At the time specified, my friends came. The expected voyage
was then a town's talk, and I had much ado to keep my
counsel from Sophia. An evening or two after her arrival, on
visiting her with my accustomed punctuality, I found her beautiful
eyes filled with tears. I asked the cause. She handed me
one of the evening journals. It announced my name as that of
the aëronaut who was about to make his perilous venture. Sophia
implored me to say that it was erroneous, and thus remove
her misery.

For a moment I was utterly unmanned. The tears of a lovely
being, who had never before met me but with a smile, and whom
I adored so tenderly, were too much for me. I hesitated a little:
but Truth was my counseller: I knew that some of my confidants
must have `blabbed,' and I owned that the statement was
veritable.

I will not describe the scene that ensued. Had not my unusual
eloquence succeeded in explaining to her the comparative
safety of the attempt, and in soothing her fears, I would have
flung a thousand balloons to the wind, rather than wound that
gentle heart. But Sophia Howard had a yielding spirit. When
she found that my whole soul was bent on the effort, when I
showed her the reputation and advantages it might give me, she
grew calm with a `sweet reluctant delay,' that endeared her to
me more than ever.

At last came on the evening previous to the day. As I walked
among the busy throngs of Broadway, heard my name uttered
by hundreds, and caught occasional views of the rich scenery
across the Hudson, where twilight was then faintly blushing, I
could not help asking myself, `Where shall I be at this time to-morrow?
' Perhaps, a lifeless corse in the ocean, or perchance
dashed upon some rocky crag, or blasted by some dreadful explosion!
' But my mind was made up, and I drave the forebodings
from my brain. I spent a holy, melancholy evening with my
beloved, and our adieu was like that of friends who part to meet
no more.

That night I could not sleep. Perturbed by a multitude of
thoughts, I tossed upon my couch in restless longings. At last,
I slumbered, and dreamed.

Methought I embarked in my balloon to cross the ocean. I
cut the ideal cord, and set forth in my imaginary car. Day after
day, to my fancy, I rode on the posting winds, far above the
long green swells of the Atlantic. At last, I made the coast of
England, and sailed among the clouds to London. Here, methought,
news had been received of my approach, and an escort

[figure description] Page 322.[end figure description]

of several pilot-balloons came out to meet me. I found a committee
of both Houses of Parliament, with the Lord Mayor, on
the broad, flat-roof of St. Paul's, ready for my reception. They
offered me the hospitalities of the city. How fantastic is a
dream! I declined the honor, and pushed on to Windsor.
There I stopped for a moment, fastened my balloon to the terrace,
and took a glass of wine with the king, who I thought was
walking on the terrace, in his robe de chambre, and eke his night-cap.
He gave me a passport to France. I shook his royal
hand, borrowed some pigtail tobacco of him, and sailed away. I
reached France soon after. Passing over the heights of Montmartre,
I looked down upon the capital. I seemed to know the
city; and when I arrived over the Place Vendome, I was made
to look up, by some irresistible monition, and lo! my balloon
had changed to the semblance of a horn! a long, bright trumpet
of silk, the little end towards the earth, and from it, by a mere
thread, was my car suspended! All at once, the thread parted.
I went down, down, in a way that one can only sink in dreams.
I saw my head strike against the statue of Napoleon, and fall
separate from my body to the earth. I observed the jabbering
crowd picking up my limbs, (these are sights for dreams only!)
and then I awoke.

The morning sun was shining in my window. I dressed instantly.
My dream seemed to indicate that I should at any rate
have an extensive sail, though the close omened that I should
come out at last from the little end of the horn. `Never mind,'
said I, `that last part was dreamed in the morning; and there is
an adage, that `morning dreams always go by contraries.' This
satisfied my superstition, and I took my slender breakfast in
cheerfulness and hope.

I had scarcely finished this hasty meal, when my apartment
was entered by a meagre-looking gentleman, who seemed nervous
and agitated. I inquired his pleasure. He answered me
with a marked French accent. `My dear Sir,' said he, `you are
not acquainted with me, but I have taken the liberty to come and
try to dissuade you from your voyage this day. I have never
seen but one balloon ascension, and God forbid that I should
ever see another. It was that of M. Romain, and Pilatre de
Rozier, in '85. I saw them rise from the shore of France, to
cross to the English side; as their double balloons ascended
among the clouds over the waves, I saw the flames burst forth in
the lower globe; I saw the fierce blaze flashing aloft, and the
daring aëronauts precipitated from on high, mangled by the fiery

[figure description] Page 323.[end figure description]

gas, and swept to death by that aërial power which they had
fondly hoped would give them fame! Horrid remembrance!
My dear friend, can I persuade you not to go?'

I was touched with this abrupt evidence of friendship; but I
argued with the adviser, that important discoveries had since
been made in the science; that my gas would be cool, and no
embers be placed near the aërostat, as there was with that of Rozier
and Romain. My determination, I added, was inflexible.
The gentleman smiled reluctantly, and bowed himself out as suddenly
as he entered, leaving me surprised at the quickness and
singularity of the interview.

I now consulted my barometer. It had risen during the night,
but there were flying clouds in the sky, and they drifted along
with a rapidity which betokened a strong wind. I found, however,
on opening my window, that it was light but summer-like.
The barometer could not be doubted, and my hopes were assured.

I was now delayed for hours with men from the amphitheatre
at the garden, wishing my directions. I gave them like a general
commanding his legions. One I ordered to the sail-maker's, for
canvass to spread the balloon on; one to the cooper's, for extra
casks: one to one place, one to another. I issued my ukase
that no particle of iron, or any sharp, hard substance be left on
the ground about the canvass; that the policemen should be on
the ground, tickets sent to editors, and arranged every thing with
a promptitude that has since astonished me. I then retired to
my room, and dressed in a plain suit of American cloth, for the
occasion, had my chin new reaped by a dainty barber, and sallied
into the street.

It was now about twelve o'clock. I called for a moment on
the Howards, to inform them that one of the best seats had been
reserved for their use, and that an attendant would be at the gate,
to conduct them to it. This, to me, first duty arranged, I walked
slowly down Broadway to the Garden. As general a turning
of heads occurred among the most of those I met, as if I had
been the sea-serpent. There was excitement in this. I felt like
a monarch.

I found the garden by no means empty, even at that early hour;
and around about the scene, were premature groups of curious
sailors, country urchins, and Fly-market loafers, looking up at
the flags, and other popular furniture, that fluttered above. I
examined every thing connected with the apparatus most strictly.
Minutes seemed hours. At length, the cannon, booming over
the bay, and startling the distant shores and heights, announced

[figure description] Page 324.[end figure description]

the opening of the gates, and the commencement of the process
of inflation. Throngs of well-dressed citizens, ladies and gentlemen,
began to arrive. The empty benches became fewer and
fewer; and there was a bustle around me, which filled me with
impatience. My natural timidity was lost in the consciousness
that my preparations were perfect, and an assurance that I should
perform what I had promised. The wind had lulled, the clouds
dispersed from overhead, though a few bright-edged ones still lay
along the west.

The attendants now opened the carboys of oil of vitriol, some
of which they poured into large jars: these were emptied into
capacious hogsheads, where three thousand pounds of iron, and
some thousand gallons of water had already been placed. The
chemical compound was complete; the noise proceeding from
the casks, proved the powerful action of the agitated acid on the
iron. The water was fast decomposing, the gas rushed through
the tubes to the condenser, and thence poured in volumes into
the balloon, which now arose from the canvass, gradually distending
into a globular form, and quivering like a thing of life, in impatient
bondage. Finally, it was permitted to rise a few feet, for
the proper arrangement of the delicate cord-work, by which it
was encompassed. I now experienced a strong feeling of pleasure,
when I heard the loud cheering which attended the letting
off of the little pilot balloon. It passed to the east of the city,
and describing a vast semicircle over the north part of the town,
floated, at last, away to the west, beyond the wind-mills of Jersey
city, toward the town of Newark. There was a kind of
pleasing bewilderment in being thus the focus of ten thousand
eyes, in the bursts of national music, and the encouragement of
so many hearts. I felt it all. It surpassed every previous experience
of condensed excitement.

Only twenty minutes now remained before the hour of ascension.
`The time of my departure was at hand,' and I was
`ready to be offered.' Every thing requisite had been placed in
my fairy gondola; my pigeon, the poetry, in hand-bills, for the
occasion; the tissue-paper, flags, ballast, all. Every moment
seemed an hour. I did not trust myself to look often at the seat
where Sophia, and all my nearest relations, were seated; for I
feared that they might disconcert me. Observing a broken carboy
of oil of vitriol lying carelessly by the passage through which
the balloon with its netting had been brought, I ordered it instantly
removed. The amphitheatre was now filled; the Battery trees
`bore men;' the bay was crowded with craft of all sorts, and
every eminence in the neighborhood was clothed with clusters of
human beings.

[figure description] Page 325.[end figure description]

My gay wicker-car was now attached, with the minutest care,
to the long cords that depended from the buoyant globe above.
I was looking at my watch, observing that the time of twenty had
dwindled to eight minutes, when I heard the cry of `Fire!' I
sprang toward the aërostat, as if a bullet had perforated my heart.
`Where?' said I. `There, in the balloon!' was the answer.
Looking upward, I perceived that the netting had become entangled
with the valve, which ever and anon flew open, as the
wind surged against the balloon, and the gas, mixed with vapor,
issued from the aperture, resembling smoke. The netting was
soon disengaged; and the valve, closed and held by its stout
springs, remained firm in its place.

My hour had now come, and I entered the car. With a
singular taste, the band struck up at this moment the melting
air of `Sweet Home.' It almost overcame me. A thousand associations
of youth, friends, of all that I must leave, rushed upon
my mind. But like Dashall in the play, I had no leisure for
sentiment. A buzz ran through the assemblage; unnumbered
hands were clapping, unnumbered hearts beating high; and I
was the cause. Every eye was upon me. There was pride in
the thought.

`Let go!' was the word. The cheers redoubled, handkerchiefs
waved from many a fair hand, bright faces beamed from
every window, and on every side. My last look was toward
Sophia. She was pale, and her lips parted `like monument of
Grecian art.' Her white fingers touched them, as I cut the
cord. One dash with my knife, and I rose aloft, a habitant of air.

How magnificent was the sight which now burst upon me!
How sublime were my sensations! I waved the flag of my
country; the cheers of the multitude from a thousand house-tops
reached me on the breeze; and a taste of the rarer atmosphere
elevated my spirits into ecstacy. The city, with a brilliant sunshine
striking the spires and domes, now unfolded to view, a
sight incomparably beautiful. My gondola went easily upward,
clearing the depths of heaven, like a vital thing. A diagram
placed before you, on the table, could not permit you to trace
more definitely than I now could, the streets, the highways, basins,
wharves, and squares of the town. The theatres and public
buildings, I recognised from their location near parks or open
grounds, and from the peculiarity of their being covered with various
metals, as well as slate, or tiles. The hum of the city
arose to my ear, as from a vast bee-hive; and I seemed the
monarch-bee, directing the swarm. I heard the rattling of carriages,
the hearty yo-heave-o! of sailors from the docks that,

[figure description] Page 326.[end figure description]

begirt with spars, hemmed the city round: I was a spectator of all,
yet aloof, and alone. Increasing stillness attended my way;
and at last the murmurs of earth came to my ear like the last vibrations
of a bell.

My car tilted and trembled, as I rose. A swift wind sometimes
gave the ballon a rotary motion, which made me deathly
sick for a moment; but strong emotion conquered all my physical
ailings. My brain ached with the intensity of my rapture.
Human sounds had fainted from my ear. I was in the abyss of
heaven, and alone with my God. I could tell my direction by
the sun on my left; and as his rays played on the aërostat, it
seemed only a bright bubble, wavering in the sky, and I a suspended
mote, hung by chance to its train. Looking below me,
the distant Sound and Long-Island appeared to the east; the bay
lay to the south, sprinkled with shipping; under me the city,
girded with bright rivers and sparry forests; the free wind was
on my cheek and in my locks; afar, the ocean rolled its long blue
waves, chequered with masses of shadow, and gushes of ruby
sunlight; to the north and west the interminable land, variegated
like a map, dotted with purple, and green, and silver, faded to
to the eye.

The atmosphere which I now breathed seemed to dilate my
heart at every breath. I uttered some audible expression. My
voice was weaker than the faintest sound of a reed. There was
no object near to make it reverb or echo. Though rising with
incredible swiftness, I had nothing to convince my eye that I was
not nearly still. The weak flap-flap flap, of the cords against the
balloon, in regular motion, as the trembling aërostat, moved by
its subtle contents, continued to rise, was all that indicated my
tendency. My barometer now denoted an immense height; and
as I looked upward and around, the concave above seemed like
a mighty waste of purple air, verging to blackness. Below, it
was lighter; but a long, lurid bar of cloud stretched along the
west, temporarily excluding the sun. The shadows rushed afar
into the void, and a solemn, Sabbath-twilight, reigned around. I
was now startled at a fluttering in my gondola. It was my compagnon
du voyage, the carrier pigeon. I had forgotten him entirely.
I attached a string to his neck, with a label, announcing
my height, then nearly four miles, and the state of the barometer.
As he sat on the side of the car, and turned his tender eyes upon
me in mute supplication, every feather shivering with apprehension,
I felt that it was a guilty act to push him into the waste beneath.
But it was done; he attempted to rise, but I out-sped
him; he then fell obliquely, fluttering and moaning, till I lost him
in the haze.

[figure description] Page 327.[end figure description]

My greatest altitude had not yet been reached. I was now
five miles from terra-firma. I began to breathe with difficulty.
The atmosphere was too rare for safe perspiration. I pulled my
valve-cord to descend. It refused to obey my hand. For a
moment I was horror-struck. What was to be done? If I ascended
much higher, the balloon would explode. I threw over
some tissue paper to test my progress. It is well known that
this will rise very swiftly. It fell, as if blown downward, by a
wind from the zenith. I was going upward like an arrow. I attempted
to pray, but my parched lips could not move. I seized
the cord again, with desperate energy. Blessed heaven! it
moved. I threw out more tissue. It rose to me like a wing of
joy. I was descending. Though far from sunset, it was now
dark about me, except a track of blood-red haze, in the direction
of the sun. I encountered a strong current of wind; mist was
about me; it lay like dew upon my coat. At last, a thick bar
of vapor being past, what a scene was disclosed! A storm was
sweeping through the sky, nearly a mile beneath, and I looked
down upon an ocean of rainbows, rolling in indescribable grandeur,
to the music of the thunder-peal, as it moaned afar and
near, on the coming and dying wind. A frightened eagle had
ascended through the tempest, and sailed for minutes by my side,
looking at me with panting weariness, and quivering mandibles,
but with a dilated eye, whose keen iris flashed unsubdued.
Proud emblem of my Country! As he fanned me with his
heavy wings, and looked with a human intelligence at the car,
my pulse bounded with exulting rapture. Like the genius
of my native land, he had risen above every storm, unfettered and
free! But my transports were soon at an end. He attempted
to light on the balloon, and my heart sunk; I feared his huge
claws would tear the silk. I pulled my cord; he rose, as I sank,
and the blast swept him from my view in a moment. A flock of
wild fowl, beat by the storm, were coursing below, on bewildered
pinions, and as I was nearing them, I knew I was descending. A
singular effect was now produced by my position. It was a double
horizon, one formed by the outer edge of the upper cloud, and
the other by the angle of the eye to the extreme strata of the
storm over the earth. A breaking rift now admitted the sun.
The rainbows tossed and gleamed; chains of fleecy rack, shining
in prismatic rays of gold, and purple, and emerald, `beautiful
exceedingly,' spread on every hand. Vast curtains of cloud
pavilioned the immensity, brighter than celestial roses, or `jasper,
bdellium, or the ruby stone,' glittered around; masses of mist
were lifted on high, like steps of living fire, more radiant than

[figure description] Page 328.[end figure description]

the sun himself, when his glorious noontide culminates from the
equator. A kind of aërial Euroclydon now smote my ear; and
three of the cords parted, which tilted my gondola to the side,
filling me with terror. I caught the broken cords in my hand,
but could not tie them. They had been dragged over the broken
carboy of oil of vitriol, of which I have spoken, and had rotted
asunder.

The storm below was now rapidly passing away, and beneath
its waving outline, to the southeast, I saw the ocean. Ships
were speeding on their course, and their bright sails melting into
distance: a rainbow hung afar, and the rolling anthems of the
Atlantic came like celestial hymnings to my ear.

Presently, all was clear below me. The fresh air played
around. I had taken a noble circuit, and my last view was better
than the first. I was far over the bay, `afloating sweetly to the
west.' The city, colored by the last blaze of day, brightened
remotely to the view. Below, ships were hastening to and fro
through the narrows; and the far country lay smiling like an
Eden. Bright rivers ran like ribands of gold and silver, till they
were lost in the vast inland, stretching beyond the view; the
gilded mountains were flinging their purple shadows over many a
vale; bays were blushing to the farewell day-beams; and now I
was passing over a green island. I sailed to the main land;
saw the tall old trees waving to the evening breeze; heard the
rural lowing of herds; heard the welcome sound of human
voices; and finally, sweeping over forest tops and embowered
villages, at last descended with the sun, among a kind-hearted,
surprised, and hospitable community, in as pretty a town as one
could desire to see, `safe and well.'

If I have told too long a yarn for so short a voyage, I crave
the reader's mercy. My feat has not diminished the number of
my friends, and nothing could increase Sophia Howard's love.
She is now mine; and when she wishes to amuse our little Sophia,
as some childish casualty bids her weep, she takes her on
her knee, and tells her `about Pa's voyage in the sky,' until,

[figure description] Page 329.[end figure description]

Whoever has been at Campeachy within the last twenty-five
years, has probably seen, and must remember, a fellow of curious
look and gait, wandering to and fro through the streets of the
city. His nether garments have never been considered remarkable
for their cleanliness or beauty; his tattered sombrero de
paja hangs ever slouchingly over his cunning and restless eyes;
and he is evermore to be seen poking his intrusive nose into
other people's business; not unblushingly, it is true, for the
member of which I speak has always glowed and beamed as did
the `maintained salamander' of Bardolph, which Falstaff used as
a sort of lantern, to light him about from tavern to tavern; from
the Boar's Head, and its dependencies, to all the adjacent taprooms,
near and far, in London. I say most if not all people
who have seen Campeachy, will remember the nondescript of
whom I speak—El Pedrero Campechano, or the Stone-flinger,
of that ilk. He is a well-educated and accomplished loafer, the
very head of his tribe, having been brought up at the feet of
loafers from childhood. No adventure was ever too arduous for
his undertaking. He would pick a pocket, or thresh a friend's
enemy, for the same quid pro quo, and with equal good will.
He was eternally busy in the day time, about nothing; for the
moonlight evenings and the twilight hours were his only seasons
of pecuniary harvest. His eye was an unerring, unerratic orb,
in its wildest and most maudlin rollings; and for hire or from
caprice, he would take a stone in his right hand and send it to
the distance of a quarter-mile with arithmetical precision. He
could single out a man from a crowd, among thousands, and consign
him to oblivion, without mistake or fear. In daylight, to
see him, you would think him the busiest man alive. He was
always to be observed running about the long wharf of the town,
with a memorandum-book and pencil in his hand, taking notes
of bales and boxes, as if he were the most anxious merchant in
the place, and had immense consiguments in his charge. Yet
he had not a copper, of any kind, unless it were some gratuity
for his scoundrel contests. No one ever understood better the
science of projectiles, or loved better the bottle and the glass.
Hence he inherited, by positive merit and common consent, the
soubriquet of Pepe Naranjo, or Pepe Botella, in which he rejoiced.

[figure description] Page 330.[end figure description]

In one of the drunken scrapes of Pepe Botella, he had the
misfortune to have his left side kicked into a palsy by an athletic
fellow with whom he was contending. He never but partially
recovered from the effects of this accident; and while he passed
along the street, the contrast between his sinister and dextral
members was particularly striking; one side being tottering and
rickety, the other strong and lusty. The strength of the palsied
portion of his body seemed only to have united itself with the
hearty department, greatly adding to the force thereof. The
offender, however, who produced this disaster, had reason to rue
the day when he used his foot so discourteously. He stood in
daily fear of his life; and was at last found one moonlight evening,
prostrate and dead in the street. A large stone lay near him,
covered with hair and clotted blood; his head was indented
with a hideous wound, and the place where he lay, stained with
the vital current. No one was seen in the neighborhood during
the evening; no words of strife were heard; and the whole
event was concealed in mystery. El Pedrero was observed to
look very knowingly and satisfied, when told of the occurrence,
and was even suspected of the act; but it was impossible to produce
any satisfactory proof against him.

The reputation of Pepe as a stone-flinger at last became fully
established. He was even employed sometimes to avenge the
wrongs of others, which he would do for a very small `consideration.
' A glass of spiritous fluid would generally be deemed
by him a sufficient guerdon for almost any enterprise.

There lived in Campeachy a licentious priest, named Juan
de Raduan, who had become exceedingly hateful to many of the
young men of the city, for his libertine propensities. Nothing
certain, however, could be adduced against him. Vague suspicions
and rumors alone were afloat respecting his conduct, and
these at last gradually died away. The station of the Padre;
the holy office he professed and filled, joined to the great reverence
of the people for the priesthood; all served to keep him
secure, even if guilty, and to appear as it were in apotheösis, if
innocent. The murmurs of suspicion being quelled, the holy
villain sought occasion, at an evening confessional, to pour into
the ear of a lovely damsel, one Isabella de Leon, the daughter
of a princely house, the enticing accents and proposals of the
basest passion. The affrighted girl fled from his presence in disgust,
communicated the secret to her brother, and besought him,
nay required of him, under the most solemn injunctions, that the

[figure description] Page 331.[end figure description]

circumstance should be communicated to no one living. The
brother bit his pale lip, and swore obedience.

The Semana Santa, or holy week, was near. At last it arrived.
During this season, great solemnity prevails through the
town; plaintive tones roll from the aisles and belfries of the
cathedrals; the penitent wail in the streets, and count their beads
at every turn. Preaching is `done' in the public places; and
the clergy are as busy in their vocation, as the faculty of a college
previous to commencement.

One evening, in early twilight, the Padre Raduan took his
station in an out-door pulpit, at the termination of the Barrio de
Guadaloupe, and La Punta de Diamanta, streets of the city
which form the two long angles of a triangle. The area in front
of the pulpit was occupied by a tumultuous sea of people, bowing
and kneeling in penitence and prayer. The preliminary services
were over: the vesper incense had ascended, the ave Maria
had ceased, and the Padre began his discourse.

While this scene was passing, the traveller might have noted,
in a green lane near the outskirts of the town, a tall youth, holding
low and anxious converse in the fading light with El Pedrero,
the Stone-flinger. It was young de Leon.

`He is a precious villain,' said the latter, `that wretched Padre,
and he must not live. He a Priest! By the Holy Virgin,
were it not for an oath, I would pierce his surplice with my own
stiletto! Now, Pepe, can I engage you to make his forehead
and a stone acquainted?'

`Si Señor,' replied Botella; `but for what pay? I am no
hireling murderer, Señor; and I can not perform this heavy job
for a common reward. I must have my flask filled daily with
the best liquor in your wine vault, for six months to come; and
I want also some money for my present necessities. What will
you give?'

`Now, a doblon de a una, and when your deed is done, ten
more.'

El Pedrero knew the potential value of gold, that slave of the
dark and dirty mine. In this he but imitated mankind in the
mass, from Indus to the Pole. Where, and over whom does it
not hold sway? `Gold, of all other,' saith the quaint Democritus
his pen, `is a most delitious objecte; a sweet light, a goodly lustre
it hath; gratius auram quam solem intuemur, saith Austin,
and we rather see it than the sun. Sweet and pleasant in getting,
in keeping, it seasons all our labors; intolerable pains we
take for it; base employment, endure bitter flouts and taunts,
long journeys, heavy burdens; all are made light and easy by

[figure description] Page 332.[end figure description]

this hope of gain. The sight of gold refresheth our spirits, and
ravisheth our hearts, as the Babylonian garment and golden
wedge did Achan in the camp; the very sight and hearing sets
on fire his soul with desire of it. It will make a man run to the
Antipodes, or tarry at home and turn parasite, lye, flatter, prostitute
himself, swear and bear false witness; he will venture his
body, kill a king, murther his father, and damn his soul to come
at it.' To the latter extreme, or near it, had El Pedrero been
roused by the single doblon de a una of de Leon.

Slowly and stealthily the Stone-flinger and his employer made
their way toward the Barrio de Guadaloupe. As they neared
the great area by the Punta de Diamanta, they perceived that the
evening torches and flambeaux had been lighted, and were shedding
their fitful rays over the vast multitude. Tall wax candles
by the pulpit enabled the many thousands around to see with
perfect distinctness the splendid robes of the Padre Raduan.
He was preaching with a drawling coldness; and evidently took
more pains to gesture gracefully, and to see who of his female
friends were among the assemblage, than to deliver the testimony
of a man of God.

On the very outskirts of the multitude, at the distance of six
or seven hundred yards from the pulpit and priest, stood El
Pedrero and his master for the time.

`Can you see his eye, Señor?' said the Stone-flinger, in a low
voice.

`No,' replied de Leon: `the rays of the candles dazzle me.'

`It is no matter,' added Pepe: `I can see his face. That
will do. Stand back, Señor, and tell me where to strike him.'

`In the middle of his forehead, between the temples; dash
out his brains, if you can; the unrighteous wretch!' responded
de Leon.

`Stop a moment,' muttered Pedrero.

This moment was spent in preparation. He poised the stone
in his right hand, thrust forward his right leg, with a tragedian
attitude, and lifting his hand, like a dying gladiator in his last
clutch toward his victim, prepared to fling the stone, now raised
uprightly in his dexter hand.

The priest had warmed a little in his discourse, and in some
ejaculation to Heaven had lifted his hand.

`Now's the time!' said de Leon.

No sooner said than done. El Pedrero lifted his hand yet
higher; a slight whiz! hummed over the heads of the multitude;
and the Padre dropped down in his place, the blood streaming
from his forehead, and the air resounding with the lamentations
and groans of the assemblage.

[figure description] Page 333.[end figure description]

Hundreds rushed to the pulpit. The Padre Raduan had fallen
by the hand of some vile assassin. The uproar was dreadful.
Men shouted, women shrieked and fainted; emissaries were despatched
with the news of the Padre's death, (for he had expired
in his pulpit,) to the different churches of the city. All was
confusion. Ten minutes had not elapsed, when the bells of San
Jose, San Francisquito, San Juan de Dios, and the old Cathedral
of San Francisco, poured out upon the evening air their
full-volumed descommunion-dirge against the dire offender, the
Priest-slayer, the Unknown Man of Blood.

All was of no avail. The shouting multitudes, as they bore
away the dead body of the Padre, knew not of his murderer,
nor was he ever identified. El Pedrero escaped, scot free. Isabella
de Leon was satisfied, and her brother avenged.

Time would fail, should the writer of this hurried sketch attempt
to relate all the adventures of El Pedrero. He has
wrought `twenty mortal murders' on as many crowns. Two
priests are among the victims of his personal avarice, or hired
enmity. In all his adventures, no one has ever been able to
identify him. Testimony has been found useless against him.
With an omnipresent alibi, he has ever eluded the law; and still
lives, to kill and to escape.

His last act was perpetrated at the corner of the Castle San
Pedro, (outside the walls of the city of Campeachy,) which divides
the district of Santa Anna and Guadaloupe. He drew a
stone from his doublet, and at the length of seven hundred yards
smote a priest on the breast, who is, in consequence, afflicted with
the asthma to this day. The secret of his power is known to
few, but his person is familiar with every Campechean. He
`bears a charmed life,' beyond the limits of the laws; for such
is the incredible distance to which he can project a missile, that
it is a matter of impossibility to procure evidence against him.
His hand, or his employer's eye, can be only his witness. The
suspected terror of all, yet the accused of none, he sustains himself
upon the fears of others. His interested friends are numerous;
his employers the same; and between them all, the Stoneflinger
lives, of late years, more like a prince, than the loafer
that he is. Wo to the head of that citizen who refuses him a
glass, call for it when he will! His laws are Draconian, written
in blood; and like that of the Medes and Persians, their code is
unalterable.

`Oh, Spirit-Land!—thou land of Dreams!
A world thou art, of mysterious gleams;
Like a wizard's magic-glass thou art,
Where the wavy shadows float by, and part.
Visions of aspects, now loved, now strange,
Glimmering and mingling in ceaseless change.
Thou art like the depths where the seas have birth,
Rich with the wealth that is lost from earth:
All the bright flowers of our days gone by,
And buried gems, in thy bosom lie.'

[figure description] Page 334.[end figure description]

I am a lover of the ideal. I bow to those enchantments of
the imagination, which come we know not whence or wherefore,
to awaken a few evanescent throbs of pleasure in the heart, and
to shed a few gushes of sunshine around the common walks of
this working-day world. I love to give myself up to the guidance
of my dreaming moods, and to say, `Halloo, my fancy,
whither wilt thou go?' I deem that the great charm of existence
lies, not in wailing because of the stern realities that we may not
shun, but in seeking those bright lapses in the stream of time,
illusive though they be, which sparkle into the soul with their radiance,
and cause every nerve to thrill with momentary enthusiasm.
As sorrow sometimes rolls its unbidden blight over the
spirit, so does pleasure there pour its lustre; and of neither the
one nor the other can we rightly discern the cause, commencement,
or end. How often will a cluster of hopes, gathering
thickly in the mind, clothed in hues of heaven, warm the bosom
into transports which have no definite origin, and can be traced
to none; which fade by far too soon, and yet grow lovelier
while they fade?

The shocks which our imaginary world sustains; the earthquakes
which devastate its glorious demensnes, and shake to
nothingness its thousand brilliant creations, are too frequent in
manhood to render the influence of the Ideal abiding. Its magnificent
pictures melt beneath the noontide of experience. We
know what we have been; we see what we are; and, contrasting
the raptures of the past with the faint visions of the present, are
led to feel, and deeply too, that the `golden exhalations of our
dawn' were too beautiful for perpetuity. Some rude lesson from
men diminishes our rich amount of romance. Coldness, deceit,
the changes and forgetfulness of friendships that we deemed almost
indestructible, admonish us with a voice stern and

[figure description] Page 335.[end figure description]

unrelenting, that the radiance of ideality is limited to a narrow compass
in our being, and that we soon recede from that shore,


`Where every scene is pleasant to the view,
And every rapture of the heart is new;
Where on the land and wave a light is thrown,
Which to the morn of life alone is known;'
and that, whether we will or no, those enchantments are eluding
our search, and those iris hues of delight rapidly `evanishing
amid the storm.'

It is with the mind as with the sky; continued brightness
would soon be wearisome. Like Macbeth, I have often been
`a-weary of the sun.' I like those little passages of life which
break the self-deception of the soul, and lead me to contemplate
things as they are. This liking, too, is by no means incompatible
with a passion for the ideal, but rather identical with it. One
may give the reins to fancy, and journeying in thought from
heaven to earth and from earth to heaven, may enjoy the transit
without supposing it reality. This is, in my view, the acmé of
day-dreaming. We are prepared to wake with new vigor from
the illusive reverie, fortified for the conflicts of the world; for
we know that we can sometimes shake off the latter, and in the
twilights of spring or summer, or during the golden reign of
autumn, command the former at our will. It is by the cultivation
of this spirit that the poet, the novelist, and the painter, have
depicted their best conceptions. Shutting out the world for the
nonce, yet retaining a sense of its continuance; amid the urbane
resumptions of cigarillos, or pipe, or over-generous cordial, they
luxuriate and dream; the air, the light, the view from an open
window of some pleasant landscape, minister to their quietude:
and thus, abstracted in meditation, they roll up the shadowy curtains
of Reality, and spread before their mental gaze an El Dorado
and an Eden.

Somebody—I believe it is Dr. Johnson—pronounces books
to be dull friends. They may be so; but they are glorious
companions. They can not lend one money, but they can enrich
his mind with incorruptible and unalienable affluence.
They can confer in gorgeous profusion the vast estates of ideality—
the dominions and principalities of thought. And while
they impart an enjoyment in all respects equal to worldly riches,
they inculcate no sordid selfishness; they never contract the
heart; and they leave its genial avenues unclogged by envy;
unpolluted by pride; for knowledge ever humbles its votaries,
even while it exalts them.

But there are some grievous disappointments to which

[figure description] Page 336.[end figure description]

imagination is subject; namely, the changes that happen inevitably to
the romantic fancies derived from human annals, and which form
the ideal of history. We read of mighty conquerors and statesmen,
who have made rivers run with blood, or thrilled senates
with resistless eloquence: we pore over the records of their lives
by some partial contemporary, until we deem them demi-gods.
We wish that we had lived in their day, and heard the rolling of
their chariot wheels, or the musical thunder of their periods.
Anon, we meet with authentic accounts of their private foibles,
their inglorious passions, their petty iniquities, until they diminish
in our eyes to the mere playthings of small impulses, the ignoble
puppets of Whim. We forget Cicero the orator, and find him
the puff-seeker of a friend, soliciting the hyperbole of praise in
an extravagant biography, and hinting at its reward. We see
monarchs bribing historians to give fair colors to their fame, or
posthumously shining in the doubtful authorship of an Ikon Basilike.

I have been marvellously shocked at the variations which have
passed over my imagination in reference to the great characters
of history. The trusty annalists who have dwelt more on their
private than their public course, have almost destroyed my
original portraits; and although I began them fancifully `in large,'
they have left them `in little.' From the heroes and heroines of
Greece and Rome, down to the queens, ladies, kings, princes,
and knights of European dominions, there has passed away the
coleur de rose with which my fancy first invested them. They
have come to appear like common people to me, and the greatness
they once wore to my spiritual eye, has gone like the pageant
of a vision. I can not cite many instances here, but they
are as numerous as the leaves of history.

Among those great personages of historic fame, who have
swayed monarchies by their nod, or been closely allied to regnant
majesty, I look with the greatest interest upon those whose tastes
and judgment have connected them with the success of genius
and literature. I should like to have had a peep at that old
Tuscanian Macænas, and witnessed the pleasures and the affluence
that he imparted to the gifted spirits by whom he was surrounded;
making the sweet Mantuan to `possess himself in much
quietness,' and brightening the Sabine estate before the quick eye
of Horace, until that satirist felt almost ready to forswear his
haughty nil admirari. I should delight to have met them all
together over a glass of that ancient and mellow Falernian, which
Horace kept so long in his cellar, and felt upon my lips those
gouts of an inspiration that used to find its way so often into

[figure description] Page 337.[end figure description]

deathless verse. But alas! had I known them, I should doubtless
have witnessed many a vulgar scene; many tableaux vivants
of maudlin revellers, reposing under tables, quite overdone; and
been haunted to my grave with an oft-recurring vision of broken
goblets, among lost streams of wine, rolling over the flooded
board, and wasting upon unmindful nostrils the odor of delicate
spices.

To those monarchical friends of talent, who have shone as
the patronizing beautifiers of our vernacular tongue, I have always
looked in a kind of misty admiration. How have I filled
my fancy with pictures of Elizabeth, the rewarded of merit, the
learned lady, the favorite of the gentle Sidney, the friend of
Shakspeare; and beyond all, according to some loyal chroniclers,
the possessor of that best religion `which triumpheth upon pride,
and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible
perpetuity unto which all others must diminish their diameters,
and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.' I have painted
her in my thought as a tall majestic woman, with an eye which
warmed, while it awed the heart, and whose glance, pleasing,
and commanding homage, filled her court with reflected sunshine;
her person stately as Juno, and marked by the befitting sweetness
of a gracious queen. I have almost doated on what I supposed
must have been about her smile. But like my fancy-sketch of
the great Russian Empress Catharine, the partial hues have vanished
before the rays of truth, and the bright lineaments have
gone. I have fallen upon Paul Hentzner's `Journey thoroughe
Englande,' in the year of grace m.d. xc. viii.; and ah, what
havoc hath he made! Touching Elizabeth and her arrangements,
he speaketh thus: `Her presence chamber was strewn
with hay, and therein were present the Archbishop of Canterbury,
Bishop of London, and so; first went gentlemen, barons, earles,
knights, all richly dressed and bareheaded; next wended the
chauncellour, with seals in a silk purse between two, one of
which carried the royal sceptre, the other ye sworde of State, in
a red scabbard, covered with fleurs de lis, and pointed upward.
Next came the Queen; * * her face long and wrinkled, her eyen
small, but black and pleasaunt; her nose a little hooked; her
lips narrow, and her teeth black, a defect whereunto the English
do seem subject, from their too great use of sugar. From her
ears did depend two pearls, with exceeding rich drops; she did
wear false hair, and that red; over which she had a small crown
of Lunenberg table gold: her bosom was uncovered; thence
she was dressed in white silk, burdened with pearls, the size of
beans, over which was a black mantle.'

[figure description] Page 338.[end figure description]

When I read this, good heaven! what a pattern of female
grace and nobleness faded from my mind. This, then, was Elizabeth!
The two portraits shown by Hamlet to his mother were
not more dissimilar than this and mine. Mine was a free drawing;
Hentzner's an unquestioned original. And was this the
Queen for whom the bards of her day thought it an honor to
weave their lays; and who considered it the summum bonum vitæ
to bask in her royal favor? Was this the peerless personage in
whose service the high-born Sidney fluttered and did the amiable;
in whose cause he fought and died? The very same. Oh flesh!
by partial pens how art thou glorified!

Talking of Sidney, leads me to say, that his case is another
instance in my experience of the false Ideal. He has stood in
the mirage of my conception, a knight unparagon'd; a poet as
full of personal grace as his verses are of beauty. He was the
favorite of the most intellectual court in Europe; the mark and
model of his sex; the cynosure of the ladies. He has appeared
to me, clothed in the purpureum lumen of nobility; the valiant
oracle and pet of his fair sovereign; walking and talking with
her, in English, French, Italian, Scotch, Dutch,[16] `and so;' in
fine, the very concrete of gentlemen. I have supposed him winningly
tall and majestic; easy as Adonis; with his lace points all
adjusted, and his bow superb. But Hentzner has dissolved the
vision, by furnishing an engraved portrait, undoubtedly authentic,
in which he is represented sitting clumsily on a bank, like a
shepherd of Arcady, with a form fat, oily, and burly, a bulbous
nose, a double chin, and eyes of a deplorably lack-lustre leer!
I shall never think of Sidney as a perfect courtier and preux
chevalier again.

It were a grievous list indeed that should contain all those alterations
which the stern pencil of truth has painted upon the
first pictures of great people in my mind. It has substituted the
coarse for the comely, and flung harsh shades over beauties of
sky-tinctured grain.' Warriors have dwindled into Lilliputians:
diplomatists into hair-brained invalids; empresses into dowdies.
Taking a fancy view of the Duke of Wellington, across the Atlantic,
I have supposed him a lofty personage, six feet nine in his
boots, with an eye like Mars, and a curl of disdainful dignity in
his monstrous nose. But he is a little pocket edition of a man,
with a bended back, a countenance in no wise prepossessing, and
legs approximating to that parenthesis state called the bandy.
Julius Cæsar! how the late describers of that man have undeceived
me!

[figure description] Page 339.[end figure description]

Just so with Talleyrand. I thought him a diplomatic weazel;
ever wide awake, with ears erect, and ready to slip out of any
negotiation that the finesse of court forecaste or private instructions
might suggest. But he is just the contrary. Instead of
being filled with deceitful animation, his visage is soporific; his
manner languid, nay stupid; and the last portrait—the latest and
best, I suppose—has sketched him asleep!

But because history darkens my ideal, shall I refuse to chase
it? No, by my halidome! I love the journeyings of thought.
I will travel often over those exclusive railways of the mind;
passing by castles, towers, lakes, wide-watered shores and splendid
towns; through fields made Champs Elysées by the poets,
and over hills renowned in song. I have seen those who surpassed
my brightest beau-ideal—living, moving, breathing, beings.
If I should see them again, something will have vanished
to break the charm—to dissolve the spell. I choose to hug
these camera obscura pictures to my heart; though with reference
to their characters, histories should be caught fibbing, and chroniclers
be falsified.

eaf050.n16

[16] Elizabeth understood all these languages.

—`men of pith,
Sixteen called Thompson, and nineteen named Smith.'
Byron.

[figure description] Page 340.[end figure description]

My name is John Smith. The first important event of my
life was my birth; but of that my reminiscences are faint, of
course. John Jenkins Smith was my father's name; and, until
my twelfth year, I was called John Jenkins Smith, Junior; the
middle appellation being in compliment to the sir-names of my
uncle and aunt, Increase and Abundance Jenkins. In the fitness
of time, my father deceased. He was an estimable individual,
and did a good business in the line of bar-soap; the avails arising
from the sale of which article created a decent competency
for the necessities of his surviving family. He was an industrious
man, with habits uncommonly domestic. My mother, nine brothers,
and seven sisters, lived to mourn his loss.

After the demise of my father, it was my mother's wish and
advice, that I should drop the Jenkins and the Junior from my
title, and adopt the simple cognomen of John Smith. Persuasion
at last induced me to comply with her desires; and dearly
have I paid for my acquiescence. The simplicity of the name
has been fruitful of mystery. Innumerable are the vexations and
difficulties into which it has led me. Were I to relate them, in
the swelling style of modern writers, I do verily believe that the
world would not contain my books. But the task is too formidable,
even if I were fond of authorship, which, I thank heaven, I
am not. My name forbids the thought. The wise may cogitate
from the tripod, and the dunce twaddle on his stool. I
shall not arise to push them from their places. Save in the Directory
and the census, I shall be nominis umbra.

When one arrives in a large city, it is a common simile to
liken him to a drop of water falling into the ocean; it mingles,
and is lost, in the vasty deep. So I found it, when I left my
native village `up the river' for the metropolis, in more ways than
one. I ascertained by a glance at the Directory, that I was one
among hundreds who bore my personal appellation. Having
passed my time from youth to early manhood in the country, the
bustle and buzz of a vast city like this almost drave me crazy.
Like John Jones, in the play of that name, `I was excited.'
Forthwith I made my way to the Adelphi. I had a fair share of
money, and the picture of that hotel, hung in the steamboat cabin,

[figure description] Page 341.[end figure description]

had captivated my eye. Glancing at the travellers' book in the
bar-room, I perceived my name three times repeated. I began
to think myself of consequence. `Doubtless,' said I, `the several
coachmen who stood on the wharf with uplifted, beckoning
whips, awaited my commands, and who ascertained my destination,
have come hither in advance, to record my arrival.' I was
unsophisticated in those days. Those things which we chew the
cud of wisdom withal, namely, eye-teeth, had not then been cut.
I thought, with a pleasing sensation, of the truth of the old poet's
remark, that one always finds `the warmest welcome at an inn.'

Purposes of business brought me to town. It was my intention,
after passing a year or two at mercantile apprenticeship in
the city, to become a country trader; and I had resolved from
the first to make all the acquaintances I could. I was rejoiced
to hear, the morning after my arrival, that several persons whom
I did not see, had inquired after my health at the Adelphi. I
knew I had many friends who had come to the Great Babel before
me; but I had not the most distant suspicion that they would
remember the `gawkey,' as they used to call me, whom they
knew at home. However, I solaced my mind with reflections
on my growing importance, and indulged myself in pleasing anticipations
of the success which these acquaintances would yet
induce for me.

I was fond of strolling through the streets in the morning,
when the glitter and stir of fashion were abroad, and I never
failed to walk myself hungry before twelve o'clock. An advertisement
which I had inserted in the newspapers, of, `Wants a
place, a young man from the country, with an extensive knowledge
of figures, who writes a good hand,' had been successful.
I had procured a situation, and was to enter upon its duties in a
fortnight. Of course, I was delighted; and remembering my
boyish scrape-maxim, `Dum vivimus vivamus,' I resolved to enjoy
my time. So, on each day at twelve o'clock, I was wont to resort
to one of those famous ordinaries in Broadway, where all
that the human appetite can crave is spread before the eye in
rich profusion. `A fig for the expense,' said I, `the things are
good, and I wish to make acquaintances for my employers.'

At the resort of which I am speaking, it seemed to me that all
the town convened. There, from eleven until five, were to be seen
vast numbers of voracious aldermen, and opulent good-livers, devouring
their respective lunches. Many a one of these, as he
came out, went along the streets with a pleased and satisfied
countenance,

[figure description] Page 342.[end figure description]

Of course, there were many faces that I came at last to know
`passing well.' One individual, especially, in a suit of rusty
brown, a bell-crowned hat, and a bombazine stock of blue, used
every day to enter the apartment just at the time I did, and seat
himself at the marble table next me. By degrees, we became
slightly acquainted. Being a regular visitor, my name and lodgings
were soon known to the bar-keeper. One morning, the
man in brown picked up a letter from the floor under his table,
and asked me if I had dropped it. I told him I had neither
written nor lost any.

`Very singular,' said he, without putting the epistle into my
hands; `I will make inquiries about it.' He showed it to the
keeper, who opened it, and after casting his eye down the page,
bowed politely to me, and said, `Certainly, certainly, with pleasure.
' The whole affair was an enigma; but I was as green at
that time as a new-hatched gosling. Supposing the person had
mistaken his man, but not wishing to be outdone in courtesy, I
bowed and smiled in return.

Shortly after, when I had taken my usual meal, and was about
to render the trifling equivalent, the keeper said to me:

`This is Mr. John Smith, I believe.'

`Yes, that is my name.'

`Got a certain note about you; the bill is all right; put up
your money.'

I did n't understand him.

`You are Mr. John Smith, at the Adelphi?'

`Yes. I am at that hotel.'

`Very well, my dear Sir, the note is accepted. Your bills are
paid until farther notice.'

`Well, thought I, my friends are polite, that is truth. I have
almost the freedom of the city. How curiously agreeable! I
continued to go for days and weeks together, and eat at this ordinary,
`without money and without price.' He in the brown
coat was ever present.

At the end of the month, I received at my hotel a bill of forty
dollars, for edibles used at the ordinary aforesaid. I hurried to
the place, and demanded an explanation. I was informed that
the man in brown had given a letter to the keeper, under my very
nose, requesting lunches for two every morning, the bill to be
sent monthly to John Smith, at the Adelphi. References were
given, and had been answered, all by the same hand!

It was a broad hoax; and after paying the money, as I was
obliged to do, (it was left `to my honor' that potent opener of
purse-strings,) I found that one of the three John Smiths whose

[figure description] Page 343.[end figure description]

names were written at the Adelphi, was a chevalier d'industrie,
who passed as my friend at the lunch, and my cousin John at
the hotel. He came down with me in the steam-boat. I never
saw him after he was `blowed.' This was the first practical attack
on my name; but by how many dozens was it not the last! Let
me go on.

There is scarcely any body who has not been in love, as often
as once, at least. I have had my flame, but my name quenched
it. About the third month of my mercantile apprenticeship, I
was induced on a certain evening to attend one of those convocations,
a sacred concert; and at first sight, I became attached
to a lady who was attached to the choir. She looked like a divinity,
she sang like an angel.

I followed her to her house, when the concert broke up, to ascertain
her residence; and from that time, my life was one wild
dream of suspense and passion. I used to see her every day or
two at the window, and sometimes at church. A good-looking
young man, who lodged at the Adelphi, and for whom I had
often been taken, seemed to be pursuing the same object. When
I went in that direction, he generally walked a few yards behind
me, as constant to my trip, as the shadow to the substance; but
as he went beyond, I supposed he had friends farther on, in the
same street; for he passed the house, whereas I saw nothing
worth a step beyond, and used to `wheel about' like a militiaman,
directly in front of the domicil, when my eye had drunk in
its dizzy poison from the window. One evening, just at twilight,
I saw my Adelphi friend standing on the steps of my lady's
dwelling. Good heavens! Perhaps he knew her. I sought my
hotel with a spirit of envy, that I find it hard to describe. Was
that man my rival?

The next day I received a scented note, in a fine crow-quill
hand, which ran as ensueth:

`No.—,—Street.
`My Dear John:

We do not know each other well, for we have been
thwarted by the presence of untoward circumstances; but surely, my dear,
my only John, the language of my eyes must have convinced you that
since we first met, my heart has been wholly yours. Come to-morrow
evening at eight, and in a walk of a few moments, I will convince you, if
words can do it, of the unalterable affection of your devoted

I have a notion that my punctuality the next evening was a
model of mercantile precision. As the town-clocks were clanging
eight, my hand was on the knocker of the Wallace door. A
very attentive `color' person' answered my call, and in a moment

[figure description] Page 344.[end figure description]

after my inquiry, the arm of Miss Wallace was in mine, trembling
with hurry and agitation. We walked for the space of nearly `a
block,' without the utterance of any thing but low interjections
of pleasure, and an occasional remark upon that inexhaustible
subject, the weather.

We turned into Broadway. Here, in the blaze of gas lights,
we met abruptly, two gentlemen, who turned after passing us,
and striding hastily a few paces before, like Othello's lady, they
`turned again,' and as I was on the point of pouring out some
tender sayings, one of the fellows, staring at the face of my fair
companion, exclaimed:

`Good gracious! Miss Wallace, is that you?'

It was my tracking friend, of the Adelphi. I knew his voice
instantly. The lady dropped my arm, as if she had received a
death-shot.

`Why are you walking with this man, and how did you come to
know him?' Miss Wallace answered with a faltering voice, that
she did not know me, but had mistaken me for himself. `Dear
John,' said she, did you not get my note this morning? I expected
you to walk with me, and not a person with whom I have
no acquaintance whatever.'

Guess my surprise. I was, as the Kentuckians phrase it, `an
entire stranger.' The gallant began to bluster.

`Will—you—just—permit—me—to—ask—you,' said he
to me, cocking his hat fiercely o' one side, and drawling his
words, sotto voce, through his set teeth, `who the devil you are?
what you are here for? what's your name? and what you are
a'ter? (syncopating the last word with a broad inflection of the
first syllable.) I have seen you at the Adelphi, and I begin to
think you are a puppy.'

`Puppy, I am none,' said I coolly, for I hate fighting, `and
my being with this lady at present, is the result of concert. I received
a note from her this morning, requesting an interview.'

`Liar!' said the gentleman.

`That phrase,' I responded meekly, `would not be borne, if I
considered you a good judge of the truth in the present case. I
happen to have the note in my pocket, Sir; and as you are very
inquisitive, let me return the compliment, and ask your name?'

`My name, sà; I am not ashamed of my name, sà, as you appear
to be of yours; my name, sà, is—John Smith!'

`And so is mine. Here's the heart of the mystery. I see at
once that the similarity of our names has been the cause of this
error. Your note fell into my hands. I never spoke to this
lady, before to-night, in all my life, though I have for some time
occasionally seen and admired her, at a distance.'

[figure description] Page 345.[end figure description]

We were friends in a moment. The young damsel had accidentally
made his acquaintance, a week or two previously, after
an extensive interchange of oglings, at churches, and other public
resorts, and they were, it was plain to see, quite desperate with
each other. I could not help comparing myself to the man in
the play, whose servant says to him; `Maister, ar' n't your name
Gregory?' `Yes, Sir R. Gregory.' `So is mine.' `Ah, then
your name is similar.' `No, master, my name ar' n't Similar,
my name's Gregory!'

These amusing reflections were but a momentary gleam of
sunshine on the cloud which darkened my spirit. My dream of
love was broken. Another John Smith had stepped into my
bower of hope, and plucked the brightest rose it ever grew. I
became `melancholy and gentleman-like;' went to conventicles
with great regularity, and read a multitude of books. By degrees
I began to have quite a passion for literature, and tried my
hand in the light department, as a producer. With the assistance
of Ossian, and a rhyming dictionary, I made some poetry, and
sent it to a popular weekly journal. It was entitled `A River
Scene,' and bore for its motto the following couplet from some
grand inconnu:

Ambitious of distinction, I wrote my name in full at the top of
the piece. What kind of reception, think you, did it encounter?
Reader, read:

`John Smith's poetry is received, and has gone to that vast receptacle
of things lost for the present upon earth, on the cover of which it is thus
written: `Rejected Balaam: Clauduntur in aternam noctem.' We would
advise John Smith to give up his visions of fame. Let them dissolve into
airy nothing, for they produce nothing, and out of nothing, nothing comes.
No man, with exactly his two names, need expect glory below the sun.
The last one is not the objection: for the Jones's, the Browns, Thompsons,
and Jacksons, with many other names, might compete with it in point of
numbers; but the baptismal prefix of John, makes the title no name at all;
and thus, if we mistake not, has the matter been ruled in courts of justice.
We beg our correspondent to drop either the lyre or his name; for he will
labor in vain for renown, unless he prays the legislature for a divorce from
his present cognomen.

This unequivocal compliment almost extinguished my lyrical
propensities. I was convinced that John Smith would never
make any respectable sensation in literature. Cruel thought! A
rose would smell as sweet, according to Shakspeare, even if it
were called ipecacuanha, as by any other name. Why then,

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from such a cause, should a barrier be placed against the aspirations
of an ambitious mortal? The idea was not endurable. I
determined to be even with the editor who had so crucified my
lines. A rival publication had offered prizes for an Essay, a
Tale, and some poetry. It wanted a month before the meeting
of the committee. I spent a fortnight on one poem. The paper
in question was great in a small way, and bore on its cover a
learned motto, `from the Greek of Alcæus.' The time arrived;
the committee convened; the award was made; and what was my
delight on reading in the public journals the following announcement:

`NOTICE.

`The committee appointed to examine the pieces of prose and poetry,
designed for the prizes in the `Oriental Olympiad and Weekly Sunburst,'
beg leave to report, that after a close examination of the matters confided to
their discrimination, they have come to a decision. Private notice has already
been made to the modest and successful authors of the Essay and
Tale. Before giving the name of the victorious writer of the poem to the
world, the committee desire to state, that with reference to the two baskets
of accepted and rejected productions, now in the office of the Sunburst,
they cannot make a more fitting comparison, than by likening them to the
figs of Jeremiah; (Jer. xxiv. 2.) `One basket had very good figs, even like
the figs that are first ripe; and the other basket had very naughty figs,
which could not be eaten, they were so bad.' The committee now proceed,
with a feeling of serene and solemn exultation, to commit to the public
eye at this era, and to that which shall lift its lid in future ages, the
name of the distinguished person who has won the guerdon of twenty-five
dollars, and a year's gratuitous subscription to the Olympiad and Sunburst,
It is John Smith, Esq., of New-York. He will readily comprehend his putative
identity, when the committee remark, that his effusion commences
with a spirited invocation to the Nine. The committee will be prepared to
meet him, and to administer into his hands the twenty-five dollars, and a
year's receipt for the popular journal aforesaid, on Tuesday evening next,
at six o'clock, in the saloon of the City Hotel. That the author may be
received without the embarrassment of self-introduction, he is requested to
wear a white favor in the lappel button-hole of his coat; whereupon, on his
entrance, he will be introduced to the company, and receive the pecuniary
tribute due to his extraordinary genius. Many ladies, amateurs, and literary
gentlemen, will be present.

`Nov. 25. eod. ass. dtf.'

I read this notice over at least forty times, before the appointed
evening. On that day, after dinner, I dressed with studied neatness,
and turning down my collar, à la Byron, brushed my reddish
locks, Apollo-like, around my forehead, in a style of sublime
confusion, and awaited with a palpitating bosom the proud
moment when I should enter the saloon. I paused some thirty
minutes after the appointed time, so that expectation should be
on tiptoe. At last I sallied forth, and with a queer feeling of
transport opened the door of the saloon and entered. There

[figure description] Page 347.[end figure description]

was a collection of people; and at one side of the room, like
stinted wall-flowers, stood a line of wo-begone-looking individuals,
to the number of fifteen, each with a white favor in his bosom,
but with such diversified garments! `Motley was their only
wear.' I was surprised, bewildered. At the request of the committee,
tendered through their chairman, I took my station `in
line.' A subdued snicker ran through the room, as two more
persons, bearing white favors, entered, and stepped by direction
into the ranks below me. I stole a glance at my comrades.
They were silent, grim, and sad to see. We all of us looked
like a small company, detailed for private exercise, from `the
great army of martyrs.'

At last the chairman rose, and waving his hand loftily, said:
`An unexpected duty, ladies and gentlemen, devolves upon the
humble person who now addresses you. Called to my office at
a moment of peculiar excitement, I wish to discharge its duties
with approval. I expected to-night, in the presence of you all,
to pay a delegated honor to the genius of one bright son of song.
But I am obliged to select him from yon troop of tuneful worthies
now arranged before the assembly, every one of whom, by a
singular concatenation of parental tastes, bears the name of John
Smith!'

I could have evaporated through the key-hole. My first impulse
was to cut and run. A second thought told me, I might be
the John Smith, and I determined to see the farce out.

`In this state of uncertainty,' continued the chairman, `the
only method of arriving at the successful author is to read the
accepted lines.'

He began to read them with the lungs of a Stentor, and the
gestic grace of an elephant. They were not mine, that was certain;
poor, drawling, spiritless stanzas, mere verbiage to mine.
My contempt for the committee was unbounded.

But a person now jumped out from our row, with the quickness
of a Narraganset pacer; bowed, was identified as the author,
and took his perquisites. When he wheeled again, and
made a derisive inclination of the head to the rest of us unsuccessful
essayists, I did instantly, by the sinister smirk of his face,
recognise the ecstatic entity. It was the rascal in brown, whose
bill I had paid at the lunch!

I remember little of the occasion after this. I only recollect
that some of the `great rejected' swore with emphasis, that they
had been sadly misused. Each man contended for the peculiar
merit of his own composition, every one of which, even to the entire
eighteen, opened with an appeal to the muse for assistance.

[figure description] Page 348.[end figure description]

One man, who seemed a little excited with wine, declared that
`he came there for the prize, and the prize he would have; he
had already engaged a supper below, for himself and a few friends,
on the strength of the prize; `and I would like to know,' he
added, with a sardonic grin of defiance, `who in the name of
Parnassus is a-going to pay the bill? My heart is heaving and
bursting with emotion. What is to requite us all for our disappointment?

`Messieurs Smith,' said the chairman, entirely disregarding the
loquacious member, `you are dismissed. Your badges, beside
being emblems of peace, which will prevent any wranglings
among yourselves, are also signs that you feel independent, and
ask no favors.' Here the company laughed, in the manner of a
certain popular actress, `like hyenas.'

How the company broke up, I know not. I was the first at
the door, and walked up Broadway with my hat in my hand, although
the weather was drizzling. I have never entirely recovered
from the acidity of spirit which that sore discomfiture entailed
upon me. I had been crossed in love and literature; and my
coming days seemed only to me, a helpless wanderer on the
ocean of time, like `breakers ahead.' And so they have proved.
I have been advertised in the newspapers; persecuted by females
whom I knew not; had callow bantlings laid on my door-steps.
In short, I have suffered every thing but death; and all
for my name. In vain do I attempt to console myself, by thinking
of one great name like mine, the captain, who was saved by
the Indian girl, Pocahontas, and two that are `similar,' the renowned
Horace and James, the wittiest men living. I am still
plodding along the vale of existence, looking at the bright steep
of fame in the distance, knowing it `impossible to climb.' My
name hangs to my tail as heavy as the stone of Sysiphus. I almost
wish I was entirely defunct.

Having long ago removed from the Adelphi, in consequence
of a `collapse' in its prosperity, I have got a home of my own,
and am well to do in the world. But I am not happy. I disburse
the postage for a weekly mass of letters, of which three in five
are intended for others. I read notices concerning me, hymeneal
and obituary, several times in a month. I have been waited
upon simultaneously, by persons who had come to wish me joy,
in the expectancy of a punch-drinking, and by rival tomb-stone

[figure description] Page 349.[end figure description]

cutters, desirous of a job `to my memory,' from the surviving
members of my bachelor household. I pay twice my own
amount of bills. A John Smith lives next door, to whom half
my choice rounds and sirloins, selected personally in the market,
for I love good provant, are sent without distinction. My name is
a bore, and my life a burden. Touching the debts I have paid,
which were not my own, they have harassed me beyond measure.
Such is the perplexity arising from their constant and unavoidable
occurrence, that I begin to think myself a member of that
class of reprobates, mentioned by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the
Romans, who have been given up by Divine Providence, `to do
those things which are not convenient.' Heartily do I wish I
could do as the Druids of old did, who contracted earthly debts
for themselves and others, and gave promissory notes, payable in
the other world.

But I forbear to recite my infelicities. I skip over some hundreds,
and come to the latest. Yesterday morning the following
police report met my eye:

`John Smith, a new offender, was on Monday last committed to Bridewell,
charged with having stolen several descriptions of clothes from various
hotels in Broadway. He formerly made his home at the Adelphi, where
he practised his light fingered arts for a considerable time. He was at one
period `well-off,' and lived in Broadway, but his thieving propensities have
brought him up, at last, to a full stop. Bail having been procured, he is
now at large, but so well known, that his career is now comparatively
harmless.'

This is the latest, but not the last. I have met scores of acquaintances
since yesterday, and they all shun me as if they
scented in my garments the air of a jail; all but one puppy, and
he asked me `when I got out!' There is ample botheration in
store for me. Its kind I know not, but the quantity must be
enormous. I will bear it no longer. I have booked myself for
Albany to-morrow; and if I am not released from my name by
the House, I will go, for refuge, to that narrow house appointed
for all living; and on my tomb-stone shall be recorded, in good
`slap-up' Latin, `Sic transit tristitia Johannes Smithi!'

—`Some strange commotion
Is in his brain: he bites his lip, and starts;
Stops on a sudden, looks upon the ground,
Then lays his finger on his temple; straight
Springs out into fast gait; then stops again,
Strikes his breast hard; and then anon he casts
His eye against the moon; in most strange posture
We have seen him set himself.'
Shaks: Henry Viii.

[figure description] Page 350.[end figure description]

A few years ago, near the sunset of an autumnal day, I
reached a populous town on the banks of the Mississippi. An
accident to the steam-boat, wherein I had embarked, and by which
many lives were lost through the carelessness of an ignorant and
drunken engineer, had compelled the directors of the boat to stop
with the remaining company, and repair the damages that had
occurred.

Alas! there were damages and evils on board that unpretending
craft, which were beyond the reach of mechanist or chirurgeon.
The dead were strewing the deck; fragments of the
boiler, and broken wheels, were lying around; and masses of
soot and cinders from the unclean pipes blackened the deck.
On every side were corpses, and wailing friends, and tearful eyes.
A few settees had been brought up from the cabin, and on the
mattresses with which they were covered, the dead were laid. It
was an awful scene. Two hours before, all was well; and every
heart seemed bounding with the rapid impulse of life and hope.
I myself escaped by a miracle. I was seated at the stern of the
boat, near the end window of the cabin, over the rudder, watching,
as is my wont, to see the turbulent waters boil around the
keel, and mark the landscape flit by and recede. A noise like
an earthquake, which made the shuddering boat recoil many
yards; a rush of hot steam through the broken windows; the hissing
of the pieces from the boiler, as they dropped into the river;
and after one sad pause of an instant, the shrieks and groans of
the dead and dying, and the surviving mourners; these were the
signs which betokened the appalling disaster, and convinced me
visibly, for the first time, what a vast amount of pain and misery
can be crowded into a passing moment.

It is a sight of horror to behold the strong man smitten down
in his might; to see the pride of womanhood defaced and blighted

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by sudden death; to hear the lamentations of grief and despair,
where but a little time before were heard the light laugh of
pleasure, and the tones of delight. How distant was the thought
of harm, from each and all! Truly it is said by the great bard
of nature, `We know what we are, but not what we shall be.'
We weave the garlands of joy, even by the precipice of death;
we disport in the sunbeam, unmindful of the storm that is booming
afar, and will soon be at hand!

The sun descended as we entered the town, which was situated
on ascending grounds near the river. A swell of upland, over-looking
near at hand a few patches of green, which I took to be
cotton fields, and which apparently commanded an extended
view of the shores and course of the great Father of Rivers,
stretched rearward from the place. Overcome with excitement
and gratitude for my deliverance, and seeing also that there
had throunged to the wharf a large number of citizens, sufficient
for every purpose of charitable assistance toward the sufferers,
and the dead on board of the steam-boat, I selected that portion of
my luggage which had not been destroyed, and after seeking an
hotel, made the best of my way to the upland of which I have
spoken. I felt like one snatched from the grave; and deeply
impressed with the sense of the danger from which I had escaped,
through the watchfulness of a benignant Providence, I determined
to seek some haunt of retirement, and quiet my agitated spirits
with thankful meditation.

When I gained the eminence, I found that the view was calculated
to heighten and expand all the feelings with which my
heart was surcharged, to the overflow. A few gorgeous clouds,
bedight in crimson and purple, were sailing in glory along the
melancholy west; dark cypresses, hung to their tops with trailing
clusters of wild vine, colored with mingled violet, amber, and
emerald, stood in relief before the horizon; while afar, on either
hand, the great Mississippi was seen rolling along with a kind of
quivering radiance, and exhibiting, even at that distance, the turbulent
might, which makes it seem like a prostrate Niagara. At
a distance, in each extremity of the view, it was lost in dark
woods and misty head-lands; an emblem, most striking at the
moment, of that obscurity which, like the shadow-curtain in the
vision of Mirza, overhung the stream of life and time, making of
the Past a dream, and of the Future a vast unknown.

It is impossible to describe the sensations which animate the
bosom of an American, as he looks at this running ocean, and the
long, long vale through which it rolls. He gazes onward with
the eye of anticipation to the not distant period, when that

[figure description] Page 352.[end figure description]

almost interminable stretch of landscape shall become bright with
towns, and vocal with the sounds of human industry; when the
busy hum of scholars at their tasks, of artists at their labors, of
the husbandman folding his flocks, or garnering the rich treasures
of the harvest, shall succeed the moanings of the cypress, and the
mingled howlings of roaming beasts of prey, and yet wilder Indians;
when the light of civilization and religion shall extend
over forests and savannahs, until the progress of our people
through the dominions of the receding Aborigines, shall be, in
the expressive words of Scripture, `as the morning spread upon
the mountains: a great people, and a strong; of whom there
hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, to
the years of many generations.'

As I turned to survey the prospect, I saw at no great distance
from the spot where I stood, a white tent, or pavillion, surmounted
with a parti-colored flag, which was waving in the evening
breeze, and on which I read the words, `The Snake Eater.'
The tent was open on one side like a door, before which there
was a curtain. Benches were placed in an amphitheatrical form
before the tent, which were then filling with people. The faint
glimmer of an early lamp was perceivable behind the dark curtain;
and, moved with curiosity, I bent my steps toward the assemblage.
I paid the requisite sum to the person who kept the
gate of a picket-fence which surrounded the amphitheatre, and
took my seat among the crowd, in the open air.

Twilight had now set in, and the twinkling of the stars could
be seen on the broad bosom of the Mississippi, as it moved in
noiseless solemnity toward the ocean. The cypresses assumed
the semblance of weird and ghastly forms against the sky; and
the occasional sweep of a belated hawk from the far-off prairies,
with his dismal scream, gave token that the day had died, and
that its dirge was sounding.

Presently, at the tinkle of a little bell, the curtain of the tent
was lifted. A young man was seated at a table, with a box before
him, covered with glass, and apparently subdivided into two
or more drawers. He seemed about eight-and-twenty years of
age; his face was thin, and a leaden wanness overspread his features;
but his sunken eye had that supernatural brightness so
often seen in the eyes of the consumptive. His voice, though
faint, was musical, but interrupted by an occasional cough; and
as he removed his cravat, and turned his wristbands over the cuffs
of his coat, he said:

`The company has assembled to see the Snake Eater. If any
one wishes to satisfy himself with regard to the reptile which I

[figure description] Page 353.[end figure description]

am now about to devour, in the presence of you all, and to restore
again from my throat, alive, he will please draw nigh.'

He turned the closed cover of the box over toward the audience,
as he made this observation, and disclosed to the sight a
hideous rattlesnake. It was coiled; and when disturbed, elevated
it spiry head from its circle, and while its forked tongue played
with a rapid motion, it darted against the glass in vain attempts
to escape, while its rattles continued to quiver, with a violent and
whizzing sound, accompanied by that apparent flattening of the
head, which denotes the highest pitch of resentment. Its dilated
eye shot fire; and the coarse scales on its contorted form grew
rugged in its anger.

After this exposé, the Snake Eater placed the box in its original
position. A chilly shudder ran through the assembly, when, after
turning his back to the beholder, he bent his face for a moment
at the edge of one of the drawers, with a kind of chuckling
sound, and drew forth the horrid reptile with his hand. The
snake now seemed languid and passive, though the rattles continued
to sound. He placed the head of the venomous serpent
to his lips; he opened his mouth, and the long spire began to descend.
It was an appalling sight to see that huge monstrum horrendum
making his way into the throat of a human being. The
cheeks of the young man began to dilate, and his complexion became
a livid purple. His eyes seemed bursting from their sockets;
masses of foam gathered about his lips, and he looked as
if in the severest struggles of the last mortal agony—as if `tasting
of death.' Several of the audience shrieked with affright.

After apparently mumbling and crunching his fearful meal, the
Snake Eater again partially opened his lips, and the forked tongue
of the reptile was seen playing, like threads of bright red fire, between
them. Presently it began to emerge. It moved very
slowly, as if held back by other serpents that had preceded it, in
the awful deglutition of its master. As the long, loathsome folds
hung from his lips, and continued to extend, the features of the
Snake Eater assumed their wonted aspect; and in a moment, the
reptile had emerged, was re-placed in the box, and the feat was
accomplished.

After seating himself for a few seconds, to recover from the
perilous execution of his task, the Snake Eater arose and addressed
the audience. He desired them to believe that he had
wished not to appal, but to surprise them. There was, he acknowledged,
an art in what he had done, but it was a mysterious
and undiscoverable one. `They call me mad,' he added, bitterly,
`and a conjurer; but a conjurer I am none, and though I

[figure description] Page 354.[end figure description]

have been mad, I am not now; yet often do I wish I were. You
will denominate my calling one of foolish hazard, and perhaps of
disgust; but did you know all, you would judge of me better. I
thank you for your attendance; and if I have succeeded in surprising
you, my aim has been won.'

The audience, in the enthusiasm of western feeling, gave the
performer three hearty cheers, and retired with wonder-stricken
faces. I lingered behind until the last had departed, and stepped
into the tent, where the Snake Eater had drawn a few eatables
from his knapsack, which he was discussing with considerable
relish. I found him sociable, but sad. By degrees, my observations
excited a sympathy in his mind; and, as we sat, toward
midnight, in his solitary house of canvass, the dark Mississippi
rolling below, the pale stars fretting the vault above, and the far
West stretching in dimness around, he thus began:

THE SNAKE EATER'S STORY.

`I am not, my friend, what you see me. Though regarded hereabout
as one who has dealings with `familiar spirits and wizards,
' I am only a heart-broken man, the child of sorrow, and almost
without hope. I do not speak thus for your sympathy; for
human sympathy can at best but awaken afresh the wells of
mournful tenderness in my breast, without pouring one ray of
sunshine upon the troubled fountains; they must flow on in
darkness, without a prospect of day. Listen to me.

`Eight short years ago, with the spirit of adventure stirring
within me, I came as it were directly from the walls of a university,
in one of the Atlantic states, to this `far country.' I came
with prodigal endowments from my father; and seeking the then
frontiers of civilization, embarked in trade with settlers and Indians.
I bought furs and sold all kinds of mercantile riches. I
prospered; my capital re-doubled itself, and in all respects was
prosperous. You may perhaps desire to know my motive for
thus leaving the charms of society, and seeking the seclusion of
the wilderness. It was the strongest of motives, human affection.
An uncle had preceded me. He had a ward, to whom I had
been deeply and devotedly attached from my childhood. She
was the paragon of her sex. I speak not as a rhapsodist, or with
enthusiasm; for the loveliest being that ever came from the
hands of God into this lower world could not excel her for
beauty. She made that beauty perfect, by the graces of a mind,
pure and clear as the forming diamond. Her voice was melody;
her smile a burst of living and pearly light; and her clam blue

[figure description] Page 355.[end figure description]

eyes were the sweet expositors of a sinless affection. The young
peach, when the airs and beams of summer have awakened its
ripening blushes, or the pomegranate, as it glows among leaves
that tremble to the rich chant of the nightingale, surpassed not
her cheeks, for bloom or loveliness, when her fair hair was divided
on her brow, and fell in masses of waving and silken gold
around them. Truly, I loved her with my whole soul. She was
my idol; my cynosure; the centre of every desire, and the object
of every aspiration.

`We were married. Time went on, and brought me a bud
from the rose that I had established in my green bower of home.
We were blest indeed. Aloof from society, though we missed a
few of its luxuries, we suffered none of its vexatious and demoralizing
corruptions. On Sabbath days, we rode many miles
through the wilderness, to worship our Maker in his sanctuary,
and hear the word of life from the lips of those who journeyed
through the forest on missionary enterprises, and for the edification
of the believing; ambassadors from a court, of which the
most noble court on earth affords not the faintest emblem.

`On the day that our dear little Sarali attained her second
year, she was seated by my counter, and her mother was standing
by, when three fierce-looking Indians entered the store.
They had evidently travelled a long way, for their leggins were
torn and dirty, and their feet were almost bare. I recognised
one of them instantly, as The Crouching Wolf, a desperate being,
who hung alternately around the skirts of the settlements, begging
for rum, or getting it in barter for small peltry, which he obtained
in the chase. Just one year before, he had visited me for the
purpose of procuring the fire-water, or ardent spirit. I refused
him, and he left me with a vow of future vengeance.

` `Hoogh!' said he, as he reeled up, with his gruff-looking
companions, toward the counter, where my child was playing,
and my wife stood: `The Crouching Wolf said he would come
back. He wants the talking water; he wants that or—revenge.
He will have one!'

`I tried to reason with him, but he was deaf to reason. He
had already tasted from the flagon of one of his red comrades,
and the fumes were in his brain.

` `Come, medicine-man, the Wolf wants the fire-milk. Where
is it? He can not wait. His spirit is up, and his forehead is
warm.'

`I saw he grew desperate, but my resolution was fixed: I
sternly denied him. It was a fatal denial.

`He stepped back a few paces, growled some gututral

[figure description] Page 356.[end figure description]

sentences to his companions, and the three then advanced toward my
child. I was motionless, and paralyzed with terror. As the
Wolf approached my daughter, he drew a tomahawk from his
belt, and flourished it on high. I sprang toward him, but was
pushed back by his companions. The dear innocent, unaffrighted,
smiled in the face of the Crouching Wolf, and it seemed as
if the cheerful purity of her look stayed his vengeful arm. He
paused, until a scream from the mother aroused the terror of her
first-born. She shrunk back from the relentless savage, while
her mother was kept, like myself, at bay, and while her sweet red
lip, chiselled like her mother's, was quivering with dismay, she
said in childish simplicity:

` `Naughty Indian; if he hurts Sarah, ma will be angry, and
punish him.' As she said this, she burst into tears—her last for
ever!

`In an instant, the trenchant weapon of the infuriated Indian
clove in sunder the head of my babe; in the next, his excited
comrades had murdered the wife of my bosom. I have an indistinct
and horrid remembrance of my burning store; the red
fiends yelling over the consuming roof and walls; my escape to
the forest; the rest was but silence and oblivion. I was a madman!

`Ten months after, I found myself in New-Orleans. I had
reached the city, no one knew how; had been conveyed to a
hospital, kindly treated, and discharged as cured; but an outcast
and a beggar. Misfortunes seldom come singly. My father
had died; and as I had already received my share of his estate,
the residue melted away among a host of brothers. My inheritance
had been destroyed by the Indians. I was without a home
or a friend.

`How I subsisted, I scarcely know. At last, as I was one
day walking on the levee, I saw a group collected around an Indian,
who was performing certain tricks from a box, with a rattlesnake.
It was the Crouching Wolf.

` `The murderer of my wife and child!' I exclaimed, as I penetrated
through the ring, and with one huge blow felled the vile
monster to the earth. I seized him by the throat; I placed my
knee upon his breast. In a few moments, he was a distorted and
ghastly corpse beneath my feet.

`My award of retribution was considered just, and no effort
was made to arrest me. Availing myself of the box belonging to
the Crouching Wolf, which I contended was mine as a debt, I
soon learnt the mystery of his art, as it were by intuition. The
upper drawer of the box contained the real rattlesnake; the other,

[figure description] Page 357.[end figure description]

merely the skin of one, which could be inflated by the breath, at
will. The motion of the tongue, which was dried, and had
wires within, was produced by loadstone; the movement of the
rattles by the same cause.[17]

`Filled from the lungs, it could readily be taken into the
mouth, and compressed into a very small compass, and while repassing
outward, inflated again. I bought a new snake from a
museum, which I killed, and prepared according to the model
before me. I could not endure the thought of even using the
same instruments formerly employed by the destroyer of all
that I most loved on earth, and I turned from his trickery with a
feeling of almost positive loathing. A little practice made me
an adept in the mystery of snake-eating, and I have since wandered
in loneliness from town to town, attempting this curious
enterprise. My pecuniary success has been sufficient for my
comfort and convenience, and the danger of the feat is only in
appearance. With a slight exertion, I can resolve my face into
the colors and contortions you witnessed this evening, and which
heighten the interest of the spectacle.† But these things can
only temporarily divert my thoughts, for I carry within my heart
an aching fever, which no prosperity can allay or remove. The
objects that have cheered me, can cheer me no more. I stand
alone in this wilderness world; a mourner and a pilgrim. My
visions are of my wife and child; my day dreams are of them;
but I must suffer as you see, until I meet them in that better
country, where the sun descends not, and darkness is unknown;
where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest.
I can forget my child—for her existence seems to me like a
misty trance—in the fond assurance that the sparkling dew-drop
has exhaled to heaven; but for the cherished rose that sustained
it, I cease not to grieve. Alas, for the wife of my bosom! Well
can I say, with one who, perhaps, has loved and mourned like
me:

[figure description] Page 358.[end figure description]

The morning had already began to fire the eastern horizon,
beyond the distant wilderness, and to sparkle on the river, when
I parted with the Snake Eater, and pursued my journey. On
my return from the great metropolis of the Mississippi, I found
that he had died, and gone to rejoin the lost treasures of his affection,
in a clime where Sorrow has no residence, and where
neither reptile nor poison can enter.

eaf050.n17

[17] The writer has now in his possession a curiosity from the far West, in the
shape of a large prairie-beetle, which is composed, among other ingredients, of paper
and wood. At the end of every claw and feeler, where they are attached to the
body, are small bits of lead, impregnated with loadstone. This lifeless imitation
performs all the movements of the actual beetle; moves, and extends its limbs, precisely
like nature. It would puzzle the profoundest entomologist, on a common
examination, `to wotte whether that it livedde or was dede.'

[figure description] Page 359.[end figure description]

`Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis,' is a saw of all
earthly saws the tritest, yet it strikes pat upon the Drama. How
has that `department of the fine arts' varied and turned, like an
anxious politician, until you can discern neither the ancient coherence
of its comely parts, nor its present estate! Divine Shakspeare!
couldst thou now revisit the glimpses of the moon, how
would thy fine taste be outraged, and thy noble spirit grieved,
by the perceiving flashes of inspiration, which centuries agone
issued from thy luminous mind, now dimmed by modern playwrights,
and diluted into weak flickerings of sentiment! How
would it vex thy poor ghost! Verily, the dramatic abominations
of the day might create a soul of anger under the ribs of Death.

Take, for example, the play of Richard III. When the bard
of Avon made that `pityful tragedie,' he adhered religiously to
historical facts. The language of all the interlocutors was characteristic
and consistent. Look at that tragedy now-a-days.
Speeches `like vermin on the lion's crest,' have been introduced
as clap-traps, which show a foolish ambition in the fool that made
and the zanies who use them; history is distorted—the poet is
mangled.

The task would be quite too tedious to point out all the errors
which the march of histrionic improvement has engrafted like
cankerous buds upon one of the noblest intellectual trees of
Shakspeare's rearing. In many instances the subordinates of the
bloody play are omitted altogether; and, as in the case of Tyrrell
and the young princes, the mere instigators of the murder
are made actors in it. Most people, listening to the present performance
of Richard III., would be led to infer, at least, from
the modernized text, that Tyrrell himself was the person who in
the night-time flung the princely corpses down the Thames. We
miss the passage where the sanguinary and ambitious baronet soliloquizes
respecting `Dighton and Forest whom he did suborn,'
to do the deed, and who it is conclusively known, were its diabolical
perpetrators. That the young nephews were thrown into
the river, is a very general though erroneous impression. History,
as we shall see, buries them in the tower.

With perhaps the majority of play-goers, the Drama usurps
the province, and supplies the teachings of history. It embalms,
for posterity, the floating facts of the olden time; and those
heroes have a small chance for posthumous fame who do not

[figure description] Page 360.[end figure description]

execute some act in their lives that is peculiarly stage-effectual, and
may be in some way perpetuated by plays. Thus the great
Winkelreid of Switzerland, in contrast with William Tell, is
comparatively unknown. How important is it then in all dramatic
efforts, such as those of the immortal Shakspeare, that the
truths of history should never be stretched nor polluted!

There is an eloquent passage in Richard III.; the soliloquy
of the monarch, on the evening before the battle of Bosworth
Field. Its intrinsic beauty makes it acceptable any where, but
its utterance by Richard, under the circumstances, is rather out
of place. It was originally a part of a chorus, with which many
of the prominent acts of Shakspeare's plays were at first introduced,
in imitation of the Greek tragedies. The speech of King
Henry, also, on receiving news of his son's death, does not belong
at all to Richard. It is from one of the Henrys.

How many play-goers have shouted and clapped their hands,
pitlings, boxites, and all, when the crook-backed tyrant, on hearing
of the capture of his enemy, exclaims:

`Off with his head! So much for Buckingham!'

Perhaps many of the readers of the Knickerbocker are unacquainted
with the contemporaneous history of the bloody Gloster,
and therefore they cannot object to hearing him spoken of
by an ancient and most veritable chronicler, who lived not long
after the tyrant's time. Rare and curious indeed is that black-letter
tome, `Ye Cronikels of Iohn Stovve,' wherefrom the following
quaint but right credible historie hath been taken.

`On ye 4th of Iuly, Richard iij. hee came to the Tower by
water with his wiffe, and made 14 knightes of ye bath.' During
that moneth he had numerous victims arrested as rebels, among
whom was one John Smith (the name was extant even then);
and all of whom he charged with a design to fire the city of London,
so that while it was burning they might rescue Prince Edward
and his brother the Duke of York, out of the tower:

`Now,' says the honest Stowe, `there fel myscheeves thick; and as the
thing euil gotten, is neuer wel kepit, thorough all Richard's tyme neuer
ceased there cruell deths and slawters till his own destruction ended them.

[figure description] Page 361.[end figure description]

But as he finished his time with the best deth and the most righteous, that
is to wit with his owne, so he began with the most pityous and wicked—I
meene the lamentible murther of his innocent nevues, the young king and
his tender brother, whose death and finall infortune hath natheless comen
so far in question that some did remain in dovt whether they were destroyed
in his daies or no. But I shall rehearse you the dolorous death of these
babes, not after every way that I have heard, but by such men and by such
means as methinketh it were hard but it should be true.'

Richard knew that while his nephews lived, he could have no
right to the realm, and that therefore their death must ensue.
Shakspeare has nobly expressed this in Gloster's famous soliloquy.
The manner in which he effected this, is succinctly recorded
by Stowe. He tried at first, through his special and
trustworthy servant, John Greene, to prevail on Sir Robert Brakenbry,
constable of the Tower, to attempt the murder, which that
functionary flatly declined. Greene returned with his answer to
Richard, who was then at Warwick:

`Secretly displeased, Richard said, on the same night to his secret
page, `Ah, whom shall a man trust? Those that I have broughten up myself,
those that I had weened would most surely serve me, even these fail
me, and at my commandment would doe nothing for me.' `Sir, (quoth the
page,) there lieth one on your pallet without, that I dare well say to do
your grace's pleasure the thing were right hard that he would refuse,' meaning
by this Sir James Tyrrell, which was a man of right goodly personage;
(modern playwrights make him a ruffian) and for nature's gifts worthie to
haue serued a much better prince, if he had served God, and by grace obtained
so much truth and good will, as he had strength and wit. This man
had an high heart, and sore longed upward, not rising yet so fast as he had
hoped, being hindered and kept under by ye meanes of Sir Richard Ratcliffe
and Sir William Catesby, which longed for ne moe partners of the
prince's favor. Richard tooke this time to put him foreward, and by such
wise to doo him good, that all the enemies he had except the diuel, could
never had done him so much.

`Upon hearing his page's wordes, Kynge Richard arose, (for in this communication
he had been sitting at the draught—convenient carpet for such
a council,) and came out into a pallet chamber, in which he found Sir
Iames and Sir Thomas Tirels, of persons like and brethren of bloud, but
nothing of kin in conditions. Then said ye Kynge merrily vnto them:
`What, Sirs, are ye in bedde so soone?' and calling Sir James, brake secretly
to him his minde in this mischievous matter, in which he found him
nothing straunge. Wherefore on the morrow he sent him to Brakenbry,
with a letter by which he was commanded to deliver to Sir James all the
keyes of the tower for one night, to the end he might there accomplish the
king's pleasure in such things as he had given him commandment. After
the which letter deliuered and keyes receiued, Sir Iames appointed the next
night ensuing for to destroie them, deuising before and preparing ye meanes.
When the eldest of the young princes was told that his Vncle would be
kynge, he was sore abashed, and sighed and said, `Alas, I would my Vncle
would let me haue my liffe yet, though I should leve my Kyngedomme.'
Thenne he that tolde him ye tale, used him with good words, and put him
in ye best comfort he could. But forthwith was the prince and his brother
both shut vp and all other remoued from them, onely one called Black

[figure description] Page 362.[end figure description]

Wille, or William Slaughter except, sette to serue them, and see all sure.
After which time ye prince neuer tyde his pointes nor aught roughte of
himself, but with ye babe his brother, lingred in thought and great beauinesse,
till his traitrous death deliuered him of that wretchedness, for Sir
Iames Tirell deuised that they should be murdered in their beds. To ye
execution whereof he appointed Miles Forest, one of the four that kept
them; a fellow fleshed in murther aforetime. To him he ioyned one Ioh.
Dighton, his owne horse-keeper; a bigge, broade, square, stronge knaue.

`Then all other being remoued from them, this Miles Forrest and Iohn
Dighton about midnighte (ye sweete children lyeing in their beddes) came
into ye chamber and sodainely lapped them up among ye clothes, and so bewrapped
them and enstrangled them, keeping down ye feather bed and pillowes
harde unto their mouthes, that within a while, smothered and
stifled, their sweete breaths failing, they gaue to God their innocent souls
into the ioyes of Heauen, leauing to the tormentors their bodies dead in ye
bedde. Which after that the wretches perceiued, the first by the struggling
with ye paines of death and after long lying still to be throughly dead, they
laid their bodies naked out upon the bed and fetched Sir Iames to see them,
which vpon the sight of them caused these murtherers to bury them at the
staires foot, meetely deepe in ye grounde under a great hepe of stones.'

When Tyrrell conveyed the news to Richard at Warwick, he
was overjoyed at the success of his dreadful and cruel plot.
Several chroniclers, Master Moore, Stowe, Howes, etc., assert the
tradition that Tyrrell was knighted on the spot. But the consummate
hypocrite, Richard, affected to be both chagrined and
indignant that the bodies were buried in so vile a corner, because
`they were kynge's sonnes,' and ought to have been interred in
a better tomb. It was said that the bodies were afterward removed
by Brakenbry, but where, he never condescended to tell.
It is not impossible that the skeletons of those unfortunate princes
passed by discovery and reversion, into the hands of some ancient
doctor or surgeon! Who can tell? Hamlet speculated
at a wilder rate than this, and yet with perfect plausibility. He
proved by respectable ratiocination, that


`Imperious Cæsar, dead, and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away.'
Tyrrell was afterward imprisoned in the Tower for treason against
King Henry the VII. There, both himself and Dighton were
examined, and confessed the murder of the princes as above
written; but as touching the places whither the `fair corpses'
were removed, they could impart no information.

A more diabolical event, if we except the sad story of the
Cenci, can scarcely be found in history. It seems to have moved
the tender heart and aroused the warmest sympathies of the
worthy Stowe, who thus `entreateth' the subject:

`In this wise, as I haue learned of them that much knew and little cause
had to lye, were these two princes, these innocent, tender children, borne

[figure description] Page 363.[end figure description]

of most royal bloude, brought up in grete wealth, likely long to liue, rule
and rayne in ye relme, by traitrous tyranny depriued of their estate, shortly
shut vp in prisonn, priuily slaine and murthered—their dainty bodies caste
God he wots where, by the cruell ambition of their Vnnatural Vncle and
his dispiteous tormentors. Which things on euery part well pondred, God
neuer gaue this world a notabler example neyther in what mischief worketh
the enterprise of an hie heart, or finally what end ensueth such dispiteous
cruelty. For to begin with the ministres, Miles Forest at Saint Martins
rotted peacemeal away, Dighton indeed yet walketh ye earth (he was a
contemporary of Stowe) in good possibility to be hanged ere he die. But
Sir Iames Tyrel dyed at ye Towre hill, beheaded for treason; and kynge
Richard himself was slaine in ye the fielde,[18] hacked and hewed of his enemies
hands; carried on horse-back, dead; his hair in despight torne and
tugged like to a Curre Dogg: and the mischefe that he tooke was within less
than three yeares of ye mischeves that he did; and yet all the mean time
spent in much paine and trouble outwarde, much feare, anguish, and sorrow
within. For I haue heard by credible report of such as were secrett
with his chamberlaines, that after his abominable deed done, he neuer had
quiet in his mynde; he neuer bedeemed himself sure: wheneuer he went
abroad his eien whirled about, his body privily fenced, his hand euer vpon
his dagger—his countenance and manner like one alwaies ready to strike
again; he took ill rest a-nights; lay long waking and musing, sore wearied
with care and watch; rather slumbered than slept, troubled with fearful
dreams: sometimes sodainely started up and leapt out of his bedde, to runne
about ye chamber, so was his restless heart continually tossed and tumbled
with the hideous impression and awful remembrance of his abominable
deede.'

We marvel whether a better description of what might not inaptly
be termed an earthly hell, can be found in all history, than
the foregoing portrait of Richard, during those three memorable
years in which his plans of insatiate ambition were working to
their fulfilment. In his immortal play, Shakspeare has caught
the very aspect of Gloster's form, and exhibited the concrete essence
of his foul spirit. Tyranny must always be miserable to
its dispenser; and a crown got and maintained by blood, sits like
corroding iron, not on the brow alone, but on the heavy heart of
the usurper. Such were the feelings of Richard at Warwick,
and of Tiberius at Capreæ; and such will ever be the fate of
those who rest wrongfully in their regal seats, and abuse their
ill-gotten prerogatives. Happily, in modern times, little despotism
exists in kingly dominions. The people hold in their hands
the balance of power, and monarchs themselves are accountable
to their subjects.

eaf050.n18

[18] `After ye battel of Bosworth Field,' says our worthy historian, `ye dead corps
of Richard was as shamefully carried to ye towne of Leister, as hee gorgeously the
the day before with pomp departed out of ye same towne; for his body was naked
to ye skinne, not so much as one clout about him, and he was trussed up on horseback
behind a pursuivant at armes like a dogge or caffe, ye head and armes hanging
on one side of ye horse, and ye leggis vpon the other; and all sprinkeled with
myre and bloud, was brought to ye Gray-Friers Churche, within ye towne, and
there homely buried, when he had rained three yeeres, two moneths, and one day.'

[figure description] Page 364.[end figure description]

I was much pleased by the perusal of the lament of one Old-school,
in a recent number of the Knickerbocker wherein he
discoursed with true feeling and discretion upon the theme of
Music `under the Reformation.' True it is, that we receive no
longer that auricular gratification from sweet and simple sounds,
once commended so delectably to our senses. The reason is
obvious. There is a mania among our modern singers for mere
execution, which drives harmony and melody at once into the
shade. I shall treat of this, in connexion with others, as among
the chiefest of my infelicities.

Naturally, I have tender ears. As recipients of the different
modulations of sound, they are peculiarly subtile. My nervous
organization is delicate; and those airs that melted into my soul,
and kindled up my heart in my better days, still charm those recesses
of thought and feeling with an influence truly magical.
The enchantment of association twines itself among the notes,
and awakens all the dreams of the past, until the tear is on my
eyelid, and the throb of remembered delight trembling in my
bosom like a reed shaken by the wind. I return with the elastic
and visionary tread of memory, into that Happy Valley of Youth,
where I spent the sunny morning of my days. I see the streams
sparkling blue and bright along the meadows; the bird chants
in the wild wood; the flocks are white on the green hill-side;
the herds are cropping the herbage in shady places, and lashing
the summer flies, murmuring as they sting; and, above all,
swells the pomp of the unsearchable sky, and `gorgeous companies
of clouds.' These, like the pictures of a panorama, ever
arise to my mental vision at the sound of music, such as I heard
in other times. Mornings, and sunsets, and landscapes that
were dear to me of old, throng around me. I give up the present,
and live in the past.

But of late these emotions are strangers to my breast, and the
pictures have faded from my mind. I hear singers announce
and execute songs called by the same names as those I used to
hear; but how different their sound! New shakes, quavers, and
variations, murder their sweetness at the very portals of my ear,
and put all their associations to flight. Affectation, too, that
bane of good singing, has come so much in fashion, that it is
quite impossible to hear a simple song without the modern emendations.
If you do, it will be from some fresh-hearted creature,

[figure description] Page 365.[end figure description]

with affections as pure as the rose on her cheek, who spends a
few winter weeks among friends or relations in the city. Then,
to a guileless mind, her attractions in music are transcendent,
and she shows among the starched, affected demoiselles of fashion,
`like to a snowy dove trooping with crows.' I have a
good friend, Kate J—, who now and then comes to the city;
and I hail her arrival as a blessing. She sings with simplicity,
but with correctness and good taste. She feels what she sings;
and does not, parrot-like, repeat the sonorous ejaculations and
half-musical intonations, expressive of spurious sorrow or delight,
taught by some mortally affected master. I sit by her piano, and
in a moment my spirit is wandering in the dominions of recollection,
and finds the things of the present to be but as entities of
the twilight, flitting unobservedly around.

I have said that affectation is now-a-days the bane of social
music. And so it is. Your city-bred Miss, following the teachings
of her instructor, does not permit her friends to hear, or
rather to understand more than half the words in a song. Some
of them are butchered on her lips; some of them come forth
clipped of their proportions in such wise that you know them not;
others are murdered in her thorax. This is not her fault, for
she learns and sings `according to the mode;' therefore her tenderness
is affetuoso, and her feeling second-hand. If she visit the
Theatre, she will hear ladies and gentlemen applauded to the
echo, who if they read a song with the pronunciation with which
they sung it, would be hissed out of sight in a moment. For
example, I have heard a fashionable female vocalist, whose name
I leave unmentioned, sing Black-Eyed Susan with a pronunciation
exactly as expressed in the stanza below:

Now why is it that such errors are tolerated? and that they are
imitated? The musical old gentleman in Salmagundi, who
worked several summers in producing a change in the chimes of
Trinity church bells, so that instead of going di do ding dong,
they might go ding dong do di, was far better employed than the
masters or the vocalists who inculcate affectation. Let us have
sincerity in music. It is, of all things, the sweetest and most acceptable.
Let the ear have its honestly-desired fruition of harmony,
and not be mocked with the shadow of music and feeling,
when the substance is wanting.

—`Thou takest a life away—
A holy, human life—the life God gave!'
Milman's `Fazio.'

[figure description] Page 366.[end figure description]

A few months ago, in company with a professional friend, I
visited a Lunatic Asylum, in the neighborhood of one of our
most populous cities. It was a mild autumn day; of that rich
and breathing kind, which wears less of earth than heaven; when
the garniture of the year displays a loveliness like the cheek of
Beauty, tinted with the hectic of coming dissolution, which seems
more a herald of life and promise, than of death or decay. The
institution I have mentioned, stood upon an eminence, surrounded
by groves, waving like a mass of rainbows in the air. The
scene from its site was beautiful in the extreme. Blue mountains
melted afar into the sky; fair vales and bright rivers smiled
and rolled between; the city was near at hand, with its towers
and battlements, `and banners floating in the sunny air;' all was
delightful, all serene. My spirit received into its inmost depths
the harmonizing influences of the view; and I could not help
contrasting the peaceful calmness that lay like a charm upon the
landscape around, with the murmurs of phrensy which reached my
ear, as I stood with my friend at the great door of the asylum,
waiting, for a moment, to enjoy the prospect, before we entered.
Voices were heard, in various tone and measure, singing, talking,
and howling, in mingled confusion. It was as if Limbo had
been dispeopled, and we were listening to the wailings of its miserable
inhabitants.

As we entered, I was struck with the regularity and order
which every where prevailed in the appearance of the mansion.
It seemed a place where Reason, could it be permitted to enjoy
so sweet a retreat alone, might wrap itself in the mantle of undisturbed
reflection; where Love might nestle and be delighted;
and from whence the baneful passions of our nature might be utterly
banished.

As we strayed along the solemn corridors, catching ever and
anon rich views of the distant scenery from the windows and embrasures,
I could not but admire the generosity which had
planned such a Refuge. It had been very successful. The exertions
of its officers and various superintendents had been so
well rewarded, as to give pleasure to every philanthropist in the
large community of liberal hearts to whom their yearly reports

[figure description] Page 367.[end figure description]

were submitted. Blessed, surely, of Heaven, will those be, who
thus bind up the weary bosoms that have been pierced by the
bitter shafts of affliction; who re-unite the disjointed links of
memory and reason, and cause the streams of thought to flow
with the renewal of a fresh and healthy impulse, through the
soul!

We entered many of the apartments. Several contained females,
sitting in gentle abstraction, humming some half-forgotten
song, and repeating in audible cadence the disordered images
that rose to the mind, like the changeful hues of a kaleidoscope,
in a thousand beautiful but fantastic and momentary forms.

At the extremity of a wide gallery, extending the entire length
of the mansion, were two rooms, larger than any on the same
floor, and, when the doors were shut, with no communication
whatever, even in sight, between them. One was occupied by a
female, the other by a young gentleman who scarcely seemed


`Less than Archangel ruined, or the excess
Of glory obscured.'
He was tall, and of an erect, manly form. He was pacing his
apartment, and separated from the observer, as his door opened,
by a close iron palisade which extended into the room about a
foot from the door. On one ankle was a chain which clanked
incessantly, as he strode to and fro through the apartment, like a
lion in his cage. He scarcely deigned a look at us, but wandered
on, turning at regular intervals, and sometimes pausing for a
moment, with flushed features, to place his hand on his forehead,
as if to repress a tide of swelling thoughts, which seemed ready
to burst the boundary of the brain. His forehead was wide, but
not high. Around it the dark hair hung in masses of gloomy
shadow, or drooped in the lank dampness of perspiration. There
was an expression of stern and implacable bitterness about the
lip; but it was in the eye, that the direful meanings of phrensy
were the most convincingly exhibited. The pupils dilated with
a fearful expression, while, now and then, he would lengthen and
retard his pace, as if measuring a space of ground accurately
with his tread. Then he would stand sidewise, in a soldier's attitude,
and with his eye fixed closely on some distant object, lift
his arm to the level of his breast, reach it strongly out from his
side, his shifting eye quickly following the curl of his fore-finger,
as if taking aim for a pistol shot. In this position he would remain
for nearly a minute, at the end of which his eye would
close as if from horror; a shuddering ran through his limbs, and
his arm dropped nervelessly by his side. Then he would curse,

[figure description] Page 368.[end figure description]

and weep such tears! They seemed wrung like life-blood from
the very fountain of his heart.

`Poor fellow!' said my comrade: `three years ago, he was
one of the most attractive and promising youths I ever knew.
He was the best scholar in his class at college, for learning
seemed to come to him without an effort. Energetic and ambitious,
but with most unbridled passions, he allowed nothing to
stand in the way of his desires. He was beloved by some for his
freedom of spirit, but condemned by the judicious for the recklessness
of his aims. An unfortunate affair has brought him
hither; and I, used as I am to histories of crime and sorrow,
have never been able to retain a sufficient mastery of my feelings,
to relate his story as I know it, even to the most intimate
friend. When he first reached the asylum, he was a raving
maniac. Several months passed by, and his disorder grew more
temperate and mild. There were occasions when he would not
for days utter an irrational word. He desired that writing materials
should be allowed him, and he wrote many sheets closely
full. These he tied together in the form of a book, with fanciful
strings of blue and red silk, and used almost daily to read over,
marking out, with apparent care, every inelegant or irrelevant
word. Earnest hopes were entertained of his recovery, at no
distant period, when the admission of a lunatic lady into the opposite
apartment, and of whom he caught a glimpse through his
open door as she entered, drove him at once into a settled delirium.
In this state he has continued ever since. Increasing
weakness now marks his disorder; his appetite has declined;
fitful ravings disturb his repose; no drowsy potion can calm his
mind; and he sometimes, especially in summer nights, howls
away the doleful watches, in all the agony of a doomed spirit. A
few months, I fear, will seal his destiny.'

The conversation of my friend seemed to have no effect upon
the prisoner before us. He appeared wrapt up in the thick darkness
of his own imaginations, and gave none but vague tokens
that he recognised our presence. Indeed, until then, he had
scarcely glanced in that direction. My friend wished to try the
effect of a new face upon him, (as he had seen none but himself
and a domestic attendant for several months, strict seclusion
having been advised). Accordingly, he retired into the hall, and
with his extended cane, (himself unseen,) rapped against the
threshold, the usual salute.

The maniac turned his face toward me, and started back with
wild surprise. `Why, sir,' said he, `have you not been to see
me before? I have been imprisoned in this cell, by order of

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Cleostratus, because I refused to explain his epicycles before the
faculty at—college. He wrote a note to them; Socrates
signed it, Plato stuck his sign-manual on it, and I was expelled!
Sir,' he continued, `they have got Cleopatra in the other room;
and she is trying to kill me! Twenty times in a night, with the
fire of a demon in her eye, and the poisonous blood coursing
over her bosom, does she open that door where you stand, and
let loose from a box which she got of Pandora, a swarm of asps
and scorpions on my floor. Yes; you know it, for at this moment
you are scowling upon me, as if you were leagued with her!
Fiend! What have I done to her, or you? Where is my friend?
My friend—ha! ha! ha!—my Friend?'

I trembled at his manner and his words. He continued to go
on, in language similar to that I have quoted, uttered without
much connection or relevancy, in a voice hollow and sepulchral.
The play of his features was agonizing to behold. What can be
more terrible than a mind in ruins, `like sweet bells jangled out
of tune?' The stare of natural idiotcy is not so painful to receive,
because we know, as we look on the sufferer, that he has
never fallen from a high estate; but when we meet the glances
of a disturbed and restless eye, flashing with phrensy, and shifting
every way, as if tossed about by the boiling fervors of a `heat-oppressed
brain;' when we remember that once, perhaps but
lately, it shone with the scintillations of wit and reason; then it is,
that we can faintly apprehend the inherent greatness, and delicate
dependencies of the immortal mind. It is fearful to see the light
of God extinguished in the soul; to behold it reduced to a chaos:
to note the obscuration of a spark whose divine lustre, next to
the vast spheres of heaven, affords the most convincing proof of
an ever-watchful and omnipotent intelligence; and assures us
that man is indeed `but little lower than the angels.'

I was so completely absorbed in contemplating the features and
movements of the maniac before me, that I felt as if spell-bound
in a dream. Whether an influence, akin to sympathy of thought
or feeling, is conveyed by a lunatic to his observer, I know not;
but certain it was, that every glance, shot from the penetrative eye
of the being before me, awakened a new interest in his behalf.
He ceased speaking, and walked on, turning with heavy steps,
and humming occasionally the faint notes of disremembered music,
that came to his mind, half cheerful, half sad; the wrecks,
perchance, of sounds that had melted and won his heart in better
years. My companion still continued to stand aloof, anxious to
know what the consequences of my interview might be. Abstraction
seemed to be the maniac's chief characteristic. Bitter

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memories, it was evident, were at work in his hand. At last he
stopped suddenly, and said in a deep, sober tone:

`Do you know that my chain reaches to that corner, and that
desk? It does, upon my honor. Yes, upon my honor. Men
fight for honor, they die for honor, they plunge themselves into
rivers of fire and blood—for honor! Oh God! I have—I
have!'

Words cannot convey the desperation of his language, or the
horror that sate upon his countenance, as he gave it breath. It
was like the features of the thunder-scarred and dark-browed spirit,
in Milton, whose cheek, blanched by tempests of dire hail from
the treasuries of the Almighty, was the throne of care.

Suiting his action to his word, the prisoner approached the
desk, and took from it the identical manuscript which my friend
had described. `I will give this,' said he, `to you. It is a deed
of all my property. I bequeath it for your benefit. Now I look
at you again, you seem a friend.' Here, without an effort, or
apparent emotion, the large tears came again to his eye. He attempted
to reach the manuscript to me, but could not. Instantly
he approached the window, and grasped one of the wooden bars
which crossed it. With desperate energy, he drew it from the
casement, as easily as Samson disparted the withes wherewith
he was bound. Tying the colored strings to the bar, he handed
the book to me, through the grating which separated us from each
other. I took it, and thanked him for his pains. He made me
no answer, but stood like an image of stone. He seemed to have
dispossessed himself of a burden, and disposed for sleep. He
approached his pallet in the corner, and sank so quickly into
slumber, that it seemed like the mimic sleep of an actor, in Richard
the Third, when the tyrant sees the ghost of the Plantagenets,
`Clarence and the rest,' rising around him. His breathing was
heavy and slow; large drops of sweat stood on his temples; and
an occasional groan, as if sounding from the heart, moaned
through his lips.

`Now,' said my companion, `is the time to go. Step lightly,
for the least sound will waken him at this hour.'

As we turned from his apartment, my friend moved a little
slide before a pane of glass in the door of the opposite room, and
bade me look in. A lady was sitting at the window, gazing outward,
with a vacant eye, and kissing her hand at the airy nothings
of her mind. The noise of the sliding panel attracted her notice.
She glanced toward the door. The moment my face was
recognised, she sprang toward me. `Oh, Henry,' she said, `are
you come? How long I have waited for you! No, no,' she

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added, pushing her fair hair wildly back from her brow, `you
are not Henry—no; if you were, you would speak to me!'

I could not speak to her. I was overpowered, bewildered.
She was a beautiful being, seemingly not twenty years of age.
The ravages of sorrow had thinned her features, and saddened
her brow; but her lips were still feverishly full and red; her blue
eye, still bright; the hues of fading loveliness, like the reflected
tints of a damask rose, still lingered in her cheek; and her voice!
oh, how sweet and musical, did its gentle accents fall upon my
ear! Every word bespoke the stainless purity of the spirit that
fate had steeped in ruin.

I could not bear the sight, and a world could not then have
compelled me to the utterance of a word. I closed the panel,
with a distressful feeling; and taking the arm of my friend, replied
to his attentive offers, that I would see no more.

When I returned to my lodgings in the city, I opened the
maniac's pages. I have deemed them of interest, and I now give
them to the reader, word for word—a melancholy record of passion
and crime.

`I am a man, smitten of God. I seize my pen with a trembling
hand, to record some of the events in a life that has not been
long, but is yet wearing swiftly to its close. A world of sable
images is arrayed before the prospect of my soul. I lift the dismal
curtain of fate from the gloom of departed years, and discern,
over its scenes of horror, the sun of recollection; bloody
and wan, like that pale sphere which hung above Jerusalem,
when the veil of the temple was rent in sunder; when they who
slept in their graves arose, called from their cerements by the
moaning of thunders and earthquakes on a thousand hills. The
beams of innocence have vanished for ever from my mind; the
roses that opened once around my pathway, are changed for the
night-shade and the ivy; my feet have stumbled upon the dark
mountains of error; and for the dews of pleasure, or the blooms
of hope, I inherit the vulture of regret. Remorse and pain are
knawing at my heart; and like the fabled scorpion in his envenomed
circle, I mingle at once the poison of the adder, with the
torpor of the worm.

`The misery of years may be compressed into one short page.
I shall be brief. What I am now, I was not always. As I sit
by my window, and look out from the bars that hedge me in,
upon earth and sky, basking in that sunlight which but faintly
shadows the smile of the Creator, I bethink me of all the past.
My soul swells with remembrance, my heart with emotion. It

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is the hour of sunset. The great orb rolls slowly down; he dips
behind the western mountains, and in gushes of solemn pomp,
ethereal brightness flows over their blue outlines, along the landscape.
It is a Sabbath evening—the month is June: the distant
bells of the city load the fragrant breeze with volumes of tender
melody. Around, are aroma, and peace, and music, and holiness—
but not with me.

`My testimony must be given. I hold my uncertain reason as
a boon which a breath may dissolve; and as its dawning day
continues, I must inscribe my record, before the night shall come.
Against myself, I am to place upon these pages a fearful witness.
I shall write as one on whom the sleepless eye of God looks
with a discerning vision. I shall unveil my heart. I will bare
to the day the corruption of its motives, and the deed of horror
to which they have led; the thoughts whereof have withered my
form, and scathed my brain, like the blast of a samiel. I will
call up from their dungeons, the wierd spectres of memory. I
will lift the mirror of truth before me, and describe the hideous
monster that I behold therein, though the appalling reflection
should sere my eyeballs, and make me shudder through every
nerve.

`I have been a scholar and a student. I have gone through
the studies and trials alloted to those who delve after knowledge.
I have explored the treasures of orators, dramatists, annalists, and
poets. I have bent over the breathing pages of Cicero, and
Homer, and Virgil; of Æschylus and Thucydides, Tacitus, and
Livy. I have quaffed long and deep at the fountains of ancient
lore; but the only spring that ever cheered me has dried up,
and left for my seeking lip the sand alone.

`I have loved. There lies the secret of my torture and my
doom. At the junior exhibition of my class, as I was speaking
before a large and brilliant assembly in the University chapel, I
saw, for the first time, an object that riveted my gaze and secured
my admiration, my affection. She was young, and oh, how supremely
lovely! I paused with a sense of intoxicating transport.
Her liquid blue eyes met mine; her fine Grecian features seemed
lit with an unearthly intelligence; the blush of innocence was
on her cheek. The periods of my salutatory dropped slowly
from my lips; I forgot my duties, my honors; I was `clothed
upon with love!'

`When the exercises of the day were over, I made enquiries
after the fair being who had so moved me. She was a partial
stranger in town, remaining at the dwelling of a relation. A year
previous she had visited the city, and been addressed by a

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classmate with whom my terms of friendship were strict and intimate.
He had been accepted as her suitor, and the day of their union
had already been appointed.

`Fired with passion, I sought her acquaintance. I met her
often; and amidst the attractions of a society not deficient in female
loveliness, I found her ever the sole ascendant star. God!
how I loved her! I waited upon her footsteps, and bent to her
beck, as one that obeys the bidding of a celestial spirit. Her
smile was the joy of my heart; her voice the richest music to
my ear. But I wooed in vain. With a delicacy, pure as it was
engaging, she repelled all my advances, and I could not but see
that my friend, Henry Rivers, was the choice of her affection.

`Rivers was indeed my friend. We had been all in all to
each other. But causes must produce effects, and coldness soon
sprang up between us. He loved May Morton with a perfect
idolatry. I was the foul iconoclast, who destroyed both the worshipper
and the image. Wo is me!

`My passion could not be concealed. The pent-up flame defied
restraint. One balmy afternoon in spring, I sought the apartment
of May Morton. I poured out my soul, in kisses and protestations,
on the white, reluctant hand that thrilled in mine. I was
answered in tones of melody, whose fatal sweetness haunts me
still, that my suit was vain. Rivers was her betrothed—her
heart and hand were his own. I heard no more. Pride spread
its burning color over my cheek. I ceased to supplicate; I
bowed, and withdrew. Weeks passed over me, without a knowledge
of existence. A malignant fever brought me to the margin
of the grave; and the delirium of passion and sickness was continually
upon me.

`Months elapsed before I recovered. When I came forth
again, it was only to hear of the approaching marriage of my
rival. A few days were to witness its consummation. In all
my sickness, Rivers, forgetting my offence, was my devoted attendant.
He was generous and noble. No office was too arduous
for his goodness; and through the watches of many a
weary night, he kept his vigil by my side. Alas! how was he
repaid!

`As the time drew nigh for the celebration of his nuptials,
my vigor increased. I ate but little, yet I seemed to subsist
and thrive on thought. A vague idea of some desperate deed
beset my soul. What it was destined to be, I knew not; but I
felt, inly, as if nerving myself for some dire resolve.

`How little do we know of our own hearts! During all this
period, I could not recognise in myself any hatred to Rivers. I

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thought him the happiest of men; I would have given worlds to
have filled his place in the affections of May Morton; and because
she did, I thought I too loved him. Fatal delusion!

`I received an invitation to be present at their nuptials. I
went, but with a feeling such as I never before experienced. It
was the elateness of a desperate mind—the elevation which precedes
despair.

`It was a lovely evening. The guests were met, the feast was
spread. I heard the voice of the priest; I saw the hands of the
betrothed united in eternal fidelity. The room swam to my
vision; the smiles that met me were repaid by glances of vacancy
or of fire; and the wine-cup passed my lips untasted.

`A dance ensued. The music breathed through the scented
apartments, like a heavenly epithalamium. Graceful forms were
moving in fairy circles; the viol uttered its harmonies; all was
brightness; all delight.

`How it was, I know not, that I approached the happy pair as
they stood at the head of a cotillon. `Pleasant time, this, Mr.
Rivers,' said I, with a bitter smile, and in a hollow voice; `very
pleasant—do n't you think so?'

“Indeed I do; the happiest of my life. My sweet May beside
me, and my own! It is like a dream.'

“Very likely,' I replied. `What a pity it is that so sweet a
dream should not be enjoyed by somebody who deserved it.'

“What do you mean, Sir?' said Rivers, the generous meanings
of his eye changing to a look of stern inquiry.

“I mean,' I responded, with the abruptness of instant falsehood,
which could not be contradicted from the grave, `that you
told young Everts, of our class, that my Oration at the Junior
Exhibition was written by you. He is dead now, and can not
say to you, as I do, that you are both a liar and a coward. I
speak it aloud; I am heard by all around me; and I leave you
to demand of me that satisfaction, current among all honorable
men, which you will not fail to receive.'

`Rivers was thunder-struck. He gazed at me with a look of
mingled pity and surprise. At last he said:

“Charles, now I know you. This is an angry, envious trick
of yours, and I see the motive. But it shall not avail you. You
shall be met, as you desire; but not to-night. To night, at
least,' he added, addressing his terrified bride, with looks of unutterable
tenderness, `shall be devoted to rapture and to love.
Sir, you will hear from me in the morning.'

`What were my feelings! Like Ithuriel in Eden, I stood,
hideous and single, in the midst of a scene of loveliness. From

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bitter envy and unrequited passion, I had wantonly falsified the
truth, and poisoned the happiness of a lovely being, by embroiling
in mortal combat the chosen companion of her bosom.

`I know not how I reached home. I slept as on a bed of fire.
In the morning I received a note from Rivers, which I accepted
without delay.

`That afternoon we met. The grey walls of the University,
where we had spent so many happy hours, shone through the
distant grove, as we measured our deadly paces. The word
was waiting to be given; the lengthened solemn tread was made.
Rivers held his pistol as if willing to use it on an enemy, but not
on a friend. I levelled my aim at his heart. I see him still as
he stood before me then; the sunshine playing on his chestnut
locks and manly forehead; the look of blended pity and consternation
that his features wore. He stood with the sublimity
of a good conscience beaming from his eye. As I stretched my
mortal weapon toward his bosom, he shrank not. He seemed
to feel the moral advantage that he possessed over me. A whirl
of giddy thoughts rushed through my mind, but I had no time
for reflection. Some fallen angel whispered vengeance in my
ear. What had I to avenge? What, but an innocent and mutual
love?

`I held my elevated pistol a shade higher. The word was
spoken by the seconds; I drew back my lock, and heard the
click of Rivers' simultaneous with mine. I took deliberate aim;
the burning flash warmed over my fingers, the report rang
through the grove. Rivers stepped toward me with extended
hand; his pistol exploded as it dropped from his nerveless grasp;
he brought his open palm convulsively to his breast; he reeled;
he fell.

`I rushed to my fallen friend. The crimson blood was gushing
from his heart, over his bosom; the leaden hue of death was
beneath his closing eyes; its pallor was on his cheek; its foam
on his lips.

“Oh, May!' he uttered, with an agonizing groan; and then,
as if nerving himself to an act of dreadful energy, he raised himself
partially up, and reaching forth his hand, exclaimed: `Charles,
I forgive you! You have killed me without a cause; you will
break the fondest heart that ever beat for man; but—I forgive
you!'

`The blood now gathered, clotty and smoking, on his purple
lips; the gurgling sound of dissolution was in his throat; and in
one short moment, his life-current staining the green sward where
he fell, he was among the dead....

[figure description] Page 376.[end figure description]

`I tell no more. Is it for me to describe the funeral; the
grief that brought the widowed and distant mother of a widowed
bride to the grave; the distress that made May Rivers a maniac?
Can I paint the burden of remorse which at last, and for a long,
dark period, dethroned my reason? Shall I revert to that hour
to-day, when, an inmate of this dreary place, I saw her whom I
once loved, as never did a thing on earth, before me; her fair
locks and graceful vestments torn with the struggles of phrensy;
an occupant of the same mad mansion? No; the picture is too
dreadful, even for a mind that has conceived the deeds and suffered
the horrors of mine. At uncertain moments, my brain
seems reeling as if a weight of lead were pressed upon its cell;
ghastly forms rise up around me; hands that would incarnadine
the ocean, beckon to me from the dark walls of Evening, and
funeral murmurs, like the wul-wullehs of the East, come booming
from afar. Wo is me! I am smitten of God!'

Here the manuscript of the maniac ended. It was with a
melancholy heart, a few months after its perusal, that I saw, on
a second visit to the Asylum, in the green cemetery of the institution,
the graves of the duelist and his hapless victim. The
verdant mantle of Spring decked the earth where they slept, with
rich fertility. His monument was of dark, gloomy marble; but
the white, simple stone, which shone above the tomb of fair
May Rivers, stood like an emblem of her stainless life and her
glorified soul. She had gone from earth, like the breath of the
Spring-time, or the bloom from its flowers. The memorial that
rose above her slumbers was shaped like an urn. On one side,
was sculptured `May'—on the other, `Hope.' What fitter device
could have been made? Let the shaft or the cenotaph be
lifted for the mind that has gone to its beatitude, not for the lost
grace that is wasting, the lip that is dumb, or the brow that is
dim! In the pale dominions of the dead, `that have fallen
asleep upon the bosom of the earth,' never again to rise on mortal
vision, to whom should we build?

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Nobody is cynic or green-goose enough to deny that the present
is the age of improvement. Every thing seems to be going
onward with a rapidity, the strides whereof may be likened unto
the tread of an army with banners. All kinds of systems, social,
political, public and private, seem to be better fixed than they
used to be. To account for these great emendations on any common
hypothesis, would be ridiculous. Hypotheses are remnants
of antiquity; and I believe the age can yet be found able to dispense
with them altogether. The time is not distant, I fancy,
when conclusions will be jumped at without argument, and when
Truth herself (I believe I have hit the gender of that respectable
stranger) will come out of the well where her troglodyte
limbs have so long been cooling, and lift her mirror on high
to irradiate the benighted brains of every son and daughter of
Adam.

I say it is difficult to account for these grand emendations on
any common cause; but I have one to which I refer them uniformly,
and it is to my mind of a very satisfactory nature. Modern
philosophers have discovered that, in the matter of light, the
extremities of comets have scattered new substances into our atmosphere,
and that when these eccentric characters are in perihelio,
their tails are peculiarly bright and flashy. Now, my impression
is, that the light of these comets, thus generously disbursed
from their hinder sides, in an intermittent diarrhœa of
glory, is conveyed by some principal of induction to the mind
of man; that the subtile rays act specifically upon some craniological
bump of his head, inclining him to love music, poetry,
politics, horse-stealing, or any thing of the sort, according to the
character of the organ in which these rays may settle. To some,
they convey high fiscal notions and a love of locomotion, as in
the case of Mr. Nazro, the classical teacher, who has such rapid
habits and extensive relations, and who charges $100,000 per
year, for the finishing of a scholar in his Biblical Instruction.
To my own mind, I am sensible that there has been conveyed a
strong portion of light on the subject of musical adaptation, and
my ears have been acted upon to a considerable extent by the
same principle. I never witness any public amusement of late,
that I do not begin to reflect on some way in which music might
be made to help it on; and being an ardent though blind admirer

[figure description] Page 378.[end figure description]

of European customs, I join in that sublime chase in this science,
and in other matters of about the same importance, with which a
large majority of my comet-stricken fellow-citizens seem interested.
But to my subject.

I was lounging the other day, on one of the luxurious sofas
of the Washington Divan, and sipping a cup of delicious coffee,
and looking at the fine paintings and various periodicals hanging
and lying around, when I took up that elegant paper, Bell's Life
in London, and straightway fell into a train of deep reflection, as
I sent my eye up and down its columns, upon the great prevalence
among the gentlemen of England, of those lofty and dignified
amusements, so cheering to intelligent minds, which are yet
almost unknown in this country. I worked myself by degrees
into a paroxysm of high-bred indignation, that our imitative gentry
had copied so sparingly from these great transatlantic examples,
in pastimes so pleasing to humanity and healthful to the soul.
I had touched the climax of my regret, when the following advertisement
caught my gaze:

`Cocking.—A main of cocks will take place on Wednesday the 6th
inst., at the Royal Cockpit, West Green, Tottenham, for £5 the battle and
£50 the odd, between the gentlemen of Middlesex and Kent; to fight in
silver. Feeders, Gumm and Hawick.

`Three whole days' play will be fought at Bristol on the 19th inst., and
the two following days, between the gentlemen of Gloucestershire and the
gentlemen of Somersetshire, for £10 the battle, and £100 the main. Feeders,
Grant, for Somersetshire; Bumm, for Leicestershire.'

As I peered over this notice, a train of luminous thought,
rapid as the scintillations of a meteor, burst upon my mind.
Why, said I to myself, has not this accomplished sport of cockfighting
been more extensively introduced into this meridian?
and why should it not be done to music? How few, alas! how
very few of the intelligent gentlemen of this country have ever
taken an interest in these gladiatorial rencontres between exasperated
fowls; or reflected upon the admirable manner in which
their contests might be associated with instrumental sounds, and
their jumps, pecks, and gaff-kicks, be timed with crotchet and
quaver! To the honor of a few remote Kentuckians, or Indiana
Hoosheroons, this eminent sport has found a few advocates in
those distant quarters of our republic. Is it not time that the
practice were forbidden to waste its exclusive elegance in the
haunts of rural life, and that it were introduced into our cities?
Should not cock-pits be built by the sale of stock, and capacious
coops be laid in? Should not feeders be imported, to deliver
lectures on the subject; and ought there not to be competent
composers engaged, who shall produce a series of militant arias,

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by means of which the cocks could fight with precision, and the
ears of the audience be simultaneously delectated? For the
credit of the nation, and of the growing taste for operative, active
music, I ask, can this solemn appeal be resisted? I think
not.

Some churlish, old-fashioned denizens may deem this plan infeasible;
but I can tell them otherwise. Let us secure the importation
of one of those foreign fowl-supervisors. Bumm, for
instance, `Cock-feeder to the gentlemen of Leiscestershire;' let
him be installed as manager of the New-York Metropolitan Cockpit;
and let the musical department be entrusted to some passionate
master of the science, who feels the spirit of his trade;
and I warrant me the concern will prosper beyond hope. Our
people need to be advanced in these lovely refinements, and I ask
leave to explain how it can be done.

Let the pit be opened as the theatres are at present. Let the
curtain rise on the feathered combatants, standing each by his
feeder, looking grim as Tophet, and his plumage quivering with
impatience. Chanticleers, and fowls of that genus, without distinction
of sex, are peculiarly susceptible to music. Martial
melody seems to impregnate them with the very spirit of evil.
At the juncture in question, let their pugnacious propensities be
roused by horns, bass-drums, and such like soul-stirring instruments.
Let the audience hear the gathering storm of sound
which impels the fighters onward, every note kindling their adventurous
intentions, and `sticking in their crops' with ominous
energy. What an interesting picture is thus presented!

`See to their desks A pollo's sons repair—
Swift rides the rosin o'er the horse's hair;
In unison their various tones to tune,
Murmurs the hautboy, growls the hoarse bassoon;
In soft vibrations sighs the whispering lute;
Twang goes the harpsichord—too-too, the flute;
Brays the loud trumpet, squeaks the fiddle sharp,
Winds the French horn, and rings the tingling harp;
`Till like great Jove, the leader, figuring in,
Attunes to order the chaotic din.'
After the overture, let the fighting begin, to slow music. Let
the fiddlers scrape out the gaff-time; and if the cocks do battle
`in silver,' let the music be made to imitate the jingling of that
pleasant metal. As the combat deepens, the various instruments
should express the growling discord; and when the unsuccessful
cock begins to give in, let that peculiar burst of melody called
a collywabble by the cockneys, which expresses something between
a squeal and a wheeze, he ecstacised forth from the bowels

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of some ancient fiddle, cracked for the purpose. This would be
truly interesting; and when the discomfited fowl gave his final
flutter, let his act of tumbling over be accompanied by that `strain
which has a dying fall.'

A full blast of fac-simile cock-crowing should then proceed
from the orchestra, significant of victory. After this, a gush of
soft, low airs should denote the end of the strife, and express in
descriptive measures, the falling of the feathers that have been
antagonistically educed from the combatants during the fray, and
which will just then be floating naturally around. The finale
could be selected with propriety from the variations of Jim Crow.
Should an after-piece be required, a set-to between the feeders
might come off, before the assembly.

This sketch is very imperfect; but it embodies a conception
which I have long groaned withal, and of which I am proud;
namely, the establishment of Cock-fighting by Music. The plan
is stupendous, I know; and, like all great undertakings, will
probably meet with opposition; but the march of Taste will
cause it to succeed. Humanity, decency, dignity, and other
cabalistic words, of no particular import, may be employed against
it; but this refined amusement must make its way, and float
sweetly into favor, under the smiles of Euterpe. I am now in
active correspondence with my worthy friend Adrian Q. Jebb,
Esq., private cock-feeder to an English nobleman whose name I
am not at liberty to disclose; and I am happy in believing that
he will yet visit America, to instruct our aristocracy in the modus
operandi of his profession.

I merely mention my plan at present, owing to the want of
time, and shall perhaps make further disclosures to the public
hereafter. In the meanwhile, I will merely remark, that subscription
books for the Metropolitan Cock-pit will soon be open,
and the script ready for delivery. The opening address is being
prepared by the celebrated author of `The Antediluvians;' and
the whole establishment will be well appointed, in all respects.
I anticipate the co-operation of every fellow-citizen, whose veins
contain any gentle blood, and who can trace his pedigree back
to his grandfather without stumbling on an artisan. It is to such,
fit audience though few, that I commend my enterprise.

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There can be no doubt of the fact, that Lemuel Gulliver has,
in modern days, enjoyed too exclusive a reputation as a fictionist.
Munchausen has laurels which, though partly deserved, are some-what
too exuberant for his deserts. Congreve showed his knowledge
of liars, when he made one of his dramatic characters say
to another:

Pinto was great in his way, but he was a poor romancer, compared
with Sir John Mandeville. The elastic credulity of that
gentleman could take in a mountain of mendacity. Marvels,
that were such to others, were trifles to him; and with respect to
the stories he heard in his travels, however gross they were, his
great belief had stomach for them all. We design to rake up a
few of his wonders, and by comparing them with those of Pinto,
prove conclusively that the latter is immeasurably distanced, as
also are Rabelais, Munchausen, Gulliver, and indeed the whole
olden tribe of pencillers by the way-side. We will begin with
the Portuguese.

His travels were of one-and-twenty years' duration. They
were made in the kingdoms of Ethiopia, China, Tartary, Cauchin-China,
Calaminham, Siam, Pegu, Japan, and a great part
of the East Indies. They were `done in English by H. C.,
Gent, printed by J. Macock,' and were `to be sold by Henry
Herringman, at the sign of the Blew Anchor, in the Lower
Walk of the London New Exchange,' in the year of grace 1663.
Poor Pinto! He suffered much; and Cervantes has blackened
his memory by calling him the Prince of Liars. Among the
various sovereigns of the East with whom he sojourned, and in
whose various battles he fought, he does certainly give accounts
of violence, and misfortunes, and scenes of bloodshed that are
somewhat enlarged; but he does not expect them, we imagine,
to be believed. In his wanderings, he `five times suffered ship-wrack,
was sixteen times sold, and thirteen times made a slave.'
He went first to the Indies, then to Ethiopia, thence to Turkey.
Here he was purchased by a Greek, (he was then a captive,)
and sold to a Jew. Then he was ransomed, and passing to Goa,
was received into the service of the king of Portugal. Here he
is engaged in astonishing battles, sees the strangest sights, and

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does the daily labor of Hector. Here is one of his largest lies.
`While coasting the ile of Sumatra,' he saith, `we entred a litel
River, and saw athwart a wood such a many adders and crawling
creatures, no less prodigious for their length than for the
strangeness of their formes, that I shall not marvel if they that
read this history will not believe my report of them.' With this
preamble, he emboldens himself to say: `Those of this country
assured us that these creatures are so hardy as there be some of
them will set upon an Armada, when there is not above four or
five men in her, and overturn it with their tails, swallowing the
men whole, without dismembering them!' Gathering confidence
as he gets on, he observes:

`In this place also we saw a strange kind of creatures which they call
Caquisscitan; they are of the bigness of a great goose, very black and scaly
on their backs, with a row of sharpe pricks on their chins, as long as a writing
pen; moreover they have wings like unto bats, long necks, and a little
bone growing on their necks resembling a cock's spur, with a very long
tale, spotted black and green, like unto the lizards of that country; these
creatures hop and fly together like grass-hoppers; and in that manner they
hunt apes, and such other beasts, whom they pursue even to the tops of the
highest trees. Also we saw adders that were copped on the crowns of their
heads, as big as a man's thigh, and so venomous, as the negroes of that
country informed us, that if any living thing came within the reach of their
breath it died presently, there being no remedy nor antidote against it.
We likewise saw others not copped on their crowns, nor so venomous as the
former, but far greater and longer, with an head as big as a calf's.'

In the course of his wanderings, he somehow got into the service
of the king of China, during which time the city of Nanquin
was attempted to be taken by the king of Tartaria, but his army
was sorely discomfited. Mark the result. `Now,' says Pinto,
`after they had taken an account of all the dead, there appeared
four hundred and fifty thousand, the most of whom died by sickness,
as also an hundred thousand horses, and three score thousand
rhinocerots, which were eaten in the space of two months
and a half, wherein they wanted victual; so that of eighteen
hundred thousand men, wherewith the king of Tartaria came to
besiege Pequin, he carried home seven hundred and fifty thousand
less than he brought.' From carrying on an armament
against the king of Mattaban, Pinto becomes ambassador to the
court of Calaminham, whose extraordinary magnificence he
especially describes, and thence sails down the great river Ritsey,
whose banks, if we may believe him, are stocked with marvels.
He makes particular mention of `certain tawny men, who are
great archers, having their feet like oxen, but their hands are like
unto other men, except that they are exceedingly hairy.' He
saw, beside, `men named Magares, who feed on wild beasts,

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which they eat raw, such as serpents and adders; they hunt these
wild beasts, mounted on certain animals as big as horses, which
have three horns in the middle of their foreheads, with thick,
short legs, and on the middle of their backs a row of prickles;
all the rest of their body is like a great lizard; beside, they have
on their necks instead of hair, other prickles, far longer and bigger
than those on their backs; and on the joints of their shoulders
short wings, (the real hippogriff!) wherewith they fly, as it
were—leaping the length of five or six-and-twenty paces at a
grasp.'

Let us now see how Sir John Mandeville bears away the palm
in his Travels, `werein is sett down ye way to the Holie Lond,
or Lond of Behest and Hieruzaleme; as also to the londs of the
Great Caan, and of Prester Iohn; to Indy and diverse other
countries, with manie and straunge merveilles therein.' His
tour was commenced in 1322, and ended in 1356, making thirty-four
years' absence from his native land. He went first to
Egypt, and engaged in the service of the Sultan of that country,
Melek Maderon. His religion at last induced him to leave that
court for the Holy Land. Thence he went to Tartary, where,
with four other knights, he was in the service of the Great Chan.
His object of travel is thus expressed: `And for als moche as
it is long tyme past that there was no general passage ne vyage
over the see; and many men were desiren for to here speke of
the Holy Lond, I, John Mandeville, knyght, that was born in
Englond, in the town of Seynt Albones, albeit not worthi, passed
the see in the yeere of our Lord Iesu Crist mcccxxii., in the
day of Seynt Michelle, and hidre to have ben long tyme over the
see, and have seen and gone thorghe divers londs, and manie
provinces and kingdomes, and iles, and have passed thorghe
Tartarye, Lybye, Calde, and a gret partie of Ethiope; thorghe
Amazoyne, Inde the less and the more, a gret partie, and thorgheout
manie other iles that ben abouten Inde; where dwellen
many divers folkes, and of divers manners and laws, and of divers
schappes of men.'

Mandeville seemed to labor under a kind of mental elephantiasis.
Nothing was too large for his credit. In dragons and evil
spirits, that carried on their ambulatory carnival on earth, and
appeared constantly to the `stark staring eyes' of men, he had
the fullest belief; in fact, if we may trust him, he met with them
in great abundance, and saw their nests, as it were, where most
they bred and haunted. `In Ethiope,' as we learn from him,
`are such men that have but one foot, and they go so fast that it
is a grete marvel; and that is a large foot, for the shadow

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thereof covereth the body from sun or rain when they lie on their
backs.' In the island of Macameran, which is a `great ile and
fair,' he says `the men and women have heads like hounds; they
are reasonable, and worship an ox for their God; they are good
men to fight, and bear a great target wherewith they cover all
their body, and a spear in their hand.' The population in the
island of Tarkonet, which he visited, receive this mention: `In
this ile, all men are as beasts, and dwell in caves, not having
wit to make houses. They eat adders, and speke not, but make
such noises as the beasts do one to another.' He proceeds:
`There is another ile called Dodyn, and in the same ile are
many and divers sorts of men who have evil manners. The
King of this ile is a great lord and mighty, and hath in many iles
other kings under him; and in one of these iles are men that
have but one eye, and that is in the midst of their front; which
eat their flesh and fish all raw. And in another ile are men that
have no heads, and their eyes are in their shoulders, and their
mouth in their breasts!'

This gives Mandeville our `suffrages' as a superior of Pinto.
No doubt his work was familiar to Shakspeare, who unquestionably
took from it the information which Othello conveyed to the
grave and reverend seniors, in his great Defence, wherein he
spoke

Mandeville continues: `And in another ile nigh-by, are men
that have ne head, ne eyen, and their mouth is in their shoulders!
Another ile is there, where be men that have flat faces without
nosen and without eyen, but they have two small holes in lew of
eyen, and they have flatted nosen, withouten lippes. And also in
that ile are men that have their faces all flat, without eyen, without
mouth, and withouten nose, but they have their eyen and
their mouth behind, on their shoulders!'

The old knight was a perfect Yankee in inquisitiveness. These
are his reasons for going to Tartary. We give them in his own
quaint language: `And yee schalle undirstond that my fellowes
and I with our zomen, we serveden this Emperour (of Tartary)
and weren his soudyoures fifteen moneths agenst the kyng of
Mancy, that held war agenst him. And the cause was, for we
hadden grete lust for to see his noblesse, and the estat of his
corte, and all his governance, to wyt gif it were soche as we herden
say that it was.'

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