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 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN &. CO. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 1894 
 
T5 3I-S' 2 ' 
 
 Copyright, 1872, 
 By JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. 
 
 Copyright, 1885 and 1894, 
 By HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A. 
 Electrotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 First Study 1 
 
 Second Study 22 
 
 Third Study ,48 
 
 Fourth Study 73 
 
 Fifth Study 98 
 
 Sixth Study . . . 128 
 
 Seventh Study 155 
 
 Eighth Study 169 
 
 Ninth Study . 197 
 
 Tenth Study 224 
 
 Eleventh Study 241 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 FIRST STUDY. 
 
 ►I. 
 
 The fire on the hearth has almost gone 
 out in New England ; the hearth has gone 
 out ; the family has lost its centre ; age 
 ceases to be respected ; sex is only distin- 
 guished by the difference between millinery 
 bills and tailors' bills ; there is no more 
 toast - and - cider ; the young are not al- 
 lowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at 
 night ; half a cheese is no longer set to toast 
 before the fire ; you scarcely ever see in front 
 of the coals a row of roasting apples, which 
 a bright little girl, with many a dive and 
 start, shielding her sunny face from the fire 
 with one hand, turns from time to time ; 
 scarce are the gray-haired sires who strop 
 their razors on the family Bible, and doze 
 in the chimney-corner. A good many things 
 have gone out with the fire on the hearth. 
 
Z BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 I do not mean to say that public and pri- 
 vate morality have vanished with the hearth. 
 A good degree of purity and considerable 
 happiness are possible with grates and blow- 
 ers ; it is a day of trial, when we are all pass- 
 ing through a fiery furnace, and very likely 
 we shall be purified as we are dried up and 
 wasted away. Of course the family is gone, 
 as an institution, though there still are at- 
 tempts to bring up a family round a " reg- 
 ister." But you might just as well try to 
 bring it up by hand, as without the rallying- 
 point of a hearthstone. Are there any home- 
 steads nowadays ? Do people hesitate to 
 change houses any more than they do to 
 change their clothes ? People hire houses 
 as they would a masquerade costume, liking, 
 sometimes, to appear for a year in a little 
 fictitious stone - front splendor above their 
 means. Thus it happens that so many 
 people live in houses that do not fit them. 
 I should almost as soon think of wearing an- 
 other person's clothes as his house ; unless I 
 could let it out and take it in until it fitted, 
 and somehow expressed my own character 
 and taste. But we have fallen into the days 
 of conformity. It is no wonder that people 
 constantly go into their neighbors' houses by 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 3 
 
 mistake, just as, in spite of the Maine law, 
 they wear away each other's hats from an 
 evening party. It has almost come to this, 
 that you might as well be anybody else as 
 yourself. 
 
 Am I mistaken in supposing that this is 
 owing to the discontinuance of big chimneys, 
 with wide fireplaces in them ? How can a 
 person be attached to a house that has no 
 centre of attraction, no soul in it, in the vis- 
 ible form of a glowing fire and a warm chim- 
 ney, like the heart in the body ? When you 
 think of the old homestead, if you ever do, 
 your thoughts go straight to the wide chim- 
 ney and its burning logs. No wonder that 
 you are ready to move from one fireplaceless 
 house into another. But you have something 
 just as good, you say. Yes, I have heard of 
 it. This age, which imitates everything, even 
 to the virtues of our ancestors, has invented 
 a fireplace, with artificial, iron, or composi- 
 tion logs in it, hacked and painted, in which 
 gas is burned, so that it has the appearance 
 of a wood fire. This seems to me blasphemy. 
 Do you think a cat would lie down before it ? 
 Can you poke it ? If you can't poke it, it is 
 a fraud. To poke a wood fire is more solid 
 enjoyment than almost anything else in the 
 
4 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 world. The crowning human virtue in a 
 man is to let his wife poke the fire. I do 
 not know how any virtue whatever is pos- 
 sible over an imitation gas log. What a 
 sense of insincerity the family must have, if 
 they indulge in the hypocrisy of gathering 
 about it ! With this centre of untruthful- 
 ness, what must the life in the family be ? 
 Perhaps the father will be living at the rate 
 of ten thousand a year on a salary of four 
 thousand ; perhaps the mother, more beauti- 
 ful and younger than her beautified daugh- 
 ters, will rouge ; perhaps the young ladies 
 will make wax-work. A cynic might sug- 
 gest as the motto of modern life this sim- 
 ple legend, " Just as good as the real." But 
 I am not a cynic, and I hope for the re- 
 kindling of wood fires, and a return of the 
 beautiful home light from them. If a wood 
 fire is a luxury, it is cheaper than many 
 in which we indulge without thought, and 
 cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made 
 necessary by the want of ventilation of the 
 house. Not that I have anything against 
 doctors ; I only wish, after they have been 
 to see us in a way that seems so friendly, 
 they had nothing against us. 
 
 My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 5 
 
 three feet wide, has a broad hearthstone in 
 front of it, where the live coals tumble down, 
 and a pair of gigantic brass andirons. The 
 brasses are burnished, and shine cheerfully 
 in the firelight, and on either side stand tall 
 shovel and tongs, like sentries, mounted in 
 brass. The tongs, like the two-handed sword 
 of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. 
 We burn in it hickory wood, cut long. We 
 like the smell of this aromatic forest timber, 
 and its clear flame. The birch is also a sweet 
 wood for the hearth, with a sort of spiritual 
 flame and an even temper, — no snappish- 
 ness. Some prefer the elm, which holds fire 
 so well ; and I have a neighbor who uses 
 nothing but apple-tree wood, — a solid, fam- 
 ily sort of wood, fragrant also, and full of 
 delightful suggestions. But few people can 
 afford to burn up their fruit-trees. I should 
 as soon think of lighting the fire with sweet- 
 oil that comes in those graceful wicker-bound 
 flasks from Naples, or with manuscript ser- 
 mons, which, however, do not burn well, be 
 they never so dry, — not half so well as 
 printed editorials. 
 
 Few people know how to make a wood fire, 
 but everybody thinks he or she does. You 
 want, first, a large backlog, which does not 
 
6 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 rest on the andirons. This will keep your 
 fire forward, radiate heat all day, and late 
 in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing 
 coals, like the last days of a good man, 
 whose life is the richest and most beneficent 
 at the close, when the flames of passion and 
 the sap of youth are burned out, and there 
 only remain the solid, bright elements of 
 character. Then you want a forestick on 
 the andirons ; and upon these build the fire 
 of lighter stuff. In this way you have at 
 once a cheerful blaze, and the fire gradually 
 eats into the solid mass, sinking down with 
 increasing fervor ; coals drop below, and del- 
 icate tongues of flame sport along the beauti- 
 ful grain of the forestick. There are people 
 who kindle a fire underneath. But these are 
 conceited people, who are wedded to their 
 own way. I suppose an accomplished incen- 
 diary always starts a fire in the attic, if he 
 can. I am not an incendiary, but I hate 
 bigotry. I don't call those incendiaries very 
 good Christians who, when they set fire to the 
 martyrs, touched off the fagots at the bottom, 
 so as to make them go slow. Besides, knowl- 
 edge works down easier than it does up. 
 Education must proceed from the more en- 
 lightened down to the more ignorant strata. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 7 
 
 If you want better common schools, raise the 
 standard of the colleges, and so on. Build 
 your fire on top. Let your light shine. I 
 have seen people build a fire under a balky 
 horse ; but he would n't go ; he 'd be a horse- 
 martyr first. A fire kindled under one never 
 did him any good. Of course you can make 
 a fire on the hearth by kindling it under- 
 neath, but that does not make it right. I 
 want my hearth-fire to be an emblem of the 
 best things. 
 
 H. 
 
 It must be confessed that a wood fire 
 needs as much tending as a pair of twins. 
 To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into 
 the room, even by the best wood, from the 
 explosion of gases confined in its cells, the 
 brands are continually dropping down, and 
 coals are being scattered over the hearth. 
 However much a careful housewife, who 
 thinks more of neatness than enjoyment, 
 may dislike this, it is one of the chief de- 
 lights of a wood fire. I would as soon have 
 an Englishman without side-whiskers as a 
 fire without a big backlog ; and I would 
 rather have no fire than one that required 
 no tending, — one of dead wood that could 
 
8 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 not sing again the imprisoned songs of the 
 forest, or give out in brilliant scintillations 
 the sunshine it absorbed in its growth. 
 Flame is an ethereal sprite, and the spice of 
 danger in it gives zest to the care of the 
 hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as spring- 
 ing, changing flame, — it was the last freak 
 of the Gothic architecture men to represent 
 the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as 
 on fire, by the kindling flamboyant devices. 
 A fireplace is, besides, a private laboratory, 
 where one can witness the most brilliant 
 chemical experiments, minor conflagrations 
 only wanting the grandeur of cities on fire. 
 It is a vulgar notion that a fire is only for 
 heat. A chief value of it is, however, to 
 look at. It is a picture, framed between the 
 jambs. You have nothing on your walls, 
 by the best masters (the poor masters are 
 not, however, represented) that is really so 
 fascinating, so spiritual. Speaking like an 
 upholsterer, it furnishes the room. And it 
 is never twice the same. In this respect it 
 is like the landscape- view through a window, 
 always seen in a new light, color, or condi- 
 tion. The fireplace is a window into the 
 most charming world I ever had a glimpse 
 of. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 9 
 
 Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. 
 I am not scientific enough to despise it, and 
 have no taste for a winter residence on 
 Mount Washington, where the thermometer 
 cannot be kept comfortable even by boiling. 
 They say that they say in Boston that there 
 is a satisfaction in being well dressed which 
 religion cannot give. There is certainly a 
 satisfaction in the direct radiance of a hick- 
 ory fire which is not to be found in the fier- 
 iest blasts of a furnace. The hot air of a 
 furnace is a sirocco ; the heat of a wood fire 
 is only intense sunshine, like that bottled in 
 LacrimaB Christi. Besides this, the eye is 
 delighted, the sense of smell is regaled by 
 the fragrant decomposition, and the ear is 
 pleased with the hissing, crackling, and sing- 
 ing, — a liberation of so many out-door 
 noises. Some people like the sound of bub- 
 bling in a boiling pot, or the fizzing of a 
 frying-spider. But there is nothing gross in 
 the animated crackling of sticks of wood 
 blazing on the hearth ; not even if chestnuts 
 are roasting in the ashes. All the senses 
 are ministered to, and the imagination is left 
 as free as the leaping tongues of flame. 
 
 The attention which a wood fire demands 
 is one of its best recommendations. We 
 
10 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 value little that which costs us no trouble to 
 maintain. If we had to keep the sun kin- 
 dled up and going by private corporate ac- 
 tion or act of Congress, and to be taxed for 
 the support of customs officers of solar heat, 
 we should prize it more than we do. Not 
 that I should like to look upon the sun as a 
 job, and have the proper regulation of its 
 temperature get into politics, where we al- 
 ready have so much combustible stuff ; but 
 we take it quite too much as a matter, of 
 course, and, having it free, do not reckon it 
 among the reasons for gratitude. Many 
 people shut it out of their houses as if it 
 were an enemy, watch its descent upon the 
 carpet as if it were only a thief of color, and 
 plant trees to shut it away from the moul- 
 dering house. All the animals know better 
 than this, as well as the more simple races 
 of men ; the old women of the southern Ital- 
 ian coasts sit all day in the sun and ply the 
 distaff, as grateful as the sociable hens on 
 the south side of a New England barn ; the 
 slow tortoise likes to take the sun upon his 
 sloping back, soaking in color that shall 
 make him immortal when the imperishable 
 part of him is cut up into shell ornaments. 
 The capacity of a cat to absorb sunshine is 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. H 
 
 only equalled by that of an Arab or an Ethi- 
 opian. They are not afraid of injuring their 
 complexions. White must be the color of 
 civilization ; it has so many natural disad- 
 vantages. But this is politics. I was about 
 to say that, however it may be with sun- 
 shine, one is always grateful for his wood 
 fire, because he does not maintain it without 
 some cost. 
 
 Yet I cannot but confess to a difference 
 between sunlight and the light of a wood 
 fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. 
 Where it rages most freely it tends to evoke 
 the brilliancy rather than the harmonious sat- 
 isfactions of nature. The monstrous growths 
 and the flaming colors of the tropics con- 
 trast with our more subdued loveliness of 
 foliage and bloom. The birds of the middle 
 region dazzle with their contrasts of plu- 
 mage, and their voices are for screaming 
 rather than singing. I presume the new ex- 
 periments in sound would project a macaw's 
 voice in very tangled and inharmonious lines 
 of light. I suspect that the fiercest sunlight 
 puts people, as well as animals and vegeta- 
 bles, on extremes in all ways. A wood fire 
 on the hearth is a kindler of the domestic 
 virtues. It brings in cheerfulness and a 
 
12 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 family centre, and, besides, it is artistic. I 
 should like to know if an artist could ever 
 represent on canvas a happy family gath- 
 ered round a hole in the floor called a reg- 
 ister. Given a fireplace, and a tolerable ar- 
 tist could almost create a pleasant family 
 round it. But what could he conjure out of 
 a register ? If there was any virtue among 
 our ancestors, — and they labored under a 
 great many disadvantages, and had few of 
 the aids which we have to excellence of life, 
 — I am convinced they drew it mostly from 
 the fireside. If it was difficult to read the 
 eleven commandments by the light of a pine- 
 knot, it was not difficult to get the sweet 
 spirit of them from the countenance of the 
 serene mother knitting in the chimney-cor- 
 ner. 
 
 III. 
 
 When the fire is made, you want to sit in 
 front of it and grow genial in its effulgence. 
 I have never been upon a throne, — except 
 in moments of a traveller's curiosity, about 
 as long as a South American dictator re- 
 mains on one, — but I have no idea that 
 it compares, for pleasantness, with a seat 
 before a wood fire. A whole leisure day 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 13 
 
 before you, a good novel in hand, and the 
 backlog only just beginning to kindle, with 
 uncounted hours of comfort in it, — has life 
 anything more delicious ? For " novel " you 
 can substitute " Calvin's Institutes," if you 
 wish to be virtuous as well as happy. Even 
 Calvin would melt before a wood fire. A 
 great snow-storm, visible on three sides of 
 your wide-windowed room, loading the ever- 
 greens, blown in fine powder from the great 
 chestnut-tops, piled up in ever-accumulating 
 masses, covering the paths, the shrubbery, 
 the hedges, drifting and clinging in fantastic 
 deposits, deepening your sense of security, 
 and taking away the sin of idleness by mak- 
 ing it a necessity, — this is an excellent 
 background to your day by the fire. 
 
 To deliberately sit down in the morning 
 to read a novel, to enjoy yourself, is this not, 
 in New England (I am told they don't read 
 much in other parts of the country), the sin 
 of sins? Have you any right to read, es- 
 pecially novels, until you have exhausted the 
 best part of the day in some employment 
 that is called practical ? Have you any right 
 to enjoy yourself at all until the fag end of 
 the day, when you are tired and incapable 
 of enjoying yourself ? I am aware that this 
 
14 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 is the practice, if not the theory, of our so- 
 ciety, — to postpone the delights of social 
 intercourse until after dark, and rather late 
 at night, when body and mind are both weary 
 with the exertions of business, and when we 
 can give to what is the most delightful and 
 profitable thing in life, social and intellec- 
 tual society, only the weariness of dull brains 
 and over-tired muscles. No wonder we take 
 our amusements sadly, and that so many 
 people find dinners heavy and parties stupid. 
 Our economy leaves no place for amuse- 
 ments ; we merely add them to the burden 
 of a life already full. The world is still a 
 little off the track as to what is really useful. 
 I confess that the morning is a very good 
 time to read a novel, or anything else which 
 is good, and requires a fresh mind ; and I 
 take it that nothing is worth reading that 
 does not require an alert mind. I suppose 
 it is necessary that business should be trans- 
 acted; though the amount of business that 
 does not contribute to anybody's comfort or 
 improvement suggests the query whether it 
 is not overdone. I know that unremitting 
 attention to business is the price of success, 
 but I don't know what success is. There is 
 a man, whom we all know, who built a house 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 15 
 
 that cost a quarter of a million of dollars, and 
 furnished it for another like sum, who does 
 not know anything more about architecture, 
 or painting, or books, or history, than he 
 cares for the rights of those who have not so 
 much money as he has. I heard him once, 
 in a foreign gallery, say to his wife, as they 
 stood in front of a famous picture by Ru- 
 bens : " That is the Rape of the Sardines ! " 
 What a cheerful world it would be if every- 
 body was as successful as that man ! While 
 I am reading my book by the fire, and tak- 
 ing an active part in important transactions 
 that may be a good deal better than real, let 
 me be thankful that a great many men are 
 profitably employed in offices and bureaus 
 and country stores in keeping up the gossip 
 and endless exchange of opinions among 
 mankind, so much of which is made to ap- 
 pear to the women at home as " business." 
 I find that there is a sort of busy idleness 
 among men in this world that is not held in 
 disrepute. When the time comes that I 
 have to prove my right to vote, with women, 
 I trust that it will be remembered in my 
 favor that I made this admission. If it is 
 true, as a witty conservative once said to me, 
 that we never shall have peace in this coun- 
 
16 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 try until we elect a colored woman presi- 
 dent, I desire to be rectus in curia early. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fireplace, as we said, is a window 
 through which we look out upon other scenes. 
 We like to read of the small, bare room, 
 with cobwebbed ceiling and narrow window, 
 in which the poor child of genius sits with 
 his magical pen, the master of a realm of 
 beauty and enchantment. I think the open 
 fire does not kindle the imagination so much 
 as it awakens the memory ; one sees the 
 past in its crumbling embers and ashy gray- 
 ness, rather than the future. People become 
 reminiscent and even sentimental in front of 
 it. They used to become something else in 
 those good old days when it was thought 
 best to heat the poker red hot before plung- 
 ing it into the mugs of flip. This heating 
 of the poker has been disapproved of late 
 years, but I do not know on what grounds ; 
 if one is to drink bitters and gins and the 
 like, such as I understand as good people as 
 clergymen and women take in private, and 
 by advice, I do not know why one should 
 not make them palatable and heat them with 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 17 
 
 his own poker. Cold whiskey out of a bot- 
 tle, taken as a prescription six times a day 
 on the sly, is n't my idea of virtue any more 
 than the social ancestral glass, sizzling wick- 
 edly with the hot iron. Names are so con- 
 fusing in this world ; but things are apt to 
 remain pretty much the same, whatever we 
 call them. 
 
 Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it 
 widens and grows deep and cavernous. The 
 back and the jambs are built up of great 
 stones, not always smoothly laid, with jutting 
 ledges upon which ashes are apt to lie. The 
 hearthstone is an enormous block of trap 
 rock, with a surface not perfectly even, but 
 a capital place to crack butternuts on. Over 
 the fire swings an iron crane, with a row of 
 pot-hooks of all lengths hanging from it. It 
 swings out when the housewife wants to 
 hang on the tea-kettle, and it is strong 
 enough to support a row of pots, or a mam- 
 moth caldron kettle on occasion. What a 
 jolly sight is this fireplace when the pots and 
 kettles in a row are all boiling and bubbling 
 over the flame, and a roasting-spit is turning 
 in front ! It makes a person as hungry as 
 one of Scott's novels. But the brilliant sight 
 is in the frosty morning, about daylight, when 
 
18 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the fire is made. The coals are raked open, 
 the split sticks are piled up in open-work 
 criss-crossing, as high as the crane ; and 
 when the flame catches hold and roars up 
 through the interstices, it is like an out-of- 
 door bonfire. Wood enough is consumed in 
 that morning sacrifice to cook the food of a 
 Parisian family for a year. How it roars 
 up the wide chimney, sending into the air 
 the signal smoke and sparks which announce 
 to the farming neighbors another day cheer- 
 fully begun ! t The sleepiest boy in the world 
 would get up in his red flannel nightgown to 
 see such a fire lighted, even if he dropped to 
 sleep again in his chair before the ruddy 
 blaze. Then it is that the house, which has 
 shrunk and creaked all night in the pinch- 
 ing cold of winter, begins to glow again and 
 come to life. The thick frost melts little by 
 little on the small window-panes, and it is 
 seen that the gray dawn is breaking over 
 the leagues of pallid snow. It is time to 
 blow out the candle, which has lost all its 
 cheerfulness in the light of day. The morn- 
 ing romance is over ; the family is astir ; 
 and member after member appears with the 
 morning yawn, to stand before the crackling, 
 fierce conflagration. The daily round be* 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 19 
 
 gins. The most hateful employment ever 
 invented for mortal man presents itself : the 
 " chores " are to be done. The boy who ex- 
 pects every morning to open into a new 
 world finds that to-day is like yesterday, but 
 he believes to-morrow will be different. And 
 yet enough for him, for the day, is the wad- 
 ing in the snow-drifts, or the sliding on the 
 diamond-sparkling crust. Happy, too, is he, 
 when the storm rages, and the snow is piled 
 high against the windows, if he can sit in 
 the warm chimney-corner and read about 
 Burgoyne, and General Eraser, and Miss 
 McCrea, midwinter marches through the wil- 
 derness, surprises of wigwams, and the stir- 
 ring ballad, say, of the Battle of the Kegs : — 
 
 " Come, gallants, attend and list a friend 
 Thrill forth harmonious ditty ; 
 While I shall tell what late befell 
 At Philadelphia city." 
 
 I should like to know what heroism a boy 
 in an old New England farm-house — rough- 
 nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions 
 of the old wars — did not aspire to. " John," 
 says the mother, " you ']1 burn your head to 
 a crisp in that heat." But John does not 
 hear ; he is storming the Plains of Abraham 
 just now. " Johnny, dear, bring in a stick 
 
20 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 of wood." How can Johnny bring in wood 
 when he is in that defile with Braddock, and 
 the Indians are popping at him from behind 
 every tree ? There is something about a 
 boy that I like, after all. 
 
 The fire rests upon the broad hearth, the 
 hearth rests upon a great substruction of 
 stone, and the substruction rests upon the 
 cellar. What supports the cellar I never 
 knew, but the cellar supports the family. 
 The cellar is the foundation of domestic 
 comfort. Into its dark, cavernous recesses 
 the child's imagination fearfully goes. Bo- 
 gies guard the bins of choicest apples. I 
 know not what comical sprites sit astride 
 the cider-barrels ranged along the walls. 
 The feeble flicker of the tallow-candle does 
 not at all dispel, but creates, illusions, and 
 magnifies all the rich possibilities of this un- 
 derground treasure-house. When the cellar- 
 door is opened, and the boy begins to de- 
 scend into the thick darkness, it is always 
 with a heart-beat as of one started upon some 
 adventure. Who can forget the smell that 
 comes through the opened door ? — a min- 
 gling of fresh earth, fruit exhaling delicious 
 aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odor 
 of barrels, a sort of ancestral air, — as if a 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 21 
 
 door had been opened into an old romance. 
 Do you like it? Not much. But then I 
 would not exchange the remembrance of it 
 ^or a good many odors and perfumes that I 
 do like. 
 
 It is time to punch the backlog and put 
 on a new forestick. 
 
SECOND STUDY. 
 
 1. 
 
 The log was white birch. The beautiful 
 satin bark at once kindled into a soft, pure, 
 but brilliant flame, something like that of 
 naphtha. There is no other wood flame so 
 rich, and it leaps up in a joyous, spiritual 
 way, as if glad to burn for the sake of burn- 
 ing. Burning like a clear oil, it has none 
 of the heaviness and fatness of the pine and 
 the balsam. Woodsmen are at a loss to ac- 
 count for its intense and yet chaste flame, 
 since the bark has no oily appearance. The 
 heat from it is fierce, and the light dazzling. 
 It flares up eagerly like young love, and 
 then dies away ; the wood does not keep up 
 the promise of the bark. The woodsmen, it 
 is proper to say, have not considered it in its 
 relation to young love. In the remote set- 
 tlements the pine-knot is still the torch of 
 courtship ; it endures to sit up by. The 
 birch-bark has alliances with the world of 
 sentiment and of letters. The most poetical 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 23 
 
 reputation of the North American Indian 
 floats in a canoe made of it ; his picture- 
 writing was inscribed on it. It is the paper 
 that nature furnishes for lovers in the wil- 
 derness, who are enabled to convey a delicate 
 sentiment by its use, which is expressed 
 neither in their ideas nor chirography. It 
 is inadequate for legal parchment, but does 
 very well for deeds of love, which are not 
 meant usually to give a perfect title. With 
 care, it may be split into sheets as thin as 
 the Chinese paper. It is so beautiful to 
 handle that it is a pity civilization cannot 
 make more use of it. But fancy articles 
 manufactured from it are very much like all 
 ornamental work made of nature's perish- 
 able seeds, leaves, cones, and dry twigs, — 
 exquisite while the pretty fingers are fash- 
 ioning it, but soon growing shabby and 
 cheap to the eye. And yet there is a pathos 
 in "dried things," whether they are dis- 
 played as ornaments in some secluded home, 
 or hidden religiously in bureau-drawers, 
 where profane eyes cannot see how white 
 ties are growing yellow and ink is fading 
 from treasured letters, amid a faint and dis- 
 couraging perfume of ancient rose-leaves. 
 The birch log holds out very well while it 
 
24 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 is green, but has not substance enough for a 
 backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber 
 or men is always an experiment. A man 
 may do very well in a simple, let us say, 
 country or backwoods line of life, who would 
 come to nothing in a more complicated civil- 
 ization. City life is a severe trial. One 
 man is struck with a dry-rot; another de- 
 velops season-cracks ; another shrinks and 
 swells with every change of circumstance. 
 Prosperity is said to be more trying than ad- 
 versity, a theory which most people are will- 
 ing to accept without trial ; but few men 
 stand the drying out of the natural sap of 
 their greenness in the artificial heat of city 
 life. This, be it noticed, is nothing against 
 the drying and seasoning process ; character 
 must be put into the crucible some time, and 
 why not in this world ? A man who cannot 
 stand seasoning will not have a high market 
 value in any part of the universe. It is 
 creditable to the race that so many men and 
 women bravely jump into the furnace of 
 prosperity and expose themselves to the dry- 
 ing influences of city life. 
 
 The first fire that is lighted on the hearth 
 in the autumn seems to bring out the cold 
 weather. Deceived by the placid appear- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 25 
 
 ance of the dying year, the softness of the 
 sky, and the warm color of foliage, we have 
 been shivering about for days without ex- 
 actly comprehending what was the matter. 
 The open fire at once sets up a standard of 
 comparison. We find that the advance 
 guards of winter are besieging the house. 
 The cold rushes in at every crack of door 
 and window, apparently signalled by the 
 flame to invade the house and fill it with 
 chilly drafts and sarcasms on what we call 
 the temperate zone. It needs a roaring fire 
 to beat back the enemy ; a feeble one is only 
 an invitation to the most insulting demon- 
 strations. Our pious New England ances- 
 tors were philosophers in their way. It was 
 not simply owing to grace that they sat for 
 hours in their barn-like meeting-houses dur- 
 ing the winter Sundays, the thermometer 
 many degrees below freezing, with no fire, 
 except the zeal in their own hearts, — a con- 
 gregation of red noses and bright eyes. It 
 was no wonder that the minister in the pul- 
 pit warmed up to his subject, cried aloud, 
 used hot words, spoke a good deal of the hot 
 place and the Person whose presence was a 
 burning shame, hammered the desk as if he 
 expected to drive his text through a two-inch 
 
26 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 plank, and lieated himself by all allowable 
 ecclesiastical gymnastics. A few of their 
 followers in our day seem to forget that our 
 modern churches are heated by furnaces and 
 supplied with gas. In the old days it would 
 have been thought unphilosophic as well as 
 effeminate to warm the meeting-houses arti- 
 ficially. In one house I knew, at least, when 
 it was proposed to introduce a stove to take 
 a little of the chill from the Sunday services, 
 the deacons protested against the innovation. 
 They said that the stove might benefit those 
 who sat close to it, but it would drive all the 
 cold air to the other parts of the church, 
 and freeze the people to death ; it was cold 
 enough now around the edges. Blessed days 
 of ignorance and upright living ! Sturdy 
 men who served God by resolutely sitting 
 out the icy hours of service, amid the rat- 
 tling of windows and the carousal of winter 
 in the high, wind-swept galleries ! Patient 
 women, waiting in the chilly house for con- 
 sumption to pick out his victims, and replace 
 the color of youth and the flush of devotion 
 with the hectic of disease ! At least, you 
 did not doze arid droop in our overheated 
 edifices, and die of vitiated air and disre- 
 gard of the simplest conditions of organized 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 27 
 
 life. It is fortunate that each generation 
 does not comprehend its own ignorance. 
 We are thus enabled to call our ancestors 
 barbarous. It is something also that each 
 age has its choice of the death it will die. 
 Our generation is most ingenious. From 
 our public assembly-rooms and houses we 
 have almost succeeded in excluding pure air. 
 It took the race ages to build dwellings that 
 would keep out rain ; it has taken longer to 
 build houses air-tight, but we are on the eve 
 of success. We are only foiled by the ill- 
 fitting, insincere work of the builders, who 
 build for a day, and charge for all time. 
 
 II. 
 
 When the fire on the hearth has blazed 
 up and then settled into steady radiance, 
 talk begins. There is no place like the 
 chimney-corner for confidences ; for picking 
 up the clews of an old friendship ; for tak- 
 ing note where one's self has drifted, by 
 comparing ideas and prejudices with the in- 
 timate friend of years ago, whose course in 
 life has lain apart from yours. No stranger 
 puzzles you so much as the once close friend, 
 with whose thinking and associates you have 
 
28 , BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 for years been unfamiliar. Life has come 
 to mean this and that to you ; you have 
 fallen into certain habits of thought; for 
 you the world has progressed in this or that 
 direction; of certain results you feel very 
 sure; you have fallen into harmony with 
 your surroundings ; you meet day after day 
 people interested in the things that interest 
 you ; you are not in the least opinionated : it 
 is simply your good fortune to look upon the 
 affairs of the world from the right point of 
 view. When you last saw your friend, — 
 less than a year after you left college, — he 
 was the most sensible and agreeable of men ; 
 he had no heterodox notions ; he agreed with 
 you ; you could even tell what sort of a wife 
 he would select, and if you could do that 
 you held the key to his life. 
 
 Well, Herbert came to visit me the other 
 day from the antipodes. And here he sits 
 by the fireplace. I cannot think of any one 
 I would rather see there, — except perhaps 
 Thackeray ; or, for entertainment, Boswell ; 
 or old Pepys ; or one of the people who was 
 left out of the Ark. They were talking one 
 foggy London night at Hazlitt's about whom 
 they would most like to have seen, when 
 Charles Lamb startled the company by de» 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 29 
 
 claring that he would rather have seen Judas 
 Iscariot than any other person who had lived 
 on the earth. For myself, I would rather 
 have seen Lamb himself once than to have 
 lived with Judas. Herbert, to my great de- 
 light, has not changed ; I should know him 
 anywhere, — the same serious, contempla- 
 tive face, with lurking humor at the corners 
 of the mouth, — the same cheery laugh and 
 clear, distinct enunciation as of old. There 
 is nothing so winning as a good voice. To 
 see Herbert again, unchanged in all outward 
 essentials, is not only gratifying, but valu- 
 able as a testimony to nature's success in 
 holding on to a personal identity, through 
 the entire change of matter that had been 
 constantly taking place for so many years. 
 I know very well there is here no part of 
 the Herbert whose hand I had shaken at the 
 Commencement parting ; but it is an aston- 
 ishing reproduction of him, — a material 
 likeness ; and now for the spiritual. 
 
 Such a wide chance for divergence in the 
 spiritual. It has been such a busy world 
 for twenty years. So many things have 
 been torn up by the roots again that were 
 settled when we left college. There were to 
 be no more wars ; democracy was democ* 
 
30 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 racy, and progress, the differentiation of the 
 individual, was a mere question of clothes ; 
 if you want to be different, go to your tai- 
 lor ; nobody had demonstrated that there is 
 a man-soul, and a woman-soul, and that each 
 is in reality only a half -soul, — putting the 
 race, so to speak, upon the half-shell. The 
 social oyster being opened, there appears to 
 be two shells and only one oyster ; who shall 
 have it ? So many new canons of taste, of 
 criticism, of morality, have been set up; 
 there has been such a resurrection of his- 
 torical reputations for new judgment, and 
 there have been so many discoveries, geo- 
 graphical, archaeological, geological, biolog- 
 ical, that the earth is not at all what it was 
 supposed to be ; and our philosophers are 
 much more anxious to ascertain where we 
 came from than whither we are going. In 
 this whirl and turmoil of new ideas, Nature, 
 which has only the single end of maintaining 
 the physical identity in the body, works on 
 undisturbed, replacing particle for particle, 
 and preserving the likeness more skilfully 
 than a mosaic artist in the Vatican ; she has 
 not even her materials sorted and labelled, 
 as the Roman artist has his thousands of 
 bits of color ; and man is all the while doing 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 31 
 
 his best to confuse the process, by changing 
 his climate, his diet, all his surroundings, 
 without the least care to remain himself. 
 But the mind ? 
 
 It is more difficult to get acquainted with 
 Herbert than with an entire stranger, for I 
 have my prepossessions about him, and do 
 not find him in so many places where I ex- 
 pect to find him. He is full of criticism of 
 the authors I admire ; he thinks stupid or 
 improper the books I most read ; he is scep- 
 tical about the " movements " I am inter- 
 ested in ; he has formed very different opin- 
 ions from mine concerning a hundred men 
 and women of the present day ; we used to 
 eat from one dish ; we could n't now find 
 anything in common in a dozen ; his preju- 
 dices (as we call our opinions) are most ex- 
 traordinary, and not half so reasonable as 
 my prejudices ; there are a great many per- 
 sons and things that I am accustomed to de- 
 nounce, uncontradicted by anybody, which 
 he defends ; his public opinion is not at all 
 my ^public opinion. I am sorry for him. 
 He appears to have fallen into influences 
 and among a set of people foreign to me. 
 I find that his church has a different steeple 
 on it from my church (which, to say the 
 
32 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 truth, has n't any). It is a pity that such a 
 dear friend and a man of so much promise 
 should have drifted off into such general 
 contrariness. I see Herbert sitting here by 
 the fire, with the old look in his face coming 
 out more and more, but I do not recognize 
 any features of his mind, — except perhaps 
 his contrariness ; yes, he was always a little 
 contrary, I think. And finally he surprised 
 me with, " Well, my friend, you seem to 
 have drifted away from your old notions and 
 opinions. We used to agree when we were 
 together, but I sometimes wondered where 
 you would land ; for, pardon me, you showed 
 signs of looking at things a little contrary." 
 
 I am silent for a good while. I am trying 
 to think who I am. There was a person 
 whom I thought I knew, very fond of Her- 
 bert, and agreeing with him in most things. 
 Where has he gone? and, if he is here, 
 where is the Herbert that I knew? 
 
 If his intellectual and moral sympathies 
 have all changed, I wonder if his physical 
 tastes remain, like his appearance, the same. 
 There has come over this country within the 
 last generation, as everybody knows, a great 
 wave of condemnation of pie. It has taken 
 the character of a " movement," though we 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 33 
 
 have had no conventions about it, nor is any 
 one, of any of the several sexes among us, 
 running for president against it. It is safe 
 almost anywhere to denounce pie, yet nearly 
 everybody eats it on occasion. A great 
 many people think it savors of a life abroad 
 to speak with horror of pie, although they 
 were very likely the foremost of the Ameri- 
 cans in Paris who used to speak with more 
 enthusiasm of the American pie at Madame 
 Busque's than of the Yenus of Milo. To 
 talk against pie and still eat it is snobbish, 
 of course ; but snobbery, being an aspiring 
 failing, is sometimes the prophecy of better 
 things. To affect dislike of pie is something. 
 We have no statistics on the subject, and 
 cannot tell whether it is gaining or losing in 
 the country at large. Its disappearance in 
 select circles is no test. The amount of 
 writing against it is no more test of its des- 
 uetude than the number of religious tracts 
 distributed in a given district is a criterion 
 of its piety. We are apt to assume that 
 certain regions are substantially free of it. 
 Herbert and I, travelling north one summer, 
 fancied that we could draw in New England 
 a sort of diet line, like the sweeping curves 
 on the isothermal charts, which should show 
 
34 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 at least the leading pie sections. Journey- 
 ing towards the White Mountains, we con- 
 cluded that a line passing through Bellows 
 Falls, and bending a little south on either 
 side, would mark northward the region of 
 perpetual pie. In this region pie is to be 
 found at all hours and seasons, and at every 
 meal. I am not sure, however, that pie is 
 not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, 
 as I find that all the hill and country towns 
 of New England are full of those excellent 
 women, the very salt of the housekeeping 
 earth, who would feel ready to sink in morti- 
 fication through their scoured kitchen floors, 
 if visitors should catch them without a pie 
 in the house. The absence of pie would be 
 more noticed than a scarcity of Bible, even. 
 Without it the housekeepers are as distract- 
 ed as the boarding-house keeper, who de- 
 clared that if it were not for canned tomato 
 she should have nothing to fly to. Well, in 
 all this great agitation I find Herbert un- 
 moved, a conservative, even to the under- 
 crust. I dare not ask him if he eats pie at 
 breakfast. There are some tests that the 
 dearest friendship may not apply. 
 
 " Will you smoke ? " I ask. 
 
 " No, I have reformed." 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 35 
 
 " Yes, of course." 
 
 " The fact is that when we consider the 
 correlation of forces, the apparent sympathy 
 of spirit manifestations with electric condi- 
 tions, the almost revealed mysteries of what 
 may be called the odic force, and the relation 
 of all these phenomena to the nervous system 
 in man, it is not safe to do anything to the 
 nervous system that will " — 
 
 " Hang the nervous system ! Herbert, we 
 can agree in one thing ; old memories, rev- 
 eries, friendships, centre about that : is n't 
 an open wood fire good ? " 
 
 " Yes," says Herbert, combatively, " if you 
 don't sit before it too long." 
 
 III. 
 
 The best talk is that which escapes up the 
 open chimney and cannot be repeated. The 
 finest woods make the best fire and pass 
 away with the least residuum. I hope the 
 next generation will not accept the reports 
 of " interviews " as specimens of the conver- 
 sations of these years of grace. 
 
 But do we talk as well as our fathers and 
 mothers did ? We hear wonderful stories of 
 the bright generation that sat about the wide 
 
36 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 fireplaces of New England. Good talk has 
 so much short-hand that it cannot be re- 
 ported, — the inflection, the change of voice, 
 the shrug, cannot be caught on paper. The 
 best of it is when the subject unexpectedly 
 goes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a 
 conclusion so suddenly revealed that it has 
 the effect of wit. It needs the highest cul- 
 ture and the finest breeding to prevent the 
 conversation from running into mere persi- 
 flage on the one hand — its common fate — 
 or monologue on the other. Our conversa- 
 tion is largely chaff. I am not sure but the 
 former generation preached a good deal, but 
 it had great practice in fireside talk, and 
 must have talked well. There were narra- 
 tors in those days who could charm a circle 
 all the evening long with stories. When 
 each day brought comparatively little new 
 to read, there was leisure for talk, and the 
 rare book and the infrequent magazine were 
 thoroughly discussed. Families now are 
 swamped by the printed matter that comes 
 daily upon the centre-table. There must be 
 a division of labor, one reading this, and 
 another that, to make any impression on it. 
 The telegraph brings the only common food, 
 and works this daily miracle, that every 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 37 
 
 mind in Christendom is excited by one topic 
 simultaneously with every other mind ; it 
 enables a concurrent mental action, a burst 
 of sympathy, or a universal prayer to be 
 made, which must be, if we have any faith 
 in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces 
 in modern life. It is fit that an agent so 
 subtle as electricity should be the minister 
 of it. 
 
 When there is so much to read, there is 
 little time for conversation ; nor is there 
 leisure for another pastime of the ancient 
 firesides, called reading aloud. The listen- 
 ers, who heard while they looked into the 
 wide chimney-place, saw there pass in stately 
 procession the events and the grand persons 
 of history, were kindled with the delights of 
 travel, touched by the romance of true love, 
 or made restless by tales of adventure ; — 
 the hearth became a sort of magic stone that 
 could transport those who sat by it to the 
 most distant places and times, as soon as 
 the book was opened and the reader began, 
 of a winter's night. Perhaps the Puritan 
 reader read through his nose, and all the lit- 
 tle Puritans made the most dreadful nasal 
 inquiries as the entertainment went on. The 
 prominent nose of the intellectual New Eng- 
 
38 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 lander is evidence of the constant linguistic 
 exercise of the organ for generations. It 
 grew by talking through. But I have no 
 doubt that practice made good readers in 
 those days. Good reading aloud is almost 
 a lost accomplishment now. It is little 
 thought of in the schools. It is disused at 
 home. It is rare to find any one who can 
 read, even from the newspaper, well. Read- 
 ing is so universal, even with the unculti- 
 vated, that it is common to hear people mis- 
 pronounce words that you did not suppose 
 they had ever seen. In reading to them- 
 selves they glide over these words, in read- 
 ing aloud they stumble over them. Besides, 
 our e very-day books and newspapers are so 
 larded with French that the ordinary reader 
 is obliged marcher d pas de loup, — for in- 
 stance. 
 
 The newspaper is probably responsible for 
 making current many words with which the 
 general reader is familiar, but which he rises 
 to in the flow of conversation, and strikes at 
 with a splash and an unsuccessful attempt at 
 appropriation ; the word, which he perfectly 
 knows, hooks him in the gills, and he cannot 
 master it. The newspaper is thus widening 
 the language in use, and vastly increasing 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 39 
 
 the number of words which enter into com- 
 mon talk. The Americans of the lowest in- 
 tellectual class probably use more words to 
 express their ideas than the similar class of 
 any other people ; but this prodigality is 
 partially balanced by the parsimony of words 
 in some higher regions, in which a few 
 phrases of current slang are made to do the 
 whole duty of exchange of ideas ; if that can 
 be called exchange of ideas when one intel- 
 lect flashes forth to another the remark, con- 
 cerning some report, that " you know how it 
 is yourself," and is met by the response of 
 "that's what's the matter," and rejoins with 
 the perfectly conclusive " that 's so." It re- 
 quires a high degree of culture to use slang 
 with elegance and effect ; and we are yet 
 very far from the Greek attainment. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the 
 wind rising, the night heavy and black 
 above, but light with sifting snow on the 
 earth, — a background of inclemency for the 
 illumined room with its pictured walls, tables 
 heaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and 
 their occupants, — it needs, I say, to glow 
 
40 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 and throw its rays far through the crystal of 
 the broad windows, in order that we may 
 rightly appreciate the relation of the wide- 
 jambed chimney to domestic architecture in 
 our climate. We fell to talking about it ; 
 and, as is usual when the conversation is 
 professedly on one subject, we wandered all 
 around it. The young lady staying with us 
 was roasting chestnuts in the ashes, and the 
 frequent explosions required considerable at- 
 tention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat 
 alert, ready to rise at any instant and minis- 
 ter to the fancied want of this or that guest, 
 forgetting the reposeful truth that people 
 about a fireside will not have any wants if 
 they are not suggested. The worst of them, 
 if they desire anything, only want something 
 hot, and that later in the evening. And 
 it is an open question whether you ought to 
 associate with people who want that. 
 
 I was saying that nothing had been so slow 
 in its progress in the world as domestic ar- 
 chitecture. Temples, palaces, bridges, aque- 
 ducts, cathedrals, towers of marvellous deli- 
 cacy and strength, grew to perfection while 
 the common people lived in hovels, and the 
 richest lodged in the most gloomy and con- 
 tracted quarters. The dwelling-house is a 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 41 
 
 modern institution. It is a curious fact that 
 it has only improved with the social elevation 
 of women. Men were never more brilliant 
 in arms and letters than in the age of Eliz- 
 abeth, and yet they had no homes. They 
 made themselves thick-walled castles, with 
 slits in the masonry for windows, for defence, 
 and magnificent banquet-halls for pleasure ; 
 the stone rooms into which they crawled for 
 the night were often little better than dog- 
 kennels. The Pompeians had no comfortable 
 night-quarters. The most singular thing to 
 me, however, is that, especially interested as 
 woman is in the house, she has never done 
 anything for architecture. And yet woman 
 is reputed to be an ingenious creature. 
 
 Herbert. I doubt if woman has real in- 
 genuity; she has great adaptability. I don't 
 say that she will do the same thing twice 
 alike, like a Chinaman, but she is most cun- 
 ning in suiting herself to circumstances. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Oh, if you speak of 
 constructive, creative ingenuity, perhaps not ; 
 but in the higher ranges of achievement — 
 that of accomplishing any purpose dear to 
 her heart, for instance — her ingenuity is 
 simply incomprehensible to me. 
 
 Herbert. Yes, if you mean doing things 
 by indirection. 
 
42 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 The Mistress. When you men assume 
 all the direction, what else is left to us ? 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Did you ever see a 
 woman refurnish a house ? 
 
 The Young Lady Staying With Us. 
 I never saw a man do it, unless he was burned 
 out of his rookery. 
 
 Herbert. There is no comfort in new 
 things. 
 
 The Fire-Tender (not noticing the in- 
 terruption). Having set her mind on a total 
 revolution of the house, she buys one new 
 thing, not too obtrusive, nor much out of har- 
 mony with the old. The husband scarcely 
 notices it, least of all does he suspect the rev- 
 olution, which she already has accomplished. 
 Next, some article that does look a little 
 shabby beside the new piece of furniture is 
 sent to the garret, and its place is supplied 
 by something that will match in color and 
 effect. Even the man can see that it ought 
 to match, and so the process goes on, it may 
 be for years, it may be forever, until nothing 
 of the old is left, and the house is trans- 
 formed as it was predetermined in the wo- 
 man's mind. I doubt if the man ever un- 
 derstands how or when it was done ; his wife 
 certainly never says anything about the re- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 43 
 
 furnishing, but quietly goes on to new con- 
 quests. 
 
 The Mistress. And is n't it better to 
 buy little by little, enjoying every new object 
 as you get it, and assimilating each article to 
 your household life, and making the home a 
 harmonious expression of your own taste, 
 rather than to order things in sets, and turn 
 your house, for the time being, into a furni- 
 ture wareroom? 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Oh, I only spoke of 
 the ingenuity of it. 
 
 The Young Lady. For my part, I never 
 can get acquainted with more than one piece 
 of furniture at a time. 
 
 Herbert. I suppose women are our su- 
 periors in artistic taste, and I fancy that I 
 can tell whether a house is furnished by a 
 woman or a man ; of course, I mean the few 
 houses that appear to be the result of indi- 
 vidual taste and refinement, — most of them 
 look as if they had been furnished on con- 
 tract by the upholsterer. 
 
 The Mistress. Woman's province in 
 this world is putting things to rights. 
 
 Herbert. With a vengeance, sometimes. 
 In the study, for example. My chief objec- 
 tion to woman is that she has no respect for 
 
44 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the newspaper, or the printed page, as such. 
 She is Siva, the destroyer. I have noticed 
 that a great part of a married man's time at 
 home is spent in trying to find the things he 
 has put on his study table. 
 
 The Young Lady. Herbert speaks with 
 the bitterness of a bachelor shut out of par- 
 adise. It is my experience that if women 
 did not destroy the rubbish that men bring 
 into the house, it would become uninhab- 
 itable, and need to be burned down every 
 five years. 
 
 The Fiee-Tendee. I confess women do 
 a great deal for the appearance of things. 
 When the mistress is absent, this room, al- 
 though everything is here as it was before, 
 does not look at all like the same place ; it 
 is stiff, and seems to lack a soul. When 
 she returns, I can see that her eye, even 
 while greeting me, takes in the situation at 
 a glance. While she is talking of the jour- 
 ney, and before she has removed her trav- 
 elling-hat, she turns this chair and moves 
 that, sets one piece of furniture at a different 
 angle, rapidly, and apparently unconsciously 
 shifts a dozen little knick-knacks and bits 
 of color, and the room is transformed. I 
 could n't do it in a week. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 45 
 
 The Mistkess. That is the first time I 
 ever knew a man admit he could n't do any- 
 thing if he had time. 
 
 Herbert. Yet with all her peculiar in- 
 stinct for making a home, women make 
 themselves very little felt in our domestic 
 architecture. 
 
 The Mistress. Men build most of the 
 houses in what might be called the ready- 
 made-clothing style, and we have to do the 
 best we can with them ; and hard enough it 
 is to make cheerful homes in most of them. 
 You will see something different when the 
 woman is constantly consulted in the plan 
 of the house. 
 
 Herbert. We might see more difference 
 if women would give any attention to ar- 
 chitecture. Why are there no women ar- 
 chitects ? 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Want of the ballot, 
 doubtless. It seems to me that here is a 
 splendid opportunity for woman to come to 
 the front. 
 
 The Young Lady. They have no desire 
 to come to the front ; they would rather 
 manage things where they are. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. If they would mas- 
 ter the noble art, and put their brooding 
 
46 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 taste upon it, we might very likely compass 
 something in our domestic architecture that 
 we have not yet attained. The outside of 
 our houses needs attention as well as the in- 
 side. Most of them are as ugly as money 
 can build. 
 
 The Young Lady. What vexes me most 
 is, that women — married women — have so 
 easily consented to give up open fires in 
 their houses. 
 
 Herbert. They dislike the dust and the 
 bother. I think that women rather like the 
 confined furnace heat. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Nonsense ; it is their 
 angelic virtue of submission. We wouldn't 
 be hired to stay all day in the houses we 
 build. 
 
 The Young Lady. That has a very 
 chivalrous sound, but I know there will be 
 no reformation until women rebel and de- 
 mand everywhere the open fire. 
 
 Herbert. They are just now rebelling 
 about something else ; it seems to me yours 
 is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the 
 rear. 
 
 The Mistress. 1 11 join that movement. 
 The time has come when woman must strike 
 for her altars and her fires. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 47 
 
 Herbert. Hear, hear ! 
 
 The Mistress. Thank you, Herbert. I 
 applauded you once, when you declaimed 
 that, years ago, in the old Academy. I 
 remember how eloquently you did it. 
 
 Herbert. Yes, I was once a spouting 
 idiot. 
 
 Just then the door-bell rang, and company 
 came in. And the company brought in a 
 new atmosphere, as company always does, — 
 something of the disturbance of out-doors, 
 and a good deal of its healthy cheer. The 
 direct news that the thermometer was ap- 
 proaching zero, with a hopeful prospect of 
 going below it, increased to liveliness our 
 satisfaction in the fire. When the cider was 
 heated in the brown stone pitcher, there was 
 difference of opinion whether there should 
 be toast in it ; some were for toast, because 
 that was the old-fashioned way, and others 
 were against it, " because it does not taste 
 good" in cider. Herbert said there was 
 very little respect left for our forefathers. 
 
 More wood was put on, and the flame 
 danced in a hundred fantastic shapes. The 
 snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight 
 lay in silvery patches among the trees in the 
 ravine. The conversation became worldly. 
 
THIRD STUDY. 
 I. 
 
 Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one 
 night, that he wished he had turned his at- 
 tention to writing poetry like Tennyson's. 
 
 The remark was not whimsical, but satiri- 
 cal. Tennyson is a man of talent, who hap- 
 pened to strike a lucky vein, which he has 
 worked with cleverness. The adventurer 
 with a pick-axe in Washoe may happen upon 
 like good fortune. The world is full of po- 
 etry as the earth is of " pay-dirt ; " one only 
 needs to know how to " strike " it. An able 
 man can make himself almost anything that 
 he will. It is melancholy to think how many 
 epic poets have been lost in the tea-trade, 
 how many dramatists (though the age of the 
 drama has passed) have wasted their genius 
 in great mercantile and mechanical enter- 
 prises. I know a man who might have been 
 the poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of 
 this country, who chose to become a county 
 judge, to sit day after day upon a bench in 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 49 
 
 an obscure corner of the world, listening to 
 wrangling lawyers and prevaricating wit- 
 nesses, preferring to judge his fellow-men 
 rather than enlighten them. 
 
 It is fortunate for the vanity of the living 
 and the reputation of the dead that men get 
 almost as much credit for what they do not 
 as for what they do. It was the opinion of 
 many that Burns might have excelled as a 
 statesman, or have been a great captain in 
 war ; and Mr. Carlyle says that if he had 
 been sent to a university, and become a 
 trained intellectual workman, it lay in him 
 to have changed the whole course of British 
 literature ! A large undertaking, as so vig- 
 orous and dazzling a writer as Mr. Carlyle 
 must know by this time, since British litera- 
 ture has swept by him in a resistless and 
 widening flood, mainly uncontaminated, and 
 leaving his grotesque contrivances wrecked 
 on the shore with other curiosities of letters, 
 and yet among the richest of all the treas- 
 ures lying there. 
 
 It is a temptation to a temperate man to 
 become a sot, to hear what talent, what ver- 
 satility, what genius, is almost always at- 
 tributed to a moderately bright man who is 
 habitually drunk. Such a mechanic, such a 
 
50 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 mathematician, such a poet, he would be if 
 he were only sober ; and then he is sure to 
 be the most generous, magnanimous, friendly 
 soul, conscientiously honorable, if he were 
 not so conscientiously drunk. I suppose it 
 is now notorious that the most brilliant and 
 promising men have been lost to the world 
 in this way. It is sometimes almost painful 
 to think what a surplus of talent and genius 
 there would be in the world if the habit of 
 intoxication should suddenly cease ; and 
 what a slim chance there would be for the 
 plodding people who have always had toler- 
 ably good habits. The fear is only mitigated 
 by the observation that the reputation of a 
 person for great talent sometimes ceases with 
 his reformation. 
 
 It is believed by some that the maidens 
 who would make the best wives never marry, 
 but remain free to bless the world with their 
 impartial sweetness, and make it generally 
 habitable. This is one of the mysteries of 
 Providence and New England life. It seems 
 a pity, at first sight, that all those who be- 
 come poor wives have the matrimonial 
 chance, and that they are deprived of the 
 reputation of those who would be good 
 wives were they not set apart for the high 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 51 
 
 and perpetual office of priestesses of society. 
 There is no beauty like that which was 
 spoiled by an accident ; no accomplishments 
 and graces are so to be envied as those that 
 circumstances rudely hindered the develop- 
 ment of. All of which shows what a char- 
 itable and good-tempered world it is, not- 
 withstanding its reputation for cynicism and 
 detraction. 
 
 Nothing is more beautiful than the belief 
 of the faithful wife that her husband has all 
 the talents, and could, if he would, be dis- 
 tinguished in any walk in life ; and nothing 
 will be more beautiful — unless this is a 
 very dry time for signs — than the husband's 
 belief that his wife is capable of taking 
 charge of any of the affairs of this confused 
 planet. There is no woman but thinks that 
 her husband, the green-grocer, could write 
 poetry if he had given his mind to it, or else 
 she thinks small beer of poetry in compar- 
 ison with an occupation or accomplishment 
 purely vegetable. It is touching to see the 
 look of pride with which the wife turns to 
 her husband from any more brilliant per- 
 sonal presence or display of wit than his, in 
 the perfect confidence that if the world knew 
 what she knows there would be one more 
 
52 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 popular idol. How she magnifies his small 
 wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in 
 his face as if it were a sign of wisdom! 
 What a councillor that man would make! 
 What a warrior he would be ! There are a 
 great many corporals in their retired homes 
 who did more for the safety and success of 
 our armies in critical moments, in the late 
 war, than any of the " high-cock-a-lorum " 
 commanders. Mrs. Corporal does not envy 
 the reputation of General Sheridan ; she 
 knows very well who really won Five Forks, 
 for she has heard the story a hundred times, 
 and will hear it a hundred times more with 
 apparently unabated interest. What a gen- 
 eral her husband would have made ; and how 
 his talking talent would shine in Congress ! 
 
 Herbert. Nonsense. There is n't a wife 
 in the world who has not taken the exact 
 measure of her husband, weighed him and 
 settled him in her own mind, and knows him 
 as well as if she had ordered him after de- 
 signs and specifications of her own. That 
 knowledge, however, she ordinarily keeps to 
 herself, and she enters into a league with her 
 husband, which he was never admitted to 
 the secret of, to impose upon the world. In 
 nine out of ten cases he more than half be- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 53 
 
 lieves that he is what his wife tells him he 
 is. At any rate, she manages him as easily 
 as the keeper does the elephant, with only a 
 bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. 
 Usually she flatters him, but she has the 
 means of pricking clear through his hide on 
 occasion. It is the great secret of her power 
 to have him think that she thoroughly be- 
 lieves in him. 
 
 The Young Lady Stating With Us. 
 And you call this hypocrisy ? I have heard 
 authors, who thought themselves sly obser- 
 vers of women, call it so. 
 
 Herbert. Nothing of the sort. It is the 
 basis on which society rests, the conventional 
 agreement. If society is about to be over- 
 turned, it is on this point. Women are be- 
 ginning to tell men what they really think of 
 them ; and to insist that the same relations 
 of downright sincerity and independence that 
 exist between men shall exist between wo- 
 men and men. Absolute truth between souls, 
 without regard to sex, has always been the 
 ideal life of the poets. 
 
 The Mistress. Yes ; but there was never 
 a poet yet who would bear to have his wife 
 say exactly what she thought of his poetry, 
 any more than he would keep his temper if 
 
54 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 his wife beat him at chess ; and there is 
 nothing that disgusts a man like getting 
 beaten at chess by a woman. 
 
 Herbert. Well, women know how to win 
 by losing. I think that the reason why most 
 women do not want to take the ballot, and 
 stand out in the open for a free trial of 
 power, is that they are reluctant to change 
 the certain domination of centuries, with 
 weapons they are perfectly competent to 
 handle, for an experiment. I think we should 
 be better off if women were more transparent, 
 and men were not so systematically puffed 
 up by the subtle flattery which is used to 
 control them. 
 
 Mandeville. Deliver me from transpar- 
 ency ! When a woman takes that guise, and 
 begins to convince me that I can see through 
 her like a ray of light, I must run or be 
 lost. Transparent women are the truly dan- 
 gerous. There was one on shipboard [Man- 
 deville likes to say that ; he has just returned 
 from a little tour in Europe, and he quite 
 often begins his remarks with " on the ship 
 going over ; " the Young Lady declares that 
 he has a sort of roll in his chair, when he 
 says it, that makes her seasick] who was 
 the most innocent, artless, guileless, natural 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 55 
 
 bunch of lace and feathers you ever saw ; 
 she was all candor and helplessness and de- 
 pendence ; she sang like a nightingale, and 
 talked like a nun. There never was such 
 simplicity. There was n't a sounding-line on 
 board that would have gone to the bottom of 
 her soulful eyes. But she managed the cap- 
 tain and all the officers, and controlled the 
 ship as if she had been the helm. All the 
 passengers were waiting on her, fetching this 
 and that for her comfort, inquiring of her 
 health, talking about her genuineness, and 
 exhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore 
 in safety as if she had been about to knight 
 them all and give them a castle apiece when 
 they came to land. 
 
 The Mistkess. What harm ? It shows 
 what I have always said, that the service o£ 
 a noble woman is the most ennobling influ- 
 ence for men. 
 
 Mandeville. If she is noble, and not a 
 mere manager. I watched this woman to see 
 if she would ever do anything for any one 
 else. She never did. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Did you ever see her 
 again? I presume Mandeville has intro- 
 duced her here for some purpose. 
 
 Mandeville. No purpose. But we did 
 
56 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 see her on the Rhine ; she was the most dis- 
 gusted traveller, and seemed to be in very ill 
 humor with her maid. I judged that her 
 happiness depended upon establishing con- 
 trolling relations with all about her. On 
 this Rhine boat, to be sure, there was reason 
 for disgust. And that reminds me of a re- 
 mark that was made. 
 
 The Young Lady. Oh ! 
 
 Mandeville. When we got aboard at 
 Mayence we were conscious of a dreadful 
 odor somewhere ; as it was a foggy morning, 
 we could see no cause of it, but concluded it 
 was from something on the wharf. The fog 
 lifted, and we got under way, but the odor 
 travelled with us, and increased. We went 
 to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but in 
 vain. It occasionally reached us in great 
 waves of disagreeableness. We had heard 
 of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but 
 we had no idea that the entire stream was 
 infected. It was intolerable. 
 
 The day was lovely, and the passengers 
 stood about on deck holding their noses and 
 admiring the scenery. You might see a row 
 of them leaning over the side, gazing up at 
 some old ruin or ivied crag, entranced with 
 the romance of the situation, and all hold* 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 57 
 
 ing their noses with thumb and finger. The 
 sweet Rhine ! By and by somebody discov- 
 ered that the odor came from a pile of cheese 
 on the forward deck, covered with a canvas ; 
 it seemed that the Rhinelanders are so fond 
 of it that they take it with them when they 
 travel. If there should ever be war between 
 us and Germany, the borders of the Rhine 
 would need no other defence from American 
 soldiers than a barricade of this cheese. I 
 went to the stern of the steamboat to tell a 
 stout American traveller what was the origin 
 of the odor he had been trying to dodge all 
 the morning. He looked more disgusted than 
 before when he heard that it was cheese ; 
 but his only reply was : " It must be a 
 merciful God who can forgive a smell like 
 that ! " 
 
 II. • 
 
 The above is introduced here in order to 
 illustrate the usual effect of an anecdote on 
 conversation. Commonly it kills it. That 
 talk must be very well in hand, and under 
 great headway, that an anecdote thrown in 
 front of will not pitch off the track and 
 wreck. And it makes little difference what 
 the anecdote is: a poor one depresses the 
 
58 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 spirits, and casts a gloom over the company; 
 a good one begets others, and the talkers go 
 to telling stories ; which is very good enter- 
 tainment in moderation, but is not to be 
 mistaken for that unwearying flow of argu- 
 ment, quaint remark, humorous color, and 
 sprightly interchange of sentiments and opin- 
 ions, called conversation. 
 
 The reader will perceive that all hope is 
 gone here of deciding whether Herbert could 
 have written Tennyson's poems, or whether 
 Tennyson could have dug as much money 
 out of the Heliogabalus Lode as Herbert 
 did. The more one sees of life, I think the 
 impression deepens that men, after all, play 
 about the parts assigned them, according to 
 their mental and moral gifts, which are lim- 
 ited and preordained, and that their en- 
 trances and exits are governed by a law no 
 less certain because it is hidden. Perhaps 
 nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels 
 lies in him to do ; but nearly every one who 
 tries his powers touches the walls of his be- 
 ing occasionally, and learns about how far 
 to attempt to spring. There are no impos- 
 sibilities to youth and inexperience ; but 
 when a person has tried several times to 
 reach high C and been coughed down, he is 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 59 
 
 quite content to go down among the chorus 
 It is only the fools who keep straining at 
 high C all their lives. 
 
 Mandeville here began to say that that 
 reminded him of something that happened 
 when he was on the — 
 
 But Herbert cut in with the observation 
 that no matter what a man's single and sev- 
 eral capacities and talents might be, he is 
 controlled by his own mysterious individu- 
 ality, which is what metaphysicians call the 
 substance, all else being the mere accidents 
 of the man. And this is the reason that we 
 cannot with any certainty tell what any per- 
 son will do or amount to, for, while we know 
 his talents and abilities, we do not know the 
 resulting whole, which is he himself. 
 
 The Fire -Tender. So if you could take 
 all the first-class qualities that we admire 
 in men and women, and put them together 
 into one being, you would n't be sure of the 
 result ? 
 
 Herbert. Certainly not. You would 
 probably have a monster. It takes a cook 
 of long experience, with the best materials, 
 to make a dish " taste good ; " and the " taste 
 good " is the indefinable essence, the result- 
 ing balance or harmony which makes man 
 
60 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 or woman agreeable, or beautiful, or effec* 
 tive in the world. 
 
 The Young Lady. That must be the 
 reason why novelists fail so lamentably in 
 almost all cases in creating good characters. 
 They put in real traits, talents, dispositions, 
 but the result of the synthesis is something 
 that never was seen on earth before. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Oh, a good character 
 in fiction is an inspiration. We admit this 
 in poetry. It is as true of such creations as 
 Colonel Newcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix 
 Esmond. There is no patchwork about 
 them. 
 
 The Young Lady. Why was n't Thack- 
 eray ever inspired to create a noble wo- 
 man? 
 
 The Eire -Tender. That is the stand- 
 ing conundrum with all the women. They 
 will not accept Ethel Newcome even. Per- 
 haps we shall have to admit that Thackeray 
 was a writer for men. 
 
 Herbert. Scott and the rest had drawn 
 so many perfect women that Thackeray 
 thought it was time for a real one. 
 
 The Mistress. That 's ill-natured. Thack- 
 eray did, however, make ladies. If he had 
 depicted, with his searching pen, any of us 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 61 
 
 just as we are, I doubt if we should have 
 liked it much. 
 
 Mandeville. That's just it. Thack- 
 eray never pretended to make ideals, and if 
 the best novel is an idealization of human 
 nature, then he was not the best novelist. 
 When I was crossing the Channel — 
 
 The Misteess. Oh dear, if we are to go 
 to sea again, Mandeville, I move we have in 
 the nuts and apples, and talk about our 
 friends. 
 
 III. 
 
 There is this advantage in getting back to 
 a wood fire on the hearth, that you return to 
 a kind of simplicity ; you can scarcely im- 
 agine any one being stiffly conventional in 
 front of it. It thaws out formality, and puts 
 the company who sit around it into easy at- 
 titudes of mind and body, — lounging atti- 
 tudes, Herbert said. 
 
 And this brought up the subject of culture 
 in America, especially as to manner. The 
 backlog period having passed, we are begin- 
 ning to have in society people of the cultured 
 manner, as it is called, or polished bearing, 
 in which the polish is the most noticeable 
 thing about the man. Not the courtliness, 
 
62 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the easy simplicity of the old-school gentle- 
 man, in whose presence the milkmaid was as 
 much at her ease as the countess, but some- 
 thing far finer than this. These are the 
 people of unruffled demeanor, who never for- 
 get it for a moment, and never let you for- 
 get it. Their presence is a constant rebuke 
 to society. They are never "jolly;" their 
 laugh is never anything more than a well- 
 bred smile ; they are never betrayed into any 
 enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign of inex- 
 perience, of ignorance, of want of culture. 
 They never lose themselves in any cause; 
 they never heartily praise any man or wo- 
 man or book ; they are superior to all tides 
 of feeling and all outbursts of passion. They 
 are not even shocked at vulgarity. They are 
 simply indifferent. They are calm, visibly 
 calm, painfully calm ; and it is not the eter- 
 nal, majestic calmness of the Sphinx either, 
 but a rigid, self-conscious repression. You 
 would like to put a bent pin in their chair 
 when they are about calmly to sit down. 
 
 A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but 
 hopeful ; she has faith that her eggs are not 
 china. These people appear to be sitting on 
 china eggs. Perfect culture has refined all 
 blood, warmth, flavor, out of them. We ad* 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 63 
 
 mire them without envy. They are too beau- 
 tiful in their manners to be either prigs or 
 snobs. They are at once our models and 
 our despair. They are properly careful of 
 themselves as models, for they know that if 
 they should break, society would become a 
 scene of mere animal confusion. 
 
 Mandeville. I think that the best-bred 
 people in the world are the English. 
 
 The Young Lady. You mean at home. 
 
 Mandeville. That 's where I saw them. 1 
 There is no nonsense about a cultivated Eng- 
 lish man or woman. They express them- 
 selves sturdily and naturally, and with no sub- 
 servience to the opinions of others. There 's 
 a sort of hearty sincerity about them that I 
 like. Ages of culture on the island have 
 gone deeper than the surface, and they have 
 simpler and more natural manners than we. 
 There is something good in the full, round 
 tones of their voices. 
 
 Herbert. Did you ever get into a dil- 
 igence with a growling Englishman who 
 had n't secured the place he wanted ? 
 
 The Mistress. Did you ever see an 
 English exquisite at the San Carlo, and hear 
 him cry " Bwavo " ? 
 
 1 Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about 
 on the tops of omnibuses. 
 
64 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Mandeville. At any rate, he acted out 
 his nature, and was n't afraid to. 
 
 The Eire-Tender. I think Mandeville 
 is right, for once. The men of the best cul- 
 ture in England, in the middle and higher 
 social classes, are what you would call good 
 fellows, — easy and simple in manner, en- 
 thusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cul- 
 tivated into the smooth calmness of indiffer- 
 ence which some Americans seem to regard 
 as the sine qua non of good breeding. Their 
 position is so assured that they do not need 
 that lacquer of calmness of which we were 
 speaking. 
 
 The Young Lady. Which is different 
 from the manner acquired by those who live 
 a great deal in American hotels ? 
 
 The Mistress. Or the Washington man- 
 ner? 
 
 Herbert. The last two are the same. 
 
 The Eire-Tender. Not exactly. You 
 think you can always tell if a man has 
 learned his society carriage of a dancing- 
 master. Well, you cannot always tell by a 
 person's manner whether he is a habitue of 
 hotels or of Washington. But these are dis. 
 tinct from the perfect polish and politeness 
 of indifferentism. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 65 
 
 IV. 
 
 Daylight disenchants. It draws one from 
 the fireside, and dissipates the idle illusions 
 of conversation, except under certain con- 
 ditions. Let us say that the conditions are : 
 a house in the country, with some forest- 
 trees near, and a few evergreens, which are 
 Christmas-trees all winter long, fringed with 
 snow, glistening with ice-pendants, cheerful 
 by day and grotesque by night ; a snow-storm 
 beginning out of a dark sky, falling in a soft 
 profusion that fills all the air, its dazzling 
 whiteness making a light near at hand, which 
 is quite lost in the distant darkling spaces. 
 
 If one begins to watch the swirling flakes 
 and crystals, he soon gets an impression of 
 infinity of resources that he can have from 
 nothing else so powerfully, except it be from 
 Adirondack gnats. Nothing makes one feel 
 at home like a great snow-storm. Our in- 
 telligent cat will quit the fire and sit for 
 hours in the low window, watching the fall- 
 ing snow with a serious and contented air. 
 His thoughts are his own, but he is in ac- 
 cord with the subtlest agencies of Nature ; 
 on such a day he is charged with enough 
 electricity to run a telegraphic battery, if it 
 
66 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 could be utilized. The connection between 
 thought and electricity has not been exactly 
 determined, but the cat is mentally very 
 alert in certain conditions of the atmosphere. 
 Feasting his eyes on the beautiful out-doors 
 does not prevent his attention to the slight- 
 est noise in the wainscot. And the snow- 
 storm brings content, but not stupidity, to 
 all the rest of the household. 
 
 I can see Mandeville now, rising from his 
 arm-chair and swinging his long arms as he 
 strides to the window, and looks out and up, 
 with " Well, I declare ! " Herbert is pre- 
 tending to read Herbert Spencer's tract on 
 the philosophy of style ; but he loses much 
 time in looking at the Young Lady, who is 
 writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her 
 lap, — one of her everlasting letters to one 
 of her fifty everlasting friends. She is one 
 of the female patriots who save the post-office 
 department from being a disastrous loss to 
 the treasury. Herbert is thinking of the 
 great radical difference in the two sexes, 
 which legislation will probably never change, 
 that leads a woman always to write letters 
 on her lap and a man on a table, — a dis- 
 tinction which is commended to the notice 
 of the anti-suffragists. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 67 
 
 The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast- 
 cap, is moving about the room with a feather- 
 duster, whisking invisible dust from the pic- 
 ture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who 
 has just come in, and is thawing the snow 
 from his boots on the hearth. The Parson 
 says the thermometer is 15°, and going 
 down ; that there is a snow-drift across the 
 main church entrance three feet high, and 
 that the house looks as if it had gone into 
 winter quarters, religion and all. There were 
 only ten persons at the conference meeting 
 last night, and seven of those were women ; 
 he wonders how many weather-proof Chris- 
 tians there are in the parish, anyhow. 
 
 The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining li- 
 brary, pretending to write ; but it is a poor 
 day for ideas. He has written his wife's 
 name about eleven hundred times, and can- 
 not get any farther. He hears the Mistress 
 tell the Parson that she believes he is trying 
 to write a lecture on the Celtic Influence in 
 Literature. The Parson says that it is a 
 first-rate subject, if there were any such influ- 
 ence, and asks why he does n't take a shovel 
 and make a path to the gate. Mandeville 
 says that, by George ! he himself should like 
 no better fun, but it would n't look well for 
 
68 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 a visitor to do it. The Fire-Tender, not to 
 be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on 
 writing his wife's name. 
 
 Then the Parson and the Mistress fall 
 to talking about the soup-relief, and about 
 old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a 
 present of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self- 
 Acting Bibles on Christmas, when she had 
 n't coal enough in the house to heat her 
 gruel; and about a family behind the 
 church, a widow and six little children and 
 three dogs, and he did n't believe that any 
 of them had known what it was to be warm 
 in three weeks, and as to food, the woman 
 said, she could hardly beg cold victuals 
 enough to keep the dogs alive. 
 
 The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen 
 to fill a basket with provisions and send 
 it somewhere ; and when the Fire-Tender 
 brought in a new forestick, Mandeville, who 
 always wants to talk, and had been sitting 
 drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, 
 attacked him. 
 
 Mandeville. Speaking about culture 
 and manners, did you ever notice how ex- 
 tremes meet, and that the savage bears him- 
 self very much like the sort of cultured per- 
 sons we were talking of last night? 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 69 
 
 The Fire-Tender. In what respect ? 
 
 Mandeville. Well, you take the North 
 American Indian. He is never interested 
 in anything, never surprised at anything. 
 He has by nature that calmness and indiffer- 
 ence which your people of culture have ac- 
 quired. If he should go into literature as a 
 critic, he would scalp and tomahawk with 
 the same emotionless composure, and he 
 would do nothing else. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Then you think the 
 red man is a born gentleman of the highest 
 breeding ? 
 
 Mandeville. I think he is calm. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. How is it about the 
 war-path and all that ? 
 
 Mandeville. Oh, these studiously calm 
 and cultured people may have malice under- 
 neath. It takes them to give the most effec- 
 tive " little digs ; " they know how to stick 
 in the pine-splinters and set fire to them. 
 
 Herbert. But there is more in Mande- 
 ville' s idea. You bring a red man into a 
 picture-gallery, or a city full of fine archi- 
 tecture, or into a drawing-room crowded with 
 objects of art and beauty, and he is appar- 
 ently insensible to them all. Now I have 
 seen country people, — and by country peo- 
 
70 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 pie I don't mean people necessarily who live 
 in the country, for everything is mixed in 
 these days, — some of the best people in the 
 world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted 
 as the Indian would. 
 
 The Mistress. Herbert, if I didn't 
 know you were cynical, I should say you 
 were snobbish. 
 
 Herbert. Such people think it a point 
 of breeding never to speak of anything in 
 your house, nor to appear to notice it, how- 
 ever beautiful it may be ; even to slyly 
 glance around strains their notion of eti- 
 quette. They are like the countryman who 
 confessed afterwards that he could hardly 
 keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill's 
 entertainments. 
 
 The Young Lady. Do you remember 
 those English people at our house in Flush- 
 ing last summer, who pleased us all so much 
 with their apparent delight in everything 
 that was artistic or tasteful, who explored 
 the rooms and looked at everything, and 
 were so interested? I suppose that Her- 
 bert's country relations, many of whom live 
 in the city, would have thought it very ill- 
 bred. 
 
 Mandeville. It 's just as I said. The 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 71 
 
 English, the best of them, have become so 
 civilized that they express themselves, in 
 speech and action, naturally, and are not 
 afraid of their emotions. 
 
 The Parson. I wish Mandeville would 
 travel more, or that he had stayed at home. 
 It 's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea- 
 sickness will do for a man's judgment and 
 cultivation. He is prepared to pronounce on 
 art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is 
 more nonsense talked about culture than 
 about anything else. 
 
 Herbert. The Parson reminds me of 
 an American country minister I once met 
 walking through the Vatican. You could n't 
 impose upon him with any rubbish; he 
 tested everything by the standards of his 
 native place, and there was little that could 
 bear the test. He had the sly air of a man 
 who could not be deceived, and he went 
 about with his mouth in a pucker of incre- 
 dulity. There is nothing so placid as rustic 
 conceit. There was something very enjoy- 
 able about his calm superiority to all the 
 treasures of art. 
 
 Mandeville. And the Parson reminds 
 me of another American minister, a consul 
 in an Italian city, who said he was going up 
 
72 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 to Rome to have a thorough talk with the 
 Pope, and give him a piece of his mind. 
 Ministers seem to think that is their busi- 
 ness. They serve it in such small pieces in 
 order to make it go round. 
 
 The Parson. Mandeville is an infidel. 
 Come, let 's have some music ; nothing else 
 will keep him in good humor till lunch-time. 
 
 The Mistress. What shall it be ? 
 
 The Parson. Give us the larghetto from 
 Beethoven's second symphony. 
 
 The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. 
 Herbert looks at the young lady. The Par- 
 son composes himself for critical purposes. 
 Mandeville settles himself in a chair and 
 stretches his long legs nearly into the fire, 
 remarking that music takes the tangles out 
 of him. 
 
 After the piece is finished, lunch is an- 
 nounced. It is still snowing. 
 
FOURTH STUDY. 
 I. 
 
 It is difficult to explain the attraction 
 which the uncanny and even the horrible 
 have for most minds. I have seen a delicate 
 woman half fascinated, bat wholly disgusted, 
 by one of the most unseemly of reptiles, vul- 
 garly known as the "blowing viper" of the 
 Alleghanies. She would look at it, and turn 
 away with irresistible shuddering and the 
 utmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it 
 again and again, only to experience the same 
 spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion 
 she must have relished the sort of electric 
 mental shock that the sight gave her. 
 
 I can no more account for the fascination 
 for us of the stories of ghosts and " appear- 
 ances," and those weird tales in which the 
 dead are the chief characters ; nor tell why 
 we should fall into converse about them 
 when the winter evenings are far spent, the 
 embers are glazing over on the hearth, and 
 the listener begins to hear the eerie noises in 
 
74 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the Louse. At such times one's dreams be- 
 come of importance, and people like to tell 
 them and dwell upon them, as if they were a 
 link between the known and unknown, and 
 could give us a clew to that ghostly region 
 which in certain states of the mind we feel 
 to be more real than that we see. 
 
 Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting 
 around the borders of the supernatural late 
 at night, Mandeville related a dream of 
 his which he assured us was true in every 
 particular, and it interested us so much that 
 we asked him to write it out. In doing so 
 he has curtailed it, and to my mind shorn it 
 of some of its more vivid and picturesque 
 features. He might have worked it up with 
 more art, and given it a finish which the 
 narration now lacks, but I think best to in- 
 sert it in its simplicity. It seems to me that 
 it may properly be called — 
 
 A NEW " VISION OF SIN." 
 
 In the winter of 1850 I was a member of 
 one of the leading colleges of this country. 
 I was in moderate circumstances pecuniarily, 
 though I was perhaps better furnished with 
 less fleeting riches than many others. I was 
 an incessant and indiscriminate reader of 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 75 
 
 books. For the solid sciences I had no par- 
 ticular fancy, but with mental modes and 
 habits, and especially with the eccentric and 
 fantastic in the intellectual and spiritual 
 operations, I was tolerably familiar. All the 
 literature of the supernatural was as real to 
 me as the laboratory of the chemist, where I 
 saw the continual struggle of material sub- 
 stances to evolve themselves into more vol- 
 atile, less palpable and coarse forms. My 
 imagination, naturally vivid, stimulated by 
 such repasts, nearly mastered me. At times 
 I could scarcely tell where the material 
 ceased and the immaterial began (if I may 
 so express it) ; so that once and again I 
 walked, as it seemed, from the solid earth 
 onward upon an impalpable plain, where I 
 heard the same voices, I think, that Joan of 
 Arc heard call to her in the garden at Dom- 
 remy. She was inspired, however, while I 
 only lacked exercise. I do not mean this in 
 any literal sense ; I only describe a state of 
 mind. I was at this time of spare habit and 
 nervous, excitable temperament. I was am- 
 bitious, proud, and extremely sensitive. I 
 cannot deny that I had seen something of 
 the world, and had contracted about the av- 
 erage bad habits of young men who have the 
 
76 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 sole care of themselves, and rather bungle 
 the matter. It is necessary to this relation 
 to admit that I had seen a trifle more of 
 what is called life than a young man ought 
 to see, but at this period I was not only sick 
 of my experience, but my habits were as cor- 
 rect as those of any Pharisee in our college, 
 and we had some very favorable specimens 
 of that ancient sect. 
 
 Nor can I deny that at this period of my 
 life I was in a peculiar mental condition. I 
 well remember an illustration of it. I sat 
 writing late one night, copying a prize es- 
 say, — a merely manual task, leaving my 
 thoughts free. It was in June, a sultry 
 night, and about midnight a wind arose, 
 pouring in through the open windows, full 
 of mournful reminiscence, not of this, but of 
 other summers, — the same wind that De 
 Quincey heard at noonday in midsummer 
 blowing through the room where he stood, a 
 mere boy, by the side of his dead sister, — 
 a wind centuries old. As I wrote on me- 
 chanically I became conscious of a presence 
 in the room, though I did not lift my eyes 
 from the paper on which I wrote. Gradu- 
 ally I came to know that my grandmother — • 
 dead so long ago that I laughed at the idea 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 77 
 
 — was in the room. She stood beside her 
 old-fashioned spinning-wheel, and quite near 
 me. She wore a plain muslin cap with a 
 high puff in the crown, a short woollen gown, 
 a white and blue checked apron, and shoes 
 with heels. She did not regard me, but 
 stood facing the wheel, with the left hand 
 near the spindle, holding lightly between the 
 thumb and forefinger the white roll of wool 
 which was being spun and twisted on it. In 
 her right hand she held a small stick. I 
 heard the sharp click of this against the 
 spokes of the wheel, then the hum of the 
 wheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twist- 
 ing yarn was teased by the whirl of its point, 
 then a step backward, a pause, a step for- 
 ward and the running of the yarn upon the 
 spindle, and again a backward step, the 
 drawing out of the roll, and the droning and 
 hum of the wheel, — most mournful, hopeless 
 sound that ever fell on mortal ear. Since 
 childhood it has haunted me. All this time 
 I wrote, and I could hear distinctly the 
 scratching of the pen upon the paper. But 
 she stood behind me (why I did not turn my 
 head I never knew), pacing backward and 
 forward by the spinning-wheel, just as I had 
 a hundred times seen her in childhood in the 
 
78 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 old kitchen on drowsy summer afternoons. 
 And I heard the step, the buzz and whirl of 
 the spindle, and the monotonous and dreary 
 hum of the mournful wheel. Whether her 
 face was ashy pale and looked as if it might 
 crumble at the touch, and the border of her 
 white cap trembled in the June wind that 
 blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did not 
 see her. But I hnow she was there, spin- 
 ning yarn that had been knit into hose years 
 and years ago by our fireside. For I was in 
 full possession of my faculties, and never 
 copied more neatly and legibly any manu- 
 script than I did the one that night. And 
 there the phantom (I use the word out of 
 deference to a public prejudice on this sub- 
 ject) most persistently remained until my 
 task was finished, and, closing the portfolio, 
 I abruptly rose. Did I see anything ? That 
 is a silly and ignorant question. Could I 
 see the wind which had now risen stronger, 
 and drove a few cloud-scuds across the sky, 
 filling the night, somehow, with a longing 
 that was not altogether born of reminis- 
 cence ? 
 
 In the winter following, in January, I 
 made an effort to give up the use of tobacco, 
 ■ — a habit in which I was confirmed, and of 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 79 
 
 which I have nothing more to say than this : 
 that I should attribute to it almost all the 
 sin and misery in the world, did I not re- 
 member that the old Romans attained a 
 very considerable state of corruption with- 
 out the assistance of the Virginia plant. 
 
 On the night of the third day of my ab- 
 stinence, rendered more nervous and excit- 
 able than usual by the privation, I retired 
 late, and later still I fell into an uneasy 
 sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid, illumi- 
 nated, more real than any event of my life. 
 I was at home, and fell sick. The illness 
 developed into a fever, and then a delirium 
 set in ; not an intellectual blank, but a misty 
 and most delicious wandering in places of in- 
 comparable beauty. I learned subsequently 
 that our regular physician was not certain to 
 finish me, when a consultation was called, 
 which did the business. I have the satisfac- 
 tion of knowing that they were of the proper 
 school. I lay sick for three days. 
 
 On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, 
 I died. 
 
 The sensation was not unpleasant. It was 
 not a sudden shock. I passed out of my 
 body as one would walk from the door of his 
 house. There the body lay, — a blank, so 
 
80 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 far as I was concerned, and only interesting 
 to me as I was rather entertained with 
 watching the respect paid to it. My friends 
 stood about the bedside, regarding me (as 
 they seemed to suppose), while I, in a dif- 
 ferent part of the room, could hardly repress 
 a smile at their mistake, solemnized as they 
 were, and I too, for that matter, by my re- 
 cent demise. A sensation (the word you see 
 is material and inappropriate) of ethereali- 
 zation and imponderability pervaded me, 
 and I was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, 
 slow mass as I now perceived myself to be, 
 lying there on the bed. When I speak of 
 my death, let me be understood to say that 
 there was no change, except that I passed 
 out of my body and floated to the top of a 
 bookcase in the corner of the room, from 
 which I looked down. For a moment I was 
 interested to see my person from the outside, 
 but thereafter I was quite indifferent to the 
 body. I was now simply soul. I seemed to 
 be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about 
 six inches in diameter. I saw and heard 
 everything as before. Of course, matter was 
 no obstacle to me, and I went easily and 
 quickly wherever I willed to go. There was 
 none of that tedious process of communicat- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 81 
 
 ing my wishes to the nerves, and from them 
 to the muscles. I simply resolved to be at 
 a particular place, and I was there. It was 
 better than the telegraph. 
 
 It seemed to have been intimated to me 
 at my death (birth I half incline to call it) 
 that I could remain on this earth for four 
 weeks after my decease, during which time 
 I could amuse myself as I chose. 
 
 I chose, in the first place, to see myself 
 decently buried, to stay by myself to the 
 last, and attend my own funeral for once. 
 As most of those referred to in this true 
 narrative are still living, I am forbidden to 
 indulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to 
 say exactly how my death affected my friends, 
 even the home circle. Whatever others did, 
 I sat up with myself and kept awake. I 
 saw the " pennies " used instead of the 
 " quarters " which I should have preferred. 
 I saw myself " laid out," a phrase that has 
 come to have such a slang meaning that I 
 smile as I write it. When the body was put 
 into the coffin I took my place on the lid. 
 
 I cannot recall all the details, and they 
 are commonplace besides. The funeral took 
 place at the church. We all rode thither in 
 carriages, and I, not fancying my place in 
 
82 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 mine, rode on the outside with the under- 
 taker, whom I found to be a good deal more 
 jolly than he looked to be. The coffin was 
 placed in front of the pulpit when we arrived. 
 I took my station on the pulpit cushion, from 
 which elevation I had an admirable view of 
 all the ceremonies, and could hear the ser- 
 mon. How distinctly I remember the ser- 
 vices ! I think I could even at this distance 
 write out the sermon. The tune sung was 
 of the usual country selection, — Mount 
 Vernon. I recall the text. I was rather 
 flattered by the tribute paid to me, and my 
 future was spoken of gravely and as kindly 
 as possible, — indeed, with remarkable char- 
 ity, considering that the minister was not 
 aware of my presence. I used to beat him 
 at chess, and I thought, even then, of the 
 last game ; for, however solemn the occasion 
 might be to others, it was not so to me. 
 With what interest I watched my kinsfolks 
 and neighbors as they filed past for the last 
 look! I saw, and I remember, who pulled 
 a long face for the occasion and who exhib- 
 ited genuine sadness. I learned with the 
 most dreadful certainty what people really 
 thought of me. It was a revelation never 
 forgotten* 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 83 
 
 Several particular acquaintances of mine 
 were talking on the steps as we passed 
 out. 
 
 " Well, old Starr 's gone up. Sudden, 
 was n't it ? He was a first-rate fellow." 
 
 " Yes ; queer about some things, but he 
 had some mighty good streaks," said an- 
 other. And so they ran on. 
 
 Streaks ! So that is the reputation one 
 gets during twenty years of life in this 
 world. Streaks ! 
 
 After the funeral I rode home with the 
 family. It was pleasanter than the ride 
 down, though it seemed sad to my relations. 
 They did not mention me, however, and I 
 may remark that, although I stayed about 
 home for a week, I never heard my name 
 mentioned by any of the family. Arrived 
 at home, the tea-kettle was put on, and sup- 
 per got ready. This seemed to lift the gloom 
 a little, and under the influence of the tea 
 they brightened up, and gradually got more 
 cheerful. They discussed the sermon and 
 the singing, and the mistake of the sexton 
 in digging the grave in the wrong place, 
 and the large congregation. From the man- 
 tel-piece I watched the group. They had 
 waffles for supper, — of which I had been 
 
84 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 exceedingly fond, but now I saw them dis- 
 appear without a sigh. 
 
 For the first day or two of my sojourn at 
 home I was here and there at all the neigh- 
 bors', and heard a good deal about my life 
 and character, some of which was not very 
 pleasant, but very wholesome, doubtless, for 
 me to hear. At the expiration of a week 
 this amusement ceased to be such, for I 
 ceased to be talked of. I realized the fact 
 that I was dead and gone. 
 
 By an act of volition I found myself back 
 at college. I floated into my own room, 
 which was empty. I went to the room of 
 my two warmest friends, whose friendship I 
 was, and am yet, assured of. As usual, half 
 a dozen of our set were lounging there. 
 A game of whist was just commencing. I 
 perched on a bust of Dante on the top of 
 the book -shelves, where I could see two of 
 the hands and give a good guess at a third. 
 My particular friend Timmins was just shuf- 
 fling the cards. 
 
 " Be hanged if it is n't lonesome without 
 old Starr. Did you cut ? I should like to 
 see him lounge in now with his pipe, and 
 with feet on the mantel-piece proceed to ex- 
 pound on the duplex functions of the soul." 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 85 
 
 " There — misdeal ! " said his vis-d^vis. 
 "Hope there 's been no misdeal for old 
 Starr." 
 
 " Spades, did you say ? " the talk ran on. 
 " I never knew Starr was sickly." 
 
 " No more was he ; stouter than you are, 
 and as brave and plucky as he was strong. 
 By George, fellows, how we do get cut down ! 
 Last term little Stubbs, and now one of the 
 best fellows in the class." 
 
 " How suddenly he did pop off, — one for 
 game, honors easy, — he was good for the 
 Spouts' Medal this year, too." 
 
 " Remember the joke he played on Prof. 
 A., freshman year ? " asked another. 
 
 "Remember he borrowed ten dollars of 
 me about that time," said Timmins's part- 
 ner, gathering the cards for a new deal. 
 
 " Guess he is the only one who ever did," 
 retorted some one. 
 
 And so the talk went on, mingled with 
 whist-talk, reminiscent of me, not all exactly 
 what I would have chosen to go into my bi- 
 ography, but on the whole kind and tender, 
 after the fashion of the boys. At least I was 
 in their thoughts, and I could see was a good 
 deal regretted, — so I passed a very pleasant 
 evening. Most of those present were of my 
 
86 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 society, and wore crape on their badges, and 
 all wore the usual crape on the left arm. I 
 learned that the following afternoon a eulogy 
 would be delivered on me in the chapel. 
 
 The eulogy was delivered before members 
 of our society and others, the next afternoon, 
 in the chapel. I need not say that I was 
 present. Indeed, I was perched on the desk, 
 within reach of the speaker's hand. The 
 apotheosis was pronounced by my most in- 
 timate friend, Timmins, and I must say he 
 did me ample justice. He never was accus- 
 tomed to " draw it very mild " (to use a vul- 
 garism which 1 dislike) when he had his 
 head, and on this occasion he entered into 
 the matter with the zeal of a true friend, 
 and a young man who never expected to 
 have another occasion to sing a public " In 
 Memoriam." It made my hair stand on end, 
 — metaphorically, of course. From my 
 childhood I had been extremely precocious. 
 There were anecdotes of preternatural bright- 
 ness, picked up, Heaven knows where, of my 
 eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chival- 
 rous young soul, and of my arduous struggles 
 with chill penury, which was not able (as it 
 appeared) to repress my rage, until I entered 
 this institution, of which I had been orna- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 87 
 
 ment, pride, cynosure, and fair promising 
 bud blasted while yet its fragrance was 
 mingled with the dew of its youth. Once 
 launched upon my college days, Timmins 
 went on with all sails spread. I had, as it 
 were, to hold on to the pulpit-cushion. Latin, 
 Greek, the old literatures, I was perfect mas- 
 ter of ; all history was merely a light repast 
 to me ; mathematics I glanced at, and it dis- 
 appeared; in the clouds of modern philos- 
 ophy I was wrapped, but not obscured ; 
 over the field of light literature I familiarly 
 roamed as the honey-bee over the wide fields 
 of clover which blossom white in the Junes 
 of this world ! My life was pure, my char- 
 acter spotless, my name was inscribed among 
 the names of those deathless few who were 
 not born to die ! 
 
 It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before 
 he finished, though I had misgivings at the 
 beginning, that I deserved it all. The effect 
 on the audience was a little different. They 
 said it was a "strong" oration, and I think 
 Timmins got more credit by it than I did. 
 After the performance they stood about the 
 chapel, talking in a subdued tone, and seemed 
 to be a good deal impressed by what they 
 had heard, or perhaps by thoughts of the de- 
 
88 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 parted. At least they all soon went over to 
 Austin's and called for beer. My partic- 
 ular friends called for it twice. Then they 
 all lit pipes. The old grocery keeper was 
 good enough to say that I was no fool if I did 
 go off owing him four dollars. To the credit 
 of human nature, let me here record that the 
 fellows were touched by his remark reflect- 
 ing upon my memory, and immediately made 
 up a purse and paid the bill ; that is, they 
 told the old man to charge it over to them. 
 College boys are rich in credit and the pos- 
 sibilities of life. 
 
 It is needless to dwell upon the days I 
 passed at college during this probation. So 
 far as I could see, everything went on as if 
 I were there, or had never been there. I 
 could not even see the place where I had 
 dropped out of the ranks. Occasionally I 
 heard my name, but I must say that four 
 weeks was quite long enough to stay in a 
 world that had pretty much forgotten me. 
 There is no great satisfaction in being 
 dragged up to light now and then, like an 
 old letter. The case was somewhat different 
 with the people with whom I had boarded. 
 They were relations of mine, and I often 
 saw them weep, and they talked of me a 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 89 
 
 good deal at twilight and Sunday nights, 
 especially the youngest one, Carrie, who 
 was handsomer than any one I knew, and 
 not much older than I. I never used to 
 imagine that she cared particularly for me, 
 nor would she have done so if I had lived, 
 but death brought with it a sort of senti- 
 mental regret, which, with the help of a 
 daguerreotype, she nursed into quite a little 
 passion. I spent most of my time there, for 
 it was more congenial than the college. 
 
 But time hastened. The last sand of 
 probation leaked out of the glass. One day, 
 while Carrie played (for me, though she 
 knew it not) one of Mendelssohn's " songs 
 without words," I suddenly, yet gently, with- 
 out self-effort or volition, moved from the 
 house, floated in the air, rose higher, higher, 
 by an easy, delicious, exultant, yet incon- 
 ceivably rapid motion. The ecstasy of that 
 triumphant flight! Groves, trees, houses, 
 the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled away be- 
 neath me. Upward mounting, as on angels' 
 wings, with no effort, till the earth hung be- 
 neath me a round black ball swinging, re- 
 mote, in the universal ether. Upward mount- 
 ing, till the earth, no longer bathed in the 
 sun's rays, went out to my sight, — disap- 
 
90 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 peared in the blank. Constellations, before 
 seen from afar, I sailed among. Stars, too 
 remote for shining on earth, I neared, and 
 found to be round globes flying through 
 space with a velocity only equalled by my 
 own. New worlds continually opened on 
 my sight; new fields of everlasting space 
 opened and closed behind me. 
 
 For days and days — it seemed a mortal 
 forever — I mounted up the great heavens, 
 whose everlasting doors swung wide. How 
 the worlds and systems, stars, constellations, 
 neared me, blazed and flashed in splendor, 
 and fled away ! At length, — was it not a 
 thousand years ? — I saw before me, yet 
 afar off, a wall, the rocky bourn of that 
 country whence travellers come not back, a 
 battlement wider than I could guess, the 
 height of which I could not see, the depth 
 of which was infinite. As I approached, it 
 shone with a splendor never yet beheld on 
 earth. Its solid substance was built of jew- 
 els the rarest and stones of priceless value. 
 It seemed like one solid stone, and yet all 
 the colors of the rainbow were contained in 
 it. The ruby, the diamond, the emerald, the 
 carbuncle, the topaz, the amethyst, the sap- 
 phire : of them the wall was built up in har. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 91 
 
 monious combination. So brilliant was it 
 that all the space I floated in was full of the 
 splendor. So mild was it and so translucent 
 that I could look for miles into its clear 
 depths. 
 
 Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, 
 an immense niche was disclosed in its solid 
 face. The floor was one large ruby. Its 
 sloping sides were of pearl. Before I was 
 aware I stood within the brilliant recess. I 
 say I stood there, for I was there bodily, in 
 my habit as I lived ; how, I cannot explain. 
 Was it the resurrection of the body? Be- 
 fore me rose, a thousand feet in height, a 
 wonderful gate of flashing diamond. Beside 
 it sat a venerable man, with long white 
 beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, 
 and a golden key hanging by a cord from 
 his waist. In the serene beauty of his noble 
 features I saw justice and mercy had met 
 and were reconciled. I cannot describe the 
 majesty of his bearing or the benignity of 
 his appearance. It is needless to say that I 
 stood before St. Peter, who sits at the Ce- 
 lestial Gate. 
 
 I humbly approached, and begged admis- 
 sion. St. Peter arose, and regarded me 
 kindly, yet inquiringly. 
 
92 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 " What is your name," asked he, u and 
 from what place do you come ? " 
 
 I answered, and, wishing to give a name 
 well known, said I was from Washington, 
 United States. He looked doubtful, as if 
 he had never heard the name before. 
 
 " Give me," said he, " a full account of 
 your whole life." 
 
 I felt instantaneously that there was no 
 concealment possible ; all disguise fell away, 
 and an unknown power forced me to speak 
 absolute and exact truth. I detailed the 
 events of my life as well as I could, and the 
 good man was not a little affected by the 
 recital of my early trials, poverty, and temp- 
 tation. It did not seem a very good life 
 when spread out in that presence, and I 
 trembled as I proceeded ; but I plead youth, 
 inexperience, and bad examples. 
 
 "Have you been accustomed," he said, 
 after a time, rather sadly, " to break the 
 Sabbath ? " 
 
 I told him frankly that I had been rather 
 lax in that matter, especially at college. I 
 often went to sleep in the chapel on Sunday, 
 when I was not reading some entertaining 
 book. He then asked who the preacher was, 
 and when I told him he remarked that 1 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 93 
 
 was not so much to blame as he had sup- 
 posed. 
 
 " Have you," he went on, " ever stolen, or 
 told any lie ? " 
 
 I was able to say no, except admitting as 
 to the first usual college " conveyances," and 
 as to the last an occasional " blinder " to the 
 professors. He was gracious enough to say 
 that these could be overlooked as incident to 
 the occasion. 
 
 "Have you ever been dissipated, living 
 riotously and keeping late hours ? ' ; 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 This also could be forgiven me as an in- 
 cident of youth. 
 
 " Did you ever," he went on, " commit the 
 crime of using intoxicating drinks as a bev- 
 erage ? " 
 
 I answered that I had never been a habit- 
 ual drinker, that I had never been what was 
 called a " moderate drinker," that I had 
 never gone to a bar and drank alone ; but 
 that I had been accustomed, in company 
 with other young men, on convivial occasions 
 to taste the pleasures of the flowing bowl, 
 sometimes to excess, but that I had also 
 tasted the pains of it, and for months before 
 my demise had refrained from liquor alto- 
 
94 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 gether. The holy man looked grave, but, 
 after reflection, said this might also be over- 
 looked in a young man. 
 
 " What," continued he, in tones still more 
 serious, " has been your conduct with regard 
 to the other sex ? " 
 
 I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. 
 I pulled from my bosom a little book like 
 the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of 
 Don Giovanni. There, I said, was a record 
 of my flirtation and inconstancy. I waited 
 long for the decision, but it came in mercy. 
 
 . " Rise," he cried ; " young men will be 
 young men, I suppose. We shall forgive 
 this also to your youth and penitence." 
 
 " Your examination is satisfactory," he in- 
 formed me, after a pause; "you can now 
 enter the abodes of the happy." 
 
 Joy leaped within me. We approached 
 the gate. The key turned in the lock. The 
 gate swung noiselessly on its hinges a little 
 open. Out flashed upon me unknown splen- 
 dors. What I saw in that momentary gleam 
 I shall never whisper in mortal ears. I stood 
 upon the threshold, just about to enter. 
 
 " Stop ! one moment," exclaimed St. Peter, 
 laying his hand on my shoulder ; " I have 
 one more question to ask you." 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 95 
 
 I turned toward him. 
 
 " Young man, did you ever use tobacco f " 
 
 " I both smoked and chewed in my life- 
 time," I faltered, " but " — 
 
 " Then to hell with you ! " he shouted 
 in a voice of thunder. 
 
 Instantly the gate closed without noise, 
 and I was flung, hurled, from the battlement, 
 down ! down ! down ! Faster and faster I 
 sank in a dizzy, sickening whirl into an un- 
 fathomable space of gloom. The light faded. 
 Dampness and darkness were round about 
 me. As before, for days and days I rose 
 exultant in the light, so now forever I sank 
 into thickening darkness, — and yet not 
 darkness, but a pale, ashy light more fear- 
 ful. 
 
 In the dimness, I at length discovered a 
 wall before me. It ran up and down and on 
 either hand endlessly into the night. It was 
 solid, black, terrible in its frowning massive- 
 ness. 
 
 Straightway I alighted at the gate, — a 
 dismal crevice hewn into the dripping rock. 
 The gate was wide open, and there sat — I 
 knew him at once ; who does not ? — the 
 Arch Enemy of mankind. He cocked his 
 eye at me in an impudent, low, familiar 
 
96 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 manner that disgusted me. I saw that I was 
 not to be treated like a gentleman. 
 
 " Well, young man," said he, rising, with 
 a queer grin on his face, " what are you sent 
 here for?" 
 
 " For using tobacco," I replied. 
 
 " Ho ! " shouted he in a jolly manner, pe- 
 culiar to devils, " that 's what most of 'em 
 are sent here for now." 
 
 Without more ado, he called four lesser 
 imps, who ushered me within. What a 
 dreadful plain lay before me ! There was a 
 vast city laid out in regular streets, but there 
 were no houses. Along the streets were 
 places of torment and torture exceedingly 
 ingenious and disagreeable. For miles and 
 miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors 
 through these horrors. Here was a deep vat 
 of burning tar. Here were rows of fiery 
 ovens. I noticed several immense caldron 
 kettles of boiling oil, upon the rims of which 
 little devils sat, with pitchforks in hand, and 
 poked down the helpless victims who floun- 
 dered in the liquid. But I forbear to go 
 into unseemly details. The whole scene is as 
 vivid in my mind as any earthly landscape. 
 
 After an hour's walk my tormentors halted 
 before the mouth of an oven, — a furnace 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 97 
 
 heated seven times, and now roaring with 
 flames. They grasped me, one hold of each 
 hand and foot. Standing before the blazing 
 mouth, they, with a swing, and a " one, two, 
 three " — 
 
 I again assure the reader that in this nar- 
 rative I have set down nothing that was not 
 actually dreamed, and much, very much of 
 this wonderful vision I have been obliged to 
 omit. 
 
 Hcec fahula docet : It is dangerous for a 
 young man to leave off the use of tobacco. 
 
FIFTH STUDY. 
 I. 
 
 I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyous- 
 ness of the New England winter. Perhaps 
 I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. 
 But skepticism comes in with the south-wind. 
 When that begins to blow, one feels the 
 foundations of his belief breaking up. This 
 is only another way of saying that it is more 
 difficult, if it be not impossible, to freeze out 
 orthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is to 
 thaw it out ; though it is a mere fancy to 
 suppose that this is the reason why the mar- 
 tyrs, of all creeds, were burned at the stake. 
 There is said to be a great relaxation in New 
 England of the ancient strictness in the 
 direction of toleration of opinion, called by 
 some a lowering of the standard, and by 
 others a raising of the banner of liberality ; 
 it might be an interesting inquiry how much 
 this change is due to another change, — the 
 softening of the New England winter and 
 the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 99 
 
 fashion nowadays to refer almost everything 
 to physical causes, and this hint is a gratui- 
 tous contribution to the science of metaphy- 
 sical physics. 
 
 The hindrance to entering fully into the 
 joyousness of a New England winter, except 
 far inland among the mountains, is the south- 
 wind. It is a grateful wind, and has done 
 more, I suspect, to demoralize society than 
 any other. It is not necessary to remember 
 that it rilled the silken sails of Cleopatra's" 
 galley. -It blows over New England every 
 few days, and is in some portions of it the 
 prevailing wind. That it brings the soft 
 clouds, and sometimes continues long enough 
 to almost deceive the expectant buds of the 
 fruit-trees, and to tempt the robin from the 
 secluded evergreen copses, may be nothing ; 
 but it takes the tone out of the mind, and 
 engenders discontent, making one long for 
 the tropics ; it feeds the weakened imagina- 
 tion on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before 
 we know it we become demoralized, and 
 shrink from the tonic of the sudden change 
 to sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic 
 patient does from the plunge. It is the in- 
 sidious temptation that assails us when we 
 are braced up to profit by the invigorating 
 rigor of winter. 
 
100 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Perhaps the influence of the four great 
 winds on character is only a fancied one ; 
 but it is evident on temperament, which is 
 not altogether a matter of temperature, al- 
 though the good old deacon used to say, in 
 his humble, simple way, that his third wife 
 was a very good woman, but her " tempera- 
 ture was very different from that of the other 
 two." The north-wind is full of courage, 
 and puts the stamina of endurance into a 
 man, and it probably would into a woman 
 too if there were a series of resolutions passed 
 to that effect. The west-wind is hopeful ; 
 it has promise and adventure in it, and is, 
 except to Atlantic voyagers America-bound, 
 the best wind that ever blew. The east-wind 
 is peevishness ; it is mental rheumatism and 
 grumbling, and curls one up in the chimney- 
 corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever 
 smokes, it smokes when the wind sits in that 
 quarter. The south-wind is full of longing 
 and unrest, of effeminate suggestions of lux- 
 urious ease, and perhaps we might say of 
 modern poetry, — at any rate, modern poe- 
 try needs a change of air. I am not sure 
 but the south is the most powerful of the 
 winds, because of its sweet persuasiveness. 
 Nothing so stirs the blood in spring, when it 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 101 
 
 comes up out of the tropical latitude ; it 
 makes men " longen to gon on pilgrimages." 
 I did intend to insert here a little poem 
 (as it is quite proper to do in an essay) on 
 the south- wind, composed by the Young 
 Lady Staying With Us, beginning, — 
 
 " Out of a drifting southern cloud 
 
 My soul heard the night-bird cry," — 
 
 but it never got any farther than this. The 
 Young Lady said it was exceedingly difficult 
 to write the next two lines, because not only 
 rhyme, but meaning, had to be procured. 
 And this is true ; anybody can write first 
 lines, and that is probably the reason we 
 have so many poems which seem to have 
 been begun in just this way, that is, with a 
 south-wind-longing without any thought in 
 it, and it is very fortunate when there is not 
 wind enough to finish them. This emotional 
 poem, if I may so call it, was begun after 
 Herbert went away. I liked it, and thought 
 it was what is called " suggestive," although 
 I did not understand it, especially what the 
 night-bird was : and I am afraid I hurt the 
 Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she 
 meant Herbert by the " night-bird," — a 
 very absurd suggestion about two unsenti- 
 mental people. She said, " Nonsense ; " but 
 
102 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 she afterwards told the Mistress that there 
 were emotions that one could never put into 
 words without the danger of being ridiculous, 
 — a profound truth. And yet I should not 
 like to say that there is not a tender lone- 
 someness in love that can get comfort out 
 of a night-bird in a cloud, if there be such 
 a thing. Analysis is the death of senti- 
 ment. 
 
 But to return to the winds. Certain peo- 
 ple impress us as the winds do. Mandeville 
 never comes in that I do not feel a north- 
 wind vigor and healthfulness in his cordial, 
 sincere, hearty manner, and in his wholesome 
 way of looking at things. The Parson, you 
 would say, was the east-wind, and only his 
 intimates know that his peevishness is only 
 a querulous humor. In the fair west-wind I 
 know the Mistress herself, full of hope, and 
 always the first one to discover a bit of blue 
 in a cloudy sky. It would not be just to 
 apply what I have said of the south-wind to 
 any of our visitors, but it did blow a little 
 while Herbert was here. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 103 
 
 II. 
 
 In point of pure enjoyment, with an intel- 
 lectual sparkle in it, I suppose that no luxu- 
 rious lounging on tropical isles set in tropical 
 seas compares with the positive happiness 
 one may have before a great wood fire (not 
 two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with 
 a veritable New England winter raging out- 
 side. In order to get the highest enjoyment, 
 the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled 
 into a mere recipient dulness. There are 
 those who prefer a warm bath to a brisk 
 walk in the inspiring air, where ten thou- 
 sand keen influences minister to the sense of 
 beauty and run along the excited nerves. 
 There are, for instance, a sharpness of hori- 
 zon outline and a delicacy of color on dis- 
 tant hills which are wanting in summer, and 
 which convey to one rightly organized the 
 keenest delight, and a refinement of enjoy- 
 ment that is scarcely sensuous, not at all 
 sentimental, and almost passing the intel- 
 lectual line into the spiritual. 
 
 I was speaking to Mandeville about this, 
 and he said that I was drawing it altogether 
 too fine ; that he experienced sensations of 
 pleasure in being out in almost all weathers ; 
 
104 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 that lie rather liked to breast a north-wind, 
 and that there was a certain inspiration in 
 sharp outlines and in a landscape in trim 
 winter-quarters, with stripped trees, and, as 
 it were, scudding through the season under 
 bare poles ; but that he must say that he 
 preferred the weather in which he could sit 
 on the fence by the wood-lot, with the spring 
 sun on his back, and hear the stir of the 
 leaves and the birds beginning their house- 
 keeping. 
 
 A very pretty idea for Mandeville ; and I 
 fear he is getting to have private thoughts 
 about the Young Lady. Mandeville natu- 
 rally likes the robustness and sparkle of 
 winter, and it has been a little suspicious to 
 hear him express the hope that we shall have 
 an early spring. 
 
 I wonder how many people there are in 
 New England who know the glory and in- 
 spiration of a winter walk just before sunset, 
 and that, too, not only on days of clear sky, 
 when the west is aflame with a rosy color, 
 which has no suggestion of languor or un- 
 satisfied longing in it, but on dull days, when 
 the sullen clouds hang about the horizon, full 
 of threats of storm and the terrors of the 
 gathering night. We are very busy with 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 105 
 
 our own affairs, but there is always some- 
 thing going on out-doors worth looking at ; 
 and there is seldom an hour before sunset 
 that has not some special attraction. And, 
 besides, it puts one in the mood for the cheer 
 and comfort of the open fire at home. 
 
 Probably if the people of New England 
 could have a plebiscitum on their weather, 
 they would vote against it, especially against 
 winter. Almost no one speaks well of win- 
 ter. And this suggests the idea that most 
 people here were either born in the wrong 
 place, or do not know what is best for them. 
 I doubt if these grumblers would be any bet- 
 ter satisfied, or would turn out as well, in 
 the tropics. Everybody knows our virtues, 
 
 — at least if they believe half we tell them, 
 
 — and for delicate beauty, that rare plant, 
 I should look among the girls of the New 
 England hills as confidently as anywhere, 
 and I have travelled as far south as New 
 Jersey, and west of the Genesee Valley. In- 
 deed, it would be easy to show that the par- 
 ents of the pretty girls in the West emi- 
 grated from New England. And yet — such 
 is the mystery of Providence — no one would 
 expect that one of the sweetest and most 
 delicate flowers that blooms, the trailing 
 
106 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitable 
 climate, and peep forth from the edge of a 
 snow-bank at that. 
 
 It seems unaccountable to a superficial ob- 
 server that the thousands of people who are 
 dissatisfied with their climate do not seek 
 a more congenial one — or stop grumbling. 
 The world is so small, and all parts of it are 
 so accessible, it has so many varieties of cli- 
 mate, that one could surely suit himself by 
 searching ; and, then, is it worth while to 
 waste our one short life in the midst of un- 
 pleasant surroundings and in a constant fric- 
 tion with that which is disagreeable? One 
 would suppose that people set down on this 
 little globe would seek places on it most 
 agreeable to themselves. It must be that 
 they are much more content with the climate 
 and country upon which they happen, by the 
 accident of their birth, than they pretend to 
 be. 
 
 III. 
 
 Home sympathies and charities are most 
 active in the winter. Coming in from my 
 late walk, — in fact driven in by a hurrying 
 north-wind that would brook no delay, a 
 wind that brought snow that did not seem to 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 107 
 
 fall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown 
 from polar fields, — I find the Mistress re- 
 turned from town, all in a glow of philan- 
 thropic excitement. 
 
 There has been a meeting of a woman's 
 association for Ameliorating the Condition 
 of somebody — here at home. Any one can 
 belong to it by paying a dollar, and for 
 twenty dollars one can become a life Amel- 
 iorator, — a sort of life assurance. The 
 Mistress, at the meeting, I believe, "sec- 
 onded the motion " several times, and is one 
 of the Vice-Presidents; and this family 
 honor makes me feel almost as if I were a 
 president of something myself. These little 
 distinctions are among the sweetest things in 
 life, and to see one's name officially printed 
 stimulates his charity, and is almost as satis- 
 factory as being the chairman of a committee 
 or the mover of a resolution. It is, I think, 
 fortunate, and not at all discreditable, that 
 our little vanity, which is reckoned among 
 our weaknesses, is thus made to contribute 
 to the activity of our nobler powers. What- 
 ever we may say, we all of us like distinc- 
 tion ; and probably there is no more subtle 
 flattery than that conveyed in the whisper, 
 " That 's he," " That 's she.'' 
 
108 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 There used to be a society for amelior- 
 ating the condition of the Jews ; but they 
 were found to be so much more adept than 
 other people in ameliorating their own con- 
 dition that I suppose it was given up. 
 Mandeville says that to his knowledge there 
 are a great many people who get up amel- 
 iorating enterprises merely to be conspicu- 
 ously busy in society, or to earn a little 
 something in a good cause. They seem to 
 think that the world owes them a living be- 
 cause they are philanthropists. In this 
 Mandeville does not speak with his usual 
 charity. It is evident that there are Jews, 
 and some Gentiles, whose condition needs 
 ameliorating, and if very little is really ac- 
 complished in the effort for them, it always 
 remains true that the charitable reap a ben- 
 efit to themselves. It is one of the beautiful 
 compensations of this life that no one can 
 sincerely try to help another without helping 
 himself. 
 
 Our Next-Door Neighbor. Why is it 
 that almost all philanthropists and reform- 
 ers are disagreeable ? 
 
 I ought to explain who our next-door 
 neighbor is. He is the person who comes 
 in without knocking, drops in in the most 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 109 
 
 natural way, as his wife does also, and not 
 seldom in time to take the after-dinner cup 
 of tea before the fire. Formal society begins 
 as soon as you lock your doors, and only ad- 
 mit visitors through the media of bells and 
 servants. It is lucky for us that our next- 
 door neighbor is honest. 
 
 The Parson. Why do you class reform- 
 ers and philanthropists together? Those 
 usually called reformers are not philanthro- 
 pists at all. They are agitators. Finding 
 the world disagreeable to themselves, they 
 wish to make it as unpleasant to others as 
 possible. 
 
 Mandeville. That's a noble view of 
 your fellow-men. 
 
 Oue Next Door. Well, granting the 
 distinction, why are both apt to be unpleas- 
 ant people to live with ? 
 
 The Parson. As if the unpleasant peo- 
 ple who won't mind their own business were 
 confined to the classes you mention ! Some 
 of the best people I know are philanthro- 
 pists, — I mean the genuine ones, and not 
 the uneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as 
 a means of living. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. It is not altogether 
 the not minding their own business. Nobody 
 
110 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 does that. The usual explanation is that 
 people with one idea are tedious. But that 
 is not all of it. For few persons have more 
 than one idea, — ministers, doctors, lawyers, 
 teachers, manufacturers, merchants, — they 
 all think the world they live in is the central 
 one. 
 
 Mandeville. And you might add au- 
 thors. To them nearly all the life of the 
 world is in letters, and I suppose they would 
 be astonished if they knew how little the 
 thoughts of the majority of people are occu- 
 pied with books, and with all that vast 
 thought-circulation which is the vital cur- 
 rent of the world to book-men. Newspapers 
 have reached their present power by becom- 
 ing unliterary, and reflecting all the inter- 
 ests of the world. 
 
 The Mistress. I have noticed one thing, 
 that the most popular persons in society are 
 those who take the world as it is, find the 
 least fault, and have no hobbies. They are 
 always wanted to dinner. 
 
 The Young Lady. And the other kind 
 always appear to me to want a dinner. 
 
 The Fire-Tekder. It seems to me that 
 the real reason why reformers and some 
 philanthropists are unpopular is that they 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. Ill 
 
 disturb our serenity and make us conscious 
 of our own short-comings. It is only now 
 and then that a whole people get a spasm of 
 reformatory fervor, of investigation and re- 
 generation. At other times they rather hate 
 those who disturb their quiet. 
 
 Our Next Dooe. Professional reform- 
 ers and philanthropists are insufferably con- 
 ceited and intolerant. 
 
 The Mistress. Everything depends upon 
 the spirit in which a reform or a scheme of 
 philanthropy is conducted. 
 
 Mandeville. I attended a protracted 
 convention of reformers of a certain evil, 
 once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner 
 with a tableful of them. It was one of those 
 country dinners accompanied with green tea. 
 Every one disagreed with every one else, 
 and you would n't wonder at it, if you had 
 seen them. They were people with whom 
 good food would n't agree. George Thomp- 
 son was expected at the convention, and I 
 remember that there was almost a cordiality 
 in the talk about him, until one sallow 
 brother casually mentioned that George took 
 snuff, when a chorus of deprecatory groans 
 went up from the table. One long-faced 
 maiden in spectacles, with purple ribbons in 
 
112 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 her hair, who drank five cups of tea by my 
 count, declared that she was perfectly dis- 
 gusted, and did n't want to hear him speak. 
 In the course of the meal the talk ran upon 
 the discipline of children, and how to ad- 
 minister punishment. I was quite taken by 
 the remark of a thin, dyspeptic man who 
 summed up the matter by growling out in 
 a harsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in 
 love ! " It sounded as if he had said, " Shoot 
 'em on the spot ! " 
 
 The Pakson. I supposed you would 
 say that he was a minister. There is an- 
 other thing about those people. I think 
 they are working against the course of na- 
 ture. Nature is entirely indifferent to any 
 reform. She perpetuates a fault as persist- 
 ently as a virtue. There 's a split in my 
 thumb-nail that has been scrupulously con- 
 tinued for many years, notwithstanding all 
 my efforts to make the nail resume its old 
 regularity. You see the same thing in 
 trees whose bark is cut, and in melons that 
 have had only one summer's intimacy with 
 squashes. The bad traits in character are 
 passed down from generation to generation 
 with as much care as the good ones. Nature, 
 unaided, never reforms anything. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 113 
 
 Mandeville. Is that the essence of 
 Calvinism ? 
 
 The Parson. Calvinism has n't any es- 
 sence, — it 's a fact. 
 
 Mandeville. When I was a boy, I 
 always associated Calvinism and calomel 
 together. I thought that homoeopathy — 
 similia, etc. — had done away with both of 
 them. 
 
 Our Next Door (rising). If you are 
 going into theology, I 'm off. 
 
 IV. 
 
 I fear we are not getting on much with 
 the joyousness of winter. In order to be 
 exhilarating it must be real winter. I have 
 noticed that the lower the thermometer sinks 
 the more fiercely the north-wind rages, and 
 the deeper the snow is the higher rise the 
 spirits of the community. The activity of 
 the " elements " has a great effect upon 
 country folk especially ; and it is a more 
 wholesome excitement than that caused by a 
 great conflagration. The abatement of a 
 snow-storm that grows to exceptional mag- 
 nitude is regretted, for there is always the 
 half -hope that this will be, since it has gone 
 
114 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 so far, the largest fall of snow ever known 
 in the region, burying out of sight the great 
 fall of 1808, the account of which is cir- 
 cumstantially and aggravatingly thrown in 
 our way annually upon the least provocation. 
 We all know how it reads : " Some said it 
 began at daylight, others that it set in after 
 sunrise ; but all agree that by eight o'clock 
 Friday morning it was snowing in heavy 
 masses that darkened the air." 
 
 The morning after we settled the five — 
 or is it seven ? — points of Calvinism, there 
 began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of 
 those wide-sweeping, careering storms that 
 may not much affect the city, but which 
 strongly impress the country imagination 
 with a sense of the personal qualities of the 
 weather, — power, persistency, fierceness, 
 and roaring exultation. Out-doors was ter- 
 rible to those who looked out of windows, 
 and heard the raging wind, and saw the 
 commotion in all the high tree-tops and the 
 writhing of the low evergreens, and could 
 not summon resolution to go forth and breast 
 and conquer the bluster. The sky was dark 
 with snow, which was not permitted to fall 
 peacefully like a blessed mantle, as it some* 
 times does, but was blown and rent and tossed 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 115 
 
 like the split canvas of a ship in a gale. 
 The world was taken possession of by the 
 demons of the air, who had their will of it. 
 There is a sort of fascination in snch a scene 
 equal to that of a tempest at sea, and with- 
 out its attendant haunting sense of peril ; 
 there is no fear that the house will founder 
 or dash against your neighbor's cottage, 
 which is dimly seen anchored across the 
 field ; at every thundering onset there is no 
 fear that the cook's galley will upset, or the 
 screw break loose and smash through the 
 side, and we are not in momently expecta- 
 tion of the tinkling of the little bell to " stop 
 her." The snow rises in drifting waves, and 
 the naked trees bend like strained masts ; 
 but so long as the window-blinds remain 
 fast, and the chimney-tops do not go, we 
 preserve an equal mind. Nothing more 
 serious can happen than the failure of the 
 butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, in- 
 deed, the little news-carrier should fail to 
 board us with the world's daily bulletin, or 
 our next-door neighbor should be deterred 
 from coming to sit by the blazing, excited 
 fire, and interchange the trifling, harmless 
 gossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion 
 on such a day is sweet, but the true friend 
 
116 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 who does brave the storm and come is wel- 
 comed with a sort of enthusiasm that his 
 arrival in pleasant weather would never ex- 
 cite. The snow-bound in their Arctic hulk 
 are glad to see even a wandering Esquimau. 
 
 On such a day I recall the great snow- 
 storms on the northern New England hills, 
 which lasted for a week with no cessation, 
 with no sunrise or sunset, and no observa- 
 tion at noon ; and the sky all the while dark 
 with the driving snow, and the whole world 
 full of the noise of the rioting Boreal forces ; 
 until the roads were obliterated, the fences 
 covered, and the snow was piled solidly above 
 the first-story windows of the farm-house on 
 one side, and drifted before the front door 
 so high that egress could only be had by 
 tunnelling the bank. 
 
 After such a battle and siege, when the 
 wind fell and the sun struggled out again, 
 the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, 
 and the scattered dwellings were not unlike 
 wrecks stranded by the tempest and half 
 buried in sand. But when the blue sky 
 again bent over all, the wide expanse of 
 snow sparkled like diamond-fields, and the 
 chimney signal-smokes could be seen, how 
 beautiful was the picture ! Then began the 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 117 
 
 stir abroad, and the efforts to open up com- 
 munication through roads, or fields, or wher- 
 ever paths could be broken, and the ways to 
 the meeting-house first of alL Then from 
 every house and hamlet the men turned out 
 with shovels, with the patient, lumbering 
 oxen yoked to the sleds, to break the roads, 
 driving into the deepest drifts, shovelling 
 and shouting as if the severe labor were a 
 holiday frolic, the courage and hilarity rising 
 with the difficulties encountered ; and relief 
 parties, meeting at length in the midst of the 
 wide white desolation, hailed each other as 
 chance explorers in new lands, and made the 
 whole country - side ring with the noise of 
 their congratulations. There was as much 
 excitement and healthy stirring of the blood 
 in it as in the Fourth of July, and perhaps 
 as much patriotism. The boy saw it in 
 dumb show from the distant, low farm-house 
 window, and wished he were a man. At 
 night there were great stories of achievement 
 told by the cavernous fireplace ; great lati- 
 tude was permitted in the estimation of the 
 size of particular drifts, but never any agree- 
 ment was reached as to the " depth on a 
 level." I have observed since that people 
 are quite as apt to agree upon the marvel" 
 
118 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 lous and the exceptional as upon simple 
 facts. 
 
 V. 
 
 By the firelight and the twilight^, the 
 Young Lady is finishing a letter to Herbert, 
 — writing it, literally, on her knees, trans- 
 forming thus the simple deed into an act of 
 devotion. Mandeville says that it is bad for 
 her eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his 
 eyes. He begins to doubt the wisdom of 
 reliance upon that worn apothegm about 
 absence conquering love. Memory has the 
 singular characteristic of recalling in a friend 
 absent, as in a journey long past, only that 
 which is agreeable. Mandeville begins to 
 wish he were in New South Wales. 
 
 I did intend to insert here a letter of Her- 
 bert's to the Young Lady, — obtained, I need 
 not say, honorably, as private letters which 
 get into print always are, — not to gratify a 
 vulgar curiosity, but to show how the most 
 unsentimental and cynical people are affected 
 by the master passion. But I cannot bring 
 myself to do it. Even in the interests of sci- 
 ence one has no right to make an autopsy of 
 two loving hearts, especially when they are 
 suffering under a late attack of the one agree- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 119 
 
 able epidemic. All the world loves a lover, 
 but it laughs at him none the less in his ex- 
 travagances. He loses his accustomed reti- 
 cence ; he has something of the martyr's wil- 
 lingness for publicity ; he would even like to 
 show the sincerity of his devotion by some 
 piece of open heroism. Why should he con- 
 ceal a discovery which has transformed the 
 world to him, a secret which explains all the 
 mysteries of nature and humanity? He is 
 in that ecstasy of mind which prompts those 
 who were never orators before to rise in an 
 experience-meeting and pour out a flood of 
 feeling in the tritest language and the most 
 conventional terms. I am not sure that Her- 
 bert, while in this glow, would be ashamed 
 of his letter in print, but this is one of the 
 cases where chancery would step in and pro- 
 tect one from himself by his next friend. 
 This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps 
 it is brutal to allude to it at all. 
 
 In truth, the letter would hardly be in- 
 teresting in print. Love has a marvellous 
 power of vivifying language and charging 
 the simplest words with the most tender 
 meaning, of restoring to them the power 
 they had when first coined. They are words 
 of fire to those two who know their secret, 
 
120 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 but not to others. It is generally admitted 
 that the best love-letters would not make 
 very good literature. "Dearest," begins 
 Herbert, in a burst of originality, felicitously 
 selecting a word whose exclusiveness shuts 
 out all the world but one, and which is a 
 whole letter, poem, confession, and creed, in 
 one breath. What a weight of meaning it 
 has to carry ! There may be beauty and 
 wit and grace and naturalness and even the 
 splendor of fortune elsewhere, but there is 
 one woman in the world whose sweet pres- 
 ence would be compensation for the loss of 
 all else. It is not to be reasoned about ; he 
 wants that one ; it is her plume dancing 
 down the sunny street that sets his heart 
 beating ; he knows her form among a thou- 
 sand, and follows her ; he longs to run after 
 her carriage, which the cruel coachman whirls 
 out of his sight. It is marvellous to him that 
 all the world does not want her too, and he 
 is in a panic when he thinks of it. And what 
 exquisite flattery is in that little word ad- 
 dressed to her, and with what sweet and 
 meek triumph she repeats it to herself, with 
 a feeling that is not altogether pity for those 
 who still stand and wait. To be chosen out 
 of all the available world, — it is almost as 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 121 
 
 much bliss as it is to choose. "All that 
 long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage 
 I thought of you every moment, and won- 
 dered what you were doing and how you 
 were looking just that moment, and I found 
 the occupation so charming that I was almost 
 sorry when the journey was ended." Not 
 much in that ! But I have no doubt the 
 Young Lady read it over and over, and 
 dwelt also upon every moment, and found in 
 it new proof of unshaken constancy, and had 
 in that and the like things in the letter a 
 sense of the sweetest communion. There is 
 nothing in this letter that we need dwell on 
 it, but I am convinced that the mail does not 
 carry any other letters so valuable as this 
 sort. 
 
 I suppose that the appearance of Herbert 
 in this new light unconsciously gave tone a 
 little to the evening's talk ; not that any- 
 body mentioned him, but Mandeville was 
 evidently generalizing from the qualities that 
 make one person admired by another to 
 those that win the love of mankind. 
 
 Mandeville. There seems to be some- 
 thing in some persons that wins them liking, 
 special or general, independent almost of 
 what they do or say. 
 
122 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 The Mistress. Why, everybody is liked 
 by some one. 
 
 Mandeville. I'm not sure of that. 
 There are those who are friendless, and 
 would be if they had endless acquaintances. 
 But, to take the case away from ordinary 
 examples, in which habit and a thousand 
 circumstances influence liking, what is it 
 that determines the world upon a perso- 
 nal regard for authors whom it has never 
 seen ? 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Probably it is the 
 spirit shown in their writings. 
 
 The Mistress. More likely it is a sort 
 of tradition ; I don't believe that the world 
 has a feeling of personal regard for any 
 author who was not loved by those who 
 knew him most intimately. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Which comes to the 
 same thing. The qualities, the spirit, that 
 got him the love of his acquaintances he put 
 into his books. 
 
 Mandeville. That does n't seem to me 
 sufficient. Shakespeare has put everything 
 into his plays and poems, swept the whole 
 range of human sympathies and passions, 
 and at times is inspired by the sweetest spirit 
 that ever man had. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 123 
 
 The Young Lady. No one has better 
 interpreted love. 
 
 Mandeville. Yet I apprehend that no 
 person living has any personal regard for 
 Shakespeare, or that his personality affects 
 many, — except they stand in Stratford 
 chnrch and feel a sort of awe at the thought 
 that the bones of the greatest poet are so 
 near them. 
 
 The Parson. I don't think the world 
 cares personally for any mere man or woman 
 dead for centuries. 
 
 Mandeville. But there is a difference. 
 I think there is still rather a warm feeling 
 for Socrates the man, independent of what 
 he said, which is little known. Homer's 
 works are certainly better known, but no 
 one cares personally for Homer any more 
 than for any other shade. 
 
 Our Next Door. Why not go back to 
 Moses ? We 've got the evening before us 
 for digging up people. 
 
 Mandeville. Moses is a very good il- 
 lustration. No name of antiquity is better 
 known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken 
 the same kind of popular liking that Soc- 
 rates does. 
 
 Our Next Door. Fudge ! You just get 
 
124 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 up in any lecture assembly and propose 
 three cheers for Socrates, and see where 
 you'll be. Mandeville ought to be a mis- 
 sionary, and read Robert Browning to the 
 Fijis. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. How do you ac- 
 count for the alleged personal regard for 
 Socrates? 
 
 The Parson. Because the world called 
 Christian is still more than half heathen. 
 
 Mandeyille. He was a plain man ; his 
 sympathies were with the people ; he had 
 what is roughly known as " horse-sense," 
 and he was homely. Franklin and Abraham 
 Lincoln belong to his class. They were all 
 philosophers of the shrewd sort, and they all 
 had humor. It was fortunate for Lincoln 
 that, with his other qualities, he was homely. 
 That was the last touching recommendation 
 to the popular heart. 
 
 The Mistress. Do you remember that 
 ugly brown-stone statue of St. Antonio by 
 the bridge in Sorrento? He must have 
 been a coarse saint, patron of pigs as he 
 was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or 
 the homely stone image of one, so loved by 
 the people. 
 
 Our Next Door. Ugliness being trump, 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 125 
 
 I wonder more people don't win. Mande- 
 ville, why don't you get up a " centenary " 
 of Socrates, and put up his statue in the 
 Central Park ? It would make that one of 
 Lincoln in Union Square look beautiful. 
 
 The Paeson. Oh, you '11 see that some 
 day, when they have a museum there illus- 
 trating the " Science of Religion." 
 
 The Fiee-Tendee. Doubtless, to go back 
 to what we were talking of, the world has a 
 fondness for some authors, and thinks of 
 them with an affectionate and half-pitying 
 familiarity ; and it may be that this grows 
 out of something in their lives quite as much 
 as anything in their writings. There seems 
 to be more disposition of personal liking to 
 Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are 
 dead, — a result that would hardly have 
 been predicted when the world was crying 
 over Little Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky 
 Sharp. 
 
 The Young Lady. What was that you 
 were telling about Charles Lamb, the other 
 day, Mandeville ? Is not the popular liking 
 for him somewhat independent of his writ- 
 ings? 
 
 Mandeville. He is a striking example 
 of an author who is loved. Very likely the 
 
126 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 remembrance of his tribulations has still 
 something to do with the tenderness felt for 
 him. He supported no dignity, and per- 
 mitted a familiarity which indicated no self- 
 appreciation of his real rank in the world of 
 letters. I have heard that his acquaintances 
 familiarly called him " Charley." 
 
 Our Next Door. It 's a relief to know 
 that ! Do you happen to know what Socrates 
 was called ? 
 
 Mandeville. I have seen people who 
 knew Lamb very well. One of them told 
 me, as illustrating his want of dignity, that 
 as he was going home late one night through 
 the nearly empty streets, he was met by a 
 roistering party who were making a night 
 of it from tavern to tavern. They fell upon 
 Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesi- 
 tating manner, and, hoisting him on their 
 shoulders, carried him off, singing as they 
 went. Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not 
 tell them who he was. When they were 
 tired of lugging him, they lifted him, with 
 much effort and difficulty, to the top of a 
 high wall, and left him there amid the 
 broken bottles, utterly unable to get down. 
 Lamb remained there philosophically in the 
 enjoyment of his novel adventure, until a 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 127 
 
 passing watchman rescued him from his 
 ridiculous situation. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. How did the story 
 get out ? 
 
 Mandeville. Oh, Lamb told all about 
 it next morning ; and when asked afterwards 
 why he did so, he replied that there was no 
 fun in it unless he told it. 
 
SIXTH STUDY. 
 I. 
 
 The King sat in the winter-house in the 
 ninth month, and there was a fire on the 
 hearth burning before him. . . . When Je- 
 hudi had read three or four leaves he cut it 
 with the penknife. 
 
 That seems to be a pleasant and home-like 
 picture from a not very remote period, — 
 less than twenty-five hundred years ago, and 
 many centuries after the fall of Troy. And 
 that was not so very long ago, for Thebes, in 
 the splendid streets of which Homer wan- 
 dered and sang to the kings when Memphis, 
 whose ruins are older than history, was its 
 younger rival, was twelve centuries old when 
 Paris ran away with Helen. 
 
 I am sorry that the original — and you 
 can usually do anything with the " original " 
 — does not bear me out in saying that it 
 was a pleasant picture. I should like to be- 
 lieve that Jehoiakim — for that was the sin- 
 gular name of the gentleman who sat by his 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 129 
 
 hearthstone — had just received the Memphis 
 " Palimpsest," fifteen days in advance of the 
 date of its publication, and that his secretary- 
 was reading to him that monthly, and cutting 
 its leaves as he read. I should like to have 
 seen it in that year when Thales was learn- 
 ing astronomy in Memphis, and Necho was 
 organizing his campaign against Carchemish. 
 If Jehoiakim took the " Attic Quarterly," he 
 might have read its comments on the "banish- 
 ment of the Alcmseonidse, and its gibes at 
 Solon for his prohibitory laws, forbidding 
 the sale of unguents, limiting the luxury of 
 dress, and interfering with the sacred rights 
 of mourners to passionately bewail the dead 
 in the Asiatic manner; the same number 
 being enriched with contributions from two 
 rising poets, — a lyric of love by Sappho, 
 and an ode sent by Anacreon from Teos, 
 with an editorial note explaining that the 
 Maga was not responsible for the sentiments 
 of the poem. 
 
 But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before 
 the backlog in his winter-house had other 
 things to think of. For Nebuchadnezzar was 
 coming that way with the chariots and horses 
 of Babylon and a great crowd of marauders ; 
 and the king had not even the poor choice 
 / 
 
130 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 whether he would be the vassal of the Chal- 
 dean or of the Egyptian. To us, this is only 
 a ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors 
 stalking across vast historic spaces. It was 
 no doubt a vulgar enough scene of "war and 
 plunder. The great captains of that age 
 went about to harry each other's territories 
 and spoil each other's cities very much as we 
 do nowadays, and for similar reasons ; Napo- 
 leon the Great in Moscow, Napoleon the 
 Small in Italy, Kaiser William in Paris, 
 Great Scott in Mexico! Men have not 
 changed much. 
 
 — The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-gar- 
 den in the third month ; there was a fire on 
 the hearth burning before him. He cut the 
 leaves of " Scribner's Monthly " with his 
 penknife, and thought of Jehoiakim. 
 
 That seems as real as the other. In the 
 garden, which is a room of the house, the 
 tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about 
 the fountain ; the sun, streaming through the 
 glass, illumines the many-hued flowers. I 
 wonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy- 
 bug on his passion-vine, and if he had any 
 way of removing the scale -bug from his 
 African acacia? One would like to know, 
 too, how he treated the red-spider on the Le 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 131 
 
 Marque rose. The record is silent. I do 
 not doubt lie had all these insects in his win- 
 ter-garden, and the aphidae besides ; and he 
 could not smoke them out with tobacco, for 
 the world had not yet fallen into its second 
 stage of the knowledge of good and evil by 
 eating the forbidden tobacco-plant. 
 
 I confess that this little picture of a fire 
 on the hearth so many centuries ago helps 
 to make real and interesting to me that 
 somewhat misty past. No doubt the lotus 
 and the acanthus from the Nile grew in that 
 winter -house, and perhaps Jehoiakim at- 
 tempted — the most difficult thing in the 
 world — the cultivation of the wild-flowers 
 from Lebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was in- 
 terested also, as I am through this ancient 
 fireplace, — which is a sort of domestic win- 
 dow into the ancient world, — in the loves 
 of Bernice and Abaces at the court of 
 the Pharaohs. I see that it is the same 
 thing as the sentiment — perhaps it is the 
 shrinking which every soul that is a soul 
 has, sooner or later, from isolation — which 
 grew up between Herbert and the Young 
 Lady Staying With Us. Jeremiah used to 
 come in to that fireside very much as the 
 Parson does to ours. The Parson, to be 
 
132 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and 
 is the chorus in the play that sings the ever- 
 lasting ai ai of "I told you so ! " Yet we 
 like the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter 
 herb that makes the pottage wholesome. I 
 should rather, ten times over, dispense with 
 the flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the 
 grumblers. But the grumblers are of two 
 sorts, the healthful-toned and the winners. 
 There are makers of beer who substitute for 
 the clean bitter of the hops some deleterious 
 drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by 
 some cloying sweet. There is nothing of 
 this sickish drug in the Parson's talk, nor 
 was there in that of Jeremiah. I sometimes 
 think there is scarcely enough of this whole- 
 some tonic in modern society. The Parson 
 says he never would give a child sugar-coated 
 pills. Mandeville says he never would give 
 them any. After all, you cannot help liking 
 Mandeville. 
 
 II. 
 
 We were talking of this late news from 
 Jerusalem. The Fire-Tender was saying that 
 it is astonishing how much is telegraphed us 
 from the East that is not half so interesting. 
 He was at a loss philosophically to account 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 133 
 
 for the fact that the world is so eager to 
 know the news of yesterday which is unim- 
 portant, and so indifferent to that of the day 
 before which is of some moment. 
 
 Mandeville. I suspect that it arises 
 from the want of imagination. People need 
 to touch the facts, and nearness in time is 
 contiguity. It would excite no interest to 
 bulletin the last siege of Jerusalem in a vil- 
 lage where the event was unknown, if the 
 date was appended ; and yet the account of 
 it is incomparably more exciting than that 
 of the siege of Metz. 
 
 Oub Next Dook. The daily news is a 
 necessity. I cannot get along without my 
 morning paper. The other morning I took 
 it up, and was absorbed in the telegraphic 
 columns for an hour nearly. I thoroughly 
 enjoyed the feeling of immediate contact 
 with all the world of yesterday, until I read 
 among the minor items that Patrick Dona- 
 hue, of the city of New York, died of a sun- 
 stroke. If he had frozen to death, I should 
 have enjoyed that ; but to die of sunstroke 
 in February seemed inappropriate, and I 
 turned to the date of the paper. When I 
 found it was printed in July, I need not say 
 that I lost all interest in it, though why the 
 
134 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 trivialities and crimes and accidents, relating 
 to people I never knew, were not as good 
 six months after date as twelve hours, I can- 
 not say. 
 
 The Pike-Tender. You know that in 
 Concord the latest news, except a remark or 
 two by Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas. 
 I believe the Rig- Veda is read at the break- 
 fast-table instead of the Boston journals. 
 
 The Parson. I know it is read after- 
 ward instead of the Bible. 
 
 Mandeville. That is only because it is 
 supposed to be older. I have understood 
 that the Bible is very well spoken of there, 
 but it is not antiquated enough to be an 
 authority. 
 
 Our Next Door. There was a project 
 on foot to put it into the circulating library, 
 but the title New in the second part was 
 considered objectionable. 
 
 Herbert. Well, I have a good deal of 
 sympathy with Concord as to the news. 
 We are fed on a daily diet of trivial events 
 and gossip, of the unfruitful sayings of 
 thoughtless men and women, until our men- 
 tal digestion is seriously impaired ; the day 
 will come when no one will be able to sit 
 down to a thoughtful, well-wrought book 
 and assimilate its contents. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 135 
 
 The Mistress. I doubt if a daily news- 
 paper is a necessity, in the higher sense of 
 the word. 
 
 The Parson. Nobody supposes it is to 
 women, — that is, if they can see each other. 
 
 The Mistress. Don't interrupt, unless 
 you have something to say ; though I should 
 like to know how much gossip there is afloat 
 that the minister does not know. The news- 
 paper may be needed in society, but how 
 quickly it drops out of mind when one goes 
 beyond the bounds of what is called civiliza- 
 tion. You remember when we were in the 
 depths of the woods, last summer, how diffi- 
 cult it was to get up any interest in the files 
 of late papers that reached us, and how un- 
 real all the struggle and turmoil of the world 
 seemed. We stood apart) and could esti- 
 mate things at their true value. 
 
 The Young Lady. Yes, that was real 
 life. I never tired of the guide's stories; 
 there was some interest in the intelligence 
 that a deer had been down to eat the lily- 
 pads at the foot of the lake the night before ; 
 that a bear's track was seen on the trail we 
 crossed that day ; even Mandeville's fish- 
 stories had a certain air of probability ; and 
 how to roast a trout in the ashes and serve 
 
136 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 him hot and juicy and clean, and how to 
 cook soup and prepare coffee and heat dish- 
 water in one tin-pail, were vital problems. 
 
 The Pakson. You would have had no 
 such problems at home. Why will people 
 go so far to put themselves to such inconve- 
 nience ? I hate the woods. Isolation breeds 
 conceit ; there are no people so conceited as 
 those who dwell in remote wildernesses and 
 live mostly alone. 
 
 The Young Lady. For my part, I feel 
 humble in the presence of mountains, and in 
 the vast stretches of the wilderness. 
 
 The Parson. I'll be bound a woman 
 would feel just as nobody would expect her 
 to feel, under given circumstances. 
 
 Mandeville. I think the reason why 
 the newspaper and the world it carries take 
 no hold of us in the wilderness is that we 
 become a kind of vegetable ourselves when 
 we go there. I have often attempted to im- 
 prove my mind in the woods with good solid 
 books. You might as well offer a bunch of 
 celery to an oyster. The mind goes to sleep : 
 the senses and the instincts wake up. The 
 best I can do when it rains, or the trout 
 won't bite, is to read Dumas's novels. Their 
 ingenuity will almost keep a man awake 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 137 
 
 after supper, by the camp-fire. And there 
 is a kind of unity about them that I like ; 
 the history is as good as the morality. 
 
 Our Next Door. I always wondered 
 where Mandeville got his historical facts. 
 
 The Mistress. Mandeville misrepresents 
 himself in the woods. I heard him one 
 night repeat "The Vision of Sir Laun- 
 fal" — 
 
 (The Fire-Tender. Which comes very 
 near being our best poem.) 
 — as we were crossing the lake, and the 
 guides became so absorbed in it that they 
 forgot to paddle, and sat listening with open 
 mouths, as if it had been a panther story. 
 
 The Parson. Mandeville likes to show 
 off well enough. I heard that he related to 
 a woods boy up there the whole of the Siege 
 of Troy. The boy was very much inter- 
 ested, and said " there 'd been a man up 
 there that spring from Troy, looking up 
 timber." Mandeville always carries the 
 news when he goes into the country. 
 
 Mandeville. I 'm going to take the 
 Parson's sermon on Jonah next summer; 
 it 's the nearest to anything like news we 've 
 had from his pulpit in ten years. But, seri- 
 ously, the boy was very well informed. He 'd 
 
138 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 heard of Albany; his father took in the 
 Weekly Tribune, and he had a partial con- 
 ception of Horace Greeley. 
 
 Our Next Door. I never went so far 
 out of the world in America yet that the 
 name of Horace Greeley did n't rise up be- 
 fore me. One of the first questions asked 
 by any camp-fire is, " Did ye ever see Hor- 
 ace?" 
 
 Herbert. Which shows the power of 
 the press again. But I have often remarked 
 how little real conception of the moving 
 world, as it is, people in remote regions get 
 from the newspaper. It needs to be read in 
 the midst of events. A chip cast ashore in 
 a refluent eddy tells no tale of the force and 
 swiftness of the current. 
 
 Our Next Door. I don't exactly get 
 the drift of that last remark ; but I rather 
 like a remark that I can't understand ; like 
 the landlady's indigestible bread, it stays by 
 you. 
 
 Herbert. I see that I must talk in 
 words of one syllable. The newspaper has 
 little effect upon the remote country mind, 
 because the remote country mind is inter- 
 ested in a very limited number of things. 
 Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 139 
 
 The most accomplished scholar will be the 
 butt of all the guides in the woods, because 
 he cannot follow a trail that would puzzle a 
 sable (saple the trappers call it). 
 
 The Parson. It 's enough to read the 
 summer letters that people write to the 
 newspapers from the country and the woods. 
 Isolated from the activity of the world, they 
 come to think that the little adventures of 
 their stupid days and nights are important. 
 Talk about that being real life ! Compare 
 the letters such people write with the other 
 contents of the newspaper, and you will see 
 which life is real. That 's one reason I hate 
 to have summer come, — the country letters 
 set in. 
 
 The Misteess. I should like to see 
 something the Parson does n't hate to have 
 come. 
 
 Mandeville. Except his quarter's sal- 
 ary, and the meeting of the American Board. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. I don't see that we 
 are getting any nearer the solution of the 
 original question. The world is evidently 
 interested in events simply because they are 
 recent. 
 
 Our Next Door. I have a theory that 
 a newspaper might be published at little 
 
140 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of 
 years before, only altering the dates ; just 
 as the Parson preaches over his sermons. 
 
 The Fire - Tender. It 's evident we 
 must have a higher order of news-gatherers. 
 It has come to this, that the newspaper fur- 
 nishes thought-material for all the world, 
 actually prescribes from day to day the 
 themes the world shall think on and talk 
 about. The occupation of news-gathering 
 becomes, therefore, the most important. 
 When you think of it, it is astonishing that 
 this department should not be in the hands 
 of the ablest men, accomplished scholars, 
 philosophical observers, discriminating se- 
 lectors of the news of the world that is 
 worth thinking over and talking about. 
 The editorial comments frequently are able 
 enough, but is it worth while keeping an ex- 
 pensive mill going to grind chaff ? I some- 
 times wonder, as I open my morning paper, 
 if nothing did happen in the twenty-four 
 hours except crimes, accidents, defalcations, 
 deaths of unknown loafers, robberies, mon- 
 strous births, — say about the level of police- 
 court news. 
 
 Our Next Door. I have even noticed 
 that murders have deteriorated ; they are 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 141 
 
 not so high-toned and mysterious as they 
 used to be. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. It is true that the 
 newspapers have improved vastly within the 
 last decade. 
 
 Herbert. I think, for one, that they are 
 very much above the level of the ordinary 
 gossip of the country. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. But I am tired of 
 having the under- world still occupy so much 
 room in the newspapers. The reporters are 
 rather more alert for a dog-fight than a phil- 
 ological convention. It must be that the 
 good deeds of the world outnumber the bad 
 in any given day; and what a good reflex 
 action it would have on society if they could 
 be more fully reported than the bad ! I sup- 
 pose the Parson would call this the Enthusi- 
 asm of Humanity. 
 
 The Parson. You'll see how far you 
 can lift yourself up by your boot- straps. 
 
 Herbert. I wonder what influence on 
 the quality (I say nothing of quantity) of 
 news the coming of women into the report- 
 er's and editor's work will have. 
 
 Our Next Door. There are the baby- 
 shows ; they make cheerful reading. 
 
 The Mistress. All of them got up by 
 
142 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 speculating men, who impose upon the vanity 
 of weak women. 
 
 Herbert. I think women reporters are 
 more given to personal details and gossip 
 than the men. When I read the Washing- 
 ton correspondence I am proud of my coun- 
 try, to see how many Apollo Belvederes, 
 Adonises, how much marble brow and pier- 
 cing eye and hyacmthine locks, we have in 
 the two houses of Congress. 
 
 The Young Lady. That 's simply be- 
 cause women understand the personal weak- 
 ness of men ; they have a long score of per- 
 sonal flattery to pay off too. 
 
 Mandeville. I think women will bring 
 in elements of brightness, picturesqueness, 
 and purity very much needed. Women have 
 a power of investing simple ordinary things 
 with a charm ; men are bungling narrators 
 compared with them. 
 
 The Parson. The mistake they make is 
 in trying to write, and especially to " stump- 
 speak," like men ; next to an effeminate man 
 there is nothing so disagreeable as a man- 
 nish woman. 
 
 Herbert. I heard one once address a 
 legislative committee. The knowing air, the 
 familiar, jocular, smart manner, the nodding 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 143 
 
 and winking innuendoes, supposed to be 
 those of a man " up to snuff " and aufait 
 in political wiles, were inexpressibly comical. 
 And yet the exhibition was pathetic, for it 
 had the suggestive vulgarity of a woman in 
 man's clothes. The imitation is always a 
 dreary failure. 
 
 The Mistress. Such women are the rare 
 exceptions. I am ready to defend my sex ; 
 but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in 
 one. 
 
 The Fire -Tender. I have great hope 
 that women will bring into the newspaper 
 an elevating influence ; the common and 
 sweet life of society is much better fitted to 
 entertain and instruct us than the excep- 
 tional and extravagant. I confess (saving 
 the Mistress's presence) that the evening 
 talk over the dessert at dinner is much more 
 entertaining and piquant than the morning 
 paper, and often as important. 
 
 The Mistress. I think the subject had 
 better be changed. 
 
 Mandeville. The person, not the sub- 
 ject. There is no entertainment so full of 
 quiet pleasure as the hearing a lady of cul- 
 tivation and refinement relate her day's ex- 
 perience in her daily rounds of calls, chari- 
 
144 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 table visits, shopping, errands of relief and 
 condolence. The evening budget is better 
 than the finance minister's. 
 
 Our Next Door. That 's even so. My 
 wife will pick up more news in six hours 
 than I can get in a week, and I 'm fond of 
 news. 
 
 Mandeville. I don't mean gossip, by 
 any means, or scandal. A woman of culture 
 skims over that like a bird, never touching 
 it with the tip of a wing. What she brings 
 home is the freshness and brightness of life. 
 She touches everything so daintily, she hits 
 off a character in a sentence, she gives the 
 pith of a dialogue without tediousness, she 
 mimics without vulgarity ; her narration 
 sparkles, but it does n't sting. The picture 
 of her day is full of vivacity, and it gives 
 new value and freshness to common things. 
 If we could only have on the stage such ac- 
 tresses as we have in the drawing-room ! 
 
 The Fire-Tender. We want something 
 more of this grace, sprightliness, and harm- 
 less play of the finer life of society in the 
 newspaper. 
 
 Our Next Door. I wonder Mandeville 
 does n't marry, and become a permanent sub- 
 scriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper, 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 145 
 
 The Young Lady. Perhaps he does not 
 relish the idea of being unable to stop his 
 subscription. 
 
 Oue Next Dook. Parson, won't you 
 please punch that fire, and give us more 
 blaze ? We are getting into the darkness of 
 socialism. 
 
 Hi- 
 Herbert returned to us in March. The 
 Young Lady was spending the winter with 
 us, and March, in spite of the calendar, 
 turned out to be a winter month. It usually 
 is in New England, and April too, for that 
 matter. And I cannot say it is unfortunate 
 for us. There are so many topics to be 
 turned over and settled at our fireside that 
 a winter of ordinary length would make lit- 
 tle impression on the list. The fireside is, 
 after all, a sort of private court of chancery, 
 where nothing ever does come to a final de- 
 cision. The chief effect of talk on any sub- 
 ject is to strengthen one's own opinions, and, 
 in fact, one never knows exactly what he 
 does believe until he is warmed into convic- 
 tion by the heat of attack and defence. A 
 man left to himself drifts about like a boat 
 on a calm lake ; it is only when the wind 
 blows that the boat goes anywhere. 
 
146 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Herbert said lie had been dipping into the 
 recent novels written by women, here and 
 there, with a view to noting the effect upon 
 literature of this sudden and rather over- 
 whelming accession to it. There was a good 
 deal of talk about it evening after evening, 
 off and on, and I can only undertake to set 
 down fragments of it. 
 
 Herbert. I should say that the distin- 
 guishing feature of the literature of this day 
 is the prominence women have in its produc- 
 tion. They figure in most of the magazines, 
 though very rarely in the scholarly and crit- 
 ical reviews, and in thousands of newspa- 
 pers ; to them we are indebted for the oceans 
 of Sunday-school books, and they write the 
 majority of the novels, the serial stories, and 
 they mainly pour out the watery flood of 
 tales in the weekly papers. Whether this is 
 to result in more good than evil it is impos- 
 sible yet to say, and perhaps it would be un- 
 just to say, until this generation has worked 
 off its froth, and women settle down to artis- 
 tic, conscientious labor in literature. 
 
 The Mistress. You don't mean to say 
 that George Eliot, and Mrs. Gaskell, and 
 George Sand, and Mrs. Browning before her 
 marriage and severe attack of spiritism, are 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 147 
 
 less true to art than contemporary men nov- 
 elists and poets. 
 
 Herbert. You name some exceptions 
 that show the bright side of the picture, not 
 only for the present, but for the future. 
 Perhaps genius has no sex ; but ordinary 
 talent has. I refer to the great body of 
 novels, which you would know by internal 
 evidence were written by women. They are 
 of two sorts : the domestic story, entirely 
 unidealized, and as flavorless as water-gruel ; 
 and the spiced novel, generally immoral in 
 tendency, in which the social problems are 
 handled, unhappy marriages, affinity and pas- 
 sional attraction, bigamy, and the violation 
 of the seventh commandment. These sub- 
 jects are treated in the rawest manner, with- 
 out any settled ethics, with little discrimina- 
 tion of eternal right and wrong, and with 
 very little sense of responsibility for what is 
 set forth. Many of these novels are merely 
 the blind outbursts of a nature impatient of 
 restraint and the conventionalities of society, 
 and are as chaotic as the untrained minds 
 that produce them. 
 
 Mandeyille. Don't you think these nov- 
 els fairly represent a social condition of un- 
 rest and upheaval ? 
 
148 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Herbert. Very likely ; and they help 
 to create and spread abroad the discontent 
 they describe. Stories of bigamy (some- 
 times disguised by divorce), of unhappy 
 marriages, where the injured wife, through 
 an entire volume, is on the brink of falling 
 into the arms of a sneaking lover, until 
 death kindly removes the obstacle, and the 
 two souls, who were born for each other, but 
 got separated in the cradle, melt and mingle 
 into one in the last chapter, are not health- 
 ful reading for maids or mothers. 
 
 The Mistress. Or men. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. The most disagree- 
 able object to me in modern literature is the 
 man the women novelists have introduced as 
 the leading character ; the women who come 
 in contact with him seem to be fascinated by 
 his disdainful mien, his giant strength, and 
 his brutal manner. He is broad across the 
 shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as lithe as a 
 cat ; has an ugly scar across his right cheek ; 
 has been in the four quarters of the globe ; 
 knows seventeen languages ; had a harem in 
 Turkey and a Fayaway in the Marquesas ; 
 can be as polished as Bayard in the draw- 
 ing-room, but is as gloomy as Conrad in the 
 library ; has a terrible eye and a withering 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 149 
 
 glance, but can be instantly subdued by a 
 woman's hand, if it is not bis wife's ; and 
 through all his morose and vicious career 
 has carried a heart as pure as a violet. 
 
 The Mistress. Don't you think the 
 Count of Monte Cristo is the elder brother 
 of Rochester ? 
 
 The Fire-Tender. One is a mere hero 
 of romance ; the other is meant for a real 
 man. 
 
 Mandeville. I don't see that the men 
 novel-writers are better than the women. 
 
 Herbert. That 's not the question ; but 
 what are women who write so large a pro- 
 portion of the current stories bringing into 
 literature ? Aside from the question of mor- 
 als, and the absolutely demoralizing manner 
 of treating social questions, most of their 
 stories are vapid and weak beyond expres- 
 sion, and are slovenly in composition, show- 
 ing neither study, training, nor mental dis- 
 cipline. 
 
 The Mistress. Considering that women 
 have been shut out from the training of the 
 universities, and have few opportunities for 
 the wide observation that men enjoy, is n't it 
 pretty well that the foremost living writers 
 of fiction are women ? 
 
150 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Herbert. You can say that for the mo- 
 ment, since Thackeray and Dickens have 
 just died. But it does not affect the general 
 estimate. We are inundated with a flood 
 of weak writing. Take the Sunday-school 
 literature, largely the product of women ; it 
 hasn't as much character as a dried-apple 
 pie. I don't know what we are coming to if 
 the presses keep on running. 
 
 Our Next Door. We are living, we 
 are dwelling, in a grand and awful time ; 
 I 'm glad I don't write novels. 
 
 The Parson. So am I. 
 
 Our Next Door. I tried a Sunday- 
 school book once : but I made the good boy 
 end in the poor-house, and the bad boy go to 
 Congress ; and the publisher said it would 
 n't do, the public would n't stand that sort 
 of thing. Nobody but the good go to Con- 
 gress. 
 
 The Mistress. Herbert, what do you 
 think women are good for ? 
 
 Our Next Door. That 's a poser. 
 
 Herbert. Well, I think they are in a 
 tentative state as to literature, and we can- 
 not yet tell what they will do. Some of our 
 most brilliant books of travel, correspon- 
 dence, and writing on topics in which their 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 151 
 
 sympathies have warmly interested them are 
 by women. Some of them are also strong 
 writers in the daily journals. 
 
 Mandeville. I 'm not sure there 's any- 
 thing a woman cannot do as well as a man, 
 if she sets her heart on it. 
 
 The Parson. That 's because she 's no 
 conscience. 
 
 Chorus. Oh, Parson ! 
 
 The Parson. Well, it doesn't trouble 
 her, if she wants to do anything. She looks 
 at the end, not the means. A woman, set 
 on anything, will walk right through the 
 moral crockery without wincing. She 'd be 
 a great deal more unscrupulous in politics 
 than the average man. Did you ever see 
 a female lobbyist ? Or a criminal ? It is 
 Lady Macbeth who does not falter. Don't 
 raise your hands at me ! The sweetest an- 
 gel or the coolest devil is a woman. I see 
 in some of the modern novels we have been 
 talking of the same unscrupulous daring, a 
 blindness to moral distinctions, a constant 
 exaltation of a passion into a virtue, an 
 entire disregard of the immutable laws on 
 which the family and society rest. And you 
 ask lawyers and trustees how scrupulous 
 women are in business transactions ! 
 
152 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. Women are often 
 ignorant of affairs, and, besides, they may 
 have a notion often that a woman ought to 
 be privileged more than a man in business 
 matters ; but I tell you, as a rule, that if 
 men would consult their wives, they would 
 go a deal straighter in business operations 
 than they do go. 
 
 The Parson. We are all poor sinners. 
 But I 've another indictment against the 
 women writers. We get no good old-fash- 
 ioned love stories from them. It 's either a 
 quarrel of discordant natures — one a pan- 
 ther and the other a polar bear — for court- 
 ship, until one of them is crippled by a rail- 
 way accident ; or a long wrangle of married 
 life between two unpleasant people, who can 
 neither live comfortably together nor apart. 
 I suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing, 
 with all its torturing and delightful uncer- 
 tainty, still goes on in the world ; and I have 
 no doubt that the majority of married peo- 
 ple live more happily than the unmarried. 
 But it 's easier to find a dodo than a new 
 and good love-story. 
 
 Mandeville. I suppose the old style of 
 plot is exhausted. Everything in man and 
 outside of him has been turned over so often 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 153 
 
 that I should think the novelists would cease 
 simply from want of material. 
 
 The Pakson. Plots are no more ex- 
 hausted than men are. Every man is a new 
 creation, and combinations are simply end- 
 less. Even if we did not have new material 
 in the daily change of society, and there 
 were only a fixed number of incidents and 
 characters in life, invention could not be ex- 
 hausted on them. I amuse myself some- 
 times with my kaleidoscope, but I can never 
 reproduce a figure. No, no. I cannot say 
 that you may not exhaust everything else : 
 we may get all the secrets of a nature into a 
 book by and by, but the novel is immortal, 
 for it deals with men. 
 
 The Parson's vehemence came very near 
 carrying him into a sermon ; and as nobody 
 has the privilege of replying to his sermons, 
 so none of the circle made any reply now. 
 
 Our Next Door mumbled something about 
 his hair standing on end, to hear a minister 
 defending the novel ; but it did not interrupt 
 the general silence. Silence is unnoticed 
 when people sit before a fire; it would be 
 intolerable if they sat and looked at each 
 other. 
 
 The wind had risen during the evening, 
 
154 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 and Mandeville remarked, as they rose to 
 go, that it had a spring sound in it, but it 
 was as cold as winter. The Mistress said 
 she heard a bird that morning singing in 
 the sun ; it was a winter bird, but it sang a 
 spring song. 
 
SEVENTH STUDY. 
 
 We have been much interested in what is 
 called the Gothic revival. We have spent 
 I don't know how many evenings in looking 
 over Herbert's plans for a cottage, and have 
 been amused with his vain efforts to cover 
 with Gothic roofs the vast number of large 
 rooms which the Young Lady draws in her 
 sketch of a small house. 
 
 I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is 
 capable of infinite modification, so that every 
 house built in that style may be as different 
 from every other house as one tree is from 
 every other, can be adapted to our modern 
 uses, and will be, when artists catch its 
 spirit instead of merely copying its old 
 forms. But just now we are taking the Gothic 
 very literally, as we took the Greek at one 
 time, or as we should probably have taken 
 the Saracenic, if the Moors had not been 
 colored. Not even the cholera is so conta- 
 gious in this country as a style of architecture 
 which we happen to catch ; the country is 
 
156 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 just now broken out all over with the Man- 
 sard-roof epidemic. 
 
 And in secular architecture we do not 
 study what is adapted to our climate any 
 more than in ecclesiastic architecture we 
 adopt that which is suited to our religion. 
 
 We are building a great many costly 
 churches here and there, we Protestants, and 
 as the most of them are ill adapted to our 
 forms of worship, it may be necessary and 
 best for us to change our religion in order to 
 save our investments. I am aware that this 
 would be a grave step, and we should not 
 hasten to throw overboard Luther and the 
 right of private judgment without reflec- 
 tion. And yet, if it is necessary to revive 
 the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not 
 in its spirit (that we nowhere do), but in 
 the form which served another age and an- 
 other faith, and if, as it appears, we have 
 already a great deal of money invested in 
 this reproduction, it may be more prudent to 
 go forward than to go back. The question 
 is, " Cannot one easier change his creed than 
 his pew ? " 
 
 I occupy a seat in church which is an ad- 
 mirable one for reflection, but I cannot see 
 or hear much that is going on in what we 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 157 
 
 like to call the apse. There is a splendid 
 stone pillar, a clustered column, right in 
 front of me, and I am as much protected 
 from the minister as Old Put's troops were 
 from the British, behind the stone wall at 
 Bunker's Hill. I can hear his voice occa- 
 sionally wandering round in the arches over- 
 head, and I recognize the tone, because he is 
 a friend of mine and an excellent man, but 
 what he is saying I can very seldom make 
 out. If there was any incense burning I 
 could smell it, and that would be something. 
 I rather like the smell of incense, and it has 
 its holy associations. But there is no smell 
 in our church, except of bad air, — for there 
 is no provision for ventilation in the splen- 
 did and costly edifice. The reproduction of 
 the old Gothic is so complete that the build- 
 ers even seem to have brought over the an- 
 cient air from one of the churches of the 
 Middle Ages, — you would declare it had 
 n't been changed in two centuries. 
 
 I am expected to fix my attention during 
 the service upon one man, who stands in the 
 centre of the apse and has a sounding-board 
 behind him in order to throw his voice out 
 of the sacred semicircular space (where the 
 altar used to stand, but now the sounding* 
 
158 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 board takes the place of the altar) and scat- 
 ter it over the congregation at large, and 
 send it echoing up in the groined roof. I 
 always like to hear a minister who is unfa- 
 miliar with the house, and who has a loud 
 voice, try to fill the edifice. The more he 
 roars and gives himself with vehemence to 
 the effort, the more the building roars in in- 
 distinguishable noise and hubbub. By the 
 time he has said (to suppose a case), " The 
 Lord is in his holy temple," and has passed 
 on to say, " let all the earth keep silence," 
 the building is repeating " The Lord is in 
 his holy temple " from half a dozen different 
 angles and altitudes, rolling it and growling 
 it, and is not keeping silence at all. A man 
 who understands it waits until the house has 
 had its say, and has digested one passage, 
 before he launches another into the vast, 
 echoing spaces. I am expected, as I said, 
 to fix my eye and mind on the minister, the 
 central point of the service. But the pillar 
 hides him. Now if there were several minis- 
 ters in the church, dressed in such gorgeous 
 colors that I could see them at the distance 
 from the apse in which my limited income 
 compels me to sit, and candles were burning, 
 and censers were swinging, and the platform 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 159 
 
 was full of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous 
 ritual worship, and a bell rang to tell me the 
 holy moments, I should not mind the pillar 
 at all. I should sit there, like any other 
 Goth, and enjoy it. But, as I have said, the 
 pastor is a friend of mine, and I like to look 
 at him on Sunday, and hear what he says, 
 for he always says something worth hearing. 
 I am on such terms with him, indeed we all 
 are, that it would be pleasant to have the 
 service of a little more social nature, and 
 more human. When we put him away off 
 in the apse, and set him up for a Goth, and 
 then seat ourselves at a distance, scattered 
 about among the pillars, the whole thing 
 seems to me a trifle unnatural. Though I 
 do not mean to say that the congregations 
 do not " enjoy their religion " in their splen- 
 did edifices which cost so much money and 
 are really so beautiful. 
 
 A good many people have the idea, so it 
 seems, that Gothic architecture and Chris- 
 tianity are essentially one and the same 
 thing ; just as many regard it as an act of 
 piety to work an altar cloth or to cushion a 
 pulpit. It may be, and it may not be. 
 
 Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us 
 a valuable religious experience, bringing out 
 
160 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 many of the Christian virtues. It may have 
 had its origin in pride, but it is all being 
 overruled for our good. Of course I need 
 n't explain that it is the thirteenth-century 
 ecclesiastic Gothic that is epidemic in this 
 country ; and I think it has attacked the 
 Congregational and the other non - ritual 
 churches more violently than any others. 
 We have had it here in its most beautiful 
 and dangerous forms. I believe we are 
 pretty much all of us supplied with a Gothic 
 church now. Such has been the enthusiasm 
 in this devout direction that I should not be 
 surprised to see our rich private citizens put 
 ting up Gothic churches for their individual 
 amusement and sanctification. As the day 
 will probably come when every man in Hart- 
 ford will live in his own mammoth, five-story 
 granite insurance building, it may not be 
 unreasonable to expect that every man will 
 sport his own Gothic church. It is begin- 
 ning to be discovered that the Gothic sort 
 of church edifice is fatal to the Congrega- 
 tional style of worship that has been preva- 
 lent here in New England ; but it will do 
 nicely (as they say in Boston) for private 
 devotion. 
 
 There is n't a finer or purer church than 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 161 
 
 ours anywhere, inside and outside, Gothic to 
 the last. The elevation of the nave gives 
 it even that " high-shouldered " appearance 
 which seemed more than anything else to 
 impress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at 
 Amiens. I fancy that for genuine high- 
 shoulderness we are not exceeded by any 
 church in the city. Our chapel in the rear 
 is as Gothic as the rest of it, — a beautiful 
 little edifice. The committee forgot to make 
 any more provision for ventilating that than 
 the church, and it takes a pretty well-sea- 
 soned Christian to stay in it long at a time. 
 The Sunday-school is held there, and it is 
 thought to be best to accustom the children 
 to bad air before they go into the church. 
 The poor little dears should n't have the 
 wickedness and impurity of this world break 
 on them too suddenly. If the stranger no- 
 ticed any lack about our church, it would be 
 that of a spire. There is a place for one ; 
 indeed, it was begun, and then the builders 
 seem to have stopped, with the notion that 
 it would grow itself from such a good root. 
 It is a mistake, however, to suppose that we 
 do not know that the church has what the 
 profane here call a " stump-tail " appear- 
 ance. But the profane are as ignorant of 
 
162 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 history as they are of true Gothic. All the 
 Old World cathedrals were the work of cen- 
 turies. That at Milan is scarcely finished 
 yet; the unfinished spires of the Cologne 
 cathedral are one of the best-known features 
 of it. I doubt if it would be in the Gothic 
 spirit to finish a church at once. We can 
 tell cavillers that we shall have a spire at 
 the proper time, and not a minute before. 
 It may depend a little upon what the Bap- 
 tists do, who are to build near us. I, for 
 one, think we had better wait and see how 
 high the Baptist spire is before we run ours 
 up. The church is everything that could be 
 desired inside. There is the nave, with its 
 lofty and beautiful arched ceiling ; there are 
 the side aisles, and two elegant rows of stone 
 pillars, stained so as to be a perfect imita- 
 tion of stucco ; there is the apse, with its 
 stained glass and exquisite lines ; and there 
 is an organ-loft over the front entrance, 
 with a rose window. Nothing was wanting, 
 so far as we could see, except that we should 
 adapt ourselves to the circumstances; and 
 that we have been trying to do ever since. 
 It may be well to relate how we do it, for 
 the benefit of other inchoate Goths. 
 
 It was found that if we put up the organ 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 163 
 
 in the loft, it would hide the beautiful rose 
 window. Besides, we wanted congregational 
 singing, and if we hired a choir, and hung it 
 up there under the roof, like a cage of birds, 
 we should not have congregational singing. 
 We therefore left the organ-loft vacant, 
 making no further use of it than to satisfy 
 our Gothic cravings. As for choir, several 
 of the singers of the church volunteered to 
 sit together in the front side-seats, and as 
 there was no place for an organ, they gal- 
 lantly rallied round a melodeon, — or per- 
 haps it is a cabinet organ, — a charming in- 
 strument, and, as everybody knows, entirely 
 in keeping with the pillars, arches, and great 
 spaces of a real Gothic edifice. It is the 
 union of simplicity with grandeur, for which 
 we have all been looking. I need not say 
 to those who have ever heard a melodeon 
 that there is nothing like it. It is rare, 
 even in the finest churches on the Continent. 
 And we had congregational singing. And it 
 went very well indeed. One of the advan- 
 tages of pure congregational singing is that 
 you can join in the singing whether you 
 have a voice or not. The disadvantage is 
 that your neighbor can do the same. It is 
 strange what an uncommonly poor lot of 
 
164 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 voices there is, even among good people. 
 But we enjoy it. If you do not enjoy it, 
 you can change your seat until you get 
 among a good lot. 
 
 So far, everything went well. But it was 
 next discovered that it was difficult to hear 
 the minister, who had a very handsome little 
 desk in the apse, somewhat distant from the 
 bulk of the congregation ; still, we could 
 most of us see him on a clear day. The 
 church was admirably built for echoes, and 
 the centre of the house was very favorable to 
 them. When you sat in the centre of the 
 house, it sometimes seemed as if three or 
 four ministers were speaking. It is usually 
 so in cathedrals ; the Right Reverend So- 
 and-So is assisted by the very Reverend Such- 
 and-Such, and the good deal Reverend Thus- 
 and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the 
 minister's voice appeared to go up into the 
 groined arches, and, as there was no one up 
 there, some of his best things were lost. We 
 also had a notion that some of it went into 
 the cavernous organ-loft. It would have 
 been all right if there had been a choir 
 there, for choirs usually need more preach- 
 ing, and pay less heed to it, than any other 
 part of the congregation. Well, we drew a 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 165 
 
 sort of screen over the organ-loft; but the 
 result was not as marked as we had hoped. 
 We next devised a sounding-board, — a sort 
 of mammoth clam-shell, painted white, and 
 erected it behind the minister. It had a 
 good effect on the minister. It kept him 
 up straight to his work. So long as he kept 
 his head exactly in the focus, his voice went 
 out and did not return to him ; but if he 
 moved either way he was assailed by a Babel 
 of clamoring echoes. There was no opportu- 
 nity for him to splurge about from side to side 
 of the pulpit, as some do. And if he raised 
 his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, 
 he was liable to be drowned in a refluent sea 
 of his own eloquence. And he could hear 
 the congregation as well as they could hear 
 him. All the coughs, whispers, noises, were 
 gathered in the wooden tympanum behind 
 him, and poured into his ears. 
 
 But the sounding-board was an improve- 
 ment, and we advanced to bolder measures ; 
 having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. 
 Besides, those who sat in front began to 
 be discontented with the melodeon. There 
 are depths in music which the melodeon, 
 even when it is called a cabinet organ, with 
 a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound. 
 
166 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 The melodeon was not, originally, designed 
 for the Gothic worship. We determined to 
 have an organ, and we speculated whether, 
 by erecting it in the apse, we could not fill 
 up that elegant portion of the church, and 
 compel the preacher's voice to leave it, and 
 go out over the pews. It would of course 
 do something to efface the main beauty of a 
 Gothic church ; but something must be done, 
 and we began a series of experiments to test 
 the probable effects of putting the organ and 
 choir behind the minister. We moved the 
 desk to the very front of the platform, and 
 erected behind it a high, square board screen, 
 like a section of tight fence round the fair- 
 grounds. This did help matters. The min- 
 ister spoke with more ease, and we could 
 hear him better. If the screen had been 
 intended to stay there, we should have agi- 
 tated the subject of painting it. But this 
 was only an experiment. 
 
 Our next move was to shove the screen 
 back and mount the volunteer singers, melo- 
 deon and all, upon the platform, — some 
 twenty of them crowded together behind 
 the minister. The effect was beautiful. It 
 seemed as if we had taken care to select the 
 finest-looking people in the congregation, — . 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 167 
 
 much to the injury of the congregation, of 
 course, as seen from the platform. There 
 are few congregations that can stand this 
 sort of culling, though ours can endure it as 
 well as any ; yet it devolves upon those of 
 us who remain the responsibility of looking 
 as well as we can. The experiment was a 
 success, so far as appearances went, but 
 when the screen went back the minister's 
 voice went back with it. We could not hear 
 him very well, though we could hear the choir 
 as plain as day. We have thought of rem- 
 edying this last defect by putting the high 
 screen in front of the singers, and close to 
 the minister, as it was before. This would 
 make the singers invisible, — " though lost 
 to sight, to memory dear," — what is some- 
 times called an " angel choir," when the 
 singers (and the melodeon) are concealed, 
 with the most subdued and religious effect. 
 It is often so in cathedrals. 
 
 This plan would have another advantage. 
 The singers on the platform, all handsome 
 and well dressed, distract our attention from 
 the minister, and what he is saying. We 
 cannot help looking at them, studying all 
 the faces and all the dresses. If one of them 
 sits up very straight, he is a rebuke to us ; 
 
168 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 if he " lops " over, we wonder why he does n't 
 sit up ; if his hair is white, we wonder 
 whether it is age or family peculiarity ; if 
 he yawns, we want to yawn ; if he takes up 
 a hymn-book, we wonder if he is uninterested 
 in the sermon ; we look at the bonnets, and 
 query if that is the latest spring style, or 
 whether we are to look for another; if he 
 shaves close, we wonder why he does n't let 
 his beard grow ; if he has long whiskers, we 
 wonder why he does n't trim 'em ; if she 
 sighs, we feel sorry ; if she smiles, we would 
 like to know what it is about. And then 
 suppose any of the singers should ever want 
 to eat fennel, or peppermints, or Brown's 
 troches, and pass them round ! Suppose the 
 singers, more or less of them, should sneeze ! 
 Suppose one or two of them, as the hand- 
 somest people sometimes will, should go to 
 sleep ! In short, the singers there take away 
 all our attention from the minister, and 
 would do so if they were the homeliest peo- 
 ple in the world. We must try something 
 else. 
 
 It is needless to explain that a Gothic 
 religious life is not an idle one. 
 
EIGHTH STUDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, 
 philosophically. I cannot but regret that 
 the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who ap- 
 pears to have an uncontrollable penchant for 
 saying the things you would like to say your- 
 self, has alluded to the anachronism of " Sir 
 Coeur de Lion Plantagenet in the mutton- 
 chop whiskers and the plain gray suit." A 
 great many scribblers have felt the disad- 
 vantage of writing after Montaigne ; and 
 it is impossible to tell how much originality 
 in others Dr. Holmes has destroyed in this 
 country. In whist there are some men you 
 always prefer to have on your left hand, and 
 I take it that this intuitive essayist, who is 
 so alert to seize the few remaining unappro- 
 priated ideas and analogies in the world, is 
 one of them. 
 
 No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day 
 were required to dress in a suit of chain- 
 armor and wear iron pots on their heads, 
 
170 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 they would be as ridiculous as most tragedy 
 actors on the stage. The pit which recog- 
 nizes Snooks in his tin breastplate and helmet 
 laughs at him, and Snooks himself feels like 
 a sheep ; and when the great tragedian 
 comes on, shining in mail, dragging a two- 
 handed sword, and mouths the grandilo- 
 quence which poets have put into the speech 
 of heroes, the dress-circle requires all its 
 good-breeding and its feigned love of the 
 traditionary drama not to titter. 
 
 If this sort of acting, which is supposed 
 to have come down to us from the Eliza- 
 bethan age, and which culminated in the 
 school of the Keans, Kembles, and Siddonses, 
 ever had any fidelity to life, it must have 
 been in a society as artificial as the prose of 
 Sir Philip Sidney. That anybody ever be- 
 lieved in it is difficult to think, especially 
 when we read what privileges the fine beaux 
 and gallants of the town took behind the 
 scenes and on the stage in the golden days 
 of the drama. When a part of the audience 
 sat on the stage, and gentlemen lounged or 
 reeled across it in the midst of a play, to 
 speak to acquaintances in the audience, the 
 illusion could not have been very strong. 
 
 Now and then a genius, like Rachel as 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 171 
 
 Horatia, or Hackett as Falstaff, may actually 
 seem to be the character assumed by virtue 
 of a transforming imagination, but I sup- 
 pose the fact to be that getting into a cos- 
 tume, absurdly antiquated and remote from 
 all the habits and associations of the actor, 
 largely accounts for the incongruity and ri- 
 diculousness of most of our modern acting. 
 Whether what is called the " legitimate 
 drama " ever was legitimate we do not know, 
 but the advocates of it appear to think that 
 the theatre was some time cast in a mould, 
 once for all, and is good for all times and 
 peoples, like the propositions of Euclid. To 
 our eyes the legitimate drama of to-day is 
 the one in which the day is reflected, both in 
 costume and speech, and which touches the 
 affections, the passions, the humor, of the 
 present time. The brilliant success of the 
 few good plays that have been written out 
 of the rich life which we now live — the 
 most varied, fruitful, and dramatically sug- 
 gestive — ought to rid us forever of the bus- 
 kin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spec- 
 tacular curiosity. 
 
 We have no objection to Julius Caesar or 
 Richard III. stalking about in impossible 
 clothes, and stepping four feet at a stride, if 
 
172 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 they want to, but let them not claim to he 
 more " legitimate " than " Ours " or " Rip 
 Van Winkle." There will probably be some 
 orator for years and years to come, at every 
 Fourth of July, who will go on asking, 
 Where is Thebes ? but he does not care any- 
 thing about it, and he does not really expect 
 an answer. I have sometimes wished I knew 
 the exact site of Thebes, so that I could rise 
 in the audience, and stop that question, at 
 any rate. It is legitimate, but it is tiresome. 
 If we went to the bottom of this subject, I 
 think we should find that the putting upon 
 actors clothes to which they are unaccus- 
 tomed makes them act and talk artificially, 
 and often in a manner intolerable. An ac- 
 tor who has not the habits or instincts of a 
 gentleman cannot be made to appear like 
 one on the stage by dress ; he only carica- 
 tures and discredits what he tries to repre- 
 sent ; and the unaccustomed clothes and sit- 
 uation make him much more unnatural and 
 insufferable than he would otherwise be. 
 Pressed appropriately for parts for which he 
 is fitted, he will act well enough, probably. 
 What I mean is that the clothes inappro- 
 priate to the man make the incongruity of 
 him and his part more apparent. Vulgarity 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 173 
 
 is never so conspicuous as in fine apparel, on 
 or off the stage, and never so self-conscious. 
 Shall we have, then, no refined characters 
 on the stage ? Yes ; but let them be taken 
 by men and women of taste and refinement, 
 and let us have done with this masquerading 
 in false raiment, ancient and modern, which 
 makes nearly every stage a travesty of na- 
 ture and the whole theatre a painful pre- 
 tension. We do not expect the modern the- 
 atre to be a place of instruction (that busi- 
 ness is now turned over to the telegraphic 
 operator who is making a new language), but 
 it may give amusement instead of torture, 
 and do a little in satirizing folly and kin- 
 dling love of home and country by the way. 
 
 This is a sort of summary of what we all 
 said, and no one in particular is responsible 
 for it ; and in this it is like public opinion. 
 The Parson, however, whose only experience 
 of the theatre was the endurance of an ora- 
 torio once, was very cordial in his denuncia- 
 tion of the stage altogether. 
 
 Mandeville. Yet, acting itself is de- 
 lightful ; nothing so entertains us as mim- 
 icry, the personation of character. We enjoy 
 it in private. I confess that I am always 
 pleased with the Parson in the character of 
 
174 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 grumbler. He would be an immense sue* 
 cess on the stage. I don't know but the 
 theatre will have to go back into the hands 
 of the priests, who once controlled it. 
 
 The Parson. Scoffer! 
 
 Mandeville. I can imagine how enjoy- 
 able the stage might be, cleared of all 
 its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, 
 stilted behavior, all the rubbish of false sen- 
 timent, false dress, and the manners of times 
 that were both artificial and immoral, and 
 filled with living characters, who speak the 
 thought of to-day, with the wit and culture 
 that are current to-day. I 've seen private 
 theatricals, where all the performers were 
 persons of cultivation, that — 
 
 Our Next Door. So have I. For some- 
 thing particularly cheerful, commend me to 
 amateur theatricals. I have passed some 
 melancholy hours at them. 
 
 Mandeville. That's because the per- 
 formers acted the worn stage plays, and at- 
 tempted to do them in the manner they had 
 seen on the stage. It is not always so. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. I suppose Mandeville 
 would say that acting has got into a manner- 
 ism which is well described as stagey ; and 
 is supposed to be natural to the stage, just 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 175 
 
 as half the modern poets write in a recog- 
 nized form of literary manufacture, without 
 the least impulse from within, and not with 
 the purpose of saying anything, but of turn- 
 ing out a piece of literary work. That 's the 
 reason we have so much poetry that im- 
 presses one like sets of faultless cabinet-fur- 
 niture made by machinery. 
 
 The Parson. But you need n't talk of 
 nature or naturalness in acting or in any- 
 thing. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It 
 can't go alone. Amateur acting — they get 
 it up at church sociables nowadays — is apt 
 to be as near nature as a school-boy's decla- 
 mation. Acting is the Devil's art. 
 
 The Mistress. Do you object to such 
 innocent amusement ? 
 
 Mandeville. What the Parson objects 
 to is that he is n't amused. 
 
 The Parson. What 's the use of object- 
 ing ? It 's the fashion of the day to amuse 
 people into the kingdom of heaven. 
 
 Herbert. The Parson has got us off the 
 track. My notion about the stage is that it 
 keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of 
 the world ; the stage is usually quite up to 
 the level of the audience. Assumed dress 
 on the stage, since you were speaking of 
 
176 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 that, makes people no more constrained and 
 self-conscious than it does off the stage. 
 
 The Mistkess. What sarcasm is coming 
 now? 
 
 Hekbeet. Well, you may laugh, but the 
 world has n't got used to good clothes yet. 
 The majority do not wear them with ease. 
 People who only put on their best on rare 
 and stated occasions step into an artificial 
 feeling. 
 
 Our Next Door. I wonder if that 's the 
 reason the Parson finds it so difficult to get 
 hold of his congregation. 
 
 Herbert. I don't know how else to ac- 
 count for the formality and vapidity of a set 
 "party," where all the guests are clothed in 
 a manner to which they are unaccustomed, 
 dressed into a condition of vivid self-con- 
 sciousness. The same people, who know each 
 other perfectly well, will enjoy themselves 
 together without restraint in their ordinary 
 apparel. But nothing can be more artificial 
 than the behavior of people together who 
 rarely " dress up." It seems impossible to 
 make the conversation as fine as the clothes, 
 and so it dies in a kind of inane helplessness. 
 Especially is this true in the country, where 
 people have not obtained the mastery of 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 177 
 
 their clothes that those who live in the city 
 have. It is really absurd, at this stage of 
 our civilization, that we should be so affected 
 by such an insignificant accident as dress. 
 Perhaps Mandeville can tell us whether this 
 clothes panic prevails in the older societies. 
 
 The Parson. Don't. We 've heard it ; 
 about its being one of the Englishman's 
 thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit 
 down to dinner without a dress-coat, and all 
 that. 
 
 The Mistress. I wish, for my part, that 
 everybody who has time to eat a dinner 
 would dress for that, the principal event of 
 the day, and do respectful and leisurely 
 justice to it. 
 
 The Young Lady. It has always seemed 
 singular to me that men who work so hard 
 to build elegant houses, and have good din- 
 ners, should take so little leisure to enjoy 
 either. 
 
 Mandeville. If the Parson will permit 
 me, I should say that the chief clothes ques- 
 tion abroad just now is, how to get any ; and 
 it is the same with the dinners. 
 
178 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 II. 
 
 It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk 
 about clothes ran into the question of dress 
 reform, and ran out, of course. You cannot 
 converse on anything nowadays that you do 
 not run into some reform. The Parson says 
 that everybody is intent on reforming every- 
 thing but himself. We are all trying to 
 associate ourselves to make everybody else 
 behave as we do. Said 
 
 Our Next Door. Dress reform ! As if 
 people could n't change their clothes with- 
 out concert of action. Resolved, that no- 
 body should put on a clean collar oftener 
 than his neighbor does. I 'm sick of every 
 sort of reform. I should like to retrograde 
 awhile. Let a dyspeptic ascertain that he 
 can eat porridge three times a day and live, 
 and straightway he insists that everybody 
 ought to eat porridge and nothing else. I 
 mean to get up a society every member of 
 which shall be pledged to do just as he 
 pleases. 
 
 The Parson. That would be the most 
 radical reform of the day. That would be 
 independence. If people dressed according 
 to their means, acted according to their con- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 179 
 
 victions, and avowed their opinions, it would 
 revolutionize society. 
 
 Our Next Door. I should like to walk 
 into your church some Sunday and see the 
 changes under such conditions. 
 
 The Parson. It might give you a novel 
 sensation to walk in at any time. And I 'm 
 not sure but the church would suit your re- 
 trograde ideas. It 's so Gothic that a Chris- 
 tian of the Middle Ages, if he were alive, 
 could n't see or hear in it. 
 
 Herbert. I don't know whether these 
 reformers who carry the world on their 
 shoulders in such serious fashion, especially 
 the little fussy fellows, who are themselves 
 the standard of the regeneration they seek, 
 are more ludicrous than pathetic. 
 
 The Fire - Tender. Pathetic, by all 
 means. But I don't know that they would 
 be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There 
 are those reform singers who have been pip- 
 ing away so sweetly now for thirty years, 
 with never any diminution of cheerful, pa- 
 tient enthusiasm ; their hair growing longer 
 and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, 
 and their faces, I do believe, sweeter and 
 sweeter ; singing always with the same con- 
 stancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for 
 
180 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the snuff-taker, for the suffragist, " There's- 
 a-good-time-com-ing-boys (nothing offensive 
 is intended by " boys ; " it is put in for 
 euphony, and sung pianissimo, not to offend 
 the suffragists), it 's-almost-here." And what 
 a brightening up of their faces there is when 
 they say, " it 's-al-most-here," not doubting 
 for a moment that "it's" coming to-mor- 
 row; and the accompanying melodeon also 
 wails its wheezy suggestion that " it 's-al- 
 most-here," that " good-time " (delayed so 
 long, waiting perhaps for the invention of 
 the melodeon) when we shall all sing and 
 all play that cheerful instrument, and all 
 vote, and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat 
 meat, "boys." I declare it almost makes 
 me cry to hear them, so touching is their 
 faith in the midst of a jeering world. 
 
 Herbert. I suspect that no one can be 
 a genuine reformer and not be ridiculous. I 
 mean those who give themselves up to the 
 unction of the reform. 
 
 The Mistress. Does n't that depend 
 upon whether the reform is large or petty ? 
 
 The Fire-Tender. I should say rather 
 that the reforms attracted to them all the 
 ridiculous people, who almost always manage 
 to become the most conspicuous. I suppose 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 181 
 
 that nobody dare write out all that was ludi- 
 crous in the great abolition movement. But 
 it was not at all comical to those most zeal- 
 ous in it ; they never could see — more 's 
 the pity, for thereby they lose much — the 
 humorous side of their performances, and 
 that is why the pathos overcomes one's sense 
 of the absurdity of such people. 
 
 The Young Lady. It is lucky for the 
 world that so many are willing to be ab- 
 surd. 
 
 Heebeet. Well, I think that, in the 
 main, the reformers manage to look out for 
 themselves tolerably well. I knew once a 
 lean and faithful agent of a great philan- 
 thropic scheme, who contrived to collect 
 every year for the cause just enough to sup- 
 port him at a good hotel comfortably. 
 
 The Misteess. That 's identifying one's 
 self with the cause. 
 
 Mandeville. You remember the great 
 free-soil convention at Buffalo, in 1848, when 
 Van Buren was nominated. All the world 
 of hope and discontent went there, with its 
 projects of reform. There seemed to be no 
 doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that 
 if they could get a resolution passed that 
 bread should be buttered on both sides, that 
 
182 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 it would be so buttered. The platform pro- 
 vided for every want and every woe. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. I remember. If you 
 could get the millennium by political action, 
 we should have had it then. 
 
 Mandeville. We went there on the 
 Erie Canal, the exciting and fashionable 
 mode of travel in those days. I was a boy 
 when we began the voyage. The boat was 
 full of conventionists ; all the talk was of 
 what must be done there. I got the impres- 
 sion that as that boat-load went so would go 
 the convention ; and I was not alone in that 
 feeling. I can never be enough grateful 
 for one little scrubby fanatic who was on 
 board, who spent most of his time in draft- 
 ing resolutions and reading them privately 
 to the passengers. He was a very enthu- 
 siastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little 
 man, who wore a woollen muffler about his 
 throat, although it was summer ; he had 
 nearly lost his voice, and could only speak 
 in a hoarse, disagreeable whisper, and he al- 
 ways carried a teacup about, containing some 
 sticky compound which he stirred frequently 
 with a spoon, and took, whenever he talked, 
 in order to improve his voice. If he was 
 separated from his cup for ten minutes his 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 183 
 
 whisper became inaudible. I greatly de- 
 lighted in him, for I never saw any one who 
 had so much enjoyment of his own impor- 
 tance. He was fond of telling what he would 
 do if the convention rejected such and such 
 resolutions. He 'd make it hot for 'em. I 
 did n't know but he 'd make them take his 
 mixture. The convention had got to take a 
 stand on tobacco, for one thing. He 'd heard 
 Giddings took snuff ; he 'd see. When we 
 at length reached Buffalo he took his tea- 
 cup and carpet-bag of resolutions and went 
 ashore in a great hurry. I saw him once 
 again in a cheap restaurant, whispering a 
 resolution to another delegate, but he did n't 
 appear in the convention. I have often 
 wondered what became of him. 
 
 Our Next Door. Probably he 's consul 
 somewhere. They mostly are. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. After all, it's the 
 easiest thing in the world to sit and sneer at 
 eccentricities. But what a dead and uninter- 
 esting world it would be if we were all 
 proper, and kept within the lines ! Affairs 
 would soon be reduced to mere machinery. 
 There are moments, even days, when all in- 
 terests and movements appear to be settled 
 upon some universal plan of equilibrium; 
 
184 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 but just then some restless and absurd per* 
 son is inspired to throw the machine out of 
 gear. These individual eccentricities seem 
 to be the special providences in the general 
 human scheme. 
 
 Herbert. They make it very hard work 
 for the rest of us, who are disposed to go 
 along peaceably and smoothly. 
 
 Mandeville. And stagnate. I 'm not 
 sure but the natural condition of this planet 
 is war, and that when it is finally towed to 
 its anchorage — if the universe has any har- 
 bor for worlds out of commission — it will 
 look like the Fighting Temeraire in Tur- 
 ner's picture. 
 
 Herbert. There is another'thing I should 
 like to understand : the tendency of people 
 who take up one reform, perhaps a personal 
 regeneration in regard to some bad habit, to 
 run into a dozen other isms, and get all at 
 sea in several vague and pernicious theories 
 and practices. 
 
 Mandeville. Herbert seems to think 
 there is safety in a man's being anchored, 
 even if it is to a bad habit. 
 
 Herbert. Thank you. But what is it 
 in human nature that is apt to carry a man 
 who may take a step in personal reform into 
 so many extremes ? 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 185 
 
 Our Next Door. Probably it 's human 
 nature. 
 
 Herbert. Why, for instance, should a 
 reformed drunkard (one of the noblest ex- 
 amples of victory over self) incline, as I have 
 known the reformed to do, to spiritism, or a 
 woman suffragist to " pantarchism " (what- 
 ever that is), and want to pull up all the 
 roots of society, and expect them to grow in 
 the air, like orchids ; or a Graham-bread dis- 
 ciple become enamored of Communism ? 
 
 Mandeville. I know an excellent Con- 
 servative who would, I think, suit you ; he 
 says that he does not see how a man who in- 
 dulges in the theory and practice of total ab- 
 stinence can be a consistent believer in the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 Herbert. Well, I can understand what 
 he means : that a person is bound to hold 
 himself in conditions of moderation and con- 
 trol, using and not abusing the things of this 
 world, practising temperance, not retiring 
 into a convent of artificial restrictions in 
 order to escape the full responsibility of self- 
 control. And yet his theory would certainly 
 wreck most men and women. What does 
 the Parson say ? 
 
 The Parson. That the world is going 
 
186 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 crazy on the notion of individual ability. 
 Whenever a man attempts to reform him- 
 self, or anybody else, without the aid of the 
 Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift, 
 and is pretty certain to be blown about by 
 absurd theories, and shipwrecked on some 
 pernicious ism. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. I think the discus- 
 sion has touched bottom. 
 
 III. 
 
 I never felt so much the value of a house 
 with a backlog in it as during the late 
 spring ; for its lateness was its main feature. 
 Everybody was grumbling about it, as if 
 it were something ordered from the tailor, 
 and not ready on the day. Day after day 
 it snowed, night after night it blew a gale 
 from the northwest ; the frost sunk deeper 
 and deeper into the ground; there was a 
 popular longing for spring that was almost 
 a prayer; the weather bureau was active; 
 Easter was set a week earlier than the year 
 before, but nothing seemed to do any good. 
 The robins sat under the evergreens, and 
 piped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the 
 blue jays came and scolded in the midst of 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 187 
 
 the snow-storm, as they always do scold in 
 any weather. The crocuses couldn't be 
 coaxed to come up, even with a pickaxe. 
 I 'm almost ashamed now to recall what we 
 said of the weather, only I think that peo- 
 ple are no more accountable for what they 
 say of the weather than for their remarks 
 when their corns are stepped on. 
 
 We agreed, however, that, but for disap- 
 pointed expectations and the prospect of late 
 lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire 
 as much as we were losing by the frost. And 
 the Mistress fell to chanting the comforts of 
 modern civilization. 
 
 The Fire-Tender said he should like to 
 know, by the way, if our civilization differed 
 essentially from any other in anything but 
 its comforts. 
 
 Herbert. We are no nearer religious 
 unity. 
 
 The Parson. We have as much war as 
 ever. 
 
 Mandeville. There was never such a 
 social turmoil. 
 
 The Young Lady. The artistic part of 
 our nature does not appear to have grown. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. We are quarrelling 
 as to whether we are in fact radically differ- 
 ent from the brutes. 
 
188 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Hekbert. Scarcely two people think 
 alike about the proper kind of human gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 The Parson. Our poetry is made out of 
 words, for the most part, and not drawn 
 from the living sources. 
 
 Our Next Door. And Mr. dimming 
 is uncorking his seventh phial. I never felt 
 before what barbarians we are. 
 
 The Mistress. Yet you won't deny 
 that the life of the average man is safer and 
 every w r ay more comfortable than it was 
 even a century ago. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. But what I want to 
 know is, whether what we call our civiliza- 
 tion has done anything more for mankind at 
 large than to increase the ease and pleasure 
 of living. Science has multiplied wealth 
 and facilitated intercourse, and the result is 
 refinement of manners and a diffusion of 
 education and information. Are men and 
 women essentially changed, however ? I sup- 
 pose the Parson would say we have lost 
 faith, for one thing. 
 
 Mandeville. And superstition; and 
 gained toleration. 
 
 Herbert. The question is, whether toL 
 eration is anything but indifference. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 189 
 
 The Parson. Everything is tolerated 
 now but Christian orthodoxy. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. It 's easy enough to 
 make a brilliant catalogue of external achieve- 
 ments, but I take it that real progress ought 
 to be in man himself. It is not a question 
 of what a man enjoys, but what he can pro- 
 duce. The best sculpture was executed two 
 thousand years ago. The best paintings are 
 several centuries old. We study the finest 
 architecture in its ruins. The standards of 
 poetry are Shakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and 
 David. The latest of the arts, music, cul- 
 minated in composition, though not in exe- 
 cution, a century ago. 
 
 The Mistress. Yet culture in music 
 certainly distinguishes the civilization of this 
 age. It has taken eighteen hundred years 
 for the principles of the Christian religion 
 to begin to be practically incorporated in 
 government and in ordinary business, and it 
 will take a long time for Beethoven to be 
 popularly recognized ; but there is growth 
 toward him, and not away from him, and 
 when the average culture has reached his 
 height, some other genius will still more 
 profoundly and delicately express the high- 
 est thoughts. 
 
190 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 Herbert. I wish I could believe it. 
 The spirit of this age is expressed by the 
 Calliope. 
 
 The Parson. Yes, it remained for us to 
 add church-bells and cannon to the orches- 
 tra. 
 
 Our Next Door. It 's a melancholy 
 thought to me that we can no longer ex- 
 press ourselves with the bass-drum ; there 
 used to be the whole of the Fourth of July 
 in its patriotic throbs. 
 
 Mandeville. We certainly have made 
 great progress in one art, — that of war. 
 
 The Young Lady. And in the humane 
 alleviations of the miseries of war. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. The most discour- 
 aging symptom to me in our undoubted ad- 
 vance in the comforts and refinements of so- 
 ciety is the facility with which men slip back 
 into barbarism, if the artificial and external 
 accidents of their lives are changed. We 
 have always kept a fringe of barbarism on 
 our shifting western frontier ; and I think 
 there never was a worse society than that in 
 California and Xevada in their early days. 
 
 The Young Lady. That is because wo- 
 men were absent. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. But women are not 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 191 
 
 absent in London and New York, and they 
 are conspicuous in the most exceptionable 
 demonstrations of social anarchy. Certainly 
 they were not wanting in Paris. Yes, there 
 was a city widely accepted as the summit of 
 our material civilization. No city was so 
 beautiful, so luxurious, so safe, so well or- 
 dered for the comfort of living ; and yet it 
 needed only a month or two to make it a 
 kind of Pandemonium of savagery. Its citi- 
 zens were the barbarians who destroyed its 
 own monuments of civilization. I don't mean 
 to say that there was no apology for what was 
 done there in the deceit and fraud that pre- 
 ceded it, but I simply notice how ready the 
 tiger was to appear, and how little restraint 
 all the material civilization was to the beast. 
 
 The Mistress. I can't deny your in- 
 stances, and yet I somehow feel that pretty 
 much all you have been saying is in effect 
 untrue. Not one of you would be willing to 
 change our civilization for any other. In 
 your estimate you take no account, it seems 
 to me, of the growth of charity. 
 
 Mandeville. And you might add a rec- 
 ognition of the value of human life. 
 
 The Mistress. I don't believe there was 
 ever before diffused everywhere such an ele- 
 
192 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 ment of good will, and never before were wo- 
 men so much engaged in philanthropic work. 
 
 The Parson. It must be confessed that 
 one of the best signs of the times is woman's 
 charity for woman. That certainly never 
 existed to the same extent in any other civ- 
 ilization. 
 
 Mandeville. And there is another thing 
 that distinguishes us, or is beginning to. 
 That is, the notion that you can do some- 
 thing more with a criminal than punish him ; 
 and that society has not done its duty when 
 it has built a sufficient number of schools 
 for one class, or of decent jails for another. 
 
 Herbert. It will be a long time before 
 we get decent jails. 
 
 Mandeville. But when we do they will 
 begin to be places of education and train- 
 ing as much as of punishment and disgrace. 
 The public will provide teachers in the pris- 
 ons as it now does in the common schools. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. The imperfections of 
 our methods and means of selecting those in 
 the community who ought to be in prison are 
 so great that extra care in dealing with them 
 becomes us. We are beginning to learn that 
 we cannot draw arbitrary lines with infallible 
 justice. Perhaps half those who are convicted 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 193 
 
 of crimes are as capable of reformation as 
 half those transgressors who are not con- 
 victed, or who keep inside the statutory law. 
 
 Herbert. Would you remove the odium 
 of prison ? 
 
 The Fire -Tender. No; but I would 
 have criminals believe, and society believe, 
 that in going to prison a man or woman does 
 not pass an absolute line and go into a fixed 
 state. 
 
 The Parson. That is, you would not 
 have judgment and retribution begin in this 
 world. 
 
 Our Next Door. Don't switch us off 
 into theology. I hate to go up in a balloon, 
 or see any one else go. 
 
 Herbert. Don't you think there is too 
 much leniency toward crime and criminals, 
 taking the place of justice, in these days ? 
 
 The Fire -Tender. There may be too 
 much disposition to condone the crimes of 
 those who have been considered respectable. 
 
 Our Next Door, That is, scarcely any- 
 body wants to see his friend hung. 
 
 Mandeville. I think a large part of the 
 bitterness of the condemned arises from a 
 sense of the inequality with which justice is 
 administered. I am surprised, in visiting 
 
194 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 jails, to find so few respectable-looking con. 
 victs. 
 
 Our Next Door. Nobody will go to 
 jail nowadays who thinks anything of him- 
 self. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. When society seri- 
 ously takes hold of the reformation of crim- 
 inals (say with as much determination as it 
 does to carry an election) this false leniency 
 will disappear ; for it partly springs from a 
 feeling that punishment is unequal, and does 
 not discriminate enough in individuals, and 
 that society itself has no right to turn a man 
 over to the Devil, simply because he shows 
 a strong leaning that way. A part of the 
 scheme of those who work for the reforma- 
 tion of criminals is to render punishment 
 more certain, and to let its extent depend 
 upon reformation. There is no reason why 
 a professional criminal, who won't change 
 his trade for an honest one, should have in- 
 tervals of freedom in his prison life in which 
 he is let loose to prey upon society. Crim- 
 inals ought to be discharged, like insane 
 patients, when they are cured. 
 
 Our Next Door. It 's a wonder to me, 
 what with our multitudes of statutes and 
 hosts of detectives, that we are any of us out 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 195 
 
 of jail. I never come away from a visit to 
 a state-prison without a new spasm of fear 
 and virtue. The facilities for getting into 
 jail seem to be ample. We want more or- 
 ganizations for keeping people out. 
 
 Mandeville. That is the sort of enter- 
 prise the women are engaged in, the frustra- 
 tion of the criminal tendencies of those born 
 in vice. I believe women have it in their 
 power to regenerate the world morally. 
 
 The Parson. It's time they began to 
 undo the mischief of their mother. 
 
 The Mistress. The reason they have 
 not made more progress is that they have 
 usually confined their individual efforts to 
 one man ; they are now organizing for a 
 general campaign. 
 
 The Fire-Tender. I 'm not sure but 
 here is where the ameliorations of the condi- 
 tions of life, which are called the comforts 
 of this civilization, come in, after all, and 
 distinguish the age above all others. They 
 have enabled the finer powers of women to 
 have play as they could not in a ruder age. 
 I should like to live a hundred years and see 
 what they will do. 
 
 Herbert. Not much but change the 
 fashions, unless they submit themselves to 
 
196 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the same training and discipline that men 
 do. 
 
 I have no doubt that Herbert had to apol- 
 ogize for this remark afterwards in private, 
 as men are quite willing to do in particular 
 cases ; it is only in general they are unjust. 
 The talk drifted off into general and partic- 
 ular depreciation of other times. Mande- 
 ville described a picture, in which he ap- 
 peared to have confidence, of a fight between 
 an Iguanodon and a Megalosaurus, where 
 these huge iron-clad brutes were represented 
 chewing up different portions of each other's 
 bodies in a forest of the lower cretaceous 
 period. So far as he could learn, that sort 
 of thing went on unchecked for hundreds of 
 thousands of years, and was typical of the 
 intercourse of the races of man till a com- 
 paratively recent period. There was also 
 that gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus ; in fact, 
 all the early brutes were disgusting. He 
 delighted to think that even the lower ani- 
 mals had improved, both in appearance and 
 disposition. 
 
 The conversation ended, therefore, in a 
 very amicable manner, having been taken to 
 a ground that nobody knew anything about. 
 
NINTH STUDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 Can you have a backlog in July ? That 
 depends upon circumstances. 
 
 In northern New England it is considered 
 a sign of summer when the housewives fill 
 the fireplaces with branches of mountain 
 laurel, and, later, with the feathery stalks of 
 the asparagus. This is often, too, the timid 
 expression of a tender feeling, under Puri- 
 tanic repression, which has not sufficient 
 vent in the sweet-william and hollyhock at 
 the front door. This is a yearning after 
 beauty and ornamentation which has no 
 other means of gratifying itself. 
 
 In the most rigid circumstances, the grace- 
 ful nature of woman thus discloses itself in 
 these mute expressions of an undeveloped 
 taste. You may never doubt what the com- 
 mon flowers growing along the pathway to 
 the front door mean to the maiden of many 
 summers who tends them, — love and re- 
 ligion, and the weariness of an uneventful 
 
198 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 life. The sacredness of the Sabbath, the 
 hidden memory of an unrevealed and unre- 
 quited affection, the slow years of gathering 
 and wasting sweetness, are in the smell of 
 the pink and the sweet-clover. These senti- 
 mental plants breathe something of the long- 
 ing of the maiden who sits in the Sunday 
 evenings of summer on the lonesome front 
 door-stone, singing the hymns of the saints, 
 and perennial as the myrtle that grows 
 thereby. 
 
 Yet not always in summer, even with the 
 aid of unrequited love and devotional feel- 
 ing, is it safe to let the fire go out on the 
 hearth, in our latitude. I remember when 
 the last almost total eclipse of the sun hap- 
 pened in August, what a bone-piercing chill 
 came over the world. Perhaps the imagina- 
 tion had something to do with causing the 
 chill from that temporary hiding of the sun 
 to feel so much more penetrating than that 
 from the coming on of night, which shortly \ 
 followed. It was impossible not to experi- 
 ence a shudder as of the approach of the 
 Judgment Day, when the shadows were flung 
 upon the green lawn, and we all stood in the 
 wan light, looking unfamiliar to each other. 
 The birds in the trees felt the spell. We 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 199 
 
 could in fancy see those spectral camp-fires 
 which men would build on the earth, if the 
 sun should slow its fires down to about the 
 brilliancy of the moon. It was a great re- 
 lief to all of us to go into the house, and, 
 before a blazing wood fire, talk of the end 
 of the world. 
 
 In New England it is scarcely ever safe 
 to let the fire go out ; it is best to bank it, 
 for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane 
 at any hour to sweep the Atlantic rains over 
 us, or to bring down the chill of Hudson's 
 Bay. There are days when the steamship 
 on the Atlantic glides calmly along under a 
 full canvas, but its central fires must always 
 be ready to make steam against head-winds 
 and antagonistic waves. Even in our most 
 smiling summer days one needs to have the 
 materials of a cheerful fire at hand. It is 
 only by this readiness for a change that one 
 can preserve an equal mind. We are made 
 provident and sagacious by the fickleness of 
 our climate. We should be another sort of 
 people if we could have that serene, un- 
 clouded trust in nature which the Egyptian 
 has. The gravity and repose of the Eastern 
 peoples is due to the unchanging aspect of 
 the sky, and the deliberation and regularity 
 
200 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 of the great climatic processes. Our litera- 
 ture, politics, religion, show the effect of un- 
 settled weather. But they compare favora- 
 bly with the Egyptian, for all that. 
 
 II. 
 
 You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, 
 with what longing I look back to those win- 
 ter days by the fire ; though all the windows 
 are open to this May morning, and the brown 
 thrush is singing in the chestnut-tree, and 
 I see everywhere that first delicate flush of 
 spring, which seems too evanescent to be 
 color even, and amounts to little more than 
 a suffusion of the atmosphere. I doubt, in- 
 deed, if the spring is exactly what it used to 
 be, or if, as we get on in years [no one ever 
 speaks of " getting on in years " till she is 
 virtually settled in life], its promises and 
 suggestions do not seem empty in compari- 
 son with the sympathies and responses of 
 human friendship, and the stimulation of 
 society. Sometimes nothing is so tiresome 
 as a perfect day in a perfect season. 
 
 I only imperfectly understand this. The 
 Parson says that woman is always most rest- 
 less under the most favorable conditions, and 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 201 
 
 that there is no state in which she is really- 
 happy except that of change. I suppose this 
 is the truth taught in what has been called 
 the "Myth of the Garden." Woman is 
 perpetual revolution, and is that element in 
 the world which continually destroys and 
 recreates. She is the experimenter and the 
 suggester of new combinations. She has no 
 belief in any law of eternal fitness of things. 
 She is never even content with any arrange- 
 ment of her own house. The only reason 
 the Mistress could give, when she rearranged 
 her apartment, for hanging a picture in what 
 seemed the most inappropriate place, was 
 that it had never been there before. Woman 
 has no respect for tradition, and because a 
 thing is as it is is sufficient reason for chang- 
 ing it. When she gets into law, as she has 
 come into literature, we shall gain something 
 in the destruction of all our vast and musty 
 libraries of precedents, which now fetter our 
 administration of individual justice. It is 
 Mandeville's opinion that women are not so 
 sentimental as men, and are not so easily 
 touched with the unspoken poetry of nature ; 
 being less poetical, and having less imagina- 
 tion, they are more fitted for practical af- 
 fairs, and would make less failures in busi- 
 
202 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 ness. I have noticed the almost selfish 
 passion for their flowers which old garden- 
 ers have, and their reluctance to part with a 
 leaf or a blossom from their family. They 
 love the flowers for themselves. A woman 
 raises flowers for their use. She is destruc- 
 tion in a conservatory. She wants the flow- 
 ers for her lover, for the sick, for the poor, 
 for the Lord on Easter day, for the orna- 
 mentation of her house. She delights in the 
 costly pleasure of sacrificing them. She 
 never sees a flower but she has an intense 
 but probably sinless desire to pick it. 
 
 It has been so from the first, though from 
 the first she has been thwarted by the ac- 
 cidental superior strength of man. What- 
 ever she has obtained has been by craft, and 
 by the same coaxing which the sun uses to 
 draw the blossoms out of the apple-trees. I 
 am not surprised to learn that she has be- 
 come tired of indulgences, and wants some 
 of the original rights. We are just begin- 
 ning to find out the extent to which she has 
 been denied and subjected, and especially 
 her condition among the primitive and bar- 
 barous races. I have never seen it in a 
 platform of grievances, but it is true that 
 among the Fijians she is not, unless a better 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 203 
 
 civilization has wrought a change in her be- 
 half, permitted to eat people, even her own 
 sex, at the feasts of the men ; the dainty en- 
 joyed by the men being considered too good 
 to be wasted on women. Is anything want- 
 ing to this picture of the degradation of 
 woman ? By a refinement of cruelty she re- 
 ceives no benefit whatever from the mission- 
 aries who are sent out by — what to her 
 must seem a new name for Tan-talus — the 
 American Board. 
 
 I suppose the Young Lady expressed a 
 nearly universal feeling in her regret at the 
 breaking up of the winter-fireside company. 
 Society needs a certain seclusion and the 
 sense of security. Spring opens the doors 
 and the windows, and the noise and unrest 
 of the world are let in. Even a winter thaw 
 begets a desire to travel, and summer brings 
 longings innumerable, and disturbs the most 
 tranquil souls. Nature is, in fact, a sug- 
 gester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrim- 
 ages and of excursions of the fancy which 
 never come to any satisfactory haven. The 
 summer in these latitudes is a campaign of 
 sentiment and a season, for the most part, of 
 restlessness and discontent. We grow now 
 in hot-houses roses which, in form and color, 
 
204 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 are magnificent, and appear to be full of 
 passion; yet one simple June rose of the 
 open air has for the Young Lady, I doubt 
 not, more sentiment and suggestion of love 
 than a conservatory full of them in Janu- 
 ary. And this suggestion, leavened as it is 
 with the inconstancy of nature, stimulated 
 by the promises which are so often like the 
 peach-bloom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying 
 by reason of its vague possibilities, differs 
 so essentially from the more limited and 
 attainable and home-like emotion born of 
 quiet intercourse by the winter fireside, that 
 I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as if 
 some spell had been broken by the transition 
 of her life from in-doors to out-doors. Her 
 secret, if secret she has, which I do not at 
 all know, is shared by the birds and the new 
 leaves and the blossoms on the fruit trees. 
 If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the 
 poets pretend always to dwell, we might be 
 content, perhaps I should say drugged, by 
 the sweet influences of an unchanging sum- 
 mer; but not living elsewhere, we can un- 
 derstand why the Young Lady probably now 
 looks forward to the hearthstone as the most 
 assured centre of enduring attachment. 
 If it should ever become the sad duty of 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 205 
 
 this biographer to write of disappointed love, 
 I am sure he would not have any sensational 
 story to tell of the Young Lady. She is one 
 of those women whose unostentatious lives 
 are the chief blessing of humanity; who, 
 with a sigh heard only by herself and no 
 change in her sunny face, would put behind 
 her all the memories of winter evenings and 
 the promises of May mornings, and give her 
 life to some ministration of human kindness 
 with an assiduity that would make her oc- 
 cupation appear like an election and a first 
 choice. The disappointed man scowls, and 
 hates his race, and threatens self-destruction, 
 choosing oftener the flowing bowl than the 
 dagger, and becoming a reeling nuisance in 
 the world. It would be much more manly 
 in him to become the secretary of a Dorcas 
 society. 
 
 I suppose it is true that women work for 
 others with less expectation of reward than 
 men, and give themselves to labors of self- 
 sacrifice with much less thought of self. At 
 least, this is true unless woman goes into 
 some public performance, where notoriety 
 has its attractions, and mounts some cause, 
 to ride it man-fashion, when I think she be- 
 comes just as eager for applause and just as 
 
206 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 willing that self-sacrifice should result in self- 
 elevation as man. For her, usually, are not 
 those unbought " presentations " which are 
 forced upon firemen, philanthropists, legis- 
 lators, railroad-men, and the superintendents 
 of the moral instruction of the young. These 
 are almost always pleasing and unexpected 
 tributes to worth and modesty, and must be 
 received with satisfaction when the public 
 service rendered has not been with a view to 
 procuring them. We should say that one 
 ought to be most liable to receive a " testi- 
 monial " who, being a superintendent of any 
 sort, did not superintend with a view to 
 getting it. But " testimonials " have become 
 so common that a modest man ought really 
 to be afraid to do his simple duty, for fear 
 his motives will be misconstrued. Yet there 
 are instances of very worthy men who have 
 had things publicly presented to them. It 
 is the blessed age of gifts and the reward of 
 private virtue. And the presentations have 
 become so frequent that we wish there were 
 a little more variety in them. There never 
 was much sense in giving a gallant fellow a 
 big speaking-trumpet to carry home to aid 
 him in his intercourse with his family ; and 
 the festive ice-pitcher has become a too uni- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 207 
 
 versal sign of absolute devotion to the public 
 interest. The lack of one will soon be proof 
 that a man is a knave. The legislative cane 
 with the gold head, also, is getting to be 
 recognized as the sign of the immaculate 
 public servant, as the inscription on it testi- 
 fies, and the steps of suspicion must erelong 
 dog him who does not carry one. The " tes- 
 timonial " business is, in truth, a little de- 
 moralizing, almost as much so as the " dona- 
 tion ; " and the demoralization has extended 
 even to our language, so that a perfectly re- 
 spectable man is often obliged to see himself 
 " made the recipient of " this and that. It 
 would be much better, if testimonials must 
 be, to give a man a barrel of flour or a keg 
 of oysters, and let him eat himself at once 
 back into the ranks of ordinary men. 
 
 III. 
 
 We may have a testimonial class in time, 
 a sort of nobility here in America, made so by 
 popular gift, the members of which will all 
 be able to show some stick, or piece of plated 
 ware, or massive chain, " of which they have 
 been the recipients." In time it may be a 
 distinction not to belong to it, and it may 
 
208 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 come to be thought more blessed to give 
 than to receive. For it must have been re- 
 marked that it is not always to the cleverest 
 and the most amiable and modest man that 
 the deputation comes with the inevitable ice- 
 pitcher (and " salver to match "), which has 
 in it the magic and subtle quality of making 
 the hour in which it is received the proudest 
 of one's life. There has not been discovered 
 any method of rewarding all the deserving 
 people and bringing their virtues into the 
 prominence of notoriety. And, indeed, it 
 would be an unreasonable world if there 
 had, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in 
 the excellences in it which are reluctantly 
 disclosed ; one of the chief pleasures of liv- 
 ing is in the daily discovery of good traits, 
 nobilities, and kindliness both in those we 
 have long known and in the chance pas- 
 senger whose way happens for a day to lie 
 with ours. The longer I live the more I am 
 impressed with the excess of human kind- 
 ness over human hatred, and the greater 
 willingness to oblige than to disoblige that 
 one meets at every turn. The selfishness in 
 politics, the jealousy in letters, the bickering 
 in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as 
 nothing compared to the sweet charities, 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 209 
 
 sacrifices, and deferences of private life. 
 The people are few whom to know inti- 
 mately is to dislike. Of course you want to 
 hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your 
 powers of discrimination bright, and to save 
 yourself from becoming a mere mush of 
 good-nature ; but perhaps it is well to hate 
 some historical person who has been dead so 
 long as to be indifferent to it. It is more 
 comfortable to hate people we have never 
 seen. I cannot but think that Judas Iscariot 
 has been of great service to the world as a 
 sort of buffer for moral indignation which 
 might have made a collision nearer home 
 but for his utilized treachery. I used to 
 know a venerable and most amiable gentle- 
 man and scholar, whose hospitable house 
 was always overrun with wayside ministers, 
 agents, and philanthropists, who lo^ed their 
 fellow-men better than they loved to work 
 for their living ; and he, I suspect, kept his 
 moral balance even by indulgence in violent 
 but most distant dislikes. When I met him 
 casually in the street, his first salutation was 
 likely to be such as this : " What a liar that 
 Alison was ! Don't you hate him ? " And 
 then would follow specifications of historical 
 inveracity enough to make one's blood run 
 
210 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 cold. When he was thus discharged of his 
 hatred by such a conductor, I presume he 
 had not a spark left for those whose mission 
 was partly to live upon him and other gener- 
 ous souls. 
 
 Mandeville and I were talking of the un- 
 known people, one rainy night by the fire, 
 while the Mistress was fitfully and interjec- 
 tionally playing with the piano-keys in an 
 improvising mood. Mandeville has a good 
 deal of sentiment about him, and without 
 any effort talks so beautifully sometimes 
 that I constantly regret I cannot report his 
 language. He has, besides, that sympathy 
 of presence — I believe it is called magnet- 
 ism by those who regard the brain as only a 
 sort of galvanic battery — which makes it a 
 greater pleasure to see him think, if I may 
 say so, than to hear some people talk. 
 
 It makes one homesick in this world to 
 think that there are so many rare people he 
 can never know ; and so many excellent 
 people that scarcely any one will know, in 
 fact. One discovers a friend by chance, and 
 cannot but feel regret that twenty or thirty 
 years of life, may be, have been spent with- 
 out the least knowledge of him. When he 
 is once known, through him opening is made 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 211 
 
 into another little world, into a circle of cul- 
 ture and loving hearts and enthusiasm in a 
 dozen congenial pursuits, and prejudices per- 
 haps. How instantly and easily the bachelor 
 doubles his world when he marries, and en- 
 ters into the unknown fellowship of the to 
 him continually increasing company which 
 is known in popular language as " all his 
 wife's relations." 
 
 Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those 
 worth knowing intimately, if one had the 
 time and the opportunity. And when one 
 travels he sees what a vast material there is 
 for society and friendship, of which he can 
 never avail himself. Car-load after car-load 
 of summer travel goes by one at any rail- 
 way-station, out of which he is sure he could 
 choose a score of life-long friends, if the con- 
 ductor would introduce him. There are faces 
 of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic 
 kindness, — interesting people, travelled peo- 
 ple, entertaining people, — as you would say 
 in Boston, "nice people you would admire 
 to know," whom you constantly meet and 
 pass without a sign of recognition, many of 
 whom are no doubt your long-lost brothers 
 and sisters. You can see that they also 
 have their worlds and their interests, and 
 
212 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 they probably know a great many " nice " 
 people. The matter of personal liking and 
 attachment is a good deal due to the mere 
 fortune of association. More fast friend- 
 ships and pleasant acquaintanceships are 
 formed on the Atlantic steamships, between 
 those who would have been only indiffer- 
 ent acquaintances elsewhere, than one would 
 think possible on a voyage which naturally 
 makes one as selfish as he is indifferent to 
 his personal appearance. The Atlantic is 
 the only power on earth I know that can 
 make a woman indifferent to her personal 
 appearance. 
 
 Mandeville remembers, and I think with- 
 out detriment to himself, the glimpses he 
 had in the White Mountains once of a young 
 lady of whom his utmost efforts could only 
 give him no further information than her 
 name. Chance sight of her on a passing 
 stage or amid a group on some mountain 
 lookout was all he ever had, and he did not 
 even know certainly whether she was the 
 perfect beauty and the lovely character he 
 thought her. He said he would have known 
 her, however, at a great distance ; there was 
 in her form that ravishing mingling of grace 
 and command of which we hear so much, 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 213 
 
 and which turns out to be nearly all com- 
 mand after the " ceremony ; " or perhaps it 
 was something in the glance of her eye or 
 the turn of her head, or very likely it was a 
 sweet inherited reserve or hauteur, that cap- 
 tivated him, that filled his days with the ex- 
 pectation of seeing her, and made him hasten 
 to the hotel registers in the hope that her 
 name was there recorded. Whatever it was, 
 she interested him as one of the people he 
 would like to know ; and it piqued him that 
 there was a life, rich in friendships, no 
 doubt, in tastes, in many noblenesses, — one 
 of thousands of such, — that must be abso- 
 lutely nothing to him, — nothing but a win- 
 dow into heaven momentarily opened and 
 then closed. I have myself no idea that she 
 was a countess incognito, or that she had 
 descended from any greater heights than 
 those where Mandeville saw her, but I have 
 always regretted that she went her way so 
 mysteriously and left no clew, and that we 
 shall wear out the remainder of our days 
 without her society. I have looked for her 
 name, but always in vain, among the attend- 
 ants at the rights' conventions, in the list of 
 those good Americans presented at court, 
 among those skeleton names that appear as 
 
214 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the remains of beauty in the morning jour- 
 nals after a ball to the wandering prince, in 
 the reports of railway collisions and steam- 
 boat explosions. No news comes of her. 
 And so imperfect are our means of commu- 
 nication in this world that, for anything we 
 know, she may have left it long ago by some 
 private way. 
 
 IV. 
 
 The lasting regret that we cannot know 
 more of the bright, sincere, and genuine 
 people of the world is increased by the fact 
 that they are all different from each other. 
 Was it not Madame de Sevigne* who said 
 she had loved several different women for 
 several different qualities ? Every real per- 
 son — for there are persons, as there are 
 fruits, that have no distinguishing flavor, 
 mere gooseberries — has a distinct quality, 
 and the finding it is always like the dis- 
 covery of a new island to the voyager. 
 The physical world we shall exhaust some 
 day, having a written description of every 
 foot of it to which we can turn ; but we 
 shall never get the different qualities of 
 people into a biographical dictionary, and 
 the making acquaintance with a human be- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 215 
 
 ing will never cease to be an exciting experi- 
 ment. We cannot even classify men so as 
 to aid us much in our estimate of them. The 
 efforts in this direction are ingenious, but 
 unsatisfactory. If I hear that a man is 
 lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, I cannot tell 
 therefrom whether I shall like and trust him. 
 He may produce a phrenological chart show- 
 ing that his knobby head is the home of all 
 the virtues, and that the vicious tendencies 
 are represented by holes in his cranium, and 
 yet I cannot be sure that he will not be as 
 disagreeable as if phrenology had not been 
 invented. I feel sometimes that phrenology 
 is the refuge of mediocrity. Its charts are 
 almost as misleading concerning character 
 as photographs. And photography may be 
 described as the art which enables common- 
 place mediocrity to look like genius. The 
 heavy-jo wled man with shallow cerebrum 
 has only to incline his head so that the lying 
 instrument can select a favorable focus, to 
 appear in the picture with the brow of a 
 sage and the chin of a poet. Of all the arts 
 for ministering to human vanity the photo- 
 graphic is the most useful, but it is a poor 
 aid in the revelation of character. You shall 
 learn more of a man's real nature by seeing 
 
216 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 him walk once up the broad aisle of his 
 church to his pew on Sunday than by study- 
 ing his photograph for a month. 
 
 No, we do not get any certain standard of 
 men by a chart of their temperaments ; it 
 will hardly answer to select a wife by the 
 color of her hair ; though it be by nature as 
 red as a cardinal's hat, she may be no more 
 constant than if it were dyed. The farmer 
 who shuns all the lymphatic beauties in his 
 neighborhood, and selects to wife the most 
 nervous-sanguine, may find that she is un- 
 willing to get up in the winter mornings and 
 make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even 
 in this scientific age which professes to label 
 us all, has been cruelly deceived in this way. 
 Neither the blondes nor the brunettes act ac- 
 cording to the advertisement of their temper- 
 aments. The truth is that men refuse to 
 come under the classifications of the pseudo- 
 scientists, and all our new nomenclatures do 
 not add much to our knowledge. You know 
 what to expect — if the comparison will be 
 pardoned — of a horse with certain points ; 
 but you would n't dare go on a journey with 
 a man merely upon the strength of knowing 
 that his temperament was the proper mixture 
 of the sanguine and the phlegmatic. Science 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 2YI 
 
 is not able to teach us concerning men as it 
 teaches us of horses, though I am very far 
 from saying that there are not traits of no- 
 bleness and of meanness that run through fam- 
 ilies and can be calculated to appear in indi- 
 viduals with absolute certainty ; one family 
 will be trusty and another tricky through all 
 its members for generations ; noble strains 
 and ignoble strains are perpetuated. When 
 we hear that she has eloped with the stable- 
 boy and married him, we are apt to remark, 
 " Well, she was a Bogardus." And when 
 we read that she has gone on a mission and 
 has died, distinguishing herself by some ex- 
 traordinary devotion to the heathen at XJjiji, 
 we think it sufficient to say, " Yes, her mother 
 married into the Smiths." But this knowl- 
 edge comes of our experience of special fam- 
 ilies, and stands us in stead no further. 
 
 If we cannot classify men scientifically and 
 reduce them under a kind of botanical order, 
 as if they had a calculable vegetable develop- 
 ment, neither can we gain much knowledge 
 of them by comparison. It does not help me 
 at all in my estimate of their characters to 
 compare Mandeville with the Young Lady, 
 or Our Next Door with the Parson. The 
 wise man does not permit himself to set up, 
 
218 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 even in his own mind, any comparison of his 
 friends. His friendship is capable of going 
 to extremes with many people, evoked as it 
 is by many qualities. When Mandeville goes 
 into my garden in June I can usually find 
 him in a particular bed of strawberries, but 
 he does not speak disrespectfully of the 
 others. When Nature, says Mandeville, con- 
 sents to put herself into any sort of straw- 
 berry, I have no criticisms to make ; I am 
 only glad that I have been created into the 
 same world with such a delicious manifesta- 
 tion of the Divine favor. If I left Mande- 
 ville alone in the garden long enough, I have 
 no doubt he would impartially make an end 
 of the fruit of all the beds, for his capacity 
 in this direction is as all-embracing as it is 
 in the matter of friendships. The Young 
 Lady has also her favorite patch of berries. 
 And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers 
 to have them picked for him — the elect of 
 the garden — and served in an orthodox 
 manner. The strawberry has a sort of poet- 
 ical precedence, and I presume that no fruit 
 is jealous of it any more than any flower is 
 jealous of the rose ; but I remark the facil- 
 ity with which liking for it is transferred to 
 the raspberry, and from the raspberry (not 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 219 
 
 to make a tedious enumeration) to the melon, 
 and from the melon to the grape, and the 
 grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple. 
 And we do not mar our enjoyment of each 
 by comparisons. 
 
 Of course it would be a dull world if we 
 could not criticise our friends, but the most 
 unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is 
 that by comparison. Criticism is not neces- 
 sarily uncharitableness, but a wholesome ex- 
 ercise of our powers of analysis and discrimi- 
 nation. It is, however, a very idle exercise, 
 leading to no results when we set the qual- 
 ities of one over against the qualities of 
 another, and disparage by contrast, and not 
 by independent judgment. And this method 
 of procedure creates jealousies and heart- 
 burnings innumerable. 
 
 Criticism by comparison is the refuge of 
 incapables, and especially is this true in lit- 
 erature. It is a lazy way of disposing of a 
 young poet to bluntly declare, without any 
 sort of discrimination of his defects or his 
 excellences, that he equals Tennyson, and 
 that Scott never wrote anything finer. What 
 is the justice of damning a meritorious nov- 
 elist by comparing him with Dickens, and 
 smothering him with thoughtless and good- 
 
220 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 natured eulogy ? The poet and the novelist 
 may be well enough, and probably have 
 qualities and gifts of their own which are 
 worth the critic's attention, if he has any 
 time to bestow on them ; and it is certainly 
 unjust to subject them to a comparison with 
 somebody else, merely because the critic will 
 not take the trouble to ascertain what they 
 are. If, indeed, the poet and novelist are 
 mere imitators of a model and copyists of a 
 style, they may be dismissed with such com- 
 mendation as we bestow upon the machines 
 who pass their lives in making bad copies of 
 the pictures of the great painters. But the 
 critics of whom we speak do not intend de- 
 preciation, but eulogy, when they say that 
 the author they have in hand has the wit of 
 Sydney Smith and the brilliancy of Ma- 
 caulay. Probably he is not like either of 
 them, and may have a genuine though mod- 
 est virtue of his own ; but these names will 
 certainly kill him, and he will never be any- 
 body in the popular estimation. The pub- 
 lic finds out speedily that he is not Sydney 
 Smith, and it resents the extravagant claim 
 for him as if he were an impudent pretender. 
 How many authors of fair ability to interest 
 the world have we known in our own day 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 221 
 
 who have been thus sky-rocketed into noto- 
 riety by the lazy indiscrimination of the 
 critic-by-comparison, and then have sunk 
 into a popular contempt as undeserved ! I 
 never see a young aspirant injudiciously 
 compared to a great and resplendent name 
 in literature but I feel like saying, My poor 
 fellow, your days are few and full of trouble ; 
 you begin life handicapped, and you cannot 
 possibly run a creditable race. 
 
 I think this sort of critical eulogy is more 
 damaging even than that which kills by a dif- 
 ferent assumption, and one which is equally 
 common, namely, that the author has not 
 done what he probably never intended to do. 
 It is well known that most of the trouble in 
 life comes from our inability to compel other 
 people to do what we think they ought, and 
 it is true in criticism that we are unwilling 
 to take a book for what it is, and credit the 
 author with that. When the solemn critic, 
 like a mastiff with a lady's bonnet in his 
 mouth, gets hold of a light piece of verse, or 
 a graceful sketch which catches the humor 
 of an hour for the entertainment of an hour, 
 he tears it into a thousand shreds. It adds 
 nothing to human knowledge, it solves none 
 of the problems of life, it touches none of 
 
222 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the questions of social science, it is not a 
 philosophical treatise, and it is not a dozen 
 things that it might have been. The critic 
 cannot forgive the author for this disrespect 
 to him. This isn't a rose, says the critic, 
 taking up a pansy and rending it ; it is not 
 at all like a rose, and the author is either 
 a pretentious idiot or an idiotic pretender. 
 What business, indeed, has the author to 
 send the critic a bunch of sweet-peas, when 
 he knows that a cabbage would be preferred, 
 — something not showy, but useful? 
 
 A good deal of this is what Mandeville 
 said, and I am not sure that it is devoid of 
 personal feeling. He published, some years 
 ago, a little volume giving an account of a 
 trip through the Great West, and a very en- 
 tertaining book it was. But one of the 
 heavy critics got hold of it, and made Man- 
 deville appear, even to himself, he confessed, 
 like an ass, because there was nothing in the 
 volume about geology or mining prospects, 
 and very little to instruct the student of 
 physical geography. With alternate sar- 
 casm and ridicule, he literally basted the 
 author, till Mandeville said that he felt al- 
 most like a depraved scoundrel, and thought 
 he should be held up to less execration 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 228 
 
 if he had committed a neat and scientific 
 murder. 
 
 But I confess that I have a good deal of 
 sympathy with the critics. Consider what 
 these public tasters have to endure ! None 
 of us, I fancy, would like to be compelled 
 to read all that they read, or to take into 
 our mouths, even with the privilege of speed- 
 ily ejecting it with a grimace, all that they 
 sip. The critics of the vintage, who pursue 
 their calling in the dark vaults and amid 
 mouldy casks, give their opinion, for the 
 most part, only upon wine, upon juice that 
 has matured and ripened into the develop- 
 ment of quality. But what crude, unstrained, 
 unfermented, even raw and drugged liquor, 
 must the literary taster put to his unwilling 
 lips day after day ! 
 
TENTH STUDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 It was my good fortune once to visit a 
 man who remembered* the rebellion of 1745. 
 Lest this confession should make me seem 
 very aged, I will add that the visit took 
 place in 1851, and that the man was then 
 one hundred and thirteen years old. He 
 was quite a lad before Dr. Johnson drank 
 Mrs. Thrale's tea. That he was as old as 
 he had the credit of being I have the evi- 
 dence of my own senses (and I am seldom 
 mistaken in a person's age), of his own fam- 
 ily, and his own word ; and it is incredible 
 that so old a person, and one so apparently 
 near the grave, would deceive about his age. 
 
 The testimony of the very aged is always 
 to be received without question, as Alexan- 
 der Hamilton once learned. He was trying 
 a land-title with Aaron Burr, and two of the 
 witnesses upon whom Burr relied were ven- 
 erable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, 
 carried the surveying chains over the land 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 225 
 
 in dispute, and who were now aged respec- 
 tively one hundred and four years and one 
 hundred and six years. Hamilton gently 
 attempted to undervalue their testimony, but 
 he was instantly put down by the Dutch jus- 
 tice, who suggested that Mr. Hamilton could 
 not be aware of the age of the witnesses. 
 
 My old man (the expression seems famil- 
 iar and inelegant) had indeed an exagger- 
 ated idea of his own age, and sometimes said 
 that he supposed he was going on four hun- 
 dred, which was true enough, in fact ; but 
 for the exact date, he referred to his young- 
 est son, — a frisky and humorsome lad of 
 eighty years, who had received us at the 
 gate, and whom we had at first mistaken for 
 the veteran, his father. But when we be- 
 held the old man, we saw the difference be- 
 tween age and age. The latter had settled 
 into a grizzliness and grimness which belong 
 to a very aged and stunted but sturdy oak- 
 tree, upon the bark of which the gray moss 
 is thick and heavy. The old man appeared 
 hale enough, he could walk about, his sight 
 and hearing were not seriously impaired, he 
 ate with relish, and his teeth were so sound 
 that he would not need a dentist for at least 
 another century ; but the moss was growing 
 
226 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 on him. His boy of eighty seemed a green 
 sapling beside him. 
 
 He remembered absolutely nothing that 
 had taken place within thirty years, but 
 otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as 
 it ever was, for he must always have been 
 an ignoramus, and would never know any- 
 thing if he lived to be as old as he said he 
 was going on to be. Why he was interested 
 in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, 
 for he of course did not go over to Scotland 
 to carry a pike in it, and he only remem- 
 bered to have heard it talked about as a 
 great event in the Irish market-town near 
 which he lived, and to which he had ridden 
 when a boy. And he knew much more 
 about the horse that drew him, and the cart 
 in which he rode, than he did about the re- 
 bellion of the Pretender. 
 
 I hope I do not appear to speak harshly 
 of this amiable old man, and if he is still 
 living I wish him well, although his example 
 was bad in some respects. He had used to- 
 bacco for nearly a century, and the habit 
 has very likely been the death of him. If 
 so, it is to be regretted. For it would have 
 been interesting to watch the process of his 
 gradual disintegration and return to the 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 227 
 
 ground ; the loss of sense after sense, as 
 decaying limbs fall from the oak ; the fail- 
 ure of discrimination, of the power of choice, 
 and finally of memory itself; the peaceful 
 wearing out and passing away of body and 
 mind without disease ; the natural running 
 down of a man. The interesting fact about 
 him at that time was that his bodily powers 
 seemed in sufficient vigor, but that the mind 
 had not force enough to manifest itself 
 through his organs. The complete battery 
 was there, the appetite was there, the acid 
 was eating the zinc ; but the electric current 
 was too weak to flash from the brain. And 
 yet he appeared so sound throughout that it 
 was difficult to say that his mind was not as 
 good as it ever had been. He had stored in 
 it very little to feed on, and any mind would 
 get enfeebled by a century's rumination on 
 a hearsay idea of the rebellion of '45. 
 
 It was possible with this man to fully test 
 one's respect for age, which is in all civilized 
 nations a duty. And I found that my feel- 
 ings were mixed about him. I discovered 
 in him a conceit in regard to his long sojourn 
 on this earth, as if it were somehow a credit 
 to him. In the presence of his good opinion 
 of himself, I could but question the real 
 
228 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 value of his continued life, to himself or to 
 others. If he ever had any friends he had 
 outlived them, except his boy; his wives — 
 a century of them — were all dead ; the 
 world had actually passed away for him. 
 He hung on the tree like a frost-nipped 
 apple, which the farmer has neglected to 
 gather. The world always renews itself, 
 and remains young. What relation had he 
 to it? 
 
 I was delighted to find that this old man 
 had never voted for George Washington. I 
 do not know that he had ever heard of him. 
 Washington may be said to have played his 
 part since his time. I am not sure that he 
 perfectly remembered anything so recent as 
 the American Revolution. He was living 
 quietly in Ireland during our French and 
 Indian wars, and he did not emigrate to this 
 country till long after our revolutionary and 
 our constitutional struggles were over. The 
 rebellion of '45 was the great event of the 
 world for him, and of that he knew nothing. 
 
 I intend no disrespect to this man, — a 
 cheerful and pleasant enough old person, — 
 but he had evidently lived himself out of the 
 world, as completely as people usually die 
 out of it. His only remaining value was to 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 229 
 
 the moralist, who might perchance make 
 something out of him. I suppose if he, had 
 died young, he would have been regretted, 
 and his friends would have lamented that he 
 did not fill out his days in the world, and 
 would very likely have called him back, if 
 tears and prayers could have done so. They 
 can see now what his prolonged life amounted 
 to, and how the world has closed up the gap 
 he once filled while he still lives in it. 
 
 A great part of the unhappiness of this 
 world consists in regret for those who de- 
 part, as it seems to us, prematurely. We 
 imagine that if they would return, the old 
 conditions would be restored. But would it 
 be so ? If they, in any case, came back, 
 would there be any place for them? The 
 world so quickly readjusts itself after any 
 loss that the return of the departed would 
 nearly always throw it, even the circle most 
 interested, into confusion. Are the Enoch 
 Ardens ever wanted ? 
 
 II. 
 
 A popular notion akin to this, that the 
 world would have any room for the departed 
 if they should now and then return, is the 
 
230 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 constant regret that people will not learn by 
 the experience of others that one genera- 
 tion learns little from the preceding, and that 
 youth never will adopt the experience of age. 
 But if experience went for anything, we 
 should all come to a standstill ; for there is 
 nothing so discouraging to effort. Disbelief 
 in Ecclesiastes is the mainspring of action. 
 In that lies the freshness and the interest of 
 life, and it is the source of every endeavor. 
 
 If the boy believed that the accumulation 
 of wealth and the acquisition of power were 
 what the old man says they are, the world 
 would very soon be stagnant. If he believed 
 that his chances of obtaining either were as 
 poor as the majority of men find them to be, 
 ambition would die within him. It is be- 
 cause he rejects the experience of those who 
 have preceded him that the world is kept in 
 the topsy-turvy condition which we all rejoice 
 in, and which we call progress. 
 
 And yet I confess I have a soft place in 
 my heart for that rare character in our New 
 England life who is content with the world 
 as he finds it, and who does not attempt to 
 appropriate any more of it to himself than 
 he absolutely needs from day to day. He 
 knows from the beginning that the world 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 231 
 
 could get on without him, and he has never 
 had any anxiety to leave any result behind 
 him, any legacy for the world to quarrel 
 over. 
 
 He is really an exotic in our New England 
 climate and society, and his life is perpetu- 
 ally misunderstood by his neighbors, because 
 he shares none of their uneasiness about get- 
 ting on in life. He is even called lazy, good- 
 for - nothing, and " shiftless," — the final 
 stigma that we put upon a person who has 
 learned to wait without the exhausting pro- 
 cess of laboring. 
 
 I made his acquaintance last summer in 
 the country, and I have not in a long time 
 been so well pleased with any of our species. 
 He was a man past middle life, with a large 
 family. He had always been from boyhood 
 of a contented and placid mind, slow in his 
 movements, slow in his speech. I think he 
 never cherished a hard feeling toward any- 
 body, nor envied any one, least of all the 
 rich and prosperous about whom he liked to 
 talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal about 
 wealth, especially about his cousin who had 
 been down South and "got fore-handed" 
 within a few years. He was genuinely 
 pleased at his relation's good luck, and 
 
232 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 pointed him out to me with some pride. 
 But he had no envy of him, and he evinced 
 no desire to imitate him. I inferred from 
 all his conversation about " piling it up " 
 (of which he spoke with a gleam of enthu- 
 siasm in his eye) that there were moments 
 when he would like to be rich himself ; but 
 it was evident that he would never make the 
 least effort to be so, and I doubt if he could 
 even overcome that delicious inertia of mind 
 and body called laziness sufficiently to in- 
 herit. 
 
 Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar 
 fascination for him, and I suspect he was a 
 visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet 
 I suppose he had hardly the personal prop- 
 erty which the law exempts from execution. 
 He had lived in a great many towns, moving 
 from one to another with his growing family, 
 by easy stages, and was always the poorest 
 man in the town, and lived on the most nig- 
 gardly of its rocky and bramble-grown farms, 
 the productiveness of which he reduced to 
 zero in a couple of seasons by his careful 
 neglect of culture. The fences of his hired 
 domain always fell into ruins under him, per- 
 haps because he sat on them so much, and 
 the hovels he occupied rotted down during 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 233 
 
 his placid residence in them. lie moved 
 from desolation to desolation, but carried 
 always with him the equal mind of a philos- 
 opher. Not even the occasional tart remarks 
 of his wife, about their nomadic life and his 
 serenity in the midst of discomfort, could 
 ruffle his smooth spirit. 
 
 He was, in every respect, a most worthy 
 man, truthful, honest, temperate, and, I need 
 not say, frugal ; and he had no bad habits, 
 — perhaps he never had energy enough to 
 acquire any. Nor did he lack the knack of 
 the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or 
 build a house, or doctor a cow; but it never 
 seemed to him, in this brief existence, worth 
 while to do any of these things. He was 
 an excellent angler, but he rarely fished ; 
 partly because of the shortness of days, 
 partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, 
 but principally because the trout brooks 
 were all arranged lengthwise and ran over 
 so much ground. But no man liked to look 
 at a string of trout better than he did, and 
 he was willing to sit down in a sunny place 
 and talk about trout-fishing half a day at a 
 time, and he would talk pleasantly and well 
 too, though his wife might be continually 
 interrupting him by a call for firewood. 
 
234 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 I should not do justice to his own idea of 
 himself if I did not add that he was most 
 respectably connected, and that he had a 
 justifiable though feeble pride in his family. 
 It helped his self-respect, which no ignoble 
 circumstances could destroy. He was, as 
 must appear by this time, a most intelligent 
 man, and he was a well-informed man ; that 
 is to say, he read the weekly newspapers 
 when he could get them, and he had the 
 average country information about Beecher 
 and Greeley and the Prussian war (" Napo- 
 leon is gettin' on 't, ain't he ? ") and the 
 general prospect of the election campaigns. 
 Indeed, he was warmly, or rather luke- 
 warmly, interested in politics. He liked to 
 talk about the inflated currency, and it 
 seemed plain to him that his condition would 
 somehow be improved if we could get to a 
 specie basis. He was, in fact, a little troub- 
 led by the national debt ; it seemed to press 
 on him somehow, while his own never did. 
 He exhibited more animation over the affairs 
 of the government than he did over his own, 
 — an evidence at once of his disinterested- 
 ness and his patriotism. He had been an 
 old abolitionist, and was strong on the rights 
 of free labor, though he did not care to ex- 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 235 
 
 ercise his privilege much. Of course, he had 
 the proper contempt for the poor whites 
 down South. I never saw a person with 
 more correct notions on such a variety of 
 subjects. He was perfectly willing that 
 churches (being himself a member) and 
 Sunday-schools and missionary enterprises 
 should go on ; in fact, I do not believe he 
 ever opposed anything in his life. No one 
 was more willing to vote town taxes and 
 road repairs and schoolhouses than he. If 
 you could call him spirited at all, he was 
 public-spirited. 
 
 And with all this he was never very 
 well ; he had, from boyhood, " enjoyed poor 
 health." You would say he was not a man 
 who would ever catch anything, not even an 
 epidemic ; but he was a person whom dis- 
 eases would be likely to overtake, even the 
 slowest of slow fevers. And he was n't a 
 man to shake off anything. And yet sick- 
 ness seemed to trouble him no more than 
 poverty. He was not discontented ; he 
 never grumbled. I am not sure but he rel- 
 ished a " spell of sickness " in haying-time. 
 
 An admirably balanced man, who accepts 
 tht world as it is, and evidently lives on the 
 experience of others. I have never seen a 
 
236 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 man with less envy or more cheerfulness, or 
 so contented with as little reason for being 
 so. The only drawback to his future is that 
 rest beyond the grave will not be much 
 change for him, and he has no works to fol- 
 low him. 
 
 III. 
 
 This Yankee philosopher, who, without 
 being a Brahmin, had, in an uncongenial 
 atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of 
 Nirvana, reminded us all of the ancient 
 sages ; and we queried whether a world that 
 could produce such as he, and could, beside, 
 lengthen a man's years to one hundred and 
 thirteen, could fairly be called an old and 
 worn-out world, having long passed the stage 
 of its primeval poetry and simplicity. Many 
 an Eastern dervish has, I think, got immor- 
 tality upon less laziness and resignation than 
 this temporary sojourner in Massachusetts. 
 It is a common notion that the world (mean- 
 ing the people in it) has become tame and 
 commonplace, lost its primeval freshness and 
 epigrammatic point. Mandeville, in his ar- 
 gumentative way, dissents from this entirely. 
 He says that the world is more comp^x, 
 varied, and a thousand times as interesting 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 237 
 
 as it was in what we call its youth, and that 
 it is as fresh, as individual, and capable of 
 producing odd and eccentric characters as 
 ever. He thought the creative vim had not 
 in any degree abated, that both the types of 
 men and of nations are as sharply stamped 
 and defined as ever they were. 
 
 Was there ever, he said, in the past, any 
 figure more clearly cut and freshly minted 
 than the Yankee? Had the Old World 
 anything to show more positive and uncom- 
 promising in all the elements of character 
 than the Englishman ? And if the edges of 
 these were being rounded off, was there not 
 developing in the extreme West a type of 
 men different from all preceding, which the 
 world could not yet define? He believed 
 that the production of original types was 
 simply infinite. 
 
 Herbert urged that he must at least admit 
 that there was a freshness of legend and 
 poetry in what we call the primeval peoples 
 that is wanting now; the mythic period is 
 gone, at any rate. 
 
 Mandeville could not say about the myths. 
 We couldn't tell what interpretation suc- 
 ceeding ages would put upon our lives and 
 history and literature when they have become 
 
238 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 remote and shadowy. But we need not go to 
 antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for 
 characters as racy of the fresh earth as those 
 handed down to us from the dawn of history. 
 He would put Benjamin Franklin against any 
 of the sages of the mythic or the classic pe- 
 riod. He would have been perfectly at home 
 in ancient Athens, as Socrates would have 
 been in modern Boston. There might have 
 been more heroic characters at the siege of 
 Troy than Abraham Lincoln, but there was 
 not one more strongly marked individually ; 
 not one his superior in what we call primeval 
 craft and humor. He was just the man, if 
 he could not have dislodged Priam by a writ 
 of ejectment, to have invented the wooden 
 horse, and then to have made Paris the hero 
 of some ridiculous story that would have set 
 all Asia in a roar. 
 
 Mandeville said further that as to poetry, 
 he did not know much about that, and there 
 was not much he cared to read except parts 
 of Shakespeare and Homer and passages of 
 Milton. But it did seem to him that we 
 had men nowadays who could, if they would 
 give their minds to it, manufacture in quan- 
 tity the same sort of epigrammatic sayings 
 and legends that our scholars were digging 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 239 
 
 out of the Orient. He did not know why 
 Emerson in antique setting was not as good 
 as Saadi. Take, for instance, said Mande- 
 ville, such a legend as this, and how easy it 
 would be to make others like it ! — 
 
 The son of an Emir had red hair, of 
 which he was ashamed, and wished to dye 
 it. But his father said : " Nay, my son, 
 rather behave in such a manner that all 
 fathers shall wish their sons had red hair." 
 
 This was too absurd. Mandeville had 
 gone too far, except in the opinion of Our 
 Next Door, who declared that an imitation 
 was just as good as an original, if you could 
 not detect it. But Herbert said that the 
 closer an imitation is to an original, the 
 more unendurable it is. But nobody could 
 tell exactly why. 
 
 The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed 
 on by forms. The nuggets of wisdom that 
 are dug out of the Oriental and remote lit- 
 eratures would often prove to be only com- 
 monplace if stripped of their quaint setting. 
 If you give an Oriental twist to some of our 
 modern thought, its value would be greatly 
 enhanced for many people. 
 
 Lhave seen those, said the Mistress, who 
 seem to prefer dried fruit to fresh; but I 
 
240 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 like the strawberry and the peach of each 
 season, and for me the last is always the 
 best. 
 
 Even the Parson admitted that there were 
 no signs of fatigue or decay in the creative 
 energy of the world ; and if it is a question 
 of Pagans, he preferred Mandeville to Saadi. 
 
ELEVENTH STUDY. 
 
 I. 
 
 It happened, or rather, to tell the truth, 
 it was contrived, — for I have waited too 
 long for things to turn up to have much faith 
 in " happen," — that we who have sat by 
 this hearthstone before should all be together 
 on Christmas Eve. There was a splendid 
 backlog of hickory just beginning to burn 
 with a glow that promised to grow more 
 fiery till long past midnight, which would 
 have needed no apology in a loggers' camp, 
 — not so much as the religion of which a 
 lady (in a city which shall be nameless) 
 said, " If you must have a religion, this one 
 will do nicely." 
 
 There was not much conversation, as is 
 apt to be the case when people come togeth- 
 er who have a great deal to say, and are 
 intimate enough to permit the freedom of 
 silence. It was Mandeville who suggested 
 that we read something, and the Young 
 Lady, who was in a mood tc enjoy her own 
 
242 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 thoughts, said, " Do." And finally it came 
 about that the Fire-Tender, without more 
 resistance to the urging than was becoming, 
 went to his library, and returned with a 
 manuscript, from which he read the story of 
 
 MY UNCLE IN INDIA. 
 
 Not that it is my uncle, let me explain. 
 It is Polly's uncle, as I very well know, from 
 the many times she has thrown him up to 
 me, and is liable so to do at any moment. 
 Having small expectations myself, and hav- 
 ing wedded Polly when they were smaller, I 
 have come to feel the full force, the crushing 
 weight, of her lightest remark about " My 
 Uncle in India." The words as I write 
 them convey no idea of the tone in which 
 they fall upon my ears. I think it is the 
 only fault of that estimable woman that she 
 has an uncle in India, and does not let him 
 quietly remain there. I feel quite sure that 
 if I had an uncle in Botany Bay I should 
 never, never throw him up to Polly in the 
 way mentioned. If there is any jar in our 
 quiet life, he is the cause of it ; all along of 
 possible " expectations " on the one side cal- 
 culated to overawe the other side not having 
 expectations. And yet I know that if her 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 243 
 
 uncle in India were this night to roll a bar- 
 rel of " India's golden sands," as I feel that 
 he any moment may do, into our sitting- 
 room, at Polly's feet, that charming wife, 
 who is more generous than the month of 
 May, and who has no thought but for my 
 comfort in two worlds, would straightway 
 make it over to me, to have and to hold, if I 
 could lift it, forever and forever. And that 
 makes it more inexplicable that she, being a 
 woman, will continue to mention him in the 
 way she does. 
 
 In a large and general way I regard un- 
 cles as not out of place in this transitory 
 state of existence. They stand for a great 
 many possible advantages. They are liable 
 to " tip " you at school, they are resources in 
 vacation, they come grandly in play about 
 the holidays, at which season my heart al- 
 ways did warm towards them with lively 
 expectations, which were often turned into 
 golden solidities ; and then there is always 
 the prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, that 
 uncles are mortal, and, in their timely taking 
 off, may prove as generous in the will as 
 they were in the deed. And there is always 
 this redeeming possibility in a niggardly 
 uncle. Still there must be something wrong 
 
244 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 in the character of the uncle per se, or all 
 history would not agree that nepotism is 
 such a dreadful thing. 
 
 But, to return from this unnecessary di- 
 gression, I am reminded that the charioteer 
 of the patient year has brought round the 
 holiday time. It has been a growing year, 
 as most years are. It is very pleasant to see 
 how the shrubs in our little patch of ground 
 widen and thicken and bloom at the right 
 time, and to know that the great trees have 
 added a layer to their trunks. To be sure, 
 our garden — which I planted under Polly's 
 directions, with seeds that must have been 
 patented, and I forgot to buy the right of, 
 for they are mostly still waiting the final 
 resurrection — gave evidence that it shared 
 in the misfortune of the Fall, and was never 
 an Eden from which one would have re- 
 quired to be driven. It was the easiest gar- 
 den to keep the neighbors' pigs and hens out 
 of I ever saw. If its increase was small, 
 its temptations were smaller, and that is 
 no little recommendation in this world of 
 temptations. But, as a general thing, every- 
 thing has grown, except our house. That 
 little cottage, over which Polly presides with 
 grace enough to adorn a palace, is still small 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 245 
 
 outside and smaller inside ; and if it has an 
 air of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms 
 are cosey and sunny by day and cheerful 
 by night, and it is bursting with books, and 
 not unattractive with modest pictures on the 
 walls, which we think do well enough until 
 my uncle — (but never mind my uncle, now) 
 — and if, in the long winter evenings, when 
 the largest lamp is lit, and the chestnuts 
 glow in embers, and the kid turns on the 
 spit, and the house-plants are green and flow- 
 ering, and the ivy glistens in the firelight, 
 and Polly sits with that contented, far-away 
 look in her eyes that I like to see, her fin- 
 gers busy upon one of those cruel mysteries 
 which have delighted the sex since Penelope, 
 and I read in one of my fascinating law- 
 books, or perhaps regale ourselves with a 
 taste of Montaigne, — if all this is true, there 
 are times when the cottage seems small ; 
 though I can never find that Polly thinks 
 so, except when she sometimes says that she 
 does not know where she should bestow her 
 uncle in it, if he should suddenly come back 
 from India. 
 
 There it is, again. I sometimes think 
 that my wife believes her uncle in India to 
 be as large as two ordinary men ; and if her 
 
246 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 ideas of him are any gauge of the reality, 
 there is no place in the town large enough 
 for him except the Town Hall. She proba- 
 bly expects him to come with his bungalow, 
 and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his 
 elephants, and his retinue of servants, and 
 his principalities, and his powers, and his 
 ha — (no, not that), and his chow-chow, and 
 his — I scarcely know what besides. 
 
 Christmas Eve was a shiny cold night, a 
 creaking cold night, a placid, calm, swinge- 
 ing cold night. Out-doors had gone into a 
 general state of crystallization. The snow- 
 fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that 
 Kane looked on, and lay sparkling under 
 the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy ; and all 
 the crystals on the trees and bushes hung 
 glistening, as if ready, at a breath of air, to 
 break out into metallic ringing, like a mil- 
 lion silver joy-bells. I mentioned the con- 
 ceit to Polly, as we stood at the window, and 
 she said it reminded her of Jean Paul. She 
 is a woman of most remarkable discernment. 
 
 Christmas is a great festival at our house 
 in a small way. Among the many delight- 
 ful customs we did not inherit from our Pil- 
 grim Fathers, there is none so pleasant as 
 that of giving presents at this season. It is 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 247 
 
 the most exciting time of the year. No one 
 is too rich to receive something, and no one 
 too poor to give a trifle. And in the act of 
 giving and receiving these tokens of regard, 
 all the world is kin for once, and brighter 
 for this transient glow of generosity. De- 
 lightful custom ! Hard is the lot of child- 
 hood that knows nothing of the visits of 
 Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the 
 chimney at night ; and cheerless is any age 
 that is not brightened by some Christmas 
 gift, however humble. What a mystery of 
 preparation there is in the preceding days, 
 what planning and plottings of surprises ! 
 Polly and I keep up the custom in our sim- 
 ple way, and great is the perplexity to ex- 
 press the greatest amount of affection with a 
 limited outlay. For the excellence of a gift 
 lies in its appropriateness rather than in its 
 value. As we stood by the window that 
 night, we wondered what we should receive 
 this year, and indulged in I know not what 
 little hypocrisies and deceptions. 
 
 " I wish," said Polly, " that my uncle in 
 India would send me a camel' s-hair shawl, 
 or a string of pearls, each as big as the end 
 of my thumb." 
 
 "Or a white cow, which would give 
 
248 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 golden milk, that would make butter worth 
 seventy-five cents a pound," I added, as we 
 drew the curtains, and turned to our chairs 
 before the open fire. 
 
 It is our custom on every Christmas Eve 
 — as I believe I have somewhere said, or, if 
 I have not, I say it again, as the member 
 from Erin might remark — to read one of 
 Dickens's Christmas stories. And this night, 
 after punching the fire until it sent showers 
 of sparks up the chimney, I read the open- 
 ing chapter of " Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings," 
 in my best manner, and handed the book to 
 Polly to continue ; for I do not so much rel- 
 ish reading aloud the succeeding stories of 
 Mr. Dickens's annual budget, since he wrote 
 them, as men go to war in these days, by 
 substitute. And Polly read on, in her me- 
 lodious voice, which is almost as pleasant to 
 me as the Wasser-fluth of Schubert, which 
 she often plays at twilight ; and I looked 
 into the fire, unconsciously constructing sto- 
 ries of my own out of the embers. And her 
 voice still went on, in a sort of running ac- 
 companiment to my airy or fiery fancies. 
 
 " 'Sleep ? " said Polly, stopping with what 
 seemed to me a sort of crash, in which all 
 the castles tumbled into ashes. 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 249 
 
 " Not in the least," I answered brightly ; 
 " never heard anything more agreeable." 
 And the reading flowed on and on and on, 
 and I looked steadily into the fire, the fire, 
 fire, fi — 
 
 Suddenly the door opened, and into our 
 cosey parlor walked the most venerable per- 
 sonage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me 
 with great dignity. Summer seemed to have 
 burst into the room, and I was conscious of 
 a puff of Oriental airs and a delightful, lan- 
 guid tranquillity. I was not surprised that 
 the figure before me was clad in full turban, 
 baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt 
 about the middle with a rich shawl. Fol- 
 lowed him a swart attendant, who hastened 
 to spread a rug upon which my visitor sat 
 down, with great gravity, as I am informed 
 they do in farthest Ind. The slave then 
 filled the bowl of a long-stemmed chibouk, 
 and, handing it to his master, retired behind 
 him and began to fan him with the most 
 prodigious palm-leaf I ever saw. Soon the 
 fumes of the delicate tobacco of Persia per- 
 vaded the room, like some costly aroma 
 which you cannot buy, now the entertain- 
 ment of the Arabian Kights is discontinued. 
 
 Looking through the window I saw, if I 
 
250 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 saw anything, a palanquin at our door, and 
 attendant on it four dusky, half -naked bear- 
 ers, who did not seem to fancy the splendor 
 of the night, for they jumped about on the 
 snow crust, and I could see them shiver and 
 shake in the keen air. Oho ! thought I, this, 
 then, is my uncle from India ! 
 
 " Yes, it is," now spoke my visitor extraor- 
 dinary, in a gruff, harsh voice. 
 
 " I think I have heard Polly speak of 
 you," I rejoined, in an attempt to be civil, 
 for I did n't like his face any better than I 
 did his voice, — a red, fiery, irascible kind 
 of face. 
 
 " Yes, I 've come over to — Oh, Lord ! 
 Quick, Jamsetzee 5 lift up that foot, — take 
 care. There, Mr. Trimings, if that's your 
 name, get me a glass of brandy, stiff." 
 
 I got him our little apothecary-labelled 
 bottle, and poured out enough to preserve 
 a whole can of peaches. My uncle took 
 it down without a wink, as if it had been 
 water, and seemed relieved. It was a very 
 pleasant uncle to have at our fireside on 
 Christmas Eve, I felt. 
 
 At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee 
 handed me a parcel which I saw was directed 
 to Polly, which I untied, and lo ! the most 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 251 
 
 wonderful camel' s-hair shawl that ever was, 
 so fine that I immediately drew it through 
 my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it 
 would entirely cover our little room if I 
 spread it out ; a dingy red color, but splen- 
 did in appearance from the little white hie- 
 roglyphic worked in one corner, which is 
 always worn outside, to show that it cost 
 nobody knows how many thousands of dol- 
 lars. 
 
 "A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have 
 come home — as I was saying when that con- 
 founded twinge took me — to settle down ; 
 and I intend to make Polly my heir, and 
 live at my ease and enjoy life. Move that 
 leg a little, Jamsetzee." 
 
 I meekly replied that I had no doubt 
 Polly would be delighted to see her dear 
 uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to 
 that, I did n't know any one with a greater 
 capacity for that than she. 
 
 " That depends," said the gruff old smoker, 
 "how I like ye. A fortune, scraped up in 
 forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown away 
 in a minute. But what a house this is to 
 live in ! " the uncomfortable old relative 
 went on, throwing a contemptuous glance 
 round the humble cottage. " Is this all of 
 it?" 
 
252 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 " In the winter it is all of it," I said, flush- 
 ing up ; " but in the summer, when the doors 
 and windows are open, it is as large as any- 
 body's house. And," I went on, with some 
 warmth, "it was large enough just before 
 you came in, and pleasant enough. And be- 
 sides," I said, rising into indignation, "you 
 cannot get anything much better in this city 
 short of eight hundred dollars a year, pay- 
 able first days of January, April, July, and 
 October, in advance, and my salary " — 
 
 "Hang your salary, and confound your 
 impudence and your seven-by-nine hovel! 
 Do you think you have anything to say 
 about the use of my money, scraped up in 
 forty years in Ingy ? Things have got to 
 be changed ! " he burst out, in a voice that 
 rattled the glasses on the sideboard. 
 
 I should think they were. Even as I 
 looked into the little fireplace it enlarged, 
 and there was an enormous grate, level with 
 the floor, glowing with sea - coal ; and a 
 magnificent mantel carved in oak, old and 
 brown ; and over it hung a landscape, wide, 
 deep, summer in the foreground with all the 
 gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyond 
 hills of blue and far mountains lying in rosy 
 light. I held my breath as I looked down 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 253 
 
 the marvellous perspective. Looking round 
 for a second, I caught a glimpse of a Hindoo 
 at each window, who vanished as if they had 
 been whisked off by enchantment ; and the 
 close walls that shut us in fled away. Had 
 cohesion and gravitation given out? Was 
 it the " Great Consummation " of the year 
 18 — ? It was all like the swift transfor- 
 mation of a dream, and I pinched my arm 
 to make sure that I was not the subject of 
 some diablerie. 
 
 The little house was gone ; but that I 
 scarcely minded, for I had suddenly come 
 into possession of my wife's castle in Spain. 
 I sat in a spacious, lofty apartment, furnished 
 with a princely magnificence. Rare pictures 
 adorned the walls, statues looked down from 
 deep niches, and over both the dark ivy of 
 England ran and drooped in graceful luxu- 
 riance. Upon the heavy tables were costly, 
 illuminated volumes ; luxurious chairs and 
 ottomans invited to easy rest; and upon 
 the ceiling Aurora led forth all the flower- 
 strewing daughters of the dawn in brilliant 
 frescos. Through the open doors my eyes 
 wandered into magnificent apartment after 
 apartment. There to the south, through 
 folding-doors, was the splendid library, with 
 
254 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 groined roof, colored light streaming in 
 through painted windows, high shelves 
 stowed with books, old armor hanging on 
 the walls, great carved oaken chairs about 
 a solid oaken table, and beyond a conserva- 
 tory of flowers and plants with a fountain 
 springing in the centre, the splashing of 
 whose waters I could hear. Through the 
 open windows I looked upon a lawn, green 
 with close-shaven turf, set with ancient trees, 
 and variegated with parterres of summer 
 plants in bloom. It was the month of June, 
 and the smell of roses was in the air. 
 
 I might have thought it only a freak of 
 my fancy, but there by the fireplace sat a 
 stout, red-faced, puffy-looking man, in the 
 ordinary dress of an English gentleman, 
 whom I had no difficulty in recognizing as 
 my uncle from India. 
 
 " One wants a fire every day in the year 
 in this confounded climate," remarked that 
 amiable old person, addressing no one in 
 particular. 
 
 I had it on my lips to suggest that I 
 trusted the day would come when he would 
 have heat enough to satisfy him, in perma- 
 nent supply. I wish now that I had. 
 
 I think things had changed. For now 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 255 
 
 into this apartment, full of the morning sun- 
 shine, came sweeping with the air of a coun- 
 tess born, and a maid of honor bred, and a 
 queen in expectancy, my Polly, stepping 
 with that lofty grace which I always knew 
 she possessed, but which she never had space 
 to exhibit in our little cottage, dressed with 
 that elegance and richness that I should not 
 have deemed possible to the most Dutch 
 duchess that ever lived, and, giving me a 
 complacent nod of recognition, approached 
 her uncle, and said in her smiling, cheery 
 way, " How is the dear uncle this morn- 
 ing?" And, as she spoke, she actually bent 
 down and kissed his horrid old cheek, red- 
 hot with currie and brandy and all the biting 
 pickles I can neither eat nor name, — kissed 
 him, and I did not turn into stone. 
 
 " Comfortable as the weather will permit, 
 my darling ! " — and again I did not turn 
 into stone. 
 
 " Would n't uncle like to take a drive this 
 charming morning ? " Polly asked. 
 
 Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, 
 and Polly swept away again to prepare for 
 the drive, taking no more notice of me than 
 if I had been a poor assistant office lawyer 
 on a salary. And soon the carriage was at 
 
256 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 the door, and my uncle, bundled up like a 
 mummy, and the charming Polly drove gayly 
 away. 
 
 How pleasant it is to be married rich, I 
 thought, as I arose and strolled into the 
 library, where everything was elegant and 
 prim and neat, with no scraps of paper and 
 piles of newspapers or evidences of literary 
 slovenness on the table, and no books in at- 
 tractive disorder, and where I seemed to see 
 the legend staring at me from all the walls, 
 " No smoking." So I uneasily lounged out 
 of the house. And a magnificent house it 
 was, a palace, rather, that seemed to frown 
 upon and bully insignificant me with its 
 splendor, as I walked away from it towards 
 town. 
 
 And why town ? There was no use of 
 doing anything at the dingy office. Eight 
 hundred dollars a year ! It would n't keep 
 Polly in gloves, let alone dressing her for 
 one of those fashionable entertainments to 
 which we went night after night. And so, 
 after a weary day with nothing in it, 1 went 
 home to dinner, to find my uncle quite chir- 
 ruped up with his drive, and Polly regnant, 
 sublimely engrossed in her new world of 
 splendor, a dazzling object of admiration to 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 257 
 
 me, but attentive and even tender to that 
 hypochondriacal, gouty old subject from 
 India. 
 
 Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end 
 of servants, who seemed to know that I 
 could n't have paid the wages of one of 
 them, and plate and courses endless. I say, 
 a miserable dinner, on the edge of which I 
 seemed to sit by permission of somebody, 
 like an invited poor relation, who wishes he 
 had sent a regret, and longing for some of 
 those nice little dishes that Polly used to set 
 before me with beaming face, in the dear old 
 days. 
 
 And after dinner, and proper attention to 
 the comfort for the night of our benefactor, 
 there was the Blibgims's party. No long, 
 confidential interviews, as heretofore, as to 
 what she should wear and what I should 
 wear, and whether it would do to wear it 
 again. And Polly went in one coach, and 
 I in another. No crowding into the hired 
 hack, with all the delightful care about tum- 
 bling dresses, and getting there in good 
 order ; and no coming home together to our 
 little cosey cottage, in a pleasant, excited 
 state of " flutteration," and sitting down to 
 talk it all over, and " Was n't it nice ? " and 
 
258 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 "Did I look as well as anybody? " and " Of 
 course you did to me," and all that non- 
 sense. We lived in a grand way now, and 
 had our separate establishments and sepa- 
 rate plans, and I used to think that a real 
 separation could n't make matters much dif- 
 ferent. Not that Polly meant to be any 
 different, or was, at heart ; but, you know, 
 she was so much absorbed in her new life of 
 splendor, and perhaps I was a little old- 
 fashioned. 
 
 I don't wonder at it now, as I look back. 
 There was an army of dressmakers to see, 
 and a world of shopping to do, and a house- 
 ful of servants to manage, and all the after- 
 noon for calls, and her dear, dear friend, 
 with the artless manners and merry heart of 
 a girl, and the dignity and grace of a noble 
 woman, — the dear friend who lived in the 
 house of the Seven Gables, to consult about 
 all manner of important things. I could 
 not, upon my honor, see that there was any 
 place for me, and I went my own way, not 
 that there was much comfort in it. 
 
 And then I would rather have had charge 
 of a hospital ward than take care of that 
 uncle. Such coddling as he needed, such hu^ 
 uioring of whims. And I am bound to say 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 259 
 
 that Polly couldn't have been more dutiful 
 to him if he had been a Hindoo idol. She 
 read to him and talked to him, and sat by 
 him with her embroidery, and was patient 
 with his crossness, and wearied herself, that 
 I could see, with her devoted ministrations. 
 I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, 
 and longed for the old homely simplicity. I 
 was. Nepotism had no charms for me. 
 There was nothing that I could get Polly 
 that she had not. I could surprise her with 
 no little delicacies or trifles, delightedly 
 bought with money saved for the purpose. 
 There was no more coming home weary with 
 office work, and being met at the door with 
 that warm, loving welcome which the King 
 of England could not buy. There was no 
 long evening when we read alternately from 
 some favorite book, or laid our deep house- 
 keeping plans, rejoiced in a good bargain or 
 made light of a poor one, and were content- 
 ed and merry with little. I recalled with 
 longing my little den, where in the midst 
 of the literary disorder I love, I wrote those 
 stories for the " Antarctic " which Polly, if 
 nobody else, liked to read. There was no 
 comfort for me in my magnificent library. 
 We were all rich and in splendor, and our 
 
260 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 uncle had come from India. I wished, sav- 
 ing his soul, that the ship that brought him 
 over had foundered off Barnegat Light. It 
 would always have been a tender and regret- 
 ful memory to both of us. And how sacred 
 is the memory of such a loss ! 
 
 Christmas? What delight could I have 
 in long solicitude and ingenious devices touch- 
 ing a gift for Polly within my means, and 
 hitting the border-line between her necessi- 
 ties and her extravagant fancy ? A drove 
 of white elephants would n't have been good 
 enough for her now, if each one carried a 
 castle on his back. 
 
 — " and so they were married, and in their 
 snug cottage lived happy ever after." — It 
 was Polly's voice, as she closed the book. 
 
 " There ! I don't believe you have heard 
 a word of it," she said, half complainingly. 
 
 " Oh yes, I have," I cried, starting up and 
 giving the fire a jab with the poker ; "I heard 
 every word of it, except a few at the close. 
 I was thinking" — I stopped, and looked 
 found. 
 
 " Why, Polly, where is the camel's - hair 
 shawl ? " 
 
 " Camel's-hair fiddlestick ! Now I know 
 you have been asleep for an hour." 
 
BACKLOG STUDIES. 261 
 
 And, sure enough, there was n't any cam- 
 ePs-hair shawl there, nor any uncle, nor were 
 there any Hindoos at our windows. 
 
 And then I told Polly all about it ; how 
 her uncle came back, and we were rich and 
 lived in a palace and had no end of money, 
 but she did n't seem to have time to love me 
 in it all, and all the comfort of the little 
 house was blown away as by the winter wind. 
 And Polly vowed, half in tears, that she hoped 
 her uncle never would come back, and she 
 wanted nothing that we had not, and she 
 would n't exchange our independent comfort 
 and snug house, no, not for anybody's man- 
 sion. And then and there we made it all 
 up, in a manner too particular for me to men- 
 tion ; and I never, to this day, heard Polly 
 allude to My Uncle in India. 
 
 And then, as the clock struck eleven, we 
 each produced from the place where we had 
 hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we 
 had prepared for each other, and what sur- 
 prise there was ! " Just the thing I needed." 
 And " It 's perfectly lovely." And " You 
 should n't have done it." And, then, a ques- 
 tion I never will answer, " Ten ? fifteen ? 
 five ? twelve ? " " My dear, it cost eight 
 hundred dollars, for I have put my whole 
 
262 BACKLOG STUDIES. 
 
 year into it, and I wish it was a thousand 
 times better." 
 
 And so, when the great iron tongue of the 
 city bell swept over the snow the twelve 
 strokes that announced Christmas Day, if 
 there was anywhere a happier home than 
 ours, I am glad of it !