PART II.

You do not like this Lizzy Gurney? I know. There are a dozen healthy girls in that country-town whose histories would have been pleasanter to write and to read. I chose hers purposely. I chose a bilious, morbid woman to talk to you of, because American women are bilious and morbid. Men all cling desperately to the old book-type of women, delicate, sunny, helpless. I confess to even a man's hungry partiality for them,—these roses of humanity, their genus and species emphasized by but the faintest differing pungency of temper and common sense,—mere crumpling of the rose-leaves. But how many of them do you meet on the street?

McKinstry (with most men) kept this ideal in his brain, and bestowed it on every woman in a street-car possessed of soft eyes, gaiter-boots, and a blush. Dr. Blecker (with all women) saw through that mask, and knew them as they are. He knew there was no more prurient sign of the age of groping and essay in which we live than the unrest and diseased brains of its women.

Lizzy Gurney was but like nine-tenths of the unmarried young girls of the Northern States; there was some inactive, dumb power within,—she called it genius; there was a consciousness that with a man's body she would have been more of a man than her brother; there was, stronger than all, the unconquerable craving of Nature for a husband's and child's love,—she, powerless. So it found vent in this girl, as in the others, in perpetual self-analyzing, in an hysteric clinging to one creed after another,—in embracing the chimera of the Woman's-Rights prophets with her brain, and thrusting it aside with her heart: after a while, to lapse all into a marriage, made in heaven or hell, as the case might be.

Dr. Blecker used no delicate euphuism in talking of women, which, maybe, was as well. He knew, that, more than men, though quietly, they are facing the problem of their lives, their unused powers, their sham marriages, and speak of these things to their own souls with strong, plebeian words. So much his Northern education opened his eyes to see, but he stopped there; if he had been a clear-sighted truth-seeker, he would have known that some day the problem would be solved, and by no foul Free Love-ism. But Paul was enough Southerner by birth to shrink from all inquiry or disquiet in women. If there were any problem of life for them, Grey Gurney held it solved in her nature: that was all he cared to know. Did she?

After the regiment was gone, she went into the old work,—cooking, sewing, nursing Pen. Very little of her brain or heart was needed for that; the heavy surplus lay dormant. No matter; God knew. Jesus waited thirty years in a carpenter's shop before He began His work,—to teach us to wait: hardest lesson of all. Grey understood that well. Not only at night or morning, but through the day, at the machine, or singing songs to Pen, she used to tell her story over and over to this Jesus, her Elder Brother, as she loved to call Him: He would not be tired of hearing it, how happy she was,—she knew. She did not often speak of the war to Him,—knowing how stupid she was, near-sighted, apt to be prejudiced,—afraid to pray for one side or the other, there was such bitter wrong on both; she knew it all lay in His hand, though; so she was dumb, only saying, "He knows." But for herself, out of the need of her woman's nature, she used to say, "I can do more than I do here. Give me room, Lord. Let me be Paul Blecker's wife, for I love him." She blushed, when even praying that silently in her heart. Then she used to sing gayer songs, and have a good romp with the children and Pen in the evenings, being so sure it would all come right. How, nobody could see: who could keep this house up, with the ten hungry mouths, if she were gone? But she only changed the song to an earnest hearty hymn, with the thought of that. It would come at last: He knew.

Was the problem solved in her?

It being so sure a thing to her that this was one day to be, she began in a shy way to prepare for it,—after the day's work was done to the last stitch, taking from the bottom of her work-basket certain pieces of muslin that fitted herself, and sewing on them in the quiet of her own room. She did not sing when she worked at these; her cheeks burned, though, and there was a happy shining in her eyes bright enough for tears.

Sitting, sewing there, when that July night came, she had no prescience that her trial day was at hand: for to stoop-shouldered women over machines, as well as to Job, a trial day does come, when Satan obtains leave in heaven to work his will on them, straining the fibre they are made of, that God may see what work they are fit for in the lives to come. This was the way it came to the girl. That morning, when she was stretching out some muslin to bleach in a light summer shower, there was a skirmish down yonder in among some of the low coal-hills along the Shenandoah, and half a dozen men were brought wounded in to Harper's Ferry. There was no hospital there then; one of the half-burnt Government offices was used for the purpose; and as the surgeon at that post, Dr. Blecker, was one of the wounded, young Dr. Nott came over from the next camp to see to them. His first cases: he had opened an office only for six months, out in Portage, Ohio, before he got into the army; in those six months he played chess principally, and did the poetry for the weekly paper,—his tastes being innocent: the war has been a grand outlet into a career for doctors and chaplains of that calibre. Dr. Nott, coming into the low arsenal-room that night, stopped to brush the clay off his trousers before going his rounds, and to whisk the attar of rose from his handkerchief. "No fever? All wounds?" of the orderly who carried the flaring tallow candle.

All wounds: few of them, but those desperate. Even the vapid eyes of Nott grew grave before he was through, and he ceased tipping on his toes, and tittering: he was a good-hearted fellow, at bottom, growing silent altogether when he came to operate on the surgeon, who had waited until the last. "The ball is out, Dr. Blecker,"—looking up at length, but not meeting the wounded man's eye.

"I know. Cross the bandage now. You'll send a despatch for me, Nott? There is some one I want to see, before——I'll hold out two or three days?"

"Pooh, pooh! Not so bad as that. We'll hope at least, Dr. Blecker, not so bad as that. I've paper and pencil here." So Dr. Blecker sent the despatch.

It was a hot July night, soon after the seven days' slaughter at Richmond. You remember how the air for weeks after that lay torpid with a suppressed heat,—as though the very earth held her breath to hear the sharp tidings of death. It never was fully told aloud,—whispered only,—and even that hoarse whisper soon died out. We were growing used to the taste of blood by that time, in North and South, like bulls in a Spanish arena. This night, and in one or two following it, the ashy sultriness overhead was hint of some latent storm. It is one of the vats of the world where storms are brewed,—Harper's Ferry: stagnant mountain-air shut in by circling peaks whose edges cut into the sky; the sun looking straight down with a torrid compelling eye into the water all the day long, until at evening it goes wearily up to him in a pale sigh of mist, lingering to rest and say good-bye among the wooded sides of the hills. Our hill-storms are generally bred there: it was not without a certain meaning that the political cloud took its rise in this town, whose thunder has shaken the continent with its bruit.

Paul Blecker lay by a window: he could see the tempest gathering for days: it was a stimulus that pleased him well. Death, or that nearness to it which his wound had brought, fired his brain with a rare life, like some wine of the old gods. The earth-life cleared to him, so tired he grew then of paltry words and thoughts, standing closer to the inner real truth of things. So, when he had said to the only creature who cared for him, "They say I will not live, come and stay with me," he never had doubted, as a more vulgar man might have done, that she would come,—never doubted either, that, if it were true that he should die, she would come again after him some day, to work and love yonder with him,—his wife. Nature sends this calmness, quiet reliance on the real verities of life, down there into that border-ground of death,—kind, as is her wont to be. When the third day was near its close, he knew she would come that night; half smiling to himself, as he thought of what an ignorant, scared traveller she would be; wishing he could have seen her bear down all difficulties in that turbulent house with her child-like "He wants me,—I must go." How kind people would be to her on the road, hearing her uncertain timid voice! Why, that woman might pass through the whole army, even Blenker's division, unscathed: no roughness could touch her, remembering the loving trust in her little freckled face, and how innocently her soul looked out of her hazel eyes. He used to call her Una sometimes: it was the only pet name he gave her. She was in the Virginia mountains now. If he could but have been with her when she first saw them! She would understand there why God took his prophets up into the heights when He would talk to them.

So thinking vaguely, but always of her, not of the fate that waited him, if he should die. Literally, the woman was dearer to him than his own soul.

The room was low-ceiled, but broad, with windows opening on each side. Overhead the light broke in through broken chinks in the rafters,—the house being, in fact, but a ruin.

A dozen low cots were scattered about the bare floor: on one a man lay dead, ready for burial in the morning; on the others the men who were wounded with him, bearing trouble cheerfully enough, trying, some of them, to hum a chorus to "We're marching along," which the sentry sang below.

The room was dark: he was glad of that; when she came, she could not see his altered face: only a dull sconce spattered at one end, under which an orderly nodded over a dirty game of solitaire.

Outside, he could see the reddish shadow of the sky on the mountains: a dark shadow, making the unending forests look like dusky battalions of giants scaling the heights. Below, the great tide of water swelled and frothed angrily, trying to bury and hide the traces of the battles fought on its shore: ruined bridges, masses of masonry, blackened beams of cars and engines. One might fancy that Nature, in her grand temperance, was ashamed of man's petty rage, and was striving to hide it even from himself. Laurel and sumach bushes were thrusting green foliage and maroon velvet flowers over the sand ledges on the rock where the Confederate cannon had been placed; and even over the great masses of burnt brick and granite that choked the valley, the delicate moss, undaunted and indefatigable, was beginning to work its veiling way. Near him he saw a small square building, uninjured,—the one in which John Brown had been held prisoner: the Federal troops used it as a guard-house now for captured Confederates.

One of these men, a guerrilla, being sick, had been brought in to the hospital, and lay in the bed next to Blecker's,—a raw-boned, wooden-faced man, with oiled yellow whiskers, and cold, gray, sensual eye: complaining incessantly in a whining voice,—a treacherous humbug of a voice, Blecker fancied: it irritated him.

"Move that man's bed away from mine to-morrow," he said to the nurse that evening. "If I must die, let me hear something at the last that has grit in it."

He heard the man curse him; but even that was softly done.

The storm was gathering slowly. Low, sharp gusts of wind crept along the ground at intervals, curdling the surface of the water, shivering the grass: far-off moans in the mountain-passes, beyond the Maryland Heights, heard in the dead silence: abrupt frightened tremors in the near bushes and tree-tops, then the endless forests swaying with a sullen roar. The valley darkened quickly into night; a pale greenish light, faint and fierce, began to flash in the north.

"Thunder-storm coming," said the sleepy orderly, Sam, coming closer to fasten the window.

"Let it be open," said Blecker, trying nervously to rise on one arm. "It is ten o'clock. I must hear the train come in."

The man turned away, stopping by the bed of the prisoner to gossip awhile before going down to camp. He thought, as they talked in a desultory way, as men do, thrown together in the army, of who and what they had been, that the Yankee doctor listened attentively, starting forward, and throwing off the bed-clothes.

"But he was an uneasy chap always, always," thought Sam, "as my old woman would say,—in a kippage about somethin' or other. But darned ef this a'n't somethin' more 'n usual,"—catching a glimpse of Blecker's face turned toward the prisoner, a curious tigerish look in his half-closed eyes.

The whistle of the train was heard that moment far-off in the gorge. Blecker did not heed it, beckoning silently to the orderly.

"Go for the Colonel, for Sheppard," in a breathless way; "bring some men, stout fellows that can lift. Quick, Sam, for God's sake!"

The man obeyed, glancing at the prisoner, who lay with his eyes closed as though asleep.

"Blecker glowers at him as though he were the Devil,"—stopping outside to light a cigar at the oil-lamp. "That little doctor has murder writ in his face plain as print this minute."

Sam may not have been wrong. Paul Blecker was virulent in hates, loves, or opinions: in this sudden madness of a moment that possessed him, if his feet would have dragged him to that bed yonder, and his wrists been strong enough, he would have wrung the soul out of the man's body, and flung him from his way. Looking at the limbs stretched out under the sheet, the face, an obscene face, even with the eyes closed, as at a deadly something that had suddenly reared itself between him and his chance of heaven. The man was Grey Gurney's husband. She was coming: in a moment, it might be, would be here. She thought that man dead. She always should think him dead. He held back his breath in his clinched teeth: that was all the sign of passion; his brain was never cooler, more alert.

Sheppard, the colonel of the regiment, a thick-set, burly little fellow, with stubbly black whiskers and honest eyes, came stumping down the room.

"What is it, hey? Life and death, Blecker?"

"More, to me," with a smile. "Make your men remove that man Gurney into the lower ward. Don't stop to question, Colonel: I'll explain afterwards. I'm surgeon of this post."

"You're crotchety as a woman, Paul," laughed the other, as he gave the order.

"What d' ye mean to do, old fellow, with this wound of yours? Go under for it, as you said at first?"

"This morning I would have told you yes. I don't know now. I can't afford to leave the world just yet. I'll fight death to the last breath." Watching the removal of the prisoner as he spoke; when the door closed on him, letting his head fall on the pillow with a sigh of relief. "Sheppard, there was another matter I wished to see you about. Your mother came to see me yesterday."

"Yes; was the soup good she sent this morning? We're famous for our broths on the farm, but old Nance isn't here, and"——

"Very good;—but there was another favor I wished to ask."

"Well?"—staring into the white-washed wall to avoid seeing how red poor crotchety Blecker's face grew.

"By the way, Paul, my mother desired me to bring that young lady you told her of home with me. She means to adopt her for the present, I believe."

The redness grew hotter.

"It was that I meant to ask of her,—you knew?"

"Yes, I knew. Bah, man, don't wring my fingers off. If the girl's good and pure enough to do this thing, my mother's the woman to appreciate it. She knows true blood in horses or men, mother. Not a better eye for mules in Kentucky than that little woman's. A Shelby, you know? Stock-raisers. By George, here she comes, with her charge in tow already!"

Blecker bit his parched lips: among the footsteps coming up the long hall, he heard only one, quick and light; it seemed to strike on his very brain, glancing to the yellow-panelled door, behind which the prisoner lay. She thought that man dead. She always should think him dead. She should be his wife before God; if He had any punishment for that crime, he took it on his own soul,—now. And so turned with a smile to meet her.

"Don't mind Paul's face, if it is skin and bone," said the Colonel, hastily interposing his squat figure between it and the light. "Needs shaving, that's all. He'll be round in no time at all, with a bit of nursing; 's got no notion of dying."

"I knew he wouldn't die," she said, half to herself, not speaking to Paul,—only he held both her hands in his, and looked in her eyes.

Sheppard, after the first glance over the little brown figure and the face under the Shaker hood, had stood, hat in hand, with something of the same home-trusty smile he gave his wife on his mouth. The little square-built body in black seeded silk and widow's cap, that had convoyed the girl in, touched the Colonel's elbow, and they turned their backs to the bed,—talking of hot coffee and sandwiches. Paul drew her down.

"My wife, Grey? Mine?" his breath thin and cold,—because no oath now could make that sure.

"Yes, Paul."

He shut his eyes. She wondered that he did not smile when she put her timorous fingers in his tangled hair. He thought he would die, maybe. He could not die. Her feet seemed to take firmer root into the ground. A clammy damp broke out over her body. He did not know how she had wrestled in prayer; he did not believe in prayer. He could not die. That which a believer asked of God, believing He would grant, was granted. She held him in life by her hand on Christ's arm.

"Were you afraid to travel alone, eh?"

Grey looked up. The little figure facing her had a body that somehow put you in mind of unraised dough: and there was nothing spongy or porous or delusive in the solid little soul either, inside of the body,—that was plain. She looked as if Kentucky had sent her out, a tight, right, compact drill-sergeant, an embodiment of Western reason, to try by herself at drum-head court-martial the whole rank and file of Northernisms, airy and intangible illusions. Nothing about her that did not summon you to stand and deliver common sense; the faint down on her upper-lip, the clog-soled shoes, the stiff dress, the rope of a gold watch-chain, the single pure diamond blazing on one chubby white hand, the general effect of a lager-bier keg, unmovable, self-poised, the round black eyes, the two black puffs of hair on each temple, said with one voice, "No fooling now; no chance for humbug here." Why should there be? One of the Shelbys; well-built in bone and blood, honest, educated,—mule-raisers; courted by General Sheppard according to form, a modest, industrious girl, a dignified, eminently sensible wife, a blindly loving mother, a shrewd business-woman as a widow. Her son was a Christian, her slaves were fat and contented, her mules the best stock imported. She hated the Abolitionists, lank, uncombed, ill-bred fanatics; despised the Secessionists as disappointed Democrats; clung desperately to the Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement of the laws, not knowing she was holding to the most airy and illusive nothings of all. So she was here with Pratt, her son, at Harper's Ferry, nursing the sick, keeping a sharp eye on the stock her overseer sold to Government, looking into the face of every Rebel prisoner brought in, with a very woman's sick heart, but colder growing eyes. For Buckner, you know, had induced Harry to go into the Southern army. Harry Clay, (they lived near Ashland,)—Harry was his mother's pet, before this, the youngest. If he was wounded, like to die, not all their guerrillas or pickets should keep her back; though, when he was well, she would leave him without a word. He had gone, like the prodigal son, to fill his belly with the husks the swine did eat,—and not until he came back, like the prodigal son, would she forgive him. But if he was wounded—If Grey had stopped one hour before coming to this man she loved, she would have despised her.

"Were you afraid to travel alone?"

"Yes; but I brought Pen for company, Paul. You did not see that I brought Pen."

But Pen shied from the outstretched hand, and had recourse to a vial of spirituous-looking liquorice-water.

It was raining now, heavily. By some occult influence, Mrs. Sheppard had caused a table to spring up beside the bed, whereon a cozy round-stomached oil-lamp burned and flared in the wind, in a jolly, drunken fashion, and a coffee-pot sent out mellow whiffs of brown steam.

"It's Mocha, my dear,—not rye. I mean to support my Government, and I'll not shirk the duty when it comes to taxes on coffee. So you were afraid? It's the great glory of our country that a woman can travel unprotected from one end to——Well. But you are young and silly yet."

And she handed Grey a cup with a relaxing mouth, which showed, that, though she were a woman herself, capable of swallowing pills without jelly, she did not hope for as much from weaker human nature.

Paul Blecker had not heard the thunder the first hour Grey was there, nor seen the livid flashes lighting up those savagest heights in the mountains: his eye was fixed on that yellow door yonder in the flickering darkness of the room, and on the possibility that lay beyond it.

Now, while Grey, growing used to her new home, talked to Pen and her hostess, Paul's thoughts came in cheerier and warmer: noting how the rain plashed like a wide sweep of loneliness outside, forcing all brightness and comfort in,—how the red lamp-light glowed, how even the pale faces of the men, in the cold beds yonder, grew less dour and rigid, looking at them; hearing the low chirp of Grey's voice now and then,—her eyes turned always on him, watchful, still. It was like home, that broad, half-burnt arsenal-room. Even the comfortable little black figure, sturdily clicking steel needles through an uncompromising pair of gray socks, fitted well and with meaning into the picture, and burly Pratt Sheppard holding little Pen on his knee, his grizzly black brows knitted. Because Mary, down at home there, was nursing his baby boy now, most likely, just as he held this one. His baby was only a few months old: he had never seen it: perhaps he might never see it.

"She looks like Mary, a bit, mother, eh?"—nodding to Grey, and steadying one foot on the rung of his chair.

Mrs. Sheppard shot a sharp glance.

"About the nose? Mary's is sharper."

"The forehead, I think. Hair has the same curly twist."

Grey, hearing the whisper, colored, and laughed, and presently took off the Shaker hood.

"'Pon my soul, mother, it's a remarkable likeness.—You're not related to the Furnesses, Miss Gurney,—Furnesses of Tennessee?"

"Pratt sees his wife in every woman he meets," said his mother, toeing off her sock.

She had not much patience with Pratt's wife-worship: some of these days he'd be sold to those Furnesses, soul and body. They were a mawkish, "genteel" set: from genteel people might the Lord deliver her!

"Does the boy look like this one at all, mother?—I never saw my boy, Miss Gurney,"—explaining. "Fellows are shirking so now, I won't ask for a furlough."

"The child's a Shelby, out and out,"—angrily enough. "Look here, Dr. Blecker,"—pulling up her skirt, to come at an enormous pocket in her petticoat. "Here's the daguerreotype, taken when he was just four weeks old, and there's Pratt's eyes and chin to a T. D'ye see? Pratt was a fine child,—weighed fourteen pounds. But he was colicky to the last degree. And as for croup——Does your Pen have croup, Miss Grey? Sit here. These men won't care to hear our talk."

They did care to hear it. It was not altogether because Blecker was weakened by sickness that he lay there listening and talking so earnestly about their home and Grey's, the boy and Mary,—telling trifles, too, which he remembered, of his own childhood. It was such a new, cordial, heartsome life which this bit of innocent gossip opened to him. What a happy fellow old Pratt was, with his wife and child! Good fighter, too. Well, some day, maybe, he, too——

They were all quiet that night, coming closer together, maybe because they heard the rain rushing down the gorges, and knew what ruin and grief and slaughter waited without. Looking back at that night often through the vacancy of coming days, Paul used to say, "I was at home then," and after that try to whistle its thought off in a tune. He never had been at home before.

So, after that night, the summer days crept on, and out of sight: the sea of air in which the earth lay coloring and massing the sunlight down into its thin ether, until it ebbed slowly away again in yellow glows, tinctured with smells of harvest-fields and forests, clear and pungent, more rare than that of flowers. Here and there a harvest-field in the States was made foul with powder, mud,—the grain flat under broken artillery-wheels, canteens, out of which oozed the few drops of whiskey, torn rags of flesh, and beyond, heaped in some unploughed furrow, a dozen, a hundred, thousands, it may be, of useless bodies, dead to no end. Up yonder in New England, or down in some sugar-plantation, or along the Lakes, some woman's heart let the fresh life slip out of it, to go down into the grave with that dead flesh, to grovel there, while she dragged her tired feet the rest of the way through the world. Her pain was blind; but that was all that was blind. The wind, touching the crimson moccasin-flower in the ditch, and the shining red drops beside it, said only, "It is the same color; God wills they shall be there," and went unsaddened on its appointed way. The white flesh, the curly hair, (every ring of that hair the woman yonder knew by heart,) gave back their color cheerily in the sunlight, and sank into the earth to begin their new work of roots and blossoming, and the soul passed as quietly into the next wider range of labor and of rest. And God's eternal laws of sequence and order worked calmly, and remained under all.

This world without the valley grew widely vague to Blecker, as he lay there for weeks. These battles he read of every morning subserved no end: the cause stood motionless; only so many blue-coated machines rendered useless: but behind the machines—what? That was what touched him now: every hour some touch of Grey's, some word of the home-loving Kentuckians, even Pen's giant-stories, told as he sat perched on Blecker's bolster, made him think of this, when he read of a battle. So many thousand somethings dead, who pulled a trigger well or ill, for money or otherwise; so much brute force lost; behind that, a home somewhere, clinging little hands, a man's aspirations, millions of fears and hopes, religion, chances of a better foothold in the next life. It was that background, after all, the home-life, the notions of purity, honor, bravery absorbed there, that made the man a man in the battle-field.

So, lying on the straw mattress there, this man, who had been making himself from the first, got into the core of the matter at last, into his own soul-life, brought himself up face to face with God and the Devil, letting the outside world, the great war, drift out of sight for the time. His battle-field was here in this ruined plat of houses, prisoned by peaks that touched the sky. The issues of the great struggles without were not in his hands; this was. What should he do with this woman, with himself?

He gained strength day by day. They did not know it, he was so grave and still, not joining in the hearty, cheery life of the arsenal-room; for Mrs. Sheppard had swept the half-drunken Dutch nurses out of the hospital, and she and Grey took charge of the dozen wounded men (many dainty modiste-made ladies find that they are God-made women in this war). So the room had whitened and brightened every day; the red, unshaved faces slept sounder on their clean pillows; the men ate with a relish; and Grey, being the best of listeners, had carried from every bed a story of some home in Iowa or Georgia or the North. Only behind the yellow door yonder she never went. Blecker had ordered that, and she obeyed like a child in everything.

So like a child, that Mrs. Sheppard, very tender of her, yet treated her with as much deference as she might a mild kitten. That girl was just as anxious that Bill Sanders's broth should be properly salted, and Pen's pinafore white, as she was to know Banks's position. Pish! Yet Mrs. Sheppard told Pen pages of "Mother Goose" in the evenings, that the girl might have time to read to Doctor Blecker. She loved him as well as if he were her husband; and a good wife she would be to him! Paul, looking at the two, as they sat by his bedside, knew better than she; saw clearly in which woman lay the spring of steel, that he never could bend, if her sense of right touched it. He used to hold her freckled little hands, growing yellow and rough with the hard work, in his, wondering what God meant him to do. If they both could lie dead together in that great grave-pit behind the Virginia Heights, it would have been relief to him. If he should let her go blindfold into whatever hell lay beyond death, it would be more merciful to her than to give her to her husband yonder. For himself—No, he would think only of her, how she could be pure and happy. Yet bigamy? No theory, no creed could put that word out of his brain, when he looked into her eyes. Never were eyes so genial or so pure. The man Gurney, he learned from Sheppard and Nott, recovered but slowly; yet there was no time to lose; a trivial accident might reveal all to her. Whatever struggle was in Blecker's mind came to an end at last; he would go through with what he purposed; if there were crime in it, he took it to his own soul's reckoning, as he said before.

It was a cool morning in early August, when the Doctor first crept out of bed; a nipping north-wind, with a breath of far-off frost in it, just enough to redden the protruding cheek of the round gum-trees on the mountain-ledges and make them burn and flame in among the swelling green of the forests. He dragged himself slowly to the wooden steps and waited in the sunshine. The day would be short, but the great work of his life should be done in it.

"Sheppard!" he called, seeing the two square, black figures of the Colonel and his mother trotting across the sunny street.

"Hillo! you'll report yourself ready for service soon, at this rate, Doctor."

"In a week. That man Gurney. When can he be removed?"

"What interest can you have in that dirty log, Blecker? I've noticed the man since you asked of him. He's only a Northern rogue weakened into a Southern bully."

"I know. But his family are known to me. I have an order for his exchange: it came yesterday. He holds rank as captain in the other service, I believe?"

"Yes,—but he's in no hurry to leave his bed, Nott tells me."

"This order may quicken his recovery, eh?"

"Perhaps."

Sheppard laughed.

"You are anxious to restore him to his chances of promotion down yonder; yet I fancied I saw no especial love for him in your eyes, heh? Maybe you'd promote him to the front rank, as was done with Uriah,—what d' ye say, Paul?"

He went on laughing, without waiting for an answer.

"As was done with Uriah?" Pah, what folly was this? He took out his handkerchief, wiping his face and neck; he felt cold and damp,—from weakness, it might be.

"You will tell that man Gurney, Sam," beckoning to the orderly who was loitering near, "that an order for his exchange is made out, when he is able to avail himself of it."

"Won't you see him yerself, Doctor?" insinuated Sam. "He's a weak critter, an' 'll be monstrous thankful, I'm thinkin'."

Blecker shook his head and turned off, waiting for Mrs. Sheppard. She was on the sidewalk, laying down the law to the chaplain, who, with his gilt-banded cap, looked amazingly like a footman. The lady's tones had the Kentucky, loud, mellow ring; her foot tapped, and her nervous fingers emphasized the words against her palm.

"Ill-bred," thought the young man; but he bowed, smiling suavely. "If I have been derelict in duty, Madam, I will be judged by a Higher Power."

"But it's my way, young Sir, to go to the root of the matter, when I see things rotting,—be it a potato-field or a church. We're plain-tongued in my State. And I think the Higher Power needs a mouth-piece just now."

And something nobler of mien than good-breeding gave to Sarah Sheppard's earnest, pursy little figure meaning just then, before which the flimsy student of the Thirty-Nine Articles stood silent.

"I'm an old woman, young man; you're a boy, and the white cravat about your neck gives me no more respect for you than the bit of down on your chin, so long as you are unworthy to wear either. We Virginians and Kentuckians may be shelled up yet in our old-fogy notions; it's likely, as you say. We don't understand the rights of man, maybe, or know just where Humanity has got to in its progress. But we've a grip on the old-fashioned Christianity, and we mean to make it new again. And when I see hundreds of young, penniless preachers, and old, placeless preachers, shoving into the army for the fat salaries, drinking, card-playing with the men, preaching murder instead of Christ's gospel of peace, I'll speak, though I am a woman. I'll call them the Devil's servants instead of the Lord's, and his best and helpfullest servants, too, nowadays. If there's a time when a man's soul cries out to get a clear sight of God, it's when he's standing up for what he thinks right, with his face to the foe, and his country behind him. And it's not the droning, slovenly prayers nor hashed-up political speeches of such men as you, that will show Him to them. Oh, my son!" putting her hand on the young man's arm, her voice unsteady, choking a minute, "I wish you'd be earnest, a peace-teacher like your Master. It's no wonder the men complain of the Federal chaplains as shams and humbugs. I don't know how it is on the other side. I've a son there,—Harry. I'd like to think he'd hear some live words of great truth before he goes into battle. Not vapid gabbling over the stale, worn-out cant, nor abuse of the enemy. When he's lying there, the blood coming from his heart on the sod, life won't be stale to him, nor death, nor the helping blood of the cross. And for his enemy, when he lies dead there, my Harry, would God love his soul better because it came to Him filled with hate of his brother?"

She was half talking to herself now, and the young man drew his coat-sleeve out of her hold and slipped away. Afterwards he said that old lady was half-Secesh, because she had a son in the Rebel army; but I think her words left some meaning in his brain other than that.

She met Blecker, her face redder, her eyebrows blacker than usual.

"You up and out, Doctor Blecker? Very well! You'll pay for it in fever to-morrow. But every young man is wiser in his own conceit, to-day, than seven men that can render a reason. It was not so in my day. Young people knew their age. I never sat down before my mother without permission granted, nor had an opinion of my own."

She stood silent a moment, cooling.

"Pha, pha! I'm a foolish old body. Fretting and fuming to no purpose, likely. There's Pratt, now, laughing, down the street. 'Mother, if you're going to have one of your brigazoos with that young parson, I'm off,' he says. He says,—'You're not in your own country, where the Shelbys rule the roast.' What if I'm not, Doctor Blecker? Truth's truth. I'm tired of cant, whether it belongs to the New-England new age of reason, their Humanity and Fourierism and Broad-Church and Free-Love, or what not, or our own Southern hard-bit, tight-reined men's creeds. Not God's,—driving men headlong into one pit, all but a penned-up dozen. I'm going back of all churches to the words of Jesus. There's my platform. But you said you wanted to speak with me. What's your trouble?"

Blecker hesitated,—not knowing how this sturdy interpreter of the words of Jesus would look on his marriage with another man's wife, if she understood the matter clearly. He fumbled his cravat a minute, feeling alone, as if the earth and heaven were vacant,—no background for him to lean against. Men usually do stand thus solitary, when they are left to choose by God.

"You're hard on the young fellow, Mrs. Sheppard. I wish for my own sake he was a better specimen of his cloth. There's no one else here to marry me."

"Tut! no difference what he is,"—growing graver, as she spoke. "God's blessing comes pure, if the lips are not the cleanest that speak it. You are resolved, then, on your course, as you spoke to me last night?"

"Yes, I am, if Grey will listen to reason. You and the Colonel leave to-morrow?"

"Yes, and she cannot stay here behind me, to a certainty. Pratt is ordered off, and I must go see to my three-year-olds. Morgan will have them before I know what I'm about. I'll take the girl back to Wheeling, so far on her way home. As to this marriage"——

She stopped, with her fingers on her chin. The Doctor laughed to himself. She was deciding on Grey's fate and his, as if they were a pair of her three-year-olds that Government wanted to buy.

"It's unseemly, when the child's father is not here. That's how it seems to me, Dr. Blecker. As for love, and that, it will keep. Pha, pha! There's one suggestion of weight in favor of it. If you were killed in battle, the girl would have some provision as your widow that she could not have now. D'ye see?"

Blecker laughed uneasily.

"I see; you come at the bone of the matter, certainly. I have concluded, Mrs. Sheppard, Grey must go with you; but she shall leave here as my wife. If there is any evil consequence, it shall come to me."

There was a moment's silence. He avoided the searching black eyes fixed on his face.

"It is not for me to judge in this matter," she said, with some reserve. "The girl is a good girl, however, and I will try and take the place of a mother to her. You have reasons for this haste unknown to me, probably. When do you wish the ceremony, and where, Doctor? The church up yonder," sliding into her easy, dogmatic tone again; "it's one of the few whole roofs in the place. That is best,—yes. And for time, say sunset. That will suit me. I must go write to that do nothing M'Key about the trousers for Pratt's men. They're boxed up in New York yet: and then I've to see to getting a supply of blue pills. If you'll only give one to each man two nights before going into battle, just enough to stir their livers up, you'll find it work like a charm in helping them to fight. Sundown,—yes. I cannot attend to it possibly before."

"It was the time I had fixed upon, if Grey consents."

"Pah! she's a bit of linen rag, that child. You can turn her round your finger, and you know it. You will find her down on the shore, I think. I must go and tell my young parson he had better read over the ceremony once or twice to be posted up in it."

"To be sure, Pratt," she said, a few moments after, as she detailed the intended programme to the Colonel, farther down the street,—"to be sure, it's too hasty. I have not had time to give it consideration as I ought. These wartimes, my brain is so thronged night and day. But I think it's a good match. There's an honest, downright vein in young Blecker that'll make a healthy life. Wants birth, to be sure. Girl's got that. You needn't sneer, Pratt. It is only men and women that come of the old rooted families, bad or good, that are self-poised. Made men always have an unsteady flicker, a hitch in their brains somewhere,—like your Doctor, eh? Grey's out of one of the solid old Pennsylvania stocks. Better blooded the mule, the easier goer, fast or not."

She shut her porte-monnaie with a click, and repinned her little veil that struck out behind her, stiff, pennant-wise, as she walked.

"Well, I've no time now. I'm going to drop in and see that Gurney, and tell him he's exchanged. And the sooner he's up and out, the better for him. Dyspepsia's what ails him. I'll get him out for a walk to-day. 'S cool and bracing."

It was a bracing day, the current of wind coming in between the Maryland Heights fresh and vigorous, driving rifts of gray cloud across the transparent blue overhead. A healthy, growing day, the farmers called it; one did fancy, too, that the late crops, sowed after the last skirmish about the town, did thrust out their green blades more hopefully to-day than before; the Indian corn fattened and yellowed under its tresses of soft sun-burnt silk. Grey, going with Pen that afternoon through a great field of it, caught the clean, damp perfume of its husk; it put her in mind of long ago, somehow, when she was no older than Pen. So she stopped to gather the scarlet poppies along the fence, to make "court-ladies" out of them for him, as she used to do for herself in those old times.

"Make me some shawls for them," said Pen, presenting her some lilac-leaves, which she proceeded to ornament by biting patterns with her teeth.

"Oth said, if I eat poppy-seeds, I'd sleep, an' never waken again. Is that true, Sis?"

"I believe it is. I don't know."

Death and eternal sleeps were dim, far-off matters to Grey always,—very trivial to-day. She was a healthy, strong-nerved woman, loving God and her kin with every breath of her body, not likely to trouble herself about death, or ever to take her life as a mean, stingy makeshift and cheat, a mere rotten bridge to carry her over to something better, as more spiritually-minded women do. It was altogether good and great; every minute she wanted a firmer hold on it, to wring more work and pleasure out of it. She was so glad to live. God was in this world. Sure. She knew that, every moment she prayed. In the other? Yes; but then that was shadowy, and there were no shadows nor affinity for them in Grey. This was a certainty,—here. And to-day——So content to be alive to-day, that a something dumb in her brown eyes made Pen, looking up, laugh out loud.

"Kiss me, Sis. You're a mighty good old Sis to-day. Let's go down to the river."

They went down by the upper road, leaving the town behind them. The road was only a wide, rutted cow-path on the side of the hill. Here and there a broken artillery-wheel, or bomb-shell, or a ragged soldier's jacket lay among the purple iron-weed. She would not see them—to-day. Instead, she saw how dark the maple-leaves were growing,—it was nearly time for them to turn now; the air was clear and strong this morning, as if it brought a new lease of life into the world; on the hill-banks, brown and ash-colored lichen, and every shade of green, from pale apple-tint to the blackish shadows like moss in October, caught the sunshine, in the cheeriest fashion. Yellow butterflies chased each other about the grass, tipsily; the underbrush was full of birds, chattering, chirping calls, stopping now and then to thrill the air up to heaven with a sudden shiver of delight,—so glad even they were to be alive. Mere flecks of birds, some of them, bits of shining blue and scarlet and brown, trembling in and out of the bushes: chippeys, for instance,—you know?—so contemptibly little; it was ridiculous, in these sad times, to see how much joy they made their small bodies hold. But it isn't their fault that they only have instinct, and not reason. I'm afraid Grey, with most women, was very near their predicament. That day was so healthy, though, that the very bees got out of their drowsiness, and made a sort of song of their everlasting hum; and that old coffin-maker of a woodpecker in the hollow beech down by the bridge set to work at his funereal "thud, thud," with such sudden vigor, it sounded like a heartsome drum, actually, beating the reveille. Not much need of that: Grey thought the whole world was quite awake: looking up to the mountains, she did not feel their awful significance of rest, as Paul Blecker might have done. They only looked to her like the arms this world had to lift up to heaven its forests and flowers,—to say, "See how glad and beautiful I am!" Why, up there in those barest peaks above the clouds she had seen delicate little lakes nestling, brimming with light and lilies.

They came to the river, she and Pen, where it bends through the gorge, and sat down there under a ledge of sandstone, one groping finger of the sunshine coming in to hold her freckled cheek and soft reddish hair. They say the sun does shine the same on just and unjust; but he likes best to linger, I know, on things wholesome and pure like this girl. When Pen began to play "jacks" with the smooth stones on the shore, she spread out her skirt for him to sit on,—to keep him close, hugging him now and then, with the tears coming to her eyes: because she had seen Paul an hour before, and promised all he asked. And Pen was the only thing there of home, you know. And on this her wedding-day she loved them all with a hungry pain, somehow, as never before. She was going back to-morrow; she could work and help them just as before; and yet a gulf seemed opening between them forever. She had been selfish and petulant,—she saw that now; sometimes impatient with her old father's trumpery rocks, or Lizzy's discontent; in a rage, often, at Joseph. Now she saw how hardly life had dealt with them, how poor and bare their lives were. She might have made them warmer and softer, if she had chosen. Please God, she would try, when she went home again,—wiping the hot tears off, and kissing Pen's dismal face, until he rebelled. The shadows were lengthening, the rock above her threw a jagged, black boundary about her feet. When the sun was behind yon farthest hill she was going back, up to the little church, with Pen; then she would give herself to her master, forever.

Whatever feeling this brought into her soul, she kept it there silent, not coming to her face as the other had done in blushes or tears. She waited, her hands clutched together, watching the slow sinking of the sun. Not even to Paul had she said what this hour was to her. She had come a long journey; this was the end.

"I would like to be alone until the time comes," she had said, and had left him. He did not know what he was to the girl; she loved him, moderately, he thought, with a temperate appreciation that taunted his hot passion. She did not choose that even he should know with what desperate abandonment of self she had absorbed his life into hers. She chose to be alone, shrinking, with a sort of hatred, from the vulgar or strange eyes that would follow her into the church. In this beginning of her new life she wanted to be alone with God and this soul, only kinsman of her own. If they could but go, Paul and she, up into one of these mountain-peaks, with Him that made them very near, and there give themselves to each other, before God, forever!

She sat, her hands clasped about her knees, looking into the gurgling water. The cool, ashen hue that precedes sunset in the mountains began to creep through the air. The child had crouched down at her feet, and fallen into a half doze. It was so still that she heard far down the path a man's footsteps crushing the sand, coming close. She did not turn her head,—only the sudden blood dyed her face and neck.

"Paul!"

She knew he was coming for her. No answer. She stood up then, and looked around. It was the prisoner Gurney, leaning against the rock, motionless, only that he twisted a silk handkerchief nervously in his hand, looking down at it, and crunching tobacco vehemently in his teeth.

"I've met you at last, Grey. I knew you were at the Ferry."

The girl said nothing. Sudden death, or a mortal thrust of Fate, like this, brings only dumb astonishment at first: no pain. She put her fingers to her throat: there was a lump in it, choking her. He laughed, uneasily.

"It's a devilish cool welcome, considering you are my wife."

Pen woke and began to cry. She patted his shoulder in a dazed way, her eyes never leaving the man's face; then she went close, and caught him by the arm.

"It is flesh and blood,"—shaking her off. "I'm not dead. You thought I was dead, did you? I got that letter written from Cuba,"—toying with his whiskers, with a complacent smirk. "That was the sharpest dodge of my life, Grey. Fact is, I was damnably in debt, and tied up with your people, and I cut loose. So, eh? What d' ye think of it, Puss?" putting his hand on her arm. "Wife, eh?"

She drew back against the sandstone with a hoarse whisper of a cry such as can leave a woman's lips but once or twice in a lifetime: an animal tortured near its death utters something like it, trying to speak.

"Well, well, I don't want to incommode you,"—shifting his feet uncertainly. "I—it's not my will I came across you. Single life suits me. And you too, heh? I've been rollicking round these four years,—Tom Crane and I: you don't know Tom, though. Plains,—Valparaiso,—New Orleans. Well, I'm going to see this shindy out in the States now. Tom's in it, head-devil of a guerrilla-band. I keep safe. Let Jack Gurney alone for keeping a whole skin! But, eh, Grey?"—mounting a pair of gold-rimmed eye-glasses over his thick nose. "You've grown. Different woman, by George! Nothing but a puling, gawky girl, when I went away. Your eyes and skin have got color,—luscious-looking: why, your eyes flash like a young bison's we trapped out in Nevada. Come, kiss me, Grey. Eh?"—looking in the brown eyes that met his, and stopping short in his approach.

Of the man and woman standing there face to face the woman's soul was the more guilty, it may be, in God's eyes, that minute. She loathed him with such intensity of hatred. The leer in his eyes was that of a fiend, to her. In which she was wrong. There are no thorough-bred villains, out of novels: even Judas had a redeeming trait (out of which he hanged himself). This man Gurney had a weak, incomplete brain, strong sensual instincts, and thick blood thirsty for excitement,—all, probably, you could justly say of Nero. He did not care especially to torment the woman,—would rather she were happy than not,—unless, indeed, he needed her pain. So he stopped, regarding her. Enough of a true voluptuary, too, to shun turmoil.

"There! hush! For God's sake don't begin to cry out. I'm weak yet; can't bear noise."

"I'm not going to cry," her voice so low he had to stoop to hear. Something, too, in her heart that made her push Pen from her, when he fumbled to unclasp her clinched hands,—some feeling she knew to be so foul she dared not touch him.

"Do you mean to claim me as your wife, John?"

He did not reply immediately; leisurely inspecting her from head to foot, as she stood bent, her eyes lying like a dead weight on his, patting and curling his yellow whiskers meanwhile.

"Wife, heh? I don't know. Your face is getting gray. Where's that pretty color gone you had a bit ago, Puss? By George!"—laughing,—"I don't think it would need much more temptation to make a murderer out of you. I did not expect you to remember the old days so well. I was hard on you then,"—stopping, with a look of half admiration, half fear, to criticize her again. "Well, well, I'll be serious. Will I claim you again? N—o. On the whole, I believe not. I'll be candid, Grey,—I always was a candid man, you know. I'd like well enough to have the taming of you. It would keep a man alive to play Petruchio to such a Kate, 'pon honor! But I do hate the trammels,—I've cut loose so long, you see. You're not enough to tempt a fellow to hang out as family man again. It's the cursedest slavery! So I think," poising his ringed finders on his chin, thoughtfully, "we'd best settle it this way. I'll take my exchange and go South, and we'll keep our own counsel. Nobody's wiser. If it suits you to say I'm dead, why, I'm dead at your service. I won't trouble you again. Or if you would rather, you can sue out a divorce in some of the States,—wilful desertion, etc. I'm willing."

She shook her head.

"In any case you are free."

She wrung her hands.

"I am never free again! never again!"—sobs coming now, shaking her body. She crouched down on the ground, burying her head out of sight.

"Tut! tut! A scene, after all! I tell you, girl, I'll do what you wish."

She raised her head.

"If you were dead, John Gurney! That is all. I was going to be a pure, good, happy woman, and now"——

Her eyes closed, her head fell slowly on her breast, her hands and face gray with the mottled blood blued under the eyes.

"Oh, damn it! Poor thing! She won't know anything for a bit," said Gurney, laying her head back against the sandstone. "I'll be off. What a devil she is, to be sure! Boy, you'd best put some water on your sister's face in a minute or two,"—to the whimpering Pen. "If I was safe out of this scrape, and off from the Ferry"——

And thrusting his eye-glass into his pocket, he went up the hill, still chafing his whiskers. Near the town he met Paul Blecker. The sun was nearly down. The Doctor stopped short, looking at the man's face fixedly. He found nothing there, but a vapid self-complacency.

"He has not seen her," said Paul, hurrying on. "Another hour, and I am safe."

But Gurney had a keen twinkle in his eye.

"It's not the first time that fellow has looked as if he would like to see my throat cut," he muttered. "I begin to understand, eh? If he has a mind to the girl, I'm not safe. Jack Gurney, you'd best vamose this ranch to-night. Sheppard will parole me to headquarters, and then for an exchange."

THE HANCOCK HOUSE AND ITS FOUNDER.

"Every man's proper mansion-house and home, being the Theater of his hospitality, the seate of selfe-fruition, the comfortablest part of his own life, the noblest of his sonne's inheritance, a kind of private princedome, nay, to the possessors thereof, an epitome of the whole world, may well deserve, by these attributes, according to the degree of the master, to be decently and delightfully adorned."—Sir Henry Wotton.

In the year of grace 1722, Captain John Bonner, Ætatis suæ 60, took it upon himself to publish a plan of "The Town of Boston in New-England. Engraven and printed by Fra: Dewing and Sold by Capt. Bonner and Will^m. Price, against y^e Town House." From the explanation given on the margin, it appears that the town then contained "Streets 42, Lanes 36, Alleys 22, Houses near 3000, 1000 Brick rest Timber, near 12,000 people." The area of the Common shows the Powder-House, the Watch-House, and the Great Elm, venerable even then in its solitary grandeur,—the Rope-Walks line the distant road to Cambridge Ferry, and far to the west of houses and settlements rises the conical peak of Beacon Hill,—a lonely pasture for the cattle of the thrifty and growing settlement.

Fifteen years later, a great improvement began to be visible in this hitherto neglected suburb. The whole southerly slope of the hill had been purchased in 1735 by a citizen of renown, and soon a fair stone mansion began to show its elegant proportions on the most eligible spot near its centre. By this time, as we have it, on the authority of no less reputable a chronicler than Mr. John Oldmixon, "the Conversation of the Town of Boston is as polite as in most of the Cities and Towns of England; many of their merchants having traded into Europe, and those that stayed at home having the Advantage of Society with travellers" (including, of course, Mr. Oldmixon himself). "So that a gentleman from London would almost think himself at home at Boston," (this is in Mr. Anthony Trollope's own vein,) "when he observes the numbers of people, their houses, their furniture, their tables, their dress and conversation, which perhaps is as splendid and showy as that of the most considerable tradesman in London." Primus inter pares, however, stood the builder of the house on Beacon Hill, and there seems to be little doubt that Mr. Hancock's doings on his fine estate created a great stir of admiration, and that the new stone house was thought to be a very grand and famous affair in the infant metropolis of New England, in the year 1737.

The precise period which brought Mr. Hancock to undertake the building of the house in Beacon Street was one in which it might not have been altogether uninteresting to have lived. The affairs of the mother country had been carried on for nearly twenty years of comparative peace, under the dexterous guidance of Sir Robert Walpole,—that cleverest, if not most scrupulous, minister of the British crown,—while my Lord Bolingbroke—permitted to return from France, but living under a qualified attainder, and closely watched by the keen-sighted minister—was occupying himself in writing his bitter and uncompromising pamphlets against the government of the House of Hanover. The minister's son Horace, an elegant, indolent youth, fresh from Cambridge, was travelling on the Continent in company with a shy and sensitive man of letters, not much known at the time,—by the name of Gray. This gentleman gained no small credit, however, some ten or twelve years afterwards, by the publication of "An Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,"—a piece which, notwithstanding the remote date of its appearance, it is possible that some of our readers may have chanced to come across in the course of their literary researches. Giddiness, loss of memory, and other alarming symptoms of mental disorder had begun to attack the great intellect of Dr. Swift, and forced him to lay aside the pen which for nearly half a century had been alternately the scourge and the support of the perplexed cabinets of the time. His friend Mr. Pope, however, was living quite snug and comfortable, on the profits of his translations, at his pretty villa at Twickenham, and adding to his fame and means by the publication of his "Correspondence" and his "Universal Prayer." The learned Rector of Broughton, Dr. Warburton, encouraged by the advice of friends, had just brought out his first volume of "The Divine Legation of Moses"; the Bishop of Bristol had carried his great "Analogy of Religion" through the press the year before; Dr. Watts was getting old and infirm, but still engaged in his thirty years' visit to his friend Sir Thomas Abney, Knight and Alderman, of Abney Park, Stoke Newington. That remarkable young Scotchman, David Hume, was paying his respects to the sensational philosophy of Locke in a series of essays which "spread consternation through every region of existing speculation"; Adam Smith was a promising pupil under Hutcheson,—the father of Scotch metaphysics,—at the University of Glasgow. General Fielding's son Henry—but just married—was spending his charming young wife's portion of fifteen hundred pounds in the careless hospitality of his Derbyshire house-keeping,—three years' experience of which, however, reduced him to the necessity of undertaking his first novel for the booksellers, in the story of "Joseph Andrews." Captain Cook, at the age of thirteen, was a restless apprentice to a haberdasher near Whitby. And although "the age of steam" had certainly not then arrived, it must yet be allowed—in the words of the Highland vagrant to Cameron of Lochiel, not long after—that already

"Coming events cast their shadows before,"—

since we find that there lay in his nursery, in the family of Town Councillor Watt, the Bailie of Greenock, in the spring of the year 1736, a quiet, delicate, little Scotch baby, complacently sucking the tiny fist destined in after years to grasp and imprison that fearful vapory demon whose struggle for escape from his life-long captivity now furnishes the motive-power for the most mighty undertakings of man throughout the civilized world. It would surely have been something, we think,—the opportunity to have seen all these, from Bolingbroke in his library to James Watt in his cradle.

Turning to affairs somewhat nearer home, perhaps a slight glance at "y^e conversation and way of living" of the good people of Boston, during the years that Mr. Hancock was carrying on his building and getting himself gradually settled in its comforts, may help us to conceive a better idea of the form and pressure of the age. Well,—Mr. Peter Faneuil was just then laboring to persuade the town that it might not be the worst thing they could do to accept the gift of a handsome new Town-Hall which he was very desirous to build for them,—an opinion so furiously combated and opposed by the conservatives and practical men of that day, that Mr. Faneuil succeeded in carrying his revolutionary measure, at last, in the open town-meeting, by a majority of only seven votes (a much larger majority, however, it is but fair to observe, than that which adopted a decent City-Hall for the same municipality only last year). Whitefield was preaching on the Common, in front of Mr. Hancock's premises, to audiences of twenty thousand people, "as some compute," "poor deluded souls," says the unemotional Dr. Douglass, writing at the period, "whose time is their only Estate; called off to these exhortations, to the private detriment of their families, and great Damage to the Public: thus perhaps every such exhortation of his was about £1000 damage to Boston." Governor Belcher, who came home from England with the same instructions as Governor which he was sent out to oppose as envoy, had been superseded in his high office by "William Shirley, Esquire,—esteemed for his gentlemanly deportment." Watchmen were required "in a moderate tone to cry the time o' night, and give an Account of the Weather as they walk't their rounds after twelve o'clock." The men that had been raised in town for the ill-starred expedition to Carthagena were being drilled on the Common,—and Hancock, writing to a friend, tells him, "We have the pleasure of Seeing 'em Disciplin'd every Day from 5 in morning to 8, & from 5 afternoon 'till night, before our house,—many Gentleⁿ & others Daily fill y^e Common,—& wee have not y^e Less Company for it, but a quicker draft for Wine & Cider." Annually, on the Fifth of November, Guy Fawkes, the Pope, the Devil, and the Pretender were burned on the Common, amidst much noise and rioting, often degenerating into the tapping of claret and solid cracking of crowns between the North End and South End champions,—who made this always their field-day, par excellence,—to the great worriment of the Town Constables, and the infinite wrath and disgust of the Select Men. And, finally, we remark, "the goodness of the pavement in Boston might compare with most in London, for to gallop a Horse on it is three Shillings and fourpence Forfeit!"

Such were the curious and simple, but, withal, rather cozy and jolly old years in which the Hancock House was planned and built and first occupied. Always a really fine residence, it is now the sole relic of the family mansions of the old Town of Boston, as in many respects it has long been the most noted and interesting of them all. One hundred and twenty-seven years have passed away since its erection, and old Captain Bonner's map now requires a pretty close study to enable our modern eyes to recognize any clue to its present locality. It stands, in fact, a solitary monumental pillar in the stream of time,—a link to connect the present with the eventful past; and the prospect of its expected removal—though not, we trust, of its demolition—may render the present a fitting opportunity to call up some few of the quaint old reminiscences with which it is connected.

We have now before us, as we write, the original Contract or Indenture for the freestone work of the venerable structure. It is a document certainly not without a curious interest to those of us who have passed and repassed so often in our daily walks the gray old relic of New England's antiquity, to the very inception of which this faded paper reverts. It is an agreement made between Mr. Thomas Hancock and one "Thomas Johnson of Middleton in the County of Hartford and Colony of Connecticut In New-England, Stone-Cutter." By this instrument the Connecticut brown-stone man of that day binds himself to "Supply and Furnish the said Thomas Hancock with as much Connecticut Stone as Shall be Sufficient to Beatify and build Four Corners, One Large Front Door, Nine Front Windows and a Facie for the Front and back Part Over the Lower Story Windows of a certain Stone House which the Said Thomas Hancock is about to Erect on a Certain Piece of Land Situate near Beacon Hill in Boston aforesaid; as also So much of said Connecticut Stone as shall be Sufficient to make a water Table round the Said House, which Said Stone the Said Johnson Covenants and Agrees shall be well Cut, fitted and polished, workmanlike and According to the Rules of Art every way Agreeable, & to the Liking and Satisfaction of Mr. Hancock." The stone is to be delivered to Mr. Hancock's order at Boston, all "In Good Order and Condition, not Touched with the Salt Water, and at the proper Cost, Charge and Risque of the s^d Johnson." The consideration paid to Johnson is fixed at "the Sum of three hundred Pounds in Goods as the Said Stone Cutter's work is Carryed on." The latter stipulation as to the payment would be curious enough at the present day, though it appears to have been not uncommon at the time this contract was executed. The perusal of Mr. Thomas Hancock's letter-book, however, now also lying before us, will not leave one in any need of this additional proof of the old Boston merchant's keen eye always to a business profit.

The Indenture is written in a clear, round, mercantile hand,—evidently Mr. Hancock's own, but his best, by comparison with the letter-book,—the leading words of the principal paragraphs being garnished with masterly flourishes, and the top of the paper "indented" by cutting with a knife so as to fit or "tally," after the fashion of those days, with the corresponding copy delivered to Johnson. It has been indorsed and filed away with evident care, and is consequently now in a state of absolute and perfect preservation. With the exception, however, of that little matter of the store-pay, and of the wording of the date of its execution, which is given as the "Tenth Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord George the Second, by the Grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, &c.," the document differs but little in its phraseology—so conservative is the letter of the law of real estate—from those in use for precisely such contracts in the year 1863.

"Thomas Hancock, of Boston in the County of Suffolk and Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, Merchant," as he is named and described in the paper before us, was the founder of the fortunes of the family, and a man of the most considerable note and importance in his day. He was the son of the Reverend Mr. John Hancock, of Lexington, in which town he was born on the 13th of July, 1703. He was sent to Boston early in life to learn the business of a stationer,—with which calling those of bookseller and bookbinder were then combined,—and served his time accordingly with the leading provincial bibliopole of the day, "the enterprising Bookseller Henchman," who died in 1761. Quick, active, thrifty, young Hancock soon made his way in the world,—his famous bookstore in Ann Street was known as the "Stationers' Arms" as early as 1729; the industrious apprentice in due course married his master's fair daughter Lydia; and so our Thomas Hancock went on his way to credit and fortune, and last and best of all to house-building after his own mind, "the comfortablest part of his own life," with strides quite as easy and certain as did his contemporary, the Worshipful Francis Goodchild, Esq., of London,—whose career was, at that very time, so impressing itself upon the notice of that eminent hand, Mr. William Hogarth, of Leicester Fields in the Parish of St. Martin's, as to lead him to depict its events in the remarkable series of prints, "Industry and Idleness," in which they are now handed down for the admiration of posterity. And what the great painter tells us of his hero is equally true of ours,—that, "by taking good courses, and pursuing those points for which he was put apprentice, he became a valuable man, and an ornament to his country."

The pursuits connected with book-making were not, however, without their trials and troubles, even at that early day. From some of Hancock's letters for the year 1736, we find that one Cox was a sad thorn in his side, a grievous lion in his daily path. His chief correspondent among the booksellers in London at this period was Mr. Thomas Longman,—the founder of the renowned house of Longmans of our own time,—and to him Hancock often pours out his trials and grievances in the quaint and pointed style of the business letters of "The Spectator's" own day. Under date of April 10, 1736, for instance, he writes,—"I cannot Think of Doing much more in the Book way at present, unless Cox Recalls his Agent, which I am Certain He never will if you give up this point," (i. e. of making larger consignments to Hancock on his own account,) "as I can Improve my Money In other Goods from Great Brittan to so much better Advantage." Yet, he continues, "I am unwilling Quite to Quit The Book branch of Trade, and you Can't but be Senceable that it was my Regard to you has Occasioned it's being forced from me in this way."

About the month of May, 1738, Cox appears to have become wellnigh intolerable. On the 24th of that month our bookseller writes to Longman,—"Cox has Sent some more Books here this Spring, & I Cannot Learn that he's Called his man home Yet. I am a Great Sufferer by him, as well as you, having above £250 Sterling in Books by me, before what Came from you now." Sometimes, however, Cox makes a slight mistake, and then our bookseller again takes heart of courage. Thus, under date of October 29, 1739, he again writes to Longman,—"Cox's man Caine in Hall's ship about a month Agoe, brought Eight Trunks and a Box or two of Books, has opened his Shop, but makes no Great Figure & is but little taken Notice off, which is a a Good Symtom of a bad Sortment,—his Return here was Surprising to me; truly I did not Expect it. At present I don't know how to Govern myself as to the Book Trade, but am willing to do the Needful to Discountenance him, and will write you again in little Time." But, alas! by the 10th of December following, Cox had rallied bravely, and, accordingly, Hancock again writes in despair,—"I know not how to Conduct my Affairs as to the Book Trade. Cox's Shop is opened, & he has a pretty Good Collection of Books. He brought with him 8 Trunks, & 4 Came in y^e next Ship. His Coming is A Great Damage to me, having many Books by me unsold for Years past, & most all which I had of you this Year. I am Ready Sometimes to Give up that part of my Business, & I think I should have done it ere now, were I not in hopes of Serving you in that Branch of Trade. Could you propose any Scheem to discountenance our Common Enemy I will Gladly Joyn you. I fear he will have more Goods in the Next Ship. I have Nothing to Add at this time only that I am with Great Esteem Your Assur^d Fr^d &c. T. H."

We may remark, that, if Longman were not by this time brought to be fully Senceable of the sacrifices which had been made here for his interest, it was assuredly through no fault of his Boston customer. In a letter dated April 30, 1736, Hancock had felt emboldened to inform him,—

"I have Occasion for Tillotson's Works, Rapine's History of England, Chamber's Dictionary & Burkitt on N. Testament for my own use, and as the Burthen of y^e two Last years Sale of Books & Returns for them has mostly Laine on my Self, & as I have rec'd no Commitions, Some Debts yet outstanding, and many books by me now on Sold, which shall be glad to Sell for what I allowed you & now have paid for,—I say if you'l please make a Present to me of y^e above named, or any part of 'em They will be very Acceptable to me. My Last to you was of y^e 10th & 14th Instent, which hope you have Rec'd ere This & I am

"Your obliged Humb. Serv. "T. H."

Once only, in the whole correspondence, are we able to find that this interloping caitiff of Cox's was fairly circumvented. With what an inward glow of satisfaction must our Boston bookseller have found himself sufficiently master of the situation to be able to write to Longman (under date of May 10th, 1739),—

"Pr. this Conveyance Messr^s. Joseph Paine & Son of London have Orders from this place to buy £50. Sterling worth of Books; I have Engaged Mr. Cushing, who writes to Paine to Order him to buy them of you, & that you would Use them well, which I Desire you to Doe; it will be ready money & I was Loth you should miss of it, (this is the Case,—Cox's man had Engaged to Send for them & let the Gentleman have 'em at the Sterling Cost,) but the Gentleman being my friend, I interposed, & So Strongly Sollicited on your behalf that I fix't it right at last & you may Certainly depend on the Comition, tho' it may be needful you See Mr. Paine as Soon as this Comes to hand. Pray procure me such a Bible as you think may suit me & Send when Oppertunity offers.

"I am S^r. &c. &c. T. H."

Longman's next trunk brings a copy of Chambers's Dictionary, then just published, as a present to Mr. Hancock, and we might almost fancy it an acknowledgment of this letter about the Comition in more ways than one. We ought in justice to observe, however, that in those days, in the absence of any generally recognized and accepted standard of authority, gentlemen of the best condition in life appear to have felt at liberty to spell pretty much as they pleased, in New England. So far, at least, as Mr. Hancock's credit for orthography is concerned, it must be allowed, from his repeatedly spelling the same word in two or three different ways on the same page, that he probably gave the matter very little thought at any time,—taking as small pains as did Mr. Pepys, and really caring as little as Sir Thomas Browne for "the βατραχομυομαχια and hot skirmish betwixt S and T in Lucian, or how grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case of Jupiter."[1] That such spelling would hardly be admissible on India Wharf to-day, we freely admit,—nay, would even rush, were it necessary, to maintain,—but we must still claim for our favorite, that a century and a quarter agone he seems to have spelt about as well, on the whole, as the generality of his neighbors.

There is one most extraordinary escapade of his, however, in this line of performance, which we do not know how we can undertake wholly to defend. To Mr. John Rowe, a little doubtful about New-England Bills of Exchange, he writes,—"As to the £100 Draft of Mr. Faneuil's above mentioned, I doubt not but any merchant in London will take that Gentleman's Bill, when accepted, as Soon as a Bank Note,—he being the Topinest merchant in this Country, & I Gave 20 per Cent Extra^y for it." If there be really a proper superlative of the adjective topping, our letter-writer, it must be confessed, has made a wide miss here of the mark he aimed at. "Priscian's a little scratch'd here,"—rather too much, indeed, even for 1739.

That the reader may not suspect Mr. Hancock of monopolizing all the cacography of his time, we give verbatim the following letter from Christopher Kilby,[2] a letter among many of the same sort found with Mr. Hancock's papers.

"London, 15 February 1727.

"Honest Fr^d. This not only advises you of my arrival but acknowledges the rec^t of your favour. By your desire I waited upon Mr. Cox, & have told him and every body else, where it was necessary, as much as you desired, & account it part of my Felicity that I have so worthy a friend as Mr. Hancock. When you arrive here you'l find things vastly beyond your imagination,—I shall give you no other Character of England than this, that it is beyond expression, greater and finer than any thing I could ever form an Idea of. I wish you may arrive before I leave it, that you may with me, gaze and Wonder at a place that wee can neither of us give a good Discripsion of. Pray present my Services to Mr. Wood, Mr. Cunnington, and if Mr. Leverett be not so engaged at the Annual meeting in Choosing Hogg Constables &c. that to mention it to him might be an interruption in so important affairs, my Service to him also,—but rather than he shou'd loose any part of his Pleasure while you take up his Time in doing it, I begg you'l wait till a more leisure opportunity, when you may assure him that I am at his Service in anything but being Bread Weigher, Hogg Constable or any of those honourable posts of pleasure & profit. I have nothing more to add but Service to all friends, & assurance of my being

"Your sincere friend & very
"humble Servant,
"Chris^r. Kilby."

There is a letter in another book—Mr. Hancock's letter-book from 1740 to 1744—in which poetical justice to the arch-disturber of his peace is feelingly recorded. Cox [3] comes to grief at last,—surely, though late. Observe with what placid resignation Hancock regards his rival's mishap. The letter is to Longman, and bears date April 21st, 1742.

"——Thomas Cox has sent Orders to a Gentleⁿ here to Receive from his man all his Effects,—the Shop is Accordingly Shutt up, & I am told his man is absconded & has Carried of all the money, I hear to the value of £500 Sterling; of Consequence a very bad Acco^tt must be rendered to his Master & no doubt 't will put a final Stop to his unjust proceedings & Trade to New-Eng^d. I pray God it may have this long wished for Effect, the Good fruits of which, I hope you & we shall soon partake of."

The correspondence with Longman is kept up with great activity through the whole of the first third of the volume before us. Gradually, however, Hancock had been growing into a larger way of business, and his Bills of Exchange for £500 and £600, drawn generally by Mr. Peter Faneuil,[4] begin to be of more frequent occurrence,—bills which he writes his London correspondents "are Certainly very Good, & will meet with Due Honour." We read here and there of ventures to Medara and to Surranam, and of certain consignments of "Geese and Hogges to y^e New Found Land." "Be so Good," he says, in a letter of May 17th, 1740, to a friend then staying in London, "as to Interist me in y^e half of 8 or 10 Ticketts when any Lottery's going on, you think may doe, and am oblidged to you for mentioning your Kind intention herein. Please God y^e Young Eagle, Philip Dumerisque Com^r comes well home, and I believe I shall make no bad voyage." It is easy to see that the snug little business of the "Stationers' Arms" is soon to be given up, for what Drake [5] describes as "the more extensive field of mercantile enterprise."[6] By this time, too, the signs of the French War began to loom alarmingly upon the horizon of the little colony, and Hancock rose with the occasion to the character of a man of large and grave affairs. Cox's man, and his Trunks and Sortments of Books, appear, after this, to have but little of his attention. There was need of raising troops, and of fitting out vessels; and when the famous expedition against Louisburg was determined on, Hancock had a large share in the matter of providing its munitions and equipment. His correspondence with Sir William Pepperell in these great affairs still lies preserved in good order in boxes in the attic of the old mansion.

Meanwhile, as he rose in the world, he had been laying out his grounds, and building and furnishing his house; his first letter from which is addressed to his "Dear Friend," Christopher Kilby, then in London, and is dated, rather grandly, "At my house in Beacon Street, Boston y^e 22^d Mar. 1739-40." Let us look back, then, a little over the yellow, time-stained record of the letter-book before us, and see what were the experiences of a gentleman, in building and planting in Beacon Street, so long before our grandfathers were born.

Under date of the 5th of July, 1736, Hancock writes to his friend and constant correspondent in London, "Mr. Francis Wilks Esq^r,"[7] inclosing a letter to one James Glin at Stepney, with orders for some trees, concerning which he tells Wilks, "I am advised to have 'em bought,—but if you Can find any man Will Serve us Better I Leave it to your Pleasure." He must have thought it a great pity, from the sequel of this affair, that Mr. Wilks's Pleasure did not happen to lie in another direction. "I am Recommended by Mr. Tho^s. Hubbard of This Town," runs the letter inclosed to Glin, "to you for A number of Fruit Trees,—be pleased to waite on Mr. Wilks for the Inv^o of them & Let me have y^e best Fruit, & pack^t in y^e best manner, & All numbered, with an Acco^t of y^e Same. I pray you be very Carefull That y^e Trees be Took up in y^e Right Season, and if these Answer my Expectations I shall want more, & 't will Ly in my way to Recommend Some Friends to you. I Intreat the Fruit may be the best of their Kind, the Trees handsome Stock, well Pack't, All N^o'd & Tally'd, & particular Inv^o of 'em. I am S^r. &c. &c. T. H."

This careful order was evidently duly executed by the nurseryman, and at first all appears to have gone smoothly enough, since, on the 20th of December following, (1736,) we find another letter to Glin, as follows:—

"Sir,—My Trees and Seeds pr. Cap^t. Bennett Came Safe to hand and I Like them very well. I Return you my hearty Thanks for the Plumb Tree & Tulip Roots you were pleased to make a Present off, which are very Acceptable to me. I have Sent my friend Mr. Wilks a mem^o to procure for me 2 or 3 Doz. Yew Trees Some Hollys & Jessamin Vines & if you have any Particular Curious Things not of a high price will Beautifie a flower Garden, Send a Sample with the price or a Catalogue of 'em; pray Send me a Catalogue also of what Fruit you have that are Dwarf Trees and Espaliers. I shall want Some next Fall for a Garden I am Going to lay out next Spring. My Gardens all Lye on the South Side of a hill, with the most Beautifull Assent to the Top & it's Allowed on all hands the Kingdom of England don't afford So Fine a Prospect as I have both of Land and water. Neither do I intend to Spare any Cost or Pains in making my Gardens Beautifull or Profitable. If you have any Knowlidge of S^r John James he has been on the Spott & is perfectly acquainted with its Situation & I believe has as high an Opinion of it as myself & will give it as Great a Carrictor. Let me know also what you'l Take for 100 Small Yew Trees in the Rough, which I'd Frame up here to my own Fancy. If I can Do you any Service here I shall be Glad & be Assured I'll not forgett your Favour,—which being y^e needful Concludes,

"S^r.
"Your most Ob^edt. Servant,
"Tho^s. Hancock."

But neither Esquire Hancock nor Mr. Glin at Stepney could control the force of Nature, or persuade the delicate fruit-trees of Old England to blossom and flourish here, even on the south side of Beacon Hill. The maxim, "L'homme propose, et le bon Dieu dispose," was found to be as inevitable in 1736 as it is in our later day and generation. It is true that no ancestral Downing was then at hand, with wise counsels of arboriculture, nor had any accidental progenitor of Sir Henry Stuart of Allanton as yet taught the Edinboro' public of the Pretender's time the grand secrets of transplanting and induration. Esquire Hancock, therefore, was left to work out by himself his own woful, but natural disappointment. On the 24th of June, 1737, he writes to the unfortunate nurseryman in a strain of severe, and, as he doubtless thought, of most righteous indignation.

"Sir,—I Rec^d. your Letter & your Baskett of flowers per. Capt. Morris, & have Desired Francis Wilks Esq^r to pay you £26 for them Though they are Every one Dead. The Trees I Rec^d Last Year are above half Dead too,—the Hollys all Dead but one, & worse than all is, the Garden Seeds and Flower Seeds which you Sold Mr. Wilks for me Charged at £6. 8^s. 2^d. Sterling were not worth one farthing. Not one of all the Seeds Came up Except the Asparrow Grass, So that my Garden is Lost to me for this Year. I Tryed the Seeds both in Town and Country & all proved alike bad. I Spared Mr. Hubbard part of them and they All Serv'd him the Same." (Rather an unlucky blow this for poor Glin, as Mr. Hubbard had been his first sponsor and perhaps his only friend in New England.) "I think Sir, you have not done well by me in this thing, for me to send a 1000 Leagues and Lay out my money & be so used & Disapointed is very hard to Bare, & so I doubt not but you will Consider the matter & Send me over Some more of the Same Sort of Seeds that are Good & Charge me nothing for them,—if you don't I shall think you have imposed upon me very much, & 't will Discourage me from ever Sending again for Trees or Seeds from you. I Conclude,

"Your Humble Serv^t.
"T. H.

"P. S. The Tulip Roots you were pleased to make a present off to me are all Dead as well."

The last paragraph is truly delicious,—a real Parthian arrow, of the keenest, most penetrating kind. The ill-used gentleman is determined that poor Glin shall find no crumb of credit left,—not in the matter of the purchased wares alone, but even for the very presents that he had had the effrontery to send him.

After learning the opinion entertained by Mr. Hancock of his estate, its situation, prospect, and capacities, and understanding his intentions in regard to its improvement, as expressed in his first letter to Glin,—it may naturally be expected that we shall come upon some further allusions to the works he had thus taken in hand, in the antiquated volume before us. In this respect, as we turn over its remaining pages, we shall find that we are not to be disappointed. His letters on the subject, addressed to persons on the other side of the water, and particularly to the trusty Wilks, are, in fact, for the space of the next three or four years, most refreshingly abundant. Some of these are so minute, characteristic, and interesting, that we shall need no apology for transcribing them, most literally, here. On June 24th, 1737, he had written to Wilks,—

"This waites on you per M^r Francis Pelthro who has Taken this Voyage to Lond^o. in order to be Cutt for y^e Stone by D^r. Cheselden;[8] he Is my Friend & a Very honest Gentleman. In case he needs your advise in any of his affairs & Calls on you for it, I beg y^e fav^r of you to do him what Service falls in your way, which Shall Take as done to my Self, and as he's a Stranger, Should he have occasion for Ten Guineas please to Let him have it & Charge to my Acco^t. I suppose he's sofficeint with him—Except Some Extrordinary accidant happen.

"I beg your particular Care about my Glass, that it be the best, and Every Square Cutt Exactly to the Size, & not to worp or wind in the Least, & Pack't up So that it may take no Damage on the passage,—it's for my Own Use & would have it Extrordinary. I am S^r

"Your most oblid'gd obed. Sev^t.
"T. H."

By one of those stupid accidents,—not, as we are sorry to record, altogether unknown to the business of house-building in our own day,—the memorandum previously sent for the glass turned out to be entirely incorrect. In less than a fortnight after, Mr. Hancock accordingly hastens to countermand his order, as follows:—

"Boston, N.E. July 5^th. 1737.

Francis Wilks, Esq^r.

"S^r,—Sheperdson's Stay being Longer than Expected Brings me to the 5^th of July, and if you have not bought my Glass According to the Demention per Cap^t. Morris I Pray you to have no regard to those, but the following viz.

"380 Squares of best London Crown Glass all Cutt Exactly 18 Inches Long & 11-1/2 Inches wide of a Suitable Thickness to the Largness of the Glass free from Blisters and by all means be Carefull it don't wind or worp.—

"100 Squares Ditto 12 Inches Long 8-1/2 wide of the Same Goodness as above.

"Our Friend Tylers Son William Comes per This Conveyance, I only add what Service's you doe him will Assuredly be Retaliated By his Father, & will Oblidge S^r

"Your most Obedient Hum^e Serv^t
"T. H."

The window-glass being fairly off his mind, Mr. Hancock next turns his attention to the subject of wall-papers, on which head he comes out in the most strong and even amazing manner. We doubt if the documentary relics of the last century can show anything more truly genre than the following letter "To Mr. John Rowe, Stationer, London," dated

"Boston, N. E. Jan. 23^d. 1737-8.

"Sir,—Inclosed you have the Dimentions of a Room for a Shaded Hanging to be Done after the Same Pattorn I have Sent per Capt. Tanner, who will Deliver it to you. It's for my own House, & Intreat the favour of you to Get it Done for me, to Come Early in the Spring, or as Soon as the nature of the Thing will admitt. The pattorn is all was Left of a Room Lately Come over here, & it takes much in y^e Town & will be the only paper-hanging for Sale here wh. am of Opinion may Answer well. Therefore desire you by all means to Get mine well Done & as Cheap as Possible, & if they can make it more Beautifull by adding more Birds flying here & there, with Some Landskip at the Bottom should Like it well. Let the Ground be the Same Colour of the Pattorn. At the Top & Bottom was a narrow Border of about 2 Inches wide wh. would have to mine. About 3 or 4 Years ago my friend Francis Wilks Esq^r. had a hanging Done in the Same manner but much handsomeer Sent over here for M^r Sam^l Waldon of this place, made by one Dunbar in Aldermanbury, where no doubt he or Some of his Successors may be found. In the other parts of these Hangings are Great Variety of Different Sorts of Birds, Peacocks, Macoys, Squirril, Monkys, Fruit & Flowers &c., But a Greater Variety in the above mentioned of Mr. Waldon's & Should be fond of having mine done by the Same hand if to be mett with. I design if this pleases me to have two Rooms more done for myself. I Think they are handsomer & Better than Painted hangings Done in Oyle, so I Beg your particular Care in procuring this for me, & that the pattorns may be Taken Care off & Return'd with my Goods. Henry Atkins has Ordered Mr. Tho^s. Pike of Pool [9] to pay you £10 in Liew of the Bill you Returned Protested Drawn by Sam^ll Pike, which hope you'l Receive. Inclosed you have also Crist^o Kilby's Draft on King Gould Esq^r. for £10 wh. will meet with Due Honour. Design to make you Some other Remittence in a Little Time. Interim Remain S^r. Your Assured Fr^d & Hum^e. Servt.

"T. H."

There are certain other adornments about the Hancock House, besides the glass and the wall-papers, which were somewhat beyond the skill of New-England artificers of that time. Another of these exotic features is fully accounted for in the following extract from a letter to "Dear Kilby," dated

"22^d Mar. 1739-40.

"I Pray the favour of you to Enquire what a pr. of Capitolls will Cost me to be Carved in London, of the Corinthian Order, 16-1/2 Inches One Way and 9 y^e Other,—to be well Done. Please to make my Compliments Acceptable to Mr. Wilks, & believe me to be

"S^r.
"Your assu^d. Friend & very
"Hum^e. Sev^t.
"T. H."

One more commission for the trusty Wilks remained. It was said of Mr. Hancock, long afterward, in one of the obituary notices called forth by his sudden demise, that "his house was the seat of hospitality, where all his numerous acquaintances and strangers of distinction met with an elegant reception." With a wise prevision, therefore, of the properties necessary to support the character and carry on the business of so bountiful a cuisine, we find him, under cover of a letter of May 24th, 1738, inclosing an order in these terms:—

"1 Middle Size Jack of 3 Guineas price,—Good works, with Iron Barrell, a wheel-fly & Spitt Chain to it."

Several other passages, scattered here and there in these letters, certainly go far to justify a reputation for the love of good cheer on the part of their writer. Throughout all of them, indeed, we are not without frequent indications of "a careful attention to and a laudable admiration of good, sound, hearty eating and drinking." Thus, in a postscript to one of his favors to Wilks, he adds,—"I Desire you also to send me a Chest of Lisbon Lemons for my own use." And again, in a letter to Captain Partington, master of one of his vessels, then in Europe, he writes,—"When you come to any Fruit Country, Send or bring me 2 or 4 Chests of Lemmons, for myself & the Officers of this Port, & Take the Pay out of the Cargo." Alas, that the Plantation Rum Punch of those days should now perforce be included among Mr. Phillips's Lost Arts! He sends a consignment with an order "To Messers Walter & Rob^t. Scott," as follows:—"I have the favour to ask of you, when please God the Merch'dse Comes to your hands, that I may have in return the best Sterling Medara Wines for my own use,—I don't Stand for any Price, provided the Quality of the wine Answers to it. My view in Shipping now is only for an Oppertunity to procure the best wine for my own use, in which you will much oblidge me." And about the same time he orders from London "1 Box Double flint Glass ware. 6 Quart Decanters. 6 Pint do. 2 doz. handsome, new fash^d wine Glasses, 6 pair Beakers, Sorted, all plain, 2 pr. pint Cans, 2 pr. 1/2 pint do. 6 Beer Glasses, 12 Water Glasses & 2 Doz. Jelly Glasses." Well might he write to Kilby, not long after, "We live Pretty comfortable here now, on Beacon Hill."

There is a graphic minuteness about all these trivial directions, which takes us more readily behind the curtain of Time than the most elaborate and dignified chronicles could possibly do. The Muse of History is no doubt a most stately and learned lady,—she looks very splendid in her royal attitudes on the ceilings of Blenheim and in the galleries of Windsor; but can her pompous old stylus bring back for us the every-day work and pleasure of these bygone days,—paint for us the things that come home so nearly "to men's business and bosoms,"—or show us the inner life and the real action of these hearty, jolly old times, one-half so well as the simple homeliness of these careless letters? We seem to see in them the countenances of the people of those long buried years, and to catch the very echo of their voices, in the daily walk of their pleasant and hearty lives. "The dialect and costume," said Mr. Hazlitt, "the wars, the religion, and the politics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries" (and we may now venture to add for him, of the earlier half of the eighteenth) "give a charming and wholesome relief to the fastidious refinement and over-labored lassitude of modern readers. Antiquity, after a time, has the grace of novelty, as old fashions revived are mistaken for new ones." In the present instance this seems to us to be, more than usually, the effect of Hancock's quaint and downright style. All these letters of his, in fact, are remarkable for one thing, even beyond the general tenor of the epistolary writing of his time, and that is their directness. He is the very antipode to Don Adriano in "Love's Labor's Lost"; never could it be said of him that "he draweth out the thread of his verbosity finer than the staple of his argument." He does not leave his correspondents to grope their way to his meaning by inferences,—he comes to the point. If he likes more "Macoys, Squirril & Monkys" in his wallpaper than his neighbors,—if he thinks Cox's man ought to be abated, or Glin to do the handsome thing by him, he says so, point-blank, and there's an end.

——"He pours out all, as plain
As downright Shippen, or as old Montaigne."

Perhaps the particular phase of change which the language itself was going through at the time may assist in giving these letters, to us, something of their air of genuine force and originality. But after making due allowance for the freshness of a vocabulary as yet unimpeded by any cumbrous burden of euphemism, we are still convinced that we must recognize the source of much of the quality we have noted only in the naïve and outspoken nature of the writer. For, if ever there was a man who knew just what he wanted and just how he wanted it, it was the T. H. of the amusing correspondence before us.

Thus lived, for some quarter of a century more, this cheery and prosperous gentleman, growing into a manly opulence, and enjoying to the full the pleasant "seate of self-fruition" which he had so carefully set up for himself on Beacon Hill. Not much addressing himself, indeed, to "looking abroad into universality," as Bacon calls it, but rather honestly and heartily "doing his duty in that state of life unto which it had pleased God to call him." He filled various posts of honor and dignity meanwhile,—always prominent, and even conspicuous, in the public eye,—and was "one of His Majesty's Council" at the commencement of the troubles which led to the War of the Revolution. The full development of this mighty drama, however, Thomas Hancock did not live to see. He died of an apoplexy, on the first day of August, 1764, about three of the clock in the afternoon, having been seized about noon of the same day, just as he was entering the Council Chamber. He was then in the sixty-second year of his age. By his will he gave one thousand pounds sterling for the founding of a professorship of the Oriental languages in Harvard College, one thousand pounds lawful money to the Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Indians, six hundred pounds to the town of Boston, towards an Insane Hospital, and two hundred pounds to the Society for carrying on the Linen Manufactory,—an enterprise from which much appears, just then, to have been expected. His property was valued, after his decease, at about eighty thousand pounds sterling,—a very much larger sum for that time than its precise money equivalent would represent at the present day. Having no issue of his own, he left the bulk of his estate to his nephew John,—a gentleman who, without a tithe of the nerve and pith and vigor of this our Thomas, has yet happened, from the circumstances of the time in which he bore up the family-fortunes, to have acquired a much more distinguished name and filled a much larger space in the tablets of History than has ever fallen to the share of his stout old uncle.

The Hancock estate, as we have been accustomed to see it of late years, is greatly reduced from its original dimensions, and shorn of much of its ancient glory.[10] The property, in Mr. Thomas Hancock's time, extended on the east to the bend in Mount Vernon Street, including, of course, the whole of the grounds now occupied by the State House,[11]—on the west to Joy Street, called Hancock Street on the ancient plan of the estate now before us,—and in the rear about to what is now Derne Street, on the north side of Beacon Hill, and comprising on that side all the land through which Mount Vernon Street now runs, for the whole distance from Joy Street to Beacon-Hill Place. Thus was included a large part, too, of the site of the present reservoir on Derne Street, a portion of which, being the last of the estate sold up to the present year, was purchased by the city from the late John Hancock, Esq., some ten or twelve years ago. The two large wings of the house—the one on the east side containing an elegant ball-room, and that on the west side comprising the kitchen and other domestic offices—have long ago disappeared. The centre of the mansion, however, remains nearly intact, and with its antique furniture, stately old pictures, and the quaint, but comfortable appointments of the past century, still suffices to bring up to the mind of the visitor the most vivid and interesting reminiscences both of our Colonial and Revolutionary history.

The central and principal portion of the house, which remains entire, is a very perfect and interesting specimen of the stateliest kind of our provincial domestic architecture of the last century. There are several other houses of a similar design still standing in the more important sea-port towns of New England. The West House, on Essex Street, in Salem, has but lately disappeared; but another in that neighborhood, the Collins House in Danvers, (now the property of Mr. F. Peabody, of Salem,) the Dalton House, on State Street, Newburyport, the Langdon House, (now the residence of the Reverend Dr. Charles Burroughs,) in Portsmouth, N. H., and the Gilman House, in Exeter, N. H., removed, not long since, to make way for the new Town Hall, were all almost identical with this in the leading features of their design. A broad front-door opening from a handsome flight of stone steps, and garnished with pillars and a highly ornamental door-head, a central window, also somewhat ornamented, over it, and four other windows in each story, two being on either side of the centre, a main roof-cornice enriched with carved modillions, a high and double-pitched or "gambrel" roof with bold projecting dormer-windows rising out of it, and a carved balcony-railing inclosing the upper or flatter portion of the roof, are features common to them all. The details of the Hancock House are all classical and correct; they were doubtless executed by the master-builder of the day with a scrupulous fidelity of adherence to the plates of some such work as "Ware's Compleat Body of Architecture," or "Swan's Architect,"—books of high repute and rare value at the time, and contemporary copies of which are still sometimes to be found in ancient garrets. There is a very perfect specimen of the former in the Athenæum Library, and another at Cambridge, while of the latter an excellent copy is in the possession of the writer,—and it is not difficult to trace, in the soiled and well-thumbed condition of some of the plates, evidences of the bygone popularity of some peculiarly apposite or useful design.

The material of the walls is of squared and well-hammered granite ashlar,—probably obtained by splitting up boulders lying on the surface of the ground only, above the now extensive quarries in the town of Quincy. We incline to this conjecture, because it bears an exact resemblance to the stone of the King's Chapel, built in 1753, and which is known to have been obtained in that way. In fact, the wardens and vestry of the Chapel, in their report on the completion of the building, congratulated themselves that they had had such good success in getting all the stone they needed for that building, as it was exceedingly doubtful, they remarked, whether the whole country could be made to furnish stone for another structure of equal extent.

The interior of the house is quite in keeping with the promise of its exterior. The dimensions of the plan are fifty-six feet front by thirty-eight feet in depth. A nobly panelled hall, containing a broad staircase with carved and twisted balusters, divides the house in the centre, and extends completely through on both stories from front to rear. On the landing, somewhat more than half-way up the staircase, is a circular headed window looking into the garden, and fitted with deep-panelled shutters, and with a broad and capacious window-seat, on which the active merchant of 1740 doubtless often sat down to cool himself in the draught, after some particularly vexatious morning's work with poor Glin's "Plumb Trees and Hollys." On this landing, too, stood formerly a famous eight-day clock, which has now disappeared, no one knows whither. But the order for its purchase is before us in the old letter-book, and will serve to give a very graphic idea of its unusual attractions. The order is addressed, as usual, to Mr. Wilks, and bears date December 20th, 1738. As the safe reception of the time-piece is acknowledged in a subsequent letter, there can be little doubt as to its identity.

"I Desire the favour of you to procure for me & Send with my Spring Goods, a Handsome Chiming Clock of the newest fashion,—the work neat & Good, with a Good black Walnutt Tree Case, Veneer'd work, with Dark, lively branches,—on the Top insteed of Balls let be three handsome Carv'd figures, Gilt with burnished Gold. I'd have the Case without the figures to be 10 foot Long, the price 15 not to Exceed 20 Guineas, and as it's for my own use I beg your particular Care in buying of it at the Cheapest Rate. I'm advised to apply to one Mr. Marmaduke Storr at the foot of Londⁿ Bridge, but as you are best Judge I leave it to you to purchase it where you think proper,—wh. being the needfull, Concludes

"Sir Your &c. T. H."

On the right of the hall, as you enter, is the fine old drawing-room, seventeen by twenty-five feet, also elaborately finished in moulded panels from floor to ceiling. In this room the founder of the Hancock name, as a man of note, and a merchant of established consequence, must often have received the Shirleys, the Olivers, the Pownalls, and the Hutchinsons of King George's colonial court; and here, too, some years later, his stately nephew John dispensed his elegant hospitalities to that serene Virginian, Mr. Washington, the Commander-in-Chief of the Army of the Revolution, and to the ardent young French Marquis who accompanied him. The room itself, hung with portraits from the honest, if not flattering hand of Smibert, and the more courtly and elegant pencil of Copley, still seems to bear witness in its very walls to the reality of such bygone scenes. We enter the close front-gate from the sunny and bustling promenade of Beacon Street, pass up the worn and gray terrace of the steps, and in a moment more closes behind us the door that seems to shut us out from the whirl and turmoil and strife of the present, and, almost mysteriously, to transport us to the grave shadows and the dignified silence of the past of American history.

Over the chimney-piece, in this room, hangs the portrait of John Hancock, by Copley,—masterly in drawing, and most characteristic in its expression. It was painted apparently about ten or twelve years earlier than the larger portrait in Faneuil Hall,—an excellent copy of which latter picture, but by another hand, occupies the centre of the wall at the end of the room opposite the windows. But by far the most interesting works of this great artist are the two pictures on the long side of the room opposite the chimney,—the portraits of Thomas Hancock and his handsome wife Lydia Henchman, done in colored crayons or pastel, and which still retain every whit of their original freshness. These two pictures are believed to be unique specimens of their kind from the hand of Copley,—and equally curious are the miniature copies of them by himself, done in oil-color, and which hang in little oval frames over the mantel. That of the lady, in particular, is exquisitely lifelike and easy. On the same long side of the room with the pastel drawings are the portraits of Thomas Hancock's father and mother,—the minister of Lexington and his dignified-looking wife,—by Smibert. In one of the letters to "Dear Kilby," of which we have already made mention in this article, there is an allusion to this portrait of his father which shows in what high estimation it was always held by Mr. Hancock. "My Wife & I are Drinking your health this morning, 8 o' the Clock, in a Dish of Coffee and under the Shade of your Picture which I Rec'd not long Since of Mr. Smibert, in which am much Delighted, & have Suited it with a Frame of the fashion of my other Pictures, & fix'd it at the Right hand of all, in the Keeping-room. Every body that Sees it thinks it to be Exceedingly Like you, as it really is. I am of Opinion it's as Good a Piece as Mr. Smibert has done, and full as Like you as my Father's is Like him, which all mankind allows to be a Compleat Picture." It is to be regretted that the picture of Kilby has now disappeared from this collection. We have called the pastel portraits of Thomas Hancock and his wife unique specimens; we should add this qualification, however, that there is a copy of the former in this room,—also by Copley, but differing in the costume, and perhaps even more carefully finished than the one already mentioned.

The chamber overhead, too, has echoed, in days long gone by, to the footstep of many an illustrious guest. Washington never slept here, though it is believed that he has several times been a temporary occupant of the room; but Lafayette often lodged in this apartment, while a visitor to John Hancock, during his earlier stay in America. Here Lord Percy—the same

"who, when a younger son,
Fought for King George at Lexington,
A Major of Dragoons"—

made himself as comfortable as he might, while "cooped up in Boston and panting for an airing," through all the memorable siege of the town. It was from the windows of this chamber, on the morning of the 5th of March, 1776, that the officers [12] on the staff of Sir William Howe first beheld, through Thomas Hancock's old telescope, the intrenchments which had been thrown up the night before on the frozen ground of Dorchester Heights,—works of such a character and location as to satisfy them that thenceforth "neither Hell, Hull, nor Halifax could afford them worse shelter than Boston." And here, too, years after the advent of more peaceful times, the stately old Governor, racked with gout, and "swathed in flannel from head to foot," departed this life on the night of the 8th of October, 1793. As President of the Continental Congress of 1776, he left a name everywhere recognized as a household word among us; while his noble sign-manual to the document of gravest import in all our annals—that wonderful signature, so bold, defiant, and decided in its every line and curve—has become, almost of itself, his passport to the remembrance and his warrant to the admiration of posterity.