The Project Gutenberg eBook, Fifteen Days, by Mary Lowell Putnam

FIFTEEN DAYS.

AN

EXTRACT FROM EDWARD COLVIL'S JOURNAL.

"Aux plus déshérités le plus d'amour."

BOSTON:
TICKNOR AND FIELDS.
1866.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1865, by M. Lowell Putnam, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Massachusetts.

"Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more,
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere,
I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude,
And with forced fingers rude
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year."

FIFTEEN DAYS—CONTENTS.

Good-Friday Evening, April 5, 1844.

No entry in my journal since the twenty-eighth of March. Yet these seven silent days have a richer history than any that have arrived, with their exactions or their gifts, since those liberal ones of two springs ago came to endow me with your friendship.

Easy to tread and pleasant to look back upon is the level plain of our life, uniform, yet diversified, familiar, yet always new; but, from time to time, we find ourselves on little sunny heights from which the way we have traversed shows yet fairer than we knew it, and that which we are to take invites with more cheerful promise.

I did not know last Friday morning that anything was wanting to me. And had I not enough? My farm-duties, which restrict my study-time just enough to leave it always the zest of privilege; my books, possessed or on the way; my mother's dear affection; your faithful letters, true to the hour; Selden's, that come at last;—these, and then the casual claims, the little countless pleasures infinitely varied, special portion of each human day! always something to do, something to enjoy, something to expect. And yet I would not now go back and be where I was last Friday morning. Beautiful miracle! Our cup is always full, yet its capacity is never reached!

Since the day I stood at my gate, listening for the fading sounds of your horse's feet, many guests have crossed my threshold and recrossed it,—all received with good-will, dismissed with good wishes. Last Friday brought one whom I took to my heart and hold there. The first clasp of his firm hand, the first look of his sweet, frank eyes, bound me to him forever. Keith, I have more to love than I had a week ago, and the world is more beautiful for me, life better worth living.

We had had gray weather for a week before he came; the blue sky appeared with him, and smiled on us every day while he was here. I cannot now separate the thought of him from that of sunshine, nor can I tell how much of the glow and freshness of those days was of the atmosphere, how much from his happy nature.

I had just come in from work, and was sitting near the window, watching the slowly clearing sky, when I heard a step coming down the road. You know I am used to listen to approaching footsteps, and to judge beforehand what manner of man is about to present himself at my door. This was a step that struck very cheerfully on the ear. Firm, regular, it had no haste in it, yet a certain eagerness. My mother heard it, too. "The feet of him that bringeth good tidings," she said, smiling. The sun broke out full and clear as she spoke. "Can it be Dr. Borrow?—it must be," I asked and answered myself; and my heart warmed to him as it had not when I was reading his praises in Selden's letter. I heard the gate open and close again. I went to the door, and saw, coming along the path I guided you on that first dark night, a figure that agreed perfectly with the step, but not at all with what I had imagined Dr. Borrow. It was that of a man hardly more than twenty, who carried about with him, it seemed, a world of youthful happiness, but assuredly no great weight of learning. Erect, vigorous, animated, his whole person spoke harmonious strength and freedom of soul and body. His head was uncovered,—or, rather, it was protected only by its masses of fair brown hair, whose curls the light wind that had sprung up to meet him lifted tenderly, as if to show them sparkling in the sunshine. This was no chance visitor; he walked as if he knew where he was going, and felt himself an expected and a welcome guest. He had come from far; his well-fitting travelling-suit of dark gray told of a very distant skill and fashion, and was a little the worse for the long road. He had a knapsack on his shoulders. From a strap which crossed his breast hung a green tin case, such as botanists carry on their tours. This, again, connected him with Dr. Borrow; but the wild-flowers in his hand had been gathered for their beauty, not their rarity, and the happy grace of their arrangement denoted rather the artist than the savant.

He saw me as soon as I came to the door; for he quickened his step, and, from where I stood, I could see his face brighten. You do not know the face, and it is not like any other; how can you understand the impression it made on me?

Our hands were soon joined in a cordial clasp. He answered my warm welcome with a look full of youthful delight, behind which lay an earnest, manly satisfaction.

The name which was in my mind came, though hesitatingly, to my lips: "Dr. Borrow——" I began. A flash of merriment passed over my guest's features; but they were instantly composed, as if he felt the mirthful thought a disrespect to the absent.

"I am Harry Dudley. Dr. Borrow is coming. I walked on before to let you know."

He laid his bouquet of wild-flowers in the shadow of the doorsteps, threw off his knapsack, flung down on it the felt hat he had carried crumpled up under his arm, and, turning, showed himself ready to walk off with me to meet the Doctor. We had reached the gate, when he stopped suddenly and looked towards the house.

"But do you not wish——?"

"No,"—I understood him at once,—"my mother is prepared; we have been for some time expecting Dr. Borrow—and you," I ought in politeness to have added, but in truth I could not. I looked at him a little anxiously, fearing he might have remarked the omission, but his eyes met mine, glad and frank.

Dr. Borrow had engrossed us. His visit, from the time it was first promised, had been the one theme here within doors and without. Morning and evening I had consulted with my mother over his entertainment; Tabitha had, more than once, in his behalf, displaced and reinstated every object in the house; Hans and his boys had stimulated each other to unusual efforts, that the farm might find favor in such enlightened eyes. Harry Dudley! certainly I ought to have been expecting him. Certainly Selden's letter had told me he was coming. But the mention of him had been so slight, or, I will now rather say, so simple, that I had almost overlooked it. A line held it, after three full pages given to Dr. Borrow. "Harry Dudley goes with him,"—that was all. How little importance the name had for me which was to have so much!

But, if no pains had been taken to prepossess me in Harry's favor, full justice, I am sure, had been done me with him. He seemed to regard me not as an acquaintance newly found, but as an old friend rejoined: we were going out to meet and welcome the stranger whose comforts we were to care for together.

"I suppose you will give Dr. Borrow your room, and you will take the little one down-stairs, that you had when Selden was here? I shall sleep in the barn on the hay."

I was, to be sure, just considering whether I should have one of our little impromptu bedsteads set up for Harry, in a corner of the room—yours—which had been assigned to the Doctor, or whether I should share my little nook down-stairs with him. In the end, he had it all his own way.

It was not long before we came upon the Doctor. I could not draw his full portrait at first sight, as I did Harry's, for I had only a profile view of his stooping figure, until I was quite close to him. He, too, carried a knapsack;—a large russet one; Harry's was black;—and strapped to it was a long umbrella, which protruded on either side. He was grubbing in a meadow, and was either really so intent that he did not see us, or thought it better not to let us know that he did until he had finished his work. We stood near him some minutes before he straightened himself up, booty in hand. He scrutinized his prize for a moment, and then, apparently satisfied, came forward and saluted mo in a very friendly tone. His dark-blue spectacles prevented me from seeing whether the eyes seconded the voice, and his other features are too heavy to be very expressive. When I had made known my satisfaction at his arrival, and he had acquiesced,—when I had inquired after Selden, and he had answered that he had not seen our common friend for six weeks, we stood opposite each other, I looking for a subject which could not be disposed of so promptly, and he, apparently, waiting for me to bring it forward. But Harry now spoke eagerly:—

"Have you found it?"—holding out his hand at the same time for the poor little specimen which the Doctor held between his thumb and finger.

"Yes."

"The very one you have been looking for?"

"The very thing."

"Shall I put it into the box?"

Harry received the little object respectfully, and deposited it in the tin case with care. He then relieved Dr. Borrow's shoulders of the knapsack and took it on his own, having first withdrawn the umbrella and placed it in the hands of the owner, who watched its extrication with interest, and received it in a way which showed it to be an object of attachment. The Doctor gathered up some inferior spoil which lay in a circle round the place where he had been at work. Harry found room for all in the box. He had entered so fully into his companion's success, that I thought he might after all be a botanist himself; but he told me, as we walked towards the house, that he knew nothing of plants except what he had learned in journeying with Dr. Borrow.

"But I know what it is to want to complete your collection," he added, laughing. "We have been all the morning looking for this particular kind of grass. Dr. Borrow thought it must grow somewhere in this neighborhood, and here it is at last. The Doctor has a great collection of grasses."

"The largest, I think I may say, on this continent,—one of the largest, perhaps, that exists," said the Doctor, with the candor of a man who feels called upon to render himself justice, since there is no one else qualified to do it. And then he entered upon grasses; setting forth the great part filled by this powerful family, in the history of our earth, and vindicating triumphantly his regard for its humblest member.

When we came within sight of the house, Harry walked rapidly on. By the time the Doctor and I rejoined him at the door, he had disencumbered himself of the knapsack, had taken his flowers from their hiding-place, and stood ready to follow us in.

I introduced Dr. Borrow to my mother in form, and was about to do the same by Harry, who had stood back modestly until his friend had been presented; but he was now already taking her extended hand, bowing over it with that air of filial deference which we hear that high-bred Frenchmen have in their manner to elder women. I wondered that I had before thought him so young; his finished courtesy was that of a man versed in society. But the next moment he was offering her his wild-flowers with the smile with which an infant brings its little fistful of dandelions to its mother, delighting in the pleasure it has been preparing for her. His name had made more impression on my mother than on me. She called him by it at once. This redeemed all my omissions, if, indeed, he had remarked them, and I believe he had not.

The Doctor, in the mean while, had lifted his spectacles to the top of his head. You have not seen a man until you have looked into his eyes. Dr. Borrow's, of a clear blue, made another being of him. His only speaking feature, they speak intelligence and good-will. I felt that I should like him, and I do. He did not, however, find himself so immediately at home with us as Harry did. He took the chair I offered him, but sat silent and abstracted, answering absently, by an inclination of the head, my modest attempts at conversation. Harry, interpreting his mood, brought him the green tin case. He took it a little hastily, and looked about him, as if inquiring for a place where he could give himself to the inspection of its contents. I offered to conduct him to his room. Harry went out promptly and brought in the well-stuffed russet knapsack,—took the respectable umbrella from the corner where it was leaning, and followed us up-stairs,—placed his load inside the chamber-door, and ran down again. I introduced the Doctor to the chair and table in my little study, where he installed himself contentedly.

When I came down, I found Harry standing by my mother. He was putting the flowers into water for her,—consulting her, as he arranged them, now by a look, now by a question. She answered the bright smile with which he took leave of her, when his work was done, by one tender, almost tearful. I knew to whom that smile was given. I knew that beside her then stood the vision of a little boy, fair-haired, dark-eyed, like Harry, and full of such lovely promise as Harry's happy mother could see fulfilled in him. But the sadness flitted lightly, and a soft radiance overspread the dear pale face.

The name of our little Charles had been in my mind too, and my thoughts followed hers backward to that sweet infancy, and forward to that unblemished maturity, attained in purer spheres, of which Harry's noble and tender beauty had brought us a suggestion.

It was the absence of a moment. I was recalled by a greeting given in Harry's cordial voice. Tabitha stood in the doorway. She studied the stranger with a long look, and then, advancing in her stateliest manner, bestowed on him an emphatic and elaborate welcome. He listened with grave and courteous attention, as a prince on a progress might receive the harangue of a village mayor, and answered with simple thanks, which she, satisfied with having performed her own part, accepted as an ample return, and applied herself to more practical hospitality.

Harry had been intent on some purpose when Tabitha intercepted him. He now went quickly out, brought in the knapsack he had thrown down beside the door on his first arrival, and began to undo the straps. I felt myself interested, for there was a happy earnestness in his manner which told of a pleasure on the way for somebody, and it seemed to be my turn. I was not mistaken. He drew out a book, and then another and another.

"These are from Selden."

He watched me as I read the title-pages, entering warmly into my satisfaction, which was great enough, I am sure, to be more than a reward for the weight Selden's gift had added to his pack.

"It does not take long to know Harry Dudley. Dear, affectionate boy, in what Arcadia have you grown up, that you have thus carried the innocence and simplicity of infancy through your twenty years!" This I said within myself, as I looked upon his pure forehead, and met the sweet, confiding expression of his beautiful eyes. Yet, even then, something about the mouth arrested me, something of deep, strong, resolute, which spoke the man who had already thought and renounced and resisted. It does not take long to love Harry Dudley, but I have learned that he is not to be known in an hour. Selden might well leave him to make his own introduction. I can understand, that, to those who are familiar with him, his very name should seem to comprehend a eulogium.

Tabitha gave Dr. Borrow no such ceremonious reception as she had bestowed on Harry. She was hospitable, however, and gracious, with a touch of familiarity in her manner just enough to balance the condescension in his. As he had not been witness of the greater state with which Harry was received, he was not, I trust, sensible of any want.

We sat up late that evening. The hours passed rapidly. Dr. Borrow had laid aside his preoccupations, and gave himself up to the pleasures of discourse. He passed over a wide range of topics, opening freely for us his magazines of learning, scientific and scholastic, and displaying a power of graphic narration I was not prepared for. He aids himself with apt and not excessive gesture. In relating conversations, without descending to mimicry, he characterizes his personages for you, so that you are never in doubt.

Selden, telling me almost everything else about the Doctor, had said nothing of his age; but he spoke of him as of a friend of his own, and is himself only twenty-seven; so I had supposed it to lie on the brighter side of thirty. It did, indeed, seem marvellous that the stores of erudition attributed to him could have been gathered in so early, but I made allowance for Selden's generous faculty of admiration.

Dr. Borrow must be forty, or perhaps a little more. He is of middle height, square-built, of a dull complexion, which makes his open blue eyes look very blue and open. You are to imagine for him a strong, clear voice, a rapid, yet distinct utterance, and a manner which denotes long habit of easy and secure superiority.

I have never known the Doctor in finer vein than that first evening. We were only three to listen to him, but it was long since he had had even so large an audience capable of admiring, I will not say of appreciating him. Whatever his topic, he enchained our attention; but he made his power most felt, perhaps, when treating of his own specialty, or scientific subjects connected with it. He is, as he told us, emphatically a practical man, preferring facts to speculations. He propounds no theories of his own, but he develops those of others very happily, setting forth the most opposite with the same ingenuity and clearness. When, in these expositions, he sometimes approached the limits where earthly science merges in the heavenly, Harry's face showed his mind tending powerfully forward. But the Doctor always stopped short of the point to which he seemed leading, and was on the ground again without sharing in the fall he had prepared for his listeners.

Very entertaining to me were Dr. Borrow's accounts of his travelling experiences and observations in our own State and neighborhood. His judgments he had brought with him, and I soon found that his inquiry had been conducted with the view rather of confirming than of testing them. I felt myself compelled to demur at some of his conclusions; but I cannot flatter myself that I did anything towards shaking his faith in them: he only inculcated them upon me with greater zeal and confidence. When a little debate of this kind occurred, Harry followed it attentively, but took no part in it. I sometimes felt that his sympathies were on my side, and my opponent certainly thought so,—for, when I pressed him a little hard, he would turn upon his travelling-companion a burst of refutation too lively to be addressed to a new acquaintance. The pleasant laugh in Harry's eyes showed him amused, yet still far within the limits of respect.

Sometimes, in the course of his narrations, or of his disquisitions upon men and manners, American or foreign, the Doctor turned for corroboration to Harry, who gave it promptly and gladly when he could. If he felt himself obliged to dissent, he did so with deference, and forbore to urge his objections, if they were overruled, as they commonly were.

I found, however, before the first evening was over, that, with all his modesty, Harry maintained his independence. When the Doctor, who is no Utopist, found occasion to aim a sarcasm at the hopes and prospects of the lovers of humanity, or pronounced in a slighting tone some name dear to them, Harry never failed to put in a quiet, but express protest, which should at least exempt him from complicity. And Dr. Borrow would turn upon him a satirical smile, which gradually softened into an indulgent one, and then take up again quietly the thread of his discourse. At times, Harry was forced into more direct and sustained opposition. I observed that his tone was then, if less positive than his antagonist's, quite as decided. If the Doctor's words came with all the weight of a justifiable self-esteem, Harry's had that of deep and intimate conviction. I am persuaded that conversation would lose all zest for the Doctor, if conducted long with persons who agreed with him. He kindles at the first hint of controversy, as the horse at the sound of the trumpet. To Harry sympathy is dearer than triumph; he enters upon contest only when compelled by loyalty to principle or to friendship.

The elder man needs companionship as much as the younger, and perhaps enjoys it as much, though very differently. The admiration he excites reacts upon him and stimulates to new efforts. Harry's tender and grateful nature expands to affectionate interest, as a flower to the sunshine.

The Doctor has a certain intellectual fervor, which quickens the flow of his thought and language, and enables him to lead you, willingly fascinated, along the road he chooses to walk in for the time. When Harry is drawn out of his usual modest reserve to maintain a position, his concentrated enthusiasm sometimes gives to a few words, spoken in his calm, resolute voice, the effect of a masterly eloquence. These words pass into your heart to become a part of its possessions.

I think I never fully understood the meaning of the expression personal influence, until I knew Harry Dudley. What a divine gift it is, when of the force and quality of his! What a bright line his life-stream will lead through the happy region it is to bless! And he holds this magical power so unconsciously! Here is another point of contrast between him and his friend. Dr. Borrow is very sensible of all his advantages, and would be surprised, if others were insensible to them. No one can do him this displeasure; his merits and acquirements must be manifest on first acquaintance. But Harry Dudley,—you do not think of asking whether he has this or that talent or accomplishment. You feel what he is, and love him for it, before you know whether he has anything.

These two companions, so different, are yet not ill-assorted. Harry's simplicity and strength together prevent him from being injured by his friend's love of domination, which might give umbrage to a more self-conscious, or overbear a weaker man; his frankness and courage only make his esteem of more value to the Doctor, who, with all his tendency to the despotic, is manly and loves manliness.

I shall not attempt to write down for you any of the Doctor's brilliant dissertations. You will know him some time, I hope, and he will do himself a justice I could not do him. Harry you must know. He will go to see you on his way home, and, if he does not find you, will make a visit to you the object of a special journey. He will be a new bond between us. We shall watch his course together. It will not, it cannot, disappoint us; for "spirits are not finely touched, but to fine issues."

They are gone. We have promised each other that this parting shall not be the final one. And yet my heart was heavy to-day at noon. When the gate fell to after they had passed out, it seemed to me the sound had in it something of determined and conclusive. I rebuked the regret almost before it had made itself felt. Dudley is going out into the world, which has so much need of men like him, true, brave, steadfast. I can have no fear or anxiety for him. He must be safe everywhere in God's universe. Do not all things work together for good to those that love Him?

Saturday Evening, April 6, 1844.

My date ought to be March 30th, for I have been living over again to-day the scenes of a week ago, and in my twilight talk with my mother it was last Saturday that was reviewed, instead of this.

Last Saturday! The friends who now seem to belong to us, as if we had never done without them, were then new acquisitions. The Doctor we had not yet made out. How bright and pure that morning was! I was up early, or thought I was, until I entered our little parlor, which I had expected to find cheerless with the disorder that had made it cheerful the evening before. But Tabitha, watchful against surprises, had it in receiving-trim. She was giving it the last touches as I entered. I had heard no sound from my mother's little chamber, which my present one adjoins, and had been careful in my movements, thinking her not yet awake. But here she was already in her place on the couch, wearing a look of pleased solicitude, which I understood. I was not myself wholly free from hospitable cares. Selden had been so exact in forewarning me of Dr. Borrow's tastes and habits, that in the midst of my anticipations intruded a little prosaic anxiety about the breakfast. My mother, perhaps, shared it. Tabitha did not. She heard some officious suggestions of mine with a lofty indifference. The event justified her. How important she was, and how happy! How considerately, yet how effectively, she rang the great bell! I did not know it capable of such tones. When it summoned us, Harry was absent. The Doctor and I took our places at the table without him. My mother made his apology: he must have been very tired by his long walk the day before, and had probably overslept himself. "Not he!" cried the Doctor, with energy, as if repelling a serious accusation. "It's your breakfast"—he pointed to the clock—"was ready four minutes too soon. I've known two punctual men in my life, and Harry's one of them. He's never two minutes after the time, nor two minutes before it."

The Doctor had hardly done speaking when Harry's step was heard. It was always the same, and always gave the same sensation of a joy in prospect. Nor did it ever deceive. Dr. Borrow's good-morning was very hearty. Harry had arrived just one minute before the time. If he had come a minute earlier, or three minutes later, I do not know how it might have been, for the Doctor does not like to be put in the wrong.

Harry brought in a bouquet for my mother. He did not fail in this attention a single morning while he was here. I could not but sometimes think of her who missed this little daily offering.

I had determined beforehand to give myself entirely to Dr. Borrow during the time of his visit. I have often regretted the hours my farm took from you. I had forewarned Hans of my intention of allowing myself a vacation, and had arranged for the boys some work which did not require oversight. They were to take hold of it, without further notice, as soon as the distinguished stranger arrived. I could therefore give myself up with an easy mind to the prolonged pleasures of the breakfast-table. The Doctor was in excellent spirits,—full of anecdote and of argument. I was very near being drawn into a controversy more than once; but I was more willing to listen to him than to myself, and avoided it successfully. Harry was in the same peaceful disposition, but was not so fortunate.

A subject of difference between the friends, which seems to be a standing one, is the character of the French. How did the Doctor bring it on the table that morning? I think it was à-propos of the coffee. He praised it and compared it with Paris coffee, which he did not dispraise. But, once landed in France, that he should expatiate there for a time was of course; and he found himself, as it appeared, in a favorite field of animadversion. He began with some general reflection,—I forget what; but, from the tone in which it was given, I understood perfectly that it was a glove thrown down to Harry. It was not taken up; and the Doctor, after a little defiant pause, went forward. He drew highly colored sketches of the Gaul and the Anglo-Saxon. Harry simply abstained from being amused. Dr. Borrow passed to his individual experiences. It appeared, that, notwithstanding the light regard in which he held the French, he had done them the honor to pass several years in their country. This intimate acquaintance had only given him the fairer opportunity of making a comparison which was entirely to the advantage of the race he himself represented. He declared, that, walking about among the population of Paris, he felt himself on quite another scale and of quite another clay. Harry here suggested that perhaps a Frenchman in London, or in one of our cities, might have the same feeling.

"He can't,—he can't, if he would. No race dreams of asserting superiority over the Anglo-Saxon,—least of all the French."

"If the French do not assert their superiority," Harry answered, laughing, "it is because they are ignorant that it has been questioned."

"That gives the measure of their ignorance; and they take care to maintain it: a Frenchman never learns a foreign language."

"Because—as I once heard a Frenchman say—foreigners pay him the compliment of learning his."

The Doctor burst out upon French vanity.

"At least you will admit that it is a quiet one," Harry replied. "The French are content with their own good opinion. The tribute that foreigners pay them is voluntary."

The Doctor arraigned those who foster the conceit of the French, first by trying to copy them and then by failing in it. He was very entertaining on this head. Neither Harry nor I thought it necessary to remind him that the pictures he drew of the French and their imitators did not precisely illustrate Anglo-Saxon superiority. He told the origin of several little French customs, which, founded simply in motives of economy or convenience, have been superstitiously adopted, without any such good reason, and even made a test of breeding, by weak-minded persons in England and this country. No one took up the defence of those unfortunates, but the Doctor was not satisfied with this acquiescence. He had an uneasy sense that his advantage in the encounter with Harry had not been decisive. He soon returned to the old field. Harry continued to parry his attacks playfully for a time, but at last said seriously,—

"Doctor, I know you are not half in earnest; but if I hear ill spoken of France, without replying, I feel as if I were not as true to my friends there as I know they are to me. One of the best and noblest men I ever knew is a Frenchman. This is not to argue with you. You know better than anybody what the world owes to France. If you were to take up my side, you would find a great deal more to say for it than I could. I wish you would!"

A pause followed, long enough for the bright, earnest look with which Harry made this appeal to fade from his face. As I did not think there was much hope of the Doctor's taking the part proposed to him, at least until he should find himself in company with persons who professed the opinions he was now maintaining, I tried to divert him to another topic, and succeeded; but it was only to bring about a yet warmer passage between him and his friend. I was not sorry, however; for this time the subject was one that interested me strongly. He had referred, the evening before, to some dangerous adventures Harry and he had had among the mountains of Mantaw County, which they crossed, going from Eden to Cyclops. I now asked him for the details. He turned to me at once, and entered upon the story with great spirit. I am familiar with the region in which the scene was laid, but, listening to him, it took a new aspect. I believe those hills will always be higher for me henceforth,—the glens deeper and darker; I shall hear new voices in the rush of the torrents and the roar of the pines. Harry listened admiringly too, until the Doctor, brought by the course of his narrative to the services of a certain slave-guide, named Jonas, took a jocular tone, seemingly as much amused by the black man's acuteness and presence of mind as he might have been by the tricks of an accomplished dog.

"A capital fellow!" interposed Harry, with emphasis.

"He showed himself intelligent and faithful, certainly. I sent his master a good account of him. He did his duty by us." This in the Doctor's mildest tone.

The answer was in Harry's firmest:—"His duty as a man. It was real, hearty kindness that he showed us. We owe him a great deal. I am not sure that we did not owe him our lives that dark night. I regard him as a friend."

"Your other friends are flattered.—It is curious how these negrophiles betray themselves";—the Doctor had turned to me;—"they show that they think of the blacks just as we do, by their admiration when they meet one who shows signs of intelligence and good feeling." Ho looked at Harry, but in vain. "Here Harry, now, has been falling into transports all along the road." Harry kept his eyes on the table, but the Doctor was not to be balked. "Confess now, confess you have been surprised—and a good deal more surprised than I was—to find common sense and humanity in black men!"

"No, not in black men. I have been surprised to find not only talent and judgment, but dignity and magnanimity, in slaves."

"You must find the system not altogether a bad one which has developed such specimens of the human being,—out of such material, above all."

"You must admit that the race is a strong and a high one which has not been utterly debased by such a system,—if it is to be called a system. I only wish our own race"——

"Showed an equal power of resistance?"

"That was what I was going to say."

"You might have said it. Yes,—the whites are the real sufferers."

"I stopped because I remembered instances of men who have resisted nobly."

"I am glad you can do justice to them. I thought you did not believe in humane slaveholders."

"I was not thinking of them."

"Ah! to be sure not! My friend Harvey, who entertained us so hospitably, is a bad man, I suppose?"

"A mistaken man."

"That is to be proved; he is trying to work out a difficult problem."

"He is attempting an impossible compromise."

"Compromise! Word of fear to the true New-Englander! Compromise? He is trying to reconcile his own comfort with that of his laborers, I suppose you mean."

"He is trying to reconcile injustice with humanity."

"See the stern old Puritan vein! I doubt whether his ancestor, the model of Massachusetts governors, ever carried a stiffer upper lip." And the Doctor surveyed Harry with a look from which he could not exclude a certain softening of affectionate admiration. "And he, a living exemplification of the persistence of race, is a stickler for the equality of all mankind! It is hard for one of that strict line to bend his views to circumstances," the Doctor went on, in a more indulgent tone. "Harry, my boy, you are in a new latitude. You must accept another standard. You cannot try things here by the weights and measures of the Puritans of the North. But who are your examples of resistance, though?"

"The Puritans of the South. The men here who have but one standard,—that of right. The men here who are true to the principle which our country represents, and by which it is to live."

"What principle?"

"That the laws of man must be founded on the law of God."

"You mean, to be explicit, such men as Judge Henley of Virginia, Dr. Kirwin of South Carolina, and, above all, Shaler of this State?"

"Yes."

"Who, instead of living with the people among whom their lot had been cast, and protecting and improving them, scattered them to the four winds of heaven, and all for the comfort of their own sickly consciences!"

"Charles Shaler does not look like a man of a sickly conscience."

The Doctor could not forbear smiling at the image Harry brought before him. He was beginning to answer, but stopped short and turned to me with a look of apology.

"The subject is ill-chosen," he said; "I do not know how we came upon it; though, indeed, we are always coming upon it. We have sworn a truce a dozen times, but the war breaks out again when we are least expecting it."

"The subject cannot be more interesting to you than it is to me," I answered.

"But your interest in it may be of a different sort from ours."

"It is quite as impartial. I am not a slaveholder."

"Is it possible?"

The Doctor's voice betrayed that there was pleasure in his surprise, but, except in this involuntary way, he did not express it. He went on in his former tone.

"Well, that is more than Harry here can say. Since he has been in your State, he has become master, by right of purchase, of a human soul."

I looked at Harry.

"Yes," he said, gravely, "I have made myself my brother's keeper."

"And very literally of a soul," the Doctor continued. "The body was merely thrown in as an inconsiderable part of the bargain. We were on the road from Omocqua to Tenpinville, where we meant to dine. Harry was a little ahead. I was walking slowly, looking along the side of the road for what I might find, when I heard, in front of us and coming towards us, a tramping and a shuffling and a clanking that I knew well enough for the sound of a slave-coffle on the move. I did not lift my head; I am not curious of such sights. But presently I heard Harry calling, and in an imperative tone that he has sometimes, though, perhaps, you would not think it. I looked up, upon that, and saw him supporting in his arms a miserable stripling, who was falling, fainting, out of the coffle. Harry was hailing the slave-trader, who brought up the rear of the train on horseback. I foresaw vexation, and made haste. The cavalier got there first, though. By the time I came up, he had dismounted, and Harry and he were in treaty, or at least in debate. It was a picture! The poor wretch they were parleying over was lying with his wasted, lead-colored face on Harry's shoulder, but was still held by the leg to his next man, who was scowling at him as if he thought the boy had fainted only to make the shackles bite sharper into the sore flesh of his comrade. Harry held his prize in a way which showed he did not mean to part with it. 'Name your price! Name your own price!' were the first words I heard. It seemed the slave-dealer was making difficulties. I thought he would jump at the chance of getting rid of what was only a burden, and plainly could never be anything else to anybody; but no; he said he could not sell the boy, and seemed to mean it. Harry is too much used to having his own way to give it up very easily, but I don't know whether he would have got it this time, if I had not interfered with my remonstrances:—

"'What are you going to do with him? Where are you going to take him? Who's to be his nurse on the road?'

"I meant to bring Harry to his senses. I only brought the slave-dealer to his.

"'Do you belong in this State?' asked he, growing reasonable as he saw a reasonable man to deal with.

"'No; in Massachusetts.'

"'Do you mean to take him off there?'

"'Yes!' cried Harry, without giving me a chance to answer.

"'How soon?'

"'In a few weeks.'

"'And what will you do with him in the mean while?'

"Harry seemed now to remember that I was a party concerned. He turned to me with a deprecating and inquiring look, but I was not prepared to make any suggestion.

"'If you care enough about having the boy to pay part of his price in trouble,' says the dealer, 'perhaps we may manage it. I bought him with conditions. If I sell him to you, I make them over to you, too. If you'll engage to take him as far as Omocqua to-day, and never bring him, or let him be brought, within twenty miles of Tenpinville in any direction, you shall have him for fifty dollars; that will give me back what he's cost me. I don't want to make anything on him. I only took him to oblige.'

"I knew by experience that there was no use in opposing Harry in anything he had made up his mind about. I looked grim, but said nothing. So the bargain was struck; the money was paid; the boy unfettered. The slave-dealer moved on with his drove, leaving us his parting words of encouragement,—

"'If he lives, he'll be worth something to you.'

"And there we were in the middle of the road, with a dying boy on our hands.

"'If he lives!' Harry's look answered,—'He will live!'

"For my own part, I hoped it very little, and was not sure that I ought to hope it at all.

"It was my turn to fume now; for Harry, as soon as he had carried his point, was as calm as a clock. He had everything planned out. I was to go back to Quickster and hire some sort of wagon to take our patient to Omocqua, where Harry had promised to have him before night. I had permission to stay at Quickster, if I chose, until he came back,—or to go on to Tenpinville, or even to Harvey's, without him. But I had heard, since I left Omocqua, of a remarkable cave, not five miles from there, which had some points of interest for me. I had had half a mind to propose to Harry to go back and see it before we met with this adventure. So, as I must humor him at any rate, I thought it as well to do it with a good grace. I walked off to Quickster, got my wagon, drove back, and found our godsend asleep, with Harry watching by him like a miser over his treasure. We lifted him into the wagon without waking him,—he was no great weight,—and got him safe to the hotel we had left in the morning.

"Harry, when he was making his purchase, had his wits sufficiently about him to require the means of proving his title in case of question. The dealer promised to set all right at Omocqua. I had doubts whether we should meet him again; but Harry had none, and was right. The man arrived the next morning with his convoy, found us out, and gave Harry a regular bill of sale. Being now twenty miles from Tenpinville, he was somewhat more communicative than he had been in the morning. It appeared the sick boy was a great musical genius. He could sing anything he had ever heard, and many things that never had been heard before he sang them. He played upon the piano without any instruction except what he had got by listening under the windows. Indeed, he could make any instrument that was put into his hands, after a little feeling about, do whatever he wanted of it. But he had accidentally received a blow on the chest that had spoiled his voice, and had so injured his health besides, that his master, a tender-hearted man, couldn't bear to see him about. The family, tender-hearted too, couldn't bear to see him sold. So the master, to spare pain all round, decided that the boy should disappear silently, and that it should be understood in the house and neighborhood that he had been enticed away by an amateur from the North, who hoped to cure him and make a fortune out of his talent.

"'How came the master's sensibility to take such a different turn from that of the rest of the family?' I asked,—and drew out that the boy, being a genius, had some of the ways of one, and was at times excessively provoking. He had silent fits, when he would sit dreaming, moving his lips, but making no sound. There was no use in trying to rouse him. You might have shaken him to pieces without his soul's giving the least sign of being in his body. Not only this, but, sometimes, when he did sing, he wouldn't sing well, though perhaps it was just when he was most wanted. There were people he never would sing before, if he could help it; and when he was obliged to, he did himself no credit. Some of his caprices of this kind were insupportable. His master was only too indulgent; but one day, it seems, the provocation was too much for him. In a moment of anger, he flung the unlucky boy down the door-steps, or over a bank, or out of the open window, I forget which. Either the push on the chest or the shock of the fall did a harm that was not meant. The master was a good man, and was so accounted. He reproached himself, whenever he saw the ailing boy, and felt as if others reproached him. Better out of sight and out of mind.

"So Harry became the owner, or, as he says, the keeper, of a fragment of humanity distinguished from the mass by the name of Orphy: Orphy for Orpheus, I suppose; though Harry is modest for him, and calls him Orfano. He has splendid visions for his protégé, nevertheless. He sees in him the very type and representative of the African. I shouldn't wonder if he were looking forward to the rehabilitation of the race through him. He is to be a Mozart, a Beethoven, a Bach, or, perhaps, something beyond either. The world is to listen and be converted."

"I wish you could have brought him here," I said.

"Your house is within the twenty miles, and so is Harvey's, or we should have taken him on there with us. But he is well off where he is. Harry, by the aid of our innkeeper,—a Northern man, by the way,—installed him in a comfortable home at Omocqua. We are to take him up there on our return. We expect to be there again on the eighteenth of next month."

"So soon?" I exclaimed; for, with the Doctor's words the pang of parting fell on me prematurely.

"We mean to stay with you, if you want us so long, until the fifth. We have a few excursions to make yet; but we shall guide ourselves so as to reach Omocqua at the appointed time."

"Meet us there," cried Harry. "Meet us there in fifteen days from the time we leave you. Let us keep the nineteenth of April there together."

My mother, who had not hitherto taken any part in the conversation, spoke now to express her warm approbation of the plan. This was all that was wanting. The project was ratified. My happiness was freed again from the alloy of insecurity which had begun to mingle with it.

The Doctor divined my feeling, and smiling pleasantly,—"Our leave-taking will not be so hard; it will be au revoir, not adieu."

Harry was the first to leave the breakfast-table. He had made acquaintance with Karl and Fritz that morning, and had promised to help them on a drag they were getting up for hauling brush. He was to join us again in two hours, and we were to have a walk to Ludlow's Woods.

"He has been to the post-office this morning!" cried the Doctor, as soon as Harry was out of hearing. It was evident that my mother's unacceptable suggestion still rested on his mind. "He has been to the post-office: that was it! You remember he asked you last night how far to the nearest one? The first thing he does, when he arrives in a place, is to inquire about the means of forwarding letters."

"How he must be missed in his home!" my mother said.

"Ah, indeed! He is an only son. But, contrary to the custom of only sons, he thinks as much of his home as his home does of him. He has not failed to write a single day of the thirty-five we have been travelling together. His letters cannot have been received regularly of late; but that is no fault of ours."

"His parents must be very anxious, when he is so far from them," said my mother.

"He knows how to take care of himself,—and of me too," the Doctor added, laughing. "I thought that on this journey I was to have charge of him, but it turned out quite the other way. He assumed the business department from the first. I acquiesced, thinking he would learn something, but expecting to be obliged to come to his aid from time to time. I think it wrong for a man to submit to imposition. I never do. But Harry, open-hearted and lavish,—I thought anybody could take him in. I did not find that anybody wanted to."

"I can understand," said my mother, "that, with his trusting disposition and his force of character together, he should always find people do what he expects of them."

"You are right,—you are quite right."—The Doctor seldom contradicted my mother, and very considerately when he did.—"It is not your generous men that tempt others to overreach, but your uncertain ones. It seems he carries about with him something of the nature of a divining-rod, that makes men's hearts reveal what of gold they have in them. I have known a churlish-looking fellow, who has come to his door on purpose to warn us thirsty wayfarers off from it, soften when his eye met Harry's, urge us in as if he were afraid of losing us, do his best for us, and then try to refuse our money when we went away. Well, if son of mine could bring but one talent into the world with him, let it be that for being loved; it is worth all others put together."

"How many does it not include?" asked my mother.

"Truly, there is perhaps more justice in the world than appears on the outside."

I found this the place to put in a little apology for Tabitha, who had persisted in treating Harry with marked distinction, although I had tried to remind her of the elder guest's claims to precedence by redoubling my attentions to him.

"Oh, I'm used to it, I'm used to it," cried the Doctor, cutting short my apologies very good-humoredly. "Wherever we go, people treat him as if he had done them some great service, or was going to do them one. But I find my account in his good reception. I reap the practical advantages. And then I am something of a fool about Harry myself; so I can hardly blame the rest of the world. Think of his drawing me into complicity in that affair of the negro Orpheus! I made a pretence to myself that I wanted to see a foolish cave at Egerton, just to excuse my weakness in humoring his whims; but, in truth, by the time we were well on the road to Omocqua, I was feeling as if the welfare of the world depended on our getting that poor wretch safely housed there. Well, we shall see what will come of it! I remember, when Harry was a little boy, saying to him once, after seeing him bestow a great deal of labor in accomplishing a work not very important in older eyes, 'Well, Harry, now what have you done, after all?' 'I have done what I meant to do,' said the child. I am so used now to seeing Harry do what he means to do, that even in this case I can't help looking for some result,—though, probably, it will be one not so important in my view as in his, nor worth all that may be spent in arriving at it. I want to see him once fairly engaged in some steady career to which he will give himself heart and soul, as he does give himself to what he undertakes; then he'll have no time nor thought for these little extravagances."

"Does Harry intend to take a profession?"

"The law, I hope. He will study it in any case. This makes part of a plan he formed for himself years ago. He considers the study of law as a branch of the study of history, and a necessary preparation for the writing of history,—his dream at present. But when he once takes hold of the law, I hope he will stick to it."

"Harry has very little the look of a student."

"Yet he has already learned

"'To scorn delights and live laborious days.'

"But he has measure in everything,—and it is something to say of a boy of his ardent temper. He observes the balance between physical and mental exercise. He follows the counsel Languet gave to Sir Philip Sidney,—to 'take care of his health, and not be like one who, on a long journey, attends to himself, but not to the horse that is to carry him.'"

"Do his parents wish him to follow the law?" my mother asked.

"They wish whatever he does. It seems they hold their boy something sacred, and do not dare to interfere with him. But I wish it. The law is the threshold of public life. I want to see him in his place."

The Doctor sat smiling to himself for a little while, nodded his head once or twice, and then, fixing his clear, cool blue eyes on my face, said, in an emphatic voice,—"That boy will make his mark. Depend upon it, he will make his mark in one way or another!" A shadow fell over the eyes; the voice was lowered:—"I have only one fear for him. It is that he may throw himself away on some fanaticism."

"How long have you known Harry Dudley?" I asked, when the pause had lasted so long that I thought the Doctor would not begin again without being prompted.

"All his life. Our families are connected;—not so nearly by blood; but they have run down side by side for four or five generations. His father and I pass for cousins. We were in college together. He was my Senior, but I was more with him than with any of my own classmates until he was graduated. He married very soon after, and then his house was like a brother's to me. I went abroad after I left college, and was gone three years. When I came back, we took things up just where we left them. Dudley went to Europe himself afterwards with his family, but I was backwards and forwards, so that I have never lost sight of them. I have nobody nearer to me."

"I was surprised to learn, from what you said last evening, that Harry had passed a good deal of time in Europe."

The Doctor turned upon me briskly. Perhaps my tone may have implied that I was sorry to learn it.

"He has lost nothing by that. He has lost nothing by it, but that fixed stamp of place and time that most men wear. Though I don't know whether he would have had it at any rate: he was always himself. You have seen some shallow fellow who has been spoiled for living at home by a few years of sauntering and lounging about Europe. But rely on it, he who comes back a coxcomb went out one. Never fear! Harry is as good an American as if he had not been away,—and better. Living abroad, he has had the simplicity to study the history of his own country as carefully as if it had been a foreign one, not aware that it is with us no necessary part of a polite education. As for its institutions, he has an enthusiasm for them that I could almost envy him while it lasts, though I know he has got to be cured of it."

"How long was he abroad?"

"More than seven years."

"Was he with his parents all the time?"

"They were near him. His home was always within reach. But he was for several years at a large school in Paris, and again at one in Germany. At sixteen he had done with school and took his education into his own hands. He lived at home, but his parents did not meddle with him, except to aid him to carry out his plans. It was a course that would not answer with every young man, perhaps; but I don't know that any other would have done with him. He is one to cut out his own path. He chose not only his own studies, but, to a great extent, his own acquaintances; took journeys when he pleased and as he pleased. Wherever he was, with whomever, he always held his own walk straight and firm. You would not think that boy had seen so much of the world?"

"I could have thought he had been carefully guarded from it, and shielded almost from the very knowledge of wrong."

"He has never been kept out of danger of any kind; but it seems there was none anywhere for him. He is now, as you say, just as much a simple, innocent boy as if he were nothing more."

"His wings are grown, and shed off evil as the birds' do rain."

The Doctor started as this voice came from behind his chair. Tabitha, who had disappeared as soon as her attendance on the table was no longer needed, had reëntered unobserved, and stood, her basket of vegetables poised on her head, absorbed in our conversation, until she forgot herself into joining in it.

Sunday, April 7, 1844.

The storm which has been gathering since Friday evening came on last night. This morning the rain pelts heavily against the windows. This is not the Easter-Sunday I was looking forward to when I urged Harry Dudley to stay for it. He would have been glad to stay, I know; but he did not think it right to ask Dr. Borrow to change his plans again, and merely for a matter of pleasure. When I addressed the Doctor himself on the subject, he showed me a paper on which he had planned out occupation for every day and almost for every hour of the two weeks that were to pass before our meeting at Omocqua. I had not the courage to remonstrate.

I am afraid we shall have none of the neighbors here to-day. But the table is set out with all the prettiest things the house affords, ready for the collation which is to follow the morning reading. This is a munificence we allow ourselves at Christmas and Easter. We keep ceremoniously and heartily the chief holy days, the religious and the national. In your large cities, where sources of emotion and instruction are open on every hand, where the actual day is so full and so animated that it is conscious of wanting nothing outside of itself, it is not strange, perhaps, that men should become careless of these commemorations or yield them only a formal regard. Our life must widen and enrich itself, by stretching its sympathies and claims far beyond its material limits. We cannot forego our part in the sorrows and joys of universal humanity.

It was a pleasure to me to find that Harry, who has lived so long in countries where the public observance of the Christian festivals is too marked to allow even the indifferent to overlook them, remembers them from affection as well as by habit. When I came into the parlor, early last Sunday morning, I saw by the branches over the windows that he had not forgotten it was Palm-Sunday. He was sitting on the doorstep trimming some long sprays of a beautiful vine, which he had brought from the thicket. As soon as I appeared, he called on me to help him twine them round the engraving of the Transfiguration. You did right to tell me to bring that engraving down-stairs. It hangs between the windows. I have made a simple frame for it, which answers very well; but next winter I am going to carve out quite an elaborate one, after an Italian pattern which Harry has sketched for me. If I could think that you would ever see it!

Harry and I had a walk before breakfast,—the first of the early morning walks that were afterwards our rule. He is not a great talker. The sweet modesty of his nature retains its sway even in the most familiar moments. He is earnest; sometimes impassioned; but never voluble, never excited, never diffuse. What he has to say is generally put in the form of simple and concise statement or suggestion; but he gives, and perhaps for that very reason, a great deal to be thought and felt in an hour.

The bouquet that Harry brought in that morning was of green of different shades, only in the centre there were a few delicate wood-flowers.

"Has Dr. Borrow seen these?" my mother asked, looking at them with pleasure.

"No," the Doctor answered for himself, laying down on the window-seat beside him the microscope with which he had been engaged. "No," he said, with a good-humored smile; "but I know Harry's choice in flowers. He begins to have a nice tact as to what's what, when it is a question of helping me; but, for himself, he still likes flowers for their looks, or sometimes, I think, for their names. His favorites are the May-flower and the Forget-me-not. They represent for him the New World and the Old,—that of hope, and that of memory. But he is a friend of all wild-flowers, especially of spring wild-flowers,—and more especially of those of New England. He loves the blood-root, though he ought not, for it is a dissembler; it wears outwardly the garb of peace and innocence, but, out of sight, wraps itself in the red robes of tyranny and war."

"No," Harry answered; "red is the color of tyrants only because they have usurped that with the rest. Red, in the old tradition, is symbolic of Divine Love, the source of righteous power. White is the symbol of Divine Wisdom, and is that of peace, because where this wisdom is there must be harmony."

This talk of New-England wild-flowers, the mention of names once so familiar, was very pleasant to me. I must have the blood-root, if it will grow here. I could never see it again without seeing in it a great deal more than itself. For me, the pure white of the flower will symbolize the wisdom of God, always manifest; the red of the root, His love, sometimes latent, yet still there.

The Doctor, having made his protest, put the microscope into its case, and came to my mother's table to examine. When he spied the little flowers nestled in the green, he exclaimed,—

"Where did you find these, Harry? You must have gone far for them."

"No; I found them where the old forest used to be, among the stumps."

"Waiting for a new generation of protectors to grow up about them," said the Doctor, looking at them kindly; "this generous climate leaves nothing long despoiled. If Nature is let alone, she will soon have a forest there again. But, Harry, you must take me to that spot. We'll see what else there is to find."

"Are these flowers scarce?" Harry asked.

"They are getting to be."

"I should have shown them to you, but they are so pretty I thought they must be common."

"Well, to do you justice, you don't often make a mistake now.—When we first set out," continued the Doctor, turning to me, "he was always asking me to see this beautiful flower or that superb tree; but now he never calls my attention to anything that is not worth looking at."

"I called you to see one superb tree that you found worth looking at," said Harry,—"Brompton's oak at Omocqua. Colvil, when you see that tree!"

Love of trees is one of the things that Harry and I are alike in.

"Yes, that is one of the finest specimens of the live-oak I have met with," affirmed the Doctor.

"We will hold our meeting under it on the nineteenth," said Harry. "Colvil, come on the afternoon of the eighteenth. Be there before sunset."

"Harry will bespeak fine weather," said the Doctor.

"You know how Omocqua stands?" asked Harry. "It is in a plain, but a high plain."

"I have heard that it is a beautiful place."

"It is beautiful from a distance," said the Doctor; "and when you are in it, the distant views are beautiful. The hotel we were at,—the Jefferson Hotel, Harry?"

"The Jackson, I believe, Doctor."

"No, the Jefferson," decided the Doctor, after a moment's thought. "We heard the two hotels discussed at Cyclops, and decided for the oldest."

"They are opposite each other on Union Square," said Harry, waiving the question.

"The hotel we were at," the Doctor began again, "is on the northern side of the town. From the field behind it, where Harry's tree stands, the prospect is certainly very grand. Hills, mountains, to the north and east,—and west, a fine free country, intersected by a river, and happily varied with low, round, wooded hills, and soft meadows, and cultivated fields. Harry drew me there almost against my will, but it needed no force to keep me there. I had my flowers to see to. Harry brought out my press and my portfolios, and established me in a shed that runs out from the barn, at right angles with it, fronting west. He found a bench there that served me for a table, and brought me a wooden block for a seat. So there I could sit and work,—my plants and papers sheltered from the wind,—and look up at the view when I chose. Harry is right. Meet us there on the afternoon of the eighteenth. I wish it as much as he does; and the sunset will be worth seeing, if there is one."

"Come on the eighteenth," said Harry,—"and if you arrive before us, wait for us under that tree; if after, and you do not find me at the door, look for me there. You go through the house by the main entry, across the court, through the great barn; the field is in front of you, and the tree."

"Or, if you like better," said the Doctor, "you can enter by a gate on a side-street, from which a wagon-road leads straight to my work-shed. The street runs west of the hotel. In any case, don't fail us on the nineteenth. We'll hold your celebration under your tree, Harry,—that is, if Colvil agrees to it."

There was no doubt about that.

After breakfast, I went up into the study to prepare for the morning's reading. I had intended to choose a sermon suited to Palm-Sunday; but I happened to take down first a volume of South, and, opening on the text, "I have called you friends," could not lay it down again. What lesson fitter to read on that beautiful day, and in that dear company, than this, which aids us to comprehend the inexhaustible resources of the Divine Affection,—its forbearance, its constancy, its eager forgiveness, beforehand even with our prayer for it,—by drawing for us the portrait of a true, manly friendship?

I have never been able to accept the doctrine that the Great Source of Love is jealous of His own bounty, and reproaches us for bestowing again what He has freely bestowed. Yet, though unassenting, I feel pain when I read in the works of pious men that a devoted regard yielded to a mortal is an infringement of the Highest Right, and I am grateful to the teachers who permit us to learn to love the Father whom we have not seen by loving the brother whom we have seen. In those seasons which happen to us all, when a shadow seems to pass between the spirit and its sun, I have brought myself back to a full and delighted sense of the Supreme Benignity by supposing the generosity and tenderness of a noble human heart infinitely augmented; and I have invigorated my trust in the promises of God, the spoken and the implied, by calling to mind what I have known of the loyalty of man.

Human ties wind themselves very quickly and very closely round my heart. I cannot be brought even casually into contact with others so nearly that I am made aware of their interests and aims, without in some sort receiving their lives into my own,—sharing, perhaps, in disappointments, that, in my own person, I should not have encountered, and rejoicing in successes which would have been none to me. But friendship is still something very different from this,—different even from a kind and pleasant intimacy. Nor can we create it at will. I feel deeply the truth of South's assurance, that "it is not a human production." "A friend," he says, "is the gift of God: He only who made hearts can unite them. For it is He who creates those sympathies and suitablenesses of nature that are the foundation of all true friendship, and then by His providence brings persons so affected together."

Last Sunday was one of those days that are remembered for their own perfection, apart from the associations that may have gathered about them; and it seems to be one of the properties of these transcendent seasons to come attended by all harmonious circumstances. Nothing was wanting to last Sunday. It stands cloudless and faultless in my memory.

Harry proposed that we should hold our services in the open air. My mother approved. We took up her couch and carried it out to your favorite dreaming-ground, setting it down near the old tree that goes, for your sake, by the name of Keith's Pine. The place is not rough as when you were here. I have had the stumps cleared away, and your pine no longer looks so lonely, now that it seems to have been always alone.

We brought out a bench and all the chairs in the house. We placed the bench opposite my mother's couch, about thirty feet off. We set the great arm-chair for the Doctor, near the head of the couch, which we considered the place of honor. My straight-backed oak chair was put near the foot, with my mother's little table before it for the books. The other chairs were arranged in a semicircle on each side, with liberal spaces. Tabitha assisted at these dispositions, and chose a place for her own favorite willow chair close to the trunk of the pine-tree, between it and the couch, where, as she said, she had a full view of the congregation. I understood very well that the poor soul had another motive, and was guarding her dignity by selecting a distinguished and at the same time a secluded station. When she saw that all was in order, she went back to the house to stay until the last moment, in order to direct late comers.

Harry, at first, sat down on the grass near me; but when Karl and Fritz came, they looked toward him, evidently divided between their desire to be near him and their fear of presuming. Discretion prevailed, and they took their seats on the ground at a little distance from the bench. Harry perceived their hesitation, and saw Hans consulting me with his eyes. He was up in a moment, brought a chair and put it beside mine for the old man, who is getting a little deaf, and then exchanging a smiling recognition with the boys, took his own place near them.

Barton, the landlord of the Rapid Run, at Quickster, came that morning. You cannot have forgotten Quickster, the pretty village with a water-fall, which charmed you so much,—about five miles from Tenpinville, to the north. And I hope you remember Barton, the landlord of the inn that takes its name and its sign from the swift little river that courses by his door. He never sees me without inquiring after you. He shows the delights of his neighborhood always with the same zeal. He guided the Doctor and Harry about it for an hour or two the day they passed through Quickster, coming from Omocqua. It was to him the Doctor had recourse, when he went back to hire a wagon for poor Orphy. I thought at first that Barton had forgotten the custom of our Sunday morning, and had only meant to pay me a visit. But it was not so. He had his son with him,—Isaac Davis Barton,—who is now ten years old, and in whom, he says, he wants to keep a little of the New-Englander, if he can, and so shall bring him over to our reading every fair Sunday. I did not know whether I ought to feel pleased or not. There is no church at Quickster yet; but there is one at Tenpinville,—two, I think. I have no doubt at all that I have done well to invite our few neighbors, who have no chance of hearing a good word in any other way, to listen to a chapter in the Bible and a sermon here on Sunday. I have had evidence that some of them have been made happier, and I almost dare to think better, by coming. But it is another thing when there is an opportunity of attending regular religious services. I did not think it well to discourage Barton by telling him my scruples on this first occasion. It would have been rather ungracious after his ten miles' ride. I like the little boy very much, and hope we shall be good friends. I shall feel a better right to advise by and by. Barton had a chair near Dr. Borrow's; his son sat in front of him on the grass.

Next to Barton came an old man and his wife, who have established themselves in one of the empty houses on the Shaler plantation,—whether by permission or as squatters I do not know, and nobody about here does. But as the man has a smattering of two or three trades through which he makes himself acceptable, and the woman some secrets in cookery and other household arts which she imparts very readily, no umbrage is taken at them. Their name is Franket. They have simple, honest faces, and bring nothing discordant with them.

The next place in this semicircle was filled by a man who has not a very good name in the neighborhood. Meeting him one day, I asked him to join us on Sundays, only because I ask all who live near enough to come easily. I did it with a little trouble, expecting to see a sneer on his face; but he thanked me quite civilly, and, though several weeks passed without his taking any further notice of my invitation, it seems he had not forgotten it. He is not an ill-looking man, when you see him fairly. His expression is melancholy rather than morose, as I used to think it. After this, I shall never take refusal for granted, when I have anything to offer which I believe worth accepting. This man's name is Winford. I assigned to him, as a stranger, one of two remaining chairs; but he declined it, taking his seat on the ground. The chairs were immediately after occupied by the wife and daughter of Rufe Hantham, a man tolerated for abilities convenient rather than useful. He is one of the class of parasites that spring up about every large plantation. He is a hanger-on of the Westlake estate, which lies just beyond Shaler's, between that and Tenpinville. The wife is a poor little woman, whose face wears an habitual expression of entreaty. It is the daughter who brings her, I think. This young girl, of fifteen or less, has a look of thought and determination, as if she held in her mind some clearly formed plan which she will carry out to the end, towards which her coming here is possibly one of the first steps. She keeps her eyes fixed on the ground, but evidently is listening intently,—committing, as it seems, everything she hears to a memory that never lets go what it has once taken hold of. They have been twice before. When the reading is over, the mother looks as if she would like to have a little chat with somebody; but the daughter holds her in check with hand and eye,—not unkindly, but effectually. They wait until some one sets the example of going, and then follow quickly and silently. We have made no attempt to invade a reserve which seems deliberate.

Harvey's plantation is on the other side of Tenpinville, more than eighteen miles from us; but it had a representative here, in young Lenox, one of the sons of the overseer. He came for the first time. He sat in the opposite semicircle, next to Harry, with whom he was already acquainted. The chairs on that side were occupied by the Segrufs and Blantys, respectable neighbors, whom you may remember.

Another new-comer was a little boy whom we met in our morning walk, and who joined himself to us at once with a confidence which was very pleasant. Harry took a great fancy to him. I asked him to come to us at ten, hardly hoping he would accept; but he did, eagerly. He does not belong to our part of the world. He is the son of a carpenter who has work here for a few months. I was glad to see him come in, and another little fellow whose father has brought him once or twice, but who has not been alone before. The father is not often well enough to come.

There are one or two persons whom I am always glad not to see; and that morning my wishes were answered in those who came and in those who stayed away. Of these last is Phil Phinn, who thinks to make up for the time of mine he uses in the adjustment of his neighborly differences by devoting an hour of his own, once in two or three weeks, to the penance of listening to me. I could well spare his vacant solemnity that day. His absence was of good augury, too, for he is strict in attendance when an occasion for mediation is imminent.

At ten o'clock precisely we heard the great bell rung by Tabitha, who until then kept watch at the house. While it was ringing, a family came in of which I must speak more particularly, because I feel already that I shall speak of it often. This family has only recently arrived in the neighborhood. The father, I think, is Southern born; the mother must be from the North. They brought all their children, down to the baby, three years old, that listened with all its eyes, as the rest with all their hearts. They had been here only twice before; but the perfect unity of this little family, which seemed always influenced by one feeling, moved by one will, the anxious watchfulness of the parents, the close dependence of the children, had already greatly interested me. This man and woman have certainly known more prosperous, if not better days. The lines of their faces, their whole bearing, tell of successive reverses, worthily, though not resolutely borne,—of a down-hill path long trodden by patient, but unresisting feet. There are no signs of struggle against adverse fortune. But, in such a struggle, how often do the charm and joy of life perish, torn and trampled by their very rescuers! These people have maintained their equanimity, if not their cheerfulness. They have no reproaches for themselves or each other. The bench was for this family. The father, the mother with the baby in her lap, the daughter, and the second son filled it; the eldest sat at his mother's feet, and, when he was particularly moved or pleased by anything that was read, looked up to her to see if he was right. A great gravity held the whole group,—deepest on the elder faces, and gradually shading off into the undue tranquillity of the infantile look.

When Tabitha came, she brought the little white vase with Harry's flowers, and put it on the table, where, indeed, it ought to have been.

I seldom read the whole of a sermon. I like to keep more time for the Bible. And then I omit those passages which I foresee might provoke questions which I should not dare to assume the responsibility of answering. I do not presume to take upon myself the office of religious teacher. I only strive, in the absence of one, to keep alive in myself and those near me a constant sense of God's presence and care, and of the bond which, uniting us to Him, unites us to each other. This I do by reading the words of those who have had this sense most strongly and have expressed it most vividly.

Of the sermon I had chosen I read the first paragraph, and then, turning over nine pages, began with the Privileges of Friendship. I do not know whether this discourse of South's is to others what it is to me. Perhaps there is something in it particularly adapted to my needs,—or perhaps it is because it came to me first at a time when I was very eager for the assurances it gives; but I never read it without feeling a new inflow of peace and security. At least some of those who heard it with me that day felt with me. Harry I was sure of beforehand. When we broke up, and I went forward to speak to the strangers on the bench, it seemed to me that their anxieties were soothed by something softer than patience. An indefinable change had passed over the whole family. They all seemed lightened of a part of the habitual burden. I took them up to my mother. She asked them to be sure and come on Easter Sunday; they accepted in earnest; but with their poor little wagon and poor old mule they will hardly encounter the rain and the mud to-day.

I was so intent on my letter, that I forgot the weather, until, writing the word rain, I looked towards the window. It does not rain, and has apparently held up for some time. And now I hear a racket in the road, and a stumping, that can come only from the poor little wagon and the poor old mule.

Afternoon, 3 o'clock.

It is raining again; but I think our friends had time to reach their homes before it began. We have had a happy day, notwithstanding its dull promise. I read an Easter sermon,—"Because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." The text itself is more than a thousand sermons.

The name of the family that was arriving this morning when I left off writing is Linton. They are from Western Virginia. They stayed with us for an hour after the reading was over. Our interest in them is still increased. Winford came again. I asked him to stay; he declined; but I think he was pleased at being invited. The Hanthams came, mother and daughter. They arrived at the last moment, and went at the closing of the book. The corner in which the table stood was curtained off, so that there was no visible sign of unusual hospitality; but they had perhaps heard of the custom of the day. Mrs. Hantham would not have been inexorable; but she was summoned away by a gesture a little too imperative, perhaps, from a daughter to her mother. Davis Barton came on horseback, without his father. I set him off again at one o'clock; for the sky threatened, and his road home was a difficult one at best.

But let me go back to last Sunday. I was just at the breaking-up of our little assembly by the pine.

The Lintons—they had no name then—were the first to go. The Hanthams were the next. Then the others dropped off, one by one and two by two: some taking leave as if they felt themselves guests; others withdrawing silently, as considering themselves only part of a congregation. Barton went round shaking hands with one and another. I was surprised to see him show this attention to Winford. Barton likes to be well with the world,—that is, with as much of it as he respects; but he respects himself, and does not seek popularity at the expense of sincerity. I am confirmed in my belief that there is good in Winford.

When all the rest were gone, Barton came up to have a talk with the Doctor, for whom he evidently has a great admiration. Harry remained with Karl and Fritz, who were holding him in conversation, apparently on some important matter,—old Hans, a critical listener, completing the group.

Barton inquired after the success of the Doctor's late excursions, and complimented him warmly on his powers of endurance, which seemed almost miraculous in a city man. This Doctor Borrow freely admitted, declaring that he had hardly ever undertaken an expedition with a party of people which had not turned out a disappointment,—that he seldom, indeed, found even a single companion who could walk with him, or who could rough it as he could.

"You've got one now, though," said Barton.

"Oh, for that," the Doctor answered, laughing, "Harry is a degree beyond me. I can bear as much as any man, but I know that I'm bearing, and like to give myself credit for it. Harry never feels either heat or cold or damp or dust. Nothing disagreeable is able to get at him. There is no such thing as hard fare for him; and if he knows what fatigue is, he has never confessed to it."

"And yet I suppose he's something of a scholar, too?" asked Barton; and he looked thoughtfully down at his son, who always kept close to him, and who had been drinking all this in eagerly.

As the Doctor hesitated to reply, Barton added,—"I asked him, that day you were at Quickster, if he had read a book that I had seen a good deal of talk about in the newspapers, and he said, No, that he had hardly read anything yet."

"Of course, of course, at his age! Still, you need not precisely take him at his own estimate. His modesty misleads, as much as some people's conceit does the other way. He is not always up to the fashion of the moment in literature; does not try to read everything that is talked about; but he has read the best of the best."

"Is that the best way, do you think?" asked Barton, anxiously.

"What do you think yourself?" asked the Doctor.

"I should think it must be a good one."

"It depends altogether on what you want to have," said the Doctor, following the track of Barton's thought, and fixing a searching look on Davis, as if to ascertain what material was there. "The queen-bee is fed on special and choice food from the first; if you want a king-man, you must follow the same course."

"You've seen some fine countries abroad, Sir?" said Barton, presently. "Any finer than ours?"

"Finer than yours? No. You've a fine country here, Mr. Barton, and a fresh country: Nature stands on her own merits, as yet. No 'associations' here; no 'scenes of historical interest' for sightseers to gape at and enthusiasts to dream over. You have your Indian mounds, to be sure; but these are simple objects of curiosity, and don't exact any tribute of feeling: you've no 'glorious traditions,' and I assure you, it is reposing to be out of their reach."

"We've only what we bring with us," answered Barton, a little touched; "we don't leave our country when we come here."

"Colvil looks now as if he had something in reserve. But I'm not alarmed. If there had been anything about here that had a tinge of poetry, I should have heard of it long ago from Harry. Most people think this sort of folly is in good taste only in Europe. But Harry brought it home with him in full force. Before he'd been on land a week, he'd seen Concord and Lexington."

"Had he, though?" cried Barton. "I am an Acton boy, you know," he added, in a subdued tone, a little abashed by his own vivacity.

"Upon my word, Dudley has waked up the old-fashioned patriot in you already."—Harry had now come up, and made one of the Doctor's listeners.—"I saw he was getting hold of you that morning at Quickster, when you were talking up your State to us. You were beginning to feel that you had something to do about it. It isn't the country that belongs to her sons, according to him, but her sons that belong to the country. Take care! give him time, and he'll make a convert of you."

"I will give him time," answered Barton, laughing.

"Don't be too confident of yourself. I have to stand on my guard, myself, sometimes. And don't be misled into supposing that his notions are the fashion in the part of the world we come from, or in any other civilized part of it. Harry, you were born some hundreds of years too late or too early. Fervor in anything, but above all in public service, is out of place in the world of our day.

"'Love your country; wish it well;
Not with too intense a care:
Let it suffice, that, when it fell,
Thou its ruin didst not share.'

"That's modern patriotism, the patriotism of Europe. Ours is of the same strain, only modified by our circumstances. Our Mother-land is a good housekeeper. She spreads a plentiful table, and her sons appreciate it. She wants no sentimental affection, and receives none. She is not obliged to ask for painful sacrifice; and lucky for her that she is not!"

Harry's cheek flushed, and his eye kindled:—

"Let her only have need of them, and it will be seen whether her sons love her!"

Davis Barton was in more danger of conversion than his father; his eyes were fixed ardently on Harry; his face glowed in sympathy.

"The nearest thing we have to a place with 'associations,'" I began quickly, preventing whatever sarcastic answer may have been ready on the Doctor's lips, "is the Shaler plantation."

"Yes," said Barton, "the Colonel was an old Revolutioner."

"The father?" asked the Doctor.

"Yes."

"To be sure. The son's title is an inherited one, like my friend Harvey's, who, now he is beginning to get a little gray, is 'the Judge,' I find, with everybody."

"And he looks it very well," said Barton. "I don't know whether it will go down farther."

"And the present Colonel is a new Revolutioner, probably," said the Doctor, inquiringly.

"I suppose some people might think he only followed after his father," Barton answered.

We were getting on delicate ground. Barton is no trimmer, but he is landlord of the Rapid Run. He made a diversion by inquiring after Orphy, and the Doctor gave him the account of their journey as he had given it to me,—yet not forgetting that he had given it to me. The same in substantial facts, his story was amplified and varied in details and in ornament, so that I heard it with as much interest as if it had been the first time.

"Is musical genius of the force of Orphy's common among the negroes of your plantations?" The Doctor addressed this question to me.

"Not common, certainly,—nor yet entirely singular. Almost all our large plantations have their minstrel, of greater or less talent. Your friend, Mr. Frank Harvey, has a boy on his place, who, if not equal to Orphy, has yet a remarkable gift. Did not Mr. Harvey speak to you of him?"

"I dare say. He had several prodigies of different kinds to exhibit to us. But we were there so short a time! He introduced us to a blacksmith of genius; to a specimen of ugliness supposed to be the most superior extant,—out of Guinea; and to a few other notabilities. But we had hardly time to see even the place itself, which really offers a great deal to admire. I could have given a few more days to it, but I saw that Harry was in a hurry to be off."

"I am sorry you did not see that boy. He would have taken hold of your imagination, I think, and certainly of Harry's. Airy has seen only the sunny side of life. He has all the espièglerie of the African child."

"Orphy has not much of that," said the Doctor.

You ought to have seen little Airy, too, Keith. He was already famous when you were here. He is rightly named; a very Ariel for grace and sportiveness. With the African light-heartedness, he has also something of African pathos. In his silent smile there is a delicate sadness,—not the trace of any pain he has known, but like the lingering of an inherited regret. His transitions are more rapid than belong to our race: while you are still laughing at his drollery, you see that he has suddenly passed far away from you; his soft, shadowy eyes are looking out from under their drooping lashes into a land where your sight cannot follow them.

"If you were to go there again, it would be worth while to ask for him," I said to the Doctor. "Airy Harvey is one of the wonders of our world."

"Airy Harvey!" cried the Doctor; "does Harvey allow his servants to bear his name? Westlake strictly forbids the use of his to his people. But then he supplies them with magnificent substitutes. He doesn't think any name but his own too good for them."

"Does he forbid them to take it?" asked Barton. "I heard so, but thought it was a joke. Why, there isn't a living thing on his place but goes by his name, down to that handsome hound that follows him, who's known everywhere about as Nero Westlake."

Barton seemed to enjoy Westlake's failure, and so, I am afraid, did the Doctor. He laughed heartily.

"He's rather unlucky," he said, "considering it's almost the only thing he is particular about."

"I don't believe Mr. Harvey could change the custom either, if he wished," I said; "but I do not think he does wish it. A name is a strong bond."