A SHORT DIARY AFTER MY MARRIAGE.
August 10th. I have been married just ten days. During that short period, many circumstances have occurred, much tending to dispel the illusive hopes so long and so lately cherished in my imagination and fervent feelings. My husband is possessed of many rare qualities of mind and heart, and he loves me with excessive earnestness. But I have now discovered, what I could not, through infatuation, before marriage—that those passions of his nature which won my admiration are barbed with opposite extremes. At one time he loads me with caresses; at another reviles with unbecoming satire. My petulant disposition impels a retort, and hence frequent altercations. In moments of calmness I explain to him how oppressive and deplorable are these recurrences. He relents with an apology, and then calmly and sweetly do we reason together. Late affectionate attachments are renewed, and a Divine Presence witnesseth the communion of our hearts.
There are several considerations which render our marriage untimely and unwise.
First. Our mutual acquaintance was too short. We did not at all canvass each other’s faults; we rather strove to conceal and veil our eyes before them,—too frequent and important mistakes of love-trapped young people.
Secondly. Our religious predilections are much too dissimilar—he being strictly Calvinistic, a religion to which I am sternly opposed. The mild precepts of our beloved Saviour, and the sacred vows of the altar, are thus desecrated by contention—a double curse.
Thirdly. We are much too poor.
This last consideration is most unfortunately omitted in the anticipatory summing-up of the chances and consequences of married life, by those whose misfortune it is to be poor like ourselves. Reflect upon it as you may, and palliate as you please, poverty marriages are in themselves an evil and a disgrace. In a favored land like this, no industrious single man (unless peculiarly unfortunate) has a right to be pennyless at the age of twenty-five; and such as are imprudent, as well as those who wrap the golden hours of manhood in a napkin, should, by special enactment of law, be not only debarred from the enjoyments of matrimony, but also shamed from the presence of worthy people. As love-fevers are managed in these days, the habiliments of the altar are too often the sport of an illusion, as fatal in its effects as ill-timed in concert. Marriage, under proper regulations, is indeed a boon and a blessing; but when made to minister to the forlorn hopes of the inconsiderate, the poverty-bound, or the helpless, it is a curse of the deepest die. It has darkened the face of creation as a simoon from time immemorial, encompassing the wretchedness of millions, who, had they timely resolved, first to better their conditions, then to marry, might have been independent and happy all their lives.
August 20th. Ten more days have passed—so many saw-teeth. It is painful to trace the pale appearances which have assumed the place of the rose-tint upon my husband’s cheek. Returning from his daily toils, I find him stubborn in manner and bitter in words. All my efforts to humble his towering will have failed. So, between poverty, contention, and disappointment, our pathway to the future is unflowered.
When she had concluded to remove to Boston, there to reside permanently, a new tide rushed in upon her destiny. She was lost. The fountain of her tears was dry. Despair laid its iron fingers upon the strings of her heart. And now began that career of madness and crime which rendered her name a signal of terror to the licentious, who thronged the dens of prostitution. She laughed and was happy in her revengeful determination.—Revenge! at whose shrine of blood she did reverence!
“And where her frown of hatred darkly fell,
Hope withering fled, and mercy sighed farewell.”
For a period of over four years, she led the van in the battle of Extermination to Man, the plunderer of her life’s joys, her innocence—Man, the rock of her ruin! She saw but to conquer. The devotees of pomatum swarmed about her, lavishing sickening adulations upon her charms. She inwardly mocked at their hollowness, and Murder whetted its beak upon their lies. Twice were her hands imbrued in the blood of her paramours; and, had her existence been prolonged a few more days, it is highly probable that a printer, of a name similar to that borne by the object of her first love, would have fallen a victim to her avenging steel.
But the hour came when the mighty King of Terrors summoned her soul into the presence of that forgiving Jesus who wrote upon the sand, at the harlot’s feet—“Let him among you that is without sin cast the first stone!” By a murderer’s hand she fell, as had others by her own. And then there was heard a noise in the air without, such as had never before greeted human ears. Whence it came, none could tell.
Dark and inexplicable Fate! weaver of wild contrasts, demon of this hoary world, that movest through it as a spirit moveth over the waters, filling the depths of things with a solemn mystery, and an everlasting change! Thou sweepest over our graves, and Joy is born from the ashes: thou sweepest over Joy, and lo, it is a grave! Engine and tool of the Almighty, whose years cannot fade! thou changest the earth as a garment, and as a vesture it is changed: thou makest it one vast sepulchre and womb united, swallowing and creating life, and reproducing over and over, from age to age—from creation to the creation’s doom—the same dust and ashes which stalked under the names of the countless millions who danced to the discordant music of life, and gave up the ghost!
CHAPTER VI.
The Person and Character of Albert J. Tirrell.
Early on the morning of the awful tragedy which filled the whole country with amazement and dread, and before the newspapers blazed with its horrible details, there was great excitement in the horse-stables and the gambling-shops of Boston. The sucker-sharps, who always, in every part of the world, keep up a telegraphic communication with the frail sisterhood, were on this occasion elated with an event which so absorbed their inquisitive cunning, that they forgot, for a few hours, the game of filching green-horns. Spagnoletto, with all the power of his pencil, would fail in a delineation of those groups of human cormorants, as they surfeited their murderous appetites upon the fresh intelligence. They were jolly-serious—upsetting chairs, swallowing brandy, breaking glasses, and uttering fearful oaths. In one place a sucker preached a tirade to the riotous auditory, himself standing on a large Bible. A murder, of unexampled atrocity, had just been committed by one of the most notorious of their gang.
“Plume’s”
Daguerreotype of Tirrell.
The name of the murderer was Albert J. Tirrell, a young man whose improvidence had, in less than one year, scattered to the winds a patrimony of more than twenty-seven thousand dollars—the life’s earnings of an indulgent parent, whose grey hairs had but lately gone down in sorrow to the grave. His flushed cheeks, his beak-like, pimpled nose, his gallynipper lips, rendered his demeanor the beau ideal of a sucker-sharp. His tongue could rattle off more lies and oaths in a minute than that of any other sucker in Boston, excepting one. These characteristics, accompanied by the most lavish expenditure of his wealth, won for him the appellation of “good fellow,” all about the horse-stables, at least. Whenever he hired a horse and buggy, he carelessly and suavitously tossed a five dollar gold piece, by way of perquisite, to the ostler. Then would the literature of horse-flies load him with slimy phrases. “Liberal-hearted fine gentleman,”—“noble fellow,”—“there’s nothing mean about him,”—“good fellow,” etc., often reverberated through the horse-stalls, and the same learned and pithy remarks were nightly circulating through the upper rooms of a celebrated gambling-house in Sudbury street, for many years the sucker-sharp head quarters, and the devil’s den in Boston. But, as the enterprising Dickinson once remarked to a clan of rebellious compositors, “There is an end to all things,” so the greatnesses of Tirrell’s life were on that morning hurried into a grand tableau.
Tirrell’s Flight. He had slashed open Maria Bickford’s throat with a razor, most valiantly, from ear to ear, and, to slip the noose of the gallows, ran away!
There is no doubt of his INSANITY.
But we cannot dismiss the subject matter of this history until we inform the world of one of Tirrell’s exploits in a business way. No sooner had he tumbled into the possession of his patrimony, than he took up quarters in the city of New York, with the intention of founding a publishing house, on a magnificent scale. After beating about the trade for two or three weeks, without knowing where or how to begin a business of which he was utterly ignorant, and which his rattle-headedness rendered him incapable of comprehending under any circumstances, he made up his mind to commence the publication of a periodical, of some kind or other. Our information runs, that, with this object before his eyes, he called on Mr. Edgar A. Poe, of that city, and tendered him the exclusive editorship and control of the concern, without ceremony or condition. Poe, after a cautious and analytical survey of the gentleman, propounded divers queries which Tirrell had not the capacity to answer. He seemed to be possessed of a belief that if he brought some doubled sheets of printed paper before the people, and the ladies in particular, an illumination as wonderful as the aurora borealis would be the consequence. “The people,” said he, “want knowledge; they thirst for it as the heart panteth for the water brooks.” “Yes, sir, precisely,” said the other, “but engagements compel me to decline your generous offers; I have already promised to do much more than I can possibly accomplish. I think, however, there is a compositor of my acquaintance whose talents are so nearly like your own, that he would prove the very person you are seeking. I will give you his name—it is Silas Estabrook. Explain your plans to that individual, sir, and there will be no lack of projects, I assure you.”
Tirrell was elated with this advice, and forthwith made search for and found the obscure and shrivelled compositor. With the same mountebank bluffness, he made known his wants. “They say you sometimes work in the editing line, sir. Now, sir, I’m about to start a great publishing establishment, like that of the Harpers, and I want to engage you to edit it! If you’ll go into it strong with me, we’ll make Astors of ourselves. I will furnish all the money to begin with.”
Estabrook rubbed his eyes and looked at the man through a spy-glass. “Can it be possible,” thought he, “that good luck has found me at last, and that I am about to realize the Actual from my splendid ideas? This must be the very man whom I have wanted so much to find.” A long and earnest confab took place. Perhaps two persons never before met, whose brains rattled with more incoherence, than did those of Tirrell and Estabrook. If the first was ignorant, impudent and stupid, the other greatly transcended him by a fanatical adherence to his own visionary fooleries. His plans and projects for astonishing the world were as numerous as the phases of a kaleidescope, and his explanations thereof were as voluminous and intelligible as a colloquial parody from that useful bird, the goose.
“I will tell you what it is, Mr. Tirrell,” said he, “we have a fortune within our grasp. I have the mind and you the means. We must get up something which has never been dreamed of before. It’s of no use to think of starting a common newspaper; the very idea of it is vulgar—yet it must be a publication of some kind. Now, I propose that we issue a journal in the shape and style of a Letter; print it in the smallest type—cram a large amount of racy matter into a small space—and then fold it up and seal it. Let the price be six cents a copy, and a figure indicating this sum can be stamped with red ink on the outside, as though it were the postage by mail. Then let us send a copy to every man, woman, and child, in this great city, under a written direction. In this guise and shape every body will jump after it, and the result will be, that we shall sell at least two hundred thousand copies a day. You see they will be so pleased with the contents, that after they receive the first letter they will be still more and more greedy to get the succeeding ones. Now, just reckon up how much 200,000 letters a day, at six cents each, will amount to in a year.”
Tirrell drew from his pocket a ponderous gold pencil and began to cypher. After scratching his head for a half hour he suddenly leaped from his chair in a perfect phrenzy of exultation. The amount was enormous. The golden egg was discovered. Nobody else had found it out. It was the most wonderful idea of the age! He patted Estabrook on the shoulder as fondly as a cat would play with a philosopher’s stone, and immediately invited him to partake of a supper of oysters.
The oysters were devoured. During their mastication, Tirrell was overflowing with so much joy that he was unable to sustain a decent composure. His horse-laughs so annoyed the other patrons of the restorateur, that the host politely ordered him to quit the premises. Tirrell observed the mandate with the most indifferent contempt, and spatting a ten dollar bill on the counter, bawled out for Wine! at the full blast of his lungs.
The preliminaries for publishing the great unexpected were soon arranged. Estabrook manufactured the “copy” with the rapacity and zeal of a starving lunatic. The flow of ideas imparted to his eyes an unnatural stare; his brows were knit; and his teeth chattered as if he were undergoing an attack of the delirium-tremens in a wintry blast. But he heeded not himself nor the movements around him, though Tirrell was constantly peeping over his shoulder and mouthing every sentence as it fell from the pen. In two days the “copy” was completed, and placed in the hands of the printer, who was required by written contract to produce the whole edition in five days. Tirrell launched out his money like water in the purchase of fine letter-sized paper; “the trade” greatly marvelled at what was “in the wind;” and the power of steam was brought into full requisition night and day. At the end of the time specified, the immense job was finished, at a cost of $2,500. Tirrell cashed the bill with readiness and delight. One hundred and twenty-five girls were then hired to double and seal them, and thirty-three clerks were at the same time employed in writing the inscriptions. Every name in Doggett’s octavo directory, of something like 400 closely printed pages, was transcribed to a “letter.” Estabrook, with becoming dignity, reserved to himself the privilege of giving the finishing touch to the whole, by stamping, after the manner of a post mark, the figure “6” on one corner, which was intended as the price of the article. When this was completed, “all hands” were set about arranging them; and let me say to the reader that this feature was no trifling one. It required the machinery of a great post office to assort and arrange that mass of letters, number by number and street by street. The whole being at length completed at an expense of over $700 more, the day at length came when the edition was to be placed into the hands of two hundred efficient carriers, who were to sally forth at the same moment in all parts of the city. Below we give the inner heading of this singular publication, with some extracts, to convey to the reader of these pages a more correct idea of its character and purpose:
