Chapter 7

He assisted Columbia without a word of comment. Now the room, she said, would no longer look hot and uncomfortable. There would be less dust to distract one on the walls. But Silas, the stickler for old things, thought jealously, "There's always a reason ready to excuse every change. It's pride that's to pay now,--she's getting ashamed of the shop."

And he remembered the queer look Alexander had cast around him the last time he entered that room; and he knew that this same Alexander was now expected home daily.

This was the rock, then, against which the sturdy craft of Silas was destined to strike and go to pieces! This was the whirlpool which should uproot the fairest tree and swing it to final ingulfing! Dark foreboding! sad fear! his heart was so concerned about Columbia Dexter. Alas for the halcyon days! it was winter indeed, but a winter worthy of Labrador.

So much she rejoiced in this midshipman's advancement, so proud of it she seemed,--she was so bold in prophecy where he was concerned, so manifestly fitted to appreciate a hero's career,--she could talk so long about him without every suspecting that the theme might please another less,--there was but one end likely, or desirable, for all this.

Then Alexander came. And his popularity waxed, instead of waning. So Silas at last gravely said to himself, after his sensible, moderate manner of dealing with that unhappy person, "If she and the young man were only married and settled, there the business would end; _he_ should no longer be distracted, as he did not deny he had long been, on her account." That admission was fatal. It compelled him to ask himself sharply why he should be distracted. "What business was this of his? Did he not, above all things, desire that Columbia should be happy? Must she not be the best judge of what could make her happiness?" He tried to deal honestly with himself.

This endeavor led him to remark one morning to Columbia,--

"You and Alexander seem to be getting on finely."

"Oh, yes," said she,--"of course."

"I hope you always will," he continued, with a tragic vehemence of wish.

"Thank you, Silas; we shall, I think," she replied, with such an excess of gratitude, so he deemed it, that the poor fellow attempted no more.

All that day he thought and thought; and at night Silas Swift looked back from a corner of High Street at a building over whose door a flag was waving, and said to himself, "I was born as free as others,"--and he walked on silently, with himself for his dismal company.

It made no difference to him where he went, which path he took, he said; but he passed Salt Lane, and crossed Long Wharf, and walked down the beach, under the old sycamores, and wandered on. There was another seaport-town some miles down the coast; he was walking in that direction, but he did not acknowledge a purpose.

How splendid was the night! a night of magnificent constellations, of flashing auroras, of many meteors; and he saw the comet, which he and Columbia had looked for since its first announcement. But the heavens might as well have been "hung in black." Chilled by more than the wintry wind, he went his way. When the sun rose, he was still wandering on. Light, heaven-deep, shone on land and sea. He sat down to rest, and to order himself for future movements: for the town was now in sight; in an hour or two he should come to the busy streets; already he could discern the lofty spires, and the tall masts of the great vessels.

Yes,--he would find a situation on one of those ships. He would go out as supercargo to China, or India, or Spain. He could get a situation without difficulty, for he was well known in the town. Then, after he had sailed, word could go back to his father and mother.

So, then, he should go to sea? Of course. It was now arranged,--to foreign ports. He should see foreign people, and visit ancient places. The strange would have advantage over the familiar. He did not desire death. He had not that weakness, not being worn out by sickness, and having never used this life as abusing it. The friends he loved were living; his affections were strong. No, he could not think of death without a shudder, for Love was on the earth. Yet--what had he to do with Love? By her own election _she_ was no more to him than a hundred others as good and fair might prove. Must he be so weak as to go through life regretting? Not he, Silas Swift!

By-and-by he rose up from the sand. I think his face must have resembled, then, the face of Elijah when the Lord inquied, with the still, small voice, "What dost thou here?" For, as he arose, he looked back on the waste by which he came,--his face turned homewards. Ay, and his steps likewise; and not with indecision, as though fearing when he surrendered to himself and One mightier.

Do they tell us filial reverence is a forgotten virtue? Silas was going home. Child, do you call him coward? Perhaps he was that,--no, not even yesterday, for the yesterday was capable of to-day! Do you, then, say, with a doubting smile, "Love! Love!" Yea, verily, Love! The mount of God takes up your word, so feebly and falsely spoken, and the echo is like thunder whose fire can destroy. Yea, _Love_! Two old faces, wrinkled, anxious. Eyes not so bright as once, dimmer to-day for tears; hair sprinkled with gray. Prayers broken by sobbing; trust disappointed; confidence violated. Ay, hearts that loved him first, and would surely love him always. Smiles first recognized of all he has ever seen, that could not change to frowns. They call him with tremulous tenderness, and the heart of Silas breaks with hearing. Bleed, poor heart, but let not those old hearts bleed!

The music of the inviting waves is not so soft as the sound of those feeble voices,--the freedom they promise is not powerful to tempt him; behold the arms that hang powerless yonder, and the hearts whose tides are more wondrous than those of the sea! The halcyon days shall never break through eternal ages on him, if he will walk on now in darkness.

"I will arise and go to my father."

The everlasting gates lift up their heads. The full-grown man reënters. Love drove him forth with stripes; there may have been who rejoiced and thought of fainting Ishmael. But against no man should this youth's hand be lifted. No son of the bond-woman he. Isaac, not Ishmael.

Love drove him forth with stripes; but a holier drew him home. By his past life's integrity the man was bound,--by the honor of a good name, that waited to be justified.

He went home to ask forgiveness of LOVE. Not of Youth and Beauty, but of Age and Trust.

He went home to souls which had proved themselves, each one, before the divine messenger in the hours of his absence.

Back, once more to break on a little circle gathered in an obscure corner of the town, talking his case over with distressed perplexity: to women disturbed with fears incredible to them,--to three, save one who did not seem distracted, and who looked around her with something like triumph, as a prophet might gaze when his word was verified. She was the youngest and the fairest of them all. How many times she had said, "He can explain. He will come soon. How can you fear for Silas?"

He went back to the dead silence that fell with his appearing. His mother was first to break it. With a faltering voice she spoke, but with the authority of maternal love and faith,--through sobs, but with authority.

"There! there! I told you! Now speak, Silas! quick! Did you find him?"--and, half fainting, she threw her arms about her son.

The father would fain speak with severity, but he failed in the attempt; he could no longer harbor his cruel fear, with the lad there before him.

"Silas, what do you mean, Sir? Here's Mr. Dexter's shop broke in, and his till robbed, and you off, and the Devil to pay! But Columby, there, said you had gone in search of the thief. Oh! oh!"

"Of course!" cried Dexter, the words rolling out as a cloud of smoke from a conspicuous safety-valve,--"I knew 't was all right. I'd expect the world to bu'st up as quick as for you to cheat us. I said it, I did, fifty times." And there Dexter choked, and was silent.

Ay, time for him to return! "Glory to God!" said Silas, and he looked around him, scanning every face, as a man might scan the faces of accusers.

More than any said or thought he saw in Columbia's eyes. Silent, pale, she merely sat gazing at him steadfastly. Oh, powers of speech, surrender! It was a gaze that made the young fellow turn from all, that the spasm of joy might pass, and leave him breath to declare himself like a man in the hearing of those present.

The words he spoke might not disturb the dreaming halcyon, but they must have brought angels nearer,--so near that not one there in the little back-room could escape the heavenly atmosphere.

Was Love born in a stable? Is Nature changed since, that a little room back of a shop should not be heaven itself, and the inmates kings and priests, though without the ermine and ephod?

Shall we sing the halcyon's song?

ON TRANSLATING THE DIVINA COMMEDIA.

Oft have I seen at some cathedral-door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his pater-noster o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become an undistinguishable roar. So, as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster-gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait.

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

XI.

My wife and I were sitting at the open bow-window of my study, watching the tuft of bright red leaves on our favorite maple, which warned us that summer was over. I was solacing myself, like all the world in our days, with reading the "Schönberg Cotta Family," when my wife made her voice heard through the enchanted distance, and dispersed the pretty vision of German cottage-life.

"Chris!"

"Well, my dear."

"Do you know the day of the month?"

Now my wife knows this is a thing that I never do know, that I can't know, and, in fact, that there is no need I should trouble myself about, since she always knows, and what is more, always tells me. In fact, the question, when asked by her, meant more than met the ear. It was a delicate way of admonishing me that another paper for the "Atlantic" ought to be in train; and so I answered, not to the external form, but to the internal intention.

"Well, you see, my dear, I haven't made up my mind what my next paper shall be about."

"Suppose, then, you let me give you a subject."

"Sovereign lady, speak on! Your slave hears!"

"Well, then, take _Cookery_. It may seem a vulgar subject, but I think more of health and happiness depends on that than on any other one thing. You may make houses enchantingly beautiful, hang them with pictures, have them clean and airy and convenient; but if the stomach is fed with sour bread and burnt coffee, it will raise such rebellions that the eyes will see no beauty anywhere. Now in the little tour that you and I have been taking this summer, I have been thinking of the great abundance of splendid material we have in America, compared with the poor cooking. How often, in our stoppings, we have sat down to tables loaded with material, originally of the very best kind, which had been so spoiled in the treatment that there was really nothing to eat! Green biscuit with acrid spots of alkali,--sour yeast-bread,--meat slowly simmered in fat till it seemed like grease itself, and slowly congealing in cold grease,--and above all, that unpardonable enormity, strong butter! How often I have longed to show people what might have been done with the raw material out of which all these monstrosities were concocted!"

"My dear," said I, "you are driving me upon delicate ground. Would you have your husband appear in public with that most opprobrious badge of the domestic furies, a dish-cloth pinned to his coat-tail? It is coming to exactly the point I have always predicted, Mrs. Crowfield: you must write, yourself. I always told you that you could write far better than I, if you would only try. Only sit down and write as you sometimes talk to me, and I might hang up my pen by the side of 'Uncle Ned's' fiddle and bow."

"Oh, nonsense!" said my wife. "I never could write. I know what ought to be said, and I could _say_ it to any one; but my ideas freeze in the pen, cramp in my fingers, and make my brain seem like heavy bread. I was born for extemporary speaking. Besides, I think the best things on all subjects in this world of ours are said not by the practical workers, but by the careful observers."

"Mrs. Crowfield, that remark is as good as if I had made it myself," said I.

"It is true that I have been all my life a speculator and observer in all domestic matters, having them so confidentially under my eye in our own household; and so, if I write on a pure woman's matter, it must be understood that I am only your pen and mouth-piece,--only giving tangible form to wisdom which I have derived from you."

So down I sat and scribbled, while my sovereign lady quietly stitched by my side. And here I tell my reader that I write on such a subject under protest,--declaring again my conviction, that, if my wife only believed in herself as firmly as I do, she would write so that nobody would ever want to listen to me again.

COOKERY.

We in America have the raw material of provision in greater abundance than any other nation. There is no country where an ample, well-furnished table is more easily spread, and for that reason, perhaps, none where the bounties of Providence are more generally neglected. I do not mean to say that the traveller through the length and breadth of our land could not, on the whole, find an average of comfortable subsistence; yet, considering that our resources are greater than those of any other civilized people, our results are comparatively poorer.

It is said, that, a list of the summer vegetables which are exhibited on New-York hotel-tables being shown to a French _artiste_, he declared that to serve such a dinner properly would take till midnight. I recollect how I was once struck with our national plenteousness, on returning from a Continental tour, and going directly from the ship to a New-York hotel, in the bounteous season of autumn. For months I had been habituated to my neat little bits of chop or poultry garnished with the inevitable cauliflower or potato, which seemed to be the sole possibility after the reign of green-peas was over; now I sat down all at once to a carnival of vegetables: ripe, juicy tomatoes, raw or cooked; cucumbers in brittle slices; rich, yellow sweet-potatoes; broad Lima-beans, and beans of other and various names; tempting ears of Indian-corn steaming in enormous piles, and great smoking tureens of the savory succotash, an Indian gift to the table for which civilization need not blush; sliced egg-plant in delicate fritters; and marrow-squashes, of creamy pulp and sweetness: a rich variety, embarrassing to the appetite, and perplexing to the choice. Verily, the thought has often impressed itself on my mind that the vegetarian doctrine preached in America left a man quite as much as he had capacity to eat or enjoy, and that in the midst of such tantalizing abundance he really lost the apology which elsewhere bears him out in preying upon his less gifted and accomplished animal neighbors.

But with all this, the American table, taken as a whole, is inferior to that of England or France. It presents a fine abundance of material, carelessly and poorly treated. The management of food is nowhere in the world, perhaps, more slovenly and wasteful. Everything betokens that want of care that waits on abundance; there are great capabilities and poor execution. A tourist through England can seldom fail, at the quietest country-inn, of finding himself served with the essentials of English table-comfort,--his mutton-chop done to a turn, his steaming little private apparatus for concocting his own tea, his choice pot of marmalade or slice of cold ham, and his delicate rolls and creamy butter, all served with care and neatness. In France, one never asks in vain for delicious _café-au-lait_, good bread and butter, a nice omelet, or some savory little portion of meat with a French name. But to a tourist taking like chance in American country-fare what is the prospect? What is the coffee? what the tea? and the meat? and above all, the butter?

In lecturing on cookery, as on house-building, I divide the subject into not four, but five grand elements: first, Bread; second, Butter; third, Meat; fourth, Vegetables; and fifth, Tea,--by which I mean, generically, all sorts of warm, comfortable drinks served out in teacups, whether they be called tea, coffee, chocolate, broma, or what not.

I affirm, that, if these five departments are all perfect, the great ends of domestic cookery are answered, so far as the comfort and well-being of life are concerned. I am aware that there exists another department, which is often regarded by culinary amateurs and young aspirants as the higher branch and very collegiate course of practical cookery, to wit, Confectionery,--by which I mean to designate all pleasing and complicated compounds of sweets and spices, devised not for health or nourishment, and strongly suspected of interfering with both,--mere tolerated gratifications of the palate, which we eat, not with the expectation of being benefited, but only with the hope of not being injured by them. In this large department rank all sorts of cakes, pies, preserves, ices, etc. I shall have a word or two to say under this head before I have done. I only remark now, that in my tours about the country I have often had a virulent ill-will excited towards these works of culinary supererogation, because I thought their excellence was attained by treading under foot and disregarding the five grand essentials. I have sat at many a table garnished with three or four kinds of well-made cake, compounded with citron and spices and all imaginable good things, where the meat was tough and greasy, the bread some hot preparation of flour, lard, saleratus, and acid, and the butter unutterably detestable. At such tables I have thought, that, if the mistress of the feast had given the care, time, and labor to preparing the simple items of bread, butter, and meat that she evidently had given to the preparation of these extras, the lot of a traveller might be much more comfortable. Evidently, she never had thought of these common articles as constituting a good table. So long as she had puff pastry, rich black cake, clear jelly, and preserves, she seemed to consider that such unimportant matters as bread, butter, and meat could take care of themselves. It is the same inattention to common things as that which leads people to build houses with stone fronts and window-caps and expensive front-door trimmings, without bathing-rooms or fireplaces or ventilators.

Those who go into the country looking for summer board in farm-houses know perfectly well that a table where the butter is always fresh, the tea and coffee of the best kinds and well made, and the meats properly kept, dressed, and served, is the one table of a hundred, the fabulous enchanted island. It seems impossible to get the idea into the minds of people that what is called common food, carefully prepared, becomes, in virtue of that very care and attention, a delicacy, superseding the necessity of artificially compounded dainties.

To begin, then, with the very foundation of a good table,--_Bread:_ What ought it to be? It should be light, sweet, and tender.

This matter of lightness is the distinctive line between savage and civilized bread. The savage mixes simple flour and water into balls of paste, which he throws into boiling water, and which come out solid, glutinous masses, of which his common saying is, "Man eat dis, he no die,"--which a facetious traveller who was obliged to subsist on it interpreted to mean, "Dis no kill you, nothing will." In short, it requires the stomach of a wild animal or of a savage to digest this primitive form of bread, and of course more or less attention in all civilized modes of bread-making is given to producing lightness. By lightness is meant simply that the particles are to be separated from each other by little holes or air-cells, and all the different methods of making light bread are neither more nor less than the formation in bread of these air-cells.

So far as we know, there are four practicable methods of aërating bread, namely--by fermentation,--by effervescence of an acid and an alkali,--by aërated egg, or egg which has been filled with air by the process of beating,--and lastly, by pressure of some gaseous substance into the paste, by a process much resembling the impregnation of water in a soda-fountain. All these have one and the same object,--to give us the cooked particles of our flour separated by such permanent air-cells as will enable the stomach more readily to digest them.

A very common mode of aërating bread, in America, is by the effervescence of an acid and an alkali in the flour. The carbonic acid gas thus formed produces minute air-cells in the bread, or, as the cook says, makes it light. When this process is performed with exact attention to chemical laws, so that the acid and alkali completely neutralize each other, leaving no overplus of either, the result is often very palatable. The difficulty is, that this is a happy conjunction of circumstances which seldom occurs. The acid most commonly employed is that of sour milk, and, as milk has many degrees of sourness, the rule of a certain quantity of alkali to the pint must necessarily produce very different results at different times. As an actual fact, where this mode of making bread prevails, as we lament to say it does to a great extent in this country, one finds five cases of failure to one of success. It is a woful thing that the daughters of New England have abandoned the old respectable mode of yeast-brewing and bread-raising for this specious substitute, so easily made, and so seldom well made. The green, clammy, acrid substance, called biscuit, which many of our worthy republicans are obliged to eat in these days, is wholly unworthy of the men and women of the Republic. Good patriots ought not to be put off in that way,--they deserve better fare.

As an occasional variety, as a household convenience for obtaining bread or biscuit at a moment's notice, the process we earnestly entreat American housekeepers, in Scriptural language, to stand in the way and ask for the old paths, and return to the good yeast-bread of their sainted grandmothers.

If acid and alkali must be used, by all means let them be mixed in due proportions. No cook should be left to guess and judge for herself about this matter. There is an article, called "Preston's Infallible Yeast-Powder," which is made by chemical rule, and produces very perfect results. The use of this obviates the worst dangers in making bread by effervescence.

Of all processes of aëration in bread-making, the oldest and most time-honored is by fermentation. That this was known in the days of our Saviour is evident from the forcible simile in which he compares the silent permeating force of truth in human society to the very familiar household process of raising bread by a little yeast.