CHAPTER IV.

AUTOCHTHONES

_July 30._--At Hopedale, lat. 55° 30', we come upon an object of first-class interest, worthy of the gravest study,--an original and pre-Adamite man. In two words I give the reader a key to my final conclusions, or impressions, concerning the Esquimaux race.

Original: Shakspeare is a copyist, and England a plagiarism, in comparison with this race. The Esquimaux has done all for himself: he has developed his own arts, adjusted himself by his own wit to the Nature which surrounds him. Heir to no Rome, Greece, Persia, India, he stands there in the sole strength of his native resources, rich only in the traditionary accomplishments of his own race. Cut off equally from the chief bounties of Nature, he has small share in the natural wealth of mankind. When Ceres came to the earth, and blessed it, she forgot him. The grains, the domestic animals, which from the high plateaus of Asia descended with the fathers of history to the great fields of the world, to him came not. The sole domestic animal he uses, the dog, is not the same with that creature as known elsewhere; he has domesticated a wolf, and made a dog for himself.

Not only is he original, but one of the most special of men, related more strictly than almost any other to a particular aspect of Nature. Inseparable from the extreme North, the sea-shore, and the seal, he is himself, as it were, a seal come to feet and hands, and preying upon his more primitive kindred. The cetacean of the land, he is localized, like animals,--not universal, like civilized man. He is no inhabitant of the globe as a whole, but is contained within special poles. His needle does not point north and south; it is commanded by special attractions, and points only from shore to sea and from sea to shore in the arctic zone. Nor is this relation to particular phases of Nature superficial merely, a relation of expedient and convenience; it penetrates, saturates, nay, anticipates and moulds him. Whether he has come to this correspondence by original creation or by slow adjustment, he certainly does now correspond in his whole physical and mental structure to the limited and special surroundings of his life,--the seal itself or the eider-duck not more.

He is pre-Adamite, I said,--and name him thus not as a piece of rhetorical smartness, but in gravest characterization.

The first of human epochs is that when the thoughts, imaginations, beliefs of men become to them _objects_, on which further thought and action are to be adjusted, on which further thought and action may be based. So long as man is merely responding to outward and physical circumstances, so long he is living by bread alone, and has no history. It is when he begins to respond _to himself_--to create necessities and supplies out of his own spirit,--to build architectures on foundations and out of materials that exist only in virtue of his own spiritual activity,--to live by bread which grows, not out of the soil, but out of the soul,--it is then, then only, that history begins. This one may be permitted to name the Adamite epoch.

The Esquimaux belongs to that period, more primitive, when man is simply responding to outward Nature, to physical necessities. He invents, but does not create; he adjusts himself to circumstances, but not to ideas; he works cunningly upon materials which he has _found_, but never on material which owes its existence to the productive force of his own spirit.

In going to look upon the man of this race, you sail, not merely over seas, but over ages, epochs, unknown periods of time,--sail beyond antiquity itself, and issue into the obscure existence that antedates history. Arrived there, you may turn your eye to the historical past of man as to a barely possible future. Palestine and Greece, Moses and Homer, as yet are not. Who shall dare to say that they can be? Surely that were but a wild dream! Expel the impossible fancy from your mind! Go, spear a seal, and be a reasonable being!--Never enthusiast had a dream of the future so unspeakably Utopian as actual history becomes, when seen from the Esquimaux, or pre-Adamite, point of view.

Swiss lakes are raked, Belgian caves spaded and hammered, to find relics of old, pre-historical races. Go to Labrador, and you find the object sought above ground. There he is, preserving all the characters of his extinct congeners,--small in stature, low and smooth in cranium, held utterly in the meshes of Nature, skilled only to meet ingeniously the necessities she imposes, and meeting them rudely, as man ever does till the ideal element comes in: for any fine feeling of even physical wants, any delicacy of taste, any high notion of comfort, is due less to the animal than to the spiritual being of man.

A little sophisticated he is now, getting to feel himself obsolete in this strange new world. He begins to borrow, and yet is unable radically to change; outwardly he gains a very little from civilization, and grows inwardly poorer and weaker by all that he gains. His day wanes apace; soon it will be past. He begins to nurse at the breasts of the civilized world; and the foreign aliment can neither sustain his ancient strength nor give him new. Civilization forces upon him a rivalry to which he is unequal; it wrests the seal from his grasp, thins it out of his waters; and he and his correlative die away together.

* * * * *

We reached Hopedale, as intimated above, on the morning of the 30th of July, at least a month later than had been hoped. The reader will see by the map that this place is about half way from the Strait of Belle Isle to Hudson's Strait. We were to go no farther north. This was a great disappointment; for the expectation of all, and the keen desire of most, had been to reach at least Cape Chudleigh, at the opening of Hudson's Strait. Ice and storm had hindered us: they were not the only hindrances.

"The Fates are against us," said one.

"It is true," answered the Elder,--"the Fates are against us: I know of nothing more fatal than imbecility."

However, we should be satisfied; for here we have fairly penetrated the great solitudes of the North. Lower Labrador is visited by near forty thousand fishermen annually, and vessels there are often more frequent than in Boston Bay. But at a point not far from the fifty-fifth parallel of latitude you leave all these behind, and leave equally the white residents of the coast: to fishermen and residents alike the region beyond is as little known as the interior of Australia. There their world comes to an end; there the unknown begins. Knowledge and curiosity alike pause there; toward all beyond their only feeling is one of vague dislike and dread. And so I doubt not it was with the ordinary inhabitant of Western Europe before the discovery of America. The Unknown, breaking in surf on his very shores, did not invite him, but dimly repelled. Thought about it, attraction toward it, would seem to him far-fetched, gratuitous, affected, indicating at best a feather-headed flightiness of mind. The sailors of Columbus probably regarded him much as Sancho Panza does Don Quixote, with an obscure, overpowering awe, and yet with a very definite contempt.

On our return we passed two Yankee fishermen in the Strait of Belle Isle. The nearer hailed.

"How far _down_ [up] have you been?"

"To Hopedale."

"WHERE?"--in the tone of one who hears distinctly enough, but cannot believe that he hears.

"Hopedale."

"H-o-p-e-d-a-l-e! Where the Devil's that?"

"A hundred and fifty miles beyond Cape Harrison." (Cape Weback on the map.)

Inarticulate gust of astonishment in response.

"Where did he say?" inquires some one in the farther schooner.

"----! He's been to the North Pole!"

To him it was all North Pole beyond Cape Harrison, and he evidently looked upon us much as he might upon the apparition of the Flying Dutchman, or some other spectre-ship.

The supply-ship which yearly visits the Moravian stations on this coast anchored in the harbor of Hopedale ten minutes before us: we had been rapidly gaining upon her in our Flying Yankee for the last twenty miles. Signal-guns had answered each other from ship and shore; the missionaries were soon on board, and men and women were falling into each other's arms with joyful, mournful kisses and tears. The ship returned some missionaries after long absence; it brought also a betrothed lady, next day to be married: there was occasion for joy, even beyond wont on these occasions, when, year by year, the missionary-exiles feel with bounding blood the touch of civilization and fatherland. But now those who came on board brought sad tidings,--for one of their ancient colaborers, closely akin to the new comers, had within a day or two died. Love and death the world over; and also the hope of love without death.

Our eyes have been drawn to them; it is time to have a peep at Hopedale.

I had been so long looking forward to this place, had heard and thought of it so much as an old mission-station, where was a village of Christian Esquimaux, that I fully expected to see a genuine village, with houses, wharves, streets. It would not equal our towns, of course. The people were not cleanly; the houses would be unpainted, and poor in comparison with ours. I had taken assiduous pains to tone down my expectations, and felt sure that I had moderated them liberally,--nay, had been philosophical enough to make disappointment impossible, and open the opposite possibility of a pleasant surprise. I conceived that in this respect I had done the discreet and virtuous thing, and silently moralized, not without self-complacency, upon the folly of carrying through the world expectations which the fact, when seen, could only put out of countenance. "Make your expectations zero," I said with Sartor.

I need not put them _below_ zero. That would be too cold an anticipation to carry even to this latitude. Zero: a poor, shabby village these Christian Esquimaux will have built, even after nigh a century of Moravian tuition. Still it will be a real village, not a distracted jumble of huts, such as we had seen below.

The prospect had been curiously pleasing. True, I desired much to see the unadulterated Esquimaux. But that would come, I had supposed, in the further prosecution of our voyage. Here I could see what they would become under loving instruction,--could gauge their capabilities, and thus answer one of the prime questions I had brought.

A real Hopedale, after all this wild, sterile, hopeless coast! A touch of civilization, to contrast with the impression of that Labradorian rag-tag existence which we had hitherto seen, and which one could not call human without coughing! I like deserts and wilds,--but, if you please, by way of condiment or sauce to civilization, not for a full meal. I have not the heroic Thoreau-digestion, and grow thin after a time on a diet of moss and granite, even when they are served with ice. Lift the curtain, therefore, and let us look forthwith on your Hopedale.

"Hopedale? Why, here it is,--look!"

Well, I have been doing nothing less for the last half-hour. If looking could make a village, I should begin to see one. There, to be sure, is the mission-house, conspicuous enough, quaint and by no means unpleasing. It is a spacious, substantial, two-story edifice, painted in two shades of a peculiar red, and looking for all the world as if a principal house, taken from one of those little German toy-villages which are in vogue about Christmas, had been enormously magnified, and shipped to Labrador. There, too, and in similar colors, is the long chapel, on the centre of whose roof there is a belfry, which looks like two thirds of immense red egg, drawn up at the top into a spindle, and this surmounted by a weathercock,--as if some giant had attempted to blow the egg from beneath, and had only blown out of it this small bird with a stick to stand on! Ah, yes! and there is the pig-sty,--not in keeping with the rest, by any means! It must be that they keep a pig only now and then, and for a short time, and house it any way for that little while. But no, it is not a piggery; it is not a building at all; it is some chance heap of rubbish, which will be removed to-morrow.

The mission-station, then, is here; but the village must be elsewhere. Probably it is on the other side of this point of land on which the house and chapel are situated; we can see that the water sweeps around there. That is the case, no doubt; Hopedale is over there. After dinner we will row around, and have a look at it.

After dinner, however, we decide to go first and pay our respects to the missionaries. They are entitled to the precedence. We long, moreover, to take the loving, self-sacrificing men by the hand; while, aside from their special claims to honor, it will be _so_ pleasant to meet cultivated human beings once more! They are Germans, but their head-quarters are at London; they will speak English; and if their vocabulary prove scanty, we will try to eke it out with bits of German.

We row ashore in our own skiff, land, and--Bless us! what is this now? To the right of the large, neat, comfortable mission-house is a wretched, squalid spatter and hotch-potch of--what in the world to call them? Huts? Hovels? One has a respect for his mother-tongue,--above all, if he have assumed obligations toward it by professing the function of a writer; and any term by which human dwellings are designated must be taken _cum grano salis_, if applied to these structures. "It cannot be that this is Christian Hopedale!" Softly, my good Sir; it can be, for it is!

Reader, do you ever say, "Whew-w-w"? There were three minutes, on the 30th of July last, during which that piece of interjectional eloquence seemed to your humble servant to embody the whole dictionary!

To get breath, let us turn again to the mission-mansion, which now, under the effect of sudden contrast, seems too magnificent to be real, as if it had been built by enchantment rather than by the labor of man. This is situated half a dozen rods from the shore, at a slight elevation above it, and looks pleasantly up the bay to the southwest. The site has been happily chosen. Here, for a wonder, is an acre or two of land which one may call level,--broader toward the shore, and tapering to a point as it runs back. To the right, as we face it, the ground rises not very brokenly, giving a small space for the hunch of huts, then falls quickly to the sea; while beyond, and toward the ocean, islands twenty miles deep close in and shelter all. To the left go up again the perpetual hills, hills. Everywhere around the bay save here, on island and main, the immitigable gneiss hills rise bold and sudden from the water, now dimly impurpled with lichen, now in nakedness of rock surface, yet beautified in their bare severity by alternating and finely waving stripes of lightest and darkest gray,--as if to show sympathy with the billowy heaving of the sea.

Forward to the mansion. In front a high, strong, neat picket-fence incloses a pretty flower-yard, in which some exotics, tastefully arranged, seem to be flourishing well. We knock; with no manner of haste, and with no seeming of cordial willingness, we are admitted, are shown into a neat room of good size, and entertained by a couple of the brethren.

One of these only, and he alone among the missionaries, it appeared, spoke English. This was an elderly, somewhat cold and forbidding personage, of Secession sympathies. He had just returned from Europe after two years' absence, was fresh from London, and put on the true Exeter-Hall whine in calling ours "a n-dreadful n-war." He did not press the matter, however, nor in any manner violate the _rôle_ of cold courtesy which he had assumed; and it was chiefly by the sudden check and falling of the countenance, when he found us thorough Unionist, that his sympathies were betrayed. Wine and rusks were brought in, both delicious,--the latter seeming like ambrosia, after the dough cannon-balls with which our "head cook at the Tremont House" had regaled us. After a stay of civil brevity we took our leave, and so closed an interview in which we had been treated with irreproachable politeness, but in which the heart was forbidden to have any share.

First the missionaries; now the natives. The squat and squalid huts, stuck down upon the earth without any pretence of raised foundation, and jumbled together, corner to side, back to front, any way, as if some wind had blown them there, did not improve on acquaintance. The walls, five feet high, were built of poles some five inches in diameter; the low roof, made of similar poles, was heavily heaped with earth. What with this deep earth-covering, and with their grovelling toward the earth in such a flat and neighborly fashion, they had a dreadfully under-foot look, and seemed rather dens than houses. Many were ragged and rotten, all inconceivably cheerless. No outhouses, no inclosures, no vegetation, no relief of any kind. About and between them the swardless ground is all trodden into mud. Prick-eared Esquimaux dogs huddle, sneak, bark, and snarl around, with a free fight now and then, in which they all fall upon the one that is getting the worst of it. Before the principal group of huts, in the open space between them and the mansion, a dead dog lies rotting; children lounge listlessly, and babies toddle through the slutch about it. Here and there a full-grown Esquimaux, in greasy and uncouth garb, loiters, doing nothing, _looking_ nothing.

I, for one, was completely overcrowed by the impression of a bare and aimless existence, and could not even wonder. Christian Hopedale! "Leave all hope, ye that enter here!"

At 5 P. M. the chapel-bell rings, and at once the huts swarm. We follow the crowd. They enter the chapel by a door at the end nearest their dens, and seat themselves, the women at the farther, the men at the hither extreme, all facing a raised desk at the middle of one side. Behind them, opposite this pulpit, is an organ. Presently, from a door at the farther end, the missionaries file in, some twelve in number; one enters the pulpit, the others take seats on either side of him, facing the audience, and at a dignified remove. The conductor of the service now rises, makes an address in Esquimaux a minute and a half long, then gives out a hymn,--the hymns numbered in German, as numbers, to any extent, are wanting to the Esquimaux language. All the congregation join in a solid old German tune, keeping good time, and making, on the whole, better congregational music than I ever heard elsewhere,--unless a Baptist conventicle in London, Bloomsbury Chapel, furnish the exception. After this another, then another; at length, when half a dozen or more have been sung, missionaries and congregation rise, the latter stand in mute and motionless respect, the missionaries file out with dignity at their door; and when the last has disappeared, the others begin quietly to disperse.

This form of worship is practised at the hour named above on each weekday, and the natives attend with noticeable promptitude. There are no prayers, and the preliminary address in this case was exceptional.

_Sunday, July 31._--I had inquired at what hour the worship would begin this day, and, with some hesitancy, had been answered, "At half past nine." But the Colonel also had asked, and his interlocutor, after consulting a card, said, "At ten o'clock." At ten we went ashore. Finding the chapel-door still locked, I seated myself on a rock in front of the mission-house, to wait. The sun was warm (the first warm day for a month); the mosquitoes swarmed in myriads; I sat there long, wearily beating them off. Faces peeped out at me from the windows, then withdrew. Presently Bradford joined me, and began also to fight mosquitoes. More faces at the windows; but when I looked towards them, thinking to discover some token of hospitable invitation, they quickly disappeared. After half an hour, the master of the supply-ship came up, and entered into conversation; in a minute one of the brethren appeared at the door, and invited him to enter, but without noticing Bradford and myself. I took my skiff and rowed to the schooner. Fifteen minutes later the chapel-bell rang.

I confess to some spleen that day against the missionaries. When I expressed it, Captain French, the pilot, an old, prudent, pious man, "broke out."

"Them are traders," said he. "I don't call 'em missionaries; I call 'em traders. They live in luxury; the natives work for 'em, and get for pay just what they choose to give 'em. They fleece the Esquimaux; they take off of 'em all but the skin. They are just traders!"

My spleen did not last. There was some cause of coldness,--I know not what. The missionaries afterwards became cordial, visited the schooner, and exchanged presents with us. I believe them good men. If their relation to the natives assume in some degree a pecuniary aspect, it is due to the necessity of supporting the mission by the profits of traffic. If they preserve a stately distance toward the Esquimaux, it is to retain influence over them. If they allow the native mind to confound somewhat the worship of God with the worship of its teachers, it is that the native mind cannot get beyond personal relations, and must worship something tangible. That they are not at all entangled in the routine and material necessities of their position I do not assert; that they do not carry in it something of noble and self-forgetful duty nothing I have seen will persuade me.

_August 1._--We go to push our explorations among the Esquimaux, and invite the reader to make one of the party. Enter a hut. The door is five feet high,--that is, the height of the wall. Stoop a little,--ah, there goes a hat to the ground, and a hand to a hurt pate! One must move carefully in these regions, which one hardly knows whether to call sub- or supra-terranean.

This door opens into a sort of porch occupying one end of the den; the floor, earth. Three or four large, dirty dogs lie dozing here, and start up with an aspect of indescribable, half-crouching, mean malignity, as we enter; but a sharp word, with perhaps some menace of stick or cane, sends the cowardly brutes sneaking away. In a corner is a circle of stones, on which cooking is done; and another day we may find the family here picking their food out of a pot, and serving themselves to it, with the fingers. Save this primitive fireplace, and perhaps a kettle for the dogs to lick clean, this porch is bare.

From this we crouch into the living-room through a door two and a half or three feet high, and find ourselves in an apartment twelve feet square, and lighted by a small, square skin window in the roof. The only noticeable furniture consists of two board beds, with skins for bed-clothes. The women sit on these beds, sewing upon seal-skin boots. They receive us with their characteristic fat and phlegmatic good-nature, a pleasant smile on their chubby cheeks and in their dark, dull eyes,--making room for us on the bedside. Presently others come in, mildly curious to see the strangers,--all with the same aspect of unthinking, good-tempered, insensitive, animal content. The head is low and smooth; the cheekbones high, but less so than those of American Indians; the jowl so broad and heavy as sometimes to give the _ensemble_ of head and face the outline of a cone truncated and rounded off above. In the females, however, the cheek is so extremely plump as perfectly to pad these broad jaws, giving, instead of the prize-fighter physiognomy, an aspect of smooth, gentle heaviness. Even without this fleshy cheek, which is not noticeable, and is sometimes noticeably wanting, in the men, there is the same look of heavy, well-tempered lameness. The girls have a rich blood color in their swarthy cheeks, and some of them are really pretty, though always in a lumpish, domestic-animal style. The hands and feet are singularly small; the fingers short, but nicely tapered. Take hold of the hand, and you are struck with its _cetacean_ feel. It is not flabby, but has a peculiar blubber-like, elastic compressibility, and seems not quite of human warmth.

See them in their houses, and you see the horizon of their life. In these fat faces, with their thoughtless content, in this pent-up, greasy, wooden den, the whole is told. The air is close and fetid with animal exhalations. The entrails and part of the flesh of a seal, which lie on the floor in a corner,--to furnish a dinner,--do not make the atmosphere nor the aspect more agreeable. Yet you see that to them this is comfort, this is completeness of existence. If they are hungry, they seek food. Food obtained, they return to eat and be comfortable until they are again hungry. Their life has, on this earth at least, no farther outlook. It sallies, it returns, but here is the fruition; for is not the seal-flesh dinner there, nicely and neatly bestowed on the floor? Are they not warm? (The den is swelteringly hot.) Are they not fed? What would one have more?

Yes, somewhat more, namely, tobacco,--and also second-hand clothes, with which to be fine in church. For these they will barter seal-skins, dog-skins, seal-skin boots, a casual bear-skin, bird-spears, walrus-spears, anything they have to vend,--concealing their traffic a little from the missionaries. Colored glass beads were also in request among the women. Ph---- had brought some large, well-made pocket-knives, which, being useful, he supposed would be desired. Not at all; they were fumbled indifferently, then invariably declined. But a plug of tobacco,--ah, that now _is_ something!

The men wear tight seal-skin trousers and boots, with an upper garment of the same material, made like a Guernsey frock. In winter a hood is added, but in summer they all go bareheaded,--the stiff, black hair chopped squarely off across the low forehead, but longer behind. The costume of the females is more peculiar,--seal-skin boots, seal-skin trousers, which just spring over the hips, and are there met by a body-garment of seal-skin more lightly colored. Over this goes an astonishing article of apparel somewhat resembling the dress-coat in which unhappy civilization sometimes compels itself to masquerade, but--truth stranger than fiction!--_considerably_ more ugly. A long tail hangs down to the very heels; a much shorter peak comes down in front; at the sides it is scooped out below, showing a small portion of the light-colored body-garment, which irresistibly suggests a very dirty article of lady-linen whereon the eyes of civilized decorum forbear to look, while an adventurous imagination associates it only with snowy whiteness. The whole is surmounted by an enormous peaked hood, in which now and then one sees a baby carried.

This elegant garment was evidently copied from the skin of an animal,--so Ph---- acutely suggested. The high peak of the hood represents the ears; the arms stand for the fore legs; the downward peak in front for the hind legs sewed together; the rear dangler represents the tail. I make no doubt that our dress-coat has the same origin, though the primal conception has been more modified. It is a bear-skin _plus_ Paris.

Is the reader sure of his ribs and waistcoat-buttons? If so, he may venture to look upon an Esquimaux woman walking,--which I take to be the most ludicrous spectacle in the world. Conceive of this short, squat, chunky, lumpish figure in the costume described,--grease _ad libitum_ being added. The form is so plump and heavy as very much to project the rear dangler at the point where it leaves the body, while below it falls in, and goes with a continual muddy slap, slap, against the heels. The effect of this, especially in the profile view, is wickedly laughable, but the gait makes it more so. The walk is singularly slow, unelastic, loggy, and is characterized at each step by an indescribable, sudden sag or _slump_ at the hip. As she thus slowly and heavily _churns_ herself along, the nether slap emphasizes each step, as it were, with an exclamation-point; while, as the foot advances, the shoulder and the whole body on the same side turn and sag forward, the opposite shoulder and side dragging back,--as if there were a perpetual debate between the two sides whether to proceed or not. It was so laughable that it made one sad; for this, too, was a human being. The gait of the men, on the contrary, is free and not ungraceful.

_August 3._--An Esquimaux wedding! In the chapel,--Moravian ceremony,--so far not noticeable. Costume same as above, only of white cloth heavily embroidered with red. Demeanor perfect. Bride obliged to sit down midway in the ceremony, overpowered with emotion. She did so with a simple, quiet dignity, that would not have misbecome a duchess.

When the ceremony was ended, the married pair retired into the mission-house, and half an hour later I saw them going home. This was the curious part of the affair. The husband walked before, taking care not to look behind, doing the indifferent and unconscious with great assiduity, and evidently making it a matter of serious etiquette not to know that any one followed. Four rods behind comes the wife, doing the unconscious with equal industry. She is not following this man here in front,--bless us, no, indeed!--but is simply walking out, or going to see a neighbor, this nice afternoon, and does not observe that any one precedes her. Following that man? Pray, where were you reared, that you are capable of so discourteous a supposition? It gave me a malicious pleasure to see that the pre-Adamite man, as well as the rest of us, imposes upon himself at times these difficult duties, _toting_ about that foolish face, so laboriously vacant of precisely that with which it is brimming full.

To adjust himself to outward Nature,--that, we said, is the sole task of the primitive man. The grand success of the Esquimaux in this direction is the _kayak_. This is his victory and his school. It is a seal-skin Oxford or Cambridge, wherein he takes his degree as master of the primeval arts. Here he acquires not only physical strength and quickness, but self-possession also, mental agility, the instant use of his wits,--here becomes, in fine, a _cultivated_ man.

It is no trifling matter. Years upon years must be devoted to these studies. Oxford and Cambridge do not task one more, nor exhibit more degrees of success. Some fail, and never graduate; some become illustrious for kayak-erudition.

This culture has also the merit of entire seriousness and sincerity. Life and death, not merely a name in the newspapers, are in it. Of all vehicles, on land or sea, to which man intrusts himself, the kayak is safest and unsafest. It is a very hair-bridge of Mohammed: security or destruction is in the finest poise of a moving body, the turn of a hand, the thought of a moment. Every time that the Esquimaux spears a seal at sea, he pledges his life upon his skill. With a touch, with a moment's loss of balance, the tipsy craft may go over; over, the oar, with which it is to be restored, may get entangled, may escape from the hand, may--what not? For all _what-nots_ the kayaker must preserve instant preparation; and with his own life on the tip of his fingers, he must make its preservation an incidental matter. He is there, not to save his life, but to capture a seal, worth a few dollars! It is his routine work. Different from getting up a leading article, making a plea in court, or writing Greek iambics for a bishopric!

Probably there is no race of men on earth whose ordinary avocations present so constantly the alternative of rarest skill on the one hand, or instant destruction on the other. And for these avocations one is fitted only by a _scholarship_, which it requires prolonged schooling, the most patient industry, and the most delicate consent of mind and body to attain. If among us the highest university-education were necessary, in order that one might live, marry, and become a householder, we should but parallel in our degree the scheme of their life.

Measured by post-Adamite standards, the life of the Esquimaux is a sorry affair; measured by his own standards, it is a piece of perfection. To see the virtue of his existence, you must, as it were, look at him with the eyes of a wolf or fox,--must look up from that low level, and discern, so far above, this skilled and wondrous creature, who by ingenuity and self-schooling has converted his helplessness into power, and made himself the plume and crown of the physical world.

In the kayak the Esquimaux attains to beauty. As he rows, the extremes of the two-bladed oar revolve, describing rhythmic circles; the body holds itself in airy poise, and the light boat skims away with a look of life. The speed is greater than our swiftest boats attain, and the motion graceful as that of a flying bird. Kayak and rower become to the eye one creature; and the civilized spectator must be stronger than I in his own conceit not to feel a little humble as he looks on.

We had racing one calm evening. Three kayaks competed: the prize--O Civilization!--was a plug of tobacco. How the muscles swelled! How the airy things flew! "Hi! Hi!" jockey the lookers-on: they fly swifter still. Up goes another plug,--another!--another!--and the kayaks half leap from the water. It was sad withal.

The racing over, there was a new feat. One of the kayakers placed himself in his little craft directly across the course; another stationed himself at a distance, and then, pushing his kayak forward at his utmost speed, drove it directly over the other! The high sloping bow rose above the middle of the stationary kayak on which it impinged, and, shooting up quite out of water, the boat skimmed over.

The Esquimaux is an honest creature. I had engaged a woman to make me a pair of fur boots, leaving my name on a slip of paper. L----, next day, roaming among the huts, saw her hanging them out to dry. Enamored of them, and ignorant of our bargain, he sought to purchase them; but at the first token of his desire, the woman rushed into the hut, and brought forth the slip of paper, as a sufficient answer to all question on that matter. L---- having told me of the incident, and informed me that he had elsewhere bargained for a similar pair, I was wicked enough to experiment upon this fidelity, desirous of learning what I could. Taking, therefore, some clothes, which I knew would be desired, and among them a white silk handkerchief bordered with blue, which had been purchased at Port Mulgrave, all together far exceeding in value the stipulated price, I sought the hut, and began admiring the said boots, now nearly finished. Instantly came forth the inevitable slip with L----'s name upon it. Making no sign, I proceeded to unroll my package. The good creature was intensely taken with its contents, and gloated over them with childish delight. But though she rummaged every corner to find somewhat to exchange with me for them, it evidently did not even enter her thoughts to offer me the boots. I took them up and admired them again; she immediately laid her hand on the slip of paper. So I gave her the prettiest thing I had, and left with a cordial _okshni_ (good-bye).

This honesty is attributed to missionary instruction, and with the more color as the untaught race is noted for stealing from Europeans everything they can lay hands on. It is only, however, from foreigners that they were ever accustomed to steal. Toward each other they have ever been among the most honest of human beings. Civilization and the seal they regarded as alike lawful prey. The missionaries have not implanted in them a new disposition, but only extended the scope of an old and marked characteristic.

At the same time their sense of pecuniary obligation would seem not to extend over long periods. Of the missionaries in winter they buy supplies on credit, but show little remembrance of the debt when summer comes. All must be immediate with them; neither their thought nor their moral sense can carry far; they are equally improvident for the future and forgetful of the past. The mere Nature-man acts only as Nature and her necessities press upon him; thought and memory are with him the offspring of sensation; his brain is but the feminine spouse of his stomach and blood,--receptive and respondent, rather than virile and original.

Partly, however, this seeming forgetfulness is susceptible of a different explanation. They evidently feel that the mission-house owes them a living. They make gardens, go to church and save their souls, for the missionaries; it is but fair that they should be fed at a pinch in return.

This remark may seem a sneer. Not so; my word for it. I went to Hopedale to study this race, with no wish but to find in them capabilities of spiritual growth, and with no resolve but to see the fact, whatever it should be, not with wishes, but with eyes. And, pointedly against my desire, I saw this,--that the religion of the Esquimaux is, nine parts in ten at least, a matter of personal relation between him and the missionaries. He goes to church as the dog follows his master,--expecting a bone and hoping for a pat in return. He comes promptly at a whistle (the chapel-bell); his docility and decorum are unimpeachable; he does what is expected of him with a pleased wag of the tail; but it is still, it is always, the dog and his master.

The pre-Adamite man is not distinctively religious; for religion implies ideas, in the blood at least, if not in the brain, as imagination, if not as thought; and ideas are to him wanting, are impossible. His whole being is summed and concluded in a relationship to the external, the tangible, to things or persons; and his relation to persons goes beyond animal instinct and the sense of physical want only upon the condition that it shall cling inseparably to them. The spiritual instincts of humanity are in him also, but obscure, utterly obscure, not having attained to a circulation in the blood, much less to intellectual liberation. Obscure they are, fixed, in the bone, locked up in phosphate of lime. Ideas touch them only as ideas lose their own shape and hide themselves under physical forms.

Will he outgrow himself? Will he become post-Adamite, a man to whom ideas are realities? I desire to say yes, and cannot. Again and again, in chapel and elsewhere, I stood before a group, and questioned, questioned their faces, to find there some prophecy of future growth. And again and again these faces, with their heavy content, with their dog-docility, with their expression of utter limitation, against which nothing in them struggled, said to me,--"Your quest is vain; we are once and forever Esquimaux." Had they been happy, had they been unhappy, I had hoped for them. They were neither: they were contented. A half-animal, African exuberance, token of a spirit obscure indeed, but rich and effervescent, would open for them a future. One sign of dim inward struggle and pain, as if the spirit resented his imprisonment, would do the same. Both were wanting. They ruminate; life is the cud they chew.

The Esquimaux are celebrated as gluttons. This, however, is but one half the fact. They can eat, they can also fast, indefinitely. For a week they gorge themselves without exercise, and have no indigestion; for a week, exercising vigorously, they live on air, frozen air, too, and experience no exhaustion. Last winter half a dozen appeared at Square-Island Harbor, sent out their trained dogs, drove in a herd of deer, and killed thirteen. They immediately encamped, gathered fuel, made fires, began to cook and eat,--ate themselves asleep; then waked to cook, eat, and sleep again, until the thirteenth deer had vanished. Thereupon they decamped, to travel probably hundreds of miles, and endure days on days of severe labor, before tasting, or more than tasting, food again.

The same explanation serves. These physical capabilities, not to be attained by the post-Adamite man, belong to the primitive races, as to hawks, gulls, and beasts of prey. The stomach of the Esquimaux is his cellar, as that of the camel is a cistern, wherein he lays up stores.

_August 4._--This day we sailed away from Hopedale, heading homeward,--leaving behind a race of men who were, to me a problem to be solved, if possible. All my impressions of them are summed in the epithet, often repeated, pre-Adamite. In applying, this, I affirm nothing respecting their physical origin. All that is to me an open question, to be closed when I have more light than now. It may be, that, as Mr. Agassiz maintains, they were created originally just as they are. For this hypothesis much may be said, and it may be freely confessed that in observing them I felt myself pressed somewhat toward the acceptance of it as a definite conclusion. It may be that they have become what they are by slow modification of a type common to all races,--that, with another parentage, they have been made by adoption children of the icy North, whose breath has chilled in their souls the deeper powers of man's being. This it will be impossible for me to deny until I have investigated more deeply the influence of physical Nature upon man, and learned more precisely to what degree the traditions of a people, constituting at length a definite social atmosphere, may come to penetrate and shape their individual being. I do not pronounce; I wait and keep the eyes open. Doubtless they are God's children; and knowing this, one need not be fretfully impatient, even though vigilantly earnest, to know the rest.

In naming them pre-Adamite I mean two things.

First, that they have stopped short of ideas, that is, of the point where human history begins. They belong, not to spiritual or human, but to outward and physical Nature. There they are a great success.

Secondly, in this condition of mere response to physical Nature, their whole being has become shapen, determined, fixed. They have no future. Civilization affects them, but only by mechanical modification, not by vital refreshment and renewal. The more they are instructed, the weaker they become.

They change, and are unchangeable.

Unchangeable: if they assume in any degree the ideas and habits of civilization, it is only as their women sometimes put on calico gowns over their seal-skin trousers. The modification is not even skin-deep. It is a curious illustration of this immobility, that no persuasion, no authority, can make them fishermen. Inseparable from the sea-shore, the Esquimaux will not catch a fish, if he can catch a dinner otherwise. The missionaries, both as matter of paternal care and as a means of increasing their own traffic,--by which the station is chiefly sustained,--have done their utmost to make the natives bring in fish for sale, and have failed. These people are first sealers, then hunters; some attraction in the blood draws them to these occupations; and at last it is an attraction in the blood which they obey.

Yet on the outermost surface of their existence they change, and die. At Hopedale, out of a population of some two hundred, _twenty-four died in the month of March last!_ At Nain, where the number of inhabitants is about the same, twenty-one died in the same month; at Okkak, also twenty-one. More than decimated in a month!

The long winter suffocation in their wooden dens, which lack the ventilation of the _igloe_ that their untaught wit had devised, has doubtless much to do with this mortality. But one feels that there is somewhat deeper in the case. One feels that the hands of the great horologe of time have hunted around the dial, till they have found the hour of doom for this primeval race. Now at length the tolling bell says to them, "No more! on the earth no more!"

Farewell, geological man, _chef-d'oeuvre_, it may be, of some earlier epoch, but in this a grotesque, grown-up baby, never to become adult! As you are, and as in this world you must be, I have seen you; but in my heart is a hope for you which is greater than my thought,--a hope which, though deep and sure, does not define itself to the understanding, and must remain unspoken. There is a Heart to which you, too, are dear; and its throbs are pulsations of Destiny.

DOCTOR JOHNS.

XI.

There were scores of people in Ashfield who would have been delighted to speak consolation to the bereaved clergyman; but he was not a man to be approached easily with the ordinary phrases of sympathy. He bore himself too sternly under his grief. What, indeed, can be said in the face of affliction, where the manner of the sufferer seems to say, "God has done it, and God does all things well"? Ordinary human sympathy falls below such a standpoint, and is wasted in the utterance.

Yet there are those, who delight in breaking in upon the serene dignity which this condition of mind implies with a noisy proffer of consolation, and an aggravating rehearsal of the occasion for it; as if such comforters entertained a certain jealousy of the serenity they do not comprehend, and were determined to test its sufficiency. Dame Tourtelot was eminently such a person.

"It's a dreadful blow to ye, Mr. Johns," said she, "I know it is. Almiry is a'most as much took down by it as you are. 'She was such a lovely woman,' she says; and the poor, dear little boy,--won't you let him come and pass a day or two with us? Almiry is very fond of children."

"Later, later, my good woman," says the parson. "I can't spare the boy now; the house is too empty."

"Oh, Mr. Johns,--the poor lonely thing!" (And she says this, with her hands in black mits, clasped together.) "It's a bitter blow! As I was a-sayin' to the Deacon, 'Such a lovely young woman, and such a good comfortable home, and she, poor thing, enjoyin' it so much!' I do hope you'll bear up under it, Mr. Johns."

"By God's help, I will, my good woman."

Dame Tourtelot was disappointed to find the parson wincing so little as he did under her stimulative sympathy. On returning home, she opened her views to the Deacon in this style:--

"Tourtelot, the parson is not so much broke down by this as we've been thinkin'; he was as cool, when I spoke to him to-day, as any man I ever see in my life. The truth is, she was a flighty young person, noways equal to the parson. I've been a-suspectin' it this long while; she never, in my opinion, took a real hard hold upon him. But, Tourtelot, you should go and see Mr. Johns; and I hope you'll talk consolingly and Scripterally to him. It's your duty."

And hereupon she shifted the needles in her knitting, and, smoothing down the big blue stocking-leg over her knee, cast a glance at the Deacon which signified command. The dame was thoroughly mistress in her own household, as well as in the households of not a few of her neighbors. Long before, the meek, mild-mannered little man who was her husband had by her active and resolute negotiation been made a deacon of the parish,--for which office he was not indeed ill-fitted, being religiously disposed, strict in his observance of all duties, and well-grounded in the Larger Catechism. He had, moreover, certain secular endowments which were even more marked,--among them, a wonderful instinct at a bargain, which had been polished by Dame Tourtelot's superior address to a wonderful degree of sharpness; and by reason of this the less respectful of the townspeople were accustomed to say, "The Deacon is very small at home, but great in a trade." Not that the Deacon could by any means be called an avaricious or miserly man: he had always his old Spanish milled quarter ready for the contribution-box upon Collection-Sundays; and no man in the parish brought a heavier turkey to the parson's larder on donation-days: but he could no more resist the sharpening of a bargain than he could resist a command of his wife. He talked of a good trade to the old heads up and down the village street as a lad talks of a new toy.

"Squire," he would say, addressing a neighbor on the Common, "what do you s'pose I paid for that brindle ye'rlin' o' mine? Give us a guess."

"Waäl, Deacon, I guess you paid about ten dollars."

"Only eight!" the Deacon would say, with a smile that was fairly luminous,--"and a pootty likely critter I call it for eight dollars."

"Five hogs this year," (in this way the Deacon was used to soliloquize,)--"I hope to make 'em three hundred apiece. The price works up about Christmas: Deacon Simmons has sold his'n at five,--distillery-pork; that's sleezy, wastes in bilin'; folks know it: mine, bein' corn-fed, ought to bring half a cent more,--and say, for Christmas, six; that'll give a gain of a cent,--on five hogs, at three hundred apiece, will be fifteen dollars. That'll pay half my pew-rent, and leave somethin' over for Almiry, who's always wantin' fresh ribbons about New-Year's."

The Deacon cherished a strong dread of formal visits to the parsonage: first, because it involved his Sunday toilet, in which he was never easy, except at conference or in his pew at the meeting-house; and next, because he counted it necessary on such occasions to give a Scriptural garnish to his talk, in which attempt he almost always, under the authoritative look of the parson, blundered into difficulty. Yet Tourtelot, in obedience to his wife's suggestion, and primed with a text from Matthew, undertook the visit of condolence,--and, being a really kind-hearted man, bore himself well in it. Over and over the good parson shook his hand in thanks.

"It'll all be right," says the Deacon. "'Blessed are the mourners,' is the Scripteral language, 'for they shall inherit the earth.'"

"No, not that, Deacon," says the minister, to whom a misquotation was like a wound in the flesh; "the last thing I want is to inherit the earth. 'They shall be comforted,'--that's the promise, Deacon, and I count on it."

It was mortifying to his visitor to be caught napping on so familiar a text; the parson saw it, and spoke consolingly. But if not strong in texts, the Deacon knew what his strong points were; so, before leaving, he invites a little offhand discussion of more familiar topics.

"Pootty tight spell o' weather we've been havin', Parson."

"Rather cool, certainly," says the unsuspecting clergyman.

"Got all your winter's stock o' wood in yit?"

"No, I haven't," says the parson.

"Waäl, Mr. Johns, I've got a lot of pastur'-hickory cut and corded, that's well seared over now,--and if you'd like some of it, I can let you have it _very reasonable indeed_."

The sympathy of the Elderkins, if less formal, was none the less hearty. The Squire had been largely instrumental in securing the settlement of Mr. Johns, and had been a political friend of his father's. In early life he had been engaged in the West India trade from the neighboring port of Middletown; and on one or two occasions he had himself made the voyage to Porto Rico, taking out a cargo of horses, and bringing back sugar, molasses, and rum. But it was remarked approvingly in the bar-room of the Eagle Tavern that this foreign travel had not made the Squire proud,--nor yet the moderate fortune which he had secured by the business, in which he was still understood to bear an interest. His paternal home in Ashfield he had fitted up some years before with balustrade and other architectural adornments, which, it was averred by the learned in those matters, were copied from certain palatial residences in the West Indies.

The Squire united eminently in himself all those qualities which a Connecticut observer of those times expressed by the words, "right down smart man." Not a turnpike enterprise could be started in that quarter of the State, but the Squire was enlisted, and as shareholder or director contributed to its execution. A clear-headed, kindly, energetic man, never idle, prone rather to do needless things than to do nothing; an ardent disciple of the Jeffersonian school, and in this combating many of those who relied most upon his sagacity in matters of business; a man, in short, about whom it was always asked, in regard to any question of town or State policy, "What does the Squire think?" or "How does the Squire mean to vote?" And the Squire's opinion was sure to be a round, hearty one, which he came by honestly, and about which one who thought differently might safely rally his columns of attack. The opinion of Giles Elderkin was not inquired into for the sake of a tame following-after,--that was not the Connecticut mode,--but for the sake of discussing and toying with it: very much as a sly old grimalkin toys with a mouse,--now seeming to entertain it kindly, then giving it a run, then leaping after it, crunching a limb of it, bearing it off into some private corner, giving it a new escape, swallowing it perhaps at last, and appropriating it by long process of digestion. And even then, the shrewd Connecticut man, if accused of modulating his own opinions after those of the Squire, would say, "No, I allers thought so."

Such a man as Giles Elderkin is of course ready with a hearty, outspoken word of cheer for his minister. Nay, the very religion of the Squire, which the parson had looked upon as somewhat discursive and human,--giving too large a place to good works,--was decisive and to the point in the present emergency.

"It's God's doing," said he; "we must take the cup He gives us. For the best, isn't it, Parson?"

"I do, Squire. Thank God, I can."

There was good Mrs. Elderkin--who made up by her devotion to the special tenets of the clergyman many of the shortcomings of the Squire--insisted upon sending for the poor boy Reuben, that he might forget his grief in her kindness, and in frolic with the Elderkins through that famous garden, with its huge hedges of box,--such a garden as was certainly not to be matched elsewhere in Ashfield. The same good woman, too, sends down a wagon-load of substantial things from her larder, for the present relief of the stricken household; to which the Squire has added a little round jug of choice Santa Cruz rum,--remembering the long watches of the parson. This may shock us now; and yet it is to be feared that in our day the sin of hypocrisy is to be added to the sin of indulgence: the old people nestled under no cover of liver specifics or bitters. Reform has made a grand march indeed; but the Devil, with his square bottles and Scheidam schnapps, has kept a pretty even pace with it.

XII.

The boy Reuben, in those first weeks after his loss, wandered about as if in a maze, wondering at the great blank that death had made; or, warming himself at some out-door sport, he rushed in with a pleasant forgetfulness,--shouting,--up the stairs,--to the accustomed door, and bursts in upon the cold chamber, so long closed, where the bitter knowledge comes upon him fresh once more. Esther, good soul that she is, has heard his clatter upon, the floor, his bound at the old latch, and, fancying what it may mean, has come up in time to soothe him and bear him off with her. The parson, forging some sermon for the next Sabbath, in the room at the foot of the stairs, hears, may-be, the stifled sobbing of the boy, as the good Esther half leads and half drags him down, and opens his door upon them.

"What now, Esther? Has Reuben caught a fall?"

"No, Sir, no fall; he's not harmed, Sir. It's only the old room, you know, Sir, and he quite forgot himself."

"Poor boy! Will he come with me, Esther?"

"No, Mr. Johns. I'll find something'll amuse him; hey, Ruby?"

And the parson goes back to his desk, where he forgets himself in the glow of that great work of his. He has taught, as never before, that "all flesh is grass." He accepts his loss as a punishment for having thought too much and fondly of the blessings of this life; henceforth the flesh and its affections shall be mortified in him. He has transferred his bed to a little chamber which opens from his study in the rear, and which is at the end of the long dining-room, where every morning and evening the prayers are said, as before. The parishioners see a light burning in the window of his study far into the night.

For a time his sermons are more emotional than before. Oftener than in the earlier days of his settlement he indulges in a forecast of those courts toward which he would conduct his people, and which a merciful God has provided for those who trust in Him; and there is a coloring in these pictures which his sermons never showed in the years gone.

"We ask ourselves," said he, "my brethren, if we shall knowingly meet there--where we trust His grace may give us entrance--those from whom you and I have parted; whether a fond and joyous welcome shall greet us, not alone from Him whom to love is life, but from those dear ones who seem to our poor senses to be resting under the sod yonder. Sometimes I believe that by God's great goodness," (and here he looked, not at his people, but above, and kept his eye fixed there)--"I believe that we shall; that His great love shall so delight in making complete our happiness, even by such little memorials of our earthly affections (which must seem like waifs of thistle-down beside the great harvest of His abounding grace); that all the dear faces of those written in the Golden Book shall beam a welcome, all the more bounteous because reflecting His joy who has died to save."

And the listeners whispered each other as he paused, "He thinks of Rachel."

With his eyes still fixed above, he goes on,--

"Sometimes I think thus; but oftener I ask myself, 'Of what value shall human ties be, or their memories, in His august presence whom to look upon is life? What room shall there be for other affections, what room for other memories, than those of 'the Lamb that was slain'?

"Nay, my brethren," (and here he turns his eyes upon them again,) "we do know in our hearts that many whom we have loved fondly--infants, fathers, mothers, wives, may-be--shall never, never sit with the elect in Paradise; and shall we remember these in heaven, going away to dwell with the Devil and his angels? Shall we be tortured with the knowledge that some poor babe we looked upon only for an hour is wearing out ages of suffering? 'No,' you may say, 'for we shall be possessed in that day of such sense of the ineffable justice of God, and of His judgments, that all shall seem right.' Yet, my brethren, if this sense of His supreme justice shall overrule all the old longings of our hearts, even to the suppression of the dearest ties of earth, where they conflict with His ordained purpose, will they not also overrule all the longings in respect of friends who are among the elect, in such sort that the man we counted our enemy, the man we avoided on earth, if so be he have an inheritance in heaven, shall be met with the same yearning of the heart as if he were our brother? Does this sound harshly, my brethren? Ah, let us beware,--let us beware how we entertain any opinions of that future condition of holiness and of joy promised to the elect, which are dependent upon these gross attachments of earth, which are colored by our short-sighted views, which are not in every iota accordant with the universal love of Him who is our Master!"

"This man lives above the world," said the people; and if some of them did not give very cordial assent to these latter views, they smothered their dissent by a lofty expression of admiration; they felt it a duty to give them open acceptance, to venerate the speaker the more by reason of their utterance. And yet their limited acceptance diffused a certain chill, very likely, over their religious meditations. But it was a chill which unfortunately they counted it good to entertain,--a rigor of faith that must needs be borne. It is doubtful, indeed, if they did not make a merit of their placid intellectual admission of such beliefs as most violated the natural sensibilities of the heart. They were so sure that affectionate instincts were by nature wrong in their tendencies, so eager to cumulate evidences of the original depravity, that, when their parson propounded a theory that gave a shock to their natural affections, they submitted with a kind of heroic pride, however much their hearts might make silent protest, and the grounds of such a protest they felt a cringing unwillingness to investigate. There was a determined shackling of all the passional nature. What wonder that religion took a harsh aspect? As if intellectual adhesion to theological formulas were to pave our way to a knowledge of the Infinite!--as if our sensibilities were to be outraged in the march to Heaven!--as if all the emotional nature were to be clipped away by the shears of the doctors, leaving only the metaphysic ghost of a soul to enter upon the joys of Paradise!

Within eight months after his loss, Mr. Johns thought of Rachel only as a gift that God had bestowed to try him, and had taken away to work in him a humiliation of the heart. More severely than ever he wrestled with the dogmas of his chosen divines, harnessed them to his purposes as preacher, and wrought on with a zeal that knew no abatement and no rest.

In the spring of 1825 Mr. Johns was invited by Governor Wolcott to preach the Election Sermon before the Legislature convened at Hartford: an honorable duty, and one which he was abundantly competent to fulfil. The "Hartford Courant" of that date said,--"A large auditory was collected last week to listen to the Election Sermon by Mr. Johns, minister of Ashfield. It was a sound, orthodox, and interesting discourse, and won the undivided attention of all the listeners. We have not recently listened to a sermon more able or eloquent."

In that day even country editors were church-goers and God-fearing men.

XIII.

In the latter part of the summer of 1826,--a reasonable time having now elapsed since the death of poor Rachel,--the gossips of Ashfield began to discuss the lonely condition of their pastor, in connection with any desirable or feasible amendment of it. The sin of such gossip--if it be a sin--is one that all the preaching in the world will never extirpate from country towns, where the range of talk is by the necessity of the case exceedingly limited. In the city, curiosity has an omnivorous maw by reason of position, and finds such variety to feed upon that it is rarely--except in the case of great political or public scandal--personal in its attentions; and what we too freely reckon a perverted and impertinent country taste is but an ordinary appetite of humanity, which, by the limitation of its feeding-ground, seems to attach itself perversely to private relations.

There were some invidious persons in the town who had remarked that Miss Almira Tourtelot had brought quite a new fervor to her devotional exercises in the parish within the last year, as well as a new set of ribbons to her hat; and two maiden ladies opposite, of distinguished pretensions and long experience of life, had observed that the young Reuben, on his passage back and forth from the Elderkins, had sometimes been decoyed within the Tourtelot yard, and presented by the admiring Dame Tourtelot with fresh doughnuts. The elderly maiden ladies were perhaps uncharitable in their conclusions; yet it is altogether probable that the Deacon and his wife may have considered, in the intimacy of their fireside talk, the possibility of some time claiming the minister as a son-in-law. Questions like this are discussed in a great many families even now.

Dame Tourtelot had crowned with success all her schemes in life, save one. Almira, her daughter, now verging upon her thirty-second year, had long been upon the anxious-seat as regarded matrimony; and with a sentimental turn that incited much reading of Cowper and Montgomery and (if it must be told) "Thaddeus of Warsaw," the poor girl united a sickly, in-door look, and a peaked countenance, which had not attracted wooers. The wonderful executive capacity of the mother had unfortunately debarred her from any active interest in the household; and though the Tourtelots had actually been at the expense of providing a piano for Almira, (the only one in Ashfield,)--upon which the poor girl thrummed, thinking of "Thaddeus," and, we trust, of better things,--this had not won a roseate hue to her face, or quickened in any perceptible degree the alacrity of her admirers.

Upon a certain night of later October, after Almira has retired, and when the Tourtelots are seated by the little fire, which the autumn chills have rendered necessary, and into the embers of which the Deacon has cautiously thrust the leg of one of the fire-dogs, preparatory to a modest mug of flip, (with which, by his wife's permission, he occasionally indulges himself,) the good dame calls out to her husband, who is dozing in his chair,--

"Tourtelot!"

But she is not loud enough.

"TOURTELOT! you're asleep!"

"No," says the Deacon, rousing himself,--"only thinkin'."

"What are you thinkin' of, Tourtelot?"

"Thinkin'--thinkin'," says the Deacon, rasped by the dame's sharpness into sudden mental effort,--"thinkin', Huldy, if it isn't about time to butcher: we butchered last year nigh upon the twentieth."

"Nonsense!" says the dame; "what about the parson?"

"The parson? Oh! Why, the parson'll take a side and two hams."

"Nonsense!" says the dame, with a great voice; "you're asleep, Tourtelot. Is the parson goin' to marry, or isn't he? that's what I want to know"; and she rethreads her needle.

(She can do it by candle-light at fifty-five, that woman!)

"Oh, marry!" replies the Deacon, rousing himself more thoroughly,--"waäl, I don't see no signs, Huldy. If he _doos_ mean to, he's sly about it; don't you think so, Huldy?"

The dame, who is intent upon her sewing again,--she is never without her work, that woman!--does not deign a reply.

The Deacon, after lifting the fire-dog, blowing off the ashes, and holding it to his face to try the heat, says,--

"I guess Almiry ha'n't much of a chance."

"What's the use of your guessin'?" says the dame; "better mind your flip."

Which the Deacon accordingly does, stirring it in a mild manner, until the dame breaks out upon him again explosively:--

"Tourtelot, you men of the parish ought to _talk_ to the parson; it a'n't right for things to go on this way. That boy Reuben is growin' up wild; he wants a woman in the house to look arter him. Besides, a minister ought to have a wife; it a'n't decent to have the house empty, and only Esther there. Women want to feel they can drop in at the parsonage for a chat, or to take tea. But who's to serve tea, I want to know? Who's to mind Reuben in meetin'? He broke the cover off the best hymn-book in the parson's pew last Sunday. Who's to prevent him a-breakin' all the hymn-books that belong to the parish? You men ought to speak to the parson; and, Tourtelot, if the others won't do it, you _must_."

The Deacon was fairly awake now. He pulled at his whiskers deprecatingly. Yet he clearly foresaw that the emergency was one to be met; the manner of Dame Tourtelot left no room for doubt; and he was casting about for such Scriptural injunctions as might be made available, when the dame interrupted his reflections in more amiable humor,--

"It isn't Almiry, Samuel, I think of, but Mr. Johns and the good of the parish. I really don't know if Almiry would fancy the parson; the girl is a good deal taken up with her pianny and books; but there's the Hapgoods, opposite; there's Joanny Meacham"----

"You'll never make that do, Huldy," said the Deacon, stirring his flip composedly; "they're nigh on as old as parson."

"Never you mind, Tourtelot," said the dame, sharply; "only you hint to the parson that they're good, pious women, all of them, and would make proper ministers' wives. Do you think I don't know what a man is, Tourtelot? Humph!" And she threads her needle again.

The Deacon was apt to keep in mind his wife's advices, whatever he might do with Scripture quotations. So when he called at the parsonage, a few days after,--ostensibly to learn how the minister would like his pork cut,--it happened that little Reuben came bounding in, and that the Deacon gave him a fatherly pat upon the shoulder.

"Likely boy you've got here, Mr. Johns,--likely boy. But, Parson, don't you think he must feel a kind o' hankerin' arter somebody to be motherly to him? I 'most wonder that you don't feel that way yourself, Mr. Johns."

"God comforts the mourners," said the clergyman, seriously.

"No doubt, no doubt, Parson; but He sometimes provides comforts ag'in which we shet our eyes. You won't think hard o' me, Parson, but I've heerd say about the village that Miss Meacham or one of the Miss Hapgoods would make an excellent wife for the minister."

The parson is suddenly very grave.

"Don't repeat such idle gossip, Deacon. I'm married to my work. The Gospel is my bride now."

"And a very good one it is, Parson. But don't you think that a godly woman for helpmeet would make the work more effectooal? Miss Meacham is a pattern of a person in the Sunday school. The women of the parish would rather like to find the doors of the parsonage openin' for 'em ag'in."

"That is to be thought of certainly," said the minister, musingly.

"You won't think hard o' me, Mr. Johns, for droppin' a word about this matter?" says the Deacon, rising to leave. "And while I think on 't, Parson, I see the sill under the no'theast corner o' the meetin'-house has a little settle to it. I've jest been cuttin' a few sticks o' good smart chestnut timber; and if the Committee thinks best, I could haul down one or two on 'em for repairs. It won't cost nigh as much as pine lumber, and it's every bit as good."

Even Dame Tourtelot would have been satisfied with the politic way of the Deacon, both as regarded the wife and the prospective bargain. The next evening the good woman invited the clergyman--begging him "not to forget the dear little boy"--to tea.

This was by no means the first hint which the minister had had of the tendency of village gossip. The Tew partners, with whom he had fallen upon very easy terms of familiarity,--both by reason of frequent visits at their little shop, and by reason of their steady attendance upon his ministrations,--often dropped hints of the smallness of the good man's grocery account, and insidious hopes that it might be doubled in size at some day not far off.

Squire Elderkin, too, in his bluff, hearty way, had occasionally complimented the clergyman upon the increased attendance latterly of ladies of a certain age, and had drawn his attention particularly to the ardent zeal of a buxom, middle-aged widow, who lived upon the skirts of the town, and was "the owner," he said, "of as pretty a piece of property as lay in the county."

"Have you any knack at farming, Mr. Johns?" continued he, playfully.

"Farming? why?" says the innocent parson, in a maze.

"Because I am of opinion, Mr. Johns, that the widow's little property might be rented by you, under conditions of joint occupancy, on very easy terms."

Such badinage was so warded off by the ponderous gravity which the parson habitually wore, that men like Elderkin loved occasionally to launch a quiet joke at him, for the pleasure of watching the rebound.

When, however, the wide-spread gossip of the town had taken the shape (as in the talk of Deacon Tourtelot) of an incentive to duty, the grave clergyman gave to it his undivided and prayerful attention. It was over-true that the boy Reuben was running wild. No lad in Ashfield, of his years, could match him in mischief. There was surely need of womanly direction and remonstrance. It was eminently proper, too, that the parsonage, so long closed, should be opened freely to all his flock; and the truth was so plain, he wondered it could have escaped him so long. Duty required that his home should have an established mistress; and a mistress he forthwith determined it should have.

Within three weeks from the day of the tea-drinking with the Tourtelots, the minister suggested certain changes in the long-deserted chamber which should bring it into more habitable condition. He hinted to his man Larkin that an additional fire might probably be needed in the house during the latter part of winter; and before January had gone out, he had most agreeably surprised the delighted and curious Tew partners with a very large addition to his usual orders,--embracing certain condiments in the way of spices, dried fruits, and cordials, which had for a long time been foreign to the larder of the parsonage.

Such indications, duly commented on, as they were most zealously, could not fail to excite a great buzz of talk and of curiosity throughout the town.

"I knew it," says Mrs. Tew, authoritatively, setting back her spectacles from her postal duties;--"these 'ere grave widowers are allers the first to pop off, and git married."

"Tourtelot!" said the dame, on a January night, when the evidence had come in overwhelmingly,--"Tourtelot! what does it all mean?"

"D'n' know," says the Deacon, stirring his flip,--"d'n' know. It's my opinion the parson has his sly humors about him."

"Do you think it's true, Samuel?"

"Waäl, Huldy,--I _du_."

"Tourtelot! finish your flip, and go to bed; it's past ten."

And the Deacon went.

XIV

Toward the latter end of the winter there arrived at the parsonage the new mistress,--in the person of Miss Eliza Johns, the elder sister of the incumbent, and a spinster of the ripe age of three-and-thirty. For the last twelve years she had maintained a lonely, but matronly, command of the old homestead of the late Major Johns, in the town of Canterbury. She was intensely proud of the memory of her father, and of _his_ father before him,--every inch a Johns. No light cause could have provoked her to a sacrifice of the name; and of weightier causes she had been spared the trial. The marriage of her brother had always been more or less a source of mortification to her. The Handbys, though excellent plain people, were of no particular distinction. Rachel had a pretty face, with which Benjamin had grown suddenly demented. That source of mortification and of disturbed intimacy was now buried in the grave. Benjamin had won a reputation for dignity and ability which was immensely gratifying to her. She had assured him of it again and again in her occasional letters. The success of his Election Sermon had been an event of the greatest interest to her, which she had expressed in an epistle of three pages, with every comma in its place, and full of gratulations. Her commas were _always_ in place; so were her stops of all kinds: her precision was something marvellous. This precision had enabled her to manage the little property which had been left her in such a way as to maintain always about her establishment an air of well-ordered thrift. She concealed adroitly all the shifts--if there were any--by which she avoided the reproach of seeming poor.

In person she was not unlike her father, the Major,--tall, erect, with a dignified bearing, and so trim a figure, and so elastic a step even at her years, as would have provoked an inquisitive follower to catch sight of the face. This was by no means attractive. Her features were thin, her nose unduly prominent; and both eye and mouth, though well formed, carried about them a kind of hard positiveness that would have challenged respect, perhaps, but no warmer feeling. Two little curls were flattened upon either temple; and her neck-tie, dress, gloves, hat, were always most neatly arranged, and ordered with the same precision that governed all her action. In the town of Canterbury she was an institution. Her charities and all her religious observances were methodical, and never omitted. Her whole life, indeed, was a discipline. Without any great love for children, she still had her Bible-class; and it was rare that the weather or any other cause forbade attendance upon its duties. Nor was there one of the little ones who listened to that clear, sharp, metallic voice of hers but stood in awe of her; not one that could say she was unkind; not one who had ever bestowed a childish gift upon her,--such little gifts as children love to heap on those who have found the way to their hearts.

Sentiment had never been effusive in her; and it was now limited to quick sparkles, that sometimes flashed into a page of her reading. As regarded the serious question of marriage, implying a home, position, the married dignities, it had rarely disturbed her; and now her imaginative forecast did not grapple it with any vigor or longing. If, indeed, it had been possible that a man of high standing, character, cultivation,--equal, in short, to the Johnses in every way,--should woo her with pertinacity, she might have been disposed to yield a dignified assent, but not unless he could be made to understand and adequately appreciate the immense favor she was conferring. In short, the suitor who could abide and admit her exalted pretensions, and submit to them, would most infallibly be one of a character and temper so far inferior to her own that she would scorn him from the outset. This dilemma, imposed by the rigidity of her smaller dignities, that were never mastered or overshadowed either by her sentiment or her passion, not only involved a life of celibacy, but was a constant justification of it, and made it eminently easy to be borne. There are not a few maiden ladies who are thus lightered over the shoals of a solitary existence by the buoyancy of their own intemperate vanities.

Miss Johns did not accept the invitation of her brother to undertake the charge of his household without due consideration. She by no means left out of view the contingency of his possible future marriage; but she trusted largely to her own influences in making it such a one, if inevitable, as should not be discreditable to the family name. And under such conditions she would retire with serene contentment to her own more private sphere of Canterbury,--or, if circumstances should demand, would accept the position of guest in the house of her brother. Nor did she leave out of view her influence in the training of the boy Reuben. She cherished her own hopes of moulding him to her will, and of making him a pride to the family.

There was of course prodigious excitement in the parsonage upon her arrival. Esther had done her best at all household appliances, whether of kitchen or chamber. The minister received her with his wonted quietude, and a brotherly kiss of salutation. Reuben gazed wonderingly at her, and was thinking dreamily if he should ever love her, while he felt the dreary rustle of her black silk dress swooping round as she stooped to embrace him. "I hope Master Reuben is a good boy," said she; "your Aunt Eliza loves all good boys."

He had nothing to say; but only looked back into that cold gray eye, as she lifted his chin with her gloved hand.

"Benjamin, there's a strong look of the Handbys; but it's your forehead. He's a little man, I hope," and she patted him on the head.

Still Reuben looked--wonderingly--at her shining silk dress, at her hat, at the little curls on either temple, at the guard-chain which hung from her neck with a glittering watch-key upon it, at the bright buckle in her belt, and most of all at the gray eye which seemed to look on him from far away. And with the same stare of wonderment, he followed her up and down throughout the house.

At night, Esther, who has a chamber near him, creeps in to say good-night to the lad, and asks,--

"Do you like her, Ruby, boy? Do you like your Aunt Eliza?"

"I d'n know," says Reuben, "She says she likes good boys; don't you like bad uns, Esther?"

"But you're not _very_ bad," says Esther, whose orthodoxy does not forbid kindly praise.

"Didn't mamma like bad uns, Esther?"

"Dear heart!" and the good creature gives the boy a great hug; it could not have been warmer, if he had been her child.

The household speedily felt the presence of the new comer. Her precision, her method, her clear, sharp voice,--never raised in anger, never falling to tenderness,--ruled the establishment. Under all the cheeriness of the old management, there had been a sad lack of any economic system, by reason of which the minister was constantly overrunning his little stipend, and making awkward appeals from time to time to the Parish Committee for advances. A small legacy that had befallen the late Mrs. Johns, and which had gone to the purchase of the parsonage, had brought relief at a very perplexing crisis; but against all similar troubles Miss Johns set her face most resolutely. There was a daily examination of butchers' and grocers' accounts, that had been previously unknown to the household. The kitchen was placed under strict regimen, into the observance of which the good Esther slipped, not so much from love of it, as from total inability to cope with the magnetic authority of the new mistress. Nor was she harsh in her manner of command.

"Esther, my good woman, it will be best, I think, to have breakfast a little more promptly,--at half past six, we will say,--so that prayers may be over and the room free by eight; the minister, you know, must have his morning in his study undisturbed."

"Yes, Marm," says Esther; and she would as soon have thought of flying over the house-top in her short gown as of questioning the plan.

Again, the mistress says,--"Larkin, I think it would be well to take up those scattered bunches of lilies, and place them upon either side of the walk in the garden, so that the flowers may be all together."

"Yes, Marm," says Larkin.

And much as he had loved the little woman now sleeping in her grave, who had scattered flowers with an errant fancy, he would have thought it preposterous to object to an order so calmly spoken, so evidently intended for execution. There was something in the tone of Miss Johns in giving directions that drew off all moral power of objection as surely as a good metallic conductor would free an overcharged cloud of its electricity.

The parishioners were not slow to perceive that new order prevailed at the quiet parsonage. Curiosity, no less than the staid proprieties which governed the action of the chief inhabitants, had brought them early into contact with the new mistress. She received all with dignity and with an exactitude of deportment that charmed the precise ones and that awed the younger folks. The bustling Dame Tourtelot had come among the earliest, and her brief report was,--"Tourtelot, Miss Johns's as smart as a steel trap."

Nor was the spinster sister without a degree of cultivation which commended her to the more intellectual people of Ashfield. She was a reader of "Rokeby" and of Miss Austen's novels, of Josephus and of Rollin's "Ancient History." The Miss Hapgoods, who were the blue-stockings of the place, were charmed to have such an addition to the cultivated circle of the parish. To make the success of Miss Johns still more decided, she brought with her a certain knowledge of the conventionalisms of the city, by reason of her occasional visits to her sister Mabel, (now Mrs. Brindlock of Greenwich Street,) which to many excellent women gave larger assurance of her position and dignity than all besides. Before the first year of her advent had gone by, it was quite plain that she was to become one of the prominent directors of the female world of Ashfield.

Only in the parsonage itself did her influence find its most serious limitations,--and these in connection with the boy Reuben.

XV.

There is a deep emotional nature in the lad, which, by the time he has reached his eighth year,--Miss Eliza having now been in the position of mistress of the household a twelvemonth,--works itself off in explosive tempests of feeling, with which the prim spinster has but faint sympathy. No care could be more studious and complete than that with which she looks after the boy's wardrobe and the ordering of his little chamber; his supply of mittens, of stockings, and of underclothing is always of the most ample; nay, his caprices of the table are not wholly overlooked, and she hopes to win upon him by the dishes that are most toothsome; but, however grateful for the moment, his boyish affections can never make their way with any force or passionate flow through the stately proprieties of manner with which the spinster aunt is always hedged about.

He wanders away after school-hours to the home of the Elderkins,--Phil and he being sworn friends, and the good mother of Phil always having ready for him a beaming look of welcome and a tender word or two that somehow always find their way straight to his heart. He loiters with Larkin, too, by the great stable-yard of the inn, though it is forbidden ground. He breaks in upon the precise woman's rule of punctuality sadly; many a cold dish he eats sulkily,--she sitting bolt upright in her place at the table, looking down at him with glances which are every one a punishment. Other times he is straying in the orchard at the hour of some home-duty, and the active spinster goes to seek him, and not threateningly, but with an assured step and a firm grip upon the hand of the loiterer, which he knows not whether to count a favor or a punishment, (and she as much at a loss, so inextricably interwoven are her notions of duty and of kindness,) leads him homeward, plying him with stately precepts upon the sin of negligence, and with earnest story of the dreadful fate which is sure to overtake all bad boys who do not obey and keep "by the rules"; and she instances those poor lads who were eaten by the bears, of whom she has read to him the story in the Old Testament.

"Who was it they called 'bald-head,' Reuben? Elisha or Elijah?"

He, in no mood for reply, is sulkily beating off the daisies with his feet, as she drags him on; sometimes hanging back, with impotent, yet concealed struggle, which she--not deigning to notice--overcomes with even sharper step, and plies him the more closely with the dire results of badness,--has not finished her talk, indeed, when they reach the door-step and enter. There he, fuming now with that long struggle, fuming the more because he has concealed it, makes one violent discharge with a great frown on his little face, "You're an ugly old thing, and I don't like you one bit!"

Esther, good soul, within hearing of it, lifts her hands in apparent horror, but inwardly indulges in a wicked chuckle over the boy's spirit.

But the minister has heard him, too, and gravely summons the offender into his study.

"My son, Reuben, this is very wrong."

And the boy breaks into a sob at this stage, which is a great relief.

"My boy, you ought to love your aunt."

"Why ought I?" says he.

"Why? why? Don't you know she's very good to you, and takes excellent care of you, and hears you say your catechism every Saturday? You ought to love her."

"But I can't make myself love her, if I don't," says the boy.

"It is your duty to love her, Reuben; and we can all do our duty."

Even the staid clergyman enjoys the boy's discomfiture under so orthodox a proposition. Miss Johns, however, breaks in here, having overheard the latter part of the talk:--

"No, Benjamin, I wish no love that is given from a sense of duty. Reuben sha'n't be forced into loving his Aunt Eliza."

And there is a subdued tone in her speech which touches the boy. But he is not ready yet for surrender; he watches gravely her retirement, and for an hour shows a certain preoccupation at his play; then his piping voice is heard at the foot of the stairway,--

"Aunt Eliza! Are you there?"

"Yes, Master Reuben!"

Master! It cools somewhat his generous intent; but he is in for it; and he climbs the stair, sidles uneasily into the chamber where she sits at her work, stealing a swift, inquiring look into that gray eye of hers,--

"I say--Aunt Eliza--I'm sorry I said that--you know what."

And he looks up with a little of the old yearning,--the yearning he used to feel when another sat in that place.

"Ah, that is right, Master Reuben! I hope we shall be friends, now."

Another disturbed look at her,--remembering the time when he would have leaped into a mother's arms, after such struggle with his self-will, and found gladness. That is gone; no swift embrace, no tender hand toying with his hair, beguiling him from play. And he sidles out again, half shamefaced at a surrender that has wrought so little. Loitering, and playing with the balusters as he descends, the swift, keen voice comes after him,--

"Don't soil the paint, Reuben!"

"I haven't."

And the swift command and as swift retort put him in his old, wicked mood again, and he breaks out into a defiant whistle. (Over and over the spinster has told him it was improper to whistle in-doors.) Yet, with a lingering desire for sympathy, Reuben makes his way into his father's study; and the minister lays down his great folio,--it is Poole's "Annotations,"--and says,--

"Well, Reuben!"

"I told her I was sorry," says the boy; "but I don't believe she likes me much."

"Why, my son?"

"Because she called me Master, and said it was very proper."

"But doesn't that show an interest in you?"

"I don't know what interest is."

"It's love."

"Mamma never called me Master," said Reuben.

The grave minister bites his lip, beckons his boy to him,--"Here, my son!"--passes his arm around him, had almost drawn him to his heart,--

"There, there, Reuben; leave me now; I have my sermon to finish. I hope you won't be disrespectful to your aunt again. Shut the door."

And the minister goes back to his work, ironly honest, mastering his sensibilities, tearing great gaps in his heart, even as the anchorites once fretted their bodies with hair-cloth and scourgings.

In the summer of 1828 Mr. Johns was called upon to preach a special discourse at the Commencement exercises of the college from which he had received his degree; and so sterlingly orthodox was his sermon, at a crisis when some sister colleges were bolstering up certain new theological tenets which had a strong taint of heresy, that the old gentlemen who held rank as fellows of his college, in a burst of zeal, bestowed upon the worthy man the title of D. D. It was not an honor he had coveted; indeed, he coveted no human honors; yet this was more wisely given than most: his dignity, his sobriety, his rigid, complete adherence to all the accepted forms of religious belief made him a safe recipient of the title.

The spinster sister, with an ill-concealed pride, was most zealous in the bestowal of it; and before a month had passed, she had forced it into current use throughout the world of Ashfield.

Did a neglectful neighbor speak of the good health of "Mr. Johns," the mistress of the parsonage said,--"Why, yes, the Doctor is working very hard, it is true; but he is quite well; the Doctor is remarkably well."

Did a younger church-sister speak in praise of some late sermon of "the minister," Miss Eliza thanked her in a dignified way, and was sure "the Doctor" would be most happy to hear that his efforts were appreciated.

As for Larkin and Esther, who stumbled dismally over the new title, the spinster plied them urgently.

"Esther, my good woman, make the Doctor's tea very strong to-night."

"Larkin, the Doctor won't ride to-day; and mind, you must cut the wood for the Doctor's fire a little shorter."

Reuben only rebelled, with the mischief of a boy:--

"What for do you call papa Doctor? He don't carry saddle-bags."

To the quiet, staid man himself it was a wholly indifferent matter. In the solitude of his study, however, it recalled a neglected duty, and in so far seemed a blessing. By such paltry threads are the colors woven into our life! It recalled his friend Maverick and his jaunty prediction; and upon that came to him a recollection of the promise which he had made to Rachel, that he would write to Maverick.

So the minister wrote, telling his old friend what grief had stricken his house,--how his boy and he were left alone,--how the church, by favor of Providence, had grown under his preaching,--how his sister had come to be mistress of the parsonage,--how he had wrought the Master's work in fear and trembling; and after this came godly counsel for the exile.

He hoped that light had shone upon him, even in the "dark places" of infidel France,--that he was not alienated from the faith of his fathers,--that he did not make a mockery, as did those around him, of the holy institution of the Sabbath.

"My friend," he wrote, "God's word is true; God's laws are just; He will come some day in a chariot of fire. Neither moneys nor high places nor worldly honors nor pleasures can stay or avert the stroke of that sword of divine justice which will 'pierce even to the dividing asunder of the joints and marrow.' Let no siren voices beguile you. Without the gift of His grace who died that we might live, there is no hope for kings, none for you, none for me. I pray you consider this, my friend; for I speak as one commissioned of God."

Whether these words of the minister were met, after their transmission over seas, with a smile of derision,--with an empty gratitude, that said, "Good fellow!" and forgot their burden,--with a stitch of the heart, that made solemn pause and thoughtfulness, and short, in struggle against the habit of a life, we will not say; our story may not tell, perhaps. But to the mind of the parson it was clear that at some great coming day it _would_ be known of all men where the seed that he had sown had fallen,--whether on good ground or in stony places.

The cross-ocean mails were slow in those days; and it was not until nearly four months after the transmission of the Doctor's letter--he having almost forgotten it--that Reuben came one day bounding in from the snow in mid-winter, his cheeks aflame with the keen, frosty air, his eyes dancing with boyish excitement:--

"A letter, papa! a letter!--and Mr. Troop" (it is the new postmaster under the Adams dynasty) "says it came all the way from Europe. It's got a funny post-mark."

The minister lays down his book,--takes the letter,--opens it,--reads,--paces up and down the study thoughtfully,--reads again, to the end.

"Reuben, call your Aunt Eliza."

There is matter in the letter that concerns her,--that in its issues will concern the boy,--that may possibly give a new color to the life of the parsonage, and a new direction to our story.

OUR FIRST CITIZEN.[A]

Winter's cold drift lies glistening o'er his breast; For him no spring shall bid the leaf unfold: What Love could speak, by sudden grief oppressed, What swiftly summoned Memory tell, is told.

Even as the bells, in one consenting chime, Filled with their sweet vibrations all the air, So joined all voices, in that mournful time, His genius, wisdom, virtues, to declare.

What place is left for words of measured praise, Till calm-eyed History, with her iron pen, Grooves in the unchanging rock the final phrase That shapes his image in the souls of men?

Yet while the echoes still repeat his name, While countless tongues his full-orbed life rehearse, Love, by his beating pulses taught, will claim The breath of song, the tuneful throb of verse,--

Verse that, in ever-changing ebb and flow, Moves, like the laboring heart, with rush and rest, Or swings in solemn cadence, sad and slow, Like the tired heaving of a grief-worn breast.

This was a mind so rounded, so complete,-- No partial gift of Nature in excess,-- That, like a single stream where many meet, Each separate talent counted something less.

A little hillock, if it lonely stand, Holds o'er the fields an undisputed reign; While the broad summit of the table-land Seems with its belt of clouds a level plain.

Servant of all his powers, that faithful slave, Unsleeping Memory, strengthening with his toils, To every ruder task his shoulder gave, And loaded every day with golden spoils.

Order, the law of Heaven, was throned supreme O'er action, instinct, impulse, feeling, thought; True as the dial's shadow to the beam, Each hour was equal to the charge it brought.

Too large his compass for the nicer skill That weighs the world of science grain by grain; All realms of knowledge owned the mastering will That claimed the franchise of his whole domain.

Earth, air, sea, sky, the elemental fire, Art, history, song,--what meanings lie in each Found in his cunning hand a stringless lyre, And poured their mingling music through his speech.

Thence flowed those anthems of our festal days, Whose ravishing division held apart The lips of listening throngs in sweet amaze, Moved in all breasts the self-same human heart.

Subdued his accents, as of one who tries To press some care, some haunting sadness down; His smile half shadow; and to stranger eyes The kingly forehead wore an iron crown.

He was not armed to wrestle with the storm, To fight for homely truth with vulgar power; Grace looked from every feature, shaped his form,-- The rose of Academe,--the perfect flower!

Such was the stately scholar whom we knew In those ill days of soul-enslaving calm, Before the blast of Northern vengeance blew Her snow-wreathed pine against the Southern palm.

Ah, God forgive us! did we hold too cheap The heart we might have known, but would not see, And look to find the nation's friend asleep Through the dread hour of her Gethsemane?

That wrong is past; we gave him up to Death With all a hero's honors round his name; As martyrs coin their blood, he coined his breath, And dimmed the scholar's in the patriot's fame.

So shall we blazon on the shaft we raise,-- Telling our grief, our pride, to unborn years,-- "He who had lived the mark of all men's praise Died with the tribute of a nation's tears."

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Read at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Jan. 30, 1865.

NEEDLE AND GARDEN

THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.