The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Complete Project Gutenberg Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
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Title: The Complete Project Gutenberg Writings of Charles Dudley Warner
Author: Charles Dudley Warner
Release date: October 11, 2004 [eBook #3136]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2021
Language: English
Credits: Produced by David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMPLETE PROJECT GUTENBERG WRITINGS OF CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER ***
Produced by David Widger
By CHARLES D. WARNER
CONTENTS:
Baddeck and That Sort of Thing
My Summer In A Garden
Calvin A Study Of Character
Backlog Studies
In The Wilderness
How I Killed A Bear
Lost In The Woods
A Fight With A Trout
A-Hunting Of The Deer
A Character Study (Old Phelps)
Camping Out
A Wilderness Romance
What Some People Call Pleasure
How Spring Came In New England
Captain John Smith
The Story Of Pocahontas
Saunterings
Being A Boy
On Horseback
As We Were Saying (Essays)
Rose And Chrysanthemum
The Red Bonnet
The Loss In Civilization
Social Screaming
Does Refinement Kill Individuality?
The Directoire Gown
The Mystery Of The Sex
The Clothes Of Fiction
The Broad A
Chewing Gum
Women In Congress
Shall Women Propose?
Frocks And The Stage
Altruism
Social Clearing-House
Dinner-Table Talk
Naturalization
Art Of Governing
Love Of Display
Value Of The Commonplace
The Burden Of Christmas
The Responsibility Of Writers
The Cap And Gown
A Tendency Of The Age
A Locoed Novelist
As We Go (Essays)
Our President
The Newspaper-Made Man
Interesting Girls
Give The Men A Chance
The Advent Of Candor
The American Man
The Electric Way
Can A Husband Open His Wife's Letters?
A Leisure Class
Weather And Character
Born With An "Ego"
Juventus Mundi
A Beautiful Old Age
The Attraction Of The Repulsive
Giving As A Luxury
Climate And Happiness
The New Feminine Reserve
Repose In Activity
Women—Ideal And Real
The Art Of Idleness
Is There Any Conversation
The Tall Girl
The Deadly Diary
The Whistling Girl
Born Old And Rich
The "Old Soldier"
The Island Of Bimini
June
Nine Short Essays
A Night In The Garden Of The Tuileries
Truthfulness
The Pursuit Of Happiness
Literature And The Stage
The Life-Saving And Life Prolonging Art
"H.H." In Southern California
Simplicity
The English Volunteers During The Late Invasion
Nathan Hale
Fashions In Literature
The American Newspaper
Certain Diversities Of American Life
The Pilgrim, And The American Of Today—[1892]
Some Causes Of The Prevailing Discontent
The Education Of The Negro
The Indeterminate Sentence
Literary Copyright
The Relation Of Literature To Life
Biographical Sketch By Thomas R. Lounsbury.
The Relation Of Literature To Life
"Equality"
What Is Your Culture To Me?
Modern Fiction
Thoughts Suggested By Mr. Froude's "Progress"
England
The Novel And The Common School
The People For Whom Shakespeare Wrote
Trilogy
A Little Journey In The World
The Golden House
That Fortune
Their Pilgrimage
Washington Irving
By Charles Dudley Warner
PREFACE
TO JOSEPH H. TWICHELL
It would be unfair to hold you responsible for these light sketchesof a summer trip, which are now gathered into this little volume inresponse to the usual demand in such cases; yet you cannot escapealtogether. For it was you who first taught me to say the nameBaddeck; it was you who showed me its position on the map, and aseductive letter from a home missionary on Cape Breton Island, inrelation to the abundance of trout and salmon in his field of labor.That missionary, you may remember, we never found, nor did we see histackle; but I have no reason to believe that he does not enjoy goodfishing in the right season. You understand the duties of a homemissionary much better than I do, and you know whether he would belikely to let a couple of strangers into the best part of hispreserve.
But I am free to admit that after our expedition was started youspeedily relieved yourself of all responsibility for it, and turnedit over to your comrade with a profound geographical indifference;you would as readily have gone to Baddeck by Nova Zembla as by NovaScotia. The flight over the latter island was, you knew, however, nopart of our original plan, and you were not obliged to take anyinterest in it. You know that our design was to slip rapidly down,by the back way of Northumberland Sound, to the Bras d'Or, and spenda week fishing there; and that the greater part of this journey hereimperfectly described is not really ours, but was put upon us by fateand by the peculiar arrangement of provincial travel.
It would have been easy after our return to have made up fromlibraries a most engaging description of the Provinces, mixing itwith historical, legendary, botanical, geographical, and ethnologicalinformation, and seasoning it with adventure from your glowingimagination. But it seemed to me that it would be a more honestcontribution if our account contained only what we saw, in our rapidtravel; for I have a theory that any addition to the great body ofprint, however insignificant it may be, has a value in proportion toits originality and individuality,—however slight either is,—andvery little value if it is a compilation of the observations ofothers. In this case I know how slight the value is; and I can onlyhope that as the trip was very entertaining to us, the record of itmay not be wholly unentertaining to those of like tastes.
Of one thing, my dear friend, I am certain: if the readers of thislittle journey could have during its persual the companionship thatthe writer had when it was made, they would think it altogetherdelightful. There is no pleasure comparable to that of going aboutthe world, in pleasant weather, with a good comrade, if the mind isdistracted neither by care, nor ambition, nor the greed of gain. Thedelight there is in seeing things, without any hope of pecuniaryprofit from them! We certainly enjoyed that inward peace which thephilosopher associates with the absence of desire for money. For, asPlato says in the Phaedo, "whence come wars and fightings andfactions? whence but from the body and the lusts of the body? Forwars are occasioned by the love of money." So also are the majorityof the anxieties of life. We left these behind when we went into theProvinces with no design of acquiring anything there. I hope it maybe my fortune to travel further with you in this fair world, undersimilar circumstances.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, April 10, 1874.
C. D. W.
BADDECK AND THAT SORT OF THING
"Ay, now I am in Arden: the more fool I; when I was at home,
I was in a better place; but travellers must be content."
—TOUCHSTONE.
Two comrades and travelers, who sought a better country than theUnited States in the month of August, found themselves oneevening in apparent possession of the ancient town of Boston.
The shops were closed at early candle-light; the fashionableinhabitants had retired into the country, or into thesecond-story-back, of their princely residences, and even an air oftender gloom settled upon the Common. The streets were almost empty,and one passed into the burnt district, where the scarred ruins andthe uplifting piles of new brick and stone spread abroad under theflooding light of a full moon like another Pompeii, without anyincrease in his feeling of tranquil seclusion. Even the news-officeshad put up their shutters, and a confiding stranger could nowhere buya guide-book to help his wandering feet about the reposeful city, orto show him how to get out of it. There was, to be sure, a cheerfultinkle of horse-car bells in the air, and in the creeping vehicleswhich created this levity of sound were a few lonesome passengers ontheir way to Scollay's Square; but the two travelers, not havingwell-regulated minds, had no desire to go there. What would havebecome of Boston if the great fire had reached this sacred point ofpilgrimage no merely human mind can imagine. Without it, I supposethe horse-cars would go continually round and round, never stopping,until the cars fell away piecemeal on the track, and the horsescollapsed into a mere mass of bones and harness, and thebrown-covered books from the Public Library, in the hands of thefading virgins who carried them, had accumulated fines to anincalculable amount.
Boston, notwithstanding its partial destruction by fire, is still agood place to start from. When one meditates an excursion into anunknown and perhaps perilous land, where the flag will not protecthim and the greenback will only partially support him, he likes tosteady and tranquilize his mind by a peaceful halt and a serenestart. So we—for the intelligent reader has already identified uswith the two travelers resolved to spend the last night, beforebeginning our journey, in the quiet of a Boston hotel. Some peoplego into the country for quiet: we knew better. The country is noplace for sleep. The general absence of sound which prevails atnight is only a sort of background which brings out more vividly thespecial and unexpected disturbances which are suddenly sprung uponthe restless listener. There are a thousand pokerish noises that noone can account for, which excite the nerves to acute watchfulness.
It is still early, and one is beginning to be lulled by the frogs andthe crickets, when the faint rattle of a drum is heard,—just a fewpreliminary taps. But the soul takes alarm, and well it may, for aroll follows, and then a rub-a-dub-dub, and the farmer's boy who ishandling the sticks and pounding the distended skin in a neighboringhorse-shed begins to pour out his patriotism in that unendingrepetition of rub-a-dub-dub which is supposed to represent love ofcountry in the young. When the boy is tired out and quits the field,the faithful watch-dog opens out upon the stilly night. He is theguardian of his master's slumbers. The howls of the faithfulcreature are answered by barks and yelps from all the farmhouses fora mile around, and exceedingly poor barking it usually is, until allthe serenity of the night is torn to shreds. This is, however, onlythe opening of the orchestra. The cocks wake up if there is thefaintest moonshine and begin an antiphonal service between responsivebarn-yards. It is not the clear clarion of chanticleer that is heardin the morn of English poetry, but a harsh chorus of cracked voices,hoarse and abortive attempts, squawks of young experimenters, andsome indescribable thing besides, for I believe even the hens crow inthese days. Distracting as all this is, however, happy is the manwho does not hear a goat lamenting in the night. The goat is themost exasperating of the animal creation. He cries like a desertedbaby, but he does it without any regularity. One can accustomhimself to any expression of suffering that is regular. Theannoyance of the goat is in the dreadful waiting for the uncertainsound of the next wavering bleat. It is the fearful expectation ofthat, mingled with the faint hope that the last was the last, thataggravates the tossing listener until he has murder in his heart.He longs for daylight, hoping that the voices of the night will thencease, and that sleep will come with the blessed morning. But he hasforgotten the birds, who at the first streak of gray in the east haveassembled in the trees near his chamber-window, and keep up for anhour the most rasping dissonance,—an orchestra in which each artistis tuning his instrument, setting it in a different key and to play adifferent tune: each bird recalls a different tune, and none sings"Annie Laurie,"—to pervert Bayard Taylor's song.
Give us the quiet of a city on the night before a journey. As wemounted skyward in our hotel, and went to bed in a serene altitude,we congratulated ourselves upon a reposeful night. It began well.But as we sank into the first doze, we were startled by a suddencrash. Was it an earthquake, or another fire? Were the neighboringbuildings all tumbling in upon us, or had a bomb fallen into theneighboring crockery-store? It was the suddenness of the onset thatstartled us, for we soon perceived that it began with the clash ofcymbals, the pounding of drums, and the blaring of dreadful brass.It was somebody's idea of music. It opened without warning. The mencomposing the band of brass must have stolen silently into the alleyabout the sleeping hotel, and burst into the clamor of a rattlingquickstep, on purpose. The horrible sound thus suddenly let loosehad no chance of escape; it bounded back from wall to wall, like theclapping of boards in a tunnel, rattling windows and stunning allcars, in a vain attempt to get out over the roofs. But such musicdoes not go up. What could have been the intention of this assaultwe could not conjecture. It was a time of profound peace through thecountry; we had ordered no spontaneous serenade, if it was aserenade. Perhaps the Boston bands have that habit of going into analley and disciplining their nerves by letting out a tune too big forthe alley, and taking the shock of its reverberation. It may be wellenough for the band, but many a poor sinner in the hotel that nightmust have thought the judgment day had sprung upon him. Perhaps theband had some remorse, for by and by it leaked out of the alley, inhumble, apologetic retreat, as if somebody had thrown something at itfrom the sixth-story window, softly breathing as it retired the notesof "Fair Harvard."
The band had scarcely departed for some other haunt of slumber andweariness, when the notes of singing floated up that prolific alley,like the sweet tenor voice of one bewailing the prohibitory movement;and for an hour or more a succession of young bacchanals, who wereevidently wandering about in search of the Maine Law, lifted up theirvoices in song. Boston seems to be full of good singers; but theywill ruin their voices by this night exercise, and so the city willcease to be attractive to travelers who would like to sleep there.But this entertainment did not last the night out.
It stopped just before the hotel porter began to come around to rousethe travelers who had said the night before that they wanted to beawakened. In all well-regulated hotels this process begins at twoo'clock and keeps up till seven. If the porter is at all faithful,he wakes up everybody in the house; if he is a shirk, he only rousesthe wrong people. We treated the pounding of the porter on our doorwith silent contempt. At the next door he had better luck. Pound,pound. An angry voice, "What do you want?"
"Time to take the train, sir."
"Not going to take any train."
"Ain't your name Smith?"
"Yes."
"Well, Smith"—
"I left no order to be called." (Indistinct grumbling from Smith'sroom.)
Porter is heard shuffling slowly off down the passage. In a littlewhile he returns to Smith's door, evidently not satisfied in hismind. Rap, rap, rap!
"Well, what now?"
"What's your initials? A. T.; clear out!"
And the porter shambles away again in his slippers, grumblingsomething about a mistake. The idea of waking a man up in the middleof the night to ask him his "initials" was ridiculous enough tobanish sleep for another hour. A person named Smith, when hetravels, should leave his initials outside the door with his boots.
Refreshed by this reposeful night, and eager to exchange thestagnation of the shore for the tumult of the ocean, we departed nextmorning for Baddeck by the most direct route. This we found, bydiligent study of fascinating prospectuses of travel, to be by theboats of the International Steamship Company; and when, at eighto'clock in the morning, we stepped aboard one of them from CommercialWharf, we felt that half our journey and the most perplexing part ofit was accomplished. We had put ourselves upon a great line oftravel, and had only to resign ourselves to its flow in order toreach the desired haven. The agent at the wharf assured us that itwas not necessary to buy through tickets to Baddeck,—he spoke of itas if it were as easy a place to find as Swampscott,—it was aconspicuous name on the cards of the company, we should go right onfrom St. John without difficulty. The easy familiarity of thisofficial with Baddeck, in short, made us ashamed to exhibit anyanxiety about its situation or the means of approach to it.Subsequent experience led us to believe that the only man in theworld, out of Baddeck, who knew anything about it lives in Boston,and sells tickets to it, or rather towards it.
There is no moment of delight in any pilgrimage like the beginning ofit, when the traveler is settled simply as to his destination, andcommits himself to his unknown fate and all the anticipations ofadventure before him. We experienced this pleasure as we ascended tothe deck of the steamboat and snuffed the fresh air of Boston Harbor.What a beautiful harbor it is, everybody says, with its irregularlyindented shores and its islands. Being strangers, we want to knowthe names of the islands, and to have Fort Warren, which has anational reputation, pointed out. As usual on a steamboat, no one iscertain about the names, and the little geographical knowledge wehave is soon hopelessly confused. We make out South Boston veryplainly: a tourist is looking at its warehouses through hisopera-glass, and telling his boy about a recent fire there. We find outafterwards that it was East Boston. We pass to the stern of the boatfor a last look at Boston itself; and while there we have thepleasure of showing inquirers the Monument and the State House. Wedo this with easy familiarity; but where there are so many tallfactory chimneys, it is not so easy to point out the Monument as onemay think.
The day is simply delicious, when we get away from the unozoned airof the land. The sky is cloudless, and the water sparkles like thetop of a glass of champagne. We intend by and by to sit down andlook at it for half a day, basking in the sunshine and pleasingourselves with the shifting and dancing of the waves. Now we arebusy running about from side to side to see the islands, Governor's,Castle, Long, Deer, and the others. When, at length, we find FortWarren, it is not nearly so grim and gloomy as we had expected, andis rather a pleasure-place than a prison in appearance. We areconscious, however, of a patriotic emotion as we pass its green turfand peeping guns. Leaving on our right Lovell's Island and the Greatand Outer Brewster, we stand away north along the jaggedMassachusetts shore. These outer islands look cold and wind-swepteven in summer, and have a hardness of outline which is very far fromthe aspect of summer isles in summer seas. They are too low and barefor beauty, and all the coast is of the most retiring and humbledescription. Nature makes some compensation for this lowness by aneccentricity of indentation which looks very picturesque on the map,and sometimes striking, as where Lynn stretches out a slender armwith knobby Nahant at the end, like a New Zealand war club. We sitand watch this shore as we glide by with a placid delight. Itscurves and low promontories are getting to be speckled with villagesand dwellings, like the shores of the Bay of Naples; we see the whitespires, the summer cottages of wealth, the brown farmhouses with anoccasional orchard, the gleam of a white beach, and now and then theflag of some many-piazzaed hotel. The sunlight is the glory of itall; it must have quite another attraction—that of melancholy—undera gray sky and with a lead-colored water foreground.
There was not much on the steamboat to distract our attention fromthe study of physical geography. All the fashionable travelers hadgone on the previous boat or were waiting for the next one. Thepassengers were mostly people who belonged in the Provinces and hadthe listless provincial air, with a Boston commercial traveler ortwo, and a few gentlemen from the republic of Ireland, dressed intheir uncomfortable Sunday clothes. If any accident should happen tothe boat, it was doubtful if there were persons on board who coulddraw up and pass the proper resolutions of thanks to the officers. Iheard one of these Irish gentlemen, whose satin vest was insufficientto repress the mountainous protuberance of his shirt-bosom,enlightening an admiring friend as to his idiosyncrasies. Itappeared that he was that sort of a man that, if a man wantedanything of him, he had only to speak for it "wunst;" and that one ofhis peculiarities was an instant response of the deltoid muscle tothe brain, though he did not express it in that language. He went onto explain to his auditor that he was so constituted physically thatwhenever he saw a fight, no matter whose property it was, he lost allcontrol of himself. This sort of confidence poured out to a singlefriend, in a retired place on the guard of the boat, in an unexcitedtone, was evidence of the man's simplicity and sincerity. The veryact of traveling, I have noticed, seems to open a man's heart, sothat he will impart to a chance acquaintance his losses, hisdiseases, his table preferences, his disappointments in love or inpolitics, and his most secret hopes. One sees everywhere thisbeautiful human trait, this craving for sympathy. There was the oldlady, in the antique bonnet and plain cotton gloves, who got aboardthe express train at a way-station on the Connecticut River Road.She wanted to go, let us say, to Peak's Four Corners. It seemed thatthe train did not usually stop there, but it appeared afterwards thatthe obliging conductor had told her to get aboard and he would lether off at Peak's. When she stepped into the car, in a flusteredcondition, carrying her large bandbox, she began to ask all thepassengers, in turn, if this was the right train, and if it stoppedat Peak's. The information she received was various, but the weightof it was discouraging, and some of the passengers urged her to getoff without delay, before the train should start. The poor woman gotoff, and pretty soon came back again, sent by the conductor; but hermind was not settled, for she repeated her questions to every personwho passed her seat, and their answers still more discomposed her."Sit perfectly still," said the conductor, when he came by. "Youmust get out and wait for a way train," said the passengers, whoknew. In this confusion, the train moved off, just as the old ladyhad about made up her mind to quit the car, when her distraction wascompleted by the discovery that her hair trunk was not on board. Shesaw it standing on the open platform, as we passed, and after onelook of terror, and a dash at the window, she subsided into her seat,grasping her bandbox, with a vacant look of utter despair. Fate nowseemed to have done its worst, and she was resigned to it. I am sureit was no mere curiosity, but a desire to be of service, that led meto approach her and say, "Madam, where are you going?"
"The Lord only knows," was the utterly candid response; but then,forgetting everything in her last misfortune and impelled to a burstof confidence, she began to tell me her troubles. She informed methat her youngest daughter was about to be married, and that all herwedding-clothes and all her summer clothes were in that trunk; and asshe said this she gave a glance out of the window as if she hoped itmight be following her. What would become of them all now, all brandnew, she did n't know, nor what would become of her or her daughter.And then she told me, article by article and piece by piece, all thatthat trunk contained, the very names of which had an unfamiliar soundin a railway-car, and how many sets and pairs there were of each. Itseemed to be a relief to the old lady to make public this cataloguewhich filled all her mind; and there was a pathos in the revelationthat I cannot convey in words. And though I am compelled, by way ofillustration, to give this incident, no bribery or torture shall everextract from me a statement of the contents of that hair trunk.
We were now passing Nahant, and we should have seen Longfellow'scottage and the waves beating on the rocks before it, if we had beennear enough. As it was, we could only faintly distinguish theheadland and note the white beach of Lynn. The fact is, that intravel one is almost as much dependent upon imagination and memory ashe is at home. Somehow, we seldom get near enough to anything. Theinterest of all this coast which we had come to inspect was mainlyliterary and historical. And no country is of much interest untillegends and poetry have draped it in hues that mere nature cannotproduce. We looked at Nahant for Longfellow's sake; we strained oureyes to make out Marblehead on account of Whittier's ballad; wescrutinized the entrance to Salem Harbor because a genius once sat inits decaying custom-house and made of it a throne of the imagination.Upon this low shore line, which lies blinking in the midday sun, thewaves of history have beaten for two centuries and a half, andromance has had time to grow there. Out of any of these coves mighthave sailed Sir Patrick Spens "to Noroway, to Noroway,"
"They hadna sailed upon the sea
A day but barely three,
Till loud and boisterous grew the wind,
And gurly grew the sea."
The sea was anything but gurly now; it lay idle and shining in anAugust holiday. It seemed as if we could sit all day and watch thesuggestive shore and dream about it. But we could not. No man, andfew women, can sit all day on those little round penitential stoolsthat the company provide for the discomfort of their passengers.There is no scenery in the world that can be enjoyed from one ofthose stools. And when the traveler is at sea, with the land failingaway in his horizon, and has to create his own scenery by an effortof the imagination, these stools are no assistance to him. Theimagination, when one is sitting, will not work unless the back issupported. Besides, it began to be cold; notwithstanding the shiny,specious appearance of things, it was cold, except in a shelterednook or two where the sun beat. This was nothing to be complained ofby persons who had left the parching land in order to get cool. Theyknew that there would be a wind and a draught everywhere, and thatthey would be occupied nearly all the time in moving the littlestools about to get out of the wind, or out of the sun, or out ofsomething that is inherent in a steamboat. Most people enjoy ridingon a steamboat, shaking and trembling and chow-chowing along inpleasant weather out of sight of land; and they do not feel anyennui, as may be inferred from the intense excitement which seizesthem when a poor porpoise leaps from the water half a mile away."Did you see the porpoise?" makes conversation for an hour. On oursteamboat there was a man who said he saw a whale, saw him just asplain, off to the east, come up to blow; appeared to be a young one.I wonder where all these men come from who always see a whale. Inever was on a sea-steamer yet that there was not one of these men.
We sailed from Boston Harbor straight for Cape Ann, and passed closeby the twin lighthouses of Thacher, so near that we could see thelanterns and the stone gardens, and the young barbarians of Thacherall at play; and then we bore away, straight over the tracklessAtlantic, across that part of the map where the title and thepublisher's name are usually printed, for the foreign city of St.John. It was after we passed these lighthouses that we did n't seethe whale, and began to regret the hard fate that took us away from aview of the Isles of Shoals. I am not tempted to introduce them intothis sketch, much as its surface needs their romantic color, fortruth is stronger in me than the love of giving a deceitful pleasure.There will be nothing in this record that we did not see, or mightnot have seen. For instance, it might not be wrong to describe acoast, a town, or an island that we passed while we were performingour morning toilets in our staterooms. The traveler owes a duty tohis readers, and if he is now and then too weary or too indifferentto go out from the cabin to survey a prosperous village where alanding is made, he has no right to cause the reader to suffer by hisindolence. He should describe the village.
I had intended to describe the Maine coast, which is as fascinatingon the map as that of Norway. We had all the feelings appropriate tonearness to it, but we couldn't see it. Before we came abreast of itnight had settled down, and there was around us only a gray andmelancholy waste of salt water. To be sure it was a lovely night,with a young moon in its sky,
"I saw the new moon late yestreen
Wi' the auld moon in her arms,"
and we kept an anxious lookout for the Maine hills that push soboldly down into the sea. At length we saw them,—faint, duskyshadows in the horizon, looming up in an ashy color and with a mostpoetical light. We made out clearly Mt. Desert, and felt repaid forour journey by the sight of this famous island, even at such adistance. I pointed out the hills to the man at the wheel, and askedif we should go any nearer to Mt. Desert.
"Them!" said he, with the merited contempt which officials in thiscountry have for inquisitive travelers,—"them's Camden Hills. Youwon't see Mt. Desert till midnight, and then you won't."
One always likes to weave in a little romance with summer travel on asteamboat; and we came aboard this one with the purpose and thelanguage to do so. But there was an absolute want of material, thatwould hardly be credited if we went into details. The first meetingof the passengers at the dinner-table revealed it. There is a kindof female plainness which is pathetic, and many persons can truly saythat to them it is homelike; and there are vulgarities of manner thatare interesting; and there are peculiarities, pleasant or thereverse, which attract one's attention: but there was absolutelynothing of this sort on our boat. The female passengers were allneutrals, incapable, I should say, of making any impression whatevereven under the most favorable circumstances. They were probablywomen of the Provinces, and took their neutral tint from the foggyland they inhabit, which is neither a republic nor a monarchy, butmerely a languid expectation of something undefined. My comrade wasdisposed to resent the dearth of beauty, not only on this vessel butthroughout the Provinces generally,—a resentment that could be shownto be unjust, for this was evidently not the season for beauty inthese lands, and it was probably a bad year for it. Nor should anAmerican of the United States be forward to set up his standard oftaste in such matters; neither in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, norCape Breton have I heard the inhabitants complain of the plainness ofthe women.
On such a night two lovers might have been seen, but not on our boat,leaning over the taffrail,—if that is the name of the fence aroundthe cabin-deck, looking at the moon in the western sky and the longtrack of light in the steamer's wake with unutterable tenderness.For the sea was perfectly smooth, so smooth as not to interfere withthe most perfect tenderness of feeling; and the vessel forged aheadunder the stars of the soft night with an adventurous freedom thatalmost concealed the commercial nature of her mission. It seemed—this voyaging through the sparkling water, under the scintillatingheavens, this resolute pushing into the opening splendors of night—like a pleasure trip. "It is the witching hour of half past ten,"said my comrade, "let us turn in." (The reader will notice theconsideration for her feelings which has omitted the usualdescription of "a sunset at sea.")
When we looked from our state-room window in the morning we saw land.We were passing within a stone's throw of a pale-green and rathercold-looking coast, with few trees or other evidences of fertilesoil. Upon going out I found that we were in the harbor of Eastport.I found also the usual tourist who had been up, shivering in hiswinter overcoat, since four o'clock. He described to me themagnificent sunrise, and the lifting of the fog from islands andcapes, in language that made me rejoice that he had seen it. He knewall about the harbor. That wooden town at the foot of it, with thewhite spire, was Lubec; that wooden town we were approaching wasEastport. The long island stretching clear across the harbor wasCampobello. We had been obliged to go round it, a dozen miles out ofour way, to get in, because the tide was in such a stage that wecould not enter by the Lubec Channel. We had been obliged to enteran American harbor by British waters.
We approached Eastport with a great deal of curiosity andconsiderable respect. It had been one of the cities of theimagination. Lying in the far east of our great territory, amilitary and even a sort of naval station, a conspicuous name on themap, prominent in boundary disputes and in war operations, frequentin telegraphic dispatches,—we had imagined it a solid city, withsome Oriental, if decayed, peculiarity, a port of trade and commerce.The tourist informed me that Eastport looked very well at a distance,with the sun shining on its white houses. When we landed at itswooden dock we saw that it consisted of a few piles of lumber, asprinkling of small cheap houses along a sidehill, a big hotel with aflag-staff, and a very peaceful looking arsenal. It is doubtless avery enterprising and deserving city, but its aspect that morning wasthat of cheapness, newness, and stagnation, with no compensatingpicturesqueness. White paint always looks chilly under a gray skyand on naked hills. Even in hot August the place seemed bleak. Thetourist, who went ashore with a view to breakfast, said that itwould be a good place to stay in and go a-fishing and picnicking onCampobello Island. It has another advantage for the wicked overother Maine towns. Owing to the contiguity of British territory, theMaine Law is constantly evaded, in spirit. The thirsty citizen orsailor has only to step into a boat and give it a shove or two acrossthe narrow stream that separates the United States from Deer Islandand land, when he can ruin his breath, and return before he ismissed.
This might be a cause of war with, England, but it is not the mostserious grievance here. The possession by the British of the islandof Campobello is an insufferable menace and impertinence. I writewith the full knowledge of what war is. We ought to instantlydislodge the British from Campobello. It entirely shuts up andcommands our harbor, one of our chief Eastern harbors and warstations, where we keep a flag and cannon and some soldiers, andwhere the customs officers look out for smuggling. There is no wayto get into our own harbor, except in favorable conditions of thetide, without begging the courtesy of a passage through Britishwaters. Why is England permitted to stretch along down our coast inthis straggling and inquisitive manner? She might almost as well ownLong Island. It was impossible to prevent our cheeks mantling withshame as we thought of this, and saw ourselves, free Americancitizens, land-locked by alien soil in our own harbor.
We ought to have war, if war is necessary to possess Campobello andDeer Islands; or else we ought to give the British Eastport. I amnot sure but the latter would be the better course.
With this war spirit in our hearts, we sailed away into the Britishwaters of the Bay of Fundy, but keeping all the morning so close tothe New Brunswick shore that we could see there was nothing on it;that is, nothing that would make one wish to land. And yet the bestpart of going to sea is keeping close to the shore, however tame itmay be, if the weather is pleasant. A pretty bay now and then, arocky cove with scant foliage, a lighthouse, a rude cabin, a levelland, monotonous and without noble forests,—this was New Brunswickas we coasted along it under the most favorable circumstances. Butwe were advancing into the Bay of Fundy; and my comrade, who had beenbrought up on its high tides in the district school, was on thelookout for this phenomenon. The very name of Fundy is stimulatingto the imagination, amid the geographical wastes of youth, and theyoung fancy reaches out to its tides with an enthusiasm that is givenonly to Fingal's Cave and other pictorial wonders of the text-book.I am sure the district schools would become what they are not now, ifthe geographers would make the other parts of the globe as attractiveas the sonorous Bay of Fundy. The recitation about that is always aneasy one; there is a lusty pleasure in the mere shouting out of thename, as if the speaking it were an innocent sort of swearing. Fromthe Bay of Fundy the rivers run uphill half the time, and the tidesare from forty to ninety feet high. For myself, I confess that, inmy imagination, I used to see the tides of this bay go stalking intothe land like gigantic waterspouts; or, when I was better instructed,I could see them advancing on the coast like a solid wall of masonryeighty feet high. "Where," we said, as we came easily, and neitheruphill nor downhill, into the pleasant harbor of St. John,—-"whereare the tides of our youth?"
They were probably out, for when we came to the land we walked outupon the foot of a sloping platform that ran into the water by theside of the piles of the dock, which stood up naked and blackenedhigh in the air. It is not the purpose of this paper to describe St.John, nor to dwell upon its picturesque situation. As one approachesit from the harbor it gives a promise which its rather shabbystreets, decaying houses, and steep plank sidewalks do not keep. Acity set on a hill, with flags flying from a roof here and there, anda few shining spires and walls glistening in the sun, always lookswell at a distance. St. John is extravagant in the matter offlagstaffs; almost every well-to-do citizen seems to have one on hispremises, as a sort of vent for his loyalty, I presume. It is a goodfashion, at any rate, and its more general adoption by us would addto the gayety of our cities when we celebrate the birthday of thePresident. St. John is built on a steep sidehill, from which itwould be in danger of sliding off, if its houses were not mortisedinto the solid rock. This makes the house-foundations secure, butthe labor of blasting out streets is considerable. We note thesethings complacently as we toil in the sun up the hill to the VictoriaHotel, which stands well up on the backbone of the ridge, and fromthe upper windows of which we have a fine view of the harbor, and ofthe hill opposite, above Carleton, where there is the brokenlytruncated ruin of a round stone tower. This tower was one of thefirst things that caught our eyes as we entered the harbor. It gavean antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wantedwithout this. Round stone towers are not so common in this worldthat we can afford to be indifferent to them. This is called aMartello tower, but I could not learn who built it. I could notunderstand the indifference, almost amounting to contempt, of thecitizens of St. John in regard to this their only piece of curiousantiquity. "It is nothing but the ruins of an old fort," they said;"you can see it as well from here as by going there." It was,however, the one thing at St. John I was determined to see. But wenever got any nearer to it than the ferry-landing. Want of time andthe vis inertia of the place were against us. And now, as I think ofthat tower and its perhaps mysterious origin, I have a longing for itthat the possession of nothing else in the Provinces could satisfy.
But it must not be forgotten that we were on our way to Baddeck; thatthe whole purpose of the journey was to reach Baddeck; that St. Johnwas only an incident in the trip; that any information about St.John, which is here thrown in or mercifully withheld, is entirelygratuitous, and is not taken into account in the price the readerpays for this volume. But if any one wants to know what sort of aplace St. John is, we can tell him: it is the sort of a place that ifyou get into it after eight o'clock on Wednesday morning, you cannotget out of it in any direction until Thursday morning at eighto'clock, unless you want to smuggle goods on the night train toBangor. It was eleven o'clock Wednesday forenoon when we arrived atSt. John. The Intercolonial railway train had gone to Shediac; ithad gone also on its roundabout Moncton, Missaquat River, Truro,Stewiack, and Shubenacadie way to Halifax; the boat had gone to DigbyGut and Annapolis to catch the train that way for Halifax; the boathad gone up the river to Frederick, the capital. We could go to noneof these places till the next day. We had no desire to go toFrederick, but we made the fact that we were cut off from it anaddition to our injury. The people of St. John have thispeculiarity: they never start to go anywhere except early in themorning.
The reader to whom time is nothing does not yet appreciate theannoyance of our situation. Our time was strictly limited. Theactive world is so constituted that it could not spare us more thantwo weeks. We must reach Baddeck Saturday night or never. To gohome without seeing Baddeck was simply intolerable. Had we not toldeverybody that we were going to Baddeck? Now, if we had gone toShediac in the train that left St. John that morning, we should havetaken the steamboat that would have carried us to Port Hawkesbury,whence a stage connected with a steamboat on the Bras d'Or, which(with all this profusion of relative pronouns) would land us atBaddeck on Friday. How many times had we been over this route on themap and the prospectus of travel! And now, what a delusion itseemed! There would not another boat leave Shediac on this routetill the following Tuesday,—quite too late for our purpose. Thereader sees where we were, and will be prepared, if he has a map (andany feelings), to appreciate the masterly strategy that followed.
II
During the pilgrimage everything does not suit the tastes of thepilgrim.—TURKISH PROVERB.
One seeking Baddeck, as a possession, would not like to be detained aprisoner even in Eden,—much less in St. John, which is unlike Edenin several important respects. The tree of knowledge does not growthere, for one thing; at least St. John's ignorance of Baddeckamounts to a feature. This encountered us everywhere. So dense wasthis ignorance, that we, whose only knowledge of the desired placewas obtained from the prospectus of travel, came to regard ourselvesas missionaries of geographical information in this dark provincialcity.
The clerk at the Victoria was not unwilling to help us on ourjourney, but if he could have had his way, we would have gone to aplace on Prince Edward Island which used to be called Bedeque, but isnow named Summerside, in the hope of attracting summer visitors. Asto Cape Breton, he said the agent of the Intercolonial could tell usall about that, and put us on the route. We repaired to the agent.The kindness of this person dwells in our memory. He entered at onceinto our longings and perplexities. He produced his maps andtime-tables, and showed us clearly what we already knew. The PortHawkesbury steamboat from Shediac for that week had gone, to be sure,but we could take one of another line which would leave us at Pictou,whence we could take another across to Port Hood, on Cape Breton.This looked fair, until we showed the agent that there was no steamerto Port Hood.
"Ah, then you can go another way. You can take the Intercolonialrailway round to Pictou, catch the steamer for Port Hawkesbury,connect with the steamer on the Bras d'Or, and you are all right."
So it would seem. It was a most obliging agent; and it took us halfan hour to convince him that the train would reach Pictou half a daytoo late for the steamer, that no other boat would leave Pictou forCape Breton that week, and that even if we could reach the Bras d'Or,we should have no means of crossing it, except by swimming. Theperplexed agent thereupon referred us to Mr. Brown, a shipper on thewharf, who knew all about Cape Breton, and could tell us exactly howto get there. It is needless to say that a weight was taken off ourminds. We pinned our faith to Brown, and sought him in hiswarehouse. Brown was a prompt business man, and a traveler, andwould know every route and every conveyance from Nova Scotia to CapeBreton.
Mr. Brown was not in. He never is in. His store is a rustywarehouse, low and musty, piled full of boxes of soap and candles anddried fish, with a little glass cubby in one corner, where a thinclerk sits at a high desk, like a spider in his web. Perhaps he is aspider, for the cubby is swarming with flies, whose hum is the onlynoise of traffic; the glass of the window-sash has not been washedsince it was put in apparently. The clerk is not writing, and hasevidently no other use for his steel pen than spearing flies. Brownis out, says this young votary of commerce, and will not be in tillhalf past five. We remark upon the fact that nobody ever is "in"these dingy warehouses, wonder when the business is done, and go outinto the street to wait for Brown.
In front of the store is a dray, its horse fast-asleep, and waitingfor the revival of commerce. The travelers note that the dray is ofa peculiar construction, the body being dropped down from the axlesso as nearly to touch the ground,—a great convenience in loading andunloading; they propose to introduce it into their native land. Thedray is probably waiting for the tide to come in. In the deep sliplie a dozen helpless vessels, coasting schooners mostly, tipped ontheir beam ends in the mud, or propped up by side-pieces as if theywere built for land as well as for water. At the end of the wharf isa long English steamboat unloading railroad iron, which will returnto the Clyde full of Nova Scotia coal. We sit down on the dock,where the fresh sea-breeze comes up the harbor, watch the lazilyswinging crane on the vessel, and meditate upon the greatness ofEngland and the peacefulness of the drowsy after noon. One's feelingof rest is never complete—unless he can see somebody else at work,—but the labor must be without haste, as it is in the Provinces.
While waiting for Brown, we had leisure to explore the shops ofKing's Street, and to climb up to the grand triumphal arch whichstands on top of the hill and guards the entrance to King's Square.
Of the shops for dry-goods I have nothing to say, for they tempt theunwary American to violate the revenue laws of his country; but hemay safely go into the book-shops. The literature which is displayedin the windows and on the counters has lost that freshness which itonce may have had, and is, in fact, if one must use the term,fly-specked, like the cakes in the grocery windows on the side streets.There are old illustrated newspapers from the States, cheap novelsfrom the same, and the flashy covers of the London and Edinburghsixpenny editions. But this is the dull season for literature, wereflect.
It will always be matter of regret to us that we climbed up to thetriumphal arch, which appeared so noble in the distance, with thetrees behind it. For when we reached it, we found that it was builtof wood, painted and sanded, and in a shocking state of decay; andthe grove to which it admitted us was only a scant assemblage ofsickly locust-trees, which seemed to be tired of battling with theunfavorable climate, and had, in fact, already retired from thebusiness of ornamental shade trees. Adjoining this square is anancient cemetery, the surface of which has decayed in sympathy withthe mouldering remains it covers, and is quite a model in thisrespect. I have called this cemetery ancient, but it may not be so,for its air of decay is thoroughly modern, and neglect, and notyears, appears to have made it the melancholy place of repose it is.Whether it is the fashionable and favorite resort of the dead of thecity we did not learn, but there were some old men sitting in itsdamp shades, and the nurses appeared to make it a rendezvous fortheir baby-carriages,—a cheerful place to bring up children in, andto familiarize their infant minds with the fleeting nature ofprovincial life. The park and burying-ground, it is scarcelynecessary to say, added greatly to the feeling of repose which stoleover us on this sunny day. And they made us long for Brown and hisinformation about Baddeck.
But Mr. Brown, when found, did not know as much as the agent. He hadbeen in Nova Scotia; he had never been in Cape Breton; but hepresumed we would find no difficulty in reaching Baddeck by so andso, and so and so. We consumed valuable time in convincing Brownthat his directions to us were impracticable and valueless, and thenhe referred us to Mr. Cope. An interview with Mr. Cope discouragedus; we found that we were imparting everywhere more geographicalinformation than we were receiving, and as our own stock was small,we concluded that we should be unable to enlighten all theinhabitants of St. John upon the subject of Baddeck before we ranout. Returning to the hotel, and taking our destiny into our ownhands, we resolved upon a bold stroke.
But to return for a moment to Brown. I feel that Brown has been letoff too easily in the above paragraph. His conduct, to say thetruth, was not such as we expected of a man in whom we had put ourentire faith for half a day,—a long while to trust anybody in thesetimes,—a man whom we had exalted as an encyclopedia of information,and idealized in every way. A man of wealth and liberal views andcourtly manners we had decided Brown would be. Perhaps he had asuburban villa on the heights over-looking Kennebeckasis Bay, and,recognizing us as brothers in a common interest in Baddeck,not-withstanding our different nationality, would insist upon takingus to his house, to sip provincial tea with Mrs. Brown and VictoriaLouise, his daughter. When, therefore, Mr. Brown whisked into hisdingy office, and, but for our importunity, would have paid no moreattention to us than to up-country customers without credit, and whenhe proved to be willingly, it seemed to us, ignorant of Baddeck, ourfeelings received a great shock. It is incomprehensible that a manin the position of Brown with so many boxes of soap and candles todispose of—should be so ignorant of a neighboring province. We hadheard of the cordial unity of the Provinces in the New Dominion.Heaven help it, if it depends upon such fellows as Brown! Of course,his directing us to Cope was a mere fetch. For as we have intimated,it would have taken us longer to have given Cope an idea of Baddeck,than it did to enlighten Brown. But we had no bitter feelings aboutCope, for we never had reposed confidence in him.
Our plan of campaign was briefly this: To take the steamboat at eighto'clock, Thursday morning, for Digby Gut and Annapolis; thence to goby rail through the poetical Acadia down to Halifax; to turn northand east by rail from Halifax to New Glasgow, and from thence to pushon by stage to the Gut of Canso. This would carry us over the entirelength of Nova Scotia, and, with good luck, land us on Cape BretonIsland Saturday morning. When we should set foot on that island, wetrusted that we should be able to make our way to Baddeck, bywalking, swimming, or riding, whichever sort of locomotion should bemost popular in that province. Our imaginations were kindled byreading that the "most superb line of stages on the continent" ranfrom New Glasgow to the Gut of Canso. If the reader perfectlyunderstands this programme, he has the advantage of the twotravelers at the time they made it.
It was a gray morning when we embarked from St. John, and in fact alittle drizzle of rain veiled the Martello tower, and checked, likethe cross-strokes of a line engraving, the hill on which it stands.The miscellaneous shining of such a harbor appears best in a goldenhaze, or in the mist of a morning like this. We had expected days offog in this region; but the fog seemed to have gone out with the hightides of the geography. And it is simple justice to thesepossessions of her Majesty, to say that in our two weeks'acquaintance of them they enjoyed as delicious weather as ever fallson sea and shore, with the exception of this day when we crossed theBay of Fundy. And this day was only one of those cool interludes oflow color, which an artist would be thankful to introduce among agroup of brilliant pictures. Such a day rests the traveler, who isoverstimulated by shifting scenes played upon by the dazzling sun.So the cool gray clouds spread a grateful umbrella above us as we ranacross the Bay of Fundy, sighted the headlands of the Gut of Digby,and entered into the Annapolis Basin, and into the region of aromantic history. The white houses of Digby, scattered over thedowns like a flock of washed sheep, had a somewhat chilly aspect, itis true, and made us long for the sun on them. But as I think of itnow, I prefer to have the town and the pretty hillsides that standabout the basin in the light we saw them; and especially do I like torecall the high wooden pier at Digby, deserted by the tide and soblown by the wind that the passengers who came out on it, with theirtossing drapery, brought to mind the windy Dutch harbors thatBackhuysen painted. We landed a priest here, and it was a pleasureto see him as he walked along the high pier, his broad hat flapping,and the wind blowing his long skirts away from his ecclesiasticallegs.
It was one of the coincidences of life, for which no one can account,that when we descended upon these coasts, the Governor-General of theDominion was abroad in his Provinces. There was an air ofexpectation of him everywhere, and of preparation for his coming; hislordship was the subject of conversation on the Digby boat, hismovements were chronicled in the newspapers, and the gracious bearingof the Governor and Lady Dufferin at the civic receptions, balls, andpicnics was recorded with loyal satisfaction; even a literary flavorwas given to the provincial journals by quotations from hislordship's condescension to letters in the "High Latitudes." It wasnot without pain, however, that even in this un-American region wediscovered the old Adam of journalism in the disposition of thenewspapers of St. John toward sarcasm touching the well-meantattempts to entertain the Governor and his lady in the provincialtown of Halifax,—a disposition to turn, in short, upon thedemonstrations of loyal worship the faint light of ridicule. Therewere those upon the boat who were journeying to Halifax to take partin the civic ball about to be given to their excellencies, and as wewere going in the same direction, we shared in the feeling ofsatisfaction which proximity to the Great often excites.
We had other if not deeper causes of satisfaction. We were sailingalong the gracefully moulded and tree-covered hills of the AnnapolisBasin, and up the mildly picturesque river of that name, and we wereabout to enter what the provincials all enthusiastically call theGarden of Nova Scotia. This favored vale, skirted by low ranges ofhills on either hand, and watered most of the way by the AnnapolisRiver, extends from the mouth of the latter to the town of Windsor onthe river Avon. We expected to see something like the fertilevalleys of the Connecticut or the Mohawk. We should also passthrough those meadows on the Basin of Minas which Mr. Longfellow hasmade more sadly poetical than any other spot on the WesternContinent. It is,—this valley of the Annapolis,—in the belief ofprovincials, the most beautiful and blooming place in the world, witha soil and climate kind to the husbandman; a land of fair meadows,orchards, and vines. It was doubtless our own fault that this landdid not look to us like a garden, as it does to the inhabitants ofNova Scotia; and it was not until we had traveled over the rest ofthe country, that we saw the appropriateness of the designation. Theexplanation is, that not so much is required of a garden here as insome other parts of the world. Excellent apples, none finer, areexported from this valley to England, and the quality of the potatoesis said to ap-proach an ideal perfection here. I should think thatoats would ripen well also in a good year, and grass, for those whocare for it, may be satisfactory. I should judge that the otherproducts of this garden are fish and building-stone. But weanticipate. And have we forgotten the "murmuring pines and thehemlocks"? Nobody, I suppose, ever travels here without believingthat he sees these trees of the imagination, so forcibly has the poetprojected them upon the uni-versal consciousness. But we were unableto see them, on this route.
It would be a brutal thing for us to take seats in the railway trainat Annapolis, and leave the ancient town, with its modern houses andremains of old fortifications, without a thought of the romantichistory which saturates the region. There is not much in the smart,new restaurant, where a tidy waiting-maid skillfully depreciates ourcurrency in exchange for bread and cheese and ale, to recall theearly drama of the French discovery and settlement. For it is to theFrench that we owe the poetical interest that still invests, like agarment, all these islands and bays, just as it is to the Spaniardsthat we owe the romance of the Florida coast. Every spot on thiscontinent that either of these races has touched has a color that iswanting in the prosaic settlements of the English.
Without the historical light of French adventure upon this town andbasin of Annapolis, or Port Royal, as they were first named, Iconfess that I should have no longing to stay here for a week;notwithstanding the guide-book distinctly says that this harbor has"a striking resemblance to the beautiful Bay of Naples." I am notoffended at this remark, for it is the one always made about aharbor, and I am sure the passing traveler can stand it, if the Bayof Naples can. And yet this tranquil basin must have seemed a havenof peace to the first discoverers.
It was on a lovely summer day in 1604, that the Sieur de Monts andhis comrades, Champlain and the Baron de Poutrincourt, beating aboutthe shores of Nova Scotia, were invited by the rocky gateway of thePort Royal Basin. They entered the small inlet, says Mr. Parkman,when suddenly the narrow strait dilated into a broad and tranquilbasin, compassed with sunny hills, wrapped with woodland verdure andalive with waterfalls. Poutrincourt was delighted with the scene,and would fain remove thither from France with his family. SincePoutrincourt's day, the hills have been somewhat denuded of trees,and the waterfalls are not now in sight; at least, not under such agray sky as we saw.
The reader who once begins to look into the French occupancy ofAcadia is in danger of getting into a sentimental vein, and sentimentis the one thing to be shunned in these days. Yet I cannot but stay,though the train should leave us, to pay my respectful homage to oneof the most heroic of women, whose name recalls the most romanticincident in the history of this region. Out of this past there risesno figure so captivating to the imagination as that of Madame de laTour. And it is noticeable that woman has a curious habit of comingto the front in critical moments of history, and performing someexploit that eclipses in brilliancy all the deeds of contemporarymen; and the exploit usually ends in a pathetic tragedy, that fixesit forever in the sympathy of the world. I need not copy out of thepages of De Charlevoix the well-known story of Madame de la Tour; Ionly wish he had told us more about her. It is here at Port Royalthat we first see her with her husband. Charles de St. Etienne, theChevalier de la Tour,—there is a world of romance in these merenames,—was a Huguenot nobleman who had a grant of Port Royal and ofLa Hive, from Louis XIII. He ceded La Hive to Razilli, thegovernor-in-chief of the provinces, who took a fancy to it, for aresidence. He was living peacefully at Port Royal in 1647, when theChevalier d'Aunay Charnise, having succeeded his brother Razilli atLa Hive, tired of that place and removed to Port Royal. De Charnisewas a Catholic; the difference in religion might not have producedany unpleasantness, but the two noblemen could not agree in dividingthe profits of the peltry trade,—each being covetous, if we may soexpress it, of the hide of the savage continent, and determined totake it off for himself. At any rate, disagreement arose, and De laTour moved over to the St. John, of which region his father hadenjoyed a grant from Charles I. of England,—whose sad fate it is notnecessary now to recall to the reader's mind,—and built a fort atthe mouth of the river. But the differences of the two ambitiousFrenchmen could not be composed. De la Tour obtained aid fromGovernor Winthrop at Boston, thus verifying the Catholic predictionthat the Huguenots would side with the enemies of France on occasion.De Charnise received orders from Louis to arrest De la Tour; but alittle preliminary to the arrest was the possession of the fort ofSt. John, and this he could not obtain, although be sent all hisforce against it. Taking advantage, however, of the absence of De laTour, who had a habit of roving about, he one day besieged St. John.Madame de la Tour headed the little handful of men in the fort, andmade such a gallant resistance that De Charnise was obliged to drawoff his fleet with the loss of thirty-three men,—a very seriousloss, when the supply of men was as distant as France. But DeCharnise would not be balked by a woman; he attacked again; and thistime, one of the garrison, a Swiss, betrayed the fort, and let theinvaders into the walls by an unguarded entrance. It was Eastermorning when this misfortune occurred, but the peaceful influence ofthe day did not avail. When Madame saw that she was betrayed, herspirits did not quail; she took refuge with her little band in adetached part of the fort, and there made such a bold show ofdefense, that De Charnise was obliged to agree to the terms of hersurrender, which she dictated. No sooner had this unchivalrousfellow obtained possession of the fort and of this Historic Woman,than, overcome with a false shame that he had made terms with awoman, he violated his noble word, and condemned to death all themen, except one, who was spared on condition that he should be theexecutioner of the others. And the poltroon compelled the bravewoman to witness the execution, with the added indignity of a roperound her neck,—or as De Charlevoix much more neatly expresses it,"obligea sa prisonniere d'assister a l'execution, la corde au cou."
To the shock of this horror the womanly spirit of Madame de la Toursuccumbed; she fell into a decline and died soon after. De la Tour,himself an exile from his province, wandered about the New World inhis customary pursuit of peltry. He was seen at Quebec for twoyears. While there, he heard of the death of De Charnise, andstraightway repaired to St. John. The widow of his late enemyreceived him graciously, and he entered into possession of the estateof the late occupant with the consent of all the heirs. To removeall roots of bitterness, De la Tour married Madame de Charnise, andhistory does not record any ill of either of them. I trust they hadthe grace to plant a sweetbrier on the grave of the noble woman towhose faithfulness and courage they owe their rescue from obscurity.At least the parties to this singular union must have agreed toignore the lamented existence of the Chevalier d'Aunay.
With the Chevalier de la Tour, at any rate, it all went wellthereafter. When Cromwell drove the French from Acadia, he grantedgreat territorial rights to De la Tour, which that thrifty adventurersold out to one of his co-grantees for L16,000; and he no doubtinvested the money in peltry for the London market.
As we leave the station at Annapolis, we are obliged to put Madame dela Tour out of our minds to make room for another woman whose name,and we might say presence, fills all the valley before us. So it isthat woman continues to reign, where she has once got a foothold,long after her dear frame has become dust. Evangeline, who is asreal a personage as Queen Esther, must have been a different womanfrom Madame de la Tour. If the latter had lived at Grand Pre, shewould, I trust, have made it hot for the brutal English who drove theAcadians out of their salt-marsh paradise, and have died in herheroic shoes rather than float off into poetry. But if it shouldcome to the question of marrying the De la Tour or the Evangeline, Ithink no man who was not engaged in the peltry trade would hesitatewhich to choose. At any rate, the women who love have more influencein the world than the women who fight, and so it happens that thesentimental traveler who passes through Port Royal without a tear forMadame de la Tour, begins to be in a glow of tender longing andregret for Evangeline as soon as he enters the valley of theAnnapolis River. For myself, I expected to see written over therailway crossings the legend,
"Look out for Evangeline while the bell rings."
When one rides into a region of romance he does not much notice hisspeed or his carriage; but I am obliged to say that we were nothurried up the valley, and that the cars were not too luxurious forthe plain people, priests, clergymen, and belles of the region, whorode in them. Evidently the latest fashions had not arrived in theProvinces, and we had an opportunity of studying anew those that hadlong passed away in the States, and of remarking how inappropriate afashion is when it has ceased to be the fashion.
The river becomes small shortly after we leave Annapolis and beforewe reach Paradise. At this station of happy appellation we lookedfor the satirist who named it, but he has probably sold out andremoved. If the effect of wit is produced by the sudden recognitionof a remote resemblance, there was nothing witty in the naming ofthis station. Indeed, we looked in vain for the "garden" appearanceof the valley. There was nothing generous in the small meadows orthe thin orchards; and if large trees ever grew on the borderinghills, they have given place to rather stunted evergreens; thescraggy firs and balsams, in fact, possess Nova Scotia generally aswe saw it,—and there is nothing more uninteresting and wearisomethan large tracts of these woods. We are bound to believe that NovaScotia has somewhere, or had, great pines and hemlocks that murmur,but we were not blessed with the sight of them. Slightly picturesquethis valley is with its winding river and high hills guarding it, andperhaps a person would enjoy a foot-tramp down it; but, I think hewould find little peculiar or interesting after he left theneighborhood of the Basin of Minas.
Before we reached Wolfville we came in sight of this basin and someof the estuaries and streams that run into it; that is, when the tidegoes out; but they are only muddy ditches half the time. The AcadiaCollege was pointed out to us at Wolfville by a person who said thatit is a feeble institution, a remark we were sorry to hear of a placedescribed as "one of the foremost seats of learning in the Province."But our regret was at once extinguished by the announcement that thenext station was Grand Pre! We were within three miles of the mostpoetic place in North America.
There was on the train a young man from Boston, who said that he wasborn in Grand Pre. It seemed impossible that we should actually benear a person so felicitously born. He had a justifiable pride inthe fact, as well as in the bride by his side, whom he was taking tosee for the first time his old home. His local information, impartedto her, overflowed upon us; and when he found that we had read"Evangeline," his delight in making us acquainted with the scene ofthat poem was pleasant to see. The village of Grand Pre is a milefrom the station; and perhaps the reader would like to know exactlywhat the traveler, hastening on to Baddeck, can see of the famouslocality.
We looked over a well-grassed meadow, seamed here and there by bedsof streams left bare by the receding tide, to a gentle swell in theground upon which is a not heavy forest growth. The trees partlyconceal the street of Grand Pre, which is only a road bordered bycommon houses. Beyond is the Basin of Minas, with its sedgy shore,its dreary flats; and beyond that projects a bold headland, standingperpendicular against the sky. This is the Cape Blomidon, and itgives a certain dignity to the picture.
The old Normandy picturesqueness has departed from the village ofGrand Pre. Yankee settlers, we were told, possess it now, and thereare no descendants of the French Acadians in this valley. I believethat Mr. Cozzens found some of them in humble circumstances in avillage on the other coast, not far from Halifax, and it is there,probably, that the
"Maidens still wear their Norman caps and their kirtles of homespun,
And by the evening fire repeat Evangeline's story,
While from its rocky caverns the deep-voiced, neighboring ocean
Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the forest."
At any rate, there is nothing here now except a faint tradition ofthe French Acadians; and the sentimental traveler who laments thatthey were driven out, and not left behind their dikes to rear theirflocks, and cultivate the rural virtues, and live in the simplicityof ignorance, will temper his sadness by the reflection that it is tothe expulsion he owes "Evangeline" and the luxury of his romanticgrief. So that if the traveler is honest, and examines his own soulfaithfully, he will not know what state of mind to cherish as hepasses through this region of sorrow.
Our eyes lingered as long as possible and with all eagerness uponthese meadows and marshes which the poet has made immortal, and weregretted that inexorable Baddeck would not permit us to be pilgrimsfor a day in this Acadian land. Just as I was losing sight of theskirt of trees at Grand Pre, a gentleman in the dress of a ruralclergyman left his seat, and complimented me with this remark: "Iperceive, sir, that you are fond of reading."
I could not but feel flattered by this unexpected discovery of mynature, which was no doubt due to the fact that I held in my hand oneof the works of Charles Reade on social science, called "Love meLittle, Love me Long," and I said, "Of some kinds, I am."
"Did you ever see a work called 'Evangeline'?"
"Oh, yes, I have frequently seen it."
"You may remember," continued this Mass of Information, "that thereis an allusion in it to Grand Pre. That is the place, sir!"
"Oh, indeed, is that the place? Thank you."
"And that mountain yonder is Cape Blomidon, blow me down, you know."
And under cover of this pun, the amiable clergyman retired,unconscious, I presume, of his prosaic effect upon the atmosphere ofthe region. With this intrusion of the commonplace, I suffered aneclipse of faith as to Evangeline, and was not sorry to have myattention taken up by the river Avon, along the banks of which wewere running about this time. It is really a broad arm of the basin,extending up to Windsor, and beyond in a small stream, and would havebeen a charming river if there had been a drop of water in it. Inever knew before how much water adds to a river. Its slimy bottomwas quite a ghastly spectacle, an ugly gash in the land that nothingcould heal but the friendly returning tide. I should think it wouldbe confusing to dwell by a river that runs first one way and then theother, and then vanishes altogether.
All the streams about this basin are famous for their salmon andshad, and the season for these fish was not yet passed. There seemsto be an untraced affinity between the shad and the strawberry; theyappear and disappear in a region simultaneously. When we reachedCape Breton, we were a day or two late for both. It is impossiblenot to feel a little contempt for people who do not have theseluxuries till July and August; but I suppose we are in turn despisedby the Southerners because we do not have them till May and June.So, a great part of the enjoyment of life is in the knowledge thatthere are people living in a worse place than that you inhabit.
Windsor, a most respectable old town round which the railroad sweeps,with its iron bridge, conspicuous King's College, and handsome churchspire, is a great place for plaster and limestone, and would be agood location for a person interested in these substances. Indeed,if a man can live on rocks, like a goat, he may settle anywherebetween Windsor and Halifax. It is one of the most sterile regionsin the Province. With the exception of a wild pond or two, we sawnothing but rocks and stunted firs, for forty-five miles, a monotonyunrelieved by one picturesque feature. Then we longed for the"Garden of Nova Scotia," and understood what is meant by the name.
A member of the Ottawa government, who was on his way to theGovernor-General's ball at Halifax, informed us that this country isrich in minerals, in iron especially, and he pointed out spots wheregold had been washed out. But we do not covet it. And we were notsorry to learn from this gentleman, that since the formation of theDominion, there is less and less desire in the Provinces forannexation to the United States. One of the chief pleasures intraveling in Nova Scotia now is in the constant reflection that youare in a foreign country; and annexation would take that away.
It is nearly dark when we reach the head of the Bedford Basin. Thenoble harbor of Halifax narrows to a deep inlet for three miles alongthe rocky slope on which the city stands, and then suddenly expandsinto this beautiful sheet of water. We ran along its bank for fivemiles, cheered occasionally by a twinkling light on the shore, andthen came to a stop at the shabby terminus, three miles out of town.This basin is almost large enough to float the navy of Great Britain,and it could lie here, with the narrows fortified, secure from theattacks of the American navy, hovering outside in the fog. Withthese patriotic thoughts we enter the town. It is not the fault ofthe railroad, but its present inability to climb a rocky hill, thatit does not run into the city. The suburbs are not impressive in thenight, but they look better then than they do in the daytime; and thesame might be said of the city itself. Probably there is notanywhere a more rusty, forlorn town, and this in spite of itsmagnificent situation.
It is a gala-night when we rattle down the rough streets, and havepointed out to us the somber government buildings. The Halifax ClubHouse is a blaze of light, for the Governor-General is being receivedthere, and workmen are still busy decorating the Provincial Buildingfor the great ball. The city is indeed pervaded by his lordship, andwe regret that we cannot see it in its normal condition of quiet; thehotels are full, and it is impossible to escape the festive feelingthat is abroad. It ill accords with our desires, as tranquiltravelers, to be plunged into such a vortex of slow dissipation.These people take their pleasures more gravely than we do, andprobably will last the longer for their moderation. Havingascertained that we can get no more information about Baddeck herethan in St. John, we go to bed early, for we are to depart from thisfascinating place at six o'clock.
If any one objects that we are not competent to pass judgment on thecity of Halifax by sleeping there one night, I beg leave to plead theusual custom of travelers,—where would be our books of travel, ifmore was expected than a night in a place?—and to state a fewfacts. The first is, that I saw the whole of Halifax. If I wereinclined, I could describe it building by building. Cannot one seeit all from the citadel hill, and by walking down by thehorticultural garden and the Roman Catholic cemetery? and did not Iclimb that hill through the most dilapidated rows of brown houses,and stand on the greensward of the fortress at five o'clock in themorning, and see the whole city, and the British navy riding atanchor, and the fog coming in from the Atlantic Ocean? Let thereader go to! and if he would know more of Halifax, go there. Wefelt that if we remained there through the day, it would be a day ofidleness and sadness. I could draw a picture of Halifax. I couldrelate its century of history; I could write about its free-schoolsystem, and its many noble charities. But the reader always skipssuch things. He hates information; and he himself would not stay inthis dull garrison town any longer than he was obliged to.
There was to be a military display that day in honor of the Governor.
"Why," I asked the bright and light-minded colored boy who soldpapers on the morning train, "don't you stay in the city and see it?"
"Pho," said he, with contempt, "I'm sick of 'em. Halifax is playedout, and I'm going to quit it."
The withdrawal of this lively trader will be a blow to the enterpriseof the place.
When I returned to the hotel for breakfast—which was exactly likethe supper, and consisted mainly of green tea and dry toast—therewas a commotion among the waiters and the hack-drivers over a nervouslittle old man, who was in haste to depart for the morning train. Hewas a specimen of provincial antiquity such as could not be seenelsewhere. His costume was of the oddest: a long-waisted coatreaching nearly to his heels, short trousers, a flowered silk vest,and a napless hat. He carried his baggage tied up in mealbags, andhis attention was divided between that and two buxom daughters, whowere evidently enjoying their first taste of city life. The littleold man, who was not unlike a petrified Frenchman of the lastcentury, had risen before daylight, roused up his daughters, and hadthem down on the sidewalk by four o'clock, waiting for hack, orhorse-car, or something to take them to the station. That he mightbe a man of some importance at home was evident, but he had lost hishead in the bustle of this great town, and was at the mercy of alladvisers, none of whom could understand his mongrel language. As wecame out to take the horse-car, he saw his helpless daughters drivenoff in one hack, while he was raving among his meal-bags on thesidewalk. Afterwards we saw him at the station, flying about in thegreatest excitement, asking everybody about the train; and at last hefound his way into the private office of the ticket-seller. "Get outof here!" roared that official. The old man persisted that hewanted a ticket. "Go round to the window; clear out!" In a veryflustered state he was hustled out of the room. When he came to thewindow and made known his destination, he was refused tickets,because his train did not start for two hours yet!
This mercurial old gentleman only appears in these records because hewas the only person we saw in this Province who was in a hurry to doanything, or to go anywhere.
We cannot leave Halifax without remarking that it is a city of greatprivate virtue, and that its banks are sound. The appearance of itspaper-money is not, however, inviting. We of the United States leadthe world in beautiful paper-money; and when I exchanged my crisp,handsome greenbacks for the dirty, flimsy, ill-executed notes of theDominion, at a dead loss of value, I could not be reconciled to thetransaction. I sarcastically called the stuff I received"Confederate money;" but probably no one was wounded by the severity;for perhaps no one knew what a resemblance in badness there isbetween the "Confederate" notes of our civil war and the notes of theDominion; and, besides, the Confederacy was too popular in theProvinces for the name to be a reproach to them. I wish I hadthought of something more insulting to say.
By noon on Friday we came to New Glasgow, having passed through acountry where wealth is to be won by hard digging if it is won atall; through Truro, at the head of the Cobequid Bay, a placeexhibiting more thrift than any we have seen. A pleasant enoughcountry, on the whole, is this which the road runs through up theSalmon and down the East River. New Glasgow is not many miles fromPictou, on the great Cumberland Strait; the inhabitants buildvessels, and strangers drive out from here to see the neighboringcoal mines. Here we were to dine and take the stage for a ride ofeighty miles to the Gut of Canso.
The hotel at New Glasgow we can commend as one of the mostunwholesome in the Province; but it is unnecessary to emphasize itscondition, for if the traveler is in search of dirty hotels, he willscarcely go amiss anywhere in these regions. There seems to be afashion in diet which endures. The early travelers as well as thelater in these Atlantic provinces all note the prevalence of dry,limp toast and green tea; they are the staples of all the meals;though authorities differ in regard to the third element fordiscouraging hunger: it is sometimes boiled salt-fish and sometimesit is ham. Toast was probably an inspiration of the first woman ofthis part of the New World, who served it hot; but it has become nowa tradition blindly followed, without regard to temperature; and thecustom speaks volumes for the non-inventiveness of woman. At the innin New Glasgow those who choose dine in their shirt-sleeves, andthose skilled in the ways of this table get all they want in sevenminutes. A man who understands the use of edged tools can get alongtwice as fast with a knife and fork as he can with a fork alone.
But the stage is at the door; the coach and four horses answer theadvertisement of being "second to none on the continent." We mountto the seat with the driver. The sun is bright; the wind is in thesouthwest; the leaders are impatient to go; the start for the longride is propitious.
But on the back seat in the coach is the inevitable woman, young andsickly, with the baby in her arms. The woman has paid her farethrough to Guysborough, and holds her ticket. It turns out, however,that she wants to go to the district of Guysborough, to St. Mary'sCross Roads, somewhere in it, and not to the village of Guysborough,which is away down on Chedabucto Bay. (The reader will notice thisgeographical familiarity.) And this stage does not go in thedirection of St. Mary's. She will not get out, she will notsurrender her ticket, nor pay her fare again. Why should she? Andthe stage proprietor, the stage-driver, and the hostler mull over theproblem, and sit down on the woman's hair trunk in front of thetavern to reason with her. The baby joins its voice from the coachwindow in the clamor of the discussion. The baby prevails. Thestage company comes to a compromise, the woman dismounts, and we areoff, away from the white houses, over the sandy road, out upon ahilly and not cheerful country. And the driver begins to tell usstories of winter hardships, drifted highways, a land buried in snow,and great peril to men and cattle.
III
"It was then summer, and the weather very fine; so pleased was I withthe country, in which I had never travelled before, that my delightproved equal to my wonder."—BENVENUTO CELLINI.
There are few pleasures in life equal to that of riding on thebox-seat of a stagecoach, through a country unknown to you andhearing the driver talk about his horses. We made the intimateacquaintance of twelve horses on that day's ride, and learned thepeculiar disposition and traits of each one of them, their ambitionof display, their sensitiveness to praise or blame, theirfaithfulness, their playfulness, the readiness with which theyyielded to kind treatment, their daintiness about food and lodging.
May I never forget the spirited little jade, the off-leader in thethird stage, the petted belle of the route, the nervous, coquettish,mincing mare of Marshy Hope. A spoiled beauty she was; you could seethat as she took the road with dancing step, tossing her pretty headabout, and conscious of her shining black coat and her tail done up"in any simple knot,"—like the back hair of Shelley's BeatriceCenci. How she ambled and sidled and plumed herself, and now andthen let fly her little heels high in air in mere excess of larkishfeeling.
"So! girl; so! Kitty," murmurs the driver in the softest tones ofadmiration; "she don't mean anything by it, she's just like akitten."
But the heels keep flying above the traces, and by and by the driveris obliged to "speak hash" to the beauty. The reproof of thedispleased tone is evidently felt, for she settles at once to herwork, showing perhaps a little impatience, jerking her head up anddown, and protesting by her nimble movements against the moredeliberate trot of her companion. I believe that a blow from thecruel lash would have broken her heart; or else it would have made alittle fiend of the spirited creature. The lash is hardly ever goodfor the sex.
For thirteen years, winter and summer, this coachman had driven thismonotonous, uninteresting route, with always the same sandy hills,scrubby firs, occasional cabins, in sight. What a time to nurse histhought and feed on his heart! How deliberately he can turn thingsover in his brain! What a system of philosophy he might evolve outof his consciousness! One would think so. But, in fact, thestagebox is no place for thinking. To handle twelve horses everyday, to keep each to its proper work, stimulating the lazy andrestraining the free, humoring each disposition, so that the greatestamount of work shall be obtained with the least friction, making eachtrip on time, and so as to leave each horse in as good condition atthe close as at the start, taking advantage of the road, refreshingthe team by an occasional spurt of speed,—all these things requireconstant attention; and if the driver was composing an epic, thecoach might go into the ditch, or, if no accident happened, thehorses would be worn out in a month, except for the driver's care.
I conclude that the most delicate and important occupation in life isstage-driving. It would be easier to "run" the Treasury Departmentof the United States than a four-in-hand. I have a sense of theunimportance of everything else in comparison with this business inhand. And I think the driver shares that feeling. He is theautocrat of the situation. He is lord of all the humble passengers,and they feel their inferiority. They may have knowledge and skillin some things, but they are of no use here. At all the stables thedriver is king; all the people on the route are deferential to him;they are happy if he will crack a joke with them, and take it as afavor if he gives them better than they send. And it is his jokethat always raises the laugh, regardless of its quality.
We carry the royal mail, and as we go along drop little sealed canvasbags at way offices. The bags would not hold more than three pintsof meal, and I can see that there is nothing in them. Yet somebodyalong here must be expecting a letter, or they would not keep up themail facilities. At French River we change horses. There is a millhere, and there are half a dozen houses, and a cranky bridge, whichthe driver thinks will not tumble down this trip. The settlement mayhave seen better days, and will probably see worse.
I preferred to cross the long, shaky wooden bridge on foot, leavingthe inside passengers to take the risk, and get the worth of theirmoney; and while the horses were being put to, I walked on over thehill. And here I encountered a veritable foot-pad, with a club inhis hand and a bundle on his shoulder, coming down the dusty road,with the wild-eyed aspect of one who travels into a far country insearch of adventure. He seemed to be of a cheerful and sociableturn, and desired that I should linger and converse with him. But hewas more meagerly supplied with the media of conversation than anyperson I ever met. His opening address was in a tongue that failedto convey to me the least idea. I replied in such language as I hadwith me, but it seemed to be equally lost upon him. We then fellback upon gestures and ejaculations, and by these I learned that hewas a native of Cape Breton, but not an aborigine. By signs he askedme where I came from, and where I was going; and he was so muchpleased with my destination, that he desired to know my name; andthis I told him with all the injunction of secrecy I could convey;but he could no more pronounce it than I could speak his name. Itoccurred to me that perhaps he spoke a French patois, and I askedhim; but he only shook his head. He would own neither to German norIrish. The happy thought came to me of inquiring if he knew English.But he shook his head again, and said,
"No English, plenty garlic."
This was entirely incomprehensible, for I knew that garlic is not alanguage, but a smell. But when he had repeated the word severaltimes, I found that he meant Gaelic; and when we had come to thisunderstanding, we cordially shook hands and willingly parted. Oneseldom encounters a wilder or more good-natured savage than thisstalwart wanderer. And meeting him raised my hopes of Cape Breton.
We change horses again, for the last stage, at Marshy Hope. As weturn down the hill into this place of the mournful name, we dash pasta procession of five country wagons, which makes way for us:everything makes way for us; even death itself turns out for thestage with four horses. The second wagon carries a long box, whichreveals to us the mournful errand of the caravan. We drive into thestable, and get down while the fresh horses are put to. Thecompany's stables are all alike, and open at each end with greatdoors. The stable is the best house in the place; there are three orfour houses besides, and one of them is white, and has vines growingover the front door, and hollyhocks by the front gate. Three or fourwomen, and as many barelegged girls, have come out to look at theprocession, and we lounge towards the group.
"It had a winder in the top of it, and silver handles," says one.
"Well, I declare; and you could 'a looked right in?"
"If I'd been a mind to."
"Who has died?" I ask.
"It's old woman Larue; she lived on Gilead Hill, mostly alone. It'sbetter for her."
"Had she any friends?"
"One darter. They're takin' her over Eden way, to bury her where shecome from."
"Was she a good woman?" The traveler is naturally curious to knowwhat sort of people die in Nova Scotia.
"Well, good enough. Both her husbands is dead."
The gossips continued talking of the burying. Poor old woman Larue!It was mournful enough to encounter you for the only time in thisworld in this plight, and to have this glimpse of your wretched lifeon lonesome Gilead Hill. What pleasure, I wonder, had she in herlife, and what pleasure have any of these hard-favored women in thisdoleful region? It is pitiful to think of it. Doubtless, however,the region isn't doleful, and the sentimental traveler would not havefelt it so if he had not encountered this funereal flitting.
But the horses are in. We mount to our places; the big doors swingopen.
"Stand away," cries the driver.
The hostler lets go Kitty's bridle, the horses plunge forward, and weare off at a gallop, taking the opposite direction from that pursuedby old woman Larue.
This last stage is eleven miles, through a pleasanter country, and wemake it in a trifle over an hour, going at an exhilarating gait, thatraises our spirits out of the Marshy Hope level. The perfection oftravel is ten miles an hour, on top of a stagecoach; it is greaterspeed than forty by rail. It nurses one's pride to sit aloft, andrattle past the farmhouses, and give our dust to the cringing foottramps. There is something royal in the swaying of the coach body,and an excitement in the patter of the horses' hoofs. And what anhonor it must be to guide such a machine through a region of rusticadmiration!
The sun has set when we come thundering down into the pretty Catholicvillage of Antigonish,—the most home-like place we have seen on theisland. The twin stone towers of the unfinished cathedral loom uplarge in the fading light, and the bishop's palace on the hill—thehome of the Bishop of Arichat—appears to be an imposing white barnwith many staring windows. At Antigonish—with the emphasis on thelast syllable—let the reader know there is a most comfortable inn,kept by a cheery landlady, where the stranger is served by the comelyhandmaidens, her daughters, and feels that he has reached a home atlast. Here we wished to stay. Here we wished to end this wearypilgrimage. Could Baddeck be as attractive as this peaceful valley?Should we find any inn on Cape Breton like this one?
"Never was on Cape Breton," our driver had said; "hope I never shallbe. Heard enough about it. Taverns? You'll find 'em occupied."
"Fleas?
"Wus."
"But it is a lovely country?"
"I don't think it."
Into what unknown dangers were we going? Why not stay here and behappy? It was a soft summer night. People were loitering in thestreet; the young beaux of the place going up and down with thebelles, after the leisurely manner in youth and summer; perhaps theywere students from St. Xavier College, or visiting gallants fromGuysborough. They look into the post-office and the fancy store.They stroll and take their little provincial pleasure and make love,for all we can see, as if Antigonish were a part of the world. Howthey must look down on Marshy Hope and Addington Forks and Tracadie!What a charming place to live in is this!
But the stage goes on at eight o'clock. It will wait for no man.
There is no other stage till eight the next night, and we have no
alternative but a night ride. We put aside all else except duty and
Baddeck. This is strictly a pleasure-trip.
The stage establishment for the rest of the journey could hardly becalled the finest on the continent. The wagon was drawn by twohorses. It was a square box, covered with painted cloth. Withinwere two narrow seats, facing each other, affording no room for thelegs of passengers, and offering them no position but a strictlyupright one. It was a most ingeniously uncomfortable box in which toput sleepy travelers for the night. The weather would be chillybefore morning, and to sit upright on a narrow board all night, andshiver, is not cheerful. Of course, the reader says that this is nohardship to talk about. But the reader is mistaken. Anything is ahardship when it is unpleasantly what one does not desire or expect.These travelers had spent wakeful nights, in the forests, in a coldrain, and never thought of complaining. It is useless to talk aboutthe Polar sufferings of Dr. Kane to a guest at a metropolitan hotel,in the midst of luxury, when the mosquito sings all night in his ear,and his mutton-chop is overdone at breakfast. One does not like tobe set up for a hero in trifles, in odd moments, and in inconspicuousplaces.
There were two passengers besides ourselves, inhabitants of CapeBreton Island, who were returning from Halifax to Plaster Cove, wherethey were engaged in the occupation of distributing alcoholic liquorsat retail. This fact we ascertained incidentally, as we learned thenationality of our comrades by their brogue, and their religion bytheir lively ejaculations during the night. We stowed ourselves intothe rigid box, bade a sorrowing good-night to the landlady and herdaughters, who stood at the inn door, and went jingling down thestreet towards the open country.
The moon rises at eight o'clock in Nova Scotia. It came above thehorizon exactly as we began our journey, a harvest-moon, round andred. When I first saw it, it lay on the edge of the horizon as iftoo heavy to lift itself, as big as a cart-wheel, and its disk cut bya fence-rail. With what a flood of splendor it deluged farmhousesand farms, and the broad sweep of level country! There could not bea more magnificent night in which to ride towards that geographicalmystery of our boyhood, the Gut of Canso.
A few miles out of town the stage stopped in the road before apost-station. An old woman opened the door of the farmhouse to receivethe bag which the driver carried to her. A couple of sprightly littlegirls rushed out to "interview" the passengers, climbing up to asktheir names and, with much giggling, to get a peep at their faces. Andupon the handsomeness or ugliness of the faces they saw in themoonlight they pronounced with perfect candor. We are not obliged tosay what their verdict was. Girls here, no doubt, as elsewhere, losethis trustful candor as they grow older.
Just as we were starting, the old woman screamed out from the door,in a shrill voice, addressing the driver, "Did you see ary a sick man'bout 'Tigonish?"
"Nary."
"There's one been round here for three or four days, pretty bad off;'s got the St. Vitus's. He wanted me to get him some medicine for itup to Antigonish. I've got it here in a vial, and I wished you couldtake it to him."
"Where is he?"
"I dunno. I heern he'd gone east by the Gut. Perhaps you'll hear ofhim." All this screamed out into the night.
"Well, I'll take it."
We took the vial aboard and went on; but the incident powerfullyaffected us. The weird voice of the old woman was exciting initself, and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancingabout this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by nightand alone, and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso. Thisfugitive mystery almost immediately shaped itself into the followingsimple poem:
"There was an old man of Canso,
Unable to sit or stan' so.
When I asked him why he ran so,
Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so,
All down the Gut of Canso.'"
This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of
Antigonish.
In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore onslowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in thejolting wagon. One can sleep upright, but not when his head is everymoment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover. Even a jollyyoung Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep underwhatever discouragement, is beaten by these circumstances. He wisheshe had his fiddle along. We never know what men are on casualacquaintance. This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee ofmusic, and knows how to coax the sweetness out of the unwillingviolin. Sometimes he goes miles and miles on winter nights to drawthe seductive bow for the Cape Breton dancers, and there isenthusiasm in his voice, as he relates exploits of fiddling fromsunset till the dawn of day. Other information, however, the youngman has not; and when this is exhausted, he becomes sleepy again, andtries a dozen ways to twist himself into a posture in which sleepwill be possible. He doubles up his legs, he slides them under theseat, he sits on the wagon bottom; but the wagon swings and jolts andknocks him about. His patience under this punishment is admirable,and there is something pathetic in his restraint from profanity.
It is enough to look out upon the magnificent night; the moon is nowhigh, and swinging clear and distant; the air has grown chilly; thestars cannot be eclipsed by the greater light, but glow with achastened fervor. It is on the whole a splendid display for the sakeof four sleepy men, banging along in a coach,—an insignificantlittle vehicle with two horses. No one is up at any of thefarmhouses to see it; no one appears to take any interest in it,except an occasional baying dog, or a rooster that has mistaken thetime of night. By midnight we come to Tracadie, an orchard, afarmhouse, and a stable. We are not far from the sea now, and cansee a silver mist in the north. An inlet comes lapping up by the oldhouse with a salty smell and a suggestion of oyster-beds. We knockup the sleeping hostlers, change horses, and go on again, deadsleepy, but unable to get a wink. And all the night is blazing withbeauty. We think of the criminal who was sentenced to be kept awaketill he died.
The fiddler makes another trial. Temperately remarking, "I am verysleepy," he kneels upon the floor and rests his head on the seat.This position for a second promises repose; but almost immediatelyhis head begins to pound the seat, and beat a lively rat-a-plan onthe board. The head of a wooden idol couldn't stand this treatmentmore than a minute. The fiddler twisted and turned, but his headwent like a triphammer on the seat. I have never seen a devotionalattitude so deceptive, or one that produced less favorable results.The young man rose from his knees, and meekly said,
"It's dam hard."
If the recording angel took down this observation, he doubtless madea note of the injured tone in which it was uttered.
How slowly the night passes to one tipping and swinging along in aslowly moving stage! But the harbinger of the day came at last.When the fiddler rose from his knees, I saw the morning-star burstout of the east like a great diamond, and I knew that Venus wasstrong enough to pull up even the sun, from whom she is never distantmore than an eighth of the heavenly circle. The moon could not puther out of countenance. She blazed and scintillated with a dazzlingbrilliance, a throbbing splendor, that made the moon seem a pale,sentimental invention. Steadily she mounted, in her fresh beauty,with the confidence and vigor of new love, driving her more domesticrival out of the sky. And this sort of thing, I suppose, goes onfrequently. These splendors burn and this panorama passes nightafter night down at the end of Nova Scotia, and all for thestage-driver, dozing along on his box, from Antigonish to the strait.
"Here you are," cries the driver, at length, when we have becomewearily indifferent to where we are. We have reached the ferry. Thedawn has not come, but it is not far off. We step out and find achilly morning, and the dark waters of the Gut of Canso flowingbefore us lighted here and there by a patch of white mist. Theferryman is asleep, and his door is shut. We call him by all thenames known among men. We pound upon his house, but he makes nosign. Before he awakes and comes out, growling, the sky in the eastis lightened a shade, and the star of the dawn sparkles lessbrilliantly. But the process is slow. The twilight is long. Thereis a surprising deliberation about the preparation of the sun forrising, as there is in the movements of the boatman. Both appear tobe reluctant to begin the day.
The ferryman and his shaggy comrade get ready at last, and we stepinto the clumsy yawl, and the slowly moving oars begin to pull usupstream. The strait is here less than a mile wide; the tide isrunning strongly, and the water is full of swirls,—the littlewhirlpools of the rip-tide. The morning-star is now high in the sky;the moon, declining in the west, is more than ever like a silvershield; along the east is a faint flush of pink. In the increasinglight we can see the bold shores of the strait, and the squareprojection of Cape Porcupine below.
On the rocks above the town of Plaster Cove, where there is a blackand white sign,—Telegraph Cable,—we set ashore our companions ofthe night, and see them climb up to their station for retailing thenecessary means of intoxication in their district, with the mournfulthought that we may never behold them again.
As we drop down along the shore, there is a white sea-gull asleep onthe rock, rolled up in a ball, with his head under his wing. Therock is dripping with dew, and the bird is as wet as his hard bed.We pass within an oar's length of him, but he does not heed us, andwe do not disturb his morning slumbers. For there is no such crueltyas the waking of anybody out of a morning nap.
When we land, and take up our bags to ascend the hill to the whitetavern of Port Hastings (as Plaster Cove now likes to be called), thesun lifts himself slowly over the treetops, and the magic of thenight vanishes.
And this is Cape Breton, reached after almost a week of travel. Hereis the Gut of Canso, but where is Baddeck? It is Saturday morning;if we cannot make Baddeck by night, we might as well have remained inBoston. And who knows what we shall find if we get there? A forlornfishing-station, a dreary hotel? Suppose we cannot get on, and areforced to stay here? Asking ourselves these questions, we enter thePlaster Cove tavern. No one is stirring, but the house is open, andwe take possession of the dirty public room, and almost immediatelydrop to sleep in the fluffy rocking-chairs; but even sleep is notstrong enough to conquer our desire to push on, and we soon rouse upand go in pursuit of information.
No landlord is to be found, but there is an unkempt servant in thekitchen, who probably does not see any use in making her toilet morethan once a week. To this fearful creature is intrusted the daintyduty of preparing breakfast. Her indifference is equal to her lackof information, and her ability to convey information is fettered byher use of Gaelic as her native speech. But she directs us to thestable. There we find a driver hitching his horses to a two-horsestage-wagon.
"Is this stage for Baddeck?"
"Not much."
"Is there any stage for Baddeck?"
"Not to-day."
"Where does this go, and when?"
"St. Peter's. Starts in fifteen minutes."
This seems like "business," and we are inclined to try it, especiallyas we have no notion where St. Peter's is.
"Does any other stage go from here to-day anywhere else?"
"Yes. Port Hood. Quarter of an hour."
Everything was about to happen in fifteen minutes. We inquirefurther. St. Peter's is on the east coast, on the road to Sydney.Port Hood is on the west coast. There is a stage from Port Hood toBaddeck. It would land us there some time Sunday morning; distance,eighty miles.
Heavens! what a pleasure-trip. To ride eighty miles more withoutsleep! We should simply be delivered dead on the Bras d'Or; that isall. Tell us, gentle driver, is there no other way?
"Well, there's Jim Hughes, come over at midnight with a passengerfrom Baddeck; he's in the hotel now; perhaps he'll take you."
Our hope hung on Jim Hughes. The frowzy servant piloted us up to hissleeping-room. "Go right in," said she; and we went in, according tothe simple custom of the country, though it was a bedroom that onewould not enter except on business. Mr. Hughes did not like to bedisturbed, but he proved himself to be a man who could wake upsuddenly, shake his head, and transact business,—a sort of Napoleon,in fact. Mr. Hughes stared at the intruders for a moment, as if hemeditated an assault.
"Do you live in Baddeck?" we asked.
"No; Hogamah,—half-way there."
"Will you take us to Baddeck to-day?"
Mr. Hughes thought. He had intended to sleep—till noon. He hadthen intended to go over the Judique Mountain and get a boy. But hewas disposed to accommodate. Yes, for money—sum named—he wouldgive up his plans, and start for Baddeck in an hour. Distance, sixtymiles. Here was a man worth having; he could come to a decisionbefore he was out of bed. The bargain was closed.
We would have closed any bargain to escape a Sunday in the PlasterCove hotel. There are different sorts of hotel uncleanliness. Thereis the musty old inn, where the dirt has accumulated for years, andslow neglect has wrought a picturesque sort of dilapidation, themouldiness of time, which has something to recommend it. But thereis nothing attractive in new nastiness, in the vulgar union ofsmartness and filth. A dirty modern house, just built, a housesmelling of poor whiskey and vile tobacco, its white paint grimy, itsfloors unclean, is ever so much worse than an old inn that neverpretended to be anything but a rookery. I say nothing against thehotel at Plaster Cove. In fact, I recommend it. There is a kind ofharmony about it that I like. There is a harmony between thebreakfast and the frowzy Gaelic cook we saw "sozzling" about in thekitchen. There is a harmony between the appearance of the house andthe appearance of the buxom young housekeeper who comes upon thescene later, her hair saturated with the fatty matter of the bear.The traveler will experience a pleasure in paying his bill anddeparting.
Although Plaster Cove seems remote on the map, we found that we wereright in the track of the world's news there. It is the transferstation of the Atlantic Cable Company, where it exchanges messageswith the Western Union. In a long wooden building, divided into twomain apartments, twenty to thirty operators are employed. At eighto'clock the English force was at work receiving the noon messagesfrom London. The American operators had not yet come on, for NewYork business would not begin for an hour. Into these rooms ispoured daily the news of the world, and these young fellows toss itabout as lightly as if it were household gossip. It is a marvelousexchange, however, and we had intended to make some reflections hereupon the en rapport feeling, so to speak, with all the world, whichwe experienced while there; but our conveyance was waiting. Wetelegraphed our coming to Baddeck, and departed. For twenty-fivecents one can send a dispatch to any part of the Dominion, except theregion where the Western Union has still a foothold.
Our conveyance was a one-horse wagon, with one seat. The horse waswell enough, but the seat was narrow for three people, and the entireestablishment had in it not much prophecy of Baddeck for that day.But we knew little of the power of Cape Breton driving. It becameevident that we should reach Baddeck soon enough, if we could clingto that wagon-seat. The morning sun was hot. The way was souninteresting that we almost wished ourselves back in Nova Scotia.The sandy road was bordered with discouraged evergreens, throughwhich we had glimpses of sand-drifted farms. If Baddeck was to belike this, we had come on a fool's errand. There were some savage,low hills, and the Judique Mountain showed itself as we got away fromthe town. In this first stage, the heat of the sun, the monotony ofthe road, and the scarcity of sleep during the past thirty-six hourswere all unfavorable to our keeping on the wagon-seat. We noddedseparately, we nodded and reeled in unison. But asleep or awake, thedriver drove like a son of Jehu. Such driving is the fashion on CapeBreton Island. Especially downhill, we made the most of it; if thehorse was on a run, that was only an inducement to apply the lash;speed gave the promise of greater possible speed. The wagon rattledlike a bark-mill; it swirled and leaped about, and we finally got theexciting impression that if the whole thing went to pieces, we shouldsomehow go on,—such was our impetus. Round corners, over ruts andstones, and uphill and down, we went jolting and swinging, holdingfast to the seat, and putting our trust in things in general. At theend of fifteen miles, we stopped at a Scotch farmhouse, where thedriver kept a relay, and changed horse.
The people were Highlanders, and spoke little English; we had struckthe beginning of the Gaelic settlement. From here to Hogamah weshould encounter only the Gaelic tongue; the inhabitants are allCatholics. Very civil people, apparently, and living in a kind ofniggardly thrift, such as the cold land affords. We saw of thisfamily the old man, who had come from Scotland fifty years ago, hisstalwart son, six feet and a half high, maybe, and two buxomdaughters, going to the hay-field,—good solid Scotch lassies, whosmiled in English, but spoke only Gaelic. The old man could speak alittle English, and was disposed to be both communicative andinquisitive. He asked our business, names, and residence. Of theUnited States he had only a dim conception, but his mind ratherrested upon the statement that we lived "near Boston." He complainedof the degeneracy of the times. All the young men had gone away fromCape Breton; might get rich if they would stay and work the farms.But no one liked to work nowadays. From life, we diverted the talkto literature. We inquired what books they had.
"Of course you all have the poems of Burns?"
"What's the name o' the mon?"
"Burns, Robert Burns."
"Never heard tell of such a mon. Have heard of Robert Bruce. He wasa Scotchman."
This was nothing short of refreshing, to find a Scotchman who hadnever heard of Robert Burns! It was worth the whole journey to takethis honest man by the hand. How far would I not travel to talk withan American who had never heard of George Washington!
The way was more varied during the next stage; we passed through somepleasant valleys and picturesque neighborhoods, and at length,winding around the base of a wooded range, and crossing its point, wecame upon a sight that took all the sleep out of us. This was thefamous Bras d'Or.
The Bras d'Or is the most beautiful salt-water lake I have ever seen,and more beautiful than we had imagined a body of salt water couldbe. If the reader will take the map, he will see that two narrowestuaries, the Great and the Little Bras d'Or, enter the island ofCape Breton, on the ragged northeast coast, above the town of Sydney,and flow in, at length widening out and occupying the heart of theisland. The water seeks out all the low places, and ramifies theinterior, running away into lovely bays and lagoons, leaving slendertongues of land and picturesque islands, and bringing into therecesses of the land, to the remote country farms and settlements,the flavor of salt, and the fish and mollusks of the briny sea.There is very little tide at any time, so that the shores are cleanand sightly for the most part, like those of fresh-water lakes. Ithas all the pleasantness of a fresh-water lake, with all theadvantages of a salt one. In the streams which run into it are thespeckled trout, the shad, and the salmon; out of its depths arehooked the cod and the mackerel, and in its bays fattens the oyster.This irregular lake is about a hundred miles long, if you measure itskillfully, and in some places ten miles broad; but so indented isit, that I am not sure but one would need, as we were informed, toride a thousand miles to go round it, following all its incursionsinto the land. The hills about it are never more than five or sixhundred feet high, but they are high enough for reposeful beauty, andoffer everywhere pleasing lines.
What we first saw was an inlet of the Bras d'Or, called, by thedriver, Hogamah Bay. At its entrance were long, wooded islands,beyond which we saw the backs of graceful hills, like the capes ofsome poetic sea-coast. The bay narrowed to a mile in width where wecame upon it, and ran several miles inland to a swamp, round the headof which we must go. Opposite was the village of Hogamah. I had mysuspicions from the beginning about this name, and now asked thedriver, who was liberally educated for a driver, how he spelled"Hogamah."
"Why-ko-ko-magh. Hogamah."
Sometimes it is called Wykogamah. Thus the innocent traveler ismisled. Along the Whykokomagh Bay we come to a permanent encampmentof the Micmac Indians,—a dozen wigwams in the pine woods. Thoughlumber is plenty, they refuse to live in houses. The wigwams,however, are more picturesque than the square frame houses of thewhites. Built up conically of poles, with a hole in the top for thesmoke to escape, and often set up a little from the ground on atimber foundation, they are as pleasing to the eye as a Chinese orTurkish dwelling. They may be cold in winter, but blessed be thetenacity of barbarism, which retains this agreeable architecture.The men live by hunting in the season, and the women support thefamily by making moccasins and baskets. These Indians are most ofthem good Catholics, and they try to go once a year to mass and asort of religious festival held at St. Peter's, where their sins areforgiven in a yearly lump.
At Whykokomagh, a neat fishing village of white houses, we stoppedfor dinner at the Inverness House. The house was very clean, and thetidy landlady gave us as good a dinner as she could of the inevitablegreen tea, toast, and salt fish. She was Gaelic, but Protestant, asthe village is, and showed us with pride her Gaelic Bible andhymn-book. A peaceful place, this Whykokomagh; the lapsing waters ofBras d'Or made a summer music all along the quiet street; the bay laysmiling with its islands in front, and an amphitheater of hills rosebehind. But for the line of telegraph poles one might have fanciedhe could have security and repose here.
We put a fresh pony into the shafts, a beast born with an everlastinguneasiness in his legs, and an amount of "go" in him which suited hisreckless driver. We no longer stood upon the order of our going; wewent. As we left the village, we passed a rocky hay-field, where theGaelic farmer was gathering the scanty yield of grass. A comelyIndian girl was stowing the hay and treading it down on the wagon.The driver hailed the farmer, and they exchanged Gaelic reparteewhich set all the hay-makers in a roar, and caused the Indian maid todarkly and sweetly beam upon us. We asked the driver what he hadsaid. He had only inquired what the man would take for the load—asit stood! A joke is a joke down this way.
I am not about to describe this drive at length, in order that thereader may skip it; for I know the reader, being of like passion andfashion with him. From the time we first struck the Bras d'Or forthirty miles we rode in constant sight of its magnificent water. Nowwe were two hundred feet above the water, on the hillside, skirting apoint or following an indentation; and now we were diving into anarrow valley, crossing a stream, or turning a sharp corner, butalways with the Bras d'Or in view, the afternoon sun shining on it,softening the outlines of its embracing hills, casting a shadow fromits wooded islands. Sometimes we opened on a broad water plainbounded by the Watchabaktchkt hills, and again we looked over hillafter hill receding into the soft and hazy blue of the land beyondthe great mass of the Bras d'Or. The reader can compare the view andthe ride to the Bay of Naples and the Cornice Road; we did nothing ofthe sort; we held on to the seat, prayed that the harness of the ponymight not break, and gave constant expression to our wonder anddelight. For a week we had schooled ourselves to expect nothing morefrom this wicked world, but here was an enchanting vision.
The only phenomenon worthy the attention of any inquiring mind, inthis whole record, I will now describe. As we drove along the sideof a hill, and at least two hundred feet above the water, the roadsuddenly diverged and took a circuit higher up. The driver said thatwas to avoid a sink-hole in the old road,—a great curiosity, whichit was worth while to examine. Beside the old road was a circularhole, which nipped out a part of the road-bed, some twenty-five feetin diameter, filled with water almost to the brim, but not runningover. The water was dark in color, and I fancied had a brackishtaste. The driver said that a few weeks before, when he came thisway, it was solid ground where this well now opened, and that a largebeech-tree stood there. When he returned next day, he found thishole full of water, as we saw it, and the large tree had sunk in it.The size of the hole seemed to be determined by the reach of theroots of the tree. The tree had so entirely disappeared, that hecould not with a long pole touch its top. Since then the water hadneither subsided nor overflowed. The ground about was compactgravel. We tried sounding the hole with poles, but could makenothing of it. The water seemed to have no outlet nor inlet; atleast, it did not rise or fall. Why should the solid hill give wayat this place, and swallow up a tree? and if the water had anyconnection with the lake, two hundred feet below and at some distanceaway, why didn't the water run out? Why should the unscientifictraveler have a thing of this kind thrown in his way? The driver didnot know.
This phenomenon made us a little suspicious of the foundations ofthis island which is already invaded by the jealous ocean, and isanchored to the continent only by the cable.
The drive became more charming as the sun went down, and we saw thehills grow purple beyond the Bras d'Or. The road wound around lovelycoves and across low promontories, giving us new beauties at everyturn. Before dark we had crossed the Middle River and the BigBaddeck, on long wooden bridges, which straggled over sluggish watersand long reaches of marsh, upon which Mary might have been sent tocall the cattle home. These bridges were shaky and wanted a plank atintervals, but they are in keeping with the enterprise of thecountry. As dusk came on, we crossed the last hill, and were bowlingalong by the still gleaming water. Lights began to appear ininfrequent farmhouses, and under cover of the gathering night thehouses seemed to be stately mansions; and we fancied we were on anoble highway, lined with elegant suburban seaside residences, andabout to drive into a town of wealth and a port of great commerce.We were, nevertheless, anxious about Baddeck. What sort of havenwere we to reach after our heroic (with the reader's permission) weekof travel? Would the hotel be like that at Plaster Cove? Were ourthirty-six hours of sleepless staging to terminate in a night ofmisery and a Sunday of discomfort?
We came into a straggling village; that we could see by thestarlight. But we stopped at the door of a very unhotel-likeappearing hotel. It had in front a flower-garden; it was blazingwith welcome lights; it opened hospitable doors, and we were receivedby a family who expected us. The house was a large one, for twoguests; and we enjoyed the luxury of spacious rooms, an abundantsupper, and a friendly welcome; and, in short, found ourselves athome. The proprietor of the Telegraph House is the superintendent ofthe land lines of Cape Breton, a Scotchman, of course; but his wifeis a Newfoundland lady. We cannot violate the sanctity of whatseemed like private hospitality by speaking freely of this lady andthe lovely girls, her daughters, whose education has been soadmirably advanced in the excellent school at Baddeck; but we canconfidently advise any American who is going to Newfoundland, to geta wife there, if he wants one at all. It is the only new article hecan bring from the Provinces that he will not have to pay duty on.And here is a suggestion to our tariff-mongers for the "protection"of New England women.
The reader probably cannot appreciate the delicious sense of rest andof achievement which we enjoyed in this tidy inn, nor share theanticipations of undisturbed, luxurious sleep, in which we indulgedas we sat upon the upper balcony after supper, and saw the moon riseover the glistening Bras d'Or and flood with light the islands andheadlands of the beautiful bay. Anchored at some distance from theshore was a slender coasting vessel. The big red moon happened tocome up just behind it, and the masts and spars and ropes of thevessel came out, distinctly traced on the golden background, makingsuch a night picture as I once saw painted of a ship in a fiord ofNorway. The scene was enchanting. And we respected then theheretofore seemingly insane impulse that had driven us on to Baddeck.
IV
"He had no ill-will to the Scotch; for, if he had been conscious ofthat, he never would have thrown himself into the bosom of theircountry, and trusted to the protection of its remote inhabitants witha fearless confidence."—BOSWELL'S JOHNSON.
Although it was an open and flagrant violation of the Sabbath day asit is kept in Scotch Baddeck, our kind hosts let us sleep late onSunday morning, with no reminder that we were not sleeping the sleepof the just. It was the charming Maud, a flitting sunbeam of a girl,who waited to bring us our breakfast, and thereby lost theopportunity of going to church with the rest of the family,—an actof gracious hospitality which the tired travelers appreciated.
The travelers were unable, indeed, to awaken into any feeling ofSabbatical straitness. The morning was delicious,—such a morning asnever visits any place except an island; a bright, sparkling morning,with the exhilaration of the air softened by the sea. What a day itwas for idleness, for voluptuous rest, after the flight by day andnight from St. John! It was enough, now that the morning was fullyopened and advancing to the splendor of noon, to sit upon the upperbalcony, looking upon the Bras d'Or and the peaceful hills beyond,reposeful and yet sparkling with the air and color of summer, andinhale the balmy air. (We greatly need another word to describe goodair, properly heated, besides this overworked "balmy.") Perhaps itmight in some regions be considered Sabbath-keeping, simply to restin such a soothing situation,—rest, and not incessant activity,having been one of the original designs of the day.
But our travelers were from New England, and they were not willing tobe outdone in the matter of Sunday observances by such anout-of-the-way and nameless place as Baddeck. They did not setthemselves up as missionaries to these benighted Gaelic people, toteach them by example that the notion of Sunday which obtained twohundred years ago in Scotland had been modified, and that thesacredness of it had pretty much disappeared with the unpleasantnessof it. They rather lent themselves to the humor of the hour, andprobably by their demeanor encouraged the respect for the day on CapeBreton Island. Neither by birth nor education were the travelersfishermen on Sunday, and they were not moved to tempt the authoritiesto lock them up for dropping here a line and there a line on theLord's day.
In fact, before I had finished my second cup of Maud-mixed coffee, mycompanion, with a little show of haste, had gone in search of thekirk, and I followed him, with more scrupulousness, as soon as Icould without breaking the day of rest. Although it was Sunday, Icould not but notice that Baddeck was a clean-looking village ofwhite wooden houses, of perhaps seven or eight hundred inhabitants;that it stretched along the bay for a mile or more, straggling offinto farmhouses at each end, lying for the most part on the slopingcurve of the bay. There were a few country-looking stores and shops,and on the shore three or four rather decayed and shaky wharves raninto the water, and a few schooners lay at anchor near them; and theusual decaying warehouses leaned about the docks. A peaceful andperhaps a thriving place, but not a bustling place. As I walked downthe road, a sailboat put out from the shore and slowly disappearedround the island in the direction of the Grand Narrows. It had asmall pleasure party on board. None of them were drowned that day,and I learned at night that they were Roman Catholics fromWhykokornagh.
The kirk, which stands near the water, and at a distance shows apretty wooden spire, is after the pattern of a New Englandmeeting-house. When I reached it, the house was full and the servicehad begun. There was something familiar in the bareness anduncompromising plainness and ugliness of the interior. The pews hadhigh backs, with narrow, uncushioned seats. The pulpit was high,—asort of theological fortification,—approached by wide, curvingflights of stairs on either side. Those who occupied the near seatsto the right and left of the pulpit had in front of them a blankboard partition, and could not by any possibility see the minister,though they broke their necks backwards over their high coat-collars.The congregation had a striking resemblance to a country New Englandcongregation of say twenty years ago. The clothes they wore had beenSunday clothes for at least that length of time.
Such clothes have a look of I know not what devout and painfulrespectability, that is in keeping with the worldly notion of rigidScotch Presbyterianism. One saw with pleasure the fresh androsy-cheeked children of this strict generation, but the women of theaudience were not in appearance different from newly arrived andrespectable Irish immigrants. They wore a white cap with long frillsover the forehead, and a black handkerchief thrown over it andhanging down the neck,—a quaint and not unpleasing disguise.
The house, as I said, was crowded. It is the custom in this regionto go to church,—for whole families to go, even the smallestchildren; and they not unfrequently walk six or seven miles to attendthe service. There is a kind of merit in this act that makes up forthe lack of certain other Christian virtues that are practicedelsewhere. The service was worth coming seven miles to participatein!—it was about two hours long, and one might well feel as if hehad performed a work of long-suffering to sit through it. Thesinging was strictly congregational. Congregational singing is good(for those who like it) when the congregation can sing. Thiscongregation could not sing, but it could grind the Psalms of Davidpowerfully. They sing nothing else but the old Scotch version of thePsalms, in a patient and faithful long meter. And this is regarded,and with considerable plausibility, as an act of worship. Itcertainly has small element of pleasure in it. Here is a stanza fromPsalm xlv., which the congregation, without any instrumentalnonsense, went through in a dragging, drawling manner, and withperfect individual independence as to time:
"Thine arrows sharply pierce the heart of th' enemies of the king,
And under thy sub-jec-shi-on the people down do bring."
The sermon was extempore, and in English with Scotch pronunciation;and it filled a solid hour of time. I am not a good judge ofsermons, and this one was mere chips to me; but my companion, who knowsa sermon when he hears it, said that this was strictly theological,and Scotch theology at that, and not at all expository. It wasdoubtless my fault that I got no idea whatever from it. But theadults of the congregation appeared to be perfectly satisfied withit; at least they sat bolt upright and nodded assent continually.The children all went to sleep under it, without any hypocriticalshow of attention. To be sure, the day was warm and the house wasunventilated. If the windows had been opened so as to admit thefresh air from the Bras d'Or, I presume the hard-working farmers andtheir wives would have resented such an interference with theirordained Sunday naps, and the preacher's sermon would have seemedmore musty than it appeared to be in that congenial and drowsy air.Considering that only half of the congregation could understand thepreacher, its behavior was exemplary.
After the sermon, a collection was taken up for the minister; and Inoticed that nothing but pennies rattled into the boxes,—amelancholy sound for the pastor. This might appear niggardly on thepart of these Scotch Presbyterians, but it is on principle that theyput only a penny into the box; they say that they want a free gospel,and so far as they are concerned they have it. Although the farmersabout the Bras d'Or are well-to-do they do not give their ministerenough to keep his soul in his Gaelic body, and his poor support iseked out by the contributions of a missionary society. It wasgratifying to learn that this was not from stinginess on the part ofthe people, but was due to their religious principle. It seemed tous that everybody ought to be good in a country where it costs nextto nothing.
When the service was over, about half of the people departed; therest remained in their seats and prepared to enter upon their Sabbathexercises. These latter were all Gaelic people, who had understoodlittle or nothing of the English service. The minister turnedhimself at once into a Gaelic preacher and repeated in that languagethe long exercises of the morning. The sermon and perhaps theprayers were quite as enjoyable in Gaelic as in English, and thesinging was a great improvement. It was of the same Psalms, but thecongregation chanted them in a wild and weird tone and manner, aswailing and barbarous to modern ears as any Highland devotionaloutburst of two centuries ago. This service also lasted about twohours; and as soon as it was over the faithful minister, without anyrest or refreshment, organized the Sunday-school, and it must havebeen half past three o'clock before that was over. And this isconsidered a day of rest.
These Gaelic Christians, we were informed, are of a very old pattern;and some of them cling more closely to religious observances than tomorality. Sunday is nowhere observed with more strictness. Thecommunity seems to be a very orderly and thrifty one, except uponsolemn and stated occasions. One of these occasions is thecelebration of the Lord's Supper; and in this the ancient Highlandtraditions are preserved. The rite is celebrated not oftener thanonce a year by any church. It then invites the neighboring churchesto partake with it,—the celebration being usually in the summer andearly fall months. It has some of the characteristics of a"camp-meeting." People come from long distances, and as many as twothousand and three thousand assemble together. They quarterthemselves without special invitation upon the members of theinviting church. Sometimes fifty people will pounce upon one farmer,overflowing his house and his barn and swarming all about hispremises, consuming all the provisions he has laid up for his family,and all he can raise money to buy, and literally eating him out ofhouse and home. Not seldom a man is almost ruined by one of thesereligious raids,—at least he is left with a debt of hundreds ofdollars. The multitude assembles on Thursday and remains overSunday. There is preaching every day, but there is somethingbesides. Whatever may be the devotion of a part of the assembly, thefour days are, in general, days of license, of carousing, ofdrinking, and of other excesses, which our informant said he wouldnot particularize; we could understand what they were by reading St.Paul's rebuke of the Corinthians for similar offenses. The evil hasbecome so great and burdensome that the celebration of this sacredrite will have to be reformed altogether.
Such a Sabbath quiet pervaded the street of Baddeck, that the fastdriving of the Gaels in their rattling, one-horse wagons, crowdedfull of men, women, and children,—released from their long sanctuaryprivileges, and going home,—was a sort of profanation of the day;and we gladly turned aside to visit the rural jail of the town.
Upon the principal street or road of Baddeck stands the dreadfulprison-house. It is a story and a quarter edifice, built of stoneand substantially whitewashed; retired a little from the road, with asquare of green turf in front of it, I should have taken it for theresidence of the Dairyman's Daughter, but for the iron gratings atthe lower windows. A more inviting place to spend the summer in, avicious person could not have. The Scotch keeper of it is an old,garrulous, obliging man, and keeps codfish tackle to loan. I thinkthat if he had a prisoner who was fond of fishing, he would take himwith him on the bay in pursuit of the mackerel and the cod. If theprisoner were to take advantage of his freedom and attempt to escape,the jailer's feelings would be hurt, and public opinion would hardlyapprove the prisoner's conduct.
The jail door was hospitably open, and the keeper invited us toenter. Having seen the inside of a good many prisons in our owncountry (officially), we were interested in inspecting this. It wasa favorable time for doing so, for there happened to be a manconfined there, a circumstance which seemed to increase the keeper'sfeeling of responsibility in his office. The edifice had four roomson the ground-floor, and an attic sleeping-room above. Three ofthese rooms, which were perhaps twelve feet by fifteen feet, werecells; the third was occupied by the jailer's family. The familywere now also occupying the front cell,—a cheerful room commanding aview of the village street and of the bay. A prisoner of aphilosophic turn of mind, who had committed some crime of sufficientmagnitude to make him willing to retire from the world for a seasonand rest, might enjoy himself here very well.
The jailer exhibited his premises with an air of modesty. In therear was a small yard, surrounded by a board fence, in which theprisoner took his exercise. An active boy could climb over it, andan enterprising pig could go through it almost anywhere. The keepersaid that he intended at the next court to ask the commissioners tobuild the fence higher and stop up the holes. Otherwise the jail wasin good condition. Its inmates were few; in fact, it was rather aptto be empty: its occupants were usually prisoners for debt, or forsome trifling breach of the peace, committed under the influence ofthe liquor that makes one "unco happy." Whether or not the people ofthe region have a high moral standard, crime is almost unknown; thejail itself is an evidence of primeval simplicity. The greatincident in the old jailer's life had been the rescue of a well-knowncitizen who was confined on a charge of misuse of public money. Thekeeper showed me a place in the outer wall of the front cell, wherean attempt had been made to batter a hole through. The Highland clanand kinsfolk of the alleged defaulter came one night and threatenedto knock the jail in pieces if he was not given up. They bruised thewall, broke the windows, and finally smashed in the door and tooktheir man away. The jailer was greatly excited at this rudeness, andwent almost immediately and purchased a pistol. He said that for atime he did n't feel safe in the jail without it. The mob had thrownstones at the upper windows, in order to awaken him, and had insultedhim with cursing and offensive language.
Having finished inspecting the building, I was unfortunately moved byI know not what national pride and knowledge of institutions superiorto this at home, to say,
"This is a pleasant jail, but it doesn't look much like our greatprisons; we have as many as a thousand to twelve hundred men in someof our institutions."
"Ay, ay, I have heard tell," said the jailer, shaking his head inpity, "it's an awfu' place, an awfu' place,—the United States. Isuppose it's the wickedest country that ever was in the world. Idon't know,—I don't know what is to become of it. It's worse thanSodom. There was that dreadful war on the South; and I hear now it'svery unsafe, full of murders and robberies and corruption."
I did not attempt to correct this impression concerning my nativeland, for I saw it was a comfort to the simple jailer, but I tried toput a thorn into him by saying,
"Yes, we have a good many criminals, but the majority of them, themajority of those in jails, are foreigners; they come from Ireland,England, and the Provinces."
But the old man only shook his head more solemnly, and persisted,
"It's an awfu' wicked country."
Before I came away I was permitted to have an interview with the soleprisoner, a very pleasant and talkative man, who was glad to seecompany, especially intelligent company who understood about things,he was pleased to say. I have seldom met a more agreeable rogue, orone so philosophical, a man of travel and varied experiences. He wasa lively, robust Provincial of middle age, bullet-headed, with a massof curly black hair, and small, round black eyes, that danced andsparkled with good humor. He was by trade a carpenter, and had awork-bench in his cell, at which he worked on week-days. He had beenput in jail on suspicion of stealing a buffalo-robe, and he lay injail eight months, waiting for the judge to come to Baddeck on hisyearly circuit. He did not steal the robe, as he assured me, but itwas found in his house, and the judge gave him four months in jail,making a year in all,—a month of which was still to serve. But hewas not at all anxious for the end of his term; for his wife wasoutside.
Jock, for he was familiarly so called, asked me where I was from. AsI had not found it very profitable to hail from the United States,and had found, in fact, that the name United States did not conveyany definite impression to the average Cape Breton mind, I venturedupon the bold assertion, for which I hope Bostonians will forgive me,that I was from Boston. For Boston is known in the easternProvinces.
"Are you?" cried the man, delighted. "I've lived in Boston, myself.
There's just been an awful fire near there."
"Indeed!" I said; "I heard nothing of it.' And I was startled withthe possibility that Boston had burned up again while we werecrawling along through Nova Scotia.
"Yes, here it is, in the last paper." The man bustled away and foundhis late paper, and thrust it through the grating, with the inquiry,"Can you read?"
Though the question was unexpected, and I had never thought beforewhether I could read or not, I confessed that I could probably makeout the meaning, and took the newspaper. The report of the fire"near Boston" turned out to be the old news of the conflagration inPortland, Oregon!
Disposed to devote a portion of this Sunday to the reformation ofthis lively criminal, I continued the conversation with him. Itseemed that he had been in jail before, and was not unaccustomed tothe life. He was not often lonesome; he had his workbench andnewspapers, and it was a quiet place; on the whole, he enjoyed it,and should rather regret it when his time was up, a month from then.
Had he any family?
"Oh, yes. When the census was round, I contributed more to it thananybody in town. Got a wife and eleven children."
"Well, don't you think it would pay best to be honest, and live withyour family, out of jail? You surely never had anything but troublefrom dishonesty."
"That's about so, boss. I mean to go on the square after this. But,you see," and here he began to speak confidentially, "things arefixed about so in this world, and a man's got to live his life. Itell you how it was. It all came about from a woman. I was acarpenter, had a good trade, and went down to St. Peter's to work.There I got acquainted with a Frenchwoman,—you know what Frenchwomenare,—and I had to marry her. The fact is, she was rather lowfamily; not so very low, you know, but not so good as mine. Well, Iwanted to go to Boston to work at my trade, but she wouldn't go; andI went, but she would n't come to me, so in two or three years I cameback. A man can't help himself, you know, when he gets in with awoman, especially a Frenchwoman. Things did n't go very well, andnever have. I can't make much out of it, but I reckon a man 's gotto live his life. Ain't that about so?"
"Perhaps so. But you'd better try to mend matters when you get out.Won't it seem rather good to get out and see your wife and familyagain?"
"I don't know. I have peace here."
The question of his liberty seemed rather to depress this cheerfuland vivacious philosopher, and I wondered what the woman could befrom whose companionship the man chose to be protected by jail-bolts.I asked the landlord about her, and his reply was descriptive andsufficient. He only said,
"She's a yelper."
Besides the church and the jail there are no public institutions inBaddeck to see on Sunday, or on any other day; but it has very goodschools, and the examination-papers of Maud and her elder sisterwould do credit to Boston scholars even. You would not say that theplace was stuffed with books, or overrun by lecturers, but it is anorderly, Sabbath-keeping, fairly intelligent town. Book-agents visitit with other commercial travelers, but the flood of knowledge, whichis said to be the beginning of sorrow, is hardly turned in thatdirection yet. I heard of a feeble lecture-course in Halifax,supplied by local celebrities, some of them from St. John; but so faras I can see, this is a virgin field for the platform philosophersunder whose instructions we have become the well-informed people weare.
The peaceful jail and the somewhat tiresome church exhaust one'sopportunities for doing good in Baddeck on Sunday. There seemed tobe no idlers about, to reprove; the occasional lounger on theskeleton wharves was in his Sunday clothes, and therefore within thestatute. No one, probably, would have thought of rowing out beyondthe island to fish for cod,—although, as that fish is ready to bite,and his associations are more or less sacred, there might be excusesfor angling for him on Sunday, when it would be wicked to throw aline for another sort of fish. My earliest recollections are of thecodfish on the meeting-house spires in New England,—his sacred tailpointing the way the wind went. I did not know then why this emblemshould be placed upon a house of worship, any more than I knew whycodfish-balls appeared always upon the Sunday breakfast-table. Butthese associations invested this plebeian fish with something of areligious character, which he has never quite lost, in my mind.
Having attributed the quiet of Baddeck on Sunday to religion, we didnot know to what to lay the quiet on Monday. But its peacefulnesscontinued. I have no doubt that the farmers began to farm, and thetraders to trade, and the sailors to sail; but the tourist felt thathe had come into a place of rest. The promise of the red sky theevening before was fulfilled in another royal day. There was aninspiration in the air that one looks for rather in the mountainsthan on the sea-coast; it seemed like some new and gentle compound ofsea-air and land-air, which was the perfection of breathing material.In this atmosphere, which seemed to flow over all these Atlanticisles at this season, one endures a great deal of exertion withlittle fatigue; or he is content to sit still, and has no feeling ofsluggishness. Mere living is a kind of happiness, and the easy-goingtraveler is satisfied with little to do and less to see, Let thereader not understand that we are recommending him to go to Baddeck.Far from it. The reader was never yet advised to go to any place,which he did not growl about if he took the advice and went there.If he discovers it himself, the case is different. We know too wellwhat would happen. A shoal of travelers would pour down upon CapeBreton, taking with them their dyspepsia, their liver-complaints,their "lights" derangements, their discontent, their guns andfishing-tackle, their big trunks, their desire for rapid travel,their enthusiasm about the Gaelic language, their love for nature;and they would very likely declare that there was nothing in it. Andthe traveler would probably be right, so far as he is concerned.There are few whom it would pay to go a thousand miles for the sakeof sitting on the dock at Baddeck when the sun goes down, andwatching the purple lights on the islands and the distant hills, thered flush in the horizon and on the lake, and the creeping on of graytwilight. You can see all that as well elsewhere? I am not so sure.There is a harmony of beauty about the Bras d'Or at Baddeck which islacking in many scenes of more pretension. No. We advise no personto go to Cape Breton. But if any one does go, he need not lackoccupation. If he is there late in the fall or early in the winter,he may hunt, with good luck, if he is able to hit anything with arifle, the moose and the caribou on that long wilderness peninsulabetween Baddeck and Aspy Bay, where the old cable landed. He mayalso have his fill of salmon fishing in June and July, especially onthe Matjorie River. As late as August, at the time, of our visit, ahundred people were camped in tents on the Marjorie, wiling thesalmon with the delusive fly, and leading him to death with a hook inhis nose. The speckled trout lives in all the streams, and can becaught whenever he will bite. The day we went for him appeared to bean off-day, a sort of holiday with him.
There is one place, however, which the traveler must not fail tovisit. That is St. Ann's Bay. He will go light of baggage, for hemust hire a farmer to carry him from the Bras d'Or to the branch ofSt. Ann's harbor, and a part of his journey will be in a row-boat.There is no ride on the continent, of the kind, so full ofpicturesque beauty and constant surprises as this around theindentations of St. Ann's harbor. From the high promontory whererests the fishing village of St. Ann, the traveler will cross toEnglish Town. High bluffs, bold shores, exquisite sea-views,mountainous ranges, delicious air, the society of a member of theDominion Parliament, these are some of the things to be enjoyed atthis place. In point of grandeur and beauty it surpasses Mt. Desert,and is really the most attractive place on the whole line of theAtlantic Cable. If the traveler has any sentiment in him, he willvisit here, not without emotion, the grave of the Nova Scotia Giant,who recently laid his huge frame along this, his native shore. A manof gigantic height and awful breadth of shoulders, with a hand as bigas a shovel, there was nothing mean or little in his soul. While thevisitor is gazing at his vast shoes, which now can be used only assledges, he will be told that the Giant was greatly respected by hisneighbors as a man of ability and simple integrity. He was notspoiled by his metropolitan successes, bringing home from his foreigntriumphs the same quiet and friendly demeanor he took away; he isalmost the only example of a successful public man, who did not feelbigger than he was. He performed his duty in life withoutostentation, and returned to the home he loved unspoiled by theflattery of constant public curiosity. He knew, having tried both,how much better it is to be good than to be great. I should like tohave known him. I should like to know how the world looked to himfrom his altitude. I should like to know how much food it took atone time to make an impression on him; I should like to know whateffect an idea of ordinary size had in his capacious head. I shouldlike to feel that thrill of physical delight he must have experiencedin merely closing his hand over something. It is a pity that hecould not have been educated all through, beginning at a high school,and ending in a university. There was a field for the multifariousnew education! If we could have annexed him with his island, Ishould like to have seen him in the Senate of the United States. Hewould have made foreign nations respect that body, and fear hislightest remark like a declaration of war. And he would have been athome in that body of great men. Alas! he has passed away, leavinglittle influence except a good example of growth, and a grave whichis a new promontory on that ragged coast swept by the winds of theuntamed Atlantic.
I could describe the Bay of St. Ann more minutely and graphically, ifit were desirable to do so; but I trust that enough has been said tomake the traveler wish to go there. I more unreservedly urge him togo there, because we did not go, and we should feel no responsibilityfor his liking or disliking. He will go upon the recommendation oftwo gentlemen of taste and travel whom we met at Baddeck, residentsof Maine and familiar with most of the odd and striking combinationsof land and water in coast scenery. When a Maine man admits thatthere is any place finer than Mt. Desert, it is worth making a noteof.
On Monday we went a-fishing. Davie hitched to a rattling wagonsomething that he called a horse, a small, rough animal with a greatdeal of "go" in him, if he could be coaxed to show it. For the firsthalf-hour he went mostly in a circle in front of the inn, movingindifferently backwards or forwards, perfectly willing to go down theroad, but refusing to start along the bay in the direction of MiddleRiver. Of course a crowd collected to give advice and make remarks,and women appeared at the doors and windows of adjacent houses.Davie said he did n't care anything about the conduct of the horse,—he could start him after a while,—but he did n't like to have allthe town looking at him, especially the girls; and besides, such anexhibition affected the market value of the horse. We sat in thewagon circling round and round, sometimes in the ditch and sometimesout of it, and Davie "whaled" the horse with his whip and abused himwith his tongue. It was a pleasant day, and the spectatorsincreased.
There are two ways of managing a balky horse. My companion knew oneof them and I the other. His method is to sit quietly in the wagon,and at short intervals throw a small pebble at the horse. The theoryis that these repeated sudden annoyances will operate on a horse'smind, and he will try to escape them by going on. The spectatorssupplied my friend with stones, and he pelted the horse with measuredgentleness. Probably the horse understood this method, for he didnot notice the attack at all. My plan was to speak gently to thehorse, requesting him to go, and then to follow the refusal by onesudden, sharp cut of the lash; to wait a moment, and then repeat theoperation. The dread of the coming lash after the gentle word willstart any horse. I tried this, and with a certain success. Thehorse backed us into the ditch, and would probably have backedhimself into the wagon, if I had continued. When the animal was atlength ready to go, Davie took him by the bridle, ran by his side,coaxed him into a gallop, and then, leaping in behind, lashed himinto a run, which had little respite for ten miles, uphill or down.Remonstrance on behalf of the horse was in vain, and it was only onthe return home that this specimen Cape Breton driver began toreflect how he could erase the welts from the horse's back before hisfather saw them.
Our way lay along the charming bay of the Bras d'Or, over thesprawling bridge of the Big Baddeck, a black, sedgy, lonesome stream,to Middle River, which debouches out of a scraggy country into abayou with ragged shores, about which the Indians have encampments,and in which are the skeleton stakes of fish-weirs. Saturday nightwe had seen trout jumping in the still water above the bridge. Wefollowed the stream up two or three miles to a Gaelic settlement offarmers. The river here flows through lovely meadows, sandy,fertile, and sheltered by hills,—a green Eden, one of the fewpeaceful inhabited spots in the world. I could conceive of no newscoming to these Highlanders later than the defeat of the Pretender.Turning from the road, through a lane and crossing a shallow brook,we reached the dwelling of one of the original McGregors, or at leastas good as an original. Mr. McGregor is a fiery-haired Scotchman andbrother, cordial and hospitable, who entertained our wayward horse,and freely advised us where the trout on his farm were most likely tobe found at this season of the year.
It would be a great pleasure to speak well of Mr. McGregor'sresidence, but truth is older than Scotchmen, and the reader looks tous for truth and not flattery. Though the McGregor seems to have agood farm, his house is little better than a shanty, a rathercheerless place for the "woman" to slave away her uneventful lifein, and bring up her scantily clothed and semi-wild flock ofchildren. And yet I suppose there must be happiness in it,—therealways is where there are plenty of children, and milk enough forthem. A white-haired boy who lacked adequate trousers, small thoughhe was, was brought forward by his mother to describe a trout he hadrecently caught, which was nearly as long as the boy himself. Theyoung Gael's invention was rewarded by a present of real fish-hooks.We found here in this rude cabin the hospitality that exists in allremote regions where travelers are few. Mrs. McGregor had none ofthat reluctance, which women feel in all more civilized agriculturalregions, to "break a pan of milk," and Mr. McGregor even pressed usto partake freely of that simple drink. And he refused to take anypay for it, in a sort of surprise that such a simple act ofhospitality should have any commercial value. But travelersthemselves destroy one of their chief pleasures. No doubt we plantedthe notion in the McGregor mind that the small kindnesses of life maybe made profitable, by offering to pay for the milk; and probably thenext travelers in that Eden will succeed in leaving some small changethere, if they use a little tact.
It was late in the season for trout. Perhaps the McGregor was awareof that when he freely gave us the run of the stream in his meadows,and pointed out the pools where we should be sure of good luck. Itwas a charming August day, just the day that trout enjoy lying incool, deep places, and moving their fins in quiet content,indifferent to the skimming fly or to the proffered sport of rod andreel. The Middle River gracefully winds through this Vale of Tempe,over a sandy bottom, sometimes sparkling in shallows, and then gentlyreposing in the broad bends of the grassy banks. It was in one ofthese bends, where the stream swirled around in seductive eddies,that we tried our skill. We heroically waded the stream and threwour flies from the highest bank; but neither in the black water norin the sandy shallows could any trout be coaxed to spring to thedeceitful leaders. We enjoyed the distinction of being the onlypersons who had ever failed to strike trout in that pool, and thiswas something. The meadows were sweet with the newly cut grass, thewind softly blew down the river, large white clouds sailed highoverhead and cast shadows on the changing water; but to all thesegentle influences the fish were insensible, and sulked in their coolretreats. At length in a small brook flowing into the Middle Riverwe found the trout more sociable; and it is lucky that we did so, forI should with reluctance stain these pages with a fiction; and yetthe public would have just reason to resent a fish-story without anyfish in it. Under a bank, in a pool crossed by a log and shaded by atree, we found a drove of the speckled beauties at home, dozens ofthem a foot long, each moving lazily a little, their black backsrelieved by their colored fins. They must have seen us, but at firstthey showed no desire for a closer acquaintance. To the red ibis andthe white miller and the brown hackle and the gray fly they werealike indifferent. Perhaps the love for made flies is an artificialtaste and has to be cultivated. These at any rate were uncivilized-trout, and it was only when we took the advice of the young McGregorand baited our hooks with the angleworm, that the fish joined in ourday's sport. They could not resist the lively wiggle of the wormbefore their very noses, and we lifted them out one after an other,gently, and very much as if we were hooking them out of a barrel,until we had a handsome string. It may have been fun for them but itwas not much sport for us. All the small ones the young McGregorcontemptuously threw back into the water. The sportsman will perhapslearn from this incident that there are plenty of trout in CapeBreton in August, but that the fishing is not exhilarating.
The next morning the semi-weekly steamboat from Sydney came into thebay, and drew all the male inhabitants of Baddeck down to the wharf;and the two travelers, reluctant to leave the hospitable inn, and thepeaceful jail, and the double-barreled church, and all the lovelinessof this reposeful place, prepared to depart. The most conspicuousperson on the steamboat was a thin man, whose extraordinary heightwas made more striking by his very long-waisted black coat and hisvery short pantaloons. He was so tall that he had a littledifficulty in keeping his balance, and his hat was set upon the backof his head to preserve his equilibrium. He had arrived at thatstage when people affected as he was are oratorical, and overflowingwith information and good-nature. With what might in strict art becalled an excess of expletives, he explained that he was a civilengineer, that he had lost his rubber coat, that he was a greattraveler in the Provinces, and he seemed to find a humoroussatisfaction in reiterating the fact of his familiarity with Painsecjunction. It evidently hovered in the misty horizon of his mind as ajoke, and he contrived to present it to his audience in that light.From the deck of the steamboat he addressed the town, and then, tothe relief of the passengers, he decided to go ashore. When the boatdrew away on her voyage we left him swaying perilously near the edgeof the wharf, good-naturedly resenting the grasp of his coat-tail bya friend, addressing us upon the topics of the day, and wishing usprosperity and the Fourth of July. His was the only effort in thenature of a public lecture that we heard in the Provinces, and wecould not judge of his ability without hearing a "course."
Perhaps it needed this slight disturbance, and the contrast of thishazy mind with the serene clarity of the day, to put us into the mostcomplete enjoyment of our voyage. Certainly, as we glided out uponthe summer waters and began to get the graceful outlines of thewidening shores, it seemed as if we had taken passage to theFortunate Islands.
V
"One town, one country, is very like another; …… there are indeedminute discriminations both of places and manners, which, perhaps,are not wanting of curiosity, but which a traveller seldom stays longenough to investigate and compare."—DR. JOHNSON.
There was no prospect of any excitement or of any adventure on thesteamboat from Baddeck to West Bay, the southern point of the Brasd'Or. Judging from the appearance of the boat, the dinner might havebeen an experiment, but we ran no risks. It was enough to sit ondeck forward of the wheel-house, and absorb, by all the senses, thedelicious day. With such weather perpetual and such scenery alwayspresent, sin in this world would soon become an impossibility. Eventowards the passengers from Sydney, with their imitation English waysand little insular gossip, one could have only charity and the mostkindly feeling.
The most electric American, heir of all the nervous diseases of allthe ages, could not but find peace in this scene of tranquil beauty,and sail on into a great and deepening contentment. Would the voyagecould last for an age, with the same sparkling but tranquil sea, andthe same environment of hills, near and remote! The hills approachedand fell away in lines of undulating grace, draped with a tendercolor which helped to carry the imagination beyond the earth. Atthis point the narrative needs to flow into verse, but my comrade didnot feel like another attempt at poetry so soon after that on the Gutof Canso. A man cannot always be keyed up to the pitch ofproduction, though his emotions may be highly creditable to him. Butpoetry-making in these days is a good deal like the use of profanelanguage,—often without the least provocation.
Twelve miles from Baddeck we passed through the Barra Strait, or theGrand Narrows, a picturesque feature in the Bras d'Or, and came intoits widest expanse. At the Narrows is a small settlement with aflag-staff and a hotel, and roads leading to farmhouses on the hills.Here is a Catholic chapel; and on shore a fat padre was waiting inhis wagon for the inevitable priest we always set ashore at such aplace. The missionary we landed was the young father from Arichat,and in appearance the pleasing historical Jesuit. Slender is toocorpulent a word to describe his thinness, and his stature wasprimeval. Enveloped in a black coat, the skirts of which reached hisheels, and surmounted by a black hat with an enormous brim, he hadthe form of an elegant toadstool. The traveler is always gratefulfor such figures, and is not disposed to quarrel with the faith whichpreserves so much of the ugly picturesque. A peaceful farmingcountry this, but an unremunerative field, one would say, for thecolporteur and the book-agent; and winter must inclose it in alonesome seclusion.
The only other thing of note the Bras d'Or offered us before wereached West Bay was the finest show of medusm or jelly-fish thatcould be produced. At first there were dozens of these disk-shaped,transparent creatures, and then hundreds, starring the water likemarguerites sprinkled on a meadow, and of sizes from that of a teacupto a dinner-plate. We soon ran into a school of them, a convention,a herd as extensive as the vast buffalo droves on the plains, acollection as thick as clover-blossoms in a field in June, miles ofthem, apparently; and at length the boat had to push its way througha mass of them which covered the water like the leaves of thepondlily, and filled the deeps far down with their beautifulcontracting and expanding forms. I did not suppose there were somany jelly-fishes in all the world. What a repast they would havemade for the Atlantic whale we did not see, and what inward comfortit would have given him to have swum through them once or twice withopen mouth! Our delight in this wondrous spectacle did not preventthis generous wish for the gratification of the whale. It isprobably a natural human desire to see big corporations swallow uplittle ones.
At the West Bay landing, where there is nothing whatever attractive,we found a great concourse of country wagons and clamorous drivers,to transport the passengers over the rough and uninteresting ninemiles to Port Hawkesbury. Competition makes the fare low, butnothing makes the ride entertaining. The only settlement passedthrough has the promising name of River Inhabitants, but we could seelittle river and less inhabitants; country and people seem to belongto that commonplace order out of which the traveler can extractnothing amusing, instructive, or disagreeable; and it was a greatrelief when we came over the last hill and looked down upon thestraggling village of Port Hawkesbury and the winding Gut of Canso.
One cannot but feel a respect for this historical strait, on accountof the protection it once gave our British ancestors. Smollett makesa certain Captain C——tell this anecdote of George II. and hisenlightened minister, the Duke of Newcastle: "In the beginning of thewar this poor, half-witted creature told me, in a great fright, thatthirty thousand French had marched from Acadie to Cape Breton.'Where did they find transports?' said I. 'Transports!' cried he; 'Itell you, they marched by land.' By land to the island of CapeBreton?' 'What! is Cape Breton an island?' 'Certainly.' 'Ha! areyou sure of that?' When I pointed it out on the map, he examined itearnestly with his spectacles; then taking me in his arms, 'My dearC——!' cried he, you always bring us good news. I'll go directlyand tell the king that Cape Breton is an island.'"
Port Hawkesbury is not a modern settlement, and its public house isone of the irregular, old-fashioned, stuffy taverns, with low rooms,chintz-covered lounges, and fat-cushioned rocking-chairs, the decayand untidiness of which are not offensive to the traveler. It has alow back porch looking towards the water and over a mouldy garden,damp and unseemly. Time was, no doubt, before the rush of travelrubbed off the bloom of its ancient hospitality and set a vigilantman at the door of the dining-room to collect pay for meals, thatthis was an abode of comfort and the resort of merry-making andfrolicsome provincials. On this now decaying porch no doubt loverssat in the moonlight, and vowed by the Gut of Canso to be fond ofeach other forever. The traveler cannot help it if he comes upon thetraces of such sentiment. There lingered yet in the house an air ofthe hospitable old time; the swift willingness of the waiting-maidsat table, who were eager that we should miss none of the home-madedishes, spoke of it; and as we were not obliged to stay in the hoteland lodge in its six-by-four bedrooms, we could afford to make alittle romance about its history.
While we were at supper the steamboat arrived from Pictou. Wehastened on board, impatient for progress on our homeward journey.But haste was not called for. The steamboat would not sail on herreturn till morning. No one could tell why. It was not on accountof freight to take in or discharge; it was not in hope of morepassengers, for they were all on board. But if the boat had returnedthat night to Pictou, some of the passengers might have left her andgone west by rail, instead of wasting two, or three days loungingthrough Northumberland Sound and idling in the harbors of PrinceEdward Island. If the steamboat would leave at midnight, we couldcatch the railway train at Pictou. Probably the officials were awareof this, and they preferred to have our company to Shediac. Wemention this so that the tourist who comes this way may learn topossess his soul in patience, and know that steamboats are not runfor his accommodation, but to give him repose and to familiarize himwith the country. It is almost impossible to give the unscientificreader an idea of the slowness of travel by steamboat in theseregions. Let him first fix his mind on the fact that the earth movesthrough space at a speed of more than sixty-six thousand miles anhour. This is a speed eleven hundred times greater than that of themost rapid express trains. If the distance traversed by a locomotivein an hour is represented by one tenth of an inch, it would need aline nine feet long to indicate the corresponding advance of theearth in the same time. But a tortoise, pursuing his ordinary gaitwithout a wager, moves eleven hundred times slower than an expresstrain. We have here a basis of comparison with the provincialsteamboats. If we had seen a tortoise start that night from PortHawkesbury for the west, we should have desired to send letters byhim.
In the early morning we stole out of the romantic strait, and bybreakfast-time we were over St. George's Bay and round his cape, andmaking for the harbor of Pictou. During the forenoon something inthe nature of an excursion developed itself on the steamboat, but ithad so few of the bustling features of an American excursion that Ithought it might be a pilgrimage. Yet it doubtless was a highlydeveloped provincial lark. For a certain portion of the passengershad the unmistakable excursion air: the half-jocular manner towardseach other, the local facetiousness which is so offensive touninterested fellow-travelers, that male obsequiousness about ladies'shawls and reticules, the clumsy pretense of gallantry with eachother's wives, the anxiety about the company luggage and the companyhealth. It became painfully evident presently that it was anexcursion, for we heard singing of that concerted and determined kindthat depresses the spirits of all except those who join in it. Theexcursion had assembled on the lee guards out of the wind, and wasenjoying itself in an abandon of serious musical enthusiasm. Wefeared at first that there might be some levity in this performance,and that the unrestrained spirit of the excursion was working itselfoff in social and convivial songs. But it was not so. The singerswere provided with hymn-and-tune books, and what they sang theyrendered in long meter and with a most doleful earnestness. It isagreeable to the traveler to see that the provincials disportthemselves within bounds, and that an hilarious spree here does notdiffer much in its exercises from a prayer-meeting elsewhere. Butthe excursion enjoyed its staid dissipation amazingly.
It is pleasant to sail into the long and broad harbor of Pictou on asunny day. On the left is the Halifax railway terminus, and threerivers flow into the harbor from the south. On the right the town ofPictou, with its four thousand inhabitants, lies upon the side of theridge that runs out towards the Sound. The most conspicuous buildingin it as we approach is the Roman Catholic church; advanced to theedge of the town and occupying the highest ground, it appears large,and its gilt cross is a beacon miles away. Its builders understoodthe value of a striking situation, a dominant position; it is a partof the universal policy of this church to secure the commandingplaces for its houses of worship. We may have had no prejudices infavor of the Papal temporality when we landed at Pictou, but thischurch was the only one which impressed us, and the only one we tookthe trouble to visit. We had ample time, for the steamboat after itsarduous trip needed rest, and remained some hours in the harbor.Pictou is said to be a thriving place, and its streets have a cinderyappearance, betokening the nearness of coal mines and the presence offurnaces. But the town has rather a cheap and rusty look. Itsstreets rise one above another on the hillside, and, except a fewcomfortable cottages, we saw no evidences of wealth in the dwellings.The church, when we reached it, was a commonplace brick structure,with a raw, unfinished interior, and weedy and untidy surroundings,so that our expectation of sitting on the inviting hill and enjoyingthe view was not realized; and we were obliged to descend to the hotwharf and wait for the ferry-boat to take us to the steamboat whichlay at the railway terminus opposite. It is the most unfair thing inthe world for the traveler, without an object or any interest in thedevelopment of the country, on a sleepy day in August, to express anyopinion whatever about such a town as Pictou. But we may say of it,without offence, that it occupies a charming situation, and may havean interesting future; and that a person on a short acquaintance canleave it without regret.
By stopping here we had the misfortune to lose our excursion, a lossthat was soothed by no know ledge of its destination or hope ofseeing it again, and a loss without a hope is nearly always painful.Going out of the harbor we encounter Pictou Island and Light, andpresently see the low coast of Prince Edward Island,—a coastindented and agreeable to those idly sailing along it, in weatherthat seemed let down out of heaven and over a sea that sparkled butstill slept in a summer quiet. When fate puts a man in such aposition and relieves him of all responsibility, with a book and agood comrade, and liberty to make sarcastic remarks upon hisfellow-travelers, or to doze, or to look over the tranquil sea, he maybe pronounced happy. And I believe that my companion, except in thematter of the comrade, was happy. But I could not resist a worryinganxiety about the future of the British Provinces, which not even theremembrance of their hostility to us during our mortal strife with theRebellion could render agreeable. For I could not but feel that theostentatious and unconcealable prosperity of "the States" over-shadowsthis part of the continent. And it was for once in vain that I said,"Have we not a common land and a common literature, and no copyright,and a common pride in Shakespeare and Hannah More and Colonel Newcomeand Pepys's Diary?" I never knew this sort of consolation to failbefore; it does not seem to answer in the Provinces as well as it doesin England.
New passengers had come on board at Pictou, new and hungry, and notall could get seats for dinner at the first table. Notwithstandingthe supposed traditionary advantage of our birthplace, we were unableto dispatch this meal with the celerity of our fellow-voyagers, andconsequently, while we lingered over our tea, we found ourselves atthe second table. And we were rewarded by one of those pleasingsights that go to make up the entertainment of travel. There satdown opposite to us a fat man whose noble proportions occupied at theboard the space of three ordinary men. His great face beamed delightthe moment he came near the table. He had a low forehead and a widemouth and small eyes, and an internal capacity that was a prophecy offamine to his fellow-men. But a more good-natured, pleased animalyou may never see. Seating himself with unrepressed joy, he lookedat us, and a great smile of satisfaction came over his face, thatplainly said, "Now my time has come." Every part of his vast bulksaid this. Most generously, by his friendly glances, he made uspartners in his pleasure. With a Napoleonic grasp of his situation,he reached far and near, hauling this and that dish of fragmentstowards his plate, giving orders at the same time, and throwing intohis cheerful mouth odd pieces of bread and pickles in an unstudiedand preliminary manner. When he had secured everything within hisreach, he heaped his plate and began an attack upon the contents,using both knife and fork with wonderful proficiency. The man'sgood-humor was contagious, and he did not regard our amusement asdifferent in kind from his enjoyment. The spectacle was worth ajourney to see. Indeed, its aspect of comicality almost overcame itsgrossness, and even when the hero loaded in faster than he couldswallow, and was obliged to drop his knife for an instant to arrangematters in his mouth with his finger, it was done with such a beamingsmile that a pig would not take offense at it. The performance wasnot the merely vulgar thing it seems on paper, but an achievementunique and perfect, which one is not likely to see more than once ina lifetime. It was only when the man left the table that his facebecame serious. We had seen him at his best.
Prince Edward Island, as we approached it, had a pleasing aspect, andnothing of that remote friendlessness which its appearance on the mapconveys to one; a warm and sandy land, in a genial climate, withoutfogs, we are informed. In the winter it has ice communication withNova Scotia, from Cape Traverse to Cape Tormentine,—the route of thesubmarine cable. The island is as flat from end to end as a floor.When it surrendered its independent government and joined theDominion, one of the conditions of the union was that the governmentshould build a railway the whole length of it. This is in process ofconstruction, and the portion that is built affords greatsatisfaction to the islanders, a railway being one of the necessaryadjuncts of civilization; but that there was great need of it, orthat it would pay, we were unable to learn.
We sailed through Hillsborough Bay and a narrow strait toCharlottetown, the capital, which lies on a sandy spit of landbetween two rivers. Our leisurely steamboat tied up here in theafternoon and spent the night, giving the passengers an opportunityto make thorough acquaintance with the town. It has the appearanceof a place from which something has departed; a wooden town, withwide and vacant streets, and the air of waiting for something.Almost melancholy is the aspect of its freestone colonial building,where once the colonial legislature held its momentous sessions, andthe colonial governor shed the delightful aroma of royalty. Themansion of the governor—now vacant of pomp, because that officialdoes not exist—is a little withdrawn from the town, secluded amongtrees by the water-side. It is dignified with a winding approach,but is itself only a cheap and decaying house. On our way to it wepassed the drill-shed of the local cavalry, which we mistook for askating-rink, and thereby excited the contempt of an old lady of whomwe inquired. Tasteful residences we did not find, nor that attentionto flowers and gardens which the mild climate would suggest. Indeed,we should describe Charlottetown as a place where the hollyhock inthe dooryard is considered an ornament. A conspicuous building is alarge market-house shingled all over (as many of the public buildingsare), and this and other cheap public edifices stand in the midst ofa large square, which is surrounded by shabby shops for the mostpart. The town is laid out on a generous scale, and it is to beregretted that we could not have seen it when it enjoyed the glory ofa governor and court and ministers of state, and all theparaphernalia of a royal parliament. That the productive island,with its system of free schools, is about to enter upon a prosperouscareer, and that Charlottetown is soon to become a place of greatactivity, no one who converses with the natives can doubt; and Ithink that even now no traveler will regret spending an hour or twothere; but it is necessary to say that the rosy inducements totourists to spend the summer there exist only in the guide-books.
We congratulated ourselves that we should at least have a night ofdelightful sleep on the steamboat in the quiet of this secludedharbor. But it was wisely ordered otherwise, to the end that weshould improve our time by an interesting study of human nature.Towards midnight, when the occupants of all the state-rooms weresupposed to be in profound slumber, there was an invasion of thesmall cabin by a large and loquacious family, who had been making anexcursion on the island railway. This family might remind anantiquated novel-reader of the delightful Brangtons in "Evelina;"they had all the vivacity of the pleasant cousins of the heroine ofthat story, and the same generosity towards the public in regard totheir family affairs. Before they had been in the cabin an hour, wefelt as if we knew every one of them. There was a great squabble asto where and how they should sleep; and when this was over, therevelations of the nature of their beds and their peculiar habits ofsleep continued to pierce the thin deal partitions of the adjoiningstate-rooms. When all the possible trivialities of vacant mindsseemed to have been exhausted, there followed a half-hour of"Goodnight, pa; good-night, ma;" "Goodnight, pet;" and "Are youasleep, ma?" "No." "Are you asleep, pa?" "No; go to sleep, pet.""I'm going. Good-night, pa; good-night, ma." "Goodnight, pet.""This bed is too short." "Why don't you take the other?" "I'm allfixed now." "Well, go to sleep; good-night." "Good-night, ma;goodnight, pa,"—no answer. "Good-night,pa." "Goodnight, pet.""Ma, are you asleep?" "Most." "This bed is all lumps; I wish I'dgone downstairs." "Well, pa will get up." "Pa, are you asleep?""Yes." "It's better now; good-night, pa." "Goodnight, pet.""Good-night, ma." "Good-night, pet." And so on in an exasperatingrepetition, until every passenger on the boat must have beenthoroughly informed of the manner in which this interesting familyhabitually settled itself to repose.
Half an hour passes with only a languid exchange of family feeling,and then: "Pa?" "Well, pet." "Don't call us in the morning; wedon't want any breakfast; we want to sleep." "I won't." "Goodnight,pa; goodnight, ma. Ma?" "What is it, dear?" "Good-night, ma.""Good-night, pet." Alas for youthful expectations! Pet shared herstateroom with a young companion, and the two were carrying on aprivate dialogue during this public performance. Did these youngladies, after keeping all the passengers of the boat awake till nearthe summer dawn, imagine that it was in the power of pa and ma toinsure them the coveted forenoon slumber, or even the morning snooze?The travelers, tossing in their state-room under this domesticinfliction, anticipated the morning with grim satisfaction; for theyhad a presentiment that it would be impossible for them to arise andmake their toilet without waking up every one in their part of theboat, and aggravating them to such an extent that they would stayawake. And so it turned out. The family grumbling at the unexpecteddisturbance was sweeter to the travelers than all the exchange offamily affection during the night.
No one, indeed, ought to sleep beyond breakfast-time while sailingalong the southern coast of Prince Edward Island. It was a sparklingmorning. When we went on deck we were abreast Cape Traverse; thefaint outline of Nova Scotia was marked on the horizon, and NewBrunswick thrust out Cape Tomentine to greet us. On the still, sunnycoasts and the placid sea, and in the serene, smiling sky, there wasno sign of the coming tempest which was then raging from Hatteras toCape Cod; nor could one imagine that this peaceful scene would, a fewdays later, be swept by a fearful tornado, which should raze to theground trees and dwelling-houses, and strew all these now invitingshores with wrecked ships and drowning sailors,—a storm which haspassed into literature in "The Lord's-Day Gale" of Mr Stedman.
Through this delicious weather why should the steamboat hasten, inorder to discharge its passengers into the sweeping unrest ofcontinental travel? Our eagerness to get on, indeed, almost meltedaway, and we were scarcely impatient at all when the boat loungedinto Halifax Bay, past Salutation Point and stopped at Summerside.This little seaport is intended to be attractive, and it would givethese travelers great pleasure to describe it, if they could at allremember how it looks. But it is a place that, like some faces,makes no sort of impression on the memory. We went ashore there, andtried to take an interest in the ship-building, and in the littleoysters which the harbor yields; but whether we did take an interestor not has passed out of memory. A small, unpicturesque, woodentown, in the languor of a provincial summer; why should we pretend aninterest in it which we did not feel? It did not disturb ourreposeful frame of mind, nor much interfere with our enjoyment of theday.
On the forward deck, when we were under way again, amid a groupreading and nodding in the sunshine, we found a pretty girl with acompanion and a gentleman, whom we knew by intuition as the "pa" ofthe pretty girl and of our night of anguish. The pa might have beena clergyman in a small way, or the proprietor of a femaleboarding-school; at any rate, an excellent and improving person totravel with, whose willingness to impart information made even thetravelers long for a pa. It was no part of his plan of this familysummer excursion, upon which he had come against his wish, to have anyhour of it wasted in idleness. He held an open volume in his hand, andwas questioning his daughter on its contents. He spoke in a loudvoice, and without heeding the timidity of the young lady, who shrankfrom this public examination, and begged her father not to continueit. The parent was, however, either proud of his daughter'sacquirements, or he thought it a good opportunity to shame her out ofher ignorance. Doubtless, we said, he is instructing her upon thegeography of the region we are passing through, its early settlement,the romantic incidents of its history when French and English foughtover it, and so is making this a tour of profit as well as pleasure.But the excellent and pottering father proved to be no disciple of thenew education. Greece was his theme and he got his questions, and hisanswers too, from the ancient school history in his hand. The lessonwent on:
"Who was Alcibiades?
"A Greek."
"Yes. When did he flourish?"
"I can't think."
"Can't think? What was he noted for?"
"I don't remember."
"Don't remember? I don't believe you studied this."
"Yes, I did."
"Well, take it now, and study it hard, and then I'll hear you again."
The young girl, who is put to shame by this open persecution, beginsto study, while the peevish and small tyrant, her pa, is nagging herwith such soothing remarks as, "I thought you'd have more respect foryour pride;" "Why don't you try to come up to the expectations ofyour teacher?" By and by the student thinks she has "got it," andthe public exposition begins again. The date at which Alcibiades"flourished" was ascertained, but what he was "noted for" gothopelessly mixed with what Thernistocles was "noted for." Themomentary impression that the battle of Marathon was fought bySalamis was soon dissipated, and the questions continued.
"What did Pericles do to the Greeks?"
"I don't know."
"Elevated 'em, did n't he? Did n't he elevate Pem?"
"Yes, sir."
"Always remember that; you want to fix your mind on leading things.
Remember that Pericles elevated the Greeks. Who was Pericles?
"He was a"—
"Was he a philosopher?"
"Yes, sir."
"No, he was n't. Socrates was a philosopher. When did he flourish?"
And so on, and so on.
O my charming young countrywomen, let us never forget that Pericleselevated the Greeks; and that he did it by cultivating the nationalgenius, the national spirit, by stimulating art and oratory and thepursuit of learning, and infusing into all society a higherintellectual and social life! Pa was this day sailing through seasand by shores that had witnessed some of the most stirring andromantic events in the early history of our continent. He might havehad the eager attention of his bright daughter if he had unfoldedthese things to her in the midst of this most living landscape, andgiven her an "object lesson" that she would not have forgotten allher days, instead of this pottering over names and dates that were asdry and meaningless to him as they were uninteresting to hisdaughter. At least, O Pa, Educator of Youth, if you are insensibleto the beauty of these summer isles and indifferent to their history,and your soul is wedded to ancient learning, why do you not teachyour family to go to sleep when they go to bed, as the classic Greeksused to?
Before the travelers reached Shediac, they had leisure to ruminateupon the education of American girls in the schools set apart forthem, and to conjecture how much they are taught of the geography andhistory of America, or of its social and literary growth; andwhether, when they travel on a summer tour like this, these coastshave any historical light upon them, or gain any interest from thedaring and chivalric adventurers who played their parts here so longago. We did not hear pa ask when Madame de la Tour "flourished,"though "flourish" that determined woman did, in Boston as well as inthe French provinces. In the present woman revival, may we not hopethat the heroic women of our colonial history will have theprominence that is their right, and that woman's achievements willassume their proper place in affairs? When women write history, someof our popular men heroes will, we trust, be made to acknowledge thefemale sources of their wisdom and their courage. But at presentwomen do not much affect history, and they are more indifferent tothe careers of the noted of their own sex than men are.
We expected to approach Shediac with a great deal of interest. Ithad been, when we started, one of the most prominent points in ourprojected tour. It was the pivot upon which, so to speak, weexpected to swing around the Provinces. Upon the map it was soattractive, that we once resolved to go no farther than there. Itonce seemed to us that, if we ever reached it, we should be contentedto abide there, in a place so remote, in a port so picturesque andforeign. But returning from the real east, our late interest inShediac seemed unaccountable to us. Firmly resolved as I was to noteour entrance into the harbor, I could not keep the place in mind; andwhile we were in our state-room and before we knew it, the steamboatJay at the wharf. Shediac appeared to be nothing but a wharf with arailway train on it, and a few shanty buildings, a part of themdevoted to the sale of whiskey and to cheap lodgings. This landing,however, is called Point du Chene, and the village of Shediac is twoor three miles distant from it; we had a pleasant glimpse of it fromthe car windows, and saw nothing in its situation to hinder itsgrowth. The country about it is perfectly level, and stripped of itsforests. At Painsec Junction we waited for the train from Halifax,and immediately found ourselves in the whirl of intercolonial travel.Why people should travel here, or why they should be excited aboutit, we could not see; we could not overcome a feeling of theunreality of the whole thing; but yet we humbly knew that we had noright to be otherwise than awed by the extraordinary intercolonialrailway enterprise and by the new life which it is infusing into theProvinces. We are free to say, however, that nothing can be lessinteresting than the line of this road until it strikes theKennebeckasis River, when the traveler will be called upon to admirethe Sussex Valley and a very fair farming region, which he would liketo praise if it were not for exciting the jealousy of the "Garden ofNova Scotia." The whole land is in fact a garden, but differingsomewhat from the Isle of Wight.
In all travel, however, people are more interesting than land, and soit was at this time. As twilight shut down upon the valley of theKennebeckasis, we heard the strident voice of pa going on with theGrecian catechism. Pa was unmoved by the beauties of Sussex or bythe colors of the sunset, which for the moment made picturesque thescraggy evergreens on the horizon. His eyes were with his heart, andthat was in Sparta. Above the roar of the car-wheels we heard hisnagging inquiries.
"What did Lycurgus do then?"
Answer not audible.
"No. He made laws. Who did he make laws for?"
"For the Greeks."
"He made laws for the Lacedemonians. Who was another greatlawgiver?"
"It was—it was—Pericles."
"No, it was n't. It was Solon. Who was Solon?"
"Solon was one of the wise men of Greece."
"That's right. When did he flourish?"
When the train stops at a station the classics continue, and thestudious group attracts the attention of the passengers. Pa is wellpleased, but not so the young lady, who beseechingly says,
"Pa, everybody can hear us."
"You would n't care how much they heard, if you knew it," repliesthis accomplished devotee of learning.
In another lull of the car-wheels we find that pa has skipped over to
Marathon; and this time it is the daughter who is asking a question.
"Pa, what is a phalanx?"
"Well, a phalanx—it's a—it's difficult to define a phalanx. It's astretch of men in one line,—a stretch of anything in a line. Whendid Alexander flourish?"
This domestic tyrant had this in common with the rest of us, that hewas much better at asking questions than at answering them. Itcertainly was not our fault that we were listeners to his instructivestruggles with ancient history, nor that we heard his petulantcomplaining to his cowed family, whom he accused of dragging him awayon this summer trip. We are only grateful to him, for a moreentertaining person the traveler does not often see. It was withregret that we lost sight of him at St. John.
Night has settled upon New Brunswick and upon ancient Greece beforewe reach the Kennebeckasis Bay, and we only see from the car windowsdimly a pleasant and fertile country, and the peaceful homes ofthrifty people. While we are running along the valley and comingunder the shadow of the hill whereon St. John sits, with a regaloutlook upon a most variegated coast and upon the rising and fallingof the great tides of Fundy, we feel a twinge of conscience at theinjustice the passing traveler must perforce do any land he hurriesover and does not study. Here is picturesque St. John, with itscouple of centuries of history and tradition, its commerce, itsenterprise felt all along the coast and through the settlements ofthe territory to the northeast, with its no doubt charming societyand solid English culture; and the summer tourist, in an idle moodregarding it for a day, says it is naught! Behold what "travels"amount to! Are they not for the most part the records of themisapprehensions of the misinformed? Let us congratulate ourselvesthat in this flight through the Provinces we have not attempted to doany justice to them, geologically, economically, or historically,only trying to catch some of the salient points of the panorama as itunrolled itself. Will Halifax rise up in judgment against us? Welook back upon it with softened memory, and already see it again inthe light of history. It stands, indeed, overlooking a gate of theocean, in a beautiful morning light; and we can hear now therepetition of that profane phrase, used for the misdirection ofwayward mortals,—-"Go to Halifax!" without a shudder.
We confess to some regret that our journey is so near its end.Perhaps it is the sentimental regret with which one always leaves theeast, for we have been a thousand miles nearer Ireland than Bostonis. Collecting in the mind the detached pictures given to our eyesin all these brilliant and inspiring days, we realize afresh thevariety, the extent, the richness of these northeastern lands whichthe Gulf Stream pets and tempers. If it were not for attractingspeculators, we should delight to speak of the beds of coal, thequarries of marble, the mines of gold. Look on the map and followthe shores of these peninsulas and islands, the bays, the penetratingarms of the sea, the harbors filled with islands, the protectedstraits and sounds. All this is favorable to the highest commercialactivity and enterprise. Greece itself and its islands are not moreindented and inviting. Fish swarm about the shores and in all thestreams. There are, I have no doubt, great forests which we did notsee from the car windows, the inhabitants of which do not showthemselves to the travelers at the railway-stations. In thedining-room of a friend, who goes away every autumn into the wilds ofNova Scotia at the season when the snow falls, hang trophies—enormous branching antlers of the caribou, and heads of the mightymoose—which I am assured came from there; and I have no reason todoubt that the noble creatures who once carried these superb hornswere murdered by my friend at long range. Many people have aninsatiate longing to kill, once in their life, a moose, and wouldtravel far and endure great hardships to gratify this ambition. Inthe present state of the world it is more difficult to do it than itis to be written down as one who loves his fellow-men.
We received everywhere in the Provinces courtesy and kindness, whichwere not based upon any expectation that we would invest in mines orrailways, for the people are honest, kindly, and hearty by nature.What they will become when the railways are completed that are tobind St. John to Quebec, and make Nova Scotia, Cape Breton, andNewfoundland only stepping-stones to Europe, we cannot say. Probablythey will become like the rest of the world, and furnish no materialfor the kindly persiflage of the traveler.
Regretting that we could see no more of St. John, that we couldscarcely see our way through its dimly lighted streets, we found theferry to Carleton, and a sleeping-car for Bangor. It was in theheart of the negro porter to cause us alarm by the intelligence thatthe customs officer would, search our baggage during the night. Asearch is a blow to one's self-respect, especially if one hasanything dutiable. But as the porter might be an agent of ourgovernment in disguise, we preserved an appearance of philosophicalindifference in his presence. It takes a sharp observer to tellinnocence from assurance. During the night, awaking, I saw a greatlight. A man, crawling along the aisle of the car, and poking underthe seats, had found my traveling-bag and was "going through" it.
I felt a thrill of pride as I recognized in this crouching figure anofficer of our government, and knew that I was in my native land.
and
CALVIN A STUDY OF CHARACTER
By Charles Dudley Warner
INTRODUCTORY LETTER
MY DEAR MR. FIELDS,—I did promise to write an Introduction to thesecharming papers but an Introduction,—what is it?—a sort ofpilaster, put upon the face of a building for looks' sake, andusually flat,—very flat. Sometimes it may be called a caryatid,which is, as I understand it, a cruel device of architecture,representing a man or a woman, obliged to hold up upon his or herhead or shoulders a structure which they did not build, and whichcould stand just as well without as with them. But an Introductionis more apt to be a pillar, such as one may see in Baalbec, standingup in the air all alone, with nothing on it, and with nothing for itto do.
But an Introductory Letter is different. There is in that noformality, no assumption of function, no awkward propriety or dignityto be sustained. A letter at the opening of a book may be only afootpath, leading the curious to a favorable point of observation,and then leaving them to wander as they will.
Sluggards have been sent to the ant for wisdom; but writers mightbetter be sent to the spider, not because he works all night, andwatches all day, but because he works unconsciously. He dare noteven bring his work before his own eyes, but keeps it behind him, asif too much knowledge of what one is doing would spoil the delicacyand modesty of one's work.
Almost all graceful and fanciful work is born like a dream, thatcomes noiselessly, and tarries silently, and goes as a bubble bursts.And yet somewhere work must come in,—real, well-considered work.
Inness (the best American painter of Nature in her moods of realhuman feeling) once said, "No man can do anything in art, unless hehas intuitions; but, between whiles, one must work hard in collectingthe materials out of which intuitions are made." The truth could notbe hit off better. Knowledge is the soil, and intuitions are theflowers which grow up out of it. The soil must be well enriched andworked.
It is very plain, or will be to those who read these papers, nowgathered up into this book, as into a chariot for a race, that theauthor has long employed his eyes, his ears, and his understanding,in observing and considering the facts of Nature, and in weavingcurious analogies. Being an editor of one of the oldest dailynews-papers in New England, and obliged to fill its columns day afterday (as the village mill is obliged to render every day so many sacksof flour or of meal to its hungry customers), it naturally occurred tohim, "Why not write something which I myself, as well as my readers,shall enjoy? The market gives them facts enough; politics, liesenough; art, affectations enough; criminal news, horrors enough;fashion, more than enough of vanity upon vanity, and vexation of purse.Why should they not have some of those wandering and joyous fancieswhich solace my hours?"
The suggestion ripened into execution. Men and women read, andwanted more. These garden letters began to blossom every week; andmany hands were glad to gather pleasure from them. A sign it was ofwisdom. In our feverish days it is a sign of health or ofconvalescence that men love gentle pleasure, and enjoyments that donot rush or roar, but distill as the dew.
The love of rural life, the habit of finding enjoyment in familiarthings, that susceptibility to Nature which keeps the nerve gentlythrilled in her homliest nooks and by her commonest sounds, is wortha thousand fortunes of money, or its equivalents.
Every book which interprets the secret lore of fields and gardens,every essay that brings men nearer to the understanding of themysteries which every tree whispers, every brook murmurs, every weed,even, hints, is a contribution to the wealth and the happiness of ourkind. And if the lines of the writer shall be traced in quaintcharacters, and be filled with a grave humor, or break out at timesinto merriment, all this will be no presumption against their wisdomor his goodness. Is the oak less strong and tough because the mossesand weather-stains stick in all manner of grotesque sketches alongits bark? Now, truly, one may not learn from this little book eitherdivinity or horticulture; but if he gets a pure happiness, and atendency to repeat the happiness from the simple stores of Nature, hewill gain from our friend's garden what Adam lost in his, and whatneither philosophy nor divinity has always been able to restore.
Wherefore, thanking you for listening to a former letter, whichbegged you to consider whether these curious and ingenious papers,that go winding about like a half-trodden path between the garden andthe field, might not be given in book-form to your million readers, Iremain, yours to command in everything but the writing of anIntroduction,
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
MY DEAR POLLY,—When a few of these papers had appeared in "TheCourant," I was encouraged to continue them by hearing that they hadat least one reader who read them with the serious mind from whichalone profit is to be expected. It was a maiden lady, who, I amsure, was no more to blame for her singleness than for her age; andshe looked to these honest sketches of experience for that aid whichthe professional agricultural papers could not give in the managementof the little bit of garden which she called her own. She may havebeen my only disciple; and I confess that the thought of her yieldinga simple faith to what a gainsaying world may have regarded withlevity has contributed much to give an increased practical turn to myreports of what I know about gardening. The thought that I hadmisled a lady, whose age is not her only singularity, who looked tome for advice which should be not at all the fanciful product of theGarden of Gull, would give me great pain. I trust that her autumn isa peaceful one, and undisturbed by either the humorous or thesatirical side of Nature.
You know that this attempt to tell the truth about one of the mostfascinating occupations in the world has not been without itsdangers. I have received anonymous letters. Some of them weremurderously spelled; others were missives in such elegant phrase anddress, that danger was only to be apprehended in them by one skilledin the mysteries of medieval poisoning, when death flew on the wingsof a perfume. One lady, whose entreaty that I should pause hadsomething of command in it, wrote that my strictures on "pusley" hadso inflamed her husband's zeal, that, in her absence in the country,he had rooted up all her beds of portulaca (a sort of cousin of thefat weed), and utterly cast it out. It is, however, to be expected,that retributive justice would visit the innocent as well as theguilty of an offending family. This is only another proof of thewide sweep of moral forces. I suppose that it is as necessary in thevegetable world as it is elsewhere to avoid the appearance of evil.
In offering you the fruit of my garden, which has been gathered fromweek to week, without much reference to the progress of the crops orthe drought, I desire to acknowledge an influence which has lent halfthe charm to my labor. If I were in a court of justice, orinjustice, under oath, I should not like to say, that, either in thewooing days of spring, or under the suns of the summer solstice, youhad been, either with hoe, rake, or miniature spade, of the least usein the garden; but your suggestions have been invaluable, and,whenever used, have been paid for. Your horticultural inquiries havebeen of a nature to astonish the vegetable world, if it listened, andwere a constant inspiration to research. There was almost nothingthat you did not wish to know; and this, added to what I wished toknow, made a boundless field for discovery. What might have becomeof the garden, if your advice had been followed, a good Providenceonly knows; but I never worked there without a consciousness that youmight at any moment come down the walk, under the grape-arbor,bestowing glances of approval, that were none the worse for not beingcritical; exercising a sort of superintendence that elevatedgardening into a fine art; expressing a wonder that was ascomplimentary to me as it was to Nature; bringing an atmosphere whichmade the garden a region of romance, the soil of which was set apartfor fruits native to climes unseen. It was this bright presence thatfilled the garden, as it did the summer, with light, and now leavesupon it that tender play of color and bloom which is called among theAlps the after-glow.
NOOK FARM, HARTFORD, October, 1870
C. D. W.
The love of dirt is among the earliest of passions, as it is thelatest. Mud-pies gratify one of our first and best instincts. Solong as we are dirty, we are pure. Fondness for the ground comesback to a man after he has run the round of pleasure and business,eaten dirt, and sown wild-oats, drifted about the world, and takenthe wind of all its moods. The love of digging in the ground (or oflooking on while he pays another to dig) is as sure to come back tohim as he is sure, at last, to go under the ground, and stay there.To own a bit of ground, to scratch it with a hoe, to plant seeds andwatch, their renewal of life, this is the commonest delight of therace, the most satisfactory thing a man can do. When Cicero writesof the pleasures of old age, that of agriculture is chief among them:
"Venio nunc ad voluptates agricolarum, quibus ego incredibiliterdelector: quae nec ulla impediuntur senectute, et mihi ad sapientisvitam proxime videntur accedere." (I am driven to Latin because NewYork editors have exhausted the English language in the praising ofspring, and especially of the month of May.)
Let us celebrate the soil. Most men toil that they may own a pieceof it; they measure their success in life by their ability to buy it.It is alike the passion of the parvenu and the pride of thearistocrat. Broad acres are a patent of nobility; and no man butfeels more, of a man in the world if he have a bit of ground that hecan call his own. However small it is on the surface, it is fourthousand miles deep; and that is a very handsome property. And thereis a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownershipof it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has donesomething for the good of the World. He belongs to the producers.It is a pleasure to eat of the fruit of one's toil, if it be nothingmore than a head of lettuce or an ear of corn. One cultivates a lawneven with great satisfaction; for there is nothing more beautifulthan grass and turf in our latitude. The tropics may have theirdelights, but they have not turf: and the world without turf is adreary desert. The original Garden of Eden could not have had suchturf as one sees in England. The Teutonic races all love turf: theyemigrate in the line of its growth.
To dig in the mellow soil-to dig moderately, for all pleasure shouldbe taken sparingly—is a great thing. One gets strength out of theground as often as one really touches it with a hoe. Antaeus (thisis a classical article) was no doubt an agriculturist; and such aprize-fighter as Hercules could n't do anything with him till he gothim to lay down his spade, and quit the soil. It is not simply beetsand potatoes and corn and string-beans that one raises in hiswell-hoed garden: it is the average of human life. There is life inthe ground; it goes into the seeds; and it also, when it is stirred up,goes into the man who stirs it. The hot sun on his back as he bends tohis shovel and hoe, or contemplatively rakes the warm and fragrantloam, is better than much medicine. The buds are coming out on thebushes round about; the blossoms of the fruit trees begin to show; theblood is running up the grapevines in streams; you can smell the Wildflowers on the near bank; and the birds are flying and glancing andsinging everywhere. To the open kitchen door comes the busy housewifeto shake a white something, and stands a moment to look, quitetransfixed by the delightful sights and sounds. Hoeing in the gardenon a bright, soft May day, when you are not obliged to, is nearly equalto the delight of going trouting.
Blessed be agriculture! if one does not have too much of it. Allliterature is fragrant with it, in a gentlemanly way. At the foot ofthe charming olive-covered hills of Tivoli, Horace (not he ofChappaqua) had a sunny farm: it was in sight of Hadrian's villa, whodid landscape gardening on an extensive scale, and probably did notget half as much comfort out of it as Horace did from his more simplytilled acres. We trust that Horace did a little hoeing and farminghimself, and that his verse is not all fraudulent sentiment. Inorder to enjoy agriculture, you do not want too much of it, and youwant to be poor enough to have a little inducement to work moderatelyyourself. Hoe while it is spring, and enjoy the best anticipations.It is not much matter if things do not turn out well.
FIRST WEEK
Under this modest title, I purpose to write a series of papers, someof which will be like many papers of garden-seeds, with nothing vitalin them, on the subject of gardening; holding that no man has anyright to keep valuable knowledge to himself, and hoping that thosewho come after me, except tax-gatherers and that sort of person, willfind profit in the perusal of my experience. As my knowledge isconstantly increasing, there is likely to be no end to these papers.They will pursue no orderly system of agriculture or horticulture,but range from topic to topic, according to the weather and theprogress of the weeds, which may drive me from one corner of thegarden to the other.
The principal value of a private garden is not understood. It is notto give the possessor vegetables or fruit (that can be better andcheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patienceand philosophy and the higher virtues, hope deferred andexpectations blighted, leading directly to resignation and sometimesto alienation. The garden thus becomes a moral agent, a test ofcharacter, as it was in the beginning. I shall keep this centraltruth in mind in these articles. I mean to have a moral garden, ifit is not a productive one,—one that shall teach, O my brothers!O my sisters! the great lessons of life.
The first pleasant thing about a garden in this latitude is, that younever know when to set it going. If you want anything to come tomaturity early, you must start it in a hot-house. If you put it outearly, the chances are all in favor of getting it nipped with frost;for the thermometer will be 90 deg. one day, and go below 32 deg. thenight of the day following. And, if you do not set out plants or sowseeds early, you fret continually; knowing that your vegetables willbe late, and that, while Jones has early peas, you will be watchingyour slow-forming pods. This keeps you in a state of mind. When youhave planted anything early, you are doubtful whether to desire tosee it above ground, or not. If a hot day comes, you long to see theyoung plants; but, when a cold north wind brings frost, you tremblelest the seeds have burst their bands. Your spring is passed inanxious doubts and fears, which are usually realized; and so a greatmoral discipline is worked out for you.
Now, there is my corn, two or three inches high this 18th of May, andapparently having no fear of a frost. I was hoeing it this morningfor the first time,—it is not well usually to hoe corn until aboutthe 18th of May,—when Polly came out to look at the Lima beans. Sheseemed to think the poles had come up beautifully. I thought theydid look well: they are a fine set of poles, large and well grown,and stand straight. They were inexpensive, too. The cheapness cameabout from my cutting them on another man's land, and he did not knowit. I have not examined this transaction in the moral light ofgardening; but I know people in this country take great liberties atthe polls. Polly noticed that the beans had not themselves come upin any proper sense, but that the dirt had got off from them, leavingthem uncovered. She thought it would be well to sprinkle a slightlayer of dirt over them; and I, indulgently, consented. It occurredto me, when she had gone, that beans always come up that way,—wrongend first; and that what they wanted was light, and not dirt.
Observation.—Woman always did, from the first, make a muss in agarden.
I inherited with my garden a large patch of raspberries. Splendidberry the raspberry, when the strawberry has gone. This patch hasgrown into such a defiant attitude, that you could not get withinseveral feet of it. Its stalks were enormous in size, and cast outlong, prickly arms in all directions; but the bushes were pretty muchall dead. I have walked into them a good deal with a pruning-knife;but it is very much like fighting original sin. The variety is onethat I can recommend. I think it is called Brinckley's Orange. Itis exceedingly prolific, and has enormous stalks. The fruit is alsosaid to be good; but that does not matter so much, as the plant doesnot often bear in this region. The stalks seem to be biennialinstitutions; and as they get about their growth one year, and bearthe next year, and then die, and the winters here nearly always killthem, unless you take them into the house (which is inconvenient ifyou have a family of small children), it is very difficult to inducethe plant to flower and fruit. This is the greatest objection thereis to this sort of raspberry. I think of keeping these fordiscipline, and setting out some others, more hardy sorts, for fruit.
SECOND WEEK
Next to deciding when to start your garden, the most important matteris, what to put in it. It is difficult to decide what to order fordinner on a given day: how much more oppressive is it to order in alump an endless vista of dinners, so to speak! For, unless yourgarden is a boundless prairie (and mine seems to me to be that when Ihoe it on hot days), you must make a selection, from the greatvariety of vegetables, of those you will raise in it; and you feelrather bound to supply your own table from your own garden, and toeat only as you have sown.
I hold that no man has a right (whatever his sex, of course) to havea garden to his own selfish uses. He ought not to please himself,but every man to please his neighbor. I tried to have a garden thatwould give general moral satisfaction. It seemed to me that nobodycould object to potatoes (a most useful vegetable); and I began toplant them freely. But there was a chorus of protest against them."You don't want to take up your ground with potatoes," the neighborssaid; "you can buy potatoes" (the very thing I wanted to avoid doingis buying things). "What you want is the perishable things that youcannot get fresh in the market."—"But what kind of perishablethings?" A horticulturist of eminence wanted me to sow lines ofstraw-berries and raspberries right over where I had put my potatoesin drills. I had about five hundred strawberry-plants in anotherpart of my garden; but this fruit-fanatic wanted me to turn my wholepatch into vines and runners. I suppose I could raise strawberriesenough for all my neighbors; and perhaps I ought to do it. I had alittle space prepared for melons,—muskmelons,—which I showed to anexperienced friend.
"You are not going to waste your ground on muskmelons?" he asked."They rarely ripen in this climate thoroughly, before frost." He hadtried for years without luck. I resolved to not go into such afoolish experiment. But, the next day, another neighbor happened in."Ah! I see you are going to have melons. My family would rather giveup anything else in the garden than musk-melons,—of the nutmegvariety. They are the most grateful things we have on the table."So there it was. There was no compromise: it was melons, or nomelons, and somebody offended in any case. I half resolved to plantthem a little late, so that they would, and they would n't. But Ihad the same difficulty about string-beans (which I detest), andsquash (which I tolerate), and parsnips, and the whole round of greenthings.
I have pretty much come to the conclusion that you have got to putyour foot down in gardening. If I had actually taken counsel of myfriends, I should not have had a thing growing in the garden to-daybut weeds. And besides, while you are waiting, Nature does not wait.Her mind is made up. She knows just what she will raise; and she hasan infinite variety of early and late. The most humiliating thing tome about a garden is the lesson it teaches of the inferiority of man.Nature is prompt, decided, inexhaustible. She thrusts up her plantswith a vigor and freedom that I admire; and the more worthless theplant, the more rapid and splendid its growth. She is at it earlyand late, and all night; never tiring, nor showing the least sign ofexhaustion.
"Eternal gardening is the price of liberty," is a motto that I shouldput over the gateway of my garden, if I had a gate. And yet it isnot wholly true; for there is no liberty in gardening. The man whoundertakes a garden is relentlessly pursued. He felicitates himselfthat, when he gets it once planted, he will have a season of rest andof enjoyment in the sprouting and growing of his seeds. It is agreen anticipation. He has planted a seed that will keep him awakenights; drive rest from his bones, and sleep from his pillow. Hardlyis the garden planted, when he must begin to hoe it. The weeds havesprung up all over it in a night. They shine and wave in redundantlife. The docks have almost gone to seed; and their roots go deeperthan conscience. Talk about the London Docks!—the roots of theseare like the sources of the Aryan race. And the weeds are not all.I awake in the morning (and a thriving garden will wake a person uptwo hours before he ought to be out of bed) and think of thetomato-plants,—the leaves like fine lace-work, owing to black bugsthat skip around, and can't be caught. Somebody ought to get upbefore the dew is off (why don't the dew stay on till after areasonable breakfast?) and sprinkle soot on the leaves. I wonder ifit is I. Soot is so much blacker than the bugs, that they aredisgusted, and go away. You can't get up too early, if you have agarden. You must be early due yourself, if you get ahead of thebugs. I think, that, on the whole, it would be best to sit up allnight, and sleep daytimes. Things appear to go on in the night inthe garden uncommonly. It would be less trouble to stay up than itis to get up so early.
I have been setting out some new raspberries, two sorts,—a silverand a gold color. How fine they will look on the table next year ina cut-glass dish, the cream being in a ditto pitcher! I set themfour and five feet apart. I set my strawberries pretty well apartalso. The reason is, to give room for the cows to run through whenthey break into the garden,—as they do sometimes. A cow needs abroader track than a locomotive; and she generally makes one. I amsometimes astonished, to see how big a space in, a flower-bed herfoot will cover. The raspberries are called Doolittle and GoldenCap. I don't like the name of the first variety, and, if they domuch, shall change it to Silver Top. You never can tell what a thingnamed Doolittle will do. The one in the Senate changed color, andgot sour. They ripen badly,—either mildew, or rot on the bush.They are apt to Johnsonize,—rot on the stem. I shall watch theDoolittles.
THIRD WEEK
I believe that I have found, if not original sin, at least vegetabletotal depravity in my garden; and it was there before I went into it.It is the bunch, or joint, or snakegrass,—whatever it is called. AsI do not know the names of all the weeds and plants, I have to do asAdam did in his garden,—name things as I find them. This grass hasa slender, beautiful stalk: and when you cut it down, or pull up along root of it, you fancy it is got rid of; but in a day or two itwill come up in the same spot in half a dozen vigorous blades.Cutting down and pulling up is what it thrives on. Exterminationrather helps it. If you follow a slender white root, it will befound to run under the ground until it meets another slender whiteroot; and you will soon unearth a network of them, with a knotsomewhere, sending out dozens of sharp-pointed, healthy shoots, everyjoint prepared to be an independent life and plant. The only way todeal with it is to take one part hoe and two parts fingers, andcarefully dig it out, not leaving a joint anywhere. It will take alittle time, say all summer, to dig out thoroughly a small patch; butif you once dig it out, and keep it out, you will have no furthertrouble.
I have said it was total depravity. Here it is. If you attempt topull up and root out any sin in you, which shows on the surface,—ifit does not show, you do not care for it,—you may have noticed howit runs into an interior network of sins, and an ever-sproutingbranch of them roots somewhere; and that you cannot pull out onewithout making a general internal disturbance, and rooting up yourwhole being. I suppose it is less trouble to quietly cut them off atthe top—say once a week, on Sunday, when you put on your religiousclothes and face so that no one will see them, and not try toeradicate the network within.
Remark.—This moral vegetable figure is at the service of anyclergyman who will have the manliness to come forward and help me ata day's hoeing on my potatoes. None but the orthodox need apply.
I, however, believe in the intellectual, if not the moral, qualitiesof vegetables, and especially weeds. There was a worthless vine that(or who) started up about midway between a grape-trellis and a row ofbean-poles, some three feet from each, but a little nearer thetrellis. When it came out of the ground, it looked around to seewhat it should do. The trellis was already occupied. The bean-polewas empty. There was evidently a little the best chance of light,air, and sole proprietorship on the pole. And the vine started forthe pole, and began to climb it with determination. Here was asdistinct an act of choice, of reason, as a boy exercises when he goesinto a forest, and, looking about, decides which tree he will climb.And, besides, how did the vine know enough to travel in exactly theright direction, three feet, to find what it wanted? This isintellect. The weeds, on the other hand, have hateful moralqualities. To cut down a weed is, therefore, to do a moral action.I feel as if I were destroying sin. My hoe becomes an instrument ofretributive justice. I am an apostle of Nature. This view of thematter lends a dignity to the art of hoeing which nothing else does,and lifts it into the region of ethics. Hoeing becomes, not apastime, but a duty. And you get to regard it so, as the days andthe weeds lengthen.
Observation.—Nevertheless, what a man needs in gardening is acast-iron back,—with a hinge in it. The hoe is an ingeniousinstrument, calculated to call out a great deal of strength at agreat disadvantage.
The striped bug has come, the saddest of the year. He is a moraldouble-ender, iron-clad at that. He is unpleasant in two ways. Heburrows in the ground so that you cannot find him, and he flies awayso that you cannot catch him. He is rather handsome, as bugs go, bututterly dastardly, in that he gnaws the stem of the plant close tothe ground, and ruins it without any apparent advantage to himself.I find him on the hills of cucumbers (perhaps it will be acholera-year, and we shall not want any), the squashes (small loss),and the melons (which never ripen). The best way to deal with thestriped bug is to sit down by the hills, and patiently watch for him.If you are spry, you can annoy him. This, however, takes time. Ittakes all day and part of the night. For he flieth in darkness, andwasteth at noonday. If you get up before the dew is off the plants,—it goes off very early,—you can sprinkle soot on the plant (soot ismy panacea: if I can get the disease of a plant reduced to thenecessity of soot, I am all right) and soot is unpleasant to the bug.But the best thing to do is to set a toad to catch the bugs. Thetoad at once establishes the most intimate relations with the bug.It is a pleasure to see such unity among the lower animals. Thedifficulty is to make the toad stay and watch the hill. If you knowyour toad, it is all right. If you do not, you must build a tightfence round the plants, which the toad cannot jump over. This,however, introduces a new element. I find that I have a zoologicalgarden on my hands. It is an unexpected result of my littleenterprise, which never aspired to the completeness of the Paris"Jardin des Plantes."
FOURTH WEEK
Orthodoxy is at a low ebb. Only two clergymen accepted my offer tocome and help hoe my potatoes for the privilege of using my vegetabletotal-depravity figure about the snake-grass, or quack-grass as somecall it; and those two did not bring hoes. There seems to be a lackof disposition to hoe among our educated clergy. I am bound to saythat these two, however, sat and watched my vigorous combats with theweeds, and talked most beautifully about the application of thesnake-grass figure. As, for instance, when a fault or sin showed onthe surface of a man, whether, if you dug down, you would find thatit ran back and into the original organic bunch of original sinwithin the man. The only other clergyman who came was from out oftown,—a half Universalist, who said he wouldn't give twenty centsfor my figure. He said that the snake-grass was not in my gardenoriginally, that it sneaked in under the sod, and that it could beentirely rooted out with industry and patience. I asked theUniversalist-inclined man to take my hoe and try it; but he said hehad n't time, and went away.
But, jubilate, I have got my garden all hoed the first time! I feelas if I had put down the rebellion. Only there are guerrillas lefthere and there, about the borders and in corners, unsubdued,—Forrestdocks, and Quantrell grass, and Beauregard pig-weeds. This firsthoeing is a gigantic task: it is your first trial of strength withthe never-sleeping forces of Nature. Several times, in its progress,I was tempted to do as Adam did, who abandoned his garden on accountof the weeds. (How much my mind seems to run upon Adam, as if therehad been only two really moral gardens,—Adam's and mine!) The onlydrawback to my rejoicing over the finishing of the first hoeing is,that the garden now wants hoeing the second time. I suppose, if mygarden were planted in a perfect circle, and I started round it witha hoe, I should never see an opportunity to rest. The fact is, thatgardening is the old fable of perpetual labor; and I, for one, cannever forgive Adam Sisyphus, or whoever it was, who let in the rootsof discord. I had pictured myself sitting at eve, with my family, inthe shade of twilight, contemplating a garden hoed. Alas! it is adream not to be realized in this world.
My mind has been turned to the subject of fruit and shade trees in agarden. There are those who say that trees shade the garden toomuch, and interfere with the growth of the vegetables. There may besomething in this: but when I go down the potato rows, the rays ofthe sun glancing upon my shining blade, the sweat pouring from myface, I should be grateful for shade. What is a garden for? Thepleasure of man. I should take much more pleasure in a shady garden.Am I to be sacrificed, broiled, roasted, for the sake of theincreased vigor of a few vegetables? The thing is perfectly absurd.If I were rich, I think I would have my garden covered with anawning, so that it would be comfortable to work in it. It might rollup and be removable, as the great awning of the Roman Coliseum was,—not like the Boston one, which went off in a high wind. Another verygood way to do, and probably not so expensive as the awning, would beto have four persons of foreign birth carry a sort of canopy over youas you hoed. And there might be a person at each end of the row withsome cool and refreshing drink. Agriculture is still in a verybarbarous stage. I hope to live yet to see the day when I can do mygardening, as tragedy is done, to slow and soothing music, andattended by some of the comforts I have named. These things come soforcibly into my mind sometimes as I work, that perhaps, when awandering breeze lifts my straw hat, or a bird lights on a nearcurrant-bush, and shakes out a full-throated summer song, I almostexpect to find the cooling drink and the hospitable entertainment atthe end of the row. But I never do. There is nothing to be done butto turn round, and hoe back to the other end.
Speaking of those yellow squash-bugs, I think I disheartened them bycovering the plants so deep with soot and wood-ashes that they couldnot find them; and I am in doubt if I shall ever see the plantsagain. But I have heard of another defense against the bugs. Put afine wire-screen over each hill, which will keep out the bugs andadmit the rain. I should say that these screens would not cost muchmore than the melons you would be likely to get from the vines if youbought them; but then think of the moral satisfaction of watching thebugs hovering over the screen, seeing, but unable to reach the tenderplants within. That is worth paying for.
I left my own garden yesterday, and went over to where Polly wasgetting the weeds out of one of her flower-beds. She was workingaway at the bed with a little hoe. Whether women ought to have theballot or not (and I have a decided opinion on that point, which Ishould here plainly give, did I not fear that it would injure myagricultural influence), 'I am compelled to say that this was ratherhelpless hoeing. It was patient, conscientious, even pathetichoeing; but it was neither effective nor finished. When completed,the bed looked somewhat as if a hen had scratched it: there was thattouching unevenness about it. I think no one could look at it andnot be affected. To be sure, Polly smoothed it off with a rake, andasked me if it was n't nice; and I said it was. It was not afavorable time for me to explain the difference between putteringhoeing, and the broad, free sweep of the instrument, which kills theweeds, spares the plants, and loosens the soil without leaving it inholes and hills. But, after all, as life is constituted, I thinkmore of Polly's honest and anxious care of her plants than of themost finished gardening in the world.
FIFTH WEEK
I left my garden for a week, just at the close of the dry spell. Aseason of rain immediately set in, and when I returned thetransformation was wonderful. In one week every vegetable had fairlyjumped forward. The tomatoes which I left slender plants, eaten ofbugs and debating whether they would go backward or forward, hadbecome stout and lusty, with thick stems and dark leaves, and some ofthem had blossomed. The corn waved like that which grows so rank outof the French-English mixture at Waterloo. The squashes—I will notspeak of the squashes. The most remarkable growth was the asparagus.There was not a spear above ground when I went away; and now it hadsprung up, and gone to seed, and there were stalks higher than myhead. I am entirely aware of the value of words, and of moralobligations. When I say that the asparagus had grown six feet inseven days, I expect and wish to be believed. I am a littleparticular about the statement; for, if there is any prize offeredfor asparagus at the next agricultural fair, I wish to compete,—speed to govern. What I claim is the fastest asparagus. As foreating purposes, I have seen better. A neighbor of mine, who lookedin at the growth of the bed, said, "Well, he'd be ——-": but I toldhim there was no use of affirming now; he might keep his oath till Iwanted it on the asparagus affidavit. In order to have this sort ofasparagus, you want to manure heavily in the early spring, fork itin, and top-dress (that sounds technical) with a thick layer ofchloride of sodium: if you cannot get that, common salt will do, andthe neighbors will never notice whether it is the orthodox Na. Cl.58-5, or not.
I scarcely dare trust myself to speak of the weeds. They grow as ifthe devil was in them. I know a lady, a member of the church, and avery good sort of woman, considering the subject condition of thatclass, who says that the weeds work on her to that extent, that, ingoing through her garden, she has the greatest difficulty in keepingthe ten commandments in anything like an unfractured condition. Iasked her which one, but she said, all of them: one felt likebreaking the whole lot. The sort of weed which I most hate (if I canbe said to hate anything which grows in my own garden) is the"pusley," a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and themost propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in thedictionary) plant I know. I saw a Chinaman, who came over with areturned missionary, and pretended to be converted, boil a lot of itin a pot, stir in eggs, and mix and eat it with relish,—"Me likeehe." It will be a good thing to keep the Chinamen on when they cometo do our gardening. I only fear they will cultivate it at theexpense of the strawberries and melons. Who can say that otherweeds, which we despise, may not be the favorite food of some remotepeople or tribe? We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible thatwe destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in someother place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices arevirtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that thisthought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than weedsare.
There is another subject which is forced upon my notice. I likeneighbors, and I like chickens; but I do not think they ought to beunited near a garden. Neighbors' hens in your garden are anannoyance. Even if they did not scratch up the corn, and peck thestrawberries, and eat the tomatoes, it is not pleasant to see themstraddling about in their jerky, high-stepping, speculative manner,picking inquisitively here and there. It is of no use to tell theneighbor that his hens eat your tomatoes: it makes no impression onhim, for the tomatoes are not his. The best way is to casuallyremark to him that he has a fine lot of chickens, pretty well grown,and that you like spring chickens broiled. He will take them away atonce.
The neighbors' small children are also out of place in your garden,in strawberry and currant time. I hope I appreciate the value ofchildren. We should soon come to nothing without them, though theShakers have the best gardens in the world. Without them the commonschool would languish. But the problem is, what to do with them in agarden. For they are not good to eat, and there is a law againstmaking away with them. The law is not very well enforced, it istrue; for people do thin them out with constant dosing, paregoric,and soothing-syrups, and scanty clothing. But I, for one, feel thatit would not be right, aside from the law, to take the life, even ofthe smallest child, for the sake of a little fruit, more or less, inthe garden. I may be wrong; but these are my sentiments, and I amnot ashamed of them. When we come, as Bryant says in his "Iliad," toleave the circus of this life, and join that innumerable caravanwhich moves, it will be some satisfaction to us, that we have never,in the way of gardening, disposed of even the humblest childunnecessarily. My plan would be to put them into Sunday-schools morethoroughly, and to give the Sunday-schools an agricultural turn;teaching the children the sacredness of neighbors' vegetables. Ithink that our Sunday-schools do not sufficiently impress uponchildren the danger, from snakes and otherwise, of going into theneighbors' gardens.
SIXTH WEEK
Somebody has sent me a new sort of hoe, with the wish that I shouldspeak favorably of it, if I can consistently. I willingly do so, butwith the understanding that I am to be at liberty to speak just ascourteously of any other hoe which I may receive. If I understandreligious morals, this is the position of the religious press withregard to bitters and wringing-machines. In some cases, theresponsibility of such a recommendation is shifted upon the wife ofthe editor or clergy-man. Polly says she is entirely willing to makea certificate, accompanied with an affidavit, with regard to thishoe; but her habit of sitting about the garden walk, on an invertedflower-pot, while I hoe, some what destroys the practical value ofher testimony.
As to this hoe, I do not mind saying that it has changed my view ofthe desirableness and value of human life. It has, in fact, madelife a holiday to me. It is made on the principle that man is anupright, sensible, reasonable being, and not a groveling wretch. Itdoes away with the necessity of the hinge in the back. The handle isseven and a half feet long. There are two narrow blades, sharp onboth edges, which come together at an obtuse angle in front; and asyou walk along with this hoe before you, pushing and pulling with agentle motion, the weeds fall at every thrust and withdrawal, and theslaughter is immediate and widespread. When I got this hoe I wastroubled with sleepless mornings, pains in the back, kleptomania withregard to new weeders; when I went into my garden I was always sureto see something. In this disordered state of mind and body I gotthis hoe. The morning after a day of using it I slept perfectly andlate. I regained my respect for the eighth commandment. After twodoses of the hoe in the garden, the weeds entirely disappeared.Trying it a third morning, I was obliged to throw it over the fencein order to save from destruction the green things that ought to growin the garden. Of course, this is figurative language. What I meanis, that the fascination of using this hoe is such that you aresorely tempted to employ it upon your vegetables, after the weeds arelaid low, and must hastily withdraw it, to avoid unpleasant results.I make this explanation, because I intend to put nothing into theseagricultural papers that will not bear the strictest scientificinvestigation; nothing that the youngest child cannot understand andcry for; nothing that the oldest and wisest men will not need tostudy with care.
I need not add that the care of a garden with this hoe becomes themerest pastime. I would not be without one for a single night. Theonly danger is, that you may rather make an idol of the hoe, andsomewhat neglect your garden in explaining it, and fooling about withit. I almost think that, with one of these in the hands of anordinary day-laborer, you might see at night where he had beenworking.
Let us have peas. I have been a zealous advocate of the birds. Ihave rejoiced in their multiplication. I have endured their concertsat four o'clock in the morning without a murmur. Let them come, Isaid, and eat the worms, in order that we, later, may enjoy thefoliage and the fruits of the earth. We have a cat, a magnificentanimal, of the sex which votes (but not a pole-cat),—so large andpowerful that, if he were in the army, he would be called Long Tom.He is a cat of fine disposition, the most irreproachable morals Iever saw thrown away in a cat, and a splendid hunter. He spends hisnights, not in social dissipation, but in gathering in rats, mice,flying-squirrels, and also birds. When he first brought me a bird, Itold him that it was wrong, and tried to convince him, while he waseating it, that he was doing wrong; for he is a reasonable cat, andunderstands pretty much everything except the binomial theorem andthe time down the cycloidal arc. But with no effect. The killing ofbirds went on, to my great regret and shame.
The other day I went to my garden to get a mess of peas. I had seen,the day before, that they were just ready to pick. How I had linedthe ground, planted, hoed, bushed them! The bushes were very fine,—seven feet high, and of good wood. How I had delighted in thegrowing, the blowing, the podding! What a touching thought it wasthat they had all podded for me! When I went to pick them, I foundthe pods all split open, and the peas gone. The dear little birds,who are so fond of the strawberries, had eaten them all. Perhapsthere were left as many as I planted: I did not count them. I made arapid estimate of the cost of the seed, the interest of the ground,the price of labor, the value of the bushes, the anxiety of weeks ofwatchfulness. I looked about me on the face of Nature. The windblew from the south so soft and treacherous! A thrush sang in thewoods so deceitfully! All Nature seemed fair. But who was to giveme back my peas? The fowls of the air have peas; but what has man?
I went into the house. I called Calvin. (That is the name of ourcat, given him on account of his gravity, morality, and uprightness.We never familiarly call him John). I petted Calvin. I lavishedupon him an enthusiastic fondness. I told him that he had no fault;that the one action that I had called a vice was an heroic exhibitionof regard for my interests. I bade him go and do likewisecontinually. I now saw how much better instinct is than mereunguided reason. Calvin knew. If he had put his opinion intoEnglish (instead of his native catalogue), it would have been: "Youneed not teach your grandmother to suck eggs." It was only the roundof Nature. The worms eat a noxious something in the ground. Thebirds eat the worms. Calvin eats the birds. We eat—no, we do noteat Calvin. There the chain stops. When you ascend the scale ofbeing, and come to an animal that is, like ourselves, inedible, youhave arrived at a result where you can rest. Let us respect the cat.He completes an edible chain.
I have little heart to discuss methods of raising peas. It occurs tome that I can have an iron peabush, a sort of trellis, through whichI could discharge electricity at frequent intervals, and electrifythe birds to death when they alight: for they stand upon my beautifulbrush in order to pick out the peas. An apparatus of this kind, withan operator, would cost, however, about as much as the peas. Aneighbor suggests that I might put up a scarecrow near the vines,which would keep the birds away. I am doubtful about it: the birdsare too much accustomed to seeing a person in poor clothes in thegarden to care much for that. Another neighbor suggests that thebirds do not open the pods; that a sort of blast, apt to come afterrain, splits the pods, and the birds then eat the peas. It may beso. There seems to be complete unity of action between the blast andthe birds. But, good neighbors, kind friends, I desire that you willnot increase, by talk, a disappointment which you cannot assuage.
SEVENTH WEEK
A garden is an awful responsibility. You never know what you may beaiding to grow in it. I heard a sermon, not long ago, in which thepreacher said that the Christian, at the moment of his becoming one,was as perfect a Christian as he would be if he grew to be anarchangel; that is, that he would not change thereafter at all, butonly develop. I do not know whether this is good theology, or not; andI hesitate to support it by an illustration from my garden, especiallyas I do not want to run the risk of propagating error, and I do notcare to give away these theological comparisons to clergymen who makeme so little return in the way of labor. But I find, in dissecting apea-blossom, that hidden in the center of it is a perfect miniaturepea-pod, with the peas all in it,—as perfect a pea-pod as it will everbe, only it is as tiny as a chatelaine ornament. Maize and some otherthings show the same precocity. This confirmation of the theologictheory is startling, and sets me meditating upon the moralpossibilities of my garden. I may find in it yet the cosmic egg.
And, speaking of moral things, I am half determined to petition theEcumenical Council to issue a bull of excommunication against"pusley." Of all the forms which "error" has taken in this world,I think that is about the worst. In the Middle Ages the monks in St.Bernard's ascetic community at Clairvaux excommunicated a vineyardwhich a less rigid monk had planted near, so that it bore nothing.In 1120 a bishop of Laon excommunicated the caterpillars in hisdiocese; and, the following year, St. Bernard excommunicated theflies in the Monastery of Foigny; and in 1510 the ecclesiasticalcourt pronounced the dread sentence against the rats of Autun, Macon,and Lyons. These examples are sufficient precedents. It will bewell for the council, however, not to publish the bull either justbefore or just after a rain; for nothing can kill this pestilentheresy when the ground is wet.
It is the time of festivals. Polly says we ought to have one,—astrawberry-festival. She says they are perfectly delightful: it isso nice to get people together!—this hot weather. They create sucha good feeling! I myself am very fond of festivals. I always go,—when I can consistently. Besides the strawberries, there are icecreams and cake and lemonade, and that sort of thing: and one alwaysfeels so well the next day after such a diet! But as socialreunions, if there are good things to eat, nothing can be pleasanter;and they are very profitable, if you have a good object. I agreedthat we ought to have a festival; but I did not know what object todevote it to. We are not in need of an organ, nor of anypulpit-cushions. I do not know that they use pulpit-cushions now asmuch as they used to, when preachers had to have something soft topound, so that they would not hurt their fists. I suggested pockethandkerchiefs, and flannels for next winter. But Polly says that willnot do at all. You must have some charitable object,—something thatappeals to a vast sense of something; something that it will be rightto get up lotteries and that sort of thing for. I suggest a festivalfor the benefit of my garden; and this seems feasible. In order tomake everything pass off pleasantly, invited guests will bring or sendtheir own strawberries and cream, which I shall be happy to sell tothem at a slight advance. There are a great many improvements whichthe garden needs; among them a sounding-board, so that the neighbors'children can hear when I tell them to get a little farther off from thecurrant-bushes. I should also like a selection from the tencommandments, in big letters, posted up conspicuously, and a few traps,that will detain, but not maim, for the benefit of those who cannotread. But what is most important is, that the ladies should crochetnets to cover over the strawberries. A good-sized, well-managedfestival ought to produce nets enough to cover my entire beds; and Ican think of no other method of preserving the berries from the birdsnext year. I wonder how many strawberries it would need for a festivaland whether they would cost more than the nets.
I am more and more impressed, as the summer goes on, with theinequality of man's fight with Nature; especially in a civilizedstate. In savagery, it does not much matter; for one does not take asquare hold, and put out his strength, but rather accommodateshimself to the situation, and takes what he can get, without raisingany dust, or putting himself into everlasting opposition. But theminute he begins to clear a spot larger than he needs to sleep in fora night, and to try to have his own way in the least, Nature is atonce up, and vigilant, and contests him at every step with all heringenuity and unwearied vigor. This talk of subduing Nature ispretty much nonsense. I do not intend to surrender in the midst ofthe summer campaign, yet I cannot but think how much more peaceful myrelations would now be with the primal forces, if I had, let Naturemake the garden according to her own notion. (This is written withthe thermometer at ninety degrees, and the weeds starting up with afreshness and vigor, as if they had just thought of it for the firsttime, and had not been cut down and dragged out every other day sincethe snow went off.)
We have got down the forests, and exterminated savage beasts; butNature is no more subdued than before: she only changes her tactics,—uses smaller guns, so to speak. She reenforces herself with avariety of bugs, worms, and vermin, and weeds, unknown to the savagestate, in order to make war upon the things of our planting; andcalls in the fowls of the air, just as we think the battle is won, tosnatch away the booty. When one gets almost weary of the struggle,she is as fresh as at the beginning,—just, in fact, ready for thefray. I, for my part, begin to appreciate the value of frost andsnow; for they give the husbandman a little peace, and enable him,for a season, to contemplate his incessant foe subdued. I do notwonder that the tropical people, where Nature never goes to sleep,give it up, and sit in lazy acquiescence.
Here I have been working all the season to make a piece of lawn. Ithad to be graded and sowed and rolled; and I have been shaving itlike a barber. When it was soft, everything had a tendency to go onto it,—cows, and especially wandering hackmen. Hackmen (who are aproduct of civilization) know a lawn when they see it. They ratherhave a fancy for it, and always try to drive so as to cut the sharpborders of it, and leave the marks of their wheels in deep ruts ofcut-up, ruined turf. The other morning, I had just been running themower over the lawn, and stood regarding its smoothness, when Inoticed one, two, three puffs of fresh earth in it; and, hasteningthither, I found that the mole had arrived to complete the work ofthe hackmen. In a half-hour he had rooted up the ground like a pig.I found his run-ways. I waited for him with a spade. He did notappear; but, the next time I passed by, he had ridged the ground inall directions,—a smooth, beautiful animal, with fur like silk, ifyou could only catch him. He appears to enjoy the lawn as much asthe hackmen did. He does not care how smooth it is. He isconstantly mining, and ridging it up. I am not sure but he could becountermined. I have half a mind to put powder in here and there,and blow the whole thing into the air. Some folks set traps for themole; but my moles never seem to go twice in the same place. I amnot sure but it would bother them to sow the lawn with interlacingsnake-grass (the botanical name of which, somebody writes me, isdevil-grass: the first time I have heard that the Devil has abotanical name), which would worry them, if it is as difficult forthem to get through it as it is for me.
I do not speak of this mole in any tone of complaint. He is only apart of the untiring resources which Nature brings against the humblegardener. I desire to write nothing against him which I should wishto recall at the last,—nothing foreign to the spirit of thatbeautiful saying of the dying boy, "He had no copy-book, which,dying, he was sorry he had blotted."
My garden has been visited by a High Official Person. PresidentGr-nt was here just before the Fourth, getting his mind quiet forthat event by a few days of retirement, staying with a friend at thehead of our street; and I asked him if he wouldn't like to come downour way Sunday afternoon and take a plain, simple look at my garden,eat a little lemon ice-cream and jelly-cake, and drink a glass ofnative lager-beer. I thought of putting up over my gate, "Welcometo the Nation's Gardener;" but I hate nonsense, and did n't do it.I, however, hoed diligently on Saturday: what weeds I could n'tremove I buried, so that everything would look all right. Theborders of my drive were trimmed with scissors; and everything thatcould offend the Eye of the Great was hustled out of the way.
In relating this interview, it must be distinctly understood that Iam not responsible for anything that the President said; nor is he,either. He is not a great speaker; but whatever he says has anesoteric and an exoteric meaning; and some of his remarks about myvegetables went very deep. I said nothing to him whatever aboutpolitics, at which he seemed a good deal surprised: he said it wasthe first garden he had ever been in, with a man, when the talk wasnot of appointments. I told him that this was purely vegetable;after which he seemed more at his ease, and, in fact, delighted witheverything he saw. He was much interested in my strawberry-beds,asked what varieties I had, and requested me to send him some seed.He said the patent-office seed was as difficult to raise as anappropriation for the St. Domingo business. The playful bean seemedalso to please him; and he said he had never seen such impressivecorn and potatoes at this time of year; that it was to him anunexpected pleasure, and one of the choicest memories that he shouldtake away with him of his visit to New England.
N. B.—That corn and those potatoes which General Gr-nt looked at Iwill sell for seed, at five dollars an ear, and one dollar a potato.Office-seekers need not apply.
Knowing the President's great desire for peas, I kept him from thatpart of the garden where the vines grow. But they could not beconcealed. Those who say that the President is not a man easilymoved are knaves or fools. When he saw my pea-pods, ravaged by thebirds, he burst into tears. A man of war, he knows the value ofpeas. I told him they were an excellent sort, "The Champion ofEngland." As quick as a flash he said, "Why don't you call them 'TheReverdy Johnson'?"
It was a very clever bon-mot; but I changed the subject.
The sight of my squashes, with stalks as big as speaking-trumpets,restored the President to his usual spirits. He said the summersquash was the most ludicrous vegetable he knew. It was nearly allleaf and blow, with only a sickly, crook-necked fruit after a mightyfuss. It reminded him of the member of Congress from…; but Ihastened to change the subject.
As we walked along, the keen eye of the President rested upon somehandsome sprays of "pusley," which must have grown up since Saturdaynight. It was most fortunate; for it led his Excellency to speak ofthe Chinese problem. He said he had been struck with one, couplingof the Chinese and the "pusley" in one of my agricultural papers; andit had a significance more far-reaching than I had probably supposed.He had made the Chinese problem a special study. He said that I wasright in saying that "pusley" was the natural food of the Chinaman,and that where the "pusley" was, there would the Chinaman be also.For his part, he welcomed the Chinese emigration: we needed theChinaman in our gardens to eat the "pusley;" and he thought the wholeproblem solved by this simple consideration. To get rid of rats and"pusley," he said, was a necessity of our civilization. He did notcare so much about the shoe-business; he did not think that thelittle Chinese shoes that he had seen would be of service in thearmy: but the garden-interest was quite another affair. We want tomake a garden of our whole country: the hoe, in the hands of a mantruly great, he was pleased to say, was mightier than the pen. Hepresumed that General B-tl-r had never taken into consideration thegarden-question, or he would not assume the position he does withregard to the Chinese emigration. He would let the Chinese come,even if B-tl-r had to leave, I thought he was going to say, but Ichanged the subject.
During our entire garden interview (operatically speaking, thegarden-scene), the President was not smoking. I do not know how theimpression arose that he "uses tobacco in any form;" for I have seenhim several times, and he was not smoking. Indeed, I offered him aConnecticut six; but he wittily said that he did not like a weed in agarden,—a remark which I took to have a personal political bearing,and changed the subject.
The President was a good deal surprised at the method and fineappearance of my garden, and to learn that I had the sole care of it.He asked me if I pursued an original course, or whether I got myideas from writers on the subject. I told him that I had had no timeto read anything on the subject since I began to hoe, except"Lothair," from which I got my ideas of landscape gardening; and thatI had worked the garden entirely according to my own notions, exceptthat I had borne in mind his injunction, "to fight it out on thisline if"—The President stopped me abruptly, and said it wasunnecessary to repeat that remark: he thought he had heard it before.Indeed, he deeply regretted that he had ever made it. Sometimes, hesaid, after hearing it in speeches, and coming across it inresolutions, and reading it in newspapers, and having it droppedjocularly by facetious politicians, who were boring him for anoffice, about twenty-five times a day, say for a month, it would getto running through his head, like the "shoo-fly" song which B-tl-rsings in the House, until it did seem as if he should go distracted.He said, no man could stand that kind of sentence hammering on hisbrain for years.
The President was so much pleased with my management of the garden,that he offered me (at least, I so understood him) the position ofhead gardener at the White House, to have care of the exotics. Itold him that I thanked him, but that I did not desire any foreignappointment. I had resolved, when the administration came in, not totake an appointment; and I had kept my resolution. As to any homeoffice, I was poor, but honest; and, of course, it would be uselessfor me to take one. The President mused a moment, and then smiled,and said he would see what could be done for me. I did not changethe subject; but nothing further was said by General Gr-nt.
The President is a great talker (contrary to the general impression);but I think he appreciated his quiet hour in my garden. He said itcarried him back to his youth farther than anything he had seenlately. He looked forward with delight to the time when he couldagain have his private garden, grow his own lettuce and tomatoes, andnot have to get so much "sarce" from Congress.
The chair in which the President sat, while declining to take a glassof lager I have had destroyed, in order that no one may sit in it.It was the only way to save it, if I may so speak. It would havebeen impossible to keep it from use by any precautions. There arepeople who would have sat in it, if the seat had been set with ironspikes. Such is the adoration of Station.
NINTH WEEK
I am more and more impressed with the moral qualities of vegetables,and contemplate forming a science which shall rank with comparativeanatomy and comparative philology,—the science of comparativevegetable morality. We live in an age of protoplasm. And, iflife-matter is essentially the same in all forms of life, I purposeto begin early, and ascertain the nature of the plants for which I amresponsible. I will not associate with any vegetable which isdisreputable, or has not some quality that can contribute to my moralgrowth. I do not care to be seen much with the squashes or thedead-beets. Fortunately I can cut down any sorts I do not like withthe hoe, and, probably, commit no more sin in so doing than theChristians did in hewing down the Jews in the Middle Ages.
This matter of vegetable rank has not been at all studied as itshould be. Why do we respect some vegetables and despise others,when all of them come to an equal honor or ignominy on the table?The bean is a graceful, confiding, engaging vine; but you never canput beans into poetry, nor into the highest sort of prose. There isno dignity in the bean. Corn, which, in my garden, grows alongsidethe bean, and, so far as I can see, with no affectation ofsuperiority, is, however, the child of song. It waves in allliterature. But mix it with beans, and its high tone is gone.Succotash is vulgar. It is the bean in it. The bean is a vulgarvegetable, without culture, or any flavor of high society amongvegetables. Then there is the cool cucumber, like so many people,good for nothing when it is ripe and the wildness has gone out of it.How inferior in quality it is to the melon, which grows upon asimilar vine, is of a like watery consistency, but is not half sovaluable! The cucumber is a sort of low comedian in a company wherethe melon is a minor gentleman. I might also contrast the celerywith the potato. The associations are as opposite as the dining-roomof the duchess and the cabin of the peasant. I admire the potato,both in vine and blossom; but it is not aristocratic. I begandigging my potatoes, by the way, about the 4th of July; and I fancy Ihave discovered the right way to do it. I treat the potato just as Iwould a cow. I do not pull them up, and shake them out, and destroythem; but I dig carefully at the side of the hill, remove the fruitwhich is grown, leaving the vine undisturbed: and my theory is, thatit will go on bearing, and submitting to my exactions, until thefrost cuts it down. It is a game that one would not undertake with avegetable of tone.
The lettuce is to me a most interesting study. Lettuce is likeconversation: it must be fresh and crisp, so sparkling that youscarcely notice the bitter in it. Lettuce, like most talkers, is,however, apt to run rapidly to seed. Blessed is that sort whichcomes to a head, and so remains, like a few people I know; growingmore solid and satisfactory and tender at the same time, and whiterat the center, and crisp in their maturity. Lettuce, likeconversation, requires a good deal of oil to avoid friction, and keepthe company smooth; a pinch of attic salt; a dash of pepper; a quantityof mustard and vinegar, by all means, but so mixed that you will noticeno sharp contrasts; and a trifle of sugar. You can put anything, andthe more things the better, into salad, as into a conversation; buteverything depends upon the skill of mixing. I feel that I am in thebest society when I am with lettuce. It is in the select circle ofvegetables. The tomato appears well on the table; but you do not wantto ask its origin. It is a most agreeable parvenu. Of course, I havesaid nothing about the berries. They live in another and more idealregion; except, perhaps, the currant. Here we see, that, even amongberries, there are degrees of breeding. The currant is well enough,clear as truth, and exquisite in color; but I ask you to notice how farit is from the exclusive hauteur of the aristocratic strawberry, andthe native refinement of the quietly elegant raspberry.
I do not know that chemistry, searching for protoplasm, is able todiscover the tendency of vegetables. It can only be found out byoutward observation. I confess that I am suspicious of the bean, forinstance. There are signs in it of an unregulated life. I put upthe most attractive sort of poles for my Limas. They stand high andstraight, like church-spires, in my theological garden,—liftedup; and some of them have even budded, like Aaron's rod. Nochurch-steeple in a New England village was ever better fitted to drawto it the rising generation on Sunday, than those poles to lift up mybeans towards heaven. Some of them did run up the sticks seven feet,and then straggled off into the air in a wanton manner; but more thanhalf of them went gallivanting off to the neighboring grape-trellis,and wound their tendrils with the tendrils of the grape, with adisregard of the proprieties of life which is a satire upon humannature. And the grape is morally no better. I think the ancients, whowere not troubled with the recondite mystery of protoplasm, were rightin the mythic union of Bacchus and Venus.
Talk about the Darwinian theory of development, and the principle ofnatural selection! I should like to see a garden let to run inaccordance with it. If I had left my vegetables and weeds to a freefight, in which the strongest specimens only should come to maturity,and the weaker go to the wall, I can clearly see that I should havehad a pretty mess of it. It would have been a scene of passion andlicense and brutality. The "pusley" would have strangled thestrawberry; the upright corn, which has now ears to hear the guiltybeating of the hearts of the children who steal the raspberries,would have been dragged to the earth by the wandering bean; thesnake-grass would have left no place for the potatoes under ground;and the tomatoes would have been swamped by the lusty weeds. With afirm hand, I have had to make my own "natural selection." Nothingwill so well bear watching as a garden, except a family of childrennext door. Their power of selection beats mine. If they could readhalf as well as they can steal awhile away, I should put up a notice,"Children, beware! There is Protoplasm here." But I suppose it wouldhave no effect. I believe they would eat protoplasm as quick asanything else, ripe or green. I wonder if this is going to be acholera-year. Considerable cholera is the only thing that would letmy apples and pears ripen. Of course I do not care for the fruit;but I do not want to take the responsibility of letting so much"life-matter," full of crude and even wicked vegetable-humantendencies, pass into the composition of the neighbors' children,some of whom may be as immortal as snake-grass. There ought to be apublic meeting about this, and resolutions, and perhaps a clambake.At least, it ought to be put into the catechism, and put in strong.
TENTH WEEK
I think I have discovered the way to keep peas from the birds. Itried the scarecrow plan, in a way which I thought would outwit theshrewdest bird. The brain of the bird is not large; but it is allconcentrated on one object, and that is the attempt to elude thedevices of modern civilization which injure his chances of food. Iknew that, if I put up a complete stuffed man, the bird would detectthe imitation at once: the perfection of the thing would show himthat it was a trick. People always overdo the matter when theyattempt deception. I therefore hung some loose garments, of a brightcolor, upon a rake-head, and set them up among the vines. Thesupposition was, that the bird would think there was an effort totrap him, that there was a man behind, holding up these garments, andwould sing, as he kept at a distance, "You can't catch me with anysuch double device." The bird would know, or think he knew, that Iwould not hang up such a scare, in the expectation that it would passfor a man, and deceive a bird; and he would therefore look for adeeper plot. I expected to outwit the bird by a duplicity that wassimplicity itself I may have over-calculated the sagacity andreasoning power of the bird. At any rate, I did over-calculate theamount of peas I should gather.
But my game was only half played. In another part of the garden wereother peas, growing and blowing. To-these I took good care not toattract the attention of the bird by any scarecrow whatever! I leftthe old scarecrow conspicuously flaunting above the old vines; and bythis means I hope to keep the attention of the birds confined to thatside of the garden. I am convinced that this is the true use of ascarecrow: it is a lure, and not a warning. If you wish to save menfrom any particular vice, set up a tremendous cry of warning aboutsome other; and they will all give their special efforts to the oneto which attention is called. This profound truth is about the onlything I have yet realized out of my pea-vines.
However, the garden does begin to yield. I know of nothing thatmakes one feel more complacent, in these July days, than to have hisvegetables from his own garden. What an effect it has on themarket-man and the butcher! It is a kind of declaration ofindependence. The market-man shows me his peas and beets andtomatoes, and supposes he shall send me out some with the meat. "No,I thank you," I say carelessly; "I am raising my own this year."Whereas I have been wont to remark, "Your vegetables look a littlewilted this weather," I now say, "What a fine lot of vegetablesyou've got!" When a man is not going to buy, he can afford to begenerous. To raise his own vegetables makes a person feel, somehow,more liberal. I think the butcher is touched by the influence, andcuts off a better roast for me, The butcher is my friend when he seesthat I am not wholly dependent on him.
It is at home, however, that the effect is most marked, thoughsometimes in a way that I had not expected. I have never read of anyRoman supper that seemed to me equal to a dinner of my ownvegetables; when everything on the table is the product of my ownlabor, except the clams, which I have not been able to raise yet, andthe chickens, which have withdrawn from the garden just when theywere most attractive. It is strange what a taste you suddenly havefor things you never liked before. The squash has always been to mea dish of contempt; but I eat it now as if it were my best friend. Inever cared for the beet or the bean; but I fancy now that I couldeat them all, tops and all, so completely have they been transformedby the soil in which they grew. I think the squash is less squashy,and the beet has a deeper hue of rose, for my care of them.
I had begun to nurse a good deal of pride in presiding over a tablewhereon was the fruit of my honest industry. But woman!—John StuartMill is right when he says that we do not know anything about women.Six thousand years is as one day with them. I thought I hadsomething to do with those vegetables. But when I saw Polly seatedat her side of the table, presiding over the new and susceptiblevegetables, flanked by the squash and the beans, and smiling upon thegreen corn and the new potatoes, as cool as the cucumbers which laysliced in ice before her, and when she began to dispense the freshdishes, I saw at once that the day of my destiny was over. You wouldhave thought that she owned all the vegetables, and had raised themall from their earliest years. Such quiet, vegetable airs! Suchgracious appropriation! At length I said,—
"Polly, do you know who planted that squash, or those squashes?"
"James, I suppose."
"Well, yes, perhaps James did plant them, to a certain extent. Butwho hoed them?"
"We did."
"We did!" I said, in the most sarcastic manner.
And I suppose we put on the sackcloth and ashes, when the striped bugcame at four o'clock A.M., and we watched the tender leaves, andwatered night and morning the feeble plants. "I tell you, Polly,"said I, uncorking the Bordeaux raspberry vinegar, "there is not a peahere that does not represent a drop of moisture wrung from my brow,not a beet that does not stand for a back-ache, not a squash that hasnot caused me untold anxiety; and I did hope—but I will say nomore."
Observation.—In this sort of family discussion, "I will say nomore" is the most effective thing you can close up with.
I am not an alarmist. I hope I am as cool as anybody this hotsummer. But I am quite ready to say to Polly, or any other woman,"You can have the ballot; only leave me the vegetables, or, what ismore important, the consciousness of power in vegetables." I see howit is. Woman is now supreme in the house. She already stretches outher hand to grasp the garden. She will gradually control everything.Woman is one of the ablest and most cunning creatures who have evermingled in human affairs. I understand those women who say theydon't want the ballot. They purpose to hold the real power while wego through the mockery of making laws. They want the power withoutthe responsibility. (Suppose my squash had not come up, or my beans—as they threatened at one time—had gone the wrong way: where wouldI have been?) We are to be held to all the responsibilities. Womantakes the lead in all the departments, leaving us politics only. Andwhat is politics? Let me raise the vegetables of a nation, saysPolly, and I care not who makes its politics. Here I sat at thetable, armed with the ballot, but really powerless among my ownvegetables. While we are being amused by the ballot, woman isquietly taking things into her own hands.
ELEVENTH WEEK
Perhaps, after all, it is not what you get out of a garden, but whatyou put into it, that is the most remunerative. What is a man? Aquestion frequently asked, and never, so far as I know,satisfactorily answered. He commonly spends his seventy years, if somany are given him, in getting ready to enjoy himself. How manyhours, how many minutes, does one get of that pure content which ishappiness? I do not mean laziness, which is always discontent; butthat serene enjoyment, in which all the natural senses have easyplay, and the unnatural ones have a holiday. There is probablynothing that has such a tranquilizing effect, and leads into suchcontent as gardening. By gardening, I do not mean that insane desireto raise vegetables which some have; but the philosophical occupationof contact with the earth, and companionship with gently growingthings and patient processes; that exercise which soothes the spirit,and develops the deltoid muscles.
In half an hour I can hoe myself right away from this world, as wecommonly see it, into a large place, where there are no obstacles.What an occupation it is for thought! The mind broods like a hen oneggs. The trouble is, that you are not thinking about anything, butare really vegetating like the plants around you. I begin to knowwhat the joy of the grape-vine is in running up the trellis, which issimilar to that of the squirrel in running up a tree. We all havesomething in our nature that requires contact with the earth. In thesolitude of garden-labor, one gets into a sort of communion with thevegetable life, which makes the old mythology possible. Forinstance, I can believe that the dryads are plenty this summer: mygarden is like an ash-heap. Almost all the moisture it has had inweeks has been the sweat of honest industry.
The pleasure of gardening in these days, when the thermometer is atninety, is one that I fear I shall not be able to make intelligibleto my readers, many of whom do not appreciate the delight of soakingin the sunshine. I suppose that the sun, going through a man, as itwill on such a day, takes out of him rheumatism, consumption, andevery other disease, except sudden death—from sun-stroke. But,aside from this, there is an odor from the evergreens, the hedges,the various plants and vines, that is only expressed and set afloatat a high temperature, which is delicious; and, hot as it may be, alittle breeze will come at intervals, which can be heard in thetreetops, and which is an unobtrusive benediction. I hear a quail ortwo whistling in the ravine; and there is a good deal of fragmentaryconversation going on among the birds, even on the warmest days. Thecompanionship of Calvin, also, counts for a good deal. He usuallyattends me, unless I work too long in one place; sitting down on theturf, displaying the ermine of his breast, and watching my movementswith great intelligence. He has a feline and genuine love for thebeauties of Nature, and will establish himself where there is a goodview, and look on it for hours. He always accompanies us when we goto gather the vegetables, seeming to be desirous to know what we areto have for dinner. He is a connoisseur in the garden; being fond ofalmost all the vegetables, except the cucumber,—a dietetic hint toman. I believe it is also said that the pig will not eat tobacco.These are important facts. It is singular, however, that those whohold up the pigs as models to us never hold us up as models to thepigs.
I wish I knew as much about natural history and the habits of animalsas Calvin does. He is the closest observer I ever saw; and there arefew species of animals on the place that he has not analyzed. Ithink he has, to use a euphemism very applicable to him, got outsideof every one of them, except the toad. To the toad he is entirelyindifferent; but I presume he knows that the toad is the most usefulanimal in the garden. I think the Agricultural Society ought tooffer a prize for the finest toad. When Polly comes to sit in theshade near my strawberry-beds, to shell peas, Calvin is always lyingnear in apparent obliviousness; but not the slightest unusual soundcan be made in the bushes, that he is not alert, and prepared toinvestigate the cause of it. It is this habit of observation, socultivated, which has given him such a trained mind, and made him sophilosophical. It is within the capacity of even the humblest of usto attain this.
And, speaking of the philosophical temper, there is no class of menwhose society is more to be desired for this quality than that ofplumbers. They are the most agreeable men I know; and the boys inthe business begin to be agreeable very early. I suspect the secretof it is, that they are agreeable by the hour. In the driest days,my fountain became disabled: the pipe was stopped up. A couple ofplumbers, with the implements of their craft, came out to view thesituation. There was a good deal of difference of opinion aboutwhere the stoppage was. I found the plumbers perfectly willing tosit down and talk about it,—talk by the hour. Some of their guessesand remarks were exceedingly ingenious; and their generalobservations on other subjects were excellent in their way, and couldhardly have been better if they had been made by the job. The workdragged a little, as it is apt to do by the hour. The plumbers hadoccasion to make me several visits. Sometimes they would find, uponarrival, that they had forgotten some indispensable tool; and onewould go back to the shop, a mile and a half, after it; and hiscomrade would await his return with the most exemplary patience, andsit down and talk,—always by the hour. I do not know but it is ahabit to have something wanted at the shop. They seemed to me verygood workmen, and always willing to stop and talk about the job, oranything else, when I went near them. Nor had they any of thatimpetuous hurry that is said to be the bane of our Americancivilization. To their credit be it said, that I never observedanything of it in them. They can afford to wait. Two of them willsometimes wait nearly half a day while a comrade goes for a tool.They are patient and philosophical. It is a great pleasure to meetsuch men. One only wishes there was some work he could do for themby the hour. There ought to be reciprocity. I think they have verynearly solved the problem of Life: it is to work for other people,never for yourself, and get your pay by the hour. You then have noanxiety, and little work. If you do things by the job, you areperpetually driven: the hours are scourges. If you work by the hour,you gently sail on the stream of Time, which is always bearing you onto the haven of Pay, whether you make any effort, or not. Working bythe hour tends to make one moral. A plumber working by the job,trying to unscrew a rusty, refractory nut, in a cramped position,where the tongs continually slipped off, would swear; but I neverheard one of them swear, or exhibit the least impatience at such avexation, working by the hour. Nothing can move a man who is paid bythe hour. How sweet the flight of time seems to his calm mind!
TWELFTH WEEK
Mr. Horace Greeley, the introduction of whose name confers an honorupon this page (although I ought to say that it is used entirelywithout his consent), is my sole authority in agriculture. Inpolitics I do not dare to follow him; but in agriculture he isirresistible. When, therefore, I find him advising Western farmersnot to hill up their corn, I think that his advice must be political.You must hill up your corn. People always have hilled up their corn.It would take a constitutional amendment to change the practice, thathas pertained ever since maize was raised. "It will stand thedrought better," says Mr. Greeley, "if the ground is left level." Ihave corn in my garden, ten and twelve feet high, strong and lusty,standing the drought like a grenadier; and it is hilled. In advisingthis radical change, Mr. Greeley evidently has a political purpose.He might just as well say that you should not hill beans, wheneverybody knows that a "hill of beans" is one of the most expressivesymbols of disparagement. When I become too lazy to hill my corn, I,too, shall go into politics.
I am satisfied that it is useless to try to cultivate "pusley." I seta little of it one side, and gave it some extra care. It did notthrive as well as that which I was fighting. The fact is, there is aspirit of moral perversity in the plant, which makes it grow themore, the more it is interfered with. I am satisfied of that. Idoubt if any one has raised more "pusley" this year than I have; andmy warfare with it has been continual. Neither of us has slept much.If you combat it, it will grow, to use an expression that will beunderstood by many, like the devil. I have a neighbor, a goodChristian man, benevolent, and a person of good judgment. He plantednext to me an acre of turnips recently. A few days after, he went tolook at his crop; and he found the entire ground covered with a thickand luxurious carpet of "pusley," with a turnip-top worked in hereand there as an ornament. I have seldom seen so thrifty a field. Iadvised my neighbor next time to sow "pusley" and then he might get afew turnips. I wish there was more demand in our city markets for"pusley" as a salad. I can recommend it.
It does not take a great man to soon discover that, in raisinganything, the greater part of the plants goes into stalk and leaf,and the fruit is a most inconsiderable portion. I plant and hoe ahill of corn: it grows green and stout, and waves its broad leaveshigh in the air, and is months in perfecting itself, and then yieldsus not enough for a dinner. It grows because it delights to do so,—to take the juices out of my ground, to absorb my fertilizers, towax luxuriant, and disport itself in the summer air, and with verylittle thought of making any return to me. I might go all through mygarden and fruit trees with a similar result. I have heard of placeswhere there was very little land to the acre. It is universally truethat there is a great deal of vegetable show and fuss for the resultproduced. I do not complain of this. One cannot expect vegetablesto be better than men: and they make a great deal of ostentatioussplurge; and many of them come to no result at last. Usually, themore show of leaf and wood, the less fruit. This melancholyreflection is thrown in here in order to make dog-days seem cheerfulin comparison.
One of the minor pleasures of life is that of controlling vegetableactivity and aggressions with the pruning-knife. Vigorous and rapidgrowth is, however, a necessity to the sport. To prune feeble plantsand shrubs is like acting the part of dry-nurse to a sickly orphan.You must feel the blood of Nature bound under your hand, and get thethrill of its life in your nerves. To control and culture a strong,thrifty plant in this way is like steering a ship under full headway,or driving a locomotive with your hand on the lever, or pulling thereins over a fast horse when his blood and tail are up. I do notunderstand, by the way, the pleasure of the jockey in setting up thetail of the horse artificially. If I had a horse with a tail notable to sit up, I should feed the horse, and curry him into goodspirits, and let him set up his own tail. When I see a poor,spiritless horse going by with an artificially set-up tail, it isonly a signal of distress. I desire to be surrounded only byhealthy, vigorous plants and trees, which require constant cutting-inand management. Merely to cut away dead branches is like perpetualattendance at a funeral, and puts one in low spirits. I want to havea garden and orchard rise up and meet me every morning, with therequest to "lay on, Macduff." I respect old age; but an oldcurrant-bush, hoary with mossy bark, is a melancholy spectacle.
I suppose the time has come when I am expected to say something aboutfertilizers: all agriculturists do. When you plant, you think youcannot fertilize too much: when you get the bills for the manure, youthink you cannot fertilize too little. Of course you do not expectto get the value of the manure back in fruits and vegetables; butsomething is due to science,—to chemistry in particular. You musthave a knowledge of soils, must have your soil analyzed, and then gointo a course of experiments to find what it needs. It needsanalyzing,—that, I am clear about: everything needs that. You hadbetter have the soil analyzed before you buy: if there is "pusley"in it, let it alone. See if it is a soil that requires much hoeing,and how fine it will get if there is no rain for two months. Butwhen you come to fertilizing, if I understand the agriculturalauthorities, you open a pit that will ultimately swallow you up,—farm and all. It is the great subject of modern times, how tofertilize without ruinous expense; how, in short, not to starve theearth to death while we get our living out of it. Practically, thebusiness is hardly to the taste of a person of a poetic turn of mind.The details of fertilizing are not agreeable. Michael Angelo, whotried every art, and nearly every trade, never gave his mind tofertilizing. It is much pleasanter and easier to fertilize with apen, as the agricultural writers do, than with a fork. And thisleads me to say, that, in carrying on a garden yourself, you musthave a "consulting" gardener; that is, a man to do the heavy andunpleasant work. To such a man, I say, in language used byDemosthenes to the Athenians, and which is my advice to allgardeners, "Fertilize, fertilize, fertilize!"
THIRTEENTH WEEK
I find that gardening has unsurpassed advantages for the study ofnatural history; and some scientific facts have come under my ownobservation, which cannot fail to interest naturalists andun-naturalists in about the same degree. Much, for instance, hasbeen written about the toad, an animal without which no garden wouldbe complete. But little account has been made of his value: thebeauty of his eye alone has been dwelt on; and little has been saidof his mouth, and its important function as a fly and bug trap. Hishabits, and even his origin, have been misunderstood. Why, as anillustration, are toads so plenty after a thunder-shower? All mylife long, no one has been able to answer me that question. Why,after a heavy shower, and in the midst of it, do such multitudes oftoads, especially little ones, hop about on the gravel-walks? Formany years, I believed that they rained down; and I suppose manypeople think so still. They are so small, and they come in suchnumbers only in the shower, that the supposition is not a violentone. "Thick as toads after a shower," is one of our best proverbs.I asked an explanation 'of this of a thoughtful woman,—indeed, aleader in the great movement to have all the toads hop in anydirection, without any distinction of sex or religion. Her replywas, that the toads come out during the shower to get water. This,however, is not the fact. I have discovered that they come out notto get water. I deluged a dry flower-bed, the other night, withpailful after pailful of water. Instantly the toads came out oftheir holes in the dirt, by tens and twenties and fifties, to escapedeath by drowning. The big ones fled away in a ridiculous streak ofhopping; and the little ones sprang about in the wildest confusion.The toad is just like any other land animal: when his house is fullof water, he quits it. These facts, with the drawings of the waterand the toads, are at the service of the distinguished scientists ofAlbany in New York, who were so much impressed by the Cardiff Giant.
The domestic cow is another animal whose ways I have a chance tostudy, and also to obliterate in the garden. One of my neighbors hasa cow, but no land; and he seems desirous to pasture her on thesurface of the land of other people: a very reasonable desire. Theman proposed that he should be allowed to cut the grass from mygrounds for his cow. I knew the cow, having often had her in mygarden; knew her gait and the size of her feet, which struck me as alittle large for the size of the body. Having no cow myself, butacquaintance with my neighbor's, I told him that I thought it wouldbe fair for him to have the grass. He was, therefore, to keep thegrass nicely cut, and to keep his cow at home. I waited some timeafter the grass needed cutting; and, as my neighbor did not appear, Ihired it cut. No sooner was it done than he promptly appeared, andraked up most of it, and carried it away. He had evidently beenwaiting that opportunity. When the grass grew again, the neighbordid not appear with his scythe; but one morning I found the cowtethered on the sward, hitched near the clothes-horse, a shortdistance from the house. This seemed to be the man's idea of thebest way to cut the grass. I disliked to have the cow there, becauseI knew her inclination to pull up the stake, and transfer her fieldof mowing to the garden, but especially because of her voice. Shehas the most melancholy "moo" I ever heard. It is like the wail ofone uninfallible, excommunicated, and lost. It is a most distressingperpetual reminder of the brevity of life and the shortness of feed.It is unpleasant to the family. We sometimes hear it in the middleof the night, breaking the silence like a suggestion of comingcalamity. It is as bad as the howling of a dog at a funeral.
I told the man about it; but he seemed to think that he was notresponsible for the cow's voice. I then told him to take her away;and he did, at intervals, shifting her to different parts of thegrounds in my absence, so that the desolate voice would startle usfrom unexpected quarters. If I were to unhitch the cow, and turn herloose, I knew where she would go. If I were to lead her away, thequestion was, Where? for I did not fancy leading a cow about till Icould find somebody who was willing to pasture her. To this dilemmahad my excellent neighbor reduced me. But I found him, one Sundaymorning,—a day when it would not do to get angry, tying his cow atthe foot of the hill; the beast all the time going on in thatabominable voice. I told the man that I could not have the cow inthe grounds. He said, "All right, boss;" but he did not go away. Iasked him to clear out. The man, who is a French sympathizer fromthe Republic of Ireland, kept his temper perfectly. He said hewasn't doing anything, just feeding his cow a bit: he wouldn't makeme the least trouble in the world. I reminded him that he had beentold again and again not to come here; that he might have all thegrass, but he should not bring his cow upon the premises. Theimperturbable man assented to everything that I said, and kept onfeeding his cow. Before I got him to go to fresh scenes and pasturesnew, the Sabbath was almost broken; but it was saved by one thing: itis difficult to be emphatic when no one is emphatic on the otherside. The man and his cow have taught me a great lesson, which Ishall recall when I keep a cow. I can recommend this cow, if anybodywants one, as a steady boarder, whose keeping will cost the ownerlittle; but, if her milk is at all like her voice, those who drink itare on the straight road to lunacy.
I think I have said that we have a game-preserve. We keep quails, ortry to, in the thickly wooded, bushed, and brushed ravine. This birdis a great favorite with us, dead or alive, on account of itstasteful plumage, its tender flesh, its domestic virtues, and itspleasant piping. Besides, although I appreciate toads and cows, andall that sort of thing, I like to have a game-preserve more in theEnglish style. And we did. For in July, while the game-law was on,and the young quails were coming on, we were awakened one morning byfiring, —musketry-firing, close at hand. My first thought was, thatwar was declared; but, as I should never pay much attention to wardeclared at that time in the morning, I went to sleep again. But theoccurrence was repeated,—and not only early in the morning, but atnight. There was calling of dogs, breaking down of brush, and firingof guns. It is hardly pleasant to have guns fired in the direction ofthe house, at your own quails. The hunters could be sometimes seen,but never caught. Their best time was about sunrise; but, before onecould dress and get to the front, they would retire.
One morning, about four o'clock, I heard the battle renewed. Isprang up, but not in arms, and went to a window. Polly (likeanother 'blessed damozel') flew to another window,—
"The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of heaven,"
and reconnoitered from behind the blinds.
"The wonder was not yet quite gone
From that still look of hers,"
when an armed man and a legged dog appeared in the opening. I wasvigilantly watching him.
. . . . "And now
She spoke through the still weather."
"Are you afraid to speak to him?" asked Polly.
Not exactly,
. . . ."she spoke as when The stars sang in their spheres.
"Stung by this inquiry, I leaned out of the window till
"The bar I leaned on (was) warm,"
and cried,—
"Halloo, there! What are you doing?"
"Look out he don't shoot you," called out Polly from the otherwindow, suddenly going on another tack.
I explained that a sportsman would not be likely to shoot a gentlemanin his own house, with bird-shot, so long as quails were to be had.
"You have no business here: what are you after?" I repeated.
"Looking for a lost hen," said the man as he strode away.
The reply was so satisfactory and conclusive that I shut the blindsand went to bed.
But one evening I overhauled one of the poachers. Hearing his dog inthe thicket, I rushed through the brush, and came in sight of thehunter as he was retreating down the road. He came to a halt; and wehad some conversation in a high key. Of course I threatened toprosecute him. I believe that is the thing to do in such cases; buthow I was to do it, when I did not know his name or ancestry, andcouldn't see his face, never occurred to me. (I remember, now, thata farmer once proposed to prosecute me when I was fishing in atrout-brook on his farm, and asked my name for that purpose.) Hesaid he should smile to see me prosecute him.
"You can't do it: there ain't no notice up about trespassing."
This view of the common law impressed me; and I said,
"But these are private grounds."
"Private h—-!" was all his response.
You can't argue much with a man who has a gun in his hands, when youhave none. Besides, it might be a needle-gun, for aught I knew. Igave it up, and we separated.
There is this disadvantage about having a game preserve attached toyour garden: it makes life too lively.
FOURTEENTH WEEK
In these golden latter August days, Nature has come to a sereneequilibrium. Having flowered and fruited, she is enjoying herself.I can see how things are going: it is a down-hill business afterthis; but, for the time being, it is like swinging in a hammock,—such a delicious air, such a graceful repose! I take off my hat asI stroll into the garden and look about; and it does seem as ifNature had sounded a truce. I did n't ask for it. I went out with ahoe; but the serene sweetness disarms me. Thrice is he armed who hasa long-handled hoe, with a double blade. Yet to-day I am almostashamed to appear in such a belligerent fashion, with this terriblemitrailleuse of gardening.
The tomatoes are getting tired of ripening, and are beginning to gointo a worthless condition,—green. The cucumbers cumber theground,—great yellow, over-ripe objects, no more to be compared tothe crisp beauty of their youth than is the fat swine of the sty tothe clean little pig. The nutmeg-melons, having covered themselveswith delicate lace-work, are now ready to leave the vine. I knowthey are ripe if they come easily off the stem.
Moral Observations.—You can tell when people are ripe by theirwillingness to let go. Richness and ripeness are not exactly thesame. The rich are apt to hang to the stem with tenacity. I havenothing against the rich. If I were not virtuous, I should like tobe rich. But we cannot have everything, as the man said when he wasdown with small-pox and cholera, and the yellow fever came into theneighborhood.
Now, the grapes, soaked in this liquid gold, called air, begin toturn, mindful of the injunction, "to turn or burn." The clustersunder the leaves are getting quite purple, but look better than theytaste. I think there is no danger but they will be gathered as soonas they are ripe. One of the blessings of having an open garden is,that I do not have to watch my fruit: a dozen youngsters do that, andlet it waste no time after it matures. I wish it were possible togrow a variety of grape like the explosive bullets, that shouldexplode in the stomach: the vine would make such a nice border forthe garden,—a masked battery of grape. The pears, too, are gettingrusset and heavy; and here and there amid the shining leaves onegleams as ruddy as the cheek of the Nutbrown Maid. The FlemishBeauties come off readily from the stem, if I take them in my hand:they say all kinds of beauty come off by handling.
The garden is peace as much as if it were an empire. Even the man'scow lies down under the tree where the man has tied her, with such anair of contentment, that I have small desire to disturb her. She ischewing my cud as if it were hers. Well, eat on and chew on,melancholy brute. I have not the heart to tell the man to take youaway: and it would do no good if I had; he wouldn't do it. The manhas not a taking way. Munch on, ruminant creature.
The frost will soon come; the grass will be brown. I will becharitable while this blessed lull continues: for our benevolencesmust soon be turned to other and more distant objects,—theamelioration of the condition of the Jews, the education oftheological young men in the West, and the like.
I do not know that these appearances are deceitful; but Isufficiently know that this is a wicked world, to be glad that I havetaken it on shares. In fact, I could not pick the pears alone, notto speak of eating them. When I climb the trees, and throw down thedusky fruit, Polly catches it in her apron; nearly always, however,letting go when it drops, the fall is so sudden. The sun gets in herface; and, every time a pear comes down it is a surprise, like havinga tooth out, she says.
"If I could n't hold an apron better than that!"
But the sentence is not finished: it is useless to finish that sortof a sentence in this delicious weather. Besides, conversation isdangerous. As, for instance, towards evening I am preparing a bedfor a sowing of turnips,—not that I like turnips in the least; butthis is the season to sow them. Polly comes out, and extemporizesher usual seat to "consult me" about matters while I work. I wellknow that something is coming.
"This is a rotation of crops, is n't it?"
"Yes: I have rotated the gone-to-seed lettuce off, and expect torotate the turnips in; it is a political fashion."
"Is n't it a shame that the tomatoes are all getting ripe at once?What a lot of squashes! I wish we had an oyster-bed. Do you want meto help you any more than I am helping?"
"No, I thank you." (I wonder what all this is about?)
"Don't you think we could sell some strawberries next year?"
"By all means, sell anything. We shall no doubt get rich out of thisacre."
"Don't be foolish."
And now!
"Don't you think it would be nice to have a?"….
And Polly unfolds a small scheme of benevolence, which is not quiteenough to break me, and is really to be executed in an economicalmanner. "Would n't that be nice?"
"Oh, yes! And where is the money to come from?"
"I thought we had agreed to sell the strawberries."
"Certainly. But I think we would make more money if we sold theplants now."
"Well," said Polly, concluding the whole matter, "I am going to doit." And, having thus "consulted" me, Polly goes away; and I put inthe turnip-seeds quite thick, determined to raise enough to sell.But not even this mercenary thought can ruffle my mind as I rake offthe loamy bed. I notice, however, that the spring smell has gone outof the dirt. That went into the first crop.
In this peaceful unison with yielding nature, I was a little takenaback to find that a new enemy had turned up. The celery had justrubbed through the fiery scorching of the drought, and stood afaint chance to grow; when I noticed on the green leaves a biggreen-and-black worm, called, I believe, the celery-worm: but I don'tknow who called him; I am sure I did not. It was almost ludicrous thathe should turn up here, just at the end of the season, when I supposedthat my war with the living animals was over. Yet he was, no doubt,predestinated; for he went to work as cheerfully as if he had arrivedin June, when everything was fresh and vigorous. It beats me—Naturedoes. I doubt not, that, if I were to leave my garden now for a week,it would n't know me on my return. The patch I scratched over for theturnips, and left as clean as earth, is already full of ambitious"pusley," which grows with all the confidence of youth and the skill ofold age. It beats the serpent as an emblem of immortality. While allthe others of us in the garden rest and sit in comfort a moment, uponthe summit of the summer, it is as rampant and vicious as ever. Itaccepts no armistice.
FIFTEENTH WEEK
It is said that absence conquers all things, love included; but ithas a contrary effect on a garden. I was absent for two or threeweeks. I left my garden a paradise, as paradises go in thisprotoplastic world; and when I returned, the trail of the serpent wasover it all, so to speak. (This is in addition to the actual snakesin it, which are large enough to strangle children of average size.)I asked Polly if she had seen to the garden while I was away, and shesaid she had. I found that all the melons had been seen to, and theearly grapes and pears. The green worm had also seen to about halfthe celery; and a large flock of apparently perfectly domesticatedchickens were roaming over the ground, gossiping in the hot Septembersun, and picking up any odd trifle that might be left. On the whole,the garden could not have been better seen to; though it would take asharp eye to see the potato-vines amid the rampant grass and weeds.
The new strawberry-plants, for one thing, had taken advantage of myabsence. Every one of them had sent out as many scarlet runners asan Indian tribe has. Some of them had blossomed; and a few had goneso far as to bear ripe berries,—long, pear-shaped fruit, hanginglike the ear-pendants of an East Indian bride. I could not butadmire the persistence of these zealous plants, which seemeddetermined to propagate themselves both by seeds and roots, and makesure of immortality in some way. Even the Colfax variety was asambitious as the others. After having seen the declining letter ofMr. Colfax, I did not suppose that this vine would run any more, andintended to root it out. But one can never say what thesepoliticians mean; and I shall let this variety grow until after thenext election, at least; although I hear that the fruit is small, andrather sour. If there is any variety of strawberries that reallydeclines to run, and devotes itself to a private life offruit-bearing, I should like to get it. I may mention here, since weare on politics, that the Doolittle raspberries had sprawled all overthe strawberry-bed's: so true is it that politics makes strangebedfellows.
But another enemy had come into the strawberries, which, after allthat has been said in these papers, I am almost ashamed to mention.But does the preacher in the pulpit, Sunday after Sunday, year afteryear, shrink from speaking of sin? I refer, of course, to thegreatest enemy of mankind, "p-sl-y." The ground was carpeted withit. I should think that this was the tenth crop of the season; andit was as good as the first. I see no reason why our northern soilis not as prolific as that of the tropics, and will not produce asmany crops in the year. The mistake we make is in trying to forcethings that are not natural to it. I have no doubt that, if we turnour attention to "pusley," we can beat the world.
I had no idea, until recently, how generally this simple and thriftyplant is feared and hated. Far beyond what I had regarded as thebounds of civilization, it is held as one of the mysteries of afallen world; accompanying the home missionary on his wanderings, andpreceding the footsteps of the Tract Society. I was not long ago inthe Adirondacks. We had built a camp for the night, in the heart ofthe woods, high up on John's Brook and near the foot of Mount Marcy:I can see the lovely spot now. It was on the bank of the crystal,rocky stream, at the foot of high and slender falls, which pouredinto a broad amber basin. Out of this basin we had just taken troutenough for our supper, which had been killed, and roasted over thefire on sharp sticks, and eaten before they had an opportunity tofeel the chill of this deceitful world. We were lying under the hutof spruce-bark, on fragrant hemlock-boughs, talking, after supper.In front of us was a huge fire of birchlogs; and over it we could seethe top of the falls glistening in the moonlight; and the roar of thefalls, and the brawling of the stream near us, filled all the ancientwoods. It was a scene upon which one would think no thought of sincould enter. We were talking with old Phelps, the guide. Old Phelpsis at once guide, philosopher, and friend. He knows the woods andstreams and mountains, and their savage inhabitants, as well as weknow all our rich relations and what they are doing; and in lonelybear-hunts and sable-trappings he has thought out and solved most ofthe problems of life. As he stands in his wood-gear, he is asgrizzly as an old cedar-tree; and he speaks in a high falsetto voice,which would be invaluable to a boatswain in a storm at sea.
We had been talking of all subjects about which rational men areinterested,—bears, panthers, trapping, the habits of trout, thetariff, the internal revenue (to wit the injustice of laying such atax on tobacco, and none on dogs:—"There ain't no dog in the UnitedStates," says the guide, at the top of his voice, "that earns hisliving"), the Adventists, the Gorner Grat, Horace Greeley, religion,the propagation of seeds in the wilderness (as, for instance, wherewere the seeds lying for ages that spring up into certain plants andflowers as soon as a spot is cleared anywhere in the most remoteforest; and why does a growth of oak-trees always come up after agrowth of pine has been removed?)—in short, we had pretty nearlyreached a solution of many mysteries, when Phelps suddenly exclaimedwith uncommon energy,—
"Wall, there's one thing that beats me!"
"What's that?" we asked with undisguised curiosity.
"That's 'pusley'!" he replied, in the tone of a man who has come toone door in life which is hopelessly shut, and from which he retiresin despair.
"Where it comes from I don't know, nor what to do with it. It's inmy garden; and I can't get rid of it. It beats me."
About "pusley" the guide had no theory and no hope. A feeling of awecame over me, as we lay there at midnight, hushed by the sound of thestream and the rising wind in the spruce-tops. Then man can gonowhere that "pusley" will not attend him. Though he camp on theUpper Au Sable, or penetrate the forest where rolls the Allegash, andhear no sound save his own allegations, he will not escape it. Ithas entered the happy valley of Keene, although there is yet nochurch there, and only a feeble school part of the year. Sin travelsfaster than they that ride in chariots. I take my hoe, and begin;but I feel that I am warring against something whose roots take holdon H.
By the time a man gets to be eighty, he learns that he is compassedby limitations, and that there has been a natural boundary set to hisindividual powers. As he goes on in life, he begins to doubt hisability to destroy all evil and to reform all abuses, and to suspectthat there will be much left to do after he has done. I stepped intomy garden in the spring, not doubting that I should be easily masterof the weeds. I have simply learned that an institution which is atleast six thousand years old, and I believe six millions, is not tobe put down in one season.
I have been digging my potatoes, if anybody cares to know it. Iplanted them in what are called "Early Rose,"—the rows a littleless than three feet apart; but the vines came to an early close inthe drought. Digging potatoes is a pleasant, soothing occupation,but not poetical. It is good for the mind, unless they are too small(as many of mine are), when it begets a want of gratitude to thebountiful earth. What small potatoes we all are, compared with whatwe might be! We don't plow deep enough, any of us, for one thing. Ishall put in the plow next year, and give the tubers room enough. Ithink they felt the lack of it this year: many of them seemed ashamedto come out so small. There is great pleasure in turning out thebrown-jacketed fellows into the sunshine of a royal September day,and seeing them glisten as they lie thickly strewn on the warm soil.Life has few such moments. But then they must be picked up. Thepicking-up, in this world, is always the unpleasant part of it.
SIXTEENTH WEEK
I do not hold myself bound to answer the question, Does gardeningpay? It is so difficult to define what is meant by paying. There isa popular notion that, unless a thing pays, you had better let italone; and I may say that there is a public opinion that will not leta man or woman continue in the indulgence of a fancy that does notpay. And public opinion is stronger than the legislature, and nearlyas strong as the ten commandments: I therefore yield to popularclamor when I discuss the profit of my garden.
As I look at it, you might as well ask, Does a sunset pay? I knowthat a sunset is commonly looked on as a cheap entertainment; but itis really one of the most expensive. It is true that we can all havefront seats, and we do not exactly need to dress for it as we do forthe opera; but the conditions under which it is to be enjoyed arerather dear. Among them I should name a good suit of clothes,including some trifling ornament,—not including back hair for onesex, or the parting of it in the middle for the other. I should addalso a good dinner, well cooked and digestible; and the cost of afair education, extended, perhaps, through generations in whichsensibility and love of beauty grew. What I mean is, that if a manis hungry and naked, and half a savage, or with the love of beautyundeveloped in him, a sunset is thrown away on him: so that itappears that the conditions of the enjoyment of a sunset are ascostly as anything in our civilization.
Of course there is no such thing as absolute value in this world.You can only estimate what a thing is worth to you. Does gardeningin a city pay? You might as well ask if it pays to keep hens, or atrotting-horse, or to wear a gold ring, or to keep your lawn cut, oryour hair cut. It is as you like it. In a certain sense, it is asort of profanation to consider if my garden pays, or to set amoney-value upon my delight in it. I fear that you could not put it inmoney. Job had the right idea in his mind when he asked, "Is there anytaste in the white of an egg?" Suppose there is not! What! shall Iset a price upon the tender asparagus or the crisp lettuce, which madethe sweet spring a reality? Shall I turn into merchandise the redstrawberry, the pale green pea, the high-flavored raspberry, thesanguinary beet, that love-plant the tomato, and the corn which did notwaste its sweetness on the desert air, but, after flowing in a sweetrill through all our summer life, mingled at last with the engagingbean in a pool of succotash? Shall I compute in figures what dailyfreshness and health and delight the garden yields, let alone the largecrop of anticipation I gathered as soon as the first seeds got aboveground? I appeal to any gardening man of sound mind, if that whichpays him best in gardening is not that which he cannot show in histrial-balance. Yet I yield to public opinion, when I proceed to makesuch a balance; and I do it with the utmost confidence in figures.
I select as a representative vegetable, in order to estimate the costof gardening, the potato. In my statement, I shall not include theinterest on the value of the land. I throw in the land, because itwould otherwise have stood idle: the thing generally raised on cityland is taxes. I therefore make the following statement of the costand income of my potato-crop, a part of it estimated in connectionwith other garden labor. I have tried to make it so as to satisfythe income-tax collector:—
Plowing…………………………………$0.50
Seed……………………………………$1.50
Manure…………………………………. 8.00
Assistance in planting and digging, 3 days…. 6.75
Labor of self in planting, hoeing, digging,
picking up, 5 days at 17 cents……….. 0.85
_____
Total Cost…………….$17.60
Two thousand five hundred mealy potatoes, at 2 cents…………………………$50.00Small potatoes given to neighbor's pig……. .50
Total return…………..$50.50
Balance, profit in cellar……$32.90
Some of these items need explanation. I have charged nothing for myown time waiting for the potatoes to grow. My time in hoeing,fighting weeds, etc., is put in at five days: it may have been alittle more. Nor have I put in anything for cooling drinks whilehoeing. I leave this out from principle, because I always recommendwater to others. I had some difficulty in fixing the rate of my ownwages. It was the first time I had an opportunity of paying what Ithought labor was worth; and I determined to make a good thing of itfor once. I figured it right down to European prices,—seventeencents a day for unskilled labor. Of course, I boarded myself. Iought to say that I fixed the wages after the work was done, or Imight have been tempted to do as some masons did who worked for me atfour dollars a day. They lay in the shade and slept the sleep ofhonest toil full half the time, at least all the time I was away. Ihave reason to believe that when the wages of mechanics are raised toeight and ten dollars a day, the workmen will not come at all: theywill merely send their cards.
I do not see any possible fault in the above figures. I ought to saythat I deferred putting a value on the potatoes until I had footed upthe debit column. This is always the safest way to do. I hadtwenty-five bushels. I roughly estimated that there are one hundredgood ones to the bushel. Making my own market price, I asked twocents apiece for them. This I should have considered dirt cheap lastJune, when I was going down the rows with the hoe. If any one thinksthat two cents each is high, let him try to raise them.
Nature is "awful smart." I intend to be complimentary in saying so.She shows it in little things. I have mentioned my attempt to put ina few modest turnips, near the close of the season. I sowed theseeds, by the way, in the most liberal manner. Into three or fourshort rows I presume I put enough to sow an acre; and they all cameup,—came up as thick as grass, as crowded and useless as babies in aChinese village. Of course, they had to be thinned out; that is,pretty much all pulled up; and it took me a long time; for it takes aconscientious man some time to decide which are the best andhealthiest plants to spare. After all, I spared too many. That isthe great danger everywhere in this world (it may not be in thenext): things are too thick; we lose all in grasping for too much.The Scotch say, that no man ought to thin out his own turnips,because he will not sacrifice enough to leave room for the remainderto grow: he should get his neighbor, who does not care for theplants, to do it. But this is mere talk, and aside from the point:if there is anything I desire to avoid in these agricultural papers,it is digression. I did think that putting in these turnips so latein the season, when general activity has ceased, and in a remote partof the garden, they would pass unnoticed. But Nature never evenwinks, as I can see. The tender blades were scarcely out of theground when she sent a small black fly, which seemed to have beenborn and held in reserve for this purpose,—to cut the leaves. Theyspeedily made lace-work of the whole bed. Thus everything appears tohave its special enemy,—except, perhaps, p——y: nothing evertroubles that.
Did the Concord Grape ever come to more luscious perfection than thisyear? or yield so abundantly? The golden sunshine has passed intothem, and distended their purple skins almost to bursting. Suchheavy clusters! such bloom! such sweetness! such meat and drink intheir round globes! What a fine fellow Bacchus would have been, ifhe had only signed the pledge when he was a young man! I have takenoff clusters that were as compact and almost as large as the BlackHamburgs. It is slow work picking them. I do not see how thegatherers for the vintage ever get off enough. It takes so long todisentangle the bunches from the leaves and the interlacing vines andthe supporting tendrils; and then I like to hold up each bunch andlook at it in the sunlight, and get the fragrance and the bloom ofit, and show it to Polly, who is making herself useful, as taster andcompanion, at the foot of the ladder, before dropping it into thebasket. But we have other company. The robin, the most knowing andgreedy bird out of paradise (I trust he will always be kept out), hasdiscovered that the grape-crop is uncommonly good, and has come back,with his whole tribe and family, larger than it was in pea-time. Heknows the ripest bunches as well as anybody, and tries them all. Ifhe would take a whole bunch here and there, say half the number, andbe off with it, I should not so much care. But he will not. Hepecks away at all the bunches, and spoils as many as he can. It istime he went south.
There is no prettier sight, to my eye, than a gardener on a ladder inhis grape-arbor, in these golden days, selecting the heaviestclusters of grapes, and handing them down to one and another of agroup of neighbors and friends, who stand under the shade of theleaves, flecked with the sunlight, and cry, "How sweet!" "What niceones!" and the like,—remarks encouraging to the man on the ladder.It is great pleasure to see people eat grapes.
Moral Truth.—I have no doubt that grapes taste best in otherpeople's mouths. It is an old notion that it is easier to begenerous than to be stingy. I am convinced that the majority ofpeople would be generous from selfish motives, if they had theopportunity.
Philosophical Observation.—Nothing shows one who his friends arelike prosperity and ripe fruit. I had a good friend in the country,whom I almost never visited except in cherry-time. By your fruitsyou shall know them.
I like to go into the garden these warm latter days, and muse. Tomuse is to sit in the sun, and not think of anything. I am not surebut goodness comes out of people who bask in the sun, as it does outof a sweet apple roasted before the fire. The late September andOctober sun of this latitude is something like the sun of extremeLower Italy: you can stand a good deal of it, and apparently soak awinter supply into the system. If one only could take in his winterfuel in this way! The next great discovery will, very likely, be theconservation of sunlight. In the correlation of forces, I look tosee the day when the superfluous sunshine will be utilized; as, forinstance, that which has burned up my celery this year will beconverted into a force to work the garden.
This sitting in the sun amid the evidences of a ripe year is theeasiest part of gardening I have experienced. But what a combat hasgone on here! What vegetable passions have run the whole gamut ofambition, selfishness, greed of place, fruition, satiety, and nowrest here in the truce of exhaustion! What a battle-field, if onemay look upon it so! The corn has lost its ammunition, and stackedarms in a slovenly, militia sort of style. The ground vines aretorn, trampled, and withered; and the ungathered cucumbers, worthlessmelons, and golden squashes lie about like the spent bombs andexploded shells of a battle-field. So the cannon-balls lay on thesandy plain before Fort Fisher after the capture. So the greatgrassy meadow at Munich, any morning during the October Fest, isstrewn with empty beermugs. History constantly repeats itself.There is a large crop of moral reflections in my garden, whichanybody is at liberty to gather who passes this way.
I have tried to get in anything that offered temptation to sin.There would be no thieves if there was nothing to steal; and Isuppose, in the thieves' catechism, the provider is as bad as thethief; and, probably, I am to blame for leaving out a few winterpears, which some predatory boy carried off on Sunday. At first Iwas angry, and said I should like to have caught the urchin in theact; but, on second thought, I was glad I did not. The interviewcould not have been pleasant: I shouldn't have known what to do withhim. The chances are, that he would have escaped away with hispockets full, and jibed at me from a safe distance. And, if I hadgot my hands on him, I should have been still more embarrassed. If Ihad flogged him, he would have got over it a good deal sooner than Ishould. That sort of boy does not mind castigation any more than hedoes tearing his trousers in the briers. If I had treated him withkindness, and conciliated him with grapes, showing him the enormityof his offense, I suppose he would have come the next night, andtaken the remainder of the grapes. The truth is, that the publicmorality is lax on the subject of fruit. If anybody puts arsenic orgunpowder into his watermelons, he is universally denounced as astingy old murderer by the community. A great many people regardgrowing fruit as lawful prey, who would not think of breaking intoyour cellar to take it. I found a man once in my raspberry-bushes,early in the season, when we were waiting for a dishful to ripen.Upon inquiring what he was about, he said he was only eating some;and the operation seemed to be so natural and simple, that I dislikedto disturb him. And I am not very sure that one has a right to thewhole of an abundant crop of fruit until he has gathered it. Atleast, in a city garden, one might as well conform his theory to thepractice of the community.
As for children (and it sometimes looks as if the chief products ofmy garden were small boys and hens), it is admitted that they arebarbarians. There is no exception among them to this condition ofbarbarism. This is not to say that they are not attractive; for theyhave the virtues as well as the vices of a primitive people. It isheld by some naturalists that the child is only a zoophyte, with astomach, and feelers radiating from it in search of something to fillit. It is true that a child is always hungry all over: but he isalso curious all over; and his curiosity is excited about as early ashis hunger. He immediately begins to put out his moral feelers intothe unknown and the infinite to discover what sort of an existencethis is into which he has come. His imagination is quite as hungryas his stomach. And again and again it is stronger than his otherappetites. You can easily engage his imagination in a story whichwill make him forget his dinner. He is credulous and superstitious,and open to all wonder. In this, he is exactly like the savageraces. Both gorge themselves on the marvelous; and all the unknownis marvelous to them. I know the general impression is that childrenmust be governed through their stomachs. I think they can becontrolled quite as well through their curiosity; that being the morecraving and imperious of the two. I have seen children follow abouta person who told them stories, and interested them with his charmingtalk, as greedily as if his pockets had been full of bon-bons.
Perhaps this fact has no practical relation to gardening; but itoccurs to me that, if I should paper the outside of my high boardfence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me agood deal of protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top,which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save muchfruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But ifthe fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to readthem until it was too late for him to climb into the garden? I don'tknow. Human nature is vicious. The boy might regard the picture ofthe garden of the Hesperides only as an advertisement of what wasover the fence. I begin to find that the problem of raising fruit isnothing to that of getting it after it has matured. So long as thelaw, just in many respects, is in force against shooting birds andsmall boys, the gardener may sow in tears and reap in vain.
The power of a boy is, to me, something fearful. Consider what hecan do. You buy and set out a choice pear-tree; you enrich the earthfor it; you train and trim it, and vanquish the borer, and watch itsslow growth. At length it rewards your care by producing two orthree pears, which you cut up and divide in the family, declaring theflavor of the bit you eat to be something extraordinary. The nextyear, the little tree blossoms full, and sets well; and in the autumnhas on its slender, drooping limbs half a bushel of fruit, dailygrowing more delicious in the sun. You show it to your friends,reading to them the French name, which you can never remember, on thelabel; and you take an honest pride in the successful fruit of longcare. That night your pears shall be required of you by a boy!Along comes an irresponsible urchin, who has not been growing muchlonger than the tree, with not twenty-five cents worth of clothing onhim, and in five minutes takes off every pear, and retires into safeobscurity. In five minutes the remorseless boy has undone your workof years, and with the easy nonchalance, I doubt not, of any agent offate, in whose path nothing is sacred or safe.
And it is not of much consequence. The boy goes on his way,—toCongress, or to State Prison: in either place he will be accused ofstealing, perhaps wrongfully. You learn, in time, that it is betterto have had pears and lost them than not to have had pears at all.You come to know that the least (and rarest) part of the pleasure ofraising fruit is the vulgar eating it. You recall your delight inconversing with the nurseryman, and looking at his illustratedcatalogues, where all the pears are drawn perfect in form, and ofextra size, and at that exact moment between ripeness and decay whichit is so impossible to hit in practice. Fruit cannot be raised onthis earth to taste as you imagine those pears would taste. Foryears you have this pleasure, unalloyed by any disenchanting reality.How you watch the tender twigs in spring, and the freshly formingbark, hovering about the healthy growing tree with your pruning-knifemany a sunny morning! That is happiness. Then, if you know it, youare drinking the very wine of life; and when the sweet juices of theearth mount the limbs, and flow down the tender stem, ripening andreddening the pendent fruit, you feel that you somehow stand at thesource of things, and have no unimportant share in the processes ofNature. Enter at this moment boy the destroyer, whose office is thatof preserver as well; for, though he removes the fruit from yoursight, it remains in your memory immortally ripe and desirable. Thegardener needs all these consolations of a high philosophy.
EIGHTEENTH WEEK
Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything mighthave turned out so differently! If Ravaillac had not been imprisonedfor debt, he would not have stabbed Henry of Navarre. If William ofOrange had escaped assassination by Philip's emissaries; if Francehad followed the French Calvin, and embraced Protestant Calvinism, asit came very near doing towards the end of the sixteenth century; ifthe Continental ammunition had not given out at Bunker's Hill; ifBlucher had not "come up" at Waterloo,—the lesson is, that things donot come up unless they are planted. When you go behind thehistorical scenery, you find there is a rope and pulley to effectevery transformation which has astonished you. It was the rascalityof a minister and a contractor five years before that lost thebattle; and the cause of the defeat was worthless ammunition. Ishould like to know how many wars have been caused by fits ofindigestion, and how many more dynasties have been upset by the loveof woman than by the hate of man. It is only because we are illinformed that anything surprises us; and we are disappointed becausewe expect that for which we have not provided.
I had too vague expectations of what my garden would do of itself. Agarden ought to produce one everything,—just as a business ought tosupport a man, and a house ought to keep itself. We had a conventionlately to resolve that the house should keep itself; but it won't.There has been a lively time in our garden this summer; but it seemsto me there is very little to show for it. It has been a terriblecampaign; but where is the indemnity? Where are all "sass" andLorraine? It is true that we have lived on the country; but wedesire, besides, the fruits of the war. There are no onions, for onething. I am quite ashamed to take people into my garden, and havethem notice the absence of onions. It is very marked. In onion isstrength; and a garden without it lacks flavor. The onion in itssatin wrappings is among the most beautiful of vegetables; and it isthe only one that represents the essence of things. It can almost besaid to have a soul. You take off coat after coat, and the onion isstill there; and, when the last one is removed, who dare say that theonion itself is destroyed, though you can weep over its departedspirit? If there is any one thing on this fallen earth that theangels in heaven weep over—more than another, it is the onion.
I know that there is supposed to be a prejudice against the onion;but I think there is rather a cowardice in regard to it. I doubt notthat all men and women love the onion; but few confess their love.Affection for it is concealed. Good New-Englanders are as shy ofowning it as they are of talking about religion. Some people havedays on which they eat onions,—what you might call "retreats," ortheir "Thursdays." The act is in the nature of a religious ceremony,an Eleusinian mystery; not a breath of it must get abroad. On thatday they see no company; they deny the kiss of greeting to thedearest friend; they retire within themselves, and hold communionwith one of the most pungent and penetrating manifestations of themoral vegetable world. Happy is said to be the family which can eatonions together. They are, for the time being, separate from theworld, and have a harmony of aspiration. There is a hint here forthe reformers. Let them become apostles of the onion; let them eat,and preach it to their fellows, and circulate tracts of it in theform of seeds. In the onion is the hope of universal brotherhood.If all men will eat onions at all times, they will come into auniversal sympathy. Look at Italy. I hope I am not mistaken as tothe cause of her unity. It was the Reds who preached the gospelwhich made it possible. All the Reds of Europe, all the sworndevotees of the mystic Mary Ann, eat of the common vegetable. Theiroaths are strong with it. It is the food, also, of the common peopleof Italy. All the social atmosphere of that delicious land is ladenwith it. Its odor is a practical democracy. In the churches all arealike: there is one faith, one smell. The entrance of Victor Emanuelinto Rome is only the pompous proclamation of a unity which garlichad already accomplished; and yet we, who boast of our democracy, eatonions in secret.
I now see that I have left out many of the most moral elements.Neither onions, parsnips, carrots, nor cabbages are here. I havenever seen a garden in the autumn before, without the uncouth cabbagein it; but my garden gives the impression of a garden without a head.The cabbage is the rose of Holland. I admire the force by which itcompacts its crisp leaves into a solid head. The secret of it wouldbe priceless to the world. We should see less expansive foreheadswith nothing within. Even the largest cabbages are not always thebest. But I mention these things, not from any sympathy I have withthe vegetables named, but to show how hard it is to go contrary tothe expectations of society. Society expects every man to havecertain things in his garden. Not to raise cabbage is as if one hadno pew in church. Perhaps we shall come some day to free churchesand free gardens; when I can show my neighbor through my tiredgarden, at the end of the season, when skies are overcast, and brownleaves are swirling down, and not mind if he does raise his eyebrowswhen he observes, "Ah! I see you have none of this, and of that." Atpresent we want the moral courage to plant only what we need; tospend only what will bring us peace, regardless of what is going onover the fence. We are half ruined by conformity; but we should bewholly ruined without it; and I presume I shall make a garden nextyear that will be as popular as possible.
And this brings me to what I see may be a crisis in life. I begin tofeel the temptation of experiment. Agriculture, horticulture,floriculture,—these are vast fields, into which one may wander away,and never be seen more. It seemed to me a very simple thing, thisgardening; but it opens up astonishingly. It is like the infinitepossibilities in worsted-work. Polly sometimes says to me, "I wishyou would call at Bobbin's, and match that skein of worsted for me,when you are in town." Time was, I used to accept such a commissionwith alacrity and self-confidence. I went to Bobbin's, and asked oneof his young men, with easy indifference, to give me some of that.The young man, who is as handsome a young man as ever I looked at,and who appears to own the shop, and whose suave superciliousnesswould be worth everything to a cabinet minister who wanted to repelapplicants for place, says, "I have n't an ounce: I have sent toParis, and I expect it every day. I have a good deal of difficultyin getting that shade in my assortment." To think that he is incommunication with Paris, and perhaps with Persia! Respect for sucha being gives place to awe. I go to another shop, holding fast to myscarlet clew. There I am shown a heap of stuff, with more colors andshades than I had supposed existed in all the world. What a blaze ofdistraction! I have been told to get as near the shade as I could;and so I compare and contrast, till the whole thing seems to me aboutof one color. But I can settle my mind on nothing. The affairassumes a high degree of importance. I am satisfied with nothing butperfection. I don't know what may happen if the shade is notmatched. I go to another shop, and another, and another. At last apretty girl, who could make any customer believe that green is blue,matches the shade in a minute. I buy five cents worth. That was theorder. Women are the most economical persons that ever were. I havespent two hours in this five-cent business; but who shall say theywere wasted, when I take the stuff home, and Polly says it is aperfect match, and looks so pleased, and holds it up with the work,at arm's length, and turns her head one side, and then takes herneedle, and works it in? Working in, I can see, my own obligingnessand amiability with every stitch. Five cents is dirt cheap for sucha pleasure.
The things I may do in my garden multiply on my vision. Howfascinating have the catalogues of the nurserymen become! Can Iraise all those beautiful varieties, each one of which is preferableto the other? Shall I try all the kinds of grapes, and all the sortsof pears? I have already fifteen varieties of strawberries (vines);and I have no idea that I have hit the right one. Must I subscribeto all the magazines and weekly papers which offer premiums of thebest vines? Oh, that all the strawberries were rolled into one, thatI could inclose all its lusciousness in one bite! Oh for the goodold days when a strawberry was a strawberry, and there was noperplexity about it! There are more berries now than churches; andno one knows what to believe. I have seen gardens which were allexperiment, given over to every new thing, and which produced littleor nothing to the owners, except the pleasure of expectation. Peoplegrow pear-trees at great expense of time and money, which never yieldthem more than four pears to the tree. The fashions of ladies'bonnets are nothing to the fashions of nurserymen. He who attemptsto follow them has a business for life; but his life may be short.If I enter upon this wide field of horticultural experiment, I shallleave peace behind; and I may expect the ground to open, and swallowme and all my fortune. May Heaven keep me to the old roots and herbsof my forefathers! Perhaps in the world of modern reforms this isnot possible; but I intend now to cultivate only the standard things,and learn to talk knowingly of the rest. Of course, one must keep upa reputation. I have seen people greatly enjoy themselves, andelevate themselves in their own esteem, in a wise and critical talkabout all the choice wines, while they were sipping a decoction, theoriginal cost of which bore no relation to the price of grapes.
NINETEENTH WEEK
The closing scenes are not necessarily funereal. A garden should begot ready for winter as well as for summer. When one goes intowinter-quarters, he wants everything neat and trim. Expecting highwinds, we bring everything into close reef. Some men there are whonever shave (if they are so absurd as ever to shave), except whenthey go abroad, and who do not take care to wear polished boots inthe bosoms of their families. I like a man who shaves (next to onewho does n't shave) to satisfy his own conscience, and not fordisplay, and who dresses as neatly at home as he does anywhere. Sucha man will be likely to put his garden in complete order before thesnow comes, so that its last days shall not present a scene ofmelancholy ruin and decay.
I confess that, after such an exhausting campaign, I felt a greattemptation to retire, and call it a drawn engagement. But bettercounsels prevailed. I determined that the weeds should not sleep onthe field of battle. I routed them out, and leveled their works. Iam master of the situation. If I have made a desert, I at least havepeace; but it is not quite a desert. The strawberries, theraspberries, the celery, the turnips, wave green above the cleanearth, with no enemy in sight. In these golden October days no workis more fascinating than this getting ready for spring. The sun isno longer a burning enemy, but a friend, illuminating all the openspace, and warming the mellow soil. And the pruning and clearingaway of rubbish, and the fertilizing, go on with something of thehilarity of a wake, rather than the despondency of other funerals.When the wind begins to come out of the northwest of set purpose, andto sweep the ground with low and searching fierceness, very differentfrom the roistering, jolly bluster of early fall, I have put thestrawberries under their coverlet of leaves, pruned the grape-vinesand laid them under the soil, tied up the tender plants, given thefruit trees a good, solid meal about the roots; and so I turn away,writing Resurgam on the gatepost. And Calvin, aware that the summeris past and the harvest is ended, and that a mouse in the kitchen isworth two birds gone south, scampers away to the house with his tailin the air.
And yet I am not perfectly at rest in my mind. I know that this isonly a truce until the parties recover their exhausted energies. Allwinter long the forces of chemistry will be mustering under ground,repairing the losses, calling up the reserves, getting new strengthfrom my surface-fertilizing bounty, and making ready for the springcampaign. They will open it before I am ready: while the snow isscarcely melted, and the ground is not passable, they will begin tomove on my works; and the fight will commence. Yet how deceitfullyit will open to the music of birds and the soft enchantment of thespring mornings! I shall even be permitted to win a few skirmishes:the secret forces will even wait for me to plant and sow, and show myfull hand, before they come on in heavy and determined assault.There are already signs of an internecine fight with the devil-grass,which has intrenched itself in a considerable portion of mygarden-patch. It contests the ground inch by inch; and digging itout is very much such labor as eating a piece of choke-cherry piewith the stones all in. It is work, too, that I know by experience Ishall have to do alone. Every man must eradicate his owndevil-grass. The neighbors who have leisure to help you ingrape-picking time are all busy when devil-grass is most aggressive.My neighbors' visits are well timed: it is only their hens which haveseasons for their own.
I am told that abundant and rank weeds are signs of a rich soil; butI have noticed that a thin, poor soil grows little but weeds. I aminclined to think that the substratum is the same, and that the onlychoice in this world is what kind of weeds you will have. I am notmuch attracted by the gaunt, flavorless mullein, and the wiry thistleof upland country pastures, where the grass is always gray, as if theworld were already weary and sick of life. The awkward, uncouthwickedness of remote country-places, where culture has died out afterthe first crop, is about as disagreeable as the ranker and richervice of city life, forced by artificial heat and the juices of anoverfed civilization. There is no doubt that, on the whole, the richsoil is the best: the fruit of it has body and flavor. To whataffluence does a woman (to take an instance, thank Heaven, which iscommon) grow, with favoring circumstances, under the stimulus of therichest social and intellectual influences! I am aware that therehas been a good deal said in poetry about the fringed gentian and theharebell of rocky districts and waysides, and I know that it ispossible for maidens to bloom in very slight soil into a wild-woodgrace and beauty; yet, the world through, they lack that wealth ofcharms, that tropic affluence of both person and mind, which higherand more stimulating culture brings,—the passion as well as the soulglowing in the Cloth-of-Gold rose. Neither persons nor plants areever fully themselves until they are cultivated to their highest. I,for one, have no fear that society will be too much enriched. Theonly question is about keeping down the weeds; and I have learned byexperience, that we need new sorts of hoes, and more disposition touse them.
Moral Deduction.—The difference between soil and society isevident. We bury decay in the earth; we plant in it the perishing;we feed it with offensive refuse: but nothing grows out of it that isnot clean; it gives us back life and beauty for our rubbish. Societyreturns us what we give it.
Pretending to reflect upon these things, but in reality watching theblue-jays, who are pecking at the purple berries of the woodbine onthe south gable, I approach the house. Polly is picking up chestnutson the sward, regardless of the high wind which rattles them abouther head and upon the glass roof of her winter-garden. The garden, Isee, is filled with thrifty plants, which will make it always summerthere. The callas about the fountain will be in flower by Christmas:the plant appears to keep that holiday in her secret heart allsummer. I close the outer windows as we go along, and congratulatemyself that we are ready for winter. For the winter-garden I have noresponsibility: Polly has entire charge of it. I am only required tokeep it heated, and not too hot either; to smoke it often for thedeath of the bugs; to water it once a day; to move this and that intothe sun and out of the sun pretty constantly: but she does all thework. We never relinquish that theory.
As we pass around the house, I discover a boy in the ravine filling abag with chestnuts and hickorynuts. They are not plenty this year;and I suggest the propriety of leaving some for us. The boy is alittle slow to take the idea: but he has apparently found the pickingpoor, and exhausted it; for, as he turns away down the glen, he hailsme with,
"Mister, I say, can you tell me where I can find some walnuts?"
The coolness of this world grows upon me. It is time to go in andlight a wood-fire on the hearth.
NOTE.—The following brief Memoir of one of the characters inthis book is added by his friend, in the hope that the recordof an exemplary fife in an humble sphere may be of some serviceto the world.
HARTFORD, January, 1880.
CALVIN
A STUDY OF CHARACTER
Calvin is dead. His life, long to him, but short for the rest of us,was not marked by startling adventures, but his character was souncommon and his qualities were so worthy of imitation, that I havebeen asked by those who personally knew him to set down myrecollections of his career.
His origin and ancestry were shrouded in mystery; even his age was amatter of pure conjecture. Although he was of the Maltese race, Ihave reason to suppose that he was American by birth as he certainlywas in sympathy. Calvin was given to me eight years ago by Mrs.Stowe, but she knew nothing of his age or origin. He walked into herhouse one day out of the great unknown and became at once at home, asif he had been always a friend of the family. He appeared to haveartistic and literary tastes, and it was as if he had inquired at thedoor if that was the residence of the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin,"and, upon being assured that it was, bad decided to dwell there.This is, of course, fanciful, for his antecedents were whollyunknown, but in his time he could hardly have been in any householdwhere he would not have heard "Uncle Tom's Cabin" talked about. Whenhe came to Mrs. Stowe, he was as large as he ever was, andapparently as old as he ever became. Yet there was in him noappearance of age; he was in the happy maturity of all his powers,and you would rather have said that in that maturity he had found thesecret of perpetual youth. And it was as difficult to believe thathe would ever be aged as it was to imagine that he had ever been inimmature youth. There was in him a mysterious perpetuity.
After some years, when Mrs. Stowe made her winter home in Florida,Calvin came to live with us. From the first moment, he fell into theways of the house and assumed a recognized position in the family,—Isay recognized, because after he became known he was always inquiredfor by visitors, and in the letters to the other members of thefamily he always received a message. Although the least obtrusive ofbeings, his individuality always made itself felt.
His personal appearance had much to do with this, for he was of royalmould, and had an air of high breeding. He was large, but he hadnothing of the fat grossness of the celebrated Angora family; thoughpowerful, he was exquisitely proportioned, and as graceful in everymovement as a young leopard. When he stood up to open a door—heopened all the doors with old-fashioned latches—he was portentouslytall, and when stretched on the rug before the fire he seemed toolong for this world—as indeed he was. His coat was the finest andsoftest I have ever seen, a shade of quiet Maltese; and from histhroat downward, underneath, to the white tips of his feet, he worethe whitest and most delicate ermine; and no person was ever morefastidiously neat. In his finely formed head you saw something ofhis aristocratic character; the ears were small and cleanly cut,there was a tinge of pink in the nostrils, his face was handsome, andthe expression of his countenance exceedingly intelligent—I shouldcall it even a sweet expression, if the term were not inconsistentwith his look of alertness and sagacity.
It is difficult to convey a just idea of his gayety in connectionwith his dignity and gravity, which his name expressed. As we knownothing of his family, of course it will be understood that Calvinwas his Christian name. He had times of relaxation into utterplayfulness, delighting in a ball of yarn, catching sportively atstray ribbons when his mistress was at her toilet, and pursuing hisown tail, with hilarity, for lack of anything better. He could amusehimself by the hour, and he did not care for children; perhapssomething in his past was present to his memory. He had absolutelyno bad habits, and his disposition was perfect. I never saw himexactly angry, though I have seen his tail grow to an enormous sizewhen a strange cat appeared upon his lawn. He disliked cats,evidently regarding them as feline and treacherous, and he had noassociation with them. Occasionally there would be heard a nightconcert in the shrubbery. Calvin would ask to have the door opened,and then you would hear a rush and a "pestzt," and the concert wouldexplode, and Calvin would quietly come in and resume his seat on thehearth. There was no trace of anger in his manner, but he would n'thave any of that about the house. He had the rare virtue ofmagnanimity. Although he had fixed notions about his own rights, andextraordinary persistency in getting them, he never showed temper ata repulse; he simply and firmly persisted till he had what he wanted.His diet was one point; his idea was that of the scholars aboutdictionaries,—to "get the best." He knew as well as any one what wasin the house, and would refuse beef if turkey was to be had; and ifthere were oysters, he would wait over the turkey to see if theoysters would not be forthcoming. And yet he was not a grossgourmand; he would eat bread if he saw me eating it, and thought hewas not being imposed on. His habits of feeding, also, were refined;he never used a knife, and he would put up his hand and draw the forkdown to his mouth as gracefully as a grown person. Unless necessitycompelled, he would not eat in the kitchen, but insisted upon hismeals in the dining-room, and would wait patiently, unless a strangerwere present; and then he was sure to importune the visitor, hopingthat the latter was ignorant of the rule of the house, and would givehim something. They used to say that he preferred as his table-clothon the floor a certain well-known church journal; but this was saidby an Episcopalian. So far as I know, he had no religiousprejudices, except that he did not like the association withRomanists. He tolerated the servants, because they belonged to thehouse, and would sometimes linger by the kitchen stove; but themoment visitors came in he arose, opened the door, and marched intothe drawing-room. Yet he enjoyed the company of his equals, andnever withdrew, no matter how many callers—whom he recognized as ofhis society—might come into the drawing-room. Calvin was fond ofcompany, but he wanted to choose it; and I have no doubt that his wasan aristocratic fastidiousness rather than one of faith. It is sowith most people.
The intelligence of Calvin was something phenomenal, in his rank oflife. He established a method of communicating his wants, and evensome of his sentiments; and he could help himself in many things.There was a furnace register in a retired room, where he used to gowhen he wished to be alone, that he always opened when he desiredmore heat; but he never shut it, any more than he shut the door afterhimself. He could do almost everything but speak; and you woulddeclare sometimes that you could see a pathetic longing to do that inhis intelligent face. I have no desire to overdraw his qualities,but if there was one thing in him more noticeable than another, itwas his fondness for nature. He could content himself for hours at alow window, looking into the ravine and at the great trees, notingthe smallest stir there; he delighted, above all things, to accompanyme walking about the garden, hearing the birds, getting the smell ofthe fresh earth, and rejoicing in the sunshine. He followed me andgamboled like a dog, rolling over on the turf and exhibiting hisdelight in a hundred ways. If I worked, he sat and watched me, orlooked off over the bank, and kept his ear open to the twitter in thecherry-trees. When it stormed, he was sure to sit at the window,keenly watching the rain or the snow, glancing up and down at itsfalling; and a winter tempest always delighted him. I think he wasgenuinely fond of birds, but, so far as I know, he usually confinedhimself to one a day; he never killed, as some sportsmen do, for thesake of killing, but only as civilized people do,—from necessity.He was intimate with the flying-squirrels who dwell in thechestnut-trees,—too intimate, for almost every day in the summer hewould bring in one, until he nearly discouraged them. He was, indeed,a superb hunter, and would have been a devastating one, if his bump ofdestructiveness had not been offset by a bump of moderation. There wasvery little of the brutality of the lower animals about him; I don'tthink he enjoyed rats for themselves, but he knew his business, and forthe first few months of his residence with us he waged an awfulcampaign against the horde, and after that his simple presence wassufficient to deter them from coming on the premises. Mice amused him,but he usually considered them too small game to be taken seriously; Ihave seen him play for an hour with a mouse, and then let him go with aroyal condescension. In this whole, matter of "getting a living,"Calvin was a great contrast to the rapacity of the age in which helived.
I hesitate a little to speak of his capacity for friendship and theaffectionateness of his nature, for I know from his own reserve thathe would not care to have it much talked about. We understood eachother perfectly, but we never made any fuss about it; when I spokehis name and snapped my fingers, he came to me; when I returned homeat night, he was pretty sure to be waiting for me near the gate, andwould rise and saunter along the walk, as if his being there werepurely accidental,—so shy was he commonly of showing feeling; andwhen I opened the door, he never rushed in, like a cat, but loitered,and lounged, as if he had no intention of going in, but wouldcondescend to. And yet, the fact was, he knew dinner was ready, andhe was bound to be there. He kept the run of dinner-time. Ithappened sometimes, during our absence in the summer, that dinnerwould be early, and Calvin, walking about the grounds, missed it andcame in late. But he never made a mistake the second day. There wasone thing he never did,—he never rushed through an open doorway. Henever forgot his dignity. If he had asked to have the door opened,and was eager to go out, he always went deliberately; I can see himnow standing on the sill, looking about at the sky as if he wasthinking whether it were worth while to take an umbrella, until hewas near having his tail shut in.
His friendship was rather constant than demonstrative. When wereturned from an absence of nearly two years, Calvin welcomed us withevident pleasure, but showed his satisfaction rather by tranquilhappiness than by fuming about. He had the faculty of making us gladto get home. It was his constancy that was so attractive. He likedcompanionship, but he wouldn't be petted, or fussed over, or sit inany one's lap a moment; he always extricated himself from suchfamiliarity with dignity and with no show of temper. If there wasany petting to be done, however, he chose to do it. Often he wouldsit looking at me, and then, moved by a delicate affection, come andpull at my coat and sleeve until he could touch my face with hisnose, and then go away contented. He had a habit of coming to mystudy in the morning, sitting quietly by my side or on the table forhours, watching the pen run over the paper, occasionally swinging histail round for a blotter, and then going to sleep among the papers bythe inkstand. Or, more rarely, he would watch the writing from aperch on my shoulder. Writing always interested him, and, until heunderstood it, he wanted to hold the pen.
He always held himself in a kind of reserve with his friend, as if hehad said, "Let us respect our personality, and not make a 'mess' offriendship." He saw, with Emerson, the risk of degrading it totrivial conveniency. "Why insist on rash personal relations withyour friend?" "Leave this touching and clawing." Yet I would notgive an unfair notion of his aloofness, his fine sense of thesacredness of the me and the not-me. And, at the risk of not beingbelieved, I will relate an incident, which was often repeated.Calvin had the practice of passing a portion of the night in thecontemplation of its beauties, and would come into our chamber overthe roof of the conservatory through the open window, summer andwinter, and go to sleep on the foot of my bed. He would do thisalways exactly in this way; he never was content to stay in thechamber if we compelled him to go upstairs and through the door. Hehad the obstinacy of General Grant. But this is by the way. In themorning, he performed his toilet and went down to breakfast with therest of the family. Now, when the mistress was absent from home, andat no other time, Calvin would come in the morning, when the bellrang, to the head of the bed, put up his feet and look into my face,follow me about when I rose, "assist" at the dressing, and in manypurring ways show his fondness, as if he had plainly said, "I knowthat she has gone away, but I am here." Such was Calvin in raremoments.
He had his limitations. Whatever passion he had for nature, he hadno conception of art. There was sent to him once a fine and veryexpressive cat's head in bronze, by Fremiet. I placed it on thefloor. He regarded it intently, approached it cautiously andcrouchingly, touched it with his nose, perceived the fraud, turnedaway abruptly, and never would notice it afterward. On the whole,his life was not only a successful one, but a happy one. He neverhad but one fear, so far as I know: he had a mortal and a reasonableterror of plumbers. He would never stay in the house when they werehere. No coaxing could quiet him. Of course he did n't share ourfear about their charges, but he must have had some dreadfulexperience with them in that portion of his life which is unknown tous. A plumber was to him the devil, and I have no doubt that, in hisscheme, plumbers were foreordained to do him mischief.
In speaking of his worth, it has never occurred to me to estimateCalvin by the worldly standard. I know that it is customary now,when any one dies, to ask how much he was worth, and that no obituaryin the newspapers is considered complete without such an estimate.The plumbers in our house were one day overheard to say that, "Theysay that she says that he says that he wouldn't take a hundreddollars for him." It is unnecessary to say that I never made such aremark, and that, so far as Calvin was concerned, there was nopurchase in money.
As I look back upon it, Calvin's life seems to me a fortunate one,for it was natural and unforced. He ate when he was hungry, sleptwhen he was sleepy, and enjoyed existence to the very tips of histoes and the end of his expressive and slow-moving tail. Hedelighted to roam about the garden, and stroll among the trees, andto lie on the green grass and luxuriate in all the sweet influencesof summer. You could never accuse him of idleness, and yet he knewthe secret of repose. The poet who wrote so prettily of him that hislittle life was rounded with a sleep, understated his felicity; itwas rounded with a good many. His conscience never seemed tointerfere with his slumbers. In fact, he had good habits and acontented mind. I can see him now walk in at the study door, sitdown by my chair, bring his tail artistically about his feet, andlook up at me with unspeakable happiness in his handsome face. Ioften thought that he felt the dumb limitation which denied him thepower of language. But since he was denied speech, he scorned theinarticulate mouthings of the lower animals. The vulgar mewing andyowling of the cat species was beneath him; he sometimes uttered asort of articulate and well-bred ejaculation, when he wished to callattention to something that he considered remarkable, or to some wantof his, but he never went whining about. He would sit for hours at aclosed window, when he desired to enter, without a murmur, and whenit was opened, he never admitted that he had been impatient by"bolting" in. Though speech he had not, and the unpleasant kind ofutterance given to his race he would not use, he had a mighty powerof purr to express his measureless content with congenial society.There was in him a musical organ with stops of varied power andexpression, upon which I have no doubt he could have performedScarlatti's celebrated cat's-fugue.
Whether Calvin died of old age, or was carried off by one of thediseases incident to youth, it is impossible to say; for hisdeparture was as quiet as his advent was mysterious. I only knowthat he appeared to us in this world in his perfect stature andbeauty, and that after a time, like Lohengrin, he withdrew. In hisillness there was nothing more to be regretted than in all hisblameless life. I suppose there never was an illness that had moreof dignity, and sweetness and resignation in it. It came ongradually, in a kind of listlessness and want of appetite. Analarming symptom was his preference for the warmth of afurnace-register to the lively sparkle of the open woodfire.Whatever pain he suffered, he bore it in silence, and seemed onlyanxious not to obtrude his malady. We tempted him with thedelicacies of the season, but it soon became impossible for him toeat, and for two weeks he ate or drank scarcely anything. Sometimeshe made an effort to take something, but it was evident that he madethe effort to please us. The neighbors—and I am convinced that theadvice of neighbors is never good for anything—suggested catnip. Hewould n't even smell it. We had the attendance of an amateurpractitioner of medicine, whose real office was the cure of souls,but nothing touched his case. He took what was offered, but it waswith the air of one to whom the time for pellets was passed. He sator lay day after day almost motionless, never once making a displayof those vulgar convulsions or contortions of pain which are sodisagreeable to society. His favorite place was on the brightestspot of a Smyrna rug by the conservatory, where the sunlight fell andhe could hear the fountain play. If we went to him and exhibited ourinterest in his condition, he always purred in recognition of oursympathy. And when I spoke his name, he looked up with an expressionthat said, "I understand it, old fellow, but it's no use." He was toall who came to visit him a model of calmness and patience inaffliction.
I was absent from home at the last, but heard by daily postal-card ofhis failing condition; and never again saw him alive. One sunnymorning, he rose from his rug, went into the conservatory (he wasvery thin then), walked around it deliberately, looking at all theplants he knew, and then went to the bay-window in the dining-room,and stood a long time looking out upon the little field, now brownand sere, and toward the garden, where perhaps the happiest hours ofhis life had been spent. It was a last look. He turned and walkedaway, laid himself down upon the bright spot in the rug, and quietlydied.
It is not too much to say that a little shock went through theneighborhood when it was known that Calvin was dead, so marked washis individuality; and his friends, one after another, came in to seehim. There was no sentimental nonsense about his obsequies; it wasfelt that any parade would have been distasteful to him. John, whoacted as undertaker, prepared a candle-box for him and I believeassumed a professional decorum; but there may have been the usuallevity underneath, for I heard that he remarked in the kitchen thatit was the "driest wake he ever attended." Everybody, however, felta fondness for Calvin, and regarded him with a certain respect.Between him and Bertha there existed a great friendship, and sheapprehended his nature; she used to say that sometimes she was afraidof him, he looked at her so intelligently; she was never certain thathe was what he appeared to be.
When I returned, they had laid Calvin on a table in an upper chamberby an open window. It was February. He reposed in a candle-box,lined about the edge with evergreen, and at his head stood a littlewine-glass with flowers. He lay with his head tucked down in hisarms,—a favorite position of his before the fire,—as if asleep inthe comfort of his soft and exquisite fur. It was the involuntaryexclamation of those who saw him, "How natural he looks!" Asfor myself, I said nothing. John buried him under the twinhawthorn-trees,—one white and the other pink,—in a spot where Calvinwas fond of lying and listening to the hum of summer insects and thetwitter of birds.
Perhaps I have failed to make appear the individuality of characterthat was so evident to those who knew him. At any rate, I have setdown nothing concerning him, but the literal truth. He was always amystery. I did not know whence he came; I do not know whither he hasgone. I would not weave one spray of falsehood in the wreath I layupon his grave.
By Charles Dudley Warner
FIRST STUDY
I
The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; the hearthhas gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to berespected; sex is only distinguished by a difference betweenmillinery bills and tailors' bills; there is no more toast-and-cider;the young are not allowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at night;half a cheese is no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcelyever see in front of the coals a row of roasting apples, which abright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunnyface from the fire with one hand, turns from time to time; scarce arethe gray-haired sires who strop their razors on the family Bible, anddoze in the chimney-corner. A good many things have gone out withthe fire on the hearth.
I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanishedwith the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happinessare possible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when weare all passing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall bepurified as we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family isgone, as an institution, though there still are attempts to bring upa family round a "register." But you might just as well try to bringit up by hand, as without the rallying-point of a hearthstone. Arethere any homesteads nowadays? Do people hesitate to change housesany more than they do to change their clothes? People hire houses asthey would a masquerade costume, liking, sometimes, to appear for ayear in a little fictitious stone-front splendor above their means.Thus it happens that so many people live in houses that do not fitthem. I should almost as soon think of wearing another person'sclothes as his house; unless I could let it out and take it in untilit fitted, and somehow expressed my own character and taste. But wehave fallen into the days of conformity. It is no wonder that peopleconstantly go into their neighbors' houses by mistake, just as, inspite of the Maine law, they wear away each other's hats from anevening party. It has almost come to this, that you might as well beanybody else as yourself.
Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing to the discontinuanceof big chimneys, with wide fireplaces in them? How can a person beattached to a house that has no center of attraction, no soul in it,in the visible form of a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like theheart in the body? When you think of the old homestead, if you everdo, your thoughts go straight to the wide chimney and its burninglogs. No wonder that you are ready to move from one fireplacelesshouse into another. But you have something just as good, you say.Yes, I have heard of it. This age, which imitates everything, evento the virtues of our ancestors, has invented a fireplace, withartificial, iron, or composition logs in it, hacked and painted, inwhich gas is burned, so that it has the appearance of a wood-fire.This seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat would lie down beforeit? Can you poke it? If you can't poke it, it is a fraud. To pokea wood-fire is more solid enjoyment than almost anything else in theworld. The crowning human virtue in a man is to let his wife pokethe fire. I do not know how any virtue whatever is possible over animitation gas-log. What a sense of insincerity the family must have,if they indulge in the hypocrisy of gathering about it. With thiscenter of untruthfulness, what must the life in the family be?Perhaps the father will be living at the rate of ten thousand a yearon a salary of four thousand; perhaps the mother, more beautiful andyounger than her beautified daughters, will rouge; perhaps the youngladies will make wax-work. A cynic might suggest as the motto ofmodern life this simple legend,—"just as good as the real." But I amnot a cynic, and I hope for the rekindling of wood-fires, and areturn of the beautiful home light from them. If a wood-fire is aluxury, it is cheaper than many in which we indulge without thought,and cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made necessary by the wantof ventilation of the house. Not that I have anything againstdoctors; I only wish, after they have been to see us in a way thatseems so friendly, they had nothing against us.
My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three feet wide, has a broadhearthstone in front of it, where the live coals tumble down, and apair of gigantic brass andirons. The brasses are burnished, andshine cheerfully in the firelight, and on either side stand tallshovel and tongs, like sentries, mounted in brass. The tongs, likethe two-handed sword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. Weburn in it hickory wood, cut long. We like the smell of thisaromatic forest timber, and its clear flame. The birch is also asweet wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual flame and an eventemper,—no snappishness. Some prefer the elm, which holds fire sowell; and I have a neighbor who uses nothing but apple-tree wood,—asolid, family sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of delightfulsuggestions. But few people can afford to burn up their fruit trees.I should as soon think of lighting the fire with sweet-oil that comesin those graceful wicker-bound flasks from Naples, or with manuscriptsermons, which, however, do not burn well, be they never so dry, nothalf so well as printed editorials.
Few people know how to make a wood-fire, but everybody thinks he orshe does. You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest onthe andirons. This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat allday, and late in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, likethe last days of a good man, whose life is the richest and mostbeneficent at the close, when the flames of passion and the sap ofyouth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, brightelements of character. Then you want a forestick on the andirons;and upon these build the fire of lighter stuff. In this way you haveat once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually eats into the solidmass, sinking down with increasing fervor; coals drop below, anddelicate tongues of flame sport along the beautiful grain of theforestick. There are people who kindle a fire underneath. But theseare conceited people, who are wedded to their own way. I suppose anaccomplished incendiary always starts a fire in the attic, if he can.I am not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry. I don't call thoseincendiaries very good Christians who, when they set fire to themartyrs, touched off the fagots at the bottom, so as to make them goslow. Besides, knowledge works down easier than it does up.Education must proceed from the more enlightened down to the moreignorant strata. If you want better common schools, raise thestandard of the colleges, and so on. Build your fire on top. Letyour light shine. I have seen people build a fire under a balkyhorse; but he wouldn't go, he'd be a horse-martyr first. A firekindled under one never did him any good. Of course you can make afire on the hearth by kindling it underneath, but that does not makeit right. I want my hearthfire to be an emblem of the best things.
II
It must be confessed that a wood-fire needs as much tending as a pairof twins. To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room,even by the best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in itscells, the brands are continually dropping down, and coals are beingscattered over the hearth. However much a careful housewife, whothinks more of neatness than enjoyment, may dislike this, it is oneof the chief delights of a wood-fire. I would as soon have anEnglishman without side-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; andI would rather have no fire than one that required no tending,—oneof dead wood that could not sing again the imprisoned songs of theforest, or give out in brilliant scintillations the sunshine itabsorbed in its growth. Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spiceof danger in it gives zest to the care of the hearth-fire. Nothingis so beautiful as springing, changing flame,—it was the last freakof the Gothic architecture men to represent the fronts of elaborateedifices of stone as on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. Afireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, where one can witnessthe most brilliant chemical experiments, minor conflagrations onlywanting the grandeur of cities on fire. It is a vulgar notion that afire is only for heat. A chief value of it is, however, to look at.It is a picture, framed between the jambs. You have nothing on yourwalls, by the best masters (the poor masters are not, however,represented), that is really so fascinating, so spiritual. Speakinglike an upholsterer, it furnishes the room. And it is never twicethe same. In this respect it is like the landscape-view through awindow, always seen in a new light, color, or condition. Thefireplace is a window into the most charming world I ever had aglimpse of.
Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I am not scientificenough to despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence onMount Washington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortableeven by boiling. They say that they say in Boston that there is asatisfaction in being well dressed which religion cannot give. Thereis certainly a satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory firewhich is not to be found in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. Thehot air of a furnace is a sirocco; the heat of a wood-fire is onlyintense sunshine, like that bottled in Lacrimae Christi. Besidesthis, the eye is delighted, the sense of smell is regaled by thefragrant decomposition, and the ear is pleased with the hissing,crackling, and singing,—a liberation of so many out-door noises.Some people like the sound of bubbling in a boiling pot, or thefizzing of a frying-spider. But there is nothing gross in theanimated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the earth, not evenif chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the senses areministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leapingtongues of flame.
The attention which a wood-fire demands is one of its bestrecommendations. We value little that which costs us no trouble tomaintain. If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by privatecorporate action, or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the supportof customs officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than wedo. Not that I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and havethe proper regulation of its temperature get into politics, where wealready have so much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too muchas a matter of course, and, having it free, do not reckon it amongthe reasons for gratitude. Many people shut it out of their housesas if it were an enemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if itwere only a thief of color, and plant trees to shut it away from themouldering house. All the animals know better than this, as well asthe more simple races of men; the old women of the southern Italiancoasts sit all day in the sun and ply the distaff, as grateful as thesociable hens on the south side of a New England barn; the slowtortoise likes to take the sun upon his sloping back, soaking incolor that shall make him immortal when the imperishable part of himis cut up into shell ornaments. The capacity of a cat to absorbsunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or an Ethiopian. Theyare not afraid of injuring their complexions.
White must be the color of civilization; it has so many naturaldisadvantages. But this is politics. I was about to say that,however it may be with sunshine, one is always grateful for hiswood-fire, because he does not maintain it without some cost.
Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and thelight of a wood-fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where itrages most freely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than theharmonious satisfactions of nature. The monstrous growths and theflaming colors of the tropics contrast with our more subduedloveliness of foliage and bloom. The birds of the middle regiondazzle with their contrasts of plumage, and their voices are forscreaming rather than singing. I presume the new experiments insound would project a macaw's voice in very tangled and inharmoniouslines of light. I suspect that the fiercest sunlight puts people, aswell as animals and vegetables, on extremes in all ways. A wood-fireon the hearth is a kindler of the domestic virtues. It brings incheerfulness, and a family center, and, besides, it is artistic.I should like to know if an artist could ever represent on canvas ahappy family gathered round a hole in the floor called a register.Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist could almost create apleasant family round it. But what could he conjure out of aregister? If there was any virtue among our ancestors,—and theylabored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aidswhich we have to excellence of life,—I am convinced they drew itmostly from the fireside. If it was difficult to read the elevencommandments by the light of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to getthe sweet spirit of them from the countenance of the serene motherknitting in the chimney-corner.
III
When the fire is made, you want to sit in front of it and grow genialin its effulgence. I have never been upon a throne,—except inmoments of a traveler's curiosity, about as long as a South Americandictator remains on one,—but I have no idea that it compares, forpleasantness, with a seat before a wood-fire. A whole leisure daybefore you, a good novel in hand, and the backlog only just beginningto kindle, with uncounted hours of comfort in it, has life anythingmore delicious? For "novel" you can substitute "Calvin'sInstitutes," if you wish to be virtuous as well as happy. EvenCalvin would melt before a wood-fire. A great snowstorm, visible onthree sides of your wide-windowed room, loading the evergreens, blownin fine powder from the great chestnut-tops, piled up in everaccumulating masses, covering the paths, the shrubbery, the hedges,drifting and clinging in fantastic deposits, deepening your sense ofsecurity, and taking away the sin of idleness by making it anecessity, this is an excellent ground to your day by the fire.
To deliberately sit down in the morning to read a novel, to enjoyyourself, is this not, in New England (I am told they don't read muchin other parts of the country), the sin of sins? Have you any rightto read, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part ofthe day in some employment that is called practical? Have you anyright to enjoy yourself at all until the fag-end of the day, when youare tired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am aware that thisis the practice, if not the theory, of our society,—to postpone thedelights of social intercourse until after dark, and rather late atnight, when body and mind are both weary with the exertions ofbusiness, and when we can give to what is the most delightful andprofitable thing in life, social and intellectual society, only theweariness of dull brains and over-tired muscles. No wonder we takeour amusements sadly, and that so many people find dinners heavy andparties stupid. Our economy leaves no place for amusements; wemerely add them to the burden of a life already full. The world isstill a little off the track as to what is really useful.
I confess that the morning is a very good time to read a novel, oranything else which is good and requires a fresh mind; and I take itthat nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind.I suppose it is necessary that business should be transacted; thoughthe amount of business that does not contribute to anybody's comfortor improvement suggests the query whether it is not overdone. I knowthat unremitting attention to business is the price of success, butI don't know what success is. There is a man, whom we all know, whobuilt a house that cost a quarter of a million of dollars, andfurnished it for another like sum, who does not know anything moreabout architecture, or painting, or books, or history, than he caresfor the rights of those who have not so much money as he has. Iheard him once, in a foreign gallery, say to his wife, as they stoodin front of a famous picture by Rubens: "That is the Rape of theSardines!" What a cheerful world it would be if everybody was assuccessful as that man! While I am reading my book by the fire, andtaking an active part in important transactions that may be a gooddeal better than real, let me be thankful that a great many men areprofitably employed in offices and bureaus and country stores inkeeping up the gossip and endless exchange of opinions among mankind,so much of which is made to appear to the women at home as"business." I find that there is a sort of busy idleness among men inthis world that is not held in disrepute. When the time comes that Ihave to prove my right to vote, with women, I trust that it will beremembered in my favor that I made this admission. If it is true, asa witty conservative once said to me, that we never shall have peacein this country until we elect a colored woman president, I desire tobe rectus in curia early.
IV
The fireplace, as we said, is a window through which we look out uponother scenes. We like to read of the small, bare room, withcobwebbed ceiling and narrow window, in which the poor child ofgenius sits with his magical pen, the master of a realm of beauty andenchantment. I think the open fire does not kindle the imaginationso much as it awakens the memory; one sees the past in its crumblingembers and ashy grayness, rather than the future. People becomereminiscent and even sentimental in front of it. They used to becomesomething else in those good old days when it was thought best toheat the poker red hot before plunging it into the mugs of flip.This heating of the poker has been disapproved of late years, but Ido not know on what grounds; if one is to drink bitters and gins andthe like, such as I understand as good people as clergymen and womentake in private, and by advice, I do not know why one should not makethem palatable and heat them with his own poker. Cold whiskey out ofa bottle, taken as a prescription six times a day on the sly, is n'tmy idea of virtue any more than the social ancestral glass, sizzlingwickedly with the hot iron. Names are so confusing in this world;but things are apt to remain pretty much the same, whatever we callthem.
Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it widens and grows deep andcavernous. The back and the jambs are built up of great stones, notalways smoothly laid, with jutting ledges upon which ashes are apt tolie. The hearthstone is an enormous block of trap rock, with asurface not perfectly even, but a capital place to crack butternutson. Over the fire swings an iron crane, with a row of pot-hooks ofall lengths hanging from it. It swings out when the housewife wantsto hang on the tea-kettle, and it is strong enough to support a rowof pots, or a mammoth caldron kettle on occasion. What a jolly sightis this fireplace when the pots and kettles in a row are all boilingand bubbling over the flame, and a roasting spit is turning in front!It makes a person as hungry as one of Scott's novels. But thebrilliant sight is in the frosty morning, about daylight, when thefire is made. The coals are raked open, the split sticks are piledup in openwork criss-crossing, as high as the crane; and when theflame catches hold and roars up through the interstices, it is likean out-of-door bonfire. Wood enough is consumed in that morningsacrifice to cook the food of a Parisian family for a year. How itroars up the wide chimney, sending into the air the signal smoke andsparks which announce to the farming neighbors another day cheerfullybegun! The sleepiest boy in the world would get up in his redflannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped tosleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze. Then it is that thehouse, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold ofwinter, begins to glow again and come to life. The thick frost meltslittle by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that thegray dawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. It is time toblow out the candle, which has lost all its cheerfulness in the lightof day. The morning romance is over; the family is astir; and memberafter member appears with the morning yawn, to stand before thecrackling, fierce conflagration. The daily round begins. The mosthateful employment ever invented for mortal man presents itself: the"chores" are to be done. The boy who expects every morning to openinto a new world finds that to-day is like yesterday, but he believesto-morrow will be different. And yet enough for him, for the day, isthe wading in the snowdrifts, or the sliding on the diamond-sparklingcrust. Happy, too, is he, when the storm rages, and the snowis piled high against the windows, if he can sit in the warmchimney-corner and read about Burgoyne, and General Fraser, and MissMcCrea, midwinter marches through the wilderness, surprises of wigwams,and the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle of the Kegs:—
"Come, gallants, attend and list a friend
Thrill forth harmonious ditty;
While I shall tell what late befell
At Philadelphia city."
I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New Englandfarmhouse—rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of theold wars did not aspire to. "John," says the mother, "You'll burnyour head to a crisp in that heat." But John does not hear; he isstorming the Plains of Abraham just now. "Johnny, dear, bring in astick of wood." How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in thatdefile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behindevery tree? There is something about a boy that I like, after all.
The fire rests upon the broad hearth; the hearth rests upon a greatsubstruction of stone, and the substruction rests upon the cellar.What supports the cellar I never knew, but the cellar supports thefamily. The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort. Into itsdark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes.Bogies guard the bins of choicest apples. I know not what comicalsprites sit astride the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. Thefeeble flicker of the tallow-candle does not at all dispel, butcreates, illusions, and magnifies all the rich possibilities of thisunderground treasure-house. When the cellar-door is opened, and theboy begins to descend into the thick darkness, it is always with aheart-beat as of one started upon some adventure. Who can forget thesmell that comes through the opened door;—a mingling of fresh earth,fruit exhaling delicious aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odorof barrels, a sort of ancestral air,—as if a door had been openedinto an old romance. Do you like it? Not much. But then I wouldnot exchange the remembrance of it for a good many odors and perfumesthat I do like.
It is time to punch the backlog and put on a new forestick.
SECOND STUDY
I
The log was white birch. The beautiful satin bark at once kindledinto a soft, pure, but brilliant flame, something like that ofnaphtha. There is no other wood flame so rich, and it leaps up in ajoyous, spiritual way, as if glad to burn for the sake of burning.Burning like a clear oil, it has none of the heaviness and fatness ofthe pine and the balsam. Woodsmen are at a loss to account for itsintense and yet chaste flame, since the bark has no oily appearance.The heat from it is fierce, and the light dazzling. It flares upeagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keepup the promise of the bark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, havenot considered it in its relation to young love. In the remotesettlements the pine-knot is still the torch of courtship; it enduresto sit up by. The birch-bark has alliances with the world ofsentiment and of letters. The most poetical reputation of the NorthAmerican Indian floats in a canoe made of it; his picture-writing wasinscribed on it. It is the paper that nature furnishes for lovers inthe wilderness, who are enabled to convey a delicate sentiment by itsuse, which is expressed neither in their ideas nor chirography. Itis inadequate for legal parchment, but does very well for deeds oflove, which are not meant usually to give a perfect title. Withcare, it may be split into sheets as thin as the Chinese paper. Itis so beautiful to handle that it is a pity civilization cannot makemore use of it. But fancy articles manufactured from it are verymuch like all ornamental work made of nature's perishable seeds,leaves, cones, and dry twigs,—exquisite while the pretty fingers arefashioning it, but soon growing shabby and cheap to the eye. And yetthere is a pathos in "dried things," whether they are displayed asornaments in some secluded home, or hidden religiously in bureaudrawers where profane eyes cannot see how white ties are growingyellow and ink is fading from treasured letters, amid a faint anddiscouraging perfume of ancient rose-leaves.
The birch log holds out very well while it is green, but has notsubstance enough for a backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber ormen is always an experiment. A man may do very well in a simple, letus say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothingin a more complicated civilization. City life is a severe trial.One man is struck with a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks;another shrinks and swells with every change of circumstance.Prosperity is said to be more trying than adversity, a theory whichmost people are willing to accept without trial; but few men standthe drying out of the natural sap of their greenness in theartificial heat of city life. This, be it noticed, is nothingagainst the drying and seasoning process; character must be put intothe crucible some time, and why not in this world? A man who cannotstand seasoning will not have a high market value in any part of theuniverse. It is creditable to the race, that so many men and womenbravely jump into the furnace of prosperity and expose themselves tothe drying influences of city life.
The first fire that is lighted on the hearth in the autumn seems tobring out the cold weather. Deceived by the placid appearance of thedying year, the softness of the sky, and the warm color of thefoliage, we have been shivering about for days without exactlycomprehending what was the matter. The open fire at once sets up astandard of comparison. We find that the advance guards of winterare besieging the house. The cold rushes in at every crack of doorand window, apparently signaled by the flame to invade the house andfill it with chilly drafts and sarcasms on what we call the temperatezone. It needs a roaring fire to beat back the enemy; a feeble oneis only an invitation to the most insulting demonstrations. Ourpious New England ancestors were philosophers in their way. It wasnot simply owing to grace that they sat for hours in their barnlikemeeting-houses during the winter Sundays, the thermometer manydegrees below freezing, with no fire, except the zeal in their ownhearts,—a congregation of red noses and bright eyes. It was nowonder that the minister in the pulpit warmed up to his subject,cried aloud, used hot words, spoke a good deal of the hot place andthe Person whose presence was a burning shame, hammered the desk asif he expected to drive his text through a two-inch plank, and heatedhimself by all allowable ecclesiastical gymnastics. A few of theirfollowers in our day seem to forget that our modern churches areheated by furnaces and supplied with gas. In the old days it wouldhave been thought unphilosophic as well as effeminate to warm themeeting-houses artificially. In one house I knew, at least, when itwas proposed to introduce a stove to take a little of the chill fromthe Sunday services, the deacons protested against the innovation.They said that the stove might benefit those who sat close to it, butit would drive all the cold air to the other parts of the church, andfreeze the people to death; it was cold enough now around the edges.Blessed days of ignorance and upright living! Sturdy men who servedGod by resolutely sitting out the icy hours of service, amid therattling of windows and the carousal of winter in the high, windsweptgalleries! Patient women, waiting in the chilly house forconsumption to pick out his victims, and replace the color of youthand the flush of devotion with the hectic of disease! At least, youdid not doze and droop in our over-heated edifices, and die ofvitiated air and disregard of the simplest conditions of organizedlife. It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend itsown ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.It is something also that each age has its choice of the death itwill die. Our generation is most ingenious. From our publicassembly-rooms and houses we have almost succeeded in excluding pureair. It took the race ages to build dwellings that would keep outrain; it has taken longer to build houses air-tight, but we are onthe eve of success. We are only foiled by the ill-fitting, insincerework of the builders, who build for a day, and charge for all time.
II
When the fire on the hearth has blazed up and then settled intosteady radiance, talk begins. There is no place like thechimney-corner for confidences; for picking up the clews of an oldfriendship; for taking note where one's self has drifted, bycomparing ideas and prejudices with the intimate friend of years ago,whose course in life has lain apart from yours. No stranger puzzlesyou so much as the once close friend, with whose thinking andassociates you have for years been unfamiliar. Life has come to meanthis and that to you; you have fallen into certain habits of thought;for you the world has progressed in this or that direction; ofcertain results you feel very sure; you have fallen into harmony withyour surroundings; you meet day after day people interested in thethings that interest you; you are not in the least opinionated, it issimply your good fortune to look upon the affairs of the world fromthe right point of view. When you last saw your friend,—less than ayear after you left college,—he was the most sensible and agreeableof men; he had no heterodox notions; he agreed with you; you couldeven tell what sort of a wife he would select, and if you could dothat, you held the key to his life.
Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day from the antipodes. Andhere he sits by the fireplace. I cannot think of any one I wouldrather see there, except perhaps Thackery; or, for entertainment,Boswell; or old, Pepys; or one of the people who was left out of theArk. They were talking one foggy London night at Hazlitt's aboutwhom they would most like to have seen, when Charles Lamb startledthe company by declaring that he would rather have seen JudasIscariot than any other person who had lived on the earth. Formyself, I would rather have seen Lamb himself once, than to havelived with Judas. Herbert, to my great delight, has not changed; Ishould know him anywhere,—the same serious, contemplative face, withlurking humor at the corners of the mouth,—the same cheery laugh andclear, distinct enunciation as of old. There is nothing so winningas a good voice. To see Herbert again, unchanged in all outwardessentials, is not only gratifying, but valuable as a testimony tonature's success in holding on to a personal identity, through theentire change of matter that has been constantly taking place for somany years. I know very well there is here no part of the Herbertwhose hand I had shaken at the Commencement parting; but it is anastonishing reproduction of him,—a material likeness; and now forthe spiritual.
Such a wide chance for divergence in the spiritual. It has been sucha busy world for twenty years. So many things have been torn up bythe roots again that were settled when we left college. There wereto be no more wars; democracy was democracy, and progress, thedifferentiation of the individual, was a mere question of clothes; ifyou want to be different, go to your tailor; nobody had demonstratedthat there is a man-soul and a woman-soul, and that each is inreality only a half-soul,—putting the race, so to speak, upon thehalf-shell. The social oyster being opened, there appears to be twoshells and only one oyster; who shall have it? So many new canons oftaste, of criticism, of morality have been set up; there has beensuch a resurrection of historical reputations for new judgment, andthere have been so many discoveries, geographical, archaeological,geological, biological, that the earth is not at all what it wassupposed to be; and our philosophers are much more anxious toascertain where we came from than whither we are going. In thiswhirl and turmoil of new ideas, nature, which has only the single endof maintaining the physical identity in the body, works onundisturbed, replacing particle for particle, and preserving thelikeness more skillfully than a mosaic artist in the Vatican; she hasnot even her materials sorted and labeled, as the Roman artist hashis thousands of bits of color; and man is all the while doing hisbest to confuse the process, by changing his climate, his diet, allhis surroundings, without the least care to remain himself. But themind?
It is more difficult to get acquainted with Herbert than with anentire stranger, for I have my prepossessions about him, and do notfind him in so many places where I expect to find him. He is full ofcriticism of the authors I admire; he thinks stupid or improper thebooks I most read; he is skeptical about the "movements" I aminterested in; he has formed very different opinions from mineconcerning a hundred men and women of the present day; we used to eatfrom one dish; we could n't now find anything in common in a dozen;his prejudices (as we call our opinions) are most extraordinary, andnot half so reasonable as my prejudices; there are a great manypersons and things that I am accustomed to denounce, uncontradictedby anybody, which he defends; his public opinion is not at all mypublic opinion. I am sorry for him. He appears to have fallen intoinfluences and among a set of people foreign to me. I find that hischurch has a different steeple on it from my church (which, to saythe truth, hasn't any). It is a pity that such a dear friend and aman of so much promise should have drifted off into such generalcontrariness. I see Herbert sitting here by the fire, with the oldlook in his face coming out more and more, but I do not recognize anyfeatures of his mind,—except perhaps his contrariness; yes, he wasalways a little contrary, I think. And finally he surprises me with,"Well, my friend, you seem to have drifted away from your old notionsand opinions. We used to agree when we were together, but Isometimes wondered where you would land; for, pardon me, you showedsigns of looking at things a little contrary."
I am silent for a good while. I am trying to think who I am. Therewas a person whom I thought I knew, very fond of Herbert, andagreeing with him in most things. Where has he gone? and, if he ishere, where is the Herbert that I knew?
If his intellectual and moral sympathies have all changed, I wonderif his physical tastes remain, like his appearance, the same. Therehas come over this country within the last generation, as everybodyknows, a great wave of condemnation of pie. It has taken thecharacter of a "movement!" though we have had no conventions aboutit, nor is any one, of any of the several sexes among us, running forpresident against it. It is safe almost anywhere to denounce pie,yet nearly everybody eats it on occasion. A great many people thinkit savors of a life abroad to speak with horror of pie, although theywere very likely the foremost of the Americans in Paris who used tospeak with more enthusiasm of the American pie at Madame Busque'sthan of the Venus of Milo. To talk against pie and still eat it issnobbish, of course; but snobbery, being an aspiring failing, issometimes the prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of pie issomething. We have no statistics on the subject, and cannot tellwhether it is gaining or losing in the country at large. Itsdisappearance in select circles is no test. The amount of writingagainst it is no more test of its desuetude, than the number ofreligious tracts distributed in a given district is a criterion ofits piety. We are apt to assume that certain regions aresubstantially free of it. Herbert and I, traveling north one summer,fancied that we could draw in New England a sort of diet line, likethe sweeping curves on the isothermal charts, which should show atleast the leading pie sections. Journeying towards the WhiteMountains, we concluded that a line passing through Bellows Falls,and bending a little south on either side, would mark northward theregion of perpetual pie. In this region pie is to be found at allhours and seasons, and at every meal. I am not sure, however, thatpie is not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, as I find thatall the hill and country towns of New England are full of thoseexcellent women, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, who wouldfeel ready to sink in mortification through their scoured kitchenfloors, if visitors should catch them without a pie in the house.The absence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bibleeven. Without it the housekeepers are as distracted as theboarding-house keeper, who declared that if it were not for cannedtomato, she should have nothing to fly to. Well, in all this greatagitation I find Herbert unmoved, a conservative, even to theunder-crust. I dare not ask him if he eats pie at breakfast. Thereare some tests that the dearest friendship may not apply.
"Will you smoke?" I ask.
"No, I have reformed."
"Yes, of course."
"The fact is, that when we consider the correlation of forces, theapparent sympathy of spirit manifestations with electric conditions,the almost revealed mysteries of what may be called the odic force,and the relation of all these phenomena to the nervous system in man,it is not safe to do anything to the nervous system that will—"
"Hang the nervous system! Herbert, we can agree in one thing: oldmemories, reveries, friendships, center about that:—is n't an openwood-fire good?"
"Yes," says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it toolong."
III
The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot berepeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with theleast residuum. I hope the next generation will not accept thereports of "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of theseyears of grace.
But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did? We hearwonderful stories of the bright generation that sat about the widefireplaces of New England. Good talk has so much short-hand that itcannot be reported,—the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug,cannot be caught on paper. The best of it is when the subjectunexpectedly goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to aconclusion so suddenly revealed that it has the effect of wit. Itneeds the highest culture and the finest breeding to prevent theconversation from running into mere persiflage on the one hand—itscommon fate—or monologue on the other. Our conversation is largelychaff. I am not sure but the former generation preached a good deal,but it had great practice in fireside talk, and must have talkedwell. There were narrators in those days who could charm a circleall the evening long with stories. When each day broughtcomparatively little new to read, there was leisure for talk, and therare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughly discussed.Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comes daily uponthe center-table. There must be a division of labor, one readingthis, and another that, to make any impression on it. The telegraphbrings the only common food, and works this daily miracle, that everymind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneously with everyother mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burst ofsympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if we haveany faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modernlife. It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be theminister of it.
When there is so much to read, there is little time for conversation;nor is there leisure for another pastime of the ancient firesides,called reading aloud. The listeners, who heard while they lookedinto the wide chimney-place, saw there pass in stately procession theevents and the grand persons of history, were kindled with thedelights of travel, touched by the romance of true love, or maderestless by tales of adventure;—the hearth became a sort of magicstone that could transport those who sat by it to the most distantplaces and times, as soon as the book was opened and the readerbegan, of a winter's night. Perhaps the Puritan reader read throughhis nose, and all the little Puritans made the most dreadful nasalinquiries as the entertainment went on. The prominent nose of theintellectual New-Englander is evidence of the constant linguisticexercise of the organ for generations. It grew by talking through.But I have no doubt that practice made good readers in those days.Good reading aloud is almost a lost accomplishment now. It is littlethought of in the schools. It is disused at home. It is rare tofind any one who can read, even from the newspaper, well. Reading isso universal, even with the uncultivated, that it is common to hearpeople mispronounce words that you did not suppose they had everseen. In reading to themselves they glide over these words, inreading aloud they stumble over them. Besides, our every-day booksand newspapers are so larded with French that the ordinary reader isobliged marcher a pas de loup,—for instance.
The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many wordswith which the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to inthe flow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and anunsuccessful attempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectlyknows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot master it. Thenewspaper is thus widening the language in use, and vastly increasingthe number of words which enter into common talk. The Americans ofthe lowest intellectual class probably use more words to expresstheir ideas than the similar class of any other people; but thisprodigality is partially balanced by the parsimony of words in somehigher regions, in which a few phrases of current slang are made todo the whole duty of exchange of ideas; if that can be calledexchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forth to another theremark, concerning some report, that "you know how it is yourself,"and is met by the response of "that's what's the matter," and rejoinswith the perfectly conclusive "that's so." It requires a high degreeof culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yet veryfar from the Greek attainment.
IV
The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavyand black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, abackground of inclemency for the illumined room with its picturedwalls, tables heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and theiroccupants,—it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far throughthe crystal of the broad windows, in order that we may rightlyappreciate the relation of the wide-jambed chimney to domesticarchitecture in our climate. We fell to talking about it; and, as isusual when the conversation is professedly on one subject, wewandered all around it. The young lady staying with us was roastingchestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosions requiredconsiderable attention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, readyto rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this orthat guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about afireside will not have any wants if they are not suggested. Theworst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, andthat later in the evening. And it is an open question whether youought to associate with people who want that.
I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in theworld as domestic architecture. Temples, palaces, bridges,aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength,grew to perfection while the common people lived in hovels, and therichest lodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters. Thedwelling-house is a modern institution. It is a curious fact that ithas only improved with the social elevation of women. Men were nevermore brilliant in arms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, andyet they had no homes. They made themselves thick-walled castles,with slits in the masonry for windows, for defense, and magnificentbanquet-halls for pleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawledfor the night were often little better than dog-kennels. ThePompeians had no comfortable night-quarters. The most singular thingto me, however, is that, especially interested as woman is in thehouse, she has never done anything for architecture. And yet womanis reputed to be an ingenious creature.
HERBERT. I doubt if woman has real ingenuity; she has greatadaptability. I don't say that she will do the same thing twicealike, like a Chinaman, but she is most cunning in suiting herself tocircumstances.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, if you speak of constructive, creativeingenuity, perhaps not; but in the higher ranges of achievement—thatof accomplishing any purpose dear to her heart, for instance—heringenuity is simply incomprehensible to me.
HERBERT. Yes, if you mean doing things by indirection.
THE MISTRESS. When you men assume all the direction, what else isleft to us?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see a woman refurnish a house?
THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH US. I never saw a man do it, unless hewas burned out of his rookery.
HERBERT. There is no comfort in new things.
THE FIRE-TENDER (not noticing the interruption). Having set her mindon a total revolution of the house, she buys one new thing, not tooobtrusive, nor much out of harmony with the old. The husbandscarcely notices it, least of all does he suspect the revolution,which she already has accomplished. Next, some article that doeslook a little shabby beside the new piece of furniture is sent to thegarret, and its place is supplied by something that will match incolor and effect. Even the man can see that it ought to match, andso the process goes on, it may be for years, it may be forever, untilnothing of the old is left, and the house is transformed as it waspredetermined in the woman's mind. I doubt if the man everunderstands how or when it was done; his wife certainly never saysanything about the refurnishing, but quietly goes on to newconquests.
THE MISTRESS. And is n't it better to buy little by little, enjoyingevery new object as you get it, and assimilating each article to yourhousehold life, and making the home a harmonious expression of yourown taste, rather than to order things in sets, and turn your house,for the time being, into a furniture ware-room?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, I only spoke of the ingenuity of it.
THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I never can get acquainted with morethan one piece of furniture at a time.
HERBERT. I suppose women are our superiors in artistic taste, and Ifancy that I can tell whether a house is furnished by a woman or aman; of course, I mean the few houses that appear to be the result ofindividual taste and refinement,—most of them look as if they hadbeen furnished on contract by the upholsterer.
THE MISTRESS. Woman's province in this world is putting things torights.
HERBERT. With a vengeance, sometimes. In the study, for example.My chief objection to woman is that she has no respect for thenewspaper, or the printed page, as such. She is Siva, the destroyer.I have noticed that a great part of a married man's time at home isspent in trying to find the things he has put on his study-table.
THE YOUNG LADY. Herbert speaks with the bitterness of a bachelorshut out of paradise. It is my experience that if women did notdestroy the rubbish that men bring into the house, it would becomeuninhabitable, and need to be burned down every five years.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I confess women do a great deal for the appearanceof things. When the mistress is absent, this room, althougheverything is here as it was before, does not look at all like thesame place; it is stiff, and seems to lack a soul. When she returns,I can see that her eye, even while greeting me, takes in thesituation at a glance. While she is talking of the journey, andbefore she has removed her traveling-hat, she turns this chair andmoves that, sets one piece of furniture at a different angle,rapidly, and apparently unconsciously, shifts a dozen littleknick-knacks and bits of color, and the room is transformed. Icouldn't do it in a week.
THE MISTRESS. That is the first time I ever knew a man admit hecouldn't do anything if he had time.
HERBERT. Yet with all their peculiar instinct for making a home,women make themselves very little felt in our domestic architecture.
THE MISTRESS. Men build most of the houses in what might be calledthe ready-made-clothing style, and we have to do the best we can withthem; and hard enough it is to make cheerful homes in most of them.You will see something different when the woman is constantlyconsulted in the plan of the house.
HERBERT. We might see more difference if women would give anyattention to architecture. Why are there no women architects?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Want of the ballot, doubtless. It seems to me thathere is a splendid opportunity for woman to come to the front.
THE YOUNG LADY. They have no desire to come to the front; they wouldrather manage things where they are.
THE FIRE-TENDER. If they would master the noble art, and put theirbrooding taste upon it, we might very likely compass something in ourdomestic architecture that we have not yet attained. The outside ofour houses needs attention as well as the inside. Most of them areas ugly as money can build.
THE YOUNG LADY. What vexes me most is, that women, married women,have so easily consented to give up open fires in their houses.
HERBERT. They dislike the dust and the bother. I think that womenrather like the confined furnace heat.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Nonsense; it is their angelic virtue of submission.
We wouldn't be hired to stay all-day in the houses we build.
THE YOUNG LADY. That has a very chivalrous sound, but I know therewill be no reformation until women rebel and demand everywhere theopen fire.
HERBERT. They are just now rebelling about something else; it seemsto me yours is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the rear.
THE MISTRESS. I'll join that movement. The time has come when womanmust strike for her altars and her fires.
HERBERT. Hear, hear!
THE MISTRESS. Thank you, Herbert. I applauded you once, when youdeclaimed that years ago in the old Academy. I remember howeloquently you did it.
HERBERT. Yes, I was once a spouting idiot.
Just then the door-bell rang, and company came in. And the companybrought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of thedisturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. Thedirect news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopefulprospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfactionin the fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher,there was difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it;some were for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, andothers were against it, "because it does not taste good" in cider.Herbert said there, was very little respect left for our forefathers.
More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantasticshapes. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay insilvery patches among the trees in the ravine. The conversationbecame worldly.
THIRD STUDY
I
Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he hadturned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's.
The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man oftalent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked withcleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen uponlike good fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of"pay-dirt;" one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able mancan make himself almost anything that he will. It is melancholy tothink how many epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, how manydramatists (though the age of the drama has passed) have wasted theirgenius in great mercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a manwho might have been the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, ofthis country, who chose to become a country judge, to sit day afterday upon a bench in an obscure corner of the world, listening towrangling lawyers and prevaricating witnesses, preferring to judgehis fellow-men rather than enlighten them.
It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and the reputation ofthe dead, that men get almost as much credit for what they do not asfor what they do. It was the opinion of many that Burns might haveexcelled as a statesman, or have been a great captain in war; and Mr.Carlyle says that if he had been sent to a university, and become atrained intellectual workman, it lay in him to have changed the wholecourse of British literature! A large undertaking, as so vigorousand dazzling a writer as Mr. Carlyle must know by this time, sinceBritish literature has swept by him in a resistless and wideningflood, mainly uncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque contrivanceswrecked on the shore with other curiosities of letters, and yet amongthe richest of all the treasures lying there.
It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear whattalent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed toa moderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic,such a mathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober;and then he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendlysoul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiouslydrunk. I suppose it is now notorious that the most brilliant andpromising men have been lost to the world in this way. It issometimes almost painful to think what a surplus of talent and geniusthere would be in the world if the habit of intoxication shouldsuddenly cease; and what a slim chance there would be for theplodding people who have always had tolerably good habits. The fearis only mitigated by the observation that the reputation of a personfor great talent sometimes ceases with his reformation.
It is believed by some that the maidens who would make the best wivesnever marry, but remain free to bless the world with their impartialsweetness, and make it generally habitable. This is one of themysteries of Providence and New England life. It seems a pity, atfirst sight, that all those who become poor wives have thematrimonial chance, and that they are deprived of the reputation ofthose who would be good wives were they not set apart for the highand perpetual office of priestesses of society. There is no beautylike that which was spoiled by an accident, no accomplishments—andgraces are so to be envied as those that circumstances rudelyhindered the development of. All of which shows what a charitableand good-tempered world it is, notwithstanding its reputation forcynicism and detraction.
Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of the faithful wife thather husband has all the talents, and could, if he would, bedistinguished in any walk in life; and nothing will be morebeautiful—unless this is a very dry time for signs—than thehusband's belief that his wife is capable of taking charge of any ofthe affairs of this confused planet. There is no woman but thinksthat her husband, the green-grocer, could write poetry if he hadgiven his mind to it, or else she thinks small beer of poetry incomparison with an occupation or accomplishment purely vegetable. Itis touching to see the look of pride with which the wife turns to herhusband from any more brilliant personal presence or display of witthan his, in the perfect confidence that if the world knew what sheknows, there would be one more popular idol. How she magnifies hissmall wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in his face as ifit were a sign of wisdom! What a councilor that man would make!What a warrior he would be! There are a great many corporals intheir retired homes who did more for the safety and success of ourarmies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the"high-cock-a-lorum" commanders. Mrs. Corporal does not envy thereputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really wonFive Forks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and willhear it a hundred times more with apparently unabated interest. Whata general her husband would have made; and how his talking talentwould shine in Congress!
HERBERT. Nonsense. There isn't a wife in the world who has nottaken the exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled himin her own mind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered himafter designs and specifications of her own. That knowledge,however, she ordinarily keeps to herself, and she enters into aleague with her husband, which he was never admitted to the secretof, to impose upon the world. In nine out of ten cases he more thanhalf believes that he is what his wife tells him he is. At any rate,she manages him as easily as the keeper does the elephant, with onlya bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usually she flattershim, but she has the means of pricking clear through his hide onoccasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him think thatshe thoroughly believes in him.
THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us. And you call this hypocrisy? I haveheard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call itso.
HERBERT. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis on which societyrests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to beoverturned, it is on this point. Women are beginning to tell menwhat they really think of them; and to insist that the same relationsof downright sincerity and independence that exist between men shallexist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, withoutregard to sex, has always been the ideal life of the poets.
THE MISTRESS. Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear tohave his wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any morethan he would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; andthere is nothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess bya woman.
HERBERT. Well, women know how to win by losing. I think that thereason why most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out inthe open for a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant tochange the certain domination of centuries, with weapons they areperfectly competent to handle, for an experiment. I think we shouldbe better off if women were more transparent, and men were not sosystematically puffed up by the subtle flattery which is used tocontrol them.
MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes thatguise, and begins to convince me that I can see through her like aray of light, I must run or be lost. Transparent women are the trulydangerous. There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to saythat; he has just returned from a little tour in Europe, and he quiteoften begins his remarks with "on the ship going over;" the YoungLady declares that he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he saysit, that makes her sea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless,guileless, natural bunch of lace and feathers you ever saw; she wasall candor and helplessness and dependence; she sang like anightingale, and talked like a nun. There never was such simplicity.There was n't a sounding-line on board that would have gone to thebottom of her soulful eyes. But she managed the captain and all theofficers, and controlled the ship as if she had been the helm. Allthe passengers were waiting on her, fetching this and that for hercomfort, inquiring of her health, talking about her genuineness, andexhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore in safety, as if she hadbeen about to knight them all and give them a castle apiece when theycame to land.
THE MISTRESS. What harm? It shows what I have always said, that theservice of a noble woman is the most ennobling influence for men.
MANDEVILLE. If she is noble, and not a mere manager. I watched thiswoman to see if she would ever do anything for any one else. Shenever did.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see her again? I presume Mandevillehas introduced her here for some purpose.
MANDEVILLE. No purpose. But we did see her on the Rhine; she wasthe most disgusted traveler, and seemed to be in very ill humor withher maid. I judged that her happiness depended upon establishingcontrolling relations with all about her. On this Rhine boat, to besure, there was reason for disgust. And that reminds me of a remarkthat was made.
THE YOUNG LADY. Oh!
MANDEVILLE. When we got aboard at Mayence we were conscious of adreadful odor somewhere; as it was a foggy morning, we could see nocause of it, but concluded it was from something on the wharf. Thefog lifted, and we got under way, but the odor traveled with us, andincreased. We went to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but invain. It occasionally reached us in great waves of disagreeableness.We had heard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but we had noidea that the entire stream was infected. It was intolerable.
The day was lovely, and the passengers stood about on deck holdingtheir noses and admiring the scenery. You might see a row of themleaning over the side, gazing up at some old ruin or ivied crag,entranced with the romance of the situation, and all holding theirnoses with thumb and finger. The sweet Rhine! By and by somebodydiscovered that the odor came from a pile of cheese on the forwarddeck, covered with a canvas; it seemed that the Rhinelanders are sofond of it that they take it with them when they travel. If thereshould ever be war between us and Germany, the borders of the Rhinewould need no other defense from American soldiers than a barricadeof this cheese. I went to the stern of the steamboat to tell a stoutAmerican traveler what was the origin of the odor he had been tryingto dodge all the morning. He looked more disgusted than before, whenhe heard that it was cheese; but his only reply was: "It must be amerciful God who can forgive a smell like that!"
II
The above is introduced here in order to illustrate the usual effectof an anecdote on conversation. Commonly it kills it. That talkmust be very well in hand, and under great headway, that an anecdotethrown in front of will not pitch off the track and wreck. And itmakes little difference what the anecdote is; a poor one depressesthe spirits, and casts a gloom over the company; a good one begetsothers, and the talkers go to telling stories; which is very goodentertainment in moderation, but is not to be mistaken for thatunwearying flow of argument, quaint remark, humorous color, andsprightly interchange of sentiments and opinions, calledconversation.
The reader will perceive that all hope is gone here of decidingwhether Herbert could have written Tennyson's poems, or whetherTennyson could have dug as much money out of the Heliogabalus Lode asHerbert did. The more one sees of life, I think the impressiondeepens that men, after all, play about the parts assigned them,according to their mental and moral gifts, which are limited andpreordained, and that their entrances and exits are governed by a lawno less certain because it is hidden. Perhaps nobody everaccomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do; but nearly everyone who tries his powers touches the walls of his being occasionally,and learns about how far to attempt to spring. There are noimpossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person hastried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he isquite content to go down among the chorus. It is only the fools whokeep straining at high C all their lives.
Mandeville here began to say that that reminded him of something thathappened when he was on the—
But Herbert cut in with the observation that no matter what a man'ssingle and several capacities and talents might be, he is controlledby his own mysterious individuality, which is what metaphysicianscall the substance, all else being the mere accidents of the man.And this is the reason that we cannot with any certainty tell whatany person will do or amount to, for, while we know his talents andabilities, we do not know the resulting whole, which is he himself.THE FIRE-TENDER. So if you could take all the first-class qualitiesthat we admire in men and women, and put them together into onebeing, you wouldn't be sure of the result?
HERBERT. Certainly not. You would probably have a monster. Ittakes a cook of long experience, with the best materials, to make adish "taste good;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence,the resulting balance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeableor beautiful or effective in the world.
THE YOUNG LADY. That must be the reason why novelists fail solamentably in almost all cases in creating good characters. They putin real traits, talents, dispositions, but the result of thesynthesis is something that never was seen on earth before.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration.
We admit this in poetry. It is as true of such creations as Colonel
Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond. There is no patchwork about
them.
THE YOUNG LADY. Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create anoble woman?
THE FIRE-TENDER. That is the standing conundrum with all the women.They will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have toadmit that Thackeray was a writer for men.
HERBERT. Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women that
Thackeray thought it was time for a real one.
THE MISTRESS. That's ill-natured. Thackeray did, however, makeladies. If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us justas we are, I doubt if we should have liked it much.
MANDEVILLE. That's just it. Thackeray never pretended to makeideals, and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature,then he was not the best novelist. When I was crossing the Channel—
THE MISTRESS. Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, Imove we have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends.
III
There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth,that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine anyone being stiffly conventional in front of it. It thaws outformality, and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudesof mind and body,—lounging attitudes,—Herbert said.
And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially asto manner. The backlog period having passed, we are beginning tohave in society people of the cultured manner, as it is called, orpolished bearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thingabout the man. Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of theold-school gentleman, in whose presence the milkmaid was as much ather ease as the countess, but something far finer than this. Theseare the people of unruffled demeanor, who never forget it for amoment, and never let you forget it. Their presence is a constantrebuke to society. They are never "jolly;" their laugh is neveranything more than a well-bred smile; they are never betrayed intoany enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of inexperience, of ignorance,of want of culture. They never lose themselves in any cause; theynever heartily praise any man or woman or book; they are superior toall tides of feeling and all outbursts of passion. They are not evenshocked at vulgarity. They are simply indifferent. They are calm,visibly calm, painfully calm; and it is not the eternal, majesticcalmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid, self-consciousrepression. You would like to put a bent pin in their chair whenthey are about calmly to sit down.
A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith thather eggs are not china. These people appear to be sitting on chinaeggs. Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out ofthem. We admire them without envy. They are too beautiful in theirmanners to be either prigs or snobs. They are at once our models andour despair. They are properly careful of themselves as models, forthey know that if they should break, society would become a scene ofmere animal confusion.
MANDEVILLE. I think that the best-bred people in the world are the
English.
THE YOUNG LADY. You mean at home.
MANDEVILLE. That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about acultivated English man or woman. They express themselves sturdilyand naturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others.There's a sort of hearty sincerity about them that I like. Ages ofculture on the island have gone deeper than the surface, and theyhave simpler and more natural manners than we. There is somethinggood in the full, round tones of their voices.
HERBERT. Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling
English-man who had n't secured the place he wanted?
[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops ofomnibuses.]
THE MISTRESS. Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San
Carlo, and hear him cry "Bwavo"?
MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraidto.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men ofthe best culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes,are what you would call good fellows,—easy and simple in manner,enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into thesmooth calmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regardas the sine qua non of good breeding. Their position is so assuredthat they do not need that lacquer of calmness of which we werespeaking.
THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by thosewho live a great deal in American hotels?
THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?
HERBERT. The last two are the same.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if aman has learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, youcannot always tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui ofhotels or of Washington. But these are distinct from the perfectpolish and politeness of indifferentism.
IV
Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipatesthe idle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions.Let us say that the conditions are: a house in the country, with someforest trees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-treesall winter long, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants,cheerful by day and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out ofa dark sky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, itsdazzling whiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lostin the distant darkling spaces.
If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon getsan impression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothingelse so powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothingmakes one feel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent catwill quit the fire and sit for hours in the low window, watching thefalling snow with a serious and contented air. His thoughts are hisown, but he is in accord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; onsuch a day he is charged with enough electricity to run a telegraphicbattery, if it could be utilized. The connection between thought andelectricity has not been exactly determined, but the cat is mentallyvery alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. Feasting hiseyes on the beautiful out-doors does not prevent his attention to theslightest noise in the wainscot. And the snow-storm brings content,but not stupidity, to all the rest of the household.
I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging hislong arms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with,"Well, I declare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer'stract on the philosophy of style but he loses much time in looking atthe Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in herlap,—one of her everlasting letters to one of her fifty everlastingfriends. She is one of the female patriots who save the post-officedepartment from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert isthinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, whichlegislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, towrite letters on her lap and a man on a table,—a distinction whichis commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.
The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about theroom with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from thepicture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, andis thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says thethermometer is 15 deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift acrossthe main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as ifit had gone into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only tenpersons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those werewomen; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in theparish, anyhow.
The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; butit is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name abouteleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears theMistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write alecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says thatit is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, andasks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate.Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no betterfun, but it wouldn't look well for a visitor to do it. TheFire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps onwriting his wife's name.
Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about thesoup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had apresent of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles onChristmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat hergruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six littlechildren and three dogs; and he did n't believe that any of them hadknown what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, thewoman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep thedogs alive.
The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket withprovisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought ina new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had beensitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him.
MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever noticehow extremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much likethe sort of cultured persons we were talking of last night?
THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?
MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is neverinterested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has bynature that calmness and indifference which your people of culturehave acquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he wouldscalp and tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he woulddo nothing else.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman ofthe highest breeding?
MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm.
THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?
MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may havemalice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "littledigs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire tothem.
HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a redman into a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, orinto a drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he isapparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people,—and by country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in thecountry, for everything is mixed in these days,—some of the bestpeople in the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as theIndian would.
THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I shouldsay you were snobbish.
HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak ofanything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautifulit may be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion ofetiquette. They are like the countryman who confessed afterwardsthat he could hardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill'sentertainments,
THE YOUNG LADY. Do you remember those English people at our house inFlushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparentdelight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored therooms and looked at everything, and were so interested? I supposethat Herbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city,would have thought it very ill-bred.
MANDEVILLE. It's just as I said. The English, the best of them,have become so civilized that they express themselves, in speech andaction, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions.
THE PARSON. I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he hadstayed at home. It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sicknesswill do for a man's judgment and cultivation. He is prepared topronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is morenonsense talked about culture than about anything else.
HERBERT. The Parson reminds me of an American country minister Ionce met walking through the Vatican. You could n't impose upon himwith any rubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his nativeplace, and there was little that could bear the test. He had the slyair of a man who could not be deceived, and he went about with hismouth in a pucker of incredulity. There is nothing so placid asrustic conceit. There was something very enjoyable about his calmsuperiority to all the treasures of art.
MANDEVILLE. And the Parson reminds me of another American minister,a consul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to havea thorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind.Ministers seem to think that is their business. They serve it insuch small pieces in order to make it go round.
THE PARSON. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, let's have some music;nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time.
THE MISTRESS. What shall it be?
THE PARSON. Give us the larghetto from Beethoven's second symphony.
The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. Herbert looks at the younglady. The Parson composes himself for critical purposes. Mandevillesettles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly intothe fire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him.
After the piece is finished, lunch is announced. It is stillsnowing.
FOURTH STUDY
It is difficult to explain the attraction which the uncanny and eventhe horrible have for most minds. I have seen a delicate woman halffascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly ofreptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies.She would look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering andthe utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, onlyto experience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion,she must have relished the sort of electric mental shock that thesight gave her.
I can no more account for the fascination for us of the stories ofghosts and "appearances," and those weird tales in which the dead arethe chief characters; nor tell why we should fall into converse aboutthem when the winter evenings are far spent, the embers are glazingover on the hearth, and the listener begins to hear the eerie noisesin the house. At such times one's dreams become of importance, andpeople like to tell them and dwell upon them, as if they were a linkbetween the known and unknown, and could give us a clew to thatghostly region which in certain states of the mind we feel to be morereal than that we see.
Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting around the borders of thesupernatural late at night, MANDEVILLE related a dream of his whichhe assured us was true in every particular, and it interested us somuch that we asked him to write it out. In doing so he has curtailedit, and to my mind shorn it of some of its more vivid and picturesquefeatures. He might have worked it up with more art, and given it afinish which the narration now lacks, but I think best to insert itin its simplicity. It seems to me that it may properly be called,
A NEW "VISION OF SIN"
In the winter of 1850 I was a member of one of the leading collegesof this country. I was in moderate circumstances pecuniarily,though I was perhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches thanmany others. I was an incessant and indiscriminate reader of books.For the solid sciences I had no particular fancy, but with mentalmodes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic inthe intellectual and spiritual operations, I was tolerably familiar.All the literature of the supernatural was as real to me as thelaboratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual struggle ofmaterial substances to evolve themselves into more volatile, lesspalpable and coarse forms. My imagination, naturally vivid,stimulated by such repasts, nearly mastered me. At times I couldscarcely tell where the material ceased and the immaterial began (ifI may so express it); so that once and again I walked, as it seemed,from the solid earth onward upon an impalpable plain, where I heardthe same voices, I think, that Joan of Arc heard call to her in thegarden at Domremy. She was inspired, however, while I only lackedexercise. I do not mean this in any literal sense; I only describe astate of mind. I was at this time of spare habit, and nervous,excitable temperament. I was ambitious, proud, and extremelysensitive. I cannot deny that I had seen something of the world, andhad contracted about the average bad habits of young men who have thesole care of themselves, and rather bungle the matter. It isnecessary to this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle more ofwhat is called life than a young man ought to see, but at this periodI was not only sick of my experience, but my habits were as correctas those of any Pharisee in our college, and we had some veryfavorable specimens of that ancient sect.
Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiarmental condition. I well remember an illustration of it. I satwriting late one night, copying a prize essay,—a merely manual task,leaving my thoughts free. It was in June, a sultry night, and aboutmidnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full ofmournful reminiscence, not of this, but of other summers,—the samewind that De Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer blowing throughthe room where he stood, a mere boy, by the side of his dead sister,—a wind centuries old. As I wrote on mechanically, I became consciousof a presence in the room, though I did not lift my eyes from thepaper on which I wrote. Gradually I came to know that mygrandmother—dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea—was in theroom. She stood beside her old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and quitenear me. She wore a plain muslin cap with a high puff in the crown,a short woolen gown, a white and blue checked apron, and shoes withheels. She did not regard me, but stood facing the wheel, with theleft hand near the spindle, holding lightly between the thumb andforefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun and twisted onit. In her right hand she held a small stick. I heard the sharpclick of this against the spokes of the wheel, then the hum of thewheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twisting yarn was teased bythe whirl of its point, then a step backwards, a pause, a stepforward and the running of the yarn upon the spindle, and again abackward step, the drawing out of the roll and the droning and hum ofthe wheel, most mournfully hopeless sound that ever fell on mortalear. Since childhood it has haunted me. All this time I wrote, andI could hear distinctly the scratching of the pen upon the paper.But she stood behind me (why I did not turn my head I never knew),pacing backward and forward by the spinning-wheel, just as I had ahundred times seen her in childhood in the old kitchen on drowsysummer afternoons. And I heard the step, the buzz and whirl of thespindle, and the monotonous and dreary hum of the mournful wheel.Whether her face was ashy pale and looked as if it might crumble atthe touch, and the border of her white cap trembled in the June windthat blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did NOT see her. But Iknow she was there, spinning yarn that had been knit into hose yearsand years ago by our fireside. For I was in full possession of myfaculties, and never copied more neatly and legibly any manuscriptthan I did the one that night. And there the phantom (I use the wordout of deference to a public prejudice on this subject) mostpersistently remained until my task was finished, and, closing theportfolio, I abruptly rose. Did I see anything? That is a silly andignorant question. Could I see the wind which had now risenstronger, and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling thenight, somehow, with a longing that was not altogether born ofreminiscence?
In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up theuse of tobacco,—a habit in which I was confirmed, and of which Ihave nothing more to say than this: that I should attribute to italmost all the sin and misery in the world, did I not remember thatthe old Romans attained a very considerable state of corruptionwithout the assistance of the Virginia plant.
On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervousand excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and laterstill I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid,illuminated, more real than any event of my life. I was at home, andfell sick. The illness developed into a fever, and then a deliriumset in, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most deliciouswandering in places of incomparable beauty. I learned subsequentlythat our regular physician was not certain to finish me, when aconsultation was called, which did the business. I have thesatisfaction of knowing that they were of the proper school. I laysick for three days.
On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died. The sensation wasnot unpleasant. It was not a sudden shock. I passed out of my bodyas one would walk from the door of his house. There the body lay,—ablank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I wasrather entertained with watching the respect paid to it. My friendsstood about the bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose),while I, in a different part of the room, could hardly repress asmile at their mistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for thatmatter, by my recent demise. A sensation (the word you see ismaterial and inappropriate) of etherealization and imponderabilitypervaded me, and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow massas I now perceived myself to be, lying there on the bed. When Ispeak of my death, let me be understood to say that there was nochange, except that I passed out of my body and floated to the top ofa bookcase in the corner of the room, from which I looked down. Fora moment I was interested to see my person from the outside, butthereafter I was quite indifferent to the body. I was now simplysoul. I seemed to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about sixinches in diameter. I saw and heard everything as before. Ofcourse, matter was no obstacle to me, and I went easily and quicklywherever I willed to go. There was none of that tedious process ofcommunicating my wishes to the nerves, and from them to the muscles.I simply resolved to be at a particular place, and I was there. Itwas better than the telegraph.
It seemed to have been intimated to me at my death (birth I halfincline to call it) that I could remain on this earth for four weeksafter my decease, during which time I could amuse myself as I chose.
I chose, in the first place, to see myself decently buried, to stayby myself to the last, and attend my own funeral for once. As mostof those referred to in this true narrative are still living, I amforbidden to indulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to sayexactly how my death affected my friends, even the home circle.Whatever others did, I sat up with myself and kept awake. I saw the"pennies" used instead of the "quarters" which I should havepreferred. I saw myself "laid out," a phrase that has come to havesuch a slang meaning that I smile as I write it. When the body wasput into the coffin, I took my place on the lid.
I cannot recall all the details, and they are commonplace besides.The funeral took place at the church. We all rode thither incarriages, and I, not fancying my place in mine, rode on the outsidewith the undertaker, whom I found to be a good deal more jolly thanhe looked to be. The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit whenwe arrived. I took my station on the pulpit cushion, from whichelevation I had an admirable view of all the ceremonies, and couldhear the sermon. How distinctly I remember the services. I think Icould even at this distance write out the sermon. The tune sung wasof—the usual country selection,—Mount Vernon. I recall the text.I was rather flattered by the tribute paid to me, and my future wasspoken of gravely and as kindly as possible,—indeed, with remarkablecharity, considering that the minister was not aware of my presence.I used to beat him at chess, and I thought, even then, of the lastgame; for, however solemn the occasion might be to others, it was notso to me. With what interest I watched my kinsfolks, and neighborsas they filed past for the last look! I saw, and I remember, whopulled a long face for the occasion and who exhibited genuinesadness. I learned with the most dreadful certainty what peoplereally thought of me. It was a revelation never forgotten.
Several particular acquaintances of mine were talking on the steps aswe passed out.
"Well, old Starr's gone up. Sudden, was n't it? He was a first-ratefellow."
"Yes, queer about some things; but he had some mighty good streaks,"said another. And so they ran on.
Streaks! So that is the reputation one gets during twenty years oflife in this world. Streaks!
After the funeral I rode home with the family. It was pleasanterthan the ride down, though it seemed sad to my relations. They didnot mention me, however, and I may remark, that although I stayedabout home for a week, I never heard my name mentioned by any of thefamily. Arrived at home, the tea-kettle was put on and supper gotready. This seemed to lift the gloom a little, and under theinfluence of the tea they brightened up and gradually got morecheerful. They discussed the sermon and the singing, and the mistakeof the sexton in digging the grave in the wrong place, and the largecongregation. From the mantel-piece I watched the group. They hadwaffles for supper,—of which I had been exceedingly fond, but now Isaw them disappear without a sigh.
For the first day or two of my sojourn at home I was here and thereat all the neighbors, and heard a good deal about my life andcharacter, some of which was not very pleasant, but very wholesome,doubtless, for me to hear. At the expiration of a week thisamusement ceased to be such for I ceased to be talked of. I realizedthe fact that I was dead and gone.
By an act of volition I found myself back at college. I floated intomy own room, which was empty. I went to the room of my two warmestfriends, whose friendship I was and am yet assured of. As usual,half a dozen of our set were lounging there. A game of whist wasjust commencing. I perched on a bust of Dante on the top of thebook-shelves, where I could see two of the hands and give a goodguess at a third. My particular friend Timmins was just shufflingthe cards.
"Be hanged if it is n't lonesome without old Starr. Did you cut? Ishould like to see him lounge in now with his pipe, and with feet onthe mantel-piece proceed to expound on the duplex functions of thesoul."
"There—misdeal," said his vis-a-vis. "Hope there's been no misdealfor old Starr."
"Spades, did you say?" the talk ran on, "never knew Starr wassickly."
"No more was he; stouter than you are, and as brave and plucky as hewas strong. By George, fellows,—how we do get cut down! Last termlittle Stubbs, and now one of the best fellows in the class."
"How suddenly he did pop off,—one for game, honors easy,—he wasgood for the Spouts' Medal this year, too."
"Remember the joke he played on Prof. A., freshman year?" askedanother.
"Remember he borrowed ten dollars of me about that time," said
Timmins's partner, gathering the cards for a new deal.
"Guess he is the only one who ever did," retorted some one.
And so the talk went on, mingled with whist-talk, reminiscent of me,not all exactly what I would have chosen to go into my biography, buton the whole kind and tender, after the fashion of the boys. Atleast I was in their thoughts, and I could see was a good dealregretted,—so I passed a very pleasant evening. Most of thosepresent were of my society, and wore crape on their badges, and allwore the usual crape on the left arm. I learned that the followingafternoon a eulogy would be delivered on me in the chapel.
The eulogy was delivered before members of our society and others,the next afternoon, in the chapel. I need not say that I waspresent. Indeed, I was perched on the desk within reach of thespeaker's hand. The apotheosis was pronounced by my most intimatefriend, Timmins, and I must say he did me ample justice. He neverwas accustomed to "draw it very mild" (to use a vulgarism which Idislike) when he had his head, and on this occasion he entered intothe matter with the zeal of a true friend, and a young man who neverexpected to have another occasion to sing a public "In Memoriam." Itmade my hair stand on end,—metaphorically, of course. From mychildhood I had been extremely precocious. There were anecdotes ofpreternatural brightness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of myeagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and ofmy arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as itappeared) to repress my rage, until I entered this institution, ofwhich I had been ornament, pride, cynosure, and fair promising budblasted while yet its fragrance was mingled with the dew of itsyouth. Once launched upon my college days, Timmins went on with allsails spread. I had, as it were, to hold on to the pulpit cushion.Latin, Greek, the old literatures, I was perfect master of; allhistory was merely a light repast to me; mathematics I glanced at,and it disappeared; in the clouds of modern philosophy I was wrappedbut not obscured; over the field of light literature I familiarlyroamed as the honey-bee over the wide fields of clover which blossomwhite in the Junes of this world! My life was pure, my characterspotless, my name was inscribed among the names of those deathlessfew who were not born to die!
It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before he finished, though I hadmisgivings at the beginning, that I deserved it all. The effect onthe audience was a little different. They said it was a "strong"oration, and I think Timmins got more credit by it than I did. Afterthe performance they stood about the chapel, talking in a subduedtone, and seemed to be a good deal impressed by what they had heard,or perhaps by thoughts of the departed. At least they all soon wentover to Austin's and called for beer. My particular friends calledfor it twice. Then they all lit pipes. The old grocery keeper wasgood enough to say that I was no fool, if I did go off owing him fourdollars. To the credit of human nature, let me here record that thefellows were touched by this remark reflecting upon my memory, andimmediately made up a purse and paid the bill,—that is, they toldthe old man to charge it over to them. College boys are rich incredit and the possibilities of life.
It is needless to dwell upon the days I passed at college during thisprobation. So far as I could see, everything went on as if I werethere, or had never been there. I could not even see the place whereI had dropped out of the ranks. Occasionally I heard my name, but Imust say that four weeks was quite long enough to stay in a worldthat had pretty much forgotten me. There is no great satisfaction inbeing dragged up to light now and then, like an old letter. The casewas somewhat different with the people with whom I had boarded. Theywere relations of mine, and I often saw them weep, and they talked ofme a good deal at twilight and Sunday nights, especially the youngestone, Carrie, who was handsomer than any one I knew, and not mucholder than I. I never used to imagine that she cared particularlyfor me, nor would she have done so, if I had lived, but death broughtwith it a sort of sentimental regret, which, with the help of adaguerreotype, she nursed into quite a little passion. I spent mostof my time there, for it was more congenial than the college.
But time hastened. The last sand of probation leaked out of theglass. One day, while Carrie played (for me, though she knew it not)one of Mendelssohn's "songs without words," I suddenly, yet gently,without self-effort or volition, moved from the house, floated in theair, rose higher, higher, by an easy, delicious, exultant, yetinconceivably rapid motion. The ecstasy of that triumphant flight!Groves, trees, houses, the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled awaybeneath me. Upward mounting, as on angels' wings, with no effort,till the earth hung beneath me a round black ball swinging, remote,in the universal ether. Upward mounting, till the earth, no longerbathed in the sun's rays, went out to my sight, disappeared in theblank. Constellations, before seen from afar, I sailed among.Stars, too remote for shining on earth, I neared, and found to beround globes flying through space with a velocity only equaled by myown. New worlds continually opened on my sight; newfields ofeverlasting space opened and closed behind me.
For days and days—it seemed a mortal forever—I mounted up the greatheavens, whose everlasting doors swung wide. How the worlds andsystems, stars, constellations, neared me, blazed and flashed insplendor, and fled away! At length,—was it not a thousand years?—Isaw before me, yet afar off, a wall, the rocky bourn of that countrywhence travelers come not back, a battlement wider than I couldguess, the height of which I could not see, the depth of which wasinfinite. As I approached, it shone with a splendor never yet beheldon earth. Its solid substance was built of jewels the rarest, andstones of priceless value. It seemed like one solid stone, and yetall the colors of the rainbow were contained in it. The ruby, thediamond, the emerald, the carbuncle, the topaz, the amethyst, thesapphire; of them the wall was built up in harmonious combination.So brilliant was it that all the space I floated in was full of thesplendor. So mild was it and so translucent, that I could look formiles into its clear depths.
Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, an immense niche wasdisclosed in its solid face. The floor was one large ruby. Itssloping sides were of pearl. Before I was aware I stood within thebrilliant recess. I say I stood there, for I was there bodily, in myhabit as I lived; how, I cannot explain. Was it the resurrection ofthe body? Before me rose, a thousand feet in height, a wonderfulgate of flashing diamond. Beside it sat a venerable man, with longwhite beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, and a golden keyhanging by a cord from his waist. In the serene beauty of his noblefeatures I saw justice and mercy had met and were reconciled. Icannot describe the majesty of his bearing or the benignity of hisappearance. It is needless to say that I stood before St. Peter, whosits at the Celestial Gate.
I humbly approached, and begged admission. St. Peter arose, andregarded me kindly, yet inquiringly.
"What is your name?" asked he, "and from what place do you come?"
I answered, and, wishing to give a name well known, said I was fromWashington, United States. He looked doubtful, as if he had neverheard the name before.
"Give me," said he, "a full account of your whole life."
I felt instantaneously that there was no concealment possible; alldisguise fell away, and an unknown power forced me to speak absoluteand exact truth. I detailed the events of my life as well as Icould, and the good man was not a little affected by the recital ofmy early trials, poverty, and temptation. It did not seem a verygood life when spread out in that presence, and I trembled as Iproceeded; but I plead youth, inexperience, and bad examples.
"Have you been accustomed," he said, after a time, rather sadly, "tobreak the Sabbath?"
I told him frankly that I had been rather lax in that matter,especially at college. I often went to sleep in the chapel onSunday, when I was not reading some entertaining book. He then askedwho the preacher was, and when I told him, he remarked that I was notso much to blame as he had supposed.
"Have you," he went on, "ever stolen, or told any lie?"
I was able to say no, except admitting as to the first, usual college"conveyances," and as to the last, an occasional "blinder" to theprofessors. He was gracious enough to say that these could beoverlooked as incident to the occasion.
"Have you ever been dissipated, living riotously and keeping latehours?"
"Yes."
This also could be forgiven me as an incident of youth.
"Did you ever," he went on, "commit the crime of using intoxicatingdrinks as a beverage?"
I answered that I had never been a habitual drinker, that I had neverbeen what was called a "moderate drinker," that I had never gone to abar and drank alone; but that I had been accustomed, in company withother young men, on convivial occasions to taste the pleasures of theflowing bowl, sometimes to excess, but that I had also tasted thepains of it, and for months before my demise had refrained fromliquor altogether. The holy man looked grave, but, after reflection,said this might also be overlooked in a young man.
"What," continued he, in tones still more serious, "has been yourconduct with regard to the other sex?"
I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosom alittle book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "DonGiovanni." There, I said, was a record of my flirtation andinconstancy. I waited long for the decision, but it came in mercy.
"Rise," he cried; "young men will be young men, I suppose. We shallforgive this also to your youth and penitence."
"Your examination is satisfactory, he informed me," after a pause;"you can now enter the abodes of the happy."
Joy leaped within me. We approached the gate. The key turned in thelock. The gate swung noiselessly on its hinges a little open. Outflashed upon me unknown splendors. What I saw in that momentarygleam I shall never whisper in mortal ears. I stood upon thethreshold, just about to enter.
"Stop! one moment," exclaimed St. Peter, laying his hand on myshoulder; "I have one more question to ask you."
I turned toward him.
"Young man, did you ever use tobacco?"
"I both smoked and chewed in my lifetime," I faltered, "but…"
"THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!" he shouted in a voice of thunder.
Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I was flung, hurled,from the battlement, down! down! down! Faster and faster I sank ina dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom. Thelight faded. Dampness and darkness were round about me. As before,for days and days I rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sankinto thickening darkness,—and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashylight more fearful.
In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me. It ran upand down and on either hand endlessly into the night. It was solid,black, terrible in its frowning massiveness.
Straightway I alighted at the gate,—a dismal crevice hewn into thedripping rock. The gate was wide open, and there sat-I knew him atonce; who does not?—the Arch Enemy of mankind. He cocked his eye atme in an impudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me. I sawthat I was not to be treated like a gentleman.
"Well, young man," said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face,"what are you sent here for?
"For using tobacco," I replied.
"Ho!" shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, "that's whatmost of 'em are sent here for now."
Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, who ushered me within.What a dreadful plain lay before me! There was a vast city laid outin regular streets, but there were no houses. Along the streets wereplaces of torment and torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable.For miles and miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors throughthese horrors, Here was a deep vat of burning tar. Here were rows offiery ovens. I noticed several immense caldron kettles of boilingoil, upon the rims of which little devils sat, with pitchforks inhand, and poked down the helpless victims who floundered in theliquid. But I forbear to go into unseemly details. The whole sceneis as vivid in my mind as any earthly landscape.
After an hour's walk my tormentors halted before the mouth of anoven,—a furnace heated seven times, and now roaring with flames.They grasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. Standing before theblazing mouth, they, with a swing, and a "one, two, THREE…."
I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set downnothing that was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of thiswonderful vision I have been obliged to omit.
Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off theuse of tobacco.
FIFTH STUDY
I
I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New Englandwinter. Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. Butskepticism comes in with the south wind. When that begins to blow,one feels the foundations of his belief breaking up. This is onlyanother way of saying that it is more difficult, if it be notimpossible, to freeze out orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it isto thaw it out; though it is a mere fancy to suppose that this is thereason why the martyrs, of all creeds, were burned at the stake.There is said to be a great relaxation in New England of the ancientstrictness in the direction of toleration of opinion, called by somea lowering of the standard, and by others a raising of the banner ofliberality; it might be an interesting inquiry how much this changeis due to another change,—the softening of the New England winterand the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the fashion nowadays torefer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint is agratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics.
The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New Englandwinter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind. Itis a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralizesociety than any other. It is not necessary to remember that itfilled the silken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over NewEngland every few days, and is in some portions of it the prevailingwind. That it brings the soft clouds, and sometimes continues longenough to almost deceive the expectant buds of the fruit trees, andto tempt the robin from the secluded evergreen copses, may benothing; but it takes the tone out of the mind, and engendersdiscontent, making one long for the tropics; it feeds the weakenedimagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before we know it webecome demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the sudden change tosharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does from theplunge. It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we arebraced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter.
Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only afancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is notaltogether a matter of temperature, although the good old deacon usedto say, in his humble, simple way, that his third wife was a verygood woman, but her "temperature was very different from that of theother two." The north wind is full of courage, and puts the staminaof endurance into a man, and it probably would into a woman too ifthere were a series of resolutions passed to that effect. The westwind is hopeful; it has promise and adventure in it, and is, exceptto Atlantic voyagers America-bound, the best wind that ever blew.The east wind is peevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling,and curls one up in the chimney-corner like a cat. And if thechimney ever smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that quarter.The south wind is full of longing and unrest, of effeminatesuggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps we might say of modernpoetry,—at any rate, modern poetry needs a change of air. I am notsure but the south is the most powerful of the winds, because of itssweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the blood in spring, when itcomes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men "longen to gon onpilgrimages."
I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper todo in an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady StayingWith Us, beginning,—
"Out of a drifting southern cloud
My soul heard the night-bird cry,"
but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it wasexceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not onlyrhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody canwrite first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so manypoems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with asouth-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is veryfortunate when there is not wind enough to finish them. Thisemotional poem, if I may so call it, was begun after Herbert wentaway. I liked it, and thought it was what is called "suggestive;"although I did not understand it, especially what the night-bird was;and I am afraid I hurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if shemeant Herbert by the "night-bird,"—a very absurd suggestion abouttwo unsentimental people. She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwardstold the Mistress that there were emotions that one could never putinto words without the danger of being ridiculous; a profound truth.And yet I should not like to say that there is not a tenderlonesomeness in love that can get comfort out of a night-bird in acloud, if there be such a thing. Analysis is the death of sentiment.
But to return to the winds. Certain people impress us as the windsdo. Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigorand healthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in hiswholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, wasthe east wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness isonly a querulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistressherself, full of hope, and always the first one to discover a bit ofblue in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to apply what I have saidof the south wind to any of our visitors, but it did blow a littlewhile Herbert was here.
II
In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, Isuppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropicalseas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a greatwoodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritableNew England winter raging outside. In order to get the highestenjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mererecipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to abrisk walk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influencesminister to the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves.There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and adelicacy of color on distant hills which are wanting in summer, andwhich convey to one rightly organized the keenest delight, and arefinement of enjoyment that is scarcely sensuous, not at allsentimental, and almost passing the intellectual line into thespiritual.
I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I wasdrawing it altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations ofpleasure in being out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked tobreast a north wind, and that there was a certain inspiration insharp outlines and in a landscape in trim winter-quarters, withstripped trees, and, as it were, scudding through the season underbare poles; but that he must say that he preferred the weather inwhich he could sit on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring sunon his back, and hear the stir of the leaves and the birds beginningtheir housekeeping.
A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to haveprivate thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likesthe robustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a littlesuspicious to hear him express the hope that we shall have an earlyspring.
I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the gloryand inspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too,not only on days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosycolor, which has no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing init, but on dull days, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon,full of threats of storm and the terrors of the gathering night. Weare very busy with our own affairs, but there is always somethinggoing on out-doors worth looking at; and there is seldom an hourbefore sunset that has not some special attraction. And, besides, itputs one in the mood for the cheer and comfort of the open fire athome.
Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum ontheir weather, they would vote against it, especially against winter.Almost no one speaks well of winter. And this suggests the idea thatmost people here were either born in the wrong place, or do not knowwhat is best for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be anybetter satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics.Everybody knows our virtues,—at least if they believe half we tellthem,—and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, I should look amongthe girls of the New England hills as confidently as anywhere, and Ihave traveled as far south as New Jersey, and west of the GeneseeValley. Indeed, it would be easy to show that the parents of thepretty girls in the West emigrated from New England. And yet—suchis the mystery of Providence—no one would expect that one of thesweetest and most delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing.arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable climate, and peep forthfrom the edge of a snowbank at that.
It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousandsof people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a morecongenial one—or stop grumbling. The world is so small, and allparts of it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate,that one could surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is itworth while to waste our one short life in the midst of unpleasantsurroundings and in a constant friction with that which isdisagreeable? One would suppose that people set down on this littleglobe would seek places on it most agreeable to themselves. It mustbe that they are much more content with the climate and country uponwhich they happen, by the accident of their birth, than they pretendto be.
III
Home sympathies and charities are most active in the winter. Comingin from my late walk,—in fact driven in by a hurrying north windthat would brook no delay,—a wind that brought snow that did notseem to fall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown from polarfields,—I find the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow ofphilanthropic excitement.
There has been a meeting of a woman's association for Amelioratingthe Condition of somebody here at home. Any one can belong to it bypaying a dollar, and for twenty dollars one can become a lifeAmeliorator,—a sort of life assurance. The Mistress, at themeeting, I believe, "seconded the motion" several times, and is oneof the Vice-Presidents; and this family honor makes me feel almost asif I were a president of something myself. These little distinctionsare among the sweetest things in life, and to see one's nameofficially printed stimulates his charity, and is almost assatisfactory as being the chairman of a committee or the mover of aresolution. It is, I think, fortunate, and not at all discreditable,that our little vanity, which is reckoned among our weaknesses, isthus made to contribute to the activity of our nobler powers.Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinction; and probablythere is no more subtle flattery than that conveyed in the whisper,"That's he," "That's she."
There used to be a society for ameliorating the condition of theJews; but they were found to be so much more adept than other peoplein ameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up.Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many peoplewho get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busyin society, or to earn a little something in a good cause. They seemto think that the world owes them a living because they arephilanthropists. In this Mandeville does not speak with his usualcharity. It is evident that there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whosecondition needs ameliorating, and if very little is reallyaccomplished in the effort for them, it always remains true that thecharitable reap a benefit to themselves. It is one of the beautifulcompensations of this life that no one can sincerely try to helpanother without helping himself.
OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. Why is it that almost all philanthropistsand reformers are disagreeable?
I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor is. He is the personwho comes in without knocking, drops in in the most natural way, ashis wife does also, and not seldom in time to take the after-dinnercup of tea before the fire. Formal society begins as soon as youlock your doors, and only admit visitors through the media of bellsand servants. It is lucky for us that our next-door neighbor ishonest.
THE PARSON. Why do you class reformers and philanthropists together?Those usually called reformers are not philanthropists at all. Theyare agitators. Finding the world disagreeable to themselves, theywish to make it as unpleasant to others as possible.
MANDEVILLE. That's a noble view of your fellow-men.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Well, granting the distinction, why are both apt tobe unpleasant people to live with?
THE PARSON. As if the unpleasant people who won't mind their ownbusiness were confined to the classes you mention! Some of the bestpeople I know are philanthropists,—I mean the genuine ones, and notthe uneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as a means of living.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It is not altogether the not minding their ownbusiness. Nobody does that. The usual explanation is, that peoplewith one idea are tedious. But that is not all of it. For fewpersons have more than one idea,—ministers, doctors, lawyers,teachers, manufacturers, merchants,—they all think the world theylive in is the central one.
MANDEVILLE. And you might add authors. To them nearly all the lifeof the world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished ifthey knew how little the thoughts of the majority of people areoccupied with books, and with all that vast thought circulation whichis the vital current of the world to book-men. Newspapers havereached their present power by becoming unliterary, and reflectingall the interests of the world.
THE MISTRESS. I have noticed one thing, that the most popularpersons in society are those who take the world as it is, find theleast fault, and have no hobbies. They are always wanted to dinner.
THE YOUNG LADY. And the other kind always appear to me to want adinner.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It seems to me that the real reason why reformersand some philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb ourserenity and make us conscious of our own shortcomings. It is onlynow and then that a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor,of investigation and regeneration. At other times they rather hatethose who disturb their quiet.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Professional reformers and philanthropists areinsufferably conceited and intolerant.
THE MISTRESS. Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reformor a scheme of philanthropy is conducted.
MANDEVILLE. I attended a protracted convention of reformers of acertain evil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with atableful of them. It was one of those country dinners accompaniedwith green tea. Every one disagreed with every one else, and youwould n't wonder at it, if you had seen them. They were people withwhom good food wouldn't agree. George Thompson was expected at theconvention, and I remember that there was almost a cordiality in thetalk about him, until one sallow brother casually mentioned thatGeorge took snuff,—when a chorus of deprecatory groans went up fromthe table. One long-faced maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbonsin her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my count, declared thatshe was perfectly disgusted, and did n't want to hear him speak. Inthe course of the meal the talk ran upon the discipline of children,and how to administer punishment. I was quite taken by the remark ofa thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matter by growling out in aharsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in love!" It sounded as if he hadsaid, "Shoot 'em on the spot!"
THE PARSON. I supposed you would say that he was a minister. Thereis another thing about those people. I think they are workingagainst the course of nature. Nature is entirely indifferent to anyreform. She perpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue.There's a split in my thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continuedfor many years, not withstanding all my efforts to make the nailresume its old regularity. You see the same thing in trees whosebark is cut, and in melons that have had only one summer's intimacywith squashes. The bad traits in character are passed down fromgeneration to generation with as much care as the good ones. Nature,unaided, never reforms anything.
MANDEVILLE. Is that the essence of Calvinism?
THE PARSON. Calvinism has n't any essence, it's a fact.
MANDEVILLE. When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism andcalomel together. I thought that homeopathy—similia, etc.—had doneaway with both of them.
OUR NEXT DOOR (rising). If you are going into theology, I'm off..
IV
I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter. Inorder to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed thatthe lower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north windrages, and the deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of thecommunity. The activity of the "elements" has a great effect uponcountry folk especially; and it is a more wholesome excitement thanthat caused by a great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-stormthat grows to exceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is alwaysthe half-hope that this will be, since it has gone so far, thelargest fall of snow ever known in the region, burying out of sightthe great fall of 1808, the account of which is circumstantially andaggravatingly thrown in our way annually upon the least provocation.We all know how it reads: "Some said it began at daylight, othersthat it set in after sunrise; but all agree that by eight o'clockFriday morning it was snowing in heavy masses that darkened the air."
The morning after we settled the five—or is it seven?—points ofCalvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of thosewide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city,but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense ofthe personal qualities of the weather,—power, persistency,fierceness, and roaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to thosewho looked out of windows, and heard the raging wind, and saw thecommotion in all the high tree-tops and the writhing of the lowevergreens, and could not summon resolution to go forth and breastand conquer the bluster. The sky was dark with snow, which was notpermitted to fall peacefully like a blessed mantle, as it sometimesdoes, but was blown and rent and tossed like the split canvas of aship in a gale. The world was taken possession of by the demons ofthe air, who had their will of it. There is a sort of fascination insuch a scene, equal to that of a tempest at sea, and without itsattendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fear that the housewill founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage, which is dimlyseen anchored across the field; at every thundering onset there is nofear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw break loose andsmash through the side, and we are not in momently expectation of thetinkling of the little bell to "stop her." The snow rises indrifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but solong as the window-blinds remain fast, and the chimney-tops do notgo, we preserve an equal mind. Nothing more serious can happen thanthe failure of the butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, indeed,the little news-carrier should fail to board us with the world'sdaily bulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred fromcoming to sit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange thetrifling, harmless gossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion onsuch a day is sweet, but the true friend who does brave the storm andcome is welcomed with a sort of enthusiasm that his arrival inpleasant weather would never excite. The snow-bound in their Arctichulk are glad to see even a wandering Esquimau.
On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern NewEngland hills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with nosunrise or sunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all thewhile dark with the driving snow, and the whole world full of thenoise of the rioting Boreal forces; until the roads were obliterated,the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above thefirst-story windows of the farmhouse on one side, and drifted beforethe front door so high that egress could only be had by tunneling thebank.
After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sunstruggled out again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, andthe scattered dwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by thetempest and half buried in sand. But when the blue sky again bentover all, the wide expanse of snow sparkled like diamond-fields, andthe chimney signal-smokes could be seen, how beautiful was thepicture! Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts to open upcommunication through roads, or fields, or wherever paths could bebroken, and the ways to the meeting-house first of all. Then fromevery house and hamlet the men turned out with shovels, with thepatient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to break the roads,driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting as if thesevere labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarityrising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meetingat length in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed eachother as chance explorers in new lands, and made the wholecountry-side ring with the noise of their congratulations. There wasas much excitement and healthy stirring of the blood in it as in theFourth of July, and perhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it indumb show from the distant, low farmhouse window, and wished he werea man. At night there were great stories of achievement told by thecavernous fireplace; great latitude was permitted in the estimationof the size of particular drifts, but never any agreement was reachedas to the "depth on a level." I have observed since that people arequite as apt to agree upon the marvelous and the exceptional as uponsimple facts.
V
By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing aletter to Herbert,—writing it, literally, on her knees, transformingthus the simple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville says thatit is bad for her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes.He begins to doubt the wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegmabout absence conquering love.
Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friendabsent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable.Mandeville begins to wish he were in New South Wales.
I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the Young Lady,—obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which getinto print always are,—not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, butto show how the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected bythe master passion. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in theinterests of science one has no right to make an autopsy of twoloving hearts, especially when they are suffering under a late attackof the one agreeable epidemic.
All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less inhis extravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he hassomething of the martyr's willingness for publicity; he would evenlike to show the sincerity of his devotion by some piece of openheroism. Why should he conceal a discovery which has transformed theworld to him, a secret which explains all the mysteries of nature andhuman-ity? He is in that ecstasy of mind which prompts those whowere never orators before to rise in an experience-meeting and pourout a flood of feeling in the tritest language and the mostconventional terms. I am not sure that Herbert, while in this glow,would be ashamed of his letter in print, but this is one of the caseswhere chancery would step in and protect one from himself by his nextfriend. This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is brutalto allude to it at all.
In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print. Love hasa marvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplestwords with the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the powerthey had when first coined. They are words of fire to those two whoknow their secret, but not to others. It is generally admitted thatthe best love-letters would not make very good literature."Dearest," begins Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitouslyselecting a word whose exclusiveness shuts out all the world but one,and which is a whole letter, poem, confession, and creed in onebreath. What a weight of meaning it has to carry! There may bebeauty and wit and grace and naturalness and even the splendor offortune elsewhere, but there is one woman in the world whose sweetpresence would be compensation for the loss of all else. It is notto be reasoned about; he wants that one; it is her plume dancing downthe sunny street that sets his heart beating; he knows her form amonga thousand, and follows her; he longs to run after her carriage,which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight. It is marvelous tohim that all the world does not want her too, and he is in a panicwhen he thinks of it. And what exquisite flattery is in that littleword addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph sherepeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity forthose who still stand and wait. To be chosen out of all theavailable world—it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "Allthat long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of youevery moment, and wondered what you were doing and how you werelooking just that moment, and I found the occupation so charming thatI was almost sorry when the journey was ended." Not much in that!But I have no doubt the Young Lady read it over and over, and dweltalso upon every moment, and found in it new proof of unshakenconstancy, and had in that and the like things in the letter a senseof the sweetest communion. There is nothing in this letter that weneed dwell on it, but I am convinced that the mail does not carry anyother letters so valuable as this sort.
I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new lightunconsciously gave tone a little to the evening's talk; not thatanybody mentioned him, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing fromthe qualities that make one person admired by another to those thatwin the love of mankind.
MANDEVILLE. There seems to be something in some persons that winsthem liking, special or general, independent almost of what they door say.
THE MISTRESS. Why, everybody is liked by some one.
MANDEVILLE. I'm not sure of that. There are those who arefriendless, and would be if they had endless acquaintances. But, totake the case away from ordinary examples, in which habit and athousand circumstances influence liking, what is it that determinesthe world upon a personal regard for authors whom it has never seen?
THE FIRE-TENDER. Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings.
THE MISTRESS. More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don't believethat the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author whowas not loved by those who knew him most intimately.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Which comes to the same thing. The qualities, thespirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into hisbooks.
MANDEVILLE. That does n't seem to me sufficient. Shakespeare hasput everything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range ofhuman sympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by thesweetest spirit that ever man had.
THE YOUNG LADY. No one has better interpreted love.
MANDEVILLE. Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personalregard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many,—exceptthey stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thoughtthat the bones of the greatest poet are so near them.
THE PARSON. I don't think the world cares personally for any mereman or woman dead for centuries.
MANDEVILLE. But there is a difference. I think there is stillrather a warm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what hesaid, which is little known. Homer's works are certainly betterknown, but no one cares personally for Homer any more than for anyother shade.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Why not go back to Moses? We've got the eveningbefore us for digging up people.
MANDEVILLE. Moses is a very good illustration. No name of antiquityis better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind ofpopular liking that Socrates does.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Fudge! You just get up in any lecture assembly and
propose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be.
Mandeville ought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the
Fijis.
THE FIRE-TENDER. How do you account for the alleged personal regardfor Socrates?
THE PARSON. Because the world called Christian is still more thanhalf heathen.
MANDEVILLE. He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people;he had what is roughly known as "horse-sense," and he was homely.Franklin and Abraham Lincoln belong to his class. They were allphilosophers of the shrewd sort, and they all had humor. It wasfortunate for Lincoln that, with his other qualities, he was homely.That was the last touching recommendation to the popular heart.
THE MISTRESS. Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St.Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento? He must have been a coarse saint,patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or thehomely stone image of one, so loved by the people.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win.Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and putup his statue in the Central Park? It would make that one of Lincolnin Union Square look beautiful.
THE PARSON. Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museumthere illustrating the "Science of Religion."
THE FIRE-TENDER. Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of,the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with anaffectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that thisgrows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything intheir writings. There seems to be more disposition of personalliking to Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead,—a resultthat would hardly have been predicted when the world was crying overLittle Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp.
THE YOUNG LADY. What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb,the other day, Mandeville? Is not the popular liking for himsomewhat independent of his writings?
MANDEVILLE. He is a striking example of an author who is loved.Very likely the remembrance of his tribulations has still somethingto do with the tenderness felt for him. He supported no dignity andpermitted a familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of hisreal rank in the world of letters. I have heard that hisacquaintances familiarly called him "Charley."
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a relief to know that! Do you happen to knowwhat Socrates was called?
MANDEVILLE. I have seen people who knew Lamb very well. One of themtold me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was goinghome late one night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by aroystering party who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern.They fell upon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitatingmanner, and, hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off,singing as they went. Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell themwho he was. When they were tired of lugging him, they lifted him,with much effort and difficulty, to the top of a high wall, and lefthim there amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get down. Lambremained there philosophically in the enjoyment of his noveladventure, until a passing watchman rescued him from his ridiculoussituation.
THE FIRE-TENDER. How did the story get out?
MANDEVILLE. Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when askedafterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in itunless he told it.
SIXTH STUDY
I
The King sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was afire on the hearth burning before him . . . . When Jehudi hadread three or four leaves he cut it with the penknife.
That seems to be a pleasant and home-like picture from a not veryremote period,—less than twenty-five hundred years ago, and manycenturies after the fall of Troy. And that was not so very long ago,for Thebes, in the splendid streets of which Homer wandered and sangto the kings when Memphis, whose ruins are older than history, wasits younger rival, was twelve centuries old when Paris ran away withHelen.
I am sorry that the original—and you can usually do anything withthe "original"—does not bear me out in saying that it was a pleasantpicture. I should like to believe that Jehoiakiin—for that was thesingular name of the gentleman who sat by his hearthstone—had justreceived the Memphis "Palimpsest," fifteen days in advance of thedate of its publication, and that his secretary was reading to himthat monthly, and cutting its leaves as he read. I should like tohave seen it in that year when Thales was learning astronomy inMemphis, and Necho was organizing his campaign against Carchemish.If Jehoiakim took the "Attic Quarterly," he might have read itscomments on the banishment of the Alcmaeonida, and its gibes atSolon for his prohibitory laws, forbidding the sale of unguents,limiting the luxury of dress, and interfering with the sacred rightsof mourners to passionately bewail the dead in the Asiatic manner;the same number being enriched with contributions from two risingpoets,—a lyric of love by Sappho, and an ode sent by Anacreon fromTeos, with an editorial note explaining that the Maces was notresponsible for the sentiments of the poem.
But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before the backlog in hiswinter-house had other things to think of. For Nebuchadnezzar wascoming that way with the chariots and horses of Babylon and a greatcrowd of marauders; and the king had not even the poor choice whetherhe would be the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian. To us,this is only a ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors stalkingacross vast historic spaces. It was no doubt a vulgar enough sceneof war and plunder. The great captains of that age went about toharry each other's territories and spoil each other's cities verymuch as we do nowadays, and for similar reasons;—Napoleon the Greatin Moscow, Napoleon the Small in Italy, Kaiser William in Paris,Great Scott in Mexico! Men have not changed much.
—The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in the third month; therewas a fire on the hearth burning before him. He cut the leaves of"Scribner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought of Jehoiakim.
That seems as real as the other. In the garden, which is a room ofthe house, the tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about thefountain; the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines themany-hued flowers. I wonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy-bug onhis passion-vine, and if he had any way of removing the scale-bugfrom his African acacia? One would like to know, too, how he treatedthe red spider on the Le Marque rose. The record is silent. I donot doubt he had all these insects in his winter-garden, and theaphidae besides; and he could not smoke them out with tobacco, forthe world had not yet fallen into its second stage of the knowledgeof good and evil by eating the forbidden tobacco-plant.
I confess that this little picture of a fire on the hearth so manycenturies ago helps to make real and interesting to me that somewhatmisty past. No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grewin that winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted—the mostdifficult thing in the world the cultivation of the wild flowers fromLebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested also, as I am through thisancient fireplace,—which is a sort of domestic window into theancient world,—in the loves of Bernice and Abaces at the court ofthe Pharaohs. I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment—perhaps it is the shrinking which every soul that is a soul has,sooner or later, from isolation—which grew up between Herbert andthe Young Lady Staying With Us. Jeremiah used to come in to thatfireside very much as the Parson does to ours. The Parson, to besure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in theplay that sings the everlasting ai ai of "I told you so!" Yet welike the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herb that makes thepottage wholesome. I should rather, ten times over, dispense withthe flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But thegrumblers are of two sorts,—the healthful-toned and the whiners.There are makers of beer who substitute for the clean bitter of thehops some deleterious drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by somecloying sweet. There is nothing of this sickish drug in the Parson'stalk, nor was there in that of Jeremiah, I sometimes think there isscarcely enough of this wholesome tonic in modern society. TheParson says he never would give a child sugar-coated pills.Mandeville says he never would give them any. After all, you cannothelp liking Mandeville.
II
We were talking of this late news from Jerusalem. The Fire-Tenderwas saying that it is astonishing how much is telegraphed usfrom the East that is not half so interesting. He was at a lossphilosophically to account for the fact that the world is so eager toknow the news of yesterday which is unimportant, and so indifferentto that of the day before which is of some moment.
MANDEVILLE. I suspect that it arises from the want of imagination.People need to touch the facts, and nearness in time is contiguity.It would excite no interest to bulletin the last siege of Jerusalemin a village where the event was unknown, if the date was appended;and yet the account of it is incomparably more exciting than that ofthe siege of Metz.
OUR NEXT DOOR. The daily news is a necessity. I cannot get alongwithout my morning paper. The other morning I took it up, and wasabsorbed in the telegraphic columns for an hour nearly. I thoroughlyenjoyed the feeling of immediate contact with all the world ofyesterday, until I read among the minor items that Patrick Donahue,of the city of New York, died of a sunstroke. If he had frozen todeath, I should have enjoyed that; but to die of sunstroke inFebruary seemed inappropriate, and I turned to the date of the paper.When I found it was printed in July, I need not say that I lost allinterest in it, though why the trivialities and crimes and accidents,relating to people I never knew, were not as good six months afterdate as twelve hours, I cannot say.
THE FIRE-TENDER. You know that in Concord the latest news, except aremark or two by Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas. I believe theRig-Veda is read at the breakfast-table instead of the Bostonjournals.
THE PARSON. I know it is read afterward instead of the Bible.
MANDEVILLE. That is only because it is supposed to be older. I haveunderstood that the Bible is very well spoken of there, but it is notantiquated enough to be an authority.
OUR NEXT DOOR. There was a project on foot to put it into thecirculating library, but the title New in the second part wasconsidered objectionable.
HERBERT. Well, I have a good deal of sympathy with Concord as to thenews. We are fed on a daily diet of trivial events and gossip, ofthe unfruitful sayings of thoughtless men and women, until our mentaldigestion is seriously impaired; the day will come when no one willbe able to sit down to a thoughtful, well-wrought book and assimilateits contents.
THE MISTRESS. I doubt if a daily newspaper is a necessity, in thehigher sense of the word.
THE PARSON. Nobody supposes it is to women,—that is, if they cansee each other.
THE MISTRESS. Don't interrupt, unless you have something to say;though I should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that theminister does not know. The newspaper may be needed in society, buthow quickly it drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds ofwhat is called civilization. You remember when we were in the depthsof the woods last summer how difficult it was to get up any interestin the files of late papers that reached us, and how unreal all thestruggle and turmoil of the world seemed. We stood apart, and couldestimate things at their true value.
THE YOUNG LADY. Yes, that was real life. I never tired of theguide's stories; there was some interest in the intelligence that adeer had been down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the lake thenight before; that a bear's track was seen on the trail we crossedthat day; even Mandeville's fish-stories had a certain air ofprobability; and how to roast a trout in the ashes and serve him hotand juicy and clean, and how to cook soup and prepare coffee and heatdish-water in one tin-pail, were vital problems.
THE PARSON. You would have had no such problems at home. Why willpeople go so far to put themselves to such inconvenience? I hate thewoods. Isolation breeds conceit; there are no people so conceited asthose who dwell in remote wildernesses and live mostly alone.
THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I feel humble in the presence ofmountains, and in the vast stretches of the wilderness.
THE PARSON. I'll be bound a woman would feel just as nobody wouldexpect her to feel, under given circumstances.
MANDEVILLE. I think the reason why the newspaper and the world itcarries take no hold of us in the wilderness is that we become a kindof vegetable ourselves when we go there. I have often attempted toimprove my mind in the woods with good solid books. You might aswell offer a bunch of celery to an oyster. The mind goes to sleep:the senses and the instincts wake up. The best I can do when itrains, or the trout won't bite, is to read Dumas's novels. Theiringenuity will almost keep a man awake after supper, by thecamp-fire. And there is a kind of unity about them that I like; thehistory is as good as the morality.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I always wondered where Mandeville got his historicalfacts.
THE MISTRESS. Mandeville misrepresents himself in the woods. Iheard him one night repeat "The Vision of Sir Launfal"—(THEFIRE-TENDER. Which comes very near being our best poem.)—as we werecrossing the lake, and the guides became so absorbed in it that theyforgot to paddle, and sat listening with open mouths, as if it hadbeen a panther story.
THE PARSON. Mandeville likes to show off well enough. I heard thathe related to a woods' boy up there the whole of the Siege of Troy.The boy was very much interested, and said "there'd been a man upthere that spring from Troy, looking up timber." Mandeville alwayscarries the news when he goes into the country.
MANDEVILLE. I'm going to take the Parson's sermon on Jonah nextsummer; it's the nearest to anything like news we've had from hispulpit in ten years. But, seriously, the boy was very well informed.He'd heard of Albany; his father took in the "Weekly Tribune," and hehad a partial conception of Horace Greeley.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I never went so far out of the world in America yetthat the name of Horace Greeley did n't rise up before me. One ofthe first questions asked by any camp-fire is, "Did ye ever seeHorace?"
HERBERT. Which shows the power of the press again. But I have oftenremarked how little real conception of the moving world, as it is,people in remote regions get from the newspaper. It needs to be readin the midst of events. A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy tellsno tale of the force and swiftness of the current.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I don't exactly get the drift of that last remark;but I rather like a remark that I can't understand; like thelandlady's indigestible bread, it stays by you.
HERBERT. I see that I must talk in words of one syllable. Thenewspaper has little effect upon the remote country mind, because theremote country mind is interested in a very limited number of things.Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited. The most accomplishedscholar will be the butt of all the guides in the woods, because hecannot follow a trail that would puzzle a sable (saple the trapperscall it).
THE PARSON. It's enough to read the summer letters that people writeto the newspapers from the country and the woods. Isolated from theactivity of the world, they come to think that the little adventuresof their stupid days and nights are important. Talk about that beingreal life! Compare the letters such people write with the othercontents of the newspaper, and you will see which life is real.That's one reason I hate to have summer come, the country letters setin.
THE MISTRESS. I should like to see something the Parson does n'thate to have come.
MANDEVILLE. Except his quarter's salary; and the meeting of the
American Board.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I don't see that we are getting any nearer thesolution of the original question. The world is evidently interestedin events simply because they are recent.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I have a theory that a newspaper might be publishedat little cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before,only altering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over hissermons.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It's evident we must have a higher order ofnews-gatherers. It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishesthought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day today the themes the world shall think on and talk about. Theoccupation of news-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important.When you think of it, it is astonishing that this department shouldnot be in the hands of the ablest men, accomplished scholars,philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of theworld that is worth thinking over and talking about. The editorialcomments frequently are able enough, but is it worth while keeping anexpensive mill going to grind chaff? I sometimes wonder, as I openmy morning paper, if nothing did happen in the twenty-four hoursexcept crimes, accidents, defalcations, deaths of unknown loafers,robberies, monstrous births,—say about the level of police-courtnews.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I have even noticed that murders have deteriorated;they are not so high-toned and mysterious as they used to be.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It is true that the newspapers have improved vastlywithin the last decade.
HERBERT. I think, for one, that they are very much above the levelof the ordinary gossip of the country.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But I am tired of having the under-world stilloccupy so much room in the newspapers. The reporters are rather morealert for a dog-fight than a philological convention. It must bethat the good deeds of the world outnumber the bad in any given day;and what a good reflex action it would have on society if they couldbe more fully reported than the bad! I suppose the Parson would callthis the Enthusiasm of Humanity.
THE PARSON. You'll see how far you can lift yourself up by yourboot-straps.
HERBERT. I wonder what influence on the quality (I say nothing ofquantity) of news the coming of women into the reporter's andeditor's work will have.
OUR NEXT DOOR. There are the baby-shows; they make cheerful reading.
THE MISTRESS. All of them got up by speculating men, who impose uponthe vanity of weak women.
HERBERT. I think women reporters are more given to personal detailsand gossip than the men. When I read the Washington correspondence Iam proud of my country, to see how many Apollo Belvederes, Adonises,how much marble brow and piercing eye and hyacinthine locks, we havein the two houses of Congress.
THE YOUNG LADY. That's simply because women understand the personalweakness of men; they have a long score of personal flattery to payoff too.
MANDEVILLE. I think women will bring in elements of brightness,picturesqueness, and purity very much needed. Women have a power ofinvesting simple ordinary things with a charm; men are bunglingnarrators compared with them.
THE PARSON. The mistake they make is in trying to write, andespecially to "stump-speak," like men; next to an effeminate manthere is nothing so disagreeable as a mannish woman.
HERBERT. I heard one once address a legislative committee. Theknowing air, the familiar, jocular, smart manner, the nodding andwinking innuendoes, supposed to be those of a man "up to snuff," andau fait in political wiles, were inexpressibly comical. And yet theexhibition was pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of awoman in man's clothes. The imitation is always a dreary failure.
THE MISTRESS. Such women are the rare exceptions. I am ready todefend my sex; but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in one.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I have great hope that women will bring into thenewspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life ofsociety is much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than theexceptional and extravagant. I confess (saving the Mistress'spresence) that the evening talk over the dessert at dinner is muchmore entertaining and piquant than the morning paper, and often asimportant.
THE MISTRESS. I think the subject had better be changed.
MANDEVILLE. The person, not the subject. There is no entertainmentso full of quiet pleasure as the hearing a lady of cultivation andrefinement relate her day's experience in her daily rounds of calls,charitable visits, shopping, errands of relief and condolence. Theevening budget is better than the finance minister's.
OUR NEXT DOOR. That's even so. My wife will pick up more news insix hours than I can get in a week, and I'm fond of news.
MANDEVILLE. I don't mean gossip, by any means, or scandal. A womanof culture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with thetip of a wing. What she brings home is the freshness and brightnessof life. She touches everything so daintily, she hits off acharacter in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue withouttediousness, she mimics without vulgarity; her narration sparkles,but it does n't sting. The picture of her day is full of vivacity,and it gives new value and freshness to common things. If we couldonly have on the stage such actresses as we have in the drawing-room!
THE FIRE-TENDER. We want something more of this grace,sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life of society in thenewspaper.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder Mandeville does n't marry, and become apermanent subscriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper.
THE YOUNG LADY. Perhaps he does not relish the idea of being unableto stop his subscription.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Parson, won't you please punch that fire, and give usmore blaze? we are getting into the darkness of socialism.
III
Herbert returned to us in March. The Young Lady was spending thewinter with us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to bea winter month. It usually is in New England, and April too, forthat matter. And I cannot say it is unfortunate for us. There areso many topics to be turned over and settled at our fireside that awinter of ordinary length would make little impression on the list.The fireside is, after all, a sort of private court of chancery,where nothing ever does come to a final decision. The chief effectof talk on any subject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, infact, one never knows exactly what he does believe until he is warmedinto conviction by the heat of attack and defence. A man left tohimself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake; it is only when thewind blows that the boat goes anywhere.
Herbert said he had been dipping into the recent novels written bywomen, here and there, with a view to noting the effect uponliterature of this sudden and rather overwhelming accession to it.There was a good deal of talk about it evening after evening, off andon, and I can only undertake to set down fragments of it.
HERBERT. I should say that the distinguishing feature of theliterature of this day is the prominence women have in itsproduction. They figure in most of the magazines, though very rarelyin the scholarly and critical reviews, and in thousands ofnewspapers; to them we are indebted for the oceans of Sunday-schoolbooks, and they write the majority of the novels, the serial stories,and they mainly pour out the watery flood of tales in the weeklypapers. Whether this is to result in more good than evil it isimpossible yet to say, and perhaps it would be unjust to say, untilthis generation has worked off its froth, and women settle down toartistic, conscientious labor in literature.
THE MISTRESS. You don't mean to say that George Eliot, and Mrs.Gaskell, and George Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage andsevere attack of spiritism, are less true to art than contemporarymen novelists and poets.
HERBERT. You name some exceptions that show the bright side of thepicture, not only for the present, but for the future. Perhapsgenius has no sex; but ordinary talent has. I refer to the greatbody of novels, which you would know by internal evidence werewritten by women. They are of two sorts: the domestic story,entirely unidealized, and as flavorless as water-gruel; and thespiced novel, generally immoral in tendency, in which the socialproblems are handled, unhappy marriages, affinity and passionalattraction, bigamy, and the violation of the seventh commandment.These subjects are treated in the rawest manner, without any settledethics, with little discrimination of eternal right and wrong, andwith very little sense of responsibility for what is set forth. Manyof these novels are merely the blind outbursts of a nature impatientof restraint and the conventionalities of society, and are as chaoticas the untrained minds that produce them.
MANDEVILLE. Don't you think these novels fairly represent a socialcondition of unrest and upheaval?
HERBERT. Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad thediscontent they describe. Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised bydivorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through anentire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneakinglover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls,who were born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, meltand mingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful readingfor maids or mothers.
THE MISTRESS. Or men.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The most disagreeable object to me in modernliterature is the man the women novelists have introduced as theleading character; the women who come in contact with him seem to befascinated by his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutalmanner. He is broad across the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet aslithe as a cat; has an ugly scar across his right cheek; has been inthe four quarters of the globe; knows seventeen languages; had aharem in Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas; can be as polished asBayard in the drawing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in thelibrary; has a terrible eye and a withering glance, but can beinstantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is not his wife's; andthrough all his morose and vicious career has carried a heart as pureas a violet.
THE MISTRESS. Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elderbrother of Rochester?
THE FIRE-TENDER. One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meantfor a real man.
MANDEVILLE. I don't see that the men novel-writers are better thanthe women.
HERBERT. That's not the question; but what are women who write solarge a proportion of the current stories bringing into literature?Aside from the question of morals, and the absolutely demoralizingmanner of treating social questions, most of their stories are vapidand weak beyond expression, and are slovenly in composition, showingneither study, training, nor mental discipline.
THE MISTRESS. Considering that women have been shut out from thetraining of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wideobservation that men enjoy, isn't it pretty well that the foremostliving writers of fiction are women?
HERBERT. You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray andDickens have just died. But it does not affect the generalestimate. We are inundated with a flood of weak writing. Take theSunday-school literature, largely the product of women; it has n't asmuch character as a dried apple pie. I don't know what we are coming toif the presses keep on running.
OUR NEXT DOOR. We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awfultime; I'm glad I don't write novels.
THE PARSON. So am I.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I tried a Sunday-school book once; but I made thegood boy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; andthe publisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand thatsort of thing. Nobody but the good go to Congress.
THE MISTRESS. Herbert, what do you think women are good for?
OUR NEXT DOOR. That's a poser.
HERBERT. Well, I think they are in a tentative state as toliterature, and we cannot yet tell what they will do. Some of ourmost brilliant books of travel, correspondence, and writing on topicsin which their sympathies have warmly interested them, are by women.Some of them are also strong writers in the daily journals.
MANDEVILLE. I 'm not sure there's anything a woman cannot do as wellas a man, if she sets her heart on it.
THE PARSON. That's because she's no conscience.
CHORUS. O Parson!
THE PARSON. Well, it does n't trouble her, if she wants to doanything. She looks at the end, not the means. A woman, set onanything, will walk right through the moral crockery without wincing.She'd be a great deal more unscrupulous in politics than the averageman. Did you ever see a female lobbyist? Or a criminal? It is LadyMacbeth who does not falter. Don't raise your hands at me! Thesweetest angel or the coolest devil is a woman. I see in some of themodern novels we have been talking of the same unscrupulous daring, ablindness to moral distinctions, a constant exaltation of a passioninto a virtue, an entire disregard of the immutable laws on which thefamily and society rest. And you ask lawyers and trustees howscrupulous women are in business transactions!
THE FIRE-TENDER. Women are often ignorant of affairs, and, besides,they may have a notion often that a woman ought to be privileged morethan a man in business matters; but I tell you, as a rule, that ifmen would consult their wives, they would go a deal straighter inbusiness operations than they do go.
THE PARSON. We are all poor sinners. But I've another indictmentagainst the women writers. We get no good old-fashioned love-storiesfrom them. It's either a quarrel of discordant natures one apanther, and the other a polar bear—for courtship, until one of themis crippled by a railway accident; or a long wrangle of married lifebetween two unpleasant people, who can neither live comfortablytogether nor apart. I suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing,with all its torturing and delightful uncertainty, still goes on inthe world; and I have no doubt that the majority of married peoplelive more happily than the unmarried. But it's easier to find a dodothan a new and good love-story.
MANDEVILLE. I suppose the old style of plot is exhausted.Everything in man and outside of him has been turned over so oftenthat I should think the novelists would cease simply from want ofmaterial.
THE PARSON. Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man isa new creation, and combinations are simply endless. Even if we didnot have new material in the daily change of society, and there wereonly a fixed number of incidents and characters in life, inventioncould not be exhausted on them. I amuse myself sometimes with mykaleidoscope, but I can never reproduce a figure. No, no. I cannotsay that you may not exhaust everything else: we may get all thesecrets of a nature into a book by and by, but the novel is immortal,for it deals with men.
The Parson's vehemence came very near carrying him into a sermon; andas nobody has the privilege of replying to his sermons, so none ofthe circle made any reply now.
Our Next Door mumbled something about his hair standing on end, tohear a minister defending the novel; but it did not interrupt thegeneral silence. Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire;it would be intolerable if they sat and looked at each other.
The wind had risen during the evening, and Mandeville remarked, asthey rose to go, that it had a spring sound in it, but it was as coldas winter. The Mistress said she heard a bird that morning singingin the sun a spring song, it was a winter bird, but it sang.
SEVENTH STUDY
We have been much interested in what is called the Gothic revival.We have spent I don't know how many evenings in looking overHerbert's plans for a cottage, and have been amused with his vainefforts to cover with Gothic roofs the vast number of large roomswhich the Young Lady draws in her sketch of a small house.
I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capable of infinitemodification, so that every house built in that style may be asdifferent from every other house as one tree is from every other, canbe adapted to our modern uses, and will be, when artists catch itsspirit instead of merely copying its old forms. But just now we aretaking the Gothic very literally, as we took the Greek at one time,or as we should probably have taken the Saracenic, if the Moors hadnot been colored. Not even the cholera is so contagious in thiscountry as a style of architecture which we happen to catch; thecountry is just now broken out all over with the Mansard-roofepidemic.
And in secular architecture we do not study what is adapted to ourclimate any more than in ecclesiastic architecture we adopt thatwhich is suited to our religion.
We are building a great many costly churches here and there, weProtestants, and as the most of them are ill adapted to our forms ofworship, it may be necessary and best for us to change our religionin order to save our investments. I am aware that this would be agrave step, and we should not hasten to throw overboard Luther andthe right of private judgment without reflection. And yet, if it isnecessary to revive the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not inits spirit (that we nowhere do), but in the form which served anotherage and another faith, and if, as it appears, we have already a greatdeal of money invested in this reproduction, it may be more prudentto go forward than to go back. The question is, "Cannot one easierchange his creed than his pew?"
I occupy a seat in church which is an admirable one for reflection,but I cannot see or hear much that is going on in what we like tocall the apse. There is a splendid stone pillar, a clustered column,right in front of me, and I am as much protected from the minister asOld Put's troops were from the British, behind the stone wall atBunker's Hill. I can hear his voice occasionally wandering round inthe arches overhead, and I recognize the tone, because he is a friendof mine and an excellent man, but what he is saying I can very seldommake out. If there was any incense burning, I could smell it, andthat would be something. I rather like the smell of incense, and ithas its holy associations. But there is no smell in our church,except of bad air,—for there is no provision for ventilation in thesplendid and costly edifice. The reproduction of the old Gothic isso complete that the builders even seem to have brought over theancient air from one of the churches of the Middle Ages,—you woulddeclare it had n't been changed in two centuries.
I am expected to fix my attention during the service upon one man,who stands in the centre of the apse and has a sounding-board behindhim in order to throw his voice out of the sacred semicircular space(where the altar used to stand, but now the sounding-board takes theplace of the altar) and scatter it over the congregation at large,and send it echoing up in the groined roof I always like to hear aminister who is unfamiliar with the house, and who has a loud voice,try to fill the edifice. The more he roars and gives himself withvehemence to the effort, the more the building roars inindistinguishable noise and hubbub. By the time he has said (tosuppose a case), "The Lord is in his holy temple," and has passed onto say, "let all the earth keep silence," the building is repeating"The Lord is in his holy temple" from half a dozen different anglesand altitudes, rolling it and growling it, and is not keeping silenceat all. A man who understands it waits until the house has had itssay, and has digested one passage, before he launches another intothe vast, echoing spaces. I am expected, as I said, to fix my eyeand mind on the minister, the central point of the service. But thepillar hides him. Now if there were several ministers in the church,dressed in such gorgeous colors that I could see them at the distancefrom the apse at which my limited income compels me to sit, andcandles were burning, and censers were swinging, and the platform wasfull of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritual worship, and a bellrang to tell me the holy moments, I should not mind the pillar atall. I should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoy it. But, asI have said, the pastor is a friend of mine, and I like to look athim on Sunday, and hear what he says, for he always says somethingworth hearing. I am on such terms with him, indeed we all are, thatit would be pleasant to have the service of a little more socialnature, and more human. When we put him away off in the apse, andset him up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance,scattered about among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me atrifle unnatural. Though I do not mean to say that the congregationsdo not "enjoy their religion" in their splendid edifices which costso much money and are really so beautiful.
A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothicarchitecture and Christianity are essentially one and the same thing.Just as many regard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth orto cushion a pulpit. It may be, and it may not be.
Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religiousexperience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may havehad its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good.Of course I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth centuryecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think ithas attacked the Congregational and the other non-ritual churchesmore violently than any others. We have had it here in its mostbeautiful and dangerous forms. I believe we are pretty much all ofus supplied with a Gothic church now. Such has been the enthusiasmin this devout direction, that I should not be surprised to see ourrich private citizens putting up Gothic churches for their individualamusement and sanctification. As the day will probably come whenevery man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-storygranite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable to expect thatevery man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginning to bediscovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal to theCongregational style of worship that has been prevalent here in NewEngland; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for privatedevotion.
There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside andoutside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it eventhat "high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anythingelse to impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancythat for genuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any churchin the city. Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it,—a beautiful little edifice. The committee forgot to make any moreprovision for ventilating that than the church, and it takes a prettywell-seasoned Christian to stay in it long at a time. TheSunday-school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustomthe children to bad air before they go into the church. The poor littledears shouldn't have the wickedness and impurity of this world breakon them too suddenly. If the stranger noticed any lack about ourchurch, it would be that of a spire. There is a place for one;indeed, it was begun, and then the builders seem to have stopped,with the notion that it would grow itself from such a good root. Itis a mistake however, to suppose that we do not know that the churchhas what the profane here call a "stump-tail" appearance. But theprofane are as ignorant of history as they are of true Gothic. Allthe Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries. That at Milanis scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of the Colognecathedral are one of the best-known features of it. I doubt if itwould be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once. We cantell cavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and nota minute before. It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do,who are to build near us. I, for one, think we had better wait andsee how high the Baptist spire is before we run ours up. The churchis everything that could be desired inside. There is the nave, withits lofty and beautiful arched ceiling; there are the side aisles,and two elegant rows of stone pillars, stained so as to be a perfectimitation of stucco; there is the apse, with its stained glass andexquisite lines; and there is an organ-loft over the front entrance,with a rose window. Nothing was wanting, so far as we could see,except that we should adapt ourselves to the circumstances; and thatwe have been trying to do ever since. It may be well to relate howwe do it, for the benefit of other inchoate Goths.
It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hidethe beautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregationalsinging, and if we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof,like a cage of birds, we should not have congregational singing. Wetherefore left the organ-loft vacant, making no further use of itthan to satisfy our Gothic cravings. As for choir,—several of thesingers of the church volunteered to sit together in the frontside-seats, and as there was no place for an organ, they gallantlyrallied round a melodeon,—or perhaps it is a cabinet organ,—acharming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keepingwith the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a real Gothic edifice.It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for which we have allbeen looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard amelodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in thefinest churches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing.And it went very well indeed. One of the advantages of purecongregational singing, is that you can join in the singing whetheryou have a voice or not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor cando the same. It is strange what an uncommonly poor lot of voicesthere is, even among good people. But we enjoy it. If you do notenjoy it, you can change your seat until you get among a good lot.
So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it wasdifficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little deskin the apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation;still, we could most of us see him on a clear day. The church wasadmirably built for echoes, and the centre of the house was veryfavorable to them. When you sat in the centre of the house, itsometimes seemed as if three or four ministers were speaking.
It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So isassisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good dealReverend Thus-and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the minister'svoice appeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was noone up there, some of his best things were lost. We also had anotion that some of it went into the cavernous organ-loft. It wouldhave been all right if there had been a choir there, for choirsusually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any otherpart of the congregation. Well, we drew a sort of screen over theorgan-loft; but the result was not as marked as we had hoped. Wenext devised a sounding-board,—a sort of mammoth clamshell, paintedwhite,—and erected it behind the minister. It had a good effect onthe minister. It kept him up straight to his work. So long as hekept his head exactly in the focus, his voice went out and did notreturn to him; but if he moved either way, he was assailed by a Babelof clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity for him to splurgeabout from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And if he raisedhis voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liable to bedrowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. And he could hearthe congregation as well as they could hear him. All the coughs,whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him,and poured into his ears.
But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to boldermeasures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides,those who sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon.There are depths in music which the melodeon, even when it is calleda cabinet organ, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound.The melodeon was not, originally, designed for the Gothic worship.We determined to have an organ, and we speculated whether, byerecting it in the apse, we could not fill up that elegant portion ofthe church, and compel the preacher's voice to leave it, and go outover the pews. It would of course do something to efface the mainbeauty of a Gothic church; but something must be done, and we began aseries of experiments to test the probable effects of putting theorgan and choir behind the minister. We moved the desk to the veryfront of the platform, and erected behind it a high, square boardscreen, like a section of tight fence round the fair-grounds. Thisdid help matters. The minister spoke with more ease, and we couldhear him better. If the screen had been intended to stay there, weshould have agitated the subject of painting it. But this was onlyan experiment.
Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteersingers, melodeon and all, upon the platform,—some twenty of themcrowded together behind the minister. The effect was beautiful. Itseemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people inthe congregation,—much to the injury of the congregation, of course,as seen from the platform. There are few congregations that canstand this sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any;yet it devolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility oflooking as well as we can.
The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but whenthe screen went back, the minister's voice went back with it. Wecould not hear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plainas day. We have thought of remedying this last defect by putting thehigh screen in front of the singers, and close to the minister, as itwas before. This would make the singers invisible,—"though lost tosight, to memory dear,"—what is sometimes called an "angel choir,"when the singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, with the mostsubdued and religious effect. It is often so in cathedrals.
This plan would have another advantage. The singers on the platform,all handsome and well dressed, distract our attention from theminister, and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them,studying all the faces and all the dresses. If one of them sits upvery straight, he is a rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder whyhe does n't sit up; if his hair is white, we wonder whether it is ageor family peculiarity; if he yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up ahymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested in the sermon; we look atthe bonnets, and query if that is the latest spring style, or whetherwe are to look for another; if he shaves close, we wonder why hedoesn't let his beard grow; if he has long whiskers, we wonder why hedoes n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feel sorry; if she smiles, wewould like to know what it is about. And, then, suppose any of thesingers should ever want to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown'stroches, and pass them round! Suppose the singers, more or less ofthem, should sneeze!
Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will,should go to sleep! In short, the singers there take away all ourattention from the minister, and would do so if they were thehomeliest people in the world. We must try something else.
It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idleone.
EIGHTH STUDY
I
Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically. I cannotbut regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to havean uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like tosay yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de LionPlantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit."
A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing afterMontaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality inothers Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there aresome men you always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take itthat this intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the fewremaining unappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one ofthem.
No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in asuit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would beas ridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage. The pit whichrecognizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him,and Snooks himself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragediancomes on, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouthsthe grandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes,the dress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned loveof the traditionary drama not to titter.
If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to usfrom the Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of theKeans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it musthave been in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir PhilipSidney. That anybody ever believed in it is difficult to think,especially when we read what privileges the fine beaux and gallantsof the town took behind the scenes and on the stage in the goldendays of the drama. When a part of the audience sat on the stage, andgentlemen lounged or reeled across it in the midst of a play, tospeak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not havebeen very strong.
Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett asFalstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue ofa transforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that gettinginto a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habitsand associations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruityand ridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what iscalled the "legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, butthe advocates of it appear to think that the theatre was some timecast in a mould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples,like the propositions of Euclid. To our eyes the legitimate drama ofto-day is the one in which the day is reflected, both in costume andspeech, and which touches the affections, the passions, the humor, ofthe present time. The brilliant success of the few good plays thathave been written out of the rich life which we now live—the mostvaried, fruitful, and dramatically suggestive—ought to rid usforever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacularcuriosity.
We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III. stalking aboutin impossible clothes, and stepping four feet at a stride, if theywant to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours"or "Rip Van Winkle." There will probably be some orator for yearsand years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking,Where is Thebes? but he does not care anything about it, and he doesnot really expect an answer. I have sometimes wished I knew theexact site of Thebes, so that I could rise in the audience, and stopthat question, at any rate. It is legitimate, but it is tiresome.
If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find thatthe putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makesthem act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable.
An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot bemade to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricaturesand discredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomedclothes and situation make him much more unnatural and insufferablethan he would otherwise be. Dressed appropriately for parts forwhich he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably. What I meanis, that the clothes inappropriate to the man make the incongruity ofhim and his part more apparent. Vulgarity is never so conspicuous asin fine apparel, on or off the stage, and never so self-conscious.Shall we have, then, no refined characters on the stage? Yes; butlet them be taken by men and women of taste and refinement and let ushave done with this masquerading in false raiment, ancient andmodern, which makes nearly every stage a travesty of nature and thewhole theatre a painful pretension. We do not expect the moderntheatre to be a place of instruction (that business is now turnedover to the telegraphic operator, who is making a new language), butit may give amusement instead of torture, and do a little insatirizing folly and kindling love of home and country by the way.
This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one inparticular is responsible for it; and in this it is like publicopinion. The Parson, however, whose only experience of the theatrewas the endurance of an oratorio once, was very cordial in hisdenunciation of the stage altogether.
MANDEVILLE. Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertainsus as mimicry, the personation of character. We enjoy it in private.I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the characterof grumbler. He would be an immense success on the stage. I don'tknow but the theatre will have to go back into the hands of thepriests, who once controlled it.
THE PARSON. Scoffer!
MANDEVILLE. I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, clearedof all its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior,all the rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners oftimes that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with livingcharacters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culturethat are current to-day. I've seen private theatricals, where allthe performers were persons of cultivation, that….
OUR NEXT DOOR. So have I. For something particularly cheerful,commend me to amateur theatricals. I have passed some melancholyhours at them.
MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stageplays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on thestage. It is not always so.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has gotinto a mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposedto be natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in arecognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulsefrom within, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but ofturning out a piece of literary work. That's the reason wehave so much poetry that impresses one like sets of faultlesscabinet-furniture made by machinery.
THE PARSON. But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in actingor in anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone.Amateur acting—they get it up at church sociables nowadays—is aptto be as near nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting is theDevil's art.
THE MISTRESS. Do you object to such innocent amusement?
MANDEVILLE. What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused.
THE PARSON. What's the use of objecting? It's the fashion of theday to amuse people into the kingdom of heaven.
HERBERT. The Parson has got us off the track. My notion about thestage is, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of theworld; the stage is usually quite up to the level of the audience.Assumed dress on the stage, since you were speaking of that, makespeople no more constrained and self-conscious than it does off thestage.
THE MISTRESS. What sarcasm is coming now?
HERBERT. Well, you may laugh, but the world has n't got used to goodclothes yet. The majority do not wear them with ease. People whoonly put on their best on rare and stated occasions step into anartificial feeling.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder if that's the reason the Parson finds it sodifficult to get hold of his congregation.
HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality andvapidity of a set "party," where all the guests are clothed in amanner to which they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition ofvivid self-consciousness. The same people, who know each otherperfectly well, will enjoy themselves together without restraint intheir ordinary apparel. But nothing can be more artificial than thebehavior of people together who rarely "dress up." It seemsimpossible to make the conversation as fine as the clothes, and so itdies in a kind of inane helplessness. Especially is this true in thecountry, where people have not obtained the mastery of their clothesthat those who live in the city have. It is really absurd, at thisstage of our civilization, that we should be so affected by such aninsignificant accident as dress. Perhaps Mandeville can tell uswhether this clothes panic prevails in the older societies.
THE PARSON. Don't. We've heard it; about its being one of theEnglishman's thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit down todinner without a dress-coat, and all that.
THE MISTRESS. I wish, for my part, that everybody who has time toeat a dinner would dress for that, the principal event of the day,and do respectful and leisurely justice to it.
THE YOUNG LADY. It has always seemed singular to me that men whowork so hard to build elegant houses, and have good dinners, shouldtake so little leisure to enjoy either.
MANDEVILLE. If the Parson will permit me, I should say that thechief clothes question abroad just now is, how to get any; and it isthe same with the dinners.
II
It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk about clothes ran intothe question of dress-reform, and ran out, of course. You cannotconverse on anything nowadays that you do not run into some reform.The Parson says that everybody is intent on reforming everything buthimself. We are all trying to associate ourselves to make everybodyelse behave as we do. Said—
OUR NEXT DOOR. Dress reform! As if people couldn't change theirclothes without concert of action. Resolved, that nobody should puton a clean collar oftener than his neighbor does. I'm sick of everysort of reform. I should like to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspepticascertain that he can eat porridge three times a day and live, andstraightway he insists that everybody ought to eat porridge andnothing else. I mean to get up a society every member of which shallbe pledged to do just as he pleases.
THE PARSON. That would be the most radical reform of the day. Thatwould be independence. If people dressed according to their means,acted according to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, itwould revolutionize society.
OUR NEXT DOOR. I should like to walk into your church some Sundayand see the changes under such conditions.
THE PARSON. It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at anytime. And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrogradeideas. It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if hewere alive, couldn't see or hear in it.
HERBERT. I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world ontheir shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussyfellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration theyseek, are more ludicrous than pathetic.
THE FIRE-TENDER. Pathetic, by all means. But I don't know that theywould be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There are those reformsingers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years,with never any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hairgrowing longer and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, andtheir faces, I do believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always withthe same constancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for thesnufftaker, for the suffragist,—"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys(nothing offensive is intended by "boys," it is put in foreuphony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend the suffragists),it's-almost-here." And what a brightening up of their faces there is whenthey say, "it's-al-most-here," not doubting for a moment that "it's"coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeon also wails its wheezysuggestion that "it's-al-most-here," that "good-time" (delayed solong, waiting perhaps for the invention of the melodeon) when weshall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote,and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys." I declare italmost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faith in themidst of a jeer-ing world.
HERBERT. I suspect that no one can be a genuine reformer and not beridiculous. I mean those who give themselves up to the unction ofthe reform.
THE MISTRESS. Does n't that depend upon whether the reform is largeor petty?
THE FIRE-TENDER. I should say rather that the reforms attracted tothem all the ridiculous people, who almost always manage to becomethe most conspicuous. I suppose that nobody dare write out all thatwas ludicrous in the great abolition movement. But it was not at allcomical to those most zealous in it; they never could see—more's thepity, for thereby they lose much—the humorous side of theirperformances, and that is why the pathos overcomes one's sense of theabsurdity of such people.
THE YOUNG LADY. It is lucky for the world that so many are willingto be absurd.
HERBERT. Well, I think that, in the main, the reformers manage tolook out for themselves tolerably well. I knew once a lean andfaithful agent of a great philanthropic scheme, who contrived tocollect every year for the cause just enough to support him at a goodhotel comfortably.
THE MISTRESS. That's identifying one's self with the cause.
MANDEVILLE. You remember the great free-soil convention at Buffalo,in 1848, when Van Buren was nominated. All the world of hope anddiscontent went there, with its projects of reform. There seemed tobe no doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that if they could geta resolution passed that bread should be buttered on both sides, itwould be so buttered. The platform provided for every want and everywoe.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I remember. If you could get the millennium bypolitical action, we should have had it then.
MANDEVILLE. We went there on the Erie Canal, the exciting andfashionable mode of travel in those days. I was a boy when we beganthe voyage. The boat was full of conventionists; all the talk was ofwhat must be done there. I got the impression that as that boat-loadwent so would go the convention; and I was not alone in that feeling.I can never be grateful enough for one little scrubby fanatic who wason board, who spent most of his time in drafting resolutions andreading them privately to the passengers. He was a veryenthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little man, who wore awoolen muffler about his throat, although it was summer; he hadnearly lost his voice, and could only speak in a hoarse, disagreeablewhisper, and he always carried a teacup about, containing some stickycompound which he stirred frequently with a spoon, and took, wheneverhe talked, in order to improve his voice. If he was separated fromhis cup for ten minutes, his whisper became inaudible. I greatlydelighted in him, for I never saw any one who had so much enjoymentof his own importance. He was fond of telling what he would do ifthe convention rejected such and such resolutions. He'd make it hotfor them. I did n't know but he'd make them take his mixture. Theconvention had got to take a stand on tobacco, for one thing. He'dheard Gid-dings took snuff; he'd see. When we at length reachedBuffalo he took his teacup and carpet-bag of resolutions and wentashore in a great hurry. I saw him once again in a cheap restaurant,whispering a resolution to another delegate, but he did n't appear inthe con-vention. I have often wondered what became of him.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably he's consul somewhere. They mostly are.
THE FIRE-TENDER. After all, it's the easiest thing in the world tosit and sneer at eccentricities. But what a dead and uninterestingworld it would be if we were all proper, and kept within the lines!Affairs would soon be reduced to mere machinery. There are moments,even days, when all interests and movements appear to be settled uponsome universal plan of equilibrium; but just then some restless andabsurd person is inspired to throw the machine out of gear. Theseindividual eccentricities seem to be the special providences in thegeneral human scheme.
HERBERT. They make it very hard work for the rest of us, who aredisposed to go along peaceably and smoothly.
MANDEVILLE. And stagnate. I 'm not sure but the natural conditionof this planet is war, and that when it is finally towed to itsanchorage—if the universe has any harbor for worlds out ofcommission—it will look like the Fighting Temeraire in Turner'spicture.
HERBERT. There is another thing I should like to understand: thetendency of people who take up one reform, perhaps a personalregeneration in regard to some bad habit, to run into a dozen otherisms, and get all at sea in several vague and pernicious theories andpractices.
MANDEVILLE. Herbert seems to think there is safety in a man's beinganchored, even if it is to a bad habit.
HERBERT. Thank you. But what is it in human nature that is apt tocarry a man who may take a step in personal reform into so manyextremes?
OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably it's human nature.
HERBERT. Why, for instance, should a reformed drunkard (one of thenoblest examples of victory over self) incline, as I have known thereformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suffragist to "pantarchism"(whatever that is), and want to pull up all the roots of society, andexpect them to grow in the air, like orchids; or a Graham-breaddisciple become enamored of Communism?
MANDEVILLE. I know an excellent Conservative who would, I think,suit you; he says that he does not see how a man who indulges in thetheory and practice of total abstinence can be a consistent believerin the Christian religion.
HERBERT. Well, I can understand what he means: that a person isbound to hold himself in conditions of moderation and control, usingand not abusing the things of this world, practicing temperance, notretiring into a convent of artificial restrictions in order to escapethe full responsibility of self-control. And yet his theory wouldcertainly wreck most men and women. What does the Parson say?
THE PARSON. That the world is going crazy on the notion of individualability. Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else,without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift,and is pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, andshipwrecked on some pernicious ism.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I think the discussion has touched bottom.
III
I never felt so much the value of a house with a backlog in it asduring the late spring; for its lateness was its main feature.Everybody was grumbling about it, as if it were something orderedfrom the tailor, and not ready on the day. Day after day it snowed,night after night it blew a gale from the northwest; the frost sunkdeeper and deeper into the ground; there was a popular longing forspring that was almost a prayer; the weather bureau was active;Easter was set a week earlier than the year before, but nothingseemed to do any good. The robins sat under the evergreens, andpiped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the bluejays came andscolded in the midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scold inany weather. The crocuses could n't be coaxed to come up, even witha pickaxe. I'm almost ashamed now to recall what we said of theweather only I think that people are no more accountable for whatthey say of the weather than for their remarks when their corns arestepped on.
We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed expectations and theprospect of late lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire asmuch as we were losing by the frost. And the Mistress fell tochanting the comforts of modern civilization.
THE FIRE-TENDER said he should like to know, by the way, if ourcivilization differed essentially from any other in anything but itscomforts.
HERBERT. We are no nearer religious unity.
THE PARSON. We have as much war as ever.
MANDEVILLE. There was never such a social turmoil.
THE YOUNG LADY. The artistic part of our nature does not appear tohave grown.
THE FIRE-TENDER. We are quarreling as to whether we are in factradically different from the brutes.
HERBERT. Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind ofhuman government.
THE PARSON. Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, andnot drawn from the living sources.
OUR NEXT DOOR. And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial. Inever felt before what barbarians we are.
THE MISTRESS. Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man issafer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But what I want to know is, whether what we callour civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than toincrease the ease and pleasure of living? Science has multipliedwealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement ofmanners and a diffusion of education and information. Are men andwomen essentially changed, however? I suppose the Parson would saywe have lost faith, for one thing.
MANDEVILLE. And superstition; and gained toleration.
HERBERT. The question is, whether toleration is anything butindifference.
THE PARSON. Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy.
THE FIRE-TENDER. It's easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue ofexternal achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to bein man himself. It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but whathe can produce. The best sculpture was executed two thousand yearsago. The best paintings are several centuries old. We study thefinest architecture in its ruins. The standards of poetry areShakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David. The latest of the arts,music, culminated in composition, though not in execution, a centuryago.
THE MISTRESS. Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes thecivilization of this age. It has taken eighteen hundred years forthe principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practicallyincorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will takea long time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there isgrowth toward him, and not away from him, and when the averageculture has reached his height, some other genius will still moreprofoundly and delicately express the highest thoughts.
HERBERT. I wish I could believe it. The spirit of this age isexpressed by the Calliope.
THE PARSON. Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannonto the orchestra.
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a melancholy thought to me that we can no longerexpress ourselves with the bass-drum; there used to be the whole ofthe Fourth of July in its patriotic throbs.
MANDEVILLE. We certainly have made great progress in one art,—thatof war.
THE YOUNG LADY. And in the humane alleviations of the miseries ofwar.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The most discouraging symptom to me in ourundoubted advance in the comforts and refinements of society is thefacility with which men slip back into barbarism, if the artificialand external accidents of their lives are changed. We have alwayskept a fringe of barbarism on our shifting western frontier; and Ithink there never was a worse society than that in California andNevada in their early days.
THE YOUNG LADY. That is because women were absent.
THE FIRE-TENDER. But women are not absent in London and New York,and they are conspicuous in the most exceptionable demonstrations ofsocial anarchy. Certainly they were not wanting in Paris. Yes,there was a city widely accepted as the summit of our materialcivilization. No city was so beautiful, so luxurious, so safe, sowell ordered for the comfort of living, and yet it needed only amonth or two to make it a kind of pandemonium of savagery. Itscitizens were the barbarians who destroyed its own monuments ofcivilization. I don't mean to say that there was no apology for whatwas done there in the deceit and fraud that preceded it, but I simplynotice how ready the tiger was to appear, and how little restraintall the material civilization was to the beast.
THE MISTRESS. I can't deny your instances, and yet I somehow feelthat pretty much all you have been saying is in effect untrue. Notone of you would be willing to change our civilization for any other.In your estimate you take no account, it seems to me, of the growthof charity.
MANDEVILLE. And you might add a recognition of the value of humanlife.
THE MISTRESS. I don't believe there was ever before diffusedeverywhere such an element of good-will, and never before were womenso much engaged in philanthropic work.
THE PARSON. It must be confessed that one of the best signs of thetimes is woman's charity for woman. That certainly never existed tothe same extent in any other civilization.
MANDEVILLE. And there is another thing that distinguishes us, or isbeginning to. That is, the notion that you can do something morewith a criminal than punish him; and that society has not done itsduty when it has built a sufficient number of schools for one class,or of decent jails for another.
HERBERT. It will be a long time before we get decent jails.
MANDEVILLE. But when we do they will begin to be places of educationand training as much as of punishment and disgrace. The public willprovide teachers in the prisons as it now does in the common schools.
THE FIRE-TENDER. The imperfections of our methods and means ofselecting those in the community who ought to be in prison are sogreat, that extra care in dealing with them becomes us. We arebeginning to learn that we cannot draw arbitrary lines withinfallible justice. Perhaps half those who are convicted of crimesare as capable of reformation as half those transgressors who are notconvicted, or who keep inside the statutory law.
HERBERT. Would you remove the odium of prison?
THE FIRE-TENDER. No; but I would have criminals believe, and societybelieve, that in going to prison a man or woman does not pass anabsolute line and go into a fixed state.
THE PARSON. That is, you would not have judgment and retributionbegin in this world.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Don't switch us off into theology. I hate to go upin a balloon, or see any one else go.
HERBERT. Don't you think there is too much leniency toward crime andcriminals, taking the place of justice, in these days?
THE FIRE-TENDER. There may be too much disposition to condone thecrimes of those who have been considered respectable.
OUR NEXT DOOR. That is, scarcely anybody wants to see his friendhung.
MANDEVILLE. I think a large part of the bitterness of the condemnedarises from a sense of the inequality with which justice isadministered. I am surprised, in visiting jails, to find so fewrespectable-looking convicts.
OUR NEXT DOOR. Nobody will go to jail nowadays who thinks anythingof himself.
THE FIRE-TENDER. When society seriously takes hold of thereformation of criminals (say with as much determination as it doesto carry an election) this false leniency will disappear; for itpartly springs from a feeling that punishment is unequal, and doesnot discriminate enough in individuals, and that society itself hasno right to turn a man over to the Devil, simply because he shows astrong leaning that way. A part of the scheme of those who work forthe reformation of criminals is to render punishment more certain,and to let its extent depend upon reformation. There is no reasonwhy a professional criminal, who won't change his trade for an honestone, should have intervals of freedom in his prison life in which heis let loose to prey upon society. Criminals ought to be discharged,like insane patients, when they are cured.
OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a wonder to me, what with our multitudes ofstatutes and hosts of detectives, that we are any of us out of jail.I never come away from a visit to a State-prison without a new spasmof fear and virtue. The faculties for getting into jail seem to beample. We want more organizations for keeping people out.
MANDEVILLE. That is the sort of enterprise the women are engaged in,the frustration of the criminal tendencies of those born in vice. Ibelieve women have it in their power to regenerate the world morally.
THE PARSON. It's time they began to undo the mischief of theirmother.
THE MISTRESS. The reason they have not made more progress is thatthey have usually confined their individual efforts to one man; theyare now organizing for a general campaign.
THE FIRE-TENDER. I'm not sure but here is where the ameliorations ofthe conditions of life, which are called the comforts of thiscivilization, come in, after all, and distinguish the age above allothers. They have enabled the finer powers of women to have play asthey could not in a ruder age. I should like to live a hundred yearsand see what they will do.
HERBERT. Not much but change the fashions, unless they submitthemselves to the same training and discipline that men do.
I have no doubt that Herbert had to apologize for this remarkafterwards in private, as men are quite willing to do in particularcases; it is only in general they are unjust. The talk drifted offinto general and particular depreciation of other times. Mandevilledescribed a picture, in which he appeared to have confidence, of afight between an Iguanodon and a Megalosaurus, where these hugeiron-clad brutes were represented chewing up different portions ofeach other's bodies in a forest of the lower cretaceous period. Sofar as he could learn, that sort of thing went on unchecked forhundreds of thousands of years, and was typical of the intercourse ofthe races of man till a comparatively recent period. There was alsothat gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus; in fact, all the early bruteswere disgusting. He delighted to think that even the lower animalshad improved, both in appearance and disposition.
The conversation ended, therefore, in a very amicable manner, havingbeen taken to a ground that nobody knew anything about.
NINTH STUDY
I
Can you have a backlog in July? That depends upon circumstances.
In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when thehousewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and,later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often,too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanicrepression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william andhollyhock at the front door. This is a yearning after beauty andornamentation which has no other means of gratifying itself.
In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful nature of woman thusdiscloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste.You may never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathwayto the front door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;—love and religion, and the weariness of an uneventful life. Thesacredness of the Sabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed andunrequited affection, the slow years of gathering and wastingsweetness, are in the smell of the pink and the sweet-clover. Thesesentimental plants breathe something of the longing of the maiden whosits in the Sunday evenings of summer on the lonesome frontdoorstone, singing the hymns of the saints, and perennial as themyrtle that grows thereby.
Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love anddevotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth,in our latitude. I remember when the last almost total eclipse ofthe sun happened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over theworld. Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing thechill from that temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much morepenetrating than that from the coming on of night, which shortlyfollowed. It was impossible not to experience a shudder as of theapproach of the Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon thegreen lawn, and we all stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar toeach other. The birds in the trees felt the spell. We could infancy see those spectral camp-fires which men would build on theearth, if the sun should slow its fires down to about the brilliancyof the moon. It was a great relief to all of us to go into thehouse, and, before a blazing wood-fire, talk of the end of the world.
In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it isbest to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at anyhour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill ofHudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glidescalmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always beready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Even inour most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of acheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change thatone can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious bythe fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people ifwe could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptianhas. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to theunchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity ofthe great climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, showthe effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with theEgyptian, for all that.
II
You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look backto those winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open tothis May morning, and the brown thrush is singing in thechestnut-tree, and I see everywhere that first delicate flush ofspring, which seems too evanescent to be color even, and amounts tolittle more than a suffusion of the atmosphere. I doubt, indeed, if thespring is exactly what it used to be, or if, as we get on in years [noone ever speaks of "getting on in years" till she is virtually settledin life], its promises and suggestions do not seem empty in comparisonwith the sympathies and responses of human friendship, and thestimulation of society. Sometimes nothing is so tiresome as a perfectday in a perfect season.
I only imperfectly understand this. The Parson says that woman isalways most restless under the most favorable conditions, and thatthere is no state in which she is really happy except that of change.I suppose this is the truth taught in what has been called the "Mythof the Garden." Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that elementin the world which continually destroys and re-creates. She is theexperimenter and the suggester of new combinations. She has nobelief in any law of eternal fitness of things. She is never evencontent with any arrangement of her own house. The only reason theMistress could give, when she rearranged her apartment, for hanging apicture in what seemed the most inappropriate place, was that it hadnever been there before. Woman has no respect for tradition, andbecause a thing is as it is is sufficient reason for changing it.When she gets into law, as she has come into literature, we shallgain something in the destruction of all our vast and musty librariesof precedents, which now fetter our administration of individualjustice. It is Mandeville's opinion that women are not sosentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspokenpoetry of nature; being less poetical, and having less imagination,they are more fitted for practical affairs, and would make lessfailures in business. I have noticed the almost selfish passion fortheir flowers which old gardeners have, and their reluctance to partwith a leaf or a blossom from their family. They love the flowersfor themselves. A woman raises flowers for their use. She isdestruct-ion in a conservatory. She wants the flowers for her lover,for the sick, for the poor, for the Lord on Easter day, for theornamentation of her house. She delights in the costly pleasure ofsacrificing them. She never sees a flower but she has an intense butprobably sinless desire to pick it.
It has been so from the first, though from the first she has beenthwarted by the accidental superior strength of man. Whatever shehas obtained has been by craft, and by the same coaxing which the sunuses to draw the blossoms out of the apple-trees. I am not surprisedto learn that she has become tired of indulgences, and wants some ofthe original rights. We are just beginning to find out the extent towhich she has been denied and subjected, and especially her conditionamong the primitive and barbarous races. I have never seen it in aplatform of grievances, but it is true that among the Fijians she isnot, unless a better civilization has wrought a change in her behalf,permitted to eat people, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men;the dainty enjoyed by the men being considered too good to be wastedon women. Is anything wanting to this picture of the degradation ofwoman? By a refinement of cruelty she receives no benefit whateverfrom the missionaries who are sent out by—what to her must seem anew name for Tantalus—the American Board.
I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly universal feeling in herregret at the breaking up of the winter-fireside company. Societyneeds a certain seclusion and the sense of security. Spring opensthe doors and the windows, and the noise and unrest of the world arelet in. Even a winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and summerbrings longings innumerable, and disturbs the most tranquil souls.Nature is, in fact, a suggester of uneasiness, a promoter ofpilgrimages and of excursions of the fancy which never come to anysatisfactory haven. The summer in these latitudes is a campaign ofsentiment and a season, for the most part, of restlessness anddiscontent. We grow now in hot-houses roses which, in form andcolor, are magnificent, and appear to be full of passion; yet onesimple June rose of the open air has for the Young Lady, I doubt not,more sentiment and suggestion of love than a conservatory full ofthem in January. And this suggestion, leavened as it is with theinconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises which are so oftenlike the peach-blossom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying by reason ofits vague possibilities, differs so essentially from the more limitedand attainable and home-like emotion born of quiet intercourse by thewinter fireside, that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if somespell had been broken by the transition of her life from in-doors toout-doors. Her secret, if secret she has, which I do not at allknow, is shared by the birds and the new leaves and the blossoms onthe fruit trees. If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the poetspretend always to dwell, we might be content, perhaps I should saydrugged, by the sweet influences of an unchanging summer; but notliving elsewhere, we can understand why the Young Lady probably nowlooks forward to the hearthstone as the most assured center ofenduring attachment.
If it should ever become the sad duty of this biographer to write ofdisappointed love, I am sure he would not have any sensational storyto tell of the Young Lady. She is one of those women whoseunostentatious lives are the chief blessing of humanity; who, with asigh heard only by herself and no change in her sunny face, would putbehind her all the memories of winter evenings and the promises ofMay mornings, and give her life to some ministration of humankindness with an assiduity that would make her occupation appear likean election and a first choice. The disappointed man scowls, andhates his race, and threatens self-destruction, choosing oftener theflowing bowl than the dagger, and becoming a reeling nuisance in theworld. It would be much more manly in him to become the secretary ofa Dorcas society.
I suppose it is true that women work for others with less expectationof reward than men, and give themselves to labors of self-sacrificewith much less thought of self. At least, this is true unless womangoes into some public performance, where notoriety has itsattractions, and mounts some cause, to ride it man-fashion, when Ithink she becomes just as eager for applause and just as willing thatself-sacrifice should result in self-elevation as man. For her,usually, are not those unbought—presentations which are forced uponfiremen, philanthropists, legislators, railroad-men, and thesuperintendents of the moral instruction of the young. These arealmost always pleasing and unexpected tributes to worth and modesty,and must be received with satisfaction when the public servicerendered has not been with a view to procuring them. We should saythat one ought to be most liable to receive a "testimonial" who,being a superintendent of any sort, did not superintend with a viewto getting it. But "testimonials" have become so common that amodest man ought really to be afraid to do his simple duty, for fearhis motives will be misconstrued. Yet there are instances of veryworthy men who have had things publicly presented to them. It is theblessed age of gifts and the reward of private virtue. And thepresentations have become so frequent that we wish there were alittle more variety in them. There never was much sense in giving agallant fellow a big speaking-trumpet to carry home to aid him in hisintercourse with his family; and the festive ice-pitcher has become atoo universal sign of absolute devotion to the public interest. Thelack of one will soon be proof that a man is a knave. Thelegislative cane with the gold head, also, is getting to berecognized as the sign of the immaculate public servant, as theinscription on it testifies, and the steps of suspicion must ere-longdog him who does not carry one. The "testimonial" business is, intruth, a little demoralizing, almost as much so as the "donation;"and the demoralization has extended even to our language, so that aperfectly respectable man is often obliged to see himself "made therecipient of" this and that. It would be much better, iftestimonials must be, to give a man a barrel of flour or a keg ofoysters, and let him eat himself at once back into the ranks ofordinary men.
III
We may have a testimonial class in time, a sort of nobility here inAmerica, made so by popular gift, the members of which will all beable to show some stick or piece of plated ware or massive chain, "ofwhich they have been the recipients." In time it may be adistinction not to belong to it, and it may come to be thought moreblessed to give than to receive. For it must have been remarked thatit is not always to the cleverest and the most amiable and modest manthat the deputation comes with the inevitable ice-pitcher (and"salver to match"), which has in it the magic and subtle quality ofmaking the hour in which it is received the proudest of one's life.There has not been discovered any method of rewarding all thedeserving people and bringing their virtues into the prominence ofnotoriety. And, indeed, it would be an unreasonable world if therehad, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in the excellences in itwhich are reluctantly disclosed; one of the chief pleasures of livingis in the daily discovery of good traits, nobilities, and kindlinessboth in those we have long known and in the chance passenger whoseway happens for a day to lie with ours. The longer I live the more Iam impressed with the excess of human kindness over human hatred, andthe greater willingness to oblige than to disoblige that one meets atevery turn. The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in letters,the bickering in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as nothingcompared to the sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences ofprivate life. The people are few whom to know intimately is todislike. Of course you want to hate somebody, if you can, just tokeep your powers of discrimination bright, and to save yourself frombecoming a mere mush of good-nature; but perhaps it is well to hatesome historical person who has been dead so long as to be indifferentto it. It is more comfortable to hate people we have never seen. Icannot but think that Judas Iscariot has been of great service to theworld as a sort of buffer for moral indignation which might have madea collision nearer home but for his utilized treachery. I used toknow a venerable and most amiable gentleman and scholar, whosehospitable house was always overrun with wayside ministers, agents,and philanthropists, who loved their fellow-men better than theyloved to work for their living; and he, I suspect, kept his moralbalance even by indulgence in violent but most distant dislikes.When I met him casually in the street, his first salutation waslikely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was! Don't youhate him?" And then would follow specifications of historicalinveracity enough to make one's blood run cold. When he was thusdischarged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not aspark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him andother generous souls.
Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy nightby the fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionallyplaying with the piano-keys in an improvising mood. Mandeville has agood deal of sentiment about him, and without any effort talks sobeautifully sometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report hislanguage. He has, besides, that sympathy of presence—I believe itis called magnetism by those who regard the brain as only a sort ofgalvanic battery—which makes it a greater pleasure to see him think,if I may say so, than to hear some people talk.
It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so manyrare people he can never know; and so many excellent people thatscarcely any one will know, in fact. One discovers a friend bychance, and cannot but feel regret that twenty or thirty years oflife maybe have been spent without the least knowledge of him. Whenhe is once known, through him opening is made into another littleworld, into a circle of culture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in adozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices perhaps. How instantly andeasily the bachelor doubles his world when he marries, and entersinto the unknown fellowship of the to him continually increasingcompany which is known in popular language as "all his wife'srelations."
Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, ifone had the time and the opportunity. And when one travels he seeswhat a vast material there is for society and friendship, of which hecan never avail himself. Car-load after car-load of summer travelgoes by one at any railway-station, out of which he is sure he couldchoose a score of life-long friends, if the conductor would introducehim. There are faces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetickindness,—interesting people, traveled people, entertaining people,—as you would say in Boston, "nice people you would admire to know,"whom you constantly meet and pass without a sign of recognition, manyof whom are no doubt your long-lost brothers and sisters. You cansee that they also have their worlds and their interests, and theyprobably know a great many "nice" people. The matter of personalliking and attachment is a good deal due to the mere fortune ofassociation. More fast friendships and pleasant acquaintanceshipsare formed on the Atlantic steamships between those who would havebeen only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would thinkpossible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish as he isindifferent to his personal appearance. The Atlantic is the onlypower on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to herpersonal appearance.
Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, theglimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whomhis utmost efforts could give him no further information than hername. Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on somemountain lookout was all he ever had, and he did not even knowcertainly whether she was the perfect beauty and the lovely characterhe thought her. He said he would have known her, however, at a greatdistance; there was to her form that command of which we hear so muchand which turns out to be nearly all command after the "ceremony;" orperhaps it was something in the glance of her eye or the turn of herhead, or very likely it was a sweet inherited reserve or hauteur thatcaptivated him, that filled his days with the expectation of seeingher, and made him hasten to the hotel-registers in the hope that hername was there recorded. Whatever it was, she interested him as oneof the people he would like to know; and it piqued him that there wasa life, rich in friendships, no doubt, in tastes, in manynoblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must be absolutelynothing to him,—nothing but a window into heaven momentarily openedand then closed. I have myself no idea that she was a countessincognito, or that she had descended from any greater heights thanthose where Mandeville saw her, but I have always regretted that shewent her way so mysteriously and left no glow, and that we shall wearout the remainder of our days without her society. I have looked forher name, but always in vain, among the attendants at therights-conventions, in the list of those good Americans presented atcourt, among those skeleton names that appear as the remains of beautyin the morning journals after a ball to the wandering prince, in thereports of railway collisions and steamboat explosions. No news comesof her. And so imperfect are our means of communication in this worldthat, for anything we know, she may have left it long ago by someprivate way.
IV
The lasting regret that we cannot know more of the bright, sincere,and genuine people of the world is increased by the fact that theyare all different from each other. Was it not Madame de Sevigne whosaid she had loved several different women for several differentqualities? Every real person—for there are persons as there arefruits that have no distinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries—has adistinct quality, and the finding it is always like the discovery ofa new island to the voyager. The physical world we shall exhaustsome day, having a written description of every foot of it to whichwe can turn; but we shall never get the different qualities of peopleinto a biographical dictionary, and the making acquaintance with ahuman being will never cease to be an exciting experiment. We cannoteven classify men so as to aid us much in our estimate of them. Theefforts in this direction are ingenious, but unsatisfactory. If Ihear that a man is lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, I cannot telltherefrom whether I shall like and trust him. He may produce aphrenological chart showing that his knobby head is the home of allthe virtues, and that the vicious tendencies are represented by holesin his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be asdisagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented. I feelsometimes that phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity. Its chartsare almost as misleading concerning character as photographs. Andphotography may be described as the art which enables commonplacemediocrity to look like genius. The heavy-jowled man with shallowcerebrum has only to incline his head so that the lying instrumentcan select a favorable focus, to appear in the picture with the browof a sage and the chin of a poet. Of all the arts for ministering tohuman vanity the photographic is the most useful, but it is a pooraid in the revelation of character. You shall learn more of a man'sreal nature by seeing him walk once up the broad aisle of his churchto his pew on Sunday, than by studying his photograph for a month.
No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of theirtemperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color ofher hair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she maybe no more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer who shuns allthe lymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife themost nervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up inthe winter mornings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even inthis scientific age which professes to label us all, has been cruellydeceived in this way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes actaccording to the advertisement of their temperaments. The truthis that men refuse to come under the classifications of thepseudo-scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do not add much to ourknowledge. You know what to expect—if the comparison will be pardoned—of a horse with certain points; but you wouldn't dare go on a journeywith a man merely upon the strength of knowing that his temperament wasthe proper mixture of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is notable to teach us concerning men as it teaches us of horses, though I amvery far from saying that there are not traits of nobleness and ofmeanness that run through families and can be calculated to appear inindividuals with absolute certainty; one family will be trusty andanother tricky through all its members for generations; noble strainsand ignoble strains are perpetuated. When we hear that she has elopedwith the stable-boy and married him, we are apt to remark, "Well, shewas a Bogardus." And when we read that she has gone on a mission andhas died, distinguishing herself by some extraordinary devotion to theheathen at Ujiji, we think it sufficient to say, "Yes, her mothermarried into the Smiths." But this knowledge comes of our experienceof special families, and stands us in stead no further.
If we cannot classify men scientifically and reduce them under a kindof botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetabledevelopment, neither can we gain much knowledge of them bycomparison. It does not help me at all in my estimate of theircharacters to compare Mandeville with the Young Lady, or Our NextDoor with the Parson. The wise man does not permit himself to set upeven in his own mind any comparison of his friends. His friendshipis capable of going to extremes with many people, evoked as it is bymany qualities. When Mandeville goes into my garden in June I canusually find him in a particular bed of strawberries, but he does notspeak disrespectfully of the others. When Nature, says Mandeville,consents to put herself into any sort of strawberry, I have nocriticisms to make, I am only glad that I have been created into thesame world with such a delicious manifestation of the Divine favor.If I left Mandeville alone in the garden long enough, I have no doubthe would impartially make an end of the fruit of all the beds, forhis capacity in this direction is as all-embracing as it is in thematter of friendships. The Young Lady has also her favorite patch ofberries. And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers to have thempicked for him the elect of the garden—and served in an orthodoxmanner. The straw-berry has a sort of poetical precedence, and Ipresume that no fruit is jealous of it any more than any flower isjealous of the rose; but I remark the facility with which liking forit is transferred to the raspberry, and from the raspberry (not tomake a tedious enumeration) to the melon, and from the melon to thegrape, and the grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple. And wedo not mar our enjoyment of each by comparisons.
Of course it would be a dull world if we could not criticise ourfriends, but the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism isthat by comparison. Criticism is not necessarily uncharitableness,but a wholesome exercise of our powers of analysis anddiscrimination. It is, however, a very idle exercise, leading to noresults when we set the qualities of one over against the qualitiesof another, and disparage by contrast and not by independentjudgment. And this method of procedure creates jealousies andheart-burnings innumerable.
Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables, and especiallyis this true in literature. It is a lazy way of disposing of a youngpoet to bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimination of hisdefects or his excellences, that he equals Tennyson, and that Scottnever wrote anything finer. What is the justice of damning ameritorious novelist by comparing him with Dickens, and smotheringhim with thoughtless and good-natured eulogy? The poet and thenovelist may be well enough, and probably have qualities and gifts oftheir own which are worth the critic's attention, if he has any timeto bestow on them; and it is certainly unjust to subject them to acomparison with somebody else, merely because the critic will nottake the trouble to ascertain what they are. If, indeed, the poetand novelist are mere imitators of a model and copyists of a style,they may be dismissed with such commendation as we bestow upon themachines who pass their lives in making bad copies of the pictures ofthe great painters. But the critics of whom we speak do not intenddepreciation, but eulogy, when they say that the author they have inhand has the wit of Sydney Smith and the brilliancy of Macaulay.Probably he is not like either of them, and may have a genuine thoughmodest virtue of his own; but these names will certainly kill him,and he will never be anybody in the popular estimation. The publicfinds out speedily that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents theextravagant claim for him as if he were an impudent pretender. Howmany authors of fair ability to interest the world have we known inour own day who have been thus sky-rocketed into notoriety by thelazy indiscrimination of the critic-by-comparison, and then have sunkinto a popular contempt as undeserved! I never see a young aspirantinjudiciously compared to a great and resplendent name in literature,but I feel like saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and full oftrouble; you begin life handicapped, and you cannot possibly run acreditable race.
I think this sort of critical eulogy is more damaging even than thatwhich kills by a different assumption, and one which is equallycommon, namely, that the author has not done what he probably neverintended to do. It is well known that most of the trouble in lifecomes from our inability to compel other people to do what we thinkthey ought, and it is true in criticism that we are unwilling to takea book for what it is, and credit the author with that. When thesolemn critic, like a mastiff with a ladies' bonnet in his mouth,gets hold of a light piece of verse, or a graceful sketch whichcatches the humor of an hour for the entertainment of an hour, hetears it into a thousand shreds. It adds nothing to human knowledge,it solves none of the problems of life, it touches none of thequestions of social science, it is not a philosophical treatise, andit is not a dozen things that it might have been. The critic cannotforgive the author for this disrespect to him. This isn't a rose,says the critic, taking up a pansy and rending it; it is not at alllike a rose, and the author is either a pretentious idiot or anidiotic pretender. What business, indeed, has the author to send thecritic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he knows that a cabbage would bepreferred,—something not showy, but useful?
A good deal of this is what Mandeville said and I am not sure that itis devoid of personal feeling. He published, some years ago, alittle volume giving an account of a trip through the Great West, anda very entertaining book it was. But one of the heavy critics gothold of it, and made Mandeville appear, even to himself, heconfessed, like an ass, because there was nothing in the volume aboutgeology or mining prospects, and very little to instruct the studentof physical geography. With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, heliterally basted the author, till Mandeville said that he felt almostlike a depraved scoundrel, and thought he should be held up to lessexecration if he had committed a neat and scientific murder.
But I confess that I have a good deal of sympathy with the critics.Consider what these public tasters have to endure! None of us, Ifancy, would like to be compelled to read all that they read, or totake into our mouths, even with the privilege of speedily ejecting itwith a grimace, all that they sip. The critics of the vintage, whopursue their calling in the dark vaults and amid mouldy casks, givetheir opinion, for the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that hasmatured and ripened into development of quality. But what crude,unrestrained, unfermented—even raw and drugged liquor, must theliterary taster put to his unwilling lips day after day!
TENTH STUDY
I
It was my good fortune once to visit a man who remembered therebellion of 1745. Lest this confession should make me seem veryaged, I will add that the visit took place in 1851, and that the manwas then one hundred and thirteen years old. He was quite a ladbefore Dr. Johnson drank Mrs. Thrale's tea. That he was as old as hehad the credit of being, I have the evidence of my own senses (and Iam seldom mistaken in a person's age), of his own family, and his ownword; and it is incredible that so old a person, and one soapparently near the grave, would deceive about his age.
The testimony of the very aged is always to be received withoutquestion, as Alexander Hamilton once learned. He was trying aland-title with Aaron Burr, and two of the witnesses upon whom Burrrelied were venerable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, carried thesurveying chains over the land in dispute, and who were now agedrespectively one hundred and four years and one hundred and sixyears. Hamilton gently attempted to undervalue their testimony, buthe was instantly put down by the Dutch justice, who suggested thatMr. Hamilton could not be aware of the age of the witnesses.
My old man (the expression seems familiar and inelegant) had indeedan exaggerated idea of his own age, and sometimes said that hesupposed he was going on four hundred, which was true enough, infact; but for the exact date, he referred to his youngest son,—afrisky and humorsome lad of eighty years, who had received us at thegate, and whom we had at first mistaken for the veteran, his father.But when we beheld the old man, we saw the difference between age andage. The latter had settled into a grizzliness and grimness whichbelong to a very aged and stunted but sturdy oak-tree, upon the barkof which the gray moss is thick and heavy. The old man appeared haleenough, he could walk about, his sight and hearing were not seriouslyimpaired, he ate with relish, and his teeth were so sound that hewould not need a dentist for at least another century; but the mosswas growing on him. His boy of eighty seemed a green sapling besidehim.
He remembered absolutely nothing that had taken place within thirtyyears, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, forhe must always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anythingif he lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be. Why hewas interested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for heof course did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and heonly remembered to have heard it talked about as a great event in theIrish market-town near which he lived, and to which he had riddenwhen a boy. And he knew much more about the horse that drew him, andthe cart in which he rode, than he did about the rebellion of thePretender.
I hope I do not appear to speak harshly of this amiable old man, andif he is still living I wish him well, although his example was badin some respects. He had used tobacco for nearly a century, and thehabit has very likely been the death of him. If so, it is to beregretted. For it would have been interesting to watch the processof his gradual disintegration and return to the ground: the loss ofsense after sense, as decaying limbs fall from the oak; the failureof discrimination, of the power of choice, and finally of memoryitself; the peaceful wearing out and passing away of body and mindwithout disease, the natural running down of a man. The interestingfact about him at that time was that his bodily powers seemed insufficient vigor, but that the mind had not force enough to manifestitself through his organs. The complete battery was there, theappetite was there, the acid was eating the zinc; but the electriccurrent was too weak to flash from the brain. And yet he appeared sosound throughout, that it was difficult to say that his mind was notas good as it ever had been. He had stored in it very little to feedon, and any mind would get enfeebled by a century's rumination on ahearsay idea of the rebellion of '45.
It was possible with this man to fully test one's respect for age,which is in all civilized nations a duty. And I found that myfeelings were mixed about him. I discovered in him a conceit inregard to his long sojourn on this earth, as if it were somehow acredit to him. In the presence of his good opinion of himself, Icould but question the real value of his continued life, to himselfor to others. If he ever had any friends he had outlived them,except his boy; his wives—a century of them—were all dead; theworld had actually passed away for him. He hung on the tree like afrost-nipped apple, which the farmer has neglected to gather. Theworld always renews itself, and remains young. What relation had heto it?
I was delighted to find that this old man had never voted for GeorgeWashington. I do not know that he had ever heard of him. Washingtonmay be said to have played his part since his time. I am not surethat he perfectly remembered anything so recent as the AmericanRevolution. He was living quietly in Ireland during our French andIndian wars, and he did not emigrate to this country till long afterour revolutionary and our constitutional struggles were over. TheRebellion Of '45 was the great event of the world for him, and ofthat he knew nothing.
I intend no disrespect to this man,—a cheerful and pleasant enoughold person,—but he had evidently lived himself out of the world, ascompletely as people usually die out of it. His only remaining valuewas to the moralist, who might perchance make something out of him.I suppose if he had died young, he would have been regretted, and hisfriends would have lamented that he did not fill out his days in theworld, and would very likely have called him back, if tears andprayers could have done so. They can see now what his prolonged lifeamounted to, and how the world has closed up the gap he once filledwhile he still lives in it.
A great part of the unhappiness of this world consists in regret forthose who depart, as it seems to us, prematurely. We imagine that ifthey would return, the old conditions would be restored. But wouldit be so? If they, in any case, came back, would there be any placefor them? The world so quickly readjusts itself after any loss, thatthe return of the departed would nearly always throw it, even thecircle most interested, into confusion. Are the Enoch Ardens everwanted?
II
A popular notion akin to this, that the world would have any room forthe departed if they should now and then return, is the constantregret that people will not learn by the experience of others, thatone generation learns little from the preceding, and that youth neverwill adopt the experience of age. But if experience went foranything, we should all come to a standstill; for there is nothing sodiscouraging to effort. Disbelief in Ecclesiastes is the mainspringof action. In that lies the freshness and the interest of life, andit is the source of every endeavor.
If the boy believed that the accumulation of wealth and theacquisition of power were what the old man says they are, the worldwould very soon be stagnant. If he believed that his chances ofobtaining either were as poor as the majority of men find them to be,ambition would die within him. It is because he rejects theexperience of those who have preceded him, that the world is kept inthe topsy-turvy condition which we all rejoice in, and which we callprogress.
And yet I confess I have a soft place in my heart for that rarecharacter in our New England life who is content with the world as hefinds it, and who does not attempt to appropriate any more of it tohimself than he absolutely needs from day to day. He knows from thebeginning that the world could get on without him, and he has neverhad any anxiety to leave any result behind him, any legacy for theworld to quarrel over.
He is really an exotic in our New England climate and society, andhis life is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because heshares none of their uneasiness about getting on in life. He is evencalled lazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless,"—the final stigmathat we put upon a person who has learned to wait without theexhausting process of laboring.
I made his acquaintance last summer in the country, and I have not ina long time been so well pleased with any of our species. He was aman past middle life, with a large family. He had always been fromboyhood of a contented and placid mind, slow in his movements, slowin his speech. I think he never cherished a hard feeling towardanybody, nor envied any one, least of all the rich and prosperousabout whom he liked to talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal aboutwealth, especially about his cousin who had been down South and "gotfore-handed" within a few years. He was genuinely pleased at hisrelation's good luck, and pointed him out to me with some pride. Buthe had no envy of him, and he evinced no desire to imitate him. Iinferred from all his conversation about "piling it up" (of which hespoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in his eye), that there were momentswhen he would like to be rich himself; but it was evident that hewould never make the least effort to be so, and I doubt if he couldeven overcome that delicious inertia of mind and body calledlaziness, sufficiently to inherit.
Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him, and Isuspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet Isuppose he had—hardly the personal property which the law exemptsfrom execution. He had lived in a great many towns, moving from oneto another with his growing family, by easy stages, and was alwaysthe poorest man in the town, and lived on the most niggardly of itsrocky and bramble-grown farms, the productiveness of which he reducedto zero in a couple of seasons by his careful neglect of culture.The fences of his hired domain always fell into ruins under him,perhaps because he sat on them so much, and the hovels he occupiedrotted down during his placid residence in them. He moved fromdesolation to desolation, but carried always with him the equal mindof a philosopher. Not even the occasional tart remarks of his wife,about their nomadic life and his serenity in the midst of discomfort,could ruffle his smooth spirit.
He was, in every respect, a most worthy man, truthful, honest,temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no bad habits,—perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor did he lackthe knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or build ahouse, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this briefexistence, worth while to do any of these things. He was anexcellent angler, but he rarely fished; partly because of theshortness of days, partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, butprincipally because the trout brooks were all arranged lengthwise andran over so much ground. But no man liked to look at a string oftrout better than he did, and he was willing to sit down in a sunnyplace and talk about trout-fishing half a day at a time, and he wouldtalk pleasantly and well too, though his wife might be continuallyinterrupting him by a call for firewood.
I should not do justice to his own idea of himself if I did not addthat he was most respectably connected, and that he had a justifiablethough feeble pride in his family. It helped his self-respect, whichno ignoble circumstances could destroy. He was, as must appear bythis time, a most intelligent man, and he was a well-informed man;that is to say, he read the weekly newspapers when he could get them,and he had the average country information about Beecher and Greeleyand the Prussian war ("Napoleon is gettin' on't, ain't he?"), andthe general prospect of the election campaigns. Indeed, he waswarmly, or rather luke-warmly, interested in politics. He liked totalk about the inflated currency, and it seemed plain to him that hiscondition would somehow be improved if we could get to a speciebasis. He was, in fact, a little troubled by the national debt; itseemed to press on him somehow, while his own never did. Heexhibited more animation over the affairs of the government than hedid over his own,—an evidence at once of his disinterestedness andhis patriotism. He had been an old abolitionist, and was strong onthe rights of free labor, though he did not care to exercise hisprivilege much. Of course he had the proper contempt for the poorwhites down South. I never saw a person with more correct notions onsuch a variety of subjects. He was perfectly willing that churches(being himself a member), and Sunday-schools, and missionaryenterprises should go on; in fact, I do not believe he ever opposedanything in his life. No one was more willing to vote town taxes androad-repairs and schoolhouses than he. If you could call himspirited at all, he was public-spirited.
And with all this he was never very well; he had, from boyhood,"enjoyed poor health." You would say he was not a man who would evercatch anything, not even an epidemic; but he was a person whomdiseases would be likely to overtake, even the slowest of slowfevers. And he was n't a man to shake off anything. And yetsickness seemed to trouble him no more than poverty. He was notdiscontented; he never grumbled. I am not sure but he relished a"spell of sickness" in haying-time.
An admirably balanced man, who accepts the world as it is, andevidently lives on the experience of others. I have never seen a manwith less envy, or more cheerfulness, or so contented with as littlereason for being so. The only drawback to his future is that restbeyond the grave will not be much change for him, and he has no worksto follow him.
III
This Yankee philosopher, who, without being a Brahmin, had, in anuncongenial atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of Nirvina,reminded us all of the ancient sages; and we queried whether a worldthat could produce such as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man'syears to one hundred and thirteen, could fairly be called an old andworn-out world, having long passed the stage of its primeval poetryand simplicity. Many an Eastern dervish has, I think, gotimmortality upon less laziness and resignation than this temporarysojourner in Massachusetts. It is a common notion that the world(meaning the people in it) has become tame and commonplace, lost itsprimeval freshness and epigrammatic point. Mandeville, in hisargumentative way, dissents from this entirely. He says that theworld is more complex, varied, and a thousand times as interesting asit was in what we call its youth, and that it is as fresh, asindividual and capable of producing odd and eccentric characters asever. He thought the creative vim had not in any degree abated, thatboth the types of men and of nations are as sharply stamped anddefined as ever they were.
Was there ever, he said, in the past, any figure more clearly cut andfreshly minted than the Yankee? Had the Old World anything to showmore positive and uncompromising in all the elements of characterthan the Englishman? And if the edges of these were being roundedoff, was there not developing in the extreme West a type of mendifferent from all preceding, which the world could not yet define?He believed that the production of original types was simplyinfinite.
Herbert urged that he must at least admit that there was a freshnessof legend and poetry in what we call the primeval peoples that iswanting now; the mythic period is gone, at any rate.
Mandeville could not say about the myths. We couldn't tell whatinterpretation succeeding ages would put upon our lives and historyand literature when they have become remote and shadowy. But we neednot go to antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters asracy of the fresh earth as those handed down to us from the dawn ofhistory. He would put Benjamin Franklin against any of the sages ofthe mythic or the classic period. He would have been perfectly athome in ancient Athens, as Socrates would have been in modern Boston.There might have been more heroic characters at the siege of Troythan Abraham Lincoln, but there was not one more strongly markedindividually; not one his superior in what we call primeval craft andhumor. He was just the man, if he could not have dislodged Priam bya writ of ejectment, to have invented the wooden horse, and then tohave made Paris the hero of some ridiculous story that would have setall Asia in a roar.
Mandeville said further, that as to poetry, he did not know muchabout that, and there was not much he cared to read except parts ofShakespeare and Homer, and passages of Milton. But it did seem tohim that we had men nowadays, who could, if they would give theirminds to it, manufacture in quantity the same sort of epigrammaticsayings and legends that our scholars were digging out of the Orient.He did not know why Emerson in antique setting was not as good asSaadi. Take for instance, said Mandeville, such a legend as this,and how easy it would be to make others like it:
The son of an Emir had red hair, of which he was ashamed, and wishedto dye it. But his father said: "Nay, my son, rather behave in sucha manner that all fathers shall wish their sons had red hair."
This was too absurd. Mandeville had gone too far, except in theopinion of Our Next Door, who declared that an imitation was just asgood as an original, if you could not detect it. But Herbert saidthat the closer an imitation is to an original, the more unendurableit is. But nobody could tell exactly why.
The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed on by forms. The nuggets ofwisdom that are dug out of the Oriental and remote literatures wouldoften prove to be only commonplace if stripped of their quaintsetting. If you gave an Oriental twist to some of our modernthought, its value would be greatly enhanced for many people.
I have seen those, said the Mistress, who seem to prefer dried fruitto fresh; but I like the strawberry and the peach of each season, andfor me the last is always the best.
Even the Parson admitted that there were no signs of fatigue or decayin the creative energy of the world; and if it is a question ofPagans, he preferred Mandeville to Saadi.
ELEVENTH STUDY
It happened, or rather, to tell the truth, it was contrived,—for Ihave waited too long for things to turn up to have much faith in"happen," that we who have sat by this hearthstone before should allbe together on Christmas eve. There was a splendid backlog ofhickory just beginning to burn with a glow that promised to grow morefiery till long past midnight, which would have needed no apology ina loggers' camp,—not so much as the religion of which a lady (in acity which shall be nameless) said, "If you must have a religion,this one will do nicely."
There was not much conversation, as is apt to be the case when peoplecome together who have a great deal to say, and are intimate enoughto permit the freedom of silence. It was Mandeville who suggestedthat we read something, and the Young Lady, who was in a mood toenjoy her own thoughts, said, "Do." And finally it came about thatthe Fire Tender, without more resistance to the urging than wasbecoming, went to his library, and returned with a manuscript, fromwhich he read the story of
MY UNCLE IN INDIA
Not that it is my uncle, let me explain. It is Polly's uncle, as Ivery well know, from the many times she has thrown him up to me, andis liable so to do at any moment. Having small expectations myself,and having wedded Polly when they were smaller, I have come to feelthe full force, the crushing weight, of her lightest remark about "MyUncle in India." The words as I write them convey no idea of thetone in which they fall upon my ears. I think it is the only faultof that estimable woman, that she has an "uncle in India" and doesnot let him quietly remain there. I feel quite sure that if I had anuncle in Botany Bay, I should never, never throw him up to Polly inthe way mentioned. If there is any jar in our quiet life, he is thecause of it; all along of possible "expectations" on the one sidecalculated to overawe the other side not having expectations. Andyet I know that if her uncle in India were this night to roll abarrel of "India's golden sands," as I feel that he any moment maydo, into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, that charming wife, whois more generous than the month of May, and who has no thought butfor my comfort in two worlds, would straightway make it over to me,to have and to hold, if I could lift it, forever and forever. Andthat makes it more inexplicable that she, being a woman, willcontinue to mention him in the way she does.
In a large and general way I regard uncles as not out of place inthis transitory state of existence. They stand for a great manypossible advantages. They are liable to "tip" you at school, theyare resources in vacation, they come grandly in play about theholidays, at which season mv heart always did warm towards them withlively expectations, which were often turned into golden solidities;and then there is always the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, thatuncles are mortal, and, in their timely taking off, may prove asgenerous in the will as they were in the deed. And there is alwaysthis redeeming possibility in a niggardly uncle. Still there must besomething wrong in the character of the uncle per se, or all historywould not agree that nepotism is such a dreadful thing.
But, to return from this unnecessary digression, I am reminded thatthe charioteer of the patient year has brought round the holidaytime. It has been a growing year, as most years are. It is verypleasant to see how the shrubs in our little patch of ground widenand thicken and bloom at the right time, and to know that the greattrees have added a laver to their trunks. To be sure, our garden,—which I planted under Polly's directions, with seeds that must havebeen patented, and I forgot to buy the right of, for they are mostlystill waiting the final resurrection,—gave evidence that it sharedin the misfortune of the Fall, and was never an Eden from which onewould have required to have been driven. It was the easiest gardento keep the neighbor's pigs and hens out of I ever saw. If itsincrease was small its temptations were smaller, and that is nolittle recommendation in this world of temptations. But, as ageneral thing, everything has grown, except our house. That littlecottage, over which Polly presides with grace enough to adorn apalace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if it has anair of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunny byday and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and notunattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think dowell enough until my uncle—(but never mind my uncle, now),—and if,in the long winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and thechestnuts glow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and thehouse-plants are green and flowering, and the ivy glistens in thefirelight, and Polly sits with that contented, far-away look in hereyes that I like to see, her fingers busy upon one of those cruelmysteries which have delighted the sex since Penelope, and I read inone of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps regale ourselves with ataste of Montaigne,—if all this is true, there are times when thecottage seems small; though I can never find that Polly thinks so,except when she sometimes says that she does not know where sheshould bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back fromIndia.
There it is, again. I sometimes think that my wife believes heruncle in India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideasof him are any gauge of the reality, there is no place in the townlarge enough for him except the Town Hall. She probably expects himto come with his bungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and hiselephants, and his retinue of servants, and his principalities, andhis powers, and his ha—(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his—Iscarcely know what besides.
Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, aplacid, calm, swingeing cold night.
Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization. Thesnow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on,and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and allthe crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, ata breath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a millionsilver joy-bells. I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood atthe window, and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul. She is awoman of most remarkable discernment.
Christmas is a great festival at our house in a small way. Among themany delightful customs we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers,there is none so pleasant as that of giving presents at this season.It is the most exciting time of the year. No one is too rich toreceive something, and no one too poor to give a trifle. And in theact of giving and receiving these tokens of regard, all the world iskin for once, and brighter for this transient glow of generosity.Delightful custom! Hard is the lot of childhood that knows nothingof the visits of Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the chimneyat night; and cheerless is any age that is not brightened by someChristmas gift, however humble. What a mystery of preparation thereis in the preceding days, what planning and plottings of surprises!Polly and I keep up the custom in our simple way, and great is theperplexity to express the greatest amount of affection with a limitedoutlay. For the excellence of a gift lies in its appropriatenessrather than in its value. As we stood by the window that night, wewondered what we should receive this year, and indulged in I know notwhat little hypocrisies and deceptions.
I wish, said Polly, "that my uncle in India would send me acamel's-hair shawl, or a string of pearls, each as big as the end ofmy thumb."
"Or a white cow, which would give golden milk, that would make butterworth seventy-five cents a pound," I added, as we drew the curtains,and turned to our chairs before the open fire.
It is our custom on every Christmas eve—as I believe I havesomewhere said, or if I have not, I say it again, as the member fromErin might remark—to read one of Dickens's Christmas stories. Andthis night, after punching the fire until it sent showers of sparksup the chimney, I read the opening chapter of "Mrs. Lirriper'sLodgings," in my best manner, and handed the book to Polly tocontinue; for I do not so much relish reading aloud the succeedingstories of Mr. Dickens's annual budget, since he wrote them, as mengo to war in these days, by substitute. And Polly read on, in hermelodious voice, which is almost as pleasant to me as theWasser-fluth of Schubert, which she often plays at twilight; and Ilooked into the fire, unconsciously constructing stories of my own outof the embers. And her voice still went on, in a sort of runningaccompaniment to my airy or fiery fancies.
"Sleep?" said Polly, stopping, with what seemed to me a sort ofcrash, in which all the castles tumbled into ashes.
"Not in the least," I answered brightly, "never heard anything moreagreeable." And the reading flowed on and on and on, and I lookedsteadily into the fire, the fire, fire, fi….
Suddenly the door opened, and into our cozy parlor walked the mostvenerable personage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with greatdignity. Summer seemed to have burst into the room, and I wasconscious of a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languidtranquillity. I was not surprised that the figure before me was cladin full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about themiddle with a rich shawl. Followed him a swart attendant, whohastened to spread a rug upon which my visitor sat down, with greatgravity, as I am informed they do in farthest Ind. The slave thenfilled the bowl of a long-stemmed chibouk, and, handing it to hismaster, retired behind him and began to fan him with the mostprodigious palm-leaf I ever saw. Soon the fumes of the delicatetobacco of Persia pervaded the room, like some costly aroma which youcannot buy, now the entertainment of the Arabian Nights isdiscontinued.
Looking through the window I saw, if I saw anything, a palanquin atour door, and attendant on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who didnot seem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about onthe snow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the keenair. Oho! thought! this, then, is my uncle from India!
"Yes, it is," now spoke my visitor extraordinary, in a gruff, harshvoice.
"I think I have heard Polly speak of you," I rejoined, in an attemptto be civil, for I did n't like his face any better than I did hisvoice,—a red, fiery, irascible kind of face.
"Yes I've come over to O Lord,—quick, Jamsetzee, lift up that foot,—take care. There, Mr. Trimings, if that's your name, get me aglass of brandy, stiff."
I got him our little apothecary-labeled bottle and poured out enoughto preserve a whole can of peaches. My uncle took it down without awink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved. It was a verypleasant uncle to have at our fireside on Christmas eve, I felt.
At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed me a parcel which I sawwas directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo! the most wonderfulcamel's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew itthrough my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirelycover our little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, butsplendid in appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked inone corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobodyknows how many thousands of dollars.
"A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have come home—as I was sayingwhen that confounded twinge took me—to settle down; and I intend tomake Polly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life. Move thatleg a little, Jamsetzee."
I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to seeher dear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n'tknow any one with a greater capacity for that than she.
"That depends," said the gruff old smoker, "how I like ye. Afortune, scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown awayin a minute. But what a house this is to live in!"; theuncomfortable old relative went on, throwing a contemptuous glanceround the humble cottage. "Is this all of it?"
"In the winter it is all of it," I said, flushing up; "but in thesummer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large asanybody's house. And," I went on, with some warmth, "it was largeenough just before you came in, and pleasant enough. And besides," Isaid, rising into indignation, "you can not get anything much betterin this city short of eight hundred dollars a year, payable firstdays of January, April, July, and October, in advance, and mysalary…."
"Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-ninehovel! Do you think you have anything to say about the use of mymoney, scraped up in forty years in Ingy? THINGS HAVE GOT TO BECHANGED!" he burst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on thesideboard.
I should think they were. Even as I looked into the little fireplaceit enlarged, and there was an enormous grate, level with the floor,glowing with seacoal; and a magnificent mantel carved in oak, old andbrown; and over it hung a landscape, wide, deep, summer in theforeground with all the gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyondhills of blue and far mountains lying in rosy light. I held mybreath as I looked down the marvelous perspective. Looking round fora second, I caught a glimpse of a Hindoo at each window, who vanishedas if they had been whisked off by enchantment; and the close wallsthat shut us in fled away. Had cohesion and gravitation given out?Was it the "Great Consummation" of the year 18-? It was all like theswift transformation of a dream, and I pinched my arm to make surethat I was not the subject of some diablerie.
The little house was gone; but that I scarcely minded, for I hadsuddenly come into possession of my wife's castle in Spain. I sat ina spacious, lofty apartment, furnished with a princely magnificence.Rare pictures adorned the walls, statues looked down from deepniches, and over both the dark ivy of England ran and drooped ingraceful luxuriance. Upon the heavy tables were costly, illuminatedvolumes; luxurious chairs and ottomans invited to easy rest; and uponthe ceiling Aurora led forth all the flower-strewing daughters of thedawn in brilliant frescoes. Through the open doors my eyes wanderedinto magnificent apartment after apartment. There to the south,through folding-doors, was the splendid library, with groined roof,colored light streaming in through painted windows, high shelvesstowed with books, old armor hanging on the walls, great carved oakenchairs about a solid oaken table, and beyond a conservatory offlowers and plants with a fountain springing in the center, thesplashing of whose waters I could hear. Through the open windows Ilooked upon a lawn, green with close-shaven turf, set with ancienttrees, and variegated with parterres of summer plants in bloom. Itwas the month of June, and the smell of roses was in the air.
I might have thought it only a freak of my fancy, but there by thefireplace sat a stout, red-faced, puffy-looking man, in the ordinarydress of an English gentleman, whom I had no difficulty inrecognizing as my uncle from India.
"One wants a fire every day in the year in this confounded climate,"remarked that amiable old person, addressing no one in particular.
I had it on my lips to suggest that I trusted the day would come whenhe would have heat enough to satisfy him, in permanent supply. Iwish now that I had.
I think things had changed. For now into this apartment, full of themorning sunshine, came sweeping with the air of a countess born, anda maid of honor bred, and a queen in expectancy, my Polly, steppingwith that lofty grace which I always knew she possessed, but whichshe never had space to exhibit in our little cottage, dressed withthat elegance and richness that I should not have deemed possible tothe most Dutch duchess that ever lived, and, giving me a complacentnod of recognition, approached her uncle, and said in her smiling,cheery way, "How is the dear uncle this morning?" And, as she spoke,she actually bent down and kissed his horrid old cheek, red-hot withcurrie and brandy and all the biting pickles I can neither eat norname, kissed him, and I did not turn into stone.
"Comfortable as the weather will permit, my darling!"—and again Idid not turn into stone.
"Wouldn't uncle like to take a drive this charming morning?" Pollyasked.
Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, and Polly swept away againto prepare for the drive, taking no more notice of me than if I hadbeen a poor assistant office lawyer on a salary. And soon thecarriage was at the door, and my uncle, bundled up like a mummy, andthe charming Polly drove gayly away.
How pleasant it is to be married rich, I thought, as I arose andstrolled into the library, where everything was elegant and prim andneat, with no scraps of paper and piles of newspapers or evidences ofliterary slovenness on the table, and no books in attractivedisorder, and where I seemed to see the legend staring at me from allthe walls, "No smoking." So I uneasily lounged out of the house.And a magnificent house it was, a palace, rather, that seemed tofrown upon and bully insignificant me with its splendor, as I walkedaway from it towards town.
And why town? There was no use of doing anything at the dingyoffice. Eight hundred dollars a year! It wouldn't keep Polly ingloves, let alone dressing her for one of those fashionableentertainments to which we went night after night. And so, after aweary day with nothing in it, I went home to dinner, to find my unclequite chirruped up with his drive, and Polly regnant, sublimelyengrossed in her new world of splendor, a dazzling object ofadmiration to me, but attentive and even tender to thathypochondriacal, gouty old subject from India.
Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end of servants, who seemed toknow that I couldn't have paid the wages of one of them, and plateand courses endless. I say, a miserable dinner, on the edge of whichseemed to sit by permission of somebody, like an invited poorrelation, who wishes he had sent a regret, and longing for some ofthose nice little dishes that Polly used to set before me withbeaming face, in the dear old days.
And after dinner, and proper attention to the comfort for the nightof our benefactor, there was the Blibgims's party. No long,confidential interviews, as heretofore, as to what she should wearand what I should wear, and whether it would do to wear it again.And Polly went in one coach, and I in another. No crowding into thehired hack, with all the delightful care about tumbling dresses, andgetting there in good order; and no coming home together to ourlittle cozy cottage, in a pleasant, excited state of "flutteration,"and sitting down to talk it all over, and "Was n't it nice?" and "DidI look as well as anybody?" and "Of course you did to me," and allthat nonsense. We lived in a grand way now, and had our separateestablishments and separate plans, and I used to think that a realseparation couldn't make matters much different. Not that Pollymeant to be any different, or was, at heart; but, you know, she wasso much absorbed in her new life of splendor, and perhaps I was alittle old-fashioned.
I don't wonder at it now, as I look back. There was an army ofdressmakers to see, and a world of shopping to do, and a houseful ofservants to manage, and all the afternoon for calls, and her dear,dear friend, with the artless manners and merry heart of a girl, andthe dignity and grace of a noble woman, the dear friend who lived inthe house of the Seven Gables, to consult about all manner ofimportant things. I could not, upon my honor, see that there was anyplace for me, and I went my own way, not that there was much comfortin it.
And then I would rather have had charge of a hospital ward than takecare of that uncle. Such coddling as he needed, such humoring ofwhims. And I am bound to say that Polly could n't have been moredutiful to him if he had been a Hindoo idol. She read to him andtalked to him, and sat by him with her embroidery, and was patientwith his crossness, and wearied herself, that I could see, with herdevoted ministrations.
I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, and longed for the oldhomely simplicity. I was. Nepotism had no charms for me. There wasnothing that I could get Polly that she had not. I could surpriseher with no little delicacies or trifles, delightedly bought withmoney saved for the purpose. There was no more coming home wearywith office work and being met at the door with that warm, lovingwelcome which the King of England could not buy. There was no longevening when we read alternately from some favorite book, or laid ourdeep housekeeping plans, rejoiced in a good bargain or made light ofa poor one, and were contented and merry with little. I recalledwith longing my little den, where in the midst of the literarydisorder I love, I wrote those stories for the "Antarctic" whichPolly, if nobody else, liked to read. There was no comfort for me inmy magnificent library. We were all rich and in splendor, and ouruncle had come from India. I wished, saving his soul, that the shipthat brought him over had foundered off Barnegat Light. It wouldalways have been a tender and regretful memory to both of us. Andhow sacred is the memory of such a loss!
Christmas? What delight could I have in long solicitude andingenious devices touching a gift for Polly within my means, andhitting the border line between her necessities and her extravagantfancy? A drove of white elephants would n't have been good enoughfor her now, if each one carried a castle on his back.
"—and so they were married, and in their snug cottage lived happyever after."—It was Polly's voice, as she closed the book.
"There, I don't believe you have heard a word of it," she said halfcomplainingly.
"Oh, yes, I have," I cried, starting up and giving the fire a jabwith the poker; "I heard every word of it, except a few at the closeI was thinking"—I stopped, and looked round.
"Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl?"
"Camel's-hair fiddlestick! Now I know you have been asleep for anhour."
And, sure enough, there was n't any camel's-hair shawl there, nor anyuncle, nor were there any Hindoos at our windows.
And then I told Polly all about it; how her uncle came back, and wewere rich and lived in a palace and had no end of money, but shedidn't seem to have time to love me in it all, and all the comfort ofthe little house was blown away as by the winter wind. And Pollyvowed, half in tears, that she hoped her uncle never would come back,and she wanted nothing that we had not, and she wouldn't exchange ourindependent comfort and snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion.And then and there we made it all up, in a manner too particular forme to mention; and I never, to this day, heard Polly allude to MyUncle in India.
And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each produced from the placewhere we had hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we had preparedfor each other, and what surprise there was! "Just the thing Ineeded." And, "It's perfectly lovely." And, "You should n't havedone it." And, then, a question I never will answer, "Ten? fifteen?five? twelve?" "My dear, it cost eight hundred dollars, for I haveput my whole year into it, and I wish it was a thousand timesbetter."
And so, when the great iron tongue of the city bell swept over thesnow the twelve strokes that announced Christmas day, if there wasanywhere a happier home than ours, I am glad of it!
By Charles Dudley Warner
CONTENTS:
HOW I KILLED A BEAR
LOST IN THE WOODS
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT
A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
A CHARACTER STUDY (Old Phelps)
CAMPING OUT
A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE
HOW I KILLED A BEAR
So many conflicting accounts have appeared about my casual encounterwith an Adirondack bear last summer that in justice to the public, tomyself, and to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement ofthe facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion to kill a bear,that the celebration of the exploit may be excused.
The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. I was not huntingfor a bear, and I have no reason to suppose that a bear was lookingfor me. The fact is, that we were both out blackberrying, and met bychance, the usual way. There is among the Adirondack visitors alwaysa great deal of conversation about bears,—a general expression ofthe wish to see one in the woods, and much speculation as to how aperson would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But bears arescarce and timid, and appear only to a favored few.
It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day when an adventureof any kind seemed impossible. But it occurred to the housekeepersat our cottage—there were four of them—to send me to the clearing,on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackberries. It wasrather a series of small clearings, running up into the forest, muchovergrown with bushes and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pasturedthere, penetrating through the leafy passages from one opening toanother, and browsing among the bushes. I was kindly furnished witha six-quart pail, and told not to be gone long.
Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appearances, I took agun. It adds to the manly aspect of a person with a tin pail if healso carries a gun. It was possible I might start up a partridge;though how I was to hit him, if he started up instead of standingstill, puzzled me. Many people use a shotgun for partridges. Iprefer the rifle: it makes a clean job of death, and does notprematurely stuff the bird with globules of lead. The rifle was aSharps, carrying a ball cartridge (ten to the pound),—an excellentweapon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, for a goodmany years back, to kill a deer with it. He could hit a tree with it—if the wind did not blow, and the atmosphere was just right, andthe tree was not too far off—nearly every time. Of course, the treemust have some size. Needless to say that I was at that time nosportsman. Years ago I killed a robin under the most humiliatingcircumstances. The bird was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a bigshotgun pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on thefence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from the bird, shut botheyes, and pulled the trigger. When I got up to see what hadhappened, the robin was scattered about under the tree in more than athousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to enable anaturalist to decide from it to what species it belonged. Thisdisgusted me with the life of a sportsman. I mention the incident toshow that, although I went blackberrying armed, there was not muchinequality between me and the bear.
In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The summer before, ourcolored cook, accompanied by a little girl of the vicinage, waspicking berries there one day, when a bear came out of the woods, andwalked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and escaped. AuntChloe was paralyzed with terror. Instead of attempting to run, shesat down on the ground where she was standing, and began to weep andscream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was bewildered by thisconduct. He approached and looked at her; he walked around andsurveyed her. Probably he had never seen a colored person before,and did not know whether she would agree with him: at any rate, afterwatching her a few moments, he turned about, and went into theforest. This is an authentic instance of the delicate considerationof a bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbearance towardsthe African slave of the well-known lion, because the bear had nothorn in his foot.
When I had climbed the hill,—I set up my rifle against a tree, andbegan picking berries, lured on from bush to bush by the black gleamof fruit (that always promises more in the distance than it realizeswhen you reach it); penetrating farther and farther, throughleaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, into clearing afterclearing. I could hear on all sides the tinkle of bells, the crackingof sticks, and the stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in thethicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke through a covert, Iencountered a meek cow, who stared at me stupidly for a second, andthen shambled off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumbsociety, and picked on in silence, attributing all the wood noises tothe cattle, thinking nothing of any real bear. In point of fact,however, I was thinking all the time of a nice romantic bear, and as Ipicked, was composing a story about a generous she-bear who had losther cub, and who seized a small girl in this very wood, carried hertenderly off to a cave, and brought her up on bear's milk and honey.When the girl got big enough to run away, moved by her inheritedinstincts, she escaped, and came into the valley to her father's house(this part of the story was to be worked out, so that the child wouldknow her father by some family resemblance, and have some language inwhich to address him), and told him where the bear lived. The fathertook his gun, and, guided by the unfeeling daughter, went into thewoods and shot the bear, who never made any resistance, and only, whendying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. The moral of thetale was to be kindness to animals.
I was in the midst of this tale when I happened to look some rodsaway to the other edge of the clearing, and there was a bear! He wasstanding on his hind legs, and doing just what I was doing,—pickingblackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, while with theother he clawed the berries into his mouth,—green ones and all. Tosay that I was astonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discoveredthat I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about the samemoment the bear saw me, stopped eating berries, and regarded me witha glad surprise. It is all very well to imagine what you would dounder such circumstances. Probably you wouldn't do it: I didn't.The bear dropped down on his forefeet, and came slowly towards me.Climbing a tree was of no use, with so good a climber in the rear.If I started to run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase; andalthough a bear cannot run down hill as fast as he can run up hill,yet I felt that he could get over this rough, brush-tangled groundfaster than I could.
The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred to me how I coulddivert his mind until I could fall back upon my military base. Mypail was nearly full of excellent berries, much better than the bearcould pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and slowly backedaway from it, keeping my eye, as beast-tamers do, on the bear. Theruse succeeded.
The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not accustomed to eatout of a pail, he tipped it over, and nosed about in the fruit,"gorming" (if there is such a word) it down, mixed with leaves anddirt, like a pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. Wheneverhe disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he always upsets thebuckets of syrup, and tramples round in the sticky sweets, wastingmore than he eats. The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable.
As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started and ran. Somewhat outof breath, and shaky, I reached my faithful rifle. It was not amoment too soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush afterme. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now coming on with blood in hiseye. I felt that the time of one of us was probably short. Therapidity of thought at such moments of peril is well known. Ithought an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, soldfifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the proceeds, while thatbear was loping across the clearing. As I was cocking the gun, Imade a hasty and unsatisfactory review of my whole life. I noted,that, even in such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible tothink of any good thing you have done. The sins come out uncommonlystrong. I recollected a newspaper subscription I had delayed payingyears and years ago, until both editor and newspaper were dead, andwhich now never could be paid to all eternity.
The bear was coming on.
I tried to remember what I had read about encounters with bears. Icouldn't recall an instance in which a man had run away from a bearin the woods and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bearhad run from the man and got off. I tried to think what is the bestway to kill a bear with a gun, when you are not near enough to clubhim with the stock. My first thought was to fire at his head; toplant the ball between his eyes: but this is a dangerous experiment.The bear's brain is very small; and, unless you hit that, the beardoes not mind a bullet in his head; that is, not at the time. Iremembered that the instant death of the bear would follow a bulletplanted just back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. Thisspot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands off, sidetowards you, like a target. I finally determined to fire at himgenerally.
The bear was coming on.
The contest seemed to me very different from anything at Creedmoor.I had carefully read the reports of the shooting there; but it wasnot easy to apply the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitatedwhether I had better fire lying on my stomach or lying on my back,and resting the gun on my toes. But in neither position, Ireflected, could I see the bear until he was upon me. The range wastoo short; and the bear wouldn't wait for me to examine thethermometer, and note the direction of the wind. Trial of theCreedmoor method, therefore, had to be abandoned; and I bitterlyregretted that I had not read more accounts of offhand shooting.
For the bear was coming on.
I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As my family issmall, this was not difficult. Dread of displeasing my wife, orhurting her feelings, was uppermost in my mind. What would be heranxiety as hour after hour passed on, and I did not return! Whatwould the rest of the household think as the afternoon passed, and noblackberries came! What would be my wife's mortification when thenews was brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear! I cannotimagine anything more ignominious than to have a husband eaten by abear. And this was not my only anxiety. The mind at such times isnot under control. With the gravest fears the most whimsical ideaswill occur. I looked beyond the mourning friends, and thought whatkind of an epitaph they would be compelled to put upon the stone.
Something like this:
HERE LIE THE REMAINS
OF
_______________
EATEN BY A BEAR
Aug. 20, 1877
It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. That "eaten bya bear" is intolerable. It is grotesque. And then I thought what aninadequate language the English is for compact expression. It wouldnot answer to put upon the stone simply "eaten"; for that isindefinite, and requires explanation: it might mean eaten by acannibal. This difficulty could not occur in the German, where essensignifies the act of feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast. Howsimple the thing would be in German!
HIER LIEGT HOCHWOHLGEBOREN HERR _____ _______
GEFRESSEN
Aug. 20, 1877
That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten by a beast, andpresumably by a bear,—an animal that has a bad reputation since thedays of Elisha.
The bear was coming on; he had, in fact, come on. I judged that hecould see the whites of my eyes. All my subsequent reflections wereconfused. I raised the gun, covered the bear's breast with thesight, and let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I did nothear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The bear had stopped. Hewas lying down. I then remembered that the best thing to do afterhaving fired your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge,keeping my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked backsuspiciously. There was a quiver in the hindlegs, but no othermotion. Still, he might be shamming: bears often sham. To makesure, I approached, and put a ball into his head. He didn't mind itnow: he minded nothing. Death had come to him with a mercifulsuddenness. He was calm in death. In order that he might remain so,I blew his brains out, and then started for home. I had killed abear!
Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to saunter into the housewith an unconcerned air. There was a chorus of voices:
"Where are your blackberries?"
"Why were you gone so long?"
"Where's your pail?"
"I left the pail."
"Left the pail? What for?"
"A bear wanted it."
"Oh, nonsense!"
"Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it."
"Oh, come! You didn't really see a bear?"
"Yes, but I did really see a real bear."
"Did he run?"
"Yes: he ran after me."
"I don't believe a word of it. What did you do?"
"Oh! nothing particular—except kill the bear."
Cries of "Gammon!" "Don't believe it!" "Where's the bear?"
"If you want to see the bear, you must go up into the woods. Icouldn't bring him down alone."
Having satisfied the household that something extraordinary hadoccurred, and excited the posthumous fear of some of them for myown safety, I went down into the valley to get help. The greatbear-hunter, who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, received mystory with a smile of incredulity; and the incredulity spread to theother inhabitants and to the boarders as soon as the story was known.However, as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them tothe bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last started off withme to bring the bear in. Nobody believed there was any bear in thecase; but everybody who could get a gun carried one; and we went intothe woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and sticks, againstall contingencies or surprises,—a crowd made up mostly of scoffersand jeerers.
But when I led the way to the fatal spot, and pointed out the bear,lying peacefully wrapped in his own skin, something like terrorseized the boarders, and genuine excitement the natives. It was ano-mistake bear, by George! and the hero of the fight well, I willnot insist upon that. But what a procession that was, carrying thebear home! and what a congregation, was speedily gathered in thevalley to see the bear! Our best preacher up there never drewanything like it on Sunday.
And I must say that my particular friends, who were sportsmen,behaved very well, on the whole. They didn't deny that it was abear, although they said it was small for a bear. Mr… Deane, whois equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it was a veryfair shot. He is probably the best salmon fisher in the UnitedStates, and he is an equally good hunter. I suppose there is noperson in America who is more desirous to kill a moose than he. Buthe needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound in the bear,that he had seen that kind of a shot made by a cow's horn.
This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to sleep that night,my last delicious thought was, "I've killed a bear!"
II
LOST IN THE WOODS
It ought to be said, by way of explanation, that my being lost in thewoods was not premeditated. Nothing could have been more informal.This apology can be necessary only to those who are familiar with theAdirondack literature. Any person not familiar with it would see theabsurdity of one going to the Northern Wilderness with the deliberatepurpose of writing about himself as a lost man. It may be true thata book about this wild tract would not be recognized as completewithout a lost-man story in it, since it is almost as easy for astranger to get lost in the Adirondacks as in Boston. I merelydesire to say that my unimportant adventure is not narrated in answerto the popular demand, and I do not wish to be held responsible forits variation from the typical character of such experiences.
We had been in camp a week, on the Upper Au Sable Lake. This is agem—emerald or turquoise as the light changes it—set in the virginforest. It is not a large body of water, is irregular in form, andabout a mile and a half in length; but in the sweep of its woodedshores, and the lovely contour of the lofty mountains that guard it,the lake is probably the most charming in America. Why the youngladies and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the days andnights with hooting, and singing sentimental songs, is a mystery evento the laughing loon.
I left my companions there one Saturday morning, to return to KeeneValley, intending to fish down the Au Sable River. The Upper Lakedischarges itself into the Lower by a brook which winds through amile and a half of swamp and woods. Out of the north end of theLower Lake, which is a huge sink in the mountains, and mirrors thesavage precipices, the Au Sable breaks its rocky barriers, and flowsthrough a wild gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Betweenthe Lower Lake and the settlements is an extensive forest, traversedby a cart-path, admirably constructed of loose stones, roots oftrees, decayed logs, slippery rocks, and mud. The gorge of the riverforms its western boundary. I followed this caricature of a road amile or more; then gave my luggage to the guide to carry home, andstruck off through the forest, by compass, to the river. I promisedmyself an exciting scramble down this little-frequented canyon, and acreel full of trout. There was no difficulty in finding the river,or in descending the steep precipice to its bed: getting into ascrape is usually the easiest part of it. The river is strewn withbowlders, big and little, through which the amber water rushes withan unceasing thunderous roar, now plunging down in white falls, thenswirling round in dark pools. The day, already past meridian, wasdelightful; at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead.
Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I thought, as Iconcealed myself behind a bowlder, and made the first cast. There isnothing like the thrill of expectation over the first throw inunfamiliar waters. Fishing is like gambling, in that failure onlyexcites hope of a fortunate throw next time. There was no rise tothe "leader" on the first cast, nor on the twenty-first; and Icautiously worked my way down stream, throwing right and left. WhenI had gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of the pools wasunchanged: never were there such places for trout; but the trout wereout of their places. Perhaps they didn't care for the fly: sometrout seem to be so unsophisticated as to prefer the worm. Ireplaced the fly with a baited hook: the worm squirmed; the watersrushed and roared; a cloud sailed across the blue: no trout rose tothe lonesome opportunity. There is a certain companionship in thepresence of trout, especially when you can feel them flopping in yourfish basket; but it became evident that there were no trout in thiswilderness, and a sense of isolation for the first time came over me.There was no living thing near. The river had by this time entered adeeper gorge; walls of rocks rose perpendicularly on either side,—picturesque rocks, painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It wasnot possible to climb out of the gorge; it was impossible to find away by the side of the river; and getting down the bed, over thefalls, and through the flumes, was not easy, and consumed time.
Was that thunder? Very likely. But thunder showers are alwaysbrewing in these mountain fortresses, and it did not occur to me thatthere was anything personal in it. Very soon, however, the hole inthe sky closed in, and the rain dashed down. It seemed aprovidential time to eat my luncheon; and I took shelter under ascraggy pine that had rooted itself in the edge of the rocky slope.The shower soon passed, and I continued my journey, creeping over theslippery rocks, and continuing to show my confidence in theunresponsive trout. The way grew wilder and more grewsome. Thethunder began again, rolling along over the tops of the mountains,and reverberating in sharp concussions in the gorge: the lightningalso darted down into the darkening passage, and then the rain.Every enlightened being, even if he is in a fisherman's dress ofshirt and pantaloons, hates to get wet; and I ignominiously creptunder the edge of a sloping bowlder. It was all very well at first,until streams of water began to crawl along the face of the rock, andtrickle down the back of my neck. This was refined misery, unheroicand humiliating, as suffering always is when unaccompanied byresignation.
A longer time than I knew was consumed in this and repeated effortsto wait for the slackening and renewing storm to pass away. In theintervals of calm I still fished, and even descended to what asportsman considers incredible baseness: I put a "sinker" on my line.It is the practice of the country folk, whose only object is to getfish, to use a good deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of thepools, and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I tried thisalso. I might as well have fished in a pork barrel. It is true thatin one deep, black, round pool I lured a small trout from the bottom,and deposited him in the creel; but it was an accident. Though I satthere in the awful silence (the roar of water and thunder onlyemphasized the stillness) full half an hour, I was not encouraged byanother nibble. Hope, however, did not die: I always expected tofind the trout in the next flume; and so I toiled slowly on,unconscious of the passing time. At each turn of the stream Iexpected to see the end, and at each turn I saw a long, narrowstretch of rocks and foaming water. Climbing out of the ravine was,in most places, simply impossible; and I began to look with interestfor a slide, where bushes rooted in the scant earth would enable meto scale the precipice. I did not doubt that I was nearly throughthe gorge. I could at length see the huge form of the Giant of theValley, scarred with avalanches, at the end of the vista; and itseemed not far off. But it kept its distance, as only a mountaincan, while I stumbled and slid down the rocky way. The rain had nowset in with persistence, and suddenly I became aware that it wasgrowing dark; and I said to myself, "If you don't wish to spend thenight in this horrible chasm, you'd better escape speedily."Fortunately I reached a place where the face of the precipice wasbushgrown, and with considerable labor scrambled up it.
Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, perhaps within a fewrods, of the house above the entrance of the gorge, and that, in anyevent, I should fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, I struckboldly into the forest, congratulating myself on having escaped outof the river. So sure was I of my whereabouts that I did not notethe bend of the river, nor look at my compass. The one trout in mybasket was no burden, and I stepped lightly out.
The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for a thick undergrowthof moose-bush. It was raining,—in fact, it had been raining, moreor less, for a month,—and the woods were soaked. This moose-bush ismost annoying stuff to travel through in a rain; for the broad leavesslap one in the face, and sop him with wet. The way grew everymoment more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage broughtnight on prematurely. It was decidedly premature to a near-sightedman, whose glasses the rain rendered useless: such a person ought tobe at home early. On leaving the river bank I had borne to the left,so as to be sure to strike either the clearing or the road, and notwander off into the measureless forest. I confidently pursued thiscourse, and went gayly on by the left flank. That I did not come toany opening or path only showed that I had slightly mistaken thedistance: I was going in the right direction.
I was so certain of this that I quickened my pace and got up withalacrity every time I tumbled down amid the slippery leaves andcatching roots, and hurried on. And I kept to the left. It evenoccurred to me that I was turning to the left so much that I mightcome back to the river again. It grew more dusky, and rained moreviolently; but there was nothing alarming in the situation, since Iknew exactly where I was. It was a little mortifying that I hadmiscalculated the distance: yet, so far was I from feeling anyuneasiness about this that I quickened my pace again, and, before Iknew it, was in a full run; that is, as full a run as a person canindulge in in the dusk, with so many trees in the way. Nonervousness, but simply a reasonable desire to get there. I desiredto look upon myself as the person "not lost, but gone before." Astime passed, and darkness fell, and no clearing or road appeared, Iran a little faster. It didn't seem possible that the people hadmoved, or the road been changed; and yet I was sure of my direction.I went on with an energy increased by the ridiculousness of thesituation, the danger that an experienced woodsman was in of gettinghome late for supper; the lateness of the meal being nothing to thegibes of the unlost. How long I kept this course, and how far I wenton, I do not know; but suddenly I stumbled against an ill-placedtree, and sat down on the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. Itthen occurred to me that I had better verify my course by thecompass. There was scarcely light enough to distinguish the blackend of the needle. To my amazement, the compass, which was made nearGreenwich, was wrong. Allowing for the natural variation of theneedle, it was absurdly wrong. It made out that I was going southwhen I was going north. It intimated that, instead of turning to theleft, I had been making a circuit to the right. According to thecompass, the Lord only knew where I was.
The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in a circle isunexplained. I suppose it arises from the sympathy of the legs withthe brain. Most people reason in a circle: their minds go round andround, always in the same track. For the last half hour I had beensaying over a sentence that started itself: "I wonder where that roadis!" I had said it over till it had lost all meaning. I kept goinground on it; and yet I could not believe that my body had beentraveling in a circle. Not being able to recognize any tracks, Ihave no evidence that I had so traveled, except the general testimonyof lost men.
The compass annoyed me. I've known experienced guides utterlydiscredit it. It couldn't be that I was to turn about, and go theway I had come. Nevertheless, I said to myself, "You'd better keep acool head, my boy, or you are in for a night of it. Better listen toscience than to spunk." And I resolved to heed the impartial needle.I was a little weary of the rough tramping: but it was necessary tobe moving; for, with wet clothes and the night air, I was decidedlychilly. I turned towards the north, and slipped and stumbled along.A more uninviting forest to pass the night in I never saw.Every-thing was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be necessaryto build a fire; and, as I walked on, I couldn't find a dry bit ofwood. Even if a little punk were discovered in a rotten log I had nohatchet to cut fuel. I thought it all over calmly. I had the usualthree matches in my pocket. I knew exactly what would happen if Itried to build a fire. The first match would prove to be wet. Thesecond match, when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little,and then go out. There would be only one match left. Death wouldensue if it failed. I should get close to the log, crawl under myhat, strike the match, see it catch, flicker, almost go out (thereader painfully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, andfinally fire the punk,—thank God! And I said to myself, "The publicdon't want any more of this thing: it is played out. Either have abox of matches, or let the first one catch fire."
In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The prospect was cheerless; for,apart from the comfort that a fire would give, it is necessary, atnight, to keep off the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the treadof the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there was one sourceof profound satisfaction,—the catamount had been killed. Mr. Colvin,the triangulating surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his lastofficial report to the State. Whether he despatched him with atheodolite or a barometer does not matter: he is officially dead, andnone of the travelers can kill him any more. Yet he has served them agood turn.
I knew that catamount well. One night when we lay in the bogs of theSouth Beaver Meadow, under a canopy of mosquitoes, the serenemidnight was parted by a wild and humanlike cry from a neighboringmountain. "That's a cat," said the guide. I felt in a moment thatit was the voice of "modern cultchah." "Modern culture," says Mr.Joseph Cook in a most impressive period,—"modern culture is a childcrying in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." Thatdescribes the catamount exactly. The next day, when we ascended themountain, we came upon the traces of this brute,—a spot where he hadstood and cried in the night; and I confess that my hair rose withthe consciousness of his recent presence, as it is said to do when aspirit passes by.
Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in a dark, drenched,and howling wilderness can impart, that I experienced; but I thoughtwhat a satire upon my present condition was modern culture, with itsplain thinking and high living! It was impossible to get muchsatisfaction out of the real and the ideal,—the me and the not-me.At this time what impressed me most was the absurdity of my positionlooked at in the light of modern civilization and all my advantagesand acquirements. It seemed pitiful that society could do absolutelynothing for me. It was, in fact, humiliating to reflect that itwould now be profitable to exchange all my possessions for the woodsinstinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt the value ofthe "culture" that blunts the natural instincts.
It began to be a question whether I could hold out to walk all night;for I must travel, or perish. And now I imagined that a spectre waswalking by my side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had onlyrecently eaten a hearty luncheon: but the pangs of hunger got hold onme when I thought that I should have no supper, no breakfast; and, asthe procession of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grewhungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was becoming gaunt, andwasting away: already I seemed to be emaciated. It is astonishinghow speedily a jocund, well-conditioned human being can betransformed into a spectacle of poverty and want, Lose a man in theWoods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, get his imagination runningon his lost supper and the cheerful fireside that is expecting him,and he will become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon thesethings to excite the reader's sympathy, but only to advise him, if hecontemplates an adventure of this kind, to provide himself withmatches, kindling wood, something more to eat than one raw trout, andnot to select a rainy night for it.
Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in trouble! Ihad read of the soothing companionship of the forest, the pleasure ofthe pathless woods. But I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismalactuality, that, if I ever got out of it, I would write a letter tothe newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is an impassive,stolid brutality about the woods that has never been enough insistedon. I tried to keep my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiorityto Nature; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My situation wasan amusing satire on this theory. I fancied that I could feel asneer in the woods at my detected conceit. There was somethingpersonal in it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of theground were elements of discomfort; but there was, besides these, akind of terror in the very character of the forest itself. I thinkthis arose not more from its immensity than from the kind ofstolidity to which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would bea sort of relief to kick the trees. I don't wonder that the bearsfall to, occasionally, and scratch the bark off the great pines andmaples, tearing it angrily away. One must have some vent to hisfeelings. It is a common experience of people lost in the woods tolose their heads; and even the woodsmen themselves are not free fromthis panic when some accident has thrown them out of their reckoning.Fright unsettles the judgment: the oppressive silence of the woods isa vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It's a hollow sham, thispantheism, I said; being "one with Nature" is all humbug: I shouldlike to see somebody. Man, to be sure, is of very little account,and soon gets beyond his depth; but the society of the least humanbeing is better than this gigantic indifference. The "rapture on thelonely shore" is agreeable only when you know you can at any momentgo home.
I had now given up all expectation of finding the road, and wassteering my way as well as I could northward towards the valley. Inmy haste I made slow progress. Probably the distance I traveled wasshort, and the time consumed not long; but I seemed to be adding mileto mile, and hour to hour. I had time to review the incidents of theRusso-Turkish war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question; Ioutlined the characters of all my companions left in camp, andsketched in a sort of comedy the sympathetic and disparagingobservations they would make on my adventure; I repeated somethinglike a thousand times, without contradiction, "What a fool you wereto leave the river!" I stopped twenty times, thinking I heard itsloud roar, always deceived by the wind in the tree-tops; I began toentertain serious doubts about the compass,—when suddenly I becameaware that I was no longer on level ground: I was descending a slope;I was actually in a ravine. In a moment more I was in a brook newlyformed by the rain. "Thank Heaven!" I cried: "this I shall follow,whatever conscience or the compass says." In this region, allstreams go, sooner or later, into the valley. This ravine, thisstream, no doubt, led to the river. I splashed and tumbled alongdown it in mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fallshowing that I must have wandered to high ground. When I guessedthat I must be close to the river, I suddenly stepped into mud up tomy ankles. It was the road,—running, of course, the wrong way, butstill the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid mud; but manhad made it, and it would take me home. I was at least three milesfrom the point I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had before me atoilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of the way in a ditch; butit is truth to say that I enjoyed every step of it. I was safe; Iknew where I was; and I could have walked till morning. The mind hadagain got the upper hand of the body, and began to plume itself onits superiority: it was even disposed to doubt whether it had been"lost" at all.
III
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT
Trout fishing in the Adirondacks would be a more attractive pastimethan it is but for the popular notion of its danger. The trout is aretiring and harmless animal, except when he is aroused and forcedinto a combat; and then his agility, fierceness, and vindictivenessbecome apparent. No one who has studied the excellent picturesrepresenting men in an open boat, exposed to the assaults of long,enraged trout flying at them through the open air with open mouth,ever ventures with his rod upon the lonely lakes of the forestwithout a certain terror, or ever reads of the exploits of daringfishermen without a feeling of admiration for their heroism. Most oftheir adventures are thrilling, and all of them are, in narration,more or less unjust to the trout: in fact, the object of them seemsto be to exhibit, at the expense of the trout, the shrewdness, theskill, and the muscular power of the sportsman. My own simple storyhas few of these recommendations.
We had built our bark camp one summer and were staying on one of thepopular lakes of the Saranac region. It would be a very prettyregion if it were not so flat, if the margins of the lakes had notbeen flooded by dams at the outlets, which have killed the trees, andleft a rim of ghastly deadwood like the swamps of the under-worldpictured by Dore's bizarre pencil,—and if the pianos at the hotelswere in tune. It would be an excellent sporting region also (forthere is water enough) if the fish commissioners would stock thewaters, and if previous hunters had not pulled all the hair and skinoff from the deers' tails. Formerly sportsmen had a habit ofcatching the deer by the tails, and of being dragged in merewantonness round and round the shores. It is well known that if youseize a deer by this "holt" the skin will slip off like the peel froma banana—This reprehensible practice was carried so far that thetraveler is now hourly pained by the sight of peeled-tail deermournfully sneaking about the wood.
We had been hearing, for weeks, of a small lake in the heart of thevirgin forest, some ten miles from our camp, which was alive withtrout, unsophisticated, hungry trout: the inlet to it was describedas stiff with them. In my imagination I saw them lying there inranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a solid mass.The lake had never been visited except by stray sable hunters in thewinter, and was known as the Unknown Pond. I determined to exploreit, fully expecting, however, that it would prove to be a delusion,as such mysterious haunts of the trout usually are. Confiding mypurpose to Luke, we secretly made our preparations, and stole awayfrom the shanty one morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat,a pair of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple-sugar; while Ihad my case of rods, creel, and book of flies, and Luke had an axeand the kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of this sort inthe woods.
Five miles through a tamarack swamp brought us to the inlet ofUnknown Pond, upon which we embarked our fleet, and paddled down itsvagrant waters. They were at first sluggish, winding among tristefir-trees, but gradually developed a strong current. At the end ofthree miles a loud roar ahead warned us that we were approachingrapids, falls, and cascades. We paused. The danger was unknown. Wehad our choice of shouldering our loads and making a detour throughthe woods, or of "shooting the rapids." Naturally we chose the moredangerous course. Shooting the rapids has often been described, andI will not repeat the description here. It is needless to say that Idrove my frail bark through the boiling rapids, over the successivewaterfalls, amid rocks and vicious eddies, and landed, half a milebelow with whitened hair and a boat half full of water; and that theguide was upset, and boat, contents, and man were strewn along theshore.
After this common experience we went quickly on our journey, and, acouple of hours before sundown, reached the lake. If I live to mydying day, I never shall forget its appearance. The lake is almostan exact circle, about a quarter of a mile in diameter. The forestabout it was untouched by axe, and unkilled by artificial flooding.The azure water had a perfect setting of evergreens, in which all theshades of the fir, the balsam, the pine, and the spruce wereperfectly blended; and at intervals on the shore in the emerald rimblazed the ruby of the cardinal flower. It was at once evident thatthe unruffled waters had never been vexed by the keel of a boat. Butwhat chiefly attracted my attention, and amused me, was the boilingof the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were a vastkettle, with a fire underneath. A tyro would have been astonished atthis common phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once understand me whenI say that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I studied thesurface for some time to see upon what sort of flies they werefeeding, in order to suit my cast to their appetites; but they seemedto be at play rather than feeding, leaping high in the air ingraceful curves, and tumbling about each other as we see them in theAdirondack pictures.
It is well known that no person who regards his reputation will everkill a trout with anything but a fly. It requires some training onthe part of the trout to take to this method. The uncultivated,unsophisticated trout in unfrequented waters prefers the bait; andthe rural people, whose sole object in going a-fishing appears to beto catch fish, indulge them in their primitive taste for the worm.No sportsman, however, will use anything but a fly, except he happensto be alone.
While Luke launched my boat and arranged his seat in the stern, Iprepared my rod and line. The rod is a bamboo, weighing sevenounces, which has to be spliced with a winding of silk thread everytime it is used. This is a tedious process; but, by fastening thejoints in this way, a uniform spring is secured in the rod. No onedevoted to high art would think of using a socket joint. My line wasforty yards of untwisted silk upon a multiplying reel. The "leader"(I am very particular about my leaders) had been made to order from adomestic animal with which I had been acquainted. The fishermanrequires as good a catgut as the violinist. The interior of thehouse cat, it is well known, is exceedingly sensitive; but it may notbe so well known that the reason why some cats leave the room indistress when a piano-forte is played is because the two instrumentsare not in the same key, and the vibrations of the chords of the oneare in discord with the catgut of the other. On six feet of thissuperior article I fixed three artificial flies,—a simple brownhackle, a gray body with scarlet wings, and one of my own invention,which I thought would be new to the most experienced fly-catcher.The trout-fly does not resemble any known species of insect. It is a"conventionalized" creation, as we say of ornamentation. The theoryis that, fly-fishing being a high art, the fly must not be a tameimitation of nature, but an artistic suggestion of it. It requiresan artist to construct one; and not every bungler can take a bit ofred flannel, a peacock's feather, a flash of tinsel thread, a cock'splume, a section of a hen's wing, and fabricate a tiny object thatwill not look like any fly, but still will suggest the universalconventional fly.
I took my stand in the center of the tipsy boat; and Luke shoved off,and slowly paddled towards some lily-pads, while I began casting,unlimbering my tools, as it were. The fish had all disappeared.I got out, perhaps, fifty feet of line, with no response, andgradually increased it to one hundred. It is not difficult to learnto cast; but it is difficult to learn not to snap off the flies atevery throw. Of this, however, we will not speak. I continuedcasting for some moments, until I became satisfied that there hadbeen a miscalculation. Either the trout were too green to know whatI was at, or they were dissatisfied with my offers. I reeled in, andchanged the flies (that is, the fly that was not snapped off). Afterstudying the color of the sky, of the water, and of the foliage, andthe moderated light of the afternoon, I put on a series of beguilers,all of a subdued brilliancy, in harmony with the approach of evening.At the second cast, which was a short one, I saw a splash where theleader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceivedthe game, and did not need the unfeigned "dam" of Luke to convince methat I had snatched his felt hat from his head and deposited it amongthe lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled overto the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light.At the very first cast I saw that the hour had come. Three troutleaped into the air. The danger of this manoeuvre all fishermenunderstand. It is one of the commonest in the woods: three heavytrout taking hold at once, rushing in different directions, smash thetackle into flinders. I evaded this catch, and threw again. Irecall the moment. A hermit thrush, on the tip of a balsam, utteredhis long, liquid, evening note. Happening to look over my shoulder,I saw the peak of Marcy gleam rosy in the sky (I can't help it thatMarcy is fifty miles off, and cannot be seen from this region: theseincidental touches are always used). The hundred feet of silkswished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on thewater as a three-cent piece (which no slamming will give the weightof a ten) drops upon the contribution plate. Instantly there was arush, a swirl. I struck, and "Got him, by—-!" Never mind what Lukesaid I got him by. "Out on a fly!" continued that irreverent guide;but I told him to back water, and make for the center of the lake.The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like ashot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapidity that made itsmoke. "Give him the butt!" shouted Luke. It is the usual remark insuch an emergency. I gave him the butt; and, recognizing the factand my spirit, the trout at once sank to the bottom, and sulked. Itis the most dangerous mood of a trout; for you cannot tell what hewill do next. We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for himto reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and he soondeveloped his tactics. Coming to the surface, he made straight forthe boat faster than I could reel in, and evidently with hostileintentions. "Look out for him!" cried Luke as he came flying in theair. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and,when I picked my traps up, he was spinning across the lake as if hehad a new idea: but the line was still fast. He did not run far. Igave him the butt again; a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift.In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, wascoming back again, making straight for the boat as before. Luke, whowas used to these encounters, having read of them in the writings oftravelers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defense. Thetrout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directlyat me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. Idodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail,and nearly upset the boat. The line was of course slack, and thedanger was that he would entangle it about me, and carry away a leg.This was evidently his game; but I untangled it, and only lost abreast button or two by the swiftly-moving string. The trout plungedinto the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all theline on the reel. More butt; more indignation on the part of thecaptive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and Iwas getting exhausted. We had been back and forth across the lake,and round and round the lake. What I feared was that the trout wouldstart up the inlet and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a newfancy, and began the execution of a manoeuvre which I had never readof. Instead of coming straight towards me, he took a large circle,swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in,and kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, narrowing hiscircle. I began to suspect the game; which was, to twist my headoff.—When he had reduced the radius of his circle to abouttwenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water. Itwould be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal tothe occasion. Instead of turning round with him, as he expected, Istepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round wentthe fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcysall round the horizon; the rosy tint in the west made a broad band ofpink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfectcircle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled andreeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the maliciousbeast butt and line, and all, if he would only go the other way for achange.
When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side.After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters ofa pound. Fish always lose by being "got in and dressed." It is bestto weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large oneI ever caught got away with my leader when I first struck him. Heweighed ten pounds.
IV
A-HUNTING OF THE DEER
If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self-sacrificingsportsmen who have cleared the Adirondack regions of catamounts andsavage trout, what shall be said of the army which has so noblyrelieved them of the terror of the deer? The deer-slayers havesomewhat celebrated their exploits in print; but I think that justicehas never been done them.
The American deer in the wilderness, left to himself, leads acomparatively harmless but rather stupid life, with only suchexcitement as his own timid fancy raises. It was very seldom thatone of his tribe was eaten by the North American tiger. For a wildanimal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, regular in hishabits, affectionate in his family. Unfortunately for his repose,his haunch is as tender as his heart. Of all wild creatures he isone of the most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill of anexperienced model. I have seen the goats on Mount Pentelicus scatterat the approach of a stranger, climb to the sharp points ofprojecting rocks, and attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner,striking at once those picturesque postures against the sky withwhich Oriental pictures have made us and them familiar. But thewhole proceeding was theatrical.
Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find anything therenatural and unstudied. I presume that these goats have no nonsenseabout them when they are alone with the goatherds, any more than thegoatherds have, except when they come to pose in the studio; but thelong ages of culture, the presence always to the eye of the bestmodels and the forms of immortal beauty, the heroic friezes of theTemple of Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animals,have had a steady molding, educating influence equal to a society ofdecorative art upon the people and the animals who have dwelt in thisartistic atmosphere. The Attic goat has become an artificiallyartistic being; though of course he is not now what he was, as aposer, in the days of Polycletus. There is opportunity for a veryinstructive essay by Mr. E. A. Freeman on the decadence of the Atticgoat under the influence of the Ottoman Turk.
The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our country, and as yetuntouched by our decorative art, is without self-consciousness, andall his attitudes are free and unstudied. The favorite position ofthe deer—his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, among thelily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his nose in the air at themoment he hears the stealthy breaking of a twig in the forest—isstill spirited and graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures ofhim which the artists have put upon canvas.
Wherever you go in the Northern forest you will find deer-paths. Soplainly marked and well-trodden are they that it is easy to mistakethem for trails made by hunters; but he who follows one of them issoon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing through cedarthickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or immersed in the intricaciesof a marsh. The "run," in one direction, will lead to water; but, inthe other, it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires,for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The hunters, inwinter, find them congregated in "yards," where they can besurrounded and shot as easily as our troops shoot Comanche women andchildren in their winter villages. These little paths are full ofpitfalls among the roots and stones; and, nimble as the deer is, hesometimes breaks one of his slender legs in them. Yet he knows howto treat himself without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in asettlement in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune to breakher leg. She immediately disappeared with a delicacy rare in aninvalid, and was not seen for two weeks. Her friends had given herup, supposing that she had dragged herself away into the depths ofthe woods, and died of starvation, when one day she returned, curedof lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. She had the sense to shunthe doctor; to lie down in some safe place, and patiently wait forher leg to heal. I have observed in many of the more refined animalsthis sort of shyness, and reluctance to give trouble, which exciteour admiration when noticed in mankind.
The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with possessingcourage only when he is "at bay"; the stag will fight when he canno longer flee; and the doe will defend her young in the faceof murderous enemies. The deer gets little credit for thiseleventh-hour bravery. But I think that in any truly Christiancondition of society the deer would not be conspicuous for cowardice.I suppose that if the American girl, even as she is described inforeign romances, were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behindfences every time she ventured outdoors, she would become timid, andreluctant to go abroad. When that golden era comes which the poetsthink is behind us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered inby the opening of the "vials," and the killing of everybody who doesnot believe as those nations believe which have the most cannon; whenwe all live in real concord,—perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will berespected, and will find that men are not more savage to the weak thanare the cougars and panthers. If the little spotted fawn can think,it must seem to her a queer world in which the advent of innocence ishailed by the baying of fierce hounds and the "ping" of the rifle.
Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted in the most manlyfashion. There are several methods, and in none of them is a fairchance to the deer considered. A favorite method with the natives ispracticed in winter, and is called by them "still hunting." My ideaof still hunting is for one man to go alone into the forest, lookabout for a deer, put his wits fairly against the wits of thekeen-scented animal, and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt.There seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is privateassassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about finding yourman. The still hunting of the natives has all the romance and dangerattending the slaughter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow getsdeep, many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and keep aplace trodden down, which grows larger as they tramp down the snow insearch of food. In time this refuge becomes a sort of "yard,"surrounded by unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their wayto this retreat on snowshoes, and from the top of the banks pick offthe deer at leisure with their rifles, and haul them away to market,until the enclosure is pretty much emptied. This is one of thesurest methods of exterminating the deer; it is also one of the mostmerciful; and, being the plan adopted by our government forcivilizing the Indian, it ought to be popular. The only people whoobject to it are the summer sportsmen. They naturally want somepleasure out of the death of the deer.
Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract the pleasure ofslaying deer through as many seasons as possible, object to thepractice of the hunters, who make it their chief business toslaughter as many deer in a camping season as they can. Their ownrule, they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison to eat.Their excuse is specious. What right have these sophists to putthemselves into a desert place, out of the reach of provisions, andthen ground a right to slay deer on their own improvidence? If it isnecessary for these people to have anything to eat, which I doubt, itis not necessary that they should have the luxury of venison.
One of the most picturesque methods of hunting the poor deer iscalled "floating." The person, with murder in his heart, chooses acloudy night, seats himself, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which isnoiselessly paddled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lakeor the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light in a "jack,"the rays of which are shielded from the boat and its occupants. Adeer comes down to feed upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him.He looks up, and stands a moment, terrified or fascinated by thebright flames. In that moment the sportsman is supposed to shoot thedeer. As an historical fact, his hand usually shakes so that hemisses the animal, or only wounds him; and the stag limps away to dieafter days of suffering. Usually, however, the hunters remain outall night, get stiff from cold and the cramped position in the boat,and, when they return in the morning to camp, cloud their futureexistence by the assertion that they "heard a big buck" moving alongthe shore, but the people in camp made so much noise that he wasfrightened off.
By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode is hunting with dogs.The dogs do the hunting, the men the killing. The hounds are sentinto the forest to rouse the deer, and drive him from his cover.They climb the mountains, strike the trails, and go baying andyelping on the track of the poor beast. The deer have theirestablished runways, as I said; and, when they are disturbed in theirretreat, they are certain to attempt to escape by following one whichinvariably leads to some lake or stream. All that the hunter has todo is to seat himself by one of these runways, or sit in a boat onthe lake, and wait the coming of the pursued deer. The frightenedbeast, fleeing from the unreasoning brutality of the hounds, willoften seek the open country, with a mistaken confidence in thehumanity of man. To kill a deer when he suddenly passes one on arunway demands presence of mind and quickness of aim: to shoot himfrom the boat, after he has plunged panting into the lake, requiresthe rare ability to hit a moving object the size of a deer's head afew rods distant. Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of acommon man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and cut his throat,is a sure means of getting venison, and has its charms for some.Even women and doctors of divinity have enjoyed this exquisitepleasure. It cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wiseCreator as to feel a delight in killing a wild animal which we do notexperience in killing a tame one.
The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt has never, I believe, beenregarded from the deer's point of view. I happen to be in aposition, by reason of a lucky Adirondack experience, to present itin that light. I am sorry if this introduction to my little storyhas seemed long to the reader: it is too late now to skip it; but hecan recoup himself by omitting the story.
Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 1877, a doe was feeding onBasin Mountain. The night had been warm and showery, and the morningopened in an undecided way. The wind was southerly: it is what thedeer call a dog-wind, having come to know quite well the meaning of"a southerly wind and a cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doewas her only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat was justbeginning to be mottled with the beautiful spots which make thisyoung creature as lovely as the gazelle. The buck, its father, hadbeen that night on a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond,and had not yet returned: he went ostensibly to feed on the succulentlily-pads there. "He feedeth among the lilies until the day breakand the shadows flee away, and he should be here by this hour; but hecometh not," she said, "leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon thehills." Clear Pond was too far off for the young mother to go withher fawn for a night's pleasure. It was a fashionable watering-placeat this season among the deer; and the doe may have remembered, notwithout uneasiness, the moonlight meetings of a frivolous societythere. But the buck did not come: he was very likely sleeping underone of the ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone? "I charge you, bythe roes and by the hinds of the field, that ye stir not nor awake mylove till he please."
The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender leaves of the youngshoots, and turning from time to time to regard her offspring. Thefawn had taken his morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed ofmoss, watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown eyes, everymovement of his mother. The great eyes followed her with an alertentreaty; and, if the mother stepped a pace or two farther away infeeding, the fawn made a half movement, as if to rise and follow her.You see, she was his sole dependence in all the world. But he wasquickly reassured when she turned her gaze on him; and if, in alarm,he uttered a plaintive cry, she bounded to him at once, and, withevery demonstration of affection, licked his mottled skin till itshone again.
It was a pretty picture,—maternal love on the one part, and happytrust on the other. The doe was a beauty, and would have been soconsidered anywhere, as graceful and winning a creature as the sunthat day shone on,—slender limbs, not too heavy flanks, round body,and aristocratic head, with small ears, and luminous, intelligent,affectionate eyes. How alert, supple, free, she was! What untaughtgrace in every movement! What a charming pose when she lifted herhead, and turned it to regard her child! You would have had acompanion picture if you had seen, as I saw that morning, a babykicking about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge above the AuSable, in the valley below, while its young mother sat near, with aneasel before her, touching in the color of a reluctant landscape,giving a quick look at the sky and the outline of the Twin Mountains,and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing boy,—art in itsinfancy.
The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, and turned herear to the south. Had she heard something? Probably it was only thesouth wind in the balsams. There was silence all about in theforest. If the doe had heard anything, it was one of the distantnoises of the world. There are in the woods occasional moanings,premonitions of change, which are inaudible to the dull ears of men,but which, I have no doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. Ifthe doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, they were gone assoon. With an affectionate glance at her fawn, she continued pickingup her breakfast.
But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes dilated, a tremor in herlimbs. She took a step; she turned her head to the south; shelistened intently. There was a sound,—a distant, prolonged note,bell-toned, pervading the woods, shaking the air in smoothvibrations. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt now. She shooklike the sensitive mimosa when a footstep approaches. It was thebaying of a hound! It was far off,—at the foot of the mountain.Time enough to fly; time enough to put miles between her and thehound, before he should come upon her fresh trail; time enough toescape away through the dense forest, and hide in the recesses ofPanther Gorge; yes, time enough. But there was the fawn. The cry ofthe hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The motherinstinctively bounded away a few paces. The fawn started up with ananxious bleat: the doe turned; she came back; she couldn't leave it.She bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, "Come, my child:we are pursued: we must go." She walked away towards the west, andthe little thing skipped after her. It was slow going for theslender legs, over the fallen logs, and through the rasping bushes.The doe bounded in advance, and waited: the fawn scrambled after her,slipping and tumbling along, very groggy yet on its legs, and whininga good deal because its mother kept always moving away from it. Thefawn evidently did not hear the hound: the little innocent would evenhave looked sweetly at the dog, and tried to make friends with it, ifthe brute had been rushing upon him. By all the means at her commandthe doe urged her young one on; but it was slow work. She might havebeen a mile away while they were making a few rods. Whenever thefawn caught up, he was quite content to frisk about. He wanted morebreakfast, for one thing; and his mother wouldn't stand still. Shemoved on continually; and his weak legs were tangled in the roots ofthe narrow deer-path.
Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into a panic of terror,—ashort, sharp yelp, followed by a prolonged howl, caught up andreechoed by other bayings along the mountain-side. The doe knew whatthat meant. One hound had caught her trail, and the whole packresponded to the "view-halloo." The danger was certain now; it wasnear. She could not crawl on in this way: the dogs would soon beupon them. She turned again for flight: the fawn, scrambling afterher, tumbled over, and bleated piteously. The baying, emphasized nowby the yelp of certainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn wasimpossible. The doe returned and stood by it, head erect, andnostrils distended. She stood perfectly still, but trembling.Perhaps she was thinking. The fawn took advantage of the situation,and began to draw his luncheon ration. The doe seemed to have madeup her mind. She let him finish. The fawn, having taken all hewanted, lay down contentedly, and the doe licked him for a moment.Then, with the swiftness of a bird, she dashed away, and in a momentwas lost in the forest. She went in the direction of the hounds.
According to all human calculations, she was going into the jaws ofdeath. So she was: all human calculations are selfish. She keptstraight on, hearing the baying every moment more distinctly. Shedescended the slope of the mountain until she reached the more openforest of hard-wood. It was freer going here, and the cry of thepack echoed more resoundingly in the great spaces. She was going dueeast, when (judging by the sound, the hounds were not far off, thoughthey were still hidden by a ridge) she turned short away to thenorth, and kept on at a good pace. In five minutes more she heardthe sharp, exultant yelp of discovery, and then the deep-mouthed howlof pursuit. The hounds had struck her trail where she turned, andthe fawn was safe.
The doe was in good running condition, the ground was not bad, andshe felt the exhilaration of the chase. For the moment, fear lefther, and she bounded on with the exaltation of triumph. For aquarter of an hour she went on at a slapping pace, clearing themoose-bushes with bound after bound, flying over the fallen logs,pausing neither for brook nor ravine. The baying of the hounds grewfainter behind her. But she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-woodslash. It was marvelous to see her skim over it, leaping among itsintricacies, and not breaking her slender legs. No other livinganimal could do it. But it was killing work. She began to pantfearfully; she lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer.She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower gait; but, once on morelevel, free ground, her breath came back to her, and she stretchedaway with new courage, and maybe a sort of contempt of her heavypursuers.
After running at high speed perhaps half a mile farther, it occurredto her that it would be safe now to turn to the west, and, by a widecircuit, seek her fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a sound thatchilled her heart. It was the cry of a hound to the west of her.The crafty brute had made the circuit of the slash, and cut off herretreat. There was nothing to do but to keep on; and on she went,still to the north, with the noise of the pack behind her. In fiveminutes more she had passed into a hillside clearing. Cows and youngsteers were grazing there. She heard a tinkle of bells. Below her,down the mountain slope, were other clearings, broken by patches ofwoods. Fences intervened; and a mile or two down lay the valley, theshining Au Sable, and the peaceful farmhouses. That way also herhereditary enemies were. Not a merciful heart in all that lovelyvalley. She hesitated: it was only for an instant. She must crossthe Slidebrook Valley if possible, and gain the mountain opposite.She bounded on; she stopped. What was that? From the valley aheadcame the cry of a searching hound. All the devils were loose thismorning. Every way was closed but one, and that led straight downthe mountain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among them was aslender white wooden spire. The doe did not know that it was thespire of a Christian chapel. But perhaps she thought that human pitydwelt there, and would be more merciful than the teeth of the hounds.
"The hounds are baying on my track:
O white man! will you send me back?"
In a panic, frightened animals will always flee to human-kind fromthe danger of more savage foes. They always make a mistake in doingso. Perhaps the trait is the survival of an era of peace on earth;perhaps it is a prophecy of the golden age of the future. Thebusiness of this age is murder,—the slaughter of animals, theslaughter of fellow-men, by the wholesale. Hilarious poets who havenever fired a gun write hunting-songs,—Ti-ra-la: and good bishopswrite war-songs,—Ave the Czar!
The hunted doe went down the "open," clearing the fences splendidly,flying along the stony path. It was a beautiful sight. But considerwhat a shot it was! If the deer, now, could only have been caught INo doubt there were tenderhearted people in the valley who would havespared her life, shut her up in a stable, and petted her. Was thereone who would have let her go back to her waiting-fawn? It is thebusiness of civilization to tame or kill.
The doe went on. She left the sawmill on John's Brook to her right;she turned into a wood-path. As she approached Slide Brook, she sawa boy standing by a tree with a raised rifle. The dogs were not insight; but she could hear them coming down the hill. There was notime for hesitation. With a tremendous burst of speed she clearedthe stream, and, as she touched the bank, heard the "ping" of a riflebullet in the air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to the poorthing. In a moment more she was in the opening: she leaped into thetraveled road. Which way? Below her in the wood was a load of hay:a man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were running towardsher. She turned south, and flew along the street. The town was up.Women and children ran to the doors and windows; men snatched theirrifles; shots were fired; at the big boarding-houses, the summerboarders, who never have anything to do, came out and cheered; acampstool was thrown from a veranda. Some young fellows shooting ata mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and popped away at her; butthey were accustomed to a mark that stood still. It was all sosudden! There were twenty people who were just going to shoot her;when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away across a marshtoward the foothills. It was a fearful gauntlet to run. But nobodyexcept the deer considered it in that light. Everybody told what hewas just going to do; everybody who had seen the performance was akind of hero,—everybody except the deer. For days and days it wasthe subject of conversation; and the summer boarders kept their gunsat hand, expecting another deer would come to be shot at.
The doe went away to the foothills, going now slower, and evidentlyfatigued, if not frightened half to death. Nothing is so appallingto a recluse as half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer enteredthe thin woods, she saw a rabble of people start across the meadow inpursuit. By this time, the dogs, panting, and lolling out theirtongues, came swinging along, keeping the trail, like stupids, andconsequently losing ground when the deer doubled. But, when the doehad got into the timber, she heard the savage brutes howling acrossthe meadow. (It is well enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offeredto shoot the dogs.)
The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone: she was game to thetip of her high-bred ears. But the fearful pace at which she hadjust been going told on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beatlike a trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still fledindustriously up the right bank of the stream. When she had gone acouple of miles, and the dogs were evidently gaining again, shecrossed the broad, deep brook, climbed the steep left bank, and fledon in the direction of the Mount-Marcy trail. The fording of theriver threw the hounds off for a time. She knew, by their uncertainyelping up and down the opposite bank, that she had a little respite:she used it, however, to push on until the baying was faint in herears; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the ground.
This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Roused again by thebaying pack, she leaped forward with better speed, though withoutthat keen feeling of exhilarating flight that she had in the morning.It was still a race for life; but the odds were in her—favor, shethought. She did not appreciate the dogged persistence of thehounds, nor had any inspiration told her that the race is not to theswift.
She was a little confused in her mind where to go; but an instinctkept her course to the left, and consequently farther away from herfawn. Going now slower, and now faster, as the pursuit seemed moredistant or nearer, she kept to the southwest, crossed the streamagain, left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Haystack andSkylight in the direction of the Upper Au Sable Pond. I do not knowher exact course through this maze of mountains, swamps, ravines, andfrightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor thing worked herway along painfully, with sinking heart and unsteady limbs, lyingdown "dead beat" at intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of theremorseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon, she staggered downthe shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon the shore of the lake. Ifshe could put that piece of water between her and her pursuers, shewould be safe. Had she strength to swim it?
At her first step into the water she saw a sight that sent her backwith a bound. There was a boat mid-lake: two men were in it. Onewas rowing: the other had a gun in his hand. They were lookingtowards her: they had seen her. (She did not know that they hadheard the baying of hounds on the mountains, and had been lying inwait for her an hour.) What should she do? The hounds were drawingnear. No escape that way, even if she could still run. With only amoment's hesitation she plunged into the lake, and struck obliquelyacross. Her tired legs could not propel the tired body rapidly. Shesaw the boat headed for her. She turned toward the centre of thelake. The boat turned. She could hear the rattle of the oarlocks.It was gaining on her. Then there was a silence. Then there was asplash of the water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round thelake, the words "Confound it all!" and a rattle of the oars again.The doe saw the boat nearing her. She turned irresolutely to theshore whence she came: the dogs were lapping the water, and howlingthere. She turned again to the center of the lake.
The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. In a momentmore, with a rush of water, the boat was on her, and the man at theoars had leaned over and caught her by the tail.
"Knock her on the head with that paddle!" he shouted to the gentlemanin the stern.
The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, smooth-shaven face, andmight have been a minister of some sort of everlasting gospel. Hetook the paddle in his hand. Just then the doe turned her head, andlooked at him with her great, appealing eyes.
"I can't do it! my soul, I can't do it!" and he dropped the paddle.
"Oh, let her go!"
"Let H. go!" was the only response of the guide as he slung the deerround, whipped out his hunting-knife, and made a pass that severedher jugular.
And the gentleman ate that night of the venison.
The buck returned about the middle of the afternoon. The fawn wasbleating piteously, hungry and lonesome. The buck was surprised. Helooked about in the forest. He took a circuit, and came back. Hisdoe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the fawn in a helplesssort of way. The fawn appealed for his supper. The buck had nothingwhatever to give his child,—nothing but his sympathy. If he saidanything, this is what he said: "I'm the head of this family; but,really, this is a novel case. I've nothing whatever for you. Idon't know what to do. I've the feelings of a father; but you can'tlive on them. Let us travel."
The buck walked away: the little one toddled after him. Theydisappeared in the forest.
V
A CHARACTER STUDY
There has been a lively inquiry after the primeval man. Wanted, aman who would satisfy the conditions of the miocene environment, andyet would be good enough for an ancestor. We are not particularabout our ancestors, if they are sufficiently remote; but we musthave something. Failing to apprehend the primeval man, science hassought the primitive man where he exists as a survival in presentsavage races. He is, at best, only a mushroom growth of the recentperiod (came in, probably, with the general raft of mammalian fauna);but he possesses yet some rudimentary traits that may be studied.
It is a good mental exercise to try to fix the mind on the primitiveman divested of all the attributes he has acquired in his struggleswith the other mammalian fauna. Fix the mind on an orange, theordinary occupation of the metaphysician: take from it (withouteating it) odor, color, weight, form, substance, and peel; then letthe mind still dwell on it as an orange. The experiment is perfectlysuccessful; only, at the end of it, you haven't any mind. Betterstill, consider the telephone: take away from it the metallic disk,and the magnetized iron, and the connecting wire, and then let themind run abroad on the telephone. The mind won't come back. I havetried by this sort of process to get a conception of the primitiveman. I let the mind roam away back over the vast geologic spaces,and sometimes fancy I see a dim image of him stalking across theterrace epoch of the quaternary period.
But this is an unsatisfying pleasure. The best results are obtainedby studying the primitive man as he is left here and there in ourera, a witness of what has been; and I find him most to my mind inthe Adirondack system of what geologists call the Champlain epoch. Isuppose the primitive man is one who owes more to nature than to theforces of civilization. What we seek in him are the primal andoriginal traits, unmixed with the sophistications of society, andunimpaired by the refinements of an artificial culture. He wouldretain the primitive instincts, which are cultivated out of theordinary, commonplace man. I should expect to find him, by reason ofan unrelinquished kinship, enjoying a special communion with nature,—admitted to its mysteries, understanding its moods, and able topredict its vagaries. He would be a kind of test to us of what wehave lost by our gregarious acquisitions. On the one hand, therewould be the sharpness of the senses, the keen instincts (which thefox and the beaver still possess), the ability to find one's way inthe pathless forest, to follow a trail, to circumvent the wilddenizens of the woods; and, on the other hand, there would be thephilosophy of life which the primitive man, with little external aid,would evolve from original observation and cogitation. It is ourgood fortune to know such a man; but it is difficult to present himto a scientific and caviling generation. He emigrated from somewhatlimited conditions in Vermont, at an early age, nearly half a centuryago, and sought freedom for his natural development backward in thewilds of the Adirondacks. Sometimes it is a love of adventure andfreedom that sends men out of the more civilized conditions into theless; sometimes it is a constitutional physical lassitude which leadsthem to prefer the rod to the hoe, the trap to the sickle, and thesociety of bears to town meetings and taxes. I think that OldMountain Phelps had merely the instincts of the primitive man, andnever any hostile civilizing intent as to the wilderness into whichhe plunged. Why should he want to slash away the forest and plow upthe ancient mould, when it is infinitely pleasanter to roam about inthe leafy solitudes, or sit upon a mossy log and listen to thechatter of birds and the stir of beasts? Are there not trout in thestreams, gum exuding from the spruce, sugar in the maples, honey inthe hollow trees, fur on the sables, warmth in hickory logs? Willnot a few days' planting and scratching in the "open" yield potatoesand rye? And, if there is steadier diet needed than venison andbear, is the pig an expensive animal? If Old Phelps bowed to theprejudice or fashion of his age (since we have come out of thetertiary state of things), and reared a family, built a frame housein a secluded nook by a cold spring, planted about it some appletrees and a rudimentary garden, and installed a group of flamingsunflowers by the door, I am convinced that it was a concession thatdid not touch his radical character; that is to say, it did notimpair his reluctance to split oven-wood.
He was a true citizen of the wilderness. Thoreau would have likedhim, as he liked Indians and woodchucks, and the smell of pineforests; and, if Old Phelps had seen Thoreau, he would probably havesaid to him, "Why on airth, Mr. Thoreau, don't you live accordin' toyour preachin'?" You might be misled by the shaggy suggestion of OldPhelps's given name—Orson—into the notion that he was a mightyhunter, with the fierce spirit of the Berserkers in his veins.Nothing could be farther from the truth. The hirsute and grislysound of Orson expresses only his entire affinity with the untamedand the natural, an uncouth but gentle passion for the freedom andwildness of the forest. Orson Phelps has only those unconventionaland humorous qualities of the bear which make the animal so belovedin literature; and one does not think of Old Phelps so much as alover of nature,—to use the sentimental slang of the period,—as apart of nature itself.
His appearance at the time when as a "guide" he began to come intopublic notice fostered this impression,—a sturdy figure with longbody and short legs, clad in a woolen shirt and butternut-coloredtrousers repaired to the point of picturesqueness, his headsurmounted by a limp, light-brown felt hat, frayed away at the top,so that his yellowish hair grew out of it like some nameless fern outof a pot. His tawny hair was long and tangled, matted now many yearspast the possibility of being entered by a comb.
His features were small and delicate, and set in the frame of areddish beard, the razor having mowed away a clearing about thesensitive mouth, which was not seldom wreathed with a childlike andcharming smile. Out of this hirsute environment looked the smallgray eyes, set near together; eyes keen to observe, and quick toexpress change of thought; eyes that made you believe instinct cangrow into philosophic judgment. His feet and hands were ofaristocratic smallness, although the latter were not worn away byablutions; in fact, they assisted his toilet to give you theimpression that here was a man who had just come out of the ground,—a real son of the soil, whose appearance was partially explained byhis humorous relation to-soap. "Soap is a thing," he said, "that Ihain't no kinder use for." His clothes seemed to have been put onhim once for all, like the bark of a tree, a long time ago. Theobservant stranger was sure to be puzzled by the contrast of thisrealistic and uncouth exterior with the internal fineness, amountingto refinement and culture, that shone through it all. What communionhad supplied the place of our artificial breeding to this man?
Perhaps his most characteristic attitude was sitting on a log, with ashort pipe in his mouth. If ever man was formed to sit on a log, itwas Old Phelps. He was essentially a contemplative person. Walkingon a country road, or anywhere in the "open," was irksome to him. Hehad a shambling, loose-jointed gait, not unlike that of the bear: hisshort legs bowed out, as if they had been more in the habit ofclimbing trees than of walking. On land, if we may use thatexpression, he was something like a sailor; but, once in the ruggedtrail or the unmarked route of his native forest, he was a differentperson, and few pedestrians could compete with him. The vulgarestimate of his contemporaries, that reckoned Old Phelps "lazy," wassimply a failure to comprehend the conditions of his being. It isthe unjustness of civilization that it sets up uniform and artificialstandards for all persons. The primitive man suffers by them much asthe contemplative philosopher does, when one happens to arrive inthis busy, fussy world.
If the appearance of Old Phelps attracts attention, his voice, whenfirst heard, invariably startles the listener. A small,high-pitched, half-querulous voice, it easily rises into the shrillestfalsetto; and it has a quality in it that makes it audible in all thetempests of the forest, or the roar of rapids, like the piping of aboatswain's whistle at sea in a gale. He has a way of letting itrise as his sentence goes on, or when he is opposed in argument, orwishes to mount above other voices in the conversation, until itdominates everything. Heard in the depths of the woods, quaveringaloft, it is felt to be as much a part of nature, an original force,as the northwest wind or the scream of the hen-hawk. When he ispottering about the camp-fire, trying to light his pipe with a twigheld in the flame, he is apt to begin some philosophical observationin a small, slow, stumbling voice, which seems about to end indefeat; when he puts on some unsuspected force, and the sentence endsin an insistent shriek. Horace Greeley had such a voice, and couldregulate it in the same manner. But Phelps's voice is not seldomplaintive, as if touched by the dreamy sadness of the woodsthemselves.
When Old Mountain Phelps was discovered, he was, as the reader hasalready guessed, not understood by his contemporaries. Hisneighbors, farmers in the secluded valley, had many of them grownthrifty and prosperous, cultivating the fertile meadows, andvigorously attacking the timbered mountains; while Phelps, with notmuch more faculty of acquiring property than the roaming deer, hadpursued the even tenor of the life in the forest on which he set out.They would have been surprised to be told that Old Phelps owned moreof what makes the value of the Adirondacks than all of them puttogether, but it was true. This woodsman, this trapper, this hunter,this fisherman, this sitter on a log, and philosopher, was the realproprietor of the region over which he was ready to guide thestranger. It is true that he had not a monopoly of its geography orits topography (though his knowledge was superior in these respects);there were other trappers, and more deadly hunters, and as intrepidguides: but Old Phelps was the discoverer of the beauties andsublimities of the mountains; and, when city strangers broke into theregion, he monopolized the appreciation of these delights and wondersof nature. I suppose that in all that country he alone had noticedthe sunsets, and observed the delightful processes of the seasons,taken pleasure in the woods for themselves, and climbed mountainssolely for the sake of the prospect. He alone understood what wasmeant by "scenery." In the eyes of his neighbors, who did not knowthat he was a poet and a philosopher, I dare say he appeared to be aslack provider, a rather shiftless trapper and fisherman; and hispassionate love of the forest and the mountains, if it was noticed,was accounted to him for idleness. When the appreciative touristarrived, Phelps was ready, as guide, to open to him all the wondersof his possessions; he, for the first time, found an outlet for hisenthusiasm, and a response to his own passion. It then became knownwhat manner of man this was who had grown up here in thecompanionship of forests, mountains, and wild animals; that thesescenes had highly developed in him the love of beauty, the aestheticsense, delicacy of appreciation, refinement of feeling; and that, inhis solitary wanderings and musings, the primitive man, self-taught,had evolved for himself a philosophy and a system of things. And itwas a sufficient system, so long as it was not disturbed by externalskepticism. When the outer world came to him, perhaps he had aboutas much to give to it as to receive from it; probably more, in hisown estimation; for there is no conceit like that of isolation.
Phelps loved his mountains. He was the discoverer of Marcy, andcaused the first trail to be cut to its summit, so that others couldenjoy the noble views from its round and rocky top. To him it was,in noble symmetry and beauty, the chief mountain of the globe.To stand on it gave him, as he said, "a feeling of heavenup-h'istedness." He heard with impatience that Mount Washington was athousand feet higher, and he had a childlike incredulity about thesurpassing sublimity of the Alps. Praise of any other elevation heseemed to consider a slight to Mount Marcy, and did not willingly hearit, any more than a lover hears the laudation of the beauty of anotherwoman than the one he loves. When he showed us scenery he loved, itmade him melancholy to have us speak of scenery elsewhere that wasfiner. And yet there was this delicacy about him, that he neverover-praised what he brought us to see, any more than one wouldover-praise a friend of whom he was fond. I remember that when forthe first time, after a toilsome journey through the forest, thesplendors of the Lower Au Sable Pond broke upon our vision,—thatlow-lying silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it reflectedin its bosom,—he made no outward response to our burst of admiration:only a quiet gleam of the eye showed the pleasure our appreciationgave him. As some one said, it was as if his friend had been admired—a friend about whom he was unwilling to say much himself, but wellpleased to have others praise.
Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as simply the product of theAdirondacks; not so much a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase hasit) as a natural growth amid primal forces. But our study isinterrupted by another influence, which complicates the problem, butincreases its interest. No scientific observer, so far as we know,has ever been able to watch the development of the primitive man,played upon and fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of "Greeley'sWeekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated by the woods is a fascinatingstudy; educated by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon.No one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what thisnewspaper was to such a mountain valley as Keene. If it was not aProvidence, it was a Bible. It was no doubt owing to it thatDemocrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks. But it isnot of its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that the mostcultivated and best informed portion of the earth's surface—theWestern Reserve of Ohio, as free from conceit as it is from asuspicion that it lacks anything owes its pre-eminence solely to thiscomprehensive journal. It received from it everything except acollegiate and a classical education,—things not to be desired,since they interfere with the self-manufacture of man. If Greek hadbeen in this curriculum, its best known dictum would have beentranslated, "Make thyself." This journal carried to the communitythat fed on it not only a complete education in all departments ofhuman practice and theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfyingassurance that there was nothing more to be gleaned in the universeworth the attention of man. This panoplied its readers incompleteness. Politics, literature, arts, sciences, universalbrotherhood and sisterhood, nothing was omitted; neither the poetryof Tennyson, nor the philosophy of Margaret Fuller; neither thevirtues of association, nor of unbolted wheat. The laws of politicaleconomy and trade were laid down as positively and clearly as thebest way to bake beans, and the saving truth that the millenniumwould come, and come only when every foot of the earth was subsoiled.
I do not say that Orson Phelps was the product of nature and theTri-bune: but he cannot be explained without considering these twofactors. To him Greeley was the Tri-bune, and the Tri-bune wasGreeley; and yet I think he conceived of Horace Greeley as somethinggreater than his newspaper, and perhaps capable of producing anotherjournal equal to it in another part of the universe. At any rate, socompletely did Phelps absorb this paper and this personality that hewas popularly known as "Greeley" in the region where he lived.Perhaps a fancied resemblance of the two men in the popular mind hadsomething to do with this transfer of name. There is no doubt thatHorace Greeley owed his vast influence in the country to his genius,nor much doubt that he owed his popularity in the rural districts toJames Gordon Bennett; that is, to the personality of the man whichthe ingenious Bennett impressed upon the country. That he despisedthe conventionalities of society, and was a sloven in his toilet, wasfirmly believed; and the belief endeared him to the hearts of thepeople. To them "the old white coat"—an antique garment ofunrenewed immortality—was as much a subject of idolatry as theredingote grise to the soldiers of the first Napoleon, who had seenit by the campfires on the Po and on the Borysthenes, and believedthat he would come again in it to lead them against the enemies ofFrance. The Greeley of the popular heart was clad as Bennett said hewas clad. It was in vain, even pathetically in vain, that hepublished in his newspaper the full bill of his fashionable tailor(the fact that it was receipted may have excited the animosity ofsome of his contemporaries) to show that he wore the best broadcloth,and that the folds of his trousers followed the city fashion offalling outside his boots. If this revelation was believed, it madeno sort of impression in the country. The rural readers were not tobe wheedled out of their cherished conception of the personalappearance of the philosopher of the Tri-bune.
That the Tri-bune taught Old Phelps to be more Phelps than he wouldhave been without it was part of the independence-teaching mission ofGreeley's paper. The subscribers were an army, in which every manwas a general. And I am not surprised to find Old Phelps latelyrising to the audacity of criticising his exemplar. In somerecently-published observations by Phelps upon the philosophy ofreading is laid down this definition: "If I understand the necessityor use of reading, it is to reproduce again what has been said orproclaimed before. Hence, letters, characters, &c., are arranged inall the perfection they possibly can be, to show how certain languagehas been spoken by the, original author. Now, to reproduce byreading, the reading should be so perfectly like the original that noone standing out of sight could tell the reading from the first timethe language was spoken."
This is illustrated by the highest authority at hand: I have heard asgood readers read, and as poor readers, as almost any one in thisregion. If I have not heard as many, I have had a chance to hearnearly the extreme in variety. Horace Greeley ought to have been agood reader. Certainly but few, if any, ever knew every word of theEnglish language at a glance more readily than he did, or knew themeaning of every mark of punctuation more clearly; but he could notread proper. 'But how do you know?' says one. From the fact I heardhim in the same lecture deliver or produce remarks in his ownparticular way, that, if they had been published properly in print, aproper reader would have reproduced them again the same way. In themidst of those remarks Mr. Greeley took up a paper, to reproduce byreading part of a speech that some one else had made; and his readingdid not sound much more like the man that first read or madethe speech than the clatter of a nail factory sounds like awell-delivered speech. Now, the fault was not because Mr. Greeley didnot know how to read as well as almost any man that ever lived, if notquite: but in his youth he learned to read wrong; and, as it is tentimes harder to unlearn anything than it is to learn it, he, likethousands of others, could never stop to unlearn it, but carried it onthrough his whole life.
Whether a reader would be thanked for reproducing one of HoraceGreeley's lectures as he delivered it is a question that cannotdetain us here; but the teaching that he ought to do so, I think,would please Mr. Greeley.
The first driblets of professional tourists and summer boarders whoarrived among the Adirondack Mountains a few years ago found OldPhelps the chief and best guide of the region. Those who were eagerto throw off the usages of civilization, and tramp and camp in thewilderness, could not but be well satisfied with the aboriginalappearance of this guide; and when he led off into the woods, axe inhand, and a huge canvas sack upon his shoulders, they seemed to befollowing the Wandering Jew. The contents—of this sack would havefurnished a modern industrial exhibition, provisions cooked and raw,blankets, maple-sugar, tinware, clothing, pork, Indian meal, flour,coffee, tea, &c. Phelps was the ideal guide: he knew every foot ofthe pathless forest; he knew all woodcraft, all the signs of theweather, or, what is the same thing, how to make a Delphic predictionabout it. He was fisherman and hunter, and had been the comrade ofsportsmen and explorers; and his enthusiasm for the beauty andsublimity of the region, and for its untamable wildness, amounted toa passion. He loved his profession; and yet it very soon appearedthat he exercised it with reluctance for those who had neitherideality, nor love for the woods. Their presence was a profanationamid the scenery he loved. To guide into his private and secrethaunts a party that had no appreciation of their loveliness disgustedhim. It was a waste of his time to conduct flippant young men andgiddy girls who made a noisy and irreverent lark of the expedition.And, for their part, they did not appreciate the benefit of beingaccompanied by a poet and a philosopher. They neither understood norvalued his special knowledge and his shrewd observations: they didn'teven like his shrill voice; his quaint talk bored them. It was truethat, at this period, Phelps had lost something of the activity ofhis youth; and the habit of contemplative sitting on a log andtalking increased with the infirmities induced by the hard life ofthe woodsman. Perhaps he would rather talk, either about thewoods-life or the various problems of existence, than cut wood, orbusy himself in the drudgery of the camp. His critics went so far asto say, "Old Phelps is a fraud." They would have said the same ofSocrates. Xantippe, who never appreciated the world in which Socrateslived, thought he was lazy. Probably Socrates could cook no betterthan Old Phelps, and no doubt went "gumming" about Athens with verylittle care of what was in the pot for dinner.
If the summer visitors measured Old Phelps, he also measured them byhis own standards. He used to write out what he called "short-faceddescriptions" of his comrades in the woods, which were never soflattering as true. It was curious to see how the various qualitieswhich are esteemed in society appeared in his eyes, looked at merelyin their relation to the limited world he knew, and judged by theiradaptation to the primitive life. It was a much subtler comparisonthan that of the ordinary guide, who rates his traveler by hisability to endure on a march, to carry a pack, use an oar, hit amark, or sing a song. Phelps brought his people to a test of theirnaturalness and sincerity, tried by contact with the verities of thewoods. If a person failed to appreciate the woods, Phelps had noopinion of him or his culture; and yet, although he was perfectlysatisfied with his own philosophy of life, worked out by closeobservation of nature and study of the Tri-bune, he was always eagerfor converse with superior minds, with those who had the advantage oftravel and much reading, and, above all, with those who had anyoriginal "speckerlation." Of all the society he was ever permittedto enjoy, I think he prized most that of Dr. Bushnell. The doctorenjoyed the quaint and first-hand observations of the old woodsman,and Phelps found new worlds open to him in the wide ranges of thedoctor's mind. They talked by the hour upon all sorts of themes, thegrowth of the tree, the habits of wild animals, the migration ofseeds, the succession of oak and pine, not to mention theology, andthe mysteries of the supernatural.
I recall the bearing of Old Phelps, when, several years ago, heconducted a party to the summit of Mount Marcy by the way he had"bushed out." This was his mountain, and he had a peculiar sense ofownership in it. In a way, it was holy ground; and he would ratherno one should go on it who did not feel its sanctity. Perhaps it wasa sense of some divine relation in it that made him always speak ofit as "Mercy." To him this ridiculously dubbed Mount Marcy wasalways "Mount Mercy." By a like effort to soften the personaloffensiveness of the nomenclature of this region, he invariably spokeof Dix's Peak, one of the southern peaks of the range, as "Dixie."It was some time since Phelps himself had visited his mountain; and,as he pushed on through the miles of forest, we noticed a kind ofeagerness in the old man, as of a lover going to a rendezvous. Alongthe foot of the mountain flows a clear trout stream, secluded andundisturbed in those awful solitudes, which is the "Mercy Brook" ofthe old woodsman. That day when he crossed it, in advance of hiscompany, he was heard to say in a low voice, as if greeting someobject of which he was shyly fond, "So, little brook, do I meet youonce more?" and when we were well up the mountain, and emerged fromthe last stunted fringe of vegetation upon the rock-bound slope, Isaw Old Phelps, who was still foremost, cast himself upon the ground,and heard him cry, with an enthusiasm that was intended for no mortalear, "I'm with you once again!" His great passion very rarely foundexpression in any such theatrical burst. The bare summit that daywas swept by a fierce, cold wind, and lost in an occasional chillingcloud. Some of the party, exhausted by the climb, and shivering inthe rude wind, wanted a fire kindled and a cup of tea made, andthought this the guide's business. Fire and tea were far enough fromhis thought. He had withdrawn himself quite apart, and wrapped in aragged blanket, still and silent as the rock he stood on, was gazingout upon the wilderness of peaks. The view from Marcy is peculiar.It is without softness or relief. The narrow valleys are only darkshadows; the lakes are bits of broken mirror. From horizon tohorizon there is a tumultuous sea of billows turned to stone. Youstand upon the highest billow; you command the situation; you havesurprised Nature in a high creative act; the mighty primal energy hasonly just become repose. This was a supreme hour to Old Phelps.Tea! I believe the boys succeeded in kindling a fire; but theenthusiastic stoic had no reason to complain of want of appreciationin the rest of the party. When we were descending, he told us, withmingled humor and scorn, of a party of ladies he once led to the topof the mountain on a still day, who began immediately to talk aboutthe fashions! As he related the scene, stopping and facing us in thetrail, his mild, far-in eyes came to the front, and his voice rosewith his language to a kind of scream.
"Why, there they were, right before the greatest view they ever saw,talkin' about the fashions!"
Impossible to convey the accent of contempt in which he pronouncedthe word "fashions," and then added, with a sort of regretfulbitterness, "I was a great mind to come down, and leave 'em there."
In common with the Greeks, Old Phelps personified the woods,mountains, and streams. They had not only personality, butdistinctions of sex. It was something beyond the characterization ofthe hunter, which appeared, for instance, when he related a fightwith a panther, in such expressions as, "Then Mr. Panther thought hewould see what he could do," etc. He was in "imaginative sympathy"with all wild things. The afternoon we descended Marcy, we went awayto the west, through the primeval forests, toward Avalanche andColden, and followed the course of the charming Opalescent. When wereached the leaping stream, Phelps exclaimed,
"Here's little Miss Opalescent!"
"Why don't you say Mr. Opalescent?" some one asked.
"Oh, she's too pretty!" And too pretty she was, with her foam-whiteand rainbow dress, and her downfalls, and fountainlike uprising. Abewitching young person we found her all that summer afternoon.
This sylph-like person had little in common with a monstrous ladywhose adventures in the wildernes Phelps was fond of relating. Shewas built some thing on the plan of the mountains, and her ambitionto explore was equal to her size. Phelps and the other guides oncesucceeded in raising her to the top of Marcy; but the feat of gettinga hogshead of molasses up there would have been easier. Inattempting to give us an idea of her magnitude that night, as we satin the forest camp, Phelps hesitated a moment, while he cast his eyearound the woods: "Waal, there ain't no tree!"
It is only by recalling fragmentary remarks and incidents that I canput the reader in possession of the peculiarities of my subject; andthis involves the wrenching of things out of their natural order andcontinuity, and introducing them abruptly, an abruptness illustratedby the remark of "Old Man Hoskins" (which Phelps liked to quote),when one day he suddenly slipped down a bank into a thicket, andseated himself in a wasps' nest: "I hain't no business here; but hereI be!"
The first time we went into camp on the Upper Au Sable Pond, whichhas been justly celebrated as the most prettily set sheet of water inthe region, we were disposed to build our shanty on the south side,so that we could have in full view the Gothics and that loveliest ofmountain contours. To our surprise, Old Phelps, whose sentimentalweakness for these mountains we knew, opposed this. His favoritecamping ground was on the north side,—a pretty site in itself, butwith no special view. In order to enjoy the lovely mountains, weshould be obliged to row out into the lake: we wanted them alwaysbefore our eyes,—at sunrise and sunset, and in the blaze of noon.With deliberate speech, as if weighing our arguments and disposing ofthem, he replied, "Waal, now, them Gothics ain't the kinder sceneryyou want ter hog down!"
It was on quiet Sundays in the woods, or in talks by the camp-fire,that Phelps came out as the philosopher, and commonly contributed thelight of his observations. Unfortunate marriages, and marriages ingeneral, were, on one occasion, the subject of discussion; and a gooddeal of darkness had been cast on it by various speakers; when Phelpssuddenly piped up, from a log where he had sat silent, almostinvisible, in the shadow and smoke, "Waal, now, when you've said allthere is to be said, marriage is mostly for discipline."
Discipline, certainly, the old man had, in one way or another; andyears of solitary communing in the forest had given him, perhaps, achildlike insight into spiritual concerns. Whether he had formulatedany creed or what faith he had, I never knew. Keene Valley had areputation of not ripening Christians any more successfully thanmaize, the season there being short; and on our first visit it wassaid to contain but one Bible Christian, though I think an accuratecensus disclosed three. Old Phelps, who sometimes made abruptremarks in trying situations, was not included in this census; but hewas the disciple of supernaturalism in a most charming form. I haveheard of his opening his inmost thoughts to a lady, one Sunday, aftera noble sermon of Robertson's had been read in the cathedralstillness of the forest. His experience was entirely first-hand, andrelated with unconsciousness that it was not common to all. Therewas nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, only a vividrealism, in that nearness of God of which he spoke,—"as nearsome-times as those trees,"—and of the holy voice, that, in a timeof inward struggle, had seemed to him to come from the depths of theforest, saying, "Poor soul, I am the way."
In later years there was a "revival" in Keene Valley, the result ofwhich was a number of young "converts," whom Phelps seemed to regardas a veteran might raw recruits, and to have his doubts what sort ofsoldiers they would make.
"Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, "you've kindled a pretty goodfire with light wood. That's what we do of a dark night in thewoods, you know but we do it just so as we can look around and findthe solid wood: so now put on your solid wood."
In the Sunday Bible classes of the period Phelps was a perpetualanxiety to the others, who followed closely the printed lessons, andbeheld with alarm his discursive efforts to get into freer air andlight. His remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises,but were outside of the safe path into which the others thought itnecessary to win him from his "speckerlations." The class were oneday on the verses concerning "God's word" being "written on theheart," and were keeping close to the shore, under the guidance of"Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive to the bottom, andremarked that he had "thought a good deal about the expression,'God's word written on the heart,' and had been asking himself howthat was to be done; and suddenly it occurred to him (having beenmuch interested lately in watching the work of a photographer) that,when a photograph is going to be taken, all that has to be done is toput the object in position, and the sun makes the picture; and so herather thought that all we had got to do was to put our hearts inplace, and God would do the writin'."
Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. In the woods,one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being nowhere asserted as adoctrine in the Bible, and some one suggested that the attempt topack these great and fluent mysteries into one word must always bemore or less unsatisfactory. "Ye-es," droned Phelps: "I never couldsee much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. Why, they'd agood deal better say Legion."
The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic sensibility, wasfrequently not to be distinguished from a natural religion, and wasalways tinged with the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse. Climbingslowly one day up the Balcony,—he was more than usually calm andslow,—he espied an exquisite fragile flower in the crevice of arock, in a very lonely spot.
"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, "it seems as if the
Creator had kept something just to look at himself."
To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond (a retired but ratheruninteresting spot), and who expressed a little disappointment at itstameness, saying, of this "Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm ofthis place seems to be its loneliness,"
"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, and its nativeness.
"It lies here just where it was born."
Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A secluded openingin the woods was a "calm spot." He told of seeing once, or ratherbeing in, a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlookingthe Lower Lake, so that he saw the whole bow in the sky and the lake,and seemed to be in the midst of it; "only at one place there was anindentation in it, where it rested on the lake, just enough to keepit from rolling off." This "resting" of the sphere seemed to givehim great comfort.
One Indian-summer morning in October, some ladies found the old mansitting on his doorstep smoking a short pipe.
He gave no sign of recognition except a twinkle of the eye, beingevidently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They stood there afull minute before he opened his mouth: then he did not rise, butslowly took his pipe from his mouth, and said in a dreamy way,pointing towards the brook,—
"Do you see that tree?" indicating a maple almost denuded of leaves,which lay like a yellow garment cast at its feet. "I've beenwatching that tree all the morning. There hain't been a breath ofwind: but for hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just asyou see them now; and at last it's pretty much bare." And after apause, pensively: "Waal, I suppose its hour had come."
This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly unappreciated by hisneighbors; but it has been indulged in no inconsiderable part of hislife. Rising after a time, he said, "Now I want you to go with meand see my golden city I've talked so much about." He led the way toa hill-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from the forest, thespectators saw revealed the winding valley and its stream. He saidquietly, "There is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, theysaw that vast assemblage of birches and "popples," yellow as gold inthe brooding noonday, and slender spires rising out of the glowingmass. Without another word, Phelps sat a long time in silentcontent: it was to him, as Bunyan says, "a place desirous to be in."
Is this philosopher contented with what life has brought him?Speaking of money one day, when we had asked him if he should dodifferently if he had his life to live over again, he said, "Yes, butnot about money. To have had hours such as I have had in thesemountains, and with such men as Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Shaw and Mr.Twichell, and others I could name, is worth all the money the worldcould give." He read character very well, and took in accurately theboy nature. "Tom" (an irrepressible, rather overdone specimen),—"Tom's a nice kind of a boy; but he's got to come up against asnubbin'-post one of these days."—"Boys!" he once said: "you can'tgit boys to take any kinder notice of scenery. I never yet saw a boythat would look a second time at a sunset. Now, a girl will sometimes; but even then it's instantaneous,—comes an goes like thesunset. As for me," still speaking of scenery, "these mountainsabout here, that I see every day, are no more to me, in one sense,than a man's farm is to him. What mostly interests me now is when Isee some new freak or shape in the face of Nature."
In literature it may be said that Old Phelps prefers the best in thevery limited range that has been open to him. Tennyson is hisfavorite among poets an affinity explained by the fact that they areboth lotos-eaters. Speaking of a lecture-room talk of Mr. Beecher'swhich he had read, he said, "It filled my cup about as full as Icallerlate to have it: there was a good deal of truth in it, and somepoetry; waal, and a little spice, too. We've got to have the spice,you know." He admired, for different reasons, a lecture by Greeleythat he once heard, into which so much knowledge of various kinds wascrowded that he said he "made a reg'lar gobble of it." He was notwithout discrimination, which he exercised upon the local preachingwhen nothing better offered. Of one sermon he said, "The man beganway back at the creation, and just preached right along down; and hedidn't say nothing, after all. It just seemed to me as if he wastryin' to git up a kind of a fix-up."
Old Phelps used words sometimes like algebraic signs, and had a habitof making one do duty for a season together for all occasions."Speckerlation" and "callerlation" and "fix-up" are specimens ofwords that were prolific in expression. An unusual expression, or anunusual article, would be charactcrized as a "kind of a scientificliterary git-up."
"What is the program for tomorrow?" I once asked him. "Waal, Icallerlate, if they rig up the callerlation they callerlate on, we'llgo to the Boreas." Starting out for a day's tramp in the woods, hewould ask whether we wanted to take a "reg'lar walk, or a randomscoot,"—the latter being a plunge into the pathless forest. When hewas on such an expedition, and became entangled in dense brush, andmaybe a network of "slash" and swamp, he was like an old wizard, ashe looked here and there, seeking a way, peering into the tangle, orwithdrawing from a thicket, and muttering to himself, "There ain't nospeckerlation there." And when the way became altogetherinscrutable,—"Waal, this is a reg'lar random scoot of a rigmarole."As some one remarked, "The dictionary in his hands is like clay inthe hands of the potter." "A petrifaction was a kind of a hard-woodchemical git-up."
There is no conceit, we are apt to say, like that born of isolationfrom the world, and there are no such conceited people as those whohave lived all their lives in the woods. Phelps was, however,unsophisticated in his until the advent of strangers into his life,who brought in literature and various other disturbing influences. Iam sorry to say that the effect has been to take off something of thebloom of his simplicity, and to elevate him into an oracle. Isuppose this is inevitable as soon as one goes into print; and Phelpshas gone into print in the local papers. He has been bitten with theliterary "git up." Justly regarding most of the Adirondackliterature as a "perfect fizzle," he has himself projected a work,and written much on the natural history of his region. Long ago hemade a large map of the mountain country; and, until recent surveys,it was the only one that could lay any claim to accuracy. Hishistory is no doubt original in form, and unconventional inexpression. Like most of the writers of the seventeenth century, andthe court ladies and gentlemen of the eighteenth century, he is anindependent speller. Writing of his work on the Adirondacks, hesays, "If I should ever live to get this wonderful thing written, Iexpect it will show one thing, if no more; and that is, that everything has an opposite. I expect to show in this that literature hasan opposite, if I do not show any thing els. We could not enjoy theblessings and happiness of riteousness if we did not know innicutywas in the world: in fact, there would be no riteousness withoutinnicuty." Writing also of his great enjoyment of being in thewoods, especially since he has had the society there of some peoplehe names, he adds, "And since I have Literature, Siance, and Art allspread about on the green moss of the mountain woods or the gravellbanks of a cristle stream, it seems like finding roses, honeysuckels,and violets on a crisp brown cliff in December. You know I don'tbelieve much in the religion of seramony; but any riteous thing thathas life and spirit in it is food for me." I must not neglect tomention an essay, continued in several numbers of his local paper, on"The Growth of the Tree," in which he demolishes the theory of Mr.Greeley, whom he calls "one of the best vegetable philosophers,"about "growth without seed." He treats of the office of sap: "Alltrees have some kind of sap and some kind of operation of sap flowingin their season," the dissemination of seeds, the processes ofgrowth, the power of healing wounds, the proportion of roots tobranches, &c. Speaking of the latter, he says, "I have thought itwould be one of the greatest curiosities on earth to see a thriftygrowing maple or elm, that had grown on a deep soil interval to betwo feet in diameter, to be raised clear into the air with every rootand fibre down to the minutest thread, all entirely cleared of soil,so that every particle could be seen in its natural position. Ithink it would astonish even the wise ones." From his instinctivesympathy with nature, he often credits vegetable organism with"instinctive judgment." "Observation teaches us that a tree isgiven powerful instincts, which would almost appear to amount tojudgment in some cases, to provide for its own wants andnecessities."
Here our study must cease. When the primitive man comes intoliterature, he is no longer primitive.
VI
CAMPING OUT
It seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up only by a constanteffort: Nature claims its own speedily when the effort is relaxed.If you clear a patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot thestumps, and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, you sayyou have subdued it. But, if you leave it for a season or two, akind of barbarism seems to steal out upon it from the circling woods;coarse grass and brambles cover it; bushes spring up in a wildtangle; the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit; and thehumorous bear feeds upon them. The last state of that ground isworse than the first.
Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. There is a splendid cityon the plain; there are temples and theatres on the hills; thecommerce of the world seeks its port; the luxury of the Orient flowsthrough its marble streets. You are there one day when the sea hasreceded: the plain is a pestilent marsh; the temples, the theatres,the lofty gates have sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runsover them; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate place in theworld, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, and offers to relieve you ofall that which creates artificial distinctions in society. Thehigher the civilization has risen, the more abject is the desolationof barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot in theAdirondacks is not a tamarack-swamp, where the traveler wades in mossand mire, and the atmosphere is composed of equal active parts ofblack-flies, mosquitoes, and midges. It is the village of theAdirondack Iron-Works, where the streets of gaunt houses are fallingto pieces, tenantless; the factory-wheels have stopped; the furnacesare in ruins; the iron and wooden machinery is strewn about inhelpless detachment; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag proclaim anarrested industry. Beside this deserted village, even Calamity Pond,shallow, sedgy, with its ragged shores of stunted firs, and itsmelancholy shaft that marks the spot where the proprietor of theiron-works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful.
The instinct of barbarism that leads people periodically to throwaside the habits of civilization, and seek the freedom and discomfortof the woods, is explicable enough; but it is not so easy tounderstand why this passion should be strongest in those who are mostrefined, and most trained in intellectual and social fastidiousness.Philistinism and shoddy do not like the woods, unless it becomesfashionable to do so; and then, as speedily as possible, theyintroduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in thewilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. It is they whohave strewn the Adirondacks with paper collars and tin cans. Thereal enjoyment of camping and tramping in the woods lies in a returnto primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in as total anescape as may be from the requirements of civilization. And itremains to be explained why this is enjoyed most by those who aremost highly civilized. It is wonderful to see how easily therestraints of society fall off. Of course it is not true thatcourtesy depends upon clothes with the best people; but, with others,behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. Many good habits areeasily got rid of in the woods. Doubt sometimes seems to be feltwhether Sunday is a legal holiday there. It becomes a question ofcasuistry with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on Sunday,if none of his congregation are present. He intends no harm: he onlygratifies a curiosity to see if he can hit the mark. Where shall hedraw the line? Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk, orshout at a loon. Might he fire at a mark with an air-gun that makesno noise? He will not fish or hunt on Sunday (although he is no morelikely to catch anything that day than on any other); but may he eattrout that the guide has caught on Sunday, if the guide swears hecaught them Saturday night? Is there such a thing as a vacation inreligion? How much of our virtue do we owe to inherited habits?
I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp outside ofcivilization is creditable to human nature, or otherwise. We hearsometimes that the Turk has been merely camping for four centuries inEurope. I suspect that many of us are, after all, really campingtemporarily in civilized conditions; and that going into thewilderness is an escape, longed for, into our natural and preferredstate. Consider what this "camping out" is, that is confessedly soagreeable to people most delicately reared. I have no desire toexaggerate its delights.
The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. A few bad roadsthat penetrate it, a few jolting wagons that traverse them, a fewbarn-like boarding-houses on the edge of the forest, where theboarders are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnaturalgayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by unique cookery, do littleto destroy the savage fascination of the region. In half an hour, atany point, one can put himself into solitude and every desirablediscomfort. The party that covets the experience of the camp comesdown to primitive conditions of dress and equipment. There areguides and porters to carry the blankets for beds, the rawprovisions, and the camp equipage; and the motley party of thetemporarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, perhaps bya road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and weary march. Theexhilaration arises partly from the casting aside of restraint,partly from the adventure of exploration; and the weariness, from theinterminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the grim monotonyof trees and bushes, that shut out all prospect, except an occasionalglimpse of the sky. Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded,lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy "carries" traversed.Fancy this party the victim of political exile, banished by the law,and a more sorrowful march could not be imagined; but the voluntaryhardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that the spirits ofthe party rise as the difficulties increase.
For this straggling and stumbling band the world is young again: ithas come to the beginning of things; it has cut loose from tradition,and is free to make a home anywhere: the movement has all the promiseof a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the primitiveinstincts of play and disorder. The free range of the forestssuggests endless possibilities of exploration and possession.Perhaps we are treading where man since the creation never trodbefore; perhaps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we deepenby scraping out the decayed leaves and the black earth, have neverbeen tasted before, except by the wild denizens of these woods. Wecross the trails of lurking animals,—paths that heighten our senseof seclusion from the world. The hammering of the infrequentwoodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the drumming of the solitarypartridge,—all these sounds do but emphasize the lonesomeness ofnature. The roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed ofpebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it were, a mistof sound through all the forest (continuous beating waves that havethe rhythm of eternity in them), and the fitful movement of theair-tides through the balsams and firs and the giant pines,—how thesegrand symphonies shut out the little exasperations of our vexed life!It seems easy to begin life over again on the simplest terms.Probably it is not so much the desire of the congregation to escapefrom the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from himself, thatdrives sophisticated people into the wilderness, as it is theunconquered craving for primitive simplicity, the revolt against theeverlasting dress-parade of our civilization. From this monstrouspomposity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon is arelief. It was only human nature that the jaded Frenchman of theregency should run away to the New World, and live in a forest-hutwith an Indian squaw; although he found little satisfaction in hisact of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles.
When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to the bank of alovely lake where they purpose to enter the primitive life,everything is waiting for them in virgin expectation. There is alittle promontory jutting into the lake, and sloping down to a sandybeach, on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins andshiners come to greet the stranger; the forest is untouched by theaxe; the tender green sweeps the water's edge; ranks of slender firsare marshaled by the shore; clumps of white-birch stems shine insatin purity among the evergreens; the boles of giant spruces,maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of foliage, stretch awayin endless galleries and arcades; through the shifting leaves thesunshine falls upon the brown earth; overhead are fragments of bluesky; under the boughs and in chance openings appear the bluer lakeand the outline of the gracious mountains. The discoverers of thisparadise, which they have entered to destroy, note the babbling ofthe brook that flows close at hand; they hear the splash of theleaping fish; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the eveningthrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel, who angrily challengestheir right to be there. But the moment of sentiment passes. Thisparty has come here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Naturein her poetic attitudinizing.
The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall be its opening,towards the lake; and in front of it the fire, so that the smokeshall drift into the hut, and discourage the mosquitoes; yonder shallbe the cook's fire and the path to the spring. The whole colonybestir themselves in the foundation of a new home,—an enterprisethat has all the fascination, and none of the danger, of a veritablenew settlement in the wilderness. The axes of the guides resound inthe echoing spaces; great trunks fall with a crash; vistas are openedtowards the lake and the mountains. The spot for the shanty iscleared of underbrush; forked stakes are driven into the ground,cross-pieces are laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground.In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of a house,which is entirely open in front. The roof and sides must be covered.For this purpose the trunks of great spruces are skinned. Thewoodman rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six feetabove, and slashes it perpendicularly; then, with a blunt stick, hecrowds off this thick hide exactly as an ox is skinned. It needs buta few of these skins to cover the roof; and they make a perfectlywater-tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime busy hands havegathered boughs of the spruce and the feathery balsam, and shingledthe ground underneath the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed:in theory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread theblankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are to lie there in arow, their feet to the fire, and their heads under the edge of thesloping roof. Nothing could be better contrived. The fire is infront: it is not a fire, but a conflagration—a vast heap of greenlogs set on fire—of pitch, and split dead-wood, and cracklingbalsams, raging and roaring. By the time, twilight falls, the cookhas prepared supper. Everything has been cooked in a tin pail and askillet,—potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder howeverything could have been prepared in so few utensils. When youeat, the wonder ceases: everything might have been cooked in onepail. It is a noble meal; and nobly is it disposed of by theseamateur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of trees. Neverwere there such potatoes, never beans that seemed to have more of thebean in them, never such curly pork, never trout with moreIndian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly sheepy; and the tea,drunk out of a tin cup, with a lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it,—it is the sort of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposesthe drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There is no deceptionabout it: it tastes of tannin and spruce and creosote. Everything, inshort, has the flavor of the wilderness and a free life. It isidyllic. And yet, with all our sentimentality, there is nothingfeeble about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of work, madeto last, and not go to pieces in a person's stomach like a trivialbun: we might record on them, in cuneiform characters, our incipientcivilization; and future generations would doubtless turn them up asAcadian bricks. Good, robust victuals are what the primitive manwants.
Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light from ourconflagration the woods are black. There is a tremendous impressionof isolation and lonesomeness in our situation. We are the prisonersof the night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysterious. Thetrees are gigantic. There are noises that we do not understand,—mysterious winds passing overhead, and rambling in the greatgalleries, tree-trunks grinding against each other, undefinable stirsand uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into the dimness areoutlined in monstrous proportions. The spectres, seated about in theglare of the fire, talk about appearances and presentiments andreligion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, and catamountencounters, and frozen-to-death experiences, and simple tales ofgreat prolixity and no point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. Wehear catamounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, andthe hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, the laughter of theloon. Everything is strange, spectral, fascinating.
By and by we get our positions in the shanty for the night, andarrange the row of sleepers. The shanty has become a smoke-house bythis time: waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only bylying down, and getting the head well under the eaves, that one canbreathe. No one can find her "things"; nobody has a pillow. Atlength the row is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intentionto sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke.
Good-night is said a hundred times; positions are readjusted, morelast words, new shifting about, final remarks; it is all socomfortable and romantic; and then silence. Silence continues for aminute. The fire flashes up; all the row of heads is lifted upsimultaneously to watch it; showers of sparks sail aloft into theblue night; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy spectacle. How thesparks mount and twinkle and disappear like tropical fireflies, andall the leaves murmur, and clap their hands! Some of the sparks donot go out: we see them flaming in the sky when the flame of the firehas died down. Well, good-night, goodnight. More folding of thearms to sleep; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand-bag,or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for a pillow.Good-night. Was that a remark?—something about a root, a stub inthe ground sticking into the back. "You couldn't lie along a hair?"—-"Well, no: here's another stub. It needs but a moment for theconversation to become general,—about roots under the shoulder,stubs in the back, a ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeperto balance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the ground,the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects of remarks multiply.The whole camp is awake, and chattering like an aviary. The owl isalso awake; but the guides who are asleep outside make more noisethan the owls. Water is wanted, and is handed about in a dipper.Everybody is yawning; everybody is now determined to go to sleep ingood earnest. A last good-night. There is an appalling silence. Itis interrupted in the most natural way in the world. Somebody hasgot the start, and gone to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seemsto have been brought up on the seashore, and to know how to make allthe deep-toned noises of the restless ocean. He is also like awar-horse; or, it is suggested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly hesnorts, and breaks off short, and at once begins again in anotherkey! One head is raised after another.
"Who is that?"
"Somebody punch him."
"Turn him over."
"Reason with him."
The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mistake. He was before,it appears, on his most agreeable side. The camp rises inindignation. The sleeper sits up in bewilderment. Before he can gooff again, two or three others have preceded him. They are allalike. You never can judge what a person is when he is awake. Thereare here half a dozen disturbers of the peace who should be put insolitary confinement. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out tosit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in tenor andmezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, with a chorus always comingin at the wrong time. Those who are not asleep want to know why thesmoker doesn't go to bed. He is requested to get some water, tothrow on another log, to see what time it is, to note whether itlooks like rain. A buzz of conversation arises. She is sure sheheard something behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense."Perhaps, however, it might be a mouse."
"Mercy! Are there mice?"
"Plenty."
"Then that's what I heard nibbling by my head. I shan't sleep awink! Do they bite?"
"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite out."
"It's horrid!"
Towards morning it grows chilly; the guides have let the fire go out;the blankets will slip down. Anxiety begins to be expressed aboutthe dawn.
"What time does the sun rise?"
"Awful early. Did you sleep?
"Not a wink. And you?"
"In spots. I'm going to dig up this root as soon as it is lightenough."
"See that mist on the lake, and the light just coming on the Gothics!I'd no idea it was so cold: all the first part of the night I wasroasted."
"What were they talking about all night?"
When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, after it has washedits faces in the lake, it is disorganized, but cheerful. Nobodyadmits much sleep; but everybody is refreshed, and declares itdelightful. It is the fresh air all night that invigorates; or maybeit is the tea, or the slap-jacks. The guides have erected a table ofspruce bark, with benches at the sides; so that breakfast is taken inform. It is served on tin plates and oak chips. After breakfastbegins the day's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedition, orrowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for trout in some streamtwo or three miles distant. Nobody can stir far from camp without aguide. Hammocks are swung, bowers are built novel-reading begins,worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and dealt. The day passesin absolute freedom from responsibility to one's self. At night whenthe expeditions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adventuresare recounted, every statement of the narrator being disputed andargued. Everybody has become an adept in woodcraft; but nobodycredits his neighbor with like instinct. Society getting resolvedinto its elements, confidence is gone.
Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or two of rainfalls. The head guide is appealed to. Is it going to rain? He saysit does rain. But will it be a rainy night? The guide goes down tothe lake, looks at the sky, and concludes that, if the wind shifts ap'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather we shall have.Meantime the drops patter thicker on the leaves overhead, and theleaves, in turn, pass the water down to the table; the sky darkens;the wind rises; there is a kind of shiver in the woods; and we scudaway into the shanty, taking the remains of our supper, and eating itas best we can. The rain increases. The fire sputters and fumes.All the trees are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. Wecannot step outdoors without getting a drenching. Like sheep, we arepenned in the little hut, where no one can stand erect. The rainswirls into the open front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. Thesmoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. The guides atlength conclude that it is going to be damp. The dismal situationsets us all into good spirits; and it is later than the night beforewhen we crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound sleep,lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on the bark roof. Howmuch better off we are than many a shelter-less wretch! We are assnug as dry herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off tosleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of water on his face; thisis followed by another drop; in an instant a stream is established.He moves his head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when hefeels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand outside, he finds apuddle of water soaking through his blanket. By this time, somebodyinquires if it is possible that the roof leaks. One man has a streamof water under him; another says it is coming into his ear. The roofappears to be a discriminating sieve. Those who are dry see no needof such a fuss. The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and theprotective measure is resented by his neighbor. In the darknessthere is recrimination. One of the guides, who is summoned, suggeststhat the rubber blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof.The inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower-bath is noworse than a tub-bath. The rain continues to soak down. The fire isonly half alive. The bedding is damp. Some sit up, if they can finda dry spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are made. Afew sleep. And the night wears on. The morning opens cheerless.The sky is still leaking, and so is the shanty. The guides bring ina half-cooked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There are revivingsigns of breaking away, delusive signs that create momentaryexhilaration. Even if the storm clears, the woods are soaked. Thereis no chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square.
This life, without responsibility or clean clothes, may continue aslong as the reader desires. There are, those who would like to livein this free fashion forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases;and there are some souls so constituted that they cannot exist morethan three days without their worldly—baggage. Taking the partyaltogether, from one cause or another it is likely to strike campsooner than was intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholysight. The woods have been despoiled; the stumps are ugly; thebushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire;the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with allthe unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty isa shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fireblazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought hisusual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only bymoving to virgin forests.
And move to them he will, the next season, if not this. For he whohas once experienced the fascination of the woods-life never escapesits enticement: in the memory nothing remains but its charm.
VII
A WILDERNESS ROMANCE
At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks, stands NoonMark, a shapely peak thirty-five hundred feet above the sea, which,with the aid of the sun, tells the Keene people when it is time toeat dinner. From its summit you look south into a vast wildernessbasin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, and out of whosebosom you can hear from the heights on a still day the loud murmur ofthe Boquet. This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south andsoutheast into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak and Nipple Top,—thelatter a local name which neither the mountain nor the fastidioustourist is able to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keepsits present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, it cannot geton without this name.
These two mountains, which belong to the great system of which Marcyis the giant centre, and are in the neighborhood of five thousandfeet high, on the southern outposts of the great mountains, form thegate-posts of the pass into the south country. This opening betweenthem is called Hunter's Pass. It is the most elevated and one of thewildest of the mountain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundredfeet high. In former years it is presumed the hunters occasionallyfollowed the game through; but latterly it is rare to find a guidewho has been that way, and the tin-can and paper-collar tourists havenot yet made it a runway. This seclusion is due not to any inherentdifficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little out ofthe way.
We went through it last summer; making our way into the jaws from thefoot of the great slides on Dix, keeping along the ragged spurs ofthe mountain through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walledin on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked up withbowlders and fallen trees, and beset with pitfalls in the roadsingeniously covered with fair-seeming moss. When the climberoccasionally loses sight of a leg in one of these treacherous holes,and feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has dippedinto the sources of the Boquet, which emerges lower down into fallsand rapids, and, recruited by creeping tributaries, goes brawlingthrough the forest basin, and at last comes out an amiable andboat-bearing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From the summitanother rivulet trickles away to the south, and finds its way througha frightful tamarack swamp, and through woods scarred by ruthlesslumbering, to Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly fringeof dead trees, upon which people of grand intentions and weakvocabulary are trying to fix the name of Elk Lake. The descent ofthe pass on that side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in thestream itself; and a considerable portion of the distance we swungourselves down the faces of considerable falls, and tumbled downcascades. The descent, however, was made easy by the fact that itrained, and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why sanepeople, often church-members respectably connected, will subjectthemselves to this sort of treatment,—be wet to the skin, bruised bythe rocks, and flung about among the bushes and dead wood until themost necessary part of their apparel hangs in shreds,—is one of thedelightful mysteries of these woods. I suspect that every man is atheart a roving animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to thecondition of the bear and the catamount.
There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, as I have intimated,is the least frequented portion of this wilderness. Yet we weresurprised to find a well-beaten path a considerable portion of theway and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere deer'srunway: these are found everywhere in the mountains. It is troddenby other and larger animals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts.It bears marks of having been so for a long period, and probably aperiod long ago. Large animals are not common in these woods now,and you seldom meet anything fiercer than the timid deer and thegentle bear. But in days gone by, Hunter's Pass was the highway ofthe whole caravan of animals who were continually going backward; andforwards, in the aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between MudPond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now the procession ofthem between the heights of Dix and Nipple Top; the elk and the mooseshambling along, cropping the twigs; the heavy bear lounging by withhis exploring nose; the frightened deer trembling at every twig thatsnapped beneath his little hoofs, intent on the lily-pads of thepond; the raccoon and the hedgehog, sidling along; and thevelvet-footed panther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting thepath with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an overhangingtree ready to drop into the procession at the right moment. Night andday, year after year, I see them going by, watched by the red fox andthe comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black cat,—theinnocent, the vicious, the timid and the savage, the shy and the bold,the chattering slanderer and the screaming prowler, the industriousand the peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter,—just asit is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my species when I think of it.This charming society is nearly extinct now: of the larger animalsthere only remain the bear, who minds his own business more thoroughlythan any person I know, and the deer, who would like to be friendlywith men, but whose winning face and gentle ways are no protectionfrom the savageness of man, and who is treated with the same unpityingdestruction as the snarling catamount. I have read in history thatthe amiable natives of Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of thebrutal Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As society is atpresent constituted in Christian countries, I would rather for my ownsecurity be a cougar than a fawn.
There is not much of romantic interest in the Adirondacks. Out ofthe books of daring travelers, nothing. I do not know that the KeeneValley has any history. The mountains always stood here, and the AuSable, flowing now in shallows and now in rippling reaches over thesands and pebbles, has for ages filled the air with continuous andsoothing sounds. Before the Vermonters broke into it somethree-quarters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bottoms andsugar-camps of its fringing woods, I suppose the red Indian lived herein his usual discomfort, and was as restless as his successors, thesummer boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, and themoose and the elk left their broad tracks on the sands of the river.But of the Indian there is no trace. There is a mound in the valley,much like a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, that mayhave been built by some pre-historic race, and may contain treasureand the seated figure of a preserved chieftain on his slow wayto Paradise. What the gentle and accomplished race of theMound-Builders should want in this savage region where the frost killsthe early potatoes and stunts the scanty oats, I do not know. I haveseen no trace of them, except this Tel, and one other slight relic,which came to light last summer, and is not enough to found thehistory of a race upon.
Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside on one of the littleplateaus, for a house-cellar, discovered, partly embedded, a piece ofpottery unique in this region. With the unerring instinct of workmenin regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through it, and brokethe bowl into several pieces. The joint fragments, however, give usthe form of the dish. It is a bowl about nine inches high and eightinches across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The bottom isround, the top flares into four comers, and the rim is rudely butrather artistically ornamented with criss-cross scratches made whenthe clay was soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about here,and it is one that the Indians formerly living here could not form.Was it brought here by roving Indians who may have made an expeditionto the Ohio; was it passed from tribe to tribe; or did it belong to arace that occupied the country before the Indian, and who have lefttraces of their civilized skill in pottery scattered all over thecontinent?
If I could establish the fact that this jar was made by a prehistoricrace, we should then have four generations in this lovely valley:-theamiable Pre-Historic people (whose gentle descendants were probablykilled by the Spaniards in the West Indies); the Red Indians; theKeene Flaters (from Vermont); and the Summer Boarders, to say nothingof the various races of animals who have been unable to live heresince the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley being notproductive enough to sustain both. This last incursion has been moredestructive to the noble serenity of the forest than all thepreceding.
But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The western walls of it areformed by the precipices of Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bareas the great slides of Dix which glisten in the sun like silver, butrough and repelling, and consequently alluring. I have a greatdesire to scale them. I have always had an unreasonable wish toexplore the rough summit of this crabbed hill, which is too brokenand jagged for pleasure and not high enough for glory. This desirewas stimulated by a legend related by our guide that night in the MudPond cabin. The guide had never been through the pass before;although he was familiar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Topin the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told doesn'tamount to much, none of the guides' stories do, faithfully reported,and I should not have believed it if I had not had a good deal ofleisure on my hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and Imay say in rather of a starved condition as to any romance in thisregion.
The guide said then—and he mentioned it casually, in reply to ourinquiries about ascending the mountain—that there was a cave high upamong the precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. Hescarcely volunteered the information, and with seeming reluctancegave us any particulars about it. I always admire this art by whichthe accomplished story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctanttale of the marvelous from him, and makes you in a manner responsiblefor its improbability. If this is well managed, the listener isalways eager to believe a great deal more than the romancer seemswilling to tell, and always resents the assumed reservations anddoubts of the latter.
There were strange reports about this cave when the old guide was aboy, and even then its very existence had become legendary. Nobodyknew exactly where it was, but there was no doubt that it had beeninhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had seen a light lateat night twinkling through the trees high up the mountain, and nowand then a ruddy glare as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlerswere few in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were wellknown. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by strangers, and bymen who had some secret purpose in seeking this seclusion and eludingobservation. If suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, orif any such landed from the steamers on the shore of Lake Champlain,it was impossible to identify them with these invaders who were neverseen. Their not being seen did not, however, prevent the growth ofthe belief in their existence. Little indications and rumors, eachtrivial in itself, became a mass of testimony that could not bedisposed of because of its very indefiniteness, but which appealedstrongly to man's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity.
The cave existed; and it was inhabited by men who came and went onmysterious errands, and transacted their business by night. Whatthis band of adventurers or desperadoes lived on, how they conveyedtheir food through the trackless woods to their high eyrie, and whatcould induce men to seek such a retreat, were questions discussed,but never settled. They might be banditti; but there was nothing toplunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies and raidseither in the settlements of the hills or the distant lake shore wereunknown. In another age, these might have been hermits, holy men whohad retired from the world to feed the vanity of their godliness in aspot where they were subject neither to interruption nor comparison;they would have had a shrine in the cave, and an image of the BlessedVirgin, with a lamp always burning before it and sending out itsmellow light over the savage waste. A more probable notion was thatthey were romantic Frenchmen who had grow weary of vice andrefinement together,—possibly princes, expectants of the throne,Bourbon remainders, named Williams or otherwise, unhatched eggs, soto speak, of kings, who had withdrawn out of observation to wait forthe next turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do such things. If they werenot Frenchmen, they might be honest-thieves or criminals, escapedfrom justice or from the friendly state-prison of New York. Thislast supposition was, however, more violent than the others, or seemsso to us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up New Yorkcriminal would be so insane as to run away from his political friendsthe keepers, from the easily had companionship of his pals outside,and from the society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to puthimself into the depths of a wilderness out of which escape, whenescape was desired, is a good deal more difficult than it is out ofthe swarming jails of the Empire State? Besides, how foolish for aman, if he were a really hardened and professional criminal, havingestablished connections and a regular business, to run away from thegovernor's pardon, which might have difficulty in finding him in thecraggy bosom of Nipple Top!
This gang of men—there is some doubt whether they were accompaniedby women—gave little evidence in their appearance of being escapedcriminals or expectant kings. Their movements were mysterious butnot necessarily violent. If their occupation could have beendiscovered, that would have furnished a clew to their true character.But about this the strangers were as close as mice. If anythingcould betray them, it was the steady light from the cavern, and itsoccasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to the opinion, which wasstrengthened by a good many indications equally conclusive, that thecave was the resort of a gang of coiners and counterfeiters. Herethey had their furnace, smelting-pots, and dies; here theymanufactured those spurious quarters and halves that theirconfidants, who were pardoned, were circulating, and which a fewhonest men were "nailing to the counter."
This prosaic explanation of a romantic situation satisfies all therequirements of the known facts, but the lively imagination at oncerejects it as unworthy of the subject. I think the guide put itforward in order to have it rejected. The fact is,—at least, it hasnever been disproved,—these strangers whose movements were veiledbelonged to that dark and mysterious race whose presence anywhere onthis continent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They wereSpaniards! You need not say buccaneers, you need not saygold-hunters, you need not say swarthy adventurers even: it is enoughto say Spaniards! There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism anddaring I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, and it isnot necessary either that he should have the high-sounding name ofBodadilla or Ojeda.
Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story if the moose, quaffing deepdraughts of red wine from silver tankards, and then throwingthemselves back upon divans, and lazily puffing the fragrant Havana.After a day of toil, what more natural, and what more probable for aSpaniard?
Does the reader think these inferences not warranted by the facts?He does not know the facts. It is true that our guide had neverhimself personally visited the cave, but he has always intended tohunt it up. His information in regard to it comes from his father,who was a mighty hunter and trapper. In one of his expeditions overNipple Top he chanced upon the cave. The mouth was half concealed byundergrowth. He entered, not without some apprehension engendered bythe legends which make it famous. I think he showed some boldness inventuring into such a place alone. I confess that, before I went in,I should want to fire a Gatling gun into the mouth for a littlewhile, in order to rout out the bears which usually dwell there. Hewent in, however. The entrance was low; but the cave was spacious,not large, but big enough, with a level floor and a vaulted ceiling.It had long been deserted, but that it was once the residence ofhighly civilized beings there could be no doubt. The dead brands inthe centre were the remains of a fire that could not have beenkindled by wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had beenscientifically dissected and handled. There were also remnants offurniture and pieces of garments scattered about. At the fartherend, in a fissure of the rock, were stones regularly built up, therem Yins of a larger fire,—and what the hunter did not doubt was thesmelting furnace of the Spaniards. He poked about in the ashes, butfound no silver. That had all been carried away.
But what most provoked his wonder in this rude cave was a chair IThis was not such a seat as a woodman might knock up with an axe,with rough body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured chairof commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual pattern and someelegance. This chair itself was a mute witness of luxury andmystery. The chair itself might have been accounted for, though Idon't know how; but upon the back of the chair hung, as if the ownerhad carelessly flung it there before going out an hour before, aman's waistcoat. This waistcoat seemed to him of foreign make andpeculiar style, but what endeared it to him was its row of metalbuttons. These buttons were of silver! I forget now whether he didnot say they were of silver coin, and that the coin was Spanish. ButI am not certain about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air ofimprobability over my narrative. This rich vestment the huntercarried away with him. This was all the plunder his expeditionafforded. Yes: there was one other article, and, to my mind, moresignificant than the vest of the hidalgo. This was a short and stoutcrowbar of iron; not one of the long crowbars that farmers use to pryup stones, but a short handy one, such as you would use in diggingsilver-ore out of the cracks of rocks.
This was the guide's simple story. I asked him what became of thevest and the buttons, and the bar of iron. The old man wore the vestuntil he wore it out; and then he handed it over to the boys, andthey wore it in turn till they wore it out. The buttons were cutoff, and kept as curiosities. They were about the cabin, and thechildren had them to play with. The guide distinctly remembersplaying with them; one of them he kept for a long time, and he didn'tknow but he could find it now, but he guessed it had disappeared. Iregretted that he had not treasured this slender verification of aninteresting romance, but he said in those days he never paid muchattention to such things. Lately he has turned the subject over, andis sorry that his father wore out the vest and did not bring away thechair. It is his steady purpose to find the cave some time when hehas leisure, and capture the chair, if it has not tumbled to pieces.But about the crowbar? Oh I that is all right. The guide has thebar at his house in Keene Valley, and has always used it. I am happy to be able to confirm this story by saying that nextday I saw the crowbar, and had it in my hand. It is short and thick,and the most interesting kind of crowbar. This evidence is enoughfor me. I intend in the course of this vacation to search for thecave; and, if I find it, my readers shall know the truth about it, ifit destroys the only bit of romance connected with these mountains.
VIII
WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE
My readers were promised an account of Spaniard's Cave on Nipple-TopMountain in the Adirondacks, if such a cave exists, and could befound. There is none but negative evidence that this is a mere caveof the imagination, the void fancy of a vacant hour; but it is theduty of the historian to present the negative testimony of afruitless expedition in search of it, made last summer. I beg leaveto offer this in the simple language befitting all sincere exploitsof a geographical character.
The summit of Nipple-Top Mountain has been trodden by few white menof good character: it is in the heart of a hirsute wilderness; it isitself a rough and unsocial pile of granite nearly five thousand feethigh, bristling with a stunted and unpleasant growth of firs andbalsams, and there is no earthly reason why a person should go there.Therefore we went. In the party of three there was, of course, achaplain. The guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made the ascentonce before, but not from the northwest side, the direction fromwhich we approached it. The enthusiasm of this philosopher has grownwith his years, and outlived his endurance: we carried our ownknapsacks and supplies, therefore, and drew upon him for nothing butmoral reflections and a general knowledge of the wilderness. Ourfirst day's route was through the Gill-brook woods and up one of itsbranches to the head of Caribou Pass, which separates Nipple Top fromColvin.
It was about the first of September; no rain had fallen for severalweeks, and this heart of the forest was as dry as tinder; a lightedmatch dropped anywhere would start a conflagration. This dryness hasits advantages: the walking is improved; the long heat has expressedall the spicy odors of the cedars and balsams, and the woods arefilled with a soothing fragrance; the waters of the streams, thoughscant and clear, are cold as ice; the common forest chill is gonefrom the air. The afternoon was bright; there was a feeling ofexultation and adventure in stepping off into the open but pathlessforest; the great stems of deciduous trees were mottled with patchesof sunlight, which brought out upon the variegated barks and mossesof the old trunks a thousand shifting hues. There is nothing like aprimeval wood for color on a sunny day. The shades of green andbrown are infinite; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in thesun, the russet of the changing moose-bush becomes brilliant; thereare silvery openings here and there; and everywhere the columns riseup to the canopy of tender green which supports the intense blue skyand holds up a part of it from falling through in fragments to thefloor of the forest. Decorators can learn here how Nature dares toput blue and green in juxtaposition: she has evidently the secret ofharmonizing all the colors.
The way, as we ascended, was not all through open woods; dense massesof firs were encountered, jagged spurs were to be crossed, and thegoing became at length so slow and toilsome that we took to the rockybed of a stream, where bowlders and flumes and cascades offered ussufficient variety. The deeper we penetrated, the greater the senseof savageness and solitude; in the silence of these hidden places oneseems to approach the beginning of things. We emerged from thedefile into an open basin, formed by the curved side of the mountain,and stood silent before a waterfall coming down out of the sky in thecentre of the curve. I do not know anything exactly like this fall,which some poetical explorer has named the Fairy-Ladder Falls. Itappears to have a height of something like a hundred and fifty feet,and the water falls obliquely across the face of the cliff from leftto right in short steps, which in the moonlight might seem like averitable ladder for fairies. Our impression of its height wasconfirmed by climbing the very steep slope at its side some three orfour hundred feet. At the top we found the stream flowing over abroad bed of rock, like a street in the wilderness, slanting up stilltowards the sky, and bordered by low firs and balsams, and bowlderscompletely covered with moss. It was above the world and open to thesky.
On account of the tindery condition of the woods we made our fire onthe natural pavement, and selected a smooth place for our bed near byon the flat rock, with a pool of limpid water at the foot. Thisgranite couch we covered with the dry and springy moss, which westripped off in heavy fleeces a foot thick from the bowlders. First,however, we fed upon the fruit that was offered us. Over these hillsof moss ran an exquisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green leaf, bearingsmall, delicate berries, oblong and white as wax, having a faintflavor of wintergreen and the slightest acid taste, the very essenceof the wilderness; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined for palatesaccustomed to coarser viands. There must exist somewhere sinlesswomen who could eat these berries without being reminded of the lostpurity and delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt notthis stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked by any knight ofthe Holy Grail who is worthy to eat it, and keeps alive, in theprodigality of nature, the tradition of the unperverted conditions oftaste before the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, witha sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been a sort of shew-breadof the wilderness, though I cannot answer for the chaplain, who is byvirtue of his office a little nearer to these mysteries of naturethan I. This plant belongs to the heath family, and is first cousinto the blueberry and cranberry. It is commonly called the creepingsnowberry, but I like better its official title of chiogenes,—thesnow-born.
Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal Chamber Camp, in theenthusiasm of the hour, after darkness fell upon the woods and thestars came out. We were two thousand five hundred feet above thecommon world. We lay, as it were, on a shelf in the sky, with abasin of illimitable forests below us and dim mountain-passes-in thefar horizon.
And as we lay there courting sleep which the blinking stars refusedto shower down, our philosopher discoursed to us of the principle offire, which he holds, with the ancients, to be an independent elementthat comes and goes in a mysterious manner, as we see flame spring upand vanish, and is in some way vital and indestructible, and has amysterious relation to the source of all things. "That flame," hesays, "you have put out, but where has it gone?" We could not say,nor whether it is anything like the spirit of a man which is here fora little hour, and then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of thecorrelation of forces found no sort of favor at that elevation, andwe went to sleep leaving the principle of fire in the apostoliccategory of "any other creature."
At daylight we were astir; and, having pressed the principle of fireinto our service to make a pot of tea, we carefully extinguished itor sent it into another place, and addressed ourselves to the climbof some thing over two thousand feet. The arduous labor of scalingan Alpine peak has a compensating glory; but the dead lift of ourbodies up Nipple Top had no stimulus of this sort. It is simply hardwork, for which the strained muscles only get the approbation of theindividual conscience that drives them to the task. The pleasure ofsuch an ascent is difficult to explain on the spot, and I suspectconsists not so much in positive enjoyment as in the delight the mindexperiences in tyrannizing over the body. I do not object to theelevation of this mountain, nor to the uncommonly steep grade bywhich it attains it, but only to the other obstacles thrown in theway of the climber. All the slopes of Nipple Top are hirsute andjagged to the last degree. Granite ledges interpose; granitebowlders seem to have been dumped over the sides with no more attemptat arrangement than in a rip-rap wall; the slashes and windfalls of acentury present here and there an almost impenetrable chevalier desarbres; and the steep sides bristle with a mass of thick balsams,with dead, protruding spikes, as unyielding as iron stakes. Themountain has had its own way forever, and is as untamed as a wolf; orrather the elements, the frightful tempests, the frosts, the heavysnows, the coaxing sun, and the avalanches have had their way with ituntil its surface is in hopeless confusion. We made our way veryslowly; and it was ten o'clock before we reached what appeared to bethe summit, a ridge deeply covered with moss, low balsams, andblueberry-bushes.
I say, appeared to be; for we stood in thick fog or in the heart ofclouds which limited our dim view to a radius of twenty feet. It wasa warm and cheerful fog, stirred by little wind, but moving,shifting, and boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up blackfrom below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead As a fog it couldnot have been improved; as a medium for viewing the landscape it wasa failure and we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in aRussian bath, to await revelations.
We waited two hours without change, except an occasional hopefullightness in the fog above, and at last the appearance for a momentof the spectral sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promisevouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. There it wasagain; and this time the fog was so thin overhead that we caughtsight of a patch of blue sky a yard square, across which the curtainwas instantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the fog boiledup from the valley caldrons thicker than ever. But the spell wasbroken. In a moment more Old Phelps was shouting, "The sun!" andbefore we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky overhead asbig as a farm. "See! quick!" The old man was dancing like alunatic. There was a rift in the vapor at our feet, down, down,three thousand feet into the forest abyss, and lo! lifting out of ityonder the tawny side of Dix,—the vision of a second, snatched awayin the rolling fog. The play had just begun. Before we could turn,there was the gorge of Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to thebottom. The opening shut as suddenly; and then, looking over theclouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms of the Au Sable Valley,and in a moment more the plateau of North Elba and the sentinelmountains about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses were asfleeting as thought, and instantly we were again isolated in the seaof mist. The expectation of these sudden strokes of sublimity keptus exultingly on the alert; and yet it was a blow of surprise whenthe curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and the long ridge ofColvin, seemingly within a stone's throw, heaved up like an islandout of the ocean, and was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longerfor Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening sides of rockgashed by avalanches. The fantastic clouds, torn and streaming,hurried up from the south in haste as if to a witch's rendezvous,hiding and disclosing the great summit in their flight. The mistboiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit where we stood,and plunged again into the depths. Objects were forming anddisappearing, shifting and dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog,and in the elemental whirl we felt that we were "assisting" in anoriginal process of creation. The sun strove, and his very strivingcalled up new vapors; the wind rent away the clouds, and brought newmasses to surge about us; and the spectacle to right and left, aboveand below, changed with incredible swiftness. Such glory of abyssand summit, of color and form and transformation, is seldom grantedto mortal eyes. For an hour we watched it until our vast mountainwas revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses and itssavagery, and the great basins of wilderness with their shininglakes, and the giant peaks of the region, were one by one disclosed,and hidden and again tranquil in the sunshine.
Where was the cave? There was ample surface in which to look for it.If we could have flitted about, like the hawks that came circlinground, over the steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices,I have no doubt we should have found it. But moving about on thismountain is not a holiday pastime; and we were chiefly anxious todiscover a practicable mode of descent into the great wildernessbasin on the south, which we must traverse that afternoon beforereaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond. It was enough for us tohave discovered the general whereabouts of the Spanish Cave, and weleft the fixing of its exact position to future explorers.
The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in the distance; butwe found it bristling with obstructions, dead balsams set thicklytogether, slashes of fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos;and when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge to the generalslope, we exchanged only for more disagreeable going. The slope fora couple of thousand feet was steep enough; but it was formed ofgranite rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not bedetermined, and at short intervals we nearly went out of sight inholes under the treacherous carpeting. Add to this that stems ofgreat trees were laid longitudinally and transversely and criss-crossover and among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good deal ofwork needs to be done to make this a practicable highway for anythingbut a squirrel….
We had had no water since our daylight breakfast: our lunch on themountain had been moistened only by the fog. Our thirst began to bethat of Tantalus, because we could hear the water running deep downamong the rocks, but we could not come at it. The imagination drankthe living stream, and we realized anew what delusive food theimagination furnishes in an actual strait. A good deal of the crimeof this world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the unlicensedplay of the imagination in adverse circumstances. This reflectionhad nothing to do with our actual situation; for we added to ourimagination patience, and to our patience long-suffering, andprobably all the Christian virtues would have been developed in us ifthe descent had been long enough. Before we reached the bottom ofCaribou Pass, the water burst out from the rocks in a clear streamthat was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roaring brookthat issues from the Pass to the south. It is a stream full ofcharacter, not navigable even for trout in the upper part, but asuccession of falls, cascades, flumes, and pools that would delightan artist. It is not an easy bed for anything except water todescend; and before we reached the level reaches, where the streamflows with a murmurous noise through open woods, one of our partybegan to show signs of exhaustion.
This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the day before,—hisimagination being in better working order than his stomach: he hadeaten little that day, and his legs became so groggy that he wasobliged to rest at short intervals. Here was a situation! Theafternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven miles of unknownwilderness to traverse, a portion of it swampy, in which a progressof more than a mile an hour is difficult, and the condition of theguide compelled even a slower march. What should we do in thatlonesome solitude if the guide became disabled? We couldn't carryhim out; could we find our own way out to get assistance? The guidehimself had never been there before; and although he knew the generaldirection of our point of egress, and was entirely adequate toextricate himself from any position in the woods, his knowledge wasof that occult sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible tocommunicate. Our object was to strike a trail that led from the AuSable Pond, the other side of the mountain-range, to an inlet on MudPond. We knew that if we traveled southwestward far enough we muststrike that trail, but how far? No one could tell. If we reachedthat trail, and found a boat at the inlet, there would be only a rowof a couple of miles to the house at the foot of the lake. If noboat was there, then we must circle the lake three or four milesfarther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in particular. Theprospect was not pleasing. We were short of supplies, for we had notexpected to pass that night in the woods. The pleasure of theexcursion began to develop itself.
We stumbled on in the general direction marked out, through a forestthat began to seem endless as hour after hour passed, compelled as wewere to make long detours over the ridges of the foothills to avoidthe swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake long tonguesinto the firm ground. The guide became more ill at every step, andneeded frequent halts and long rests. Food he could not eat; andtea, water, and even brandy he rejected. Again and again the oldphilosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and illness, wouldcollapse in a heap on the ground, an almost comical picture ofdespair, while we stood and waited the waning of the day, and peeredforward in vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook weencountered, we suggested a halt for the night, while it was stilllight enough to select a camping-place, but the plucky old manwouldn't hear of it: the trail might be only a quarter of a mileahead, and we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor as aguide seemed to be at stake; and, besides, he confessed to a notionthat his end was near, and he didn't want to die like a dog in thewoods. And yet, if this was his last journey, it seemed not aninappropriate ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up theghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the solemn silences hefelt most at home in. There is a popular theory, held by civilians,that a soldier likes to die in battle. I suppose it is as true thata woodsman would like to "pass in his chips,"—the figure seems to beinevitable, struck down by illness and exposure, in the forestsolitude, with heaven in sight and a tree-root for his pillow.
The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did not get out of thewoods that night, he would never go out; and, yielding to his doggedresolution, we kept on in search of the trail, although the gatheringof dusk over the ground warned us that we might easily cross thetrail without recognizing it. We were traveling by the light in theupper sky, and by the forms of the tree-stems, which every momentgrew dimmer. At last the end came. We had just felt our way overwhat seemed to be a little run of water, when the old man sunk down,remarking, "I might as well die here as anywhere," and was silent.
Suddenly night fell like a blanket on us. We could neither see theguide nor each other. We became at once conscious that miles ofnight on all sides shut us in. The sky was clouded over: therewasn't a gleam of light to show us where to step. Our first thoughtwas to build a fire, which would drive back the thick darkness intothe woods, and boil some water for our tea. But it was too dark touse the axe. We scraped together leaves and twigs to make a blaze,and, as this failed, such dead sticks as we could find by gropingabout. The fire was only a temporary affair, but it sufficed to boila can of water. The water we obtained by feeling about the stones ofthe little run for an opening big enough to dip our cup in. Thesupper to be prepared was fortunately simple. It consisted of adecoction of tea and other leaves which had got into the pail, and apart of a loaf of bread. A loaf of bread which has been carried in aknapsack for a couple of days, bruised and handled and hacked at witha hunting-knife, becomes an uninteresting object. But we ate of itwith thankfulness, washed it down with hot fluid, and bitterlythought of the morrow. Would our old friend survive the night?Would he be in any condition to travel in the morning? How were weto get out with him or without him?
The old man lay silent in the bushes out of sight, and desired onlyto be let alone. We tried to tempt him with the offer of a piece oftoast: it was no temptation. Tea we thought would revive him: herefused it. A drink of brandy would certainly quicken his life: hecouldn't touch it. We were at the end of our resources. He seemedto think that if he were at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon,or a piece of pie, he should be all right. We knew no more how todoctor him than if he had been a sick bear. He withdrew withinhimself, rolled himself up, so to speak, in his primitive habits, andwaited for the healing power of nature. Before our feeble firedisappeared, we smoothed a level place near it for Phelps to lie on,and got him over to it. But it didn't suit: it was too open. Infact, at the moment some drops of rain fell. Rain was quite outsideof our program for the night. But the guide had an instinct aboutit; and, while we were groping about some yards distant for a placewhere we could lie down, he crawled away into the darkness, andcurled himself up amid the roots of a gigantic pine, very much as abear would do, I suppose, with his back against the trunk, and therepassed the night comparatively dry and comfortable; but of this weknew nothing till morning, and had to trust to the assurance of avoice out of the darkness that he was all right.
Our own bed where we spread our blankets was excellent in onerespect,—there was no danger of tumbling out of it. At first therain pattered gently on the leaves overhead, and we congratulatedourselves on the snugness of our situation. There was somethingcheerful about this free life. We contrasted our condition with thatof tired invalids who were tossing on downy beds, and wooing sleep invain. Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this bivouac inthe forest. But, somehow, sleep did not come. The rain had ceasedto patter, and began to fall with a steady determination, a sort ofsoak, soak, all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket,and beat in our faces. The wind began to stir a little, and therewas a moaning on high. Not contented with dripping, the rain wasdriven into our faces. Another suspicious circumstance was noticed.Little rills of water got established along the sides under theblankets, cold, undeniable streams, that interfered with drowsiness.Pools of water settled on the bed; and the chaplain had a habit ofmoving suddenly, and letting a quart or two inside, and down my neck.It began to be evident that we and our bed were probably the wettestobjects in the woods. The rubber was an excellent catch-all. Therewas no trouble about ventilation, but we found that we hadestablished our quarters without any provision for drainage. Therewas not exactly a wild tempest abroad; but there was a degree ofliveliness in the thrashing limbs and the creaking of thetree-branches which rubbed against each other, and the pouring rainincreased in volume and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out ofthe question, with so much to distract our attention. In fine, ourmisery became so perfect that we both broke out into loud andsarcastic laughter over the absurdity of our situation. We hadsubjected ourselves to all this forlornness simply for pleasure.Whether Old Phelps was still in existence, we couldn't tell: we couldget no response from him. With daylight, if he continued ill andcould not move, our situation would be little improved. Our supplieswere gone, we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was pouring down onus. This was summer recreation. The whole thing was so excessivelyabsurd that we laughed again, louder than ever. We had plenty ofthis sort of amusement. Suddenly through the night we heard a sortof reply that started us bolt upright. This was a prolonged squawk.It was like the voice of no beast or bird with which we werefamiliar. At first it was distant; but it rapidly approached,tearing through the night and apparently through the tree-tops, likethe harsh cry of a web-footed bird with a snarl in it; in fact, as Isaid, a squawk. It came close to us, and then turned, and as rapidlyas it came fled away through the forest, and we lost the unearthlynoise far up the mountain-slope.
"What was that, Phelps?" we cried out. But no response came; and wewondered if his spirit had been rent away, or if some evil genius hadsought it, and then, baffled by his serene and philosophic spirit,had shot off into the void in rage and disappointment.
The night had no other adventure. The moon at length coming upbehind the clouds lent a spectral aspect to the forest, and deceivedus for a time into the notion that day was at hand; but the rainnever ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item of solidmisery wanting that we could conceive.
Day was slow a-coming, and didn't amount to much when it came, soheavy were the clouds; but the rain slackened. We crawled out of ourwater-cure "pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite relief heannounced himself not only alive, but in a going condition. I lookedat my watch. It had stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water outof it, and shook it; but, not being constructed on the hydraulicprinciple, it refused to go. Some hours later we encountered ahuntsman, from whom I procured some gun-grease; with this I filledthe watch, and heated it in by the fire. This is a most effectualway of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece.
The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our bed had beenmade in a slight depression: the under rubber blanket spread in thishad prevented the rain from soaking into the ground, and we had beenlying in what was in fact a well-contrived bathtub. While Old Phelpswas pulling himself together, and we were wringing some gallons ofwater out of our blankets, we questioned the old man about the"squawk," and what bird was possessed of such a voice. It was not abird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of the woods, largerthan the domestic animal, and an ugly customer, who is fond of fish,and carries a pelt that is worth two or three dollars in the market.Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap; and he is altogetherhateful in his ways, and has the most uncultivated voice that isheard in the woods. We shall remember him as one of the leastpleasant phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the storm,fearing any moment the advent to one of us of the grimmest messenger.
We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, and, before theshades had yet lifted from the saturated bushes, pursued our march.It was a relief to be again in motion, although our progress wasslow, and it was a question every rod whether the guide could go on.We had the day before us; but if we did not find a boat at the inleta day might not suffice, in the weak condition of the guide, toextricate us from our ridiculous position. There was nothing heroicin it; we had no object: it was merely, as it must appear by thistime, a pleasure excursion, and we might be lost or perish in itwithout reward and with little sympathy. We had something like ahour and a half of stumbling through the swamp when suddenly we stoodin the little trail! Slight as it was, it appeared to us a veryBroadway to Paradise if broad ways ever lead thither. Phelps hailedit and sank down in it like one reprieved from death. But the boat?Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a mile down to the inlet.The boat was there. Our shout to the guide would have roused him outof a death-slumber. He came down the trail with the agility of anaged deer: never was so glad a sound in his ear, he said, as thatshout. It was in a very jubilant mood that we emptied the boat ofwater, pushed off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-milerow through the black waters of the winding, desolate channel, andover the lake, whose dark waves were tossed a little in the morningbreeze. The trunks of dead trees stand about this lake, and all itsshores are ragged with ghastly drift-wood; but it was open tothe sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured all themountain-ranges we had a sense of escape and freedom that almostmade the melancholy scene lovely.
How lightly past hardship sits upon us! All the misery of the nightvanished, as if it had not been, in the shelter of the log cabin atMud Pond, with dry clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bearfits him in the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire,solicitude about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffering,and willingness to hear the now growing tale of our adventure. Thencame, in a day of absolute idleness, while the showers came and went,and the mountains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, thatperfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling of strengthwithout any inclination to use it, and in a delicious languor whichis too enjoyable to be surrendered to sleep.
By Charles Dudley Warner
New England is the battle-ground of the seasons. It is La Vendee.To conquer it is only to begin the fight. When it is completelysubdued, what kind of weather have you? None whatever.
What is this New England? A country? No: a camp. It is alternatelyinvaded by the hyperborean legions and by the wilting sirens of thetropics. Icicles hang always on its northern heights; its seacoastsare fringed with mosquitoes. There is for a third of the year acontest between the icy air of the pole and the warm wind of thegulf. The result of this is a compromise: the compromise is calledThaw. It is the normal condition in New England. The New-Englanderis a person who is always just about to be warm and comfortable.This is the stuff of which heroes and martyrs are made. A personthoroughly heated or frozen is good for nothing. Look at the Bongos.Examine (on the map) the Dog-Rib nation. The New-Englander, byincessant activity, hopes to get warm. Edwards made his theology.Thank God, New England is not in Paris!
Hudson's Bay, Labrador, Grinnell's Land, a whole zone of ice andwalruses, make it unpleasant for New England. This icy cover, likethe lid of a pot, is always suspended over it: when it shuts down,that is winter. This would be intolerable, were it not for the GulfStream. The Gulf Stream is a benign, liquid force, flowing fromunder the ribs of the equator,—a white knight of the South going upto battle the giant of the North. The two meet in New England, andhave it out there.
This is the theory; but, in fact, the Gulf Stream is mostly adelusion as to New England. For Ireland it is quite another thing.Potatoes ripen in Ireland before they are planted in New England.That is the reason the Irish emigrate—they desire two crops the sameyear. The Gulf Stream gets shunted off from New England by theformation of the coast below: besides, it is too shallow to be of anyservice. Icebergs float down against its surface-current, and fillall the New-England air with the chill of death till June: after thatthe fogs drift down from Newfoundland. There never was such amockery as this Gulf Stream. It is like the English influence onFrance, on Europe. Pitt was an iceberg.
Still New England survives. To what purpose? I say, as an example:the politician says, to produce "Poor Boys." Bah! The poor boy isan anachronism in civilization. He is no longer poor, and he is nota boy. In Tartary they would hang him for sucking all the asses'milk that belongs to the children: in New England he has all thecream from the Public Cow. What can you expect in a country whereone knows not today what the weather will be tomorrow? Climate makesthe man. Suppose he, too, dwells on the Channel Islands, where hehas all climates, and is superior to all. Perhaps he will become theprophet, the seer, of his age, as he is its Poet. The New-Englanderis the man without a climate. Why is his country recognized? Youwon't find it on any map of Paris.
And yet Paris is the universe. Strange anomaly! The greater mustinclude the less; but how if the less leaks out? This sometimeshappens.
And yet there are phenomena in that country worth observing. One ofthem is the conduct of Nature from the 1st of March to the 1st ofJune, or, as some say, from the vernal equinox to the summersolstice. As Tourmalain remarked, "You'd better observe theunpleasant than to be blind." This was in 802. Tourmalain is dead;so is Gross Alain; so is little Pee-Wee: we shall all be dead beforethings get any better.
That is the law. Without revolution there is nothing. What isrevolution? It is turning society over, and putting the bestunderground for a fertilizer. Thus only will things grow. What hasthis to do with New England? In the language of that flash of sociallightning, Beranger, "May the Devil fly away with me if I can see!"
Let us speak of the period in the year in New England when winterappears to hesitate. Except in the calendar, the action is ironical;but it is still deceptive. The sun mounts high: it is above thehorizon twelve hours at a time. The snow gradually sneaks away inliquid repentance. One morning it is gone, except in shaded spotsand close by the fences. From about the trunks of the trees it haslong departed: the tree is a living thing, and its growth repels it.The fence is dead, driven into the earth in a rigid line by man: thefence, in short, is dogma: icy prejudice lingers near it.The snow has disappeared; but the landscape is a ghastly sight,—bleached, dead. The trees are stakes; the grass is of no color; andthe bare soil is not brown with a healthful brown; life has gone outof it. Take up a piece of turf: it is a clod, without warmth,inanimate. Pull it in pieces: there is no hope in it: it is a partof the past; it is the refuse of last year. This is the condition towhich winter has reduced the landscape. When the snow, which was apall, is removed, you see how ghastly it is. The face of the countryis sodden. It needs now only the south wind to sweep over it, fullof the damp breath of death; and that begins to blow. No prospectwould be more dreary.
And yet the south wind fills credulous man with joy. He opens thewindow. He goes out, and catches cold. He is stirred by themysterious coming of something. If there is sign of change nowhereelse, we detect it in the newspaper. In sheltered corners of thattruculent instrument for the diffusion of the prejudices of the fewamong the many begin to grow the violets of tender sentiment, theearly greens of yearning. The poet feels the sap of the new yearbefore the marsh-willow. He blossoms in advance of the catkins. Manis greater than Nature. The poet is greater than man: he is natureon two legs,—ambulatory.
At first there is no appearance of conflict. The winter garrisonseems to have withdrawn. The invading hosts of the South areentering without opposition. The hard ground softens; the sun lieswarm upon the southern bank, and water oozes from its base. If youexamine the buds of the lilac and the flowering shrubs, you cannotsay that they are swelling; but the varnish with which they werecoated in the fall to keep out the frost seems to be cracking. Ifthe sugar-maple is hacked, it will bleed,—the pure white blood ofNature.
At the close of a sunny day the western sky has a softened aspect:its color, we say, has warmth in it On such a day you may meet acaterpillar on the footpath, and turn out for him. The house-fly thawsout; a company of cheerful wasps take possession of a chamber-window.It is oppressive indoors at night, and the window is raised. A flock ofmillers, born out of time, flutter in. It is most unusual weather forthe season: it is so every year. The delusion is complete, when, on amild evening, the tree-toads open their brittle-brattle chorus on theedge of the pond. The citizen asks his neighbor, "Did you hear thefrogs last night?" That seems to open the new world. One thinks of hischildhood and its innocence, and of his first loves. It fills one withsentiment and a tender longing, this voice of the tree-toad. Man is astrange being. Deaf to the prayers of friends, to the sermons andwarnings of the church, to the calls of duty, to the pleadings of hisbetter nature, he is touched by the tree-toad. The signs of the springmultiply. The passer in the street in the evening sees the maid-servantleaning on the area-gate in sweet converse with some one leaning on theother side; or in the park, which is still too damp for anything buttrue affection, he sees her seated by the side of one who is able toprotect her from the policeman, and hears her sigh, "How sweet it is tobe with those we love to be with!"
All this is very well; but next morning the newspaper nips theseearly buds of sentiment. The telegraph announces, "Twenty feet ofsnow at Ogden, on the Pacific Road; winds blowing a gale at Omaha,and snow still falling; mercury frozen at Duluth; storm-signals atPort Huron."
Where now are your tree-toads, your young love, your early season?Before noon it rains, by three o'clock it hails; before night thebleak storm-cloud of the northwest envelops the sky; a gale israging, whirling about a tempest of snow. By morning the snow isdrifted in banks, and two feet deep on a level. Early in theseventeenth century, Drebbel of Holland invented the weather-glass.Before that, men had suffered without knowing the degree of theirsuffering. A century later, Romer hit upon the idea of using mercuryin a thermometer; and Fahrenheit constructed the instrument whichadds a new because distinct terror to the weather. Science names andregisters the ills of life; and yet it is a gain to know the namesand habits of our enemies. It is with some satisfaction in ourknowledge that we say the thermometer marks zero.
In fact, the wild beast called Winter, untamed, has returned, andtaken possession of New England. Nature, giving up her melting mood,has retired into dumbness and white stagnation. But we are wise. Wesay it is better to have it now than later. We have a conceit ofunderstanding things.
The sun is in alliance with the earth. Between the two the snow isuncomfortable. Compelled to go, it decides to go suddenly. Thefirst day there is slush with rain; the second day, mud with hail;the third day a flood with sunshine. The thermometer declares thatthe temperature is delightful. Man shivers and sneezes. Hisneighbor dies of some disease newly named by science; but he dies allthe same as if it hadn't been newly named. Science has notdiscovered any name that is not fatal.
This is called the breaking-up of winter.
Nature seems for some days to be in doubt, not exactly able to standstill, not daring to put forth anything tender. Man says that theworst is over. If he should live a thousand years, he would bedeceived every year. And this is called an age of skepticism. Mannever believed in so many things as now: he never believed so much inhimself. As to Nature, he knows her secrets: he can predict what shewill do. He communicates with the next world by means of an alphabetwhich he has invented. He talks with souls at the other end of thespirit-wire. To be sure, neither of them says anything; but theytalk. Is not that something? He suspends the law of gravitation asto his own body—he has learned how to evade it—as tyrants suspendthe legal writs of habeas corpus. When Gravitation asks for hisbody, she cannot have it. He says of himself, "I am infallible; I amsublime." He believes all these things. He is master of theelements. Shakespeare sends him a poem just made, and as good a poemas the man could write himself. And yet this man—he goes out ofdoors without his overcoat, catches cold, and is buried in threedays. "On the 21st of January," exclaimed Mercier, "all kings feltfor the backs of their necks." This might be said of all men in NewEngland in the spring. This is the season that all the poetscelebrate. Let us suppose that once, in Thessaly, there was a genialspring, and there was a poet who sang of it. All later poets havesung the same song. "Voila tout!" That is the root of poetry.
Another delusion. We hear toward evening, high in air, the "conk" ofthe wild-geese. Looking up, you see the black specks of thatadventurous triangle, winging along in rapid flight northward.Perhaps it takes a wide returning sweep, in doubt; but it disappearsin the north. There is no mistaking that sign. This unmusical"conk" is sweeter than the "kerchunk" of the bull-frog. Probablythese birds are not idiots, and probably they turned back south againafter spying out the nakedness of the land; but they have made theirsign. Next day there is a rumor that somebody has seen a bluebird.This rumor, unhappily for the bird (which will freeze to death), isconfirmed. In less than three days everybody has seen a bluebird;and favored people have heard a robin or rather the yellow-breastedthrush, misnamed a robin in America. This is no doubt true: forangle-worms have been seen on the surface of the ground; and,wherever there is anything to eat, the robin is promptly on hand.About this time you notice, in protected, sunny spots, that the grasshas a little color. But you say that it is the grass of last fall.It is very difficult to tell when the grass of last fall became thegrass of this spring. It looks "warmed over." The green is rusty.The lilac-buds have certainly swollen a little, and so have those ofthe soft maple. In the rain the grass does not brighten as you thinkit ought to, and it is only when the rain turns to snow that you seeany decided green color by contrast with the white. The snowgradually covers everything very quietly, however. Winter comes backwithout the least noise or bustle, tireless, malicious, implacable.Neither party in the fight now makes much fuss over it; and you mightthink that Nature had surrendered altogether, if you did not findabout this time, in the Woods, on the edge of a snow-bank, the modestblossoms of the trailing arbutus, shedding their delicious perfume.The bravest are always the tenderest, says the poet. The season, inits blind way, is trying to express itself.
And it is assisted. There is a cheerful chatter in the trees. Theblackbirds have come, and in numbers, households of them, villagesof them,—communes, rather. They do not believe in God, theseblack-birds. They think they can take care of themselves. We shall see.But they are well informed. They arrived just as the last snow-bankmelted. One cannot say now that there is not greenness in the grass;not in the wide fields, to be sure, but on lawns and banks slopingsouth. The dark-spotted leaves of the dog-tooth violet begin toshow. Even Fahrenheit's contrivance joins in the upward movement:the mercury has suddenly gone up from thirty degrees to sixty-fivedegrees. It is time for the ice-man. Ice has no sooner disappearedthan we desire it.
There is a smile, if one may say so, in the blue sky, and there is.softness in the south wind. The song-sparrow is singing in theapple-tree. Another bird-note is heard,—two long, musical whistles,liquid but metallic. A brown bird this one, darker than thesong-sparrow, and without the latter's light stripes, and smaller,yet bigger than the queer little chipping-bird. He wants a familiarname, this sweet singer, who appears to be a sort of sparrow. He issuch a contrast to the blue-jays, who have arrived in a passion, asusual, screaming and scolding, the elegant, spoiled beauties! Theywrangle from morning till night, these beautiful, high-temperedaristocrats.
Encouraged by the birds, by the bursting of the lilac-buds, by thepeeping-up of the crocuses, by tradition, by the sweet flutterings ofa double hope, another sign appears. This is the Easter bonnets,most delightful flowers of the year, emblems of innocence, hope,devotion. Alas that they have to be worn under umbrellas, so muchthought, freshness, feeling, tenderness have gone into them! And anortheast storm of rain, accompanied with hail, comes to crown allthese virtues with that of self-sacrifice. The frail hat is offeredup to the implacable season. In fact, Nature is not to beforestalled nor hurried in this way. Things cannot be pushed.Nature hesitates. The woman who does not hesitate in April is lost.The appearance of the bonnets is premature. The blackbirds see it.They assemble. For two days they hold a noisy convention, with highdebate, in the tree-tops. Something is going to happen.
Say, rather, the usual thing is about to occur. There is a windcalled Auster, another called Eurus, another called Septentrio,another Meridies, besides Aquilo, Vulturnus, Africus. There are theeight great winds of the classical dictionary,—arsenal of mysteryand terror and of the unknown,—besides the wind Euroaquilo of St.Luke. This is the wind that drives an apostle wishing to gain Creteupon the African Syrtis. If St. Luke had been tacking to get toHyannis, this wind would have forced him into Holmes's Hole. TheEuroaquilo is no respecter of persons.
These winds, and others unnamed and more terrible, circle about NewEngland. They form a ring about it: they lie in wait on its borders,but only to spring upon it and harry it. They follow each other incontracting circles, in whirlwinds, in maelstroms of the atmosphere:they meet and cross each other, all at a moment. This New England isset apart: it is the exercise-ground of the weather. Storms bredelsewhere come here full-grown: they come in couples, in quartets, inchoruses. If New England were not mostly rock, these winds wouldcarry it off; but they would bring it all back again, as happens withthe sandy portions. What sharp Eurus carries to Jersey, Africusbrings back. When the air is not full of snow, it is full of dust.This is called one of the compensations of Nature.
This is what happened after the convention of the blackbirds: Amoaning south wind brought rain; a southwest wind turned the rain tosnow; what is called a zephyr, out of the west, drifted the snow; anorth wind sent the mercury far below freezing. Salt added to snowincreases the evaporation and the cold. This was the office of thenortheast wind: it made the snow damp, and increased its bulk; butthen it rained a little, and froze, thawing at the same time. Theair was full of fog and snow and rain. And then the wind changed,went back round the circle, reversing everything, like dragging a catby its tail. The mercury approached zero. This was nothinguncommon. We know all these winds. We are familiar with thedifferent "forms of water."
All this was only the prologue, the overture. If one might bepermitted to speak scientifically, it was only the tuning of theinstruments. The opera was to come,—the Flying Dutchman of the air.
There is a wind called Euroclydon: it would be one of the Eumenides;only they are women. It is half-brother to the gigantic storm-windof the equinox. The Euroclydon is not a wind: it is a monster. Itsbreath is frost. It has snow in its hair. It is something terrible.It peddles rheumatism, and plants consumption.
The Euroclydon knew just the moment to strike into the discord of theweather in New England. From its lair about Point Desolation, fromthe glaciers of the Greenland continent, sweeping round the coast,leaving wrecks in its track, it marched right athwart the otherconflicting winds, churning them into a fury, and inaugurating chaos.It was the Marat of the elements. It was the revolution marchinginto the "dreaded wood of La Sandraie."
Let us sum it all up in one word: it was something for which there isno name.
Its track was destruction. On the sea it leaves wrecks. What doesit leave on land? Funerals. When it subsides, New England isprostrate. It has left its legacy: this legacy is coughs and patentmedicines. This is an epic; this is destiny. You think Providenceis expelled out of New England? Listen!
Two days after Euroclydon, I found in the woods the hepatica—earliest of wildwood flowers, evidently not intimidated by the wildwork of the armies trampling over New England—daring to hold up itstender blossom. One could not but admire the quiet pertinacity ofNature. She had been painting the grass under the snow. In spots itwas vivid green. There was a mild rain,—mild, but chilly. Theclouds gathered, and broke away in light, fleecy masses. There was asoftness on the hills. The birds suddenly were on every tree,glancing through the air, filling it with song, sometimes shakingraindrops from their wings. The cat brings in one in his mouth. Hethinks the season has begun, and the game-laws are off. He is fondof Nature, this cat, as we all are: he wants to possess it. At fouro'clock in the morning there is a grand dress-rehearsal of the birds.Not all the pieces of the orchestra have arrived; but there areenough. The grass-sparrow has come. This is certainly charming.The gardener comes to talk about seeds: he uncovers the straw-berriesand the grape-vines, salts the asparagus-bed, and plants the peas.You ask if he planted them with a shot-gun. In the shade there isstill frost in the ground. Nature, in fact, still hesitates; putsforth one hepatica at a time, and waits to see the result; pushes upthe grass slowly, perhaps draws it in at night.
This indecision we call Spring.
It becomes painful. It is like being on the rack for ninety days,expecting every day a reprieve. Men grow hardened to it, however.
This is the order with man,—hope, surprise, bewilderment, disgust,facetiousness. The people in New England finally become facetiousabout spring. This is the last stage: it is the most dangerous.When a man has come to make a jest of misfortune, he is lost. "Itbores me to die," said the journalist Carra to the headsman at thefoot of the guillotine: "I would like to have seen the continuation."One is also interested to see how spring is going to turn out.
A day of sun, of delusive bird-singing, sight of the mellow earth,—all these begin to beget confidence. The night, even, has been warm.But what is this in the morning journal, at breakfast?—"An area oflow pressure is moving from the Tortugas north." You shudder.
What is this Low Pressure itself,—it? It is something frightful,low, crouching, creeping, advancing; it is a foreboding; it ismisfortune by telegraph; it is the "'93" of the atmosphere.
This low pressure is a creation of Old Prob. What is that? OldProb. is the new deity of the Americans, greater than AEolus, moredespotic than Sans-Culotte. The wind is his servitor, the lightninghis messenger. He is a mystery made of six parts electricity, andone part "guess." This deity is worshiped by the Americans; his nameis on every man's lips first in the morning; he is the Frankensteinof modern science. Housed at Washington, his business is to directthe storms of the whole country upon New England, and to give noticein advance. This he does. Sometimes he sends the storm, and thengives notice. This is mere playfulness on his part: it is all one tohim. His great power is in the low pressure.
On the Bexar plains of Texas, among the hills of the Presidio, alongthe Rio Grande, low pressure is bred; it is nursed also in theAtchafalaya swamps of Louisiana; it moves by the way of Thibodeauxand Bonnet Carre. The southwest is a magazine of atmosphericdisasters. Low pressure may be no worse than the others: it isbetter known, and is most used to inspire terror. It can be summonedany time also from the everglades of Florida, from the morasses ofthe Okeechobee.
When the New-Englander sees this in his news paper, he knows what itmeans. He has twenty-four hours' warning; but what can he do?Nothing but watch its certain advance by telegraph. He suffers inanticipation. That is what Old Prob. has brought about, suffering byanticipation. This low pressure advances against the wind. The windis from the northeast. Nothing could be more unpleasant than anortheast wind? Wait till low pressure joins it. Together they makespring in New England. A northeast storm from the southwest!—thereis no bitterer satire than this. It lasts three days. After thatthe weather changes into something winter-like.
A solitary song-sparrow, without a note of joy, hops along the snowto the dining-room window, and, turning his little head aside, looksup. He is hungry and cold. Little Minnette, clasping her handsbehind her back, stands and looks at him, and says, "Po' birdie!"They appear to understand each other. The sparrow gets his crumb;but he knows too much to let Minnette get hold of him. Neither ofthese little things could take care of itself in a New-England springnot in the depths of it. This is what the father of Minnette,looking out of the window upon the wide waste of snow, and theevergreens bent to the ground with the weight of it, says, "It lookslike the depths of spring." To this has man come: to hisfacetiousness has succeeded sarcasm. It is the first of May.
Then follows a day of bright sun and blue sky. The birds open themorning with a lively chorus. In spite of Auster, Euroclydon, lowpressure, and the government bureau, things have gone forward. Bythe roadside, where the snow has just melted, the grass is of thecolor of emerald. The heart leaps to see it. On the lawn there aretwenty robins, lively, noisy, worm-seeking. Their yellow breastscontrast with the tender green of the newly-springing clover andherd's-grass. If they would only stand still, we might think thedandelions had blossomed. On an evergreen-bough, looking at them,sits a graceful bird, whose back is bluer than the sky. There is ared tint on the tips of the boughs of the hard maple. With Nature,color is life. See, already, green, yellow, blue, red! In a fewdays—is it not so?—through the green masses of the trees will flashthe orange of the oriole, the scarlet of the tanager; perhapstomorrow.
But, in fact, the next day opens a little sourly. It is almost clearoverhead: but the clouds thicken on the horizon; they look leaden;they threaten rain. It certainly will rain: the air feels like rain,or snow. By noon it begins to snow, and you hear the desolate cry ofthe phoebe-bird. It is a fine snow, gentle at first; but it soondrives in swerving lines, for the wind is from the southwest, fromthe west, from the northeast, from the zenith (one of the ordinarywinds of New England), from all points of the compass. The fine snowbecomes rain; it becomes large snow; it melts as it falls; it freezesas it falls. At last a storm sets in, and night shuts down upon thebleak scene.
During the night there is a change. It thunders and lightens.Toward morning there is a brilliant display of aurora borealis. Thisis a sign of colder weather.
The gardener is in despair; so is the sportsman. The trout take nopleasure in biting in such weather.
Paragraphs appear in the newspapers, copied from the paper of lastyear, saying that this is the most severe spring in thirty years.Every one, in fact, believes that it is, and also that next year thespring will be early. Man is the most gullible of creatures.
And with reason: he trusts his eyes, and not his instinct. Duringthis most sour weather of the year, the anemone blossoms; and, almostimmediately after, the fairy pencil, the spring beauty, the dog-toothviolet, and the true violet. In clouds and fog, and rain and snow,and all discouragement, Nature pushes on her forces with progressivehaste and rapidity. Before one is aware, all the lawns and meadowsare deeply green, the trees are opening their tender leaves. In aburst of sunshine the cherry-trees are white, the Judas-tree is pink,the hawthorns give a sweet smell. The air is full of sweetness; theworld, of color.
In the midst of a chilling northeast storm the ground is strewed withthe white-and-pink blossoms from the apple-trees. The next day themercury stands at eighty degrees. Summer has come.
There was no Spring.
The winter is over. You think so? Robespierre thought theRevolution was over in the beginning of his last Thermidor. He losthis head after that.
When the first buds are set, and the corn is up, and the cucumbershave four leaves, a malicious frost steals down from the north andkills them in a night.
That is the last effort of spring. The mercury then mounts to ninetydegrees. The season has been long, but, on the whole, successful.Many people survive it.
By Charles Dudley Warner
PREFACE
When I consented to prepare this volume for a series, which shoulddeal with the notables of American history with some familiarity anddisregard of historic gravity, I did not anticipate the seriousnessof the task. But investigation of the subject showed me that whileCaptain John Smith would lend himself easily enough to the purelyfacetious treatment, there were historic problems worthy of adifferent handling, and that if the life of Smith was to be written,an effort should be made to state the truth, and to disentangle thecareer of the adventurer from the fables and misrepresentations thathave clustered about it.
The extant biographies of Smith, and the portions of the history ofVirginia that relate to him, all follow his own narrative, and accepthis estimate of himself, and are little more than paraphrases of hisstory as told by himself. But within the last twenty years some newcontemporary evidence has come to light, and special scholars haveexpended much critical research upon different portions of hiscareer. The result of this modern investigation has been todiscredit much of the romance gathered about Smith and Pocahontas,and a good deal to reduce his heroic proportions. A vague report of—these scholarly studies has gone abroad, but no effort has been madeto tell the real story of Smith as a connected whole in the light ofthe new researches.
This volume is an effort to put in popular form the truth aboutSmith's adventures, and to estimate his exploits and character. Forthis purpose I have depended almost entirely upon originalcontemporary material, illumined as it now is by the labors ofspecial editors. I believe that I have read everything that isattributed to his pen, and have compared his own accounts with othercontemporary narratives, and I think I have omitted the perusal oflittle that could throw any light upon his life or character. Forthe early part of his career—before he came to Virginia—there isabsolutely no authority except Smith himself; but when he emergesfrom romance into history, he can be followed and checked bycontemporary evidence. If he was always and uniformly untrustworthyit would be less perplexing to follow him, but his liability to tellthe truth when vanity or prejudice does not interfere is annoying tothe careful student.
As far as possible I have endeavored to let the actors in these pagestell their own story, and I have quoted freely from Capt. Smithhimself, because it is as a writer that he is to be judged no lessthan as an actor. His development of the Pocahontas legend has beencarefully traced, and all the known facts about that Indian—orIndese, as some of the old chroniclers call the female NorthAmericans—have been consecutively set forth in separate chapters.The book is not a history of early Virginia, nor of the times ofSmith, but merely a study of his life and writings. If my estimateof the character of Smith is not that which his biographers haveentertained, and differs from his own candid opinion, I can onlyplead that contemporary evidence and a collation of his own storiesshow that he was mistaken. I am not aware that there has been beforeany systematic effort to collate his different accounts of hisexploits. If he had ever undertaken the task, he might havedisturbed that serene opinion of himself which marks him as a man whorealized his own ideals.
The works used in this study are, first, the writings of Smith, whichare as follows:
"A True Relation," etc., London, 1608.
"A Map of Virginia, Description and Appendix," Oxford, 1612.
"A Description of New England," etc., London, 1616.
"New England's Trials," etc., London, 1620. Second edition,enlarged, 1622.
"The Generall Historie," etc., London, 1624. Reissued, with date oftitle-page altered, in 1626, 1627, and twice in 1632.
"An Accidence: or, The Pathway to Experience," etc., London, 1626.
"A Sea Grammar," etc., London, 1627. Also editions in 1653 and 1699.
"The True Travels," etc., London, 1630.
"Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New England," etc.,
London, 1631.
Other authorities are:
"The Historie of Travaile into Virginia," etc., by William Strachey,
Secretary of the colony 1609 to 1612. First printed for the Hakluyt
Society, London, 1849.
"Newport's Relatyon," 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.
"Wingfield's Discourse," etc., 1607. Am. Ant. Soc., Vol. 4.
"Purchas his Pilgrimage," London, 1613.
"Purchas his Pilgrimes," London, 1625-6.
"Ralph Hamor's True Discourse," etc., London, 1615.
"Relation of Virginia," by Henry Spelman, 1609. First printed by J.
F. Hunnewell, London, 1872.
"History of the Virginia Company in London," by Edward D. Neill,
Albany, 1869.
"William Stith's History of Virginia," 1753, has been consulted forthe charters and letters-patent. The Pocahontas discussion has beenfollowed in many magazine papers. I am greatly indebted to thescholarly labors of Charles Deane, LL.D., the accomplished editor ofthe "True Relation," and other Virginia monographs. I wish also toacknowledge the courtesy of the librarians of the Astor, the Lenox,the New York Historical, Yale, and Cornell libraries, and of Dr. J.Hammond Trumbull, the custodian of the Brinley collection, and thekindness of Mr. S. L. M. Barlow of New York, who is ever ready togive students access to his rich "Americana."
C. D. W.
HARTFORD, June, 1881
BIRTH AND TRAINING
Fortunate is the hero who links his name romantically with that of awoman. A tender interest in his fame is assured. Still morefortunate is he if he is able to record his own achievements and giveto them that form and color and importance which they assume in hisown gallant consciousness. Captain John Smith, the first of anhonored name, had this double good fortune.
We are indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant ofthe sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler acrossthe field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and headscracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one ofhis laureates—
"To see bright honor sparkled all in gore."
But we are specially his debtor for adventures on our own continent,narrated with naivete and vigor by a pen as direct and clear-cuttingas the sword with which he shaved off the heads of the Turks, and forone of the few romances that illumine our early history.
Captain John Smith understood his good fortune in being the recorderof his own deeds, and he preceded Lord Beaconsfield (in "Endymion")in his appreciation of the value of the influence of women upon thecareer of a hero. In the dedication of his "General Historie" toFrances, Duchess of Richmond, he says:
"I have deeply hazarded myself in doing and suffering, and why shouldI sticke to hazard my reputation in recording? He that acteth twoparts is the more borne withall if he come short, or fayle in one ofthem. Where shall we looke to finde a Julius Caesar whoseatchievments shine as cleare in his owne Commentaries, as they did inthe field? I confesse, my hand though able to wield a weapon amongthe Barbarous, yet well may tremble in handling a Pen among so manyjudicious; especially when I am so bold as to call so piercing and soglorious an Eye, as your Grace, to view these poore ragged lines.Yet my comfort is that heretofore honorable and vertuous Ladies, andcomparable but amongst themselves, have offered me rescue andprotection in my greatest dangers: even in forraine parts, I havefelt reliefe from that sex. The beauteous Lady Tragabigzanda, when Iwas a slave to the Turks, did all she could to secure me. When Iovercame the Bashaw of Nalbrits in Tartaria, the charitable LadyCallamata supplyed my necessities. In the utmost of my extremities,that blessed Pokahontas, the great King's daughter of Virginia, oftsaved my life. When I escaped the cruelties of Pirats and mostfurious stormes, a long time alone in a small Boat at Sea, and drivenashore in France, the good Lady Chanoyes bountifully assisted me."
It is stated in his "True Travels" that John Smith was born inWilloughby, in Lincolnshire. The year of his birth is not given, butit was probably in 1579, as it appears by the portrait prefixed tothat work that he was aged 37 years in 1616. We are able to add alsothat the rector of the Willoughby Rectory, Alford, finds in theregister an entry of the baptism of John, son of George Smith, underdate of Jan. 9, 1579. His biographers, following his account,represent him as of ancient lineage: "His father actually descendedfrom the ancient Smiths of Crudley in Lancashire, his mother from theRickands at great Heck in Yorkshire;" but the circumstances of hisboyhood would indicate that like many other men who have madethemselves a name, his origin was humble. If it had been otherwisehe would scarcely have been bound as an apprentice, nor had so muchdifficulty in his advancement. But the boy was born with a merrydisposition, and in his earliest years was impatient for adventure.The desire to rove was doubtless increased by the nature of hisnative shire, which offered every inducement to the lad of spirit toleave it.
Lincolnshire is the most uninteresting part of all England. It isfrequently water-logged till late in the summer: invisible a part ofthe year, when it emerges it is mostly a dreary flat. Willoughby isa considerable village in this shire, situated about three miles anda half southeastward from Alford. It stands just on the edge of thechalk hills whose drives gently slope down to the German Ocean, andthe scenery around offers an unvarying expanse of flats. All thevillages in this part of Lincolnshire exhibit the same character.The name ends in by, the Danish word for hamlet or small village, andwe can measure the progress of the Danish invasion of England by thenumber of towns which have the terminal by, distinguished from theSaxon thorpe, which generally ends the name of villages in Yorkshire.The population may be said to be Danish light-haired and blue-eyed.Such was John Smith. The sea was the natural element of hisneighbors, and John when a boy must have heard many stories of thesea and enticing adventures told by the sturdy mariners who wererecruited from the neighborhood of Willoughby, and whose oars hadoften cloven the Baltic Sea.
Willoughby boasts some antiquity. Its church is a spaciousstructure, with a nave, north and south aisles, and a chancel, and atower at the west end. In the floor is a stone with a Latininscription, in black letter, round the verge, to the memory of oneGilbert West, who died in 1404. The church is dedicated to St.Helen. In the village the Wesleyan Methodists also have a place ofworship. According to the parliamentary returns of 1825, the parishincluding the hamlet of Sloothby contained 108 houses and 514inhabitants. All the churches in Lincolnshire indicate the existenceof a much larger population who were in the habit of attendingservice than exists at present. Many of these now empty are of sizesufficient to accommodate the entire population of several villages.Such a one is Willoughby, which unites in its church the adjacentvillage of Sloothby.
The stories of the sailors and the contiguity of the salt water hadmore influence on the boy's mind than the free, schools of Alford andLouth which he attended, and when he was about thirteen he sold hisbooks and satchel and intended to run away to sea: but the death ofhis father stayed him. Both his parents being now dead, he was leftwith, he says, competent means; but his guardians regarding hisestate more than himself, gave him full liberty and no money, so thathe was forced to stay at home.
At the age of fifteen he was bound apprentice to Mr. Thomas S.Tendall of Lynn. The articles, however, did not bind him very fast,for as his master refused to send him to sea, John took leave of hismaster and did not see him again for eight years. These detailsexhibit in the boy the headstrong independence of the man.
At length he found means to attach himself to a young son of thegreat soldier, Lord Willoughby, who was going into France. Thenarrative is not clear, but it appears that upon reaching Orleans, ina month or so the services of John were found to be of no value, andhe was sent back to his friends, who on his return generously gavehim ten shillings (out of his own estate) to be rid of him. He isnext heard of enjoying his liberty at Paris and making theacquaintance of a Scotchman named David Hume, who used his purse—tenshillings went a long ways in those days—and in return gave himletters of commendation to prefer him to King James. But the boy hada disinclination to go where he was sent. Reaching Rouen, and beingnearly out of money, he dropped down the river to Havre de Grace, andbegan to learn to be a soldier.
Smith says not a word of the great war of the Leaguers and Henry IV.,nor on which side he fought, nor is it probable that he cared. Buthe was doubtless on the side of Henry, as Havre was at this time inpossession of that soldier. Our adventurer not only makes noreference to the great religious war, nor to the League, nor toHenry, but he does not tell who held Paris when he visited it.Apparently state affairs did not interest him. His reference to a"peace" helps us to fix the date of his first adventure in France.Henry published the Edict of Nantes at Paris, April 13, 1598, and onthe 2d of May following, concluded the treaty of France with PhilipII. at Vervins, which closed the Spanish pretensions in France. TheDuc de Mercoeur (of whom we shall hear later as Smith's "Duke ofMercury" in Hungary), Duke of Lorraine, was allied with the Guises inthe League, and had the design of holding Bretagne under Spanishprotection. However, fortune was against him and he submitted toHenry in February, 1598, with no good grace. Looking about for anopportunity to distinguish himself, he offered his services to theEmperor Rudolph to fight the Turks, and it is said led an army of hisFrench followers, numbering 15,000, in 1601, to Hungary, to raise thesiege of Coniza, which was beleaguered by Ibrahim Pasha with 60,000men.
Chance of fighting and pay failing in France by reason of the peace,he enrolled himself under the banner of one of the roving andfighting captains of the time, who sold their swords in the bestmarket, and went over into the Low Countries, where he hacked andhewed away at his fellow-men, all in the way of business, for threeor four years. At the end of that time he bethought himself that hehad not delivered his letters to Scotland. He embarked at Aucusanfor Leith, and seems to have been shipwrecked, and detained byillness in the "holy isle" in Northumberland, near Barwick. On hisrecovery he delivered his letters, and received kind treatment fromthe Scots; but as he had no money, which was needed to make his wayas a courtier, he returned to Willoughby.
The family of Smith is so "ancient" that the historians of the countyof Lincoln do not allude to it, and only devote a brief paragraph tothe great John himself. Willoughby must have been a dull place tohim after his adventures, but he says he was glutted with company,and retired into a woody pasture, surrounded by forests, a good waysfrom any town, and there built himself a pavilion of boughs—lesssubstantial than the cabin of Thoreau at Walden Pond—and there heheroically slept in his clothes, studied Machiavelli's "Art of War,"read "Marcus Aurelius," and exercised on his horse with lance andring. This solitary conduct got him the name of a hermit, whose foodwas thought to be more of venison than anything else, but in fact hismen kept him supplied with provisions. When John had indulged inthis ostentatious seclusion for a time, he allowed himself to bedrawn out of it by the charming discourse of a noble Italian namedTheodore Palaloga, who just then was Rider to Henry, Earl of Lincoln,and went to stay with him at Tattershall. This was an ancient town,with a castle, which belonged to the Earls of Lincoln, and wassituated on the River Bane, only fourteen miles from Boston, a namethat at once establishes a connection between Smith's native countyand our own country, for it is nearly as certain that St. Botolphfounded a monastery at Boston, Lincoln, in the year 654, as it isthat he founded a club afterwards in Boston, Massachusetts.
Whatever were the pleasures of Tattershall, they could not longcontent the restless Smith, who soon set out again for theNetherlands in search of adventures.
The life of Smith, as it is related by himself, reads like that of abelligerent tramp, but it was not uncommon in his day, nor is it inours, whenever America produces soldiers of fortune who are ready,for a compensation, to take up the quarrels of Egyptians or Chinese,or go wherever there is fighting and booty. Smith could now handlearms and ride a horse, and longed to go against the Turks, whoseanti-Christian contests filled his soul with lamentations; andbesides he was tired of seeing Christians slaughter each other. Likemost heroes, he had a vivid imagination that made him credulous, andin the Netherlands he fell into the toils of three French gallants,one of whom pretended to be a great lord, attended by his gentlemen,who persuaded him to accompany them to the "Duchess of Mercury,"whose lord was then a general of Rodolphus of Hungary, whose favorthey could command. Embarking with these arrant cheats, the vesselreached the coast of Picardy, where his comrades contrived to takeashore their own baggage and Smith's trunk, containing his money andgoodly apparel, leaving him on board. When the captain, who was inthe plot, was enabled to land Smith the next day, the noble lords haddisappeared with the luggage, and Smith, who had only a single pieceof gold in his pocket, was obliged to sell his cloak to pay hispassage.
Thus stripped, he roamed about Normandy in a forlorn condition,occasionally entertained by honorable persons who had heard of hismisfortunes, and seeking always means of continuing his travels,wandering from port to port on the chance of embarking on aman-of-war. Once he was found in a forest near dead with grief andcold, and rescued by a rich farmer; shortly afterwards, in a grove inBrittany, he chanced upon one of the gallants who had robbed him, andthe two out swords and fell to cutting. Smith had the satisfaction ofwounding the rascal, and the inhabitants of a ruined tower near by,who witnessed the combat, were quite satisfied with the event.
Our hero then sought out the Earl of Ployer, who had been brought upin England during the French wars, by whom he was refurnished betterthan ever. After this streak of luck, he roamed about France,viewing the castles and strongholds, and at length embarked atMarseilles on a ship for Italy. Rough weather coming on, the vesselanchored under the lee of the little isle St. Mary, off Nice, inSavoy.
The passengers on board, among whom were many pilgrims bound forRome, regarded Smith as a Jonah, cursed him for a Huguenot, sworethat his nation were all pirates, railed against Queen Elizabeth, anddeclared that they never should have fair weather so long as he wason board. To end the dispute, they threw him into the sea. But Godgot him ashore on the little island, whose only inhabitants weregoats and a few kine. The next day a couple of trading vesselsanchored near, and he was taken off and so kindly used that hedecided to cast in his fortune with them. Smith's discourse of hisadventures so entertained the master of one of the vessels, who isdescribed as "this noble Britaine, his neighbor, Captaine la Roche,of Saint Malo," that the much-tossed wanderer was accepted as afriend. They sailed to the Gulf of Turin, to Alessandria, where theydischarged freight, then up to Scanderoon, and coasting for some timeamong the Grecian islands, evidently in search of more freight, theyat length came round to Cephalonia, and lay to for some days betwixtthe isle of Corfu and the Cape of Otranto. Here it presentlyappeared what sort of freight the noble Britaine, Captain la Roche,was looking for.
An argosy of Venice hove in sight, and Captaine la Roche desired tospeak to her. The reply was so "untoward" that a man was slain,whereupon the Britaine gave the argosy a broadside, and then hisstem, and then other broadsides. A lively fight ensued, in which theBritaine lost fifteen men, and the argosy twenty, and thensurrendered to save herself from sinking. The noble Britaine andJohn Smith then proceeded to rifle her. He says that "the Silkes,Velvets, Cloth of Gold, and Tissue, Pyasters, Chiqueenes, andSuitanies, which is gold and silver, they unloaded in four-and-twentyhours was wonderful, whereof having sufficient, and tired with toils,they cast her off with her company, with as much good merchandise aswould have freighted another Britaine, that was but two hundredTunnes, she four or five hundred." Smith's share of this booty wasmodest. When the ship returned he was set ashore at "the Road ofAntibo in Piamon," "with five hundred chiqueenes [sequins] and alittle box God sent him worth neere as much more." He alwaysdevoutly acknowledged his dependence upon divine Providence, and tookwillingly what God sent him.
II
FIGHTING IN HUNGARY
Smith being thus "refurnished," made the tour of Italy, satisfiedhimself with the rarities of Rome, where he saw Pope Clement theEighth and many cardinals creep up the holy stairs, and with the faircity of Naples and the kingdom's nobility; and passing through thenorth he came into Styria, to the Court of Archduke Ferdinand; and,introduced by an Englishman and an Irish Jesuit to the notice ofBaron Kisell, general of artillery, he obtained employment, and wentto Vienna with Colonel Voldo, Earl of Meldritch, with whose regimenthe was to serve.
He was now on the threshold of his long-desired campaign against theTurks. The arrival on the scene of this young man, who was scarcelyout of his teens, was a shadow of disaster to the Turks. They hadbeen carrying all before them. Rudolph II., Emperor of Germany, wasa weak and irresolute character, and no match for the enterprisingSultan, Mahomet III., who was then conducting the invasion of Europe.The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Mathias, who was to succeed him,and Ferdinand, Duke of Styria, also to become Emperor of Germany,were much abler men, and maintained a good front against the Moslemsin Lower Hungary, but the Turks all the time steadily advanced. Theyhad long occupied Buda (Pesth), and had been in possession of thestronghold of Alba Regalis for some sixty years. Before Smith'sadvent they had captured the important city of Caniza, and just as hereached the ground they had besieged the town of Olumpagh, with twothousand men. But the addition to the armies of Germany, France,Styria, and Hungary of John Smith, "this English gentleman," as hestyles himself, put a new face on the war, and proved the ruin of theTurkish cause. The Bashaw of Buda was soon to feel the effect ofthis re-enforcement.
Caniza is a town in Lower Hungary, north of the River Drave, and justwest of the Platen Sea, or Lake Balatin, as it is also called. Duenorth of Caniza a few miles, on a bend of the little River Raab(which empties into the Danube), and south of the town of Kerment,lay Smith's town of Olumpagh, which we are able to identify on a mapof the period as Olimacum or Oberlymback. In this strong town theTurks had shut up the garrison under command of Governor Ebersbraughtso closely that it was without intelligence or hope of succor.
In this strait, the ingenious John Smith, who was present in thereconnoitering army in the regiment of the Earl of Meldritch, came tothe aid of Baron Kisell, the general of artillery, with a plan ofcommunication with the besieged garrison. Fortunately Smith had madethe acquaintance of Lord Ebersbraught at Gratza, in Styria, and had(he says) communicated to him a system of signaling a message by theuse of torches. Smith seems to have elaborated this method ofsignals, and providentially explained it to Lord Ebersbraught, as ifhe had a presentiment of the latter's use of it. He divided thealphabet into two parts, from A to L and from M to Z. Letters wereindicated and words spelled by the means of torches: "The first part,from A to L, is signified by showing and holding one linke so oft asthere is letters from A to that letter you name; the other part, fromM to Z, is mentioned by two lights in like manner. The end of a wordis signifien by showing of three lights."
General Kisell, inflamed by this strange invention, which Smith madeplain to him, furnished him guides, who conducted him to a highmountain, seven miles distant from the town, where he flashed historches and got a reply from the governor. Smith signaled that theywould charge on the east of the town in the night, and at the alarumEbersbraught was to sally forth. General Kisell doubted that heshould be able to relieve the town by this means, as he had only tenthousand men; but Smith, whose fertile brain was now in full action,and who seems to have assumed charge of the campaign, hit upon astratagem for the diversion and confusion of the Turks.
On the side of the town opposite the proposed point of attack lay theplain of Hysnaburg (Eisnaburg on Ortelius's map). Smith fastened twoor three charred pieces of match to divers small lines of an hundredfathoms in length, armed with powder. Each line was tied to a stakeat each end. After dusk these lines were set up on the plain, andbeing fired at the instant the alarm was given, they seemed to theTurks like so many rows of musketeers. While the Turks thereforeprepared to repel a great army from that side, Kisell attacked withhis ten thousand men, Ebersbraught sallied out and fell upon theTurks in the trenches, all the enemy on that side were slain ordrowned, or put to flight. And while the Turks were busy routingSmith's sham musketeers, the Christians threw a couple of thousandtroops into the town. Whereupon the Turks broke up the siege andretired to Caniza. For this exploit General Kisell received greathonor at Kerment, and Smith was rewarded with the rank of captain,and the command of two hundred and fifty horsemen. From this timeour hero must figure as Captain John Smith. The rank is not high,but he has made the title great, just as he has made the name of JohnSmith unique.
After this there were rumors of peace for these tormented countries;but the Turks, who did not yet appreciate the nature of this force,called John Smith, that had come into the world against them, did notintend peace, but went on levying soldiers and launching them intoHungary. To oppose these fresh invasions, Rudolph II., aided by theChristian princes, organized three armies: one led by the ArchdukeMathias and his lieutenant, Duke Mercury, to defend Low Hungary; thesecond led by Ferdinand, the Archduke of Styria, and the Duke ofMantua, his lieutenant, to regain Caniza; the third by Gonzago,Governor of High Hungary, to join with Georgio Busca, to make anabsolute conquest of Transylvania.
In pursuance of this plan, Duke Mercury, with an army of thirtythousand, whereof nearly ten thousand were French, besiegedStowell-Weisenberg, otherwise called Alba Regalis, a place so strongby art and nature that it was thought impregnable.
This stronghold, situated on the northeast of the Platen Sea, was,like Caniza and Oberlympack, one of the Turkish advanced posts, bymeans of which they pushed forward their operations from Buda on theDanube.
This noble friend of Smith, the Duke of Mercury, whom Haylyn stylesDuke Mercurio, seems to have puzzled the biographers of Smith. Infact, the name of "Mercury" has given a mythological air to Smith'snarration and aided to transfer it to the region of romance. He was,however, as we have seen, identical with a historical character ofsome importance, for the services he rendered to the Church of Rome,and a commander of some considerable skill. He is no other thanPhilip de Lorraine, Duc de Mercceur.'
[So far as I know, Dr. Edward Eggleston was the first to identifyhim. There is a sketch of him in the "Biographie Universelle," and alife with an account of his exploits in Hungary, entitled:Histoire de Duc Mercoeur, par Bruseles de Montplain Champs, Cologne,1689-97]
At the siege of Alba Regalis, the Turks gained several successes bynight sallies, and, as usual, it was not till Smith came to the frontwith one of his ingenious devices that the fortune of war changed.The Earl Meldritch, in whose regiment Smith served, having heard fromsome Christians who escaped from the town at what place there werethe greatest assemblies and throngs of people in the city, causedCaptain Smith to put in practice his "fiery dragons." Theseinstruments of destruction are carefully described: "Having preparedfortie or fiftie round-bellied earthen pots, and filled them withhand Gunpowder, then covered them with Pitch, mingled with Brimstoneand Turpentine, and quartering as many Musket-bullets, that hungtogether but only at the center of the division, stucke them round inthe mixture about the pots, and covered them againe with the samemixture, over that a strong sear-cloth, then over all a goodethicknesse of Towze-match, well tempered with oyle of Linseed,Campheer, and powder of Brimstone, these he fitly placed in slings,graduated so neere as they could to the places of these assemblies."
These missiles of Smith's invention were flung at midnight, when thealarum was given, and "it was a perfect sight to see the shortflaming course of their flight in the air, but presently after theirfall, the lamentable noise of the miserable slaughtered Turkes wasmost wonderful to heare."
While Smith was amusing the Turks in this manner, the Earl Roswormeplanned an attack on the opposite suburb, which was defended by amuddy lake, supposed to be impassable. Furnishing his men withbundles of sedge, which they threw before them as they advanced inthe dark night, the lake was made passable, the suburb surprised, andthe captured guns of the Turks were turned upon them in the city towhich they had retreated. The army of the Bashaw was cut to piecesand he himself captured.
The Earl of Meldritch, having occupied the town, repaired the wallsand the ruins of this famous city that had been in the possession ofthe Turks for some threescore years.
It is not our purpose to attempt to trace the meteoric course ofCaptain Smith in all his campaigns against the Turks, only toindicate the large part he took in these famous wars for thepossession of Eastern Europe. The siege of Alba Regalis must havebeen about the year 1601—Smith never troubles himself with anydates—and while it was undecided, Mahomet III.—this was the promptSultan who made his position secure by putting to death nineteen ofhis brothers upon his accession—raised sixty thousand troops for itsrelief or its recovery. The Duc de Mercoeur went out to meet thisarmy, and encountered it in the plains of Girke. In the firstskirmishes the Earl Meldritch was very nearly cut off, although hemade "his valour shine more bright than his armour, which seemed thenpainted with Turkish blood." Smith himself was sore wounded and hadhis horse slain under him. The campaign, at first favorable to theTurks, was inconclusive, and towards winter the Bashaw retired toBuda. The Duc de Mercoeur then divided his army. The Earl ofRosworme was sent to assist the Archduke Ferdinand, who was besiegingCaniza; the Earl of Meldritch, with six thousand men, was sent toassist Georgio Busca against the Transylvanians; and the Duc deMercoeur set out for France to raise new forces. On his way hereceived great honor at Vienna, and staying overnight at Nuremberg,he was royally entertained by the Archdukes Mathias and Maximilian.The next morning after the feast—how it chanced is not known—he wasfound dead His brother-inlaw died two days afterwards, and the heartsof both, with much sorrow, were carried into France.
We now come to the most important event in the life of Smith beforehe became an adventurer in Virginia, an event which shows Smith'sreadiness to put in practice the chivalry which had in the oldchronicles influenced his boyish imagination; and we approach it withthe satisfaction of knowing that it loses nothing in Smith'snarration.
It must be mentioned that Transylvania, which the Earl of Meldritch,accompanied by Captain Smith, set out to relieve, had long been in adisturbed condition, owing to internal dissensions, of which theTurks took advantage. Transylvania, in fact, was a Turkishdependence, and it gives us an idea of the far reach of the Mosleminfluence in Europe, that Stephen VI., vaivode of Transylvania, was,on the commendation of Sultan Armurath III., chosen King of Poland.
To go a little further back than the period of Smith's arrival, JohnII. of Transylvania was a champion of the Turk, and an enemy ofFerdinand and his successors. His successor, Stephen VI., surnamedBattori, or Bathor, was made vaivode by the Turks, and afterwards, aswe have said, King of Poland. He was succeeded in 1575 by hisbrother Christopher Battori, who was the first to drop the title ofvaivode and assume that of Prince of Transylvania. The son ofChristopher, Sigismund Battori, shook off the Turkish bondage,defeated many of their armies, slew some of their pashas, and gainedthe title of the Scanderbeg of the times in which he lived. Not ableto hold out, however, against so potent an adversary, he resigned hisestate to the Emperor Rudolph II., and received in exchange thedukedoms of Oppelon and Ratibor in Silesia, with an annual pension offifty thousand joachims. The pension not being well paid, Sigismundmade another resignation of his principality to his cousin AndrewBattori, who had the ill luck to be slain within the year by thevaivode of Valentia. Thereupon Rudolph, Emperor and King of Hungary,was acknowledged Prince of Transylvania. But the Transylvaniasoldiers did not take kindly to a foreign prince, and behaved sounsoldierly that Sigismund was called back. But he was unable tosettle himself in his dominions, and the second time he left hiscountry in the power of Rudolph and retired to Prague, where, in1615, he died unlamented.
It was during this last effort of Sigismund to regain his positionthat the Earl of Meldritch, accompanied by Smith, went toTransylvania, with the intention of assisting Georgio Busca, who wasthe commander of the Emperor's party. But finding Prince Sigismundin possession of the most territory and of the hearts of the people,the earl thought it best to assist the prince against the Turk,rather than Busca against the prince. Especially was he inclined tothat side by the offer of free liberty of booty for his worn andunpaid troops, of what they could get possession of from the Turks.
This last consideration no doubt persuaded the troops that Sigismundhad "so honest a cause." The earl was born in Transylvania, and theTurks were then in possession of his father's country. In thisdistracted state of the land, the frontiers had garrisons among themountains, some of which held for the emperor, some for the prince,and some for the Turk. The earl asked leave of the prince to make anattempt to regain his paternal estate. The prince, glad of such anally, made him camp-master of his army, and gave him leave to plunderthe Turks. Accordingly the earl began to make incursions of thefrontiers into what Smith calls the Land of Zarkam—among rockymountains, where were some Turks, some Tartars, but most Brandittoes,Renegadoes, and such like, which he forced into the Plains of Regall,where was a city of men and fortifications, strong in itself, and soenvironed with mountains that it had been impregnable in all thesewars.
It must be confessed that the historians and the map-makers did notalways attach the importance that Smith did to the battles in whichhe was conspicuous, and we do not find the Land of Zarkam or the cityof Regall in the contemporary chronicles or atlases. But the regionis sufficiently identified. On the River Maruch, or Morusus, was thetown of Alba Julia, or Weisenberg, the residence of the vaivode orPrince of Transylvania. South of this capital was the townMillenberg, and southwest of this was a very strong fortress,commanding a narrow pass leading into Transylvania out of Hungary,probably where the River Maruct: broke through the mountains. Weinfer that it was this pass that the earl captured by a stratagem,and carrying his army through it, began the siege of Regall in theplain. "The earth no sooner put on her green habit," says ourknight-errant, "than the earl overspread her with his troops."Regall occupied a strong fortress on a promontory and the Christiansencamped on the plain before it.
In the conduct of this campaign, we pass at once into the age ofchivalry, about which Smith had read so much. We cannot butrecognize that this is his opportunity. His idle boyhood had beensoaked in old romances, and he had set out in his youth to do whatequally dreamy but less venturesome devourers of old chronicles werecontent to read about. Everything arranged itself as Smith wouldhave had it. When the Christian army arrived, the Turks sallied outand gave it a lively welcome, which cost each side about fifteenhundred men. Meldritch had but eight thousand soldiers, but he wasre-enforced by the arrival of nine thousand more, with six-and-twentypieces of ordnance, under Lord Zachel Moyses, the general of thearmy, who took command of the whole.
After the first skirmish the Turks remained within their fortress,the guns of which commanded the plain, and the Christians spent amonth in intrenching themselves and mounting their guns.
The Turks, who taught Europe the art of civilized war, behaved allthis time in a courtly and chivalric manner, exchanging with thebesiegers wordy compliments until such time as the latter were readyto begin. The Turks derided the slow progress of the works, inquiredif their ordnance was in pawn, twitted them with growing fat for wantof exercise, and expressed the fear that the Christians should departwithout making an assault.
In order to make the time pass pleasantly, and exactly in accordancewith the tales of chivalry which Smith had read, the Turkish Bashawin the fortress sent out his challenge: "That to delight the ladies,who did long to see some courtlike pastime, the Lord Tubashaw diddefy any captaine that had the command of a company, who durst combatwith him for his head."
This handsome offer to swap heads was accepted; lots were cast forthe honor of meeting the lord, and, fortunately for us, the choicefell upon an ardent fighter of twenty-three years, named Captain JohnSmith. Nothing was wanting to give dignity to the spectacle. Trucewas made; the ramparts of this fortress-city in the mountains (whichwe cannot find on the map) were "all beset with faire Dames and menin Armes"; the Christians were drawn up in battle array; and upon thetheatre thus prepared the Turkish Bashaw, armed and mounted, enteredwith a flourish of hautboys; on his shoulders were fixed a pair ofgreat wings, compacted of eagles' feathers within a ridge of silverrichly garnished with gold and precious stones; before him was ajanissary bearing his lance, and a janissary walked at each sideleading his steed.
This gorgeous being Smith did not keep long waiting. Riding into thefield with a flourish of trumpets, and only a simple page to bear hislance, Smith favored the Bashaw with a courteous salute, tookposition, charged at the signal, and before the Bashaw could say"Jack Robinson," thrust his lance through the sight of his beaver,face, head and all, threw him dead to the ground, alighted, unbracedhis helmet, and cut off his head. The whole affair was over sosuddenly that as a pastime for ladies it must have beendisappointing. The Turks came out and took the headless trunk, andSmith, according to the terms of the challenge, appropriated the headand presented it to General Moyses.
This ceremonious but still hasty procedure excited the rage of oneGrualgo, the friend of the Bashaw, who sent a particular challenge toSmith to regain his friend's head or lose his own, together with hishorse and armor. Our hero varied the combat this time. The twocombatants shivered lances and then took to pistols; Smith received amark upon the "placard," but so wounded the Turk in his left arm thathe was unable to rule his horse. Smith then unhorsed him, cut offhis head, took possession of head, horse, and armor, but returned therich apparel and the body to his friends in the most gentlemanlymanner.
Captain Smith was perhaps too serious a knight to see the humor ofthese encounters, but he does not lack humor in describing them, andhe adopted easily the witty courtesies of the code he wasillustrating. After he had gathered two heads, and the siege stilldragged, he became in turn the challenger, in phrase as courteouslyand grimly facetious as was permissible, thus:
"To delude time, Smith, with so many incontradictible perswadingreasons, obtained leave that the Ladies might know he was not so muchenamored of their servants' heads, but if any Turke of their rankewould come to the place of combat to redeem them, should have alsohis, upon like conditions, if he could winne it."
This considerate invitation was accepted by a person whom Smith, withhis usual contempt for names, calls "Bonny Mulgro." It seemsdifficult to immortalize such an appellation, and it is a pity thatwe have not the real one of the third Turk whom Smith honored bykilling. But Bonny Mulgro, as we must call the worthiest foe thatSmith's prowess encountered, appeared upon the field. Smithunderstands working up a narration, and makes this combat long anddoubtful. The challenged party, who had the choice of weapons, hadmarked the destructiveness of his opponent's lance, and elected,therefore, to fight with pistols and battle-axes. The pistols provedharmless, and then the battle-axes came in play, whose piercing billsmade sometime the one, sometime the other, to have scarce sense tokeep their saddles. Smith received such a blow that he lost hisbattle-axe, whereat the Turks on the ramparts set up a great shout."The Turk prosecuted his advantage to the utmost of his power; yetthe other, what by the readiness of his horse, and his judgment anddexterity in such a business, beyond all men's expectations, by God'sassistance, not only avoided the Turke's violence, but having drawnhis Faulchion, pierced the Turke so under the Culets throrow backeand body, that although he alighted from his horse, he stood not longere he lost his head, as the rest had done."
There is nothing better than this in all the tales of chivalry, andJohn Smith's depreciation of his inability to equal Caesar indescribing his own exploits, in his dedicatory letter to the Duchessof Richmond, must be taken as an excess of modesty. We are preparedto hear that these beheadings gave such encouragement to the wholearmy that six thousand soldiers, with three led horses, each precededby a soldier bearing a Turk's head on a lance, turned out as a guardto Smith and conducted him to the pavilion of the general, to whom hepresented his trophies. General Moyses (occasionally Smith calls himMoses) took him in his arms and embraced him with much respect, andgave him a fair horse, richly furnished, a scimeter, and a belt worththree hundred ducats. And his colonel advanced him to the positionof sergeant-major of his regiment. If any detail was wanting toround out and reward this knightly performance in strict accord withthe old romances, it was supplied by the subsequent handsome conductof Prince Sigismund.
When the Christians had mounted their guns and made a couple ofbreaches in the walls of Regall, General Moyses ordered an attack onedark night "by the light that proceeded from the murdering musketsand peace-making cannon." The enemy were thus awaited, "whilst theirslothful governor lay in a castle on top of a high mountain, and likea valiant prince asketh what's the matter, when horrour and deathstood amazed at each other, to see who should prevail to make himvictorious." These descriptions show that Smith could handle the penas well as the battleaxe, and distinguish him from the more vulgarfighters of his time. The assault succeeded, but at great cost oflife. The Turks sent a flag of truce and desired a "composition,"but the earl, remembering the death of his father, continued tobatter the town and when he took it put all the men in arms to thesword, and then set their heads upon stakes along the walls, theTurks having ornamented the walls with Christian heads when theycaptured the fortress. Although the town afforded much pillage, theloss of so many troops so mixed the sour with the sweet that GeneralMoyses could only allay his grief by sacking three other towns,Veratis, Solmos, and Kapronka. Taking from these a couple ofthousand prisoners, mostly women and children, Earl Moyses marchednorth to Weisenberg (Alba Julia), and camped near the palace ofPrince Sigismund.
When Sigismund Battori came out to view his army he was madeacquainted with the signal services of Smith at "Olumpagh,Stowell-Weisenberg, and Regall," and rewarded him by conferring uponhim, according to the law of—arms, a shield of arms with "threeTurks' heads." This was granted by a letter-patent, in Latin, whichis dated at "Lipswick, in Misenland, December 9, 1603" It recites thatSmith was taken captive by the Turks in Wallachia November 18, 1602;that he escaped and rejoined his fellow-soldiers. This patent,therefore, was not given at Alba Julia, nor until Prince Sigismund hadfinally left his country, and when the Emperor was, in fact, thePrince of Transylvania. Sigismund styles himself, by the grace ofGod, Duke of Transylvania, etc. Appended to this patent, as publishedin Smith's "True Travels," is a certificate by William Segar, knightof the garter and principal king of arms of England, that he had seenthis patent and had recorded a copy of it in the office of the Heraldof Armes. This certificate is dated August 19, 1625, the year afterthe publication of the General Historie.
Smith says that Prince Sigismund also gave him his picture in gold,and granted him an annual pension of three hundred ducats. Thispromise of a pension was perhaps the most unsubstantial portion ofhis reward, for Sigismund himself became a pensioner shortly afterthe events last narrated.
The last mention of Sigismund by Smith is after his escape fromcaptivity in Tartaria, when this mirror of virtues had abdicated.Smith visited him at "Lipswicke in Misenland," and the Prince "gavehim his Passe, intimating the service he had done, and the honors hehad received, with fifteen hundred ducats of gold to repair hislosses." The "Passe" was doubtless the "Patent" before introduced,and we hear no word of the annual pension.
Affairs in Transylvania did not mend even after the capture ofRegall, and of the three Turks' heads, and the destruction of so manyvillages. This fruitful and strong country was the prey of faction,and became little better than a desert under the ravages of thecontending armies. The Emperor Rudolph at last determined to conquerthe country for himself, and sent Busca again with a large army.Sigismund finding himself poorly supported, treated again with theEmperor and agreed to retire to Silicia on a pension. But the EarlMoyses, seeing no prospect of regaining his patrimony, anddetermining not to be under subjection to the Germans, led his troopsagainst Busca, was defeated, and fled to join the Turks. Upon thisdesertion the Prince delivered up all he had to Busca and retired toPrague. Smith himself continued with the imperial party, in theregiment of Earl Meldritch. About this time the Sultan sent oneJeremy to be vaivode of Wallachia, whose tyranny caused the people torise against him, and he fled into Moldavia. Busca proclaimed LordRodoll vaivode in his stead. But Jeremy assembled an army of fortythousand Turks, Tartars, and Moldavians, and retired into Wallachia.Smith took active part in Rodoll's campaign to recover Wallachia, andnarrates the savage war that ensued. When the armies were encampednear each other at Raza and Argish, Rodoll cut off the heads ofparties he captured going to the Turkish camp, and threw them intothe enemy's trenches. Jeremy retorted by skinning alive theChristian parties he captured, hung their skins upon poles, and theircarcasses and heads on stakes by them. In the first battle Rodollwas successful and established himself in Wallachia, but Jeremyrallied and began ravaging the country. Earl Meldritch was sentagainst him, but the Turks' force was much superior, and theChristians were caught in a trap. In order to reach Rodoll, who wasat Rottenton, Meldritch with his small army was obliged to cut hisway through the solid body of the enemy. A device of Smith'sassisted him. He covered two or three hundred trunks—probably smallbranches of trees—with wild-fire. These fixed upon the heads oflances and set on fire when the troops charged in the night, soterrified the horses of the Turks that they fled in dismay.Meldritch was for a moment victorious, but when within three leaguesof Rottenton he was overpowered by forty thousand Turks, and the lastdesperate fight followed, in which nearly all the friends of thePrince were slain, and Smith himself was left for dead on the field.
On this bloody field over thirty thousand lay headless, armless,legless, all cut and mangled, who gave knowledge to the world howdear the Turk paid for his conquest of Transylvania and Wallachia—aconquest that might have been averted if the three Christian armieshad been joined against the "cruel devouring Turk." Among the slainwere many Englishmen, adventurers like the valiant Captain whom Smithnames, men who "left there their bodies in testimony of their minds."And there, "Smith among the slaughtered dead bodies, and many agasping soule with toils and wounds lay groaning among the rest, tillbeing found by the Pillagers he was able to live, and perceiving byhis armor and habit, his ransome might be better than his death, theyled him prisoner with many others." The captives were taken toAxopolis and all sold as slaves. Smith was bought by Bashaw Bogall,who forwarded him by way of Adrianople to Constantinople, to be aslave to his mistress. So chained by the necks in gangs of twentythey marched to the city of Constantine, where Smith was deliveredover to the mistress of the Bashaw, the young Charatza Tragabigzanda.
III
CAPTIVITY AND WANDERING
Our hero never stirs without encountering a romantic adventure.Noble ladies nearly always take pity on good-looking captains, andSmith was far from ill-favored. The charming Charatza delighted totalk with her slave, for she could speak Italian, and would feignherself too sick to go to the bath, or to accompany the other womenwhen they went to weep over the graves, as their custom is once aweek, in order to stay at home to hear from Smith how it was thatBogall took him prisoner, as the Bashaw had written her, and whetherSmith was a Bohemian lord conquered by the Bashaw's own hand, whoseransom could adorn her with the glory of her lover's conquests.Great must have been her disgust with Bogall when she heard that hehad not captured this handsome prisoner, but had bought him in theslave-market at Axopolis. Her compassion for her slave increased,and the hero thought he saw in her eyes a tender interest. But shehad no use for such a slave, and fearing her mother would sell him,she sent him to her brother, the Tymor Bashaw of Nalbrits in thecountry of Cambria, a province of Tartaria (wherever that may be).If all had gone on as Smith believed the kind lady intended, he mighthave been a great Bashaw and a mighty man in the Ottoman Empire, andwe might never have heard of Pocahontas. In sending him to herbrother, it was her intention, for she told him so, that he shouldonly sojourn in Nalbrits long enough to learn the language, and whatit was to be a Turk, till time made her master of herself. Smithhimself does not dissent from this plan to metamorphose him into aTurk and the husband of the beautiful Charatza Tragabigzanda. He hadno doubt that he was commended to the kindest treatment by herbrother; but Tymor "diverted all this to the worst of cruelty."Within an hour of his arrival, he was stripped naked, his head andface shaved as smooth as his hand, a ring of iron, with a long stakebowed like a sickle, riveted to his neck, and he was scantily clad ingoat's skin. There were many other slaves, but Smith being the last,was treated like a dog, and made the slave of slaves.
The geographer is not able to follow Captain Smith to Nalbrits.Perhaps Smith himself would have been puzzled to make a map of hisown career after he left Varna and passed the Black Sea and camethrough the straits of Niger into the Sea Disbacca, by some calledthe Lake Moetis, and then sailed some days up the River Bruapo toCambria, and two days more to Nalbrits, where the Tyrnor resided.
Smith wrote his travels in London nearly thirty years after, and itis difficult to say how much is the result of his own observation andhow much he appropriated from preceding romances. The Cambrians mayhave been the Cossacks, but his description of their habits and alsothose of the "Crym-Tartars" belongs to the marvels of Mandeville andother wide-eyed travelers. Smith fared very badly with the Tymor.The Tymor and his friends ate pillaw; they esteemed "samboyses" and"musselbits" "great dainties, and yet," exclaims Smith, "but roundpies, full of all sorts of flesh they can get, chopped with varietyof herbs." Their best drink was "coffa" and sherbet, which is onlyhoney and water. The common victual of the others was the entrailsof horses and "ulgries" (goats?) cut up and boiled in a caldron with"cuskus," a preparation made from grain. This was served in greatbowls set in the ground, and when the other prisoners had raked itthoroughly with their foul fists the remainder was given to theChristians. The same dish of entrails used to be served not manyyears ago in Upper Egypt as a royal dish to entertain a distinguishedguest.
It might entertain but it would too long detain us to repeat Smith'sinformation, probably all secondhand, about this barbarous region.We must confine ourselves to the fortunes of our hero. All his hopeof deliverance from thraldom was in the love of Tragabigzanda, whomhe firmly believed was ignorant of his bad usage. But she made nosign. Providence at length opened a way for his escape. He wasemployed in thrashing in a field more than a league from the Tymor'shome. The Bashaw used to come to visit his slave there, and beat,spurn, and revile him. One day Smith, unable to control himselfunder these insults, rushed upon the Tymor, and beat out his brainswith a thrashing bat—"for they had no flails," he explains—put onthe dead man's clothes, hid the body in the straw, filled a knapsackwith corn, mounted his horse and rode away into the unknown desert,where he wandered many days before he found a way out. If we maybelieve Smith this wilderness was more civilized in one respect thansome parts of our own land, for on all the crossings of the roadswere guide-boards. After traveling sixteen days on the road thatleads to Muscova, Smith reached a Muscovite garrison on the RiverDon. The governor knocked off the iron from his neck and used him sokindly that he thought himself now risen from the dead. With hisusual good fortune there was a lady to take interest in him—"thegood Lady Callamata largely supplied all his wants."
After Smith had his purse filled by Sigismund he made a thorough tourof Europe, and passed into Spain, where being satisfied, as he says,with Europe and Asia, and understanding that there were wars inBarbary, this restless adventurer passed on into Morocco with severalcomrades on a French man-of-war. His observations on and tales aboutNorth Africa are so evidently taken from the books of other travelersthat they add little to our knowledge of his career. For some reasonhe found no fighting going on worth his while. But good fortuneattended his return. He sailed in a man-of-war with Captain Merham.They made a few unimportant captures, and at length fell in with twoSpanish men-of-war, which gave Smith the sort of entertainment hemost coveted. A sort of running fight, sometimes at close quarters,and with many boardings and repulses, lasted for a couple of days andnights, when having battered each other thoroughly and lost many men,the pirates of both nations separated and went cruising, no doubt,for more profitable game. Our wanderer returned to his native land,seasoned and disciplined for the part he was to play in the NewWorld. As Smith had traveled all over Europe and sojourned inMorocco, besides sailing the high seas, since he visited PrinceSigismund in December, 1603, it was probably in the year 1605 that hereached England. He had arrived at the manly age of twenty-sixyears, and was ready to play a man's part in the wonderful drama ofdiscovery and adventure upon which the Britons were then engaged.
IV
FIRST ATTEMPTS IN VIRGINIA
John Smith has not chosen to tell us anything of his life during theinterim—perhaps not more than a year and a half—between his returnfrom Morocco and his setting sail for Virginia. Nor do hiscontemporaries throw any light upon this period of his life.
One would like to know whether he went down to Willoughby and had areckoning with his guardians; whether he found any relations orfriends of his boyhood; whether any portion of his estate remained ofthat "competent means" which he says he inherited, but which does notseem to have been available in his career. From the time when he setout for France in his fifteenth year, with the exception of a shortsojourn in Willoughby seven or eight years after, he lived by hiswits and by the strong hand. His purse was now and then replenishedby a lucky windfall, which enabled him to extend his travels and seekmore adventures. This is the impression that his own story makesupon the reader in a narrative that is characterized by theboastfulness and exaggeration of the times, and not fuller of themarvelous than most others of that period.
The London to which Smith returned was the London of Shakespeare. Weshould be thankful for one glimpse of him in this interesting town.Did he frequent the theatre? Did he perhaps see Shakespeare himselfat the Globe? Did he loaf in the coffee-houses, and spin the finethread of his adventures to the idlers and gallants who resorted tothem? If he dropped in at any theatre of an afternoon he was quitelikely to hear some allusion to Virginia, for the plays of the hourwere full of chaff, not always of the choicest, about the attractionsof the Virgin-land, whose gold was as plentiful as copper in England;where the prisoners were fettered in gold, and the dripping-pans weremade of it; and where—an unheard-of thing—you might become analderman without having been a scavenger.
Was Smith an indulger in that new medicine for all ills, tobacco?Alas! we know nothing of his habits or his company. He was a man ofpiety according to his lights, and it is probable that he may havehad the then rising prejudice against theatres. After his returnfrom Virginia he and his exploits were the subject of many a stageplay and spectacle, but whether his vanity was more flattered by thismark of notoriety than his piety was offended we do not know. Thereis certainly no sort of evidence that he engaged in the commondissipation of the town, nor gave himself up to those pleasures whicha man rescued from the hardships of captivity in Tartaria might beexpected to seek. Mr. Stith says that it was the testimony of hisfellow soldiers and adventurers that "they never knew a soldier,before him, so free from those military vices of wine, tobacco,debts, dice, and oathes."
But of one thing we may be certain: he was seeking adventureaccording to his nature, and eager for any heroic employment; and itgoes without saying that he entered into the great excitement of theday—adventure in America. Elizabeth was dead. James had just cometo the throne, and Raleigh, to whom Elizabeth had granted anextensive patent of Virginia, was in the Tower. The attempts to makeany permanent lodgment in the countries of Virginia had failed. Butat the date of Smith's advent Captain Bartholomew Gosnold hadreturned from a voyage undertaken in 1602 under the patronage of theEarl of Southampton, and announced that he had discovered a directpassage westward to the new continent, all the former voyagers havinggone by the way of the West Indies. The effect of this announcementin London, accompanied as it was with Gosnold's report of thefruitfulness of the coast of New England which he explored, wassomething like that made upon New York by the discovery of gold inCalifornia in 1849. The route by the West Indies, with its incidentsof disease and delay, was now replaced by the direct course opened byGosnold, and the London Exchange, which has always been quick toscent any profit in trade, shared the excitement of the distinguishedsoldiers and sailors who were ready to embrace any chance ofadventure that offered.
It is said that Captain Gosnold spent several years in vain, afterhis return, in soliciting his friends and acquaintances to join himin settling this fertile land he had explored; and that at length heprevailed upon Captain John Smith, Mr. Edward Maria Wingfield, theRev. Mr. Robert Hunt, and others, to join him. This is the firstappearance of the name of Captain John Smith in connection withVirginia. Probably his life in London had been as idle asunprofitable, and his purse needed replenishing. Here was a way opento the most honorable, exciting, and profitable employment. That itsmere profit would have attracted him we do not believe; but itsdanger, uncertainty, and chance of distinction would irresistiblyappeal to him. The distinct object of the projectors was toestablish a colony in Virginia. This proved too great an undertakingfor private persons. After many vain projects the scheme wascommended to several of the nobility, gentry, and merchants, who cameinto it heartily, and the memorable expedition of 1606 was organized.
The patent under which this colonization was undertaken was obtainedfrom King James by the solicitation of Richard Hakluyt and others.Smith's name does not appear in it, nor does that of Gosnold nor ofCaptain Newport. Richard Hakluyt, then clerk prebendary ofWestminster, had from the first taken great interest in the project.He was chaplain of the English colony in Paris when Sir Francis Drakewas fitting out his expedition to America, and was eager to furtherit. By his diligent study he became the best English geographer ofhis time; he was the historiographer of the East India Company, andthe best informed man in England concerning the races, climates, andproductions of all parts of the globe. It was at Hakluyt'ssuggestion that two vessels were sent out from Plymouth in 1603 toverify Gosnold's report of his new short route. A furtherverification of the feasibility of this route was made by CaptainGeorge Weymouth, who was sent out in 1605 by the Earl of Southampton.
The letters-patent of King James, dated April 10, 1606, licensed theplanting of two colonies in the territories of America commonlycalled Virginia. The corporators named in the first colony were SirThos. Gates, Sir George Somers, knights, and Richard Hakluyt andEdward Maria Wingfield, adventurers, of the city of London. Theywere permitted to settle anywhere in territory between the 34th and41st degrees of latitude.
The corporators named in the second colony were Thomas Hankam,Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham, representingBristol, Exeter, and Plymouth, and the west counties, who wereauthorized to make a settlement anywhere between the 38th and 48thdegrees of latitude.
The—letters commended and generously accepted this noble work ofcolonization, "which may, by the Providence of Almighty God,hereafter tend to the glory of his Divine Majesty, in propagating ofChristian religion to such people as yet live in darkness andmiserable ignorance of all true knowledge and worship of God, and mayin time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to humancivility and to a settled and quiet government." The conversion ofthe Indians was as prominent an object in all these early adventures,English or Spanish, as the relief of the Christians has been in allthe Russian campaigns against the Turks in our day.
Before following the fortunes of this Virginia colony of 1606, towhich John Smith was attached, it is necessary to glance briefly atthe previous attempt to make settlements in this portion of America.
Although the English had a claim upon America, based upon thediscovery of Newfoundland and of the coast of the continent from the38th to the 68th north parallel by Sebastian Cabot in 1497, they tookno further advantage of it than to send out a few fishing vessels,until Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a noted and skillful seaman, took outletters-patent for discovery, bearing date the 11th of January, 1578.Gilbert was the half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and thirteen yearshis senior. The brothers were associated in the enterprise of 1579,which had for its main object the possession of Newfoundland. It iscommonly said, and in this the biographical dictionaries follow oneanother, that Raleigh accompanied his brother on this voyage of 1579and went with him to Newfoundland. The fact is that Gilbert did notreach Newfoundland on that voyage, and it is open to doubt if Raleighstarted with him. In April, 1579, when Gilbert took active stepsunder the charter of 1578, diplomatic difficulties arose, growing outof Elizabeth's policy with the Spaniards, and when Gilbert's shipswere ready to sail he was stopped by an order from the council.Little is known of this unsuccessful attempt of Gilbert's. He did,after many delays, put to sea, and one of his contemporaries, JohnHooker, the antiquarian, says that Raleigh was one of the assuredfriends that accompanied him. But he was shortly after driven back,probably from an encounter with the Spaniards, and returned with theloss of a tall ship.
Raleigh had no sooner made good his footing at the court of Elizabeththan he joined Sir Humphrey in a new adventure. But the Queenperemptorily retained Raleigh at court, to prevent his incurring therisks of any "dangerous sea-fights." To prevent Gilbert fromembarking on this new voyage seems to have been the device of thecouncil rather than the Queen, for she assured Gilbert of her goodwishes, and desired him, on his departure, to give his picture toRaleigh for her, and she contributed to the large sums raised to meetexpenses "an anchor guarded by a lady," which the sailor was to wearat his breast. Raleigh risked L 2,000 in the venture, and equipped aship which bore his name, but which had ill luck. An infectiousfever broke out among the crew, and the "Ark Raleigh" returned toPlymouth. Sir Humphrey wrote to his brother admiral, Sir GeorgePeckham, indignantly of this desertion, the reason for which he didnot know, and then proceeded on his voyage with his four remainingships. This was on the 11th of January, 1583. The expedition was sofar successful that Gilbert took formal possession of Newfoundlandfor the Queen. But a fatality attended his further explorations: thegallant admiral went down at sea in a storm off our coast, with hiscrew, heroic and full of Christian faith to the last, uttering, it isreported, this courageous consolation to his comrades at the lastmoment: "Be of good heart, my friends. We are as near to heaven bysea as by land."
In September, 1583, a surviving ship brought news of the disaster toFalmouth. Raleigh was not discouraged. Within six months of thisloss he had on foot another enterprise. His brother's patent hadexpired. On the 25th of March, 1584, he obtained from Elizabeth anew charter with larger powers, incorporating himself, AdrianGilbert, brother of Sir Humphrey, and John Davys, under the title of"The College of the Fellowship for the Discovery of the NorthwestPassage." But Raleigh's object was colonization. Within a few daysafter his charter was issued he despatched two captains, PhilipAmadas and Arthur Barlow, who in July of that year took possession ofthe island of Roanoke.
The name of Sir Walter Raleigh is intimately associated with Carolinaand Virginia, and it is the popular impression that he personallyassisted in the discovery of the one and the settlement of the other.But there is no more foundation for the belief that he ever visitedthe territory of Virginia, of which he was styled governor, than thathe accompanied Sir Humphrey Gilbert to Newfoundland. An allusion byWilliam Strachey, in his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia,"hastily read, may have misled some writers. He speaks of anexpedition southward, "to some parts of Chawonock and the Mangoangs,to search them there left by Sir Walter Raleigh." But his furthersketch of the various prior expeditions shows that he meant to speakof settlers left by Sir Ralph Lane and other agents of Raleigh incolonization. Sir Walter Raleigh never saw any portion of the coastof the United States.
In 1592 he planned an attack upon the Spanish possessions of Panama,but his plans were frustrated. His only personal expedition to theNew World was that to Guana in 1595.
The expedition of Captain Amadas and Captain Barlow is described byCaptain Smith in his compilation called the "General Historie," andby Mr. Strachey. They set sail April 27, 1584, from the Thames. Onthe 2d of July they fell with the coast of Florida in shoal water,"where they felt a most delicate sweet smell," but saw no land.Presently land appeared, which they took to be the continent, andcoasted along to the northward a hundred and thirty miles beforefinding a harbor. Entering the first opening, they landed on whatproved to be the Island of Roanoke. The landing-place was sandy andlow, but so productive of grapes or vines overrunning everything,that the very surge of the sea sometimes overflowed them. Thetallest and reddest cedars in the world grew there, with pines,cypresses, and other trees, and in the woods plenty of deer, conies,and fowls in incredible abundance.
After a few days the natives came off in boats to visit them, properpeople and civil in their behavior, bringing with them the King'sbrother, Granganameo (Quangimino, says Strachey). The name of theKing was Winginia, and of the country Wingandacoa. The name of thisKing might have suggested that of Virginia as the title of the newpossession, but for the superior claim of the Virgin Queen.Granganameo was a friendly savage who liked to trade. The firstthing he took a fancy was a pewter dish, and he made a hole throughit and hung it about his neck for a breastplate. The liberalChristians sold it to him for the low price of twenty deer-skins,worth twenty crowns, and they also let him have a copper kettle forfifty skins. They drove a lively traffic with the savages for muchof such "truck," and the chief came on board and ate and drankmerrily with the strangers. His wife and children, short of staturebut well-formed and bashful, also paid them a visit. She wore a longcoat of leather, with a piece of leather about her loins, around herforehead a band of white coral, and from her ears bracelets of pearlsof the bigness of great peas hung down to her middle. The otherwomen wore pendants of copper, as did the children, five or six in anear. The boats of these savages were hollowed trunks of trees.Nothing could exceed the kindness and trustfulness the Indiansexhibited towards their visitors. They kept them supplied with gameand fruits, and when a party made an expedition inland to theresidence of Granganameo, his wife (her husband being absent) camerunning to the river to welcome them; took them to her house and setthem before a great fire; took off their clothes and washed them;removed the stockings of some and washed their feet in warm water;set plenty of victual, venison and fish and fruits, before them, andtook pains to see all things well ordered for their comfort. "Morelove they could not express to entertain us." It is noted that thesesavages drank wine while the grape lasted. The visitors returned allthis kindness with suspicion.
They insisted upon retiring to their boats at night instead oflodging in the house, and the good woman, much grieved at theirjealousy, sent down to them their half-cooked supper, pots and all,and mats to cover them from the rain in the night, and caused severalof her men and thirty women to sit all night on the shore overagainst them. "A more kind, loving people cannot be," say thevoyagers.
In September the expedition returned to England, taking specimens ofthe wealth of the country, and some of the pearls as big as peas, andtwo natives, Wanchese and Manteo. The "lord proprietary" obtainedthe Queen's permission to name the new lands "Virginia," in herhonor, and he had a new seal of his arms cut, with the legend,Propria insignia Walteri Ralegh, militis, Domini et GubernatorisVirginia.
The enticing reports brought back of the fertility of this land, andthe amiability of its pearl-decked inhabitants, determined Raleigh atonce to establish a colony there, in the hope of the ultimatesalvation of the "poor seduced infidell" who wore the pearls. Afleet of seven vessels, with one hundred householders, and manythings necessary to begin a new state, departed from Plymouth inApril, 1585. Sir Richard Grenville had command of the expedition,and Mr. Ralph Lane was made governor of the colony, with PhilipAmadas for his deputy. Among the distinguished men who accompaniedthem were Thomas Hariot, the mathematician, and Thomas Cavendish, thenaval discoverer. The expedition encountered as many fatalities asthose that befell Sir Humphrey Gilbert; and Sir Richard was destinedalso to an early and memorable death. But the new colony sufferedmore from its own imprudence and want of harmony than from naturalcauses.
In August, Grenville left Ralph Lane in charge of the colony andreturned to England, capturing a Spanish ship on the way. Thecolonists pushed discoveries in various directions, but soon foundthemselves involved in quarrels with the Indians, whose conduct wasless friendly than formerly, a change partly due to the greed of thewhites. In June, when Lane was in fear of a conspiracy which he haddiscovered against the life of the colony, and it was short ofsupplies, Sir Francis Drake appeared off Roanoke, returning homewardwith his fleet from the sacking of St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St.Augustine. Lane, without waiting for succor from England, persuadedDrake to take him and all the colony back home. Meantime Raleigh,knowing that the colony would probably need aid, was preparing afleet of three well appointed ships to accompany Sir RichardGrenville, and an "advice ship," plentifully freighted, to send inadvance to give intelligence of his coming. Great was Grenville'schagrin, when he reached Hatorask, to find that the advice boat hadarrived, and finding no colony, had departed again for England.However, he established fifteen men ("fifty," says the "GeneralHistorie") on the island, provisioned for two years, and thenreturned home.
[Sir Richard Grenville in 1591 was vice-admiral of a fleet, undercommand of Lord Thomas Howard, at the Azores, sent against a SpanishPlate-fleet. Six English vessels were suddenly opposed by a Spanishconvoy of 53 ships of war. Left behind his comrades, in embarkingfrom an island, opposed by five galleons, he maintained a terriblefight for fifteen hours, his vessel all cut to pieces, and his mennearly all slain. He died uttering aloud these words: "Here dies SirRichard Grenville, with a joyful and quiet mind, for that I haveended my life as a true soldier ought to do, fighting for hiscountry, queen, religion, and honor."]
Mr. Ralph Lane's colony was splendidly fitted out, much betterfurnished than the one that Newport, Wingfield, and Gosnold conductedto the River James in 1607; but it needed a man at the head of it.If the governor had possessed Smith's pluck, he would have held ontill the arrival of Grenville.
Lane did not distinguish himself in the conduct of this governorship,but he nevertheless gained immortality. For he is credited withfirst bringing into England that valuable medicinal weeds calledtobacco, which Sir Walter Raleigh made fashionable, not in itscapacity to drive "rheums" out of the body, but as a soother, whenburned in the bowl of a pipe and drawn through the stem in smoke, ofthe melancholy spirit.
The honor of introducing tobacco at this date is so large that it hasbeen shared by three persons—Sir Francis Drake, who brought Mr. Lanehome; Mr. Lane, who carried the precious result of his sojourn inAmerica; and Sir Walter Raleigh, who commended it to the use of theladies of Queen Elizabeth's court.
But this was by no means its first appearance in Europe. It wasalready known in Spain, in France, and in Italy, and no doubt hadbegun to make its way in the Orient. In the early part of thecentury the Spaniards had discovered its virtues. It is stated byJohn Neander, in his "Tobaco Logia," published in Leyden in 1626,that Tobaco took its name from a province in Yucatan, conquered byFernando Cortez in 1519. The name Nicotiana he derives from D.Johanne Nicotino Nemansensi, of the council of Francis II., who firstintroduced the plant into France. At the date of this volume (1626)tobacco was in general use all over Europe and in the East. Picturesare given of the Persian water pipes, and descriptions of the mode ofpreparing it for use. There are reports and traditions of a veryancient use of tobacco in Persia and in China, as well as in India,but we are convinced that the substance supposed to be tobacco, andto be referred to as such by many writers, and described as"intoxicating," was really India hemp, or some plant very differentfrom the tobacco of the New World. At any rate there is evidencethat in the Turkish Empire as late as 1616 tobacco was still somewhata novelty, and the smoking of it was regarded as vile, and a habitonly of the low. The late Hekekian Bey, foreign minister of oldMahomet Ali, possessed an ancient Turkish MS which related anoccurrence at Smyrna about the year 1610, namely, the punishment ofsome sailors for the use of tobacco, which showed that it was anovelty and accounted a low vice at that time. The testimony of thetrustworthy George Sandys, an English traveler into Turkey, Egypt,and Syria in 1610 (afterwards, 1621, treasurer of the colony inVirginia), is to the same effect as given in his "Relation,"published in London in 1621. In his minute description of the peopleand manners of Constantinople, after speaking of opium, which makesthe Turks "giddy-headed" and "turbulent dreamers," he says: "Butperhaps for the self-same cause they delight in Tobacco: which theytake through reedes that have joyned with them great heads of wood tocontaine it, I doubt not but lately taught them as brought them bythe English; and were it not sometimes lookt into (for Morat Bassa[Murad III.?] not long since commanded a pipe to be thrust throughthe nose of a Turke, and to be led in derision through the Citie), noquestion but it would prove a principal commodity. Nevertheless theywill take it in corners; and are so ignorant therein, that that whichin England is not saleable, doth passe here among them for mostexcellent."
Mr. Stith ("History of Virginia," 1746) gives Raleigh credit for theintroduction of the pipe into good society, but he cautiously says,"We are not informed whether the queen made use of it herself: but itis certain she gave great countenance to it as a vegetable ofsingular strength and power, which might therefore prove of benefitto mankind, and advantage to the nation." Mr. Thomas Hariot, in hisobservations on the colony at Roanoke, says that the natives esteemedtheir tobacco, of which plenty was found, their "chief physicke."
It should be noted, as against the claim of Lane, that Stowe in his"Annales" (1615) says: "Tobacco was first brought and made known inEngland by Sir John Hawkins, about the year 1565, but not used byEnglishmen in many years after, though at this time commonly used bymost men and many women." In a side-note to the edition of 1631 weread: "Sir Walter Raleigh was the first that brought tobacco in use,when all men wondered what it meant." It was first commended for itsmedicinal virtues. Harrison's "Chronologie," under date of 1573,says: "In these daies the taking in of the smoke of the Indian herbecalled 'Tabaco' by an instrument formed like a little ladell, wherebyit passeth from the mouth into the hed and stomach, is gretlietaken-up and used in England, against Rewmes and some other diseasesingendred in the longes and inward partes, and not without effect."But Barnaby Rich, in "The Honestie of this Age," 1614, disagrees withHarrison about its benefit: "They say it is good for a cold, for apose, for rewmes, for aches, for dropsies, and for all manner ofdiseases proceeding of moyst humours; but I cannot see but that thosethat do take it fastest are as much (or more) subject to all theseinfirmities (yea, and to the poxe itself) as those that have nothingat all to do with it." He learns that 7,000 shops in London live bythe trade of tobacco-selling, and calculates that there is paid forit L 399,375 a year, "all spent in smoake." Every base groom musthave his pipe with his pot of ale; it "is vendible in every taverne,inne, and ale-house; and as for apothecaries shops, grosers shops,chandlers shops, they are (almost) never without company that, frommorning till night, are still taking of tobacco." Numbers of housesand shops had no other trade to live by. The wrath of King James wasprobably never cooled against tobacco, but the expression of it wassomewhat tempered when he perceived what a source of revenue itbecame.
The savages of North America gave early evidence of the possession ofimaginative minds, of rare power of invention, and of an amiabledesire to make satisfactory replies to the inquiries of theirvisitors. They generally told their questioners what they wanted toknow, if they could ascertain what sort of information would pleasethem. If they had known the taste of the sixteenth century for themarvelous they could not have responded more fitly to suit it. Theyfilled Mr. Lane and Mr. Hariot full of tales of a wonderful coppermine on the River Maratock (Roanoke), where the metal was dipped outof the stream in great bowls. The colonists had great hopes of thisriver, which Mr: Hariot thought flowed out of the Gulf of Mexico, orvery near the South Sea. The Indians also conveyed to the mind ofthis sagacious observer the notion that they had a very respectablydeveloped religion; that they believed in one chief god who existedfrom all eternity, and who made many gods of less degree; that formankind a woman was first created, who by one of the gods broughtforth children; that they believed in the immortality of the soul,and that for good works a soul will be conveyed to bliss in thetabernacles of the gods, and for bad deeds to pokogusso, a great pitin the furthest part of the world, where the sun sets, and where theyburn continually. The Indians knew this because two men lately deadhad revived and come back to tell them of the other world. Thesestories, and many others of like kind, the Indians told ofthemselves, and they further pleased Mr. Hariot by kissing his Bibleand rubbing it all over their bodies, notwithstanding he told themthere was no virtue in the material book itself, only in itsdoctrines. We must do Mr. Hariot the justice to say, however, thathe had some little suspicion of the "subtiltie" of the weroances(chiefs) and the priests.
Raleigh was not easily discouraged; he was determined to plant hiscolony, and to send relief to the handful of men that Grenville hadleft on Roanoke Island. In May, 1587, he sent out three ships and ahundred and fifty householders, under command of Mr. John White, whowas appointed Governor of the colony, with twelve assistants as aCouncil, who were incorporated under the name of "The Governor andAssistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia," with instructions tochange their settlement to Chesapeake Bay. The expedition foundthere no one of the colony (whether it was fifty or fifteen thewriters disagree), nothing but the bones of one man where theplantation had been; the houses were unhurt, but overgrown withweeds, and the fort was defaced. Captain Stafford, with twenty men,went to Croatan to seek the lost colonists. He heard that the fiftyhad been set upon by three hundred Indians, and, after a sharpskirmish and the loss of one man, had taken boats and gone to a smallisland near Hatorask, and afterwards had departed no one knewwhither.
Mr. White sent a band to take revenge upon the Indians who weresuspected of their murder through treachery, which was guided byMateo, the friendly Indian, who had returned with the expedition fromEngland. By a mistake they attacked a friendly tribe. In August ofthis year Mateo was Christianized, and baptized under the title ofLord of Roanoke and Dassomonpeake, as a reward for his fidelity. Thesame month Elinor, the daughter of the Govemor, the wife of AnaniasDare, gave birth to a daughter, the first white child born in thispart of the continent, who was named Virginia.
Before long a dispute arose between the Governor and his Council asto the proper person to return to England for supplies. Whitehimself was finally prevailed upon to go, and he departed, leavingabout a hundred settlers on one of the islands of Hatorask to form aplantation.
The Spanish invasion and the Armada distracted the attention ofEurope about this time, and the hope of plunder from Spanish vesselswas more attractive than the colonization of America. It was notuntil 1590 that Raleigh was able to despatch vessels to the relief ofthe Hatorask colony, and then it was too late. White did, indeed,start out from Biddeford in April, 1588, with two vessels, but thetemptation to chase prizes was too strong for him, and he went on acruise of his own, and left the colony to its destruction.
In March, 1589-90, Mr. White was again sent out, with three ships,from Plymouth, and reached the coast in August. Sailing by Croatanthey went to Hatorask, where they descried a smoke in the place theyhad left the colony in 1587. Going ashore next day, they found noman, nor sign that any had been there lately. Preparing to go toRoanoke next day, a boat was upset and Captain Spicer and six of thecrew were drowned. This accident so discouraged the sailors thatthey could hardly be persuaded to enter on the search for the colony.At last two boats, with nineteen men, set out for Hatorask, andlanded at that part of Roanoke where the colony had been left. WhenWhite left the colony three years before, the men had talked of goingfifty miles into the mainland, and had agreed to leave some sign oftheir departure. The searchers found not a man of the colony; theirhouses were taken down, and a strong palisade had been built. Allabout were relics of goods that had been buried and dug up again andscattered, and on a post was carved the name "CROATAN." This signal,which was accompanied by no sign of distress, gave White hope that heshould find his comrades at Croatan. But one mischance or anotherhappening, his provisions being short, the expedition decided to rundown to the West Indies and "refresh" (chiefly with a little Spanishplunder), and return in the spring and seek their countrymen; butinstead they sailed for England and never went to Croatan. The menof the abandoned colonies were never again heard of. Years after, in1602, Raleigh bought a bark and sent it, under the charge of SamuelMace, a mariner who had been twice to Virginia, to go in search ofthe survivors of White's colony. Mace spent a month lounging aboutthe Hatorask coast and trading with the natives, but did not land onCroatan, or at any place where the lost colony might be expected tobe found; but having taken on board some sassafras, which at thattime brought a good price in England, and some other barks which weresupposed to be valuable, he basely shirked the errand on which he washired to go, and took himself and his spicy woods home.
The "Lost Colony" of White is one of the romances of the New World.Governor White no doubt had the feelings of a parent, but he did notallow them to interfere with his more public duties to go in searchof Spanish prizes. If the lost colony had gone to Croatan, it wasprobable that Ananias Dare and his wife, the Governor's daughter, andthe little Virginia Dare, were with them. But White, as we haveseen, had such confidence in Providence that he left his dearrelatives to its care, and made no attempt to visit Croatan.
Stith says that Raleigh sent five several times to search for thelost, but the searchers returned with only idle reports and frivolousallegations. Tradition, however, has been busy with the fate ofthese deserted colonists. One of the unsupported conjectures is thatthe colonists amalgamated with the tribe of Hatteras Indians, andIndian tradition and the physical characteristics of the tribe aresaid to confirm this idea. But the sporadic birth of children withwhite skins (albinos) among black or copper-colored races that havehad no intercourse with white people, and the occurrence of lighthair and blue eyes among the native races of America and of NewGuinea, are facts so well attested that no theory of amalgamation canbe sustained by such rare physical manifestations. According toCaptain John Smith, who wrote of Captain Newport's explorations in1608, there were no tidings of the waifs, for, says Smith, Newportreturned "without a lump of gold, a certainty of the South Sea, orone of the lost company sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh."
In his voyage of discovery up the Chickahominy, Smith seem; to haveinquired about this lost colony of King Paspahegh, for he says, "whathe knew of the dominions he spared not to acquaint me with, as ofcertaine men cloathed at a place called Ocanahonan, cloathcd likeme."
[Among these Hatteras Indians Captain Amadas, in 1584, saw childrenwith chestnut-colored hair.]
We come somewhat nearer to this matter in the "Historie of Travaileinto Virginia Britannia," published from the manuscript by theHakluyt Society in 1849, in which it is intimated that seven of thesedeserted colonists were afterwards rescued. Strachey is a first-rateauthority for what he saw. He arrived in Virginia in 1610 andremained there two years, as secretary of the colony, and was a manof importance. His "Historie" was probably written between 1612 and1616. In the first portion of it, which is descriptive of theterritory of Virginia, is this important passage: "At Peccarecamekand Ochanahoen, by the relation of Machumps, the people have housesbuilt with stone walls, and one story above another, so taught themby those English who escaped the slaughter of Roanoke. At what timethis our colony, under the conduct of Captain Newport, landed withinthe Chesapeake Bay, where the people breed up tame turkies abouttheir houses, and take apes in the mountains, and where, at Ritanoe,the Weroance Eyanaco, preserved seven of the English alive—four men,two boys, and one young maid (who escaped [that is from Roanoke] andfled up the river of Chanoke), to beat his copper, of which he hathcertain mines at the said Ritanoe, as also at Pamawauk are said to bestore of salt stones."
This, it will be observed, is on the testimony of Machumps. Thispleasing story is not mentioned in Captain Newport's "Discoveries"(May, 1607). Machumps, who was the brother of Winganuske, one of themany wives of Powhatan, had been in England. He was evidently alively Indian. Strachey had heard him repeat the "Indian grace," asort of incantation before meat, at the table of Sir Thomas Dale. Ifhe did not differ from his red brothers he had a powerfulimagination, and was ready to please the whites with any sort of amarvelous tale. Newport himself does not appear to have seen any ofthe "apes taken in the mountains." If this story is to be acceptedas true we have to think of Virginia Dare as growing up to be a womanof twenty years, perhaps as other white maidens have been, Indianizedand the wife of a native. But the story rests only upon a romancingIndian. It is possible that Strachey knew more of the matter than herelates, for in his history he speaks again of those betrayed people,"of whose end you shall hereafter read in this decade." But thepossessed information is lost, for it is not found in the remainderof this "decade" of his writing, which is imperfect. Anotherreference in Strachey is more obscure than the first. He is speakingof the merciful intention of King James towards the Virginia savages,and that he does not intend to root out the natives as the Spaniardsdid in Hispaniola, but by degrees to change their barbarous nature,and inform them of the true God and the way to Salvation, and thathis Majesty will even spare Powhatan himself. But, he says, it isthe intention to make "the common people likewise to understand, howthat his Majesty has been acquainted that the men, women, andchildren of the first plantation of Roanoke were by practice ofPowhatan (he himself persuaded thereunto by his priests) miserablyslaughtered, without any offense given him either by the firstplanted (who twenty and odd years had peaceably lived intermixed withthose savages, and were out of his territory) or by those who are nowcome to inhabit some parts of his distant lands," etc.
Strachey of course means the second plantation and not the first,which, according to the weight of authority, consisted of onlyfifteen men and no women.
In George Percy's Discourse concerning Captain Newport's explorationof the River James in 1607 (printed in Purchas's "Pilgrims") isthis sentence: "At Port Cotage, in our voyage up the river, we saw asavage boy, about the age of ten years, which had a head of hair of aperfect yellow, and reasonably white skin, which is a miracle amongstall savages." Mr. Neill, in his "History of the Virginia Company,"says that this boy "was no doubt the offspring of the colonists leftat Roanoke by White, of whom four men, two boys, and one young maidhad been preserved from slaughter by an Indian Chief." Under thecircumstances, "no doubt" is a very strong expression for a historianto use.
This belief in the sometime survival of the Roanoke colonists, andtheir amalgamation with the Indians, lingered long in colonialgossip. Lawson, in his History, published in London in 1718,mentions a tradition among the Hatteras Indians, "that several oftheir ancestors were white people and could talk from a book; thetruth of which is confirmed by gray eyes being among these Indiansand no others."
But the myth of Virginia Dare stands no chance beside that of
Pocahontas.
V
FIRST PLANTING OF THE COLONY
The way was now prepared for the advent of Captain John Smith inVirginia. It is true that we cannot give him his own title of itsdiscoverer, but the plantation had been practically abandoned, allthe colonies had ended in disaster, all the governors and captainshad lacked the gift of perseverance or had been early drawn intoother adventures, wholly disposed, in the language of Captain JohnWhite, "to seek after purchase and spoils," and but for the energyand persistence of Captain Smith the expedition of 1606 might havehad no better fate. It needed a man of tenacious will to hold acolony together in one spot long enough to give it root. CaptainSmith was that man, and if we find him glorying in his exploits, andrepeating upon single big Indians the personal prowess thatdistinguished him in Transylvania and in the mythical Nalbrits, wehave only to transfer our sympathy from the Turks to theSasquesahanocks if the sense of his heroism becomes oppressive.
Upon the return of Samuel Mace, mariner, who was sent out in 1602 tosearch for White's lost colony, all Raleigh's interest in theVirginia colony had, by his attainder, escheated to the crown. Buthe never gave up his faith in Virginia: neither the failure of nineseveral expeditions nor twelve years imprisonment shook it. On theeve of his fall he had written, "I shall yet live to see it anEnglish nation:" and he lived to see his prediction come true.
The first or Virginian colony, chartered with the Plymouth colony inApril, 1606, was at last organized by the appointment of Sir ThomasSmith, the 'Chief of Raleigh's assignees, a wealthy London merchant,who had been ambassador to Persia, and was then, or shortly after,governor of the East India Company, treasurer and president of themeetings of the council in London; and by the assignment of thetransportation of the colony to Captain Christopher Newport, amariner of experience in voyages to the West Indies and in plunderingthe Spaniards, who had the power to appoint different captains andmariners, and the sole charge of the voyage. No local councilorswere named for Virginia, but to Captain Newport, Captain BartholomewGosnold, and Captain John Ratcliffe were delivered sealedinstructions, to be opened within twenty-four hours after theirarrival in Virginia, wherein would be found the names of the personsdesignated for the Council.
This colony, which was accompanied by the prayers and hopes ofLondon, left the Thames December 19, 1606, in three vessels—theSusan Constant, one hundred tons, Captain Newport, with seventy-onepersons; the God-Speed, forty tons, Captain Gosnold, with fifty-twopersons; and a pinnace of twenty tons, the Discovery, CaptainRatcliffe, with twenty persons. The Mercure Francais, Paris, 1619,says some of the passengers were women and children, but there isno other mention of women. Of the persons embarked, one hundred andfive were planters, the rest crews. Among the planters were EdwardMaria Wingfield, Captain John Smith, Captain John Martin, CaptainGabriel Archer, Captain George Kendall, Mr. Robert Hunt, preacher,and Mr. George Percie, brother of the Earl of Northumberland,subsequently governor for a brief period, and one of the writers fromwhom Purchas compiled. Most of the planters were shipped asgentlemen, but there were four carpenters, twelve laborers, ablacksmith, a sailor, a barber, a bricklayer, a mason, a tailor, adrummer, and a chirurgeon.
The composition of the colony shows a serious purpose of settlement,since the trades were mostly represented, but there were too manygentlemen to make it a working colony. And, indeed, the gentlemen,like the promoters of the enterprise in London, were probably moresolicitous of discovering a passage to the South Sea, as the way toincrease riches, than of making a state. They were instructed toexplore every navigable river they might find, and to follow the mainbranches, which would probably lead them in one direction to the EastIndies or South Sea, and in the other to the Northwest Passage. Andthey were forcibly reminded that the way to prosper was to be of onemind, for their own and their country's good.
This last advice did not last the expedition out of sight of land.They sailed from Blackwell, December 19, 1606, but were kept sixweeks on the coast of England by contrary winds. A crew of saintscabined in those little caravels and tossed about on that coast forsix weeks would scarcely keep in good humor. Besides, the positionof the captains and leaders was not yet defined. Factious quarrelsbroke out immediately, and the expedition would likely have broken upbut for the wise conduct and pious exhortations of Mr. Robert Hunt,the preacher. This faithful man was so ill and weak that it wasthought he could not recover, yet notwithstanding the stormy weather,the factions on board, and although his home was almost in sight,only twelve miles across the Downs, he refused to quit the ship. Hewas unmoved, says Smith, either by the weather or by "the scandalousimputations (of some few little better than atheists, of the greatestrank amongst us)." With "the water of his patience" and "his godlyexhortations" he quenched the flames of envy and dissension.
They took the old route by the West Indies. George Percy notes thaton the 12th of February they saw a blazing star, and presently astorm. They watered at the Canaries, traded with savages at SanDomingo, and spent three weeks refreshing themselves among theislands. The quarrels revived before they reached the Canaries, andthere Captain Smith was seized and put in close confinement forthirteen weeks.
We get little light from contemporary writers on this quarrel. Smithdoes not mention the arrest in his "True Relation," but in his"General Historie," writing of the time when they had been six weeksin Virginia, he says: "Now Captain Smith who all this time from theirdeparture from the Canaries was restrained as a prisoner upon thescandalous suggestion of some of the chiefs (envying his repute) whofancied he intended to usurp the government, murder the Council, andmake himself King, that his confedcrates were dispersed in all threeships, and that divers of his confederates that revealed it, wouldaffirm it, for this he was committed a prisoner; thirteen weeks heremained thus suspected, and by that time they should return theypretended out of their commiserations, to refer him to the Council inEngland to receive a check, rather than by particulating his designsmake him so odious to the world, as to touch his life, or utterlyoverthrow his reputation. But he so much scorned their charity andpublically defied the uttermost of their cruelty, he wisely preventedtheir policies, though he could not suppress their envies, yet sowell he demeaned himself in this business, as all the company did seehis innocency, and his adversaries' malice, and those suborned toaccuse him accused his accusers of subornation; many untruths werealleged against him; but being apparently disproved, begot a generalhatred in the hearts of the company against such unjust Commanders,that the President was adjudged to give him L 200, so that all he hadwas seized upon, in part of satisfaction, which Smith presentlyreturned to the store for the general use of the colony."—
Neither in Newport's "Relatyon" nor in Mr. Wingfield's "Discourse" isthe arrest mentioned, nor does Strachey speak of it.
About 1629, Smith, in writing a description of the Isle of Mevis(Nevis) in his "Travels and Adventures," says: "In this little [isle]of Mevis, more than twenty years agone, I have remained a good timetogether, to wod and water—and refresh my men." It ischaracteristic of Smith's vivid imagination, in regard to his ownexploits, that he should speak of an expedition in which he had nocommand, and was even a prisoner, in this style: "I remained," and"my men." He goes on: "Such factions here we had as commonly attendsuch voyages, and a pair of gallows was made, but Captaine Smith, forwhom they were intended, could not be persuaded to use them; but notany one of the inventors but their lives by justice fell into hispower, to determine of at his pleasure, whom with much mercy hefavored, that most basely and unjustly would have betrayed him." Andit is true that Smith, although a great romancer, was oftenmagnanimous, as vain men are apt to be.
King James's elaborate lack of good sense had sent the expedition tosea with the names of the Council sealed up in a box, not to beopened till it reached its destination. Consequently there was norecognized authority. Smith was a young man of about twenty-eight,vain and no doubt somewhat "bumptious," and it is easy to believethat Wingfield and the others who felt his superior force andrealized his experience, honestly suspected him of designs againstthe expedition. He was the ablest man on board, and no doubt wasaware of it. That he was not only a born commander of men, but hadthe interest of the colony at heart, time was to show.
The voyagers disported themselves among the luxuries of the WestIndies. At Guadaloupe they found a bath so hot that they boiledtheir pork in it as well as over the fire. At the Island of Monacathey took from the bushes with their hands near two hogsheads full ofbirds in three or four hours. These, it is useless to say, wereprobably not the "barnacle geese" which the nautical travelers usedto find, and picture growing upon bushes and dropping from the eggs,when they were ripe, full-fledged into the water. The beasts werefearless of men. Wild birds and natives had to learn the whitesbefore they feared them.
"In Mevis, Mona, and the Virgin Isles," says the "General Historie,""we spent some time, where with a lothsome beast like a crocodile,called a gwayn [guana], tortoises, pellicans, parrots, and fishes, wefeasted daily."
Thence they made sail-in search of Virginia, b