CHAPTER V.
Doctor Fenwick is now the father of four small tow-headed children, who poss the long Australian days teasing a tame Kangaroo and stoning the loud-laughing great kingfisher and other birds, catalogue of which is mislaid. His wife has not had a single nervous attack for years, and probably never will have another. Doctor Faber married Mrs. Ashleigh!
Doctor Fenwick, it is needless to say, has thrown his library of Alchemists, Rosicrucianists, Mesmerists, Spiritualists, Transcendentalists, and all other trashy lists into the fire, together with several pounds of bang, hasheesh, cocculus indicus, and opium. He at this present time of writing, is an active, industrious, intelligent, and practical man, finding in the truthful working out THE great problem, Do unto others as you would have others do unto you, an exceeding great reward.
THE END.
WHAT THEN?
BY J. HAL. ELLIOT.
God's pity on them! Human souls, I mean,
Crushed down and hid 'neath squalid rags and dirt,
And bodies which no common sore can hurt;
All this between
Those souls, and life—corrupt, defiled, unclean.
And more—hard faces, pinched by starving years.
Cold, stolid, grimy faces—vacant eyes,
Wishful anon, as when one looks and dies;
But never tears!
Tears would not help them—battling constant jeers.
Forms, trained to bend and grovel from the first,
Crouching through life forever in the dark,
Aimlessly creeping toward an unseen mark;
And no one durst
Deny their horrid dream, that they are curst.
And life for them! dare we call life its name?
O God! an arid sea of burning sand,
Eternal blackness! death on every hand!
A smothered flame,
Writhing and blasting in the tortured frame.
And death! we shudder when we speak the word;
'Tis all the same to them—or life, or death;
They breathe them both with every fevered breath;
When have they heard,
That cool Bethesda's waters might be stirred!
They live among us—live and die to-day;
We brush them with our garments on the street,
And track their footsteps with our dainty feet;
'Poor common clay!'
We curl our lips—and that is what we say.
God's pity on them! and on us as well:
They live and die like brutes, and we like men:
Both go alone into the dark—what then?
Or heaven, or hell?
They suffered in this life! Stop! Who can tell?
The last stranger who visited Washington Irving, before his death, was Theodore Tilton, who published shortly afterward an account of the interview. Mr. Tilton wrote also a private letter to a friend, giving an interesting reminiscence, which he did not mention in his published account. The following is an extract from this letter, now first made public:
As I was about parting from Mr. Irving, at the door-step, he held my hand a few moments, and said:
'You know Henry Ward Beecher?
'Yes,' I replied, 'he is an intimate friend.'
'I have never seen him,' said he, 'tell me how he looks.'
I described, in a few words, Mr. Beecher's personal appearance; when Mr. Irving remarked:
'I take him to be a man always in fine health and cheery spirits.'
I replied that he was hale, vigorous, and full of life; that every drop of his blood bubbled with good humor.
'His writings,' said Knickerbocker, 'are full of human kindness. I think he must have a great power of enjoyment.'
'Yes,' I added, 'to hear him laugh is as if one had spilt over you a pitcher of wine.'
'It is a good thing for a man to laugh well,' returned the old gentleman, smiling. He then observed:
'I have read many of your friend's writings; he draws charming pictures; he inspires and elevates one's mind; I wish I could once take him by the hand.'
At which I instantly said:
'I will ask him to make you a visit.'
'Tell him I will give him a Scotch welcome; tell him that I love him, though I never have seen his face.'
These words were spoken with such evident sincerity, that Sunnyside will always have a sunnier place in my memory, because of the old man's genial tribute to my dear friend.
The following paragraph from the Boston Traveller, contains a few facts well worth noting:
'The secession sympathizers in the North have two favorite dodges for the service of their friends, the enemy. The first is, to magnify the numbers of the rebel forces, placing them at 500,000 men, whereas they never have had above half as many men in the field, all told, and counting negroes as well as white men. The other is, to magnify the cost of the war on the side of the Federalists. They tell us that our public war-debt, by the close of the current fiscal year, June 30, 1862, will be 1,200,000,000, (twelve hundred million dollars.) They know better than this, for that debt will, at the date named, be not much above $620,000,000, which would be no greater burden on the country than was that which it owed in 1815, perhaps not so great a burden as that was. People should not allow themselves to be frightened by the prophecies of men who, if they could be sure of preserving slavery in all its force, would care for nothing else.'
It is always easy to make up a gloomy statement, and this has been done of late to perfection by the demo-secessionists among us. It is an easy matter to assume, as has been done, the maximum war expenditure for one single day, and say that it is the average. It is easy, too, to say that 'You can never whip the South,' and point to Richmond 'bounce' in confirmation. It will all avail nothing. Slavery is going—of that rest assured—and the South is to be thoroughly Northed with new blood. Delenda est Dixie.
Our 'private' readers in the army—of whom we have enough, we are proud to say, to constitute a pretty large-sized public—may rest assured that accounts will not be settled with the South without very serious consideration of what is due to the soldier for his services 'in snatching the common-weal from the jaws of hell,' as the Latin memorial to Pitt, on the Dedham stone hath it. It has been said that republics are ungrateful; but in this instance the adage must fall to the ground. The soldier will be as much needed after the war, to settle the South, 'North it,' and preserve the Union by his intellect and his industry, as he now is to reestablish it by his bravery.
We find the following in the Boston Courier of March 29th:
'Our attention has been called to a statement in the CONTINENTAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE, to the effect, that certain interesting 'Notes on the Gulf States,' which have recently appeared in this paper were reproductions, with certain alterations, of letters which were printed in the Knickerbocker Magazine several years ago. The statement made is not positive, but made with such qualifications as might lead to the inference that the comparison was not very carefully made. We can only say, that we have had no opportunity to confer with our distant correspondent, who handed us the whole series of 'Notes' together, in manuscript, for publication; nor had we any reason to believe that they were ever printed before, either in whole or in part. We can say nothing further, until we know more about the grounds for the intimation of the CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.'
We were guarded in our statement, not having at hand, when we wrote the paragraph referred to, more than three or four numbers of the Courier containing the Gulf States articles, and not desiring to give the accusation a needlessly harsh expression, knowing well that the best informed editor may have at times old literary notes passed upon him for new ones. What we do say, is simply that several columns of the articles which appeared as original in the Boston Courier, were literal reprints from a series which appeared in the Knickerbocker Magazine in 1847.
Notes.
Lond. Doc. 1, 24. [(Return)]
Wassemaer's Historie Van Europa, Amsterdam, 1621-1628. [(Return)]
Alb. Rec. xviii. [(Return)]
The statistics given above are correct. That small number of slaveholders sustains the system of slavery, and has caused this terrible rebellion. They are, almost to a man, rebels and secessionists, and we may cover the South with armies, and keep a file of soldiers upon every plantation, and not smother this insurrection unless we break down the power of that class. Their wealth gives them their power, and their wealth is in their slaves. Free their negroes by an act of Emancipation, or Confiscation, and the rebellion will crumble to pieces in a day. Omit to do it, and it will last till doomsday.
The power of this dominant class once broken; with landed property at the South more equally divided, a new order of things will arise there. Where now, with their large plantations, not one acre in ten is tilled, a system of small farms will spring into existence, and the whole country be covered with cultivation. The six hundred thousand men who have gone there to fight our battles, will see the amazing fertility of the Southern soil—into which the seed is thrown and springs up without labor into a bountiful harvest—and many of them, if slavery is crushed out, will remain there. Thus a new element will be introduced into the South, an element that will speedily make it a loyal, prosperous, and intelligent section of the Union.
I would interfere with no one's rights, but a rebel in arms against his country has no rights; all that he has 'is confiscate.' Will the loyal people of the North submit to be ground to the earth with taxes to pay the expenditures of a war brought upon them by these Southern oligarchists, while the traitors are left in undisturbed possession of every thing, and even their slaves are exempted from taxation? It were well that our legislators should ask this question now, and not wait till it is asked of them by THE PEOPLE. [(Return)]