This eBook was produced by David Widger

TALES AND SKETCHES

BY

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER

CONTENTS:

THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER PASSACONAWAY THE OPIUM EATER THE PROSELYTES DAVID MATSON THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH YANKEE GYPSIES THE TRAINING THE CITY OF A DAY PATUCKET FALLS FIRST DAY IN LOWELL THE LIGHTING UP TAKING COMFORT CHARMS AND FAIRY FAITH MAGICIANS AND WITCH FOLK THE BEAUTIFUL THE WORLD'S END THE HEROINE OF LONG POINT

THE LITTLE IRON SOLDIER

OR, WHAT AMINADAB IVISON DREAMED ABOUT.

AMINADAB IVISON started up in his bed. The great clock at the head of the staircase, an old and respected heirloom of the family, struck one.

"Ah," said he, heaving up a great sigh from the depths of his inner man,
"I've had a tried time of it."

"And so have I," said the wife. "Thee's been kicking and threshing about all night. I do wonder what ails thee."

And well she might; for her husband, a well-to-do, portly, middle-aged gentleman, being blessed with an easy conscience, a genial temper, and a comfortable digestion, was able to bear a great deal of sleep, and seldom varied a note in the gamut of his snore from one year's end to another.

"A very remarkable exercise," soliloquized Aminadab; "very."

"Dear me! what was it?" inquired his wife.

"It must have been a dream," said Aminadab.

"Oh, is that all?" returned the good woman. "I'm glad it's nothing worse. But what has thee been dreaming about?"

"It's the strangest thing, Hannah, that thee ever heard of," said Aminadab, settling himself slowly back into his bed. Thee recollects Jones sent me yesterday a sample of castings from the foundry. Well, I thought I opened the box and found in it a little iron man, in regimentals; with his sword by his side and a cocked hat on, looking very much like the picture in the transparency over neighbor O'Neal's oyster-cellar across the way. I thought it rather out of place for Jones to furnish me with such a sample, as I should not feel easy to show it to my customers, on account of its warlike appearance. However, as the work was well done, I took the little image and set him up on the table, against the wall; and, sitting down opposite, I began to think over my business concerns, calculating how much they would increase in profit in case a tariff man should be chosen our ruler for the next four years. Thee knows I am not in favor of choosing men of blood and strife to bear rule in the land: but it nevertheless seems proper to consider all the circumstances in this case, and, as one or the other of the candidates of the two great parties must be chosen, to take the least of two evils. All at once I heard a smart, quick tapping on the table; and, looking up, there stood the little iron man close at my elbow, winking and chuckling. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he, clapping his little metal hands together till he rang over like a bell, 'take the least of two evils.' His voice had a sharp, clear, jingling sound, like that of silver dollars falling into a till. It startled me so that I woke up, but finding it only a dream presently fell asleep again. Then I thought I was down in the Exchange, talking with neighbor Simkins about the election and the tariff. 'I want a change in the administration, but I can't vote for a military chieftain,' said neighbor Simkins, 'as I look upon it unbecoming a Christian people to elect men of blood for their rulers.' 'I don't know,' said I, 'what objection thee can have to a fighting man; for thee 's no Friend, and has n't any conscientious scruples against military matters. For my own part, I do not take much interest in politics, and never attended a caucus in my life, believing it best to keep very much in the quiet, and avoid, as far as possible, all letting and hindering things; but there may be cases where a military man may be voted for as a choice of evils, and as a means of promoting the prosperity of the country in business matters.' 'What!' said neighbor Simkins, 'are you going to vote for a man whose whole life has been spent in killing people?' This vexed me a little, and I told him there was such a thing as carrying a good principle too far, and that he night live to be sorry that he had thrown away his vote, instead of using it discreetly. 'Why, there's the iron business,' said I; but just then I heard a clatter beside me, and, looking round, there was the little iron soldier clapping his hands in great glee. 'That's it, Aminadab!' said he; 'business first, conscience afterwards! Keep up the price of iron with peace if you can, but keep it up at any rate.' This waked me again in a good deal of trouble; but, remembering that it is said that 'dreams come of the multitude of business,' I once more composed myself to sleep."

"Well, what happened next?" asked his wife.

"Why, I thought I was in the meeting-house, sitting on the facing-seat as usual. I tried hard to settle my mind down into a quiet and humble state; but somehow the cares of the world got uppermost, and, before I was well aware of it, I was far gone in a calculation of the chances of the election, and the probable rise in the price of iron in the event of the choice of a President favorable to a high tariff. Rap, tap, went something on the floor. I opened my eyes, and there was the little image, red-hot, as if just out of the furnace, dancing, and chuckling, and clapping his hands. 'That's right, Aminadab!' said he; 'go on as you have begun; take care of yourself in this world, and I'll promise you you'll be taken care of in the next. Peace and poverty, or war and money. It's a choice of evils at best; and here's Scripture to decide the matter: "Be not righteous overmuch."' Then the wicked-looking little image twisted his hot lips, and leered at me with his blazing eyes, and chuckled and laughed with a noise exactly as if a bag of dollars had been poured out upon the meeting-house floor. This waked me just now in such a fright. I wish thee would tell me, Hannah, what thee can make of these three dreams?"

"It don't need a Daniel to interpret them," answered Hannah. "Thee 's been thinking of voting for a wicked old soldier, because thee cares more for thy iron business than for thy testimony against wars and fightings. I don't a bit wonder at thy seeing the iron soldier thee tells of; and if thee votes to-morrow for a man of blood, it wouldn't be strange if he should haunt thee all thy life."

Aminadab Ivison was silent, for his conscience spoke in the words of his wife. He slept no more that night, and rose up in the morning a wiser and better man.

When he went forth to his place of business he saw the crowds hurrying to and fro; there were banners flying across the streets, huge placards were on the walls, and he heard all about him the bustle of the great election.

"Friend Ivison," said a red-faced lawyer, almost breathless with his hurry, "more money is needed in the second ward; our committees are doing a great work there. What shall I put you down for? Fifty dollars? If we carry the election, your property will rise twenty per cent. Let me see; you are in the iron business, I think?"

Aminadab thought of the little iron soldier of his dream, and excused himself. Presently a bank director came tearing into his office.

"Have you voted yet, Mr. Ivison? It 's time to get your vote in. I wonder you should be in your office now. No business has so much at stake in this election as yours."

"I don't think I should feel entirely easy to vote for the candidate," said Aminadab.

"Mr. Ivison," said the bank director, "I always took you to be a shrewd, sensible man, taking men and things as they are. The candidate may not be all you could wish for; but when the question is between him and a worse man, the best you can do is to choose the least of the two evils."

"Just so the little iron man said," thought Aminadab. "'Get thee behind me, Satan!' No, neighbor Discount," said he, "I've made up my mind. I see no warrant for choosing evil at all. I can't vote for that man."

"Very well," said the director, starting to leave the room; "you can do as you please; but if we are defeated through the ill-timed scruples of yourself and others, and your business pinches in consequence, you need n't expect us to help men who won't help themselves. Good day, sir."

Aminadab sighed heavily, and his heart sank within him; but he thought of his dream, and remained steadfast. Presently he heard heavy steps and the tapping of a cane on the stairs; and as the door opened he saw the drab surtout of the worthy and much-esteemed friend who sat beside him at the head of the meeting.

"How's thee do, Aminadab?" said he. "Thee's voted, I suppose?"

"No, Jacob," said he; "I don't like the candidate. I can't see my way clear to vote for a warrior."

"Well, but thee does n't vote for him because he is a warrior, Aminadab," argued the other; "thee votes for him as a tariff man and an encourager of home industry. I don't like his wars and fightings better than thee does; but I'm told he's an honest man, and that he disapproves of war in the abstract, although he has been brought up to the business. If thee feels tender about the matter, I don't like to urge thee; but it really seems to me thee had better vote. Times have been rather hard, thou knows; and if by voting at this election we can make business matters easier, I don't see how we can justify ourselves in staying at home. Thou knows we have a command to be diligent in business as well as fervent in spirit, and that the Apostle accounted him who provided not for his own household worse than an infidel. I think it important to maintain on all proper occasions our Gospel testimony against wars and fightings; but there is such a thing as going to extremes, thou knows, and becoming over-scrupulous, as I think thou art in this case. It is said, thou knows, in Ecclesiastes, 'Be not righteous overmuch: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?'"

"Ah," said Aminadab to himself, "that's what the little iron soldier said in meeting." So he was strengthened in his resolution, and the persuasions of his friend were lost upon him.

At night Aminadab sat by his parlor fire, comfortable alike in his inner and his outer man. "Well, Hannah," said he, "I've taken thy advice. I did n't vote for the great fighter to-day."

"I'm glad of it," said the good woman, "and I dare say thee feels the better for it."

Aminadab Ivison slept soundly that night, and saw no more of the little iron soldier.

PASSACONAWAY.

[1833.]

I know not, I ask not, what guilt's in thy heart, But I feel
that I love thee, whatever thou art.
Moor.

THE township of Haverhill, on the Merrimac, contained, in the autumn of 1641, the second year of its settlement, but six dwelling-houses, situated near each other, on the site of the present village. They were hastily constructed of rude logs, small and inconvenient, but one remove from the habitations of the native dwellers of the wilderness. Around each a small opening had been made through the thick forest, down to the margin of the river, where, amidst the charred and frequent stumps and fragments of fallen trees, the first attempts at cultivation had been made. A few small patches of Indian corn, which had now nearly reached maturity, exhibited their thick ears and tasselled stalks, bleached by the frost and sunshine; and, here and there a spot of yellow stubble, still lingering among the rough incumbrances of the soil, told where a scanty crop of common English grain had been recently gathered. Traces of some of the earlier vegetables were perceptible, the melon, the pea, and the bean. The pumpkin lay ripening on its frosted vines, its sunny side already changed to a bright golden color; and the turnip spread out its green mat of leaves in defiance of the season. Everything around realized the vivid picture of Bryant's Emigrant, who:

"Hewed the dark old woods away,
And gave the virgin fields to the day
And the pea and the bean beside the door
Bloomed where such flowers ne'er bloomed before;
And the maize stood up, and the bearded rye
Bent low in the breath of an unknown sky."

Beyond, extended the great forest, vast, limitless, unexplored, whose venerable trees had hitherto bowed only to the presence of the storm, the beaver's tooth, and the axe of Time, working in the melancholy silence of natural decay. Before the dwellings of the white adventurers, the broad Merrimac rolled quietly onward the piled-up foliage of its shores, rich with the hues of a New England autumn. The first sharp frosts, the avant couriers of approaching winter, had fallen, and the whole wilderness was in blossom. It was like some vivid picture of Claude Lorraine, crowded with his sunsets and rainbows, a natural kaleidoscope of a thousand colors. The oak upon the hillside stood robed in summer's greenness, in strong contrast with the topaz- colored walnut. The hemlock brooded gloomily in the lowlands, forming, with its unbroken mass of shadow, a dark background for the light maple beside it, bright with its peculiar beauty. The solemn shadows of the pine rose high in the hazy atmosphere, checkered, here and there, with the pale yellow of the birch.

"Truly, Alice, this is one of God's great marvels in the wilderness," said John Ward, the minister, and the original projector of the settlement, to his young wife, as they stood in the door of their humble dwelling. "This would be a rare sight for our friends in old Haverhill. The wood all about us hath, to my sight, the hues of the rainbow, when, in the words of the wise man, it compasseth the heavens as with a circle, and the hands of the Most High have bended it. Very beautifully hath He indeed garnished the excellent works of His wisdom."

"Yea, John," answered Alice, in her soft womanly tone; "the Lord is, indeed, no respecter of persons. He hath given the wild savages a more goodly show than any in Old England. Yet, John, I am sometimes very sorrowful, when I think of our old home, of the little parlor where you and I used to sit of a Sunday evening. The Lord hath been very bountiful to this land, and it may be said of us, as it was said of Israel of old, 'How goodly are thy tents, O Jacob! and thy tabernacles, O Israel!' But the people sit in darkness, and the Gentiles know not the God of our fathers."

"Nay," answered her husband, "the heathen may be visited and redeemed, the spirit of the Lord may turn unto the Gentiles; but a more sure evil hath arisen among us. I tell thee, Alice, it shall be more tolerable in the day of the Lord, for the Tyre and Sidon, the Sodom and Gomorrah of the heathen, than for the schemers, the ranters, the Familists, and the Quakers, who, like Satan of old, are coming among the sons of God."

"I thought," said Alice, "that our godly governor had banished these out of the colony."

"Truly he hath," answered Mr. Ward, "but the evil seed they have sown here continues to spring up and multiply. The Quakers have, indeed, nearly ceased to molest us; but another set of fanatics, headed by Samuel Gorton, have of late been very troublesome. Their family has been broken up, and the ring-leaders have been sentenced to be kept at hard labor for the colony's benefit; one being allotted to each of the old towns, where they are forbidden to speak on matters of religion. But there are said to be many still at large, who, under the encouragement of the arch-heretic, Williams, of the Providence plantation, are even now zealously doing the evil work of their master. But, Alice," he continued, as he saw his few neighbors gathering around a venerable oak which had been spared in the centre of the clearing, "it is now near our time of worship. Let us join our friends."

And the minister and his wife entered into the little circle of their neighbors. No house of worship, with spire and tower, and decorated pulpit, had as yet been reared on the banks of the Merrimac. The stern settlers came together under the open heavens, or beneath the shadow of the old trees, to kneel before that God, whose works and manifestations were around them.

The exercises of the Sabhath commenced. A psalm of the old and homely version was sung, with true feeling, if not with a perfect regard to musical effect and harmony. The brief but fervent prayer was offered, and the good man had just announced the text for his sermon, when a sudden tramp of feet, and a confused murmur of human voices, fell on the ears of the assembly.

The minister closed his Bible; and the whole group crowded closer together. "It is surely a war party of the heathen," said Mr. Ward, as he listened intently to the approaching sound. "God grant they mean us no evil!"

The sounds drew nearer. The swarthy figure of an Indian came gliding through the brush-wood into the clearing, followed closely by several Englishmen. In answer to the eager inquiries of Mr. Ward, Captain Eaton, the leader of the party, stated that he had left Boston at the command of Governor Winthrop, to secure and disarm the sachem, Passaconaway, who was suspected of hostile intentions towards the whites. They had missed of the old chief, but had captured his son, and were taking him to the governor as a hostage for the good faith of his father. He then proceeded to inform Mr. Ward, that letters had been received from the governor of the settlements of Good Hoop and Piquag, in Connecticut, giving timely warning of a most diabolical plot of the Indians to cut off their white neighbors, root and branch. He pointed out to the notice of the minister a member of his party as one of the messengers who had brought this alarming intelligence.

He was a tall, lean man, with straight, lank, sandy hair, cut evenly all around his narrow forehead, and hanging down so as to remind one of Smollett's apt similitude of "a pound of candles."

"What news do you bring us of the savages?" inquired Mr. Ward.

"The people have sinned, and the heathen are the instruments whereby the Lord hath willed to chastise them," said the messenger, with that peculiar nasal inflection of voice, so characteristic of the "unco' guid." "The great sachem, Miantonimo, chief of the Narragansetts, hath plotted to cut off the Lord's people, just after the time of harvest, to slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children."

"How have ye known this?" asked the minister.

"Even as Paul knew of those who had bound themselves together with a grievous oath to destroy him. The Lord hath done it. One of the bloody heathens was dreadfully gored by the oxen of our people, and, being in great bodily pain and tribulation thereat, he sent for Governor Haines, and told him that the Englishman's god was angry with him for concealing the plot to kill his people, and had sent the Englishman's cow to kill him."

"Truly a marvellous providence," said Mr. Ward; "but what has been done in your settlements in consequence of it?"

"We have fasted many days," returned the other, in a tone of great solemnity, "and our godly men have besought the Lord that he might now, as of old, rebuke Satan. They have, moreover, diligently and earnestly inquired, Whence cometh this evil? Who is the Achan in the camp of our Israel? It hath been greatly feared that the Quakers and the Papists have been sowing tares in the garden of the true worship. We have therefore banished these on pain of death; and have made it highly penal for any man to furnish either food or lodging to any of these heretics and idolaters. We have ordered a more strict observance of the Sabbath of the Lord, no, one being permitted to walk or run on that day, except to and from public worship, and then, only in a reverent and becoming manner; and no one is allowed to cook food, sweep the house, shave or pare the nails, or kiss a child, on the day which is to be kept holy. We have also framed many wholesome laws, against the vanity and licentiousness of the age, in respect to apparel and deportment, and have forbidden any young man to kiss a maid during the time of courtship, as, to their shame be it said, is the manner of many in the old lands."

"Ye have, indeed, done well for the spiritual," said Mr. Ward; "what have you done for your temporal defence?"

"We have our garrisons and our captains, and a goodly store of carnal weapons," answered the other. "And, besides, we have the good chief Uncas, of the Mohegans, to help us against the bloody Narragansetts."

"But, my friend," said the minister, addressing Captain Eaton, "there must be surely some mistake about Passaconaway. I verily believe him to be the friend of the white men. And this is his son Wonolanset? I saw him last year, and remember that he was the pride of the old savage, his father. I will speak to him, for I know something of his barbarous tongue."

"Wonolanset!"

The young savage started suddenly at the word, and rolled his keen bright eye upon the speaker.

"Why is the son of the great chief bound by my brothers?"

The Indian looked one instant upon the cords which confined his arms, and then glanced fiercely upon his conductors.

"Has the great chief forgotten his white friends? Will he send his young men to take their scalps when the Narragansett bids him?"

The growl of the young bear when roused from his hiding-place is not more fierce and threatening than were the harsh tones of Wonolanset as he uttered through his clenched teeth:—

"Nummus quantum."

"Nay, nay," said Mr. Ward, turning away from the savage, "his heart is full of bitterness; he says he is angry, and, verily, I like not his bearing. I fear me there is evil on foot. But ye have travelled far, and must needs be weary rest yourselves awhile, and haply, while ye refresh your bodies, I may also refresh your spirits with wholesome and comfortable doctrines."

The party having acquiesced in this proposal, their captive was secured by fastening one end of his rope to a projecting branch of the tree. The minister again named his text, but had only proceeded to the minuter divisions of his sermon, when he was again interrupted by a loud, clear whistle from the river, and a sudden exclamation of surprise from those around him. A single glance sufficed to show him the Indian, disengaged from his rope, and in full retreat.

Eaton raised his rifle to his eye, and called out to the young sachem, in his own language, to stop, or he would fire upon him. The Indian evidently understood the full extent of his danger. He turned suddenly about, and, pointing, up the river towards the dwelling of his father, pronounced with a threatening gesture:—

"Nosh, Passaconaway!"

"Hold!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, grasping the arm of Eaton. "He threatens us with his father's vengeance. For God's sake keep your fire!" It was too late. The report of the rifle broke sharply upon the Sabbath stillness. It was answered by a shout from the river, and a small canoe, rowed by an Indian and a white man, was seen darting along the shore. Wonolanset bounded on unharmed, and, plunging into the river, he soon reached the canoe, which was hastily paddled to the opposite bank. Captain Eaton and his party finding it impossible to retake their prisoner, after listening to the sermon of Mr. Ward, and partaking of some bodily refreshment, took their leave of the settlers of Pentucket, and departed for Boston.

The evening, which followed the day whose events we have narrated, was one of those peculiar seasons of beauty when the climate of New England seems preferable to that of Italy. The sun went down in the soft haze of the horizon, while the full moon was rising at the same time in the east. Its mellow silver mingled with the deep gold of the sunset. The south-west wind, as warm as that of summer, but softer, was heard, at long intervals, faintly harping amidst the pines, and blending its low sighing with the lulling murmurs of the river. The inhabitants of Pentucket had taken the precaution, as night came on, to load their muskets carefully, and place them in readiness for instant use, in the event of an attack from the savages. Such an occurrence, was, indeed, not unlikely, after the rude treatment which the son of old Passaconaway had received at the settlement. It was well known that the old chief was able, at a word, to send every warrior from Pennacook to Naumkeag upon the war-path of Miantonimo; the vengeful character of the Indians was also understood; and, in the event of an out-breaking of their resentment, the settlement of Pentucket was, of all others, the most exposed to danger.

"Don't go to neighbor Clements's to-night, Mary," said Alice Ward to her young, unmarried sister; "I'm afraid some of the tawny Indians may be lurking hereabout. Mr. Ward says he thinks they will be dangerous neighbors for us."

Mary had thrown her shawl over her head, and was just stepping out. "It is but a step, as it were, and I promised good-wife Clements that I would certainly come. I am not afraid of the Indians. There's none of them about here except Red Sam, who wanted to buy me of Mr. Ward for his squaw; and I shall not be afraid of my old spark."

The girl tripped lightly from the, threshold towards the dwelling of her neighbor. She had passed nearly half the distance when the pathway, before open to the moonlight, began to wind along the margin of the river, overhung with young sycamores and hemlocks. With a beating heart and a quickened step she was stealing through the shadow, when the boughs on the river-side were suddenly parted, and a tall man sprang into the path before her. Shrinking back with terror, she uttered a faint scream.

"Mary Edmands!" said the stranger, "do not fear me."

A thousand thoughts wildly chased each other through the mind of the astonished girl. That familiar voice—that knowledge of her name—that tall and well-remembered form! She leaned eagerly forward, and looked into the stranger's face. A straggling gleam of moonshine fell across its dark features of manly beauty.

"Richard Martin! can it be possible!"

"Yea, Mary," answered the other, "I have followed thee to the new world, in that love which neither sea nor land can abate. For many weary months I have waited earnestly for such a meeting as this, and, in that time, I have been in many and grievous perils by the flood and the wilderness, and by the heathen Indians and more heathen persecutors among my own people. But I may not tarry, nor delay to tell my errand. Mary, thou knowest my love; wilt thou be my wife?"

Mary hesitated.

"I ask thee again, if thou wilt share the fortunes of one who hath loved thee ever since thou wast but a child, playing under the cottage trees in old Haverhill, and who hath sacrificed his worldly estate, and perilled his soul's salvation for thy sake. Mary, dear Mary, for of a truth thou art very dear to me; wilt thou go with me and be my wife?"

The tones of Richard Martin, usually harsh and forbidding, now fell soft and musical on the ear of Mary. He was her first love, her only one. What marvel that she consented?

"Let us hasten to depart," said Martin, "this is no place for me. We will go to the Providence plantations. Passaconaway will assist us in our journey."

The bright flush of hope and joy faded from the face of the young girl.
She started back from the embrace of her lover.

"What mean you, Richard? What was 't you said about our going to that sink of wickedness at Providence? Why don't you go back with me to sister Ward's?"

"Mary Edmands!" said Martin, in a tone of solemn sternness, "it is fitting that I should tell thee all. I have renounced the evil doctrines of thy brother-in-law, and his brethren in false prophecy. It was a hard struggle, Mary; the spirit was indeed willing, but the flesh was weak, exceeding weak, for I thought of thee, Mary, and of thy friends. But I had a measure of strength given me, whereby I have been enabled to do the work which was appointed me."

"Oh, Richard!" said Mary, bursting into tears, "I'm afraid you have become a Williamsite, one of them, who, Mr. Ward says, have nothing to hope for in this world or in that to come."

"The Lord rebuke him!" said Martin, with a loud voice. "Woe to such as speak evil of the witnesses of the truth. I have seen the utter nakedness of the land of carnal professors, and I have obeyed the call to come out from among them and be separate. I belong to that persecuted family whom the proud priests and rulers of this colony have driven from their borders. I was brought, with many others, before the wicked magistrates of Boston, and sentenced to labor, without hire, for the ungodly. But I have escaped from my bonds; and the Lord has raised up a friend for his servant, even the Indian Passaconaway, whose son I assisted, but a little time ago, to escape from his captors."

"Can it be?" sobbed Mary, "can it be? Richard, our own Richard, following the tribe of Gorton, the Familist! Oh, Richard, if you love me, if you love God's people and his true worship, do come away from those wicked fanatics."

"Thou art in the very gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity," answered Martin. "Listen, Mary Edmands, to the creed of those whom thou callest fanatics. We believe in Christ, but not in man-worship. The Christ we reverence is the shadow or image of God in man; he was crucified in Adam of old, and hath been crucified in all men since; his birth, his passion, and his death, were but manifestations or figures of his sufferings in Adam and his descendants. Faith and Christ are the same, the spiritual image of God in the heart. We acknowledge no rule but this Christ, this faith within us, either in temporal or spiritual things. And the Lord hath blessed us, and will bless us, and truth shall be magnified and exalted in us; and the children of the heathen shall be brought to know and partake of this great redemption whereof we testify. But woe to the false teachers, and to them who prophesy for hire and make gain of their soothsaying. Their churches are the devices of Satan, the pride and vanity of the natural Adam. Their baptism is blasphemy; and their sacrament is an abomination, yea, an incantation and a spell. Woe to them who take the shadow for the substance, that bow down to the altars of human device and cunning workmanship, that make idols of their ceremonies! Woe to the high priests and the Pharisees, and the captains and the rulers; woe to them who love the wages of unrighteousness!"

The Familist paused from utter exhaustion, so vehemently had he poured forth the abundance of his zeal. Mary Edmands, overwhelmed by his eloquence, but still unconvinced, could only urge the disgrace and danger attending his adherence to such pernicious doctrines. She concluded by telling him, in a voice choked by tears, that she could never marry him while a follower of Gorton.

"Stay then," said Martin, fiercely dashing her hand from his, "stay and partake of the curse of the ungodly, even of the curse of Meroz, who come not up to the help of the Lord, against the mighty Stay, till the Lord hath made a threshing instrument of the heathen, whereby the pride of the rulers, and the chief priests, and the captains of this land shall be humbled. Stay, till the vials of His wrath are poured out upon ye, and the blood of the strong man, and the maid, and the little child is mingled together!"

The wild language, the fierce tones and gestures of her lover, terrified the unhappy girl. She looked wildly around her, all was dark and shadowy, an undefined fear of violence came over her; and, bursting into tears, she turned to fly. "Stay yet a moment," said Martin, in a hoarse and subdued voice. He caught hold of her arm. She shrieked as if in mortal jeopardy.

"Let go the gal, let her go!" said old Job Clements, thrusting the long barrel of his gun through the bushes within a few feet of the head of the Familist. "A white man, as sure as I live! I thought, sartin, 't was a tarnal In-in." Martin relinquished his hold, and, the next instant, found himself surrounded by the settlers.

After a brief explanation had taken place between Mr. Ward and his sister-in-law, the former came forward and accosted the Familist. "Richard Martin!" he said, "I little thought to see thee so soon in the new world, still less to see thee such as thou art. I am exceeding sorry that I cannot greet thee here as a brother, either in a temporal or a spiritual nature. My sister tells me that you are a follower of that servant of Satan, Samuel Gorton, and that you have sought to entice her away with you to the colony of fanatics at Rhode Island, which may be fitly compared to that city which Philip of Macedonia peopled with rogues and vagabonds, and the offscouring of the whole earth."

"John Ward, I know thee," said the unshrinking Familist; "I know thee for a man wise above what is written, a man vain, uncharitable, and given to evil speaking. I value neither thy taunts nor thy wit; for the one hath its rise in the bitterness, and the other in the vanity, of the natural Adam. Those who walk in the true light, and who have given over crucifying Christ in their hearts, heed not a jot of the reproaches and despiteful doings of the high and mighty in iniquity. For of us it hath been written: 'I have given them thy word and the world hath hated them because they are not of the world. If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If they have hated me they will hate you also; if they have persecuted me they will persecute you.' And, of the scoffers and the scorners, the wise ones of this world, whose wisdom and knowledge have perverted them, and who have said in their hearts, There is none beside them, it hath been written, yea, and will be fulfilled: The day of the Lord of Hosts shall be upon every one that is proud and lofty, and upon every one that is lifted up, and he shall be brought low; and the loftiness of man shall be bowed down, and the haughtiness of man shall be brought low; and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day; and the idols shall he utterly abolish.' Of thee, John Ward, and of thy priestly brotherhood, I ask nothing; and for the much evil I have received, and may yet receive at your hands, may ye be rewarded like Alexander the coppersmith, every man according to his works."

"Such damnable heresy," said Mr. Ward, addressing his neighbors, "must not be permitted to spread among the people. My friends, we must send this man to the magistrates."

The Familist placed his hands to his month, and gave a whistle, similar
to that which was heard in the morning, and which preceded the escape of
Wonolanset. It was answered by a shout from the river; and a score of
Indians came struggling up through the brush-wood.

"Vile heretic!" exclaimed Mr. Ward, snatching a musket from the hands of his neighbor, and levelling it full at the head of Martin; "you have betrayed us into this jeopardy."

"Wagh! down um gun," said a powerful Indian, as he laid his rough hand on the shoulder of the minister. "You catch Wonolanset, tie um, shoot um, scare squaw. Old sachem come now, me tie white man, shoot um, roast um;" and the old savage smiled grimly and fiercely in the indistinct moonlight, as he witnessed the alarm and terror of his prisoner.

"Hold, Passaconaway!" said Martin, in the Indian tongue. "Will the great chief forget his promise?"

The sachem dropped his hold on Mr. Ward's arm. "My brother is good," he said; "me no kill um, me make um walk woods like Wonolanset." Martin spoke a few words in the chief's ear. The countenance of the old warrior for an instant seemed to express dissatisfaction; but, yielding to the powerful influence which the Familist had acquired over him, he said, with some reluctance, "My brother is wise, me do so."

"John Ward," said the Familist, approaching the minister, "thou hast devised evil against one who hath never injured thee. But I seek not carnal revenge. I have even now restrained the anger of this heathen chief whom thou and thine have wronged deeply. Let us part in peace, for we may never more meet in this world." And he extended his hand and shook that of the minister.

"For thee, Mary," he said, "I had hoped to pluck thee from the evil which is to come, even as a brand from the burning. I had hoped to lead thee to the manna of true righteousness, but thou last chosen the flesh- pots of Egypt. I had hoped to cherish thee always, but thou hast forgotten me and my love, which brought me over the great waters for thy sake. I will go among the Gentiles, and if it be the Lord's will, peradventure I may turn away their wrath from my people. When my wearisome pilgrimage is ended, none shall know the grave of Richard Martin; and none but the heathen shall mourn for him. Mary! I forgive thee; may the God of all mercies bless thee! I shall never see thee more."

Hot and fast fell the tears of that stern man upon the hand of Mary. The eyes of the young woman glanced hurriedly over the faces of her neighbors, and fixed tearfully upon that of her lover. A thousand recollections of young affection, of vows and meetings in another land, came vividly before her. Her sister's home, her brother's instructions, her own strong faith, and her bitter hatred of her lover's heresy were all forgotten.

"Richard, dear Richard, I am your Mary as much as ever I was. I'll go with you to the ends of the earth. Your God shall be my God, and where you are buried there will I be also."

Silent in the ecstasy of joyful surprise, the Familist pressed her to his bosom. Passaconaway, who had hitherto been an unmoved spectator of the scene, relaxed the Indian gravity of his features, and murmured, in an undertone, "Good, good."

"Will my brother go?" he inquired, touching Martin's shoulder; "my squaws have fine mat, big wigwam, soft samp, for his young woman."

"Mary," said Martin, "the sachem is impatient; and we must needs go with him." Mary did not answer, but her head was reclined upon his bosom, and the Familist knew that she resigned herself wholly to his direction. He folded the shawl more carefully around her, and supported her down the precipitous and ragged bank of the river, followed closely by Passaconaway and his companions.

"Come back, Mary Edmands!" shouted Mr. Ward. "In God's name come back."

Half a dozen canoes shot out into the clear moonlight from the shadow of the shore. "It is too late!" said the minister, as he struggled down to the water's edge. "Satan hath laid his hands upon her; but I will contend for her, even as did Michael of old for the body of Moses. Mary, sister Mary, for the love of Christ, answer me."

No sound came back from the canoes, which glided like phantoms, noiselessly and swiftly, through the still waters of the river. "The enemy hath prevailed," said Mr. Ward; "two women were grinding at my mill, the one is taken and the other is left. Let us go home, my friends, and wrestle in prayer against the Tempter."

The heretic and his orthodox bride departed into the thick wilderness,
under the guidance of Passaconaway, and in a few days reached the
Eldorado of the heretic and the persecuted, the colony of Roger
Williams. Passaconaway, ever after, remained friendly to the white men.
As civilization advanced he retired before it, to Pennacook, now
Concord, on the Merrimac, where the tribes of the Naumkeags,
Piscataquas, Accomentas, and Agawams acknowledged his authority.

THE OPIUM EATER.

[1833.]

Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving from its lowest depths of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me! Here was a panacea, a pharmakon nepenthes for all human woes; here was the secret of happiness about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages: happiness might be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat pocket.—DEQUINCEY's "Confessions of an Opium Eater."

HE was a tall, thin personage, with a marked brow and a sunken eye.

He stepped towards a closet of his apartment, and poured out a few drops of a dark liquid. His hand shook, as he raised the glass which contained them to his lips; and with a strange shuddering, a nervous tremor, as if all the delicate chords of his system were unloosed and trembling, he turned away from his fearful draught.

He saw that my eye was upon him; and I could perceive that his mind struggled desperately with the infirmity of his nature, as if ashamed of the utter weakness of its tabernacle. He passed hastily up and down the room. "You seem somewhat ill," I said, in the undecided tone of partial interrogatory.

He paused, and passed his long thin fingers over his forehead. "I am indeed ill," he said, slowly, and with that quavering, deep-drawn breathing, which is so indicative of anguish, mental and physical. "I am weak as a child, weak alike in mind and body, even when I am under the immediate influence of yonder drug." And he pointed, as he spoke, to a phial, labelled "Laudanum," upon a table in the corner of the room.

"My dear sir," said I, "for God's sake abandon your desperate practice: I know not, indeed, the nature of your afflictions, but I feel assured that you have yet the power to be happy. You have, at least, warm friends to sympathize with you. But forego, if possible, your pernicious stimulant of laudanum. It is hurrying you to your grave."

"It may be so," he replied, while another shudder ran along his nerves; "but why should I fear it? I, who have become worthless to myself and annoying to my friends; exquisitely sensible of my true condition, yet wanting the power to change it; cursed with a lively apprehension of all that I ought now to be, yet totally incapable of even making an effort to be so! My dear sir, I feel deeply the kindness of your motives, but it is too late for me to hope to profit by your advice."

I was shocked at his answer. "But can it be possible," said I, "that the influence of such an excessive use of opium can produce any alleviation of mental suffering? any real relief to the harassed mind? Is it not rather an aggravation?"

"I know not," he said, seating himself with considerable calmness,—"I know not. If it has not removed the evil, it has at least changed its character. It has diverted my mind from its original grief; and has broken up and rendered divergent the concentrated agony which oppressed me. It has, in a measure, substituted imaginary afflictions for real ones. I cannot but confess, however, that the relief which it has afforded has been produced by the counteraction of one pain by another; very much like that of the Russian criminal, who gnaws his own flesh while undergoing the punishment of the knout.'"

"For Heaven's sake," said I, "try to dispossess your mind of such horrid images. There are many, very many resources yet left you. Try the effect of society; and let it call into exercise those fine talents which all admit are so well calculated to be its ornament and pride. At least, leave this hypochondriacal atmosphere, and look out more frequently upon nature. Your opium, if it be an alleviator, is, by your own confession, a most melancholy one. It exorcises one demon to give place to a dozen others.

'With other ministrations, thou, O Nature!
Healest thy wandering and distempered child.'"

He smiled bitterly; it was a heartless, melancholy relaxation of features, a mere muscular movement, with which the eye had no sympathy; for its wild and dreamy expression, the preternatural lustre, without transparency, remained unaltered, as if rebuking, with its cold, strange glare, the mockery around it. He sat before me like a statue, whose eye alone retained its stony and stolid rigidity, while the other features were moved by some secret machinery into "a ghastly smile."

"I am not desirous, even were it practicable," he said, "to defend the use of opium, or rather the abuse of it. I can only say, that the substitutes you propose are not suited to my condition. The world has now no enticements for me; society no charms. Love, fame, wealth, honor, may engross the attention of the multitude; to me they are all shadows; and why should I grasp at them? In the solitude of my own thoughts, looking on but not mingling in them, I have taken the full gauge of their hollow vanities. No, leave me to myself, or rather to that new existence which I have entered upon, to the strange world to which my daily opiate invites me. In society I am alone, fearfully solitary; for my mind broods gloomily over its besetting sorrow, and I make myself doubly miserable by contrasting my own darkness with the light and joy of all about me; nay, you cannot imagine what a very hard thing it is, at such times, to overcome some savage feelings of misanthropy which will present themselves. But when I am alone, and under the influence of opium, I lose for a season my chief source of misery, myself; my mind takes a new and unnatural channel; and I have often thought that any one, even that of insanity, would be preferable to its natural one. It is drawn, as it were, out of itself; and I realize in my own experience the fable of Pythagoras, of two distinct existences, enjoyed by the same intellectual being.

"My first use of opium was the consequence of an early and very bitter disappointment. I dislike to think of it, much more to speak of it. I recollect, on a former occasion, you expressed some curiosity concerning it. I then repelled that curiosity, for my mind was not in a situation to gratify it. But now, since I have been talking of myself, I think I can go on with my story with a very decent composure. In complying with your request, I cannot say that my own experience warrants, in any degree, the old and commonly received idea that sorrow loses half its poignancy by its revelation to others. It was a humorous opinion of Sterne, that a blessing which ties up the tongue, and a mishap which unlooses it, are to be considered equal; and, indeed, I have known some people happy under all the changes of fortune, when they could find patient auditors. Tully wept over his dead daughter, but when he chanced to think of the excellent things he could say on the subject, he considered it, on the whole, a happy circumstance. But, for my own part, I cannot say with the Mariner in Coleridge's ballad, that

"'At an uncertain hour My agony returns;

And, till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns.'"

He paused a moment, and rested his head upon his hand. "You have seen Mrs. H———, of ———-?" he inquired, somewhat abruptly. I replied in the affirmative.

"Do you not think her a fine woman?"

"Yes, certainly, a fine woman. She was once, I am told, very beautiful."

"Once? is she not so now?" he asked. "Well, I have heard the same before. I sometimes think I should like to see her now, now that the mildew of years and perhaps of accusing recollections are upon her; and see her toss her gray curls as she used to do her dark ones, and act over again her old stratagem of smiles upon a face of wrinkles. Just Heavens! were I revengeful to the full extent of my wrongs, I could wish her no worse punishment.

"They told you truly, my dear sir,—she was beautiful, nay, externally, faultless. Her figure was that of womanhood, just touching upon the meridian of perfection, from which nothing could be taken, and to which nothing could be added. There was a very witchery in her smile, trembling, as it did, over her fine Grecian features, like the play of moonlight upon a shifting and beautiful cloud.

"Her voice was music, low, sweet, bewildering. I have heard it a thousand times in my dreams. It floated around me, like the tones of some rare instrument, unseen by the hearer; for, beautiful as she was, you could not think of her, or of her loveliness, while she was speaking; it was that sweetly wonderful voice, seemingly abstracted from herself, pouring forth the soft current of its exquisite cadence, which alone absorbed the attention. Like that one of Coleridge's heroines, you could half feel, half fancy, that it had a separate being of its own, a spiritual presence manifested to but one of the senses; a living something, whose mode of existence was for the ear alone.—[See Memoirs of Maria Eleonora Schoning.]

"But what shall I say of the mind? What of the spirit, the resident divinity of so fair a temple? Vanity, vanity, all was vanity; a miserable, personal vanity, too, unrelieved by one noble aspiration, one generous feeling; the whited sepulchre spoken of of old, beautiful without, but dark and unseemly within.

"I look back with wonder and astonishment to that period of my life, when such a being claimed and received the entire devotion of my heart. Her idea blended with or predominated over all others. It was the common centre in my mind from which all the radii of thought had their direction; the nucleus around which I had gathered all that my ardent imagination could conceive, or a memory stored with all the delicious dreams of poetry and romances could embody, of female excellence and purity and constancy.

"It is idle to talk of the superior attractions of intellectual beauty, when compared with mere external loveliness. The mind, invisible and complicated and indefinite, does not address itself directly to the senses. It is comprehended only by its similitude in others. It reveals itself, even then, but slowly and imperfectly. But the beauty of form and color, the grace of motion, the harmony of tone, are seen and felt and appreciated at once. The image of substantial and material loveliness once seen leaves an impression as distinct and perfect upon the retina of memory as upon that of the eyes. It does not rise before us in detached and disconnected proportions, like that of spiritual loveliness, but in crowds, and in solitude, and in all the throngful varieties of thought and feeling and action, the symmetrical whole, the beautiful perfection comes up in the vision of memory, and stands, like a bright angel, between us and all other impressions of outward or immaterial beauty.

"I saw her, and could not forget her; I sought her society, and was gratified with it. It is true, I sometimes (in the first stages of my attachment) had my misgivings in relation to her character. I sometimes feared that her ideas were too much limited to the perishing beauty of her person. But to look upon her graceful figure yielding to the dance, or reclining in its indolent symmetry; to watch the beautiful play of coloring upon her cheek, and the moonlight transit of her smile; to study her faultless features in their delicate and even thoughtful repose, or when lighted up into conversational vivacity, was to forget everything, save the exceeding and bewildering fascination before me. Like the silver veil of Khorassan it shut out from my view the mental deformity beneath it. I could not reason with myself about her; I had no power of ratiocination which could overcome the blinding dazzle of her beauty. The master-passion, which had wrestled down all others, gave to every sentiment of the mind something of its own peculiar character.

"I will not trouble you with a connected history of my first love, my boyish love, you may perhaps call it. Suffice it to say, that on the revelation of that love, it was answered by its object warmly and sympathizingly. I had hardly dared to hope for her favor; for I had magnified her into something far beyond mortal desert; and to hear from her own lips an avowal of affection seemed more like the condescension of a pitying angel than the sympathy of a creature of passion and frailty like myself. I was miserably self-deceived; and self-deception is of a nature most repugnant to the healthy operation of truth. We suspect others, but seldom ourselves. The deception becomes a part of our self-love; we hold back the error even when Reason would pluck it away from us.

"Our whole life may be considered as made up of earnest yearnings after objects whose value increases with the difficulties of obtaining them, and which seem greater and more desirable, from our imperfect knowledge of their nature, just as the objects of the outward vision are magnified and exalted when seen through a natural telescope of mist. Imagination fills up and supplies the picture, of which we can only catch the outlines, with colors brighter, and forms more perfect, than those of reality. Yet, you may perhaps wonder why, after my earnest desire had been gratified, after my love had found sympathy in its object, I did not analyze more closely the inherent and actual qualities of her heart and intellect. But living, as I did, at a considerable distance from her, and seeing her only under circumstances calculated to confirm previous impressions, I had few advantages, even had I desired to do so, of studying her true character. The world had not yet taught me its ungenerous lesson. I had not yet learned to apply the rack of philosophical analysis to the objects around me, and test, by a cold process of reasoning, deduced from jealous observation, the reality of all which wore the outward semblance of innocence and beauty. And it may be, too, that the belief, nay, the assurance, from her own lips, and from the thousand voiceless but eloquent signs which marked our interviews, that I was beloved, made me anxious to deceive even myself, by investing her with those gifts of the intellect and the heart, without which her very love would have degraded its object. It is not in human nature, at least it was not in mine, to embitter the delicious aliment which is offered to our vanity, by admitting any uncomfortable doubts of the source from which it is derived.

"And thus it was that I came on, careless and secure, dreaming over and over the same bright dream; without any doubt, without fear, and in the perfect confidence of an unlimited trust, until the mask fell off, all at once; without giving me time for preparation, without warning or interlude; and the features of cold, heartless, systematic treachery glared full upon me.

"I saw her wedded to another. It was a beautiful morning; and never had the sun shone down on a gayer assemblage than that which gathered together at the village church. I witnessed the imposing ceremony which united the only one being I had ever truly loved to a happy and favored, because more wealthy, rival. As the grayhaired man pronounced the inquiring challenge, 'If any man can show just cause why they may not lawfully be joined together, let him now speak or else forever after hold his peace,' I struggled forward, and would have cried out, but the words died away in my throat. And the ceremony went on, and the death- like trance into which I had fallen was broken by the voice of the priest: 'I require and charge ye both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if either of you know of any impediment why ye may not lawfully be joined together in matrimony, ye do now confess it; for be ye well assured, that if any persons are joined together otherwise than as God's word doth allow, their marriage is not lawful.' As the solemn tones of the old man died away in the church aisles, I almost expected to hear a supernatural voice calling upon him to forbear. But there was no sound. For an instant my eyes met those of the bride; the blood boiled rapidly to her forehead, and then sank back, and she was as pale as if death had been in the glance I had given her. And I could see the folds of her rich dress tremble, and her beautiful lips quiver; and she turned away her eyes, and the solemn rites were concluded.

"I returned to my lodgings. I heeded not the gay smiles and free merriment of those around me. I hurried along like one who wanders abroad in a dark dream; for I could hardly think of the events of the morning as things of reality. But, when I spurred my horse aside, as the carriage which contained the newly married swept by me, the terrible truth came upon me like a tangible substance, and one black and evil thought passed over my mind, like the whispered suggestion of Satan. It was a feeling of blood, a sensation like that of grasping the strangling throat of an enemy. I started from it with horror. For the first time a thought of murder had risen up in my bosom; and I quenched it with the natural abhorrence of a nature prone to mildness and peace.

"I reached my chamber, and, exhausted alike in mind and body, I threw myself upon my bed, but not to sleep. A sense of my utter desolation and loneliness came over me, blended with a feeling of bitter and unmerited wrong. I recollected the many manifestations of affection which I had received from her who had that day given herself, in the presence of Heaven, to another; and I called to mind the thousand sacrifices I had made to her lightest caprices, to every shade and variation of her temper; and then came the maddening consciousness of the black ingratitude which had requited such tenderness. Then, too, came the thought, bitter to a pride like mine, that the cold world had a knowledge of my misfortunes; that I should be pointed out as a disappointed man, a subject for the pity of some, and the scorn and jestings of others. Rage and shame mingled with the keen agony of outraged feeling. 'I will not endure it,' I said, mentally, springing from my bed and crossing the chamber with a flushed brow and a strong step; 'never!' And I ground my teeth upon each other, while a fierce light seemed to break in upon my brain; it was the light of the Tempter's smile, and I almost laughed aloud as the horrible thought of suicide started before me. I felt that I might escape the ordeal of public scorn and pity; that I might bid the world and its falsehood defiance, and end, by one manly effort, the agony of an existence whose every breath was torment.

"My resolution was fixed. 'I will never see another morrow!' I said, sternly, but with a calmness which almost astonished me. Indeed, I seemed gifted with a supernatural firmness, as I made my arrangements for the last day of suffering which I was to endure. A few friends had been invited to dine with me, and I prepared to meet them. They came at the hour appointed with smiling faces and warm and friendly greetings; and I received them as if nothing had happened, with even a more enthusiastic welcome than was my wont.

"Oh! it is terrible to smile when the heart is breaking! to talk lightly and freely and mirthfully, when every feeling of the mind is wrung with unutterable agony; to mingle in the laugh and in the gay volleys of convivial fellowship,

'With the difficult utterance of one
Whose heart is with an iron nerve put down.'

"Yet all this I endured, hour after hour, until my friends departed and I had pressed their hands as at a common parting, while my heart whispered an everlasting farewell!

"It was late when they left me. I walked out to look for the last time upon Nature in her exceeding beauty. I hardly acknowledged to myself that such was my purpose; but yet I did feel that it was so; and that I was taking an everlasting farewell of the beautiful things around me. The sun was just setting; and the hills, that rose like pillars of the blue horizon, were glowing with a light which was fast deserting the valleys. It was an evening of summer; everything was still; not a leaf stirred in the dark, overshadowing foliage; but, silent and beautiful as a picture, the wide scenery of rock and hill and woodland, stretched away before me; and, beautiful as it was, it seemed to possess a newness and depth of beauty beyond its ordinary appearance, as if to aggravate the pangs of the last, long farewell.

"They do not err who believe that man has a sympathy with even inanimate Nature, deduced from a common origin; a chain of co-existence and affinity connecting the outward forms of natural objects with his own fearful and wonderful machinery; something, in short, manifested in his love of flowing waters, and soft green shadows, and pleasant blowing flowers, and in his admiration of the mountain, stretching away into heaven, sublimed and awful in its cloudy distance; the heave and swell of the infinite ocean; the thunder of the leaping cataract; and the onward rush of mighty rivers, which tells of its original source, and bears evidence of its kindred affinities. Nor was the dream of the ancient Chaldean 'all a dream.' The stars of heaven, the beauty and the glory above us, have their influences and their power, not evil and malignant and partial and irrevocable, but holy and tranquillizing and benignant, a moral influence, by which all may profit if they will do so. And I have often marvelled at the hard depravity of that human heart which could sanction a deed of violence and crime in the calm solitudes of Nature, and surrounded by the enduring evidences of an overruling Intelligence. I could conceive of crime, growing up rank and monstrous in the unwholesome atmosphere of the thronged city, amidst the taint of moral as well as physical pestilence, and surrounded only by man and the works of man. But there is something in the harmony and quiet of the natural world which presents a reproving antagonism to the fiercer passions of the human heart; an eye of solemn reprehension looks out from the still places of Nature, as if the Great Soul of the Universe had chosen the mute creations of his power to be the witnesses of the deeds done in the body, the researchers of the bosoms of men.

"And then, even at that awful moment, I could feel the bland and gentle ministrations of Nature; I could feel the fever of my heart cooling, and a softer haze of melancholy stealing over the blackness of my despair; and the fierce passions which had distracted me giving place to the calm of a settled anguish, a profound sorrow, the quiet gloom of an overshadowing woe, in which love and hatred and wrong were swallowed up and lost. I no longer hated the world; but I felt that it had nothing for me; that I was no longer a part and portion of its harmonious elements; affliction had shut me out forever from the pale of human happiness and sympathy, and hope pointed only to the resting-place of the grave!

"I stood steadily gazing at the setting sun. It touched and sat upon the hill-top like a great circle of fire. I had never before fully comprehended the feeling of the amiable but misguided Rousseau, who at his death-hour desired to be brought into the open air, that the last glance of his failing eye might drink in the glory of the sunset heavens, and the light of his great intellect and that of Nature go out together. For surely never did the Mexican idolater mark with deeper emotion the God of his worship, for the last time veiling his awful countenance, than did I, untainted by superstition, yet full of perfect love for the works of Infinite Wisdom, watch over the departure of the most glorious of them all. I felt, even to agony, the truth of these exquisite lines of the Milesian poet:

'Blest power of sunshine, genial day!
What joy, what life is in thy ray!
To feel thee is such real bliss,
That, had the world no joy but this,
To sit in sunshine, calm and sweet,
It were a world too exquisite
For man to leave it for the gloom,
The dull, cold shadow of the tomb!'

"Never shall I forget my sensations when the sun went down utterly from my sight. It was like receiving the last look of a dying friend. To others he might bring life and health and joy, on the morrow; but tome he would never rise. As this thought came over me, I felt a stifling sensation in my throat, tears started in my eyes, and my heart almost wavered from its purpose. But the bent bow had only relaxed for a single instant; it returned again to its strong and abiding tension.

"I was alone in my chamber once more. A single lamp burned gloomily before me; and on the table at my side stood a glass of laudanum. I had prepared everything. I had written my last letter, and had now only to drink the fatal draught, and lie down to my last sleep. I heard the old village clock strike eleven. 'I may as well do it now as ever,' I said mentally, and my hand moved towards the glass. But my courage failed me; my hand shook, and some moments elapsed before I could sufficiently quiet my nerves to lift the glass containing the fatal liquid. The blood ran cold upon my heart, and my brain reeled, as again and again I lifted the poison to my closed lips. 'It must be done,' thought I, 'I must drink it.' With a desperate effort I unlocked my clenched teeth and the deed was done!

"'O God, have mercy upon me!' I murmured, as the empty glass fell from my hand. I threw myself upon the bed, and awaited the awful termination. An age of unutterable misery seemed crowded into a brief moment. All the events of my past life, a life, as it then seemed to me, made up of folly and crime, rose distinct before me, like accusing witnesses, as if the recording angel had unrolled to my view the full and black catalogue of my unnumbered sins:—

'O'er the soul Winters of memory seemed to roll,
And gather, in that drop of time,
A life of pain, an age of crime.'

"I felt that what I had done was beyond recall; and the Phantom of Death, as it drew nearer, wore an aspect darker and more terrible. I thought of the coffin, the shroud, and the still and narrow grave, into whose dumb and frozen solitude none but the gnawing worm intrudes. And then my thoughts wandered away into the vagueness and mystery of eternity, I was rushing uncalled for into the presence of a just and pure God, with a spirit unrepenting, unannealed! And I tried to pray and could not; for a heaviness, a dull strange torpor crept over me. Consciousness went out slowly. 'This is death,' thought I; yet I felt no pain, nothing save a weary drowsiness, against which I struggled in vain.

"My next sensations were those of calmness, deep, ineffable, an unearthly quiet; a suspension or rather oblivion of every mental affliction; a condition of the mind betwixt the thoughts of wakefulness and the dreams of sleep. It seemed to me that the gulf between mind and matter had been passed over, and that I had entered upon a new existence. I had no memory, no hope, no sorrow; nothing but a dim consciousness of a pleasurable and tranquil being. Gradually, however, the delusion vanished. I was sensible of still wearing the fetters of the flesh, yet they galled no longer; the burden was lifted from my heart, it beat happily and calmly, as in childhood. As the stronger influences of my opiate (for I had really swallowed nothing more, as the druggist, suspecting from the incoherence of my language, that I was meditating some fearful purpose, furnished me with a harmless, though not ineffective draught) passed off, the events of the past came back to me. It was like the slow lifting of a curtain from a picture of which I was a mere spectator, about which I could reason calmly, and trace dispassionately its light and shadow. Having satisfied myself that I had been deceived in the quantity of opium I had taken, I became also convinced that I had at last discovered the great antidote for which philosophy had exhausted its resources, the fabled Lethe, the oblivion of human sorrow. The strong necessity of suicide had passed away; life, even for me, might be rendered tolerable by the sovereign panacea of opium, the only true minister to a mind diseased, the sought 'kalon' found.

"From that day I have been habitually an opium eater. I am perfectly sensible that the constant use of the pernicious drug has impaired my health; but I cannot relinquish it. Some time since I formed a resolution to abandon it, totally and at once; but had not strength enough to carry it into practice. The very attempt to do so nearly drove me to madness. The great load of mental agony which had been lifted up and held aloof by the daily applied power of opium sank back upon my heart like a crushing weight. Then, too, my physical sufferings were extreme; an indescribable irritation, a general uneasiness tormented me incessantly. I can only think of it as a total disarrangement of the whole nervous system, the jarring of all the thousand chords of sensitiveness, each nerve having its own particular pain.—[ Essay on the Effects of Opium, London, 1763.]

"De Quincey, in his wild, metaphysical, and eloquent, yet, in many respects, fancy sketch, considers the great evil resulting from the use of opium to be the effect produced upon the mind during the hours of sleep, the fearful inquietude of unnatural dreams. My own dreams have been certainly of a different order from those which haunted me previous to my experience in opium eating. But I cannot easily believe that opium necessarily introduces a greater change in the mind's sleeping operations, than in those of its wakefulness.

"At one period, indeed, while suffering under a general, nervous debility, from which I am even now but partially relieved, my troubled and broken sleep was overshadowed by what I can only express as 'a horror of thick darkness.' There was nothing distinct or certain in my visions, all was clouded, vague, hideous; sounds faint and awful, yet unknown; the sweep of heavy wings, the hollow sound of innumerable footsteps, the glimpse of countless apparitions, and darkness falling like a great cloud from heaven.

"I can scarcely give you an adequate idea of my situation in these dreams, without comparing it with that of the ancient Egyptians while suffering under the plague of darkness. I never read the awful description of this curse, without associating many of its horrors with those of my own experience.

"'But they, sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable hell,

"'Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted; for a sudden fear and not looked for, came upon them.'

"'For neither might the corner which held them keep them from fear; but noises, as of waters falling down, sounded about them, and sad visions appeared unto them, with heavy countenances.

"'Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious voice of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently;

"'Or, a terrible sound of stones cast down, or, a running that could not be seen, of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains: these things made them to swoon for fear.'—[Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xvii.]

"That creative faculty of the eye, upon which Mr. De Quincey dwells so strongly, I have myself experienced. Indeed, it has been the principal cause of suffering which has connected itself with my habit of opium eating. It developed itself at first in a recurrence of the childish faculty of painting upon the darkness whatever suggested itself to the mind; anon, those figures which had before been called up only at will became the cause, instead of the effect, of the mind's employment; in other words, they came before me in the night-time, like real images, and independent of any previous volition of thought. I have often, after retiring to my bed, seen, looking through the thick wall of darkness round about me, the faces of those whom I had not known for years, nay, since childhood; faces, too, of the dead, called up, as it were, from the church-yard and the wilderness and the deep waters, and betraying nothing of the grave's terrible secrets. And in the same way, some of the more important personages I had read of, in history and romance, glided often before me, like an assembly of apparitions, each preserving, amidst the multitudinous combinations of my visions, his own individuality and peculiar characteristics.—[Vide Emanuel Count Swedenborg, Nicolai of Berlin's Account of Spectral Illusion, Edinburgh Phrenological Journal.]

"These images were, as you may suppose, sufficiently annoying, yet they came and went without exciting any emotions of terror. But a change at length came over them, an awful distinctness and a semblance of reality, which, operating upon nerves weakened and diseased, shook the very depths of my spirit with a superstitious awe, and against which reason and philosophy, for a time, struggled in vain.

"My mind had for some days been dwelling with considerable solicitude upon an intimate friend, residing in a distant city. I had heard that he was extremely ill, indeed, that his life was despaired of; and I may mention that at this period all my mind's operations were dilatory; there were no sudden emotions; passion seemed exhausted; and when once any new train of thought had been suggested, it gradually incorporated itself with those which had preceded it, until it finally became sole and predominant, just as certain plants of the tropical islands wind about and blend with and finally take the place of those of another species. And perhaps to this peculiarity of the mental economy, the gradual concentring of the mind in a channel, narrowing to that point of condensation where thought becomes sensible to sight as well as feeling, may be mainly attributed the vision I am about to describe.

"I was lying in my bed, listless and inert; it was broad day, for the easterly light fell in strongly through the parted curtains. I felt, all at once, a strong curiosity, blended with an unaccountable dread, to look upon a small table which stood near the bedside. I felt certain of seeing something fearful, and yet I knew not what; there was an awe and a fascination upon me, more dreadful from their very vagueness. I lay for some time hesitating and actually trembling, until the agony of suspense became too strong for endurance. I opened my eyes and fixed them upon the dreaded object. Upon the table lay what seemed to me a corpse, wrapped about in the wintry habiliments of the grave, the corpse of my friend.

[William Hone, celebrated for his antiquarian researches, has given a distinct and highly interesting account of spectral illusion, in his own experience, in his Every Day Book. The artist Cellini has made a similar statement.]

"For a moment, the circumstances of time and place were forgotten; and the spectre seemed to me a natural reality, at which I might sorrow, but not wonder. The utter fallacy of this idea was speedily detected; and then I endeavored to consider the present vision, like those which had preceded it, a mere delusion, a part of the phenomena of opium eating. I accordingly closed my eyes for an instant, and then looked again in full expectation that the frightful object would no longer be visible. It was still there; the body lay upon its side; the countenance turned full towards me,—calm, quiet, even beautiful, but certainly that of death:

'Ere yet Decay's effacing fingers
Had swept the lines where Beauty lingers'

and the white brow, and its light shadowy hair, and the cold, still familiar features lay evident and manifest to the influx of the strengthening twilight. A cold agony crept over me; I buried my head in the bed-clothes, in a child-like fear, and when I again ventured to look up, the spectre had vanished. The event made a strong impression on my mind; and I can scarcely express the feeling of relief which was afforded, a few days after, by a letter from the identical friend in question, informing me of his recovery of health.

"It would be a weary task, and one which you would no doubt thank me for declining, to detail the circumstances of a hundred similar visitations, most of which were, in fact, but different combinations of the same illusion. One striking exception I will mention, as it relates to some passages of my early history which you have already heard.

"I have never seen Mrs. H since her marriage. Time, and the continued action of opium, deadening the old sensibilities of the heart and awakening new ones, have effected a wonderful change in my feelings towards her. Little as the confession may argue in favor of my early passion, I seldom think of her, save with a feeling very closely allied to indifference. Yet I have often seen her in my spectral illusions, young and beautiful as ever, but always under circumstances which formed a wide contrast between her spectral appearance and all my recollections of the real person. The spectral face, which I often saw looking in upon me, in my study, when the door was ajar, and visible only in the uncertain lamplight, or peering over me in the moonlight solitude of my bed-chamber, when I was just waking from sleep, was uniformly subject to, and expressive of, some terrible hate, or yet more terrible anguish. Its first appearance was startling in the extreme. It was the face of one of the fabled furies: the demon glared in the eye, the nostril was dilated, the pale lip compressed, and the brow bent and darkened; yet above all, and mingled with all, the supremacy of human beauty was manifest, as if the dream of Eastern superstition had been realized, and a fierce and foul spirit had sought out and animated into a fiendish existence some beautiful sleeper of the grave. The other expression of the countenance of the apparition, that of agony, I accounted for on rational principles. Some years ago I saw, and was deeply affected by, a series of paintings representing the tortures of a Jew in the Holy Inquisition; and the expression of pain in the countenance of the victim I at once recognized in that of the apparition, rendered yet more distressing by the feminine and beautiful features upon which it rested.

"I am not naturally superstitious; but, shaken and clouded as my mind had been by the use of opium, I could not wholly divest it of fear when these phantoms beset me. Yet, on all other occasions, save that of their immediate presence, I found no difficulty in assigning their existence to a diseased state of the bodily organs, and a corresponding sympathy of the mind, rendering it capable of receiving and reflecting the false, fantastic, and unnatural images presented to it.

[One of our most celebrated medical writers considers spectral illusion a disease, in which false perceptions take place in some of the senses; thus, when the excitement of motion is produced in a particular organ, that organ does not vibrate with the impression made upon it, but communicates it to another part on which a similar impression was formerly made. Nicolai states that he made his illusion a source of philosophical amusement. The spectres which haunted him came in the day time as well as the night, and frequently when he was surrounded by his friends; the ideal images mingling with the real ones, and visible only to himself. Bernard Barton, the celebrated Quaker poet, describes an illusion of this nature in a manner peculiarly striking:—

"I only knew thee as thou wert,
A being not of earth!
"I marvelled much they could not see
Thou comest from above
And often to myself I said,
'How can they thus approach the dead?'

"But though all these, with fondness warm,
Said welcome o'er and o'er,
Still that expressive shade or form
Was silent, as before!
And yet its stillness never brought
To them one hesitating thought.">[

"I recollected that the mode of exorcism which was successfully adopted by Nicolai of Berlin, when haunted by similar fantasies, was a resort to the simple process of blood-letting. I accordingly made trial of it, but without the desired effect. Fearful, from the representations of my physicians, and from some of my own sensations, that the almost daily recurrence of my visions might ultimately lead to insanity, I came to the resolution of reducing my daily allowance of opium; and, confining myself, with the most rigid pertinacity, to a quantity not exceeding one third of what I had formerly taken, I became speedily sensible of a most essential change in my condition. A state of comparative health, mental and physical with calmer sleep and a more natural exercise of the organs of vision, succeeded. I have made many attempts at a further reduction, but have been uniformly unsuccessful, owing to the extreme and almost unendurable agony occasioned thereby.

"The peculiar creative faculty of the eye, the fearful gift of a diseased vision, still remains, but materially weakened and divested of its former terrors. My mind has recovered in some degree its shaken and suspended faculties. But happiness, the buoyant and elastic happiness of earlier days, has departed forever. Although, apparently, a practical disciple of Behmen, I am no believer in his visionary creed. Quiet is not happiness; nor can the absence of all strong and painful emotion compensate for the weary heaviness of inert existence, passionless, dreamless, changeless. The mind requires the excitement of active and changeful thought; the intellectual fountain, like the pool of Bethesda, has a more healthful influence when its deep waters are troubled. There may, indeed, be happiness in those occasional 'sabbaths of the soul,' when calmness, like a canopy, overshadows it, and the mind, for a brief season, eddies quietly round and round, instead of sweeping onward; but none can exist in the long and weary stagnation of feeling, the silent, the monotonous, neverending calm, broken by neither hope nor fear."

THE PROSELYTES.

[1833]

THE student sat at his books. All the day he had been poring over an old and time-worn volume; and the evening found him still absorbed in its contents. It was one of that interminable series of controversial volumes, containing the theological speculations of the ancient fathers of the Church. With the patient perseverance so characteristic of his countrymen, he was endeavoring to detect truth amidst the numberless inconsistencies of heated controversy; to reconcile jarring propositions; to search out the thread of scholastic argument amidst the rant of prejudice and the sallies of passion, and the coarse vituperations of a spirit of personal bitterness, but little in accordance with the awful gravity of the question at issue.

Wearied and baffled in his researches, he at length closed the volume, and rested his care-worn forehead upon his hand. "What avail," he said, "these long and painful endeavors, these midnight vigils, these weary studies, before which heart and flesh are failing? What have I gained? I have pushed my researches wide and far; my life has been one long and weary lesson; I have shut out from me the busy and beautiful world; I have chastened every youthful impulse; and at an age when the heart should be lightest and the pulse the freest, I am grave and silent and sorrowful,' and the frost of a premature age is gathering around my heart. Amidst these ponderous tomes, surrounded by the venerable receptacles of old wisdom, breathing, instead of the free air of heaven, the sepulchral dust of antiquity, I have become assimilated to the objects around me; my very nature has undergone a metamorphosis of which Pythagoras never dreamed. I am no longer a reasoning creature, looking at everything within the circle of human investigation with a clear and self-sustained vision, but the cheated follower of metaphysical absurdities, a mere echo of scholastic subtilty. God knows that my aim has been a lofty and pure one, that I have buried myself in this living tomb, and counted the health of this His feeble and outward image as nothing in comparison with that of the immortal and inward representation and shadow of His own Infinite Mind; that I have toiled through what the world calls wisdom, the lore of the old fathers and time-honored philosophy, not for the dream of power and gratified ambition, not for the alchemist's gold or life-giving elixir, but with an eye single to that which I conceived to be the most fitting object of a godlike spirit, the discovery of Truth,—truth perfect and unclouded, truth in its severe and perfect beauty, truth as it sits in awe and holiness in the presence of its Original and Source!

"Was my aim too lofty? It cannot be; for my Creator has given me a spirit which would spurn a meaner one. I have studied to act in accordance with His will; yet have I felt all along like one walking in blindness. I have listened to the living champions of the Church; I have pored over the remains of the dead; but doubt and heavy darkness still rest upon my pathway. I find contradiction where I had looked for harmony; ambiguity where I had expected clearness; zeal taking the place of reason; anger, intolerance, personal feuds and sectarian bitterness, interminable discussions and weary controversies; while infinite Truth, for which I have been seeking, lies still beyond, or seen, if at all, only by transient and unsatisfying glimpses, obscured and darkened by miserable subtilties and cabalistic mysteries."

He was interrupted by the entrance of a servant with a letter. The student broke its well-known seal, and read, in a delicate chirography, the following words:—

"DEAR ERNEST,—A stranger from the English Kingdom, of gentle birth and education, hath visited me at the request of the good Princess Elizabeth of the Palatine. He is a preacher of the new faith, a zealous and earnest believer in the gifts of the Spirit, but not like John de Labadie or the lady Schurmans.

[J. de Labadie, Anna Maria Schurmans, and others, dissenters from the French Protestants, established themselves in Holland, 1670.]

"He speaks like one sent on a message from heaven, a message of wisdom and salvation. Come, Ernest, and see him; for he hath but a brief hour to tarry with us. Who knoweth but that this stranger may be commissioned to lead us to that which we have so long and anxiously sought for,—the truth as it is in God. "LEONORA."

"Now may Heaven bless the sweet enthusiast for this interruption of my bitter reflections!" said the student, in the earnest tenderness of impassioned feeling. "She knows how gladly I shall obey her summons; she knows how readily I shall forsake the dogmas of our wisest schoolmen, to obey the slightest wishes of a heart pure and generous as hers."

He passed hastily through one of the principal streets of the city to the dwelling of the lady, Eleonora.

In a large and gorgeous apartment sat the Englishman, his plain and simple garb contrasting strongly with the richness and luxury around him. He was apparently quite young, and of a tall and commanding figure. His countenance was calm and benevolent; it bore no traces of passion; care had not marked it; there was a holy serenity in its expression, which seemed a token of that inward "peace which passeth all understanding."

"And this is thy friend, Eleonora?" said the stranger, as he offered his hand to Ernest. "I hear," he said, addressing the latter, "thou hast been a hard student and a lover of philosophy."

"I am but a humble inquirer after Truth," replied Ernest.

"From whence hast thou sought it?"

"From the sacred volume, from the lore of the old fathers, from the fountains of philosophy, and from my own brief experience of human life."

"And hast thou attained thy object?"

"Alas, no!" replied the student; "I have thus far toiled in vain."

"Ah! thus must the children of this world ever toil, wearily, wearily, but in vain. We grasp at shadows, we grapple with the fashionless air, we walk in the blindness of our own vain imaginations, we compass heaven and earth for our objects, and marvel that we find them not. The truth which is of God, the crown of wisdom, the pearl of exceeding price, demands not this vain-glorious research; easily to be entreated, it lieth within the reach of all. The eye of the humblest spirit may discern it. For He who respecteth not the persons of His children hath not set it afar off, unapproachable save to the proud and lofty; but hath made its refreshing fountains to murmur, as it were, at the very door of our hearts. But in the encumbering hurry of the world we perceive it not; in the noise of our daily vanities we hear not the waters of Siloah which go softly. We look widely abroad; we lose ourselves in vain speculation; we wander in the crooked paths of those who have gone before us; yea, in the language of one of the old fathers, we ask the earth and it replieth not, we question the sea and its inhabitants, we turn to the sun, and the moon, and the stars of heaven, and they may not satisfy us; we ask our eyes, and they cannot see, and our ears, and they cannot hear; we turn to books, and they delude us; we seek philosophy, and no response cometh from its dead and silent learning.

[August. Soliloq. Cap. XXXI. "Interrogavi Terram," etc.]

"It is not in the sky above, nor in the air around, nor in the earth beneath; it is in our own spirits, it lives within us; and if we would find it, like the lost silver of the woman of the parable, we must look at home, to the inward temple, which the inward eye discovereth, and wherein the spirit of all truth is manifested. The voice of that spirit is still and small, and the light about it shineth in darkness. But truth is there; and if we seek it in low humility, in a patient waiting upon its author, with a giving up of our natural pride of knowledge, a seducing of self, a quiet from all outward endeavor, it will assuredly be revealed and fully made known. For as the angel rose of old from the altar of Manoah even so shall truth arise from the humbling sacrifice of self-knowledge and human vanity, in all its eternal and ineffable beauty.

"Seekest thou, like Pilate, after truth? Look thou within. The holy principle is there; that in whose light the pure hearts of all time have rejoiced. It is 'the great light of ages' of which Pythagoras speaks, the 'good spirit' of Socrates; the 'divine mind' of Anaxagoras; the 'perfect principle' of Plato; the 'infallible and immortal law, and divine power of reason' of Philo. It is the 'unbegotten principle and source of all light,' whereof Timmus testifieth; the 'interior guide of the soul and everlasting foundation of virtue,' spoken of by Plutarch. Yea, it was the hope and guide of those virtuous Gentiles, who, doing by nature the things contained in the law, became a law unto themselves.

"Look to thyself. Turn thine eye inward. Heed not the opinion of the world. Lean not upon the broken reed of thy philosophy, thy verbal orthodoxy, thy skill in tongues, thy knowledge of the Fathers. Remember that truth was seen by the humble fishermen of Galilee, and overlooked by the High Priest of the Temple, by the Rabbi and the Pharisee. Thou canst not hope to reach it by the metaphysics of Fathers, Councils, Schoolmen, and Universities. It lies not in the high places of human learning; it is in the silent sanctuary of thy own heart; for He, who gave thee an immortal soul, hath filled it with a portion of that truth which is the image of His own unapproachable light. The voice of that truth is within thee; heed thou its whisper. A light is kindled in thy soul, which, if thou carefully heedest it, shall shine more and more even unto the perfect day."

The stranger paused, and the student melted into tears. "Stranger!" he said, "thou hast taken a weary weight from my heart, and a heavy veil from my eyes. I feel that thou hast revealed a wisdom which is not of this world."

"Nay, I am but a humble instrument in the hand of Him who is the fountain of all truth, and the beginning and the end of all wisdom. May the message which I have borne thee be sanctified to thy well-being."

"Oh, heed him, Ernest!" said the lady. "It is the holy truth which has been spoken. Let us rejoice in this truth, and, forgetting the world, live only for it."

"Oh, may He who watcheth over all His children keep thee in faith of thy resolution!" said the Preacher, fervently. "Humble yourselves to receive instruction, and it shall be given you. Turn away now in your youth from the corrupting pleasures of the world, heed not its hollow vanities, and that peace which is not such as the world giveth, the peace of God which passeth all understanding, shall be yours. Yet, let not yours be the world's righteousness, the world's peace, which shuts itself up in solitude. Encloister not the body, but rather shut up the soul from sin. Live in the world, but overcome it: lead a life of purity in the face of its allurements: learn, from the holy principle of truth within you, to do justly in the sight of its Author, to meet reproach without anger, to live without offence, to love those that offend you, to visit the widow and the fatherless, and keep yourselves unspotted from the world."

"Eleonora!" said the humbled student, "truth is plain before us; can we follow its teachings? Alas! canst thou, the daughter of a noble house, forget the glory of thy birth, and, in the beauty of thy years, tread in that lowly path, which the wisdom of the world accounteth foolishness?"

"Yes, Ernest, rejoicingly can I do it!" said the lady; and the bright glow of a lofty purpose gave a spiritual expression to her majestic beauty. "Glory to God in the highest, that He hath visited us in mercy!"

"Lady!" said the Preacher, "the day-star of truth has arisen in thy heart; follow thou its light even unto salvation. Live an harmonious life to the curious make and frame of thy creation; and let the beauty of thy person teach thee to beautify thy mind with holiness, the ornament of the beloved of God. Remember that the King of Zion's daughter is all-glorious within; and if thy soul excel, thy body will only set off the lustre of thy mind. Let not the spirit of this world, its cares and its many vanities, its fashions and discourse, prevail over the civility of thy nature. Remember that sin brought the first coat, and thou wilt have little reason to be proud of dress or the adorning of thy body. Seek rather the enduring ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, the beauty and the purity of the altar of God's temple, rather than the decoration of its outward walls. For, as the Spartan monarch said of old to his daughter, when he restrained her from wearing the rich dresses of Sicily, 'Thou wilt seem more lovely to me without them,' so shalt thou seem, in thy lowliness and humility, more lovely in the sight of Heaven and in the eyes of the pure of earth. Oh, preserve in their freshness thy present feelings, wait in humble resignation and in patience, even if it be all thy days, for the manifestations of Him who as a father careth for all His children."

"I will endeavor, I will endeavor!" said the lady, humbled in spirit, and in tears.

The stranger took the hand of each. "Farewell!" he said, "I must needs depart, for I have much work before me. God's peace be with you; and that love be around you, which has been to me as the green pasture and the still water, the shadow in a weary land."

And the stranger went his way; but the lady and her lover, in all their after life, and amidst the trials and persecutions which they were called to suffer in the cause of truth, remembered with joy and gratitude the instructions of the pure-hearted and eloquent William Penn.

DAVID MATSON.

Published originally in Our Young Folks, 1865.

WHO of my young friends have read the sorrowful story of "Enoch Arden," so sweetly and simply told by the great English poet? It is the story of a man who went to sea, leaving behind a sweet young wife and little daughter. He was cast away on a desert island, where he remained several years, when he was discovered and taken off by a passing vessel. Coming back to his native town, he found his wife married to an old playmate, a good man, rich and honored, and with whom she was living happily. The poor man, unwilling to cause her pain and perplexity, resolved not to make himself known to her, and lived and died alone. The poem has reminded me of a very similar story of my own New England neighborhood, which I have often heard, and which I will try to tell, not in poetry, like Alfred Tennyson's, but in my own poor prose. I can assure my readers that in its main particulars it is a true tale.

One bright summer morning, not more than fourscore years ago, David Matson, with his young wife and his two healthy, barefooted boys, stood on the bank of the river near their dwelling. They were waiting for Pelatiah Curtis to come round the point with his wherry, and take the husband and father to the port, a few miles below. The Lively Turtle was about to sail on a voyage to Spain, and David was to go in her as mate. They stood there in the level morning sunshine talking cheerfully; but had you been near enough, you could have seen tears in Anna Matson's blue eyes, for she loved her husband and knew there was always danger on the sea. And David's bluff, cheery voice trembled a little now and then, for the honest sailor loved his snug home on the Merrimac, with the dear wife and her pretty boys. But presently the wherry came alongside, and David was just stepping into it, when he turned back to kiss his wife and children once more.

"In with you, man," said Pelatiah Curtis. "There is no time for kissing and such fooleries when the tide serves."

And so they parted. Anna and the boys went back to their home, and David to the Port, whence he sailed off in the Lively Turtle. And months passed, autumn followed summer, and winter the autumn, and then spring came, and anon it was summer on the river-side, and he did not come back. And another year passed, and then the old sailors and fishermen shook their heads solemnly, and, said that the Lively Turtle was a lost ship, and would never come back to port. And poor Anna had her bombazine gown dyed black, and her straw bonnet trimmed in mourning ribbons, and thenceforth she was known only as the Widow Matson.

And how was it all this time with David himself?

Now you must know that the Mohammedan people of Algiers and Tripoli, and Mogadore and Sallee, on the Barbary coast, had been for a long time in the habit of fitting out galleys and armed boats to seize upon the merchant vessels of Christian nations, and make slaves of their crews and passengers, just as men calling themselves Christians in America were sending vessels to Africa to catch black slaves for their plantations. The Lively Turtle fell into the hands of one of these sea- robbers, and the crew were taken to Algiers, and sold in the market place as slaves, poor David Matson among the rest.

When a boy he had learned the trade of ship-carpenter with his father on the Merrimac; and now he was set to work in the dock-yards. His master, who was naturally a kind man, did not overwork him. He had daily his three loaves of bread, and when his clothing was worn out, its place was supplied by the coarse cloth of wool and camel's hair woven by the Berber women. Three hours before sunset he was released from work, and Friday, which is the Mohammedan Sabhath, was a day of entire rest. Once a year, at the season called Ramadan, he was left at leisure for a whole week. So time went on,—days, weeks, months, and years. His dark hair became gray. He still dreamed of his old home on the Merrimac, and of his good Anna and the boys. He wondered whether they yet lived, what they thought of him, and what they were doing. The hope of ever seeing them again grew fainter and fainter, and at last nearly died out; and he resigned himself to his fate as a slave for life.

But one day a handsome middle-aged gentleman, in the dress of one of his own countrymen, attended by a great officer of the Dey, entered the ship-yard, and called up before him the American captives. The stranger was none other than Joel Barlow, Commissioner of the United States to procure the liberation of slaves belonging to that government. He took the men by the hand as they came up, and told them that they were free. As you might expect, the poor fellows were very grateful; some laughed, some wept for joy, some shouted and sang, and threw up their caps, while others, with David Matson among them, knelt down on the chips, and thanked God for the great deliverance.

"This is a very affecting scene," said the commissioner, wiping his eyes. "I must keep the impression of it for my 'Columbiad';" and drawing out his tablet, he proceeded to write on the spot an apostrophe to Freedom, which afterwards found a place in his great epic.

David Matson had saved a little money during his captivity by odd jobs and work on holidays. He got a passage to Malaga, where he bought a nice shawl for his wife and a watch for each of his boys. He then went to the quay, where an American ship was lying just ready to sail for Boston.

Almost the first man he saw on board was Pelatiah Curtis, who had rowed him down to the port seven years before. He found that his old neighbor did not know him, so changed was he with his long beard and Moorish dress, whereupon, without telling his name, he began to put questions about his old home, and finally asked him if he knew a Mrs. Matson.

"I rather think I do," said Pelatiah; "she's my wife."

"Your wife!" cried the other. "She is mine before God and man. I am
David Matson, and she is the mother of my children."

"And mine too!" said Pelatiah. "I left her with a baby in her arms. If you are David Matson, your right to her is outlawed; at any rate she is mine, and I am not the man to give her up."

"God is great!" said poor David Matson, unconsciously repeating the familiar words of Moslem submission. "His will be done. I loved her, but I shall never see her again. Give these, with my blessing, to the good woman and the boys," and he handed over, with a sigh, the little bundle containing the gifts for his wife and children.

He shook hands with his rival. "Pelatiah," he said, looking back as he left the ship, "be kind to Anna and my boys."

"Ay, ay, sir!" responded the sailor in a careless tone. He watched the poor man passing slowly up the narrow street until out of sight. "It's a hard case for old David," he said, helping himself to a fresh quid of tobacco, "but I 'm glad I 've seen the last of him."

When Pelatiah Curtis reached home he told Anna the story of her husband and laid his gifts in her lap. She did not shriek nor faint, for she was a healthy woman with strong nerves; but she stole away by herself and wept bitterly. She lived many years after, but could never be persuaded to wear the pretty shawl which the husband of her youth had sent as his farewell gift. There is, however, a tradition that, in accordance with her dying wish, it was wrapped about her poor old shoulders in the coffin, and buried with her.

The little old bull's-eye watch, which is still in the possession of one of her grandchildren, is now all that remains to tell of David Matson,— the lost man.

THE FISH I DID N'T CATCH.

Published originally in The Little Pilgrim, Philadelphia, 1843.

OUR old homestead (the house was very old for a new country, having been built about the time that the Prince of, Orange drove out James the Second) nestled under a long range of hills which stretched off to the west. It was surrounded by woods in all directions save to the southeast, where a break in the leafy wall revealed a vista of low green meadows, picturesque with wooded islands and jutting capes of upland. Through these, a small brook, noisy enough as it foamed, rippled, and laughed down its rocky falls by our gardenside, wound, silently and scarcely visible, to a still larger stream, known as the Country Brook. This brook in its turn, after doing duty at two or three saw and grist mills, the clack of which we could hear in still days across the intervening woodlands, found its way to the great river, and the river took it up and bore it down to the great sea.

I have not much reason for speaking well of these meadows, or rather bogs, for they were wet most of the year; but in the early days they were highly prized by the settlers, as they furnished natural mowing before the uplands could be cleared of wood and stones and laid down to grass. There is a tradition that the hay-harvesters of two adjoining towns quarrelled about a boundary question, and fought a hard battle one summer morning in that old time, not altogether bloodless, but by no means as fatal as the fight between the rival Highland clans, described by Scott in "The Fair Maid of Perth." I used to wonder at their folly, when I was stumbling over the rough hassocks, and sinking knee-deep in the black mire, raking the sharp sickle-edged grass which we used to feed out to the young cattle in midwinter when the bitter cold gave them appetite for even such fodder. I had an almost Irish hatred of snakes, and these meadows were full of them,—striped, green, dingy water- snakes, and now and then an ugly spotted adder by no means pleasant to touch with bare feet. There were great black snakes, too, in the ledges of the neighboring knolls; and on one occasion in early spring I found myself in the midst of a score at least of them,—holding their wicked meeting of a Sabbath morning on the margin of a deep spring in the meadows. One glimpse at their fierce shining beads in the sunshine, as they roused themselves at my approach, was sufficient to send me at full speed towards the nearest upland. The snakes, equally scared, fled in the same direction; and, looking back, I saw the dark monsters following close at my heels, terrible as the Black Horse rebel regiment at Bull Run. I had, happily, sense enough left to step aside and let the ugly troop glide into the bushes.

Nevertheless, the meadows had their redeeming points. In spring mornings the blackbirds and bobolinks made them musical with songs; and in the evenings great bullfrogs croaked and clamored; and on summer nights we loved to watch the white wreaths of fog rising and drifting in the moonlight like troops of ghosts, with the fireflies throwing up ever and anon signals of their coming. But the Brook was far more attractive, for it had sheltered hathing-places, clear and white sanded, and weedy stretches, where the shy pickerel loved to linger, and deep pools, where the stupid sucker stirred the black mud with his fins. I had followed it all the way from its birthplace among the pleasant New Hampshire hills, through the sunshine of broad, open meadows, and under the shadow of thick woods. It was, for the most part, a sober, quiet little river; but at intervals it broke into a low, rippling laugh over rocks and trunks of fallen trees. There had, so tradition said, once been a witch-meeting on its banks, of six little old women in short, sky-blue cloaks; and if a drunken teamster could be credited, a ghost was once seen bobbing for eels under Country Bridge. It ground our corn and rye for us, at its two grist-mills; and we drove our sheep to it for their spring washing, an anniversary which was looked forward to with intense delight, for it was always rare fun for the youngsters. Macaulay has sung,—

"That year young lads in Umbro
Shall plunge the struggling sheep;"

and his picture of the Roman sheep-washing recalled, when we read it, similar scenes in the Country Brook. On its banks we could always find the earliest and the latest wild flowers, from the pale blue, three- lobed hepatica, and small, delicate wood-anemone, to the yellow bloom of the witch-hazel burning in the leafless October woods.

Yet, after all, I think the chief attraction of the Brook to my brother and myself was the fine fishing it afforded us. Our bachelor uncle who lived with us (there has always been one of that unfortunate class in every generation of our family) was a quiet, genial man, much given to hunting and fishing; and it was one of the great pleasures of our young life to accompany him on his expeditions to Great Hill, Brandy-brow Woods, the Pond, and, best of all, to the Country Brook. We were quite willing to work hard in the cornfield or the haying-lot to finish the necessary day's labor in season for an afternoon stroll through the woods and along the brookside. I remember my first fishing excursion as if it were but yesterday. I have been happy many times in my life, but never more intensely so than when I received that first fishing-pole from my uncle's hand, and trudged off with him through the woods and meadows. It was a still sweet day of early summer; the long afternoon shadows of the trees lay cool across our path; the leaves seemed greener, the flowers brighter, the birds merrier, than ever before. My uncle, who knew by long experience where were the best haunts of pickerel, considerately placed me at the most favorable point. I threw out my line as I had so often seen others, and waited anxiously for a bite, moving the bait in rapid jerks on the surface of the water in imitation of the leap of a frog. Nothing came of it. "Try again," said my uncle. Suddenly the bait sank out of sight. "Now for it," thought I; "here is a fish at last." I made a strong pull, and brought up a tangle of weeds. Again and again I cast out my line with aching arms, and drew it back empty. I looked to my uncle appealingly. "Try once more," he said. "We fishermen must have patience."

Suddenly something tugged at my line and swept off with it into deep water. Jerking it up, I saw a fine pickerel wriggling in the sun. "Uncle!" I cried, looking back in uncontrollable excitement, "I've got a fish!" "Not yet," said my uncle. As he spoke there was a plash in the water; I caught the arrowy gleam of a scared fish shooting into the middle of the stream; my hook hung empty from the line. I had lost my prize.

We are apt to speak of the sorrows of childhood as trifles in comparison with those of grown-up people; but we may depend upon it the young folks don't agree with us. Our griefs, modified and restrained by reason, experience, and self-respect, keep the proprieties, and, if possible, avoid a scene; but the sorrow of childhood, unreasoning and all- absorbing, is a complete abandonment to the passion. The doll's nose is broken, and the world breaks up with it; the marble rolls out of sight, and the solid globe rolls off with the marble.

So, overcome by my great and bitter disappointment, I sat down on the nearest hassock, and for a time refused to be comforted, even by my uncle's assurance that there were more fish in the brook. He refitted my bait, and, putting the pole again in my hands, told me to try my luck once more.

"But remember, boy," he said, with his shrewd smile, "never brag of catching a fish until he is on dry ground. I've seen older folks doing that in more ways than one, and so making fools of themselves. It 's no use to boast of anything until it 's done, nor then either, for it speaks for itself."

How often since I have been reminded of the fish that I did not catch! When I hear people boasting of a work as yet undone, and trying to anticipate the credit which belongs only to actual achievement, I call to mind that scene by the brookside, and the wise caution of my uncle in that particular instance takes the form of a proverb of universal application: "Never brag of your fish before you catch him."

YANKEE GYPSIES.

"Here's to budgets, packs, and wallets; Here's to all the wandering
train."
BURNS.

I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to "skyey influences." I profess no indifference to the movements of that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical, heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasined feet on glittering ice pavements; bright eyes glancing above the uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her /yashmac/; schoolboys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders; the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or blazing upon ice jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this to complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,—its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales of the equinox have their varieties, —sounds of wind-shaken woods and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement, hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath and above; reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz administers his hydropathic torment,—

"A heavy, cursed, and relentless drench,—
The land it soaks is putrid;"

or rather, as everything animate and inanimate is seething in warm mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old and rheumatic, is trying the efficacy of a Thompsonian steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the heavy plash of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous melancholy drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of waterducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a dim, leaden-colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter, shutting down about one, beyond which nothing is visible save in faint line or dark projection; the ghost of a church spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who can extract pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a trick of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.

Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now. One gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of the weather. They come in at the keyhole; they peer through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney astride of the rain-drops.

I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sun-browned and wind-dried; small, quick-winking black eyes. There he stands, the water dripping from his pulpy hat and ragged elbows.

I speak to him, but he returns no answer. With a dumb show of misery, quite touching, he hands me a soiled piece of parchment, whereon I read what purports to be a melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to the particular detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro Frugoni, who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms of all charitable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the bearer of this veracious document, duly certified and indorsed by an Italian consul in one of our Atlantic cities, of a high-sounding, but to Yankee organs unpronounceable name.

Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mohammedans tell us, has two attendant angels,—the good one on his right shoulder, the bad on his left. "Give," says Benevolence, as with some difficulty I fish up a small coin from the depths of my pocket. "Not a cent," says selfish Prudence; and I drop it from my fingers. "Think," says the good angel, "of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped from the terrors of the sea-storm, in which his little property has perished, thrown half-naked and helpless on our shores, ignorant of our language, and unable to find employment suited to his capacity." "A vile impostor!" replies the lefthand sentinel. "His paper, purchased from one of those ready-writers in New York who manufacture beggar-credentials at the low price of one dollar per copy, with earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to suit customers."

Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey of my visitant. Ha! a light dawns upon me. That shrewd old face, with its sharp, winking eyes, is no stranger to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee before. Si, signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty white neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn downwards, and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious gravity, while thou wast offering to a crowd of halfgrown boys an extemporaneous exhortation in the capacity of a travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out from under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian, who had lost the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska? Is it not the face of the forlorn father of six small children, whom the "marcury doctors" had "pisened" and crippled? Did it not belong to that down- East unfortunate who had been out to the "Genesee country" and got the "fevern-nager," and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to receive my poor gift? The same, under all disguises,—Stephen Leathers, of Barrington,—him, and none other! Let me conjure him into his own likeness:—

"Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?"

"Oh, well, I thought I knew ye," he answers, not the least disconcerted. "How do you do? and how's your folks? All well, I hope. I took this 'ere paper, you see, to help a poor furriner, who couldn't make himself understood any more than a wild goose. I thought I 'd just start him for'ard a little. It seemed a marcy to do it."

Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One cannot be angry with such a fellow. I will just inquire into the present state of his Gospel mission and about the condition of his tribe on the Penobscot; and it may be not amiss to congratulate him on the success of the steam- doctors in sweating the "pisen" of the regular faculty out of him. But he evidently has no'wish to enter into idle conversation. Intent upon his benevolent errand, he is already clattering down stairs. Involuntarily I glance out of the window just in season to catch a single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed up in the mist.

He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming, "Luck go with him!" He has broken in upon the sombre train of my thoughts and called up before me pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm- house nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and green meadows to the east; the small stream which came noisily down its ravine, washing the old garden-wall and softly lapping on fallen stones and mossy roots of beeches and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at the gateway; the oak-forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon; the grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge,—the dear old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before me like a daguerreotype from that picture within which I have borne with me in all my wanderings. I am a boy again, once more conscious of the feeling, half terror, half exultation, with which I used to announce the approach of this very vagabond and his "kindred after the flesh."

The advent of wandering beggars, or "old stragglers," as we were wont to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest in the generally monotonous quietude of our farm-life. Many of them were well known; they had their periodical revolutions and transits; we could calculate them like eclipses or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and saucy; and, whenever they ascertained that the "men folks" were absent, would order provisions and cider like men who expected to pay for them, seating themselves at the hearth or table with the air of Falstaff,— "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" Others, poor, pale, patient, like Sterne's monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak and forlornness which was never without its effect on our juvenile sensibilities. At times, however, we experienced a slight revulsion of feeling when even these humblest children of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our proffered bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of cider. Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have done, it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a draught of their favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction to see their sad, melancholy faces light up as we handed them the full pitcher, and, on receiving it back empty from their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them, half breathless from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the favor, as "dear, good children!" Not unfrequently these wandering tests of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting groups of man, woman, and child, picturesque in their squalidness, and manifesting a maudlin affection which would have done honor to the revellers at Poosie-Nansie's, immortal in the cantata of Burns. I remember some who were evidently the victims of monomania,—haunted and hunted by some dark thought,—possessed by a fixed idea. One, a black-eyed, wild- haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin, shame, and suffering written in her countenance, used often to visit us, warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was never known to answer a question or to ask one. She never smiled; the cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent, impassive face, frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin. We used to look with awe upon the "still woman," and think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a "dumb spirit."

One—I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly, working his slow way up to our door—used to gather herbs by the wayside and call himself doctor. He was bearded like a he goat and used to counterfeit lameness, yet, when he supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if walking for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit, he met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in earnest, hobbling ever after with difficulty on his gnarled crutches. Another used to go stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim, under a pack made of an old bed- sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack" always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!

There was another class of peripatetic philosophers—half pedler, half mendicant—who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain. He told us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it, the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about it." "Did she die?" we inquired anxiously. There was a cun-ing twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no, she did n't. She got married."

Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician and parson,—a Yankee troubadour,—first and last minstrel of the valley of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger branches of the family. No lovesick youth could drown himself, no deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows, without fitting memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers, and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence, furnishing the raw material of song and ballad. Welcome to us in our country seclusion as Autolycus to the clown in Winter's Tale, we listened with infinite satisfaction to his readings of his own verses, or to his ready improvisation upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the outset of a new subject, his rhymes flowed freely, "as if he had eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to his tunes." His productions answered, as nearly as I can remember, to Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad,—"doleful matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung lamentably." He was scrupulously conscientious, devout, inclined to theological disquisitions, and withal mighty in Scripture. He was thoroughly independent; flattered nobody, cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When invited to sit down at our dinner-table, be invariably took the precaution to place his basket of valuables between his legs for safe keeping. "Never mind thy basket, Jonathan," said my father; "we sha'n't steal thy verses."—"I'm not sure of that," returned the suspicious guest. "It is written, 'Trust ye not in any brother.'"

Thou too, O Parson B———, with thy pale student's brow and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat overswept by white flowing locks, with thy professional white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt to thy back was problematical,—art by no means to be overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing the entree of our farm-house. Well do we remember with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over its threshold, saluting its inmates with the same air of gracious condescension and patronage with which in better days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor old man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped minister of the largest church in the town where he afterwards found support in the winter season as a pauper. He had early fallen into intemperate habits; and at the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he was only sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise. Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot the proprieties of his profession; he was always grave, decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite pupil of the learned and astute Emmons, and was to the last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school. The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon and travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted couple was doubtless the same which endeared Tam O'Shanter to the souter:—

"They had been fou for weeks thegither."

He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding chapter of Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting illustration. The evil days had come; the keepers of the house trembled; the windows of life were darkened. A few months later the silver cord was loosened, the golden bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the temptations which beset him fell the thick curtains of the grave.

One day we had a call from a "pawky auld carle" of a wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese and drinking his mug of cider he gave us Bonny Doon, Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of Dempster, than whom the Scottish bard has had no sweeter or truer interpreter; but the skilful performance of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's singing in the old farmhouse kitchen. Another wanderer made us acquainted with the humorous old ballad of "Our gude man cam hame at e'en." He applied for supper and lodging, and the next morning was set at work splitting stones in the pasture. While thus engaged the village doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited horse, and stopped to talk with my father. The fellow eyed the animal attentively, as if familiar with all his good points, and hummed over a stanza of the old poem:—

"Our gude man cam hame at e'en,
And hame cam be;
And there he saw a saddle horse
Where nae horse should be.
'How cam this horse here?
How can it be?
How cam this horse here
Without the leave of me?'
'A horse?' quo she.
'Ay, a horse,' quo he.
'Ye auld fool, ye blind fool,—
And blinder might ye be,—
'T is naething but a milking cow
My mamma sent to me.'
A milch cow?' quo he.
'Ay, a milch cow,' quo she.
'Weel, far hae I ridden,
And muckle hae I seen;
But milking cows wi' saddles on
Saw I never nane.'"

That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him the doctor's horse, and was never after heard of.

Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or more "gaberlunzie men," pack on shoulder and staff in hand, emerging from the barn or other outbuildings where they had passed the night. I was once sent to the barn to fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing into the mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by the sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just discernible in the dim moonlight streaming through the seams of the boards. I made a rapid retreat down the ladder; and was only reassured by hearing the object of my terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of a harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before. Our farm-house was situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded with woods, with no neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy night, when our parents chanced to be absent, we were sitting with our aged grandmother in the fading light of the kitchen-fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state of excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the dismal stories we could remember of ghosts, witches, haunted houses and robbers, when we were suddenly startled by a loud rap at the door. A stripling of fourteen, I was very naturally regarded as the head of the household; so,—with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I slowly opened, holding the candle tremulously above my head and peering out into the darkness. The feeble glimmer played upon the apparition of a gigantic horseman, mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider— colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night. The strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making several ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door, dismounted and followed me into the room, evidently enjoying the terror which his huge presence excited. Announcing himself as the great Indian doctor, he drew himself up before the fire, stretched his arms, clenched his fists, struck his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called his "mortal frame." He demanded in succession all kinds of intoxicating liquors; and, on being assured that we had none to give him, he grew angry, threatened to swallow my younger brother alive, and, seizing me by the hair of my head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon, led me about from room to room. After an ineffectual search, in the course of which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy, and, contrary to my explanations and remonstrances, insisted upon swallowing a portion of its contents, he released me, fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed that he was so drunk already that his horse was ashamed of him. After bemoaning and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes, and sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to understand that he was very much pleased with her appearance; adding, that if agreeable to her, he should like the privilege of paying his addresses to her. While vainly endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his very flattering proposition, he was interrupted by the return of my father, who, at once understanding the matter, turned him out of doors without ceremony.

On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the field at evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for lodgings during the night, but that, influenced by his dark, repulsive appearance, my mother had very reluctantly refused his request. I found her by no means satisfied with her decision. "What if a son of mine was in a strange land?" she inquired, self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief, I volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and, taking a cross-path over the fields, soon overtook him. He had just been rejected at the house of our nearest neighbor, and was standing in a state of dubious perplexity in the street. His looks quite justified my mother's suspicions. He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out on the traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi,—one of those bandit visages which Salvator has painted. With some difficulty I gave him to understand my errand, when he overwhelmed me with thanks, and joyfully followed me back. He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and, when we were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal evening, he told us, partly by words and, partly by gestures, the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions of the grape- gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime, edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts; and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark, sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened with grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he poured out his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had so nearly closed our door against him; and, as he departed, we all felt that he had left with us the blessing of the poor.

It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's prudence got the better of her charity. The regular "old stragglers" regarded her as an unfailing friend; and the sight of her plain cap was to them an assurance of forthcoming creature-comforts. There was indeed a tribe of lazy strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed them beyond even the pale of her benevolence. They were not unconscious of their evil reputation; and experience had taught them the necessity of concealing, under well-contrived disguises, their true character. They came to us in all shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with most miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all "the ills which flesh is heir to." It was particularly vexatious to discover, when too late, that our sympathies and charities had been expended upon such graceless vagabonds as the "Barrington beggars." An old withered hag, known by the appellation of Hopping Pat,—the wise woman of her tribe,—was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful grandson, who had "a gift for preaching" as well as for many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders. He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd, knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could "do nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his neck and money in his pocket,"—a fact going far to confirm the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites generally, that there can be no priest without tithes and surplice.

These people have for several generations lived distinct from the great mass of the community, like the gypsies of Europe, whom in many respects they closely resemble. They have the same settled aversion to labor and the same disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs, tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of "missionaries and cold water." It has been said—I know not upon what grounds—that their ancestors were indeed a veritable importation of English gypsyhood; but if so, they have undoubtedly lost a good deal of the picturesque charm of its unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that my friend Mary Russell Mitford,—sweetest of England's rural painters,—who has a poet's eye for the fine points in gypsy character, would scarcely allow their claims to fraternity with her own vagrant friends, whose camp- fires welcomed her to her new home at Swallowfield.

"The proper study of mankind is man," and, according to my view, no phase of our common humanity is altogether unworthy of investigation. Acting upon this belief two or three summers ago, when making, in company with my sister, a little excursion into the hill-country of New Hampshire, I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the purpose of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own home, and returning, once for all, their numerous visits. Taking leave of our hospitable cousins in old Lee with about as much solemnity as we may suppose Major Laing parted with his friends when he set out in search of desert-girdled Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough road, passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful little streamlet noisily working its way into a valley, where it turned a lonely, half- ruinous mill, and climbing a steep hill beyond, saw before us a wide sandy level, skirted on the west and north by low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and there with dwarf pitch-pines. In the centre of this desolate region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced, unguarded, open to all comers and goers, stood that city of the beggars,—no wall or paling between the ragged cabins to remind one of the jealous distinctions of property. The great idea of its founders seemed visible in its unappropriated freedom. Was not the whole round world their own? and should they haggle about boundaries and title-deeds? For them, on distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for them, in far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for them, if they had but the grace to note it, the broad earth put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly shadowed forth—that poetic agrarianism, which gives all to each and each to all—is the real life of this city of unwork. To each of its dingy dwellers might be not unaptly applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for quoting her beautiful poem in this connection:—

"Other hands may grasp the field or forest,
Proud proprietors in pomp may shine;
Thou art wealthier,—all the world is thine."

But look! the clouds are breaking. "Fair weather cometh out of the north." The wind has blown away the mists; on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine; and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of a Barrington beggar.

THE TRAINING.

"Send for the milingtary."
NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.

WHAT'S now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones, wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow, regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,—the United States of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury Hills, who sits quietly in his wagon dispensing apples and turnips without so much as giving a glance at the procession. Probably there is not one of them who would hesitate to divide his last tobacco-quid with his worst enemy. Social, kind-hearted, psalm-singing, sermon-hearing, Sabhath-keeping Christians; and yet, if we look at the fact of the matter, these very men have been out the whole afternoon of this beautiful day, under God's holy sunshine, as busily at work as Satan himself could wish in learning how to butcher their fellow-creatures and acquire the true scientific method of impaling a forlorn Mexican on a bayonet, or of sinking a leaden missile in the brain of some unfortunate Briton, urged within its range by the double incentive of sixpence per day in his pocket and the cat-o'-nine-tails on his back!

Without intending any disparagement of my peaceable ancestry for many generations, I have still strong suspicions that somewhat of the old Norman blood, something of the grins Berserker spirit, has been bequeathed to me. How else can I account for the intense childish eagerness with which I listened to the stories of old campaigners who sometimes fought their battles over again in my hearing? Why did I, in my young fancy, go up with Jonathan, the son of Saul, to smite the garrisoned Philistines of Michmash, or with the fierce son of Nun against the cities of Canaan? Why was Mr. Greatheart, in Pilgrim's Progress, my favorite character? What gave such fascination to the narrative of the grand Homeric encounter between Christian and Apollyon in the valley? Why did I follow Ossian over Morven's battle-fields, exulting in the vulture-screams of the blind scald over his fallen enemies? Still later, why did the newspapers furnish me with subjects for hero-worship in the half-demented Sir Gregor McGregor, and Ypsilanti at the head of his knavish Greeks? I can account for it only in the supposition that the mischief was inhered,—an heirloom from the old sea-kings of the ninth century.

Education and reflection have, indeed, since wrought a change in my feelings. The trumpet of the Cid, or Ziska's drum even, could not now waken that old martial spirit. The bull-dog ferocity of a half- intoxicated Anglo-Saxon, pushing his blind way against the converging cannon-fire from the shattered walls of Ciudad Rodrigo, commends itself neither to my reason nor my fancy. I now regard the accounts of the bloody passage of the Bridge of Lodi, and of French cuirassiers madly transfixing themselves upon the bayonets of Wellington's squares, with very much the same feeling of horror and loathing which is excited by a detail of the exploits of an Indian Thug, or those of a mad Malay running a-muck, creese in hand, through the streets of Pulo Penang. Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic,—what are they, in sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale,—human imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and master of ceremonies? It is only when a great thought incarnates itself in action, desperately striving to find utterance even in sabre-clash and gun-fire, or when Truth and Freedom, in their mistaken zeal and distrustful of their own powers, put on battle-harness, that I can feel any sympathy with merely physical daring. The brawny butcher-work of men whose wits, like those of Ajax, lie in their sinews, and who are "yoked like draught-oxen and made to plough up the wars," is no realization of my ideal of true courage.

Yet I am not conscious of having lost in any degree my early admiration of heroic achievement. The feeling remains; but it has found new and better objects. I have learned to appreciate what Milton calls the martyr's "unresistible might of meekness,"—the calm, uncomplaining endurance of those who can bear up against persecution uncheered by sympathy or applause, and, with a full and keen appreciation of the value of all which they are called to sacrifice, confront danger and death in unselfish devotion to duty. Fox, preaching through his prison- gates or rebuking Oliver Cromwell in the midst of his soldier-court Henry Vane beneath the axe of the headsman; Mary Dyer on the scaffold at Boston; Luther closing his speech at Worms with the sublime emphasis of his "Here stand I; I cannot otherwise; God help me;" William Penn defending the rights of Englishmen from the baledock of the Fleet prison; Clarkson climbing the decks of Liverpool slaveships; Howard penetrating to infected dungeons; meek Sisters of Charity breathing contagion in thronged hospitals,—all these, and such as these, now help me to form the loftier ideal of Christian heroism.

Blind Milton approaches nearly to my conception of a true hero. What a picture have we of that sublime old man, as sick, poor, blind, and abandoned of friends, he still held fast his heroic integrity, rebuking with his unbending republicanism the treachery, cowardice, and servility of his old associates! He had outlived the hopes and beatific visions of his youth; he had seen the loudmouthed advocates of liberty throwing down a nation's freedom at the feet of the shameless, debauched, and perjured Charles II., crouching to the harlot-thronged court of the tyrant, and forswearing at once their religion and their republicanism. The executioner's axe had been busy among his friends. Vane and Hampden slept in their bloody graves. Cromwell's ashes had been dragged from their resting-place; for even in death the effeminate monarch hated and feared the conquerer of Naseby and Marston Moor. He was left alone, in age, and penury, and blindness, oppressed with the knowledge that all which his free soul abhorred had returned upon his beloved country. Yet the spirit of the stern old republican remained to the last unbroken, realizing the truth of the language of his own Samson Agonistes:—

"But patience is more oft the exercise
Of saints, the trial of their fortitude,
Making them each his own deliverer
And victor over all
That tyranny or fortune can inflict."

The curse of religious and political apostasy lay heavy on the land. Harlotry and atheism sat in the high places; and the "caresses of wantons and the jests of buffoons regulated the measures of a government which had just ability enough to deceive, just religion enough to persecute." But, while Milton mourned over this disastrous change, no self-reproach mingled with his sorrow. To the last he had striven against the oppressor; and when confined to his narrow alley, a prisoner in his own mean dwelling, like another Prometheus on his rock, he still turned upon him an eye of unsubdued defiance. Who, that has read his powerful appeal to his countrymen when they were on the eve of welcoming back the tyranny and misrule which, at the expense of so much blood and treasure had been thrown off, can ever forget it? How nobly does Liberty speak through him! "If," said he, "ye welcome back a monarchy, it will be the triumph of all tyrants hereafter over any people who shall resist oppression; and their song shall then be to others, 'How sped the rebellious English?' but to our posterity, 'How sped the rebels, your fathers?'" How solemn and awful is his closing paragraph! "What I have spoken is the language of that which is not called amiss 'the good old cause.' If it seem strange to any, it will not, I hope, seem more strange than convincing to backsliders. This much I should have said though I were sure I should have spoken only to trees and stones, and had none to cry to but with the prophet, 'O earth, earth, earth!' to tell the very soil itself what its perverse inhabitants are deaf to; nay, though what I have spoken should prove (which Thou suffer not, who didst make mankind free; nor Thou next, who didst redeem us from being servants of sin) to be the last words of our expiring liberties."

THE CITY OF A DAY.

The writer, when residing in Lowell, in 1843 contributed this and the companion pieces to 'The Stranger' in Lowell.

This, then, is Lowell,—a city springing up, like the enchanted palaces of the Arabian tales, as it were in a single night, stretching far and wide its chaos of brick masonry and painted shingles, filling the angle of the confluence of the Concord and the Merrimac with the sights and sounds of trade and industry. Marvellously here have art and labor wrought their modern miracles. I can scarcely realize the fact that a few years ago these rivers, now tamed and subdued to the purposes of man and charmed into slavish subjection to the wizard of mechanism, rolled unchecked towards the ocean the waters of the Winnipesaukee and the rock-rimmed springs of the White Mountains, and rippled down their falls in the wild freedom of Nature. A stranger, in view of all this wonderful change, feels himself, as it were, thrust forward into a new century; he seems treading on the outer circle of the millennium of steam engines and cotton mills. Work is here the patron saint. Everything bears his image and superscription. Here is no place for that respectable class of citizens called gentlemen, and their much vilified brethren, familiarly known as loafers. Over the gateways of this new world Manchester glares the inscription, "Work, or die". Here