LIBRARY OF CONGRESS ODQQEaOOElH lOtA ^. .^^-t.. . : .^o. :«» « / #»^ » K° .^^°««> ho lUMBS SWEPT UP T. DE WITT TALMAG EDITOR THE CHRISTIAN HERALD PUBLISHED BY THE CMRISTIAN HERA'i>D. me down through the neck into the shoulder, and through the right arm to the fingers, and off the finger- tips to the point of the pencil, it has lost its momentum, and languishes on the canvas; but a thought that starts from the brain, and streams to the heart, there to be taken with a strong throb, and as by the stroke of a piston, forced through the arm to the canvas, arrives unspent and redoubled. The old masters succeeded not in depicting what they thought so well as in what they felt. Thoughts are often hard, and green, and tough, till the warm sunshine of the heart ripens them. Most of the ancient artists tried their hand at the Virgin and the Child, always evidencing their own nationality in the style of infantile beauty selected. The Dutch school gives a Dutch child, the Roman school a Roman child, the Spanish school a Spanish child. Rubens's Christ was not born at Bethlehem, but at Ant- werp. And as parents are not apt to under- value their children, it is probable that they Power of a Child' s Face. 85 took the model which sat in their own nursery, gathering around it their own ideal of the infant Jesus. Francesco Tac- coni represents the Holy Child as very thoughtful, a young philosopher at one year of age, with very red hair. Vivarini gives us a startled child. Duccio paints for us a child wrapped up in admiration of its mother. But Lo Spagna gives us the look of a glad child that would romp if it were not afraid of jumping out of the pic- ture. Why not a glad child? The burdens had not yet rolled over on Him. Those were good days to Him. Joseph and Mary walked and trudged, but He always had a soft carriage to ride in — that of his mother's bosom. He had enough to wear, for He was wrapped in swaddling-clothes. He probably had enough to eat, for mothers in those days were not pinched to death with corsets, and so the child need not go outside of its mother's arms for abundant supply. But any pleasant afternoon when the children of our city are out taking an air- ing, I could find a score of infant faces more like Jesus than any I have seen on ancient canvas. Perhaps, after a while, an American artist will give us the Virgin and the Child. It would be more apt to be im- partial than that of any of the ancients. They put their own nationality into the pic- 86 Crumbs Swept Up. ture, and it was a German Christ, or a Venetian Christ, or a Tuscan Christ; but the American, having in him the blood of many lands, and in his face a commingling of the features of all nations, when he gives us upon canvas Mary and the Child, it will be a world's affection bending over a world's Christ. Not only in the Madonnas, but in nearly all the chief pictures, the painters show their liking for children. You see a child peeping out somewhere. If there is no other way to get him into the picture, Paul Veronese will slide him down in the shape of a cherub on a plank of sunbeams. You would hardly expect children in Raphael's 'Teter and John Healing the Lame Man." You expect that the majesty of the scene will crowd out all familiarities. You would say that children ought to get out of the way when such exciting work is going on. There lies a lame man, his hand in the hand of the apostle. The sufferer looks up with a face that has anguish scorched into every feature; for though born a cripple, he had never got used to it. No man that I ever saw before wanted so much to get well. His twisted foot no human doctor could straighten. The mus- cles that bound it on the wrong side might have been cut, but the muscles on the other side would not have drawn it back to the Power of a Child' s Face, 87 right place. There lay the helpless, dis- torted foot, making its dumb prayer. Yon- der is another deformed beggar hobbling up. If Peter is successful with the first case, this lame man would like to have his limbs looked at. Still, he is not anxious. He is angry with the world and angry with heaven. His manner seems to say, "How did God dare to make me thus?" The wretch had been kicked off of people's steps, and jeered at by the boys of the town, till he did not much care what became of him. A face full of everything hard, bitter, malicious. He is ready either to receive help at the hand of the apostle, or to strike him with the crutch. Does r^t much be- lieve there is any cure, does not much care. Has not heard a kind word for twenty- years, and would not be at all surprised if he v/ere howled away now. A foul face — even the hair on the chin curls with scorn. He has the fierceness of an adder, which, trod on, curls up to bite its pursuer. The distortion of the body has struck in and deformed the soul. You feel that your only safety in his presence is that he can- not walk. His figure haunts a man for days. It is a scene that puts the heart in a vise, and starts the cold sweat on the forehead, and holds you with a spell from which you are trying to break away, until you look 88 Crumbs Swept Up. just over the head of the vicious mendicant, and see the clear, innocent face of a child hushed in its mother's arms, and then look to the left, and see two round-limbed chil- dren bounding into the scene, wondering what is the matter. With their dimpled hands, they pull out the thorns of the pic- ture. It is a stubborn sea of trouble that will not divide when four baby feet go pad- dling in it. We are glad that Raphael did not choose for the picture cherubs with wings fastened at the backbone, ready any moment to fly away with them, but children that look as if they had come to stay. Rather thinly dressed, indeed, for cool w^ea- ther. Raphael's picture-children did not cost him much for clothes. You know it was a warm climate. Though a bachelor, Raphael knew the worth of children in a picture. With their little hands they open the inside door of the heart, and let us pass in, when other- wise we might have been kept standing on the cold steps, looking at the corbeils and caryatides of the outside architecture. It was a little maid that directed Naaman to Jordan for healing, and it is a child in the picture that shows the leper of harsh criti- cism where to wash his scales ofif. It is by the introduction of children into their paintings that Canaletto gives warmth to the ice-white castles of Venice, and Gains- The Old Clock. 89 borough simplicity to the hollowness of a watering-place, and Turner pathos to the "Decline of Carthage," and Ruysdale life to a dead landscape; and Giotto and Tacconi and Orcagna and Joshua Reynolds follow in the track of a boy's foot. "And a little child shall lead them." -)o(- THE OLD CLOCK. ''Going! Going!" said the auctioneer. "Is seven dollars all I hear bid for this old fam- ily clock. Going! Going! Gone! Who bought it?" We looked around, and found that a hard-visaged dealer in old furniture had become the possessor of the venerable time-piece. It was not like the clocks you turn out of a factory, fifty a day, unprin- cipled clocks that would as lief lie as tell the truth, and that stand on the shelf a- chuckle when they find that they have caused you to miss the train. But such a clock as stood in the hall of your father's house when you were a boy. No one ever thought of such a time-piece as having been manufactured, but took it for granted that it had been born in the ages past, and had come on down in the family from gen- eration to generation. The old clock in the auction room, which 90 Crumbs Swept Up. had been talking persistently for so long a time, said not a word. Its hands were be- fore its face, unable to hide its grief. It had lost all its friends, and in old age had been turned out on the world. Its fortunes, like its weights, had rmi down. Looking through its glasses, it seemed to say: ''Have I come to this? I have struck the hours, and now they come back to strike me!" It first took its place on the old home- stead about seventy years ago. Grand- father and grandmother had just been mar- ried. That was a part of their outfit. It called them to their first meal. There were the blue-edged dishes, and bone-handled knives, and homely fare, and an appetite sharpened on the woodpile, or by the snow- shoveling. As the clock told twelve of noon, the rugged pair, in homemade gar- ments, took their position at the table, and keeping time to the rattle of knives, and forks, and spoons, the clock went Tick — tock! Tick — tock! There were the shining tin pans on the shelf. There were the woollen mittens on the stand. There were the unpolished raf- ters over head. There was the spinning- wheel in the corner. There was the hot fire, over which the apples baked, till they had sagged down, brown, and sissing hot; and the saucepan, on the hearth, was get- The Old Clock. 91 ting up the steam, the milk just lifting the lid to look out, and sputtering with pas- sion, until with one sudden dash it streams into the fire, making the housewife rush with holder and tongs to the rescue. The flames leaped up around the back-log, and the kettle rattled with the steam, and jocund laughter bounded away, and the old clock looked on with benignant face, as much as to say: "Grand sport. Happy pair. Good times. Clocks sympathize. Tick — tock! Tick — tock!" One day, at a vendue, grandfather was seen, with somewhat confused face, bid- ding on a high chair and a cradle. As these newly-purchased articles came into the house, the old clock in its excitement struck five, when it ought to have sounded four, but the pendulum cried ''Order!" and everything came back to its former com- posure, save that, as a dash of sunshine struck the face of the clock, it seemed to say, ''Time-pieces are not fools! Clocks sound the march of generations. A time to be born, as well as a time to die. Tick — tock! Tick — tock!" A mischievous child trying to catch the pendulum: a crying child held up to be quieted while listening to the motion of the works: a curious child standing on a chair trying to put his fingers among the cogs to 92 Crumbs Swept Up. see what they are made of: a tired child, falling asleep in a cradle. Henceforth the clock has beautiful accompaniment. Old- time cradle with a mother's foot on it, going ''Rickety — rack! rickety — rack!" All infantile trouble crushed under the rocker. Clock singing, "I started before you were born." Cradle responding, ''That which I swing shall live after you are dead." Clock chanting, "I sound the passing of Time." Cradle answering, "I soothe an heir of Eternity." Music! cradle to clock, clock to cradle. More tender than harp, more stirring than huntsman's bugle. The old time-piece had kept account of the birthday of all the children. Eighteen times it had tolled the old year out, and rung the new year in, and fair Isabel was to be married. The sleighs crunched through the snow, till at the doorway with one sudden crash of music from the bells the horses halted, and the guests, shawled and tippeted, came in. The stamp of heavy boots in the hall knocked ofif the snow, and voices of neighborly good-cheer shook the dwelling. The white-haired minister stood mid-floor waiting for the hour to strike, when the clock gave a premonitory rumble to let them know it was going ofif, and then hammered eight. The blushing pair stepped into the room, and the long charge was given, and at the close a series The Old Clock. 93 of explosive greetings, no simpering touch of the Hps, but good, round, hearty demon- strations of affection into which people threw themselves before kissing was an art. The clock seemed to enjoy it all, and every moment had something to say: 'T stood here when she was born. I was the only one present at the courtship. I told the young man when it was time to go, although sometimes he minded me not, and I had to speak again. I ordered the com- mencement of ceremonies to-day. I will dismiss the group. Good luck to Isabel, and an honest eight-day clock to bless her wherever she may go. Tick — tock! Tick — tock!" After many years grandfather became dull of hearing, and dim of sight. He could not hear the striking of the hours, but came close up and felt of the hands, and said: 'Tt is eight o'clock, and I must go to bed." He never rose again. He could not get his feet warm. The watchers sat night after night, listening to the delirious talking of the old man, the rehearsal in broken sentences of scenes long ago gone by — of how the Tories acted, and how the Hessians ran. All spake in a whisper, and moved around the room on tiptoe; but there was 94 Crumbs Swept Up. one voice that would not be quieted. If the watchers said — *'Hush!" it seemed to take up a louder tone. It was the old clock in the next room. It looked so sad when, watching for the hour to give the medicine, the candle was lifted to its face. At the wedding it laughed. Now it seemed to toll. Its wheels had a melancholy creak; its hands, as they passed over the face, trem- bled and lookecl thin, like the fingers of an old man moving in a dying dream. Poor old clock! The hand that every Saturday night for forty years has wound it up will soon be still. The iron pulses of the old time-piece seem to flutter, as though its own spirit were departing. Its tongue is thick; its face is white as one struck with death. But, just as grandfather's heart, after running for eighty years, ceased to tick, the old clock rallied, as much as to say: "It is the last thing I can do for him, and so I must toll the death-knell — one! two! three! four! five! six! seven! eight! nine! ten! eleven! twelve!" With that it stopped. Ingenious craftsmen attempted to repair it, and oiled the wheels, and swung the pendulum. But it would not go! Its race was run; its heart was broken; its soul had departed. When grandfather died, the clock died with him. Out-of-Doors. 95 What if the furniture dealer did set it down and cover it up with his rubbish. If the soul go straight, it makes but little dif- ference to us where we are buried. It is time that dust and ashes should cover the face and hands of the dear old clock. Dust to dust! -)o(- OUT-OF-DOORS. On this the brightest week of the bright- est month of all the year, I sit down to write that which I hope may be pleasant to read when red-armed Autumn smites his anvil, and through all the woods the sparks are flying, and it needs not a pro- phetic eye to see the mountains from base to tip-top filled with horses and chariots of fire. Indeed, June and October, if they could see each other, would soon be mar- ried. Not much difference between their ages; the one fair, and the other ruddy; both beautiful to look upon, and typical; the one holding a bunch of flowers, and the other a basket of fruit. The south winds would harp at the nuptials, and against the uplifted chalices would dash the blood of strawberry and grape. To that marriage altar January would bring its cups of crys- 96 Crumbs Swept Up. tal, and April its strung beads of shower, and July its golden crown of wheat. Another dream of our life is fulfilled. For the last eight years we have wanted a place where for a few weeks, apart from the hard work of our profession, we could sit with our coat off, laugh to the full extent of our lungs without shocking fastidious ears, and raise Cochin-China hens of the pure breed. While yet the March snows were on the ground we started out to purchase a place in the country. Had unaccountable ex- periences with land-agents, drove horses terrible for tardiness or speed, gazed on hills and flats, examined houses with roof pitched or horizontal, heard fabulous stor- ies of Pennsylvania grass, and New Jersey berries, until one day, the wind a hurricane, and the roads slush, and the horse a-drip with rain from blinder to trace, we drove up in front of a cottage, the first glance at which assured us we had come to the ful- filment of our wishes. In selecting a place, the first requisite is seclusion. There is a profound satisfaction in not being looked at. After dwelling for a considerable time in a large place, you are apt to know a multitude. If on some Monday morning, starting down street, you feel decidedly frisky, you must never- theless walk with as grave a step as though Out-of- Doors. 97 ascending a pulpit. If you acted out one- half the blitheness you feel, a score of gen- tlemen and ladies would question your san- ity. A country village affords no retreat. There everybody knows everybody's busi- ness. You cannot raise half a dozen gos- lings without having them stoned for pick- ing off your neighbors gooseberries. Gos- sip wants no better heaven than a small village. Miss Glib stands at her gate three times a day talking with old Mrs. Chatter- box, and on rainy days at the blacksmith shop the w^hole business of the town swims in a tank of tobacco-juice of the worst plug. Everybody knows whether this morning out of butcher's cart you bought mutton or calf's liver, and the mason's wife, at the risk of breaking her neck, rushes down stairs to exclaim, "J^st think of it! Mrs. Stuckup has bought a sirloin steak, and she is no better than other people!" Your brass kettle is always borrowed. A band- box was seen going from the millinery- shop to the house of a villager on Saturday afternoon, and on Sunday morning a score of people are early at church, head half- turned toward the door, ready to watch the coming in of the new purchase, hand- kerchief up to mouth, ready to burst out at what they pronounce a perfect fright of a bonnet. They always ask w^hat you gave for a thing, and say you were cheated; had 7 98 Crumbs Swept Up, something of a better quality they could have let you have for half the money. We have at different times lived in a small vil- lage, and many of our best friends dwell there, but we give as our opinion that there are other places more favorable for a man's getting to heaven. Yes, our place must be secluded. Not roused at night by fire-engines, nor wak- ened in the morning by the rattle of milk- man's wagon. Our milk-can shall come softly up in the shape of our clear-eyed, sleek-skinned, beautiful Devon. No chalk- settlings at the bottom of the milk, or un- accountable things floating on the top — honest milk, innocent of pump, foaming till it seems piled up above the rivets of the pail-handle. The air at noon untormented of jar and crash and jostle: only hen's cackle, and sheep's bleat, and cow's bel- low, and the rattle of clevises as the plough wheels at the end of the furrow. No call- ing in of people just because they suppose it is expected, but the coming in of neigh- bors and friends because they really want to see you, their appetite so whetted with the breath of ploughed ground that they are satisfied if you have nothing but ham for dinner. Such seclusion we have at Woodside. It is never real morning except in the country. In the city in the early part of Old- of- Doors. 99 the day there is a mixed color that climbs down over the roofs opposite, and through the smoke of the chimney, that makes peo- ple think it is time to get up and comb their hair. But we have real morning in the country. Morning! descending "from God out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband." A few moments ago I looked out, and the army of night-shadows were striking their tents. A red light on the horizon that does not make me think as it did Alexander Smith of "the barren beach of hell," but more like unto the fire kindled on the shore by Him whom the disciples saw at daybreak stirring the blaze on the beach of Gennesaret. Just now the dew woke up in the hammock of the tree- branches, and the light kissed it. Yonder, leaning against the sky, two great uprights of flame, crossed by many rundles of fire! Some Jacob must have been dreaming. Through those burnished gates a flaming chariot rolls. Some Elijah must be ascend- ing. Morning! I wish I had a rousing bell to wake the whole world up to see it. Every leaf a psalm. Every flower a censer. Every bird a chorister. Every sight beauty. Every sound music. Trees transfigured. The skies in conflagration. The air as if sweeping down from hanging-gardens of heaven. The foam of celestial seas plashed on the white tops of the spir^a. The honey- lOO Crumbs Swept Up. suckle on one side my porch challenges the sweet-brier on the other. The odors of heliotrope overflow the urns and flood the garden. Syringas with bridal blos- soms in their hair, and roses bleeding with a very carnage of color. Oh, the glories of day-dawn in the country! My pen trem- bles, and my eyes moisten. Unlike the flaming sword that drove out the first pair from Eden, these fiery splendors seem like swords unsheathed by angel hands to drive us in. We always thought we would like to have a place near a woods. A few trees will not satisfy us. They feel lonely, and sigh, and complain about the house; but give me an untamed woods that with in- numerable voices talk all night in their sleep, and when God passes in the chariot of the wind wave their plumes and shout, as multitudes in a king's procession. Our first night at Woodside was gusty, and with the hum of multitudinous spring- leaves in our ears we dreamed all night of waves roaring and battalions tramping. Shrubs and bushes do not know much, and have but little to say, but old trees are grand company. Like Jotham's, they talk in parables from the top of Gerizim; have whole histories in their trunk; tell you of what happened when your father was a boy; hold engravings on their leaves of Out of- Doors. loi divine etching, and every bursting bud is a "Thanatopsis." There are some trees that were never meant to be civiHzed. With great sweat and strain I dug up from the woods a small tree and set it in the door- yard; but it has been in a huff ever since. I saw at the time that it did not like it. It never will feel at home among the dressed- up evergreens. It is difBcult successfully to set hemlocks, and kalmias, and switch- hazel, into the rhyme of a garden. They do better in the wild blank-verse of the forest. We always thought that we would like a place which, though secluded, would be easy of access to the city. We always want our morning newspaper by breakfast. This little world is so active that we cannot af- ford to let twenty-four hours pass without hearing what new somersault it has taken. If we missed a single number we would not know that the day before the Czar of Russia had been shot at. Some day we must have a certain book. We need an ex- press to bring it. Oh, it is pleasant to sit a little back and hear the busy world go humming past without - touching us, yet confident that if need be our saddle could in ten minutes rush us into it. Thank God for a good, long, free breath in the country! For the first time in ten years we feel rested. Last evening we sped along the skirt of the wood. Our horse I02 Crumbs Swept Up. prefers to go fast, and we like to please him; and what with the odor of red clover- tops, and the breath of the woods, and the company with us in the carriage, and the moonlight it was nothing less than en- chantment. There is something in this country air to put one in blandest mood. Yesterday we allowed a snake to cross our path without any disposition on our part to kill it. We are at peace with all the world. We would not hurt a spider. We could take our bit- terest foe and give him a camp-stool on the piazza. We would not blame him for not liking us if he liked our strawberries. We would walk with him arm in arm through watermelon-patch and peach- orchard. He should be persuaded that if we could not write good sermons and viva- cious lectures, we can nevertheless raise great pumpkins, and long orange-carrots, and Drumhead cabbage. We would take him in our carriage, going at consistent ministerial gait, as though on the way to Old School Presbytery, never racing with any one, if there were danger of our being beaten. We hereby proclaim peace forever with any man who likes our hens. We fear we would have been tem.pted to sign Jefif Davis's bail-bond if he had praised our early scarlet radishes. Amidst such scenes till autumn. Con- Out-of- Doors. 103 gregations would be advantaged by it if for a few weeks of every year they would allow their pastors a little farm-life. Three weeks at fashionable watering-place will not do the work. There is not enough salts and sulphur in all the springs to overcome the tight shoes, and the uncomfortable gloves, and the late hours, and the high liv- ing, and the dresses economical at the neck. Rather turn us out to physical work. A sharp hoe will hack to pieces all your dys- pepsia. A pruning-knife will cut off the ex- crescences of your disposition. The dash of the shower that wets you to the skin will cool your spirit for ecclesiastical strife. Daily swinging of the axe will tone up your nerves. Trampling down the hay as it is tossed into the mow will tread into forgetfulness your little perplexities. In the wake of the plough you may pick up strength with which to battle public in- iquity. Neighbors looking over the fence may think we are only weeding canta- loupes, or splitting rails, or husking corn, when we are rebuilding our strength, en- kindling our spirits, quickening our brain, purifying our theology, and blessing our souls. Here I stop. The aroma of the garden almost bewilders my senses. Flowers seem to me the dividing-line between the phy- sical and the spiritual. The stamen of the I04 Cruinbs Swept Up. honeysuckle is the alabaster pillar at which the terrestrial and the celestial part and meet. Out of the cup of the water-lily- earth and heaven drink. May the blessing of larkspur and sweet-william fall upon all the dwellers in country and town! Let there be some one to set a tuft of mignon- ette by every sick man's pillow, and plant a fuchsia in every working-man's yard, and place a geranium in ever}^ sewing-girl's window, and twine a cypress about every poor man's grave. And, above all, may there come upon us the blessing of Him whose footsteps the mosses mark, and whose breath is the redolence of flowers! Between these leaves I press thee — O "Lily of the Valley!" )o( EDINBURGH AS A BRAIN-STIM- ULANT. Rushed at the rate of sixty miles an hour into the capital of Scotland, and set down with the shriek of the steam-whistle — com- pared with which a sound of an American locomotive is a harpsichord — here we are. The sensitive traveler will not sleep the first night in Edinburgh, and will do well if the second night he can be composed. The restlessness mav not be ascribed to a Edinburgh as a Brain- Stimulant. 105 lack of comfortable couch, for the art of bed-making has been carried to perfection here. You are not called, as in many an American hotel, to sleep on a promontory of mattresses, not certain on which side you may fall off into the sea. There are no lumps in the bed that take you in the middle of the back, or hardnesses in the pillow that make you dream like Jacob on the stones, barring out the ladder and the angels. The foot-board is not so near the head-board that the sleeper is, all the night long, reminded of his end. There are no stray points of feathers thrust through the linen to tickle you under the ribs. The covers do not come within just three inches of being large enough when you pull them up, making bare the foot, or when, by the grasp of the ''comfortable" between the large toe and the fatty portion of the foot, you pull them down, exposing the shoul- der, so that you fancy, in your disturbed slumber, that you are perishing in a snow- bank. But a broad, smooth, affluent couch, on which you may sublimely roll, reckless of covers, and confident that beyond the point at which you stop there is still further expanse of comfort and ease. But the restlessness will be accounted for by the fact that in no city under the sun is there so much to excite the memory and the imagination. It is a stimulant amount- io6 Crumbs Sivept Up. ing to intoxication. We find gentlemen whose minds have been overworked in this city seeking mental quiet. As well go to Iceland to get warm, or to Borneo to get cool. The Past and the Present jostle each other. The shoulder of modern architec- ture is set against the arch of the twelfth century. Antiquity says, 'T will furnish the ideas," and the Present says, *T will freeze them into stone." You take in with one glance 'The Abbey," built by Roman Catholic David the First, which has for seven hundred years sat counting its beads of stone, and that modern struc- ture 'The Donaldson Hospital," a palace of charity, crowned with twenty-four tur- rets, inviting to its blessing the poor chil- dren of the city, and launching them on the world every way equipped — knowledge in their heads, grace in their hearts, and money in their pockets. While in one part of the castle you are examining old "Mons Meg," the big gun that burst in the time of James the Second, you hear from another part of the castle the merciless bang of Professor Smythe's time-gun, fired off by a wire reaching across the city from the Observatory. Edinburgh and Boston have each been called "the modern Athens." We shall not here decide between them. They are much alike in literary atmosphere, but at the an- Edinburgh as a Brain-Stimula?it. 107 tipodes in some respects. In Boston, liter- ature has a Unitarian tinge; in Edinburgh, a Presbyterian. In this Scotch capital, re- ligion, politics, science, and literature are inextricably mixed. The late Sir James Y. Simpson, M. D., whose face is in all the photographic show-windows of the city, and whose life was spent in surgery, re- cently made an address on "Dead in Tres- passes and Sins;" and Doctor Brown, a practicing physician on Rutledge Street, wrote of ''Paul's Thorn in the Flesh;" and the collection-boxes of the Scotland Bible Society are set in the railroad stations; and Reverend Doctor Arnot, last Sabbath, at the close of his sermon, turned around and bowed to the judges of the court seated in the gallery; and over a door in "Lady Stair's Close" is the inscription, "Fear the Lord and depart from evil." In this city, acutest analysis could hardly tell where literature or politics ends or theology be- gins. But since the brain and the heart are only about a foot and a half apart, I know not why there should be such effort to separate the intellectual from the spirit- ual. All frank and intense writers on secular themes have given us a glimpse of their higher faith. We know the theology of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Babington Macaulay and William C. Bryant as well as that of Jonathan Edwards io8 Crumbs Swept Up. and Archibald Alexander. There is no need that the literati of the world go dodg- ing" and skulking about the pillars of St. Paul as though ashamed to be found there. Reaching from Edinburgh Castle, throned on the rocks, down under the city to the Abbey of Holyrood, there is an un- derground passage six hundred years old. Queen Victoria, some years since, offered a large reward to any man who would ex- plore that passage. The poor fellow who undertook it choked to death in the damps and gases, and the Queen withdrew her inducement, lest some one else should perish in the undertaking. I would that the way between the castle of beauty and strength, and the abbey of religion, in all ages, were not a dark tunnel difficult of ex- ploration, but a brilliant causeway, and that we all might walk there. Let Science and Piety walk with hooked arms in the hall of the university, and ivy climb over the cathedral wall, and every church belfry be an observatory, and learn- ing and goodness be so thoroughly inter- twined and interlocked that every man shall be both philosopher and Christian. Then Galileo will not only see that "the world moves," but that it moves in the right direction; and the gowned professors of the academy and the surpliced officials of the chapel will unite their strength to Edinburgh as a Brai7i-Stimula?it. 109 shorten the distance between the castle and the abbey. At this summer season, Edinburgh sleeps under a very thin covering of shadows. There is no night there. At ten o'clock p. m. I walked up on Calton Hill, and saw the city by daylight. And the evening and morning were the same day. The Amer- ican is perplexed as to what time he ought to retire, and at four o'clock in the morn- ing springs out of bed, feeling that he must have overslept, till he looks at his watch. The day and the night are here twin sis- ters — the one a blonde, the other a bru- nette. At this season, when tourists are most busy, the curtain does not fall on Edinburgh. The city has been compressed into small compass, so that it might be under the de- fence of the guns of the Castle. A house ten stories high is not an unusual thing. There are no ''magnificent distances." It is but two minutes' walk from the Nether- bow to the Canongate. It is only ten min- utes' ride from Holyrood to the Castle. In one short saunter you go from examining the Scottish crown in the "Jewel-room" on the Hill, down to the museum, in which you see the stool that Jenny Geddes threw at the head of the bishop. The city has a superb belt of what the no Crtwibs Swept Up. Scotch have chosen to call "Hospitals." They are not places where fractures are splintered, or physical diseases assaulted; but are educational institutions. Consider- ing ignorance a horrible sickness — the wasting away of a marasmus, the benumb- ing of a palsy, the sloughing off of a gan- grene — public charity has erected these ''Hospitals" for the cure of intellectual malady. A printer of the city gave one million fifty thousand dollars for the building and maintenance of one of these institutions, where two hundred and twenty poor chil- dren are taught. The structure is vast and imposing; battlemented and towered, and embosomed in foliage and flowers — strength in the arms of beauty, without being shorn of any of its locks. The John Watson's Hospital, the Orphan Hospital, the Gillespie Hospital, the Merchant Maiden Hospital, the George Heriot Hospital — the surplusage of be- quests not yet employed, and seemingly not needed for structures of the same char- acter — show how much the people hate darkness and love light. God gave to Edinburgh, as to Solomon, the choice of riches, honor, or wisdom. She chose wis- dom; and the riches and the honor have been thrown in as a bounty. While the antiquarian stands studying the grotesque Edinburgh as a Brain-Stimidani. 1 1 1 gargoyles which frown and mow and run out the tongue from the venerable roofs and arches of the city, I see more to ad- mire in the chubby faces of the educated children. But, while Edinburgh is preparing for a grand future, she is not willing that her head shall fall back into the shadows. With a tight grip of fingers in bronze and stone she holds on to the men of the past. She has for the last thirty years been building monuments, and she will keep on building them. As she denied the request of the Queen that Dr. Simpson be buried in Westminster Abbey, Edinburgh will not now put on the limits the sculptors who perpetuate him. Walter Scott alive, hob- bling along the Grassmarket, made not so much impression on this city as to-day, looking down on Princess Street, from un- der a canopy of stone, one hundred and ninety feet high, the dog Bevis at his feet; while breaking out in sculpture on the sides are the "Last Minstrel," and "Lady of the Lake," and Meg Merrilies, the queen of witches, with her long skinny arms seeming to marshal all the apparitions of ghostdom. Here dwelt Alexander Smith, destroyed by his own mental activity, the fire of his genius consuming not only the sacrifice but the altar; and Hugh Miller, who with 112 Crumbs Swept Up, his stone chisel cut his way into the mys- teries of the earth and the heart of nations; and Playfair, and Dugald Stewart, and Henry Mackenzie, and Doctor Blair, and Thomas de Quincy. Here Christopher North put on his "sporting-jacket," out of the pockets of which he pulled for many of us Windermere and the Highlands; his swarthy figure in bronze, now standing in the East Gardens, his hair looking like the toss of a lion's mane, his eye wild as a stormy night on the moors, his apparel as sloven as his morals. But these men were of the past. The harvest of giants has been reaped. Edin- burgh has but two or three men of world- wide fame remaining. Doctor John Brown, author of ''Rab and his Friends," may still be found on Rutledge Street; but he has dropped his royal pen, and has no more "Spare Hours" for the reading pub- lic, now that he gives his entire time to his medical profession. If the dogs, whose greatest champion he is, knew that he had abandoned their cause, they would set up a universal howl, and the spirit of "Rab" would come forth to haunt him, wagging before him that immortal stump of a tail. Though the Doctor has sent his dogs scam- pering through every American study, and through many a lady's parlor, he has no dog left. His last one, Kent by name, was Edinburgh as a Brain- Stimulant, 113 so much in danger of being contaminated by the more vulgar dogs of the city, that he was sent over to Ireland to be com- panion and defender to the Doctor's mar- ried daughter. A large portrait of "Kent" hangs over the parlor mantel on Rutledge Street. You would not wonder that all Doctor Brown's dogs have been so kind and wise and good, if you only knew their master. It seems that in one case, at least, his plea for unhappy curs has been effectual. Eleven years ago a poor and unknown man was buried in Gray Friars Churchyard. His dog, *'Bobby," a Scotch terrier, was one of the mourners. Next day he was found lying on the grave; but, as nothing but bronze or stone dogs are lawful in such places, Bobby was kicked out of the yard. The second morning he was found there, and was still more emphatically warned to give up his melancholy habits. But when, the third morning, he was found on the grave, the old curator had compassion, and ever since the bereft creature has been taken care of. For years he was allowed steaks from an officer of the city. I wish that all the dogs that live on Government were as worthy. We take the train from Edinburgh with a heavy heart. We need a year to study this city of the past and the present — its 114 Crumbs Szvept Up. crescents, and mansions, and squares, and monuments, and palaces; a city which hovers above crags, and dives into ravines, and cHmbs precipices, and shimmers in the blaze of midsummer noon, and rolls upon the soul a surge of associations that break us down into a heartfelt prayer for the peace and happiness of Scotland. -)o(- HOBBIES. We all ride something. It is folly to ex- pect us always to be walking. The cheap- est thing to ride is a hobby: it eats no oats, it demands no groom, it breaks no traces, it requires no shoeing. Moreover, it is safest: the boisterous outbreak of chil- dren's fun does not startle it; three babies astride it at once do not make it skittish. If, perchance, on some brisk morning it throw its rider, it will stand still till he climbs the saddle. For eight years we have had one tramping the nursery, and yet no accident; though meanwhile his eye has been knocked out and h?s tail dislocated. When we get old enough to leave the nursery we jump astride some philosophic, metaphysical, literary, political, or theolog- ical hobby. Parson Brownlow's hobby was the hanging of rebels; John C. Calhoun's, Hobbies. 115 South Carolina; Daniel Webster's, the Constitution; Wheeler's, the sewing-ma- chine; Doctor Windship's, gymnastics. For saddle, a book; for spur, a pen; for whip, the lash of public opinion; for race- course, platform, pulpit, newspaper-ofhce, and senate chamber. Goodyear's hobby was made out of india-rubber, Peter Coop- er's out of glue, Townsend's out of sarsa- parilla bottles, Heenan's out of battered noses. De Witt Clinton rode his up the ditch of the Erie Canal, Cyrus Field under the sea, John P. Jackson down the railroad from Amboy to Camden; indeed, the men of mark and the men of worth have all had their hobby, great or small. The philosophy is plain. Men think a great while upon one topic, and its importance increases till it absorbs every- thing else, and, impelled by this high ap- preciation of their theory, they go on to words and deeds that make themselves thoroughly felt. We have no objections to hobbies, but we contend that there are times and places when and where they should not be ridden. A few specifications. We have friends who are allopathists, homoeopathists, Thompsonians, or eclec- tics. We have no more prejudices against one school than the other. Let them each set up their claims. One of our friends about five years ago became a homoe- ii6 C7'U7?ibs Swept Up. opathist. All right! But since then she has been able to talk of nothing else. She in- sists on our taking the pellets. We say, "We feel somewhat tired to-night;" she ex- claims, "Cinchona or Cocculus!" We sneeze quite violently, and she cries ''Bella- donna!" We suggest that the apple-dump- ling did not agree with us, and she pro- poses "Chamomilla." When she walks I seem to hear the rattling of pellets. Dis- covering my prejudice against pills, she insists on my taking it in powder. I tell her that ever since my chaplaincy in the army I have disliked powder. She says I will rue it when too late. Perhaps I may, but I cannot stand these large doses of homoeopathy. I had rather be bled at once and have done with it, than be ever- lastingly shot with pellets. She talks it day and night. Her Sabbath is only a sancti- fied homoeopathy. She prefers theology in very small doses. Her hope of the refor- mation of society is in the fact that minis- ters themselves are sinners — "Similia similibus curantur.'' She thinks it easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for old-school doctors to enter into the kingdom of heaven. Alas! how much calomel and jalap they will have to answer for! How will they dare to meet on the other shore the multitudes that they let slip before their time, when they might Hobbies. 117 with a few pellets have bribed Charon to keep them this side of Acheron and Styx! She reads to us 2 Chron. xvi. 12, 13, "Asa sought to the physicians, and slept with liis fathers." You see they killed him! She considers herself a missionary to go out into the highways and hedges of allopathy and eclecticism to compel them to come in. She is an estimable lady. We always like to have her come to our house. She is more interested in your health than any one you would find in all the hard-hearted crew of allopathy. But five years ago she got a side-saddle, threw it on the back of a hobby, and has been riding ever since — tramp, tramp, tramp — round the parlor, through the hall, up the stairs, down the cellar, along the street, through the church; and I fear that in her last ''will and testa- ment" she will have nothing to leave the world but a medicine-chest, well-worn copies of "Hahnemann's Chronic Dis- eases," and ''J^hr's Manual," and direc- tions as to how many powders are to be put in the tumblers, with the specific charge to have the spoons clean and not mix the medicines. We notice that many have a mania for talking of their ailments. One question about their health will tilt over on you the great reservoir of their complaints. They have told the story so often that they can ii8 Cru?7ibs Swept Up. slide through the whole scale from C above to C below. For thirty years their spine has been at a discount, and they never were any better of neuralgia, till they took the rheumatism. At first you feel sympathy for the invalid; but after awhile the story touches the ludicrous. They tell you that they feel so faint in the morning, and have such poor appetite at noon, and cannot sleep nights, and have twitches in their side, and lumbago in their back, and swell- ings in their feet, and ringing in their ears, and little dots floating before their eyes; and have taken ammoniacum, tincture of cantharides, hydragogue julep, anthel- mintic powder, golden syrup of antimony, leaves of scordium, and, indeed, all hepa- tics, carminatives, antifebriles, 'antiscor- butics, splenetics, arthritics, stomachics, ophthalmics; they have gargled their throat with sal ammoniac, and bathed their back with saponaceous liniment, and worn dis- cutient cataplasms. That very moment they are chewing chamomile flowers to set- tle their stomachs, and excuse themselves for a moment to take off a mustard-plaster that begins to blister. They come back to express the fear that the swelling on their arm will be an abscess, or their headache turn to brain fever. They shake out from their handkerchief delicate odors of vale- rian and assafoetida. They are the harvest Hobbies. 119 of druggists, and the amazement of phy- sicians, who no sooner clear the pain from one spot than it appears in another. If one joint loses the pang, another joint gets it, and, the patient having long ago resolved never again to be well, it is only a question between membrane and midriff. At times we should talk over our dis- tresses, and seek sympathy, but perpetual discourse on such themes wears out the patience of our friends. You always see the young people run from the groaning valetudinarian; and the minister fails in his condolence, for why speak of the patience of Job to one who says that boils are noth- ing to his distresses? The hobby he rides is wounded and scabbed and torn with all the diseases mentioned in farriery, glan- ders, bots, foot-rot, spavin, ring-bone, and "king's evil." Incurable nags are taken out on the commons and killed, but this poor hobby jogs on with no hope on the other side of the Red Sea of joining Pharaoh's horses. The more it limps, and the harder it breathes, the faster they ride it. Now, Aunt Mary's sick-room was the brightest room in the house. She had enough aches and pains to confound Materia Medica. Her shelf was crystallized with bottles, and the stand was black with plasters. She could not lay down more than five minutes. Her appetite was de- I20 Crumbs Swept Up. nied all savory morsels. It was always soup, or toast, or gruel, or panado. She had not walked into the sunlight for fif- teen years. Weddings came, for which with her thin, blueveined hands she had knit beautiful presents, but she could not mingle in the congratulations, nor see how the bride looked at the altar. She never again expected to hear a sermon, or sit at the sacrament, or join in the doxology of worshipers. The blithe days of her girl- hood would never come back, when she could range the fields in spring-time in flushed excitement, plucking handfuls of wild-roses from the thicket till hands and cheeks looked like different blooms on the same trellis. While quite young she had been sent to a first-class boarding-school. When she had finished her education, she was herself finished. Instead of the romp of the fields, she took the exhausting exercise at five o'clock of the school procession, madame ahead; madame behind; step to step; eyes right; chins down; noses out; their hearts like muffled drums beating funeral marches. Stop the side glances of those hazel eyes! Quit the tossing of those flaxen curls! Cease that graceful swing of the balmoral across the street gutter! She was the only one of the family for- tunate enough to get a first-class educa- Hobbies. 121 tion. The other females grew up so stout and well, they might have been consid- ered, vulgarly speaking, healthy, and went out into life to make happy homes and help the poor; only once, and that in the pres- ence of a wound they were dressing, hav- ing attempted to faint away, but failed in the undertaking, as their constitution would not allow it. Thus they always had to acknowledge the disadvantage of not having had the first-class education of Aunt Mary. What if her nerves were worn out, she could read Les Aventnres de Tele- maqtie to pay for it. She had sharp pains, but she could understand the Latin phrases in which Dr. Pancoast described them. Her temples throbbed, but then it was a satisfaction to know that it came from be- ing struck on the head with a Greek lex- icon. The plasters were uncomfortable, but oh! the delights of knowing their geometrical shape: the one a pentagon, the other a hexagon. At school in anatomical class she had come to believe that she had a liver, but it had been only a speculative theory; now she had practical demonstra- tion. Enough to say. Aunt Mary was a life- long invalid, and yet her room was more attractive than any other. The children had to be punished for going up stairs and interrupting Auntie's napping hours. The 122 Crumbs Swept Up. kitten would purr at the invalid's door seek- ing admittance. At daybreak, the baby would crawl out of the crib and tap its tiny knuckles against the door, waiting for Aunt Mary to open it. If Charlie got from a school-fellow a handful of peaches, the ripest was saved for Auntie. At night-fall, a little procession of frisky night-gowns went up to say their prayers in Auntie's room, until three years of age supposing that she was the divinity to be worshiped: one hand on their foot, and the other over their eyes, that would peep through into Auntie's face during the solemnities, the "forever and ever, amen," dashed into Auntie's neck with a shower of good-night kisses. When a young maiden of the neighbor- hood had a great secret to keep, she was apt to get Aunt Mary to help her keep it. Auntie could sympathize with any young miss who at the picnic had nice things said to her. Auntie's face had not always been so wrinkled. She had a tiny key to a little box hid away in the back part of the top- drawer, that could have revealed a romance worth telling. In that box a pack of letters in bold hand directed to Miss Mary Tyn- dale. Also, a locket that contained a curl of brown hair that had been cut from the brow of the college student in whose death her brightest hopes were blasted. Also, Hobbies. 123 two or three pressed flowers, which the last time she was out she brought from the cemetery. When in conversation with a young heart in tender mood she opened that box, she would say nothing for some moments after. Then she would look very earnestly into the eyes of the maiden, and say, ''God bless you, my dear child! I hope you will be very happy!" Everybody knew her by name, and peo- ple who had never seen her face, the black and white, the clean and filthy, those who rode in coaches, and those who trudged the tow-path, would cry out when one of the family passed, "How is Aunt Mary to- day?" On Monday morning the minister would go in, and read more theology in the bright face of the Christian invalid than he had yesterday preached in two sermons, and her voice was as strengthening to him as the long-metre Doxology sung to the tune of "Old Hundred." When people with a heartache could get no relief else- where, they came to that sick-room and were comforted. Auntie had another key that did not open the box in the back part of the top-drawer of the bureau: it was a golden key that opened the casket of the Divine promises. Beside the bottles that stood on Auntie's shelf, was God's bottle in which He gathers all our tears. God had given to that thin hand the power to un- 124 Crumbs Swept Up. loose the captive. And they who went in waiHng came out singing. John Bunyan's pilgrim carried his burden a great while: he never knew Auntie. Yes ! yes ! the brightest room in the house was hers. Not the less so on the day when we were told she must leave us. That one small room could not keep her. She heard a voice bidding her away. The children broke forth into a tumult of weeping. The place got brighter. There must have been angels in the room. The feet of the celes- tial ladder were on both sides of that pil- low. Little Mary (named after her aunt) said, "Who will hear me say my prayers now?" George said, "Who now will take my part?" Katie cried, "Who will tell us sweet stories about heaven?" Brighter and brighter grew the place. Angels in the room! Sound no dirge. Toll no bells. Wear no black. But form a procession of chants, anthems, chorals, and hallelujahs! Put vs^hite blossoms in her hand! A white robe on her body! White garlands about her brow! And he, from whose tomb she plucked the flowers the last time she was out, come down to claim his bride. And so let the procession mount the hill, chants, anthems, chorals, and hallelujahs: For- ward! the line of march reaching from en- chanted sick-room to "house of many man- Hobbies. 125 So Auntie lived and died. Always sick, but always patient. Her cheerfulness un- horsed black-mailed Gloom. A perpetual reproof she was to all who make sicknesses their hobby. We take a step farther, and look at some of our theological hobbies. This is the only kind of horse that ministers can afford to own, and you ought not to be surprised if sometimes in this way they take an air- ing. We have had some troubles of late in fact that in these days of brotherhood, Old School and New School got astride of the same hobby, and one fell ofif before, and the other fell of¥ behind. There was not room enough for so many between mane and tail. It is well to remember that hobbies some- times kick, and that theologians, like other people, are vulnerable. How apt we are to get a religious theory, and ride it up hill and down, and expect that all the armed cavalry of the church shall make way for our hobby! There are theologians who spend their time in trying to douse Baptists, thinking it a great waste to have so much water and not use it for some decisive purpose. Others would like to upset the anxious bench of the Meth- odists, and throw them on their faces, so that they would make less noise. Others would like nothing better than to rip a hole in the surplice of Episcopacy. Others take 126 Crumbs Swept Up, the doctrine of ''election" for their favor- ite theory, and ride, and ride, till they find themselves elected to leave the settlement. Others harp on the ''perseverance of the saints," till they are unhorsed by the per- severance of sinners. And this good man devotes himself to proving that in Adam all fell, till the hearers wish that the speaker had fallen clear out of their ac- quaintanceship. This ecclesiastic gives his time to con- troversy, and his matin and vesper are, "Blessed be the Lord, who teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight." Such persons were sound asleep that Christmas night when the angel song fell to the hills, "Peace on earth, good will to men." We have been watching for the horns to come out on their forehead. They are the rams and the he-goats. They feel that they were appointed from eternity to stick somebody, and they beat Samson in the number of Philistines they slay with the same weapon. They go to the Bible as foemen to Springfield Armory or Troy Arsenal, demanding so many swords, rifles, and columbiads. They were made in the same mould as Morrissey, the pugilist, and should long ago have been sent to Con- gress. Like Nebuchadnezzar, they have claws, and, like him, ought to go to grass. In the day when the lamb and the lion lie Hobbies. 127 down together, we fear these men will be out with a pole trying to stir up the ani- mals. Here are brethren who devote them- selves to the explaining of the unexplain- able parts of the Scripture. Jonah's whale comes just in time to yield them whole bar- rels of blubber. They can explain why it was that Jonah was not digested by the whale. The gastric juice having no power to act upon a living body, it did not dis- solve the fibrine or coagulated albumen into chyme, and consequently it could not pass the pyloric orifice of the stomach. Besides, this was an intelligent whale, and probably knew that he had swallowed a minister who had a call to Nineveh, and never had any intention of turning him into whale, but rather to prepare him for that class of min- isters who are lachrymose, and on ajl oc- casions disposed to blubber. We have heard men explain this miracle by natural laws until we felt ourselves attacked by the same sickness that disturbed the leviathan of the Mediterranean when he suddenly graduated the prophet; and we felt sure that if, in an unguarded moment, we had swallowed a Jonah, he would have had good prospects of speedy deliverance. Our expounder must also explain the ass that spake to Balaam. The probability is that the animal had originally been en- 128 Crumbs Swept Up, dowed with powers of vocalization, but, being of a lethargic temperament, had never until that day found sufficient induce- ment to express himself; the probability being that this animal always retained the faculty of speech, and was married, and that he has a long line of descendants, who still, like the one of the Scriptures, are dis- posed to criticise ministers. Here is another brother who devotes forty Sundays of the year to the Apoca- lypse. He has put his lip to all the trum- pets and examined all the vials. He un- derstands them all. He reads the history of the present day in Revelation, and finds there Louis Napoleon, Bismarck, Abraham Lincoln, and General Grant. Now, all Scripture is to be expounded as far as possible; but one part is not to absorb attention to the neglect of others. Let us not be so pleased with the lily that Christ points out in his sermon that we cannot see the raven that flies past; nor while we examine the salt to find if it has lost its savor, forget to take the candle from under the bushel. The song of the morning stars at the creation must have re- sponse in the Doxology of the hundred and forty and four thousand. David's harp and the resurrection trumpet are accord- ant. The pennon swung from the cedar masts of ships of Tarshish must be an- Hobbies. 129 swered by the sail of fishing--boat on Gennesaret. Into this great battle for God we are to take Gideon's sword, and David's sling, and the white horse of Victory on which Immanuel triumphs. Hiddekei and Jordan must be confluent. Pisgah and Moriah, Sinai and Calvary, must all stand in the great Scriptural ranges. No solo or quartet in this Bible music, but the bat- tle-chorus of all the patriarchs, prophets, evangelists, and apostles. In the wall of heaven are beautifully blended jasper and emerald, beryl and sardonyx, amethyst and chrysoprasus. No one doctrine, however excellent, must be ridden constantly. The pulpit is the most unfit place in all the world for a hobby. With others the continuous theme is ventilation. We have wrecked too many sermons and lectures on ill-ventilated au- dience-rooms, not to understand the value of pure air. There are not twenty properly ventilated lecture-halls east of the Alle- gheny Mountains. We have more venera- tion for every other antiquity than for stale air. Atmosphere that has been bottled up for weeks is not quite equal to ''Balm of Thousand Flowers." Give us an old log across the stream to sit on, rather than an arm-chair in the parlor that is opened chiefly on Christmas and Thanksgiving Days.^ While waiting for this year's turkey 130 Crumbs Swept Up. to get browned, we do not want to smell last year's. There are church-basements so foul that we think some of those who fre- quent them for devotion get sooner to the end of their earthly troubles than they would if there were less dampness in the walls; some of them suffering from what they suppose to be too much religion, when it is nothing but wind-colic. Still we may put too long a stress upon ventilation. Here is a man who sits with the doors open, and while your teeth are chattering with cold, descants on the bracing weather. He sleeps with all his window^s up, with the thermometer below zero. His prescription for all the world's diseases is fresh air. And if the case be chronic, and stubborn, and yields not to the first course of treatment, then — more fresh air. If the patient die under the process, the adviser will say, ''This confirms my theory! Don't you see the difficulty? His only want was capacity to take in the air!" Witticism is the hobby of another. We admire those who have power to amuse. We cannot always have the corners of our mouth drawn down. Puns are not always to be rejected. We should like to have been with Douglas Jerrold when his friend said to him, *T had a curious dinner — calves' tails." And Jerrold instantly re- plied, "Extremes meet!" Hobbies. 131 But we cannot always have the corners of our mouth drawn up. We can all of us stand humor longer than wit. Humor is pervasive; wit explosive. The one smiles; the other laughs. Wit leaps out from am- bush; humor melts out of a summer sky. Wit hath reactions of sadness; humor dies into perpetual calm. Humor is an athios- phere full of electricity; wit is zigzag light- ning. They tx)tli have their mission, but how tedious the society of the merry- andrew and professed epigrammatist! The muscles of your face weary in attempts to look pleased. You giggle, and simper, and titter, and chuckle, and scream, and slap your hand on the table, but you do not laugh. You want information, facts, reali- ties, as well as fun. Theodore Hook and Charles Lamb grinned themselves into melancholy. Clowns are apt to be hypo- chondriac. The company of two or three so-called witty chaps is as gloomy to us as the furnishing-room of an undertaker. It is the earnest man, with an earnest work to do, who in unexpected moment puts the pry of his witticism under your soul, and sends you roaring with a laughter that shuts your eyes, and rends your side, and makes you thankful for stout waistcoat, which seems to be the only thing that keeps you from explosion into ten thou- sand quips, quirks, epigrams, repartees, 132 Crumbs Swept Up. and conundrums. Working men have a right to be facetious. We have no objec- tion to a hen's cackle, if it has first laid a large round ^^^ for the breakfast-table. But we had on our farm a hen that never did anything but cackle. The most rous- ing wit ever uttered was by stalwart men like Robert South and Jean Paul Richter. With them wit was only the foaming flake on the wave that carried into port a mag- nificent cargo. It was only the bell that rang you to a banquet of stalled ox and muscovy. But lackaday! if when at the ringing of the bell we went to find nothing but a cold slice of chuckle, a hash of drol- lery, jokes stewed, and jokes stuffed, and jokes panned, and jokes roasted, and jokes with gravy, and jokes without gravy. Pro- fessor Wilson, the peerless essayist, could afiford to put on ''Sporting Jacket," and mould the snow-ball for the "Bicker of Pedmount," and go a picnicking at Win- dermere, and shake up into rollicking glee Lockhart, Hamilton, Gillies, and his other Blackwood cronies, if, in that way refreshed for toil, he could come into the University of Edinburgh to mould and shape the heart and intellect of Scotland, with a magic touch that will be felt a thousand years. He is the most entertaining man who mixes in proper proportions work and play. We prefer a solid horse, spirited and full of fire, Hobbies, 133 but always ready to pull: somewhat skit- tish on a December morning, but still an- swering to the bit: while capable of taking you out of the dust of the man who does not want you to pass, yet willing to draw ship-timber; in preference to a frisky nag that comes from the stall sideways, and backward, getting up into the stirrups of his own saddle, and throwing you off be- fore you get on. The first is a useful man*s facetiousness; the last is a joker's hobby. Pride of ancestry is with others the chief mania. Now we believe in royal blood. It is a grand thing to have the right kind of kindred. There is but little chance for one badly born. If we belonged to some fam- ilies that we know of, we would be tempted at once to give ourselves up to the police. But while far from despising family blood, we deplore the fact that so many depend upon heraldry. They have not been in your company a minute before they begin to tell you who their father was and their mother. The greatest honor that ever hap- pened to them was that of having been born. It is a congratulation that there was but one mechanic in their line, and he helped build the first steamboat. They were no possible relation to one Simon, a" tanner. The only disgraceful thing in their line, as far back as they can trace it, was that their first parents in Paradise were 134 Crumbs Swept Up. gardeners. There was a big pile of money somewhere back, a coat of arms, and sev- eral fine carriages. They feel sorry for Adam, because he had no grandfather'. To hear them talk you would suppose that the past was crowded with their great progeni- tors, who were lords, and dukes, comrades of Wellington, accustomed to slapping George Washington on the shoulder, call- ing him by the first name; ''hail fellow well met" with Thomas Jefferson. As if it had taken ten generations of great folks to produce one such Smythe. He is no rela- tion to Smith. That family spell their name differently. But you find that in the last seventeen hundred years there were several breaks in the broadcloth. Do not say anything about their Uncle George. Con- found the fellow! He was a blacksmith. Nor ask about Cousin Rachel! Miserable thing! She is in the poorhouse. Nor in- quire about his grandfather's politics. He was a Tory. Nor ask what became of his oldest brother. He was shot in a hen-roost. Several of the family practiced in the High Courts of the United States and England — as criminals. One of their kindred was a martyr to chirography, having written the name of John Rathbone & Co. under a promissory note, and written it so well that John Rathbone & Co. were jealous, and seriously objected. But all this is nothing, Hobbies. 135 so long as they spell Smith with a 3; in the middle and an e at the end. They have always moved in the circle of the Ritten- houses, and the Minturns, and the Grin- nells, and the Vanderbilts. They talk much of their silver plate to everybody save the assessor. In the year 1700 they had an ancestor that rode in the carriage with a duchess. Yet a boy one day had the audacity, with a piece of chalk, to erase the armorial bearings from the side of their coach, and, in allusion to the industrial pursuits charged on certain members of that high family, sketched in place thereof, as coat of arms, a bar of soap and a shoe-last. Oh! this awful age of homespun and big knuckles! We would all have gone back farther than we have in search of ancestral stars and garters, crest and scutcheon, but we are so afraid of falling into kettles of tried tallow, and beds of mortar, and pans of dish-water. But we are all proud. We slept one night at the West in the rustic house of President Fillmore's father, in the very bed occupied the week before by Daniel Web- ster and the President. We felt that we must carry ofY from that room a memento. Not able to get anything more significant, we brought away from the peg in the room one of old Mrs. Fillmore's cap-strings. It was with no ordinary emotions that, after 136 Crumbs Swept Up. coming down into every-day life, we dis- played the trophy. Still how distasteful is the companion- ship of one who is always on the subject of his high associations and honored ances- try. We get vexed, and almost wish that their ancestors had been childless. At pro- per times and to proper degree let such themes be discussed, but what a folly to be on all occasions displaying Mrs. Fill- more's cap-strings! It is an outrageous case of cruelty to animals when a man per- sists in having all his progenitors join him in riding the ancestral hobby. Now it so happened that on one occasion all these hobbyists met on one field. What a time! Ten hobbies riding against each other in cavalry charge! Each rider was determined to carbine all the others. The allopathist loaded his gun with blue pills; the homoeopathist loaded his with Pulsatilla and stramonium. The hypochondriac un- sheathed his sharpest pains for the onset. The temperance monomaniac struck right and left with an ale-pitcher. The tobacco fanatic threw snufY into the eyes of those who could not see as he did. The contro- versialist and critic hung across the sad- dle a long string of scalps they had taken. The buffoon bespattered the whole regi- ment with a volley of poor jokes. And the man of distinguished ancestry attempted to Hobbies. 137 frighten the combatants from the field by riding up with a hobby that had on its back the resurrected skeletons of all his fore- fathers. Too much hobby-riding belittles the mind, distorts the truth, and cripples in- fluence. All our faculties were made for use. He who is always on one theme can- not give full play to judgment, imagina- tion, fancy, reason, wit, and humor. We want harmony of intellect — all the parts carried, treble, alto, tenor, and bass accom- panied by full orchestra, sackbut, violon- cello, cornet, drum, flute, and cymbals. He who goes through life using one faculty, hops on one foot, instead of taking the strong, smooth gait of a healthy walker. He who, finding within him powers of satire, gives himself up to that, might as well turn into a wasp and go to stinging the bare feet of children. He who is neglectful of all but his imaginative faculty, becomes a butterfly flitting idly about till the first "black frost" of criticism kills it. He who devotes himself to fun-making, will find the better parts of his soul decaying, and his temporary attractiveness will be found to be the phosphorescence of rotten wood. He who disports himself in nothing but dialectics and mathematics, will get badly hooked by the horns of a dilemma, and after a while turn into trapezoids and paral- 138 Crumbs Swept Up. lelograms — his head a blackboard for dia- grams in spherical geometry — and, while the nations are dying, and myriad voices are crying for help, will find their highest satisfaction in demonstrating that if two angles on equal spheres are mutually equilateral, they are mutually equiangular: the flying missiles in a South American earthquake to him are only brilliant ex- amples in conic sections; the one describ- ing a parabola, that an ellipse, the other a hyperbola. When God has given us so many facul- ties to use, why use only one of them? With fifty white palfreys to ride, why go tilting a hobby? He who yields to this propensity never sees the whole of anything. There is no sin in all the earth but slavery, or intem- perance, or municipal dishonesty. All the sicknesses would be healed if they would take our medicine. The only thing needed to make the world what it ought to be, is a new pavement on our sidewalk. The na- tions are safe as soon as we can bring to an end the expectorations of tobacco-juice. All that we can see of anything is between the leather pricked-up ears of our hobby. This frantic urging on of our pet notion will come to nought. Our prancing charger will sink down with lathered flanks and we be passed on the road by some Hobbies, 139 Scotch Presbyterian, astride a plain draught-horse that has been pasturing in the held next to the kirk, jogging along at an easy pace, knowing it has been elected that he is to reach the kingdom. Brethren! let us take a palm-leaf and cool off! Let your hobby rest. If it will not otherwise stop, tie it for a few days to ihe whitewashed stump of modern conserva- tism. Do not hurry things too much. If this world should be saved next week, it would spoil some of our professions. Do not let us do up things too Cjuick. This world is too big a ship for us to guide. I know from the way she swings from lar- board to starboard that there is a strong Hand at the helm. Be pa- tient. God's clock strikes but once or twice in a thousand years; but the wheels all the while keep turning. Over the caravanserai of Bethlehem, with silver tongue, it struck one. Over the University of Erfurt, Luther heard it strike nine. In the rockings of the present century it has sounded eleven. Thank God! It will strike twelve! ■)o(- 140 Crumbs Swept Up. FALLACIES ABOUT THE SEA. Every man ought to cross the ocean at least once to find how many unwarranted things have been said about it. Those who on the land have never imperilled their veracity by mastodonic statements are so metamorphosed by the first stiff breeze off Newfoundland, that they become capable of the biggest stories. They see billows as high as the Alps, and whales long enough to supply a continent with spermaceti, and have perilous escapes from sudden anni- hilation, and see over the gunwales spec- tacles compared with which the ''Flying Dutchman" is a North River clam-sloop. We have not been able to find some things that we expected. We have very often heard that sea-sickness makes one feel that he would like to be thrown over- board. One day, on our ship, there were near a hundred passengers whose stom- achs had turned somersault; but not one of these people, as far as we could detect, would like to have been pitched over- board. Indeed, an effort to deposit these nauseated Jonahs on the ''Fishing Banks" would have ended fatally to the perpetra- tor. We saw not one of the sickest patients looking at the sea as though he would like to get into it. Those who were most des- perate and agonizing in looking over the Fallacies About the Sea. 141 taffrail for the lines of latitude and long-i- tude held tight fast, lest some sudden lurch of the ship should precipitate them into the Canaan of water for which the great army of the sea-sick are said to be longing. We have also been told, in many well- rounded addresses, that the sails of British and American commerce ''zvhiten every sea." But we have averaged during our voyage only about two vessels a day. The cry of "Sail — ho!" is so rare a sound that it brings all the passengers to their feet. The mere ghost of a shroud along the line of the sky calls up all the opera-glasses. The most entertaining scallops are drop- ped from the spoon when, during the din- ing-hour, it is announced that a ship passes. Let "Fourth -of July" orators steer clear of the fall-acy that the sails of our com- merce whiten the sea. They make about as much impression upon it as a fly crossing the ceiling. We have been told of the sense of loneli- ness, isolation, and almost desolation felt when out of sight of land. But we think that in a popular steamer such a feeling is impossible. We leave a world behind, but we take a world with us. A Hamburg steamer is a portable Germany. The ship in which we sail is Berkeley Square and Fifth Avenue. London ends at the prow, Broadway begins afc the stern. 142 Crumbs Swept Up. We have on board Fulton Market, and Faneuil Hall, and Drury Lane Theatre, and Apsley House. We do not any more think of how far we are from the shore than we do how far the shore is from us. Though mid-ocean, we are in the heart of a city, and hear feet shuffling, and hammers pounding, and wheels turning, and voices shouting. We have not found any of the monotony of the deep. We have not seen an iceberg, nor a whale, nor a porpoise, nor a flying- fish, nor a water-spout; but in simply watching and thinking we have found each day so pleasantly occupied that we sor- rowed at its speedy termination. So many styles of character as come to- gether on shipboard are a perpetual study. Men by the third day turn inside out. (I refer to their characters and not to their stomachs.) Their generosity or their selfishness, their opulence of resource or their paucity, their courage or their cow- ardice, are patent. W^hat variety of mis- sion! This one goes to claim a large estate; this one to cultivate his taste in foreign pic- ture-galleries; that one to amass a for- tune; this one to see what he can learn. On some the time hangs heavily, and they betake themselves to the "betting-room." Since coming on board, some of them have lost all their money by unsuccessful wager. Fallacies About the Sea. 143 Two or three have won everything, and the others have lost. They have bet about the speed of the ship — bet that it would be five hundred and thirty knots a day, bet that it would be less, bet that the number of miles run would be an even number, bet that it would be odd, bet that the pilot com- ing aboard would step on with his right foot, bet it would be his left, bet that gold will be up when we get to Queenstown, bet that it would be down, bet every week- day, bet on Sunday. The surgeon, who read ''prayers" for us in the Sabbath service, was one of the heaviest losers. I am informed, by a cred- ible witness, that he took a bet while we were singing the psalm during the religious ser- vice which he was conducting. God save us from the morals and the physic of such a doctor! But take them all in all we never dwelt among men and w^omen of finer culture, and better heart, and nobler life than our fellow passengers. We shall be glad for- ever that on this crystal path of nations we met them. The sailors have been to us a perpetual entertainment. They are always interest- ing, always cheerful, always helpful. Each one has a history. Sometimes his life has been a tragedy, interspersed with comedy. Our heart goes out toward him. In his 144 Crumbs Swept Up. laug-h is the freedom of the sea and the wildness of the wind. We can hardly keep from laying hold with these sailorboys, as they bend to their work singing a strange song of which we catch here and there a stanza such as: Away! Haul away! Haul away, Joe! Away! Haul away! now we are sober. Once I lived in Ireland, digging turf and tatoes, But now I'm in a packet-ship a-hauling tacks and braces. Once I was a waterman and lived at home at ease, But now I am a mariner to plough the angry seas. I thought I would like a seafaring life, so I bid my love adieu, And shipped as cook and steward on board the Kangaroo. Then I never thought she would prove false, Or ever prove untrue. When we sailed away from Milfred Bay On board the Kangaroo. Away! Haul away! Haul away, Joe. Away! Haul away! Haul away, Joe. We cannot tell the metre of the songs they sing by day and night, but we prefer to call it "peculiar metre." We wish for these men a safe life-voyage, and a calm harbor at the last. Heaven give them a steady foot while running up the slippery ratlines to reef the topsail! -)o(- '''Stay Where You're Happy.''' 145 "STAY WHERE YOU'RE HAPPY." On board the steamer Java I met an English gentleman by the name of Mr. Gale. *'And who was Mr. Gale?" you ask. I know not, except that he was of so bland a nattire I felt he must be a *'gale from Heaven." We were leaning over the rail of the vessel, watching the first appeanance of land — Ireland sending out to meet us the "Skelligs," a cross-looking projection, like the snarly dog that comes out to sere- nade you with a volley of yelps at the gate of a friend, or like a dark-browed Fenian appearing to challenge the British ships, and bid them ''mind their eye," and look out how they run ''forninst ould Ireland" — when Mr. Gale summed up all his advice about European travel in the terse phrase: "Mr. Talmage, do not be rushing about in Europe, as Americans generally do. Stay where you're happy!" We set this down as among the wisest counsels ever given us, although at the very first place we stopped it nearly ruined our prospects for seeing anything besides Scot- land. Americans traveling in Europe are for the most part in immensity of perspiration. Starting with what they call "the small and insignificant island of Great Britain," and having adopted the feeling of the Yankee 146 Crumbs Swept Up. who said he thought England a very nice Httle island, but he was afraid to go out nights lest he should fall of¥, they expect to see all Europe in a few days. They spend much of their time at depots, in- quiring about the next train, or rush past Mont Blanc, with no time to stop, chas- ing up a lost valise. In our company was an American, who had five ladies and eight trunks. Getting into Switzerland, he let the ladies come on to see the mountains, while he went back a two days' journey, asking Belgium and Germany if they had seen anything of his trunks. As he is unacquainted with the language, but has learned that Das Gepack is the German for *'the luggage," I im- agine him going through the streets of Heidelberg, Frankfort, and Darmstadt, at dead of night, shouting till the people throw open the windows expecting a war- extra: "Das Gepack! Das Gepack!" Meanwhile we offered a little cologne to one of the unfortunate party bereft of their "things," and she refused to take it; and, on being urged, blushed, and hemm'd, and finally gave as her reason that she had no pocket-handkerchief. Alas! her clothes by that time were on the way to St. Petersburg or Halifax. But why sneer at the father and husband '''Stay Where You're Happy y 147 on his errand of mercy scouring Europe for his wife's silk dresses? May he be pros- pered! If he do not find the chignons, may he at least be so happy as to discover the pocket-handkerchiefs! What more impor- tant than clothes? But for a deficit in this, John Gilpin would have been respectable and happy, even at the time he could not hold his horse. Lack of this is what made Eve chilly in Paradise. As for ourselves, we carry all our bag- gage in our two hands, and yet we have two changes of apparel a day; namely, in the morning when we put it on, and in the night when we take it off. Nobody can steal our baggage unless they steal us. Often travelers, worn out with unnecessary incumbrances, wish they were home. They are not happy. They want to go to their mother. We found one American tugging along with a Swiss cottage nicely boxed up, the work of an Interlachen artificer. It made us think of looking up a pocket edi- tion of Jung-Frau. Many of our countrymen are exceeding- ly annoyed at their lack of skill in the use of the European languages. After a vain attempt to make a Parisian waiter under- stand French, they swear at him in English, But we remembered the art of the physi- cian who put all the remains of old pre- scriptions in one bottle, — the oil, and the 148 Criunbs Swept Up. calomel, and the rhubarb, and the asafoeti- da, — and when he found a patient with "complication of diseases," would shake up his old bottle and give him a dose. And so we have compounded a language for Euro- pean travel. We take a little French, and a little German, and a little English, with a few snatches of Chinese and Choctaw, and when we find a stubborn case of waiter or landlord that will not understand, we shake up all the dialects and give him a dose. It is sure to strike somewhere. If we do not make him understand, we at any rate give him a terrible scare. We have not the anxiety of some in a strange land about getting things to eat. We like everything in all the round of diet, except animated cheese and odorous codfish; always have a good appetite, never in our lives missed a meal save once, when we could not get any; and knowing that Eine gerostete RiiMcisch Schcibe means a beefsteak, Eine Messer a knife, and Eine Gabel a fork, and Eine Serviette a napkin, after that we feel reckless as to what we can or can not get. In journeying from country to country, the change in the value of coins is apt to be inextricable. But guineas, and florins, and kreutzers, and double ducats cease to be a perplexity to us. We ask the price of a thing, look wise as if we knew all ''Stay Where You're Happy.'' 149 about it, and then hold out our hand and let him take his pick. As riches take wings and fly away, we are determined to lose nothing in that manner. Fifty years from now a Turkish piastre will be worth to me as much as a Holland guilder; and it worries me not when I am cheated, for the man who cheats must in the end suffer more than I, so that my chagrin is lost in compassion for his misfortune. , In traveling let us go where we like it best, and then be happy. The manufac- turer should go to Birmingham and Man- chester. The skillful and mighty-handed machinery will make an impression upon him that he can get from nothing else. Let the shipwright traveling in Europe take considerable time at the Liverpool docks, and watch the odd-looking craft that hover about th^ French coast. The philan- thropist will busy himself in looking up Newman Hall's ''Ragged Schools," and go out a few days to Bristol to talk with George Muller, and go down to Billings- gate to hear the women sell fish with the same slang as they did fifty years ago. Let the poet go to Grub Street, Cripplegate, and, as the cab jostles through the dark and filthy street, look out and see the places in olden time frequented by hun- gry authors, and have his sensibilities 150 Cnimbs Swept Up. shocked at finding that John Milton's house, in which "Paradise Lost" was writ- ten, is now a soap factory. If a man be fond of a fine horse, and wants to see the perfection of neck, and hoof, and back, and fianks, tamed thunder- bolts controlled by caparisoned drivers, let him g-o out every clear evening, at six o'clock, to Hyde Park, or into the Royal Mews, back of Buckingham Place, and see the one hundred and sixty-eight white and bay horses that wait the Queen's bidding. It is folly for a blind man to go to see Gieseback Falls, or a deaf one to hear the Freybourg organ, or a man whose lifetime reading has been con^ned to the almanac and his own ledger to spend much time in the Reading Room of the British Museum. Stay only where ycm're happy! At the hotel in Antwerp, sitting at the table at the close of a day that had been to me a rapture among picture-galleries, a man sat down beside me, and said, ''What a dull place; there seems nothing going on!" He had applied to that exquisite city of art the business tests of the Bank of England. That was no place for him. Why did he ever come out from the shufBe and tumult of the London "Strand"? Much of the world's disquietude comes from the fact that they will not take the advice of the Englishman in the words ''Stay Where You're Happy.'' 151 heading this chapter. Queen Mary was fondled and caressed in France. Courts bowed down and worshiped her beauty. But she went to Scotland, and Elizabeth cut the poor thing's head off. Why did she not stay where she was happy? Walter Scott had a good home in Castle Street, Edinburgh, no debts to pay, all the world bringing offerings to his genius. But he went up to Abbotsford; must have a roof like Melrose Abbey, and the grounds ex- tensive as a king's park. He sank his for- tune, and roused up a pack of angry cred- itors, each one with his teeth at his throat. How much better for his peace if he had continued in the plain home. Why did he not stay where he was happy? Maximilian had the confidence of Aus- tria, and the richest of all earth's treasures, — ^the love of a good woman's heart. He gathered up all that he had and went to Mexico. A nation of assassins plotted for his life. He fell riddled with a crash of musketry, and his wife, Carlotta, goes back a maniac. They had enough before they went. They wanted more. One dead, the other crazy! Oh, that ^hey had been wise enough to stay where they were happy! -)o(- 152 Crumbs Swept Up. STAR ENGAGEMENT. One November night, a few years ago, there was to be a meteoric display on the most magnificent scale. Astronomical journals had excited the anticipations ot the whole country. Indeed, no star ever had more induce- ment to shoot Vv^ell than on that night, for the audience was immense — gathered at windows, on house-tops, and in observa- tories. The only objection we had to the bill of entertainment was that the doors Qpened at a very late hour, and at a time when we are usually in a very unimpres- sible state of mind. We hit upon the following device. We hired, by extra inducement, the servant -to sit up and watch, and, at the very first indi- cation of restlessness on the part of the celestial bodies, to thump mightily at our dormitory. We placed out hat and shoes in places where they could immediately be found, and, before the gas went out, marked the relative position, both of hat and shoes, lest, in the excitement of rising up, we might get these articles of apparel transposed, and put on at the extremity opposite that for which hatter-s and boot- makers originally intended them. We slept with one eye open, and in a state of expec- tancy, such as one feels when he wants to Star Engagement. 153 take an early train, and fears that the alarm- clock is disordered. No such meteoric display had taken place since we -were a year old — an age when our astronomical attainments were very limited. Neither had our servant witnessed anything of the kind, and her ideas were very vague as to what would really be the character of the entertainment. We warned her as to the peril of falling asleep, as when the stars really did shoot, they often shot at random. It was some time before we could persuade her of the necessity of having the gas out while watching, for she persisted in the idea that you can always see better with a light than without it. We had fallen into our first nap when there was a loud rap at the door, and -we gave a bound to the floor. The servan-t told us that she had seen one star which had been very uncertain in its movements, and had crossed lots, wagging a long tail of fire. We cried out, *'Do not call us for just one star, but wait till they all get a-going!" We took another nap and woke up, and not hearing anything about the celestial disturbances, the wife went in to see how the servant was getting on, and found her prostrate and insensible! What ivas the matter? Had the meteoric display taken place, and this innocent one in the wild sweep been knocked over, another 154 Crumbs Swept Up. victim of philosophical experiments? No! We fovmd that she had been overcome of sleep. When roused up, she immediately spoke, thus relieving our anxiety in regard to the fatality of the occurrence, and her first words (showing the ruling passion for astronomical investigation still unimpaired) were the startling interrogation: ''Have THEY SHOT?" I concluded to depend on my own watch- fulness, and forthwith to look out. Saw one "star" in motion, coming up the street on two feet, but concluded frcxm his looks that he would not shoot imless in case of a riot. I gazed intently, and saw no signs of motion among the celestials, except a few that seemed to twinkle mischievously, as if making fun of my white cravat — an article I never wear except in case of hasty toilet. But the astronomical observation was far from being a failure, for in returning my head from the open air, I struck it vio- lently against the window, and immediately saw stars. They f^ew every whither, and, what was peculiar, they were of all colors — white, black, blue, green, and striped. But from the unfavorable impression they pro- duced on me at the time, I feel like warn- ing people against putting out their heads in the night-time, when the meteors are carelessly swinging their shillelahs. We did not blame the stars, nor the astron- Star Engagement. 155 omers who excited our anticipations, but we all felt disappointed. MORAL. Do not calculate too much upon meteors. I would rather have the clear, steady shin- ing of a morning star, than all the capers that comets cut up. Saturn or Mars is more to be depended on than these celestial vagrants. The curse of the world is its unsanctified geniuses, who go darting across the political and ecclesiastical heavens just long enough to make the na- tions stare, and then go out in darkness. We love brilliancy; but let it be that of a fixed star — steady, cheerful, regulated. In some great crisis of the world's night, I have calculated upon the behavior of some one of shining capacities, and I have gone out to hear what noble things he would say, or to see what thrilling deed he would do, and what long line of light he would stretch across the heavens. But my calculations have failed. My disappoint- ment was full. Another failure at star- shooting. The moral world wants fewer comets, and more Jupiters; fewer fireflies, and more lamps; fewer Jack-o'-the-lanterns to dance the swamps, but more evening stars to cheer the world's darkness; fewer Lord Byrons, and more John Fosters. We 156 Crumbs Swept Up. never knew of but one meteor that went forth on a grand mission — the one that ran to stand over Bethlehem; and that got all its glory from the fact that it pointed to the Sun that never sets. Grand thing it was, if, on that night in November, in ad- dition to our horrible cold, we caught these moral reflections. ■)o(- CHILDREN'S BOOKS. When our older people were children, there was no juvenile literature. If the book appetite arose, they were fed on a slice of Wilberforce's ''Practical View of Christianity," or little tidbits from "Ed- wards on the Affections," or were given a few nuts to crack from Chalmers's "As- tronomical Discourses." Their fathers and mothers sighed lest these little ones should turn out badly, because they liked ginger- snaps better than Westminster Assemblies, and would spend their money for marbles when it ought to have gone toward fur- nishing red flannel shirts for the poor heathen children in Kamtchatka. You have lost all faith in John Bunyan's veraci- ty, and whistled incredulously when you came to that story about Apollyon. Pic- tures were scarce, and a book was consid- Children' s Books. 157 ered profusely adorned that had at the be- ginning a sketch of the author in gown and bands, and long hair of powdered whiteness, and at the close in ornate letters the word Finis, which you were told meant The End, although, after wearily reading it through, you did not know whether it was the end of the book or the end of you. You might as well feed your baby on lob- ster-salad as at that early age to have been ©Kpected to digest the books that were set before you. But now the children's library is filled with books of large type, and tasteful vig- nettes, and lids ridged, and flowered, and scrolled, and columned, and starred with all the fascinations of the book-bindery. There is now danger that what is called the "milk for babes" shall become nothing but chalk and water. Many of the Sabbath schools are doing much to foster a taste for trashy literature. In some of these libraries you will find sentimental love-yarns; bi- ographies of generals who were very brave, and good examples in some respects — when they were sober; fairy stories, in which the fairies had very loose morals; accounts of boys and girls who never lived — books in which there is no more religion than In "Don Quixote" or "Gulliver's Travels." We have been wondering why some religious society did not publish a 158 Criwibs Swept Up. nice little edition of "Baron Munchausen," with a moral at the end, showing our dear little people the danger of tying one's horse to the top of a church-steeple. One Sunday night your child does not want to go to bed. He cries when compelled to go, and looks under the bed for some of the reli- gious hobgoblins that come out of the Sun- day-school library. Religious spooks are just as bad as any other spooks. A child is just as afraid of Floras, Pomonas, sylphs, oreads, and fairies, as of ghosts. The poor little darling in the blue sack goes home with a book, thinking she has heaven under her arm, and, before she gets through read- ing the story of love and adventure, feels so strange that she thinks she must be get- ting lots of religion. In the choice of our children's books, let us not mistake slops for simplicity, nor in- sult our children's tastes by disquisitions about "footsy tootsies," or keep informing them of the historical fact, which they learned a great while ago, that "Mary had a little lamb," or assemble the youngsters in coroner's jury to clear up the mystery as to "who killed cock-robin." If a child has no common sense at seven years of age, it never will have. Have at least one book in your library in which all the good children did not die. My early impression from Sunday-school Children's Books. 159 books was that religion was very unhealthy. It seemed a terrible distemper that killed every boy and girl that it touched. If i found myself some day better than com- mon, I corrected the mistake for fear I should die; although it was the general opinion that I was not in much danger' from over-sanctity. But I do believe that children may have religion and yet live through it. A strong mustard-plaster and a teaspoonful of ipecac will do marvels. Timothy lived to grow up, and we are credibly informed that little Samuel woke. Indeed, the best boys I ever saw, occasion- ally upset things and got boisterous, and had the fidgets. The goody-goody kind of children make namby-pamby men. I should not be surprised to find that a colt which does not frisk becomes a horse that will not draw. It is not religion that makes that boy sit by the stove while his brothers are out snow-balling, but the ''dumps." The boy who has no fire in his nature may, after he has grown up, have animation enough to grease a wagon-wheel, but he will not own the wagon nor have money enough to buy the grease. The best boy I ever knew, before he went to heaven, could strike a ball till it soared out of sight, and, in the race, as far as you could see, you would find his red tippet coming out ahead. Look out for the boy who i6o Crumbs Swept Up. never has the fingers of a good laugh tickle him under the diaphragm. The most solemn-looking mule on our place has kicked to pieces five dash-boards. There are parents who notice that their daughter is growing pale and sick, and therefore think she must be destined to marry a missionary, and go to Borneo, al- though the only recommendation she has for that position is that she will never be any temptation to the cannibals, who, while very fond of cold missionary, are averse to diseased meat; or, finding their son look- ing cadaverous, think he is either going to die, or become a minister, considering that there is great power of consecration in liver complaint, and thinking him doubly set apart, who, while presbytery are laying their hands on his head, has dyspepsia lay- ing its hand on his stomach. Oh! for a religious literature that shall take for its model of excellence a boy that loves God, and can digest his dinner in two hours after he eats it! Be not afraid to say, in your account of his decease, that the day before you lost him he caught two rabbits in his trap down on the meadow, or soundly thrashed a street-ruffian who was trying to upset a little girl's basket of cold victuals. I do not think that heaven is so near to an ill-ventilated nursery as to a good gymnasium. If the church of God War to the Knife, i6i could trade off three thousand hogsheads of rehgious cant for three thousand hogs- heads of fresh air and stout health, we should be the gainers, but the fellow with whom we traded would be cheated merci- lessly and for ever. ■)o(- WAR TO THE KNIFE. Within a few days I have seen Belgium, Switzerland, Prussia, and Germany march- ing to their frontiers, the two former for armed neutrality, the two latter for bitterest war, and before this paragraph reaches the United States, you will, by telegraph, have heard the first shock of battle. Last Sabbath, Brussels had the appear- ance of New York city just after the as- sault on Fort Sumter. The streets were a mass of excited people. Men were flock- ing in from the country as volunteers, and the soldiers in bright uniform were parad- ing Rue de la Madeleine. As we passed up the Rhine we saw the fortifications swarm- ing with busy men. Strange, that this most peaceful of all rivers should be the ob- ject of perpetual strife, and that at the strife, and that at the sight of its pure, bright water, the kings of the earth should fall down in hydrophobia of ambition. 1 62 Crumbs Swept Up. Long" before the vineyards that crowd ta the lip of this stream shall have purpled into ripeness, war will have trodden out its vintage of blood. From Mayence to Carls- ruhe, on either side the rail-track, are earth- works that must have demanded the shovels and pickaxes of the entire popula- tion. The rail-carriages are filled with Frenchmen flying the country, the police commanding their departure. The harvests of Prussia, which look like those of Lan- caster County, Pennsylvania, for luxuri- ance, are lodging for lack of a sickle, the men having gone to the war. At Cologne,, the flowers and curiosities of the city gar- dens are being brought into the city so as to be under the defence of the fortifications. The Prussians are enthusiastic, and ready for anything. They are glad that the conf^rct has come. They have been for years hindered in their enterprise by the arrogant behavior of France, and they want the matter settled at once and forever. Their officers and troops, so far as we have seen them, are a class of men that must ex- cite the admiration of all who love nobility of character. They are honest, intelligent, bold; and though France, with her great discipline of military, may overcome them in the open- ing battles. Prussia will never submit to* France. War to the Knife. 163 We called long enough to find that even lethargic Heidelberg had gone off in the excitement, leaving its grand old castle and dirty streets for visitors to look at. The city of Basle, Switzerland, in which we are now stopping, has very nearly sus- pended business, for the purpose of seeing off her soldier boys, who, this morning at daylight, marched under our windows through the narrow street, the trumpet sounding an air wild, brisk, and strange to our ears. The red torrent of patriotism rages down these hills and among these de- files. Though Belgium and Switzerland are armed for neutrality, they are as indig- nant at France as is Prussia; and it would not require a very grave provocation to call them into the great struggle. Where the trouble will end, God only knows. Until the name of Napoleon comes down into the dust, the world cannot have quiet. The power of one bad man to tear the world's heart to pieces, was never so mightily illustrated as at this hour. A woman rushed out of the crowd when Robespierre died, crying, ''Murderer of my children! descend to hell covered with the curses of every woman in France!" But that is a moderate execration com- pared with that which we fear will come from all the outraged nations of Europe when Napoleon goes — to his uncle. 164 Crumbs Swept Up. There is no more glory in war. In the old'en time, when Fitz-James and Roderick Dhu met at Coilantogle Ford, and threw their wrath int-o combat that crimsoned Loch Vennachar, -and made the crags of old Ben An and Ben Venue echo with the sword-clang, there may have been romance and poetry in combat; but with such weap- ons as the new contrivance of death w-hich France will bring into the battle, war is murder, compared with which that perpe- trated by the hand of Antoine Probst and a Five-Points garroter is innocence unde- filed. Those who tell us that the millennium is about to begin, must have guessed wrong. We saw, a few days ago, in the Tower of London, an astonishing array of old armor, showing what a mif¥ the world has been in for five hundred years. But we wer-e pleased to see in one room how the swords and guns had, by some artistic hand, been arranged into representations of flowers; ramrods and sabres turned into lilies and fuchsias and Scottish bluebells. We offered a silent prayer that soon all the world's implements of death might so blossom. But, alas! now the red dahlia of human blood shall paint the grass, and instead of the white-fleeced lamb, which Edwin Landseer in exquisite picture repre- sents as looking into the mouth of the dis- Fresh Paint. 165 mounted gun of war, destruction and woe shall belch out of it. From the sight of this European tumult we turn away to the mountains of Switzer- land and hope to look upon Mont Blanc, that symbol of the Great White Throne on which all the world's wrongs will be righted. The uTountain gazes upon a few kingdoms, but the Throne will overlook France and Prussia and the world and the ages. )o( FRESH PAINT. In art, as in everything else, things must pass for what they are worth. A feeble pic- ture by Orcagna is none the less feeble because five hundred years old. I cannot admire his ''Coronation of the Virgin,'* wherein he sets the angels to playing bag- pipes. Even the Scotch Highlander ex- pects to put down his squealing instrument thrs side of heaven. There is no power in the centuries to consecrate a failure. Time has a scythe, but no trowel. Age, in the abstract, excites not my veneration. I must first know whether it is an old saint or an old sinner. The worst characteristic about some things is their longevity. A newly- laid ^^%, boiled just two minutes and a half by the watch, and placed on the table 1 66 Crumbs Swept Up. beside a clean napkin, is a luxury to bless the palate withal; but some of us remem- ber that once in our boarding--house at school, we chanced at the morning meal to crack the shell of the Pre-Raphaelite ^^'g, and, without "returning thanks," pre- cipitately forsook the table. Antiquity may be bad or good. As with physical vision, so in mental optics there are far-sighted men who can- not see things close by, while a quarter of a mile away they can tell the time of day from the dial on a church steeple. The sul- phurous smell in Church's "Cotopaxi" makes them cough and sneeze, though, at the peril of unhinging their necks from the spinal column, they will stand for hours, looking straight up at a homely Madonna by some ancient Italian, plastered on the rotunda of a Brussels cathedral. Having no sympathy with those who expend so much good-humor on the old masters that they have nothing left for moderns, I shall speak of recent pictures, at the risk of rub- bing against fresh paint. Americans, m-ore than any other people, Avant to see the paintings of Joseph Wil- liam Turner. John Ruskin has devoted more than half of his working life making that painter more famous. But Ruskin's art-criticisms have nowhere been read as in the United States, for the reason that Fresh Paint. 167 The Modern Painters is published in a very cheap American edition, while the English publishers of that book present it only in expensive type and with costly illustrations, thus keeping it beyond the reach of the masses. Though Turner lies beside Joshua Reynolds in the Cathedral of St. Paul, and his pictures have become the inheritance of the British nation, London knows little more of him than does New York. But nine out of ten of our friends return- ing from the National Gallery of England express sore disappointment with Turner's paintings. They think it strange that his canvas should excite the great intellect of John Ruskin for fifteen years into a seem- ing frenzy of admiration, so that he can write or speak of nothing else — enduring, in behalf of his favorite artist, all acerbity and flagellation, the masters of British and foreign schools bedaubing the brilliant writer with such surplus of paint as they could spare from their own palettes, and pursuing the twain with such ferocity, that, though the first has hidden from his foes behind the marble of the tomb, and his de- fender has, in ruined health, retired to Den- mark Hill, nevertheless the curses need some cooling yet. Our first glance at these pictures, cover- ing the four walls of two rooms in the gal- lery, struck us back with violent disap- i68 Crumbs Swept Up. pointment. On our last look, on the last day of our visit, we felt an overcomirug sad- ness that probably we never again should find such supernatural power in an artist. We say supernatural, for if we believe that Jeremiah and r>avid and John had more than human power to write, I know not why it wouM be wrong to suppose that Paul Veronese, and Giotto, and Rem- brandt, and West, and William Turner were divinely inspired to paint. In the one case, it was parchment; in the other, can- vas. Here it was ink; there it was colors. Now a pen; then a pencil. Was it not the same power w^hich handed Raphael's "Transfiguration" across four centuries that has conveyed to this present time the New Testament? I never felt so deeply the suffering of the Saviour, when reading the description in Luke and John, as when standing in the cathedral at Antwerp. Looking at the "Crucifixion," by Rubens, I was beaten down and crushed in soul, and, able to look no more, I staggered out, faint, and sick, and exhausted, the sweat drop- ping from every pore. I will not advocate the supernal inspira- tion of any of these men, ancient or mod- ern; but must say that the paintings of Wil- liam Turner exerted over me an influence different from anything I have experienced. The change between my first and last look Fresh Pahii. 169 of this British artist is to be explained by the change of stand-point. No paintings in the world are so dependent upon the posi- tion occupied by the spectator. Gazed at from ordinary distances, they are insipid, meaningless, exaggerated. You feel as if they had not be"en done with a pencil, but a brot)m. It seems that each one of them must have taken two quarts of stufif to make it as thick as that. You almost ex- pect the colors to drip ofif — you feel like taking your handkerchief and sopping up the excess. But, standing close up to the opposite wall, you see a marked improve- ment; yet, even then, the space between you and the picture is too small. You need to pass through into the next room, and then, looking through the doorway, fasten your eye on the painting. Six paces off, and Turner's ''Decline of Carthage" is a vexation; but twenty-two paces oflf, with an eye-glass, and Turner's ''Decline of Carthage" is a rapture. From the last stand-point, looking at "The Spithead," we felt like dividing our life into two por- tions — that which had occurred before we saw Turner and that which might occur af- terward. This master shifted his style four times. Ko one mood lasted him long. So many a man looks back, and finds that his life has been a series of fits. Perhaps very young lyo Crumbs Swept Up. in literature, he had a fit Tupperian. Pass- ing on a few years, and he was taken with a fit Byronian. Getting into calmer waters of life, he was attacked with a fit metaphy- sical. As might be expected, from being out so much in the fog, he took a violent fit Carlylean. Then, at the close of life, he reviewed his intellectual gyrations; and, disgusted with his ramblings, he had a fit of common sense, which was such a sudden change from anything preceding that it killed him. It is easy to trace Turner through a variety of artistic spasms, but he is always entertaining. We cannot forget his "Caligula's Palace;"' the magnificence of destruction ; the ages of the past looking through the ruined porti- cos and shivering on the top of the broken marble; the bridge, in its leap across the bay, struck with a death of desolation that leaves it a skeleton in the way; children playing in the foreground, their diminu- tiveness and simplicity, by the contrast, piling up the height of the towers, and the gorgeous pretension of the imperial do- main; the sun rising just high enough to show that carved pillars of stone belonging to a kingly fool are but dust when the "Rock of Ages" crashes against them. Who can forget the light that Turner pours on Venice, the Campanile of San Marco, the Dogana — light falling with the Fresh Paint. 171 positiveness of a pebble, but the diffusive- ness of a liquid — light that does not strike the water and stop there, but becomes transfused and intermixed — nay, which, by matchless chemistry of color, becomes a part of the wave, so that you cannot say which is light and which is water: gon- dolas variegated, dropping all their hues into the wave — gondola above, gondola beneath, and moving keel to keel. Light, though so subtle that it flies from other touch, Turner picked up, nor let it slip through his fingers till it touched the can- vas. John Martin, the Northumberland painter, tried to catch the light, but instead thereof caught the fire that burns up many of his fine pictures. Turner's light is neither a hot element to consume nor a lifeless thing that might be called a mere pallor on the cheek of the darkness, but so natural you hardly know whether it drops from the sky-window into the gallery, or was kindled by the hand which for twenty years has been mouldering in the crypt of Saint Paul's Cathedral. What water Turner painted! The waves of the sea knew him. No man could pour such moonlight upon the Thames as he ; or could so woll run the hands of the sea up and down the sides of a stranded ship; or could so sadden the Hellespont with the farewell of Lcander; or toss up the water 172 Crumbs Swept Up. in a squall so natural that you know the man in the fishing-smack must be sur- prised at the suddenness; or so infuriate the Channel at Calais that you wish you did not, on your way home, have to cross it; or could have dropped a ca-stle-shadow so softly and yet so deep into a stream. The w^ave of William Turner was not, as in many pictures, merely wet whitewash, but a mingling of brightness and gloom, crystal and azure, smoothed down as a calm morn- ing tramples it, or flung up ju«t as the winds do it. Then, all this thrown into a perspective so marked, th-at, seeing it for the first time, you fe-el that you never before knew what perspective was. You can hardly believe that the scene he sketches is on the dead level of the wall. You get on the bank of his river in ^'Prince's HoHday," and follow it back through its windings, miles away, and after you think you will be compelled to stop, you see it still beyond, and when you can no more keep the bank, you see in still greater distance what you say may be cloud, and may be water, but you cannot decide. Turner can put more miles within a square foot than any one we know of. There are always back-doors opening be- yond. But his foreshortening is quite as rare. Often his fishermen and warriors and kings are not between the frame of the Fresh Paint. 173 picture, but between you and the canvas. You almost feel their breath on your cheek, and stand back to give them room to angle, or fight, or die. After exploring miles of pictures, the two on secular themes that hang in my mem- ory, higher than all, deeper than all, brighter than all, are Turner's ''Parting of Hero and Leander;" and Turner's "Palace and Bridge of Caligula." And there they will hang forever. Yet his rivals and enemies hounded him to death. Unable longer to endure the face of a public which had so grievously mal- treated him, with a broken heart he went out from his elegant parlors on Queen Anne Street, to die in a mean house in Chelsea. After he was lifeless, the world gathered up his body, played a grand march over it, and gave It honored sepul- ture. Why did they not do justice to him while living? What are monuments worth to a dead man? Why give stones when he asked for bread? Why crack and crush the jewel, and then be so very care- ful about the casket? Away with this oft- repeated graveyard farce! Do not twist into wreaths for the tomb the flowers with which you ought to have crowned the heated brow of a living painter. )o( 174 Crumbs Swept Up. BRUTES. Edwin Landseer has come to a better un- derstanding of the brute creation than has any other man. He must have had a pet spaniel, or cat, or horse, that in hours of extreme confidence gave him the secret grips, signs, and passwords of the great fraternity of animals. He knows the lan- guage of feathers, the feeling of a sheep being sheared, of an ox goaded, and the humilration of a dog when kicked off the piazza. In presence of Landseer's hunted stag, you join sides with the stag, and wish him escape from the hounds; and when pursuers and pursued go tumbling over the rocks into the mad torrent beneath, the reindeer with lolling and bloody tongue, and eye that reels into its last darkness, you cry "Alas!" for the stag, but ''Good!" for the hounds; and wonder that the painter did not take the dogs ofif the scent before the c*atastrophe. Was ever a bay mare more beautifully shod than, in Kensington Museum, Land- seer shoes her? The blacksmith-shop is just such a one as we rode to, with rope- halter on the horse's head, and when, bare- foot, we dismounted, the smith of the leathern apron, and rusted spectacles, and hands seemingly for five years an exile from wash-basins, bade us look out how we Brutes, 175 trod on the hot iron. Does anything sound more clearly through the years than the wheeze of the old bellows, and the clang of the sledge-hammer, and the whistle of the horse-tail brush with which we kept off the flies; while, with the up- lifted and uneasy foot of the horse between the workm.an's legs, he clenched the nail, •clipped off the raggedness of the hoof, and filed smooth the surface, the horse flinch- ing again and again, as the nail came too near the quick? And then the lightning of sparks as the hammer fell on the red-hot iron, and the chuck and siss and smoke of the bar as it plunged into the water- bucket! Oh! there was a rugged poetry in a blacksmith-shop, and even now the sound of the old wagon-tire at the door rouses me up like a war-whoop, and in the breath of the furnace I glow with memories. Only a few months ago, I walked into a city blacksmith-shop, and asked if at any time I could get a horse shod there. You see, there might be a time when I would buy a horse, and he might need such services ; but our chief reason for going in was that we wanted to see if such a place looked as it did of yore. As Landseer lifts the back foot of the bay mare, the wrinkles of her haunches are warm with life, and her head turns round most naturally to oversee the job, as much 176 Crumbs Swept Up. as to say, "Be careful how you drive that nail," or, "Your holding my hoof is very uncertain." On behalf of all the horses which go limping with ill-set shoe and nails in the hock, I thank this blacksmith. I know he is doing his work well, or, from the spirit of the mare, he would before this have been hurled into the middle of the turnpike — hammer, apron, and nail-box. No one so well as Landseer can call up a bloodhound, and make him lie down in the right place — a decided case of armed peace. You treat him well, not so much because of your respect for dogs, as out of considera- tion for your own interest. Walk softly about him and see the great reefs of hide — more skin than a dog needs, as though he had been planned on a larger scale, but after he had begun to be filled in, the orig- inal plan had been altered. See the sur- plusage of snarl in that terrier, and of hair on that poodle, and how damp he is on the end of his nose! And here you find one of Landseer's cows, full-uddered, glad to be milked. You will see the pail foam over soon if that care- less milkmaid does not upset it. Bless met I have seen that cow a hundred times be- fore. It is the very one I used, in boyhood, to drive up as the evening breeze was rust- ling the corn-silk, and making the tall tas- sels wave like the plumes of an Indian war- Brutes. 177 rior squatting in the woods: a cow of kindly look, the breath of clover sweeping- from her nostrils, meeting me at the bars with head through the rails, and low moan of petition for the barn-yard. Even the donkey is introduced with a loving touch in Landseer's pictures. Now, a man who can favorably regard mule or ass is a marvel of sympathy. I am in fresh memory of a mule in the Alps. He might as well have lived on Newark Flats, for all the good fine scenery did him. With what an awkward tread he carried me up to the Mer de Glace, jerking backward and for- ward, so that I was going both ways at once, but, nevertheless, slowly advancing^ because the jerk forward was somewhat in excess of the jerk backward. The flies were ravenous, and to catch one of them he would stop mid-cliff, throw one foot up till he struck my foot in the stirrup, as though he proposed to get on himself, and then would put his head back, till nothing save a strong grip of the saddle kept me from seeing the Alps inverted. But have the fly he would, reckless of shout and whip^ and thump of heel in the side. Mules are stubborn, crafty — unlike men, in the fact that they look chiefly after their own in- terests (?); but these brutes are not very intelligent, considering, from their ears, how large an opportunity they have of 178 Crumbs Swept Up. hearing. They have most imperfect intona- tion, -and but Httle control over their voice. When a donkey begins to bray, it seems he does not know when he will be able to ,^top, or whether the voice will rise or fall in its cadences. But donkeys cannot help this, and for their sins they are to be pitied. Therefore, Edwin Landseer calls them into his pictures. What a kind man he must be! Blessed the dog that fawns at his feet, the horse that draws his carriage, the cat that mews on his window-sill, the deer that ranges through his park! Thrice blessed their m-aster! Animals in Europe are more sympa- thized wkh than in America. I see no over-driven horses, no unsheltered cattle, no cracking away at birds with old blunder- busses, just for the sake of seeing the fea- thers flutter. When, on the twelfth of Aug- ust, all England and Scotland go a-grouse- hunting, and Perth and Aberdeen and In- verness and Chatsworth are shaken with a continiKDUS bang of sportsmen, there is no cruelty. It is an honest lift of the gun, a fair look across -the barrel, a twitch of the forefinger of the right hand, a fiash, and game for dinner at Peacock Inn or Ele- phant and Castle. You see more animals in bronze and stone in Europe than in the United States. If young Americans, wanting quills to Brutes. 179 write with, have plucked the American eagle, till, featherless, and with an empty craw, it sits on the top of the Rocky Moun- tains wishing it were dead, the English have paid quite as much attention to the lion. You see it done up in every shape, sitting or standing, everywhere. The foun- tains are guarded with lions; the entrances of houses flanked with lions; the signs of stores adorned with lions, — fighting lions, sleeping lions, crying lions, laughing lions, couchant lions. English artists excel with this animal. When French and German sculptors attempt one, it is merely a lion in the abstract, too weak to rend a kid and never having seen a jungle. But lying on the base of Nelson's monument in Trafal- gar Square are four lions that look as though they had a moment before laid down there and curled their long tails peacefully around, and had just stopped there a few minutes to see what was going on at Charing Cross and the Cockspur. On the top of Northumberland House is a lion v/ith mouth open and tail extended in rigid rage, so that it is uncertain which way to run, as you know not with which end he will assault you. There are more lions in London than in Numidia. Beef and mutton are liked well by the Englishman, but for regular diet, give him lion. European horses look better satisfied i8o Crumbs Swept Up. than American. They either have more fodder or less drive. The best-kept horses I ever found are in Antwerp. I saw but one lean nag in that city, and that one I think was an emigrant just arrived. When good American horses die, they go to Ant- werp. Europeans caress the dog. He may He on the mat or sit near the table. Among the Alps we had a wretched dinner — not lacking in quantity or variety, but in qual- ity. There was enough of it, such as it was. The eggs had seen their best days, and the mutton must have been good for two or three weeks after they killed it. A Saint Bernard dog sat near by, petitioning for a morsel. The landlord was out — we saw by the bill of fare we should have high rates to pay, — we could do nothing ourselves to- ward clearing the plates, and so we con- cluded to feast our friend of Saint Bernard. We threw him half an omelet, assuring him first that the amount we gave him would de- pend on the agility with which he caught it. Either not understanding French, or being surprised at the generosity of the provision, he let half the omelet fall to the floor, but he lost no time in correcting the failure. We threw him a mutton-chop. With a snap of the eye and a snif¥, and a long sweep of the tongue over the jaw he said by his looks as plainly as if he had Brides. i8i spoken with his Hps: "I Hke that better. I never get mutton-chops. I think they will agree with me." When the landlord came in, he suspected that some unusual proceeding had taken place between his guests and the dog, and so he kicked him out of the room. The remaining sin within us suggested our treating the landlord as he had treated the mastiff, but our profes- sion, and more especially the size of the man, restrained us. I left -the inn more sorry to leave Bernard than his keeper. Among the worthiest dogs of the world, or rather of the church, are the Saint Bernards. They have no frisk of merri- ment. The shadow of the great ledges is in their eyes, and the memory of travelers lost in Alpine snows is in their hearts. When you meet them, cheer them up with chops and omelets. European cities are not ashamed to take some bird or beast under their patronage. A^enice looks especially after her pigeons. Strasburg pets the storks whose nests are on almost all the chimneys. Berne care- fully guards her bears. Egypt apotheosizes cats. Oh that the cruelty of man to bird and beast might come to an end! They have more right to the world than man, for they preceded him in the creation, the birds having been made on Friday and the cat- tle on Saturday morning, and man coming 1 82 Crumbs Swept Up. in at the fag--end of the week. No wonder th^t these aborigines of the -world some- times resist, and that the bees stingy, and the bears growl, and the cats get their backs up, and dogs bark, and eagles defend their eyries with iron beak, the crags echo- ing with the clangor of this flying squadron of the sky. ■)o(- A NATION STUNNED. The long finger of the oceanic telegraph may write on the multiform sheet of the "Associated Press" the news of victory or defeat; but no one not stopping in Paris to-day can realize the condition of things. The city is dazed and confounded. Paris never before came so near keeping Sunday as on the first day of this week. Not many concerts, but little conviviality, and no carousal — it did not seem like Sabbath at all. August 15, the Emperor's fete day, the Fourth of July of France, fell dead in front of the Tuileries. Instead of Paris on fire with illumination, the streets were dull, and the palace, as we passed along at night, had but one lighted window, save the light of the employes in .the basement. Whatever may be one's opinion in re- A Nation Stunned. 185 gard to the French Government, he must sympathize with this afflicted people. Be- fore this paragraph reaches the United States, the penduhmi of feeUng may have swung from the extreme of sorrow to the extreme of joy; but not once in a hundred years does Paris sit in ashes. She knows how to shout in a carousal, and to howl in a massacre; but it is the strangest thing of the century to see Paris in a "fit of the blues." Yesterday we drove out on the Bois de Boulogne, which might be called "the Cen- tral Park" of Europe; and in aU the ride we passed not a single vehicle. At a concert on Saturday night we heard the Marseil- laise Hymn so gloriously sung by soldiers,, in full uniform, with flags and guns, that we involuntarily threw up our hats, not knowing exactly what we were excited about; but the general applause that re- sponded to the national air was not as lively as you might hear in any place of amuse- ment in the United States on any night of the year. I know not but that this quiet may be the lull before the tempest of fire that shall sweep back the Prussians from the French frontier; but Paris sits dumb- struck to-day. The prizes that were to have been given last week in the schools have been with- held. There is no sound of laughter or 184 Crumbs Swept Up. mirth. Even intoxication has a subdued voice, and men stagger around having a quiet drunk. Many of the fountains ac- customed to dance in the Hght are still, or only weep a few doleful drops into the stone basin. With thirty-seven newspapers in Paris, there is no news. A placard of a few lines on the walls of the city, about every other day, announces something very iminiportant. We get occasionally a Lon- don Times, but are left chiefly to our imag- ination; and when our friends ask us what the news is, we tell them that the Dutch have fallen back on Amsterdam, and the Germans advanced to Darmstadt. Tourists are in a panic. Americans rush to the steamship offtces, wanting to go on the Cunard, Inman, or National Line, or even a frrst-class schooner; and almost ready, were it not for the anxiety of their friends, to go afoot. Some of our friends who have never seen Paris, dart down from Switzerland to this city, and take the first train for Calais, expecting to be massacred before they get across the city. We have concluded to risk it a little longer. As we have come on a tour of sight-seeing, we shall stay till we see all; trusting first in the good Providence which has always seen lis through, and secondly upon our Amer- ican passport. This, of all summers, has been the best A Natioji Stunned. 185 for traveling in Europe to those who hap- pened to take Germany first. The climate has been so delicious that we have not suf- fered from one hot blast. The hotels, heretofore surfeited with patronage and un- obliging, now give the best rooms and most obsequious attendance. You have your pick of a dozen carriages, each one under- bidding the other. You have a whole rail- carriage for your own party. Though there be but one American newspaper in the reading-room, no one else wants it. You look at the pictures without the im- pertinence of any one passing in front of you. There is plenty of room in the dili- gence for Chamouni. You buy things at cheap rates, because there is no rivalry among purchasers. You hear bands of martial music enlivening the air by day and night. And, besides that, one feels it grand to be here at a point of time which must be as important in history as 1572, when the bel- fry of St. Germain L'Auxerrois tolled for the horrors of St. Bartholomew's day. And who would blame me if my pen should this moment tremble a little along the line as I write, within hearing distance of the place where the mob hurled the four hundred massacred Swiss guards from the king's balcony, and only a few steps from the place where the chop of the guillotine turn- 1 86 Crumbs Swept Up, bled the head of Marie Antoinette into the dead-box. May the torch of Parisian splendor never through the pool of human blood go hiss- ing out into darkness ! The torn and shot- ted battle-flags of France hang in the chapel of Hotel des Invalides, where the old soldiers worship. Oh ! that the banners of the Prince of Peace might be set up in the Tuileries. The Arc de Triomphe has in letters of stone all the battlefields of the first Napoleon. Oh! that soon, under the arch of heavenly triumph, Immanuel might come up from the conquest of all the na- tions. In the illumination of that victory there will be no light of burning home- steads; in the wine of that feast there will be no tears. In a week we start for home. The most welcome sight to us in three months will be the faces of our friends. I am tired of resting. Speed on the days between this and the best rest that a man ever gets on earth — the joy of preaching the gospel which offers to make all men happy and free! In body, mind, and soul I thrill with the anticipation. )o( Clerical Farming. 187 CLERICAL FARMING. ''Does it pay?" we are every day asked by citizens who at this season begin to won- der what they will do with themselves next summer. "How did the cabbages turn out?" interrogates an incredulous parish- ioner with a twinkle in his eye, and a laugh twitching at the corner of his mouth. Is there not a fatal repulsion between pen and hoe? Can one who is shepherd of a city fiock keep Southdowns from getting the hoof-rot? How much out of pocket at the end of the year? We answer, that clerical farming does pay. Notwithstanding a weasel invaded the poultry-yard, and here and there a chicken died of the "gapes," and one of the frosts saved us a great deal of trouble pick- ing peaches, and one day, in the process of making butter, "soda ash" was taken for salt, and the caterpillars of our neighbor- hood were very fond of celery, and the drinking of milk without any chalk at first made us all sick — the shock too sudden for the constitution — still we feel that we made our fortune last summer. With a long- handled hoe we turned up more than our neighbors dreamt of. Though a few hun- dred dollars out of pocket (a fact we never acknowledged to agricultural infidels) we were physically born again. We have 1 88 Crumbs Swept Up. walked stronger ever since, for our walk last summer in the furrow. Our hay-pitch- ing was an anodyne that has given us sound sleep all winter. On our new grind- stone we sharpened our appetite, and have since been able to cut through anything set before us. We went out in the spring feeling that the world was going to ruin; we came back in the autumn persuaded that we were on the eve of the millennium. Like all other beginners, our first at- tempt at buying a horse resulted in our getting bitten — not by the horse. From Job's vivid description we went forth to look for a horse whose "neck was clothed with thunder." We found him. We liked the thunder very well, but not so well the lightning that flew out of his feet the first time he kicked the dash-board to pieces. We give as our experience that thunder is most too lively to plough with. We found him dishonest at both ends. Not only w^ere his heels untrustworthy, but his teeth, and the only reason we escaped being bit- ten by the horse, as well as the jockey who sold him, was that we are gifted with pow- ers of locomotion sufficient for any emer- gency, especially if there be sufficient pro- pulsion advancing from the rear. Job shall never choose another horse for us. We telegraphed to the jockey, ''Come and take your old nag, or I will sue you!" He did Clerical Farming. 189 not budg-e, for he was used to being- sued. Having changed our mind, we telegraphed offering to pay him for the honor of swind- Hng us, and the telegram was successful. We gave him a withering look as he rode away, but he did not observe it. Our first cow was more successful. She has furnished the cream of a good many jokes to our witty visitors, and stands, I warrant, this cold day, chewing her cud like a philosopher — the calmness of the blue sky in her eyes, and the breath of last summer's pasture-field sweeping from her nostrils. Gentle thing! When the city boys came out, and played "Catch," running under her, or afterward standing on both sides, four boys milking at once, she dissented not. May she never want for stalks! W^e were largely successful with one of our two pigs. Our taste may not be thor- oughly cultured, but we think a pig of six weeks is positively handsome. It has such an innocent look out of its eyes, and a voice so capable of nice shades of inflection, whether expressive of alarm or want. Such a cunning wink of the nose, such artistic twist of tail! But one of the twain fell to acting queer one day. It went about, as if, like its ancestors of Gadara, unhappily ac- tuated, till after a while it up and died. We had a farrier to doctor it, and poor thing! it was bled, and mauled, till we know not iQO Crujnbs Swept Up. whether to ascribe its demise to the disease or the malpractice of the medical adviser. But its companion flourished. We had clergymen, lawyers, and artists admire and praise it. We found recreation in looking at its advancement, and though the proverb says that you ''cannot make a whistle out of a pig's tail," figuratively speaking, I have made a dozen out of that mobile and un- promising material. Our geese flourished. Much-maligned birds! They are wise instead of foolish^ save in the one item of not knowing how to lower their necks when you want them to go under the fence. (Who of us has not one weak point of character?) They are af- fectionate, and die if shut up alone, and with wild outcry sympathize with any un- fortunate comrade whose feathers have been plucked. From their wings they fur- nished the instrument for writing Walter Scott's "Rob Roy," and Thomas Carlyle's ''Sartor Resartus." Worth more than an eagle any day, have better morals, do pluck more nutriment out of the mud than eagles do out of the sun. Save for Fourth of July orations eagles are of but little worth, filthy, cruel, ugly at the beak, fierce at the eye, loathsome at the claw; but give me a flock of geese, white-breasted, yellow-billed, coming up at night-fall with military tramp, in single file led on, till nearing the barn- Clerical Fa nning. 1 9 r yard they take wing, and with deafening- clang the flying artillery wheel to their bivouacs for the night. Yes, clerical farming docs pay. Out on the place we won the medal every day for pictures hung with fire-loops in the sky- gallery; and for machinery by which the sun drew water, and the trees pumped up the juices, and the shower and sunshine wove carpets better than Axminster for Brindle and Durham to walk on. If a city clergyman has no higher idea than a crop of turnips or corn, he had bet- ter not take a farm. It will be cheaper to let somebody else's hen lay the eggs, and to buy your tomatoes by the peck. But He who would like to look out of his window and see ''rain on the new-mown grass," and at five o'clock would love to walk out and see ''the day-spring from on high," or in the garden hear Christ preaching from the text, "Consider the lilies," or watch God feeding the ravens, or see him cloth- ing "the grass of the field," or in the gush of full moonlight learn the sweetness of the promise, "At evening tide it shall be light," — let such a minister get a place in the coimtry, and spend the weeks that he has usually passed among the bright shawls of starched watering-places, with his coat oflf, in check shirt, and coarse boots, listening while "mountains and all hills, fruitful trees 192 Crumbs Swept Up. and all cedars, beasts and all cattle, creep- ing things, and flying fowl" at matins and vesper-s praise the Lord; geranium and branch of apple-blossom swinging their censers. -)o(- MAKING THINGS GO. Sometimes a man who seems to succeed is at every step a failure. There is more lawful fraud committed than unlawful. Penitentiaries and the Court of ''Oyer and Terminer" are for those clumsy rogues who do not know how to steal. The purloining of one cabbage ends in the ''Tombs," but the absconding with one hundred thousand dollars wins a castle on the Rhine. So you see that men get into jail not because they steal, but because they do not steal enough. There are estates gathering that have not within them one honest dollar. But the general rule is that moral suc- cess is worldly success. It is easier to make a permanent fortune in honorable ways than by dishonorable conduct. The devil is a poor financier. When the gold and the silver were laid down in the earth, they were sworn to serve the cause of righteousness, and they never go into the coffers of the dishonest without commit- Making Things Go. 193 ting perjury. Lawful enterprise in the long run will declare larger dividends than dis- honest scheming. The oil c'ompany of which Hon. Bogus Greaseback is Presi- dent, and Hocus Pocus, Esq., is Secretary, at first declares twenty per cent, then ten per cent, afterw^ard three per cent, and, last of all, nothing, leaving the widows and or- phans to play the beautiful game of *'Money! money! who has the money?" But fraudulent estates do not average a continuance of more than five years. Occa- sionally, an old man, having gathered large property by ignoble means, may die in its possession, bequeathing it to his heirs; but when the boys get it, what with their wine, and what with their fast horses — ha! how thev will make it fly! There is an honest work for every one to do. When a child is born, his work is al- ready prepared for him. There is some- thing in his nature which says, ''Yonder is the field, the shop, the store! Come, my little man! Be busy!" No doubt Samson, when he was a boy, sometimes gave pre- monition of what he was going to be, amus- ing himself by carrying ofif gates, and in chasing his playmates with the jawbone of a bleached carcass, and, long before he fired of¥ the three hundred fox-tails among the corn-shocks of the Philistines, had tried the same extreme measures on the cats of 194 Crumbs Swept Up. his father's house. Cowley evinced the poet when in very early life he was wrought into enchantment by the reading of Spen- ser's ''Fairy Queen." Joshua Reynolds, in boyhood, prophesied the painter by hang- ing sketches around his father's house, al- though the disgusted father wrote under one of them, "Done by Joshua out of pure idleness!" Our own Van Derlyn began his career in boyhood by chalk sketches on the side of a blacksmith-shop. Nature invariably hints for what she has made a child. Here is a boy cunning at a bargain. At school he is extravagantly fond of trading. He will not come home twice with the same knife, or hoop, or kite. To-morrow morning he will leave the house with an ignominious yarn-ball — a great trial to a boy on the play-ground — but at night will come back with one of india-rubber, which under the stroke of the bat, will soar almost out of sight, and then come down with long-continued bounce! bounce! Some morning, calculat- ing on the lowness of the apple-market, he will take a satchel full to school. Immed- iately there is a rush in the market. He monopolizes the business. He sells at just the right time. The vigilant school-mas- ter, finding him bartering in what are not considered lawful business hours, brings him into port, and he is compelled by this Making Things Go. 195 government officer to discharge his cargo in the presence of his fellows, who gape upon him like a company of stevedores. Can you doubt for a moment for what oc- cupation he was designed? He must be a merchant. Here is a boy of different liking. Across the brook he has thrown a dam, and whirl- ing around is a water-wheel. He can con- struct anything he chooses — sleds for the winter, wagons for the summer, and boats for the river. His knife is most of the time out on a whittling excursion. Down on your best carpets he plants his muddy tools. You are so pestered on the Saturdays when there is no school, it requires all of Sunday, and sharp sermons at that, to get your pa- tience unwrinkled. Pigeon-coops on the barn and bird houses in the trees, attest his ingenuity. Give him a trade. He must be a mechanic. Here is another boy. You do not know what to do with him. He is always start- ing an argument. He meets your reproof with a syllogism. He is always at the most inconvenient time asking, "Why?" He is on the opposite side of what you believe, but anything for an argument. If you prom- ised him a flogging, he would file a caveat to stop proceedings, and, dissatisfi.ed with your decisions, he gets out a certiorari, carrying matters up to the Supreme Court 196 Crumbs Swept Up. of his own reason. With all this he has a glib tongue, and when fairly started, it rat- tles like hail on a tin roof. His destiny is plain: he must be a lawyer. But if you should happen to have under your charge, as guardian or parent, a child not sharp enough to strike a bargain, not ingenious enough to make a sled, not lo- quacious enough to start an argument, not inquisitive as to the origin of things, al- ways behind in the school, and slow on the play-ground — there is then only this alter- native: If he be fat and chubby, of uncon- querable appetite and enormous digestion, and lazy withal, then send him to the city, pull the wires, and make him an alderman; but if he be long and lean, sallow-cheeked with nerves ever on the twitch, and a diges- tion that will not go, I know not what you will do with him unless you make him a minister. Alas! for the absurdity rampant among families, that when, because of phy- sical incompetency, a man is fit for nothing else, he is fit to be a "legate of the skies." Religion will never make up for lack of liver and backbone. .)o(. Saturday Night, 197 SATURDAY NIGHT. We read Reynolds in the art-gallery; we read Longfellow by the sea; we read Ik Marvel under the trees; we read the weekly paper on Saturday night. When the week is past, and we gather at the evening stand, with the world put off, and our slippers put on, give us a good family newspaper. It is the hardest thing in the world to make. Family newspapers only a few years ago were dolorous things. The columns were full of accounts of boys and girls who al- ways sat up straight, and kept their faces clean, and wiped their, feet on the door- mat. The theology was cast-iron, and the story wooden, with a long moral, not grow- ing out, but tagged on; so that the children; took the moral with a wry face for the sake, of getting the story, just as they swallowed the calomel with the promise, ''There now.^ you shall have a sugarplum!" The world has learned that a thing is not necessarily good because it is dry. There is no religion in chips. We never could see any sanctity in husks. The donkey hath no hilarity in his voice, and no non- sense in the twitch of his ear. He never was known to dance. Yet he never grets higher than his feed-box, while the robin and the lark, from the tip of bill to tip of claw, all Hfe and joy and merriment, with 198 Crumbs Swept Up. their wings brush the door-latch of heaven. I will like it the more if the editor dips his pen in the dew to tell me of the morning, and in roseate to describe the sunset, and into the purple vats to suggest the vine- yards; and if then he fasten his sheets to- gether with a blue band, torn from the forehead of heaven. There is yet to be such a thing as holiness on the bells of the horses; and when Religion shall have com- pleted the conquest of the earth, I expect to see all the diamonds of the universe flashing in the rim of her tiara. The family newspaper must have a touch of romance. Alas, for this day of naked facts! We deplore this unromancing of everything. We have a rail-track to the top of Mount Washington. The trees un- der which Henry Clay walked are cut up into walking-sticks. Men have turned Passaic Falls into a mill-race. Be not sur- prised if Independence Hall gets to be an oyster-cellar. Dear old Santa Claus has been pushed ofif the top of the chimney and had his neck broken. Facts ! Facts ! Facts ! Give us in our family newspaper a little romance. It will do no harm to hear of moonlight ramble, and sail on the lake with only two in the boat; and while you despise elopements as unwise and dangerous, do not fear to tell us of the father who wanted his daughter to marry some rich old Dis- Saturday Night, 199 agreeable, while the young man was ready with hard hands and loving heart to earn for her a home in the cottage. I am glad that the ladder did not break, and that Timothy Hardfist won the prize. Give us more spice in our family news- paper. We meet in our daily walks so much that is depressing, give us in our family newspaper whole bundles of spice: jokes that you can understand without laborious explanation, conundrums, quips, quirks, harmless satire, caricatures of the world's foibles, and looking-glasses in which to see our failings. Yes, give place occasionally to the much-abused pun. Those only despise the pun who cannot make one. Take the quill, and after you have made the split in it, sharpen it down until the point is keen enough to puncture the toughest inconsistency. Let the sheet be fresh and healthy, in it a smell of cedar and new-cut grass. Let us hear in the rhythm of some of the sentences the moan of an untraveled wood, and the sweep of the wing of a partridge. Instead of the artifi- cial dye of stale imagery, crush against the printed leaf a bunch of huckleberries and sumac. We are tired out with all this about the nightingale; for pity's sake, catch for us a brown-thresher, and let us hear a hen cluck. Instead of riding Bucephalus to death, halter that sorrel colt. Talk not so 200 Crumbs Swept Up. much to us about frankincense, to the neg- lect of pennyroyal and brookmint. Get out with your commonplace remark about ''a solitary horseman coming over the hill." Instead of talking so much about the "bulls of Bashan," drive up Brindle and Durham. This is a grand old world if you would only let us see it as it is. The book-worm who sits down to write, having learned only of trees, and mountains, and waters, from his library, knows nothing about them. You have to put on your high-top boots, and wade right out up to your waist to pluck a water-lily, if you would see it to the best advantage. I had been with many a picnic party to see *' Buttermilk Falls," but not until the other day when I went alone, and had a stolen interview with that cascade, did I really see her perfect beauty, as, shoving aside her white veil of mist, and throwing back her ribbons of rainbow, she told me all about her tragical leap from the rocks. On Saturday night, as we open the fam- ily paper, let us catch the odor of pine, and the glance of an autumnal leaf dropping like the spark from a forge. Let some geranium-leaf overpower the smell of prin- ter's ink. Tell us of home. Let us know how wives ought to be attentive to their husbands, and how husbands — but never mind that. Come, O weekly visitant! into The Hatchet Buried. 201 the front door with a blessing. Our week's w^ork done, and notes paid, and accounts squared, and the hurry over, and the Sab- bath near, speak you a cheerful word to the desponding, a chiding word to the wander- ing, a soothing word to the perplexed; and help the ten thousand of the weary and the foot-sore, and the hardly bestead, by the still camp-fires of life's great battle- field, to thank God that the seven days' march is over, and it is Saturday night. Before long our pens, and needles, and trowels, and yardsticks, and saws, and pickaxes will be still. With our hand in the hands of some loved one, we will be waiting for a brighter Sunday morning than earth saw ever. Others call that wait- ing: — Death. I call it Saturday Night. ^t> ■)o(- THE HATCHET BURIED. When the other day the New School and Old School churches kissed each other at Pittsburg, some one said, ''Now, Lord, let- test thou thy servant depart in peace!" We felt just the other way. We want to live now more than ever to see how matters will come out. It is wrong to want to die in such a time as this, when the armies are wheeling into line, and the batteries of 202 Crumbs Swept Up. earth and hell and heaven are being im- limbered for the contest which will decide who shall have the supremacy of this world. We have spent too much time in ecclesias- tical pugilism. We have lost about a hun- dred years in gunning for Methodists, and drowning Baptists, and beating Presby- terians to death with the decrees, and pom- melling Episcopalians with the butt-end of the liturgy. As at Bothwell Bridge the Scotch army quarrelled among themselves, eighteen ministers, with eighteen different opinions, contending most fiercely, until Lord Claverhouse came down with disciplined troops and swept the field; so in the time when hosts of darkness in mail of hell were coming upon us, we were contending. Old School against New School, Free-will Bap- tists against close communionists, Metho- dist Church North against Methodist Church South, and we have been routed on a hundred fields, when, forgetting every- thing but the one-starred banner under which we fought, and the Captain who led us on, we might have shouted the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Thank God that so many of the rams of the Church have had their horns sawed off, and that the ecclesiastical chanticleers have lost their spurs. The books of contro- versialists will be on the shelves of college and State libraries, old and yellow and cob- The Hatchet Buried. 203 webbed, until even the book-worms will get tired of the slumberous literature, and depart from old leather-backs, and some day the books will be cast into the fire, and just before the last flame goes out, the world will see in the consuming scrolls the image of two religious combatants with their hands in each other's hair, combing it the wrong way. Bigotry is an owl that can- not see in the daytime; on black and spec tral wing it flits through the midnight heavens, and roosts in the belfries' of ruined churches. The millennium has already begun. The Episcopalian lion is eating straw like a Presbyterian ox, and Baptist and Pedo- Baptist, while lovingly discussing their differences, are first sprinkled, and then im- mersed, by a baptism of the Holy Ghost. Peace! If you, the Methodist, want an anx- ious seat, long as from Mulberry street to the Golden Horn, have it, and may it be crowded with repentant sinners. And if it shall be found out that all our Presbyterian brethren have been fore-ordained to eternal life. Bishops Simpson and Janes will rejoice with us in the fore-ordination. If this brother will preach in gown and bands, and the Western pioneer shall proclaim the Gospel in his shirt-sleeves, may the bless- ing come down upon both the preachers. Life is too short, and the work too great, to 204 Crumbs Swept Up. allow disputation about non-essentials. If a drowning man is to be pulled out of the floods, it makes but little difference whether the hand you reach out to him has on it buckskin mitten or kid glove. Let us all go to preaching. Send polished Paul up to Athens, and plain Bartholomew down among the fishing- smacks by the sea. Do not look so anx- iously into your pockets for your diploma from Yale, or your license from presbytery. If the Lord does not send you into the min- istry, no canon of the Church can shoot you into it. But if He has put His hand on your head, you are ordained, and your working apron shall be the robe, and the anvil your pulpit; and while you are smit- ing the iron, the hammer of God's truth will break the flinty heart in pieces. Peter was never a sophomore, nor John a freshman. Harlan Page never heard that a tangent to the parabola bisects the angle formed at the point of contact by a perpendicular to the directrix and a line drawn to the focus. If George Muller should attempt chemical experiments in a philosopher's laboratory, he would soon blow himself up. And hun- dreds of men, grandly useful, were never struck on commencement stage by a bou- quet flung from the ladies' gallery. Quick! Let us find our work. You preach a sermon — you give a tract — you House of Dogs, 205 hand a flower — you sing a song — you give a crutch to a lame man — you teach the Sab- bath class their A, B, C — you knit a pair of socks for a foundling — you pick a splinter from a child's finger. Do something! Do it now! We zvill be dead soon! -)oC- HOUSE OF DOGS. There is a great difference of opinion on the subject of dogs. By some people they are admired, and fondled, and petted, and have collars around their necks, and em- broidered blankets for their backs, and they lie on the lady's pillow, and take their siestas on the lounge, and are members of the family, the first question in coming into the house after a ride being, ''Where is Spot?" Others abhor dogs. The innocent canines, passing the threshold, are met with emphatic "Get ontT They go with their head down all their days, once in a while lifting a timid eye to a passer-by; but then, as if to atone for the outrage, giving a yelp of repentance and darting down the road. One-half the dogs you see bear the marks of humiliation. They never saw a bone till 2o6 Crumbs Swept Up. all the meat was picked off, and no sooner did they find the gill of a beheaded chicken, and had gone under the shed for a noon- day repast, than they were howled away. They have had split sticks on their tail, and tin pails appended, the whole bevy of boys shouting as the miserable cur went down the street, rattle-te-bang. He frisked up pleasantly to greet a sweet lady as she came in the gate, and the damsel shrieked as if she had been massacred, and threw herself into the arms of her friends as soon as the door opened, crying, ''That horrid dog!" What chance have dogs at respect- ability? Who wonders that they steal sheep? Now there is, back of Hoboken, a ken- nel large enough to accommodate fifty dogs. One day a citizen, passing that way, was reading an account of a great interna- tional council to be called, and forthwith the great dog that inhabited the big kennel took the suggestion, and said, 'T will make proclamation to all the kingdom of dogs, and they shall come to declare and avenge their wrongs." Soon there was much barking, and it was found out that the clans were gathering. The amphitheatre of the kennel was crowded with hunters' dogs, and teamsters* dogs, and ladies' dogs, and rowdies' dogs. The great bull-dog, with one huge growl. House of Dogs. 207 called the meeting to order, himself taking the chair. He growled at the cruelty of men, and growled at the folly of women, and growled at the outrages of children, till his growl rose into a furious bark, in which the audience joined, rat-terriers snarling, greyhounds baying, spaniels yelping, so that the tumult was louder than a whole pack on the fox-chase when with full voice they burst away on the moors. All at- tempts at gaining order were ineffectual, till presiding bull-dog took rat-terrier by the neck, and shook him till the bones cracked, and all the poodles shrieked in sheer fright. Several watch-dogs seated themselves at the reporters' desk, and took notes of pro- ceedings. A letter of regret, post-marked Switzerland, was read from a Saint Ber- nard dog, saying that he could not come, being busy in saving travelers from the snow in the Alpine passes; but signified himself ready to accept any dogma that might be enacted by the ''House of Dogs." A letter was also read from a descendant of Throckmorton's pointer. He scorned the invitation to be present. He did not be- lieve in Democratic assemblages, he having descended from the most aristocratic pointer of all history, and could not have anything to do with American mongrels. 2o8 Crumbs Swept Up. One of his great-grandfathers had been on the chase with George the Third, and an ancestor on his mother's side had run un- der the carriage of the Lord Mayor of Lon- don. At this point a fiery blood-hound sprang to his back feet, and offered the following resolutions : Whereas, All dogs have by n-ature cer- tain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; therefore. Resolved, istly, That we express our in- dignation at the treatment received from the human race. Resolved, 2dly, That to extirpate the evil, all dogs hereafter be allowed to vote, white and black, male and female. At this point the whole convention rose up into a riot. The more conservative de- clared that in this matter of suffrage every- thing depends on the color of the dog, and that as to the females, he thought it would be far more respectable if they stayed at home and took care of the pups. The uproar bid fair to break up the con- vention, had not a frisky canine mounted the stage, and in very witty style addressed the meeting. The crowd saw that some- thing pleasant was coming, for he kept wagging his tail — indeed, he was a perfect wag. His speech was not printed, for the House of Dogs. 209 reporter was requested not to take it down, as he might want, at some other conven- tion, to make the same speech. Suffice it to say, the whole convention were thrown into good humor, and sat with the sides of their mouths drawn back, and their tongues out in perfect glee. Discussion of the resolutions being in order, a butcher's dog took the stand. He complained that he had received nothing at the hands of man but cruelty and mean- ness. Surrounded as he had been always by porter-house steaks, and calf's liver, and luscious shank-pieces, and lamb-chops, he had been kept on gristle and lights. In the peroration of his speech, he said: **Hear it, ye dogs! Was it for this that we were spared in the Ark? Better that our ancestors had perished in the Deluge. I care not what course others may take, but as for m^, give me beefsteak, or give me death!" At this point there was a scramble and a rush, and a very disagreeable lap-dog leaped upon the stand. His hair was white and curly, and his eyes red and watery, and his nose damp, and there was a blue ribbon about his neck. His voice was very weak, and could not be heard. An old mastiff shouted, ''Louder!" and a New- foundland exclaimed, ''Louder!" And bull- dog, the presiding officer, seized lap-dog 2IO Cru7nbs Swept Up. by the neck, and pitched him ofif the stage, for daring to come there with no gift at pubHc speaking. A teamsters dog came forward. He had been for five years running under a Pennsylvania wagon. He hailed from Berks County, and his advantages had been limited. He was an anti-temperance dog, and complained that there were not enough taverns, for his only time to rest was when his master was halting at the inn. He had traveled many thousand miles in his time, worried ninety-eight cats, and bitten a piece out of the legs of two hundred and sixty- three beggars. He cried, ''Down with the temperance fanatics, and up with more taverns!" An old house-dog rose and looked round, and said: "My children, I am sorry to hear so many complaints! I have had a good time. I own all the place where I live. All the children of my master have ridden on my back. I used to eat with the baby off of the same plate without any spoon. When the boy came back from sea. I was the first to greet him home. What a jolly time I had at the weddings watching the horses, and eating crumbs of cake! When sad days came to my master I cheered him up. I was the first to hear his step, and the last to part with him at the lane. I fled not when the black-tasselled House of Dogs. 211 hearse came through the gate; and when the cry in the house told me that hearts were broken, I tapped at the door and went in, and laid down on the mat, and tried to divert my master from his woe. I am worth nothing, now, but young and old speak kindly when they pass, and I have nothing to disturb me, save when I dream in my sleep that a hare is passing, and I start to take him, and a stiffness catches me in the joints." A growl went through the kennel. The speech was unpopular. They said old house-dog was getting childish, or they would have howled him down. The next speaker was a worn-out, fight- ing dog. He had two slits in each ear, and one leg had been broken, and his two eyes had been partially dug out, and his tail abbreviated till it was nothing to speak of. He was covered with the wounds of bat- tle, and staggered to the stage, and said: ''All the world seems to be against me. I am always getting into trouble. Every foot kicks me, every cudgel strikes me, every whiffet annoys me, every tooth bites me. Pity the sorrows of a poor old dog! In younger days I might have entered into the spirit of this convention, but the time is past. I shall soon join the dogs of Nim- rod the mighty hunter. This is probably the last time I shall ever address the 212 Crumbs Swept Up. 'House of Dogs.' My hearing is gone, and though at this moment the applause of this audience may be rising, I hear it not. I go down to my grave unwept, unhonored,. and unsung. Upon these dim eyes no vision of brightness shall dawn. Other tails may wag, but not mine. I have no tail! It is gone forever!" At this point the whole convention broke down into a whine and snuffle, and no one felt like lifting the spell till — A hunting-dog sprang to his feet, and broke in with a cheerful clangor of voice,, which had in it the ring of hunter's horn, and call of the hawk, and gabble of wild geese, and the whir of a grouse's wing^ and the crack of the fowling-piece, and the stroke of a thunder-clap as it drops on the Catskills on an August noon. He cried: ''Why all this complaint? If you want good meat, why do you not hunt it down? If you want sport, why do you not go where it is? If you want to keep your tail, keep out of dogfights? If you would have your vision clear, wash your eyes in moun- tain dew at daybreak. When I want it, my master hath for me a whistle, and a patting,, and a caress, and a chunk of cheese cut clear across from his own luncheon. His boys are all mine. They race with me down the lane. They throw apples into the wave for me to swim in and catch. From the House of Dogs. 213 door of my kennel I hear the shout of the beaux teasing the damsels by the lamplight. What music it is — the sound of the knife striking my meal from the dinner-plate! What beauty — the foam flung from a moose's lip, the wave dashed from an elk's flank, the shadow dropped from a pheas- ant's wing, the wrinkled nostril of the deer snuffing the air as the hounds c'ome down the wind! Oh, ye house-dogs! This world is what you make it, desolate or glad! I have free house, free fare, the earth for a play-ground, the sky for a frescoed wall, the lake for a wash-basin, the mountain mosses for a rug on which to wipe my feet. A first-rate world for dogs!" ''Silence!" cried presiding bull-dog, *'we came here to curse and not to bless." "Put him out!" cried the mastiff. 'Tut him out!" cried scores of voices. And blood- hound plunged at hunting-dog's throat, and teamster rushed at the speaker with fiercer snarl than ever he started from un- der Pennsylvania wagon at small boy try- ing to steal the lash-whip, and fighting-dog tumbled over the back of poodle in blind rage, and Tray, Blanchard, and Sweetheart, and Wolf, and Carlo, and Spot joined in the assault, till hunting-dog flew from the ken- nel, followed by a terrific volley of howls, roars, yelps, and bellows, that brought out the whole neighborhood of men with Ian- 214 Cruvibs Swept Up. terns and torches, to find an empty kennel, save here and there a patch of hair, and a few broken teeth, and one dislocated eye, and a small piece of rat-terrier's ear, and a shred of blue ribbon from the poodle's neck, and the remaining inch of fighting- dog's tail which had been the only frag- ment left from previous encounters, even that small consolation henceforth denied him, and scraps of paper containing the resolutions which had not been passed in consequence of the sudden and precipitate adjournment of the "House of Dogs." By this time it was day-break, and hunting- dog had cleared his pursuers, and back of the cliffs was breakfasting on wild pigeon. -)o(- PRAYER-MEETING KILLERS. There is a class of barbarians who roam the land, making fearful havoc. They swing no tomahawk. They sound no war- whoop. But their track is marked by de- vastation. I mean that class of persons who go from church to church, charged with the mission of talking religious meetings to death. They are a restless tribe, generally disaffected with their own church, for the reason that the church can no longer en- dure them; and then they go about, like Prayer- Meeting Killers. 215 the roaring lion, seeking- whom they may devour. Though never having seen them before, I can tell them as soon as they enter a meeting. They have a brassy face, a sanc- timonious way of rolling up their eye, a solemn snuffle, and a pompous way of sit- ting down, as much as to say, ''Here goes into the seat an awful amount of religion!" They take off their overcoats, pull out the cufTs of their shirt-sleeves, give an impres- sive clearing of the throat, and wait for the time to seize their prey. The meeting is all aglow. Some old Christian has related a melting experience, or a young man has asked for prayers, or a captive of evil habits has recounted his struggles and cried from the depth of an agonized heart, "God be merciful to me a sinner!" Ortonville has just started heaven- ward, taking all the meeting along with it. The exercises have come to a climax, and the minister is about to pronounce the benediction, or invite the serious into an adjoining room for religious conversation^ when the Prayer-meeting Killer begins slowly to rise, his boots creaking, the seat in front groaning under the pressure of his right hand, and everything else seem- ing to give way. He confesses himself a stranger, but he loves prayer-meetings. He is astonished that there are not more 2i6 Crumbs Swept Up. present. He does not see how Christians can be so inconsistent. He has heard an incident that he feels called upon to relate. He related it that noon at the Fulton Street Prayer-meeting. He related it that after- noon at an old people's meeting. He will relate it now in rehearsal for a meeting to- morrow, at which he expects to relate it. His voice is wooden. His eyes are dry as the bottom of a kettle that has been on a stove two hours without any water in it. The young people laugh, and go out one by one. The aged wipe the sweat from their foreheads. And the minister begins within himself to recite an extemporized litany, 'Trom fire, and plague, and tem- pest, and itinerant bores, deliver us!" The interloper would hardly have lived through the night if he could not have given vent to this utterance. It was impos- sible for him to sit still. There was some- where down in his clothes a spring which lifted him up inevitably. At the close of the meeting he waited to be congratulated on his happy remarks, and went home feel- ing that he had given the world a mighty push toward the millennium. If such an one is notoriously inconsis- tent, he will talk chiefly on personal holi- ness. Perhaps he failed rich, so that, un- encumbered, he might give all his time to prayer-meetings. We knew a horse-jockey Prayer- Meeting Killers. 217 whose perpetual theme at such meetings was sanctification; and he said he was speeding toward heaven, but on which of his old nags we had not time to ask him. One of the chiefs of this barbarian tribe of Prayer-meeting Killers is the expository man. He is very apt to rise with a New Testament in his hand, or there has been some passage that during the day has pressed hepvily on his mind. It is prob- ably the first chapter of Romans, or some figurative passage from the Old Testament. He says, for instance: "My brethren, I call your attention to Hosea, 7th and 8th: 'Ephraim is a cake not turned.' You all know the history of Ephraim. Ephraim was — ah — well! He was a man mentioned in the Bible. You all know who he was. Surely no intelligent audience like this need to be told who Ephraim was. Now the passage says that he was a cake not turned. There are a good many kinds of cake, my brethren. There is the Indian cake, and the flannel cake, and the buckwheat cake. Now Ephraim was a cake not turned. It is an awful thing not to be turned. My friends, let us all turn!" It sometimes happens that this religious pest confines himself to the meetings of his own church. Interesting talkers are some- times detained at home by sickness; but his health is always good. Others dare not 2i8 Crumbs Swept Up. venture out in the storm; but all the ele- ments combined could not keep him from his place. He has the same prayer now that he has used for the last twenty years. There is in it an allusion to the death of a prominent individual. You do not under- stand whom he means. The fact is, he com- posed that prayer about the time that Gen- 'eral Jackson died, and he has never been able to drop the allusion. He has a patron- izing way of talking to sinners, as much as to say, ''Ho! you poor, miserable scala- wags, just look at me, and see what you might have been!" Oh! I wish some enterprising showman would gather all these Prayer-meeting Kil- lers from all our churches into a religious menagerie, and let them all talk together. It would bring together more spectators than the Cardiff Giant. We will take five season tickets for the exhibition. Let these ofifenders be put by themselves, where, day in and day out, night in and night out, they may talk without interruption. Noth- ing short of an eternity of gab would satisfy them. What will they do in heaven, with nobody to exhort? We imagine them now rising up in the angelic assemblage, pro- posing to make a few remarks. If they get there, you will never again hear of silence in heaven for the space of half an hour. Alas! the land is strewn with the car- ''n:' 219 casses of prayer-meetings slain by these re- ligious desperadoes. They have driven the young people from most of our de- votional meetings. How to get rid of this affliction is the question with hundreds of -churches. We advise your waiting on such persons, and telling them that, owing to the depraved state of public taste, their efforts are not appreciated. If they still persist, tell them they must positively stop or there will be trouble. If under ah this they are incorrigible, collar them, and hand them over to the police as disturbers of re- ligious assemblages. As you love the Church of God, put an end to their ravages. It is high time that the nuisance was abated. Among the Bornesian cannibals and Fejee Islanders I class this tribe of Prayer-Meeting Kihers. )o( There have been men with power to ab- sorb a city. It matters not which way you walk in Edinburgh, you find Walter Scott, and see the unparted hair combed down straight on the great dome of his forehead. You are shown Walter Scott's cane, and Walter Scott's jack-knife, and Walter Scott's white hat, and Walter Scott's residence. After two hundred years, 220 Crumbs Swept Up. Peter Paul Rubens carries Antwerp in his vest-pocket. The citizens adore him. You are taken to see Rubens' house, and to look at Rubens' statue, and to study Rubens' pictures, and at the mention of his name the face of the dullest Belgian is illuminated. The sceptre that sways Ant- werp to-day is a painter's pencil. Coming to Paris, you find a more power- ful memory presiding over everything. It is not a name that you see, but simply an initial inscribed on pillar, and wall, and arch, and chapel. You go into the Hotel de Ville, a place where architecture, and painting, and sculpture have done their best: statues, and fluted columns, and ceil- ings supported by elaborate caryatides, and stairs so graceful they do not climb but alight, and galleries not so much set fast as> seemingly on the wing; gold twisted, and carved, and chased into all the witcheries of beauty; and after you have walked from rich apartments to the richest you look upon a platform, on which there is one empty chair, in the upholstery of which is embroidered the initial, '*N." You go into the Pantheon, that holds its crowned head higher than all other struc- tures in Paris, a building bewildering with attractions, whether you look down to its exquisite mosaic floor, oi* aside to its carved oaken chapels, or through white *W." 221 clouds of sculptured saints and apostles into the frescoed dome bright with the wings of angels flying in the midst of heaven; and as your eye slips from the dizzy height and comes falling down from balustrade to capital, you see encircled by a wreath the initial, N. Louis XV., who laid the corner-stone of this building, would not have liked that letter put there. Charles, who went into raptures with the church, would have ob- jected to such an inscription. Marat, with all his hardness, would have opposed the marking of a religious structure with any human name save his own. Yet so it is, no L for Louis, no C for Charles, no M for Marat; but on right and left, and where least you might expect it, the inevitable N! N! You go into one of the rooms of the Louvre, and you are shown Napoleon's saddle, and Napoleon's watch, the hands at seven minutes past three, the moment he died, and his last gray coat, the summer worms having eaten in it two or three holes, for there is nothing that moth may not corrupt; and knife, and cup, and chess- board, on which he played out his games of war in miniature. You look up to see the name of the room. Right over the door, any man who knows his letters may discover it, N! 222 Crumbs Swept Up. There is no mistaking this initial for anything else. B might be taken for an R, or C for an O, or I for a J; but in the letter spoken of there are two perpendiculars, and between them a line dropped aslant from the top of one to the bottom of the other; and there you have it so that you can see it any- where, the unmistakable N! If you want your stay in Paris to be climacteric, leave till the last your visit to the tomb of Napoleon. As you go into the gate, an old man, who was with the great Frenchman at St. Helena, will sell you a poor picture of something that no photo- graphist can catch. It is a cathedral three hundred and twenty-three feet high, having cost two million dollars, dedicated to one dead man. Under its burnished dome is a concentration of wonders. Not his ashes resting there, but the embalmed and unde- cayed body of Napoleon, in military suit, in a red sarcophagus of Finlander quartzite, polished to the last perfection by skillful machinery, and resting on a block of green granite, surrounded by twelve funeral lamps of bronze, and twelve marble statues of great size, one with a wreath, as if to crown; another with a pen, as if to make record for the ages; another with a key, as if to open the celestial gate for a departed spirit; another with trumpet, to clear the way for the coming of a king! The pave- 'W." 223 merit enameled into a crown of laurels, from which radiates on all sides a living star. There are gilded gates, and speaking cenotaphs and radiant canopy, and elab- orate basso-relievos, and embossed pillars, and two Persian statues, holding on cush- ions a sceptre and a world, and ceilings a-blossom with finest frescoes by French and Italian masters, their light dripping down the marble in blue, and saffron, and em- erald, and gold. Oh, it is a dream of beauty! If the dead giant could wake up and look around, he might think he lay in the Moscow palace that he coveted, and the glistening white- ness around were the morning shining on Russian snows, or that universal empire had come to him; and to make his palace Egypt had sent its porphyry, and Switzer- land its marble, and Greece its sculpture^ and Rome its pictures, and France its bronze; and that the reverential spectators in all kinds of national costume, leaning over the balustrade to look, were the ador- ing subjects of a universal reign. At last we thought we had found a build- ing that had escaped the all-conquering initial. From dome to base all is so signifi- cant of this one great man that no inscrip- tion will be necessary; but turning to the window the old spectacle trembled upon my sight, in gilt, all by itself, N ! 224 Crumbs Swept Up. And Paris is thus signed through and through; and when the fifteenth of August comes, it is written out in fire on boulevard and arch, on Champs Elysees and Bois de Boulogne, in front of restaurant and pal- ace, under the silk veil of lighted fountain, and on the night in sky-rockets, N, N, N. All this may be wxll, but the thought comes to us that great men are expensive luxuries. We are told that Napoleon was the benefactor of the world. If you admit it, then, I ask, were his achievements worth the two great highways of bone-dust reach- ing across Europe, showing which way he went out, and which way he came in? Were they worth a continent of destroyed families, and the myriads of souls flung away into smoke of battle? Were his bones worth the hundreds of men who, coming out to do him honor, froze to death on the day his remains were brought back to Paris? Were his achievements worth the two million and a half dollars that he spent on his triumphal arches, and the two mil- lions that built his tomb? Answer the question as you may, great men are expen- sive luxuries. ■)o(- Pictures Felt. 225 PICTURES FELT. One of the aggravations of a traveler's life is the being compelled to give but four days to a gallery that demands as many years. As we hasten through, we feel the fingers of worn artists pulling us back, as much as to say, "Is this the way you look at what it took years of privation and toil to do?" Rembrandt says, ''You did not see that wrinkle in the old man's face. It took me weary hours to sink that!" Mul- ler says, *'You did not notice the twist of straw in that upturned chair!" Delacroix wonders that we pass his river Styx with- out a tear over the distressed boatmen. Guerin upbraids us for slighting that drapery which he was a month in hanging. Yet we break away and push on, in a few hours of time passing through a seeming eternity of painstaking. But, as after days of walking through strange cities, there are only five or six faces among the multitudes that you re- member, so we recall only a few of the thousands of pictures along which we have passed. THOMAS WEBSTER. To this painter there was given a revela- tion of boys. Between six and fourteen years of age the masculine nature is a mix- 15 226 Crumbs Swept Up. ture of mischief, and sensitiveness, and spunk, and fun, and trouble, and pugnacity, that the chemistry of the world fails to an- alyze. A little girl is definable. She laughs when she is pleased, cries when she feels badly, pouts when she is cross, and eats when she is hungry. Not so with a boy. He would rather go a-nutting than to eat, forgets at the fish-pond he has not had his dinner, often laughs w^hen he feels badly, and looks submissive to an imposition prac- ticed upon him till he gets the perpetrator alone in the middle of the road, and tum- bles him into the dirt till eyes and mouth and nose are so full the fellow imagines that, before his time, he has returned to dust. A boy, under a calm exterior, may have twenty emotions struggling for as- cendency. After a boy has been tamed by hard discipline, and wears a stock, and has learned to walk down street without any temptation to "skip-skop," and sees only nonsense in leap-frog, and enjoys Calvin's Institutes above Robinson Crusoe, and feels feathers on the elbows, premonitory symptoms of cherub, he ceases to be a mystery. But Thomas Webster, in "The Dame School" in Kensington Museum, London, gives us the unperfected boy such as we more frequently see him, namely, boy in the raw. This creature is somewhat Pictures Felt. 227 rough, and uncertain as to where he will break out, superlatively susceptible to tickle, is bound to lose his hat, and comes in red in the face from just having swal- lowed his slate-pencil. Thomas Webster, in this picture, man- ages boys and girls perfectly. There he places the spectacled old schoolmistress. I remember her perfectly well, although I have not seen her since I was eight years old, and yet I would have known her any- where by her nose. Fifty hot summers have dried up all the juices of her nature. Her countenance is full of whack and thump, and the gad she holds in her hand is as thick at one end as the other, not mod- erating into any mercy of thinness. It would never be mistaken for the rod that budded. Boys studying ''Rule of Three" look round at her to study rule of one, and, in multiplying the sum of school troubles, carry nine when they ought to carry noth- ing. How sharp her eyes are ! The boys sit- ting on the opposite side of the room feel her look on their back clear through the fustian. There is the cracked and peeling wall. There are the hats, and bonnets, and satch- els. There is a little girl threading a needle. She will have to twist tighter the end of the thread or she will never get it through that fine head. She will soon be 228 Crumbs Swept Up. able to hem handkerchiefs, and to take stitches for her mother. May she never have to sew for a Hving, sorrow and an- guish and despair bigger than a camel go- ing through the eye of her needle! Here is a boy prompting another in the recitation, telling him wrong, I am certain. There always was some fellow to get us into trou- ble with geography, grammar, or arithme- tic lesson, telling us that the capital of Vir- ginia is Texas, and that baboon is a per- sonal pronoun, and that in every whole there are three halves and six quarters. There is a little girl crying over her les- son. Why cannot somebody show her? Napoleon getting his ammunition wagons over the Saint Bernard pass had nothing to do compared with the tug of a little child making her first trial at spelling ''baker '^ The alphabet to many has been twenty-six tortures. Here stands a little girl with her finger in her mouth. The schoolmistress has not seen it, or she would put an end even to that small consolation. School is no place for a bee to suck honey out of a flower. A boy is looking through a sheet of paper, which he has rolled into a scroll like a telescope. He is probably an astron- omer in the early stages. Here is a plodding boy, prying away at his books. He suiters many impositions from his comrades. Away! you young Pictures Felt. 229 scamps with those sticks with which you are annoying- him! When a joke is told, and the children laugh, he will turn around with a bashful and bewildered look, imag- ining himself the victim of the satire, but next day will cackle out in the quiet of school-time at the sudden discovery of the meaning of the witticism. But he may yet outstrip them all. When a boy's head is so thick it is hard for knowledge to get in, the same thickness prohibits its departure. Give him thirty years, and he will make a dictionary. There a boy makes faces, and the whole school is in danger of running over with giggle. It is an awful thing for a child not to dare to laugh when the merriment rises, and wells up till the jacket gets tight, and the body is a ball of fun; and he knows that if out of one of the corners of his com- pressed lips a snicker should escape, all the boys would go of¥ in explosion. I remem- ber times when I had at school such re- sponsibility of repression resting on me, and proved unfaithful. There! to severely correct them, a boy and girl are placed beside each other — a style of punishment greater at that age than ever after. Here is a boy making way with an apple behind his lifted book. I ex- pect some one will cry out, "John Greed is eating an apple!" for it is a peculiarity of 230 Crumbs Swept Up. children under ten years of age (?) that they do not Hke others to have that which they themselves cannot get. Whether it be right or wrong, in their estimation, de- pends on whether themselves or somebody else has the apple. Just outside the school-room door is a boy showing his strength. As he turns up his arm in the light, he says, through the art of the painter, ''Do you see that mus- cle?" He is good at a wrestle, can run round all the bases at one stroke of the bat, can take the part of a wronged urchin, and I fear, if the school-dame comes too suddenly at him with the stick, she may lose the glass out of her spectacles. There will be no Sunday-school books made about him, although out of his brawn of body, and mind, and soul, there may yet come an Oliver Cromwell, or a Martin Luther. Thank Thomas Webster for taking us back to school by his painting! It is the only way we should like to go back. We had rather be almost anything than a boy, the world so little understands him. ROSA BONHEUR. We owe not more to the painters than to the engravers, although for the most part we let them sit, with worn fingers and half-extinguished eyes, begrudging them Pictures Felt, 231 the few shillings we pay them for their ex- pensive work. They are mediators be- tween us and the great pictures of the world. They popularize art. The people, through drinking these lighter wines, feel the taste for pictures growing on them, till they must have the stronger and intoxicat- ing portions of art, mixed by a Rembrandt or Claude Lorraine. And so we can see Raphael's "Transfiguration" without going to Rome; Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Sup- per" without going to Milan; Angelo's "Three Fates" without going to Florence; and Rosa Bonheu-r's "Horse Fair" without going to London. But there are many of the best pictures that have never attracted the engraver's art, and, for the most part, the world is ig- norant of them. In Luxembourg Gallery, at Paris, hanging in a very poor light, or rather first-rate darkness, is a hay-gather- ing scene, by Rosa Bonheur. After for hours looking upon helmets, and swords, and robes, and prim parterres, where grass does not grow without asking the gar- dener, and there are impossible horses on impossible roads, carrying impossible riders, I came upon this country-scer-^, in imagination threw myself down on the grass, and unbuttoned my shirt-collar to let the air of the fields strike the skin clear down to the chest. The weather is showery. 232 Crumbs Swept Up. It will rain in twenty minutes. The men, aware of this, are has4:ening in the load. The hair oi this workman is soaked with sw^at, and hangs in strings, as if just out of a dripping bath. The women work so awkwardly you feel that the plac'e for them is the house. The one on the load is evi- dently not so anxious to pack the hay as to save her own neck, in case the oxen should start. She feels it a risky business on an uneven field to stand on a rocking load. A rosy, white-capped maiden, of seventeen years, standing with rake in hand, does not work very fast. She is at an age when maidens are apt to take it some- what easy. She does not think it will hurt the hay much if it does get wet. Besides that, the shower may pass around. A workman is looking at her bright face. He, too, has forgotten the showery weather. No use, my dear fellow! You are too old for her. From her absent look, I know she is thinking now of the nightfall, and of some one who will come in clean smock, tying his horse at the gate. The oxen stand waiting for orders to go on, calm, stupid, honest, sinewy-necked, a skein of foam hanging from their lower lip. On this ox's back a fountain of sweat starts, but is dissipated in the thick gloss. In this dark ox, the night of the face is dawning into light beyond the hill of the Pictures Felt. 233 shoulder. They look like the yoke that answered our own command of ''Whoa! haw! gee!" needing to have the language translated by an occasional stroke of the goad, determined to get into the shadow of a tree, though the load upset, taking plenty of time, with the exception of some very uncertain starts in fly-time, hardly ever so resigned as when it is their duty to stand still. Oxen were only intended for very good people to drive, for it demands grace to do it. The man who excused himself from going to the king's feast because he had bought a yoke of oxen, gave a more plaus- ible excuse than the others; for I suppose the new team had balked, or upset the wagon, or had really started for the king's house, but came with so lazy a gait that their master was not in time for the enter- tainment. But we say nothing against these faith- ful creatures. They do heavy work for small compensation — a few carrots and a forkful of hay. They pant in the heat and shiver in the cold, and, shutting their eyes and dropping their horns aslant, they press through the hailstorm. The Bible says that God takes care for oxen. The next best thing to being in the country is to have Rosa Bonheur, in a pic- ture-gallery, plunge us into a hay-field. 234 Crumbs Swept Up. The stroke of a reaper's rifle on the scythe is to me a reveille. The past comes back, and in a moment I am a boy, with a bas- ket of luncheon, on the way to the men in the harvest-field, finding them asleep un- der the trees, taking their ''nooning." Their appetites were sharper than their whetted scythes. Those men are still tak- ing their nooning under the trees, but it is a sounder sleep. Death has ploughed for them the deep furrow of a grave. I forgive Rosa Bonheur that she wears a rowdy hat, and is fond of lounging about slaughter-houses, now, as I stand before this picture of the hay-scene. Like the be- witched workman who looked into the maiden's face, we forget it is showery weather, until it is four o'clock, and the guard of the gallery, with cocked hat, and red sash, and flaming sword, comes round to drive us out of Paradise. -)o(- RIP-RAP. A man, like a book, must have an index. He is divided into chapters, sections, pages, preface, and appendix; in size, quarto, octavo, or duodecimo, and bound in cloth, morocco antique, or half calf. The dress, the gait, the behavior are an index to the Rip-Rap, 235 contents of this strange book, and give you the number of the page. But I think we may also estimate charac- ter by the way one knocks at the door of a house, or rings the bell. We have friends whose coming is characteristically in- dicated by the sound at the door. They think to surprise us, but their first touch of the door reveals the secret, and we rush out in the hall, crying, *'I knew it was you!" The greeting we receive at many a house- hold is, *T knew the ring!" We look with veneration at the old door- knocker, which, black with the stain of ele- ments, and telling a story of many genera- tions, hangs at the entrance of the home- stead. It has none of the frivolous jingle of a modern door-bell. It never jokes, but speaks in tones monosyllabic, earnest, sol- emn, and alv/ays to the point. In olden times, the houses were wide apart, and peo- ple so busy it was not more than once or twice a week that the old iron clapper sounded at all, and then it would go off with such sudden bang that the whole fam- ily jumped, and wondered who was com- ing there. The long-promised visit from a neighbor was to take place that night. The hickory- nuts were cracked, the cider was already in the pitcher, the apples were wiped, and the doughnuts piled up in the closet. The 236 Crumbs Swept Up. children sat at the fire waiting for the ar- rival of the guests. It seemed as if the visitors v^ould never come; but at last, rousing up all the echoes of hall, and cel- lar, and garret, the long-silent knocker went Rip — rap! and there was a shaking ofif of the snow, and running up stairs with hats, and pulling up of chairs at the hearth, and snufhng of candles, and hauling out of the knitting-work, and loud clatter and gufifaw of voices, some of which have for a good while been still. At the first clap of the knocker, silence fell dead. There is a very festoon of memories hanging on the old door. The sailor-boy far at sea won- ders if it looks just as it used to when he played on the sill, and imagines himself standing with his hand on the knocker, and in his dream is startled to hear it go off, waking up to find that it is only an ice-glazed rope in the rigging, going "Rip — rap! Rip — rap!" The hearty, enthusiastic man always gives a characteristic ring. When he puts his hand on the knob, it seems as if the bell would go crazy. It flies up and down the house with racket, and after it seems to be about through, starts up again as if it meant to apologize for stopping. The nurse runs down from the bedroom, and the cook comes up from the kitchen, and the children bend over the banisters, and Rip-Rap. 237 the father, who was taking an afternoon nap, bounds to the floor, shouting, *'What on earth is the matter?" And you look at the clapper of the bell, and find it swinging yet, as if it were getting ready for another volley. When our inanimate friend comes to see us, he makes no disturbance. His liver has for several years been on a strike, and his blood acts as if it would have stopped cir- culation entirely, but for its respect for William Harvey. In his ordinary walk, each step is so undecided that you know not whether he is going on, or is about to stop and spend the evening. As he pulls your bell, you hear the tongue creak in the socket, but no decided ring. You go out in the hall to see if the bell is in mo- tion. You wait for a more decided demon- stration, and in about five minutes there is just one, little, delicate tap that lets you know the gentleman at the door is still breathing. The door-bell imposes on such men, and hangs idly about, gossiping with bedroom and parlor bells, and deserves to have a good shaking. Beggars have a characteristic knock. This man with a printed certificate that he was blown up with Vesuvius, and drowned in the Mississippi, and afterward killed on the New Jersey Central, and considerably injured in other respects, comes against 238 Crumbs Swept Up. your basement-door with an emphasis in- describable. He feels that you have what belongs to him. His knuckles are hard by much practice. When he strikes your door, it means, ''Stand and deliver!" But some nig-ht, about ten o'clock, 3^ou hear some- thing at the basement. It is a cold night, and you think it is only the wind rattling the shutters; but after a while you hear it again — a faint tap, as though it were not made with the ^-nuckle, but the nail of the little finger. You open the door, and be- fore a word is returned, you read in her face: "No fire! Nobreadforthechildren! No coverlets to keep them warm! No hope!" She had been at a dozen doors before, but had knocked so softly there was no re- sponse. She did not dare to touch the bell lest it might with garrulous tongue tell all her woe. Is any one watching that woman in the thin shawl? Did any ear listen to the craunch of that woman's foot in the crisp snow? When she struck the nail of her litle finger against the cold basement door, was the stroke drowned by the night- wind? No! It sounded farther than the heavy bang of the sturdy beggar — louder than the clang of forge, or pounding of gauntleted fist of warrior at castle-gate. Against the very door of heaven it struck, and sounded through the long, deep cor- ridors of Infinite pity: "Rip — rap! Rip Rip-Rap. 239 Children will wake up early in the morn- ing. Perhaps you have been disturbed in the night, and gone wandering around the room in your somnolent state, as much confused as ourselves on one occasion, when, at midnight, we heard a croupy cough in the nursery, and gave the ipecac to the wrong baby. Just as you begin your last morning nap, you hear a stir in the adjoining room. The trundle-bed is evidently discharging a lot of bare feet on the floor. You hear suppressed laughter at the door, slipping out into an occasional shout as one of them applies the force of a tickle to the bottom of the other's feet. You are provoked to be interrupted at such unseasonable hours, and proclaim children a nuisance. You are glad that the door is locked. But they rattle the knob. They blow through the keyhole. They push slips of paper under the door, and, getting more and more bold, they knock. Ten fingers, tipped with the rosy tints of the morn, are running races up and down the panel. Your indignation begins to cool, and your determination not to admit is giving way. The noise of fingers is inter- mingled with the stroke of dimpled fists. At last you open the door, and there bursts in a snow-flurry of night-gowns, and they bound along, brunette and blonde, wild as young Arabs. The lock that would have con- 240 Crumbs Swept Up. founded burglar, and the bolt that strong- est hand could not have broken, flew open at the touch of the tip-end of a baby's finger. The roughest knock that ever strikes the door is a sheriff's knock as he comes to levy on the furniture. The gentlest knock is that of a comforter as she arrives to tell us of the good times coming. The glad- dest, merriest ring of the door-bell is at the holiday festival, when six children, after long absence, come to the homestead, all talking at once, and asking questions, without waiting for answers before they ask more, and talking over boyhood and girl- hood days, and bringing down the old cradle from the garret, and dressing up mother in her faded wedding-dress, and continuing to laugh, and cry, and kiss, and shout, and turn somersaults, and cut up and cut down, till the door-bell is mad at the disturbance, and solemnly vows, 'T will never ring again for such a company as this!" And it keeps its word. Better each one take a leaf of the Christmas-tree, for it is the last one that shall ever grow in that house. The door-bell had told many a lie, pretending that some one worth see- ing had come, but this time it told the truth. That was the last holiday scene in which the six mingled. Another bell took up the strain, but it was deep and slow, The Right Track, 241 and the sound came down from the old church-beh'ry as though the door-bell of heaven had tapped at the going in of a soul. Not one of the six was compelled to stand, with weary rip-rap, banging at the celestial door, for the faces of their friends were pressed against the window, watching. And the table was already spread, and the pomegranates, piled up on the caskets, were so ripe that the rinds did burst at the first touch of the lip. And with oldest wine of heaven, more than eighteen hun- dred years ago by two scarred hands pressed from grapes of Eshcol, they did rise up, chalice gleaming to chalice, and drank "To the rescue!" -)o(- THE RIGHT TRACK. There are thousands of persons in places where they do not belong. The bird's wing means air, the fish's fin means water, the horse's hoof means solid ground; and what would happen if the bird tried the water, and the fish tried the air, happens when men get out of their natural element. In my watch, the spring cannot exchange places with the wheels, nor the cogs with the pivots. "Stay where I put you!" cries the watchmaker, "if you want to keep good 242 Crumbs Swept Up. time!" Now, the world is only a big- watch that God wound up, and the seasons are the hands which tell how fast the time is going. ''Stay where I put you!# says our great Creator. Or, if you prefer, human society is a ship. Some are to go ahead; they are the prow. Some are to stay be- hind and guide those who lead; they are the helm. Some are to be enthusiastic and carry the flag; they are the masts. Some are to do nothing but act as a dead weight; they are shoveled in as ballast. Some are to fume and fret and blow; they are the valves. Our happiness and success depend on be- ing where we belong. A scow may be ad- mirable, and a seventy-four gun-ship may be admirable, but do not put the scow on the ocean, or the ship-of-the-line in a mill- pond. Fortune is spoken of as an old shrew, with hot water, shovel, and tongs, pursuing the innocent. But, though some- times losing her temper, she mostly ap- proves those who are in their sphere, and condemns those who are where they do not belong. How, then, account for the success of such persons as Elihu Burritt and Hugh Miller — the former a blacksmith, yet show- ing unbounded capacity for the acquisition of languages; the latter a stone-mason, and yet, as though he were one of the old The Right Track, 243 burfed Titans come to life, pressing up through rocks and mountains, until, shak- ing from his coat a world of red sand-stone, and washing off from his hands the dust of millions of years, he takes the professor's chair in a college? We answer, different men want different kinds of colleges. The anvil was the best school-desk for Elihu Burritt, and quarry-stone for Hugh Miller. The former, among the cinders and horse- shoes, learned that patient toil which was the secret of his acquisition in the lan- guages. The latter, from observations made while toiling with chisel and crowbar, laid the foundation of his wonderful attain- ments, one shelf of rock being worth to him more than the hundred shelves of a college-library. Some men get into an occupation below that for which they are intended. They have their "seventy-four" in the mill-pond. They do not get along as well in that posi- tion as somebody with less brains. An ele- phant would make wretched work if you set it to hatch out goose-eggs, but no more wretched than a man of great attainments appointing himself to some insignificant office. Men are often in a position a little above that for which they were intended. Now the old scow is out on the ocean. The weights of a clock said, "Come! come! 244 Cntmbs Swept Up. This is dull work down here I I want to be the pendulum!" But the pendulum shouted upward. "I'm tired of this work! It does not seem that I make any progress going backward and forward! Oh! that I were the hands!" Under this excitement, the old clock, which had been going ever since the Revolutionary' War, stopped stock-still. "What is the matter now, my old friend?" says the gray-haired patriarch. For ver\- shame, not a word was said until the old man set it a-going. Then the striking-bell spoke up and said. "Nothing! only the weights wanted to be the pendulum, and the pendulum wanted to be the hands!" **Well! well!" said grandfather, "this is great work!" and the old man. losing his patience, gave the clock a gentle slap in the face, and told the pendulum hereafter to hold its tongue, and said to the weights, "You be hanged!" But how may we know if we are in our right place — not an inch above, not an inch below? If you can perform your work easily, without being cramped or exhausted, that is the right place. That man is in a hor- rible condition who is ever making prodi- ^ous effort to do more than he can do. It is just as easy for a star to swing in its orbit as for a mote to float in a sunbeam. Xature never sweats. The great law of gravitation holds the universe on its back The Right Track. 245 as easily as a miller swings over his shoul- der a bag of Genesee wheat. The winds never run themselves out of breath. The rivers do not weary in their course. The Mississippi and the Amazon are no more tired than the meadow-brook. Himalaya is not dizzy. Poets talk about the waters of Niagara being in an agony, but I think they like it. How they frolic and clap their hands miles above, as they come skipping on toward the great somersault, singing, "Over we go! over we go!" When the universe goes at such tremendous speed, and the least impediment might break one of the great wheels, is it not a wonder that we do not hear a prodigious crack, or thunderous bang, loud enough to make the world's knees knock together? Yet a million worlds in their flight do not make as much noise as a honey-bee coquetting among the clover-tops. Everything in nature is just as easy. Now, if the position you oc- cupy requires unnatural exertion, your only way out is either to take a step higher, or a step further down. Providence does not demand that you should break your back, or put your arm out of joint, or sprain your ankle. If you can only find out just what you are to do, you can do it perfectly easy. Let the young be sure to begin right. 246 Crumbs Swept Up. Not once in a thousand times does a man successfully change occupations. The sea of life is so rough that you cannot cross over from one vessel to another except at great peril of falling between. Many have fallen down to nothing between the mason's trowel and the carpenter's saw; between the lawyer's brief and the author's pen; be- tween the medicine-chest and the pulpit. It is no easy matter to switch ofif on another track this thundering express-train of life. A daffodil and a buttercup resolved to change places with each other, but in cross- ing over from stem to stem, they fell at the feet of a heart's-ease. "J^^st as I expected!" said Heart's-ease. "You might better have stayed in your places!" -)o(- RIDING THE HORSE TO BROOK. In these days, if a boy would go a horse- backing, he must have gay caparison — sad- dle of the best leather, stirrups silvered, martingales bestarred, housing flamboyant, tasseled whip, jingling spurs, gauntleted hands, and crocodile boots able to swallow him to above the knee. But we are persuaded that is not the best w^ay for a boy to ride. About seven o'clock in the morning, the farm-horses having had Riding the Horse to Brook. 247 oats and currying, must be taken to the brook for the watering. The halter is caught into a half hitch around the horse's nose, and, bringing him to the fence, the boy leaps astride. It is no rare occurrence that, in his avidity to get aboard, the boy slides off on the other side of the animal, and it is fortunate if the latter, taking ad- vantage of the miscalcuktion, does not fly away with a wild snort, finding his way to the brook. But once thoroughly mounted, the rope- halter is helm and sail sufficient. It is very easy to guide a thirsty horse w^hen you want to take him to water. A poke of 3^our bare feet into his ribs, and a strong pull of the rope, are enough to bring him back from any slight divergencies. Pass- ing through the bars, all you have to do is to gather up your feet on his warm, smooth back, and having passed the post, again drop anchor. Nothing looks more spirited or merry than a boy's feet bouncing against the sides of a glistening bay. The horse feels them, and the more briskly gallops down the lane. At his first plunge into the brook his sud- den stop would have sent the boy somer- saulting into the stream, but for a quick digging of the heels into the side, and a clutch of the scant lock of hair at the end of the mane. With lip and nostril in the 248 Crumbs Swept Up. stream, the horse cares nothing for what his young rider wills. There may be a clearer place below that the boy chooses for the watering, but the horse lifts not his head to the shout, or the jerk of halter, or stroke in the flanks. He wants to drink just there; intent upon that are mouth, and gullet, and fetlock, and spot in the face. Sitting astride, the boy feels the jerk of each swallow, and sees the accompanying wag of the pony's ears. The horse lifts his head, takes a long breath, clashes his teeth, and rinsing his jaws drops the tuft of hay that lingered in his mouth, with right foot paws up the gravel from beneath, giving notice that he is ready, if you are, throws himself back on his hind feet till his front lift from the mud, gives a quick turn, and starts for the barn. In a minute he has made the length of the lane, and stands neighing for the barn-door to open. This ride was the chief event of the day. Alas, if there are only two horses, when there are four boys! for two of them are disappointed, and keep their grudge for the most of the day. You linger about the barn for hours, and pat Pompey on the nose, and get astride his back in the stable, and imagine how it would be if it were only time to ride him down again. We would like to have in our photo- graph album a picture of the horses that in Riding the Horse to Brook. 249 boyhood we rode to the watering. Sitting here, thinking of ah their excellencies, we forgive them for all the times they threw us off. The temptation was too great for them, and the mud where we fell was soft. The dear old pets! One of them was sold, and as he was driven away we cried such large tears, and so many of them, that both coat-sleeves were insufficient to sop up the wretchedness. Another broke its leg, and it was taken to the woods and shot. We went into the house and held our ears, lest we should hear the cruel bang that an- nounced the departure of our favorite sor- rel. Another stayed on the place, and was there when we left home. He was always driven slowly, had grown uncertain of foot, and ceased to prance at any sight or sound. You could no longer make him believe that a wheelbarrow was anything supernatural, nor startle him by shaking out a buffalo- skin. He had outlived all his contem- poraries. Some had frisked out a frivolous life, and had passed away. Some had, after a life of kicking and balking, come to an ignominious end; but old Billy had lived on in an earnest way, and every Sunday morning stood at the door waiting for the family to get in the wagon and ride tx) church. Then he would jog along serious- ly, as if conscious that his church privileges would soon be gone. In the long line of 250 Crumbs Swept Up, tied horses beside the church, he would stand and Hsten to the songs inside. While others stamped, and beat the flies, and got their feet over the shafts, and slipped the hal- ter, and bit the nag on the other side of the tongue, Billy had more regard for the day and place, and stood, meditative, and de- corous. If there be any better place than this world for good horses, Billy has gone there. He never bolted; he never kicked. In ploughing, he never put his foot over the trace; he never balked; he never put back his ears and squealed. A good, kind, faithful, honest, industrious horse was he. He gave us more joy than any ten-thou- sand-dollar courser could give us now. No arched stallion careering on Central Park, or foam-dashed Long Islander racer, could thrill us like the memory of that family roadst'^^r Alas, for boys in the city, who never ride a horse to brook! An afternoon airing in ruffles, stifif and starched, and behind a costumed driver, cannot make up for this early disadvantage. The best way to start life is astride a farm-horse, with a rope- halter. In that way you learn to rough it. You are prepared for hard bounces on the road of life; you learn to hold on; you get the habit of depending on your own heels, and not upon other people's stirrups; you find how to climb on without anybody to Ghosts, 251 give you a boost. It does not hurt you so much when you fall off. And some day, far on in life, when you are in the midst of the hot and dusty city, and you are weary with the rush and din of the world, in your imagination you call back one of these nags of pleasant memory. You bring him up by the side of your study, or counting- room table, and from that you jump on, and away you canter through the old-time orchard, and by the old-time meeting- house, or down the lane in front of the barn, dashing into the cool, sparkling water of the meadow, where he stops to take his morning dram; or you hitch him up to the rocking-chair in which you have for twenty years sat rheumatic and helpless, and he drags you back some Sunday morning to the old country church, where many years ago he stood tied to the post, while you, with father and mother at either end of the pew, were learning of the land where there is no pain, and into which John looked, and said, "I saw a white horse!" ■)o(- GHOSTS. It is difficult to escape from early super- stitions. You reason against them, and are persuaded that they are unworthy of a 252 Crumbs Swept Up, man of common sense; and yet you cannot shake them off. You heard fifty years ago that Friday was an unlucky day. You know better. You recollect that on Friday Luther and William Penn were born, and the Stamp Act was repealed, and the Hud- son river discovered, and Jamestown set- tled, and the first book printed. Yet you have steered clear of Friday. You did not commence business on Friday. You did not get married on Friday. You would not like it if the governor of the State pro- claimed Thanksgiving for Friday. The owners of steamships are intelligent men, but their vessels do not start on Friday. If early superstitions were implanted in your mind, you do not like to return to the house to get anything when you have once started on a journey. Perhaps you are careful how you count the carriages at a funeral. You prefer to see the new moon over the right shoulder. Though you know there is nothing in the story of ghosts which your nurse or some one about the old place used to tell you, yet you would a little rather not rent a house that has the reputation of being haunted; and when called to go by a country grave-yard after twelve o'clock at night, you start an argu- ment to prove that you are not afraid. We never met but one ghost in all our life. It was a very dark night, and we were 01 Ghosts. 253 seven years of age. There was a German cooper, who, on the outskirts of the village, had a shop. It was an interesting spot, and we frequented it. There was a congrega- tion of barrels, kegs, casks, and firkins, that excited our boyish admiration. There the old man stood day after day, hammer- ing away at his trade. He was fond of talk, and had his head full of all that was weird, mysterious, and tragic. During the course of his life he had seen almost as many ghosts as firkins; had seen them in Ger- many, on the ocean, and in America. One summer afternoon, perhaps having made an unusually lucrative bargain in hoop-poles, the tide of his discourse bore everything before it. We hung on his lips entranced. We noticed not that the shad- ows of the evening were gathering, nor re- membered that we were a mile from home. He had wrought up our boyish imagina- tion to the tip-top pitch. He had told us how doors opened when there was no hand on the latch, and the eyes of a face in a picture winked one windy night; and how intangible objects in white would glide across the room, and headless trunks rode past on phantom horses; and how boys on the way home at night were met by a sheeted form, that picked them up and car- ried them ofif, so that they never were heard of, their mother going around as discon- 254 Crumbs Swept Up. solate as the woman in the ''Lost Heir," crying, "Where's Billy?" This last story roused us up to our whereabouts, and we felt we must go home. Our hair, that usually stood on end, took the strictly perpendicular. Our flesh crept with horror of the expedition homeward. Our faith in everything solid had been shaken. We believed only in the subtle and in the intangible. What could a boy of seven years old depend upon if one of these headless horsemen might any mo- ment ride him down, or one of these sheeted creatures pick him up? We started up the road. We were bare- foot. We were not impeded by any use- less apparel. It took us no time to get under way. We felt that if we must perish, it would be well to get as near the doorsill of home as possible. We vowed that, if we were only spared this once to get home, we would never again allow the night to catch us at the cooper's. The ground flew under our feet. No headless horseman could have kept up. Not a star was out. It was the blackness of darkness. We had made half the distance, and were in "the hollow" — the most lonely and dangerous part of the way — and felt that in a minute more we might abate our speed and take fuller breath. But, alas! no such good fortune awaited us. Suddenly our feet struck a Ghosts, 255 monster — whether beastly, human, infernal, or supernal, witch, ghost, demon, or head- less horseman, we could not immediately tell. We fell prostrate, our hands passing over a hairy creature; and, as our head struck the ground, the monster rose up, throwing our feet into the air. To this day it would have been a mystery, had not a fearful bellow revealed it as a cow, which had lain down to peaceful slumber in the road, not anticipating the terrible collision. She wasted no time, but started up the road. We, having by experiment discov- ered which end of us was up, joined her in the race. We knew not but that it was the first instalment of disasters. And, there- fore, away we went, cow and boy; but the cow beat. She came into town a hundred yards ahead. I have not got over it yet, that I let that cow beat. That was the first and last ghost we ever met. We made up our mind for all time to come that the obstacles in life do not walk on the wind, but have either two legs or four. The only ghosts that glide across the room are those of the murdered hours of the past. When the door swings open without any hand, we send for the lock- smith to put on a better latch. Sheeting has been so high since the war, that appa- ritions will never wear it again. Friday is an unlucky day only when on it we behave 256 Crumbs Swept Up. ill. If a salt-cellar upset, it means no mis- fortune, unless you have not paid for the salt. Spirits of "the departed have enough employment in the next world to keep them from cutting up monkey-shines in this. Better look out for cows than for spooks. Here is a man who starts out in a good enterprise. He makes rapid strides. He will establish a school. He will reform in- ebriates. He will establish an asylum for the destitute. The enterprise is under splendid headway. But some lazy, stupid man, holding large place in community, defeats the project. With his wealth and influence he opposes the movement. He says the thing cannot be done. He does not want it done. He will trip It up; and so the great hulk of obesity lies down across the way. His stupidity and bea&tli- ness succeed. The cow beat! A church would start out on a grand career of usefulness. They are tired of husks, and chips, and fossils. The wasted hands of distress are stretched up for help. The harvest begins to lodge for lack of a sickle. A pillar of fire with baton of light marshals the host. But some church offi- cial, priding himself on aristocratic asso- ciation, and holding prominent pew, says, "Be careful! preserve your dignity. I am opposed to such a democratic religion! Ghosts. 257 Heaven save our patent-leathers!" And, with mind stuffed with conceit and body stuffed with high hving, he Ues down across the road. The enterprise stumbles and falls over him. He chews the cud of satisfaction. The cow beat! I know communities where there are scores and hundreds of enterprising men; but some man in the neighborhood holds a large amount of land, and he will not sell. He has balked all progress for thirty years. The shriek of a steam-whistle cannot wake him up. The liveliest sound he wants to hear is a fisherman's horn coming round with lobsters and clams. His land is wanted for a school; but he has always thrived without learning, and inwardly thinks education a bad thing. At his funeral the spirit of resignation will be amazing to tell of. While he lives he will lie down across the path of all advance- ment. Public enterprises, with light foot, will come bounding on, swift as a boy m the night with ghosts after him; but only to turn ignominious somersault over his miserable carcass. The cow beat! ■)o( 17 258 Crumbs Swept Up. DEATH OF NEWSPAPERS. There is a fearful mortality among periodicals. An epidemic has broken out which has brought to the last gasp many of the dailies, weeklies, and monthlies. During the last few weeks, scores of these have died of cholera infantum. Only a little while ago, they came forth with flam- ing prospectus and long list of eminent contributors ; but the places that knew them once know them no more. Men succeeding in nothing else have concluded it to be a providential indication that they should publish a paper. Many hundreds of thousands of dollars have been sunk, and every issue of the majority of the temperance, Sunday-school, religious, and political papers of the country is a plunge into debt from which they are hoping some purchaser will lift them out. It is a constant question in the community where religious newspapers go to when they die. We know where the basely partisan go to, without asking. The mania is fearful. Many of our lit- erary friends are uneasy till they have in- vested their last five thousand dollars in printer's ink. Nine-tenths of them may whistle for their money; but the dog will not come back, having found out some Death of Newspapers. 259 other master. Why all this giving up of the ghost among newspapers? Some of them died for lack of being anathematized. Nothing ever succeeds in this country without being well cursed. If a man, or book, or periodical go forth un- assaulted, ruin is nigh. There is nothing that so decidedly lifts a thing up before the public gaze as the end of a bayonet. The neutral paper almost always fails, because it clears the scorn of parties and churches. Kicks and cuffs are an indispensable in- heritance. The more valuable the quarry, the more frequent the blasting. You can- not make wine without the crushing of the clusters. The most successful periodicals of the day are those that have been most violently hounded. Some of these papers died for lack of brains. A man may plead law or preach the gospel w^ith less intellect than is re- quired for the conduct of a paper. The editor must understand something of every- thing. He wants more than a scissors and a bottle of mucilage. If he merely retail the ideas of others,"the public will prefer to go up and get the thing at the wholesale establishment. He must be able, with strong and entertaining pen, to discuss governments, religions, educational enter- prises, social changes, books, amusements, men, institutions, everything. He must 26o Cru7nbs Swept Up. have strength to take a thought on the end of his pen and fling it a thousand miles, till it strikes within an inch of the point at which he aimed it. Lack of capital has thrown others. Ink, paper, press, type, printers, editorial sal- ,aries, contributors' fees, postal expenses, rent, machinery, necessary repairs, are tak- ing dow^n many large fortunes. The liter- ary enterprise is often crushed under its own cylinders, is drowned in its own ink, is chewed up with its own type, is shrouded in its own paper, has its epitaph in its own columns. The wider the circulation of the ill-managed newspaper, the more certain the doom. He who attempts to publish a paper without pockets full of ready cash, publishes his own discomfiture. Call on the witness-stand the hundreds of men who are now settling up the bills for their ex- tinct newspaper. Every mail brings to us the parting bow of retiring publishers, with pockets turned wrong-side out, from which hungry creditors are trying to milk out another shilling. We wonder not at the ambition that aims for the editorial chair. All other modes of affecting the public mind are narrow and weak compared with it. The pen is the lever that moves the world, and the ink- roller of the printing-press the battering- ram that smites into the dust the walls of City Fools in the Country. 261 ignorance and sin. But the prees is a strong team to drive; and one must be sure of the harness and the wheels, or, coming along a steep place, there will be a capsize, and a wreck from under which the literary ad- venturers will no^ have strength to draw themselves. Phaeton's attempt to drive the chariot of the sun ended in a grand smash-up. ■)o(- CITY FOOLS IN THE COUNTRY. Because a man is wise in some places, we are not to conclude that he is wise everywhere. You find men grandly suc- cessful in the counting-room and at the board of trade, whose commonsense for- sakes them 'as they cross the city limits. During the last few years, a multitude of men have left town for country life, with the idea that twenty thousand dollars, and a few books on agriculture, would make them successful farmers. They will take the prizes at the county fair. They will have the finest cattle, the most affluent hens, the most reasonable ducks, and the most cleanly swine. Their receipts will far outrun their expenses. The first year they are disappointed. The second year they collapse. The third year they tack to a 262 Crumbs Swept Up. post the sign, "For Sale!" They knew not that agriculture is a science and a trade, and that a farmer might as well come in with his carpet-bag, set it down in the en- gineer's room of a Liverpool steamer, ex- pecting in ten minutes to start the machin- ery, and successfully guide the vess-el across the Atlantic, as one, knowing nothing of country life, to undertake to engineer the intricate and outbranching affairs of a large farm. As well set the milkmaid to write a disquisition on metaphysics, a rag- picker to lecturing on aesthetics. The city fool hastens out at the first beck of pleasant weather. He wishes to sit in what poets call "the lap of spring." We have ourselves sat, several times, in her lap, and pronounce her the roughest nurse that ever had anything to do with us. Through March, April, and May, for the last few years, the maiden seems to have been out of patience, and she blows, and frets, and spits in your face with storm, till, seeming- ly exhausted with worriment, she lies down at the feet of June. The family of the city fool are, for the first ten days after going into the country, kept in the house by bad weather. It is the Paradise of mud. The soft ground, en- raptured with the dainty feet of the city belle, takes their photograph all up and down the lane, and secures its pay by ab- City Fools in the Country. 263 stmcting one of her overshoes up by the barn, and the other by the woods. Mud on the dress. Mud on the carriage-wheels. Mud an the door-step. A very carnival of mud! The city fool has great contempt for or- dinary stock, and talks only of ''high bloods." His cattle are all Ayrshires, or Shorthorns, or Devons. But for some rea- son, they do not give half as much milk as the awkward, unheraldic, mongrel breed that stand at nightfall looking through the neighbor's bars. The poultry of our hero are Golden Hamburgs, and Buff Dorkings, and Ben- galiers, and Cropple-crowns, and Black Polands and Chittaprats. But they are stingy of laying, and notwithstanding all the inducements of expensive coop, and ingenious nests, and handsome surround- ings, are averse to any practical or useful expression. They eat, and drink, and cackle, and do everything but lay. You feed them hot mush, and throw lime out of which they are to make the shell, and strew ashes to kill the lice, and call on them by all the glorious memory of a distinguished ancestry to do something worthy of their name, but all in vain. Here and there an ^^g dropped in the mud in preference to the appointed place, gives you a specimen of what they might do if they only willed. 264 Cruvibs Swept Up. We owned such a hen. We had g-iven an outrageous price for her. We lavished on that creature every possible kindness. Though useless she made more noise than all the other denizens of the barn-yard, and, as some faithful hen came from her nest, would join in the cackle, as much as to say, **Ain't we doing well?" We came to hate the sight of that hen. She knew it well, and as she saw us coming, would clear the fence with wild squawk, as if her con- science troubled her. We would not give one of our unpretending Dominies for three full-blooded Chittaprats. The city fool expects, with small outlay, to have bewitching shrubbery, and a very Fontainebleau of shade-trees, and pagodas, and summer-houses, and universal arbores- cence. He will be covered up with clematis and weigelia. The paths, white-graveled, innocent of weeds or grass, and round- banked, shall wind about the house, and twist themselves into all unexpectedness of beauty. If he cannot have a Chatsworth Park, nine miles in circumference, he will have something that will make you think of it. And all this will be kept in order with a few strokes of scythe, hoe, and trimming- knife. The city fool selects his country place without reference to socialities. He will bring a pocket-full of papers from the store, City Fools in the Country. 265 which will be all his family will want to know of society and the world; and then a healthy library, from which shall look down all the historians and poets, will give them a surfeit of intellectualities. He does not know why his wife and daughters want to go back to town. What could be more gay? Market- wagons passing the door, and farmers going with grist to the mill, and an occasional thunder-storm to keep things lively, and the bawling of the cow recently bereft of her calf. Coming home be- sweated from the store, at night, the father finds the females crying on the piazza. What better concert do they want than the robins? What livelier beaux than the hedges of syringa? With a very wail of woe they cry out to the exasperating husband and father: "We want to see something!" "Good gracious!" he shouts, "go forth and look at the clouds, and the grass, and the Southdowns! one breath of this even- ing air is worth all the perfumes of fashion- able society!" There is apt to be disappointment in crops. Even a stupid turnip knows a city fool as soon as it sees him. Marrow-fat peas fairly rattle in their pods with deri- sion as he passes. The fields are glad to impose upon the novice. Wandering too near the beehive with a book on honey- 266 Crumbs Swept Up. making, he got stung in three places. His cauHflower turn out to be cabbages. The thunder spoils his milk. The grass-butter, that he dreamed of, is rancid. The taxes eat up his profits. The drought consumes his corn. The rust gets in his wheat. The peaches drop off before they ripen. The rot strikes the potatoes. Expecting to sur- prise his benighted city-friends with a pres- ent of a few early vegetables, he accident- ally hears that they have had new potatoes, and green peas, and sweet corn for a fort- night. The bay mare runs away with the box-wagon. His rustic gate gets out of order. His shrubbery is perpetually need- ing the shears. It seems almost impossible to keep the grass out of the serpentine walks. A cow gets in and upsets the vase of flowers. The hogs destroy the water- melons, and the gardener runs off with the chamber-maid. Everything goes wrong, and farming is a failure. It always is a failure when a man knows nothing about it. If a man can afford to make a large outlay for his own amusement, and the health of his family, let him hasten to his country purchase. But no one, save a city fool, will think to keep a business in town, and make a farm financially profitable. There are only two conditions in which farming pays. The first, when a man makes agriculture a lifetime business, not yielding City Fools in the Country. 267 to the fatal itch for town which is depopu- lating the country, and crowding the city with a multitude of men standing idle with their hands in their own or their neighbors' pockets. The other condition is, when a citizen with surplus of means, and weary of the excitements and confinements of city life, goes to the country, not expecting a return of dollars equal to the amount dis- bursed, but expects, in health, and recrea- tion, and communion with nature, to find a wealth compared with which all bundles of scrip and packages of Government se- curities are worthless as the shreds of paper under the counting-room desk in the waste-basket. Only those who come out of the heats of the town, know the full en- chantment of country life. Three years ago, on the prongs of a long fork, with which we tossed the hay into the mow, we pitched away our last attack of "the blues." We can beat back any despondency we ever knew with a hoe-handle. Born and brought up in the country, we have, ever since we left it, been longing to go back, though doomed for most of the time to stay in town. The most rapturous lay of poet about country life has never come up to our own experiences. Among the grandest attractions about the Heavenly City are the trees, and the rivers, and the white horses. When we had a place in the 268 Crtcmbs Swept Up. Country, the banquet lasted all summer, beginning with cups of crocus, and ending with glowing tankards of autumnal leaf. At Belshazzar's feast the knees trembled for the finger that wrote doom, but the handwriting on our wall was that of honey- suckle and trumpet-creeper. •)o(- SUBLIME WRETCHEDNESS OF WATERING-PLACES. All the world may be divided into two classes — those who go to watering-places, and those who wish they could. In sum- mer, the tmemployed trunks, valises, and carpet-bags up in the attic, swell with envy until they almost burst their straps, pry off their lids, or demolish their buckles, as the express-wagons rattle the street, piled up with baggage marked for Lake George, Newport, or Clifton Springs. If the "castle in the air" that many of our business-men are building should alight, it would prob- ably come down on the Beach, or at the Springs. Give me fifteen glasses of fresh Congress water before breakfast, or I die ! For tens of thousands of our people the most delectable event in their home-life is their going away. Nothing must interfere Wretchedness of Watering-Places. 269 with this. Papa's business may have been poor during the year, and every dollar may be necessary to keep the firm from a cap- size, but walk the beach with the Hardings they ought, climb Mount Washington they must, sip sulphur water they will. There are three orders of American no- bility. To the highest belong those who spend all the summer away. Give them full swing! Feel honored if they tread on your corns. They hold in their hand letters patent of nobility, namely, a hotel bill for eight or ten weeks' board at Bedford Springs. The second order are those who stay two or three weeks. Let them be honored! They were at six "hops," rode out twice to the races, and formed the ac- quaintance of the nephew of one of the staf¥ officers of General Burnside. All hail! Put down a strip of carpet from carriage to door-step as they come back. Make way for them on the church aisle. Here they come after three weeks at Ballston Spa. The lowest order are those who can only say that they were gone *'a few days." We would not by any means class them with those who stay at home, or merely go into the country, for they are on the way up, and in a few years may compass a whole month away. Many who once had no bet- ter prospects than they, have lived to spend six weeks in an attic at five dollars a day. 270 Crumbs Swept Up. Many people, no doubt, gain great physi- cal and mental advantages from their stay at watering-p>aces. Toiling men and women find here a respite, make valuable acquaintance, and come home with stronger and steadier pulse. But there are a multitude that crowd these places, un- happy while they stay, and sick when they come home. What with small rooms, and tight clothes, and late hours, and slights, and heart-burnings, and nothing to do, it mfakes up what we call the sublime wretch- edness of watering-places. The Simingtons lived in a perfect palace on Rittenhouse Squarre. There was not a stone, or nail, or panel, or banister in all the house that seemed to be in anywise related to the nails, stones, panels, or ban- isters of the houses of common people. There was an air of pride and pomp in the mortar of the foundation — a very aristoc- racy of mud. The halls were wide, and ran straight through, ample enough to allow a military company to march and wheel. The stairs were mahogany, uncarpeted, but guarded by elaborately twisted rails, at every turn revealing a bust of marble look- ing at you from the niche in the wall. The exact size of the rooms had been sent to Axminster, with an order that the loom must do its best. The walls blossomed and bloomed with masterpieces. Bronze, with Wretchedness of Watering- Places. 271 wing of chandelier, shook down the Hght. The golden links that drooped about the burners, in a gust of evening air zigzagged — the chain-lightning of uppertendom. There was a bewitching perfume which filled the house, and made you think that the wreaths in the plush and on the sil- vered paper of the wall were living flo-wers that held in their urns the ashes of all past generations of posies. The curtains stooped about the window graceful as the veil of a bride. The sleeping apartments were adorned with canopy, and embroidered pillow, and lounges, and books, and toilet- table of tinged marble, on which lay brushes and other apparatus with which heiresses smoothed, or frizzled, or curled, or twisted, or knotted, or waved, or crimped, or coiled, or bunched, or flumixed their hair. In a word, it was a great house, and or- dinary people seldom saw the inside of it, save when passing, as the door opened to let out a party to the flashing carriage that wheeled restlessly about the door. Indeed, on our small street we all tried to do as the Simingtons did. We saw how they wore their cravats, and that was the way we tied ours. They told us at the cane- store that Simington had just bought a peculiar handle, and we took one just like it. Our wives and daughters, instead of 272 Cnimbs Swept Up. treading straight on as once when we took them to church, surprised us by a peculiar gait made up of teeter, swing, and waddle, which made us look down, and, in fear of their sudden paralysis, ask, ''What is the matter?" but we instantly saw that they were only taking on the way of the Sim- ingtons, and so we excused them. It was the first day of June, and the back room of the second story of that house looked as if it had been tossed of a whirl- wind. Two dress-makers of the first order were busy in preparing an outfit for the young ladies and their mother, who were soon to start for the watering-place. The floor, and table, and chairs, and divans were covered with patterns, and scissors, and fragments of silk, and flakes of cotton, and smoothing irons, and spools, and but- tons, and tassels, and skeins of silk, and rolls of goods from which the wrapping had just been torn, riding-habits green and black and flamboyant, pearl pendants and pipings of satin glittering with steel, bugles, and beads, and rings, and ribbons, sky- blue, grass-green or fire-tipped, and chenille and coral for the hair, and fringes, and gimps, and pufTs, and flutings, and braids, and bands, and bracelets, and neck- lets, and collars, and cuf^s, and robes of mohair, and dresses adorned with Cluny lace and Chambery gauze, and grenadines, Wretchedness of Watering- Places. 273 and organdies, and tarlatans, and moreens, a package of Ivins's Patent Hair Crimper, and bandelets of straw bells, and a great variety of hats — shell hats, soup-plate hats, sailor hats, hats so small that they looked as if the bird lodged in the trimming were carrying them off, and hats that would not be taken for hats at all, a bottle of Upham's Freckle and Tan Banisher, and a vial of Swarthout's Pimple Extinguisher, and a box of Cruickshank's Wart Exterminator, and -a hundred other things the use of which you could not imagine, unless they were weapons with which to transfix hard- hearted bachelors, -or lassos with which to haul in unmanageable coquettes. All these things were to be matched, made up, fixed, sewed together, cut apart, organized, and packed in trunks. Matilda, the elder daughter, and Blanche, were flushed with the excitement of the great undertaking. Blanche had heard that Florence, the only daughter of the next-doo-r neighbor, was going to make her first appearance that year at the Springs, and the idea of being surpassed by that young snip, as Blanche called her, was a thing not to be borne. Every few moments the door-bell was rung by errand- boys from the stores on Chestnut Street, and while the servant was attending the door, Blanche would drop the patterns, 274 Crumbs Swept Up. and run up and down the room in a state of nervousness that would have been un- justifiable were it not for the important preparations that were being made. Matilda was plainer, and more self-re- liant. The fact was that her childhood had been schooled in some hardships. The Simingtons had not always lived on Ritten- house Square. The father had belonged to that class of persons who have to work for a living, and Matilda had at one time been obliged to run of errands, scour the front steps, and wait on the door, while her mother did her own work. Now it is well known that while there may be romance about a maiden with sleeves rolled back from dimpled arms, wringing clothes in a mountain stream by the rude cabin of her father, there never has been and never will be any romance about a wash-tub in a city kitchen, the air hot and steamed, the apron soaked, the sweat run- ning to the tip of nose and chin, and the whole scene splashed with a magnitude of soapsuds, soda ash, and bags of bluing. Burns picked up poetry out of a mouse's nest, and Ralph Waldo Emerson can squeeze juice from a basket of chips, but no one has ever plucked up a canto from the depths of a wash-tub, or been able to measure poetic feet with a bar of soap. Who would think of rinsing clothes in the Wretchedness of Watering -Places. 275 Aganippe? To this day Mrs. Simington's knuckles are big, and there is an unseemly healthiness about her cheek which three years of dissipation in very high life have been unable to conquer. Amid such uncomely circumstances, Matilda had nearly cocne to a practical, robust womanhood, when h^r father, Jeph- thah Simington, was invited into an oil speculation. (Jephthah was the Christian na'me given him by an ancestor who had a passion for Scripture names, although now he writes it simply J. Simington.) By an evening lamp six gentlemen met, made out a map of Venango County, located the oil-wells, ran creeks through wherever they ought to be, agreed on the number of shares, and appointed a committee to visit Elder Stringham of the Presbyterian church, and induce him to accept the presi- dency of the company, overcoming his scruples at entering an enterprise of which he knew nothing, by offering him a large number of shares; and by the same process securing as directors Deacon Long of the Baptist church, trustee Wilkinson of the Methodist, and vestryman Powell of the Episcopal. The shares flew. At the door of the company's ofl[ice, for several days, the people stood in rows, taking their chance, and one old gentleman had a rib broken by a woman of Celtic origin with 276 Crumbs Swept Up. iron elbows, who crashed into his side as the Merrimac into the Cumberland, shout- ing, "You murtherin' wretch, git back. What do you mane by runnin' forninst a poor woman with five orphan children?" In this, as in several other projects of the kind, Simington went in on the ''ground floor," and came out through "the cellar." All the people on our street were outraged and disgusted, for nearly all be- longed to some of the three thousand com- panies organized for the development of oil, and they all supposed that they had gone in on the "ground floor," but found that they had only entered the garret. It always shocks people's moral sensibilities when they find others successfully doing that which they failed in. But there were three or four little enterprises of this kind that bothered Simington at night when he said his pravers. Indeed, one ni^ht, as he came to the sentence, "If I should die be- fore I wake," he bounded up from his knees, and sat down at the table, and drew a check for a hundred dollars for the Mis- sionary Society, that Bibles might be sent to Ethiopia to make all the colored people honest; also a check for a hundred dollars for the printing of tracts on the sin of danc- ing; and another for the same amount to the fund for the relief of the destitute, some of them having been the victims of "those Wretchedness of Watering-Places. 277 who devour widows' houses." Whereupon he felt better, went immediately to sleep, and dreamed of a heaven in which the rivers rolled oil, and the rocks gushed oil, and the trees dripped oil, and the skies rained oil, and, on a throne made out of "Slippery Rock," sat the prince of stock- auctioneers, crying, "And a half! and a half! going! gone!" No wonder the Simingtons so soon moved into a palace. But they had a world of trouble with their old acquaintances. It seemed impossible to shake off the nuis- ance. Blanche could hardly pass down the steps with Antonio Grimshaw, on the way to the opera, without having some woman in ordinary apparel a-sk, "How do you do, Blanche?" Whereupon she would frown, and stare, and almost look the offender down through the sidewalk; and when Antonio said, "Who w^as that?" Blanche would answer, "I don't know the horrid creature! It is probably our servant-girl's dress-maker!" It seemed to the Simingtons as if their life would be extinguished with the impudence of people. Oh! the disgrace of having a hack drive to the door, and a distant relative from the country dismount, holding a faded carpet-bag, the handles tied together by a rope; to go down to the parlor and have a gawk of a niece come up with a hat all over her head, and give you a 278 Crumbs Swept Up, great smack, as though she had a right to kiss the Simingtons! But people have mostly learned to know their place by this time, and, unmolested by such untimely calls and disgusting re- membrances, the dresses are being fitted. [Matilda's shape had, by early industries, been made too robust for present circum- stances, and the dress-maker had an a\\^ul time with her. All the ingenuity of the house had been expended in tr\ing to di- minish her waist. The dress-maker pinched, and pulled, and twisted, and laced, and punched, and shook the stubborn Ma- tilda, who, in the painful process of being fitted, looked red, and pale, and blue, once in a while giving an outcry of distress, w'hich finally brought her mother to the rescue. "Matilda!" cried Mrs. Simington, **how can you go on so? You shall be left at home if you don't look out! You are a great awlcward thing. Why, when I was your age I could completely span my waist with my two hands!" ''Oh, mother! mother!'' answered Matilda, *'it is not my fault. The trouble is, there is not strength enough in the corsets!" The first day of July had come, and eleven trunks were lifted into the express- wajsron: one for the father, three for the mother, one for Frank, the only son, a young man of twenty-one, and six for Wretchedness of Watering- Places. 279 Blanche and Matilda. Added to this was a bundle belonging to Rose, the black waiting-maid. It was a hot morning, the thermometer eighty-five in the shade. The cars were full of people, and the Simingtons were obliged to sit on the sunny side. None were willing to give up their seats, al- though Mrs. Simington for some seconds looked daggers at a gentleman who, she thought, might be more polite, and, not making any impression upon him, ran the point of her parasol accident-ally into his eye, and with a sudden swing of her skirts upset his valise. "What horrid creatures!" said Blanche. ''How plea-sant it would be to find some real gentleman!" It was the morning for an excursion. There were six extra cars, and all of them crowded. The rushing back and forward of such a herd of working-people pained the sensi- bilities of the whole Simington family, Ma- tilda excepted. She looked thoroughly placid, and said, ''Other people have as good a right to travel as we, and this hot weather, instead of making you pout, my dear sister, ought to fill us with thanksgiv- ing to God, for it will ripen the harvest, and make bread cheap for the poor." "Hush up, Matilda!" said Mrs. Siming- ton; "you will never get over your early mixing with those Methodists. We are going out to have a good time, and I don't 28o Crumbs Swept Up. want to hear any more of your religious comments. Blanche was right. The weather is awful. Frank! what has become of your shirt-collar? Wilted out of sight, I declare!" The dust flew with every revolu- tion of 'the wheels. Frank had all the fam- ily by turns looking into his eye for a cin- der, and was so outraged that he went out on the platform to have what he called "a good swear," feit somewhat relieved, and came back, and, pulling down the lower lid of his eye, had his mother blow into it. But no cinder was to be found. Blanche said she did not believe there was anything the matter with it; whereupon Frank called her a name not at all eulogistic, and Blanche responded in terms more em- phatic than complimentary. J. Simington sat quiet, for he felt thor- oughly exhausted. His anxieties about the trunks, his misunderstanding with the por- ters, his confusion about the checks, and the purchase of five through tickets, had besweated him amazingly. When the agent cried out, ''Show your tickets!" the old gentleman missed one of them, felt in his coat-pocket, in his vest, in his duster, looked in his hat, looked under the seat, took out his pocket-book, had all the peo- ple rise and move their carpet-bags, and the ladies shake out their dresses, and re- peated the whole process several times, till Wretchedness of Watering -Places. 281 the agent lost his patience and made the perplexed traveler pay again. What with the heat, and the dust, and the cinders, and the bad breath of the common people, the annoyance would have been unbearable to the Simingtons, had it not been for the self-control and imperturbable demeanor of Matilda, and the assurance which every now and then came to their minds that they were off on the especial business of having a good time. After much fatigue our party reach the watering-place, and go from the cars to a first-class hotel. While the family are wait- ing in the reception-room, J. Simington, Esquire, is at the clerk's desk registering the names. He writes them in full hand, supposing that a decided s-ensation will be produced among the guests and hotel offi- cials : J. Simington, Mrs. J. Simington, Frank Simington, Matilda Simington, Blanche Simington, And waiting-maid. Surely such signatures iipon the register will secure princely accommodations. "Give me three capacious rooms adjoining each other, on the first floor, sufficiently distant from all house-bells, in a place 282 Crumbs Swept Up. where there will be no children passing the door, and free from all the odors of the dining-room, the windows commanding a fine landscape!" The clerk responded, "We will do the best we can for you, and will put down your name on a private list for better apartments when there is a va- cancy. It is our pride to make the guests comfortable. John! show these people up to 397. 398, 399." The procession start for the centre of the building, and go up this flight of stairs, up another, higher, higher, through this hall, out on that porch, higher, higher, around this corner, through that dark entry, higher, higher, the wrath of the Simingtons rising with every step of elevation, until, as the attendant opens the three doors and throws the shawls, umbrellas, and satchels on the bed, th'" guests are almost speechless with rage. Old Simington says, "This is out- rageous! They do not know who I am!" His wife says nothing, for she is out of breath from the exertion of climbing. Blanche bursts into tears. Frank ex- claimed, with several unsavory prefixes, "What a place to roost!" Matilda sat down and said, "Well, this is funny! but I guess we can make out. We will be rambling in the fields all day, and at night we can up here sleep so much nearer heaven." "Hush! you Methodist!" cried Mrs. Simington Wretchedness of Watering- Places. 283 with her first gasp of utterance; "you will kill me yet with your religion. The top of a mean, dirty hotel, with the thermometer at three hundred, and no place to turn, or sit, or lay, is no place for moralizing." At this she gave a tremendous pull to the bell, and shouted at the servant, "What kind of a place do you call this? Dirty pillow- cases; damp sheets; no soap; thimbleful of water; one towel, and no ice-water. Who would have thought I could ever come to this? J. Simington! why did you bring me here?" "My dear!" interrupted the hus- band, as he began to make an explanation — "Be still!" cried Mrs. Simington; "you did it a-purpose! How could you treat in this way the companion of your bosom?" The fact was that the best rooms had all been taken. They always have been. We have known a great many people who went to watering-places, and we never knew of but one man who had rooms that entirely suited him. We have his photograph. The clerk at the hotel had never heard of the Simingtons. There are a great many rich people in the world, and a man must have a pile of dollars like an Astor or the Barings to be greatly distinguished. You see that money is a very uncertain thing, for many who have but little act as though they had much, and the really affluent often make but little pretension, and people are 284 Crwnbs Swept Up. worth so much more after they fail than before they fail. The hotel clerks had no idea of what kind of a house the Siming- tons lived in, nor how many servants they kept, nor what mottled bays with silver bits moved in their flashing ''turn-out." The hotel proprietors knew not but that, notwithstanding their appearance, these guests might really be as poor as the storied turkey that belonged to the "man of Uz." It might be possible that the Sim- ingtons belonged to that class of people who, living at home in a small house, black- ing their own boots, and doing the millin- ery of their own hats, and making their own dresses from patterns which they copy from a shop-window, come into hotels to order people about, and complain of their apartments, of the waiters, of the table- cloth — trying by their "air" to give every- body the idea that they are accustomed to having things better. Depend upon it those who at the public table insult the waiters, and send back the spring chicken three times before they get one of a proper shade of brown, and slash things around con- spicuously, at home their greatest luxury is hash, which they eat ofif of a table-cloth in need of soap, because they do their own washing; and that they seldom see a spring chicken except in a cheap wood-cut, or at their frugal breakfast, in a grocery t%^ Wretchedness of Watering -Places. 285 which some worthy hen had for three weeks tried to hatch out, but in grief had surrendered to the huckster, who wanted just one more to make a dozen. Those who in pubHc places never say ''Thank you!" to the waiters, at home you may be sure have no waiters to thank. Consider- ing what they have to suffer, we had rather be anything on earth than a hotel-waiter, excepting always the position of a mule on a tow-path, drawing a second-class canal- boat. But the Simingtons really had it better at home. We wonder not that they noticed a contrast. From a house with fourteen spacious apartments, they had come to three about as large as the rooms of a traveling photographist, who on four wheels carries from village to village art- gallery, bed-room, parlor, kitchen, and a place to dry clothes. There was no canopy to the bed, no embroidery to the pillows, no gilt on the lips of the pitcher. The window-shades would not work. The slats of the blinds were disordered, the carpet was faded, the drawers would not open, the atmosphere was musty, the files were multitudinous, and nothing cooled the tem- per of the father, or regulated the respira- tion of the mother, or moderated the sar- castic ebullitions of Frank, or relieved Blanche's hysterics, but the potent consid- 286 Crumbs Swept Up. eration that they were, individually and collectively, having a good time. But never mind. Their names were down on the private list of those who had applied for better rooms when there were any vacated. We have all had our names down on that list. We have to-day the satisfaction of knowing that our names are down on several such lists at Long Branch, C-ape May, Saratoga, Bellows Falls, Niag- ara, and the White Mountains. It is a roll of honor ever increasing. We have for the last five years been liable any moment to hear that here was at last for us a capacious room on the first floor, sufficiently distant from all the house-bells, in a place where there would be no children passing the door, and free from all the odors of the dining-room, the windows commanding a fine landscape. We hereby advise all who go to these places to see to it immediately on arrival that their names are recorded on this private register. ' The fatigues of the day disposed the Simingtons to sound sleep at night. Bu't the heat was intolerable. Mrs. Simington got up, and sat by the window, and said she should die; and Simington, disturbed by her frequent moonlight excursions about the room, declared he hoped she would. The previous occupants of the room had come thither on a sleeping-car, Wretchedness of Watering-Places. 287 the beds of which had been infested by travelers who always take a free passage, and who often become so- attached to peo- ple on a short acquaintance that they can- not consent to part. These little, innocent, previous occupants of the bed at the water- ing-place, were evidently provoked that their lodgings had been intruded upon by the Simingtons, and the latter, in main- taining a war against these creatures, were ofttimes put to the scratch. Mrs. Siming- ton at midnight compelled her husband to sit up on a chair, while she shook the sheets, and with weapons deadly as Mrs. Surratt's ''shooting-irons" pursued the in- sectiferous Amalekites, and from a bottle found on the shelf anointed them with an excellent oil that broke their heads, and in a fit of terrible humcrr, that was liable to seize her on very untoward occasions, asked her husband why that bed was like a light carriage drawn by one horse; and Simington for the first time in his life guessed right, and answered, "Because it's buggy." At which Mrs. Simington gave a Satanic laugh (she seldom laughed except at her own jokes), and said she did not care so much for the discomfort produced by these little things, but what she most thought of was her complexion. At last the morning dawned, and the whole family started to take a drink at the 288 Crumbs Swept Up. Springs before breakfast. The fountains were surrounded by a great crowd of peo- ple, and the test was who should drink the most. Now, J. Simington was physically almost as much in latitude as longitude, and therefore had unusual capacity. He unbuttoned his vest and threw back the lapels of his coat, and seemed to take down a whole glass at one swallow. Blanche made a wry face, and said such stuff as that would kill her, but Antonio Grimshaw had told her of the twenty-four glasses he took before breakfast, and so she resolved to do her best. Out of glasses from which scores of scrofulous, bad-breathed, drop- sical people had been refreshing them- selves, the Simingtons, who had not for the last two years been willing to drink out of anybody else's tumbler, took down the disagreeable beverage. Matilda drank two or three glasses, and said she thought there was reason in all things, and that she had enough. But the rest of the family took ten apiece before they began to discuss the question of stopping. Then they made several turns about the grass-plot, and came back able to take more. They sip- ped the liquid health. They poured it down. They plunged their face into the glass till their nose dripped with it. They drank for a while standing on one foot, then they resumed standing on the other. Wretchedness of Watering- Places. 289 They quaffed the nectar of the hills till the dipping-boys were confounded. Others handed the glasses back, the contents only half taken; these drained the last drop at the bottom. They rolled the water under their tongue as though it were perfect sweetness. They took up the brimming cups carefully, so as not to spill the precious liquid. After most of the health-seekers had left the fountain, Mrs. Simington cried out, "More! more! Here, boy! attend to your business!" And when at last they wended their way toward the hotel, they feared they had not fully improved their privileges. For some reason they all day felt miser- a:ble, and had no appetite, felt faint, and chilly, and nauseated, so that before noon Blanche went to her bed and had a doc- tor. But that night was to come off the "hop" of the season, and sick or well she meant to go to it. During the forenoon Matilda nursed her sister, and answered her fears ^ y prophecy that she would soon feel better As the hour for the "hop" drew near, the sick one recovered. Taking only a short while for her own toilet, Matilda gave her chief time to the adornment of Blanche and her mother. All the trunks were opened, and out came all the splendor of the Simingtons, the numberless items of which I have already named. Matilda se- 19 290 Cruvibs Swept Up. lected for the evening- the tamer colors; but Mrs. Siminofton exclaimed, "Matilda! you shall not make a Methodist of your sister." The ornamentation went on until ten o'clock. The elder Simino-ton had ^ot himself into a profuse perspiration in try- ing to tie Mrs. Simington's corsets, and in the effort to bring together the fastenings of Blanche's dress the energies of the whole family were taxed. But, the work done, they start for the ball-room. Such a caval- cade seldom descended at the watering- pla-ce. Blanche was in perpetual dread lest some one should tread on her dress, and her mother worried lest her own headgear should not be appreciated. The music of the orchestra rose to their ears, and with a feeling' of pride and jubilance that sur- passed everything the Simingtons had felt, they march into the brilliant circle. The mother was well pleased to see Matilda take a chair in an inconspicuous place, in- stead of joining the dance, for notwith- standing all that maternal kindness could effect, Matilda would walk naturally, and took no pains lo hide her unfashionable waist, and blushed so red on the least pro- vocation that her cheek was as ruddy as a mountain lass who had never done any- thing to improve her complexion. But Frank, with Blanche on his arm, prom- Wretchedness of Watering -Places. 291 enaded the room that all might admire his sister's beauty. The rustle of silks, the tap of a hundred feet, the quick pulsations of Uutes and horns, the maj^nihccnt burst of harmonies, the ringing voice of the manager, the blaze of diamonds on head and hand and neck, the bow, the whirl, the laughter, the trans- port, were beyond anticipation. At the close of the first *'set," Mrs. Simington, in manner naive as any girl, and with silk fan patting her lip, stood before a bashful young man, whom she had thoroughly cornered with her outspread immensity of skirts, engaged in conversation, chiefiy conducted by herself, in which were most prominent the words, "Reallv," "Indeed," "Delightful." "Sonice," "Yes!" "Mvstars!" and similar expressions, suggestive of af- fluence of thought and profundity of inves- tigation. But it must be acknowledged that this lady produced that night no pleas- ing impression. She was set down as one of that class of women who may always be seen in such places, and who, having out- lived their youthfulness, have an idea that by extra lace, skirt, slipper, and mincing they can make themselves perfectly killing. One of the worst-looking birds that we know of is a peacock after it has lost its feathers. 292 Crumbs Swept Up. The handsomest man on the floor was Dallas Clifford. His walk, his glance, his dress, his talk were a perpetual sensation. For several summers he made the tour of the watering-places, now stopping at the Falls, then at the Springs, and concluding at the sea-shore. He had long done as he pleased, his father from a princely purse furnishing him all he desired. His hands had never been hardened by toil, nor his brow paled with thought. He had been expelled the first year of his college course for indolence and occasional dissipation. He had no regard for God or man, but great admiration for the ladies. That night as he moved in the dance there were scores who exclaimed, "Such eyes!" "Such lips!'* "Such gait!" "Who ever saw the equal?" During the day, Frank Simington, while taking a drink at the bar, had been intro- duced to this pet of the watering-places. They were immediately congenial, found they liked the same kind of wines, the same kind of fast horses, and the same style of feminine beauty. So they drank each other's health, and before a week had passed, drank it in sulphur water at the Springs, drank it in Hock, drank it in Cognac, drank it in Burgundy, drank it in Madeira, drank it in London gin, drank it in the varieties of Champagne affected by the initiated. Wretchedness of Watering-Places. 293 Frank was resolved that at the *'hop" his sister Blanche should have the advantage of an acquaintance with Dallas Clifford. In the making up of the first "set" the intro- duction took place, and Clifford offered his arm, and accompanied Blanche in all the dances of the evening. Together they bounded in the ''galop," and bowed in "The Lancers," and stepped in "The Redowa," and whirled in the "waltz." If there really were darts in jealous eyes, Blanche would have been transfixed with a hundred. It seemed almost a imanimous opinion that she was not fit to dance with such a prodigy. There were many who would have been glad to hear her dress rip, or see her false hair tumble. An en- vious mamma, who had for three hours been arranging her own daughter with es- pecial reference to the capture of Clifford, remarked in quite loud voice, hoping that Blanche would hear it, "I knew her father when he sold fish in the market!" "Yes," says another, "the Simingtons always were vulgar!" But Blanche's mother looked on with an admiration she did not try to con- ceal. She thought, "How beautiful they look together! Both young; both hand- some; both rich. It would be just the thing." She looked at Simington, and Simington looked at her with a joy equal to that which he felt on the day when from 294 Crumbs Swept Up. the top of "Slippery Rock" he tumbled into a fortune. While the Simingtons returned to their rooms in a state of delectation, there were many who left the ball-room with hearts far from happy. Their splendor of dress had not been appreciated. They had not danced with those whose company they most desired. Others not half so attractive as themselves had carried off the spoils, and the "hop" had kindled more heart-burn- ings, jealousies, scandals, revenges, satires, and backbitings than will ever be told of. Some wished they were home. Others wished they had been dressed differently. Still others wished they had gone to some other watering-place, where they would have been appreciated. They denounced the music, and the manager, and the ball- room. The men were all "gawks," and the ladies all "flirts," and the whole evening a vexation. They never before saw such miserable headdresses, or such ridiculous slippers, or so many paste diamonds. Some of the more tenderly nervous, as soon as they reached their rooms, sat down and cried. They had been neglected. They took such coldness on the part of gentle- men as a positive insult. They threw their satin slippers into the corner with a ven- geance, and, in perfect recklessness as to consequences, tossed a two-pound ball of Wretchedness of Waterhig- Places. 295 hair against the looking-glass, and vowed, they would never go again. Not so with Blanche, for she dreamed all night of castles, and parks of deer, and galleries of art, and music, and gobelin tapestry, and of gondolas putting out from golden sands, on sapphire waters, angel- beckoned. But the next morning the whole Simington family gathered them- selves together to attend to Matilda. The evening before, instead of whirling in the dance, she had sat and looked on, much of the time talking to a long, lean, cadaverous gentleman, who had somehow obtained ac- quaintance with her. The gentleman, hav- ing just graduated from the law school, had come to recruit from exhaustion of protracted study, and was staying at ''The Brodwell House," a cheap but respectable hotel, on one of the less prominent streets. He was plainly dressed, had neither dia- mond breast-pin, nor kid gloves, nor whisk cane, nor easy manners. He came in that evening to see what he could learn of the gay world, and sat studying character while looking at the ''hop." The Simingtons felt outraged at Matilda's behavior. How could she sit there and talk with a man who was stopping at the Brodwell House! He would never be anything. He had ac- tually appeared in bare hands, and they were big. How could she throw herself 296 Crumbs Swept Up, away, and forget her father's name, and her mother's entreaty, and her sister's pros- pects! "But," said Matilda, "he was in- telHgent, and the tones of his voice indi- cated a kind disposition, and the ideas he expressed were elevated, and positively Christian." "Dear me!" said her mother; "Matilda! I expect you will pass your whole life in saying your prayers and talking reli- gion. I despair of ever making you any- thing worthy of the Simingtons!" "More than that," said Matilda, "his conversation was very improving, and we have engaged to walk to-day to Cedar Grove, and exam- ine the peculiar flora which he says abound in that region. We are both very fond of botany." While Matilda and the law student were out on the floral excursion, and talking of all the subjects kindred to flowers, Dallas Clifford and Blanche were arm-in-arm promenading the piazza, or at the piano; while Miss Simington was making up for her lack of musical skill by great exuber- ance of racket, Clifford was turning for her the leaves, and, between his favorite selec- tions, uttering various sentimentalities, and interlarding his conversation with all the French phrases he knew — such as tout en- semble, valet de chambre, hors du combat, a la belle etoile, chateau en Espagne, till several persons standing near felt so sick they had Wretchedness of Watering- Places. 297 to leave the room and take a little soda to settle their stomachs. Meanwhile, from day to day, and from week to week, Mr. and Mrs. Simington wandered about, not knowing what to do with themselves. They had no taste for reading, although on Rittenhouse Square they had a costly library; indeed they owned ten thousand dollars' worth of books. Through a literary friend em- powered to make selection, J. Simington had secured all the standard works of his- tory, poetry, romance, art, and ethics. Al- though acquainted with none of the dead languages, he owned ^schylus, Lucian, Sophocles, Strabo, Pindar, and Plautus. He rejoiced in possessing so many square feet of brains, and realized that Aristophanes ought to feel honored to stand on the shelf of the Simingtons. Several times he had looked at the pictures in Don Quixote, and took the engraving of the traveler in Pil- grim's Progress to be the sketch of some unfortunate traveler in the oil regions, and supposed that Macaulay's History was merely a continuance of the wonderful es- capes of Robinson Crusoe, and that "Young's Night Thoughts" was the story of some dream which that worthy had ex- perienced after a late supper of boiled crabs. Nevertheless, there were whole shelves of books in richest foreign bindings, printed 298 Crumbs Swept Up. on vellum, tipped with gold, set off with ex- quisite vignettes. Among these a copy of the Scriptures, upon which all the wealth of typology, etching, and book-bindery had displayed itself — a Bible so grandly gotten up, that if the inspired fishermen had come in, and, with their hands yet hard from the fishing-tackle, had attempted to touch it, they would have been kicked out. Mr. and Mrs. Simington had not brought with them any of these standard works, but for purposes of light reading had bought from the news-boy on the cars five volumes, entitled, "The Revenge," 'The Bloody Tinge," "Castles on FiVe," "The Frightful Leap," and "The Murderess on Trial." But they had no taste even for such fascinating literature. Mrs. Simington, with "The Frightful Leap" under her arm, walked from bedroom to parlor, and from parlor to hall, and from hall to piazza, wondering when dinner would be ready. She tried to sleep in the daytime, but the bed was hard, and she felt restless. She met on the stairs a lady who like herself was afflicted with restlessness, and said that the day was hot, or dusty, or asked the other lady how many glasses of water she could take before break- fast, and then passed on. She sat down and groaned without any apparent cause. She walked in front of the long mirror to see how her shawl looked, and then walked Wretchedness of Watering -Places. 299 back again, then stepped up face to face with the looking-glass, gave a twist to one of her curls, drew her face into a pucker, surveyed the room to see if any one was observing, and then sat down again. She jogged her foot uneasily, and thumped her fingers on the table, and looked for the twentieth time at the pictures in "The Frightful Leap," and, without any especial feeling of hunger, longed for the doors of the dining-hall to open, that she might have something to do. She found no relief from this feeling in looking at others, for nine-tenths of all the ladies were wander- ing about in the same perplexity. They differed in many other things. Some had fans, and some were without fans. Some wore white, and some black. Some had curls, and some no curls. Some roomed in the third story, and some in the fourth. Some took soup, and some did not. But whatever might be their differences, they nearly all agreed in a feeling of unrest, longed for something to do, studied where they had better go next, agonized for some- thing to see, and wondered when dinner would be ready. Mr. Simington exhibited in a different way the same feeling. At home he was a man of business. Though owning a large estate, he had the peculiarity of wanting more. The change from the active com- 300 Crumbs Swept Up. mercial circles in which he was accustomed to mingle, to his present entire cessation from business was unbearable. He walked about with the solemnity, but without the resignation of a martyr. He bothered the clerk of the hotel by incessantly asking, "Is the mail in?" He wondered whether stocks were up or down. Wondered whether his firm had heard from that man out West. Wondered if they were working off that old stock of goods. He walked over to the billiard saloon; went down to the bowling- alley; felt thankful as he met a little Indian boy with arrows wanting a penny put up to be shot at; walked round the block, came back and asked, "Is the mail in?" But there was another form of amuse- ment in which J. Simington frequently found relief, and that was in the examina- tion of the hotel register. It was such a pleasant thing to go up and read the ar- rivals for the last month, and study the chirography of distinguished individuals. The only hindrance to this was the fact that a dozen other gentlemen with nothing else to do were wanting to examine the record at the same time, those standing in front somewhat vexed at having so many people looking over their shoulder. Although possessing large means, he whiled away much of the time by denounc- ing the extortion of hotel-keepers, and the Wretchedness of Watering-Places. 301 extortion of boot-blacks, and the extortion of porters, and the extortion of Hvery-men. As to the waiters, he said you were sure to get macaroni soup when you ordered mock-turtle, or blue-fish when you ordered sheep's-head. What was worse for a nerv- ous man, there were so many sick people who had gone there for their health. But this imposition, which J. Simington bore in silence, his wife openly condemned. "How can I stand it?" she cried, "this everlasting wheezing of asthmatics, and hobbling of cripples, and dropsical swellings, and jaun- diced complexions, and display of sores!" She did not know why such people were allowed to come there. It was perfectly outrageous. The place for sick people was at home. Once she lay all night with two pillows and a shawl on her ear, so as not to hear the coughing in an adjoining apart- ment. At last the day for the long-expected horse-race arrived, and although J. Sim- ington and his wife did not much approve of horse-racing, they hired a carriage at ten dollars an hour (vehicles were that day so much in demand) and went out to the course. The dust flew till Mrs. Siming- ton's eyes and mouth and nose were full, and two fast gentlemen, with their horses at full run, dashed into the carriage of our friends, and almost upset them. But Mr. 302 Crumbs Swept Up. Simington soothed his wife's consterna- tion, and cahned her feeUngs, by bidding her remember that they were having a good time. The platforms were crowded, sporting hats were numerous, all the ad- joining stables crowded with fine horses, which were being rubbed down and blanketed. And to put themselves under the treatment of the elevating influences of the race-course, there came in gamblers, pickpockets, thieves, horse-jockeys, bloats, and libertines. It was high carnival for rum, onions, tobacco-spit, long hair thick with bear's-grease and ox-marrow, strong cigars, poor cologne, banter, and blas- phemy. You could no more doubt the high morality of the races if you looked at the horses, for they were well-dressed, drank nothing but water, and used no bad language. When the two favorite race- horses sped round the track, nostril to nostril, flank to flank, Mrs. Simington wanted to bet, and Mr. Simington threw up his hat, and she said, '*Did you ever?'* and he answered, ''No! I never did!" That night, as they were about to retire, a loud rap was heard at their door. Frank, in a state of beastly intoxication, was ushered in by Dallas Clifford, himself only a few degrees less damaged. They had both been at the horse-race, and since their return had tarried at the bar. As Frank's Wretchedness of Watering -Places. 303 hat fell off, there was seen across his fore- head a long gash made by the glass of an enraged comrade, because Frank, having lost a bet, had refused to pay up. Some one had relieved him of his gold watch, and, splashed with mud and vomit, he fell over at the feet of his father and mother, the only son of the Simingtons. The truth v/as, that during all the weeks of their stay, Frank, in order to throw off ennui and keep up his spirits, had made frequent visits to the bar-room, drinking with all his new acquaintances. Dallas Clifford drank even more, but had a constitution not so easily capsized. Indeed, after his fifth glass of old Otard, he won a bet by suc- cessfully walking a crack in the floor. We have noticed around many of our watering-places a class of fast young men with faces flushed, and eyes bloodshot, and hair excessively oiled, and whiskers ex- tremely curled, and handkerchief furiously perfumed, and breath that dashes the air with odors of mint- julep and a destroyed stomach. They watch about the door for new-comers, make up their mind whether a young man has money, invite him to drink, coax him to throw dice, smite his ear with uncleanness, poison his imagination, un- dermine his health, and plunge their vultur- ous beak into the vitals of his soul. Frank, through expectation of heiring large prop- 304 Crumbs Swept Up. erty, had for some time been going down, and the six weeks passed at the fashionable watering-place fastened on him a chain which he was never to break. He was go- ing with lightning speed on a down grade, spent the most of the next six months at saloons, and died of delirium tremens on Rittenhouse Square, his last moments haunted by such terrors, that to drown his shrieks, the neighbors for a block around held their ears, and prayed God that their own sons might be saved from the dissi- pations of fashionable watering-places. But I must not go so fast. You want to know whether the law-student and Matilda ever got back from their floral excursion? No, never; they are hunting flowers yet, and always finding them in pairs; plucking them in all the walks of life, by streams of gladness, on hills of joy, in shady nooks. They could find nettles, and wasps, and colopendra, if so they desired. They are not hunting for these. They are looking for flowers; and so there is the breath of the evening primrose in their conversation, and the distillation of sweet-alyssum in their demeanor, and the aroma of phlox in their disposition. They are hunting flow- ers to-day in the door-yard of a plain house on the outskirts of the village. Last night, he, who was a year ago a law-student, plead in the court-room for a Wretchedness of Watering -Places, 305 man's life, and plead in such tones of sur- passing tenderness and power, that this morning his table was covered with con- gratulatory notes from old members of the bar, saying that the like of it they had never heard, and prophesying topmost eminence in his profession; and people who have wrongs to right, and estates to settle, and causes to plead, have been coming in all day to give him retainers. The young man is as modest now as on the evening when he wandered up with his big hands from the Brodwell House to witness the *'hop." And Matilda talks so much of the kindness of God that her mother still calls her a Methodist. Indeed, when this young husband and wife go out to hunt flowers, they do not look for anything large or pre- tentious, but, strolling along on the grass, are apt to come upon a nest of violets. Do you want to know the sequel of Dal- las Clifford's demeanor? At the Springs he never appeared before Blanche until his breath had been properly disguised, and the last mark of rowdyism was brushed off. At the close of the six weeks, and a few days before the Simingtons took their de- parture, affairs between Dallas and Blanche came to a settlement. Much of the talk about blushes, awful silences, and faintings at such a crisis is an invention of story- writers. The last time a sham lady would 3o6 Crumbs Swept Up. faint is at such a juncture, especially if it were a good offer. But one thing was certain: about two months afterward, the mansion on Ritten- house Square was lighted for a wedding. The carriages reached a block each way. Everybody said that Blanche looked beau- tiful. Dallas Clifford took her hand, and vowed before Almighty God, and a great cloud of witnesses, that he would love, cherish, and protect. The wine poured from the bottles, and foamed in the beakers, and glowed under the chandeliers. Dallas Clifford drank with all, drank again and again. Drank with old and young. Drank with brothers and sisters. Drank until Blanche besought him to take no more. Drank till his tongue was ^hick, and his knees weakened, and the banquet swam away from his vi- sion, and he was carried up stairs, strug- gling, hooping, and cursing. Oh! there was an unseen Hand writing on that gilded wall terrible meanings. There was a ser- pent that put its tongue from that basket of grapes on the table. On the smoke of the costly viands an evil spirit floated. In- stead of the ring in the bride's cake, there was an iron chain. Those red drops on the table were not so much spilled wine as blood. Louder than the guffaw of laugh- ter arose the hiccough of despair. Swallowing a Fly, 307 SWALLOWING A FLY. A country meeting-house. A mid-sum- mer Sabbath. The air lazy and warm. The grave-yard around about oppressively still, the white slabs here and there shining in the light like the drifted snows of death, and not a grass-blade rustling as though a sleeper had stirred in his dream. Clap-boards of the church weather- beaten, and very much bored, either by bumble-bees, or long sermons, probably the former, as the puncture was on the out- side, instead of the in. Farmers, worn out with harvesting, excessively soothed by the services into dreaming of the good time coming, when wheat shall be worth twice as much to the bushel, and a basket of fresh-laid eggs will buy a Sunday jacket for a boy. We had come to the middle of our ser- mon, when a large fly, taking advantage of the opened mouth of the speaker, darted into our throat. The crisis was upon us. Shall we cough and eject this impertinent intruder, or let him silently have his way? We had no precedent to guide us. We knew not what the fathers of the church did in like circumstances, or the mothers either. We are not informed that Chrysostom ever turned himself into a fly-trap. We knew not what the Synod of Dort would have 3o8 Crumbs Swept Up. said to a minister's eating flies during reli- gious services. We saw the unfairness of taking advant- age of a fly in such straightened circum- stances. It may have been a bHnd fly, and not have known where it was going. It may have been a scientific fly, and only ex- perimenting with air currents. It may have been a reckless fly, doing what he soon would be sorry for, or a young fly, and gone a-sailing on Sunday without his mother's consent. Besides this, we are not fond of flies pre- pared in that way. We have, no doubt, often taken them preserved in blackberry jam, or, in the poorly lighted eating-house, taken them done up in New Orleans syrup. But fly in the raw was a diet from which we recoiled. We would have preferred it roasted, or fried, or panned, or baked, and then to have chosen our favorite part, the upper joint, and a little of the breast, if you please, sir. But, no; it was wings, probos- cis, feet, poisers, and alimentary canal. There was no choice; it was all, or none. We foresaw the excitement and disturb- ance we would make, and the probability of losing our thread of discourse, if we undertook a series of coughs, chokings, and expectorations, and that, after all our efforts, we might be unsuccessful, and end the affray with a fly's wing on our lip, and a Swallowing a Fly 309 leg in the windpipe, and the most unsavory part of it all under the tongue. We concluded to take down the nui- sance. We rallied all our energies. It was the most animated passage in all our dis- course. We were not at all hungry for anything, much less for such hastily pre- pared viands. We found it no easy job. The fly evidently wanted to back out. *'No!" we said within ourselves; ''too late to retreat. You are in for it now!" We addressed it in the words of Noah to the orang-outang, as it was about entering the Ark, and lingered too long at the door, ''Go in, sir — go in!" And so we conquered, giving a warning to flies and men that it is easier to get into trouble than to get out again. We have never mentioned the above circum.stance before; we felt it a delicate subject. But all the fly's friends are dead, and we can slan- der it as much as we please, and there is no danger now. We have had the thing on our mind ever since we had it on our stom- ach, and so we come to this confessional. You acknowledge that we did the wisest thing that could be done; and yet how many people spend their time in elaborate, and long-continued, and convulsive ejec- tion of flies which they ought to swallow and have done with. Your husband's thoughtlessness is an ex- 3IO Crumbs Swept Up. ceeding annoyance. He is a good man, no better husband since Adam gave up a spare rib as a nucleus around which to gather a woman. But he is careless about where he throws his slippers. For fifteen years you have lectured him about leaving the news- paper on the floor. Do not let such little things interfere with your domestic peace. Better swallow the fly, and have done with it. Here is a critic, to you a perpetual an- noyance. He has no great capacity him- self, but he keeps up a constant buzzing. You write a book, he caricatures it. You make a speech, he sneers at it. You never open your mouth but he flies into it. You have used up a magazine of powder in try- ing to curtail the sphere of that insect. You chased him around the corner of a Quarterly Revieiv. You hounded him out from the cellar of a newspaper. You stop the urgent work of life to catch one poor fly — the Cincinnati Express train stopping at midnight to send a brakeman ahead with flag and lantern to scare the mosquitoes off the track; a "Swamp-Angel" out a gun- ning for rats! It never pays to hunt a fly. You clutch at him. You sweep your hand convulsively through the air. You wait till he alights on your face, and then give a fierce slap on the place where he was. You slyly wait Swallowing a Fly. 311 till he crawls up your sleeve, and then give a violent crush to the folds of your coat, to find out that it was a different fly from the one you were searching for. That one sits laughing at your vexation from the tip of your nose. Apothecaries advertise insect-extermin- ators; but if in summer-time we set a glass to catch flies, for every one we kill there are twelve coroners caUed to sit as jury of inquest; and no sooner does one disappear under our fell pursuit, than all its brothers, sisters, nephews, nieces, and second cous- ins come out to see what in the world is the matter. So with the unclean critics that crawl over an author's head. You cannot destroy them with bludgeons. There is a time in a schoolboy's history when a fine- tooth comb will give him more relief than a whole park of artillery. O, man, go on with your life-work! If, opening your mouth to say the thing that ought to be said, a fly dart in, swallow it! The current of your happiness is often choked up by trifles. Your chimney smokes. Through the thick vapor you see no blessing left. You feel that with the right kind of a chimney you could be happy. It would be worse if you had no chimney at all, and still worse if you had no fire. Household annoyances multiply the martyrs of the kitchen. They want of 312 Crumbs Swept Up. more pantry room, the need of an addi- tional closet, the smallness of the bread- tray, the defectiveness of the range, the lack of draught in a furnace, a crack in the saucepan, are flies in the throat. Open your mouth, shut your eyes, and gulp down the annoyances. The aforesaid fly, of whose demise I spoke, was digested, and turned into mus- cle and bone, and went to preaching him- self. Vexations conquered become addi- tional strength. We would all be rich in disposition, if we learned to tax for our benefit the things that stick and scratch. We ought to collect a tariff on needles and pins. The flower struck of the tempest, catches the drop that made it tremble, and turns the water into wine. The battle in, and the victory dependent on your next sabre-stroke, throw not your armor down to shake a gravel from your shoe. The blue fly of despondency has choked to death many a giant. Had we stopped on the aforesaid day to kill the insect, at the same time we would have killed our sermon. We could not waste our time on such a combat. Truth ought not to be wrecked on an insect's pro- boscis. You are all ordained to some mis- sion by the laying on of the hard hands of work, the white hands of joy, and the black hands of trouble. Whether your pulpit be spoiled Childre7i. 313 blacksmith's anvil, or carpenter's bench, or merchant's counter, do not stop for a fly. Our every life is a sermon. Our birth is the text from which we start. Youth is the introduction to the discourse. During our manhood we lay down a few proposi- tions and prove them. Some of the pas- sages are dull, and some sprightly. Then come inferences and applications. At seventy years we say, ''Fifthly and Lastly." The Doxology is sung. The Benediction is pronounced. The Book closed. It is getting cold. Frost on the window-pane. Audience gone. Shut up the church. Sex- ton goes home with the key on his shoul- der. -)o(- SPOILED CHILDREN. The old adage that a girl is worth a thousand dollars, and a boy worth fifteen hundred, is a depreciation of values. I warrant that the man who invented the theory was a bachelor, or he would not have set dow^n the youngsters so far below cost. When the poorest child is born, a star of joy points down to the manger. We are tired of hearing of the duty that children owe to their parents. Let some one write a disquisition on what parents 3^4 Crumbs Swept Up. owe to their children. What though they do upset things, and chase the cats, and eat themselves into colic with green apples, and empty the caster of sweet-oil into the gravy, and bedaub their hands with tar? Grown people have the privilege of larger difficulties, and will you not let the children have a few smaller predicaments? How can we ever pay them for the prattle that drives our cares away, and the shower of soft flaxen curls on our hot cheek, and the flowers with which they have strewn our way, plucking them from the margin of their cradles, and the opening with little hands of doors into new dispensations of love? A well-regulated home is a millennium on a small scale — the lion and leopard nature by infantile stroke subdued — and *'a little child shall lead them." Blessed the pillow of the trundle-bed on which rests the young head that never ached ! Blessed the day whose morning is wakened by the pat- ter of little feet! Blessed -the heart from which all the soreness is drawn out by the soft hand of a babe! But there are children which have been so thoroughly spoiled they are a terror to the community. As you are about to enter your neighbor's door, his turbulent boy will come at you with 'the plunge of a buffalo, pitching his head into your di- spoiled Children, 315 aphragm. He will in the night stretch a rope from tree to tree to dislocate your hat, or give some passing citizen a sud- den halt as the rope catches at the throat, and he is hung before his time. They can, in a day, break more toys, slit more kites, lose more marbles than all the fathers and mothers of the neighborhood could restore in a week. They talk roughly, make old people stop to let them pass, upset the lit- tle girl's school-basket, and make them- selves universally disagreeable. You feel as if you would like to get hold of them just for once, or in their behalf call on the firm of Birch & Spank. It is easy enough to spoil a child. No great art is demanded. Only three or four things are requisite to complete the work. Make all the nurses wait on him and fly at his bidding. Let him learn never to go for a drink, but always have it brought to him. At ten years of age have Bridget tie his shoe-strings. Let him strike auntie be- cause she will not get him a sugar-plum. He will soon learn that the house is his realm, and he is to rule it. He will come up into manhood one of those precious spirits that demand obeisance and service, and with the theory that the world is his oyster, which with knife he will proceed to open. If that does not spoil him, buy him a 3i6 Crumbs Swept Up. horse. It is exhilarating and enlarging for a man to own such an animal. A good horseback ride shakes up the liver and helps the man to be virtuous, for it is al- most impossible to be good, with too much bile, and enlarged spleen, or a stomach off duty. We congratulate any man who can afford to own a horse; but if a boy own one, he will probably ride on it to destruc- tion. He will stop at the tavern for drinks. He will bet at the races. There will be room enough in the same saddle for idle- ness and dissipation to ride, one of them before, and one of them behind. The bit will not be strong enough to rein in at the right place. There are men who all their lives have been going down hill, and the reason is that in boyhood they sprang astride a horse, and got going so fast that they have never been able to stop. But if the child be insensible to all such efforts to spoil him, try the plan of never saying anything encouraging to him. If he do wrong, thrash him soundly; but if he do well, keep on reading the newspaper, pretending not to see him. There are ex- cellent people, who, through fear of pro- ducing childish vanity, are unresponsive to the very best endeavor. When a child earns parental applause he ought to have it. If he get up head at school, give him a book or an apple. If he saw a bully on spoiled Children. 317 the play-ground trampling on a sickly boy, and your son took the bully by the throat so tightly that he became a little variegated in color, praise your boy, and let him know that you love to have him the cham- pion of the weak. Perhaps you would not do right a day, if you had no more pros- pect of reward than that which you have given him. If on commencement-day he make the best speech, or read the best essay, tell him of it. Truth is always harmless, and the more you use of it the better. If your daughter at the conserva- tory take the palm, give her a new piece of music, a ring, a kiss, or a blessing. But if you have a child invulnerable to all other influences, and he cannot be spoiled by any means al ady recom- mended, give him plenty of money, with- out any questions as to what he does with it. The fare is cheap on the road between here and Smashupton. I have known boys with five dollars to pay their way clear through, and make all the connections on the "Grand Trunk" route to perdition. We know not why loose cash in a boy's pocket is called pin money, unless because it often sticks a hole into his habits. First he will buy raisins, then almonds, then a whisk cane, then a breast-pin, then cigars, then a keg of 'lager," then a ticket for a drunken excursion, and there may possibly be money 3i8 Crumbs Swept Up. enough left for the father to buy for his \ boy a coffin. Let children know something of the worth of money, by earning it. Over-pay them if you will, but let them get some idea of equivalents. If they get distorted notions of values at the start, they will never be righted. Daniel Webster knew everything except how to use money. From boyhood he had things mixed up. His mother gave him and Ezekiel money for Fourth of July. As the boys came back from the village, the mother said, "Daniel, what did you buy with your money?" and he answered, "I bought a cake and a candy, and some beer, and some fire-crackers." Then turning to Ezekiel she said, "What did you buy with your money?" "Oh," said Ezekiel, "Dan- iel borrowed mine." On the other hand, it is a ruinous policy to be parsimonious with children. If a boy find that a parent has plenty of money, and he, the boy, has none, the temptation will be to steal the first cent he can lay his hand on. Oh, the joy that five pennies can buy for a boy! They seem to open be- fore him a Paradise of licorice-drops and cream-candy. You cannot in after-life buy so much superb satisfaction with five thou- sand dollars as you bought with your first five cents. Children need enough money, spoiled Children. 319 but not a superfluity. Freshets wash away more cornfields than they culture. Boys and girls are often spoiled by parental gloom. The father never unbends. The mother's rheumatism hurts so, she does not see how little Maggie can ever laugh. Childish curiosity is denounced as impertinence. The parlor is a Parliament, and everything in everlasting order. Balls and tops in that house are a nuisance, and the pap that the boy is expected most to relish is geometry, a little sweetened with chalk of blackboards. For cheerful read- ing the father would recommend "Young's Night Thoughts" and Hervey's "Medi- tations among the Tombs." At the first chance the boy will break loose. With one grand leap he will clear the catechisms. He will burst away into all riotous living. He will be so glad to get out of Egypt that he will jump into the Red Sea. The hardest colts to catch are those that have a long while been locked up. Restraints are necessary, but there must be some outlet. Too high a dam will overflow all the meadows. A sure way of spoiling children is by surfeiting them with food. Many of them have been stuffed to death. The mother spoke of it as a grand achievement that her boy ate ten eggs at Easter. He waddles across the room under burdens of porter- 320 Crumbs Swept Up. house steak and plum-pudding enough to swamp a day-laborer. He runs his arm up to the elbow in the jar of blackberry jam, and pulls it out amid the roar of the whole household thrown into hysterics with the witticism. After a while he has a pain, then he gets ''the dumps," soon he will be troubled with indigestion, occasionally he will have a fit, and last of all he gets a fever, and dies. The parents have no idea that they are to blame. Beautiful verses are cut on the tombstone, when, if the truth had been told, the epitaph would have read — Killed by Apple Dumplings! 13 8 9^ r." y '<#-^ > ^*- ^ ''-.<,^ * .^'\ ^^ "*^ ■V »>i^» <^ aO '1,*°' -> A°^ ^v.^ •" A* .... --^. V ^^