No man, I have said, winces under a laugh more than Harry; and his only suffering worth mentioning, since he came to his new place, has been from this dislike of ridicule. When the cottage was ready, Miss Foote proposed a house-warming, and invited herself and her two maids there to tea. It was a particularly pleasant evening, with a fine fire, and plenty of light, and good tea and cake, and all the five in capital spirits. Harry was made to take the arm-chair by his own fireside; and when he began to crack his jokes it appeared that he had his own notions of the ridiculous. He quizzed his nearest neighbor, an old man, who had married a comparatively young woman, and whose children were forever playing about Miss Foote's gate. When Harry joked about that unequal match, Miss Foote could not laugh. She thought his own infinitely worse. And the poor fellow soon saw that others were quizzing him, much more severely than he had quizzed the old man. He looks grave about Dinah now, and has left off talking of his own prudence in making such a marriage. He has also told his sister that when Dinah dies he shall not marry again. It is very painful; and yet Dinah is improved beyond all that could have been anticipated. She has put off her false front, and lets her grizzled hair appear. She no longer scans Miss Foote's face to make out what it would be most acceptable that she should say, but rattles away about her affairs with a sort of youthful glee. She no longer speaks in a whining tone, but lets her voice take its own way. One day she leaned on her rake (when she was trimming her own flower-bed), and told Miss Foote, without any canting whatever, that she had quite changed her mind about the maids since she came. She was looking too far then, and so did not see what they were; but she found in time that there was no slyness or pretense, but that they were really good faithful girls, working for their employer's good, and with no plots of their own. Old as Dinah seemed to be, there appears to be a chance of her growing ingenuous and agreeable before she dies. The gentry who come to the house observe that they never saw two people so altered as Harry and Dinah; that they seem to have got new faces, a new gait—a new mind.
Harry had other ridicule to wince about. The neighbors laughed at him and his employer about their whole plan; they had never heard of keeping cows on less than three acres per cow, or, at least, five acres for two; they had never seen such deep digging; they had never known any body take the trouble to remove stones, or do any thing but bury them out of sight; they had never seen a currycomb used to a cow; they had never known a hardworking man so poor-spirited as to be a water-drinker. The milk must cost Miss Foote 6d. a quart; the cow would die; Harry would wear himself out; and so forth. One day, the first winter, the cow was very ill. Between the fear of the experiment being given up, and love for the creature, and dread of the neighbors, Harry was wretched. The tears streamed down his face as he waited on the sick beast. She got well, however; and now Harry meets ridicule with a bolder face. A temperance society having been set up in the place, he has joined it, though far above all temptation to drink. He finds it a convenience, when pressed to drink, to cut the matter short by saying that he is a pledged member—and a curious temperance preacher he is. When told lately that his cows would rot under his method of treatment, his answer was: "No, it isn't they that will rot. I'll tell you who 'tis that will rot; 'tis them that put filthy spirits into their stomachs to turn their brains, that will rot, and not my cows, that drink sweet water."
There is a grave side to Harry's lot now, happy as he is. He looks serious and hurt at times, though his health has much strengthened, his earnings are sure, his wages are raised, his Sunday dress is like that of a gentleman, there is meat on his table daily, and he has had the comfort of assisting his parents. Notwithstanding all this, a cloud comes over his face at times. As his sister says, "he feels the injury of his want of education." His mind is opening very rapidly. At any spare quarter of an hour he lectures Miss Foote on industry, temperance, duty to parents, and other good topics. The moral discoveries he has made are wonderful to him. He has attended church all his life; but truths come with new force into his mind when they enter through the spirit of hope and the medium of success. He says "it was wonderful the ideas that come into a man's mind when he sets himself a-thinking over his work, and there is no care to take up his thoughts." Hence the brightened countenance which the neighbors remark on: but hence, too, the bitter regret at his wasted years of school life—at "the injury of his want of education." What might he not hope to be and do now, Susan says, if he had but the knowledge that every man may be said to have the right to be possessed of? Yet, the good fellow has raised his family to a point of comfort. A gentleman who heard of his merits, as a first-rate laborer, wrote to the same parish officers, to inquire if there were any brothers. There was Tom; and Tom is now in a happy situation, highly esteemed by his employer, and earning 14s. a week. The employer, finding that Tom sadly missed intercourse with his family, and knowing that he could neither read nor write letters, sent for the sister, Lizzy, to be under-nursemaid in the family. In another way Harry has done a deeper and wider good. Miss Foote's friends tell her that his example is beginning to tell in the neighborhood; his example, not only of strenuous and skillful labor, but by integrity, temperance, and disinterested attachment to his employer.
All this is well—very pleasant to contemplate—but a disturbing question arises in the midst of it: What can society say to these excellent young men in excuse for their deprivation of family life? And again, what is at best their prospect for old age?
(From Bentley's Miscellany.)
A CHAPTER ON WOLVES.
BY THE AUTHOR OF "LORD BACON IN ADVERSITY," ETC.
We rustled through the leaves like wind,
Left shrubs and trees and wolves behind;
By night I beard them on the track,
Their troop came hard upon our back,
With their long gallop, which can tire
The hounds' deep hate and hunter's fire;
Where'er we flew, they followed on,
Nor left us with the morning sun.
Behind I saw them, scarce a rood
At daybreak winding through the wood,
And through the night had heard their feet,
Their stealing, rustling step repeat.
Oh! how I wished for spear or sword
At least to die amidst the horde,
And perish—if it must be so—
At bay, destroying many a foe!
Mazeppa.
A peculiar interest attaches to the wolf, from the close analogy which in all its essential features it presents to the faithful companion of man. So close indeed is the analogy, that some of the ablest zoologists, the celebrated John Hunter included, have entertained the opinion that dogs, in all their varieties, and wolves, have descended from a common stock. With the exception of an obliquity in the position of the eyes, there is no appreciable anatomical difference between these animals. The question is one of difficulty; but we believe we are correct in stating that the majority of the highest authorities agree in the belief that these animals are not derived from a common parent, but were originally distinct, and will ever so continue. There are several species of wild dogs known, quite distinct from the wolf; and although the opportunities have been numerous for dogs resuming their pristine form, by long continuance in a savage state, no instance has ever occurred of their becoming wolves, however much they might degenerate from the domestic breed. The honest and intelligent shepherd-dog was regarded by Buffon as the "fons et origo," from which all other dogs, great and small, have sprung; and he drew up a kind of genealogical table, showing how climate, food, education, and intermixture of breeds gave rise to the varieties. At Katmandoo there are many plants found in a wild state, which man has carried with him in his migrations, and wild animals, which may present the typical forms whence some of our domestic races have been derived; among these is a wild dog, which Mr. Hodgson considers to be the primitive species of the whole canine race. By Professor Kretchner, the jackal was regarded as the type of the dogs of ancient Egypt, an idea supported by the representations on the walls of the temples. This question, however, of the origin of the canine race, is so thoroughly obscured by the mists of countless ages, as to be incapable of direct proof. Philosophers may indulge themselves with speculations; but in the absence of that keystone, proof, the matter must rest on the basis of theory alone.