59 6 
 
 THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 497 
 
 among the others, as I fear I did last year, like a 
 newspaper dropped on a wood fire? 
 
 With all this in view, I intend to spend this 
 summer with the family, and also next winter, 
 unless I have some much more desirable position 
 than this one offered me. I am quite certain that 
 I shall be able to get on very nicely with them 
 this time. 
 
 I have a kind of presentiment that I have not 
 been able to convince you. You never have 
 approved of me when I did anything silly, — I did 
 
 not mean to write that word, but I scorn to 
 scratch it out, — what I mean is vacillating. To 
 conclude, I have made up my mind, and I hope 
 you can bring yourself to agree with me. 
 
 Always your friend, John Peterson Markoe. 
 
 Heinrich finished the letter and then 
 tore it into fragments. 
 
 " Fool ! " he muttered, stamping on 
 the floor so that the room shook. 
 
 THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 J&& 
 
 By Horace Graves. 
 
 HERE is a great difference 
 between the New Eng- 
 lander and the English- 
 man. That difference is 
 prjLJL.'v) not simply in dress, or 
 idiom, or accent. The pe- 
 culiarities on both sides are 
 deep - seated. They find 
 expression in figure and 
 countenance, and in physi- 
 cal and mental activity. The burly and 
 heavy build of the typical Englishman is 
 not in more pronounced contrast with the 
 slender and active form of the American, 
 than are his conservative mental opera- 
 tions with the alertness of his cisatlantic 
 kinsman. There is greater flexibility to 
 the Yankee intellect, more liberality gen- 
 erally, a larger hospitality toward men and 
 ideas that he has not been accustomed 
 to and familiar with. While the tem- 
 perament is livelier and more cheer- 
 ful, the physical coloring is darker and 
 warmer. The ruddy cheek and blue eye 
 of the Saxon are rarer among the New 
 Euglanders ; brown skin and dark eyes 
 predominate. 
 
 Lest this variance may seem fanciful 
 and overstated, let me call attention to 
 the observations of an author whose keen 
 observation none will question. Haw- 
 thorne, in his " English Note- Book," sets 
 forth in strong colors the characteristics 
 of the Englishmen who have remained at 
 home, and of those who are the product 
 of two or three centuries of life on this 
 side of the ocean. "We, in our dry 
 atmosphere," he wrote, in 1863, " are get- 
 
 ting nervous, haggard, dyspeptic, exten- 
 uated, unsubstantial, theoretic, and need 
 to be made grosser. John Bull, on the 
 other hand, has grown bulbous, long- 
 bodied, short-legged, heavy-witted, mate- 
 rial and, in a word, too intensely English. 
 In a few centuries, he will be the earthiest 
 creature that the earth ever saw." 
 
 This description surely cannot be criti- 
 cised for not being candid or explicit. 
 But when our American consul comes to 
 treat of the British woman, he seems to 
 have abandoned all pretence of gallantry 
 in his desire to depict her as she is. He 
 wrote : " I have heard a good deal of the 
 tenacity with which the English ladies 
 retain their personal beauty to a late 
 period of life; but (not to suggest that 
 an American eye needs use and cultiva- 
 tion before it can quite appreciate the 
 charm of English beauty at any age) it 
 strikes me that an English lady of fifty is 
 apt to become a creature less refined and 
 delicate, so far as her physique goes, than 
 anything that we western people class 
 under the name of woman. She has an 
 awful ponderosity of frame, not pulpy, 
 like the looser development of our few fat 
 women, but massive, with solid beef and 
 streaky tallow ; so that (though struggling 
 manfully against the idea) you inevitably 
 think of her as made up of steaks and 
 sirloins. When she walks, her advance 
 is elephantine. When she sits down it is 
 on a great round space of her Maker's 
 footstool, where she looks as if nothing 
 could ever move her. Her visage is un- 
 usually grim and stern, seldom positively 
 
498 
 
 THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 forbidding, yet calmly terrible, not merely 
 by its breadth and weight of feature, but 
 because it seems to express so much 
 well-founded self-reliance." 
 
 We find the grave Emerson making 
 substantially the same report in his 
 "English Traits." 
 
 While we hope that American women 
 have attained to something more spirit- 
 uelle than is possessed by the women 
 whom Hawthorne saw on the old soil, it 
 is interesting to notice that he attributed 
 the diversity solely to climate. It is a 
 serious responsibility that he places on 
 physical surroundings ; but the theory 
 seems hitherto to have been accepted as 
 sufficient. It is generally believed that 
 a clearer, sunnier air has browned the 
 race permanently, and begotten nervous- 
 ness of physical and mental constitution. 
 It is assumed that there could have been 
 no more powerful, and indeed no other 
 intervening cause. In support of this 
 conclusion, it is pointed out that the New 
 England colonists were purely and exclu- 
 sively English. Palfrey contends that the 
 population " continued to multiply for a 
 century and a half on its own soil, in 
 remarkable seclusion from other commu- 
 nities." John Fiske accepts Palfrey's 
 statement, and cites Savage as demon- 
 strating, after painstaking labors, that 
 ninety-eight out of every hundred of the 
 early settlers could trace their descent 
 directly to an English ancestry. These 
 authorities would leave us no alternative 
 but to conclude that climate alone must 
 have wrought the remarkable transforma- 
 tion of mind, character and body, through 
 which have been evolved and fixed the 
 idiosyncrasies of the New Englander. 
 
 If, however, climate has been the 
 potent cause of these changes, why did 
 not the modification give some evidence 
 of its advance in the first one hundred 
 years of colonial life ? On the contrary, 
 the portraits of the men who, in 1776, 
 contended for our rights on the battle 
 field and in the legislature show us 
 veritable Englishmen. Yet, in 1863, the 
 change had come about, and Hawthorne 
 found the two peoples radically different. 
 
 Climate is slower in its effects than this. 
 An Asiatic may live at the north pole for 
 a cycle of years, and still retain his hue, 
 
 his coarse black hair and coal-black eyes ; 
 not the faintest sign of bleaching betrays 
 its approach. No one imagines that 
 the negro would grow a shade lighter 
 under the glare of the perennial northern 
 whiteness, though he remained there for 
 countless generations, provided there 
 were no admixture of a lighter-hued race. 
 It is equally impossible that -the Yankee 
 could have been so greatly differentiated 
 from the Englishman in three or four 
 generations merely from exposure to a 
 climate but little unlike that of Great 
 Britain. 
 
 There was some excuse for the theory 
 of atmospheric influence before Darwin 
 passed on that question. His demonstra- 
 tion has destroyed the former notions. 
 The result of his exhaustive investigation 
 is thus summed up : " It was formerly 
 thought that the color of the skin and the 
 character of the hair were determined by 
 light or heat ; and, although it can hardly 
 be denied that some effect is thus pro- 
 duced, almost all observers now agree 
 that the effect has been very small 
 even after exposure during many ages." 
 At another point in the " Descent of 
 Man," the author says : " If, however, 
 we look to the races of men, as distrib- 
 uted over the world, we must infer 
 that their characteristic differences can- 
 not be accounted for by the direct 
 action of different conditions of life, 
 even after an exposure to them for 
 an enormous period of time." In the 
 same work, Darwin repeats : " Of all 
 the differences between the races of man, 
 the color of the skin is the most conspic- 
 uous and one of the most marked. Dif- 
 ferences of this kind, it was formerly 
 thought, could be accounted for by long 
 exposure under different climates ; but 
 Pallas first showed that this view is not 
 tenable, and he has been followed by 
 almost all anthropologists." That those 
 other respects in which we have deviated 
 from the earlier type cannot be attributed 
 to climate any more than can the com- 
 plexion, is manifest from the passage in 
 which Darwin writes that " Mr. B. A. 
 Gould endeavored to ascertain the nature 
 of the influences which thus act on 
 stature ; but he arrived only at negative 
 results, namely that they did not relate to 
 
THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 499 
 
 climate, the elevation of the land, soil, or 
 even, ' in any controlling degree,' to the 
 abundance or need of the comforts of 
 life." * 
 
 Thus the great philosopher hunts down 
 and despatches the loose theories which, 
 before his day, satisfied hasty generalizers 
 upon the causes of men's variations in 
 complexion, figure and stature. That the 
 difference of mental constitution was 
 brought about by a breeze more or less, 
 or a more or less plentiful sunshine, was 
 equally fallacious and unsubstantial. 
 
 But we have not far to seek that differ- 
 entiating cause, although it has so long 
 evaded detection. Had the result of re- 
 cent investigation been known to Haw- 
 thorne, he would undoubtedly have recog- 
 nized the influence, for he was close upon 
 its discovery. In commenting on the 
 heaviness of the English, he philosophizes 
 thus : " Heretofore, Providence has obvi- 
 ated such result by timely intermixture of 
 alien races with the old English stock; 
 so that each successive conquest of Eng- 
 land has proved a victory by revivification 
 and improvement of its native man- 
 hood." This change, then, or, if it be 
 not too strong a word, this^ transforma- 
 tion, of which we have spoken, must have 
 come from intermarriages between the 
 early English colonists and some race of 
 a slighter build, a less sombre disposition, 
 a more active mentality and an intenser 
 nature. There is no race which at once 
 combined proximity and the other requi- 
 sites of the problem, except the French ; 
 and in the French — slender, supple, 
 sinewy, cheerful, versatile, with their 
 clearness and quickness of mental vision 
 — were to be found every required ele- 
 ment. After Hawthorne's vigorous analy- 
 sis of the English, it is only justice to 
 permit Lavater to express his estimate of 
 the French ; for each author is pitiless in 
 his examination and extremely acrid in 
 statement. In his famous work on phys- 
 iognomy, the German Swiss says : " In 
 the temperament of nations, the French 
 is that of the sanguine, frivolous, benevo- 
 lent and ostentatious. The Frenchman 
 forgets not his inoffensive parade till old 
 age has made him wise. At all times 
 disposed to enjoy life, he is the best of 
 
 *" Descent of Man," Part I., chap, iv., p. no. 
 
 companions. He pardons himself much, 
 and therefore pardons others. His gait 
 is dancing, his speech without accent, 
 and his ear incurable. Wit is his inherit- 
 ance. His countenance is open and at 
 first sight speaks a thousand pleasant,, 
 amiable things. His eloquence is often 
 deafening ; but his good humor casts a 
 veil over his failings. He is all appear- 
 ance, all gesture." 
 
 This picture is drawn by the physiog- 
 nomist, who avowedly judges by what is 
 on the surface ; yet the qualities enumer- 
 ated are not objectionable, but rather de- 
 sirable when the end in view happens to 
 be the amelioration of the sombre grim- 
 ness of the English Puritan. Matthew 
 Arnold, moreover, in his graceful essay on 
 Eugenie de Guerin, has convinced us that 
 there is another element in France, not 
 frothy, but sincere and devout, without 
 which the nation could never have ex- 
 isted all these centuries. It was the 
 Frenchman of that class who produced 
 the effect we are talking of. How effectu- 
 ally it was accomplished is plain to every 
 American who visits the parent isle. It 
 remains to indicate when and where 
 there was a sufficient intermingling of 
 Frenchmen with the English colonists to 
 bring about such results. 
 
 To one who is in any degree familiar 
 with the story of our national growth, it 
 is unnecessary to mention the Huguenot 
 immigration as the movement through 
 which the transformation in the aspect 
 and nature of the English was brought 
 about. The extent of that movement 
 has not been appreciated, because the 
 French refugees came to New England 
 from motives so much like those which 
 brought the early settlers, that these 
 strangers did not, on arriving, exhibit the 
 strong contrast with their English prede- 
 cessors which appeared on the entry of 
 the French exiles into other parts of our 
 country. The Huguenots and the Puri- 
 tans had both suffered bitter persecution. 
 They had faced death from devotion to 
 the same religious principles. Moreover, 
 they were not strangers to one another ; 
 for when the little congregation from 
 Scrooby sought refuge in Holland, they 
 found Leyden full of Frenchmen who had 
 fled from their native country. For a 
 
500 
 
 THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 time both bodies of people were allowed 
 to worship in the same edifice, and both 
 were eagerly waiting the opportunity to 
 put the ocean between themselves and 
 their enemies. Yet, however great the 
 similarity in the relations of each party to 
 its old home, there was one particular in 
 which they differed radically. The Eng- 
 lish were fearful, above all things, lest 
 they should lose their "English name 
 and English tongue ; " but the French- 
 men were remarkably indifferent to their 
 native speech, and were ready, as soon as 
 possible, to translate their names into 
 equivalent Dutch or English, according to 
 the predominant population of the com- 
 munity in which they happened to be. 
 The English were enabled to be the 
 first to depart to the longed-for haven of 
 rest; and some of the Frenchmen, im- 
 patient to get away, threw in their lot 
 with those who have since been known 
 as the Pilgrim Fathers. The Huguenots 
 assimilated with their fellow voyagers so 
 unobtrusively that we have almost lost 
 sight of the fact that even the Plymouth 
 colony was not of pure and unmixed de- 
 scent. She whose name the poet has 
 culled from those early annals to adorn 
 his verse, the maiden Priscilla, is discov- 
 ered to be a Huguenot. The patronymic 
 Mullins would suggest a Hibernian 
 Frenchman ; but that is the fault of the 
 bungling tongue of the farmers from 
 Nottingham and York. Her father was 
 William Molines. It has always been a 
 source of wonder that an English girl 
 could have had the ready wit to give 
 John Alden " the tip " that released him 
 from his ambiguous wooing and herself 
 from the domination of the fierce little 
 captain. How blind we were to the Gal- 
 lic coquetry with which she held on to 
 Miles till she secured John ! She was a 
 worthy progenitor of the Yankee girl in 
 her ability to take care of herself. We 
 must blot out, then, from the historic 
 portrait the blue eyes and rosy cheeks of 
 the English maiden whom our fancy has 
 called up whenever we have thought of 
 Priscilla ; and we must paint in a slen- 
 der, graceful, black-haired brunette, with 
 brown-black velvet eyes and long sweep- 
 ing lashes, from under which were shot 
 such glances as melted the hearts of all 
 
 the colony ; and we must adorn the Puri- 
 tan garb with some dainty ribbon. Like 
 the Dutch tulips which she planted amid 
 the hollyhocks and lilacs, she blooms and 
 flashes in the garden of history, the more 
 fortunate sister of Evangeline. 
 
 What rich reward may we not expect 
 from researches in this field, when right 
 at the heart of the first effort to settle New 
 England is this revelation of the stealthy in- 
 troduction of the Huguenot to the hearth- 
 stone and into the very hearts of our an- 
 cestors ! After that, it cannot astonish us 
 to learn that several of the eminent men 
 of our early history were in some degree 
 of Huguenot descent. We have always 
 known that the mother of Alexander 
 Hamilton was a Huguenot. Perhaps we 
 might have guessed as much from his 
 character, since there appears in him all 
 the brilliancy of that nationality, with 
 the wonderful gift of crystal clearness of 
 thought and expression. Heredity, too, 
 many excuse some of his faults. Associ- 
 ated with Hamilton in establishing the 
 foundation of our national finances was 
 Albert Gallatin, whose name betrays a 
 Huguenot extraction. There, too, is the 
 illustrious record of John Jay and his 
 descendants, whose ancestor, Pierre Jay, 
 fled from La Rochelle to America. And 
 there are the Bayards, who have exhibited 
 in our country the qualities which made 
 the chevalier in his time the subject of 
 generous eulogy. 
 
 New England would spurn any sum- 
 mary of her history which omitted to 
 mention Faneuil Hall. The Faneuils 
 were from La Rochelle ; and Andre Fa- 
 neuil of Boston adopted Peter Faneuil, 
 the son of his brother Benjamin, who had 
 settled in New York. The family became 
 eminent as merchants almost as soon as 
 the hand of persecution was stayed from 
 harrying them. The thrift of the Prot- 
 estant French is proverbial. It found 
 speedy expression in commerce and in 
 devising new subjects of manufacture and 
 exportation. As they were the founders 
 of many British industries when they 
 settled in England, so they were most 
 efficient in developing the resources of 
 the new country.* But they were never 
 
 * Baird's " Emigration of the Huguenots to Americ»," 
 
 Vol. II., p. 20I. 
 
THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 501 
 
 so engrossed in trade that they allowed 
 their passion for civil and religious liberty 
 to expire or even smoulder. It was a 
 Huguenot, Paul Revere, who was the 
 trusted messenger of the Boston patriots 
 on the night before the conflict at Lex- 
 ington. 
 
 The race of the Huguenot has blos- 
 somed into genius in unexpected places, 
 and this not in the past only, for a recent 
 president of the United States, one of the 
 most gifted, — Garfield, — was a son of 
 the Huguenots ; his mother was a Ballou, a 
 name which has been made illustrious by 
 Hosea and Maturin. Our latest literature 
 has been adorned by the productions 
 of Thoreau, Lanier, Tourgee and Janvier, 
 all of them descendants of Protestant 
 French refugees. In fact, almost the 
 first notes of song in this country came 
 from a Huguenot, — Freneau. 
 
 When one bethinks himself of the 
 mark which has been made by men of 
 this extraction, the conviction is inevi- 
 table, either that this line of descent is 
 singularly and richly endowed, or that the 
 Huguenots were vastly more numerous 
 and have contributed more extensively to 
 the constitution of the American people 
 than is generally suspected. - 
 
 Although that claim might be readily 
 admitted in respect to other parts of our 
 country, there would be some hesitation 
 in conceding as much for New England. 
 Yet Palfrey is more than conservative 
 when he states, in his History of New 
 England, that at least one hundred and 
 fifty Huguenot families came to Massachu- 
 setts after the revocation of the edict of 
 Fontainebleau in 1685. He makes no ac- 
 count of those who were already here, nor 
 of those who did not come directly from 
 France, nor of those who kept coming 
 in small parties from time to time, even 
 down to 1776. Nor does he take account 
 of the number who have names that seem 
 to be English or Dutch, but which are 
 French translated, as in the case of some 
 of the Duboises, living in Leyden, who 
 allowed themselves to be called Van den 
 Bosch, and came to America under the 
 Dutch version of their patronymic. 
 Gerneau, in English mouths, became 
 Gano, and those who bore the name, 
 tiring of correcting habitual mispronun- 
 
 ciation, at last consented to speak and 
 write their name in the corrupted form. 
 Thus Erouard became Heroy, Bouquet 
 is now spelled Bockee, Tissau became 
 Tishew, Fleurri is anglicized into Florence, 
 Olivier has been confused with the 
 English Oliver, and Burpo was originally 
 Bonrepos. Nor was the assent to this 
 distortion due to ignorance on the part 
 of the Frenchmen ; for Bonrepos was a 
 learned pastor of the Huguenot church 
 in Boston, and the refugees were gener- 
 ally of the higher and cultivated classes 
 of their native land.* 
 
 Very early in the sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth centuries, the merchants of France 
 became familiar with the seaports of the 
 New England coast, \ and readily fled to 
 Salem and Boston when the time of peril 
 came. These emigrants, as has been 
 intimated, sometimes found shelter in 
 neighboring countries before coming to 
 America. The Channel Islands, Jersey 
 and Guernsey, were so filled with Protes- 
 tant exiles, that they utterly destroyed 
 the position which the Catholics had ob- 
 tained. As many as fifty ministers of the 
 reformed faith went to Jersey, \ whose 
 area is less than that of Staten Island ; 
 while migration to England and Switzer- 
 land was in large bodies. After a short 
 stay in the countries and islands near 
 to France, they abandoned all hope of 
 restoration to their native land, and began 
 to find their way in larger or smaller 
 groups to the wilds of America. 
 
 When the Cabots, the Lefavours, the 
 Beadles, the Valpys and Philip English 
 had established themselves in Salem, they 
 began to bring over their fellow country- 
 men^ • English, whose real name was 
 L'Anglois, became the owner of a large 
 number of ships and a great deal of other 
 property. He kept his accounts in 
 French, and corresponded in that lan- 
 guage with his relatives in Jersey. For a 
 long series of years he was in the habit 
 of importing young men to be apprenticed 
 as sailors, and young girls to be employed 
 as domestic servants. They were all of 
 
 * Baird's "Emigration to America," Vol. I., p. 181; 
 Vol. II., p. 233. 
 
 t Baird's " Huguenot Emigration to America," Vol. 
 II., p. 191. 
 
 % "Caesarea" by Philip Faille. 
 
 § " Proceedings of the Essex Institute," Vol. II., pp. 
 117, 143, 157 and 181. 
 
502 
 
 THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 Huguenot ancestry ; and their descend- 
 ants to-day disclose their French origin 
 in their personal appearance. Between 
 the Connecticut River and Massachusetts 
 Bay, young men of that line of ancestry 
 are by no means rare, with large brown 
 eyes, black hair and slender, graceful 
 figures, which proclaim them Frenchmen 
 in everything except speech ; and yet 
 their forefathers have been inhabitants of 
 eastern Massachusetts ever since the be- 
 ginning of the seventeenth century. In 
 a little seaport near Salem there are to 
 be found to-day at least fifty family names 
 which are distinctly French ; yet those 
 who bear them have never suspected that 
 they were of other than English descent. 
 
 One instance will illustrate how the 
 French were absorbed into the families 
 of the English colonists, and came to 
 bear English names. In a newspaper pub- 
 lished in Boston on the nineteenth day 
 of February, 1736, appeared the following 
 obituary notice : " On the first instant, 
 departed this life, at Providence, Mr. 
 Gabriel Bernon, in the 92 nd year of his 
 age. He was a gentleman by birth and 
 estate, born in Rochelle, in France ; and 
 about fifty years ago he left his native 
 country, and the greatest part of his es- 
 tate, and, for the cause of true religion, 
 fled into New England, where he has ever 
 since continued, and behaved himself as 
 a zealous Protestant professor. He was 
 courteous, honest and kind, and died in 
 great faith and hope in his Redeemer, 
 and assurance of Salvation ; and has left 
 a good name among his acquaintances. 
 He evidenced the power of Christianity 
 in his great sufferings, by leaving his 
 country and his great estate, that he 
 might worship God according to his con- 
 science. He has left three daughters 
 which he had by his first wife (a French 
 gentlewoman), one of which is the virtu- 
 ous wife of the Hon. William Coddington, 
 Esq. ; three daughters and a son by a 
 gentlewoman of New England, who be- 
 haved to him as a virtuous woman and 
 gave singular proof of a good wife ever 
 till his death." 
 
 Those six girls undoubtedly married, — 
 for old maids were not popular in " old 
 colony times ; " and though the family 
 name was lost, the genius of the Hugue- 
 
 nots was just as certainly transmitted to 
 succeeding generations. 
 
 How extended may have been this in- 
 fluence flowing into our national life may 
 be inferred from the fact that of the twen- 
 ty-five thousand or more English who 
 were to be found in New England toward 
 the middle or latter part of the seven- 
 teenth century, the descendants are 
 reckoned by Mr. Fiske at fifteen millions.* 
 To these few thousands of English, the 
 Huguenots, as admitted by Palfrey, made 
 an accession of one hundred and fifty 
 families, — which means nearly a thousand 
 persons, as families went then ; but after 
 this first flood had spent its strength, 
 nearly every ship from London, accord- 
 ing to Baird, for many years brought ad- 
 ditions to those who had come in the 
 mass.f The exodus from France contin- 
 ued, from 1666, for full fifty years; and 
 within that time at least a million French- 
 men were expatriated, and those the 
 flower of the nation. % Many at first sought 
 shelter in Holland ; great numbers in 
 every conceivable craft reached the shores 
 of England, barely escaping starvation and 
 shipwreck ; § and, as we have seen, the 
 neighboring islands of the English Chan- 
 nel were crowded with them. It is not 
 possible that less than four or five thou- 
 sand came to dwell in New England. 
 
 Even if the numbers were smaller than 
 is probable, we can heartily concur in Mr. 
 Fiske's opinion " of the population of 
 France driven away and added to the 
 Protestant population of northern Ger- 
 many and England and America. The 
 gain to these countries and the damage to 
 France," he says, "was far greater than 
 the mere figures would imply ; for in 
 determining the character of a commu- 
 nity, a hundred selected men and women 
 are far more potent than a thousand men 
 and women taken at random." || 
 
 That gain for New England is distinctly 
 revealed in the development of Yankee 
 enterprise along those very lines in which 
 it was started by French emigrees. But 
 these were also present in the requisite 
 
 * Fiske's " Beginnings of New England," p. 170. 
 
 t Baird's " The Huguenot Emigration to America/' 
 Vol. II., pp. 193, 196. 
 
 1 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. " Huguenots." 
 
 § Baird's " Huguenot Emigration to America/' Vol. 
 1 1.,' p. 188. 
 
 || Fiske's " Beginnings of New England," p. 161. 
 
THE HUGUENOT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 503 
 
 numbers ; and when the eye is once 
 trained and the ear attuned to detect the 
 names which indicate Huguenot ancestry, 
 it is astonishing how frequently they re- 
 veal themselves. If New Englanders are 
 closely questioned concerning their gen- 
 ealogy, there are very few who do not 
 confess to some trace of French blood, 
 though it be slight. This is peculiarly 
 true of the eastern half of Massachusetts. 
 In the northern parts of Vermont, New 
 Hampshire and Maine, the blond com- 
 plexion and unusual stature of the Eng- 
 lish still prevail. Yet that fact affects 
 our position very little ; for it was east- 
 ern Massachusetts that was held in view 
 by Hawthorne and the other American 
 authors who have been referred to. 
 After all, is it not Boston and its sur- 
 roundings that largely give character to 
 New England 5 Many of the inhabitants 
 of the three northern states appear to 
 be the unchanged Englishmen, as Motley 
 describes them in the report of the 
 Dutch Ambassador who saw the England 
 of Elizabeth's time. The English of 
 that period certainly had the head tones 
 and the Yankee twang which mark 
 rural New England speech even to this 
 day. 
 
 When the Huguenots contributed their 
 genial presence to our population, it was 
 like the influx of a gladdening river into 
 a thirsty land, carrying joy wherever it 
 goe;. At first, like all foreigners, they 
 were reserved, and marriages were con- 
 fined to their own nationality ; but there 
 is no instrumentality like our public 
 schools for breaking down national or 
 race prejudices, — and the second or 
 third generation found alliances that made 
 
 Americans of them all. How rapidly 
 nationalities merge in this country is seen 
 in a case that is not imaginary, of a young 
 man whose father was a Frenchman and 
 whose mother was an American of Eng- 
 lish descent. His wife's mother is an 
 Irishwoman, and her father a German. 
 Thus that marriage rolled four nationali- 
 ties into one within two generations. But 
 between the Huguenot and the Puritan 
 there was no stream to bridge over. They 
 had in their common Calvinism and love 
 of freedom a bond of sympathy and union 
 that brought them into harmony as soon 
 as their tongues had learned to speak a 
 common language. 
 
 It is evident that the absorption of the 
 Huguenots would occur more rapidly and 
 effectually after than before the Revolu- 
 tionary war, and would manifest itself 
 unmistakably during the first half of the 
 nineteenth century, the time when the 
 contrast between the New Englander and 
 the Old Englander made so strong an 
 impression on Hawthorne and Emerson. 
 The result is so noteworthy that it is mar- 
 vellous that we did not long ago recognize 
 the method of the brewing of that race of 
 men and the material which entered into 
 it. There is a substance known to chem- 
 istry as diastase, which is an active ele- 
 ment in the germination of every seed, 
 and which, on being sprinkled, never so 
 sparingly, over a great mass of the brewer's 
 cloudy, pasty " mash," clears it instantly 
 and leaves it a sweet, pure, transparent 
 liquid. Such an office might the intro- 
 duction of the Huguenot into New Eng- 
 land seem to have performed, in dissipat- 
 ing the heaviness and dogged prejudice 
 of our insular kinsmen. 
 
A POINT OF CONTACT. 
 
 By Annie Rothwell. 
 
 E ward 
 when 
 
 very quiet 
 night-nurse 
 
 gardens ; 
 stretched 
 
 was 
 
 the ~. 6 , 
 went on duty. Through 
 the three long windows 
 the breeze came cool 
 and soft from the lake 
 across the intervening 
 and over the sleeping waters 
 a shining ^rack of light from 
 the lately risen moon, looking to weary 
 eyes like a path to that heaven for which 
 yet more weary souls grew sick with 
 yearning. In the fourteen white pallets 
 there had been no change since the 
 morning, save that in one cot in a 
 screened recess by the window, which 
 had then been vacant, there was now an 
 occupant ; a dark head lay on the pillow, 
 and a large and strong but now nerve- 
 less hand moved restlessly to and fro 
 over the snowy spread. 
 
 " There's one new case," the day- 
 nurse had said as she surrendered her 
 charge ; " but he's not likely to trouble you 
 much. He should by rights have been 
 in the accident ward ; but number eight 
 there is very violent to-night ; and as this 
 man's only chance, if he has a chance at 
 all, is quiet, they have put him here. It's 
 doubtful if he lives till morning ; but if 
 not, the doctor says he'll probably sleep 
 away. There's not much to do for him 
 if he lives ; and if he dies, and you want 
 help, you're to call on Rose Gray, the 
 probationer in the next ward." 
 
 "What is it? who is he?" had whis- 
 pered the on-coming nurse. She was 
 out of her probation, had suffered much 
 and seen much suffering, but she had not 
 yet learned callousness in view of ap- 
 proaching death. 
 
 " Shot- wound," the other had returned. 
 " He's got no friends here. He's a 
 lumberman down from the shanties on a 
 spree. There was a drunken row in 
 some tavern down by the wharves, and 
 somebody's revolver came a little too 
 handy. He's struck in the lung, and the 
 
 501 
 
 ball's in yet, but they can't look for it till 
 daylight — maybe there'll be no need to 
 look for it then. What brutes they are, 
 those men in the shanties ! " she ended, 
 with a little shudder, half levity and half 
 simulated horror. 
 
 The smooth forehead of the night- 
 nurse contracted in a frown, and a quiver 
 stirred her lip. " Good night" was all 
 she said as she turned away. 
 
 The lights were low, and the room was 
 silent and cool. The nurse went the 
 round of her charges, mostly quiet now 
 in that first repose which early darkness 
 brings after a day of pain. She had as 
 yet no essential duties to perform ; but 
 she gave drink to one, smoothed the pil- 
 low of another, and laid a gentle hand on 
 the aching head of a third. Then she 
 studied the orders in the book that lay 
 under the shaded drop-light on the table, 
 where the added item read thus : — 
 
 " Number eleven. Wound not to be 
 touched. Medicine every second hour. 
 Stimulant if needful." 
 
 She sighed as she recognized the hope- 
 less meaning of the entry, and at last 
 approached the bed where number eleven 
 lay. He was not attractive to look on. 
 His head was swathed in a wet bandage, 
 and on his face the ghastly pallor of 
 mortality struggled with the brown scorch 
 of sun and wind. The face itself was of 
 a low type, with scanty brow, and a 
 mouth of coarse outline, which a rough 
 growth of beard but half concealed. 
 Toil and exposure, privation and dissipa- 
 tion had set their stamp upon him. He 
 did not look like one to whom virtue had 
 been a necessity, or high thought as 
 daily bread. 
 
 Perhaps the nurse was given to reflec- 
 tion. Perhaps her occupation had soft- 
 ened her heart. She stood long looking 
 thoughtfully down, in the dim light, on 
 the helpless form before her. Where 
 were now the strength and the subtlety 
 bespoken by the massive, powerful frame