Part II
The Reading-Club.
THE DRUMMER’S BETROTHED.
“Douce est la morte qui vient en bien aimant.”
Our liege lord, the Duc de Bretagne, To deadly battle for the king Summons sent from Nantes to Mortagne, In the plain and on the mountain, To warriors of his following.
Barons they are, whose gleaming arms Adorn the moated castle’s crest, Proud knights, grown old midst war’s alarms Esquires, and footmen with their arms; And my betrothed went with the rest.
He went to Aquitaine, and, though Among the drummers he’s enrolled, He seemed a captain, marching slow, With haughty head, and eyes aglow, And doublet glittering with gold.
Since then nor peace nor rest I know. Joining his lot with mine, I’ve cried To my St. Brigitte, bending low, Watch well his guardian angel, so That he shall never leave his side!
I said to our abbé one night, Pray for our soldiers, messire, pray! And since he loves to see their light, I left three candles burning bright Before St. Gildas’ shrine next day.
And to Our Lady of Lorette I promised in my cruel fright To wear—and see, I wear it yet— A ruff with pilgrim’s cockles set, Close hid from curious sight.
No loving letters has he penned While far away where battles rage: Though life and love be near their end. The vassal has no squire to send, The vassal’s sweetheart has no page.
To-day the duke returns in state, With him my love, a soldier tried, No longer lowly in estate. I lift my head, bowed down of late, And my bliss blossoms into pride.
The duke brings home triumphantly, Worn and soiled, the flag that’s floated O’er his camp. Come all with me To the old gate, the troops to see, And the prince and my betrothèd.
To see the horse, with trappings gay Caparisoned, his lord to bear, Advance, retreat, with conscious neigh, Tossing his head till its array Of plumes like flaming torches flare.
To see—O sisters, why so slow?— The drums that lead my hero on, The drums that in the sunlight glow, That throb beneath his tireless blow Till the heart throbs in unison.
And, best of all, to see his face! I worked his cloak with broidery fair: He’ll look like one of princely race, And with a more than princely grace His plumèd helm he’ll wear.
The impious Egyptian bent Close above me last night, hissing, (God help us!) “You are confident! Drums will sound till the air is rent, But one drummer will be missing.”
But I hope still, so much I’ve prayed! Though, with her hand outstretched to where Among the tombs her home she made, Her snake’s eyes gleaming through the shade, She said: “We’ll meet to-morrow there.”
No more dark fancies! Hear how loud The drums beat! Sisters, let us go. See how the ladies fair and proud The purple-hung pavilions crowd, Where banners float and flowers glow.
The escort comes, by pikemen led, Then, not to-day in armor tried, In gleaming silken robes instead, And velvet-capped each haughty head, The barons, under flags flung wide.
And robèd priests pass, chanting low, And heralds, riding milk-white steeds, Escutcheons on their corslets show Their masters’ rank, won long ago By some ancestor’s mighty deeds.
In Persian mail magnificent, Feared of all hell, the Templars ride; Then, all in buff, with bows unbent, The long array of archers, sent From far Lausanne, march side by side.
The duke is near; his banners fling Their folds o’er squire and cavalier; The captured ensigns seem to cling About their standards, sorrowing. Look, the drummers are almost here!
Silent, smiling, she turned her head, Scanned the close ranks with eager eye. The crowd pressed close; no word she said, But fell among them cold and dead— The drummers had passed by. By M. Cecile Brown, from the French of Victor Hugo.
JOHN LELAND’S EXAMINATION.
Up on the heights in the Old Dominion, where the houses are few, and many of the mountaineers know little of the settlements below, a man of God lived who took to preaching the gospel in his own rude way. He was a man of strong character and clear common sense. He could just read the Bible—that was all; but he got at the heart of things as his ministry showed, and drew near to the heart of his Master. He was a very plain preacher, a most careless and unguarded man. He told the people the truth without any apologies, with all kindness and tenderness of heart. Many were turned from sin unto righteousness; and the presbytery, in whose bounds his work was, determined to ordain him, simply on the ground of his efficiency and clear call to the ministry, though he had no education. He objected. They persisted. Finally the day was appointed, and a large company from the mountains and the valleys below gathered to witness the examination for licensing and ordination of this strange character. All knew that there would be something entertaining in his answers. The presbytery assembled, the congregation looking on. John Leland took his place in front, dropping his head into his hands. The moderator simply stated the object of the meeting, addressing Mr. Leland. The latter looked up and said,—
“Mr. Moderator, I’ll tell you all I know. It won’t take long,” and down his head went into his hands again. A smile went around the assembly.
Moderator. Mr. Leland, do you believe that God had a people, chosen and elect before the foundations of the world?
Leland. I don’t know what God was doin’ before he made the world. Don’t know any thin’ about it. I a’n’t a educated man.
Moderator. Yes, but you must understand me. You certainly believe that God had a people chosen and elect from all eternity?
Leland. No. I don’t believe that. They couldn’t a’ been our kind o’ folks, anyway; because ours are made out of the dust of the earth, you know.
Moderator. Mr. Leland, we have heard of your Christian life, of your efficiency and your success, and we are met to ordain you to the ministry of the gospel. This is a solemn occasion, and you must not make light of the questions. Now, I want to know if you believe in the total depravity of mankind?
Leland. No, I don’t, if you mean by that that men are as bad as they can be; for the Devil a’n’t any worse’n that, you know.
Moderator. Do you believe in imputed righteousness, and that it is sufficient to save all who have faith?
Leland. I don’t know any righteousness that will save a man who won’t do right himself.
Moderator. Do you believe in the final perseverance of the saints?
Leland. I don’t know what that means.
Moderator. Well, you believe that all who are converted will be kept, and not fall away?
Leland. Oh, I don’t know how it is down in the settlements, among the educated; but I tell you up where we live, we have the awfulest cases of backsliding.
Moderator. But, Mr. Leland, you certainly believe that when a man is converted he will be kept in some way, and finally saved?
Leland. I cannot tell much about that, till I am saved myself. Don’t know any thing about it now.
Moderator. You feel that you are called to preach the gospel?
Leland. No, I never heard any one call me.
Moderator. We do not mean that you heard a voice—any thing said—but that you are called.
Leland. Well, Mr. Moderator, if there wasn’t any voice, or any thing said, don’t know how there could be any call. Never heard any.
Moderator. You believe it is your duty to preach the gospel to all creatures?
Leland. No. I don’t believe it my duty to preach to the Dutch, for instance. I can’t talk Dutch. If the Lord wanted me to preach to them, in some way I could talk Dutch; but I can’t, I never tried.
Moderator. Mr. Leland, you certainly desire to see all men come to repentance, and turn to righteousness. Your acts show that. We have heard of your self-sacrificing spirit, your love for mankind, and all your good works to win sinners to the gospel and repentance.
Leland. Mr. Moderator, I’ll tell you the honest truth. I am a little ashamed of it; but it is God’s truth just as I tell you. Some days I do feel that way; and then again, some of them act so bad, I don’t care if the Devil gets half of them.
After the presbytery had retired to take counsel over the matter, they returned and announced that while his answers had not been entirely satisfactory in every respect, nevertheless, in view of his efficiency in preaching, they had voted to ordain him, which they proceeded to do in the usual manner. After it was over, Mr. Leland lifted his head out of his hands, straightened himself up, and stood his full height. Looking first at the moderator, and then all round him, he said,—
“Brethren, I’ve put you to a heap o’ trouble. I don’t know any thin’ about your doctrines, ’n’ I told you I didn’t. I’ve been doin’ the best I could, preachin’ the gospel as I found it in the Bible. Now, you see, I don’t know any thing else. Another thing: when the apostles put their hands on a man’s head, I read that the man had some power, or some sense, or some knowledge, that he hadn’t afore. But now, brethren, honest and true, right out, you’ve all had your hands on me, and I am just as big a fool as ever I was. But I thank you, nevertheless: I’m very much obleeged to you.”
And so they let him go.
THE SEPTEMBER GALE.
I’m not a chicken: I have seen Full many a chill September; And though I was a youngster then, That gale I well remember. The day before my kite-string snapped, And, I my kite pursuing, The wind whisked off my palm-leaf hat; For me two storms were brewing!
It came as quarrels sometimes do, When married folks get clashing: There was a heavy sigh or two Before the fire was flashing; A little stir among the clouds Before they rent asunder; A little rocking of the trees, And then came on the thunder.
Lord! how the ponds and rivers boiled! They seemed like bursting craters! And oaks lay scattered on the ground As if they were p’taters; And all above was in a howl, And all below a clatter,— The earth was like a frying-pan, Or some such hissing matter.
It chanced to be our washing-day, And all our things were drying: The storm came roaring through the lines, And sent them all a-flying; I saw the shirts and petticoats Go riding off like witches; I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,— I lost my Sunday breeches!
I saw them straddling through the air, Alas! too late to win them; I saw them chase the clouds as if The Devil had been in them. They were my darlings and my pride, My boyhood’s only riches,— “Farewell, farewell,” I faintly cried, “My breeches! Oh my breeches!”
That night I saw them in my dreams; How changed from what I knew them! The dews had steeped their faded threads, The wind had whistled through them; I saw the wide and ghastly rents Where demon claws had torn them; A hole was in their amplest part, As if an imp had worn them.
I have had many happy years, And tailors kind and clever; But those young pantaloons have gone Forever, and forever! And not till time has cut the last Of all my earthly stitches, This aching heart shall cease to mourn My loved, my long-lost breeches. O. W. Holmes
AT THE RISING OF THE MOON.
“Oh, then! tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall, Tell me why you hurry so?” “Hush, ma bouchal, hush and listen;” And his cheeks were all aglow. “I bear ordhers from the captain: Get you ready, quick and soon; For the pikes must be together At the risin’ of the moon.”
“Oh, then! tell me, Shawn O’Ferrall, Where the gatherin’ is to be?” “In the ould spot by the river, Right well known to you and me. One word more—for signal token, Whistle up the marchin’ tune, With your pike upon your shoulder By the risin’ of the moon.”
Out from many a mud-wall cabin, Eyes were watching through that night: Many a manly chest was throbbing For the blessed warning light. Murmurs passed along the valley, Like the banshee’s lonely croon, And a thousand blades were flashing, At the risin’ of the moon.
There beside the singing river That dark mass of men was seen, Far above the shining weapons Hung their own beloved green. “Death to every foe and traitor! Forward, strike the marchin’ tune, And hurrah, my boys, for freedom! ’Tis the risin’ of the moon.”
Well, they fought for poor old Ireland, And full bitter was their fate. (Oh! what glorious pride and sorrow Fill the name of Ninety-eight!) Yet, thank God, e’en still are beating Hearts in manhood’s burning noon, Who would follow in their footsteps At the risin’ of the moon! Leo Casey.
THE SADDEST SIGHT.
When a woman her home would decorate, She stops not at obstacles small or great; But the funniest sight her trials afford Is when madam essays to saw a board.
With her knee on a plank, and the plank on a chair, She poises her saw with a knowing air, Makes several wild rasps at the pencilled line, And is off with a whizz the reverse of fine.
With lips compressed she gets down to work, And crosses the timber jerkity-jerk; She can’t keep to the line, her knee slips askew; But she keeps to the work till the board splits in two.
She has damaged the chair, she has ruined the saw, Her back is aching, her hands are raw, And she finds, when she tries to fit her prize, It’s an inch too short of the requisite size.
NEBULOUS PHILOSOPHY.
She came from Concord’s classic shades, on Reason’s throne she sat, And wove intricate arguments to prove, in language pat, The Whichness of the Wherefore, and the Thusness of the That.
She scorned ignoble subjects, each grovelling household care, But tuned her lofty soul to prove the Airness of the Air, And twisted skeins of logic round the Whatness of the Where.
To lower natures leaving the dollars, and the sense, She soared above the level of commonplace pretence, And moulded treatises which prove the Thatness of the Thence.
Her glorious purpose to reveal the Thinkfulness of the Thought, To trace each line by Somewhat on the Somehow’s surface wrought, To picture forms of Whynot’s from the Whatnot’s meaning caught;
To cultivate our spirits with the Whyfore’s classic flow, To benefit the Thereness with the Highness of the How, To flood the dark with radiance from the Thisness of the Now.
“What good has she accomplished?” Oh, never doubt her thus! It must be useful to reveal the Plusness of the Plus, To illustrate with corkscrew words the Whichness of the Us.
Mock not, poor common mortal, when thoughts like these appear, Illumining our labor with the Howness of the Here, And blazing like a comet through the Nowness of the Near.
Some day in Realms Eternal such grand mist-haunted souls, Inscribe their words of Whichness on Whereforeantic scrolls, In that great world of Muchness which through the Maybe rolls.
Then shall we each acknowledge the Whyness of the Whence; Each understand completely with Sensefulness of Sense, The Thusness of the Therefore, the Thatness of the Thence. J. Edgar Jones.
AT ARLINGTON.
The broken column, reared in air, To him who made our country great, Can almost cast its shadow where The victims of a grand despair In long, long ranks of death await The last loud trump, the judgment sun, Which comes for all, and soon or late Will come for those at Arlington.
In that vast sepulchre repose The thousands reaped from every fray; The men in blue who once uprose In battle front to smite their foes— The Spartan bands who wore the gray. The combat o’er, the death-hug done, In summer blaze or winter’s snows, They keep the truce at Arlington.
And, almost lost in myriad graves Of those who gained the unequal fight, Are mounds that hide Confederate braves, Who reck not how the north wind raves, In dazzling day or dimmest night. O’er those who lost and those who won Death holds no parley which was right— Jehovah judges Arlington.
The dead had rest; the dove of peace, Brooded o’er both with equal wings; To both had come that great surcease, The last omnipotent release From all the world’s delirious stings, To bugle deaf and signal gun They slept, like heroes of old Greece, Beneath the glebe at Arlington.
And in the Spring’s benignant reign, The sweet May woke her harp of pines, Teaching her choir a thrilling strain Of jubilee to land and main. She danced in emerald down the lines, Denying largess bright to none. She saw no difference in the signs That told who slept at Arlington.
She gave her grasses and her showers To all alike who dreamed in dust; Her song-birds wove their dainty bowers Amid the jasmine buds and flowers, And piped with an impartial trust. Waifs of the air and liberal sun! Their guileless glees were kind and just To friend and foe at Arlington.
And ’mid the generous spring there came Some women of the land who strove To make this funeral field of fame Glad as the May God’s altar flame With rosy wreaths of mutual love. Unmindful who had lost or won, They scorned the jargon of a name— No North, no South, at Arlington. James R. Randall.
A LAUGHING PHILOSOPHER.
Admiring my flowers, sir? P’raps you’d step inside the gate, and walk round my little place? It ain’t big, but there’s plenty of variety,—violets and cabbages, roses and artichokes. Any one that didn’t care for flowers ’ud be sure to find beauty in them young spring onions. People’s ideas differ very much, there ain’t a doubt of it. One man’s very happy over a glass of whiskey and water, and another thinks every thing ’ud go straight in this ’ere world if we all drank tea and lemonade. And it’s right enough: it keeps things even. We should have the world a very one-sided affair if everybody pulled the same way. Philosopher, am I? Well, I dunno. I’ve got a theory to be sure—every one has nowadays; and mine is, that there is a joke to be found in every mortal thing if only we look in the right place for it. But some people don’t know how to look for it. Why, sir, if you’ll believe it, I was talking to a man yesterday that couldn’t see any thing to laugh at in the naval demonstration.
Am I independent? Well, I makes money by my fruit and vegetables, if that’s what you mean. But there’s so many ways of being independent. One man marries a woman with £20,000 a year, and calls that independence. Another votes on the strongest side, and calls that being independent. One takes up every new-fangled idea that comes out, and says he’s independent. Some calls impudence independence. There’s not a name as fits so many different articles. No! I’ve never bin married. Somehow, I don’t think married men see the fun in every thing same as single ones. I don’t mean to be disrespectful to the ladies, but I do think they enjoy a good cry more than a good laugh. Was I ever in love? and did I laugh then? Why, yes, never laughed heartier in my life. It’s a good many years ago now. I was living in lodgings down Clerkenwell way, and the landlady’s daughter was as pretty a creature as ever you see, bright and cheery, like a robin, when first I knew her. But, by and by, she grew pale and peaky,—used to go about the house without singing, and had such big, sad-looking eyes. Her home wasn’t a particularly happy one, for her mother was a nagger. Perhaps you’ve never come across a woman of that pertikler character. Well, then, you should say double the prayers of ordinary people; for you’ve much to be thankful for. I never looked at her without feeling that her husband must have been very happy indeed when he got to heaven. I sometimes think, sir, that women of this sort might be made use of, and prisons, and all other kind of punishment, done away with: perhaps, though, the lunatic asylums ’ud get too full.
Well, I grew to be quite intimate with Bessie; and one evening, I don’t know how it was, she told me all her troubles. She was engaged to a young man; and her mother wouldn’t consent to them marrying, and was always worrying her to break it off. I asked her if there were any thing against him. Nothing, except that her mother had taken a dislike to him: he wasn’t very strong, but he was the best, cleverest, dearest fellow that ever lived. All the time she was talking I felt a gnawing sort of pain somewhere in my inside. First, I thought I must be hungry; but, when I came to eat, all my food seemed to get in my throat, and stick there. This won’t do, old fellow, thinks I: there must be a joke to be got out of it somewhere. So I set to consider; and there, clear enough, it was. Why, the joke ’ud be to let Bessie marry her young man, and see the pretty cheeks grow round and pink again. But how to do it, there was the rub. I began to cultivate the old lady’s society with a view to finding out her weak point: for, being a woman, of course she had a weak point; and, being a very ugly woman, what do you think it was? Why, vanity, to be sure. I soon noticed a change in her. She took her hair out of paper every day, instead of only on Sundays, as she had been used to do; and she put on a clean cap sometimes, and smirked whenever I passed her. Why, here’s a bigger joke than I bargained for, thinks I! While I’ve been studying the woman to find out her weak point, she thinks I’ve been admiring her. But I soon saw what use I could make of this. I went down into the kitchen when she wasn’t busy,—I knew it would be rather too hot other times,—and I got talking about Bessie. “It’s strange,” I says, “that a fine-looking girl like that shouldn’t have a sweetheart. Things was different when you was younger, I’ll be bound.”
“As for that,” says she, “Bessie has a sweetheart; but I don’t approve of him. He’s not exactly the sort of man I expected for her.”
“But, lor’,” I says, “you wouldn’t go and keep that girl single! Think what harm you may do yourself. You can’t be so cruel as to give up all idea of marrying agin! Why, you don’t look forty.” That wasn’t an untruth, for she looked fifty. She tossed her head, and told me to go along. I didn’t go along. I says, “There’s no doubt lots of young fellows ’ud be glad enough of a good-looking wife like you, but mightn’t care for a daughter as old as Miss Bessie.” This seemed to strike her very much. I followed it up, got talking to her day after day, and always led the conversation to the same point. At last one day when I came home from work, she says, “It’s all settled. Bessie’s going to be married, and her Tom’s coming here this evening.” Then I went up to my own room, and laughed till I cried. Presently I heard the little girl run up-stairs as she hadn’t run for many a long day, and I knew she’d gone to put on a smart ribbon for Tom’s sake. She tapped at my door as she passed. Would I come down? somebody was there, and wanted to know me. I called out that I was busy, and couldn’t come; and she went away. But after about an hour she came again. I was sitting in the dark, thinking of a good many things; and before I had time to speak she was down on her knees beside me, and hiding her face.
“You told me you were busy,” she said; “and here you are all in the dark and cold, and I can’t bear any one to be dull or lonely to-night, because I’m so very, very happy. And I know it’s all through you. Mother would never have given in of her own accord. You’ve always been my friend when I wanted one very badly; and now you must be angry with me, or you wouldn’t stay away to-night. And you won’t even speak to me. Oh, whatever I’ve done to vex you, don’t think of it any more!”
She nestled up to me so close that her hair touched my coat-sleeve, and her pretty eyes looked up all swimming with tears. I ground my teeth, and clinched my hands, or—or I don’t know what I mightn’t ha’ done. You see the joke of this, sir, don’t you? Here was the girl crying, and asking me to forgive her, and like her a little; and there was I—not disliking her a bit all the time. Ha, ha, ha! I had a hearty laugh at her, and hurried with her down-stairs, and was introduced to Tom, and I talked to the old lady, and drank the young people’s health, and was as happy as possible. And on the wedding-day I gave her away as if I had been her father; and I sang a song and danced: and, when the time came for Bessie to go away with her husband, I dried her eyes; for at the last moment the tender-hearted little thing broke down, and cried, and kissed us all, and asked her mother not to feel angry with her for leaving her all alone; and then the mother cried, and what with having so many eyes to wipe, I found myself wiping my own just as if it all weren’t a tremendous joke.
How have they got on since? ’Bout as well as most people, I suppose; she loves him, and takes care of him. And the mother’s softened down a bit since she’s bin a grandmother. And as to my godson, there never was such a boy. I have him with me as much as possible, and he’s beginning to see the joke of every thing almost as much as I do myself. And when I die, all this little place’ll belong to him, and he’ll be a rich man: so my death’ll be the biggest joke of all, you see, sir.
THE SONG OF THE DRUM.
Dr-r-rum! Dr-r-rum! Dr-r-rum! Drum! Drum! With a rap, and a tap, and a rolling beat, And a sound on the ground of the tramp of feet, Keeping step they come, With the sound of the drum, With the rolling and the beating of the drum.
And away fly the people as if driven for their lives! Scudding out as if possessed from their daily human hives, With a flurry, And a scurry, In a most outrageous hurry, Out of counting house and office, Out of store and room and shop, Don’t ask them any questions, For they haven’t time to stop, Till they meet in the street, Touching shoulders, crushing feet, Millionnaire and humble tradesman, and the man who toils for bread, And up in one direction turned is every eager head.
Hear the crowd Cry aloud! What a mixed and motley set! And anon Running on While the drum is distant yet, Making every one forget Any business on which the mind is set.
Oh, the drum is full of life! And its stirring sound is rife With an inspiration wonderful to break the listless mood Of the indolent, and all, When its martial echoes fall, Like the touch of sudden fire to excite the sluggish blood. And this is the song, As the soldiers march along, Head erect—keeping time To the rolling and the rhyme Of the quick reiteration of the drummers hollow chime.
“Fame is eternal—glories supernal, Heroes the wreaths shall share, Victors the crowns shall wear. March on! Brave and true, Steady, on! Dare and do; On to the contest whose struggle elates you! On for the conflict where duty awaits you! There is the foe—advance and attack! Drive every enemy—back—back—BACK! Who cares for pain or for danger or woe? Here are our colors—and there is the foe!”
And so begins the fight, (God knows how it may end!) But we strive for the right, (May God the right defend!) For country and for home, For freedom and for truth, And freely to that cause we give the sturdy strength of youth, And freely in that cause we shed the blood that makes it strong, While we march to death and glory to the drum’s inspiring song.
Again, all is still. On the side of the hill Lies silent the camp in the shadow of night, The soldiers are sleeping; The sentinel walks in the moon’s silver light, His silent watch keeping. Hark! What is that? ’tis a step. “Who goes there?” No answer—black forms swiftly darken the air! The enemy comes! awake! AWAKE! How terrible are the alarms that break On the ear of the sleeper, and call him for war!
Hear the roll—hear the call—hear the hurried command, Not a breath—still as death—the regiments stand. Forward! Advance and attack! Where? There! See the dark forms through the dew-laden air! Cannons roar—bullets pour—squadrons march, Battalions—companies—regiments, charge! And all the red front of the terrible fight Glows like the conflict of demons at night.
Still, hearts are but human, Man, born of woman, Seeing his brother fall, all his flesh creeps, Seeing unheeded fresh wounds all bleeding, Sick of the sight of war, shudders and weeps. And the soldier sheds tears On the face of his foe. And the drummer is dumb In the sight of that woe.
Now when the hero lies silent in death, The end having come, Shorn of its echoing glory, what saith The dull muffled drum?
“Soldier sleep— Drum—drum! Soldier, rest— Drum—drum! In the breast of the earth whence we come, We come! All your toil Is done, And the fight Is won. Soldier, sleep—Soldier, rest!” says the drum, “Drum—drum!”
And this is the song, as we march along, That the hollow drum sings to the gathering throng; With the rap, and the tap, and the rolling beat, With the sound on the ground of the tramp of feet, Keeping step they come, With the sounding drum, With the rolling and the beating of the drum. I. E. Diekenga
THE BRAVEST BOY IN TOWN.
He lived in the Cumberland Valley, And his name was Jamie Brown; But it changed one day, so the neighbors say, To the “Bravest Boy in Town.”
’Twas the time when the Southern soldiers, Under Early’s mad command, O’er the border made their dashing raid From the north of Maryland;
And Chambersburg, unransomed, In smouldering ruins slept; While up the vale, like a fiery gale, The rebel raiders swept.
And a squad of gray-clad horsemen Came thundering o’er the bridge, Where peaceful cows in the meadows browse At the foot of the great Blue Ridge;
And on till they reached the village That fair in the valley lay, Defenceless then—for its loyal men At the front were far away.
“Pillage and spoil and plunder!” This was the fearful word That the Widow Brown, in gazing down From her latticed window, heard.
’Neath the boughs of the sheltering oak-tree The leader bared his head, As left and right, until out of sight, His dusty gray-coats sped.
Then he called “Halloo, within there!” A gentle, fair-haired dame Across the floor to the open door In gracious answer came.
“Here, stable my horse, you woman!” The soldier’s tones were rude; “Then bestir yourself, and from yonder shelf Set out your store of food!”
For her guest she spread the table; She motioned him to his place With a gesture proud; then the widow bowed, And gently asked a grace.
“‘If thine enemy hunger, feed him!’ I obey, dear Christ,” she said. A creeping blush, with its scarlet flush, O’er the face of the soldier spread.
He rose. “You have said it, madame! Standing within your doors Is the rebel foe; but as forth they go They shall trouble not you nor yours!”
Alas for the word of the leader! Alas for the soldier’s vow! When the captain’s men rode down the glen, They drove the widow’s cow.
It was then the fearless Jamie Sprang up with flashing eyes, And in spite of tears and his mother’s fears, On the gray mare off he flies.
Like a wild young Tam O’Shanter He plunged with piercing whoop, O’er field and brook, till he overtook The straggling rebel troop,—
Laden with spoil and plunder, And laughing and shouting still. As with cattle and sheep they lazily creep Through the dust o’er the winding hill.
“Oh the coward crowd!” cried Jamie. “There’s Brindle! I’ll teach them now!” And with headlong stride, at the captain’s side, He called for his mother’s cow.
“Who are you, and who is your mother? I promised she should not miss? Well! upon my word, have I never heard Of assurance like to this!”
“Is your word the word of a soldier?” And the young lad faced his foes, As a jeering laugh, in anger half And half in sport, arose.
But the captain drew his sabre, And spoke with lowering brow,— “Fall back into line! The joke is mine! Surrender the widow’s cow!”
And a capital joke they thought it, That a barefoot lad of ten Should demand his due—and get it too— In the face of forty men.
And the rollicking rebel raiders Forgot themselves somehow, And three cheers gave for the hero brave, And three for the brindle cow.
He lived in the Cumberland Valley, And his name was Jamie Brown; But it changed that day, so the neighbors say, To the “Bravest Boy in Town.” Emma Huntington Nason, in “Wide Awake.”
BRER RABBIT AND THE BUTTER.
“De anemules an’ de beastesses,” said Uncle Remus, shaking his coffee around in the bottom of his tin cup, in order to gather up all the sugar, “dey kep’ on gettin’ mo’ and mo’ familious wid wunner nudder, twel bimeby, ’twant long ’fo’ Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum got ter sorter bunchin’ der perwishions tergedder in de same house. Arter while de roof sorter ’gun ter leak, en one day Brer Rabbit, en Brer Fox, en Brer Possum ’semble fer ter see ef dey couldn’t kinder patch her up. Dey had a big day’s wuk in front un um, en den dey fotch der dinner wid um. Dey lumped de vittles up in one pile, en de butter w’at Brer Fox brung dey goes en puts in de spring-house fer ter keep cool, en den dey wen’ ter wuk, en ’twan’t long ’fo’ Brer Rabbit’s stummuck ’gun ter sorter growl en pester ’im. Dat butter of Brer Fox’s sot heavy on his mine, en his mouf water eve’y time he ’member ’bout it. Presen’ly he say ter hisself dat he bleedzd ter have a nip at dat butter, en den he lay his plans, he did. Fus news you know, w’ile dey was all wukkin’ ’long, Brer Rabbit raise his head quick en fling his years forred en holler out,—
“‘Here I is. W’at you want wid me?’ en off he went like sump’n wuz arter ’im.
“He sailed ’roun’, old Brer Rabbit did, en arter he make sho dat nobody ain’t foller’n ’im, inter de spring-’ouse he bounces, en dar he stays twel he git a bait er butter. Den he santer on back en go to wuk.
“‘Whar you bin?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘I hear my chilluns callin’ me,’ says Brer Rabbit, sezee, ’en I hatter go see w’at dey want. My ole ’oman done gone en tuck mighty sick,’ sezee.
“Dey wuk on twel bimeby de butter tas’e so good dat ole Brer Rabbit want some mo’. Den he raise up his head, he did, en holler out,—
“‘Heyo! Wait! I’m a comin’!’ en off he put.
“Dis time he stay right smart while, en w’en he git back Brer Fox ax him whar he bin.
“‘I bin ter see my ole ’oman, en she’s a sinkin’,’ sezee.
“Dreckly Brer Rabbit hear um callin’ ’im ag’in, en off he goes, en dis time, bless yo’ soul, he gets de butter out so clear dat he kin see hisse’f in de bottom er de bucket. He scrape it clean en lick it dry, en den he go back ter wuk lookin’ mo’ samer den a nigger w’at de patter-rollers bin had holt up.
“‘How’s yo’ ole ’oman dis time?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘I’m oblije ter you, Brer Fox,’ sez Brer Rabbit, sezee, ‘but I’m fear’d she’s done gone by, now,’ en dat sorter make Brer Fox en Brer Possum feel in moanin’ wid Brer Rabbit.
“Bimeby, w’en dinner-time come, dey all got out der vittles, but Brer Rabbit keep on lookin’ lonesome, en Brer Fox and Brer Possum, dey sorter rustle ’roun’ for ter see ef dey can’t make Brer Rabbit feel sorter splimmy.”
“What is that, Uncle Remus?” asked the little boy.
“Sorter splannny, honey—sorter like he’s in a crowd—sorter like his ole ’oman ain’t dead ez she mout be. You know how fokes duz w’en dey gits whar people’s a moanin’.”
The little boy didn’t know, fortunately for him, and Uncle Remus went on,—
“Brer Fox and Brer Possum rustle roun’, dey did, gittin’ out de vittles, en bimeby Brer Fox say, sezee,—
“‘Brer Possum, you run down to de spring en fetch de butter, en I’ll sail ’roun’ yer en set de table,’ sezee.
“Brer Possum he lope off arter de butter, en dreckly here he comes lopin’ back, wid his years a trimblin’, en his tongue a hangin’ out. Brer Fox, he holler out,—
“‘W’at de matter now, Brer Possum?’ sezee.
“‘You all better run yer, fokes,’ sez Brer Possum, sezee. ‘De las’ drap er dat butter done gone.’
“‘Whar she gone?’ sez Brer Fox, sezee.
“‘Look like she dried up,’ sez Brer Possum, sezee.
“Den Brer Rabbit he look sorter wise, he did, en he up’n say, sezee,—
“‘I speck dat butter melt in somebody’s mouf,’ sezee.
“Den dey went down ter de spring wid Brer Possum, en sho ’nuff de butter wuz gone. W’ile dey was sputin’ over der wunderment, Brer Rabbit say he see tracks all ’roun’ dar, en he p’int out dat ef dey’ll all go ter sleep, he kin ketch de chap w’at stole de butter. Den dey all lie down, en Brer Fox en Brer Possum dey soon drapt off ter sleep; but Brer Rabbit he stay ’wake, en w’en de time come, he raise up easy en smear Brer Possum’s mouf wid de butter on his paws, en den he run off en nibble up de bes’ er de dinner w’at dey lef’ layin’ out, en den he come back en wake up Brer Fox, en show ’im de butter on Brer Possum’s mouf. Den dey wake Brer Possum up, en tell ’im about it; but c’ose Brer Possum ’ny it to de las’. Brer Fox, dough, he’s a kinder lawyer, en he argafy dis way,—dat Brer Possum wuz de fus one at de butter, en de fus one fer ter miss it, en, mo’n dat, dar hung de signs on his mouf. Brer Possum see dat dey got ’im jammed up in a cornder, en den he up en say dat de way fer ter ketch de man w’at stole de butter is ter bil’ a big bresh-heap en set her afier, en all hands try ter jump over, en de one w’at fall in, den he de chap w’at stole de butter. Brer Rabbit and Brer Fox dey bofe ’gree, dey did; en dey whirl in en b’il’ de bresh-heap, en dey b’il’ her high, en dey b’il’ her wide, en den dey totch her off. W’en she got ter blazin’ up good, Brer Rabbit he tuck de fus turn. He sorter step back, look ’roun’ en giggle, en over he went mo’ samer den a bird fly in’. Den come Brer Fox. He got back little fudder, en spit on his han’s, en den lit out en made de jump, en he come so nigh gettin’ in dat de een’ er his tail kotch afier. Ain’t you never see no fox, honey?” inquired Uncle Remus in a tone that implied both conciliation and information.
The little boy thought probably he had, but he wouldn’t commit himself.
“Well, den,” continued the old man, “nex’ time you see one un um, you look right close en see ef de een’ er his tail ain’t white. Hit’s des like I tell you. Dey b’ars de skyar er dat bresh-heap down ter dis day. Dey er marked—dat’s w’at dey is—dey er marked.”
“And what about Brother Possum?” asked the boy.
“Old Brer Possum, he tuck a runnin’ start, he did, en he come lumberin’ ’long, en he hit—ker blam!—right in de middle er de fier, en dat waz de las’ er old Brer Possum.”
“But, Uncle Remus, Brother Possum didn’t steal the butter after all,” said the little boy, who was not at all satisfied with such summary injustice.
“Dat w’at make I say w’at I duz, honey. In dis worrul, lots er folks is gotter souffer fer udder folkes’ sins. Look like hit’s mighty on wrong; but hit’s des dat a way. Tribbalashun seem like she’s a waitin’ roun’ de cornder fer ter ketch one en all un us, honey.”
Harris.
THE LOVES OF A LIFE.
Love! Love is the flight of the soul towards God, towards the great, the sublime, and the beautiful, which are the shadow of God upon earth. Love your family, the partner of your life, those around you ready to share your joys and sorrows, the dead who were dear to you, and to whom you were dear. But let your love be the love taught you by Dante and by us,—the love of souls that aspire together, and do not grovel on the earth in search of a felicity which is not the destiny of the creature here to reach; do not yield to a delusion which inevitably would degrade you into egotism. To love, is to promise, and to receive a promise for the future. God has given us love, that the weary soul may give and receive support upon the way of life. It is a flower which springs up on the path of duty, but which cannot change its course. Purify, strengthen, and improve yourselves by loving. Ever act—even at the price of increasing her earthly trials—so that the sister soul united to your own may never need, here or elsewhere, to blush through you or for you. The time will come when from the height of a new life, embracing the whole past and comprehending its secret, you will smile together at the sorrows you have endured, the trials you have overcome.
Love your country. Your country is the land where your parents sleep, where is spoken that language in which the chosen of your heart, blushing, whispered the first word of love; it is the house that God has given you, that, by striving to perfect yourselves therein, you may prepare to ascend to him. It is your name, your glory, your sign among the peoples. Give to it your thought, your counsel, your blood. Raise it up, great and beautiful, as foretold by our great men. And see that you leave it uncontaminated by any trace of falsehood, or of servitude, unprofaned by dismemberment. Let it be one, as the thought of God. You are twenty-four millions of men, endowed with active, splendid faculties, with a tradition of glory the envy of the nations of Europe; an immense future is before you, your eyes are raised to the loveliest heaven, and around you smiles the loveliest land in Europe; you are encircled by the Alps and the sea, boundaries marked out by the finger of God for a people of giants. And you must be such, or nothing. Let not a man of that twenty-four millions remain excluded from the fraternal bond which shall join you together; let not a look be raised to that heaven, which is not that of a free man. Let Rome be the ark of your redemption, the temple of your nation. Has she not twice been the temple of the destinies of Europe? In Rome two extinct worlds, the Pagan and the Papal, meet each other like the double jewels of a diadem; and you must draw from thence a third world, greater than the other two. From Rome, the Holy City, the City of Love (Amor), the purest and wisest among you, elected by the vote, and strengthened by the inspiration, of a whole people, shall give forth the pact that shall unite us in one, and represent us in the future alliance of the peoples. Until then you have no country, or you have it contaminated.
Love humanity. You can only ascertain your own mission from the aim placed by God before humanity at large. God has given you your country as cradle, humanity as mother, and you can only love your brethren of the cradle in loving your common mother. Beyond the Alps, beyond the sea, are other peoples, now fighting, or preparing to fight, the holy fight of independence, of nationality, of liberty: other peoples striving by different routes to reach the same goal,—improvement, association, and the foundation of an authority which shall put an end to moral anarchy, and link again earth to heaven, and which mankind may love and obey without remorse or shame. Unite with them, they will unite with you. Do not invoke their aid where your single arm can suffice to conquer; but say to them, that the hour will shortly sound for a terrible struggle between right and blind force, and that in that hour you will ever be found with those who have raised the same banner as yourselves.
And love, young men, love and reverence above every thing the ideal. The ideal is the word of God, superior to every country, superior to humanity; it is the country of the spirit, the city of the soul, in which all are brethren who believe in the inviolability of thought, and in the dignity of our immortal soul; and the baptism of this fraternity is martyrdom. From that high sphere spring the principles which alone can redeem the peoples. Arise for them! and not from impatience of suffering, or dread of evil. Anger, pride, ambition, and the desire of material prosperity are arms common to the peoples and their oppressors; and, even should you conquer with them to-day, you will fall again to-morrow: but principles belong to the peoples alone, and their oppressors can find no arms to oppose them. Adore enthusiasm. Worship the dreams of the virgin soul, and the visions of early youth, for they are the perfume of paradise, which the soul preserves in issuing from the hands of its Creator. Respect above all things your conscience; have upon your lips the truth that God has placed in your hearts, and, while working together in harmony in all that tends to the emancipation of our soil, even with those who differ from you, yet ever bear erect your own banner, and boldly promulgate your faith.
Mazzini
THE PRISONER.
Closed in by four gray walls, Grim, and grimy, and hard! One only break in the slimy dark, A window, iron-barred!
Quivering on tiptoe there, I spy at the world without, And wearily scan that blue sea-bay, Where the white sails glide about. I gaze, till my hot eyes ache With the changeful, flashing light: That billowy blue, so terribly blue; That white, so intensely white! And I step from my trembling hold Down on the loathsome floor; Then bruised, half-blinded, and sick, I climb, and gaze once more.
Out of this fearful dun-light,— Darkness “made visible,”— I gaze on the summer sunlight Which never visits my cell,— Out on yon summer-glory Flooding the golden sand; And I sigh for the distant freedom: I weep for my far-off land!
So I cling to the bars, and wonder If my lot will ever be To float in that skifflet yonder, Home o’er that tempting sea.
Oh! I loathe the foreign banner, With its fluttering, flaunting brag; And my soul is sad and weary, Heart-sick for the dear old flag! Oh! could I loose from her moorings, Could I reach yon tiny boat, With what glad, wild heart-boundings. Away, away I’d float!
But the sunbeams lie still and burning, On ocean and on land, While scarce by one breezy flutter Is my burning forehead fanned.
’Tis maddening!—this awful still, Round me in my hollow stone! Though yonder the glad notes thrill, I hear not, I hear not one! But out of my terrible silence, I can see these voices yonder, While over my tugging heart-strings Creep echoes, dearer, fonder.
I ache for liberty, Over the far blue sea, O’er the blue sea so wide! And I hear the angels singing, “Keeping time, In silver rhyme” With that boat so slowly swinging, On the restless, heaving tide. Ripple, dipple, Plashing, dashing, The wavelets sleepily lap the shore; Lazily, hazily; Drearily, wearily, I cling here, listening o’er and o’er—
To the sobbing oozing gurgle Slushing underneath the keel, And the restless, dipping murmur Which I cannot know by the outward ear, The tide is too far for me to hear, But deep in my soul I feel.
And I see yon boat so slowly swinging: I hear the far-off home-bells ringing, Ringing through my heart! Sweet bells of home, I must be free: Yon skiff shall bear me o’er the sea, If but these stanchions part!
Then will I dare the tempest’s wrath, While seeking out the homeward path, For liberty’s dear sake; And my frail bark shall boldly drift, Where mightier ships have passed, and left Lines of snow-foam in their wake.
Ha! the iron bars are loosening! So! gently on the floor! I am mad for yon shifting sea, Frantic I’ll spring to liberty! Now! there goes one bar more!
Another! And now I’m free! I’m free! Wide is my path to liberty; For a sailor’s foot and hand Make light of castle-wall, In its rugged fall To the golden strand.
Down! down! down! Beneath the castle’s frown! Surely, I fell! For blood is flowing, and wounds are wide: I know it, I know it, ’tis life’s full tide, In crimson swell! The boat is empty, I lie on the sand, Far from those bells of my own dear land! I am dying, alone, but free! Out in God’s glorious sun and light, Loyal in heart, and true in hand, To the royal flag of my native land! Dying, but free, By the solemn sea! Mother, good-night!
THE OLD CANTEEN.
Send it up to the garret? Well, no, what’s the harm, If it hangs like a horseshoe to serve as a charm? Had its day? to be sure. Matches ill with things here! Shall I sack the old friend just because it is queer? Thing of beauty ’tis not; but a joy none the less, As my hot lips remember its old-time caress, And I think on the solace once gurgling between My lips from that old battered tin canteen.
It has hung by my side in the long, weary tramp; Been my friend in the bivouac, barracks, and camp, In the triumph, the capture, advance, and retreat, More than light to my path, more than guide to my feet. Sweeter nectar ne’er flowed, howe’er sparkling and cold, From out chalice of silver or goblet of gold, For a king or emperor, princess or queen, Than to me, from the mouth of that old canteen.
It has cheered the desponding on many a night, Till their laughing eyes gleamed in the camp’s fire-light; Whether guns stood at silence, or boomed at short range, It was always on duty, though ’twould not be strange If in somnolent periods, just after “taps,” Some colonel or captain disturbed at his naps May have felt a suspicion—that spirits unseen Had somehow bedeviled that old canteen.
But I think on the time when in lulls of the strife It has called the far look in dim eyes back to life, Helped to stanch the quick blood beginning to pour, Softened broad, gaping wounds that were stiffened and sore, Moistened thin, livid lips, so despairing of breath, They could only speak thanks in the quiver of death. If an angel of mercy ever hovered between This world and the next, ’twas that old canteen.
Then banish it not, as a profitless thing; Were it hung in a palace, it well might swing, To tell in its mute, allegorical way How the citizen volunteer won the day. How he bravely, unflinchingly, grandly won, And how, when the death-dealing work was done, ’Twas as easy his passion from war to wean As his mouth from the lips of the old canteen.
By and by, when all hate for the rage with the Bars, Is forgotten in love for the “Stripes and the Stars,” When Columbia rules every thing solid and sole From her one ship-canal to the ice at the pole, When the Grand-Army men have obeyed the last call, And the Mayflowers and violets bloom for us all, Then, away in some garret, the cobwebs may screen My battered, old, cloth-covered tin canteen.
AUNT SOPHRONIA TABOR AT THE OPERA.
“So this is the uproar? Well, isn’t this a monster big building? And that chantieleer! It’s got a thousand candles if it has one. It must have taken a sight of tallow to have run them all!”—“They are make-believe candles, aunt, with little jets of gas inside to give the effect of real ones.”—“I want to know! Well, I only wish that your uncle Peleg was here. You’re sure, Louisa, that this is a perfectly proper place?”—“Why, aunt, you don’t suppose that papa would consent to our attending the opera if it were other than a perfectly proper place, do you?”—“No, no, dear; I suppose not. But somehow you city folks look upon such things differently from what we do who live in the country. Dear suz! Louisa, do look way up there in the tiptop of the house! Did you ever see such a sight of people? Why, excursion-trains must have run from all over the State. Massy, child! There’s a woman forgot her bonnet! Do just nudge her, Louisa, and tell her of it. My Eliza Ann cut just such a caper as that one Sunday last summer,—got clean into the meeting-house, and half way down the middle aisle, before she discovered it, and the whole congregation a-giggling and a-tittering. Your cousin Woodman Harrison shook the whole pew; and I don’t know but what he’d ’a’ hawhawed right out in meeting if his father hadn’t ’a’ given him one of his looks. As ’twas, I was afeard he’d bust a blood-vessel. Just speak to that poor creature, Louisa. She’ll feel awfully cut up when she finds it out, and ’tis a Christian duty to tell her.”—“Why, aunt, don’t you know that she is in full dress, and left her bonnet at home intentionally? See how beautifully her hair is arranged. You don’t suppose she wanted to cover up all that elegance, do you?”—“Come bareheaded a-purpose! Well, I do declare! But, Louisa, where’s the horse-chestnut?”—“The horse-chestnut, aunt?”—“Yes, child; you said something or other about a horse-chestnut playing a voluntary or something of that sort.”—“Oh, the orchestra! Yes, I remember. Don’t you see those gentlemen in front of the stage?”—“Them men with the fiddles and the bass-viols?”—“Yes. Well, they compose the orchestra, and the orchestral part of this opera is particularly fine.”—“I want to know! Belong to the first families, I suppose. They are an uncommon good-looking set of men. Is Mrs. Patte a furrener?”—“Yes; she’s a mixture of Spanish and Italian. She was born in Madrid, but came to the United States when only five years of age, and remained here until she was nearly seventeen. There, aunt; there’s the bell, and the curtain will rise in a minute. Yes; see, there it goes.”—“Louisa!”—“Sh—! listen. I want you to hear Signor Monti. He is considered a very fine bass.”—“But, Louisa, oughtn’t we to stand up during prayer-time?”—“You forget, aunt, that this is only a play, and not a temple.”—“Dear suz! I only wish your uncle Peleg was here. Somehow it seems kinder unchristian to be play-acting worship.”—“Why, aunt, there’s no need of your feeling so conscience-stricken. Lots of church-people come to the opera. It isn’t like the theatre, you know. It’s more—more—er—well, I can’t just express it, aunt. But, anyway, people who discountenance the theatre, especially during Lent, approve of the opera.”—“But, Louisa, what is the matter? La sakes, child! let’s get out as spry as ever we can! The theatre is all on fire. Hurry, Louisa! Wish that your uncle Peleg”—“Sh—aunt; do sit down. It isn’t a fire. It’s only the people applauding because Patti is on the stage. Don’t you see her?”—“Sakes alive! Is that it? I thought we was all afire, or Wiggin’s flood had come. So that is Mrs. Patte. Well, I declare for it! she’s as spry as a cricket, and no mistake. Why, Louisa, how old is she? She looks scarcely out of her teens.”—“Oh, aunt, you must not be so practical, and ask such personal questions. Ladies don’t always want their ages known; but, between ourselves, she’s over forty.”—“Is it possible? There, they’re at it again. What is the matter now?”—“Why, Scalchi has appeared. Don’t you see?”—“What, that dapper little fellow a-bowing and a-scraping and a-smirking! Is that Mr. Scalchi?”—“That’s Madame Scalchi, aunt; and she’s taking the part of Arsaces, the commander of the Assyrian army, you know.”—“Louisa, are you sure that this is a perfectly proper place? I only wish Peleg was here, for then I shouldn’t feel so sort a-skerry like and guilty.”—“Now, aunt, we mustn’t speak another word till the opera is through, because we disturb the people.”—“I suppose we do; but, whenever any thing happens, you nudge me, and I’ll nudge you; or we can squeeze hands,—that’s the way Peleg and I do when we go to the lyceum. It’s sorter social, and everybody can hear just as well.” Soon outrang the glorious voice. “Bravo! bravo! bravo!” echoed from all parts of the house “Hooray!”—“Why, Aunt Tabor! sit down.”—“If Peleg were only here! Hip, hip”—“Aunt, in pity’s name keep still! Don’t get so excited.”—“Well, I never! The sweat’s just a-rolling off me, and I am as weak as a rag-baby. I wish I had my turkey-tail. This mite of a fan of yours don’t give wind enough to cool a mouse.”—“Now, aunt, do keep quiet. You’ll hear better, and won’t get so warm.”—“Well, dear, I suppose you are right. But didn’t that sound like an angel-choir?”—“’Twas certainly very fine. One thing is sure: you’ve heard Patti at her best.”—“I’m so glad I came; and if Peleg was only along! But, there, I hain’t going to speak again till the uproar is over.” And so the opera went on, when, suddenly: “Louisa Allen, what are them half-nude statutes a-standing up in the back there? Don’t they realize that the whole congregation can see them? and haven’t they any modesty?”—“Why, aunt, that’s the ballet.”—“The what?”—“The ballet, aunt. Look, look! there they come. Isn’t that the very poetry of”—“Louisa Sophronia Tabor Allen, just you pick up your regimentals, and follow me; and that quick, too.”—“But, auntie”—“You needn’t auntie me. Just get your duds together, and we’ll travel. Thank goodness your uncle Peleg Josiah Tabor is not here! Don’t let me see you give as much as a glance to where those graceless nudities are, or, big as you are, I’ll box your ears.”—“Why, aunt”—“Louisa, I only wish I had my thickest veil, for I am positively ashamed to be caught in this unchristian scrape. Come, and don’t raise your eyes. There, thank goodness, we’re in pure air at last!”—“Why, aunt, I thought you were enjoying the opera!”—“The uproar, Louisa? I have nothing to say agin the uproar. Them voices would grace a celestial choir. This I say with all reverence. But that side show! I wouldn’t have had my Eliza Ann, nor my Woodman Harrison, ’a’ witnessed what we’ve come near a-witnessing for a thousand-dollar bill. No, not for a ten-thousand bill. And I am so thankful that your uncle Peleg was not here! Somehow, Louisa, I feel as if I’d fallen like the blessed Lucifer out of the moon.”
NEVER TOO LATE.
There is a good and a bad in the wayside inns On the highways of our lives, And man can never be free from sins, No matter how hard he strives; Yet even when down destruction’s grade Our thorny pathways trend, In spite of a thousand errors made, “It is never too late to mend.”
There are crosses heavy for men to bear, And passions to conquer too; There are joys and woes that each must share Before the journey is through; But men may be poor for honor’s sake, And truth and right defend, And hope will never this promise break,— “It is never too late to mend.”
’Tis never too late for a noble deed; For, blessed by the angels’ tears, It plants in the breasts of men a seed That will grow in after years; And words of kindness, of hope, and cheer, Will always comfort lend: We must live for love, and banish fear,— “It is never too late to mend.”
It is never too late to mend, my lad, No matter what people say: And no man’s nature is wholly bad, Even if old and gray: And in our journey toward the grave, Until we reach the end, There is time to change, and time to save,— “It is never too late to mend.” Ernest McGaffey.
A FIGHT WITH A TROUT.
We had been hearing for weeks of a small lake in the heart of the forest, some ten miles from our camp, which was alive with trout,—unsophisticated, hungry trout: the inlet to it was described as stiff with them. In my imagination I saw them lying there in ranks and rows, each a foot long, three tiers deep, a solid mass. The lake had never been visited, except by stray sable hunters in the winter, and was known as Unknown Pond. I determined to explore it fully, expecting that it would prove to be a delusion, as such haunts of the trout usually are. Confiding my purpose to Luke, we secretly made our preparations, and stole away from the shanty one morning at daybreak. Each of us carried a boat, a pair of blankets, a sack of bread, pork, and maple sugar; while I had my case of rods, reel, and book of flies, and Luke had an axe and the kitchen utensils. We think nothing of loads of this kind in the woods.
A couple of hours before sundown we reached the lake. If I live, to my dying day I shall never forget its appearance.... But what chiefly attracted my attention, and amused me, was the boiling of the water, the bubbling and breaking, as if the lake were a vast kettle with fire underneath. A tyro would have been astonished at this common phenomenon; but sportsmen will at once understand me, when I say that the water boiled with the breaking trout. I began casting, and had got out perhaps fifty feet of line, and gradually increased it to a hundred. It is not difficult to learn to cast, but it is difficult to learn not to jerk off the flies at every throw. Finally, in making a shorter cast, I saw a splash where the leader fell, and gave an excited jerk. The next instant I perceived the game, and did not need the unfeigned “dam” of Luke to convince me that I had snatched his felt hat from his head, and deposited it among the lilies. Discouraged by this, we whirled about, and paddled over to the inlet, where a little ripple was visible in the tinted light. Instantly, upon casting, there was a rush, a swirl. I struck, and “Got him, by—” Never mind what Luke said I got him by. “Out on a fly,” continued that irreverent guide; but I told him to back water, and make for the centre of the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like a shot, and took out the whole of the line with a rapidity that made it smoke. “Give him the butt,” shouted Luke. It is the usual remark in such an emergency. I gave him the butt; and, recognizing the fact and my spirit, the trout sank to the bottom, and sulked. It is the most dangerous mood of the trout, for you cannot tell what he will do next. We reeled up a little, and waited five minutes for him to reflect. A tightening of the line enraged him, and he soon developed his tactics. Coming to the surface, he made straight for the boat faster than I could reel in, and evidently with hostile intentions.
“Look out for him!” cried Luke, as he came flying in the air. I evaded him by dropping flat in the bottom of the boat; and when I picked my traps up he was spinning across the lake as if he had a new idea, but the line was still fast. He did not run far. I gave him the butt again, a thing he seemed to hate, even as a gift. In a moment the evil-minded fish, lashing the water in his rage, was coming back again, making straight for the boat as before. Luke, who was used to these encounters, having read them in the writings of travellers he had accompanied, raised his paddle in self-defence. The trout left the water about ten feet from the boat, and came directly at me with fiery eyes, his speckled sides flashing like a meteor. I dodged as he whisked by with a vicious slap of his bifurcated tail, and nearly upset the boat. The line was, of course, slack: and the danger was, that he would entangle it about me, and carry away one leg. This was evidently his game: but I untangled it, and only lost a breast-button or two by the swift-moving string. The trout plunged into the water with a hissing sound, and went away again with all the line on the reel. More butt, more indignation on the part of the captive. The contest had now been going on for half an hour, and I was getting exhausted. We had been back and forth across the lake, and around and around the lake. What I feared was, that the trout would start up the inlet, and wreck us in the bushes. But he had a new fancy, and began the execution of a manœuvre which I had never read of. Instead of coming straight toward us, he took a large circle, swimming rapidly, and gradually contracting his orbit. I reeled in, and kept my eye on him. Round and round he went, narrowing the circle. I began to suspect the game, which was to twist my head off. When he had reduced the radius of his circle to about twenty-five feet, he struck a tremendous pace through the water. It would be false modesty in a sportsman to say that I was not equal to the occasion. Instead of turning around with him, as he expected, I stepped to the bow, braced myself, and let the boat swing. Round went the fish, and round we went like a top. I saw a line of Mount Marcys all around the horizon; the rosy tint of the west made a broad bank of pink along the sky above the tree-tops; the evening star was a perfect circle of light, a hoop of gold in the heavens. We whirled and reeled, and reeled and whirled. I was willing to give the malicious beast butt and line and all, if he would only go the other way for a change.
When I came to myself, Luke was gaffing the trout at the boat-side. After we had got him in and dressed him, he weighed three-quarters of a pound! Fish always lose by being “got in and dressed.” It is best to weigh them while they are in the water. The only really large one I ever caught, got away with my leader when I first struck him. He weighed ten pounds.
Charles Dudley Warner.
AN ORDER FOR A PICTURE.
O good painter! tell me true, Has your hand the cunning to draw Shapes of things that you never saw? Ay? Well, here is an order for you.
Woods and cornfields, a little brown,— The picture must not be over-bright,— Yet all in the golden and gracious light Of a cloud, when the summer sun is down.
Alway and alway, night and morn, Woods upon woods, with fields of corn Lying between them, not quite sere, And not in the full, thick, leafy bloom, When the wind can hardly find breathing room Under their tassels; cattle near, Biting shorter the short green grass, And a hedge of sumach and sassafras, With bluebirds twittering all around,— (Ah, good painter, you can’t paint sound!)— These, and the house where I was born, Low and little, and black and old, With children, many as it can hold, All at the windows, open wide,— Heads and shoulders clear outside, And fair young faces all a-blush: Perhaps you may have seen, some day, Roses crowding the selfsame way, Out of a wilding wayside bush.
Listen closer. When you have done With woods and cornfields and grazing herds, A lady the loveliest ever the sun Looked down upon, you must paint for me. Oh, if I only could make you see The clear blue eyes, the tender smile, The sovereign sweetness, the gentle grace, The woman’s soul, and the angel’s face That are beaming on me all the while!— I need not speak these foolish words: Yet one word tells you all I would say,— She is my mother: you will agree That all the rest may be thrown away.
Two little urchins at her knee You must paint, sir: one like me,— The other with a clearer brow, And the light of his adventurous eyes Flashing with boldest enterprise: At ten years old he went to sea,— God knoweth if he be living now,— He sailed in the good ship Commodore: Nobody ever crossed her track To bring us news, and she never came back. Ah, ’tis twenty long years and more Since that old ship went out of the bay With my great-hearted brother on her deck; I watched him till he shrank to a speck, And his face was toward me all the way. Bright his hair was, a golden brown, The time we stood at our mother’s knee: That beauteous head, if it did go down, Carried sunshine into the sea!
Out in the fields one summer night We were together, half afraid Of the corn-leaves’ rustling, and of the shade Of the high hills stretching so still and far,— Loitering till after the low little light Of the candle shone through the open door, And over the haystack’s pointed top, All of a tremble, and ready to drop, The first half-hour, the great yellow star, That we, with staring, ignorant eyes, Had often and often watched to see Propped and held in its place in the skies By the fork of a tall red mulberry-tree, Which close in the edge of our flax-field grew,— Dead at the top,—just one branch full Of leaves, notched round, and lined with wool, From which it tenderly shook the dew Over our heads, when we came to play In its handbreadth of shadow, day after day:— Afraid to go home, sir; for one of us bore A nest full of speckled and thin-shelled eggs,— The other, a bird, held fast by the legs, Not so big as a straw of wheat: The berries we gave her she wouldn’t eat, But cried and cried, till we held her bill, So slim and shining, to keep her still.
At last we stood at our mother’s knee. Do you think, sir, if you try, You can paint the look of a lie? If you can, pray have the grace To put it solely in the face Of the urchin that is likest me: I think ’twas solely mine, indeed: But that’s no matter,—paint it so; The eyes of our mother (take good heed) Looking not on the nestful of eggs, Nor the fluttering bird, held so fast by the legs, But straight through our faces down to our lies, And oh, with such injured, reproachful surprise! I felt my heart bleed where that glance went, as though A sharp blade struck through it. You, sir, know, That you on the canvas are to repeat Things that are fairest, things most sweet,— Woods and cornfields and mulberry-tree,— The mother,—the lads, with their bird, at her knee: But oh that look of reproachful woe! High as the heavens your name I’ll shout, If you paint me the picture, and leave that out. Alice Cary.
FORCIBLE ENTRY.
It happened out on South Hill, nine thousand miles from Maple Street. The man’s wife had taken up the carpet in the bath-room the day before, and put all the crooked tacks in a saucer, and put it on a chair. It is a marvellous thing why women will always save tacks that come out of the carpet; although it is a matter of record, that, out of the countless millions of tacks thus laid by, not one was ever used again, save in the soles of the bare masculine feet. They—the tacks, not the feet—are stowed away in saucers up on high shelves, in dark closets, and in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. And on these dusty perches they remain until the corroding hand of time, and dust, and spider-webs, and dead flies, and flakes of whitewash, and old bits of resin, and chunks of sealing-wax, and old steel pens, and similar accumulations, have filled the saucer to overflowing, when it is taken down and thrown away by the woman, who petulantly wonders who under the sun put all that trash in the saucer, and stuck it up there. And nine times out of ten she charges the crime on her husband. The tenth time she declares it was the hired girl. And always, before the saucer of crooked tacks is stowed away on the shelf, it is stuck around for three or four days on chairs and in corners of the room, spilling out occasional tacks on the carpet of every bedroom in the house, which fill the masculine soles with agony, and darken the air of the bedroom with inartistic but forcible profanity. Nothing is so painful as a crooked tack in the middle of one’s foot. A broken heart doesn’t hold half so much anguish, and a boil is a blessing in comparison.
This man who lives so far from Maple Street had a splendid bath; and when he had rubbed his skin into a glow with a crash-towel as rough as a pig’s back, he gathered his socks, and, backing up to the only chair in the room, sat down to put them on.
Every tack in that saucer saw him coming down.
Every last tack smiled in anticipation of the dénoûment, and stood on its head, and reached for him.
Every last solitary individual and collective tack fetched him, got him, and held to him.
He dropped his socks, and rose from that chair with an abruptness that knocked his head against the ceiling. He came down, and waltzed wildly round and round the room, shrieking and yelling, gyrating madly with his arms, while his eyes stuck out so far they hung down. He howled until the neighbors besieged the house, yet he wouldn’t let any of them in. At last his yells died away; but they could hear his breath hiss between his set teeth, while at short intervals would come a yell, supplemented by the remark, “There’s another out!” In about three-quarters of an hour the yells ceased entirely, the window was opened, and a shower of tacks fell over the assembled and wondering multitude; while a large saucer skimmed across the street, and smashed against the side of a house opposite.
Nobody knows what ails the man, for he will not tell any one a thing about it: but he takes his meals off the mantel-piece all the same; and, when he sits, he sits down on his hip, for all the world as though he wore a “tied-back.” But he doesn’t. It’s a tacked-back that ails him.
J. M. Bailey.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
The power to discern right amid all the wrappings of interest, and all the seductions of ambition, was singularly his. To choose the lowly; for their sake to abandon all favor, all power, all comfort, all ambition, all greatness,—that was his genius and glory. He confronted the spirit of the nation and of the age. I had almost said, he set himself against nature, as if he had been a decree of God overriding all these other insuperable obstacles. That was his function. Mr. Phillips was not called to be a universal orator, any more than he was a universal thinker. In literature and in history he was widely read; in person most elegant; in manners most accomplished; gentle as a babe; sweet as a new-blown rose; in voice, clear and silvery. He was not a man of tempests; he was not an orchestra of a hundred instruments; he was not an organ, mighty and complex. The nation slept, and God wanted a trumpet, sharp, far-sounding, narrow, and intense; and that was Mr. Phillips. The long roll is not particularly agreeable in music or in times of peace; but it is better than flutes or harps when men are in a great battle, or are on the point of it. His eloquence was penetrating and alarming. He did not flow as a mighty gulf-stream: he did not dash upon the continent as the ocean does; he was not a mighty rushing river. His eloquence was a flight of arrows, sentence after sentence, polished, and most of them burning. He shot them one after the other, and where they struck they slew; always elegant, always awful. I think scorn in him was as fine as I ever knew it in any human being. He had that sublime sanctuary in his pride that made him almost insensitive to what would by other men be considered obloquy. It was as if he said every day, in himself, “I am not what they are firing at. I am not there, and I am not that. It is not against me. I am infinitely superior to what they think me to be. They do not know me.” It was quiet and unpretentious, but it was there. Conscience and pride were the two concurrent elements of his nature.
He lived to see the slave emancipated, but not by moral means. He lived to see the sword cut the fetter. After this had taken place, he was too young to retire, though too old to gather laurels of literature, or to seek professional honors. The impulse of humanity was not at all abated. His soul still flowed on for the great under-masses of mankind; though, like the Nile, it split up into diverse mouths, and not all of them were navigable.
After a long and stormy life, his sun went down in glory. All the English-speaking people on the globe have written among the names that shall never die, the name of that scoffed, detested, mob-beaten Wendell Phillips. Boston, that persecuted and would have slain him, is now exceedingly busy in building his tomb, and rearing his statue. The men that would not defile their lips with his name are to-day thanking God that he lived.
He has taught a lesson that the young will do well to take heed to,—the lesson that the most splendid gifts and opportunities and ambitions may be best used for the dumb and the lowly. His whole life is a rebuke to the idea that we are to climb to greatness by climbing up on the backs of great men; that we are to gain strength by running with the currents of life; that we can from without add any thing to the great within that constitutes man. He poured out the precious ointment of his soul upon the feet of that diffusive Jesus who suffers here in his poor and despised ones. He has taught the young ambitions, too, that the way to glory is the way, oftentimes, of adhesion simply to principle: and that popularity and unpopularity are not things to be known or considered. Do right and rejoice. If to do right will bring you into trouble, rejoice that you are counted worthy to suffer with God and the providences of God in this world.
He belongs to the race of giants, not simply because he was in and of himself a great soul, but because he bathed in the providence of God, and came forth scarcely less than a god; because he gave himself to the work of God upon earth, and inherited thereby, or had reflected upon him, some of the majesty of his Master. When pygmies are all dead, the noble countenance of Wendell Phillips will still look forth, radiant as a rising sun,—a sun that will never set. He has become to us a lesson, his death an example, his whole history an encouragement to manhood,—to heroic manhood.
Henry Ward Beecher.
AUNT PARSONS’S STORY.
I told Hezekiah—that’s my man. People mostly call him Deacon Parsons, but he never gets any deaconing from me. We were married—“Hezekiah and Amariah”—that’s going on forty years ago, and he’s jest Hezekiah to me, and nothin’ more.
Well, as I was saying, says I, “Hezekiah, we aren’t right. I am sure of it.” And he said, “Of course not. We are poor sinners, Amy; all poor sinners.” And I said, “Hezekiah, this ‘poor-sinner’ talk has gone on long enough. I suppose we are poor sinners, but I don’t see any use of being mean sinners; and there’s one thing I think is real mean.”
It was jest after breakfast: and, as he felt poorly, he hedn’t gone to the shop yet; and so I had this little talk with him to sort o’ chirk him up. He knew what I was comin’ to, for we hed had the subject up before. It was our little church. He always said, “The poor people, and what should we ever do?” And I always said, “We never shall do nothin’ unless we try.” And so, when I brought the matter up in this way, he just began bitin’ his toothpick, and said, “What’s up now? Who’s mean? Amariah, we oughtn’t to speak evil one of another.” Hezekiah always says “poor sinners,” and doesn’t seem to mind it; but when I occasionally say “mean sinners,” he somehow gits oneasy. But I was started, and I meant to free my mind.
So I said, says I, “I was goin’ to confess our sins. Dan’l confessed for all his people, and I was confessin’ for all our little church.
“Truth is,” says I, “ours is allus called one of the ‘feeble churches,’ and I am tried about it. I’ve raised seven children, and at fourteen months old every boy and girl of ’em could run alone. And our church is fourteen years old,” says I; “and it can’t take a step yet without somebody to hold on by. The Board helps us; and General Jones, good man, he helps us,—helps too much, I think,—and so we live along; but we don’t seem to get strong. Our people draw their rations every year as the Indians do up at the agency, and it doesn’t seem sometimes as if they ever thought of doing any thing else.
“They take it so easy!” I said. “That’s what worries me. I don’t suppose we could pay all expenses; but we might act as if we wanted to, and as if we meant to do all we can.
“I read,” says I, “last week about the debt of the Board; and this week, as I understand,” says I, “our application is going in for another year, and no particular effort to do any better; and it frets me. I can’t sleep nights, and I can’t take comfort Sundays. I’ve got to feelin’ as if we were a kind of perpetual paupers. And that was what I meant when I said, ‘It is real mean!’ I suppose I said it a little sharp,” says I, “but I’d rather be sharp than flat any day; and if we don’t begin to stir ourselves, we shall be flat enough before long, and shall deserve to be. It grows on me. It has jest been ‘Board, Board, Board,’ for fourteen years, and I’m tired of it. I never did like boardin’,” says I; “and even if we were poor, I believe we might do something toward settin’ up housekeepin’ for ourselves.
“Well, there’s not many of us—about a hundred, I believe; and some of these is women-folks, and some is jest girls and boys. And we all have to work hard, and live close; but,” says I, “let us show a disposition, if nothing more. Hezekiah, if there’s any spirit left in us, let us show some sort of a disposition.”
And Hezekiah had his toothpick in his teeth, and looked down at his boots, and rubbed his chin, as he always does when he’s goin’ to say somethin’. “I think there’s some of us that shows a disposition.”
Of course I understood that hit, but I kep’ still. I kep’ right on with my argument; and I said, “Yes, and a pretty bad disposition it is. It’s a disposition to let ourselves be helped when we ought to be helping ourselves. It’s a disposition to lie still and let somebody carry us. And we are growing up cripples—only we don’t grow.
“’Kiah,” says I, “do you hear me?” Sometimes when I want to talk a little he jest shets his eyes, and begins to rock himself back and forth in the old arm-chair; and he was doin’ that now. So I said, “’Kiah, do you hear?” And he said, “Some!” and I went on. “I’ve got a proposition,” says I. And he sort o’ looked up, and said, “Hev you? Well, between a disposition and a proposition, I guess the proposition might be better.”
He’s awful sarcrostic, sometimes. But I wasn’t goin’ to get riled, nor thrown off the track; so I jest said, “Yes; do you and I git two shillin’s’ worth apiece, a week, out o’ that blessed little church of ourn, do you think?” says I. “Cos, if we do, I want to give two shillin’s a week to keep it goin’; and I thought maybe you could do as much.” So he said he guessed we could stand that; and I said, “That’s my proposition, and I mean to see if we can’t find somebody else that’ll do the same. It’ll show disposition, anyway.”
“Well, I suppose you’ll hev your own way,” says he: “you most always do.” And I said, “Isn’t it most allers a good way?” Then I brought out my subscription paper. I had it all ready. I didn’t jest know how to shape it, but I knew it was something about “the sums set opposite our names;” and so I drawed it up, and took my chances. “You must head it,” says I, “because you’re the oldest deacon; and I must go on next, because I am the deacon’s wife; and then I’ll see some of the rest of the folks.”
So ’Kiah sot down, and put on his specs, and took his pen, but did not write. “What’s the matter?” says I. And he said, “I’m sort o’ ’shamed to subscribe two shillin’s. I never signed so little as that for any thing. I used to give that to the circus when I was nothin’ but a boy, and I ought to do more than that to support the gospel. Two shillin’ a week! Why, it’s only a shillin’ a sermon, and all the prayer-meetin’s throwed in. I can’t go less than fifty cents, I am sure.” So down he went for fifty cents; and then I signed for a quarter, and then my sunbonnet went onto my head pretty lively; and says I, “Hezekiah, there’s some cold potato in the pantry, and you know where to find the salt; so, if I am not back by dinner-time, don’t be bashful, help yourself.” And I started.
I called on the Smith family first. I felt sure of them. And they were just happy. Mr. Smith signed, and so did Mrs. Smith; and Long John, he came in while we were talkin’, and put his name down; and then old Grandma Smith, she didn’t want to be left out; so there was four of ’em. I’ve allers found it a great thing in any good enterprise to enlist the Smith family. There’s a good many of ’em. Next, I called on the Joslyns, and next on the Chapins, and then on the Widdy Chadwick, and so I kept on.
I met a little trouble once or twice, but not much. There was Fussy Furber; and bein’ trustee, he thought I was out of my spear, he said; and he wanted it understood that such work belonged to the trustees. “To be sure,” says I: “I’m glad I’ve found it out. I wish the trustees had discovered that a leetle sooner.” Then there was sister Puffy that’s got the asthma. She thought we ought to be lookin’ after “the sperritooalities.” She said we must get down before the Lord. She didn’t think churches could be run on money. But I told her I guessed we should be jest as spiritual to look into our pocketbooks a little, and I said it was a shame to be ’tarnally beggin’ so of the Board.
She looked dredful solemn when I said that, and I almost felt as I’d been committin’ profane language. But I hope the Lord will forgive me if I took any thing in vain. I did not take my call in vain, I tell you. Mrs. Puffy is good, only she allus wanted to talk so pious; and she put down her two shillin’s, and then hove a sigh. Then I found the boys at the cooper-shop, and got seven names there at one lick; and when the list began to grow, people seemed ashamed to say no; and I kept gainin’ till I had jest an even hundred, and then I went home.
Well, it was pretty well towards candle-light when I got back, and I was that tired I didn’t know much of any thing. I’ve washed, and I’ve scrubbed, and I’ve baked, and I’ve cleaned house, and I’ve biled soap, and I’ve moved; and I ’low that a’most any one of that sort of thing is a little exhaustin’. But put your bakin’ and movin’ and bilin’ soap all together, and it won’t work out as much genuine tired soul and body as one day with a subscription paper to support the gospel. So when I sort o’ dropped into a chair, and Hezekiah said, “Well?” I was past speakin’; and I put my check apron up to my face as I hadn’t done since I was a young, foolish girl, and cried. I don’t know what I felt so bad about: I don’t know as I did feel bad. But I felt cry, and I cried. And ’Kiah, seein’ how it was, felt kind o’ sorry for me, and set some tea a-steepin’; and when I had had my drink with weepin’, I felt better. I handed him the subscription paper, and he looked it over as if he didn’t expect any thing; but soon he began saying, “I never! I never!” And I said, “Of course you didn’t: you never tried. How much is it?”—“Why, don’t you know?” says he. “No,” I said: “I ain’t quick in figures, and I hadn’t time to foot it up. I hope it will make us out this year three hundred dollars or so.”
“Amy,” says he, “you’re a prodigy—a prodigal, I may say—and you don’t know it. A hundred names at two shillin’ each gives us twenty-five dollars a Sunday. Some of ’em may fail, but most of ’em is good; and there is ten, eleven, thirteen, that sign fifty cents. That’ll make up what fails. That paper of yourn’ll give us thirteen hundred dollars a year!” I jumped up like I was shot. “Yes,” he says, “we sha’n’t need any thing this year from the Board. This church, for this year at any rate, is self-supporting.”
We both sot down and kep’ still a minute, when I said kind o’ softly, “Hezekiah,” says I, “isn’t it about time for prayers?” I was just chokin’; but, as he took down the Bible, he said, “I guess we’d had better sing somethin’.” I nodded like, and he just struck in. We often sing at prayers in the morning; but now it seemed like the Scripter that says, “He giveth songs in the night.” ’Kiah generally likes the solemn tunes, too; and we sing “Show pity, Lord,” a great deal; and this mornin’ we had sung “Hark! from the tombs a doleful sound,” ’cause ’Kiah was not feelin’ very well, and we wanted to chirk up a little.
So I just waited to see what metre he’d strike to-night; and would you believe it? I didn’t know that he knew any sech tune. But off he started on “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.” I tried to catch on; but he went off lickerty-switch, like a steam-engine, and I couldn’t keep up. I was partly laughin’ to see ’Kiah go it, and partly crying again, my heart was so full; so I doubled up some of the notes, and jumped over the others; and so we safely reached the end.
But, I tell you, Hezekiah prayed. He allers prays well; but this was a bran’ new prayer, exactly suited to the occasion. And when Sunday come, and the minister got up and told what had been done, and said, “It is all the work of one good woman, and done in one day,” I just got scared, and wanted to run. And when some of the folks shook hands with me after meetin’, and said, with tears in their eyes, how I’d saved the church; and all that, I came awful nigh gettin’ proud. But, as Hezekiah says, “we’re all poor sinners;” and so I choked it back. But I am glad I did it; and I don’t believe our church will ever go boarding any more.
Presbyterian Journal.
THE SOLDIER’S DREAM.
It was the ninth of April—historic month and day! The day of Lee’s surrender—a score of years away. The sick-room veiled in midnight; no sound disturbed the air, Except the sufferer’s breathing, reclining in his chair.
The savior of his country lay face to face with Death, Whose lean and hungry fingers confined his choking breath: A panoramic vision illumed his dreamy sight,— The vision of a lifetime, from dawn to waning light.
A child of sunny summers, beside his mother’s knee, A youth of earnest purpose, his half-shut eyelids see; A grave and silent soldier, the pride of the parade, He rides, as if a Cossack, ’gainst Montezuma’s blade;
A sturdy, sunburnt farmer, within his rustic home, Beside his blazing hearthstone, who never cares to roam Except where boon companions, with pipes and foaming beer, Tell tales of wild adventure, sing songs of hearty cheer.
But hark! the bugle calleth! Its clarions wake the farms,— “Your country is in danger! To arms, my sons, to arms!” The streets are black with soldiers; their bristling bayonets gleam, A hundred thousand marching, as flows a mountain stream.
The dreamer in his vision descries a battle-field; He hears the cannon echo, he sees battalions yield; He sees the blue-coats rally, he sees the gray-coats fall, The ghastly dead and dying, the “stars and bars” their pall
Along the queen of rivers, against her trembling shore, Volcanic flames are belching, and volleying thunders roar: Hot shot and shell are crashing, while lurid smoke and flame Are from a fortress leaping,—a fortress known to fame.
Again the picture changes! The Capitol is seen, Where rolls the broad Potomac through the banks of ever green: Not now fraternal kindness disports in festive garb, But brother, armed ’gainst brother, spurs on his fiery barb.
Brigades and solid squadrons are marching out of camp; He hears their stirring music, he hears their steady tramp: The Wilderness the arena, a nation’s life the prize, Their watchword, “On to Richmond!” He hears their battle-cries.
For days, for weeks together, repulsed, defeated, slain, As sands restrain old ocean, their ranks roll back again, Till rising higher, higher, with loud, exultant roar, The foaming, raging billows sweep o’er the crumbling shore.
Now he sees a planter’s dwelling in Appomattox vale: The earth is piled in breastworks, ’tis rent with iron hail; What villages of canvas for men in blue or gray, What lines of halting columns, in grave or grim array!
Within appear two chieftains, of heroes full a score, The victors and the vanquished: thank God, the war is o’er! “The olive-branch shall shield you, the sun of peace shall shine! This flag,” so says the leader, “this ægis still is thine!”
No lion mien and bearing, no eagle’s eye of pride; As modest as a schoolboy, the conqueror seeks to hide—, Hide his speechless joy of triumph by generous act and word,— He feeds the conquered army! The beggar seems the lord.
The reveille has sounded; ’twill never sound again! For days, in martial splendor, three hundred thousand men. From Vicksburg and from Shiloh, Antietam and the sea. From Shenandoah’s Valley and Gettysburg’s green lea.—
Those cannoneers of Ruin, that hurricane of horse, With Pestilence behind them, and Carnage in their course; Those, those—when Pickett’s cohorts were charging wave on wave,— That stood like granite ledges, the bravest of the brave;
With drums, with banners flying, with triumph in each eye, The grand review are marching. He sees them passing by As saw in dream. Napoleon, from that triumphal arch, That night in phantom phalanx his splendid heroes march.
’Twas like a shield all gory, that sun of Austerlitz! No bloody, ghostly phantom before our hero flits! Ye idols of the people, who lead an army well, Shall wield a nation’s sceptre, in capitols shall dwell!
Past ages grim and hoary their victors loved to crown: The flaming sword of conquest still wins sublime renown. All echo and re-echo the glories of the brave; All, all, a grateful country! bedew the soldier’s grave. C. G. Fall.
OVER THE LEFT.
Their deposits were left over night in the bank,— In a bank without whisper of fault: The amounts to their credit were placed on the books, And were left over night in the vault.
To their credit, I say it, the bank was locked tight, Guarding thus against fire and theft; A patrol on the walk, and a new ’lectric light, Throwing beams to the right and the left.
Just here the cashier he left over night, Taking all but the house and the soil; And the long and the short of the story is this,— He was too long of stocks—short of oil.
A receiver was called, and he looked o’er the wreck, And received those who called—thus bereft. “Have you nothing left over?” they timidly ask: He answers, “Yes, over the left.” W. C. Dornin.
THE SEMINOLE’S REPLY.
Blaze, with your serried columns! I will not bend the knee! The shackles ne’er again shall bind The arm which now is free. I’ve mailed it with the thunder, When the tempest muttered low; And where it falls, ye well may dread The lightning of its blow!
I’ve scared ye in the city, I’ve scalped ye on the plain; Go, count your chosen, where they fell Beneath my leaden rain! I scorn your proffered treaty! The pale-face I defy! Revenge is stamped upon my spear, And blood my battle-cry!
Some strike for hope of booty, Some to defend their all— I battle for the joy I have To see the white man fall: I love, among the wounded, To hear his dying moan, And catch, while chanting at his side, The music of his groan.
Ye’ve trailed me through the forest, Ye’ve tracked me o’er the stream; And struggling through the everglade, Your bristling bayonets gleam: But I stand as should the warrior, With his rifle and his spear; The scalp of vengeance still is red, And warns ye, “Come not here!”
I loathe ye in my bosom, I scorn ye with mine eye; And I’ll taunt ye with my latest breath, And fight ye till I die! I ne’er will ask ye quarter, And I ne’er will be your slave; But I’ll swim the sea of slaughter, Till I sink beneath its wave.
THE DUTCHMAN’S SERENADE.
Vake up, my schveet! Vake up, my lofe! Der moon dot can’t been seen abofe. Vake oud your eyes, und dough it’s late, I’ll make you oud a serenate.
Der shtreet dot’s kinder dampy vet, Und dhere vas no goot blace to set; My fiddle’s getting oud of dune, So blease get vakey wery soon.
O my lofe! my lofely lofe! Am you avake ub dhere abofe, Feeling sad und nice to hear Schneider’s fiddle schrabin near?
Vell, anyvay, obe loose your ear, Und try to saw if you kin hear From dem bedclose vat you’m among, Der little song I’m going to sung:
O lady, vake! Get vake! Und hear der tale I’ll tell; Oh, you vot’s schleebin’ sound ub dhere, I like you pooty vell!
Your plack eyes dhem don’t shine Ven you’m ashleep—so vake! (Yes, hurry up, und voke up quick, For gootness cracious sake!)
My schveet imbatience, lofe, I hobe you vill oxcuse: I’m singing schveetly (dhere, py Jinks! Dhere goes a shtring proke loose!)
O putiful, schveet maid! Oh, vill she efer voke? Der moon is mooning—(Jimminy! dhere Anoder shtring vent proke!)
Oh, say, old schleeby head! (Now I vas getting mad— I’ll holler now, und I don’t care Uf I vake up her dad!)
I say, you schleeby, vake! Vake oud! Vake loose! Vake ub! Fire! Murder! Police! Vatch! Oh, cracious! do vake ub!
Dot girl she schleebed—dot rain it rained, Und I looked shtoopid like a fool, Vhen mit my fiddle I shneaked off So vet und shlobby like a mool!
SCENE FROM “INGOMAR”
CHARACTERS.
Ingomar. Leader of a band of Alemanni.
Parthenia. A Greek girl.
(Parthenia clasps her hands before her face, and stands sobbing in the foreground.)
Ingomar. (Who has been standing on a rock looking at the proceedings of his followers.) No violence! Ho! how he runs! and now He stops and cries again! Poor fearful fool! It must be strange to fear: now, by my troth, I should like to feel, for once, what ’tis to fear! But the girl—(Leaning forward.) Ha! do I see right? you weep. [To Parthenia. Is that the happy temper that you boast?
Par. Oh, I shall never see him more!
Ing. What! have we For a silly old man, got now a foolish And timid weeping girl? I have had enough Of tears.
Par. Enough, indeed, since you but mock them! I will not—no, I’ll weep no more.
[She quickly dries her eyes, and retires to the background.[1]
Ing. That’s good! come, that looks well; She is a brave girl! she rules herself, and if She keep her word, we have made a good exchange— “I’ll weep no more!” Aha! I like the girl. And if—Ho! whither goest thou?
[To Parthenia, who is going off with two goblets.
Par. Where should I go? to yonder brook, to cleanse the cups.
Ing. No! stay and talk with me.
Par. I have duties to perform. [Going.
Ing. Stay—I command you, slave!
Par. I am no slave! your hostage, but no slave. I go to cleanse the cups. [Exit l.
Ing. Ho! here’s a self-willed thing—here is a spirit! [Mimicking her. “I will not, I am no slave! I have duties to perform! Take me for hostage!” and she flung back her head As though she brought with her a ton of gold! “I’ll weep no more,”—Aha! an impudent thing. She pleases me! I love to be opposed; I love my horse when he rears, my dogs when they snarl, The mountain torrent, and the sea, when it flings Its foam up to the stars; such things as these Fill me with life and joy. Tame indolence Is living death! the battle of the strong Alone is life!
[During this speech Parthenia has returned with the cups and a bundle of field flowers. She seats herself on a piece of rock in front.
Ing. Ah! she is here again. (He approaches her, and leans over her on the rock.) What art thou making there?
Par. I? garlands.
Ing. Garlands? (Musing.) It seems to me as I before had seen her In a dream! How! Ah, my brother!—he who died A child—yes, that is it. My little Folko—She has his dark-brown hair, his sparkling eye: Even the voice seems known again to me; I’ll not to sleep—I’ll talk to her. [Returns to her. These you call garlands, And wherefore do you weave them?
Par. For these cups.
Ing. How?
Par. Is it not with you a custom? With us At home, we love to intertwine with flowers Our cups and goblets.
Ing. What use is such a plaything?
Par. Use? They are beautiful; that is their use. The sight of them makes glad the eye; their scent Refreshes, cheers. There! (Fastens the half-finished garland round a cup and presents it to him.) Is not that, now, beautiful?
Ing. Ay—by the bright sun! That dark-green mixed Up with the gay flowers! Thou must teach our women To weave such garlands.
Par. That is soon done: thy wife Herself shall soon weave wreaths as well as I.
Ing. (Laughing heartily.) My wife! my wife! a woman Dost thou say? I thank the gods, not I. This is my wife— [Pointing to his accoutrements. My spear, my shield, my sword; let him who will Waste cattle, slaves, or gold, to buy a woman; Not I—not I!
Par. To buy a woman?—how?
Ing. What is the matter? why dost look so strangely?
Par. How! did I hear aright? bargain for brides As you would slaves—buy them like cattle?
Ing. Well, I think a woman fit only for a slave. We follow our own customs, as you yours. How do you in your city there?
Par. Consult our hearts. Massilia’s freeborn daughters are not sold, But bound by choice with bands as light and sweet As these I hold. Love only buys us there.
Ing. Marry for love—what! do you love your husbands?
Par. Why marry else?
Ing. Marry for love; that’s strange! I cannot comprehend. I love my horse, My dogs, my brave companions—but no woman! What dost thou mean by love—what is it, girl?
Par. What is it? ’Tis of all things the most sweet— The heaven of life—or, so my mother says, I never felt it.
Ing. Never?
Par. No, indeed. [Looking at garland. Now look how beautiful! Here would I weave Red flowers if I had them.
Ing. Yonder there, In that thick wood they grow.
Par. How sayest thou? (Looking off.) Oh, what a lovely red! Go, pluck me some.
Ing. (Starting at the suggestion.) I go for thee? the master serve the slave! [Gazing on her with increasing interest. And yet, why not? I’ll go—the poor child’s tired.
Par. Dost thou hesitate?
Ing. No, thou shalt have the flowers As fresh and dewy as the bush affords. [He goes off, r. Par. (Holding out the wreath.) I never yet succeeded half so well. It will be charming! Charming? and for whom? Here among savages! no mother here Looks smiling on it—I am alone, forsaken! But no, I’ll weep no more! No, none shall say I fear.
Re-enter Ingomar, with a bunch of flowers, and slowly advancing towards Parthenia.
Ing. (Aside.) The little Folko, when in his play he wanted Flowers or fruit, would so cry “Bring them to me; Quick! I will have them—these I will have or none;” Till somehow he compelled me to obey him, And she, with the same spirit, the same fire—Yes, there is much of the bright child in her. Well, she shall be a little brother to me! There are the flowers. [He hands her the flowers.
Par. Thanks, thanks! Oh, thou hast broken them Too short off in the stem! [She throws some of them on the ground. Ing. Shall I go and get thee more?
Par. No: these will do.
Ing. Tell me now about your home—I will sit here, Near thee.
Par. Not there: thou art crushing all the flowers.
Ing. (Seating himself at her feet.) Well, well; I will sit here, then. And now tell me, What is your name?
Par. Parthenia.
Ing. Parthenia! A pretty name! and now, Parthenia, tell me How that which you call love grows in the soul; And what love is: ’tis strange, but in that word There’s something seems like yonder ocean—fathomless.
Par. How shall I say? Love comes, my mother says, Like flowers in the night—reach me those violets—It is a flame a single look will kindle, But not an ocean quench. Fostered by dreams, excited by each thought, Love is a star from heaven, that points the way And leads us to its home—a little spot In earth’s dry desert, where the soul may rest— A grain of gold in the dull sand of life— A foretaste of Elysium; but when Weary of this world’s woes, the immortal gods Flew to the skies, with all their richest gifts, Love staid behind, self-exiled for man’s sake!
Ing. I never yet heard aught so beautiful! But still I comprehend it not.
Par. Nor I. For I have never felt it; yet I know A song my mother sang, an ancient song, That plainly speaks of love, at least to me. How goes it? Stay— [Slowly, as trying to recollect.
“What love is, if thou wouldst be taught, Thy heart must teach alone,— Two souls with but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one.
And whence comes love? like morning’s light, It comes without thy call; And how dies love?—A spirit bright, Love never dies at all!”
And when—and when— [Hesitating as if unable to continue.
Ing. Go on.
Par. I know no more.
Ing. (Impatiently.) Try—try!
Par. I cannot now; but at some other time I may remember.
Ing. (Somewhat authoritatively.) Now, go on, I say.
Par. (Springing up in alarm.) Not now, I want more roses for my wreath! Yonder they grow, I will fetch them for myself. Take care of all my flowers and the wreath! [Throws the flowers into Ingomar’s lap and runs off.
Ing. (After a pause, without changing his position, speaking to himself in deep abstraction.)
“Two souls with but a single thought, Two hearts that beat as one.”
Maria Lovell’s translation from the German.
[1] Parthenia’s father having been taken prisoner by Ingomar’s followers, Parthenia voluntarily offers herself as hostage, while her father returns to Massilia to raise his ransom. Her offer has been accepted, and her father released.
CICELY AND THE BEARS.
I. “Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes! ding-dong!” The bellman’s voice is loud and strong; So is his bell: “Oh, yes! ding-dong!” He wears a coat with golden lace; See how the people of the place Come running to hear what the bellman says! “Oh, yes! Sir Nicholas Hildebrand Has just returned from the Holy Land, And freely offers his heart and hand— Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes! ding-dong!” All the women hurry along, Maids and widows, a clattering throng. “Oh, sir, you are hard to understand! To whom does he offer his heart and hand? Explain your meaning, we do command!” “Oh, yes! ding-dong! you shall understand! Oh, yes! Sir Nicholas Hildebrand Invites the ladies of this land To feast with him, in his castle strong, This very day at three. Ding-dong! Oh, yes! Oh, yes! Oh, yes! ding-dong!” Then all the women went off to dress, Mary, Margaret, Bridget, Bess, Patty, and more than I can guess. They powdered their hair with golden dust, And bought new ribbons—they said they must— But none of them painted, we will trust. Long before the time arrives, All the women that could be wives Are dressed within an inch of their lives. Meanwhile Sir Nicholas Hildebrand Had brought with him from the Holy Land A couple of bears—Oh, that was grand! He tamed the bears, and they loved him true: Whatever he told them they would do— Hark! ’tis the town-clock striking two!
II. Among the maidens of low degree The poorest of all was Cicely— A shabbier girl could hardly be. “Oh, I should like to see the feast, But my frock is old, my shoes are pieced, My hair is rough!”—(It never was greased.) The clock struck three! She durst not go! But she heard the band, and, to see the show, Crept after the people that went in a row. When Cicely came to the castle gate, The porter exclaimed, “Miss Shaggypate, The hall is full, and you come too late!” Just then the music made a din, Flute, and cymbal, and culverin, And Cicely, with a squeeze, got in. Oh, what a sight! Full fifty score Of dames that Cicely knew, and more, Filling the hall from dais to door! The dresses were like a garden bed, Green and gold, and blue and red— Poor Cicely thought of her tossy head! She heard the singing—she heard the clatter— Clang of flagon and clink of platter— But, oh, the feast was no such matter! For she saw Sir Nicholas himself, Raised on a dais just like a shelf, And fell in love with him—shabby elf! Her heart beat quick; aside she stepped: Under the tapestry she crept, Tousling her tossy hair, and wept! Her cheeks were wet, her eyes were red. “Who makes that noise?” the ladies said; “Turn out that girl with the shaggy head!”
III. Just then there was heard a double roar, That shook the place, both wall and floor: Everybody looked to the door. It was a roar, it was a growl; The ladies set up a little howl, And flapped and clucked like frightened fowl. Sir Hildebrand for silence begs— In walked the bears on their hinder legs, Wise as owls, and merry as grigs! The dark girls tore their hair of sable; The fair girls hid underneath the table; Some fainted; to move they were not able. But most of them could scream and screech— Sir Nicholas Hildebrand made a speech— “Order, ladies, I do beseech!” The bears looked hard at Cicely, Because her hair hung wild and free— “Related to us, miss, you must be!” Then Cicely, filling two plates of gold As full of cherries as they could hold, Walked up to the bears, and spoke out bold: “Welcome to you! and to you Mr. Bear! Will you take a chair? will you take a chair? This is an honor, we do declare!” Sir Hildebrand strode up to see, Saying, “Who may this maiden be? Ladies, this is the wife for me!” Almost before they could understand, He took up Cicely by the hand, And danced with her a saraband. Her hair was rough as a parlor broom; It swung, it swirled all round the room— Those ladies were vexed, we may presume. Sir Nicholas kissed her on the face, And set her beside him on the dais, And made her the lady of the place. The nuptials soon they did prepare, With a silver comb for Cicely’s hair: There were bands of music everywhere. And in that beautiful bridal show Both the bears were seen to go Upon their hind legs to and fro! Now every year on the wedding-day The boys and girls come out to play, And scramble for cherries as they may. With a cheer for this and the other bear, And a cheer for Sir Nicholas, free and fair, And a cheer for Cis, of the tossy hair— With one cheer more (if you will wait) For every girl with a curly pate, Who keeps her hair in a proper state. Sing bear’s grease! curling-irons to sell! Sing combs and brushes! sing tortoise-shell! Oh, yes! ding-dong! the crier, the bell! Isn’t this a pretty tale to tell? Lilliput Levee.
A HOWL IN ROME.
It had been a day of triumph in Capua. Lentulus, returning with victorious eagles, had amused the populace with the sports of the amphitheatre to an extent hitherto unknown, even in that luxurious city. A large number of people from the rural districts had taken advantage of half-rates on the railroad, and had been in town watching the conflict in the arena, listening to the infirm, decrepit ring-joke, and viewing the bogus sacred elephant.
The shouts of revelry had died away. The last loiterer had retired from the free-lunch counter, and the lights in the palace of the victor were extinguished. The restless hyena in the Roman menagerie had sunk to rest, and the Numidian lion at the stock-yards had taken out his false teeth for the night. The moon, piercing the tissue of fleecy clouds, tipped the dark waters of the Tiber with a wavy, tremulous light. The dark-browed Roman soldier moved on his homeward way, the sidewalk flipping up occasionally, and hitting him in the small of the back. No sound was heard, save the low sob of some retiring wave as it told its story to the smooth pebbles on the beach, or the unrelenting boot-jack as it struck the high board fence in the back yard, just missing the Roman tomcat in its mad flight; and then all was still as the breast when the spirit has departed. Anon the half-stifled Roman snore would steal in upon its deathly stillness, and then die away like a hot biscuit in the hands of the hired man.
In the green room of the amphitheatre a little band of gladiators were assembled. The foam of conflict yet lingered on their lips, the scowl of battle yet hung upon their brows, and the large knobs on their profiles indicated that it had been a busy day with them in the arena.
There was an embarrassing silence of about five minutes, when Spartacus, gently laying his chew of tobacco on the banister, stepped forth and addressed them:—
“Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen,—Ye call me chief, and ye do well to call him chief who for twelve long years has met in the arena every shape of man or beast that the broad empire of Rome could furnish, and yet has never squealed. I do not say this egotistically, but simply to show that I am the star thumper of the entire outfit.
“If there be one among you who can say that ever in public fight, or private brawl, my actions did belie my words, let him stand forth and say it, and I will spread him around over the arena till the coroner will have to soak him out of the ground with benzine. If there be three in all your company dare face me on the bloody sands, let them come, and I will construct upon their physiognomy such cupolas and cornices and dormer-windows and Corinthian capitals and entablatures, that their own masters would pass them by in the broad light of high noon unrecognized.
“And yet I was not always thus,—a hired butcher,—the savage chief of still more savage men. My ancestors came from Sparta, Wisconsin, and settled among the vine-clad hills and citron-groves of Syracuse. My early life ran as quiet as the clear brook by which I sported. Aside from the gentle patter of my angel mother’s slipper on the bustle of my overalls, every thing moved along with the still and rhythmic flow of goose-grease. My boyhood was one long, happy summer day. We stole the Roman muskmelon, and put split sticks on the tail of the Roman dog, and life was a picnic and a hallelujah.
“When, at noon, I led the sheep beneath the shade, and played ‘Little Sallie Waters’ on my shepherd’s flute, there was another Spartan youth, the son of a neighbor, to join me in the pastime; we led our flocks to the same pasture, and together picked the large red ants out of our doughnuts.
“One evening, after the sheep had been driven into the corral, and we were all seated beneath the ‘Bammygilead’-tree that shaded our cottage, my grandsire, an old man, was telling of Marathon and Leuctra, and Dr. Mary Walker, and other great men; and how a little band of Spartans at Milwaukee had stood off the police, and how they fled away into the mountains, and there successfully held an annual pass over the C. M. & St. P. Railway. Held it for a year! I did not know then what war was; but my cheeks burned, I knew not why, and I thought what a glorious thing it would be to leave the reservation, and go upon the war-path. But my mother kissed my throbbing temples, and bade me go and soak my head, and think no more of those old tales and savage wars. That very night the Romans landed on our coasts. They pillaged the whole country, burned the agency buildings, demolished the ranche, rode off the stock, tore down the smoke-house, and ran their war horses over the cucumber-vines.
“To-day I killed a man in the arena; and when I broke his helmet clasps, and looked upon him, behold! he was my friend. The same sweet smile was on his face that I had known when in adventurous boyhood we bathed in the glassy lake by our Spartan home, and he had tied my shirt into 1,752 dangerous and difficult knots. He knew me, smiled faintly, told me always to tell the truth, and to travel by the Milwaukee & St. Paul road, and then ascended the golden stair. I begged of the Praetor that I might be allowed to bear away the body, and have it packed in ice, and shipped to his relatives in Sparta, Wisconsin; but he couldn’t see it. As upon my bended knees, amid the dust and blood of the arena, I begged this poor boon, and the Praetor answered, ‘Let the carrion rot. There are no noblemen but Romans and Ohio men. Let the show go on. Bring forth the bobtail lion from Abbyssinia.’ And the assembled maids and matrons and the rabble shouted in derision, and told me to ‘brace up;’ and they threw peanut-shells at me, and told me to ‘cheese it,’ with other Roman flings which I do not now recall.
“And so must you, fellow gladiators, and so must I, die like dogs. To-morrow we are billed to appear at the Coliseum at Rome; and reserved seats are even now being sold for our moral and instructive performance, while I am speaking to you.
“Ye stand here like giants as ye are; but to-morrow some Roman dude will pat your red brawn, and bet his shekels upon your blood.
“O Rome! Rome! Thou hast been a tender nurse to me. Thou hast given to that gentle, timid, shepherd lad, who never knew a harsher tone than a flute note, muscles of iron, and a heart of steel. Thou hast taught him to drive his sword through plaited mail and links of rugged brass, and warm it in the stomach of his foe; to gaze into the glaring eyeballs of a fierce Numidian lion, even as the smooth-cheeked senator looks into the laughing eyes of the chambermaid. And he shall pay thee back till the rushing Tiber is red as frothing wine, and in its deepest ooze thy life-blood lies curdled. Ye doubtless hear the gentle murmur of my bazoo.
“Hark! Hear ye yon lion roaring in his den? ’Tis three days since he tasted flesh, but to-morrow he will have gladiator on toast, and don’t you forget it; and he will fling your vertebræ around his cage, and wipe his nose on your clustering hair.
“If ye are brutes, then stand here like fat oxen waiting the butcher’s knife. If ye are men, arise and follow me! Strike down the warden and the turnkey, slide our baggage out the third story window of the amphitheatre, overpower the public, and cut for the tall timber!
“O comrades! Warriors! Gladiators! If we be men, let us die like men, beneath the blue sky, and by the still waters, and be buried according to Hoyle, instead of having our shin-bones polished off by Numidian lions, amid the groans and hisses of the populace here in Rome, New York. Let us break loose, chaw the ear of the night watchman, buy our tickets via the Chicago, Milwaukee, & St. Paul Railway, and go to farming in Dakota! Then if the fierce Roman don’t like our style, he knows our post-office address.”
Bill Nye.
JAMIE DOUGLAS.
It was in the days when Claverhouse Was scouring moor and glen, To change, with fire and bloody sword, The faith of Scottish men.
They had made a covenant with the Lord Firm in their faith to bide, Nor break to him their plighted word, Whatever might betide.
The sun was well-nigh setting, When o’er the heather wild, And up the narrow mountain path, Alone there walked a child.
He was a bonny, blithesome lad, Sturdy and strong of limb: A father’s pride, a mother’s love, Were fast bound up in him.
His bright blue eyes glanced fearless round, His step was firm and light: What was it underneath his plaid His little hands grasped tight?
It was bannocks which, that very morn, His mother made with care, From out her scanty store of meal, And now, with many a prayer,
Had sent by Jamie, her ane boy, A trusty lad and brave, To good old Pastor Tammus Roy, Now hid in yonder cave,
And for whom the bloody Claverhouse Had hunted long in vain, And swore they would not leave that glen Till old Tam Roy was slain.
So Jamie Douglas went his way With heart that knew no fear: He turned the great curve in the rock, Nor dreamed that death was near.
And there were bloody Claverhouse men Who laughed aloud with glee, When, trembling now within their power, The frightened child they see.
He turns to flee, but all in vain: They drag him back apace To where their cruel leader stands, And set them face to face.
The cakes concealed beneath his plaid Soon tell the story plain— “It is old Tam Roy the cakes are for!” Exclaimed the angry man.
“Now guide me to his hiding-place, And I will let you go.” But Jamie shook his yellow curls, And stoutly answered, “No!”
“I’ll drop you down the mountain side, And there upon the stones The old gaunt wolf and carrion crow Shall battle for your bones.”
And in his brawny, strong right hand He lifted up the child, And held him where the clefted rocks Formed a chasm deep and wild.
So deep it was, the trees below Like stunted bushes seemed. Poor Jamie looked in frightened maze: It seemed some horrid dream.
He looked at the blue sky above, Then at the men near by: Had they no little boys at home, That they could let him die?
But no one spoke, and no one stirred, Or lifted hand to save From such a fearful, frightful death, The little lad so brave.
“It is woful deep!” he shuddering cried; “But, oh! I canna tell! So drop me down, then, if you will— It is nae so deep as hell!”
A childish scream, a faint, dull sound— O Jamie Douglas true! Long, long within that lonely cave Shall Tam Roy wait for you.
Long for your welcome coming Waits the mother on the moor, And watches and calls, “Come, Jamie, lad,” Through the half-open door.
No more adown the rocky path You come with fearless tread, Or, on moor or mountain, take The good man’s daily bread.
But up in heaven the shining ones A wond’rous story tell, Of a child snatched up from a rocky gulf That is nae so deep as hell.
And there before the great white throne, Forever blessed and glad, His mother dear and old Tam Roy Shall meet their bonny lad.
STORY OF A BEDSTEAD.
It was night.
The boarding-house was wrapt in tenebrous gloom, faintly tinted with an odor of kerosene.
Suddenly there arose on the air a yell, followed by wild objurgations and furious anathemas.
Then there was a clanking and rattling, as of an over-turned picket-fence, and another yell with more anathemas. The fatted boarders listened, and, ghostly clad, tip-toed along to Buffum’s room,—he of Buffum & Bird, second-hand furniture dealers. As they stood there, there was a whiz, a grinding, a rattling and a bang, and more yells. They consulted, and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
“Open it.”
“I can’t.”
Convinced that Buffum was in his last agony, they knocked in the door with a bedpost.
The sight was ghastly. Clasped between two sturdy, though slender, frames of walnut, Buffum, pale as a ghost, was six feet up in the air. He couldn’t move. He was caught like a bear in a log-trap.
“What on earth is it?” they said.
“Bedstead—combination. New patent I was tellin’ you about,” gasped Buffum.
His story was simple, though tearful. He had brought it home that day; and, after using it for a writing-desk, had opened it out and made his bed. He was going peacefully to dream-land, when he rolled over and accidentally touched a spring. The faithful invention immediately became a double crib, and turned Buffum into a squalling wafer. Then he struggled, and was reaching around for the spring, when the patent bedstead thought it would show off some more, and straightened out, and shot up in the air, and was a clothes-horse. Buffum said he didn’t like to be clothes, and he would give the thing to anybody that would get him out. They said they would try. They didn’t want any such fire-extinguisher as that for their trouble, but they would try. They inspected it cautiously. They walked all around it. Then the commission-merchant laid his little finger on the top end of it. The thing snorted and reared as if it had been shot, slapped over with a bang, and became an extension-table for ten people. When they recovered from the panic, they came back. They found the commission-merchant in the corner trying to get breath enough to swear, while he rubbed his shins. Buffum had disappeared, but they knew he had not gone far. The invention appeared to have taken a fancy to him, and incorporated him into the firm, so to speak. He was down underneath, straddling one of the legs, with his head jammed into the mattress. Nobody dared to touch it. The landlady got a club and reached for its vital parts, but could not find them. She hammered her breath away; and when she got through, and dropped the club in despair, the thing spread out its arms with a gasp and a rattle, turned over twice, and slapped itself into a bed again, with Buffum peacefully among the sheets. He held his breath for a minute; and then, watching his opportunity, made a flying-leap to the floor, just in time to save himself from being a folding-screen.
A man with a black eye and cut lip told the “Wasp” editor about it yesterday. He said he owned the patent, that Buffum had been explaining to him how it worked.
From the San Francisco “Wasp.”
“MAGDALENA.”
Sat we ’neath the dark veranda, Years and years ago; And I softly pressed a hand a Deal more white than snow; And I cast aside my reina, As I gazed upon her face, And I read her “Magdalena,” While she smoothed her Spanish lace— Read her Waller’s “Magdalena”— She had Magdalena’s grace, Read her of the Spanish duel, Of the brother, courtly, cruel, Who between the British wooer And the Seville lady came: How her lover promptly slew her Brother, and then fled in shame— How he dreamed, in long years after, Of the river’s rippling laughter— Of the love he used to know, In the myrtle-curtained villa, Near the city of Sevilla, Years and years ago.
Ah, how warmly was I reading, As I gazed upon her face! And my voice took tones of pleading, For I sought to win her grace. Surely, thought I, in her veins Runs some drop of foreign strains— There is something half Castilian In that lip that shames vermilion; In that mass of raven tresses, Tossing like a falcon’s jesses; In that eye with trailing lashes— And its witching upward flashes— Such, indeed, I know, Shone where Guadalquivir plashes Years and years ago.
Looking in her face I read it— How the metre trips!— And the god of lovers On my happy lips— All those words of mystic sweetness Spoke I with an airy neatness, As I never had before— As I cannot speak them more— Reja, plaza and mantilla. “No palabras” and Sevilla, Caballero and sombrero, And duenna and Duero, Spada, senor, sabe Dios— Smooth as pipe of Melibœus— Ah, how very well I read it, Looking in her lovely eyes! When ’twas o’er, I looked for credit, As she softly moved to rise.
Doting dream, ah, dream fallacious— Years and years ago! For she only said, “My gracious— What a lot of French you know!” Puck.
RAKING THE MEADOW-LOT.
A HAY-TIME IDYL.
“We’ll mow,” quoth old farmer Jacobs, “the new corner medder to-day— Nell, you come an’ help with the rakin’—its right ketchin’ weather for hay; Neighbor Smith’s Jim, he’s bin to the city, an’ a new-fangled patent he’s bought; An’ he’s bound to come over this mornin’, an’ streak through that air medder-lot.
He sez—an’ I tell him the kaounty ain’t able to beat him for cheek— The thing’ll do more execution than me an’ my boys in a week; But he offered so kinder perlite-like (I’ve no faith in the gimcrack—not I), I couldn’t do other than ’low him to fetch the queer critter an’ try.”
Pretty Nell, skimming cream in the dairy, peeped out through the vine-shaded pane, As Jim, with “Old Roan” and “Black Billy” went clattering down through the lane; And was it the “new-fangled mower” her shy blue eyes followed? I ween From the blushes that deepened and flitted, it could not have been the machine.
Prone under the lengthening shadows the feathery meadow-grass lay; The daises uncrowned in their glory, sun-smitten, slow fading away; The cardinal flower in the ditches, rose proudly, right royally dressed, And restlessly hither and hither moaned the bobolinks spoiled of their nest.
Fair Nellie outrivalled the daises; and so, it was plain, thought young Jim, Or else that such dainty hay-making required much assistance from him; And if ever the lost joy of Eden came back to this earth long forgot, It came to these blissful young lovers, a raking the new meadow-lot.
“What’s this that you ax for—my Nellie?—Wal, if I ain’t beat—can it be It wasn’t my hay but my darter made you mighty obleegin’ to me? You don’t desarve her, you rascal, but”—the shrewd gray eyes twinkled—“I guess— Considerin’ the help you’ll be hayin’—I s’pose—shall hev to say—yes.” Ruth Revere.
AFTER “TAPS.”
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! As I lay with my blanket on, By the dim firelight, in the moonlit night, When the skirmishing fight was done.
The measured beat of the sentry’s feet, With the jingling scabbard’s ring! Tramp! tramp! in my meadow-camp By the Shenandoah’s spring!
The moonlight seems to shed cold beams On a row of pale grave-stones: Give the bugle breath, and that image of Death Will fly from the reveille’s tones.
By each tented roof, a charger’s hoof Makes the frosty hillside ring: Give the bugle breath, and a spirit of Death To each horse’s girth will spring.
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! The sentry before my tent, Guards in gloom his chief, for whom Its shelter to-night is lent.
I am not there. On the hillside bare I think of the ghost within; Of the brave who died at my sword-hand side, To-day, ’mid the horrible din
Of shot and shell, and the infantry yell, As we charged with the sabre drawn. To my heart I said, “Who shall be the dead In my tent at another dawn?”
I thought of a blossoming almond-tree, The stateliest tree that I know; Of a golden bowl; of a parted soul; And a lamp that is burning low.
Oh, thoughts that kill! I thought of the hill In the far-off Jura chain; Of the two, the three, o’er the wide salt sea, Whose hearts would break with pain;
Of my pride and joy—my eldest boy; Of my darling, the second—in years; Of Willie, whose face with its pure, mild grace, Melts memory into tears;
Of their mother, my bride, by the Alpine lake’s side, And the angels asleep in her arms; Love, Beauty, and Truth, which she brought to my youth, In that sweet April day of her charms.
“Halt! Who comes there?” The cold midnight air, And the challenging word, chills me through: The ghost of a fear whispers, close to my ear, “Is peril, love, coming to you?”
The hoarse answer, “Relief,” makes the shade of a grief Die away, with the step on the sod. A kiss melts in air, while a tear and a prayer Confide my beloved to God.
Tramp! tramp! tramp! tramp! With a solemn pendulum-swing! Though I slumber all night, the fire burns bright, And my sentinels’ scabbards ring.
“Boot and saddle!” is sounding. Our pulses are bounding. “To horse!” and I touch with my heel Black Gray in the flanks, and ride down the ranks, With my heart, like my sabre, of steel. Horace Binney Sargent.
INDIAN NAMES.
Ye say they all have passed away— That noble race and brave; That their light canoes have vanished From off the crested wave; That, ’mid the forests where they roamed, There rings no hunter’s shout; But their name is on your waters— Ye may not wash it out.
’Tis where Ontario’s billow, Like ocean’s surge is curled; Where strong Niagara’s thunders wake The echo of the world; Where red Missouri bringeth Rich tribute from the west, And Rappahannock sweetly sleeps On green Virginia’s breast.
Ye say their cone-like cabins, That clustered o’er the vale, Have fled away like withered leaves Before the Autumn’s gale; But their memory liveth on your hills. Their baptism on your shore: Your everlasting rivers speak Their dialect of yore.
Old Massachusetts wears it Upon her lordly crown, And broad Ohio bears it Amid his young renown; Connecticut hath wreathed it Where her quiet foliage waves, And bold Kentucky breathes it hoarse Through all her ancient caves.
Wachusett hides its lingering voice Within his rocky heart, And Alleghany graves its tone Throughout his lofty chart; Monadnock on his forehead hoar Doth seal the sacred trust; Your mountains build their monument, Though ye destroy their dust.
Ye call these red-browed brethren The insects of an hour: Crushed like the noteless worm amid The regions of their power, Ye drive them from their fathers’ lands, Ye break of faith the seal; But can ye from the Court of Heaven Exclude their last appeal?
Ye see their unresisting tribes, With toilsome steps and slow, On through the trackless desert pass, A caravan of woe: Think ye the Eternal Ear is deaf? His sleepless vision dim? Think ye the soul’s blood may not cry From that far land to him? L. H. Sigourney.
HE NEVER TOLD A LIE.
I saw him standing in the crowd— A comely youth and fair! There was a brightness in his eye, A glory in his hair! I saw his comrades gaze on him— His comrades standing by. I heard them whisper each to each, “He never told a lie!”
I looked in wonder on that boy, As he stood there so young: To think that never an untruth Was uttered by his tongue. I thought of all the boys I’d known,— Myself among the fry,— And knew of none that one could say, “He never told a lie!”
I gazed upon that youth with awe That did enchain me long: I had not seen a boy before So perfect and so strong. And with something of regret I wished that he was I, So they might look at me and say, “He never told a lie!”
I thought of questions very hard For boys to answer right: “How did you tear those pantaloons?” “My son! what caused the fight?” “Who left the gate ajar last night?” “Who bit the pumpkin-pie?” What boy could answer all of these, And never tell a lie?
I proudly took him by the hand— My words with praise were rife; I blessed that boy who never told A falsehood in his life; I told him I was proud of him— A fellow standing by, Informed me that that boy was dumb Who never told a lie!
A LESSON TO LOVERS.
She, with a milk-pail on her arm, Turns aside with her young cheeks glowing, And sees down the lane, the slow, dull tread Of the drove of cows that are homeward going. “Bessie,” he said: at the sound she turned, Her blue eyes full of childish wonder: “My mother is feeble and lame and old— I need a wife at my farmhouse yonder.
“My heart is lonely, my home is drear: I need your presence ever near me. Will you be my guardian angel, dear, Queen of my household, to guide and cheer me?”
“It has a pleasant sound,” she said,— “A household queen, a guiding spirit, To warm your heart, and cheer your home, And keep the sunshine ever near it: But I am only a simple child, So my mother says in her daily chiding; And what must a guardian angel do When she first begins her work of guiding?”
“Well, first, dear Bessie, a smiling face Is dearer far than the rarest beauty; And my mother, fretful, lame, and old, Will require a daughter’s loving duty. You will see to her flannels, drops, and tea, And talk with her of lungs and liver: Give her your cheerful service, dear— The Lord he loveth a cheerful giver.
“You will see that my breakfast is piping hot, And rub the clothes to a snowy whiteness; Make golden butter and snowy rolls, And polish things to a shining brightness; Will darn my stockings, and mend my coats, And see that the buttons are sewed on tightly: You will keep things cheerful and neat and sweet, That home’s altar-fires may still burn brightly.
“You will read me at evening the daily news, The tedious winter nights beguiling, And never forget that the sweetest face Is a cheerful face that’s always smiling. In short, you’ll arrange in a general way For a sort of sublunary heaven; For home, dear Bessie, say what we may, Is the highest sphere to a woman given.”
The lark sang out to the bending sky, The bobolink piped in the nodding rushes, And out of the tossing clover-blooms Came the sweet, clear song of the meadow-thrushes. And Bessie, listening, paused a while, Then said, with a sly glance at her neighbor, “But John—do you mean—that is to say, What shall I get for all this labor?
“To be nurse, companion, and servant girl, To make home’s altar-fires burn brightly; To wash and iron and scrub and cook, And always be cheerful, neat, and sprightly; To give up liberty, home, and friends, Nay, even the name of a mother’s giving,— To do all this for one’s board and clothes, Why, the life of an angel isn’t worth living!”
And Bessie gayly went her way Down through the fields of scented clover, But never again since that summer day Has she won a glance from her rustic lover. The lark sings out to the bending sky, The clouds sail on as white as ever; The clovers toss in the summer wind, But Bessie has lost that chance forever.
GRANT’S STRATEGY.
Who had thought, until Grant said it, that the crisis comes in battle when both armies are nearly exhausted, and that usually the one wins which attacks first? When did he ever fail to attack first? Who had thought, until he suggested it, that the trouble with the Potomac army, the pride of the nation, was, that it had not fought its battles through? Who then living has forgotten the utter downfall of hope, the absolute despair throughout the North, as the moan from the Wilderness came rolling up on the southern breeze? Is the task hopeless? Is this last mighty effort only more disastrous than that of McClellan, of Pope, of Burnside, of Hooker? No! listen to the assurance, “I’ll fight it out on this line if it takes all summer.” Every loyal heart in the land is inspired. That telegram to the President was the death-knell of rebellion.
But the test-hour of Grant had not yet come. Meade was glorious, Sherman magnificent; but Sigel is routed, Butler has not succeeded, Banks utterly failed. Shall Grant unloose his grip? Never! Was it, then, less than the inspiration of genius? Sheridan, take the Sixth Corps, and clean out the valley so a “crow must take his rations when he flies over it.” Meade, absorb the army of the James, and never let Lee escape. Sherman, march to the sea as a cyclone of devastation. Thomas, play with Hood until you draw him to destruction. Stoneman, take your bold riders across the mountains, into Virginia and the Carolinas, right across every line of supply to the enemy. Wilson, push your twelve thousand mounted men into the heart of Alabama. Canby, capture Mobile.
Such was the new combination, audacious in strategy beyond precedent; but, if faulty in any respect, military critics have not discovered it. Its perfection, and the result of the execution, stamp it forever with the insignia of genius. Masterly tactics, brilliant manœuvring, bold fighting, though essential to success after the combinations have produced the strategical situation, yet rarely cure material defect in the latter. If cured at all, it is generally by blunders of the enemy. Lee and Johnston, as defensive generals, were not blunderers. I pity the man who, in the face of the record, attacks General Grant as a master of grand strategy. I need not speak of his tactics. I believe mankind are agreed, that the history of war discloses no display of tactical skill and vigor superior to Grant’s about Vicksburg, and from the 3d to the 9th of April, 1865, being directed to prevent General Lee’s attempted escape from Petersburg and junction with Johnston in North Carolina. The annals of other wars seem tame when read by the side of the story of that week’s work. It resulted in the despatch to Secretary Stanton, so simple and modest in language, yet the most momentous of all history: “General Lee surrendered the army of Northern Virginia this afternoon on terms proposed by myself.” The work was done, and how completely done,—done precisely as planned; not an element, not a vestige, of luck in it. Every army was at the precise place designed, with the exact work accomplished that was marked out for it. Method, plan, design, exclude the idea of luck. Let us in humble reverence say, as the truth was, the God of nations blessed General Grant in his awful undertaking.
Judge Veazey.
A “LOVE” GAME.
Shall we take a stroll together, You and I, And discuss the charming weather, This July, Or the picnics and the dances, And those sweet but short romances, Which, like other idle fancies, Pass and die?
Yes, ’tis true that things have happened Since we met,— Since I saw you first with cap and Gay rosette, Standing like some well-drilled soldier, Only calmer and—well—bolder, With a racket on your shoulder, At the net;
And your face lit up with laughter Through it all, Little feet went tripping after Every ball, While the look of bright reliance Which bespoke a pert defiance Of all manly wiles and science, I recall.
’Twas a glance that struck dire terror To my heart, And proved source of many an error In my art; Yet in truth I felt not humbled, Though my partner growled and grumbled, As I slid and slipped and stumbled Through my part.
You still remember, though so trifling. What I said As we left the lawn, too stifling, For the shade; And as, moved by glance magnetic Of your eyes, I waxed prophetic, While you smiled back sympathetic, Calm and staid?
Is it wise, then, to remember Golden hours,— Recall June in December Such as ours? All the hopes that have miscarried— What! too long, you say, you’ve tarried, And your husband—Then you’re married! Gracious powers! T. Malcolm Watson
AN OLD MAN’S PRAYER.
In the loftiest room, of princely state, Of a modern palace grand and great, Whose marble front is a symbol true Of the inner splendors hid from view, On an autumn night, when wild without The bold winds held their revel rout, Rudely assailing the passing throng, Through churchyards creeping with mournful song, A group was gathered around a board Heaped with all that wealth could afford, Or taste could suggest: dishes costly and rare, Fruits of all climes and all seasons, were there. The pendent lights in brilliance danced On the gleaming plate their rays enhanced; The massive mirrors thrice displayed The stately banquet there arrayed. Furniture carved by an artist hand, Carpets which only great wealth could command, Curtains of damask, of lace, and of gold, Spoke of the splendors wealth could unfold, And filled with a joy and a pleasure rare The youthful hearts that were gathered there. Slender each form, and fair each face, Of the twelve gay lads which that table grace, As with genial talk and pleasant jest They banter each other, and cheer their guest. For one guest is there, as youthful as they, With a heart as light, and a voice as gay, Who laughs at their jests with ready glee, And whose quick returns speak a spirit free,— An honored guest; for, on the morrow, They must part with him in pain and sorrow. The glittering emblems his shoulders bear Bid him for strife and for peril prepare; Bid him go forth at his Country’s call, With her banner to triumph, or on it to fall. A moment’s pause, as with ready hand The waiter hurries, at command, To clear the table, and, instead Of the rich, choice viands thickly spread, Ranges dark bottles and cruses, which show Marks of long years in damp vaults below. The richest juices age can display Are quickly spread in tempting array. Wines of Bordeaux and Seville are there, With liquors and cordials sparkling and rare; And bottles are opened, and glasses are filled. When all in a moment the tumult is stilled, As he who presides with dignified grace High raises his goblet, and stands in his place:— “I give you, friends, no warrior’s name Your hearts to thrill, your blood to flame; No toast to beauty shall my lips repeat, Where we to-night in sacred friendship meet To part with one, who, in our boyhood’s days, Earnest and true, won all our love and praise; Who, on the morrow, plays the hero’s part, And seeks the battle with a loyal heart. His health I give with an earnest prayer, That, while on his mission of peril and care, Success may be his, and, by deeds renowned, He may meet us again with laurels crowned.” All glasses are raised, when a gentle hand Is heard at the door—all silent stand As it slowly opens, and into the light An old man steps, his features bright: The long white hairs o’er his shoulders stream, Like silver threads in the warm rays beam. Wrinkled his brow, and pale his face, Wasted his form, and tottering his pace, Shrunken his cheek; but the eye above Tells of gentleness, kindliness, love. And silent stand all as he slowly seeks A place near the table, and gently speaks:—
“Young men, but a moment I check your mirth, And bring you back to the common earth. Unbidden I come with an old man’s prayer: May it seek your hearts, and gain entrance there! Look on my face, seamed, not with crime, But with marks of age before their time: These long white hairs should not have shown Till ten more years had by me flown. Age is upon me; not age by years, But age by sorrow and care and tears; Not age that cheers as it draweth near Yon heaven which seemeth more bright and clear, But age which causes the heart to lag In its onward course, and the spirit to flag; That prays for death as but a release From earthly care, and finds no peace In that sweet belief that at last I hail,— ‘There is rest for the weary beyond the vale.’ For to me has come a spirit of light, Bringing the morning, and chasing the night; Causing my heart with joy to swell To my Maker, ‘who doeth all things well.’ You shall hear my story: ’twill not be long, And may guard you all from sin and from wrong. I had wealth and plenty in goodly lands, In houses and cattle; and from my hands Many were fed; and many were they Who partook of my charity day by day. My house was open to stranger and friend; And my gold did I lavishly, freely spend. But one bitter curse did my wealth uprear To poison my life,—the tempter here, The sparkling demon, which now I see From all your glasses glaring on me,— A monster who steals on its prey so slow, That it has your life before you know Or dream of its power: this was the curse That sat at my fireside, robbed my purse, Poisoned my life, and left me to be A drifting log on the world’s wide sea, Ruined and bankrupt, lost and bereft; No kindred, no fortune, no treasure, left. Treasure!—yes; for I had three sons, The hope of my life,—three noble ones. You shall hear their fate, and then I’ll away, Nor longer your hour of pleasure delay.
“One sought as a merchant hopeful to clear Our tarnished name, to again uprear Our shattered house; but, sad to say, The curse of the wine-cup was in his way. He seized on it madly, drank deep and fast, And sank to the drunkard’s grave at last. I stood by his side as with frenzy wild He cursed himself and his wife and child; He cursed me too, as the one who had led His feet in the path that drunkards tread; And then—it was worse than all beside— He cursed his Maker; and then—he died!
“Another, with spirit that loved to brave, Sought a bold, free life on the ocean-wave. He left my side full of life and health, In a good stanch ship, in search of wealth. A twelvemonth passed, and day by day I scanned for his sail the distant bay. At last I saw it, and eagerly flew To welcome my boy so manly and true. But, alas! he was gone: no son to greet My waiting heart came with eager feet. But they told me there,—one stormy night, When the heavens were filled with angry light, The waves rolled high, and the winds beat wild, That out on a frail yard went my child; He had drunk deep, and ’twas fearful to sweep On that slender spar o’er the seething deep; That one heavy sea tossed the ship like a toy, And hurled from his hold my darling boy. Then I sank me down in agony wild, And glared on the waves that rolled over my child: I gazed until in the waters blue I saw reflected the brilliant hue Of one lone star, which, high above, Seemed to speak to my heart of faith and love; And I thought, as I turned my eyes to its light, It beckoned me on to the heavens so bright, Where I know, whenever this life shall cease, I shall meet my boy in eternal peace.
“I had but one left; and him I taught To shun each sinful word and thought; To beware of the wine-cup’s demon lure, That would steel his heart, and his soul obscure. He took the way of life that leads To the sacred desk where the preacher pleads, And placed his foot on the pulpit stair, The gospel—banner of life—to bear. When the cannon’s boom o’er Sumter broke, And the air was filled with traitorous smoke; When brave men sprang with willing hearts To their Country’s flag to repel the darts Which treason had hurled with malice wild At the life of the mother, so good and mild,— My boy stepped down from the preacher’s stand, And started forth, with life in hand, To sell it dear, but to battle strong With the loyal North against fearful wrong. I know that he carries a magic spell ’Gainst the curse of our race to guard him well; And I know, should he fall, his death will be In the foremost ranks of loyalty. And now, young men, an old man’s prayer:— Leave the bright wine in your glasses there; Shun its allurements; for in its deep red Is the blood of its victims dying and dead. Fill up your glasses, and pledge your friend In the crystal stream that Heaven doth send.”
With a lowly bow, and the same meek air, He has passed the door, and adown the stair; While those he has left to their leader turn With downcast eyes, and cheeks that burn. Silent he stands as his glass he takes, When the guest of the evening the silence breaks. “Friends of my boyhood, the old man’s prayer Shall meet a response in the heart I wear. I come to-night from a mother’s side: She watches my life with a parent’s pride; And I know ’tis the dearest wish of her heart, In camp and in battle to keep me apart From sin and temptation; unceasing will pray Heaven’s blessing to guard on my perilous way. And this pledge will I leave her,—never again The wine-cup’s deadly poison to drain. So, friends, let’s drink to our meeting again: My drink is the water, free from all stain.” He stood with his upraised glass, and the light Full on his fair young brow beamed bright,— That brow which an anxious mother would kiss With a pure, deep feeling of heartfelt bliss; And along the line of his comrades young, To honor his toast, each hand upsprung: In not one glass did the red wine gleam; But all were filled from the crystal stream.
On the morrow, adown the street, With trumpet’s blast and war-drum’s beat, Firm and erect, with martial tread, The flag of their Country overhead, With brave, stout hearts, and patriot-song, The Nation’s heroes go marching along. And our soldier is there, marching forth To join the bands of the loyal North; To strike a blow for his Country dear, And her trailing flag to again uprear. Light is his heart; his faith is strong; Bright gleams his sword as he moves along: But the armor he wears that shall serve him best Is the pledge to his mother guarding his breast. George M. Baker.
THE LEAK IN THE DIKE.
A STORY OF HOLLAND.
The good dame looked from her cottage At the close of the pleasant day, And cheerily called to her little son Outside the door at play,— “Come, Peter, come! I want you to go, While there is light to see, To the hut of the blind old man who lives Across the dike, for me; And take these cakes I made for him— They are hot and smoking yet: You have time enough to go and come Before the sun is set.”
Then the good-wife turned to her labor, Humming a simple song, And thought of her husband, working hard At the sluices all day long; And set the turf a-blazing, And brought the coarse black bread, That he might find a fire at night, And find the table spread.
And Peter left the brother, With whom all day he had played, And the sister who had watched their sports In the willow’s tender shade, And told them they’d see him back before They saw a star in sight, Though he wouldn’t be afraid to go In the very darkest night!
For he was a brave, bright fellow, With eye and conscience clear; He could do whatever a boy might do, And he had not learned to fear. Why, he wouldn’t have robbed a bird’s nest, Nor brought a stork to harm, Though never a law in Holland Had stood to stay his arm!
And now, with his face all glowing, And eyes as bright as the day With the thoughts of his pleasant errand, He trudged along the way; And soon his joyous prattle Made glad a lonesome place— Alas! if only the blind old man Could have seen that happy face! Yet he somehow caught the brightness Which his voice and presence lent, And he felt the sunshine come and go As Peter came and went.
And now, as the day was sinking, And the winds began to rise, The mother looked from her door again. Shading her anxious eyes, And saw the shadows deepen, And birds to their homes come back, But never a sign of Peter Along the level track. But she said, “He will come at morning, So I need not fret or grieve; Though it isn’t like my boy at all To stay without my leave.”
But where was the child delaying? On the homeward way was he, And across the dike, while the sun was up An hour above the sea. He was stopping, now to gather flowers, Now listening to the sound, As the angry waters dashed themselves Against their narrow bound. “Ah! well for us,” said Peter; “That the gates are good and strong, And my father tends them carefully, Or they would not hold you long! You’re a wicked sea,” said Peter: “I know why you fret and chafe; You would like to spoil our lands and homes But our sluices keep you safe!”
But hark! Through the noise of waters Comes a low, clear, trickling sound; And the child’s face pales with terror, And his blossoms drop to the ground. He is up the bank in a moment, And, stealing through the sand, He sees a stream not yet so large As his slender, childish hand. ’Tis a leak in the dike! He is but a boy, Unused to fearful scenes; But, young as he is, he has learned to know The dreadful thing that means. A leak in the dike! The stoutest heart Grows faint that cry to hear, And the bravest man in all the land Turns white with mortal fear. For he knows the smallest leak may grow To a flood in a single night, And he knows the strength of the cruel sea When loosed in its angry might.
And the boy! He has seen the danger, And, shouting a wild alarm, He forces back the weight of the sea With the strength of his single arm. He listens for the joyful sound Of a footstep passing nigh, And lays his ear to the ground, to catch The answer to his cry. And he hears the rough winds blowing, And the waters rise and fall, But never an answer comes to him, Save the echo of his call. He sees no hope, no succor; His feeble voice is lost; Yet what shall he do but watch and wait, Though he perish at his post!
So, faintly calling and crying Till the sun is under the sea, Crying and moaning till the stars Come out for company, He thinks of his brother and sister, Asleep in their safe warm bed; He thinks of his father and mother, Of himself as dying—and dead; And of how, when the night is over, They must come and find him at last: But he never thinks he can leave the place Where duty holds him fast.
The good dame in the cottage Is up and astir with the light, For the thought of her little Peter Has been with her all night. And now she watches the pathway, As yestereve she had done; But what does she see so strange and black Against the rising sun? Her neighbors are bearing between them Something straight to her door: Her child is coming home, but not As he ever came before!
“He is dead!” she cries; “my darling!” And the startled father hears, And comes and looks the way she looks, And fears the thing she fears: Till a glad shout from the bearers Thrills the stricken man and wife— “Give thanks, for your son has saved our land, And God has saved his life!” So, there in the morning sunshine They knelt about the boy; And every head was bared and bent In tearful, reverent joy.
’Tis many a year since then; but still, When the sea roars like a flood, Their boys are taught what a boy can do Who is brave and true and good. For every man in that country Takes his son by the hand, And tells him of little Peter, Whose courage saved the land. They have many a valiant hero Remembered through the years, But never one whose name so oft Is named with loving tears. And his deed shall be sung by the cradle, And told the child on the knee, So long as the dikes of Holland Divide the land from the sea! Phœbe Cary.
THE “COURSE OF LOVE” TOO “SMOOTH.”
She came tripping from the church-door, her face flushed by emotions awakened by the just uttered discourse, and eyes bright with loving expectation. He shivered on the curbstone, where for an hour he had waited impatiently, with a burning heart fairly palpitating in his throat, and frozen fingers in his pockets. They linked arms, and started for the residence of her parents. After a few moments’ hesitating, silence, he said, “Jane, we have known each other long. You must know just how I feel. You must have seen that clear down at the bottom—O Moses!”
He had slipped down on the ice with so much force that his spine was driven up into his hat, and his hat was tipped over his nose; but she was a tender-hearted girl; she did not laugh, but she carefully helped him to his feet, and said,—
“You were saying, John, when you slipped, that the foundation—Oh, goodness!”
She slipped herself that time, and saw little stars come down to dance before her eyes; but he pulled her up in haste, and went on,—
“Yes; just as I said, clean down at the bottom of my heart is a fervent love, on which I build my hopes. That love has helped me stand and face—Thunder!”
He was down again, but scrambled up before she could stoop to help him; and she said, breathlessly,—
“Yes, yes, John. You remember you just said a love which helped you stand and face thunder. And that you founded your hopes on—This pesky ice!”
There she sat. John grasped the loose part of her sack, between the shoulders, with one hand, and raised her to her feet, as one would lift a kitten from a pail of water by the back of the neck. Then he said, with increased earnestness,—
“Of course, darling; and I have longed for a opportunity to tell my love, and to hear those sweet lips whisper—Whoop!”
Somehow John’s feet had slipped from under him, and he had come down like a capital V with his head and feet pointing skyward. She twined her taper fingers in his curling locks, and raised him to the stature of a man, set his hat firmly over his eyes with both hands, and cried, in breathless haste,—
“I understand! and let me assure you John, that if it is in my power to lighten your cares, and make lighter your journey through life to—Jerusalem!”
John stood alone, and said with breathless vehemence,—“O my precious! and thus shall it be my lifelong pleasure to lift you from the rude assaults of earth, and surround you with the loving atmosphere of—Texas!”
And there they both sat together. They had nearly reached the gate, and, hand in hand, and with hearts overflowing with the bliss of young love’s first confession, they crept along on their knees up to the front steps, and were soon forgetful of their bumps on the softest cushion of the parlor sofa.
DYIN’ VORDS OF ISAAC.
Vhen Shicago vas a leedle villages, dher lifed dherein py dot Clark Sdhreet out, a shentlemans who got some names like Isaacs; he geeb a cloting store, mit goots dot vit you yoost der same like dhey vas made. Isaacs vas a goot fellers, und makes goot pishness on his hause. Vell, thrade got besser as der time he vas come, und dose leetle shtore vas not so pig enuff like anudder shtore, und pooty gwick he locks out und leaves der pblace.
Now Yacob Schloffenheimer vas a shmard feller; und he dinks of he dook der olt shtore, he got good pishness, und dose olt coostomers von Isaac out. Von tay dhere comes a shentlemans on his store, und Yacob quick say of der mans, “How you vas, mein freund? you like to look of mine goots, aind it?”—“Nein,” der mans say. “Vell, mein freund, it makes me notting troubles to show dot goots.”—“Nein; I don’d vood buy sometings to-tay”—“Yoost come mit me vonce, mein freund, und I show you sometings, und so hellup me gracious, I don’d ask you to buy dot goods.”—“Vell, I told you vat it vas. I don’d vood look at some tings yoost now; I keebs a livery shtable; und I likes to see mein old freund Mister Isaacs, und I came von Kaintucky out to see him once.”—“Mister Isaacs? Vell, dot ish pad; I vas sorry von dot. I dells you, mein freund, Mister Isaacs he vas died. He vas mein brudder, und he vas not mit us eny more. Yoost vhen he vas on his deat-ped, und vas dyin’, he says of me, ‘Yacob,’ (dot ish mine names), und I goes me ofer mit his petside, und he poods his hands of mine, und he says of me, ‘Yacob’ ofer a man he shall come von Kaintucky out, mit ret hair, und mit plue eyes, Yacob, sell him dings cheab;’ und he lay ofer und died his last.”
Anonymous.
NO!
No sun—no moon— No morn—no noon— No dawn—no dusk—no proper time of day— No sky—no earthly view— No distance looking blue— No road—no street—no “t’other side the way”— No end to any Row— No indications where the crescents go— No top to any steeple— No recognition of familiar people— No courtesies for showing ’em— No knowing ’em— No travelling at all—no locomotion— No inkling of the way—no notion— No go, by land or ocean! No mail—no post— No news from any foreign coast— No park—no ring—no afternoon gentility— No company—no nobility— No warmth—no cheerfulness, no healthful ease— No comfortable feel in any member— No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees, No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds, November! Hood.
THE MENAGERIE.
Did you ever? No, I never! Mercy on us, what a smell! Don’t be frightened, Johnny dear! Gracious! how the jackalls yell. Mother, tell me what’s the man Doing with that pole of his? Bless your little precious heart, He’s stirring up the beastesses!
Children, don’t you go so near! Heving’s! there’s the Afric cowses What’s the matter with the child? Why, the monkey’s, tore his trousers! Here’s the monstrous elephant— I’m all a-tremble at the sight; See his monstrous toothpick, boys! Wonder if he’s fastened tight?
There’s the lion! see his tail! How he drags it on the floor! Sakes alive! I’m awful scared To hear the horrid creatures roar! Here’s the monkeys in their cage, Wide awake you are to see ’em; Funny, ain’t it? How would you Like to have a tail and be ’em?
Johnny, darling, that’s the bear That tore the naughty boys to pieces! Horned cattle! only hear How the dreadful camel wheezes! That’s the tall giraffe, my boy, Who stoops to hear the morning lark; ’Twas him who waded Noah’s flood, And scorned the refuge of the ark.
Here’s the crane—the awkward bird! Strong his neck is as a whaler’s; And his bill is full as long As ever met one from the tailor’s. Look! just see the zebra there, Standing safe behind the bars; Goodness me! how like a flag, All except the corner stars!
There’s the bell! the birds and beasts Now are going to be fed; So, my little darlings, come, It’s time for you to be abed. “Mother, ’tisn’t nine o’clock! You said we needn’t go before; Let us stay a little while— Want to see the monkeys more!”
Cries the showman, “Turn ’em out! Dim the lights! there, that will do; Come again to-morrow, boys; Bring your little sister, too.” Exit mother, half distraught, Exit father, muttering “Bore!” Exit children blubbering still, “Want to see the monkeys more!” J. Honeywell.
BIDDY’S PHILOSOPHY.
What would I do if you was dead? And when do you think of dying? I’d stand by your bed, and hold your head, And cry, or pretind to be crying! There’s many a worser man nor you— If one knew where to find him— And mebbe many a better, too, With money to leave behind him! But you, if I was dying to-day, (I saw you now when you kissed her!) I tell you, Pat, what you’d be at— You’d marry your widdy’s sister!
You’d make an illigant corpse, indade, Sleeping so sound and stiddy; If you could see yourself as you laid, You’d want to come back to Biddy! You would be dressed in your Sunday best, As tidy as I could make you, With a sprig of something on your breast, And the boys would come to wake you. But you, if I was dead in your stead, (Do you think I never missed her?) I tell you, Pat, what you’d be at— You’d marry your widdy’s sister!
The undertaker would drive the hearse That has the big black feather; If there was no money left in your purse, Your friends would club together. They’d look at your cold remains before They followed you down to the ferry, And the coaches standing at the door Would go to the cemetery. But you, if I was once in the box, (I wonder her lips don’t blister!) I tell you, Pat, what you’d be at— You’d marry your widdy’s sister!
When you was under the sod I’d sigh, And—if I could do without you— Mebbe I’ve a strapping lad in my eye Would come here and talk about you. A little courtin’ would be divertin’, A kind voice whispering “Biddy!” And a kiss on the sly—for what’s the hurt in A man consoling a widdy? But you, before I was dead at all, (Now don’t deny that you kissed her!) I tell you, Pat, what you’d be at— You’d marry your widdy’s sister! R. H. Stoddard.
ON THE SHORES OF TENNESSEE.
“Move my arm-chair, faithful Pompey, In the sunshine bright and strong, For this world is fading, Pompey— Massa won’t be with you long; And I fain would hear the south wind Bring once more the sound to me, Of the wavelets softly breaking On the shores of Tennessee.
“Mournful though the ripples murmur, As they still the story tell, How no vessels float the banner That I’ve loved so long and well, I shall listen to their music, Dreaming that again I see Stars and strips on sloop and shallop Sailing up the Tennessee;
“And, Pompey, while old Massa’s waiting For Death’s last despatch to come, If that exiled starry banner Should come proudly sailing home, You shall greet it, slave no longer— Voice and hand shall both be free That shout and point to Union colors On the waves of Tennessee.”
“Massa’s berry kind to Pompey; But old darkey’s happy here, Where he’s tended corn and cotton For dese many a long gone year. Over yonder Missis’ sleeping— No one tends her grave like me: Mebbe she would miss the flowers She used to love in Tennessee.”
“’Pears like, she was watching Massa— If Pompey should beside him stay, Mebbe she’d remember better How for him she used to pray; Telling him that way up yonder White as snow his soul would be, If he served the Lord of heaven While he lived in Tennessee.”
Silently the tears were rolling Down the poor old dusky face, As he stepped behind his master, In his long accustomed place. Then a silence fell around them, As they gazed on rock and tree Pictured in the placid waters Of the rolling Tennessee,—
Master, dreaming of the battle Where he fought by Marion’s side, When he bid the haughty Tarleton Stoop his lordly crest of pride,— Man, remembering how yon sleeper Once he held upon his knee, Ere she loved the gallant soldier, Ralph Vervair of Tennessee.
Still the south wind fondly lingers ’Mid the veteran’s silver hair; Still the bondman close beside him Stands behind the old arm-chair, With his dark-hued hand uplifted, Shading eyes, he bends to see Where the woodland, boldly jutting, Turns aside the Tennessee.
Thus he watches cloud-born shadows Glide from tree to mountain crest, Softly creeping, aye and ever To the river’s yielding breast. Ha! above the foliage yonder Something flutters wild and free! “Massa! Massa! Hallelujah! The flag’s come back to Tennessee!”
“Pompey, hold me on your shoulder; Help me stand on foot once more, That I may salute the colors As they pass my cabin door. Here’s the paper signed that frees you; Give a freeman’s shout with me— ‘God and Union’ be our watchword Evermore in Tennessee!”
Then the trembling voice grew fainter, And the limbs refused to stand; One prayer to Jesus—and the soldier Glided to the better land. When the flag went down the river, Man and master both were free; While the ring-dove’s note was mingled With the rippling Tennessee. E. L. Beers.
PADDY’S DREAM.
I have often laughed at the way an Irish help we had at Barnstable once fished me for a glass of whiskey. One morning he says to me, “Oh, yer honor,” says he, “I had a great drame last night intirely! I dramed I was in Rome, tho’ how I got there is more than I can tell: but there I was, sure enough; and as in duty bound, what does I do but go and see the Pope. Well, it was a long journey, and it was late when I got there—too late for the likes of me; and when I got to the palace I saw priests and bishops and cardinals, and all the great dignitaries of the Church, a-coming out; and sais one of them to me, ‘How are ye, Pat Moloney?’ sais he; ‘and that spalpeen yer father, bad luck to him! how is he?’ It startled me to hear me own name so suddent, that it came mighty nigh waking me up, it did. Sais I, ‘Your riverence, how in the world did ye know that Pat Moloney was me name, let alone that of me father?’—‘Why, ye blackguard!’ sais he, ‘I knew ye since ye was knee-high to a goose, and I knew yer mother afore ye was born.’—‘It’s good right yer honor has then to know me,’ sais I.—‘Bad manners to ye!’ sais he; ‘what is it ye are afther doing here at this time o’night?’—‘To see his Holiness, the Pope,’ sais I. ‘That’s right,’ sais he; ‘pass on, but leave yer impudence with yer hat and shoes at the door.’ Well, I was shown into a mighty fine room where his Holiness was, and down I went on me knees. ‘Rise up, Pat Moloney,’ sais his Holiness; ‘ye’re a broth of a boy to come all the way from Ireland to do yer duty to me; and it’s dutiful children ye are, every mother’s son of ye. What will ye have to drink, Pat?’ (The greater a man is, the more of a rael gintleman he is, yer honor, and the more condescending.) ‘What will ye have to drink, Pat?’ sais he. ‘A glass of whiskey, yer Holiness,’ sais I, ‘if it’s all the same to ye.’—‘Shall it be hot, or cold?’ sais he. ‘Hot,’ sais I, ‘if it’s all the same, and gives ye no trouble.’—‘Hot it shall be,’ sais he; ‘but as I have dismissed all me servants for the night, I’ll just step down below for the tay-kettle;’ and wid that he left the room, and was gone for a long time; and jist as he came to the door again he knocked so loud the noise woke me up, and, be jabers! I missed me whiskey entirely! Bedad, if I had only had the sense to say ‘Nate, yer Holiness,’ I’d a had me whiskey sure enough, and never known it warn’t all true, instead of a drame.” I knew what he wanted, so I poured him out a glass. “Won’t it do as well now, Pat?” said I. “Indeed it will, yer honor,” says he, “and me drame will come true, after all. I thought it would; for it was mighty nateral at the time, all but the whiskey.”
Anonymous.
LESSONS IN COOKERY.
Miss Cicely Jones is just home from boarding-school, and engaged to be married; and, as she knows nothing about cooking or housework, is going to take a few lessons in culinary art to fit her for the new station in life which she is expected to adorn with housewifely grace. She certainly makes a charming picture as she stands in the kitchen-door, draped in a chintz apron prettily trimmed with bows of ribbon, her bangs hidden under a Dolly-Varden cap, old kid gloves, while she sways to and fro on her dainty French-kid heels, like some graceful wind-blown flower.
“Mamma,” she lisped prettily, “please introduce me to your assistant.”
Whereupon, mamma says, “Bridget, this is your young lady, Miss Cicely, who wants to learn the name and use of every thing in the kitchen, and how to make cocoanut rusks and angels’ food, before she goes to housekeeping for herself.”
Bridget gives a snort of disfavor; but, as she looks at the young lady, relents, and says, “I’ll throy.”
“And now, Bridget dear,” says Miss Cicely, when they were alone, “tell me every thing. You see, I don’t know any thing, except what they did at school; and isn’t this old kitchen lovely? What makes this ceiling such a beautiful bronze color, Bridget?”
“Shmoke,” answers Bridget shortly; “and me ould eyes are put out with that same.”
“Shmoke—I must remember that; and, Bridget, what are those shiny things on the wall?”
“Kivers?—tin kivers for pots and kittles.”
“Kivers?—oh, yes; I must look for the derivation of that word. Bridget, what are those round things in the basket?”
“Praties! (For the Lord’s sake where hez ye lived niver to hear of praties?) Why, them’s the principal mate of Ireland, where I kim from.”
“Oh! but we have corrupted the name into potatoes; such a shame not to keep the idiom of a language! Bridget—do you mind if I call you Biddie? It is more euphonious, and modernizes the old classic appellation. What is this liquid in the pan here?”
“Och, murder! Where wuz ye raised? That’s millick, fresh from the cow.”
“Millick? That is the vernacular, I suppose, of milk; and that thick, yellow coating?”
“Is crame. (Lord, such ignorance!)”
“Crame! Now, Biddie, dear, I must get to work. I’m going to make a cake all out of my own head for Henry—he’s my lover, Biddie—to eat when he comes to-night.”
Bridget [aside]: “It’s dead he is, sure, if he ates it!”
“I’ve got it all down here, Biddie, on my tablet: A pound of butter, twenty eggs, two pounds of sugar, salt to your taste. No, that’s a mistake. Oh, here it is! Now, Biddie, the eggs first. It says to beat them well; but won’t that break the shells?”
“Well, I’d break thim this time if I were you, Miss Cicely; they might not set well on Mister Henry’s stummack if ye didn’t,” said Bridget pleasantly.
“Oh! I suppose the shells are used separately. There! I’ve broken all the eggs into the flour. I don’t think I’ll use the shells, Biddie; give them to some poor people. Now, what next? Oh, I’m so tired! Isn’t housework dreadful hard? But I’m glad I’ve learned to make cake. Now, what shall I do next, Biddie?”
“Excuse me, Miss Cicely, but you might give it to the pigs. It’s meself can’t see any other use for it,” said Bridget, very crustily.
“Pigs! O Biddie! you don’t mean to say that you have some dear, cunning little white pigs! Oh, do bring the little darlings in and let me feed them! I’m just dying to have one for a pet! I saw some canton-flannel ones once at a fair, and they were too awfully sweet for any thing.”
Just then the bell rang, and Bridget returned to announce Mr. Henry; and Cicely told Bridget she would take another lesson the next day: and then she went up-stairs in her chintz apron and mob-cap, with a little dab of flour on her tip-lifted nose, and told Henry she was learning to cook; and he told her she must not be overheated, or worried out, for he didn’t care whether she could cook or not: he should never want to eat when he could talk to her, and it was only sordid souls that cared for cooking.
And, meanwhile, poor Bridget was just slamming things in the kitchen, and talking to herself in her own sweet idiom about “idgits turning things upside down for her inconvaniencing.”
Detroit Free Press.
PAT’S REASON.
One day, in a crowded Market-street car, A lady was standing. She had ridden quite far, And seemed much disposed to indulge in a frown, As nobody offered to let her sit down. And many there sat, who, to judge by their dress, Might a gentleman’s natural instincts possess; But who, judged by their acts, make as firmly believe That appearances often will sadly deceive. There were some most intently devouring the news, And some, through the windows, enjoying the views; And others indulged in a make-believe nap, While the lady stood holding on by the strap. At last a young Irishman, fresh from the “sod,” Arose with a smile and most comical nod, Which said quite as plain as in words could be stated, That the lady should sit in the place he’d vacated. “Excuse me,” said Pat, “that I caused you to wait So long before offerin’ to give you a sate; But in truth I was only just waitin’ to see If there wasn’t more gintlemin here beside me.”
AN ORIGINAL IDEA.
A DUOLOGUE FOR A LADY AND GENTLEMAN IN TWO PARTS.
CHARACTERS.
Festus, a rejected suitor.
Stella, the cruel rejecter.
Scene.—A handsomely furnished apartment in the house of Stella. Table, c., with rich cover, books, flowers, etc. Tête-à-tête, r. c., arm-chairs, r. and l. of table, c. Entrances, r., l., and c.
Enter Festus, l., in evening costume.
Festus. “Thus far into the bowels of the land have we marched on without impediment.” Here am I once more in the place from which, but one short week ago, I made an unceremonious exit as the rejected suitor of a young, lovely, and talented lady. Rejected suitor!—those words slip very smoothly from the lips, as pleasantly as though they were associated with some high-sounding title of nobility. There is nothing in the sound of them to conjure up the miserable, mean, contemptible, kicked-out feeling which a man experiences who has received at the hands of lovely woman that specimen of feminine handicraft—the mitten. All my own fault, too! I’m a bashful man. Modesty, the virtue which is said to have been “the ruination of Ireland,” is the rock against which my soaring ambition has dashed itself. I have sat in this room, evening after evening, upon the edge of a chair, twirling my thumbs, and saying—nothing. I couldn’t help it. I have brought scores of compliments to the door, and left them in the hall with my hat. I wanted to speak; I kept up “a deuce of a thinking;” but somehow, when I had an agreeable speech ready to pop out of my mouth, it seemed to be frightened at the sight of the fair object against whom it was to be launched, and tumbled back again. It’s no use: when a man is in love, the more he loves, the more silent he becomes; at least it was so in my case. And when I did manage, after much stammering and blushing, to “pop the question,” the first word from the lady set me shivering; and the conclusion of her remarks set me running from the house utterly demoralized,—“I shall always be happy to see you as a friend, your conversation is so agreeable.” Here was a damper, after six weeks of unremitting though silent attention. But she likes me, I’m sure of that. It is my silence which has frightened her. I only need a little more variety in my style of conversation to make myself agreeable to her. I have an original idea; and I advise all bashful men to take warning from my past experience, and profit by my future. I will borrow language in which to speak my passion. There’s nothing very original in borrowing, financially speaking; but to borrow another man’s ideas by which to make love, I call original. And, as luck would have it, I have an excellent opportunity to test my new idea. Lounging in the sanctum of my friend Quill, the editor of “The Postscript,” a few days ago, he called my attention to an advertisement which had just been presented for insertion. It ran thus: “Wanted, a reader,—a gentleman who has studied poetic and dramatic compositions with a view to delivery, who has a good voice, and who would be willing to give one evening a week to the entertaining of an invalid. Address, with references, ‘Stella,’ Postscript Office.” I recognized the handwriting as that of the lady to whom I had been paying attentions, the signature as the nom de plume under which she had written several poetic contributions for the press; and I had no trouble in guessing the meaning of the advertisement, knowing she has an invalid uncle. “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.” I felt that it was high tide with me, and boldly launched my canoe; answered the advertisement under the assumed name of “Festus,” and waited for a reply. It came: “Stella is satisfied with the references of Festus, and will give him an opportunity to test his ability as a reader Tuesday evening next,”[2] etc. You will naturally conclude that my heart bounded with rapture on receiving this favorable answer. It did nothing of the sort: on the contrary, the rebound almost took away my breath. I began to shiver and shake, and felt inclined to retreat. But “love conquers all things.” I determined to persevere; and here I am, by appointment, to test the practicability of my original idea. The lady is a fine reader. I am well acquainted with her favorite authors; and, if I can but interest her in this novel suit, may at least pass a pleasant evening if I am not unspeakably happy. I was told to wait for Stella. (Takes a book from table, and sits l. of table, with his back to r.) Shakspeare, ah! Let me draw a little courage from the perusal of this. (Enter Stella, r., in evening costume, with flowers in her hair.)
Stella. My maid said Festus was in this room. Ah! there he is, deep in a book: that’s so like these literary gentry! No sooner are their roving eyes fastened on a book than it is seized with the avidity with which a starving man grasps a loaf of bread. He seems happy: I will not disturb him. (Sits on tête-à-tête.) What a strange idea! Here am I to pass the evening listening to the voice of one whom I never saw before. This is one of my uncle’s whims: he fears I am working too hard to entertain him with readings from his favorite authors, and so determines to employ a reader to relieve me. Dear uncle, with all his pain and suffering he has a sharp eye: he notices my want of spirit, and thinks it is caused by weariness. He little knows that the true cause is that stupid lover of mine, who sat here evening after evening as dumb as an oyster, until, out of spite, I started him off. What could have ailed the man? Nothing could he say but “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am,” “Fine evening,” “Good-night.” I never was so plagued in all my life, for I should have liked the fellow if he had only tried to make himself agreeable; but he was as silent and stupid as—Festus here. (Festus rises, gesticulating with his hand, his eyes fastened on the book.) What can the man be about?
Festus. (Reading.) “Is this a dagger which I see before me? the handle towards my hand? Come, let me clutch thee! I have thee not, and yet I see”—(Turns and sees Stella. Drops book, and runs behind chair very confused.)
Stella. Good gracious! you here again?
Festus. I beg your pardon. You are—I am—
Stella. I thought, sir, I was to have no more of your agreeable society.
Festus. I beg your pardon, madam: you seem to be in error. I am Festus,—Festus.
Stella. You Festus?
Festus. Oh, yes: I’m Festus! I came here by appointment.
Stella. What do you mean, sir? I expected a gentleman here to read.
Festus. Exactly! Pray, are you the invalid?
Stella. Sir, you are insulting! You will be kind enough to leave this room at once. I thought the last time you were here—
Festus. Excuse me for interrupting; but you evidently mistake me for some other person. I never was in this house before.
Stella. Is the man crazy? Do you mean to say you did not make a proposal of marriage to me in this very room a week ago?
Festus. Madam, you surprise me. To the best of my knowledge and belief, I never saw you before.
Stella. Was there ever such assurance? Is not your name—
Festus. Festus; and yours Stella. Am I not right?
Stella. Sir, this is very provoking; but, if you are Festus, what is your object in calling here?
Festus. To entertain you.
Stella. To entertain me! With what, pray? Sitting on the edge of a chair, and twirling your thumbs?
Festus. (Aside.) That’s a hard hit. (Aloud.) With readings, if you please.
Stella. Readings! Pray, what do you read? Ovid’s “Art of Love”?
Festus. Madam, I answered your advertisement, being desirous of securing the situation of reader to an invalid.
Stella. You won’t suit.
Festus. You haven’t heard me.
Stella. No, but I’ve seen you; and your silence cannot be excelled by your reading.
Festus. Will you hear me read?
Stella. No: you will not suit.
Festus. Very well: then I claim the trial. Remember your promise,—“Stella is satisfied with the references of ‘Festus,’ and will give him an opportunity to test his ability as a reader Tuesday evening,” etc.
Stella. Oh, very well! If you insist upon making yourself ridiculous, proceed. (Sits in chair, r. of table, and turns her back on Festus.)
Festus. But will you not listen to me? I cannot read to you while you sit in that position.
Stella. I told you I did not wish to hear you read: you insist. Proceed: I am not interested.
Festus. Oh, very well! My first selection shall be from the writings of one well known to fame,—a lady whose compositions have electrified the world; whose poetic effusions have lulled to sleep the cross and peevish infant, stilled the noisy nursery, and exerted an influence upon mankind of great and lasting power; one whose works are memorable for their antiquity,—the gift of genius to the budding greatness of the nineteenth century. (Producing a book from his pocket.) I will read from Mother Goose.
Stella. (Starting up.) Mother Goose!
Festus. Yes: are you acquainted with the lady?
Stella. (Sarcastically.) I have heard of her.
Festus. (Reads in very melodramatic style.)
“‘We are three brethren out of Spain, Come to court your daughter Jane.’ ‘My daughter Jane she is too young: She is not skilled in flattering tongue.’ ‘Be she young, or be she old, ’Tis for her gold she must be sold. So fare you well, my lady gay; We will return another day.’”
How do you like that?
Stella. (Fiercely.) I don’t like it.
Festus. No? Perhaps you prefer some other style of delivery.
(Reads with a drawl.)
“‘We awe thwe bwethwen-aw out of Spain, Come to court-aw your dawtaw Jane-aw.’”
Stella. Oh, do read something else!
Festus. Certainly.
“Hi diddle diddle! the cat and the fiddle! The cow jumped over the moon”—
Stella. (Jumps up.) Pray, sir, do you intend to read that nonsense the whole evening?
Festus. Oh, no! I think I can get through the book in about an hour.
Stella. Sir, you have forced yourself here, an unwelcome visitor: you insist upon my hearing such nonsense as Mother-Goose melodies for an hour. Do you call that gentlemanly?
Festus. Madam, you advertised for a reader. I have applied, with your permission, for the situation. Under the circumstances, I naturally expected to have your attention during the reading of such selections as I should offer; instead of which, you turn your back upon me, and very coolly bid me proceed. Do you call that ladylike?
Stella. Frankly, no. You have asked the trial: you shall have it. For an hour I will hear you; and, though I strongly suspect the situation of reader is not the object of your visit, you shall have no reason to complain of my inattention. Is that satisfactory?
Festus. Pray go a step farther. You are said to have fine elocutionary powers. May I not hope to have the pleasure of hearing your voice? Grant me your assistance, and my hour’s trial may perhaps be made agreeable to both.
Stella. Oh! not quite certain of your ability, Mr. Festus?
Festus. Not in the presence of so fine a reader.
Stella. A compliment! Well, I agree.
Festus. Let me hear you read: that will give me courage to make the attempt myself.
Stella. Oh, very well! Remembering your partiality for juvenile literature, you will pardon me if I read a very short but sweet poem. (Produces a printed handkerchief from her pocket.)
Festus. Ah, a pocket edition!
Stella. (Reads from the handkerchief.)
“Who sat and watched my infant head When sleeping on my cradle-bed, And tears of sweet affection shed? My mother.
When sleep forsook my open eye, Who was it sang sweet lullaby, And rocked me that I should not cry? My mother.
When pain and sickness made me cry, Who gazed upon my heavy eye, And wept for fear that I should die? My mother.”
There, sir! what do you say to that?
Festus. It’s very sweet. But that child had too many mothers. Now, I prefer Tom Hood’s parody. (Reads “A Lay of Real Life” by Thomas Hood.)
A LAY OF REAL LIFE.
Who ruined me ere I was born, Sold every acre, grass or corn, And left the next heir all forlorn? My Grandfather.
Who said my mother was no nurse, And physicked me, and made me worse, Till infancy became a curse? My Grandmother.
Who left me in my seventh year, A comfort to my mother dear, And Mr. Pope the overseer? My Father.
Who let me starve to buy her gin, Till all my bones came through my skin, Then called me “ugly little sin”? My Mother.
Who said my mother was a Turk, And took me home, and made me work, But managed half my meals to shirk? My Aunt.
Who “of all earthly things” would boast, “He hated others’ brats the most,” And therefore made me feel my post? My Uncle.
Who got in scrapes, an endless score, And always laid them at my door, Till many a bitter bang I bore? My Cousin.
Who took me home when mother died, Again with father to reside, Black shoes, clean knives, run far and wide? My Stepmother.
Who marred my stealthy urchin joys, And, when I played, cried “What a noise!”— Girls always hector over boys?— My Sister.
Who used to share in what was mine, Or took it all, did he incline, ’Cause I was eight, and he was nine? My Brother.
Who stroked my head, and said, “Good lad,” And gave me sixpence, “all he had;” But at the stall the coin was bad? My Godfather.
Who, gratis, shared my social glass, But, when misfortune came to pass, Referred me to the pump? Alas! My Friend.
Through all this weary world, in brief, Who ever sympathized with grief, Or shared my joy, my sole relief? Myself.
Stella. That is very amusing; but, Mr. Festus, if this is the extent of your elocutionary acquirements—
Festus. Oh, I beg your pardon! By no means! With your permission, I will read something a little more sombre,—Edgar Poe’s “Raven.”
Stella. That is certainly more sombre. Proceed.
Reading. “The Raven,” by Edgar A. Poe. Festus.
Stella. Excellent! Mr. Festus, you are certainly a good reader. But this seems to affect you.
Festus. It does, it does; for I, too, have lost one—
Stella. A raven?
Festus. Pshaw! Come, madam, I believe you are to read now, and I to listen.
Stella. Certainly. I will read, with your permission, Whittier’s “Maud Muller.”
Festus. I should be delighted to hear it.
Reading. “Maud Muller.” Stella.
Festus. Beautiful, beautiful! Madam, this, too, affects me.
Stella. How?
Festus. When I think “it might have been.”
Stella. Then I wouldn’t think of it, if I were you. What shall we have now?
Festus. Suppose we read together.
Stella. Together?
Festus. Yes, a scene from some play. There’s “The Marble Heart.”
Stella. Oh, there’s nothing in that but love-scenes!
Festus. It’s a favorite play with me; and I have been thinking, while you were reading, that the character of “Marco” is one in which you might excel.
Stella. Indeed! I have studied the character.
Festus. (Aside.) I should think so. (Aloud.) Let us attempt a scene. Come, you shall have your choice.
Stella. Thank you. Then I will choose “the rejection scene.”
Festus. (Aside.) Of course you would! (Aloud.) Very well.
Stella. Do you know, Mr. Festus, I think there is something very odd in your attempting a love-scene?
Festus. Do you? I have attempted them, and with success too.
Stella. Ah! I remember there was one attempted here.
Festus. Indeed!
Stella. Yes; but the gentleman’s name was not Festus.
Festus. Shall we try the scene?
Stella. You must prompt me if I fail.
Festus. Fail! “In the bright lexicon of youth, there’s no such word as fail.”
Stella. Ah! but, in attempts at acting, there are many failures.
Festus. True; but yours will not be one of them.
Stella. (Aside.) Another compliment! I begin to like the fellow.
Festus. Now, then, the scene! (Stella takes a bouquet from the table, sits on tête-à-tête, r.)
Scene from “The Marble Heart.” Arranged for this piece. Published in No. 15 Reading-Club.
PART II.
Scene.—Same as before. Enter Festus, c.
Festus. It is astonishing how much a little borrowed plumage becomes a bashful man. The ice once broken by the inspiring thoughts and words of the love-sick “Raphael,” I feel now almost equal to the composition and delivery of an energetic and passionate appeal that shall carry the heart of the lady by storm; but then, having once been refused, I dread a second attempt. “A burnt child fears the fire;” and a singed lover trembles before the blazing eyes of the object of his adoration. I have yet a short time before the expiration of my hour of trial, and the character of “Sir Thomas Clifford” from which to borrow courage. (Enter Stella, c.)
Stella. Well, mysterious “Festus,” what new fancy is agitating your fertile brain?
Festus. Madam, to tell you the truth, I was—thinking—of you.
Stella. Of me, or of your future salary?
Festus. Both.
Stella. What of me?
Festus. (Very awkward and confused.) That I think—I think—that you—you—are—are—
Stella. Well, what am I?
Festus. (Abruptly.) A very fine reader.
Stella. Oh! is that all?
Festus. All worth mentioning.
Stella. Sir!
Festus. That is all I am at liberty to mention.
Stella. What if I should grant you liberty to say more?
Festus. Oh! then—then I should say—I should say—
Stella. Well, what would you say?
Festus. It’s your turn to read.
Stella. (Aside.) Stupid! (Aloud.) Well, sir, what shall I read?
Festus. Oh! oblige me by making your own selection.
Stella. There’s “The Bells,” by Poe. Do you like that?
Festus. Oh, exceedingly!
Stella. But I don’t know how to read it: it’s very difficult.
Festus. Perhaps I can assist you. (Aside.) I’ll provoke her a bit; see if she has a temper.
Stella. Well, you are very kind. (Aside.) I’ll see if I can make him talk.
Festus. Well, then, you take the book, and read. (Hands her copy of Poe.) When I think you need correcting, I will speak.
Stella. Very well. (They sit, c. Stella reads in a very tragic tone, emphasizing the words in Italics.)
“Hear the sledges with the bells, Silver bells!”
Festus. Oh, stop, stop, stop! Dear me! that’s not the way to read. There’s no silver in your bells. Listen:—
“Hear the sledges with the bells, Sil-ver bells!”
Very silvery, don’t you see?
Stella. Oh, yes! excuse me. (Reads in a very silly tone.)
“Hear the sledges with the bells, Sil———verbells!”
Festus. Oh, no, no! that’s too silly.
Stella. Sir!
Festus. I mean, there’s too much of the sil in silver. (Repeats his reading. She imitates it.)
Festus. Ah! that’s better. Thank you: you are charming. (She looks at him.) That is, a charming reader. Go on.
Stella. (Reads.)
“What a world of merriment their melody foretells! How they tinkle”—
Festus. (Interrupting.) I beg your pardon: “twinkle.”
Stella. No, sir: “tinkle.”
Festus. But I am sure it is “twinkle.”
Stella. Can’t I believe my own eyes?
Festus. Not unless they “twinkle.”
Stella. Look for yourself. (Shows him the book.)
Festus. My stars! it is “tinkle.” I beg your pardon. Go on.
Stella.
“How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle, In the icy air”—
Festus. No, no: frosty,—frosty air.
Stella. No, sir: it’s icy air.
Festus. You are mistaken: “frosty.”
Stella. Am I? Look for yourself.
Festus. Well, I declare! It is, I see, icy. I beg your pardon. Go on.
Stella. I see, I see. You are bent on interrupting me. What do you mean, sir?
Festus. What can you expect, if you don’t know how to read?
Stella. Sir, this is provoking. I don’t know how to read?
Festus. Not “The Bells,” I know.
Stella. Oh! do you? Well, sir, I know you are no gentleman; and I know, if you want “The Bells” read (starts up, and throws book at him), read it yourself.
Festus. Madam, what am I to understand by this?
Stella. That your presence is no longer agreeable to me.
Festus. Oh, very well, very well! I understand you wish me to go. (Stella stands, r., with her back to him.) You wish me to go. I will intrude no longer. (Very loud.) Since you—wish—me—to—go—(Aside.) Confound it, I believe she does! (Aloud.) Very well, madam, very well. Good-evening. (Exit, l.)
Stella. He’ll be back in three minutes. (Enter Festus, l.)
Festus. I forgot my hat. You’ll excuse me if I take my—(Aside.) Confound it, she won’t speak! (Stands irresolute a moment, and then approaches her.) Madam,—Stella,—I was wrong. You can read “The Bells” divinely. I hear them ringing in my ears now. I beg your pardon. Read “The Bells” in any manner you please: I shall be delighted to listen.
Stella. Oh, very well! Since you have returned, I will read.
Reading. “The Bells,” Poe. Stella.
Festus. Splendid, splendid!
Stella. Now, sir, I shall be happy to listen to you once more.
Festus. Your “Bells” have stirred the fires of patriotism within my heart; and I will give you, as my selection, “Sheridan’s Ride.”
Reading. “Sheridan’s Ride,” Reid. Festus.
Stella. Excellent! Mr. Festus, you are a very spirited rider,—I mean reader. Now, suppose, for variety, we have another scene.
Festus. With all my heart. What shall it be?
Stella. Oh! you select. Pray. Mr. Festus, did you have any design in selecting the scene from “The Marble Heart”?
Festus. Well, I like that. You selected it yourself.
Stella. But the play was your selection; and you were very perfect in the part of “Raphael.”
Festus. Well, I selected what I thought I should most excel in.
Stella. You excel in love-making! That’s good. But I must say, you act it well.
Festus. Yes—that is—I think that circumstances—occurring—which would make—circumstances—perfectly—that is, I mean to say that—circumstances—indeed—what were you saying?
Stella. Ha, ha, ha! O mighty Festus! you’ve lost your place; but, as you have a partiality for love-scenes, what is your next?
Festus. What say you to a scene from “The Hunchback”? “The secretary of my lord”? You know the scene,—“Julia” and “Sir Thomas Clifford.”
Stella. Oh, yes! I am familiar with it; but I think, as an applicant for a situation, you are making me perform more than my share of work.
Festus. Oh! if you object—
Stella. Oh! but I don’t object. Proceed. (Sits, l. of table. Festus exits, l.)
SCENE FROM “THE HUNCHBACK.”
(Arranged for this piece.)
Julia, Stella.
Sir Thomas Clifford, Festus.
Jul. (Alone.) A wedded bride? Is it a dream? Oh, would it were a dream! How would I bless the sun that waked me from it! I am wrecked By mine own act! What! no escape? no hope? None! I must e’en abide these hated nuptials! Hated!—ay, own it, and then curse thyself That mad’st the bane thou loathest for the love Thou bear’st to one who never can be thine! Yes, love! Deceive thyself no longer. False To say ’tis pity for his fall,—respect Engendered by a hollow world’s disdain, Which hoots whom fickle fortune cheers no more! ’Tis none of these: ’tis love, and, if not love, Why, then, idolatry! Ay, that’s the name To speak the broadest, deepest, strongest passion That ever woman’s heart was borne away by! He comes! Thoud’st play the lady,—play it now! (Enter Clifford, l.) Speaks he not? Or does he wait for orders to unfold His business? Stopped his business till I spoke, I’d hold my peace forever! (Clifford kneels, presenting a letter.) Does he kneel? A lady am I to my heart’s content! Could he unmake me that which claims his knee, I’d kneel to him,—I would, I would! Your will?
Clif. This letter from my lord.
Jul. Oh, fate! who speaks?
Clif. The secretary of my lord. (Rises.)
Jul. I breathe! I could have sworn ’twas he! (Makes an effort to look at him, but is unable.) So like the voice!— I dare not look lest there the form should stand. How came he by that voice? ’Tis Clifford’s voice If ever Clifford spoke! My fears come back. Clifford, the secretary of my lord! Fortune hath freaks, but none so mad as that. It cannot be!—it should not be! A look, And all were set at rest. (Tries to look at him again, but cannot.) So strong my fears, Dread to confirm them takes away the power To try and end them. Come the worst, I’ll look. (She tries again, and is again unequal to the task.) I’d sink before him if I met his eye!
Clif. Wilt please your ladyship to take the letter?
Jul. There, Clifford speaks again! Not Clifford’s breath Could more make Clifford’s voice: not Clifford’s tongue And lips more frame it into Clifford’s speech. A question, and ’tis over! Know I you?
Clif. Reverse of fortune, lady, changes friends: It turns them into strangers. What I am I have not always been.
Jul. Could I not name you?
Clif. If your disdain for one, perhaps too bold When hollow fortune called him favorite, Now by her fickleness perforce reduced To take an humble tone, would suffer you—
Jul. I might?
Clif. You might.
Jul. O Clifford! is it you?
Clif. Your answer to my lord. (Gives the letter.)
Jul. Your lord!
Clif. Wilt write it? Or, will it please you send a verbal one? I’ll bear it faithfully.
Jul. You’ll bear it?
Clif. Madam, Your pardon: but my haste is somewhat urgent. My lord’s impatient, and to use despatch Were his repeated orders.
Jul. Orders? Well (takes letter), I’ll read the letter, sir. ’Tis right you mind His lordship’s orders. They are paramount. Nothing should supersede them. Stand beside them! They merit all your care, and have it! Fit, Most fit, they should. Give me the letter, sir.
Clif. You have it, madam.
Jul. So! How poor a thing I look! so lost while he is all himself! Have I no pride? If he can freeze, ’tis time that I grow cold. I’ll read the letter. (Opens it, and holds it as about to read it.) Mind his orders! So! Quickly he fits his habits to his fortunes! He serves my lord with all his will! His heart’s In his vocation. So! Is this the letter? ’Tis upside down, and here I’m poring on’t! Most fit I let him see me play the fool! Shame! Let me be myself! (She sits a while at table, vacantly gazing on the letter, then looks at Clifford.) How plainly shows his humble suit! It fits not him that wears it. I have wronged him! He can’t he happy—does not look it—is not! That eye which reads the ground is argument Enough. He loves me. There I let him stand, And I am sitting! (Rises, and points to a chair.) Pray you, take a chair. (He bows as acknowledging and declining the honor. She looks at him a while.) Clifford, why don’t you speak to me? (Weeps.)
Clif. I trust You’re happy.
Jul. Happy? Very, very happy! You see I weep I am so happy. Tears Are signs, you know, of naught but happiness. When first I saw you, little did I look To be so happy. Clifford!
Clif. Madam?
Jul. Madam! I call thee Clifford, and thou call’st me madam!
Clif. Such the address my duty stints me to. Thou art the wife elect of a proud earl Whose humble secretary sole am I.
Jul. Most right! I had forgot! I thank you, sir, For so reminding me, and give you joy That what, I see, had been a burthen to you Is fairly off your hands.
Clif. A burthen to me? Mean you yourself? Are you that burthen, Julia? Say that the sun’s a burthen to the earth! Say that the blood’s a burthen to the heart! Say health’s a burthen, peace, contentment, joy, Fame, riches, honors, everything that man Desires, and gives the name of blessing to!— E’en such a burthen Julia were to me Had fortune let me wear her.
Jul. (Aside.) On the brink Of what a precipice I’m standing! Back, Back! while the faculty remains to do’t! A minute longer, not the whirlpool’s self More sure to suck thee down! One effort! (Sits.) There! (Recovers her self-possession, takes up the letter, and reads.) To wed to-morrow night! Wed whom? A man Whom I can never love! I should before Have thought of that. To-morrow night. This hour To-morrow,—how I tremble! At what means Will not the desperate snatch! What’s honor’s price? Nor friends, nor lovers,—no, nor life itself! Clifford, this moment leave me! (Clifford retires up the stage out of her sight.) Is he gone? Oh, docile lover! Do his mistress’ wish That went against his own! Do it so soon, Ere well ’twas uttered! No good-by to her! No word, no look! ’Twas best that so he went. Alas the strait of her who owns that best Which last she’d wish were done! What’s left me now? To weep, to weep!
(Leans her head upon her arm, which rests upon the table, her other arm hanging listless at her side. Clifford comes down the stage, looks a moment at her, approaches her, and, kneeling, takes her hand.)
Clif. My Julia!
Jul. Here again? Up, up! By all thy hopes of heaven go hence! To stay’s perdition to me! Look you, Clifford! Were there a grave where thou art kneeling now, I’d walk into’t and be inearthed alive Ere taint should touch my name! Should some one come And see thee kneeling thus! Let go my hand!— Remember, Clifford, I’m a promised bride— And take thy arm away! It has no right To clasp my waist! Judge you so poorly of me As think I’ll suffer this? My honor, sir! (She breaks from him, quitting her seat.) I’m glad you’ve forced me to respect myself: You’ll find that I can do so.
Clif. There was a time I held your hand unchid; There was a time I might have clasped your waist: I had forgot that time was past and gone. I pray you, pardon me.
Jul. (Softened.) I do so, Clifford.
Clif. I shall no more offend.
Jul. Make sure of that. No longer is it fit thou keep’st thy post In’s lordship’s household. Give it up! A day, An hour, remain not in it.
Clif. Wherefore?
Jul. Live In the same house with me, and I another’s? Put miles, put leagues, between us! The same land Should not contain us. O Clifford, Clifford! Rash was the act, so light that gave me up, That stung a woman’s pride, and drove her mad, Till in her frenzy she destroyed her peace! Oh, it was rashly done! Had you reproved, Expostulated, had you reasoned with me, Tried to find out what was indeed my heart, I would have shown it, you’d have seen it, all Had been as naught can ever be again.
Clif. Lov’st thou me, Julia?
Jul. Dost thou ask me, Clifford?
Clif. These nuptials may be shunned—
Jul. With honor?
Clif. Yes.
Jul. Then take me! Hold!—hear me, and take me, then! Let not thy passion be my counsellor; Deal with me, Clifford, as my brother. Be The jealous guardian of my spotless name. Scan thou my cause as ’twere thy sister’s. Let Thy scrutiny o’erlook no point of it, And turn it o’er not once, but many a time, That flaw, speck, yea, the shade of one,—a soil So slight not one out of a thousand eyes Could find it out,—may not escape thee; then Say if these nuptials can be shunned with honor!
Clif. They can.
Jul. Then take me, Clifford—
Festus. Stop one moment. (Looks at watch.) Time’s up.
Stella. So soon?
Festus. The tone of your voice expresses regret. What is your decision?
Stella. My decision?
Festus. Upon my application for the situation of reader. Shall I have it?
Stella. Perhaps the terms will not suit.
Festus. Madam, I am willing to serve you on any terms. Allow me to throw off the mask of “Festus,” which of course you have seen through, and offer myself for a situation under the name of—
Stella. Stop: you are not going to pronounce that name before all these good people?
Festus. Of course not. But what shall I do? Stella, I feel that “Raphael” and “Sir Thomas Clifford” have inspired me to attempt love-making on my own account. Grant me the opportunity to make application for the situation made vacant by my unceremonious exit the other night. Let “Festus” apply once more.
Stella. What shall I say? (To audience.) Would you? He seems to have found his tongue; and who knows but what he may make an agreeable beau? I think he had better call again; for to have a lover who can make love by borrowing, is, at least,—under the circumstances—under the circumstances—what is it, Festus?
Festus. Circumstances? Why, under the circumstances, I should say it was “An Original Idea.”
George M. Baker.
Note. The “Readings” and “Scenes” maybe varied to suit the taste of the performers. “The Garden Scene” in “Romeo and Juliet,” scenes from “Ingomar,” “The School for Scandal,” etc., have been used with good effect.
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THE SECOND MRS. TANQUERAY Play in Four Acts. Eight males, five females. Costumes, modern; scenery, three interiors. Plays a full evening.
SWEET LAVENDER Comedy in Three Acts. Seven males, four females. Scene, a single interior; costumes, modern. Plays a full evening.
THE TIMES Comedy in Four Acts. Six males, seven females. Scene, a single interior; costumes, modern. Plays a full evening.
THE WEAKER SEX Comedy in Three Acts. Eight males, eight females. Costumes, modern; scenery, two interiors. Plays a full evening.
A WIFE WITHOUT A SMILE Comedy in Three Acts. Five males, four females. Costumes, modern; scene, a single interior. Plays a full evening.
Sent prepaid on receipt of price by Walter H. Baker & Company No. 5 Hamilton Place, Boston, Massachusetts
Recent Popular Plays
THE AWAKENING Play in Four Acts. By C. H. Chambers. Four males, six females. Scenery, not difficult, chiefly interiors; costumes, modern. Plays a full evening. Price, 50 Cents.
THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT Comedy in Four Acts. By L. Tolstoi. Twenty-one males, eleven females. Scenery, characteristic interiors; costumes, modern. Plays a full evening. Recommended for reading clubs. Price, 25 Cents.
HIS EXCELLENCY THE GOVERNOR Farce in Three Acts. By R. Marshall. Ten males, three females. Costumes, modern; scenery, one interior. Acting rights reserved. Time, a full evening. Price, 50 Cents.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND Comedy in Four Acts. By Oscar Wilde. Nine males, six females. Costumes, modern; scenery, three interiors. Plays a full evening. Acting rights reserved. Sold for reading. Price, 50 Cents.
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST Farce in Three Acts. By Oscar Wilde. Five males, four females. Costumes, modern; scenes, two interiors and an exterior. Plays a full evening. Acting rights reserved. Price, 50 Cents.
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN Comedy in Four Acts. By Oscar Wilde. Seven males, nine females. Costumes, modern; scenery, three interiors. Plays a full evening. Acting rights reserved. Price, 50 Cents.
NATHAN HALE Play in Four Acts. By Clyde Fitch. Fifteen males, four females. Costumes of the eighteenth century in America. Scenery, four interiors and two exteriors. Acting rights reserved. Plays a full evening. Price, 50 Cents.
THE OTHER FELLOW Comedy in Three Acts. By M. B. Horne. Six males, four females. Scenery, two interiors; costumes, modern. Professional stage rights reserved. Plays a full evening. Price, 50 Cents.
THE TYRANNY OF TEARS Comedy in Four Acts. By C. H. Chambers. Four males, three females. Scenery, an interior and an exterior; costumes, modern. Acting rights reserved. Plays a full evening. Price, 50 Cents.
A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE Comedy in Four Acts. By Oscar Wilde. Eight males, seven females. Costumes, modern; scenery, three interiors and an exterior. Plays a full evening. Stage rights reserved. Offered for reading only. Price, 50 Cents.
Sent prepaid on receipt of price by Walter H. Baker & Company No. 5 Hamilton Place, Boston, Massachusetts
S. J. PARKHILL & CO., PRINTERS, BOSTON, U.S.A.
Transcriber's Notes:
The cover image is in the public domain.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.
The advertisement on the first page has been relocated to the end of the book to be with the other advertisements.