Harry had scarcely made any observations on his fellow-passengers,
so much had he been engaged in his reveries
and studies. He exchanged with them the ordinary courtesies
of the day, but had experienced no desire to cultivate
the acquaintance of any, with the exception of the familiar
and kind stranger, Mr. Rivington and his daughter. Several
casual occurrences brought them more together, and,
on a nearer view and better acquaintance, he perceived
that they were particularly agreeable, and that the young

[figure description] Page 085.[end figure description]

lady was a very charming girl in mind and manners. She
had not appeared to him, at first, beautiful, but, while conversing,
he perceived a certain loveliness dwelt in her
countenance, which, as if a quality of her soul as well as of
her features, seemed to increase in proportion as the conversation
grew animated and interesting. There was in
her a mixture of frankness and modesty, of self-possession,
and yet of reserve, which at first attracted his attention, and
then captivated his taste. On seeing yet more of her, he
found that nature had not been less bountiful in the solid
qualities of sense and virtue, than in that external grace
which made her so engaging.

One day a death occurred on board, the little son of a
poor Englishman, who, with his wife and three children,
had emigrated several years before to America, been unsuccessful,
and was now returning in the steerage to his
native country. The small body was the next morning
sewed up in a piece of sail and shoved off into the sea.
The burial service was read by Mr. Rivington. The mother
stood by without a word, and heard the plunge of her
child into the waves. It was painful to conjecture, by the
deadly paleness of her face and the expression of her features,
what emotions filled her soul.

The circumstance drew the attention of Harry to the
family. Fearing, from their appearance, that they were but
ill provided with the necessaries of life, he offered to supply
their wants, but found Mr. Rivington and his daughter
had already anticipated him.

It was by and by discovered that another child was ill,
and with a dangerous and contagious malady. There was
among the passengers a physician, who called himself Dr.
Mason. Mr. Rivington politely informed him of the illness
of the second child and the distress of the family.

“Pray, doctor, see her at once.”

“Not I,” was the answer.

“No?”

“Certainly not,” and, taking out a fire-box, he lighted a
cigar. “I don't consider myself on duty at present, and a
contagious disorder. I don't deem it necessary to expose
myself, and the other cabin passengers too.”

“I will cheerfully compensate you,” remarked Mr. Rivington,
mildly, after a pause.

“Oh, d—n it! that's not it.”

[figure description] Page 086.[end figure description]

“But it seems to me, my good sir,” resumed Mr. Rivington,
more gravely, “if duty did not urge you, humanity—”

“Of that,” replied the doctor, coolly, “I must be the best
judge.”

“My daughter has been at the bedside of the little girl,”
said Mr. Rivington.

“But Dr. Mason is not your daughter,” interrupted Mr.
Barnett, a tall, ugly-looking young gentleman of one or two-and-twenty,
and a great ally of the doctor in smoking,
drinking, and backgammon.

A few days after, despite the assiduous attentions of Mr.
and Miss Rivington, and Harry, the little sufferer also died.
The same funeral ceremony was gone through with. The
mother heard the same plunge, with the same pale, silent
face, while the father, in a distant part of the ship, sat alone,
leaning his head on his hands.

Harry's soul was struck with deep compassion. He had
watched the little drama with interest, and, ardent in his
feelings, he at once formed a strong and tender attachment
for Rivington and his daughter, and at the same time conceived
a lively indignation, mingled with a disgust which he
scarcely made any effort to conceal, against Dr. Mason.

At length the poor mother became ill—too much so to leave
her berth; and, to fill the cup of her misery to overflowing,
the third and last child, a very pretty boy three years old,
was attacked with the same disorder which had carried off
his brother and sister. Miss Rivington determined to descend
into the dark and filthy hole where the poor sufferers
lay, but she was met by Harry, who gently but firmly refused
her admittance.

“I have been below,” he said. “The child must die.
I don't think the poor mother will. For her sake, one might
almost wish she might. Her only ailment is grief, and that
does its work slowly. I will see that the little creature has
all the attention possible.”

“Is the father below?”

“Poor fellow! yes, but completely prostrated with despair.”

“I think, Mr. Lennox, I had better go down.”

“No; I positively interpose force. I will not permit
your daughter, sir, to expose herself to any more danger.
I have been below. The child must die, probably to-day,
but, while he exists, suffer me to be his nurse. The

[figure description] Page 087.[end figure description]

exposure of one person is necessary, of two would be useless
and imprudent. You and your daughter attended the last:
now it is my turn.”

Mr. Rivington shook him warmly by the hand.

In the evening, as he had predicted, the boy died. This
time the mother was too weak to witness the third ceremony,
which left her childless. The father retired, as before,
to a distant part of the deck, and covered his ears with his
hands, as if to shut out the sound of the fatal plunge.

In pity to the bereaved mother, Harry spent some time
below with her. She spoke with him freely, and even
cheerfully.

“You do not seem, my good woman,” remarked he one
day, when they had been speaking of her bereaved state—
“you do not seem to be as much prostrated by your loss as
I feared you would be.”

Her lips quivered, and she wept a moment in silence.

“I feel, but I do not yield to my feelings generally.
Whom He loveth, He chasteneth. I am in his hands. My
children are removed, I doubt not wisely, from a cruel
world, where I had little power to protect or make them
happy. They are in heaven, where I hope to meet them
soon. Their sufferings are over. The Lord giveth and the
Lord taketh away: blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Harry felt as if he could have shrugged his shoulders,
but he contented himself with the reflection that her trust in
the Lord had been but poorly answered.

“I would not be ungrateful for the blessings left me,”
added the woman.

“Blessings?” echoed Harry, looking around upon the
wretched den, which he could not remain in a moment
without a sensation of disgust, and then upon the emaciated
form and face, the ragged clothes of the poor woman.
“Blessings? what blessings?”

“Here,” replied she, laying her hand upon her bosom,
“and here.”

She produced from under her pillow a small Bible. Harry
took it and turned over the leaves. They appeared
worn and almost ready to fall to pieces by the constant use
of years, but it was obviously in a state of the most perfect
cleanliness and preservation possible.

“You love to read your Bible, then?”

“I hope so: I should be very ungrateful if I did not; for

[figure description] Page 088.[end figure description]

it has consoled and supported me through many a long year
of suffering. My story is rather a sad one, but the more sad
the life, the more clear appears the divine power of that
book. I have often thought it is like the stars, which, the
blacker the night is, look more bright.”

“You have not always been in your present impoverished
state?” inquired Harry, becoming interested. “Your language
and thoughts imply education and reflection.”

“Oh yes, sir, I have always been poor and wretched,
but people are apt to think those in our class have not
thoughts and feelings like them; and when they find we
have, and when they hear us utter them, they are as surprised
as if a dumb man should speak.”

“There is a good deal of sad truth in that. But where
did you learn to express yourself so well?”

“If I express myself better than others of my condition,
it is because I have been more diligent in studying my Bible.
It has been education as well as happiness to me.
It has, moreover, taught me how to live, and, I hope, how to
die. The loss of my sweet children, in one sense, makes
me happy, and I bend to the judgment of God with more
patience than others might. Those children were so dear
to me—they were all of them so sweet, so pretty—so—”

Here she stopped and wept again.

“My mind was always disturbed with apprehensions
about them. I could neither live nor die in peace, for they
bound my soul to earth. Now I never can suffer anything
more this side the grave which will disturb my peace. A
few more years, perhaps days, and I shall join them. All
our troubles will then be at an end. I look upon my own
death as a desirable and even happy change. How can I,
then, yield to grief for them?”

“The Bible,” thought Harry, “is certainly useful in such
a case as this. What would this sick, childless, friendless
woman be without some such consolation? True or false,
earthly or divine, the Bible has its use. It is not, as I once
thought, a mere collection of absurdities. It has a task in
the world, as much as air or medicine. It performs an appointed
duty. It is like the sunshine, which warms the unclothed
and houseless, which shines with its blessed light
into the cottage as into the palace.”

Thus a certain respect for the volume he had hitherto
neglected with such indifference rose in his heart. He

[figure description] Page 089.[end figure description]

regarded it as he would have beheld some notorious quack
doctor actually perform a remarkable cure. True, it might
be by acting on the imagination of the patient, but he who
can cure the ills of life in any way, cannot justly be passed
over with contempt.

He related the conversation to Mr. and Miss Rivington,
with whom he had now become much better acquainted,
and who appeared to return his obvious friendship with one
as sincere. He expressed his astonishment and admiration
at the “philosophy of the woman.”

“I can conceive that, as the keenest anguish of life may
arise from the severing of affections, the mother's grief for
the loss of her child must approach nearest to the inconsolable;
but three children, one after the other, torn from her
in that way: it is enough to crush the heart of Socrates or
Zeno, and yet she seems actually happier than she was before.”

“This is not philosophy; it is religion,” remarked Mr.
Rivington.

“That is, philosophy embellished by fancy and strengthened
by superstition!” answered Harry.

“I perceived some time ago,” observed Mr. Rivington,
“that, while Providence has blessed you with a heart capable
of feeling all the necessity of religion, you have not yet
become aware of its truth.”

Harry looked at Miss Rivington with a certain embarrassment.

“Oh, you need not mind Helen. She has made the
subject a study, and will not be any more frightened at
your open acknowledgment of infidelity than a good physician
at the confessions of a sick patient.”

“I could hope Miss Rivington might pardon me,” said
Harry, “for acknowledging my own deficiency.”

“You mean by that, boasting of your own superiority,”
said Miss Rivington, smiling.

“I should not pardon myself,” continued he, “were I to
expose her to the contagion of bad example.”

“If it were not,” said Mr. Rivington, “that I never approach
lightly a sacred subject, I would let you try the effect
of your example on her. The contagion could not
take. You have not an argument or an impression which
she could not confute to her and your own satisfaction.

[figure description] Page 090.[end figure description]

Pray confess what you like. It will, perhaps, prove the
first step to reformation.”

“Well, then,” said Harry, frankly, “I confess at once,
that the only mystery in religion to me is, that any one of
education and sense can be found to believe it.”

“You have not examined the subject?”

“Oh yes, I have, carefully, and believed less after the
examination than I did before.”

“You did not come to the task with the proper spirit,”
observed Miss Rivington.

“Ah, that is the way the advocates of Christianity defend
their cause. First it is, you have never examined
it; then, you did not examine in the proper spirit. And
pray define to me what sort of spirit a man of sense must
have before he can be made to believe black is white.”

“My father can perhaps explain,” said Miss Rivington.

“No,” said her father; “it would be like explaining
what light is to a blind man. Life will explain it as it
rolls on over your head. Death will explain it when the
spectre appears to you. Sorrow and sickness, should you
suffer them (and you can scarcely go through the world
without doing so), will shed upon you that spirit.”

“Mysticism, transcendentalism, and all the isms,” said
Harry, laughing, “can't have any more incomprehensibleism
than this. What can a fit of the gout have to do with
an opinion on the subject? You place a sum in arithmetic
before me, and tell me twice two make five. I don't believe
it. You accuse me of not examining. Well, I do
examine, and find two and two make four. Then my spirit
is not yet prepared. I must wait till I lose my papa and
my mamma, till I get very ill (and imbecile, perhaps); then
you come to me with your arithmetic, and I tell you, perhaps,
two and two make five, or twenty, if you will, and believe
it, perhaps, simply because my feelings predominate
over my reason: and yet, after all, two and two do make
four.”

“I never debate on religion,” said Rivington, gravely,
“because a debate is a struggle for victory, not a search
after truth. Only do not deceive yourself with the idea
that you have examined the evidences of Christianity. If
Heaven spare your life, you will one day feel the want of
religion. With the want will come the spirit, and then you
will understand me.”

[figure description] Page 091.[end figure description]

Harry was silent before the mild dogmatism of the amiable
enthusiasts. He shrugged his shoulders while alone
he paced the deck late that evening to enjoy his cigar.

“Thus it is,” he thought, “that education makes of men
what it will: `just as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.'
Had this amiable person been educated to believe theft and
murder justifiable, he would still retain the opinion. Had
he been taught that Mohammed was the true God, he would
tremble and bow at the name of Mohammed. Hence,
through the wonder-working power of education, a Galilean
peasant, executed for disturbing the public peace, becomes
a divine being, and receives the worship of the same intelligent
mind which would think adoration paid to Mars or
Minerva utterly ridiculous.”

“And what do I believe?” he added, gloomily, after a
long pause. “That this world has ever been what it is,
will ever remain what it is. If God may be eternal and
from eternity, why may not the world? If God made himself,
why may not Nature have done the same? What, then,
is man? an insect! an accident! Where have gone those
dead children? Into the deep, to the fishes. They are
matter, nothing more, and the poor duped mother, who
thinks she will meet them again beside summer streams
and amid perennial groves—she is a fool! and there is
no real difference between Rivington and Barnett, between
Miss Rivington and Dr. Mason. One is as good as the
other. Yes, this lovely being, so fair, so gentle, so self-sacrificing,
has no real, only an abstract, temporary superiority
over this selfish, cowardly Mason. I ought to respect
one as much as the other. Certainly, to the eye of philosophy,
they are the same. A rose is sweeter, but not more
innocent, than a thistle. God, that is, Nature, made them
both, and hereafter they will go together to the dust. The
difference between them will not exist after death. The
admiration I feel for the one, the disgust towards the other,
is a weakness. Strange world! But as it is, it is!”

And with a cold and barren heart, the young infidel paced
the deck, quenched in his bosom all holy impulses, and
strove to turn from truth and nature into paradoxes and follies,
which he called reason and philosophy: strove, and
for the time succeeded, for to his youthful fancy life seemed
endless, and he was surrounded by all that could make
it gay and happy. Memory brought him scarcely a care,

[figure description] Page 092.[end figure description]

and hope pointed to joys which filled him with delight.
He was rich, handsome, young, gifted, absorbed by this
world, its proud plans and graceful pleasures and virtues.
He was satisfied with infidelity, because he felt no need of
God or religion. He had resources enough without them.
His happiness was his misery; his hopes were his despair.
He was like some traveller carrying a torch, whose smoky
and lurid light prevents his beholding the moon and the
stars, the order and harmony of the universe, and the hand
that created and sustains it.