CHAPTER IV.

I quitted the sewing-school on a Friday evening, intending to put my things in order the following day: for Monday was my birthday,--I should then be eighteen, and was to go with my father and select a sewing-machine.

As before mentioned, he had usually employed all his spare time in winter, when there was no garden-work to be done, in making seines for the fishermen. These were very great affairs, being used in the shad-fishery on the Delaware; and as they were many hundred yards in length, they required a large gang of men to manage them. This employment naturally brought him an extensive acquaintance among the fishermen, by whom he was always invited to participate in their first hauling of the river, at the breaking up of winter. As he was quite as fond of this exciting labor as we had been of fishing along the ditches, he never failed to accept these invitations. He not only enjoyed the sport, but he was anxious to see how well the seines would operate which he had sat for weeks in making. In addition to this, there was the further gratification of being asked to accept of as many of the earliest shad as he could carry away in his hand. It was a perquisite which we looked for and prized as much as he did himself. This recreation was of course attended with much exposure, being always entered on in the gusty, chilly weather of the early spring.

The morning after my quitting school saw him leaving us by daybreak to go on one of these fishing-excursions, taking my brother with him. It was in April, a cold, raw, and blustering time, and they would be gone all day. I had put my little matters in order,--though there was really very little to do in this way, as neither my wardrobe nor chamber was crowded with superfluities,--and having decided among ourselves where the machine should stand, I sat down with my mother and sister to sew. The weather had changed to quite a snow-storm, with angry gusts of wind; but our small sitting-room was warm and cheerful. We drew round the stove, and discussed the events of the coming week. We were to try the machine on the work which my mother and sister then had in the house,--for Jane had long since left school, and was actively employed at home. She had gone through a similar training with myself. I was to teach both mother and her the use of the machine; and we had determined, that, as soon as Jane had become sufficiently expert as an operator, she was to obtain a situation in some establishment, and our earnings were to be saved, until, with father's assistance, we could purchase machines for her and mother. We made up our minds that we could accomplish this within a year at farthest. Thus there was much before and around us to cheer our hearts and fill them with the brightest anticipations. It seemed to me, that, if I had been travelling in a long lane, I was now approaching a delightful turn,--for it has been said that there is none so long as to be without one.

We had dined frugally, as usual, and mother had set away an ample provision for the two absentees, who invariably came home with great appetites. Our work had been resumed around the stove, and all was calm and comfortable within the little sitting-room, though without the wind had risen higher and the snow fell faster and faster, when the door was suddenly opened, and as suddenly shut, by the wife of a neighbor, who, with hands clasped together, as if overcome by some terrible grief, rushed toward where my mother was sitting, and exclaimed,--

"Oh, Mrs. Lacey! how can I tell you?"

"What is it?" eagerly inquired my mother, starting from her seat, and casting from her the work on which she had been engaged. "What is it? Speak! What has happened?" she cried, wild at the woman's apparent inability to communicate the tidings she had evidently come to relate.

Regaining her composure in some measure, the latter, covering her face with her hands, and bursting into tears, sobbed out,--

"He's drowned!"

"Oh! which of them?" shrieked my mother, wringing her hands, and every vestige of color in her cheeks supplanted by a pallor so frightful that it struck dismay to my heart.

A mysterious instinct had warned her, the moment the woman spoke the first words, that some calamity had overtaken us.

"Which of them?" she repeated, with frantic impetuosity, "Is it my husband or my son? Speak! speak! My heart breaks!"

"Your husband, Mrs. Lacey," the woman replied; and as if relieved from the crushing burden she had thus transferred from her own spirit to ours, she sank back exhausted into a chair.

"Oh! when, where, and how?" demanded my mother. "Are you sure it is true? Who brought the news?"

"Your own son, Ma'am; he sent me here to tell you," answered the woman.

The door opened at the moment, and Fred, accompanied by several of the neighbors, entered the room. Crying as if his heart would break, he called out,--

"Oh, mother! it's too true,--father is gone!"

This confirmation of the withering blow broke her down. I saw that she was tottering to a fall, and threw my arms round her just in time to prevent it. We laid her on the settee, insensible to everything about her.

As the news of our great bereavement spread, the neighbors crowded in, offering their sympathy and aid. It was very kind of them, but, alas! could do nothing towards lightening its weight. The story of how my dear father came to his untimely end was at length related to us. He had gone out upon the river in a boat from which a seine was being cast, and by accident, no one could tell exactly how, had fallen overboard. Being no swimmer, and the water of icy coldness, he sank immediately, without again coming to the surface. Strong arms were waiting to seize him, upon rising, but the deep had closed over him.

I know not how it was, but the prostration of my poor mother seemed to give me new strength to bear up under this terrible affliction. Oh! that was a sad evening for us, and the birthday to which all had looked forward with so much pleasure as the happiest of my life was to be the saddest. Morning--it was Sunday--brought comparative calmness to my mother. But she was broken down by the awful suddenness of the blow. She wept over the thought that he had died without _her_ being near him,--that there had been no opportunity for parting words,--that _she_ was not able to close his dying eyes. She could have borne it better, if she had been permitted to speak to him, to hear him say farewell, before death shut out the world from his view. Then there was the painful anxiety as to recovering the body. It had sunk in deep water, in the middle of the river, and it was uncertain how far the strong current might have swept it away from the spot where the accident occurred. The neighbors had already begun to search for it with drags, and all through that gloomy Sunday had continued their labor without success; for they were not watermen, and therefore knew little of the proper methods of procedure.

Days passed away in this distressing uncertainty. Our pastor, Mr. Seeley, missing Fred and Jane from Sunday-school, as well as myself from the charge of my class, and learning the cause of our absence, came down to see us. His consolations to my mother, his sympathy, his prayers, revived and strengthened her. Finding that her immediate anxiety was about the recovery of the body, he told her that the bodies of drowned persons were seldom found without a reward being offered for them, and that one must be promised in the present case. This suggestion brought up the question of payment, and for the first time in our affliction it was recollected that my father had always persisted in carrying in his pocket-wallet all the money he had saved, and thus whatever he might have accumulated was with him at the time of his death. Following, nevertheless, the advice of our excellent pastor, a reward of fifty dollars was advertised, and just one week from the fatal day the body was brought to our now desolated home. But the wallet, with its contents, had been abstracted. The little fund my mother had always managed to keep on hand was too small to meet this heavy draft of the reward in addition to that occasioned by the funeral, so that, when that sad ceremony was over, we found ourselves beginning the world that now opened on us incumbered with a debt of fifty dollars.

But though borne down by the weight of our affliction, we were far from being hopelessly discouraged. It is true that my young hopes had been suddenly blasted. The bright pictures of the future which we had painted in our little sitting-room the very morning of the day that our calamity overtook us had all faded from sight, and were remembered only in contrast with the dark shadows that now filled their places. The cup, brimming with joyous anticipations, had been dashed from my lips. My birthday passed in sorrow and gloom. But I roused myself from a torpor which would have been likely to increase by giving way to it, and put on all the energy of which I was capable. I felt, that, while I had griefs for the dead, I had duties to perform to the living. The staff on which we had mainly leaned for support had been taken away, and we were now left to depend exclusively on our own exertions. I saw that the condition of my mother devolved the chief burden on me, and I determined that I would resolutely assume it.

I had Fred immediately apprenticed to an iron-founder in the neighborhood; and thenceforward, by his weekly allowance for board, he became a contributor to the common support. My knowledge of the sewing-machine secured for me a situation in a large establishment, in which more than thirty other girls were employed in making bosoms, wristbands, and collars for shirts; and I gradually recovered from what at first was the bitter disappointment of having no machine of my own.

I have seen it stated in the newspaper, that, when some cotton had been imported into a certain manufacturing town in England, where all the mills had long been closed for want of a supply from this country, the people, who were previously in the greatest distress, went out to meet it as it was approaching the town, and the women wept over the bales, and kissed them, and then sang a hymn of thanksgiving for the welcome importation. It would give them work! It was with a feeling akin to this that I took my position in the great establishment referred to, having also succeeded in obtaining a situation for my sister, whom I instructed in the use of the machine until she became as expert an operator as myself.

The certainty of employment, even at moderate wages, relieved my mind of many domestic cares, while the employment itself was a further relief. It was, moreover, infinitely more agreeable than working for the slop-shops, or even for the most fashionable tailors. Our duties were defined and simple, and there was no unreasonable hurry, and no night-work: we had our evenings to ourselves. As usual with sewing-women, the pay was invariably small. The old formula had been adhered to,--that because the cost of a sewing-woman's board was but trifling, therefore her wages should be graduated to a figure just above it. She was not permitted, as men are, to earn too much. My sister and I were sometimes able to earn eight dollars a week between us, sometimes only six. But this little income was the stay of the family. And it was well enough, so long as we had no sickness to interrupt our work and lessen the moderate sum.

They paid off the girls by gas-light on Saturday evening. As we had a long walk to reach home, the streets through which we passed presented, on that evening, an animated appearance. A vast concourse of work-women, laborers, mechanics, clerks, and others, who had also received their weekly wages, thronged the streets. There were crowds of girls from the binderies, mostly well dressed, and sewing-women carrying great bundles to the tailors, many of them, without doubt uncertain as to whether their work would be accepted, just as we had been in former days. As the evening advanced, the shops of all descriptions for the supply of family-stores were crowded by the wives of workmen thus paid off, and the sewing-girls or their mothers, all purchasing necessaries for the coming week, thus immediately disbursing the vast aggregate paid out on Saturday for wages.

The quickness with which I secured employment on the sewing-machine, because of my having qualified myself to operate it, was a new confirmation of my idea that women are engaged in so few occupations only because they have not been taught. Employers want skilful workers, not novices to whom they are compelled to teach everything. But what was to be the ultimate effect on female labor of the introduction of this machine had been a doubtful question with me until now, I worked so steadily in this establishment, the occupation was so constant, as well as so light, with far more bodily exercise than formerly when sitting in one position over the needle, and the wages were paid so punctually, with no mean attempts to cut us down on the false plea of imperfect work, that I came insensibly to the conclusion that a vast benefit had been conferred on the sex by its introduction. Yet the apprehensions felt by all sewing-women, when the new instrument was first brought out, were perfectly natural. I have read that similar apprehensions were entertained by others on similar occasions. When the lace-machines were first introduced in Nottingham, they were destroyed by riotous mobs of hand-loom weavers, who feared the ruin of their business. But where, fifty years ago, there were but a hundred and forty lace-machines in use in England, there are now thirty-five hundred, while the price of lace has fallen from a hundred shillings the square yard to sixpence. Before this lace-machinery was invented, England manufactured only two million dollars' worth per annum, and in doing so employed only eight thousand-hands; whereas now she produces thirty million dollars' worth annually, and employs a hundred and thirty thousand hands. It has been the same with power-looms, reapers, threshing-machines, and every other contrivance to economize human labor. I am sure that my brother would be thrown out of employment, if there were no steam-engine to operate the foundry where he is at work, and that, if there were no sewing-machines, my sister and myself would be compelled to join the less fortunate army of seamstresses who still labor so unrequitedly for the slop-shops.

To satisfy my mind on this subject, I have looked into such books as I have had time and opportunity to consult, and have found evidence of the fact, that, the more we increase our facilities for performing work with speed and cheapness, the more we shall have to do, and so the more hands will be required to do it. The time was when it was considered so great an undertaking for a man to farm a hundred acres, that very few persons were found cultivating a larger tract. But now, with every farming process facilitated by the use of labor-saving machines, there are farms of ten thousand acres better managed than were formerly those of only a hundred acres. There would be no penny paper brought daily to our door, unless the same wonderful revolution had been made in all the processes of the paper-mill, and in the speed of printing-presses. If I had doubted what was to be the consequence of bringing machinery into competition with the sewing-women, it was owing to my utter ignorance of how other great revolutions had affected the labor of different classes of workers.

This doubt thus satisfactorily resolved, it very soon became with me a question for profound wonder, what became of the immensely increased quantity of clothing which was manufactured by so many thousands of machines. I could not learn that our population had suddenly increased to an extent sufficient to account for the enlarged consumption that was evidently taking place. I had heard that there were nations of savages who considered shirts a sort of superfluity, and who moved about in very much the same costume as that in which our primal mother clothed herself just previously to indulging in the forbidden fruit. But they could not have thus suddenly taken to the wearing of machine-made shirts. There was a paragraph also in our paper which stated that the usual dress in hot weather, in some parts of our own South, was only a hat and spurs. This, however, I regarded as a piece of raillery, and was not inclined to place much faith in it. But I had never heard that any other portion of our people were in the habit of going without shirts or pantaloons. If such had been the practice, and if it had on the instant been renounced, it would have accounted for the sudden and unprecedented demand which now sprang up for these indispensable articles of dress. Or if the fashion had so changed that men had taken to wearing two shirts instead of one, that also might account for it,--though the wearing of two would be considered as great an eccentricity as the wearing of none.

I found that others with whom I conversed on the subject were equally surprised with myself. Even some who were concerned in carrying on the establishment in which we were employed could not account for the immediate absorption of the vastly increased quantities of work that were turned out. Few could tell exactly why more was wanted than formerly, nor where it went. The only fact apparent was that there was a demand for thrice as much as before sewing-machines were brought into use. My own conclusion was eventually this,--that distant sections of our country were supplied exclusively from these manufactories in the great cities, which combined capital, energy, and enterprise in the creation of an immense business. Yet I could not understand why people in those distant sections did not establish manufactories of their own. They had quite as much capital, and could procure machines as readily, while the population to be supplied was immediately at their doors.

I had always heard that the South and West had never at any time manufactured their own clothing. I knew that the Southern women, particularly, were so ignorant and helpless that they had always been dependent on the North for almost everything they wore, from the most elaborate bonnet down to a pocket pin-cushion, and that the supplying of their wardrobes, by the men-milliners of this section, was a highly lucrative employment. As it is a difficult matter to divert any business from a channel in which it has long flowed, I concluded that our Northern dealers, having always commanded these distant markets, would easily retain them by adapting their business to the change of circumstances. They had the trade already, and could keep it flowing in its old channels by promptly availing themselves of the new invention.

They did so without hesitation,--indeed, the great struggle was as to who should be first to do it,--and not only kept their business, but obtained for it an unprecedented increase. In doing this they must have displaced thousands of sewing-women all over the country, as their cheaper fabrics enabled them to undersell the latter everywhere. I know that this was the first effect here, and it is difficult to understand how in other places it should have been otherwise. These sewing-women must have been deprived of work, or the consumers of clothing must have immediately begun to purchase and wear double or treble as much as they had been accustomed to. I do not doubt that the consumption increased from the mere fact of increased cheapness. I believe it is an invariable law of trade, that consumption increases as price diminishes. If silks were to fall to a shilling a yard, everybody would turn away from cotton shirts. As it was, shirts were made without collars, and the collars were produced in great manufactories by steam. They were made by millions, and by millions they were consumed. They were sold in boxes of a dozen or a hundred, at two or three cents apiece, according to the wants of the buyer. He could appear once or twice a day in all the glory of an apparently clean shirt, according to his ambition to shine in a character which might be a very new one. Judging by the consumption of these conveniences, it would seem, that, if one had only a clean collar to display, it was of little consequence whether he had a shirt or not.

To digress a moment, I will observe, that, when I first saw these ingenious contrivances to escape the washerwoman's bill, as well as the cuffs made by the same process for ladies' use, they both struck me so favorably, while their cheapness was so surprising, that my curiosity was inflamed to see and know how they were made. In company with my sister, I visited the manufactory. It was in a large building, and employed many hands, who operated with machinery that exceeds my ability to describe. They took a whole piece of thin, cheap muslin, to each side of which they pasted a covering of the finest white paper by passing the three layers between iron rollers. The paper and muslin were in rolls many hundred feet long. The beautiful product of this union was then parted into strips of the proper width and dried, then passed through hot metal rollers, combining friction with pressure, whence it was delivered with a smooth, glossy, enamelled surface. The material for many thousand collars was thus enamelled in five minutes. It was then cut by knives into the different shapes and sizes required, and so rapidly that a man and boy could make more than ten thousand in an hour. Every collar was then put through a machine which printed upon it imitation stitches, so exactly resembling the best work of a sewing-machine as to induce the belief that the collar was actually stitched. Two girls were working or attending two of these machines, and the two produced nearly a hundred collars per minute, or about sixty thousand daily. The button-holes were next punched with even greater rapidity, then the collar was turned over so nicely that no break occurred in the material. Then they were counted and put in boxes, and were ready for market.

Besides these shirt-collars, there was a great variety of ladies' worked cuffs and collars, adapted to every taste, and imitating the finest linen with the nicest exactness, but all made of paper. Some hundreds of thousands of these were piled up around, ready for counting and packing, sufficient, it appeared to me, to supply our whole population for a twelvemonth. They were sold so cheaply, also, that it cost no more to buy a new collar than to wash an old one. Like friction-matches, they were used only once and then thrown away; hence, the consumption being perpetual, the production was continuous the year round.

I inquired of the proprietor how he accounted for the immense consumption of these articles, without which the world had been getting on comfortably for so many thousand years.

"Why," said he, "we have been fortunate enough to create a new want. Perhaps we did not really create the want, but only discovered that an unsatisfied one existed. It is all the same in either case. Any great convenience, or luxury, heretofore unknown to the public, when fairly set before them is sure to come into general use. It has been so, in my experience, with many things that were not thought of twenty years ago. I have been as much puzzled to account for the unlimited consumption of cuffs and collars as you are to know why so much more clothing is used now than before sewing-machines came into operation. But the increased cheapness of a thing, whether old or new, and the convenience of getting it, are the great stimulants to enlarged consumption,--and as these conditions are present, so will be the latter."

"But when you began this business, did you expect to sell so many?" I inquired.

"We did not," he replied, "and are ourselves surprised at the quantity we sell. Besides, there are several other factories, which produce greater numbers than we do. But when I reflect on the extent to which the business has already gone, I find the facts to be only in keeping with results in other cases. I have thought and read much on the very subject which so greatly interests you. Some years ago I was puzzled to account for the immensely increased circulation of newspapers,--rising, in some instances, from one thousand up to forty thousand. I knew that our population had not grown at one tenth that rate, yet the circulation went on extending. One day I asked a country postmaster how _he_ accounted for it 'Why,' he replied, 'the question is easily answered;--where a man formerly took only one paper, he now takes seven. Cheap postage, and the establishment of news-agents all over the country, enable the people to get papers at less cost and with only half the trouble of twenty years ago. The power of production is complete, and the machinery of distribution has kept pace with it. The people don't actually need the papers any more now than they did then, but the convenience of having them brought to their doors induces them to buy six or seven where they formerly bought only one. That's the way it happens.'"

"Then," continued my polite and communicative informant, "look at the article of pins. You ladies, who use so many more than our sex, have never been able to tell what becomes of them. You know that of late years you have been using the American solid-head pins, which were produced so cheaply as immediately to supersede the foreign article. Now," said he, with a smile, "don't you think you use up six pins you formerly used only one? Careful people, twenty years ago, when they saw one on the pavement, or on the parlor-floor, stopped and picked it up; but now they pass it by, or sweep it into the dust-pan. Is it not so, and have not careful people ceased to exist?"

I confess that the illustration was so full of point that some indistinct conviction of its truth came over me; it was really my own experience.

"So you see," he continued, "that, while of all these new and cheaply manufactured articles there is a vast consumption, there is also a vast waste. People--that is, prudent people--generally take care of things according to their cost. You don't wear your best bonnet in the rain. It is precisely so with our cuffs and collars. We sell them so cheaply that some people wear three or four a day, while a careful person would make one suffice. When the collar was attached to the shirt, it served for a much longer time; what but cheapness and convenience can tempt to such wastefulness now? My family, at least the female portion, use these articles about as extravagantly, and I think your whole sex must be equally fond of indulging in the same lavish use of them,--otherwise the consumption could not be so great as you see it is."

I could not but inwardly plead guilty to this weakness of indulging in clean cuffs and collars,--neither could I fail to recognize the soundness of this reasoning, which must have grown out of superior knowledge. It gave me new light, and settled a great many doubts.

"I suppose, Miss," he resumed, as if unwilling to leave anything unexplained, "you use friction-matches at home? Now you know how cheap they are,--two boxes for a cent. But I remember when one box sold for twenty-five cents. People were then careful how they used them, and it was not everybody who could afford to do so. The flint and tinder-box were long in going out of use. But how is it now? Instead of one match serving to light a cigar, the smokers use two or three. They waste them because they are cheap, carrying them loose in their pockets, that they may always have enough, with some to throw away.

"Take the article of hoop-skirts. Women did very well without them, and looked quite as well, at least in my opinion. But some ingenious man conceived the idea of tempting them with a new want, and they were at once persuaded into believing that hoop-skirts were indispensable to a genteel appearance. They were adopted all over the country with a rapidity that outstripped that of the cuffs and collars,--not, perhaps, that as many were manufactured, because, if that had been the case, they could not have been consumed, unless each woman had worn two or three. And they may in fact wear two or three each,--I don't know how that is,--but look at the waste already visible. Every week or two, new patterns are brought out, better, lighter, or prettier than the last; whereupon the old ones are thrown aside, though not half worn. Why, Miss, do you know that your sex are carrying about them some thousands of tons of brass and steel in the shape of these skirts? As to the waste, it is already so large as to have become a public nuisance. An old hat or shoe may be given away to somebody,--an old scrubbing-brush may be disposed of by putting it into the stove; but as to an old skirt, who wants it? You cannot burn it; the very beggars will not take it; and hence it is thrown into the street, or into the alley close to your door, where it continues for months to trip up the feet of every wayfaring man quite as provokingly as it sometimes tripped up those of the wearer. It is the waste of hoop-skirts, as much as anything else, that keeps the manufacture so brisk.

"Then, again," he continued, as if expanded by the skirts he had just been speaking of, "look at the long dresses which the ladies now wear. See how the most costly stuffs are dragging over the pavement, sweeping up the filth with which it is covered. To speak of the foul condition into which such draggletailed dresses must soon get is positively sickening. If a dozen of them were thrown into a closet and left there for a few hours, I have no doubt they would burn of spontaneous combustion."

I was half inclined to take fire myself at hearing this, but remained silent, and he proceeded.

"See, too, what a constant fidget the wearers are in, under the incumbrance of a dress so foolishly long as to require the use of both hands to keep it at a cleanly elevation. I presume the ladies wear these ridiculous trains because they think they look more graceful in them. But do you know, Miss, that our sex feel the most profound contempt for a woman who is so weak as to make such an exhibition of folly? It might do for great people, at a great party,--but in dirty, sloppy, muddy streets, by servant-girls as well as by fashionable women, it is considered not only indecent, but as evincing a want of common sense. Moreover, the quantity of material destroyed by thus dragging over the pavement is very great. It must amount to thousands of yards annually, and it appears to me that the more it costs per yard, the more of it is devoted to street-sweeping. Here is wastefulness by wholesale."

"But do you think the same remarks apply to the case of the greatly increased amount of clothing that is now manufactured by the sewing-machines?" I inquired.

"Certainly, Miss," he responded. "There are not a great many more people in this country now to be clothed than there were three years ago; yet at least three times as much clothing is manufactured. The question is as to how it is consumed. I do not suppose that men wear two coats or shirts, or that any ever went without them. But the increased cheapness has led to increased waste, exactly as in the case of pins and matches. Clothing being obtainable at lower prices than were ever known before in this country, it is purchased in unnecessary quantities, just like the newspapers, and not taken care of. Thousands of men now have two or three coats where they formerly had only one. It is these extra outfits, and this continual waste, that keep up the production at which you are so much astonished. The facts afford you another illustration of the great law of supply and demand,--that as you cheapen and multiply products or manufactures of any kind, so will the consumption of them increase. If pound-cake could be had at the price of corn-bread, does it not strike you that the community would consume little else? The cry for pound-cake would be universal,--it would be, in fact, in everybody's mouth."

"But," I again inquired, "will this extraordinary demand for the products of the sewing-machine continue? I have told you that I am a sewing-girl, and hence feel a deep interest in learning all I can upon the subject."

"Judging from appearances, it must," was his reply. "We are the most extravagant people in the world. We consume, per head, more coffee, tea, and sugar, jewelry, silks, and cotton, than the people of any other country on the face of the earth. Our women wear more satins and laces, and our men smoke more high-priced cigars, than those of any other part of the world. They eat more meat, drink more liquor, and spend more in trifles. And it is not likely that they contemplate any reformation of these lavish habits, at least while wages keep up to the present rates. Were it proposed, I think that coats and shirts would be about the last things the men would begin with, and paper cuffs and collars among the last the women would repudiate. They are fond enough of changing their clothes, but have no idea of doing without them."

"I notice," I observed, "that you employ girls in your establishment, several being occupied in feeding the stamping-rollers. Could a man feed those rollers more efficiently than a girl? or would they turn out more work in a week, if attended by a man than by a girl?"

"Not any more," he answered.

"Do the girls receive as much wages as the men?" I added.

"About one third as much," he replied.

"But," I suggested, "if they perform as much work as men could, why do you pay them so much less?"

"Competition, Miss," he answered, "There is a constant pressure on us from girls seeking employment, and this keeps down wages. Besides, those whom we do employ come here wholly ignorant of what they are required to do. Some have never worked a day in their lives. It requires time to teach them, and while being taught they spoil a great deal of material. It is a long time before they become really skilled hands. You can have no conception of the kind of help that offers itself to us every week. Parents don't seem to educate their daughters to anything useful; and our girls nowadays appear to have little or nothing to do in-doors. Formerly they had plenty of household duties, as a multitude of things were done at home which even the poorest old woman never thinks of doing now. The baker now makes their bread; the spinning, the weaving, the knitting, and sewing are taken out of their hands by machinery; and if women want to work, they must go out and seek it, just as those do who apply to us. Machinery has undoubtedly effected a great revolution in all home-employments for women, compelling many to be idle; and not being properly encouraged to adopt new employments in place of the old ones, they remain idle until forced to work for bread, and then go out in search of occupation, knowing no more of one half the things we want them to do than mere children."

"But when they become skilled," I again asked, "you do not pay them as high wages as you pay the men, though they do as much and as well?"

"Women don't need as much," he replied. "They can live on less, they pay less board, have fewer wants, and less occasion for money."

"But don't you think," I rejoined, "that, if you gave them the money, they would find the wants, and that the scarcity of the former is the true reason for the limitation of the latter? Do not working-women live on the little they get only because they are compelled to?"

"It may be so," he answered. "Our wants are born with us,--and as one set is supplied, another rises up to demand gratification. But they offer to work for these wages, and why should we give them more than they ask?"

"But how is it with the women with families, the widows?" I suggested. "Have they no more wants than young girls? If the fewer necessities of the girls be a reason for giving them low wages, why should not the more numerous ones of the widows be as potent a reason for giving them better wages?"

"Competition again, Miss," he responded. "The prices at which the girls work govern the market."

There was no getting over facts like these. Let me look at the subject in whatever aspect I might, it seemed impossible that female labor should be adequately paid by any class of employers. But on the present occasion this was an incidental question. The primary one, why so much more sewing was required for the people now than formerly, was answered measurably to my satisfaction. I thought a great deal on this subject, because now, since the loss of our main family-dependence, I was more interested in its solution. I think I settled down into accepting the foregoing facts and opinions as embodying a satisfactory explanation; and although not exactly set at ease, yet the conclusion then embraced has not been changed by any subsequent discovery.

The gentleman referred to may have been altogether wrong in some parts of his argument, but I was too little versed in matters of trade, and the laws of supply and demands to show wherein he was so. It seemed to me a strange argument, that the consumption of things was to be so largely attributed to wastefulness. But I suppose this must be what people call political economy, and how should I be expected to know anything of that? I knew that in our little family the utmost economy was practised. I have turned or fixed up the same bonnet as many as four times, putting on new trimmings at very little expense, and making it look so different every time that none suspected it of being the old bonnet altered, while many of my acquaintances admired it as a new one, some of them even inquiring what it cost, and who was the milliner that made it. We never thought of giving one away until it had gone through many such transformations, nor, in fact, until it was actually used up, at least for me. Even when mine had seen such long and severe service, my sister Jane fell heir to it, though without knowing it,--for she had more pride than myself, and was much more particular about her good looks. Hence, when the thing was at all feasible, my veteran bonnet was transformed, in private, into a very fair new one for her. She had been familiar with my head-gear for so many years that I often wondered how she failed to detect the disguises I put upon it; and I had as much as I could do to keep from laughing, when I brought to her what we invariably called her new bonnet. As she grew older, she became more exacting in her tastes, and at the same time foolishly suspicious of the mysterious origin of her new bonnets,--just as if they were any worse for my having worn them for years! I presume her mortification will be extreme, when she comes to read this. As to old clothes, they were nursed up quite as carefully, though Jane had her full inheritance of both mine and mother's. When entirely past service, they were cut up into carpet-rags, from which we obtained the warmest covering for our floors. Thus practising no wastefulness ourselves, it was difficult to understand how the national wastefulness could be great enough to insure the prosperity of a multitude of extensive manufacturing establishments. But our premises were very humble ones from which to start an argument of any description.

Yet, when the attention of an inquiring mind is directed toward any given subject, it is astonishing how, if only a little observation is practised, it will unfold and expand itself. In my walks to and from the factory there lay numerous open lots or commons, all of which afforded abundant evidence of the extent to which this public wastefulness was carried. Heretofore I had passed on without noticing much about them. But now I observed that they were heaped up with great piles of coal-ashes, from which cropped out large quantities of the unburnt mineral, as black and shining as when it came from the mines. There were thousands of loads of this residuum, in which many hundred tons of pure coal must have been thus wastefully thrown away. In other parts of the city the same evidence of carelessness existed, so that the waste of a single city in the one article of coal must be enormous. Then, over these commons were scattered, almost daily, the remains of clothing, old hats, bonnets, and the indestructible hoop-skirts, of which the collar-maker had complained as being in everybody's way, as much so when out of use as when in. Somebody had been guilty of wastefulness in thus casting these things away. But though losses to some, they were gains to others. By early daylight the rag-pickers came in platoons to gather up all these waifs. The hats, the bonnets, and the clothing were quickly appropriated by women and children who had come out of the narrow courts and hovels of the city in search of what they knew was an every-day harvest. These small gatherings of the rag-pickers amounted to hundreds of dollars daily. Then there was another class of searchers after abandoned treasure, in the persons of other women and children, who, with pronged or pointed sticks, worked their way into the piles of ashes, and picked out basketfuls of coal as heavy as they could carry, and in this laborious way provided themselves with summer and winter fuel.

There was living near us a man who made a business of gathering up the offal of several hundred kitchens in the city, as food for pigs. I know that he grew rich at this vocation. He lived in a much better house than ours, and his wife and daughters dressed as expensively as the wealthiest women. They had a piano, and music in abundance. He had several carts which were sent on their daily rounds through the city, collecting the kitchen-waste of boarding-houses, hotels, and private families. The quantity of good, wholesome food which these carts brought away to be fed to pigs was incredible. It was a common thing to see whole loaves of bread taken out of the family swill-tub, with joints of meat not half eaten, sound vegetables, and fragments of other food, as palatable and valuable as the portion that had been consumed on the table. It seemed as if there were hundreds of families who made it a point never to have food served up a second time. The waste by this thriftlessness was great. I doubt not that some men must have been kept poor by such want of proper oversight on the part of their wives, as I know that it enriched the individual who gathered up the fat crumbs which fell from their tables. I think it must be quite true that "fat kitchens make lean wills."

These slight incidental confirmations of the theory of national wastefulness came under my daily notice. I had heretofore overlooked them, but now they attracted my attention. Then I had only to direct my eye to other and higher fields of observation to be sure that it had some foundation. The streets, the shop-windows, were eloquent witnesses for it. The waste of clothing material consequent on the introduction of hoop-skirts was seen to be prodigious. It was not only the poor thin body that was now to be covered with finery, but the huge balloon in which fashion required that that body should be enveloped. I thought, now that the subject was one for study, that I could see it running through almost every thing.

This wastefulness, then, was to be the ground on which the sewing-woman was to rest her hopes of continued employment. It might be good holding-ground in times of high general prosperity, when money was abundant and circulation active; but how would it be when reverses of any kind overtook the nation? As extravagance was the rule now, it occurred to me that so would a stringent economy be the rule then, The old hats that were usually thrown away upon the commons would be rejuvenated and worn again,--the parsimony of one crisis seeking to make up for the wastefulness of another; for when a sharp turn of hard times comes round, everybody takes to economizing. There are older heads and more observant minds than my own, that must remember how these things have worked in bygone years. These have had the experience of a whole lifetime to enable them to judge: I was a mere inquirer on the threshold of a very brief one.

* * * * *

Our employment at the factory kept us comfortable. In time we were able to earn something more than when we began. Our good pastor had lent us the money with which to pay the reward for recovering my dear father's body; and as my mother had a great dread of being in debt, we had practised a most rigid economy at home in order to save enough to repay him. This we did, a few dollars at a time, until we had finally paid the whole. Though he frequently came down to see my mother in her loneliness, yet he never alluded to the matter of the loan, and actually declined taking any part of it until it was almost forced upon him. He even offered, on one occasion, to increase the loan to any extent that my mother might think necessary for her comfort, and in various ways manifested a strong disposition to do everything far us that he could. We had all been favorite pupils in his Sunday school, where I had soon been promoted to the position of a teacher. Finding, also, that we were fond of reading, he had lent us books from his own library, and even invited me to come and select for myself. I sometimes accepted these invitations, and occasionally chose books on subjects that seemed to surprise him very much But, after all, are not a few books well chosen better than a great library?

The lending of the money at the time we were in so much distress was of inexpressible value to us. But as every-day life is a leaf in one's history, so was this pecuniary experience in ours. I had innocently supposed that the chief value of money was to supply one's own wants, but I now learned that its highest capacity for good lay in its power of ministering to the necessities of others. I have read that in prosperity it is the easiest thing to find a friend; but that in adversity it is of all things the most difficult. I know that in trouble we often come off better than we expect, and always better than we deserve. But men of the noblest dispositions are apt to consider themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them. Our pastor lent us this little sum of money at a time when it was of the utmost value to us; but it was done in a way so hearty, and so unobtrusive, as to add immeasurably to the obligation. Indeed, I sometimes think that a pecuniary favor which is granted grudgingly is no favor at all.

Still, while at work in the factory, there were many things to think of, and some inconveniences to submit to. The long walks to it were unpleasant in stormy weather, and occasionally we were compelled to lose a day or two from this cause. But then the out-door exercise in fine weather was beneficial to health, and we were spared the public mortification of carrying great bundles of made-up clothing through the streets: for, let a sewing-girl feel as independent as she may, she does not covet the being everywhere known as belonging to that class of workers. Her bundle is the badge of her profession. My sister had a great deal of pride on this point. She was extremely nice about her looks, There was a neat jauntiness in her appearance, of which she seemed to be fully conscious; and as she grew up to womanhood, I think it became more apparent in all her actions. She was really a very attractive girl,--certainly so to me,--and she must have been more so to the other sex, as I noticed that the men about the establishment were more courteous to her than they were to me. Even our employer treated her with a deferential politeness that he did not extend to others, and when paying us our wages, always had a complimentary remark for Jane, as if seeking to win the good opinion of one who seemed to be a general favorite.

But I confess that during all the time we were working in the factory I sighed for the possession of a machine of my own, so that I could be more at home with my mother in her loneliness: for when we left her in the morning we carried our dinners with us, leaving her to her own thoughts during the whole day. The grief at my father's loss had by no means been overcome, for with all of us it was something more than the shadow of a passing cloud. Personally, I cared nothing for the carrying of a bundle through the streets, even though it made proclamation of my being a sewing-girl. Then as to exercise or recreation, I could have abundance in the garden. As it was, I still continued to see it kept in order. Fred was very good in doing all I wanted. He would rise early before breakfast, and do any digging it required, and in the evening, after returning from the foundry, would attend to many other things about it as they needed. I was equally industrious; and now that it was wholly left for me to see to, my fondness for it increased, while I came to understand its management more thoroughly than when my father was sole director. The more I had to do, the more I learned. Then there were times when I rose in the morning feeling so poorly that it was a tax upon both spirits and strength to tramp the long distance to the factory; yet it would have been no hardship to work at a machine at home, or to do an hour's gardening. I think my earnings could have been made quite as large as they were at the factory, as the owner of a machine generally received a little more pay than when working on one belonging to her employer; and I felt quite sure that there would be no difficulty in obtaining abundance of work. My doubts on this point had been pretty well settled.

But we had no hundred and thirty or forty dollars to lay out for a machine now, and there was no prospect of our being able to save enough to purchase one. Hence I never even hinted to my mother what my wishes were, as it would only be to her a fresh anxiety. I did mention the subject to my sister, but she did not seem to favor my plans. She was a great favorite at the factory, and why should not the factory be as great a favorite with her? I have no doubt that our pastor, who was as wealthy as he was generous and good, would have promptly loaned us, or even me, the money; but he had heard nothing of the fact that my father's sudden death had alone prevented my obtaining a machine, nor during his frequent visits to our house did we ever mention what we had then expected or what I now so much desired. Besides, it would be a great debt, so large that I should have hesitated about incurring it. We had been a long while in getting clear of the other, and the apparent hopelessness of discharging one nearly three times as great, and that, too, from my individual earnings, was such, that in the end I concluded it would be better for me to avoid the debt by doing without the machine, than to have it only on condition of buying it on credit.

MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

THEODORE HOOK AND HIS FRIENDS.

Theodore Edward Hook was born in Charlotte Street, Bedford Square, on the 22d of September, 1788. His father was an eminent musical composer, who "enjoyed in his time success and celebrity"; his elder brother James became Dean of Windsor, whose son is the present learned and eloquent Dean of Chichester; the mother of both was an accomplished lady, and also an author.

His natural talent, therefore, was early nursed. Unfortunately, the green-room was the too frequent study of the youth; for his father's fame and income were chiefly derived from the composition of operetta songs, for which Theodore usually wrote the libretti. When little more than a boy he had produced perhaps thirty farces, and in 1808 gave birth to a novel. Those who remember the two great actors of a long period, Mathews and Liston, will be at no loss to comprehend the popularity of Hook's farces: for they were his "props."

In 1812, when his finances were low, and the chances of increasing them limited, and when, perhaps, also, his constitution had been tried by "excesses," he received the appointment of Accountant-General and Treasurer at the Mauritius,--a post with an income of two thousand pounds a year. Hook seems to have derived his qualifications for this office from his antipathy to arithmetic and his utter unfitness for business.

The result might have been easily foreseen. In 1819 he returned to England: the cause may be indicated by his very famous pun, when, the Governor of the Cape having expressed a hope that he was not returning because of ill health, he was "sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the _chest_." He was found guilty of owing twelve thousand pounds to the Government: yet he was "without a shilling in his pocket." If public funds had been abstracted, he was none the richer, and there was certainly no suspicion that the money had been dishonestly advantageous to him.

Although kept for years in hot water, battling with the Treasury, it was not until 1823 that the penalty was exacted,--sometime after the "John Bull" had made him a host of enemies. Of course, as he could not pay in purse, he was doomed to "pay in person." After spending some months "pleasantly" at a dreary sponging-house in Shoe Lane, where there was ever "an agreeable prospect, _barring_ the windows," he was removed to the "Rules of the Bench," residing there a year, being discharged from custody in 1825.

Hook, while in the Rules, was under very little restraint; he was almost as much in society as ever, taking special care not to be seen by any of his creditors, who might have pounced upon him and made the Marshal responsible for the debt. The danger was less in Hook's case than in that of others, for his principal "detaining creditor" was the King. I remember his telling me, that, during his "confinement" in the Rules, he made the acquaintance of a gentleman, who, while a prisoner there, paid a visit to India. The story is this. The gentleman called one morning on the Marshal, who said,--

"Mr. ----, I have not had the pleasure to see you for a long time."

"No wonder," was the answer; "for since you saw me last I have been to India."

In reply to a look of astonished inquiry, he explained,--

"I knew my affairs there were so intricate and involved that no one but myself could unravel them; so I ran the risk, and took my chance. I am back with ample funds to pay all my debts, and to live comfortably for the rest of my days."

Mr. Hook did not say if the gentleman had obtained from his securities a license for what he had done; but the anecdote illustrates the extreme laxity enjoyed by prisoners in the Rules, (which extended to several streets,) as compared with the doleful incarceration to which _poor_ debtors were subjected, who in those days often had their miserable home in a jail for debts that might have been paid by shillings.

Hook then took up his residence at Putney, from which he afterwards removed to a "mansion" in Cleveland Street, but subsequently to Fulham, where the remainder of his life was passed, and where he died. It was a small, detached cottage. It is of this cottage that Lockhart says, "We doubt if its interior was ever seen by half a dozen people besides the old confidential worshippers of Bull's mouth."

He resided here in comparative obscurity. It gave him a pleasant prospect of Putney Bridge, and of Putney on the opposite side of the river. As the Thames flowed past the bottom of his small and narrow garden, he had a perpetually cheerful and changing view of the many gay passers-by in small boats, yachts, and steamers. The only room of the cottage I ever saw was somewhat coarsely furnished: a few prints hung on the walls, but there was no evidence of those suggestive refinements which substitute intellectual for animal gratifications, in the internal arrangements of a domicile that becomes necessarily a workshop.

Hook's love of practical joking seems to have commenced early. Almost of that character was his well-known answer to the Vice-Chancellor at Oxford, when asked whether he was prepared to subscribe to the Thirty-Nine Articles,--"Certainly, to forty of them, if you please"; and his once meeting the Proctor dressed in his robes, and being questioned, "Pray, Sir, are you a member of this University?" he replied, "No, Sir; pray are you?"

In the Memoirs of Charles Mathews by his widow abundant anecdotes are recorded of these practical jokes; but, in fact, "Gilbert Gurney," which may be regarded as an autobiography, is full of them. Mr. Barham, his biographer, also relates several, and states, that, when a young man, he had a "museum" containing a large and varied collection of knockers, sign-paintings, barbers' poles, and cocked hats, gathered together during his predatory adventures; but its most attractive object was "a gigantic Highlander," lifted from the shop-door of a tobacconist on a dark, foggy night. These "enterprises of great pith and moment" are detailed by himself in full. The most "glorious" of them has been often told: how he sent through the post some four thousand letters, inviting on a given day a huge assemblage of visitors to the house of a lady of fortune, living at 54, Berners Street. They came, beginning with a dozen sweeps at daybreak, and including lawyers, doctors, upholsterers, jewellers, coal-merchants, linen-drapers, artists, even the Lord Mayor, for whose behoof a special temptation was invented. In a word, there was no conceivable trade, profession, or calling that was not summoned to augment the crowd of foot-passengers and carriages by which the street was thronged from dawn till midnight; while Hook and a friend enjoyed the confusion from a room opposite.[B] Lockhart, in the "Quarterly," states that the hoax was merely the result of a wager that Hook would in a week make the quiet dwelling the most famous house in all London. Mr. Barham affirms that the lady, Mrs. Tottenham, had on some account fallen under the displeasure of the formidable trio, Mr. Hook and two unnamed friends.

His conversation was an unceasing stream of wit, of which he was profuse, as if he knew the source to be inexhaustible. He never kept it for display, or for company, or for those only who knew its value: wit was, indeed, as natural to him as commonplace to commonplace characters. It was not only in puns, in repartees, in lively retorts, in sparkling sentences, in brilliant illustrations, or in apt or exciting anecdote, that this faculty was developed. I have known him string together a number of graceful verses, every one of which was fine in composition and admirable in point, at a moment's notice, on a subject the most inauspicious, and apparently impossible either to wit or rhyme,--yet with an effect that delighted a party, and might have borne the test of criticism the most severe. These verses he usually sang in a sort of recitative to some tune with which all were familiar,--and if a piano were at hand, he accompanied himself with a gentle strain of music.

Mrs. Mathews relates that she was present once when Hook dined with the Drury-Lane Company, at a banquet given to Sheridan in honor of his return for Westminster. The guests were numerous, yet he made a verse upon every person in the room:--"Every action was turned to account; every circumstance, the look, the gesture, or any other accidental effect, served as occasion for wit." Sheridan was astonished at his extraordinary faculty, and declared that he could not have imagined such power possible, had he not witnessed it.

People used to give him subjects the most unpromising to test his powers. Thus, Campbell records that he once supplied him with a theme, "Pepper and Salt," and that he amply seasoned the song with both.

I was present when this rare faculty was put to even a more severe test, at a party at Mr. Jerdan's, at Grove House, Brompton,--a house long since removed to make room for Ovington Square. It was a large supper-party, and many men and women of mark were present: for the "Literary Gazette" was then in the zenith of its power, worshipped by all aspirants for fame, and courted even by those whose laurels had been won. Its editor, be his shortcomings what they might, was then, as he had ever been, ready with a helping hand for those who needed help: a lenient critic, a generous sympathizer, who preferred pushing a dozen forward to thrusting one back.

Hook, having been asked for his song, and, as usual, demanding a theme, one of the guests, either facetiously or maliciously, called out, "Take Yates's big nose." (Yates, the actor, was one of the party.) To any one else such a subject would have been appalling: not so to Hook. He rose, glanced once or twice round the table, and chanted (so to speak) a series of verses perfect in rhythm and rhyme: the incapable theme being dealt with in a spirit of fun, humor, serious comment, and absolute philosophy, utterly inconceivable to those who had never heard the marvellous improvisator,--each verse describing something which the world considered great, but which became small, when placed in comparison with

"Yates's big nose!"

It was the first time I had met Hook, and my astonishment was unbounded. I found it impossible to believe the song was improvised; but I had afterwards ample reason to know that so thorough a triumph over difficulties was with him by no means rare.

I had once a jovial day with him on the Thames,--fishing in a punt on the river opposite the Swan at Thames-Ditton. Hook was in good health and good spirits, and brimful of mirth. He loved the angler's craft, though he seldom followed it; and he spoke with something like affection of a long-ago time, when bobbing for roach at the foot of Fulham Bridge, the fisherman perpetually raising or lowering his float, according to the ebb and flow of the tide.

A record of his "sayings and doings," that glorious day, from early morn to set of sun, would fill a goodly volume. It was fine weather, and fishing on the Thames is lazy fishing; for the gudgeons bite freely, and there is little labor in "landing" them. It is therefore the perfection of the _dolce far-niente_, giving leisure for talk, and frequent desire for refreshment. Idle time _is_ idly spent; but the wit and fun of Mr. Hook that day might have delighted a hundred by-sitters, and it was a grief to me that I was the only listener. Hook then conceived--probably then made--the verses he afterwards gave the "New Monthly," entitled "The Swan at Ditton."

The last time I saw Hook was at Prior's Bank, Fulham, where his neighbors, Mr. Baylis and Mr. Whitmore, had given an "entertainment," the leading feature being an amateur play,--for which, by the way, I wrote the prologue. Hook was then in his decadence,--in broken health,--his animal spirits gone,--the cup of life drained to the dregs. It was morning before the guests departed, yet Hook remained to the last; and a light of other days brightened up his features, as he opened the piano, and began a recitative. The theme was, of course, the occasion that had brought the party together, and perhaps he never, in his best time, was more original and pointed. I can recall two of the lines,--

"They may boast of their Fulham omnibus, But _this_ is the Fulham stage."

There was a fair young boy standing by his side, while he was singing. One of the servants suddenly opened the drawing-room shutters, and a flood of light felt upon the lad's head: the effect was very touching, but it became a thousand times more so, as Hook, availing himself of the incident, placed his hand upon the youth's brow, and in tremulous tones uttered a verse, of which I recall only the concluding lines,--

"For _you_ is the dawn of the morning. For _me_ is the solemn good-night."

He rose from the piano, burst into tears, and left the room. Few of those who were present saw him afterwards.[C]

All the evening Hook had been low in spirits. It seemed impossible to stir him into animation, until the cause was guessed at by Mr. Blood, a surgeon, who was at that time an actor at the Haymarket. He prescribed a glass of Sherry, and retired to procure it, returning presently with a bottle of pale brandy. Having administered two or three doses, the machinery was wound up, and the result was as I have described it.

I give one more instance of his ready wit and rapid power of rhyme. He had been idle for a fortnight, and had written nothing for the "John Bull" newspaper. The clerk, however, took him his salary as usual, and on entering his room said, "Have you heard the news? the king and queen of the Sandwich Islands are dead," (they had just died in England of the small-pox.) "and," added the clerk, "we want something about them."--"Instantly," cried Hook, "you shall have it:--

"'Waiter, two Sandwiches,' cried Death. And their wild Majesties resigned their breath."

The "John Bull" was established at the close of the year 1820, and it is said that Sir Walter Scott, having been consulted by some leader among "high Tories," suggested Hook as the person precisely suited for the required task. The avowed purpose of the publication was to extinguish the party of the Queen,--Caroline, wife of George IV.; and in a reckless and frightful spirit the work was done. She died, however, in 1821, and persecution was arrested at her grave. Its projectors and proprietors had counted on a weekly sale of seven hundred and fifty copies, and prepared accordingly. By the sixth week it had reached a sale of ten thousand, and became a valuable property to "all concerned." Of course, there were many prosecutions for libels, damages and costs and incarceration for breaches of privilege; but all search for actual delinquents was vain. Suspicions were rife enough, but positive proofs there were none.

Hook was of course In no way implicated in so scandalous and slanderous a publication! On one occasion there appeared among the answers to correspondents a paragraph purporting to be a reply from Mr. Theodore Hook, "disavowing all connection with the paper." The gist of the paragraph was this:--"Two things surprise us in this business: the first, that anything we have thought worthy of giving to the public should have been mistaken for Mr. Hook's; and secondly, that _such a person as Mr. Hook_ should think himself disgraced by a connection with 'John Bull.'"

Even now, at this distance of time, few of the contributors are actually known; among them were undoubtedly John Wilson Croker, and avowedly Haynes Bayly, Barham, and Dr. Maginn.

In 1836, when I had resigned the "New Monthly" into the hands of Mr. Hook, he proposed to me to take the sub-editorship and general literary management of the "John Bull." That post I undertook, retaining it for a year. Our "business" was carried on, not at the "John Bull" office, but at Easty's Hotel, in Southampton Street, Strand, in two rooms on the first floor of that tavern. Mr. Hook was never seen at the office; his existence, indeed, was not recognized there. If any one had asked for him by name, the answer would have been that no such person was known. Although at the period of which I write there was no danger to be apprehended from his walking in and out of the small office in Fleet Street, a time had been when it could not have been done without personal peril. Editorial work was therefore conducted with much secrecy, a confidential person communicating between the editor and the printer, who never knew, or rather was assumed not to know, by whom the articles were written. In 1836, some years before, and during the years afterwards, no paragraph was inserted that in the remotest degree assailed private character. Political hatreds and personal hostilities had grown less in vogue, and Hook had lived long enough to be tired of assailing those whom he rather liked and respected. The bitterness of his nature (if it ever existed, which I much doubt) had worn out with years. Undoubtedly much of the brilliant wit of the "John Bull" had evaporated, in losing its distinctive feature. It had lost its power, and as a "property" dwindled to comparative insignificance. Mr. Hook derived but small income from the editorship during the later years of his life. I will believe that higher and more honorable motives than those by which he had been guided during the fierce and turbulent party-times, when the "John Bull" was established, had led him to relinquish scandal, slander, and vituperation, as dishonorable weapons. I know that in my time he did not use them; his advice to me, on more than one occasion, while acting under him, was to remember that "abuse" seldom effectually answered a purpose, and that it was wiser as well as safer to act on the principle that "praise undeserved is satire in disguise." All that was evil in the "John Bull" had been absorbed by two infamous weekly newspapers, "The Age" and "The Satirist." They were prosperous and profitable. Happily, no such newspapers now exist; the public not only would not buy, they would not tolerate, the personalities, the indecencies, the gross outrages on public men, the scandalous assaults on private character, that made these publications "good speculations" at the period of which I write, and undoubtedly disgraced the "John Bull" during the early part of its career.

No wonder, therefore, that no such person as Mr. Theodore Hook was connected with the "John Bull." He invariably denied all such connection, and perseveringly protested against the charge that he had ever written a line in it. I have heard it said, that, during the troublous period of the Queen's trial, Sir Robert Wilson met Hook in the street, and said, in a sort of confidential whisper,--"Hook, I am to be traduced and slandered in the 'John Bull' next Sunday." Hook, of course, expressed astonishment and abhorrence. "Yes," continued Wilson, "and if I am, I mean to horsewhip _you_ the first time you come in my way. Now stop; I know you have nothing to do with that newspaper,--you have told me so a score of times; nevertheless, if the article, which is purely of a private nature, appears, let the consequences be what they may, I will horsewhip _you_!" The article never did appear. I can give no authority for this anecdote, but I do not doubt its truth.

I knew Sir Robert Wilson in 1823, and was employed by him to copy and arrange a series of confidential documents, relative to the Spanish war of independence, between the Cortes and the Government, the result of which was an engagement to act as his private secretary, and to receive a commission in the Spanish service, in the event of Sir Robert's taking a command in Spain. He went to Spain, leaving me as secretary to the fund raised in that year in England to assist the cause. Fortunately for me, British aid began and ended with these subscriptions; no force was raised. Sir Robert returned without taking service in Spain, and I was saved from the peril of becoming a soldier. Sir Robert was a tall, slight man, of wiry form and strong constitution, handsome both in person and features, with the singularly soldier-like air that we read so much of in books. In those days of fervid and hopeful youth, the story of Sir Robert's chivalric and successful efforts to save the life of Lavalette naturally touched my heart, and if I had remained in his service, he would have had no more devoted follower. During my engagement as Secretary to the Spanish Committee, (leading members of which were John Cam Hobhouse, Joseph Hume, and John Bowring,) I contributed articles to the "British Press,"--a daily newspaper, long since deceased,--and this led to my becoming a Parliamentary reporter.

I apologize for so much concerning myself,--a subject on which I desire to say as little as possible,--but in this "Memory" it is more a necessity to do so than it will be hereafter.

I have another story to tell of these editorial times. One day a gentleman entered the "John Bull" office, evidently in a state of extreme exasperation, armed with a stout cudgel. His application to see the editor was answered by a request to walk up to the second-floor front room. The room was empty; but presently there entered to him a huge, tall, broad-shouldered fellow, who, in unmitigated brogue, asked,--

"What do you plase to want, Sir?"

"Want!" said the gentleman,--"I want the editor."

"I'm the idditur, Sir, at your sarvice."

Upon which the gentleman, seeing that no good could arise from an encounter with such an "editor," made his way down stairs and out of the house without a word.

In 1836 Mr. Hook succeeded me in the editorship of the "New Monthly Magazine." The change arose thus. When Mr. Colburn and Mr. Bentley had dissolved partnership, and each had his own establishment, much jealousy, approaching hostility, existed between them. Mr. Bentley had announced a comic miscellany,--or rather, a magazine of which humor was to be the leading feature. Mr. Colburn immediately conceived the idea of a rival in that line, and applied to Hook to be its editor. Hook readily complied. The terms of four hundred pounds per annum having been settled, as usual he required payment in advance, and "then and there" received bills for his first year's salary. Not long afterwards Mr. Colburn saw the impolicy of his scheme. I had strongly reasoned against it,--representing to him that the "New Monthly" would lose its most valuable contributor, Mr. Hook, and other useful allies with him,--that the ruin of the "New Monthly" must be looked upon as certain, while the success of his "Joker's Magazine" was problematical at best. Such arguments prevailed; and he called upon Mr. Hook with a view to relinquish his design. Mr. Hook was exactly of Mr. Colburn's new opinion. He had received the money, and was not disposed, even if he had been able, to give it back, but suggested his becoming editor of the "New Monthly," and in that way working it out. The project met the views of Mr. Colburn; and so it was arranged.

But when the plan was communicated to me, I declined to be placed in the position of sub-editor. I knew, that, however valuable Mr. Hook might be as a large contributor, he was utterly unfitted to discharge editorial duties, and that, as sub-editor, I could have no power to do aught but obey the orders of my superior, while, as co-editor, I could both suggest and object, as regarded articles and contributors. This view was the view of Mr. Colburn, but not that of Mr. Hook. The consequence was that I retired. As to the conduct of the "New Monthly" in the hands of Mr. Hook, until it came into those of Mr. Hood, and, not long afterwards, was sold by Mr. Colburn to Mr. Harrison Ainsworth, it is not requisite to speak.

A word here of Mr. Colburn. I cherish the kindliest memory of that eminent bibliopole. He has been charged with many mean acts as regards authors; but I know that he was often liberal, and always considerate towards them. He could be implacable, but also forgiving; and it was ever easy to move his heart by a tale of sorrow or a case of distress. For more than a quarter of a century he led the general literature of the kingdom; and I believe his sins of omission and commission were very few. Such is my impression, resulting from six years' continual intercourse with him. He was a little, sprightly man, of mild and kindly countenance, and of much bodily activity. His peculiarity was, that he rarely or never finished a sentence, appearing as if he considered it hazardous to express fully what he thought. Consequently one could seldom understand what was his real opinion upon any subject he debated or discussed. His debate was always a "possibly" or "perhaps"; his discussion invariably led to no conclusion for or against the matter in hand.

It was during my editorship of the "New Monthly" that the best of all Hook's works, "Gilbert Gurney," was published in that magazine. The part for the ensuing number was rarely ready until the last moment, and more than once at so late a period of the month, that, unless in the printer's hands next morning, its publication would have been impossible. I have driven to Fulham to find not a line of the article written; and I have waited, sometimes nearly all night, until the manuscript was produced. Now and then he would relate to me one of the raciest of the anecdotes before he penned it down,--sometimes as the raw statement of a fact before it had received its habiliments of fiction, but more often as even a more brilliant story than the reader found it on the first of the month.[D]

Hook was in the habit of sending pen-and-ink sketches of himself in his letters. I have one of especial interest, in which he represented himself down upon knees, with handkerchief to eyes. The meaning was to indicate his grief at being late with his promised article for the "New Monthly," and his begging pardon thereupon. He had great facility for taking off likenesses, and it is said was once suspected of being the "H. B." whose lithographic drawings of eminent or remarkable persons startled society a few years ago by their rare graphic power and their striking resemblance,--barely bordering on caricature.

Here is Hook's contribution to Mrs. Hall's album:--

"Having been requested to do that which I never did in my life before,--write two charades upon two given and by no means sublime words,--here are they. It is right to say that they are to be taken with reference to each other.

"My first is in triumphs most usually found; Old houses and trees show my second; My whole is long, spiral, red, tufted, and round, And with beef is most excellent reckoned.

My first for age hath great repute; My second is a tailor; My whole is like the other root,-- Only a _little_ paler.

"THEODORE E. HOOK.

"September 4, 1835.

"Do you give them up?

"_Car-rot._ _Par-snip._"

The reader will permit me here to introduce some memories of the immediate contemporaries and allies of Hook, whose names are, indeed, continually associated with his, and who, on the principle of "'birds of a feather," may be properly considered in association with this master-spirit of them all.

The Reverend Mr. Barham, whose notes supplied material for the "Memoirs of Hook," edited by his son, and whose "Ingoldsby Legends" are famous, was a stout, squat, and "hearty-looking" parson of the old school. His face was full of humor, although when quiescent it seemed dull and heavy; his eyes were singularly small and inexpressive, whether from their own color or the light tint of the lashes I cannot say, but they seemed to me to be what are called white eyes. I do not believe that in society he had much of the sparkle that characterized his friend, or that might have been expected in so formidable a wit of the pen. Sam Beazley, on the contrary, was a light, airy, graceful person, who had much refinement, without that peculiar manner which bespeaks the well-bred gentleman. He was the Daly of "Gilbert Gurney," whose epitaph was written by Hook long before his death,--

"Here lies Sam Beazeley, Who lived and died easily."[E]

When I knew him, he was practising as an architect in Soho Square. He was one of Hook's early friends, but I believe they were not in close intimacy for many years previous to the death of Hook. It was by Beazley that the present Lyceum Theatre was built.

Tom Hill was another of Hook's more familiar associates. He is the Hull of "Gilbert Gurney," and is said to have been the original of Paul Pry, (which Poole, however, strenuously denied,)--a belief easily entertained by those who knew the man. A little, round man he was, with straight and well-made-up figure, and rosy cheeks that might have graced a milkmaid, when his years numbered certainly fourscore.[F] But his age no one ever knew. The story is well known of James Smith asserting that it never could be ascertained, for that the register of his birth was lost in the fire of London, and Hook's comment,--"Oh, he's much older than that: he's one of the little Hills that skipped in the Bible." He was a merry man, _toujours gai_, who seemed as if neither trouble nor anxiety had ever crossed his threshold or broken the sleep of a single night of his long life. His peculiar faculty was to find out what everybody did, from the minister of state to the stable-boy; and there are tales enough told of his chats with child-maids in the Park, to ascertain the amounts of their wages, and with lounging footmen in Grosvenor Square, to learn how many guests had dined at a house the day previous. His curiosity seemed bent upon prying into small things; for secrets that involved serious matters he appeared to care nothing. "Pooh, pooh, Sir, don't tell me; I happen to know!" That phrase was continually coming from his lips.

Of a far higher and better order was Hook's friend, Mr. Brodrick,--so long one of the police magistrates,--a gentleman of large acquirements and sterling rectitude. Nearly as much may be said of Dubois, more than half a century ago the editor of a then popular magazine, "The Monthly Mirror." Dubois, in his latter days, enjoyed a snug sinecure, and lived in Sloane Street. He was a pleasant man in face and in manners, and retained to the last much of the humor that characterized the productions of his earlier years. To the admirable actor and estimable gentleman, Charles Mathews, I can merely allude. His memory has received full honor and homage from his wife; but there are few who knew him who will hesitate to indorse her testimony to his many excellences of head and heart.

Among leading contributors to the "New Monthly," both before and after the advent of Mr. Hook, was John Poole, the author of "Little Pedlington," "Paul Pry," and many other pleasant works, not witty, but full of true humor. He was, when in his prime, a pleasant companion, though nervously sensitive, and, like most professional jokers, exceedingly irritable whenever a joke was made to tell against himself. It is among my memories, that, during the first month of my editorship of the "New Monthly," I took from a mass of submitted manuscripts one written in a small, neat hand, entitled "A New Guide-Book." I had read it nearly half through, and was about to fling it with contempt among "the rejected" before I discovered its point. I had perused it so far as an attempt to describe an actual watering-place, and to bring it into notoriety. When, however, I did discover the real purpose of the writer, my delight was large in proportion. The manuscript was the first part of "Little Pedlington," which subsequently grew into a book.

It is, and was at the time, generally believed that Tom Hill suggested the character of Paul Pry. Poole never would admit this. In a sort of rambling autobiography which he wrote to accompany his portrait in the "New Monthly," he thus gives the origin of the play.

"The idea of the character of Paul Pry was suggested to me by the following anecdote, related to me several years ago by a beloved friend. An idle old lady, living in a narrow street, had passed so much of her time in watching the affairs of her neighbors, that she at length acquired the power of distinguishing the sound of every knocker within hearing. It happened that she fell ill and was for several days confined to her bed. Unable to observe in person what was going on without, she stationed her maid at the window, as a substitute, for the performance of that duty. But Betty soon grew weary of that occupation; she became careless in her reports, impatient and tetchy when reprimanded for her negligence.

"'Betty, what _are_ you thinking about? Don't you hear a double knock at No. 9? Who is it?'

"'The first-floor lodger, Ma'am.'

"'Betty, Betty, I declare I must give you warning. Why don't you tell me what that knock is at No. 54?'

"'Why, lor, it's only the baker with pies.'

"'Pies, Betty? What _can_ they want with pies at 54? They had pies yesterday!'"

Poole had the happy knack of turning every trifling incident to valuable account. I remember his telling me an anecdote in illustration of this faculty. I believe he never printed it. Being at Brighton one day, he strolled into an hotel to get an early dinner, took his seat at a table, and was discussing his chop and ale, when another guest entered, took his stand by the fire, and began whistling. After a minute or two,--

"Fine day, Sir," said he.

"Very fine," answered Poole.

"Business pretty brisk?"

"I believe so."

"Do anything with Jones on the Parade?"

"Now," said Poole, "it so happened that Jones was the grocer from whom I occasionally bought a quarter of a pound of tea; so I answered,--

"'A little.'

"'Good man, Sir,' quoth the stranger.

"'Glad to hear it, Sir.'

"'Do anything with Thomson in King Street?'

"'No, Sir.'

"'Shaky, Sir.'

"'Sorry to hear it, Sir; recommend Mahomet's baths!'

"'Anything with Smith in James Street?'

"'Nothing,--I have heard the name of Smith before, certainly; but of this particular Smith I know nothing.'"

The stranger looked at Poole earnestly, advanced to the table, and with his arms a-kimbo said,--

"By Jove, Sir, I begin to think you are a gentleman!"

"I hope so, Sir," answered Poole; "and I hope you are the same!"

"Nothing of the kind," said the stranger; "and if you are a gentleman, what business have you here?"

Upon which he rang the bell, and, as the waiter entered, indignantly exclaimed,--

"That's a gentleman,--turn him out!"

Poole had unluckily entered and taken his seat in the commercial room of the hotel!

All who knew Poole know that he was ever full of himself,--believing his renown to be the common talk of the world. A whimsical illustration of this weakness was lately told me by a mutual friend. When at Paris recently, he chanced to say to Poole, "Of course you are full of all the theatres."--"No, Sir, I am not," he answered, solemnly and indignantly. "Will you believe _this_? I went to the Opéra Comique, told the Director I wished a free admission; he asked me who I was; I said, 'John Poole.' Sir, I ask you, will you believe _this_? He said, _he didn't know me_!"

The Queen gave him a nomination to the Charter-House, where his age might have been passed in ease, respectability, comfort, and competence; but it was impossible for one so restless to bear the wholesome and necessary restraint of that institution. He came to me one day, boiling over with indignation, having resolved to quit its quiet cloisters, his principal ground for complaint being that he must dine at two o'clock and be within walls by ten. He resigned the appointment, but subsequently obtained one of the Crown pensions, took up his final abode in Paris, where, during the last ten years of his life, he lived, if that can be called "life" which consisted of one scarcely ever interrupted course of self-sacrifice to _eau-de-vie_. His mind was of late entirely gone. I met him in 1861, in the Rue St. Honoré, and he did not recognize me, a circumstance I could scarcely regret.

I am not aware of any details concerning his death. When I last inquired concerning him, all I could learn was that he had gone to live at Boulogne,--that two quarters had passed without any application from him for his pension,--and that therefore, of course, he was dead. His death, however, was a loss to none, and I believe not a grief to any.

He was a tall, handsome man, by no means "jolly," like some of his contemporary wits,--rather, I should say, inclined to be taciturn; and I do not think his habits of drinking were excited by the stimulants of society.[G] Little, I believe, is known of his life, even to the actors and playwrights, with whom he chiefly associated, from the time when his burlesque of "Hamlet Travestie" (printed in 1810) commenced his career of celebrity, if not of fame, to his death, (in the year 1862, I believe,) being then probably about seventy years old.

I knew Dr. Maginn when he was a schoolmaster in Cork. He had even then established a high reputation for scholastic knowledge, and attained some eminence as a wit; and about the year 1820 astounded "the beautiful city" by poetical contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," in which certain of its literary citizens were somewhat scurrilously assailed. I was one of them. There were two parties, who had each their "society." Maginn and a surgeon named Gosnell were the leaders of one: they were, for the most part, wild and reckless men of talent. The other society was conducted by the more sedate and studious. Gosnell wrote the _ottava rima_ entitled "Daniel O'Rourke," which passed through three or four numbers of "Blackwood": he died not long afterwards in London, one of the many unhappy victims of misgoverned passions.

Maginn was also one of the earlier contributors to the "Literary Gazette," and Jerdan has recorded with what delight he used to open a packet directed in the well-known hand, with the post-mark Cork. The Doctor, it is said, was invited to London in order to share with Hook the labors of the "John Bull." I believe, however, he was but a very limited help. Perhaps the old adage, "Two of a trade," applied in this case; certain it is that he subsequently found a more appreciative paymaster in Westmacott, who conducted "The Age," a newspaper then greatly patronized, but, as I have said, one that now would be universally branded with the term "infamous."

It is known also that he became a leading contributor to "Fraser's Magazine,"--a magazine that took its name less from its publisher, Fraser, than from its first editor, Fraser, a barrister, whose fate, I have understood, was as mournful as his career had been discreditable. The particulars of Maginn's duel with Grantley Berkeley are well known. It arose out of an article in "Fraser," reviewing Berkeley's novel, in the course of which he spoke in utterly unjustifiable terms of Berkeley's mother. Mr. Berkeley was not satisfied with inflicting on the publisher so severe a beating that it was the proximate cause of his death, but called out the Doctor, who manfully avowed the authorship. Each, it is understood, fired five shots, without further effect than that one ball struck the whisker of Mr. Berkeley and another the boot of Maginn, and when Fraser, who was Maginn's second, asked if there should be another shot, Maginn is reported to have said, "Blaze away, by ----! a barrel of powder!"

The career of Maginn in London was, to say the least, mournful. Few men ever started with better prospects; there was hardly any position in the state to which he might not have aspired. His learning was profound; his wit of the tongue and of the pen ready, pointed, caustic, and brilliant; his writings, essays, tales, poems, scholastic disquisitions, in short, his writings upon all conceivable topics, were of the very highest order; "O'Doherty" is one of the names that made "Blackwood" famous. His acquaintances, who would willingly have been his friends, were not only the men of genius of his time, but among them were several noblemen and statesmen of power as well as rank. In a word, he might have climbed to the highest round of the ladder, with helping hands all the way up: he stumbled at its base.

Maginn's reckless habits soon told upon his character, and almost as soon on his constitution. They may be illustrated by an anecdote related of him in Barham's Life of Hook. A friend, when dining with him, and praising his wine, asked where he got it. "At the tavern, close by," said the Doctor. "A very good cellar," said the guest; "but do you not pay rather an extravagant price for it?" "I don't know, I don't know," returned the Doctor; "I believe they do put down something in a book." And I have heard of Maginn a story similar to that told of Sheridan, that, once when he accepted a bill, he exclaimed to the astonished creditor, "Well, thank Heaven, _that_ debt is off my mind!"

It is notorious that Maginn wrote at the same time for the "Age," outrageously Tory, and for the "True Sun," a violently Radical paper. For many years he was editor of the "Standard." It was, however, less owing to his thorough want of principle than to his habits of intoxication that his position was low, when it ought to have been high,--that he was indigent, when he might have been rich,--that he lost self-respect, and the respect of all with whom he came in contact, except the few "kindred spirits" who relished the flow of wit, and little regarded the impure source whence it issued. The evil seemed incurable; it was indulged not only at noon and night, but in the morning. He was one of the eight editors engaged by Mr. Murray to edit the "Representative" during the eight months of its existence. I was a reporter on that paper of great promise and large hopes. One evening Maginn himself undertook to write a notice of a fancy-ball at the Opera-House in aid of the distressed weavers of Spitalfields. It was a grand affair, patronized by the royal family and a vast proportion of the aristocracy of England. Maginn went, of course inebriated, and returned worse. He contemplated the affair as if it had taken place among the thieves and demireps of Whitechapel, and so described it in the paper of the next morning. Well I remember the wrath and indignation of John Murray, and the universal disgust the article excited.

I may relate another anecdote to illustrate this sad characteristic. It was told to me by one of the Doctor's old pupils and most intimate and steady friends, Mr. Quinten Kennedy of Cork. A gentleman was anxious to secure Maginn's services for a contemplated literary undertaking of magnitude, and the Doctor was to dine with him to arrange the affair. Kennedy was resolved, that, at all events, he should go to the dinner sober, and so called upon him before he was up, never leaving him for a moment all day, and resolutely resisting every imploring appeal for a dram. The hour of six drew near, and they sallied out. On the way, Kennedy found it almost impossible, even by main force, to prevent the Doctor entering a public-house. Passing an undertaker's shop, the Doctor suddenly stopped, recollected he had a message there, and begged Kennedy to wait for a moment outside,--a request which was readily complied with, as it was thought there could be no possible danger in such a place. Maginn entered, with his handkerchief to his eyes, sobbing bitterly. The undertaker, recognizing a prospective customer, sought to subdue his grief with the usual words of consolation,--Maginn blubbering out, "Everything must be done in the best style, no expense must be spared,--she was worthy, and I can afford it." The undertaker, seeing such intense grief, presented a seat, and prescribed a little brandy. After proper resistance, both were accepted; a bottle was produced and emptied, glass after glass, with suggested "instructions" between whiles. At length the Doctor rose to join his wondering and impatient friend, who soon saw what had happened. He was, even before dinner, in such a state as to preclude all business-talk; and it is needless to add that the contemplated arrangement was never entered into.

He lived in wretchedness, and died in misery in 1842. His death took place at Walton-on-Thames, and in the churchyard of that village he is buried. Not long ago I visited the place, but no one could point out to me the precise spot of his interment. It is without a stone, without a mark, lost among the clay sepulchres of the throng who had no friends to inscribe a name or ask a memory.[H]

Maginn was rather under than above the middle size; his countenance was swarthy, and by no means genial in expression. He had a peculiar thickness of speech, not quite a stutter. Latterly, excesses told upon him, producing their usual effects: the quick intelligence of his face was lost; his features were sullied by unmistakable signs of an ever-degrading habit; he was old before his time.

He is another sad example to "warn and scare"; a life that might have produced so much yielded comparatively nothing; and although there have been several suggestions, from Lockhart and others, to collect his writings, they have never been gathered together from the periodical tombs in which they lie buried, and now, probably, they cannot be all recognized.

* * * * *

From what I have written, the reader will gather that I knew Hook only in his decline, the relic of a manly form, the decadence of a strong mind, and the comparative exhaustion of a brilliant wit. Leigh Hunt, speaking of him at a much earlier period, thus writes:--"He was tall, dark, and of a good person, with small eyes, and features more round than weak: a face that had character and humor, but no refinement." And Mrs. Mathews describes him as with sparkling eyes and expressive features, of manly form, and somewhat of a dandy in dress. When in the prime of manhood and the zenith of fame, Mr. Barham says, "He was not the tuft-hunter, but the tuft-hunted"; and it is easy to believe that one so full of wit, so redolent of fun, so rich in animal spirits, must have been a marvellously coveted acquaintance in the society where he was so eminently qualified to shine: from that of royalty to the major and minor clubs,--from "The Eccentrics" to "The Garrick," of which he was all his life long a cherished member.

In 1825, when I first saw him, he was above the middle height, robust of frame, and broad of chest, well-proportioned, with evidence of great physical capacity. His complexion was dark, as were his eyes; there was nothing fine or elevated in his expression; indeed, his features, when in repose, were heavy; it was otherwise when animated; yet his manners were those of a gentleman, less perhaps from inherent faculty than from the polish which refined society ever gives.

He is described as a man of "iron energies," and certainly must have had an iron constitution; for his was a life of perpetual stimulants, intellectual as well as physical.

When I saw him last,--it was not long before his death,--he was aged, more by care than time; his face bore evidence of what is falsely termed "a gay life"; his voice had lost its roundness and force, his form its buoyancy, his intellect its strength,--

"Alas! how changed from him, That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!"

Yet his wit was ready still; he continued to sparkle humor even when exhausted nature failed; and his last words are said to have been a brilliant jest.

At length the iron frame wore down. He was haunted by pecuniary difficulties, yet compelled to daily work, not only for himself, but for a family of children by a person to whom he was not married. He then lived almost entirely on brandy, and became incapable of digesting animal food.

Well may his friend Lockhart say, "He came forth, _at best_, from a long day of labor at his writing-desk, after his faculties had been at the stretch,--feeling, passion, thought, fancy, excitable nerves, suicidal brain, all worked, perhaps wellnigh exhausted."

And thus, "at best," while "seated among the revellers of a princely saloon," sometimes losing at cards among his great "friends" more money than he could earn in a month, his thoughts were laboring to devise some mode of postponing a debt only from one week to another. Well might he have compared, as he did, his position to that of an alderman who was required to relish his turtle-soup while forced to eat it sitting on a tight rope!

The last time he went out to dinner was with Colonel Shadwell Clarke, at Brompton Grove. While in the drawing-room he suddenly turned to the mirror and said, "Ay! I see I look as I am,--done up in purse, in mind, and in body, too, at last!"

He died on the 24th of August, 1841.

Yes, when I knew most of him, he was approaching the close, not of a long, but of a "fast" life; he had ill used Time, and Time was not in his debt! He was tall and stout, yet not healthfully stout; with a round face which told too much of jovial nights and wasted days,--of toil when the head aches and the hand shakes,--of the absence of self-respect,--of mornings of ignoble rest to gather strength for evenings of useless energy,--of, in short, a mind and constitution vigorous and powerful: both had been sadly and grievously misapplied and misused.

No writer concerning Hook can claim for him an atom of respect. His history is but a record of written or spoken or practical jokes that made no one wiser or better; his career "points a moral" indeed, but it is by showing the wisdom of virtue. In the end, his friends, so called, were ashamed openly to give him help,--and although bailiffs did not, as in the case of Sheridan,

"Seize his last blanket,"

his death-bed was haunted by apprehensions of arrest; and it was a relief, rather than a loss to society, when a few comparatively humble mourners laid him in a corner of Fulham churchyard.

Alas! let not those who read the records of many distinguished, nay, many illustrious lives, imagine, that, because men of genius have too often cherished the perilous habit of seeking consolation or inspiration from what it is a libel on Nature to call "the social glass," it is therefore reasonable or excusable, or can ever be innocuous. Talfourd may gloss it over in Lamb, as averting a vision terrible; Seattle may deplore it in Campbell, as having become a dismal necessity; the biographer of Hook may lightly look upon the curse as the springhead of his perpetual wit. I will not continue the list,--it is frightfully long. Hook is but one of many men of rare intellect, large mental powers, with faculties designed and calculated to benefit mankind, who have sacrificed character, life, I had almost said SOUL, to habits which are wrongly and wickedly called pleasures,--the pleasures of the table. Many, indeed, are they who have thus made for themselves miserable destinies, useless or pernicious lives, and unhonored or dishonorable graves. I will add the warning of Wordsworth, when addressing the sons of Burns:--

"But ne'er to a seductive lay Let faith be given, Nor deem the light that leads astray Is light from heaven."

FOOTNOTES:

[B] In "Gilbert Gurney," Hook makes Daly say, "I am the man; I did it; for originality of thought and design, I _do_ think that was perfect."

[C] Mr. Barham has a confused account of this incident. He was not present on the occasion, as I was, standing close by the piano when it occurred.

[D] His biographer does not seem aware that for several months before he became editor of the "New Monthly" he wrote the "Monthly Commentary" for that magazine,--a pleasant, piquant, and sometimes severe series of comments on the leading topics or events of the month.

[E] Mr. Peake, the dramatist, who wrote most of the "Mathews at Home," attributes this epitaph to John Hardwicke. Lockhart gives it to Hook. Hook pictures Beazley in "Gilbert Gurney":--"His conversation was full of droll conceits, mixed with a considerable degree of superior talent, and the strongest evidence of general acquirements and accomplishments."

[F] "He was plump, short, with an intelligent countenance, and near-sighted, with, a constitution and complexion fresh enough to look forty, when _I_ believed him to be at least four times that age."--_Gilbert Gurney._

[G] He played a practical joke upon the actors of the Brighton Theatre, who were defective of a letter in their dialogue, by sending to them a packet, containing, on cards of various sizes, the letter H.

[H] While on his death-bed, Sir Robert Peel sent him a sum of money, probably not the first. It arrived in time to pay his funeral expenses. In September, 1842, a subscription was made for the widow and children of Dr. Maginn,--Dr. Giffard (then editor of the "Standard") and Lockhart being trustees in England, the Bishop of Cork and the Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, in Ireland, and Professor Wilson in Scotland. The card that was issued said truly,--"No one ever listened to Maginn's conversation, or perused even the hastiest of his minor writings, without feeling the interest of very extraordinary talent; his classical learning was profound and accurate; his mastery of modern languages almost unrivalled; his knowledge of mankind and their affairs great and multifarious"; but it did not state truly, that, "in all his essays, verse or prose, serious or comic, he never trespassed against decorum or sound morals," or that "the keenness of his wit was combined with such playfulness of fancy, good-humor, and kindness of natural sentiment, that his merits were ungrudgingly acknowledged even by those of politics most different from his own."

THE CHIMNEY-CORNER.

IV.

LITTLE FOXES.--PART III.

Being the true copy of a paper read in my library to my wife and Jennie.

REPRESSION.

I am going now to write on another cause of family unhappiness, more subtile than either of those before enumerated.

In the General Confession of the Church, we poor mortals all unite in saying two things: "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done." These two heads exhaust the subject of human frailty.

It is the things left undone which we ought to have done, the things left unsaid which we ought to have said, that constitute the subject I am now to treat of.

I remember my school-day speculations over an old "Chemistry" I used to study as a text-book, which informed me that a substance called Caloric exists in all bodies. In some it exists in a latent state: it is there, but it affects neither the senses nor the thermometer. Certain causes develop it, when it raises the mercury and warms the hands. I remember the awe and wonder with which, even then, I reflected on the vast amount of blind, deaf, and dumb comforts which Nature had thus stowed away. How mysterious it seemed to me that poor families every winter should be shivering, freezing, and catching cold, when Nature had all this latent caloric locked up in her store-closet,--when it was all around them, in everything they touched and handled!

In the spiritual world there is an exact analogy to this. There is a great life-giving, warming power called Love, which exists in human hearts dumb and unseen, but which has no real life, no warming power, till set free by expression.

Did you ever, in a raw, chilly day, just before a snow-storm, sit at work in a room that was judiciously warmed by an exact thermometer? You do not freeze, but you shiver; your fingers do not become numb with cold, but you have all the while an uneasy craving for more positive warmth. You look at the empty grate, walk mechanically towards it, and, suddenly awaking, shiver to see that there is nothing there. You long for a shawl or cloak; you draw yourself within yourself; you consult the thermometer, and are vexed to find that there is nothing there to be complained of,--it is standing most provokingly at the exact temperature that all the good books and good doctors pronounce to be the proper thing,--the golden mean of health; and yet perversely you shiver, and feel as if the face of an open fire would be to you as the smile of an angel.

Such a lifelong chill, such an habitual shiver, is the lot of many natures, which are not warm, when all ordinary rules tell them they ought to be warm,--whose life is cold and barren and meagre,--which never see the blaze of an open fire.

I will illustrate my meaning by a page out of my own experience.

I was twenty-one when I stood as groomsman for my youngest and favorite sister Emily. I remember her now as she stood at the altar,--a pale, sweet, flowery face, in a half-shimmer between smiles and tears, looking out of vapory clouds of gauze and curls and all the vanishing mysteries of a bridal morning.

Everybody thought the marriage such a fortunate one!--for her husband was handsome and manly, a man of worth, of principle good as gold and solid as adamant,--and Emmy had always been such a flossy little kitten of a pet, so full of all sorts of impulses, so sensitive and nervous, we thought her kind, strong, composed, stately husband made just on purpose for her. "It was quite a Providence," sighed all the elderly ladies, who sniffed tenderly, and wiped their eyes, according to approved custom, during the marriage ceremony.

I remember now the bustle of the day,--the confused whirl of white gloves, kisses, bridemaids, and bridecakes, the losing of trunk-keys and breaking of lacings, the tears of mamma--God bless her!--and the jokes of irreverent Christopher, who could, for the life of him, see nothing so very dismal in the whole phantasmagoria, and only wished he were as well off himself.

And so Emmy was wheeled away from us on the bridal tour, when her letters came back to us almost every day, just like herself, merry, frisky little bits of scratches,--as full of little nonsense-beads as a glass of Champagne, and all ending with telling us how perfect he was, and how good, and how well he took care of her, and how happy, etc., etc.

Then came letters from her new home. His house was not yet built; but while it was building, they were to live with his mother, who was "such a good woman," and his sisters, who were also "such nice women."

But somehow, after this, a change came over Emmy's letters. They grew shorter; they seemed measured in their words; and in place of sparkling nonsense and bubbling outbursts of glee, came anxiously worded praises of her situation and surroundings, evidently written for the sake of arguing herself into the belief that she was extremely happy.

John, of course, was not as much with her now: he had his business to attend to, which took him away all day, and at night he was very tired. Still he was very good and thoughtful of her, and how thankful she ought to be! And his mother was very good indeed, and did all for her that she could reasonably expect,--of course she could not be like her own mamma; and Mary and Jane were very kind,--"in their way," she wrote, but scratched it out, and wrote over it, "very kind indeed." They were the best people in the world,--a great deal better than she was; and she should try to learn a great deal from them.

"Poor little Em!" I said to myself, "I am afraid these very nice people are slowly freezing and starving her." And so, as I was going up into the mountains for a summer tour, I thought I would accept some of John's many invitations and stop a day or two with them on my way, and see how matters stood. John had been known among us in college as a taciturn fellow, but good as gold. I had gained his friendship by a regular siege, carrying parallel after parallel, till, when I came into the fort at last, I found the treasures worth taking.

I had little difficulty in finding Squire Evan's house. It was _the_ house of the village,--a true, model, New England house,--a square, roomy, old-fashioned mansion, which stood on a hillside under a group of great, breezy old elms, whose wide, wind-swung arms arched over it like a leafy firmament. Under this bower the substantial white house, with all its window-blinds closed, with its neat white fences all tight and trim, stood in its faultless green turfy yard, a perfect Pharisee among houses. It looked like a house all finished, done, completed, labelled, and set on a shelf for preservation; but, as is usual with this kind of edifice in our dear New England, it had not the slightest appearance of being lived in, not a door or window open, not a wink or blink of life: the only suspicion of human habitation was the thin, pale-blue smoke from the kitchen-chimney.

And now for the people in the house.

In making a New England visit in winter, was it ever your fortune to be put to sleep in the glacial spare-chamber, that had been kept from time immemorial as a refrigerator for guests,--that room which no ray of daily sunshine and daily living ever warms, whose blinds are closed the whole year round, whose fireplace knows only the complimentary blaze which is kindled a few moments before bed-time in an atmosphere where you can see your breath? Do you remember the process of getting warm in a bed of most faultless material, with linen sheets and pillow-cases, slippery and cold as ice? You did get warm at last, but you warmed your bed by giving out all the heat of your own body.

Such are some families where you visit. They are of the very best quality, like your sheets, but so cold that it takes all the vitality you have to get them warmed up to the talking-point. You think, the first hour after your arrival, that they must have heard some report to your disadvantage, or that you misunderstood your letter of invitation, or that you came on the wrong day; but no, you find in due course that you _were_ invited, you were expected, and they were doing for you the best they know how, and treating you as they suppose a guest ought to be treated.

If you are a warm-hearted, jovial fellow, and go on feeling your way discreetly, you gradually thaw quite a little place round yourself in the domestic circle, till, by the time you are ready to leave, you really begin to think it is agreeable to stay, and resolve that you will come again. They are nice people; they like you; at last you have got to feeling at home with them.

Three months after, you go to see them again, when, lo! there you are, back again just where you were at first. The little spot which you had thawed out is frozen over again, and again you spend all your visit in thawing it and getting your hosts limbered and in a state for comfortable converse.

The first evening that I spent in the wide, roomy front-parlor, with Judge Evans, his wife, and daughters, fully accounted for the change in Emmy's letters. Rooms, I verily believe, get saturated with the aroma of their spiritual atmosphere; and there are some so stately, so correct, that they would paralyze even the friskiest kitten or the most impudent Scotch terrier. At a glance, you perceive, on entering, that nothing but correct deportment, an erect posture, and strictly didactic conversation is possible there.

The family, in fact, were all eminently didactic, bent on improvement, laboriously useful. Not a good work or charitable enterprise could put forth its head in the neighborhood, of which they were not the support and life. Judge Evans was the stay and staff of the village and township of ----; he bore up the pillars thereof. Mrs. Evans was known in the gates for all the properties and deeds of the virtuous woman, as set forth by Solomon; the heart of her husband did safely trust in her. But when I saw them, that evening, sitting, in erect propriety, in their respective corners each side of the great, stately fireplace, with its tall, glistening brass andirons, its mantel adorned at either end with plated candlesticks, with the snuffer-tray in the middle,--she so collectedly measuring her words, talking in all those well-worn grooves of correct conversation which are designed, as the phrase goes, to "entertain strangers," and the Misses Evans, in the best of grammar and rhetoric, and in most proper time and way possible, showing themselves for what they were, most high-principled, well-informed, intelligent women,--I set myself to speculate on the cause of the extraordinary sensation of stiffness and restraint which pervaded me, as if I had been dipped in some petrifying spring and was beginning to feel myself slightly crusting over on the exterior.

This kind of conversation is such as admits quite easily of one's carrying on another course of thought within; and so, as I found myself like a machine, striking in now and then in good time and tune, I looked at Judge Evans, sitting there so serene, self-poised, and cold, and began to wonder if he had ever been a boy, a young man,--if Mrs. Evans ever was a girl,--if he was ever in love with her, and what he did when he was.

I thought of the lock of Emmy's hair which I had observed in John's writing-desk in days when he was falling in love with her,--of sundry little movements in which at awkward moments I had detected my grave and serious gentleman when I had stumbled accidentally upon the pair in moonlight strolls or retired corners,--and wondered whether the models of propriety before me had ever been convicted of any such human weaknesses. Now, to be sure, I could as soon imagine the stately tongs to walk up and kiss the shovel as conceive of any such bygone effusion in those dignified individuals. But how did they get acquainted? how came they ever to be married?

I looked at John, and thought I saw him gradually stiffening and subsiding into the very image of his father. As near as a young fellow of twenty-five can resemble an old one of sixty-two, he was growing to be exactly like him, with the same upright carriage, the same silence and reserve. Then I looked at Emmy: she, too, was changed,--she, the wild little pet, all of whose pretty individualities were dear to us,--that little unpunctuated scrap of life's poetry, full of little exceptions referable to no exact rule, only to be tolerated under the wide score of poetic license. Now, as she sat between the two Misses Evans, I thought I could detect a bored, anxious expression on her little mobile face,--an involuntary watchfulness and self-consciousness, as if she were trying to be good on some quite new pattern. She seemed nervous about some of my jokes, and her eye went apprehensively to her mother-in-law in the corner; she tried hard to laugh and make things go merrily for me; she seemed sometimes to look an apology for me to them, and then again for them to me. For myself, I felt that perverse inclination to shock people which sometimes comes over one in such situations. I had a great mind to draw Emmy on to my knee and commence a brotherly romp with her, to give John a thump on his very upright back, and to propose to one of the Misses Evans to strike up a waltz, and get the parlor into a general whirl, before the very face and eyes of propriety in the corner: but "the spirits" were too strong for me; I couldn't do it.

I remembered the innocent, saucy freedom with which Emmy used to treat her John in the days of their engagement,--the little ways, half loving, half mischievous, in which she alternately petted and domineered over him. _Now_ she called him "Mr. Evans," with an anxious affectation of matronly gravity. Had they been lecturing her into these conjugal proprieties? Probably not. I felt sure, by what I now experienced in myself, that, were I to live in that family one week, all such little deviations from the one accepted pattern of propriety would fall off, like many-colored sumach-leaves after the first hard frost. I began to feel myself slowly stiffening, my courage getting gently chilly. I tried to tell a story, but had to mangle it greatly, because I felt in the air around me that parts of it were too vernacular and emphatic; and then, as a man who is freezing makes desperate efforts to throw off the spell, and finds his brain beginning to turn, so I was beginning to be slightly insane, and was haunted with a desire to say some horribly improper or wicked thing which should start them all out of their chairs. Though never given to profane expressions, I perfectly hankered to let out a certain round, unvarnished, wicked word, which I knew would create a tremendous commotion on the surface of this enchanted mill pond,--in fact, I was so afraid that I should make some such mad demonstration, that I rose at an early hour and begged leave to retire. Emmy sprang up with apparent relief, and offered to get my candle and marshal me to my room.

When she had ushered me into the chilly hospitality of that stately apartment, she seemed suddenly disenchanted. She set down the candle, ran to me, fell on my neck, nestled her little head under my coat, laughing and crying, and calling me her dear old boy; she pulled my whiskers, pinched my ear, rummaged my pockets, danced round me in a sort of wild joy, stunning me with a volley of questions, without stopping to hear the answer to one of them; in short, the wild little elf of old days seemed suddenly to come back to me, as I sat down and drew her on to my knee.

"It does look so like home to see you, Chris!--dear, dear home!--and the dear old folks! There never, never was such a home!--everybody there did just what they wanted to, didn't they, Chris?--and we love each other, don't we?"

"Emmy," said I, suddenly, and very improperly, "you aren't happy here."

"Not happy?" she said, with a half-frightened look,--"what makes you say so? Oh, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should be very unreasonable and wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, I assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can't be like our folks at home. _That_ I should not expect, you know,--people's ways are different,--but then, when you know people are so good, and all that, why, of course you must be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to learn to control my feelings, you know, and not give way to impulses. They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings,--they always do right. Oh, they are quite wonderful!"

"And agreeable?" said I.

"Oh, Chris, we mustn't think so much of that. They certainly aren't pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they never scold, they always are good. And we oughtn't to think so much of living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our duty, don't you think so?"

"All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a ramrod, and their front-parlor is like a tomb. You mustn't let them petrify him."

Her face clouded over a little.

"John is different here from what he was at our house. He has been brought up differently,--oh, entirely differently from what we were; and when he comes back into the old house, the old business, and the old place between his father and mother and sisters, he goes back into the old ways. He loves me all the same, but he does not show it in the same ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it on trust. He is _very_ busy,--works hard all day, and all for me; and mother says women are unreasonable that ask any other proof of love from their husbands than what they give by working for them all the time. She never lectures me, but I know she thought I was a silly little petted child, and she told me one day how she brought up John. She never petted him; she put him away alone to sleep, from the time he was six months old; she never fed him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact obedience. I remember John's telling me of his running to her once and hugging her round the neck, when he had come in without wiping his shoes, and she took off his arms and said, 'My son, this isn't the best way to show love. I should be much better pleased to have you come in quietly and wipe your shoes than to come and kiss me when you forget to do what I say.'"

"Dreadful old jade!" said I, irreverently, being then only twenty-three.

"Now, Chris, I won't have anything to say to you, if this is the way you are going to talk," said Emily, pouting, though a mischievous gleam darted into her eyes. "Really, however, I think she carried things too far, though she is so good. I only said it to excuse John, and show how he was brought up."

"Poor fellow!" said I. "I know now why he is so hopelessly shut up, and walled up. Never a warmer heart than he keeps stowed away there inside of the fortress, with the drawbridge down and moat all round."

"They are all warm-hearted inside," said Emily. "Would you think she didn't love him? Once when he was sick, she watched with him seventeen nights without taking off her clothes; she scarcely would eat all the time: Jane told me so. She loves him better than she loves herself. It's perfectly dreadful sometimes to see how intense she is when anything concerns him; it's her _principle_ that makes her so cold and quiet."

"And a devilish one it is!" said I.

"Chris, you are really growing wicked!"

"I use the word seriously, and in good faith," said I. "Who but the Father of Evil ever devised such plans for making goodness hateful, and keeping the most heavenly part of our nature so under lock and key that for the greater part of our lives we get no use of it? Of what benefit is a mine of love burning where it warms nobody, does nothing but blister the soul within with its imprisoned heat? Love repressed grows morbid, acts in a thousand perverse ways. These three women, I'll venture to say, are living in the family here like three frozen islands, knowing as little of each other's inner life as if parted by eternal barriers of ice,--and all because a cursed principle in the heart of the mother has made her bring them up in violence to Nature."

"Well," said Emmy, "sometimes I do pity Jane; she is nearest my age, and, naturally, I think she was something like me, or might have been. The other day I remember her coming in looking so flushed and ill that I couldn't help asking if she were unwell. The tears came into her eyes; but her mother looked up, in her cool, business-like way, and said, in her dry voice,--

"'Jane, what's the matter?'

"'Oh, my head aches dreadfully, and I have pains in all my limbs!'

"I wanted to jump and run to do something for her,--you know at our house we feel that a sick person must be waited on,--but her mother only said, in the same dry way,--

"'Well, Jane, you've probably got a cold; go into the kitchen and make yourself some good boneset tea, soak your feet in hot water, and go to bed at once'; and Jane meekly departed.

"I wanted to spring and do these things for her; but it's curious, in this house I never dare offer to do anything; and mother looked at me, as she went out, with a significant nod,--

"'That's always _my_ way; if any of the children are sick, I never coddle them; it's best to teach them to make as light of it as possible.'"

"Dreadful!" said I.

"Yes, it is dreadful," said Emmy, drawing her breath, as if relieved that she might speak her mind; "it's dreadful to see these people, who I know love each other, living side by side and never saying a loving, tender word, never doing a little loving thing,--sick ones crawling off alone like sick animals, persisting in being alone, bearing everything alone. But I won't let them; I will insist on forcing my way into their rooms. I would go and sit with Jane, and pet her and hold her hand and bathe her head, though I knew it made her horridly uncomfortable at first; but I thought she ought to learn to be petted in a Christian way, when she was sick. I will kiss her, too, sometimes, though she takes it just like a cat that isn't used to being stroked, and calls me a silly girl; but I know she is getting to like it. What is the use of people's loving each other in this horridly cold, stingy, silent way? If one of them were dangerously ill now, or met with any serious accident, I know there would be no end to what the others would do for her; if one of them were to die, the others would be perfectly crushed: but it would all go inward,--drop silently down into that dark, cold, frozen well; they couldn't speak to each other; they couldn't comfort each other; they have lost the power of expression; they absolutely _can't_."

"Yes," said I, "they are like the fakirs who have held up an arm till it has become stiffened,--they cannot now change its position; like the poor mutes, who, being deaf, have become dumb through disuse of the organs of speech. Their education has been like those iron suits of armor into which little boys were put in the Middle Ages, solid, inflexible, put on in childhood, enlarged with every year's growth, till the warm human frame fitted the mould as if it had been melted and poured into it. A person educated in this way is hopelessly crippled, never will be what he might have been."

"Oh, don't say that, Chris; think of John; think how good he is."

"I do think how good he is,"--with indignation,--"and how few know it, too. I think, that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, the utmost appreciation of human friendship, he has passed in the world for a cold, proud, selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive nature had not unlocked gates and opened doors, he would never have known the love of woman: and now he is but half disenchanted; he every day tends to go back to stone."

"But I sha'n't let him; oh, indeed, I know the danger! I shall bring him out. I shall work on them all. I know they are beginning to love me a good deal: in the first place, because I belong to John, and everything belonging to him is perfect; and in the second place,"----

"In the second place, because they expect to weave, day after day, the fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff and shrouded as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck: don't you remember him?"

"Yes, poor fellow! how he would stay out, and swim round and round, while the pond kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming-place grew smaller and smaller every day; but he was such a plucky little fellow that"----

"That at last we found him one morning frozen tight in, and he has limped ever since on his poor feet."

"Oh, but I won't freeze in," she said, laughing.

"Take care, Emmy! You are sensitive, approbative, delicately organized; your whole nature inclines you to give way and yield to the nature of those around you. One little lone duck such as you, however warm-blooded, light-hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freezing. While you have any influence, you must use it all to get John away from these surroundings, where you can have him to yourself."

"Oh, you know we are building our house; we shall go to housekeeping soon."

"Where? Close by, under the very guns of this fortress, where all your housekeeping, all your little management, will be subject to daily inspection."

"But mamma, never interferes, never advises,--unless I ask advice."

"No, but she influences; she lives, she looks, she is there; and while she is there, and while your home is within a stone's throw, the old spell will be on your husband, on your children, if you have any; you will feel it in the air; it will constrain, it will sway you, it will rule your house, it will bring up your children."

"Oh, no! never! never! I never could! I never will! If God should give me a dear little child, I will not let it grow up in these hateful ways!"

"Then, Emmy, there will be a constant, still, undefined, but real friction of your life-power, from the silent grating of your wishes and feelings on the cold, positive millstone of their opinion; it will be a life-battle with a quiet, invisible, pervading spirit, who will never show himself in fair fight, but who will be around you in the very air you breathe, at your pillow when you lie down and when you rise. There is so much in these friends of yours noble, wise, severely good,--their aims are so high, their efficiency so great, their virtues so many,--that they will act upon you with the force of a conscience, subduing, drawing, insensibly constraining you into their moulds. They have stronger wills, stronger natures than yours; and between the two forces of your own nature and theirs you will be always oscillating, so that you will never show what you can do, working either in your own way or yet in theirs: your life will be a failure."

"Oh, Chris, why do you discourage me?"

"I am trying tonic treatment, Emily; I am showing you a real danger; I am rousing you to flee from it. John is making money fast; there is no reason why he should always remain buried in this town. Use your influence as they do,--daily, hourly, constantly,--to predispose him to take you to another sphere. Do not always shrink and yield; do not conceal and assimilate and endeavor to persuade him and yourself that you are happy; do not put the very best face to him on it all; do not tolerate his relapses daily and hourly into his habitual, cold, inexpressive manner; and don't lay aside your own little impulsive, outspoken ways. Respect your own nature, and assert it; woo him, argue with him; use all a woman's weapons to keep him from falling back into the old Castle Doubting where he lived till you let him out. Dispute your mother's hateful dogma, that love is to be taken for granted without daily proof between lovers; cry down latent caloric in the market; insist that the mere fact of being a wife is not enough,--that the words spoken once, years ago, are not enough,--that love needs new leaves every summer of life, as much as your elm-trees, and new branches to grow broader and wider, and new flowers at the root to cover the ground.

"Oh, but I have heard that here is no surer way to lose love than to be exacting, and that it never comes for a woman's reproaches."

"All true as Gospel, Emmy. I am not speaking of reproaches, or of unreasonable self-assertion, or of ill-temper,--you could not use any of these forces, if you would, you poor little chick! I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred,--that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt. Thoughtless, instinctive, unreasoning love and self-sacrifice, such as many women long to bestow on husband and children, soil and lower the very objects of their love. _You_ may grow saintly by self-sacrifice; but do your husband and children grow saintly by accepting it without return? I have seen a verse which says,--

'They who kneel at woman's shrine Breathe on it as they bow.'

Is not this true of all unreasoning love and self-devotion? If we _let_ our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend. Any good man soon learns to discriminate between the remonstrance that comes from a woman's love to his soul, her concern for his honor, her anxiety for his moral development, and the pettish cry which comes from her own personal wants. It will be your own fault, if, for lack of anything you can do, your husband relapses into these cold, undemonstrative habits which have robbed his life of so much beauty and enjoyment. These dead, barren ways of living are as unchristian as they are disagreeable; and you, as a good Christian sworn to fight heroically under Christ's banner, must make headway against this sort of family Antichrist, though it comes with a show of superior sanctity and self-sacrifice. Remember, dear, that the Master's family had its outward tokens of love as well as its inward life. The beloved leaned on His bosom; and the traitor could not have had a sign for his treachery, had there not been a daily kiss at meeting and parting with His children."

"I am glad you have said all this," said Emily, "because now I feel stronger for it. It does not now seem so selfish for me to want what it is better for John to give. Yes, I must seek what will be best for him."

And so the little one, put on the track of self-sacrifice, began to see her way clearer, as many little women of her sort do. Make them look on self-assertion as one form of martyrdom, and they will come into it.

But, for all my eloquence on this evening, the house was built in the self-same spot as projected; and the family life went on, under the shadow of Judge Evan's elms, much as if I had not spoken. Emmy became mother of two fine, lovely boys, and waxed dimmer and fainter; while with her physical decay came increasing need of the rule in the household of mamma and sisters, who took her up energetically on eagles' wings, and kept her house, and managed her children: for what can be done when a woman hovers half her time between life and death?

At last I spoke out to John, that the climate and atmosphere were too severe for her who had become so dear to him,--to them all; and then they consented that the change much talked of and urged, but always opposed by the parents, should be made.

John bought a pretty cottage in our neighborhood, and brought his wife and boys; and the effect of change of moral atmosphere verified all my predictions. In a year we had our own blooming, joyous, impulsive little Emily once more,--full of life, full of cheer, full of energy,--looking to the ways of her household,--the merry companion of her growing boys,--the blithe empress over her husband, who took to her genial sway as in the old happy days of courtship. The nightmare was past, and John was as joyous as any of us in his freedom. As Emmy said, he was turned right side out for life; and we all admired the pattern. And that is the end of my story.

And now for the moral,--and that is, that life consists of two parts,--_Expression_ and _Repression_,--each of which has its solemn duties. To love, joy, hope, faith, pity, belongs the duty of _expression_: to anger, envy, malice, revenge, and all uncharitableness belongs the duty of _repression_.

Some very religious and moral people err by applying _repression_ to both classes alike. They repress equally the expression of love and of hatred, of pity and of anger. Such forget one great law, as true in the moral world as in the physical,--that repression lessens and deadens. Twice or thrice mowing will kill off the sturdiest crop of weeds; the roots die for want of expression. A compress on a limb will stop its growing; the surgeon knows this, and puts a tight bandage around a tumor; but what if we put a tight bandage about the heart and lungs, as some young ladies of my acquaintance do,--or bandage the feet, as they do in China? And what if we bandage a nobler inner faculty, and wrap _love_ in grave-clothes?

But again there are others, and their number is legion,--perhaps you and I, reader, may know something of it in ourselves,--who have an instinctive habit of repression in regard to all that is noblest and highest, within them, which they do not feel in their lower and more unworthy nature.

It comes far easier to scold our friend in an angry moment than to say how much we love, honor, and esteem him in a kindly mood. Wrath and bitterness speak themselves and go with their own force; love is shamefaced, looks shyly out of the window, lingers long at the door-latch.

How much freer utterance among many good Christians have anger, contempt, and censoriousness, than tenderness and love! _I hate_ is said loud and with all our force. _I love_ is said with a hesitating voice and blushing cheek.

In an angry mood we do an injury to a loving heart with good, strong, free emphasis; but we stammer and hang back when our diviner nature tells us to confess and ask pardon. Even when our heart is broken with repentance, we haggle and linger long before we can

"Throw away the worser part of it."

How many live a stingy and niggardly life in regard to their richest inward treasures! They live with those they love dearly, whom a few more words and deeds expressive of this love would make so much happier, richer, and better; and they cannot, will not, turn the key and give it out. People who in their very souls really do love, esteem, reverence, almost worship each other, live a barren, chilly life side by side, busy, anxious, preoccupied, letting their love go by as a matter of course, a last year's growth, with no present buds and blossoms.

Are there not sons and daughters who have parents living with them as angels unawares,--husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, in whom the material for a beautiful life lies locked away in unfruitful silence,--who give time to everything but the cultivation and expression of mutual love?

The time is coming, they think in some far future when they shall find leisure to enjoy each other, to stop and rest side by side, to discover to each other these hidden treasures which lie idle and unused.

Alas! time flies and death steals on, and we reiterate the complaint of one in Scripture,--"It came to pass, while thy servant was busy hither and thither, the man was gone."

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone. "She never knew how I loved her." "He never knew what he was to me." "I always meant to make more of our friendship." "I did not know what he was to me till he was gone." Such words are the poisoned arrows which cruel Death shoots backward at us from the door of the sepulchre.

How much more we might make of our family life, of our friendships, if every secret thought of love blossomed into a deed! We are not now speaking merely of personal caresses. These may or may not be the best language of affection. Many are endowed with a delicacy, a fastidiousness of physical organization, which shrinks away from too much of these, repelled and overpowered. But there are words and looks and little observances, thoughtfulnesses, watchful little attentions, which speak of love, which make it manifest, and there is scarce a family that might not be richer in heart-wealth for more of them.

It is a mistake to suppose that relations must of course love each other because they are relations. Love must be cultivated, and can be increased by judicious culture, as wild fruits may double their bearing under the hand of a gardener; and love can dwindle and die out by neglect, as choice flower-seeds planted in poor soil dwindle and grow single.

Two causes in our Anglo-Saxon nature prevent this easy faculty and flow of expression which strike one so pleasantly in the Italian or the French life: the dread of flattery, and a constitutional shyness.

"I perfectly longed to tell So-and-so how I admired her, the other day," says Miss X.

"And why in the world didn't you tell her?"

"Oh, it would seem like flattery, you know."

Now what is flattery?

Flattery is _insincere_ praise given from interested motives, not the sincere utterance to a friend of what we deem good and lovely in him.

And so, for fear of flattering, these dreadfully sincere people go on side by side with those they love and admire, giving them all the time the impression of utter indifference. Parents are so afraid of exciting pride and vanity in their children by the expression of their love and approbation, that a child sometimes goes sad and discouraged by their side, and learns with surprise, in some chance way, that they are proud and fond of him. There are times when the open expression of a father's love would be worth more than church or sermon to a boy; and his father cannot utter it, will not show it.

The other thing that represses the utterances of love is the characteristic _shyness_ of the Anglo-Saxon blood. Oddly enough, a race born of two demonstrative, outspoken nations--the German and the French--has an habitual reserve that is like neither. There is a powerlessness of utterance in our blood that we should fight against, and struggle outward towards expression. We can educate ourselves to it, if we know and feel the necessity; we can make it a Christian duty, not only to love, but to be loving,--not only to be true friends, but to _show_ ourselves friendly. We can make ourselves say the kind things that rise in our hearts and tremble back on our lips,--do the gentle and helpful deeds which we long to do and shrink back from; and, little by little, it will grow easier,--the love spoken, will bring back the answer of love,--the kind deed will bring back a kind deed in return,--till the hearts in the family-circle, instead of being so many frozen, icy islands, shall be full of warm airs and echoing bird-voices answering back and forth with a constant melody of love.

MR. HOSEA BIGLOW TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Dear Sir,--Your letter come to han', Requestin' me to please be funny; But I a'n't made upon a plan Thet knows wut 's comin', gall or honey: Ther' 's times the world doos look so queer, Odd fancies come afore I call 'em; An' then agin, for half a year, No preacher 'thout a call 's more solemn.

You 're 'n want o' sunthin' light an' cute, Rattlin' an' shrewd an' kin' o' jingleish, An' wish, pervidin' it 'ould suit, I 'd take an' citify my English. I _ken_ write long-tailed, ef I please,-- But when I 'm jokin', no, I thankee; Then, 'fore I know it, my idees Run helter-skelter into Yankee.

Sence I begun to scribble rhyme, I tell ye wut, I ha'n't ben foolin'; The parson's books, life, death, an' time Hev took some trouble with my schoolin'; Nor th' airth don't git put out with me, Thet love her 'z though she wuz a woman; Why, th' a'n't a bird upon the tree But half forgives my bein' human.

An' yit I love th' unhighschooled way Ol' farmers hed when I wuz younger; Their talk wuz meatier, an' 'ould stay, While book-froth seems to whet, your hunger, For puttin' in a downright lick 'Twixt Humbug's eyes, ther' 's few can match it, An' then it helves my thoughts ez slick Ez stret-grained hickory doos a hatchet.

But when I can't, I can't, thet 's all, For Natur' won't put up with gullin'; Idees you hev to shove an' haul Like a druv pig a'n't wuth a mullein; Live thoughts a'n't sent for; thru all rifts O' sense they pour an' resh ye onwards, Like rivers when south-lyin' drifts Feel thet the airth is wheelin' sunwards.

Time wuz, the rhymes come crowdin' thick Ez office-seekers arter 'lection, An' into ary place 'ould stick Without no bother nor objection; But sence the war my thoughts hang back Ez though I wanted to enlist 'em, An' substitutes,--wal, _they_ don't lack, But then they 'll slope afore you 've mist 'em.

Nothin' don't seem like wut it wuz; I can't see wut there is to hinder, An' yit my brains 'jes' go buzz, buzz, Like bumblebees agin a winder; 'Fore these times come, in all airth's row, Ther' wuz one quiet place, my head in, Where I could hide an' think,--but now It 's all one teeter, hopin', dreadin'.

Where 's Peace? I start, some clear-blown night, When gaunt stone walls grow numb an' number, An', creakin' 'cross the snow-crust white, Walk the col' starlight into summer; Up grows the moon, an' swell by swell Thru the pale pasturs silvers dimmer Than the last smile thet strives to tell O' love gone heavenward in its shimmer.

I hev ben gladder o' sech things Than cocks o' spring or bees o' clover, They filled my heart with livin' springs, But now they seem to freeze 'em over; Sights innercent ez babes on knee, Peaceful ez eyes o' pastur'd cattle, Jes' coz they be so, seem to me To rile me more with thoughts o' battle.

In-doors an' out by spells I try; Ma'am Natur' keeps her spin-wheel goin', But leaves my natur' stiff an' dry Ez fiel's o' clover arter mowin'; An' her jes' keepin' on the same, Calmer than clock-work, an' not carin', An' findin' nary thing to blame, Is wus than ef she took to swearin'.

Snow-flakes come whisperin' on the pane The charm makes blazin' logs so pleasant, But I can't hark to wut they 're say'n', With Grant or Sherman oilers present; The chimbleys shudder in the gale, Thet lulls, then suddin takes to flappin' Like a shot hawk, but all's ez stale To me ez so much sperit-rappin'.

Under the yaller-pines I house, When sunshine makes 'em all sweet-scented, An' hear among their furry boughs The baskin' west-wind purr contented,-- While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin', The wedged wil' geese their bugles blow, Further an' further South retreatin'.

Or up the slippery knob I strain An' see a hunderd hills like islan's Lift their blue woods in broken chain Out o' the sea o' snowy silence; The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on airth, Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin', Seem kin' o' sad, an' roun' the hearth Of empty places set me thinkin'.

Beaver roars hoarse with meltin' snows, An' rattles di'mon's from his granite; Time wuz, he snatched away my prose, An' into psalms or satires ran it; But he, nor all the rest thet once Started my blood to country-dances, Can't set me goin' more 'n a dunce Thet ha'n't no use for dreams an' fancies.

Rat-tat-tat-tattle thru the street I hear the drummers makin' riot, An' I set thinkin' o' the feet Thet follered once an' now are quiet,-- White feet ez snowdrops innercent, Thet never knowed the paths o' Satan, Whose comin' step ther' 's ears thet won't, No, not lifelong, leave off awaitin'.

Why, ha'n't I held 'em on my knee? Did n't I love to see 'em growin', Three likely lads ez wal could be, Handsome an' brave an' not tu knowin'? I set an' look into the blaze Whose natur', jes' like their'n, keeps climbin', Ez long 'z it lives, in shinin' ways, An' half despise myself for rhymin'.

Wut 's words to them whose faith an' truth On War's red techstone rang true metal, Who ventered life an' love an' youth For the gret prize o' death in battle? To him who, deadly hurt, agen Flashed on afore the charge's thunder, Tippin' with fire the bolt of men Thet rived the Rebel line asunder?

'T a'n't right to hev the young go fust, All throbbin' full o' gifts an' graces, Leavin' life's paupers dry ez dust To try an' make b'lieve fill their places: Nothin' but tells us wut we miss, Ther' 's gaps our lives can't never fay in, An' thet world seems so fur from this Lef' for us loafers to grow gray in!

My eyes cloud up for rain; my mouth Will take to twitchin' roun' the corners; I pity mothers, tu, down South, For all they sot among the scorners: I 'd sooner take my chance to stan' At Jedgment where your meanest slave is, Than at God's bar hol' up a han' Ez drippin' red ez your'n, Jeff Davis!

Come, Peace! not like a mourner bowed For honor lost an' dear ones wasted, But proud, to meet a people proud, With eyes thet tell o' triumph tasted! Come, with han' grippin' on the hilt, An' step thet proves ye Victory's daughter! Longin' for you, our sperits wilt Like shipwrecked men's on raf's for water!

Come, while our country feels the lift Of a gret instinct shoutin' forwards, An' knows thet freedom a'n't a gift Thet tarries long in hans' o' cowards! Come, sech ez mothers prayed for, when They kissed their cross with lips thet quivered, An' bring fair wages for brave men, A nation saved, a race delivered!

"IF MASSA PUT GUNS INTO OUR HAN'S."

The record of any one American who has grown up in the nurture of Abolitionism has but little value by itself considered; but as a representative experience, capable of explaining all enthusiasms for liberty which have created "fanatics" and martyrs in our time, let me recall how I myself came to hate Slavery.

The training began while I was a babe unborn. A few months before I saw the light, my father, mother, and sister were driven from their house in New York by a furious mob. When they came cautiously back, their home was quiet as a fortress the day after it has been blown up. The front-parlor was full of paving-stones; the carpets were cut to pieces; the pictures, the furniture, and the chandelier lay in one common wreck; and the walls were covered with inscriptions of mingled insult and glory. Over the mantel-piece had been charcoaled "Rascal"; over the pier-table, "Abolitionist." We did not fare as badly as several others who rejoiced in the spoiling of their goods. Mr. Tappan, in Rose Street, saw a bonfire made of all he had in the world that could make a home or ornament it.

Among the earliest stories which were told me in the nursery, I recollect the martyrdom of Nat Turner,--how Lovejoy, by night, but in light, was sent quite beyond the reach of human pelting,--and all the things which Toussaint did, with no white man, but with the whitest spirit of all, to help him. As to minor sufferers for the cause of Freedom, I should know that we must have entertained Abolitionists at our house largely, since even at this day I find it hard to rid myself of an instinctive impression that the common way of testifying disapprobation of a lecturer in a small country-town is to bombard him with obsolete eggs, carried by the audience for that purpose. I saw many at my father's table who had enjoyed the honors of that ovation.

I was four years old when I learned that my father combined the two functions of preaching in a New England college town and ticket-agency on the Underground Railroad. Four years old has a sort of literal mindedness about it. Most little boys that I knew had an idea that professors of religion and professors in college were the same, and that a real Christian always had to wear black and speak Greek. So I could be pardoned for going down cellar and watching behind old hogsheads by the hour to see where the cars came in.

A year after that I casually saw my first passenger, but regretted not also to have seen whether he came up by the coal-bin or the meat-safe. His name was Isidore Smith; so, to protect him from Smith, my father, being a conscientious man, baptized him into a liberty to say that his name was John Peterson. I held the blue bowl which served for font. To this day I feel a sort of semi-accountability for John Peterson. I have asked after him every time I have crossed the Suspension Bridge since I grew up. In holding that baptismal bowl I suppose I am, in a sense, his godfather. Half a godfather is better than none, and in spite of my size I was a very earnest one.

There are few godchildren for whom I should have had to renounce fewer sins than for thee, brave John Peterson!

John Peterson had been baptized before. No sprinkling that, but an immersion in hell! He had to strip to show it to us. All down his back were welts in which my father might lay his finger; and one gash healed with a scar into which I could put my small, boyish fist. The former were made by the whip and branding-irons of a Virginia planter,--the latter by the teeth of his bloodhounds. When I saw that black back, I cried; and my father might have chosen the place to baptize in, even as John Baptist did Ænon, "because there was much water there."

John stayed with us three or four weeks and then got moody. Nobody in the town twitted him as a runaway. He was inexhaustibly strong in health, and never tired of doing us service as gardener, porter, errand-boy, and, on occasion, cook. In few places could his hard-won freedom be less imperilled than with us. At last the secret of his melancholy came out. He burst into tears, one morning, as he stood with the fresh-polished boots at the door of my father's study, and sobbed,--

"Massa, I's got to go an' fetch dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey, 'r I's be done dead afore de yeah's out!"

As always, a woman in the case!

Had it been his own case, I think I know my father well enough to believe that he would have started directly South for "dat yer gal 'n' little Pompey," though he had to face a frowning world. But being John's counsellor, his _rôle_ was to counsel moderation, and his duty to put before him the immense improbability of his ever making a second passage of the Red Sea, if he now returned. If he were caught and whipped to death, of what benefit could he be to his wife and child? Why not stay North and buy them?

But the marital and the parental are also the automatic and the immediate. Reason with love! As well with orange-boughs for bearing orange-buds, or water upon its boiling-point! When John's earnestness made my father realize that this is the truth, he gave John all the available funds in the underground till, and started him off at six in the morning. I was not awake when he went, and felt that my luck was down on me. I never should see that hole where the black came up.

For six months the Care-Taker of Ravens had under His sole keeping a brave head as black as theirs, and a heart like that of the pious negro, who, in a Southern revival-hymn is thus referred to:--

"O! O! Him hab face jus' like de crow, But de Lor' gib him heart like snow."

(The most Southern slaves, who had never travelled and seen snow, found greater reality in the image of "cotton wool," and used to sing the hymn with that variation.) At the end of that time, contrary to our most sanguine expectations, John Peterson appeared. Nor John Peterson alone, for when he rang our door-bell he put into the arms of a nice-looking mulatto woman of thirty a little youngster about two years old.

A new servant, with some trepidation, showed them up to "Massa's" study. We had weeded John's dialect of that word before he went away, but he had been six months since then in a servile atmosphere. He stood at the open study-door. My father stopped shaving, and let the lather dry on his face, as he shielded with his hand the eyes he in vain tried to believe. Yes, veritably, John Peterson!

But John Peterson could not speak. He choked visibly; and then, pointing to the two beside him, blurted out,--

"I's done did it, Massa!" and broke entirely down.

Again it was Ænon generally, and there was more baptizing done.

John had made a march somewhat like Sherman's. He had crossed the entire States of Virginia and Maryland, carrying two non-combatants, and no weapon of his own but a knife,--subsisting his army on the enemy all the way,--using negro guides freely, but never sending them back to their masters,--and terminating his brilliant campaign with an act of bold, unconstitutional confiscation. He couldn't have found a Chief-Justice in the world to uphold him in it at that time.

Hiding by day and walking by night, with his boy strapped to his back and his wife by his side, he had come within thirty miles of the Maryland line, when one night the full moon flashed its Judas lantern full upon him, and, being in the high-road, he naturally enough "tuk a scar'." Freedom only thirty miles off,--that vast territory behind him, three times traversed for her dear sake and Love's,--a slave-owner's stable close by,--a wife and a baby crouching in the thicket,--God above saying, "The laborer is worthy of his hire." No Chief-Justice in the world could have convinced that man.

With an inspired touch,--the _tactus eruditus_ of a bitter memory and a glorious hope,--John felt for and found the best horse in the stable, saddled him, led him out without awakening a soul, and, mounting, took his wife before him with the baby in her arms. A pack of deerhounds came snuffing about him as he rode off; but, for a wonder, they never howled.

"Oh, Massa!" said John, "when I see dat, I knowed we was safe anyhow. Dat Lor' dat stop de moufs of dem dogs was jus' de same as Him dat shut de moufs of de lions in Dannelindelinesden." (I write it as he pronounced it. I think he thought it was a place in the Holy Land.) "When I knowed dat was de same Lor', an' He come down dar to help me, I rode along jus' as quiet as little Pompey dar, an' neber feared no moon."

When he reached the Pennsylvania border he turned back the horse, and proceeded on his way through a land where as yet there was no Fugitive-Slave Law, and those who sought to obstruct the progress of the negro-hunter were, as they ever have been, many.

* * * * *

After that I got by accident into a Northern school with Southern _principals_.

Æsthetically it was a good school. We wore kid gloves when we went to meeting, and sat in a gallery like a sort of steamer over the boiler, in which deacons and other large good people were stewing, through long, hot Sunday afternoons. If we went to sleep, or ate cloves not to go to sleep, we were punched in the back with a real gold-headed cane. The cane we felt proud of, because it had been presented by the boys, and it was a perpetual compliment to us to see that cane go down the street with our principal after it; but nothing could have exceeded our mortification at being punched with it in full sight of the girls'-school gallery opposite, we having our kid gloves on at the time, and in some instances coats with tails, like men.

When I say "Southern" principals, I do not mean to indicate their nativity; for I suppose no Southerner ever taught a Northerner anything until Bull Run, when the lesson was, not to despise one's enemy, but to beat him. Nor do I intend to call them pro-slavery men in the obnoxious sense. Like many good men of the day, they depended largely on Southern patronage, and opposed all discussion of what they called "political differences." At that day, in most famous schools, "Liberty" used to be cut out of a boy's composition, if it meant anything more than an exhibition-day splurge with reference to the eagle and the banner in the immediate context.

Among the large crowd of young Southerners sent to this school, I began preaching emancipation in my pinafore. Mounted upon a window-seat in an alcove of the great play-hall, I passed recess after recess in haranguing a multitude upon the subject of Freedom, with as little success as most apostles, and with only less than their crown of martyrdom, because, though small boys are more malicious than men, they cannot hit so hard.

On one occasion, brought to bay by a sophism, I answered unwisely, but made a good friend. A little Southerner (as often since a large one) turned on me fiercely and said,--

"Would you marry a nigger?"

Resolved to die by my premises, I gave a great gulp and said,--

"Yes!"

Of course one general shout of derision ascended from the throng. Nothing but the ringing of the bell prevented me from accepting on the spot the challenge to a fist-fight of a boy whom Lee has since cashiered from his colonelcy for selling the commissions in his regiment. After school I was taken in hand by a gentleman, then one of our belles-lettres teachers, but now a well-known and eloquent divine in New York city, who for the first time showed me how to beat an antagonist by avoiding his deductions.

"Tell G. the next time," said the present Rev. Dr. W., "that, if you saw a poor beggar-woman dying of cold and hunger, you would do all in your power to help her, though you might be far enough from wanting to marry her."

How many a _non-sequitur_ of people who didn't sit in the boys' gallery has this simple little formula of Dr. W.'s helped me to shed aside since then!

* * * * *

Just after the John Brown raid, I went to Florida. I remained in the State from the first of January till the first week of the May following. I found there the climate of Utopia, the scenery of Paradise, and the social system of Hell.

I am inclined to think that the author of the pamphlet which last spring advocated amalgamation was a Floridian. The most open relations of concubinage existed between white chevaliers and black servants in the town of Jacksonville. I was not surprised at the fact, but was surprised at its openness. The particular friend of one family belonging to the cream of Florida society was a gentleman in thriving business who had for his mistress the waiting-maid of the daughters. He used to sit composedly with the young ladies of an evening,--one of them playing on the piano to him, the other smiling upon him over a bouquet,--while the woman he had afflicted with the burdens, without giving her the blessings, of marriage, came in curtsying humbly with a tea-tray. Everybody understood the relation perfectly; but not even the pious shrugged their shoulders or seemed to care. One day, a lank Virginian, wintering South in the same hotel with myself, began pitching into me on the subject of "Northern amalgamators." I called to me a pretty little boy with the faintest tinge of umber in his skin, and pointed him to the lank Virginian without a word. The lank Virginian understood the answer, and sat down to read Bledsoe on the Soul. Bledsoe, as a slave-labor growth in metaphysics, (indeed, the only Southern metaphysician, if we except Governor Wise,) is much coddled at the South. I believe, besides, that he proves the divine right of Slavery _a priori_. If he begins with the "Everlasting Me," he must be just the kind of reading for a slave aristocrat.

* * * * *

It is very amusing to hear the Southerners talk of arming their slaves. I often heard them do it in Florida. I have read such Richmond Congress debates as have transpired upon the subject. I do not believe that any important steps will be taken in the matter. I have known a master mad with fear, when he saw an old gun-stock protruding from beneath one of those dog-heaps of straw and sacking called beds, in the negro-quarters. The fact that it had been thrown away by himself, had no barrel attached to it, and was picked up by a colored boy who had a passion for carving, hardly prevented the man from giving the innocent author of his fright a round "nine-and-thirty." When I was in Florida, a peculiar set of marks, like the technical "blaze," were found on certain trees in that and the adjoining State westward. The people were alive in an instant. There were editorials and meetings. The Southern heart was fired, and fired off. There was every indication of a negro uprising, and those marks pointed the way to the various rendezvous. When they were discovered to be the work of some insignificant rodent, who had put himself on bark-tonic to a degree which had never chanced to be observed before, nobody seemed ashamed, for everybody said,--"Well, it was best to be on the safe side; the thing might have happened just as well as not." I do not believe that one thinking Southern man (if any such there be in the closing hours of a desperate conspiracy) has any more idea of arming his negroes than of translating San Domingo to the threshold of his home. I should like to see the negroes whom I knew most thoroughly intrusted with blockade-run rifles, just by way of experiment. Let me recall a couple of these acquaintances.

* * * * *

The St. John's River is one of the most picturesque and beautiful streams in the world. Its bluffs never rise higher than fifty or sixty feet; it has no abrupt precipices; the whole formation about it is tertiary and drift or modern terrace; but its first eighty miles from its mouth are broad as a bay of the sea, and its narrow upper course above Pilatka, where current supersedes tide, is all one dream of Eden,--an infinitely tortuous avenue, peopled with myriads of beautiful wild-birds, roofed by overhanging branches of oak, magnolia, and cypress, draped with the moss that tones down those solitudes into a sort of day-moonlight, and, in the greatest contrast with this, festooned by the lavish clusters of odorous yellow jasmine and many-hued morning-glory,--the latter making a pillar heavy with triumphal wreaths of every old stump along the plashy brink,--the former swinging from tree-top to tree-top to knit the whole tropic wilderness into a tangle of emerald chains, drooping lamps of golden fire, and censers of bewildering fragrance.

To the hunting, fishing, and exploration of such a river I was never sorry that I had brought my own boat. It was one of the _chefs-d'oeuvres_ of my old schoolmate Ingersoll,--a copper-fastened, clinker-built pleasure-boat, pulling two pairs of sculls, fifteen feet long, comfortably accommodating six persons, and adorned by the builder with a complimentary blue and gilt backboard of mahogany and a pair of presentation tiller-ropes twisted from white and crimson silk.

In this boat I and the companion of my exile took much comfort. When we intended only a short row,--some trifle of ten or twelve miles,--we always pulled for ourselves; but on long tours, where the faculties of observation would have been impaired by the fatigue of action, we employed as our oarsman a black man whom I shall call Sol Cutter,--not knowing on which side of the lines he may be at present.

Sol, when we first discovered him, was hovering around the Jacksonville wharves, looking for a job. It is so novel to see that kind of thing in the South, that I asked him if he was a free negro. He replied, that he was the slave of a gentleman who allowed him to buy his time. He said "allowed"; but I suspect that the truer, though less delicate, way of putting it would have been to say "obliged" him to, for the sake of a living. Sol's "Mossa Cutter" had remaining to him none of the paternal acres; and it never having occurred to him, that, when lands and houses all are spent, then learning is most excellent, he possessed none of that _nous_ which would have enabled a Northern man to outflank embarrassments by directing his forces into new channels. Having worked a plantation, when he had no longer any plantation to work he was compelled to send his negroes into the street to earn an eleëmosynary living for him. This was no obloquy. How many such men has every Southern traveller seen,--"sons of the first South Carolina families,"--parodying the Caryatides against the sunny wall of some low grog-shop during a whole winter afternoon,--their eyes listless, their hands in their pockets, their legs outstretched, their backs bent, their conversation a languid mixture of Cracker dialect and overseer slang, their negroes' earnings running down their throats at intervals, as they change their outside for a temporary inside position,--and all the well-dressed citizens addressing them cheerfully as "Colonel" and "Major," without a blush of shame, as they go by! Goldwin Smith was right in pointing at such men as one of the former palliations for the social invectives of the foreign tourist,--though any such tourist with brains need not have mistaken them for sample Americans, having already been in Boston, New York, and Philadelphia. The trouble is, that foreign tourists, as a rule, do _not_ have brains. At any rate, they may say to us, as Artemus Ward of his gifts of eloquence,--"I _have_ them, but--I haven't got them with me."

Sol Cutter paid his master eight dollars a week. As he had to keep himself out of his remainder earnings, he was naturally more enterprising than most slaves, and I took a fancy to him immediately. From the day I found him, he always went out with me on my long rows.

The middle of a river six miles wide is the safest place that can be found at the South for insurrectionary conversation. Even there I used to wonder whether the Southerners had not given secret-service money to the alligators who occasionally stuck their knobby noses above the flood to scent our colloquies.

Sol was pulling away steadily, having "got his second wind" at the end of the first mile. I was sitting with tiller-ropes in hand, and studying his strong-featured, but utterly expressionless face, with deep curiosity. His face was one over which the hot roller of a great agony has passed, smoothing out all its meaning.

"So your master sells you your time?"

"Yes, Mossa." (Always "_Mossa_" never "_Massa_," so far South as this.)

"Do you support your wife and children as well as yourself?"

A convulsive gulp on the part of Sol, but no reply.

"Have you never been married?"

"Yes, Mossa."

"Is your wife dead?"

"I hope so,--to de good God, I hope so, Mossa!"

Sol leaned forward on his oars and stopped rowing. He panted, he gnashed his teeth, he frothed at the mouth, and when I thought he must be an epileptic, he lifted himself up with one strong shudder, and turning on me a face stern as Cato's,--

"Nebber, _nebber_, NEBBER, shall I see wife or chil' agin!"

I then said openly that I was an Abolitionist,--that I believed in every man's right to freedom,--and that, as to the safest friend in the world, he might tell me his story,--which he thereupon did, and which was afterward abundantly corroborated by pro-slavery testimony on shore.

"Mossa Cutter" had fallen heir in South Carolina to a good plantation and thirty likely "niggers." At the age of twenty-five he sold out the former and emigrated to Florida with the latter. The price of the plantation rapidly disappeared at horse-races, poker-parties, cock-fights, and rum-shops. If Mossa Cutter speculated, he was always unsuccessful, because he was always hotheaded and always drunk.

In process of time "debts of honor" and the sheriff's hammer had dissipated his entire clientage of blacks, with the exception of Sol, a pretty yellow woman with a nice baby, who were respectively Sol's wife and child, and a handsome quadroon boy of seventeen, who was Mossa Cutter's body-servant.

Sol came to the quarters one night and found his wife and child gone. They were on their way to Tallahassee in a coffle which had been made up as a sudden speculation on the cheerful Bourse of Jacksonville. Four doors away Mossa Cutter could be seen between the flaunting red curtains of a bar-room window, drinking Sol's heart's blood at sixpence the tumblerful.

Sol, I hear they are going to put an English musket in your hands!

Sol fell paralyzed to the ground. A moment after, he was up on his feet again, and, without thought of nine o'clock, pass, patrol, or whipping-house, rushing on the road likely to be taken by chain-gangs to Tallahassee. He reached the "Piny Woods" timber on the outskirts of the town. No one had noticed him, and he struck madly through the sand that floors those forests, knowing no weariness, for his heart-strings pulled that way. He travelled all night without overtaking them; but just as the first gray dawn glimmered between the piny plumes behind him, he heard the coarse shout of drivers close ahead, and found himself by the fence of a log-hut where the gang had huddled down for its short sleep. It was now light enough to travel, and the drivers were "geeing" up their human cattle.

Sol rushed to his wife and baby. As the man and woman clasped each other in frantic caress, the driver came up, and, kicking them, bade them with an oath to have done.

"Whose nigger are you?" (to Sol.)

"I belong to Mossa Cutter. I's come to be taken along."

"Did he send you?"

"He did so, Sah. He tol' me partic'lar. I done run hard to catch up wid you gemplemen, Mossa. Mossa Cutter he sell me to-day to be sol' in de same lot wid Nancy."

The drivers went aside and talked for a while, then took him on with them, and, for a wonder, did sell Sol and Nancy in the same lot. Nancy's and the baby's price had one good use to Sol, for it kept Mossa Cutter for a week too drunk to know of his loss or care for his recovery.

Sol was the coachman, Nancy the laundress, of a gentleman residing at the capital. Their master had the happy eccentricity of getting more amiable with every rum-toddy; and as he never for any length of time discontinued rum-toddies, the days of Sol and Nancy at Judge Q.'s were halcyon.

They had not counted on one of the drivers going back to Jacksonville, meeting Mossa Cutter over his libations, and confidentially confessing to him,--

"I tuk a likely boy o'yourn over to Tallahassee in that gang month afore last."

Sol, if they had put a British gun in your hands _then_!

Mossa Cutter swooped down on them in the midst of their happiness,--refused to let Judge Q. ransom Sol at twice his value,--and tore him from his wife and child. Returning with him to Jacksonville, he beat him almost to death,--after which, he sent him out on the wharves to earn their common living.

A few nights after the return of Sol, Mossa Cutter came home with _mania a potu_. His handsome quadroon body-servant was sitting up for him. Mossa Cutter said to him,--

"You have the sideboard-keys,--bring me that decanter of brandy."

The boy replied,--

"Oh, don't, _dear_ Mossa! you surely kill you'self!"

Upon this, his master, damning him for a "saucy, disobedient nigger," drew his bowie-knife and inflicted on him a frightful wound across the abdomen, from which he died next day. A Jacksonville jury brought in a verdict of accidental death.

That might have been another good occasion to hand Sol a musket!

Not having any, he remained in the proud and notorious position of "Mossa Cutter's Larst Niggah."

* * * * *

In a certain part of Florida (obvious reasons will show themselves for leaving it indefinite) I enjoyed the acquaintance of two Southern gentlemen,--gentlemen, however, of widely different kinds. One was a general, a lawyer, a rake, a drunkard, and white; the other was a body-servant, a menial, an educated man, a fine man-of-business, a Sir Roger in his manners, and black. The two had been brought up together, the black having been given to the white gentleman during the latter's second year. "They had played marbles in the same hole," the General said. I know that Jim was unceasing in his attentions to his master, and that his master could not have lived without them. A sort of attachment of fidelity certainly did exist on Jim's side; and the most selfish man must feel an attachment of need for the servant who could manage his bank-account and superintend his entire interests much more successfully than himself,--who could tend him without complaint through a week's sleeplessness, when he had the horrors,--who was in fact, to all intents and purposes, his own only responsible manifestation to the world.

Jim's wife was dead, but had left him two sons and a daughter. When I first saw him, none of them had been sold from him. The boys were respectively eighteen and twenty years old. Their sister had just turned sixteen, and was a nice-looking, modest, mulatto girl, whom her father idolized because she was looking more and more every day "like de oder Sally dat's gone, Mossa."

A week after he said that to me, Sally on earth might well have prayed to Sally in heaven to take her, for she was sold away into the horrors of concubinage to one of the wickedest men on the river.

To describe the result of this act upon Jim is beyond my power, if indeed my heart would allow me to repeat such sorrow. It was not violent,--but, O South, South, lying on a volcano, if all your negroes had been violent, how much better for you!

Jim, I hear they intend to give you a rifle!

Well, as to that, I remember Jim had heard of such things.

Boarding at the same hotel with the General, I sat also at the same table. When he was well enough to come down to his meals, he occupied the third chair below me on the opposite side.

One night, when all the boarders but ourselves had left the tea-room, the General, being confidentially sober, (I say _sober_, for when he reached the confidential he was on the rising scale,) began talking politics with me.

"I see in the 'Mercury,'" said the General, "that some of your Northern scum are making preparations for another John Brown raid into Virginia."

"Oh no, I fancy not. That's sensation."

"Well, now, you just look h'y'ere! If they do come, d'ye know what _I_'m gwine to do! If I'm too feeble to walk or ride a hoss, I'll crawl on my knees to the banks of the Potomac, and"----

"What, with those new Northern-made pantaloons on?"

"D'interrupt me, Sir. I'll crawl on my knees to the bank of the Potomac and defend Old Virginny to the last gasp. She's my sister, Sir! So'll all the negroes fight for her. Talk about our not trusting 'em! Here's Jim. He's got all the money I have in the world; takes care of me when I'm sick; comes after me, to the Gem when I'm--a little not myself, you know; sees me home; puts me to bed, and never leaves me. Faithful as a hound, by Heavens! Why, I'd trust him with my life in a minute, Sir! Yes, Sir, and----Oh, yes! we'll just arm our niggers, and put 'em in the front ranks to make 'em shoot their brothers, Sir!"

I said, "Ah?" and the General went out to take a drink, leaving Jim and myself alone together at the table. The remaining five minutes, before I finished my tea, Jim seemed very restless. Just as I rose to go, he said to me,--

"Mossa, could you hab de great kin'ness to come out to de quarters to see Peter?" (his eldest boy,)--"he done catch bery bad col', Sah."

I was physician in ordinary to the servants in that hotel. In every distress they called on me. I told Jim that I would gladly accompany him. When we got to a considerable distance from the main houses, Jim stopped under an immense magnolia, and, drawing me into its shade, said, after a sweeping glance in all directions,--

"Oh, Mossa! _is_ dat true, dat dem dere Abolitionists is a-comin' down here to save us,--to redeem us, Mossa? Is dey a-comin' to take pity on us, Mossa, an' take dis people out of hell? Oh, _is_ dey, _is_ dey, Mossa?"

I told Jim that they were very weak and few in number just now; but that in a few years there would be nobody but them at the North, and then they'd come down a hundred thousand strong. (I said _one_ hundred thousand, the modern army not yet having been dreamed of.) I told him to bide the Lord's time.

He cast a fainting glance over to that window in the negro quarters, dark now, where his little Sally used to ply her skilful needle. Then he tossed his hands wildly into the air, and cried out,--

"_Lord's_ time! Oh, _is_ der any Lord?"

I clasped him by the hand and said,--

"_Yes_, my poor, broken-hearted--_brother_!"

That word fell on his ear for the first time from a white man's lips, and the stupefaction of it was a countercheck to his grief.

He became perfectly calm, and clasped me by the hands gently, like a child.

"Mossa, you mean dat? To _me_, Mossa? Dear Mossa, den I _will_ try for to bide de Lord's time! But," (here his face grew black in the growing moonlight, with a deeper blackness than complexion,)--"but, if de Mossas only _do_ put de guns into our han's, _oh, dey'll find out which side we'll turn 'em on!_"

Jim, I hope you have arms in your hands long ere this, and have done good work with them! I hope Sol has also. Either of you has enough of the _vis ab intra_ to make a good soldier. As you won't know what that means, Jim and Sol, I'll tell you,--it's a broken heart.

But whether Sol and Jim have arms in their hands or not, by all means arm the rest.

Wanted, two hundred thousand British muskets to arm as many likely niggers,--all warranted equal to samples, Sol and Jim,--same make, same temper. Blockade-runners had better apply immediately.