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Title: Graham's Magazine, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1841
Author: Various
Language: English
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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XVIII. January, 1841. No. 1.
Contents
Fiction, Literature and Articles
The Lost Evening
Yoo-Ti-Hu
Leaves from a Lawyer’s Port-Folio
My Progenitors
The Blind Girl
The Reefer of ’76
The Syrian Letters
Clara Fletcher
Sports and Pastimes
Angling
Review of New Books
Poetry, Music and Fashion
The Young Rambler
The Waters of Lethe
Language of the Wild Flowers
A Soldier’s the Lad for Me
To the Pine on the Mountain
Sabbath Bells.—Impromptu
A Sea Scene
Thine—Only Thine
The Indian Maid
The Latest Fashions, January 1841
Transcriber’s Notes can be found at the end of this eBook.
* * * * *
GRAHAM’S
LADY’S AND GENTLEMAN’S
MAGAZINE.
(THE CASKET AND GENTLEMAN’S UNITED.)
EMBRACING
EVERY DEPARTMENT OF LITERATURE:
EMBELLISHED WITH
ENGRAVINGS, FASHIONS, AND MUSIC,
ARRANGED FOR THE
PIANO-FORTE, HARP, AND GUITAR.
VOLUME XVIII.
PHILADELPHIA:
GEORGE R. GRAHAM.
1841.
* * * * *
INDEX
TO THE
EIGHTEENTH VOLUME.
FROM JANUARY, TO JUNE, 1841, INCLUSIVE.
Alchymist, the, by Mrs. Lambert, 105
Blind Girl, the, by Mrs. C. Durang, 26
Blind Girl of Pompeii, the, (_illustrated_), 49
Clara Fletcher, 40
Confessions of a Miser, the, by J. Ross Browne, 83, 102, 189
Clothing of the Ancients, the, by Willam Duane, Jr. 269
Destroyer’s Doom, the, 115
Defaulter, the, by J. T. Maull, 164
Descent into the Maelström, a, by Edgar A. Poe, 235
Empress, the, 122
Father’s Blessing, the, by Mrs. S. A. Whelpley, 132
Grandmother’s Tankard, my, by Jesse E. Dow, 59
Grandfather’s Story, my, by Lydia Jane Pierson, 217
Haunted Castle, the, a Legend of the Rhine, 214
Island of the Fay, the, by Edgar A. Poe, 253
(_illustrated_,)
Lost Evening, the, by Jesse E. Dow, 2
Leaves from a Lawyer’s Port-Folio, 13, 224
Lady Isabel, the, (_illustrated_,) 97, 145
Lost Heir, the, by H. J. Vernon, 261
Life Guardsman, the, by Jesse E. Dow, 275
My Progenitors, by S. W. Whelpley, A. M. 21
Maiden’s Adventure, the, 109
Major’s Wedding, the, by Jeremy Short, Esq. 129
Murders in the Rue Morgue, the, by Edgar A. Poe, 166
May-Day. A Rhapsody, by Jeremy Short, Esq. 242
Our Bill, by Mrs. Lambert, 150
Outlaw Lover, the, by J. H. Dana, 189
Parsonage Gathering, the, by Mrs. E. C. Stedman, 221
Poetry: the Uncertainty of its Appreciation, by Joseph 288
Evans Snodgrass,
Reefer of ’76, the, by the Author of “Cruizing in the 30, 51, 125,
Last War,” 180, 210, 256
Review of New Books, 47, 92, 142,
197, 248, 294
Rescued Knight, the, 64
Syrian Letters, the, 36, 78, 265
Sports and Pastimes, 44, 90, 140,
196, 246, 292
Silver Digger, the, by M. Topham Evans, 68
Saccharineous Philosophy, the, 81
Sketch from Life, a, by J. Tomlin, 136
Self-Devotion, by Mrs. E. C. Embury, 159
Thunder Storm, the, by J. H. Dana, 285
Unequally Yoked, by Rev. J. Kennaday, 159
Ugolino. A Tale of Florence, by M. Topham Evans, 279
Worth and Wealth: or the Choice of a Wife, by Ellen 206
Ashton,
Yoo-ti-hu, by J. Ross Browne, 10
POETRY.
A Soldier’s the Lad for me, by A. McMakin, 25
April Day, an, by Alex. A. Irvine, 179
Æolian Harp, to the, 179
Alethe, by J. S. Freligh, 216
Brilliant Nor-West, the, by Dr. J. K. Mitchell, 149
“Blue-Eyed Lassie,” to the, by the late J. G. Brooks, 223
Callirhöe, by H. Perceval, 100
Comparisons, by C. West Thompson, 165
Chimes of Antwerp, the, by J. Hickman, 192
Dream of the Delaware, the, 56
Departed, the, 128
Dusty White Rose, the, by Mrs. Volney E. Howard, 209
Fairy’s Home, the, 87
I am your Prisoner, by Thos. Dunn English, M. D. 135
Invitation, the, by E. G. Mallery, 137
I Cling to Thee, by T. G. Spear, 234
Joys of Former Years have Fled, the, by S. A. Raybold, 289
June, by A. A. Irvine, 287
Language of Wild Flowers, by Thos. Dunn English, M. D. 20
Little Children, by Mrs. C. H. W. Esling, 67
Lines, by E. Clementine Stedman, 114
Lake George, 124
Life, by Martin Thayer, Jr. 243
Lay of the Affections, the, by Mrs. M. S. B. Dana, 268
Lord Byron, to, by R. M. Walsh, 273
Mother’s Pride, the, by Mrs. C. H. W. Esling, 205
(_illustrated_),
Not Lost, but Gone before, by Chas. West Thompson, 87
Napoleon, by J. E. Dow, 113
Old Memories, by Mrs. C. H. W. Esling, 188
Old Rock, to an, by G. G. Foster, 223
Pine on the Mountain, to the, by Lydia Jane Pierson, 29
Picture, a, by Mrs. M. S. B. Dana, 158
Sabbath Bells, Impromptu, by Willis G. Clark, 35
Sea Scene, a, by Robert Morris, 35
Skating, by George Lunt, 77
Soul’s Destiny, the, by Mrs. M. S. B. Dana, 80
Slighted Woman, a, by the Author of “Howard Pinckney,” 156
Soliloquy of an Octogenarian, by Pliney Earle, M. D. 241
Sighs for the Unattainable, by Charles West Thompson, 264
Sonnet written in April, by Mrs. E. C. Stedman, 278
Thine—Only Thine, by Mrs. C. H. W. Esling, 39
Time’s Changes, by John W. Forney, 260
Voice of the Spring Time, by Martin Thayer, Jr. 209
Voice of the Wind, the, by Emma, 255
Waters of Lethe, the, by N. C. Brooks, A. M. 9
Winter, by J. W. Forney, 82
Winter Scene, a, by Mrs. E. C. Stedman, 163
Winter Scene, a, by L. J. Pierson, 192
Young Rambler, the, by Thomas J. Spear, 1
STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
The Playmates.
Fashions for January (three figures) colored.
The Blind Girl of Pompeii.
Fashions for February (four figures) colored.
Why don’t he Come?
Fashions for March (three figures) colored.
He Comes.
Fashions for April (four figures) colored.
The Mother’s Pride.
Fashions for May. Ladies of Queen Victoria’s
Court—correct likenesses—(seven figures) colored.
The Island of the Fay.
Fashions for June, (three figures) colored.
MUSIC.
The Indian Maid, by S. Nelson, 42
Not for Me! Not for Me! by M. W. Balfe, 88
You never knew Annette, by C. M. Sola, 138
Oh! Gentle Love, by T. Cooke, 193
The Sweet Birds are Singing, by J. Moschelles, 244
Let Me Rest in the Land of my Birth, by J. Harroway, 290
* * * * *
[Illustration: Painted by J. Lucas. Engraved by J. Sartain.
The Playmates.
Engraved for Graham’s Magazine]
* * * * *
GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.
Vol. XVIII. JANUARY, 1841. No. 1.
* * * * *
THE YOUNG RAMBLER.
BY THOMAS G. SPEAR
O’er a landscape array’d in the verdure of June,
While the sky was serene, and the birds were in tune,
From his vine-cover’d home, with his dog and his toy,
Went the glad-hearted youth in the hey-day of joy.
He saunter’d away in his quest of delight,
As heedless of rest as a bird in its flight,
Allur’d by the flowers, and sooth’d by the gale,
O’er the green-sloping hill and the fair sunny vale.
With a fondness to roam, and a wish to be free,
He bounded in triumph, or whistled in glee,
Now crushing a blossom, or plucking a bough,
Or climbing a tree by the cliff’s rugged brow.
With his dog at his side, o’er the heather he flew,
Where the clover-bed bloom’d, or the strawberry grew,
And trampled the grass that encumber’d the plain,
While flutter’d the flock from the clustering grain.
He knew the lone spots of the forest and glen,
The rook of the crow, and the nest of the wren,
And hied as a forager there for his prey,
But left the wood-tenants unharm’d in their play.
By hedge-row, and brushwood, and briar, and brake,
To the pebble-shor’d brook, and the wild-wooded lake,
He rov’d, while the pathway was leafy and green,
Where bow’d the old oaks o’er the silvery scene.
And there by the brookside, when tir’d of play,
He gazed on the charms of the slow-dying day,
And thought, as it gave to some lovelier land,
The blaze of that light which the zenith had spann’d,
That a ray there must be to illumine the heart—
A guide and a goal for man’s innermost part—
A Glory unknown, to be follow’d and bless’d,
That again would recall what it gave to its breast.
When Love can a lustre so beautiful shed,
It were sad if the soul could be lost or misled,
Or its flight to its source be less cheerful and bright,
Than the blaze of that sun ’neath the curtains of night.
With the lovely illusions of day’s mellow’d scene,
All around him was radiant, and vocal, and green,
But now as he gaz’d on the sky and the air,
No melody rose, and no splendour was there.
“Oh! keep me,” he said, “in the path where I stray,
Illum’d by the warmth of some soul-cheering ray—
That my glance may be clear thro’ the cloud and the storm,
When the night of the grave has o’ershadow’d my form.”
He look’d as a child, but he felt as a man,
And in Wisdom concluded what Folly began;
Then in silence his steps he was fain to resume,
Ere the shadowy fall of the thick-coming gloom.
Soon up from the shore, and away from the stream,
He wended as one that was wak’d from a dream,
For the voice of a thought had been heard in his heart,
And the lingering whisper was slow to depart.
His vine-cover’d home in the twilight was nigh,
And the whipporwill sending its plaint to the sky,
And the bark of his dog, and the voice at the door,
He welcom’d with joy when his ramble was o’er.
Though dear to his vision that forest-bound scene,
With its dwelling of peace on a carpet of green,
The wild spot his memory loves to restore,
Is the path to that stream, and the oak by its shore.
* * * * *
THE LOST EVENING.
BY JESSE E. DOW.
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the
flood, leads on to fortune.”
“Maurice stay and go with me to the ball at Mrs. Wilson’s this evening,”
said a fairy formed creature with eyes that sparkled with anticipated
delight, as she rested her hand upon a young naval officer’s arm and
gazed upon his manly features.
“Mary, dearest Mary,” replied the young man in a hesitating manner. “The
stage will leave here at eleven to-night, and if I miss it I shall lose
my only chance of reaching my Frigate. She is under sailing orders—and
will be off in the twinkling of a marline spike, and there’s glory to be
won and——”
“A seaman’s sepulchre—” said the lovely girl, as the tears started into
her eyes and glittered like tiny pearls upon her long dark eye-lashes.
“But Maurice, you can go at eleven and accompany me to the ball beside.
The last evening you spend at Belleview should be spent with your
friends.”
The young man hesitated no longer. “Mary,” said he, “you have conquered,
I will accompany you to Mrs. Wilson’s and leave at eleven—I shall then
bear with me your last impression; and when the tempest howls and the
billows toss their snowy spray around me, when the never wearied Petril
sings in the hollows of ocean astern, and the thunder awakes the echo of
the deep—then while the good ship scuds along her lightning way, will I
recall this evening of light and beauty, and with my dread-nought
wrapped about me, keep my midnight watch, happier far, than the lazy
commodore who snores in a velvet night-cap in his luxurious cabin.”
“Well, Maurice, you have finished at last,” said the laughing girl
leaning upon his arm, “I never expected to hear the end of your rhapsody
when you commenced—but come let us go in for I have much to do and the
evening approaches.” The young man returned her animated glance with a
gaze of deep devotion and following her, entered the house from the
garden Verandah. There was no one in the drawing-room when Maurice
Fitzgerald and Mary Howard entered.
“Maurice,” said the young maiden as she pointed out upon the ocean, and
then turned to a table of magazines and annuals, “Nature and art are
placed before you, and I shall leave you to be amused by them until my
father’s return.” Thus saying, the light hearted girl bounded away to
dress for the coming rout. Fitzgerald answered with a smile and then
turned to gaze upon the prospect that spread out before his uncle’s
mansion. The broad Atlantic was seen for several miles rolling in the
crimson light of the setting sun, and the hollow roar of its distant
breakers burst upon his ear. The sea-birds in forked trains were seen
winging their garrulous flight toward the land, and the successful
fishermen were casting their scaly spoil upon the beach. It was a quiet
evening, notwithstanding the wind in cat’s paws ruffled the surface of
the deep, and wailed sadly amid the branches of the elm trees that lined
the avenue in front of the mansion.
As Fitzgerald gazed upon the scene he thought of his lovely cousin and
then of the glorious profession that he had chosen. The eye of the
mariner loves the ocean. His ear delights in its hollow murmurs, its
lashing surges, its misty shadows, and its constant motion. He feels
that the land is not for him and that his home is on the deep, deep sea.
He sickens in the forest. He grows weary upon the mountain side, the
fairest valley smiles in vain for him, and the babbling river but
carries him away to that mightier deep whose ebb and flood surrounds the
world. The very air—the scent of the sea is far more pleasant to him
than the spicy breezes that sigh o’er India’s isles, and the stout ship
with its tar and rope-yarn, its salt junk, called by sea-men mahogany,
and its duff puddings that defy the tooth of time, is far more agreeable
to him than the altar’d palace of an eastern prince with tables crushing
beneath the weight of costly viands and richest wines. No one can
appreciate the beauty and majesty of the heavens but him who has been
shut out from every other prospect for days and weeks together. How
beautiful it is to lean upon the taffrail in a moonlight night upon an
eastern sea while the sails of the gallant ship from sky to water are
gently filled by the dying Levanter, and watch the broad bright moon as
she travels up the high way of heaven and sheds a brighter lustre upon
the stars. Then the eye penetrates, aye even into the deep blue space
beyond her and as when gazing upon the calm bosom of the middle ocean
sees naught but mysterious shadowings—a waving curtain of eternal blue.
The topsails of a ship now flashed upon the edge of the horizon, the
quick eye of Fitzgerald soon discovered her to be a vessel of war. He
watched her with intense interest, and as she approached the land the
sun went down to his rest in the deep.
As the last ray of the golden orb flashed upon the vessel, Fitzgerald
saw plainly that the Cross of Saint George floated at her ensign peak
and that she was an enemy of his country. The stranger having drawn in
sufficiently near to the land, now tacked, and in the uncertain haze of
evening, faded away.
“I will be the first to communicate the glad tidings to my commander,”
said the young officer, proudly; “and ere many days the haughty Briton
shall humble himself to the stars of the republic.”
“Well said, my gallant boy,” cried Col. Howard, as he hobbled up to his
future son-in-law, who started like one awakened from a glorious dream.
“Uncle,” said Fitzgerald with a smile, “I did not hear you enter.”
“No matter, boy,” said the old soldier, as he screwed his features into
the proper expression for a severe twinge of the gout, and stood silent
for a moment, and then as the pain _evaporated_, continued, “I heard you
and am pleased with your thoughts; you must leave this evening.”
“Certainly,” said Fitzgerald, smiling.
The tea urn was now brought in, and the family of Colonel Howard
assembled around the well spread table. A short blessing interrupted by
a few short pishes and pshaws! on account of the severe pains that
constantly seized the old gentleman’s leg, was now said by him; and then
the evening meal was quietly and systematically disposed of. Sage
surmises as to the course of the belligerent stranger, and sager
speculations as to the result of her meeting with an American cruizer,
now occupied the thoughts and conversational powers of the little party;
at length Colonel Howard began to grow drowsy. His arm chair was now
wheeled to the right about—he gave his blessing to his nephew with a
good will, grasped his hand with the frankness of a soldier, and bade
him adieu; then bringing his crutch to the third position of the manual,
he went to sleep. Soon the young couple heard the old man muttering in
his visions of the revolution, “on to Princeton—ha, there goes Knox, I
know his fire—onward my boys—huzza, they fly—the day is ours,” and
then a twinge of the gout played the deuce with his dream, and when it
past away he slumbered as sweetly as a child upon its mother’s breast.
Fitzgerald and Mary now departed for Mrs. Wilson’s, the former having
taken his baggage in the carriage, so as to be ready to step from the
ball room to the stage-coach.
Mrs. Wilson was one of those comets of fashion who regularly appear with
every cycle of time, and who after setting the cities in a blaze, retire
to the inland towns to renew their fires, and shine forth as planets of
the first magnitude amid inferior stars; believing it to be better to be
the head of a village than the tail of a city. It was currently reported
by scandalising spinsters that she had been a milliner in England, and
having a handsome person was hired by the manager of a country theatre,
there to act the _goddess_ in the play of Cherry and Fair Star. Here she
entrapped the affections of a young nobleman, who by a mock marriage
became her reputed husband. The honey moon soon passed away, and with
the realities of wedded life, came the astounding _denouement_ that the
nobleman’s coachman had officiated as chaplain on the occasion, and that
the marriage was a humbug. This was a downfall to Mrs. Wilson, but she
had no help excepting to marry the butler of his lordship, a man of
considerable wealth, and emigrate to America. His lordship was generous
on the occasion: and the honest butler found himself with a wife, an
estate, and an heir presumptive, all at the same moment. Having money
and a handsome person, the beautiful and well dressed Mrs. Wilson soon
imposed herself upon an aristocratic family in New York as a branch of a
noble stock in England. Mr. Wilson, it may be proper to observe, died on
his passage, and Mrs. Wilson was a widow when she made the highlands of
Neversink.
There is over all those stale meat pies, ycleped large cities, a
self-styled upper crust that rises in puffs above the solids. It rejects
every thing that is not as light and as trifling as itself, and to say
the least of it, has but little virtue or consistency. It covers the
virtues and the vices of the social compact, and smothers in _flour_ and
_paste_ the unhappy genius who endeavors to penetrate it. As nothing was
made in vain, perhaps this self-important crust, like the web of the
spider, was designed to catch the painted and gilded drones, whose
presence and senseless buzzing might otherwise have disturbed the
working party of mankind at their labors, and have caused them to leave
the world to starve. To this upper stratum of society in New York, Mrs.
Wilson was introduced by her new made friends, and she continued in the
ascendent for three months, but unfortunately for human greatness, one
evening at a large and fashionable rout, a noble marquis was announced,
who to the astonishment of every person present exclaimed, as he was
presented to Mrs. Wilson, “Poll Johnson are you here, when did you leave
the millinary line?” This was sufficient—the party broke up in
confusion, as though a case of plague had occurred in the _circle_. Mrs.
Wilson fainted, and was sent home in a hack as a bundle of soiled linen
is sent to the washerwomen, duly marked and numbered upon the outside;
and the aristocratic family who had been imposed upon by her, went
through with a three weeks’ purification at Saratoga Springs, whence
they returned with a sin offering, in the shape of a real nobleman—a
perfect simpleton of a count—whose soul lay in whiskers, and whose
heart was in bottle green.
Mrs. Wilson, like the jack daw, stripped of borrowed plumes, left New
York in great haste, and settled upon a country farm near Belleview,
where at the opening of my sketch she reigned mistress of the ton.
As Mary Howard and Fitzgerald entered the saloon, a number of light
footed creatures preceded by the super-human Mrs. W. came sailing across
the room to meet them.
The ball had commenced, and numbers were dancing to a tune which was
then in vogue, and which had been made for these words—
“Come list to me a minute,
A song I’m going to begin it,
There’s something serious in it,
’Tis all about the Law,
L!——A!——W!——law!
Has got a deuce of a claw.”
Here the ladies all curtesied to the gentlemen, and the gentlemen all
bowed to the ladies, and all continued for five seconds looking in their
partners faces with pendent arms, straight under-pinnings, body and
breast bent into a half circle, and head erect—
Like some brass God of Heathen make
In shape unheard of——;
but as soon as the note expressive of the word _claw_ was ended, which
in the language of Milton, was like
“Linked sweetness long drawn out;”
every body like an unstrung bow, resumed its straight position, and then
such a double shuffle commenced as bade defiance to the most agile of
the monkeys of Paraguay, and would have caused a mutiny in the lodge of
the Upper Mandans had the dance been introduced there by the
incomparable Mrs. Wilson.
The ball went on in its vigor—small talk and sour lemonade, with some
of the thinnest slices of smoked beef, between two equally thin slices
of bread, oiled on one side, and patted down on the other, filled up the
interstices of the evening, and the company were as amiable and as
ceremonious as possible.
A young gentleman in checkered pantaloons, and a bottle green coat, with
a spotted cravat, and a retiring dickey around his neck, now approached
Miss Howard and her cousin, and was introduced by the presiding deity as
Count Frederick Ampisand, of Hesse Cassel, Germany.
Fitzgerald did not like the appearance of the count; he gave him a
formal return of civilities and retired to another corner of the room.
Mary Howard who was a perfectly artless creature; but still perverse in
her nature from the indulgence of an invalid mother, and proud of having
her own way, became pleased with the foreigner as Fitzgerald became
disgusted. She admired his pretty broken sentences; his captivating
lisp, his manner of pulling up his dickey, and of raising his quizzing
glass whenever a lady passed him. Forgetting all but her own
gratification, and being desirous of giving Fitzgerald a commentary upon
jealousy—that green-eyed jade—she neglected her lover, and hung upon
the Count’s aspirations as Eve did upon the devil’s whisper in Eden’s
bower.
Fitzgerald was piqued. In fact he became angry, and joining the dance,
which he had heretofore declined, became the gayest of the gay. He
skipped through a cotillion like a reefer at a dignity ball in
Barbadoes, and the light-footed Mrs. Wilson declared that she discovered
new graces in Mr. Fitzgerald every time he jumped over the music-stool.
Mary Howard now became piqued in turn, and she joined heartily in the
laugh against her lover. A rude remark of the Count’s, and a heartier
laugh of his beloved, at his expense, now stung the young officer to the
soul. He looked at the little knot of critics. The Count was gazing at
him through an enormous quizzing glass, and a smile of scorn curled his
moustached lip.
Fitzgerald was impetuous and brave. Nature had given him great strength,
and a good share of modest assurance. He walked deliberately up to the
party—“Miss Howard,” said he, “I beg of you to excuse the Count for a
moment. I have a laughable trick to show him in the hall.” The Count did
not relish the proposition to go into the dark entry with the officer.
He had discovered a spice of devil lurking in his eye. But Mary,
suspecting that her cousin was about to divert them with a sea trick
that required the aid of a second person, insisted upon Count Ampisand’s
going with him to oblige her.
“Aye, ver well to oblige Miss ’Oward. I will go with Neptune,” said the
Count magnanimously.
“Get your hat,” said Fitzgerald, as the Count left the saloon.
“I ave him in my pocket,” said Ampisand, pulling from his coat an opera
hat, that answered the double purpose of a “bustle” and a beaver, and
clapping it upon his head. The two lovers now stood at the outside door
from which several steps led to the muddy street.
“Count Ampisand,” said Fitzgerald, “you are an imposter and a pitiful
scoundrel. I have called you out to insult you. Now, sir, take that, and
be off.” So saying, before the thunder-stricken Ampisand could reply,
Fitzgerald seized him by the nose, and, after giving it no infant’s
pull, presented his front to the street, and administered an impetus to
his after body that carried him into a horse-pond in the middle of the
road.
“I will ave the satisfacione, begar, Mr. Lieutenant to shoot you wid de
small sword dis night,” said the Count, gathering himself up, and
retreating to the two Golden Eagles in no small haste. Fitzgerald
laughed aloud, and closing the door behind him, walked lazily toward the
shore of the ocean. After walking for half an hour upon the wild sea
beach, Fitzgerald turned his steps toward Mrs. Wilson’s for the purpose
of bidding his cousin farewell.
Coming footsteps now aroused him from his reverie, and soon a young
gentleman from the city, accompanied by a surgeon, and Count Ampisand,
came up to him. A challenge was received and accepted, and Fitzgerald
named the present as the only time. After much haggling about the
unseasonableness of the hour, and the disturbance the duel might create
in the vicinity of Mrs. Wilson’s,—on the part of the challenging
party—the count, who had been refreshing his courage with some old
port, prepared to meet his antagonist on the spot.
Small swords had been brought by Ampisand’s friend, and the surgeon, who
was an acquaintance of Fitzgerald, undertook to act as his second. The
gentle breeze was singing a lullaby to the ocean, and the sound of the
distant viol broke upon their ears. The ground was now paced out—the
principals were placed, and the words, one! two! three! guard! were
given, and the duel commenced. For a few seconds the parties appeared to
be equally matched, but at length the count, whose body seemed
wonderfully to have increased in size since the insult, began to pant
and blow like a porpoise out of water. Fitzgerald now caught the count’s
sword in the fleshy part of his arm, and ran him through the body. The
wounded man dropped his weapon, and fell heavily upon the ground.
Fitzgerald and the surgeon ran up to him,—“Forgive me,” said the
apparently dying man, whispering in Fitzgerald’s ear, “I loved Mary
Howard, and would have borne her away from you, but now, alas, my
prospects are blighted, and I must pay for my folly with my blood.”
“He does not bleed,” said the surgeon, mournfully.
“Alas, my friend is mortally wounded,” said the count’s second, putting
a bottle of Scotch snuff to his mouth, instead of a phial of brandy. The
wounded man grated his teeth violently, and rejected all aid. Lights now
came from Mrs. Wilson’s toward them, notwithstanding the moon shone
brightly to dim them.
“Is there no hope?” said Fitzgerald to the surgeon. The medical man
raised the body up—a cold sweat was upon the face—death seemed nigh at
hand. He shook his head.
“Fly, sir,” said Ampisand’s second, “or you will be taken, the crowd are
near at hand.”
“Go to my lodgings,” said the surgeon, “and I will meet you there in a
few minutes.”
Ampisand’s friend and Fitzgerald now took the swords and ran across the
churchyard, which made a short cut to the surgeon’s. As they reached the
street they heard a stage-coach rattling furiously down the main street.
Fitzgerald stopped. He saw it was far ahead—he uttered a faint cry—his
chance of reaching his frigate was past. The surgeon soon came. The
wounded man was in the charge of a German doctor, at Mrs. Wilson’s. The
ladies had nearly all gone home in fainting fits, and Mary Howard had
left in a flood of tears. This confirmed Fitzgerald’s suspicions. “She
loved him,” said he “and, oh, what have I lost by this evening’s
devotion!”
Fitzgerald’s arm pained him considerably, and the surgeon dressed it. A
carriage was then sent for, to bear the young officer to his post; and
while it was being made ready, he threw himself upon the surgeon’s
truckle bed, and caught an unquiet nap. It was nearly 3 o’clock of a
cold wet morning,—for a storm had ushered in the day,—when the unhappy
Fitzgerald departed in a close carriage from Belleview.
For the first stage he had a hope of overtaking the post, but his horses
began to lag with the advance of day, and it was three P. M. before he
arrived at the point of embarkation. As he drew up at the Bowery House,
he watched eagerly for some one of his brother officers, but none
appeared to greet him. He paid his coachman and bounded into the
passage. The bar-keeper met him at the door.
“Where is the Frigate, Dennis?” said he impatiently.
“She sailed at nine this morning,” said the bar-keeper, “and is now out
at sea.”
Maurice Fitzgerald, I have said, was a brave man. He could have faced
death upon the blood-stained deck, and gloriously braved the brunt of
battle, but now he felt his strength depart, and retiring suddenly to
his room, burst into a flood of tears. After a few moments, his moral
courage returned. “I have merited this,” said he, “by acceding to her
girlish whims. I must now make the best of a bad matter, and trust to
fortune for success.” He now proceeded to act in a calm manner. He wrote
a hasty note to Col. Howard, detailing the circumstances of the case as
they occurred, and sending his formal respects to Mary. He wrote a line
to his aged father, of the same character, and furthermore stated his
intention of joining his vessel by the aid of a pilot boat. Having paid
his bill, he sold a check upon his banker, purchased a sea-cloak and a
brace of pistols, and with his valise in his hand, boarded a fast
sailing pilot, at Beckman’s Slip. A bargain was soon struck, and the
light craft, with Fitzgerald at the helm, turned her head to the sea. On
the way down, they met the pilot who had taken the frigate to sea, and
ascertained her course. Trusting, then, to the swiftness of the boat,
that had several days provision on board, the young officer boldly
steered for the Atlantic, and when the sun set, the highlands of
Neversink were astern.
During the night, which continued wet and gloomy, the wind, in fitful
puffs, hurled them swiftly o’er the waves, and, when the morning came,
the long, swelling billows of the ocean tumbled o’er them, and the
sheer-water darted ahead along the thunder-chaunting waves. Nothing was
to be seen but the clouds above, and the gloomy waves below, which came
together at the edge of the horizon like the lid and bottom of a
circular tobacco box, when closed. The old pilot was now confident that
the frigate had changed her course during the evening preceding, and
that all possibility of his overtaking her was gone. With a heavy heart,
therefore, Fitzgerald put his helm down, the tacks and sheets were
shifted, the snowy canvass felt again the side-long breath of the gale,
and the little bark drew in toward the distant shore.
A suspicious looking schooner now hove in sight, and bore down upon them
with the swiftness of the wind. The pilot, from the first, did not like
her appearance, and Fitzgerald, although he said nothing to alarm his
companion, felt confident that she was a pirate. In less than an hour,
the warlike stranger shot across their bows, fired a gun, loaded with
grape, at their sails, and hoisted the black flag of the Bucaniers.
All resistance to this antagonist would have been madness, and the pilot
obeyed the hoarse hail, and ran alongside the pirate. Twenty rough
looking rascals, each armed to the teeth, with a young man of higher
rank at their head, sprang into the pilot boat, and after making sundry
motions, which seemed to imply a speedy cutting of their throats, bound
the pilot and his men. Fitzgerald, however, resisted the party that came
upon him, and with his pistols soon wounded two of the pirates. A
cutlass now flashed before his eyes, and sense and reason departed.
When Fitzgerald again became conscious of existence, he found himself in
a cot, swinging in a beautiful cottage, in the vicinity of the sea, for
he could hear the solemn roar of breakers, and the screams of the
sea-birds, as they revelled amid the foam. A beautiful Creole maiden
stood by his bed side, chaunting a low, mournful tune, while she brushed
away the flies from his pillow with a long fan made of peacock’s
feathers.
He looked at her for some seconds, and then as the thought of his cousin
past across his brain, a deep sigh burst from his lips. The maiden
started—“hush,” said she, putting her finger to her lips, and stepping
to the side table, handed him a composing draught in a silver goblet. He
drank the contents with gratitude, and soon fell into a sweet sleep.
It was nearly sunset when Fitzgerald awoke, completely invigorated in
body and mind. He looked around him,—no one was to be seen. He called,
but no one answered his summons. He now determined to find out where he
was. His clothes were in a chair beside his cot, and his valise was upon
the dressing table. He raised himself slowly upon his arm,—finding that
he was not in want of strength, he sprang out of the cot and dressed
himself. He now viewed his face in a huge Spanish mirror, that hung over
a taper, with the holy letters I. H. S. below it. He started back in
astonishment. A cruel cut had laid open his marble forehead to the
scull, and a long, purple scar, scarcely healed, marked the track of the
cutlass. Having brushed his long, black hair over the disfiguration, he
went to the window and looked out upon the surrounding face of nature.
He saw he was upon a small island, in the midst of a host of others, and
that the narrow passes between them were filled with clippers and
man-o’-war boats, apparently returning from cruizes upon the main. It
was a romantic spot, unlike any other in the world. About sixty
cottages, like the one he occupied, rose in the distance, each with its
garden and verandah. Groves of orange and lemon trees, loaded with ripe
fruit, waved their tops of eternal green around, and filled the
atmosphere with a delicious odor.
The waves broke over the long, bold reefs that lined the islands, and
the sky was dotted with flocks of sea-birds. Here and there a solitary
pine tree sprung from a crevice in the rocks, where its cone had been
thrown up by the dash of some sweeping wave whose crest had borne it
across the sea. It was Noman’s Group, and was not far from Cape Flyaway.
Fitzgerald had hardly made the discoveries above related, when the
lovely Creole, with an officer in a naval uniform, entered the chamber.
They saluted Fitzgerald with kindness, and appeared to be astonished at
his sudden improvement. He now found a ready market for the smattering
of Spanish he had picked up among the Dagos of Mahon, and in half an
hour his store was exhausted.
From them he learned that the pilot had been set adrift in his boat,
after having furnished all the information desired; but that he, from
his resistance, had been retained to be killed at leisure. Having,
however, from a fever of the brain, continued insensible so long,—it
being then the thirtieth day,—the pirates concluded to send him to the
Hospital Island, to be restored to health. He was now with his surgeon
and attentive nurse, and would be reported “_well_,” on the coming
Saturday. His attendants refused to tell him where he was. All distances
and names of places were carefully concealed, and all that he could
ascertain was, that a direct communication was kept up with the American
Continent, and that newspapers were brought to the islands from the
United States weekly, and would be furnished him if he desired them.
Fitzgerald was lavish of his thanks for such kindness, and begged that
the latest newspapers from New York might be given him.
The Creole girl left the room immediately, and presently a boat was seen
putting off to a brig in the pass, opposite the cottage.
The surgeon now drew his chair closer to that of his patient, and became
less reserved. The latter soon understood that it had been decided by
the pirates that upon his recovery he should join them or be shot upon
the cliff. The blood of Fitzgerald boiled in his veins at the bare
proposal of the Bucanier, but before he gave his anger words, his lovely
Creole approached with a package of New York dailies, taken the week
previous from an outward bound brig. Forgetting every thing else in his
desire to hear from his native land, he opened the first paper that met
his eye, and read the following:—“Arrived, the United States Frigate
——, with His Britannic Majesty’s Ship —— of forty-four guns, in tow,
as a prize. The action lasted thirty minutes, when the British frigate
struck her flag. Capt. —— immediately left the frigate and proceeded
to Washington with the enemy’s flag. The official account of this
gallant action will be given to-morrow. Suffice it to say that every
officer and man did his duty, and that promotion, and the thanks of a
grateful country await the victors.” In another paper he read a list of
promotions in the navy, and his own dismissal from the service. The
marriage list now caught his eye, and he read,—“Married in Belleview,
on the 1st instant, by the Reverend Mr. Smell Fungus, Count Frederick
Ampisand, of Hesse Cassel, Germany, to Miss Mary Howard, the only
daughter of Col. John Howard, of the revolutionary army.
“Love is the silken cord that binds
Two willing hearts together.”
Every word of this paragraph remained like an impression from types of
fire upon his melancholy brain.
“Doctor,” said Fitzgerald, throwing down the paper, while the blood
oozed from his scarcely-healed wound,—“tell your leaders that
henceforth I am with them body and soul. The victim of circumstance—the
sport of the world—a cork floating upon the stream of time.—I will be
dreaded, if I cannot be loved.”
The morning came, and Fitzgerald was introduced to the bucaniers in
their strong hold. Bold and generous, two qualities that always sail in
company, he became a universal favorite at the melee, and o’er the bowl;
and in the course of a short time, he paced along the weather quarter of
the gun brig, King Fisher,—“the monarch of her peopled deck.”
It was a beautiful summer’s night. The sun had sunk in a dense cloud
bank behind the Bahamas; and the small red bow in the northwest,
accompanied by a hollow sound, as though cannons had been fired far down
beneath the surface of the ocean, gave evidence of the near approach of
a norther.
The brig was soon prepared for the war of the elements, whose signal
guns had been heard wakening the lowest echoes of the deep. Her head was
brought so as to receive the first burst of the tempest’s fury;
conductors were rigged aloft, and their chains of steel rattled sharply
as they descended into the sea along side. The light spars were sent
down, her storm stay-sail was set, and she rode the heaving billows like
a duck.
A tall merchantman, bound apparently to the Havana, now swept along to
the windward of the islands under a press of canvass. Fitzgerald saw
that she was crowded with passengers, and his soul sickened at the
thought, that ere the morning dawned that gallant bark would be a wreck
upon an iron-bound coast, and her host of human beings would lie the
play things of the shark, and the lifeless sport of the thunder-pealing
waves. A sudden throb of sympathy moved his heart, a tear—the first, he
had shed for months—started to his eye. He grasped his trumpet—his
topsails were unfurled and in less than an hour he occupied a station to
the windward of THE DOOMED SHIP. His canvass was now reduced as before,
and under the smallest possible sail, he stretched ahead of the
merchantman.
The norther now came on in its fury—from the red bow that had reached
the zenith, a bright flash of blinding lightning darted in a long bright
stream and parted into a thousand forks, and then came a crash of
thunder with the almost resistless wind. The King Fisher was borne down
to her bearings, and then righted again, and gallantly faced the blast.
Not so with the crank merchantman. Her tall masts were whipped out of
her in a twinkling; the ocean surges swept her deck fore and aft: and
she lay tossing in the trough of the sea a helpless wreck.
At midnight the fury of the blast died away, and the sea that had rolled
in terrific waves began to go down. The brig under a reefed foresail and
maintopsail now danced again from billow to tasseled-tipt billow, and
gained rapidly upon the sea washed wreck. As the King Fisher drew near
the once gallant vessel, Fitzgerald heard a voice crying in agony for
help. He looked over the head and saw a female floating upon a spar, a
short distance before him. To brace round his topsail-yard, lay to, and
lower the life boat, was but the work of a moment, and with six trusty
fellows he launched out upon the midnight deep.
In a few moments he caught the almost lifeless female by the hair, and
wrapped her in his sea-cloak—“To the wreck,” said he, in a voice of
thunder, as his starboard oars backed water to return to their craft.
The crew gave way with a will, and immediately the life boat made fast
to the loose rigging of the wreck. Preceded by Fitzgerald, two of his
men mounted the vessel’s side. Fitzgerald as he sprang upon the deck
started back with astonishment. Colonel Howard stood before him in a
long robe of white flannel, apparently as free from the gout as the
youngest of the party.
“Uncle,” said the young officer, with a cry of delight, “what a
meeting!”
The old man looked up, “Rash and impetuous boy,” said he, with a voice
trembling with joy and astonishment, “you have not lost all sympathy
yet; I have been in search of you, but little did I expect such a
meeting. Poor Mary, oh, that she had remained a few moments longer.”
“Is Mary here?” said Fitzgerald, casting a troubled glance around the
anxious crowd that had gathered around the speakers.
“No,” said the old veteran, clasping his hands and lifting up his eyes
streaming with tears—“She was swept out of my aged arms by the last
sea, and is now in heaven.”
“She is in my boat,” said Fitzgerald, “I thought that voice was Mary’s
as it came from the deep, but come let us haste, the wreck may go down
with us while we stand here.”
“Are you all armed in the boat?” hailed Fitzgerald, in a voice of
thunder.
“Aye, aye, sir,” was the gruff answer from the ones who remained in her.
“Then shoot the first person who attempts to enter her without my
orders,” said Fitzgerald; the pirates cocked their pistols, and sat
ready to execute his commands. The two men who had boarded the wreck
with him were now ordered to make ropes fast to the ends of a hammock;
one rope was then thrown to the boat’s crew, while the other remained on
board the wreck. The aged men and women, one by one, were now lowered by
this simple contrivance to the boat; and when she was sufficiently
loaded, Fitzgerald ordered one of his men on board to steer her, with
orders to see that the passengers were not molested until he came on
board. Seven times the life boat, filled with the passengers and crew of
the Rosalie, whose captain had been washed away, made its voyage of
mercy, and having cleared the wreck, the noble-hearted
Fitzgerald—plunged into the waves and reached the boat in safety—this
had been made necessary by the parting of the rigging that held the
boat. The whole were saved, and as the life boat was run up to the
davits, the wreck plunged heavily to leeward, a heavy wave rolled over
her and she was seen no more.
It was a bright morning at the Bahamas when the King Fisher took her
departure for the Florida reef. Fitzgerald now entered his cabin for the
first time since the rescue, and the thousand thanks that were showered
upon him by the aged and the young—by the strong man—the gentle
woman—and the lisping child almost overpowered him.
He received their congratulations in a proper manner, and modestly
informed them that he had but performed his duty. He bade them welcome
to the best his poor brig afforded, and promised to land them at the
nearest port. Mary Howard, pale and weak, now came out of her little
state-room. She cast her round black eyes which beamed fearfully bright
upon Fitzgerald. A crimson cloud past over her snowy face,—“It is he,”
she screamed, while the tears that had so long refused to flow from
their sealed fountains filled her eyes; Fitzgerald sprang to meet her,
and in a moment she fell lifeless into his open arms.
Colonel Howard now bade the young officer place his daughter upon the
sofa in the after cabin: and having seen her revive, retired and left
them alone.
The unfortunate Mary now became calm and collected, and with a heart
overflowing with gratitude, and eyes suffused with tears, related to
Fitzgerald the events that had transpired since his departure, and the
cause of her present voyage amid the horrors and uncertainties of war.
It seems that Count Ampisand had stuffed his clothes with pillows, and
that Fitzgerald’s sword had barely grazed his noble body, having been
warded off by the feathers that filled his stuffing. This accounted for
the entire absence of blood. The count of course soon became
convalescent.
Mary Howard ever generous, and feeling that she had been the unhappy
cause of the duel, prevailed upon her father to take the wounded
foreigner to his house on the night of the duel. Ampisand was delighted
with this state of things, and he pressed his suit upon Mary Howard
warmly: but she repelled his advances with scorn. Mrs. Wilson, however,
and her scandalising circle, could not wait for Count Ampisand to get
married in the regular way, and believing in the absence of Fitzgerald
that Mary Howard could not refuse the amiable and accomplished count,
they prevailed upon a travelling letter writer—one of those drag nets
for second-handed news—to put a paragraph in his _master’s_ paper for
the fun of it.
This was the notice that Fitzgerald saw, and which had caused him so
much terrible agony of mind.
“It is too late to repair the evil,” said Fitzgerald, as he paced the
cabin with a countenance tortured by despair.
“It is never too late to do a good action,” said Mary Howard,
firmly—“Maurice Fitzgerald you are not the one to bring dishonor upon a
patriot father’s name: or to call down the curse of a sainted mother
upon your head.” The young man bowed his head upon the rudder case, and
the fair girl resumed her narrative.
The arrival of the scandalous paragraph caused the speedy ejection of
the count from Colonel Howard’s domicil, in no ceremonious manner, and
the instant departure of Mrs. Wilson, bag and baggage.
Colonel Howard raved like a madman for a week; threatened the editor of
the offending paper with a prosecution; discovered the perpetrators of
the scandal; placarded the whole party as retailers and manufacturers of
falsehoods; and posted Count Ampisand as an imposter and a villain in
every section of the Union.
The count was shortly afterward tried for stealing spoons and convicted.
The next day he changed his lodgings, and occupied a room on the ground
floor of the castellated building at Moyamensing, which had but one
_grate_, and that was before the window, while Sanderson, the terror of
the genteel sucker, had him served up in his amusing diary of a
Philadelphia Landlord on the next Saturday.
The departure of Fitzgerald from New York was commended by his brother
officers, but his long absence from the ship could not be satisfactorily
accounted for, and he was dismissed by the navy department. Enquiries
had been made in every section of the country for him by his almost
distracted father; and at last a reward was offered in the newspapers
for any information concerning him. The pilot who had left him wounded
with the pirates, now came forward, and related the circumstances under
which he and Fitzgerald had parted company. Fitzgerald’s father, an aged
man of great wealth, and who had no other child to attract his love, now
insisted upon Colonel Howard’s proceeding to ransom his son. Mary, whose
health was rapidly declining, was directed by her physician to perform a
sea voyage, and thus father and daughter were induced to brave the
dangers of that sea, whose waves teemed with freebooters, and whose
isles flashed with cutlasses and boarding-pikes.
The Rosalie had agreed, for a great sum of money, to land the Howards at
New Providence: and then proceed on to New Orleans, her port of final
destination. Once landed, they were to trust to opportunity for the
means of transportation to their native land.
The norther brought them together as before related; and the warring
elements of nature produced a reconciliation between the lovers.
Fitzgerald, when Mary had ceased speaking, raised his head. He had been
singularly agitated during her narrative; he now calmly opened his soul
to her. He kept nothing back; the catalogue of offences detailed to her
was an exact copy of the dark list that had been registered against his
name above. Twice she started as though an adder had stung her; but when
he informed her that his hand had never been stained with blood; and
that he had never appropriated to himself a dollar of the ill-gotten
wealth, she breathed freer, and as he concluded, a smile lit up her
heavenly countenance.
“Maurice,” said she, “I believe you—you have made a false move in life:
and I have been the innocent cause of it. It is not too late to repair
it—you must leave this bloody craft at the first port you make—the
busy times—the deeds of blood—the privateering and the blustering of
war will cover all, and in our little village we can peacefully linger
out our lives, and rejoice that the day of our sorrow is over.”
Colonel Howard now entered the cabin. He approved of the plan suggested,
and Fitzgerald joyfully consented to its being carried into execution.
The next day the brig made the land. The passengers of the foundered
ship were immediately sent on shore, with the exception of Colonel
Howard and his daughter; and upon the return of the last boat a letter
of thanks, signed by the passengers, with a draft for ten thousand
dollars, was handed to Fitzgerald.
He immediately sent an officer in disguise to New Orleans to get the
money; and at twelve o’clock, accompanied by the Howards, left the King
Fisher. He had left a letter in his signal book to the next in command,
surrendering up the brig, renouncing the service of the bucaniers, and
giving his portion of the spoils to the crew. His necessary clothing he
had packed with Colonel Howard’s. Upon reaching the shore, he bade the
officer of the boat to inform the second in command that he should be
absent for a few days, and that if he found it necessary to move his
berth he would find instructions for his guidance in his signal book. A
house was near at hand, the little party soon changed their apparel, and
procuring a conveyance, proceeded to a little village on the other side
of the island, whence in a fast sailing clipper they stretched over to
Pensacola. Having shaved off his ferocious whiskers and his long
soap-locks, which gave him the appearance of a nondescript animal,
somewhere between a man and a monkey, he dressed himself in the sober
attire of a citizen of this glorious republic, and in company with his
kind uncle and much loved cousin, proceeded by land to Belleview.
On the arrival of the party at the homestead, the fortunate Fitzgerald
became the husband of the true-hearted Mary; and old Fitzgerald and
Colonel Howard danced a hop waltz together, gout and all, on the
occasion. The wedding broke up at a late hour, and old Fitzgerald went
to bed tipsy, very much to the scandal of a total abstinence society, of
which he was an honorary member.
Fitzgerald and his domestic wife settled down upon the homestead, and in
a few months Colonel Howard and Major Fitzgerald were called to the
dread muster of the dead.
The property of the old, now became the property of the young; and the
broad lands and splendid mansion of Maurice Fitzgerald became the envy
and the pride of the village.
Of the King Fisher nothing was heard until after the war, when she was
found rotting upon a mud bank, near the place where her commander left
her. Her crew had deserted her, and the gallant gun brig never ploughed
the ocean furrow more.
Washington, November, 1840.
* * * * *
THE WATERS OF LETHE.
BY N. C. BROOKS, A. M.
Written for one in dejection.
“Oh, for a cup of the Waters of Lethe.” _Letter of a Friend._
Come, Peri, from the well,
Where cooling waters steep
The soul that’s bound by memory’s spell
In soft oblivion’s sleep.
The lethean power diffuse;
I could not wake again:
Pour o’er my heart its balmy dews,
And on my burning brain.
The plighted hopes of youth—
The perished joys of years—
Affections withered—slighted truth—
The sunlight dashed with tears—
The cloud, the storm, the strife,
I would recall no more,
And all the bitterness of life;
The lethean goblet pour!
Remembered tones of old—
Of friends in quiet sleep,
Make other eyes and tones seem cold,
And bid the lonely weep;
Come then, Oblivion, seal
All memory as I drink;
This tortured heart would cease to feel,
This fevered brain to think.
Baltimore, November, 1840.
* * * * *
YOO-TI-HU.
BY J. ROSS BROWNE.
I. The Consultation.
Yoo-ti-hu, the handsomest and sprightliest Page in the suite of
Pokatoka, King of Gazaret, imprudently fell in love with Omanea, the
flower of the king’s harem. Pokatoka, though sadly afflicted with
rheumatism, was partial to the amusements of the harem. It happened that
he had a slight suspicion of Yoo-ti-hu’s integrity, and this rendered
him perfectly miserable. Tally-yang-sang, Great Nazir, or Chamberlain of
the Harem, was sent for.
“Mirror of Vigilance,—Quintessence of Piety,—and Disciple of
Wisdom,”—such were the Grand Nazir’s titles, and so the king addressed
him.—“Well we know thy skill in affairs of the heart. Well we know thy
penetration is never at fault. We have required thy presence to demand
if thou hast noticed anything peculiar in the conduct of our peerless
Omanea, since the addition of Yoo-ti-hu to our suite?”
“There is a lone dove,” replied the Grand Nazir, in his own mysterious
way, “whose nest is in the grove of love. Even as this emblem of
tenderness awaits the coming of a prisoned mate, so pines in secret my
lady Omanea.”
“And by whom think you, wondrous Tally-yang-sang, is this change
effected?”
“Your mightiness would scarcely thank me if I made known my suspicions,
since they implicate your greatest favorite.”
“Ha! ’tis Yoo-ti-hu! I thought so! I knew it!—he shall die.”
“God is great,” muttered Tally-yang-sang.
“Let the page’s head be brought to me,” said the king, “as a token of my
displeasure.”
“With all my heart, sire. I dislike the youth, and your highness shall
be obeyed.” The Grand Nazir bowed very low, and left the audience
chamber.
II. The Three Wishes.
Yoo-ti-hu, being accidentally near, heard what had passed. In the
bitterness of despair, he rushed from the palace, and roamed to a
solitary retreat in the gardens.
“How miserable am I,” he cried, “to love so hopelessly and so madly.
Grant, oh, inventive genius! that I may evade the vigilance and
persecution of Tally-yang-sang. Grant that the fates may aid me in this
dilemma.”
“Yoo-ti-hu,” said a voice from the shrubbery, “thou hast incurred my
displeasure; but, nevertheless, since thou art in a dangerous situation,
I promise three such things as thou shalt choose.”
“Verily,” quoth Yoo-ti-hu, “thou art a bountiful genius; and it is a sin
to reject aid from so high a source. Know then, generous spirit, that I
have peculiar occasion for a bow and a quiver of arrows.”
“A modest request,” observed the Genius, “and fortunately, I have by me
such an one as no living archer ever shot with; for look you this way or
that, such are its virtues, that it will hit the mark exactly in the
centre.”
“Bless thee a thousand times!” cried Yoo-ti-hu in an ecstacy of joy;
“and since thou art so kind, I fancy I may crave a lute,—with which I
shall be satisfied, were it never so small.”
“Thou shalt have one, my son, of such exquisite tones, that when the
same is played, all living things shall skip and dance,—so pleasant is
the music.”
“Delightful!—excellent!” cried Yoo-ti-hu.
“What next?” said the Genius.
“Indeed, thou art too good,” replied Yoo-ti-hu; “I am going now to rove
the world as a simple minstrel. I shall live on birds, and amuse myself
with my lute,—so I need nothing more.”
“But, son, I solemnly swear thou shalt have three things, be they never
so costly.”
“Well, good Genius, since thou art so kindly disposed, I shall choose an
inexhaustible purse.”
“The very thing I have in my pocket,” quoth the Genius, and handing the
inexhaustible purse to Yoo-ti-hu, he disappeared immediately.
III. Tally-yang-sang in a Plight.
Yoo-ti-hu seated himself on the steps of a fountain to admire his bow
and his lute. Tally-yang-sang, chancing to roam in the vicinity, espied
the page, whereupon he assumed a very severe countenance, and
approaching the spot, spoke thus: “Yoo-ti-hu, thou art an unfaithful
wretch! Thou hast betrayed the confidence of thy king. Thou hast entered
his harem and stolen the heart of Omanea! Know, then, that I am
commanded to carry him thy head, as a slight token of his displeasure.”
“Verily, great and worthy nazir,” quoth Yoo-ti-hu, “I can show thee
pleasanter sport than that. Seest thou yon Bird of Paradise, with
plumage more bright than the colors of Iris? Behold, your highness, how
I shall shoot him!” Yoo-ti-hu drew his bow—shut his eyes—and let fly
an arrow. The bird fell quivering among the bushes. Tally-yang-sang was
no less pious than philosophical, and this feat surprised him
exceedingly. With curiosity depicted in his countenance, he walked
forward to where the bird had fallen.
“A little farther,” said Yoo-ti-hu.
“Here?”
“Still farther.”
“Here, then.”
“On.”
“Now?”
“Yes—there lies the bird. But tell me,” said Yoo-ti-hu, with a boldness
that surprised the Grand Nazir, “dost thou certainly mean to carry my
head to the king?”
“God is great,” quoth Tally-yang-sang.
“And Mahommed is his Prophet!” added Yoo-ti-hu; with which he started up
such a tune on his lute, as caused the venerable chamberlain to skip and
dance like one possessed of the devil.
“The spirit of Ebris seize thee!” roared Tally-yang-sang, capering about
among the bushes, and leaving a strip of skin on every thorn, “the devil
take thee for a musician!” and on he skipped and danced till the tears
ran down his cheeks—the blood streamed from his jagged and scarified
limbs—and his capacious breeches were completely torn from his legs.
Yoo-ti-hu continued the music with unabated ardor. Tally-yang-sang
forgot his orisons and paternosters; and up and down—left hand and
right hand—ladies chain—balancee—reel—jig—and Spanish waltz, danced
the bare-legged amateur, roaring with pain, and uttering horrible
imprecations.
“God is great?” quoth Yoo-ti-hu.
“His curse be on thee!” roared Tally-yang-sang.
“Music hath charms,” said Yoo-ti-hu.
“Exercise is the staff of life,” philosophised Yoo-ti-hu.
“Blast it!” shrieked Tally-yang-sang.
“Piety is pleasant,” moralised Yoo-ti-hu.
“Damnable!” roared Tally-yang-sang.
Yoo-ti-hu perceived the vigor departing from the limbs of the Great
Nazir, whereupon he struck up a still livelier air. Tally-yang-sang
curvetted and pranced—whirled hither and thither his bare spindles, and
leaped madly among the thorns. In an agony of pain he cried, “Dear,
gentle Yoo-ti-hu,—I beseech thee to stop!”
“Verily,” quoth Yoo-ti-hu, “I value my head.”
“I shall not harm a hair,” groaned Tally-yang-sang.
“Words are cheap,” said Yoo-ti-hu.
“But I swear—I solemnly swear!” piteously cried Tally-yang-sang.
“By what?”
“By the Prophet!”
“Nay.”
“By God himself!”
“Swear by thy beard!”
“Never!”
“Then dance!”
Another good hour did Tally-yang-sang caper about, roar and blaspheme,
till cruelly excoriated from head to foot.
“Do you swear?” asked Yoo-ti-hu.
“I do.”
“By that which is sacred?”
“By my beard!”
In a truly pitiable condition the Grand Nazir limped toward the palace.
Yoo-ti-hu followed—admiring the bandy and scarified legs of the great
Tally-yang-sang, and muttering benedictions on the genius.
IV. Yoo-ti-hu in Danger.
The great rajas, moguls, and lords of Gazaret, belonging to the court of
Pokatoka, had sallied out with the king, to take a stroll in the royal
gardens.
“Ho!” cried Yptaleen, high master of the festivities, “what fantastic
clown comes hither?”
“An Egyptian dancer,” quoth the king.
“A self-punished Musselman,” added a raja.
“True,” said a grand mogul, “for behind him walks his koran bearer.”
“Rather a shia with his talisman,” observed a lord of Gazaret.
“Or a sooni,” whispered a pious Mohammedan.
“A blood-stained spirit of Ebris,” remarked a famous Astrologer.
“Hush!” exclaimed Yptaleen, “by all that is terrible!—by monkin and
nakir! ’tis Tally-yang-sang, grand nazir of the harem!”
And Tally-yang-sang it was, whose woeful figure approached the pageant.
“Mirror of Piety!” cried the king, “what means this outlandish freak?
Methinks it ill becomes thee to tramp about, bare-legged and bloody,
after this fashion. Propriety of conduct, and delicacy, should
distinguish a master of the harem; and I much regret that thou hast
infringed, not only on these, but on the laws of decency.”
“Sure, mighty monarch of Gazaret,” replied Tally-yang-sang, wringing his
hands and smiting his breast, “thy page deals with the devil; for,
verily, he hath a lute of such bewitching tones, that, when the same be
played, I could not help skipping and dancing among the bushes till my
bones creaked—my head whirled, and I was flayed and excoriated within
an inch of my life—as your highness may see.”
“Tally-yang-sang,” said the king gravely, “thy character is
impeached—thou hast spoken of impossibilities; in fact, thou hast
lied.”
“By all that is solemn, I have spoken the truth,” cried the grand nazir.
“And nothing but the truth?”
“As I live!” protested Tally-yang-sang.
“Then Yoo-ti-hu shall lose his head.”
“Nay,—I have sworn on my beard to save it.”
“Generous Tally-yang-sang!” cried Pokatoka, “thou art too lenient of
offence. Nevertheless, Yoo-ti-hu shall be punished.”
“Certainly,” said Tally-yang-sang, “it was my design to have him
decently flayed to death.”
“Which shall be done,” quoth the king, “if thou provest the offence.”
Without further delay the bare-legged and excoriated Tally-yang-sang led
the way to the palace; and caliphs, rajas, moguls and lords of Gazaret,
followed admiringly in the rear.
V. The Trial and its Effects.
The grand council-chamber of the palace was presently crowded with
courtiers, officers of the guard, sicaries, mandarins, and pashas,—at
the head of whom, seated by his queen, and attended by a magnificent
suite of pages sat Pokatoka, King of Gazaret. At a desk, immediately
under the throne, sat a venerable Arabian writer, versed in
hieroglyphics, and ready to take the minutes of the whole proceedings.
Ranged around, stood a number of beautiful Circassians, Georgians,
Nubians, and Abyssinians—slaves and witnesses from the king’s harem;
but the diamond of these gems was Omanea, arraigned on charge of having
unlawfully bestowed her heart on Yoo-ti-hu. The fact is, Tally-yang-sang
was determined that the lovers should both be condemned, and had thus
prepared matters for the prosecution. In order to establish the truth of
his charge, he remained—much to the edification of the young slaves by
whom he was surrounded—in the same plight in which the king had met
him.
“Quintessence of piety and disciple of wisdom,” said the king, “proceed
with thy charge.”
“Know then, courtiers, rajas, mandarins and officers of the guard,”
quoth Tally-yang-sang, “that Yoo-ti-hu hath stolen the heart of Omanea,
and that his highness, the king, commanded me to rid the offender of his
head. This very evening I roamed in the royal gardens, meditating on the
most agreeable plans of decapitation, when I espied the wicked
Yoo-ti-hu. Having lured me into a horrid bush, he struck up a tune on
his lute—the infernal strains of which caused me to dance till I was
fairly torn to shreds—as you all may perceive. Then—”
“Stop there!” cried Pokatoka, “this story of the lute must be
established ere you proceed farther.”
“I solemnly beseech your mightiness to take my word,” groaned
Tally-yang-sang, eyeing the lute with horror,—“Do, Great King of
Gazaret! and the blessings of heaven be on thee!”
“Nay,” cried the king, “we must have a fair and impartial investigation.
Yoo-ti-hu, thou art commanded on pain of loosing thy head to strike us a
tune on thy lute!”
“For God’s sake,” implored the grand nazir, “since ye must hear it, I
pray and beseech ye to bind me to a post.”
Exactly in the middle of the court stood a post, ornamented with divers
beautiful designs, carved in wood and in gold; and to this was the
chamberlain firmly tied.
“Truth is mighty,” quoth the king, “and will out. So proceed Yoo-ti-hu,
in the name of God and Mahommed, his Prophet!”
Yoo-ti-hu forthwith struck up his liveliest air; and lords, rajas, and
moguls; sages, philosophers and mamelukes; officers of the guard,
sicaries and mandarins; slaves, young and lovely, and old and ugly;
disciples of Mahommed; priests, friars, saints and heretics; pages,
trainbearers, and virgins of incense—sprang to their feet and danced
hither and thither—hornpipe, jig and merry reel—in such glee and
confusion as were never heard of before or since. The venerable writer
had leaped from the desk—the decrepit Pokatoka from his throne; the
sharp-featured old queen from her chair of dignity and joined in the
general melee. But the groans of the gouty—the blasphemies of the
pious—the laughter of the young—and the remonstrances of the sage,
were all drowned in the lusty roars of Tally-yang-sang, who cruelly
bruised his head against the post in trying to beat time—tore the live
flesh from his back so eager was he to dance—and uttered a horrid
imprecation at every ornament on the post.
“Yoo-ti-hu! Yoo-ti-hu!” cried the breathless Pokatoka.
“Yoo-ti-hu!” screamed the dancing queen.
“Yoo-ti-hu! Yoo-ti-hu!” was echoed and re-echoed around by the nobles
and courtiers; and to and fro they skipped, as Yoo-ti-hu plied his
merriest tunes—the floor groaning—the perspiration streaming from
their cheeks; and their breath failing at every jump.
“Dear, pleasant, Yoo-ti-hu,” cried the king, in the heat of a Spanish
jig, “I do beseech thee to stop.”
“A thousand seguins for silence!” groaned a gouty raja, prancing high
and low in a German waltz.
“I am shamed—disgraced forever!” muttered an Arabian astrologer, in the
middle of a Scotch reel.
“Yoo-ti-hu—the devil seize thee!” shouted a pious Musselman.
“Have mercy!” cried a blasphemous heretic.
“Mercy! mercy!” echoed the dancers one and all—“Do, gentle Yoo-ti-hu,
have mercy, and cease thy accursed music!”
“Pardon him! pardon him!” roared the magnanimous Tally-yang-sang—his
ribs rattling frightfully against the post; “in the name of the prophet
pardon him ere I bruise myself into an Egyptian mummy!”
“Yoo-ti-hu cease! thou art pardoned!” cried the king, in a piteous tone,
“my seal—my life on it thou shall not be harmed!”
“Very well,” said Yoo-ti-hu, still striking his lute; “but I must have
Omanea as a bride.”
“Thou shalt have her!—take her!—she is thine!” shouted the rheumatic
monarch.
“Thy oath on it,” quoth Yoo-ti-hu.
“By all that’s sacred—by my beard she is thine!”
Yoo-ti-hu ceased—the dancers, groaning and breathless, returned to
their seats—the grand nazir was taken from the post in a pitiable
plight—and the pious Musselman ejaculated—“God is great!”
* * * * *
An Arabian historian says that Yoo-ti-hu having espoused Omanea, carried
his bride to the kingdom of Bucharia, of which, in the course of time,
he became the king; and with his inexhaustible purse built a palace of
gold, wherein he reigned for half a century, the mirror of monarchy, and
the admiration of mankind.
Louisville, Kentucky, December 14, 1840.
* * * * *
LEAVES FROM A LAWYER’S PORT-FOLIO.
THE AVENGER.
“Slave, I have set my life upon a cast,
And I will stand the hazard of the die.”
_Shakspeare._
“I feel that I am dying,” exclaimed the sick man, gazing wistfully
toward the window, “and it seems good to me that it should be so. Lift
me up a little that I may look upon this April morn, and throw back the
curtains that I may feel the sweet breath of heaven once more upon my
brow,—there, that will do, God bless you all.”
The speaker was in the last stage of his disease. His eye was sunken,
his voice was feeble, his lips were bloodless, his emaciated fingers
looked like talons, and his originally handsome countenance, now hollow,
pale, and ghastly, seemed already as the face of a corpse. At times his
features would twitch convulsively. He breathed quick and heavily.
The balmy air of a spring morning stealing soothingly across his
forehead, and tossing his long dark locks wantonly about, appeared for a
while to kindle up the fading energies of the dying man, and turning
with a faint smile toward me, he said,
“I promised you my history, did I not? Well, I will tell it now, for I
feel my sands are running low, and the cistern will soon be broken at
the fountain. I have no time to lose; move nigher, for my voice is weak.
Put that glass of wine close at your elbow,—I shall want my lips
moistened, for my tale is long.
“Do you know what it is to be young? Ah! who does not? Youth is the
heaven of our existence. Every thing then is full of poetry. It is the
time for love, and song, and more than all for hope. This glorious
morning is a type of our youth. The birds sing sweeter than ever; the
winds have a music as of heaven; the distant tinkle of the streams is
like a fountain-fall in moonlight, and the whole earth seems as if it
were one cloudless Eden, where life would pass like a dream of sinless
childhood. Poetry! did I say? oh! what is like our youth for that? But
more than all, aye! more than music, or beauty, or even those childish
dreams, is the poetry of a first pure love! I see by your countenance
that you have known what that is. God help me! it has been at once the
bliss and the bane of my existence.
“I left the University rich, accomplished, and not without academic
fame. My parents were dead, and I had but few relations. Life was before
me where to choose. I had every thing to make me happy, but—will you
believe me?—I was not so. There was a void within me. I longed for
something, and scarcely knew what. It was not for fame, for I had tasted
of that, and turned sickened away; it was not for wealth, for I enjoyed
enough of that to teach me, it would not satisfy my craving; it was
neither fashion nor ease, nor the popularity of a public man; no, from
all these I turned away athirst for higher and loftier things. What
could it be? At length I learned. My life is dated from that moment.
“It was about a year after I had graduated, when, sick of the world and
its emptiness, I left the city, in early summer for a stroll through the
mountains of the interior. You have often seen the hills of the
Susquehanna: well, I cannot stop to describe them. I was enraptured with
their beauty, and determined to loiter among them until September, and
so dismissing my servant, I took lodgings in a quiet country inn, and
assumed the character of a mountain sportsman. But I delay my story.
Hand me the wine and water.
“It was on a sporting excursion that I first saw my Isabel! Oh! if ever
the ideal beauty of the ancients, or the dreams we have in childhood of
angels’ faces, were realised in a human countenance, they were in that
of Isabel. There was a sweetness about it I cannot describe; a purity in
every line which breathed alone of heaven. Do you not believe that the
face is the impress of the mind; that our prevailing thoughts gradually
stamp themselves on our countenances, and that the sinless child and the
haggard felon alike carry the mark of their characters written upon
their brows? You do. Yes! God branded Cain as a murderer, but it was
only the brand of his wild, terrible, agonising remorse.
“From the first moment of my seeing Isabel, I felt that I had met with
that for which I had so long sought. The void in my bosom was satisfied.
I had found something holier and brighter than I had deemed earth could
give birth to, and I almost worshipped the ground where she trod. I
loved her with all the poetry and fervor of a first love. She did not
seem to me like others of her sex. There was a holiness cast around her
like the mantle of a seraph, which awed the beholder into a reverential
love. And oh! what bliss it was to gaze upon her face, to hear her
lute-like voice, and to feel that I breathed the same air with herself.
“Isabel was the daughter of a village clergyman, who had been poor
without being dependent. Her mother had been dead for many years; and
her father had followed his wife but a few months before I first met
Isabel.
“How could I help loving such a being? Wealth to me was no object: I
looked not for it in a bride. I sought for one in whom I might confide
every thought, and in finding Isabel my happiness was complete.
“Why should I delay telling the story of my love? Day after day found me
at the cottage of Isabel, and day after day I grew more enraptured with
her artlessness. Together we read in the mornings; and together we
wandered out amidst the beautiful scenery around; and together we sat in
the still evening twilight, when my greatest pleasure was to hear her
sing some of those simple little lays of which her memory preserved such
a store. Ah! those were happy hours,—hours, alas! which can never come
again. From such meetings I would loiter home beneath the summer moon,
with a thousand bright and joyous, yet undefined feelings, thrilling on
every nerve of my frame. And often, as I turned to take a last look at
the little white cottage, embowered in its trees, I thought I could
detect the form of Isabel, standing where I left her as if she still
followed me with her eye.
“It was not long before I declared my love to Isabel, and found that it
was returned with all the fervor and purity of her guileless heart. Oh!
with what rapturous emotions did I hear the first confession of her
sentiments—with what delight did I clasp her hand in mine, as her head
lay upon my bosom—what tumultuous feelings thrilled my soul, as her
dark eyes looked up into my own, with all that purity and depth of
affection which tell that the soul of the gazer is in the look.
“Well, we were married. It was that season of the year in which all
nature puts on her autumn glory, and when hill and plain and valley are
clothed with a garmenture as of a brighter world. The corn was yellowed
for the harvest; the wild flowers were fading from the hill-sides; the
grapes hung down in purple clusters from the old, twisted vines in the
woods; and the birds, that had been used to sing for us, in every grove,
were one by one disappearing, as they took flight for the sunny south.
But could I miss their music while Isabel was by to whisper in her fairy
voice, or cheer me with her low and witching minstrelsy? Was I not
happy—wholly, supremely happy? It was as if I dwelt in an enchanted
land. I forgot, almost, that I was a member of society; saw but little
company; and spent the day with Isabel in rambling around the mountain,
or when confined by the weather to the house, in a thousand little
fireside amusements. We talked of the past, of our plans for the future,
of the hollowness of the great world without, and of that mutual love
for each other which we felt could not be eradicated by the power of a
universe. Isabel was all I had imagined her in my fondest moments. Like
myself, she turned away from the companionship of a selfish world, and
sought only to spend life afar from human strife, secure in the
possession of the one she loved. Alas! little did she think that the
thunder-cloud was hanging, dark and lowering, above us, which would
eventually burst, and bring ruin on our unsheltered heads.
“We saw but little company, I have remarked; but among that little was
one with whom, as subsequent events developed, my destiny was
inextricably woven. He was an old classmate in the University, whom I
had casually met at the neighboring county-town; where he resided in the
capacity of a medical man. Our former intimacy was revived; for Robert
Conway was really a fascinating man. It was not long before he became
intimate with our little family, and, seduced by his plausible demeanor,
I not only engaged him as my family physician, but entrusted him with
the nearest and dearest secrets of my heart. I felt the warmest
friendship for him, and, next to Isabel, there was no one for whom I
would have done so much. I have told you of the poetic nature of my
character; you may have also noticed its warmth; and, in the present
instance, believing I had found a really disinterested friend, I was
hurried away into an infatuation from which I awoke only to find that I
had clasped an adder to my bosom, and that—oh! my God—all my hopes of
life were blasted forever.
“The winter had already set in, when I received a short letter from my
town agent, requesting my immediate presence in the city on business of
the last importance to my fortune. As Isabel was in a weak state of
health, and would not be able to accompany me, I returned an answer,
stating my inability to comply with the summons, and declaring my
willingness to suffer even some pecuniary loss, rather than leave her at
that time.
“In less than a fortnight, however, I received a still more pressing
letter from my correspondent, declaring that my absence had already
prejudiced my fortune, and that nothing but my personal presence could,
in the then distracted state of monetary affairs, preserve myself from
beggary. This was an appeal which, for Isabel’s sake, I could not
resist. That the being whom I loved above myself should be subjected to
the miseries of poverty, was a supposition too harrowing to entertain.
“Never shall I forget the eve of the morning on which I departed. It was
one of surpassing beauty. The landscape without was covered with a
mantle of snow, and the trees were laden with icicles spangled in the
star-light. The heavens were without a cloud, and the innumerable worlds
above, glittered on the blue expanse like jewels on the mantle of a
king. It was, in short, one of those clear, cold nights in early
February, when the very ringing of a sleigh-bell can be heard for miles
across the still expanse of the landscape.
“As Isabel and I stood looking through the casement at the brilliancy of
the starry hosts on high, a melancholy foreboding suddenly shot across
my mind that we were parting to meet no more. I know not how it was, but
the same feeling pervaded the thoughts of Isabel; for as a meteor-star
darted across the sky, and instantly disappeared, she heaved a sigh,
and, turning toward me, said, as she leaned upon my arm, and gazed
confidingly up into my face,—
“‘Do you know, George, that, during all the evening I have been tortured
with a foreboding that our happiness is destined, like yonder
shooting-star, to last only for a while, and then pass away forever? It
may be that this is our last evening. I cannot tell in what shape the
impending evil will come,’ she said, ‘but this I know, that be it what
it may, we shall always love each other, shall we not, George?’
“‘Yes, dearest!’ I replied, kissing her, ‘but dismiss these gloomy
thoughts; they arise only from your ill-health. Believe me, we shall
continue for long, long years to enjoy our present felicity.’ Ah! me,
little did my own feelings coincide with what I said. ‘Cheer up,
dearest, I shall return in a fortnight or so, and by that time shall be
able to assure you that I shall leave you no more.’
“With words like these I attempted to remove the forebodings of Isabel,
but though she smiled faintly in return, I found that I could not wholly
dispel the melancholy of her thoughts. I dreaded the parting on the
morrow, and accordingly, having deceived her as to the hour of my
setting forth, I rose at day-break, kissed her as she lay calmly
sleeping, and, tearing myself from her, entered the mail-stage, and
before the hour when we usually arose, was miles away from our
habitation.
“I reached the city, and found my fortune, indeed, trembling on the
verge of ruin. For some days its preservation engaged every faculty of
my mind, and I found time for nothing else, unless it was to read and
answer the letters I daily received from my sweet wife. The times were
critical. Stocks of every kind—and nearly my whole fortune was vested
in them—were undergoing a fearful depreciation; and one or two heavy
loans which had been made out of my estate, and which completed the
balance of my wealth, were in a most precarious situation. I soon found
it would not only be impossible to settle my affairs so as to rejoin
Isabel at the end of the fortnight, but that I must undertake a journey,
personally, to a southern city, which would delay me at least a month
more; and, accordingly, I penned a hasty note to her on the eve of my
setting out, bidding her look forward, at the expiration of this new
term, to a happy meeting, and informing her at what post-towns I should
look for letters from her.
“I set forth on the ensuing day, but, though I enquired at the various
post-offices along my route, where I expected letters, yet I did not
receive a line from Isabel; and the first epistle which I obtained was a
letter which I found lying for me, on my arrival at the port of my
destination. It had come from P——, and was written prior to Isabel’s
knowledge of my second journey. I have it still by me; every line of it
is graven on my heart; my only prayer is that it may be buried with me,
for alas!—it is the last letter I ever received from Isabel.
“As day after day rolled by without receiving any intelligence from her,
I grew more and more uneasy, until, as the term of my absence drew
toward a close, my sensations approached to agony. A few disappointments
I had borne with fortitude, if not with calmness, for I knew that the
mail was not always regular; but when days grew into weeks, and weeks
had almost grown into months, without the arrival of a single line from
Isabel, either directly from our residence, or indirectly by the way of
P——, nay fears grew insupportable. I was like Prometheus chained to a
rock, and subject to a torture from which there was no escape. At length
I could endure it no longer, but hastily bringing my business to a
close, even at a considerable sacrifice, I set out by rapid journeys
toward my home, without even passing by P——, such was my eagerness to
know what could have been the cause of Isabel’s silence.
“It was on an evening in the latter part of the month of March, when my
jaded horses drew up before the gate of my dwelling. Hastily alighting,
I entered the little lawn, and was soon at my long-sought-for threshold.
But I started back at the sight that met my eyes. The windows were dark
and cheerless; the grass was covered with leaves and broken twigs; the
knobs upon the door were soiled for want of burnishing; and everything
around wore that appearance of loneliness and desolation which marks an
uninhabited house. With a fainting heart I lifted the knocker. The
sounds echoed with hollow distinctness through the house; but no one
replied to the summons. Again and again I repeated it; and again and
again I was unsuccessful. With a heart wild with the most terrible fears
I passed to the back part of the house; but there, too, I found the same
silence and desolation. It was like the house of the dead. Unable longer
to contain myself I rushed back to my carriage, and with an air that
made the coachman believe me insane, ordered him to drive to a
neighboring farm-house.
“‘Who’s there?’ asked a female voice from inside of the cottage, in
answer to my impetuous knock.
“‘I, madam, do you not know me? But where, in heaven’s name, is Isabel?
where is my wife?’ I exclaimed, seeing by the astonished looks of the
woman, that she, too, believed me out of my senses, ‘what is the matter
at my house, that I find it closed?’
“‘Oh! la,’ answered the woman, curtseying as she held the candle to my
face, ‘you are the gentleman that lived at the big house nigh to the
stage-road, across the creek. Gracious me! how wild you look. But, sit
down, sir; we ain’t very nice just now, for baby’s sick, and we can’t
afford help—’
“‘Woman,’ I exclaimed, vehemently interrupting her, and seizing her
fiercely by the arm, ‘in God’s name tell me all. Answer me at once—is
my wife dead?’ and though my voice grew husky, it trembled not, as I put
the fearful question.
“‘Dead! why indeed I don’t know, sir,’ she answered, tremblingly, awed
by my wild demeanor, ‘for it’s been nigh a month since she left here to
join her husband.’
“‘To join _me_!’
“‘Yes, sir. Why didn’t you,’ she asked, perceiving surprise in every
feature of my countenance, ‘write for her? The neighbors all say so, and
Dr. Conway went to see her safe to town; though it’s queer, now, since I
think on’t, that he ain’t got back agin by this time.’
“‘My God,’ I exclaimed, staggering back, as a fearful suspicion flashed
across my mind, ‘was I reserved for this? Oh! Isabel, Isabel—’ But I
could say no more. My brain reeled; my temples throbbed to bursting; a
strange, swimming sensation was in my ears; every thing appeared to
whirl around and around me; and, losing all consciousness, I fell back,
senseless, on the floor.
“When I recovered my recollection, I was leaning against the bed, and a
group, composed of the woman to whom I had been speaking, her husband,
and a farm boy, stood around me. My cravat was untied, and my brow was
wet with water.
“‘My good woman,’ I said faintly, ‘I feel better now. Go on with your
story; I can bear to hear the worst. God help me, though,’ I continued,
placing my hand upon my forehead, ‘it has well nigh drove me mad.’
“She had, however, but little to tell, beyond what I knew already. But
her husband added, that after my departure, he had noticed that not a
day passed without his seeing the vehicle of Dr. Conway in front of my
house; and that, too, long after the returning health of my wife
rendered professional visits unnecessary. He had thought, he said, it
singular, but, as he was not given to gossip, he had kept silence. About
a month since, he added, the house had been shut up, and, under pretence
of rejoining me, Isabel had set out, no one knew whither, with my old
classmate.
“Oh! who can tell the feelings that, during this recital, and for days
after, raged in my bosom? The evidence was unquestionable, irresistible,
damning in its character. And yet I could not—though every one else
did—believe Isabel to be guilty. She was too pure, too artless, too
ardently attached to me. But, then again, how could I resist the
testimony staring me in the face? The visits of Conway; his fascinating
manners; the false report of my having written for her; and her flight
with the seducer, no one knew whither, were circumstances which my
reason could not answer, whatever my assurance of her love might
persuade me. Who knows not the pangs, the torments of uncertainty? And
day after day, while my enquiries of the fugitives were being pushed in
every quarter, did I fluctuate between a confidence in Isabel’s purity,
and the most fearful suspicions of her faith. It was a terrible
struggle, that one in her favor. But at length, as every successive
informant brought new proofs of her infidelity, I settled down into the
agonising belief of her ruin.
“Yet I did not give up my pursuit of the fugitives. No—my God! how
could I forget my shame? The dearest hopes of my heart had been
overthrown, and she, in whom I had trusted as man never before trusted,
had wantonly deserted me—aye! even while my own kisses were still, as
it were, warm upon her cheek. I had sacrificed everything at the shrine
of her love; was this the return my devotedness had met with? What! she
whom I had pressed to my bosom as a wife,—she whom I had made the
incarnation of all ideal loveliness, to be—oh! that I should have to
speak the word—a mere wanton. God of my fathers! was this the destiny
to which I was condemned?
“I am calmer now. I must hurry on, for my breath is rapidly failing me.
My brow burns: bathe it—there, that will do. And open the window. There
is something in this gentle, balmy breeze, fragrant with a thousand
odors, which calls back the memory of happy days, and almost makes me
weep. God grant that none of you may ever suffer as I have suffered.
“I pass by three months, three long and weary months, during which I
received no tidings of the fugitives. They had never been in P——; even
my epistle announcing my departure to the south had never been received
by Isabel, but had been sent, with most of the ensuing ones, as a dead
letter to Washington. I traced the fugitives only for a single stage;
there every clue to them was lost. At length I was about giving over in
despair, when chance revealed what I had so long sought for in vain.
“Did you ever visit an Insane Hospital? You start. Ah! you know nothing
of its horrors unless you have seen your dearest friend writhing beneath
the keeper’s lash, or chained like a felon by his infernal fetters. Do
you understand me? No! the truth is too horrible for you to suspect.
Well, then, it was in visiting one of these loathsome prison-houses that
I saw and recognised, in one of its miserable victims, my own, my lost,
my now suffering Isabel.
“You need not think that I shall grow phrenzied by this harrowing
recital. I have thought of it too often, and endured subsequent agonies
too great, to suffer myself now to lose my reason in reciting it. But
neither will I dwell upon that awful meeting. Suffice it to say that all
my anger against Isabel departed when I saw her, who had once lain pure
and trusting on my bosom, confined as a maniac, in a public hospital.
Oh! I would give worlds could I shut out that horrid sight.
“I soon learnt all from the keeper. Isabel had been placed there nearly
_four_ months before, by a woman I instantly recognised from his
description, to be the one I had procured at my marriage to wait upon
Isabel. She had stated that the patient was a half sister, and had left
an address where she might be found.
“As the rules of the establishment precluded all hope of my removing
Isabel, in spite of my protestations that I was her husband, unless I
brought her pretended relative, to corroborate my account, I was
compelled to rest satisfied with the melancholy pleasure of knowing,
that her disease should receive at my expense, the attention of the best
physicians, and with the renewed hope of discovering her waiting woman,
and thus removing my wife from what I felt was worse than death. Guilty
as she was, she was still my wife, and I could not utterly desert her.
“I entertained little doubt of discovering this woman, although as might
have been supposed, her address was fictitious. I had, in fact, a means
of finding her out which I did not scruple to adopt. She had been an
English woman, and had often boasted of rich relations across the
Atlantic, to whom in her simple vanity, she one day expected to be
heiress. As I knew that, at most, she could only have connived at my
wife’s disgrace, and as I knew also that money was the touch-stone of
every avenue to her heart, I had no doubt whatever as to the success of
the scheme I intended to put in execution. It was simply this: I caused
an advertisement to be extensively circulated, describing her and her
relationship to her English cousin, and informing her that if she would
apply at a certain office in P——, she would hear of something to her
advantage. The bait took. She came in person; I was instantly sent for,
and confronted her. But to come at once to the conclusion of this part
of my story; she owned, upon my threats, and promises of forgiveness
with a large sum of money if she would confess all, that she could
satisfy every particular as yet unknown to me, of this melancholy
tragedy.
“She stated, in effect, that Conway, from the first moment he had beheld
Isabel, had entertained a passion for her, which neither the favor he
had received from me, nor her own purity, nor the impassable barriers
against its gratification, had enabled him to conquer. Indeed it is
questionable if he ever cared to do so. Wilful, headstrong, remorseless,
and careless of every thing but the gratification of his desires, he was
perhaps one of the most hardened villains that ever cursed mankind; a
villain the more dangerous, because his fascinating manners enabled him
to wear the guise of virtue, and perpetrate his infamous designs without
suspicion. But in laying himself out to seduce Isabel, he capped the
climax of his villainy. For a long time, however, he only attempted to
gain the good will of Isabel, and to seduce by large presents, her
waiting woman to his side. As yet he had not ventured to breathe a word
of his unholy passion to its object. But my departure opened new hopes.
Flattered and deceived by the attentions paid him by Isabel,—attentions
which I now learned with the wildest joy, were only paid to him because
he was my friend,—he now resolved to make a bold throw in his perilous
game. He knew my writing well. In a word, he forged a letter purporting
to be from me, to Isabel, requesting her to join me in P——, under his
escort; and by these means he placed my unhappy wife wholly in his
power. As she would not travel without her waiting woman, he was forced
to make her his confidant, and purchase her secrecy by large sums of
money. But why linger on this awful history? Demons themselves would
shudder at its relation. I cannot—yes! I must tell it. Repulsed by
Isabel with scorn, when, on the second day, he ventured to declare his
passion, he told her, with the mockery of a fiend, as he pointed to the
lonely inn where they then were, that resistance was useless.
Yes!—here, hold down your ear, closer, let me whisper it only; he used
force; God of heaven, there was none to save her from the monster’s
fangs!
“There—there—it is over: unhand me I say. But forgive me: I am well
nigh crazed: I know not what I do. Some of that drink. Bless you for
fanning my poor, aching brow; I believe sometimes that I am becoming a
child again. Those tears have relieved me. I am so weak now that they
come involuntarily into my eyes, but time was when it seemed as if they
had been dried up forever at their fountain, and when, in my unutterable
agony, I would have given worlds to weep.
“I forgot to tell you that I felled that hag to the ground like an ox,
when she told me that fearful tale. I could not help it. A woman! and
stand by merciless! Oh! my God it was too much.
“And Isabel then was innocent. Aye! it had driven her mad. Oh! I could
have crept on my hands and knees to her feet, for a whole life-time; if
by so doing I could only have won from her forgiveness, for suspecting
for a single moment, her angel purity. But it was not so to be. It was
my fitting punishment. In the inscrutable designs of that Providence,
before whose bar I shall so soon appear, it was decreed that I should
never more see Isabel in the possession of her reason. She died. I had
only time to hurry from that strange recital to behold her last moments.
Never, never shall I forget that sight.
“She was evidently in the last stage of her malady when I entered the
chamber where she lay; and as she turned her wild, and wasted, but still
beautiful countenance toward me as the door opened, I burst into a flood
of tears, and could scarcely stagger to a seat at her bedside. I
suffered more—will you believe it?—in that moment than I had ever done
before. Our first meeting; our early love; our auspicious union; our
days of after felicity; that long to be remembered night of our
separation; and all the hideous succession of ensuing events whirled
through my brain as if a wild, shadowy phantasmagoria was revolving,
with the swiftness of thought, around me. But more than all my injustice
toward her smote me to the heart. Could I look upon that emaciated face,
in every line of which was stamped sufferings the most extreme, and not
feel its silent though unconscious reproaches? I bent over and kissed
her cheek. As I did so a hot tear-drop fell upon her face.
“‘Who is it weeps?’ faintly said my dying wife, looking vacantly into my
face, ‘ah! I know you not. You are not him. When will he come, when will
he come?’ she continued, in a plaintive tone, drawing tears from every
eye. She was dreaming still that she awaited my return at our
far-off-home. Thank heaven! all else was forgot.
“At this moment one of the physicians entered the room. Noiseless as he
was, her quick ear detected his footstep. She turned quickly around: a
look of disappointment stole over her face. She shook her head
mournfully.
“‘Why don’t he come?’ she murmured, ‘ah! he has forgotten Isabel. Well,’
she continued, in a tone that almost broke my heart, ‘he may desert me,
but never can I desert him.’
“‘Isabel—Isabel,’ I ejaculated, unable longer to contain myself, ‘for
the love of heaven speak not so. Isabel, dear Isabel, do you know me?
Oh! you do. Say, only say you do: one word. Oh! my God, she will never
awake to reason.’
“‘Did you talk of Isabel?’ she said, looking inquiringly up into my
face, and for an instant I fancied the light of intellect shone across
those pale, wan features. But alas! if so, it faded like it came. In
another moment her eyes assumed their former vacant, yet sorrowful and
imploring expression, and turning away she began to sing a snatch of an
old song I had taught her in the days of our courtship.
“It flashed across me that, by singing the following verse, I might
possibly touch a link in her memory, and recall her to reason. I
mentioned it to the physicians. They implored me to do so. I obeyed.
“‘Who sang that?’ suddenly exclaimed the sufferer, starting half up in
bed, and looking eagerly around, ‘it seems, I do believe, as if it was
the voice of George,’ and lifting up her hand to command silence, she
bent her ear down to catch the sounds.
“There was not a dry eye in the room. My own tears came fast and thick;
and my utterance became so choked that I could not proceed.
“The hopes we had again entertained by her sudden question, seemingly so
rational, were the next instant dissipated, by her dropping her hand,
and sinking back upon the pillows, in a state approaching to
insensibility. Need I delay? From that stupor, gradually becoming deeper
and more profound, she never awoke; or rather awoke only in that better
world where she found relief from all her sorrows, and where, if earthly
suffering, or earthly purity can avail aught, she is now one of the
brightest of the redeemed.
“Ah! you may well shed tears. It were enough to make angels weep, that
death-bed! Night and day, in illness or health, here or in another
continent, that closing scene of her life has been present to me, urging
me on to avenge her wrongs.
“We buried her. Far away from the spot where she died, amid the green
old hills of her birth, and in the quiet, little church-yard where her
father and mother slept, we laid her down to her rest; and my last
prayer is that I too may be buried there, side and side with that sweet
suffering angel.
“I was from that moment her Avenger. I sought out her waiting woman
again, and learning from her all the information she could give me
respecting the retreat to which Conway had fled, I set out in his
pursuit. But her information was too scanty to avail me aught. Conway
had left her money enough to bear his victim to P——, and then, alarmed
at the catastrophe, fled she knew not whither. Once or twice since,
however, he had remitted her small sums of money by mail, enjoining on
her continued secrecy. The letters were post-marked New York.
“Thither I went. But all my enquiries were useless. After a search of a
month I was no nearer to the attainment of my object, than on the day
when I first set forth in pursuit of Conway.
“But did my zeal abate? How could it when that death-bed scene was
ringing its cry for vengeance night and day in my ears? No. I had stood
beside the grave of Isabel, and vowed to be her Avenger: I had repeated
that vow, night and morning since; and I would spend the last cent of my
fortune, and go to the uttermost end of the earth, but what I would yet
fulfil the oath.
“At length I obtained a clue to Conway’s retreat. He had sailed from New
York five months before for London, under an assumed name. I now felt
sure of my prey.
“On my arrival at that vast metropolis, I instituted a cautious enquiry
after his present abode, which I felt certain would ultimately place him
within my grasp. Meantime I began a course of daily practice at a
neighboring pistol-gallery, and soon became so proficient that I could
split a ball, at twelve paces, nine times out of ten, upon the edge of a
knife. Nor did I neglect fencing. I became by constant attention an
invincible swordsman.
“But months, aye! years elapsed, and still he evaded my grasp. He
hurried from one land to another, under a dozen disguises, but though
delayed by my anxiety to be perfectly certain of the road he had
adopted, I was ever like the blood-hound on his path. Fly where he
would, the AVENGER OF BLOOD was behind him. Thrice he flew to Paris,
once he hurried to Rome, twice he hid himself in the Russian capital,
four times he visited England under different names, two several times
he crossed and re-crossed the Atlantic, and once for nearly a whole
year, during which he went on a voyage to Calcutta, I almost lost sight
of him. But I recovered the clue at his return. Years had only whetted
my appetite for revenge. My determination was when I met him, to goad
him by insult into an honorable encounter, and if this could not be
done, to shoot him in the street like a dog.
“Fortune favored me at length. It was scarcely a month after his return
from the East Indies, when I learned that three days before he had set
out for Paris. Thither, like the angel of death, I pursued him.
“It was the second night of my arrival at Paris, when I stepped into a
noted gambling-house in the Rue des ——. The apartment was brilliantly
lighted, and in the ostentatious luxury of its furniture reminded one of
a fairy palace. It was densely crowded. I sauntered up to a table where
they were playing _vingt et un_, and carelessly threw down a guinea upon
the chance. I won. I was about turning indifferently away, when an
individual approached the table, whom, even under his disguise, I
recognised, in a moment, to be Conway. He threw down his stake. At that
instant his eye caught mine. Never had I seen human countenance change
so fearfully as his did during the instant of recognition. It quivered
in every nerve. He turned paler than ashes. I looked at him, for a
moment, sternly and calmly. His eye fell before mine. In an instant,
however, he recovered, in a measure, his equanimity, and turning away
with an air of affected indifference, whistled a careless tune. I
stepped up to him.
“‘Dr. Conway,’ said I, ‘you are a scoundrel.’
“‘Sir, sir,’ stammered the abashed villain in French, affecting not to
know me, ‘you mistake your man. _I_ am Monsieur De Rivers, at your
service.’
“‘Monsieur De Rivers then, if you please,’ said I, tauntingly, ‘I
congratulate you on understanding a language which you affect not to be
able to speak.’ The villain crimsoned and was abashed. ‘But think not
you shall thus escape. _You are my man_; and without regard to the name
under which at present you choose to go, I pronounce you again to be a
scoundrel.’
“‘I—I,’ stammered Conway, ‘know you not. The gentleman is mad,’ he
said, with a faint smile of contempt, turning to the crowd which had now
gathered around us. A scornful look was the only reply. One of them even
went so far as to say, shrugging his shoulders,
“‘Sacre—why don’t you fight? Can’t you see the gentleman _means_ to
insult you.’
“‘Crazy, did you say, villain?’ I exclaimed, stepping up to Conway, ‘I
am sane enough to see that you are a coward as well as a scoundrel—do
you understand me now?’ and deliberately taking him by the nose, I spat
in his face.
“‘By God, sir,’ said he, his face blanched with rage, making him, for
one moment, forget his fears, ‘this is too much. I am at your service.
Here is my card. When shall it be?’
“‘The sooner the better,’ I hissed in his ear, as he turned to leave the
room. ‘Let it be to-night.’
“‘Gentlemen,’ interposed a French officer, whom I knew casually,
approaching us at my beck, ‘this matter had better be settled at once.
Had it not?’ he continued, turning to Conway, or rather to an
acquaintance of his, whom my enemy had singled out from the crowd as we
left the room.
“‘Yes! let it be at once—here,’ exclaimed Conway, almost foaming with
rage.
“‘At once then,’ said the two seconds, simultaneously, ‘step this way.’
“We followed as they lead; and passing up a staircase before us, we soon
found ourselves in a small, dimly lighted room, about twelve feet
square.
“‘We shall be free from observation here,’ said my second, as he closed
and double-locked the door.
“During this brief remark the other officer had been engaged in an
earnest conversation with his principal; and after a silence of some
minutes on our part, he crossed the room, and addressed a few words to
my second. After the other had ceased speaking, he continued silent for
a few minutes. At length, however, he said,
“‘Well, I will make your proposition;’ and turning to me he continued,
‘I suppose you are scarcely willing to apologise. The demand comes from
your opponent.’
“‘Never,’ said I.
“‘Then the affair must proceed.’
“‘Gentlemen,’ said Conway’s second, ‘how do you fight? As you are the
challenged party the choice is with you!’
“‘With pistols—at once—in this room,’ answered my second.
“I observed the cheek of Conway blanch at these words, and his eye
became wild and unsettled. He muttered something about the police, the
possibility of an interruption, and the unseasonableness of the hour.
Even his own second could not restrain an expression of disgust at his
cowardice.
“‘I can scarcely hold a pistol, much less hit a mark with one,’
whispered Conway to his second; but in the death-like silence the remark
was heard distinctly throughout the room.
“‘Sacre,’ muttered the officer addressed, but checking his anger, he
turned around, and asked our party if we should be put up across the
room.
“‘No,’ said I, ‘Dr. Conway has declared he knows nothing of the use of
the weapon I have chosen. Villain as he is, I do not wish to take
advantage of him. Let us fire across this table,’ said I, touching one
about four feet wide with my foot, ‘or if that will not suit him, we
will cut for the highest card, and the loser shall bare his breast to
the pistol of the other.’
“‘My God! do you mean to murder me?’ said Conway, trembling like an
aspen, and scarcely able to articulate.
“‘Murder you! No, miscreant, though _you_ have murdered one dearer to me
than life—one, whom friendship, if not gratitude should have
preserved—one who now lies in her early grave; while you, for years
since her death, have been insulting man and God by your continued
existence.
“‘What do you choose?’ asked my second sternly, as soon as I had ceased,
‘it were better for all that this matter should be closed at once.’
“‘We cut for the chance,’ said Conway’s second.
“The cards were brought, shuffled, and placed upon the table. I signed
to Conway to take one. He stepped hurriedly up, and with a trembling
hand, drew. It was a king. A smile of sardonic triumph lighted up every
feature of his countenance. My second looked aghast. Yet, in that
moment, my confidence did not forsake me; not a nerve quivered, as I
advanced proudly to the table and drew my card. _It was an ace._
“‘Oh! my God, it is all over,’ almost shrieked the miserable Conway,
flinging his card down in despair, ‘is there no hope?’ he said, turning
wildly to his second, ‘oh! shew me a chance,’ he continued, addressing
me, ‘for my life. Don’t murder me in cold blood. Don’t—don’t—don’t,’
and he fell on his knees before me, raising his hands imploringly to me,
while the big drops of sweat rolled from his face.
“‘Take your place across the table,’ said I sternly to him, ‘put a
pistol into his hands. Villain as he is, he is too miserable a coward to
be shot down unresisting—though he would have granted me no such favor
had the chance been his.’
“They placed him in his position. No words were spoken. Not many seconds
elapsed before the word was given, and we both fired simultaneously. I
felt a slight, sharp puncture in my side; and I knew I was wounded. But
as the smoke wreathed away from before me, I beheld Conway leap toward
the ceiling convulsively, and fall, the next instant, dead across the
table. He had been shot through the heart. Isabel was AVENGED.
“I fled from Paris. I reached here, saw you, have adjusted my affairs
under your supervision, and am dying of that wound.”
Reader, that night he expired.
D.
Philadelphia, December, 1840.
* * * * *
LANGUAGE OF THE WILD FLOWERS.
BY THOMAS DUNN ENGLISH, M. D.
_I. Solanum Dulcamara._ Deadly Nightshade.
DEATH.
I hear thy step afar—
I see the flashing of thy blade
Out-blazing like a meteor star,
Thine eyes are peering from the shade,
Burning with smouldering flame;
Thy voice is as a woman’s wail,
Thy face is bloodless all and pale,
A mockery to fame.
Thou sportest thee a shad’wy robe—
Thy fingers grasp an air-built globe—
A mighty scorn is on thy lip,
Haught skeleton!
Thy wrath is straining on the slip
Unearthly one!
Fire leaves thy nostrils—plague thy breath;
Fear is thy handmaid—thou art Death!
Smile not so grimly—though an hour
May find me powerless in thy pow’r,
And subject me to thy control,—
’Twill be my body—not my soul,
There victor, I defy thee.
For though thou mayest seize my form,
Devote my body to the worm—
And all the grave’s corruption—HE,
The maker both of thee and me,
Decreeth to deny thee
Presumptuous one! all power to inherit,
That portion of his breath which is my spirit.
_II. Sambucus Canadensis._ Elder.
BE COMPASSIONATE.
The wind blows cold—yon poor, old man
Seeks pity for his woe,
For naught hath he to bear him on,
Though a long, long way to go,
All houseless, homeless, weak and tired,
While friends are far away,
His clothes are tattered—locks are white—
Oh! pity him, I pray.
His wife is dead—his children gone,
He knoweth not where but far;
The sun’s bright light he seeth not,
Nor light of moon nor star.
For God hath taken sight away,
Hath bent him as you see;
And made his limbs as thin and weak
As those of a withered tree.
A very little from your wealth,
Some coppers more or few’r—
Will get him a morsel of bread to eat,
And cannot make you poor.
Give alms! the memory will be
A balm unto thy heart,
A spring to thy limbs—a sight to thine eye—
And joy to ne’er depart.
Oh! curl not thy proud lip, nor turn
Thy form away in pride;
As _he_ is, _you_ may be e’er long,
When woes of life betide.
Then as a wearied, blasted man,
From door to door you go—
You’ll think with tears of when you scorned
The humble blind man’s woe.
_III. Juniperus Virginiana._ Cedar.
WINTER.
The winter has come, and the skaters are here
With a falchion of steel
On each manly heel,
To strike the ice with a stroke of fear;
And to make the victim the story tell,
With a voice as clear as a tinkling bell.
The winter has come, and he howls at the door,
And puffing his cheeks,
He whistles and shrieks,—
A shriek of ill-will to the suffering poor,
That maketh the widow clasp her sons,
And huddle together her shiv’ring ones.
The winter has come, and the sorrow besides,
And the poor man’s breast
Can know of no rest,
While his life’s troubled torrent onward glides,
But when ’tis exhausted, the poor will share
A place with the rich, and no winter is there.
Philadelphia, December, 1840.
* * * * *
MY PROGENITORS.
BY S. W. WHELPLEY, A. M.
Mr. Lowman in his treatise on the civil government of the Hebrews,
remarks, that their careful attention to genealogy was a distinguishing
trait in their national policy. From considering the Hebrews who glory
in their descent from the most renowned patriarchs, I was led to reflect
on the probable influence which the same custom would have upon other
nations. Indeed I have often admired the general indifference of mankind
to the names and history of their ancestors; especially considering the
veneration which all men feel for every thing that wears the marks of
antiquity.
From a few obvious principles I shall endeavor to state the benefits
which I consider would result to mankind from the universal prevalence
of the custom of keeping an exact genealogy in families. It would be a
perpetual source of entertainment and pleasure. Who would not feel
gratified to look back upon the line of his ancestors, and see their
names, characters, occupations, place of residence, and time when they
lived? They would also open numerous and extensive sources of friendly
attachment, by closing the ancient alliances of interest, honor,
consanguinity and friendship, which subsisted between our forefathers,
who perhaps fought side by side in battles, ploughed the seas together,
or shared the common danger of exploring and settling new countries.
Genealogical study would operate as a stimulus to laudable ambition, and
would enkindle a sense of honor. If a man’s ancestors were mean and low,
he would often be struck with the animating thought of raising the
reputation of his race. If they were high and honorable, he would, at
times, be jealous of their honor, and feel strongly prompted to emulate
their virtues.
Could every man trace back his line, it would level many useless
distinctions; for it would appear, that some who are ostentatious of
their descent and blood, have beggars, bandits, and the humblest
cottagers for whole series of links in their chain. That others who are
now low and indigent, could look back to lords, princes, and monarchs,
who dwelt in “cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces.” In fine, it would
appear that the descending line of generations is ever wavering, now
elevated, now depressed. The grandfathers and grandchildren of lords may
have been porters, footpads, or slaves.
The other evening, while investigating a knotty point, I prosed myself
into a deep sleep, and dreamed out the sequel. It would be better for
many metaphysicians, moral philosophers, and writers of all classes, if
they did the same.
I thought I was still pondering on the subject of Genealogy, and
considering with what curiosity and pleasure I could look back on the
line of my ancestors to the grand progenitors of our race, when suddenly
there appeared before me a winged fantastic figure, answering in some
measure to the description of Iris. Her flowing robes were of various
and varying colors; her eye was penetrating but never fixed; and her
aspect might be compared to the shade and light wandering over the folds
and margin of a summer cloud. I knew her instantly to be one of the airy
powers that preside over dreams.
She informed me that she was empowered to give me a view of _my
ancestors_, and bade me attend her. Not knowing whither she intended to
conduct me, or in what form of vision I was to be enwrapt, a chill of
terror and ineffable awe rivetted me to the spot. Turning eastward she
beckoned me with her hand, and with easy volition, we rose to the region
of the clouds. We continued to move with inconceivable speed, till the
Atlantic rolled beneath our feet, and we directly alighted on Plinlimmon
in Wales.
I was now a little recovered from my surprise, and was delighted to see
_the venerable seat of my forefathers_. I could evidently discern the
meanderings of the Severn and Dee, although by distance diminished to a
thread. Numberless villages and flourishing farms lay extended in
various directions, and I looked with great curiosity over the rocky
hills and blue ridges, where a hardy race of men were once able to
resist the impetuous armies of the Henrys and Edwards.
Here my conductress presented me with a perspective of most wonderful
powers. It would not only magnify objects to their natural size, but
this it would do even at any assignable distance. Within the external
tube was a sliding barrel, graduated into sixty circles. My guide
informed me that a circle denoted a century, and that when the barrel
was drawn to the first circle, I might look back one century; and so of
all the rest.
Upon this she drew the barrel to the second circle, and presented me the
instrument, impatient to try its astonishing powers. Looking through it
I saw a face of things entirely new. James the I. had just ascended the
throne of the United Kingdoms. I was looking around to observe the
appearance of the country which had flourished long under the happy
reign of Queen Elizabeth. My guide asked me if I could discern a cottage
at the foot of the mountain. “That,” said she, “is the dwelling of your
ancestors in the male line.” The moment I espied the cottage, which was
low and poor, an aged man came out. His figure was tall and erect—his
head quite gray—his look was grave, forbidding, and shaded with
melancholy.
My conductress succinctly told me that he had long since buried his
wife, and all his children, excepting one son, who was then at sea—that
his father was killed in battle, and that his grandfather had emigrated
when a youth from Germany. Without further words she took from me the
perspective, and the scene of modern times changed.
We immediately mounted on the wing, and again moved eastward. As we
passed over London I was not a little gratified by a transient glance of
that majestic city, the noblest in Europe, and most commercial in the
world. The forest of towers, the waters, all white with sails, and the
country all covered with villages, by turns caught my eye; but I
travelled too much in the manner of young noblemen, who take the tour of
Europe, to make very particular remarks; since our route from Plinlimmon
to the banks of the Danube took up but about five minutes. We now stood
on a rising ground, having on our right the city of Presburgh, and on
our left majestically rolled the Danube. The country appeared beautiful,
but I noticed, with regret, various vestiges of tyranny and misery in
the appearance of an abject multitude.
The fantastic power now drew out the third circle, and looking through
the perspective I beheld a scene in the reign of Maximillian the I. The
comparison was truly at the expense of the present day: a bold and manly
race appeared, in general of larger size and nobler form. Their thoughts
seemed full of freedom, and their general air was martial and
independent. With something that appeared like the first dawn of modern
refinement, there was a strong tinge of unpolished and simple manners.
While I stood in high expectation every moment of seeing another of my
ancient fathers, there appeared a royal personage at the head of a
splendid retinue of chariots and horsemen. It was the emperor
Maximillian himself, who, at that time was at Presburgh, and was on a
party of pleasure that morning on the banks of the Danube. I gazed at
his majesty, who was a man of uncommonly fine presence, and said, how
happy should I be should he prove to be the man I am in quest of.
My guide soon dashed my hopes, by desiring me to observe the coachman of
the last carriage,—“That,” said she, “is the man!” I began to fear that
my blood
“Had crept thro’ scoundrels
Since the flood.”
I observed that I had always understood my ancestors were from Germany,
but never knew till now that they were _coachmen_—she smiled and bade
me not be disheartened. He was a perfect Scythian, and seemed to look
like one of the vilest of the human race; there being not discernible in
his features any sentiments of honor or humanity. “He is,” continued my
guide, “the son of a Tartar by a German mother. His father was one of
the wandering tribes that dwelt, at times, near the Bosphorus in
Circassia, and on the borders of the Caspian sea.” I wanted no more,
but, delivering her perspective, I stepped back into 1840, and was more
than ever struck with the wide difference which the flight of three
centuries had made in one of the most warlike nations of the world.
Germany! how art thou fallen? Thy councils are divided—thy heroic
spirit fled—thy warriors are become women! I consoled myself, however,
that my father was a German coachman in the fourteenth, and not in the
nineteenth century.
We rose once more, and passed over rivers, solitudes, morasses, forests,
lakes and mountains, and at length alighted on an eminence near the
mouth of the river Wolga. My guide, not leaving it optional, drew the
glass to the sixth circle. I shivered in every nerve to think that my
forefathers for such a period of years, had lived in the dreary regions
of mental darkness. But could they have been tossed less at random, or
enjoyed a milder sky in any of those countries where Rome had once
displayed her eagle?
The Wolga is one of the largest rivers in the world. It rises in the
Russian empire, and receiving a multitude of tributary streams, it winds
a course of three thousand miles, and pours an immense volume into the
Caspian sea. Through its whole course, it is said, there is not a
cataract. It rolls majestically, with gentle current, through extensive,
rich and beautiful plains, diffusing every where luxuriant vegetation
and exhaustless abundance. Near the sea, it branches and forms a number
of pleasant and beautiful islands.
On one of these we stood, and, for a moment, surveyed the romantic
scenery. Near us was a Russian castle and garrison, and the island,
which had been used as a military station since the reign of Peter the
Great, was guarded by strong fortifications, and enriched with an
infinite number of boats and vessels, and defended by ships of war and
gallies.
I now looked through the glass, which threw me back six hundred years.
How surprising was the change! One half of the island was a forest. The
other half was occupied by a spacious camp, containing innumerable wheel
carriages of singular forms. Before me lay a great army marshalled for
parade. I was struck with their uncommon dress and armor; and presently
more so, by a sight of their council chief, who occupied an elevated
platform, and seemed at that moment engaged in deep consultation.
At the head three seats were raised above the rest, on which sat three
personages of the greatest dignity. The central one, said my guide, is
none other than Genghis Khan, and in him you behold your ancestor. He is
now holding a council of war, and deliberating on an invasion of China.
But you have little reason to boast of your descent from one who has
destroyed fifty thousand cities. His tyranny and the perfidy of his
queen have roused a conspiracy, which, though it will not destroy him,
will imbitter his future life. Beneath a dark brow his fierce and
jealous eye seemed to dart the fires of glory and valor into every
surrounding breast. Yet he looked like one on whose heart the worm of
care unceasingly preys, and who is inwardly consumed by the fires of
ambition.
Leaving him, however, to his fate, my guide gave the signal of
departure. We crossed the Caspian sea, and the Circassian mountains. The
dominions of the ancient Medes and now of the Persians, passed beneath
us. In a few moments we alighted on a hill which commanded a view of the
fair and delectable vales of Sheeraz, the most celebrated province in
Persia. Sublime conceptions struck my fancy as we were travelling the
region of the clouds, when I saw stretched out on one side the vast
ridges of Mount Taurus, and far distant on the other, the plains where
Darius and Alexander fought. A sigh rose at the remembrance of the great
cities and powerful empires which once flourished there.
Before me was the vale of Sheeraz, for many miles in extent. The
surrounding mountains were covered with vines, and widely extended
prospects of rural felicity in that happy region. Innumerable flocks and
herds were scattered over the hills, the shepherds and shepherdesses
looked gay, all nature was blooming, and the Persians, brave, polite,
and elegant in every age, seemed the happiest people upon the face of
the earth. The sun shone with peculiar smiles from the cloudless azure,
and far remote the calm billows of the Persian Gulf, drew a silver line
on the horizon.
On this hill, said my conductress, once dwelt your ancient fathers. At
this she drew the glass to the twelfth circle, making from the Wolga a
transit of 600, and from this of 1200 years. I looked eagerly through
the prospective, and there arose before me a scene of unspeakable horror
and desolation. An immense horde of barbarians was ravaging and
destroying the whole country. Their faces flashed with fury. They were
swift and fierce as tigers. The villages and hamlets, as far as could be
seen were in flames; heaven was obscured by smoke; age, infancy,
innocence, and beauty, were mingled in indiscriminate slaughter; and
blood poured in all directions.
They rushed into a house which stood near me, dragged forth its
inhabitants, and cut them in pieces. The parents and the children were
mangled and slain together. A little infant only was left, and that, to
all appearance, by accident. It was flung upon the ground, and lay
wallowing in the blood of its parents, weeping at its fall, although
insensible to its deplorable condition. Behold, said my guide, _your
ancient father_. The existence of numerous generations depends on his
preservation, and from him multitudes shall descend. Astonished at man’s
inexplicable destiny, I gazed, admired, and wept.
At length a female barbarian came up. She was black, filthy, deformed,
hideously savage, and resembled a harpy. She spied the weeping infant,
and a sensation of humanity stole upon her heart. Kind nature, and
compassion to man, has implanted those heavenly sensibilities in the
rudest and most degenerate of her children. She took up the babe, and
seemed to sooth it. She wiped away its tears and blood, laid it in her
bosom and darted out of sight. The glass dropped from my hand, and I
stood rivetted in silent astonishment.
That child, resumed my companion, is carried into the bosom of Scythia;
there becomes first a robber, then a chieftain, afterward a sage. His
descendants dwelt at times in India, in the islands, in Tonquin, in
China, in Tartary; and a last issue, as you have seen, was the conqueror
of Asia. O Providence! how unsearchable are thy ways! What beings of
light, what fiends of darkness, are among thy children. O listen to the
fervent aspirations of a worm, and if thine ear is not inexorable, smile
on their destiny.
As the glass dropped, the modern vale of Sheeraz returned and as soon
vanished. Passing over Palestine, the Levant, Archipelago, Greece and
Italy, our next stand was on the banks of the Tiber, among ruined
monuments of ancient Rome. The remains of arches, towers and temples,
porticos and palaces, where the Cæsars and Scipios once lived, lay
before me. A gloomy grandeur covered the scene with awful solemnity, and
filled my soul with sensations equally sublime and melancholy.
“There the vile foot of every clown,
Tramples the sons of honor down,
Beggars with awful ashes sport,
And tread the Cæsars to the dirt.”
My airy governess now drew the glass beyond the eighteenth circle. I
looked through it and beheld Rome at the zenith of her ancient
greatness. A forest of towers covered her seven hills. Never, even in
imagination, had I beheld so grand a scene. Her temples, domes and
structures, rose and expanded on my view, and at once displayed the
glories of that queen of cities. Noble and beautiful villas covered as
far as the eye could see, the banks of the Tiber: and the whole prospect
appeared as though the wealth, the arts, sciences and elegance of the
world, were collected to adorn and beautify the scene.
In the forum a vast assembly of people were listening to the address of
an orator, who, from his dignified and commanding manner, I took to be
Cicero. My guide assured me it was none else. His attitude, his
gestures, his whole manner, were sublime. He was pleading for Milo. The
occasion had drawn together an innumerable throng of spectators. I
admired the elegance of the criminal: his appearance was firm, heroic,
and great. Pompey was present at the head of a select body of troops.
I have seen no man in modern times who can bear a comparison with
Pompey. He had the qualities of great men with a dignity peculiar to
himself.
On high glittered the Roman eagle, and the whole group of objects
appeared with a majesty and resplendence not to be described. The
judges, the criminal, the orator, the general, the nobility of Rome, the
army and the spectators, possessed a grandeur of countenance which might
have induced one to imagine that all the fine and noble countenances in
the world had been collected together.
After indulging my curiosity for a moment, my guide showed me _my
ancestor_. He was a common soldier, and stood near the general,
appearing to belong to his life guard. He listened with deep attention
to the orator; and at times, roused by the powerful flights of
unrivalled eloquence, seemed to lay his hand upon his sword, ready to
draw it in defence of innocence.
His descendants, continued my conductress, accompany Trajan in his
expedition into Asia, where, after various turns of fortune, some of
them, as you have seen, settled in the vale of Sheeraz. Here, I must
remark, that I was more interested than I had been before, for, upon
noticing him more particularly, I found him perfectly to resemble my
father in stature, proportions, and countenance.
The next field of discovery carried me back to the Trojan war. The
celebrated city of Troy, and the Phrygian shores, the fleet and army of
Greece, now engaged my whole attention. I was not a little gratified to
have a glance at a scene which has filled the world with noise, and been
so famous in poetry. Yet I must confess my expectations were not fully
answered. The Grecian chiefs appeared with far less splendor than they
are made to exhibit under the glowing pen of Homer. I liked Ulysses the
best of any of them. He was a sturdy old fellow, and although in
appearance somewhat of a barbarian, yet he was strong, manly, and
sagacious, equally able to ward off as to meet danger. I hoped now my
ambition would be crowned by finding Ulysses among my progenitors. My
guide, however, directly pointed out to me _Thersites_, assuring me that
he was the very man. To save time, I will give a description of him, as
we find it in Pope’s translation of Homer:
Thersites clamored in the throng,
Loquacious, loud and turbulent of tongue,
Awed by no shame, by no respect controlled,
In scandal busy, in reproaches bold:
His figure such as might his soul proclaim,
One eye was blinking, and one leg was lame,
His mounting shoulders half his breast o’erspread,
Thin hair bestrewed his long mishapen head,
Spleen to mankind his envious heart possessed,
And much he hated _all_ but _most_ the _best_.
Ugly as Thersites was, I thought it, however, no small honor to be
descended from one of the conquerors of Troy, and I intend at a
convenient time, to consult the ancient critics, to see whether Homer
has not been guilty of detraction in stating the character of Thersites.
From Troy the genii lead me directly to Mesopotamia, and we halted in
the midst of an extensive morass, a wild and trackless wilderness,
inhabited by noxious reptiles and wild beasts. Presenting me the glass,
she told me to make the best of it as this would be the last
opportunity. Under the eye of the perspective the scene presently
kindled with glowing colors and magnificent prospects. In the midst
wandered a spacious river, the circumjacent grounds, although reclaimed
from their native state, afforded those rural wild and romantic scenes
indicative of the _morning of improvement_ and invention. Thousands of
people appeared busy in building various structures. Many were leisurely
roving in the gardens and groves along the river banks. Contentment and
tranquility smiled, labor went on with cheerfulness, and the orders of
superiors were obeyed with a rude but lofty air of conscious freedom.
My conductress asked me whether I had yet noticed the _Tower of Babel_?
On which, turning to my right, I saw, not far off, that massive
structure. Its elevated summit rising toward the clouds, seemed indeed
to threaten heaven. I could not but remark how much I had the advantage
of Herodotus and some of the other Greek Philosophers, who viewed that
Tower in a state of decay, and yet gave a most wonderful account of its
greatness. I was now fully sensible that this was the seat of the first
of empires, and was beginning to observe more attentively several
things, when the appearance of some personages, at the head of a troop
of horse, attracted my notice. Two personages of majestic port, followed
by a numerous train, now drew near. Before them the statue of Apollo
Belvidere would have appeared diminutive.
You see, said my guide, Nimrod and Ham. The former was in the bloom and
vigor of manhood. In his eye the fire of ambition burned, and all his
actions bespoke haughtiness, ostentation and authority. He was the true
and original founder of the science of war and despotism.
In the appearance of Ham there was something almost more than mortal.
His deportment was grave, thoughtful, and gloomy. His snowy locks fell
over his shoulders which the flight of centuries had not bowed, and his
venerable beard swept a breast where the secrets of wisdom seemed
deposited. But yet his eye was fierce and cruel, and gave sign of his
inward depravity.
Whilst I was scrutinising to discover marks of consanguinity, my guide
pointed me to a little fellow just by me who was _making brick_. There,
says he, is _your progenitor_. His face was an isosceles triangle; and a
long sharp nose and chin gave him the air of complete originality. He
is, continued she, a true and legitimate offspring of Japhet. And now,
having favored you more than I ever did any other mortal, to give you
complete satisfaction, know, that from Noah to yourself there have been
one hundred generations; and in your line there have been one King, five
Princes, seven Butchers, eight Sages, five Commanders, ten Magicians,
six Pilgrims, fourteen Soldiers, twenty Husbandmen, seventeen Mechanics,
fourteen Sailors, thirteen Shepherds, eleven Beggars, eight
Philosophers, twelve Robbers, ten Hermits, nine Warriors, and one
Author.
Moreover, some of this illustrious line were present at the confusion of
Babel, at the sack of Troy, the battle of Pharsalia, the destruction of
Palmyra, the burning of fifty thousand cities in India and China, the
defeat of Bajaret, the assassination of Henry the Fourth of France, the
Powder Plot, and many other great events. Here I awoke, and behold! it
was a dream.
And now the information I would make of the knowledge derived front my
dream, is to publish forthwith an address to all the sons of Adam,
demonstrating the importance of keeping an exact genealogy. The plan of
which address is developed in the following articles.
I.—The seven subsequent years must be employed in exploring the
generations that are past; and as _I_ should be obliged to go to Wales
and Germany, most of us to Europe and perhaps some to Asia, if not to
Africa, I believe there had better be an armistice; for this business
cannot be accomplished without an universal peace.
II.—The scheme of Leibnitz of an universal language, might also in that
time or a little more, be matured. For in order to know the fair
Asiatics and Africans, we must certainly have a common language.
III.—When the scheme is effected, men will see more and more the
importance of improving their race. Upon this discovery a Science will
arise of infinitely greater glory and utility than that of War. Nations
will cross their breed as much as possible; and a wife from India or the
South Sea, will be prized more than a ship-load of silks.
IV.—Every man who dies without an issue is the _end of a line_. He is
like a thread cut from a weaver’s web, and never joined again, or like a
river that perishes in the sands of Africa, and never reaches the ocean.
The plan contemplated, therefore, will excite in men a universal desire
to propagate their species. Every man will see the folly and criminality
of remaining single, and the horrid impiety of exposing his life in war
before he has tied himself to some future generations. He will view it
as risking the extermination of an endless chain of beings equally
important with himself. And when he has become a parent, he will view it
still more impious to hazard his life in any way, now become necessary
for the preservation and care of his children.
V.—Thus the _art of killing_, which has been the main business of
nations, will be superceded by that of communicating, preserving and
improving life. And in future generations the names of heroes and
conquerors will be eternized only by their infamy, as crimes are
recorded in law Books, preceded by prohibition and followed by penalty.
The ages of war will be regarded as the period of universal destruction,
or rather as the _period in which the human race had not yet acquired
the use of reason_. Then Philosophers and Philanthropists will be
celebrated, and a man will only be considered as great as he is known to
be _good_.
December, 1840.
* * * * *
A SOLDIER’S THE LAD FOR ME.
BY A. M‘MAKIN.
There’s a charm in the fame
Of a soldier’s name,
With his colors so gay, and his spirits so light;
At his bold command,
No lass in the land,
Can withhold from his prowess her smile so bright,—
With his nodding plume, and his manners so free,
A soldier—a soldier’s the lad for me.
At fete or at ball
He is courted by all;
His step is the lightest that trips in the dance,
With his sword on his thigh,
And a smile in his eye,
Each belle doth acknowledge his bow and his glance,
With his nodding plume, and his manners so free,
A soldier—a soldier’s the lad for me.
When there’s mischief to pay,
He is first in the fray,
Nor blanches when death-shots are falling around,
With a tear for the foe
In the battle laid low,
He sheds not till victory his valor hath crown’d;
With his nodding plume, and his manners so free,
A soldier—a soldier’s the lad for me.
In his wild bivouac,
With his cup and his sack,
His sweetheart remember’d with heart, and with soul;
To beauty a fill,
And a cheer with a will,
While each comrade to friendship is passing the bowl.
With his nodding plume, and his manners so free,
A soldier—a soldier’s the lad for me.
Philadelphia, December 20, 1840.
* * * * *
THE BLIND GIRL.
BY MRS. C. DURANG.
“Can nothing induce you to give up the idea of going to the ball
to-night, my dear Maria?” said the anxious Mr. Worthington, “our dear
little one seems quite unwell, and surely the loss, or rather the
exchange of one pleasure for another, can not be so distressing,
particularly when the one is of so evanescent a nature as a rout.”
“What good could I possibly do the infant?” was the reply to this kind
expostulation of her doting husband; “you know Sarah is quite accustomed
to her, and really I think it ridiculous that you should wish me to stay
home; but lately you seem to rack your brains to contrive what means you
can devise to thwart my wishes: if I ask for anything that will cost the
slightest extra expense, the reply is: ‘we can’t afford it.’ Pray how do
other people afford to live in more style than we do, with less income
than ours?”
“Unfortunately, they _cannot_ afford it,” said Mr. Worthington; “and we
see the consequences daily. Many of the enormous failures that have
lately occurred, might have been prevented, but for the spirit of
rivalry that fashion has instilled into the families of many of our
merchants and citizens.”
“So,” said Mrs. Worthington, “because people fail, I am to be deprived
of everything I wish for, and kept at home to see whether the child is
_going_ to be sick. I am sure I have taken every precaution to prevent
its crying after me, for I have carefully covered its eyes every time I
have nursed it since its birth. Nay, I do not let it come into the room
where I am without something thrown over its face, that it may not know
me; so that if I was to remain home to watch it, it would neither be
better nor wiser; nay, it might frighten her to see a strange face.”
Mr. Worthington paused for some time, confounded by his wife’s unnatural
exultation, and want of affection for her infant, at last he exclaimed,
with considerable sharpness,—“_Have you a heart?_”
“I _once_ did, and _do still_, possess such an article, notwithstanding
I presume you consider yourself the proprietor.”
“It must be small indeed,” said Mr. Worthington with a sigh.
“Large enough for it to admit the whole circle of my friends,” added the
lady.
“I fear it will soon be untenanted, then,” uttered Mr. Worthington as he
left the room, finding it was impossible to dissuade her from her
purpose, and discovering, too late, the misery of being united to one
whose education had unfitted her for a wife.
Maria Wilson was an only child. At an early age she was left to the
direction of a mother, whose partiality for her daughter blinded her to
all her errors. The best affections of her heart had been neglected,
their place had been allowed to be usurped by pride, arrogance, and
self-sufficiency. Their means were circumscribed and insufficient to
enable her to shine in the gay world, although her beauty was well
calculated to attract the admiration of those who moved in it, and her
sole ambition seemed to be to gain pre-eminence there, so that when Mr.
Worthington, young, handsome, and rich, offered his hand, it was not
rejected:—he viewed her faults with the fondness of a lover, and
deceived himself into the belief that, once his, he could mould her
disposition to whatever he wished it to be; but, after marriage, she
launched into the vortex of fashionable life with enthusiasm, regardless
of consequences; she was courted and caressed; in vain he entreated, in
vain he expostulated; the wish of her heart was gratified; the goblet of
happiness, as she thought, was at her lips, and she was determined to
quaff it to the dregs; misfortune had not yet taught him to despair, and
hope still upheld him; he looked forward to the time when she would
become a mother, when the bonds of nature would form a fresh tie with
those of affection. But, alas! he was doomed to be disappointed; the
little stranger was viewed as an intruder, whose smile was not allowed
to meet the mother’s eyes; she mourned that the _fashion was past_ for
children to be put out to nurse, and never suffered it to be brought _to
her without its face being covered_, that it would not fret for her
absence. Every request from her husband to avoid unnecessary expenses,
were recorded as evidences of his want of love, or as proofs of a
contracted and narrow disposition.
She went to the ball,—and, when she returned, her little infant, Adela,
lay at the point of death. For the first time, a pang of regret and
remorse stung her bosom; repentance caused her tears to flow, as she
became a voluntary watcher of its sick bed. Oh! how anxiously did she
endeavor to behold one look from those eyes she had so often concealed
from hers; she feared they were closed never to be opened again. She sat
in silence and despair, endeavoring to catch the sound of that voice
whose plaintive wail she had so often despised, but for two days its
heavy breathing alone reached her ear.
Providence ordained that it should recover. On the third day it opened
its eyes, those eyes which, for the first time, met those of its mother,
and as she beheld it smile, a beam of newly-kindled affection woke in
her breast; she caressed her child, but it turned from her, and sought
the face it had been accustomed to behold; she endeavored in vain to
gain the affection of the slighted child; it clung to its nurse, Sarah,
who loved her with a mother’s fondness. After many fruitless efforts to
regain the treasure she had lost in her infant’s smiles and love, she
abandoned the attempt, and with the child’s return to health, she
returned to her old routine of levity and frivolity. Unthinking woman!
how little did she reflect what labor of mind, and sacrifice of personal
comfort her husband daily endured. Of what utility was his splendidly
furnished house to him? Surely he merited at least her gratitude, when
it was for her gratification that his hours were passed in his homely
counting-house, where dreariness was banished by the excitement of
business. The wooden chairs, the maps on the wall, the perpetual
almanac, table of interest and foreign exchange, pasted in formal array,
formed a strong contrast to the splendid rooms where the draperied
windows admitted the softened light, which reflected on gilded mirrors,
and carpets, where mingled the colors of the rainbow, to blaze in
beauty; while the rich vases, filled with flowers, rivalling in beauty
the choicest exotics in their hues, would tempt the looker on to believe
it was a paradise. And such it would have been to him in his hours of
relaxation, could he but have secured the affections of his Maria there;
but fashion was the forbidden fruit, and vanity the serpent; they both
proved irresistible; her beauty was the theme of universal admiration;
it was that which first attracted him, when he sought her heart and
hand. But the movements of the heart are imperceptible, its pulsations
are uncontrollable, and it will sometimes appear to vibrate on slight
occasions. Alas! he too late discovered that with hers it was but the
echo of ambition, pride, or vanity that had touched its chords; love had
never been awakened in her bosom.
As Adela advanced in years, the subject of her education engrossed much
of her father’s thoughts; it was there he felt most severely his wife’s
deficiency of duty. A mother’s watchful care is necessary for her
daughter’s welfare. No one but her can guard the mind, and guide it
through that ideal world, which the youthful imagination creates, and
wherein it wanders, bewildered by false hopes and illusive joys.
There is no country whose system of female education is free from error.
The elite of England and America select the fashionable boarding schools
for their daughters to finish their studies in; where, unfortunately,
the adornment of the person, and flippancy of manner, often supercede
the adornment of the mind. Can parents reflect that the conclusion of a
female’s education requires _their_ care the _most_, and that the
dashing boldness of manners, too often learned at a fashionable school,
is but the mask which covers ignorance, and bravados out the want of
merit? How much less estimable is the character of such a female than
the modest, timid, but firm being who has received and finished her
education under the watchful guidance of that mother’s eye, whose
anxious glance searches unto the soul of her charge, guarding it from
evils that threaten and too often besiege the senses, till confusion and
desolation leave the fair fabric a monument of ruins for parental
fondness to mourn over.
In France the convent is selected, in a measure secluded from the
influence of fashion: there the mind is more unfettered by folly, and
becomes prepared to receive necessary instruction. Hence they are more
capable of encountering the vicissitudes of life, and prepared for that
intercourse which French women are allowed in society. Thus their minds
become strengthened; no nation has produced so many celebrated women as
France.
An English husband condemned for treason will be allowed to linger in
prison, unless the entreaties and petitions of his wife and friends have
sufficient influence to procure his release; if they fail, she sinks
beneath the weight of her misfortunes, and an early grave yields repose
to the bruised spirit: not so with the French woman; it awakens all the
energies of her soul; every effort is made; every stratagem is resorted
to; the prison doors though barred, are still accessible to love,
artifice, and ingenuity, these combined, generally contrive to elude the
vigilance of the keepers; thus Madame Lavalette, Roland, and several
others, have given bright examples of what fortitude, education, and
energy may achieve; thus the Bastille’s dungeons have been insufficient
barriers to the influence of the French women.
As time passed on, the aspect of Mr. Worthington’s affairs seemed to
become less prosperous; day after day losses occurred, until at last his
bankruptcy served to convince his wife that his admonitions had not been
needless; remorse again visited the unhappy woman; she felt that her
husband’s forbearance had been great; and determined that the neglect of
her first born infant should be amply atoned for, by double attention to
the second, whose birth was now at hand.
After Mr. Worthington’s bankruptcy, it became necessary that he should
leave his native place, and enter into business where it might prove
more successful; he settled his wife in a small house till he should be
enabled to send for her, and for a short time enjoyed more comfort than
when splendor shone around them; they looked forward with hope and joy
to the time when they would behold a child that would be mutually
attached to each.
The infant was born; a lovely girl, but alas! its eyes were denied to
see the blessed light of heaven! _It was blind!_
The wretched, self-convicted, soul-struck woman dared not complain;
conviction of her errors bowed her spirit to the earth; what would she
not now have given to recall some years of her past life? But it was too
late, and the only resource now left her, was to submit with resignation
to her fate.
After Mr. Worthington had departed for the Island of Martinque, his wife
had to struggle for the maintenance of her children till he should be
enabled to establish himself in business; she proposed opening a
seminary, and called on some of those friends whose presence had often
enlivened her assemblies, and who had partaken of her hospitality. One
had just sent her children to Mrs. ——, who was all the ton. Another
thought it would be better style to have a governess in the house; and
if she thought she could take the entire charge of the children, she
would have no objection to give her the preference, if she could make
the terms very low; others were “not at home” when she called—while
some more candid than the rest—at once informed her, that any other
occupation would be more suitable to her as her former dislike to
children could not be so easily overcome; among them were those, who
with sneers, regretted the change in her circumstances.
Thus it is to live in the world without studying human nature. We will
be sure to find nought but disappointments, if we trust to those we meet
in the giddy throng of fashionable assemblies; they are like the fleecy
vapors that float over the blue expanse, their brightness is only the
reflection of the light by which they are surrounded, and their aspect
is as changing. The human family taken in the mass collectively, are
cold and senseless, the philanthropic sensations of the heart are
extinct, and an apathetic illusion usurps the place of the genuine
effusions of benevolence, with which the refined soul overflows when in
its unsophisticated state; it is in the domestic circles that friendship
is found, given, and reciprocated, it is there that the best human
feelings reign monarchs; but in the busy scenes of life, coldness, and
contempt are the answers to an appeal for compassion and humanity.
With a mind forlorn and desolate, Mrs. Worthington sought consolation
from her children. The cherub smiles of one yielded it; but the early
affections of the other had been blighted by its mother’s neglect, and
it sheltered itself among strangers. It was no longer swayed by the same
gentle passions, but fierce and uncontrolled, they became an ocean of
contending emotions.
Adela, at the age of sixteen, eloped with a young man, whose worthless
character precluded any chance of felicity for the unhappy girl, and
added to the tortures of the miserable parents: but the winning
softness, and amiable disposition of the sightless Isabella, made ample
amendment for all her mother’s misfortunes. With calmness and
cheerfulness she bore her calamity: “What,” said she, “though darkness
is over those veiled orbs; my _mind’s_ vision sees beyond this world,
the mental light that flashes through the long vista of existence,
gleams with brilliance to direct my course. Why should I sigh to
_behold_ this world? Do I not enjoy the delightful fragrance of the
earth’s flowers, and am I not nourished by its fruits? Do I not possess
the affections of those I love, and has not the philanthropy of man
instructed (us children whose existence is one still night of calm,) in
reading, working, and employing ourselves usefully, so that we feel not
that the light of day is darkened from our view?”
And truly might it be called useful, for by her efforts she had
supported her mother during a long sickness. The physician, Dr. Morris,
that attended Mrs. Worthington, beheld the beauty of Isabella; respect
and humanity first guided him to the assistance of a lovely, interesting
creature, who deprived of one of the most essential faculties of our
nature, exerted those she still possessed for the support of her mother.
Her progress in music had been so rapid that before she had been two
years under the instruction of one of the directors of the institution
for the Relief of the Blind, she was even enabled to fill the situation
of principal chorister in a church. _That_ respect soon ripened into
love, and she only waited the return of Mr. Worthington to bestow her
hand on one altogether worthy of the amiable girl.
The many years that passed with Mr. Worthington, wherein all his efforts
proved unsuccessful, finally broke his spirits. Every prospect of
raising his family to their former splendor proved unavailing; the
separation from his wife had not been felt by him as severely as it
would have been, had not her conduct, during the early period of their
marriage, alienated his affections; thus those disappointments, which at
the time he deplored, proved to be mercies, that in the end were as
beneficent as the morning and evening dew which temporises the soil for
the fruits it is hereafter to produce.
The final blow was yet to come. He had determined on returning to his
native land, and settling in some humble manner of life—when a letter
arrived, informing him that his daughter Adela was not expected to live.
He immediately arranged his affairs, and departed for those shores which
blighted hopes had driven him from in despair.
The sun was about to set, as Dr. Morris sat by the bedside of the dying
Mrs. Worthington. Isabella knelt by the side of her mother, and breathed
a secret prayer, that the spirit of her parent might be permitted to
remain on this earth till the return of her father. Every knock at the
door for the last three weeks, had awakened in her bosom a throb of
expectation, hoping it might be him. An awful pause ensued, as her last
wish and prayer ascended to heaven; it was interrupted by the heavy
breathing of the sufferer; when a step was heard approaching the door,
it opened, and her father stood there. A shriek from her mother
acquainted her, whose eyes were denied the sight of him, that it was him
to whom she owed her being, that had come.
“My prayer is heard,” said she, “father let your daughter receive a
second blessing, He who is in heaven, ‘the Father of all,’ has already
blessed me, by your presence. Mother rejoice, our prayers are heard; and
if it is His will that you should soon return to your heavenly home, you
can bear with you the last embrace of him you so wished to see, to be
assured you die with his blessing on your head.”
“Bless you, my child! bless you, my wife! but there is _one_ that craves
_your_ blessing, Maria, if you have yet the strength: it is indeed,
needed.” He waited not for a reply, but left the room, to which in a few
moments he returned, bearing in his arms the wasted and almost inanimate
form of Adela; the last effort of nature gave almost supernatural
strength to the mother; she caught her child in her arms, they were
folded in one long embrace: the spirits of both departed together.
Heaven! in mercy, veiled the sight of so much misery from Isabella; she
felt that a solemn scene had passed in her presence, but she knew not
the full extent of its horrors.
It was the last trial Mr. Worthington had to endure. The union of
Isabella with Dr. Morris banished every solicitude; and taught him that
the goodness of God is shown most conspicuous, when by granting those
wishes that seem opposed to _His_, our _folly_, and His _wisdom_ is
manifested.
December, 1840.
* * * * *
TO THE PINE ON THE MOUNTAIN.
BY LYDIA JANE PIERSON.
Thou giant Pine of patriarchal years,
O’er the rock helm of the stern mountain bending,
As watching yon glad river, which appears
Like a bright dream through bowers of beauty wending.
Mocking thy bleak and solitary pride
With warm and flowery scenes, and soft wings gleaming,
Bright fountains laughing on the mountain’s side,
’Neath bow’rs of blossom’d vines, profusely streaming.
And sigh’st thou o’er those visions of delight,
As my lone bosom o’er the glowing treasures
Which live in fancy’s realm before my sight,
Mocking my spirit with ideal pleasures?
Or art thou holding converse with the wind,
Waving majestic assent to some story
Of mournful interest, how thy stately kind
Have perish’d from the places of their glory?
Or are ye talking of the noble race
Stately as thou, with the wind’s freedom roaming;
Who o’er these mountains once pursued the chace,
Or stem’d the river at its spring tide foaming?
Oh knew I all the legends of the past!
With life and love, and death and sorrow teeming,
On which thou hast looked down, since first the blast
Play’d with thy plumes, in morning sunlight gleaming.
Thou’st seen the free born hunters of the wild,
Chasing the fleet deer in his antler’d glory;
Or with his chosen maid, rich nature’s child,
Breathing in whispers love’s ungarnish’d story.
And thou hast seen him on the mountain path,
Victor and vanquish’d, fleeing and pursuing,
Conquer’d and writhing with vindictive wrath,
Or agonising o’er his nation’s ruin.
While the fierce conqueror gaz’d with gloating eye
On mangled forms, in mortal anguish lying;
Or where the wigwam’s flame was wreathing high,
Showing its inmates, wild with terror flying.
Seemed he not king-like, with his plumy crown,
And like a tiger, streak’d with hideous painting!
With hand that sought no treasure but renown,
And heart that knew no fear, and felt no fainting.
Full many a time, perchance beneath thy shade,
The youthful sachem stood with pride surveying
His wide domains, and the soft valley’s shade,
Where through the bowers his dark-eyed love was straying.
Yet sometimes still there comes a wasted form,
With locks like thine, by many winters faded;
Well has he brav’d the battle, and the storm,
The sachem whom thy youthful branches shaded.
Ye are a noble pair, ye stand the last,
Each of a noble race; and ye are staying
Magnificent mementoes of the past,
Glorious and wonderful in your decaying.
And thou dost toss thy branches to the wind,
And sigh sad dirges of thy perished glory;
And he is brooding, with a saddened mind,
Over a perish’d nation’s wrongful story.
A few more years, and the wild eagle’s wing
Shall seek his long-lov’d rest with mournful screaming;
A few more years, and no dark form shall cling
To this stern height of perish’d glory dreaming.
And who will mourn when thou art lying low,
And o’er thy shattered limbs green mosses creeping;
What noble heart will melt with generous woe,
When the last warrior of his race is sleeping?
Liberty, December, 1840.
* * * * *
THE REEFER OF ’76.
BY THE AUTHOR OF “CRUIZING IN THE LAST WAR.”
THE RESCUE.
“God bless you!” said my old schoolmate, Harry St. Clair, to me, on a
bright morning in April, 1776, as I shook his hand for the last time,
and leaping into the stern-sheets of the boat, waved my hand in adieu,
and bade the crew, with a husky voice, give way. I could scarcely trust
myself to look again at the group of old classmates crowding the
battery, for a thousand memories of the past came crowding on me as I
gazed. The tears, despite myself, welled into my eyes. Determined that
no one should witness my emotions, I turned my face away from the crew,
affecting to be engaged in scanning the appearance of the brigantine
destined to be my future home, the Fire-Fly.
She was as beautiful a craft as ever sat the water. Her hull was long
and low, of a mould then but lately introduced. There was no poop upon
her quarter deck, nor was she disfigured by the unsightly forecastle
then in use. Never had I seen a more exquisite run than that which her
glossy hull developed; while her tall, rakish spars, tapering away into
needles, and surrounded by their cobweb tracery of ropes, finished the
picture. She was, indeed, all a sailor’s heart could desire. When I
stepped upon her decks my admiration increased to a ten-fold degree. She
had seemed from the water to be a craft of not more than a hundred tons
burthen; but the illusion vanished on ascending her side, when you found
yourself on board of a brigantine of not less than thrice that size. Her
well-scraped decks; her bright burnished binnacle; the boarding-pikes
lashed to the main-boom; the muskets placed in stands abaft the
main-mast; the nicety with which even the smallest rope was coiled down
in its place; the guns ranged along on either side under her bulwarks,
and especially the air of neatness, finish, and high discipline
perceptible about her, convinced me that I was embarking on board a
man-of-war of the highest professional character. In fact I knew Captain
Stuart’s reputation to be that of a rigid disciplinarian.
“Mr. Parker—glad to see you,” said my superior, as I touched the deck
and raised my hat, “you are punctual, but allow me,” said he, turning to
an officer on his right hand, whom I knew to be his lieutenant, “to
present you to Mr. Lennox—Mr. Lennox, Mr. Parker.”
The usual salutations were exchanged; the boat was hoisted in; and I
dove down into the mess-room to stow away my traps. It was full of
officers. The second lieutenant, the purser, and my three fellow reefers
greeted me heartily, as they rose from a long, narrow table, on which
was a formidable display of salt junk and old Jamaica.
“Just in time, Parker,” sang out my old crony, Westbrook, “we’re
stiffening ourselves to keep up against the fog outside. Push the
bottle, Jack—a cut of the junk for Parker—and as there’s nothing like
beginning right, here’s a jolly voyage to us.”
The toast had just been drunk, amid a whirlwind of huzzas, when the
shrill whistle of the boatswain shrieked through the ship, followed by
the hoarse cry, “all hands on deck, ahoy!”
In an instant the gun-room was deserted, and we were at our several
posts; while the gallant brigantine echoed with the tramp of the crew,
the orders of the first lieutenant, and the monotonous creaking of the
windlass, as the anchor was being hove up to the bows.
By the time the anchor was catted the morning sun was just beginning to
struggle over the heights of Long Island; and as the mists upon the
water curled upward in fantastic wreaths beneath his rays, the head of
our brigantine began slowly to incline from the breeze. In another
instant, as her sails filled, the water could be heard rippling under
the cut-water. Then as a sudden puff of wind pressed her down toward her
bearings, and we shot rapidly ahead, the bubbles went whizzing along her
sides, and eddying around her rudder, swept away astern in a long and
glittering wake.
I stood, after the bustle of making sail was over, gazing on the scenery
around me, with feelings such as I had never experienced before. It was
to be my first voyage in a man-of-war: I would soon, doubtless, imbrue
my hands in the blood of my fellow men; and I myself might never return
alive from my cruize. I could not help, therefore, being filled with
strange and new emotions, as I leaned over the taffrail, gazing on the
now fast-receding town, and recurring, again and again, to the many
happy days I had spent in my native city, and to the dear faces there
which I might never see again. But gradually these feelings were lost in
the admiration enkindled in my bosom by the beauty of the surrounding
scenery.
It was indeed a glorious sight which opened around me. Right in the wake
of the brigantine lay the city, still partly shrouded in the morning
mists; while the back-ground was filled up by a range of uplands,
through which a narrow opening disclosed where the Hudson rolled his
arrowy course. To the right lay Governor’s Island, the East River, with
its shipping, and the verdant shores of Long Island; while on the left
rose up the bluff highlands of Staten Island, emerging, as it were, from
a cloud of mist, and crowned with antique farm-houses, rich fields of
verdant grass, and here and there a strip of woodland, as yet sparsely
decked with its new-found leaves. Directly ahead were the Narrows, with
the frowning heights on either hand; while a white, glittering line on
the horizon without, and the long, undulating swell, heaving in through
the streight, betokened our near approach to the ocean. A few sails
flashed in the distance. All was still, beautiful, and serene.
Occasionally, however, the measured sound of oars would give token of a
passing fishing boat, or a snatch of a drinking song would float from
some craft idly anchored in the stream. A few gulls screamed overhead. A
flock of smaller water-fowl wheeled and settled on a strip of white,
sandy beach just outside the Narrows. The surf broke with a hollow roar,
in a long line of foam, along the neighboring coast; while out on the
sea-board hung a dim haze, undulating slowly beneath the sun’s rays as
he rose, blood-red, in the eastern horizon.
“A fine breeze for our first day’s cruize,” said Westbrook, “and, faith,
a deuce of a one it will be, if we should happen to be caught by one of
King George’s frigates, and either be strung up for rebels at the yard
arm, or stifled to death in one of his cursed prison hulks. What think
you of the prospect, comrades, isn’t it pleasant?”
“Pleasant do ye call it?” said Patrick O’Shaughnessy, a reefer of about
my own age, who was a dangerously late emigrant to the colony, “shure,
and it is rayther at my father’s hearth I would be, in dear, ould
Ireland, afther all, if we’re to be thrated as rebels the day.”
“Your father’s hearth, Pat,” said Westbrook, “and do you really mean to
say that they have such things in Galway, or wherever else it was that
you were suffered to eat potatoes in ignorance, until your guardians
brought you out here on a speculation.”
“By St. Patrick, your head must be hard,” said the irritated reefer,
“and it’s well that my shillelah isn’t on the wrist—”
“Pshaw! now you’re not angry, comrade mine,” said Westbrook, laughing
good-humoredly, but repenting already of his reckless speech, “come,
we’ve got a long cruize before us, and we shall have enough of quarrels
with those rascally British, without getting up any among ourselves,”
and he frankly extended his hand.
“Shure, and it’s a gentleman ye are, Misther Westbrook, and I’d like to
see the spalpeen that says ye aint,” said O’Shaughnessy, grasping the
proffered hand, and shaking it heartily.
“Yonder are the white caps of the Atlantic, rolling ahead,” said I, as
we stretched past Sandy Hook, and beheld the broad ocean opening in all
its vastness and sublimity before us.
We were now fairly afloat. At that time the enterprise in which we had
embarked was one of the greatest danger, for not only were we liable to
the usual dangers of nautical warfare, but we were, as yet, uncertain in
what manner we should be treated in case of a capture. But we were all
confident in the justness of our country’s cause, and being such, we
were prepared for either fortune.
Nearly a week elapsed without anything occurring to dissipate the
monotony of our voyage, excepting a momentary alarm at the appearance of
a frigate, which we at first took to be an English one, but which
subsequently turned out to be a Frenchman. Meanwhile, we were not
without many a merry bout in the gun-room, and over our salt junk and
Jamaica, we enjoyed ourselves as hilariously as many an epicure would
over his Burgundy and turtle-soup. The jest went round; the song was
gaily trolled; many a merry story was rehearsed, and anticipations of a
successful cruize were mingled with determinations to bear the worst, if
fortune should so will it. Under the broad flag of New York, we were
resolved “to do or die,” against the prouder ensign of an unjust, and
tyrannical king.
We had run down well nigh to the Windward islands, and were beating up
against a head wind, when we spoke a French merchantman, who informed us
that he had passed a rich Indiaman, but the day before, bound from
London to Jamaica. After enquiring the course of the Englishman, our
skipper hauled his wind, and bidding the friendly Gaul, “_un bon
voyage_,” we steered away in pursuit of our prize. Night settled down
upon us before we caught sight of her; but still crowding on all sail we
kept on in our way.
It was about eight bells in the middle watch, and I was on the point of
preparing to go below, after the relief should have been called, when I
thought I heard a rattling of cordage down in the thick bank of fog to
leeward. I listened attentively, and again heard the sound distinctly,
but this time it was like the rollicking of oars.
“Hist! Benson,” said I to the boatswain, who was standing near me at the
moment, “hist! lay your ear close to the water here, and listen if you
do not hear the sound of oars.”
The old fellow got into the main chains, and holding on with one hand to
them, cautiously leaned over and listened for several minutes.
“I hear nothing, sir,” said he in a whisper, “it’s as still as death
down in yonder fog-bank. But I’ll keep a sharp look-out, for it may be
there’s a sail close on to us, without our knowing it, in this mist.”
The night had been intensely dark, but was now breaking away overhead,
where a few stars could be seen twinkling on the patches of half-hid
azure sky. All round the horizon, however, but especially to leeward,
hung a dark, massy curtain of mist, shrouding everything on the
sea-board in impenetrable obscurity, and, like piled up fleeces, laying
thick and palpable upon the immediate surface of the ocean, but
gradually becoming thinner and lighter as it ascended upwards, until it
finally terminated in a thin, gauze-like haze, almost obscuring the
stars on the mid heaven above. So dense was the mist in our immediate
vicinity, that the man at the helm could not discern the end of the
bowsprit; while the upper yards of the brigantine looked like shadowy
lines in the gloom. Occasionally, the light breeze would undulate the
fog, lifting it for a moment from the water, and disclosing to our sight
a few fathoms of the unruffled sea around us; but before a minute had
passed the vapors would again settle in fantastic wreaths upon the face
of the deep, wrapping us once more in the profoundest obscurity. Not a
sound was heard except the occasional rubbing of the boom, the sullen
flap of a sail, or the low ripple of the swell under our cut-water, as
we stole noiselessly along in the impenetrable gloom. The tread of one
of the watch, or the sudden thrashing of a reef-point against the sail,
broke on the ear with startling distinctness. Suddenly I heard a noise
as of a stifled cry coming up out of the thick fog to leeward, from a
spot apparently a few points more on our quarter than the last sound.
The boatswain heard it also, and turning quickly to me, he said—
“There’s something wrong there, Mr. Parker, or my name isn’t Jack
Benson. And look—don’t you see a ship’s royal through the fog
there—just over that gun—that shadowy object, like a whiff of
tobacco-smoke, down here to the right, is what I mean.”
“By heavens! you are right—and—see!—yonder comes her fore-top-mast,
rising above the undulating mist.”
“Ship ahoy!” hailed the second lieutenant, at that moment appearing on
deck, and listening to my report, “what craft is that?”
The hoarse summons sailed down to leeward, like the wailing of some
melancholy spirit, but no answer was returned. A couple of minutes
elapsed.
“Ship ah—o—o—y!” sung out the officer again, “answer, or I’ll fire
into you—this is the Fire-Fly, an armed vessel of the free state of New
York.”
“We are a merchantman, belonging to Philadelphia,” answered a gruff
voice in reply.
“Send your boat on board.”
“We can’t,” answered the same voice, “for one of them was washed
overboard, three days ago, in a gale, and the other one was swamped.”
At this instant, one of those sudden puffs of wind, to which I have
already alluded, momentarily swept away the fog from around the
approaching ship, and we beheld, to our astonishment, that her sails had
been backed, and that she was slowly falling astern of us, as if with
the intention of slipping across our wake, and going off to windward.
“Fill away again, there,” thundered the lieutenant, perceiving their
manœuvre, “or I’ll fire on you—fill away, I say.”
“By the holy aposthles,” said O’Shaughnessy at this moment, “isn’t there
a schooner’s mast, on the lee-quarter of the fellow—yes—there it
is—see?”
Every eye was instantly turned in the direction to which he had pointed.
A single glance established the keenness of his vision. Right under the
weather quarter of the merchantman, might be seen the mast of apparently
a small schooner. The sails were down, and only the bare stick could be
discerned; but the whole truth flashed upon us as if with the rapidity
of lightning.
“The ship is in the hands of pirates,” I exclaimed involuntarily, “God
help the poor wretches who compose her crew.”
“Boarders ahoy!” sung out the voice of the captain, breaking, like a
trumpet-call, upon the momentary silence of the horror-struck crew,
“muster on the forecastle, all—up with the helm, quarter-master—ready
to grapple there—heave,” and the huge irons, as we bore down upon the
ship, went crashing among her hamper.
The instant that discovered the true nature of our position, worked a
change in the whole appearance of the merchantman. Her deserted decks
swarmed with men; her silence gave place to shouts, oaths, and the
clashing of arms; and after a momentary confusion, we saw, in the
obscurity, a dark group of ruffians clustered on the forecastle,
awaiting our attack.
“Boarders ahoy!” again shouted Captain Stuart, brandishing his sword on
high, “follow me,” and springing into the fore-rigging of the
merchantman, he levelled a pistol at the first pirate attempting to
oppose him, and followed by a score, and more, of hardy tars, rushed,
the next instant, down upon her decks.
“Stand to your posts, my men,” thundered the pirate captain, as he stood
by the main-mast, surrounded by his swarthy followers, “stand to your
posts, and remember, you fight for your lives—come on,” and drawing a
pistol from his belt, he levelled it at the first lieutenant, who,
pressing on, aside of Captain Stuart, received the ball in his side, and
fell, apparently, lifeless on the deck.
“Revenge! Revenge!” thundered the Captain, turning to cheer on his men,
“sweep the miscreants from the deck, on—on,” and waving his sword
aloft, he dashed into the fray. The men answered by a cheer, and bore
down upon the pirates with an impetuosity, doubly more vehement from
their desire to avenge the fallen lieutenant.
For full five minutes the contest was terrific. Desperation lent
additional vigor to the freebooters’ muscles, while our own men were
inflamed to madness by the fall of Lennox. I had never been in a
conflict of any kind whatever before, and for the first few moments—I
will not hesitate to own it—a strange whirling sensation, akin to fear,
swept through my brain. But a half a minute had not passed before it had
vanished; and I felt a wild tumultuous excitement which seemed to endow
me with the strength of a Hercules. I lost all sight of the turmoil
around me. I could only see that it had become a general _mêleé_, in
which personal prowess was of more importance than discipline. I heard a
wild mingling of oaths, shouts, cries for mercy, the clashing of arms,
the explosion of pistols, the shrieks of the wounded, and the fierce
tramping of men struggling together in the last stage of mortal combat.
But I had no time for more detailed observations. A giant ruffian
singling me out from the crowd, rushed upon me with uplifted cutlass,
and the next instant I would have been clove in twain, had I not caught
the blow upon my blade. But so tremendous was its force that it
splintered my trusty steel to fragments, and sent a shock through every
nerve of my system. I staggered. But not a moment was to be lost.
Already the gigantic arm of the pirate was raised on high. Happily my
pistols were both as yet untouched. Springing back a step or two I
jerked one from my belt, levelled it at his brain, and fired. He whirled
around as if intoxicated, staggered, would have caught at the mast for
support, and fell over dead upon the deck.
But I had no leisure to regard my fallen foe. The contest still raged
around me fiercer than ever. On our side of the ship, however, the
pirates had broken, and were retreating slowly and doggedly toward the
stern. We pressed on hotly in pursuit, while shouts, curses, and huzzas,
the groans of the dying, and the fierce rattling of cutlasses, formed a
tumult around us of stirring excitement; but just as I rushed past the
gangway, followed by a few of the bravest of our crew, a wild, long,
thrilling scream from the cabin below, rose up over all the uproar of
the conflict. It could come from no one but a woman—that prolonged cry
of mortal agony! In an instant the retreating pirates were forgotten; I
thought only of the danger of the sufferer below. Dashing aside, with
the power of a giant, a brawny ruffian who would have impeded my
progress, I sprang, at one leap, half way down the gangway, and with
another stride found myself in the cabin of the ship.
Never shall I forget the scene that there met my eyes.
The apartment in which I stood was elegantly, even luxuriously
furnished, presenting the appearance rather of a sumptuous drawing-room,
than of a merchantman’s cabin. The state-rooms were of mahogany,
elegantly inlaid with ebony. A service of silver and rich cut glass was
ranged in the beaufut around the mast. Silken ottomans stretched along
the sides of the room; a silver lamp of exquisite workmanship, depended
from the ceiling; and a carpet of gorgeous pattern, and of the finest
quality, covered the floor. But not a solitary individual was to be
seen. A lady’s guitar, however, lay carelessly on one of the ottomans,
and a few books were scattered around it in easy negligence. Could I be
deceived with this corroborative testimony? Yet where was the owner of
these little trifles? These reflections did not, however, occupy an
instant; for I had scarcely finished a rapid survey of the cabin before
another, and another shriek, ringing out just before me, roused every
emotion of my heart to an uncontrollable fury. Catching sight of an
undulating curtain at the farther end of the apartment, which I had
imagined was only the drapery of the windows, I darted forward, and
lifting up the damask, started back in horror at the sight that met my
eyes.
This after cabin was smaller, and even more luxuriously fitted up than
the other. But I did not remark this, at the time, for such a scene as I
then witnessed, God grant I may never be called to look upon again.
As I pushed aside the curtain, three swarthy, olive-complexioned
ruffians, dressed with more elaboration than any of their comrades I had
yet seen, turned hastily around as if interrupted in some infamous deed,
scowling upon me with the looks of demons. It needed but a glance to
detect their fiendish work. A well dressed elderly man was extended at
their feet, weltering in his blood. On an ottoman before them half
lying, half sitting, was one of the fairest beings I had ever seen, her
night dress disordered, her frame trembling, and her hair, wild and
dishevelled, hanging in loose tresses from her shoulders. Her hands were
covered in one or two places with blood; her eyes were wild; her face
was flushed; and she panted as one does whose strength has been nearly
overtasked in a desperate struggle. Never shall I forget the unutterable
agony depicted on that countenance when I first entered; never shall I
forget the lightning-like change which came over it as her eye fell upon
me. Rushing frantically forward, while joy beamed in every feature of
her face, she flung herself into my arms, shrieking hysterically,
“Oh! save me—save me—for the love of your mother, save me.”
My sudden appearance had startled the three ruffians, and for a moment
they stood idle, suffering her to dart between them; but at the sound of
her voice, they rushed as one man upon me. The odds were fearful, but I
felt, at that instant, as if I could have dared heaven and earth in
behalf of that suffering maiden. Clasping my arm around her waist, and
retreating hastily into the other cabin, I shouted aloud for aid,
parrying, with a cutlass I picked up at random, the attack of the
miscreants. But the attempt was desperation itself. Already I had
received two cuts across my arm, and I could scarcely hold my weapon in
it, when the foremost ruffian, leaving my death, as he thought, to his
comrades, laid his unholy hand once more upon the maiden. Good God! I
thought my heart would have burst at this new insult. My determination
was quicker than the electric spark of heaven. Hastily releasing the
lovely burden from my hold, I seized my remaining pistol with the
disengaged hand, and before the villain could perceive my purpose
planted it against his face and fired. The brains spattered the ceiling,
and even fell upon my own face and arm. But the miscreant was dead. Oh,
the joy, the rapture of that moment! I heard, too, as the report
subsided, the death-groan of another of the ruffians falling beneath the
avenging cutlass of our men, who now, victorious on deck, came pouring
down the hatchway. In another instant, as a shout of victory rang
through the cabin, I had raised the almost senseless girl from the
floor. She looked eagerly into my face, gazed wildly around, uttered a
cry of joy, and convulsively clinging to me, as if for shelter, buried
her head upon my bosom, and burst into a passion of hysteric tears.
The emotions of that moment were such as I had never deemed mortal being
capable of experiencing. Feelings I cannot even now describe whirled
through me, until my brain seemed almost to spin around in a delirium of
joy. Yet there was a holiness in my emotions, far, far different from
the common sensations of pleasure. I felt—I knew not how—a sudden
interest in the fair being, sobbing convulsively upon my shoulder, which
made her already seem dearer to me than life itself. I pressed her
involuntarily to me; but a mother could not have done so with more
purity to a new-born infant. Her sobs melted me so that I could scarcely
keep my own eyes dry.
“God bless you, my poor, sweet girl,” I said in a husky voice, “you are
among friends now.”
The tone, the words went to her very heart; she clasped me convulsively
again, and burst into a fresh flood of tears. Poor dove! she had just
escaped from the hands of the spoiler, and fluttered, as yet,
involuntarily on her rescuer’s bosom.
“God—in—hea—ven—bless you,” she murmured, betwixt her sobs, after a
while, raising her tearful countenance from my shoulder, and looking
upon me with eyes, whose depth, and whose gratitude I had never seen
equalled—“God—bless—you, sir, for this act. Oh! if a life of prayers
for your welfare can repay you,” she continued, with uplifted hands, and
a countenance, which, in despite of its earnestness, was crimsoned with
blushes, “it shall be freely given by me. But my uncle! my poor uncle!
alas! they have murdered him,” and she covered her eyes with her hands,
as if to shut out the fearful sight.
“Say nothing, my dear girl,” said I, the tears standing in my own eyes,
“all are friends around you now. The ship has been rescued—the pirates
are no more. Compose yourself—none here will harm you—your slightest
wish shall be attended to, and you shall be served with the purity with
which we serve a saint. Do not thus give way to grief—let me insist on
your retiring—here is your maid,” said I, as the trembling creature
emerged from a state-room, in which she had locked herself when her
mistress was in danger, “a little rest will compose you.”
“Oh! my uncle, my more than parent—heaven bless you,” sobbed the
beautiful, but still agitated girl, as she suffered herself to be led
away by her little less agitated maid.
The prize turned out to be the British West-Indiaman, which had been
surprised by pirates about a quarter of an hour before we hailed her.
The beautiful being and her uncle were the only passengers. It is
needless to say that very few of the ruffians survived the conflict, and
that those who did were tried summarily by a court-martial the next day,
and hung at the ship’s yard-arm. Their little schooner, or rather
oyster-boat, was scuttled and sunk.
The wounds in my arm proved serious, though not dangerous, but they did
not disable me from continuing on duty. I would willingly have lost the
limb in such a holy cause.
The first appearance on deck of Beatrice Derwent—for such was the name
of her I rescued—was at the burial of her uncle on the evening
succeeding the re-capture of the ship. She appeared, leaning on the arm
of her maid, and as her eye, just lifted for one moment from the deck,
happened to catch mine, her face became suffused with crimson, and such
a look of gratitude toward the living, combined with grief for the dead,
flashed over her countenance as I never saw equalled. But in another
moment her eyes dropped once more on the corpse, and I saw, by the
convulsive heaving of her bosom, how fearful was her grief. When the
corpse was launched into the deep, her sorrow broke all the restraint of
custom, and she sobbed aloud. Directly, however, they subsided
partially; and as she turned to re-enter the cabin, the last rays of the
setting sun, gilding the mast-head with a crown of glory, and glittering
along the surface of the deep, lingered a moment on her sunny hair, like
the smile of the departed spirit.
The prize meantime, proving to be richly laden, was allotted to me to
conduct into port, as the first lieutenant’s wound prevented him from
assuming the command, and the second lieutenant chose rather to remain
with the brigantine. Beatrice Derwent was, as a matter of course, to
continue on board the merchantman. Thus did destiny again link my fate
with this lovely creature, and by one of those simple accidents which so
often occur, open for me a train of events, whose transaction it is my
purpose to detail in the following crude autobiography.
The sensations with which I watched the receding brigantine, after
assuming my new command, and hauling up on our course, may well be
imagined. Scarcely a fortnight had elapsed since I first launched on the
deep, a nameless, unknown, irresponsible midshipman; and now, by one of
fortune’s wildest freaks, I was commanding a prize of untold value, and
become the protector of the loveliest of her sex.
“There’s a divinity that shapes our fortunes,
Rough hew them as we will.”
It was not till the third day after parting company with the brigantine,
that Miss Derwent, with her maid, appeared once more upon the deck. The
shock of her uncle’s death had brought on an illness, which confined her
during that time to the cabin; and even now, there was a languor in her
fine countenance, and a melancholy in her dark eye, which, though they
added to the interest of her appearance, betokened the acuteness of her
grief. She was attired in a dark silken dress; her hair was plainly
braided back, and she wore no ornaments of any kind whatever. Rarely had
I beheld a vision of such surpassing loveliness. I stepped forward to
assist her to a seat. She smiled faintly, her eyes sparkled a moment,
and then a deep blush shot across her saddened features. But I will not
detail the scene that ensued. Suffice it to say that, from that moment I
loved Beatrice; and that though she had not bid me hope, there was
nothing in her conduct to bid me despair.
* * * * *
SABBATH BELLS.—IMPROMPTU.
BY WILLIS G. CLARK.
Sweet Sabbath! to my ear,
Thy bells, with mingling tone,
Tell of the distant and the dear
In yon far blue unknown.
Of happier days they tell,
When o’er the vernal ground,
Fairer than Ocean’s richest shell,
Young Nature breathed around:
When Hope, as at a shrine,
To Fancy poured her lay,
And hues, inspiring and divine,
Painted the live-long day.
Sweet bells! They have a voice,
Lost to the usual air,
Which bids the sorrowing heart rejoice,
Though life no more be fair.
Though dust to dust has gone,
They speak of brighter hours,
When Memory, as from a throne,
Surveyed her paths of flowers.
Of sunny spots, where Love
Unfurled his purple wings,
And filled the spirit and the grove
With glorious offerings!
* * * * *
A SEA SCENE.
BY ROBERT MORRIS.
The world is hushed and still, save where the sea
Against the rock-bound shore, in monster glee
Rushes and roars, and far along the coast,
In solemn thunders o’er the loved and lost
A constant requiem pours. Above—beyond—
No glimmering light is seen! No cheerful sound
Steals from the distance. Not a lonely star
Gleams from the dim, mysterious depths afar,
To win the eye, and, like a spirit chart,
To chase the sadness from the sea-boy’s heart.
His craft is small and frail—the waves are high—
And fresh and chill the wild breeze whistles by!
On, madly, blindly, rushes his slight sail,
An arrow winged before the maddened gale.
His heart is stout and firm; his messmates true,
Will, at his call, their hopeless toil renew!
But hark! that peal! Old ocean reels and rings,
While wilder still, the poor craft bends and springs;
And see yon flash—like lava from the sky
Poured rashly out by some dread hand on High,
And dealing death to those unfit to die!
Again—again! And mingling with the sea
The frail thing sinks and mounts. Eternity
Now yawns at every plunge, and each strong wave
Seems hurrying on to some cold ocean grave!
Now lost to view—now soaring with the swell—
Ah! who the thoughts of that pale crew may tell!
How radiant, Home, must seem thy beauties now!
How far thy low roof from that vessel’s prow!
How angel-like fond features, sunny eyes,
Rise o’er the waves in memory’s paradise!
Sweet gentle words are heard amid the storm,
And hands are clasped, whose blood flows fast and warm.
The future breaks upon the mental sight,
And Hope’s eternal watch-fire gives it light!
The soul again is nerved—the storm rolls on—
Morn breaks, and with it comes the welcome sun,
And though, as yet, no land salutes the eye,
Some tropic bird comes wheeling gaily by;
The air seems sweeter, and the ocean’s foam
Looks fresher, brighter, and reminds of home!
Oh! who may paint the rapture of that hour—
The peril past, the breeze, with fresh’ning power,
Filling the out-spread canvass! Who may tell
The wild emotions that each bosom swell,
As the glad morrow dawns upon the soul;
And feeling’s fountain bursts beyond control—
As welcome voices greet, or lip to lip,
In speechless joy, the heart’s companionship—
Is mutely told—or, as in some fair face
A gentler, deeper, thought of love we trace,
And mark with joy the chosen one’s embrace!
* * * * *
THE SYRIAN LETTERS.
WRITTEN FROM DAMASCUS, BY SERVILIUS PRISCUS OF CONSTANTINOPLE, TO HIS
KINSMAN, CORNELIUS DRUSUS, RESIDING AT ATHENS, AND BUT NOW TRANSLATED.
LETTER I.
Damascus.
Servilius to Cornelius—Greeting:
How cheering it is, my dear Cornelius, after a long and perilous voyage,
and the fearful pitchings of a frail vessel, to feel your accustomed
security of footstep, and trace in the wide plains and lofty mountains
the varying forms of nature’s loveliness, doubly enchanting after a
temporary separation. Such were my emotions after landing on the shore
of Berytus, heightened by the delightful and unexpected surprise of
meeting an old friend in a strange land.
Sulpicius behaved toward us in the most elegant and hospitable manner,
and so swiftly did the interval between arrival and departure fly, that
the scene of parting salutation was in sad contrast with the joy of our
first greeting. But as I have revived these recollections, let me give a
hasty sketch of what passed on the second evening of our landing. Having
gathered around the tables to the evening repast, cheerfulness reigned
triumphant. Tossed for days upon the whirling waters, we were now in
conscious security gaily, assembled in the harmonious circle, with not a
care to distract, and every reasonable pleasure to elevate. The music
ceasing, Lactantius observed he was sure he had heard that strain
before, he thought, when off the coast of Cyprus.
“Yes,” I replied, with a smile, “Lactantius you are right, I also heard
it.”
“Ah!” said he, “I believed every eye had been closed in sleep. It was my
custom at the dead hour of night, that time so fruitful of meditation
and of better thoughts—when silence reigns and unarmed repose throws
her soft mantle over every living thing; and the air robbed of its noon
day heat grows cool and balmy, to order before me the events of the day,
and mark wherein I had done amiss. Pardon me, Lactantius, this was not
all, have I not heard you, on more than one occasion, breathe passages
not of poetry only, but of bright description and solid thought? Come, I
call upon you, in the name of those around, should you approve, to
narrate the story of our voyage.”
“Yes! a good thought,” they cried. “And interweave,” says Marcus, “as
much poetry in the narration as you are wont.”
“Stay,” cries Sulpicius, “if you mean by poetry, play of fancy, at the
expense of geography, I should heartily prefer the unpainted narrative,
for how is it that travellers love the wonderful so much, and delight to
make the storms more dangerous, the mountains higher, and the valleys
greener than nature ever made them?”
“Such Sulpicius, is not my meaning,” rejoined Marcus, “but only that one
so competent to color nature as she should be colored, should perform
the task, and who, if he but wave the gay wand of fancy, may bring
before you every hill in its greenness, and temple in its sculptured
whiteness, so that you might almost believe you saw them on the
painter’s easel, or starting up in beautiful reality at your feet.”
“Stop Marcus, the subject of this undeserved eulogy is present, and if
you say another word I shall hesitate whether to begin, since our
friends may form expectations which cannot be realised.”
With this he described the whole course of our voyage, from our
embarkation at Constantinople to our landing at Berytus, its perils and
its pleasures: the countries we saw, the cities we visited, in that full
and flowing style for which he is so celebrated. At one moment he would
bring so faithfully to our eye, the terrors of that night on which we
were so near engulphed, that the shudder of fancied danger shot through
our veins, and the billows almost seemed to toss us, so vividly can a
master’s hand summon up an image of those horrors one has but lately
passed through. Indeed at one part of the recital, Fortunatus who was
present, uttered a smothered cry to the sailors, as if he was again
acting the part of a commander upon his ship. At this strange
ejaculation, notwithstanding the exciting story, we could not repress
our laughter; Lactantius himself joining in the general merriment. When
he began to describe the different cities we had entered, he used
considerable action, and so clearly did he bring the representation to
our view that in pointing, as if to the real object, we instinctively
followed with our eyes the motion of his fingers, as it were, in
expectation that the rising walls of some palace, or the rich scenery of
some wooded valley, would meet our gaze. Such is that silent homage
which we unknowingly pay to eloquent genius.
When he had finished, some expression of pleasure or admiration burst
from every tongue, and Sulpicius ordered us to fill our glasses to
Lactantius, accompanying this token of friendship with other marks of
high wrought satisfaction, such as he displays only on those occasions,
when his feelings are strongly enlisted in the object of them.
“Lactantius,” he remarked, “having always at my elbow a ready scribe,
who, committing to parchment with the most wonderful facility all that
falls from the lips of those distinguished men from Rome,
Constantinople, or other great cities, who in their travels may chance
to honor me with a visit, I have been enabled to accumulate a rich
collection, over which, whether as memorials of genius or of friendship,
I linger, whenever I peruse them, with fresh delight. This day’s
conversation, as it fell from your lips, is already deposited on the
precious pile.”
Here I perceived an uneasy play upon the features of my friend; as I
quickly traced the cause, for it was none other than his retiring
diffidence, I felt anxious to change the topic of our conversation. The
announcement of a stranger’s name, repeated, however, in so low a tone
that I did not hear it, diverted the attention of the company. Entering,
he walked toward the couch of Sulpicius, and we were all struck, at the
first glance, with his commanding air and dignified deportment. An ample
forehead, dark and piercing eye, and venerable beard, that sported with
by a passing wind, carelessly floated about the graceful folds of his
tunic, elicited instantaneous respect.
“I come,” he said, addressing himself to Sulpicius, “to seek the great
Lactantius, and understanding he was present, took the liberty of
entering without ceremony.” Sulpicius with this, rose, kindly welcomed
and invited him to join us at the tables, but politely refusing, he
continued,—“I come to consult him upon a subject which I hold to be
entitled to the friendly countenance of every lover of generosity and
toleration, be he of whatever faith.”
With this Lactantius arose and joined him, and as he clasped his hand,
there seemed so much Christian sincerity in his manner, that a tear
sparkled in the eye of the stranger, but it passed away, and his settled
demeanor was resumed. When they had left, a hundred conjectures sprang
up, as to what might be the object of this interview. But Sulpicius
informed us he was an eminent citizen of Berytus, that he had held a
responsible office under one of the last Emperors, embracing, however,
the creed of that new sect called Christians, he fell into disgrace, and
stood in jeopardy of his life, but was saved through the earnest
intercession of an influential friend residing at Baalbec, and a solemn
promise to retire into distant and perpetual banishment. Upon the death
of the Emperor he returned from exile, and would have been re-instated
in all his former dignities, but tiring of the turmoil of public life he
preferred the quiet of retirement, and the peaceful enjoyment of
domestic bliss. But you have not given us, observed Valerius, your
conjecture of the object of his visit, nor the name of that worthy
citizen whose intervention was so happy in its results. The object of
the interview is doubtless to arouse the feelings, or invoke the
powerful aid of Lactantius in the establishment of a Christian Colony,
or perhaps in the building of some Christian temple, since Constantine
has proved so munificent in the erection of the most gorgeous edifices
to the Christian’s God. The name of the citizen whose good offices were
so fortunate, was Æmelianus of Heliopolis. When this name was mentioned,
I noticed that the countenance of Lucretia became pale, and her lip was
compressed, as if in the suppression of some hidden emotion, but its
cause I was not able to divine.
The sun upon the following day shining through the windows’ tapestry,
awoke me by his reddening beams, and warned me to rise and behold the
grandeur at my feet. Throwing the lattice open, I beheld a panorama
unequalled in sublimity and beauty by any thing I had ever seen. Berytus
stretched away below me, sparkling with shining domes, glistening house
tops, and here and there arose some marble monumental pillar, or an
obelisk, commemorative of some signal event, which, peeping from their
encircling grove, appeared to rest upon its summit like flakes of
freshly fallen snow. Beyond the city lay the ocean, with many a sail,
but dimly visible upon its heaving bosom; behind me rose, towering and
precipitous, eternal Lebanon, bathed in a flood of various lights, like
a vestment dyed with many colors, and the pines which crown its heights,
spreading their fringy leaves against the clouds, borrowed all their
hues.
With nature clothed in gladness, and the scented freshness of the
morning air, filled with the warbling of birds, you may entertain
surprise when I tell you, that my feelings were those of sadness, for I
reflected that this great city must, in its turn, as other cities have,
either sink into insignificance, or become much diminished in splendor,
and its thousands of busy people, with the unerring certainty of the
rising sun, be gathered generation after generation, to their fathers,
while the hoary mountain at whose base it lay, would through all time
raise its head in haughty glory. How vain to boast of immortality, how
vain to live solely for ambition’s sake, when the fame of the hero rests
upon the mercy of a parchment, or the treacherous reliance of tradition.
A convulsion of the earth may overthrow a temple, the pride of
centuries, the boast of a nation—a spark consume a city, and time’s
wasting finger in the interval of but a few years, destroy the golden
record of genius, however perpetuated, so that the celebrity of the
orator, and the works of the poet, shall have but a flickering
existence, and finally shall perish from the recollection of their
countrymen.
The morning of our departure being now at hand, we began our journey
from Berytus, through Baalbec to Damascus, and as it lay through a rocky
region, we knew it would be rough and wearisome, but when we remembered
the grandeur of nature, the mountains, valleys, forests, temples,
palaces, we should behold, we trusted we would be able to drive away
fatigue.
Among those who performed the journey with us, were Lactantius, Marcus,
and Valerius; also Cornelia, and Placidia, the daughter of Lucius
Sergius, and their kinswoman Lucretia.
Lucius having purchased a chariot, the ladies accompanied him by another
route, the rest of us having bought chargers at the market place of
Berytus, well accustomed to the rocky pathway, determined to travel by
the _via Antoniana_, cut at some spots into the solid rock, through the
liberality of Antoninus, who has left in this country endless works of
art, which I hope may remain imperishable monuments to his genius,
generosity, and enterprise. The journey from Berytus to Baalbec by this
route is of more than a day—arduous and perilous—but as I said, the
traveller finds an ample return for all his toil, in the awful sublimity
of countless rocky peaks, which cap these hoary mountains with an
imperishable crown. Rising into the clouds, they seem to bear the fleecy
vapors upon their broad summits, while their terrible height obscures
the morning sun, and for the while hides their base in impenetrable
darkness, and even throws a gloom upon the troubled bosom of the ocean,
which occasionally lashes their everlasting foundations in its fury.
Ocean always in motion, mountains ever at rest, both as thou wert a
thousand years ago—unchangeable! what a fruitful comment upon the
perishable creations of man’s feeble arm.
Crossing the river Lycus, which having its birth among the purest
fountains, and finding its channel in the hollow of a deep cleft of the
mountains, shoots beneath your feet with impetuous dashings, we after a
space arrived at the banks of the purple Adonis. You may remember it was
near this river, that he, from whom it derives its name, came to his
end. Many temples have been dedicated in these wild regions to the
memory of Adonis, and to her who the poets tell us mourned so bitterly
for his loss. Having passed over Lebanon, we fell upon luxuriant
gardens; endless groves of olive trees; purpled vineyards; hill sides
clad with trees laden with ripe fruit, that shining from their dark
surrounding foliage, were bright with every tint of heaven, from the
richest golden to the deeply blushing red. Such was this enchanting
prospect, heightening in its beauty at each succeeding step, and when at
last we came in full view of the great Baalbec, or as some call
Heliopolis of Phenicia or of Assyria, built upon the level of a broad
and verdant plain, and starting from among deep embosoming thickets, our
admiration was irrepressible. High and conspicuous above the city walls
rose that greatest temple of the world, the Temple of the Sun, now lit
with his departing beams; and we could plainly trace its portico, its
courts, and surrounding temples. In one spot a monument or an obelisk
upreared itself, or the gilded dome of some Palace, shining like a
Pharos above the dark enshrouding groves.
Having approached the northern gate of the city, we were obliged to pass
through established ceremonies ere we secured an entrance. This enabled
me to examine the beautiful architecture of this noble portal. Four
Corinthian pillars upon an elevated basement, supported a heavy
architrave, with niches between their intercolumniations, filled with
two statues, one representing the founder of the city, King Solomon in
royal robes, the other Sheba. In the centre hung a lofty brazen gate,
covered with massive mouldings cast in brass, one I recollect much
resembling that upon the great shield in the temple of Mars at
Constantinople. So weighty was this structure, that it must have proved
a labor of years to construct it, as it surely would one almost of
months to batter it down. It looked impenetrable. On beholding this
gate, I could not but fancy it opened into some new region, that when
drawn aside, I should be presented with a scene novel and wonderful.
Directly the immense mass began to yield, and the harsh rattling of its
bars and chains, and the low rumbling of its enormous hinges, reminded
me of distant, deep mouthed thunder. Its ponderous folds were now fully
opened to admit us, and the issue realised what fancy had portrayed, for
an exhibition of the gayest kind was passing before us. Young and ardent
charioteers in streaming and many colored robes, and mounted upon
chariots, richly inlaid with sparkling gems and gold, were driving their
highly mettled coursers in various directions, through the broad and
noble avenues, some of which seemed to terminate at this northern gate.
So rapid and complicated were the movements of these young votaries,
that it was matter of wonder to me they did not come in dreadful
conflict. Others on prancing steeds were displaying their gallant
horsemanship. Here you saw a gathering group of youthful citizens at
some athletic sport, and there a little knot of philosophers, who may be
readily distinguished by their long mantles, grave countenances, and
earnest conversation, as if in the hot discussion of some exciting
topic. You may have noticed after an attendance at the theatre for
hours, with nothing to fix your wandering gaze, except the curtain of
the Proscenium, how gladly you have hailed the lifting of it, revealing
the actors in full dress, and all the dazzling arrangements of the
Drama. Such were my sensations at this moment. Asking for the house of a
kinsman of Sergius, some friendly citizen informed us he had just left
him at the baths, but that he had perhaps returned, and he would conduct
us to his mansion. Arriving there, we found the owner at his hall of
entrance, when instantly recognising Sergius, he pressed us immediately
to dismount, else, as he alleged, we would violate the customs of
Heliopolis. Not choosing at the very first, to violate so hospitable a
custom, we cheerfully entered the splendid mansion, and as gladly were
we received. Having assembled in the Hall, after the freshening
influences of the bath, we were greeted by a number of distinguished
citizens, who, were invited to meet us, as eminent Romans upon our
journey through Syria. Under such _favorable auspices_ though wholly
undeserved as they respect your friend Servilius, it was not long ere we
cemented a friendship. “Highly welcome!” exclaimed Mobilius, (for this
was his title,) upon his first acquaintance, for on such good terms did
he seem to be with himself and those around him. “Highly welcome to
Baalbec, but this you will not find a very Christian spot, while these
priests of Heliopolitan Jove are so numerous: Is it true,” he continued
in the same breath, “and you must bring the latest news, that
Constantine intends to close our temples, and convert them into others,
for the observance of the rites of this new sect called Christians?”
“There was such a rumor my friend,” replied Lactantius, “but of its
truth I cannot speak, would it were correct.”
At this, his eye flashed and I plainly saw, he was a true convert to the
worship of the sun.
“You would not speak thus,” he said, “had you ever witnessed the
splendid ceremonies of our religion,” and whispering to him as if
bestowing a peculiar mark of confidence, “you shall if you wish from a
secret undiscoverable nook, see all,” and darting a quick enquiring
glance, he added in the same low whisper, though distinct enough to be
heard by me, “you may be a convert.”
“I will behold the spectacle,” was Lactantius’ brief reply. I doubted
not but that this great warrior in a self denying cause, had in this
ready compliance, some wise purpose, possibly, to persuade this youthful
votary of the danger of his faith, or to convert him to his own: and
such I believed was partly Mobilius’ design, so I felt there would be no
difficulty in securing a share of this undiscoverable nook, for I was
eager to witness these strange ceremonies. But I have exhausted my
parchment, and I fear your patience, so I shall reserve my account until
the next epistle, which I hope may find you as I trust this does in
continued prosperity and health. Farewell.
Philadelphia, December, 1840.
* * * * *
THINE—ONLY THINE.
BY MRS. CATHARINE H. W. ESLING.
Thine—only thine,
The bland winds whisper it at every breath,
And thou art mine—
Mine thro’ all changes—mine alone till death.
Years will pass by,
And write their records upon either’s brow,
Will dim the eye,
But alter not one heart pulse beating now.
Changes will come,
And the light foot, less lightly tread the ground,
The gentle hum
Of voices, will have lost their softest sound.
And clinging ties
Will be dissever’d—from the household band
Some may arise
To the bright mansions in the “Happy Land.”
In all their youth,
The sunny gladness of their early years,
To realms of truth
Their spotless souls soar from “the vale of tears.”
Strong links may break,
Links that are twined around the inmost heart,
And dreamers, wake
To see their sand-built fabrics slowly part.
But thou wilt be,
Even as the oak, in all thy strength and pride,
An unscath’d tree,
While I, the Ivy, cling thy form beside.
And when we leave
The sunny paths of youth, where flowers grew bright
We will not grieve
That our brief morning hid its beams in night.
Edging each cloud,
Hope’s silver ray shall light us near and far,
No darken’d shroud
Can hide from us love’s ever-burning star.
Like noon’s sweet close
Before the shades of eve grow dim and dark,
When flowers repose,
And angels’ eyes day’s slow departure mark.
Like that, shall seem
Our parting from this world of earthly bloom,
And life’s calm stream,
Shall gently lave us as we near the tomb.
Thine—only thine,
The bland winds whisper it at every breath,
And thou art mine—
Mine thro’ all changes—mine alone till death.
Philadelphia, December, 1840.
* * * * *
CLARA FLETCHER.
OR, FIRST AND LAST LOVE.
“What a beautiful creature Clara Fletcher is!” exclaimed Mr. Tressayle.
“Beautiful!” replied the lady by whom he stood, tossing her head
disdainfully, “why la!” and she raised her glass to her eye, “_I_ think
she’s positively plain looking.”
“Beautiful indeed!” echoed her mamma, a fat, vulgar looking woman, the
flaunting colors of whose dress, betrayed her character at once, “why
now, I do say, Mr. Tressayle, it’s astonishing—it is—how a gentleman
of such _tone_ as you, should think that pert Miss Fletcher any thing
but common-like. Why do look at her hair now, I’d be bound she done it
up herself—and then her dress, why that stuff,” said she, with a
contemptuous curl of her lip, “couldn’t have cost a dollar a yard. Do
you think it could, Araminta, my dear?”
Mr. Tressayle was decidedly the most fashionable man at Saratoga. With a
fine person, a handsome countenance, the most courtly manners, and more
than all supposed to be possessed of a fortune as extensive as his
establishment was fashionable, he was looked up to by all as _the_ match
of the season. The Belvilles, therefore, with whom he was now
conversing, were not a little flattered by the attentions which he paid
them. True they were the wealthiest family at the Springs; but then Mr.
Belville had made his princely fortune as a distiller. Originally the
keeper of a green-grocer’s shop, he had risen afterward into an obscure
tavern-keeper, and from thence by slow gradations, he had become a
wine-merchant, a distiller, a usurer, and a millionaire. Latterly, his
lady, discarding the shop, and affecting to despise tradesmen’s wives,
had set up for a woman of fashion, and nothing gave her, in her eyes,
more importance than the attentions obviously paid by Mr. Tressayle to
her only child, Araminta Melvina Belville, a long, scraggy young lady of
about two-and-twenty, but who affected the manners of “sweet sixteen.”
The devotion of Tressayle to such a being was indeed surprising to all
who did not know how involved was his fortune.
What reply might have been made by Tressayle to this remark we know not,
for his answer was cut short by the appearance of no less a personage
than Mr. Belville.
“How are you, Tressayle, fine girls here, eh!” said this gentleman,
slapping the young man somewhat familiarly on the shoulder, “deuced
handsome gal that, just come in, and has fell heiress to a cool three
hundred thousand. By Jove she’s a lucky thing to get the hunk of money
old Snarler made in the East India trade.”
“Clara Fletcher heiress to Mr. Snarler!—you surprise me,” said
Tressayle, “I thought he had sworn to cut off her mother, who was his
sister, you know, and all her family with a shilling, merely for
marrying Mr. Fletcher, who, though poor, was in every respect a
gentleman.”
“Ay, so he did—so he did, but he died at last—d’ye see?—without a
will,—and so Clara Fletcher, the only daughter of his only sister, cuts
into his fortune fat.”
“It’s singular I never heard of this before,” said Tressayle, half
musingly.
“Mamma, la! if I don’t think Mr. Tressayle has seen Miss Fletcher
before,” whispered the daughter behind her fan; and then raising her
voice and simpering and blushing as Tressayle looked down on overhearing
her, she continued, “dear me, you haven’t been listening all the while,
have you? But do tell, Mr. Tressayle, who is that young man talking with
her?”
“I believe it is Mr. Rowley.”
“Gad is _he_ the feller,” broke in Mr. Belville, “that published the
poems so many people are cracking up? Why he isn’t much after all I
guess. For my part I don’t see why some people get praised for writing
poetry—it’s nothing—I could do it myself if I’d try,” said he, with a
sneer. “I don’t think this Mr. Rowley a man of talent; no poet is.” And
finishing his sentence with a supercilious look at the subject of his
remarks, the ci-devant green-grocer, inflated with the consciousness of
his wealth, thrust his fingers into his waistcoat pockets, and marched
off to join another group.
“Why, my dear Miss Fletcher, how d’ye do?” said the shrill voice of Mrs.
Belville, at this moment, as Mr. Rowley led his beautiful partner to a
seat near the pretender to ton, “how _have_ you been this age? Why how
well you are looking. Laws me, and so you know Mr. Tressayle. Well now I
do say how quiet you’ve all kept it.”
It was as Mrs. Belville said. Clara Fletcher had scarcely replied to the
vulgar address of her neighbor by a distant though polite inclination of
her head, before she caught the eyes of Tressayle fixed upon her with a
look of mingled inquiry and delight, and as he bowed and stepped forward
a slight blush passed over her beautiful cheek, and a scarcely
perceptible tremor of the voice might have been detected in replying to
his salutation.
That night mother and daughter held a long consultation, the result of
which was, that Miss Fletcher might prove a formidable rival, and that
therefore no arts were to be omitted to detach the fashionable and
wealthy Mr. Tressayle from her suite.
Meanwhile, Tressayle reached his room, and throwing himself abstractedly
into a large _fautieul_, sat for nearly an hour, with his face leaning
on his hand. At length he started up, and pacing the room rapidly,
exclaimed, as if continuing a train of thought,
“It is no use denying it, Clara Fletcher is far more beautiful than I
ever dreamed she could be. Yes! and I once loved her,—at least I told
her so. I wonder if she would refuse me now,” and he paused before the
glass. “Pshaw! it is idle to think so. True, she is not more than half
as wealthy as this inanimate little fool, Miss Belville; but, then,
there is the vulgar mother, and coarse father of the latter. Clara has
none of these. I never saw their vulgarity so plainly as I did to-night.
Ah! I forgot, there is that coldness I showed to Clara when her other
uncle disappointed every one’s expectations in omitting her in his will.
I’m cursedly afraid she’s not forgotten it. But, then, how could one
know she would ever become an heiress? It’s deucedly unlucky, now I
think of it, that I never called on her in New York, after my return
from Europe. But ‘faint heart never won fair lady;’ and, besides, if
Clara ever loved me, as I really think she once did, it’s not so
difficult a matter for Henry Tressayle to re-kindle that affection in
her bosom. Besides, I’m really making a heroic sacrifice in giving up a
fortune twice as large for my old flame.”
From that time Tressayle was almost ever at the side of the beautiful
Clara Fletcher. He rode with her, sang with her, danced with her,
promenaded with her, and did this too, without a rival, for her former
suitor, Mr. Rowley had been compelled to return to New York by business,
and few cared to enter the lists against so resistless a beau as
Tressayle. Every body declared that they were already affianced lovers,
or they soon would be so, except the Belvilles, whose chagrin could not
be concealed, and who sneered even at the probability of such a thing.
Tressayle, however, was not so well satisfied with his progress as was
the world at large. His knowledge of the sex told him that the conduct
of Clara toward him, was not exactly that of one whose affections he had
anew engaged. She was too easy, too composed, possessed of too much
quiet calmness at all times, not to awaken uneasy suspicions, lest her
love was not yet gained. Still, however, she did nothing to shew any
distaste for Tressayle’s society, and his own vanity led him on in the
pursuit.
Nor was his love any longer a mere matter of calculation to Tressayle.
It had become a necessity—it had grown into a passion. If ever he loved
a woman, that woman had been Clara Fletcher, and when it had become
known that she was not her uncle’s heiress, it was not without a
struggle that Tressayle left her. But supremely selfish, and with a
fortune impaired by extravagance, he looked at it as an impossibility
that he should marry except to an heiress. Now, however, all his old
feelings toward Clara were revived, and revived too in ten-fold force.
Her fortune was no longer an obstacle. Yes, Tressayle loved; loved for
the first time; loved with more than the fervor of which such a man
might be thought capable. He could endure his suspense no longer, and
determining to propose at once for Clara, he chose for his purpose, an
afternoon when they rode out unaccompanied together.
Words cannot describe the eloquence with which the lover—for
Tressayle’s talented, though selfish mind, was capable of the highest
eloquence—poured forth his passion in the ear of his mistress. But it
drew no answering emotion from Clara. A slight blush perhaps tinged her
cheek a moment, but her eye calmly looked into his own, and her voice
was firm and clear, as she replied,
“Listen to me, Tressayle,” she said. “I am young still, but I was once
younger. You remember it well. Then I met you, and—need I disguise
it?—you spake to me of love. I know it was but once you said so, but it
was after you had paid attention to me which _you_ knew, as well as I,
was more eloquent than words. I had never seen one whom I thought your
equal, and I loved you. Stay—hear me out. I loved you with all the
ardor of a girl’s first love. But how was it returned? While I thought
only of you,—while a word from you was my law—while the day seemed
gloomy without your presence—while, in short, I gave to you freely
every emotion of my heart, _you_ were coolly calculating how much my
fortune would be, and preparing, as you subsequently did, to discard me
altogether in case I was not my uncle’s heiress—”
“Oh, Clara, Clara, hear me.”
“Yes, Tressayle, but listen first, and then I will hear you. You left me
without cause when my uncle’s will was opened and I was found to have
been overlooked. I need not tell you the agony of my heart on
discovering your character. Let that pass. Reason conquered at last.
They say a first love,” continued the beautiful girl, looking at her
companion until his eye quailed before the calm dignity of her own, “can
never be conquered; but believe me it is a mistake. When the object of
that love is unworthy, it is not impossible. And now, Tressayle, you
understand me. You are to me as a stranger. Never can I love you again.
I am, moreover, the affianced bride of Mr. Rowley.”
Tressayle could not answer a word. Mortification and shame overpowered
him, and he was glad when he saw that they were near the termination of
their ride.
The first person they met on alighting was Mr. Belville. Ashamed of
himself and stung to the very quick, Tressayle took advantage to propose
to the millionaire for his daughter.
“Gad, and are you the only ignorant man here of your loss of fortune?”
said Mr. Belville, superciliously. “But I forgot the mail came in while
you were riding with Miss Fletcher. Good morning, sir.”
Tressayle hurried to his room, opened his letters, and found that the
Bank in which he was a large stockholder was broken. In two hours he had
left Saratoga.
H. J. V.
* * * * *
THE INDIAN MAID.
A BALLAD.
SUNG BY MRS. WATSON,
THE MUSIC ARRANGED BY S. NELSON.
Geo. W. Hewitt & Co. No. 184 Chesnut Street, Philadelphia.
[Illustration: musical score]
Morning’s dawn is in the skies,
Whilst o’er the Mountain height,
Fast the glorious beams arise,
[Illustration: musical score]
Hail we their golden light:
Ere the brightness of those rays
Dies on the distant sea,
May the hopes of my young days
Be warm’d to life by thee.
May the hopes of my young days
Be warm’d to life by thee.
2
Fairest flow’r ’neath eastern skies,
Stor’d in thy peaceful mind
More of wealth for me there lies
Than in the gems of Ind.
Never from thy trusting heart,
Ne’er from thy smiling brow
May the hopes, the peace depart
Which beam upon them now.
3
Hours and days will wing their flight,
Still never day shall fade;
But I’ll share some new delight
With thee, my Indian maid.
In the passing hour of gloom
Rest thou thy cares on me;
To restore thy pleasure’s bloom,
Will my best guerdon be.
* * * * *
SPORTS AND PASTIMES.
We have been favored with the Edinburg copy of “The Rod and Gun,” an
excellent work, from the pen of the author of the celebrated “Oakleigh
Shooting Code.” The most important parts of the essay are expanded in
this volume, and many valuable hints to sportsmen, gathered from all
parts of the world, and from the experience of the author, are thrown
in. With this work, the ablest decidedly that has of late years been
given to the sporting world—we propose this month to make somewhat
free, and intend hereafter to push the acquaintance to the utmost verge
of familiarity, and shall present the writer to our readers each month
in form. He will be found to improve, “like good wine upon
acquaintance,” and we feel assured that no good gentleman “and true,”
will fail to appreciate the honor, or to derive valuable and instructive
hints relative to manly exercises, from his conversation. He makes his
own introduction:
“The wand with which we now desire to charm an enlightened and
discerning public, was first waved some seasons back. We think the butt
end is not much the worse for wear—we have strengthened the mid-pieces,
repaired the top, and given the whole a coat of varnish, hoping that in
the hands of others now more fit for the practice of the gentle art than
we ourselves, it may prove a steady friend and true, whether in still or
troubled waters.”
* * * * *
ANGLING.
[Illustration: THE PIKE.]
The pike is in season from May to February, and is most frequently
angled for by trolling with a strong topped rod. The hooks are generally
fastened to a bit of brass wire for a few inches from the shaft, to
prevent the line from being snapped. Different methods are used in
angling for pike. _Trolling_, in the more limited sense of the word,
signifies catching fish with the gorge-hook, which is composed of two,
or what is called a double eel-hook; _live-bait fishing_ is practised
with the aid of a floated line; and _snap-fishing_ consists in the use
of large hooks, so baited as to enable the angler to strike the fish the
moment he feels it bite, immediately after which he drags it _nolens
volens_ ashore.
Trolling for pike may be practised during the winter months, when trout
fishing has ceased; and the colder season of the year is in fact more
convenient for the sport, owing to the decay or diminution of the weeds
which usually surround their favorite haunts. With the exception of chub
and dace, which bite pretty freely at the bottom all winter, scarcely
any other fish can be relied upon for sport during the more inclement
portion of the year. To bait a gorge-hook, take a baiting-needle, and
hook the curved end to the loop of the gimp, to which the hook is tied.
Then introduce the point of the needle into a dead bait’s mouth, and
bring it out at the middle of the fork of the tail, by which means the
piece of lead which covers the shank of the hook, and part of the
connecting wire, will lie concealed in the interior of the bait: the
shank will be in the inside of its mouth, and the barbs on the outside,
turning upward. To keep the bait steady on the hook, fasten the tail
part just above the fork to the gimp, with a silk or cotton thread; or a
neater method is, to pass the needle and thread through the side of the
bait, about half an inch above the tail, so as encircle the gimp in the
interior. The baits used vary in weight from one to four ounces, and the
hooks must be proportioned to the size of the fish with which they are
baited. The barbs of the hook ought not to project much beyond the sides
of the mouth, because, as the pike generally seizes his prey cross-wise,
and turns it before it is pouched or swallowed, if he feels the points
of the hook he may cast it out entirely.
[Illustration]
In trolling for pike, it is advised to keep as far from the water as
possible, and to commence casting close by the near shore, with the wind
blowing from behind. When the water is clear and the weather bright,
some prefer to fish against the wind. “After trying closely,” says Mr.
Salter, “make your next throw farther in the water, and draw and sink
the baited hook, drawing it straight upward near to the surface of the
water, and also to right and left, searching carefully every foot of
water; and draw your bait with the stream, because you must know that
jack and pike lay in wait for food with their heads and eyes pointing up
the stream, to catch what may be coming down; therefore experienced
trollers fish a river or stream down, or obliquely across; but the
inconsiderate as frequently troll against the stream, which is improper,
because they then draw their baited hook behind either jack or pike when
they are stationary, instead of bringing it before his eyes and mouth to
tempt him. _Note._—Be particularly careful, in drawing up or taking the
baited hook out of the water, not to do it too hastily, because you will
find by experience that the jack and pike strike or seize your bait more
frequently when you are drawing it upward than when it is sinking. And
also farther observe, that when drawing your bait upward, if you
occasionally shake the rod, it will cause the bait to spin and twist
about, which is very likely to attract either jack or pike.”
These fish are partial to the bends of rivers and the bays of lakes,
where the water is shallow, and abounding in weeds, reeds, water lilies,
&c. In fishing with the gorge-hook, when the angler feels a run, he
ought not to strike for several minutes after the fish has become
stationary, lest he pull the bait away before it is fairly pouched. If a
pike makes a very short run, then remains stationary for about a minute,
and again makes one or two short runs, he is probably merely retiring to
some quiet haunt before he swallows the bait; but if, after remaining
still for three or four minutes, he begins to shake the line and move
about, the inference is that he has pouched the bait, and feels some
annoyance from the hook within, then such part of the line as has been
slackened may be wound up, and the fish struck. It is an unsafe practice
to lay down the rod during the interval between a run and the supposed
pouching of the bait, because it not unfrequently happens that a heavy
fish, when he first feels the hooks in his interior, will make a sudden
and most violent rush up the river or along the lake, and the line is
either instantly broken, or is carried, together with both the rod and
reel, for ever beyond the angler’s reach. “When the pike cometh,” says
Colonel Venables, “you may see the water move, at least you may feel
him; then slack your line and give him length enough to run away to his
hold, whither he will go directly, and there pouch it, ever beginning
(as you may observe) with the head, swallowing that first. Thus let him
lye until you see the line move in the water, and then you may certainly
conclude he hath pouched your bait, and rangeth about for more; then
with your trowl wind up your line till you think you have it almost
streight, then with a smart jerk hook him, and make your pleasure to
your content.”
The fresher and cleaner the bait is kept, whether for trolling,
live-bait, or snap-fishing, the greater is the chance of success.
[Illustration]
As pike, notwithstanding their usual voracity, are sometimes, as the
anglers phrase it, more on the play than the feed, they will
occasionally seize the bait across the body, and, instead of swallowing
it, blow it from them repeatedly and then take no farther notice of it.
The skilful and wily angler must instantly convert his gorge into a
snap, and strike him in the lips or jaws when he next attempts such
dangerous amusement. The dead snap may be made either with two or four
hooks. Take about twelve inches of stout gimp, make a loop at one end,
at the other tie a hook (size No. 2,) and about an inch farther up the
gimp tie another hook of the same dimensions; then pass the loop of the
gimp into the gill of a dead bait-fish, and out at its mouth, and draw
the gimp till the hook at the bottom comes just behind the back fin of
the bait, and the point and barb are made to pierce slightly through its
skin, which keeps the whole steady: now pass the ring of a drop-bead
lead over the loop of the gimp, fix the lead inside the bait’s mouth,
and sew the mouth up. This will suffice for the snap with a couple of
hooks. If the four-hooked snap is desired (and it is very killing,) take
a piece of stout gimp about four inches long, and making a loop at one
end, tie a couple of hooks of the same size, and in the same manner as
those before described. After the first two and the lead are in their
places, and previous to the sewing up of the mouth, pass the loop of the
shorter gimp through the opposite gill, and out at the mouth of the
bait; then draw up the hooks till they occupy a position corresponding
to those of the other side: next pass the loop of the longer piece of
gimp through that of the shorter, and pull all straight: finally, tie
the two pieces of gimp together close to the fish’s mouth, and sew the
latter up.
Some anglers prefer fishing for pike with a floated line and a live
bait. When a single hook is used for this purpose, it is baited in one
or other of the two following ways: Either pass the point and barb of
the hook through the lips of the bait, toward the side of the mouth, or
through beneath the base of the anterior portion of the dorsal fin. When
a double hook is used, take a baiting-needle, hook its curved end into
the loop of the gimp, and pass its point beneath the skin of the bait
from behind the gills upward in a sloping direction, bringing it out
behind the extremity of the dorsal fin; then draw the gimp till the bend
of the hooks are brought to the place where the needle entered, and
attach the loop to the trolling line. Unless a kind of snap-fishing is
intended, the hooks for the above purpose should be of such a size as
that neither the points nor the barbs project beyond either the shoulder
or the belly of the bait.
Snap-fishing is certainly a less scientific method of angling for pike
than that with the gorge or live-bait; for when the hooks are baited,
the angler casts in search, draws, raises, and sinks his bait, until he
feels a bite. He then strikes strongly and drags or throws his victim on
shore; for there is little fear of his tackle giving way, as that used
in snap-fishing is of the largest and stoutest kind. “This hurried and
unsportsmanlike way of taking fish,” it is observed in the _Troller’s
Guide_, “can only please those who value the game more than the sport
afforded by killing a jack or pike with tackle, which gives the fish a
chance of escaping, and excites the angler’s skill and patience, mixed
with a certain pleasing anxiety, and the reward of his hopes. Neither
has the snap-fisher so good a chance of success, unless he angles in a
pond or piece of water where the jack or pike are very numerous or half
starved, and will hazard their lives for almost any thing that comes in
their way. But in rivers where they are well fed, worth killing, and
rather scarce, the coarse snap-tackle, large hooks, &c. generally alarm
them. On the whole, I think it is two to one against the snap in most
rivers; and if there are many weeds in the water, the large hooks of the
snap, by standing rank, are continually getting foul, damaging the bait,
and causing much trouble and loss of time.”
Pike sometimes rise at an artificial fly, especially in dark, windy
days. The fly ought to be dressed upon a double hook, and composed of
very gaudy materials. The head is formed of a little fur, some gold
twist, and (if the angler’s taste inclines that way, for it is probably
a matter of indifference to the fish) two small black or blue beads for
eyes. The body is framed rough, full, and round, the wings not parted,
but made to stand upright on the back, with some small feathers
continued down the back to the end of the tail, so that when finished
they may exceed the length of the hook. The whole should be about the
bulk of a wren.
During clear and calm weather in summer and autumn, pike take most
freely about three in the afternoon: in winter they may be angled for
with equal chances of success during the whole day: early in the
morning, and late in the evening are the periods best adapted for the
spring.
This fish is also angled for in a variety of ways by fixed or set lines,
and also by trimmers, or liggers, as they are provincially called in
some parts of England. Horsea Mere and Heigham Sound are two large
pieces of water in the county of Norfolk, not far from Yarmouth, noted
for their pike, as partly immortalised in old Camden’s famous lines of
lengthened sweetness long drawn out,—
“Horsey Pike,
None like.”
Mr. Yarrell received the following returns from a sporting gentleman, of
four days’ fishing with trimmers in these waters, in the month of March,
1834: viz. on the 11th at Heigham Sounds, 60 pike, weighing 280 pounds;
on the 13th at Horsea Mere, 89 pike, weighing 379 pounds; on the 18th,
again at Horsea Mere, 49 pike, weighing 213 pounds; on the 19th, at
Heigham Sounds, 58 pike, weighing 263 pounds: the four days sport
producing 256 fish, weighing together 1135 pounds.
As the mode of using trimmers in these extensive _broads_ affords great
diversion, and is rather peculiar, we shall here quote Mr. Yarrell’s
account of it. “I may state that the ligger or trimmer is a long
cylindrical float, made of wood or cork, or rushes tied together at each
end; to the middle of this float a string is fixed, in length from eight
to fifteen feet; this string is wound round the float except two or
three feet, when the trimmer is to be put into the water, and slightly
fixed by a notch in the wood or cork, or by putting it between the ends
of the rushes. The bait is fixed on the hook, and the hook fastened to
the end of the pendent string, and the whole then dropped into the
water. By this arrangement the bait floats at any required depth, which
should have some reference to the temperature of the season,—pike
swimming near the surface in fine warm weather, and deeper when it is
colder, but generally keeping near its peculiar haunts. When the bait is
seized by a pike, the jerk looses the fastening, and the whole string
unwinds,—the wood, cork, or rushes, floating at the top, indicating
what has occurred. Floats of wood or cork are generally painted, to
render them more distinctly visible on the water to the fishers, who
pursue their amusement and the liggers in boats. Floats of rushes are
preferred to others, as least calculated to excite suspicion in the
fish.”
Pike are occasionally taken in the English lakes above 30 pounds in
weight, and Dr. Grierson mentions one killed in Loch Ken, in Galloway,
which weighed 61 pounds. The color of the young fish is of a greenish
hue, but it afterward becomes rather of a dusky olive brown upon the
upper parts, marked on the sides with mottled green and yellow, and
silvery white on the abdomen. We do not think highly of its flesh,
although by many it is held in some esteem.
* * * * *
REVIEW OF NEW BOOKS.
_“Mercedes of Castile,” a Romance, by J. Fennimore Cooper. 2
vols. Lea & Blanchard, 1840._
As a history, this work is invaluable: as a novel, it is well nigh
worthless. The author deserves credit for presenting to the public, in a
readable form, so much historical information, with which, otherwise,
the great mass of the community would have never become acquainted; and
he ought, also, to receive proper commendation for having woven that
information in any way whatever, into the narrative of a novel; but at
the same time, if called upon to speak of his work as a romance, and not
as a history, we can neither disguise from ourselves, nor from our
readers, that it is, if possible, the worst novel ever penned by Mr.
Cooper. A hasty sketch of the plot will fully sustain our assertion.
The work opens with the marriage of Isabella of Castile, and Ferdinand
of Arragon, after which a _hiatus_ occurs of more than twenty-two years.
This, in the first place, is a grand error in the novelist. Had he
commenced his narrative at the siege of Granada at once, we should have
been spared an ungainly excrescence on the very front of the story. We
shall, therefore, consider the novel as beginning properly at an ensuing
chapter.
The scene opens on the day when the city of Granada is taken possession
of by the Moors; and when Columbus, as a suitor for vessels to carry on
his contemplated discoveries, is almost worn out with seven years of
delay and disappointment. A young Spanish Grandee, called Luis
Bobadilla, wild, adventurous, and fond of roving at sea, happening to be
introduced to him in the crowd, is half persuaded to embark with the
navigator on his dangerous voyage; an inclination which is strengthened
to a firm resolve by his mistress, who, forbidden by Queen Isabella to
marry so roving a nobleman, and thinking that such a voyage would be
taken as a sort of expiation by her sovereign, advises, nay! commands
him to embark with Columbus. The difficulties; the hopes; the final
disappointment, and solitary departure of Columbus, are then faithfully
described, as well as his sudden recall by order of the queen, and her
determination to fit out the expedition from her own purse. This,
however, we pass over, only remarking in passing, that the fiery pursuit
of the young grandee through the Vega after the departing Columbus, and
the scene where he overtakes the dejected navigator, are worthy of the
best passages of the Pioneers, the Water-Witch, or the Last of the
Mohicans.
The young nobleman, consequently, disguised as a sailor, sails with
Columbus out into the, as then thought, shoreless Atlantic. To describe
this voyage was manifestly the sole object of the author in writing the
work. Availing himself of the journal of the admiral, and mingling just
enough of fiction with the incidents recorded there, to make it
generally readable, Mr. Cooper has succeeded in producing the most
popular, detailed, readable history of that voyage which has yet seen
the light; and for this, we again repeat, he deserves much credit. But
the very preponderance given to the narration of this part of the story,
injures the work, _as a novel_, irremediably. It makes it, in short,
“neither fish, flesh, fowl, nor good red-herring.”
There is, indeed, an attempt to redeem the interest of the story by the
introduction of an Indian princess, who, of course, falls in love with
Bobadilla, and whom, of course, he does not marry. She, however,
accompanies Luis home to Spain, and is the cause of much jealousy on the
part of his mistress, of much anger on the part of the queen, and of
just sufficient clap-trap in the last few chapters, to satisfy the
conscience of your inveterate novel readers,—a class who think no novel
is good unless it has a pretty strong dose of jealousy, reconcilement,
and marriage, as a _finale_, much as Tony Lumpkin thought “that the
inside of a letter was the cream of the correspondence.”
In one thing we are disappointed in this novel. We did not look for
character in it, for that is not Cooper’s _forte_: nor did we expect
that his heroine would be aught better than the inanimate thing she
is,—but we did expect he would have given us another of those
magnificent sea-pictures for which, in all their sternness and
sublimity, he is so justly celebrated. We were mistaken. Excepting a
storm, which overtakes the Nina, we have nothing even approaching to the
grandeur of the Pilot and the Red Rover. If Columbus did not figure in
the romance,—and what, after all, has he to do personally with the
denouement?—Mercedes of Castile would be the most tame of romances. Cut
out the historical account of the voyage to San Salvador, by merely
stating in one, instead of a score of chapters, that the hero performed
his penance, and—we stake our grey goose-quill against the copy-right
on it—that not two out of every dozen, who read the novel, will
pronounce it even interesting.
It is but justice to the author to say that the necessity of adhering
closely to fact in his romance, is the true secret of its want of
interest; for how could any hero, no matter whom, awaken our sympathy
strongly, so long as Columbus figured in the same narrative? Besides,
the voyage which the hero undertakes to win his mistress, being a matter
of history, we are from the first without any curiosity as to its
result—we want, indeed, all that exciting suspense, without which a
novel is worthless. Our author appears to have been aware of this, and
therefore introduces Omenea, and makes Mercedes jealous, and the queen
suspicious, in order to create this suspense. For all the purposes of a
love-story, therefore, the novel might as well have begun toward the
close of the second volume, an introductory chapter merely being
affixed, narrating rapidly the events which, in the present work, are
diluted into a volume and a half. The interest of a romance should
continue, let it be remembered, throughout the whole story; but in
Mercedes of Castile it does not begin until we are about to close the
book.
* * * * *
_“American Melodies.” Containing a single selection from the
production of two hundred writers. Compiled by George P. Morris.
For sale by Henry Perkins, Philadelphia._
This is one of the prettiest little gift books of the season. The
typography is good as well as the binding. The title of the work has
been the subject of much captious criticism by the herd who are
constantly detecting spots in the sun, and who lack the calibre of
intellect necessary to a manly and liberal criticism of a literary
performance. The selections were originally made of _songs_ set to
music, but as this was found to narrow down, rather much, the limits
assigned for the work, the compiler took a wider range, and included in
the volume pieces _adapted_ to music also. He has been candid enough to
say in the dedication, that in making these selections he has not been
guided so much by the literary worth of the articles, as by their
admission into the musical world. A second volume is already under way,
in which many names of note, necessarily omitted in the first, will be
included.
The compiler has every reason to congratulate him self upon the happy
performance of his task. A more interesting or valuable little volume
has not been given to the public for many-a-day. If the second is like
unto it, General Morris will have added another to the long list of
obligations which the public owes him, in creating a taste for national
melody.
* * * * *
_“French Writers of Eminence.” By Mrs. Shelley, and others. 2
vols. Lea & Blanchard._
This compilation, for it is nothing more—has the merit of presenting
well-known Encyclopædia biographies of French authors, to the general
public, in a cheap and portable form,—thus bringing down much valuable
information within the means of those who could not afford to purchase
the larger and more comprehensive work. The design is praiseworthy.
The sketches of Rabelais, Racine, Corneille, Moliere, Voltaire,
Rochefoucald, and others, will prove highly interesting to those who
have not perused them before. A more valuable work, when considered
solely as an introduction to French literature, has not, for some time,
been issued from the American press. We would guard our readers,
however, from fancying that Mrs. Shelley was the principal author of
these sketches, as it would neither be truth, nor, in fact, add to her
reputation.
* * * * *
_“Poems.” By J. N. McJilton. Boston: Otis, Broaders & Co._
This volume is a compilation of pieces, most of which have appeared in
the prominent American Magazines. Many of them were written at the time
the author was connected, as editor, with the Baltimore Literary
Monument. Several pieces in this volume may take a high rank in American
poetry, and all of them do credit to the writer. The work is beautifully
printed.
* * * * *
_“The Literary Amaranth of Prose and Poetry.” By N. C. Brooks.
Author of Scripture Anthology, Philadelphia: Kay & Brother._
This is chiefly a collection of the fugitive pieces of Mr. Brooks, with
some emendation. Of the talents of the author we have had occasion
before to speak, both in the Magazine and elsewhere. His Scripture
Anthology established his claims as a writer. The work is beautifully
got up, in the annual style, and is worthy of a conspicuous place upon
the centre-table, among the presents of the season.
* * * * *
Reviews of the Third Volume of Bancroft’s History of the United States,
of Mrs. Gore’s volume of Tales, and of several of the Annuals, have been
crowded out by our press of matter. We shall, perhaps, be able to notice
Bulwer’s last novel,—Morning and Night,—in our next.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE LATEST FASHIONS, JANUARY 1841, FOR GRAHAM’S
MAGAZINE.]
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience. Archaic
spellings and hyphenation have been retained. Obvious punctuation and
typesetting errors have been corrected without note. Other errors have
been corrected as noted below. For illustrations, some caption text may
be missing or incomplete due to condition of the originals available for
preparation of the eBook. A cover was created for this eBook and is
placed in the public domain.
page 22, ancestors where from Germany, ==> ancestors were from Germany,
page 37, vestment died with many colors ==> vestment dyed with many colors
page 47, or the Last of the Mohicians ==> or the Last of the Mohicans
[End of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1841, George R.
Graham, Editor]
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Graham's Magazine, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, January 1841" ***
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