Shillaber, B. P. (Benjamin Penhallow), 1814-1890 [1859], Knitting-work: a web of many textures. (Brown, Taggard & Chase, Boston) [word count] [eaf676T].
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CHARACTER.
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How many gleams of character a man gives, without
saying a word, by outward involuntary indications!
The vane does not show which way the wind blows
with more certainty than do the little idosyncrasies of
exterior habit denote the quality of the interior man.
It was the remark of some one that a man of sense
could not lay down his hat in coming into a room, or
take it up in going out, without discovering himself by
some peculiarity of the motion. You may dress a
boor up in purple and fine linen, but the boor will
reveal itself. So will the gentleman, even through
rags. He need not speak to do this. The Lord
Duberlys will declare by their acts the primitive shopman,
even though their tongues be tied by never so
many conventional prescriptions. A gentleman moves
invariably as to the manner born, which education may
scarcely impart. He holds his title direct from the
hand of Nature, and finds a living voucher for it in the
educated character, which combines urbanity, dignity,
good sense, and kindness, irrespective of dollar consciousness.
SELF-RESPECT.
Self-respect is an excellent thing, but, like many
other excellent things, it is susceptible of being over-done.
It sometimes takes the form of a disease, and
runs to self-inflation, on the one hand; or, if poor, to
self-immolation on the altar of pride. People have
starved to death rather than confess to being poor;
and very often, if we could lift the veil from many
homes, we should find bitter distress that friendship
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and love would have been glad to relieve, had not
pride shut friendship and love out of its confidence.
Minds so affected call for pity. Beneath the exterior
of cheerfulness, and prosperity, and hope, the darkest
despair is lurking. The heart hardens in the aching of
ever-present misery, and feeds on its silent bitterness.
Such pride, were it rational, would be the height of
wickedness and folly. Of what use are friendship and love
unless they can be appealed to for sympathy and aid in
the dark hour! In them, if rightly regarded, are
deposits which may be drawn upon, and will not be
refused, when the trial comes. This is the case if we
are true to the principles of friendship and love, and
from a just appreciation make our deposit, so to speak,
in the proper institution, as we would make a money
deposit. The right to receive aid where the one asking
it has ever been ready and willing to be drawn
upon at sight, is no more a compromise of pride than
would be the asking for one's own that had been
loaned.
LOVE.
Love is divine, — unselfish, asking naught,
But winning it by the attractive force
Of generous trust and sweet unfearing, fraught
With the grace of tenderness to mark its course.
Harshness and doubt cannot abide with love.
Doubt is from selfishness, and that can ne'er
Yoke with the sentiment that from above
Was sent, which Scripture sayeth casts out fear.
Love has no limit, — 't is the God in man,
Broad, universal, deep, and evermore
The same, as when the stars their song began
Of sweet accord, when Time creation bore.
O, could we feel what Love is, passion free,
Then God the good, indeed, with us would thronéd be!
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FRENCHMAN'S LANE.
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'T was a brave old spot, and deep was the shade
By the fast-locked boughs of the elm-trees made,
Where the sun scarce looked with his fiery eye,
As he coursed through the burning summer sky,
Where breezes e'er fanned the heat-flushed cheek, —
Old Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
Most lovely the spot, yet dark was the tale
That made the red lips of boyhood pale,
Of the Frenchman's doom, and the bitter strife,
Of the blood-stained sward, and the gleaming knife,
Of the gory rock set the wrong to speak,
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
But the grass sprung green where the Frenchman fell,
And the elder-blossoms were sweet as well,
And the pears grew ripe on the branches high,
And the bright birds sang in the elm-trees nigh,
And the squirrels played at their hide and seek
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
The blesséd shade on the green sward lay,
And quiet and peace reigned there all day;
The fledglings were safe in the tall elm tops,
More safe than the pear-trees' luscious crops;
For the pears were sweet, and virtue weak,
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
But at times when the night hung heavily there,
And a spirit of mystery filled the air,
When the whispering leaves faint murmur made,
Like children at night when sore afraid,
Came fancied sounds like a distant shriek
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
And gleaming white at times was seen
A figure, the gloomy trees between,
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And fancy gave it the Frenchman's shape,
All ghastly and drear, with wounds agape!
But fancy played us many a freak
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek:
For lovers' vows those dark shades heard,
Their sighs the slumbering night-air stirred,
And the gleaming muslin's hue, I ween,
Was the ghostly glimpse, the limbs between!
There was arm in arm and cheek by cheek
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
Ah, blissful days! how fleet ye flew,
Ere from life exhaled its morning dew,
When children's voices sweet echoes woke,
That often the brooding stillness broke,
As the meadow strawberry's bed they 'd seek,
Through Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
Those days have long been distant days,
Recalled in memory's flickering rays,
And the boys are men, with hearts grown cold
In the world whose sun is a sun of gold,
And their voice no more in music will speak
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
And Frenchman's Lane has passed away:
No more on its sward do the shadows play;
The pear-trees old from the scene have passed,
And the blood-marked stone aside is cast,
And the engine's whistle is heard to shriek
In Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
But, true to ourselves, we shall ever retain
A love for the green old Frenchman's Lane,
And its romance, its terror, its birds and bloom,
Its pears and the elderblow's perfume, —
And a tear at times may moisten the cheek
For Frenchman's Lane, up by Islington Creek.
eaf676n1* Frenchman's Lane was the scene of a fearful murder, where a sailor
belonging to the French fleet that lay at Portsmouth, N. H., nearly a century
ago, was found with his throat cut. Hence its name, and the mystery
connected with it.
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THE FIRST SUIT.
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Not at law, good friends. — We mean the boy's first
suit of clothes, as he emerges from the semi-fix of
boyhood into the realization of frock-coat, vest, pants,
and boots, and walks out among men, a man, in his own
opinion. Indeed, it might not be safe for one to insinuate
that he was any longer a boy; and even parental
rule is materially restricted, in view of the consequence
assumed with the clothes. What an air of exaltation
marks his steps as he moves along! and he looks at
everybody that passes as if expecting to hear some
remarks about his improved appearance; for, of course,
he thinks they are all looking at him. He will not
exactly cut his former acquaintances, who remain in
jackets, but he will let them know their places. There
is an impassable gulf of broadcloth now between them,
and theirs is but a satinet condition, that can properly
claim no sympathy with his. He looks at the young
ladies now patronizingly, and has a half-idea of regret
at the killing nature of his attractions, wondering which
of the number he shall select as his particular flame.
His habits change. He talks now in a different key,
and his childish treble is no longer discernible. He
thrusts his hands into his pockets, and fingers his keys
in a maturity of style that receives universal admiration.
He speaks of his father as “the governor,” of his
mother as “the old lady,” of his grown-up sisters as
“the girls;” and of his brothers, two or three years
younger than himself, as “the small fry,” telling Tommy,
with considerable authority, to black his boots for him,
and Mary Jane to adjust his neck-tie. He soon learns
to say “us men” with the greatest freedom. Such are
the first steps in progressive manhood, too often marred
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by rowdyism in the secondary stages, where impudence
is mistaken for smartness.
MORAL TENDENCY.
“Where is your little boy tending?” asked the good
man, as he was inquiring of Mrs. Partington with
regard to the proclivities of Ike, who had a hard name
in the neighborhood. He meant the direction for good
or ill that the boy was taking. “Well,” said the old
lady, “he is n't tending anywhere yet. I thought some
of putting him into a wholesome store; but some says
the ringtail is the most beneficious, though he is n't old
enough yet to go into a store.” — “I meant morally
tending,” said her visitor, solemnly, straightening himself
up like an axe-handle. — “Yes,” said she, a little
confusedly, as though she did n't fully understand, but
did n't wish to insult him by saying she did n't; “yes,
I should hope he 'd tend morally, though there 's a
great difference in shopkeepers, and the moral tenderness
in some seems a good deal less than in others, and
in others a good deal more. A shopkeeper is one that
you should put confidence into; but I 've always
noticed sometimes that the smilingest of them is the
deceivingest. One told me, the other day, that a calico
would wash like a piece of white; and it did just like
it, for all the color washed out of it.” — “Good-morning,
ma'am,” said her visitor, and stalked out, with a
long string attached to his heel by a piece of gum that
had somehow got upon the floor beneath his feet.
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SYMPATHY WITH RASCALS.
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Byron says, “a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous
kind,” and we sometimes are half inclined to accept this
as the reason for a latent and deep-seated sympathy we
entertain for rascals. The confession causes us no
shame, as we think, if there is one class of men more
than another that needs sympathy, it is these. The principal
reason for this is that they receive none. The
rascal — the legitimately-recognized and found-out rascal—
stands alone, comparatively. A woman or two,
in the form of mother, wife, or sister, may cling to the
rascal, and love him better that he is debased, and follow
him to the scaffold, may be, but beyond this he is
alone. Rascals have no sympathy with each other
beyond a mere sense of mutual danger, and the master
of them all leaves them in the lurch just as they most
need his help. The antecedents of rascals are to be
looked at, and herein is much cause for sympathy.
They were, perhaps, born rascals by psychological entailment,
and could n't help it any more than they could
help being squint-eyed or club-footed; or, perhaps, by
wrong influences, — insidious and hard to be resisted,—
the best qualities of their minds became perverted,
and were led to run in the wrong channel. From the
very earliest indications of his rascally proclivities,
every hand is raised against the rascal, and society
“puts into every honest hand a whip to lash the rascal
naked through the world.” The law is against him, and
his life is literally fenced with constables' poles and
policemen's batons. His only teacher is his fear, and
his only preacher the criminal judge. Of course, this
sympathy only extends to the detected rascals. There
are many great rascals who never get found out. These
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only should be detested, — the devourers of widows'
houses, the disturbers of the poor, the extortioners, the
slanderers, — but not one spark of sympathy should be
extended to them. It is to the wicked, hunted, benighted,
fated, tempted, and fallen man that the sympathy
belongs, who has such odds against him, — who,
with Ishmaelitish instinct, has his hand raised against
every other man, seeing in all his enemies. How far he
is from happiness! How much need he has of sympathy!
We do not love the rascality the rascal commits, —
that is ever to be deprecated, — and its hideous
character is another call upon our sympathy for the
rascal who is impelled by the insidious whisper of the
devil to commit it, and to be committed for it. Verily,
the way of the transgressor is hard, and sympathy with
him is called for in the same degree that his lot is hard.
ORGANIC.
“Will you please to play Apollyon crossing the
Alps?” said Mrs. Partington, reaching out of her chamber
window, as an organ-man was turning his crank
with a persistent arm beneath. — “Non entendez,” said
he, looking up, and smiling at her. — “Can't you play it
in less than ten days?” replied she, in an elevated key. —
“Non entendez,” said he again, still smiling at her, and
turning away at the crank. — “Not in ten days,” she
mused; “I suppose he means it will take more than ten
days to learn it so as to play it exceptionably.” She
gave Ike a five-cent piece to carry down to him.
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SCRATCHING FOR A LIVING.
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Mr. Nighthewind is a utilitarian. Everything around
him has to scratch, as he expresses it. He had to
scratch, he says, to get along, and he means that everything
else shall, that he controls. Mr. Bounderby was
not more exultant or boastful of his beginning than was
Nighthewind of his scratching. A morning caller found
Mr. N. out in the yard in his dressing-gown, busily
engaged with his hens, chasing them from corner to
corner, and acting by them in a very mysterious
manner. “What are you doing?” said his visitor,
thinking him a little mad. — “Doing?” said he; “why,
these hens” — shying a stick at a big rooster — “won't
scratch, as I had to; and I 'm determined they shall
scratch for a living. They are so pampered with luxurious
feed that they don't seem disposed to scratch.
Shoo! you rascals! why don't you scratch?” and Mr.
Nighthewind went again into the energetic demonstration;
but so obstinate are hens that they did n't seem
to profit by it.
ODORLESS ROSES.
A rose of rarest beauty met my view,
Half in the verdant dewy foliage lying;
I strove to reach it, but too high it grew,
And the fair flower escaped my earnest trying.
At last, a ladder gained, I plucked the prize,
And deemed myself well paid for toil expended;
Alas! I found it only pleased the eyes, —
No fragrant odor with its beauty blended!
And then this moral crossed my vision's disc:
That there are human roses brightly blooming,
For which men neck and peace together risk,
But find, when gained, no gentle heart-perfuming, —
No breathing sweets amid the flower they 've won,
And feel the sense of being severely “done.”
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THE PRITCHARD HEIRS.
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CHAPTER I.
The venerable Pritchard, for a thousand years, more
or less, head of the firm of Pritchard, Smead, & Raikes,
merchants, had finished his business on a pleasant
Saturday evening, in the summer before the beginning
of the present century, and retired to his old home-stead,
which he had occupied for a great number of
years, and which, like himself, was apparently strong
and good for many years to come. He had lived so
long in this house that it seemed as if he were a part of
it, and was in complete sympathy with its brick and
mortar components, though to all else it was a stupid
old pile enough, — a ghostly and ghoulish thing, — that
the timid heard strange sounds issue from, and hastened
by with all celerity. It was brimful of odd closets
and odd traps, the uses of which had outlived their
generation; and it was said that a secret communication
existed inside, with underground passages, conducting
to the garden behind the house, and that the house had,
in its day, served as the head-quarters of an expert
smuggler, who drove a lucrative business through the
medium of the viaduct aforesaid; though this was
merely a supposition, as, when the old house was pulled
down, to make way for a new block of granite stores,
no trace of the secret passage was to be found.
Mr. Pritchard entered his house, swinging the heavy
oaken door to behind him, which awakened dull echoes
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through the ancient fabric, hung his three-cornered hat
on a peg in the entry, and deposited his cane in its
accustomed corner. After which, he turned the brass
knob of the old parlor-door, and entered, his feet
making scarcely any sound upon the sand-strewn floor.
He seated himself in his arm-chair, to which he had
been long accustomed, and, laying back, seemed deep
in thought.
Mr. Pritchard had been what the world understands
by the term, a good man. He had been as honest as
circumstances would permit; had never been detected
in any flagrant violation of law or equity; his word had
long been law among the merchants of his day, and, at
the close of a long mercantile career, marked by some
shrewd speculations, including the purchase and sale of
a large amount of continental money, he was said to be
worth several hundred thousand dollars. He had not
wasted his substance in riotous living, nor in extensive
charities, though he gave freely at times to objects connected
with public benefit; and when collections were
taken in the church where he attended, the return of
the contribution-box from over the door of the faded
blue-lined wall-pew where he sat disclosed always a
bill lovingly hovering over the heads of the coppers
that lay at the bottom of it, the admiration of all who
saw it. Some said he was pharisaical about this; but
we know there are envious and slanderous people in
the world, and the very best of us are liable to
feel the force of their malignant and depreciating
remarks. With our statement of Mr. Pritchard's position
and acts, we leave him in the hands of the reader.
He has gone, long ago, with his faults and his virtues,
and the opinion of men cannot affect him one way or
the other.
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He had been several years a widower, his wife having
died in giving birth to his youngest child, who, at the
time of which we write, was about twelve years old, a
fair and sensitive boy, with a heart full of loving feeling
for every one, but especially for his father, who was
very dear to him, and who bestowed upon this, his
youngest born, as much love as a man absorbed by
business and the world can feel. The boy resembled
his mother, and in the old man's tender moments the
thoughts of her would stream down into his heart with
a touching influence, and invest her child with new
claims to his regard.
It was in one of these moods that Mr. Pritchard made
a will. He had drawn it up himself, and had it witnessed
by two men of substance, one of whom had
died, and had placed it away carefully, in a nook which
he knew, where it was to rest until called for, at his
death. There was nothing unusual in this mode of
proceeding; but those who witnessed his signature —
those to whom he necessarily confided the secret of his
making the instrument — had not the most remote idea
of the character of its provisions, or who were to be
benefited thereby. But the angel that prompted the
will, and was looking over his shoulder when he wrote
it, one dark night, saw the pleased smile that mantled
his face as he recorded the name of his youngest son,
Henry — named for himself.
The two other boys, James and Thomas, were of a different
character from the youngest. James, the oldest,
possessed all his father's shrewdness and much of his own,
and he early showed a disposition to pursue a course
likely to make him a leading mind in the community.
He was ambitious and persistent, and not too regardful
of the rights of others; a disposition that had revealed
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itself in many acts of youthful littleness towards his
companions and playmates, which now, at twenty-one,
gave him the reputation of being the sharpest young
man in town. He had been with his father since he
had left school, and had become conversant with all the
modes of making money then existing. His only affection
for any one was through their money, and his
father formed no exception to the rule. The second
boy was a dreamer, and exhibited no business proclivities:
better content with a book and quiet, at sixteen,
than with all that the mart could afford, obtained
through strife and endeavor.
The only one of his sons to whom Mr. Pritchard made
any mention concerning a will was to his youngest, as
he stood by his knee the morning after.
“How shall I name you in my will?” said the old
man to him, patting him upon his head. “Shall I leave
you enough, so that when I die you will be rich, and
never have to work any, and will have plenty of servants,
and coaches, and pretty things, as you wish for
them?”
The boy looked up in his father's face, and his eyes
filled with tears, as he said he would rather work and
forego all that had been named, so that his father might
live; and the old man let the will remain where he had
placed it, and never referred to it again.
We left him in his arm-chair, with the house hushed
and still; and he was sitting with his head laid back,
deeply thinking, perhaps, of past times, and perhaps,
thinking of the future, towards which he was hastening.
His two boys were at school, his eldest son at the store,
and the housekeeper, who had filled that position for
many years, was in her chamber, in a remote part of the
old pile. Was Mr. Pritchard asleep, that he sat there
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so still? It was unusual for him to sleep thus;
but the weather was warm, and the cool air blew in
from the garden, freighted with the odor of flowers,
and imparted somniferous influences. He slept well
after the fatigues of the day, and his breathing was so
gentle that the ear was pained by the effort to catch the
tone of its rise and fall. His eyes were open, as if the
outward senses were still awake, though his weary
spirit was steeped in forgetfulness. Still he sat there
in the venerable chair, saved from other generations,
and moved not, though hour after hour crept by, and
the stroke of the old clock on the stairs proclaimed
the passing time. It was a waste of time for Mr. Pritchard
to sit thus, when there were many papers to adjust
before bed-time, and a letter upon the table, involving a
sale of many goods, must be answered before the morning
mail.
“Father!” cried a joyful voice, breaking the silence,
“Father!”
Mr. Pritchard moved not, though the voice was one
that he loved to hear when awake. How soundly he
slept, not to hear it!
“Father!” and Henry Pritchard, awed by the
silence, moved towards his father's chair, and placed his
hand upon the arm that lay extended upon the velvet
covering. A moment more, and his cries rang through
the house, and “Father is dead!” reverberated through
the still rooms like a voice in a tomb. Mr. Pritchard
slept the long sleep of death!
There was a great parade at the funeral. The bells
were tolled, and the flags upon the shipping were
hoisted at half-staff, and a long train of respectable
mourners followed the remains to their last resting-place.
A funeral sermon was preached upon the
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virtues of the deceased, and the papers of the day were
full of eulogies upon the great man fallen in Israel, and
elegiac poets sang his praises in the most approved
verse. His death pointed a moral for many discourses
for a long time, and was used beneficially to illustrate
the fact that the rich and the great must die as well as
the poor; and a superb monument was erected to his
memory, bearing upon its tablet the inscription, “An
honest man 's the noblest work of God.” Mr. Pritchard
slept.
CHAPTER II.
“It was always a mystery to me what Pritchard did
with that will,” said a corpulent old gentleman, with
very white hair and a very red face, to another old gentleman,
with whom he was conversing. “He made a will,
I know, because I 've got a memorandum of having
witnessed it a year before he died. Let 's see, that
would make it more than thirty-five years ago. How
time does fly away! Pritchard was a very careful man,
and that the will was n't found seems very strange.”
“Perhaps he destroyed it,” said the other old gentleman.
“Some folks don't like to think of dying, and after
they have made their wills they destroy 'em. They 're
kind o' superstitional like.”
“Well, Pritchard was n't one of that sort. He
knowed he 'd have to die; and he was a very careful
man. I do wish it had been found. I guess that oldest
son of his would n't have fared so much better than
the rest.”
“I guess not,” said his shadow; “and how he 's managed
to get it all into his own hands, away from Thomas,
who is worth forty of him as a man, is more than I can
tell.”
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“Why, 't is the same old story,” says the red-faced
man; “Thomas must foolishly go to speculating, and
ruin himself in that way; and then his kind brother
relieved him by paying half of what his share of the
patrimony is worth. It 's plain enough. Then his
younger brother, that he had sent off in one of his ships,
dies in the Indies, and he steps in for the whole of his
share on a pretended will from Henry. He must be
dead; for he has n't been heard of for more 'n thirty
years now.”
“Hush!” said the other; “here he comes in his
coach, with his wife and daughters, as proud as peacocks.”
The coach rolled by them as he spoke, and James
Pritchard bowed coldly to the old friends of his father,
who returned it for the father's sake, but not for his
own.
“I han't got no patience with that fellow!” says the
one whom the red-faced man had been speaking to,
striking his cane on the ground. “He was the last, I
know, in his father's regard, and is now enjoying all his
money. It 'll make the old man unhappy in his grave,
if he knows anything about it.”
“I guess he does n't care about it,” said the red-faced
man; “where he 's gone our exchange is n't negotiable;
but sometimes, as I pass the old house, there, that 's
been shut up so long, I almost expect to see the old
man step out of the door. I wonder why James does n't
tear it down.”
“He dare not do it, it is thought,” replied his companion;
“for they say that the housekeeper, before she
died, hinted to him that when he pulled down the old
house, he would fall with it. It has doubled in value
since Pritchard died.”
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“Good-by,” said the red-faced man. — “Good-by,” responded
his friend; and they separated, rattling the
bricks with their canes as they moved away.
It was at the close of the day on which the above
conversation occurred that the family of James Pritchard
were seated in his magnificent drawing-room, supplied
with every luxury that wealth and art could produce.
The feet sunk in carpets wrought on foreign
looms, luxurious couches wooed repose, heavy curtains
gave a grandeur to the apartment, exquisite pictures
graced the walls, costly candelabras glittered upon the
marble mantelpieces, and large mirrors multiplied on
every hand the splendors collected there.
“James, who were those gross-looking people who
bowed to us as we were riding, this afternoon?” said
Mrs. Pritchard, as her husband sat, with a half-abstracted
air, reading the paper.
“Old Varney and Slade,” was his reply, somewhat
abruptly, and a little harsh, “old friends of my father's.”
“Well, what claims have they upon your attention,
if they were only his friends? I think their presumption
in speaking to you unbearable. You should respect your
daughters' feelings, Mr. Pritchard, if you have no regard
for your wife's, and not encourage any such familiarity.
Poor things!”
“One was such a horrid fat man!” said the youngest
daughter, raising her jewelled hands.
“And the other was so terribly gaunt!” said the
elder, with a tone of horror.
“Why, really, ladies,” said Mr. Pritchard, with a
chagrin that he vainly strove to conceal, “you treat my
father's old friends with considerable freedom. They
are very respectable citizens, and, besides, they are very
necessary people to me — or those whose good-will I
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would fain secure, though I half suspect, from their
coldness, that I have n't got it.”
“Very well,” said his wife; “I suppose it will always
be the case that a woman is to have no voice in determining
who her husband is to be intimate with, though
she herself must be circumspect in her acquaintance.
At any rate, the mother of your daughters will try to
retrieve what their father loses.”
His brow contracted, and his heart prompted a bitter
reply, — no unusual thing in that household, — when
the door-bell rang, and Mr. Varney was announced.
With a half-imprecation, he ordered the servant to admit
him; and, as the haughty wife and daughters swept in
stately pride from the room, our fat old friend of the
afternoon's conversation entered.
Mr. Pritchard welcomed him with a shake of the hand,
marked by assumed heartiness, and conducted him to a
seat, at the same time taking his hat from his hand.
But Mr. Varney held to this most tenaciously, for he
was a humble man, and it rather took him aback to witness
the splendors which he saw around him.
“Thank'ee — thank'ee!” said the old man; “your
father, Mr. Pritchard, was a very polite man — very. I
never went into the old house in my life that he did n't
order up the best his cellar had in it, to drink General
Washington's health.”
Mr. Pritchard rang the bell. The servant appearing,
he was ordered to bring a bottle of the best wine from
the cellar, and glasses.
“I did n't speak on that account,” said Mr. Varney;
“but it sounds so like your father! and, as I 've been
walking pretty brisk, I will try a thimble-full.”
The wine being brought, Mr. Varney imbibed rather
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more than his stipulated amount, and, placing his glass
upon the salver, he said,
“I 've come up, Mr. Pritchard, in this odd way, not
exactly on my own account. You see, about an hour
or so ago, I was sitting on the corner opposite, where
your father's old house is standing, when a stranger
came along, who stopped and looked at the old building,
and asked me who it belonged to. He seemed
mightily taken with it, and went over and tried the door,
as if he wanted to go in. I told him who it belonged
to now, and who used to own it. — Lord bless your
father! I can see him just as plain as if it were
yesterday!”
Mr. Pritchard looked over his shoulder, with a troubled
expression, as if he expected to see some sight
which he did n't want to, and said,
“Well, Mr. Varney, this man?”
“So I told him,” continued Mr. Varney, who was
warmed up by his wine, “all that I knew about the
family, and about your father's making a will, and about
my witnessing it, and about how it never was found,
and much of the same sort, when he asked me if I did n't
think you would sell the old house. I told him he had
better come over here and inquire; but he asked me to
come, as I was somewhat acquainted with the family;
and so I 've come.”
“Very well, Mr. Varney, you have done your errand
very handsomely,” said Mr. Pritchard. “You may tell
the one who sent you that the old place is not to be
sold; and I may as well say to yourself that a repetition
of your visit on the same errand would be very
disagreeable to me.”
The old man had poured some wine from the bottle,
preparatory to taking another “thimble-full;” but, as
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Mr. Pritchard finished speaking, he placed it upon the
salver untasted, and, taking his hat, turned to go. He
was politely bowed to the door, and left the house with
a figurative brushing of the dust from his feet as he
departed.
“I could n't have drank it; it would have choked
me,” said he, the thought of the sparkling fluid dancing
through his mind, as if to tempt him into a regret
for his self-denial.
Soon after his departure, the house of James Pritchard
was illuminated with a blaze of light, and merry
sounds of music and the laughter of glad voices came
from the open windows. It was a reception night, and
fashionable forms moved here and there amid the splendors
revealed without. Poor people went by on the
other side, and looked up wistfully; but there was no
atmosphere there, they knew, wherein the virtue of
charity could grow, and they passed on.
A different scene was enacting, at the same moment,
in an obscure part of the town, at the home of the other
of the Pritchard heirs.
Thomas Pritchard sat in his little parlor alone. He
was a man apparently fifty years old, and his iron-gray
hair denoted that care had not passed over him lightly.
There was a gentle expression upon his face, and an
eye indicative of great kindness; but there prevailed
at the same time an expression of indecision and of
shrinking back in his manner, as if from extreme sensitiveness.
His bearing was that of the gentleman, and
his kind voice had a sympathetic and loving tone that
bespoke a heart attuned to rightful feelings. He was a
fine-looking man, intellectually, and his countenance
altogether was prepossessing in the extreme. Such
was Thomas Pritchard. His home exhibited none of
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the extravagance of wealth, as seen at his brother's;
but, though humble, an air of neatness prevailed on
every side, and competency was evident throughout.
A neat and somewhat extensive library occupied one
side of the small parlor, a piano found a place upon
the other side, some beautiful pictures in water-colors
graced the wall, and a portrait of old Mr. Pritchard
smiled down from above the mantelpiece. A fine taste
was perceptible in the arrangement of a vase of flowers
upon the table, and a stranger might guess that the
hand of woman had given the touch that lent such an
air of neat cheerfulness to the scene. Mr. Pritchard
had been a widower for several years. He had had a
number of children, but they had died, one by one, and
none remained of his family but one young boy, and an
adopted daughter, whose education he had mainly attended
to himself. Her works graced the walls, and
her fingers could awaken sweet tones from the instrument
which held its place in the room. He had
adopted her at a time when, involved in troubles, he
had scarce a hope of being able to give her a support;
and it was a source of joy to him, ever after, that he
had done so. He had cultivated her mind himself, and
trained it in a manner to repay him ten-fold for the care
bestowed; and now that his days were weary with the
thoughts of those he had lost, her voice broke through
the gloom to cheer him, and her hand ministered to his
comfort, as though hers was the reflected love of that
which had fled, returned from the brighter sphere to
soften the sorrow of this.
As we have said, he sat alone. The shadows had fallen
gradually around him, and he was scarcely sensible of
the darkness, when the door opened, and a beautiful
girl entered, clothed in white, and bearing a light. The
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sudden glare startled him, and he shaded his eyes with
his hand.
“Madeline,” he said, “this gloom is more in keeping
with my present feelings than the light. Carry it away,
my dear child, and come to me.”
She obeyed him, and, returning to where he sat, threw
her arms around his neck and kissed him, with all of
a daughter's tenderness. Laying her head upon his
breast, she looked up into his face as though earnestly
endeavoring to pierce the gloom resting there, and
devise some means for its banishment.
“Father,” said she, in a sweet voice, sinking to her
knee by his side, “shall I sing for you? My voice, you
say, soothes you when your spirit is troubled.”
“No, my child,” replied he, placing his hand tenderly
upon her head; “this is a time when I would not have
my thoughts interrupted, even though they are very
sorrowful ones. Your voice is very sweet to me, my
child, always. This is the anniversary of my father's
death, and the thought comes to me of the strange fate
that has attended his sons — that —”
He ceased; and the whole tide of feeling for the
wrong done him by his brother, and his own humble
condition, rushed through his mind, but found no expression.
He would not wound the gentle ears inclined
towards him with the bitterness swelling up in
his own heart, and he pursued the theme no further.
“This home is too poor for you, my sweet girl,”
said he, kissing her forehead. “A refinement that
would grace a palace should not be hid in obscurity
like this.”
“Dear father,” cried she, starting to her feet, “you,
who have given me this refinement, know that its first
desire is to minister to your pleasure. What other
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companions do I want than yourself and my dear brother,
and the circle that I call friends? What more of gratification
do I want than my music and my painting? I
desire nothing, but to make you happy.”
The fond girl threw herself into his arms as she spoke,
and the father and daughter momentarily forgot their
sorrows in a loving embrace. They were disturbed by
a voice at their side, which called out,
“Hallo! what courting 's going on here? Who 's
this? You, Pritchard? Ah, yes, and here 's my little
pet, Miss Madeline. Bless you, my darling! That 's
right, love your father.”
This was all spoken in the hearty tones of our old fat
friend Varney, who caught Madeline, as she extricated
herself from her father's arms, into his own, and kissed
her voluminously before she escaped from the room, —
vanishing like a spirit through an opposite door.
Mr. Varney chuckled as she disappeared, and then,
with a renewal of his hearty tone, said,
“Mr. Pritchard, I ask your pardon, but I 've brought
a gentleman here, who wants to make some inquiries
about the old estate yonder, — if you know anything
about its being sold — if it 's ever going to be.”
“We will have a light,” said Mr. Pritchard, rising.
“No,” said another voice beside Mr. Varney's, “no
light is necessary. I merely wished to make inquiry concerning
the property, as I am pleased with its situation,
and would like to purchase it for building purposes.”
“I have no longer any interest in it,” said Mr. Pritchard,
with strong emotion; “my brother has got it all
now (there was a strong emphasis on the word brother),
and he will not sell. He believes the downfall of
his fortune depends upon that of the old house, and he
dare not do it.”
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“Has he no other brother?” asked the stranger.
“No,” replied Mr. Pritchard; “he never had but
one, beside myself — a little brother, who died abroad.
He was too good, and too frail, for a hard world like
this.”
“Well, sir,” said the stranger, “having ascertained
concerning the property, I will now take my leave.
Good-night, sir.”
He passed out as he spoke, but Mr. Varney remained
behind a moment, just to say that the stranger seemed
as rich as a Jew, and that he did n't, for the life of him,
know who he was.
CHAPTER III.
Toward the close of the day after the one we
have described, a pedestrian, dusty and weary, walked
up the broad street that led by the stately mansion of
the oldest of the Pritchard heirs. He appeared to be
upwards of forty years of age, stooped in his gate like
one prematurely old, and was evidently a stranger, for
he gazed at the lofty dwelling of James Pritchard long
and earnestly, as if admiring the beauty of its architecture.
“Whose residence is this?” he asked of one who
was passing at that time.
“Pritchard's,” was the reply.
“Pritchard's?” reëchoed the stranger; “the name is
not familiar to me. Is he a native of this place?”
“Yes,” said the man, “he is one of the sons of old
Pritchard, the merchant, that died here many years ago,
and he has contrived to get all the old man's property
into his hands. Got a brother over here, humble
enough.” And he passed on.
The stranger stood looking at the house, when a gay
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party came tripping down the steps, consisting of the
two daughters of James Pritchard, and a young and
fashionably-dressed man, whose likeness to the sisters
was sufficient evidence of his relationship. It was their
brother, a petted and only son, the heir to the name
and fortune of James Pritchard. As they passed the
stranger, the youngest of the sisters whispered to her
brother,
“O, Richard, what a horrid-looking creature! What
can he be staring at our house for?”
“I can't say,” replied the young man. — “Look here,
old fellow,” said he, addressing the stranger, “what
concern have you about the house, yonder, that you
stare at it so? Do you think of a midnight visit to it,
and a robbery of plate? The young ladies don't like
your looks, and you had better move on.”
“Don't be so severe, Richard,” said the young lady;
“he may come and murder us in our beds.”
The stranger made no reply, but looked upon the
party with a strong glance of contempt as they moved
away, and then mounted the steps that led to the elegant
mansion. He rang the bell with a feeble pull,
which was speedily answered by a servant in livery,
who stared upon him with a supercilious expression,
and then demanded why he had not gone round to the
back door.
“Because I want to see your master,” said the
stranger, with a weak voice.
“Well,” replied the domestic, “go round to the back
door, and I will call him.”
The stranger walked slowly round the house, looking
up at the windows, as he went along the gravelled
walks, that made his weary steps more slow and painful.
Reaching the door designated, he sat down upon
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the step to await the approach of the proprietor of the
mansion. At last the servant appeared, and requested
the stranger to walk into the library. Mr. James
Pritchard was sitting at his table writing, as the man
entered.
“Is this Mr. Pritchard?” he asked.
“It is,” was the reply.
“You had a brother Henry, sir?” continued the
stranger.
“I had,” replied Mr. Pritchard, with a sudden flush
upon his face. “Why do you ask?”
“Because, sir, I knew your brother in India, and was
with him in his last moments. He enjoined a promise
upon me, if ever I came to his native place, to call upon
his brothers, assuring me of a warm welcome. It is
many years ago, but I have not forgotten the promise.
Fortune has gone rather hard with me since, and I am
induced to ask your aid for my old friend's sake.”
“Indeed, my brother's friend, you have a strong
memory, to retain the matter so long.”
“I never can forget him; he was so generous. I
remember that he left his share of his father's patrimony
to your brother.”
“There your memory fails you,” said Mr. Pritchard,
with irony in his tone, rising at the same time, and
going to his secretary. “This, perhaps, may refresh
your memory,” unfolding a paper, “if you are the one
you represent yourself to be. The property is willed
to me.”
And there, in unmistakable tracery, was the name of
James Pritchard as the legatee of Henry Pritchard.
The stranger grew pale with emotion as he looked upon
the paper, while the leggatee watched his face with sharp
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inspection. Resuming his composure, he said, with a
sigh,
“True, true, time plays sad freaks with our memory;
but is the other brother of my friend — is your brother
alive?”
“Yes, he lives,” said Mr. Pritchard, with embarrassment;
“but an estrangement has grown up between us.
Family difficulties have led to non-intercourse, and we
rarely meet. But our conversation is growing irksome,
and, as I have pressing business, you will please excuse
me if I bid you good-evening. Take this for your
needs, and, as a reminder of painful things is what I
cannot bear, owing to a too sensitive nature, I beg you
will not call again.”
He placed a five-dollar bill in his visitor's hand,
and, calling a servant, directed him to show the stranger
to the door. The bill was quietly laid upon the corner
of the table, and an expression of pain was visible
upon the man's face as he left the door of the inhospitable
mansion. On leaving the house, he strolled
pensively along, apparently unheeding as to where
he was walking, when he entered the street where
the old Pritchard house stood in its decay, with
its low-browed windows, its heavy cornices, and its
immense stacks of chimneys. The stranger paused a
moment to look at it, and moved away in deep thought.
He turned a corner at the end of the street, and, in a
moment more, was at the house of Thomas Pritchard.
Knocking at the door, it was opened to him by the
charming Madeline, who ushered him into the parlor, as
he expressed the wish to see Mr. Pritchard, who was
not in, but was momently expected. The stranger's
humble and weary appearance won her sympathy, and
her kind voice bade him be seated till her father's
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return. She arranged for him the softest seat, and
showed such a solicitude to please him that he was
profuse in thanks for her kindness. At length Mr.
Pritchard returned, and was informed that the stranger
awaited him. Entering the parlor, he courteously
saluted him, when, rising to his feet, the stranger stood
in the broad light that broke in a flood from the west,
and held out his hand. Mr. Pritchard took it, and, looking
full in his face, with a disturbed air, asked him who
he was.
“Thomas Pritchard, don't you know me?” was the
reply.
The voice was a voice from the dead, — the voice
broke the gloom that hung over a remembrance of
thirty years, — the voice was a renewal of fraternal joy
in his breast,— and, with a cry of “Henry, my brother!”
he held the stranger to his heart.
The sound had attracted the fair Madeline and her
brother Henry into the room, who were made partakers
in the joy of the reünion. The mystery was explained.
He had been very ill in India, and, in the belief that he
was about to die, had made a will bequeathing his porttion
of his father's estate to his brother Thomas, whose
name, as he had just seen, had been erased, and that of his
elder brother substituted. The vessel to which he was
attached had sailed, leaving him, as it was supposed, to
die. Reviving soon afterwards, a rich native of the
country, attracted by his friendless condition, had taken
him to his own home, where he had been cared for with
the greatest tenderness, and his life saved by the most
unremitting attention. He at last so ingratiated himself
that the old man adopted him as his son, he taking
the name of his new father. His remembrance of home,
at first vivid and mingled with regretful feelings at
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leaving the spot he loved so well, became dimmed by
the lengthening absence. Communication between the
portion of the country where he was and his own land
was rare, and at last indifference gained complete mastery
over him, and he had devoted his energies to
business. He had married young. His wife and family
were living, and had come with him to the adjoining
town, where he had stopped on account of cheapness
of accommodation; for “you must judge, my brother,”
said he, pointing with a melancholy smile to his faded
garments, “that I am not quite equal to our aristocratic
brother, with whom I had an interview this morning.”
His kind brother assured him that he was most welcome
to such as he had, and asked a description of that
interview, which was given him. Thomas Pritchard
heard it with a downcast face, and when he raised it
there was a cloud upon it; but no word escaped him of
censure for one who had done him such wrong.
“And now that I have come to life again,” said
Henry Pritchard, in a lively tone, “I shall be the executor
of my own will, and adjust the slight mistake of a
name that has somehow occurred.”
“Not for the world,” said his brother; “let him have
it all, as he has got all the rest. I wish not to contend
with him for it.”
“Well, then, for the present let it remain as it is,”
said Henry; “and for the present let me remain the
stranger that I was an hour since, for a purpose of my
own. I will be your guest for a day or two.”
Madeline busied herself in preparing the evening
meal, and the Pritchard heirs spent a long hour at the
board, talking of old times and scenes, and the thousand
things that come up to interest those who have
been long separated.
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“And now, Thomas,” said Henry Pritchard, “I want
to get permission to visit the old house again. There
is a strange feeling in my mind with regard to it. I am
not superstitious; but, if ever a man was visited by a
denizen of the other world, our father has paid me a
visit. He came in a dream, and I thought he revealed
the old room to me where he died. Doing so, he
seemed to point to a closet which I do not remember to
have existed, but without a word of explanation he disappeared.
Three times the vision appeared to me, and
there was a troubled appearance upon the face that disturbed
me. It revived the interest in my home, and
the new desire that brought me here. How is this
entrance to be gained?”
“Our neighbor, Mr. Varney, will get permission for
me,” said his brother, “and you can accompany me.”
Mr. Varney was sent for, and our old fat friend came
soon after, waddling into the room. He started as he
saw the stranger with Mr. Pritchard, who placed his
fingers on his lips in token of silence. The desire to
visit the old house was stated, and Mr. Varney under-took
to procure the necessary leave in the name of
Thomas Pritchard. This he succeeded in doing the
next morning, and the three proceeded together to the
old pile, that had been deserted for many years.
The massive oaken door grated harshly on its hinges
as the brothers entered, and their footfalls and subdued
voices wakened strange echoes through the
rooms. It was with deep emotion they entered the
room where their father had died. Several articles yet
remained of what then filled it, and for a short time the
main object of visiting the place was forgotten in the
tender reminiscences of the past that were awakened.
An exclamation from Henry Pritchard at last attracted
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attention, and, pointing to a panel in the wainscot, he
said, in a whisper,
“The very spot the ghost revealed to me!”
An examination showed that the panel was a secret
door, secured to the floor by small hinges, and at the
top by a spring, which was hid in the deep moulding.
The rust of years prevented an immediate removal of
the panel, but after some little exertion it was done,
when a large amount of old papers was found, and in
a case by itself a paper, labelled “The Last Will and
Testament of Henry Pritchard.”
As the paper was unrolled, the eye of Mr. Varney
fell upon the names of those who had witnessed the
will, and he shouted out, in a tone that made the old
house ring again,
“Found, at last! — found, at last! I told 'em there was
a will. Found, at last! `Witness, Simon Varney,' as
plain as your hand.”
The will was written in a clear and distinct manner,
and the tenor of it was, that the eldest son, James, having
been fitted for business, should enjoy his position in
the firm of Pritchard, Smead, & Raikes, and that the
property should be equally divided between the brothers,
Thomas and Henry Pritchard. The instrument
abounded with kind expressions for his children. It
was thought advisable to return the papers to their
hiding-place, and the panel was restored as before. No
sooner was this done than the door opened, and James
Pritchard entered. His brow was dark as night, and
the expression of his face cruelly forbidding, as he
looked upon the assembled group in the little low
parlor. He took no notice of his brother Thomas, but,
turning to the stranger, whom he recognized as his
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visitor of the day previous, he demanded, in an imperious
tone,
“By what right, sir, do you enter here without my
permission?”
“By permission of Mr. Pritchard, sir,” was the
stranger's reply, in a humble tone.
“And by what right has he permitted you?” cried
the imperious man, with increasing violence.
“By my right as one of my father's heirs,” said
Thomas Pritchard, in a voice firm and distinct, as though
the occasion had given him new powers.
“Then leave, all of you,” said he; “for the house is
mine.”
“James Pritchard,” said Thomas, with a firmness
of tone that was unusual, “you are yourself an intruder
here, and remain but by our sufferance. Our father
made a will, deeding his property to myself and our
youngest brother. That brother lives.”
James Pritchard laughed scornfully, and his laugh
sounded fearfully in the old house.
“It is too late a day,” said he, “for such an assertion,
and assertion is not proof.”
He stamped his foot as he spoke, and the panel, but
feebly secured, fell with a loud sound at his feet, revealing
the secret closet.
“Our father speaks to you, James Pritchard, from the
tomb,” said Thomas Pritchard, holding the will towards
him, “and affirms my truth; and here, by your side, is
one from the grave to claim his right. It is our
brother Henry.”
The color fled from the haughty man's cheeks, as
though a ghost had, indeed, risen and was standing
before him. He clutched at the air, as if to seize something
with which to support himself, and gazed upon
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the stranger with an eye in which hatred and fear
seemed combined.
“I deny his identity!” at length he found voice to
say. “I deny his identity, — he is an impostor! I have
twenty witnesses of my brother's death. Your credulity
has been deceived. The will is a fabrication.”
“I was one of the witnesses, myself,” said Mr. Varney,
as though this were the greatest event in his life;
“no cheat, sir! See there, `Witness, Simon Varney.'”
James Pritchard left the house, saying, as he left,
“I deny the will, and deny the scheme trumped up
by a fool and an impostor to deprive me of my right.”
The younger brothers held a brief conference as
to what course to pursue. To establish their claim
would require money, of which they had apparently
none at command, while the one who was to contest it
with them had abundant means. In this strait they
appealed to Mr. Varney, who, after revolving the
matter for some time, gave it as his opinion that the
one who had proposed to buy the property the day or
two before would advance money to aid their cause,
through hope of obtaining it. He said this with a significant
glance at Henry Pritchard, who nodded in
reply; and Mr. Varney was left to consult with the
stranger, when he should see him. The next morning
Mr. Varney informed the brothers that the stranger
would advance them money to any amount, through
him, though desirous of remaining unknown in the
matter. This seemed to remove one difficulty from
the path, and, having retained eminent counsel, the
cause was submitted entirely to his hands. The town
became interested in the affair, and public opinion
divided upon the question, a large party siding with
James Pritchard; but the will was too well
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authenticated to admit of doubt, although the second brother
had long since sold his right in the property unconditionally
to the elder, which shut him out from his
interest in the will, and the denial of the identity of the
younger seemed hard to prove, which rendered the case
apparently a safe one for the possessor of the property.
But there were those engaged in the cause, backed by
the wealth which came from the invisible friend of the
Pritchard heirs, who met the fierce contestant of their
father's will with a powerful force. Evidence was introduced
to prove the death of the young Pritchard in India,—
the one who had brought the will, — and the probability
of his decease argued from after circumstances.
On the other side, the cause was left to the evidence of
personal resemblance to the deceased, attested by old
people who remembered the elder Pritchard, and by the
memory of his brother Thomas. After great difficulty,
and the occupancy of months of time, the case was
decided in favor of the Pritchard heirs. This decision
was made at the close of a fine day, and Thomas Pritchard,
sad at his success, went home with a clouded brow
and a weary heart. Henry Pritchard had gone to
inform his family of the result.
Since his return he had acted very mysteriously with
regard to his family. To the repeated invitations to
bring them to his brother's house, he had invariably
replied that they were very well where they were, and
from his evasion it had appeared that he was desirous
they should remain in present obscurity.
Thomas Pritchard was received by his children with
affectionate regard, and they learned from his lips the
intelligence of his success. He sat down in his arm-chair,
and leaned his head upon his hand, with the air of
a man who had been defeated. A knock at the door
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aroused him, and in a moment more James Pritchard
stood before him. His surprise was great. Neither
spoke for a minute; at last, motioning to a chair,
Thomas Pritchard asked his visitor to be seated.
“Not,” said he, in a manner far different from that
which he usually employed, “till I am assured, by my
brother's forgiveness of unbrotherly wrong, that I am
welcome. Thomas, we have long been estranged. I
have deeply wronged you; and during this vexed trial
I have thought of that wrong. My father's spirit has
struggled with me, and my stubborn heart has yielded.
I had, before the decision, resolved to make reparation,
and have now come to express that determination, and
to beg your forgiveness, and that of my disowned
younger brother.”
Thomas Pritchard had risen to his feet as his brother
was speaking, and before he had concluded he had
grasped the hand held towards him, and pressed it to
his heart with a fervent embrace.
“And you have my most hearty forgiveness, James,”
he cried, shaking the hand warmly. “This moment is
worth more to me than all the wealth of India. I have
never been estranged from you; my feelings have been
true to you, with a conviction that you would some day
come back to brotherly allegiance. James, you are
welcome. I wish Henry were here to share my joy.”
The door opened as he spoke, and Henry Pritchard
entered, accompanied by Mr. Varney, whose delight in
the success of the heirs was great, in the importance
that the witnessing of the will had given him. A blank
expression fell on his jolly features, as he saw in whose
presence he stood, while Henry Pritchard, with no
further notice than a glance, passed to the other side of
the room. James Pritchard left the spot where he was
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standing, and crossed over gently to where his younger
brother was gazing upon the picture of his father upon
the wall.
“Henry Pritchard,” he said, laying his finger upon
his brother's shoulder, “your elder brother asks your
forgiveness. He disowned you from a mistaken belief,
and is willing to repair, as far as possible, the injury he
has done, by restoring, without further contest, the
property he has held so long, — unjustly, dishonestly
held.”
Henry Pritchard turned and looked upon his brother's
face. Its expression assured him, and, seizing his
hand, he shook it warmly. It was enough. The Pritchard
brothers were at peace!
Mr. Varney coughed and fidgeted to attract attention;
at last, when wearied with trying, he spoke, —
“I 've come for you to go with me and see the benefactor
who has befriended you, in his own house. He 's
sent his coach for you.”
The heirs at once obeyed the summons, and invited
their elder brother to accompany them, which he assented
to, and, getting into the coach together, they
drove away. Through the main street of the town they
passed, towards the suburbs, and, after riding about
ten miles, they arrived at a splendid mansion-house,
embowered in trees, and everything about it denoting
affluence and taste. The coach stopped, and the party
alighted. They were met at the door by a lady of
about forty years of age, in whose complexion the
effect of an ardent sun was visible, who, in elegant
terms, bade them welcome, ushering them into a parlor,
richly but neatly furnished. She told them her husband,
General de Main, would welcome them presently.
In a few moments the door opened, and Henry
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Pritchard stood before them, and was introduced to the
astounded brothers as “General de Main,” the proprietor
of the mansion in which they then were. They
had not missed him from their side, and the surprise
was complete. He smiled at the puzzled expression
they wore, while Mr. Varney chuckled and rubbed his
hands gleefully, as if the matter was nothing new to
him, and he was aching to tell all he knew about it.
“I am here,” said their host, “in four capacities: as
the East Indian General de Main, Henry Pritchard, the
unknown benefactor of the Pritchard heirs, and your
host, — in all of which I shall endeavor to do my duty;
and this, my sweet wife, shall make up for my deficiencies.”
He touched a bell, and folding doors unclosing,
disclosed a rich banquet, spread for a large party; and
there assembled were the family of their host, — the
oldest, a young man of about twenty-two, and four
young ladies, of ages varying from sixteen to six years,—
as beautiful as their mother, and as vivacious as they
were beautiful. And there, among them all, to the
astonishment of Thomas Pritchard, were the sweet Madeline
and his son Henry, who, through the good Mr.
Varney, had been brought there before them, he
having transformed himself into an ancient Ariel to
bring about results on which his heart was set. He
looked upon the scene with tears in his eyes, and his
great sides shook at the fun of the thing.
The party welcomed the guests, and James Pritchard,
though his heart smote him for what he had done,
experienced a pleasure he had not known for years, —
the first return for sincere repentance. He was cordially
welcomed by his brother, and every attention
shown him that could make him at ease; and Thomas
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Pritchard, in his new-found joy, made all happy by the
magnetism of his presence.
“And how could you so hide yourself from us?”
asked Thomas of his brother Henry.
“Through the aid of my father's old friend, Varney,
whom I remembered. I sought him, and through
him learned all of our family affairs, and proposed the
purchase of the old house. Then I visited you in the
dark, the night before I disclosed myself to you; and
the idea suddenly occurred to me to preserve my incognito.
My friend Varney assisted me in it all, and
through his aid, in spending my money, I am located
here, where I shall remain for a season.”
Mr. Varney smiled blandly with new importance,
and smoothed the napkin upon his lap with nervous
delight.
The party sat long, and separated with the promise
of renewed affection, which promise was fully redeemed.
The Pritchard estate was settled; how, the world knew
not, and Mr. Varney, who knew all about it, would n't
tell; but things remained relatively with the brothers
as before, with the exception that Thomas Pritchard's
house was enlarged, and more beautiful pictures graced
the walls, and more books swelled the library, in which
he took delight; and neater and more roomy grounds
appeared about the house, in which the fair face of
Madeline was often seen of mornings in the summer
time, bending over the blossoms less bright than the
glow upon her cheek. And the blush was brighter
when young Frank de Main pressed her hand and whispered
into her ear tender words, not unwillingly
heard. The families mingled, although the haughty
wife and daughters of James Pritchard reluctantly
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consented to associate with those they had despised; but
the General and his wealth reconciled all difficulties,
and even the humble Thomas, reflecting the glitter,
became a visitable brother. It was a moment of mortification
when the daughters and son discovered in their
India uncle the one they had feared as a robber; but
they were of the class that are willing to be forgiven,
and forgot it, as their uncle seemingly did.
There was a grand family party, the next year, at the
house of Thomas Pritchard, on the occasion of the marriage
of Frank de Main Pritchard and the charming
Madeline; and the papers of the day, which we have
consulted, bear testimony to the gallantry of the groom
and the beauty of the bride, of which we have no
doubt. The superb set of diamonds, given her by
James Pritchard, was scarcely less beautiful than the
costly products of the India looms with which she was
presented by her husband's mother. But neither gift
was so precious to her heart as was the blessing of her
father, as he placed his hand upon her head and invoked
upon her the richest of heaven's bounty for her dutiful
regard, and kissed her brow as the amen to the prayer.
The amen was echoed by Mr. Varney, who took her in
his arms, and kissed her vehemently, much to the disgust
of the fashionable portion of the family, who looked
with aversion, as they had at a time previously, on the
horrid fat man. Mr. Varney did n't know what they
thought, and did n't care. He was as happy as though
he had been made the possessor of all the Indies, and
acted accordingly. Some thought it was the wine, in
which he pledged the bride's health eleven times. The
last act of folly which he committed was to punch the
aristocratic James Pritchard in the ribs, in a great style
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of familiarity, which that gentleman overlooked in the
hilarity of the occasion.
The old house was torn down, soon after, by general
consent, and a fine block of stores was raised upon its
site, that long was regarded an ornament to the part
of the city where it was located, and even now, though
some thirty years have transpired, is looked at with
pride by the older merchants.
If the reader see no other moral in this story than
the simple struggle for money that forms its basis, then
the writer will feel that his real effort has been overlooked,
and that his work has been in vain. But he
hopes its true meaning will have been observed, and in
this hope he leaves in their hands the story of the
Pritchard Heirs.
DON'T FRET.
What is the use of fretting? Better take
Things coolly, nor allow ourselves to fume;
To growl about it cannot better make
A thing that 's wrong, nor darkened spots illume.
We have, we know, but little time to stay,
With everything around us to enjoy:
What sense were it to waste our time away,
And leave the real gold for its alloy?
Fret not, O, fret not! — be a jolly soul, —
That is to say, of course, be if you can;
Yield not yourself to anger's fierce control,
But let good-nature's sunshine warm you, man. —
Now, may perplexing mischief haunt the life
Of that performer on that wretched fife!
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THE DICKY.
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Very much of human happiness depends upon the
dicky, — more, perhaps, than we are aware of, or are
willing to admit. Harmony is made to respond with
the vibration of its strings, and those strings draw at
times closely about the heart, as well as the neck. We
challenge philosophy to maintain itself against a refractory
dicky-string or a treacherous button. The placidity
of temper that might bear a man along above and
defiant of other accidents, shakes to its centre when
tested by accidents that pertain to the collar. He
becomes, perforce, choleric at once. It is not every
one who knows how to wear a dicky: upon some it
is never becoming, sitting as ungracefully as the sides
of a wheelbarrow. Such people adopt the demi-dicky,
that presents the suspicion of a shirt, but gives people
a strong idea that the wearer is undergoing a choking
sensation. Gracefully worn, the dicky is eminently
ornamental, — the mirror before us gives assurance of
the fact; but such as have not been provided by
Providence with necks adapted to the wearing of
dickies, should never essay it, but stick to turn-over
collars instead. Wyars was a melancholy instance of
the folly of such ambition. His head had, for some
wise purpose, been placed upon his shoulders without
the intervention of a neck, and he aspired to wear a
dicky! But it was the sort of ambition that o'erleaps
itself, and condign punishment attended such gross
infraction of the law of fitness. His dicky, as if sensible
of the folly of trying to be respectable, broke
through all restraint; and, meet Wyars when one might,
the dicky showed symptoms of eraticism: now about
two points off the wind, now at right angles with the
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body, and one day he appeared with both points of the
dicky peeping very quizzically from under the hind part
of his hat, he looking for all the world like the man
with the turned head. He gave it up shortly afterwards,
and now wears an extended binding of his shirt
for a dicky, that comes up under his jowls like a splinter
for a broken leg, keeping his head in a perpetual
perpendicularity, like a martinet on parade.
HEATHENISH.
Radbod, the pagan chief, had bowed his head
To teachings of the holy word, and then
He came the last grand offering to perform, —
Within the holy font to wash away
The trace of heathen sin that yet remained.
He turned him to the priest: “Pray tell me true,
O, man of God, where are my fathers now,
Where are my kindred, and the loving ones
Snatched from my bosom by remorseless death?”
One foot immersed, he stood the fate to hear
Of those whose memory still was priceless held.
“Alas, my son, they lift their eyes in realms
Where unbelievers shall forever dwell!”
Then Radbod said, as proudly he looked up,
His dark eye flashing with the loving light
That burned within, an ever-constant flame,
“Where'er my kindred bide, there too will I, —
Whether within the blest abode of those
Redeemed and singing their celestial joy,
Or where the darkness is forever felt
In depths of an unutterable woe.
As God loves me, so do I love my race.”
No more; he straightway from the font withdrew
His dripping foot, nor could entreaty move
His faithful soul to forfeiture of love
And union with his kindred in the land
Where soul meets soul, — and so the heathen died.
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BRINGING UP CHILDREN.
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With regard to the management of children, said the
philosopher, a few wholesome rules may not be amiss.
As Solomon said, “spare the rod and spoil the child,”
it is your duty, at the outset, to impress upon the
mind of your child the idea that force alone is to be
your measure of family discipline; but, as it may be
troublesome and require time to apply the switch, the
next best thing is tongue. The tongue is easily applied,
takes little time, and is very salutary. As soon as your
children are up in the morning, or get into the house
from school, begin to find fault with them, and blame
them about their looks, gait, and behavior. Speak to
them tartly, if you want them to mind you; there is
nothing like a good sharp parental voice in making a
child start quickly. It would be unbecoming weakness
to ask them to do what you wish, and a tone of displeased
authority is very efficacious in inspiring feelings
of respect. If they do not start quickly, — particularly
if a boy has his boot half on, or a girl her head
half combed, — threaten them with dismemberment, decapitation,
or any other equally trifling penalty, if they
do not jump, and the willing haste they will show in
minding will astonish you. If children are teasing
round you from hunger or whim, yell at them lustily,
and threaten them with whipping. No matter whether
you execute the threat or not, — persevere in threatening,
and after a while they may be led to believe you
will do it. It may take some time, but stick to it. It
will not do to gratify any little desire of theirs at once;
it will look too much like bending from parental dignity.
It is best always to refuse them at first, and work
their feelings to turbulence, and then to comply; this
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will give them a sense of their dependence, and yourself
an opportunity of throwing oil upon the troubled
waters. It is a fine experiment, when well managed;
and it is, besides, a practical application of the text,
“through much tribulation,” &c. If one of your children
cry, through the teasing propensity of another,
first look round, as if searching for something to throw
at the head of the culprit, then, with an angry eye, dart
upon and give him or her a rap. It will be remembered,
you may depend. Don't waste time in counsel. This
would derogate from the parental authority. If your
children are noisy, it is an ingenious expedient to feign
extreme distress, and threaten to go away or jump overboard;
by appealing to their affections thus for a few
times, they will get so as to believe it. If this fail, go
up stairs, or anywhere in the cold, under pretence
that your head is “splitting open” from their noise.
If a child is disposed to sing, check it at once; it is a
boisterous practice, and should be discouraged. As if
heaven had not given it more use for its lungs than a
bird! It is a good way to cry out “Stop that noise!”
It prevents the formation, by the child, of a too exalted
opinion of its own vocal ability. The same rule may
apply, if the child is disposed to dance. What can be
more ungainly than a little child capering about a room,
with no more consideration than a lamb? If a child is
disposed to be affectionate, don't return it; remember
that we should not love the creature more than the
Creator. Don't show that you love it too well; it is
best to repel petulantly all little acts of endearment;
to encourage a child in kissing is apt to lead to bad
results. If your children make mistakes, and are not
ready to learn, it is a beneficial plan to rail at them for
their stupidity, and present a microscopic view of their
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failings; this latter, particularly, if a neighbor or playmate
chance to be present. Disparaging comparisons
are very apt to encourage them to persevere. Be careful
and do not praise them for good qualities they may
possess; this would tend to make them vain, and vanity
is sin. Having yourself arrived at what you know by
intuition, or divine inspiration, of course it is of no use
to instruct your children how to do anything. Let
them find out as you did. You will get along a great
deal better in your management if you have some
grandparent or maiden-aunt to assist, especially if they
take views opposite to yourself in everything. The
balance is thus beautifully preserved. A good grumbler
is invaluable among a family of children; the
grumbler will prevent their dying from a surfeit of
jollity. Depend upon it, said the philosopher, the
advice I have given, if it be rightly understood and
rightly applied, may be made profitable. The interests
of time and eternity depend upon judicious family
training; and yet how few there are who know how to
bring up children in the way they should go! Almost
all read the Solomonian injunction, “Train up a child
and away he 'll go,” — and they go it.
UNMET CONFIDENCE.
Much of the evil of life springs from hiding ourselves
from each other; and that we do hide ourselves is the
result of a want of confidence in each other, that would
allow us to give and receive with kindness. We dare
not tell one of his faults, though they may be very
apparent, because we fear to offend him. He sets us
down as his enemy, at once, when we wound his self-esteem
by intimating that he is not infallible. So when
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others are spoken of in whom we have interest. An
intimation of their possible imperfection excites us
against the one breathing the suspicion. We know the
charges are wrong; we feel that we cannot have been
mistaken in the individuals who so much engross our
esteem, and hence we cast off those who, by the very
act of daring to incur our displeasure, have proved themselves
our best friends, and the most worthy of our
friendship. The charges may be false, groundless, but
they should be made, in orker to be met and refuted, and
the motive of their being submitted canvassed, and its
sincerity established. In domestic matters the want of
this confidence is severely felt. The tart and scornful
reply to a confided thing checks future candor in that
direction. No man, if he have any spirit, will incur the
danger of getting snubbed twice in the same way.
Hence when, after many days, scandal bears tales to
ears that should have heard them long ago, tears and
bitterness make a dismal episode in life, that never would
have occurred if those who weep had known the secret
of securing their own happiness. An ingenuous spirit
should be met with equal openness and candor. To
cramp such a spirit, and still its warmth by reproach, or
innuendo, or indifference, is a fatal mistake, and lays the
foundation for a healthy growth of misery in the time to
come, when love and confidence are most needed. Men
speak in very severe terms, and justly, of deserted homes
and domestic wrong; but, could they become acquainted
with the facts that led to such desertion and such wrong,
they would find, maybe, that their sympathies are due in
a different direction from that in which they have been
solicited. This is a lesson which will admit of much
thought, and, as the old gentleman remarked when he
laced the boy's shoulders with an ox-goad, we hope it
will do good.
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THE DEAD SAILOR.
His sails are furled, his voyage is done, —
Now may the gallant sailor rest;
The peaceful port his bark has won,
No hostile storms shall more molest;
Life's boisterous course he has bravely run, —
Lay him away, with his worth confest.
Ay, throw above him the starry pall
He loved so well in his hours of life;
He has seen its gossamer shadow fall
Where the spirits of ocean waged their strife,
Has waved its folds round earth's huge ball,
His soul with its sovereign glories rife.
'T is a fitting shroud, and he loved it well,
But his beaming eye is glazed and cold,
And his manly heart will never swell
To see it in starry pride unfold;
Yet place it there, — its stars may tell
The shining deeds of the sailor bold.
It may tell the tale of a generous heart,
That never refused a friend's appeal;
It may tell of tears that dared to start
From founts that pity bade unseal;
It may tell of a bolder, a sterner part,
Where duty claimed his nerves of steel.
All, all alone! not a kinsman near
To see the earth receive its own;
No gallant messmate by his bier,
To mark his frail wreck where 't is thrown;
The winds sing o'er him an anthem drear,
And the heavens their tears outpour alone.
But naught he cares: nor rain, nor cold,
Nor ill of earth, doth the body know;
His spirit eyes on scenes unfold
Surpassing all he has known below;
Around and above him are joys untold,
He ne'er would exchange for mortal woe.
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Then lay his hulk where the bright flowers bloom,
When the bitter winter storms are fled,
Where the apple-blossoms shall give perfume,
And the grass its emerald beauties spread,
Where the stars he loved shall ever illume
With gentle rays his lowly bed,
And birds all the summer long shall come
And sing o'er the sailor dead.
THE COOLIES.
“Well, what if they did?” said Mrs. Partington,
as the visitor was condemning certain parties for the
transportation of coolies. She glanced at the thermometer,
as she spoke, with the mercury indicating
ninety degrees, at the same time inhaling a pinch of
Col. Rhoades' rappee. “I think they ought to be
praised,” continued she, “for trying to get a little
coolly anywhere, such times as these. How hot it is,
to be sure! It is almost equal to the horrid zone;”
and the old lady fanned herself energetically. — “But,”
said her friend, “I mean the coolies, brought from the
East.” — “Well,” responded the dame, “it does seem
like an interference with the plans of Providence to
bring them here; but when the wind sticks at the
south all the time, they should n't be blamed for trying
to get the east winds to cool the people off with, anyhow.”
Her friend looked at her with compassionate
benignity, but attempted no further explanation, while
Ike sat endeavoring to make the sundered parts of the
old lady's cooler stick together, as he had seen Signor
Blitz do.
-- 110 -- p676-131
TALKING HORSE.
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It is very amusing, during a trotting season, to observe
the horse-bent of conversation at the grounds,
and outside, among those, small and large, who are
interested in horses. It seems as if every man was
thinking horse, and by sympathy had become half horse.
Indeed, one might be excused for watching the mouths
of those speaking with the expectation of having them
neigh like horses, as those who come from sections
where lobsters are caught become so imbued with lobster
as to partake of the peculiarities of that excellent
fish. Passing round from group to group, it appears
like hearkening to the same conversation, divided into
sections. In each section the same matters are discussed:
horse genealogy, horse manners, horse points,
horse riding, and horse raising — the latter so frequently
that a general equine resurrection seems the main point
of horse belief. One would think, at such times, that
there was no other animal in the world than the horse,
and that the whole of human progression, with its
weight of moral and social interests, was to be helped
along on horseback, or upon a spider-web vehicle, weighing
but about seventy-five pounds. A man who cannot
talk horse, then and there, is floored — is nowhere — is
obsolete — is done up. Though he should speak with
the tongues of angels and of men and have no knowledge
of horse, he is as nothing. The merest tyro of
the curry-comb turns up his nose at him. It is well to
affect horse, at such times, though one may not know
the mane from the tail, or the snaffle from the side-saddle.
Some pursue this course, and win a great reputation
by listening and looking. Looking at a horse
appreciatingly and admiringly is about half equal to
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speaking about him, and some have by this course been
able to pass as respectably under the eyes of the initiate
as though they were born and educated in a stable.
PICTURES.
We don't care whether pictures abound in a house
from pride, fashion, or taste, so that they be there. If
there is insensibility in the proprietor, he may be the
means of gratifying taste in others, or of awakening a
taste where it was lying inactive before. It is more delightful,
of course, where good taste prompts their supply;
then the pleasure of the exhibitor is added to the
gazer, be he never so humble, and the two realize a
better brotherhood, — not before recognized, perhaps, —
in the broad avenue of natural taste. How cheerful the
walls of a home look with them; and, by the rule of opposites,
how cheerless without them! It is a garden
without flowers, a family without children. Let an observing
man enter a house, and ten times in ten he can
decide the character of the proprietor. If he is a mean
man, there will be no pictures; if rich and ostentatious,
they will be gairish and costly, brought from over the
water, with expensive frames, and mated with mathematical
exactness; if a man of taste, the quality is observable,
and, whatever their number or arrangement, regard has
evidently been had to the beauty of subject and fitness,
with just attention to light and position. In humble
homes, when this taste exists, it still reveals itself, though
cheaply, but the quick eye detects it and respects it.
We have seen it in a prison, where a judicious placing
of a wood-cut or a common lithograph has given almost
cheerfulness to the stone walls on which it hung.
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THE OCEAN.
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Thou art jolly in thy mood, O, playful giant,
Hurling us here and yon, despite our will,
To all entreaties deaf — to all defiant —
Holding no moment, at our bidding, still.
The poets praise thee — those upon some mountain,
From which their optics thy bright face can see,
Dipping their cups in the Castalian fountain,
Pouring libations soft in praise of thee.
O, treacherous sea! how sweet thou look'st but now,
And smooth, as is the cheek of maiden fair; —
There are ten thousand wrinkles on thy brow,
And anger's fury in thy hoary hair.
Let poets sing of thee — 't is my conviction
They 'd sing another tune, if 'neath thy jurisdiction!
FATALITY.
“Did you ever notice,” said Dr. Spooner, “the fatality
that attends upon the name of Atwood? Meet with
it where you will, oysters may be found connected with
it as closely as barnacles to a ship's copper. It seems
the most natural thing in the world. Atwood seems as
much made for oysters as oysters for Atwood. I can't
understand it, any more than I can spirit rapping or the
aurora borealis. It is one of those mysterious phenomena
of the universe that cannot be fathomed by the
usual rules of interpretation. Should I go to England,
I should expect to find Atwood engaged in the oyster
business. Were I to go to France, I should be greatly
disappointed did I not find Mons. Atwood opening the
bivalves to my order. Were I to find my way to China,
I should look for Atwood with a long tail to supply me
with oysters! It is very strange, and I never look at
the sign bearing the name without thinking of this
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destiny — this oystere destiny, if I am allowed the privilege
of indulging in a little pleasantry — that chains them to
a specific calling, like old Sassafras that rolled the big
rock up the mountain.”—“I have myself noticed this
fatality,” said the imperturbable, who sat smoking in the
corner, “and your remark about meeting the name in
foreign parts I myself have tested. I have met it in Paris,
in Amsterdam; and once, when in Cairo, Egypt, as I
was taking some oysters with a friend, I had the curiosity
to ask the name of the one who kept the place, with
a view to establishing the fact of which we are speaking,
and the name was given of —” — “Atwood, of
course,” said the Doctor, breaking in. — “No, sir,” replied
the imperturbable, “it was Tomally, an Egyptian as
black as your hat.” He kept on with his smoking,
while the Doctor pulled on his glove and went out,
evidently troubled at the smile that greeted his discomfiture.
A SERIOUS CALL.
What of the night, O, watchman on the walls?
Dost see the day-star through the mist arise?
Hears't thou the herald voice of God, that calls,
Speaking as once it spoke from out the skies?
Has man aught further on his journey passed
In the dark shadows of the dreary night?
Will his horizon long be overcast,
And thick the veil that keeps from him the light?
What of the night, O, watchmen? See yon gleam
Shoot upward from the darkly-curtained east!
It is the day-star's radiating beam —
Now from its thrall will manhood be released!
What of the night? — O, why this silence deep? —
No day-star beams to them — the watchmen are asleep.
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THE BARON OF BOSTON.
The Baron he liveth a happy life —
O, a happy man is he!
For his mind has no shade of care or strife,
And its fancies are bright and free.
No acres broad doth the Baron boast,
But his heart is rich as a king's,
And that dominion he craves the most
Is what good fellowship brings,
As he laughs,
As he quaffs,
In the light which his happiness flings.
And the bold Baron sits in a regal way —
His retainers are friends most true,
And he rules them at will by the magical play
Of his fancies rich and new.
His sceptre 's a Cuba, of title proud,
Betipped with a glowing star,
And his crown is a circle of fragrant cloud,
More graceful than jewels are,
As he puffs,
As he snuffs
His odorous, sweet cigar.
No malice he bears in his genial breast,
No bitter thoughts he knows;
So full of his own broad friendship blest,
No room has he for foes.
He welcomes a friend with a loving cheer,
With the clasp of a generous hand,
No human ice in his sunshine clear
Can ever unmelted stand;
And he smiles
And beguiles
By the heart's own kind command.
And long may the Baron his rule preserve,
And his castle doors be stout,
With garrisoned larder and cellar to serve
To keep the enemy out;
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And when in the evening of life the gale
Shall bear him from Time's rough coast,
May he speed o'er the sea with a willing sail,
To the haven desired most,
And his elegy
The world shall see
Recorded in the Post.
SWEARING.
Almost every one accustomed to smoking, who has a
proper regard for the little courtesies of life, asks, before
he indulges in his propensity, if it may be offensive
to any. Suppose the same question were asked with
regard to swearing, by those who are disposed to indulge
in the luxury of blaspheming. There are times
when good taste is fearfully shocked by the introduction
of words and sentiments that should not be spoken by
the members of any circle; and, though not disposed to
claim for ourselves a very great measure of sanctity,
there are times when we have been offended — to use a
very mild term for the feeling — at expressions which
good manners should have suppressed, and good morals
should never have allowed to enter the mind of those
who uttered them. We think the time has gone by
when profanity is generally regarded as an essential
adjunct of wit, and that a story loses nothing of its
piquancy when the profanity is left out. It is very
offensive to have an obtrusive head, with an oath ever
between its teeth, thrust among decent people, and it is a
wonder that sensible men, themselves, who speak profanely—
and there are too many such — should not see
the probable disagreeable nature of it to those who
hear them, and suppress it. At least, they might
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preface their remarks with the question, “Is swearing
offensive to you?” If, as in nine cases out of ten where
the same question is asked about smoking, the answer
is in the negative, then the swearer can blaze away with
his anathemas and imprecations till the teeth of everybody
chatter to hear him. Many seem to swear unconsciously,
the oaths coming in as naturally as italic
words in the emphasis of conversation; and, like the
boy who declared that he did n't whistle in school —
that it whistled itself, they might give the same excuse
for it. There is something very unsatisfactory in
swearing, and after a man has indulged in his profane
stories, and has made crowds laugh by them, he feels,
when he gets by himself, that he has n't much to brag
of, after all, and that
“The atheist laugh 's a poor exchange
For Deity offended.”
THE PRIMA DONNA.
“Did you like her vocalization?” asked the amateur,
reaching over the seat on which Mrs. Partington was
sitting, as a young lady finished the singing of a favorite
piece of music, in a manner that set every heart
thrilling with pleasure to hear her. — “What did you
say?” said she, turning partly round. — “Did you like
her vocalization?” he repeated. — “Yes,” replied she,
with animation, beating the time on her umbrella-handle,
“and I liked her singing too.” She kept on, like a jolly
old wheelbarrow — “Why should we send to Europe
and England and France and Fiddledee for executioners
of music, when we can find such voices at home by our
own fireplaces? It seemed to me while she was singing
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that we were getting over the bars of heaven, and had
come to a rest on top when she stopped. The music of
the spears can't be no better. But do look at that
boy! I declare I believe he will be a prodigal of musical
talons, by and by, if he lives long enough.” She pointed
at Ike, who had secured a long-handled contribution-box
out of the deacon's pew, and had transformed it
into an imaginary violoncello, playing upon it with the
handle of a deceased palm-leaf fan, the fragments of
which strewed the floor.
MISANTHROPY.
The picture in Bleak House, representing “the
young man Guppy” in the theatre, with dishevelled
hair and desperation upon his brow, after being rejected
by Esther, is very ludicrous. The young man feels that
fate has done him a deep wrong, and he defies fate. He
challenges fate to hit him again. The milk of human
kindness has dried up in him, and he is now lacteally
farrow. Guppy is one of a class that we meet with
almost every day, who, through large self-esteem and a
sovereign belief in their own importance, become misanthropic
at the first breath of ill-luck, and resolve to
punish the world, that they conceive has injured them,
by leaving it to its own destruction. We 'll have nothing
to do with this ill-natured world, they say, which
has so far lost sight of its own interests as to treat us,
its brightest ornaments, so badly, and then see how it
will get along! We abjure it, we leave it, we wash our
hands of it. In this spite they regard the world, and
bore the ears and plague the hearts of all who listen to
their complaints. They see, however, the great globe
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spin on, to their utter disgust, and find that, after all,
they are acting very foolishly; that growling does no
good, and that a cheerful acquiescence in the dispensations
of Providence, and humble trust, are far better than
breaking one's head in futile buttings against destiny or
accident. Nine times out of ten, those who growl the
most against the world have most reason to growl
about themselves. They make, by their own stupidity
or improvidence, the fortune they deprecate, and have
no more reason to quarrel about it than they would
have to complain that destiny gave them a sore finger
after they had put their finger in the fire. Could people
who attempt the misanthrope but look at the ridiculous
Mr. Guppy, it would seem that they should be cured
of the disease of overvaluing themselves.
MEASURING LOVE.
“Brief, brief at best is all the love of man!
A word, a promise in a moment broke,
As evanescent as the wreathing smoke
That melts in air ere we its form may scan.” —
Nay, loved one, nay, speak not the cruel word,
For recently, when on the railway train,
My fleet thoughts fleeter flew to thee again,
And love for thee my heart's emotion stirred:
More ardent grew the faster that we flew,
And every mile the passion warmer burned,
And every mile my heart the fonder yearned
To pour for thee its offering warm and true.
Talk of the length of love! Why, all this while
My love you might have measured by the mile.
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PLEBEIAN PRETENSION.
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The doctor said it was a case of the gout — a clear
case. This was surprising to everybody, and everybody
smiled hugely at the idea; for beyond the most
frugal limit of appetite, including occasional tea, the
sufferer had not gone. There was a great flutter in the
family on account of it, because a case of the gout, they
deemed, brought respectability with it. Sir Leicester
Dedlock, in Bleak House, had the gout, and gloried in
it, because it was a disease that had been in the family
for many generations, and he had it by descent. But
here was a case where it had left the charmed circle of
the aristocracy, and had planted itself directly upon a
plebeian toe; — painfully, it is true, and the flesh cringed
and groaned in the utter misery of it; but it was “respectable,”
and a grateful posterity, it was deemed,
would look back reverently to the one who had introduced
the gout into the family blood. That doctor was
regarded as a marvellous man, whose science had penetrated
through the rheumatic and erysipelatic indications,
and had singled the gout as the actual disorder,
then gnawing like a vicious devil at the mortal extremity;
and it was with a thrill of pride that inquirers for
the health of the sufferer were assured that the gout
was the malady. Then old plates in Gentlemen's Magazines
were sought, by which to define the true position
for the gouty patient, — to determine whether the foot
should rest at an angle of forty or sixty degrees, or on a
plane with the horizon, — the difficulty being dispelled by
an old habitué of the theatres, who prescribed a flowered
dressing-gown, plenty of flannels, and the foot upon a
common cricket, as the theatrical position, and it was
forthwith adopted. The world affected to laugh about
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it, — it was such a glorious joke! — the world always
jokes when it affects to sympathize. Here was a claim to
gentility; here was an attempt to overstep, with a gouty
foot, old landmarks, by one who had no legitimate right
to the position, and men were alarmed; but, though
they tried to sneer it down as rheumatism, and roar
about it till they were red as erysipelas, the doctor,
who ought to know, said it was the gout, and the sufferer,
standing on his crutches, swore he would cut his
toe off before he would abate one nail of his claim —
that it was so.
THE FRANKLIN STATUE.
“Did you see the statue?” we asked of Mrs. Partington,
the next day after the inaugurative procession.
An expression of disappointment passed over her
features, as she answered, “No, I did n't; it must have
gone by when I went down stairs to get some water for
the children. A three-cornered gentleman, with a
cocked hat, on a cart, I took to be it; but I found out
that it was one of Franklin's contemptuaries, an old
printer. But the occasion was very obtrusive,” continued
she, brightening up like a jolly old warming-pan,
“and if I did n't see the statue, somebody else did; so
it 's just as well.” She smiled again, and subsided into
a calm, while Ike, with three chairs, and Lion harnessed
to a table, filled with a clothes-basket, four chairs, and a
water-bucket, was “making believe” a car in a procession
on his own account. Lion did n't seem to enjoy it.
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A WAY TO BE HAPPY.
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The study to be happy is a momentous one, and its
pursuit is one of the great rights that are laid down in
our political decalogue. How to be happy is just what
we all would like to know. A few suggestions on this
subject may not be amiss; and if they should not be
deemed exactly the thing, try the opposite course from
the one recommended, and see if that will secure the
desired end. Get up in the morning scolding and fretting
with everything and everybody — it will be an
excellent discipline for yourself, and give your family
an ardent appetite for breakfast; and if the fault happen
to be with your wife, make no apology — it is a lesson
put in in advance, and will operate prospectively.
Growl about the expense of dinner, and hint about
being ruined through home extravagance; this will, of
course, secure economy, and help bring about perfect
peace in the household. Kick the dog, if he is in your
way, and if he bite you it will afford excellent evidence
that things are working. Refuse to acknowledge your
neighbor's bow; he is a wretch that some one has been
talking about, and hence deserves to be cut by one of
your superior purity; of course, your contempt will
break his heart. Complain to the widow next door that
her son is a disgrace to the neighborhood, and hint to
her about the Farm School and the poor-house; it will
tend very much to cheer her. When you come home
and find the floor scoured, plant your dirty feet upon
it; the cheerful phenomena attending this experiment
will be very novel. Be crabbed as a bear to employés,
and find all the fault you can; nothing gives such a delicious
flow to the spirit, and secures such willing service,
as good wholesome censure. Always assert your
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own superior claim to wisdom, and prove your companions'
stupidity by measuring their little corn in your
big bushel; it will give them a very exalted opinion of
you. If a boy come into your store to sell you anything,
drive him off, and threaten to set the dog on him;
it will encourage him to persevere in an honest calling.
We have laid down a few propositions, which may be
added to. Should one follow these carefully, he would
soon, undoubtedly, attain the ultimate of mundane bliss.
NEW ENGLAND'S LION.
A lion 's in our path, but not like him,
In Eastern climes, the monarch of the wood,
Whose roaring echoes through the jungles dim,
In which he lurks in sanguinary mood,
Waiting to lay his predatory paw
Unprayerfully on what may come as prey,
And by the force of his own mighty law
Make all pay toll who cross his royal way.
New England's lion greets us by our path,
His bright eye, golden in its rim of green,
Flashes not on us with a glance of wrath,
But e'er in sweet placidity is seen.
Between the lions of the East and West,
The Dandelion I proclaim the best.
UNNATURAL FATHERS.
The conversation had somehow turned upon parents
in plays who were depicted as turning their children
out of doors for disobedience, and incidents were cited
in actual life where the same thing had been done.
These were pronounced very unnatural, and much indignation
was expressed at their occurrence. One
instance, in particular, was named that seemed like the
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[figure description] Page 123.[end figure description]
recital of an old-world tale, where a tyrannical father
had shut his door against his daughter for the offence
of loving and marrying one obnoxious to him, and she
had sickened and died with not one word of forgiveness
or message of love from his cold lips, and he had
denied her even the honor of a formal attendance at her
funeral. “Shame! shame!” was the cry; “how unnatural!”
Dr. Spooner raised his finger. The glove
was off, as though he were fearful the intervention of
thread would disturb the electric force of the gesture.
“Not unnatural,” said he; “pardon me, but to my view
the conduct of such a father is the most natural thing in
the world. Why, do you ask? Because the relation
between such father and daughter is entirely natural,
without one ray of spiritual light to illumine it, without
one feeling of spiritual sympathy to cement it. Such
fathers are the Dombeys, who are incapable of sympathetic
feeling; who marry and raise families, and cultivate
pride for affection, which is tested in scenes like
the one named. Their marriages are conventional, and
their offspring partake of the same conventionality.
They are proud of their children, as they might be of
their horses, and the world calls it affection; but, at
the first breath of opposition to their rule or inclination,
from a child that dares to love, the offended pride turns
the child out of doors, and has no remorseful feelings
afterwards for the act. Love does not thus. It may at
times storm and rave at opposition, where the hopes of
a lifetime are blasted by wilfulness — inherited wilfulness,
maybe — on the part of children; but where true
affection is, obdurate pride, anger, frustrated intention,
everything yields to its gentle pleadings, that never
plead in vain. Depend upon it, there is nothing unnatural
about the case you have named.”
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A DIFFICULTY.
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“Domestic difficulties,” said Mrs. Partington, “comes
in different guys, — some is quarrelling, some is poverty,
and some is something else; but this is the greatest
of 'em all.” She pointed to a paper, as she spoke,
which chronicled six children at a birth. “There 's difficulty,”
continued she; “and how the poor mother will
overcome it is more than I can imagine. Only think,
six mouths to feed, six dresses to wash, six heads to
comb, six cases of chicken-pox to take care of, six
measles to look after, six to pull out of the water, six to
keep from getting run over, six to buy books for, and
six to get places for when they grow up. I declare I
don't see how she can ever get over it.” No wonder
that she saw the difficulty, when she found it so hard to
manage one, who even then was trying the experiment,
that he had seen Blitz perform, of balancing a plate on
his finger, to fall in a moment to irremediable smash.
LOVE.
The pulse of life is Love, — without its throb,
Men were but mere machines, and poor at that,
And all life's duties but a weary job,
Like these, my rhymes, — unprofitable, stale, and flat!
Love is born with and in us and around,
It lights our cradle with its ray serene,
It follows us in sorrow's depths profound,
It shrinks not, howsoever drear the scene;
Stronger when woe's dense cloud of trial lowers,
Its voice is heard still breathing in the gloom,
As the sweet herb of night expands its flowers,
And sheds amid the darkness its perfume!
Yet Love too oft feels not the gentle mesh
Of olden thrall, but sighs for pots of flesh.
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HEIR-LOOMS.
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How sacred a thing is made, by the lapse of time! A
stick that one of our remote ancestors has carried in his
hands may have been handed down to us; and though he
is one with whom, in the world of matter, we have nothing
in common that we know of, unless it be a common name,
and that perhaps changed in the spelling, we are brought
near to him by this simple twig — a meaningless thing
in itself — to which, by some strange process, the spirit
of its original owner has imparted itself. Why not?
No thought is lost, and why may it not be that our venerable
ancestor's thought, that prompted him to cut the
twig we prize, and cherish it, and trim off the knots and
make it so comely and shapely, and to guard it for many
a year, may still in some way — we 'll not say how —
protect it, in order that it may be a connecting thing
between himself and his descendants, thus preserving a
sympathetic rapport between the past and the present?
It has always seemed to us that heir-looms were imbued
with this old spirit, for this purpose. And that they
have their effect is manifest in the way that they are
cherished by those people who are governed by the
“sentimentality” that recognizes the value of a thing
above its market price, and set more by an old cocked
hat, or a pair of small-clothes, or a faded dress, than by a
thousand new things, with no association, beyond the
fact that they may not yet have been paid for, to commend
them. What sacredness attaches to an old chair,
for instance, whose arms have held many a generation
that still speak to us! Our ancestors embrace us in
the antique and queer frame, and we repeat the assertion
of Miss Eliza Cook that “we love it.” It would
bring, perhaps, twenty-five cents at auction, and
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everybody but ourselves would laugh at it; but every silver
of it has a value that money cannot offset. Heir-looms
have good influences about them, inasmuch as they
come down from good people. Things thus transmitted
bear some evidence of person or deed that is pleasant—
representing, in this direction, one combining many
virtues, and in this some act that it makes us better to
know, though generations removed from the time and
scene of its occurrence. A knife or a halter would not be
preserved as an heir-loom, nor the memory of crime-stained
life be very particularly cherished, outside the
annals of justice. So we honor our ancestors through
transmitted timber, old crockery, or old pictures, or keep
alive patriotic emotions by collecting canes from old
Ironsides, Independence Hall, or Mount Vernon.
DON'T LOOK BACK.
How some men dwell and ponder on the past;
Like ghosts come back 'neath glimpses of the moon,
Sighing o'er hopes and joys too bright to last,
And happiness departed all too soon!
Like owls they live, delighted with the night,
Or brood in hollows where the sun ne'er cheers,
Shutting their eyes perversely to the light,
That broad before them evermore appears.
O, men, throw off the sombre pall which hides
From your soul's vision the bright land To Be,
And sail on hopeful o'er the flowing tides
That tend toward the everlasting sea!
This counsel heed: that track 's the rightest one
That brings our vessel's prow the nearest to the sun.
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GOOD RESOLUTIONS.
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“This is the season of good resolutions,” said the
young man, in answer to Dr. Spooner's wish for a happy
new year. “Nominally,” replied the Doctor; “there is
something in the commencement of a new year that naturally
suggests thought of habits contracted or pampered
during the year that 's past, and, as we see them
clinging to us like vampires, sucking the marrow from
our moral or physical bones, we plant our feet with
something very like resolution, and say we will turn
over a new leaf. And we are honest in the determination,
and mean to stick to it; but, alas! with the waning
year resolution wanes, and we find that our promises,
like pie-crust, are very easily broken. Like a man full
of wine and meat disavowing a desire for victuals, so
we, with appetites satiated, for the nonce deem that appetite
is an easy thing to overcome; but we find that
we cannot throw it aside with our tobacco. It becomes
an importunate thing, that, like Banquo's ghost, obtrudes
itself in our hours of pleasure, and everywhere. It is
an ever-present thing. Memory battles with resolution,
and the diseased fancy clothes the banished with a
thousand fascinations, and we become its victim, till a
new year brings new resolutions, to be broken again in
after time. When a man leaves off a habit and resumes
it again,” continued the Doctor, “I am reminded of the
scripture where the evil one goes out of a man and
seeks rest in dry places, but, finding none, he returns to
his old apartments that have been cleaned up during
his absence, to follow the simplifying rule laid down by
my friend Dr. Sawyer, and the latter days of that man
are worse than his first. Habit and appetite once established,
they are about as hard to throw off as was the
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little old man of the sea, who volunteered as a neck-tie
for the renowned Sinbad. Stick to your resolution, my
young friend, for one month, and you will deserve a
medal as big as a griddle for your moral heroism.” —
“And did you ever find it thus hard?” the young man
inquired; “did you ever have habits thus hard to overcome?” —
“Did I?” repeated the Doctor, twitching at
his gloves nervously. “Who is there that has them not?
Habit takes a thousand forms, and he who rails the
loudest at you for using tobacco or wine may have a
habit of cormorantish appetite dragging him down in
another direction.” The Doctor went out, leaving the
young man standing with meditation in his eye and a
paper of silver-leaf tobacco in his hand, the open stove-door
before him.
MRS. PARTINGTON ON MUSIC.
“Music is one of the greatest attractions of home,”
said the teacher, leaning his left hand upon the table,
and elevating his right, with the fore-finger protruding,
like a lightning-rod. “The greatest attraction,” he repeated,
drumming upon the table with his sinister digits, as if
he would enforce his remark by a practical example. —
“Well,” said Mrs. Partington, smoothing down a seam
in some garment she was making, “I believe it is, and
when our neighbor, Mr. Smooth, got his new pioneer
fort for his noisy children, it seemed as if they had added
forty detractions to home, for they were always quarrelling
like dog's-delight to see who should play on to it.
The way to make home harmonious,” — and she looked
up with an expression of great wisdom, as she said it,
her eyes glancing through the western window at the
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Old South vane, that gleamed in the sunshine, as if
catching the ray of her own inspiration, — “the way to
make home harmonious is to organize it — to buy a
hand-organ, and hire somebody to play on to it. The
noise of it would soon put a stop to all the family jars,
depend upon it.” She bit off the thread of her discourse
and her cotton at the same time, while her listener
smiled faintly, either at the misapprehension she was
evidently laboring under, or at the newness of her theory
with regard to the harmony of home, but made no
further remark.
SACRILEGIOUS.
“Sich corruption in the church!” said Mrs. Parting
ton, bringing her hands down severely on a paper she
was reading, containing an account of an Episcopal dedication
somewhere. There was instantly great attention.
“I read here,” continued she, “that the archbishop came
in with his mitre and stole; and, if stealing is n't corruption,
then I don't know what is.” She looked round
upon the circle, and there was a smile perceptible upon
the faces of such as understood what she was driving
at. Just as one of the party was going to explain to
her that she was lying under a misapprehension, Lion
rushed in with Ike on his back, and the harmony of the
circle was interrupted.
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AN OLD FABLE MODERNIZED.
I glean this fable from jolly old Rabelais,
Who ne'er marred a story by telling it shabbily,
And I earnestly hope that my versification
Will give to its moral a plain application;
Which moral will show that by acting too speedily,
And grasping and striving for aught over greedily,
'T will end most likely in signal disaster
(Reward from the ancient particular master),
While we who are modest, and not any covetous,
Taking all quiet, as Fortune may shove it us,
Will make out better, be sure, at the last of it,
And in its enjoyment make ample repast of it:
One day, when the gods, in high debate,
Had waxed quite warm on concerns of state,
And Jupiter Tonans wiped his face,
As discussion found a resting place —
(For on the nods of the gods, you know,
Depended all matters then below,
And business of merely men or kings,
Or any other terrestrial things,
Must come before the conclave high,
Convened in chambers of the sky),—
That a fearful clamor from earth arose,
Like the accent of a thousand woes,
That broke the Thunderer's short repose.
“What are the sounds that our ears profane?
Mercury! start like a railway train;
Open the windows of heaven, and know
The cause of all this rumpus below.”
Then Mercury listened with eager ear,
And smiled to himself the sound to hear,
For in truth it struck him as rather queer:
“O, Jupiter Tonans,” a voice cried out,
With tone stentoriously stout,
That rung like a trumpet arraying a host-
“O, Jupiter Tonans! my axe is lost!
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O, cruel fortune, thus for to bother one!
O, great Jupiter, give me another one!”
Then Jupiter winked with an ominous leer,
As he the petitioner's prayer did hear —
“Confound the fellow! what clamor he makes!
The very concave of heaven he shakes,
As if he 'd all of creation tax,
By making this muss about his axe!
Yet offer him one of silver or gold,
He 'd no longer clamor for this so bold.
Run, Mercury, run! or, sure as a gun,
By this chap's noise we are all undone!
Offer him axe of silver and gold,
And iron — his own choice uncontrolled —
I 'll stake my sceptre that he 'll think higher on
Either the silver or gold than the iron;
But if he choose silver or gold instead,
I say, Mercury, off with his head!”
Jupiter frowned like easterly weather,
And the gods, affrighted, huddled together,
And shook in every wing and feather!
Mercury gave one jump, and flew,
Cutting his way through the ether blue,
And quick as the lightning made his tracks,
Where the man was bellowing for his axe.
“Here 't is, old chap!” then Mercury said,
And threw before him the gold one red.
“None of your tricks,” says he, right cross,
“'T is n't for this I mourn the loss.”
Then Mercury threw the silver down,
Which suited still less the weeping clown;
But when the iron one met his view,
He cried, delighted, “'T is good as new.”
He held its handle, and grasped it tight.
And said, “Old fellow, this ere 's all right!”
Then Mercury called him an honest soul,
Told him for this he should have the whole;
Then left all three with the happy elf,
And went right back to report himself.
Now the clod was rich, and with few words
He bought him houses, and barns, and herds.
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His neighbors wondered this to see,
And sought to unravel the mystery;
Nor long did he their wondering tax,
But told the story about his axe.
Then all who had axes vowed to go
And see what luck to them would flow;
And those who had none stopped at naught,
But sold their goods and axes bought,
Then went away, resolved to lose 'em,
And make appeal to Jove's own bosom,
Convinced that he would not refuse 'em.
Their clamoring wakened all the sky,
And angry grew the Thunderer's eye, —
Who summoned Mercury to go
Upon his errand again below —
“These chaps must n't be left to pother one,
Serve them just as you did the other one;
Put the test that then you tried,
Let them for themselves decide,
Give what they ax, and let 'em slide!”
Down went Mercury on his mission
Where they noisily made petition.
The golden axe on the ground he threw:
The first one greedily at it flew,
When, swinging the steel axe in his hand,
The head of the seeker sought the sand;
And so of the whole of the clamorous crowd
Each nose like a coulter the green sward ploughed;
And from this day's ensanguined workery
Arose man's guess of the uses of mercury —
And it undoubtedly a palpable fact is,
Ten medical colleges, all in full practice,
With surgeons awaiting a chance to dissect you all,
Could n't make mercury more effectual,
Or cut men down quicker than Mercury packed his
On this first day of “legitimate” practice.
My friends, ye who read this fable so winning,
Look for the moral at the beginning —
For which, and the story, think just as you may of them,
I have nothing more at present to say of them.
-- 133 -- p676-154
ROBERT BURNS.
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How little we can see the end from the beginning!
Burns was born in a mud cabin on the banks of the
Doon, a hundred years ago, — a humble enough beginning,
from which no higher future could be presumed
through any entailed right,— and to-day the world unites
in honoring the one who was then “the babe beneath
the shieling,” but whose song has since done so noble a
work in humanizing man. On the centennial anniversary
of the birthday of Robert Burns, wherever the
English language is spoken, — and that embraces a very
wide range, — men, imbued with a love of the manhood
that inspired him, met to do honor to his memory. The
high and the low, the learned and the unlearned, save
in lessons of heart, combined in ovation to their favorite—
their favorite so far as the feelings hold sway over
the mere machinery of the brain, for Burns' cultivation
was limited, and his song flowed, like “bonny Doon,”
undirected, save by the great voice of Nature that spoke
to him from field and wayside, and brook and flower,
and gave freshness and beauty to everything it approached.
It was necessary that he should be born poor.
Like the mavis, he sprang from the dead flat of life,
and rose to sing among the stars. His spirit was ever
reaching far out into the spirit of the universe, and
drinking in through its thousand fibres the life that
filled it — that burned in his denunciation of wrong,
scatched like the lightning in his satire, melted in his
lays that had the human heart and the ingleside for their
themes, or laughed in the songs that gushed under the
inspiration of John Barleycorn. He was not divine;
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that is cherished as a glorious thought — for he is made
our brother through his imperfection, and men love him
for his humanity. There is no writer since Shakespeare
that has lived so much in the sympathies of the people
as Burns, and herein is the secret of his fame; he was
the poet of the common heart, which received him and
prized him. He was a prophet, and, with thoughts a
hundred years in advance of his time, he denounced
wrong then in the ascendant, and the stigma attached
to him that ever attends upon such; but the years are
doing him justice. The cloud becomes light in the
admitted right of his prescience, and his frailties, “where
nature stepped aside,” are forgotten in the simple grandeur
of the truths he sung.
The following was written for the Burns centenary
celebration, at the Parker House, Boston, Jan. 25th,
1859, and sung by a member of the Burns Club:
WHAT 'S A' THE STEER?
What 's a' the steer makin'? what 's a' the steer?
The Peasant Bard first saw the light this day a hunder year;
An' a' our hearts expand blithely — a' our hearts expand
Wi' honor o' his name that 's known in every land;
For 't was a blessed thing, surely, 't was a blessed thing,
Sin' a' the world was better for 't when Burns began to sing;
Sae we 'll raise our voices high, in tones of grandest cheer,
That Rob the Rhymer saw the light this day a hunder year!
His fame 's brawly won, nei'bor, his fame 's brawly won,
An' a' the lan's unite to crown auld Scotia's gifted son;
They plait a laurel-wreath for him, — his weel achievit bays, —
And bring rich offerings o' mind as tributes to his praise:
For tho' o' humble birth, nei'bor, tho' o' humble birth,
His genius gied him station wi' gentles o' the earth;
Sae we 're a' unco happy, and we 'll mak' a joyfu' steer,
Sin' Rob the Poet saw the light this day a hunder year!
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The humble and the high, nei'bor, the humble and the high,
Combine to glorify the bard whose sang will never die;
In every clime 't is heard wi' joy — in every gentle hame —
An' sparkling een glow doubly bright at mention o' his name.
O, he 's the puir man 's friend, nei'bor! he 's the puir man 's friend,
An' hoddin gray tak's honored rank, where worth its grace doth lend.
There 's a blessin' on the hour that hauds us captive here,
For Rob the Puir Man's Bard saw light this day a hunder year!
Wide is his clan spreadin' — wide is his clan:
They 're counted wheresoever men most nobly act the man;
Not where the tartans gleam, nei'bor, nor yet the bonnets blue,
But where the heart is tender, and men are leal and true.
'T is nae tie o' bluid, nei'bor, nae tie o' bluid,—
His sangs unite the nations a' in ae braid britherhood;
Sae honor crown the time, and pang it fu' o' cheer,
Sin' Burns the Ploughman Bard was born this day a hunder year!
THE KNOCKING AT THE GATE.
FOUNDED UPON A REAL INCIDENT.
'T was the social hour of evening,
And the ruddy fire gleamed bright,
On the grateful tea-urn glancing,
With a fond and loving light,
When our happy circle gathered
Round about the plenteous board,
And those cheerful words were spoken
That contented hearts afford;
And the little voices blended
With the graver tones of love,
And the blest domestic picture
Forecast seemed of bliss above; —
Whilst thus at the table sitting,
Heart and eye and tongue elate,
Came a sound of some one rapping —
Rapping softly at the gate.
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The bitter wind without was howling,
Rattling rude the window blind,
And the frost upon the casement
Many a witchy shape defined;
Whilst the snow in angry swirlings
Darted by like figures white,
Phantoms seeming, adding terror
To the dreariness of night.
Maggy then her form presented,
And thus spoke she soft and mild:
“Please ye, very cold and hungry,
Stands outside a little child,
And for bread the poor thing 's asking
For the ones at home in need;
Shall I give her, may it please ye?
It will be a Christian deed.”
Then our little Mary whispered:
“Tell me, what did Maggy say?
Tell me of the little beggar, —
Tell me all about it, pray.”
Then we told her all the story —
How some people wanted bread,
And the fearful, tearful struggle
Where pale famine reared its head.
And she listened when we told her
Of her own far happier state
Than that of the little beggar
Lately knocking at the gate;
Listened like a child, half heeding,
To our dismal tale of woe —
Gravely heard us to the ending,
Rocking gently to and fro.
Long she sat, and we, not noting
Talked again of this and that,
Till sweet Mary, sadly sobbing,
Waked us from our busy chat.
“What 's the matter, darling?” asked we,
And with trembling voice she said,
“I was weeping at the story
Of the child who wanted bread!”
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Then our hearts were full of gladness,
And our eyes were full of tears,
At the words our darling uttered
In this dawning of her years;
'T was the gush of heavenly pity
That another's woe unsealed,
And we gloried in the promise
Its deep sympathy revealed.
MRS. PARTINGTON AND IKE.
“What is your mean temperature here, mem?” said
the meteorologist, as he sat in Mrs. Partington's little
shaded back parlor, on a warm day, with the cool air
drawing through the windows, and rustling the cut
paper around the old looking-glass frame that had hung
for so long a time on the wall. — “Mean temperature!”
exclaimed she, with a sharp emphasis on the mean;
“mean temperature! we have got no mean temperature
here, sir; nor mean people, neither, unless you
may call Mr. Grab, the sheriff, one, who pretended he
had an attachment for a man, and then went and took
all his propriety on a mean process for debt. This was
mean enough, goodness knows.” — “I mean the temperature
of the weather, I assure you,” said the listener,
dreading the indignation that gathered in her tone like
distant thunder on the other side of a river; “I mean
what is your medium heat?” — “Well,” said she, “as
for mediums, I don't know much about 'em, though
there was a great heat about one that came here, that
told people who their grandfathers was; but it cooled
off, arter a while. They could n't make me believe that.
But, goodness me, look at that boy!” She pointed to
Ike as she spoke, who had donned the hat of the visitor,
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and was making a feint to attack the stove-pipe with his
cane, having on his arm a large wash-boiler cover for a
shield, and a pair of fierce moustaches painted in soot
upon his upper lip. As they looked, a fierce lunge
conquered the adversary, and the young hero stood
triumphant, brandishing the cane in his hand, and shouting,
“Down with the border ruffian!” She checked him
gently, and, as her visitor regained his hat and stick,
which last had been broken, she turned to him, with
much satisfaction in her manner, and asked if he did n't
think the boy had talents by which he might “require
a reputation;” and the visitor said he certainly thought
so. Ike knew what he meant, and kept a safe distance
from the cane.
COLD WEATHER.
We shiver as we feel the biting air,
And think more warmly of the ones who suffer,
Counting how much of change we have to spare
For those who wrestle with Old Frost, the buffer; —
Not he who aldermanic honors gained
By public favor in the late election,
But Jack Frost, who our comfort has profaned,
And now assails the poor, who need protection.
Depend upon 't, cold weather is the time
To set our warm heart's blood in kindness flowing,
To coin itself in many a ready dime,
And make the loan the Scripture page is showing,
For which a four-fold interest is given,
Paid at the eternal banking-house in heaven!
-- 139 -- p676-160
AN ANALOGY.
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SHOWING A FANCIED RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN A LITTLE STREAM OF WATER
AND A LITTLE LIFE.
A gentle rill gushed from the breast of Spring,
And flowed in beauty through the summer-land,
Stealing along, just like some bashful thing,
Half hidden by the boughs that o'er it spanned.
But the wild blossoms in its mirrored sheen
Beheld themselves in all their rustic pride,
And the tall trees assumed a brighter green
Because they stood the little rill beside.
So humble was it that the dallying grass
Asked not the question whence the wanderer came,
And the proud lilies, as they felt it pass,
Looked down upon the stream of modest name.
Yet tenderly the sweet rill loved the flowers,
And the great trees that grew upon its brink;
It saved for them the bounty of the showers,
And filled their empty cups with needed drink.
It asked for no return; unselfishly
It moved, content that it was doing good,
Delighted from its ministry to see
The gladness of a green beatitude.
Anon a change came o'er the little stream, —
The loving sun had claimed it for his own,
And, like some fleeting picture in a dream,
In all its quiet beauty it had flown.
The flowers grew sickly that had erewhile dwelt
Upon its banks in queenliness of state,
The sturdy trees its unlooked absence felt,
The lilies withered, beautiful of late.
The grasses sighed in sallow discontent,
And all confessed the rill a friend most true,
Contrite that its sweet life should thus be spent
Before its loving offices they knew.
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'T is thus we 've seen some gentle loving one
Noiselessly moving through the paths of life,
Here cheering sadness with her voice's tone,
There giving tears as mollients to strife;
Singing with bird-like sweetness on her way,
From the outgushing of her teemping heart,
As the airs blow, or the bright waters play,
Unknowing the blest influence they impart.
We value not the blessing by our side
Until, down-stricken by some fatal blight,
We feel it with our joy identified,
And mourn the star now hidden from our sight.
The noisy consequence of life may claim
The tribute of attention at our hand,
But 't is the little acts of humble name
That make our hearts with blessedness expand.
NAHANT.
Nahant! bold battler of the mighty sea,
My harp would sound one note to swell thy glory,
How much of health and beauty dwells in thee,
Thou hard, solidified old promontory!
I rest me here, and feel thy breezes free
Filling my ears with their enchanting story;
I hear the sea around me ceaselessly
Curling about thy base its big waves hoary.
O, beautiful! I cry, delightedly,
Here would I end my life so transitory,
Climbing the rocks in plenitude of glee,
Or catching mackerel in a little dory.
Great is Nahant, by Neptune loved and Flora, —
Esteemed by all, beside, whose bent is piscatory
-- 141 -- p676-162
NUMBER ONE HUNDRED AND ONE.
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MERELY A LOCAL ITEM.
It is a strange title to a very strange story, which, I
should not be willing to swear to the correctness of, if
any one but myself had told it. But here is the tale,
believe it or not. I am a remarkably sensitive man,
keenly alive to the beautiful in nature or art, — have in
my lifetime gone miles out of my way to see a beautiful
face, and a glimpse of some picturesque scene of
sea or shore has driven me wild with delight. I had
arrived in Boston from an old bachelor jaunt to the
White Hills, solitary and alone. On such occasions I
cannot bear to have any one with me. A voice disturbs
me, and grates upon my nerves. I have turned
almost hermit, and forsworn men, merely because a
frivolous fool has cried out some commonplace exclamation
upon viewing scenes that nothing but expressive
silence could do justice to. An exception to this, however,
must be made in favor of the militia captain on
Mount Washington, who, in delight at the sublimity of
the scene before him, cried, “Attention, the universe!”
There must be an exception in this case, of course.
I arrived in Boston, after an absence of some years
from it, — almost a stranger in it, though I remembered
Faneuil Hall, and the Old South, and the Old Province
House, and the Old Jail, that stood where the Courthouse
was, and old “101,” where I had made my home
for several years, in a retired up-stairs back room, that
overlooked a large garden, and commanded a fine view
of the country round about. Here I returned, and, by
good luck, as I thought, engaged my former apartment,
which the landlady informed me could be vacated for
me immediately. I did not take possession till late in
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the evening, and reserved my first glance for the objects
of my admiration for the morning, as soon as I should
rise. I went to sleep dreaming of garden walks and
summer-houses, and clustering blossoms, that formed
the inner side of a wide horizon of beauty, which I
gazed on with uninterrupted delight, when the clatter
of a milkman's quart-pot upon a gate knocked me all
awake in a moment, and I was conscious that it was
morning, and the sun was shining in at my window.
I immediately arose and dressed myself, when, placing
my chair close to the window, I drew aside the
curtain. What! the garden had disappeared, gone,
and the beautiful scene which so long had gladdened
me was obscured by a red, flaming brick wall, without a
window in it, the back of a block of stores on another
street. I reached out of the window and looked down
upon a shed where I had in old times seen damsels, in
the blush of youth and morning, hanging out clothes;
but the shed had disappeared, and a long brick L protruded
in its stead, with a glass roof, beneath which I
could see workmen in their shirt-sleeves moving to and
fro. I fancied, in my first disappointment, that everything
which I had regarded was swept away, and, humming
to myself some original lines, that just then
occurred to me, beginning
“'T was ever thus, from childhood's hour,
I 've seen my fondest hopes decay,”
I was about closing the curtain, when I saw, through
a little vista between the buildings, a beautiful view of
a fair scene beyond, — clear sky, green trees, and distance, —
made more beautiful from the difficulty through
which it was seen. I thought I should become reconciled
in a little while to the loss of the rest, could I
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retain this. Whenever I was in the house I took my
station by my window, and enjoyed with miserly regard
my buena vista.
But “a change came o'er the spirit of my dream.” I
found one day a source of extreme nervous anxiety to
me right in the way of my enjoyment. Some demon,
with a special disposition to torment me, had leased a
room in a corner of my vista — the proscenium-box, so
to speak — to an unappreciative wretch, who, with a
levity that deserved the thumb-screws, had placed a
large bust of Shakespeare in the window, and put
thereon a red shirt and black neck-cloth, and had
covered the head with an old straw hat, making the
great bard of Avon look as if he had just returned from
some jolly bout in the harbor, or some deer-stealing
operation in the country. I shut my window in disgust.
The next day I looked. The bust was still
there, with the addition of a black moustache. I
dropped into a seat. The third day a large green patch
was placed over one eye. The fourth day a hole had
been made through the lips, and Shakespeare was
actually smoking a long nine! Shade of Sir Walter
Raleigh! but my blood boiled at the outrage upon
me and upon Shakespeare. I tried to think of some
remedy for the nuisance, and went out to reconnoitre
the premises. I found there was a narrow alley leading
to the shed which formed the outer bound of the
territory where my annoyance was placed, and that
from this, with a moderately long stick, I could reach
the hated object, push it from its position in the window,
and dash it to pieces. My plan was formed, and that
night I resolved it should be executed.
About eleven o'clock that summer night, with Tarquin's
strides, and a footfall as light as a cat's, I was on
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my way to my revenge, armed with resolution and a
long cane-pole that I had procured for the purpose.
The alley-way was dark, which favored me, and I
gained my destination without detection. A moment
more and I stood on the shed, which commanded a view
of the room in the open window of which my bane was
resting. A moment more —
It was a warm night, and, as unpropitious fortune
would have it, directly below the window where the
bust was resting, the cook was sitting with her lover in
the dark, talking preliminary matters incident to matrimony.
The oppressive heat had made them drowsy,
and, leaning their heads upon the window-sill, they were
both fast asleep. They had not heard my step upon the
shed. Crash! Down came the bust, red shirt, hat, and
all, and planted itself directly between them; and as the
lover opened his eyes he was astonished to find a masculine
form between him and his dear. His first impulse
was carried out, to plump the figure betwixt the
eyes; his next was carried out with equal promptness,
to let it alone — for his knuckles were hurt. At this
instant he caught a view of the outline of my retiring
figure, and, bounding through the window, he darted
out of the shed-door, meeting me, as I descended, with a
warm embrace and an energetic exclamation, which I
construed into “Watch!” I was much gratified,
besides, to hear the windows in the vicinity open, as if
a public interest were awakening. Thanks to my
science, I had muscle and strength, and here was a field
for their operation. I used them with a will. I
punched my adversary in the dark, and he was so busy
in taking care of himself that he ceased to halloo for the
watch. At this moment, a blow aimed at my head by
the cook, who had emerged from the shed, took effect
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on his, and he rolled upon the ground, defeated, while I
hastened off.
In a few minutes I was in my room. I looked out,
and could see lights moving in the house I had just left,
as if the garrison were aroused. I went to bed happy.
My object was achieved. The next morning, to enjoy
my triumph, I looked towards the hated window. My
crest fell immediately, for there, upon the window-frame,
was the bust of Shakespeare, with the red shirt
still upon it; but, instead of the old straw hat upon its
head, my own hat, with my name in it, that, I forgot to
say, I had left upon the field.
The papers, the next day, were full of it, and reference
to the Columbian Centinel files for June, 1838,
will show the following:
Daring Outrage. — Last evening a burglarious attempt
was made to enter the house of Mr. T. Speed, in—
street; but the burglar threw down a bust of
Shakespeare in the attempt, which attracted the attention
of Mr. Muggins, passing at the time, who pursued the
ruffian over a shed, and boldly attacked him in Marsh
alley, when the villain drew a pistol and threatened to
shoot his assailant, who persistingly stuck to him until
a blow from the butt of the pistol knocked him down,
and the rascal escaped, leaving his hat on the premises,
in which was the name O. Hush. Mr. Muggins treated
him very severely, and it is believed the atrocious
wretch may be detected by the injury he received.
The police are upon his track.
It had happened, fortunately, that I was to pay for
my accommodations by the quarter. The landlady was
the only one who knew my name, and her reply to the
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questions with regard to it having been simply “Hush,”
it had been deemed that she wished to keep shady
about the matter, and they had hushed. The old lady
did not read the papers, and I was safe from her; but
I thought it advisable to leave that afternoon by stage
for the mountains. Before leaving, I glanced from the
window. The bust was still there, and it seemed that
the features wore a malicious smile of satisfaction at
my discomforture. I slammed the door to with a
bang, and bade good-by to Number One Hundred and
One.
CONTENTMENT.
There is no virtue like it under heaven,
And he whose life is crowned with sweet content
Is rich as though old Crœsus' wealth were given,
E'en though, in fact, he be not worth a cent.
There is no bound to man's ambitious schemes:
His eager palm outspreads as on he goes,
Gold shimmers down through all his daily dreams,
The verb “to get” the only one he knows.
How blest is he who, whate'er may betide,
Sits smiling at the boon which fortune sends;
Who God's own finger has identified,
And deems that all he suffers rightly tends!
And I myself am something of this stuff,
Always contented when I have enough.
-- 147 -- p676-168
THE OLD PIANO.
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[The following lines are supposed to embody the feelings of one who stands amid the
wreck of her ruined fortunes, and finds in the memories of the past a solace for the present.
It is not altogether a fancy sketch.]
When the evening falls around me,
And my room is hushed and calm,
Come to me long-vanished pleasures, —
Come the wormwood and the balm;
Loving faces smile upon me,
Faces long beneath the mould,
Loving lips mine own are pressing,
Lips that long ago grew cold.
O, the voices! how they whisper!
And I strain my eager ear,
Not to lose a word whose meaning
All my spirit thrills to hear;
And amid the tones they utter,
Weaving through them like a thread,
Comes a strain of distant music,
Echo of a strain long fled.
From amid the brooding shadows,
And the shapes that come and go,
Hark! the old piano murmurs
With a note I dearly know;
And my soul in transport listens
To the keys' familiar tone,
As the shadowy fingers touch them
With a love they erst have known.
Joyful notes of sweetest meaning
Tinkle in my wakeful brain,
As upon the parching foliage
Sounds the grateful summer rain;
Mournful notes of import tender
Sighingly my heart receives,
As amid the evening breezes
Sighs the cadence of the leaves.
'T was a phantom, — an illusion, —
And the voices all have flown,
Leaving me here desolated,
In my widowhood alone;
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But the old piano lingers,
And about its dreamy strings
Rests the memory of fingers,
And their pleasant utterings.
Now it takes angelic seeming,
Calling me, with hopeful voice,
From the land where peace and gladness
Through eternal hours rejoice;
And I feel the hand extended
Of the loved ones gone before,
Grasping mine amid the darkness,
With the fervency of yore.
How I love it! — like a sister,
Ever faithful by my side,
Patient in my fallen fortunes,
Loving in my hours of pride;
It is not to me insensate,
And I 'm sure it feels with me,
Sorrowing in my saddened moments,
Laughing in my hours of glee.
Blessings on thee, old piano!
While I live we ne'er shall part,
For thy melody is woven
With the pulses of my heart.
Years may dim my mortal vision,
And my raven hair turn gray,
But my wasted life is blended
With the thoughts that round thee stay.
IKE AT CHURCH.
“What do you think will become of you?” said Mrs.
Partington to Ike, as they were going from church.
The question related to the young gentleman's conduct
in the church, where he had tipped over the cricket,
peeped over the gallery, attracting the attention of a
boy in the pew below, by dropping a pencil tied with a
string upon his head, and had drawn a hideous picture
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of a dog upon the snow-white cover of the best hymn-book. —
“Where do you expect to go to?” It was a
question that the youngster had never before had put
to him quite so closely, and he said he did n't know,
but thoght he 'd like to go up in a balloon. — “I 'm
afeard you 'll go down, if you don't mend your ways,
rather than go up. You have been acting very bad in
meeting,” continued she, “and I declare I could hardly
keep from boxing your ears right in the midst of the
lethargy. You did n't pay no interest, and I lost all the
thread of the sermon, through your tricks.” — “I did n't
take your thread,” said Ike, who thought she alluded to
the string by which the pencil was lowered upon the
boy; “that was a fishing-line.” — “O, Isaac,” continued
she, earnestly, “what do you want to act so like the
probable son, for? Why don't you try and be like
David and Deuteronomy, that we read about, and act
in a reprehensible manner?” The appeal was touching,
and Ike was silent, thinking of the sling that David killed
Goliath with and wondering if he could n't make one.
SOUNDS OF THE SUMMER NIGHT.
The soft winds sigh above the slumbering flowers,
And tremble 'mid the tresses of the trees;
A child's sharp cry disturbs the solemn hours,
That woman's voice endeavors to appease;
A dull piano's melancholy strains
Fall faintly on my ear, borne from afar;
A night-key's click the midnight hush profanes,
And harshly clangs a door's discordant jar;
A dog howls dismally across the way,
Anon darts through the air a vengeful stone;
And sounds of whispered voices hither stray,
Revealing lovers' vows by their soft tone;
Yon cat-calls cut discretion to the quick, —
O, that kind fate would grant my hand a brick!
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THE HOUSEHOLD SHADOW.
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All felt badly when the little creature sickened. It
was a fearful disease, and the burning skin and the
labored breath spoke painfully of danger. The voice
was hushed that uttered the word danger, and the heart
was pained as the ear caught the fearful sound. Danger
to the darling that love so clung to, and surrounded,
and hemmed in! and alarm awakened more vigilance,
and more loving care. But day by day revealed the
inroads of the insidious disease, burning at the foundation
of the precious life; and hope, that was at first
strong in spite of fear, grew day by day weaker. How
dear she grew! — how much dearer than when in the
fulness of health and beautiful activity; when every
impulse was a joyous outburst of conscious existence;
when her little arms entwined in fond conjunction with
loving arms, and her tender kisses were rained upon
ready lips, as the sacrifice of innocent love! She seemed
doubly dear; and the imploring look for aid, in paroxysms
of pain, sank deep into hearts rendered sad by
a sense of inability to help. At last the crisis came.
The shadow deepened with every moment, and hope
grew less and less; and, when the darkness that comes
before the light of morning rested upon the earth,
another little spirit was added to the multitude that
had gone before, like fruit untimely plucked. Then
was the shadow most opaque and dismal, and the household
was very dreary. But anon the morning broke,
and the sun came up; the gloom of night vanished from
the clear heavens and the bright earth, and it was day.
So with the shadow over the household. A voice came
from the shadow, speaking peace to the saddened hearts.
It spoke of love and trust, and gave sweet assurance
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that it was no tyrant's hand that had smote the household,
in the wilfulness of power; but that a loving
Father had lifted up the lamb from the weakness and
imperfection of human trust to the eternal fold, above
the storms and sorrows and sins of time; that behind
the darkness of death shone the clear sun of eternal
life, and that the morning would break, and the dreary
shadows of the night, now obscuring its glory, would
flee away; that the loved within the veil were walking
beside us in our darkness, to bear us on and up, their
loving hands still clasped in ours! Then the household
shadow changed, and a holy light played around it;
and, though it was still a shadow, and hid the loved
from view, a trust born of faith said, It is well, and the
stricken spirits bowed submissively to the will of Heaven.
Shillaber, B. P. (Benjamin Penhallow), 1814-1890 [1859], Knitting-work: a web of many textures. (Brown, Taggard & Chase, Boston) [word count] [eaf676T].
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