Part 5

“Why, we have nothing to do with that.”

“That is the very reason. If it was mine or yours, do you think I should not have taken it in hand long ago? All my draining goes for little while that shallow ditch keeps my ground a continual sop. It is all uneven along the bottom;—not the same depth for three feet together anywhere, and not deep enough by two feet in any part. So there it is, choked up and putrid; and, after an hour or two of rain, my garden gets such a soaking, that the next frost is destruction.”

“I will speak about it again,” said Fleming. “We must have it set right before next winter.”

“I think we have seen enough of the uselessness of speaking,” replied Woodruffe, gloomily. “If we tease the gentry any more, they may punish you for it. I would show them my mind by being off,—throwing up my bargain at all costs, if I had not put so much into the ground that I have nothing left to move away with.”

“Don’t be afraid for me,” said Fleming, cheerfully, “It was chiefly my doing that you came here, and I must try my utmost to obtain fair conditions for you. We must remember that the benefit of your outlay has all to come.”

“Yes; I can’t say we have got much of it yet.”

“By next winter,” continued Fleming, “your privet hedges and screens will have grown up into some use against the frost; and your own drainage——. Come, come, Allan, my boy! be off! It is getting late.”

Allan seemed to be idling, re-arranging his bunches of small radishes, and little bundles of rhubarb, in their clean baskets, and improving the stick with which he was to drive: but he pleaded that he was waiting for Moss, and for the parcel which his mother was getting ready for Becky.

“Ah! my poor little girl!” said Woodruffe. “Give my love to her, and tell her it will be a happy day when we can send for her to come home again. Be sure you observe particularly, to tell us, how she looks; and, mind, if she fancies anything in the cart,—any radishes, or whatever else, because it comes out of our garden, be sure you give it her. I wish I was going myself with the cart, for the sake of seeing Becky; but I must go to work. Here have I been all the while, waiting to see you off. Ah! here they come! you may always have notice now of who is coming by that child’s crying.”

“O, father! not always!” exclaimed Allan.

“Far too often, I’m sure. I never knew a child grow so fractious. I am saying, my dear,” to his wife, who now appeared with her parcel, and Moss in his best hat, “that boy is the most fractious child we ever had: and he is getting too old for that to begin now. How can you spoil him so?”

“I am not aware,” said Mrs. Woodruffe, her eyes filling with tears, “that I treat him differently from the rest: but the child is not well. His chilblains tease him terribly; and I wish there may be nothing worse.”

“Warm weather will soon cure the chilblains, and then I hope we shall see an end of the fretting.—Now, leave off crying this minute, Moss, or you don’t go. You don’t see me cry with my rheumatism, and that is worse than chilblains, I can tell you.”

Moss tried to stifle his sobs, while his mother put more straw into the cart for him, and cautioned Allan to be careful of him, for it really seemed as if the child was tender all over. Allan seemed to succeed best as comforter. He gave Moss the stick to wield, and showed him how to make believe to whip the pony, so that before they turned the corner, Moss was wholly engrossed with what he called driving.

“Yes, yes,” said Woodruffe, as he turned away, to go to his garden, “Allan is the one to manage him. He can take as good care of him as any woman, without spoiling him.”

Mrs. Woodruffe submitted to this in silence; but with the feeling that she did not deserve it.

Becky had had no notice of this visit from her brothers: but no such visit could take her by surprise; for she was thinking of her family all day long, every day, and fancying she should see them, whichever way she turned. It was not her natural destination to be a servant in a farm-house: she had never expected it,—never been prepared for it. She was as willing to work as any girl could be; and her help in the gardening was beyond what most women are capable of: but it was a bitter thing to her to go among strangers, and toil for them, when she knew that she was wanted at home by father and mother, and brothers, and just at present, by her sister too; for Mrs. Fleming’s confinement was to happen this spring. The reason why Becky was not at home while so much wanted there was, that there really was no accommodation for her. The plan of sleeping all huddled together as they were at first would not do. The girl herself could not endure it; and her parents felt that she must be got out at any sacrifice. They had inquired diligently till they found a place for her in a farm-house where the good wife promised protection, and care, and kindness; and fulfilled her promise to the best of her power.

“I hope they do well by you here, Becky,” asked Allan, when the surprise caused by his driving up with a dash had subsided, and everybody had retired, to leave Becky with her brothers for the few minutes they could stay. “I hope they are kind to you here.”

“O, yes,—very kind. And I am sure you ought to say so to father and mother.”

Becky had jumped into the cart, and had her arms round Moss, and her head on his shoulder. Raising her head, and with her eyes filling as she spoke, she inquired anxiously how the new cottages went on, and when father and mother were to have a home of their own again. She owned, but did not wish her father and mother to hear of it, that she did not like being among such rough people as the farm servants. She did not like some of the behaviour that she saw; and, still less, such talk as she was obliged to overhear. When _would_ a cottage be ready for them?

“Why, the new cottages would soon be getting on now,” Allan said: but he didn’t know; nobody fancied the look of them. He saw them just after the foundations were laid; and the enclosed parts were like a clay-puddle. He did not see how they were ever to be improved; for the curse of wet seemed to be on them, as upon everything about the Station. Fleming’s cottage was the best he had seen, after all, if only it was twice as large. If anything could be done to make the new cottages what cottages should be, it would be done: for every body agreed that the railway gentlemen desired to do the best for their people, and to set an example in that respect: but it was beyond anybody’s power to make wet clay as healthy as warm gravel. Unless they could go to work first to dry the soil, it seemed a hopeless sort of affair.

“But, I say, Becky,” pursued Allan, “you know about my garden—that father gave me a garden of my own.”

Becky’s head was turned quite away; and she did not look round, when she replied,

“Yes; I remember. How does your garden get on?”

There was something in her voice which made her brother lean over and look into her face; and, as he expected, tears were running down her cheeks.

“There now!” said he, whipping the back of the cart with his stick; “something must be done, if you can’t get on here.”

“O! I can get on. Be sure you don’t tell mother that I can’t get on, or anything about it.”

“You look healthy, to be sure.”

“To be sure I am. Don’t say any more about it. Tell me about your garden.”

“Well: I am trying what I can make of it, after I have done working with father. But it takes a long time to bring it round.”

“What! is the wet there, too?”

“Lord, yes! The wet was beyond everything at first. I could not leave the spade in the ground ten minutes, if father called me, but the water was standing in the hole when I went back again. It is not so bad now, since I made a drain to join upon father’s principal one; and father gave me some sand, and plenty of manure: but it seems to us that manure does little good. It won’t sink in when the ground is so wet.”

“Well, there will be the summer next, and that will dry up your garden.”

“Yes. People say the smells are dreadful in hot weather, though. But we seem to get used to that. I thought it sickly work, just after we came, going down to get osiers, and digging near the big ditch that is our plague now: but somehow, it does not strike me now as it did then, though Fleming says it is getting worse every warm day. But come—I must be off. What will you help yourself to? And don’t forget your parcel.”

Becky’s great anxiety was to know when her brothers would come again. O! very often, she was assured—oftener and oftener as the vegetables came forward: whenever there were either too many or too few to send to the town by rail.

After Becky had jumped down, the farmer and one of the men were seen to be contemplating the pony.

“What have you been giving your pony lately?” asked the farmer of Allan. “I ask as a friend, having some experience of this part of the country. Have you been letting him graze?”

“Yes, in the bit of meadow that we have leave for. There is a good deal of grass there, now. He has been grazing there these three weeks.”

“On the meadow where the osier beds are? Ay! I knew it, by the look of him. Tell your father that if he does not take care, his pony will have the staggers in no time. An acquaintance of mine grazed some cattle there once; and in a week or two, they were all feverish, so that the butcher refused them on any terms; and I have seen more than one horse in the staggers, after grazing in marshes of that sort.”

“There is fine thick grass there, and plenty of it,” said Allan, who did not like that anybody but themselves should criticise their new place and plans.

“Ay, ay; I know,” replied the farmer. “But if you try to make hay of that grass, you’ll be surprised to find how long it takes to make, and how like wool it comes out at last. It is a coarse grass, with no strength in it; and it must be a stronger beast than this that will bear feeding on it. Just do you tell your father what I say, that’s all; and then he can do as he pleases: but I would take a different way with that pony, without loss of time, if it was mine.”

Allan did not much like taking this sort of message to his father, who was not altogether so easy to please as he used to be. If anything vexed him ever so little, he always began to complain of his rheumatism—and he now complained of his rheumatism many times in a day. It was managed, however, by tacking a little piece of amusement and pride upon it. Moss was taught, all the way as they went home, after selling their vegetables, how much everything sold for; and he was to deliver the money to his father, and go through his lesson as gravely as any big man. It succeeded very well. Everybody laughed. Woodruffe called the child his little man-of-business; gave him a penny out of the money he brought; and when he found that the child did not like jumping as he used to do, carried him up to the railway to listen for the whistle, and see the afternoon train come up, and stop a minute, and go on again.

TOPOGRAPHY AND TEMPERANCE.

FROM MR. CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE.

“MR. CONDUCTOR,

“Sir, I take up my pen to tell you what’s going to happen if the cause of temperance is to be allowed to have unlicensed power to unlicense all the public-houses. We have heard a good deal about the advantages of Temperance (and I don’t deny them), but Mr. Ledru Rollin has taught me to look closer than ever to the dark side of things, and tee-totalism has its dark side like everything else; it is not all clear water, I can tell you. I look forward to the time when strong liquors will be abolished, and pot-houses taken from the corners of the streets or shifted from the sides of the road, and I say, ‘how _shall_ I find my way about?’

“For the fact is; Sir, public-houses are the great land-marks of the country. Whether you are benighted in a Northumberland moor; lost in a Devonshire lane (the one thing in nature which it is well known has no end); whether you are cast away in a river; left without a clue upon Salisbury Plain; or reduced to a state of topographical despair in a Warwickshire wood; the first person you meet—be it he or she, gentle or simple, old or young, a genius or an idiot—will assuredly convince you that the only rural means of directing you are the names and signs of places of public entertainment. ‘Go on straight till you come to the Green Lion, then turn to the left close to the Goat and Compasses, and after you have passed the Plough, bear off to the right; and, opposite the Jolly Gardeners, you will see a lane: go down that lane till you have to cross a brook by the side of the Bottle and Bagpipes, and when you have got to the Three Whistles and Cockchafer further down, get over a stile next to the Tinker and Turkey-Cock, take the first to the left—and that’s it.’ Such were the directions by which I found my old friend, Groggles, last Monday. Without the signs I have mentioned, I never should have found Groggles to this day.

“Now, Sir, I trust the advocates of temperance will pause before they wash away the land-marks of England (Tooting included), in order to substitute water-marks. How are we to find our way about without signs, I wonder? for I suppose these will not be allowed to stand when the houses behind them are taken away. Do the great Father Mathews of this age intend—like the monks of old—to christen the wells, and to give names to the pumps, and springs, and fountains, and conduits? Indeed I hope they do; for these I venture to say will be the only taps they intend leaving to a future generation.

“Unless, Sir, they wish the topography of our native land to be utterly confused, and desire to make voluntary locomotion impossible (I call railways compulsory travelling, for you must go where they choose to take you), I do intreat of them to leave us their signs, whatever they do with the inns. Why not move the former to stand sponsors to their new-fangled watering places? Take the ‘Puncheon of Rum’ from what used to be the posting-house (before steam blew post-horses off the road) and stick it on the parish pump. Let wayside wells be ornamented with effigies of ‘Topers Heads’; transfer the ‘Barrel of Beer’ from the village inn to the village fountain, and the ‘Jolly Full Bottle’ from the alehouse to the conduit. Then, when a man comes to the picture of three drunken soldiers, and the inscription, ‘The Rendezvous,’ he will know it means a reservoir, or regular meeting of the waters. The ‘Punch-Bowl,’ in gold letters, will indicate a water-trough; the ‘Black Jack’ would give a significant license for water to be drunk on the premises; and the ‘Sir John Barleycorn’ would indicate that a good supply of the ale of our first parent is not far off.

“I do hope my suggestion will be complied with. The tavern signs of England are a great topographical institution. If they will not take them down, the Temperance Movement may do its worst for me. I, and a good many others who live out of town and don’t carry lanterns at night, will still be able to find our way about, and the agricultural population will be able to show us when we have lost it. In that case, the Green Dragons, Marquises of Granby, Roses and Crowns, Bears and Buttermilks, Bulls in the Pounds, Stars and Stumps, with innumerable other signs dear to the eyes and ready to the tongues of unconverted tipplers for the behoof of way-beguiled strangers, would not be utterly lost to the land. Without them, I venture to assert, in conclusion, in the words of the late Mr. Pope, England (Tooting included) will be ‘a mighty maze without a plan.’

“I am, &c., &c. “CHRISTOPHER SHRIMBLE. “Paradise Row, Tooting.”

THE LATE AMERICAN PRESIDENT.

Towards the close of the last century there was a movement of settlers to the frontiers of Kentucky. The new comers to the then unsettled district were from various parts of the American continent, and each of the pioneers who thus cast his lot upon the extreme verge of civilisation made his account for holding his homestead by aid of his rifle, against the attacks of the denizens of the neighbouring forests. Sometimes the enemy was only in shape of a wolf or a bear—oftentimes in that of an Indian. In either case the farmer had to maintain his ground by the strong hand, in those days the only law that held sway in the backwoods. In such a state of affairs it is clear that none but bold spirits would venture to found a home on the frontier; yet such were not wanting; and amongst them was a farmer, who at an earlier period of his life had left the plough to take up arms in defence of American independence. In that rough and ready service he had gained the often quickly-acquired rank of Colonel; but the war ceasing, he, like others among his patriotic countrymen, quietly returned to his more peaceful occupation as a farmer; choosing a location where land was plenty and cheap to those who had the courage to hold it where Indians and other dangerous neighbours were abundant. The sons of such a man, nurtured in such a spot, might well be expected to inherit the enterprise, courage, and hardihood which distinguished their parent. Handling a rifle as soon as they were strong enough to lift one; accustomed to hunting excursions and “camping out;” working now at the plough, now in building up a barn, or in filling it when complete; driving the waggon and its load to a distant market, and bringing back at any hour, and in all seasons, the stores that varied their farm-grown contributions to the larder; and when winter-time brought comparative leisure, turning to books for almost the only education procurable in the rough and primitive region they inhabited;—boys, so reared, could scarcely be other than bold, energetic, and fruitful in resources, and equal in after life to the shifting exigencies of an active military career. From such a parent, and such a childhood and youth, and with such an early training, sprang President and General Zachary Taylor, whose recent death our Transatlantic brethren are even now deploring; and the story of whose life their journals will help us to tell.

Zachary Taylor before he was twenty-one volunteered to leave home on a military expedition needed by the exigencies of the time. This, his first essay in war, proved very harmless; for no enemy was found, and he soon returned to his father’s farm, with a taste, however, for the new life he had made this short trial of. The taste thus acquired induced him to accept with great alacrity an opportunity that subsequently offered of joining the regular army of the United States, which he did in 1803, with the rank of lieutenant. Shortly afterwards an occasion arose for distinguishing himself, and he did not let it pass unimproved. He defended a post called Fort Harrison, against great odds; and by the check thus given to a large hostile party of Indians, saved a frontier from devastation. This gallant commencement was followed by a succession of equally noticeable exploits. He courted every chance of securing active service, and in succession won new reputation in contests with the Indians, with the English, and lastly with the Mexicans. Since it was with this last opponent that his chief battles were fought, and his really important victories won; and as those victories have gained an European reputation from the fact that they led to the acquisition of the real land of gold—El Dorado—California itself; we may glance over the events that induced and characterised the strife, and led to so memorable a result.

Mexico and the United States had long had causes of quarrel; not the least of which was that the Mexicans got into debt to the Yankees, and would not pay what they admitted to be due. With several such unsettled and unsatisfactory accounts on hand, the Texas difficulty arose, and a large body of the Texians declaring for annexation with the United States, the few scruples that stood in the way of such an increase of dominion were quickly overlooked, and the large and fertile province was incorporated in the Union. Half such a cause of quarrel was enough to secure a declaration of war from a country like Mexico—_a country that has gone through eighteen revolutions in twenty-five years_—and accordingly war began. The Mexicans took steps for re-assuming the lost Texas, when, on the 4th of February, 1846, General Taylor received orders to march, with a force of three thousand men under his command, to the Rio Grande, the western limit of the newly-attached State. The President, for the time being, of Mexico claimed Texas as a revolted province, and hastened to submit the question to the ordeal of battle. The Mexicans shed the first blood. They took some prisoners—some Americans—and shot them in cold blood; and soon afterwards they captured more Americans, including some women, whose bodies were discovered subsequently with their throats cut. This brutality added fuel to the flame before existing, and the struggle began that ended in the capture of Mexico and the cession of California.

The early days of the war were characterised by many acts of daring bravery. Amongst others, we find mention of the feat performed by a Captain Walker. The Americans were in total ignorance of the movements of the enemy, when they heard cannonading in the direction of a fort with which they had been unable to keep open communications. Taylor dispatched a squadron of cavalry, who returned without definite information, and the General was in suspense as to the condition of his friends in the fort, when Captain Walker arrived in the camp bearing dispatches from the leader of the beleaguered party in Fort Brown. He had left the small stronghold under the cover of night, and with no other guide than the wind on his cheek had tracked his way through the enemy’s camp, and through the wild, roadless country that lay between it and the army of General Taylor. He brought the news that the Mexicans had attacked Fort Brown, opening upon it a heavy cannonade. The besieged had, however, returned the fire with spirit, and had succeeded in dismounting some of the Mexican guns. General Taylor at once set off to raise the siege, taking with him two thousand three hundred men. With this force he encountered the enemy at Palo Alta, and the battle so named was fought. For five hours was the strife continued, when the attacking party carried the day. The Mexicans fell back.

On the next morning another engagement took place with the same result. The Mexicans lost a thousand men; some cannon; and had one of their generals taken prisoner;—and Fort Brown was relieved.

The war had thus commenced. The Mexicans loudly denounced what they called the dismemberment of their empire; the Americans heard with evident joy that their small army had won two battles of an enemy who had provoked the encounter.