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

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

FIFTEEN DAYS—CONTENTS.

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

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

I did not know last Friday morning that anything was wanting to me. And had I not enough? My farm-duties, which restrict my study-time just enough to leave it always the zest of privilege; my books, possessed or on the way; my mother's dear affection; your faithful letters, true to the hour; Selden's, that come at last;—these, and then the[Pg 2] casual claims, the little countless pleasures infinitely varied, special portion of each human day! always something to do, something to enjoy, something to expect. And yet I would not now go back and be where I was last Friday morning. Beautiful miracle! Our cup is always full, yet its capacity is never reached!

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

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

I had just come in from work, and was sitting near the window, watching the slowly clearing sky, when I heard a step coming down the road. You know I am used to listen to approaching footsteps,[Pg 3] and to judge beforehand what manner of man is about to present himself at my door. This was a step that struck very cheerfully on the ear. Firm, regular, it had no haste in it, yet a certain eagerness. My mother heard it, too. "The feet of him that bringeth good tidings," she said, smiling. The sun broke out full and clear as she spoke. "Can it be Dr. Borrow?—it must be," I asked and answered myself; and my heart warmed to him as it had not when I was reading his praises in Selden's letter. I heard the gate open and close again. I went to the door, and saw, coming along the path I guided you on that first dark night, a figure that agreed perfectly with the step, but not at all with what I had imagined Dr. Borrow. It was that of a man hardly more than twenty, who carried about with him, it seemed, a world of youthful happiness, but assuredly no great weight of learning. Erect, vigorous, animated, his whole person spoke harmonious strength and freedom of soul and body. His head was uncovered,—or, rather, it was protected only by its masses of fair brown hair, whose curls the light wind that had sprung up to meet him lifted tenderly, as if to show them sparkling in the sunshine. This was no chance visitor; he walked as if he knew where he was going, and felt himself an expected and a welcome guest. He had come from far; his well-fitting travelling-suit of dark gray told[Pg 4] of a very distant skill and fashion, and was a little the worse for the long road. He had a knapsack on his shoulders. From a strap which crossed his breast hung a green tin case, such as botanists carry on their tours. This, again, connected him with Dr. Borrow; but the wild-flowers in his hand had been gathered for their beauty, not their rarity, and the happy grace of their arrangement denoted rather the artist than the savant.

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

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

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

He laid his bouquet of wild-flowers in the shadow of the doorsteps, threw off his knapsack, flung down on it the felt hat he had carried crumpled up[Pg 5] under his arm, and, turning, showed himself ready to walk off with me to meet the Doctor. We had reached the gate, when he stopped suddenly and looked towards the house.

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

Dr. Borrow had engrossed us. His visit, from the time it was first promised, had been the one theme here within doors and without. Morning and evening I had consulted with my mother over his entertainment; Tabitha had, more than once, in his behalf, displaced and reinstated every object in the house; Hans and his boys had stimulated each other to unusual efforts, that the farm might find favor in such enlightened eyes. Harry Dudley! certainly I ought to have been expecting him. Certainly Selden's letter had told me he was coming. But the mention of him had been so slight, or, I will now rather say, so simple, that I had almost overlooked it. A line held it, after three full pages given to Dr. Borrow. "Harry Dudley goes with him,"—that was all. How little impor[Pg 6]tance the name had for me which was to have so much!

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

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

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

It was not long before we came upon the Doctor. I could not draw his full portrait at first sight, as I did Harry's, for I had only a profile view of his stooping figure, until I was quite close to him. He, too, carried a knapsack;—a large russet one; Harry's was black;—and strapped to it was a long umbrella, which protruded on either side. He was grubbing in a meadow, and was either really so intent that he did not see us, or thought[Pg 7] it better not to let us know that he did until he had finished his work. We stood near him some minutes before he straightened himself up, booty in hand. He scrutinized his prize for a moment, and then, apparently satisfied, came forward and saluted mo in a very friendly tone. His dark-blue spectacles prevented me from seeing whether the eyes seconded the voice, and his other features are too heavy to be very expressive. When I had made known my satisfaction at his arrival, and he had acquiesced,—when I had inquired after Selden, and he had answered that he had not seen our common friend for six weeks, we stood opposite each other, I looking for a subject which could not be disposed of so promptly, and he, apparently, waiting for me to bring it forward. But Harry now spoke eagerly:—

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

Harry received the little object respectfully, and deposited it in the tin case with care. He then relieved Dr. Borrow's shoulders of the knapsack and took it on his own, having first withdrawn the um[Pg 8]brella and placed it in the hands of the owner, who watched its extrication with interest, and received it in a way which showed it to be an object of attachment. The Doctor gathered up some inferior spoil which lay in a circle round the place where he had been at work. Harry found room for all in the box. He had entered so fully into his companion's success, that I thought he might after all be a botanist himself; but he told me, as we walked towards the house, that he knew nothing of plants except what he had learned in journeying with Dr. Borrow.

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

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

When we came within sight of the house, Harry[Pg 9] walked rapidly on. By the time the Doctor and I rejoined him at the door, he had disencumbered himself of the knapsack, had taken his flowers from their hiding-place, and stood ready to follow us in.

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

The Doctor, in the mean while, had lifted his spectacles to the top of his head. You have not seen a man until you have looked into his eyes. Dr. Borrow's, of a clear blue, made another being of him. His only speaking feature, they speak intelligence and good-will. I felt that I should like him, and I do. He did not, however, find himself[Pg 10] so immediately at home with us as Harry did. He took the chair I offered him, but sat silent and abstracted, answering absently, by an inclination of the head, my modest attempts at conversation. Harry, interpreting his mood, brought him the green tin case. He took it a little hastily, and looked about him, as if inquiring for a place where he could give himself to the inspection of its contents. I offered to conduct him to his room. Harry went out promptly and brought in the well-stuffed russet knapsack,—took the respectable umbrella from the corner where it was leaning, and followed us up-stairs,—placed his load inside the chamber-door, and ran down again. I introduced the Doctor to the chair and table in my little study, where he installed himself contentedly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We sat up late that evening. The hours passed[Pg 13] rapidly. Dr. Borrow had laid aside his preoccupations, and gave himself up to the pleasures of discourse. He passed over a wide range of topics, opening freely for us his magazines of learning, scientific and scholastic, and displaying a power of graphic narration I was not prepared for. He aids himself with apt and not excessive gesture. In relating conversations, without descending to mimicry, he characterizes his personages for you, so that you are never in doubt.

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

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

I have never known the Doctor in finer vein than that first evening. We were only three to[Pg 14] listen to him, but it was long since he had had even so large an audience capable of admiring, I will not say of appreciating him. Whatever his topic, he enchained our attention; but he made his power most felt, perhaps, when treating of his own specialty, or scientific subjects connected with it. He is, as he told us, emphatically a practical man, preferring facts to speculations. He propounds no theories of his own, but he develops those of others very happily, setting forth the most opposite with the same ingenuity and clearness. When, in these expositions, he sometimes approached the limits where earthly science merges in the heavenly, Harry's face showed his mind tending powerfully forward. But the Doctor always stopped short of the point to which he seemed leading, and was on the ground again without sharing in the fall he had prepared for his listeners.

Very entertaining to me were Dr. Borrow's accounts of his travelling experiences and observations in our own State and neighborhood. His judgments he had brought with him, and I soon found that his inquiry had been conducted with the view rather of confirming than of testing them. I felt myself compelled to demur at some of his conclusions; but I cannot flatter myself that I did anything towards shaking his faith in them: he only inculcated them upon me with greater zeal and[Pg 15] confidence. When a little debate of this kind occurred, Harry followed it attentively, but took no part in it. I sometimes felt that his sympathies were on my side, and my opponent certainly thought so,—for, when I pressed him a little hard, he would turn upon his travelling-companion a burst of refutation too lively to be addressed to a new acquaintance. The pleasant laugh in Harry's eyes showed him amused, yet still far within the limits of respect.

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

I found, however, before the first evening was over, that, with all his modesty, Harry maintained his independence. When the Doctor, who is no Utopist, found occasion to aim a sarcasm at the hopes and prospects of the lovers of humanity, or pronounced in a slighting tone some name dear to them, Harry never failed to put in a quiet, but express protest, which should at least exempt him from complicity. And Dr. Borrow would turn upon him a satirical smile, which gradually softened into an indulgent one, and then take up again[Pg 16] quietly the thread of his discourse. At times, Harry was forced into more direct and sustained opposition. I observed that his tone was then, if less positive than his antagonist's, quite as decided. If the Doctor's words came with all the weight of a justifiable self-esteem, Harry's had that of deep and intimate conviction. I am persuaded that conversation would lose all zest for the Doctor, if conducted long with persons who agreed with him. He kindles at the first hint of controversy, as the horse at the sound of the trumpet. To Harry sympathy is dearer than triumph; he enters upon contest only when compelled by loyalty to principle or to friendship.

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

The Doctor has a certain intellectual fervor, which quickens the flow of his thought and language, and enables him to lead you, willingly fascinated, along the road he chooses to walk in for the time. When Harry is drawn out of his usual modest reserve to maintain a position, his concentrated enthusiasm sometimes gives to a few words, spoken in his calm, resolute voice, the effect of a masterly eloquence.[Pg 17] These words pass into your heart to become a part of its possessions.

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

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

I shall not attempt to write down for you any of[Pg 18] the Doctor's brilliant dissertations. You will know him some time, I hope, and he will do himself a justice I could not do him. Harry you must know. He will go to see you on his way home, and, if he does not find you, will make a visit to you the object of a special journey. He will be a new bond between us. We shall watch his course together. It will not, it cannot, disappoint us; for "spirits are not finely touched, but to fine issues."

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

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

Last Saturday! The friends who now seem to belong to us, as if we had never done without them, were then new acquisitions. The Doctor we had not yet made out. How bright and pure that morning was! I was up early, or thought I was, until I entered our little parlor, which I had expected to find cheerless with the disorder that had made it cheerful the evening before. But Tabitha, watchful against surprises, had it in receiving-trim. She was giving it the last touches as I entered. I had heard no sound from my mother's little chamber, which my present one adjoins, and had been careful in my movements, thinking her not yet awake. But here she was already in her place on the couch, wearing a look of pleased solicitude, which I understood. I was not myself wholly free from hospitable cares. Selden had been so exact in forewarning me of Dr. Borrow's tastes and habits, that in the midst of my anticipations intruded a little[Pg 20] prosaic anxiety about the breakfast. My mother, perhaps, shared it. Tabitha did not. She heard some officious suggestions of mine with a lofty indifference. The event justified her. How important she was, and how happy! How considerately, yet how effectively, she rang the great bell! I did not know it capable of such tones. When it summoned us, Harry was absent. The Doctor and I took our places at the table without him. My mother made his apology: he must have been very tired by his long walk the day before, and had probably overslept himself. "Not he!" cried the Doctor, with energy, as if repelling a serious accusation. "It's your breakfast"—he pointed to the clock—"was ready four minutes too soon. I've known two punctual men in my life, and Harry's one of them. He's never two minutes after the time, nor two minutes before it."

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

Harry brought in a bouquet for my mother. He[Pg 21] did not fail in this attention a single morning while he was here. I could not but sometimes think of her who missed this little daily offering.

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

A subject of difference between the friends, which seems to be a standing one, is the character of the French. How did the Doctor bring it on the table that morning? I think it was à-propos of the coffee. He praised it and compared it with Paris coffee, which he did not dispraise. But, once landed in France, that he should expatiate there for a time was of course; and he found himself, as it appeared,[Pg 22] in a favorite field of animadversion. He began with some general reflection,—I forget what; but, from the tone in which it was given, I understood perfectly that it was a glove thrown down to Harry. It was not taken up; and the Doctor, after a little defiant pause, went forward. He drew highly colored sketches of the Gaul and the Anglo-Saxon. Harry simply abstained from being amused. Dr. Borrow passed to his individual experiences. It appeared, that, notwithstanding the light regard in which he held the French, he had done them the honor to pass several years in their country. This intimate acquaintance had only given him the fairer opportunity of making a comparison which was entirely to the advantage of the race he himself represented. He declared, that, walking about among the population of Paris, he felt himself on quite another scale and of quite another clay. Harry here suggested that perhaps a Frenchman in London, or in one of our cities, might have the same feeling.

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

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

"That gives the measure of their ignorance;[Pg 23] and they take care to maintain it: a Frenchman never learns a foreign language."

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

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

The Doctor arraigned those who foster the conceit of the French, first by trying to copy them and then by failing in it. He was very entertaining on this head. Neither Harry nor I thought it necessary to remind him that the pictures he drew of the French and their imitators did not precisely illustrate Anglo-Saxon superiority. He told the origin of several little French customs, which, founded simply in motives of economy or convenience, have been superstitiously adopted, without any such good reason, and even made a test of breeding, by weak-minded persons in England and this country. No one took up the defence of those unfortunates, but the Doctor was not satisfied with this acquiescence. He had an uneasy sense that his advantage in the encounter with Harry had not been decisive. He soon returned to the old field. Harry continued to parry his attacks playfully for a time, but at last said seriously,[Pg 24]—

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

A pause followed, long enough for the bright, earnest look with which Harry made this appeal to fade from his face. As I did not think there was much hope of the Doctor's taking the part proposed to him, at least until he should find himself in company with persons who professed the opinions he was now maintaining, I tried to divert him to another topic, and succeeded; but it was only to bring about a yet warmer passage between him and his friend. I was not sorry, however; for this time the subject was one that interested me strongly. He had referred, the evening before, to some dangerous adventures Harry and he had had among the mountains of Mantaw County, which they crossed, going from Eden to Cyclops. I now asked him for the details. He turned to me at once, and entered upon the story with great spirit. I am familiar with the region in which the scene was laid, but,[Pg 25] listening to him, it took a new aspect. I believe those hills will always be higher for me henceforth,—the glens deeper and darker; I shall hear new voices in the rush of the torrents and the roar of the pines. Harry listened admiringly too, until the Doctor, brought by the course of his narrative to the services of a certain slave-guide, named Jonas, took a jocular tone, seemingly as much amused by the black man's acuteness and presence of mind as he might have been by the tricks of an accomplished dog.

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

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

"Your other friends are flattered.—It is curious how these negrophiles betray themselves";—the Doctor had turned to me;—"they show that they think of the blacks just as we do, by their admiration when they meet one who shows signs of intelligence and good feeling." Ho looked at Harry,[Pg 26] but in vain. "Here Harry, now, has been falling into transports all along the road." Harry kept his eyes on the table, but the Doctor was not to be balked. "Confess now, confess you have been surprised—and a good deal more surprised than I was—to find common sense and humanity in black men!"

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

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

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

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

"Ah! to be sure not! My friend Harvey, who[Pg 27] entertained us so hospitably, is a bad man, I suppose?"

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

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

"The Puritans of the South. The men here[Pg 28] who have but one standard,—that of right. The men here who are true to the principle which our country represents, and by which it is to live."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And very literally of a soul," the Doctor continued. "The body was merely thrown in as an inconsiderable part of the bargain. We were on the road from Omocqua to Tenpinville, where we meant to dine. Harry was a little ahead. I was walking slowly, looking along the side of the road for what I might find, when I heard, in front of us and coming towards us, a tramping and a shuffling and a clanking that I knew well enough for the sound of a slave-coffle on the move. I did not lift my head; I am not curious of such sights. But presently I heard Harry calling, and in an imperative tone that he has sometimes, though, perhaps,[Pg 30] you would not think it. I looked up, upon that, and saw him supporting in his arms a miserable stripling, who was falling, fainting, out of the coffle. Harry was hailing the slave-trader, who brought up the rear of the train on horseback. I foresaw vexation, and made haste. The cavalier got there first, though. By the time I came up, he had dismounted, and Harry and he were in treaty, or at least in debate. It was a picture! The poor wretch they were parleying over was lying with his wasted, lead-colored face on Harry's shoulder, but was still held by the leg to his next man, who was scowling at him as if he thought the boy had fainted only to make the shackles bite sharper into the sore flesh of his comrade. Harry held his prize in a way which showed he did not mean to part with it. 'Name your price! Name your own price!' were the first words I heard. It seemed the slave-dealer was making difficulties. I thought he would jump at the chance of getting rid of what was only a burden, and plainly could never be anything else to anybody; but no; he said he could not sell the boy, and seemed to mean it. Harry is too much used to having his own way to give it up very easily, but I don't know whether he would have got it this time, if I had not interfered with my remonstrances:—

"'What are you going to do with him? Where[Pg 31] are you going to take him? Who's to be his nurse on the road?'

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

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

"'If you care enough about having the boy to pay part of his price in trouble,' says the dealer, 'perhaps we may manage it. I bought him with conditions. If I sell him to you, I make them over to you, too. If you'll engage to take him as far as Omocqua to-day, and never bring him, or let him be brought, within twenty miles of Tenpinville in any direction, you shall have him for fifty dollars; that will give me back what he's cost me. I don't[Pg 32] want to make anything on him. I only took him to oblige.'

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

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

"It was my turn to fume now; for Harry, as soon as he had carried his point, was as calm as a clock. He had everything planned out. I was to go back to Quickster and hire some sort of wagon to take our patient to Omocqua, where Harry had promised to have him before night. I had permission to stay at Quickster, if I chose, until he came back,—or to go on to Tenpinville, or even to Harvey's, without him. But I had heard, since I left Omocqua, of a remarkable cave, not five miles from there, which had some points of interest for me. I had had half a mind to propose to Harry to[Pg 33] go back and see it before we met with this adventure. So, as I must humor him at any rate, I thought it as well to do it with a good grace. I walked off to Quickster, got my wagon, drove back, and found our godsend asleep, with Harry watching by him like a miser over his treasure. We lifted him into the wagon without waking him,—he was no great weight,—and got him safe to the hotel we had left in the morning.

"Harry, when he was making his purchase, had his wits sufficiently about him to require the means of proving his title in case of question. The dealer promised to set all right at Omocqua. I had doubts whether we should meet him again; but Harry had none, and was right. The man arrived the next morning with his convoy, found us out, and gave Harry a regular bill of sale. Being now twenty miles from Tenpinville, he was somewhat more communicative than he had been in the morning. It appeared the sick boy was a great musical genius. He could sing anything he had ever heard, and many things that never had been heard before he sang them. He played upon the piano without any instruction except what he had got by listening under the windows. Indeed, he could make any instrument that was put into his hands, after a little feeling about, do whatever he wanted of it. But he had accidentally received a blow on the chest[Pg 34] that had spoiled his voice, and had so injured his health besides, that his master, a tender-hearted man, couldn't bear to see him about. The family, tender-hearted too, couldn't bear to see him sold. So the master, to spare pain all round, decided that the boy should disappear silently, and that it should be understood in the house and neighborhood that he had been enticed away by an amateur from the North, who hoped to cure him and make a fortune out of his talent.

"'How came the master's sensibility to take such a different turn from that of the rest of the family?' I asked,—and drew out that the boy, being a genius, had some of the ways of one, and was at times excessively provoking. He had silent fits, when he would sit dreaming, moving his lips, but making no sound. There was no use in trying to rouse him. You might have shaken him to pieces without his soul's giving the least sign of being in his body. Not only this, but, sometimes, when he did sing, he wouldn't sing well, though perhaps it was just when he was most wanted. There were people he never would sing before, if he could help it; and when he was obliged to, he did himself no credit. Some of his caprices of this kind were insupportable. His master was only too indulgent; but one day, it seems, the provocation was too much for him. In a moment of anger, he flung the un[Pg 35]lucky boy down the door-steps, or over a bank, or out of the open window, I forget which. Either the push on the chest or the shock of the fall did a harm that was not meant. The master was a good man, and was so accounted. He reproached himself, whenever he saw the ailing boy, and felt as if others reproached him. Better out of sight and out of mind.

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

"Your house is within the twenty miles, and so is Harvey's, or we should have taken him on there with us. But he is well off where he is. Harry, by the aid of our innkeeper,—a Northern man, by the way,—installed him in a comfortable home at Omocqua. We are to take him up there on our[Pg 36] return. We expect to be there again on the eighteenth of next month."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He has been to the post-office this morning!"[Pg 37] cried the Doctor, as soon as Harry was out of hearing. It was evident that my mother's unacceptable suggestion still rested on his mind. "He has been to the post-office: that was it! You remember he asked you last night how far to the nearest one? The first thing he does, when he arrives in a place, is to inquire about the means of forwarding letters."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, I'm used to it, I'm used to it," cried the Doctor, cutting short my apologies very good-humoredly. "Wherever we go, people treat him as if he had done them some great service, or was going to do them one. But I find my account in his good reception. I reap the practical advantages. And then I am something of a fool about Harry myself; so I can hardly blame the rest of the world. Think of his drawing me into complicity in that affair of the negro Orpheus! I made a pretence to myself that I wanted to see a foolish cave at Egerton, just to excuse my weakness in humoring his whims; but, in truth, by the time we were well on the road to Omocqua, I was feeling as if the welfare of the world depended on our getting that poor wretch safely housed there. Well, we shall see what will come of it! I remember, when Harry was a little boy, saying to him once, after seeing him bestow a great deal of labor in accomplishing a work not very important in older eyes, 'Well, Harry, now what have you done, after all?' 'I have done what I meant to do,' said the child. I am so used now to seeing Harry do what he means to do, that even in this case I can't help looking for some result,—though, probably, it will be one not so important in my view as in his, nor worth all that may be spent in arriving at it. I want to see him once fairly engaged in some steady career to[Pg 40] which he will give himself heart and soul, as he does give himself to what he undertakes; then he'll have no time nor thought for these little extravagances."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I was surprised to learn, from what you said[Pg 42] last evening, that Harry had passed a good deal of time in Europe."

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

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

"They were near him. His home was always within reach. But he was for several years at a large school in Paris, and again at one in Germany.[Pg 43] At sixteen he had done with school and took his education into his own hands. He lived at home, but his parents did not meddle with him, except to aid him to carry out his plans. It was a course that would not answer with every young man, perhaps; but I don't know that any other would have done with him. He is one to cut out his own path. He chose not only his own studies, but, to a great extent, his own acquaintances; took journeys when he pleased and as he pleased. Wherever he was, with whomever, he always held his own walk straight and firm. You would not think that boy had seen so much of the world?"

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

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

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

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

I am afraid we shall have none of the neighbors here to-day. But the table is set out with all the prettiest things the house affords, ready for the collation which is to follow the morning reading. This is a munificence we allow ourselves at Christmas and Easter. We keep ceremoniously and heartily the chief holy days, the religious and the national. In your large cities, where sources of emotion and instruction are open on every hand, where the actual day is so full and so animated that it is conscious of wanting nothing outside[Pg 45] of itself, it is not strange, perhaps, that men should become careless of these commemorations or yield them only a formal regard. Our life must widen and enrich itself, by stretching its sympathies and claims far beyond its material limits. We cannot forego our part in the sorrows and joys of universal humanity.

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

Harry and I had a walk before breakfast,—the first of the early morning walks that were after[Pg 46]wards our rule. He is not a great talker. The sweet modesty of his nature retains its sway even in the most familiar moments. He is earnest; sometimes impassioned; but never voluble, never excited, never diffuse. What he has to say is generally put in the form of simple and concise statement or suggestion; but he gives, and perhaps for that very reason, a great deal to be thought and felt in an hour.

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

"No," the Doctor answered for himself, laying down on the window-seat beside him the microscope with which he had been engaged. "No," he said, with a good-humored smile; "but I know Harry's choice in flowers. He begins to have a nice tact as to what's what, when it is a question of helping me; but, for himself, he still likes flowers for their looks, or sometimes, I think, for their names. His favorites are the May-flower and the Forget-me-not. They represent for him the New World and the Old,—that of hope, and that of memory. But he is a friend of all wild-flowers, especially of spring wild-flowers,—and more especially of those of New England. He loves the blood-root, though he ought[Pg 47] not, for it is a dissembler; it wears outwardly the garb of peace and innocence, but, out of sight, wraps itself in the red robes of tyranny and war."

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

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

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

"Waiting for a new generation of protectors to grow up about them," said the Doctor, looking at[Pg 48] them kindly; "this generous climate leaves nothing long despoiled. If Nature is let alone, she will soon have a forest there again. But, Harry, you must take me to that spot. We'll see what else there is to find."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The hotel we were at," the Doctor began again, "is on the northern side of the town. From the field behind it, where Harry's tree stands, the prospect is certainly very grand. Hills, mountains, to the north and east,—and west, a fine free country, intersected by a river, and happily varied with low, round, wooded hills, and soft meadows, and cultivated fields. Harry drew me there almost against my will, but it needed no force to keep me there. I had my flowers to see to. Harry brought out my press and my portfolios, and established me in a shed that runs out from the barn, at right angles with it, fronting west. He found a bench there that served me for a table, and brought me a wooden block for a seat. So there I could sit and[Pg 50] work,—my plants and papers sheltered from the wind,—and look up at the view when I chose. Harry is right. Meet us there on the afternoon of the eighteenth. I wish it as much as he does; and the sunset will be worth seeing, if there is one."

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

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

After breakfast, I went up into the study to prepare for the morning's reading. I had intended to choose a sermon suited to Palm-Sunday; but I happened to take down first a volume of South, and, opening on the text, "I have called you friends," could not lay it down again. What lesson fitter to read on that beautiful day, and in that dear company, than this, which aids us to com[Pg 51]prehend the inexhaustible resources of the Divine Affection,—its forbearance, its constancy, its eager forgiveness, beforehand even with our prayer for it,—by drawing for us the portrait of a true, manly friendship?

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

Human ties wind themselves very quickly and very closely round my heart. I cannot be brought even casually into contact with others so nearly that I am made aware of their interests and aims, with[Pg 52]out in some sort receiving their lives into my own,—sharing, perhaps, in disappointments, that, in my own person, I should not have encountered, and rejoicing in successes which would have been none to me. But friendship is still something very different from this,—different even from a kind and pleasant intimacy. Nor can we create it at will. I feel deeply the truth of South's assurance, that "it is not a human production." "A friend," he says, "is the gift of God: He only who made hearts can unite them. For it is He who creates those sympathies and suitablenesses of nature that are the foundation of all true friendship, and then by His providence brings persons so affected together."

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

Harry proposed that we should hold our services in the open air. My mother approved. We took up her couch and carried it out to your favorite dreaming-ground, setting it down near the old tree that goes, for your sake, by the name of Keith's Pine. The place is not rough as when you were[Pg 53] here. I have had the stumps cleared away, and your pine no longer looks so lonely, now that it seems to have been always alone.

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

Harry, at first, sat down on the grass near me; but when Karl and Fritz came, they looked toward him, evidently divided between their desire to be near him and their fear of presuming. Discretion prevailed, and they took their seats on the ground at a little distance from the bench. Harry per[Pg 54]ceived their hesitation, and saw Hans consulting me with his eyes. He was up in a moment, brought a chair and put it beside mine for the old man, who is getting a little deaf, and then exchanging a smiling recognition with the boys, took his own place near them.

Barton, the landlord of the Rapid Run, at Quickster, came that morning. You cannot have forgotten Quickster, the pretty village with a water-fall, which charmed you so much,—about five miles from Tenpinville, to the north. And I hope you remember Barton, the landlord of the inn that takes its name and its sign from the swift little river that courses by his door. He never sees me without inquiring after you. He shows the delights of his neighborhood always with the same zeal. He guided the Doctor and Harry about it for an hour or two the day they passed through Quickster, coming from Omocqua. It was to him the Doctor had recourse, when he went back to hire a wagon for poor Orphy. I thought at first that Barton had forgotten the custom of our Sunday morning, and had only meant to pay me a visit. But it was not so. He had his son with him,—Isaac Davis Barton,—who is now ten years old, and in whom, he says, he wants to keep a little of the New-Englander, if he can, and so shall bring him over to our reading every fair Sunday. I did not know whether I ought to feel[Pg 55] pleased or not. There is no church at Quickster yet; but there is one at Tenpinville,—two, I think. I have no doubt at all that I have done well to invite our few neighbors, who have no chance of hearing a good word in any other way, to listen to a chapter in the Bible and a sermon here on Sunday. I have had evidence that some of them have been made happier, and I almost dare to think better, by coming. But it is another thing when there is an opportunity of attending regular religious services. I did not think it well to discourage Barton by telling him my scruples on this first occasion. It would have been rather ungracious after his ten miles' ride. I like the little boy very much, and hope we shall be good friends. I shall feel a better right to advise by and by. Barton had a chair near Dr. Borrow's; his son sat in front of him on the grass.

Next to Barton came an old man and his wife, who have established themselves in one of the empty houses on the Shaler plantation,—whether by permission or as squatters I do not know, and nobody about here does. But as the man has a smattering of two or three trades through which he makes himself acceptable, and the woman some secrets in cookery and other household arts which she imparts very readily, no umbrage is taken at them. Their name is Franket. They have simple,[Pg 56] honest faces, and bring nothing discordant with them.

The next place in this semicircle was filled by a man who has not a very good name in the neighborhood. Meeting him one day, I asked him to join us on Sundays, only because I ask all who live near enough to come easily. I did it with a little trouble, expecting to see a sneer on his face; but he thanked me quite civilly, and, though several weeks passed without his taking any further notice of my invitation, it seems he had not forgotten it. He is not an ill-looking man, when you see him fairly. His expression is melancholy rather than morose, as I used to think it. After this, I shall never take refusal for granted, when I have anything to offer which I believe worth accepting. This man's name is Winford. I assigned to him, as a stranger, one of two remaining chairs; but he declined it, taking his seat on the ground. The chairs were immediately after occupied by the wife and daughter of Rufe Hantham, a man tolerated for abilities convenient rather than useful. He is one of the class of parasites that spring up about every large plantation. He is a hanger-on of the Westlake estate, which lies just beyond Shaler's, between that and Tenpinville. The wife is a poor little woman, whose face wears an habitual expression of entreaty. It is the daughter who brings her, I[Pg 57] think. This young girl, of fifteen or less, has a look of thought and determination, as if she held in her mind some clearly formed plan which she will carry out to the end, towards which her coming here is possibly one of the first steps. She keeps her eyes fixed on the ground, but evidently is listening intently,—committing, as it seems, everything she hears to a memory that never lets go what it has once taken hold of. They have been twice before. When the reading is over, the mother looks as if she would like to have a little chat with somebody; but the daughter holds her in check with hand and eye,—not unkindly, but effectually. They wait until some one sets the example of going, and then follow quickly and silently. We have made no attempt to invade a reserve which seems deliberate.

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

Another new-comer was a little boy whom we met in our morning walk, and who joined himself to[Pg 58] us at once with a confidence which was very pleasant. Harry took a great fancy to him. I asked him to come to us at ten, hardly hoping he would accept; but he did, eagerly. He does not belong to our part of the world. He is the son of a carpenter who has work here for a few months. I was glad to see him come in, and another little fellow whose father has brought him once or twice, but who has not been alone before. The father is not often well enough to come.

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

At ten o'clock precisely we heard the great bell rung by Tabitha, who until then kept watch at the house. While it was ringing, a family came in of which I must speak more particularly, because I feel already that I shall speak of it often. This family has only recently arrived in the neighbor[Pg 59]hood. The father, I think, is Southern born; the mother must be from the North. They brought all their children, down to the baby, three years old, that listened with all its eyes, as the rest with all their hearts. They had been here only twice before; but the perfect unity of this little family, which seemed always influenced by one feeling, moved by one will, the anxious watchfulness of the parents, the close dependence of the children, had already greatly interested me. This man and woman have certainly known more prosperous, if not better days. The lines of their faces, their whole bearing, tell of successive reverses, worthily, though not resolutely borne,—of a down-hill path long trodden by patient, but unresisting feet. There are no signs of struggle against adverse fortune. But, in such a struggle, how often do the charm and joy of life perish, torn and trampled by their very rescuers! These people have maintained their equanimity, if not their cheerfulness. They have no reproaches for themselves or each other. The bench was for this family. The father, the mother with the baby in her lap, the daughter, and the second son filled it; the eldest sat at his mother's feet, and, when he was particularly moved or pleased by anything that was read, looked up to her to see if he was right. A great gravity held the whole group,—deepest on the elder faces, and grad[Pg 60]ually shading off into the undue tranquillity of the infantile look.

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

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

Of the sermon I had chosen I read the first paragraph, and then, turning over nine pages, began with the Privileges of Friendship. I do not know whether this discourse of South's is to others what it is to me. Perhaps there is something in it particularly adapted to my needs,—or perhaps it is because it came to me first at a time when I was very eager for the assurances it gives; but I never read it without feeling a new inflow of peace and security. At least some of those who heard it with me that day felt with me. Harry I was sure of[Pg 61] beforehand. When we broke up, and I went forward to speak to the strangers on the bench, it seemed to me that their anxieties were soothed by something softer than patience. An indefinable change had passed over the whole family. They all seemed lightened of a part of the habitual burden. I took them up to my mother. She asked them to be sure and come on Easter Sunday; they accepted in earnest; but with their poor little wagon and poor old mule they will hardly encounter the rain and the mud to-day.

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

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

The name of the family that was arriving this[Pg 62] morning when I left off writing is Linton. They are from Western Virginia. They stayed with us for an hour after the reading was over. Our interest in them is still increased. Winford came again. I asked him to stay; he declined; but I think he was pleased at being invited. The Hanthams came, mother and daughter. They arrived at the last moment, and went at the closing of the book. The corner in which the table stood was curtained off, so that there was no visible sign of unusual hospitality; but they had perhaps heard of the custom of the day. Mrs. Hantham would not have been inexorable; but she was summoned away by a gesture a little too imperative, perhaps, from a daughter to her mother. Davis Barton came on horseback, without his father. I set him off again at one o'clock; for the sky threatened, and his road home was a difficult one at best.

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

The Lintons—they had no name then—were the first to go. The Hanthams were the next. Then the others dropped off, one by one and two by two: some taking leave as if they felt themselves guests; others withdrawing silently, as considering themselves only part of a congregation. Barton went round shaking hands with one and another. I was surprised to see him show this attention to[Pg 63] Winford. Barton likes to be well with the world,—that is, with as much of it as he respects; but he respects himself, and does not seek popularity at the expense of sincerity. I am confirmed in my belief that there is good in Winford.

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

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

"Oh, for that," the Doctor answered, laughing, "Harry is a degree beyond me. I can bear as much as any man, but I know that I'm bearing, and like to give myself credit for it. Harry never feels either heat or cold or damp or dust. Nothing disagreeable is able to get at him. There is no such[Pg 64] thing as hard fare for him; and if he knows what fatigue is, he has never confessed to it."

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

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

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

"It depends altogether on what you want to have," said the Doctor, following the track of Barton's thought, and fixing a searching look on Davis, as if to ascertain what material was there. "The queen-bee is fed on special and choice food from the[Pg 65] first; if you want a king-man, you must follow the same course."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's modern patriotism, the patriotism of Europe. Ours is of the same strain, only modified by our circumstances. Our Mother-land is a good housekeeper. She spreads a plentiful table, and her[Pg 67] sons appreciate it. She wants no sentimental affection, and receives none. She is not obliged to ask for painful sacrifice; and lucky for her that she is not!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That's true," said the Doctor. "Harvey's a wise man; it's a means of government."

"If I had to live under one of them," said Barton, "Westlake's haphazard fashions would suit me better than Harvey's regular system: a life in which everything is known beforehand tells on the nerves. But, strangely enough, Mr. Harvey never loses one of his people, and Westlake's are always slipping off."

"If Harvey carried on his plantation himself, as Westlake does," replied the Doctor, "he would be adored where now he is only loved. His rule would abound in that element of uncertainty whose[Pg 71] charm you appreciate so justly. But he is wisely content to reign and not to govern."

"Mr. Harvey has a good overseer, I understand," said Barton,—"supervisor, though, I believe it is."

"And from what I have myself seen. The estate is really well ordered,—all things considered; Harvey tells me it is rare that a complaint is heard from his negroes."

"And he ought. I walked round among the cabins with Harvey. Not a creature but had his petition; not one but would have had his grievance, if he had dared."

"I suppose no such thing. I never saw the man yet—the grown man—without one; and as I did not expect to meet with him here, I didn't look for him. Harvey allows no unnecessary severity; his plantation is governed by fixed laws, to which the overseer is amenable as well as the slaves. Every deviation from them has to be accounted for. He sees that his people have justice done them,[Pg 72]—that is to say, as far as justice ever is done on this earth. He has wrought no miracles, and probably did not expect to work any. He has run into no extravagances of benevolence; and I respect him for it all the more that I know he is by nature an impetuous man. I cannot but think our friend Shaler would have done better to follow his example than to abandon his negroes as he has."

"So much thrown away. Just a sop to his conscience, like the rest; a mode of excusing himself to himself for shifting off his own responsibilities upon other people. Two thirds of his rabble are paupers by this time."

"They have been free four years. Two of them have fallen back on his hands,—two out of one hundred and seventy-three. He has not abandoned them. They still apply to him when they need advice or aid."

"I was not so much arguing about this particular case, which I don't pretend to have much knowledge of, as reasoning upon general grounds. I still think he would have done better to keep his slaves and try to make something of them here."

"A great deal may be done, still keeping within the law," replied the Doctor, "by a man more intent on doing good than on doing it precisely in his own way."

"Even in what it allowed, the law did not protect him. Where injustice is made law, law loses respect,—most of all with those who have perverted it to their service. You know Mr. Westlake's maxim,—'Those who make the laws can judge what they are made for.'"

"The power of opinion in what are called free countries," replied the Doctor, "is indeed excessive. It has long been a question with me, whether a single hand to hold the sceptre is not preferable to this Briareus. But we have chosen. I am not disposed to deliver myself up, bound hand and foot, to this fetich of public opinion. Still, a man owes some respect to the feelings and principles of the community in which he lives. I may think the best way of disposing of old houses is to burn them down; but my neighbors will have something to say, and justly."

Tabitha appeared and bore off three chairs,—one on her head and one in each hand. We understood the signal. Harry and I took up my mother's couch; Barton and his son loaded themselves with two chairs each; the Doctor lifted[Pg 74] the arm-chair with both hands, and, holding it out before him, led the way, somewhat impeded by his burden; and so we moved in slow procession to the house.

In the afternoon, when Barton and his son were gone, the Doctor, Harry, and I took a walk to the site of the old forest. We found a few more flowers like those Harry had brought to my mother in the morning, but nothing else that the Doctor cared for. On our way back, I told him the story of Shaler's attempt and failure. I wonder I did not tell it to you when you were here. But we had so much to ask and to say, and the time was so short! I will tell it to you now.

Shaler did not wish to burn down the old house, nor even to pull it down. He wished to renew and remodel it so slowly and so cautiously that those who were in it should hardly be aware of change until they learned it by increase of comfort. He was not a self-centred, but a very public-spirited man. He had a great ambition for his State. He wished it to be a model of prosperity, material and moral. He saw that its natural advantages entitled it to take this position. The most practical of reformers, he began with himself. He found fault with nobody; he preached to nobody; he meant to let his plantation speak for him. His plan was simply to substitute inducement for coercion,—to give[Pg 75] his men a healthy interest in their labor by letting them share the profits,—in short, to bring them under the ordinary motives to exertion. This does not appear to you a very original scheme, nor, probably, a very dangerous one. He entered upon it, however, with great precautions, having due regard to law, and, as he thought, to opinion. He did not pay his people wages, nor even make them presents in money. He gave them better food, better clothes, better houses, letting their comforts and luxuries increase in exact proportion to their industry. The result was what he had hoped,—or rather, it was beyond his hopes. The pecuniary advantage was greater and more speedy than he had expected. He did not boast himself. He waited for his abundant crops, his fine gardens and orchards, and his hard-working people to bring him enviers and imitators. The report, in fact, soon spread, that Shaler was trying a new system, and that it was succeeding. Neighbors came to inspect and inquire,—first the near, then the more distant. Shaler forgot his caution. He was an enthusiast, after all. He saw proselytes in his guests. He laid bare his schemes and hopes. These aimed at nothing less than the conversion of the whole State, through his success, to more enlightened views; thence, a revisal of the laws, a withdrawal of the checks on benevolent effort; and finally, the merg[Pg 76]ing of slavery in a new system, which should have nothing of the past but the tradition of grateful dependence on the part of the employed and of responsibility on that of the employer, rendering their relation more kindly and more permanent.

Among his visitors and hearers were generous men to be moved by his ideas, and wise men to appreciate their practical fruit; but the sensitiveness of delicate minds, and the caution of judicious ones, withholding from prompt speech and action, too often leave the sway in society to men of small heart, narrow mind, and strong, selfish instincts. Such never hesitate. Their sight is not far enough or strong enough to show them distant advantages or dangers. Their nearest interest is all they inquire after. These men combine easily; they know each other, and are sure of each other. The sensitive shrink aside and let them pass on; the prudent deliberate until the moment for arresting them has gone by. Men who are both good and brave come singly, and, for the most part, stand and fall alone.

Shaler had not miscalculated so much as the result would seem to show: the opinion of the majority was perhaps with him; but the only voices raised were against him. The storm had already gathered[Pg 77] thick about him before he was aware of its approach. The first intimations were not violent. He was admonished that his course was disapproved,—was advised to let things slip back quietly into the old track, and that so his eccentricities would be forgotten. This mildness failing, he was told that he was endangering the welfare of the community,—and, lastly, that he would incur peril himself, if he persisted. He was not a man to be driven from his ground by threats, nor by loss or suffering which he was to bear alone. His cattle died; his horses fell lame; his barns and store-houses took fire. He ignored the cause of these disasters and kept quietly on, still hoping to overcome evil with good. His great strength and courage, with his known skill in the use of arms, deterred from personal violence. But there were surer means: his people were subjected to annoyance and injury,—and, moreover, were accused of every offence committed within a circuit of twenty miles. His duty as their protector obliged him to give way: he took the only course by which he could provide for their welfare.

"I have no quarrel with Shaler," said the Doctor, after he had heard the story, which I gave him much less at length than I have told it to you. "I have no quarrel with Shaler. He had a right to do what he would with his own. I only ask the same[Pg 78] liberty for my friend Harvey, and for those who, like him, accept their lot as it is given to them."

"Mr. Harvey is not happy," said Harry, seriously. "There are lines of pain on his face. I do not think he accepts his lot."

"He is of the age for doubting himself. It is at twenty that we are infallible. To be sure, some happy men are so all their lives. Shaler, I dare say, wouldn't have a doubt of his own wisdom, if the whole hundred and seventy-three were starved or hanged. If there are marks of care on Harvey's face, reasons might be found for it without inventing for him an uneasy conscience."

"I think he envies Shaler, and would follow his example, if he had the resolution. It is strange to see a brave man under such a thraldom."

"There are men who have courage to face a foe, but not to stand up against a friend."

"Certainly, in such a project, he would have his wife's family to count with, to say nothing of his own children. I fancy he would hardly find a co-adjutor in Fred. You know Fred Harvey, Harry;[Pg 79] he was at school with you in Paris. What sort of a fellow was he then?"

"I was not ill-pleased with him, when I saw him in Paris four years ago. A fine-looking fellow; formed manners; modest enough, too. I thought he would fill his place in the world creditably. Did you see much of him, Harry, after you left school?"

"For a year I saw him constantly. We went to the same lectures at the Jardin des Plantes."

While this conversation was going on, a reminiscence had been waking in my mind.

It was clear. I had been present once at a conversation between Frederic and his sister, in which he spoke of his companion on this journey into Brittany more warmly than I had ever heard him speak of any other man, and yet with a discrimination that individualized the praise, and made it seem not only sincere, but accurate. This conversation interested me very much at the time; but, as I had no expectation of seeing the person who was the subject of it, his name passed from me.

I was glad to hear Harry say he liked Frederic Harvey. It would have been hard, if he had not. And yet I am not sure that I like him very much myself. I am grateful for the preference he shows for my society; but I cannot meet as I would his evident desire for intimacy. How true is what South says:—"That heart shall surrender itself and its friendship to one man, at first view, which another has long been laying siege to in vain"!

Those full days must still furnish these.—My walk with Harry was the first of last Monday's pleasures. Roaming over our fields with him, I found myself now in one, now in another European scene; and everywhere, hardly speaking of himself, he set his individual stamp on every object he called up before me. He had seen and felt with his own eyes and heart; and everywhere had been disclosed for him those special sympathies which Nature and the works of genius hold for each separate human soul.

Florence will always be dear to me among Italian cities because it was so dear to Harry. He has taught me to love, beside those greatest names in Art familiar to us all from infancy, and which we have chiefly in mind when we long for Europe, others less universally cherished, and for which I had before only a vague respect which I should have found it hard to justify.

Rome is no longer for me merely the Rome I have read of. With the distant historic interest is now mingled one near and familiar. Harry's favorite spots are already mine. I would walk on the green turf where the altar to Hercules stood, in that[Pg 82] oldest time when monuments were raised to benefactors, and not yet to oppressors. I would bring away an ivy-leaf from the ruined heap, the ever "recent" tomb of the young Marcellus. I would gather white daisies on the path along which Saint Agnes was borne to the grave, which was to become a shrine. I cannot, but you will for me. And you will find the little chapel on the Appian Way which marks the place consecrated in popular tradition as that where Peter, escaping, met Christ "going up to Rome to be crucified again," and turned back to meet his martyrdom. You will look up from the Ponte Molle to the beautiful blue Italian sky, where the symbol of suffering appeared as the sign of victory.

When you are in Europe, old Europe, do not carry about with you among the monuments of its past all the superiorities of the nineteenth century. Respect the legend. Our age does not produce it, but it is the part of our inheritance we could least do without. Be reverent before the monuments of the early Christian martyrs: they are true shrines. With the people they have not yet lost their sacredness, and have not yet lost their use. Faith in something stronger than violence and nobler than rank is kept alive by the homage paid to the courageous defiers of older usurpations and oppressions.

When we came in, we found the Doctor in excellent spirits and in excellent humor. He had not been idle that morning. He had been at work over his pressed flowers, and, owing to the dry weather of the last two days, had had no trouble with them. I proposed to take him, after breakfast, to a piece of marsh land where I thought he might find something to interest him.

Harry again left the table first. He had made an engagement with Karl and Fritz. We were to find him at the place where they were at work, which was almost on our way. The Doctor wanted an hour or two more for his flowers. While he was busy with them, I occupied myself with the books which Harry had brought me.

We set off for the marshes. We walked the first part of the way in silence, or nearly so, only exchanging now and then an observation on the weather or scenery, not very earnest. "How we miss Harry Dudley!" I was just saying within myself, when the Doctor made the same exclamation aloud. I wanted nothing better than to hear him talk of Harry again. I saw he was ready, and turned to him with a look of expectation which he understood.

"I told you I had known Harry all his life; and so I have. But our friendship began when he was about five years old. The time before that has[Pg 84] left me only a general remembrance of his singular beauty and a certain charming gayety that seemed to lighten the air all about him. But I went one day to his father's house in the country with some friends I wanted to introduce there,—strangers. There was no one at home, the man who answered our knock said, except—— He stepped back, and there came forward this lovely child, who received us in due form, regretted his father's absence, conducted us in, ordered refreshments for us, and, in short, did the honors of the house with the ease and courtesy of a man of society, and, at the same time, with a sweet, infantile grace not to be described. I was content with Young America that day. Harry and I have been intimates ever since then. We had our little differences from the first, just as we have now. I thought my twenty years' advantage in experience gave me a right to have my judgments accepted without being examined; but he took a different view of my claims. When I went out to his father's, I always used to look the little fellow up,—in the garden, or in the barn, or wherever he might be. As soon as I appeared, his eyes took a merry sparkle, as if he knew there was good sport ahead: and so there was, for both of us. He maintained his side with an originality and quaint humor that made a debate with him a very entertaining exercise. Some of his childish sayings[Pg 85] have stayed in my mind, though many wiser things have passed out of it."

The Doctor enjoyed his thoughts a little while; and then, with a graver, and something of a confidential tone,—

"If Harry should talk to you about his future, do not encourage that little vein of Quixotism that runs in his blood."

"At any rate, I need not begin to disturb myself already. He will not enter upon active life before he has prepared himself well. That I know. And preparation, as he understands it, involves long work and hard. But I sometimes almost think in good earnest that he has come into the world in the wrong age. He is made for great times, and he has fallen on very little ones. These are the days of the supple and the winding, not of the strong and the straightforward."

"Since he has been sent to these times," I answered, "without doubt his part in them has been marked out for him."

Dr. Borrow's brow lowered. It seemed he had a misgiving that the part allotted to Harry might[Pg 86] not be that which he himself would have assigned to him.

Here some flowers at a little distance caught the Doctor's eye, and he ran off to examine them. They were not to his purpose, and were left to nod and wave away their life unconscious that a great danger and a great honor had been near them. When he came back, the cloud had passed. He began talking pleasantly, and still on the subject on which I most wished to hear him talk.

Harry has not always been an only son. He had once a brother, to whom he was fondly, even passionately, attached. After his brother's death, a deeper thoughtfulness was seen in him. He was not changed, but matured and strengthened.

"You still see the fun look out of his eyes at times," said the Doctor, "and his laugh has a quality that refreshes and refines for us again the meaning of the good old word 'hearty'; but mirthfulness is no longer so marked a characteristic in him as it once was."

When we came in sight of the little plantation prophetically known as "The Grove," I could not help calling the Doctor's attention to it. He took a much more flattering interest in it than you did, I must tell you. He turned his steps towards it immediately, commended the spaces which made full allowance for growth, and, seating himself on[Pg 87] one of the benches,—according to you, such premature constructions,—gave me a dissertation on soils, very entertaining and very profitable. When he had finished, I would gladly have carried him back to the subject from which the sight of my trees had diverted us, but I felt that this required a little skill: I had known him repelled by a question of too incautious directness from a topic on which he would have been eloquent, if he had led the way to it himself. However, as soon as we were once walking forward on our former path again, his thoughts, too, returned to the old track. Our intimacy had ripened fast on the common ground of sympathy we had found in the grove. He was more expansive than before, and revealed a latent gentleness I had begun to suspect in him. He went on to tell of Harry's infancy and childhood, and to relate instances of his early daring, self-reliance, and generosity of heart,—smiling, indeed, a little at himself as he did so, and casting now and then towards me a glance of inquiry, almost of apology, like one who is conscious of being indiscreet, but who cannot resolve to refrain. I could not but observe that the anecdotes related with most pleasure illustrated that very side of Harry's character which gave the Doctor uneasiness.

Karl and Fritz were employed that day in clear[Pg 88]ing a piece of ground overgrown with brushwood. We had found them at their work in our morning walk, and Harry had promised to come back and take a hand in it. It was an animated scene that the Doctor and I came upon. Before we reached it, we heard a pleasant clamor of voices and laughter. My German boys are faithful workers, and generally cheerful ones; but now they carried on their task with an ardor and an hilarity which doubled their strength, and gave them an alertness which I had thought was not of their race.

"Will you let me finish my stint?" Harry cried, as soon as we were near enough to answer him. The merry light in his eye and the gleeful earnestness of his manner brought up to me the little boy of whom the Doctor had been talking to me. He was taking the lead. He could not have been practised in the work; but the strong sweep of his arm, his sure strokes, did not speak the novice. He directed and encouraged his assistants in familiar and idiomatic German, which made me feel that my carefully composed sentences must be somewhat stilted to their native ears.

Old Hans found himself there, too, drawn by I don't know what attraction,—for a share in this work did not belong to his day's plan. He was not taking a principal part in it; he had a hatchet in his hand and chopped a little now and then in a care[Pg 89]less and fitful way, but he was chiefly occupied in observing the amateur, whose movements he followed with an admiration a little shaded by incredulity. He stood like the rustic spectator of an exhibition of legerdemain, his applause restrained by the displeasure of feeling himself the subject of an illusion.

But over the boys Harry's ascendancy was already complete: not only did their bush-scythes keep time with his, but their voices, when they answered him, and even when they spoke to each other, were more gently modulated,—their very laugh had caught something of the refinement of his. When afterwards in my talks with him he unfolded, among his plans for the future, a favorite one of leading a colony to some yet unsettled region, I felt, remembering this scene, that he was the man for it.

Hans was won over before we left him. When we arrived, he had searched my face with a look which, at the same time that it asked my opinion of the stranger, gave me to understand that he himself was not one to be dazzled by outward show. As we were going, his eye caught mine again: he gave me a nod of satisfaction, which said that he had at last made up his mind, and that it was one with my own. Perhaps he had been aided in coming to a decision by the care with which Harry deliv[Pg 90]ered up to him the tools he had been using, and by the frank pleasure with which the volunteer woodman received the words of approbation which the veteran could not withhold.

I cannot write you the whole of last Monday's journal to-night. I came in late. The weather is fine again, and I took a long day in the field to make up for lost time.

The Doctor had a successful morning. The tin case was always opening and closing for some new treasure. Noon found him in high good-humor. I did not propose to go home for dinner. It had been arranged with Tabitha that we should take it on the little knoll known in our level region as Prospect Hill. We found two baskets in the shade of its two trees. Harry and I unpacked them, the Doctor superintending and signifying coöperation by now and then putting his thumb and finger to the edge of a dish or plate on its way to the turfy table. Harry filled our bottle from the cool spring that bubbles up at the foot of the mound. There was a log under one of the trees, affording seats for three, but we left it to the Doctor, and took our places on the ground, fronting him, on either side of the outspread banquet.

We talked of plans for the coming week. I told over our few objects of modest interest, and the names of such of our neighbors as could lay claim to the honor of a visit from Dr. Borrow, or could in[Pg 92] any degree appreciate his society. The nearest of these was Westlake.

"We have been at Westlake's," said the Doctor; "we passed a day and night with him. He pressed us to stay longer, and I was very well amused there; but Harry looked so plainly his eagerness to be on, and his fear lest I should allow myself to be persuaded, that I put your hospitable neighbor off with a promise to give him another day, if we had time, after we had been here. Harry has all along wanted to secure the visit here as soon as possible, for fear something or other should interfere with it. I believe, if I had proposed it, he would even have put off going to the Harveys, old friends as they are. You must know that you have been his load-star from the first."

Very much pleased, yet surprised, I looked at Harry. His color deepened a little as he answered, "I have heard Selden speak of you; but it was after we met Mr. Shaler that I had so great a desire to know you."

"We met Shaler in a great forlorn tavern at Mantonville, quite by chance. We hadn't been in the house half an hour before Harry and he found each other out. I had just had time to give some orders up-stairs for making my room a little habitable,—for we were going to pass a day or two[Pg 93] there,—and came down to look about me below. There I find Harry walking up and down the breezy entry with a stately stranger, engaged in earnest and intimate conversation. Presently he comes to ask me if it would be agreeable to me to have our seats at the table taken near Mr. Charles Shaler's, who, it seemed, was by two days more at home than we were. Of course it was agreeable to me in that populous No Man's Land to sit near any one who had a name to be called by. And the name was not a new one. I had never seen Charles Shaler,—Colonel Shaler, as he is called,—of Metapora; but I had heard a great deal of him, for he is own cousin to the Harveys. I felt sure that this was the man. His appearance agreed perfectly with the description given me, and then Harry's foregathering with him so instinctively was a proof in itself. I found him very agreeable that day at dinner, though, and continued to find him so, except when he mounted his hobby; then he was insupportable. There's no arguing with enthusiasts. They are lifted up into a sphere entirely above that of reason. And when they have persuaded themselves that the matter they have run wild upon is a religious one, they're wrapped in such a panoply of self-righteousness that there's no hitting them anywhere. You may demonstrate to such a man as Shaler the absurdity, the impracticability, of his[Pg 94] schemes: he seems to think he's done his part in laying them before you; he doesn't even show you the attention to be ruffled by your refutation, but listens with a complacent politeness that is half-way to an affront. However, I had my little occupations, and he and Harry used to found Utopias together to their own complete satisfaction, whatever good the world may derive from their visions.—Does Shaler ever come here now?"

"From time to time he appears, unlocks the old house, and walks through the empty rooms."

"We passed by it on our way here from Westlake's. But we saw only the fine trees on the border. We did not enter. Why doesn't he sell it, let it, have it occupied by some one who might get a support from it? Or does he carry his respect for liberty so far that he thinks it a sin for a man to compel the earth to supply his needs?"

"He is, as you say, an enthusiast. He regards the culture of the earth as a religious work, and thinks it sacrilege to carry it on in the frantic pursuit of exorbitant gain, watering the innocent soil with tears and the painful sweat of unrewarded labor. But he has not given up the hope of returning."

"Nobody interferes with Harvey; nobody objects to his reforms," said the Doctor, after a little silence.

"They have led to giving him a splendid income, and to giving his people as much comfort as they can appreciate, and as much instruction as they can profit by. Harvey is really a religious man. He regards his relation to his slaves as a providential one, and does not believe he has a right to break it off violently, as Shaler has done."

I had all along tried, in these discussions, to maintain an impartial tone, confining myself to a simple statement of facts, and leaving the controversy to the Doctor and Harry; but I had been gradually losing my coolness, and found myself more and more drawn to take a side. The repetition of this reflection upon Shaler was more than I could bear.

"There is certainly," I said, "a wide difference between Shaler's view of the relation of the master to his laborers and Harvey's. Shaler believed that these dependent beings were a charge intrusted to him by their Maker and his. As unto him more had been given than unto them, of him, he knew, more would be required. Harvey supposes that[Pg 96] these inferior creatures have been given to him for his use. His part is to supply them with sustenance, and to show them so much of kindness and indulgence as is consistent with keeping them in the condition to which they have been called; theirs is to serve him with all their soul and all their strength, to render him an unqualified obedience, to subordinate even the most sacred ties of nature to their attachment to him. Here is, indeed, no danger to slavery. Ameliorations, under such conditions, fortify instead of undermining it. The sight of an apparent well-being in this state pacifies uneasy consciences in the master-class; while the slave, subjugated by ideas instilled from infancy, not less than by the inexorable material force which incloses him, finds even his own conscience enlisted in his oppressor's service, steeled and armed against himself."

"You wrong Frank Harvey, if you suppose he allows his slaves a mere animal support; he has them taught what is needful for them to know."

"He has them taught just so much as shall increase their usefulness to him, without giving them a dangerous self-reliance."

"Precisely, so far as secular knowledge is concerned. And it is possible he may be right in view of their interests as well as of his own. But he allows them religious instruction to any extent,—takes care that they have it."

"The religious instruction allowed by Harvey, and by other humane slaveholders who maintain the lawfulness of slavery, inculcates the service of the earthly master as the fulfilment of the practical service of God on earth. For the rest, the slaves are allowed to look forward to another world, to which this life is a sorrowful passage,—whose toils, pains, and privations, however unnecessary and resultless, are, if only passively accepted, to be compensated by proportionate enjoyments."

"This constitutes, then, the whole of the much talked-of religion of your negro Christians?"

"Of too many; but the promise, 'Ask, and ye shall receive,' was made to them as to all. Even to the slave-cabin has been sent the Comforter who teacheth all things. But we were speaking not so much of the religion of the slaves as of the religious instruction given or allowed them by their masters. It is necessarily circumscribed, as I have told you."

"They were taught that life, even earthly life, is a sacred and precious gift, for which they were to show themselves grateful by keeping it pure and noble and by filling it with useful work. They were taught that duty to God consists not in mere acquiescence, but in active obedience. They were[Pg 98] taught that there are earthly duties which no human being can lay down; that on the relation of husband and wife, of parent and child, all other human relations are founded. In short, Shaler recognized men in his slaves. He attributed to them the natural rights of men, and the responsibilities of civilized and Christian men."

"And his neighbors unreasonably took umbrage! Mind, I am no upholder of slavery. I am merely speaking of what is, not of what ought to be. A slaveholder, meaning to remain one, can yield nothing in principle, let him be as indulgent as he will in practice. What becomes of his title in the slave-family, if the slave-father has one that he is religiously bound to maintain and the rest of the world to respect? The master is the owner no longer. The property has died a natural death."

"But," the Doctor began, in a different tone, passing lightly from a train of argument which might have led him where he had not meant to go, "I should never have taken Shaler to be the lowly-minded man you represent him. I cannot imagine his people addressing him with the familiarity that even Harvey permits; still less can I think of him as treating them with the good-natured roughness of your neighbor Westlake."

"I have never seen him followed about his place by a crowd of begging children, nor throwing down coppers or sugar-plums to be scrambled and squabbled for."

"Nor tweaking their ears, I suppose," broke in the Doctor, laughing, "nor pulling their hair to make them squeal and rub their heads, and grin gratefully under the flattering pain of master's condescension. I have witnessed these little urbanities. I have not met with a case of the hailing with sugar-plums; but I have known Westlake pelt his people with some pretty heavy oaths, which were as acceptable, to judge by the bobbings and duckings and mowings with which they were received. He is very fond of his people, he tells me, and especially of a distinguished old crone who was his nurse, and who is to be gratified with a majestic funeral. She was impartially graced with his emphatic compliments, and did her utmost to make an adequate return in 'nods and becks and wreathèd smiles.' So I suppose it was understood that he was expressing himself in the accepted terms of patrician endearment. Probably Shaler's affection for his wards was not so demonstrative?"

"There was in his manner to them a considerate kindness,—not familiar, yet intimate; in theirs to him an affectionate reverence. He was well fitted to be the chief of a primitive people."

"He would have been sure of election in the days when being taller by the head and shoulders than the common crowd was a qualification."

"He had the qualification of the ordained as well as that of the popular leader: 'A comely person, and the Lord is with him.' This last is the mark of the true rulers by divine right,—of the men who seem framed to be the conductors of higher influences. The less finely organized

Harry's beautiful face was wonderfully illuminated. Strange, this unconscious consciousness of the elect!

"The relation of master and slave," I went on,—for the Doctor did not offer to speak,—"is, in Shaler's opinion, a most perverted and unnatural one; but he believes in that of protector and protected. The love of power, the instinct of dominion, is strong in him. Perhaps it must be so in those who are to be called to its exercise. 'I know thy pride,' David's elder brother said to him, when the boy left the charge of his few sheep to offer himself as the champion of a nation. But Shaler's ambition was directed by the precept, 'Let him who would be greatest among you be your servant';—whether deliberately, or by the spontaneous flow of his large, generous nature, I do not know. Whatever supe[Pg 101]riority he possessed, whether of position, education, or natural endowment, he employed for the advantage of the people under his care. All the proceeds of the estate were spent upon it. The land was brought into a high state of cultivation. Its productiveness was not only maintained, but increased. Nor was beauty neglected. Groves were planted, marshes drained, ponds formed. The old cabins gave place to new and pretty cottages. The owners and builders were encouraged to employ their own invention on them; thus there was great variety in the architecture. Vines planted about them, by favor of our kind climate, soon draped them luxuriantly, harmonizing the whole, and giving even to eccentricities of form a beauty of their own. While he took care that ability and energy should enjoy their just return of prosperity, the inferior, whether in body, mind, or soul, were not Pariahs. As Shaler believed the exercise of beneficent power to be the greatest privilege accorded to mortals, he made it one of the chief rewards of exertion."

"The slave of a tyrannical master is too often the most brutal of oppressors; but disinterestedness and tenderness have a sympathetic force, no less, surely, than rapacity and cruelty. Besides, with a[Pg 102] race in which sense of honor is so leading a characteristic as in the African, the glory of being the doer and the giver, the shame of being the mere idle recipient, are very potent. Shaler was not too wise and good for dealing with ordinary human nature; he was considerate of innocent weaknesses, even of those with which his nature least enabled him to sympathize. He found, for example, that his people did not like to see the 'great house' on their estate surpassed in furniture and decoration by the mansions of neighboring planters. He respected their simple pride. He understood that his house was their palace, their state-house,—that their wish to embellish it was, in fact, a form of public spirit. He indulged them in what was no indulgence to himself."

"Harvey has rather the advantage of him there: he can please himself and his people at the same time. How long have you known the Harvey plantation,—Land's End, as Judge Harvey called it, when he first came to settle here?"

"Ten years," I answered. "I was there for the first time about three years after Mr. Frank Harvey came back from Europe."

"I was there nearly twenty-three years ago. Frank and I had just left Harvard. We were both going to finish our studies abroad. We were to sail together. Frank must go home for a visit first, and asked me to go with him. I saw slavery then for the first time. I had heard enough about it before. We had just been through the Missouri storm. I did not find it, as it showed itself on Judge Harvey's place, 'the sum of all villanies'; though, perhaps, looking back, I may think it was the sum of all absurdities. I did not reason or moralize about it then. I was hardly eighteen, and took things as they came. But to judge of what has been done on that plantation, you should have seen it as I saw it in '21. Sans Souci would have been the right name for it. Not that I liked it the less. I made none of these wise observations then. On the contrary, I was fresh from the study of dead antiquity, and was charmed to find that it[Pg 104] wasn't dead at all. It must be admitted, there is a certain dignity in the leisurely ease of primitive peoples, past and present. They seem to think that what they are doing is just as important as what they may be going to do. We moderns and civilized talk a good deal about immortality; but those simple folks have a more vital sense of it: they seem to be conscious that there will be time enough for all they shall ever have to do in it. Old Judge Harvey was a sort of pristine man,—about as easy and indolent as the negroes themselves."

"He was, indeed, of the old type. Formerly, I believe, planters—at least the well-born and well-reputed—were content, if their estates yielded them the means of living generously and hospitably, without display or excessive luxury. They took life easily, and let their people do the same. I have heard that Judge Harvey moved off here, from one of the older Slave States, when the money-making mania came in, hoping to keep up for himself and his people the primitive régime they had grown up under. I believe he was no advocate of slavery."

"The only forcible thing about him was his dislike of it. He had the greatest compassion for the slave of any man I ever saw, and with the best reason, for he was one himself. He was as much the property of his worshippers as the Grand Lama.[Pg 105] He always entertained the intention of emancipating himself. But there were legal forms to be gone through with. To encounter them required an immense moral force. His hundred tyrants were, of course, all as happy as clams, and had as little thought of a change of domicile. So there was nothing to stir him up, and there was never any more reason for acting to-day than there had been yesterday. I must do him the justice, however, to say that he made provision for his son's living in freedom, in case he should choose it. In spite of the loose way in which the estate was managed, it yielded, as of its own free will, a pretty fair income. The old man spent little, and so put by really a respectable sum, half of which was to be employed in securing an independence to his son, and the other half in compensating his natural proprietors for the loss of his valuable services. Shaler was not original: the scheme he carried out in the end was old Judge Harvey's exactly,—if, indeed, it was his, and not his daughter's. I always suspected that it originated in the head of that little girl. You know Shaler and she were own cousins. The abolition vein, they say, came down from a grandmother. At any rate, Judge Harvey's plan, as he detailed it to me, was to colonize his blacks in a Free State, each with a pretty little sum in his pocket for a nest egg. He had taken into his confidence—— No,[Pg 106] there was no confidence about it; the Judge was as liberal of his thoughts as of everything else; there was not an urchin on the place that might not have known what was planning, for the fatigue of listening; but the gentle flow of the Judge's words was heard as the notes of the birds and the frogs were,—with a little more respect, perhaps, but with no more inquiry after meaning. He had taken, not as the confidant, then, but as the partner of his day-dreams, a man who governed his estate for him,—as far as it was governed,—one of the blackest negroes I ever saw, and one of the cleverest, by name Jasper."

"He has fallen from his high estate,—a Belisarius, only not quite blind. It is really almost touching to see him feebly fussing round doing little odd jobs of work about the grounds where he was once monarch of all he surveyed. At the time I speak of he was in his glory. It was worth while to see him holding audience,—according or discarding petitions,—deciding between litigating parties,—pronouncing sentence on offenders, or bestowing public commendation on the performer of some praiseworthy act. He carried on the farm in a loose, Oriental sort of way,—letting the people eat, drink, and be merry, in the first place, and work as much as they found good for them, in the second. With[Pg 107] all this, he made the estate do more than pay for itself. It was he who carried the surplus up to Danesville to be invested. He was like the eldest servant in Abraham's house, who ruled over all that he had. Frank treated him with as much respect as, I dare say, Isaac did Eliezer. And I ought to mention that Jasper kept his master's son very handsomely supplied,—paid off his college debts too, without a wry look, though it must have come hard to subtract anything from the hoard. Our Jasper missed it in not having their schemes carried into effect when he might. He could have prevailed, as he did in regard to some other matters, by getting his master embarked in the preliminaries, and then persuading him that 'returning were as tedious as go o'er.' But possibly Jasper himself, having got the habit of power, did not like to lay it down; or perhaps he thought he must always have the store yet a little larger, seeing what Frank's wants were likely to be. And then it probably never occurred to him that a daughter could die before her father. At any rate, it was decided that the Judge should arrange the matter by will, things remaining as they were during his life. He never made a will, any more than he ever did anything else he meant to do. Did you know him?"

"I remember him only as a pale, exhausted old[Pg 108] man, drawn about in a garden-chair by Jasper, who was almost as sad and humble-looking then as he is now."

"It was already over with his reign and his projects. All was at an end when Constance died. Her father broke down at once and forever. She was his very soul. When I was there she was only thirteen, but she was art and part in all her father's plans,—if, indeed, they were not hers. If she had lived, they would have been carried out;—though, as far as that is concerned, I believe things are better as they are. But her brother was as much her subject as her father was. There was a force about that gentle, generous creature! It was a force like that of sunshine,—it subdued by delighting. You did not know Constance Harvey?"

"She recognized what her father did not,—the necessity of some preparation for freedom. The law against letters did not exist then, I believe; I remember them, the great and little, painted on boards and put up round a pretty arbor she called her school-house. I don't know whether her pupils ever mastered them or not; but what certainly did prosper was the class for singing, and that for recitation. I had not seen much of men and things then, and had not learned to distinguish the desirable and the practicable. Even I came under the illusion[Pg 109] of the hour, and dreamed liberty, equality, and perfectibility with the best. Not that Constance talked about these fine things, but she had an innate faith in them of the sort that makes mole-hills of mountains. Even now, looking back on that diligent, confident child, I seem to feel the 'almost thou persuadest me.' Poor Constance! She died, at twenty-two, of overwork. She wore herself out in efforts to bring her poor barbarians up to the standard her imagination had set for them."

Constance Harvey had a spirit strong enough to have sustained a slighter frame than hers through all the fatigues necessary to the attainment of a great end. She died, not of her work, but of its frustration. She had all power with her father, except to overcome his inertness. To this, as years went on, other hindrances were added. Her brother married a fashionable woman and lived in Paris. His demands forbade the increase of the reserved fund, and soon began to encroach upon it. She urged her brother's return. He replied, that the delicacy of his wife's health made the climate of France necessary to her. His expenses increased, instead of lessening. Constance saw, coming nearer and nearer, a danger far more terrible to her than mere pecuniary embarrassment. She saw that her father must either exercise a courage that she had little hope of, or break his faith with Jasper,—with[Pg 110] the faithful people who had worked for them, or rather, as she viewed it, with them, for the accomplishment of a common object. One half of the fund she regarded as a deposit,—as a sacred trust. Until her brother's claims had exhausted the portion always intended to be his, she combated her anxieties, and kept up hope and effort. Through her genius and energy the income of the estate was increased, the expenses diminished, and yet the comforts of the work-people not curtailed. Jasper seconded her bravely. But the hour of dishonor came at last,—came hopeless, irretrievable. She struggled on a little while for her poor father's sake, and Jasper exerted himself strenuously for hers, stimulating the people to renewed industry by his warm appeals. Before, he had roused them with the hope of freedom and independent wealth; now, he urged them to rescue from ruin the generous master who had meant them so much good. But the demands from Paris increased as the means of supplying them diminished. Debt came, and in its train all the varied anguish which debt involves, where human souls are a marketable commodity. Let Dr. Borrow give you the outside of this story, now that you have the key to it.

"Frank and I were not much together after we got to Paris. Our worlds were different. Frank was going from ball to ball and from watering-place[Pg 111] to watering-place after Flora Westlake, until they were married, and then they followed the same round together. His father wrote to them to come home and live with him, so Frank told me, and I believe that was what he had expected to do; but Madame Harvey naturally preferred Paris to the World's End; so there they stayed,—Frank always meaning to go home the next year, for eight years. Their establishment, by the way, did Jasper great credit. Then he heard of his sister's death: they could not go home then; it would be too sad. But soon followed news of his father's illness: that started them. On the voyage to New York, he met with this Lenox, liked him, and engaged him for the place he has filled so satisfactorily. He judged wisely: Frank has an excellent head for organizing, but no faculty for administration. Once at home, he devoted himself to his plantation as his sister had done. I believe her example has had a great influence with him. But he has respected her practice more than her theories. He is content to take his people as they are, and to make them useful to themselves and to him. His father lived a few years, but did not meddle with anything. Frank has shown an ability and an energy that nobody expected of a man of leisure and of pleasure like him. Except a short visit to Europe, two summers ago, here he has been steady at his post for twelve[Pg 112] years through. His life here is not an hilarious one, for a man of his tastes; but, if doing one's duty is a reason for being happy, Frank Harvey has a right to be so. You think he looks sad, Harry. He does,—and older than his age; but I am afraid there is a nearer cause than you have found for it."

The Doctor sat silent for a few moments with contracted brows; then, throwing off his vexation with an effort, began again,—

"Frederic is expected home in a week or two. Perhaps we shall fall in with him somewhere on our road. I should like to see you together and hear you have a talk about slavery. He is as great a fanatic on one side as you are on the other."

"He was very far from upholding slavery when I knew him. At school he used to be indignant with Northern boys who defended it. He used to tell me terrible things he had himself known. The first thing I ever heard of Fred made me like him. A New-York boy, who made the passage to France with him, told me that there was on board the steamer a little mulatto whom some of the other boys teased and laughed at. Fred took his part, used to walk up and down the deck with him, and, when they landed, went up with him to the school he was going to in Havre."

"Lucky for the mulatto, and for Fred Harvey, too, if he values your good opinion,—and he values everybody's. If you had taken the boy up, Fred would have put him down."

"He has changed, if he ever admitted anything against slavery. When you see him, you can serve up to him some of his own stories."

"I would not do that; but, if he introduces the subject, I shall say what I think of slavery as plainly as ever I did."

"He certainly will introduce it. And he would not be at all embarrassed, if you were to cast up his old self to him. He would admit freely that in his green age he entertained crude opinions which time and experience have modified. You must be prepared to be overwhelmed with his learning, though. He is a great political economist,—as they all are, for that matter, down here. He almost stifled me with his citations, the last time I was in his company. When he was in Boston, about eight months ago, I asked him to dine. He exerted himself so powerfully to prove to me that slavery is the most satisfactory condition for ordinary human nature, and to persuade me in general of the wisdom, humanity, and Christian tendencies of 'Southern institutions,' that I determined not to invite him[Pg 114] too often, for fear he should make an abolitionist of me.

"However, I gave half the blame to Shaler. His conduct was really a reflection upon his cousin Harvey, who had been something of a celebrity. The Harvey plantation was one of the sights of the State. Fred knew that his father's humanity made a part of his own prestige in Northern society. His filial piety took alarm. If Shaler's style of benevolence became the fashion, Harvey's would be obsolete. He must either follow the lead of another, and so take a secondary place, or count as one behind the times. Fred appreciated the position: it was a question of condemning or being condemned; of course there was no question. But all has gone to heart's wish. Shaler has passed out of mind, and Harvey's is still the model plantation."

"I should be glad to have nothing to find fault with in Fred but his dogmatism and his pedantry," the Doctor began again, lowering his voice. "After you left Paris, Harry, he fell in with intimates not so safe. He gives his father anxiety,—has, I very much fear, even embarrassed him by his extravagance."

Harry looked pained, but made no reply. The Doctor expected one, but having waited for it a moment in vain, went back to the dinner which had left so unfavorable an impression. He gave some[Pg 115] examples of Frederic's strain of argument, rather shallow, certainly, and, for so young a man, rather cold-blooded.

"I thought," Harry exclaimed at last, with emotion, "that I had always hated slavery as much as I could hate it; but, when I see what it has done to men whom I like,—whom I want to like,—when I see what it has done"——

"When you see what it has done to women?" asked the Doctor, as Harry hesitated to finish his sentence. "Ah, I understand. You are thinking of that garden scene."

The Doctor turned from Harry and addressed himself to me, taking up his narrative tone.

"You know we ought to have been here three days earlier. The delay was owing to that Orpheus escapade I told you of. It took us back to Omocqua, and, once there, we determined to give a day or two to Egerton, which we had missed before. The cave was no great affair, after those we had seen; and the wonderful flowers that grow there turned out a humbug, as I knew they would. However, Egerton proved to be something of a place, and who should be there but my friend Harvey himself, to whose plantation we were bound. He had his carriage, and proposed to take us down there with him. We accepted, excusing to ourselves the breach of our rule, in consideration of the gratuitous[Pg 116] tramp we had taken between Omocqua and Tenpinville. We didn't start until afternoon, so it was rather late when we arrived. However, Madame received us charmingly, and we had a pleasant hour or two talking over the old times at Paris and Dieppe. Nobody else appeared that evening, and I didn't inquire after anybody: I knew Fred was away, and the other children were children when I last heard of them.

"I had a room that looked on the garden. Harry was in early in the morning,—not too early for me. I was already some time dressed, had unscrewed my press, and was beginning to release my flowers, prizes of the day before. Harry knew better than to interrupt me, and I sat working away comfortably and leisurely while he stood at the open window. Without, not far off, an old man was dressing a border. The click, click, of his strokes, not very rapid and not very strong, made a pleasant accompaniment to the other pleasant sounds,—such as those of the birds, of the insects, and of a little unseen human swarm whose hum rose and fell at intervals. Suddenly, notes before which everything else seemed stilled to listen,—those of a clear, rich voice,—a woman's voice. It chanted a morning hymn. Every word was distinctly heard. The precision and purity of the tones told of careful training, and the simplicity of the delivery showed either[Pg 117] high breeding or a fine artistic sense. Was the charm received through the ear to be heightened or dissolved by the eye? To judge whether there was anything worth getting up for, I looked at Harry. He had an expression—awe-struck shall I call it? Yes, but with a soft, delightful awe. I took my place beside him where he stood looking down into the garden, as James of Scotland looked down from the Tower, upon the fair vision flitting among the flowers, and wondered what name could be sweet enough to call it by,—only Harry was not wondering. It was I. 'Margarita!' he said, under his breath, and quickly, to prevent my question. And Margarita it ought to have been! All in white, soft white; fresh and cool as if a sea-shell had just opened to give her passage; her face of that lovely pallor which makes Northern roses seem rude. What two years could do, if this were little Maggie Harvey! The song was broken off abruptly, just when, recounting the blessings of the season, it had come to the opening flowers. The theme was continued, but the tone was changed. The poor old man, in spite of an immense pair of iron spectacles, with half a glass remaining in one of the eye-holes, had failed to distinguish a plant of price from the plebeian crowd that had shot up about it. There it lay on the ignoble heap, its wilted flowers witnessing against him! Behold our Maggie a Megæra![Pg 118] If half the promises she made the old offender were fulfilled, he never sinned again. But I don't believe they were:—

Jasper trembled under hers, though. Yet he still had thought for the honor of the family: he lifted his eyes meaningly to our window; she turned, perceived us; and you should have seen the shame on—Harry's face!"

Going home, we made a long circuit. We passed near Piney's plantation. The slaves were in the field. We stopped to look at them. They all seemed to work mechanically,—seemed all of the same low type. We could not have discerned any differences of character or capacity among them. But the overseer, who stood by, whip in hand, evidently distinguished shades of industry or reluctance.

"You see nothing of that at Harvey's," said the Doctor, as we walked on again. "You see nothing like it there," he repeated, as Harry did not reply.

"The force is there, whether we see it or not," said Harry. "Dr. Falter told us that his negroes never thought of running away. Presently we saw the bloodhounds."

"You mean to say these precautions are a necessity of his position. It is true; and there is his justification. He has a good heart; he would rather be served through love than fear. As things are, he must base his authority on both."

"Is it not terrible, when law and opinion, which should restrain from tyranny, compel to it?"

The Doctor himself led the way to a new topic. He stopped to admire the great plain which surrounded us. As we walked on again, he spoke of our magnificent prairies, of the pampas of South America, of the landes of Gascony, of the pusztas of Hungary, all of which he had seen, and of which he discriminated for us the characteristic features. He spoke of the love which the inhabitant of these immense extents feels for them,—equal to that with which the dweller on the coast, or the mountaineer, regards his home; a love, the intensity of which is due to the emotions of sublimity which they, like the ocean and grand highland scenery, excite, and debarred from which, he whose life they have exalted pines with a nameless want. The Doctor passed to the Campagna of Rome, where Harry was at home,—and I, too, through imagination. Our conversation left its record on the scene we were passing through. The Doctor, illustrating his descriptions, pointed out now this, now that feature of our own landscape. The name he associated with it rested there. Fidenæ, Antemnæ, have thus made themselves homes on beautiful undulations of our Campagna, never to be dislodged for me.

The Doctor left us presently, as he was in the habit of doing on our walks, and went on a little before. Harry and I continued to talk of Italy,—of all that it has given to the world of example and of warning. We talked of its ancient fertility and beauty, and of the causes of its decline. We talked of its earlier and later republican days; of its betrayal by the selfish ambition and covetousness of unworthy sons; of the introduction of masses of foreign slaves; of the consequent degradation of labor, once so honorable there; of the absorption of landed property in a few hands; of the gradual reduction of freemen to a condition hopeless as that of slaves; of the conversion of men of high race—and who should have been capable, by natural endowment, of what humanity has shown of best and greatest—into parasites, hireling bravoes, and shameless mendicants; of the revival of its primitive heroism in its early Christians; of its many and strenuous efforts after renovation; of the successes it attained only to be thrown back into ruin by its misleaders and misrulers. Harry has as warm hopes for Italy as I have, and his nearer knowledge of her people has not rendered his faith in them less confident than mine. We talked of the value of traditions, and especially of those which a people cherishes in regard to its own origin and early history. I found that Harry had interested himself[Pg 122] very much in the ancient history of Italy, and in the questions concerning the origin of its different races. In the morning I had seen the poetical side of his mind, and had received an impression of his general culture. I now became aware of the thoroughness and exactness of his special studies.

We came to Blanty's farm. The Doctor stopped at the gate and we rejoined him there. Blanty was standing before his door, in conference with a tall, strong, self-reliant-looking black man,—a slave, but a slave as he might have been in Africa: the respectful and respected aid, companion, adviser of his master. Blanty, seeing us, came down to the gate and asked us to go in. We had not time; but we had a little talk where we were. Blanty and I discussed the future of our crops. He was well content with the season and its prospects. He had seen Dr. Borrow and Harry on Sunday. A single interview at a common friend's makes intimate acquaintance out here. Blanty was quite unreserved, and praised himself and everything belonging to him as frankly as ever Ulysses did. He is a grand good fellow. Dr. Borrow's eye rested on the black man, who remained where his master had left him, in an attitude for a statue,—so firm was his stand, so easy, so unconscious.

"My mother gave it to him. He will not let himself be called out of it. He never knows himself by it, if it is shortened. He is a native African, though all of his life that he can remember he has passed here. His mother brought him away in her arms. They were carried to Cuba first, and re-shipped. He is more of a man than I am," continued Blanty, who is enough of a man to risk admitting a superior. "If I had his head and his tongue, I would have been in Congress before this."

"He's thirty years old," answered Blanty. "The law hadn't taken hold of reading and writing when he had his bringing up. My mother gave him as careful teaching as she did her own boys, and he got more out of it. 'Search the Scriptures,' she said, was a plain command; and how could a man search the Scriptures, if he couldn't read? But he works as well. Things here look famously, as you say; I see it myself. It's more to his praise than mine. He has done well by me;[Pg 124] I should like to do well by him. My farm's larger than I want. I might give him a piece, as you have your German; but I can't, you know. It's hard, in a free country, that a man can't do as he would with his own. I don't want to send him off, and he doesn't want to go. I married late; if I should be taken away, I should leave my children young. I'd as soon leave them to his care as to a brother's. I've talked it over with him; he knows how I feel. And then, he's married his wife on Piney's plantation. Foolish; but I didn't tell him so. I knew marriage was a thing a man hadn't his choice in. I sometimes think it was a providence for the easing of my mind."

"I hope so, and in thirty years a great deal may happen. I mean right, and I hope God will bring things out right for me somehow."

After we left Blanty's, we walked on in silence for a time. Then the Doctor spoke abruptly,—in answer to himself, probably, for neither Harry nor I had said anything:—

"What then? What then? Here is an instance of a slave capable of taking care of himself,—that[Pg 125] is to say, of a man out of place. There are cases of as great hardship elsewhere. Are we not constantly hearing, even with us, of men who have never found their place? A Southern planter would feel himself very much out of place anywhere but where he is,—and very much out of place where he is, in changed relations with his people. Blanty is no example. Blanty has half a dozen slaves perhaps at most, with whom he works himself. He might change them into day-laborers and hardly know the difference. But Harvey, Westlake, Falter,—because they are provided for too well, as you seem to think,—will you dispossess them altogether? Why all sympathy for the black? Have not the whites a right to a share,—our own brothers by blood?"

"Yes, to a large share," Harry answered. "But we are made to feel most for those who have fewest to feel for them; we offer our help first to the helpless. And would not Mr. Harvey be happier, if there were no whip or stocks on his plantation, seen or unseen? Would not Dr. Falter be happier, if his bloodhounds were kept only as curiosities? I wish them both happier,—and I wish Blanty happier, who seems all the more like a brother to me, since he can see one in Othello."

"Let Blanty talk, who has a claim. If he can find men enough in his own State who agree with[Pg 126] him, they may be able to do something. We have no part in the matter."

"We take a part, when we give our sympathy to the maintainers of slavery, and withhold it from such as Shaler, our truest brothers,—from such as Blanty, and thousands like him, whom it might strengthen and embolden."

"Harry, you are a Northerner. You belong to a State where you need not know that there is such a thing as slavery, if you don't inquire after it. Take your lot where it has been given to you, and be thankful."

"I am neither a Northerner nor a Southerner: I am an American. If Massachusetts is dearer to me than all other States, it is only as our little farm at Rockwood is dearer to me than all other farms: I do not wish the rain to fall upon it or the sun to shine upon it more than upon others. When we met an Alabamian or a Georgian abroad, was he not our countryman? Did we not feel ourselves good Kentucks, walking through beautiful Kentucky?"

"How is it, Harry, that you, who love your country so passionately, who take such pride in her institutions, such delight in her prosperity, will yet fix your eyes on her one blemish, will insist on suffering pain she hardly feels? There is enough to do. Leave slavery where it is."

"The principles on which our national institutions are founded, if they have the vital force you attribute to them, will prevail. Let patience have its perfect work."

"The world is full of evils. You have not found that out yet, but you will. You have spied this one, and, young Red-Cross Knight, you must forthwith meet the monster in mortal combat. Every country has its household foe, its bosom viper, its vampire, its incubus. We are blessed in comparison with others; but we are not celestial yet. We are on the same earth with Europe, if we are on the other side of it. We have our mortal portion; but, young and strong, our country can bear its incumbrance more easily than the rest."

We talked of something else for about half a mile, and then the Doctor, turning to Harry, said,—

"There is enough to do; and you, of all persons, have laid out enough, without embarking in a crusade against slavery. Write your histories; show the world that it has known nothing about itself up to this time; set up your model farm; aid by word[Pg 128] and example to restore to the culture of the ground its ancient dignity; carry out, or try to carry out, any or all of the projects with which your young brain is teeming; but do not throw yourself into an utterly thankless work. I laugh, but I am in earnest. I do hope something from you, Harry. Do not disappoint us all!"

"Who calls you to it? Who made you arbiter here? From whom have you your warrant?"

Harry turned to me with a look, grateful, earnest, nobly humble: he longed to believe an oracle in these words, yet hardly dared.

"I do not know yet whether I am called to it," he said, after a few moments of grave silence; "but I stand ready. I do not know yet what I am worth. It must be years before I am prepared to be useful, if I can be. But when the time comes, if it is found that I have anything to give, I shall give it to that cause."

He spoke solemnly and with a depth of resolution which showed him moved by no new or transient impulse. The Doctor's lips were compressed, as if[Pg 129] he forbade himself to answer. He walked away and looked at some flowers, or seemed to look at them, and then strolled along slowly by himself. We observed the same pace with him, but did not attempt to join him.

When we came near the grove, Doctor Borrow took his way toward it, and we followed him. He sat down on a bench; I took my place beside him, and Harry his, as usual, on the grass near us. The Doctor, refreshed by the little interval of solitude, was ready to talk again.

"Do not make me out an advocate of slavery. I am not fonder of it than you are, Harry. It has brought trouble enough upon us, and will bring us worse still."

"Slavery disposed of, there are no slaves. The men I would leave where they are, to till the ground as they till it now, only better. There has never been a time or a place in which men did not work for their family, their community, their State. The black man will work for his family, as soon as he has one,—for his community, as soon as he is a member of one,—for the State, as soon as we admit him to a share in it."

"You will not dare to say of these poor beings that they are capable of self-government?"

"Which of us would dare to say it of himself?" replied Harry, reverently; "and yet God trusts us."

"Those are the words of a Pagan priestess," Harry answered. "The hand of our God is not known by its parsimony. He does not force on us what we will not accept, but His bounty is limited only by our trust in it. Ask large enough!" he exclaimed, springing up, and standing before us,—

"The greatest religious poet of the old time, translated by the greatest of the new,—David, by Milton."

It was I who answered,—for Harry, absorbed in his own thoughts, had not heard the question.

He rose presently and walked off for home. Harry and I followed, but at a little distance, for he had the air of wishing to be alone.

I found that Harry's interest in the question of slavery was not new. In Europe, it had pained him deeply to see the injury done to the cause of freedom by our tolerance of this vestige of barbarism,—in truth, a legacy from the arbitrary systems we have rejected, but declared by the enemies of the people to be the necessary concomitant of republican institutions. He has studied, as few have, the history of slavery in the United States, and its working, political and social. It has not escaped him, that, though limited in its material domain, it has not been so in its moral empire: North, as well as South, our true development has been impeded. His great love for his country, his delight in what it has already attained, his happy hopes for its future, only quicken his sight to the dangers which threaten it from this single quarter. He sees that not only the national harmony is threatened by it, but the national virtue;—for a habit of accepting inconsistencies and silencing scruples must infallibly impair that native rectitude of judgment and[Pg 132] sincerity of conscience through which the voice of the people is the voice of God. It is this perception, not less than the strong call the suffering of the weak makes upon every manly heart, that has brought Harry Dudley to the conviction that the obliteration of slavery is the work of our time.

We talked of the slave; of his future, which depends not more on what we do for him than on what he is able to do for himself. We spoke of the self-complacent delusion cherished among us, that he brought his faults with him from Africa, and has gained his virtues here; of the apprehension consequent on this error, that what is original will cleave to him, while that which has been imposed is liable to fall from him with his chain.

We talked of the mysterious charm possessed by the name of Africa, while its wonders and wealth were only divined and still unproved. We talked of Henry the Navigator; of the great designs so long brooded in his brain; of the sudden moment of resolution, followed up by a quarter of a century of patience; of the final success which was to have such results to the world,—in the African slave-trade, which he, of Christian princes, was the first to practise,—in the discovery of America by Columbus, to whose enterprises those of Henry immediately led.

If we could suppose that man ever, indeed, antici[Pg 133]pated the decrees of Providence, or obtained by importunity a grant of the yet immature fruits of destiny, it might seem to have been when Henry of Portugal overcame the defences of the shrouded world, and opened new theatres to the insane covetousness of Western Europe. We cannot suppose it. Doubtless mankind needed the terrible lesson; and, happily, though the number of the victims has been immense, that of the criminals has been more limited.

The history of early Portuguese adventure—this strange history, full of the admirable and the terrible, attractive at the same time and hateful—owes nothing of its romance or its horror to the fancy of the poet or of the people. It does not come to us gathered up from tradition, to be cavilled at and perhaps rejected,—nor woven into ballad and legend. It has been preserved by sober and exact chroniclers. The earliest and most ample of its recorders, called to his task by the King of Portugal, was historiographer of the kingdom and keeper of its archives. Long a member of the household of Prince Henry, and the intimate acquaintance of his captains, he heard the story of each voyage from the lips of those who conducted it.

He makes us present at Henry's consultations before the fitting out of an expedition,—at his inter[Pg 134]views with his returning adventurers. He gives us the report of the obstacles they met with, and the encouragements. We follow the long disappointment of the sandy coast; gain from the deck of the caravel the first glimpse of the green land, with its soft meadows, quietly feeding cattle, and inviting shade. We receive the first kindly welcome of the wondering inhabitants, and meet their later defiance.

These earliest witnesses to the character of the black man are among the most sincere. They were not tempted to deny to him the qualities they found in him. They had no doubt of the validity of the principle, that the stronger and wiser are called upon to make property of the faculties and possessions of the weaker and simpler; they were as sincerely persuaded that the privileges of superiority were with themselves. They believed in the duty and glory of extirpating heathenism, and with it the heathen, if need were. They acted under the command of "their lord Infant," to whose bounty and favor their past and their future were bound by every tie of gratitude and expectation. They had no occasion, then, to malign their victims in order to justify themselves. They did not call in question the patriotism of the people whom they intended to dispossess, nor its right to defend a country well worth defending. This people was odious to them for its[Pg 135] supposed worship of "the Demon," and for its use of weapons of defence strange to the invaders, and therefore unlawful. But, even while grieving for the losses and smarting under the shame of an incredible defeat, they admitted and admired the courage by which they suffered. If they seized and carried away the children left on the river-side in barbarian security, with as little remorse as any marauders that came after them, they made themselves no illusions in regard to the feelings of the father, who, discovering his loss, rushed down to the beach in a vain attempt at rescue, "without any fear, through the fury of his paternal love." They made no scruple of employing guile, when it served better than force,—the civilized and the Christian are thus privileged in their dealings with the man of Nature and the Pagan,—but their report does justice to the loyalty of primitive society. Nor does their chronicler feel any call to make himself their advocate. Glorying in their exploits, he is not ashamed of their motives. He does, indeed, bestow higher praise on those with whom desire of honor is the more prevailing incentive; but he has no fear of detaching any sympathies by avowing that their courage was fired and fortified by the promise and the view of gain.

I related to Harry some scenes from this narrative. He asked me to write it out, and hereafter[Pg 136] to continue it, by gathering from other early witnesses what indications are to be found of the original qualities of the black races; of their condition and civilization, and of the character of their institutions, before they had been demoralized and disorganized by foreign violence and cunning. I had already sketched to him my views on this subject. His historical studies, his knowledge of the laws and customs of primitive peoples, enabled him to draw at once, from the facts I stated, the inferences to which I would have led him, and to see titles to respect where more superficial minds might have found only matter for a condescending, or perhaps a disdainful, curiosity.

Harry's request came to confirm an intention whose execution I had continually put off to a more convenient season. I gave him my promise gladly, and determined to begin while he was still with me, that I might have the pleasure of reading over at least the first pages with him. Dr. Borrow likes to spend two hours or so after breakfast in arranging and labelling his pressed flowers; Harry is pleased to have some active work in his day. It was agreed between us that he should give that time to helping Karl and Fritz, and that I should take it for writing. I resolved within myself, though, that I would not wait for the morning. Dr. Borrow was not in talking vein that evening. We broke up[Pg 137] early. As soon as I found myself in my room, I took out my portfolio and began. It happened to me, however,—as it has often happened to me,—that what I wrote was not what I had meant to write.

I was to tell the story of the Finding of Guinea. But let us leave the land of mystery and promise still lying in shadow, until we have first informed ourselves a little concerning the world with which the Portuguese explorers are to bring it into relation,—the civilized and Christian world, which is about to rush into the opened road, proposing, in exchange for dominion and gold, to share with its intended tributaries its own moral and spiritual wealth, and to endow them with the fruits of its social and political wisdom.

We must be content to receive our accounts of Africa from Europeans: let us try to look at Europe with the eyes of an African.

Let us suppose that the Moorish traders, whose golden legends drew the eyes of Europe southward, have excited in a Ialof or Fulah prince a desire to see the wonders of the North. Or rather, let the traveller be a Mandingo; for that people is as remarkable for good judgment as for truthfulness, and our observer of Christian manners must be one who will not easily commit injustice. We will give him about a three-years' tour,—more time than most travellers allow themselves for forming an opinion[Pg 139] of a quarter of the globe. It is the year 1415 schemes of African expedition are germinating in the brains of the Portuguese Infants. The Mandingo has heard of Portugal from the Moors, and of the young prince who has questioned them of Africa with so keen an interest. Portugal, then, attracts him first. We may take it for granted that the representative of Africa is well received. We may suppose him to be entertained with the superb hospitality that Bemoy, the Ialof prince, actually met with at the Portuguese court something more than half a century later. All its magnificence is displayed for his admiration; and its most delightful entertainments, such as bull-baiting, feats of dogs, tricks of buffoons, and the like, are put in requisition for him as for Bemoy.

The Mandingo traveller is, of course, very welcome to Prince Henry, as a living evidence of the existence of the hidden world he has dreamed of. The reports he receives of its resources, from so competent a witness, confirm his hopes and inflame his zeal. He expresses to the stranger his strong desire to see these interesting regions brought into communication with Europe, and discloses those projects of maritime adventure whose execution afterwards gained him the surname of the Navigator. The manners and conversation of Henry are very acceptable to his foreign guest, who is espe[Pg 140]cially won by his disinterestedness: for this prince, and his young brother Ferdinand, not less ardent than himself, have the good of Africa as much at heart as that of their own country. They wish, so they tell him, to aid its advance in science and the arts; above all, they wish to carry there a religion which has been revealed to them, and which cannot but prove an inestimable blessing.

The Mandingo is surprised, and at first a little disturbed, by this last announcement; for the account he has heard of the religions of Europe is not such as to make him desire to see any of them transported to Africa. But he learns that he has been grossly misinformed: it is not true, as the Moors have reported, that the Europeans are ignorant of a Supreme Being and worship only idols: they do, indeed, pay homage to the images of tutelary divinities, whom they call saints; but they are perfectly aware that these are subordinate beings. The Africans themselves might, on the same evidence, be accused, by a superficial traveller, of a like deplorable ignorance. Neither is it true that many of the states of Europe worship an Evil Demon who delights in carnage and is propitiated by massacre. On the contrary, the Christian religion, which prevails in the greater part of Europe, teaches especially love to God and love to man; it is opposed to every form of violence, forbidding[Pg 141] even retaliation, and requiring its followers to love not only friends and strangers, but even enemies. This account he receives from a good priest, who is appointed to give him instruction. He is greatly moved by the exposition of this sublime doctrine. Far from dreading, he now ardently desires to see the influences of the religion of Christendom extended to Africa. He has arrived at a favorable time for studying its precepts; for Portugal is at peace with itself and its neighbors: an unusual state of things, however, and not likely to last, as the stranger cannot but soon perceive,—for preparations unmistakably warlike are going on about him. He observes that the people are agitated by various apprehensions; he hears them murmur at their increased burdens, and at the prospect of having their sons taken from them to die in a foreign land. All this is very puzzling to our traveller. How reconcile it with the religion he was on the point of embracing? At the court he sees elation and mystery on the faces of the younger men; in those of the elder, grave concern. The people, he finds, are as ignorant as himself of the object of the military preparations: some saying that a new war with Castile is impending; others, that the king is about to aid the Father at Rome against the Father at Avignon. He is more and more perplexed; but, mindful of the reserve and delicacy becoming a[Pg 142] stranger, he is sparing of questions, and waits for time and a wider experience to enlighten him.

In the mean time, he turns his attention to what seems to concern himself more nearly. He believes that Henry, whom he perceives to be as resolute as adventurous, will one day carry out his schemes of maritime enterprise, and that he will thus exercise an influence on the destinies of Africa. Will this influence be exerted for good or evil? He sets himself to study the character of the young prince more carefully, makes diligent inquiry concerning his deportment in childhood, and tries to collect information in regard to his lineage,—for this is a point much considered among the Mandingos. He is so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of an ancient nobleman, versed in the history and traditions of the country, as well as in those of the royal court, and fond of telling what he knows, when he has a safe opportunity,—for he is a man of experience, and does not make either the past or the future a topic of conversation with his brother-courtiers. To him the African addresses his questions, and not in vain. The old man knew the present king when he was only Grand Master of the Order of Avis, and the Infant Henry has grown up under his very eyes. All that the traveller learns in regard to Henry himself is satisfactory; and he finds that King John, his father, is regarded[Pg 143] as a just and wise sovereign. But, on nearer inquiry, he discovers that this great king is, in fact, a usurper; for, in Portugal, the successor to the crown must be the son of his father's principal wife, and King John had not this advantage. He learns, with yet more regret, that this sovereign is of a family in which filial impiety is hereditary. The first of the dynasty, King Alphonso, made war against his own mother, and imprisoned her in a fortress, where she died, having first, as the Mandingo heard with horror, bestowed her malediction on her son and his line. She foretold that he should be great, but not happy; that his posterity should live in domestic strife and unnatural hatred; that success should only bring them sorrow, and even their just enterprises should turn to evil.

The African asks anxiously whether the religion of the Christians had already been revealed in the time of Alphonso. His venerable friend replies that it had, and that Alphonso, by his great piety displayed in the building of monasteries and in the slaughter of Moors,—for he did not spare even the tender infants,—averted from himself some of the effects of the curse. But though he obtained the crown of Portugal and was permitted to triumph over the infidels, yet it was remarked that his life was disturbed and unhappy, and that he met with strange disasters in the midst of his successes. The[Pg 144] curse seemed to deepen with time. His grandson, the second Alphonso, set aside his father's will, and seized on the inheritance of his sisters; a third Alphonso, son to this second one, deprived his elder brother of his throne; the fourth Alphonso rebelled against his father, and was rebelled against, in his turn, by his son Peter, whose wife he had murdered, and who, in revenge, ravaged the country that was to be his own inheritance. When he came to the throne, Peter caused the men who had been the instruments of his father's crime to be put to death by horrible and lingering tortures, which he himself superintended. This Peter, surnamed the Severe, was father to the reigning king, entitled John the Great.

The Mandingo, hearing this history of the royal house of Portugal, is made to feel that he is indeed in a country of barbarians: a fact which the pomp of their court, and the account he has heard of their religion, had almost made him forget. The old courtier becomes more and more communicative, as he sees the surprise and interest his narrative excites, and ventures at last, in strict confidence, to reveal that King John himself, before attaining to the crown, gave evidence of the qualities that marked his house. He assassinated with his own hand a man whom he considered his enemy, after inviting him to an amicable conference; he spread[Pg 145] devastation and horror through the kingdom on his way to the throne, which, when he seized it, had several other claimants. One of these was, like himself, a son of Peter the Severe, and had the superiority of a legal birth; but he, having murdered his wife, went on foreign travel, and happening, when the throne of Portugal was left vacant, to be in the dominions of the husband of his niece,—another of the claimants,—was seized and thrown into prison. In this state of the family-affairs, John, the Grand Master of Avis, saw a chance for himself. He consented to act, until the true heir should be decided on, as Protector of the kingdom, and in this capacity opened the prisons, offering pardon to all who would enter his service. He thus formed a devoted little army, which he provided for by giving it license to plunder the enemies of order, among whom, it seemed, were dignitaries of Church and State, and holy recluse women: at least, their estates were ravaged, themselves murdered, and their dead bodies dragged through the streets in terror to others. There was no lack of recruits; the reformed convicts found the path of duty as congenial as that of crime, and all the ruined spendthrifts and vagabonds of the country were content to link their fortunes to those of the Protector. No corner of the kingdom was left unschooled by summary executions. In fine, the adherents of the[Pg 146] Grand Master played their part so well, that the people, tired of the interregnum, begged him to make an end of it and set the crown on his own head. He complied, and the country had the relief of being ravaged by the armies of his Castilian competitor and of supporting his own forces in a more regular manner.

But all this is now over; the kingdom has enjoyed an interval of peace, and begins to look with pride on the prince who won it so adroitly and governs it so firmly. The curse which hung over the royal line seems to have been baffled, or, at least, suspended, by his irregular accession. He has held his usurped sceptre with a fortunate as well as a vigorous hand. His five sons are dutiful, united, and of princely endowments.

The Mandingo then inquires about the descent of Henry on the maternal side, and learns that his mother is a sister of the late king of England, a great and wise sovereign, whose son Henry, the fifth of the name, now reigns in his stead. He must see the island-kingdom governed by Prince Henry's cousin and namesake. But he postpones this visit,—for he hears that in a certain city of the mainland the most illustrious persons of Europe are assembled to hold a solemn council, whose decrees are to have force in all Christian states. Even the Supreme Pontiff himself is to be there, the head[Pg 147] of the Christian world, superior to all potentates. The African will not lose such an opportunity of studying the manners and institutions of Europe. He hastens to Constance, where the concourse and the magnificence surpass his expectations. He inquires earnestly if he may be permitted to see the Great Pontiff, and learns, to his surprise, that three sacred personages claim this title, to the great confusion and misery of Christendom, which has already shed torrents of blood in these holy quarrels and sees new wars in preparation. Nor is this the worst that is to be dreaded. The power of the rightful Pontiff extends into the future life; and as each of the claimants threatens the followers of his rivals with terrible and unending punishment in the next world, the uncertainty is truly fearful. One of the pretenders is compelled by the council to renounce his claims, and is instantly thrown into prison, that he may have no opportunity of resuming them. A second withdraws his pretensions by deputy; and it is understood that the council intends to require a similar resignation of the third, that the anxiety of the world may be put to rest by the election of a fourth, whose rights and powers shall be unquestionable. There seems, however, no prospect of a speedy solution of these difficulties; and our traveller, having seen all the great personages of the assembly, with their equipages and at[Pg 148]tendants, begins to weary of the noise and bustle. But he hears that a ceremony of a very particular kind is about to take place, and stays to witness it; for he will neglect no opportunity of improvement. He is present, therefore, at the burning of John Huss, which he understands to be a great propitiatory sacrifice. When he hears, the following year, that a holocaust of the same kind has again been offered in the same place, he, of course, feels justified in recording it as an annual celebration. He notes as a remarkable circumstance, that the victim, on both occasions, is taken from the same nation; but he cannot learn that any law prescribes this selection, or that the efficacy of the sacrifice would be affected by a different choice. Another circumstance which seems to him noteworthy is, that, whereas, under their old religions, the people of these countries offered up, in preference, malefactors reserved for the purpose, or captives taken in war, the Europeans of this newer faith, on the contrary, select men without spot or blemish, and possessed of all the gifts and acquirements held in highest honor among them. He hears vaunted, on all sides, the virtue and learning of Huss, and, above all, his extraordinary eloquence,—for this gift is held in as much esteem in Europe as in Africa. He hears the same encomiums pronounced on the second victim, Jerome of Prague, and learns, at[Pg 149] the same time, that the possession of these powers renders his doom the more necessary. He can but infer that the great, though mistaken, piety of the Christians makes them conceive that only what they have of best is worthy to be devoted to so sacred a purpose. But these reflections were made a year later. We must go back to the summer of 1415.

It is in the month of August that our African traveller arrives in England. The king is just setting off on a hostile expedition against a country whose inhabitants, though Christian, like the English, are held by them in detestation and contempt. Just before going, the king is obliged to cut off the head of one of his cousins. The cause of this severity is thus explained:—The late king, cousin to his own predecessor, dethroned and killed him; and it being a rule in England that what has been done once is to be done again, the present king lives in great fear of cousins. He finds the people considerate of these royal exigencies. He hears praises bestowed on the clemency of the young Henry, who remits,—so it is reported,—in the case of his kinsman, a grievous part of the punishment which the law awards to treason, only suffering the sentence to be executed in full on a man of inferior rank condemned with him as his accomplice.

Notwithstanding the disturbed state of the times, the stranger is well received, and is questioned with avidity. He is gratified to find that his country is a subject of interest to the English as well as to the Portuguese. They seem, indeed, to be fully aware[Pg 151] that Africa is the most favored portion of the globe. They are never tired of asking about its perpetual summer, its marvellous fertility, its inexhaustible mines. Even the common soldiers in Henry's army "speak of Africa and golden joys." He finds that some of the learned maintain that continent to have been the first home of man, and believe that the terrestrial Paradise lies somewhere hidden among its mountains. When he becomes a little more familiar with his hosts, however, he finds that they entertain some notions not altogether so flattering. They are curious about a certain people of Africa who live in the caves of the earth, whose meat is the flesh of serpents, and who have no proper human speech, but only a grinning and chattering; they ask him whether his travels in his own country have extended as far as the land of the Blemmyes, a people without heads, who have their eyes and mouth set in their breasts. He answers, a little stiffly, that he has no knowledge of any such people. When they go on to inquire whether he ever ventured into the region inhabited by the Anthropophagi, explaining at the same time what peculiarities are intimated by that name, his indignation almost gets the better of him, and he denies, with some vehemence, that such wretches hold any portion of his native soil. His English friends assure him that it is nevertheless very certain that such a people[Pg 152] live in the neighborhood of the Mountains of the Moon. When he finds that he cannot otherwise persuade them out of this injurious opinion, he ventures, though with as much delicacy as possible, to tell them, that, while on the mainland of Europe, he heard stories equally wonderful and equally absurd of their own island. In especial, he heard a Frenchman assert that the eating of human flesh was practised in some part of the dominions of the English king. He assures his English friends that he refused to credit this story, as well as some other particulars in regard to their island, which seemed to him too monstrous for belief, though they were given to him on the authority of a Greek traveller of high reputation, who had not long before visited England in company with the Emperor of the East, and who had enjoyed extraordinary opportunities for studying the manners of the most polite society of the kingdom. The Mandingo is here interrupted by his English hosts, who make haste to assure him that the Greeks are everywhere known to be great liars; that the same may be said of Frenchmen; and that, indeed, there is no nation of Europe, except their own, whose word is at all to be relied upon. The Mandingo refrains from passing so severe a judgment on the travellers who brought back such rash reports of his own country, but he permits himself to suppose that they did not[Pg 153] themselves visit the regions whose manners they described, but received with too little examination stories prevalent in other, perhaps hostile, countries; for he is obliged to confess, with regret, that Africa is not, any more than Europe, always at peace within itself. For himself, he protests, that, even if his natural caution did not prevent him from accepting too readily the statements of the enemies of England, he should have been guarded from this error by the favorable accounts he had heard from Henry of Portugal, by whom he had been warned against believing the stories current among the common Portuguese, who held their English allies in ungrateful abhorrence, and regarded their visits in the same light as those of the plague or of famine. His English friends approve the African's candor; but he can perceive, that, so far as his own country is concerned, they remain of their first opinion. They politely turn the conversation, however, from the men of Africa to its animals,—asking, in particular, about that strange creature, shaped like a pig, but having a horse's mane, whose shadow, falling on a dog, takes from him the power of barking, and which, lurking near a sheepfold until it learns the shepherd's name, calls him by it, and, when he comes, devours him. The African does not deny that an animal possessed of these endowments may somewhere exist, but he is[Pg 154] not acquainted with it; neither has he met with the wonderful stone, said to be found in the same creature's eye, which, being placed under a man's tongue, causes him to foretell future events. This ignorance of the natural history of his country does not raise his reputation with the English.

They give him, on their part, every opportunity of forming a correct judgment of their own country,—not concealing or extenuating things liable to be found fault with by a stranger. Indeed, he cannot enough admire the contented and cheerful character of this people, who find advantages where others would have seen deficiencies or evils, and account by latent virtues for disagreeable appearances on the surface. They congratulate themselves that their sun never oppresses them with its rays,—that their soil has not that superabundant fertility which is only a temptation to laziness. They tell him, with pride, that it is necessary, in travelling in their country, to go in strong parties and well armed: for such is the high spirit and great heart of their people, that they cannot bear to see another have more than themselves; and such is their courage, that what they desire they seize, unless the odds are plainly too great against them. One special subject of gratulation among the English he finds to be the possession of a king whose passion is military glory; inasmuch as the foreign[Pg 155] wars in which he engages the country have the double advantage of keeping up a warlike spirit in the nation, and of clearing off the idle hands, which might become too formidable, if their natural increase were permitted. The Mandingo, seeing so much land in the island left to itself, cannot help thinking that the hands might find employment at home. But he suppresses this reflection, and, turning the conversation upon agriculture, inquires how so energetic a people as the English can be contented with so scanty a return from their land; for he has remarked that the meagreness of their crops is not wholly due to the poverty of the soil, but likewise, and in great measure, to very imperfect tillage. Many reasons are given for this neglect of their land, all more or less creditable to the English people, but not very satisfactory to the mind of the stranger. At last, however, one is brought forward which he at once accepts as sufficient: namely, the insecurity of possession. It seems that property in England often changes owners in the most unexpected manner; so that a common man, who has hired land for cultivation of its noble proprietor, is liable to be suddenly ejected, and to lose all the fruits of his industry, to say nothing of the risk he runs of laying down his life with his lease. For it appears that the nobles of the country are equally remarkable for courage with the other idle[Pg 156] persons, and display it in the same manner. If they think themselves strong enough to add their neighbor's estate to their own, they will—so one of the Mandingo's English friends tells him—"make forcible entry and put out the possessor of the same, and also take his goods and chattels, so that he is utterly disinherited and undone."

The African dismisses his surprise on the subject of agriculture, and gives his attention to the cities, expecting to see the national industry turned to arts which might offer a more certain reward. He finds that the most skilful artisans are foreigners. It occurs to him, seeing the great demand for weapons of all sorts among the English, and their love of golden ornaments, that some of the skilful cutlers and ingenious goldsmiths of his own country might find encouragement. But he gives up this hope, when he sees the hatred borne to the foreign artisans by the natives, who need their skill, but grudge them the profit they draw from it. It is not an unheard-of thing for a foreign artisan or merchant, who has begun to be a little prosperous, to have his house pulled down about his ears. And well for him, if he escape with this! Besides, the jealousy of the people obliges the kings to be always making regulations for the injury of these foreigners; thus the laws are perpetually changing, so that by the time the unlucky men have adapted[Pg 157] themselves to one set they find they are living under another. The restrictions and heavy exactions of the law are not enough: foreign artisans and traders are further subjected to the capricious extortions of the collectors. The Mandingo congratulates himself on the more liberal policy of his own country, and on the great respect paid there to the professors of useful arts, whose persons are inviolable even in time of war; above all, he reflects with satisfaction on the sacredness of the common law there, which, having been handed down through centuries, is known to all and admits of no dispute,—whereas, under this system of written enactments, continually varied, a man may spend his life in learning the rules he is to live by, and after all, perhaps, become a law-breaker before he knows it.

Notwithstanding some drawbacks, the African enjoys his visit to the English highly, and finds much to praise and admire among them. He does not neglect to note that they have the choicest wool in the world. This possession, he finds, has endowed them with a branch of manufacture which may be regarded as national. Their woollen cloths are not very fine, it is true, but they are much prized, both in England and in foreign countries, for their strength and durability.

He is much impressed by the religious archi[Pg 158]tecture of the Christians. Before their sacred edifices, he feels his soul lifted into a sublime tranquillity, as in the presence of the grandest objects in Nature. He is much moved at recognizing in the rich stone carving a resemblance to the ornamental cane-work of African houses. This reminds him of what he once heard said by a learned Arab,—that Africa was the first home of the arts, as of man himself, and that they had gone forth from their too indulgent mother to be perfected in sterner regions, where invention is quickened by necessity. He cannot but bow before the wisdom of the superintending Providence which has caused the rigors of climate and the poverty of soil so to act on the mind of man, that, where Nature is less great and exuberant, his own works are the more transcendent, so that his spiritual part may never lack the food it draws from the view of sublime and genial objects.

He admires less the arrangements of private dwellings. He finds that in England, as in Africa, the habitations of families in easy circumstances consist of several houses; but, instead of being all placed on the ground at a little distance from each other, the square in which they stand surrounded by a pretty palisade, as is the case in Africa, they are here piled one upon another, sometimes to a considerable height, so that it is necessary to mount[Pg 159] by long flights of uneasy steps; and then, in the cities, houses occupied by different families often adjoin each other, having a partition-wall in common, and their doors opening on a common way, so that it would seem the people living in them can have no proper notion of home or of domestic retirement. He finds that the houses of the common people in the country are not of more durable material than African houses. Those of the great are very commonly of stone, and, unless ruined by violence, are capable of serving for centuries. The African does not think this an advantage, as in the case of the temples; for these damp stone houses, so long used as human abodes, become unwholesome; and what is even worse, when evil deeds have been committed in them,—and this is too often the case with the houses of the powerful,—the contagion of guilt hangs round the walls, and the same crime is repeated in after-generations.

The African learns, while in England, what was the real aim of the warlike preparations he saw going on in Portugal. He hears of the taking of Ceuta,—an event which excites almost as much interest in England as in Portugal; for the English are supposed to have had a great part in this success. He hears, however, the chief merit ascribed to a beneficent being who bears the title of "The[Pg 160] Lady of Mercy." It seems, the besiegers landed on a day especially consecrated to her; and to her kind interposition is referred the taking of the city and the terrible slaughter of the Moors who defended it. The African asks how favors of this kind can be made consistent with the character ascribed to this divinity, and is answered, that her mercies are for those who reverence her,—that the unbelieving Moors have no claim on her grace. He is pained; for the lovely qualities he has heard attributed to this gracious being had drawn his heart to her as to one well fitted to be a dispenser of the bounties of Heaven. But it does not appear that she is consistent even in the protection of Christians; for he hears it mentioned as an auspicious augury, that the English king effected his landing in the Christian kingdom of France on the eve of her chosen day; and later, when the Battle of Agincourt fills England with rejoicing, he hears the circumstance again referred to, and the Merciful Lady invoked as a benefactress.

He is daily more and more perplexed in regard to the religion of the Christians. He obtains instruction of an English priest, and finds he has made no mistake as to its tenets: it is understood to teach universal love and ready forgiveness in England as in Portugal. Yet he observes that nothing is considered more shameful among Chris[Pg 161]tians than to pardon an injury; even the smallest affront is to be atoned by blood; and so far from the estimation in which a man is held depending on the good he has done, he is the greatest man who has slain the greatest number of his fellow-creatures.

As he stands one day before a cathedral, marvelling how people so selfish and narrow in their religious views could imagine this grand temple, which seems, indeed, raised to the Universal Father, his attention is drawn to a man of noble aspect, who is observing him with a look so kind and pitiful that he is emboldened to give the confidence which it seems to invite.

"The time will come when they will understand it better themselves. They are now like little children, who do, indeed, reverence the words of their father, but have not yet understanding to comprehend and follow them."

The Mandingo has no time to thank his new instructor. A party of ruffians, who have been for some moments watching the venerable man, now seize upon him, put irons on his hands and feet, and drag him away, amid the shouts and cries of the people, who crowd round, some insulting the prisoner, others bemoaning his fate, others[Pg 162] asking his blessing as he passes. The wondering traveller can get no other reply to his questions than, "A Lollard! a Lollard!" uttered in different tones of disgust or compassion.

He learns, upon inquiry, that the Lollards are people who hold opinions disagreeable to the king and to the great generally. For they pretend to understand the doctrines of the Christian religion after a manner of their own; and it is thought this interpretation, if disseminated among the common people, would cause serious inconvenience to their superiors. In order to prevent the spread of these dangerous doctrines, open and notorious professors of them are shut up in prison. Yet, notwithstanding the severities which await the adherents of this sect, such is the hard-heartedness of its leaders, that, when they can manage to elude justice for a time, they use unceasing efforts to persuade others to their ruin. There are among them some men of eloquence, and their success in making converts has been so great that the prisons are filled with men of the better condition, who look for no other release than death; while, in the dungeons below them, people of the common sort are heaped upon each other, perishing miserably of fevers engendered by damp and hunger.

In spite of this unfavorable account of the Lollards, the African is glad when he hears that the[Pg 163] only one of them he knows anything about has escaped from prison,—for the second or third time, it seems.

The words of the fugitive have sunk deep into the heart of the Mandingo. But the distant hope, that the Christians may in time grow up to their religion, cannot revive the delight which, when he first became acquainted with its doctrines, he felt in the thought that this divine revelation was to be carried to Africa. What teachers are those who themselves know not what they teach! His heart is heavy, when he sees how the Christians triumph over the fall of Ceuta. Their foot once set on African soil, their imagination embraces the whole continent. He sees the eyes of the narrators and the listeners alternately gleam and darken with cupidity and envy over the story of the successful assault, and of the immense booty won by the victors, who "seem to have gathered in a single city the spoil of the universe." He is not reassured by the admiration bestowed on the craft of the Portuguese, who contrived to keep their intended prey lulled in a false security until they were ready to fall upon it. They sent out two galleys, splendidly equipped and decorated, to convey a pretended embassy to another place. The envoys, according to private instructions, stopped on the way at Ceuta, as if for rest and refreshment, and, while receiving[Pg 164] its hospitality, found opportunity to examine its defences and spy out its weak points. The King of Portugal himself, arriving near the devoted place with the fleet that brought its ruin, deigned to accept civilities and kind offices from the Infidels, in order the better to conceal his designs until the moment came for disclosing them with effect. The Mandingo recalls with less pleasure than heretofore the kind words of the Infant Henry and his brother. When he hears that the terrible first Alphonso of Portugal has made himself visible in a church at Coimbra, urging his descendants to follow up their successes, he shudders with foreboding.

We will not follow our explorer through all his voyages and experiences. They are numerous and wide. He carries his investigations even to the far North, where Eric of Pomerania wears the triple crown, placed on his head by the great Margaret. His wife is Philippa of England, niece and namesake of the mother of Henry of Portugal. It is, in part, interest in the family of that prince, his first intimate acquaintance in Europe, which leads the African on this distant journey. But he soon finds that neither pleasure nor profit is to be had in the dominions of Eric, an untamed savage, who beats his wife and ruins his subjects. The great men who rule under him are as bad as himself.[Pg 165] Some of them have been noted sea-robbers; even the prelates are not ashamed to increase their revenues by the proceeds of piracy. The traveller gives but a glance to the miseries of Sweden, where the people are perishing under Eric's officials, who extort tribute from them by the most frightful tortures, and where women, yoked together, are drawing loaded carts, like oxen.

He returns to England, where he finds preparations making for a solemn sacrifice. He hears, not without emotion, that the victim selected for this occasion is the stately man who once stood with him in front of the great cathedral. He visits the place chosen for the celebration, and sees the pile of wood prepared to feed the fire, over which the victim is to be suspended by an iron chain. He cannot bring himself to witness the sacrifice, but he afterwards hears that it was performed with great pomp in the presence of many illustrious persons. The king himself, it seems, once superintended a similar ceremony in the lifetime of his father, by whom this species of sacrifice had been reinstituted after a very long disuse. It is customary to choose the victim from among the Lollards, as it is thought that the chance of serving on these occasions will contribute to deter people from adopting, or at least from proclaiming, the unsafe opinions of that sect.

The African traveller's last visit is to France. He made an earlier attempt to see that country, but, finding it ravaged by invasion and by civil war, deferred his design to a quieter time. Such a time does not arrive; but he cannot leave one of the most important countries of Europe unseen. On landing in France, he finds the condition of things even worse than he had anticipated. But he resolves to penetrate to Paris, in spite of the dangers of the road. He passes through desolated regions, where only the smoke rising from black heaps gives sign of former villages, and where the remaining trees, serving as gibbets, still bear the trophies of the reciprocal justice which the nobles and gentlemen of the country have been executing on each other.

It is on this journey through France that the Mandingo learns to be truly grateful for having been born in a civilized country. The unfortunate land in which he now finds himself has at its head a young prince who has robbed his own mother and sent her to prison. Such impious guilt cannot, the African feels, fail to draw down the vengeance of Heaven. Accordingly, when he reaches the capital, he finds the inhabitants engaged in an indiscriminate slaughter of their friends and neighbors. It almost seems to a stranger that the city is built on red clay, so soaked are the principal streets[Pg 167] with blood. The traveller meets no one sane enough to give an explanation of this state of things. Nor does he require one. It is plain that this people is afflicted with a judicial madness, sent upon it for the crimes of its chiefs. He finds his way to a street where the work seems completed. All is quiet here, except where some wretch still struggles with his last agony, or where one not yet wounded to death is dragging himself stealthily along the ground towards some covert where he may perhaps live through to a safer time. The stranger stoops compassionately to a child that lies on its dead father; but, as he raises it, he feels that the heaviness is not that of sleep, and lays it back on the breast where it belongs. In a neighboring quarter the work is still at its highest. Where he stands, he hears the yell of fury, the sharp cry of terror, the burst of discordant laughter, rise above the clang of weapons and the clamor of threatening and remonstrance; while, under all, the roar of a great city in movement deepens with curse and prayer and groan. And now a woman rushes from a side-street, looks wildly round for refuge, then runs, shrieking, on, until, stumbling over the dead bodies in her way, she is overtaken and silenced forever.

He has made his way out of France, and is planning new journeys, when he receives, through[Pg 168] some travelling merchants, a peremptory summons from his father, who has heard such accounts of the barbarous state of Europe that he regrets having given him leave to go out on this dangerous exploring expedition.

Our Mandingo did not meet the tragic fate of Bemoy, to whom the friendship of the whites proved fatal. He returned in safety to his country.

The house of the renowned traveller became a centre of attraction. The first question asked by his guests was, invariably, whether, in his long residence among the Christians, he had learned to prefer their manners to those of his own people. He was happy to be able to assure them that this was not the case. He had met in Europe, he said, some admirable men, and he thought the people there, in general, quite as intelligent as those of his own country, but far less amiable; they were, perhaps, even more energetic, especially the Portuguese and English; but he was obliged to add, that their energies were not as constantly employed in the service of mankind as their professions gave reason to expect. What he had found very displeasing in the manners of the Europeans was their disregard of cleanliness. Their negligence in this respect was a thing inconceivable to an African who had not lived among them.

He was much embarrassed, when called upon to[Pg 169] speak of the religion of the Europeans and their mode of professing it. His audience was indignant at the hypocrisy of the Christians. But he was of opinion that their enthusiasm for their creed and their zeal for its propagation were undoubtedly genuine. Why, then, did they allow it no influence on their conduct? He could only conclude that they knew it to be too good for them, and that, though they found it, for this reason, of no use at all to themselves, they were perfectly sincere in thinking it an excellent religion for other people.

The result of his observations on the Christian nations was, that their genius especially displayed itself in the art of war, in which they had already attained to great eminence, and yet were intent on new inventions. Indeed, he gave it as his unqualified opinion, that the European had a great natural superiority over the African in everything which concerns the science of destruction.

The Mandingo had news, from time to time, through the travelling merchants, of what was going on in the North. He heard, in this way, of the captivity and miserable end of the Infant Ferdinand, of the accession of a fifth Alphonso, and of the revival of the bloody dissensions of the royal house of Portugal. He waited long for tidings of Henry's expeditions, although the year of his own[Pg 170] return from Europe was the same in which John Gonçalvez Zarco and Tristam Vaz set off on the search for Guinea. But the looked-for news came at last, to bring with it a revival of his old foreboding.

You must allow that I have been tender of Europe. I might have introduced our traveller to it at a worse moment. Instead of going to England in the time of a chivalrous, popular prince, like Henry the Fifth, he might have seen it under Richard the Third; or I might have taken him there to assist at the decapitation of some of the eighth Henry's wives, or at a goodly number of the meaner executions, which went on, they say, at the rate of one to every five hours through that king's extended reign. Instead of making him report that human burnt-offerings, though not unknown in England, were infrequent, and that only a single victim was immolated on each occasion, I might have let him collect his statistics on this subject in the time of the bloody Mary. I am not sure that he could have seen France to much less advantage than in the days of the Bourgignon and Armagnac factions; but perhaps he would not have formed a very different judgment, if, going there a century and a half later, he had happened on the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew.

The African traveller sometimes a little misapprehended what he saw, no doubt; but he noted nothing in malice. If he did not see our English ancestors precisely with their own eyes or with ours, at least he did not fall into the monstrous mistakes of the Greek historian Chalcondyles, of whose statements in regard to English manners Gibbon says,—"His credulity and injustice may teach an important lesson: to distrust accounts of foreign and remote nations, and to suspend our belief of every tale that deviates from the laws of Nature and the character of man."

Yesterday was the day my journal should have gone; and my delay has not the usual excuse, for here was already a heavy budget. It is my love of completeness which has detained it. Next Saturday I can send you, together with the account of Harry's arrival and visit here, that of our leave-taking at Omocqua. You will thus have this little episode in my life entire.

The solicitude we had felt beforehand about Dr. Borrow's entertainment was thrown away. He has his particularities certainly, but we soon learned to accommodate ourselves to them. Harry, with perfect simplicity and directness, all along as on the first day, kept us informed of the Doctor's tastes and warned us of his antipathies, so that we had no difficulty in providing for his general comfort. As to his little humors and asperities, we accepted them, in the same way that Harry does, as belonging to the man, and never thought of asking ourselves whether we should like him better without them. One thing I will say for the Doctor: if, when he feels annoyance, he makes no secret of it, on the other hand, you can be sure that he is pleased when he appears to be,—and this is a great satis[Pg 173]faction. He is not inconsiderate of the weaknesses of others, either. I do not know how he divined that I disliked his blue glasses, but after the second day they disappeared. He said our pure air enabled him to do without them. Then the umbrella,—it attended us on the Saturday's walk. I supposed it was to be our inevitable companion. But on Sunday it came only as far as the door; here the Doctor stopped, held it up before him, considered, doubted, and set it down inside. Harry carried it up-stairs in the evening. I expected to see it come down again the next morning,—but it had no part in our pleasant Monday rambles. I had not said a word against the umbrella.

The engagement I made with Harry that Monday afternoon had Dr. Borrow's concurrence. He even expressed a willingness to assist at our readings. The order of our day was this:—In the early morning we had our walk,—Harry and I. Coming back, we always went round by Keith's Pine. We were sure to find the Doctor seated on the bench, which had been left there since the last Sunday, microscope in hand and flower-press beside him. Then all to the house, where we arrived with an exactitude which caused the Doctor, whose first glance on entering was at the clock, to seat himself at the table in a glow of self-approval sufficient to warm all present into a little innocent elation.[Pg 174] After breakfast we separated,—Harry walking off to take my place with Karl and Fritz, the Doctor going to his flowers, and I to my writing. We all met again at an appointed time and place for an excursion together. We carried our dinner with us; or, if we were not going very far, had it left at some pleasant spot, where we found it on our way home. After dinner I read, and then we had an hour or so of discussion and criticism.

I have given you the readings of two days. I shall try to copy the rest for you in the course of the week. Copying is work; I cannot do any this morning; and then I have still other things remaining to me from those days which I have not yet shared with you.

On Tuesday, the ninth, the first day of the new arrangement, Harry went away as soon as breakfast was over. The Doctor rose, as if going to his room, hesitated, and sat down again. I saw that he had something to say to me, and waited. My thoughts went back to the conversation of the afternoon before. Had I really displeased him? He spoke seriously, but very kindly.

He stopped, as if for a word which should be true at once to his pride and his disapprobation. He did not find it, and began over again:[Pg 175]—

"It is the office of friendship to restrain even from generous error. It is possible to err on the side of too great disinterestedness. A man such as Harry will be, while living for himself,—living nobly and wisely as he must live,—is living for others; he has no need to become a crusader."

"Harry will be what he was meant to be; you would not have him force himself to become anything else?"

"No, I would not," the Doctor answered confidently, yet with a little sadness in his voice. "It almost seems," he added, a moment after, "that the qualities which fit a man for a higher sphere are incompatible with his success in this."

"I am ambitious for him; I own it. And so are you, though you do not own it. You want to see him recognized for what he is."

Certainly it is natural to wish that others should love what we love, should admire what we admire. Our desire of sympathy, our regard for justice, both ask it. But we must have trust.

I could not answer the Doctor immediately.[Pg 176] "Whatever course Harry may take," I said at last, "his power will make itself felt. He will disappoint neither of us."

"He has never given me a disappointment yet; though I prepare myself for one, whenever he begins anything new. We have no right to expect everything of one; but, whatever he is doing, it seems as if that was what he was most meant to do."

"It is in part his simple-mindedness, his freedom from the disturbing influence of self-love, which gives him this security of success in what he undertakes. You have said that Harry was one to take his own path. I will trust him to find it and hold to it."

"I must come to that," answered the Doctor, whose anxiety had gradually dissipated itself. "I don't know why I should hope to guide him now, if I could not when he was seven years old. On the infantile scale his characteristics were then just what they are now, and one of them certainly always was to have a way of his own.

"And yet he was always so tender of others' feelings, so ready to give up his pleasure for theirs, you might almost have thought him of too yielding a nature, unless you had seen him tried on some point where he found it worth while to be resolved."

The Doctor sat silent a little while, held by pleasant thoughts, and then began again:—

"There comes back to me now an earlier recollection of him than any I have given you. I witnessed once a contest of will between him and a person who was put over the nursery for a time in the absence of its regular head, and who was not thoroughly versed in the laws and customs of the realm she was to administer. Harry could not have been much more than two, I think, for he had hardly yet English enough for his little needs. He was inflexible on his side; the poor woman at first positive and then plaintive. She had recourse to the usually unfailing appeal,—'But, Harry, do you not want me to love you?' He held back the tears that were pressing to his eyes,—'I want all the peoples to love me.' But he did not give way, for he was in the right.

"Candor, however, obliges me to add that he did not always give way when he was in the wrong. Oh, I was in the right sometimes."—The Doctor laughed good-humoredly in answer to my involuntary smile.—"You may believe it, for Harry has admitted it himself later. Our debates were not always fruitless. I have known him come to me, three months, six months, after a discussion in which we had taken opposite sides, and say,—'I see now that you knew better about that than I did. I was mistaken.'[Pg 178] On the other hand, some of his little sayings have worked on me with time, if not to the modification of my opinions, at least to that of my conduct, and sometimes in a way surprising to myself. For the rest, I liked to have him hold his ground well, and was just as content, when he did make a concession, that it was made out of deference, not to me, but to truth.

"I don't know whose opinion was authority with him. He did not respect even the wisdom of the world's ages as condensed in its proverbs, but coolly subjected them to the test of his uncompromising reason. I remember somebody's citing to him one day, 'A penny saved is a penny earned.' He considered it, and then rejected it decisively, proposing as a substitute,—'A penny spent is a penny saved.' I suppose that little word of his has spent me many a penny I might have saved,—but I don't know that I am the poorer.

"Another of his childish sayings passed into a by-word in the household. He was filling with apples for her grandchildren the tin kettle of an old family pensioner, whose eyes counted the rich, red spoil, as it rolled in. 'Enough!' says the conscientious gardener, who is looking on. 'Enough!' echoes the modest beneficiary. 'Enough is not enough!' gives sentence the little autocrat, and heaps the measure. I thought of this as he was[Pg 179] walking beside me, grave and silent, over Harvey's well-ordered plantation. 'The child is father of the man.'"

The time was past when the Doctor had scruples in talking of Harry or I in asking. He forgot his flowers, and I my writing. Nothing more interesting to me than real stories of childhood. As a means of instruction, it seems to me the study of the early years of the human being has been strangely neglected by the wise. I listened well, then, whenever, after one of his contemplative pauses, the Doctor began again with a new "I remember."

"I remember being in the garden with him once when a barefooted boy came in and asked for shoes. Harry ran off, and presently reappeared with a fine, shining pair, evidently taken on his own judgment. A woman, who had been looking from the window, came hurrying out, and arrived in time to see the shoes walking out of the gate on strange feet. 'Why, Harry, those were perfectly good shoes!' 'I should not have given them to him, if they had not been good,' the child answered, tranquilly. The poor woman was posed. As for me, I ignored the whole affair, that I might not be obliged to commit myself. But I thought internally that we should not have had the saying, 'Cold as charity,' current in our Christian world, if all its neighborly love had been of the type of Harry's.

"You are not to suppose that Harry and I were always at variance. Our skirmishing was our amusement. He was teachable, very teachable,—and more and more as he grew older. Some of the happiest hours I have to look back upon were passed with him by my side, his reverent and earnest look showing how devoutly, with what serious joy, his young soul welcomed its first conscious perceptions of the laws of Nature, the sacred truths of Science."

The morning called me out imperatively. It is almost like that Sunday morning on which I took my first early walk with Harry. I fell into the same path we followed then. This path led us to the Dohuta. We walked slowly along its fringed bank, as I have been walking along it now, and stopped here where the river makes a little bend round a just perceptible rising graced by three ilex-trees. We found ourselves here more than once afterwards. We never thought beforehand what way we should take; we could not go amiss, where we went together.

The river holds its calm flow as when Harry was beside it with me. Here are the trees whose vigorous growth he praised, their thorny foliage glittering in the new sunlight as it glittered then.[Pg 181] These associates of that pleasant time, renewing their impressions, awaken more and more vividly those of the dearer companionship.

It is strange the faithfulness with which the seemingly indifferent objects about us keep for us the record of hours that they have witnessed, rendering up our own past to us in a completeness in which our memory would not have reproduced it but for the suggestions of these unchosen confidants. Without displacing the familiar scene, distant and far other landscapes rise before me, visions that Harry Dudley called up for me here; to all the clear, fresh sounds of the early morning join themselves again our asking and replying voices.

I knew at once when a place had a particular interest for Harry, by the tone in which he pronounced the name. Fiesole was always a beautiful word for me, but how beautiful now that I must hear in it his affectionate accent! Volterra has a charm which it does not owe to its dim antiquity, or owes to it as revivified by him. His strong sympathy, embracing the remoter and the near, makes the past as actual to him as the present, and both alike poetic.

Harry's researches have not been carried on as a pastime, or even as a pursuit, but as a true study, a part of his preparation for a serviceable life. It[Pg 182] is the history of humanity that he explores, and he reads it more willingly in its achievements than in its failures. The remains of the early art of Etruria, its grand works of utility, give evidence of the immemorial existence of a true civilization upon that favored soil, the Italy of Italy.

Among the retributions of time—as just in its compensations as in its revenges—there is hardly one more remarkable than this which is rendering justice to the old Etruscans, awakening the world to a long unacknowledged debt. Their annals have been destroyed, their literature has perished, their very language has passed away; but their life wrote itself on the country for whose health, fertility, and beauty they invented and labored,—wrote itself in characters so strong that the wear of the long ages has not effaced them. This original civilization has never been expelled from the scene of its ancient reign. Through all changes, under all oppressions, amid all violences, it has held itself in life,—has found means to assert and reassert its beneficent rights. Its very enemies have owed to it that they have been able to blend with their false glory some share of a more honorable fame. In its early seats it has never left itself long without a witness; but still some new gift to the world, in letters, in art, or in science, has given proof of its yet unexhausted resources.

As freedom is older than despotism, so civilization is older than barbarism. Man, made in the image of God, was made loving, loyal, beneficently creative.

No country except his own is nearer to Harry's heart than Italy,—not even France, though it is almost a second home to him; but perhaps there cannot be that passion in our love for the prosperous. For me, too, Italy has always stood alone;—sacred in her triple royalty of beauty, genius, and sorrow.

Harry has ties of his own to Italy, and of those which endear most closely. It was the scene of his first great grief,—as yet his only one. The firm, devout expression which his face took, whenever he spoke of his brother, showed that the early departure of the friend with whom he had hoped to walk hand in hand through life had not saddened or discouraged him,—had only left with him a sense of double obligation.

Harry does not speak of himself uninvited; but he was ready to do so, as simply and frankly as of anything else, when I drew him to it. He has his day-dreams like other young men, and found a true youthful delight in sharing them. I could not but observe that into his plans for the future—apart from the little home, vaguely, yet tenderly sketched, for which a place was supposed in them—his own[Pg 184] advantage entered only inasmuch as they provided him a sphere of beneficent activity.

The one great duty of our time may oblige him to postpone all designs which have not its fulfilment for their immediate object. But only to postpone, I will hope. For why should we suppose that the struggle with slavery is to last through the life of the present generation? May we not believe that the time may come, even in our day, when we shall only have to build and to plant, no longer to overthrow and uproot?

Karl and Fritz have found me out here. They came to propose to me that we should have our service this morning in the open air, at the same place where we had it Sunday before last. They had already been at the house, and had obtained my mother's assent. Karl was the spokesman, as usual; but he stopped at the end of every sentence and looked for his brother's concurrence.

I have remarked a change in Karl lately. He has the advantage of Fritz, not only in years, but in capacity and energy. He has always been a good brother; but his superiority has been fully taken for granted between them, and all its rights asserted and admitted without a struggle. Within a short time, however, his character has matured rapidly. He has shown greater consideration for[Pg 185] Fritz, and in general more sympathy with what is weaker or softer or humbler than himself. I had observed a greater thoughtfulness in him before Harry Dudley's visit here. But that short intercourse has extended his view in many directions. The entire absence of assumption, where there was so incontestable a superiority, could not but affect him profoundly. And then Harry, although Karl's strength and cleverness made him a very satisfactory work-fellow, took a great interest in Fritz, in whom he discovered fine perceptions. He tried to draw him out of his reserve, and to give him pleasure by making him feel he could contribute to that of others. Some latent talents, which the shy boy had cultivated unnoticed, brought him into a new importance. He knows the habits of all our birds, and has a marvellous familiarity with insects. His observations on their modes of life had been so exact, that Doctor Borrow, in questioning him, had almost a tone of deference. He was able to render signal service to the Doctor, too, by discovering for him, from description, tiny plants hard to find when out of bloom. Hans, who is fondest of the son that never rivalled him, exulted greatly in this sudden distinction. Karl took a generous pleasure in it; and, under the double influence of increased respect from without and enhanced self-esteem, Fritz's diffident powers are warming out wonderfully.

The boys thanked me very gratefully, as if I had done them a real favor, when I gave my consent to their plan; though I do not know why they should not suppose it as agreeable to me as to themselves.

When I went home to breakfast this morning, I found the chairs already gone, except the great arm-chair. Nobody was expected to-day of sufficient dignity to occupy it. I was unwilling to draw it up to the table for myself. I believe I should have taken my breakfast standing, if it had not been that this would have called for explanation. How little I thought, when the Doctor first took his place among us, that a time would come when I should not wish to have his seat filled by any one else! I did not know how much I cared for him, until after he was gone; I do not think I knew it fully until this morning, when I came in and saw that solitary, empty chair. Then it came over me with a pang that he would never lay down the law to me from it again,—never would lean towards me sideways over its arm, to tell me, with moderated tone and softened look, little childish stories of his foster-son.

Karl stayed behind to-day, instead of Tabitha, to warn those who arrived of the place of meeting. He came in with the Lintons, who were late,—the[Pg 187] fault of their poor old mule, or rather his misfortune. He fell down, and so broke and otherwise deranged his ingenious harness that the family were obliged to re-manufacture it on the road.

My mother did a courageous thing this morning. When the Hanthams came, she addressed them by name, and, calling the daughter up to her, took her hand and said some kind words to her. I thought they would be thrown away on her, but they were not. Her look to-day had in it less of purpose and more of sympathy. The Blantys were not here. I cannot understand why, in such fine weather. We missed them very much. But all the rest of those who are most to be desired came. We had a happy and united little assemblage.

I read Jeremy Taylor's second sermon on the "Return of Prayers." I am sure that we all heard and felt together, and were left with softened and more trustful hearts; yet doubtless each took away his own peculiar lesson or solace, according to his separate need. What has remained with me is a quickened sense of the Divine munificence, which so often grants us more and better than we pray for. "We beg for a removal of a present sadness, and God gives us that which makes us able to bear twenty sadnesses."

After the services were over, Franket came up and handed me a letter,—a most unexpected and[Pg 188] a most welcome one. If I had not seen Harry's writing before, I think I should have known his strong, frank hand. I held the letter up before my mother, and her face brightened with recognition. Harry writes in fine spirits. The Doctor has been very successful. And they met Shaler again. "Perhaps he will be one of us on the nineteenth." That is good news indeed. Altogether this has been a very happy Sunday.

Davis Barton stayed with us until four o'clock, and then I rode part of the way home with him. This boy is becoming of importance to me; he is bringing a new interest into my life. This morning, after I had read Harry's letter aloud, and after my mother had read it over again to herself, I gave it to him to read. His eyes sparkled, and he cast up to me a quick glance of gratitude; for he felt, as I meant he should, that this was a mode of admitting him to full fellowship. I saw, as he walked off before us to the house, that he was a little taller already with the sense of it. Just before we arrived, however, he was overtaken by a sudden humiliation. Looking round at me, who, with Fritz, was carrying my mother's couch, the poor child espied Karl and Tabitha following, both loaded with chairs. He stood for an instant thoroughly shame-stricken, and then darted by us without lifting his eyes. He made so many and such[Pg 189] rapid journeys, that he brought back more chairs than anybody, after all. When dinner was over, I gave Davis some engravings to look at, meaning to spend an hour in writing to you. I had taken out my portfolio, but had not yet begun to write, when I found him standing beside me, looking up at me with a pretty, blushing smile, which asked me to ask him what he wanted. He wanted me to teach him.—"What do you want to learn?"—"Whatever I ought to know."—Whatever I am able to teach, then, I will teach him, and perhaps more; for, in thinking out what he ought to know, I shall discover what I ought to know myself. It was soon settled. He is to come over three times a week, very early in the morning. I shall give him an hour before breakfast, and another in the course of the day. I shall have an opportunity of testing some of the theories I have talked over with Harry. Davis has a good mother, and has been pretty well taught, and, what is more important, very well trained, up to this time. I am looking forward to a busier and more useful summer than I have known for a long while.

"When are we going to see the Shaler plantation?" the Doctor asked me abruptly one morning at breakfast. "We passed it by on our way here, knowing that we should have more pleasure in going over it with you."

I had been over it only once since Shaler left it, and that once was with himself on one of his rare visits. Franket's house is near the great gates. It was a porter's lodge in the old time, and is now a sort of post-office,—Franket having added to his other avocations the charge of going once a week to Tenpinville with letters intrusted to him, and bringing back those he is empowered to receive. When I go there to ask for letters or to leave them, no old associations are roused, for I did not use the main entrance formerly. I had a key to a little gate which opens on a bridle-path through the oak-wood. I entered the grounds through this gate when I was last there with Shaler, and I had pleased myself with the thought, that, when I entered them by it again, it would be again with him, on that happy return to which he is always looking forward.

But it seemed no violation of my compact with[Pg 191] myself to unlock this gate for Harry, to walk with him through these grounds sacred to him as to me; for I knew that in his thought, as in mine, these untenanted lands were not so much deserted as dedicated. It was right that these places should know him. And what pleasure hereafter to talk of him as having been there,—to point out to Shaler the trees he had distinguished, the views that had delighted him! But I wished this visit to be the last we should make together. My delay in proposing it had, perhaps, made Harry attribute to me a secret reluctance. After the first eager expression of his desire to see the early home of his friend and mine, when we talked of Shaler together that pleasant afternoon on Prospect Hill, he did not mention the subject again. The Doctor did not second him then; but I knew he felt as much curiosity as Harry did interest, before his impatience broke bounds as I have told you.

"Any day is the right one for me," said the Doctor, who would have named an earlier one, perhaps, if I had asked him to choose.

On Thursday, then, the last day but one of their visit here, I was their guide over "The Farms."

Two brothers settled at Metapora side by side.[Pg 192] Their two plantations were carried on as one, under the direction of the younger brother, Colonel Shaler, the father of my friend. The brothers talked together of "The Farms"; their people took up the name; it gradually became the accepted one in the neighborhood, and has maintained itself, although the two places, having both been inherited by Charles Shaler, are now really one estate.

I opened the little gate for the Doctor and Harry to pass in, and followed them along the wood-path. All was the same as formerly; unkindly the same, it seemed.

"You have not been missed," said the Doctor, entering into my feeling, though not quite sympathizing with it. "You have not been missed, and you are not recognized. The birds are not jubilant because you have come back. The wood was as resonant before your key turned in the lock." He stopped and looked about him at the grand old oaks. "The man who grew up under these trees, and calls them his, may well long for them, but they will wait very patiently for his return. We could not spare trees and birds, but they can do without us well enough. Strange the place of man on his earth! Everything is necessary to him, and he is necessary to nothing."

Shaler had left the key of his house with me. There could be no indiscretion in introducing such[Pg 193] guests into it. We went first into the dining-room. Everything was as it used to be, except that the family portraits had been taken away. The cords to which they had been attached still hung from the hooks, ready to receive them again. The large oval table kept its place in the middle of the room. What pleasant hours I had had in that room, at that table!

Colonel Shaler was our first friend in this part of the world. My father and he were distantly related, and had had a week's acquaintance at the house of a common friend when my father was a very young man and the Colonel a middle-aged one. On the third day after our arrival here, my father somewhat nervously put into my hand a note which had taken some time to write, and asked me to find the way with it to Colonel Shaler's plantation, which lay somewhere within ten miles of us in a southeasterly direction. As I was to go on horseback, I liked the adventure very much, and undertook it heartily. I was first made conscious that it had a shady side, when I found myself in the hall of the great, strange house, waiting to be ushered into the presence of its master.

"Hallo!" exclaimed a voice beside and far above me, as I stood with eyes fixed on the ground, expecting that serious moment of entrance. "You are Ned Colvil's son!" And my hand was lost[Pg 194] in a capacious clasp, well proportioned to the heart it spoke for. I looked up to see a massive head, shaggy with crisp curls of grizzled hair, and to meet quick, bright blue eyes, that told of an active spirit animating the heavy frame. The Colonel did not expect me to speak. "We are to be neighbors! Good news! Your horse cannot go back at once, and I cannot wait. You must take another for to-day, and we will send yours home to you to-morrow."

Colonel Shaler's stout gray was soon led round, and presently followed, for me, a light-made, graceful black, the prettiest horse I had ever yet mounted. As soon as I saw it, I knew that it must be his son's, and visions of friendship already floated before me.

"One of Charles's," said the Colonel; "he is out on the other. I wish he was here to go with us, but we cannot wait."

I did not keep the Doctor and Harry long in the house. It was the plantation they wanted to see. We spent several hours in walking over it. I tried to do justice, not only to the plans and works of my friend, but to his father's schemes of agricultural improvement, and also to the very different labors of his uncle, Dr. George Shaler, who, utterly abstracted from matters of immediate utility, took the beautiful and the future under his affectionate protection. Through his vigilance and pertinacity,[Pg 195] trees were felled, spared, and planted, with a judgment rare anywhere, singular here. If he gave into some follies, such as grottos, mimic ruins, and surprises, after the Italian fashion, even these are becoming respectable through time. They are very innocent monuments; for their construction gave as much delight to those who labored as to him who planned, and the completed work was not less their pride than his. His artificial mounds, which, while they were piling, were the jest of the wider neighborhood,—as the good old man himself has often told me,—now, covered with thrifty trees, skilfully set, are a legacy which it was, perhaps, worth the devotion of his modest, earnest life to bequeath.

Charles Shaler has piously spared all his uncle's works,—respecting the whimsical, as well as cherishing the excellent.

We went last to the quarters of the work-people. A few of the cabins were left standing. Most of them had been carried off piecemeal, probably to build or repair the cabins of other plantations. Those that remained seemed to have been protected by the strength and beauty of the vines in which they were embowered. I was glad to find still unmolested one which had an interest for me. It had been the home of an old man who used to be very kind to me. I lifted the latch and was opening the door, when I became aware of a move[Pg 196]ment inside, as of some one hastily and stealthily putting himself out of sight. If this was so, the purpose was instantly changed; for a firm step came forward, and the door was pulled open by a strong hand. I stepped back out of the little porch, and addressed some words to the Doctor, to make known that I was not alone; but the man followed me out, and saluted me and my companions respectfully and frankly. I offered him my hand, for he was an old acquaintance.

He did not reply, but the kindling of his look showed that he saw in danger only a challenge to his powers. He saluted us again, and walking away, with a slow, even step, disappeared in a thicket which shrouded one of Dr. George's favorite grottos.

"The true Othello, after all!" exclaimed the Doctor, when we turned to each other again, after watching until we were sure that we had seen the last of this apparition. "Of royal siege, assuredly!"

"He claims to be, or rather it is claimed for him," I answered. "His mother was a native African, a king's daughter, those who came with her said; and she bore, by all accounts, the stamp of primi[Pg 197]tive royalty as clearly impressed as her son does. Her title was never questioned either in the cabin or at the great house. She was a slave on the Westlake plantation,—but only for a few weeks, as I have heard."

"No, she died long ago; but her story is still told on the plantation and in the neighborhood. Old Westlake bought her with four others, all native Africans, at Perara. The rest throve and made themselves at home. She, stately and still, endured until she had received her son into the world, and then, having consigned him to a foster-mother of her choice, passed tranquilly out of it. During her short abode on the plantation, she was an object of general homage, and when she died, the purple descended to her son."

The Doctor and Harry both turned to me with expectation. They knew the Westlake plantation and its master; but you do not. If Senator's story has not the interest for you that it had for them, that must be the reason.

The prestige of rank was the only inheritance of the little foreign orphan. The very name his mother gave him, and which she impressed, by fre[Pg 198]quent, though faint repetition, upon those about her, was lost in the surprise of her sudden departure. The good souls to whom it had been committed strove faithfully to recover it. They were sure it was no proper Christian name, but a title of dignity; and, comparing their recollections of the sound, and their intuitions of the meaning, agreed among themselves that its nearest equivalent must be "Senator."

Senator was born on Christmas day; and this was regarded as all the greater distinction that it had been enjoyed before him by the young master,—the then heir and now owner, our present Westlake.

As he grew up, he took, as of course, and held, the place assigned to him in advance. At the age of sixteen he was already in authority over men, and exercised it with an ease and acceptance which proved that he was obeyed as instinctively as he commanded.

I do not know a prouder man than Westlake, or one more saturated with the prejudice of race. But he is not exempt from the laws which govern human intercourse. He came under the spell of Senator's cool self-reliance and unhesitating will. The petted slave did not directly or palpably misuse his power; yet his demeanor occasioned a secret dissatisfaction. He gave to his master's interests the whole force of[Pg 199] his remarkable abilities, but it was not clear that he duly appreciated the indulgence which permitted him to exercise them untrammelled. He had never undergone punishment,—had hardly even met rebuke; but it was more than suspected that he attributed his immunities to his own merits. Westlake valued him for his high spirit as much as for his capacity; but should not Senator be very sensible to such magnanimity? This spirit had never been broken by fear; ought it not all the more to bend itself in love and gratitude?

Poor Westlake is very fond of gratitude. He enjoys it even from the most worthless and neglected of his slaves,—enjoys it even when it is prospective and conditional, and when he has the best reasons for knowing that the implied stipulations are not to be fulfilled. To Senator's gratitude he felt he had so entire a claim that he could not but believe in its existence. He tried to see in its very silence only a proof of its depth. But, if not necessary to his own feelings, some outward expression was important to his dignity in the eyes of others. He exerted himself, therefore, by gracious observations made in the presence of guests or before the assembled people on holidays, to afford Senator an opportunity at once of testifying to his master's liberality and of displaying the eloquence which was one of the chief glories of the plantation.[Pg 200] These condescending efforts, constantly baffled by the self-possessed barbarian, were perpetually renewed.

One Christmas morning the common flood of adulation had been poured out more profusely than usual, and Westlake had quaffed it with more than usual satisfaction. His outlay for the festival had been truly liberal, and he felt that the quality of the entertainment guarantied that of the thanks. Besides the general benevolence of the dinner,—already arranged on long, low tables set about the lawn, to be enjoyed in anticipation by their devouring eyes,—special gifts were bestowed on the most deserving or the most favored. Senator was greatly distinguished, but took his assigned portion in silence; and Westlake felt, through every tingling nerve, that the attentive crowd had seen, as he had, that it was received as a tribute rather than as a favor. He had hitherto covered his defeats with the jolly laugh that seemed meant at once to apologize for his servant's eccentricity and to forgive it. But now he had made too sure of triumph; surprise and pain hurried him out of himself.

"What is it now?" he cried, fiercely, raising his clenched fist against the impassive offender.

"Speak, then! It is time. I have done more for you than for all the rest, and not a word!"

"We have done more for you than you for us all. What you give us we first give you."

It was as if a thunderbolt had fallen. The assembly scattered like a flock of frightened sheep.

I had this from Westlake himself. He came straight over to me. Not that Westlake and I are friends. There had never been any intimacy between us. There never has been any, unless for those few hours that day.

Senator had been secured. His sentence had been announced. It was banishment. Those who were nearest the master's confidence had leave to add the terrible name—New Orleans.

Senator had neither mother nor wife. He was nineteen, the age of enterprise and confidence. Perhaps, after all, it was the master on whom the doom would fall most heavily, I thought, while Westlake was making his recital. He was almost pale; his heavy features were sharpened; his firm, round cheeks were flaccid and sunken; his voice was hoarse and tremulous. Surely, that birthday might count for ten.

"I cannot overlook it," he groaned out. "You know that yourself, Colvil. I cannot forgive it. It would be against my duty, and—— Any way, I cannot. But—you may think it strange—but I am not angry. I was, but I am not now. I cannot bear to know him locked up there in the corn-barn,[Pg 202] shackled and chained, and thinking all the time that it is I who have done it to him!"

Westlake had not seen the man since his imprisonment, and had come over to ask me to be present at the first interview. I declined positively.

"I do not believe," I said, "that he is to be reasoned out of his opinions. Certainly he will not be reasoned out of them by me. If anything could persuade a nature like his to submission, it would be the indulgent course you have till now pursued with him. If that has failed, no means within your reach will succeed."

"You do not understand me. I do not want you to reason with him, or to persuade him to anything. I only ask you to be witness to what I am going to say to him, that he may believe me,—that he may not himself thwart me in my plans."

"Plans that you will agree to, and that you will help me in, I hope,—but which I cannot trust to any one but you, nor to you except to have your help. If you will come with me, you shall know them; if not, I must take my chance, and he must take his."

I did not put much faith in Westlake's plans; but the thought of Senator chained and caged drew me to his prison. There might be nothing for me to do there; but, since I was called, I would go.

By the time my horse was saddled, Westlake had recovered his voice, and, in part, his color. This birthday would not count for more than five. He plucked up still more on the road; but when we came within a mile of his place, his trouble began to work on him again. He would have lengthened that last mile, but could not much. His horse snuffed home, and mine a near hospitality. Our entrance sustained the master's dignity handsomely. There was no misgiving or relenting to be construed out of that spirited trot.

We went together to the corn-barn. Senator was extended on the floor at the farther end of the room. He lifted his head when we entered, and then, as if compelled by an instinctive courtesy, rose to his fettered feet. I saw at once that there had been no more harshness than was needful for security; it even seemed that this had not been very anxiously provided for. The slender shackles would be no more than withes of the Philistines to such a Samson. A chain, indeed, fastened to a strong staple in the floor, passed to a ring in an iron belt about his waist; but it was long enough to allow him considerable liberty of movement. His hands were free. Perhaps Westlake had half expected to find the room empty. He stopped, a little startled, when he heard the first clank of the chain, and watched his prisoner as he slowly lifted himself[Pg 204] from the ground and rose to his full height. Then, recollecting himself, he went forward. One ignorant of what had gone before might have mistaken between the culprit and the judge.

"Senator," Westlake began, in a voice whose faltering he could not control, "I have been a kind master to you."

"I would never have sent you away of my own free will. This is your doing, not mine. You cannot want to go!" This in indignant surprise,—for something like a smile had relaxed the features of the imperious slave.

"This is my home, as it is yours. I was born here, as you were. This land is dear to me as it is to you; dearer,—for I have given my labor to it, and you never have. In return, I have had a support, and the exercise of my strength and my skill. This has been enough for me until now. But I am a man. I look round and see how other men live. I want somebody else to do for: not you, but somebody that could not do without me."

"Things might have gone differently," Westlake began, recovering his self-complacency, as visions, doubtless, of the fine wedding he would have given[Pg 205] Senator, of the fine names he would have bestowed upon his children, rose before his fancy. "Things might have gone differently, if you had been"——

"If I had been what I am not," answered Senator, becoming impatient as Westlake relapsed into pomposity. "It is enough, Master. We have done with each other, and we both know it. Let me go."

"I will let you go,"—Westlake spoke now with real dignity,—"but not as you think. If I would have you remember what I have been to you, it is for your own sake, not for mine. I am used to ingratitude; I do not complain of yours. I have never sold a servant left me by my father, and I do not mean to begin with you. You shall not drive me to it. You are to go, and forever, but by your own road. I will set you on it myself. Is there any one in the neighborhood you can trust? We shall need help."

"Then I will trust them. Tell me who they are and where they are. And quick! This news will be everywhere soon. To-morrow morning the neighbors will be coming in. What is done must be done to-night. Senator, do not ruin yourself![Pg 206] I mean right by you. Here is Mr. Colvil to witness to what I say. Is this mad obstinacy only? or do you dare not to trust yourself to me?"

"Colvil, speak to him! If he goes off by himself, I cannot hide it long. The country will be roused. I shall have to hunt him down myself. My honor will be at stake. I shall have to do it!"

The obdurate slave studied his master's features with curiosity mingled with triumph.

"Help me, Colvil! Help him! Tell him to listen to my plan and join in it! The useful time is passing!"

"Senator," I said at last, being so adjured, "your master means you well. He is not free to set you free,—you know it. You have done work for him,—good and faithful work; but never yet have you done him a pleasure, and he has intended you a good many. This is your last chance. Gratify him for once!"

Senator looked again, and saw, through the intent and wistful eyes, the poor, imploring soul within, which, hurried unconsenting towards crime, clung desperately to his rescue as its own. He compre[Pg 207]hended that here was no tyrant, but a wretched victim of tyranny. A laugh, deep, reluctant, uncontrollable, no mirth in it, yet a certain bitter irony, and Senator had recovered his natural bearing, self-possessed and authoritative; he spoke in his own voice of composed decision.

Westlake told it eagerly. He was to save his authority with his people and his reputation with his neighbors by selling the rebellious servant,—that is to say, by pretending to sell him. Senator was to entitle himself to a commutation of his sentence into simple banishment by lending himself to the pious fraud and acting his part in it becomingly. Westlake had been so long accustomed to smooth his path of life by open subterfuges and falsehoods whose only guilt was in intention, that he had formed a very high opinion of his own address, and a very low one of the penetration of the rest of the world. As he proceeded with the details of his plot, childishly ingenious and childishly transparent, Senator listened, at first with attention, then with impatience, and at last not at all. When Westlake stopped to take breath, he interposed.

"Now hear me. Order the long wagon out, with the roans. Have me handcuffed and fastened down in it. Tell those whom you trust that you are taking me to Goosefield."

Westlake could not bring himself to associate the word abolitionist with a man who had dined with him three days before.

The blood, which had rushed furiously to the proud planter's cheeks, left them with a sudden revulsion. To be taken in by a disguised fanatic might happen to any man too honorable to be suspicious. He could have forgiven himself. But to have held a slave-trader by the hand! to have asked him to his table! Westlake knew that Senator never said anything that had to be taken back.

Richard Norman was a man of name and birth from old Virginia. Of easy fortune, so it was reported, still unmarried, he spent a great part of the year in travelling; and especially found pleasure in renewing old family ties with Virginian emigrants or their children in newer States. When he favored our neighborhood, he had his quarters at Goosefield, where he always took the same apartments in the house of a man, also Virginian by birth, who was said to be an old retainer of his family. Norman's father had been the fathers' friend of most of our principal planters. He was[Pg 209] welcome in almost every household for the sake of these old memories, and apparently for his own. He was well-looking, well-mannered, possessed of various information, ready with amusing anecdote. And yet all the time it was perfectly known to every slave on every plantation where he visited what Mr. Richard Norman was. It was perfectly known to every planter except Westlake, and possibly Harvey. I do not remember to have heard of him at Harvey's. Those who never sold their servants, those who never separated families, those who never parted very young children from their mothers, found Norman a resource in those cases of necessity which exempt from law.

The slaves talked of him among themselves familiarly, though fearfully. He was the central figure of many a dark history; the house at Goosefield was known to them as Dick Norman's Den. The masters held their knowledge separately, each bound to consider himself its sole depository. If, arriving at the house of a friend, soon after a visitation of Richard Norman, one missed a familiar hand at his bridle, a kind old face at the door, curiosity was discreet; it would have been very ill manners to ask whether it was Death or Goosefield.

"Dick Norman starts at midnight. He has been ready these three days. He only waited to eat his Christmas dinner at old Rasey's."

Westlake had pondered and understood. "Where shall I really take you?" he asked, despondingly.

I find in myself such an inaptitude for simulation or artifice of any kind, that I do not believe it was intended I should serve my fellow-men by those means.

"It is true," assented Westlake, sadly; "nobody would believe you were going with me there!"

I rode off without taking leave of Senator. I felt sure of seeing him again. I thought I knew where the aid he would seek was to be found. Mine was just the half-way house to it. He would not be afraid of compromising me, for his master himself had called me to be witness to their compact. Senator would have the deciding voice, as usual; and Westlake would be guided by him now the more readily that he himself would tend in the direction of his only confidant. When I had put up my horse, I went into the house only for a few moments to tell my mother what I had seen and what I was expecting.

I walked up and down between the gate and the[Pg 211] brook that evening,—I could not tell how long. I had time to become anxious,—time to invent disasters,—time to imagine encounters Westlake might have had on the way, with officious advisers, with self-proposed companions. I was disappointed more than once by distant wheels, which came nearer and nearer only to pass on, and farther and farther away, on the road which, crossing ours, winds round behind our place to Winker's Hollow. At last I caught sound of an approach which did not leave me an instant in uncertainty. This time, beyond mistake, it was the swift, steady tramp of Westlake's roans. As they entered our sandy lane, their pace slackened to a slow trot, and then to a walk. Westlake was on the lookout for me. I went into the middle of the road. He saw me; I heard him utter an exclamation of relief.

Senator, who had been stretched out on the bottom of the wagon, sat up when the horses stopped, took the manacles from his wrists and threw them down on the straw. With his master's help, he soon disencumbered himself of his fetters, and sprang lightly to the ground. Westlake followed, and the two stood there in the starlight confronting each other for the last time.

The face of the banished man was inscrutable. His master's worked painfully. This boy, born on his own twenty-first birthday, had been assigned to[Pg 212] him, not only by his father's gift, but also, so it seemed, by destiny itself. He had had property in him; he had had pride in him; he had looked for a life-long devotion from him. And now, in one moment, all was to be over between them forever. The scene could not be prolonged. There was danger in every instant of delay.

"He must go," Westlake repeated, but hesitatingly. And then, with a sudden impulse, he put out his hand to his forgiven, even if unrepentant, servant.

"No, Master; I will not wrong you by thanking you. This is not my debt." Senator raised towards heaven the coveted hand. "It is His who always pays."

You can always tell what view of certain questions Harry Dudley will take. You have only to suppose them divested of all that prejudice or narrow interest may have encumbered them with, and look at them in the light of pure reason. One of the charms of your intercourse with Dr. Borrow is that it is full of surprises.

"I have a weakness for Westlake, I own it," said the Doctor, when we were seated at the tea-table after our return from The Two Farms. "If you had known him when he was young, as I did, Colvil! Such an easy, soft-hearted, dependent fellow! You couldn't respect him very greatly, perhaps; but like him you must! His son Reginald you ought to like. I do. And—what you will think more to the purpose—so does Harry."

Reginald Westlake is a handsome boy, rather sullen-looking, but with a face capable of beaming out into a beautiful smile. He is always distant in his manners to me, I do not know whether through shyness or dislike.

"He will make a man," Doctor Borrow went on; "if I am any judge of men, he will make a man."

The Doctor was interrupted by the brisk trot of a horse coming up the road. The rider did not stop at the gate; he cleared it. In another moment Westlake's jolly red face was looking down on us through the window. I might have found this arrival untimely; but turning to Harry to know how he took it, I saw in his eyes the "merry sparkle" the Doctor had told of, and divined that there was entertainment in a colloquy between the classmates.

Westlake made a sign with his hand that he was going to take his horse to the stable. I went out to him, Harry following. I welcomed him as cordially as I could, but his manner was reserved at first. We had not met in a way to be obliged to shake hands since Shaler went away. Westlake knew that I was greatly dissatisfied with him at that time. Not more so, though, than he was with himself, poor fellow! He was evidently sincerely glad to see Harry again, and Harry greeted both him and his horse very kindly. Westlake is always well-mounted, and deserves to be: he loves his horses both well and wisely. It is something to be thoroughly faithful in any one relation of life, and here Westlake is faultless. The horse he rode that afternoon—one raised and trained by himself—bore witness in high spirit and gentle temper to a tutor who had known how to respect a fiery and[Pg 215] affectionate nature. We all three gave our cares to the handsome creature, and this common interest put me quite in charity with my unexpected guest before we went into the house.

"This is a way to treat an old friend!" cried Westlake, as he gave his hand to the Doctor, who had come down the door-steps to meet him. "I cannot get two whole days from you, and then you come here and stay on as if you meant to live here!"

Tabitha watched my mother's reception of the new-comer, and, seeing it was hospitable, placed another chair at the table with alacrity. She knew he was out of favor here, but had never thought very hardly of him herself. Her race often judges us in our relations with itself more mildly than we can judge each other. In its strange simplicity, it seems to attribute to itself the part of the superior, and pities where it should resent.

"You cannot make it up to me, Borrow," Westlake went on, as soon as we had taken our places, "except by going right back with me to-night, or coming over to me to-morrow morning, and giving me as many days as you have given Colvil. Next week is the very time for you to be with us. I want you to see us at a gala season: next week is the great marrying and christening time of the year. It usually comes in June; but this year we[Pg 216] have it two months earlier, on account of Dr. Baskow's engagements. My little Fanny is to give all the names. She has a fine imagination."

"Westlake, I would do all but the impossible to show my sense of your kindness. For the rest, my appreciation of little Miss Fanny's inventive powers could not be heightened."

"Does that mean no? Borrow, I shall think in earnest that you have done me a wrong in giving so much time away from me, if these are really your last days in our parts."

"We will make it up to you. I will tell you how we will make it up to you. Come to us,—come to Massachusetts: I will give you there a week of my time for every day we have taken from you here. Come to us in June: that is the month in which New England is most itself. Come and renew old associations."

"I am not so sure that I used to like it, when I think back upon it. At any rate, if you want to see me, you must see me in my own place. I am not myself anywhere else. Equality, Borrow, equality is a very good thing for people who have never known anything better: may be a very good thing for people who can work themselves up out of it.[Pg 217] But for a man who has grown up in the enjoyment of those privileges inappreciable by the vulgar, but which by the noble of every age have been regarded as the most real and the most valuable,—for such a man to sit, one at a long table, feeling himself nobody, and knowing all the time he has a right to be somebody! You can talk very easily about equality. You have never suffered from it. You have your learning and—— Well, you know how to talk. I have no learning, and I can't talk, except to particular friends. A man cannot ticket himself with his claims to estimation. Even Paris has too much equality for me. Flora liked it; she had her beauty and her toilet. But I! how I longed to be back here among my own simple, humble people! As soon as she was married, I made off home. In my own place, among my own people, I am, I might almost say, like a god, if I were not afraid of shocking you. And is not their fate in my hands? My frown is their night, my smile is their sunshine. The very ratification of their prayers to a Higher Power is intrusted to my discretion. Homage, Borrow, homage is the sweetest draught ever brought to mortal lips!"

"You do not understand. How should you? Our modes of thinking and feeling are not to be[Pg 218] comprehended by one brought up in a society so differently constituted. We avow ourselves an aristocracy."

"You do well: something of the inherent meaning of a word will always make itself felt. Aristocracy! It is vain to try to dispossess it of its own. The world will not be disenchanted of the beautiful word. Cover yourselves with its prestige. It will stand you in good stead with outsiders. But, between ourselves, Westlake, how is it behind the scenes? Can you look each other in the face and pronounce it? Or have you really persuaded yourselves down here that you are governed by your best men?"

"We do not use the word so pedantically down here. By an aristocracy we mean a community of gentlemen."

"And, pronouncing it so emphatically, you of course use the word gentleman in the sense it had when it had a sense. You bear in mind what the gentleman was pledged to, when to be called one was still a distinction. 'To eschew sloth,' 'to detest all pride and haughtiness,'—these were among his obligations: doubtless they are of those most strictly observed in your community. He was required 'to be true and just in word and dealing'; 'to be of an open and liberal mind.' You find these conditions fulfilled in Rasey, your leading man."

"Certainly, your leading man. Whose lead did you follow, when you joined in worrying Charles Shaler out of your community of gentlemen?"

Westlake shrank. He was conscious that he had been going down hill ever since Shaler left the neighborhood. The hold that Rasey took of him then the crafty old man has never let go.

When Westlake's plantation came into his possession by the death of his father, he undertook to carry it on himself, and has been supposed to do so ever since. It was carried on well from the time that Senator was old enough to take charge; but with his disappearance disappeared all the credit and all the comfort his good management had secured to his master. Westlake needed some one to lean on, and Rasey was ready to take advantage of this necessity. His ascendancy was not established all at once. It is only during the last year that it has been perfected. In the beginning, he gave just a touch of advice and withdrew; showed himself again at discreet intervals, gradually shortened; but, all the time, was casting about his victim the singly almost impalpable threads of his deadly thraldom, until they had formed a coil which forbade even an effort after freedom. Westlake had put no overseer between himself and his people; but he had, without well knowing how it came[Pg 220] about, set a very hard one over both. He found the indulgences on his plantation diminished, the tasks more rigidly enforced, the holidays fewer. The punishments, which were before sometimes capriciously severe, but more often threatened and remitted, he was now expected to carry out with the inflexibility of fate. He has found himself reduced to plotting with his servants against himself,—to aiding them in breaking or evading his own laws; reduced—worst humiliation of all—to ordering, under the sharp eye and sharp voice of his officious neighbor, the infliction of chastisement for neglect which he himself had authorized or connived at.

All came of that unhappy Christmas I have told you of. If Westlake could only have been silent, the simple plot devised by Senator would have worked perfectly. All the neighborhood would have respected a secret that was its own. But Westlake could not be silent; he was too uneasy. It was not long before the culprit's escape and his master's part in it were more than surmised. In view of the effect of such a transaction on the servile imagination, Westlake's weakness was ignored by common consent; but it was not the less incumbent upon him to reinstate himself in opinion on the first opportunity. The opportunity was offered by the storm then brewing against Shaler.

Westlake's sufferings are, happily for him, intermittent. Rasey is away from the neighborhood one month out of every three, looking after the estates of yet more unlucky vassals,—his through debt, and not from simple weakness. During these intervals, Westlake takes his ease with his people, as thoughtless as they of consequences no more within his ability to avert than theirs. He has lately had an unusual respite. Rasey has been confined to the house by an illness,—the first of his life.

I do not know how far Dr. Borrow is aware of Westlake's humiliations; and Westlake, I think, does not know. When he was able to speak again, he sheltered himself under a question.

"He is owner of the plantation which lies south of yours and Shaler's, larger than both together."

"Root and branch. But who does not know him, that knows anybody here? In the next generation his history may be lost in his fortune, but it is extant yet. His father was overseer on a Georgia plantation, from which he sucked the marrow: his employer's grandchildren are crackers and clay-eaters; his are—of your community."

"Strike out all who do not yet belong to it, and all who have ceased to have a full claim to belong to it, and what have you left?"

"Lately? I hear that a great change has come over him. He has lost his elder son."

"You might say his only one. He turned the other out of doors years ago, and has had no word of him since. The old man has a daughter; but her husband has challenged him to shoot at sight. He has lost his partner and heir, and, in the course of Nature, cannot himself hold on many years longer. If a way could be found of taking property over to the other side, he might be consoled. The old Gauls used to manage it: they made loans on condition of repayment in the other world; but I doubt whether Rasey's faith is of force to let him find comfort in such a transaction.

"I had to see him about a matter of business which had been intrusted to me. I went there the day I left you. If I had known how it was with him, I should have tried to find a deputy. It is an awful sight, a man who never had compassion needing it, a man who never felt sympathy claiming and repelling it in one.

"When I entered the room, where he was sitting alone, he looked up at me with a glare like a tiger-cat's. He was tamed for the moment by the mention of my errand, which was simply to make him[Pg 223] a payment. He counted the money carefully, locked it up, and gave me a receipt. Then he began to talk to me, or rather to himself before me. I could acquiesce in all he said. I knew what Giles Rasey was, and understood that the loss of such a son, to such a father, was irreparable.

"'Another self! another self!' he repeated, until I hardly knew whether to pity him more for having had a son so like himself, or for having him no longer. It was an injustice that he felt himself suffering,—a bitter injustice. He had counted on this son as his successor, and the miscalculation was one with which he was not chargeable. 'Not thirty-five! I am past sixty, and a young man yet! My father lived to be ninety!'

"His rage against this wrong which had been done him was aggravated by another which he had done himself, a weakness into which he had been led by his son,—the only one, probably, in which they had ever been partners. The son had a slave whose ability made him valuable, whose probity made him invaluable.

"'I gave him to Giles myself,' said the old man. 'He was such as you don't find one of in a thousand; no, not in ten thousand. I could have had any money for him, if money could have bought him. It couldn't. I gave him to Giles.'

"Giles, on the death-bed where he found him[Pg 224]self with very little warning, exacted of his father a promise that this man should be made free.

"The man in whose behalf the promise was made, and who was present when it was made, took it in earnest.

"'A fellow whom we had trusted!' cried the old man. 'A fellow in whose attachment we had believed! We have let him carry away and pay large sums of money for us; have even let him go into Free States to pay them, and he always came back faithfully! You may know these people a life long and not learn them out! A fellow whom we had trusted!'

"The fellow bade good-day as soon as the funeral services were over. His master was sufficiently himself to surmise his purpose and to make an attempt to baffle it. But the intended freedman was too agile for him; he disappeared without even claiming his manumission-papers. Imagine Rasey's outraged feelings! It was like the Prince of Hell in the old legend, complaining of the uncivil alacrity with which Lazarus obeyed the summons to the upper air:—'He was not to be held, but, giving himself a shake, with every sign of malice, immediately he went away.'"

"So Rasey has lost Syphax! he has lost Sy[Pg 225]phax!" repeated Westlake, thoughtfully. "Rasey is not a good master, but he was good to him. It was hard, even for Rasey."

"You do not understand. You see in the rupture of these ties only a loss of service to the master. We feel it to be something more."

"The human heart is framed sensible to kindness; that you should have an attachment for the man who devotes his life to yours without return has nothing miraculous for me. I can believe that even Rasey is capable of feeling the loss of what has been useful to him."

"No, you do not understand the relation between us and this affectionate subject race."

"Frankly, I do not. I cannot enter into it on either side. If I were even as full of the milk of human kindness as we are bound to suppose these soft-tempered foreigners to be, it seems to me I should still like to choose my beneficiaries; and, in your place, I should have quite another taste in benefactors. When I indue myself in imagination with a black skin, and try to think and feel conformably, I find my innate narrowness too much for me; I cannot disguise from myself that I should prefer to lavish my benefits on my own flesh and blood. Resuming my personality, I can as little[Pg 226] divest myself in fancy of my pride of race. If I must accept a state of dependence, I would take the bounty of a white man, hard and scanty though it might be, rather than receive luxurious daily bread at the hands of blacks."

"Borrow, you always had the knack of making a fellow feel uncomfortable. I would rather talk with Dudley than with you. I do not see that you are any better friend to our institutions than he is."

"A friend to slavery? Distrust the man not born and bred to it who calls himself one!

"I suppose I am as much of a pro-slavery man as you will easily find in New England,—for an unambitious, private man, I mean. Slavery does not mean for me power or place. What does slavery mean for me when I oppose its opponents? It means you, Westlake, my old schoolmate,—you and your wife and children. It means Harvey and his wife and children. I have the weakness to care more for you than for your slaves. I cannot resolve to see you deprived of comforts and luxuries that use has made necessary to you, that they may rise to wants they have no sense of as yet. As to your duties to your humble neighbors, and the way you fulfil them, that account is kept between you and your Maker. He has not made me a judge or a ruler over you."

Westlake's deep red deepened. "I leave relig[Pg 227]ious matters to those whose charge it is. I have been instructed to hold the place which has been awarded me, without asking why I have been made to differ from others. And the teaching which is good enough for me is, I suppose, good enough for my servants. As for the rest, we know that our people are as well off as the same class in any part of the world, not excepting New England."

"I dare say such a class would be no better off there than here. But come and learn for yourself how it is there."

"I could not learn there how to live here. And I do not pretend that we can understand you better than you can us. But, Borrow, you are hard to suit. You twit us with our waste and improvidence, and yet you are not better pleased with Rasey, who follows gain like a New-Englander."

"Rasey follows gain from the blind impulse of covetousness. The New-Englander's zeal is according to knowledge. Rasey's greed is the inherited hunger of a precarious race. The New-Englander thrives because he has always thriven. He has in his veins 'the custom of prosperity.'

"Fuller tells us, that, in his time, 'a strict inquiry after the ancient gentry of England' would have found 'most of them in the class moderately mounted above the common level'; the more ambitious having suffered ruin in the national turmoils,[Pg 228] while these even-minded men, 'through God's blessing on their moderation, have continued in their condition.' It was from this old stock that the planters of New England were chiefly derived, mingled with them some strong scions of loftier trees."

"Do we not know that there is no such thing as birth in New England? There, even if a man had ancestry, he would not dare to think himself the better for it."

"Disabuse yourself; the New-Englander is perfectly human in this respect, and only a very little wiser than the rest of the world. But he disapproves waste, even of so cheap a thing as words: he does not speak of his blood, because his blood speaks for itself.

"Rasey thinks whatever is held by others to be so much withheld from him. To make what is theirs his is all his aim. He has no conception of a creative wealth, of a diffusive prosperity. To live and make live is an aristocratic maxim. Rasey, and such as he, grudge almost the subsistence of their human tools. With the New-Englander, parsimony is not economy. The aristocratic household law is a liberal one, and it is his. He lives up to his income as conscientiously as within it. Rasey and his like think what is theirs, enjoyed by another, wasted;—they think it wasted, enjoyed by them[Pg 229]selves. The New-Englander's rule of personal indulgence is the same with that given to the Persian prince Ghilan by his father, the wise Kyekyawus, who, warning him against squandering, adds, 'It is not squandering to spend for anything which can be of real use to thee either in this world or the next.'

"Together with the inherited habit of property, the well-descended have and transmit an inherited knowledge of the laws which govern its acquisition and its maintenance: laws older than legislation; as old as property itself; as old as man; a part of his primitive wisdom; always and everywhere the common lore of the established and endowed. If Rasey had inherited or imbibed this knowledge, perhaps he would have been more cautious. 'Beware of unjust gains,' says an Eastern sage, an ancient member of our Aryan race; 'for it is the nature of such, not only to take flight themselves, but to bear off all the rest with them.' 'Do not think,' it is set down in the book of Kabus, a compendium of Persian practical wisdom, 'Do not think even a good use of what has been ill acquired can make it thine. It will assuredly leave thee, and only thy sin will remain to thee.'

"The well-born would not dare to amass a fortune by such means as Rasey uses; amassed, they would not expose it to such hazards. 'The same[Pg 230] word in the Greek'—I am citing now an English worthy, the contemporary of our New-England fathers—'The same word in the Greek—ἰός—means both rust and poison; and a strong poison is made of the rust of metals; but none more venomous than the rust of the laborer's wages detained in his employer's purse: it will infect and corrode a whole estate.'

"A man's descent is written on his life yet more plainly than on his features. In New England you shall see a youth come up from the country to the metropolis of his State with all his worldly goods upon his back. Twenty years later you shall find him as much at ease in the position he has retaken rather than gained, as he was in the farm-house where he was born, or on the dusty road he trudged over to the scene of his fortunes. His house is elegant, not fine; it is furnished with paintings not bought on the advice of the picture-dealer, with a library not ordered complete from the bookseller. He is simple in his personal habits, laborious still, severe to himself, lenient and liberal to those who depend upon him, munificent in his public benefactions, in his kindly and modest patronage. If he enters public life, it is not because he wants a place there, but because there is a place that wants him. He takes it to work, and not to shine; lays it down when he can, or when he must; and takes hold of[Pg 231] the nearest duty, great or small as may be, with the same zeal and conscience. Such a man is called a self-made man. He is what ages of culture and highest discipline have made him,—ages of responsibility and thought for others.

"Stealthy winning and sterile hoarding are the marks of a degraded and outlawed caste. When these tendencies show themselves in a member of an honest race, they have come down from some forgotten interloper. The Raseys are the true representatives of the transported wretches who, and whose progeny, have been a dead weight upon the States originally afflicted with them, and upon those into which they have wandered out. In their native debasement, they furnish material for usurpation to work upon and with; raised here and there into fitful eminence, they infect the class they intrude upon with meannesses not its own.

"Thomas Dudley, writing to England from New England in its earliest days, when, as he frankly owns, it offered 'little to be enjoyed and much to be endured,' is explicit as to the class of men he and his colleagues would have join them. He invites only godly men of substance. Such, he says, 'cannot dispose of themselves and their estates more to God's glory.' Those who would 'come to plant for worldly ends' he dissuades altogether; for 'the poorer sort' it was 'not time yet.' As for reck[Pg 232]less adventurers and the destitute idle, who sought the New World for gold or an indolent subsistence, when these, 'seeing no other means than by their labor to feed themselves,' went back discouraged, or off to find some more indulgent plantation, the colony felt itself 'lightened, not weakened.'

"The chief distinctive mark of high race is the quality the Romans called fortitudo,—a word of larger meaning than we commonly intend by ours derived from it: that strength of soul, namely, which gives way as little before work as before danger or under suffering. A Roman has defined this Roman fortitude as the quality which enables a man fearlessly to obey the highest law, whether by enduring or by achieving.

"Another mark of high race is its trust in itself. The early heads of New England did not try to secure a position to their children. They knew that blood finds its level just as certainly as water does. Degenerate sons they disowned in advance.

"Westlake, you ought to know New England better. Even if your memory did not prompt you to do it justice, there ought to be a voice to answer for it in your heart. But I find ancestry is very soon lost in the mists of antiquity down here. You come early into the advantages of a mythical background. Must I teach you your own descent?"

"I thank you. I am acquainted with it. My[Pg 233] great-grandfather was an Englishman,—a man of some consideration, as I have been informed. He went over to Massachusetts; but my grandfather left it, as soon as he was of age, for a newer State, where he could enjoy greater freedom."

"Your great-grandfather came from England to New England, as you say. He fixed himself in that part of our Massachusetts town of Ipswich which used to go by the name of 'The Hamlet.' What he was before he came out I do not know; but I suppose he brought credentials, for he married his wife from a family both old and old-fashioned. Your grandfather, Simeon Symonds Westlake, at seventeen found the Hamlet too narrow for him, and the paternal, or perhaps the maternal, rule too strict. He walked over into New Hampshire one morning, without mentioning that he was not to be back for dinner. New Hampshire did not suit him: he went to Rhode Island; then tried New York for a year or so: it did not answer. His father died, and Simeon made experiment of life at home again, but only again to give it up in disgust. Finally he emigrated to Georgia, taking with him a little money and a great deal of courage; invested both in a small farm which was soon a large plantation; added a yet larger by marriage; died, a great landholder and a great slaveholder.

"Simeon—I must call him by that name, his[Pg 234]torical for me, although I know that the first initial disappeared from his signature after his marriage—Simeon left two sons, Reginald and Edwin. He had the ambition of founding a dynasty; so left his whole estate to the elder, yet with certain restrictions and conditions, which, doubtless, he had good reasons for imposing, and which the intended heir lost no time in justifying. By some law of inheritance which statutes cannot supersede nor wills annul, this son of a father in whom no worst enemy could have detected a trace of the Puritan, was born in liberal Georgia, in the last half of the enlightened eighteenth century, as arrogant a bigot and as flaming a fanatic as if he had come over in the Mayflower. He refused his father's bequest, on the ground that God has given man dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowls of the air, and over the cattle,—but none over his fellow-man, except such as he may win through affection or earn by service. He went back to New England, where he belonged. I knew a son of his, a respectable mason. You need not blush for him, though he was your own cousin and worked with his hands. He was never conscious of any cause for shame, himself, unless it were the sin of his slaveholding grandfather; and that did not weigh on him, for he believed the entail of the curse cut off with that of the rest of the inheritance.

"If I have grieved the shade of Simeon by pronouncing that rejected name, I will soothe it again by stating that this name has not been perpetuated by his New-England descendants. That branch of his house has already a third Reginald, about a year younger than yours. He is now a Freshman in college. You may hear of him some day."

"He is in college? That is well. He has, then, recovered, or will recover, the rank of a gentleman?"

"No need of that, if he ever had a claim to it. You, who know so much about birth, should know that its rights are ineffaceable. This was well understood by those whom it concerned, in the time of our first ancestors. We have it on high heraldic authority of two hundred years ago, that a gentleman has a right so to be styled in legal proceedings, 'although he be a husbandman.' 'For, although a gentleman go to the plough and common labor for a maintenance, yet he is a gentleman.' The New-England founders had no fear of derogating in taking hold of anything that needed to be done; had no fear that their children could derogate in following any calling for which their tastes and their abilities qualified them. Carrying to it the ideas, feelings, and manners of the gentle class, they could ennoble the humblest occupation; it could not lower them.

"It is out of this respect that good blood has for itself, that the true New-Englander, whatever his station, is not ashamed of a humbler relative. You are amazed down here at the hardihood of a Northern man who speaks coolly of a cousin of his who is a blacksmith, it may be, or a small farmer; and you bless yourselves inwardly for your greater refinement. But you are English, you say, not New-English.

"When I was in Perara, dining with one of the great folks there, I happened to inquire after a cousin of his, an unlucky fellow, who, after trying his fortune in half the cities of the Union, had had the indiscretion to settle down in a very humble business, within a stone's throw of his wealthy namesake. I had known him formerly, and could not think of leaving Perara without calling on him. To my surprise, my question threw the family into visible confusion. They gave me his address, indeed, but in a way as if they excused themselves for knowing it. This may be English, but it is not Old-English.

"In the Old England which we may call ours,—for it was before, and not long before, she founded the New,—a laboring man came to the Earl of Huntingdon, Lieutenant of Leicestershire, to pray for the discharge of his only son, the staff of his age, who had been 'pressed into the wars.' The[Pg 237] Earl inquires the name of his petitioner. The old man hesitates, fearing to be presumptuous, for his family name is the same with that of the nobleman he addresses; but being urged, he takes courage to pronounce it. 'Cousin Hastings,' said the Earl then, 'my kinsman, your son, shall not be pressed.' This 'modesty in the poor man and courtesy in the great man' were found in that day 'conformable to the gentle blood in both.' Those who know New England know that this absence of assumption and of presumption, this modest kindliness and this dignified reserve, are characteristic there, testifying to the sources from which it derives.

"I am a cosmopolite. I could never see why I should think the better or the worse of a place, for my happening to draw my first breath there. I am of the company of the truth-seekers. A fact, though it were an ugly one, is of more worth to me than a thousand pleasantest fancies. But a fact is not the less one for being agreeable: the extension of a fine race is an agreeable fact to a naturalist.

"The earlier emigrations to New England were emphatically aristocratic emigrations. Their aim was to found precisely what you claim to show here. Their aim was to found a community of gentlemen,—a community, that is to say, religious, just, generous, courteous. They proposed equality,[Pg 238] but equality on a high plane. Their work has been hindered by its very success. The claimants for adoption have crowded in faster than full provision could be made for them. They cannot instantly be assimilated. Their voices sometimes rise above those of the true children. But New England is there, strong and tranquil. Her heart has room for all that ask a place in it. She welcomes these orphans to it motherly, and will make them all thoroughly her own with time.

And Dr. Borrow, tracing the route he had marked out for his friend, sketched the country it led through, comparing what came before us with reminiscences of other travels. No contrasts here of misery with splendor rebuke a thoughtless admiration. Nowhere the picturesqueness of ruin and squalor; everywhere the lovely, living beauty of healthfulness, dignity, and order.

With what a swell of feeling does the distant New-Englander listen to accounts of family life in the old home! How dear every detail, making that real again which had come to be like a sweet, shadowy dream!

Dr. Borrow led us through the beautiful street of a New-England village, under the Gothic arches of its religious elms. He did not fear to throw[Pg 239] open for us the willing door. He showed us the simple, heartsome interior, with its orderly ease, its unambitious hospitality, its refined enjoyments. Other travellers have drawn for us other pictures. They have told us of a pomp and state which have reconciled us to our rudeness. But Dr. Borrow sketched the New-England home, such as we know it by tradition, such as it still exists among those who are content to live as their fathers lived before them.

"Hold on, Borrow!" cried Westlake; "you don't suppose you are going to persuade me that there is neither poverty nor overwork in New England! I have heard, and I think I have seen, that there are hard lives lived there,—harder than those of our slaves, of my slaves, for example;—and that not by foreigners, who, you may say, are not up to the mark yet, but by Americans born and bred."

"There are very hard lives lived there. The human lot is checkered there as everywhere. Death sometimes arrests a man midway in his course and leads him off, leaving his wife and children to struggle along the road they never knew was rough before. It happened thus to your Cousin Reginald. His wife and children were thus left. You are right. His son, the boy I told you of, is as much a slave as any of yours: almost as poorly fed, and twice as hardly worked. He lives[Pg 240] at a distance from his college, to have a cheaper room; his meals he prepares himself;—no great fatigue this, to be sure, for they are frugal, and he contents himself with two. In what ought to be his vacation, he delves away at his books harder than ever, and is besides a hewer of wood and a drawer of water,—all without wages. His only pay is his mother's pride in him, and the joy of sometimes calling back the old smiles to her face."

"He has less than nothing. To go to college, he has incurred debts,—debts for which he has pledged himself, body and soul. He was ten when his father died. His sister was sixteen. She assumed the rights of guardian over him, kept him up to his work at school, sent him to college when he was fourteen, and maintains him there.

"If his life is a hard one, hers is not easier. Every morning she walks nearly three miles to the school she teaches, gives her day there, and walks back in the late afternoon. The evening she passes in sewing, a book on the table before her. She catches a line as she draws out her thread, and fixes it in her memory with the setting of the next stitch. Besides Reginald, there are two other boys to make and mend for, not yet so mindful of the cost of clothes as he has learned to be; and she has her[Pg 241] own education to carry on, as well as that of the little community among whom she must hold her place as one who has nothing left to learn.

"Her mother works at the same table, evenly, continuously, not to disturb or distract by haste or casual movement, and under a spell of silence, which only the child whose first subject she is is privileged to break. It is broken from time to time,—the study being suspended, though not the needlework. These intervals are filled with little, happy confidences,—hopes, and dreams, which the two cherish apart and together, and whose exchange, a hundred times renewed, never loses its power to refresh and reassure. If you were near enough to hear the emphatic word in these snatches of conversation, be sure you would hear 'Reginald.'"

"Perhaps I may have spent a summer in the country town where they live. Perhaps it has been my chance some evening to walk by the little, old, black house they moved into after their father's death, from the nice, white, green-blinded one he built for them, and the astral lamp on the round table may have lighted for me the tableau I am showing you. Our heroine works and studies late, perhaps; but she must not the less be up early the next morning, to do the heavier portion of the house-work before her mother is stirring. If ever[Pg 242] you hear a severe tone in her voice, be sure the mother has been encroaching upon the daughter's prerogative by rising first, or by putting her hand to some forbidden toil.—Well, is all this enough? Not for Anna Westlake. There is a music lesson to be given, before she sets off for her regular day's work."

"Is her name Anna?"—Westlake had once a sister Anna, whom he loved.—"Is she pretty?"

"Yes; a true Westlake in features and complexion; but somewhat thin for one of your family, as you may believe."

"I should not dare to say Yes, seeing that grace is denied to New-England women; still less do I dare to say No, remembering how I have seen her taking her small brothers to their school, on the way to her own, making believe run races with them, to get the little wilful loiterers over the ground the quicker."

"You would be a severe taskmaster, if you de[Pg 243]manded of a slave such a day's work as hers. Of a slave! He would be insane who should expect it of any woman who had not the developed brain, the steady nerves, the abounding vitality of the born aristocrat.

"But how is Reginald ever going to pay his debt to this sister? Do you think she will be satisfied with anything short of seeing him President? Who knows but she looks for more yet? The Puritan stamp is as strong on her as on her grandfather. Who knows but she looks to see him one of the lights of the world,—one of the benefactors of his race,—a discoverer in science,—a reformer? Here are responsibilities for a boy to set out under!"

"For the boys, let them rough it; I have nothing to say. But, Borrow, when you go back, tell Anna Westlake there is a home for her here, whenever she is ready to come and take it."

"I will tell her, if you will, that her cousins here wish to have news of her, and are ready to love her and hers. But propose to her a life of dependence! You must get a bolder man to do that errand."

"It should not be a life of dependence. She may surely do for her own kindred what she does for a pack of village children. She should be an elder sister to my girls. Why, Borrow, I should like to have her here. I don't put it in the form[Pg 244] of a favor to her. Her being here would be a great pleasure and a great good to my little Fanny."

"She should be able to do more than she does now. Reginald should live as he ought."

"He shall have three good meals a day, and cooked for him: is that it? And the two little boys?"

"They should be as much better off as he. I do not forget that I have the whole inheritance, which might have been divided."

"Yes, the means for their material bread might be supplied by another; but it is from her own soul that she feeds theirs. And then, homage, Westlake,—homage, that sweetest draught! Do you suppose it is least sweet when most deserved?"

"I have nothing, then, to offer which could tempt her?" asked Westlake, a little crestfallen.

"You have nothing to offer, the world has nothing to offer, which could tempt her to resign her little empire;—little now, but which she sees widening out in futurity through her three brothers' work and their children's."

"I knew," said Westlake, after he had sat for a few moments in dissatisfied silence, "I knew I had once an uncle who went off to parts unknown; but it never occurred to me that he might have descendants to whom I might owe duties. Have they not claims upon me?"

"No more than you on them. Their ancestor made his choice, as yours made his. They have the portion of goods that falleth to them. They are quite as content with their share as you are with yours. Moreover, each party is free to complete his inheritance without prejudice to the other. They can recover the worldly wealth they gave up, if they choose to turn their endeavors in that direction; and nothing forbids to your children the energy and self-denial which are their birthright as much as that of their cousins.

"New England never gives up her own. A son of hers may think he has separated himself forever from her and from her principles, but she reclaims him in his children or in his children's children.

"You have forgotten your tie to the old home. The conditions of your life forbid you to remember it. But your heart formerly rebelled against these conditions. It has never ceased to protest. Reginald's protests already, and will some day protest to purpose."

"You think so!" cried Westlake; then, checking[Pg 246] himself, "I am glad, at least, that you think so; it proves that you like him. I was afraid"——

"You are right. I do not like him as he is, but only as he is to be. I saw what you feared I did, and marked it. I saw him knock down the boy whom he had condescended to make his playmate in default of better, for taking too much in earnest the accorded equality. But I saw, too, that his own breast was sorer with the blow than the one it hit. That is not always a cruel discipline which teaches a man early what he is capable of, whether in good or evil. When your Reginald comes to the responsible age, his conscience will hand in the account of his minority. Looking, then, on this item and on others like it, he will ask himself, 'Am I a dog that I have done these things?' and he will become a man, and a good one.

"We see farcical pretensions enough down here, where men are daily new-created from the mud. There is Milsom. He does not own even the name he wears. His father borrowed it for a time, and, having worn it out, left it with this son, decamping under shelter of a new one. The son, abandoned to his wits at twelve years old, relieved his father from the charge of inhumanity by proving them sufficient. His first exploit was the betraying of a fugitive who had shared a crust with him. This success revealed to him his proper road to fortune.[Pg 247] He passed through the regular degrees of slave-catcher and slave-trader, to the proud altitude of slave-holder; then, moving out of the reach of old associations, proclaims himself a gentleman by descent as well as by desert. His sons take it on his word; in all simplicity believe themselves an integral part of time-honored aristocracy, and think it beneath them to do anything but mischief.

"Your claims I neither blame nor make light of. I know what their foundation is better than you do yourself. Only dismiss illusions, and accept realities, which do not yield to them even in charm to the imagination. When you know the ground under your feet, you will stand more quietly as well as more firmly. You will understand then that the silence of the New-Englander in regard to his extraction is not indifference, but security. Nowhere is the memory of ancestry so sacredly cherished as in New England, nowhere so humbly. What are we in presence of those majestic memories? We may lead our happy humdrum lives; may fulfil creditably our easy duties; we may plant and build and legislate for those who come after us; but it will still be to these great primitive figures that our descendants will look back; it will still be the debt owed there that will pledge the living generation to posterity.

"John Westlake, your first paternal ancestor in[Pg 248] New England had nothing in common with the Puritan leaders. You are well informed there. He came over to seek his fortune. They came to prepare the destinies of a nation. He had nothing to do with them, except in being one of those they worked for. He came when the country was ready for him. His motive was a reasonable one. I shall not impugn it; but it tells of the roturier. The founding of states is an aristocratic tendency. He was a respectable ancestor. I have more than one such of my own. I owe to them the sedate mind which permits me to give myself to my own affairs, without feeling any responsibility about those of the world. But these are not the men who ennoble their descendants in perpetuity. If your breast knows the secret suggestions of lineage, these promptings are not from John Westlake. You must go back to our heroic age to find yours."

"I should be very glad to find myself in an heroic age," said Westlake, with a slight laugh, followed by a heavy sigh. "I feel as if I might have something to do there. But this thought never yet took me back to the Puritans: the battle-field is the hero's place, as I imagine the hero. They, I have understood, were especially men of peace. Is it not one of their first titles to honor?"

"The office of the hero is to create, to organize, to endow;—works of peace which incidentally require[Pg 249] him to suppress its disturbers. The heroes have always been men of peace—its winners and maintainers for those who can only enjoy it—from Hercules down, that first great overthrower of oppressions and founder of colonies.

"To the age I call on you to date from—that of the imagining and founding a new England, a renovated world—belongs the brightest and dearest of English heroic names: the name whose associations of valor and tenderness, of high-heartedness and humility are as fresh now as when the love of the noble first canonized it. It is not without good reason that the name of Philip Sidney is a household word throughout New England, held in traditional affection and reverence. He was one of the first to project a new state beyond the seas, in which the simplicity and loyalty of primitive manners were to be restored, and the true Christian Church revived. He turned from these hopes only because he felt that he owed himself to Europe as long as an effort for the vindication of human rights upon its soil was possible. It was not love of war that led him to his fate in the Netherlands. He was not to be misled by false glory. In his Defence of Poesy he makes it a reproach to History, that 'the name of rebel Cæsar, after a thousand six hundred years, still stands in highest honor.' The peace-loving Burleigh, when the expedition in which[Pg 250] Sidney fell was setting forth, wrote,—deprecating the reproach of lukewarmness,—that he 'should hold himself a man accursed, if he did not work for it with all the powers of his heart, seeing that its ends were the glory of God and the preservation of England in perpetual tranquillity.'

"'Nec gladio nec arcu' was the motto of Thomas Dudley, Harry's first ancestor in this country. He was a man of peace. But he offered his life to the same cause for which Philip Sidney laid down his,—drawing the sword for it in France, as Sidney had done ten years before in Flanders. He was reserved to aid in carrying out the other more effectual work which Sidney had designed, but from which his early death withdrew him.

"I am not telling you of Harry's ancestor for Harry's sake. You have your own part in all this, Westlake. When Reginald and Harry met and loved each other, blood spoke to blood.

"How many descendants do you suppose there are now from Governor Thomas Dudley's forty grandchildren? Hardly a family of long standing in New England but counts him among its ancestors; hardly a State of our Union into which some of that choice blood has not been carried, with other as precious.

"New England is not limited to that little northeastern corner. Our older country, 'that sceptred[Pg 251] isle, that earth of majesty,' did not send forth the happiest of its 'happy breed of men' to found a world no wider than its own: wherever the descendants of those great pioneers set up their home, they plant a new New England.

"Do you know how their regenerate Transatlantic country presented itself to its early projectors? The most sanguine of us do not paint its future more brightly now than it was imaged in 1583.

"A Hungarian poet, on a visit to England, enjoyed the intimacy of Hakluyt, and, through him introduced to the society of such men as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Philip Sidney, was initiated into the hopes and projects of the nobler England of the day. He has celebrated these in a poem addressed to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. The return of the Golden Age promised in ancient prophecy is, he believes, impossible in Europe, sunk below the iron one. He sees it, in vision, revive upon the soil of the New World, under the auspices of men who, true colonizers, renounce home and country, and dare the vast, vague dangers of sea and wilderness, not for gain or for glory, but 'for the peace and welfare of mankind.'

"Our poet was in earnest. He did not write the annals of the country that his hero did not found; but he shared his grave under the waves of the Atlantic. Their hope outlived them. Visions like theirs are not for you and me, Westlake. They are for young men,—for the men who never grow old. We may admit that such have their place in the world. Man must strive for something greatly beyond what he can attain, to effect anything. He cannot strive for what he has not faith in. Those men who live in aspirations that transcend this sphere believe that all human hearts can be tuned to the same pitch with theirs. We know better, but let us not for that contemn their efforts. I am no visionary. I have no inward evidence of things not seen; but I am capable of believing what is proved. I believe in work,—that none is lost, but that, whether for good or ill, every exertion of power and patience tells. I believe in race, and I believe in progress for a race with which belief in[Pg 253] progress is a tradition, and which inherits, besides, the strength, the courage, and the persistence which make faith prophetic.

"Your institutions, Westlake, are to yield the ground to other forms. They are contrary to the inborn principles of the race that leads on this continent. We at the North, who tolerate them, tolerate them because we know they are ephemeral. It is a consciousness of their transitoriness that enables you yourselves to put up with them."

"Not so fast! If they are not rooted, they are taking root. They have a stronger hold with every year. If any of us felt in the way you suppose, we should have to keep our thoughts to ourselves."

"So you all keep your thoughts to yourselves for fear of each other. What a lightening of hearts, when you once come to an understanding! I wish it soon for your own sakes; but a few years in the life of a people are of small account. I am willing to wait for the fulness of time. The end is sure."

"I do not undervalue your difficulties. The greatest is this miserable population that has crept over your borders from the older Slave States: progeny of outcasts and of reckless adventurers, they never had a country and have never found one. Without aims or hopes, they ask of their[Pg 254] worthless life only its own continuance. Ignorant that they can never know anything worse than to remain what they are, dreading change more than those who may have something to lose by it, they uphold the system that dooms them to immobility, shameful Atlantes of the dismal structure."

"You will not wonder that we are ready to renounce the theories of equality put forth by the men you would have us look to as founders. We make laws to keep our black servants from getting instruction. Do you think we could legislate the class you speak of into receiving it?"

"Westlake, they are here. They are among you, and will be of you, or you of them."

"We must take our precautions. We intend to do so. The dividing line must be more strongly marked. They must have their level prescribed to them, and be held to it."

"The more you confirm their degradation, the more you prepare your own. The vile and abject, for being helpless, are not harmless. Unapt for honest service, but ready tools of evil, they corrupt the class whose parasites they are, tempting the strong and generous to tyranny and scorn."

"But ten righteous men are enough to redeem a state. No State of ours but has men enough, greatly more than enough, to save and to exalt it, whose descent pledges them to integrity and entitles them to authority. Only let them know themselves, and stand by themselves and by each other.

And it will. The sins of the fathers are visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation, but their virtues are a perpetual inheritance.

"I should not talk as I have been talking out of the family."—The Doctor fell into his familiar tone.—"I take in Colvil, because I know, if we had time to trace it up, we should not go back far without coming upon common ancestors. Our pedigrees all run one into another. When I see a New-England man, I almost take for granted a cousin. I found one out not many days' journey from here, by opening the old family Bible, which made an important part of the furniture of his log-house, and running over the names of his grandmothers. I am so well informed in regard to your great-grandfather, because his story is a part of my own[Pg 256] family history. It is through your mother that you are related to Harry. Perhaps, if she had lived long enough for you to remember her, you would not have forgotten New England."

"My mother was an orphan young, and had neither brother nor sister. I have never seen any member of her family. They tell me that Reginald looks like her."

"I asked him to come. He said that Dudley and he had agreed on a time of meeting. He is not very communicative with me; but they seem to understand each other."

The parting of the classmates was very kindly. Westlake led his horse as far as the end of our road,—the Doctor, Harry, and I accompanying. When he had mounted, he still delayed. I thought that he looked worn and weary. With his old friend, he had been his old, easy self; but now that his face was turned towards home, it seemed that he felt its vexations and cares confronting him again. The Doctor probably does not know as much of Westlake's position as is known in the neighborhood; he saw in this sadness only that of the separation from himself, and was more gratified than pained by it.

"We shall not see each other again, Borrow," said Westlake, stretching down his hand for a last clasp of his friend's.

"Yes, we shall. Why not, if we both wish it? Say good-bye for me to the little Fanny," the Doctor added, gayly.

Westlake brightened with the one pleasant thought connected with his home, and, under its influence, set forward.

The Doctor stood looking after him with a friendly, contented air. He was pleased with himself for having spoken his mind out, and with Westlake for having heard it. But when he turned and met Harry's happy, affectionate look, his face clouded. He passed us and walked on fast. When we came into the house, he was seated in the arm-chair, looking straight before him. Harry went and stood beside him, waiting for him to give sign that all was right between them again by opening a new conversation.

The Doctor did not hold out long. "I have told, or as good as told, my old friend," he began, with rather a sour smile, "that he is suffering himself to be infected by the meannesses of those below him; and now I am almost ready to tell myself that my grave years are giving into the fanaticisms of boyhood. But I stand where I did, Harry. I stand precisely where I did. I have always told[Pg 258] you that I hate slavery as much as you do. The only difference between us is, that I am not for justice though the heavens fall."

"Justice, and the heavens will not fall," Harry answered, firmly, but with a tender deference in look and tone.

"And you make too much account of a name," the Doctor went on. "What does it signify that men are called slaves and slaveholders, if, in their mutual relations, they observe the laws of justice and kindness? You will not deny that this is possible? I object to slavery, as it exists, because it too often places almost absolute power in unqualified hands. But you are too sweeping. Good men are good masters. I should count Harvey among such. Colvil has given you a portrait you will accept in Shaler, who was as good a man when he was a slaveholder as he is now. Cicero, a slaveholder,—and Roman slaveholders have not the best repute,—writing upon justice, does not put the slave beyond its pale; he recognizes his humanity and its rights. Will you suppose that we have not American slaveholders as Christian as Cicero?"

"We will not dispute to-night, Harry. I am not altogether insensible to the interests of the world, but I have some regard for yours. Perhaps[Pg 259] I should take less thought for them, if there were hope that you would take any. At any rate, we will not dispute to-night."

Harry, at least, was in no mood for disputing. He was very happy. He had a gayety of manner I had hardly seen in him. The Doctor soon fell into tune with it, and reconciled himself to the pleasure he had caused.

The Friday came. We had made our last evening a long one, but we were up early on the last morning. Harry and I had our walk together. Coming back, we found the Doctor under Keith's Pine, busy making up his dried grasses and flowers into little compact packages. We sat down there with him as usual. I read aloud. My reading gave us matter of discussion on the way home.

After breakfast, Hans, Karl, and Fritz came up to the house. Good Friday we always keep alone with our own family; but these three are of it, though they are lodged under a different roof. I read part of a sermon of South's:—"For the transgression of my people was he stricken."

How real seemed to me, that morning, the sacred story! I had hitherto contemplated the Christ in his divine being, looking up to him from a reverent distance. Now he seemed suddenly brought near to me in his human nature. I felt that our earth had, indeed, once owned him. And then how vivid the sense of loss and waste,—a beautiful and beneficent life cut short by violence! "Dying, not like a lamp that for want of oil can burn no longer, but like a torch in its full flame blown out by the breath of a north wind!"

Everything that I read with Harry, or that I talk over with him, has new meaning for me, or a new force.

Why are we so careful to avoid pain? If it was a necessary part of the highest mortal experience, how can we ask that it may be left out from ours? And yet, on every new occasion, we strive to put from us the offered cross. Even while we say, "Thy will be done!" an inward hope entreats that will to be merciful. Such remonstrances with myself rose in me as I read. They did not prevent me from feeling a thrill of dread as this warning passed over my lips:—"Who shall say how soon God may draw us from our easy speculations and theories of suffering, to the practical experience of it? Who can tell how soon we may be called to the fiery trial?" I turned involuntarily to Harry. He, too, had heard a summons in these words. I read in his eyes the answer that came from his steady breast,—"My Father, I am here!" I felt my spirit lifted with the closing words,—"If we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him"; but there was no change in Harry's clear, prepared look. I have never known a faith so implicit as his. He does not ask after threats or promises; he only listens for commands.

When the services were over, Hans came forward to say good-bye to the Doctor and Harry. He[Pg 262] took a hand of each, and stood looking from one to the other.

"We cannot spare you, Harry Dudley. We shall miss you, Doctor. Harry, when you are ready to set up your farm, come and take a look round you here again. We are good people, and love you. There will be land near in the market before long. Sooner should you have it than old Rasey. Think of it; we can talk things over, evenings."

"You shall have your turn," he said to his boys, who were waiting, one on either side of him. "I am an old man, and leave-taking comes hard. Youth has many chances more."

He gave his benediction, repeated a little rhyming German couplet,—a charm, perhaps, for a good journey,—and then turned away sturdily, went slowly out of the door and down the steps, leaving Karl and Fritz to say their words of farewell. Karl spoke for both. What Fritz had in his heart to say he could not utter, for the tears would have come with it.

At a quarter before twelve Harry brought down the russet knapsack,—brought down the little flower-press,—brought down the long umbrella.

He transferred from the over-full knapsack to his own some packages of flowers. The flower-press would not enter either knapsack. The Doctor had[Pg 263] it strapped on outside his. I watched these little arrangements, glad of the time they took. Harry helped the Doctor on with his pack. I would have done the same for Harry, but he was too quick for me. I adjusted the strap from which the green tin case hung, that I might do something for him.

Doctor Borrow took a serious leave of my mother,—for this, at least, was a final one. But Harry would not have it so. The tears were gathering in her eyes. "You will see us again," he said, confidently.

The Doctor shook his head. "You have made us too happy here for us not to wish that it might be so."

They looked round for Tabitha. She appeared from my mother's room, the door of which had been a little open. Both thanked her cordially for her kind cares. She gave them her good wishes, affectionately and solemnly, and disappeared again.

"Only till the nineteenth," said Harry, clasping it as soon as the Doctor relinquished it. "Till the eighteenth," I mean; "till the eighteenth," he repeated, urgently.

The Doctor mounted the blue spectacles. This[Pg 264] was the last act of preparation. The minute-hand was close upon the appointed moment.

At the first stroke of twelve, they were on their way. I followed, slowly, as if the reluctance of my steps could hold back theirs. The gate closed behind them. The Doctor took at once his travelling gait and trudged straight on; but Harry turned and gave a glance to the house, to the barn, to the little patch of flowers,—to all the objects with which the week had made him familiar. Then his look fell upon me, who was waiting for it. He searched my face intently for an instant, and then, with a smile which made light of all but happy presentiments, waved me adieu, and hastened on to overtake the Doctor.

I was glad it was not a working-day,—glad that I could go in and sit down by my mother, to talk over with her, or, silent, to think over with her, the scenes which had animated our little room, and which were still to animate it. Harry's parting look stayed with me. I felt all my gain, and had no more sense of loss. Can we ever really lose what we have ever really possessed?

I have been over to Blanty's. I should have gone yesterday, but it rained heavily from early[Pg 265] morning until after dark. Such days I consider yours. I had been anxious about Blanty since Sunday, and not altogether without reason. He has had a threatening of fever. I hope it will prove a false alarm. I found him sitting at his door, already better,—but still a good deal cast down, for he was never ill in his life before. He had been wishing for me, and would have sent to me, if I had not gone. He could hardly let me come away, but pressed me to stay one hour longer, one half hour, one quarter. But I had some things to attend to at home, and, as he did not really need me, I bade him good-bye resolutely, promising to go to him again next Monday. I cannot well go sooner.

If I had stayed, I should have missed a visit from Frederic Harvey. When I came within sight of our gate, on the way back, a horseman was waiting at it, looking up the road, as if watching for me. He darted forward, on my appearance,—stopped short, when close beside me,—dismounted, and greeted me with a warmth which I blamed myself for finding it hard to return. He did not blame me, apparently. Perhaps he ascribes the want he may feel in my manner to New-England reserve; or perhaps he feels no want. He is so assured of the value of his regard, that he takes full reciprocity for granted. The docile horse, at a sign, turned and[Pg 266] walked along beside us to the gate, followed us along the path to the house, and took his quiet stand before the door when we went in.

Frederic Harvey, having paid his respects to my mother, seated himself in the great arm-chair, which now seems to be always claiming the Doctor, and which this new, slender occupant filled very inadequately.

"I stayed in New York three weeks too long," he exclaimed, after looking about him a little—for traces of Harry, it seemed. "Time goes so fast there! But I thought, from one of my sister's letters, that Dudley was to go back to World's End after he left you. Is he changed? Oh, but you cannot tell. You never knew him till now. I need not have asked, at any rate. He is not one to change. While I knew him, he was only more himself with every year."

"Yes; but what are two years to men who were children together? We shall take things up just where we laid them down. Ours is the older friendship. I shall always have the advantage of you there. But you and he must have got along very well together. Your notions agree with his better than mine do. It does not matter. Friendship goes by fate, I believe. He may hold what opinions he likes, for me; and so may you."

"I believe that on some important subjects my opinions differ very much from yours."—I am determined to stand square with Frederic Harvey.

"In regard to our institutions, you mean? I know, that, spoken or unspoken, hatred of them is carried in the heart of every New-Englander. It is sometimes suppressed through politeness or from interest, but I never saw a Northerner who was good for anything, in whom it did not break out on the first provocation. I like as well to have it fairly understood in the outset. I have had a letter from Harry in answer to one of mine. It is explicit on this point."

I had no doubt it was very explicit. Frederic's eye meeting mine, he caught my thought, and we had a good laugh together, which made us better friends.

"The Northerners are brought up in their set of prejudices, as we in ours. I can judge of the force of theirs by that of my own. I only wish there was the same unanimity among us. We are a house divided against itself."

And Frederic's face darkened,—perhaps with the recollection of the rupture of old ties in Shaler's case,—or rather, as it seemed, with the rankling of some later, nearer pain. He turned quickly away from the intrusive thought, whatever it was. He does not like the unpleasant side of things.

"At any rate, because Harry Dudley and I are to be adverse, it does not follow that we are to be estranged. I cannot forget our school-days,—our walks on the boulevards and the quays,—our rides in the Bois,—our journeys together, when we were like brothers. I was never so happy as in those days, when I had not a care or a duty in the world."

He had the air, with his twenty-one years, of a weary man-of-the-world. There was no affectation in it. Unless report have done him injustice, the last two years have put a gulf between him and that time.

I reminded him of the conversation between him and his sister, in which they spoke of Harry Dudley before I knew who Harry Dudley was. He remembered it, and returned very readily to the subject of it. He related many incidents of the tour in Brittany, and spoke warmly of the pleasure of travelling with a companion who is alive to everything of interest in every sort. He said his travels in Germany, and even in Italy, had hardly left with him so lively and enduring impressions as this little journey into Brittany; for there he had gone to the heart of things.

"I must see him again. We must meet once more as we used to meet. We must have one good clasp of the hand; we must, at least, say a kind good-bye to the old friendship. If, hereafter,[Pg 269] we find ourselves opposed in public life, I shall deal him the worst I can, but with openness and loyalty like his own, and doing him more justice in my heart, perhaps, than he will do me."

Frederic Harvey inquired anxiously where Harry was to be found, and I was obliged to tell him of our intended meeting. I was afraid he would propose to go with me. He was on the point of doing so, but refrained, seeing that I was not expecting such a suggestion.

We could easily have arranged to meet at Quickster, which is about the same distance from him that it is from me. But a ride of twenty miles, most of them slow ones, beside a man with whom you are not in full sympathy, is a trial. I did not feel called upon to undergo it for him. When he took leave of me, he again seemed about to propose something, and I felt it was this plan which was so natural; but he was again withheld, by pride or by delicacy. Either feeling I could sympathize with, and I was more touched by this reserve than by all his friendly advances; but I hardened my heart. He mounted his horse. I saw him go slowly down the path to the road, stoop from the saddle to open the gate,—pass out. And then I was seized with sudden compunction. I heard the slow step of his horse, receding as if reluctantly, and ready to be checked at a hint. I ran to the gate.[Pg 270] Frederic was just turning away, as if he had been looking back, expecting to see me; but in the same instant he gave an intimation to his horse, and was out of the reach of my repentance.

"I liked him." With Harry these words mean a great deal. Could Harry ever have liked him, if he had not been worthy to be liked? How sad his look was, when he spoke of his happy boyish days!—happier than these only because they were blameless. Was not this regret itself an earnest of the power of return? He had good blood in him. He is Charles Shaler's cousin. He has a weak, shallow mother,—a father whose good qualities and whose faults are overlaid with the same worldly varnish impartially. He feels the need of other influences, and clings to Harry. He comes to me instinctively seeking something he has not in his home. My mother has always judged him more kindly than I have. If he had been a poor outcast child, I should have felt his coming to me so frankly and so persistently to be a sign I was to do something for him. Is there a greater need than that of sympathy and honest counsel? I have been selfish, but this pain is punishment enough. I feel a remorse surely out of proportion to my sin. I do not prevent his going to meet Harry by not asking him to go with me. He is not one to give up his wish; and in this case there is no reason that he should.[Pg 271] He will arrive; I am sure of it. And I will atone, at least in part. I will ask him to join me on the ride home.

Old Jasper has told me stories of Frederic Harvey's good-heartedness in childhood: tells them to me, indeed, every time he sees me. I remember one in particular, of the pretty little boy in his foreign dress, and speaking his foreign language, carrying his own breakfast one morning to the cabin where the old man lay sick; and another of his taking away part of her load from a feeble woman; and another of his falling on a driver and wresting from him the whip with which he was lashing a fainting boy. But Jasper has only these early stories to tell of him; and what different ones are current now!

In dear old New England the child is father of the man. There the lovely infancy is the sure promise of the noble maturity. But where justice is illegal! where mercy is a criminal indulgence! where youth is disciplined to selfishness, and the man's first duty is to deny himself his virtues! If the nephew of Augustus had lived, would he indeed have been Marcellus? Heu pietas! Heu prisca fides!—these might have been mourned, though Octavia had not wept her son.

It is thirty-five miles to Omocqua by the common road through Metapora and Tenpinville; but I shall save myself five, going across fields and through wood-paths, and coming out at Quickster. You left the Omocqua road there, and took that to Quarleston. I shall stop half an hour at Quickster to rest my horse and have a little talk with Barton. I mean to allow myself ample time for the journey, that Brownie may take it easily and yet bring me to Omocqua in season for a stroll about the neighborhood with the Doctor and Harry before nightfall. Some miles of my way are difficult with tree-stumps and brush; a part of it is sandy; the last third is hilly. I have never been farther on that road than Ossian, about three miles beyond Quickster; but the country between Ossian and Omocqua is, I know, very much like that between Quarleston and Cyclops, which you found so beautiful and so tiresome.

I do not mean that my parting with Harry shall be a sad one. After that day at Omocqua, I shall not meet his smile,—his hand will not clasp mine again; but he will leave with me something of himself which will not go from me. His courage,[Pg 273] the energy of his straightforward will, shall still nerve and brace me, though his cordial voice may never again convey their influence to my heart. Wherever he is, I shall know we are thinking, feeling together, and working together; for I shall surely do what he asks of me: that he thinks it worth doing is enough.

And Dr. Borrow does not leave me what he found me. It was with a continual surprise that I learned how much there is of interest and variety in our uniform neighborhood for a man who knows the meaning of what he sees. How many things are full of suggestion now that were mute before! He has given me glimpses of undreamed-of pleasures. A practical man, following him in his walks, and gathering up the hints he lets fall, might turn them to great real use.

What a part the Doctor and such as he, disciples and interpreters of Nature, would have in the world, how warmly they would be welcomed everywhere, if these were only times in which men could live as they were meant to live, happy and diligent, cherishing Earth and adorning her, receiving her daily needful gifts, and from time to time coming upon precious ones, which she, fond and wise mother, has kept back for the surprise of some hour of minuter search or bolder divination!

But now, how can we be at ease to enjoy our[Pg 274] own lot, however pleasantly it may have been cast for us, or to occupy ourselves with material cares or works, even the most worthy and the most rational?

Dr. Borrow says that Harry is out of place in our time. I should rather say that it is he himself who is here a century, or perhaps only a half-century, too soon. Our first need now is of men clear-sighted to moral truths, and intrepid to announce and maintain them.

It was through the consciousness, not yet lost, of eternal principles, that primitive poetry made Themis the mother of the gracious Hours,—those beneficent guardians, bringers of good gifts, promoters and rewarders of man's happy labor. When Justice returns to make her reign on earth, with her come back her lovely daughters, and all the beautiful attendant train.

When that time arrives, the Doctor will have found his place, and Harry will not have lost his.

Perhaps I shall not come back until Saturday. According to their plan, Dr. Borrow and Harry are to leave Omocqua again to-morrow afternoon; but I shall try to persuade them to remain until the[Pg 275] next morning. While they stay, I shall stay. When they go, Brownie and I take our homeward road. In any case, I will write to you Friday night, and send off my budget on Saturday without fail.

To-day has not given me anything to tell of it yet, except that it has opened as it should, fresh and cloudless. In five hours I shall be on the road.

My paper is blistered and the writing blurred with wet drops. It is only that some freshly gathered flowers on my table have let fall their dew upon the page. You, with the trace of mysticism that lurks in your man of the world's heart, would be drawing unfavorable auguries. I am too happy to accept any to-day. If fancy will sport with this accident, let it feign that these morning tears are of sympathy, but not of compassion; that they fall, not to dim my hopes, but to hallow them.

"In five hours I shall be on the road." So I wrote at six o'clock. I wrote too confidently.

At eleven I had mounted my horse, had sent my last good-bye through the open window, and had caught the last soft answer from within. I lingered[Pg 276] yet an instant, held by those links of tenderness and solicitude that bind to home and make the moment of parting for any unusual absence, even though a pleasant and desired one, a moment of effort. A heavy, dragging step, which I almost knew before I saw the lounging figure of Phil Phinn, warned me of a different delay. I watched his slow approach with a resignation which had still a little hope in it; but when he at last stood beside me and began his ingratiating preamble, I felt my sentence confirmed. His woe-begone face, his quivering voice, announced the suppliant before he reached the recital of his wrongs; while the utter self-abandonment of his attitude conveyed renunciation of all cares and responsibilities in favor of his elected patron. I will not give you the details of the difficulty of to-day,—an absurd and paltry one, yet capable of serious consequences to him. I obeyed instinctively the old-fashioned New-England principle I was brought up in, which requires us to postpone the desire of the moment to its demands. Sadly I led my horse to the stable, took off the saddle and put him up. "I cannot be back until two," I thought, "perhaps not before three. I shall lose our walk and our sunset; but even if it is as late as four, I will still go." I ran into the house to say a word of explanation to my mother; but she had heard and understood. She gave me a look of sympathy, and I did not wait for more.

I set out resolutely in a direction opposite to that in which my own road lay. Phil Phinn followed, already raised to complacency, though not to energy. I outwalked him continually, and was obliged to stop and wait for him to come up. He plainly thought my haste unseasonable, and did not disguise that he was incommoded by the sun and the mud. It was a tedious way, a long five miles for him and for me.

We arrived at last at the house of his adversary, who, having, besides the advantage of being in a superior position, also that of justice on his side, could the more easily give way. I should soon have come to an understanding with him, if my client, while leaving me the whole responsibility of his case, had not found himself unable to resign its management: he must lend me the aid of his argumentative and persuasive gifts. After some hours of wrangling and pleading, the matter was accommodated, and Phil Phinn, without a care in the world, or the apprehension of ever having one again, sauntered away toward his home. I set off for mine, already doubtful of myself, remembering that I was not the only disappointed one.

When I reached home, it was half-past six o'clock. I felt strongly impelled to go, even then. My mother did not offer any objection, but her look showed so plainly the anxiety the thought of a[Pg 278] night-ride caused her, that I gave it up without a word. I could not, indeed, have arrived at Omocqua before midnight, and Harry would long have done expecting me.

I am not as well satisfied with myself as I ought to be, having made such a sacrifice to duty. I begin to ask myself, Was it made to duty? After all, a little suspense would have done Phil Phinn good,—if anything can do him good. And are not the claims of friendship paramount to all other? Harry will be pained by needless anxiety. Can he believe that I would, without grave cause, lose any of the time we might yet have together? But a few hours will set all right.

I am at home again. I take out the package which has been waiting for the day at Omocqua. Hoarding is always imprudence. If these letters of last week had gone on their day, they would have been faithful messengers. Now they go to tell you of a happiness which already is not mine,—of hopes and plans that you can never share.

Are these last pages yesterday's? A lifetime is between me and them. The book I pushed aside to write them lies there open, waiting to be recalled. Had it an interest for me only yesterday? The flowers on my table still hold their frail, transient beauty. No longer ago than when I gathered them, I could take pleasure in flowers!

I sit here and go through the history of these last two days, retracing every minutest incident. I begin again. I make some one little circumstance different, and with it all is changed. I pass into a happy dream; I find myself smiling. And then I remember that I cannot smile!

I was to write to you to-night. I should have written, if I had not promised. I must spend these hours with you. Every object here is so full of[Pg 280] pain! Everything is so exactly as it was; and yet nothing can ever be as it was to me again!

It seemed last evening that I suffered more from my disappointment than was reasonable. I wished for sleep to shorten the hours of waiting. But troubled dreams lengthened them instead. I was up at three; at four I was on the road. I had an hour over fields and cleared land; then came some miles through the woods. The forest-ride had not its usual charm. I was still haunted by the failure of yesterday. I could not bear the thought of being misjudged by Harry, even for a moment. I longed to be with him and explain. But would he find me absolved? I was glad to come out into light and cheerfulness at Quickster. It was six o'clock when I stood before the door of the Rapid Run. Barton came down to me, drew out his pocket-book, and took from it a folded paper.

I opened it and found written in pencil,—"Jackson House, Omocqua." The sight of that frank handwriting dispelled every doubt.

"He came in a little before one yesterday. He asked if you had been along. I thought not; you would have given me a call. He stayed round here about an hour, waiting for you. I told him[Pg 281] that you might have struck the road farther down,—at Ossian, perhaps. He took a horse of me, knowing you would ride."

"Yes. He told me Dr. Borrow was at Rentree; was to join him at Omocqua this morning, though."

In half an hour we were on our way again. I was eager still, but no longer impatient. There was no uncertainty in my mind now. Harry was at Omocqua. He was expecting me. As to blaming me, he had never thought of it. He would have imagined for me some better excuse than I had to give. Or rather, it had never occurred to him that I could need excuse. I should find him at the door on the lookout for me. His hand would be in mine before I could dismount. In the mean while the miles between us diminished rapidly. My horse enjoyed, as I did, every step of the happy road. His prompt, elastic tread showed it, and the alert ears which seemed not watchful against danger, but vigilant to catch all the sweet and animating sounds that cheered us forward.

Three miles from Quickster we came on the intended town of Ossian. I stopped a moment. Harry had probably lingered here yesterday, watching to see me emerge from that dusky wood-path. He had found no one to speak to. One inhabitant[Pg 282] outstayed the rest a year; but he has now been long gone, and his house is falling in.

Beyond Ossian the road was new to me. For about three miles it is good. Then the country becomes uneven, and soon after very hilly. It was slower work here; but Brownie and I took it pleasantly.

"How far is it to Omocqua?" I asked, as he was passing me, a man whom I had watched painfully descending in his little wagon the hill I was about to climb.

"Omocqua? You are for Omocqua? An hour, or a little more; though I am a good hour and a half from there. They had something of a fuss down there last night, perhaps you know."

"Well, a man from Tenpinville met a runaway boy of his who had been hiding round there. The fellow ran; his master hailed him, and when he wouldn't stop, out with a pistol and shot him flat."

"If I heard, I've lost it. I put up just outside the town. If I'd gone in to hear the talk, I might have got mixed up; and I'd no call."

The hour was a long one. I hardly wished it shorter, yet I tried to hasten. I urged my horse; but mastery is of the spirit, not of the hand or will.[Pg 283] He had obeyed so well the unconscious impulse! and now, though he started forward under the spur of an inciting word, he soon forgot it, and mounted the slow hills and descended them again with drudging step and listless ears.

What a meeting! what a topic for the nineteenth of April! I imagined Harry's grief, his shame, his concentrated indignation. I remembered the flash of his eye, the flush of his cheek, when Dr. Borrow was telling of the approach of the slave-coffle from which they had rescued Orphy. And with this a keen apprehension seized me. Would Harry have been able to repress his remonstrance, his reprobation? The common man I had just met had not trusted the acquired prudence of half a century. Could Harry's warm young heart contain itself?

Why was I not there? A warning, a restraining word——. But would Harry have heard it? Could I have spoken it? Would he not have felt, must not I have felt with him, that this was one of those moments when to see wrong done without protesting is to share in it? And then rose before me the possible scenes:—the beautiful, glowing face, the noble, passionate words, the tumult, the clamor, the scoff, the threat, the—— Oh, no! surely the angels would have had charge concerning him!

When we reached the summit of the last hill, my horse stopped of himself, as if to let me receive well into my mind the first lovely aspect of the town below us, and thus connect a charm with its name which nearer knowledge should not be able to disturb.

I yielded to the influence of the scene the more easily that it was in such contrast with my perturbed feelings. We may court and cherish a fanciful or a superficial grief; but the bitterly tormented mind asks ease as the tortured body does, and takes eagerly the soothing draught from any hand. The landscape, still freshened by the night, and already brilliant with the day, spoke peace and hope. I accepted the promise. Descending the hill, I thought and reasoned cheerfully. I smiled that I should have fancied nothing could happen in Omocqua, when Harry was there, without his having a part in it. This took place last evening; he had not heard of it yet, perhaps. Or he had heard of it; but not until it was over, and there was nothing to be done. He was commonly silent under strong emotion. He would have heard this story as he had heard others of the sort, with resolved composure, finding in it new food for his inward purpose.

On the outskirts of the town I came to a little tavern, the one probably at which my acquaintance[Pg 285] of the road had lodged. I had almost stopped to ask the news, but thought better of it, and was going on, when a man sitting on a bench under a tree started up and ran after me, shouting. I stopped, and he came up out of breath.

I explained, that I was going to the Jackson House, where a friend was to meet me.

"The Jackson House! That's head-quarters for news, just now. All right. You looked as if you wanted to stop."

"I thought of stopping for a moment. I heard on the road that there had been some sort of disturbance in your town yesterday. Is all quiet now?"

"One of our waiters brought down such a story last night. They are sharp after news of their own. I told him 'twas wholesome, if it turned out so. But this morning it comes that it was the man who was running him off that was shot. You'll hear all about it at the Jackson. If you come back this way, stop and give me a word. I can't leave."

There were a number of men on the piazza of[Pg 286] the Jackson House. Most of them had the air of habitual loungers; a few were evidently travellers newly arrived. Not a figure that even from a distance I could take for Harry Dudley. Some trunks and valises were waiting to be carried in, but I saw nothing familiar. I recognized the landlord in a man who was leaning against a pillar, smoking. He did not come forward, or even raise his eyes, when I rode up. I bade him good-morning, addressing him by name. He came forward a little,—bowed in answer to my salutation, but did not speak.

Brompton did not reply. He threw out two or three puffs of smoke, then took the cigar from his lips and flung it from him. He looked serious, and, I thought, displeased. My misgivings returned. Had Harry incurred ill-will by some generous imprudence? Had he left the house, perhaps? Was the landlord afraid of being involved in his guest's discredit?

He came down the steps and stood close to me, laying a hand on my horse's neck and stroking down his mane.

"Mr. Colvil, I don't know that anybody is to[Pg 287] blame; but an accident has happened here. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you of it."

"You had some trouble in your town yesterday," I said; "can that in any way concern Mr. Dudley?"

"Mr. Dudley was here about a month ago. He had a sick boy with him, whom he left here, in a manner under my care. He was to have taken him away to-day. He arrived yesterday afternoon and asked me to send for the boy. I sent for him. Mr. Dudley was expecting you yesterday afternoon, and walked over to the Jefferson to see if there was any mistake.

"The boy was his. It was all regular. He had him of Ruffin, who never does anything unhandsome. I knew all about it. Ruffin was here with a lot of all sorts he had been picking up round the country. He told me to keep the boy pretty close while I had him in charge; and I boarded him outside the town, with an old granny, who didn't know but he was really in hiding. But it was all right.[Pg 288] He was a pet servant, spoiled till he grew saucy, and his master swapped him off,—but quietly, the family set so much by the boy. They were to think he'd been enticed away. But it must happen, that, exactly yesterday afternoon, one of the sons came riding up to this very house. He left his horse to the servant he brought with him; then comes up to the door and asks if Mr. Dudley is here; hears that he has walked out, and so walks out too. The first thing he meets, just out here on the square, is this boy, whom he had been fond of, and only over-kind to. The boy checks up, and then, like a fool, turns and runs. The young man calls to him to stop,—and then, to stop or he'd shoot. The boy only runs faster. Dudley was crossing the square, on his way back from the Jefferson, and came up at the moment. He told Orphy to stand still, and, stepping right between him and the levelled pistol, called to the other to hold on. But the man was so mad with rage at seeing his servant flout him and mind another, that he could not stop his hand. I was standing where you are now. I saw Dudley come up, with his even step, just as usual. I heard his voice, clear and cool. I did not look for mischief until I heard the crack of the pistol,—and there he was on the ground! I ran down to him. I was going to have him taken into the house, but he wanted to lie in the open air.[Pg 289] We carried him round to the green behind the barn. There was an army-surgeon here, on his way West. He did what he could, but said it was only a question of hours. Dudley knew it. He wanted to keep on till morning, thinking you might come. He lasted till after daybreak. Will you go to him?"

I followed Brompton into the house, along the entry, across the yard, through the great barn. A road led from a gate on a side-street to a shed. Before us, on the other side of the road, was a green field with one great tree. The grass under the tree was flattened.

"Yes, it was there," said Brompton. "He asked to be laid under that tree. The sun was just setting over there. When evening came, we wanted to take him to the house; but no. We let him have his will. It was natural he should want to see the sky while he could."

What struggles must have rent that strong young breast before the life was dislodged from it! How must the spirit which had known this earth only through innocent joys and sweet affections and lovely hopes,—how must it have clung to its dear mortal dwelling-place! how mourned its dividing ties! how claimed its work, unfinished, unbegun! This grief, this yearning, this reluctance would have[Pg 290] left their story on the cold immovable face. With these, bodily torture would have done its part to alter and impair! I followed my guide, foreboding that the dumb anguish in my heart was to be displaced by a fiercer pain.

There was no pain in his presence. In death, as in life, he kept his own gift of blessing. The holy light still lay on the brow; about the lips hovered a smile, last ethereal trace of the ascended spirit. My soul lifted itself to his. I understood the peace that passeth understanding.

I looked where Brompton was looking, and saw, seated near, on an overturned barrel, a figure which could be no other than that of Orphy. He sat impassive. Brompton's cruel words had not reached him. His misery was its own shield. His utter wretchedness precluded more. But he felt my look fixed upon him. He raised his eyes to me for a moment, then closed them again to shut himself in with his woe. And now his face quivered all over; his lips parted and closed rapidly,—not as forming articulate accents, but in the helpless forlornness that has no language in which to utter plaint or appeal. And yet on these trembling cheeks, about this inane mouth, still lingered some[Pg 291] of the soft, playful lines I remembered on the pretty, varying face of little Airy Harvey!

On the way from the house I was conscious that a step followed us, stopping when we stopped, and going on again when we did; but I had not given thought to it until now, when I perceived a timid movement behind me, and felt a light touch laid on my arm. I turned, and met a pair of mournful, pleading eyes.

The old man stretched one trembling hand toward the dead, while the other clasped my wrist.—"It was not meant! It was not meant!"

Jasper, searching my face, saw there what changed his look of entreaty into one of compassion. He stroked my sleeve soothingly with his poor shrunken fingers.—"And yet there never was anything but love between you! Oh, think there is a sorer heart than yours this day!"

"Gone."—It was Brompton who answered.—"Gone, I believe. He was here until all was over. He locked himself into a room up-stairs. Dudley sent for him many times the night through, in the[Pg 292] intervals of his pain. I took the messages to him. But he could neither bear to see the one he had killed, nor yet to go away, and have no chance of seeing him again. At daybreak Dudley got up, saying he had strength enough, and went as far as the barn on his way to the house. There the surgeon met him and led him back, pledging his word that the man should be brought, if it was by force. And it was almost by force, but he was brought. Dudley raised himself a little, when he came up, took his hand and clasped it close. 'Good-bye, Fred!'—in a pleasant voice, as if he were ready for a journey and must cheer up the friend he was to leave behind. And then he sank back, still holding the other's hand, and looking up at him with his kind eyes, not forgiving, but loving,—till the eyelids drooped and closed softly, and he passed into a quiet sleep. When we left him, he was breathing gently. We thought it was rest."

In those first moments I had left below my loss and my grief to follow the ascended; but now my human heart asked after the human friend.

On the rich, disordered hair were signs of the mortal agony: the soft, bright curls were loosened and dimmed. The pure forehead could not be[Pg 293] fairer than it was, yet the even, delicately finished eyebrows seemed more strongly marked. The brown eyelashes showed long and dark over the white cheek. The same noble serenity; the same gentle strength; only the resolute lines about the mouth were softened;—nothing now to resist or to dare!

Dr. Borrow would be here soon. I sat down on a block and waited. Dr. Borrow! I had thought his love for Harry tinctured with worldliness; but how honest and hearty it appeared to me now! I had loved in Harry Dudley what he was to be, what he was to do. Dr. Borrow had loved him for himself only, simply and sincerely. I remembered the Doctor's misgivings, his cautions to me. How negligently heard! Then it was only that he did not yet comprehend the high calling of the boy whom we equally loved. Now I almost felt as if I had a complicity in his fate,—as if the Doctor could demand account of me.

That Harry Dudley would give himself to a great cause had been my hope and faith; that he would spend himself on a chimera had been Doctor Borrow's dread. But which of us had looked forward to this utter waste? How reconcile it with Divine Omnipotence? with Supreme Justice? Was there not here frustration of a master-work? Was there not here a promise unfulfilled?

Careless footsteps and voices gave notice of the approach of men brought by curiosity. Seeing me, and judging me not one of themselves, they stop outside, confer a moment in lower tones, come in singly, look, and go out again.

Then new voices. A tall, stout man stalked heavily in. "And the boy was his own, after all," burst from him as he rejoined the others.

"The boy was not his own. He didn't buy him fairly to keep and work him. It was a sham sale. He meant to free him from the first, and the boy knew it. He was free by intention and in fact. He had all the mischief in him of a free negro."

"The man was a New-Englander, and saw it differently," answered the first voice.

"A man is not a fool because he is a New-Englander," replied the second. "I am from New England myself."

"I don't see much of the same about you. Are there more there like him or like you?"

"I tell you he has died as the fool dieth," the other answered sharply, coming carelessly in as he spoke. He was a mean-looking man, trimly dressed, in whom I could not but recognize the Yankee schoolmaster.

As he stooped down over the man he had contemned, some dormant inheritance of manhood revealed itself in his breast, some lingering trace of[Pg 295] richer blood stirred in his dull veins. He turned away, cast towards me a humble, deprecating look, and, still bending forward, went out on tiptoe.

Then, accompanied by a sweeping and a rustling, came a light step, but a decided, and, I felt, an indifferent one. A woman came in. She took account with imperious eyes of every object,—of me, of Orphy, of the coarse bench spread with hay, which served as bier,—and then walked confidently and coldly forward to the spectacle of death. When she had sight of the beautiful young face, she uttered a cry, then burst into passionate sobs, which she silenced as suddenly, turned, shook her fist at Orphy, and was gone.

"He asked for you," persisted Brompton, seeing that I did not rise. "He is in the same room he had when they were here together. He mistrusted something, or he had heard something; he said no word until he was there. Then he asked me what he had got to be told, and I told him."

I made a sign that I would go. Brompton left me with a look which showed that he knew what a part I had before me.

Dr. Borrow was not a patient man. He was ruffled by a slight contrariety. This unimagined grief, how was it to be borne? With what words[Pg 296] would he receive me? Would he even spare Harry Dudley himself, in the reproaches which his love would only make more bitter?

We three were to have met to-day. Was he the one to be wanting? he who was never wanting? He who had been the life, the joy, of those dearly remembered hours, was he to be the sorrow, the burden of these? I went to him again; again earth and its anxieties vanished from me. No, he would not be wanting to us.

When I touched the handle of the door, it was turned from the inside. Dr. Borrow seized my hand, clasping it, not in greeting, but like one who clings for succor. He searched my face with ardently questioning look, as if I might have brought him mercy or reprieve. He saw that I had not. A spasm passed over his face. His mouth opened to speak, with voiceless effort. He motioned me to lead where he was to go. We went down-stairs, and he followed me, as I had followed Brompton, along the entry, across the yard, through the barn. He glanced towards the tree and then took his way to the shed. I did not enter with him.

When he came back to me, he was very pale, but his expression was soft and tender as I had never known it. We went in again together, and stood there side by side.

Brompton spoke from without. "There is one thing I have not told you, Dr. Borrow."

The Doctor looked towards Orphy. Again I had almost wronged him in my thought. "Come, my lad," he said, kindly; "you and I must take care of him home."

Orphy left his place of watch. He came and stood close beside the Doctor, devoting his allegiance; tears gathered in the eyes that the soul looked through once more; the mouth retook its own pathetic smile.

I knew that Harry Dudley must lie in Massachusetts ground, but I could not look my last so soon. Dr. Borrow saw my intention and prevented it. He took my hand affectionately, yet as holding me from him.

"You have known him a few weeks. Think what I have lost,—the child, the boy, the man! All my hopes were in him,—I did not myself know how wholly!"

And beyond this anguish lay other, that he would have put off till its time, but it pressed forward.

On the side-street, the swift tread of horses and the roll of rapid wheels. A wagon stopped before the gate. What a joy Charles Shaler's coming was to have been to us!

He was prepared. He came forward erect and stern. He saluted us gravely in passing, went in and stood beside the bier. He remained gazing intently for a little time,—then, laying his hand lightly on the sacred forehead, raised his look to heaven. He came out composed as he had entered.

I had meant to combat the Doctor's desire that I should leave him,—not for my own sake, but because I thought he would need me; but I submitted now. Shaler would assume every care, and I saw that Dr. Borrow yielded himself up implicitly.

The moment came. We lifted him reverently, Orphy propping with his weak hands the arm that[Pg 299] had once lent him its strength. We carried him out into the sunshine he had loved, bright then as if it still shone for him. The wind ruffled the lifeless hair whose sparkling curls I had seen it caress so often.

It is over. Over with the last meeting, the last parting. Over with that career in which I was to have lived, oh, how much more than in my own! That brain cold! What vigorous thought, what generous enterprise benumbed within it! That heart still, whose beats should have stirred a nation's! The head for which I had dreamed so pure a glory has sunk uncrowned. The name dies away in space; not a whisper repeats it. Harry Dudley has passed from a world which will never know that it possessed and has lost him.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIFTEEN DAYS: AN EXTRACT FROM EDWARD COLVIL'S JOURNAL ***

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	Page
Good-Friday Evening, April 5, 1844	1
Saturday Evening, April 6, 1844	19
Sunday, April 7, 1844	44
Monday, April 8, 1844	81
Tuesday, April 9, 1844	91
Wednesday, April 10, 1844	103
Thursday, April 11, 1844	119
Friday, April 12, 1844	138
Saturday, April 13, 1844	150
Sunday Morning, April 14, 1844	172
Monday, April 15, 1844	190
Tuesday, April 16, 1844	213
Wednesday, April 17, 1844	260
Thursday, April 18, 1844	272
Friday Night, April 19	279

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fifteen Days: An Extract from Edward Colvil's Journal

FIFTEEN DAYS.

FIFTEEN DAYS—CONTENTS.

Transcriber's Note:

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