DIARY.
April 13, 18—.—Captain Welles was here this morning, advising daddy to buy a horse-cart. Frederic favors it; but daddy doesn't approve of newfangled contrivances. He says we can do as we always have done, viz., carry the grain to mill on horseback, or, when there's a heavy load, take the oxen.
Captain Welles's kindness to me is wonderful, considering that I can in no way favor him, being poor, and without knowledge, and wellnigh friendless. He talked with me to-day, while I was working on the fences, about my mind and my soul, and also about getting along in the world. He counselled me to keep a diary, mentioning many advantages arising therefrom. As what I write is only for my own eye, I will put down that he warned me against being vain of a comely face.
He was a sailor in the ship that brought over Mr. Murray, the preacher of that belief which daddy says is a sin to speak of. But Captain Welles has told me of many things he said on board the vessel, which sound heavenly; also of sermons he preached to the crew, that seem in no way blasphemous, as Aunt Bethiah says the new doctrines are.
They were shipwrecked on the Jersey coast, and experienced great suffering. Shortly after they gained the shore, a man came along, who cried out, as soon as he saw the preacher: "Why, you are the very man I've waited for so long! I have built a meeting-house on purpose for you!" This is very wonderful, when we think that Mr. Murray was never in our country before, and that the man was never out of it.
May 1.—Twenty years old to-day! Just ten years since daddy took me out of the poor-house! How kind they've all been to me! Frederic and Elinor and mammy, and, for the most part, Aunt Bethiah, though she is very precise. If I could only forget where I came from. Captain Welles says it is false pride; but that doesn't hinder its plaguing me. When a thorn pricks, it pricks, whether of a rose-bush or a bramble.
As long as I went to school the boys called me "Poor'us," "Poor'us," only when Frederic was by they didn't dare, for fear of his thrashing them, he was so stout and tall; and he has been growing ever since. Aunt Bethiah says it is reaching and tiptoeing up to the high shelves after company-cake, that makes him so tall. I heard her telling mammy that she fairly laid awake nights, contriving places where to hide things.
"Poor Freddy," says mammy, "he don't have no great of an appetite to eat."
"News to me," says Aunt Bethiah.
She's always on the look-out for him; but, with the whole house on her shoulders, she can't be everywhere. Last fall, while the shoemaker was here making up our winter shoes, Frederic got him to put squeaking leather into one of hers, and not into the mate of it. Then he could tell her step, for she would go "squeak," "——," "squeak," "——." Mammy knew, for her arm-chair wasn't a great ways off from the shoe-bench; but then Frederic's her idol, and all he does is right. Many's the nice bit she has tucked away for him, when Aunt Bethiah's back was turned; and does yet, for all he's a man grown.
He laughs at his grandmother about her plasters and medicines; but he is as full of feeling as he is of fun. Gets up the coldest nights in winter, when she's taken worse, to run for the neighbors, crying, when he thinks nobody sees. Who would think, to see him in his capers, he could ever shed a tear? Nights, when the chores are done, he sits down close to mammy, till the candles are lit. When he was little, 't would be on a cricket, with his head in her lap, and saying his verses; and she would tell him of his pious mother, who had a lovely countenance, and who died young, being willing to go; or of his father, who mourned himself into the grave, for the loss of his dear young wife.
But now he has grown up, he relates to her whatever has happened through the day, if it is only the finding of a hen's nest. This serves to take up her mind, and gives her something to look forward to. After that he reads, or does odd jobs of mending; and, two nights a week, brushes up and goes a-courting. And he's only a year older than I am! I shall never go a-courting. "Poor'us," "Poor'us." Who would want a "poor'us?"
In a few weeks, Elinor will come home for good. Her father's relations have done well by her, and would be glad to keep her always. People say she has bad great advantages, and Hope she will not be spoiled; but that can't be. She was always good, and always will be.
May 5.—'T was just about such a day as this, ten years ago, that Aunt Bethiah came out into the porch, and found me leaning up against the meal-chest. Daddy had just brought me home. He wasn't blind then, though he wore a green shade. How scared I was at Aunt Bethiah!—she looked so tall, and dark, and—hard, like Greatheart's wife, if he ever had one. It doesn't seem possible that she can be mammy's own sister.
Daddy said, "Mammy, suppose we keep him?" And she made answer, that mebby I might save poor Freddy some steps. Then Aunt Bethiah said, "More men folks, more work," and that Frederic knew how to save his own steps. But I stayed, for daddy's mind was made up beforehand, and daddy always has his will, though it is in a gentle way.
Elinor was a little girl then. She sat down with me in the window-seat, and showed me her new primer, and whispered softly that Aunt Bethiah would like me, if I wiped my feet.
Poor mammy! How long she has been sick! She sits in the same chair and in the same corner that she did the night I was brought. Some women wouldn't think of anybody but themselves; but she has a care over the whole neighborhood. She's always steeping up herbs or spreading plasters for somebody. Should like to know how many weight of Burgundy pitch and Dr. Oliver's salve I've run to the doctor's for. I remember how I coughed that first night.
"What a dreadful cough that poor child's got!" said she. "Elinor, reach me the bellows, and hold the blade o' the knife to the fire, and warm it warm. He must have a plaster between his shoulders."
So she laid the bellows across her lap, and spread a plaster, and told me not to tear it off as soon as it began to tickle me, but to rub my back against the door. And there were doors enough, I thought, set round that big kitchen. Nine poor boys, with dreadful coughs, could have found room.
I remember how we used to climb up to the easterly room door, which had squares of glass set in the top, and look through at the best things that were kept shut up there. And how every Sunday night we used to go into the westerly room, and watch for the sun to go down, before we could step out of doors.
May 8.—Helped Frederic to-day to weed out mammy's herb-garden. He keeps it neat as a pin, but has his fun out of it all the same. It is right under the window, where she can see growing her saffron and sage, peppermint, cumfrey, and all the rest. I don't know the names of half. Frederic calls them "health-root," "lullaby-root," "doctor's defiances," "step-quickeners," or whatever comes into his head.
Besides these, which he calls the regular practics, there are all the wild herbs to be gathered in. Mullein, motherwort, thoroughwort, golden-rod, everlasting, burdock-leaves, may-weed, must all be dried and hung up in the garret. Aunt Bethiah groans, but grabs them up with her long fingers, and has them out of the way in less than no time. Daddy calls it mammy's harvest.
Poor old man! How pitiful it is to see him groping about so, with his white face and silvery hair! Yet, to look at his countenance, nobody would say he was blind; for, though his eyes are closed, he seems to see with his whole face. I don't know how to write it down; but I mean, that the look which most people have only in their eyes seems to be spread over his whole countenance, and lights it up and makes it beautiful. Sometimes I turn my eyes away, for it seems as if I were looking at his soul,—and the soul is so mysterious!
May 12.—Frederic's great-uncle Frederic has died, and left him a little bag of silver dollars. He sat down on the floor, and made me sit down on the other side, and we rolled them to each other, just like little boys. He has given us one apiece, and put one in the drawer for Elinor. Elinor and I always used to keep our money together. When it is full, the box is to be broken open, and we shall buy the best books there are. Daddy has been asking when she will come back. By the 1st of June certainly. We've heard of several poor people finding a silver dollar under their plates. Frederic never can keep anything to himself.
May 20.—Frederic has been to Boston, and bought cloth for a tail-coat, and had it cut out by a Boston tailor. It is blue, and cost ten dollars a yard. Mary Swift has been here all the week, making it up. The buttons are gilt, and cost six dollars a dozen. A good many of the neighbors have been in to see it. Those who live farther off will have a chance to-morrow, when he goes to meeting.
May 22.—Yesterday was the Sabbath, and Frederic wore his coat to meeting. Aunt Bethiah took extra pains with his ruffles, so as to have everything correspond. He had on his new boots, with tassels on the tops, and they shone like glass bottles. He frizzed his front hair himself. But I had to braid his cue, and tie on the bow. Blue becomes him, on account of his fairness and his fresh color. I was never struck before with the resemblance of brother and sister; only she is more delicate looking.
She will be very proud of him. We all are, but try not to let it be seen. Mammy is, for all she counselled him to fix his attention on the discourse, and think only such thoughts as he would like to remember at the day of judgment. As we walked out of the yard, I caught sight of her twinkling black eyes over the window-curtain. Such a piece of work too as she makes getting up out of her chair! How handsome and noble he looked, fit for an emperor! Dreadful red, though, by the time we got sot down in meeting; for our pew is a good way up, and his boots squeaked, and we'd heard that all the singers were going early, to see him come into meeting, and Lucy sits in the seats.
After sundown took a pleasant walk through the woods, over to the schoolmaster's boarding-place, to carry back the two last books he lent me,—the poems of Burns and of Henry Kirke White.
Aunt Bethiah found one of them amongst the hay, when she was hunting for her setting-hen. She declares that reading is a dreadful waste of time, and poetry-books are worse than all, and nothing but sing-song.
May 26.—I wish I knew whether there was any merit in me or not. Most people can tell, by the manners of others towards them. But I had such a mean start! No matter how well people treat me, it all, in my estimation, settles down to one thing,—"Poor'us."
It is either, "I will treat you well because you came out of the poor-house," or, "I will treat you well notwithstanding you came from the poor-house." Captain Welles tells me I can make myself just what I want to be; but Aunt Bethiah says that is dreadful wicked doctrine, and daddy rather agrees with her; but it seems to me there can't be any harm in doing my best.
I am very ignorant, and not only so, but I hardly even know what there is to learn. From the schoolmaster's books I get but scraps of knowledge. Supposing I never saw a flower, and somebody should bring me a leaf of a violet, or a clover-head. What should I know of tulips and pinks, or the smell of roses, or of all the flowers that grow in the fields and gardens? The books speak of music, of pictures, of great authors, of the wonders of the sea, of rocks, of stars. Shall I ever learn about all these?
May 30.—In a week Elinor comes. Mammy thinks she will be all run down, and is steeping up white-oak bark and cherry-tree twigs. Elinor will make up faces, I know; but mammy will make her take it. She didn't see Frederic when he dropped in the red pepper. I wouldn't have him know for anything that I skimmed it out.
Captain Welles has bought a chaise. There are now two in the place. His is green-bottomed. It has a most agreeable leathery smell, and a gentle creak which is very pleasant. The minister's is dark blue. They are set high, and the tops tip forward, serving to keep out both sun and rain. Poor Mrs. Scott was buried to-day.
June 7.—Elinor came yesterday, late in the afternoon. Frederic brought her from the tavern. The horse shied at an old coat thrown over a fence and came nigh throwing them both.
I expected to be very glad when Elinor got home, but I'm feeling many things besides gladness.
The people she's been staying with are fashionable and polite, and she has caught their ways, and I can't say but they hang prettily about her. Her aunt is a minister's wife, and akin to a judge, so she has seen the very best of company, and heard the talk of educated people.
But she was glad enough to get home, and said pretty things to us all. Aunt Bethiah says she looks very genteel. She has had her gowns altered to the new fashion, and had on her neck a handsome handkerchief which she worked at the boarding-school. She has also worked a long white veil, very rich, and has made a cape of silk-weed. Besides this, she has painted a light-stand. It is made of bird's-eye maple, and has a green silk bag hanging from underneath. They don't speak of these in daddy's hearing.
After supper, he took her up on his knee and stroked her hair, and said, "Now let us sing rock-a-by as we used to." So, with her head on his shoulder, he rocked and sang rock-a-by, while she laughed. At last she jumped up and ran off to see the bossy.
When she was gone, daddy heaved a deep sigh; but mammy cheered him up, telling how thankful they ought to be for the safe return of their child. 'T was touching to hear them talk, each telling the other how good she was, and how from a child she had followed their wishes.
And to see how tender mammy was of his feelings! Never praising her pretty face, or saying that she looked like her mother, but only speaking of what he could take comfort in too.
Nobody but we three were in the room. At times they would keep silence. Then something long forgotten would come to mind,—some good thing she did, or said, or prayed, when a child,—and they would begin with, "And don't you remember," and so go on with the whole story. Truly pleasant were these memories of the past. Pleasant and sweet as the fragrance which was brought to us by the evening wind from far-off flowery fields.
A time of greater satisfaction I never experienced. Suddenly came in Aunt Bethiah and began to rattle the chairs, and to gather up whatever was lying about. Mammy asked me to shut down the window, for the wind seemed to have changed to the eastward. Frederic's girl came in the evening with some others,—good-looking girls enough. All flowers can't be roses.
In the night, I lay thinking, and thinking, and wishing for I knew not what, and sighing for I knew not what, and looking forwards and backwards till I was all in a whirl.
Is this, I said to myself, the little girl that used to hear me say my catechism? And then I remembered how we used to sit opposite each other on two crickets, while she put out the questions; and how her little toes peeped out, for it was the spring of the year, and she was wearing off her stockings ready to go barefooted. Her shoes were gone long before.
And I remembered, too, how, ever since we were little children, we had gone of summer mornings after wild roses for Old Becky to still; for mammy never could do without rose-water. She used to start us early, before the dew was off, for they were stronger then.
June 8.—I thought last night that we should never go after roses any more; but this morning, just as I was about to set off with the cows, I heard the house-door shut, and then a light step on the grass. I kept myself hid, and peeped through a knot-hole. She had a basket on her arm, and looked about, and took a few steps softly, this way and that, as if looking for somebody. At last I came out, innocent as a lamb. "Good morning, Elinor," says I. "Have you forgot the roses, Walter?" says she, a little bashful. As if I could forget the roses! The hills were all scattered over with children and young people; for it was a fine morning, and the roses were in their prime.
The sun shone, the children shouted, the birds sang, and the air was cool and fresh. It is good to be with the day at its beginning. Elinor laughed, and chatted, and danced up hill and down hill, and snapped her scissors, and snapped off the roses, and stuck the prettiest in her hair and in her apron-string, till at last I told her she looked like a rose-bush all in bloom.
June 11.—To-day Elinor and Frederic walked to meeting together. He had on his new things, and she had on a white chip hat with blue inside and outside, and blue ribbons tied under her chin, and a white gown, and a white mantle. Everybody in the meeting-house was looking at them, and several times the minister's eyes appeared to be directed that way. I could hardly tell preaching from praying, and once I let the pew-seat slam down in prayer-time. 'T would be better if they couldn't turn up at all, and then there wouldn't be such a rattling and clattering the minute the minister says, "Amen."
'T was a young preacher. I hope our minister won't exchange with him very often. He is too young to give satisfaction,—under thirty, I should judge.
August 10.—The summer is passing. It has brought me plenty of work and but little pleasure. Elinor has had much out-of-town company,—frolicking girls and sometimes their brothers. They often come out to rake hay or ride in the cart.
My diary has been neglected. I don't believe anybody writes down their unhappiest feelings, especially when they don't know justly what they are unhappy about.
Something about Elinor. And what is it about Elinor? Do I want to become to her what Frederic is to Lucy? Do I want to make her "Mrs. Poor'us"? Do I want to drag her down and keep her plodding all her days, clad in a homespun gown, and she fit to be a lady in her silks and satins? What is it I would be at?
September 3.—Our summer company is gone, and Aunt Bethiah is glad. We are having longer evenings. When the candles are lit Frederic bids mammy good night and goes off. Sometimes she sits up and puts on her spectacles, and reads Watts's hymns loud to daddy. Aunt Bethiah pares apples and slices them, and Elinor strings them up with a darning-needle. I am tired and sit in the chimney-corner to rest.
Yesterday Mr. Colman preached again, and to-day he took supper at our house,—rainy, and out of his way too! He was unmannerly enough to address most of his remarks to a young person when her elders were present. So seldom, too, as daddy has a chance to talk with an out-of-town minister! He is not at all good-looking. His hair is yellowish and stands up stiff on his forehead, and his eyes are no color. I don't see how he can be agreeable to any young girl. But being a minister goes a good ways.
I knew mammy would ask him to stay to tea. As soon as anybody comes, no matter if it is only in the middle of the afternoon, she always says, "Now take your things right off. Come, Bethiah, clap on the tea-kettle, and we'll have tea airly." They say she was always just so about liking to have company.
October 18.—Mr. Scott has begun to come here evenings. He owns a house and farm and wood-lot. His wife left him no children, and he lives in a lonely house all alone; and poor enough company he must find himself.
He comes here and sits all the evening, talking with daddy and looking at Elinor. Poor hand at talking, though,—so dull and heavy both in looks and words. I wonder what countryman he is. Very dark and thick-set. That doesn't seem like any country in particular. Captain Welles would know; for his father picked him up among the wharves in London, a little ragged boy, running about.
But then who cares what he is? He needn't trouble himself about remembering the heads of the sermon to tell mammy. I always have done it, and can yet. If he's a mind to scratch his hands getting sarsaparilla and snapwood for her off his wood-lot, he may. Have no objection, either, to his bringing Elinor boxberry plums. I never read yet of any maiden losing her heart on boxberry plums; though, to be sure, he might bewitch them. He looks like that.
November 21.—So Winter is coming in earnest. Well, we are all ready for him. Garret and cellar, both barns and the crib, are full. Candy frolic this evening at Lucy's. Had part of the candy stolen coming home. Elinor said she had a good tell for me. What could it be? Made believe I didn't care; but do wish I knew. She said 't wasn't the first one she'd heard, either. Ever since we were children we've come and gone together; but when I was old enough to offer my arm, I didn't dare. If she hadn't been away so much, out of town to school, why I might have been more forward.
November 28.—Frederic seems rather dull of late. Mammy has tried to discover his ailments, so as to know what to steep up. But daddy, by questioning and guessing, has found out that both he and his girl are ready to be married, but have nowhere to live. Daddy brags now that he can find out more without eyes than we all can with, and asked mammy which of her herbs would suit his case. Mr. Scott is getting very bold in his attention, and goes about with the young people. Last night he walked home on the other side of Elinor.
December 2.—It is all settled. Daddy knows how to manage Aunt Bethiah. Frederic and Lucy are to be published next Sabbath. They are going to housekeeping in our easterly front-room, and have a bedroom and one chamber. Another pair of andirons will be put in the kitchen fireplace, and another crane. Aunt Bethiah is in a great flurry about her dye-pot, and can't tell where to put it. I remember, the night I was brought, how mammy made me sit down on it and heat my feet hot.
Lucy has a few things. Frederic's got a little money laid by, and his folks will see that they have what is comfortable. Daddy is going to send me to buy half a dozen spoked chairs, painted blue, with flowers on the backs. Mammy has ordered me to get also a warming-pan.
Aunt Bethiah called me one side this afternoon and asked me, in a whisper, to buy for them a skillet and a pair of green belluses, with a sprig of flowers painted on them, and a brass nose. Who'd thought of a wedding setting her topsy-turvy!
Frederic is happy as a lord. Ever since he had his new clothes he has stood up at all the weddings, because no other fellow, for miles around, had a tail-coat. Now he will have a chance to stand up at his own.
December 13.—The schoolmaster called again this evening. He and Elinor converse well together. He brought me Thomson's "Seasons." He is a kind, thoughtful man, very entertaining. Told many stories of the different places where he had kept school. Very accommodating, too; for, our district being short for money, he has agreed to take his pay in spinning-wheels.
'T is a pleasure to listen while a man of knowledge talks, but a pain, afterwards, to feel the difference between us.
Aunt Bethiah was the first one that made me think about learning. "What! don't know his catechise?" said she. That was the first night I was brought here.
"Elinor can learn him that," said daddy. And Elinor was much younger than I. I hope the schoolmaster won't think anything of my telling him that I wouldn't put him to the trouble of bringing books to me, when I could just as well go after them.
December 14.—This afternoon, Frederic came running into the barn, and threw himself down upon the hay, laughing, and rolling over.
"What's the matter," says I.
"O dear," says he, "I've been overhearing Aunt Bethiah exalt Mr. Scott. She and Elinor were in the unfinished room, and the partition's thin.
"Says she: 'Elinor, I wonder at your being so offish with Mr. Scott. Now, he's a nice man, and well off, and why don't you like him?'
"'O, he don't bring me nigh boxberries enough,' says Elinor, laughing.
"'Laugh now, and cry by and by,' says Aunt B. 'You'll pick over a peck-measure and get a bitter apple at last. You are old enough to have more consideration. There he has got a house all finished off and furnished, English carpet in the spare room, and yellow chairs up chamber, brass andirons and fire-tongs, great wheel and little wheel, rugs braided, quilts quilted, kiverlids wove and counterpanes worked, sheets and piller-cases all made to your hand. Nothing to do, but step right into Mrs. Scott's shoes. Cow in the barn and pig in the sty, cellar all banked up, and knocker on the front door.'
"Elinor laughed so she couldn't speak. I stuffed my mittens into my mouth, and waited.
"'Besides,' she went on, 'he wouldn't be forever under foot, like most men, running in and out all day tracking the floor, and wanting to be waited upon. He eats his breakfast early, goes off with his men to the woods, and you won't see him from morning to night. Nothing to do but snug up, and sit down and take comfort.'
"At this, I gave a great shout and run. But," said Frederic, growing quite serious, "Scott will get her, for all she laughs at him, because he's in earnest; and I never yet knew a man to be dead set upon having a girl, that he didn't get her."
And then he capered off, and left me to consider of his doctrine, as follows:—
"Because he is in earnest." Well, suppose two are in earnest about the same one. What then? It must depend on the kind, or degree. Captain Welles says Scott is set as the east wind. Let him be the very east wind itself, and welcome; and I'll be the sunshine, or a gentle breeze of May, or the sweet breath of summer. The old fable may come true again. No doubt, a man should be honest, even to his own diary. So I must put down here that these pretty words came out of one of the books the schoolmaster lent me. But the application I made myself.
Afterwards Elinor came out into the barn to find a knitting-core. I mean to make her one, like a beauty I saw Lucy have. 'T was made of light wood, painted white, with a wreath of flowers running round it, and varnished. I shall give it to her on New-Year's Day. What a mean present! I wish I could give her something grand, something gold.
Sunday, December 17.—Mr. Colman preached to-day. I can't deny that his sermon was good. He showed himself very glad to meet Elinor. To-morrow he will be over here. He never comes into the place but what he comes a-visiting at our house.
December 22.—Frederic was married this evening. I was about as happy as he, for Elinor and I stood up. Lucy would have her for bridesmaid; and Frederic made her choose who should be bridesman. 'T was three days ago he told me of it. I was sitting down on the cellar-door, in the sunshine. He came up and clapped me on the shoulder, and said he:—
"Come, Walter, brush up your best clothes, for Elinor has chosen you to stand up, and fuss enough she made about it, too. First, she wouldn't choose anyway. Decided. Then she'd a good deal rather not; then she begged me to pick one out myself; and at last she hung down her head and looked sheepish, and jammed the tongs into the ashes, and said, in a little faint voice, 'I guess I'll have Walter.' Now, you know you're a handsome chap, and I expect you'll look your best."
'T was a great wedding. Everybody was there. Lucy is a little, pale, gentle creature. "The lily and the damask rose," I heard the Squire's wife say to the Squire. Our minister being called away to an ordination, Mr. Colman stayed and performed the ceremony. He hung about long after 't was time for the minister to leave, and let the young folks enjoy themselves.
January 1, 18—.—To-day is New-Year's Day, and I gave Elinor the knitting-core, which I was afterwards sorry I did. She said 't was a beauty, and tucked it in her apron-string.
Mr. Scott sent her a white merino shawl, with a border of red flowers and green leaves. Aunt Bethiah thinks 't wasn't bought new, but was one Mrs. Scott kept laid away, and never wore.
Towards night, the stage-driver brought a small box, very heavy, marked with Elinor's name. It contained beautiful books, with beautiful pictures. She read the note which came with them, then looked at me and blushed.
The box was from Mr. Colman, That present of mine was mean enough.
February 2.—I have been reading in the schoolmaster's books tales setting forth the sentiment of love and its manifestations, by which it appeareth that the modest maiden aimeth to conceal her love, appearing oftentimes cold and unmoved, when the contrary is the case. These are truly most delightful books, and I do esteem the reading of them a great privilege.
As I read, I say, Perhaps so doth Elinor. Just so good, and so sweet, and so fair is Elinor. And at the end I say, And with the same love, I hope will Elinor love me.
But shall I say, My dear love, take me and poverty? When she asks for bread, shall I give her a kiss? or for raiment, looks of tenderness? No. When I speak, it shall be to say, I have everything to make life comfortable; come, let us enjoy it together.
April 4.—Captain Welles talks of going to Ohio, with a few others, to take up land, and wants I should go. This seems a good way to get the money I want so much; though I should, of course, have to wait a few years for it. Daddy is anxious to have me do what is for my advantage. He will have to hire another man to work on the farm; for Frederic can't leave his trade now.
April 10.—It is decided that I shall go to Ohio.
They are all sorry to part with me. Elinor says nothing; but there is a heaviness in her countenance delightful to my soul. This morning she got a scolding from Aunt Bethiah for putting more sand on the floor, when it was on new yesterday, and only wanted to be herring-boned.
I shall leave and say nothing.
April 13.—Last night proved that I have some steadfastness.
After eating dinner at Captain Welles's I took a walk over the hills, thinking to find some Mayflowers. I had found a few, and was scratching away the dry leaves, when I heard a rustling quite near me. Then the bushes parted and showed me a lovely face,—the lovely, rosy face of Elinor, growing lovelier and rosier every minute. She had come to find Mayflowers too.
She wanted some very pink ones, and so we went wandering about, down in deep hollows, where the moss was damp, and by little sheep-paths, and through the woods, until at last I perceived the sun was setting, and we had scarcely any flowers.
Upon climbing a tree to discover whereabouts we were, I saw, a little below us, a scraggly, one-sided cedar-tree, which I knew to be a long way from home. The Beaver Brook road led directly past it.
We gained that road, walking quickly at first, but afterwards, more slowly. Daylight left us, and the stars came out. We walked on and on along the lonely road, walked slow, and scarcely spoke. For my resolution was taken. Elinor should not be bound by any promises or confessions. Only, just as we were stepping over the door-sill, I heard a little sigh, and these few words would blunder out, "When I come back from the West, I shall—want to tell—" But there I left off, and didn't go into the house, but walked about the place till nigh midnight.
Ohio, June 6, 18—.—Two years in the wilderness, and nothing gained. Gloom gathers around me. No little spot of blue sky can I discover. The hurricane has destroyed everything. I am sick, weak. O the deathly chills, the burning fever! O the lonesomeness, the heart-loneliness, of this dreary place! The lake, the sickening, freshwater lake, I can't endure. If I could but set foot on the hillside at the old place, and look out upon the great sea, and draw one long breath! If I could but stand on White Rock, with the spray dashing over me, and the wind, from across the broad Atlantic, rushing past! All night I dream of blue, sparkling waters, where little white-sailed boats are gliding so gently, gently off from the shore, and away into the distance. If I could but lay me down in one of these, and so float on and on, no matter where!
Why do I never dream of Elinor? Are we so utterly separated that even in visions I may not behold her face? What have I done, that God refuses me all joy? I don't know of being so bad. But I suppose this not knowing is the very badness itself.
Captain Welles and the others don't show me their letters now. But haven't we more than five senses? Else how is it I know that in these letters is the neighborhood talk of her connection with Mr. Colman? She never mentions it; neither does Frederic. But that is because they have very kind hearts.
I will drag myself once more over these hills. Better wearisome motion than wearisome rest.
June 7.—Yesterday I wandered very far away among the hills, knowing well where I wanted to go, and where I should probably go; but circling round about as if to hide from myself my own intentions. I knew of people who had been there, but had never felt heart to go myself. I crossed a desolate plain, where a fire had passed. Every bush, stump, and tree was blackened. After this came green hills, with woods and grape-vines.
On the side of a hill there stood a hut, built up against a mass of rocks. This hut was what I came to find.
I walked softly up, and looked in at the open door. A dark-looking, beautiful young girl, with long hair, sat crouching in a corner. Close by her was a great shaggy dog.
I had heard of the Prophetess, but thought to find a wrinkled old woman, and this beautiful girl startled me. Startled, but not pleased me; for there was no young look in her face. Such strange eyes I never saw. 'T was as if an old person's face had been smoothed and rounded out, and the expression left there still. By her dress I saw that she was Indian.
The hut was a damp, gloomy place, extending far back into a cavern among the rocks. She arose and beckoned me to follow her farther in,—farther from the light and sunshine. There, in half darkness, half light, she stood, with her terrible eyes fixed upon mine. I longed to step back into the sunshine, for a chill had half taken hold of me; but some power kept me standing there,—neither could I turn my eyes from hers.
Presently I became conscious of a drowsiness. Her face, her whole figure, faded from my sight. Then, in the midst of the darkness, I perceived a spot of light, which soon took unto itself the semblance of a hand,—a pale hand, which held a damask rose, seemingly just plucked, full of fragrance and wet with dew.
While I gazed upon it, I saw that it faded and drooped, till at last its head hung lifeless upon the stalk. There only remained the pale, crumpled leaves. I wept at the sight, thinking of my own damask rose so far away.
But while I wept, the rose revived. A ray of light streamed in from above. The drooping leaves expanded; their color, even their fragrance, returned; and it sat upright upon its stalk, a perfect flower, wanting nothing save the dew-drops.
The vision passed, and after a pause there came strains of mournful music. O, so mournful, so sad, so hopeless! I seemed to hear in it groans of the dying. Tears streamed from my eyes; I sobbed like a child.
But after a little the chords were swept by a more joyous hand, and gave forth a charming melody,—strains ravishing and delightful beyond description. Again I wept, but now tears of joy. A heavenly rapture pervaded my whole being.
As the last strain melted away, consciousness returned. I was standing alone in the damp, chill cavern. The girl, with that same awful look in her face, was crouching in her corner. I tottered towards the open door, towards the sunshine, and sank, shivering, upon the ground. The girl brought me something in a cup to drink,—something dark and fiery. It put new life in my veins, and strength to my limbs.
August 18.—God be thanked for a sight of the old place once more. I could hug the very trees. The grass seems too good to walk on.
God be thanked, too, for bringing me once more under the same roof with Elinor. Captain Welles was right. I could never have survived another winter at the West.
They were all glad to see me. As I went in, Elinor burst out crying. Daddy sat shelling beans.
"What are you crying for?" said he.
"Walter has come," she sobbed out.
"And what is that to be crying about?" said he.
But I saw, as he grasped my hand, that he too brushed away a tear.
Frederic and his Lucy cannot do enough for me. He tries to laugh, scold, tease, and coax me into health. Mammy is steeping up gin and mustard, which, they say, is a sure cure for the chills. Dearly beloved friends! They little know how soothingly their kindness falls upon the heart of the lonely one.
Elinor looks troubled.
They tell me of a great revival here, the like of which was never known.
I miss Aunt Bethiah. She has gone away to visit another sister of hers.
Lucy tells me that Mr. Scott has gone to England to discover his relatives, and that his going was hastened by a talk he had with Elinor. Poor fellow! No doubt his heart can ache, as well as other people's. Lucy says that Elinor was very tender of his feelings when she refused him.
August 2.—There is to be a four days' meeting here. A great many ministers are expected from abroad. Some mighty influence is sweeping over the place. The proud and haughty are bowed low before it. Little children leave their play, and persuade each other to come to Christ. They meet to pray and sing, likewise, very solemn hymns.
August 29.—This is the second day. The meeting-house was crowded full, way up into the galleries and negro seats. Four ministers in the pulpit, besides others in the front pews, and delegates back of them. It is wonderful to hear them tell of the workings of the Spirit in their own churches. The congregation was deeply moved. Many wept. I too feel my sinfulness. I too would come under this mighty influence, but cannot. My heart is like a stone within me. With life and warmth all around, I remain cold and dead.
Elinor rose for prayers. How she can be made any better is what I cannot understand.
September 2.—The meeting is over; but Mr. Colman remains to assist our minister to gather in the abundant harvest. In a few months, he goes to India as a missionary. I must say that his departure will add to my happiness, or at least take from my uneasiness.
Elinor is in great distress, calling herself a monster of iniquity. Mr. Colman labors with her incessantly. She cannot declare it to be the true feeling of her heart, that, for the glory of God, she is willing all her friends should be forever damned.
September 4.—Last night was spent, nearly the whole of it, in prayer and exhortation. I could plainly hear my dear girl sobbing and crying. Towards morning I heard a shout of joy, and immediately afterwards Elinor's voice, singing, in rapturous tones,
"I know that my Redeemer lives."
Then she broke forth into prayer. Her voice rose high and sweet. 'T was as if she was conversing with the angels around the throne of God. I trembled lest, in its ecstatic rapture, her soul should burst its fleshly bonds and soar away.
This afternoon she talked most earnestly with me. Her face was radiant with the warmth and joy of her heart.
September 21.—Mr. Colman wishes to marry Elinor, and take her with him to India.
O God, I beseech thee to spare me this great affliction! Remove not my only joy!
But will she do this? Has there not been, without words, an understanding between us two?
September 23.—I open my journal on purpose to write down, while I am calm, that I believe Mr. Colman to be a worthy, sincere man, and truly anxious for the spread of the Gospel. I wish to set this down, because I am sensible that at times my jealous feelings have caused me to misjudge him, and may do so again. He knows nothing of my hopes and fears. He is not to blame for wishing to brighten his days of exile with the sweetest face that ever smiled. It is natural, when you see a lovely flower, to wish to gather it and have it for your own. He does not know the flower is mine. I speak boldly, but it is only to myself.
September 25.—The Rev. Mr. D——, agent of the Missionary Society, preached last evening a powerful discourse. What a man he is! His soul is all on fire! And what language! There was deep silence in the congregation. They were with him among the heathen. They saw what he had seen. They heard what he had heard. They felt what he had felt. He closed with an earnest appeal for fresh laborers in the vineyard. From a high key he came suddenly down to a low, solemn tone, which suited well with the agitated state of the audience.
"Beware," said he, "of permitting earthly joys, earthly hopes, earthly loves, to come in the way of services due to Christ. Souls are perishing for want of heavenly food, and you withhold it. Thousands, millions, are on the broad road to destruction, and you refuse to extend a helping hand. And why? Because you would enjoy a few short years of earthly happiness. How mean, how worthless, how dearly bought, will appear these few short years, when, at the judgment-day, the souls of these miserable wretches shall cry out against you,—'We might have been saved! We might have been saved!' And still, as the endless ages of eternity roll on, the cry shall come up to you,—'We might have been saved! We might have been saved!'"
Elinor was greatly agitated, weeping often. Sitting next her, I could not help but take her hand in mine, to show my sympathy for her distress. I fear she will consider it a sacred duty to sacrifice herself. O, if she were a little, only a little less good! May God forgive me such a sinful wish! But I love her with an earthly love, and would not have her an angel, lest she soar away and leave me. Still, if I love her truly, ought I not to wish for her the highest holiness? For what shall I wish? For what shall I pray? My mind is perplexed.
I think I will speak to her. She may not have understood my looks, my actions. Yes, I must speak. My pride is gone. I will say: "Elinor, you are all the world to me. I am very poor. But don't leave me alone."
September 26.—This morning Frederic came up to me and clapped me on the shoulder (just in the way he did when he asked me to stand up with him), and said, in a low voice, "Walter, don't you like Elinor?"
The tears rushed to my eyes; I could not speak.
"Come," said he, "let us walk awhile together." And he took my arm in his.
It was very early. We walked miles into the woods. I told him everything.
When I had finished, he said: "Walter, marry Elinor. You must. She shall not leave us. She loves you better than anybody on earth. I guessed it before you went away; and while you were gone, I knew it. No matter about means. You are the same to me as a brother. All the farm shall be yours. My trade is enough for me. I have some money, too, that you can borrow, and repay at your leisure. I should have spoken of this long ago, if I had only known. Why did you keep so close? Ever since you came back, Lucy and I have watched, and she felt so sure that I ventured to speak. You must speak before it gets fixed in her mind that it is a duty to go. For what she thinks she ought to do she will do, and always would.
"And now," he went on in a lighter tone, for Frederic can never keep serious long, "now that I have offered you my sister, I hope you won't reject her. Lucy and I take so much comfort together, just think what a houseful of happiness there will be when you and Elinor are married!"
"O Frederic," I said, as soon as I could speak, "you are too kind; but I am afraid I am not worthy. Besides being poor, I am not a Christian, and I have had but few advantages. And she—she is pure and lovely, and has a mind that is well informed, and the manners of a lady."
"Well," said he, "you want to be good, don't you? and you want to get learning?"
"Yes."
"And you love her with all your heart?"
"I do."
"Well. Now, Walter, I tell you what I think. If a man knows his ignorance and seeks for knowledge, if he feels his badness, and longs for goodness, and loves with all his heart, he is fit to marry the king's daughter, and inherit the throne."
September 27.—I went this evening into Lucy's room, and found Elinor there alone. I sat down near her.
She looked up, with a smile on her face, and said: "I have been wanting to see you, Walter, and tell you what a glorious path is opened before me. I believe myself to be a chosen instrument for carrying the Gospel to the heathen. And Mr. Colman" (this lower) "thinks me worthy to labor with him in the vineyard."
"And you will marry him?" I asked in a constrained voice.
"Yes," said she, faintly; "I have promised."
I arose and walked many times across the room. When power of speech came, I said, standing still near her: "Elinor, do you remember, the night before I went away, I wanted so much to tell you something? Let me tell it now. But you know. You must have known—you must have seen—I have been waiting to make myself worth offering. I am almost sure I can make you happy, and—have thought you loved me—a little. If I could only hear you say so!"
"Walter," she replied, "I must not seek for happiness. I have loved you, not a little." Here the bright color spread over her face; for while the woman spoke, the angel blushed. "I have loved you. O God, sustain me in this my trial hour!"
This little prayer dropped softly from her lips. I scarce caught the sound of it. Then she spoke in a firmer tone: "What have I to do with happiness or unhappiness? The path of duty lies straight before me. And therein I must walk, though thorns pierce my feet."
"But," I asked, "is it right to marry without—Elinor, do you love Mr. Colman?"
"With my soul I do. He was with me in the Valley of the Shadow of Death,—spiritual, not bodily death. With his help I obtained my heavenly joy. My soul is bound to his. I have loved you, Walter, more than"—and again came the bright blushes, speaking more sweetly than her lips—"more than you can ever know. But the greater the love, the greater the glory of crushing it out. The heavier the cross, the brighter will be the crown, and with the greater rapture shall I wake the music of my golden harp through the countless years of eternity. What is this life? A puff, a breath of air. In it we must prepare for the real life, which lies beyond. When the heavens are rolled up like a scroll, what will it avail me that I passed with one whom I loved with an earthly love this brief existence?"
I prayed for calmness to reason with her, but it was not given me. I sat down, and bowed my face upon my hands. Elinor knelt, and offered up a most touching prayer,—beseeching strength for us both. As she finished, Lucy entered, and I went out without speaking.
It is now past midnight. Frederic has been up to see me. Lucy had a long talk with Elinor. It is a comfort, and still it is not a comfort, to know that she spends long solitary hours in self-communion, during which she strives to crush out the love for me, which, as she tells Lucy, fills all her heart. She had loved me almost from a child. She pined for me in my absence, and wept tears of joy at my return.
What a dear comforter is Frederic! He persuades me that before the time arrives she will grow more calm, and will view all these things differently. He advises me to be constantly near her, that my hold on her affections may not be loosened. Did ever man retire to sleep upon sweeter counsel?
October 5.—How shall I write? What words will express the anguish of my heart? O, how much of misery one short week may bring! My pen moves unguided, burning tears blind my eyes. And one week ago it had not happened. One week ago that pleasant face was still among us. But I cannot write.
October 6.—Since I cannot sleep, let me spend the dragging hours in writing the sad account. Let me sit face to face with my own misery, since only misery can I know.
Just one week ago yesterday it was that a man came hurrying through the place, telling that a ship of war was off Rocky Point Village, and that the British were expected to land in the night, to burn, steal, and may be kill. Help was wanted. Every able man prepared himself to hasten to the spot. Frederic and I got our guns and ammunition ready with all speed.
Lucy put up for us great stores of provisions. She was pale as ashes, but said no discouraging word. I rejoiced in the occasion; for, at the prospect of my life being in peril, Elinor could not hide her tenderness. "O Walter!" she whispered, as I stooped to say good by, "may God keep you safe!"
Just as we were stepping out of the house, mammy, all wrapped up in blankets, came out into the porch,—a thing she had not done before for years. Laying her hand on Frederic's arm, she said, in a trembling voice, "Now, Frederic, be sure and not go into any danger."
He laughed, as young folks do always at the fears of their elders, and then helped her back to her arm-chair.
Rocky Point Village was ten miles off. We were going by water,—that way being the shortest,—about twenty of us in a little pinky. We kept quite close to the land, and arrived there about midnight. The moon was just rising. People were collected from all the villages about. All were watching out for boats from the ship, but none came, and in the morning no ship was to be seen, even from the tall steeple. So it proved a false alarm.
After breakfast, some of the young men proposed going to Pine Island to eat up our good things, and to fill our baskets with beach-plums. This took up all the day.
We had to wait for the tide, so that, by the time we hoisted sail, it was late in the evening. The wind blew fresh, and was dead ahead; and when we had been an hour or two on our course, there was not one aboard but would have been glad to feel the solid land beneath his feet. The little pinky, her sails close reefed, tossed up and down, like an egg-shell. Black clouds spread over the sky, threatening rain and tempest.
Then it was that this terrible calamity took place. I was holding by the rail, comparing in my mind things outward with things internal. The soul, too, encountered storms and darkness.
All at once I perceived that the boom was swinging over, and sprang to get out of the way. As I sprang, I heard a cry, and caught sight of a man pitching headlong into the water.
"Walter! Walter!" That was the cry, and then I knew it to be Frederic, and took a great leap into the darkness.
I strove to shout, but the water rushed into my mouth and ears, and I could make no sound. Once more I heard that cry,—"Walter! Walter!"—but fainter this time, and by it I knew I should never reach him. Still, when the next wave lifted me high, I gathered all my strength, and shouted, "Frederic, wait!"
The boat had been lowered, and that shout saved my own worthless life. But Frederic's was gone forever. O the dreadful words!
They dragged me into the boat, with scarce the breath of life left in me. The vessel lay to, and boats were kept out till morning. But our Frederic was seen no more. And he was the very best of us all.
O what a night! I was watched. They would not let me come near the rail. No doubt there was reason.
I shall never forget the morning. The wind had gone down; the sun rose bright, and burned into my brain; the waves were to me like live creatures, dancing and laughing around us. They seemed to say, "We've had our victim, and are now at peace with mankind. Pass on. Pass on."
As we neared the shore, I made great efforts to be calm; for at home were those to whom I must say, "Here I am safe, but Frederic is drowned."
What would they want of me?
It was still early when we landed. I could only creep along the path, holding on by the fence; for my feet were like leaden weights. My form bowed itself like an old man's. The fields, the trees, were not green, but ghastly.
The sumachs prevented my being seen from the house. As I drew near, I saw Lucy standing at the back door, looking down at the vessel.
Frederic had never left home before, since their marriage. Such a happy look as there was on her face!
I crept off to a clump of willows, and from there ran down the hill and across the Little Swamp to the minister's.
They were in the midst of family prayers. All of them started to their feet, asking what had happened. I had just strength enough to gasp out, "You must tell them. I can't. Frederic is drowned,"—and then fell down in a faint.
O what a desolate home is ours! Poor Lucy! Poor heart-broken young thing!
On that same night a strange thing happened here at home. Mammy could not be got off to bed. She was anxious, and would sit up. At length, (this was about midnight,) she leaned her head back, and seemed to fall into a sleep, so quiet that they could scarce hear her breath. Then a beautiful smile spread over her face. Her lips moved, and spoke, as they thought, Frederic's name. She awoke soon after, but has never since that hour been quite herself,—never seemed conscious of Frederic's loss. She speaks of him as of one gone a journey. Some talk of her exertions the night before, of her anxiety, or of a partial stroke. But I think, and shall always think, that Frederic's angel appeared to her, and, in some way, deadened her mind to the dreadful suffering his loss would occasion.
We have sent for Aunt Bethiah. We need her firmness now.
October 20.—Elinor is in a strange way. I have never seen her either weep, or smile, or work, or read, since that terrible day. I must take back part of that. She does smile, as she sits idle, playing with her fingers,—smiles and moves her lips like—But I cannot bear to write what she is like. I will never believe it. She was in a state of excitement, and this blow has staggered her. But she will recover. God will not deal with us so hardly.
Mr. Colman is away, making his preparations. He surely will not take with him this poor, helpless girl.
November 7.—O, he was so good, so lovely!—noble-looking, and in his very best days. Always was something cheering or lively dropping from his lips. And to think that the last words he uttered were those cries of agony from the dark waters,—"Walter! Walter!"
All night I toss among the dreadful waves, with that cry ringing in my ears; or I strive to clutch at a man's form, as it pitches headlong; or take again that fearful leap, and, at the shock, wake in horror.
Such a dear friend as he was to me! I remember that last night he came to my chamber, so kind, so comforting. And what did I ever do for him? O, if I could only think of anything I ever did for him!
December 12.—The minister talked with me soothingly to-day of the love of God for his children. I feel to-night willing to trust all to Him.
Let the worst happen that can happen, I will bow my head in submission. What matters the few years' sadness of an obscure being? Nothing in the universe stands affected by my grief. Can I not bear what is mine own? Still, even Jesus prayed that the cup might pass.
January 9.—Mr. Colman is in the place. I am sorry. Let me try my best, I have to hate that man—a little. In my secret thoughts I call him my enemy. Did he think, because he was a preacher, that he could pick and choose,—that nothing was too good for him?
I must write down my bad thoughts sometimes. No doubt he is a good man, after all. But he must not meet Elinor now, not if he were a seraph.
January 10.—He came this afternoon, and I met him at the gate. He inquired for Elinor. I asked if he would like to see her, and drew him towards the window of the east room, Lucy's room (Lucy is with her mother). The shutters of this window were partly open. All the others were closed.
Elinor was at the farther end of the room. A little light came in from the window over the kitchen door, or we could hardly have seen her. She was sitting on a low stool, bending forward a little, her head drooping, her hands loosely clasped, and oh! so thin, so white, so lifeless, so like a blighted, wilted flower! What semblance was there of the rosy, smiling face that had so long brightened the old home?
Once she smiled, and then her lips moved as they do often. He shuddered at the sight. "She mourns for her brother," said he. "I will go in and speak to her some words of consolation."
"No, sir," said I. "What you see is not grief, but almost insanity. Shall I tell you the cause?"
Then I drew him from the house to a wide field near by, and as we walked talked to him mildly, but with some boldness.
I made known my love for her, and her own confession to Lucy. I made it plain to him that, in striving against nature, her mind had become unsettled, and so unable to bear that terrible shock. And, finally, I implored him not to take away so frail a being to perish among strangers.
I was surprised that he made no answer. He left me abruptly and walked towards the minister's. Was he offended?
January 11.—This morning a boy brought a note from Mr. Colman, requesting me to come and see him. I went as soon as I could leave home.
He came down to the door and asked me up into his chamber. After handing me a chair, he seated himself at the table, where he remained for some minutes with his head bowed. When he looked up, I was startled at the pale and sorrow-stricken look of his face.
"Young man," said he, "I have passed the night in self-examination, and now I wish to confess that I have deceived myself, injured you, and destroyed the peace of one precious to us both. In gaining a laborer for Christ, I hoped also to gain comfort for my own heart. Still," he added, earnestly, "I was not wholly selfish. I really believed that, under God, she might become a mighty instrument for good. Who so fitted to teach the Gospel as the pure-hearted? I hoped to gain her love. She seemed—there was something in her manner that—but let it pass. I was walking in a dream. 'T was surely a dream, or I should have known that such happiness was not for me.
"Love met me once. It was in early youth. As fair, as lovely a being as God ever made yielded up to me her young heart, and then drooped and died. Years passed. I never thought to meet love again.
"It was while preaching here that I first saw Elinor. I was struck with the resemblance to her who once bloomed in just such loveliness. There was the same purity, the same sweetness, the same dewy freshness. Even the dress was similar,—the lovely blue and white, harmonizing so well with that fair beauty.
"My agitation was so great I could scarcely go on with the services. From that day my dead heart became alive again. Fountains of feeling, which I had deemed sealed forever, burst forth afresh. I dreamed I should walk in light, and not in darkness.
"But it is all past. False hopes shall mislead me no more. I will live solely for the glory of God, since such is His will. Was not that will made plain to me in my early youth? I have asked His forgiveness, and now," he added, extending his hand, "I ask yours. She will recover. With her your life will be blest.
"I will not even bid her farewell. But when health and strength return, when she is yours and you are hers, will you not sometimes speak together of me? Shall you be unwilling to cast for a moment a shadow across the brightness of life, by remembering a lonely man passing his days in exile, without one flower of love to cheer him?"
He was deeply agitated, and from the first had grown more and more earnest. I stood like one confounded. A minister of the Gospel was asking my forgiveness. He whom I had thought proud and haughty was shedding tears. The moment he humbled himself, I seemed to sink below him, O so far!
I told him this, and every feeling I had ever had against him. And, sitting there together, we had a long and friendly talk about Elinor and Frederic and the old people. Before I left, he handed me a letter addressed to Elinor, which he requested me, when she should recover, to give to her.
February 27.—To-day, upon going suddenly into Frederic's room, I found Elinor there, weeping. This was a welcome sight. She had found in the drawer a pair of his mittens,—gray, spotted with red; also a little box which he had given her, and a picture, with "To my sister" written on the back.
She was crouched upon the floor, with these spread out before her, weeping bitterly. I raised her up, speaking soothing words, and drew her towards the window, where the sun shone in, bright and warm.
It was long before she grew calm. I judged it best to say but little. But O the joy of knowing she is saved!
March 17.—To-day Elinor did many little things for mammy, who is now very feeble, and requires constant attention. It is long since she has risen from her bed, and she is for the greater part of the time in a sleep or stupor. Sometimes she revives a little, and seeing, perhaps, some neighbors or friends in the room, will say, "Now you must all stay to tea," or, "Is anybody sick in your neighborhood?" and then drop off again.
I watched Elinor, as she bent over the bed, with tears in my eyes, but joy in my heart. When I left the room, she followed me out, and sat down near me, and whispered, "Let us talk about him."
And then we spoke freely of our dear Frederic,—spoke of his noble heart, of his goodness, of all his pleasant ways. Many little incidents of his life were remembered.
"Frederic is in heaven," I whispered.
"I know he is," she answered calmly, and as if she knew with a knowledge not of earth.
April 15.—Elinor has been growing more like herself ever since the day I found her crying in Frederic's room. She busies herself about the house, talks cheerfully with her grandfather, and does much for his comfort. Good old man! He said to me, the other day: "Walter, I am very wicked. I do not mourn for Frederic. My days here are but few; and I rejoice to think that, when I pass over the river, he will welcome me to the other shore. I strive against this happy thought, but it will come. I wanted to tell somebody of my wicked feelings."
"O, don't talk to me so!" I said, "don't call yourself wicked."
I shall always love Aunt Bethiah, she is so kind to him and to us all. She loved Frederic dearly, in her way. I have noticed that she never sets on the table, at meal-times, the things he used to like best.
June 9.—All my anxiety about Elinor is gone. The color and the smiles are coming back to her face, and the light to her eye. She is almost her old self again. Only, when people have suffered a great deal, some sign of it will always remain.
June 12.—Yesterday, I brought in to her a bunch of wild-roses. She put them in a tumbler, and carried them into mammy's room. This morning she came out with her basket. "Let us be children again," she said. "Let us go for some roses."
So we went over the hills; and, as we passed along the pasture-road, we found ourselves walking hand in hand.
Every day I think I will ask her to be my wife, and every day I put it off till another time. The reason is, that I fear to disturb this pleasant season. I don't know what she thinks about Mr. Colman. She has never mentioned his name.
There are more ways of telling things than by word of mouth. I set my love before her in a thousand ways, and she never throws it back upon me. I shall give her the letter to-morrow.
June 16.—Yesterday, after tea, we sat all together, in mammy's room, till almost dark. She was in an uneasy way, and daddy calmed her down by saying hymns to her,—the very ones she used to read to him. Elinor was making a wreath of oak-leaves for a young girl in the next house, who was going to have a party. I was picking out for her the fairest leaves, equal in size. Daddy said his verses in a sing-song way, so that mammy at last fell quietly asleep, and we spoke to each other softly, so as not to disturb her.
All at once daddy spoke out; and says he, in a slow, quiet way: "Blind folks, you know, hear very quick. I do myself, and sometimes even more than is spoken. For instance, to-night, when Walter says, 'Here is a beautiful leaf for you,' I can hear, 'I love you with all my heart.' And when Elinor says, 'And it will just match this one,' I can hear, 'You can't love me any more than I do you.' Now, children, what are you waiting for?"
Dear old man! I felt like throwing my arms right about his neck, and started up for that purpose. But Elinor came first, and so—
"Never mind me," says daddy, "I'm blind, you know."
Whereupon, I explained that Elinor had taken what was meant for him.
And when we grew a little calm he began to plan plans.
And after that we two took a long walk; and neither of us knew whither we went, or how long we stayed. But during the walk she confessed to me her belief, that God made the heart, as well as the soul, and would never require one to be crushed for the sake of the other. She gave me Mr. Colman's letter. It was as follows:—
[Omitted.]
About one o'clock, I should think it was, that night, something happened, and, when daylight came, I hardly knew whether it had happened or not.
I had been lying awake some hours, recalling all my past life,—thinking over and over again how a poor, friendless boy had reached a great happiness; and every time I came to the happiness, tears of joy would fill my eyes, and I could not sleep, and did not wish to.
And while I lay in this blissful state, there came floating upon the air strains of the most heavenly music. The whole room was filled with melody. And with the music came the consciousness of its being familiar to me. Where had I heard those sweet strains before? They grew fainter. Raising my head, that no note might escape me, I awoke myself from a sort of trance into which I did not know of having fallen; for I was sure my eyes had not once been closed.
The last, faint sounds died away. Instantly there flashed upon my mind the remembrance of that strange music in the Western wilderness.
THE DARWINIAN THEORY.
Great interest has been awakened, of late, by the promulgation of a new "Theory of Creation"; and non-scientific readers have met with numerous controversial articles in the journals, magazines, and newspapers of the day. The name of Darwin, after having been honorably known for a quarter of a century to the scientists of the world, has become familiar to us all as that of the author of this new theory. A word has been added to our vocabulary. "Darwinian" is now a distinctive epithet wherewith to individualize the new school of thought, and an appellation to designate its votaries. Notwithstanding the interest which Mr. Darwin's writings and the replies of his opponents have created, and the constant allusion to them in publications of all kinds; in spite of the active warfare they have incited; in spite of the sneers and sarcasms which have been launched by writers, lecturers, and preachers,—sure means of advertisement among the people,—few really and thoroughly comprehend Mr. Darwin's idea. A lecturer, alluding to it lately, says that it will be worthy of consideration when we see an ape turn into a man; and this is about the extent, we imagine, to which the great mass of people understand a theory which has been received as revelation by many of the first scientific men of the age,—men who have given their lives to patient, profound, untiring, unimpassioned study of nature, and who rank among the foremost thinkers of the world.
Leaving the argumentative detail to those whose learning is the only armory which can supply weapons adequate to the maintenance of the struggle, let us see if we cannot explain the idea which causes it; nor consider its verification to lie in the metamorphosis of an ape into a man.
Darwin's idea is generally conceived to be a new one. This is not strictly the case. The real foundation was laid long ago. It is the law of persistent force, acting on the universe. This is as old as Buddha, and was a dogma of Buddhism. It has been enunciated in some form or other for ages. But Darwin has infused into it a new vital strength, has given it new application, has clearly explained its workings, has been its prophet to the people. To fully understand the history and progress of the Darwinian theory, we must look back many years, and trace the influence which theology has had upon the advance of scientific knowledge.
For centuries the Bible was understood to contain a perfect, exact, undoubted account of the origin of the world. It was believed by everybody that the world was made in six days. The very imperfect acquaintance which the ancients had with geology and physics allowed them to accept this relation unchallenged. Faith was far stronger than reason; and, during the long ages in which the Church ruled supreme, this statement was accepted and implicitly believed by the whole race of Christians. But as men began to grow more enlightened,—as, one by one, the secrets of nature were revealed to the students whose desire for knowledge overbore their tacit acceptance of tradition,—doubts began to arise as to the possibility of the truth of this long-cherished idea. When the printing-press came, and enabled these ardent explorers to communicate freely the results of their studious labors, the leaven of discredit, thus disseminated, began to work in the mass, and the reason of men began to rise beneath the superincumbent theological pressure which had so long weighed upon it. The multitude of facts gathered together by these careful students became, by and by, so vast, and the conclusions to which they led so indubitable, that the theologians were forced, out of simple common-sense, to revise their expoundings of the sacred writings.
When it was found that the earth was made up of vast depositions of matter which contained the remains of long-extinct creatures, whose fragments were buried in solid rocks, once soft, oozy mud; when it was found that other rocks, hundreds of feet in thickness, were wholly composed of the imperishable remains of other extinct animals, which once lived and died and were gathered together in waters which broke over the very spot where these rocks now rise; when it was found that untold millions of years were necessary for the formation of one single group of these rocks, among many equally vast; when it was found that, in the memory of man, during the lapse of at least five thousand years, the earth had undergone no appreciable change; when it was found that the earth was the result of the action of laws existent in matter,—an upheaving, a washing away, a hardening, a disintegrating through a period of time beyond the conception of man,—the theologians were forced to substitute periods for days. When the old walls which had circumscribed man's mind became so crumbled as to allow of egress, individuals broke through them and revelled in the freedom of intelligent thought. When these walls were demolished by those who had themselves erected them, they were leaped, in all directions, by ardent explorers; and naturalists, no longer restrained by tradition, rushed upon voyages of discovery into the teeming world before them.
For a while this emancipation exhausted itself in the contemplation of the physical world, and an inquiry into brute life. Speculations and theories might riot in a past which was a practical eternity. They had unlimited space wherein to project, backward, the structure of the universe. But this long-stretching past was to be peopled only by the lower orders of animal life. The rocks were found to be filled with stony remains of animals who perished when the sandstone, which built old crumbling castles, was sea-shore mud; the chalk hills which bore them were found to be made up of myriads of little creatures. These humble representatives of life might be, must be, credited with a remote antiquity. But man was not an animal. He was a being apart. Although he was liable to heat and cold, disease and death, although his body was made of the same materials as the brute's, and was subject to the same laws of life, he was invested with an individuality which separated him from them. For a while the old influence of theological rule held even these venturous explorers to the ancient landmarks of human origin. By and by, the same impulse which had before led men to examine the proofs of physical creation induced them to consider the evidence of their own advent upon earth. Certain Scriptural statements did not appear reconcilable with each other. Cain went forth and builded a city; and there were artificers in brass and iron. Now Cain was only one of two men when he went forth. Whence came the citizens of that early settlement, and how did they understand the production of brass, a composite metal? How was it that man always met man wherever he went on the globe? Five thousand years ago the varied races were known to be distinct as now, and yet man was formerly said to be but about six thousand years old. Could one thousand years have produced the changes then evident, while five thousand succeeding years have scarce altered these different races? These and many other difficulties led thinkers to question whether man might not look much farther back into the past for his origin, and whether the same laws which had governed the birth, continuance, and distribution of other animals were not always in action to produce in him kindred results. The old belief, that all men descended from one man, began to be shaken; and good, honest, faithful Christians expressed their doubts of the matter. It was surmised that they were created in numbers. The old idea, that animals were all created in individual pairs, was found to be incompatible with the discovery of animal remains, in profusion, in rocks which were mud ages before any Adam could have existed to give them Hebrew names. Then, breaking away from the theological bonds, there sprang into active thought men of far-reaching minds, who began a thorough reconstruction of the whole theory of creation. The handwriting on the wall was Natural Law. All creation, man included, was but the result of one undeviating, unceasing, eternal, all-pervading law, and the state of the universe at any given moment was the state of evolution which that universe exhibited. Behind this law was the great inscrutable Spirit-power.
The infinite number of varied, aggregated facts stored up by man's patient study of this universe are irrelevant here, in a sketch of the progressive advance of his knowledge of creation. Those who desire to examine the evidence which has led to this verdict must go over the records themselves, or accept, out of their own convictions, the result of the examination. To entirely comprehend the Darwinian idea, one should be, to a certain extent, familiar with the principles of science. In other words, he should know more or less of what Darwin knows. He should be familiar with the general results of man's study in the different branches of science. He need not be an astronomer, a physicist, a geologist, a zoölogist, a botanist; but he should have a general acquaintance with the results of the labors of those who are such. He should, to a certain extent, understand the workings of Natural Law.
This is the great battle-ground on which the struggle is now taking place. The point at issue is, whether the physical changes of the material world, the introduction, continuance, and variation of organized beings, are due to the direct, special intervention of Deity, or whether they are the results of primeval laws, inherent in matter, and out of whose workings spring the phenomena of nature. The adherents to the former opinion maintain that the Deity has created all animals individually, or in individual species, by direct action, apart from natural forces, and indeed by an interference therewith. The votaries of the latter deny special creation, and maintain that all animals are, like the rest of the universe, the results of forces acting through all time, producing, by their diverse changing influences, the variations which, as they have widened and strengthened, have resulted in the difference exhibited among animals. The first is the old traditional idea, having its foundation in belief, and drawing its support from the Scriptures. The last is the modern conviction, having its foundation in reason, and drawing its support from the study of nature. How are these differences among animate creatures—these wide contrasts of form, size, and habits—produced, if not by God's special creation? This is the question which Mr. Darwin and his school of thinkers are seeking to answer.
Some half a century ago, M. Lamarck, a French naturalist, propounded a theory which excited the derision of the whole world. He accounted for these variations by suggesting that, as any special want was felt by an animal, the body took on that structure which was required to relieve it. To give a broad illustration: if men needed to fly for the support of life, wings would gradually grow out from their shoulders. Ridiculous as this may be, it showed that thinkers were at that time endeavoring to account, on purely natural grounds, for what they considered natural, and not supernatural phenomena.
Some twenty years ago, a book made its appearance which startled the whole reading world, and caused as much dispute as Darwin has since done. This was "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation." It was anonymous, and the author has never acknowledged it: to this day he is unknown. This book was learned and lucid. It was received with delight by those who were still looking for some explanation of animal origin on natural grounds; and was derided quite as much as Lamarck's work by the adherents to the old traditional belief. Scouted by the great majority of naturalists, who still clung with tenacity to the notions of their predecessors, stigmatized as atheistic and abominable by theologians, it was first read with eagerness, and then put aside; and though it went through many editions, it is now almost forgotten. But this book was the beginning of Darwinism. It says:—
"We have seen powerful evidence that the construction of this globe and its associates, and, inferentially, that of all the other globes in space, was the result, not of any immediate or personal exertion on the part of Deity, but of natural laws which are expressions of his will. What is to hinder our supposing that the organic creation is also the result of natural laws, which are in like manner an expression of his will?"
Referring to the Deity as the great motive-power of all the universe, the author says:—
"To a reasonable mind the Divine attributes must appear, not diminished or reduced in any way, by supposing a creation by law, but infinitely exalted. It is the narrowest of all views of the Deity, and characteristic of a humble class of intellects, to suppose him acting constantly in particular ways for particular occasions. It, for one thing, greatly detracts from his foresight,—the most undeniable of all the attributes of Omnipotence. It lowers him towards the level of our own humble intellects. Much more worthy of him it surely is to suppose that all things have been commissioned by him from the first, though neither is he absent from a particle of the current of natural affairs in one sense, seeing that the whole system is continually supported by his providence.... When all is seen to be the result of law, the idea of an Almighty author becomes irresistible, for the creation of a law for an endless series of phenomena—an act of intelligence above all else we can conceive—could have no other imaginable source, and tells, moreover, as powerfully for a sustaining as for an originating power."
He sums up the hypothesis which he seeks to sustain thus:—
"I suggest, then, as an hypothesis already countenanced by much that is ascertained, and likely to be further sanctioned by much that remains to be known, that the first step was an advance, under favor of peculiar circumstances, from the simplest forms of being to the next more complicated, and this through the medium, of the ordinary process of generation."
And further:—
"That the simplest and most primitive type, under a law to which that of like production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above it; that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small, namely, from one species to another; so that the phenomenon has always been of a simple and modest character."
In a Sequel which the author wrote, in answer to the numerous attacks made upon him, he has the following:—
"The probable fact is, that the modification takes place in an offshoot of the original tribe, which has removed into a different set of circumstances, these circumstances being the cause of the change; thus there is no need to presume that the original tribe is at all affected by any such modification."
The author thus supposes that the variations among animals were periodical and sudden, the results of some peculiar impetus given at special periods. Later knowledge—the study of nature by the light of greater experience—has exposed many errors in this work. Its crudities have been made apparent; but the thought which pervaded it was intrinsically right. The last passage quoted above foreshadows the more elaborate speculations of the later philosopher.
In 1859 appeared Darwin's work, "On the Origin of Species, by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life." Like its predecessors, it was a firebrand thrown into the scientific camp. Like his predecessors, the author drew down obloquy and anathemas from the clergy, sarcasm and vituperation from the laity, and a host of replies from writers of all grades. Like his predecessor, the author of the "Vestiges," he might have said, in the words of Agassiz:—
"The history of the sciences is present to tell us that there are few of the great truths now recognized which have not been treated as chimerical and blasphemous before they were demonstrated."
Darwin, as he himself tells us in his Preface, spent twenty years in a patient, laborious study of nature, having special reference to this topic,—the origin of species. Certain observations made in the course of his explorations in South America led him to the convictions which subsequent study only strengthened; and, after having spent years in the collection of facts bearing upon the subject, he gave his theory to the world in the volume mentioned, which was merely a digest of the facts. It is perhaps needless to say, that Charles Darwin is a naturalist of the highest rank; that he stands among the foremost men of the day as a clear-minded, trustworthy, accurate, profound thinker.
The Darwinian theory is erected on the primary foundation of a natural law acting through all time,—a persistent force which is applied to all creation, immutable, unceasing, eternal; which determined the revolutions of the igneous vapor out of which worlds were first evolved; which determines now the color and shape of a rose-bud, the fall of the summer leaves, the course of a rippling brook, the sparkle of a diamond; which gives light to the sun and beauty to a woman's eye. It rejects utterly the idea of special creation, and maintains that the globe, as it exists to-day with all its myriad inhabitants, is only one phase of that primeval vapor which by the force of that law has reached its present state. As a little microscopic egg becomes in time a full-grown, living, breathing, loving animal by the operation of natural laws which we term growth, so has the universe, with its denizens, become what it is by the workings of Natural Law.
The precise process by which sentient existence first became evolved from inorganic matter seems to be beyond the scrutiny of man. It is so far without the scope of his experience, his speculation even, that it is futile to attempt to surmise it; although certain interesting phenomena have attended the experiments of naturalists, especially those of Professor Jeffries Wyman. Darwin takes the subject up at the appearance of animal life, and seeks to work out the causes of the present variation among animals, and to detect the modus operandi by which the law of evolution has produced the multiform changes now apparent. "Natural Selection" is his password into the great workshop of Nature. The three great agencies at work there are the tendency of all animals to transmit their peculiarities to their offspring, the tendency of all animals to vary from their ancestors under varying influences around them, and the constant changes taking place in their surroundings. "Natural Selection" are the words chosen to express the action of animals under these conflicting forces. The power of external influence upon structure is exhibited in the remarkable results of man's treatment of plants and animals. The varieties of pears and apples are of his producing; and the different breeds of domestic animals are the direct consequences of his influence. The most astonishing instance of his power is shown in pigeons, which are made, by skilful breeders, to assume a great variety of shapes, colors, and habits. To what is this change due? If a rock-pigeon were left to itself, it would produce only rock-pigeons, unless some new influences were brought to bear by natural causes. Man gives a rock-pigeon some peculiar food, subjects it to some peculiar treatment, and the creature begins at once to change; that is, to accommodate itself to the new circumstances by which it is surrounded. The plastic nature undergoes an alteration correspondent to the new state of existence. In a few generations these varieties are indefinitely multiplied; and then, by crossing these varieties, new ones are again produced. What is then the state of affairs? We have a series of birds which, were they discovered in new countries, would be considered to be new species. They differ in shape and color, in the number of their vertebræ and ribs, the number of wing and tail feathers, the number of scales on their toes, and various other anatomical peculiarities. Here then is proof that animals, when exposed to influences different from those which surrounded their ancestors, take on new forms and characteristics. This is man's work. But is not man one of the many agents in the work of the Great Prime Mover? Let us suppose that the peculiar circumstances which produced a pouter or a fan-tail were to remain in force for centuries; would not pouters or fan-tails continue to procreate, and thus a new species be added to the genus? What, then, becomes of special creation of every species of animal, if man in a few years can produce a dozen forms out of one, any one of which dozen is so distinct as to be deemed a new species, were it Nature's work and not man's? The fact is thus demonstrated that animals become varied in accordance with variations in their surroundings. This simple fact, once substantiated, is the key to the whole subject. Man's influence ceases when he leaves the animal to itself. But Nature never leaves the animal to itself. Her changes are slight and slow; but they never go back. They are permanent, only to be reaffected as the environment alters. When we consider the incalculable, inconceivable lapse of time through which organic life has been swayed by the never-ceasing action of the forces around it, we can imagine what a vast variety of animal forms may have been evolved from some one primal ancestor.
Darwin endeavors to explain, in detail, how this differentiation takes place. The largest or strongest get the best food or the most attractive females, and then transmit their strength or their peculiarities to their progeny. These peculiarities are the results of the environment, and if this shall go on changing in the direction of these peculiarities, they will increase. Suppose that the climate should gradually grow colder; the result might be a denser growth of hair. Those which, by strength or otherwise, chanced to have denser hair than others, would more readily endure the change, and would transmit the habit to their young; others less fitted to endure the change would die out. In a short time the young would be born with the dense hair, as it is well known that any new habit assumed by animals is exhibited earlier and earlier in the young, as long as it is a necessity of life. These variations are never due to one single cause. Organized life is wrought upon by a wonderfully complex web of influences. Darwin has the following passage touching the action of vegetable and animal life upon each other.
"In Staffordshire, on the estate of a relation where I had ample means of investigation, there was a large and extremely barren heath, which had never been touched by the hand of man; but several hundred acres of exactly the same nature had been enclosed twenty-five years previously, and planted with Scotch fir. The change in the native vegetation of the planted part of the heath was most remarkable,—more than is generally seen in passing from one quite different soil to another; not only the proportional numbers of the heath plants were wholly changed, but twelve species of plants (not counting grasses and carices) flourished in the plantations, which could not be found on the heath. The effect on the insects must have been still greater, for six insectivorous birds were very common in the plantations which were not to be seen on the heath; and the heath was frequented by two or three distinct insectivorous birds. Here we see how potent has been the effect of the introduction of a single tree, nothing whatever else having been done, with the exception that the land had been enclosed, so that cattle could not enter. But how important an element enclosure is, I plainly saw near Farnham in Surrey. Here there are extensive heaths, with a few clumps of old Scotch firs on the distant hill-tops; within the last ten years large spaces have been enclosed, and self-sown firs are now springing up in multitudes, so close together that all cannot live. When I ascertained that these young trees had not been sown or planted, I was so much surprised at their numbers that I went to several points of view, whence I could examine hundreds of acres of the unenclosed heath, and, literally, I could not see a single Scotch fir, except the old planted clumps. But on looking closely between the stems of the heath, I found multitudes of seedlings and little trees, which had been perpetually browsed down by the cattle. In one square yard, at a point some hundred yards distant from one of the old clumps, I counted thirty-two little trees; and one of them, judging from the rings of growth, had during twenty-six years tried to raise its head above the stems of the heath, and had failed. No wonder that, as soon as the land was enclosed, it became thickly clothed with vigorously growing young firs. Yet the heath was so barren and so extensive that no one would ever have imagined that cattle would have so closely and effectually searched it for food.
"Here we see that cattle absolutely determine the existence of the Scotch fir; but in several parts of the world insects determine the existence of cattle. Perhaps Paraguay offers the most curious instance of this; for here neither cattle nor horses nor dogs have ever run wild, though they swarm southward and northward in a feral state; and Azara and Rengger have shown that this is caused by the greater number in Paraguay of a certain fly, which lays its eggs in the navels of these animals when first born. The increase of these flies, numerous as they are, must be habitually checked by some means, probably by birds. Hence if certain insectivorous birds (whose numbers are probably regulated by hawks or beasts of prey) were to increase in Paraguay, the flies would decrease,—then cattle and horses would become feral; and this would certainly greatly alter (as indeed I have observed in parts of South America) the vegetation: this, again, would largely affect the insects; and this, as we just have seen in Staffordshire, the insectivorous birds, and so onwards in ever-increasing circles of complexity."
In the struggle for life, the strongest live; or, in other words, those best fitted to live in the environment endure. Animals and plants produce in vast excess of the possibility of life. A destruction of life is going on to an almost incredible amount. Were this not the case, the slowest breeders in existence would soon cover the earth so as to occupy every inch of space. Darwin reckons that the elephant, the slowest breeder, if allowed to go on unchecked, and to live his allotted term of years, would in five centuries produce fifteen millions of elephants from one pair. If every cod's egg had developed into a full-grown fish, the whole ocean would, ages ago, have been packed with them, like herrings in a box. In this destruction, the weaker animals and plants—those least fitted to thrive under the influences around—become the prey of others better fitted for the struggle, or die of their own lack of assimilative force. Thus, through untold ages of shifting outward circumstances, the plastic forms of organic life have been remoulded. A little obscure plant, the food of an insect, dies out; the insect itself, deprived of its food, dies out or migrates; the bird which fed upon it dies out or migrates; the bird of prey follows the like course. Migration introduces them to an entirely new state of existence, temperature, food, and antagonists. The migrating animals are replaced by others, which likewise experience new surroundings; and thus the extirpation of a single plant may determine a long series of changes. Instances of this kind are not uncommon. What must these changes have been throughout the remote ages which have turned sea-shore mud into uplifted mountain chains, and sunk long-stretching, sunny hills into the ocean depths!
Darwin constructs his theory of gradual differentiation on the evidence thus obtained. He takes a given specific animal form, and supposes that, owing to some external change in a given locality, it takes on some correspondent variation. But all of the individuals of the species may not be likewise affected. The circumstances may alter in one place and not in another. The result will be two varieties of animal. The variety goes on increasing in diversity, while the original still continues to produce its like. By and by the variety, having a greater tendency to vary, from its having already done so, undergoes a new differentiation, the difference being, in all cases, slight, and the time between the periods of maximum change being hundreds, thousands of years. One of the new varieties may by peculiar circumstances take on a special amplitude of growth, while the other, peculiarly circumstanced, may be contracted and dwarfed. One of the original varieties may by this time have disappeared. The original itself may have disappeared. Thus the connecting link between the two forms is lost. The more individualized form may go on accenting its own peculiar characters, and again be broken into new varieties, some of which may retain the old characters in circumscribed areas, while others may increase in greater abundance and occupy a much wider area. The wider the field of life, the more numerous the differing influences and the more diverse the conditions the animal must undergo. Thence arise more differentiations. After the lapse of some millions of ages, these constantly forking growths will have taken on a diversity to which that of the pouters and fan-tails is trifling.
Some forms may be less plastic than others, and give way less readily to the incident forces. These may remain unchanged for a far longer period than subsequent varieties, and be coexistent with them. Some varieties may take on a cerebral growth as widely different and as strongly individualized as frame structure. Man himself is a striking instance. The Negro, the Malay, the Mongolian, are almost precisely what they were five thousand years ago. The Bushman, the Hottentot, the Patagonian, and the Digger Indian are to-day not much above the animals about them; while the Caucasian has gone on in a wonderful advancement, leaving the other races in the same state of development in which they were when the Caucasian was no farther advanced than they. And here is perhaps the place to allude to the derisive objection to Darwinism, that it makes man an improved monkey. Darwin's theory certainly gives to both some vastly remote common ancestor; but it does not maintain the metamorphosis of one into the other. It does not suppose that man was once a gorilla. It supposes that from out of some of the differentiations of some animal form arose the first man-like creature, and that, gradually changing, like other animal forms, some of the varieties eventually evolved into apes and orangoutangs, to stop there and die out like hosts of other forms now extinct. But from some strongly individualized variety sprang, with more rapid and advancing growth, the primitive man, who has, under complex influences, differentiated into the so-called races of mankind. We talk of man as being something infinitely above all animals. There is a vast difference between the highest and lowest species of the genus homo. Were the race confined to those lowest species, we imagine that European and American pride of nature would go before a grievous fall. These constantly succeeding changes are supposed to have taken place during the whole time that this earth has been fitted for animal life,—a period of time so long that the human mind is unable to grasp it.
One objection to this theory, strongly insisted on, is the absence of any evidence of connecting links between man and the lower animals, or between the strongly defined demarcations of the animal orders. The answer to this is, that little is known of the whole earth: much of it is submerged now that was once above the waters and served for a dwelling-place for organized beings. A great deal is known of the sequence of forms which have been unearthed from their stony sepulchres. The negative evidence is as weighty as the positive. Besides this, millions of air-breathing animals die, without leaving anything behind them to mark their existence. Preyed upon by other animals, devoured at their death by myriads of insects, exposed to the action of destructive chemical agents, they soon decay, and leave no trace behind. Who ever finds the dead bodies of the thousands of animals and birds which perish yearly? Who finds the remains of the familiar creatures which frequent our woods and meadows? For one which is accidentally buried so as to resist the destructive forces of air and water, millions are resolved into their primitive elements, and are annihilated as structural forms. And yet, because in portions of the vast deposits of rock the remains of certain ancient forms are discovered, it is asked that the Darwinians should furnish a perfect progressive sequence of fossils to elucidate the theory, and prove it beyond dispute. Recent discoveries have brought to light human remains in caves, where they are associated with bones of extinct animals. That they are of very ancient origin is beyond doubt,—older than any civilization, as we understand the term. But even they are doubtless modern, when we take into consideration the time that the earth has been as it now is. How many thousands of ages has it taken the Niagara Falls to cut their way through the solid rock back from Ontario to Erie? It is highly probable that the earth has been approximately the same as it now is for many millions of years. Reaching still farther back into the past, before this state of comparative quiescence, can we not find adequate time for the gradual succession of organized beings on this earth, and for the structural differentiations which have finally resulted in the present position of things? Because we see one day succeed another with no change in the organic life around, because the written history of man records no vital change in his structure, men deny the possibility of antecedent variation. Man's written history is a thing of to-day. The builders of the Pyramids were our brothers. The five thousand years which have elapsed since the cultivated civilization of Egypt are but a day to the previous ages upon ages of man's existence before that civilization was dreamed of. The bones of untold myriads of human kind crumbled into dust before Egypt saw the rudest mud-hut that foreshadowed the temples of her prime.
The imperfectness of the geological record is certainly a great hindrance to the exact proof of the Darwinian theory, and is a strong weapon in the hands of its opponents. But while so much of the dim, remote past is attainable only by inference and deduction, the argument is decisive for neither side. One weighty argument for the Darwinians is the general plan upon which animals are constructed. All vertebrates have the same typical form. Take off the skins from some dozen air-breathing vertebrates, place the bodies in an upright attitude, and they are in general structure identical. The position of the head, eyes, and ears, the neck, the central vertebral column, the fore legs, which are arms in that position, the pelvis, the hind legs, all bear a close resemblance. Of course there are material differences; but they are evidently moulded upon one general plan. If there were a special creation for each species, why should they all necessarily have a kindred structure? To be sure the question may be answered, that they might as well be similar as dissimilar. But how much more in consonance with the known action of natural laws is it, to suppose that from some original type these various forms have gradually differentiated into their present diversity of structure; the original typical plan, the least variable characteristic, having maintained its individuality, while the more plastic appendages have been swayed by incident forces. This will logically and naturally account for the unlikeness, and yet the resemblance.
The Darwinian theory then is, that Natural Law or Persistent Force, acting through all time upon the universe, has evolved from certain primitive organic forms of a very low order of existence the present diversified races on the earth. It does not stop here. With the eye of prescience it sees the process going on far into the ages yet to come. What may be the result in that distant day, finite speculation may not determine. But the laws which have swayed the world sway it still, and will sway it forevermore. As in the past they have evolved order out of disorder, heterogeneous beauty out of homogeneous crudity, progressive individuality of being and thought out of chaotic vapor, so will they continue their evolving force through all time, till the boasted perfectness of this day of ours, perfect because it is our day, will be as primitive to the later denizens of this globe as the barbarity of the cave savages is to modern civilization.
A host of noble minds, each in its own peculiar province, is exploring the vast field of knowledge. Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Tyndal, Lyell, Hooker, and many others, are giving their profound thought to the elucidation of the laws which govern the vast universe of which they are a part. Their intellects touch the scarce-seen planets; they turn over the stony pages of earth's autobiography; they anatomize to their ultimate atoms the structure of its organisms; they use the intelligence evolved from their own growth to search for the law which has determined that evolution. And they speak out their convictions manfully and earnestly. They proclaim what is to them a revelation of truth in the records which the past and the present offer to their understanding. Herbert Spencer thus maintains the necessity of the expression of man's deepest convictions, in a passage instinct with nobleness of thought and dignity of utterance:—
"Whoever hesitates to utter that which he thinks the highest truth, lest it should be too much in advance of the time, may reassure himself by looking at his acts from an impersonal point of view. Let him duly realize the fact, that opinion is the agency through which character adapts external arrangements to itself,—that his opinion rightly forms part of this agency,—is a unit of force, constituting, with other such units, the general power which works out social changes,—and he will perceive that he may properly give full utterance to his innermost conviction, leaving it to produce what effect it may. It is not for nothing that he has in him these sympathies with some principles and repugnance to others. He, with all his capacities and aspirations and beliefs, is not an accident, but a product of the time. He must remember that, while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future; and that his thoughts are as children born to him, which he may not carelessly let die. He, like every other man, may properly consider himself as one of the myriad agencies through whom works the Unknown Cause; and when the Unknown Cause produces in him a certain belief, he is thereby authorized to profess and act out that belief. For, to render in their highest sense the words of the poet,
'Nature is made better by no mean,
But nature makes that mean: over that art
Which you say adds to nature, is an art
That nature makes.'
"Not as adventitious, therefore, will the wise man regard the faith which is in him. The highest truth he sees he will fearlessly utter; knowing that, let what may come of it, he is thus playing his right part in the world,—knowing that, if he can effect the change he aims at, well: if not, well also, though not so well."
VARIOUS ASPECTS OF THE WOMAN QUESTION.
Diogenes. Eve did not enter into the original plan; she was an unlucky afterthought. Listen to Milton:—
"O, why did God,
Creator wise, that peopled highest heaven
With spirits masculine...?"
You observe that there are no feminine angels in heaven?
Aristippus. So much the better for us, if we have them all here.
Diogenes. For the same reason, probably, we are told that there will be neither marrying nor giving in marriage hereafter.
Aristippus. Not at all. There will be so many more women in heaven than men, that any marriage, except of the Mormon kind, would be impossible.
Diogenes.
"O, why did God
... create at last
This novelty on earth, this fair defect
Of nature?"
I have always wondered why.
Aristippus. You forget that it was Eve who first picked fruit from the tree of knowledge.
Diogenes. The only use she made of it was to get the idea of dress; and the primeval curse still clings to man, in the shape of milliners' bills.
Aristippus. Nevertheless we ought to be grateful to her for her enterprising spirit. Whatever her motives may have been, you must admit that her move was in the right direction. Where would we be now, had the future of the race been left to Adam alone? And if woman did turn man out of Paradise, she has done her best ever since to make it up to him. Every pretty girl one sees is a reminiscence of the garden of Eden.
Diogenes.
"This mischief had not then befallen,
And more that shall befell, innumerable
Disturbances on earth through female snares."
It was an excellent fancy of the ancients to make woman the incarnation of original sin,—the tempter and the temptation in one,—a combination of the apple and the serpent. King David, Herod, and even the terrible Bluebeard, might have behaved well in a world without women. It is proverbial that there is no quarrel without a woman in it.
Aristippus. Because, as Steele said, there is nothing else worth quarrelling about.
Hipparchia. Admirable! You remind me of the two shepherds in a pastoral who sing in alternate strains.
"Be mine your tuneful struggle to deride."
You, Diogenes, should recollect that woman is a fact you cannot get rid of, and that the only remedy for your complaints is to improve her condition. And you, Aristippus, like a thousand other sentimental conservatives, cannot hear the suggestion that woman might do something more in this world than she is now doing without giving tongue at once: "Woman's sphere is the home,"—"Woman's mission is to be beautiful, to cheer, and to elevate." Suppose she has no home, and is old and ugly; what then? I know nothing more cheering and elevating than intelligence and efficiency; and I have never heard that either was detrimental to beauty. Is your ideal a woman who is good for nothing?—
"Bred only and completed to the taste
Of lustful appetence, to sing, to dance,
To dress and troll the tongue and roll the eye"?
Aristippus. Not at all. I believe in the old Roman notion, that woman's domestic honor and chief praise is, Domi mansit, lanam fecit,—with the qualification, that lanam shall not mean worsted-work. I understand the Scriptural word "helpmeet," as applied to wife, in the New England sense of "help." She should, above all, be a creature not too bright and good to know how to prepare and serve up human nature's daily food. I have never seen without emotion the epitaph placed by a high legal dignitary in a neighboring State on the tomb of his first wife:—
"An excellent woman and a good cook."
And when I hear an able-bodied woman in easy circumstances speak of housekeeping as too much for her strength, or "too wearing," I set her down very low on my list of contemptibles, and ask her, mentally, "What the devil then are you good for?" But you and your friends, Hipparchia, would make a world all cubes, parallelopipedons, and pyramids,—an achromatic world, peopled with wise creatures who could demonstrate the usefulness of all they did, and the economy of the processes by which they did it. As there is no place in such a world for women as we know them, you wish to create Eve over again, or rather to call forth a female Adam. I object. Man cannot live by pure mathematics alone. Imagination is a faculty of the mind, as much as reason. Now, women are the imaginative side of the human race; not only imaginative themselves, but the cause of imagination in others. I like mountains and clouds, trees, birds, and flowers,—the raw material of poetry; but to me handsome women are more pleasant than all of them,—they are little poems ready made. I like their rustling dresses, their bright, graceful ways, the "flash of swift white feet" in ball-room; even their roguish airs and childlike affectations. And if some of them do not trim their souls quite as much as their gowns, or perhaps venture into society with minds naked to the verge of indecent ignorance, then I say to these, "Talk to me only with your eyes,"—and they can be more eloquent than any Demosthenes of your New England Athens. Women are younger than men, and nearer to nature; they have more animal life and spirits and glee. Their lively, frolicsome, sunshiny chatter keeps existence from growing mouldy and stale. We have it on the authority of the wittiest of Frenchmen, that for the purposes of pleasant, every-day life, L'enjouement vaut mieux que l'esprit. If I wish to discuss a question of political economy, or of metaphysics, I can go to men; but the art of talking the men of to-day have lost. They either lecture, dispute, or twaddle. A Rabbinical story relates that twelve baskets of chit-chat fell from heaven, and that Eve secured nine while Adam was picking up the other three. Since then, Eve seems to have obtained possession of all.
What do you "earnest women" want? You have your own way in everything. I cannot take up a paper without reading something about lovely, delicate, refined females; or an item announcing that some ungallant fellow has been turned out of an omnibus because he would not offer his seat to an Irish lady, who had probably twice his muscular power and endurance.
Hipparchia. Hotel elegance, railway manners, and penny-a-liner sentiment are alike contemptible. Do you suppose that any sensible female cares for those second-hand phrases and vulgar civilities? This deference you boast of is a mere habit, worn threadbare: the feeling has died out. What does it really amount to, when, in this city, a woman, even of my age, cannot go alone to an evening lecture or to the theatre without the risk of an insult? English and French women have more liberty of action than we have, although the men do not offer them their seats on every occasion. I had rather take my chance with the crowd at a hotel ordinary, and have more independence in daily life. The time will come, I trust, when women will no longer be contented with the few empty and exaggerated compliments in which men pay them off,—"Angelic creatures!" "Poet's theme!" and so on,—stuff that springs from what Diogenes calls the spooney view of women, and only applicable to the young and handsome,—a very small minority. It is sad to see the graceless, the "gone-off," and the downright elderly smirk complacently at a few phrases which are only aimed at them in derision. The others, too, one would think, ought to care little for adulation that fades away with their good looks.
The supremacy of woman in this country is like that of the Mikado in Japan,—a sovereign sacred and irresponsible, but on condition of sitting still, and leaving the management of affairs, the real business of life, to others. It is the same theory of government with which the constitutionalists tormented the late Louis Philippe,—Le roi régne et ne gouverne pas. He was unwilling to accept such a position, and so am I. I cannot take a pride in insignificance and uselessness, although I confess with shame that most women do,—the result of which is, that we have not the kind of influence we ought to have, and that a real, hearty, genuine respect for women does not exist. In every man's heart there lurks a mild contempt for us, because of our ignorance of business, politics, and practical matters generally outside of the nursery and the milliner's shop. The best of you look upon us and our doings as grown people look at pretty children and their plays,—with a good-natured feeling of superiority, and a smile half pleasure and half pity. The truth is, that men have always despised us, from the earliest times. At first, we were mere slaves and drudges; then, playthings, if handsome and lively,—something to be brought on with the wine at a feast. Chivalry, which in newspaper rhetoric means devotion to women and respect, knew little of either, when it was alive and vigorous. The droits de bottage et de cuissage alone are enough to prove that. In our times, indeed, the savage view of woman as a slave has been softened by civilization into housekeeper and nurse; but it still lingers in every man's feelings. Woman's mission in his eyes is simply babies; to which is superadded the duty of making the father comfortable. But the high prices of living are teaching people who have never heard of Malthus or of Mill the necessity of celibacy; and women must find something else to do than to rock a cradle.
Diogenes. Yes, unlimited issues on an insufficient capital lead to ruin. That ivy clinging to the oak view of the woman question still finds a place in print; but in practice I think the oaks are getting rather tired of it They find that the graceful wreaths of the ivy draw heavily upon their substance, and they would prefer a more self-sustaining simile.
Hipparchia. So much the better. I desire to see females support themselves.
Aristippus. Don't say female again, Hipparchia! I hate the word used in that sense, as much as Swift hated the word bowels. It is a term of natural history. A mare is a female; so is a cow, and so is a female dog. It would be curious to analyze the feeling that led euphuistic donkeys to choose it as a compromise word between lady and woman.
Hipparchia. They must have been male donkeys. All the terms of reproach you apply to us when you forget your chivalry manners, such as witch, shrew, termagant, slut, and so on, were all originally made by men for men,—at least so Archdeacon Trench tells us. You have gradually shuffled them off upon us; and worse yet, when you wish to describe in two words a pompous, prosing, dull-witted man, you call him an old woman. This is not just. Old women always have some imagination; and their gossip does not pretend to be the highest wisdom, which makes a great difference.
Diogenes. True! The elderly male fossil of the Silurian age,—the age of mollusks,—whose habitat is some still-water club, or public reading-room, where he babbles of the morning's news, is a thousand times more tiresome than any loquacious elderly lady. We excel in this as in everything. We beat you at your own weapons. Sewing seems to be instinctive with women; yet tailors tell me that they are obliged to give out their best work to men.
Hipparchia. Dress and want of method are two radical weaknesses women must extirpate if they ever hope to rise from their present secondary position. Their dress is the outward and visible sign of it,—the livery of their lower condition. Everything about it is absurd, from the spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are not a whit more absurd.
Diogenes. Women go to and fro like that funny little crab we saw lately in Aquaria, who adorns his head and shoulders with bits of sea-weed, or any other stuff within his reach, and paddles about his tank self-satisfied and ridiculous. Women must and will trim, as spiders spin webs, and bees make honeycombs. They even trim bathing-dresses: one would think that nothing could redeem them from their hideousness. But they obey a law of their being. The special aptitudes of the lower animals are brought into play when no other reason can be given than the necessity for discharging an accumulation of the inward energy,—a saying of the physico-psychologists that is verified in this instance.
Hipparchia. A man's raiment is of plain color and of good, strong material,—ugly if you please, but durable and serviceable; but a woman puts on textures that cost hundreds of dollars and that a drop of water may ruin. Then fashions change daily. The bonnet idolized yesterday is offered up without a sigh if it refuses to adopt the new shape,—cast into the flames, or thrown to wild Biddies to be worn to pieces.
Diogenes. The great M. Comte, with whose works you, Hipparchia, are no doubt familiar, divides philosophy into the three stages of Theological, Metaphysical, and Positive. This general theorem he completes by particular applications,—to costume among others. In this he distinguishes the three stages of Tattooing (including paint), Frippery, and Clothes. Man has reached the third stage, he says; woman is in the second, and not entirely out of the first.
Hipparchia. Everything about a woman's dress is uncomfortable. Everything is pinned on and false. There is nothing real but the trouble and the expense; and women whose love of appearances exceeds their incomes must work hard with their own needles. But they undergo it all without a murmur,—I may say, with pleasure.
Diogenes. "For 't is their nature to," as I remarked just now. Women are compounds of plain-sewing and make-believe, daughters of Sham and of Hem. I consider dress an epidemic disease,—a moral cholera that originates in the worst quarters of Paris. Every ship that comes from those regions is infected with French trollopism, and should be quarantined and fumigated until every trace of the contagious novelty has been expurgated.
Hipparchia. Could a stranger, ignorant of our customs, suppose it possible that beings capable of reason would habitually go out of a winter evening less clad by half than during the day? I say nothing of the propriety or good taste of this fashion. When Eve ate of the apple, she knew she was naked. I have often thought, as I looked at her dancing daughters, that another bite would be of service to them: it might open their eyes to their uncovered condition.
Diogenes. Let us put that reform down among those we mean to carry out last; unless, indeed, the neck of age commits the fault, then, I confess, I should like to complain to the Board of Health and have the nuisance abated. There is nothing sadder than to look at dressy old things, who have reached the frozen latitudes beyond fifty, and who persist in appearing in the airy costume of the tropics. They appear to think, as Goldsmith says, that they can conceal their age by exposing their persons.
Hipparchia. Their case is hopeless, I fear: we must teach sounder ideas on all these subjects to the young.
Aristippus. You have tried it already. Did not a wise woman come from the West preaching to her sisters that one of their lost rights was, to dress like men? What did Bloomerism amount to? A few forlorn creatures shortened their petticoats a few inches, adopted most of the ugly in a man's attire with none of the practical, and retained the follies of a woman's dress without the taste. Their shoes were neither stouter nor larger. They wore a thing on their heads more unsightly than a bonnet, and no better a protection against sun or rain. They made their jackets and their trouserettes of the same flimsy stuffs as before, and sprinkled an unusual quantity of incongruous and unsuitable trimmings over all. Luckily they have disappeared, and now are probably devoting their energies to some other right that does less violence to woman's nature. Do you suppose that you will be listened to when you preach from the text, "Take no thought for your body what ye shall put on"? How many lady free-thinkers in fashionable doctrines do you know? I see a superfluous ribbon even in your cap, Hipparchia; and, if I mistake not, your magisterial skirts are expanded by a wirework cage.
Diogenes. Men say knowledge is power; women think dress is power. Look at a woman who is certain that she is well dressed,—"the correct thing,"—how she walks along with stately steps, head well up, parasol held with two fingers at the present, and skirts expanding luxuriantly behind her,—proud, self-satisfied, conscious of being stared at and admired. She feels like the just man made perfect,—who knows that he has done his duty, and that the by-standers also know it and respect him for it. Dress overgrows and smothers every other feeling in a woman's heart. Love, marriage, children, religion, the death of friends, are regarded as affording new and various opportunities for dress. The becoming is the greatest good. For finery and fashion women risk comfort, health, life, even reputation. What matter ignorance, ill-breeding, ill-nature, if she dress well? A camel's-hair shawl, like charity, will cover a multitude of sins. On the other hand, though she speak French and German, and understand all onomies and ologies, and the mysteries of housekeeping, and is treasurer of Dorcas societies, crèches, and dispensaries, and have not style, it profiteth her nothing. On this great question women never have a misgiving. You may find creatures so lost as to be castaways from fashion, but they believe in it. The scepticism of the age has left this subject untouched.
Hipparchia. The same amount of thought and labor applied to useful subjects would make them all that I desire them to be. A thorough reform in the education of woman is necessary for this. What is their education now? Even the girls of the richer class get next to none. They are taught to say "How d' ye do" in two languages, and to irritate the nervous system of their relations for some hours every day with a piano,—the most gigantic, useless, and expensive instrument of torture ever invented. These for serious work. A little drawing, worsted-work, and catechism are added as accomplishments; and then at eighteen—the age when a boy really begins his training—their education is completed, they are told; and they are turned into the world to devote their time and talents to trimmings, novels, and idle tittle-tattle.
Aristippus. There can be no objection to good gossip, or even to a little scandal, when its teeth have been drawn. If the noblest study of mankind is man, surely his sayings and doings cannot be improper subjects for conversation.
Hipparchia. Education is not the teaching of this thing or that. It is the training of the mind for the work of daily life. The few women of fortune who pride themselves on their cleverness get a parrot-like acquaintance with the contents of books, enunciate charmingly, and are very learned on the syntax and spelling of an invitation to dinner; but of the great topics of the day, political, social, economical, financial, scientific, mechanical, theological, they are utterly ignorant and careless. I know some brilliant exceptions, who show what women might be if they chose.
The consequence of no education, no thought, no practical experiences, and no real responsibility is, that, whenever moral questions are disconnected with feeling, a woman's moral standard is lower than a man's. Truth, rare in both sexes, is very rare in women; not that they love truth less, but that usually they love exaggeration more,—truth is so often commonplace and tiresome; they dress it up to hide its nakedness.
Aristippus. What does it matter? We all understand them when they say "Splendid!" "Shocking!" "Awful!" "Glorious!" in describing a walk or a tea-party. We believe in the vivacity of their impressions, if not in the accuracy of the terms they use. And besides, there are many things pleasant to listen to, even though we know them to be false.
"When my love swears that she is made of truth,
I do believe her, though I know she lies."
Women have such a wonderful power of secreting adjectives that they cannot speak the truth when they try. There is no moral obliquity in the case. It is psychical incapacity.
Hipparchia. Ambition in a man is the resolution to become powerful, useful, great, rich. A woman means by ambition the desire to shine in the society she belongs to, or perhaps to work her way into a set she considers better. And honor and virtue are, I think, used in a different sense.
Diogenes. Yes; the meaning is very much "localized."
Hipparchia. I admit that women have caught from the men a little of the dissatisfied, dyspeptic philosophy of this generation. But the men do not know what they want, and the ideas of the women are still more vague. They only know that they would like a change of some kind. Their imaginations are not contented with the commonplaces of every-day life. They long for more excitement, and to get it are willing, as Punch has it,
"To do or suffer ere they die
They know not what, they care not why."
But the "mission" must be exotic, meteoric, dazzling. Home missions present as little attraction as bonnets that do not come from Paris. The little opportunities for doing good that spring up about their feet are neglected. I know so many of those gifted, enthusiastic transcendental natures, at least in their own opinion, who cannot condescend to the meaner duties of life,—such as being faithful to their husbands, taking care of their children, and making themselves agreeable to their relatives.
Then really "earnest" women, who mean to be useful to their fellow-creatures, often do as much harm as good for the want of practical sense. Their dear little foundlings all die of measles, diphtheria, or scarlet-fever. They give their pet paupers a regular allowance, which supplies them bountifully with tobacco and grog. They quack pauperism, and increase the malady instead of curing it, because impulses of weakness miscalled feelings are consulted, instead of the hard, dry details of eleemosynary science; for science it is,—a branch of political economy. Benevolence like this is only another form of the love for excitement. Women will never take the trouble to consider the principle of things.
Diogenes. I have read somewhere a definition of woman,—"An unreasoning animal that pokes the fire on top."
Aristippus. Diogenes was converted to this hopeless condition of infidelity by a little French treatise, Le Mal qu'on dit des Femmes. I give him over to it. His doctrine, like unwholesome food, carries its punishment with it. But you, Hipparchia, have pulled woman to pieces for a purpose; and I should like to know on what practicable principle you propose to make her over again.
Hipparchia. Some one said wittily,—I think it was Mrs. Howe,—"Man carves his destiny; woman is helped to hers." Women have been kept so long in this state of dependence, that their characters have become dwarfed. The thirst for excitement that drives them restless from one amusement to another, and which finds relief in the extravagances of dress,—this passionate devotion to the frivolous and the absurd,—spring from the want of a reasonable employment for mind and body. My great principle is to exchange their passive condition for an active one. I would establish schools, where girls may receive a thorough education, such as is given to boys. In these schools, I should insist upon mathematical training as earnestly as Plato in his Republic. Women must be made to feel the magical power that numbers have in regulating the mind. Once get them really to believe that twice two make four, and can never make more or less,—once bring them to feel that a foot always means twelve inches, and that correct measurement is indispensable, even for seamstresses and cooks,—and the spirit of accuracy which now passes all their understanding will be with them and remain with them forever. Next, I should insist that the employments now monopolized by men should be thrown open to women. Why should we be excluded from all the well-paid trades and professions? Why should we not hold office, "commissioned, paid, and uniformed by the state"? Do you think it fair to limit us to scrubbing and plain-sewing as the only means of earning a livelihood?
Aristippus. I admit that many occupations for which women are admirably calculated are carried on by men, and I hope that some day a more manly public opinion will make all such persons as ridiculous as a male seamstress is now. I do not envy the feelings of men who can invent, manufacture or sell baby-jumpers, dress elevators, hoop-skirts, or those cosmetics I see "indorsed by pure and high-toned females." But when you and your friend seek the positions of "night-patrols or inspectors of police," you run into ultraism, the parent of all isms; but, luckily a parent like Saturn, who destroys its offspring.
Hipparchia. Marriage is now to women what all trades and professions are to men. Spinsters are supposed to have no chance in life,—neither liberty of action nor of ideas. Hence, rather than not marry at all, a woman will marry anybody; and, like Shenstone's Gratia,
"Choose to attend a monkey here
Before an ape below."
This prejudice is almost as strong and as absurd as the Mormon notion that a woman cannot get to heaven unless she is sealed to some saint. It has driven hundreds of women, who might have been happy single, into a slavery for life from which there is no relief. A husband, if he find that the connubial paradise he dreamed of turns out to be the other place, has the world all before him where to choose; but the lady is "cabined, cribbed,—confined" possibly: it is in the course of things. But when new fields of employment are thrown open to women, those who cannot marry, or who do not wish to marry, will lead useful and pleasant lives, and cease to be "superfluous existences,—inartistic figures, crowding the canvas of life without adequate effect." But all our reforms centre in one great point, on which our eyes are hopefully fixed,—I mean, the right to vote. Give women a vote, and at once they will take a direct interest in the business of life. They will have something to think of, and something to do. It will be the best form of education. Mr. Lecky, in his interesting, though perhaps rather windy, "History of Rationalism," has a passage that expresses my opinion and my hope. "If the suffrage should ever be granted to women, it would probably, after two or three generations, effect a complete revolution in their habits of thought, which, by acting upon the first period of education, would influence the whole course of opinion." Mr. Mill, it is well known, is warmly in favor of it. He has been abundantly sneered at in England for this crotchet, as they call it,—although it is not easy to see why it should be ridiculous for women to vote in a country governed by a queen.
Aristippus. In this I am with you. I have always thought it absurd that the ignorant Irishman who drives the carriage of a rich widow should have a voice in the government of the country, and that the employer, whose money enables him to live, should have none. In Austria, women who hold real property in their own right have the right to vote. I would go a step further, and give the suffrage to every independent, self-supporting widow or single woman. Wives I would exclude,—not from the fear of adding to the stock subjects of domestic disputation,—the usual reason given,—but because they are not independent. The same reason should apply to daughters residing under the paternal roof. And, in all fairness, I would extend my rule to men. I would make, not a property, but an independence qualification. A man who lives on a dollar a day, if he owns it or earns it, should vote; but the son who depends upon a rich father for support, and the pauper who lives upon public charity, should not vote. Socially, both are minors. We might even say, that, financially, both are unweaned. Why should they not be minors politically? This plan would really be manhood suffrage.
Hipparchia. Justice and wisdom are both upon our side. We must eventually succeed; and then the emancipation of woman will be complete, and her equality with man established. The resolution passed in our Convention, "that a just government and a true church are alike opposed to class and caste, whether the privileged order be feudal baron, British lord, or American white male," ought to be true, and will be true at a future day.
Diogenes. Vigorously expressed! The feudal baron, indeed, is an extinct species, and was hardly worth mentioning, unless to adorn your rhetoric and point your resolution. But let me tell you that the white male can show an older and a better patent of nobility than the British lord with whom you associate him. Is it not recorded in Genesis, that Adam was created first, and Eve from him?—a copy only, you observe; and a copy never comes up to the original. As Dryden has it:—
"He to God's image, she to his, was made;
So farther from the fount the stream at random strayed."
And in the same inspired history we read: "Thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
Hipparchia. Nonsense! I thought that the argument from Scripture had died out with slavery polemics. You forget that every Eve has not an Adam. On what ground do you ask a single woman to occupy an inferior position? I admit that the married may sometimes do so with propriety.
Aristippus. On the ground of an inferiority, and of infirmities absolutely incurable. Between the female man of your theories and the real male man there is a great gulf you cannot pass over. A negro is a man,—we can imagine him a brother; but no effort of philanthropic self-abnegation can work the same miracle for a woman. When you preach the natural equality of the sexes, you injure your cause. The facts are too strong and too visible for you. A man can rest his claim to superiority on brute force, if on nothing else; and force is, after all, the ultimate basis of all government. I do not mean to underrate the cleverness of women. The first man was overreached by Eve; and the last woman will probably turn the head of the laggard who brings up the rear of the human race. If a wife is only half of the scissors, as Franklin suggests, she is often the half with the point. But feminine ability is not of the ruling kind. You dance, for instance, better than men, if the gymnastic capers of acrobats and tumblers can be called dancing at all; but you cannot wield a sledge-hammer as vigorously, and your excellent performances, numerous in literature, rarer in art, and still more rare in science, seem to me to be mostly of the dancing rather than of the sledge-hammer order.
But success would be your ruin. If you could establish the complete equality you long for, your relative inferiority would become so manifest as to be humiliating. In most of the vocations of men, women would be as ridiculous, morally, as they are physically in men's clothes. If a woman is nothing but a smaller man, the savage contempt for the sex is logical. Place two races together, of which the one is weaker, less energetic, less pugnacious than the other; and the result will inevitably be that the strong and the fierce will make the mild and the feeble do all their hard work. The barbarous ages would return again. We should sit by, like the Indian, smoking the pipe of laziness, while you were furnishing us with board, lodging, clothes, and tobacco. The Amazons, the earliest known advocates of women's rights, saw this point clearly; and consequently excluded men altogether from their communities, except at their yearly camp-meetings. Men worship women for their gentleness, affection, imagination, refinement,—for the fond, cosey, nestling way they have with them,—for their femininity (in one awkward word), the contrast and complement to the masculine character. There is a sex in soul quite as much as in body. In the mythology, no god falls in love with Minerva. A mannish woman only attracts a feminine man. A woman's power lies in her petticoats, as Samson's strength lay in his hair. Cut them off, and you leave her at the mercy of every brutal Philistine, who now dares not be rude to her because she is sacred. Do you not see that, instead of gaining something, you will lose all?—sink into fifth-rate mannikins, with fewer opportunities,—boys in petticoats?
Diogenes. And we be obliged to set our amorous eclogues to the tune of Formosus Pastor Corydon?
Aristippus. I might quote a suggestive remark from Pepys's Diary, namely, that the only female animal which gives a name to both sexes is the goose. But, seriously, your chances of success are not brilliant,—at least for the present. There are two kinds of women, both of them excellent; but almost as distinct as diamonds and black lead, which are both pure carbon;—one is made to be admired, the other to be useful. The girl who wakes the poet's sigh is a very different creature from the girl who makes his soup. You have read of the loves of the Angels with the daughters of the Antediluvians. I sometimes think that the diamonds can claim descent from the high-bred race that sprang from those aristocratic relations. The late Monsieur Balzac, who handled this subject with ingenuity, was struck by this difference. He divided woman into two classes: woman, and the female of the order Mammalia, genus Bimanis, species Homo. In his essays he overlooks altogether the second class. But in it you must seek your disciples. The heaven-descended sisters will not go with you. You may try to make them useful and self-supporting; but you will lose your pains. They have only to show themselves, to receive the attention and applause that a man of genius must work a lifetime to earn. Their world is at their feet. Wealth, power, gratified vanity, are theirs without an effort. Madame de Staël said she would willingly give all her fame for one season of the reign of a youthful beauty. She, it is true, was a woman; but David Hume, a keen observer, and moderate in his statements, noticed that even a "little miss, dressed in a new gown for a dancing-school ball, receives as complete enjoyment as the greatest orator who triumphs in the splendor of his eloquence, while he governs the passions and resolutions of a numerous assembly." You ask them to give up these pleasures and these triumphs, and to abdicate their thrones,—to become implements instead of ornaments, and to help to bring down the high price of labor in the present scarcity of laborers; and you offer them in exchange the right to wear trousers, to drive an omnibus, or to wear a policeman's uniform! Do you think that they will listen to you? No,—not even the respectable members of the second class. The Cinderellas with no glass slippers and no protecting fairy might join with you, if they did not look up to the first class as their rulers and models. They feel instinctively that the glory of the Angelidæ illuminates even them; and they all, or almost all, have a faint yet abiding and comforting hope that some unheard-of miracle, or yet undiscovered cosmetic, may place them among the blessed.
You cannot, my dear Hipparchia, by any process of teaching, not even by magazine-articles, make a canary-bird into a useful barn-door fowl. It will wear yellow feathers, and it will sing and nibble at sugar.
SCARABÆI ED ALTRI.
Down by the sands, where the midland sea surges and draws off its feeble tides, and the sheltering beaches, the delight of antique mariners, tempt straying ruminants with their salt herbage, and no voracious spring-tide floods the beach, I made my first positive acquaintance with the Scarabæus pilularius, and guessed at the mystery of his worship in those Eastern lands where sand and sun are the rulers, and he their chief subject. Wonderful in his knowledge of statics and dynamics I found him; heroic in fight and magnanimous in victory, as ungrudging in his acceptance of defeat; and altogether a creature of rare and wonderful instincts.
A line of tracks, so similar to hieroglyphics as to justify an initiatory reverence in a Cadmian mind, drawn indefinitely across the smooth-spread yellow sand, led me, curious, to the arena of his achievements. A dozen similar tracks led from different directions, converging to a pile of dung, and here half a dozen Scarabæi, of as many sizes, were cutting and carving, and every now and then another came buzzing up from the leeward, flying in the eye of the wind, and dropped heavily on the sand, ready to make one of the busy crowd. I selected as subject of my observations the largest, a fellow of prodigious proportions and exemplary industry. He had commenced the excavation of a mass of the pilulary, making a circular cut downwards, and was half buried in the fosse which was to isolate a sufficient fragment. Round and round he went in a perfect arc, cutting deeper and deeper until he reached the sand below and the separation was complete. He traversed it to and fro, time after time, to be sure that the cut was direct and absolute; then, bracing his head against the sand foundation, he began pushing with his hind legs to move off the selected portion. I thought to help him, and carefully pushed it with a small reed until it rolled over on the sand, and he with it, innocuously hoist by his own petard.
Finding himself free on the level sand, he commenced to roll and round it, kneading the irregularities back and dragging upwards at the same time with his fore feet, so that in less than a minute after his liberation he had worked his lump into a close approximation to globular form, and had started on his voyage; but after a few turns he stopped, seemed to try the weight of his load, deliberately rolled it back into its original bed, and then began to excavate another portion, which he set himself to work into the original ball, which when weighed had been found wanting. The surface of the latter was thoroughly sanded by its revolutions, and adhesion was impossible; so he began working the new material under the coating of sand in so dexterous a way that he quickly completed the integration, and at the same time restored the globular form to the whole; then he started anew, to roll it off to its future depository.
The worst of his mechanical difficulties was overcome; but now began a series of struggles with Scarabæi unprovided with the objects of beetling ambition, and whose education seemed to have stopped at the days when power and possession were words nearer their root and each other than now,—when to justify piracy you must organize some sort of government.
I recognized in the deportment of these rovers of the sands another claim to the reverence of the early ages of human civilization,—another reason for their canonization by the Egyptians, in whose calendar is mentioned St. Scarabæus. For the moment any wandering and pilless Scarabæus met the hero of my story he made an examination of the size and general perfections of his work, going up the side opposite to that on which its lawful owner had established his motive power; and, as the bolus was at least a dozen times the size of its owner, he sometimes took a considerable ramble before he met that important individual. But they no sooner met than the tug of war began. They fought like Ajax and Hector for the dead body of Patroclus. They clenched, wrestled, struggled, pushed, until the stronger got uppermost, when he employed all his remaining force to push the other off and keep him down. If nearly matched, sometimes the under one got a shoulder-lock on his adversary, and, by an Herculean effort, threw him over his head, and to a distance of two or three inches across the sand. This usually terminated the battle, and the whipped Scarabæus made his way off as rapidly as his legs would carry him. If the Scarabæus in possession could keep the other off the ball for a few seconds, the latter gave up the struggle and sought his fortunes on another field.
I had wisely chosen my hero so strong that there was little fear of his being ousted; so my sympathies were on the winning side. But once he met his master, and was pitched with terrific violence across the sand, striking on his head, to his evident stupefaction. When he recovered he gave up his property without demur, and started for another venture. Then I, the deus ex machina, stepped into the epic, pitched the usurper three times as far as he had thrown my friend, then rolled the "apple of discord" directly in the path of its rightful owner, and saw him commencing his task anew, with unabated energy. A little declivity stood in his way, and it was a Sysiphus-labor to get beyond it. Time after time, poising himself squarely and solidly on his head, and bracing himself after the manner of equestrian performers by his superior extremities, he walked backwards, pushing the ball before him, and gingerly meeting the tendency to escape, first on one side, and then on the other; finally, missing, it rolled down the whole slope, carrying him in dizzy revolutions with it; but without hesitation he recommenced his work undiscouraged.
Some I saw who seemed to have partners in their toils,—a smaller, demurer-looking Scarabæus,—working side by side and in peace with the greater originator, to get their burden into some quiet spot. What their relations were, and what they wanted to do with bolus, I don't know, and doubt if the wisest man in the court of the first of the Pharaohs did. Whether the Scarabæi are a nation of Amazons, and the hero I had chosen was a heroine, or whether the lesser partner was a patient waiter for conjugal content and the fruition of marital hopes, I of course can't tell. Perhaps Agassiz or Wyman could, but Moses, I am sure, couldn't; and as what he knew of the Scarabæus pilularius lies behind all he is to me in connection with my present subject of dissertation, I take the beetle from the Pharaonic point of view, and, looking over all I know of the reasons for reverence, and for being cut in stone, I make them these:—
Firstly, he was a scavenger, and the wise men taught the people to respect him as a means of preserving the race undiminished. The common people have always a profound contempt for the beings who do their dirty work, and contempt with them goes before enmity. In this the Egyptians would only show that they were a Southern people, and so had much dirty work to do. And in this connection I must say, that I consider that, an undeveloped people not being awake to fine distinctions, and being predisposed to despise everything differing from themselves, we must attribute all the respect paid the Scarabæus pilularius to the advice and influence of their wise men, who, so long as they were wise, would persuade them to protect every useful creature.
Secondly, the mechanical instincts of the Scarabæus pilularius must have always excited the interest of the geometers and mechanists at a time when geometry and mechanics were known in their simplest elements mainly, and considered the marvellous secrets of creation. The absolute rotundity of the pedifacture of the insect must have seemed the result of a sense little less than preternatural, to people who were not accustomed to reason away all recognition of the preternatural. But that which was wonderful to me, the power of weighing so accurately the load he was to propel, must have been not a little amazing to them, less familiar than we have become, through subsequent researches in natural history, with the powers of the brute creation.
Thirdly, that the Scarabæus pilularius was a soldier and hero was less noteworthy in those days than in modern times; for then he was no man who was no soldier, and to be brave was only a human virtue, but was still marvellous in an insect.
And, if last, not least of the claims of our friend to reverence was the strange line of hieroglyph he left on the tabula rasa sea-washed, in column like the message written down an obelisk; and that the most high priest had no key to the cipher only made it more curious and more revered.
I do not know that anything so simple ever impressed me more strangely than the meeting for the first time on the solitary sands of Antium, amid thoughts of Egypt's queen and her sad loves, this line of curious figures, sand-written. And who shall say that the original Cadmus was not our Pilularius? Certainly he left a record of the life he led, and the journeys he took, long before the first emigration from the flood-fertilized lands around Thebes-on-Nile carried civilization into northern lands.
It may have been from this trick of his of writing on the sand that they took his image for the signet; or perhaps it was only that the broad under-surface of the stone or smalt of which they made the Scarabæus was too tempting to be left vacant, and the portable shape and size of the stone gave it the preference over the images of crocodile or cat. Be that as it may, it became the form universal for signets, and bore the monogram or polygram of kings unnumbered and of chiefs unknown, so that the fictle Scarabæus doubtless carries to-day more strange messages for us than did the great original to his first observers. Being as ignorant of what hieroglyphs tell as the man who died when Champollion was born, I do not venture a conjecture on the significance or value of the "cartouches" inscribed on the plane surface of the Scarabæus. There can be no doubt that they were tokens of rank, and mainly bore direct reference to the history or condition of the wearer, with occasional mystic sentences, perhaps serving at once as signet and amulet.
My purpose, however, is to treat only of certain artistic relations, and to me, therefore, the Egyptian Scarabæus is only of value as it leads to, and is connected with, the Etruscan. The former is utterly unartistic,—a rude, but tolerably accurate imitation of the Scarabæus pilularius, the specific character being sufficiently developed,—the whole value of the work, both in its figure and the incisions under it, being evidently in its significance, and all conditions required of it being sufficiently answered by intelligibility. This is, indeed, characteristic of all Egyptian so-called art. It is not art at all, it is only writing; and the transfer of the Scarabæus from Egypt to Etruria only forms another evidence of the inevitable antithesis existing between art and record. The identical types which on the Nile told the same story age after age, unchanging in their form as in their meaning, once in the hands of the Etruscan, entered on a course of refinement and artistic development into objects of beauty; but in this they entirely lost sight of their original meaning. This is strikingly the case with the Scarabæus which, under the hands of the Etruscan cutter, lost at once all specific character. He might be Scarabæus anything: he is not pilularius; and, instead of being made of basalt, porphyry, smalt, and very rarely of pietra dura, as in Egypt, he is engraved in carnelian, onyx, sardonyx, and all the rare and lovely varieties of pietra dura,—which, being essentially the same, change their names with their colors,—but mainly in an opaque carnelian, admirably calculated to show off the beauty of the workmanship. The change from use to ornament is abrupt, and perceivable in the earliest Etruscan examples, and proves conclusively to me two disputed points; namely, that the Scarabæus pilularius and his allied notions came from Egypt to Etruria, and that the Etruscan and Egyptian races were utterly diverse in origin and antithetic in intellectual character. The eminent utilitarianism of the latter leaves no room for purely artistic effort, while the former literally non tetiget quod non ornavit. Even the pictorial and sculptural representations of the Egyptians were absolutely subservient to history or worship; but the Etruscans cared so little for their own history as to leave us almost no inscribed monuments, though the remains of their taste and skill stand side by side with what we have of Greek work. They seem, indeed, to have been a more absolutely artistic people even than the Greeks, in whom art was exalted by a certain union with intellectual culture, the result of which was, of course, a larger growth and nobler ideal than the more ornamental Etrurian mind could attain. This points to an Eastern origin more in kinship with the Persian than the Greek, and to-day only illustrated by the Persian ornamentation.
The Scarabæus then, instead of the rude, straightforward representation of the Egyptian workman, assumes a more elegant form, with elaborate sculpture of all the insect characteristics, the edges of the wings and the lines that divide them from the chest being exquisitely beaded and wrought, and the claws being relieved and modelled with the highest care and most artistic finish. The form of the image, in fact, generally resembles more the beautiful green beetle which I have often caught in the mountains around Rome, than his plebeian and utilitarian cousin, the Scarabæus pilularius. The contour of the stone beneath the Scarabæus proper is markedly distinguished from the insect portion, and ornamented with a relieved cornice, more or less elaborate according to the general finish of the stone. I have one in which this cornice of .073 inch in width contains an upper and a lower bead and a U moulding of which the parts are only one fourth the height of the cornice in breadth, and yet are cut with mathematical regularity and completeness. The bead that marks the junction of the wings and chest is divided into squares of .0045 inch in dimension. If this care is given to the less important part of the stone, what may we not expect from the intaglii which make the more important objects of the lapidary's work! A stone, three fourths of an inch in length, contains two full-length figures seated in conversational attitudes, the extended hand of one of which, with the thumb and four fingers perfectly defined, is only .063 inch in length.
The great inequality between the power of design and the executive skill and taste in mere ornamentation in the characteristic Etruscan work is comparable only to those Eastern products which I have before alluded to,—the Persian fabrics. The animals are drawn without any regard to anatomical or optical truth,—foreshortening taken by a royal road, and grace thrown overboard. The hog is generally shown as flatted out, the legs appearing two on each side of the body; and the members of all animals are stowed away with more direct reference to composition of masses than of animal organisms. I remember one of a horse, in which, there not being room for the four legs in their natural places, one was hung up at the side where a vacant space offered itself.
The earliest work seems to be done by a graving process, as if cutting were by lines; the later is evidently done by the drilling operation now in use, and the process is much more apparent, especially in the drill-like terminations. This was probably owing to the use of the diamond itself for the incision, instead of the steel point and diamond dust, as in modern times, and to the great difficulty in getting a point on the implement.
The purely ornamental manner of treating the Scarabæus seems to indicate that it had neither religious nor historical value. Had the contrary been the case, we should inevitably have found some artistic quality sacrificed to their meaning, which is not the case with the intaglio more than with the insect representation. The subjects include all the objects known to familiar life, with all the incidents of martial experience,—horses, chariots, arms,—warriors wounded, defeated, dying, victorious, struggling. One I remember of a surgeon dressing the wound of a warrior, who throws up his hands in expression of the pain he suffers; another, of the Genius of Death coming to Hercules; another still, of two winged genii burying a warrior; one, of two warriors dividing the dead body of a third, etc., etc. The style of cutting gradually changes, probably under the influence of Greek artists,—who are known to have emigrated to Etruria from Corinth, exiled by their native tyrants,—and becomes quite Greek in delicacy of finish and grace of proportion; and the subject becomes almost entirely of Greek history or mythology,—the heroes of the Trojan war figuring largely.
Some of these are the perfection of intaglio: nothing in the gem-cutting of the Greeks could be more exquisite and purely beautiful than they are as intaglio. Yet, excellent as is the work, there is an essential difference between the Etruscan and Greek design, which no similarity of workmanship will ever conceal,—a difference as radical as that between Roman and Greek sculpture, and still more marked. The Etruscan, in its highest artistic development, preserves something of an Oriental fantasy and want of repose, and invariably falls short of the dignified and purely imaginative character of the Greek. It makes no exception to this rule, that there are Etruscan Scarabæi which have purely Greek intaglii, since we know that there were Greek artists of the highest rank among those who emigrated to Etruria, and that it was customary for one workman to make the Scarabæus, and another the incision. But these are rare, and the trained eye of an artist need not be more puzzled to determine the Greek or Etruscan character of an intaglio, than to distinguish a Florentine picture from a Venetian. The difference is radical,—that between the objective and subjective art,—between an Indian shawl and a bit of drapery by Paul Veronese.
As to the uses of the Scarabæus, we may be sure that they were at first intended as signets and mounted as rings in the simple and charming way of which we find so many examples in the Etruscan tombs, each end of a gold wire being passed through the perforated Scarabæus, and the extremities secured by being wound round the wire at the opposite side of the stone. As soon as they become mere ornaments, a more elaborate mounting is seen on those worn as rings; and they appear in bracelets, necklaces, etc., in such profusion and confusion of subject, and style and date of workmanship, as to show plainly that they had lost all superstitious value or personal significance, and had become, like diamonds and pearls, a part of the gold-worker's material.
What the wealth and luxuriousness of those cities, now more deeply buried than Thebes or Nineveh, must have been, we can only imagine from the few traditions preserved by Roman historians,—grudging the glory of rivals so long and masters so often, though finally subjects of the irresistible force of crescent empire,—and from the gold-work known after so many centuries of sepulture. We know that Porsenna built himself a tomb in the solid rock,—a labyrinth whose secret no searchers of modern times have yet found, though they have burrowed around Clusium like marmots; and that over this he raised himself a monument,—five towers of stone, on the top of which was laid a domed platform of brass, and above this still towers and other brass, and higher yet, towers and a crowning bronze dome; and that from the edges of all these platforms hung thousands of bells, rung by the sea-breeze which every midday came up, and still comes, across the low Etrurian hills, to find the children she wafted from the land of the Parsee and Chaldee. It is hard to define a "civilization"; and we talk of the ages of gold and of bronze as if we knew the history of the whole world and its generations; but to me the few glimpses I get through the crevices of the ages that hide Etruria, as the hills of the Black Forest hide the fairies from the German child, indicate an age more fitting the epithet Golden than any since, and a nation the like of which, as of the good-folk, we shall see no more on earth. There were confederation without over-centralization; states side by side, without mutual hate or subjugation; wealth and power, without the corruption that destroys nations; and military prowess, without the unscrupulous ambition that cannot live and let live. They were instructors of Rome in all that Rome knew of civilization; many times masters of the imperial city, without ever envying it its existence; mild conquerors, and just lawgivers; and the City of the Seven Hills owed to the proximity of her seven Etrurian sisters all her early wisdom in politics, all her knowledge of the arts which refine and preserve; and to their love of those arts, and of the peace in which they flourish, the permission of her existence in those early centuries which preceded the fall of Veii.
It is not here the place to develop the moral of Etruscan history, or to investigate the political and social condition of the Etruscan people; though the links we have of the former, and the glimpses of the latter seen athwart the prejudices and mortified pride of the Roman historians, give the subject a fascinating interest. It is said that when the Roman armies invaded the territory of the northern Etruscan states, and their commander asked the name of the first city they approached, the unsuspecting subject of the Lars replied only,—not understanding the barbarian language,—Χαιρε, "Hail!" and ever since the city has been known as Cære (and to its present inhabitants as Cerevetere,—Cære vetus). Until the fatal dissension which permitted the Romans to conquer Veii, the Etruscan states calmly and steadily repelled all invasion,—rarely, as in the time of Porsenna, turning aside to retaliate on Rome,—and still pursued their peaceful career, the sages of Egypt and the artists and poets of Greece giving wisdom and grace to their daily lives,—their temples the richest, their domestic life the fairest, their political condition the most prosperous, and their commerce the widest of all Italy, if not of all Europe.
Of it all, we have only the grave into which art sought to carry an immortality of its own, and from which religion strove to banish the drear gloom of the uncertain by surrounding the dead with all the objects familiar to their daily lives and the incidents which were the most antagonistic in impression to the darkness and silence to which they abandoned the beloved ones only when conquest and destruction had concealed the portals of their tombs, and ancestor and descendant had yielded to the same oblivion. Among the most interesting tombs at Tarquinii is one painted round with a wedding feast, the bridegroom kissing his bride, the wine-cups and garlands, the dance and song with the timing pipes, in colors fresh and sharp to-day amid the grave-damps, giving the challenge strangely to the all-destroyer. One much later in style of decoration has a procession of spirits driven by two demons,—Dantesque in power and simplicity of conception and evident faith, but telling a stranger story, in its contrast with the former, than anything we know in the history of the time,—a change from the golden to the iron days of Etruria.
The marvellous treasures of these tombs,—though only the few which, by comparative insignificance or fortunate accident, have escaped the unintelligent ravage of Roman or of Goth,—are like the scale or bone of Agassiz's saurian; and a necklace of Scarabæi alternated with the little pendent fantasies in gold, which we may see in the Campana collection, is the fragment from which we build Etruria, taking a little help from the time-defying walls, and a hint from the sarcophagus whose mutually embracing effigies of the two made one tell that position given to woman which made Rome what she was after the fraud of Romulus gave to Romans Etruscan wives.
The Etrurians were the gold-workers of all time. Like shawls of Cashmere, Greek statuary, Gothic architecture, and Saracenic tracery, Etruscan gold-work stands absolutely alone,—the result of an artistic instinct deeper than any rules or any instruction, and therefore not to be improved or repeated. It is characterized by the most subtile and lovely use of decorative masses and lines,—not for representation or imitation, which are not motives to enter into pure ornament, but for the highest effect of beautiful form and rich color, without giving the eye or mind any associative or intellectual suggestion. The vice of all modern ornamentation is, that it insists on mixing natural history with decoration. It cannot avoid preaching, as fairy stories now-a-days cannot stop without a moral for good children, and consequently is, like them, stupid and unreal. The best ornamentation is that which is farthest from imitation; and that, in gold-work, is the Etruscan. As we had occasion to say in the preceding pages, the Scarabæus marks the difference between the moralizing Egyptian mind and the beauty-loving Etruscan. And if we might point a moral in an article defiant of morals, it would be in comparing the black, blood-stained history of Egypt with the fair record of the Larthian people. Beauty is its own moral and its own redeemer, and a mind that loves it may be corrupted to decay, but cannot be led into brutality or sunk into obscurity. Of the magnificence of the living people we can scarcely judge, since all we have now is the gorgeous array of those who were robed for the eternal rest. Castellani, in his pamphlet on the antique gold-work (Dell' Oreficeria Antica, Discorso di August Castellani), says: "But the excavations of Etruria which have preserved, what with pictures, apparel, and fabrics, so many of the antique sacerdotal ornaments, add almost nothing to the little we know about the names and uses of them. Micali says that 'the mechanism of the whole Etruscan government was beyond doubt priestly in its institutions.' After such a declaration by one of the most accurate narrators of ancient Italian history, I should scarcely know what to add to convey an idea of the pomp in which the priestly class of Etruria lived and robed itself. We can conjecture that the great poitrel in the Etruscan museum in the Vatican, the two magnificent bridles of the Campana museum, all the collars of extraordinary size and the large bullæ of various forms and dimensions which come from the various collections, and the innumerable vases, pateræ, cups, and goblets of gold, silver, and bronze found in the sepulchres, were all implements, furniture, and ornaments devoted to the service of religion. And such a multitude of objects may give some indication both of the multiplicity of the mysteries and sacred functions, and of the treasures which must have been contained in the antique temples, plundered by the barbarians, and then destroyed by the intolerant zeal of ignorant disciples of a new, triumphant religion."
What the wealth of the favored Etruscan fanes must have been may be conjectured from the fact that Dionysius carried from one on the sea-coast treasures to the amount of $40,000,000.
Of the gold-working, Castellani's restorations and imitations will give us a tolerable idea, so far as workmanship is concerned, though he himself confesses to be unable to equal all its qualities. I translate an interesting passage.
"Having proposed to ourselves, then, to restore as far as we could, and, so to speak, to renew the antique gold-work, we first set ourselves to search for the methods which the ancients must have used. It was observed that in the ornaments of gold all the parts in relief were by the ancients superimposed; that is to say, prepared separately and then placed in position by means of soldering or some chemical process, and not raised by stamping, casting, or chiselling. From this arises, perhaps, the something spontaneous, the freedom and artistic neglect which is seen in the works of the ancients, which appear all made by hands guided by thought, while the moderns impress, I would say, a certain perfect exactness on the things produced by them, which reveals the work of mechanical implements, and shows a want of the creative thought of the artist. Here, then, they sought to find means to compose and solder together so many pieces of gold of different forms, and of such minuteness, that, as we have said, it goes to the very extreme.
"We made innumerable experiments, and put in operation successively all the chemical agents, many metallic alloys, and the most powerful fluxes. We searched the writings of Pliny, of Theophilus, and of Cellini; the works of the Indian gold-workers and those of Genoa and of Malta were studied with all care; in short, there was forgotten no one of those sources whence we might hope for some hint. Finally, whence least we expected it came some real assistance.
"Hidden in the highest mountains of the Apennine range is a little town called St. Angelo in Vado, where are made gold and silver ornaments, with which the fair mountaineers decorate themselves. Here it appears that they preserve, at least in part, the oldest traditions of the art of working in gold and silver; and these workmen,... shut, so to speak, from all contact with modern things, make crowns of filigree strung with gilded pearls and ear-rings of that peculiar form which is called the 'navicella,' by such methods as perhaps the antique were made, so that these jewels resemble not a little those found in the Greek and Etruscan sepulchres, although for elegance of form and for taste they are far from equalling them....
"Not long since, when, examining with a lens the Etruscan jewels of our own collection, I discerned in the zones of the tiny grains (which are characteristic of the work of these patient artists) certain defects, such as those which are made in enamel by the melting of the gold. These observations suggested to me to try a new process, in order to reproduce this exceedingly fine grain-work, believed hitherto impossible to be even distantly imitated by modern gold-workers. I immediately commenced the new experiments, and the results were sufficiently satisfactory to enable me to say, at present, that the problem is nearly solved which for almost twenty years has defied us."
And even now Castellani's best grain-work is far from equalling in delicacy and perfection of workmanship some of the antiques in his own collection.
Our Scarabæus has got into magnificent company, and modern taste finds that he deserved it; and certainly, me judice, nothing can be more purely artistic than a fine Scarabæus, and the fascination that comes over whoever has ventured to dabble in that kind of wares is as dangerous as the chances of play. Be content with a single one! If you once get into comparison, you have abandoned yourself to the witchery of the unknown and unattainable perfection.
Engraved gems or simple intaglios in pietra dura seem to belong to Greek art rather than Etruscan. The style of finishing the stone was more in accordance with the simple and elegant ideal of the Greek intellect. The intaglio was all to the Greek artist, and anything more was labor worse than wasted. His intaglio ceased to be ornamentation, and passed into the category of ideal work. And there are intaglii of Greek workmanship which are as lovely as it is possible to conceive anything,—all the spirit and perfect proportion of the antique sculpture concentrated in an oval, an inch by three quarters of an inch, executed with a delicacy which defies the naked eye to measure it!
A critical study of gems is an affair of years; yet, so far as all principles of design are concerned or characteristics of art, we may always consider the intaglii with the sculpture of the same epoch. The spirit and manner and perfections are the same. The first are, of course, the Greek; and a fine example is rarely found,—heads only, of Dioscorides or any equally famous artist, being valued at from $400 to $800, and even $1200 in the case of the Ariadne. The next in value are Etruscan, very fine examples being nearly as much esteemed as Greek, while the best Roman is, like Roman sculpture, but a far-off emulation in design, though often admirable in execution and finish. Very fine examples of either are not largely current, being taken up by collectors and consigned at once to public or private cabinets; but now and then one turns up, or is turned up by an unenterprising share-holder of the Campagna of Rome, or by some excavator or vineyard-digger in Sicily, Magna Græcia, or Greece proper, and, if it gets into commerce, finds its way generally to Rome, the centre of exchange for classical antiquities. The Scarabæi are mostly found in the Etruscan tombs, and occasionally outside the walls of the Etruscan cities,—swept out, may be, with the antique dust. But there are Roman imitations, made doubtless for some aristocratic descendant of the mythic Etrurian kings, like Mæcenas, proud of that remote if subjugated ancestry, and looking wistfully backward to the Arcadia of which his family traditions only preserved the record. The Roman lapidaries were not nice workmen, and their imitations are most palpable.
Then, in the fifteenth century, came other and better lapidaries, and of better taste, many of whose Scarabæi are of great value, though still not difficult to distinguish from the Etruscan, when we study the design. The modern demand for them has produced innumerable impositions in the shape of copies,—poor Scarabæi retouched to fine ones, still bearing the marks of antiquity, and others whose under surface, being originally left blank, is engraved by the hired workmen of the modern Roman antiquaries, by whom they are sold as guaranteed antiques. This is the most common and dangerous cheat, and one which the easy conscience of the Italian merchant regards as perfectly justifiable; for has not the stone all the aroma of antiquity? A little shade darker in iniquity is the selling of stones entirely recut from broken larger ones, so that, though the stone remains identical, the workman puts a new face on it; and even this the antiquary will sell you as a veritable antique. Then there is the unmitigated swindle of the pure imitation, oftentimes so perfect that the most experienced judges are deceived. There is in fact no absolute certainty in the matter. There are antiques of which no doubt can be entertained, with characteristics utterly inimitable; but there are others as certainly antique which have none of these, but, taken without reference to their placer, are not to be distinguished with absolute certainty. I remember a necklace in the Campana museum, which, in a large number of unmistakable Scarabæi, had one for which I would not have paid two scudi on the Piazza Navona, so like the modern imitations did it look. The only reliable criterion for the majority of cases is the spirit of the design in the intaglio. Castellani says: "Antique Etruscan, Greek, or Roman Scarabæi are at present very rare, and their high price tempts the moderns to counterfeit them. And to such a perfection have they carried their business that it is with difficulty the best-trained eye can discover the fraud. It is not the stone, not the polish, nor even the incision, but a peculiar smoothness and morbidezza, which distinguishes the antique; and which only they who for many years have studied such kinds of work, or who, either in the way of trade or otherwise, have seen and handled many of the gems, are able to perceive."
A friend in Rome came to me one day with a request that I would go with him to see a Scarabæus which he had taken a fancy to, and had engaged to buy if it were counted genuine by good judges. It was a superb stone, a deep carnelian, nearly opaque, exquisitely elaborated, and with an intaglio which I doubt not was Greek. It was the most beautiful one I had ever seen, and I gave my opinion, such as it was, in favor of its antiquity. It was purchased, and afterwards shown to a well-known dealer, by whom it was pronounced a cheat; and on inquiry it was discovered that the seller had had a copy made of the original, and, while he offered the latter for sale, delivered the former, which was so carefully and perfectly copied as to puzzle the eye even of the best-instructed amateur.
A merchant of antiquities with whom I have occasional dealings—we will call him A. because that is not his initial—brought me one day a large intaglio, which had the appearance of an archaic Etruscan work. A. is known as one of the piu cognoscenti of Rome; and his dictum is worth any other two. He declared it an original antique of the rarest quality; and Odelli, the best gem-cutter in Rome, coincided in the opinion. He held it at two thousand francs, but would have sold it to me for eighteen hundred, I suppose. I didn't bite, and after a few weeks lured the collector of whom he had bought it—one of those who make it a business to haunt the markets, and visit distant cities and excavations, to purchase and sell again to the Roman antiquaries—to boast his prowess as compared with that of A., who had bitten him severely several times in their dealings; and, in the full tide of his self-glorification, I turned the conversation on the black agate, now become famous among the dealers. He could not resist the temptation, and told me all about it. "A. believes it to be antique, don't he?" "O, he is certain of it," said I. "Well, I'll tell you how it is: I bought the thing of the man who made it, and paid him three scudi for it. I took it to A. and offered it to him for six; but he refused it, thinking it to be a paste. I took it away again, and, having had it tested as a stone, offered it to him for twenty. After examining it and keeping it a few days, he offered me twelve. I said no,—eighteen. He said no. I said sixteen, and he offered me fourteen, which I took. The fact is," said he, "no one is able to say for certain if a stone is antique or not. A. has the best judgment in Rome, but you see how he is deceived." I bought of the same man a small engraved emerald, which he had just purchased of a peasant, and, without much examination, sold me for one scudo, as a basso-impero of ordinary quality. My eyes were better, and had seen, in what he thought a handful of flowers, a cross; and on cleaning it we found it to be an early Christian stone of much greater value than he supposed, to his great chagrin.
If the perfections of our Scarabæus give us a glimpse of Etruscan existence, we may perhaps gather from the gems some notion of what Rome was, beyond what historians have written, or the ruins of her palaces and tombs have shown. The quantity of intaglii alone, such as they are, which are dug up in the gardens and vineyards around Rome every year, is incredible to one who has not watched day by day the acquisitions of the antiquity shops, and the stalls of the Piazza Navona. Very few of them are of any artistic value; but the fact that so many were made use of is a marvel in itself, and implies a greater luxury than marble palaces even hint at. I one day remarked to a peasant who brought me some intaglii to sell, that the ancients must have worn a great many rings; and he replied, that in his country the richer people wore so many that they had to hold their hands up to keep them from falling off. On inquiry I found that he came from the Abruzzi, where it seems that the people still hold on to something of the antique customs; for we know that the Romans began the fashion of covering the fingers to that extravagant degree, so that the number of rings possessed by a family of great wealth must have been almost inestimable. At every irruption of the barbarians, the villas that covered the Campagna for miles around Rome must have felt the first fury of their ravages; and as the stones contained in the ornaments were of no use to the plunderers, they were broken out and thrown away, many of them to be uncovered, more than a thousand years later, by the spade of the trencher in the vineyards. One of a number of peasants playing at bowls in one of the roads near Rome struck with his ball a point of hardened mud, which flew in pieces, disclosing an exquisite intaglio head of Nero in carnelian, in perfect condition, for which the finder received ten scudi.
The laborers in the fields have so far learned the value of the stones they find, that it becomes almost impossible anywhere in the vicinity of Rome to buy them of the finders, even at the most extravagant prices. Unable to distinguish in quality, and knowing that certain stones have brought such and such prices, they refuse to sell any for a smaller price, but retain them until the next festa, when they carry them in succession to all the mercanti di pietre in Rome, to see which will offer the highest price,—a kind of vendue which evinces greater trade-cleverness than the Italians get credit for, and which has the effect of bringing the dealers at once to their best terms. No matter what price you offer, they never accept it until they have tried the value it has for others. It is only when a stone has such great value that it justifies paying a price passing the imagination of the peasant, that the buyer can profit by buying from the first hand.
Of the finer kind of intaglii, there is little danger of buying counterfeits, since the art of gem-cutting is too low now to permit of such counterfeits as might be mistaken for first-rate antiques. Of the common kind, again, there are those which, cut with a certain conventionalism in design and a facility in execution which incessant repetition only can produce, cannot be imitated except at a cost utterly beyond their market value. Like the designs on the Etruscan vases, their main excellence is, that, being so good, they should be done so facilely. An imitator loses the rapidity and spirit of execution. The mass of imitations are of things only tolerably good, and of things whose characteristics are in the execution merely, as in the Roman and conventional Etruscan work.
I will close with one bit of advice to my readers. If your fancy finds any satisfaction in Scarabæi ed altri, let your acquisition stop with the first example,—take a sample brick from antiquity. If you once commence collecting them in ever so small a way, or with any excuse to your own pocket, you will find yourself subject to a fascination more irresistible than the love of money,—more absorbing than the search for the philosopher's stone. While you are in Rome, you will find yourself unable to keep your feet from ways that lead to the antiquaries, or your money out of the hands of a class (with two or three exceptions) of cheats. You will find the extravagances of one day coming to be the niggardness of the next; and feverish anxieties lest you should not succeed in getting this gem, and irritating regrets that you too soon bought that, will divide your tortured soul. And when you finally leave Rome, as you must some day, you will always harbor a small canker-worm of immitigable grief, that you did not purchase one stone you saw and thought too high-priced; and will pass thenceforward no curiosity-shop without looking in the windows a moment, in the hope of finding some gem strayed away into parts where no man knows its value. If you feel in you the capacity of loving them, let them alone.
MIANTOWONA.
Long ere the Pale Face
Crossed the Great Water,
Miantowona
Passed, with her beauty,
Into a legend
Pure as a wild-flower
Found in a broken
Ledge by the sea-side.
Let us revere them,—
These wildwood legends,
Born of the camp-fire!
Let them be handed
Down to our children,—
Richest of heirlooms!
No land may claim them:
They are ours only,
Like our grand rivers,
Like our vast prairies,
Like our dead heroes!
In the pine-forest,
Guarded by shadows,
Lieth the haunted
Pond of the Red Men.
Ringed by the emerald
Mountains, it lies there
Like an untarnished
Buckler of silver,
Dropped in that valley
By the Great Spirit!
Weird are the figures
Traced on its margins,—
Vine-work and leaf-work,
Knots of sword-grasses,
Moonlight and starlight,
Clouds scudding northward!
Sometimes an eagle
Flutters across it;
Sometimes a single
Star on its bosom
Nestles till morning.
Far in the ages,
Miantowona,
Rose of the Hurons,
Came to these waters.
Where the dank greensward
Slopes to the pebbles,
Miantowona
Sat in her anguish.
Ice to her maidens,
Ice to the chieftains,
Fire to her lover!
Here he had won her,
Here they had parted,
Here could her tears flow.
With unwet eyelash,
Miantowona
Nursed her old father,
Oldest of Hurons,
Soothed his complainings,
Smiled when he chid her
Vaguely for nothing,—
He was so weak now,
Like a shrunk cedar
White with the hoar-frost
Sometimes she gently
Linked arms with maidens,
Joined in their dances:
Not with her people,
Not in the wigwam,
Wept for her lover.
Ah! who was like him?
Fleet as an arrow,
Strong as a bison,
Lithe as a panther,
Soft as the south-wind,
Who was like Wawah?
There is one other
Stronger and fleeter,
Bearing no wampum,
Wearing no war-paint,
Ruler of councils,
Chief of the war-path,—
Who can gainsay him,
Who can defy him?
His is the lightning,
His is the whirlwind.
Let us be humble,
We are but ashes,—
'T is the Great Spirit!
Ever at nightfall
Miantowona
Strayed from the lodges,
Passed through the shadows
Into the forest:
There by the pond-side
Spread her black tresses
Over her forehead.
Sad is the loon's cry
Heard in the twilight;
Sad is the night-wind,
Moaning and moaning;
Sadder the stifled
Sob of a widow!
Low on the pebbles
Murmured the water:
Often she fancied
It was young Wawah
Playing the reed-flute.
Sometimes a dry branch
Snapped in the forest:
Then she rose, startled,
Ruddy as sunrise,
Warm for his coming!
But when he came not,
Back through the darkness,
Half broken-hearted,
Miantowona
Went to her people.
When an old oak dies,
First 't is the tree-tops,
Then the low branches,
Then the gaunt stem goes:
So fell Tawanda,
Oldest of Hurons,
Chief of the chieftains.
Miantowona
Wept not, but softly
Closed the sad eyelids;
With her own fingers
Fastened the deer-skin
Over his shoulders;
Then laid beside him
Ash-bow and arrows,
Pipe-bowl and wampum,
Dried corn and bear-meat,—
All that was needful
On the long journey.
Thus old Tawanda
Went to the hunting
Grounds of the Red Man.
Then, as the dirges
Rose from the village,
Miantowona
Stole from the mourners,
Stole through the cornfields,
Passed like a phantom
Into the shadows
Through the pine-forest.
One who had watched her—
It was Nahoho,
Loving her vainly—
Saw, as she passed him,
That in her features
Made his stout heart quail.
He could but follow.
Quick were her footsteps,
Light as a snow-flake,
Leaving no traces
On the white clover.
Like a trained runner,
Winner of prizes,
Into the woodlands
Plunged the young chieftain.
Once he abruptly
Halted, and listened;
Then he sped forward
Faster and faster
Toward the bright water.
Breathless he reached it.
Why did he crouch then,
Stark as a statue?
What did he see there
Could so appall him?
Only a circle
Swiftly expanding,
Fading before him;
But, as he watched it,
Up from the centre,
Slowly, superbly
Rose a Pond-Lily.
One cry of wonder,
Shrill as the loon's call,
Rang through the forest,
Startling the silence,
Startling the mourners
Chanting the death-song.
Forth from the village,
Flocking together
Came all the Hurons,—
Striplings and warriors,
Maidens and old men,
Squaws with pappooses.
No word was spoken:
There stood the Hurons
On the dank greensward,
With their swart faces
Bowed in the twilight.
What did they see there?
Only a Lily
Rocked on the azure
Breast of the water.
Then they turned sadly
Each to the other,
Tenderly murmuring,
"Miantowona!"
Soft as the dew falls
Down through the midnight,
Cleaving the starlight,
Echo repeated,
"Miantowona!"