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“— O, that men's ears should be
To counsel deaf, and not to flattery.”

“— Whereto serves mercy,
But to confront the visage of offence.”

A WINTER'S night is long, even to the happy healthful
sleeper; but to the sick, the afflicted, or the faithful watcher,
it is doubly long. The agitated, suffering mother, knew no
rest. The son, tormented by conflicting thoughts and images,
knew not the balm of sleep.

The pious matron poured her soul in prayer. If, for a moment,
her sighs and sobs were not heard, and her tears ceased
to flow—if slumbers fell upon her exhausted senses, visions of
years long past, made the reality of the present more bitter
after the momentary cessation of pain.

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Henry, at times, paced the floor; at times sat motionless,
gazing at the pitiable object whose presence banished rest,
and scarcely breathing in the hope that his mother slept; but
when a sigh or sob fell on his ear, he started.

“Can I help you to any thing, mother?”

“No, my son.”

And again he walked the floor, while the past, the present,
and the future, revolved again and again in his troubled mind.
The last was a cloudy prospect, but hope seldom deserts youth,
and a light broke through the darkness, and discovered the
form of Emma Portland. But the clouds of the present encompassed
him around. His only resource for the support of his
mother through the winter, was the scanty wages he received
as a watchman—a pittance earned by the sale of that rest which
youth requires. The last quarter's rent for the hovel they
lived in, had not been paid, and another had become due that
day. He had served the stipulated time, within a few weeks,
as a clerk, and had qualified himself for the salary, he was, by
agreement, to receive for the succeeding year, commencing at
the time his present service of probation ended; but, in the
mean time, for months to come, he had only his present inadequate
resources to support his mother and himself, and no
means of pacifying his landlord, even by a payment of a small
portion of the debt, without depriving his mother of necessaries
for subsistence.

His father was present—was before him—was rolling in
wealth—but he shrunk from him with loathing. He congratulated
himself that he was unknown as his son. There sat, in
deathlike insensibility, the husband and father, who was the
cause of misery to the wife and son; whose wife was sinking
prematurely to the grave prepared by him, and who was himself
committing the most cowardly suicide.

“Time and the hour runs through the longest day.” And
so, the longest night. Day dawned on the mother and son:
but a winter's day on the first of February 1812 did not promise
much consolation to them, although worthy of “joy and
gladness.” Long as is the night when the snow covers the
earth, and the winds howl around the poor, the sleepless, and
the sick, the day will come; but it came unattended by comfort
to Mrs. Johnson. She looked from her curtained bed,
a luxury yet preserved to her, and saw the disgusting object,
still sleeping, who might claim her as a wife, and her beloved
Henry as a son. She turned again to her pillow, and drew
the curtains around her.

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The fire had almost expired, and Henry, chilled by long
watching, felt that the room had become cold: he brought
fuel from the ill-supplied wood-pile in an adjoining closet. He
brought it reluctantly; for he saw that the scanty store would
barely suffice to warm the room for his sick mother for the
coming day. It is only day by day that the poor can purchase,
and that at the dearest rate, that article necessary for
the support of life. The city authorities aid the poor in the
last extremity; but it is such as those we are now contemplating,
who are the last to look for such succour. They suffer
in silence, while the improvident and vicious complain.

Freely could Henry Johnson have given to the stranger and
the sufferer; but he reluctantly threw down the wood on the
hearth, and turned away again with a degree of irritation, from
the man for whose immediate comfort he was about to sacrifice
what might be required for his mother's support. The
noise made by the falling wood roused the lethargic sleeper.
He looked with blood-shot eyes sleepily around him; and that
face, which native intellect had so often brightened into all the
flashing changes of the most energetic passion—that countenance,
on which thousands of admiring spectators had gazed,
and testified their delight at the intellectual powers which illumined
it by shouts of applause, was a bloated, discoloured,
disgusting mask, incapable of any expression but that of idiotic
vacancy.

“Where am I?” he asked. “Who are you? O, ay—the
watch-house. Watchman! Fellow! I'm cold—cold—cold—”

The last words were muttered as to himself, and he continued
in the same tone.

“The scoundrel!—Strike me—me—in his own house.”

And his face assumed an expression of despair and malignity
as he growled somewhat louder, “I've been ranging all night
in hell!—Watchman!—Get me a bottle of brandy!”

O, who can feel—who can realize the agony which these
sounds conveyed to the hearts of the hearers? To a wife! To
a son! To a mother!

When we see such objects, (they are even yet sometimes
seen) and hear them uttering sounds of insensate joy, or desperate
and, perhaps, blasphemous defiance. When we ask,
has he a wife, and children? has he parents? heart-stricken
parents certainly—if death has not mercifully removed them!
How painful is the question to the benevolent!

Henry cast a look on the face of the wretched man and hastily
withdrew his eyes.

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“Fellow, I tell you I am cold—here's money—get me
brandy!”

The young man kneeled down and blew the fire.

“Watchman! I say, get me a quart of brandy! I am cold!”

“I will make more fire.”

“Brandy! I say, brandy!”

“You have had too much already.”

“Ha! do you talk to me! who are you, sirr?”

“A man, and in my senses. A man who has not drowned
the voice of conscience by strong liquor, or reduced himself by
indulging his vitiated appetite to a state of helplessness and
idiotcy.”

The youth stood erect before his father. The returning
reason of the unhappy being, on whom his stern eye rested,
seemed to be quickened by its flash. His eyes brightened
into partial speculation, and the pupils dilated as if to gain distinct
images for the sluggish and diseased soul they served.
He gazed in Henry's face—then around the room—at the
fire—and again on the young man's face—and the muscles of
his own visage betrayed emotions of pain and confusion.

“This is not the watch-house?—The watchmen brought me
into the watch-house—the snow—the street—I was sleeping
on the street—yes—it would have been my last sleep—Oh,
God!—”

And he shuddered as awakened reason presented images
of the past, and of the imagined future, mingled and twined,
and succeeding each other in mazes, now bright, now indistinct,
but all fearful; and his face assuming the demoniacal expression
which he had studied for, and his admirers had applauded
in the horrible character of the unnatural father in
Massinger's play, he groaned as he shouted—“brandy—bring
me a quart of brandy!”

“Not a drop sir. I see that you can understand what I
say, and I tell you are in the room of a sick woman.
My mother! and you must not disturb her by this vociferation.
You were found perishing in the street, and brought hither by
those who wished to preserve your life; you shall have shelter,
and warmth, and food, until your friends come to you, or until
you can remove yourself, provided you behave with decency,
otherwise—”

During these words the tragedian had rouzed himself, and
sat erect on the chair he occupied, and now, with a tone of
more sanity, he interrupted the speaker with—“What sirr?—
otherwise what?”

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“I will thrust you from walls your presence pollutes.”

Cooke's eye kindled, and he was preparing a reply, when
his attention was called to the bed by a loud groan from the
sufferer within. The fire blazed a momentary flickering light,
and he saw in the partial opening of the curtain, a thin pale
ghastly face, and heard a faint exclamation of “oh no! no!”

“Who is that?—what's that?” cried the conscience-stricken
man, and he crouched down in the chair, his eyes still fixed
on the curtain, now closed, and his lips moving in convulsive
horror. He then cast down his head, closed his eye-lids, and
covered his face with his clasped hands.

Henry went to the bed-side, and the son and mother communed
in whispers.

Some minutes elapsed. The aged misguided sufferer seemed
to sink into the insensibility from which the awakening of
reason and consciousness had aroused him. Suddenly he exclaimed.

“I saw her!—I saw her before!—Where am I?—I have
seen her and heard her all night—sick—well—young—old—
dying—saving me—cursing me—”

The sick woman sobbed aloud, and her son advanced to
still the raving dreamer.

“Hush, sir, you disturb my sick mother.”

“Your mother? That face—O, ay, I recollect now—the
street—the storm—the snow—you preserved me—you saved
me from perishing like a famished cur in the street of a populous
city—thrust out and dishonoured by a blow—no matter—
but you were not alone—there was a female—a guiding and a
guarding angel—she appeared alone—and strove to help me—
she disappeared—and devils came in her stead—she appeared
again—she hovered round me—she strove to save me!”

“Yes, there was a female, one but for whom you had perished,
a frozen outcast in the night storm. There was an
angel that guided the strength which rescued you. Was she
the first female who, by her efforts, has rescued you from
death? Who, by her cares, has tried to save you from destruction?”

“Who are you that ask that question? Fellow, do you
know—Fellow!—good fellow—you saved me—give me—give
me—some water—some water.”

He threw himself back in the sick woman's chair, for it was
that he sat in, and Henry, softened to pity, flew to present a
glass of cold and refreshing water to his burning lips.

Again the old man shut his eyes, seemingly offended by the

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light which now streamed in through the ill-closed shutters, and
silence again reassumed her reign, only interrupted by the
noises of the busy street, the cries of those who administer to
the comforts of others, and the tinkling of sleigh-bells, from
the hackman's, the cartman's, or the milkman's, sleds.

Henry walked the floor, or occasionally approached the bed
of his mother. He suppressed his groans. He knew that the
day had commenced on which his landlord had threatened to
distrain for rent. He knew that he could only offer a small
portion saved from the wages of night watches. He knew
that his all, and the savings of his mother's industry, had been
exhausted by the expenses attendant on a sick bed. And now
he knew that his father, rolling in riches, and wallowing in destructive
excess, was before him.—The thought occurred,
“shall he be the means of our deliverance—has his vices
driven him unknowingly to save the being who suffers for his
sins?” But he spurned it from him. “Rather let her go to
the poor-house—she is entitled to that shelter—rather let us
perish—perish!—am I not young and strong?—Is there not a
God above us?—but my mother!—she shall to the hospital,
rather than receive aid from—”

These thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the street-door,
and Henry went out of the room.

Cooke was now thoroughly awake, although still under the
influence of the poison which was destroying soul and body.
Thought had been aroused, and retrospection tormented him.
He then recurred to the present situation, and felt a wish to repay
the poor people who had succoured him. His attention
was called to the voices of the supposed watchman, and some
other person at the door. He heard sentences which, as his
senses became more acute, he put together, and formed the
conclusion that a bailiff was demanding rent, and threatening a
sale of furniture. He looked around and saw tokens of poverty,
and some remains of a better state, and proofs of taste
above the state of the habitually poor. He listened to the
words of those without.

“Speak lower—she is very ill.”

“He says I must sell to-day.”

“I will write to him again. I can pay—”

“He says it will not do.”

“She is very low—kill her—”

“Hospital—”

“She cannot be moved.”

“Gracious heaven!” thought Cooke, “are they going to turn

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poor sick creature out into the storm, from which she has sheltered
me;” and he strove to rise from his seat, but his abused
and stiffened limbs failed, and he sunk down again—he heard
the voices louder.

“I must obey my orders.”

“I will resist. She shall not be removed! I have another
proposition—”

“I can't be going backward and forward day after day.”

“Who's there?” shouted Cooke. “Come in!”

“I will write to him—I will compensate you. A day's
delay—”

“Who's there? I say?”

Henry hearing Cooke's voice, and fearing that his mother
would be more disturbed by that than even by the presence of
the constable, came into the room with him.

“Henry, come hither, my son.” The young man obeyed,
and the officer walked to the fire and placed himself between
it and the squalid figure in the chair, of which he took no notice,
until he was addressed with the imperative, “Fellow, take
off your hat!”

“For what?”

“Don't you know me, fellow? I am George Frederick
Cooke.”

“Poh! poh! hold your tongue.”

“Stand from before me!”

“Well, well; I wont keep the fire from you, poor devil!”

“Poor devil!—Yes, yes; I am, I am!”

“Well, Mr. Johnson, if you have any thing to offer, do it
soon. I will go to the landlord once more, for I do not want
to inconvenience the old woman; but, right's right, and the
rent must be paid, and I must be paid.”

“Sit down, if you please, I will write once more to Mr.
Jones.” And Henry took from a hanging shelf (on which
were a few books) some paper and an ink-stand, and sat down to
make his proposal to his landlord, with little hope but of a short
respite, and time to think and to remove his father from the
scene of his mother's suffering.

In the mean time Cooke put a bank note into the constable's
hand, unperceived by Henry, and gained information immediately,
from the astonished officer, of the sum for which the
landlord's warrant was issued.

Henry having written a short note carried it to his mother.
It being now broad-day, she read it without opening the
curtains.

“This will not do, my son. Why not apply to your

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employer. He has promised that after next May you shall have
a salary in his counting-house, and he would, if he knew our
situation, advance enough to relieve us.”

“Mother, I cannot. He reproached me lately, on finding
me asleep at my desk, and accused me of dissipation; supposing
my sluggish senses were overpowered in consequence of
night-watchings of a very different complexion from the reality.
I cannot apply to him. This application to Mr. Jones will
gain us time.”

“Young man!—Come here!” said Cooke in a tone of command.

Henry obeyed; unconscious of the mixed motives which
guided his steps.

“I am George Frederick Cooke!” Henry was about to
retire again with an air and feeling of disgust. “I will be
heard, sirr,” continued the excited tragedian. “I have a right
to be heard and to be obeyed.” Henry shuddered. Cooke
continued. “You have saved my life, sirr, and your mother
has sheltered me in this house, from which your landlord
threatens to eject her, and to snatch the bed from under her on
which she is, perhaps, languishing in her last sickness, and for
the paltry sum of fifty dollars for two quarters rent. I wil pay
the rent. Give me the pen and ink, and I will write an order
for the money.”

“No.”

“Why not, sirr?”

“My mother cannot, shall not, receive aid from—from—
you.”

“From me, sirr? George Frederick Cooke! Constable,
give me the table, and pen, and ink, and paper.”

“No. I say no. Never!”

“Henry!”

“Mother!” and he again shrouded himself within the curtains
of his agitated, almost exhausted mother.

The constable, at the request of Cooke, placed the table and
writing materials before him; he attempted to write an order on
the treasurer of the theatre for fifty dollars; his hand would
not obey his will; he gave an unintelligible scrawl to the officer.

“What this? This won't do.”

It was handed back and torne. Cooke then thought of
Spiffard, and in a scrawl, scarcely legible, he wrote a few
words to him, desiring him to come to him quickly.

The little black girl had by this time ended her second

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peaceful slumber, and had come forth from her dormitory and
taken her place by the fire.

Cooke having finished his scrawl, now first saw the child's
black face, and eyes wide open and fixed on him. “Come
hither, blackey, can you take this to Mr. Spiffard?”

“If misses pleases.”

Henry again came forward, and in a collected manner addressed
his father. “Mr. Spiffard was assisting in bringing
you hither, sir, and has promised to be here again this morning.
He will remove you from hence.”

“He will bring the money, and discharge this debt and this
constable.”

“No. That he shall not. All we ask of you is your absence,
and that you will forget that you were ever sheltered by
this roof.”

As Henry Johnson now stood proudly rejecting the assistance
offered by the man who had wronged his mother, his tall
and athletic person drawn up to its utmost height, gave additional
dignity to a face which would not be selected by the
sculptor or the painter as a model of beauty, but rather for one
of power; a model for a leader in the field, or in the council.
The reader may observe, in Sully's portrait of Cooke, that
breadth between the eyes, at the junction of the nose with the
forehead, which has been supposed to characterize strength of
intellect. It may be seen likewise in the portrait of Washington,
by Stuart, and in Ciracchi's bust of the hero. This same
feature marked the face of Henry Johnson, combined with a
fine open broad forehead, large hazle eyes, and mouth of uncommon
beauty, in all which he resembled his mother.

The extraordinary situation in which Cooke found himself
placed, (extraordinary even for him, and as he understood it,
but beyond measure more so in reality), consciousness of the
present, and indistinct recollections of the past night, seemed
to recall his mental faculties to their healthful operation, and
he spoke with the tone of restored reason.

“Young man! what do you mean? Do you think I am a
beast, devoid of reason or gratitude? Do you think I can
ever forget the obligation I am under to you and your
mother? Am I not under the greatest possible obligation to
her?”

“You are—you are!”

“Am I not bound to assist her?”

“Yes; you are, indeed! More—”

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“I owe my life to you and to her. And do you deny me
the privilege of doing my duty towards her?”

“You cannot.”

“Am I not rich?”

“Rich! rich! Money! riches and money! Thus, in
your world, everything is swallowed up in the thought of
money. Money covers all—sanctions all. Can your riches
restore to that dying woman the years of peace and health
which a ruffian's baseness has robbed her of? Can your
fifty dollars pay her for country—friends—peace of mind—
health?”

“Henry! Henry!”

“I have done. Forgive me, mother! Keep your riches,
sir. We will do as we have done, without your—without them!
You will be removed to your home, and then we shall be restored
to that quiet which is necessary to the sick—perhaps
the dying.”

“But you want a friend—”

“Friend? We shall find a friend. We have a friend who
has never deserted us, and never will desert us, as long as we
confide in him, and do our duty towards his creatures.”

The energy of the young man—the discrepancy between his
rough watchman's dress, and his comparatively polished language—
the mystery which, to Cooke's apprehension, appeared
to surround him and his mother—combining with the agitation
and confusion existing in the old man's mind, now overwhelmed
him. He sunk back again in the sick lady's chair, and
covered his face with his hands.

“But this won't do for me, Mr. Johnson,” said the constable.
“I must do my duty. Why not take this old man's offer,
and let me go.”

“Never, sir! never! If Mr. Jones will not consent to the
proposition in my note, you must do your duty. My mother
can die in the hospital.”

Note.—Two facts are used by the author which are recorded in the memoirs
of Cooke. He was found in the street covered with snow at midnight,
and conveyed by watchmen to a poor woman's house; and he not
only offered but actually paid a quarter's rent, and prevented the sale of
the poor widow's furniture.

p089-350

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