deluge to fear; it has attained its majority; it finds within itself all
the motives and stimulants to action; light circulates; every one has
the right to speak and to be heard; the sum total of all opinions, the
net result of discussion, may be accepted as the voice of truth itself!
I do not deny that in certain questions of general interest and utility,
on which every one may be tolerably well informed, the voice of all has,
in our mild and instructed ages, its share of reason, and even of
wisdom; ideas ripen by the mere conjunction of forces and the course of
the seasons. And yet has routine altogether ceased? Is prejudice, that
monster with a thousand forms which has the quality of never recognizing
its own visage, as far removed as we flatter ourselves? Is progress,
true progress, as entirely the order of the day as it is believed to be?
How many steps are there still to take,--steps which I am persuaded
never will be taken save by the impulsion and at the signal of a firm
and vigorous head, which shall take the direction upon itself!

"Some years since there was a question about finishing the Louvre. Could
it of could it not be done? A great Assembly, when consulted, declared
it to be impracticable. It was in fact impracticable under the
conditions which then existed. Yet within the short period that has
since elapsed, the Louvre has been finished. This instance is for me
only a symbol. How many moral Louvres remain to be completed!

"There are governments which have for their principle resistance and
obstruction; but there are also governments of initiation. Governments
founded on pure liberty are not necessarily the most active. Free
assemblies are better suited to put the drag upon the wheels, to check
them when they go too fast, than to accelerate them. Like criticism,
which is in fact their province and their strength, they excel in
warning and in hindering rather than in undertaking. The eternal problem
is to reconcile, to balance, authority and liberty, using sometimes the
one, sometimes the other. In this double play theory may be at fault,
but practical ability will always triumph.

"Some nations, it was lately said by a liberal, have tried to dispense
with great men, and have succeeded. There is a perspective to
contemplate! Let us not, however, in France, try too often to dispense
with them. The greatest of our moralists, he who knew us best, has said
of man in general, what is true of the French nature in particular, that
we have more force than will. Let us hope that this latter quality may
not fail us too long or in too many cases; and, that it may be
efficacious, there is nothing like a man, a determined and sovereign
will, at the head of the nation.

"I appreciate human dignity as much as others. Woe to him who would seek
to diminish the force of this moral spring; he would cripple at a blow
all the virtues. I do not, however, place this noblest of sentiments on
the somewhat isolated height where it is put by the exclusive adorers of
liberty. Let us not confound dignity with mere loftiness. Moreover, by
the side of dignity let us never forget that other inspiring sentiment,
which is at least its equal in value, humanity; that is to say, the
remembrance, the care, of that great number who are condemned to a life
of poverty and suffering, and whose precarious condition will not endure
those obstacles, retardments, and delays that belong to every plan of
amelioration founded on agitation and a conflict of systems and ideas. I
am far from imputing to the worshippers of liberty a disregard of this
humane and generous feeling. But with them the means is more sacred than
the end. They would rather take but one step in the path of true
progress, than be projected two by an adverse principle. Their political
religion is stronger than mine. Mine is not proof against experience.

"If a question were put to us in a general way, Which is the better for
a people, self-government, full discussion, decisions in accordance with
good sense, and submitted to by all--or government by one, however
able?--it would be only too easy to decide. But the practical question
is, Given such a nation, with such a character, with such a history, in
such a position,--does it, can it, wish to govern itself by itself?
would not the end be anarchy? We talk of principles; let us not leave
out of sight France, which is for us the first and most sacred of
principles. Some have their idol in Rome and the Vatican; others in
Westminster and the English Parliament; meanwhile, what becomes of poor
France, which is neither Roman nor English, and which does not wish to
be either?

"No, without doubt, all is not perfect. Let us accept it on the
condition of correcting and improving it. Examine the character,
original and altogether modern, of this new Empire, which sincerely has
no desire to repress liberty, which has acquired glory, and in which the
august chain of tradition is already renewed. What a _rôle_ does it
offer to young and intelligent minds, to generous minds, which, putting
apart secondary questions and disengaging themselves from formulas,
should be willing to seize and comprehend their entire epoch, accepting
all that it contains! What a problem in politics, in public economy, in
popular utility, that of seeking and aiding to prepare the way for such
a future as is possible for France, as is now grandly opening before
her, with a chief who has in his hand the power of Louis XIV., and in
his heart the democratic principles of the Revolution,--for he has them,
and his race is bound to have them!"

This, it will be perceived, is an application of the ideas of Mr.
Carlyle, modified by the special views and characteristics of the
writer, and adapted to the circumstances and necessities of the
particular case. It has far less similarity with the doctrines so
pompously announced, so vaguely applied, in the _Vie de Jules César_. It
does not lie open to the criticism which that clumsy and feeble apology
seemed intended to provoke, and which it had received at the competent
hands of M. Scherer. We have here no mysterious revelations of the
designs of Providence, no intimations that the world was created as a
theatre for the exaltation of certain godlike individuals. The question,
as presented by M. Sainte-Beuve, is a practical one, and as such we
accept it. We believe with him in the necessity for great men, in the
guidance of heroes. We believe with M. Scherer in the animating forces
of liberty, in its activity and power as an essential principle of
progress and civilization. That the combination may exist is attested by
such examples as William of Orange, Count Cavour, Abraham Lincoln.

It all comes, therefore, to this single inquiry: Is the present ruler of
France a great man, a hero? Is he the enlightened leader whom a nation
may and confidently follow? Has he the genius and the will to solve the
problem before him, to reconcile liberty with authority? Posterity alone
will be able to pronounce with unanimity. For ourselves, we must answer
in the negative. We do not denounce him, we believe it absurd to
denounce him, as a conspirator or a usurper. If he was a conspirator,
France was his accomplice. There cannot be a doubt that the nation not
only was ready to accept him, but sought him; not indeed for his
personal qualities, not as recognizing its appointed guide, but from the
recollections and the hopes of which his name was the symbol. We
acknowledge, too, his obvious abilities; we acknowledge the material and
economical improvements which his government has inaugurated. But we
fail to see the "moral Louvres" which he has opened; we fail to see in
his character any evidences of the moral power which can alone inspire
such improvements; we fail to see in his reign any principle of
"initiation," save that which the Ruler of the universe has implanted in
every system and in every government. Yet we concede the right of others
to think differently on these points, without being suspected of moral
obtuseness or obliquity. Especially can we comprehend how a patriotic
Frenchman should choose to accept all the conditions of his epoch, and
embrace every opportunity of aiding in the task of correction and
amelioration.

We are unwilling to emerge from our subject at its least agreeable
angle. Our strain, however feeble, shall not close with a discord. And
indeed, in looking back, we are pained to perceive how slight is the
justice we have been able to render to the rare combination of powers
exhibited in the works we have enumerated. We have left unnoticed the
wonderful extent and accuracy of the learning, the compass and
profundity of the thought, the inexhaustible spirit, ever preserving the
happy mean between mental languor and nervous excitement. In these
twenty-seven volumes of criticism, scarcely an error has been detected,
scarcely a single repetition is met with; there is scarcely a page which
a reader, unpressed for time, would be inclined to skip. Where you least
agree with the author, there you will perhaps have the most reason to
thank him for his hints and elucidations. Is it not then with reason
that M. Sainte-Beuve has been styled "the prince of contemporaneous
criticism"? His decisions have been accepted by the public, and he has
founded a school which does honor to France.

How is it that our own language offers no such example? How is it that
the English literature of the present century, superior to that of
France in so many departments, richer therefore in the material of
criticism, has nothing to show in this way, we will not say equal,
but--taking quantity as well as quality into the account--in any degree
similar? How is it that nothing has been written on the highest minds
and chief productions of the day--on Tennyson, on Thackeray, on
Carlyle--which is worth preserving or remembering? Is it that criticism
has been almost abandoned to a class of writers who have no sense of
their responsibilities, no enlightened interest in their art, no
liberality of views,--who make their position and the influence attached
to it subservient either to their interests or to their vanity? Descend,
gentlemen reviewers, from the heights on which you have perched
yourselves; lay aside your airs and your tricks, your pretences and
affectations! Have the honesty not to misrepresent your author, the
decency not to abuse him, the patience to read, and if possible to
understand him! Point out his blemishes, correct his blunders, castigate
his faults; it is your duty,--he himself will have reason to thank you.
But do not approach him with arrogance or a supercilious coldness; do
not, if your knowledge be less than his, seek to mask your ignorance
with the deformity of conceit; do not treat him as a criminal or as a
dunce, unless he happens really to be one. Above all, do not, by dint of
_judging_, vitiate your faculty of _tasting_. Recognize the importance,
the inestimable virtues, of that quality which you have piqued
yourselves on despising,--that _sympathy_ which is the sum of
experience, the condition of insight, the root of tolerance, the seal of
culture!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] At the moment when we are sending this sketch to press a specimen of
the sort of criticism to which we have alluded comes to us in the form
of an article in the Quarterly Review for January,--the subject, M.
Sainte-Beuve himself. One wonders how it is that the writer, who, if
really familiar with the productions he criticises, must have been
indebted to them for many hours of enjoyment, much curious information,
and a multitude of suggestions and stimulants to reflection, should have
had no feeling of kindliness or gratitude for the author. But then the
question comes up, Was he in reality familiar with the works? Several of
his statements might provoke a doubt upon this point. We cite a single
example. Speaking of M. Sainte-Beuve's temporary connection with the
Saint-Simonians, he says: "For a brief season he appears to have felt
some of the zeal of a neophyte, _speaking_ the _speech_ and _talking_
the vague nonsense of his new friends. But soon his native good-sense
seems to have perceived that the whole thing was only a fevered dream of
a diseased age." Now the reviewer, if he knows anything of the doctrines
in question, is entitled to express his opinion of them, even if he does
it in tautological and slipshod English. But he has no right to
attribute his own opinions to M. Sainte-Beuve, who is so far from
holding them that, in articles written so lately as in 1861 (_Nouveaux
Lundis_, I.), he has not only traced the _enduring_ influence of
Saint-Simonianism upon some of the ablest minds in France, but has
contended that what were once considered the wildest dreams of that
system have since been substantially realized. Perhaps the reviewer
thinks that, as M. Sainte-Beuve is "a chameleon," with scarcely one
single fixed opinion on any problem, literary, philosophical, political,
or religious, there can be no harm in fathering upon him any notion from
whatever source. But on one point at least--the duty of being accurate
in the statement of other persons' opinions--M. Sainte-Beuve has shown
an unwavering consistency.

[D] Here is, quite _apropos_, a frank admission to that effect from the
Quarterly Reviewer before mentioned: "We confess we should be glad to
meet with some passages in the writings of M. Sainte-Beuve which would
prove him capable of downright scorn or anger." Yes, but if they had
been there, how stern would have been the rebuke!

[E] A Quarterly Reviewer must now be added.

DE SPIRIDIONE EPISCOPO.

    This is the story of Spiridion,
    Bishop of Cyprus by the grace of God,
    Told by Ruffinus in his history.

    A fair and stately lady was Irené,
    Spiridion's daughter, and in all the isle
    Was none so proud; if that indeed be pride,
    The haughty conscience of great truthfulness,
    Which makes the spirit faithful unto death,
    And martyrdom itself a little thing.

    There came a stranger to Spiridion,
    A wealthy merchant from the Syrian land,
    Who, greeting, said: "Good father, I have here
    A golden casket filled with Roman coin
    And Eastern gems of cost uncountable.
    Great are the dangers of the rocky road,
    False as a serpent is the purple sea,
    And he who carries wealth in foreign lands
    Carries his death, too often, near his heart,
    And finds life's poison where he hoped to find
    Against its pains a pleasant antidote.
    I pray you, keep for me these gems in trust,
    And give them to me when I come again."

    Spiridion listened with a friendly smile,
    And answered thus the dark-browed Syrian:
    "Here is a better guardian of gold,--
    My daughter, sir. The people of the coast
    Are wont to say that, if she broke her faith,
    Silver and gold themselves would lose their shine.
    She is our island's trusty treasurer."
    "Then," said the Syrian, "she shall be mine
    As well as theirs,"--and saying this he gave
    The casket with the jewels to her hand.

    Right earnestly the lady answered him,
    As one who slowly turns some curious thought:
    "Sir, you have called this treasure _life and death_,
    Which in your Eastern lore, as I have read,
    Is the symbolic phrase of Deity,
    And the most potent phrase to sway the world.
    With life to death I'll guard the gems for you,
    And dead or living give them back again."

    Now while the merchant went to distant Rome
    The fair Irené died a sudden death,
    And all the land went mourning for the maid,
    And on the roads and in the palaces
    Was one long wail for her by night and day.
    While thus they grieved, the Syrian came again,
    And, after fit delay, in proper time
    Went to the father, to Spiridion,
    Condoling with him on his daughter's death
    In many a sad and gentle Eastern phrase,
    Deep tinctured with a strange philosophy.

    Now when they had awhile consumed their grief
    Outspoke the Bishop: "Syrian, it is well
    If this sad death be not more sad for us,
    And most especially more sad for thee,
    Than thou hast dreamed of." Here he checked his speech,
    And then, as if in utter agony,
    Burst forth with--"She is gone! and all thy store,
    It too is gone: she only upon earth
    Knew where 't was hidden,--and she trusted none.
    O God, be merciful! What shall I do?"

    Then on him gravely looked the Syrian
    With grand, calm mien, as almost pitying,
    And said: "O father, can this be thy _faith_?
    Man of the West, how little didst thou know
    The wondrous nature of that girl now dead.
    Hast thou ne'er heard that they who once become
    Faithful to death are masters over death?
    And here and there on earth a woman lives
    Whose eyes proclaim the mighty victory won.
    Give me thy hand and lead me to the bier:
    Thou know'st it is not all of death to die."

    He took his hand and led him to the bier,
    And they beheld the Beautiful in Death,
    The perfect loveliness of Grecian form
    Inspired by Egypt's solemn mystery.
    A single pause in the eternity,
    The Present, Past, and Future all in one.

    Awhile they stood and gazed upon the Dead,
    And then Spiridion spoke, as one inspired:
    "O God! thou wert our witness,--make it known!"
    He paused in solemn awe, for at the word
    There came an awful sign. The dead white hand
    Was lifted, and Irené's eyes unclosed,
    Beaming with light as only angels' beam,
    And from the cold white lips there came a voice:
    "_The gems lie hidden in the garden wall._
    _God bless thee, father, for thy constant love!_
    _God bless thee, Syrian, for thy faith in me!_"

    This is the story of Spiridion,
    And of his daughter, faithful unto death.

A STRUGGLE FOR SHELTER.

Having, in "A Letter to a Young Housekeeper," held counsel with her
whose home is made by a noble husband, it is no less pleasant to recall
the claims of her whose home is made by herself; who, instead of keeping
house for two, keeps house for but one, and whose stars have not yet led
her on either to matrimony or to Washington Territory.

Mrs. Stowe, in a late number of the Atlantic, has discoursed admirably
on the woman question of how to get occupation; a point to be equally
anxious upon is that of how to get a shelter. It is often easier to get
a husband than either. Perhaps every one knows the exceeding difficulty
with which, in our large cities, the single woman obtains even a room
wherein to lodge; but only the victims can know the real distresses it
involves. In the capital, where noble women are chiefly needed, to begin
homeless is a positive peril; and to stand on the surest integrity is
only to fall at last. If one apply at the boarding-houses it is either
to be instantly rebuffed by learning that no rooms are let to ladies, or
more delicately parried by being told that the terms are forty dollars a
week! If one have attractions and friends, it is equivocal; if one have
them not, it is equally desperate. Should Minerva herself alight there
with a purse that would not compass Willard's, one cannot imagine what
would become of her. She would probably be seen wandering at late night,
with bedimmed stars and bedraggled gauze, until some vigorous officer
should lead her to the station-house for vagrancy. Thus when fascination
and forlornness are at equal discount, when powers and penuries go down
together, and common and uncommon sense fail alike, to what natural
feeling shall one hope to appeal? There is no sound spot of humanity
left to rest upon. It is a dilemma that is nothing but horns.

Possibly it is a trifle better in New England; but here, as elsewhere,
the chief enemy of woman is woman. It is women who keep our houses for
boarding and lodging, and, with a few radiant exceptions, it is they who
never take ladies. If by any chance a foothold be obtained there, the
only safety is in keeping it with stern self-denial of all outside
pleasures or excursions. Surrender for a week, and you return to that
door only to hear that two gentlemen have taken your room, and that they
will pay more. You ask for an attic. Just now there are two gentlemen
there. Will there be a place under the eaves? Possibly, next week. But
before then the two gentlemen are on hand again, have unpacked their
vials of unctuous hair-oil, and are happily snuggled under the eaves.
Indeed, they seem to make long journeys expressly to head one off, and
to be where they should not be. They are on time always, and in at the
winning. Some day one will pathetically die of two gentlemen on the
brain; and the doctor will only call it congestion. O for a new Knight
of a Sorrowful Figure, to demolish all such ubiquitous persons! I have
sometimes had as many as three of my engaged rooms at a time occupied by
these perpetual individuals,--myself waiting a-tremble on the portico.
Then it struck me that, if there were really any more gentlemen in
Washington Territory than here, women had better not go there.

Out of this exigency has arisen a grand vision of mine to build a flat
of five or six rooms; a single landing of dining- and drawing-rooms,
boudoir, bedroom, and kitchen with its apartment for a domestic. And,
either by lounge-bedstead or famous Plympton, there should be the
possibility of sleeping in every apartment but the kitchen. This would
be such sweet revenge for one whom the Fates had driven about for five
years to hunt lodgings. I would gormandize on bedrooms,--like Cromwell
resting in a different one every night,--and the empty ones filling with
forlornest of females, provided one need not do the honors at their
table in the morning and hear how they have slept. There should be
alcoves too, with statues; and unexpected niches of rooms crimson with
drapery, "fit to soothe the imagination with privacy"; and oh! perhaps
somewhere a bit of a conservatory and a fountain,--did not Mrs. Stowe
tell us of these too? Here one could dwell snugly as in the petals of a
rose, or expansively as in a banyan-tree, undisturbed alike from
gentlemen in black or women in white, liable only to the elements and to
mortality.

If only this castle were as attainable as that of Thoreau!--which was to
consist of but one room, with one door to enter it, and where "some
should live in the fireplace, some in the recess of a window, and some
on settles,--some at one end of the hall, some at another, and some
aloft on rafters with the spiders if they chose."

But on the _terra firma_ of realities one's trouble is somewhat
mitigated by the fact that, when all is said and done, the
boarding-houses are usually so poor, that, having entered them, one's
effort to get admitted is rather exceeded by one's desire to depart. The
meats are all cooked together with one universal gravy;--beef is pork,
and lamb is pork, each passing round the swinal sin; the vegetables
often seem to know but one common kettle, for turnip is onion, and
squash is onion; while the corn-cake has soda for sugar, and the bread
is sour and drab-colored, much resembling slices of Kossuth hat.

From these facts grew the experiment of becoming housekeeper
extraordinary to myself,--a strait to which many a one is likely to be
driven, unless we are to have something better than can be offered by
the present system of boarding-houses. For since one's castle was not
yet builded outside of the brain, it only took a little Quixotism of
imagination to consider as castles all these four-story brick houses
with placards affixed of "Rooms to be let," and to secure the most
eligible corner in one of these at moderate rent.

This of course is not so easy to do; but at last a _petite_ room seemed
to be struck out from the white heat of luck,--so _petite_!--six feet by
thirteen feet, two carpet-breadths wide and four masculine strides long;
one flight up, and just large enough to sheathe one's self in;
high-walled and corniced, with on the one hand a charming bay-window
looking three ways, and cheerily catching the sunlight early and late;
on the other, an open grate fire, fit to illuminate the gray Boston
mornings,--though, when the brilliant sun came round full at noon, there
seemed no fire till that was gone. I strove to forget that it might have
been a doctor's consulting office, and three days after there blossomed
out of it seven several apartments; the inevitable curtain across the
corner giving a wardrobe and bath; the short side of the room, with
desk, a library; the long side, with sofa, a bedchamber; the upper end,
with table, a dining-hall; the cupboard and region about the hearth, a
kitchen; while the remainder, with a lively camp-stool chair that
balanced about anywhere and doubled into nothing when desired, was
drawing-room,--that is, it was drawing-room wherever the chair was
drawn. In this apartment everything was handy. One could sit in the
centre thereof, and, by a little dexterous tacking to north or south,
reach every article in it. But when a lad whose occasional infirmity was
fainting was proposed to build the fire, it became necessary to decline,
on the ground that there really was not room enough, unless he were so
kind as to faint up chimney. A genuine bower it was, but not a Boffin's
Bower, where the wedded occupants suited their contrary tastes by having
part sanded-floor for Mr. Boffin, and part high-colored carpet for Mrs.
Boffin,--"comfort on one side and fashion on the other." In this the
walls were hung with pictures, and the windows with lace, while the
corner curtain was a gorgeous piano cover. Mr. Boffin not being here, it
was both comfort and fashion all round.

In this minute way of living, the first visiting messages could only
include the announcement of dainty regards, and of readiness to receive
friends one by one; and dining messages could only entreat "the best one
to come to the _petite_ one on Thursday, for sake of a suggestion of
pigeons' wings." Assuredly none would have voted any exquisite thing out
of place, from a dish of lampreys, that favorite viand of kings, to the
common delicacy of Rome, a stew of nightingales' tongues. And so compact
were all the arrangements, that a brilliant friend was fain to declare
that the hostess should certainly live on condensed milk.

Indeed, it was the grand concentration of having wardrobe and bath
together that caused a very singular mishap. One morning, being in
clumsy-fingered haste to get to a train, I summarily dropped my bonnet
into the wash-bowl. This was not a very dry joke, but having mopped up
the article as well as possible, I put it on and departed with usual
hilarity,--still remembering what it was to have the kindest fortune in
the world, and that one should not expect so rare a life as mine without
an occasional disaster.

But none need undertake a plan of this sort on the theology of Widow
Bedott's hymn, "K. K., Kant Kalkerlate"; for in this song of life on six
feet by thirteen, calculation is the sole rhyme for salvation. We have
heard of dying by inches: this is living by inches. If there be not
floor-room, then perhaps there is wall-room, and every possible article
must be made to hang, from the boot-bag and umbrella behind the curtain
to the pretty market-basket, so toy-like, in the corner. Indeed, it is
the chief charm of a camp-stool chair that this too, when off duty, may
be hung upon the wall, like a hunter's saddle when the chase is ended.
Only see that all the screws are in stoutly, so that in some
entertaining hour various items of your wardrobe or adornments do not
bring their owner to sudden grief.

As might be anticipated, it was rather a struggle to get condensed; and
afterward, too, there were fleeting phases of feeling about it all. For
at times it is not pleasant to connect the day of the week chiefly with
its being the day to clean one's cupboard or lamp-chimney. Often, too,
during a very nice breakfast, one is ready to vow that she will never do
otherwise than board herself; and while despatching the work after,
equally ready to vow that she will take flight from this as soon as
possible. Sometimes, also, one gets a little too much of herself, and an
overdose in this direction is about as bad as most insufferable things.
But then there must be seasons of discouragement in everything. They
inhere to all human enterprises, just as measles and whooping-cough to
childhood. It is well to remember as they pass how rarely it is that
they prove fatal.

And wherefore discouraged, indeed? Is it not the charm of life that
nothing is final,--not even death itself? In this strange existence,
with its great and rapid transitions, happy events are always imminent.
One may be performing her own menialities to-day, and to-morrow, in an
ambassador's carriage, be folded in a fur robe with couchant lions upon
it; to-day be quartered in a single attic, to-morrow be treading the
tapestries of her own drawing-rooms. Thus the golden Fate turns and
keeps turning; it is only when, through frigidness or fear, we refuse to
revolve with it, that there ensues the discord of despair.

But instead of going to a Walden and camping on the shady edges of the
world, to see what could be done without civilization, I preferred to
camp down in the heart of civilization, and see what could be done with
it;--not to fly the world, but to face it, and give it a new emphasis,
if so it should be; to conjure it a little, and strike out new
combinations of good cheer and good fellowship. In fact, it seems to me
ever that the wild heart of romance and adventure abides no more with
rough, uncouth nature than with humanity and art. To sit under the pines
and watch the squirrels run, or down in the bush-tangles of the
Penobscot and see the Indians row, is to me no more than when Gottschalk
wheels his piano out upon the broad, lone piazza of his house on the
crater's edge, and rolls forth music to the mountains and stars. Here
too are mystery, poesy, and a perpetual horizon.

This for romance; but true adventure abides most where most the forces
of humanity are. So I camped down in the heart of things, surely; for in
the next room were a child, kitten, and canary; in the basement was a
sewing-machine; while across the entry were a piano, flute, and
music-box. But Providence, that ever takes care of its own, did ever
prevent all these from performing at once, or the grand seraglio of
Satan would have been nothing to it.

But if in getting a room one is haunted by the two gentlemen, in getting
furniture and provisions one is afterward haunted by the "family"
relation. It is a result of the youthfulness of our civilization, that
as yet it is cumbrous and unwieldy. We do not yet master it, but are
mastered by it; and nowhere in America will one find the charming
arrangements for single living which have filled the Old World with
delightful haunts for the students of every land. As yet we provide for
people, not persons; and the needs of the single woman are no more
considered in business than in boarding. Forever she is reminded of the
Scripture, "He setteth the solitary in families"; and forever it seems
that all must be set there but herself. For nice crockery is sold by the
set, knives and forks by the half-dozen, the best coal by the half-ton;
the tin-pans are immense, and suggest a family Thanksgiving; pokers
gigantic, fit only to be wielded by the father of a family; and at
market the game is found with feet tied together in clever family
bunches, while one is equally troubled to get a chop or a steak, because
it will spoil the family roast,--and as to a bit of venison for
breakfast, it may be had by taking two haunches and a saddle. In
desperation she exclaims with O'Grady of Arrah na Pogue, "O father Adam,
why had you not died with all your ribs left in your body!" For since
there is neither place nor provision for her in the world, why indeed
should she have come?

Having once, on a fruitless tour through Faneuil Hall Market for a
single slice of beef, come to the last stall, and here finding nothing
less than a sirloin of six pounds, which was not to be cut, I could
only answer imploringly, "But pray, what is one person to do with a
sirloin of six pounds?" A relenting smile swept over the stern butcher's
face. "I _will_ cut it!" he said, brandishing the knife at once. "Thank
you," I cried, with a gush of emotion; for he seemed a really religious
man. He comprehended that there was at least one solitary whom the Lord
had not set in a family. I took the number of his stall.

Nor is it yet too late to be grateful to him who proposed breaking a
bundle of cutlery in my behalf. He too realized the situation, and saw
that by no possibility could one person gracefully get on with six
knives and forks at once.

Indeed, since one's single wants are not regularly met by this system of
things, the only way at present to get them answered is by favor. So
that the first item in setting up an establishment is not only to bring
one's resources about one, but to find the people of the trade who will
assist in the gladdest way. One wants the right stripe in the morning
and evening papers, but none the less happy are just the right merchant
and just the right menial. Since all of life may be rounded into rhythm,
shall we not even consult the harmonies in a grocer or an upholsterer?
Personal power can be carried into every department. It is well to find
where one's word has weight, then always say the word there. This is a
part of the quest which makes life a perpetual adventure; and there is
nothing more piquant than to go on an exploring tour for one's
affinities among the trades. It is perhaps rather more of the
sensational than the sentimental, and might be marked in the private
note-book with famous headings, like those of the New York papers on a
balloon marriage, as, The last affinity item! A raid among the
magnetisms! or, Hifalutin among prunes! However, in some subtile way,
one soon divines on entering a store whether she is to be well served
there, and must follow with tact the undercurrent in the shop as well as
in the _salon_. If it be not the right encounter, ask for something
there is not, and pass on to the next. Thus, "my grocer" apologizes for
keeping honey, because I do not eat sweets, and proposes to open the
butter trade because it is so annoying to go about for butter; "my
stoveman" descends from the stilts of the firm, looking after these
chimney affairs himself; "my carpenter" says, "Shure, an' ye don't owe
_me_ onything; I'd work for ye grat-tis if I could"; "my cabinet-dealer"
sends tables and wardrobes at midnight if desired, and takes them back
and sells them over the next day; even the washerwoman is an affinity,
exclaiming, "Shure, an' ye naid n't think I'll be chargin' ye with all
the collars an' ruffles ye put in,--shure, an' I'll not."

Perhaps it sounds a little egotistic to say "my grocer," &c., but is not
this the way that heads of families talk, and am I not head and family
too? At least the solitary may soothe themselves with the family sounds.
Indeed, it soon appears that all these faithful servers are like to
become so radical a part of the my and mine of existence, as to make it
really alarming. When one's comfort is thus bound up in fire-boy and
washerwoman, alas! what will become of the grand philosophy of
Epictetus?

To begin housekeeping proper, one will need at least a bread-knife and
tumbler, a gridiron and individual salt,--cost eighty-four cents. My
list also includes for kitchen and table use:--

    Tin saucepan                          .40
     " baking-pan                         .23
     " oyster pail                        .25
    2 breakfast plates                    .20
    4 tea plates                          .32
    Cup (and cover to mimic sugar-bowl)   .15
    Mixing spoon                          .15
    Pint bowl                             .20
    Butter jar                            .35
    2 knives and forks                    .45
    2 saucers                             .14
    2 minute platters                     .18
    1 " vegetable-dish                    .10
    3 individual butter-plates            .18
                                         ----
                                        $3.30
    The aforementioned gridiron, &c.      .84
                                         ----
             Sum total                  $4.14

To this should be added a small iron frying-pan for gravied meats. The
quart pail usually did duty for vegetables, the saucepan for soup, while
prime chops and steaks appeared from the gridiron. Tea-spoons are not
included, nor any tea things whatever. These excepted, it will be seen
that less than five dollars gives a full housekeeping apparatus, with
pretty white crockery enough to invite a dinner guest.

The provisions for one week were:--

    Bread and rolls                .59
    4 pears and 1/2 lb. grapes     .28
    1 lb. butter                   .55
      " granulated sugar           .22
      " corn starch                .16
      " salt                       .05
    1/4 lb. pepper                 .15
    1/2 lb. halibut                .25
    3/4 lb. steak                  .30
    1 quail                        .40
    1 pint cranberries             .08
    Celery                         .05
    1 peck potatoes and turnips    .40
    Pickles, 1 pint bottle         .37
                                  ----
                                 $3.85

At the end of the week there was stock unused to the amount of $1.00,
making $2.85 for actual board, (I did not dine out once,) and this
included the most expensive meats, which one might not always care to
get; for it is not parsimony that often prefers a sirloin steak at
thirty cents to a tenderloin at forty cents. But this note may be added.
Don't buy quails, they are all gizzard and feathers; and don't buy
halibut, till you have inquired the price. It will also be perceived
that beverages are not mentioned. None of that seven million pounds of
tea shipped from China last September ever came to my shores. If this
article were added, there would come in large complications of furniture
and food, beside the obligation of being on the stairs at early hours in
fearful dishabille, watching for the milkman, as I have seen my
sister-lodgers.

The pecuniary result is, that, for less than three dollars per week and
the work, one may have the best food in the market; for three dollars
and no work, one may have the very worst in the world.

For any ordinary amount of cooking, an open grate is admirable, though
it do not furnish that convenient stove-pipe whereon lady boarders can
smooth out their ribbons, &c.; but it is accessible, and draws the
culinary odors speedily out of the room. At least it is admirable from
fall to the middle of December, when you find that it draws the heat, as
well as the odors, up chimney; then you will get a "Fairy" stove of the
smallest size, with a portable oven, and fairly go into winter quarters.
But by the grate one may boil, broil, and toast, if not roast; for I
used with delight to cook apples on the cool corners, giving them a turn
between sentences as I read or wrote. They seemed to have a higher
flavor, being seasoned with thoughts; but it was not equally sure if the
thoughts were better for being seasoned with apple. However, one must
not count herself so _recherché_ as Schiller, who could only write when
his desk was full of rotten apples.

Still the grate has no oven, and the chief difficulty is in bread. One
starts bravely on the baker's article, but such is the excess of yeast
that the bitterness becomes intolerable. Then one begins to perambulate
the city, and thinks she has a prize in this or that brand,--is enamored
of Brigham's Graham biscuits, hot twice a week, or of Parker's
rolls,--but soon eats through novelty to the core, and that is always
hops. Thus one goes from baker to baker, but it is only a hopping from
hops to hops. I see with malicious joy that the exportation tariff is to
be removed from hops.

As to crackers, they are of course no more available than pine splints,
though the Graham variety is the best. Aerated bread is probably the
most healthful, but this is pitiable to live on; it tastes like salted
flannel.

Finally, let me confess to the use of a friendly oven near by, and from
this came every week the indispensable Graham cakes, which are the
despair of all the cooks. Of course, on this point it is impossible,
without seeing their experiment, to say why it failed; but all the
given conditions being met, if the cakes were tough, there was probably
too much meal; if soggy, too little. Also the latest improvement is not
to cut them in diamonds, but to roll them into various forms. After
scalding, the dough is just too soft to be handled easily; it is then to
be dropped into meal upon the board, separating it in small quantities
with a spoon or knife, and rolling lightly in the meal into small
biscuits, rolls, or any form desired. But do not work in any of the
meal. Possibly some of the failures come from disregard of this; for the
meal which is added after, being unscalded, is not light, and would only
clog the cakes. And, in eating, the biscuits should be broken, never
sliced. They are in their prime when hot, quite as much as Ward
Beecher's famous apple-pie; but, unlike that, may be freshened afterward
by dipping in cold water and heating in a quick oven just before wanted.
In other words, they may be regenerated by immersion.

As to the system of this minute household,--if any should be curious to
know,--it was to have breakfast-dishes despatched, with the dinner
vegetables pared, at half past nine, A. M.; dinner out of hand by two,
P. M.; bread and butter and Cochituate precisely at six, P. M.

In one of Mr. and Mrs. Hall's "Memories of Authors," mention is made of
a little Miss Spence, who, with rather limited arrangements in two
rooms, used to give literary tea-parties, and was shrewdly suspected of
keeping her butter in a wash-bowl. I did not follow any such underhanded
proceeding. I kept my butter on the balcony. All-out-doors was my
refrigerator; and if one will look abroad some cool, glittering night,
he may yet see my oyster-pail hung by a star, or swinging on the horns
of a new moon.

Perhaps it is fair to mention, however, that on one glittering night the
mercury fell below zero, and the windows all froze hard down, and there
was the butter locked on the outer side! And oh! it is such a trying
calamity to be frozen in from one's butter! But after this experience
the housekeeper shrewdly watches for these episodes of weather, and
takes the jar in of a night. So it is that eternal vigilance is the
price even of butter.

Still it seemed that, with careful and economizing mind, on six feet by
thirteen it was not only possible to live, but to take table-boarders.
Certainly nothing could be gayer, unless to ramble delightfully forever
in one of those orange-colored ambrotype-saloons, drawn by milk-white
oxen; or to quarter like Gavroche of _Les Miserables_ among the ribs of
the plaster elephant in the Bastile; or more pensively to abide in the
crannied boat-cabin of the Peggotys, watching the tide sweep out and in.

This must be the weird, barbaric side of the before-named brick and
mortar flat of five rooms.

Pope, the tragedian, said that he knew of but one crime a man could
commit,--peppering a rump steak. It is an argument for boarding one's
self that all these comfortable crimes thus become feasible. One may
even butter her bread on three sides with impunity; or eat tamarinds at
every meal, running the risk of her own grimaces; or take her stewed
cherries with curious, undivided interest as to whether a sweet or sour
one will come next (dried cherries are a great consolation); and, being
allowed to help herself, can the better bring all the edibles to an end
at once upon her plate,--an indication of Providence that the proper
feast is finished. Wonderfully independent all this! Life with the
genuine bachelor flavor. As L. remarked, even the small broom in the
corner had a sturdy little way of standing alone.

Perhaps there is nothing finer than the throng of fancies that comes in
a solitary breakfast. Then one reaches hands of greeting to all the lone
artists taking their morning _acquavite_ in Rome; to the young students
of Germany at their early coffee and eggs; even remembering the lively
_grisette_ of Paris, as, with a parting fillip to her canary, she flits
forth from her upper room; and finally drinks to the memory of our own
Irving at his bachelor breakfast among the fountains and flowers in the
Court of Lions at the Alhambra.

And very sweet, too, it is, in the fall of the day, to sit by the rich,
ruby coals, and think of those who are far, until they come near; and of
that which is hoped for, until it seems that which is; to sit and dream,
till

        "The breath of the great Lord God divine
    Stirs the little red rose of a room."

This it is to keep house with a bread-knife and tumbler, a gridiron and
an individual salt. This it is to vitally understand the _multum in
parvo_ of existence. This it is to have used and mastered civilization.

But the total pecuniary result is, that the rent of the very smallest
room in central location--at the hub of the hub--will not be less than
three dollars per week, without light, heat, or furniture. Fire, and a
boy to make it, will be two dollars per week; light seventy-five cents
if gas, twenty-five cents if kerosene; this, with board at three
dollars, washing at one dollar per dozen, and the constant Tribune,
etc., brings one up to the pretty little sum of ten dollars per week,
without a single item of luxury, unless daily papers can be called
luxurious. Or, should one go out to breakfasts and dinners, nothing
tolerable can be had under five dollars per week; and this gives a total
of twelve dollars. Then, to complete one's life, there must be clothing,
literature, perhaps travel and hospitality, making nearly as much more;
and to crown it, there must be the single woman's favorite lecturer or
_prima donna_; for ah! we too, in some form, must have our cigars and
champagne. A round thousand a year for ever so small a package of
humanity!

And of course, as goods are higher in small quantities, so in living by
this individual way it will be discovered that prices are prodigious,
but that weights and measures are not. After opening the small purse
regularly at half-hour intervals for several weeks, one at length finds
herself opening it when there is nothing to be bought, from mere
muscular habit. Altogether it is easy to spend as much as a second-rate
Congressman, without any of his accommodations. This is wherein one does
not master civilization.

Mr. McCulloch, in his Report on the Treasury, suggested an increase of
salary for certain subordinates in his department, declaring that they
could not support their families in due rank on four, five, or even six
thousand dollars a year. It is easy to believe it. It is easy to believe
anything that may be stated with regard to money, except that one will
ever be able to get enough of it to cover these terrible charges. The
entire fabric of things rests on money; and our prices would drive a
respectable Frenchman into suicide. O poor Robin Ruff! alas for your
grand visions that you sang so glowingly to dear Gaffer Green! In this
age of the world, O what could you do, or where could you go, e'en on a
thousand pounds a year, poor Robin Ruff?

And so long as each must keep her separate establishment, it will not be
found possible to reduce living much below the present figures. But
London has more wisely met the pressure of the times in those
magnificent clubhouses, which have made Pall Mall almost a solid square
of palaces hardly inferior to the homes of the nobility themselves. Each
of these houses has its hundreds of members, who really fare
sumptuously, having all the luxuries of wealth on the prices that one
pays here for poverty. The food is furnished by the best purveyors, and
charged to the consumers at cost; all other expenses of the
establishment being met by the members' initiation fees, ranging from
£32 entrance fee and £11 annual subscription, to £9 and £6 for entrance
and subscription. Being admirably officered and planned throughout,
these gigantic households are systematized to the beautiful smoothness
of small ones; their phrase of "fare-well" is one of epicurean
invitation, not of dismissal; while such are the combined luxuriousness
and economy that, says one authority, "the modern London club is a
realization of a Utopian coenobium,--a sort of lay convent, rivalling
the celebrated Abbey of Thelemé, with the agreeable motto of _Fais ce
que voudras_, instead of monastic discipline."

Of course, New York also has followed suit, and there, too, clubs are
trumps; but, according to "The Nation," with this remarkable exception,
that "at these houses the leading idea seems to be, not to furnish the
members at cost price, but to increase the finances with a view to some
future expenditure." The writer reasonably observes, that "what a man
wants is his breakfast or dinner cheaper than he can get it at the
hotel, and not to pay thirty or sixty dollars annually in order that ten
years hence the club may have a new building farther up town." And
Boston has followed New York, with its trio of well-known clubs,
differing also from those of London in having poorer appointments and
the highest conceivable charges.

But most of these clubs do not include lodgings, and none of them
include ladies. It remains for America to give us the club complete in
both. There is every reason why women should secure elegant and
economical homes in this way. Indeed, in the present state of things,
there seems no other way to secure them. There is no remedy but in a
system of judicious clubbing. Since this phase of the world seems made
up for the family relation, then ladies must make themselves into a sort
of family to face it. Where is the coming man who shall communicate this
art of clubbing, which has not yet even been admitted into the feminine
dialect? Mr. Mercer is doing for the women who wish to go out in the
world that which womanly gratitude can but lightly repay.[F] Where is
the kindly, honest-hearted Mr. Mercer who shall further a like
enterprise here,--a provision of quarters for those who can pay
reasonably and who do not wish to go away? This would be a genuine
Stay-at-home Club, a Can't-get-away Club of the very happiest sort. And
this alone can put life in our noble cities, where active-brained women
love to be, on something like possible terms.

In Miss Howitt's "Art Student at Munich,"--a charming sketch, by the
way, of women living _en bachelier_ abroad,--we find one young
enthusiast idealizing upon this very need of feminine life, which she
christens an Associated Home. In her artistic mind it takes the form of
an outer and inner sisterhood,--the inner devoted to culture, the outer
attending to the useful, ready alike to broil a steak or toe a stocking
for the more ethereal ones of the household. This is all quite amiably
intended, but no queen-bee and common-bee scheme of the sort seems to be
either generous or practicable. It involves at once too much caste and
too much contact. We do not wish to find servants or scrubs in our
sisters, nor do we wish at all times even to see our sisters. There must
be elbow-room for mood and temperament, as well as high walls of
defence. The social element is too shy and elusive, and will not, like a
monkey, perform on demand; therefore our plan abjures all these poetic
organizations, which have a great deal of cant and very little good
companionship; it has no sentimentalism to offer, proposing an
association of purses rather than of persons,--a household on the base
of protection rather than of society,--a mere combining for privileges
and against prices. It is resolved into a simple matter of business; and
the only help women need is that of an organizing brain to put
themselves into this associate form, whereby they can meet the existing
state of things with somewhat of human comfort.

Are we never to obtain even this, until the golden doors of the
Millennium swing open? Ah, then indeed one must melt a little, looking
regretfully back to Brook Farm, undismayed by the fearful Zenobia;
looking leniently toward Wallingford, Lebanon, and Haryard. Anything
for wholesome diet, free life, and a quiet refuge.

But whether to live alone or together, the first want is of
houses,--which is another hitch in the social system. In the city a
building-lot is an incipient fortune; and the large sum paid for it is
the beginning of reasons for the large rent of the building that is put
upon it. But then if ground is costly, air is cheap,--land is high, but
sky is low; and one need have but very little earth to a great deal of
house. A writer, describing the London of thirty years ago, speaks of
the huge, narrow dwellings, full five stories high, and says that the
agility with which the inmates "ran up and down, and perched on the
different stories, gave the idea of a cage with its birds and sticks";
and the like figure seems to have occurred to the queer Mademoiselle
Marchand of "Denise," who, as she toiled to her eyrie on the topmost
landing, exclaimed, "One would think these houses were built by a winged
race, who only used stairs when they were moulting!" But these same
lofty houses are the very thing we must have to-day, all but the running
up and down. Build us houses up, and up, as high as they will stand;
give us plenty of sky-parlors, but also plenty of steam-elevators to go
to and from "my lady's chamber." It is not a wise economy to devote
one's precious power to this enormous amount of stair-work. It is not a
kind of exercise that is sanitive. The Evans House and Hotel Pelham, for
instance, are very pretty Bostonianisms, but all their rooms within
range of ordinary means are beyond the range of ordinary strength. The
achievement of twenty flights a day, back and forth, would leave but
small surplus of vigor. While the steam power is there for heating
purposes, why not use some of it to propel the passengers up and down
that wilderness of rosy boudoirs? Is there any reason why this
labor-saving machine, the steam-elevator, which we now associate with
Fifth Avenue luxury, should not be the common possession of all our
large tenanted buildings? And is there any reason, indeed, in our houses
being no better appointed than the English houses of thirty years ago?
Ruskin has been honorably named for renting a few cottages with an eye
to his tenants as well as himself; but the men who in our crowded cities
shall erect these mammoth rental establishments, with steam access to
every story, will build their own best monuments for posterity. We
commend it to capitalists as a chance to invest in a generous fame.
Until this is done, we shall even disapprove of bestowing any more
mansions upon our beloved General Grant. It is not gallant. Until then,
too, how shall one ever pass that venerable Park Street Church of
Boston, without the irreverent sigh of "What capital lodgings it would
make!" Those three little windows in the curve, looking up and down the
street, and into the ever-fascinating Atlantic establishment; the lucky
tower, into which one might retreat, pen in hand, if not wishing to be
at home to callers nor abroad to himself,--Carlyle-like, making the
library at the top of the house; and all within glance of the dominating
State-House, whither one might steal up for an occasional lunch of
oratory or a digest of laws. We also hear of a new hotel being builded
on Tremont Street, and wonder if there will be any rooms fit for ladies,
and whether one of those in the loft will rent for as much as a charming
villa should command.

But while we ask now for immediate relief by clubs and rental
establishments, the great practical and artistic problem of America
still remains in learning to manage its civilization; in acquiring a
forecaste, a system, that meets individual wants; in adjusting resource
to requirement. Then we shall not be driven into association. It is
jocosely said, that in the West, whose rivers are shallow and uncertain,
the steamers are built to run on a heavy dew. Allowing for the joke,
this is not more nice than wise. To be dexterous, fine-fingered, facile!
How perfect is the response in all the petty personalities of politics!
In this America, where all men aspire, and more men get office than one
would think there were offices to get, what miracles of adroitness! It
is one perpetual, Turn, turn again, Lord Mayor! If but half the genius
were diverted from office-getting to house-building, what towering
results! But since it is the misery of a republic that politics is
supreme, and that a people who govern themselves can have little leisure
for anything else, I have sometimes feared that the only way to get
these woman questions through is by tacking them on to politics. If,
then, any of our masculine friends now go to Congress on an amelioration
of labor, Heaven speed the day when they can only go on an amelioration
of lodgings.

But on this side of the question we as yet hold close to the leeward.
For to make it political, women must have political power, the power of
the ballot; and this claim she chooses to defer to the more oppressed
race,--chooses first to secure justice to all men, before entering the
long campaign of justice to women.

Meanwhile, we young housekeepers, who are neither capitalists to build
what we need, nor politicians to procure it builded, can only live on
these real-unreal lives as we may. But sometimes, when the city lamps
are agleam in the early evening, we go out for a walk of romance upon
the brilliant avenue near by, gazing eagerly into those superb
drawing-rooms where the curtains are kindly lifted a little, and tempted
to ring at the door on a false errand where they are not,--simply to get
a peep at the captivating comfort inside. And thus we too possess houses
and homes; with all these to enjoy and none of them to care for, why may
not one easily remain the wealthiest person in the universe? Ah, no one
knows what riches we have in our thoughts, and how little bliss there is
in the world that we have not!

FOOTNOTES:

[F] Since the above was written, there have been serious charges against
Mr. Mercer, but our praise must remain until the case shall be more
fairly made up.

DOCTOR JOHNS.

LIII.

Reuben, meantime, is leading a dashing life in the city. The Brindlock
family have taken him to their arms again as freely and heartily as if
he had never entered the fold over which the good Doctor exercised
pastoral care, and as if he had never strayed from it again.

"I told you 't would be all right, Mabel," said Mr. Brindlock to his
wife; and neither of them ever rallied him upon his bootless experience
in that direction.

But the kindly aunt had not forborne (how could she?) certain pertinent
inquiries in regard to the pretty Miss Maverick, under which Reuben had
shown considerable disposition to flinch; although he vainly fancied
that he stood the interrogation with a high hand. Mrs. Brindlock drew
her own conclusions, but was not greatly disturbed by them. Why should
she be, indeed? Reuben, with his present most promising establishment in
business, and with a face and air that insured him a cordial welcome in
that circle of wealthy acquaintances which Mrs. Brindlock especially
cultivated, was counted a _bon parti_, independent of his position as
presumptive heir to a large share of the Brindlock estate.

Once or twice since his leave of Ashfield he has astonished the good
people there by a dashing visit. Perhaps he has enjoyed (such things are
sometimes enjoyed) setting forth before the quiet parishioners of his
father his new consequence as a man of the world and of large moneyed
prospects. It is even possible that he may have entertained agreeably
the fancy of dazing the eyes of both Rose and Adèle with the glitter of
his city distinctions. But their admiration, if they felt any, was not
flatteringly expressed. Adèle, indeed, was always graciously kind, and,
seeing his confirmed godlessness, tortured herself secretly with the
thought that, but for her rebuff, he might have made a better fight
against the bedevilments of the world, and lived a truer and purer life.
All that, however, was irrevocably past. As for Rose, if there crept
into her little prayers a touch of sentiment as she pleaded for the
backslidden son of the minister, her prayers were none the worse for it.
Such trace of sentimental color--like the blush upon her fair
cheek--gave a completed beauty to her appeals.

Reuben saw that Phil was terribly in earnest in his love, and he
fancied, with some twinges, that he saw indications on the part of Adèle
of its being not wholly unacceptable. Rose, too, seemed not disinclined
to receive the assiduous attentions of the young minister, who had
become a frequent visitor in the Elderkin household, and who preached
with an unction and an earnestness that touched her heart, and that made
her sigh despondingly over the outcast son of the old pastor. Watching
these things with a look studiedly careless and indifferent, Reuben felt
himself cut off more than ever from such charms or virtues as might
possibly have belonged to continued association with the companions of
his boyhood, and nerved himself for a new and firmer grip upon those
pleasures of the outer world which had not yet proved an illusion. There
were moments--mostly drifting over him in silent night-hours, within his
old chamber at the parsonage--when it seemed to him that he had made a
losing game of it. The sparkling eyes of Adèle, suffused with tears,--as
in that memorable interview of the garden,--beam upon him, promising, as
then, other guidance; they gain new brilliance, and wear stronger
entreaty, as they shine lovingly upon him from the distance--growing
greater and greater--which now lies between them. Her beauty, her grace,
her tenderness, now that they are utterly beyond reach, are tenfold
enticing; and in that other sphere to which, in his night revery, they
seem translated, the joyous face of Rose, like that of an attendant
angel, looks down regretfully, full of a capacity for love to which he
must be a stranger.

He is wakened by the bells next morning,--a Sunday morning, may be.
There they go,--he sees them from the window,--the two comely damsels,
picking their way through the light, fresh-fallen snow of March. Going
possibly to teach the catechism; he sneers at this thought, for he is
awake now. Has the world no richer gift in store for him? That Sophie
Bowrigg is a great fortune, a superb dancer, a gorgeous armful of a
woman. What if they were to join their fortunes and come back some day
to dazzle these quiet townsfolk with the splendor of their life? His
visits in Ashfield grow shorter and more rare. There is nothing
particularly alluring. We shall not meet him there again until we meet
him for the last time.

Mr. Catesby is an "acceptable preacher." He unfolds the orthodox
doctrines with more grace than had belonged to the manner of the Doctor,
and illustrates them from time to time with a certain youthful glow, and
touches of passionate exhortation, which for many years the Ashfield
pulpit had not known. The old ladies befriend him and pet him in their
kindly way; and if at times his speculative humor (which he is not
wholly without) leads him beyond the bounds of the accepted doctrines,
he compounds the matter by strong assertion of those sturdy generalities
which lie at the bottom of the orthodox creed.

But his self-control is not so apparent in his social intercourse; and
before he has been three months in Ashfield, he has given tongue to
gossip, and all the old ladies comment upon his enslavement to the
pretty Rose Elderkin. And they talk by the book; he is desperately
enamored. Young clergymen have this way of falling, at sight, into the
toils, which is vastly refreshing to middle-aged observers. But we have
no occasion to detail his experience. An incident only of his recreative
pursuits in this direction belongs to our narrative.

Upon one of the botanical excursions of later spring which he had
inaugurated, and to which the maidenly modesty of Rose had suggested
that Adèle should make a party, the young Catesby (who was a native of
Eastern Massachusetts) had asked in his _naïve_ manner after her family
connections. An uncle of his had known a Mr. Maverick, who had long been
a resident of Europe.

"It may possibly be some relation of yours, Miss Maverick," said the
young minister.

"Do you recall the first name?" said Rose.

Mr. Catesby hesitated in that interesting way in which lovers are wont
to hesitate. No, he did not remember; but he was a jovial,
generous-hearted man, (he had heard his uncle often describe him,) who
must be now some fifty or sixty years old.--"Frank Maverick, to be sure;
I have the name."

"Why, it is my father," said Adèle with a swift, happy rush of color to
her face.

"O no, Miss Maverick," said the young Catesby with a smile, "that is
quite impossible. The gentleman of whom I speak, and my uncle visited
him only three years ago, is a confirmed bachelor, and he had rallied
him, I remember, upon never having married."

The color left the cheeks of Adèle.

"Frank, did you say?" persisted Rose.

"Frank was the name," said the innocent young clergyman; "and he was a
merchant, if I remember rightly, somewhere upon the Mediterranean."

"It's very strange," said Rose, turning to Adèle.

And Adèle, all her color gone, had the fortitude to pat Rose lovingly
upon the shoulder, and to say, with a forced smile, "Life is very
strange, Rose."

But from this time till they reached home,--fortunately not far
away,--Adèle said nothing more. Rose remarked an unwonted pallor in her
cheeks.

"You are tired, Adèle," said she; "you are so pale!"

"Child," said Adèle, tapping her again, in a womanly way that was
strange to her companion, "you have color for us both."

At this, her reserve of dignity and fortitude being now wellnigh spent,
she rushed away to her chamber. What wonder if she sought the little
crucifix, sole memento of the unknown mother, and glued it to her lips,
as she fell upon her knees by the bedside, and uttered such a prayer for
help and strength as had never uttered before?

"It is true! it is true! I see it now. The child of shame! The child of
shame! O my father, my father! what wrong have you done me!" And again
she prays for help and strength.

There is not a doubt in her mind where the truth lies. In a moment her
thought has flashed over the whole chain of evidence. The father's
studied silence; her alienation from any home of her own; the mysterious
hints of the Doctor; and the strange communication of Reuben,--all come
up in stately array and confound her with the bitter truth. There is a
little miniature of her father which she has kept among her choicest
treasures. She seeks it now. Is it to throw it away in scorn? No, no,
no. Our affections are after all not submissible to strict moral
regimen. It is with set teeth and a hard look in her eye that she
regards it at first; then her eyes suffuse with tears while she looks,
and she kisses it passionately again and again.

"Can there be some horrible mistake in all this?" she asks herself. At
the thought she slips on hat and shawl and glides noiselessly down the
stairs, (not for the world would she have been interrupted!) and walks
swiftly away to her old home at the parsonage.

Dame Tourtelot meets her and says, "Good evening, Miss Adeel."

And Adèle, in a voice so firm that it does not seem her own, says, "Good
evening, Miss Tourtelot." She wonders greatly at her own calmness.

LIV.

The Doctor is alone in his study when Adèle comes in upon him, and she
has reached his chair and dropped upon her knees beside him before he
has time to rise.

"New Papa, you have been so kind to me! I know the truth now,--the
mystery, the shame";--and she dropped her head upon his knees.

"Adaly, Adaly, my dear child!" said the old man with a great tremor in
his voice, "what does this mean?"

She was sobbing, sobbing.

"Adaly, my child, what can I do for you?"

"Pray for me, New Papa!" and she lifted her eyes upon him with a tender,
appealing look.

"Always, always, Adaly!"

"Tell me, New Papa,--tell me honestly,--is it not true that I can call
no one mother,--that I never could?"

The Doctor trembled: he would have given ten years of his life to have
been able to challenge her story, to disabuse her mind of the belief
which he saw was fastened past all recall. "Adaly," said he, "Christ
befriended the Magdalen,--how much more you, then, if so be you are the
unoffending child of----"

"I knew it! I knew it!" and she fell to sobbing again upon the knee of
the old gentleman, in a wild, passionate way.

In such supreme moments the mind reaches its decisions with electrical
rapidity. Even as she leaned there, her thought flashed upon that poor
Madame Arles who had so befriended her,--against whom they had cautioned
her, who had shown such intense emotion at their first meeting, who had
summoned her at the last, and who had died with that wailing cry, "_Ma
fille!_" upon her lip. Yes, yes, her mother indeed, who died in her
arms! (she can never forget that death-clasp.)

She hints as much to the Doctor, who, in view of his recent
communication from Maverick, will not gainsay her.

When she moved away at last, as if for a leave-taking, silent and
humiliated, the old man said to her, "My child, are you not still my
Adaly? God is no respecter of persons; his ministers should be like
him."

Whereupon Adèle came and kissed him with a warmth that reminded him of
days long past.

She rejoiced in not having encountered the gray, keen eyes of the
spinster. She knew they would read unfailingly the whole extent of the
revelation that had dawned upon her. That the spinster herself knew the
truth, and had long known it, she was sure; and she recalled with a
shudder the look of those uncanny eyes upon the evening of their little
frolic at the Elderkins. She dreaded the thought of ever meeting them
again, and still more the thought of listening to the stiff, cold words
of consolation which she knew she would count it her duty to administer.

It was dusk when she left the Doctor's door; he would have attended, but
she begged to be alone. It was an April evening, the chilliness of the
earth just yielding to the coming summer; the frogs clamorous in all the
near pools, and filling the air with the harsh uproar of their voices;
the delicate grass-blades were just thrusting their tips through the
brown web of the old year's growth, and in sunny, close-trodden spots
showing a mat of green, while the fleecy brown blossoms of the elm were
tufting all the spray of the embowering trees. Here and there a village
loiterer greeted her kindly. They all knew Miss Adèle. "They will all
know it to-morrow," she thought, "and then--then--"

With a swift but unsteady step she makes her way to the little
graveyard; she had gone there often, and there were those who said
wantonly that she went to say her prayers before the little cross upon
the tombstone she had placed over the grave of Madame Arles. Now she
threw herself prone upon the little hillock, with a low, sharp cry of
distress, like that of a wounded bird,--"My mother! my mother!"

Every word, every look of tenderness which the dead woman had lavished,
she recalls now with a terrible distinctness. Those loud, vague appeals
of her delirium come to her recollection with a meaning in them that is
only too plain; and then the tight, passionate clasp, when, strained to
her bosom, relief came at last. Adèle lies there unconscious of the
time, until the night dews warn her away; she staggers through the gate.
Where next? She fancies they must know it all at the Elderkins',--that
she has no right there. Is she not an estray upon the world? Shall she
not--as well first as last--wander forth, homeless as she is, into the
night? And true to these despairing thoughts, she hurries away farther
and farther from the town. The frogs croak monotonously in all the
marshes, as if in mockery of her grief. On some near tree an owl is
hooting, with a voice that is strangely and pitifully human. Presently
an outlying farm-house shows its cheery, hospitable light through the
window-panes, and she is tempted to shorten her steps and steal a look
into the room where the family sits grouped around the firelight. No
such sanctuary for her ever was or ever can be. Even the lowing of a cow
in the yard, and the answering bleat of a calf within the barn, seem to
mock the outcast.

On she passes, scarce knowing whither her hurrying steps are bearing
her, until at last she spies a low building in the fields away upon her
right, which she knows. It is the home of that outlawed woman where
Madame Arles had died. Here at least she will be met with sympathy, even
if the truth were wholly known; and yet perhaps last of all places would
she have it known there. She taps at the door; she has wandered out of
her way, and asks for a moment's rest. The little boy of the house, when
he has made out the visitor by a few furtive peeps from behind the
mother's chair, comes to her fawningly and familiarly; and as Adèle
looks into his bright, fearless eyes, a new courage seems to possess
her. God's children, all of us; and He careth even for the sparrows. She
will conquer her despairing weakness; she will accept her cross and bear
it resolutely. By slow degrees she is won over by the frolicsome humor
of the curly-pated boy, who never once quits her side, into cheerful
prattle with him. And when at last, fairly rested, she would set off on
her return, the lone woman says she will see her safely as far as the
village street; the boy, too, insists doggedly upon attending them; and
so, with her hand tightly clasped in the hand of the lad, Adèle makes
her way back into the town. Along the street she passes, even under the
windows of the parsonage, with her hand still locked in that of the
outlawed boy; and she wonders if in broad day the same courage would be
meted to her? They only part when within sight of the broad glow of
light from the Elderkin windows; and here Adèle, taking out her purse,
counts out the half of her money and places it in the hands of the boy.

"We will share and share alike, Willie," said she, "But never tell who
gave you this."

"But, Miss Maverick, it's too much," said the woman.

"No, it's not," said the boy, clutching it eagerly.

With a parting good-night, Adèle darted within the gate, and opened
softly the door, determined to meet courageously whatever rebuffs might
be in store for her.

LV.

Rose has detailed the story of the occurrence, with the innocent
curiosity of girlhood, to the Squire and Mrs. Elderkin (Phil being just
now away). The Squire, as he hears it, has passed a significant look
across to Mrs. Elderkin.

"It's very queer, isn't it?" asked Rose.

"Very," said the Squire, who had for some time cherished suspicions of
certain awkward relations existing between Maverick and the mother of
Adèle, but never so decided as this story would seem to warrant. "And
what said Adèle?" continued he.

"It disturbed her, I think, papa; she didn't seem at all herself."

"Rose, my dear," said the kindly old gentleman, "there is some unlucky
family difference between Mr. and Mrs. Maverick, and I dare say the talk
was unpleasant to Adèle; if I were you, I wouldn't allude to it again;
don't mention it, please, Rose."

If it could be possible, good Mrs. Elderkin greeted Adèle as she came in
more warmly than ever. "You must be careful, my dear, of these first
spring days of ours; you are late to-night."

"Yes," says Adèle, "I was gone longer than I thought. I rambled off to
the churchyard, and I have been at the Doctor's."

Again the old people exchanged glances.

Why does she find herself watching their looks so curiously? Yet there
is nothing but kindness in them. She is glad Phil is not there.

The next morning the Squire stepped over at an early hour to the
parsonage, and by an adroit question or two, which the good Doctor had
neither the art nor the disposition to evade, unriddled the whole truth
with respect to the parentage of Adèle. The Doctor also advised him of
the delusion of the poor girl with respect to Madame Arles, and how he
had considered it unwise to attempt any explanation until he should hear
further from Mr. Maverick, whose recent letter he counted it his duty to
lay before Mr. Elderkin.

"It's a sad business," said he.

And the Doctor, "_The way of the wicked is as darkness; they know not at
what they stumble._"

The Squire walks home in a brown study. Like all the rest, he has been
charmed with the liveliness and grace of Adèle; over and over he has
said to his boy, "How fares it, Phil? Why, at your age, my boy, I should
have had her in the toils long ago."

Since her domestication under his own roof, the old gentleman's liking
for her had grown tenfold strong; he had familiarized himself with the
idea of counting her one of his own flock. But, the child of a
French----

"Well, well, we will see what the old lady may say," reflected he. And
he took the first private occasion to lay the matter before Mrs.
Elderkin.

"Well, mother, the suspicions of last night are all true,--true as a
book."

"God help the poor child, then!" said Madam, holding up her hands.

"Of course He'll do that, wife. But what say you to Phil's marriage now?
Does it look as tempting as it did?"

The old lady reflected a moment, lifting her hand to smooth the hair
upon her temple, as if in aid of her thought, then said,--"Giles, you
know the world better than I; you know best what may be well for the
boy. I love Adèle very much; I do not believe that I should love her any
less if she were the wife of Phil. But you know best, Giles; you must
decide."

"There's a good woman!" said the Squire; and he stayed his pace up and
down the room to lay his hand approvingly upon the head of the old lady,
touching as tenderly those gray locks as ever he had done in earlier
years the ripples of golden brown.

In a few days Phil returns,--blithe, hopeful, winsome as ever. He is
puzzled, however, by the grave manner of the Squire, when he takes him
aside, after the first hearty greetings, and says, "Phil, my lad, how
fares it with the love matter? Have things come to a crisis, eh?"

"What do you mean, father?" and Phil blushes like a boy of ten.

"I mean to ask, Philip," said the old gentleman, measuredly, "if you
have made any positive declaration to Miss Maverick."

"Not yet," said Phil, with a modest frankness.

"Very good, my son, very good. And now, Phil, I would wait a
little,--take time for reflection; don't do anything rashly. It's an
important step to take."

"But, father," says Phil, puzzled by the old gentleman's manner, "what
does this mean?"

"Philip," said the Squire, with a seriousness that seemed almost comical
by its excess, "would you really marry Adèle?"

"To-morrow, if I could," said Phil.

"Tut, tut, Phil! It's the old hot blood in him!" (He says this, as if to
himself.) "Philip, I wouldn't do so, my boy."

And thereupon he gives him in his way a story of the revelations of the
last few days.

At the first, Phil is disposed to an indignant denial, as if by no
possibility any indignity could attach to the name or associations of
Adèle. But in the whirl of his feeling he remembered that interview with
Reuben, and his boast that Phil could not affront the conventionalities
of the world. It confirmed the truth to him in a moment. Reuben then had
known the whole, and had been disinterestedly generous. Should he be any
less so?

"Well, father," said Phil, after a minute or two of silence, "I don't
think the story changes my mind one whit. I would marry her to-morrow,
if I could," and he looked the Squire fairly and squarely in the face.

"Gad, boy," said the old gentleman, "you must love her as I loved your
mother!"

"I hope I do," said Phil,--"that is if I win her. I don't think she's to
be had for the asking."

"Aha! the pinch lies there, eh?" said the Squire, and he said it in
better humor than he would have said it ten days before. "What's the
trouble, Philip?"

"Well, sir, I think she always had a tenderness for Reuben; I think she
loves him now in her heart."

"So, so! The wind lies there, eh? Well, let it bide, my boy; let it bide
awhile. We shall know something more of the matter soon."

And there the discourse of the Squire ended.

Meantime, however, Rose and Adèle are having a little private interview
above stairs, which in its subject-matter is not wholly unrelated to the
same theme.

"Rose," Adèle had said, as she fondled her in her winning way, "your
brother Phil has been very kind to me."

"He always meant to be," said Rose, with a charming glow upon her face.

"He always _has_ been," said Adèle; "but, dear Rose, I know I can talk
as plainly to you as to another self almost."

"You can,--you can, Ady," said she.

"I have thought," continued Adèle, "though I know it is very unmaidenly
in me to say it, that Phil was disposed sometimes to talk even more
warmly than he has ever talked, and to ask me to be a nearer friend to
him even than you, dear Rose. May be it is only my own vanity that leads
me sometimes to suspect this."

"O, I hope it may be true!" burst forth Rose.

"I hope _not_," said Adèle, with a voice so gravely earnest that Rose
shuddered.

"O Ady, you don't mean it! you who are so good, so kind! Phil's heart
will break."

"I don't think that," said Adèle, with a faint hard smile, in which her
womanly vanity struggled with her resolution. "And whatever might have
been, that which I have hinted at _must_ not be now, dear Rose. You will
know some day why--why it would be ungrateful in me to determine
otherwise. Promise me, darling, that you will discourage any inclination
toward it, wherever you can best do so. Promise me, dear Rose!"

"Do you really, truly mean it?" said the other, with a disappointment
she but poorly concealed.

"With all my heart, I do," said Adèle.

And Rose promised, while she threw herself upon the neck of Adèle and
said, "I am so sorry! It will be such a blow to poor Phil!"

After this, things went on very much in their old way. To the great
relief of Adèle there was no explosive village demonstration of the news
which had come home so cruelly to herself. The Doctor had given an
admonition to the young minister, and the old Squire had told him, in a
pointed and confidential way, that he had heard of his inquiries and
assertions with respect to Mr. Maverick, and begged to hint that the
relations between the father and the mother of Adèle were not of the
happiest, and it was quite possible that Mr. Maverick had assumed
latterly the name of a bachelor; it was not, however, a very profitable
subject of the speculation or of gossip, and if he valued the favor of
the young ladies he would forbear all allusion to it. A suggestion which
Mr. Catesby was not slow to accept religiously, and scrupulously to bear
in mind.

Phil was as hot a lover as ever, though for a time a little more
distant: and the poor fellow remarked a new timidity and reserve about
Adèle, which, so far from abating, only fed the flame; and there is no
knowing to what reach it might have blazed out, if a trifling little
circumstance had not paralyzed his zeal.

From time to time, Phil had been used to bring home a rare flower or two
as a gift for Adèle, which Rose had always lovingly arranged in some
coquettish fashion, either upon the bosom or in the hair of Adèle; but a
new and late gift of this kind--a little tuft of the trailing arbutus
which he has clambered over miles of woodland to secure--is not worn by
Adèle, but by Rose, who glances into the astounded face of Phil with a
pretty, demure look of penitence.

"I say, Rose," says he, seizing his chance for a private word,--"that's
not for you."

"I know it, Phil; Adèle gave it to me."

"And that's her favorite flower."

"Yes, Phil," and there is a shake in her voice now. "I think she's grown
tired of such gifts, Phil";--whereat she glances keenly and pitifully at
him.

"_Truly_, Rose?" says Phil, with the color on a sudden quitting his
cheeks.

"Truly,--truly, Phil,"--and in spite of herself the pretty hazel eyes
are brimming full, and, under pretence of some household duty, she
dashes away. For a moment Phil stands confounded. Then, through his set
teeth, he growls, "I was a fool not to have known it!"

But Phil was not a fool, but a sturdy, brave-hearted fellow, who bore
whatever blows fortune gave him, or seemed to give, with a courage that
had a fine elastic temper in it. He may have made his business
engagements at the river or in the city a little more frequent and
prolonged after this; but always there was the same deferential show of
tender feeling toward his father's guest, whenever he happened in
Ashfield. Indeed, he felt immensely comforted by a little report which
Rose made to him in her most despairing manner. Adèle had told her that
she "would never, never marry."

There are a great many mothers of fine families who have made such a
speech at twenty or thereabout; and Phil knew it.

LVI.

We by no means intend to represent our friend Adèle as altogether a
saint. Such creatures are very rare, and not always the most lovable,
according to our poor human ways of thinking; but she may possibly grow
into saintship, in view of a certain sturdy religious sense of duty that
belongs to her, and a faith that is always glowing. At present she is a
high-spirited, sensitive girl,--not without her pride and her lesser
vanities, not without an immense capacity for loving and being loved,
but just now trembling under that shock to her sensibilities which we
have detailed,--but never fainting, never despairing. Not even
relinquishing her pride, but guarding it with triple defences, by her
reserve in respect to Phil, as well as by a certain new dignity of
manner which has grown out of her conflict with the opprobrium that
seems to threaten, for no fault of her own.

Adèle sees clearly now the full burden of Reuben's proposal to cherish
and guard her against whatever indignities might threaten; she sees more
clearly than ever the rich, impulsive generosity of his nature
reflected, and it disturbs her grievously to think that she had met it
only with reproach. The thought of the mad, wild, godless career upon
which he may have entered, and of which the village gossips are full, is
hardly more afflictive to her than her recollection of that frank,
self-sacrificing generosity, so ignobly requited. She longs in her heart
to clear the debt,--to tell him what grateful sense she has of his
intended kindness. But how? Should she,--being what she is,--even by a
word, seem to invite a return of that devotion which may be was but the
passion of an hour, and which it were fatal to renew? Her pride revolts
at this. And yet--and yet--so brave a generosity shall not be wholly
unacknowledged. She writes:--

"Reuben, I know now the full weight of the favor of what you promised to
bestow upon me when I so blindly reproached you with intrusion upon my
private griefs. Forgive me, Reuben! I thank you now, late as it is, with
my whole heart. It is needless to tell you how I came to know what,
perhaps, I had better never have known, but which must always have
overhung me as a dark cloud charged with a blasting fate. This
knowledge, dear Reuben, which separates us so surely and so widely,
relieves me of the embarrassment which I might otherwise have felt in
telling you of my lasting gratitude, and (if as a sister I may say it)
my love. If your kind heart could so overflow with pity then, you will
surely pity me the more now; yet not _too much_, Reuben, for my pride as
a woman is as strong as ever. The world was made for me, as much as it
was made for others; and if I bear its blight, I will find some flowers
yet to cherish. I do not count it altogether so grim and odious a
world,--even under the broken light which shines upon it for me,--as in
your last visits you seemed disposed to reckon it.

"And this reminds me, Reuben, that I have told you frankly how the cloud
which overhung me has opened with a terrible surety. How is it with the
cloud that lay upon you? Is there any light? Ah, Reuben, when I recall
those days in which long ago your faith in something better beyond this
world than lies in it seemed to be so much stronger and firmer than
mine, and when your trust was so confident as to make mine stronger, it
seems like a strange dream to me,--all the more when now you, who should
reason more justly than I, believe in 'nothing,' (was not that your last
word?)--and yet, dear Reuben, I cling,--I cling. Do you remember the old
hymn I sung in those days:--

    'Ingemisco tanquam reus,
    Culpa rubet vultus meus;
    Supplicanti parce, Deus.'

Even the old Doctor, who was so troubled by the Romish hymns, said it
must have been written by a good man."

Much more she writes in this vein, but returns ever and again to that
noble generosity of his,--her delicacy struggling throughout with her
tender gratitude,--yet she fails not to show a deep, earnest
undercurrent of affection, which surely might develop under sympathy
into a very fever of love. Will it not touch the heart of Reuben? Will
it not divert him from the trail where he wanders blindly? If we have
read his character rightly, surely this letter, in which a delicate
sensibility hardly veils a great passionate wealth of feeling, will stir
him to a new and more hopeful venture.

God send that the letter may reach him safely!

For a long time Adèle has not written to Reuben, and it occurs to her,
as she strolls away toward the village post, that to mail it herself may
possibly provoke new town gossip. In this perplexity she presently
encounters her boy friend, Arthur, who for a handful of pennies, and
under injunction of secrecy, cheerfully undertakes the duty. To the
house of the lad's mother, far away as it was, Adèle had wandered
frequently of late, and had borne away from time to time some trifling
memento of the dead one whose memory so endeared the spot. It happens
that she continues her stroll thither on this occasion; and the poor
woman, toward whom Adèle's charities have flowed with a profusion that
has astounded the Doctor, repays some new gift by placing in her hands a
little embroidered kerchief, "too fine for such as she," which had
belonged to Madame Arles. A flimsy bit of muslin daintily embroidered;
but there is a name stitched upon its corner, for which Adèle treasures
it past all reckoning,--the name of _Julie Chalet_.

It was as if the dead one had suddenly come back and whispered it in her
ear,--Julie Chalet. The spring birds sung the name in chorus as she
walked home; and on the grave-stone, under the cross, she seemed to see
it cut upon the marble,--Julie Chalet.

Adèle has written to her father, of course, in those days when the first
shock of the new revelation had passed. How could she do otherwise? If
she has poured out the bitterness of her grief and of her isolation, she
has mercifully spared him any reproach!

"I think I now understand," she writes, "the reason of your long absence
from me. Whatever other griefs I bear, I will not believe that it has
been from lack of affection for me. I recall that day, dear papa, when,
with my head lying on your bosom, you said to me, 'She is unworthy; I
will love you for both.' You must! But was she, papa, so utterly
unworthy? I think I have known her; nay, I feel almost sure,--sure that
these arms held her in the moment when she breathed adieu to the world.
If ever bad, I am sure that she must have grown into goodness. I cannot,
I will not, think otherwise. I can tell you so many of her kind deeds as
will take away your condemnation. In this hope I live, dear papa.

"I have found her true name too, at last,--Julie Chalet,--is it not so?
I wonder with what feeling you will read it; will it be with a wakened
fondness? will it be with loathing? I tremble while I ask. You shall go
with me (will you not?) _to her grave_; and there a kind Heaven will put
in our hearts what memories are best.

"I know now the secret of your caution in respect to Reuben; you have
been unwilling that _your child_ should bring any possible shame to the
household of a friend! Trust to me,--trust to _me_, papa, your
sensitiveness cannot possibly be keener, if it be more generous, than my
own. Yet I have never told you--what I have since learned--of the
unselfish devotion of Reuben, which declared itself when he knew
all,--all. Would I not be almost tempted to thank him with--myself? Yet,
trust me, if I have written him with an almost unmaidenly warmth, I have
called to his mind the great gulf that _must_ lie between us.

"Is the old godmother, of whom you used to speak, still alive? It seems
that I should love to hang about her neck in memory of days gone; it
seems that I should love the warm sky under which I was born,--I am sure
I should love the olive orchards, and the vines, and the light upon the
sea. I feel as if I were living in chains now. When, when will you come
to break them, and set me free?"

In those days of May, when the leaflets were unfolding, and when the
downy bluebells were lifting their clustered blossoms filled with a
mysterious fragrance, like the breath of young babes, Adèle loved to
linger in the study of the parsonage; more than ever the good Doctor
seemed a "New Papa,"--more than ever his eye dwelt upon her with a
parental smile. It was not that she loved Rose less, that she lingered
here so long; but she could not shake off the conviction that some day
soon Rose might shrink from her. The good Doctor never would. Nor can it
be counted strange if there, in the study so familiar to her childhood,
she should recall the days when she had frolicked down the orchard,
when Reuben had gathered flowers for her, when life seemed enchanting.
Was it enchanting now?

The Doctor was always gravely kind. "Have courage, Adaly, have courage!"
he was wont to say, "God orders all things right."

And somehow, when she hears him say it, she believes it more than ever.

Ten days, a fortnight, and a month pass, and there is no acknowledgment
from Reuben of her grateful letter. He does not count it worth his
while, apparently, to break his long silence; or, possibly, he is too
much engrossed with livelier interests to give a thought to this episode
of his old life in Ashfield. Adèle is disturbed by it; but the very
disturbance gives her new courage to combat faithfully the difficulties
of her position. "One cheering word I would have thought he might have
given me," said she.

The appeal to her father, too, has no answer. Before it reaches its
destination, Maverick has taken ship for America; and, singularly
enough, it is fated that the letter of Adèle should be first opened and
read--by her mother.

LVII.

Some time in mid-May of this year Maverick writes:--

"My dear Johns,--I shall again greet you, God willing, in your own home,
some forty days hence, and I shall come as a repentant Benedick; for I
now wear the dignities of a married man. Your kind letter counted for a
great deal toward my determination; but I will not affect to conceal
from you, that my tender interest in the future of Adèle counted for a
great deal more. As I had supposed, the communication to Julie (which I
effected through her brother) that her child was still living, and
living motherless, woke all the tenderness of her nature. I cannot say
that the sudden change in her inclinations was any way flattering to me;
but knowing her recent religious austerities, I was prepared for this. I
shall not undertake to describe to you our first interview, which I can
never forget. It belongs to those heart-secrets which cannot be spoken
of; but this much I may tell you,--that, if there was no kindling of the
old and wayward love, there grew out of it a respect for her present
severity and elevation of character that I had never anticipated. At our
age, indeed, (though, when I think of it, I must be many years your
junior,) a respect for womanly character most legitimately takes the
place of that disorderly sentiment which twenty years ago blazed out in
passion.

"We have been married according to the rites of the Romish Church. If I
had proposed other ceremony, more agreeable to your views, I am
confident that she would not have listened to me. She is wrapped as
steadfastly in her creed as ever you in yours. To do otherwise in so
sacred a matter--and with her it wore solely that aspect--than as her
Church commands, would have been to do foully and vainly. I had prepared
you, I think, for her perversity in this matter; nor do I think that all
your zeal and powers of persuasion could make her recreant to the faith
for which she has immolated all the womanly vanities which certainly
once belonged to her. Indeed, the only trace of worldliness which I see
in her is her intense yearning toward our dear Adèle, and her passionate
longing to clasp her child once more to her heart. Nor will I conceal
from you that she hopes, with all the fervor of a mother's hope, to wean
her from what she counts the heretical opinions under which she has been
reared, and to bring her into the fold of the faithful.

"You will naturally ask, my dear Johns, why I do not combat this; but I
am too old and too far spent for a fight about creeds. I should have
made a lame fight on that score at any day; but now my main concern, it
would seem, should be to look out personally for the creed which has
most of mercy in it. If I seem to speak triflingly, my dear Johns, I
pray you excuse me; it is only my business way of stating the actual
facts in the case. As for Madame Maverick, I am sure you will find no
trifling in her (if you ever meet her); she is terribly in earnest. I
tell her she would have made a magnificent lady prioress, whereat she
thumbs her beads and whispers a Latin distich, as if she were exorcising
a demon. Yet I should do wrong if I were to represent her as always
severe, even upon such a theme; there certainly belongs to her a tender,
appealing manner (reminding of Adèle in a way that brings tears to my
eyes); but it is always bounded by allegiance to her sworn faith. You
will think it an exaggeration, but she reminds me at times of those
women of the New Testament (which I have not altogether forgotten) who
gave up all for the following of the Master. If I were in your study, my
dear Johns, you might ask me who those women were? And for my soul I
could not tell you. Yet I have a vague recollection that there were
those who showed a beautiful devotion to the Christian faith, that
somehow sublimated their lives and memories. Again, I feel constrained
to put before you another feature in her character, which I am confident
will make you feel kindly toward her; my home near to Marseilles, which
has been but a gypsy home for so many years, she has taken under her
hand, and by its new appointments and order has convicted me of the
losses I have felt so long. True, you might object to the _oratoire_;
but in all else I am confident you would approve, and in all else
felicitate Adèle upon the home which was preparing for her.

"Madame Maverick will not sail with me for America; although the
marriage, under French law, may have admitted Adèle to all rights and
even social immunities, yet I have represented that another law and
custom rules with you. Whatever opprobrium might attach to the mother,
Julie, with her exalted religious sentiment, would not weigh for a
moment; but as regards Adèle, she manifests a strange tenderness. To
spare her any pang, or possible pangs, she is content to wait. I have
feared, too, I must confess, that any undue expression of condemnation
or distrust might work revulsion of her own feeling. But while she
assents,--with some reluctance, I must admit,--to this plan of deferring
her meeting with Adèle, on whom all her affections seem to centre, she
insists, in a way that I find it difficult to combat, upon her child's
speedy return. That her passionate love will insure entire devotion on
the part of Adèle, I cannot doubt. And how the anti-Romish faith which
must have been instilled in the dear girl by your teachings, as well as
by her associations, may withstand the earnest attack of Madame
Maverick, I cannot tell. I have a fear it may lead to some dismal
complications. You know what the earnestness of your own faith is; but I
don't think you yet know the earnestness of an opposing faith, with a
Frenchwoman to back it. Even as I write, she comes to cast a glance at
my work, and says, 'Monsieur Maverick,' (she called me Frank once,)
'what are you saying there to the heretical Doctor?'

"Whereupon I translate for her ear a sentence or two. 'Tell him,' says
she, 'that I thank him for his kindness; tell him besides, that I can in
no way better atone for the guiltiness of the past, than by bringing
back this wandering lamb into the true fold. Only when we kneel before
the same altar, her hand in mine, can I feel that she is truly my
child.'

"I fear greatly this zeal may prove infectious.

"And now, my dear Johns, in regard to the revelation to Adèle of what is
written here,--of the whole truth, in short, for it must come out,--I
haven't the heart or the courage to make it myself. I must throw myself
on your charity. For Heaven's sake, tell the story as kindly as you can.
Don't let her think too harshly of me. See to it, I pray, that my name
don't become a bugbear in the village. I have pretty broad shoulders,
and could bear it, if I only were to be sufferer; but I am sure 't would
react fearfully on the sensibilities of poor Adèle. _That_ sin is past
cure and past preachment; no good can come from trumpeting wrath against
it. Do me this favor, Johns, and you will find me a more willing
listener in what is to come. I can't promise, indeed, to accept all your
dogmas; there is a thick crust of the world on me, and I doubt if you
could force them through it; but, for Adèle's sake, I think I could
become a very orderly and presentable person, even for a New England
meeting-house. I will make a beginning now by turning over the little
property which you hold for Adèle, in trust, for disbursement in your
parish charities. The dear child won't need it, and the parish may."

The Doctor was happy to be relieved of the worst part of the revelation;
but he had yet to communicate the fact that the mother was still alive,
and (what was to him worst of all) that she was imbruted with the
delusions of the Romish Church. He chose his hour, and, meeting her upon
the village street, asked her into his study.

"Adaly, your father is coming. He will be here within a month."

"At last! at last!" said she, with a cry of joy.

"But, Adaly," continued he, with great gravity, "I have perhaps led you
into error. Your mother, Adaly,--your mother is still living."

"Living!" and an expression almost of radiance shot over the fair face.
But in an instant it was gone. Was not the poor lady she had so
religiously mourned over her mother? That death embrace and the tomb
were, then, only solemn mockeries! With a frightful alertness her
thought ran to them,--weighed them. "New Papa," said she, approaching
him with a gravity that matched his own, "is this some new delusion? Is
it true? Has he written me?"

"He has not written you, my child; but I have a letter, informing me of
his marriage, and begging me to make the revelation to you as kindly as
I might."

"Marriage! Marriage to whom?" says Adèle, her eyes flashing fire, and
her lips showing a tempest of scarce controllable feeling.

"Marriage to your mother, Adaly. He would be just at last."

"O my God!" exclaimed Adèle, with a burst of tears. "It's false! I shall
never see my mother again in this world. I know it! I know it!"

"But, Adaly, my child, consider!" said the old gentleman.

Adèle did not heed him. She was lost in her own griefs. She could only
exclaim, "O my father! my father!"

The old Doctor was greatly moved; he laid down his spectacles, and paced
up and down the room. The earnestness of her doubt made him almost
believe that he was himself deceived.

"Can it be? can it be?" he muttered, half under breath, while Adèle sat
drooping in her chair. "May be the instinct of the poor girl is right,
after all," thought he,--"sin is so full of disguises."

At this moment there is a sharp tap at the door, and Miss Eliza steps
in, the bearer of a letter from Reuben.

KILLED AT THE FORD

    He is dead, the beautiful youth,
    The heart of honor, the tongue of truth,--
    He, the life and light of us all,
    Whose voice was blithe as a bugle call,
    Whom all eyes followed with one consent,
    The cheer of whose laugh, and whose pleasant word,
    Hushed all murmurs of discontent.

    Only last night, as we rode along
    Down the dark of the mountain gap,
    To visit the picket-guard at the ford,
    Little dreaming of any mishap,
    He was humming the words of some old song:
    "Two red roses he had on his cap
    And another he bore at the point of his sword."

    Sudden and swift a whistling ball
    Came out of a wood, and the voice was still;
    Something I heard in the darkness fall,
    And for a moment my blood grew chill;
    I spake in a whisper, as he who speaks
    In a room where some one is lying dead;
    But he made no answer to what I said.

    We lifted him up on his saddle again,
    And through the mire and the mist and the rain
    Carried him back to the silent camp,
    And laid him as if asleep on his bed;
    And I saw by the light of the surgeon's lamp
    Two white roses upon his cheeks,
    And one just over his heart blood-red!

    And I saw in a vision how far and fleet
    That fatal bullet went speeding forth,
    Till it reached a town in the distant North,
    Till it reached a house in a sunny street,
    Till it reached a heart that ceased to beat
    Without a murmur, without a cry;
    And a bell was tolled in that far-off town,
    For one who had passed from cross to crown,--
    And the neighbors wondered that she should die.

THE LATE INSURRECTION IN JAMAICA.

If Cuba be the Queen of the Antilles, then fairest of the sisterhood
which adorn her regal state is Jamaica. A land of streams and mountains,
from the one it derives almost inexhaustible fertility of valleys and
plains; from the other, enchanting prospects, which challenge comparison
with the scenery even of Tyrol and Switzerland. Tropical along its
shores, temperate up its steep hills, the sun of Africa on its plains,
the frosts of New England in its mountains, there is scarcely a luxury
of the South or a comfort of the North which may not be cultivated to
advantage somewhere within its borders. Here is the natural home of the
sugar-cane; and it is scarcely a figure of speech to say that the sugar
supply of the world might come from the teeming bosom of this little
island. Here too are slopes of hills, and broad savannas, where "the
grass may almost be _seen_ growing," and where may be bred cattle fit to
compete with the far-famed herds of England. The forests are full of
mahogany and logwood. The surrounding waters swarm with fish of every
variety, and of the finest flavor. Nominally, at least, the people are
free and self-governed; and if, under propitious skies, the burdens
either of the private home or of the state are heavy and crushing, it is
because of mismanagement and not of necessity. To a casual observer,
therefore, it would seem as if nowhere in the same space were gathered
more elements of wealth, prosperity, and happiness than in Jamaica.

Yet Jamaica is poor and discontented, and from year to year is growing
more miserable and more full of complaints. While on the little island
of Barbadoes, which is flat and comparatively destitute of natural
beauty, the inhabitant is proud to the verge of the ludicrous of his
home, the Jamaican, dwelling amid scenes of perpetual loveliness,
despises his native soil. And not without reason. For Jamaica presents
that saddest and least flattering sight, a land sinking into hopeless
ruin. Her plantations are left uncultivated. Her cities look time-worn
and crumbling. Her fields, which once blossomed like the rose, are
relapsing into the wilderness. She does not feed her people. She does
not clothe them. She does not furnish them shelter. With three hundred
and fifty thousand negroes she has not sufficient labor. With twenty
thousand whites she has not employers enough who are capable of managing
wisely and paying honestly what labor she has. With a soil which Nature
has made one broad pasture, she does not raise the half of her own beef
and pork. With plains which ought to be waving with luxuriant harvests
of wheat and corn, her children are fed from our overflowing granaries.
With woods filled with trees fit for building, she sends all the way to
the Provinces for shingles, joist, and boards. On her two hundred swift,
sparkling rivers there was not, in 1850, a single saw-mill. In an age of
invention and labor-saving machines, the plough is to her a modern
innovation; and her laborers still scratch the soil which they seek to
till with tools of the Middle Ages. Even the production of sugar, to
which she has sacrificed every other industrial interest, has sunk from
the boasted hundred and fifty thousand hogsheads of the last century, to
a meagre yearly crop of thirty thousand. Nine tenths of her proprietors
are absentees. More than that proportion of her great estates are
ruinously mortgaged. A tourist gives as the final evidence of
exhaustion, that Jamaica has no amusements, no circus, no theatre, no
opera, none of the pleasant trifles which surplus wealth creates.

Nor are the moral aspects any more encouraging. Slavery, dying, cursed
the soil with its fatal bequest, contempt for labor; and the years which
have elapsed since emancipation have done little or nothing to give to
the toiler conscious dignity and worth. The bondsman, scarcely yet freed
from all his chains, naturally enough thinks that, "if Massa will not
work," it is the highest gentility in him not to work either, and sighs
for a few acres whereon he may live in sluggish content. And his quondam
master, left to his own resources, will not any more than before put his
shoulder to the work; and, though sunk himself in sloth, ceases not to
complain of another's indolence. The spirit of caste is still
relentless. The white man despises the black man, and, if he can, cheats
him and tramples upon him. The black man, in return, suspects and fears
his old oppressor, and sometimes, goaded to desperation, turns upon him.
A perpetual discontent has always brooded over Jamaica; and it is
recorded that no less than thirty bloody rebellions have left their
crimson stains on her ignoble annals.

It is in vain to inquire for the causes of this physical and moral
decay. For every class has its special complaint, every traveller his
favorite theory, and every political economist his sufficient
explanation. But let the cause be what it may, the fact stands out black
and repulsive. Jamaica, which came from the hand of the Creator a fair
and well-watered garden, has presented for more than half a century that
melancholy spectacle, too common in Equatorial America, of a land rich
in every natural advantage, and yet through the misfortune or folly of
its people plunged in poverty and misery.

The world at large had become tired of the griefs of Jamaica, and
reconciled itself to her wretchedness as a foregone conclusion, when the
events of last October lent a fresh and terrible interest to her
history. An insurrection, including in its purpose the murder of every
white man on the island, has been quenched in the blood of its leaders,
say the Governor of Jamaica and his defenders. An insignificant riot has
been followed by a wholesale and indiscriminate massacre, sparing not
even the women and children, reply their opponents.

Admitting for a moment the whole planter theory of a general
insurrection, the question inevitably arises, What are the causes which
would prompt such a rebellion, and which, while they do not justify
violence, furnish reasons why every humane mind should desire to treat
with leniency the errors, and even the crimes, of an ignorant and
oppressed race? The ordinary burden of the Jamaica negro is far from a
light one. The yearly expense of his government is not less than a
million dollars, or about three dollars for every man, woman, and child
on the island. The executive and judicial departments are on a scale of
expense which would befit a continent. The Governor receives a salary of
forty thousand dollars, the Chief Justice fifteen thousand dollars, the
Associate Justices ten thousand dollars. The ecclesiastical
establishment, which ministers little or nothing to the religious wants
of the colored race, absorbs another huge portion of the public revenue.
And all this magnificence of expenditure in a population of twenty
thousand bankrupt whites and three hundred and fifty thousand half-naked
blacks. If, now, the negro believed that this burden was distributed
evenly, he might bear it with patience. But he does not believe so. He
is sure, on the contrary, that the white man, who controls legislation,
so assesses the revenue that it shall relieve the rich and burden the
poor. He tells you that the luxuries of the planter are admitted at a
nominal duty, while the coarse fabrics with which he must clothe himself
and family pay forty per cent; that while the planter's huge hogshead of
seventeen hundred pounds' weight pays only an excise of three shillings,
the hard-raised barrel of his home produce of two hundred pounds must
pay two shillings; that every miserable mule-cart of the petty
land-owner is subjected to eighteen shillings license, while the great
ox-carts of the thousand-acre plantation go untaxed,--a law under which
the number of little carts in one district sunk from five hundred to
less than two hundred, and with it sunk who shall tell how much growing
enterprise. These complaints may be unjust, but the negro believes in
them, and they chafe and exasperate him.

Another important question is, What is the ability of the negro to bear
these burdens? A defender of the planters gravely asserts "that the
negro demands a price for his labor which would be exorbitant in any
part of the world." What is that exorbitant price? An able-bodied
agricultural laborer in Jamaica receives from eighteen to thirty cents a
day; and, if he is both fortunate and industrious, may net for a year's
work the fabulous sum of from fifty to eighty dollars. And this in a
country which is one of the dearest in the world; where the necessaries
of life are always at war prices; where flour is now twenty dollars a
barrel, and eggs are fifty cents a dozen, and butter is forty cents a
pound, and ham twenty-five, and beef and mutton still higher.

Did the laborer actually receive his pittance, his lot might be more
tolerable. But it is the almost universal complaint, that, either from
inability or disinclination, the planter does not keep his agreements.
Sometimes the overseer, when the work has been done, and well done,
arbitrarily retains a quarter, or even a half, of the stipulated wages.
The negro says he has no chance for redress; that even a written
agreement is worth no more than a blank paper, for the magistrates are
either all planters, or their dependents, and have no ears to hear the
cry of the lowly. Add now to all this the fact, that the last few
seasons have been unfavorable to agriculture; that planters and peasants
alike are even more than usually poor; that in whole districts the
blacks are destitute, their children up to the age of ten or twelve
years from absolute necessity going about stark naked, and their men and
women wearing only rags and streamers, which do not preserve even the
show of decency;--and is there not sufficient reason, not indeed to
justify murder and arson, but why a whole race of suffering and
excitable people should not be stamped as fiends in human shape for the
outrages of a few of their number?

Turn now to the actual scene of conflict. In a little triangular tract
of country on the east shore of Jamaica, hemmed in between the sea and
the Blue Mountains, twenty-five miles long and two thirds as wide,
occurred in October last what Governor Eyre has seen fit to dignify with
the name of an insurrection. The first act of violence was committed at
Morant Bay,--a town where it is said that no missionary to the blacks
has been permitted to live for thirty-five years,--in the parish of St.
Thomas in the East,--that very St. Thomas, possibly, whose court-house
was called forty years ago the "hell of Jamaica," and where is preserved
as a pleasant relic of the past a record book wherein the curious
traveller reads the prices paid in the palmy days of slavery for cutting
off the ears and legs, and slitting the noses, of runaway negroes. Had
these negroes of Morant Bay any special causes of exasperation? They
had. Their complaint was threefold. First, that the only magistrate who
protected their interests had been arbitrarily removed. Second, that a
plantation claimed by them to be deserted was as arbitrarily adjudged to
be the rightful property of a white man. Third, that the plucking of
fruit by the wayside, which had been a custom from time immemorial, and
which resembled the plucking of ears of corn under the Jewish law, was
by new regulations made a crime. Thus matters stood on the day of the
outbreak; a general condition of poverty and discontent throughout the
island; a special condition of exasperation in the parish of St. Thomas
in the East, and particularly at Morant Bay.

On the 7th of last October, a negro was arrested for picking two
cocoanuts, value threepence. This arrest had every exasperating
condition. The fruit was taken from a plantation whose title was
disputed, and upon which the negroes had squatted. The law which made
the plucking of fruit a crime was itself peculiarly obnoxious. The
magistrate before whom the offence was to be tried, rightly or wrongly,
was accused by the blacks of gross partiality and injustice. The accused
man was followed to the court by a crowd of his friends, armed, it is
said, with clubs, though this latter statement seems to be doubtful.
When a sentence of four shillings' fine, or, in default of payment,
thirty days' imprisonment, was imposed, the award was received in
silence. But when the costs were adjudged to be twelve shillings and
sixpence, there were murmurs. Some tumultuously advised the man not to
pay. Some, believing the case involved the title to the land, told him
to appeal to a higher court. The magistrate ordered the arrest of all
noisy persons. But these fled to the street, and, shielded by the
citizens, escaped. The next day but one, six constables armed with a
warrant proceeded to Stony Gut, the scene of the original arrest, to
take into custody twenty-eight persons accused of riot. But they were
forcibly resisted, handcuffed with their own irons, and forced
ignominiously to take their way back. Some of the arrests, however, were
made quietly a little time after.

On the 11th of October dawned an eventful day. The magistrates were
assembled in the court-house at Morant Bay for the purpose of examining
the prisoners. The court-house was guarded by twenty armed volunteers, a
body apparently of local militia. Some four or five hundred excited
blacks surrounded the court-house, armed with bludgeons, grasping
stones. What led to a collision can never be known. Very probably
missiles were thrown at the guard. At any rate the officer in command
ordered them to fire upon the crowd, and fifteen of the rioters fell
dead or wounded. Then all restraint was at an end. The negroes threw
themselves with incredible fury upon the guard, drove them into the
court-house, summoned them to surrender at discretion, then set fire to
the building, and murdered, with many circumstances of atrocity, the
unhappy inmates, as they sought to flee. Sixteen were killed, and
eighteen wounded, while a few escaped unharmed, by the help of the
negroes themselves. This was the beginning and the end of the famous
armed insurrection, so far as it ever was armed insurrection. The
rioters dispersed. The spirit of insubordination spread to the
plantations. There was general confusion, some destruction of property,
some robbery. The whites were filled with alarm. Many left all and fled.
The most exaggerated reports obtained credence. But if we except a Mr.
Hine, who had rendered himself especially unpopular, and who was
murdered on his plantation, not one white man appears to have been
killed in cold blood, and not one white woman or child suffered from
violence of any sort. Facts to the contrary may yet come to light.
Official reports may reveal some secret chapter of bloodshed. But the
chances of such a revelation are small enough. Three months have elapsed
since the first tidings of the outbreak reached the mother country.
There has been a great excitement; investigation has been demanded;
facts have been called for; the defenders of the planters have been
defied to produce facts. Meanwhile the Governor of Jamaica has written
home repeated despatches; the commander of the military forces which
crushed the rebellion has visited England; the planters' journals have
come laden with vulgar abuse of the negro, and with all sorts of evil
surmises as to his motives and purposes; letters have been received from
Jamaica from persons in every position in life; and still no new
facts,--not so much as one clear accusation of any further fatal
violence. The conclusion is irresistible, that this was a riot, and not
an insurrection; and that it began and ended, so far as armed force was
concerned, at Morant Bay, on that unhappy day, the 11th of last October.

It cannot be denied that the occurrences of that day were marked by
some circumstances of painful ferocity. Men were literally hacked to
pieces, crying for mercy. One man's tongue was cut from his mouth even
while he lived. Another, escaping, was thrown back into the burning
building, and roasted to death. The joints of the hand of the dead chief
magistrate were dissevered by the blacks, who cried out exultingly,
"This hand will write no more lying despatches to the Queen." But the
events of that day were marked also by instances of humanity. The clerk
of the court was rescued by his negro servant, who thrust him beneath
the floor, and, watching his opportunity, conveyed him to the shelter of
the woods next morning. A child, who happened to be with his father in
the court-house, was snatched up by a negro woman, who, at the risk of
her own life, carried him to a place of safety. But admitting the worst
charges, any one who remembers the New York riot of 1863 will be slow to
assert that this black mob exhibited any barbarity which has not been
more than emulated by white mobs. Shocking enough the details are; but
human action always and with every race is ferocious, when once the
restraints of self-control and the law are thrown off.

With a people so excitable as the blacks of Jamaica, and among whom
there existed so many causes of disaffection, the greatest promptitude
of action was a virtue. Had Governor Eyre marched with a military force
into the district, had he crushed out every vestige of armed resistance,
had he brought before proper tribunals and punished with severity all
persons who were convicted of any complicity in these outrages, he would
have merited the praise of every good man. What he did was to let loose
upon a little district, unmuzzled, the dogs of war. What he did was to
gather from all quarters an armed force, a motley crew, regulars and
militia, sailors and landsmen, black and white, and permit them to hold
for fourteen long days a saturnalia of blood. What he did was to summon
the savage Maroon tribes to the feast of death, that by their barbaric
warfare they might add yet one more shade of gloom to the picture. The
official accounts are enough to blanch the cheek with horror. In two
days after the riot martial law was declared. In four, the outbreak was
hemmed into narrow quarters. In a week, it ceased to exist in any shape.
Yet the work of death went on. Bands of maddened soldiers pierced the
country in every direction. Men were arrested upon the slightest
suspicion. Every petty officer constituted himself a judge; every
private soldier became an executioner. If the black man fled, he was
shot as a rebel; if he surrendered, he was hung on the same pretext,
after the most summary trial. If the number of prisoners became
inconveniently large, they were shot, or else whipped and let go,
apparently according to the whim of the officer in command. Women were
seized, stripped half naked, and thrown among the vulgar soldiery to be
scourged. The estimate is that five hundred and fifty were hung by order
of drum-head court-martials, five hundred destroyed by the Maroons, two
thousand shot by the soldiery, and that three hundred women were catted,
and how many men nobody presumes even to guess. One asks, At what
expense of life to the victors was all this slaughter accomplished? And
he reads, that not one soldier was killed, that not one soldier was
wounded, that not one soldier received so much as a scratch, unless from
the bushes through which he pursued his human prey. It was not war: it
was a massacre. These poor people fled like panic-struck sheep, and the
soldiery tracked them like wolves. The human heart could wish to take
refuge in incredulity, but alas! the worst testimony of all is found in
the official reports of the actors themselves.

A few terrible anecdotes will give reality to the picture. George
Marshall, a mulatto, was taken up with others as a straggler, and
ordered to receive fifty lashes. With each lash the unfortunate man
gritted his teeth and turned his head, whether from pain or anger is
uncertain. The provost-marshal construed this into a threatening look,
and ordered him to be hung, which was done. There was no proof whatever
that Marshall had any connection with the riot. A company of Maroons
discovered a body of blacks, men, women, and children, who had taken
refuge up in the trees, and stood and deliberately shot them, one by
one, until they had all fallen, and the ground beneath was thickly
strewn with their dead bodies. On a plantation between Morant Bay and
Port Antonio the people were led by evil example into some acts of riot
and pillage. But even in the midst of their license they sent word to
the English gentleman who had charge of the plantation, that, if he and
his family remained quiet, they should be protected. So rapidly did the
spirit of rioting burn itself out, that on the next Sunday, only four
days after the first outbreak at Morant Bay, he rode down to the estate,
conducted a religious service as usual, speaking boldly to the people of
the folly and sin of their course, and counselling them to return
quietly to their work. His words were so well received, that on Monday
morning he started for the plantation, purposing to appoint for the
workmen their tasks, as the best possible way of keeping them out of
mischief. As he drew near, he heard firing, and the first sight which
greeted him was a negro shot down. The village was in possession of a