CHAPTER I. RICHARD COMES TO THE CITY.

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It began to snow. What the almanac directed its readers
to look out for about this time — what his mother told Richard
of, as she tied the muffler on his neck in the morning —
what the men in the bar-rooms, where he stopped to warm
himself, seemed to be rubbing out of their hands into the fire—
what the cattle, crouching on the windward side of barn-yards,
rapped to each other with their slim, white horns —
what sleigh-bells, rapidly passing and repassing, jingled to
the air — what the old snow, that lay crisp and hard on the
ground, and the hushed atmosphere, seemed to be expecting—
what a “snow-bank,” a dense, bluish cloud in the south,
gradually creeping along the horizon, and looming midheavens,
unequivocally presaged, — a snow-storm, came
good at last.

Richard had watched that cloud, as it slowly unfurled
itself to the winds, and little by little let out its canvas, till
it seemed to be the mainsail of the huge earth, and would
bear everything movable and immovable along with it. He
saw the first flakes that skurry forwards so gingerly and
fool-happy through the valleys, as if they had nothing to do
but dance and be merry, and were not threatened by a
howling pack behind. He rejoiced in the feeling of these
herald drops on his cheeks, and caught at them with his
lips, refreshing himself in the dainty moisture; for he had
walked a long distance, and, though it was mid winter, his

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blood was warm, and his throat dry. The regular brush
commenced, — a right earnest one it was; and he had
something else to do than dally with it; — he must brave
the storm, and cleave his way through it. He had some
miles to go yet, and night was at hand. The pack he bore
grew heavier on his shoulders, his feet labored in the newfallen
snow, and what with frequent slips on the concealed
ice, his endurance was sore taxed. But he was cheerful
without, and strove to be quiet within; and made as if he
were independent of circumstance, and free from anxiety.
The storm had a good many plans and purposes of action.
It riddled the apple-trees; it threw up its embankments
against the fences; it fell soft and even upon shrubs and
flowers in the woods, as if it were tenderly burying its dead;
it brought out the farmer, to defend his herds against it; it
stirred the pluck of the school-boys, who insulted it with
their backs, and laughed at it with their faces; and, as if
to spite this, it turned upon an unprotected female, a dressmaker,
going home from her daily task, and twisted her
hood and snatched off her shawl; but, failing in the attempt
to rend her entire dress to pieces, it blinded her with its
gusts, and pitched her into the gutter. This was too much
for Richard. If his blood was hot before, it boiled now; and
flinging down his bundle, he sprang to the rescue. He raised
the woman, refitted her wardrobe, and sent her on her way
with many thanks. The storm, maddened and unchecked,
rallied, to stifle and subdue this new champion of woman's
rights. It smote Richard violently in the face, snatched
away his morsels of breath, and would have sunk him, by
sheer weight, in the White Sea that surrounded him.
When it could not do this, it flapped its enormous wings in
his face, so he could not see his way. Anon it raised its
sweep aloft, and left a little clear space, through which he

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beheld houses with bright hearth-fires, and tables savorily
spread for the evening meal, and little children getting
into their mothers' laps, as if to plague him in this fashion.
The flakes, as if each one had an individual commission,
flew in under the vizor of his cap, settled upon his eye-lashes,
clung to his muffler; some penetrated into his neck;
others explored his nostrils. He tried to whistle; but the
storm kept his lips so chilled he could not do that: he
attempted to laugh; certain flakes that sat on his lips seized
the moment to melt and run down his throat. When the
storm could not arrest his course, it began to trick him for
everybody to laugh at: it whitened his black suit, till he
looked like a miller's apprentice; the flakes piled themselves
in antic figures on his pack and shoulders, and strewed
his buttons with flaunting wreaths; they danced up and
down on his cap. But he pressed on, with a whistling
heart, as if he thought it was mere facetiousness in the
elements to do so. He knew there was love and gladness
at the core of all things; and the feathery crystals that
frolicked about him, and then laid themselves down so quietly
to sleep for the dreary months of winter, were full of beauty,
and there was a luminousness of Good Intent in all the haze
and hurly-burly of the storm. Richard was deeply religious;
and he knew God said to the snow, Be thou on the earth;
and he felt that the Divine Providence cared for the lilies
of the field as well in their decay as in their bloom; and
that a ceaseless Benignity was covering the beds where they
lay with the lovely raiment of the season, and cherishing in
the cold ground the juices that should, after a brief interval,
spring forth again, and create a gladsome resurrection of
nature.

He had none but kindly feelings when there passed him
a sleigh, with its occupants neck deep in buffalo-robes and

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coasts, and comfortably intrenched behind a breastwork of
muffs and tippets; and the horse, he knew, was merry, by
the way he shook his bells. He even went one side, and
stood knee-deep in the drifts, for a slow ox-sled to pass.
“Ho! my good fellow!” he cried to the teamster, who sat
on a strip of board, with his back bowed and braced against
the storm, as if there was to his mind certainly something
in the case suggestive of the knout; “you must bide your
time.”

“That is the first truth I have heard to-day,” responded
a gloomy voice, which, with the coarse shape in which it
was wrapped, soon swept out of hearing.

“One truth to-day,” said Richard to himself, “is something,
though it is towards night.”

He relapsed into musing and philosophizing on the world
and life, the day and hour, and on himself and his objects,
and on the City in which truth was so scarce. Of a sudden,
the Factories burst upon him, or their windows did, — hundreds
of bright windows, illuminated every night in honor
of Toil, — and which neither the darkness of the night, nor
the wildness of the storm, could obscure, and which never
bent or blinked before the rage and violence around. The
Factories, and factory life, — how it glowed at that moment
to his eye! and even his own ideal notions thereof were more
than transfigured before him, and he envied the girls, some
of whom he knew, who, through that troubled winter night,
were tending their looms as in the warmth, beauty, and
quietness of a summer-day. The Factories appeared like an
abode of enchantment; and the sight revived his heart, and
gave him a pleasant impression of the City, as much as a
splendid church, or a sunny park of trees, or fine gardens,
would have done. He was too much occupied to notice a
spread umbrella that approached him, moving slantwise

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abreast the storm, now criss-crossing, now plunging forward,
as it were intoxicated. It struck him, and in his insecure
footing, threw him.

“What is it?” said the umbrella, peering about on every
side.

“It is nothing,” replied Richard, who could hardly be
distinguished from the snow in which he rolled.

The umbrella raised itself, as if it were one great eyelid,
in astonishment, muttering, at the same time, “That's it;
I knew I should do it, and now I have!”

Beneath the umbrella was really a man, but apparently a
cloak, a long and slim cloak, with a shawl about its head
and ears; and it looked, also, as if this cloak was hung by
some central loop to the handle of the umbrella, and as if
the umbrella was the only live thing in the whole concern;
and it kept bobbing up and down in the wind, wrenching
and prying, as if it would draw the vitals from the cloak.
The language of the thing favored the idea of evisceration.
“I am almost dead!” it said.

“Let me help you,” said Richard.

“I have only a little further to go,” replied the other.

“How far have you come?” asked Richard, sympathetically,
thinking of the many miles he had fared that day.

“Across the River,” was the reply.

“Is it so far?” rejoined Richard, despairingly.

“A hundred rods or so. But one meets with so many
accidents here; and nobody's ways are taken care of, and
life is of no value whatever, in these times.”

Richard, delighted at the near end of his journey, did not
conceal his pleasure.

“You will not laugh, when you have experienced what I
have,” said the man.

“Is there nothing to do here?” asked Richard.

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“Yes, everything,” was the answer.

“Then I am secure,” added Richard.

“Move carefully!” — such was the advice of the retreating
shadow; “it is a slip, or a slump, all the way through.
You will be running into somebody else, or somebody will
run into you.”

Richard grew thoughtful; but he repelled the phantom of
discouragement, and clung closer to the good angel of common
sense and rational hope, that ever attended him.

He was coming to Woodylin to find employment. The
construction of mill-dams and railroads had sounded a general
summons, throughout the country, for capital and labor
to flow in thither. Business, which means the combined
and harmonious activity of capital and labor, was reported
to be good. The City was evidently growing, and there
were those who hesitated to say how large they thought
it would become, lest they should appear vain. Many
young men were attracted thither, and among these
was Richard Edney. He came from a farm, in a small
interior village, and brought with him considerable mechanical
expertness; and now, just turned of age, on the evening
of the day in which he set out to seek his fortune, or,
more strictly, to find a snug operative's berth, he appears
before the reader. He had a married sister in town, whose
house he would make his home.

He came to the covered bridge, and entering by the narrow
turn-stile, found a breathing-place from the storm in that
labyrinth of timbers. He stamped the snow from his feet,
and, unbuttoning his over-coat, seized the lappels with his
two hands, and shook them heartily, as if they were old
friends whom he had not seen for a long time, and then
folded them carefully to his breast.

One or two lamps suggested the idea of light, and that

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was about all. Their chief effect was shadow; they made
darkness visible, and very uncomfortably so. They worked
it into uncouth shapes, which were put skulking among the
arches, set astride of the braces, hung up like great spiders
on the rafters, and multitudes of them lay in ambuscade
under the feet of passengers. No; — if there were kind
feelings in that Bridge, — if any pulse of philanthropy ran
through those huge beams and iron-riveted joints, — if there
were any heart of good-will in that long vault, well studded
at the sides, close-pent above, and firmly braced under foot,
it was an unfortunate bridge; unfortunate in its expression,
unfortunate in its efforts to show kindness.

The readers of this story would like to know how Richard
felt. To speak more in detail, there are two popular
impressions anent the Bridge, one of which Richard avoided,
and into the other he fell. The first is, that the Bridge is
of no use, that it is a damage to the community; in other
words, that it defeats the very object for which it was built,
the facilitation of travel and increase of intercourse. For
instance, you will hear men say they could afford to keep a
horse, if it were not for the Bridge; some, that they should
ride a great deal more, if it were not for the Bridge; one,
that while his business is on one side of the water, he
should like to live on the other, but cannot because of the
Bridge; ladies, visiting on the opposite side of the river, are
always in haste to return before sunset, on account of the
Bridge. So business and pleasure, in innumerable forms,
seem to be interrupted by this structure. This feeling, of
course, Richard had not been long enough in the neighborhood
to understand or to share. But the other popular impression,
which indeed is connected with the first, he did,
in some degree, though perhaps unconsciously, entertain;
this, — that the Bridge is useful as a shelter from storms,

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from cold, and from the intense heat of summer. It has this
credit with the people; a passive credit, a credit bestowed
without the least idea of desert on its part; an accidental
good, wholly aside from the original design of the thing,
which it cannot help but bestow, and which it would not
bestow, if it could help. It is as if, in this vale of winds
and rain, the Bridge were a little arbor one side of the
way, to which the weary pilgrim can betake himself. So,
in summer, when the mercury is at ninety, or at any time
in a storm, or when the roads are muddy, you will see people
hastening to the Bridge; wagons are driven faster, and
foot-people increase their momentum. “We shall soon be
at the Bridge,” they say; or, “Here is the Bridge; I do not
care, now.” Umbrellas are furled, cloaks are loosened, feet
cleaned, and there is a smile of contentment and of home
in all faces, as soon as they reach that pavilion.

How fine a refuge it was from the hurtling snow, how
admirably it was adapted to protect one in this extremity of
the season, how dry and warm it was, what a convenient
place to take breath in; — this Richard felt. He had this
feeling even deeper than most folk. Blinded as he was by
the storm, tired by his long journey, lonely in feeling, knowing
no one, harrowed a little by the dark intimations that
had accosted him just as he got into the City, even the small
lamp that glimmered aloft had a friendly eye; and he overflowed
with gratitude to the little twinkler that worked so
patiently and so hopefully in the deathlike, skeleton ribs of
the edifice; and as he seated himself on a sill, since he did
not know anybody in particular, and had not participated in
those feelings to which we have referred, he thanked God
for the Bridge. The tramping of horse-feet, grating of
sleigh-runners, and buzz of lively voices, were heard in the
darkness; and immediately there passed near him an empty

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sleigh, driven by a man on foot, and four or five men and
women, likewise walking.

“Horrid!” exclaimed one. “What a place for robbers!”
cried another. “I had rather face it out there,” added a
third, jerking his head towards the gate, “than have my
shins barked here.” “I think the lecturer might have spent
a few evenings in a bridge like this,” interposed a fourth;
“it corresponds to his ideas of Gothic architecture. There
is the dimness, awe, and faint religious light; and there is
no place where one is so reverential, or walks so circumspectly,
as here.” These were young people, returning
from the Athenæum, and among them were members of
the Governor's Family, — a name that appears on our title-page;
and these observations fell from them while they
waited for the gate to be opened. “What is that by the
post?” exclaimed one. “A drunken man!” echoed another.
The ladies faintly screamed, and rushed towards the gate.
“You are mistaken,” said Richard, calmly, but a grain
piqued. His tone and manner recalled the young folk to
their senses, and not the least to a sense of injustice toward
a stranger; and they all stopped and looked towards him.
The light of the lamp revealed brotherly faces of young
men, and gentle faces of young women, and Richard spoke
freely. “I am very tired,” he said; “I have walked forty
miles since breakfast, and I was glad to sit here. But you
alarm me. Is this such a horrid place?” “No, indeed,”
replied one of the girls; it was the Governor's daughter
Melicent, that spoke. “We are addicted to scandalizing
the Bridge, just as one finds fault with his best friends.”

“I do not mean that,” answered Richard, “but all through
here — what is about you here — this neighborhood?”

“There are rum-shops hereabouts, and there is the foot
of Knuckle Lane,” said a young man.

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“I did not see them,” replied Richard.

“We live in St. Agnes-street,” said one of the females,
laughing very hard, “and you may have passed our houses,
the minister's, the Governor's, and all. And we all belong
here. I hope you don't think evil of us.”

“I was warned of evil hereabouts,” responded Richard.
“But I am sure I have nothing to fear from you.”

“Melicent! Barbara!” cried the laughing voice, “has he
anything to fear from you?”

“I have been misunderstood,” said Richard, laughing in
turn. “But really I have had as pure religious feeling,
while I have been resting myself on this bridge, as I ever
enjoyed, notwithstanding your slight and caricature of the
spot.”

“Benjamin!” cried the same bright voice, “defend yourself;
it is your ribaldry the young man has overheard.”

“We have come from a lecture on Architecture,” said
Benjamin Dennington; “and the rest is obvious. Fantastic
associations are awakened here.”

“You will not say,” answered Richard, “that religious
sentiment is fantastic!” This was seriously said, and the
company became silent when he spoke. “I mean,” he
added, “may not religious feeling be as pure in this place,
at this hour, as in any place at any hour?”

“Certainly, certainly,” said Melicent. “But who are you
that says this?”

“I am Richard Edney,” said our friend. “I am seeking
employment; can turn my hand to almost anything; would
like a chance in a saw-mill. Can you tell me where Asa
Munk lives?”

“I cannot,” said Benjamin; and none of them could. “I
am shivering with the cold,” said the laughing one, “and I
would advise the young man to learn better manners than

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to sit here and scare folks in the night.” “I should think
he might find some place more suitable for his devotions,”
added one of the girls. “Perhaps a mill-log would be as
agreeable for him to kneel upon as a hassock,” continued
the laughing one.

“I fear this is a bad place,” said Richard. “Farewell to
you all, gentle ladies,” he added, and went on his way.

“May it fare well with you!” rejoined Melicent Dennington,
sending her voice after him.

Richard crossed the Bridge, and by dint of information
plucked from the few people abroad at that time, he made
his way to a story-and-a-half white house, with doric pilasters,
that stood near the bank of the River, just above the
first dam.

He went in at the front door without ringing, traversed
with a quiet step the narrow, dark entry, and let himself
into the kitchen, where he knew he should find his friends.
He was evidently looked for, and warmly welcomed; his
sister embraced him affectionately, and his brother-in-law
shook his hand very cordially. They were sitting in front
of the stove, near a large table drawn to the centre of the
room, on which burned two well-trimmed lamps. His sister
was mending a child's garment; his brother was smoking,
and reading a newspaper. These people were about thirty
years of age; his sister had dark eyes and hair, and a face
that had once been handsome, but it now wore a sallow and
anxious expression; she was neatly dressed in dark-sprigged
calico. The brother-in-law, or Munk, as everybody called
him, had a freer look, and more sprightly bearing. He had
a small, twinkling, blue eye, a long, good-humored chin, and
slender, sorel whiskers. He wore a stout teamster's frock,
girded at the waist. If a shadow of seriousness sometimes

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stole over him, it was instantly dissipated, or illumined, by
a cheerful voice and a jocund laugh.

Richard laid off his pack and over-coat. “Do not shake
off the snow here, brother,” said his sister; “let Asa take
the things into the shed.”

Richard took off his boots, and sank into the rocking-chair
his sister drew up for him, with his feet bolstered on
the clean and bright stove-hearth. As he has now got out
of the storm and his storm-gear, and looks like himself, our
readers would like to know how he looks. He, like his
sister, had dark eyes and hair; his features were comely, his
forehead was fairly proportioned, his eyebrows were distinct
and well placed, his mouth was small, and his teeth white.
His predominant expression was cheerfulness, frankness,
earnestness. He had what some would call an intellectual
look; and, judging from the contour of his head, one would
see that he possessed a modicum of moral qualities. His
cheeks were browned by the weather, but his forehead preserved
a belt of skin of remarkable whiteness. He was of
medium height, and his body was strongly built, and in all
its members very regularly disposed. He wore a red shirt,
and a roundabout, sometimes called a monkey-jacket. His
coat, vest and pantaloons, were of a dark, stout cloth, which
his mother had evidently manufactured, as she possibly had
been the tailoress of her son.

His sister hastened supper for him; she toasted the bread,
cut fresh slices of corned beef, and prepared a cup of fragrant,
hot tea. They all sat round the table, and each had
many inquiries to make, and many to answer; and many
details of home, and friends, and life, to dilate upon. The
supper was abundant, and freely eaten, but it was not satisfying;
an uneasiness remained—so much so, that, although
Richard resumed his chair by the stove, he could not sit in

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it. He looked from side to side of the kitchen, and at last
thrust his head into a partly-opened door, that led into the
bed-room. “Not to-night,” whispered his sister, earnestly.
“I must,” said Richard. “Let him, Roxy,” said Munk.
“I must see them,” said Richard. “You will wake them,”
replied his sister. “I have made it a rule not to have
them waked after they have once been put to sleep. It will
get them into bad habits, and they have troubled me about
going to bed.” “I will not wake them,” added Richard,
pushing himself still further into the room. “Only let me
see them; let me have a light, that I may look at them.”
“Not on any account!” exclaimed his sister. “I always
said, if ever I had a child, it should not be waked up after
it was put to sleep.” But he seized a lamp, which his
brother, despite the remonstrances of Roxy, handed him, and
shading it with his fingers, went into the room. Munk followed,
and leaned upon the door-post, with much fatherly
fondness, and perhaps some brotherly pride. His sister
went too, plainly with the expectation of beholding her predictions
verified, and with the desire, also, of having displayed
before the eyes of her husband the consequences
she had so often denounced. What appeared? Two little
children, snugly asleep in their truckle-bed; two girls they
were,—one about four years old, the other of a year and a
half. Two beautiful cherub heads were all that could be
seen, and if they were not truly alive, they might have been
taken for the best of sculpture. The hair of the oldest one
had been treated with a cap, which had fallen off; and that
of the youngest was free and loose, soft, silvery, and running
every way in little shining curls, and half-formed natural ringlets.
“I see,” said the mother. “So do I,” said the uncle, as,
holding the lamp over his head, he stooped towards the
sweet, tempting faces. “You mean to wake them!” cried

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the mother. “I mean to kiss them,” responded Richard.
“Let him,” whispered the father. “It is impossible,” said
the mother; “it is contrary to all the rules I have laid down
for the children, and what Mrs. Mellow said.” “I will not
do that,” added Richard; and, making an effort, he did not;
but hovered about the faces of the children, put his mouth
towards one, and then the other, and kissed the air between,
as if that was sweet enough; experimented with the light
on this side and on that, to get every possible view of them;
with his thumb and finger took hold of the little velvety
hands, that lay over the quilt. “Did they not know I was
coming?” he asked. “They have talked about nothing
else all day,” replied his brother; “Memmy asks about
Uncle Richard; Bebby can't articulate, but she mows and
winks, and knows all about it.” “They have the promise
of seeing you in the morning,” said his sister, “and went
quietly to sleep on that.” The children slumbered on,
undisturbed alike by the storm above the roof, and the
deep anxieties and affections that were shaking beneath.
“Mother sent them some cakes and apples; they are in my
luggage. I should love to give them to them to-night.”

“How foolish you are, brother!” said Roxy. “I would
not have them eat such things, just before going to bed, for
the world.”

But Richard got the apples, large and rosy, which he
held insinuatingly before the closed eyes of the children;
pleased himself with imagining how they would like to eat
them; put them close to their cheeks, as it were comparing
colors; and, when he had finished this pantomime, laid them
on the coverlid in front of their mouths; and they left the
room.

This slight ripple of discord having spent itself, their
hearts returned to their old and proper level of kindness and

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brotherly feeling. They resumed their seats by the fire,
which burned briskly and noisily. Roxy took her sewing;
Munk leaned back against the wall, with his feet on a
round of his wife's chair, and continued to smoke; and
Richard, by the warmth of his heart, as well as that of the
fire, tried to subdue the chills with which a long walk in
the open air had infused his system.

“I do not doubt,” said Roxy, “that Richard loves the
children, and that their father does; but you are very injudicious.”

“Perhaps I was hasty,” said Richard.

“I believe I shall go to California,” said Munk. This
last remark was evidently thrown in, not to aid conversation,
or even to decoy it, but to quench it altogether, when
it happened to take a disagreeable turn.

Richard went to bed. His chamber — such as a story-and-a-half
house affords — was small and low, with sloped
ceiling, but plastered, papered, and quite convenient. It
contained a looking-glass, side-table, and fireplace. The
single window of which it could boast looked out upon the
River, and a beautiful landscape beyond. The bed was soft
and warm; and, after offering his evening thanksgiving to
the Giver of all good, exhausted and weary, our young
friend sank into a sound sleep.

Early in the morning, he was aroused by the clamor of
voices at his bed-side; there stood the disputed little ones,
in their night-gowns, each with an apple in its hands, with
which they were pummeling the face of their uncle, and at
the same time making very awkward attempts to clamber
into the bed. One of them, as the father said, could talk,
and the other could make a noise; but neither lacked the
power of rendering itself intelligible. Their uncle lifted
them up, and had them on either side of him, where he

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kissed and embraced their tender bodies to his heart's content.
But they were not for lying there. They mounted
his neck and shoulders; they took all sorts of liberty with
his nose and eyes, and ended with an endeavor to drag
him from the bed. He yielded to the children what the
storm could not accomplish, and came almost headlong to
the floor. Presently, taking Bebby in his arms, and mounting
Memmy on his back, he went below.

CHAPTER II. THE GOVERNOR'S FAMILY.

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Let us go back to the previous evening, and down St.
Agnes-street, into the Governor's house, soon after the young
people have returned from the lecture.

This house, of a fashion forty years old, was large, threestory,
brick, surrounded by a portico, and pleasantly embayed
in trees, some dozen or fourteen rods from the street.

On this boisterous winter night, the family are gathered
in a spacious apartment, called the sitting-room. In the
centre of the room is a large mahogany table, carefully
covered with a damask counterpane, over which a solar
lamp sheds its strong light. Around the table are seated
the family, if we may except the Governor himself, who, in
front of a blazing wood fire, reclines in a rocking-chair, with
his feet on the jamb. The mother of the family, or, as she
is commonly known, Madam Dennington, controls one side
of the table, with her sewing spread before her. She has
also under her special control a spermaceti candle, and a
pair of silver snuffers, with which, in moments of excitement,
she makes energetic starts for the candle-wick. It
was not her wish to have the solar lamp. Her father, Judge
Weymouth, used candles, and she had used them for thirty
years; and they answered their purpose, and she was indisposed
to see their province invaded. She wore a turban,
out of regard to her mother. She was short, erect, and
retained that vigor of eye and dignity of manner for which
her family were celebrated.

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About the table were the children and relatives of the
family. The governor had twelve children, of whom eleven
survived. The name of the deceased one, Agnes, was preserved
in the street on which they resided. Four were
married from home. The others, in order, were Roscoe,
Benjamin, Melicent, Barbara, Eunice, and two smaller ones,
who at this hour were abed. Roscoe was about twenty-six,
and the rest succeeded in due course of nature.

The relatives were Miss Rowena, a cousin of Madam's,
and Mrs. Melbourne, a lady reared in the family of the
Rev. Dr. Dennington, father of the Governor, and who, for
many years, had been a member of the household of the
latter.

Roscoe was addicted to bachelor habits, and bachelor
moods; he had no fondness for society, and a good education
he found scope for in the management of his father's
farm. Benjamin was a lawyer.

Madam was nervous, and, above all things, dreaded a
scene; and when the wind howled at the house, and shook
the windows, she started, as if one was coming. She was
religious, and seasoned her words with verses of Scripture.
She was industrious, and plied the needle assiduously; yet
not for herself, but for others; and not always for the work
to be done, but for the example to be set.

If she relished the old r/da/egime, she was charitable to the
new; and while she sought to preserve the times past, her
good sense and strong faith inspired her with interest in
those to come. She reverenced the clergy, and defended
the reformer.

Her daughters were passing from the flower of youth
into the beauty and richness of womanhood. Their dress
honored the simple taste of their mother; it was plain,
becoming, and neat without ornament. The two relatives

[figure description] Page 025.[end figure description]

were benevolent looking people, whose happiness seemed to
consist in making the family happy.

Miss Rowena had a lively and jocose turn; while Mrs.
Melbourne was subject to depression of spirits, in which
moments her vision was hazy, and her feelings petulant.

We have said this was a large room; it had, also, an air
of great amenity and comfort. The lamp wrought a quiet
but deep illumination in all parts of it; the open fire was
cheerful; nay, it was inspiring, at such times as these, when
that well-meaning but stupid creature, with a cast-iron face,
has undertaken to perform for us the office of warmth and
sociability through the long months of winter, but which
the Governor, with a luxurious or an antiquated feeling,
summarily dismissed from his premises. Pictures garnished
the walls, a sofa invited to repose, a piano suggested music,
a stand in one corner was enriched with choice literature;
under one of the windows was a table, stocked with flower
pots, and bearing geraniums and roses in bloom, and many
plants whose living verdure was a shelter for the feelings
from the storm; the mantel-piece constituted a general news
office, and collected the papers, pamphlets, letters, for daily
distribution; above it was suspended a shell card-rack, the
more select depository of the lace-edged and enameled
missives of fashion and polite society. A large mirror, on
one wall, reproduced, in attractive vista, this pleasant scene,
and prolonged the interest which the room afforded to contemplation.

The Governor left his rocking-chair, and paced to and fro
on the back side of the room. He had always condemned
rocking-chairs, and now, in his advancing years, he would
not sit in one a great while at a time; thus keeping on good
terms his age and his principles. His hands locked behind
him under his dressing-gown, his head bent forwards, he

[figure description] Page 026.[end figure description]

seemed to be in a brown study; — it was a passive habit.
He stopped against the window, and looked askance at the
storm, as if he were suspicious of it, but said nothing. He
had practised, all his life, the school-boy direction of not
speaking until he was spoken to; and, on the whole, not
without a certain advantage, since he acquired more than
he gave out, and not being over-communicative, he was
deemed very trustworthy; and since every one has some
things to say which he does not wish to have said again, it
follows that a silent man in society must gather up a vast
deal of confidence, like a well-regulated institution, in which
people like to vest their spare capital, knowing that it will
not break; — sometimes awfully like the sea, into which
malefactors hurl dead men's bodies, and even their frightful
bags of gold, knowing they will not rise again.

In the kitchen, if any of our readers are disposed to make
a further survey of the premises, is also what must now be
called an old-fashioned fire; yet one, judging from the size
of the sticks, destined to do good service yet, and of a sort
of wood that, without fruit in its living state, when brought
to the hearth, bears the richest flame-blossoms, and expires
in a ruddy, glowing crop of coals, — rock-maple. Here
were also a man-servant and a maid-servant; the one, in
one corner of the hearth, engaged, as probably fifty thousand
of our population are at this moment, reading a newspaper,
lamp in hand. The woman, modestly retired to the
other corner, at a small table, is turning an old silk dress
into a mantilla.

A fresh gust of wind, like a wave of the sea, struck the
house, and moaned piteously in every crevice of door and
window.

“God remember the poor!” said Madam, in an under but
earnest voice, without looking at anybody in particular; at

[figure description] Page 027.[end figure description]

the same time hurrying the snuffers into the candle, as if
she would extinguish all the poverty in creation, and
pressing the cloth she was sewing with her left hand tightly
on the table, as if she were, in her own mind, stanching the
sorrows of the race.

“They will need some additional help,” added the Governor,
in a quiet way.

“Yes, indeed!” replied his wife; and she recited that
passage of Scripture which intimates how vain it is to bid
the destitute be warmed, without giving them what is
needful. Then she asked, “Has that wood gone to the
O'Conners?”

“I heard the crackling of it in their stove, this afternoon,”
said Melicent, “and saw the joyous glow of it in the faces
of the family.”

Once more the storm thwacked the house, to keep stirring
and active in its inmates the remembrance of humanity;
and, at this time, to give additional pathos to its proceedings,
it roared up and down the chimney, as it were mimicking,
in condensed reverberations, the hollow, unheeded
moan of universal wretchedness.

Madam acknowledged the force of this appeal; but she
was not to be thrown from her balance, and she snuffed the
candle with marked deliberation. Marked, in truth; —
Miss Rowena saw it, and nodded to Melicent across the
table; Mrs. Melbourne saw it, and grew sombre in the
face. Now, Mrs. Melbourne had a favorite horse, which
she was very tender of, all weathers. Moreover, this horse
had not once been mentioned in course of the evening; and
Mrs. Melbourne knew Madam was not thinking of it, and
this worried her. Not but that this lady had a regard for
the poor; she had, but she claimed an enlargement of sympathy
even to the bounds of the mute creation.

[figure description] Page 028.[end figure description]

Madam kept to her own thoughts. Turning to her
grandchild, who sat in the corner, she said, “Alice Weymouth!
Alice Weymouth!” But the child was asleep.

“Asleep!” exclaimed madam, “asleep, under such
preaching as this? Asleep, when terror is calling, so
hoarse and mournful? Asleep, when love is summoning all
the elements to speak for it?” She did not say this loud
and boisterously, but with that subordination of manner
which never deserted her.

“I don't wonder the child sleeps,” said Mrs. Melbourne;
“she went half a mile, with a bed-blanket, before tea; and I
scruple if the horse in the stable has a shred to his back.”

There was a mixture of causticity and kindness in this
observation; she wished to reproach her cousin, and the
family in general, for their neglect of the brute, at the same
time seeking to shield the child from the apparent severity
of her grandmother. In all this, Mrs. Melbourne had the
habit of flattering herself she was peculiarly, nay, in a
double-fold, benevolent; and she took the flattery more to
heart, because it was wholly a matter of her own contrivance,
and no one helped her in it.

“Yes, yes,” continued Madam, “bed-blanket is warming
three, by this time; turkey sent yesterday stayed a whole
table-full of stomachs.” Here she raised her voice, as if she
were squaring accounts with the weather, and the weather
was a trifle deaf, and she meant her own side of the case
should be fairly put: “Milk is served regularly every morning;
have Peter's boys taken the cold meat?” Hereupon
the wind lulled. This gave Madam an opportunity to
declare there never was such a storm.

“We have had just such storms, every winter, for forty
years,” replied the Governor, quietly; “and you have said
the same thing,” he added, “this is now the fortieth time.”

[figure description] Page 029.[end figure description]

There was no point, no sharpness, in this rejoinder; it was
only uttered as a pleasant reminiscence.

“Yes, indeed,” she replied, twisting a little in her chair,
but soon regaining her composure; “there is nothing new
under the sun. What has been, shall be.” Nor did she
rejoin this out of servile deference to the Governor, or
because she deemed the Scripture absolute authority on
every topic that might be broached; but a moment's reflection
recalled to mind those liberal views and permanent convictions
that lay deep in her nature, and which exciting
events, like the storm, seemed for the instant to obliterate.

These things passed with little or no notice. Miss Rowena
laughed through her hand; a smile rose to the surface
of the lips of Melicent, like a dolphin at play, and disappeared.
The room was bright, and all were tranquil. The
Governor went to bed; he went without a light, — he
always did so. He said it facilitated sleep, to go to the
place of recumbency through a long passage of darkness,
and not flash into slumber too suddenly. Benjamin had one
shoulder piled on the end of the table, and the paper as
near his eyes as possible, and his eyes as near the light;—
he was near-sighted, and wore glasses; — and his reading
was intense, and was evidently fighting its way into
something. Eunice had gone to the piano, and while
the storm was dashing at the keys of her mother's heart,
she was offering herself, eyes, ears, imagination, fingers, to
the service of a couple of bars of music, and seemed unmistakably
wishing that something would fling her bodily on
to the keys of her instrument; but there was reluctance, or
great short-coming, somewhere; there were but few reasonable
tones to be heard.

Benjamin laid down his paper, and his glasses on top of
it, and rubbed his right eye very hard with the knuckle of

[figure description] Page 030.[end figure description]

his forefinger. “There is something in it,” said he, “if it
could only be got at.”

“I have no doubt there is,” answered Eunice, “but who
shall say what?”

“I have been thinking there might be,” said Barbara.

“What if there is?” interposed Mrs. Melbourne; “who
really cares?”

“Indeed, there is!” responded Madam; “and there are
a good many that care.”

“No doubt,” echoed Roscoe.

What should happen, at this instant, but that all these
persons were thinking of different things; Benjamin of
California gold, Eunice of her music, Barbara of Richard
Edney, Mrs. Melbourne of the horse, Madam of the poor,
and Roscoe of the effect of the cold on peach-trees. The
evening wore on, the lights dulled, the fire burnt low; and
these folk were becoming languid, and relapsing into a halfstupid,
half-unconscious state, in which the mind speaks out
as it were in sleep, or in intoxication; and each of them, by
a sort of hidden wire-pulling, exposed what had been on his
mind for the last fifteen minutes. They were in a jumble,
a laughable jumble; and when they began to explain, they
fell into a greater jumble, and laughed a good deal harder;
their thoughts twirled one another round, and tripped each
other's heels, — all in play. Their thoughts, secretly controlled
by the real harmony of their feelings, fell into
groups and circles, and a sort of wild polka gallopade;
but Barbara's thought, being the newest and strongest, got
the upper hand, and led off, with all the others following it;
and Barbara's thought was Richard Edney.

I dare say many of our readers have been having the
same thought; and since Richard Edney's name is so near
the Governor's Family, on the title-page, they are glad to

[figure description] Page 031.[end figure description]

have it get in there at last, and perhaps wonder how it will
be treated. That is easily told; — it was laughed at. Miss
Rowena loved to laugh, and to be decorous too. To unite
these two things, she bit her lip. If we should say now she
bit her lip hard — the fact — it would only be saying she
laughed hard.

Eunice said she hoped he would find Asa Munk's; Barbara
hoped he would find work; Miss Rowena hoped so
too, and then he would not be out late evenings, frightening
people in strange places; Melicent desired that his innocence
and simplicity might not suffer.

“There would be great danger of it,” said Miss Rowena,
“if he had happened in St. Agnes-street.”

“What! what!” ejaculated Madam, quickly and nervously.
She folded up her work, and unfolded it. She
rolled the edge of it in her fingers, and unrolled it. Just as
she was going to bed, and the storm was subsiding, she was
not prepared for the introduction of a stranger, or a strange
topic; and while she commiserated any one in distress, she
was not quite prepared, at that late hour, to go in quest of
new objects.

“What is it?” she asked, emphatically; for all witnessed
her agitation, but none answered her directly. There
was a mixture of shame and suspense in their recollections
of what transpired; and what they said was as confused as
it was lively.

Alice Weymouth, the granddaughter, who had been of
the party to the lecture, related that they had met a drunken
man, or a tired man, or an old man, she hardly knew which;
nor whether he was young or old had she any clear impression;
and had left him to find his way, in an unknown
town. Mrs. Melbourne hinted they might have offered him
a bed. Madam, truly considerate as she was of the world

[figure description] Page 032.[end figure description]

at large, shrank from the idea of an utter stranger in the
house; and in this very thing, Mrs. Melbourne, by pushing
her benevolence a little further than the rest, contrived to
keep up a little quarrel, and attain a brief triumph, on the
gentlest of topics, and with people whom, from the bottom
of her soul, she loved. It was her weakness. Miss Rowena
intimated that he might sleep with the hired man, who
would take care of him if he was likely to do mischief.

The young ladies drew their chairs about the fire;
Madam turned down the solar lamps, sent Alice to bed,
and admonishing her daughters not to make free with
strangers, or light of misery, went to her chamber.

The young ladies lifted the smooth folds of their hair over
their ears, undid their belts, and sat musing upon the
embers on the hearth.

“A liberal, hopeful, wise human voice, anywhere,” said
Melicent, “anywhere, is something; but there,” she went
on, “there, in that darkness, that solitude, with the storm
racketing and rending around it, and those weird shadows
behind it, and the bitter, sullen cold piercing it, — how very
strange it is!”

She thrust her fingers further under her hair, and raised
it higher over her ears, as if she would hear more of that
voice.

“Voices!” said Barbara. “Speech, a breath, a sigh, a
prolongation of feeling, a flight of wish, an impersonation;
without properties or relations; without the weights of
flesh and blood; without the temptations of accident or
position; without poverty, or ignorance, or vice; without
ill-nature or ill-breeding; without folly or prejudice; without
circumstance and without inevitability; — yes, voices
are well enough, and there is plenty of them.”

“I have no doubt there are some in my piano,” added

[figure description] Page 033.[end figure description]

Eunice; “and, like the woman and her goose, I should like
to break it open and get at them.”

“Eunice!” cried one from the chamber, “is it not time
you were abed? Alice Weymouth would excuse you, but
it would be a trial to her feelings, which are a little tender
such a night as this.”

“There is a voice for you,” said Eunice, “right from the
pit of your mother's heart. The weather, that has chilled
every fibre of my fingers, has thawed out the great aorta of
her sensibilities. How do you like it? How did you use
to like it, when you were of my age, — snatching you away
from pleasant company, breaking up your tête-à-têtes with
the low fire, spoiling the pleasant feeling of your own independence
and womanhood, blasting the enchantment of a
novel or a moonlight, chasing you up stairs, and giving you
no rest till you slipped away from it beneath three heavy
coverlids?”

Eunice, as one of the younger children, still required, or
received, some motherly looking after. She was an obedient
child, and did what her mother wished her to do; she shut
the piano, kissed her sisters, and retired.

The two sisters, by this time, were left alone; one by one,
all had gone; the last footsteps on the stairs were heard,
the last door was shut, the last muffled creaking in the distant
chambers had died away.

But no gloom or sorrow remained, though but one candle
burned, and but a handful of coals were alive. The storm
was over; the atmosphere fell into repose; the moon
looked down upon the hills sleeping beneath their robes
whiter than Marseilles quilts, with a calm, gushing eye,
like a mother upon her little children in bed; and the clouds,
soft as summer, looked lovingly upon the moon. The parlor
could not be empty; for the moonlight came in at the

[figure description] Page 034.[end figure description]

windows, and brought with it the shadows of the great
elms that stood before the house, the branches of which
went to extemporizing pretty patterns of things right
over the figures of the carpet, getting up a smart trial
between nature and art, and half persuading us of the
superiority of the first. More than this, the spirit of love
and the sense of a divine presence remained; parental and
brotherly kindnesses and attentions kept their place good;
gladness and joy still sat about the table; wisdom and reverence
held its seat in the great rocking-chair; the words
of the dead and the memories of the absent brooded among
them; and voices, — a thousand murmuring voices of beauty,
sweetness, ideality, ecstasy, — like a rivulet, flowed around
the piano.

These sisters were alike, and they were unlike. They
were about the same age, height and weight. Strangers
often mistook one for the other. They were fully and symmetrically
developed. Their constitutions had been reinforced
by exercise, and nurtured by work. With every
means of luxury, their habits were moderate. The features
of both had rather a Roman than a Grecian cast. They
were light complexioned, but Barbara retained throughout
an infusion of shadow deeper than Melicent; her eyes were
darker, her skin, and her hair. White was a becoming
color for both; while pink was the favorite fancy dress of
Barbara, and blue of Melicent. Melicent was the type of
perfect women; Barbara was a perfect woman: the beauty
of the one softened into the roundness of the whole;
that of the other was concentrated into the sharpness
of the individual. If you were acquainted with many
excellent women, you would fancy you had seen a dozen
Melicents to one Barbara. They had both been to the
same schools, they read the same books, and belonged

[figure description] Page 035.[end figure description]

to the same church. In dietetics, Melicent drank coffee,
Barbara drank tea. In recreation, Barbara liked to waltz,
Melicent preferred the minuet. They were both Christians;
but Barbara sometimes speculated on the miracles,—
Melicent loved the Saviour; Barbara aspired after, and
sometimes stumbled in pursuit of, the infinities of the universe, —
Melicent delighted to yield herself to the serene,
unconscious currents of the immortal life; Melicent bore her
cross with the patience of a martyr, — Barbara carried off hers
more with the ease of a strong man. Barbara had more
ideality, — Melicent more purity; Barbara more impulse, —
Melicent more firmness. Melicent possessed force of character, —
Barbara power of manner. In filial devotion they
were equal; but Melicent staid at home when her mother
wished her to stay, and Barbara went abroad when her
mother wished her to go. Barbara would make a sacrifice
if her parents insisted; Melicent would make one after they
had ceased to insist. Barbara was more lively, — Melicent
more solid. Barbara could joke with the best of feelings;
when Melicent had the best of feelings, she could not joke.
In respect of humanity, Barbara was an Abolitionist, — Melicent
gave herself to the cause of Peace. Barbara had great
hope for the race, — Melicent a strong faith in it. Both
excelled in music; but Barbara preferred Beethoven, — Melicent,
Strauss. Barbara would create a deeper and stronger
impression, — Melicent a pleasanter and warmer sympathy.
Barbara would suggest a thousand thoughts to you, — Melicent
would transfuse you with a certain stillness and serenity
that would speedily fill with thoughts.

These sisters looked out on the moonlight; but they did
not go to the same window, nor did they put their arms
around each other, in the common glow of beautiful entranced
feeling. One went to a window on one side of the chimney,

[figure description] Page 036.[end figure description]

—the other to the other. They spoke to each other, as it
were, through the chimney; each heart felt, and uttered,
and reflected back, the glorious world without, not to itself,
but that the other heart might hear. Barbara said, “O
Spirit of Eternal Beauty, keep me this night!” Melicent
responded, “O beautiful love of God, I am thine to-night!”

They set in place the chairs, wheeled back the sofa,
removed the lamp and damask cloth from the table, that it
might be ready for the servants to lay the breakfast in the
morning; exchanged the elegant, downy hearth-rug for an
obsolete, thread-bare one; raked up the fire, bolted the
door; and they too went to bed.

We offer this chapter to our readers, not because it contains
matter rare or striking; — it does not; it is of common
and familiar things; — and because it is of common and
familiar things, we write it. It is a simple picture of a
worthy American family, that we would like to preserve,
but which we are more anxious to present to our distant
readers.

American family! Patagonian? Esquimaux? Nay;
an United States of North American. Between a barbarism
on the one hand and a falsity on the other, we adopt the
falsity. A little euphuistic conformity is to be preferred to
a broken pate. We are not puissant enough to throw the
glove to national pride in favor of a proper nomenclature.
The force of this observation will be felt when we drop
down to the next.

Our distant readers. We mean the English, French,
German, Swedish. But more, much more. Philosophy
teaches that nothing is lost; and this tale must survive.
Morality urges the illimitableness of human influence;
wherefore we may calculate that some waye of kind appreciation
will cast these pages on the remotest shores. Now,

[figure description] Page 037.[end figure description]

if license can be had from the Imperial Commission of
Turkey, and our friend, Ees Hawk Effendi, of Constantinople,
amidst other engagements, shall be able to complete
the translation, we hope to publish the book in that celebrated
metropolis.

But there are pirates in that region, who will undoubtedly
be on the alert, and use so favorable an occasion to
pounce upon the work, and translate it into the language of
contiguous nations, — say the Tartars, — where its circulation,
unimpeded by copy-right, must be immense.

Now, it is an established premise of history, that the Tartars,
or ancient Scythians, peopled Europe; that the AngloSaxons
and Normans came primarily from the banks of the
Caspian. Whence it follows that we, soi-disant Americans,
deduce our genealogy from a spot renowned as the home of
Genghis Khan and Tamerlane.

Consider, then, the pleasure of introducing a work like
this among our almost forgotten ancestors! With what
delight must they hail intelligence from their long-lost, but
still alive and well, trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific children!
With what eagerness will the ladies, God bless them! of
Samarcand, that famous city, order the numbers, as they
successively appear, done in silk paper — no other is used
there — in the book-stalls of the great bazaar of the place!
How exhilarating for the dear creatures, in loose, flowing
costume, with this volume in hand, to stroll into the valley
of the Sogd, where, says the old geographer, Ibn Haukal,
“we may travel for eight days, and not be out of one delicious
garden;” read to each other about their cousins, Richard
and Melicent, and Memmy and Bebby, under the shade
of the glorious plane-trees, and cool their transports in an
atmosphere of musk, which is exhaled indigenously from

[figure description] Page 038.[end figure description]

the soil! How it must relieve the tedium of the caravan, to
have something of this sort to peruse on the way!

Then, to retrace our steps a few degrees, let us imagine
the ladies of Constantinople, in their frequent excursions on
the Bosphorus, in those ca/du/iks, the “neatest and prettiest
boats ever seen,” reclined on soft and meditative cushions,
and alternating the magnificent scenery around them with
glances at these simple, domestic pages; — would it not be a
fine idea?

But there is a cloud in this bright anticipation, — and that
is the point we would impress, — a cloud arising from the
misnomer just alluded to. Our Usbek relatives and Ottoman
friends will not understand the term, “American
Family.” They would naturally associate the Governor,
his kindred and contemporaries, with the Russians of
Alaska. A great mistake. Why not call them a New
England family? For the reason that they are not; but
are an United States of North American one.

This note, addressed, indeed, to our cognates and fellowcitizens,
will nevertheless fulfil its design as regards these
distant literary circles, and explain what would otherwise
be a kind of ethnical and geographical myth. And certainly,
if this volume is to go among the Tartars, we cannot
but be anxious that the introduction be as smooth and
unencumbered as possible.

It will not only shed light on the interesting topic of the
names of places, to which we may again refer; — it will
likewise support the propriety of certain matters that may
appear in the progress of these chapters.

CHAPTER III. RICHARD FINDS EMPLOYMENT.

[figure description] Page 039.[end figure description]

The next day Munk went with Richard to the Saw-mills.
There were many of these stretched along the canals leading
from the River. They were large buildings; long,
broad and low, and one story high. Busy, busy; so busy,
as Richard looked into one and another, his first thought
was, they must want assistance; but he soon found they
all wanted work. In a great city, everybody seems to be
doing something, and it seems as if there was something
for everybody to do; but try it, just try it! They came
to one known from its color as the Green Mill.

“Here is Captain Creamer,” said Munk, “a great friend
and patron of young operatives; I will introduce you. He
rents two or three saws.”

Captain Creamer was a man whom time dealt gently with,
while advancing years served to ripen his person and
graces; and with a few additions of art, — and art, we are
told, is the interpreter of nature, as in this instance she
labored to give most certainly the spirit of nature, and nature
is kind, — additions of art, we say, as lunar caustic
for his gray hair, and porcelain for his empty gums, he
would pass for quite youthful.

“I hope,” said the Captain, speaking politely, “you are
very well, Mr. Munk, and that Mrs. Munk is well. Belle
Fanny I need not inquire after; a bargain, that, Mr. Munk;
she is the neatest trotter the city can boast. That is my
judgment. Brother-in-law, you say; I am glad to see Mr.

[figure description] Page 040.[end figure description]

Edney. I think I have heard of you. A new one seeking
employment. They come fast. I think I have condemned
ten applications within a week.”

“Then you have no chance for him,” concluded Mr.
Munk.

“No, no; I did not say so. But it takes extraordinary, I
might say, mountaineous talents, to succeed. He has friends
who are interested for him, and his own heart is interested
for itself. As the poet has said, he has on the whole armor.
Let me see you measure and figure on that stock of
boards.”

Richard took the rule and chalk, and in a few minutes
reported an accurate and very neat account.

“Proficiency,” replied the Captain, “proficiency. Considerable
tact. Mr. Kilmarnok,” — he addressed the
head-stock man, — “let this young man take your place
a moment.”

The head-stock was the controlling and responsible end
of a stick of timber on the works, and the head-stock man
superintended the whole operation of sawing; so that Richard
was put to a critical task.

“He sights well,” said the Captain. “He handles the
bar as if he had seen one before. He must have practised.
Merit, merit, certainly. Talent in his bail-dog; his
drop-down-feed, Mr. Munk, shines. It shines, as has been
justly observed, like a hole in a blanket.”

Richard stood in perspiration and trepidation. The
severity of the eye that followed his movements was frightful.

Trembling and confused, when the log was run through,
in attempting to stop the saw, he seized the “start,” or
handle of the lever that belonged to a “cutting-off' saw,
near by, and set that going. The Captain was in an

[figure description] Page 041.[end figure description]

uproar; Mr. Kilmarnok stepped forward, and corrected the
mistake.

“Lame,” ejaculated the Captain, “and most unfortunate.
What a pity! A most shuperior piece of work spoilt by
these blotches! I am sorry for him. Let him attempt the
tail-stock. No, no; he will only disgrace himself. I have
no interest in this matter, Mr. Munk. I am only anxious
that our young men should honor themselves and the cause.
But they should confine themselves to what they can do
well. Head-stock is nice business; and if he perseveres, we
shall have the happiness of meeting him there, some time or
another. Let him show his butting. I have no doubt he
is a master there.”

Richard took an axe, and very neatly proceeded to “butt”
a log; that is, cut the end of it square off.

“A well-directed blow. A handsome calf. The swing
of his axe is pleasing, — it is positively luxuriating; as Dr.
Broadwell observed, the little hills of feeling within us clap
their hands.” So the Captain echoed the strokes.

Richard took breath and courage. The men in the mill
were looking at him, and he did not know but he should be
degraded before them; but these encouraging words of the
Captain revived him. The Captain's teeth glistened with
delight, and his arms shook applause.

“Do you think you shall be able to give me work?”
asked Richard, quite hopefully.

“Give you work?” responded the captain, very archly.
“We pay for our work. But it is necessary to begin small;
you see that it is. In the little and common matter of
chopping, you do well. But, alas! how many choppers
there are! Why, everybody can chop.”

“Then you do not want me,” added Richard.

“I did not say that. I only wish you to know your own

[figure description] Page 042.[end figure description]

powers. I wish you not to adventure too much. This is
a great field. You see Mr. Kilmarnok; you think you can
do as well as he does. It seems only a few steps there.
It is a great ways from the butt to the head-stock. How
would he do in the slip, Mr. Munk?”

“You can try him,” replied the latter.

Richard, armed with a picaroon, descended the slip, some
thirty feet, to the basin, where the logs lay in the water
ready to be drawn in, and by aid of the tooth of the mill-chain
dog, to be hauled to the bed of the mill. Richard,
standing on one log, and aiming a blow at another, lost his
balance and slipped into the water. Recovering himself, he
pushed still more energetically the experiment on which he
was sent.

“Tut, tut!” so the Captain expressed his disappointment
to Munk. “That it should have happened! I feel for the
young man. You recollect, Mr. Munk, at the lecture before
the Mechanics' Association we had explained to us the
difference between genius and doing. Now, your brother-in-law
can do many things; I acknowledge that, — no man
can deny that; but has he genius? I ask you. He can do,
and do well, if he will only keep to his sphere. He has
some axe-genius, perhaps; but he fails on the picaroon, —
utterly fails. He fails on the head-stock. He may have
some slight picaroon doing. He lacks self-oblivimy, and
is too tiercy; not enough of the barrel and the tub, Mr.
Munk. Ambition! oh, what a foe! I am sorry you spoke
to me.”

“We applied at several saws,” answered Munk, “and
they were full.”

Meanwhile Richard was doing up his job very handsomely;
and his brother called the Captain's attention to the
fact.

[figure description] Page 043.[end figure description]

Captain Creamer smiled, — he loved to smile; but with an
air of melancholy.

“He can improve; I never questioned his capacity.” The
Captain shook his head, as if, while affirming so much, there
were still many things he must deny.

Richard reäppeared on the mill-bed, with a look of suspense.

The conversation that ensued will be better understood by
a tabular word or two. The Saw-mills were the property
of companies, or corporations; and the saws were let, and
sometimes under-let. To each saw belonged, ordinarily, a
“gang” of three men, both for the day and the night; six
in all. These were the head-stock man, the tail-stock man,
and a sort of servant of the whole, who tended the slip, and
did the butting, and helped wherever he was called. Five
men could manage two saws. Captain Creamer rented two;
and, of course, in his double gang, employed ten men. This
for the main work of the mill. There was a collateral business,
as making shingles, laths, clapboards, which used up
the slabs and refuse timber; and which also required a cutting-off
saw. These operations employed several hands.
If we reckon six principal saws to each mill, we shall have
an aggregate of one or two hundred men in each; one half
of whom were in constant activity, day and night. The
subordinate branches were carried on below, under the
“bed,” or main floor of the mill, near the wheel-pit.

“Has your brother worked at shingles?” asked Captain
Creamer.

“He has,” replied Munk; “but I think he would not care
to go down there.”

“Natural, natural,” answered the Captain. “As has
justly been observed, we cannot die but once; and, Mr.
Munk, allow me to say it, we do not like to. But, Mr.

[figure description] Page 044.[end figure description]

Munk, how can one succeed without humility? without
beginning low,—as Dr. Broadwell observes, taking one's
place in the dust? Not be a shingle-sticker! Why, the
Kilmarnoks, the Gouches, were all shingle-stickers.”

“I had better return home,” said Richard.

“Do not deem me unkind,” responded the Captain.
“Young men do not appreciate the necessity of industry,
and acquaintance with detail. I fear me, I really fear, you
are ambitious. Odious sin that, as the poet observes, winds
like a hejus snake about the extremities! You see we are
tolerably full on the bed; there is hardly room for a flea.
But, Mr. Edney, it is not our interest, but the interest of our
young men, which moves me to speak.”

“You have no opening here,” said Richard, decisively.

“I would do anything for you; I would, for your respected
brother's sake. I know how friends feel. Nights — let me
see. Mr. Kilmarnok, how is Clover?”

“No better, sir,” answered the man.

“Clover is sick. Yes, there is Clover's night. He has
tended the slip; he is a man of rare qualities, and can turn
his hand to most anything. What would you say to his
chance for a few days?”

“I can do anything,” replied Richard.

“Bless me — that is it. What a spirit!”

“What wages can you afford?”

“We make no account of such things. We are only
happy to bring the boys forward — to be the instrument of
leading them to greatness. It is worth a world to us to see
a head-stock man, and say, we carried that man forwards.
Howd, the inventor of the patent wheel, was a shingle-sticker.
I suppose Howd is really the greatest man in the
world. Pierson, the improver of the shingle machine, has
claims, and many fine points, and is sometimes named; but,

[figure description] Page 045.[end figure description]

to use the expression, he cannot hold a candle to Howd. To
be associated with Howd in any way, even in the meanest
capacity, might well fire the heart of a young man. He
mounted from the wheel-pit to the bed, and went through
the slip to glory!”

“Would you name a sum?” inquired Richard.

“I will be frank with you,” replied the Captain, “and
even lay bare our whole affairs. Laths feed themselves, but
we find them; and so do shingles; but, in times like these,
they are glad to pay us a premium for being — for the mere
chance of being. What would you say to that?”

Richard shook his head.

“Ah!” sighed the Captain, “'t is Labor against Capital.
Labor is ravenous; it scratches Capital, as the poets say, like
a fowl on a dunghill. But we are generous; Green Mill is
generous; it finds, and repairs, and makes its own insurance;
it does everything, and gives all the profits to labor.
We will offer you eighteen dollars a month, board yourself;
Green Mill does not board. Or, you may form a gang, and
take the saw. We allow two dollars a thousand, piled and
stuck; oil and light yourself, of course; you understand
that.”

“I will go by the month,” said Richard.

So he found employment for a few weeks, at least; he
would work nine hours every night; and have fifteen out
of the twenty-four, wherein to sleep, and do what else he
liked.

CHAPTER IV. RICHARD AT THE MILL.

[figure description] Page 046.[end figure description]

It was an extreme night, and the mercury fell to a
great depth before morning. One man, who raised the
largest cucumbers, and had the most satisfactory children,
and drove the prettiest carryall, said his thermometer, at
thirty-eight minutes after seven, stood at five and threequarters
below zero. At any rate, it was cold enough; and
Richard felt it, when he left the house, after supper. Its
first onset was suffocating, like a simoom; then it began to
cut, and sting, and flay, as if it would not only entrap but
torture its victim. A delicate, thin, violet vapor, coming
from we know not where, had clearly mistaken the time of
the year, like birds arriving too early from a sunnier clime;
benumbed and bewildered by the cold, it lay on the western
hills, still, calm, hard, and dry. The sky was very clear,
as if the cold had driven out of it all those soft clouds, and
gentle zephyrs, and spiritual mists, on which our better feelings
float through the universe, and by which our souls are
indefinitely expanded, and our sympathies connected with
unseen orders of beings, and left it the impersonation of
intellect, — sheer, naked intellect, — intellect without love,
without tenderness; awful, dismal intellect, in which the
stars were so many iron, piercing, excruciating eyes — eyes
which one did not wish to look at, but ducked his head, and
hurried on. Or, if one could stand it, — if his fancy would
have its way, in spite of the cold, — he would see the windows
of heaven covered with frost, and the stars so many little

[figure description] Page 047.[end figure description]

crystalline sparkling points; and if he looked closely at
Sirius, he would inevitably conclude it had been snowing
there all winter; and the icy, glittering radiance of that star
he would attribute to the reflection of interminable hollows,
and mountains of snow.

There were no loafers about the mill to-night; and no boys
skating on the river, with their cheerful fires, and the belllike
ringing of their merry voices. The great doors on the
sides of the mill, that open on horizontal hinges, and are
hoisted by ropes, were dropped. The wind drifted freely
through the building; and the large, cylindrical, red-hot
stoves, seemed to be an invitation to it to come in. Nor was
it ceremonious, or hardly civil; it crowded about the stoves,
and seemed determined that nobody else should have a
place; and with a selfishness which nothing human ever
paralleled, as soon as one windy troop got warm, it made
way for another, and so left no chance at all for the workmen.
Green Mill was a large one, — two hundred feet long,
and fifty wide; and all the saws were running; not that
they always ran in winter, but these were pressing times.
It was one immense hall, where the saws were, mounting to
the ridge-pole, and broken only by the tie-beams, and the
frames in which the saws moved; and all the men might be
seen, and their varied operations inspected, at a glance. It
was a noisy, busy scene. Lamps hung on the fender-posts—
lamps shaped like a coffee-pot, with a heavy coil of wicking
in the spout, and producing so large a flame the wind
could not blow it out; and the more it was attempted to be
put down, the brighter it burned. But the lamp was provoking;
it affected great nonchalance; it made feints of
being beaten; it fell over from side to side; it treated the
wind as a rope-dancer might treat his worst enemy, by capering
on a slack wire, and jingling a tambourine in his face;

[figure description] Page 048.[end figure description]

it was as insulting as a runaway monkey, that makes
grimaces at his master from a chimney-top.

On one bed the men were butting; on another, hauling
up the slip; on a third, dividing the logs by cross-cut saws;
the creak of files, and the clink of iron bars, could be heard.
The up-and-down saws sweltered, trembled, gnashed, hissed,
as they made their way through the huge trunks before
them. There was the piteous shriek of the cutting-off saw,
and the unearthly rumbling of the wheels in the pit below.
The rag-wheels patiently ticked, as it were time-keepers
of the whole concern. The entire building, ponderous as
were its beams and firm its foundation, seemed to throb and
reel.

Richard was in a strange place, and among strange men,
though he was at home in the business. There was not
much talking, nor a very good opportunity for making
acquaintance. The men were silent in the midst of the
powerful agencies of nature and art; they were the silent
Mind that wrought through these agencies.

Of the persons with whom Richard was associated, one,
Mr. Gouch, the boss of the gang, was a middle-aged, middlesized
man, with a heavy face and a dull eye. He wore a
white fur hat, of a very old fashion, — so old, indeed, it would
be difficult to say when it was in fashion, — and which looked
as if it had come down through all the fashions, and each
of them had had a kick at it. He had on an antique surtout,
with a very high waist, and an immense collar, riding
the waist, as if it were the porter of a woollen factory.
The lips of Mr. Gouch were large and rough, and kept up
a constant twitching, as if affected with the shaking palsy.
Not that he was a great talker; only his lips stirred, somewhat
vacantly, somewhat timorously. Before he spoke, his
lips moved, as it were getting ready for that effort; after he

[figure description] Page 049.[end figure description]

had spoken, his lips moved, as if the momentum of the effort
did not immediately subside. Along with setting the gauge
and minding the carry-back, another thing occupied a deal
of his attention. This was the orders the mill had received,
and which were nailed to the fender-post. Why did he
dodge so around the corner of this post, and look at the
schedule so often? Why did he point at it with his crowbar?
Why did his lips wag at such a rate, and all to himself?
Why did he, from running the crow-bar over the list, like
an overgrown lubber of a schoolboy, who uses his finger to
fescue his eye from line to line, — why did he then jerk it
towards his fellow-laborer, whose back was turned? Richard
saw this farce, and was curious about it.

This other man seemed wholly indifferent to what was
passing; he looked, indeed, more like a beast, who could
not be affected by human interests, than anything else. He
was short, and thick, and dark. His small cap, matted to
his head, with its few filaments of fur, and its larger bare
spots, did not look like a cap, but made him look as if he
had a scrubby, stinted growth of hair. Running your eye
down his person, you would imagine that his hair, deserting
his scalp, had reappeared under his chin, and around his
neck; for here it grew thick, bushy, luxuriant. He had no
neck, apparently, but only a bed of hair, in which his head
lay. He was not deformed, but he seemed to have grown,
or been socketed, into himself; his hair grew into his head,
his head into his neck, his neck into his shoulders, and his
shoulders into his trunk. He wore a short frock, the ends
of which were tied in a large knot on his back, as if it had
something to do in keeping in place this singular structure
that he was. His mouth, except in a strong light, was
invisible; and then it opened and shut spasmodically, like a
toad's; and then no teeth were seen, but a slight vacuum,

[figure description] Page 050.[end figure description]

filled with indistinguishable shapes; as one gets a glimpse
through the fence at the charred stumps of new-burnt
ground. Smoking was not allowed in the mill; but this
man had a pipe in his mouth, whether he smoked or not.
He would sometimes smoke of a winter night. This pipe,
like the rest of him, had grown in, till there was nothing
but the black bowl left. Ever in his mouth, it seemed to be
a part of his organism; and he dipped his finger into the
bowl as frequently when it was empty as when it was full.
The name of this man was Silver.

Mr. Gouch, we have said, looked at Silver; but Silver did
not mind it. Then Mr. Gouch read again the orders:
“White, 4, hemlock 16, 7X9. Smith, 6, gray birch, 10,
3X12, Clover 9, plates, hemlock, 22, 6X8. Clover, joist,
Clover, sills, Clover, furring.” These things, from silently
transcribing with his lips, he went on to articulating more
distinctly, and finally spoke out quite loud. As he did so,
he turned his face to Silver; and then, as it were, having
caught the words on the end of his bar, he held that out for
Silver to read; but Silver neither heard nor read.

During an interval when Silver was taking away the
boards on one side of the carriage, and Mr. Gouch and
Richard were at work with a cross-cut saw on the other,
Mr. Gouch said, “He'll get it! he'll sweat!—he's gone!”

“Who'll get it?” asked Richard.

“He,” replied Mr. Gouch, and thrust his head backwards
towards Silver.

“Get what?”

“I tell you, Clover'll build!” As he said this, he pushed
the saw forwards, and leaned forwards himself, as if he
were earnest that the communication should reach Richard.
“Don't start so!” he said; “you are not concerned; you
have just come; you need n't be frightened.” Now, Richard

[figure description] Page 051.[end figure description]

could not conveniently help starting, since he held one end
of the saw, and must needs retreat as the other advanced.
Still Mr. Gouch kept operating the instrument, and endeavoring
to impress certain truths on Richard. The first he
did mechanically and skilfully; as to the last, he was in
an absent state of mind, and continually blundered in the
attempt to reconcile the ideal with the actual. “Don't be
frightened,” he said, as he again inclined towards Richard,
who was again obliged to fall back. “I tell you, Clover'll
build; and he'll get it,” writhing towards Silver, “and we
shall all get it! Plates, joist, sills and furring, — yes,
furring, — that settles it, that does the business. You are
not alarmed, I hope?”

“Why should I be?” replied Richard, laughing. “More
work, more to do.”

“Yes, more work; but how he will feel! how he will
feel!”

“Capt. Creamer told me Clover was sick.”

“Clover sick! The Captain done for, too! The Captain
slabbed off, thrown among the reffige, flung into the river,
like so much edging. And all through Clover. Clover
sick! He is too strong to be sick. He would die before he
would be sick.”

“He may be sick, and die too,” observed Richard.

“He can't die,” returned Mr. Gouch; “you can't kill
him. You might as well smite that saw with your fist;
you might as well put a trig under the dam and stop it,
as to practise on him.”

They went to the stove for their lunch; and as they went,
Mr. Gouch still muttered, “The furring fixes it; it will be a
house. He'll get it; Clover'll build.”

Silver said nothing, and Mr. Gouch said more, as if he
would teaze Silver. In an instant, Silver seized the

[figure description] Page 052.[end figure description]

cantdog, and aimed at the head-stock man. Richard sprang
between them, and Mr. Gouch fell backward over a log.
Mr. Gouch laughed, and Silver snapped his lips together in
a way that was intended to imply humor; and Richard,
seeing that the demonstration was only a merry one, very
quietly went to wooding up the stove. Mr. Gouch touched
his fingers on the stove, to see how hot it was; then he
applied them again, to see the hissing and crackling;
and he at last got up a little cannonade, which he let off
against Silver. Silver was not harmed, or cowarded. He
knocked the ashes from his pipe, sliced a new charge of
tobacco, ground it in the hollow of his hand, filled his pipe,
and stooped to light it at the mouth of the stove. Mr. Gouch
suffered quite a drop of water to explode close to Silver's
ear, saying, “Have n't you got it? Won't Clover build?”
Silver drew back, and groaned. He sat on the floor, and
groaned. He made a few empty passes at the coals with
his pipe, and thrust it, unlighted, into his lips, and groaned.

“He has got it!” said Mr. Gouch. “Did'nt I tell you
he would get it? Such quantities of furring! O, what a
nice little house, and what a nice little bed-room, and what
nice fixings!”

Silver took a pine stick and whittled it, sharpening and
smoothing it. He then tried the point of it on the palm of
his hand; then he pricked his cheek with it; then he made
as if he would stab the stove and the saw.

“There will be family ways and family doings,” continued
Mr. Gouch, addressing Richard, who was quietly consuming
his midnight meal; “and fires kindled where it is
now bleak cold, and tables set for people that never ate
together, and doors opening on new scenes and new operations.
There will be another stopping-place along the street,
and another yard to set flowers in; and by and by there

[figure description] Page 053.[end figure description]

will be children, and little ones will climb on their father's
knee, and that father will be Clover; and little ones for the
mother to put to sleep, and that mother will be —”

Silver shrieked not out, but inside, and only a smothered
explosion was heard. He thrust his stick wildly into the
air.

“Don't do that!” said Mr. Gouch; “don't hurt Clover;
don't attempt Clover; don't do anything to him!”

“It is not that,” rejoined Silver; “it's myself.”

He again tried to light his pipe, and now he was successful;
and he sucked and whiffed, as if he would evaporate
his sorrows, thoughts, and whole being, in the smoke.

“Clover'll build, and it is your treat,” said the headstock
man; “and you need not take it so hardly; a couple
of dimes will hardly be missed.”

Silver blew the smoke from him, as much as to say,
“That is nothing; I do not care for that.” He sprang up
with an air which seemed to add, “Bring on the boys! I
am ready to treat.”

The two men from the other saw came towards the stove.
One of them advanced in a jaunty, tambourine sort of way,
appearing to be playing on an invisible instrument of that
kind with his elbow and knuckles, and shuffling to the tune
with his feet. A red handkerchief was tied flauntingly on
his head, and his waist was buttoned with a leathern strap.
He was lively and talkative, and his name was Philemon
Sweetly. “Pleasantly cold, Mr. Gouch,” said he; “just
enough to make a stove, ordinarily so dull, a very agreeable
companion.”

“An Indian could n't stand it,” replied Mr. Gouch, rather
solemnly; “a frog would freeze, a barn would be out of its
element.”

“I hope,” rejoined Philemon, “the cold will bear kind of

[figure description] Page 054.[end figure description]

strong on the Captain; just hold him down softly, freeze
him gently, so he will not feel it, and let Helskill out. It is
a precious night for Helskill; he deserves such a night, now
and then.”

“How is Clover, to-day?” asked Ezra Bess, the fourth
man.

“Better,” replied Mr. Gouch; “and Silver will be generous, —
all gold, perhaps.”

“That for Clover,” added Philemon, heaving the handspike
across the mill-bed; “Helskill is wanted just now.”

At this instant, a man was seen entering the mill, and
making his way stealthily through the shadows, as if he
were afraid he might tread on them. And when a roistering
lamp flared in his face, he started, like a very polite man
who had intruded too suddenly upon the light. He had on
his arm a basket, over which he exercised incessant watchfulness,
like a mother bringing her daughter into company.
He had a broad, dark face, and eyebrows to match, and
black eyes; but a timid look, — a remarkably timid, and
almost slippery look; and a stooping gait, like one who has
the misfortune to be continually seeing obstacles in his path.
He signalized his progress, also, by a cough, — a small, hacking
cough, — as a modest token of admonition to any one
against whom he might come in the dark.

The approach of this man was regarded with interest by
the gang.

“The Friend of the People is assiduous and devoted as
ever,” said Philemon, affecting a bow to the new-comer.
“Shall I have the honor of introducing to you, Richard, Mr.
Helskill, the Friend of the People?”

“I am the Friend of the People,” replied the other, evidently
brightening up and re-collecting his courage, in the
cordiality with which he was received; “I look after the

[figure description] Page 055.[end figure description]

public good: I vote for it at the polls; I canvass for it
before election; I harness my horse, and go in pursuit of it;
I bleed for it, — yes, I do, — my purse bleeds, and my heart
bleeds, to see how it is abused; I attend to it, in my own
little way, at Quiet Arbor;” — he was still timid, and cast
his eyes from side to side, but he waxed bolder as he went
on: — “I am an advocate of the people: I defend their
rights; I teach them their independence; I stand between
them and monopoly; I take the brunt of oppression; I believe
that men are to be trusted, — that they have discretion.”

“Desput cold!” said Philemon, who, using the liberty
which the timid man scattered broadcast around him, lifted
the cover of the basket, and took from it a brace of bottles
and glasses; — “but you are the chap for it. You must
have been born in a bog, and nussed on cucumber juice.
That was economical. When you was eight years old, your
father sent you out barefoot in winter to catch titmice for
poor people's breakfast. So you learned benevolence. A
thermometer would have no effect on you; the mercury
might plump down into the bottom and freeze, — you would n't
mind it; you would buzz around your little Arbor, as chirk
and bobbish as a fly in spring-time. And how, when it
grew late, and your friends became tired and sleepy, and
wanted to lie down, you would put them out of doors, using
a little force, just to teach them self-denial! Why, you are
equal to Captain Creamer, — you are the Captain! Has n't
your wife a receipt for cold weather? You might send it
South, and they could get up a little ice for their juleps, and
kill off the yellow fever, now and then. You would n't do
for a Methodist church, just now. You might answer for
some other in town; they could set you up cheap, and you
could do so much good! You love to do good, don't you?”

Men from all parts of the mill, having a respite from

[figure description] Page 056.[end figure description]

their work, collected around Mr. Helskill, who seemed to be
quite a centre of attraction.

“I knew he would come,” said Mr. Merlew, head-stock
man of saw No. 5, a burly, hulchy looking man; “he
sticks to his word like a bail-dog to a log. He does n't mind
the coldest night, any more than No. 5 does the knots of
white hemlock.”

“No. 5, No. 5,” said Philemon, who was head-stock man
of No. 2, “will want a little oiling; will be very thankful to
the Friend of the People for a little help; will rejoice in the
opportune kindness of that man, or I am mistaken.”

The Friend of the People coughed, blushed, and looked
down. So embarrassed was he by these compliments, he
did not perceive that his glasses had escaped, and his bottles
were being emptied, while the men were secretly trying
the quality of his wares.

Mr. Gouch, meanwhile, with a medley of playfulness and
timorousness, simplicity and cunning, slid to the door of
the mill and looked out; hopped over the lumbered floor
back again, and slapped the stove with his wet fingers, chattering
to himself, “The Captain won't come; he can't come
to-night. Clover will build; Silver'll treat; he won't be
happy, if he does n't.” Silver muddled with his pipe among
the ashes. Richard leisurely hacked the end of a log.

“The honor is Silver's to-night,” said Philemon to
Richard, holding a glass in his hand. “It is his to give
merit an opportunity to distinguish itself, and to open to the
Friend of the People a sphere of action. This ordinarily
falls to the new comer; it should have been yours, as you
are in that capacity; but it is Silver's to-night.”

“I am truly obliged to you, Silver,” said Mr. Helskill,
making an effort to show his teeth, as if there resided in
them a particularly pleasing and grateful expression, which

[figure description] Page 057.[end figure description]

he was anxious to communicate; “you must be a happy
man.”

Silver hurled a chip at the timid man's head, which he
dodged, but manifested no indignation thereat. “Don't
grin at me!” Silver added, very groutily.

“I must have declined the honor,” replied Richard to
Philemon; “and I think Silver has no satisfaction in doing
it.”

“But you will drink?” returned Philemon, tendering
him a glass.

“I think I will not,” said Richard.

“Drink!” growled Silver, with a quick, deep intonation.

“The laws of the mill forbid drinking, and the law of
conscience forbids it,” added Richard.

“Clover'll build!” Mr. Gouch's lips began muttering.
This was a magical word; it worked Silver to a frenzy;
though Mr. Gouch certainly had no ill intents on his brother
stock-man.

“You shall drink! you shall all drink!” screamed Silver,
starting up.

“I am not afraid of Clover, and Clover shall not hurt
you,” said Richard.

Silver grew more quiet, and sat down to his pipe, saying,
“Drink, Richard, only drink!”

“There is mischief here,” said Richard, “and I do not
understand it. And there is more mischief here, and I do
understand it: and it is there; it is that man,” — pointing to
Mr. Helskill.

“I hope the young fellow don't accuse me of mischief,”
replied Mr. Helskill, picking up his bottles.

“You need n't hope anything about it,” said Richard.
“You may know; you may be assured.”

“Well, accuse me of mischief!”

[figure description] Page 058.[end figure description]

“I did n't accuse you of anything, and I do not. I said
you were mischief; and you are! You are deviltry incarnate,
and your stuff is the same incarnadined!”

“Not so fast,” interposed Philemon.

“There is no time to be slower,” answered Richard.
“Our lunch is out; and we are here to work, not play.”

“They would put on the screws,” said Mr. Merlew;
“they would make nigger-wheels of us, if they could, and
keep us always at it; they would like to see us saw-dust
under their feet!”

“There is no harm in fun,” said Philemon. “Must
spree it, these tremendous nights.”

“Not a drop, friends, not a drop,” replied Richard.

“He is no Friend of the People,” observed Mr. Helskill;
“he is a flinty and tyrannical character. I have seen such
before. I have repelled their malicious attempts; I have
defeated their mean operations; I have sacrificed a good
deal to put them down.”

“You are a very direct and unequivocal scamp!” said
Richard.

“Drink, for my sake!” said Silver.

“I cannot drink,” answered Richard.

“He is an unfeeling brute,” observed Mr. Helskill. “I
left my warm Arbor; I exposed myself to the weather. I
knew I had comfort for you; I knew you needed it; I knew
Silver wanted me to come. I defied the infamous statute; I
ran the risk of falling into the hands of some skulking informer,
and I have fallen into his hands, — I have fallen.”

“I am no skulker,” said Richard; “I am open-placed,
and open-tongued. I will not inform against you elsewhere;
I will tell you to your face what you are, and what
you do. You bring in mischief here; you bring in fightings,
ill-will, neglect of work; you bring in sickness and disease;

[figure description] Page 059.[end figure description]

you come a good ways to do it; you brave the coldest night
of the year to do it; you are desperate in the business; you
would send these men drunk from the mill; you would drive
them into a snow-bank to die; you would pitch them,
reeling and staggering, into their own homes! Off with
you, — off!”

“Presently, presently,” said Mr. Helskill. “Alvin shall
have his glass. Alvin shall have the ague taken out of his
fingers.” He inclined the bottle towards the person whose
name he called.

“Alvin shall not drink!” replied Richard. “Alvin is a
boy. He is too young to like it, and too old to be spoilt.”

Mr. Helskill persisted. Richard, quite aroused, with a
handspike, dashed the bottle to atoms. Carried forward
by the impulse, he descended upon the other bottle, and
treated it to the same end; and then, seizing the basket in
which these things had been borne, he hurled it towards the
door.

The confusion of this scene was heightened by what
immediately followed. The basket, in its rapid transit,
alighted in the face of a person entering the mill. It was
Captain Creamer. Already agitated by what he overheard
as he approached the building, he was exceedingly inflamed
by this latter piece of impertinence. He blustered amongst
the men in a way that boded no good to any of them.

“Don't say you did n't drink!” whispered earnestly Silver
to Richard, as he saw the Captain approaching; “for my
sake, don't say you did n't!”

The hands belonging to the other saws fled to their
respective posts. The Friend of the People, already disheartened
by the manner in which his intentions were
received, had made an early exit. The Captain's own
gang stood alone before him.

[figure description] Page 060.[end figure description]

Captain Creamer could not find words to express his
astonishment, his grief, his anger; and he was silent. At
length, composing himself sufficiently to speak, he charged
the men with violating the rules of Green Mill — their own
promises, and duty. He enlarged upon the danger to
which they were exposing themselves, and particularly on
the risk to which the mill was subjected. “Mr. Gouch,”
he said, “my head-stock man, my trusty servant, I had not
expected this.”

“Clover'll build —” began Mr. Gouch.

“Don't name Clover to me!” retorted the Captain. “I
am not afraid of Clover; Clover does n't rule here. Who
threw that basket at me?”

“I threw it,” answered Richard; “but I did not intend to
hit any one; I did not see you.”

“Drinking! In liquor! Did not know what you were
about! Could not discern an object of my size! I made no
impression on you!”

“I cannot explain,” said Richard. “I can say nothing
about it.”

“I presume you cannot,” answered the Captain.

“Hoist the gate, Mr. Gouch! You will work an hour
longer for this. In justice, I could demand more; I shall
accept of that. I have suspected all was not right; I have
had intimations of your doings. The mill is jeopardized,
the whole corporation is jeopardized, by your conduct.
Frightful as is the cold, I left my bed to look after you.”

The men resumed their duties; the Captain, reädjusting
himself in his bear-skin coat, strutted to and fro across the
gangway.

Not many minutes after, approaching the door, he called
to Richard, and pointing to an angle of the road in front of

[figure description] Page 061.[end figure description]

the mill, he said, “I see something stirring yonder. Be
spry and easy; catch it, — do not let it escape!”

Richard, approaching the mysterious object, found it to
be a man filling a basket with waste bits of wood. He trod
catlike, and seized the man firmly by the collar. The latter
dropped a stick he had in his hand, and fell back passively
on Richard's knees. The Captain leaped forward, saying,
“Hold on!” and also fastened himself to the culprit, who in
a low voice replied,

“I did n't succeed, did I? Don't hurt me!”

“He is shamming,” rejoined the Captain. “Let him not
give us the slip.”

They dragged him to the mill. The light revealed the
face of an old man, thin and gray. He was shaking with
the cold.

“Shut down,” said the Captain to Mr. Gouch; “there
are other matters to attend to. We have missed things
from the mill; an entire pile of stuff has been carried off;—
odd ends, to be sure, but such as there is market for, and
without which the mill could not live, — nay, it could n't
stand a day. I think we have got the knave.”

“It is an old man,” said Mr. Gouch.

“Old, is he?” asked the Captain, who had not noticed
this feature of the case. “Too old to be stealing; too old to
be in such bad business as this; too old to set such an
example.”

“Who would do it but me?” answered the ancient; “who
but Grandfather? Who would get a pitch-knot in the cold,
and the dark, that they might see the blaze, — that the young
folks might be gladdened? I am not old, and they will see
I am not.” This was said with a sort of doting chuckle.

“What shall we do with him?” inquired the Captain.

“I would let him go,” said Richard.

[figure description] Page 062.[end figure description]

“Do you mean to insult me again, young man?” asked
the Captain. “Has neither your own conduct nor my forbearance
taught you decency?”

“I think the chips would do the man more good than he
can do us harm,” observed Philemon; “and I would not proceed
against him.”

“Who asked what you would do, Mr. Sweetly?” responded
the Captain.

“You did, sir,” answered Philemon.

“I asked what we should do with this criminal. I did
not ask after your private sentiments. The world is full
of them; we have enough of them. I have not been at all
this pains to find them out.”

“I replied to your question, sir, the best way I knew
how.”

“Call you that doing with the man?—to let him go—to take
no notice of what he has done, — to set this villany at large?”

“Suppose we duck him in the canal,” said Ezra, “then
hang him on the jack-pole to dry.”

“Don't do that,” said the old man. “I could n't live
through it. I have n't long to live; but I want to see the
children in a better way before I die.”

“If I could shake him, I would,” said the Captain, and
endeavored to suit the action to the word, but the garment
on which he seized parted in his hand; — “but I do not
like to take the law into my own hands; I should prefer
bringing him before a justice. I shall enter a complaint, in
the morning.”

“He may abscond, in the mean time,” suggested Ezra.

“Some one must stay with him,” observed the Captain,
directing an inquiring eye to his men.

“I will not,” said Philemon.

“Nor I,” added Ezra.

[figure description] Page 063.[end figure description]

Silver was brooding over the fire, munching his pipe, and
would not answer.

“It is no part of a head-stock man's duty,” evasively
replied Mr. Gouch.

“You will do it, Richard,” said the Captain, “and I may
think better of you.”

“I will,” replied Richard.

“Watch him close,” enjoined the Captain, hooking Richard's
arm in that of the old man. “He will be called for
about ten o'clock in the morning.”

Having given a right direction to the affairs of justice, he
turned to the business of the mill.

The cold had increased. Midnight seemed to be gathering
itself up for a final plunge upon the morning. The old
man shook on Richard's arm.

“You are cold,” said Richard.

“They are,” replied the other.

“They need the wood?” continued Richard.

“I thought they did,” rejoined the old man. “They
seemed to. It may have been fancy; perhaps it was a
dream. I get confused in my head, I have so much to do;
and it seems sometimes as if I was all a dream.”

“They shall have it,” said Richard, with emphasis.

“It is too late now. It is over. I never thought I
should do that. I never thought we should come to that;
but a little blaze is so pretty. God's will be done!”

“I will pay for it,” said Richard. “There shall be no
trouble on that score.” He went to the spot where the
basket lay, which he filled; and giving the old man one
handle, and taking the other himself, he suffered his attendant
to lead the way whither he would go. This was in the
direction of the Factory Boarding Houses. Richard inquired
after the necessity of the fuel he was so unseasonably

[figure description] Page 064.[end figure description]

supplying, as a clue to the crime over which he was so
strangely made sentry. He gathered from the old man
that two girls, his grandchildren, had come to work in the
Factories, and he had accompanied them; that one of them
was sick, and the other lay exhausted at the bedside; that
their means were short, and while the girls slept, he had
slipped away for the wood.

As they reached the steps of the house, the voice of Captain
Creamer was heard close behind.

“What does this mean?” he asked, angrily. “Have I
set a thief to watch a thief? Through your means, young
man, is the very thing consummated which I have wasted a
whole night to prevent?”

Richard explained; — the Captain was not propitiated.
Richard offered to deduct the value of the wood from his
wages. How little did he understand Captain Creamer!

“The value of the wood! A basket of chips!” The
Captain spurned the thought. “It was the wrong that affected
him,” he said; “the bad beginning of a young man.”
However, he could not easily reverse the course of events,
and these accomplices in crime were permitted to enter the
house with their ill-boding freight.

Richard followed his guide up stairs to a chamber under
the roof, in the third story. A lamp in an angle of the
chimney cast a shadow over the room, and faintly revealed
the forms of the two girls on the bed. Weariness had folded
the well one, and an opiate the sick one, in deep slumber;
and they were not aroused at the entrance of Richard and
his guide.

“We had better not try to make a fire,” said Richard;
“the room is not very cold, and the hearth is warm.”

“A few shavings,” whispered the old man; “just a
little blaze. Junia loves to see a blaze. It is a comfort

[figure description] Page 065.[end figure description]

to her. And when t' other is gone, and I am gone, — and
that will be soon, — there will only be a little blaze, and the
memory of it, in all this cold world, for her to look upon.”
Richard drew some shavings from the basket, and soon had
them lighted. In the flickering glare which they cast over
the room, the old man looked and acted a little strangely,
betraying a singular medley of imbecility, pathos and joy.
He leaned over the bed with a deep and passionate interest.
Then turning to Richard, with a playful, but sad infatuation,
he pointed to the sleepers, and whispered, “That one,
the sick one, the one with morning hair, — her child's hair, —
is Violet. The other, with the evening hair, — she was born
in the evening, and there are stars in her soul, — is Junia.
Who called her Violet? I remember, her mother did, because
she was born in spring, when violets blow. And
she will die in the spring; it was then her mother died; she
will die when the birds begin to come, and the weather is
soft. If she could live then! But she had better not die
now. God's will be done! I know it was spring, for I was
sitting on the bank with the other when the nurse came.
We called the other Junia, because she was born in June;
and there is more summer in her; she is riper, and stronger,
and can bear up better; and she is full of warmth and pretty
life; her hair is darker, — they said it was then, and it is
now,—and she was always amongst us like the smooth meadow,
and her eye came into your heart like noon under
the shady trees. I remember it; I have a strong memory,—
a very strong memory. I remember a great many more
things than I used to when I was a young man. This one
was more tender, more frail, as the wind-flowers; she never
seemed to get stronger, and we made a lamb of her. She
hung like dew upon all of us, and all our feelings, — so her

[figure description] Page 066.[end figure description]

mother said, — only we knew she must go soon; and when
the buds begin to burst, she will die. God's will be done!”

There was too much tenderness in the old man, too many
cherished though bitter and confused reminiscences, too
much vague but corroding sorrow, for Richard not to be
touched. He was silent and reflective; and his whole spirit
was concentrated on the beauty and the sadness that slumbered
before him, and the unwearied, tottering affection that
stood by the side of it.

Junia awoke, and, somewhat startled, said, “What is it,
Grandfather? Has the doctor come?”

“Nothing has happened, dear,” replied the Grandfather.

“I have no business here,” said Richard.

“Yes, you have, — you know you have,” answered the old
man. “You cannot go.”

“Let me make more fire,” rejoined Richard.

“Where did the wood come from?” asked Junia, approaching
the hearth.

“He brought it,” replied her Grandfather, pointing to
Richard.

“We are obliged to you,” Junia said; “but so cold, —
so late in the night —”.

There was a mystery about the wood, which neither of
them was ready to explain.

“Have you suffered much?” asked Richard.

“Yes,” replied Junia, “we do, for Grandfather's sake.”

“Have you suffered from cold?”

“Not much, — not long. Violet feels it sometimes.”

“What is her sickness?”

“She was always slender, and after our father and mother
died, she went to keeping school; but this was too much
for her, and she had an attack of bleeding. One of our
neighbors told us how strong her girls had become in the

[figure description] Page 067.[end figure description]

Factories; and we must earn something — and we came
here. She was better for a while; but she is worse now, —
very bad, indeed. We are troubled that Grandfather should
exert himself so much.”

“They do not know me,” said the old man, a good deal
agitated; “they do not know how able I am, — how much I
can endure. They do not mean I shall know how weak
they are; they would keep it from me; they think it worries
me. But they cannot hide it, and I know she will die when
the season changes; — her mother did. I could have got
wood alone.”

“Did you go out for the wood, Grandfather?” asked
Junia, with surprise.

“I helped him,” said Richard, who wished to change that
subject. “We will have a nice fire;” and he put on more
chips and butts. He felt that his presence must be embarrassing;
he knew that the matter of the wood was so; and
he said, rising from his chair, “If there is anything I can
do for you, I shall be glad to do it.” “We are under
obligations to you,” Junia replied; “but we are not in need
of anything.” Richard advanced towards the door; but the
old man laid hands upon him, led him to his chair, adding
that he must stay.

“If Grandfather wishes it, — if it will make him happier, —
we shall be glad to have you stay,” said Junia.

Richard was bound to Capt. Creamer, and to the law, and
to his own promise, to stay; and since he could not explain
the real cause of his coming and staying, he said nothing.

“All for Grandfather!” The old man leaned forward,
with both elbows on his spread knees, rubbing his hands
before the fire, and repeated, with a dry laugh, “All for
Grandfather! They do not know it was all for them, and
that it has come to this all for them; God's will be done!”

[figure description] Page 068.[end figure description]

“Tell me what has happened,” said Junia, with an anxious
tone.

“Nothing,” said Richard, “nothing to speak of now.
Your Grandfather was afraid you might suffer; and you will
suffer if you do not keep quiet. Your sister is waking.”

“Will God take care of us?” she asked.

“He will,” answered Richard, solemnly; “and to God let
us trust all things.”

Richard's manner was so kind, and his words so soothing,
that Junia, even if her heart had begun to work with some
inexplicable evil, regained her composure, and said “I will,”
and went to the bedside. She raised her sister, and laid
pillows under her head. The golden hair of the invalid,
beneath her white cap, and above her pale, delicate face, was
like a glowing cloud in the clear sky, and her blue eye
beamed deep and far, like the sea, beneath. “That is
Grandfather's friend,” said Junia to her. “Yes, my friend,
dear, my friend,” echoed the old man. “His name is
Richard.”

Violet nodded, and smiled a faint recognition to the
stranger.

“Have you none to help you?” asked Richard. “Are
there none in the house to take turns with you nights?”

“There is a number of girls,” replied Junia, “but there
has been a good deal of sickness this winter, and they have
been called out often, and broken of their rest. Those that
have strength and leisure are devoting it to Miss Eyre,
getting her ready to be married. She is to be married to
Clover, — you may know him; a Mr. Clover, who works at
the Saw-mills, — and they say Clover will build, and that he
expects to put up a fine house, and to live in style; and the
girls are exerting themselves for Plumy Alicia. She is a
fascinating girl, and has many friends; but I think she never

[figure description] Page 069.[end figure description]

liked us very well, and I suppose we get less attention, at
this time, on that account. But so long as I have any force
left, I can do without their assistance.”

Richard felt another singular, strong twinge. The name
that haunted the Green Mill had got into this sick chamber;
that man, whom he had never seen, and never until to-day
heard of, seemed to be chasing him like an evil or a mocking
genius.

“We have had wood until to-night,” continued Junia.

The mention of the wood troubled Richard, as he knew it
did the Grandfather. He would have rushed out doors; but
that would not help matters within. He struggled with
himself, arresting the natural train of association, and repressing
all sense of the strange complexity that surrounded
him, and became calm.

The invalid, wasting under a seated pulmonary attack,
coughed at intervals, breathed heavily, nor could she help
disclosing the pains that invaded her frame.

“When the weather changes,” the old man maundered,—
“when the warm days come, when the violets sprout —”

Junia, tranquil as was her manner, lightly as she discharged
the offices of the sick room, inured as she had
become to the mournful chant of her Grandfather, and to
the still sadder presages of her own mind, could not resist
the perpetual sorrow that as a storm beat against her breast,
and she wept.

“Have you no friends in the city?” asked Richard.
“None,” she said. “Has no clergyman been to see you?”
“Not any.” “Have no prayers been made here?” “Many,
many,” she said. “We have all prayed.”

“Do you ever pray?” inquired the old man.

“Yes,” replied Richard.

“Young men do not pray as they used to,” rejoined the

[figure description] Page 070.[end figure description]

elder. "In my day, they prayed. God was all about us,
and our spirits were lively and growing; and the angels took
prayers from us, as the bees and humming-birds draw
honey from the flowers. The young men are getting old,
very old, and dry, and blasted. I am young,—ha, ha!"

"I should like to have him pray," said the sick one.

Richard read the twenty-third Psalm, in its motion so
full of spiritual and halcyon-like wafture, in its feeling so
fervid, trustful and joyous;—and prayed. He collected
into one earnest, sympathetic utterance, before God, the
hopes and the fears, the anguish and the aspirations, of the
hour.

The night waned. The Mill bells rang early, sharp, and
clear; all parts of the house resounded with the clatter of
the rising and the departing, of Work resuming its sandals,
and going forth to its pilgrim's progress for the day.
Some of the girls looked into the chamber, to inquire after
the patient, and hasted away.

The landlady entered with a tray, furnished with such
articles of food or nourishment as the invalid might require.
She wore glasses, and had a gingham handkerchief thrown
over her head, under which any quantity of grizzly hair
struggled into view. She cast her eyes over her glasses
twice at Richard,—once as she passed him towards the bed,
and next when she had reached the bed. Addressing Junia
and the old man, she said, "Breakfast is waiting." Did
she intend, thought Richard, they should take their meal
from the tray? She did not mean that, and they did not
understand her to mean that. She meant that their breakfast
was ready below. "Strangers are to be reported," she
added ; "that is the rule of the large boarding-houses,—f
ront stairs carpeted, and Ladies' Parlor,—as one might see
when they came up, and not act here as Charley Walter

[figure description] Page 071.[end figure description]

did. Perhaps he did n't know 't was Whichcomb's, — seeing
he come in the night, — and thought it was Cain's,
where they don't keep any hours; if they did, they would
stop, some time or other, boiling their knucks. Velzora Ann
Felty would cry when I spoke about it, and the things no
more touched on her plate than if she had been at Cain's.”

Both Junia and the old man said they did not wish for
breakfast; and certainly that was the last thing Richard
thought of. Junia took charge of what had been brought
for Violet, and the landlady remained in the room only long
enough to reconnoitre the person and purpose of Richard.
“A cousin, Miss Junia?” “No,” replied Junia. “Came
in the night? — an old friend?” “A friend,” answered
Richard. “Been here all night — but I shall not be hard
with you; the girls have their wills and ways, — I shall not
provoke them.” She retreated through the door.

Presently Mrs. Whichcomb returned for the tray, and to
recover such portion of its contents as were not otherwise
disposed of. Richard, who wished to communicate with
the head of the house touching his rather equivocal and
very unexpected entry into it, followed as she left the room.

He found her descending the stairs, and combining with
each step a nod of the head, and an ejaculation of the
numerals, as if the three things timed each other. “One,
two, great plate, little plate; three, four, five, six, knife,
fork, tea-spoon, and little jelly-spoon. Six, six! little jellyspoon;
gone!” She stopped, and looked back up the stairs,
to see if she had miscounted a step. She beheld Richard
watching her from above.

“O!” said she, “I was just thinking of you. No relation, —
only a friend. Do you know your friends? — do you
know them?” Richard replied that he had never seen
them before that night. “I dare say,” answered the woman.

[figure description] Page 072.[end figure description]

“It is so in all the first-class houses, which Charley Walter
knew all about it, for he pigged a month at Cain's, where
they are all in a muss. And Velzora Ann Felty could n't
have known it, for she was sick. Sickness is a bad thing in
a house. I had rather have ten well persons than one sick,
at any time.” Richard observed it was not strange she
should. “There is a great deal of viciousness in sickness;—
vice brings it on.” Richard said there was truth in that
remark. “The eating and drinking is nothing, — they are
welcome to the sugar, and jelly, and cream, — but when it
comes to the things themselves that one depends on to get
along at all, and purloining and putting out of the way,
which our extra time does not deserve, it is too much.
Many people are sick to gratify their wicked propensities.
You may not know it and would not say so.” Richard was
silent. He did not know it, and he could not say so.
“They take to their beds for the sake of being waited on;
they linger along, that they may have more opportunities
for imposing on the house; and they go to their graves with
silver spoons in their hands!” This climax was awful, and
the landlady felt it to be so; she staggered under the load
of her conceptions, and would have fallen if the balustrade
had not been a strong one.

It would have helped Richard to be put in possession of
certain particulars relating to this woman. A catastrophe
once came off in her house, from which she never entirely
recovered. It was known as the Charley Walter affair, or
the Velzora Ann Felty affair. This tinged her mind. She
referred to it when she was speaking of other things, — she
thought of it even when she was thinking of other things.
It was a rock in the current of her being, around which her
feelings perpetually eddied. In addition, she hated Cain's,
a contiguous boarding-house. And, what was most remote

[figure description] Page 073.[end figure description]

from Richard's thoughts at the moment, she was anxious
about her property.

But Richard, who was simply solicitous to be disencumbered
of his confused feelings, and to unfold to the landlady
the nature of his position, and why he was in the house,
disgusted at her manner, returned to the chamber.

The officers would soon be there; the secret would be
forthcoming, do what he might. The more he saw of
Junia, the more he was assured of her true womanliness,
and her capability of encountering evil; he stifled his
repugnance to giving her pain, and resolved to acquaint her
with the simple state of the case. Taking her one side, he
related what had befallen in the night; how her grandfather
was detected in theft, and he was appointed to watch
him. He doubted if the old man would be convicted,
though he did not know what Captain Creamer might be
able to do.

In the mean time, he would take an instant and run to his
brother's, that they might not be alarmed at his long absence.
Returning forthwith, he encountered on the stairs
the Captain, the City Constable, who was knocking at the
door of the sick room, the landlady, and several others,
women and girls, whom he did not know. “Out,” said the
Captain to him; “but is the old man in?” He said this
with a violent glance at Richard, which he meant to be
ungracious and stinging, and which should sever the young
man in twain. Richard made no reply. The door did not
open, and the Constable rapped again. He wished to be
civil. He held his ear against it, to hear if it manifested
any signs of relenting. He then looked hard at the door,
as much as to say, “I give you a minute; and if you do not
open, I shall break in.”

The lips of this functionary were tightly compressed, and

[figure description] Page 074.[end figure description]

his eye was vacant and dreamy; he did not notice the
crowd that was about him; he did not feel the boys that, in
their eagerness to be in with the foremost, trod on his heels.
Klumpp was a man of one idea, and exactly suited to a
painful or disagreeable duty. Nothing would prevent his
arriving at his main object; nothing extraneous could divert
his mind or mislead his steps. He had recently been elected
to office; he felt his inexperience, but he wished to be faithful;
he had often heard of the tap on the shoulder, and the
look in the eye, and the whispered “Come with me;” he
had seen the thing done, when he was a boy, and he had
heard the old constable describe how he treated desperate
offenders to it, and there was something magical in that tap,
and that look, and that whisper; and he was now the magician
himself, and he wished to conjure not only with success,
but with dignity. Hence the uneasy, abstract way he
had. The mercury, even now, stood nearly at zero, but he
did not notice it; and when Mrs. Whichcomb spurted out
her innuendoes, he did not notice her.

The mistress of the house had exchanged the gingham
handkerchief for a black-bordered cap. She wiped her face
with her apron, and leered at Richard. Her long, scant
fore teeth, that looked like wheel-cogs, seconded the endeavor
of her lips, and conveyed an expression of very vulgar
satisfaction. Her manner betokened great intimacy
with Richard, great understanding of his humor, great
insight into what she knew would be his feelings on the
occasion. “The world always turns out just about as we
calculate,” she said; “the world cannot deceive us long.
He would not believe it, when I told him. But 't is worse,
now. Was there any stealing, then? — ha! ha!” She
laughed, — she giggled. “Miss Eyre, this is the young
man that can tell about it. Have you examined your trunks

[figure description] Page 075.[end figure description]

and drawers, girls? I have heard Plumy Alicia say, says
she, `It was so,' says she. Ha! ha!”

A young lady in the crowd, whom this last observation
seemed to arouse, and to whom it was directed, raised her
hand, and shook her head, as if she would hush Mrs.
Whichcomb, at the same time suffusing her face with
blushes, that might have aroused the attention of anybody
else.

This must be Miss Plumy Alicia Eyre, thought Richard;
and he turned to look at her; and having looked once, he
looked again. She was worth looking at, and she seemed
even to exact an involuntary regard. She blushed, but in
such a way as to make you blush, and then to set you to
looking at her to see why she made you blush. So Richard
found himself looking at her.

She was of good proportions, and of a suggestive and
energetic countenance. Her hair was elaborated into streaming
ringlets and flowing plaits. There were showy hoops
in her ears, and glancing rings on her fingers. She had
what are termed speaking eyes, — eyes full of animation,
and brightness, and deliciousness, — and a pair of splendid
dimples. Plumy Alicia, — we call her by the only species
of titular abridgment she tolerated, — Plumy Alicia had no
previous designs on Richard; but when he looked so earnestly
at her, when he seemed so deeply interested in her,
when she saw his handsome figure, and his intelligent face,
some design took root in her. We do her no injustice in
saying this, for it was evident to all who saw her; and her
own conscience, if it were questioned, would have confessed
it. But she had no time to pursue her arts, for the attention
and person of Richard were called to other things.

Klumpp got into the room; but he did not see that it was
a sick room, nor that one lay emaciated on the bed and

[figure description] Page 076.[end figure description]

another sobbing near her; nor that the old man sat bending
over both of them, with their arms about his neck. He
only saw the old man, and the white arms — the arms lying
between him and the magical tap — interfering with Justice
and Crime. Klumpp undid the arms, and executed the tap,
and then drew back to see the effect. The old man did
not stir. Klumpp then approached, and whispered the
cabalistic words in his ear, “Come with me!” Still the old
man moved not. He then raised him up, and looked in his
eye. The eye did it. The old man went; and it was soon
rumored, in all taverns and stables, and all lairs of boys and
boyish men, what an eye Klumpp had; and everybody began
to be afraid of Klumpp's eye.

The old man went to his trial. Richard, a leading witness,
must of course go too. He fell in with the crowd
that dogged the steps of Justice. The seat of judgment was
the office of Benjamin Dennington, Esq., the Governor's
son, — or Squire Benjamin, as he was called, — before whom
the complaint was brought.

Captain Creamer testified to such facts as are in possession
of the reader. It was a plain case, and the prisoner
might as well have confessed his guilt; which in effect,
though not in words, he did do. But what coloring would
the facts bear? This was the important question, and the
judge felt it to be so. Squire Benjamin reverenced justice,
and he loved mercy. Richard spoke of some things that
the Captain did not know. He alluded to the imbecility of
the old man, to his affection for his grandchildren, to the
straitened circumstances of the family, to the sick one, to
the devoted Junia. Squire Benjamin had sisters, and his
sympathies, — dangerous things in a judge! — were stirred.
The Captain saw the danger to his cause, and exploded on
the necessity of justice, strict justice, and of quelling the

[figure description] Page 077.[end figure description]

dangerous temper of the times. Richard was again questioned.
He not only answered what was put to him; he
enlarged on the subject; he glowed in depicting the extenuating
circumstances; he was even eloquent in his enumeration
of the several points of interest. The prisoner was
acquitted with a reprimand.

CHAPTER V. BIOGRAPHICAL.

[figure description] Page 078.[end figure description]

Richard Edney was born of worthy parents, in an interior
town of the state. Three things — the Family, the
School, and the Church — contributed to the formation
of his mind and development of his character. To the
first, he owed his gentler feelings; to the second, his elementary
knowledge; the last aroused his deeper thought,
and determined his spiritual direction. He borrowed books
from the village library, and newspapers from the postmaster,
and had the reading of a weekly paper at his father's
table. A debating club, maintained by the young men of
the place, in which the topics of the times were discussed,
aroused his invention, enlivened his wit, and while it inured
him to habits of investigation, it directed him to some solid
acquisition. At the Academy, he studied the ordinary compends
of philosophy and history, and even made a slight
attempt on the Latin tongue. Nor should it be forgotten
that the reading-books in our common schools, comprising
select pieces from the best authors, exert a permanent effect
on the scholar, correcting the taste and enriching the imagination,
affording at the same time many admirable sentiments,
and suggesting some profound thought.

Besides, Richard enjoyed the ministrations of an excellent
clergyman, a man of refined culture and earnest piety.
Settled in a rural district, the recreations of this gentleman
were gardening, fishing, hunting. In this way, he was
able to pursue more satisfactorily his parochial duties, since
in the fields most of his people found occupation, while in

[figure description] Page 079.[end figure description]

the woods some prosecuted their lumbering operations, and
on the streams lay their mills. In these rambles, the youth
of the parish sometimes joined their pastor; and no one was
more happy to be thus associated than the lad who forms
the leading character of this story. Richard was thus
introduced to Nature. He conversed with the phenomena
of creation; he learned the distinctions and varieties of the
animate and inanimate world; his sense of the beautiful was
heightened, and his love of being in general, to quote a
phrase of the Schools, was developed.

Pastor Harold was not a Christian alone in doctrine and
discourse; he aimed to be such in works. He believed that
Christianity was designed to redeem mankind, and that the
Church was a chosen instrument of this redemption. He
sought to develop within the Church an Operative Philanthropy;
and this principle he applied wherever it could
subserve its great end. The evening religious meetings he
divided into several sorts. In addition to what the Gospel
could do for their souls, he urged it as a serious point upon
his people, what it would make them do for others. In furtherance
of this plan, different evenings were assigned to
different subjects: one to Intemperance; one to War; another
to Slavery; a fourth to Poverty: and the enumeration went
on till it comprised the entire routine of Practical Christianity.
He called these meetings the Church Militant; and
any particular meeting was appointed as a Conference of the
Church. At these Conferences, tracts, newspapers, circulars,
that are apt to cumber a minister's study, were distributed,
and the specific charities of the Church more wisely and
easily apportioned. These meetings were of service to
Richard; he gained thereby much valuable information, and
was led to a clearer understanding, and a more vital impression,
of his duties and responsibilities. He had access

[figure description] Page 080.[end figure description]

to his Pastor's library, and in some sense to his heart; so
that in many forms he shared largely in that renovating,
spiritualizing, and exalting influence, which this good man,
from the pulpit, the fields, the evening meeting, and his
study, shed over the town.

In the Sunday-school he learned the rudiments of the
Gospel; in the services of the sanctuary he was carried
through a still deeper religious experience; and the sermons
to which he listened, and the prayers in which he
engaged, brought him into nearer communion with the
Father of spirits, and confirmed his progress in the Divine
life.

It became not only the motto on the wall of his chamber,
but the deeper aspiration of his heart, To be good, and to
do good.

Yet his forte was rather physical than intellectual. He
did not go to college, and adopt one of the learned professions;
partly, indeed, by reason of pecuniary impediments.
He had no desire to enter a store, and embark his all on
the frail but exciting bottom of commercial avocation. His
ambition was to be a thorough and upright mechanic.
Manual labor pleased him; and he was skilled in many
forms of it. His father, besides a farm, carried on a saw-mill,
to both of which he trained his son. A well-regulated
farm demands mechanical care, and is an ample field for the
employment of mechanical genius; as, indeed, it furnishes
scope for the exercise of almost every faculty of the human
mind. Richard had spent one winter amongst the head-waters
of the River, lumbering.

Suretyship, or loss of crops, or whatever it might be,
excepting that it was no vice of his own, troubled his father
in lifting the mortgage that had lain many years on his
farm. One or two instalments were still due; — they

[figure description] Page 081.[end figure description]

were due the Governor, of whom the original purchase was
made; and Richard came to Woodylin partly for the purpose
of earning the requisite sum. He came, also, with the
desire, not uncommon in the youthful breast, of seeing
more of the world.

He came with good principles and good feelings; he was
willing to meet the world on fair grounds; he neither expected
too much, nor did he bid too freely. He sought to
glorify God, and benefit man; yet was he ignorant, practically
ignorant, of the many arts by which selfishness,
vanity, and the false systems of society, disintegrate character,
and undermine virtue.

He made engagements with Capt. Creamer in good faith;
he brake the bottles of the liquor-pedler with a righteous
zeal; he was irresistibly concerned for the Old Man and his
unfortunate grandchildren; he did not know Clover or Miss
Eyre; he loved the children of his sister, if the hyperbole
will not be misunderstood, with his whole soul.

CHAPTER VI. MEMMY AND BEBBY.

[figure description] Page 082.[end figure description]

Yes, Richard loved these children; and loved to be with
them, and to amuse them, and to be amused by them.
After his nap, — for he had had no sleep since the night
before, and many things had happened, in the mean time, to
excite and tire him, — after his nap, he came down into the
kitchen, and sat by the stove. The children began their
pranks, — they could not let them alone. Their mother was
preparing for baking, and she could neither bear their pranks
nor their presence; so she sent them into the middle of the
room. They could not stop at that, but went clear over to
Uncle Richard's knee, and rebounding thence, they fetched
up with the other side of the room. They seemed to move
together as we imagine the Siamese twins to have done,
when they were children; having one will and one centre
of gravitation, like boys in a boat, or leaves in a whirlwind.
Then, again, it was evident they had separate wills, and
sometimes a sharp individuality of will would show itself.
Memmy was the oldest, and the strongest, and we should
expect her to lead off. So she did; but not always.
Bebby's little individuality was mighty strong when it got
roused, and it made up in storming what it lacked in solid
weight. It was like a cat frightening a great dog by demonstration, —
sheer demonstration. But Memmy generally
went ahead; and Bebby wanted to do what Memmy did.
They climbed to the window, and entertained themselves
with the frost that glittered on the glass. Memmy printed
her hand in it; holding it there till palm, thumb and fingers,

[figure description] Page 083.[end figure description]

melted their image into the glass; and Bebby did the same.
It was cold work, and Bebby's fingers were red; but she was
persevering; and when Memmy called to Uncle Richard to
look at what she had done, Bebby did so too. Not that
Bebby could speak a word; but she had a finger that was
full of the energy of utterance; and she had a scream, too,
that needed no interpretation, and her lips quivered eloquence.
And then, — as if she possessed neither finger, nor
throat, nor lips, — there was her eye; that told everything.
Poor piece of dumbness! she had a superfluity of organs;
and her eye alone would have made way for her through
the world, sans everything else.

Memmy laid down to it, as we say, and applied her face
to the window, and she produced chin, lips, nose, eye-brows
thereon; and turning to Uncle Richard, to show him what
she had done, there glared, from the great ice-mountains
which the frost creates on windows, this hideous ice-mask;
and did n't Uncle pretend to be frightened? and did n't
Memmy laugh? But Bebby got up something as good, and
more humorous; for she laughed, herself, while she was
making it; and then her mouth was so pinched with the
cold, she could hardly laugh, and tears streamed down
through what she did laugh.

Memmy then took a slate-pencil, and Uncle had to fit
Bebby a sharp stick, and they set to work, scratching figures
in the frost. Memmy effected rude houses, and ruder rings
for heads, and triangular skirts, and points for feet, and
called the whole boys and girls. Bebby scratched at random,
straight lines, and cross lines; but it was all the same to
her, and she meant it to be all the same to everybody else;
and she, in her way, called it boys and girls and houses,
and her eyes sparkled, her lungs exploded, her frame
vibrated all over, when she told it.

[figure description] Page 084.[end figure description]

But we must come back of what we have written, a little;
we are overstating the case. We say Bebby could not
talk; people generally said so, and we incidentally fell into
the common error. But it would not do to say this before
Memmy; she would be instantly upon you. “Bebby can
talk; she can say `Ma, Ma,' and `No, No,' and `dum,
dum,' and `bye, bye,' and `there!' She has got teeth,
now!” It was an old idea of Memmy's that Bebby could
not talk because she had no teeth; she said the gums covered
her teeth all up, and the words, too. But the teeth
came, — at least, two or three of them got out of their
entanglement, — and then she could talk; and she did talk.
So declared Memmy; and when the Mother of the Child
and the Father spoke of its defect and backwardness in
this respect, Memmy always came forward with a stout
demurrer.

We say this, that the children may have full justice;
and we say it for Richard's sake, who took Memmy's side
in the controversy, and always defended the ground that
Bebby could talk.

Uncle Richard was reading a newspaper, but — the selfish
imps! — they would not tolerate that; they would have no
interference with their rights; they were news enough for
him; accident and incident; hair-breadth escapes; wonderful
discoveries; they were foreign news and domestic
news; they had their poet's corner, and their page of
romance. And they had some original thoughts on perpetual
motion and the quadrature of the circle, and were
crowded with pictorial advertisements of as many strange
things as Barnum has in his Museum.

Bebby was more blond, and soft, and supple, than Memmy,
or than Memmy ever had been. Memmy's hair was darker,
and lay smooth on her head; but Bebby's was all in a toss,

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

and always in a toss; it was not curly, but flocculent, and
had a pearly lustre, and it hung on her like the fringe of
the smoke-tree, and looked like a ferment of snow, a little
cloud of snow-dust flying about the room.

Memmy pulled off her shoes and stockings, — this was not
allowed, but mother's back was turned, and Uncle looked on
so smilingly, — and Bebby's were off in a trice; and they
went pattering and tripping barefoot. Memmy got into the
bed-room, and hid, and cooped; and Bebby found her; and
there were great bursts of astonishment and pleasure. Then
Bebby undertook to do the same; but she cooped before she
got to her hiding-place, and then she frisked round trying to
find herself, and this made them still more obstreperous.

Mother went out of the room a moment, leaving a bowl
of Indian meal on the table. No sooner did Memmy spy
this, and see the coast clear, than she pushed a chair alongside
the table, and fell to dabbling in the meal. Bebby
must follow suit; she shoved a chair all the way across
the room, and they both stood on the margin of the mealbowl.
This was rare sport; it was something new for
Bebby, — she never had got so far before, — she had never
thrust her hands into meal. Memmy had, — Memmy was
used to it. But Bebby, she was awed, and she was enraptured;
she was on Pisgah's top, and Canaan lay fairly before
her, — only she was a little afraid of Jordan. Why
should she crow so? Why should she be so all in a tremble?
What did she want of the meal? But into it she
dove both arms, to the elbows; she lifted it with her
hand, she crumpled it in her fist, she sifted it through her
fingers; she made piles of it, and scattered them. Then
she looked at her fingers, and on her dress, and on the
table; and when she saw the meal spilled everywhere, she
seemed half frightened. Had n't she a conscience, and

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

was n't some fiery young Nemesis scourging her inside?—
Did she love the feeling of the soft powder? had she a passion
for dust? would she wallow in the mire, if she had a
chance? Inexplicable little meal-stirrer! Memmy sprinkled
some on Bebby's head, and Bebby tried to reciprocate the
favor. Mother came back. “Richard,” she screamed,
“how could you let them do so?” Richard had done nothing
about the matter, except to look on. “Was n't that
enough?” said she; “could n't you see it? did n't you see
it?” Seizing Bebby by the shoulders, she held the child
square round, for Richard to look at. “Her tire,” she continued,
“was span-clean this morning; her hair is full of it!
O, I shall go off the handle! Have you no heart, brother?
Could n't you feel, as well as see?” “It is nothing very
bad, I hope,” said Richard. “All covered with this dirty
meal!” exclaimed Roxy. “Your meal is not dirty, is it,
sister?” “Don't joke, brother! It is a serious case; the
children are forming very bad habits!”

“Habits of what?” asked Richard.

“Habits of getting into things,” she replied.

“That is not a bad habit, — is it?”

“Habits of getting dirty. And I always said, if ever I
had a child, it should be kept clean. If there is anything
in the world most disagreeable, it is a dirty child.”

“The children are not disagreeable to me,” said Richard.

“They are not to me,” rejoined his sister; “but they are
to other people.”

“It seems to me,” added Richard, “I would not trouble
myself much about other people, if I was satisfied myself.
`Other people' are numerous; and if the little ones are to be
adjusted to their caprice, I fear they will have a hard time
of it in life, and will wonder what they were born for.

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

Besides, `other people' are a good ways off, and have really
small concern in Memmy and Bebby.”

“We do not know how far off they are, any more than
we do death; and we ought always to be prepared, as Elder
Jabson says. If Mrs. Mellow should call, — oh Richard! —
Wash your face, Memmy! — I am expecting callers to-day.
I want you to kindle a fire in the air-tight in the parlor.”

Richard went on this errand, and the children followed
him. But their mother drew them back, saying, “You
shall not go into the parlor! I have often told you not to go
into the parlor. I always said, if ever I had a child, it
should not go into the parlor. I will have one place in the
house fit to be in!”

The room, into which Richard had not been before,
acquired all at once a singular consequence to his eye. He
looked carefully around it; he walked softly over it, as if
some rare mystery lurked in the midst of it. It was the
largest room in the house, and apparently the most open
and pleasant. It had windows enough, at least, to favor the
notion of light and freedom; four of them, that must command
fine views, — views, when the curtains were up, and
the ice and snow were gone. In the mean while, as a substitute
for these out-of-door objects, the curtains afforded
certain attempts at scenery, — a yellow castle, a whittling of
a stream of water; and on the west side, right in face of the
sunset, was a picture of the sun setting in a botch of green
paint. The room was well furnished with sofa, carpet,
looking-glass, cane-bottomed chairs; a mahogany card-table
stood under the looking-glass, containing books, a card-basket,
a small solar lamp, and several daguerreotypes. The
mantel-piece was decorated with plated candlesticks, a bluetinted
cologne-bottle, a bouquet of wax flowers, and a stromb
shell.

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

Richard inspected the contents of the table. He found
the books were gifts, gilded and embossed, — most of them
old ones, and such as his sister received before her marriage.
There were also little books, Christmas presents of the
father to the children. On the sofa lay a cloak and shawl,
and a leghorn bonnet, trimmed with green, and lined with
flowers.

“Well,” thought Richard, “nothing very terrible in this.”
Now, our friend was naturally of a serious turn of mind;
but somehow, at this time, lighter feelings came over him,
and he might have gone as far as a certain Methodist young
man did, who was obliged to confess to his class-leader the
sin of perpetrating a joke. At least, he went so far as to
pretend to joke — pretend to see the ludicrous side of things.
“What can there be in the parlor to render it so frightful?
Will the chairs fall to pieces?” He shook a couple of
them. “Are there trap-doors in the floor, to let the children
through?” He tried two or three places, springing down
with his whole weight on his heels. “Perhaps the haremscarems
will have the walls down on their heads!” He
sounded different parts with his fist. “Would the curtainpictures
terrify them? That is possible, but it were easy
to roll up the curtains, and there would be a fine view from
the windows. Yes,” he continued, “this must be very fine,
in summer. What a lake the dam makes! it would hold
a thousand like father's. The houses and gardens, trees
and mountains, beyond, must be very fine.” The world
without sobered him, and so occupied him he did not perceive
the entrance of the children. Somehow they had got
into the room, and Memmy was running to show her Christmas
present, and Bebby had climbed the sofa, and got her
mother's bonnet on backside before, and her gloves palm
side up, and was trying to wrap herself in the cloak.

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

Richard's humor had not so far evaporated but he enjoyed
the sight of Bebby, and particularly when she thrust her
hands through the cloak, with the thumbs on the off-side,
and the fingers looking as if they would be glad to accommodate
the little usurper, but had laughed themselves to
death in the attempt, and had no strength left. But this
was recreation at too great cost; too great for the mother,
who bolted into the room, and soon had her ambitious child
deplumed, and restored to its proper simplicity.

“It troubles you, Roxy,” said Richard.

“It does,” she answered; “and I think you and Asa are
not considerate, — not considerate of what we women endure.
You act as if we had n't any feelings!”

“You mean, the children act so.”

“The children would not act so if they were only rightly
governed; and there can be no government when the men
do not take hold and help the women. — Get down from the
sofa, Memmy! I have given you positive orders never to
get on there.”

“What is the sofa made for?” asked Richard.

“Not for children to dirty and wear out with their feet.
We shall have nothing fit for company long, at this rate.—
Put up that book!”

“It is my present,” replied the child; “papa gave it to
me.”

“It is yours to keep, not to be torn up,” answered the
mother.

Richard began to think there was some fact in what he
had regarded as fiction, and that there was danger to the
children in the parlor. They touched the card-table, and
their hands were snatched off; they climbed into the chairs,
and were hastily taken down; they approached the walls,
and were warned away; and presently, as if the floor itself

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

might prove treacherous, and let them incontinently into the
cellar, they were driven from the room.

The street-bell rang, and Richard was desired to go to
the door. He found there two ladies, one of whom surprised
him a little in the person of Miss Plumy Alicia
Eyre. They were shown to the parlor, where his sister
introduced them. The one whom he had never seen was
Mrs. Cyphers. Miss Eyre had on a small white silk bonnet,
with pink linings, and richly ribboned in the same
color; a swan's-down victorine floated on her neck; her
hands were quietly hidden in an African lynx muff. Mrs.
Cyphers wore a straw bonnet, with plaid trimmings; a
drab-colored sack, heavily fringed; and she was further
insured against the weather by a genet muff and tippet.

What did these ladies want? To make a call; to discharge
a ceremony; to demonstrate their friendly feeling;
to talk about the weather, and say how cold the morning
had been, but that it was growing warmer?

Miss Eyre inquired for the children, observing, at the
same time, that Mrs. Munk had two of the handsomest
children in town.

Now, Mrs. Munk began to be in her element; now she
would triumph; now she would show Richard the advantage
of keeping children neat. Uncle went for the darlings.
Alas for the uncertainty of human expectations,
and the probability that one will not conquer just when he
thinks he is going to! The children had been to the wet
sink, — then they had got the ash-hole door open, and poked
out the ashes, and nibbled at the coals. But Uncle Richard, —
hard-hearted man! — brought them in just as they
were! What consternation! His sister would have gone
into hysterics; but Miss Eyre and Mrs. Cyphers said the
children were beautiful, — would take them into their laps,

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and would kiss them, and all that; and Uncle Richard
would not take them away; nay, he seemed determined
that Memmy should go into Miss Eyre's lap, and Bebby
into Mrs. Cyphers'.

This scene was soon ended, and the children dismissed;
and both Miss Eyre and Mrs. Cyphers seemed more lively
than ever, after it. Both were delighted with the children;
and to such an extent did they carry their good feelings,
that even Mrs. Munk was willing to drop the subject from
her mind; and she soon recovered from her humiliation.

“Little things,” said Miss Eyre.

“Not worth minding,” added Mrs. Cyphers.

“They are not little things,” rejoined Richard; “and I
do mind them.”

“You are joking, Mr. Edney,” said Plumy Alicia, who
sat next to Richard, on the sofa, and turned her face towards
him engagingly.

“He dotes on the children,” observed his sister, who began
to think they would account her brother a dunce; “and
he has some strange notions about them.”

“I thought our young men were not capable of serious
emotion,” said Plumy Alicia, — “that they had no deep feeling.”
The swan's-down victorine, falling from her shoulders
and touching his hand, was very soft. There was
tenderness in her words, that touched him too. Was he
prepared to meet those fascinations, of which he had obscurely
heard? Why did he look so at her? Would he
fathom the nature of that power which had, like some invisible
engine, shaken the Mill? Was he so ignorant of himself
as to suppose he could handle that fire and not be
burned? But Miss Eyre was engaged to Clover, and he
would only look at her as a strange, singular being, who
was soon to be married to an equally mysterious man.

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Was she ignorant of the power she was capable of exerting?
Was she insensible of the precise moment when it
took effect? We should answer both these questions in the
negative.

Miss Eyre was one who in certain circles would be reputed
somewhat coarse, — somewhat unlettered. She certainly
had not that refinement which a more thorough study, and
training in some other form of society, ordinarily impart.
Yet Richard was not in a state to discriminate on these
points; or, rather, so far as he was curious at all, he attended
not so much the manner as the hidden force and character
of the lady.

It had been rumored that Captain Creamer was a rejected
suitor of Miss Eyre's; indeed, so much as this had been intimated
in Richard's hearing at the Mill, — a circumstance
that shed fresh interest on what sat near him.

But what were these things to Richard? Nothing,
nothing at all; and he would probably have never thought
of them except, — what we foreboded, — except for the
swan's-down victorine, and that piercing, flattering eye.

“Did I not see you in the crowd at Whichcomb's, this
morning?” she asked. Richard answered that he was there.
“They said you were there in the night,” she continued;
“but I could not believe it.” He replied that the Captain
obliged him to keep guard over the old man. “You had
pleasant prisoners,” she said. “They are sadly in trouble,”
replied Richard. “Sad to be arraigned as common thieves,”
was the answer.

Richard dropped the victorine as if it had been a cold toad,
and walked towards the stove. “Would you bring that
against them?” he asked.

“Not that alone, — not that, without other things,” replied
Miss Eyre. “I know what poverty is; I am not ashamed

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to say I have been poor; my only boast is, that I have risen
above difficulties.”

Richard was again touched, but he did not resume his
seat on the sofa.

“They are poor,” he said.

“Yes,” she replied, “but that is not all.”

“Proud, perhaps you would add?”

“I am proud; I would not give much for a person that
has no pride.”

“What do you mean?” pursued Richard.

“I mean,” she answered, “that they have felt above their
work, — that they would rather do anything than work.”

“You do not mean that they are vicious?”

“I do not mean to say that. They came here poor, and
they have continued poor. But they could not find society
good enough in the Factories, nor in the weave-room, nor
in the superintendent's house; and they were but spoolers.
Now, Mrs. Cyphers was the wife of a superintendent; and
in alluding to a house of that name, Miss Eyre played off
the glossy end of her victorine on the person of that lady,
as much as to say, “You see what a woman they rejected.
It seemed,” continued she, “as if nothing short of Dr.
Chassford's, or Judge Burp's, or the Governor's, would satisfy
them.”

“I do not know these people,” replied Richard, “nor do I
appreciate the distinctions to which you refer.”

“You will know,” replied Miss Eyre. “You have not
been in the city long. They attended Dr. Broadwell's
Church, as if they were as good as the people that go there.”

“Is not the Church one?” asked Richard. “Are not all
the Churches equal?”

“Mr. Edney surely cannot be so ignorant,” rejoined the
lady, with a smile. “The Church is not one; it is far

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from being one. It is a good many. Some of the Churches
are aristocratic, while others keep on the level of common
people.”

“Is not Dr. Broadwell a good man?”

“He may be, for all that I know.”

“Are not his people good people?”

“That is nothing to the point. They are haughty, fashionable,
high-stomached.”

“There may have been other reasons why these girls
liked to attend there.”

“I dare say there are; I dare say Junia could give you
fifty reasons. She has a tongue of her own!”

“She did say no clergyman had been to see them.”

“Nothing more likely,” interposed Mrs. Cyphers. “They
boarded a while at Swindler's; then they went to Cain's,
and finally they got up to Whichcomb's; and no mortal
could tell where they would come out, they rose so fast.”

“Whichcomb's is higher than Swindler's?” observed
Richard.

“Half a dollar a week higher,” replied Mrs. Cyphers.
“Pies for breakfast higher, — an extra course of a Sunday
higher; to say nothing of Mrs. Whichcomb's jellies and
cream. I boarded at Whichcomb's, I would have you to
know, until our marriage.”

“There would seem to be aristocracy among the boarding-houses,”
said Richard.

“Who would not try to keep above the mean, ignorant,
stupid Swindler's?” asked Mrs. Cyphers. “And there is a
difference, Sir, there is a difference between the weave-room
and the warping-room, — between a dresser and a grinder;
and, though I say it that should n't say it, between a superintendent's
wife and the watchman's wife.”

“All have the liberty to rise that wish to?” said Richard.

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“All that deserve to!” replied Miss Eyre, casting a
searching, but rather equivocal, glance at Richard.

But Richard did not notice it; he was thinking of the
Orphans. “Violet is very sick.” The ladies assented.
“She needs attentions.”

“If Junia does not engross them all,” added Miss Eyre.
She added this in a way that she meant to be playful; but
Richard took it quite seriously.

“You are unjust to them,” said Richard; — he said this
sternly.

“We would not be,” replied Miss Eyre, deprecatingly.
Richard added nothing.

“We have other calls in hand,” said Miss Eyre, “and
must bid you good-morning.”

They left the house; Miss Eyre went out with that
calmness which dignified sorrow can so well assume. But
Richard was not moved.

Having discovered where the Orphans were wont to worship,
he would go and see the minister of the church. He
found the reverend gentleman at home. Doctor Broadwell
was of mature years, — indeed, a little past the meridian of
life. But time, that crowned him with virtues and honors,
had raised the summit so high, — if the little piece of fancy
will be tolerated, — the top of it was covered with snow.
He was gray. The lines on his forehead were marks of
strength not less than of age; they indicated rather the
vigor of thought than the corrosions of decay; like the
furrows of the sea, which are large and deep only because
the sea is large and deep. His face shone with benevolence,
that cheered and vivified whatever object it alighted upon,
and invited to its beams all sorrow, want and desolateness.
The Doctor replied to Richard that two girls, with an old
man, had been seen at his church, and partaken of his

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communion; that he had endeavored to see them, but could
not trace them, and would be glad to be conducted to their
room.

They went to Whichcomb's, where Richard parted with
the minister, and returned home.