PART II.

Gentleman Bill, full of confidence in his powers of persuasion, advances, to add the weight of his respectability to his parent's remonstrance.

"Good morning, Mr. Frisbie,"--politely lifting his hat.

"Hey?" says Frisbie, sarcastic.--"Look at his insolence, Stephen!"

"I sincerely trust, Sir," begins Bill, "that you will reconsider your determination, Sir"----

"Shall I fetch him a cut with the hosswhip?" whispers Stephen, loud enough for the stalwart young black to hear.

"You can fetch him a cut with the hosswhip, if you like," Bill answers for Mr. Frisbie, with fire blazing upon his polite face. "But, Sir, in case you do, Sir, I shall take it upon myself to teach you better manners than to insult a gentleman conferring with your master, Sir!"

"Ha, ha, ha!" roared Mr. Frisbie. "You've got it, Stephen!"

The whip trembled in Stephen's angry hand, but the strapping young negro looked so cool and wicked, standing there, that he wisely forbore to strike.

"I am sure, Sir," Bill addresses the landlord, "you are too humane a person"----

"No, I a'n't," says the florid Frisbie. "I know what you're going to say; but it's no use. You can't work upon my feelings; I a'n't one of your soft kind.--Drive up to the door, Stephen."

Stephen is very glad to start the horse suddenly and graze Gentleman Bill's knee with the wheel-hub. Bill steps back a pace, and follows him with the smiting look of one who treasures up wrath. You'd better be careful, Stephen, let me tell you!

Joe stands holding the door open, and Mr. Frisbie looks in. There, to his astonishment, he sees the women washing clothes as unconcernedly as if nothing unusual was about to occur. He jumps to the ground, heated with passion.

"Ho, here!" he shouts in at the door; "don't you see the house is coming down?"

Upon which the deaf old grandfather rises in his corner, and pulls off his cap, with the usual salutation, "Sarvant, Sah," etc., and sitting down again, relapses into a doze immediately.

Frisbie is furious. "What you 'bout here?" he cries, in an alarming voice.

"Bless you, Sir," answers the old woman, over a tub, "don't you see? We's doon' a little washin', Sir. Didn't you never see nobody wash afore?" And she proceeds with her rubbing.

"The house will be tumbling on you in ten minutes!"

"You think so? Now I don't, Mr. Frisbie! This 'ere house a'n't gwine to tumble down this mornin', I know. The Lord 'll look out for that, I guess. Look o' these 'ere childern! look o' me! look o' my ole father there, more'n a hunderd year ole! What's a-gwine to 'come on us all, if you pull the house down? Can't git another right away; no team to tote our things off with; an' how 'n the world we can do 'thout no house this winter I can't see. So I've jes' concluded to trust the Lord, an' git out my washin'." Rub, rub, rub!

Frisbie grows purple. "Are you fools?" he inquires.

"Yes, _I_ am! I'm Fessenden's." And the honest, staring youth comes forward to see what is wanted.

This unexpected response rather pricks the wind-bag of the man's zeal. He looks curiously at the boy, who follows him out of the house.

"Stephen, did you ever see that fellow before?"

"Yes, Sir; he's the one come to our house Saturday night, and I showed round to the Judge's."

"Are you the fellow?"

"Yes," says Fessenden's. "There wouldn't any of you let me into your houses, neither!"

"Wouldn't the people I sent you to let you in?"

"No!"

"Hear that, Stephen! your philanthropical Gingerford!--And what did you do?"

"I didn't do nothin',--only laid down to die, I did."

"But you didn't die, did you?"

"No! This man he come along, and brought me here."

"Here? to the niggers?"

"Yes! You wouldn't have me, so they took me, and dried me, and fed me,--good folks, niggers!" Fessenden's bore this simple testimony.

What is it makes the Frisbie color heighten so? Is it Gentleman Bill's quiet smile, as he stands by and hears this conversation?

"And you have been here ever since?" says the man, in a humbler key, and with a milder look, than before.

"Yes! It's a r'al good place!" says the youth.

"But a'n't you ashamed to live with niggers?"

"Ashamed? What for? Nobody else was good to me. But they was good to me. I a'n't ashamed."

The Frisbie color heightens more and more. He looks at that wretched dwelling,--he glances aside at Mr. Williams, that coal-black Christian, of sad and resigned demeanor, waiting ruefully to see the roof torn off,--the only roof that had afforded shelter to the perishing outcast. Mr. Frisbie is not one of the "soft kind," but he feels the prick of conscience in his heart.

"Why didn't you go to the poor-house? Didn't anybody tell you to?"

"Yes, that's what they said. But nobody showed me the way, and I couldn't find it."

"Where did you come from? Who are you?"

"Fessenden's."

"Who is Fessenden?"

"The man that owns me. But he whipped me and shet me up, and I wouldn't stay."

"Where does he live?"

"Don't know. Away off."

"You'd better go back to him, hadn't you?"

"No! I like these folks. Best folks I ever seen!" avers the earnest youth.

Flush and confusion are in the rich man's face. He turns up an uneasy glance at Adsly's men, already on the roof; then coughs, and says to Stephen,--

"This is interesting!"

"Very," says Stephen.

"Don't you remember, _I_ was going to make some provision for this fellow,--I'd have seen him safe in the almshouse, if nothing more,--but you suggested Gingerford's."

"I supposed Gingerford would be delighted to take him in," grins Stephen.

"Instead of that, he turns him out in the storm! Did you ever hear of such sham philanthropy? By George!" cries Frisbie, in his indignation against the Judge, "there's more real philanthropy in these niggers"----checking himself, and glancing again at the workmen on the roof.

"What's philanthropy?" asks Fessenden's. "Is that what you're tearin' their house down for? I'm sorry!"

Frisbie is flustered. He is ashamed of appearing "soft." He wishes heartily to be well rid of the niggers. But something in his own heart rebels against the course he has taken to eject them.

"Just hold on there a minute, Adsly!"

"Ay, ay!" says Adsly. And the work stops.

"Now what do I do this for?" exclaims Frisbie, vexed at himself the instant he has spoken. And he frowns, and blows his nose furiously. "It's because I am too good-natured, altogether!"

"No, no, Sir,--I beg your pardon!" says Mr. Williams, his heart all aglow with gratitude. "To be kind and merciful to the poor, that isn't to be too good-natured, Sir!"

"Well, well! I a'n't one of your milk-and-water sort. Look at such a man as Gingerford, for example! But I guess, come case in hand, you'll find as much genuine humanity in me, Adsly, as in them that profess so much. Wait till to-morrow before you knock the old shell to pieces. I'll give 'em another day. And in the mean time, boy," turning to Fessenden's, "you must find you another home. Either go back to your guardian, or I'll send you over to the almshouse. These people can't keep you, for they'll have no house in these parts to keep themselves in."

"So?" says Fessenden's. "They kep' me when they had a house, and I'll stay with them when they haven't got any."

Something in the case of this unfortunate stripling interested Frisbie. His devotion to his new friends was so sincere, and so simply expressed, that the robust, well-fed man was almost touched by it.

"I vow, it's a queer case, Stephen! What do you think of it?"

"I think"----said the joker.

"What do you think? Out with it!"

"You own that vacant lot opposite Gingerford's?"

"Yes; what of that?"

"I think, then, instead of pulling the house down, I'd just move it over there, niggers and all"----

"And set it opposite the Judge's!" exclaims Frisbie, catching gleefully at the idea.

"Exactly," says Stephen; "and give him enough of niggers for one while."

"I'll do it!--Adsly! Adsly! See here, Adsly! Do you suppose this old box can be moved?"

"I guess so. 'T a'n't very large. Ruther think the frame'll hold together."

"Will you undertake the job?"

"Wal, I never moved a house. There's Cap'en Slade, he moves houses. He's got all the tackle for it, and I ha'n't. I suppose I can git him, if you want me to see to the job."

Agreed! It did not take Frisbie long to decide. It was such a tremendous joke! A nest of niggers under the dainty Gingerford nose! ho, ho! Whip up, Stephen! And the red and puffy face, redder and puffier still with immense fun, rode off.

Adsly and his men disappeared also, to return with Cap'en Slade and his tackle on the morrow. Then Joe began to dance and scream like a little devil.

"Have a ride! have a ride! Oh, mammy! they're gunter snake th' ole house through the village to-morrer, an' we're all gunter have a ride! free gratis for nothin'! 'thout payin' for 't neither! A'n't we, Bill?"

Mrs. Williams sits right down, overcome by the surprise.

"Now I want to know if that 'ere 's so!"

"That's what't looks like now," says Mr. Williams. "We're goin' to be sot opposite Mr. Gingerford's."

"'Ristocratic!" cries Joe, putting on airs. "That's what'll tickle Bill!"

"Oh, laws!" exclaims Mrs. Williams, with humorous sadness,--"what a show th' ole cabin'll make, stuck down there 'mongst all them fine housen!"

"I don't know's I quite like the notion," says her husband, with a good-natured expansion of his serious features. "I'm 'fraid we sha'n't be welcome neighbors down there. 'T a'n't so much out o' kindness to us as it is out o' spite to the Gingerfords, that the house is to be moved instid o' tore down."

"That's the glory of the Lord! Even the wrath of man shall praise Him!" utters the old grandmother, devoutly.

"Won't it be jimmy?" crows Joe. "He's a jolly ole brick, that Frisbie! I'm a-gunter set straddle on the ridge-pole, an' carry a flag. Hooray!"

"I consider that the situation will be very much preferable to this," observes Gentleman Bill, polishing his hat with his coat-sleeve. "Better quarter of the town; more central; eligible locality for establishing a tailor-shop."

"Legible comicality for stablin' a shailor-top!" stammers Joe, mimicking his brother.

Upon which Bill--as he sometimes did, when excited--elapsed into the vulgar, but expressive idiom of the family. "Shet yer head, can't ye?" And he lifted a hand, with intent to clap it smartly upon the part the occlusion of which was desirable.

Joe shrieked, and fled.

"No quarrellin' on a 'casion like this!" interposes the old woman, covering the boy's retreat. "This 'ere's a time for joy and thanks, an' nuffin' else. Bless the Lord, I knowed He'd keep an eye on to th' ole house. Didn't I tell ye that boy'd bring us good luck? It's all on his account the house a'n't tore down, an' I consider it a mighty Providence from fust to last. Wasn't I right, when I said I guessed I'd have faith, an' git the washin' out? Bless the Lord, I could cry!"

And cry she did, with a fulness of heart which, I think, might possibly have convinced even the jocund Frisbie that there was something better than an old, worn-out, spiteful jest in the resolution he had taken to have the house moved, instead of razed.

And now the deaf old patriarch in the corner-became suddenly aware that something exciting was going forward; but being unable clearly to comprehend what, and chancing to see Fessenden's coming in, he gave expression to his exuberant emotions by rising, and shaking the lad's passive hand, with the usual highly polite salutation.

"Tell him we're all a-gunter have a ride," said Joe.

But as Fessenden's couldn't tell him loud enough, Joe screamed the news.

"Say?" asked the old man, raising a feeble hand to his ear, and stooping and smiling.

"Put th' ole house on wheels, an' dror it!" shrieked Joe.

"Yes, yes!" chuckled the old man. "I remember! Six hills in a row. Busters!"--looking wonderfully knowing, and, with feeble forefinger raised, nodding and winking at his great-grandchild,--as it were across the slim gulf of a hundred years which divided the gleeful boyhood of Joe from the second childhood of the ancient dreamer.

The next day came Adsly and his men again, with Cap'en Slade and his tackle, and several yokes of oxen with drivers. Levers and screws moved the house from its foundations, and it was launched upon rollers. Then, progress! Then, sensation in Timberville! Some said it was Noah's ark, sailing down the street. The household furniture of the patriarch was mostly left on board the antique craft, but Noah and his family followed on foot. They took their live stock with them,--cow and calf, and poultry and pig. Joe and his great-grandfather carried each a pair of pullets, in their hands. Gentleman Bill drove the pig, with a rope tied to his (piggy's) leg. Mr. Williams transported more poultry,--turkeys and hens, in two great flopping clusters, slung over his shoulder, with their heads down. The women bore crockery and other frangible articles, and helped Fessenden's drive the cow. A picturesque procession, not noiseless! The bosses shouted to the men, the drivers shouted to the oxen, loud groaned the beams of the ark, the cow lowed, the calf bawled, great was the squawking and squealing!

Gentleman Bill was sick of the business before they had gone half-way. He wished he had stayed in the shop, instead of coming over to help the family, and make himself ridiculous. There was not much pleasure in driving that stout young porker. Many a sharp jerk lamed the hand that held the rope that restrained the leg that piggy wanted to run with. Besides, (as I believe swine and some other folks invariably do under the like circumstances,) piggy always tried to run in the wrong direction. To add to Gentleman Bill's annoyance, spectators soon became numerous, and witty suggestions were not wanting.

"Take him up in your arms," said somebody.

"Take advantage of his contrariness, and try to drive him 't other way," said somebody else.

"Ride him," proposed a third.

"Make a whistle of his tail, an' blow it, an' he'll foller ye!" screamed a bright school-boy.

"Stick some of yer tailor's needles into him!" "Sew him up in a sack, and shoulder him!" "Take up his hind-legs, and push him like a wheelbarrer!" And so forth, and so forth, till Bill was in a fearful sweat and rage, partly with the pig, but chiefly with the uncivil multitude.

"Ruther carry me on your back, some rainy night, hadn't ye?" said Fessenden's, in all simplicity, perceiving his distress.

"You didn't excruciate my wrist so like time!" groaned Bill. And what was more, darkness covered that other memorable journey.

As for Joe, he liked it. Though he was not allowed to ride the ridge-pole and wave a flag through the village, as he proposed, he had plenty of fun on foot. He went swinging his chickens, and frequently pinching them to make them musical. The laughter of the lookers-on didn't trouble him in the least; for he could laugh louder than any. But his sisters were ashamed, and Mr. Williams looked grave; for they were, actually, human! and I suppose they didn't like to be jeered at, and called a swarm of niggers, any more than you or I would.

So the journey was accomplished; and the stupendous joke of Frisbie's was achieved. Conceive Mrs. Gingerford's wonder, when she beheld the ark approaching! Fancy her feelings, when she saw it towed up and moored in front of her own door,--the whole tribe of Noah, lowing cow, bawling calf, squawking poultry, and squealing pig, and so forth, and so forth, accompanying! This, then, was the meaning of the masons at work over there since yesterday. They had been preparing the new foundations on which the old house was to rest. So the stunning truth broke upon her: niggers for neighbors! What had she done to merit such a dispensation?

What done, unhappy lady? Your own act has drawn down upon you this retribution. You yourself have done quite as much towards bringing that queer craft along-side as yonder panting and lolling oxen. They are but the brute instruments, while you have been a moral agent in the matter. One word, uttered by you three nights ago, has had the terrible magic in it to summon forth from the mysterious womb of events this extraordinary procession. Had but a different word been spoken, it would have proved equally magical, though we might never have known it: that breath by your delicate lips would have blown back these horrible shadows; and instead of all this din and confusion of house-hauling, we should have had silence this day in the streets of Timberville. You don't see it? In plain phrase, then, understand: you took not in the stranger at your gate; but he found refuge with these blacks; and because they showed mercy unto him, the sword of Frisbie's wrath was turned aside from them, and, edged by Stephen's witty jest, directed against you and yours. Hence this interesting scene which you look down upon from your windows, at the beautiful hour of sunset, which you love. And, oh, to think of it! between your chamber and those golden sunsets that negro hut and those negroes will always be henceforth!

Now don't you wish; Madam, you had had compassion on the wayfarer? But we will not mock at your calamity. You did precisely what any of us would have been only too apt to do in your place. You told the simple truth, when you said you didn't want the ragged wretch in your house. And what person of refinement, I'd like to know, would have wanted him? For, say what you will, it is a most disagreeable thing to admit downright dirty vagabonds into our elegant dwellings. And dangerous, besides; for they might murder us in the night,--or steal something! Oh, we fastidious and fearful! where is our charity? where is the heart of trust? There was of old a Divine Man, who had not where to lay his head,--whom the wise of those days scoffed at as a crazy fellow,--whom respectable people shunned,--who made himself the companion of the poor, the comforter of the distressed, the helper of those in trouble, and the healer of diseases;--who shrank neither from the man or woman of sin, nor from the loathsome leper, nor from sorrow and death for our sakes,--whose gospel we now profess to live by, and----

But let us not be "soft." We are reasonably Christian, we hope; and it shows low breeding to be ultra. (Was the Carpenter's Son low-bred?)

And now the Judge rides home in the dusk of the December day. It is still light enough, however, for him to see that Frisbie's vacant lot has been made an Ararat of; and he could hear the Noachian noises, were it ever so dark. The awful jest bursts upon him; he hears the screaming of the bomb-shell, then the explosion. But the mind of this man is (so to speak) casemated. It is a shock,--but he never once loses his self-possession. His quick perception detects Friend Frisbie behind the gun; and he smiles with his intelligent, fine-cut face. Shall malice have the pleasure of knowing that the shot has told? Our orator is too sagacious for that. There is never any use in being angry: that is one of his maxims. Therefore, if he feels any chagrin, he will smother it. If there is a storm within, the world shall see only the rainbow, that radiant smile of his. Cool is Gingerford! He has seized the subject instantly, and calculated all its bearings. He is a man to make the best of it; and even the bitterness which is in it shall, if possible, bear him some wholesome drink. To school his mind to patience,--to practise daily the philanthropy he teaches,--this will be much; and already his heart is humbled and warmed. And who knows,--for, with all his sincerity and aspiration, he has an eye to temporal uses,--who knows but this stumbling-block an enemy has placed in his way may prove the stepping-stone of his ambition?

"What is all this, James?" he inquires of his son, who comes out to the gate to meet him.

"Frisbie's meanness!" says the young man, almost choking. "And the whole town is laughing at us!"

"Laughing at us? What have we done?" mildly answers the parent. "I tell you what, James,--they sha'n't laugh at us long. We can live so as to compel them to reverence us; and if there is any ridicule attached to the affair, it will soon rest where it belongs."

"Such a sty stuck right down under our noses!" muttered the mortified James.

"We will make of it an ornament," retorts the Judge, with mounting spirits. "Come with me,"--taking the youth's arm. "My son, call no human habitation a sty. These people are our brothers, and we will show them the kindness of brethren."

A servant receives the horse, and Gingerford and his son cross the street.

"Good evening, Friend Williams! So you have concluded to come and live neighbor to us, have you?"

Friend Williams was at the end of the house, occupied in improvising a cowshed under an old apple-tree. Piggy was already tied to the trunk of the tree, and the hens and turkeys were noisily selecting their roosts in the boughs. At sight of the Judge, whose displeasure he feared, the negro was embarrassed, and hardly knew what to say. But the pleasant greeting of the silver-toned voice reassured him, and he stopped his work to frame his candid, respectful answer.

"It was Mr. Frisbie that concluded. All I had to do was to go with the house wherever he chose to move it."

"Well, he might have done much worse by you. You have a nice landlord, a nice landlord, Mr. Williams. Mr. Frisbie is a very fine man."

It was Gingerford's practice to speak well of everybody with whom he had any personal relations, and especially well of his enemies; because, as he used to say to his son, evil words commonly do more harm to him who utters them than to those they are designed to injure, while fair and good words are easily spoken, and are the praise of their author, if of nobody else: for, if the subject of them is a bad man, they will not be accepted as literally true by any one that knows him, but, on the contrary, they will be set down to the credit of your good-nature,--or who knows but they may become coals of fire upon the head of your enemy, and convert him into a friend?

James had now an opportunity to test the truth of these observations. Was Mr. Williams convinced that Frisbie was a nice landlord and a fine man? By no means. But that Judge Gingerford was a fine man, and a charitable, he believed more firmly than ever. Then there was Stephen standing by,--having, no doubt, been sent by his master to observe the chagrin of the Gingerfords, and to bring back the report thereof; who, when he heard the Judge's words, looked surprised and abashed, and presently stole away, himself discomfited.

"I pray the Lord," said Mr. Williams, humbly and heartily, "you won't consider us troublesome neighbors."

"I hope not," replied the Judge; "and why should I? You have a good, honest reputation, Friend Williams; and I hear that you are a peaceable and industrious family. We ought to be able to serve each other in many ways. What can I do for you, to begin with? Wouldn't you like to turn your cow and calf into my yard?"

"Thank you a thousand times,--if I can, just as well as not," said the grateful negro. "We had to tear down the shed and pig-pen when we moved the house, and I ha'n't had time to set 'em up again."

"And I imagine you have had enough to do, for one day. Let your children drive the creatures through the gate yonder; my man will show them the shed. Are you a good gardener, Mr. Williams?"

"Wal, I've done consid'able at that sort of work, Sir."

"I'm glad of that. I have to hire a good deal of gardening done. I see we are going to be very much obliged to your landlord for bringing us so near together. And this is your father?"

"My grandfather, Sir," said Mr. Williams.

"Your grandfather? I must shake hands with him."

"Sarvant, Sah," said the old man, cap off, bowing and smiling there in the December twilight.

"He's deaf as can be," said Mr. Williams; "you'll have to talk loud, to make him hear. He's more 'n a hunderd year old."

"You astonish me!" exclaimed the Judge. "A very remarkable old person! I should delight to converse with him,--to know what his thoughts are in these new times, and what his memories are of the past, which, I suppose, is even now more familiar to his mind than the objects of to-day. God bless you, my venerable friend!" shaking hands a second time with the ancient black, and speaking in a loud voice.

"Tankee, Sah,--very kind," smiled the flattered old man. "Sarvant, Sah."

"'Tis you who are kind, to take notice of young fellows like me," pleasantly replied the Judge.--"Well, good evening, friends. I shall always be glad to know if there is anything I can do for you. Ha! what is this?"

It was the cow and calf coming back again, followed by Joe and Fessenden's.

"Gorry!" cried Joe,--"wa'n't that man mad? Thought he'd bite th' ole cow's tail off!"

"What man? My man?"

"Yes," said honest Fessenden's; "he said he'd be damned if he'd have a nigger's critters along with his'n!"

"Then we'll afford him an early opportunity to be damned," observed the Judge. "Drive them back again. I'll go with you.--By the way, Mr. Williams,"--Gingerford saw his man approaching, and spoke loud enough for him to hear and understand,--"are you accustomed to taking care of horses? I may find it necessary to employ some one before long."

"Wal, yes, Sir; I'm tol'able handy about a stable," replied the negro.

"Hollo, there!" called the man, somewhat sullenly, "drive that cow back here! Why didn't you tell me 't was the boss's orders?"

"Did tell him so; and he said as how I lied," said Joe,--driving the animals back again triumphantly.

The Judge departed with his son,--a thoughtful and aspiring youth, who pondered deeply what he had seen and heard, as he walked by his father's side. And Mr. Williams, greatly relieved and gratified by the interview, hastened to relate to his family the good news. And the praises of Gingerford were on all their tongues, and in their prayers that night he was not forgotten.

Three days after, the Judge's man was dismissed from his place, in consequence of difficulties originating in the affair of the cow. The Judge had sought an early opportunity to converse with him on the subject.

"A negro's cow," said he, "is as good as anybody's cow; and I consider Mr. Williams as good a man as you are."

The white coachman couldn't stand that; and the result was that the Gingerfords had a black coachman in a few days. The situation was offered to Mr. Williams, and very glad he was to accept it.

Thus the wrath of man continued to work the welfare of these humble Christians. It is reasonable to doubt whether the Judge was at heart delighted with his new neighbors; and jolly Mr. Frisbie enjoyed the joke somewhat less, I suspect, than he anticipated. One party enjoyed it, nevertheless. It was a serious and solid satisfaction to the Williams family. No member of which, with the exception, perhaps, of Joe, exhibited greater pleasure at the change in their situation than the old patriarch. It rejuvenated him. His hearing was almost restored. "One move more," he said, "and I shall be young and spry agin as the day I got my freedom,"--that day, so many, many years ago, which he so well remembered! Well, the "one move more" was near; and the morning of a new freedom, the morning of a more perfect youth and gladness, was not distant.

It was the old man's delight to go out and sit in the sun before the door, in the clear December weather, and pull off his cap to the Judge as he passed. To get a bow, and perhaps a kind word, from the illustrious Gingerford, was glory enough for one day, and the old man invariably hurried into the house to tell of it.

But one morning a singular thing occurred. To all appearances--to the eyes of all except one--he remained sitting out there in the sun after the Judge had gone. But Fessenden's, looking up suddenly, and staring at vacancy, cried,--

"Hollo!"

"What, child?" asked Mrs. Williams.

"The old man!" said Fessenden's. "Comin' into the door! Don't ye see him?"

Nobody saw him but the lad; and of course all were astonished by his earnest announcement of the apparition. The old grandmother hastened to look out. There sat her father still, on the bench by the apple-tree, leaning against the trunk. But the sight did not satisfy her. She ran out to him. The smile of salutation was still on his lips, which seemed just saying, "Sarvant, Sah," to the Judge. But those lips would never move again. They were the lips of death.

"What is the matter, Williams?" asked the Judge, on his return home that afternoon.

"My gran'ther is dead, Sir; and I don't know where to bury him." This was the negro's quiet and serious answer.

"Dead?" ejaculates the Judge. "Why, I saw him only this morning, and had a smile from him!"

"That was his last smile, Sir. You can see it on his face yet. He went to heaven with that smile, we trust."

To heaven? a negro in heaven? If that is so, some of us, I suppose, will no longer wish to go there. Or do you imagine that you will have need of servants in paradise, and that that is what Christian niggers are for? Or do you believe that in the celestial congregations there will also be a place set aside for the colored brethren,--a glorified niggers' pew? You scowl; you don't like a joke upon so serious a subject? Hypocrite! do you see nothing but a joke here?

The Judge leaves everything and goes home with his coachman. Sure enough! there is the same smile he saw in the morning, frozen on the face of the corpse.

"Gently and late death came to him!" says Gingerford. "Would we could all die as happy! There is no occasion to mourn, my good woman."

"Bless the Lord, I don't mourn!" replied the old negress. "But I'm so brimful of thanks, I must cry for 't! He died a blessed ole Christian; an' he's gone straight to glory, if there's anything in the promises. He is free now, if he never was afore;--for, though they pretend there a'n't no slaves in this 'ere State, an' the law freed us years ago, seems to me there a'n't no r'al liberty for us, 'cept this!" She pointed at the corpse, then threw up her eyes and hands with an expression of devout and joyful gratitude. "He's gone where there a'n't no predijice agin color, bless the Lord! He's gone where all them that's been washed with the blood of Christ is all of one color in His sight!" Then turning to the Judge,--"And you'll git your reward, Sir, be sure o' that!"

"My reward?" And Gingerford, touched with genuine emotion, shook his head, sadly.

"Yes, Sir, your reward," repeated the old woman, tenderly arranging the sheet over the still breast, and still, folded hands of the corpse. "For makin' his last days happy,--for makin' his last minutes happy, I may say. That 'ere smile was for you, Sir. You was kinder to him 'n folks in gin'ral. He wa'n't used to 't. An' he felt it. An' he's gone to glory with the news on 't. An' it'll be sot down to your credit there, in the Big Book."

Where was the Judge's eloquence? He could not find words to frame a fitting reply to this ignorant black woman, whose emotion was so much deeper than any fine phrases of his could reach, and whose simple faith and gratitude overwhelmed him with the sudden conviction that he had never yet said anything to the purpose, in all his rhetorical defences of the down-trodden race. From that conviction came humility. Out of humility rose inspiration. Two days later his eloquence found tongue; and this was the occasion of it:--

The body of the old negro was to be buried. That he should be simply put into the ground, and nothing said, any more than as if he were a brute beast, did not seem befitting the obsequies of so old a man and so faithful a Christian. The family had natural feelings on that subject. They wanted to have a funeral sermon.

Now it so happened that there was to be another funeral in the village about that time. The old minister, had he been living, might have managed to attend both. But the young minister couldn't think of such a thing. The loveliest flower of maidenhood in his parish had been cut down. One of the first families had been bereaved. Day and night he must ponder and scribble to prepare a suitable discourse. And then, having exhausted spiritual grace in bedecking the tomb of the lovely, should he,--good gracious! _could_ he descend from those heights of beauty and purity to the grave of a superannuated negro? Could divine oratory so descend?

"On that fair mountain leave to feed, And batten on this _moor_"?

Ought the cup of consolation, which he extended to his best, his worthiest friends and parishioners, to be passed in the same hour to thick African lips?

Which questions were, of course, decided in the negative. There was another minister in the village, but he was sick. What should be done? To go wandering about the world in search of somebody to preach the funeral sermon seemed a hard case,--as Mr. Williams remarked to the Judge.

"Tell you what, Williams," said the Judge,--"don't give yourself any more trouble on that account. I'm not a minister, nor half good enough for one,"--he could afford to speak disparagingly of himself, the beautiful, gracious gentleman!--"but if you can't do any better, I'll be present and say a few words at the funeral."

"Thank you a thousand times!" said the grateful negro. "Couldn't be nothin' better 'n that! We never expected no such honor; an' if my ole gran'ther could have knowed you would speak to his funeral, he'd have been proud, Sir!"

"He was a simple-minded old soul!" replied the Judge, pleasantly. "And you're another, Williams! However, I am glad you are satisfied. So this difficulty is settled, too." For already one very serious difficulty had been arranged through this man's kindness.

Did I neglect to mention it,--how, when the old negro died, his family had no place to bury him? The rest of his race, dying before him, had been gathered to the mother's bosom in distant places: long lines of dusky ancestors in Africa; a few descendants in America,--here and there a grave among New-England hills. Only one, a child of Mr. Williams's, had died in Timberville, and been placed in the old burying-ground over yonder. But that was now closed against interments. And as for purchasing a lot in the new cemetery,--how could poor Mr. Williams ever hope to raise money to pay for it?

"Williams," said the Judge, "I own several lots there, and if you'll be a good boy, I'll make you a present of one."

Ah, Gingerford! Gingerford! was it pure benevolence that prompted the gift? Was the smile with which you afterwards related the circumstance to dear Mrs. Gingerford a smile of sincere satisfaction at having done a good action and witnessed the surprise and gratitude of your black coachman? Tell us, was it altogether an accident, with no tincture whatever of pleasant malice in it, that the lot you selected, out of several, to be the burial-place of negroes, lay side by side with the proud family-vault of your neighbor Frisbie?

The Judge was one of those cool heads, who, when they have received an injury, do not go raving of it up and down, but put it quietly aside, and keep their temper, and rest content to wait patiently, perhaps years, perhaps a lifetime, for the opportunity of a sudden and pat revenge. Indeed, I suppose he would have been well satisfied to answer Frisbie's spite with the nobler revenge of magnanimity and smiling forbearance, had not the said opportunity presented itself. It was a temptation not to be resisted. And he, the most philanthropical of men, proved himself capable of being also the most cruel.

There, in the choicest quarter of the cemetery, shone the white ancestral monuments of the Frisbies. Death, the leveller, had not, somehow, levelled them,--proud and pretentious even in their tombs. You felt, as you read the sculptured record of their names and virtues, that even their ashes were better than the ashes of common mortals. They rendered sacred not only the still inclosure where they lay, but all that beautiful sunny bank; so that nobody else had presumed to be buried near them, but a space of many square rods on either side was left still unappropriated,--until now, when, lo! here comes a black funeral, and the corpse of one who had been a slave in his day, to profane the soil!

Nor is this all, alas! There comes not one funeral procession only. The first has scarcely entered the cemetery, when a second arrives. Side by side the dead of this day are to be laid: our old friend the negro, and the lovely young lady we have mentioned,--even the fairest of Mr. Frisbie's own children.

For it is she. The sweetest of the faces Fessenden's saw that stormy night at the window, and yearned to be within the bright room where the fire, was,--that dear warm face is cold in yonder coffin which the afflicted family are attending to the tomb.

And Frisbie, as we have somewhere said, loved his children. And in the anguish of his bereavement he had not heeded the singular and somewhat humiliating fact that his daughter had issued from the portal of Time in company with one of his most despised tenants,--that, in the same hour, almost at the same moment, Death had summoned them, leading them together, as it were, one with his right hand, and one with his left, the way of all the world. So that here was a surprise for the proud and grief-smitten parent.

"What is all that, Stephen?" he demands, with sudden consternation.

"It seems to be another funeral, Sir. They're buryin' somebody next lot to yours."

"Who, who, Stephen?"

"I--I ruther guess it's the old nigger, Sir," says Stephen.

The mighty man is shaken. Wrath and sorrow and insulted affection convulse him for a moment. His face grows purple, then pale, and he struggles with his neckcloth, which is choking him. He sees the tall form of Gingerford at the grave, and knows what it is to wish to murder a man. Were those two Christian neighbors quite alone, in this solitude of the dead, I fear one of them would soon be a fit subject for a coroner's inquest and an epitaph. O pride and hatred! with what madness can you inspire a mortal man! O Fessenden's! bless thy stars that thou art not the only fool alive this day, nor the greatest!

Fessenden's walked alone to the funeral, talking by himself, and now and then laughing. Gentleman Bill thought his conduct indecorous, and reproved him for it.

"Gracious!" said the lad, "don't you see who I'm talkin' with?"

"No, Sir,--I can't say I see anybody, Sir."

"No?" exclaimed the astonished youth. "Why, it's the old man, goin' to his own funeral!"

This, you may say, was foolishness; but, oh, it was innocent and beautiful foolishness, compared with that of Frisbie and his sympathizers, when they discovered the negro burial, and felt that their mourning was too respectable to be the near companion of the mourning of those poor blacks, and that their beautiful dead was too precious to be laid in the earth beside their dead.

What could be done? Indignation and sorrow availed nothing. The tomb of the lovely was prepared, and it only remained to pity the affront to her ashes, as she was committed to the chill depths amid silence and choking tears. It is done; and the burial of the old negro is deferentially delayed until the more aristocratic rites are ended.

Gingerford set the example of standing with his hat off in the yellow sunshine and wintry air, with his noble head bowed low, while the last prayer was said at the maiden's sepulture. Then he lifted up his face, radiant; and the flashing and rainbow-spanned torrent of his eloquence broke forth. He had reserved his forces for this hour. He had not the Williams family and their friends alone for an audience, but many who had come to attend the young lady's funeral remained to hear the Judge. It was worth their while. Finely as he had discoursed at the hut of the negroes, before the corpse was brought out, that was scarcely the time, that was certainly not the place, for a crowning effort of his genius. But here, his larger audience, the open air, the blue heavens, the graves around, the burial of the young girl side by side with the old slave, all contributed to inspire him. Human brotherhood, universal love, the stern democracy of death, immortality,--these were his theme. Life, incrusted with conventionalities; Death, that strips them all away. This is the portal (pointing to the grave) at which the soul drops all its false incumbrances,--rank, riches, sorrow, shame. It enters naked into eternity. There worldly pride and arrogance have no place. There false judgment goes out like a sick man's night-lamp, in the morning light of truth. In the courts of God only spiritual distinctions prevail. That you were a lord in this life will be of no account there, where the humblest Christian love is preferred before the most brilliant selfishness,--where the master is degraded, and the servant is exalted. And so forth, and so forth; a brief, but eloquent address, of which it is to be regretted that no report exists.

Then came the prayer,--for the Judge had a gift that way too; and the tenderness and true feeling with which he spoke of the old negro and the wrongs of his race drew tears from many eyes. Then a hymn was sung,--those who had stayed to sneer joining their voices seriously with those of the lowly mourners.

A few days later, Mr. Williams had the remains of his child taken from the old burying-ground, and brought here, and laid beside the patriarch. And before spring, simple tombstones of white marble (at Gingerford's expense) marked the spot, and commemorated the circumstances of the old man's extreme age and early bondage.

And before spring, alas! three other graves were added to that sunny bank! One by one, all those fair children whom Fessenden's had seen in the warm room where the fire was had followed their sister to the tomb. So fast they followed that Mr. Frisbie had no time to move his family-vault from the degrading proximity of the negro graves. And Fessenden's still lived, an orphan, yet happy, in the family of blacks which had adopted him; while the parents of those children, who had loved them, were left alone in the costly house, desolate. Was it, as some supposed, a judgment upon Frisbie for his pride? I cannot tell. I only know, that, in the end, that pride was utterly broken,--and that, when the fine words of the young minister failed to console him, when sympathizing friends surrounded him, and Gingerford came to visit him, and they were reconciled, he turned from them all, and gratefully received hope and comfort from the lips of a humble old Christian who had nursed the last of his children in her days and nights of suffering, almost against his will.

That Christian? It was the old negro woman.

Early in the spring, Mr. Williams----But no more! Haven't we already prolonged our sketch to an intolerable length, considering the subject of it? Not a lover in it! and, of course, it is preposterous to think of making a readable story without one. Why didn't we make young Gingerford in love with--let's see--Miss Frisbie? and Miss Frisbie's brother (it would have required but a stroke of the pen to give her one) in love with--Creshy Williams? What melodramatic difficulties might have been built upon this foundation! And as for Fessenden's being a fool and a pauper, he should turn out to be the son of some proud man, either Gingerford or Frisbie. But it is too late now. We acknowledge our fatal mistake. Who cares for the fortunes of a miserable negro family? Who cares to know the future of Mr. Williams, or of any of his race?

Suffice it, then, to say, that, as for the Williamses, God has taken care of them in every trial,--turning even the wrath of enemies to their advantage, as we have seen; just as He will, no doubt, in His fatherly kindness, provide for that unhappy race which is now in the perilous crisis of its destiny, and concerning which so many, both its friends and enemies, are anxiously asking, "What will become of them?"

FORGOTTEN.

In this dim shadow, where She found the quiet which all tired hearts crave, Now, without grief or care, The wild bees murmur, and the blossoms wave, And the forgetful air Blows heedlessly across her grassy grave.

Yet, when she lived on earth, She loved this leafy dell, and knew by name All things of sylvan birth; Squirrel and bird chirped welcome, when she came: Yet now, in careless mirth, They frisk, and build, and warble all the same.

From the great city near, Wherein she toiled through life's incessant quest, For weary year on year, Come the far voices of its deep unrest, To touch her dead, deaf ear, And surge unechoed o'er her pulseless breast.

The hearts which clung to her Have sought out other shrines, as all hearts must, When Time, the comforter, Has worn their grief out, and replaced their trust: Not even neglect can stir This little handful of forgotten dust.

Grass waves, and insects hum, And then the snow blows bitterly across; Strange footsteps go and come, Breaking the dew-drops on the starry moss: She lieth still and dumb, And counts no longer any gain or loss.

Ah, well,--'t is better so; Let the dust deepen as the years increase; Of her who sleeps below Let the name perish and the memory cease, Since she has come to know That which through life she vainly prayed for,--Peace!

WET-WEATHER WORK.

BY A FARMER.

VIII.--CONCLUSION.

As I sit in my library-chair listening to the welcome drip from the eaves, I bethink me of the great host of English farm-teachers who in the last century wrote and wrought so well, and wonder why their precepts and their example should not have made a garden of that little British island. To say nothing of the inherited knowledge of such men as Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert, Hugh Platt, Markham, Lord Bacon, Hartlib, and the rest, there was Tull, who had blazed a new path between the turnip and the wheat-drills--to fortune; there was Lord Kames, who illustrated with rare good sense, and the daintiness of a man of letters, all the economies of a thrifty husbandry; Sir John Sinclair proved the wisdom of thorough culture upon tracts that almost covered counties; Bakewell (of Dishley)--that fine old farmer in breeches and top-boots, who received Russian princes and French marquises at his kitchen-fireside--demonstrated how fat might be laid on sheep or cattle for the handling of a butcher; in fact, he succeeded so far, that Dr. Parkinson once told Paley that the great breeder had "the power of fattening his sheep in whatever part of the body he chose, directing it to shoulder, leg, or neck, as he thought proper,--and this," continued Parkinson, "is the great _problem_ of his art."

"It's a lie, Sir," said Paley,--"and that's the _solution_ of it."

And yet Dr. Parkinson was very near the truth.

Besides Bakewell, there was Arthur Young, as we have seen, giving all England the benefit of agricultural comparisons by his admirable "Tours"; Lord Dundonald had brought his chemical knowledge to the aid of good husbandry; Abercrombie and Speechly and Marshall had written treatises on all that regarded good gardening. The nurseries of Tottenham Court Road, the parterres of Chelsea, and the stoves of the Yew Gardens were luxuriant witnesses of what the enterprising gardener might do.

Agriculture, too, had a certain dignity given to it by the fact that "Farmer George" (the King) had written his experiences for a journal of Arthur Young, the Duke of Bedford was one of the foremost advocates of improved farming, and Lord Townshend took a pride in his _sobriquet_ of "Turnip Townshend."

Yet, for all this, at the opening of the present century, England was by no means a garden. Over more than half the kingdom, turnips, where sown at all, were sown broadcast. In four counties out of five, a bare fallow was deemed essential for the recuperation of cropped lands. Barley and oats were more often grown than wheat. Dibbling or drilling of grain, notwithstanding Platt and Jethro Tull, were still rare. The wet clay-lands had, for the most part, no drainage, save the open furrows which were as old as the teachings of Xenophon; indeed, it will hardly be credited, when I state that it is only so late as 1843 that a certain gardener, John Reade by name, at the Derby Show of the Royal Agricultural Society, exhibited certain cylindrical pipes, which he had formed by wrapping damp clay around a smooth billet of wood, and with which he "had been in the habit of draining the hot-beds of his master." A sagacious engineer who was present, and saw these, examined them closely, and, calling the attention of Earl Spencer (the eminent agriculturist) to them, said, "My Lord, with them I can drain all England."

It was not until about 1830 that the subsoil-plough of Mr. Smith of Deanston was first contrived for special work upon the lands of Perthshire. Notwithstanding all the brilliant successes of Bakewell, long-legged, raw-boned cattle were admired by the majority of British farmers at the opening of this century, and elephantine monsters of this description were dragged about England in vans for exhibition. It was only in 1798 that the "Smithfield Club" was inaugurated for the show of fat cattle, by the Duke of Bedford, Lord Somerville, Arthur Young, and others; and it was about the same period that young Jonas Webb (whose life has latterly been illustrated by a glowing chapter from Elihu Burritt) used to ride upon the Norfolk bucks bred by his grandfather, and, with a quick sense of discomfort from their sharp backs, vowed, that, when he "grew a man, he'd make better saddles for them"; and he did, as every one knows who has ever seen a good type of the Brabaham flock.

The Royal Agricultural Society dates from 1838. In 1835 Sir Robert Peel presented a farmers' club at Tamworth with "two iron ploughs of the best construction," and when he inquired after them and their work the following year, the report was that the wooden mould-board was better: "We tried 'em, but we be all of one mind, that the iron made the weeds grow." And I can recall a bright morning in January of 1845, when I made two bouts around a field in the middle of the best dairy-district of Devonshire, at the stilts of a plough so cumbrous and ineffective that a thrifty New-England farmer would have discarded it at sight. Nor can I omit, in this connection, to revive, so far as I may, the image of a small Devon farmer, who had lived, and I dare say will die, utterly ignorant of the instructions of Tull, or of the agricultural labors of Arthur Young: a short, wheezy, rotund figure of a man, with ruddy face,--fastening the _h_s in his talk most blunderingly,--driving over to the market-town every fair-day, with pretty samples of wheat or barley in his dog-cart,--believing in the royal family like a gospel,--limiting his reading to glances at the "Times" in the tap-room,--looking with an evil eye upon railways, (which, in that day, had not intruded farther than Exeter into his shire,)--distrusting terribly the spread of "eddication": it "doan't help the work-folk any; for, d' ye see, they've to keep a mind on their pleughing and craps; and as for the b'ys, the big uns must mind the beasts, and the little uns's got enough to do a-scaring the demed rooks. Gads! what hodds to them, please your Honor, what Darby is a-dooin' up in Lunnun, or what Lewis-Philup is a-dooin' with the Frenchers?" And the ruddy farmer-gentleman stirs his toddy afresh, lays his right leg caressingly over his left leg, admires his white-topped boots, and is the picture of British complacency. I hope he is living; I hope he stirs his toddy still in the tap-room of the inn by the pretty Erme River; but I hope that he has grown wiser as he has grown older, and that he has given over his wheezy curses at the engine as it hurtles past on the iron way to Plymouth and to Penzance.

* * * * *

The work was not all done for the agriculture and the agriculturist of England in the last century; it is hardly all done yet; it is doubtful if it will be done so as to close investigation and ripen method in our time. There was room for a corps of fresh workers at the opening of the present century; nor was such a corps lacking.

About the year 1808, a certain John Christian Curwen, Member of Parliament, and dating from Cumberland, wrote "Hints on Agricultural Subjects," a big octavo volume, in which he suggests the steaming of potatoes for horses, as a substitute for hay; but it does not appear that the suggestion was well received. To his credit, however, it may be said, that, in the same book, he urged the system of "soiling" cattle,--a system which even now needs its earnest expounders, and which would give full warrant for their loudest exhortation.

I notice, too, that, at about the same period, Dr. Beddoes, the friend and early patron of Sir Humphry Davy at the Pneumatic Institution of Bristol, wrote a book with the quaint title, "Good Advice to Husbandmen in Harvest, and for all those who labor in Hot Berths, and for others who will take it--in Warm Weather." And with the recollection of Davy's description of the Doctor in my mind,--"uncommonly short and fat,"[27]--I have felt a great interest in seeing what such a man should have to say upon harvest-heats; but his book, so far as I know, is not to be found in America.

A certain John Harding, of St. James Street, London, published, in 1809, a tract upon "The Use of Sugar in Feeding Cattle," in which were set forth sundry experiments which went to show how bullocks had been fattened on molasses, and had been rewarded with a premium. I am indebted for all knowledge of this anomalous tractate to the "Agricultural Biography" of Mr. Donaldson, who seems disposed to give a sheltering wing to the curious theory broached, and discourses upon it with a lucidity and coherence worthy of a state-paper. I must be permitted to quote Mr. Donaldson's language:--"The author's ideas are no romance or chimera, but a very feasible entertainment of the undertaking, when a social revolution permits the fruits of all climes to be used in freedom of the burden of value that is imposed by monopoly, and restricts the legitimate appropriation."

George Adams, in 1810, proposed "A New System of Agriculture and Feeding Stock," of which the novelty lay in movable sheds, (upon iron tram-ways,) for the purpose of soiling cattle. The method was certainly original; nor can it be regarded as wholly visionary in our time, when the iron conduits of Mr. Mechi, under the steam-thrust of the Tip-Tree engines, are showing a percentage of profit.

Charles Drury, in the same year, recommended, in an elaborate treatise, the steaming of straw, roots, and hay, for cattle-food,--a recommendation which, in our time, has been put into most successful practice.

Mowbray, who was for a long time the great authority upon Domestic Fowls and their Treatment, published his book in 1803, which he represents as having been compiled from the memoranda of forty years' experience.

And next, as illustrative of the rural literature of the early part of this century, I must introduce the august name of Sir Humphry Davy. This I am warranted in doing on two several counts: first, because he was an accomplished fisherman and the author of "Salmonia," and next, because he was the first scientific man of any repute who was formally invited by a Board of Agriculture to discuss the relations of Chemistry to the practice of farming.

Unfortunately, he was himself ignorant of practical agriculture,[28] when called upon to illustrate its relations to chemistry; but, like an earnest man, he set about informing himself by communication with the best farmers of the kingdom. He delivered a very admirable series of lectures, and it was without doubt most agreeable to the country-gentlemen to find the great waste from their fermenting manures made clear by Sir Humphry's retorts; but Davy was too profound and too honest a man to lay down for farmers any chemical high-road to success. He directed and stimulated inquiry; he developed many of the principles which underlay their best practice; but he offered them no safety-lamp. I think he brought more zeal to his investigations in the domain of pure science; he loved well-defined and brilliant results; and I do not think that he pushed his inquiries in regard to the way in which the forage-plants availed themselves of sulphate of lime with one-half the earnestness or delight with which he conducted his discovery of the integral character of chlorine, or with which he saw for the first time the metallic globules bubbling out from the electrified crust of potash.

Yet he loved the country with a rare and thorough love, as his descriptions throughout his letters prove; and he delighted in straying away, in the leafy month of June, to the charming place of his friend Knight, upon the Teme in Herefordshire. His "Salmonia" is, in its way, a pastoral; not, certainly, to be compared with the original of Walton, lacking its simple homeliness, for which its superior scientific accuracy can make but poor amends. I cannot altogether forget, in reading it, that its author is a fine gentleman from London. Neither fish, nor alders, nor eddies, nor purling shallows, can drive out of memory the fact that Sir Humphry must be back at "The Hall" by half-past six, in season to dress for dinner. Walton, in slouch-hat, bound about with "leaders," sat upon the green turf to listen to a milkmaid's song. Sir Humphry (I think he must have carried a camp-stool) recited some verses written by "a noble lady long distinguished at court."[29]

In fact, there was always a great deal of the fine gentleman about the great chemist,--almost too fine for the quiet tenor of a working-life. Those first brilliant successes of his professional career at the Royal Institution of London, before he was turned of thirty, and in which his youth, his splendid elocution, his happy discoveries, his attractive manner, all made him the mark for distinguished attentions, went very far, I fancy, to carry him to that stage of social intoxication under which he was deluded into marrying a wealthy lady of fashion, and a confirmed blue-stocking,--the brilliant Mrs. Apreece.

Little domestic comfort ever came of the marriage. Yet he was a chivalrous man, and took the issue calmly. It is always in his letters,--"My dear Jane," and "God bless you! Yours affectionately." But these expressions bound the tender passages. It was altogether a gentlemanly and a lady-like affair. Only once, as I can find, he forgets himself in an honest repining; it is in a letter to his brother, under date of October 30, 1823:[30]--"To add to my annoyances, I find my house, as usual, after the arrangements made by the mistress of it, without female servants; but in this world we have to suffer and bear, and from Socrates down to humble mortals, domestic discomfort seems a sort of philosophical fate."

If only Lady Davy could have seen this Xantippe touch, I think Sir Humphry would have taken to angling in some quiet country-place for a month thereafter!

And even when affairs grow serious with the Baronet, and when, stricken by the palsy, he is loitering among the mountains of Styria, he writes,--"I am glad to hear of your perfect restoration, and with health and the society of London, _which you are so fitted to ornament and enjoy_, your '_viva la felicità_' is much more secure than any hope belonging to me."

And again, "You once _talked_ of passing _this_ winter in Italy; but I hope your plans will be entirely guided by the state of your health and feelings. Your society would undoubtedly be a very great resource to me, but I am so well aware of my own present unfitness for society that I would not have you risk the chance of an uncomfortable moment on my account."

The dear Lady Jane must have had a _penchant_ for society to leave the poor palsied man to tumble into his tomb alone!

Yet once again, in the last letter he ever writes, dated Rome, March, 1829, he gallantly asks her to join him; it begins,--"I am still alive, though expecting every hour to be released."

And the Lady Jane, who is washing off her fashionable humors in the fashionable waters of Bath, writes,--"I have received, my beloved Sir Humphry, the letter signed by your hand, with its precious wish of tenderness. I start to-morrow, _having been detained here_ by Doctors Babington and Clarke till to-day.... I cannot add more" (it is a letter of half a page) "than that your fame is a deposit, and your memory a glory, your life still a hope."

Sweet Lady Jane! Yet they say she mourned him duly, and set a proper headstone at his grave. But, for my own part, I have no faith in that affection which will splinter a loving heart every day of its life, and yet, when it has ceased to beat, will make atonement with an idle swash of tears.

* * * * *

There was a British farmer by the name of Morris Birkbeck, who about the year 1814 wrote an account of an agricultural tour in France; and who subsequently established himself somewhere upon our Western prairies, of which he gave account in "Letters from Illinois," and in "Notes on a Journey in America, from the Coast of Virginia to the Territory of Illinois," with maps, etc. Cobbett once or twice names him as "poor Birkbeck,"--but whether in allusion to his having been drowned in one of our Western rivers, or to the poverty of his agricultural successes, it is hard to determine.

In 1820 Major-General Beatson, who had been Aid to the Marquis of Wellesley in India, published an account of a new system of farming, which he claimed to have in successful operation at his place in the County of Sussex. The novelty of the system lay in the fact that he abandoned both manures and the plough, and scarified the surface to the depth of two or three inches, after which he burned it over. The Major-General was called to the governorship of St. Helena before his system had made much progress. I am led to allude to the plan as one of the premonitory hints of that rotary method which is just now enlisting a large degree of attention in the agricultural world, and which promises to supplant the plough on all wide stretches of land, within the present century.

Finlayson, a brawny Scot, born in the parish of Mauchline, who was known from "Glentuck to the Rutton-Ley" as the best man for "putting the stone," or for a "hop, step, and leap," contrived the self-cleaning ploughs (with circular beam) and harrows which bore his name. He was also--besides being the athlete of Ayrshire--the author of sundry creditable and practical works on agriculture.

But the most notable man in connection with rural literature, of this day, was, by all odds, William Cobbett. His early history has so large a flavor of romance in it that I am sure my readers will excuse me for detailing it.

His grandfather was a day-laborer; he died before Cobbett was born; but the author says that he used to visit the grandmother at Christmas and Whitsuntide. Her home was "a little thatched cottage, with a garden before the door. She used to give us milk and bread for breakfast, an apple-pudding for dinner, and a piece of bread and cheese for our supper. Her fire was made of turf cut from the neighboring heath; and her evening light was a rush dipped in grease."[31] His father was a small farmer, and one who did not allow his boys to grow up in idleness. "My first occupation," he tells us, "was driving the small birds from the turnip-seed, and the rook from the pease; when I first trudged a-field, with my wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, I was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles; and at the close of the day, to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty."

At the age of eleven he speaks of himself as occupied in clipping box-edgings and weeding flower-beds in the garden of the Bishop of Winchester; and while here he encounters, one day, a workman who has just come from the famous Kew Gardens of the King. Young Cobbett is fired by the glowing description, and resolves that he must see them, and work upon them too. So he sets off, one summer's morning, with only the clothes he has upon his back, and with thirteen halfpence in his pocket, for Richmond. And as he trudges through the streets of the town, after a hard day's walk, in his blue smock-frock, and with his red garters tied under his knees, staring about him, he sees in the window of a bookseller's shop the "Tale of a Tub," price threepence; it piques his curiosity, and, though his money is nearly all spent, he closes a bargain for the book, and, throwing himself down upon the shady side of a hay-rick, makes his first acquaintance with Dean Swift. He read till it was dark, without thought of supper or of bed,--then tumbled down upon the grass under the shadow of the stack, and slept till the birds of the Kew Gardens waked him.

He finds work, as he had determined to do; but it was not fated that he should pass his life amid the pleasant parterres of Kew. At sixteen, or thereabout, on a visit to a relative, he catches his first sight of the Channel waters, and of the royal fleet riding at anchor at Spithead. And at that sight, the "old Armada," and the "brave Rodney," and the "wooden walls," of which he had read, come drifting like a poem into his thought, and he vows that he will become a sailor,--maybe, in time, the Admiral Cobbett. But here, too, the fates are against him: a kind captain to whom he makes application suspects him for a runaway, and advises him to find his way home.

He returns once more to the plough; "but," he says, "I was now spoiled for a farmer." He sighs for the world; the little horizon of Farnham (his native town) is too narrow for him; and the very next year he makes his final escapade.

"It was on the 6th of May, 1783, that I, like Don Quixote, sallied forth to seek adventures. I was dressed in my holiday clothes, in order to accompany two or three lasses to Guildford fair. They were to assemble at a house about three miles from my home, where I was to attend them; but, unfortunately for me, I had to cross the London turnpike-road. The stage-coach had just turned the summit of a hill, and was rattling down towards me at a merry rate. The notion of going to London never entered my mind till this very moment; yet the step was completely determined on before the coach came to the spot where I stood. Up I got, and was in London about nine o'clock in the evening."

His immediate adventure in the metropolis proves to be his instalment as scrivener in an attorney's office. No wonder he chafes at this; no wonder, that, in his wanderings about town, he is charmed by an advertisement which invited all loyal and public-spirited young men to repair to a certain "rendezvous"; he goes to the rendezvous, and presently finds himself a recruit in one of His Majesty's regiments which is filling up for service in British America.

He must have been an apt soldier, so far as drill went; for I find that he rose rapidly to the grade of corporal, and thence to the position of sergeant-major. He tells us that his early habits, his strict attention to duty, and his native talent were the occasion of his swift promotion. In New Brunswick, upon a certain winter's morning, he falls in with the rosy-faced daughter of a sergeant of artillery, who was scrubbing her pans at sunrise, upon the snow. "I made up my mind," he says, "that she was the very girl for me.... This matter was at once settled as firmly as if written in the book of fate."

To this end he determines to leave the army as soon as possible. But before he can effect this, the artillery-man is ordered back to England, and his pretty daughter goes with him. But Cobbett has closed the compact with her, and placed in her hands a hundred and fifty pounds of his earnings,--a free gift, and an earnest of his troth.

The very next season, however, he meets, in a sweet rural solitude of the Province, another charmer, with whom he dallies in a lovelorn way for two years or more. He cannot quite forget the old; he cannot cease befondling the new. If only the "remotest rumor had come," says he, "of the faithlessness of the brunette in England, I should have been fastened for life in the New-Brunswick valley." But no such rumor comes, and in due time he bids a heart-rending adieu, and recrosses the ocean to find his first love maid-of-all-work in a gentleman's family at five pounds a year; and she puts in his hand, upon their first interview, the whole of the hundred and fifty pounds, untouched. This rekindles his admiration and respect for her judgment, and she becomes his wife,--a wife he never ceases thereafter to love and honor.

He goes to France, and thence to America. Establishing himself in Philadelphia, he enters upon the career of authorship, with a zeal for the King, and a hatred of Dr. Franklin and all Democrats, which give him a world of trouble. His foul bitterness of speech finds its climax at length in a brutal onslaught upon Dr. Rush, for which he is prosecuted, convicted, and mulcted in a sum that breaks down his bookselling and interrupts the profits of his authorship.

He retires to England, opens shop in Pall-Mall, and edits the "Porcupine," which bristles with envenomed arrows discharged against all Liberals and Democrats. Again he is prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned. His boys, well taught in all manner of farm-work, send him, from his home in the country, hampers of fresh fruits, to relieve the tedium of Newgate. Discharged at length, and continuing his ribaldry in the columns of the "Register," he flies before an Act of Parliament, and takes new refuge in America. He is now upon Long Island, earnest as in his youth in agricultural pursuits. The late Dr. Francis of New York used to speak of his visits to him, and of the fine vegetables he raised. His political opinions had undergone modification; there was not so much declamation against democracy,--not so much angry zeal for royalty and the state-church. Nay, he committed the stupendous absurdity of carrying back with him to England the bones of Tom Paine, as the grandest gift he could bestow upon his mother-land. No great ovations greeted this strange luggage of his; I think he was ashamed of it afterwards,--if Cobbett was ever ashamed of anything. He became candidate for Parliament in the Liberal interest; he undertook those famous "Rural Rides" which are a rare jumble of sweet rural scenes and crazy political objurgation. Now he hammers the "parsons,"--now he tears the paper-money to rags,--and anon he is bitter upon Malthus, Ricardo, and the Scotch "Feelosofers,"--and closes his anathema with the charming picture of a wooded "hanger," up which he toils (with curses on the road) only to rejoice in the view of a sweet Hampshire valley, over which sleek flocks are feeding, and down which some white stream goes winding, and cheating him into a rare memory of his innocent boyhood. He gains at length his election to Parliament; but he is not a man to figure well there, with his impetuosity and lack of self-control. He can talk by the hour to those who feel with him; but to be challenged, to have his fierce invective submitted to the severe test of an inexorable logic,--this limits his audacity; and his audacity once limited, his power is gone.

But I must not forget that I have brought him into my wet-day galaxy as a farmer. His energy, his promptitude, his habits of thrift, would have made him one of the best of farmers. His book on gardening is even now one of the most instructive that can be placed in the hands of a beginner. He ignores physiology and botany, indeed; he makes crude errors on this score; but he had an intuitive sense of the right method of teaching. He is plain and clear, to a comma. He knows what needs to be told; and he tells it straightforwardly. There is no better model for agricultural writers than "Cobbett on Gardening." There is no miserable waste of words,--no indirectness of talk; what he thinks, he prints.

His "Cottage Economy," too, is a book which every small landholder in America should own; there is a sterling merit in it which will not be outlived. He made a great mistake, it is true, in insisting that Indian-corn could be grown successfully in England. But being a man who did not yield to influences of climate himself, he did not mean that his crops should; and if he had been rich enough, I believe that he would have covered his farm with a glass roof, rather than yield his conclusion that Indian-corn could be grown successfully under a British sky.

A great, impracticable, earnest, headstrong man, the like of whom does not appear a half-dozen times in a century. Being self-educated, he was possessed, like nearly all self-educated men, of a complacency and a self-sufficiency which stood always in his way. Affecting to teach grammar, he was ignorant of all the etymology of the language; knowing no word of botany, he classified plants by the "fearings" of his turnip-field. He was vain to the last degree; he thought his books were the best books in the world, and that everybody should read them. He was industrious, restless, captious, and, although humane at heart, was the most malignant slanderer of his time. He called a political antagonist a "pimp," and thought a crushing argument lay in the word; he called parsons scoundrels, and bade his boys be regular at church.

In June, 1835, while the Parliament was in session, he grew ill,--talked feebly about politics and farming, (to his household,) "wished for 'four days' rain' for the Cobbett corn," and on Wednesday, (16th June,) desired to be carried around the farm, and criticized the work that had been done,--grew feeble as evening drew on, and an hour after midnight leaned back heavily in his chair, and died.

* * * * *

I must give a paragraph, at least, to the Rev. James Grahame, the good Scotch parson, were it only because he wrote a poem called "British Georgics." They are not so good as Virgil's; nor did he ever think it himself. In fact, he published his best poem anonymously, and so furtively that even his wife took up an early copy, which she found one day upon her table, and, charmed with its pleasant description of Scottish braes and burn-sides, said, "Ah! Jemmy, if ye could only mak' a book like this!" And I will venture to say that "Jemmy" never had rarer or pleasanter praise.

Shall we read a little, and test the worth of good Mistress Grahame's judgment? It is a bit of the parson's walk in "The Sabbath":--

"Now, when the downward sun has left the glens, Each mountain's rugged lineaments are traced Upon the adverse slope, where stalks gigantic The shepherd's shadow thrown athwart the chasm, As on the topmost ridge he homeward hies. How deep the hush! the torrent's channel, dry, Presents a stony steep, the echo's haunt. But hark a plaintive sound floating along! 'Tis from yon heath-roofed shieling; now it dies Away, now rises full; it is the song Which He who listens to the hallelujahs Of choiring seraphim delights to hear; It is the music of the heart, the voice Of venerable age, of guileless youth, In kindly circle seated on the ground Before their wicker door."

Crabbe, who was as keen an observer of rural scenes, had a much better faculty of verse; indeed, he had a faculty of language so large that it carried him beyond the real drift of his stories. I do not _know_ the fact, indeed; but I think, that, notwithstanding the Duke of Rutland's patronage, Mr. Crabbe must have written inordinately long sermons. It is strange how many good men do,--losing point and force and efficiency in a welter of words! If there is one rhetorical lesson which it behooves all theologic or academic professors to lay down and enforce, (if need be with the ferule,) it is this,--Be short. It is amazing the way in which good men lose themselves on Sunday mornings in the lapse of their own language; and most rarely are we confronted from the pulpit with an opinion which would not bear stripping of wordy shifts, and be all the more comely for its nakedness.

George Crabbe wrote charming rural tales; but he wrote long ones. There is minute observation, dramatic force, tender pathos, but there is much, of tedious and coarse description. If by some subtile alchemy the better qualities could be thrown down from the turbid and watery flux of his verse, we should have an admirable pocket-volume for the country; as it is, his books rest mostly on the shelves, and it requires a strong breath to puff away the dust that has gathered on the topmost edges.

I think of the Reverend Mr. Crabbe as an amiable, absent-minded old gentleman, driving about on week-days in a heavy, square-topped gig, (his wife holding the reins,) in search of way-side gypsies, and on Sunday pushing a discourse--which was good up to the "fourthly"--into the "seventhly."

Charles Lamb, if he had been clerically disposed, would, I am sure, have written short sermons; and I think that his hearers would have carried away the gist of them clean and clear.

He never wrote anything that could be called strictly pastoral; he was a creature of streets and crowding houses; no man could have been more ignorant of the every-day offices of rural life; I doubt if he ever knew from which side a horse was to be mounted or a cow to be milked, and a sprouting bean was a source of the greatest wonderment to him. Yet, in spite of all this, what a book those Essays of his make, to lie down with under trees! It is the honest, lovable simplicity of his nature that makes the keeping good. He is the Izaak Walton of London streets,--of print-shops, of pastry-shops, of mouldy book-stalls; the chime of Bow-bells strikes upon his ear like the chorus of a milkmaid's song at Ware.

There is not a bit of rodomontade in him about the charms of the country, from beginning to end; if there were, we should despise him. He can find nothing to say of Skiddaw but that he is "a great creature"; and he writes to Wordsworth, (whose sight is failing,) on Ambleside, "I return you condolence for your decaying sight,--not for anything there is to see in the country, but for the miss of the pleasure of reading a London newspaper."

And again to his friend Manning, (about the date of 1800,)--"I am not romance-bit about _Nature_. The earth and sea and sky (when all is said) is but as a house to dwell in. If the inmates be courteous, and good liquors flow like the conduits at an old coronation,--if they can talk sensibly, and feel properly, I have no need to stand staring upon the gilded looking-glass, (that strained my friend's purse-strings in the purchase,) nor his five-shilling print, over the mantel-piece, of old Nabbs, the carrier. Just as important to me (in a sense) is all the furniture of my world,--eye-pampering, but satisfies no heart. Streets, streets, streets, markets, theatres, churches, Covent Gardens, shops sparkling with pretty faces of industrious milliners, neat seamstresses, ladies cheapening, gentlemen behind counters lying, authors in the street with spectacles, lamps lit at night, pastry-cooks' and silver-smiths' shops, beautiful Quakers of Pentonville, noise of coaches, drowsy cry of mechanic watchmen at night, with bucks reeling home drunk,--if you happen to wake at midnight, cries of 'Fire!' and 'Stop thief!'--inns of court with their learned air, and halls, and butteries, just like Cambridge colleges,--old book-stalls, 'Jeremy Taylors,' 'Burtons on Melancholy,' and 'Religio Medicis,' on every stall. These are thy pleasures, O London-with-the-many-sins!--for these may Keswick and her giant brood go hang!"

And again to Wordsworth, in 1830,--"Let no native Londoner imagine that health, and rest, and innocent occupation, interchange of converse sweet, and recreative study, can make the country anything better than altogether odious and detestable."

Does any weak-limbed country-liver resent this honesty of speech? Surely not, if he be earnest in his loves and faith; but, the rather, by such token of unbounded naturalness, he recognizes under the waistcoat of this dear, old, charming cockney the traces of close cousinship to the Waltons, and binds him, and all the simplicity of his talk, to his heart, for aye. There is never a hillside under whose oaks or chestnuts I lounge upon a smoky afternoon of August, but a pocket Elia is as coveted and as cousinly a companion as a pocket Walton, or a White of Selborne. And upon wet days in my library, I conjure up the image of the thin, bent old gentleman--Charles Lamb--to sit over against me, and I watch his kindly, beaming eye, as he recites with poor stuttering voice,--between the whiffs of his pipe,--over and over, those always new stories of "Christ's Hospital," and the cherished "Blakesmoor," and "Mackery End."

(No, you need not put back the book, my boy; 't is always in place.)

I never admired greatly James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd; yet he belongs of double right in the coterie of my wet-day preachers. Bred a shepherd, he tried farming, and he wrote pastorals. His farming (if we may believe contemporary evidence) was by no means so good as his verse. The Ettrick Shepherd of the "Noctes Ambrosianæ" is, I fancy, as much becolored by the wit of Professor Wilson as any daughter of a duchess whom Sir Joshua changed into a nymph. I think of Hogg as a sturdy sheep-tender, growing rebellious among the Cheviot flocks, crazed by a reading of the Border minstrelsy, drunken on books, (as his fellows were with "mountain-dew,") and wreaking his vitality on Gaelic rhymes,--which, it is true, have a certain blush and aroma of the heather-hills, but which never reached the excellence that he fondly imagined belonged to them. I fancy, that, when he sat at the laird's table, (Sir Walter's,) and called the laird's lady by her baptismal name, and--not abashed in any presence--uttered his Gaelic gibes for the wonderment of London guests,--that he thought far more of himself than the world has ever been inclined to think of him. I know that poets have a privilege of conceit, and that those who are not poets sometimes assume it; but it is, after all, a sorry quality by which to win the world's esteem; and when death closes the record, it is apt to insure a large debit against the dead man.

It may not be commonly known that the Ettrick Shepherd was an agricultural author, and wrote "Hogg on Sheep," for which, as he tells us, he received the sum of eighty-six pounds. It is an octavo book, and relates to the care, management, and diseases of the black-faced mountain-breed, of which alone he was cognizant. It had never a great reputation; and I think the sheep-farmers of the Cheviots were disposed to look with distrust upon the teachings of a shepherd who supped with "lords" at Abbotsford, and whose best venture in verse was in "The Queen's Wake." A British agricultural author, speaking of him in a pitiful way, says,--"He passed years of busy authorship, and encountered _the usual difficulties of that penurious mode of life_."[32]

This is good; it is as good as anything of Hogg's.

I approach the name of Mr. Loudon, the author of the Encyclopædias of Gardening and Agriculture, with far more of respect. If nothing else in him laid claim to regard, his industry, his earnestness, his indefatigable labor in aid of all that belonged to the progress of British gardening or farming, would demand it. I take a pride, too, in saying, that, notwithstanding his literary labors, he was successful as a farmer, during the short period of his farm-holding.

Mr. Loudon was a Scotchman by birth, was educated in Edinburgh, and was for a time under the tutelage of Mr. Dickson, the famous nurseryman of Leith-Walk. Early in the present century he made his first appearance in London,--published certain papers on the laying-out of the public squares of the metropolis, and shortly after was employed by the Earl of Mansfield in the arrangement of the palace-gardens at Scone. In 1813 and '14 he travelled on the Continent very widely, making the gardens of most repute the special objects of his study; and in 1822 he published his "Encyclopædia of Gardening"; that of Agriculture followed shortly after, and his book of Rural Architecture in 1833. But these labors, enormous as they were, had interludes of other periodical work, and were crowned at last by his _magnum opus_, the "Arboretum." A man of only ordinary nerve and diligence would have taken a ten years' rest upon the completion of only one of his ponderous octavos; and the wonder is the greater, that London wrought in his later years under all the disadvantages of appeals from rapacious creditors and the infirmities of a broken constitution. Crippled, palsied, fevered, for a long period of years, he still wrought on with a persistence that would have broken many a strong man down, and only yielded at last to a bronchial affection which grappled him at his work.

This author massed together an amount of information upon the subjects of which he treated that is quite unmatched in the whole annals of agricultural literature. Columella, Heresbach, Worlidge, and even the writers of the "Geoponica," dwindle into insignificance in the comparison. He is not, indeed, always absolutely accurate on historical points;[33] but in all essentials his books are so complete as to have made them standard works up to a time long subsequent to their issue.

* * * * *

No notice of the agricultural literature of the early part of this century would be at all complete without mention of the Magazines and Society "Transactions," in which alone some of the best and most scientific cultivators communicated their experience or suggestions to the public. Loudon was himself the editor of the "Gardener's Magazine"; and the earlier Transactions of the Horticultural Society are enriched by the papers of such men as Knight, Van Mons, Sir Joseph Banks, Rev. William Herbert, Messrs. Dickson, Haworth, Wedgwood, and others. The works of individual authors lost ground in comparison with such an array of reports from scientific observers, and from that time forth periodical literature has become the standard teacher in what relates to good culture. I do not know what extent of good the newly instituted Agricultural Colleges of this country may effect; but I feel quite safe in saying that our agricultural journals will prove always the most effective teachers of the great mass of the farming-population. The London Horticultural Society at an early day established the Chiswick Gardens, and these, managed under the advice of the Society's Directors, have not only afforded an accurate gauge of British progress in horticulture, but they have furnished to the humblest cultivator who has strolled through their inclosures practical lessons in the craft of gardening, renewed from month to month and from year to year. It is to be hoped that the American Agricultural Colleges will adopt some similar plan, and illustrate the methods they teach upon lands which shall be open to public inspection, and upon whose culture and its successes systematic reports shall be annually made. Failing of this, they will fail of the best part of their proper purpose. Nor would it be a fruitless work, if, in connection with such experimental farm, a weekly record were issued,--giving analyses of the artificial manures employed, and a complete register of every field, from the date of its "breaking-up" to the harvesting of the crop. Every new implement, moreover, should be reported upon with unwavering impartiality, and no advertisements should be received. I think under these conditions we might almost look for an honest newspaper.

* * * * *

Writing thus, during these in-door hours, of country-pursuits, and of those who have illustrated them, or who have in any way quickened the edge with which we farmers rasp away the weeds or carve out our pastoral entertainment, I come upon the names of a great bevy of poets, belonging to the earlier quarter of this century, that I find it hard to pass by. Much as I love to bring to mind, over and over again, "Ivanhoe" and "Waverley," I love quite as much to summon to my view Walter Scott, the woodsman of Abbotsford, with hatchet at his girdle, and the hound Maida in attendance. I see him thinning out the saplings that he has planted upon the Tweed banks. I know how they stand, having wandered by the hour among them. I can fancy how the master would have lopped away the boughs for a little looplet through which a burst of the blue Eildon Hills should come. His favorite seat, overshadowed by an arbor-vitæ, (of which a leaf lies pressed in the "Scotch Tourist" yonder,) was so near to the Tweed banks that the ripple of the stream over its pebbly bottom must have made a delightful lullaby for the toil-worn old man. But beyond wood-craft, I could never discover that Sir Walter had any strong agricultural inclination; nor do I think that the old gentleman had much eye for the picturesque; no landscape-gardener of any reputation would have decided upon such a site for such a pile as that of Abbotsford: the spot is low; the views are not extended or varied; the very trees are all of Scott's planting: but the master loved the murmur of the Tweed,--loved the nearness of Melrose, and in every old bit of sculpture that he walled into his home he found pictures of far-away scenes that printed in vague shape of tower or abbey all his limited horizon.

Christopher North carried his Scotch love of mountains to his home among the English lakes. I think he counted Skiddaw something more than "a great creature." In all respects--saving the pipes and the ale--he was the very opposite of Charles Lamb. And yet do we love him more? A stalwart, hearty man, with a great redundance of flesh and blood, who could "put the stone" with Finlayson, or climb with the hardiest of the Ben-Nevis guides, or cast a fly with the daintiest of the Low-Country fishers,--redundant of imagination, redundant of speech, and with such exuberance in him that we feel surfeit from the overflow, as at the reading of Spenser's "Faërie Queene," and lay him down with a wearisome sense of mental indigestion.

Nor yet is it so much an indigestion as a feeling of plethora, due less to the frothiness of the condiments than to a certain fulness of blood and brawn. The broad-shouldered Christopher, in his shooting-jacket, (a dingy green velveteen, with pocket-pouches all stuffed,) strides away along the skirts of Cruachan or Loch Lochy with such a tearing pace, and greets every lassie with such a clamorous outbreak of song, and throws such a wonderful stretch of line upon every pool, and amazes us with such stupendous "strikes" and such a whizzing of his reel, that we fairly lose our breath.

Not so of the "White Doe of Rylstone"; nay, we more incline to doze over it than to lose our breath. Wilson differs from Wordsworth as Loch Awe, with its shaggy savagery of shore, from the Sunday quietude and beauty of Rydal-Water. The Strid of Wordsworth was bounded by the slaty banks of the "Crystal Wharf," and the Strid of Wilson, in his best moments, was as large as the valley of Glencoe. Yet Wordsworth loved intensely all the more beautiful aspects of the country, and of country-life. No angler and no gardener, indeed,--too severely and proudly meditative for any such sleight-of-hand. The only great weight which he ever lifted, I suspect, was one which he carried with him always,--the immense dignity of his poetic priesthood. His home and its surroundings were fairly typical of his tastes: a cottage, (so called,) of homely material indeed, but with an ambitious elevation of gables and of chimney-stacks; a velvety sheen of turf, as dapper as that of a suburban haberdasher; a mossy urn or two, patches of flowers, but rather fragrant than showy ones; behind him the loveliest of wooded hills, all toned down by graceful culture, and before him the silvery mirrors of Windermere and Rydal-Water.

We have to credit him with some rare and tender description, and fragments of great poems; but I cannot help thinking that he fancied a profounder meaning lay in them than the world has yet detected.

John Clare was a contemporary of Wordsworth's, and was most essentially a poet of the fields. His father was a pauper and a cripple; not even young Cobbett was so pressed to the glebe by the circumstances of his birth. But the thrushes taught Clare to sing. He wrote verses upon the lining of his hat-band. He hoarded halfpence to buy Thomson's "Seasons," and walked seven miles before sunrise to make the purchase. The hardest field-toil could not repress the poetic aspirations of such a boy. By dint of new hoardings he succeeded in printing verses of his own; but nobody read them. He wrote other verses, which at length made him known. The world flattered the peasant-bard of Northamptonshire. A few distinguished patrons subscribed the means for equipping a farm of his own. The heroine of his love-tales became its mistress; a shelf or two of books made him rich; but in an evil hour he entered upon some farm-speculation which broke down; a new poem was sharply criticized or neglected; the novelty of his peasant's song was over. Disheartened and gloomy, he was overwhelmed with despondency, and became the inmate of a mad-house, where for forty years he has staggered idiotically toward the rest which did not come. But even as I write I see in the British papers that he is free at last. Poor Clare is dead.

With this sad story in mind, we may read with a zest which perhaps its merit alone would not provoke his little sonnet of "The Thrush's Nest":--

"Within a thick and spreading hawthorn-bush, That overhung a mole-hill large and round, I heard from morn to morn a merry thrush Sing hymns, of rapture, while I drank the sound With joy; and oft, an unintruding guest, I watched her secret toils from day to day,-- How true she warped the moss to form her nest, And modelled it within with wood and clay, And by-and-by, like heath-bells gilt with dew, There lay her shining eggs as bright as flowers, Ink-spotted over, shells of green and blue; And there I witnessed, in the summer hours, A brood of Nature's minstrels chirp and fly, Glad as the sunshine and the laughing sky."

There are pretty snatches of a Southern May in Hunt's poem of "Rimini," where

"sky, earth, and sea Breathe like a bright-eyed face that laughs out openly. 'T is Nature full of spirits, waked and springing: The birds to the delicious tune are singing, Darting with freaks and snatches up and down, Where the light woods go seaward from the town; While happy faces striking through the green Of leafy roads at every turn are seen; And the far ships, lifting their sails of white Like joyful hands, come up with scattery light, Come gleaming up true to the wished-for day, And chase the whistling brine, and swirl into the bay."

This does not sound as if it came from the prince of cockneys; and I have always felt a certain regard for Leigh Hunt, too, by reason of the tender story which he gives of the little garden, "_mio picciol orto_," that he established during his two years of prisonhood.[34]

But, after all, there was no robustness in his rural spirit,--nothing that makes the cheek tingle, as if a smart wind had smitten it. He was born to handle roses without thorns; I think that with a pretty boudoir, on whose table every morning a pretty maid should arrange a pretty nosegay, and with a pretty canary to sing songs in a gilded cage, and pretty gold-fish to disport in a crystal vase, and basted partridges for dinner, his love for the country would have been satisfied. He loved Nature as a sentimental boy loves a fine woman of twice his years,--sighing himself away in pretty phrases that flatter, but do not touch her; there is nothing to remind, even, of the full, abounding, fiery, all-conquering love with which a full-grown man meets and marries a yielding maiden.

In poor John Keats, however, there _is_ something of this; and under its heats he consumed away. For ripe, joyous outburst of all rural fancies,--for keen apprehension of what most takes hold of the susceptibilities of a man who loves the country,--for his coinage of all sweet sounds of birds, all murmur of leaves, all riot and blossoming of flowers, into fragrant verse,--he was without a peer in his day. It is not that he is so true to natural phases in his descriptive epithets, not that he sees all, not that he has heard all; but his heart has drunk the incense of it, and his imagination refined it, and his fancy set it aflow in those jocund lines which bound and writhe and exult with a passionate love for the things of field and air.

* * * * *

I close these papers, with my eye resting upon the same stretch of fields,--the wooded border of a river,--the twinkling roofs and spires flanked by hills and sea,--where my eye rested when I began this story of the old masters with Hesiod and the bean-patches of Ithaca. And I take a pleasure in feeling that the farm-practice over all the fields below me rests upon the cumulated authorship of so long a line of teachers. Yon open furrow, over which the herbage has closed, carries trace of the ridging in the "Works and Days"; the brown field of half-broken clods is the fallow ([Greek: Neos]) of Xenophon; the drills belong to Worlidge; their culture with the horse-hoe is at the order of Master Tull. Young and Cobbett are full of their suggestions; Lancelot Brown has ordered away a great straggling hedge-row; and Sir Uvedale Price has urged me to spare a hoary maple which lords it over a half-acre of flat land. Cato gives orders for the asparagus, and Switzer for the hot-beds. Crescenzi directs the walling, and Smith of Deanston the ploughing. Burns embalms all my field-mice, and Cowper drapes an urn for me in a tangled wilderness. Knight names my cherries, and Walton, the kind master, goes with me over the hill to a wee brook that bounds down under hemlocks and soft maples, for "a contemplative man's recreation." Davy long ago caught all the fermentation of my manure-heap in his retort, and Thomson painted for me the scene which is under my window to-day. Mowbray cures the pip in my poultry, and all the songs of all the birds are caught and repeated to the echo in the pages of the poets which lie here under my hand; through the prism of their verse, Patrick the cattle-tender changes to a lithe milkmaid, against whose ankles the buttercups nod rejoicingly, and Rosamund (which is the nurse) wakes all Arden (which is Edgewood) with a rich burst of laughter.

And shall I not be grateful to these my patrons? And shall I count it unworthy to pass these few in-door hours of rain in the emblazonment of their titles?

Nor must I forget here to express my indebtedness to those kind friends who have from time to time favored me with suggestions or corrections, in the course of these papers, and to those others--not a few--who have lent me rare old books of husbandry, which are not easily laid hold of.

I have discussed no works of living authors, whether of practical or pastoral intent: at some future day I may possibly pay my compliments to them. Meantime I cannot help interpolating in the interest of my readers a little fragment of a letter addressed to me within the year by the lamented Hawthorne:--"I remember long ago your speaking prospectively of a farm; but I never dreamed of your being really much more of a farmer than myself, whose efforts in that line only make me the father of a progeny of weeds in a garden-patch. I have about twenty-five acres of land, seventeen of which are a hill of sand and gravel, wooded with birches, locusts, and pitch-pines, and apparently incapable of any other growth; so that I have great comfort in that part of my territory. The other eight acres are said to be the best land in Concord, and they have made me miserable, and would soon have ruined me, if I had not determined nevermore to attempt raising anything from them. So there they lie along the roadside, within their broken fence, an eyesore to me, and a laughing-stock to all the neighbors. If it were not for the difficulty of transportation by express or otherwise, I would thankfully give you those eight acres."

And now the fine, nervous hand, which wrought with such strange power and beauty, is stilled forever! The eight acres can well lie neglected; for upon a broader field, as large as humanity, and at the hands of thousands of reapers who worked for love, he has gathered in a great harvest of _immortelles_.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] _Life of Sir Humphry Davy_, London, 1839, p. 46.

[28] See letter of Thomas Poole, p. 322, _Fragmentary Remains of Sir Humphry Davy_.

[29] _Salmonia_, p. 5, London, Murray, 1851.

[30] _Fragmentary Remains_, p. 242.

[31] _Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine._

[32] _Agricultural Biography_, etc. London, 1854. _Printed for the Author._

[33] I ought, perhaps, to make definite exception in the case of a writer so universally accredited. In his "Encyclopædia of Gardening," he speaks of the "Geoponica" as the work of "modern Greeks," written after the transfer of the seat of empire to Constantinople; whereas the bulk of those treatises were written long before that date. He speaks of Varro as first in order of time of Roman authors on agriculture; yet Varro was born 116 B. C., and Cato died as early as 149 B. C. Crescenzi he names as an author of the fifteenth century; he should be credited to the fourteenth. He also commits the very common error in writers on gardening, of confounding the Tuscan villa of Pliny with that at Tusculum. These two places of the Roman Consul were entirely distinct and unlike.

[34] _Lord Byron and his Contemporaries_, Vol. II. p. 258.

REGULAR AND VOLUNTEER OFFICERS.

It is pleasant to see how much the present war has done towards effacing the traditional jealousy between regular officers and volunteers. The two classes have been so thoroughly intermingled, on staff-duties and in the field,--so many regular officers now hold in the volunteer service a rank higher than their permanent standing,--the whole previous military experience of most regulars was so trifling, compared with that which they and the volunteers have now shared in common,--and so many young men have lately been appointed to commissions, in both branches, not only without a West-Point education, but with almost none at all,--that it really cannot be said that there is much feeling of conscious separation left. For treating the two as antagonistic the time has clearly gone by. For judiciously weighing their respective services in the field the epoch has not come, since the reign of history begins only when that of telegrams and special correspondents has ended. It is better, therefore, to limit the comparison, as yet, to that minor routine of military duty upon which the daily existence of an army depends, and of which the great deeds of daring are merely exciting episodes.

At the beginning of the war, and before the distinction was thus partially effaced, the comparison involved very different elements. In our general military inexperience, the majority were not disposed to underrate the value of specific professional training. Education holds in this country much of the prestige held by hereditary rank in Europe, modified only by the condition that the possessor shall take no undue airs upon himself. Even then the penalty consists only in a few outbreaks of superficial jealousy, and the substantial respect for any real acquirements remains the same. So there was a time when the faintest aroma of West Point lent a charm to the most unattractive candidate for a commission. Any Governor felt a certain relief in intrusting a regiment to any man who had ever eaten clandestine oysters at Benny Haven's, or had once heard the whiz of an Indian arrow on the frontier, however mediocre might have been all his other claims to confidence. If he failed, the regular army might bear the shame; if he succeeded, to the State-House be the glory.

Yet there was always another party of critics, not less intelligent, who urged the value of general preparations for any duty, as compared with special,--who held that it was always easier for a man of brains to acquire technical skill than for a person of mere technicality to superadd brains, and that the antecedents of a frontier lieutenant were, on the whole, a poorer training for large responsibilities than those of many a civilian, who had lived in the midst of men, though out of uniform. Let us have a fair statement of this position, for it was very sincere and had much temporary influence. The main thing, it was argued, was the knowledge of human nature and the habit of dealing with mankind in masses,--the very thing from which the younger regular officers at least had been rigidly excluded. From a monastic life at West Point they had usually been transferred to a yet more isolated condition, in some obscure outpost,--or if otherwise, then they had seen no service at all, and were mere clerks in shoulder-straps. But a lawyer who could manoeuvre fifty witnesses as if they were one,--a teacher used to governing young men by the hundred,--an orator trained to sway thousands,--a master-mechanic,--a railway-superintendent,--a factory-agent,--a broker who could harness Wall Street and drive it,--a financier who could rule a sovereign State with a rod of (railway) iron,--such men as these, it was plausibly reasoned, could give an average army-officer all the advantage of his special training, at the start, and yet beat him at his own trade in a year.

These theories were naturally strengthened, moreover, by occasional instances of conspicuous failure, when volunteer troops were intrusted to regular officers. These disappointments could usually be traced to very plain causes. The men selected were sometimes men whose West-Point career would hardly bear minute investigation,--or who had in civil pursuits forgotten all they had learned at the Academy, except self-esteem,--or who had been confined to the duties of some special department, as quartermasters or paymasters, and were really fitted for nothing else,--or who had served their country by resigning their commissions, if not by holding them,--or who had contrived, first or last, to lose hopelessly their tempers or their digestions, or their faith, hope, and charity. Beyond all this lay the trouble, that the best regular officer from the very fact of his superior training was puzzled to know how much to demand of volunteer troops, or what standard to enforce upon them. It was a problem in the Differential Calculus, with the Army Regulations for a constant, and a raw volunteer regiment for a variable, and not a formula in Davies which suited the purpose. Unfortunately, these perplexities were quite as apt to end in relaxation as in rigor, so that the regiments thus commanded sometimes slid into a looseness of which a resolute volunteer officer would have been ashamed.

These were among the earlier results. Against them was to be set the fact, that, on the whole, no regiments in the field made progress so rapid, or held their own so well, as those placed under regular officers. And now that three years have abolished many surmises, and turned many others into established facts, it must be owned that the total value of the professional training has proved far greater, and that of the general preparation far less, than many intelligent observers predicted. The relation between officer and soldier is something so different in kind from anything which civil life has to offer, that it has proved almost impossible to transfer methods or maxims from the one to the other. If a regiment is merely a caucus, and the colonel the chairman,--or merely a fire-company, and the colonel the foreman,--or merely a prayer-meeting, and the colonel the moderator,--or merely a bar-room, and the colonel the landlord,--then the failure of the whole thing is a foregone conclusion. War is not the highest of human pursuits, certainly; but an army comes very near to being the completest of human organizations, and he alone succeeds in it who readily accepts its inevitable laws, and applies them. An army is an aristocracy, on a three-years' lease, supposing that the period of enlistment. No mortal skill can make military power effective on democratic principles. A democratic people can perhaps carry on a war longer and better than any other; because no other can so well comprehend the object, raise the means, or bear the sacrifices. But these sacrifices include the surrender, for the time being, of the essential principle of the government. Personal independence in the soldier, like personal liberty in the civilian, must be waived for the preservation of the nation. With shipwreck staring men in the face, the choice lies between despotism and anarchy, trusting to the common sense of those concerned, when the danger is over, to revert to the old safeguards. It is precisely because democracy is an advanced stage in human society, that war, which belongs to a less advanced stage, is peculiarly inconsistent with its habits. Thus the undemocratic character, so often lamented in West Point and Annapolis, is in reality their strong point. Granted that they are no more appropriate to our stage of society than are revolvers and bowie-knives, that is precisely what makes them all serviceable in time of war. War being exceptional, the institutions which train its officers must be exceptional likewise.

The first essential for military authority lies in the power of command,--a power which it is useless to analyze, for it is felt instinctively, and it is seen in its results. It is hardly too much to say, that, in military service, if one has this power, all else becomes secondary; and it is perfectly safe to say that without it all other gifts are useless. Now for the exercise of power there is no preparation like power, and nowhere is this preparation to be found, in this community, except in regular army-training. Nothing but great personal qualities can give a man by nature what is easily acquired by young men of very average ability who are systematically trained to command.

The criticism habitually made upon our army by foreign observers at the beginning of the war continues still to be made, though in a rather less degree,--that the soldiers are relatively superior to the officers, so that the officers lead, perhaps, but do not command them. The reason is plain. Three years are not long enough to overcome the settled habits of twenty years. The weak point of our volunteer service invariably lies here, that the soldier, in nine cases out of ten, utterly detests being commanded, while the officer, in his turn, equally shrinks from commanding. War, to both, is an episode in life, not a profession, and therefore military subordination, which needs for its efficiency to be fixed and absolute, is, by common consent, reduced to a minimum. The white American soldier, being, doubtless, the most intelligent in the world, is more ready than any other to comply with a reasonable order, but he does it because it is reasonable, not because it is an order. With advancing experience his compliance increases, but it is still because he better and better comprehends the reason. Give him an order that looks utterly unreasonable,--and this is sometimes necessary,--or give him one which looks trifling, under which head all sanitary precautions are yet too apt to rank, and you may, perhaps, find that you still have a free and independent citizen to deal with, not a soldier. _Implicit_ obedience must be admitted still to be a rare quality in our army; nor can we wonder at it. In many cases there is really no more difference between officers and men, in education or in breeding, than if the one class were chosen by lot from the other; all are from the same neighborhood, all will return to the same civil pursuits side by side; every officer knows that in a little while each soldier will again become his client or his customer, his constituent or his rival. Shall he risk offending him for life in order to carry out some hobby of stricter discipline? If this difficulty exist in the case of commissioned officers, it is still more the case with the non-commissioned, those essential intermediate links in the chain of authority. Hence the discipline of our soldiers has been generally that of a town-meeting or of an engine-company, rather than that of an army; and it shows the extraordinary quality of the individual men, that so much has been accomplished with such a formidable defect in the organization. Even granting that there has been a great and constant improvement, the evil is still vast enough. And every young man trained at West Point enters the service with at least this advantage, that he has been brought up to command, and has not that task to learn.

He has this further advantage, that he is brought up with some respect for the army-organization as it is, with its existing rules, methods, and proprieties, and is not, like the newly commissioned civilian, disposed in his secret soul to set aside all its proprieties as mere "pipe-clay," its methods as "old-fogyism," and its rules as "red-tape." How many good volunteer officers will admit, if they speak candidly, that on entering the service they half believed the "Army Regulations" to be a mass of old-time rubbish, which they would gladly reëdit, under contract, with immense improvements, in a month or two,--and that they finally left the service with the conviction that the same book was a mine of wisdom, as yet but half explored! Certainly, when one thinks for what a handful of an army our present military system was devised, and with what an admirable elasticity it has borne this sudden and stupendous expansion, it must be admitted to have most admirably stood the test. Of course, there has been much amendment and alteration needed, nor is the work done yet; but it has mainly touched the details, not the general principles. The system is wonderfully complete for its own ends, and the more one studies it the less one sneers. Many a form which at first seems to the volunteer officer merely cumbrous and trivial he learns to prize at last as almost essential to good discipline; he seldom attempts a short cut without finding it the longest way, and rarely enters on that heroic measure of cutting red-tape without finding at last that he has entangled his own fingers in the process.

More thorough training tells in another way. It is hard to appreciate, without the actual experience, how much of military life is a matter of mere detail. The maiden at home fancies her lover charging at the head of his company, when in reality he is at that precise moment endeavoring to convince his company-cooks that salt-junk needs five hours' boiling, or is anxiously deciding which pair of worn-out trousers shall be ejected from a drummer-boy's knapsack. Courage is, no doubt, a good quality in a soldier, and luckily not often wanting; but, in the long run, courage depends largely on the haversack. Men are naturally brave, and when the crisis comes, almost all men will fight well, if well commanded. As Sir Philip Sidney said, an army of stags led by a lion is more formidable than an army of lions led by a stag. Courage is cheap; the main duty of an officer is to take good care of his men, so that every one of them shall be ready, at a moment's notice, for any reasonable demand. A soldier's life usually implies weeks and months of waiting, and then one glorious hour; and if the interval of leisure has been wasted, there is nothing but a wasted heroism at the end, and perhaps not even that. The penalty for misused weeks, the reward for laborious months, may be determined within ten minutes. Without discipline an army is a mob, and the larger the worse; without rations the men are empty uniforms; without ammunition they might as well have no guns; without shoes they might almost as well have no legs. And it is in the practical appreciation of all these matters that the superiority of the regular officer is apt to be shown.

Almost any honest volunteer officer will admit, that, although the tactics were easily learned, yet, in dealing with all other practical details of army-life, he was obliged to gain his knowledge through many blunders. There were a thousand points on which the light of Nature, even aided by "Army Regulations," did not sufficiently instruct him; and his best hints were probably obtained by frankly consulting regular officers, even if inferior in rank. The advantage of a West-Point training is precisely that of any other professional education. There is nothing in it which any intelligent man cannot learn for himself in later life; nevertheless, the intelligent man would have fared a good deal better, had he learned it all in advance. Test it by shifting the positions. No lawyer would trust his case to a West-Point graduate, without evidence of thorough special preparation. Yet he himself enters on a career equally new to him, where his clients may be counted by thousands, and every case is capital. The army is a foreign country to civilians; of course you can learn the language after your arrival, but how you envy your companion, who, having spoken it from childhood, can proceed at once to matters more important!

Yet the great advantage of the regular army does not, after all, consist merely in any superiority of knowledge, or in the trained habit of command. Granting that patience and labor can readily supply these to the volunteer, the trouble remains, that even in labor and patience the regular officer is apt to have the advantage, by reason of a stronger stimulus. The difference is not merely in the start, but in the pace. No man can be often thrown into the society of regular officers, especially among the younger ones, without noticing a higher standard of professional earnestness than that found among average volunteers; and in this respect a West-Point training makes little or no difference. The reason of the superiority is obvious. To the volunteer, the service is still an episode; to the regular, a permanent career. No doubt, if a man is thoroughly conscientious, or thoroughly ambitious, or thoroughly enthusiastic, a temporary pursuit may prove as absorbing as if it were taken up for life; but the majority of men, however well-meaning, are not thorough at all. How often one hears the apology made by volunteer officers, even those of high rank,--"Military life is not my profession; I entered the army from patriotism, willing to serve my country faithfully for three years, but of course not pretending to perfection in every trivial detail of a pursuit which I shall soon quit forever." But it is patriotism to think the details _not_ trivial. If one gives one's self to one's country, let the gift be total and noble. These details are worthy to absorb the whole daily thought, and they should absorb it, until more thorough comprehension and more matured executive power leave room for larger studies, still in the line of the adopted occupation. If a man leaves his office or his study to be a soldier, let him be a soldier in earnest. Let those three years bound the horizon of his plans, and let him study his new duty as if earth offered no other conceivable career. The scholar must forswear his pen, the lawyer his books, the politician his arts. An officer of whatever rank, who does not find occupation enough for every day, amid the quietest winter-quarters, in the prescribed duties of his position and the studies to which they should lead, is fitted only for civil pursuits, and had better return to them.

Without this thoroughness, life in the army affords no solid contentment. What is called military glory is a fitful and uncertain thing. Time and the newspapers play strange tricks with reputations, and of a hundred officers whose names appear with honor in this morning's despatches ninety may never be mentioned again till it is time to write their epitaphs. Who, for instance, can recite the names of the successive cavalry-commanders who have ridden on their bold forays through Virginia, since the war began? All must give place to the latest Kautz or Sheridan, who has eclipsed without excelling them all. Yet each is as brave and as faithful to-day, no doubt, as when he too glittered for his hour before all men's gaze, and the obscurer duty may be the more substantial honor. So when I lift my eyes to look on yonder level ocean-floor, the fitful sunshine now glimmers white on one far-off sail, now on another; and yet I know that all canvas looks snowy while those casual rays are on it, and that the best vessel is that which, sunlit or shaded, best accomplishes its destined course. The officer is almost as powerless as the soldier to choose his opportunity or his place. Military glory may depend on a thousand things,--the accident of local position, the jealousy of a rival, the whim of a superior. But the merit of having done one's whole duty to the men whose lives are in one's keeping, and to the nation whose life is staked with theirs,--of having held one's command in such a state, that, if at any given moment it was not performing the most brilliant achievement, it might have been,--this is the substantial triumph which every faithful officer has always within reach.

Now will any one but a newspaper flatterer venture to say that this is the habitual standard in our volunteer service? Take as a test the manner in which official inspections are usually regarded by a regimental commander. These occasions are to him what examinations by the School Committee are to a public-school teacher. He may either deprecate and dodge them, or he may manfully welcome them as the very best means of improvement for all under his care. Which is the more common view? What sight more pitiable than to behold an officer begging off from inspection because he has just come in from picket, or is just going out on picket, or has just removed camp, or was a day too late with his last requisition for cartridges? No doubt it is a trying ordeal to have some young regular-army lieutenant ride up to your tent at an hour's notice, and leisurely devote a day to probing every weak spot in your command,--to stand by while he smells at every camp-kettle, detects every delinquent gun-sling, ferrets out old shoes from behind the mess-bunks, spies out every tent-pole not labelled with the sergeant's name, asks to see the cash-balance of each company-fund, and perplexes your best captain on forming from two ranks into one by the left flank. Yet it is just such unpleasant processes as these which are the salvation of an army; these petty mortifications are the fulcrum by which you can lift your whole regiment to a first-class rank, if you have only the sense to use them. So long as no inspecting officer needs twice to remind you of the same thing, you have no need to blush. But though you be the bravest of the brave, though you know a thousand things of which he is utterly ignorant, yet so long as he can tell you one thing which you ought to know, he is master of the situation. He may be the most conceited little popinjay who ever strutted in uniform; no matter; it is more for your interest to learn than for his to teach. Let our volunteer officers, as a body, once resolve to act on this principle, and we shall have such an army as the world never saw. But nothing costs the nation a price so fearful, in money or in men, as the false pride which shrinks from these necessary surgical operations, or regards the surgeon as a foe.

It is not being an officer to wear uniform for three years, to draw one's pay periodically, and to acquit one's self without shame during a few hours or days of actual battle. History will never record what fine regiments have been wasted and ruined, since this war began, by the negligence in camp of commanders who were brave as Bayard in the field. Unless a man is willing to concentrate his whole soul upon learning and performing the humblest as well as the most brilliant functions of his new profession, a true officer he will never become. More time will not help him; for time seldom does much for one who enters, especially in middle life, on an employment for which he is essentially unfitted. It is amusing to see the weight attached to the name of veteran, in military matters, by persons who in civil life are very ready to exchange a veteran doctor or minister for his younger rival. Military seniority, though the only practicable rule of precedence, is liable to many notorious inconveniences. It is especially without meaning in the volunteer service, where the Governor of Maine may happen to date a set of commissions on the first day of January, and His Excellency of Minnesota may doom his contemporary regiment to life-long subordination by accidentally postponing theirs to the second day. But it has sufficient drawbacks even where all the appointments pass through one channel. The dignity it gives is a merely chronological distinction,--an oldest-inhabitant renown,--much like the university-degree of A. M., which simply implies that a man has got decently through college, and then survived three years. But if a man was originally placed in a position beyond his deserts, the mere lapse of time may have only made him the more dangerous charlatan. If he showed no sign of military aptitude in six months, a probation of three years may have been more costly, but not more conclusive. Add to this the fact that each successive year of the war has seen all officers more carefully selected, if only because there has been more choice of material; so that there is sometimes a temptation in actual service, were it practicable, to become Scriptural in our treatment, and put the last first and the first last. In those unfortunate early days, when it seemed to most of our Governors to make little difference whom they commissioned, since all were alike untried, and of two evils it was natural to choose that which would produce the more agreeable consequences at the next election-time,--in those days of darkness many very poor officers saw the light. Many of these have since been happily discharged or judiciously shelved. The trouble is, that those who remain are among the senior officers in our volunteer army, in their respective grades. They command posts, brigades, divisions. They preside at court-martials. Beneath the shadow of their notorious incompetency all minor evils may lurk undetected. To crown all, they are, in many cases, sincere and well-meaning men, utterly obtuse as to their own deficiencies, and manifesting (to employ a witticism coeval with themselves) all the Christian virtues except that of resignation.

The present writer has beheld the spectacle of an officer of high rank, previously eminent in civil life, who could only vindicate himself before a court-martial from the ruinous charge of false muster by summoning a staff-officer to prove that it was his custom to sign all military papers without looking at them. He has seen a lieutenant tried for neglect of duty in allowing a soldier under his command, at an important picket-post, to be found by the field-officer of the day with two inches of sand in the bottom of his gun,--and pleading, in mitigation of sentence, that it had never been the practice in his regiment to make any inspection of men detailed for such duty. That such instances of negligence should be tolerated for six months in any regiment of regulars is a thing almost inconceivable, and yet in these cases the regiments and the officers had been nearly three years in service.

It is to be remembered that even the command of a regiment of a thousand men is a first-class administrative position, and that there is no employer of men in civil life who assumes the responsibility of those under his command so absolutely and thoroughly. The life, the health, the efficiency, the finances, the families of his soldiers, are staked not so much on the courage of a regimental commander as upon his decision, his foresight, and his business-habits. As Richter's worldly old statesman tells his son, "War trains a man to business." If he takes his training slowly, he must grow perfect through suffering,--commonly the suffering of other people. The varied and elaborate returns, for instance, now required of officers,--daily, monthly, quarterly, annually,--are not one too many as regards the interests of Government and of the soldiers, but are enough to daunt any but an accurate and methodical man. A single error in an ordnance requisition may send a body of troops into action with only twenty rounds of ammunition to a man. One mistake in a property-voucher may involve an officer in stoppages exceeding his yearly pay. One wrong spelling in a muster-roll may beggar a soldier's children ten years after the father has been killed in battle. Under such circumstances no standard of accuracy can be too high. And yet even the degree of regularity that now exists is due more to the constant pressure from head-quarters than to any individual zeal. For a large part of this pressure the influence of the regular army is responsible,--those officers usually occupying the more important staff-positions, and having in some departments of service, especially in the ordnance, moulded and remoulded the whole machinery until it has become almost a model. It would be difficult to name anything in civil life which is in its way so perfect as the present system of business and of papers in this department. Every ordnance blank now contains a schedule of instructions for its own use, so simple and so minute that it seems as if, henceforward, the most negligent volunteer officer could never make another error. And yet in the very last set of returns which the writer had occasion to revise,--returns made by a very meritorious captain,--there were eight different papers, and a mistake in every one.

The glaring defeat of most of our volunteer regiments, from the beginning to this day, has lain in slovenliness and remissness as to every department of military duty, except the actual fighting and dying. When it comes to that ultimate test, our men usually endure it so magnificently that one is tempted to overlook all deficiencies on intermediate points. But they must not be overlooked, because they create a fearful discount on the usefulness of our troops, when tried by the standard of regular armies. I do not now refer to the niceties of dress-parade or the courtesies of salutation: it has long since been tacitly admitted that a white American soldier will not present arms to any number of rows of buttons, if he can by any ingenuity evade it; and to shoulder arms on passing an officer is something to which only Ethiopia or the regular army can attain. Grant, if you please, (though I do not grant,) that these are merely points of foolish punctilio. But there are many things which are more than punctilio, though they may be less than fighting. The efficiency of a body of troops depends, after all, not so much on its bravery as on the condition of its sick-list. A regiment which does picket-duty faithfully will often avoid the need of duties more terrible. Yet I have ridden by night along a chain of ten sentinels, every one of whom should have taken my life rather than permit me to give the countersign without dismounting, and have been required to dismount by only four, while two did not ask me for the countersign at all, and two others were asleep. I have ridden through a regimental camp whose utterly filthy condition seemed enough to send malaria through a whole military department, and have been asked by the colonel, almost with tears in his eyes, to explain to him why his men were dying at the rate of one a day. The latter was a regiment nearly a year old, and the former one of almost two years' service, and just from the old Army of the Potomac.

The fault was, of course, in the officers. The officer makes the command, as surely as, in educational matters, the teacher makes the school. There is not a regiment in the army so good that it could not be utterly spoiled in three months by a poor commander, nor so poor that it could not be altogether transformed in six by a good one. The difference in material is nothing,--white or black, German or Irish; so potent is military machinery that an officer who knows his business can make good soldiers out of almost anything, give him but a fair chance. The difference between the present Army of the Potomac and any previous one,--the reason why we do not daily hear, as in the early campaigns, of irresistible surprises, overwhelming numbers, and masked batteries,--the reason why the present movements are a tide and not a wave,--is not that the men are veterans, but that the officers are. There is an immense amount of perfectly raw material in General Grant's force, besides the colored regiments, which in that army are all raw, but in which the Copperhead critics have such faith they would gladly select them for dangers fit for Napoleon's Old Guard. But the newest recruit soon grows steady with a steady corporal at his elbow, a well-trained sergeant behind him, and a captain or a colonel whose voice means something to give commands.

This reference to the colored troops suggests the false impression, still held by many, that special opposition to this important military organization has been made by regular officers. There is no justice in this. While it is very probable that regular officers, as a class, may have had stronger prejudices on this point than others have held, yet it is to be remembered that the chief obstacles have not come from them, nor from military men of any kind, but from civilians at home. Nothing has been more remarkable than the facility with which the expected aversion of the army everywhere vanished before the admirable behavior of the colored troops, and the substantial value of the reinforcements they brought. When it comes to the simple question whether a soldier shall go on duty every night or every other night, he is not critical as to beauty of complexion in the soldier who relieves him.

Some regular officers may have been virulently opposed to the employment of negroes as soldiers, though the few instances which I have known have been far more than compensated by repeated acts of the most substantial kindness from many others. But I never have met one who did not express contempt for the fraud thus far practised by Government on a portion of these troops, by refusing to pay them the wages which the Secretary of War had guarantied. This is a wrong which, but for good discipline, would have long since converted our older colored regiments into a mob of mutineers, and which, while dishonestly saving the Government a few thousand dollars, has virtually sacrificed hundreds of thousands in its discouraging effect upon enlistments, at a time when the fate of the nation may depend upon a few regiments more or less. It is in vain for national conventions to make capital by denouncing massacres like that of Fort Pillow, and yet ignore this more deliberate injustice for which some of their own members are in part responsible. The colored soldiers will take their own risk of capture and maltreatment very readily, (since they must take it on themselves at any rate,) if the Government will let its justice begin at home, and pay them their honest earnings. It is of little consequence to a dying man whether any one else is to die by retaliation, but it is of momentous consequence whether his wife and family are to be cheated of half his scanty earnings by the nation for which he dies. The Rebels may be induced to concede the negro the rights of war, when we grant him the ordinary rights of peace, namely, to be paid the price agreed upon. Jefferson Davis and the London "Times"--one-half whose stock-in-trade is "the inveterate meanness of the Yankee"--will hardly be converted to sound morals by the rebukes of an administration which allows its Secretary of War to promise a black soldier thirteen dollars a month, pay him seven, and shoot him if he grumbles. From this crowning injustice the regular army, and, indeed, the whole army, is clear; to civilians alone belongs this carnival of fraud.

If, in some instances, terrible injustice has been done to the black soldiers in their military treatment also, it has not been only, or chiefly, under regular officers. Against the cruel fatigue duty imposed upon them last summer, in the Department of the South, for instance, must be set the more disastrous mismanagements of the Department of the Gulf,--the only place from which we now hear the old stories of disease and desertion,--all dating back to the astonishing blunder of organizing the colored regiments of half-size at the outset, with a full complement of officers. This measure, however agreeable it might have been to the horde of aspirants for commissions, was in itself calculated to destroy all self-respect in the soldiers, being based on the utterly baseless assumption that they required twice as many officers as whites, and was foredoomed to failure, because no _esprit de corps_ can be created in a regiment which is from the first insignificant in respect to size. It is scarcely conceivable that any regular officer should have honestly fallen into such an error as this; and it is very certain that the wisest suggestions and the most efficient action have proceeded, since the beginning, from them. It will be sufficient to mention the names of Major-General Hunter, Brigadier-General Phelps, and Adjutant-General Thomas; and one there is whose crowning merits deserve a tribute distinct even from these.

When some future Bancroft or Motley writes with philosophic brain and poet's hand the story of the Great Civil War, he will find the transition to a new era in our nation's history to have been fitly marked by one festal day,--that of the announcement of the President's Proclamation, upon Port-Royal Island, on the first of January, 1863. That New-Year's time was our second contribution to the great series of historic days, beads upon the rosary of the human race, permanent festivals of freedom. Its celebration was one beside whose simple pageant the superb festivals of other lands might seem but glittering counterfeits. Beneath a majestic grove of the great live-oaks which glorify the South-Carolina soil a liberated people met to celebrate their own peaceful emancipation. They came thronging, by land and water, from plantations which their own self-imposed and exemplary industry was beginning already to redeem. The military escort which surrounded them had been organized out of their own numbers, and had furnished to the nation the first proof of the capacity of their race to bear arms. The key-note of the meeting was given by spontaneous voices, whose unexpected anthem took the day from the management of well-meaning patrons, and swept all away into the great currents of simple feeling. It was a scene never to be forgotten: the moss-hung trees, with their hundred-feet diameter of shade; the eager faces of women and children in the foreground; the many-colored headdresses; the upraised hands; the neat uniforms of the soldiers; the outer row of mounted officers and ladies; and beyond all the blue river, with its swift, free tide. And at the centre of all this great and joyous circle stood modestly the man on whose personal integrity and energy, more than on any President or Cabinet, the hopes of all that multitude appeared to rest,--who commanded then among his subjects, and still commands, an allegiance more absolute than any European potentate can claim,--whose name will be forever illustrious as having first made a practical reality out of that Proclamation which then was to the President only an autograph, and to the Cabinet only a dream,--who, when the whole fate of the slaves and of the Government hung trembling in the balance, decided it forever by throwing into the scale the weight of one resolute man,--who personally mustered in the first black regiment, and personally governed the first community where emancipation was a success,--who taught the relieved nation, in fine, that there was strength and safety in those dusky millions who till then had been an incubus and a terror,--Brigadier-General Rufus Saxton, Military Governor of South Carolina. The single career of this one man more than atones for all the traitors whom West Point ever nurtured, and awards the highest place on the roll of our practical statesmanship to the regular army.

THE TOTAL DEPRAVITY OF INANIMATE THINGS.

I am confident, that, at the annunciation of my theme, Andover, Princeton, and Cambridge will skip like rams, and the little hills of East Windsor, Meadville, and Fairfax, like lambs. However divinity-schools may refuse to "skip" in unison, and may butt and batter each other about the doctrine and origin of _human_ depravity, all will join devoutly in the _credo_, I believe in the total depravity of inanimate things.

The whole subject lies in a nutshell, or rather an apple-skin. We have clerical authority for affirming that all its miseries were let loose upon the human race by "them greenins" tempting our mother to curious pomological speculations; and from that time till now--Longfellow, thou reasonest well!--"things are not what they seem," but are diabolically otherwise,--masked-batteries, nets, gins, and snares of evil.

(In this connection I am reminded of--can I ever cease to remember?--the unlucky lecturer at our lyceum a few winters ago, who, on rising to address his audience, applauding him all the while most vehemently, pulled out his handkerchief, for oratorical purposes only, and inadvertently flung from his pocket three "Baldwins" that a friend had given to him on his way to the hall, straight into the front row of giggling girls.)

My zeal on this subject received new impetus recently from an exclamation which pierced the thin partitions of the country-parsonage, once my home, where I chanced to be a guest.

From the adjoining dressing-room issued a prolonged "Y-ah!"--not the howl of a spoiled child, nor the protest of a captive gorilla, but the whole-souled utterance of a mighty son of Anak, whose amiability is invulnerable to weapons of human aggravation.

I paused in the midst of toilet-exigencies, and listened sympathetically, for I recognized the probable presence of the old enemy to whom the bravest and sweetest succumb.

Confirmation and explanation followed speedily in the half apologetic, wholly wrathful declaration,--"The pitcher was made foolish in the first place." I dare affirm, that, if the spirit of Lindley Murray himself were at that moment hovering over that scene of trial, he dropped a tear, or, better still, an adverbial _ly_ upon the false grammar, and blotted it out forever.

I comprehended the scene at once. I had been there. I felt again the remorseless swash of the water over neat boots and immaculate hose; I saw the perverse intricacies of its meanderings over the carpet, upon which the "foolish" pitcher had been confidingly deposited; I knew, beyond the necessity of ocular demonstration, that, as sure as there were "pipe-hole" or crack in the ceiling of the study below, those inanimate things would inevitably put their evil heads together, and bring to grief the long-suffering Dominie, with whom, during my day, such inundations had been of at least bi-weekly occurrence, instigated by crinoline. The inherent wickedness of that "thing of beauty" will be acknowledged by all mankind, and by every female not reduced to the deplorable poverty of the heroine of the following veracious anecdote.

A certain good bishop, on making a tour of inspection through a mission-school of his diocese, was so impressed by the aspect of all its beneficiaries that his heart overflowed with joy, and he exclaimed to a little maiden whose appearance was particularly suggestive of creature-comforts,--"Why, my little girl! you have everything that heart can wish, haven't you?" Imagine the bewilderment and horror of the prelate, when the miniature Flora McFlimsey drew down the corners of her mouth lugubriously, and sought to accommodate the puffs and dimples of her fat little body to an expression of abject misery, as she replied,--"No, indeed, Sir! I haven't got any--skeleton!"

We who have suffered know the disposition of graceless "skeletons" to hang themselves on "foolish" pitchers, bureau-knobs, rockers, cobble-stones, splinters, nails, and, indeed, any projection a tenth of a line beyond a dead level.

The mention of nails is suggestive of voluminous distresses. Country-parsonages, from some inexplicable reason, are wont to bristle all over with these impish assailants of human comfort.

I never ventured to leave my masculine relatives to their own devices for more than twenty-four consecutive hours, that I did not return to find that they had seemingly manifested their grief at my absence after the old Hebraic method, ("more honored in the breach than the observance,") by rending their garments. When summoned to their account, the invariable defence has been a vehement denunciation of some particular _nail_ as the guilty cause of my woes.

By the way, O Christian woman of the nineteenth century, did it ever enter your heart to give devout thanks that you did not share the woe of those whose fate it was to "sojourn in Mesech and dwell in the tents of Kedar"? that it did not fall to your lot to do the plain sewing and mending for some Jewish patriarch, patriot, or prophet of yore?

Realize, if you can, the masculine aggravation and the feminine long-suffering of a period when the head of a family could neither go down-town, nor even sit at his tent-door, without descrying some wickedness in high places, some insulting placard, some exasperating war-bulletin, some offensive order from head-quarters, which caused him to transform himself instantly into an animated rag-bag. Whereas, in these women-saving days, similar grievances send President Abraham into his cabinet to issue a proclamation, the Reverend Jeremiah into his pulpit with a scathing homily, Poet-Laureate David to the "Atlantic" with a burning lyric, and Major-General Joab to the privacy of his tent, there to calm his perturbed spirit with Drake's Plantation Bitters. In humble imitation of another, I would state that this indorsement of the potency of a specific is entirely gratuitous, and that I am stimulated thereto by no remuneration, fluid or otherwise.

Blessed be this day of sewing-machines for women, and of safety-valves and innocent explosives for their lords!

But this is a digression.

I awoke very early in life to the consciousness that I held the doctrine which we are considering.

On a hapless day when I was perhaps five years old, I was, in my own estimation, intrusted with the family-dignity, when I was deposited for the day at the house of a lordly Pharisee of the parish, with solemnly repeated instructions in table-manners and the like.

One who never analyzed the mysteries of a sensitive child's heart cannot appreciate the sense of awful responsibility which oppressed me during that visit. But all went faultlessly for a time. I corrected myself instantly each time. I said, "Yes, Ma'am," to Mr. Simon, and "No, Sir," to Madam, which was as often as I addressed them; I clenched little fists and lips resolutely, that they might not touch, taste, handle, tempting _bijouterie_; I even held in check the spirit of inquiry rampant within me, and indulged myself with only one question to every three minutes of time.

At last I found myself at the handsome dinner-table, triumphantly mounted upon two "Comprehensive Commentaries" and a dictionary, fearing no evil from the viands before me. Least of all did I suspect the vegetables of guile. But deep in the heart of a bland, mealy-mouthed potato lurked cruel designs upon my fair reputation.

No sooner had I, in the most approved style of nursery good-breeding, applied my fork to its surface, than the hardhearted thing executed a wild _pirouette_ before my astonished eyes, and then flew on impish wings across the room, dashing out its malicious brains, I am happy to say, against the parlor-door, but leaving me in a half-comatose state, stirred only by vague longings for a lodge with "proud Korah's troop," whose destination is unmistakably set forth in the "Shorter Catechism."

There is a possibility that I received my innate distrust of things by inheritance from my maternal grandmother, whose holy horror at the profanity they once provoked from a bosom-friend in her childhood was still vivid in her old age.

It was on this wise. When still a pretty Puritan maiden, my grandame was tempted irresistibly by the spring sunshine to the tabooed indulgence of a Sunday-walk. The temptation was probably intensified by the presence of the British troops, giving unwonted fascination to village-promenades. Her confederate in this guilty pleasure was a like-minded little saint; so there was a tacit agreement between them that their transgression should be sanctified by a strict adherence to religious topics of conversation. Accordingly they launched boldly upon the great subject which was just then agitating church-circles in New England.

Fortune smiled upon these criminals against the Blue Laws, until they encountered a wall surmounted by hickory rails. Without intermitting the discussion, Susannah sprang agilely up. Quoth she, balancing herself for one moment upon the summit,--"No, no, Betsey! _I_ believe God is the author of sin!" The next she sprang toward the ground; but a salient splinter, a chip of depravity, clutched her Sunday-gown, and converted her incontinently, it seems, into a confessor of the opposing faith; for history records, that, following the above-mentioned dogma, there came from hitherto unstained lips,--"The Devil!"

Time and space would, of course, be inadequate to the enumeration of all the demonstrations of the truth of the doctrine of the absolute depravity of things. A few examples only can be cited.

There is melancholy pleasure in the knowledge that a great soul has gone mourning before me in the path I am now pursuing. It was only to-day, that, in glancing over the pages of Victor Hugo's greatest work, I chanced upon the following:--"Every one will have noticed with what skill a coin let fall upon the ground runs to hide itself, and what art it has in rendering itself invisible; there are thoughts which play us the same trick," etc., etc.

The similar tendency of pins and needles is universally understood and execrated,--their base secretiveness when searched for, and their incensing intrusion when one is off guard.

I know a man whose sense of their malignity is so keen, that, whenever he catches a gleam of their treacherous lustre on the carpet, he instantly draws his two and a quarter yards of length into the smallest possible compass, and shrieks until the domestic police come to the rescue, and apprehend the sharp little villains. Do not laugh at this. Years ago he lost his choicest friend by the stab of just such a little dastard lying in ambush.

So also every wielder of the needle is familiar with the propensity of the several parts of a garment in the process of manufacture to turn themselves wrong side out, and down side up; and the same viciousness cleaves like leprosy to the completed garment so long as a thread remains.

My blood still tingles with a horrible memory illustrative of this truth.

Dressing hurriedly and in darkness for a concert one evening, I appealed to the Dominie, as we passed under the hall-lamp, for a toilet-inspection.

"How do I look, father?"

After a sweeping glance came the candid statement,--

"Beau-tifully!"

Oh, the blessed glamour which invests a child whose father views her "with a critic's eye"!

"Yes, _of course_; but look carefully, please; how is my dress?"

Another examination of apparently severest scrutiny.

"All right, dear! That's the new cloak, is it? Never saw you look better. Come, we shall be late."

Confidingly I went to the hall; confidingly I entered; since the concert-room was crowded with rapt listeners to the Fifth Symphony, I, gingerly, but still confidingly, followed the author of my days, and the critic of my toilet, to the very uppermost seat, which I entered, barely nodding to my finically fastidious friend, Guy Livingston, who was seated near us with a stylish-looking stranger, who bent eyebrows and glass upon me superciliously.

Seated, the Dominie was at once lifted into the midst of the massive harmonies of the Adagio; I lingered outside a moment, in order to settle my garments and--that woman's look. What! was that a partially suppressed titter near me? Ah! she has no soul for music! How such ill-timed merriment will jar upon my friend's exquisite sensibilities!

Shade of Beethoven! A hybrid cough and laugh, smothered decorously, but still recognizable, from the courtly Guy himself! What can it mean?

In my perturbation, my eyes fell and rested upon the sack, whose newness and glorifying effect had been already noticed by my lynx-eyed parent.

I here pause to remark that I had intended to request the compositor to "set up" the coming sentence in explosive capitals, by way of emphasis, but forbear, realizing that it already staggers under the weight of its own significance.

That sack was wrong side out!

Stern necessity, proverbially known as "the mother of invention," and practically the step-mother of ministers' daughters, had made me eke out the silken facings of the front with cambric linings for the back and sleeves. Accordingly, in the full blaze of the concert-room, there sat I, "accoutred as I was," in motley attire,--my homely little economies patent to admiring spectators: on either shoulder, budding wings composed of unequal parts of sarcenet-cambric and cotton-batting; and in my heart--_parricide_ I had almost said, but it was rather the more filial sentiment of desire to operate for cataract upon my father's eyes. But a moment's reflection sufficed to transfer my indignation to its proper object,--the sinful sack itself, which, concerting with its kindred darkness, had planned this cruel assault upon my innocent pride.

A constitutional obtuseness renders me delightfully insensible to one fruitful source of provocation among inanimate things. I am so dull as to regard all distinctions between "rights" and "lefts" as invidious; but I have witnessed the agonized struggles of many a victim of fractious boots, and been thankful that "I am not as other men are," in ability to comprehend the difference between my right and left foot. Still, as already intimated, I have seen wise men driven mad by a thing of leather and waxed-ends.

A little innocent of three years, in all the pride of his first boots, was aggravated, by the perversity of the right to thrust itself on to the left leg, to the utterance of a contraband expletive.

When reproved by his horror-stricken mamma, he maintained a dogged silence.

In order to pierce his apparently indurated conscience, his censor finally said, solemnly,--

"Dugald! God knows that you said that wicked word."

"Does He?" cried the baby-victim of reral depravity, in a tone of relief; "then _He_ knows it was a doke" (_Anglicè_, joke).

But, mind you, the sin-tempting boot intended no "doke."

The toilet, with its multiform details and complicated machinery, is a demon whose surname is Legion.

Time would fail me to speak of the elusiveness of soap, the knottiness of strings, the transitory nature of buttons, the inclination of suspenders to twist, and of hooks to forsake their lawful eyes, and cleave only unto the hairs of their hapless owner's head. (It occurs to me as barely possible, that, in the last case, the hooks may be innocent, and the sinfulness may lie in _capillary_ attraction.)

And, O my brother or sister in sorrow, has it never befallen you, when bending all your energies to the mighty task of "doing" your back-hair, to find yourself gazing inanely at the opaque back of your brush, while the hand-mirror, which had maliciously insinuated itself into your right hand for this express purpose, came down upon your devoted head with a resonant whack?

I have alluded, parenthetically, to the possible guilt of capillary attraction, but I am prepared to maintain against the attraction of gravitation the charge of total depravity. Indeed, I should say of it, as did the worthy exhorter of the Dominie's old parish in regard to slavery,--"It's the wickedest thing in the world, except sin!"

It was only the other day that I saw depicted upon the young divine's countenance, from this cause, thoughts "too deep for tears," and, perchance, too earthy for clerical utterance.

From a mingling of sanitary and economic considerations, he had cleared his own sidewalk after a heavy snow-storm. As he stood, leaning upon his shovel, surveying with smiling complacency his accomplished task, the spite of the arch-fiend Gravitation was raised against him, and, finding the impish slates (hadn't Luther something to say about "_as many devils as tiles_"?) ready to coöperate, an avalanche was the result, making the last state of that sidewalk worse than the first, and sending the divine into the house with a battered hat, and an article of faith supplementary to the orthodox thirty-nine.

Prolonged reflection upon a certain class of grievances has convinced me that mankind has generally ascribed them to a guiltless source. I refer to the unspeakable aggravation of "typographical errors," rightly so called,--for, in nine cases out of ten, I opine it is the types themselves which err.

I appeal to fellow-sufferers, if the substitutions and interpolations and false combinations of letters are not often altogether too absurd for humanity.

Take, as one instance, the experience of a friend, who, in writing in all innocency of a session of the Historical Society, affirmed mildly in manuscript, "All went smoothly," but weeks after was made to declare in blatant print, "All went _snoringly_!"

As among men, so in the alphabet, one sinner destroyeth much good.

The genial Senator from the Granite Hills told me of an early aspiration of his own for literary distinction, which was beheaded remorselessly by a villain of this type. By way of majestic peroration to a pathetic article, he had exclaimed, "For what would we exchange the fame of Washington?"--referring, I scarcely need say, to the man of fragrant memory, and not to the odorous capital. The black-hearted little dies, left to their own devices one night, struck dismay to the heart of the aspirant author by propounding in black and white a prosaic inquiry as to what would be considered a fair equivalent for the _farm_ of the father of his country!

Among frequent instances of this depravity in my own experience, a flagrant example still shows its ugly front on a page of a child's book. In the latest edition of "Our Little Girls," (good Mr. Randolph, pray read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest,) there occurs a description of a christening, wherein a venerable divine is made to dip "his _head_" into the consecrating water, and lay it upon the child.

Disembodied words are also sinners and the occasions of sin. Who has not broken the Commandments in consequence of the provocation of some miserable little monosyllabic eluding his grasp in the moment of his direst need, or of some impertinent interloper thrusting itself in to the utter demoralization of his well-organized sentences? Who has not been covered with shame at tripping over the pronunciation of some perfectly simple word like "statistics," "inalienable," "inextricable," etc., etc., etc.?

Whose experience will not empower him to sympathize with that unfortunate invalid, who, on being interrogated by a pious visitor in regard to her enjoyment of means of grace, informed the horror-stricken inquisitor,--"I have not been to church for years, I have been such an _infidel_,"--and then, moved by a dim impression of wrong somewhere, as well as by the evident shock inflicted upon her worthy visitor, but conscious of her own integrity, repeated still more emphatically,--"No; I have been a confirmed infidel for years."

But a peremptory summons from an animated nursery forbids my lingering longer in this fruitful field. I can only add an instance of corroborating testimony from each member of the circle originating this essay.

The Dominie _loq._--"Sha'n't have anything to do with it! It's a wicked thing! To be sure, I do remember, when I was a little boy, I used to throw stones at the chip-basket when it upset the cargo I had just laded, and it was a great relief to my feelings too. Besides, you've told stories about me which were anything but true. I don't remember anything about that sack."

Lady-visitor _loq._--"The first time I was invited to Mr. ----'s, (the Hon. ---- ----'s, you know,) I was somewhat anxious, but went home flattering myself I had made a creditable impression. Imagine my consternation, when I came to relieve the pocket of my gala-gown, donned for the occasion, at discovering among its treasures a tea-napkin, marked gorgeously with the Hon. ---- ----'s family-crest, which had maliciously crept into its depths in order to bring me into disgrace! I have never been able to bring myself to the point of confession, in spite of my subsequent intimacy with the family. If it were not for Joseph's positive assertion to the contrary, I should be of the opinion that his cup of divination conjured itself deliberately and sinfully into innocent Benjamin's sack."

Student _loq._ (Testimony open to criticism.)--"Met pretty girl on the street yesterday. Sure I had on my 'Armstrong' hat when I left home,--sure as fate; but when I went to pull it off,--by the crown, of course,--to bow to pretty girl, I smashed in my beaver! How it got there don't know. Knocked it off. Pretty girl picked it up and handed it to me. Confounded things, any way!"

Young divine _loq._--"While I was in the army, I was in Washington on 'leave' for two or three days. One night, at a party, I became utterly bewildered in an attempt to converse, after long desuetude, with a fascinating woman. I went stumbling on, amazing her more and more, until finally I covered myself with glory by the categorical statement that in my opinion General McClellan could 'never get across the Peninsula without a _fattle_; I beg pardon, Madam! what I mean to say is, without a _bight_.'"

School-girl _loq._--"When Uncle ---- was President, I was at the White House at a state-dinner one evening. Senator ---- came rushing in frantically after we had been at table some time. No sooner was he seated than he turned to Aunt to apologize for his delay; and, being very much heated, and very much embarrassed, he tugged away desperately at his pocket, and finally succeeded in extracting a huge blue stocking, evidently of home-manufacture, with which he proceeded to wipe his forehead very energetically and very conspicuously. I suppose the truth was that the poor man's handkerchiefs were "on a strike," and thrust forward this homespun stocking to bring him to terms."

School-girl, No. 2, _loq._--"My last term at F., I was expecting a box of 'goodies' from home. So when the message came, 'An express-package for you, Miss Fanny!' I invited all my specials to come and assist at the opening. Instead of the expected box, there appeared a misshapen-bundle, done up in yellow wrapping-paper. Four such dejected-looking damsels were never seen before as we, standing around the ugly old thing. Finally, Alice suggested,--

"'Open it!'

"'Oh, I know what it is,' I said; 'it is my old Thibet, that mother has had made over for me.'

"'Let's see,' persisted Alice.

"So I opened the package. The first thing I drew out was too much for me.

"'What a funny-looking basque!' exclaimed Alice. All the rest were struck dumb with disappointment.

"No! not a basque at all, but a man's black satin waistcoat! and next came objects about which there could be no doubt,--a pair of dingy old trousers, and a swallow-tailed coat! Imagine the chorus of damsels!

"The secret was, that two packages lay in father's office,--one for me, the other for those everlasting freedmen. John was to forward mine. He had taken up the box to write my address on it, when the yellow bundle tumbled off the desk at his feet and scared the wits out of his head. So I came in for father's secondhand clothes, and the Ethiopians had the 'goodies'!"

Repentant Dominie _loq._--"I don't approve of it at all; but then, if you must write the wicked thing, I heard a good story for you to-day. Dr. ---- found himself in the pulpit of a Dutch Reformed Church the other Sunday. You know he is one who prides himself on his adaptation to places and times. Just at the close of the introductory services, a black gown lying over the arm of the sofa caught his eye. He was rising to deliver his sermon, when it forced itself on his attention again.

"'Sure enough,' thought he, 'Dutch Reformed clergymen do wear gowns. I might as well put it on.'

"So he solemnly thrust himself into the malicious (as you would say) garment, and went through the services as well as he could, considering that his audience seemed singularly agitated, and indeed on the point of bursting out into a general laugh, throughout the entire service. And no wonder! The good Doctor, in his zeal for conformity, had attired himself in the black cambric duster in which the pulpit was shrouded during week-days, and had been gesticulating his eloquent homily with his arms thrust through the holes left for the pulpit-lamps!"

WHAT SHALL WE HAVE FOR DINNER?

I think I must be personally known to most of the readers of the "Atlantic." I see them wherever I go, and they see me. Beneath a shelter-tent by the Rapidan, in a striped railroad-station in Bavaria, at the counter of Trübner's bookstore in London, and at Cordaville, in Worcester County, Massachusetts, as we waited for the freight to get out of the way, I have read the "Atlantic" over their shoulders, or they over mine. The same thing has happened at six hundred and thirty-two other improbable places. More than this, however, my words and works in the great science of Domestic Economy have travelled everywhere before me, not simply like the Connecticut of the poet,

"Bringing shad to South Hadley, and pleasure to man,"[35]

but extending all over the civilized world. Not that I am the author of the clothes-wringing machine, or of the spring clothes-pin,--my influence has been more subtile. I have propounded great central axioms in housekeeping and the other economies, which have rushed over the world with the inevitable momentum of truth. It was I, for instance, who first discovered and proclaimed the great governing fact that the butter of a family costs more than its bread. It was I who first announced that you cannot economize in the quality of your paper. I am the discoverer of the formula that a family consumes as many barrels of flour in a year as it has adult members, reducing children to adults by the rule of three. The morning after our marriage I raised the window-shade, so that the rising sun of that auspicious day should shine full upon our parlor-Brussels. I said to Lois, "Let us never be slaves to our carpets!" The angel smiled assent; and on the wings of that smile my whisper fluttered over the earth. It brooded in a thousand homes else miserable. Light was where before was chaos. Sunshine drove scrofula from ten thousand quivering frames, and millions of infant lips would this day raise Lois's name and mine in their Kindergarten songs, did they only know who were their benefactors.

Standing thus in the centre of the sphere of the domestic economies, I have, of course, read with passionate interest the "House and Home Papers" in the "Atlantic." It is I, as I am proud to confess, who have, violated all copyright, have had them reprinted, as Tract No. 2237 of the American Tract Society, No. 63 of the American Tract Society of Boston, and No. 445 of the issues of the Sanitary Commission, and am now about to introduce them surreptitiously into the bureaus of these charities, so that the colporteurs, of every stripe, may at last be certain that they are conferring the first of benefits upon their homeless fellow-creatures. It is I who every night toil through long streets that I may slide these little tracts, messengers of blessing, under the front-doors of wretched friends, who are dying without homes in the gilded miseries of their bowling-alley parlors. Where they have introduced the patent weather-strip, I place the tract on the upper door-step, with a brick-bat, which keeps it from blowing away. But I observe that it is no part of the plan of those charming papers, more than it was of the "Novum Organon" or of the "Principia," to descend into the details of the economies. I suppose that the author left all that to the "Domestic Economy" of her excellent sister, and, as far as the details of practice go, well she might. But between that practical detail by which one sister cooks to-day the dinners on a million tables, and the æsthetic, moral, and religious considerations by which the other sister elevates the life of the million homes in whose dining-rooms those tables stand, there is room for a brief exposition of the principles on which those dinners are to be selected.

It is that exposition which, as I sit superior, I am to give, _ex cathedra_, after this long preface, now.

I shall illustrate the necessity of this exposition by an introduction to follow the preface, after the manner of the Germans, before we arrive at the substance of our work, which will be itself comprised in its first chapter. This introduction will consist of two illustrations. The first relates to the planting of potatoes. When I inherited my ancestral estate, known as "Crusoe's Well," I resolved to devote it to potatoes for the first summer. I summoned my vassals, and we fenced it. I bought dung and manured it. I hired ploughmen and oxen, and they ploughed it. I made a covenant with a Kelt, who became, _quoad hoc_, my slave, and gave to him money, with which I directed him to buy seed-potatoes and plant it.

And he,--"How many shall I buy?"

I retired to my study, consulted London, Lindley, and Linnæus,--the thick Gray, the middling Gray, and the child's Gray,--Worcester's Dictionary, and Webster's, in both of which you can usually find almost anything but what should be there,--Johnson's "Dictionary of Gardening," and Gardner's "Dictionary of Farming,"--and none of these treatises mentioned the quantity of potatoes proper for planting a given space of land. Even the Worcester and Webster failed. I was reduced to tell the Kelt to ask the huckster of whom he bought. All the treatises went on the principle--true, but inadequate--that "any fool would know." Any fool might, probably does,--but I was not a fool.

The next year, having built my house and taken Lois home, the bluebirds sang spring to us one fine morning, and we went out to plant our radish-seeds. With fit forethought, the seed had been bought, the ground manured and raked, the string, the dibble, the woman's trowel, the man's trowel, the sticks for the seed-papers, and the papers were all there. Lois was charming, in her sun-bonnet; I looked knowing in my Canadian oat-straw. We marked out the bed,--as the robins, meadow-larks, and bluebirds directed. Lois then looked up article "Radish" in the "Farmer's Dictionary," and we found the lists of "Long White Naples," "White Spanish," "Black Spanish," "Long Scarlet," "White Turnip-Root," "Purple Turnip," and the rest, for two columns, which we should and should not plant. All that was nothing to us. We were to plant radish-seeds, which we had bought, as such, from Mr. Swett. How deep to plant them, how far apart or how near together, the book was to tell. But the book only said, "Everybody knows how to plant radishes."

Now this was not true. _We_ did not know.

These two illustrations, as the minister says, are sufficient to show the character of the deficiency which I am now to supply,--which young housekeepers of intelligence feel, when they have got their nests ready and begin to bill and coo in-doors. There are many things which every fool knows, which people of sense do not know. First among these things is, "What will you have for dinner?"--a question not to be answered by detailed answers,--on the principle of the imaginary Barmacide feasts of the cook-books,--but by the results of deep principles, which underlie, indeed, the whole superficial strata of civilized life. Did not the army of the Punjaub perish, as it retreated from Ghizni to Jelalabad, not because the enemy's lances were strong, but because one day it did not dine?

I am not going to tell the old story of that "sweet pretty girl" who, after a week of legs of mutton, ordered a "leg of beef." I sympathize with her from the bottom of my heart. Her sister will be married to-morrow. To her I dedicate this paper, that she may know, not what she shall order,--that is left to her own sweet will, less fettered now that her life is rounded by her welding it upon its other half than it was when she wandered in maiden meditation fancy-free,--not, I say, what she shall order for her dinner and for Leander's, but the principle on which the order is to be given.

"But, my dear Mr. Carter," says the blushing child, as she reads, "we have got to be so dreadfully economical!"

Fairest of your sex, there was never one of your sex, since Eve finished the apple, lest any should be wasted, nor of my sex, since Adam grimly champed the parings, thinking he was "in for it," who should not be economical. A just economy is the law of a luxurious life. "Dreadful economy" is the principle which is now to be unfolded to you.

Economy in itself is one of the most agreeable of luxuries. This I need not demonstrate. Everybody knows what good fun it is to make a bargain. Economy becomes dreadful, only when some lightning-flash of truth shows us that our painful frugality has been really the most lavish waste.

So Lois and I, for nine years, lived without a corkscrew. We would buy busts and chromoliths with our money instead,--we would go to the White Mountains, we would maintain an elegant æsthetic hospitality, as they do in Paris, with the money we should save by doing without a corkscrew. So I spoiled two sets of kitchen-forks by drawing corks with them, I broke the necks of legions of bottles for which Mr. Tarr would have credited me two cents each, and many times damaged, even to the swearing-point, one of the sweetest tempers in the world,--all that we might economize on this corkscrew. But one day, at the corner-shop, I saw a corkscrew in the glass show-case, lying on some pocket-combs and family dye-stuffs. I asked the price, to learn that it cost seventeen cents. The resolution of years gave way before the temptation. I bought the corkscrew, and from that moment my income has equalled my expenses. So you see, my sweet May-bud, just trembling on the edge of housekeeping, that true economy consists in buying the right thing at the right time,--if you only pay for it as you go.

"But, my dear Mr. Carter, I don't know what the right thing is!"

Sweet heart, I knew it. And your husband knows no more than you do,--although he will pretend to know, that he may look cross when the bills come in. Read what follows; hide the "Atlantic" before he comes home; and you will know more than he knows on the most important point in human life. Vainly, henceforth, will he quote Greek to you, or talk pompous nonsense about the price of Treasury certificates, if you know at what price eggs are really cheap, and at what price they are really dear.

Listen, and remember! Then hide the "Atlantic" away.

When I engaged in the study of Hebrew, which was at that time a "regular" at college, (for why should I blush to own that I am in my one hundred and tenth year?) as I toiled through the rules and exceptions in dear old Stephen Sewall's Hebrew Grammar, I ventured to ask him, one desperately hot June day, whether he could not tell us, were it only for curiosity's sake, which rule would come into play in every verse, and which would be of use only once or twice in the whole Bible. "Ah, Carter," said the dear old fellow, (he taught his beloved language with his own book,) "it is all of use,--all!" And so we had to take it all, and find out as we could which rules would be constant servitors to us, and which occasional lackeys, hired for special occasions. Just so, dear Hero, do you stand about your housekeeping. You wall be fretting yourself to death to economize in each one of one hundred and seven different articles,--for so many are you and Leander to assimilate and make your own special phosphate and carbon, as this sweet honey-year of yours goes on. Of that fret and wear of your sweet temper, child, there is no use at all. Listen, and you shall learn what are to be the great constants of your expense,--what Stephen Sewall would have called the regular verbs transitive of your being, doing, and suffering,--and how many of the one hundred and seven are only exceptional Lamed Hhes, at which you can guess or which you can skip, if the great central movements of your economies go bravely on.

I do not know, of course, whether Leander is fond of coffee, and whether you drink tea or no. I can only tell you what is in our family, and assure you that ours is a model family. Such a model is it, that Lois has just now counted up the one hundred and seven articles for me,--has shown me that they all together cost us nine hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents in the year 1863, and how much each of them cost. Now our family consists,--

1. Of the baby, who is king.

2, 3. Of two nurses, who are prime-ministers, one of domestic affairs, one of private education.

4, 5. Of a cook and table-girl, who are chancellor and foreign secretary. These four make the cabinet.

6-8. Three older children; these are in the government, but not in the cabinet.

9 and 10. Lois and I,--who pay the taxes, fight common enemies, and do what the others tell us as well as we can.

This family, you observe, consists of six grown persons, and three children old enough to eat, who are equivalent to a seventh. I may say, in passing, that it therefore consumes just seven barrels of flour a year.

To feed it, as Lois has just now shown you, cost in the year 1863 nine hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents. That is the way we chose to live. We could have lived just as happily on half that sum,--we could have lived just as wretchedly on ten times that sum. But, however we lived, the proportions of our expense would not have varied much from what I am now to teach you, dear Hero (if that really be your name).

BUTTER is the biggest expense-item of all. Of our nine hundred and twenty-six dollars and thirty-two cents, ninety-one dollars and twenty-six cents went for butter. Remember that your butter is one-tenth part of the whole.

Next comes flour. Our seven barrels cost us seventy dollars and eighty-three cents. We bought, besides, six dollars and seventy-six cents' worth of bread, and six dollars and seventy-one cents' worth of crackers,--convenient sometimes, dear Hero. So that your wheat-flour and bread are almost a tenth of the whole.

Next comes beef, in all forms, ninety dollars and seventy-six cents; there goes another tenth. The other meats are, mutton, forty-seven dollars and sixty-seven cents; turkeys, chickens, etc., if you call them meat, sixty-one dollars and fifty-six cents; lamb, seventeen dollars and fifty-three cents; veal, eleven dollars and fifty-three cents; fresh pork, one dollar and seventy-three cents. (This must have been for some guest. Lois and I each had a grandfather named Enoch, and have Jewish prejudices; also, fresh pork is really the most costly article of diet, if you count in the doctor's bills. But for ham there is ten dollars and twenty-two cents. Ham is always available, you know, Hero. For other salt pork, I recommend you to institute a father or brother, or cousin attached to you in youth, who shall carry on a model farm in the country, and kill for you a model corn-fed pig every year, see it salted with his own eyes, and send to you a half-barrel of the pork for a _gage d'amour_. It is a much more sentimental present than rosebuds, dearest Hero,--and it lasts longer. That is the way we do; and salt pork, therefore, does not appear on our bills. But against such salt pork I have no Hebrew prejudice. Try it, Hero, with paper-sliced potatoes fried for breakfast.) All other forms of meat sum up only two dollars and twenty-three cents. And now, Hero, I will explain to you the philosophy of meats. You see they cost you a quarter part of what you spend.

Know, then, my dear child, that the real business of the three meals a day,--of the neat luncheon you serve on your wedding-silver for Mrs. Dubbadoe and her pretty daughter, when they drive in from Milton to see you,--of the ice-cream you ate last night at the summer party which the Bellinghams gave the Pinckneys,--of the hard-tack and boiled dog which dear John is now digesting in front of Petersburg,--the real business, I say, is to supply the human frame with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen in organized forms. It must be in organized matter. You might pound your wedding-diamonds for carbon, you might give water from Jordan for oxygen and hydrogen, and the snow-flakes of the Jungfrau might serve the nitrogen for Leander's dinners, but, because these are not organized, Leander's cheek would pale, and his teeth shake in their sockets, and his muscles dwindle to packthreads, as William Augustus's do in the Slovenly-Peter books, and he would die before your eyes, Hero! Yes, he would die! Do not, in your love of him, therefore, feed him on your diamonds. Give him organized matter. Now, in doing this, you have been wise in spending even a tenth of your substance on wheat. For wheat is almost pure food; and wheat contains all you want,--more carbon than your diamonds, more oxygen and hydrogen than your tears, more nitrogen than the snow-flake,--but not nitrogen enough, dear Hero.

"More nitrogen!" gasps Leander, "more nitrogen, my charmer, or I die!" This is the real meaning of the words, when he says, "Let us have roast-beef for dinner," or when he asks you to pass him the butter.

Although beef, then, has little more than a quarter as much food in it as wheat has, you must have some beef, or something like it, because Leander, and you too, my rosy-cheek, must have nitrogen as well as carbon.

I beg you not to throw the "Atlantic" away at this point, my child. Do not say that Mr. Carter is an old fool, and that you never meant to live on vegetables. A great many people have meant to, and have never known what was the matter with them, when the real deficiency was nitrogen. Besides, child, though wheat is the best single feeder of all, as I have told you, because in its gluten it has so much nitrogen, this is to be said of all vegetables, that, so far as we live on them, we exist slowly; to a certain extent we have to ruminate as the cows do, and not as men and women should ruminate, and all animal or functional life goes more slowly on. Now, Hero, you and Leander both have to lead a rapid life. Most people do in the autumn of 1864. So give him meat, dear Hero, as above.

As for my being an old fool, my dear, I have said I am one hundred and nine, which is older than old Mr. Waldo was, older than everybody except old Parr. And after forty, everybody is a fool--or a physician.

Let us return, then, to our mutton,--always a good thing to return to, especially if the plates are hot, as yours, Hero, always will be. For mutton, besides such water as you can dry out of it, contains twenty-nine per cent. of food,--for meat, a high percentage.

Let us see where we are.

Our butter costs us one-tenth.

Our flour and wheat-bread cost us almost one-tenth.

Our beef costs us one-tenth.

Our other meats cost us a tenth and a half of what we spend for eating and drinking.

"Where in the world does the rest go, Mr. Carter? Here is not half. But I could certainly live very well on these things."

Angel, you could. But if you lived wholly on these, you would want more of them. You see we have said nothing of coffee and tea,--the princes or princesses of food,--without which civilized man cannot renew his brains. In such years as these, Hero, when our brave soldiers must have coffee or we can have no victories, coffee costs me and Lois fifty dollars,--cheap at that,--for, without it, did we drink dandelion like the cows, or chiccory like the asses, how were these brains renewed?

"Tea and coffee are the same thing," says Liebig; at least, he says that _Theine_, the base of tea, and _Caffeine_, the base of coffee, are the same. What I know is, that, when coffee costs fifty dollars a year, tea costs thirty dollars and eighty-nine cents.

For tea and coffee, Hero, allow about another tenth,--the cocoa and cream will bring it up to that.

Our sugar cost us fifty-four dollars and twenty-two cents; our milk fifty dollars and sixty-two; our cream ten dollars seventy-seven.

"Buy your cream separate," says Hero, "if you have as good a milkman as Mr. Whittemore."

You have not as many babies as we, Hero. When you have, you will not grudge the milk or the sugar. Lots of nourishment in sugar! Sugar and milk are another tenth.

I do not know if you are a Catholic, Hero; but I guess your kitchen is; and so I am pretty sure that you will eat fish Fridays. I know you are a person of sense, so I know you will often delight Leander, as he rises from the day's swim which, for your sake, Hero, he takes across the cold Hellespont of life,--(all men are Leanders, and all women should be their Heros, holding high love-torches for them,)--as he rises, I say, with "a sound of wateriness," I know you will often delight him with oysters, scalloped, fried, or plain, as _entremets_ to flank his dinner-table. For fish count two per cent., for oysters two more, for eggs three or four, and for that stupid compound of starch which some men call "indispensable," and all men call "potato," count three or four more. My advice is, that, when potatoes are dear, you skip them. Rice-_croquets_ are better and cheaper. There goes another tenth.

Tea and coffee, etc., one-tenth.

Sugar and milk, one-tenth.

Fish, eggs, potatoes, etc., one-tenth.

Thus is it, Hero, that three-quarters of what you eat will be spent for your bread and butter, your meat, fish, eggs, and potatoes, your coffee, tea, milk, and sugar,--for twenty-one articles on a list of one hundred and seven. Fresh vegetables, besides those named, will take one-fifth of what is left: say five per cent. of the whole expense. The doctor will order porter or wine, when your back aches, or when Leander looks thin. Have nothing to do with them till he does order them, but reserve another five per cent. for them. The rest, Hero, it is mace, it is yeast, it is vinegar, pepper, and mustard, it is sardines, it is lobster, it is the unconsidered world of trifles which make up the visible difference between the table of high civilization and that of the Abyssinian or the Blackfoot Indian. Let us hope it is not much cream-of-tartar or saleratus. It is grits and grapes, it is lard and lemons, it is maple-sugar and melons, it is nuts and nutmeg, or any other alliteration that you fancy.

Now, pretty one, I can see you smile, and I can hear you say,--"Dear old Mr. Carter, I am very much obliged to you. I begin to see my way a little more clearly." Of course you do, child. You begin to see that the most desperate economy in lemons will not make you and Leander rich, but that you must make up your mind at the start about beef and about butter. Hear, then, my parting whisper.

Disregard the traditions of economy. What is cheap to-day is dear to-morrow. Do not make a bill-of-fare, and, because everything on it tastes very badly, think it is cheap. Salt codfish is cheap sometimes, and sometimes very dear. Venison is often an extravagance; but, of a winter when the sleighing is good, and when the hunters have not gone South, it is the cheapest food for you. Eggs are dear, if they tempt you to cakes that you do not like. But no eggs can be sent to our brave army, so, if you do choose to make a bargain with your Aunt Eunice at Naugatuck Neck to send you four dozen by express once a week, they will be, perhaps, the cheapest food you can buy. What you want, my child, is variety. However cheaply you live, secure four things: First, a change of fare from day to day, so as to have a good appetite; Second, simplicity, each day, in the table, so as to lose but little in chips; Third, fitness of things there, as hot plates for your mutton and cold ones for your butter, so that what you have may be of the best; and, first, second, third, and last, love between you and Leander. This last sauce, says Solomon, answers even for herbs. And you know the Emperors Augustus and Nebuchadnezzar both had to live on herbs,--I am afraid, because love had been wanting in both cases. If you have a stalled ox, you will need the same sauces,--much more, unless it is better dressed than the only one I ever saw, which was at Warwick, when Cheron and I were going to Stratford-on-Avon. It was not attractive. You will need three of these four things, if you are rich. Rich or poor, buy in as large quantities as you can. Rich or poor, pay cash. Rich or poor, do not try to do without carbon or nitrogen. Rich or poor, vary steadily the bills-of-fare. Now the minimum of what you can support life upon, at this moment, is easily told. Jeff Davis makes the calculation for you. It is quarter of a pound of salt pork a day, with four Graham hard-tack. That is what each of his soldiers is eating; and though they are not stout, they are wiry fellows, and fight well. The maximum you can find by lodging at the Brevoort, at New York,--where, when I last went to the front, I stopped an hour on the way, and, though I had no meals, paid two dollars and eighty cents for washing my face in another man's bedroom. A year of Jeff Davis's diet would cost you and Leander, if you bought in large quantities, sixty dollars. A year at Rye Beach just now would cost you two or three thousand dollars. Choose your dinner from either bill; vary it, by all the gradations between. But remember, child, as you would cheer Leander after his swim, and keep within your allowance, remember that what was dear yesterday may be cheap to-day,--remember to vary the repast, therefore, from Monday round to Saturday; eschew the corner-shop, and buy as large stores as Leander will let you; and always keep near at hand an unexhausted supply of Solomon's condiment.

FOOTNOTES:

[35]

"All hail, thou Connecticut, who forever hast ran, Bringing shad to South Hadley, and pleasure to man!"

BEFORE VICKSBURG.

MAY 19, 1863.

While Sherman stood beneath the hottest fire That from the lines of Vicksburg gleamed, And bomb-shells tumbled in their smoky gyre, And grape-shot hissed, and case-shot screamed; Back from the front there came, Weeping and sorely lame, The merest child, the youngest face Man ever saw in such a fearful place.

Stifling his tears, he limped his chief to meet; But when he paused, and tottering stood, Around the circle of his little feet There spread a pool of bright, young blood. Shocked at his doleful case, Sherman cried, "Halt! front face! Who are you? Speak, my gallant boy!" "A drummer, Sir:--Fifty-Fifth Illinois."

"Are you not hit?" "That's nothing. Only send Some cartridges: our men are out; And the foe press us." "But, my little friend"-- "Don't mind me! Did you hear that shout? What if our men be driven? Oh, for the love of Heaven, Send to my Colonel, General dear!" "But you?" "Oh, I shall easily find the rear."

"I'll see to that," cried Sherman; and a drop Angels might envy dimmed his eye, As the boy, toiling towards the hill's hard top, Turned round, and with his shrill child's cry Shouted, "Oh, don't forget! We'll win the battle yet! But let our soldiers have some more, More cartridges, Sir,--calibre fifty-four!"

OUR VISIT TO RICHMOND.

WHY WE WENT THERE.

Why my companion, the Rev. Dr. Jaquess, Colonel of the Seventy-Third Regiment of Illinois Volunteers, recently went to Richmond, and the circumstances attending his previous visit within the Rebel lines,--when he wore his uniform, and mixed openly with scores of leading Confederates,--I shall shortly make known to the public in a volume called "Down in Tennessee." It may now, however, be asked why I, a "civil" individual, and not in the pay of Government, became his travelling-companion, and, at a time when all the world was rushing North to the mountains and the watering-places, journeyed South for a conference with the arch-Rebel, in the hot and dangerous latitude of Virginia.

Did it never occur to you, reader, when you have undertaken to account for some of the simplest of your own actions, how many good reasons have arisen in your mind, every one of which has justified you in concluding that you were of "sound and disposing understanding"? So, now, in looking inward for the why and the wherefore which I know will be demanded of me at the threshold of this article, I find half a dozen reasons for my visit to Richmond, any one of which ought to prove that I am a sensible man, altogether too sensible to go on so long a journey, in the heat of midsummer, for the mere pleasure of the thing. Some of these reasons I will enumerate.

First: Very many honest people at the North sincerely believe that the revolted States will return to the Union, if assured of protection to their peculiar institution. The Government having declared that no State shall be readmitted which has not first abolished Slavery, these people hold it responsible for the continuance of the war. It is, therefore, important to know whether the Rebel States will or will not return, if allowed to retain Slavery. Mr. Jefferson Davis could, undoubtedly, answer that question; and that may have been a reason why I went to see him.

Second: On the second of July last, C. C. Clay, of Alabama, J. P. Holcombe, of Virginia, and G. N. Sanders, of nowhere in particular, appeared at Niagara Falls, and publicly announced that they were there to confer with the Democratic leaders in reference to the Chicago nomination. Very soon thereafter, a few friends of the Administration received intimations from those gentlemen that they were Commissioners from the Rebel Government, with authority to negotiate preliminaries of peace on something like the following basis, namely: A restoration of the Union as it was; all negroes actually freed by the war to be declared free, and all negroes not actually freed by the war to be declared slaves.

These overtures were not considered sincere. They seemed concocted to embarrass the Government, to throw upon it the odium of continuing the war, and thus to secure the triumph of the peace-traitors at the November election. The scheme, if well managed, threatened to be dangerous, by uniting the Peace-men, the Copperheads, and such of the Republicans as love peace better than principle, in one opposition, willing to make a peace that would be inconsistent with the safety and dignity of the country. It was, therefore, important to discover--what was then in doubt--whether the Rebel envoys really had, or had not, any official authority.

Within fifteen days of the appearance of these "Peace Commissioners," Jefferson Davis had said to an eminent Secession divine, who, late in June, came through the Union lines by the Maryland back-door, that he would make peace on no other terms than a recognition of Southern Independence. (He might, however, agree to two governments, bound together by a league offensive and defensive,--for all external purposes _one_, for all internal purposes _two_; but he would agree to nothing better.)

There was reason to consider this information trustworthy, and to believe Mr. Davis (who was supposed to be a clear-minded man) altogether ignorant of the doings of his Niagara satellites. If this were true, and were proven to be true,--if the _great_ Rebel should reiterate this declaration in the presence of a trustworthy witness, at the very time when the _small_ Rebels were opening their Quaker guns on the country,--would not the Niagara negotiators be stripped of their false colors, and their low schemes be exposed to the scorn of all honest men, North and South?

I may have thought so; and that may have been another reason why I went to Richmond.

Third: I had been acquainted with Colonel Jaquess's peace-movements from their inception. Early in June last he wrote me from a battle-field in Georgia, announcing his intention of again visiting the Rebels, and asking an interview with me at a designated place. We met, and went to Washington together. Arriving there, I became aware that obstacles were in the way of his further progress. Those obstacles could be removed by my accompanying him; and that, to those who know the man and his "mission," which is to preach peace on earth and good-will among men, would seem a very good reason why I went to Richmond.

Fourth,--and this to very many may appear as potent as any of the preceding reasons,--I had in my boyhood a strange fancy for church-belfries and liberty-poles. This fancy led me, in school-vacations, to perch my small self for hours on the cross-beams in the old belfry, and to climb to the very top of the tall pole which still surmounts the little village-green. In my youth, this feeling was simply a spirit of adventure; but as I grew older it deepened into a reverence for what those old bells said, and a love for the principle of which that old liberty-pole is now only a crumbling symbol.

Had not events shown that Jeff. Davis had never seen that old liberty-pole, and never heard the chimes which still ring out from that old belfry? Who knew, in these days when every wood-sawyer has a "mission," but _I_ had a "mission," and it was to tell the Rebel President that Northern liberty-poles still stand for Freedom, and that Northern church-bells still peal out, "Liberty throughout the land, to _all_ the inhabitants thereof"?

If that _was_ my mission, will anybody blame me for fanning Mr. Davis with a "blast" of cool Northern "wind" in this hot weather?

But enough of mystification. The straightforward reader wants a straightforward reason, and he shall have it.

We went to Richmond because we hoped to pave the way for negotiations that would result in peace.

If we should succeed, the consciousness of having served the country would, we thought, pay our expenses. If we should fail, but return safely, we might still serve the country by making public the cause of our failure. If we should fail, and _not_ return safely, but be shot or hanged as spies,--as we might be, for we could have no protection from our Government, and no safe-conduct from the Rebels,--two lives would be added to the thousands already sacrificed to this Rebellion, but they would as effectually serve the country as if lost on the battle-field.

These are the reasons, and the only reasons, why we went to Richmond.

HOW WE WENT THERE.

We went there in an ambulance, and we went together,--the Colonel and I; and though two men were never more unlike, we worked together like two brothers, or like two halves of a pair of shears. That we got _in_ was owing, perhaps, to me; that we got _out_ was due altogether to him; and a man more cool, more brave, more self-reliant, and more self-devoted than that quiet "Western parson" it never was my fortune to encounter.

When the far-away Boston bells were sounding nine, on the morning of Saturday, the sixteenth of July, we took our glorious Massachusetts General by the hand, and said to him,--

"Good bye. If you do not see us within ten days, you will know we have 'gone up.'"

"If I do not see you within that time," he replied, "I'll demand you; and if they don't produce you, body and soul, I'll take two for one,--better men than you are,--and hang them higher than Haman. My hand on that. Good bye."

At three o'clock on the afternoon of the same day, mounted on two raw-boned relics of Sheridan's great raid, and armed with a letter to Jeff. Davis, a white cambric handkerchief tied to a short stick, and an honest face,--this last was the Colonel's,--we rode up to the Rebel lines. A ragged, yellow-faced boy, with a carbine in one hand, and another white handkerchief tied to another short stick in the other, came out to meet us.

"Can you tell us, my man, where to find Judge Ould, the Exchange Commissioner?"

"Yas. Him and t'other 'Change officers is over ter the plantation beyont Miss Grover's. Ye'll know it by its hevin' nary door nur winder [the mansion, he meant]. They's all busted in. Foller the bridle-path through the timber, and keep your rag a-flyin', fur our boys is thicker 'n huckelberries in them woods, and they mought pop ye, ef they didn't seed it."

Thanking him, we turned our horses into the "timber," and, galloping rapidly on, soon came in sight of the deserted plantation. Lolling on the grass, in the shade of the windowless mansion, we found the Confederate officials. They rose as we approached; and one of us said to the Judge,--a courteous, middle-aged gentleman, in a Panama hat, and a suit of spotless white drillings,--

"We are late, but it's your fault. Your people fired at us down the river, and we had to turn back and come overland."

"You don't suppose they saw your flag?"

"No. It was hidden by the trees; but a shot came uncomfortably near us. It struck the water, and ricochetted not three yards off. A little nearer, and it would have shortened me by a head, and the Colonel by two feet."

"That would have been a sad thing for you; but a miss, you know, is as good as a mile," said the Judge, evidently enjoying the "joke."

"We hear Grant was in the boat that followed yours, and was struck while at dinner," remarked Captain Hatch, the Judge's Adjutant,--a gentleman, and about the best-looking man in the Confederacy.

"Indeed! Do you believe it?"

"I don't know, of course"; and his looks asked for an answer. We gave none, for all such information is contraband. We might have told him that Grant, Butler, and Foster examined their position from Mrs. Grover's house,--about four hundred yards distant,--two hours after the Rebel cannon-ball danced a break-down on the Lieutenant-General's dinner-table.

We were then introduced to the other officials,--Major Henniken of the War Department, a young man formerly of New York, but now scorning the imputation of being a Yankee, and Mr. Charles Javins, of the Provost-Guard of Richmond. This latter individual was our shadow in Dixie. He was of medium height, stoutly built, with a short, thick neck, and arms and shoulders denoting great strength. He looked a natural-born jailer, and much such a character as a timid man would not care to encounter, except at long range of a rifle warranted to five twenty shots a minute, and to hit every time.

To give us a _moonlight view_ of the Richmond fortifications, the Judge proposed to start after sundown; and as it wanted some hours of that time, we seated ourselves on the ground, and entered into conversation. The treatment of our prisoners, the _status_ of black troops, and non-combatants, and all the questions which have led to the suspension of exchanges, had been good-naturedly discussed, when the Captain, looking up from one of the Northern papers we had brought him, said,--

"Do you know, it mortifies me that you don't hate us as we hate you? You kill us as Agassiz kills a fly,--because you love us."

"Of course we do. The North is being crucified for love of the South."

"If you love us so, why don't you let us go?" asked the Judge, rather curtly.

"For that very reason,--because we love you. If we let you go, with slavery, and your notions of 'empire,' you'd run straight to barbarism and the Devil."

"We'd take the risk of that. But let me tell you, if you are going to Mr. Davis with any such ideas, you might as well turn back at once. He can make peace on no other basis than Independence. Recognition must be the beginning, middle, and ending of all negotiations. Our people will accept peace on no other terms."

"I think you are wrong there," said the Colonel. "When I was here a year ago, I met many of your leading men, and they all assured me they wanted peace and reunion, even at the sacrifice of slavery. Within a week, a man you venerate and love has met me at Baltimore, and besought me to come here, and offer Mr. Davis peace on such conditions."

"That may be. Some of our old men, who are weak in the knees, may want peace on any terms; but the Southern people will not have it without Independence. Mr. Davis knows them, and you will find he will insist upon that. Concede that, and we'll not quarrel about minor matters."

"We'll not quarrel at all. But it's sundown, and time we were 'on to Richmond.'"

"That's the 'Tribune' cry," said the Captain, rising; "and I hurrah for the 'Tribune,' for it's honest, and--I want my supper."

We all laughed, and the Judge ordered the horses. As we were about to start, I said to him,--

"You've forgotten our parole."

"Oh, never mind that. We'll attend to that at Richmond."

Stepping into his carriage, and unfurling the flag of truce, he then led the way, by a "short cut," across the cornfield which divided the mansion from the high-road. We followed in an ambulance drawn by a pair of mules, our shadow--Mr. Javins--sitting between us and the twilight, and Jack, a "likely darky," almost the sole survivor of his master's twelve hundred slaves, ("De ress all stole, Massa,--stole by you Yankees,") occupying the front-seat, and with a stout whip "working our passage" to Richmond.

Much that was amusing and interesting occurred during our three-hours' journey, but regard for our word forbids my relating it. Suffice it to say, we saw the "frowning fortifications," we "flanked" the "invincible army," and, at ten o'clock that night, planted our flag (against a lamp-post) in the very heart of the hostile city. As we alighted at the doorway of the Spotswood Hotel, the Judge said to the Colonel,--

"Button your outside-coat up closely. Your uniform must not be seen here."

The Colonel did as he was bidden; and, without stopping to register our names at the office, we followed the Judge and the Captain up to No. 60. It was a large, square room in the fourth story, with an unswept, ragged carpet, and bare, white walls, smeared with soot and tobacco-juice. Several chairs, a marble-top table, and a pine wash-stand and clothes-press straggled about the floor, and in the corners were three beds, garnished with tattered pillow-cases, and covered with white counterpanes, grown gray with longing for soapsuds and a wash-tub. The plainer and humbler of these beds was designed for the burly Mr. Javins; the others had been made ready for the extraordinary envoys (not envoys extraordinary) who, in defiance of all precedent and the "law of nations," had just then "taken Richmond."

A single gas-jet was burning over the mantel-piece, and above it I saw a "writing on the wall" which implied that Jane Jackson had run up a washing-score of fifty dollars!

I was congratulating myself on not having to pay that woman's laundry-bills, when the Judge said,--

"You want supper. What shall we order?"

"A slice of hot corn-bread would make _me_ the happiest man in Richmond."

The Captain thereupon left the room, and shortly returning, remarked,--

"The landlord swears you're from Georgia. He says none but a Georgian would call for corn-bread at this time of night."

On that hint we acted, and when our sooty attendant came in with the supper-things, we discussed Georgia mines, Georgia banks, and Georgia mosquitoes, in a way that showed we had been bitten by all of them. In half an hour it was noised all about the hotel that the two gentlemen the Confederacy was taking such excellent care of were from Georgia.

The meal ended, and a quiet smoke over, our entertainers rose to go. As the Judge bade us good-night, he said to us,--

"In the morning you had better address a note to Mr. Benjamin, asking the interview with the President. I will call at ten o'clock, and take it to him."

"Very well. But will Mr. Davis see us on Sunday?"

"Oh, that will make no difference."

WHAT WE DID THERE.

The next morning, after breakfast, which we took in our room with Mr. Javins, we indited a note--of which the following is a copy--to the Confederate Secretary of State.

"Spotswood House, Richmond, Va.

"July 17th, 1864.

"Hon. J. P. Benjamin,

"Secretary of State, etc.

"DEAR SIR,--The undersigned respectfully solicit an interview with President Davis.

"They visit Richmond only as private citizens, and have no official character or authority; but they are acquainted with the views of the United States Government, and with the sentiments of the Northern people relative to an adjustment of the differences existing between the North and the South, and earnestly hope that a free interchange of views between President Davis and themselves may open the way to such _official_ negotiations as will result in restoring PEACE to the two sections of our distracted country.

"They, therefore, ask an interview with the President, and awaiting your reply, are

"Truly and respectfully yours."

This was signed by both of us; and when the Judge called, as he had appointed, we sent it--together with a commendatory letter I had received, on setting out, from a near relative of Mr. Davis--to the Rebel Secretary. In half an hour Judge Ould returned, saying,--"Mr. Benjamin sends you his compliments, and will be happy to see you at the State Department."

We found the Secretary--a short, plump, oily little man in black, with a keen black eye, a Jew face, a yellow skin, curly black hair, closely trimmed black whiskers, and a ponderous gold watch-chain--in the northwest room of the "United States" Custom-House. Over the door of this room were the words, "State Department," and round its walls were hung a few maps and battle-plans. In one corner was a tier of shelves filled with books,--among which I noticed Headley's "History," Lossing's "Pictorial," Parton's "Butler," Greeley's "American Conflict," a complete set of the "Rebellion Record," and a dozen numbers and several bound volumes of the "Atlantic Monthly,"--and in the centre of the apartment was a black-walnut table, covered with green cloth, and filled with a multitude of "state-papers." At this table sat the Secretary. He rose as we entered, and, as Judge Ould introduced us, took our hands, and said,--

"I am glad, very glad, to meet you, Gentlemen. I have read your note, and"--bowing to me--"the open letter you bring from ----. Your errand commands my respect and sympathy. Pray be seated."

As we took the proffered seats, the Colonel, drawing off his "duster," and displaying his uniform, said,--

"We thank you for this cordial reception, Mr. Benjamin. We trust you will be as glad to hear us as you are to see us."

"No doubt I shall be, for you come to talk of peace. Peace is what we all want."

"It is, indeed; and for that reason we are here to see Mr. Davis. Can we see him, Sir?"

"Do you bring any overtures to him from your Government?"

"No, Sir. We bring no overtures and have no authority from our Government. We state that in our note. We would be glad, however, to know what terms will be acceptable to Mr. Davis. If they at all harmonize with Mr. Lincoln's views, we will report them to him, and so open the door for official negotiations."

"Are you acquainted with Mr. Lincoln's views?"

"One of us is, fully."

"Did Mr. Lincoln, _in any way_, authorize you to come here?"

"No, Sir. We came with his pass, but not by his request. We say, distinctly, we have no official, or unofficial, authority. We come as men and Christians, not as diplomatists, hoping, in a frank talk with Mr. Davis, to discover some way by which this war may be stopped."

"Well, Gentlemen, I will repeat what you say to the President, and if he follows my advice,--and I think he will,--he will meet you. He will be at church this afternoon; so, suppose you call here at nine this evening. If anything should occur in the meantime to prevent his seeing you, I will let you know through Judge Ould."

Throughout this interview the manner of the Secretary was cordial; but with this cordiality was a strange constraint and diffidence, almost amounting to timidity, which struck both my companion and myself. Contrasting his manner with the quiet dignity of the Colonel, I almost fancied our positions reversed,--that, instead of our being in his power, the Secretary was in ours, and momently expecting to hear some unwelcome sentence from our lips. There is something, after all, in moral power. Mr. Benjamin does not possess it, nor is he a great man. He has a keen, shrewd, ready intellect, but not the _stamina_ to originate, or even to execute, any great good or great wickedness.

After a day spent in our room, conversing with the Judge, or watching the passers-by in the street,--I should like to tell who they were and how they looked, but such information is just now contraband,--we called again, at nine o'clock, at the State Department.

Mr. Benjamin occupied his previous seat at the table, and at his right sat a spare, thin-featured man, with iron-gray hair and beard, and a clear, gray eye full of life and vigor. He had a broad, massive forehead, and a mouth and chin denoting great energy and strength of will. His face was emaciated, and much wrinkled, but his features were good, especially his eyes,--though one of them bore a scar, apparently made by some sharp instrument. He wore a suit of grayish-brown, evidently of foreign manufacture, and, as he rose, I saw that he was about five feet ten inches high, with a slight stoop in the shoulders. His manners were simple, easy, and quite fascinating: and he threw an indescribable charm into his voice, as he extended his hand, and said to us,--

"I am glad to see you, Gentlemen. You are very welcome to Richmond."

And this was the man who was President of the United States under Franklin Pierce, and who is now the heart, soul, and brains of the Southern Confederacy!

His manner put me entirely at my ease,--the Colonel would be at his, if he stood before Cæsar,--and I replied,--

"We thank you, Mr. Davis. It is not often you meet men of our clothes, and our principles, in Richmond."

"Not often,--not so often as I could wish; and I trust your coming may lead to a more frequent and a more friendly intercourse between the North and the South."

"We sincerely hope it may."

"Mr. Benjamin tells me you have asked to see me, to"----

And he paused, as if desiring we should finish the sentence. The Colonel replied,--

"Yes, Sir. We have asked this interview in the hope that you may suggest some way by which this war can be stopped. Our people want peace,--your people do, and your Congress has recently said that _you_ do. We have come to ask how it can be brought about."

"In a very simple way. Withdraw your armies from our territory, and peace will come of itself. We do not seek to subjugate you. We are not waging an offensive war, except so far as it is offensive-defensive,--that is, so far as we are forced to invade you to prevent your invading us. Let us alone, and peace will come at once."

"But we cannot let you alone so long as you repudiate the Union. That is the one thing the Northern people will not surrender."

"I know. You would deny to us what you exact for yourselves,--the right of self-government."

"No, Sir," I remarked. "We would deny you no natural right. But we think Union essential to peace; and, Mr. Davis, _could_ two people, with the same language, separated by only an imaginary line, live at peace with each other? Would not disputes constantly arise, and cause almost constant war between them?"

"Undoubtedly,--with this generation. You have sown such bitterness at the South, you have put such an ocean of blood between the two sections, that I despair of seeing any harmony in my time. Our children may forget this war, but _we_ cannot."

"I think the bitterness you speak of, Sir," said the Colonel, "does not really exist. _We_ meet and talk here as friends; our soldiers meet and fraternize with each other; and I feel sure, that, if the Union were restored, a more friendly feeling would arise between us than has ever existed. The war has made us know and respect each other better than before. This is the view of very many Southern men; I have had it from many of them,--your leading citizens."

"They are mistaken," replied Mr. Davis. "They do not understand Southern sentiment. How can we feel anything but bitterness towards men who deny us our rights? If you enter my house and drive me out of it, am I not your natural enemy?"

"You put the case too strongly. But we cannot fight forever; the war must end at some time; we must finally agree upon something; can we not agree now, and stop this frightful carnage? We are both Christian men, Mr. Davis. Can _you_, as a Christian man, leave untried any means that may lead to peace?"

"No, I cannot. I desire peace as much as you do. I deplore bloodshed as much as you do; but I feel that not one drop of the blood shed in this war is on _my_ hands,--I can look up to my God and say this. I tried all in my power to avert this war. I saw it coming, and for twelve years I worked night and day to prevent it, but I could not. The North was mad and blind; it would not let us govern ourselves; and so the war came, and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize his musket and fight his battle, _unless you acknowledge our right to self-government_. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,--and that, or extermination, we _will_ have."

"And there are, at least, four and a half millions of us left; so you see you have a work before you," said Mr. Benjamin, with a decided sneer.

"We have no wish to exterminate you," answered the Colonel. "I believe what I have said,--that there is no bitterness between the Northern and Southern _people_. The North, I know, loves the South. When peace comes, it will pour money and means into your hands to repair the waste caused by the war; and it would now welcome you back, and forgive you all the loss and bloodshed you have caused. But we _must_ crush your armies, and exterminate your Government. And is not that already nearly done? You are wholly without money, and at the end of your resources. Grant has shut you up in Richmond. Sherman is before Atlanta. Had you not, then, better accept honorable terms while you can retain your prestige, and save the pride of the Southern people?"

Mr. Davis smiled.

"I respect your earnestness, Colonel, but you do not seem to understand the situation. We are not exactly shut up in Richmond. If your papers tell the truth, it is your capital that is in danger, not ours. Some weeks ago, Grant crossed the Rapidan to whip Lee, and take Richmond. Lee drove him in the first battle, and then Grant executed what your people call a 'brilliant flank-movement,' and fought Lee again. Lee drove him a second time, and then Grant made another 'flank-movement'; and so they kept on,--Lee whipping, and Grant flanking,--until Grant got where he is now. And what is the net result? Grant has lost seventy-five or eighty thousand men,--_more than Lee had at the outset_,--and is no nearer taking Richmond than at first; and Lee, whose front has never been broken, holds him completely in check, and has men enough to spare to invade Maryland, and threaten Washington! Sherman, to be sure, _is_ before Atlanta; but suppose he is, and suppose he takes it? You know, that, the farther he goes from his base of supplies, the weaker he grows, and the more disastrous defeat will be to him. And defeat _may_ come. So, in a military view, I should certainly say our position was better than yours.

"As to money: we are richer than you are. You smile; but admit that our paper is worth nothing,--it answers as a circulating-medium; and we hold it all ourselves. If every dollar of it were lost, we should, as we have no foreign debt, be none the poorer. But it _is_ worth something; it has the solid basis of a large cotton-crop, while yours rests on nothing, and you owe all the world. As to resources: we do not lack for arms or ammunition, and we have still a wide territory from which to gather supplies. So, you see, we are not in extremities. But if we were,--if we were without money, without food, without weapons,--if our whole country were devastated, and our armies crushed and disbanded,--could we, without giving up our manhood, give up our right to govern ourselves? Would _you_ not rather die, and feel yourself a man, than live, and be subject to a foreign power?"

"From your stand-point there is force in what you say," replied the Colonel. "But we did not come here to argue with you, Mr. Davis. We came, hoping to find some honorable way to peace; and I am grieved to hear you say what you do. When I have seen your young men dying on the battle-field, and your old men, women, and children starving in their homes, I have felt I could risk my life to save them. For that reason I am here; and I am grieved, grieved, that there is no hope."

"I know your motives, Colonel Jaquess, and I honor you for them; but what can I do more than I am doing? I would give my poor life, gladly, if it would bring peace and good-will to the two countries; but it would not. It is with your own people you should labor. It is they who desolate our homes, burn our wheat-fields, break the wheels of wagons carrying away our women and children, and destroy supplies meant for our sick and wounded. At your door lies all the misery and the crime of this war,--and it is a fearful, fearful account."

"Not all of it, Mr. Davis. I admit a fearful account, but it is not _all_ at our door. The passions of both sides are aroused. Unarmed men are hanged, prisoners are shot down in cold blood, by yourselves. Elements of barbarism are entering the war on both sides, that should make us--you and me, as Christian men--shudder to think of. In God's name, then, let us stop it. Let us do something, concede something, to bring about peace. You cannot expect, with only four and a half millions, as Mr. Benjamin says you have, to hold out forever against twenty millions."

Again Mr. Davis smiled.

"Do you suppose there are twenty millions at the North determined to crush us?"

"I do,--to crush your _government_. A small number of our people, a very small number, are your friends,--Secessionists. The rest differ about measures and candidates, but are united in the determination to sustain the Union. Whoever is elected in November, he _must be_ committed to a vigorous prosecution of the war."

Mr. Davis still looking incredulous, I remarked,--

"It is so, Sir. Whoever tells you otherwise deceives you. I think I know Northern sentiment, and I assure you it is so. You know we have a system of lyceum-lecturing in our large towns. At the close of these lectures, it is the custom of the people to come upon the platform and talk with the lecturer. This gives him an excellent opportunity of learning public sentiment. Last winter I lectured before nearly a hundred of such associations, all over the North,--from Dubuque to Bangor,--and I took pains to ascertain the feeling of the people. I found a unanimous determination to crush the Rebellion and save the Union at every sacrifice. The majority are in favor of Mr. Lincoln, and nearly all of those opposed to him are opposed to him because they think he does not fight you with enough vigor. The radical Republicans, who go for slave-suffrage and thorough confiscation, are those who will defeat him, if he is defeated. But if he is defeated before the people, the House will elect a worse man,--I mean, worse for you. It is more radical than he is,--you can see that from Mr. Ashley's Reconstruction Bill,--and the people are more radical than the House. Mr. Lincoln, I know, is about to call out five hundred thousand more men, and I can't see how you _can_ resist much longer; but if you do, you will only deepen the radical feeling of the Northern people. They will now give you fair, honorable, _generous_ terms; but let them suffer much more, let there be a dead man in every house, as there is now in every village, and they will give you _no_ terms,--they will insist on hanging every Rebel south of ----. Pardon my terms. I mean no offence."

"You give no offence," he replied, smiling very, pleasantly. "I wouldn't have you pick your words. This is a frank, free talk, and I like you the better for saying what you think. Go on."

"I was merely going to say, that, let the Northern people once really feel the war,--they do not feel it yet,--and they will insist on hanging every one of your leaders."

"Well, admitting all you say, I can't see how it affects our position. There are some things worse than hanging or extermination. We reckon giving up the right of self-government one of those things."

"By self-government you mean disunion,--Southern Independence?"

"Yes."

"And slavery, you say, is no longer an element in the contest."

"No, it is not, it never was an _essential_ element. It was only a means of bringing other conflicting elements to an earlier culmination. It fired the musket which was already capped and loaded. There are essential differences between the North and the South that will, however this war may end, make them two nations."

"You ask me to say what I think. Will you allow me to say that I know the South pretty well, and never observed those differences?"

"Then you have not used your eyes. My sight is poorer than yours, but I have seen them for years."

The laugh was upon me, and Mr. Benjamin enjoyed it.

"Well, Sir, be that as it may, if I understand you, the dispute between your government and ours is narrowed down to this: Union or Disunion."

"Yes; or to put it in other words: Independence or Subjugation."

"Then the two governments are irreconcilably apart. They have no alternative but to fight it out. But it is not so with the people. They are tired of fighting, and want peace; and as they bear all the burden and suffering of the war, is it not right they should have peace, and have it on such terms as they like?"

"I don't understand you. Be a little more explicit."

"Well, suppose the two governments should agree to something like this: To go to the people with two propositions: say, Peace, with Disunion and Southern Independence, as your proposition,--and Peace, with Union, Emancipation, No Confiscation, and Universal Amnesty, as ours. Let the citizens of all the United States (as they existed before the war) vote 'Yes,' or 'No,' on these two propositions, at a special election within sixty days. If a majority votes Disunion, our government to be bound by it, and to let you go in peace. If a majority votes Union, yours to be bound by it, and to stay in peace. The two governments can contract in this way, and the people, though constitutionally unable to decide on peace or war, can elect which of the two propositions shall govern their rulers. Let Lee and Grant, meanwhile, agree to an armistice. This would sheathe the sword; and if once sheathed, it would never again be drawn by this generation."

"The plan is altogether impracticable. If the South were only one State, it might work; but as it is, if one Southern State objected to emancipation, it would nullify the whole thing; for you are aware the people of Virginia cannot vote slavery out of South Carolina, nor the people of South Carolina vote it out of Virginia."

"But three-fourths of the States can amend the Constitution. Let it be done in that way,--in any way, so that it be done by the people. I am not a statesman or a politician, and I do not know just how such a plan could be carried out; but you get the idea,--that the PEOPLE shall decide the question."

"That the _majority_ shall decide it, you mean. We seceded to rid ourselves of the rule of the majority, and this would subject us to it again."

"But the majority must rule finally, either with bullets or ballots."

"I am not so sure of that. Neither current events nor history shows that the majority rules, or ever did rule. The contrary, I think, is true. Why, Sir, the man who should go before the Southern people with such a proposition, with _any_ proposition which implied that the North was to have a voice in determining the domestic relations of the South, could not live here a day. He would be hanged to the first tree, without judge or jury."

"Allow me to doubt that. I think it more likely he would be hanged, if he let the Southern people know the majority couldn't rule," I replied, smiling.

"I have no fear of that," rejoined Mr. Davis, also smiling most good-humoredly. "I give you leave to proclaim it from every house-top in the South."

"But, seriously, Sir, you let the majority rule in a single State; why not let it rule in the whole country?"

"Because the States are independent and sovereign. The country is not. It is only a confederation of States; or rather it _was_: it is now _two_ confederations."

"Then we are not a _people_,--we are only a political partnership?"

"That is all."

"Your very name, Sir, '_United_ States,' implies that," said Mr. Benjamin. "But, tell me, are the terms you have named--Emancipation, No Confiscation, and Universal Amnesty--the terms which Mr. Lincoln authorized you to offer us?"

"No, Sir, Mr. Lincoln did not authorize me to offer you any terms. But I _think_ both he and the Northern people, for the sake of peace, would assent to some such conditions."

"They are _very_ generous," replied Mr. Davis, for the first time during the interview showing some angry feeling. "But Amnesty, Sir, applies to criminals. We have committed no crime. Confiscation is of no account, unless you can enforce it. And Emancipation! You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our slaves,--and if you will take care of them, you may emancipate the rest. I had a few when the war began. I was of some use to them; they never were of any to me. Against their will you 'emancipated' them; and you may 'emancipate' every negro in the Confederacy, but _we will be free_! We will govern ourselves. We _will_ do it, if we have to see every Southern plantation sacked, and every Southern city in flames."

"I see, Mr. Davis, it is useless to continue this conversation," I replied; "and you will pardon us, if we have seemed to press our views with too much pertinacity. We love the old flag, and that must be our apology for intruding upon you at all."

"You have not intruded upon me," he replied, resuming his usual manner. "I am glad to have met you, both. I once loved the old flag as well as you do; I would have died for it; but now it is to me only the emblem of oppression."

"I hope the day may never come, Mr. Davis, when _I_ say that," said the Colonel.

A half-hour's conversation on other topics--not of public interest--ensued, and then we rose to go. As we did so, the Rebel President gave me his hand, and, bidding me a kindly good-bye, expressed the hope of seeing me again in Richmond in happier times,--when peace should have returned; but with the Colonel his parting was particularly cordial. Taking his hand in both of his, he said to him,--

"Colonel, I respect your character and your motives, and I wish you well,--I wish you every good I can wish you consistently with the interests of the Confederacy."

The quiet, straightforward bearing and magnificent moral courage of our "fighting parson" had evidently impressed Mr. Davis very favorably.

As we were leaving the room, he added--

"Say to Mr. Lincoln from me, that I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our Independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other."

When we went out, Mr. Benjamin called Judge Ould, who had been waiting during the whole interview--two hours--at the other end of the hall, and we passed down the stairway together. As I put my arm within that of the Judge, he said to me,--

"Well, what is the result?"

"Nothing but war,--war to the knife."

"Ephraim is joined to his idols,--let him alone," added the Colonel, solemnly.

I should like to relate the incidents of the next day, when we visited Castle Thunder, Libby Prison, and the hospitals occupied by our wounded; but the limits of a magazine-article will not permit. I can only say that at sundown we passed out of the Rebel lines, and at ten o'clock that night stretched our tired limbs on the "downy" cots in General Butler's tent, thankful, devoutly thankful, that we were once again under the folds of the old flag.

* * * * *

Thus ended our visit to Richmond. I have endeavored to sketch it faithfully. The conversation with Mr. Davis I took down shortly after entering the Union lines, and I have tried to report his exact language, extenuating nothing, and coloring nothing that he said. Some of his sentences, as I read them over, appear stilted and high-flown, but they did not sound so when uttered. As listened to, they seemed the simple, natural language of his thought. He spoke deliberately, apparently weighing every word, and knowing well that all he said would be given to the public.

He is a man of peculiar ability. Our interview with him explained to me why, with no money and no commerce, with nearly every one of their important cities in our hands, and with an army greatly inferior in numbers and equipment to ours, the Rebels have held out so long. It is because of the sagacity, energy, and indomitable will of Jefferson Davis. Without him the Rebellion would crumble to pieces in a day; with him it may continue to be, even in disaster, a power that will tax the whole energy and resources of the nation.

The Southern masses want peace. Many of the Southern leaders want it,--both my companion and I, by correspondence and intercourse with them, know this; but there can be no peace so long as Mr. Davis controls the South. Ignoring slavery, he himself states the issue,--the only issue with him,--Union, or Disunion. That is it. We must conquer, or be conquered. We can negotiate only with the bayonet. We can have peace and union only by putting forth all our strength, crushing the Southern armies, and overthrowing the Southern government.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin._ By JAMES PARTON. New York: Mason Brothers. Two Volumes. 8vo.

To appreciate the importance of this work, we must remember that it covers more than three-fourths of a century full of great events, if not of great men; that it begins with Boston and Philadelphia as small provincial towns, and leaves them the thriving capitals of independent States; that it finds colonial energy struggling with metropolitan jealousy and ignorance; that it follows the struggle through all its phases, until the restrictions of the mother became oppression, and the love of the children was converted into hatred; that it traces the growth and expansion of American industry,--the dawn of American invention, so full of promise,--the development of the principle of self-government, so full of power,--the bitter contest, so full of lessons which, used aright, might have spared us more than half the blood and treasure of the present war.

To appreciate the difficulty of this work, we must remember that the inner and the outer life of the subject of it are equally full of marvels; that, beginning by cutting off candle-wicks in a tallow-chandler's shop in Boston, he ended as the greatest scientific discoverer among those men renowned for science who composed the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris; that, with the aid of an odd volume of the "Spectator," used according to his own conception of the best way of using it, he made himself master of a pure, simple, graceful, and effective English style; that the opinions and maxims which he drew from his own observation and reflection have passed into the daily life of millions, warning, strengthening, cheering, and guiding; that he succeeded in the most difficult negotiations, was a leader of public opinion on the most important questions, and, holding his way cheerfully, resolutely, and lovingly to the end, left the world wiser in many things, and in some better, for the eighty-four years that he had passed in it.

Nor must we forget, that, among the many things which this wonderful old man did, was to tell us half the story of his own life, and with such unaffected simplicity, such evident sincerity, and such attractive grace, as to make it--as far as it goes--the most perfect production of its class. Then why attempt to do it over again? is the question that naturally springs to every lip, on reading the title of Mr. Parton's book.

Mr. Parton has anticipated this question, and answered it. "Autobiography is one of the most interesting and valuable kinds of composition; but autobiography can never be accepted _in lieu_ of biography, because to no man is the giftie given of seeing himself as others see him. Rousseau's Confessions are a miracle of candor: they reveal much concerning a certain weak, wandering, diseased, miserable, wicked Jean Jacques; but of that marvellous Rousseau whose writings thrilled Europe they contain how much? Not one word. Madame D'Arblay's Diary relates a thousand pleasant things, but it does not tell us what manner of person Madame D'Arblay was. Franklin's Autobiography gives agreeable information respecting a sagacious shopkeeper of Philadelphia, but has little to impart to us respecting the grand Franklin, the world's Franklin, the philosopher, the statesman, the philanthropist. A man cannot reveal his best self, nor, unless he is a Rousseau, his worst. Perhaps he never knows either."

The basis of Mr. Parton's work is, as the basis of every satisfactory biography must be, the writings of its subject. "After all," he says, "Dr. Jared Sparks's excellent edition of the 'Life and Works of Franklin,' is the source of the greater part of the information we possess concerning him.... The libraries, the public records, and the private collections of England, France, and the United States, were so diligently searched by Dr. Sparks, that, though seven previous editions of the works of Franklin had appeared, he was able to add to his publication the astonishing number of six hundred and fifty pieces of Dr. Franklin's composition never before collected, of which four hundred and fifty had never before appeared in print. To unwearied diligence in collecting Dr. Sparks added an admirable talent in elucidating. His notes are always such as an intelligent reader would desire, and they usually contain all the information needed for a perfect understanding of the matter in hand. Dr. Sparks's edition is a monument at once to the memory of Benjamin Franklin and to his own diligence, tact, and faithfulness." We take great pleasure in copying this passage, both because it seems to illustrate the spirit which Mr. Parton brought to his task, and because the value of Mr. Sparks's labors have not always been so freely acknowledged by those who have been freest in their use of them.

To a careful study of those volumes Mr. Parton has added patient and extensive research among the newspapers and magazines of the time, and, apparently, a wide range of general reading. Thus he has filled his work with facts, some curious, some new, and all interesting, as well in their bearing upon the times as upon the man. He is a good delver, a good sifter, and, what is equally important, a good interpreter,--not merely bringing facts to the light, but compelling them to give out, like Correggio's pictures, a light of their own. He possesses, too, in an eminent degree, the power of forming for himself a conception of his subject as a whole, keeping it constantly before his mind in the elaboration of the parts, and thus bringing it vividly before the mind of the reader. Franklin's true place in history has never before been assigned him upon such incontrovertible evidence.

If we were to undertake to name the parts of this work which have given us most satisfaction, we should, although with some hesitation, name the admirable chapters which Mr. Parton has devoted to Franklin's diplomatic labors in England and France. In none of his good works has that great man been more exposed to calumny, or treated with more barefaced ingratitude by those who profited most by them, than in bringing to light the dangerous letters of Hutchinson and Oliver. Even within the last few years, the apologetic biographer of John Adams repeats the accusation of moral obliquity in a tone that would hardly have been misplaced in a defence of Wedderburn. Mr. Parton tells the story with great simplicity, and, without entering into any unnecessary disquisition, accepts for his commentary upon it Mr. Bancroft's wise, and, as it seems to us, unanswerable conclusion. "Had the conspiracy which was thus laid bare aimed at the life of a minister or the king, any honest man must have immediately communicated the discovery to the Secretary of State: to conspire to introduce into America a military government, and abridge American liberty, was a more heinous crime, of which irrefragable evidence had now come to light."

Never, too, was philosopher more severely tried than Franklin was tried by the colleagues whom Congress sent him, from time to time, as clogs upon the great wheel which he was turning so skilfully. And this, too, Mr. Parton has set in full light, not by the special pleading of the apologist, but by the documentary researches of the historian.

There are some things, however, in this work which we could have wished somewhat different from what they are. Mr. Parton's fluent and forcible style sometimes degenerates into flippancy. We could cite many instances of felicitous expression, some, also, of bad taste, and some of hasty assertion. "_Clubable_" is hardly a good enough word to bear frequent repetition. "This question was a complete baffler" is too much like slang to be admitted into the good company which Mr. Parton's sentences usually keep. We were not aware that "Physician, heal thyself" was a stock classical allusion. We do not believe--for Dante and Milton would rise up in judgment against us, even if the vast majority of other great men did not--that "it is only second-rate men who have great aims." We do not believe that the style of the "Spectator" is an "easily imitated style"; for, of the hundreds who have tried, how many, besides Franklin, have really succeeded in imitating it? We do not believe that Latin and Greek are an "obstructing nuisance," or that the student of Homer and Thucydides and Demosthenes and Plato and Aristotle and Cæsar and Cicero and Tacitus is merely studying "the prattle of infant man," or "adding the ignorance of the ancients to the ignorance he was born with." We believe, on the contrary, that it was by such studies that Gibbon and Niebuhr and Arnold and Grote acquired their marvellous power of discovering historical truth and detecting historical error, and that from no modern language could they have received such discipline.

But we not only agree with the sentiment, but admire the simple energy of the expression, when he says that "Franklin was the man of all others then alive who possessed in the greatest perfection the four grand requisites for the successful observation of Nature or the pursuit of literature,--a sound and great understanding, patience, dexterity, and an independent income." Equally judicious and equally well-expressed is the following passage upon the Penns:--"Thomas Penn was a man of business, careful, saving, and methodical. Richard Penn was a spendthrift. Both were men of slender abilities, and not of very estimable character. They had done some liberal acts for the Province, such as sending over presents to the Library of books and apparatus, and cannon for the defence of Philadelphia. If the Pennsylvanians had been more submissive, they would doubtless have continued their benefactions. But, unhappily, they cherished those erroneous, those Tory notions of the rights of sovereignty which Lord Bute infused into the contracted mind of George III., and which cost that dull and obstinate monarch, first, his colonies, and then his senses. It is also rooted in the British mind, that a landholder is entitled to the particular respect of his species. These Penns, in addition to the pride of possessing acres by the million, felt themselves to be the lords of the land they owned, and of the people who dwelt upon it." And in speaking of English ideas of American resistance:--"Englishmen have made sublime sacrifices to principle, but they appear slow to believe that any other people can." And, "George III. sat upon a constitutional throne, but he had an unconstitutional mind." It would be difficult to find a more comprehensive sentence than the following:--"The counsel employed by Mr. Mauduit was Alexander Wedderburn, a sharp, unprincipled Scotch barrister, destined to scale all the heights of preferment which shameless subserviency could reach."

It would be easy to multiply examples, but we have given, we believe, more than enough to show that we look upon Mr. Parton's "Franklin" as a work of very great value.

_The Maine Woods._ By HENRY D. THOREAU, Author of "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," "Walden," "Excursions," etc., etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The steadily growing fame of Thoreau has this characteristic, that it is, like his culture, a purely American product, and is no pale reflection of the cheap glories of an English reprint. Whether he would have gained or lost by a more cosmopolitan training or criticism is not the question now; but certain it is that neither of these things went to the making of his fame. Classical and Oriental reading he had; but beyond these he cared for nothing which the men and meadows of Concord could not give, and for this voluntary abnegation, half whimsical, half sublime, the world repaid him with life-long obscurity, and will yet repay him with permanent renown.

His choice of subjects, too, involves the same double recompense; for no books are less dazzling or more immortal than those whose theme is external Nature. Nothing else wears so well. History becomes so rapidly overlaid with details, and its aspects change so fast, that the most elaborate work soon grows obsolete; while a thoroughly sincere and careful book on Nature cannot be superseded, and lives forever. Its basis is real and permanent. There will always be birds and flowers, nights and mornings. The infinite fascinations of mountains and of forests will outlast this war, and the next, and the race that makes the war. The same solidity of material which has guarantied permanence to the fame of Izaak Walton and White of Selborne will as surely secure that of Thoreau, who excels each of these writers upon his own ground, while superadding a wider culture, a loftier thought, and a fine, though fantastic, literary skill. All men may not love Nature, but all men ultimately love her lovers. And of those lovers, past or present, Thoreau is the most profound in his devotion, and the most richly repaid.

Against these great merits are to be set, no doubt, some formidable literary defects: an occasional mistiness of expression, like the summit of Katahdin, as he himself describes it,--one vast fog, with here and there a rock protruding; also, an occasional sandy barrenness, like his beloved Cape Cod. In truth, he never quite completed the transition from the observer to the artist. With the power of constructing sentences as perfectly graceful as a hemlock-bough, he yet displays the most wayward aptitude for literary caterpillars'-nests and all manner of disfigurements. The same want of artistic habit appears also in his wilful disregard of all rules of proportion. He depicts an Indian, for instance, with such minute observation and admirable verbal skill that one feels as if neither Catlin nor Schoolcraft ever saw the actual creature; but though the table-talk of the aboriginal may seem for a time more suggestive than that of Coleridge or Macaulay, yet there is a point beyond which his, like theirs, becomes a bore.

In addition to these drawbacks, one finds in Thoreau an unnecessary defiance of tone, and a very resolute non-appreciation of many things which a larger mental digestion can assimilate without discomfort. In his dealings with Nature he is sweet, genial, patient, wise. In his dealings with men he exasperates himself over the least divergence from the desired type. Before any over-tendency to the amenities and luxuries of civilization, in particular, he becomes unreasonable and relentless. Hence there appears something hard and ungenial in his views of life, utterly out of keeping with the delicate tenderness which he shows in the woods. The housekeeping of bees and birds he finds noble and beautiful, but for the home and cradle of the humblest human pair he can scarcely be said to have even toleration; a farmer's barn he considers a cumbrous and pitiable appendage, and he lectures the Irish women in their shanties for their undue share of the elegancies of life. With infinite faith in the tendencies of mineral and vegetable nature, in human nature he shows no practical trust, and must even be severe upon the babies in the Maine log-huts for playing with wooden dolls instead of pine-cones. It is, indeed, noticeable that he seems to love every other living animal more unreservedly than the horse,--as if this poor sophisticated creature, though still a quadruped and a brother, had been so vitiated by undue intimacy with man as to have become little better than if he wore broadcloth and voted.

Yet there was not in Thoreau one trait of the misanthrope; his solitary life at Walden was not chosen because he loved man less, but because he loved Nature more; and any young poet or naturalist might envy the opportunities it gave him. But his intellectual habits showed always a tendency to exaggeration, and he spent much mental force in fighting shadows, Church and State, war and politics,--a man of solid vigor must find room in his philosophy to tolerate these matters for a time, even if he cannot cordially embrace them. But Thoreau, a celibate, and at times a hermit, brought the Protestant extreme to match the Roman Catholic, and though he did not personally ignore one duty of domestic life, he yet held a system which would have excluded wife and child, house and property. His example is noble and useful to all high-minded young people, but only when interpreted by a philosophy less exclusive than his own. In urging his one social panacea, "Simplify, I say, simplify," he failed to see that all steps in moral or material organization are really efforts after the same process he recommends. The sewing-machine is a more complex affair than the needle, but it simplifies every woman's life, and helps her to that same comparative freedom from care which Thoreau would seek only by reverting to the Indian blanket.

But many-sided men do not move in battalions, and even a one-sided philosopher may be a boon to think of, if he be as noble as Thoreau. His very defects are higher than many men's virtues, and his most fantastic moralizings will bear reading without doing harm, especially during a Presidential campaign. Of his books, "Walden" will probably be permanently reckoned as the best, as being the most full and deliberate exhibition of the author's mind, and as extracting the most from the least material. It is also the most uniform in texture, and the most complete in plan, while the "Week" has no unity but that of the chronological epoch it covers,--a week which is probably the most comprehensive on record, ranging from the Bhagvat-Geetha to the "good time coming,"--and the "Excursions" no unity but that of the covers which comprise them, being, indeed, a compilation of his earliest and latest essays. Which of his four volumes contains his finest writing it would really be hard to say; but in structure the present book comes nearest to "Walden"; it is within its limits a perfect monograph of the Maine woods. All that has been previously written fails to portray so vividly the mysterious life of the lonely forest,--the grandeur of Katahdin or Ktaadn, that hermit-mountain,--and the wild and adventurous navigation of those Northern water-courses whose perils make the boating of the Adirondack region seem safe and tame. The book is also more unexceptionably healthy in its tone than any of its predecessors, and it is pleasant to find the author, on emerging from his explorations, admitting that the confines of civilization afford, after all, the best residence, and that the wilderness is of most value as "a resource and a background."

There yet remain for publication Thoreau's adventures on Cape Cod; his few public addresses on passing events, especially those on the Burns Rescue and the John-Brown affair, which were certainly among the very ablest productions called forth by those exciting occasions; his poems; and his private letters to his friend Blake, of Worcester, and to others,--letters which certainly contain some of his toughest, and perhaps also some of his finest writing. All these deserve, and must one day receive, preservation. He who reads most books reads that which has a merely temporary interest, and will be presently superseded by something better; but Nature has waited many centuries for Thoreau, and we can hardly expect to see, during this generation, another mortal so favored with her confidence.

_Jennie Juneiana_: Talks on Women's Topics. By JENNIE JUNE. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 12mo. pp. 240.

Great are the resources of human invention, and the tiresome passion for alliterative titles may possibly have culminated in some name yet more foolish than that of this little green and gold volume. If so, the rival has proved too much for the trump of Fame to carry, and has dropped unnoticed. In the present case, the title does perhaps some injustice to the book, which is not a silly one, though it contains very silly things. It seems to be written from the point of view afforded by a second-rate New-York boarding-house, and by a person who has never come in contact with any refined or well-bred people. With this allowance, it is written in the interest of good manners and good morals, and with enough of natural tact to keep the writer from getting far beyond her depth, although she does talk of "Goethe's Mignion" and "Miss Werner,"--whoever these personages may be,--and of "the substantial fame achieved by the unknown author of 'Rutledge.'" It is written in the prevalent American newspaper-style,--a style which is apt to be graphic, piquant, and dashing, accompanied by a flavor, slight or more than slight, of flippancy and slang,--a style such as reaches high-tide in certain "popular" native authors, male and female, and in ebbing strands us on "Jennie June."

Of course, writing from the windows of Mrs. Todgers, "Jennie" manifests the usual superfluous anxiety of her kind not to be called strong-minded. She is prettily indignant at the thought of female physicians: there is nothing improper in having diseases, but to cure them would be indelicacy indeed. Girls out of work, who wish for places in shops, are only "patriotic young ladies who desire to fill all the lucrative situations at present occupied by young men." She would even banish Bridget from the kitchen and substitute unlimited Patricks, which will interest housekeepers as being the only conceivable remedy worse than the disease. Of course, a female lecturer is an abomination: "Jennie" proves, first, that a "strong-minded woman" must be either unmarried or unhappy in marriage, and then turns, with rather illogical wrath, upon Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, for being too domestic to make speeches since their marriage. To follow the court phraseology, "This reminds us of a little anecdote." When the fashion of long, flowing wigs was just vanishing in Boston, somebody wore one from that town down to Salem, where they were entirely extinct. All the street-boys ran after him all the morning, to ask him why he wore a wig. He, wishing to avoid offence, left it in the house at dinner-time; and was pursued all the afternoon by the same boys, with the inquiry why he did _not_ wear a wig. These eloquent women find it equally hard to please their little critic by silence or by speech. The simple truth probably is, that they hold precisely the same views which they always held, and will live to trouble her yet, when the epoch of the nursery is over. The majority of women's-rights advocates have always been wives and mothers, and, for aught we know, excellent ones, since that dear, motherly old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, first broached the matter; and the great change in our legislation on all the property-rights of that sex is just as directly traceable to their labors as is the repeal of the English corn-laws to the efforts of the "League." If, however, "Jennie" consoles herself with the reflection that the points made in this controversy by the authors of "Hannah Thurston" and "Miss Gilbert's Career" are not much stronger than her own, she must remember her favorite theory, that all foolishness sounds more respectable when uttered from masculine lips.

1. _Woman and her Era._ By ELIZA W. FARNHAM. In Two Volumes. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

2. _Eliza Woodson; or, The Early Days of one of the World's Workers._ A Story of American Life. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

In the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of woman's superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science. Second to no American woman save Miss Dix in her experience as a practical philanthropist, she has studied human nature in the sternest practical schools, from Sing-Sing to California. She justly claims for her views that they have been maturing for twenty-two years of "experience so varied as to give it almost every form of trial which could fall to the intellectual life of any save the most favored women." Her books show, moreover, an ardent love of literature and some accurate scientific training,--though her style has the condensation and vigor which active life creates, rather than the graces of culture.

The essence of her book lies in this opening syllogism:--

"Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity;

"Woman's organism is more complex and her totality of function larger than those of any other being inhabiting our earth;

"Therefore her position in the scale of life is the most exalted,--the sovereign one."

This is compactly stated and quite unequivocal, although the three last words of the conclusion are a step beyond the premises, and the main fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the word _being_. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a distinct "being" cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called "The Organic Argument," which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the book, and would, perhaps, stand stronger without the other six hundred pages. In this chapter she shows the strength of a system-maker, in the rest the weaknesses of one; she feels obliged to apply her creed to everything, to illustrate everything by its light, to find unexpected confirmations everywhere, and to manipulate all the history of art, literature, and society, till she conforms them all to her standard. She recites, with no new power, historical facts that are already familiar; and gives many pages to extracts from very well known poets and very ill known prose-writers, to the exclusion of her own terse and vigorous thought. All this is without a trace of book-making, but is done in single-hearted zeal for views which are only damaged by the process.

These are merely literary defects; but Mrs. Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,--finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume a tone of habitual antagonism towards men, from which the advocates of mere equality are excused. Indeed, the technical Woman's-Rights movement has always witnessed a very hearty coöperation among its advocates of both sexes, and it is generally admitted that men are at least as ready to concede additional rights as women to ask for them. But when one comes to Mrs. Farnham's stand-point, and sees what her opinion of men really is, the stanchest masculine ally must shrink from assigning himself to such a category of scoundrels. The best criticism made on Michelet's theory of woman as a predestined invalid was that of the sensible physician who responded, "As if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman!"--and Mrs. Farnham certainly proves too much in undertaking to expose the blunders of Deity in the construction of a man. Assuming, as she invariably does, the highest woman to be the typical woman, and the lowest man to be the typical man, she can prove anything she pleases. But even this does not content her; every gleam of tenderness and refinement exhibited by man she transfers by some inexplicable legerdemain of logic to the feminine side, and makes somehow into a new proof of his hopeless inferiority; and she is landed at last in the amazing paradox, that "the most powerful feminine souls have appeared in masculine forms, thus far in human career." (Vol. II. p. 360.)

In short, her theory involves a necessity of perpetual overstatement. The conception of a pure and noble young man, such as Richter delineates in his Walt or Albano, seems utterly foreign to her system; and of that fine subtilty of nature by which the highest types of manhood and womanhood approach each other, as if mutually lending refinement and strength, she seems to have no conception. The truth is, that, however much we may concede to the average spiritual superiority of woman, a great deal also depends on the inheritance and the training of the individual. Mrs. Farnham, like every refined woman, is often shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous men; but she does not tell us the other side of the story,--how often every man of refinement has occasion to be shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous women. Sexual disparities may be much; but individual disparities are even more.

Mrs. Farnham is noble enough, and her book is brave and wise enough, to bear criticisms which grow only from her attempting too much. The difference between her book and most of those written on the other side is, that in the previous cases the lions have been the painters, and here it is the lioness. As against the exaggerations on the other side, she has a right to exaggerate on her part. As against the theory that man is superior to woman because he is larger, she has a right to plead that in that case the gorilla were the better man, and to assert on the other hand that woman is superior because smaller,--Emerson's mountain and squirrel. As against the theory that glory and dominion go with the beard, she has a right to maintain (and that she does with no small pungency) that Nature gave man this appendage because he was not to be trusted with his own face, and needed this additional covering for his shame. As against the historical traditions of man's mastery, she does well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus was master even before man. It is, indeed, this last point which constitutes the crowning merit of the book, and which will be permanently associated with Mrs. Farnham's name. No one before her has so firmly grasped this key to woman's historic position, that the past was an age of coarse, preliminary labor, in which her time had not yet come. This theory, as elucidated by Mrs. Farnham, taken with the fine statement of Buckle as to the importance of the intuitive element in the feminine intellect, (which statement Mrs. Farnham also quotes,) constitutes the most valuable ground logically conquered for woman within this century. These contributions are eclipsed in importance only by those actual achievements of women of genius,--as of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rosa Bonheur, and Harriet Hosmer,--which, so far as they go, render all argument superfluous.

In this domain of practical achievement Mrs. Farnham has also labored well, and the autobiography of her childish years, when she only aspired after such toils, has an interest wholly apart from that of her larger work, and scarcely its inferior. Except the immortal "Pet Marjorie," one can hardly recall in literature a delineation so marvellous of a childish mind so extraordinary as "Eliza Woodson." The few characters appear with an individuality worthy of a great novelist; every lover of children must find it altogether fascinating, and to the most experienced student of human nature it opens a new chapter of startling interest.

_The Cliff-Climbers; or, The Lone Home in the Himalayas._ A Sequel to "The Plant-Hunters." By CAPTAIN MAYNE REID, Author of "The Desert Home," "The Boy-Hunters," etc., etc. With Illustrations. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Beloved of boys, the adventurous Mayne Reid continues from year to year his good work as a story-teller. Since he held the youthful student a spellbound reader of "The Desert Home," he has sent abroad a dozen volumes, all excellent in their way, for the entertainment of his ever-increasing audience. He has not, however, dealt quite fairly by his boy-friends. He kept them waiting several years for the completion of "The Plant-Hunters," and it is only now that he has found time to add "The Cliff-Climbers" as a sequel to that fascinating story. While we thank him for the book that gives us farther acquaintance with those stirring individuals, Karl and Caspar, we cannot help reminding him how long ago it is since we read "The Plant-Hunters," and wished for more.

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