smother a fire and leave its sparks, to kill a viper and take care of its young, are not actions of the wise. Though the clouds rain the water of life, you cannot eat fruit from the boughs of a willow.’
“When the vizier heard this, he applauded the king’s understanding, and assented that what he had pronounced was unanswerable.
“‘Yet, nevertheless,’ he said, ‘as the boy, if bred among the thieves, would have taken their manners, so is your servant hopeful that he might receive instruction in the society of upright men; for he is still a boy, and it is written, that every child is born in the faith of Islam, and his parents corrupt him. The son of Noah, associated with the wicked, lost his power of prophecy; the dog of the Seven Sleepers, following the good, became a man.’
“Then others of the courtiers joined in the intercession, and the king said,–
“‘I have assented, but I do not think it well.’
“They bred the youth in indulgence and affluence, and appointed an accomplished tutor to educate him, and he became learned and gained great applause in the sight of every one. The king smiled when the vizier spoke of this, and said,–
“‘Thou hast been nourished by our milk, and hast grown with us; who afterwards gave thee intelligence that thy father was a wolf?’
“A few years passed;–a company of the vagrants of the neighborhood were near; they connected themselves with the boy; a league of association was formed; and, at an opportunity, the boy destroyed the vizier and his children, carried off vast booty, and fixed himself in the place of his father in the cavern of the robbers. The king bit the hand of astonishment with the teeth of reflection, and said,–
“‘How can any one make a good sword from bad iron? The worthless, O Philosopher, does not, by instruction, become worthy. Rain, though not otherwise than benignant, produces tulips in gardens and rank weeds in nitrous ground.'”
Yet, notwithstanding Sadi and some other wise ones, here, as thieves, are the faces of boys that cannot be naturally vicious,–boys of good instincts, beyond all possible question,–and that only need a mother’s hand to smooth back the clustering hair from the forehead, to discover the future residence of plentiful and upright reason. The face of a boy, now in Sing Sing for burglary, and who bears a name which over the continent of North America is identified with the ideas of large combination and enterprise, is especially noticeable for the clear eyes, and frank, promising look.
That tale of Sadi will do well enough when Aesop tells it of a serpent;–he, indeed, can change his skin and be a serpent still; but when the old Sufi, or any one else, tells it of a boy, let us doubt.
Think of the misery that may be associated with all this,–that this represents! In this Gallery are the faces of many men; some are handsome, most of them more or less human. It cannot be that they all began wrongly,–that their lives were all poisoned at the fountain-head. No,–here are some that came from what are called good families; many others of them had homes, and you may still see some lingering love of it in an air of settled sadness,–they were misled in later life. Think of the mothers who have gone down, in bitter, bitter sorrow, to the grave, with some of the lineaments we see around before their mind’s eye at the latest moment! Oh, the circumstances under which some of these faces have been conjured up by the strong will of love! Think of the sisters, living along with a hidden heart-ache, nursing in secret the knowledge, that somewhere in the world were those dear to them, from whom they were shut out by a bar-sinister terribly real, and for whose welfare, with all the generous truth of a sister’s feeling, they would barter everything, yet who were in an unending danger! Think of them, with this skeleton behind the door of their hearts, fearful at every moment! Does it seem good in the scheme of existence, or a blot there, that those who are themselves innocent, but who are yet the real sufferers, whether punishment to the culprit fall or fail, should be made thus poignantly miserable? We know nothing.
It is said in a certain Arabic legend, that, while Moses was on Mount Sinai, the Lord instructed him in the mysteries of his providence; and Moses, having complained of the impunity of vice and its success in the world, and the frequent sufferings of the innocent, the Lord led him to a rock which jutted from the mountain, and where he could overlook the vast plain of the Desert stretching at his feet.
On one of its oases he beheld a young Arab asleep. He awoke, and, leaving behind him a bag of pearls, sprang into the saddle and rapidly disappeared from the horizon. Another Arab came to the oasis; he discovered the pearls, took them, and vanished in the opposite direction.
Now an aged wanderer, leaning on his staff, bent his steps wearily toward the shady spot; he laid himself down, and fell asleep. But scarcely had he closed his eyes, when he was rudely aroused from his slumber; the young Arab had returned, and demanded his pearls. The hoary man replied, that he had not taken them. The other grew enraged, and accused him of theft. He swore that he had not seen the treasure; but the other seized him; a scuffle ensued; the young Arab drew his sword, and plunged it into the breast of the aged man, who fell lifeless on the earth.
“O Lord! is this just?” exclaimed Moses, with terror.
“Be silent! Behold, this man, whose blood is now mingling with the waters of the Desert, many years ago, secretly, on the same spot, murdered the father of the youth who has now slain him. His crime remained concealed from men; but vengeance is mine: I will repay.”
THE PURSUIT OF KNOWLEDGE UNDER DIFFICULTIES; AND WHAT CAME OF IT.
[Concluded.]
The week of Mr. Clerron’s absence passed away more quickly than Ivy had supposed it would. The reason for this may be found in the fact that her thoughts were very busily occupied. She was more silent than usual, so much so that her father one day said to her,–“Ivy, I haven’t heard you sing this long while, and seems to me you don’t talk either. What’s the matter?”
“Do I look as if anything was the matter?” and the face she turned upon him was so radiant, that even the father’s heart was satisfied.
Very quietly happy was Ivy to think she was of service to Mr. Clerron, that she could give him pleasure,–though she could in no wise understand how it was. She went over every event since her acquaintance with him; she felt how much he had done for her, and how much he had been to her; but she sought in vain to discover how she had been of any use to him. She only knew that she was the most ignorant and insignificant girl in the whole world, and that he was the best and greatest man. As this was very nearly the same conclusion at which she had arrived at an early period of their acquaintance, it cannot be said that her week of reflection was productive of any very valuable results.
The day before Mr. Clerron’s expected return Ivy sat down to prepare her lessons, and for the first time remembered that she had left her books in Mr. Clerron’s library. She was not sorry to have so good an excuse for visiting the familiar room, though its usual occupant was not there to welcome her. Very quietly and joyfully happy, she trod slowly along the path through the woods where she last walked with Mr. Clerron. She was, indeed, at a loss to know why she was so calm. Always before, a sudden influx of joy testified itself by very active demonstrations. She was quite sure that she had never in her life been so happy as now; yet she never had felt less disposed to leap and dance and sing. The non-solution of the problem, however, did not ruffle her serenity. She was content to accept the facts, and await patiently the theory.
Arriving at the house, she went, as usual, into the library without ringing,–but, not finding the books, proceeded in search of Mrs. Simm. That notable lady was sitting behind a huge pile of clean clothes, sorting and mending to her heart’s content. She looked up over her spectacles at Ivy’s bright “good morning,” and invited her to come in. Ivy declined, and begged to know if Mrs. Simm had seen her books. To be sure she had, like the good housekeeper that she was. “You’ll find them in the book-case, second shelf; but, Miss Ivy, I wish you would come in, for I’ve had something on my mind that I’ve felt to tell you this long while.”
Ivy came in, took the seat opposite Mrs. Simm, and waited for her to speak; but Mrs. Simm seemed to be in no hurry to speak. She dropped her glasses; Ivy picked them up and handed them to her. She muttered something about the destructive habits of men, especially in regard to buttons; and presently, as if determined to come to the subject at once, abruptly exclaimed,–
“Miss Ivy, you’re a real good girl, I know, and as innocent as a lamb. That’s why I’m going to talk to you as I do. I know, if you were my child, I should want somebody to do the same by you.”
Ivy could only stare in blank astonishment. After a moment’s pause, Mrs. Simm continued,–
“I’ve seen how things have been going on for some time; but my mouth was shut, though my eyes were open. I didn’t know but maybe I’d better speak to your mother about it; but then, thinks I to myself, she’ll think it is a great deal worse than it is, and then, like enough, there’ll be a rumpus. So I concluded, on the whole, I’d just tell you what I thought; and I know you are a sensible girl and will take it all right. Now you must promise me not to get mad.”
“No,” gasped Ivy.
“I like you a sight. It’s no flattery, but the truth, to say I think you’re as pretty-behaved a girl as you’ll find in a thousand. And all the time you’ve been here, I never have known you do a thing you hadn’t ought to. And Mr. Clerron thinks so too, and there’s the trouble, You see, dear, he’s a man, and men go on their ways and like women, and talk to them, and sort of bewitch them, not meaning to do them any hurt,–and enjoy their company of an evening, and go about their own business in the morning, and never think of it again; but women stay at home, and brood over it, and think there’s something in it, and build a fine air-castle,–and when they find it’s all smoke, they mope and pine and take on. Now that’s what I don’t want you to do. Perhaps you’d think I’d better have spoken with Mr. Clerron; but it wouldn’t signify the head of a pin. He’d either put on the Clerron look and scare you to death and not say a word, or else he’d hold it up in such a ridiculous way as to make you think it was ridiculous yourself. And I thought I’d put you on your guard a little, so as you needn’t fall in love with him. You’ll like him, of course. He likes you; but a young girl like you might make a mistake, if she was ever so modest and sweet,–and nobody could be modester or sweeter than you,–and think a man loved you to marry you, when he only pets and plays with you. Not that Mr. Clerron means to do anything wrong. He’d be perfectly miserable himself, if he thought he’d led you on. There a’n’t a more honorable man every way in the whole country. Now, Miss Ivy, it’s all for your good I say this. I don’t find fault with you, not a bit. It’s only to save you trouble in store that I warn you to look where you stand, and see that you don’t lose your heart before you know it. It’s an awful thing for a woman, Miss Ivy, to get a notion after a man who hasn’t got a notion after her. Men go out and work and delve and drive, and forget; but there a’n’t much in darning stockings and making pillow-cases to take a woman’s thought off her troubles, and sometimes they get sp’iled for life.”
Ivy had remained speechless from amazement; but when Mrs. Simm had finished, she said, with a sudden accession of womanly dignity that surprised the good housekeeper,–
“Mrs. Simm, I cannot conceive why you should speak in this way to me. If you suppose I am not quite able to take care of myself, I assure you you are much mistaken.”
“Lorful heart! Now, Miss Ivy, you promised you wouldn’t be mad.”
“And I have kept my promise. I am not mad.”
“No, but you answer up short like, and that isn’t what I thought of you, Ivy Geer.”
Mrs. Simm looked so disappointed that Ivy took a lower tone, and at any rate she would have had to do it soon; for her fortitude gave way, and she burst into a flood of tears. She was not, by any means, a heroine, and could not put on the impenetrable mask of a woman of the world.
“Now, dear, don’t be so distressful, dear, don’t!” said Mrs. Simm, soothingly. “I can’t bear to see you.”
“I am sure I never thought of such a thing as falling in love with Mr. Clerron or anybody else,” sobbed Ivy, “and I don’t know what should make you think so.”
“Dear heart, I don’t think so. I only told you, so you needn’t.”
“Why, I should as soon think of marrying the angel Gabriel!”
“Oh, don’t talk so, dear; he’s no more than man, after all; but still, you know, he’s no fit match for you. To say nothing of his being older and all that, I don’t think it’s the right place for you. Your father and mother are very nice folks; I am sure nobody could ask for better neighbors, and their good word is in everybody’s mouth; and they’ve brought you up well, I am sure; but, my dear, you know it’s nothing against you nor them that you a’n’t used to splendor, and you wouldn’t take to it natural like. You’d get tired of that way of life, and want to go back to the old fashions, and you’d most likely have to leave your father and mother; for it’s noways probable Mr. Clerron will stay here always; and when he goes back to the city, think what a dreary life you’d have betwixt his two proud sisters, on the one hand,–to be sure, there’s no reason why they should be; their gran’ther was a tailor, and their grandma was his apprentice, and he got rich, and gave all his children learning; and Mr. Felix’s father, he was a lawyer, and he got rich by speculation, and so the two girls always had on their high-heeled boots; but Mr. Clerron, he always laughs at them, and brings up “the grand-paternal shop,” as he calls it, and provokes them terribly, I know. Well, that’s neither here nor there; but, as I was saying, here you’ll have them on the one side, and all the fine ladies on the other, and a great house and servants, and parties to see to, and, lorful heart! Miss Ivy, you’d die in three years; and if you know when you’re well off, you’ll stay at home, and marry and settle down near the old folks. Believe me, my dear, it’s a bad thing both for the man and the woman, when she marries above her.”
“Mrs. Simm,” said Ivy, rising, “will you promise me one thing?”
“Certainly, child, if I can.”
“Will you promise me never again to mention this thing to me, or allude to it in the most distant manner?”
“Miss Ivy, now,”–began Mrs. Simm, deprecatingly.
“Because,” interrupted Ivy, speaking very thick and fast, “you cannot imagine how disagreeable it is to me. It makes me feel ashamed to think of what you have said, and that you could have thought it even. I suppose–indeed, I know–that you did it because you thought you ought; but you may be certain that I am in no danger from Mr. Clerron, nor is there the slightest probability that his fortune, or honor, or reputation, or sisters will ever be disturbed by me. I am very much obliged to you for your good intentions, and I wish you good morning.”
“Don’t, now, Miss Ivy, go so”–
But Miss Ivy was gone, and Mrs. Simm could only withdraw to her pile of clothes, and console herself by stitching and darning with renewed vigor. She felt rather uneasy about the result of her morning’s work, though she had really done it from a conscientious sense of duty.
“Welladay,” she sighed, at last, “she’d better be a little cut up and huffy now, than to walk into a ditch blindfolded; and I wash my hands of whatever may happen after this. I’ve had my say and done my part.”
Alas, Ivy Geer! The Indian summer day was just as calm and beautiful,–the far-off mountains wore their veil of mist just as aerially,–the brook rippled over the stones with just as soft a melody; but what “discord on the music” had fallen! what “darkness on the glory”! A miserable, dull, dead weight was the heart which throbbed so lightly but an hour before. Wearily, drearily, she dragged herself home. It was nearly sunset when she arrived, and she told her mother she was tired and had the headache, which was true,–though, if she had said heartache, it would have been truer. Her mother immediately did what ninety-nine mothers out of a hundred would do in similar circumstances,–made her swallow a cup of strong tea, and sent her to bed. Alas, alas, that there are sorrows which the strongest tea cannot assuage!
When the last echo of her mother’s footstep died on the stairs, and Ivy was alone in the darkness, the tide of bitterness and desolation swept unchecked over her soul, and she wept tears more passionate and desponding than her life had ever before known,–tears of shame and indignation and grief. It was true that the thought which Mrs. Simm had suggested had never crossed her mind before; yet it is no less true, that, all-unconsciously, she had been weaving a golden web, whose threads, though too fine and delicate even for herself to perceive, were yet strong enough to entangle her life in their meshes. A secret chamber, far removed from the noise and din of the world,–a chamber whose soft and rose-tinted light threw its radiance over her whole future, and within whose quiet recesses she loved to sit alone and dream away the hours,–had been rudely entered, and thrown violently open to the light of day, and Ivy saw with dismay how its pictures had become ghastly and its sacredness was defiled. With bitter, though needless and useless self-reproach, she saw how she had suffered herself to be fascinated. Sorrowfully, she felt that Mrs. Simm’s words were true, and a great gulf lay between her and him. She pictured him moving easily and gracefully and naturally among scenes which to her inexperienced eye were grand and splendid; and then, with a sharp pain, she felt how constrained and awkward and entirely unfit for such a life was she. Then her thoughts reverted to her parents,–their unchanging love, their happiness depending on her, their solicitude and watchfulness,–and she felt as if ingratitude were added to her other sins, that she could have so attached herself to any other. And again came back the bitter, burning agony of shame that she had done the very thing that Mrs. Simm too late had warned her not to do; she had been carried away by the kindness and tenderness of her friend, and, unasked, had laid the wealth of her heart at his feet. So the night flushed into morning; and the sun rose upon a pale face and a trembling form,–but not upon a faint heart; for Ivy, kneeling by the couch where her morning and evening prayer had gone up since lisping infancy,–kneeling no longer a child, but a woman, matured through love, matured, alas! through suffering, prayed for strength and comfort; prayed that her parents’ love might be rendered back into their own bosoms a hundred fold; prayed that her friend’s kindness to her might not be an occasion of sin against God, and that she might be enabled to walk with a steady step in the path that lay before her. And she arose strengthened and comforted.
All the morning she lay quiet and silent on the lounge in the little sitting-room. Her mother, busied with household matters, only looked in upon her occasionally, and, as the eyes were always closed, did not speak, thinking her asleep. Ivy was not asleep. Ten thousand little sprites flitted swiftly through the chambers of her brain, humming, singing, weeping, but always busy, busy. Then another tread softly entered, and she knew her dear old father had drawn a chair close to her, and was looking into her face. Tears came into her eyes, her lip involuntarily quivered, and then she felt the pressure of his—-his!–surely that was not her father’s kiss! She started up. No, no! that was not her father’s face bending over her,–not her father’s eyes smiling into hers; but, woe for Ivy! her soul thrilled with a deeper bliss, her heart leaped with a swifter bound, and for a moment all the experience and suffering and resolutions of the last night were as if they had never been. Only for a moment, and then with a strong effort she remembered the impassable gulf.
“A pretty welcome home you have given me!” said Mr. Clerron, lightly.
He saw that something was weighing on her spirits, but did not wish to distress her by seeming to notice it.
“I wait in my library, I walk in my garden, expecting every moment will bring you,–and lo! here you are lying, doing nothing but look pale and pretty as hard as you can.”
Ivy smiled, but did not consider it prudent to speak.
“I found your books, however, and have brought them to you. You thought you would escape a lesson finely, did you not? But you see I have outwitted you.”
“Yes,–I went for the books yesterday,” said Ivy, “but I got talking with Mrs. Simm and forgot them.”
“Ah!” he replied, looking somewhat surprised. “I did not know Mrs. Simm could be so entertaining. She must have exerted herself. Pray, now, if it would not be impertinent, upon what subject did she hold forth with eloquence so overpowering that everything else was driven from your mind? The best way of preserving apples, I dare swear, or the superiority of pickled grapes to pickled cucumbers.”
“No,” said Ivy, with the ghost of an other smile,–“upon various subjects; but not those. How do you do, Mr. Clerron? Have you had a pleasant visit to the city?”
“Very well, I thank you, Miss Geer; and I have not had a remarkably pleasant visit, I am obliged to you. Have I the pleasure of seeing you quite well, Miss Geer,–quite fresh and buoyant?”
The lightness of tone which he had assumed had precisely the opposite effect intended.
“Ye banks and braes o’ bonny Doon,
How can ye bloom sae fresh and fair? How can ye chant, ye little birds,
And I sae weary fu’ o’ care?”
is the of stricken humanity everywhere. And Ivy thought of Mr. Clerron, rich, learned, elegant, happy, on the current of whose life she only floated a pleasant ripple,–and of herself, poor, plain, awkward, ignorant, to whom he was the life of life, the all in all. I would not have you suppose this passed through her mind precisely as I have written it. By no means. The ideas rather trooped through in a pellmell sort of way; but they got through just as effectually. Now, if Ivy had been content to let her muscles remain perfectly still, her face might have given no sign of the confusion within; but, with a foolish presumption, she undertook to smile, and so quite lost control of the little rebels, who immediately twisted themselves into a sob. Her whole frame convulsed with weeping and trying not to weep, he forced her gently back on the pillow, and, bending low, whispered softly,–
“Ivy, what is it?”
“Oh, don’t ask me!–please, don’t! Please, go away!” murmured the poor child.
“I will, my dear, in a minute; but you must think I should be a little anxious. I leave you as gay as a bird, and healthy and rosy,–and when I come back, I find you white and sad and ill. I am sure something weighs on your mind. I assure you, my little Ivy, and you must believe, that I am your true friend,–and if you would confide in me, perhaps I could bring you comfort. It would at least relieve you to let me help you bear the burden.”
The burden being of such a nature, it is not at all probable that Ivy would have assented to his proposition; but the welcome entrance of her mother prevented the necessity of replying.
“Oh, you’re awake! Well, I told Mr. Clerron he might come in, though I thought you wouldn’t be. Slept well this morning, didn’t you, deary, to make up for last night?”
“No, mamma, I haven’t been asleep.”
“Crying, my dear? Well, now, that’s a pretty good one! Nervous she is, Mr. Clerron, always nervous, when the least thing ails her; and she didn’t sleep a wink last night, which is a bad thing for the nerves,–and Ivy generally sleeps like a top. She walked over to your house yesterday, and when she got home she was entirely beat out,–looked as if she had been sick a week. I don’t know why it was, for the walk couldn’t have hurt her. She’s always dancing round at home. I don’t think she’s been exactly well for four or five days. Her father and I both thought she’d been more quiet like than usual.”
The sudden pang that shot across Ivy’s face was not unobserved by Mr. Clerron. A thought came into his mind. He had risen at Mrs. Geer’s entrance, and he now expressed his regret for Ivy’s illness, and hoped that she would soon be well, and able to resume her studies; and, with a few words of interest and inquiry to Mrs. Geer, took his leave.
“I wonder if Mrs. Simm _has_ been putting her foot in it!” thought he, as he stalked home rather more energetically than was his custom.
That unfortunate lady was in her sitting-room, starching muslins, when Mr. Clerron entered. She had surmised that he was gone to the farm, and had looked for his return with a shadow of dread. She saw by his face that something was wrong.
“Mrs. Simm,” he began, somewhat abruptly, but not disrespectfully, “may I beg your pardon for inquiring what Ivy Geer talked to you about, yesterday?”
“Oh, good Lord! She ha’n’t told you, has she?” cried Mrs. Simm,–her fear of God, for once, yielding to her greater fear of man. The embroidered collar, which she had been vigorously beating, dropped to the floor, and she gazed at him with such terror and dismay in every lineament, that he could not help being amused. He picked up the collar, which, in her perturbation, she had not noticed, and said,–
“No, she has told me nothing; but I find her excited and ill, and I have reason to believe it is connected with her visit here yesterday. If it is anything relating to me, and which I have a right to know, you would do me a great favor by enlightening me on the subject.”
Mrs. Simm had not a particle of that knowledge in which Young America is so great a proficient, namely, the “knowing how to get out of a scrape.” She was, besides, alarmed at the effect of her words on Ivy, supposing nothing less than that the girl was in the last stages of a swift consumption; so she sat down, and, rubbing her starchy hands together, with many a deprecatory “you know,” and apologetic “I am sure I thought I was acting for the best,” gave, considering her agitation, a tolerably accurate account of the whole interview. Her interlocutor saw plainly that she had acted from a sincere conscientiousness, and not from a meddlesome, mischievous interference; so he only thanked her for her kind interest, and suggested that he had now arrived at an age when it would, perhaps, be well for him to conduct matters, particularly of so delicate a nature, solely according to his own judgment, He was sorry to have given her any trouble.
“Scissors cuts only what comes between ’em,” soliloquized Mrs. Simm, when the door closed behind him. “If ever I meddle with a courting-business again, my name a’n’t Martha Simm. No, they may go to Halifax, whoever they be, ‘fore ever I’ll lift a finger.”
It is a great pity that the world generally has not been brought to make the same wise resolution.
One, two, three, four days passed away, and still Ivy pondered the question so often wrung from man in his bewildered gropings, “What shall I do?” Every day brought her teacher and friend to comfort, amuse, and strengthen. Every morning she resolved to be on her guard, to remember the impassable gulf. Every evening she felt the silken cords drawing tighter and tighter around her soul, and binding her closer and closer to him. She thought she might die, and the thought gave her a sudden joy. Death would solve the problem at once. If only a few weeks or months lay before her, she could quietly rest on him, and give herself up to him, and wait in heaven for all rough places to be made plain. But Ivy did not die. Youth and nursing and herb-tea were too strong for her, and the color came back to her cheek and the languor went out from her blue eyes. She saw nothing to be done but to resume her old routine. It would be difficult to say whether she was more glad or sorry at seeming to see this necessity. She knew her danger, and it was very fascinating. She did not look into the far-off future; she only prayed to be kept from day to day. Perhaps her course was wise; perhaps not. But she had to rely on her own judgment alone; and her judgment was founded on inexperience, which is not a trustworthy basis.
A new difficulty arose. Ivy found that she could not resume her old habits. To be sure, she learned her lessons just as perfectly at home as she had ever done. Just as punctual to the appointed hour, she went to recite them; but no sooner had her foot crossed Mr. Clerron’s threshold than her spirit seemed to die within her. She remembered neither words nor ideas. Day after day, she attempted to go through her recitation as usual, and, day after day, she hesitated, stammered, and utterly failed. His gentle assistance only increased her embarrassment. This she was too proud to endure; and, one day, after an unsuccessful effort, she closed the book with a quick, impatient gesture, and exclaimed,–
“Mr. Clerron, I will not recite any more!”
The agitated flush which had suffused her face gave way to paleness. He saw that she was under strong excitement, and quietly replied,–
“Very well, you need not, if you are tired. You are not quite well yet, and must not try to do too much. We will commence here to-morrow.”
“No, Sir,–I shall not recite any more at all.”
“Till to-morrow.”
“Never any more!”
There was a moment’s pause.
“You must not lose patience, my dear. In a few days you will recite as well as ever. A fine notion, forsooth, because you have been ill, and forgotten a little, to give up studying! And what is to become of my laurels, pray,–all the glory I am to get by your proficiency?”
“I shall study at home just the same, but I shall not recite.”
“Why not?”
His look became serious.
“Because I cannot. I do not think it best,–and–and I will not”
Another pause.
“Ivy, do you not like your teacher?”
“No, Sir. _I hate you!_”
The words seemed to flash from her lips. She sprang up and stood erect before him, her eyes on fire, and every nerve quivering with intense excitement He was shocked and startled. It was a new phase of her character,–a new revelation. He, too, arose, and walked to the window. If Ivy could have seen the workings of his face, there would have been a revelation to her also. But she was too highly excited to notice anything. He came back to her and spoke in a low voice,–
“Ivy, this is too much. This I did not expect.”
He laid his hand upon her head as he had often done before. She shook it off passionately.
“Yes, I hate you. I hate you, because”–
“Because I wanted you to love me?”
“No, Sir; because I do love you, and you bring me only wretchedness. I have never been happy since the miserable day I first saw you.”
“Then, Ivy, I have utterly failed in what it has been my constant endeavor to do.”
“No, Sir, you have succeeded in what you endeavored to do. You have taught me. You have given me knowledge and thought, and showed me the source of knowledge. But I had better have been the ignorant girl you found me. You have taken from me what I can never find again. I have made a bitter exchange. I was ignorant and stupid, I know,–but I was happy and contented; and now I am wretched and miserable and wicked. You have come between me and my home and my father and mother;–between me and all the bliss of my past and all my hope for the future.”
“And thus, Ivy, have you come between me and my past and my future;–yet not thus. You shut out from my heart all the sorrow and vexation and strife that have clouded my life, and fill it with your own dear presence. You come between me and my future, because, in looking forward, I see only you. I should have known better. There is a gulf between us; but if I could make you happy”–
“I don’t want you to make me happy. I know there is a gulf between us. I saw it while you were gone. I measured it and fathomed it. I shall not leap across. Stay you on your side quietly; I shall stay as quietly on mine.”
“It is too late for that, Ivy,–too late now. But you are not to blame, my child. Little sunbeam that you are, I will not cloud you. Go shine upon other lives as you have shone upon mine! light up other hearths as you have mine! and I will bless you forever, though mine be left desolate.”
He turned away with an expression on his face that Ivy could not read. Her passion was gone. She hesitated a moment, then went to his side and laid her hand softly on his arm. There was a strange moistened gleam in his eyes as he turned them upon her.
“Mr. Clerron, I do not understand you.”
“My dear, you never can understand me.”
“I know it,” said Ivy, with her old humility; “but, at least, I might understand whether I have vexed you.”
“You have not vexed me.”
“I spoke proudly and rudely to you. I was angry, and so unhappy. I shall always be so; I shall never be happy again; but I want you to be, and you do not look as if you were.”
If Ivy had not been a little fool, she would not have spoken so; but she was, so she did.
“I beg your pardon, little tendril. I was so occupied with my own preconceived ideas that I forgot to sympathize with you. Tell me why or how I have made you unhappy. But I know; you need not. I assure you, however, that you are entirely wrong. It was a prudish and whimsical notion of my good old housekeeper’s. You are never to think of it again. _I_ never attributed such a thought or feeling to you.”
“Did you suppose that was all that made me unhappy?”
“Can there be anything else?”
“I am glad you think so. Perhaps I should not have been unhappy but for that, at least not so soon; but that alone could never have made me so.”
Little fool again! She was like a chicken thrusting its head into a corner and thinking itself out of danger because it cannot see the danger. She had no notion that she was giving him the least clue to the truth, but considered herself speaking with more than Delphic prudence. She rather liked to coast along the shores of her trouble and see how near she could approach without running aground; but she struck before she knew it.
Mr. Clerron’s face suddenly changed. He sat down, took both her hands, and drew her towards him.
“Ivy, perhaps I have been misunderstanding you. I will at least find out the truth. Ivy, do you know that I love you, that I have loved you almost from the first, that I would gladly here and now take you to my heart and keep you here forever?”
“I do not know it,” faltered Ivy, half beside herself.
“Know it now, then! I am older than you, and I seem to myself so far removed from you that I have feared to ask you to trust your happiness to my keeping, lest I should lose you entirely; but sometimes you say or do something which gives me hope. My experience has been very different from yours. I am not worthy to clasp your purity and loveliness. Still I would do it, if–Tell me, Ivy, does it give you pain or pleasure?”
Ivy extricated her hands from his, deliberately drew a footstool, and knelt on it before him,–then took his hands, as he had before held hers, gazed steadily into his eyes, and said,–
“Mr. Clerron, are you in earnest? Do you love me?”
“I am, Ivy. I do love you.”
“How do you love me?”
“I love you with all the strength and power that God has given me.”
“You do not simply pity me? You have not, because you heard from Mrs. Simm, or suspected, yourself, that I was weak enough to mistake your kindness and nobleness,–you have not in pity resolved to sacrifice your happiness to mine?”
“No, Ivy,–nothing of the kind. I pity only myself. I reverence you, I think. I have hoped that you loved me as a teacher and friend. I dared not believe you could ever do more; now something within tells me that you can. Can you, Ivy? If the love and tenderness and devotion of my whole life can make you happy, happiness shall not fail to be yours.”
Ivy’s gaze never for a moment drooped under his, earnest and piercing though it was.
“Now I am happy,” she said, slowly and distinctly. “Now I am blessed. I can never ask anything more.”
“But I ask something more,” he replied, bending forward eagerly. “I ask much more. I want your love. Shall I have it? And I want you.”
“My love?” She blushed slightly, but spoke without hesitation. “Have I not given it,–long, long before you asked it, before you even cared for my friendship? Not love only, but life, my very whole being, centred in you, does now, and will always. Is it right to say this?–maidenly? But I am not ashamed. I shall always be proud to have loved you, though only to lose you,–and to be loved by you is glory enough for all my future.”
For a short time the relative position of these two people was changed. I allude to the change in this distant manner, as all who have ever been lovers will be able to judge what it was; and I do not wish to forestall the sweet surprise of those who have not.
Ivy rested there (query, where?) a moment; but as he whispered, “Thus you answer the second question? You give me yourself too?” she hastily freed herself. (Query, from what?)
“Never!”
“Ivy!”
“Never!” more firmly than before.
“What does this mean?” he said, sternly. “Are you trifling?”
There was such a frown on his brow as Ivy had never seen. She quailed before it.
“Do not be angry! Alas! I am not trifling. Life itself is not worth so much as your love. But the impassable gulf is between us just the same.”
“What is it? Who put it there?”
“God put it there. Mrs. Simm showed it to me.”
“Mrs. Simm be–! A prating gossip! Ivy, I told you, you were never to mention that again,–never to think of it; and you must obey me.”
“I will try to obey you in that.”
“And very soon you shall promise to obey me in all things. But I will not be hard with you. The yoke shall rest very lightly,–so lightly you shall not feel it. You will not do as much, I dare say. You will make me acknowledge your power every day, dear little vixen! Ivy, why do you draw back? Why do you not come to me?”
“I cannot come to you, Mr. Clerron, any more. I must go home now, and stay at home.”
“When your home is here, Ivy, stay at home. For the present, don’t go. Wait a little.”
“You do not understand me. You will not understand me,” said Ivy, bursting into tears. “I _must_ leave you. Don’t make the way so difficult.”
“I will make it so difficult that you cannot walk in it.”
His tones were low, but determined.
“Why do you wish to leave me? Have you not said that you loved me?”
“It is because I love you that I go. I am not fit for you. I was not made for you. I can never make you happy. I am not accomplished. I cannot go among your friends, your sisters. I am awkward. You would be ashamed of me, and then you would not love me; you could not; and I should lose the thing I most value. No, Mr. Clerron,–I would rather keep your love in my own heart and my own home.”
“Ivy, can you be happy without me?”
“I shall not be without you. My heart is full of lifelong joyful memories. You need not regret me. Yes, I shall be happy. I shall work with mind and hands. I shall not pine away in a mean and feeble life. I shall be strong, and cheerful, and active, and helpful; and I think I shall not cease to love you in heaven.”
“But there is, maybe, a long road for us to travel before we reach heaven, and I want you to help me along. Ivy, I am not so spiritual as you. I cannot live on memory. I want you before me all the time. I want to see you and talk with you every day. Why do you speak of such things? Is it the soul or its surroundings that you value? Do _you_ respect or care for wealth and station? Do _you_ consider a woman your superior because she wears a finer dress than you?”
“I? No, Sir! No, indeed! you very well know. But the world does, and you move in the world; and I do not want the world to pity you because you have an uncouth, ignorant wife. _I_ don’t want to be despised by those who are above me only in station.”
“Little aristocrat, you are prouder than I. Will you sacrifice your happiness and mine to your pride?”
“Proud perhaps I am, but it is not all pride. I think you are noble, but I think also you could not help losing patience when you found that I could not accommodate myself to the station to which you had raised me. Then you would not respect me. I am, indeed, too proud to wish to lose that; and losing your respect, as I said before, I should not long keep your love.”
“But you will accommodate yourself to any station. My dear, you are young, and know so little about this world, which is such a bugbear to you. Why, there is very little that will be greatly unlike this. At first you might be a little bewildered, but I shall be by you all the time, and you shall feel and fear nothing, and gradually you will learn what little you need to know; and most of all, you will know yourself the best and the loveliest of women. Dear Ivy, I would not part with your sweet, unconscious simplicity for all the accomplishments and acquired elegancies of the finest lady in the world.” (That’s what men always say.) “You are not ignorant of anything you ought to know, and your ignorance of the world is an additional charm to one who knows so much of its wickedness as I. But we will not talk of it. There is no need. This shall be our home, and here the world will not trouble us.”
“And I cannot give up my dear father and mother. They are not like you and your friends”–
“They are my friends, and valued and dear to me, and dearer still they shall be as the parents of my dear little wife”–
“I was going to say”–
“But you shall not say it. I utterly forbid you ever to mention it again. You are mine, all my own. Your friends are my friends, your honor my honor, your happiness my happiness henceforth; and what God joins together let not man or woman put asunder.”
“Ah!” whispered Ivy, faintly; for she was yielding, and just beginning to receive the sense of great and unexpected bliss, “but if you should be wrong,–if you should ever repent of this, it is not your happiness alone, but mine, too, that will be destroyed.”
Again their relative positions changed, and _remained so_ for a long while.
“Ivy, am I a mere schoolboy to swear eternal fidelity for a week? Have I not been tossing hither and thither on the world’s tide ever since you lay in your cradle, and do I not know my position and my power and my habits and love? And knowing all this, do I not know that this dear head”—-etc., etc., etc., etc.
But I said I was not going to marry my man and woman, did I not? Nor have I. To be sure, you may have detected premonitory symptoms, but I said nothing about that. I only promised not to marry them, and I have not married them.
It is to be hoped they were married, however. For, on a fine June evening, the setting sun cast a mellow light through the silken curtains of a pleasant chamber, where Ivy lay on a white couch, pale and and still,–very pale and still and statuelike; and by her side, bending over her, with looks of unutterable love, clasping her in his arms, as if to give out of his own heart the life that had so nearly ebbed from hers, pressing upon the closed eyes, the white cheeks, the silent lips kisses of such warmth and tenderness as never thrilled maidenly lips in their rosiest flush of beauty,–knelt Felix Clerron; and when the tremulous life fluttered back again, when the blue eyes slowly opened and smiled up into his with an answering love, his happiness was complete.
In a huge arm-chair, bolt upright, where they had placed him, sat Farmer Geer, holding in his sadly awkward hands the unconscious cause of all this agitation, namely, a poor, little, horrid, gasping, crying, writhing, old-faced, distressed-looking, red, wrinkled, ridiculous baby! between whose “screeches” Farmer Geer could be heard muttering, in a dazed, bewildered way,–“Ivy’s baby! Oh, Lud! who’d ‘a’ thunk it? No more’n yesterday she was a baby herself. Lud! Lud!”
THE PORTRAIT.
In a lumbering attic room,
Where, for want of light and air,
Years had died within the gloom,
Leaving dead dust everywhere,
Everywhere,
Hung the portrait of a lady,
With a face so fair!
Time had long since dulled the paint, Time, which all our arts disguise,
And the features now were faint,
All except the wondrous eyes,
Wondrous eyes,
Ever looking, looking, looking,
With such sad surprise!
As man loveth, man had loved
Her whose features faded there;
As man mourneth, man had mourned,
Weeping, in his dark despair,
Bitter tears,
When she left him broken-hearted
To his death of years.
Then for months the picture bent
All its eyes upon his face,
Following his where’er they went,– Till another filled the place
In its stead,–
Till the features of the living
Did outface the dead.
Then for years it hung above
In that attic dim and ghast,
Fading with the fading love,
Sad reminder of the past,–
Save the eyes,
Ever looking, ever looking,
With such sad surprise!
Oft the distant laughter’s sound
Entered through the cobwebbed door, And the cry of children found
Dusty echoes from the floor
To those eyes,
Ever looking, ever looking,
With their sad surprise.
Once there moved upon the stair
Olden love-steps mounting slow,
But the face that met him there
Drove him to the depths below;
For those eyes
Through his soul seemed looking, looking, All their sad surprise.
From that day the door was nailed
Of that memory-haunted room,
And the portrait hung and paled
In the dead dust and the gloom,–
Save the eyes,
Ever looking, ever looking,
With such sad surprise!
A LEAF
FROM THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE-LITERATURE OF THE LAST CENTURY.
One hundred and sixteen years ago, to wit, on the 20th day of October, A.D. 1743, the quiet precincts of certain streets in the town of Boston were the theatre of unusual proceedings. An unwonted activity pervaded the well-known printing-office of the “Messrs. Rogers and Fowle, in Prison Lane,” now Court Street; a small printed sheet was being worked off,–not with the frantic rush and roar of one of Hoe’s six-cylinder giants, but with the calm circumspection befitting the lever-press and ink-balls of that day,–to be conveyed, so soon as it should have assumed a presentable shape, to the counters of “Samuel Eliot, in Cornhill” and “Joshua Blanchard, in Dock Square,” (and, we will hope, to the addresses indicated on a long subscription-list,) for the entertainment and instruction of ladies in high-heeled shoes and hoops, forerunners of greater things thereafter, and gentlemen in big wigs, cocked hats, and small-clothes, no more to be encountered in our daily walks, and known to their degenerate descendants only by the aid of the art of limner or sculptor.
For some fifteen years, both in England and America, there had been indications of an approaching modification in the existing forms of periodical literature, enlarging its scope to something better and higher than the brief and barren resume of current events to which the Gazette or News-Letter of the day was in the main confined, and affording an opportunity for the free discussion of literary and artistic questions. Thus was gradually developed a class of publications which professed, while giving a proper share of attention to the important department of news, to occupy the field of literature rather than of journalism, and to serve as a _Museum, Depository_, or _Magazine_, of the polite arts and sciences. The very marked success of the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” the pioneer English publication of this class, which appeared in 1731 under the management of Cave, and reached the then almost[1] unparalleled sale often thousand copies, produced a host of imitators and rivals, of which the “London Magazine,” commenced in April, 1732, was perhaps the most considerable. In January, 1741, Benjamin Franklin began the publication of “The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America,” but only six numbers were issued. In the same year, Andrew Bradford published “The American Magazine, or Monthly View of the Political State of the British Colonies,” which was soon discontinued. Both these unsuccessful ventures were made at Philadelphia. There were similar attempts in Boston a little later. “The Boston Weekly Magazine” made its appearance March 2,1743, and lived just four weeks. “The Christian History,” edited by Thomas Prince, Jr., son of the author of the “New England Chronology,” appeared three days after, (March 5, 1743,) and reached the respectable age of two years. It professed to exhibit, among other things, “Remarkable Passages, Historical and Doctrinal, out of the most Famous old Writers both of the Church of England and Scotland from the Reformation; as also the first Settlers of New England and their Children; that we may see how far their pious Principles and Spirit are at this day revived, and may guard against all Extremes.”
[Footnote 1: It is said that as many as twenty thousand copies of particular numbers of the “Spectator” were sold.]
It would appear, however, that none of the four magazines last named were so general in their scope, or so well conducted, certainly they were not so long-lived, as “The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle,” the first number of which, bearing date “September, 1743,” appeared, as we have said, on the 20th of the following October, under the editorial charge, as is generally supposed, of Jeremy Gridley, Esq., Attorney-General of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, and the head of the Masonic Fraternity in America, though less known to us, perhaps, in either capacity, than he is as the legal instructor of the patriot Otis, a pupil whom it became his subsequent duty as the officer of the crown to encounter in that brilliant and memorable argument against the “Writs of Assistance,” which the pen of the historian, and, more recently, the chisel of the sculptor, have contributed to render immortal. This publication, if we regard it, as we doubtless may, as the original and prototype of the “American Magazine,” would seem to have been rightly named. It was printed on what old Dr. Isaiah Thomas calls “a fine medium paper in 8vo,” and he further assures us that “in its execution it was deemed equal to any work of the kind then published in London.” In external appearance, it was a close copy of the “London Magazine,” from whose pages (probably to complete the resemblance) it made constant and copious extracts, not always rendering honor to whom honor was due, and in point of mechanical excellence, as well as of literary merit, certainly eclipsed the contemporary newspaper-press of the town, the “Boston Evening Post,” “Boston News Letter” and the “New England Courant.” The first number contained forty-four pages, measuring about six inches by eight. The scope and object of the Magazine, as defined in the Preface, do not vary essentially from the line adopted by its predecessors and contemporaries, and seem, in the main, identical with what we have recounted above as characteristic of this new movement in letters. The novelty and extent of the field, and the consequent fewness and inexperience of the laborers, are curiously shown by the miscellaneous, _omnium-gatherum_ character of the publication, which served at once as a Magazine, Review, Journal, Almanac, and General Repository and Bulletin;–the table of contents of the first number exhibits a list of subjects which would now be distributed among these various classes of periodical literature, and perhaps again parcelled out according to the subdivisions of each. Avowedly neutral in politics and religion, as became an enterprise which relied upon the patronage of persons of all creeds and parties, it recorded (usually without comment) the current incidents of political and religious interest. A summary of news appeared at the end of each number, under the head of “Historical Chronicle”; but in the body of the Magazine are inserted, side by side with what would now be termed “local items,” contemporary narratives of events, many of which have, in the lapse of more than a century, developed into historical proportions, but which here meet us, as it were, at first hand, clothed in such homely and impromptu dress as circumstances might require, with all their little roughnesses, excrescences, and absurdities upon them,–crude lumps of mingled fact and fiction, not yet moulded and polished into the rounded periods of the historian.
The Magazine was established at the period of a general commotion among the dry bones of New England Orthodoxy, caused by what is popularly known as “the New-Light Movement,” to do battle with which heresy arose “The Christian History,” above alluded to. The public mind was widely and deeply interested, and the first number of our Magazine opens with “A Dissertation on the State of Religion in North America,” which is followed by a fiery manifesto of the “Anniversary Week” of 1743, entitled “The Testimony of the Pastors of the Churches in the Province of the Massachusetts Bay in New-England at their Annual Convention in Boston, May 25, 1743, Against several Errors in Doctrine and Disorders in Practice, which have of late obtained in various Parts of the Land; as drawn up by a Committee chosen by the said Pastors, read and accepted Paragraph by Paragraph, and voted to be sign’d by the Moderator in their Name, and Printed.” These “Disorders” and “Errors” are specified under six heads, being generalized at the outset as “Antinomian and Familistical Errors.” The number of strayed sheep must have been considerable, since we find a Rejoinder put forth on the seventh of the following July, which bears the signatures of “Sixty-eight Pastors of Churches,” (including fifteen who signed with a reservation as to one Article,) styled “The Testimony and Advice of an Assembly of Pastors of Churches in New England, at a Meeting in Boston, July 7, 1743. Occasion’d by the late happy Revival of Religion in many Parts of the Land.” Some dozen new books, noticed in this number, are likewise all upon theological subjects. The youthful University of Yale took part in the conflict, testifying its zeal for the established religion by punishing with expulsion (if we are to believe a writer in “The New York Post-Boy” of March 17, 1745) two students, “for going during Vacation, and while at Home with their Parents, to hear a neighboring Minister preach who is distinguished in this Colony by the Name of New Light, being by their said Parents perswaded, desired, or ordered to go.” The statement, however, is contradicted in a subsequent number by the President of the College, the Rev. Thomas Clapp, D.D., who states “that they were expelled for being Followers of the Paines, two Lay Exhorters, whose corrupt Principles and pernicious Practices are set forth in the Declaration of the Ministers of the County of Windham.” In all probability the outcasts had “corrupt Principles and pernicious Practices” charged to their private account in the Faculty books, to which, quite as much as to any departure from Orthodox standards, they may have been indebted for leave to take up their connections.
The powerful Indian Confederacy, known as the Six Nations, had just concluded at Philadelphia their famous treaty with the whites, and in the numbers for October and November, 1743, we are furnished with some curious notes of the proceedings at the eight or nine different councils held on the occasion, which may or may not be historically accurate. That the news was not hastily gathered or digested may be safely inferred from the fact that the proceedings of the councils, which met in July, 1742, are here given to the public at intervals of fifteen and sixteen months afterwards. The assemblies were convened first “at Mr. Logan’s House,” next “at the Meeting House,” and finally “at the Great Meeting House,” where the seventh meeting took place July 10, in the presence of “a great Number of the Inhabitants of Philadelphia.” As usual, the Indians complain of their treatment at the hands of the traders and their agents, and beg for more fire-water. “We have been stinted in the Article of Rum in Town,” they pathetically observe,–“we desire you will open the Rum Bottle, and give it to us in greater Abundance on the Road”; and again, “We hope, as you have given us Plenty of good Provision whilst In Town, that you will continue your Goodness so far as to supply us with a little more to serve us on the Road.” The first, at least, of these requests seems to have been complied with; the Council voted them twenty gallons of rum,–in addition to the twenty-five gallons previously bestowed,– “to comfort them on the Road”; and the red men departed in an amicable mood, though, from the valedictory address made them by the Governor, we might perhaps infer that they had found reason to contrast the hospitality of civilization with that shown in the savage state, to the disadvantage of the former. “We wish,” he says, “there had been more Room and better Houses provided for your Entertainment, but not expecting so many of you we did the best we could. ‘Tis true there are a great many Houses in Town, but as they are the Property of other People who have their own Families to take care of, it is difficult to procure Lodgings for a large Number of People, especially if they come unexpectedly.”
But the great item of domestic intelligence, which confronts us under various forms in the pages of this Magazine, is the siege and capture of Louisburg, and the reduction of Cape Breton to the obedience of the British crown,–an acquisition for which his Majesty was so largely indebted to the military skill of Sir William Pepperell, and the courage of the New England troops, that we should naturally expect to find the exploit narrated at length in a contemporary Boston magazine. The first of the long series is an extract from the “Boston Evening Post” of May 13, 1745, entitled, “A short Account of Cape Breton”; which is followed by “A further Account of the Island of Cape Breton, of the Advantages derived to France from the Possession of that Country, and of the Fishery upon its Coasts; and the Benefit that must necessarily result to Great Britain from the Recovery of that important Place,”–from the “London Courant” of July 25. In contrast to this cool and calculating production, we have next the achievement, as seen from a military point of view, in a “Letter from an Officer of Note in the Train,” dated Louisburg, June 20, 1745, who breaks forth thus:–“Glory to God, and Joy and Happiness to my Country in the Reduction of this Place, which we are now possessed of. It’s a City vastly beyond all Expectation for Strength and beautiful Fortifications; but we have made terrible Havock with our Guns and Bombs. … Such a fine City will be an everlasting Honour to my Countrymen.” Farther on, we have another example of military eloquence in a “Letter from a Superior Officer at Louisburgh, to his Friend and Brother at Boston,” dated October 22, 1745. To this succeeds “A particular Account of the Siege and Surrender of Louisburgh, on the 17th of June, 1745.” The resources of the pictorial art are called in to assist the popular conception of the great event, and we are treated on page 271 to a rude wood-cut, representing the “Town and Harbour of Louisburgh,” accompanied by “Certain Particulars of the Blockade and Distress of the Enemy.” Still farther on appears “The Declaration of His Excellency, William Shirley, Esq., Captain General and Governour in Chief of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, to the Garrison at Louisburgh.” July 18, 1745, was observed as “a Day of publick Thanksgiving, agreeably to His Excellency’s Proclamation of the 8th inst., on Account of the wonderful Series of Successes attending our Forces in the Reduction of the City and Fortress of Louisburgh with the Dependencies thereof at Cape Breton to the Obedience of His Majesty.” There are also accounts of rejoicings at Newport, New Haven, New York, Philadelphia, and other places. Nor was the Muse silent on such an auspicious occasion: four adventurous flights in successive numbers of the Magazine attest the loyalty, if not the poetic genius of Colonial bards; and a sort of running fire of description, narrative, and anecdote concerning the important event is kept up in the numbers for many succeeding months.
But, whatever may have been the magnitude and interest of domestic affairs, the enterprising vigilance of our journalists was far from overlooking prominent occurrences on the other side of the water, and the news by all the recent arrivals, dating from three to six months later from Europe, was carefully, if at times somewhat briefly, recapitulated. In this manner our ancestors heard of the brilliant campaigns of Prince George, the Duke of Cumberland, and Marshal de Noailles, during the War of the Austrian Succession,–of the battle of Dettingen in June, 1743,–of the declaration of war between the kings of France and England in March, 1744; and, above all, of the great Scotch Rebellion of 1745. Here was stirring news, indeed, for the citizens of Boston, and for all British subjects, wherever they might be. The suspense in which loyal New England was plunged, as to whether “great George our King and the Protestant succession” were to succumb before the Pretender and his Jesuitical followers, was happily terminated by intelligence of the decisive battle of Culloden, the tidings of which victory, gained on the 16th of April, 1746, appear in the number for July. Public joy and curiosity demanded full particulars of the glorious news, and a copy of the official narrative of the battle, dated “Inverness, April 18th,” is served out to the hungry quidnuncs of Boston, in the columns of our Magazine, as had been done three months before to consumers equally rapacious in the London coffeehouses. With commendable humanity, the loss of the insurgent army is put at “two thousand,”–although “the Rebels by their own Accounts make the Loss greater by 2000 than we have stated it.” In the fatal list appears the name of “Cameron of Lochiel,” destined, through the favor of the Muse, to an immortality which is denied to equally intrepid and unfortunate compatriots. The terms of the surrender upon parole of certain French and Scotch officers at Inverness,–the return of the ordnance and stores captured,–names of the killed and wounded officers of the rebel army,–various congratulatory addresses,–an extract from a letter from Edinburgh, concerning the battle,–an account of the subsequent movement of the forces,–various anecdotes of the Duke of Cumberland, during the engagement,–etc., are given with much parade and circumstance. The loyalty of the citizens is evidenced by the following “local item,” under date of “Boston, Thursday, 3d”:–“Upon the Confirmation of the joyful News of the Defeat of the Rebels in Scotland, and of the Life and Health of His Royal Highness the Duke of Cumberland, on Wednesday, the 2d inst., at Noon, the Guns at Castle William and the Batteries of the Town were fired, as were those on Board the Massachusetts Frigate, etc., and in the Evening we had Illuminations and other Tokens of Joy and Satisfaction.” There are also curious biographical sketches and anecdotes of the Earl of Kilmarnock, Lord Balmerino, and others, among those engaged in this ill-judged attempt, who expiated their treason on the scaffold, from which interesting extracts might be made. The following seems a very original device for the recovery of freedom,–one, we think, which, to most readers of the present day even, will truly appear a “new” and “extraordinary Invention”:–
“Carlisle, Sept. 27, 1746.
“The Method taken by the Rebels here under Sentence of Death to make their Escape is quite new, and reckoned a most extraordinary Invention, as by no other Instrument than a Case-Knife, a Drinking-Glass and a Silk Handkerchief, seven of them in one Night had sawn off their Irons, thus:–They laid the Silk Handkerchief single, over the Mouth of the Glass, but stretched it as much as it would bear, and tied it hard at the Bottom of the Glass; then they struck the Edge of the Knife on the Mouth of the Glass, (thus covered with the Handkerchief to prevent Noise,) till it became a Saw, with which they cut their Irons till it was Blunt, and then had Recourse to the Mouth of the Glass again to renew the Teeth of the Saw; and so completed their Design by Degrees. This being done in the Dead of Night, and many of them at Work together, the little Noise they made was overheard by the Centinels; who informed their Officers of it, they quietly doubled their Guard, and gave the Rebels no Disturbance till Morning, when it was discovered that several of them were loose, and that others had been trying the same Trick. ‘Tis remarkable that a Knife will not cut a Handkerchief when struck upon it in this Manner.”
About one-eighth part of the first volume of the Magazine is occupied with reports of Parliamentary debates, entitled, “Journal of the Proceedings and Debates of a Political Club of young Noblemen and Gentlemen established some time ago in London.” They seem to be copied, with little, if any alteration, from the columns of the “London Magazine,” and are introduced to an American public with this mildly ironical preface:–“We shall give our Readers in our next a List of the British Parliament. And as it is now render’d unsafe to entertain the Publick with any Accounts of their Proceedings or Debates, we shall give them in their Stead, in some of our subsequent Magazines, Extracts from the Journals of a Learned and Political Club of young Noblemen and Gentlemen established some time ago in London. Which will in every Respect answer the same Intentions.”
The scientific world was all astir just then with new-found marvels of Electricity,–an interest which was of course much augmented in this country by the ingenious experiments and speculations of the printer-philosopher. In the volume for the year 1745 is “An Historical Account of the wonderful Discoveries made in Germany, etc., concerning Electricity,” in the course of which the writer says, (speaking of the experiments of a Mr. Gray,) “He also discovered another surprising Property of electric Virtue, which is that the approach of a Tube of electrified Glass communicates to a hempen or silken Cord an electric Force which is conveyed along the Cord to the Length of 886 feet, at which amazing Distance it will impregnate a Ball of Ivory with the same Virtue as the Tube from which it was derived.” So true is it, that things are great and small solely by comparison: the lapse of something over a century has gradually stretched this “amazing distance” to many hundreds of miles, and now the circumference of the globe is the only limit which we feel willing to set to its extension.
At page 691 of the previous volume we have an “Extract from a Pamphlet lately published at Philadelphia intitled ‘An Account of the New Invented Pennsylvanian Fire Places.'” This was probably from the pen of Franklin, who expatiates as follows on the advantages derivable from these fireplaces, which are still occasionally to be met with, and known as “Franklin Stoves”:–“By the Help of this saving Invention our Wood may grow as fast as we consume it, and our Posterity may warm themselves at a moderate Rate, without being oblig’d to fetch their Fuel over the Atlantick; as, if Pit-Coal should not be here discovered, (which is an Uncertainty,) they must necessarily do.”
That a taste for the beauties of Nature was extant at the epoch of which we treat may be inferred from the statement of a writer who commences “An Essay in Praise of the Morning” as follows:–“I have the good Fortune to be so pleasantly lodg’d as to have a Prospect of a neighboring Grove, where the Eye receives the most delicious Refreshment from the lively Verdure of the Greens, and the wild Regularity by which the Scene shifts off and disparts itself into a beautiful Chequer.”
The ever interesting and disputed topics of dress and diet come in for an occasional discussion. The following is a characteristic specimen of the satirical vein of the British essayist school, though we have been unable to ascertain, by reference to the “Spectator,” “Tatler,” “Rambler,” “Guardian,” etc., the immediate source whence it was taken. It reads as follows:–“_History of Female Dress_. The sprightly Gauls set their little Wits to work again,” (on resuming the war under Queen Anne,) “and invented a wonderful Machine call’d a Hoop Petticoat. In this fine Scheme they had more Views than one; they had compar’d their own Climate and Constitution with that of the British, and finding both warmer, they naturally enough concluded that would only be pleasantly cool to them, which would perhaps give the British Ladies the Rheumatism, and that if they once got them off their Legs they should have them at Advantage; Besides, they had been inform’d, though falsely, that the British Ladies had not good Legs, and then at all Events this Scheme would expose them. With these pernicious Views they set themselves to work, and form’d a Rotund of near 7 Yards about, and sent the Pattern over by the Sussex Smugglers with an Intent that it should be seiz’d and expos’d to Publick View; which happen’d accordingly, and made its first Appearance at a Great Man’s House on that Coast, whose Lady claim’d it as her peculiar Property. In it she first struck at Court what the learned in Dress call a bold Stroke; and was thereupon constituted General of the British Ladies during the War. Upon the Whole this Invention did not answer. The Ladies suffer’d a little the first Winter, but after that were so thoroughly harden’d that they improv’d upon the Contrivers by adding near 2 Yards to its Extension, and the Duke of Marlboro’ having about the same Time beat the French, the Gallic Ladies dropt their Pretensions, and left the British Misstresses of the Field; the Tokens whereof are worn in Triumph to this Day, having outlasted the Colors in Westminster Hall, and almost that great General’s Glory.”
To a similar source must probably be referred an article in the same volume, entitled, “Of Diet in General, and of the bad Effects of Tea-Drinking.” The genuine conservative flavor of the extract is deliciously apparent, while its wholesale denunciations are drawn but little, if at all, stronger than those which may even yet be occasionally met with. “If we compare the Nature of Tea with the Nature of English Diet, no one can think it a proper Vegetable for us. It has no Parts fit to be assimilated to our Bodies; its essential Salt does not hold Moisture enough to be joined to the Body of an Animal; its Oyl is but very little, and that of the opiate kind, and therefore it is so far from being nutritive, that it irritates and frets the Nerves and Fibres, exciting the expulsive Faculty, so that the Body may be lessened and weakened, but it cannot increase and be strengthened by it. We see this by common Experience; the first Time persons drink it, if they are full grown, it generally gives them a Pain at the Stomach, Dejection of Spirits, Cold Sweats, Palpitation at the Heart, Trembling, Fearfulness; taking away the Sense of Fulness though presently after Meals, and causing a hypochondriac, gnawing Appetite. These symptoms are very little inferiour to what the most poisonous Vegetables we have in England would occasion when dried and used in the same manner.
“These ill Effects of Tea are not all the Mischiefs it occasions. Did it cause none of them, but were it entirely wholesome, as Balm or Mint, it were yet Mischief enough to have our whole Populace used to sip warm Water in a mincing, effeminate Manner, once or twice every Day; which hot Water must be supped out of a nice Tea-Cup, sweatened with Sugar, biting a Bit of nice thin Bread and Butter between Whiles. This mocks the strong Appetite, relaxes the Stomach, satiates it with trifling light Nick-Nacks which have little in them to support hard Labour. In this manner the Bold and Brave become dastardly, the Strong become weak, the Women become barren, or if they breed their Blood is made so poor that they have not Strength to suckle, and if they do the Child dies of the Gripes; In short, it gives an effeminate, weakly Turn to the People in general.”
Another humorous philosopher, who is benevolently anxious that his fellow-creatures may not be taken in by the rustic meteorologists, satirically furnishes a number of infallible tests to determine the approach of a severe season. He entitles his contribution to meteorological science,–“_Jonathan Weatherwise’s Prognostications._ As it is not likely that I have a long Time to act on the Stage of this Life, for what with Head-Aches, hard Labour, Storms and broken Spectacles I feel my Blood chilling, and Time, that greedy Tyrant, devouring my whole Constitution,” etc.,–an exordium which is certainly well adapted to excite our sympathy for Jonathan, even if it fail to inspire confidence in his “Prognostications,” and leave us a little in the dark as to the necessary connection between “broken spectacles” and the “chilling of the blood.” The criteria he gives us are truly Ingenious and surprising; but though the greater part would prove novel, we believe, to the present generation, we can here quote but one. He tells us, that, when a boy, he “swore revenge on the Grey Squirrel,” in consequence of a petted animal of this species having “bitten off the tip of his grandmother’s finger,”–a resolution which proved, as we shall see, unfortunate for the squirrels, but of immense advantage to science. To gratify this dire animosity, and in fulfilment of his vow, he persevered for nearly half a century in the perilous and exciting sport of squirrel-hunting, departing “every Year, for forty-nine successive Years, on the 22d of October, excepting when that Day fell on a Sunday,” in which case he started on the Monday following, to take vengeance for the outrage committed on his aged relative. Calm philosophy, however, enabled him, “in the very storm, tempest, and, as I may say, whirlwind of his passion,” to observe and record the following remarkable fact in Zoology: “When shot from a high Limb they would put their Tails in their Mouths as they were tumbling, and die in that Manner; I did not know what to make of it, ’till, in Process of Time, I found that when they did so a hard Winter always succeeded, and this may be depended on as infallible.”
The author of “An Essay on Puffing” (a topic which we should hardly have thought to have found under discussion at a period so much nearer the golden age than the present) remarks,–“Dubious and uncertain is the Source or Spring of Puffing in this Infant Country, it not being agreed upon whether Puffs were imported by the primitive Settlers of the Wilderness, (for the Puff is not enumerated in the aboriginal Catalogue,) or whether their Growth was spontaneous or accidental. However uncertain we are about the Introduction or first Cultivation of Puffs, it is easy to discover the Effects or Consequences of their Improvement in all Professions, Perswasions and Occupations.”
Under the head which has assumed, in modern journalism, an extent and importance second only to the Puff, to wit, the “Horrible Accident Department,” we find but a single item, but that one of a nature so unique and startling that it seems to deserve transcribing. “February 7 [1744]. We hear from Statten Island that a Man who had been married about 5 months, having a Design to get rid of his Wife, got some poisoned Herbs with which he advised her to stuff a Leg of Veal, and when it was done found an Excuse to be absent himself; but his Wife having eat of it found herself ill, and he coming Home soon after desired her to fry him some Sausages which she did, and having eat of them also found himself ill; upon which he asked his Wife what she fried them in, who answered, in the Sauce of the Veal; then, said he, I am a dead man: So they continued sick for some Days and then died, but he died the first.” We hardly know which most to admire, the graphic and terrible simplicity of this narrative of villany, or the ignorance which it discovers of the modern art of penny-a-lining, an expert practitioner of which would have spread the shocking occurrence over as many columns as this bungling report comprises sentences.
The poetical contents of our Magazine consist mainly, as we have said, of excerpts from the popular productions of English authors, as they were found in the magazines of the mother country or in their published works, the diluted stanzas of their imitators, satirical verses, epigrams, and translations from the Latin poets. There are, however, occasional strains from the native Muse, and here and there a waif from sources now, perhaps, lost or forgotten. Before “he threw his Virgil by to wander with his dearer bow,” Mr. Freneau’s Indian seems to have determined to leave on record a proof of his classical attainments, for he is doubtless the author of “A Latin Ode written by an American Indian, a Junior Sophister at Cambridge, anno 1678, on the death of the Reverend and Learned Mr. Thacher,”–a translation of which is given at page 166, prefaced thus:–“As the Original of the following Piece is very curious, the publishing this may perhaps help you to some better Translation. Attempted from the Latin of an American Indian.” The probability that any reader of the present paper would be disposed to help us to this “better Translation” seems too remote to warrant us in giving the Ode _in extenso_; nor do we think any would thank us for transcribing a cloudy effusion, a little farther on, entitled, “On the Notion of an abstract antecedent Fitness of Things.” The following estrays are perhaps worth the capture; they profess to date back to the reign of Queen Mary, and are styled, “Some Forms of Prayer used by the vulgar Papists.”
THE LITTLE CREED.
Little Creed can I need,
Kneel before our Lady’s Knee,
Candle light, Candle burn,
Our Lady pray’d to her dear Son
That we might all to Heaven come;
Little Creed, Amen!
THE WHITE PATER NOSTER.
White Pater Noster, St. Peter’s Brother, What hast thou in one hand? White-Book Leaves. What hast i’th’ to’ther? Heaven Gate Keys. Open Heaven Gates, and steike (shut) Hell Gates, And let every crysom Child creep to its own mother: White Pater Noster, Amen!
We do not think that the poets of the anti-shaving movement have as yet succeeded in producing anything worthy to be set off against a series of spirited stanzas under the heading of “The Razor, a Poem,” which we commend to the immediate and careful attention of the “Razor-strop Man.” The following are the concluding verses:–
“But, above all, thou grand Catholicon, Or by what useful Name so’er thou’rt call’d, Thou Sweet Composer of the tortur’d Mind! When all the Wheels of Life are heavy clogg’d With Cares or Pain, and nought but Horror dire Before us stalks with dreadful Majesty, Embittering all the Pleasures we enjoy; To thee, distressed, we call; thy gentle Touch Consigns to balmy Sleep our troubled Breasts.”
Evidently the production of a philosopher and an economist of time: for who else would have thought of shaving before going to bed, instead of at the matutinal toilet?
In less than five years from the date of its first number, (1743,) “The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle” had ceased to exist, and in the year 1757 appeared “The American Magazine and Monthly Chronicle for the British Colonies.” This was published by Mr. William Bradford in Philadelphia, under the auspices of “a Society of Gentlemen,” who declare themselves to be “_veritatis cultores, fraudis inimici_,” but who probably found themselves unequal to the difficulties of such a position, the Magazine having expired just one year after its birth. It was followed by “The New England Magazine,” (1758,) “The American Magazine,” (1769,) “The Royal American Magazine,” (1774,) “The Pennsylvania Magazine, or American Monthly Museum,” (1775,) “The Columbian Magazine,” (1786,) “The Worcester Magazine,” (the same year,) “The American Museum,” (1787,) “The Massachusetts Magazine,” (1789,) “The New-York Magazine,” (1790,) “The Rural Magazine & Vermont Repository,” (1796,) “The Missionary Magazine,” (same year,)–and others. The premature mortality characteristic of some of our own magazine-literature was, even at this early period, painfully apparent: none of the publications we have named survived their twelfth year, most of them lived less than half that period. A great diversity in the style and quality of their contents, as well as in external appearance, is, of course, observable, and it somewhat requires the eye of faith to see within their rusty and faded covers the germ of that gigantic literary plant which, in this year of Grace, 1860, counts in the city of Boston alone nearly one hundred and fifty periodical publications, (about one-third being legitimate magazines,) perhaps as many more in the other New England cities and towns, and a progeny of unknown, but very considerable extent, throughout the Union.
Apart even from their value to the historiographer and the antiquary, few relics of the past are more suggestive or interesting than the old magazine or newspaper. The houses, furniture, plate, clothing, and decorations of the generations which have preceded us possess their intrinsic value, and serve also to link by a thousand associations the mysterious past with the actual and living present; but the old periodical brings back to us, beside all this, the bodily presence, the words, the actions, and even the very thoughts of the people of a former age. It is, in mercantile phrase, a book of original entry, showing us the transactions of the time in the light in which they were regarded by the parties engaged in them, and reflecting the state of public sentiment on innumerable topics,–moral, religious, political, philosophic, military, and scientific. Its mistakes of fact or induction are honest and palpable ones, easily corrected by contemporaneous data or subsequent discoveries, and not often posted into the ledger of history without detection. The learned and patient labors of the savant or the scholar are not expected of the pamphleteer or the periodical writer of the last century, or of the present; he does but blaze the pathway of the pains-taking engineer who is to follow him, happy enough, if he succeed in satisfying immediate and daily demands, and in capturing the kind of game spoken of by Mr. Pope in that part of his manual where he instructs us to
“shoot folly as it flies,
And catch the manners living as they rise.”
Among us, however, the magazine-writer, as he existed in the last century, has left few, if any, representatives. He is fading silently away into a forgotten antiquity; his works are not on the publishers’ counters,–they linger only among the dust and cobwebs of old libraries, listlessly thumbed by the exploring reader or occasionally consulted by the curious antiquary. His place is occupied by those who, in the multiplication of books, the diffusion of information, and the general alteration of public taste, manners, and habits, though revolving in a similar orbit, move in quite another plane,–who have found in the pages of the periodical a theatre of special activity, a way to the entertainment and instruction of the many; and though much of what is thus produced may bear, as we have hinted, a character more or less ephemeral, we are sometimes presented also with the earlier blossoms and the fresher odors of a rich and perennial growth of genius, everywhere known and acknowledged in the realms of belles-lettres, philosophy, and science, crowded here as in a nursery, to be soon transplanted to other and more permanent abodes.
COME SI CHIAMA?
OR A LEAF FROM THE CENSUS OF 1850.
The first question asked of a “new boy” at school is, “What’s your name?” In this year of Grace the eighth decennial census is to be taken, asking that same question of all new comers into the great public school where towns and cities are educated. It will hardly be effected with that marvellous perfection of organization by which Great Britain was made to stand still for a moment and be statistically photographed. For with consummate skill was planned that all-embracing machinery, so that at one and the same moment all over the United Kingdom the recording pen was catching every man’s status and setting it down. The tramp on the dusty highway, the clerk in the counting-house, the sportsman upon the moor, the preacher in his pulpit, game-bird and barn-door fowl alike, all were simultaneously bagged. Unless, like the Irishman’s swallow, you could be in two places at once, down you went on the recording-tablets. Christopher Sly, from the ale-house door, if caught while the Merry Duke had possession of him, must be chronicled for a peer of the realm; Bully Bottom, if the period of his translations fell in with the census-taking, must be numbered among the cadgers’ “mokes”; nay, if Dogberry himself had encountered the officials at the moment of his pathetic lamentation, he were irrevocably written down “an ass.”
We can hardly hope for such celerity and sure handling upon this side of the water. Nor is this the subject we have just now in view. The approaching advent of the census-taker has led us to look back at the labor of his predecessor, and the careless turning over of its pages has set us to musing upon NAMES.
William Shakspeare asks, “What’s in a name?” England’s other great poetical William has devoted a series of his versifyings to the naming of places. Which has the right of it, let us not undertake to pronounce without consideration. England herself has long ago determined the question. As Mr. Emerson says of English names,–“They are an atmosphere of legendary melody spread over the land; older than all epics and histories which clothe a nation, this undershirt sits close to the body.” Dean Trench, who handles words as a numismatist his coins, has said substantially the same thing. And it is true not of England only; for the various lands of Europe are written over like palimpsests with the story of successive conquests and dominations chronicled in their local names. You stop and ask why a place is so called,–sure to be rewarded by a legend lurking beneath the title. Like the old crests of heraldry, with their “canting” mottoes beneath, they are history in little, a war or a revolution distilled into the powerful attar of a single phrase. The Rhineland towers of Falkenstein and Stolzenfels are the local counterparts of the Scotch borderers’ “Thou shalt want ere I want,” for ominous meaning.
The volume we have just laid down painfully reminds us that the poet and the historian have no such heritage in this land. We have done our best to crowd out all the beautiful significant names we found here, and to replace them by meaningless appellations. For the name of a thing is that which really has in it something of that to which it belongs, which describes and classifies it, and is its spoken representative; while the appellation is only a title conferred by act of Parliament or her Majesty’s good pleasure: it cannot make a parvenu into a peer.
But we are not writing for the mere interest of the poet and the novelist. Fit names are not given, but grow; and we believe there is not a spot in the land, possessing any attractiveness, but has its name ready fitted to it, waiting unsyllabled in the air above it for the right sponsor to speak it into life. We plead for public convenience simply. We are thinking not of the ears of taste, but of the brain of business. We do not wonder at the monstrous accumulations of the Dead-Letter Office, when we see the actual poverty which our system of naming places has brought about. Pardon us a few statistics, and, as you read them, remember, dear reader, that this is the story of ten years ago, and that the enormous growths of the last decade have probably increased the evil prodigiously.
The volume in question gives a list of a trifle under ten thousand places,–to be accurate, of nine thousand eight hundred and twenty odd. For these nine thousand cities, towns, and villages have been provided but _three_ thousand eight hundred and twenty names. All the rest have been baptized according to the results of a promiscuous scramble. Some, indeed, make a faint show of variety, by additions of such adjectives as New, North, South, East, West, or Middle. If we reduce the list of original names by striking out these and all the compounds of “ville,” “town,” and the like, we get about three thousand really distinctive names for American towns. Three hundred and thirty odd we found here when we came,–being Indian or _Native_ American. Three hundred and thirty more we imported from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. A dozen were added to them from the pure well of Welsh undefiled, and mark the districts settled by Cambro-Britons. Out of our Bibles we got thirty-three Hebrew appellations, nearly all ludicrously inappropriate; and these we have been very fond of repeating. In California, New Mexico, Texas, Florida, and the Louisiana purchase, we bought our names along with the land. Fine old French and Spanish ones they are; some thirty of them names of Saints, all well-sounding and pleasant to the ear. And there is a value in these names not at first perceptible. Most of them serve to mark the day of the year upon which the town was founded. They are commemorative dates, which one need only look at the calendar to verify. As an instance of this, there is the forgotten title of Lake George, Lake St. Sacrament, which, in spite of Dr. Cleveland Coxe’s very graceful ballad, we must hold to have been conferred because the lake was discovered on Corpus-Christi Day. In the Mississippi Valley, the great chain of French military occupation can still be faintly traced, like the half-obliterated lines of a redoubt which the plough and the country road have passed over.
There remain about two thousand names, which may fairly be called of American manufacture. We exclude, of course, those which were transferred from England, since they were probably brought directly. They have a certain fitness, as affectionate memorials of the Old Country lingering in the hearts of the exiles. Thus, though St. Botolph was of the fenny shire of Lincoln, and the new comers to the Massachusetts Bay named their little peninsula Suffolk, the county of the “South-folk,” we do not quarrel with them for calling their future city “Bo’s or Botolph’s town,” out of hearts which did not wholly forget their birthplace with its grand old church, whose noble tower still looks for miles away over the broad levels toward the German Ocean. Nor do we think Plymouth to be utterly meaningless, though it is not at the mouth of the Ply, or any other river such as wanders through the Devon Moorlands to the British Channel.
“Et parvam Trojam, simulataque magnis Pergama, et arentem Xanthi cognomine rivum Agnosco: Seaeaeque amplector limina portae.”
Throughout New England, and in all the original colonies, we find this to be the case. But, as Americans, we must reject both what our fathers brought and what they found. Two thousand specimens of the American talent for nomenclature, then, we can exhibit. Walk up, gentlemen! Here you have the top-crest of the great wave of civilization. Hero is a people, emancipated from Old-World trammels, setting the world a lesson. What is the result? With the grand divisions of our land we have not had much to do. Of the States, seventeen were baptized by their Indian appellations; four were named by French and Spanish discoverers; six were called after European sovereigns; three, which bear the prefix of New, have the names of English counties;–there remains Delaware, the title of an English nobleman, leaving us Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Rhode Island, three precious bits of modern classicality. Let us now come to the counties. Ten years ago there were some fifteen hundred and fifty-five of these. One hundred and seventy-three bear Indian names, and there are one or two uncertain. For these fifteen hundred and fifty-five counties there are eight hundred and eighty-eight names, about one to every two. Seven hundred are, then, of Anglo-Saxon bestowing? No. Another hundred are of Spanish and French origin. Six hundred county-names remain; fifty of which, neat as imported, are the names of English places, and fifty more are names bestowed in compliment to English peers. Five hundred are the American residuum.
We beg pardon for these dry statistical details, over which we have spent some little time and care; but they furnish a base of operations. Yet something more remains to be added. We have, it is true, about two thousand names of places and five hundred of counties purely American, or at least due to American taste. In most instances the county-names are repeated in some of the towns within their borders. Therefore we fall back upon our original statement, that two thousand names are the net product of Yankee ingenuity. It is hardly necessary to assure the most careless reader that the vast majority of these are names of persons. And it needs no wizard to conjecture that these are bestowed in very unequal proportions. Here the true trouble of the Postmaster-General and his staff begins.
The most frequent names are, of course, those of the Presidents. The “Father of his Country” has the honor of being god-father to no small portion of it. For there are called after him _one_ territory, _twenty-six_ counties, and _one hundred and thirty-eight_ towns and villages. Adams, the next, has but _six_ counties and _twenty-six_ towns; but his son is specially honored by a village named J.Q. Adams. Jefferson has _seventeen_ counties and _seventy-four_ towns. Madison has _fifteen_ counties and _forty-seven_ towns. Monroe has _sixteen_ counties and _fifty-seven_ towns, showing that the “era of good feeling” was extending in his day. The second Adams has one town to himself; but the son of his father could expect no more. Jackson has _fifteen_ counties and _one hundred and twenty-three_ towns, beside _six_ “boroughs” and “villes,”–showing what it was to have won the Battle of New Orleans. Van Euren gets _four_ counties and _twenty-eight_ towns. Harrison _seven_ counties and _fifty-seven_ towns, as becomes a log-cabin and hard-cider President. Tyler has but _three_ counties, and not a single town, village, or hamlet even. Polk has _five_ counties and _thirteen towns_. Taylor, _three_ counties and _twelve_ towns. The remaining Presidents being yet in life and eligible to a second term, it would be invidious to make further disclosures till after the conventions. Among unsuccessful candidates there is a vast difference in popularity. Clay has _thirty-two_ towns, and Webster only _four_. Cass has _fourteen_, and Calhoun only _one_. Of Revolutionary heroes, Wayne and Warren are the favorites, having respectively _thirteen_ and _fourteen_ counties and _fifty-three_ and _twenty-eight_ towns. But “Principles, not Men,” has been at times the American watchword; therefore there are _ten_ counties and _one hundred and three_ towns named “Union.”
We have given the reader a dose, we fear, of statistics; but imagine yourself, dear, patient friend, what you may yet be, Postmaster-General of these United States, with the responsibility of providing for all these bewildering post-offices. And we pray you to heed the absolute poverty of invention which compelled forty-nine towns to call themselves “Centre.” Forty-nine Centres! There are towns named after the points of compass simply,–not only the cardinal points, but the others,–so that the census-taker may, if he likes, “box the compass,” in addition to his other duties.
But worse than the too common names (anything but proper ones) are the eccentric. The colors are well represented; for, beside Oil and Paint for materials, there are Brown, Black, Blue, Green, White, Cherry, Gray, Hazel, Plum, Rose, and Vermilion. The animals come in for their share; for we find Alligator, Bald-Eagle, Beaver, Buck, Buffalo, Eagle, Eel, Elk, Fawn, East-Deer and West-Deer, Bird, Fox, (in Elk County,) Pigeon, Plover, Raccoon, Seal, Swan, Turbot, Wild-Cat, and Wolf. Then again, the christening seems to have been preceded by the shaking in a hat of a handful of vowels and consonants, the horrible results of which _sortes_ appear as Alna, Cessna, Chazy, Clamo, Novi, (we suspect the last two to be Latin verbs, out of place, and doing duty as substantives,) Cumru, Freco, Fristo, Josco, Hamtramck, Medybemps, Haw, Kan, Paw-Paw, Pee-Pee, Kinzua, Bono, Busti, Lagro, Letart, Lodomillo, Moluncus, Mullica, Lomira, Neave, Oley, Orland, and the felicitous ringing of changes which occurs in Luray, Leroy, and Leray, to say nothing of Ballum, Bango, Helts, and Hellam. And in other unhappy places, the spirit of whim seems to have seized upon the inhabitants. Who would wish to write themselves citizens of Murder-Kill-Hundred, or Cain, or of the town of Lack, which places must be on the high road to Fugit and Constable? There are several anti-Maine-law places, such as Tom and Jerry, Whiskeyrun, Brandywine, Jolly, Lemon, Pipe, and Pitcher, in which Father Matthew himself could hardly reside unimpeached in repute. They read like the names in the old-fashioned “Temperance Tales,” all allegory and alcohol, which flourished in our boyhood.
Then, by way of counterpart to these, there are sixty-four places known as Liberty, and thirteen as Freedom, but only one as Moral,–passing by which, we suppose we shall come to Climax, and, thence descending, arrive, as the whirligig of time appointeth, at Smackover, unless we pause in Economy, or Equality, or Candor, or Fairplay.
If we were land-hunters, we might ponder long over the town of Gratis, unless we thought Bonus promised more. There is Extra, and, if tautologically fond of grandeur, _Metropolis City_,–a mighty Babel of (in 1850) _four hundred and twenty-seven_ inhabitants,–and Bigger, which has _seven hundred_. A brisk man would hardly choose Nodaway for his home, nor a haymaker the town of Rain. And of all practical impertinences, what could in this land of novelty equal the calling of one’s abiding-place “New”? We fully expect that 1860 will reveal a comparative and superlative, and perhaps even a super-superlative, (“Newest-of-all,”) upon its columns.
But what is the sense of such titles as Buckskin, Bullskin, (is it Byrsa, by way of proving Solomon’s adage,–“There is nothing new under the sun”?) Chest, and Posey? There is one unfortunate place (do they take the New York “Herald” and “Ledger” there?) which has “gone and got itself christened” Mary Ann, and another (where “Childe Harold” is doubtless in favor) is called Ada. There is a Crockery, a Carryall, and a Turkey-Foot,–which last, like the broomstick in Goethe’s ballad, is chopped in two, only to reappear as a double nuisance, as Upper and Lower Turkey-Foot.
Then what paucity of ideas is revealed in the fact that a number of names are simply common nouns, or, worse yet, spinster adjectives, “singly blest”! Such are Hill, Mountain, Lake, Glade, Rock, Glen, Bay, Shade, Valley, Village, District, Falls, which might profitably be joined in holy matrimony with the following,–Grand, Noble, Plain, Pleasant, Rich, Muddy, Barren, Fine, and Flat.
As for one or two other unfortunates, like Bloom and Lumber, they can only be sent to State’s Prison for life, with Bean-Blossom and Scrub-Grass. We need hardly mention that to the religious public, including special attention to “clergymen and their families,” Calvin, Wesley, Whitefield, Tate, Brady, and Watts offer peculiar attractions.
But there is a class of names which does gladden us, partly from their oddity, and partly from a feeling at first sight that they are names really suggestive of something which has happened,–and this is apt to turn out the fact. Thus, Painted-Post, in New York, and Baton-Rouge, in Louisiana, are honest, though quaint appellatives; Standing-Stone is another; High-Spire, a fourth. Others of the same class provoke our curiosity. Thus, Grand-View-and-Embarras seems to have a history. So do Warrior’s-Mark and Broken-Straw. There is one queer name, Pen-Yan, which is said to denote the component parts of its population, _Pen_nsylvanians and _Yan_kees; and we have hopes that Proviso is not meaningless. Also we would give our best pen to know the true origin of Loyal-Sock, and of Marine-Town in the inland State of Illinois. This last is like a “shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia.” There is, too, a memorial of the Greek Revolution which tells its own story, –Scio-and-Webster! We could hardly wish the awkward partnership dissolved. But who will unravel the mysteries of New-Design and New-Faul? and can any one tell us whether the fine Norman name of Sanilac is really the euphonious substitute for Bloody-Pond? If there be in America that excellent institution, “Notes and Queries,” here is matter for their meddling.
But it is time to shut the book. For we are weary of picking holes in our own _poncho_, and inclined to muse a little upon the science of naming places. After what we have said about names growing,–_Nomen nascitur, non fil,_–we cannot expect that the evil can be remedied by Congress or Convention. Yet the Postal Department has fair cause of complaint. Thus much might be required, that all the supernumerary spots answering to the same hail should be compelled to change their titles. Government exercises a tender supervision of the nomenclature of our navy. Our ships of war are not permitted to disgrace the flag by uncouth titles. Enterprising merchants have offered prizes for good mouth-filling designations for their crack clippers, knowing that freight and fortune often wait upon taking titles. Was the Flying Cloud ever beaten? And in a land where all things change so lightly, why not shake off the loosely sticking names and put on better? For at present, the main end, that of conferring a _nomen_ or a name, something by which the spot shall be known, has almost passed out of sight. If John Smith, of the town of Smith, in Smith County, die, or commit forgery, or be run for Congress, or write a book, his address might as well be “Outis, Esq., Town of Anywhere, County of Everywhere.” It concerns the “Atlantic Monthly” not a little. For we desire, among its rapidly multiplying subscribers, that our particular friend and kind critic, commorant in Washington, should duly receive and enjoy this present paper, undefrauded by any resident of the other one hundred and thirty of the name. If we wish to mail a copy of “The Impending Crisis” to Franklin, Vermont, we surely do not expect that it will perish by _auto da fe_ in Franklin, Louisiana.
But the thought comes upon us, that herein is revealed a curious defect of the American mind. It lacks, we contend, the fine perceptive power which belongs to the poet. It can imitate, but cannot make. It does not seize hold upon the distinctive fact of what it looks at, and appropriate that. Our countrymen once could do it. The stern Puritan of New England looked upon the grassy meadows beside the Connecticut, and found them all bubbling with fountains, and called his settlement “Springfield.” But the American has lost the elementary uses of his mother tongue. He is perpetually inventing new abstract terms, generalizing with boldness and power and utter contempt of usage. But the rich idiomatic sources of his speech lie too deep for him. They are the glory and the joy of our motherland. You may take up “Bradshaw” and amuse yourself on the wettest day at the dullest inn, nay, even amid the horrors of the railway station, with deciphering the hidden meanings of its lists of names, and form for yourself the gliding panorama of its changing scenery and historic renown. But blank, indeed, is the American transit through Rome, Marcellus, Carthage, Athens, Palmyra, and Geneva; and blessed the relief when the Indian tongue comes musically in to “heal the blows of sound”! And whatever the expectations of the “Great American Poem,” the Transatlantic “Divina Commedia” or “Iliad,” which the public may entertain, we feel certain they will not be fulfilled in our day. Take Tennyson’s “Idyls of the King,” and see what beautiful beadrolls of names he can string together from the rough Cornish and Devon coasts. Only out of a poetic-hearted people are poets born. The peasant writes ballads, though scholars and antiquaries collect them. The Hebrew lyric fire blazed in myriad beacons from every landmark. The soil of Palestine is trodden, as it were, with the footsteps of God, so eloquent are its mountains and hamlets with these records of a nation’s faith.
But into how much of the love of home do its familiar names enter! And we appeal to the common sense of everybody, whether those we have quoted above are not enough to make a man ashamed of his birthplace. They are the ear-mark of a roving, careless, selfish population, which thinks only of mill-privileges, and never of pleasant meadows,–which has built the ugliest dwellings and the biggest hotels of any nation, save the Calmucks, over whom reigns the Czar. Upon the American soil seem destined to meet and fuse the two great elements of European civilization,–the Latin and the Saxon,–and of these two is our nation blent. But just at present it exhibits the love of glare and finery of the one, without its true and tender taste,–and the sturdy, practical utilitarianism of the other, without its simple-hearted, home-loving poetry. The boy is a great boy,–awkward, ungainly, and in the way; but he has eyes, tongue, feet, and hands to some (future) purpose. And that in good taste, good sense, refinement, and hopeful culture, our big boy has been growing, we hope will be apparent, even in the matter of “calling names,” from the pages of the next census.
We have but a word more, in the way of finale. We have not been romancing. Everything we have set down here we have truly looked up there, in the volume furnished by Mr. De Bow. He, not we, must be held answerable for any and all scarce credible names which are found wanting in a local habitation. We have counted duly and truly the fine-printed pages, from which task we pray that the kind Fates may keep the reader.
Yet, if he doubt, and care to explore the original mine whence our specimen petrifactions have been dug, he will find that we have by no means exhausted the supply; and that there are many most curious and suggestive facts, not contained in the statistics or intended by the compiler, which are embraced in the CENSUS REPORTS.
BARDIC SYMBOLS.
I.
Elemental drifts!
Oh, I wish I could impress others as you and the waves have just been impressing me!
II.
As I ebbed with an ebb of the ocean of life, As I wended the shores I know,
As I walked where the sea-ripples wash you, Paumanok, Where they rustle up, hoarse and sibilant, Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways, I, musing, late in the autumn day, gazing off southward, Alone, held by the eternal self of me that threatens to get the better of me and stifle me,
Was seized by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot, In the ruin, the sediment, that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.
III.
Fascinated, my eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows,
Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left by the tide.
IV.