"^m M.M- ^t'^viio. ^mh-.r- WBMMW'': B m ^!5'^??'?5^>:^-^:' 1 I pi li Ifti '?>i-:-.':- }'-'• ip"$i ':'■!"' iS^: >^;i5i;-;:,¥.^;,;: ^jy^''-;-5^^?' KiS ■mm^--:: ^•'^r^,. ■i';::^-;^:";;:-:':;;:;;;. Class TS aMA Book m 4 CopghtN". x^Ji^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. Iiiatl)am£l {)atot|)orne. works: Riverside Edition. With Bibliographical Notes by GEORaE P. Lathrop, 12 original full-page Etchings, 13 vignette Woodcuts, and Portrait. In 13 vols, crown 8vo, $2.00 each; the set $26.00. The set, 15 vols., including Life of Hawthorne (" Nathaniel Hawthorne and His Wife : " a Biography), by Julian Hawthorne (2 vols.), $30.00. I. Twice-Told Tales; 2. Mosses from an Old Manse; 3. The House of the Seven Gables, and the Snow-Image ; 4. A Wonder-Book, Tnnglewood Tales, and Grandfather's Chair; 5. The Scarlet Letter, and The Blithedale Romance ; 6. The Marble Faun; 7, 8.' Our Old Home, and English Noce-Books, 2 vols. ; 9. American Note-Books; 10. French and Italian Note-Books; 11. The DoUiver Romance, Fan- shawe, Septimius Felton, and in au Appendix, The Ances- tral Footstep; 12. Tales, Sketches, and Other Papers. With a Biographical Sketch by G. P. Lathrop, and Indexes: 13. Dr. Grimshawe's Secret. Edited, with Preface and Notes, by Julian Hawthorne. Little Classic Edition. Each volume containing a vignette Illustration. In 25 vols, (including Index), each iSmo, $1.00; the set, with Index, $25.00. Concord Edition. The set, 25 vols. i6mo, $25.00. Poptdar Edition. The set, 8 vols. i6mo, $10.00. For the numerous single volumes 0/ Hawthorne's Works, see Catalogue. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Boston and New York. THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE AND OTHER PIECES NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN A.-NU> C0t^l>ANi' New York : 85 Fifth Avenue LIBRARY of CONGRESS Two Copies Received JUN 23 1904 ^ Cooyrlsrht Entw CLASS (XXXo. No. •lU COPYRIGHT 1S76 BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO. COPYRIGHT 1904 BY HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CO'N TENTS. Page A Scene from the Dolliver Romance . . 9 Another Scene from the Dolliver Romance . 29 Another Fragment of the Dolliver Romance . 44 Sketches from Memory. I, The Inland Port 67 II. Rochester . . . . . . .71 III. A Night Scene 75 Fragments from the Journal of a Solitary Man. 1 77 II. My Home Return . . • . . 90 My Visit to Niagara 97 The Antique Ring 107 Graves and Goblins 125 vi CONTENTS. Dr. Bullivant 136 A Book of Autographs 147 An Old Woman's Tale 169 Time's Portraiture. — Address .... 182 "Browne's Folly" 193 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE, THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. A SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. R. DOLLIVER, a worthy personage of extreme antiquity, was aroused rather prematurely, one summer morning, by the shouts of the child Pansie, in an adjoining chamber, summoning old Martha (who performed the duties of nurse, housekeeper, and kitchen-maid, in the Doctor's establishment) to take up her little ladyship and dress her. The old gentleman woke with more than his customary alacrity, and, after taking a moment to gather his wits about him, pulled aside the faded moreen curtains of his ancient bed, and thrust his head into a beam of sunshine that caused him to wink and withdraw it again. This transitory glimpse of good Dr. Dolliver showed a flannel nightcap, fringed round with stray locks of silvery white hair, and sur- mounting a meagre and duskily yellow visage, which was crossed and criss-crossed with a record of his long life in wrinkles, faithfully written, no doubt, but with such 1*" 10 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. cramped cbirography of Father Time that the purport was illegible. It seemed hardly worth while for the pa- triarch to get out of bed any more, and bring his forlorn shadow into the summer day that was made for younger folks. The Doctor, however, was by no means of that opinion, being considerably encouraged towards the toil of living twenty-four hours longer by the comparative ease with which he found himself going through the usu- ally painful process of bestirring his rusty joints (stiffened by the very rest and sleep that should have made them pliable) and putting them in a condition to bear his weight upon the floor. Nor was he absolutely disheart- ened by the idea of those tonsorial, ablutionary, and personally decorative labors which are apt to become so intolerably irksome to an old gentleman, after perform- ing them daily and daily for fifty, sixty, or seventy years, and finding them still as immitigably recurrent as at first. Dr. Dolliver could nowise account for this happy condi- tion of his spirits and physical energies, until he remem- bered taking an experimental sip of a certain cordial which was long ago prepared by his grandson, and care- fully sealed up in a bottle, and had been reposited in a dark closet among a parcel of effete medicines ever since that gifted young man's death. "It may have wrought effect upon me," thought the doctor, shaking his head as he lifted it again from the pillow. "It maybe so; for poor Edward oftentimes instilled a strange efficacy into his perilous drugs. But I will rather believe it to be the operation of God's mercy, which may have temporarily invigorated my feeble age for little Pansie's sake." THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 11 A twinge of Lis familiar rheumatism, as he put his foot out of bed, taught him that he must not reckon too con- fidently upon even a day's respite from the intrusive family of aches and infirmities, which, with their prover- bial fidelity to attachments once formed, had long been the closest acquaintances that the poor old gentleman had in the world. Nevertheless, he fancied the twinge a little less poignant than those of yesterday; and moreover, after stinging him pretty smartly, it passed gradually off with a thrill, which, in its latter stages, grew to be almost agreeable. Pain is but pleasure too strongly emphasized. With cautious movements, and only a groan or two, the good Doctor transferred himself from the bed to the floor, where he stood awhile, gazing from one piece of quaint furniture to another (such as stiff'-backed Mayflower chairs, an oaken chest-of-drawers carved cunnmgly witli shapes of animals and wreaths of foliage, a table with multitudinous legs, a family record in faded embroidery, a shelf of black-bound books, a dirty heap of gallipots and phials in a dim corner), — gazing at these things, and steadying himself by the bedpost, while his inert brain, still partially benumbed with sleep, came slowly into accordance with the realities about him. The object which most helped to bring Dr. Dolliver completely to his waking perceptions was one that common observers might suppose to have been snatched bodily out of his dreams. The same sunbeam that had dazzled the doctor between the bed-curtains gleamed on the weather-beaten gilding which had once adorned this mysterious symbol, and showed it to be an enormous serpent, twining round a wooden post, and reaching quite from the floor of the chamber to its ceiling. 12 THE DOLLIVER EOMANCE. It was evidently a thing that could boast of consid- erable antiquity, the dry-rot having eaten out its eyes and gnawed away the tip of its tail ; and it must have stood long exposed to the atmosphere, for a kind of gray moss had partially overspread its tarnished gilt surface, and a swallow, or other familiar little bird, in some bygone summer, seemed to have built its nest in the yawning and exaggerated mouth. It looked like a kind of Mani- chean idol, which might have been elevated on a pedestal for a century or so, enjoying the worship of its votaries in the open air, until the impious sect perished from among men, — all save old Dr. Dolliver, who had set up the monster in his bedchamber for the convenience of private devotion. But we are unpardonable in suggest- ing such a fantasy to the prejudice of our venerable friend, knowing him to have been as pious and upright a Chris- tian, and with as little of the serpent in his character, as ever came of Puritan lineage. Not to make a further mystery about a very simple matter, this bedimmed and rotten reptile was once the medical emblem or apothe- cary's sign of the famous Dr. Swinnerton, who practised physic in the earlier days of New England, when a head of ^sculapius or Hippocrates would have vexed the souls of the righteous as savoring of heathendom. The ancient dispenser of drugs had therefore set up an image of the Brazen Serpent, and followed his business for many years, with great credit, under this Scriptural device ; and Dr. Dolliver, being the apprentice, pupil, and humble friend of the learned Swinnerton's old age, had inherited the symbolic snake, and much other valuable property, by his bequest. THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 13 While the patriarch was putting on his small-clotlies, he took care to stand in the parallelogram of bright sunshine that fell upon the uucarpeted floor. The summer warmth was very genial to his system, and yet made him shiver ; his wintry veins rejoiced at it, though the reviving blood tingled through them with a half-painful and only half- pleasurable titillation. For the first few moments after creeping out of bed, he kept his back to the sunny win- dow, and seemed mysteriously shy of glancing thither- ward ; but, as the June fervor pervaded him more and more thoroughly, he turned bravely about, and looked forth at a burial-ground on the corner of which he dwelt. There lay many an old acquaintance, who had gone to sleep with the flavor of Dr. DoUiver's tinctures and pow- ders upon his tongue ; it was the patient's final bitter taste of this world, and perhaps doomed to be a recollected nauseousness in the next. Yesterday, in the chill of his forlorn old age, the Doctor expected soon to stretch out his weary bones among that quiet community, and might scarcely have shrunk from the prospect on his own ac- count, except, indeed, that he dreamily mixed up the infirmities of his present condition with the repose of the approaching one, being haunted by a notion that the damp earth, under the grass and dandelions, must needs be pernicious for his cough and his rheumatism. But, this morning, the cheerful sunbeams, or the mere taste of his grandson's cordial that he had taken at bedtime, or the fitful vigor that often sports irreverently with aged people, had caused an unfrozen drop of youthfulness, somewhere within him, to expand. " Hem ! ahem ! " quoth the Doctor, hoping with one 14 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. effort to clear his throat of the dregs of a ten-years' cough. " Matters are not so far gone with me as I thought. I have known mighty sensible men, when only a little age-stricken or otherwise out of sorts, to die of mere faint-heartedness, a great deal sooner than they need." He shook his silvery head at his own image in the looking-glass, as if to impress the apothegm on that shadowy representative of himself ; and, for his part, he determined to pluck up a spirit and live as long as he possibly could, if it were only for the sake of little Pansie, who stood as close to one extremity of human life as her great-grandfather to the other. This child of three years old occupied all the unfossilized portion of good Dr. Dolliver's heart. Every other interest that he formerly had, and the entire confraternity of persons whom he once loved, had long ago departed ; and the poor Doc- tor could not follow them, because the grasp of Pansie's baby-fingers held him back. So he crammed a great silver watch into his fob, and drew on a patchwork morning-gown of an ancient fashion. Its original material was said to have been the embroid- ered front of his own wedding-waistcoat and the silken skirt of his wife's bridal attire, which his eldest grand- daughter had taken from the carved chest-of-drawers, after poor Bessie, the beloved of his youth, had been half a cen- tury in the grave. Throughout many of the intervening years, as the garment got ragged, the spinsters of the old man's family had quilted their duty and affection into it in the shape of patches upon patches, rose-color, crimson, blue, violet, and green, and then (as their hopes faded, and THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. IT^ their life kept growing shadier, and their attire took a sombre hue) sober gray and great fragments of funereal black, until the Doctor could revive the memory of most things that had befallen him by looking at his patchwork- gown, as it hung upon a chair. And now it was ragged again, and all the fingers that should have mended it were cold. It had an Eastern fragrance, too, a smell of drugs, strong-scented herbs, and spicy gums, gathered from the many potent infusions that had from time to time been spilt over it ; so that, snuffing him afar off, you might have taken Dr. DoUiver for a mummy, and could hardly have been undeceived by his shrunken and torpid aspect, as he crept nearer. Wrapt in his odorous and many-colored robe, he took staff in hand, and moved pretty vigorously to the head of the staircase. As it was somewhat steep, and but dimly lighted, he began cautiously to descend, putting his left hand on the banister, and poking down his long stick to assist him in making sure of the successive steps ; and thus he became a living illustration of the accuracy of Scripture, where it describes the aged as being " afraid of that which is high," — a truth that is often found to have a sadder purport than its external one. Half-way to the bottom, however, the Doctor heard the impatient and authoritative tones of little Pansie, — Queen Pansie, as she might fairly have been styled, in reference to her position in the household, — calling amain for grand- papa and breakfast. He was startled into such perilous activity by the summons, that his heels slid on the stairs, the slippers were shuffled off his feet, and he saved him- self from a tumble only by quickening his pace, and com- ing down at almost a run. 1.6 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. /' ; " Mercy on my poor old bones ! *' mentally exclaimed the Doctor, fancying himself fractured in fifty places. "Some of them are broken, surely, and methinks my heart has leaped out of my mouth ! What ! all right ? Well, well ! but Providence is kinder to me than I de- serve, prancing down this steep staircase like a kid of three months old ! " He bent stiffly to gather up his slippers and fallen staff; and meanwhile Pansie had heard the tumult of her great- grandfather's descent, and was pounding against the door of the breakfast-room in her haste to come at him. The Doctor opened it, and there she stood, a rather pale and large-eyed little thing, quaint in her aspect, as might well be the case with a motherless child, dwelling in an un- cheerful house, with no other playmates than a decrepit old man and a kitten, and no better atmosphere within- doors than the odor of decayed apothecary's stuff, nor gayer neighborhood than that of the adjacent burial- ground, where all her relatives, from her great-grand- mother downward, lay calling to her, " Pansie, Pansie, it is bedtime ! " even in the prime of the summer morning. For those dead women-folk, especially her mother and the whole row of maiden aunts and grand-aunts, could not but be anxious about the child, knowing that little Pansie would be far safer under a tuft of dandelions than if left alone, as she soon must be, in this difficult and deceitful world. Yet, in spite of the lack of damask roses in her cheeks^ she seemed a healthy child, and certainly showed great capacity of energetic movement in the impulsive capers with which she welcomed her venerable progenitor. She THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 17 shouted out her satisfaction, moreover (as her custom was, having never had any over-sensitive auditors about her to tame down her voice), till even the Doctor's dull ears were full of the clamor. "Pansie, darling," said Dr. Dolliver, cheerily, patting her brown hair with his tremulous fingers, " thou hast put some of thine own friskiness into poor old grand- father, this fine morning ! Dost know, child, that he came near breaking his neck down-stairs at the sound of thy vdice ? What wouldst thou have done then, little Pansie ? " " Kiss poor grandpapa and make him well ! " answered the child, remembering the Doctor's own mode of cure in similar mishaps to herself. " It shall do poor grand- papa good ! " she added, putting up her mouth to apply the remedy. " Ah, little one, thou hast greater faith in thy medi- cines than ever I had in my drugs," replied the patriarch, with a giggle, surprised and delighted at his own readi- ness of response. " But the kiss is good for my feeble old heart, Pansie, though it might do little to mend a broken neck ; so give grandpapa another dose, and let us to breakfast." In this merry humor they sat down to the table, great- grandpapa and Pansie side by side, and the kitten, as soon appeared, making a third in the party. Pirst, she showed her mottled head out of Pansie's lap, delicately sipping milk from the child's basin without rebuke ; then she took post on the old gentleman's shoulder, purring like a spinning-wheel, trying her claws in the wadding of his dressing-gown, and still more impressively reminding 18 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. him of her presence by puttin*^ out a paw to intercept a warmed-over morsel of yesterday's cliicken on its way to the Doctor's mouth. After skilfully achieving this feat, she scrambled down upon the breakfast-table and began to wash her face and hands. Evidently, these companions were all three on intimate terms, as was nat- ural en'ougli, since a great many childish impulses were softly creeping back on the simple-minded old man ; inso- much that, if no worldly necessities nor painful infirmity had disturbed him, his remnant of life might have been as cheaply and cheerily enjoyed as the early playtime of the kitten and the child. Old Dr. Dolliver and his great- granddaughter (a ponderous title, which seemed quite to overwhelm the tiny figure of Pansie) had met one another at the two extremities of the life-circle : her sunrise served him for a sunset, illuminating his locks of silver and hers of golden brown with a homogeneous shimmer of twinkling light. Little Pansie was the one earthly creature that inher- ited a drop of the Dolliver blood. The Doctor's only child, poor Bessie's offspring, had died the better part of a hundred years before, and his grandchildren, a numer- ous and dimly remembered brood, had vanished along his weary track in their youth, maturity, or incipient age, till, hardly knowing how it had all happened, he found himself tottering onward with an infant's small fingers in his nerveless grasp. So mistily did his dead progeny come and go in the patriarch's decayed recollection, that this solitary child represented for him the successive babyhoods of the many that had gone before. The emo- tions of his early paternity came back to him. She THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 19 seemed the baby of a past age oftener tlian she seemed Pansie. A whole family of grand-aunts (one of whom had perished iu her cradle, never so mature as Pansie now, another in her virgin bloom, another in autumnal maidenhood, yellow and shrivelled, with vinegar in her blood, and still another, a forlorn widow, whose grief outlasted even its vitality, and grew to be merely a tor- pid habit, and was saddest then), — all their hitherto forgotten features peeped through the face of the great- grandchild, and their long-inaudible voices sobbed, shouted, or laughed, in her familiar tones. But it often happened to Dr. Dolliver, while frolicking amid this throng of ghosts, where the one reality looked no more vivid than its shadowy sisters, — it often happened that his eyes filled with tears at a sudden perception of what a sad and poverty-stricken old man he was, already re^ mote from his own generation, and bound to stray furthel onward as the sole playmate and protector of a child ! As Dr. Dolliver, in spite of his advanced epoch of life, is likely to remain a considerable time longer upon out hands, we deem it expedient to give a brief sketch of his position, in order that the story may get onward with the greater freedom when he rises from the breakfast- table. Deeming it a matter of courtesy, we have allowed him the honorary title of Doctor, as did all his towns- people and contemporaries, except, perhaps, one or two formal old physicians, stingy of civil phrases and over- jealous of their own professional dignity. Nevertheless, these crusty graduates were technically right in exclud- ing Dr. Dolliver from their fraternity. He had never received the degree of any medical school, nor (save it 20 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. might be for the cure of a toothache, or a child's rashj or a whitlow on a seamstress's finger, or some such trifling malady) had he ever been even a practitioner of the awful science with which his popular designation con- nected him. Our old friend, in short, even at his highest social elevation, claimed to be nothing more than an apothecary, and, in these later and far less prosperous days, scarcely so much. Since the death of liis last surviving grandson (Pansie's father, whom he had in- structed in all the mysteries of his science, and who, being distinguished by an experimental and inventive tendency, was generally believed to have poisoned himself with an infallible panacea of his own distillation), — since that final bereavement. Dr. Dolliver's once pretty flourishing business had lamentably declined. After a few months of unavailing struggle, he found it expedient to take down the Brazen Serpent from the position to which Dr. Swinnerton had originally elevated it, in front of his shop in the main street, and to retire to his private dwelling, situated in a by-lane and on the edge of a burial-ground. This house, as well as the Brazen Serpent, some old medical books, and a drawer full of manuscripts, liad come to him by the legacy of Dr. Swinnerton. The dreariness of the locality had been of small importance to our friend in his young manhood, when he first led his fair wife over the threshold, and so long as neither of them had any kinship with the human dust that rose into httle hillocks, and still kept accumulating beneath their window. But, too soon afterwards, wlien poor Bessie herself had gone early to rest there, it is probable that THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 21 an influence from lier grave may have prematurely calmed and depressed her widowed husband, taking away much of the energy from what should have been the most active portion of his life. Thus he never grew rich. His thrifty townsmen used to tell him, that, in any other man's hands. Dr. Swinnerton's Brazen Serpent (meaning, I presume, the inherited credit and good-will of that old worthy's trade) would need but ten years' time to transmute its brass into gold. In Dr. Dolliver's keeping, as we have seen, the inauspicious symbol lost the greater part of what superficial gilding it originally had. Matters had not mended with him in more ad- vanced life, after he had deposited a further and further portion of his heart and its affections in each successive one of a long row of kindred graves ; and as he stood over the last of them, holding Pansie by the hand and looking down upon the coffin of his grandson, it is no wonder that the old man wept, partly for those gone be- fore, but not so bitterly as for the little one that stayed behind. Why had not God taken her with the rest ? And then, so hopeless as he was, so destitute of possibili- ties of good, his weary frame, his decrepit bones, his dried-up heart, might have crumbled into dust at once, and have been scattered by the next wind over all the heaps of earth that were akin to him. This intensity of desolation, however, was of too posi- tive a character to be long sustained by a person of Dr. Dolliver's original gentleness and simplicity, and now so completely tamed by age and misfortune. Even before he turned away from the grave, he grew conscious of a slightly cheering and invigorating eifect from the tight 22 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. grasp of the child's warm little hand. Feeble as he was, she seemed to adopt him willingly for her protector. And the Doctor never afterwards shrank from his duty nor quailed beneath it, but bore himself like a man, striving, amid the sloth of age and the breaking-up of intellect, to earn the competency which he had failed to accumulate even in his most vigorous days. To the extent of securing a present subsistence for Pansie and himself, he was successful. After his son's death, when the Brazen Serpent fell into popular disre- pute, a small share of tenacious patronage followed the old man into his retirement. In his prime, he had been allowed to possess more skill than usually fell to the share of a Colonial apothecary, having been regularly apprenticed to Dr. Swinnerton, who, throughout his long practice, was accustomed personally to concoct the medi- cines which he prescribed and dispensed. It was believed, indeed, that the ancient physician had learned the art at the world-famous drug-manufactory of Apothecary's Hall, in London, and, as some people half-malignly whis- pered, had perfected himself under masters more subtle than were to be found even there. Unquestionably, in many critical cases he was known to have employed reme- dies of mysterious composition and dangerous potency, which in less skilful hands would have been more likely to kill than cure. He would willingly, it is said, have taught his apprentice the secrets of these prescriptions, but the latter, being of a timid character and delicate conscience, had shrunk from acquaintance with them. It was probably as the result of the same scrupulosity that Dr. Dolliver had always declined to enter the" medi- THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 23 cal profession, in which his old instructor had set him such heroic examples of adventurous dealing with mat- ters of life and death. Nevertheless, the aromatic fra- grance, so to speak, of the learned Swinnerton's reputa- tion, had clung to our friend through life; and there were elaborate preparations in the pharmacopoeia of that day, requiring such minute skill and conscientious fidel- ity in the concocter that the physicians were still glad to confide them to one in whom these qualities were so evident. Moreover, the grandmothers of the community were kind to him, and mindful of his perfumes, his rose-water, his cosmetics, tooth-powders, pomanders, and pomades, the scented memory of which lingered about their toilet- tables, or came faintly back from the days when they were beautiful. Among this class of customers there was still a demand for certain comfortable little nos- trums (delicately sweet and pungent to the taste, cheer- ing to the spirits, and fragrant in the breath), the proper distillation of which was the airiest secret that the mystic Swinnerton had left behind him. And, besides, these old ladies had always liked the manners of Dr. Dolliver, and used to speak of his gentle courtesy behind the counter as having positively been something to admire ; though, of later years, an unrefined, and almost rustic simplicity, such as belonged to his humble ancestors, appeared to have taken possession of him, as it often does of prettily mannered men in their late decay. But it resulted from all these favorable circumstances that the Doctor's marble mortar, though worn with long service and considerably damaged by a crack that per- 24 THE DOLLTVER ROMANCE. vaded it, continued to keep up an occasional intimacy with the pestle ; and he still weighed drachms and scru- ples in his delicate scales, though it seemed impossible, dealing with such minute quantities, that his tremulous fingers should not put in too little or too much, leaving out life with the deficiency or spilling in death with the surplus. To say the truth, his stanchest friends were beginning to think that Dr. Dolliver's fits of absence (when his mind appeared absolutely to depart from him, while his frail old body worked on mechanically) ren- dered him not quite trustworthy without a close super- vision of his proceedings. It was impossible, however, to convince the aged apothecary of the necessity for such vigilance ; and if anything could stir up his gentle tem- per to wrath, or, as oftener happened, to tears, it was the attempt (which he was marvellously quick to detect) thus to interfere with his long-familiar business. The public, meanwhile, ceasing to regard Dr. Dolliver in his professional aspect, had begun to take an interest in him as perhaps their oldest fellow-citizen. It was he that remembered the Great Fire and the Great Snow, and that had been a grown-up stripling at the terrible epoch of Witch-Times, and a child just breeclied at the breaking out of King Philip's Indian War. He, too, in liis- school-boy days, had received a benediction from the patriarchal Governor Bradstreet, and thus could boast (somewhat as Bishops do of their unbroken succession from the Apostles) of a transmitted blessing from the whole company of sainted Pilgrims among whom the venerable magistrate had been an honored companion. Viewing tlieir townsman in this aspect, tlie people re- THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 25 voked the courteous Doctorate with which they had heretofore decorated liim, and uow knew him most familiarly as Grandsir DoUiver. His white head, his Puritan band, his threadbare garb (the fashion of which he had ceased to change, half a century ago), his gold- headed staff, that had .been Dr. Swinnerton's, his shrunken, frosty figure, and its feeble movement, — all these characteristics had a wholeness and permanence in the public recognition, like the meeting-house steeple or the town-pump. All the younger portion of the in- habitants unconsciously ascribed a sort of aged immor- tality to Grandsir Dolliver's infirm and reverend pres- ence. They fancied that he had been born old (at least, I remember entertaining some such notions about age- stricken people, when I myself was young), and that he could the better tolerate his aches and incommodities, his dull ears and dim eyes, his remoteness from human intercourse within the crust of indurated years, the cold temperature that kept him always shivering and sad, the heavy burden that invisibly bent down his shoulders, — that all these intolerable things might bring a kind of enjoyment to Grandsir Dolliver, as the lifelong con- ditions of his peculiar existence. But, alas ! it was a terrible mistake. This weight of years had a perennial novelty for the poor sufferer. He never grew accustomed to it, but, long as he had now borne the fretful torpor of his waning life, and patient as he seemed, he still retained an inward consciousness that these stiffened shoulders, these quailing knees, this cloudi- ness of sight and brain, this confused forgetfulness of men and affairs, were ti'oublesome accidents that did not really 2 26 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. belong to bim. He possibly cherished a half-recognized idea that they might pass away. Youth, however eclipsed for a season, is undoubtedly the proper, permanent, and genuine condition of man ; and if we look closely into this dreary delusion of growing old, we shall find that it never absolutely succeeds in laying hold of our innermost con- victions. A sombre garment, woven of life's unrealities, has muffled us from our true self, but within it smiles the young man whom we knew ; the ashes of many per- ishable things have fallen upon our youthful fire, but beneath them lurk the seeds of inextinguishable flame. So powerful is this instinctive faith, that men of simple modes of character are prone to antedate its consumma- tion. And thus it happened with poor Grandsir Dolli- ver, who often awoke from an old man's fitful sleep with a sense that his senile predicament was but a dream of the past night ; and hobbling hastily across the cold floor to the looking-gla«s, he would be grievously dis- appointed at beholding the white hair, the wrinkles and furrows, the ashen visage and bent form, the melancholy mask of Age, in which, as he now remembered, some strange and sad enchantment had involved him for years gone by ! To other eyes than his own, however, the shrivelled old gentleman looked as if there were little hope of his throwing off this too artfully wrought disguise, until, at no distant day, his stooping figure should be straight- ened out, his hoary locks be smoothed over his brows, and his much-enduring bones be laid safely away, with a green coverlet spread over them, beside his Bessie, who doubtless would recognize her youthful companion in THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 27 spite of liis ugly garniture of decay. He longed to be gazed at by the loving eyes now closed ; he shrank from the hard stare of them that loved him not. Walk- ing the streets seldom and reluctantly, he felt a dreary impulse to elude the people's observation, as if with a sense that he had gone irrevocably out of fashion, and broken his connecting links with the network of liuman life ; or else it was that nightmare-feeling which we sometimes have in dreams, when we seem to find ourselves wandering through a crowded avenue, with the noonday sun upon us, in some wild extravagance of dress or nudity. He was conscious of estrangement from his townspeople, but did not always know how nor where- fore, nor why he should be thus groping through the twilight mist in solitude. If they spoke loudly to him, with cheery voices, the greeting translated itself faintly and mournfully to his ears ; if they shook him by the hand, it was as if a thick, insensible glove absorbed the kindly pressure and the warmth. When little Pansie was the companion of his walk, her childish gayety and freedom did not avail to bring him into closer relation- ship with men, but seemed to follow him into that region of indefinable remoteness, that dismal Fairy -Land of aged fancy, into which old Grandsir Dolliver had so strangely crept away. Yet there were moments, as many persons had noticed, when the great-grandpapa would suddenly take stronger hues of Hfe. It was as if his faded figure had been col- ored over anew, or at least, as he and Pansie moved along the street, as if a sunbeam had fallen across him, instead of the gray gloom of an instant before. His 28 THE DOLLIVER llOMANCE. chilled sensibilities had probably been touched and quick- ened by the warm contiguity of his little companion through the medium of her hand, as it stirred within his own, or some inflection of her voice that set his memory ringing and chiming with forgotten sounds. While that music lasted, the old man was alive and happy. And tiiere were seasons, it might be, liappier than even these, when Pansie had been kissed and put to bed, and Grandsir Dolliver sat by his fireside gazing in among the massive coals, and absorbing their glow into those cavernous abysses with which all men communicate. Hence come angels or fiends into our twilight musings, according as we may have peopled them in bygone years. Over our friend's face, in the rosy flicker of the fire-gleam, stole an expression of repose and perfect trust that made him as beautiful to look at, in his high-backed chair, as the child Pansie on her pillow; and sometimes the spirits that were watching him beheld a calm surprise draw slowly over his features and brighten into joy, yet not so vividly as to break his evening quietude. The gate of heaven had been kindly left ajar, that this forlorn old creature might catch a glimpse within. All the night afterwards, he would be semi-conscious of an intangible bliss diffused through the fitful lapses of an old man's slumber, and would awake, at early dawn, with a fahit thrilling of the heart-strings, as if there had been music just now wandering over them. ANOTHER SCENE FROM THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE.* E may now suppose Grandsir Dolliver to have finished his breakfast, with a better appetite and sharper perception of the qualities of his food than he has generally felt of late years, whether it were due to old Martha's cookery or to the cordial of the night before. Little Pansie had also made an end of her bread and milk with entire satisfaction, and after- wards nibbled a crust, greatly enjoying its resistance to her little white teeth. How this child came by the odd name of Pansie, and whether it was really her baptismal name, I have not ascertained. More probably it was one of those pet appellations that grow out of a child's character, or out of some keen thrill of affection in the parents, an un- sought-for and unconscious felicity, a kind of revelation, teaching them the true name by which the child's guar- dian angel would know it, — a name with playfulness and love in it, that we often observe to supersede, in the practice of those who love the child best, the name that they carefully selected, and caused the clergyman to * This scene was not revised by the author, but is printed from his first draught. 30 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. plaster indelibly on the poor little forehead at the font, — the love-name, whereby, if the child lives, the parents know it in their hearts, or by which, if it dies, God seems to have called it away, leaving the sound lingering faintly and sweetly through the house. In Pansie's case, it may have been a certain pehsiveness which was some- times seen under her childish frolic, and so translated itself into French (pensee), her mother having been of Acadian kin ; or, quite as probably, it alluded merely to the color of her eyes, which, in some lights, were very like the dark petals of a tuft of pansies in the Doctor's garden. It might well be, indeed, on account of the suggested pensiveness; for the child's gayety had no example to sustain it, no sympathy of other children or grown people, — and her melancholy, had it been so dark a feeling, was but the shadow of the house and of the old man. If brighter sunshine came, she would brighten with it. This morning, surely, as the three com- panions, Pansie, puss, and Grandsir Dolliver, emerged from the shadow of the house into the small adjoining enclosure, they seemed all frolicksome alike. The Doctor, however, was intent over something that had reference to his lifelong business of drugs. This little spot was the place where he was wont to cultivate a variety of herbs supposed to be endowed with medici- nal virtue. Some of them had been long known in the pharmacopoeia of the Old World; and others, in the early days of the country, had been adopted by the first settlers from the Indian medicine-men, though with fear and even contrition, because these wild doctors were supposed to draw their pharmaceutic knowledge from THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 31 no gracious source, tlie Black Man himself being the principal professor in their medical school. Erom his own experience, however. Dr. Dolliver had long since doubted, though he was not bold enough quite to come to the conclusion, that Indian shrubs, and the remedies prepared from them, were much less perilous than those so freely used in European practice, and singularly apt to be followed by results quite as propitious. Into such heterodoxy our friend was the more liable to fall because it had been taught him early in life by his old master, Dr. Swinnerton, who, at those not infrequent times when he indulged a certain unhappy predilection for strong waters, had been accustomed to inveigh in terms of the most cynical contempt and coarsest ridicule against the practice by which he lived, and, as he affirmed, inflicted death on his fellow-men. Our old apothecary, though too loyal to the learned profession with which he was connected fully to believe this bitter judgment, even when pronounced by his revered master, was still so far influenced that his conscience was possibly a little easier when making a preparation from forest herbs and roots than in the concoction of half a score of nauseous poi- sons into a single elaborate drug, as the fashion of that day was. But there were shrubs in the garden of which he had never ventured to make a medical use, nor, indeed, did he know their virtue, although from year to year he had tended and fertilized, weeded and pruned them, with something like religious care. They were of the rarest character, and had been planted by the learned and famous Dr. Swinnerton, who on his death-bed, when he 32 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. left his dwelling and all his abstruse manuscripts to his favorite pupil, had particularly directed his attention to this row of shrubs. They had been collected by himself from remote countries, and had the poignancy of torrid climes in them ; and he told him, that, properly used, they would be worth all the rest of the legacy a hun- dred-fold. As the apothecary, however, found the manu- scriptSj in which he conjectured there was a treatise on the subject of these shrubs, mostly illegible, and quite beyond his comprehension in such passages as he suc- ceeded in puzzling out (partly, perhaps, owing to his very imperfect knowledge of Latin, in which language they were written), he had never derived from them any of the promised benefit. And to say the truth, remem- bering that Dr. Swinnerton himself never appeared to triturate or decoct or do anything else with the myste- rious herbs, our old friend was inclined to imagine the weighty commendation of their virtues to have been the idly solemn utterance of mental aoerration at the hour of death. So, with the integrity that belonged to his character, he had nurtured them as tenderly as was pos- sible in the ungenial climate and soil of New England, putting some of them into pots for the winter ; but the^ had rather dwindled than flourished, and he had reaped no harvests from them, nor observed them with any de- gree of scientific interest. His grandson, however, while yet a school-boy, had listened to the old man's legend of the miraculous vir- tues of these plants ; and it took so firm a hold of his mind, that the row of outlandish vegetables seemed rooted in it, and certainly flourished there with richer THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 33 luxuriance than in the soil where they actually grew. The story, acting thus early upon his imagination, may be said to have influenced his brief career in life, and, perchance, brought about its early close. The young man, in the opinion of competent judges, was endowed with remarkable abilities, and according to the rumor of the people had wonderful gifts, which were proved by the cures he had wrought with remedies of his own in- vention. His talents lay in the direction of scientific analysis and inventive combination of chemical powers. While under the pupilage of his grandfather, his progress had rapidly gone quite beyond his instructor's hope, — leaving him even to tremble at the audacity with which he overturned and invented theories, and to wonder at the depth at which he wrought beneath the superficial- ness and mock-mystery of the medical science of those days, like a miner sinking his shaft and running a hid- eous peril of the earth caving in above him. Especially did he devote himself to these plants ; and under his care they had thriven beyond all former precedent, burst- ing into luxuriance of bloom, and most of them bearing beautiful flowers, which, however, in two or three in- stances, had the sort of natural repulsiveness that the serpent has in its beauty, compelled against its will, as it were, to warn the beholder of an unrevealed danger. The young man had long ago, it must be added, de- manded of his grandfather the documents included in the legacy of Professor Swinnerton, and had spent days and nights upon them, growing pale over their mystic lore, which seemed the fruit not merely of the Profes- sor's own labors, but of those of more ancient sages than 2* c 34 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. he ; and often a whole volume seemed to be compressed within the limits of a few lines of crabbed manuscript, judging from the time which it cost even the quick- minded student to decipher them. Meantime these abstruse investigations had not wrought such disastrous effects as might have been feared, in caus- ing Edward Dolliver to neglect the humble trade, the conduct of which his grandfather had now relinquished almost entirely into his hands. On the contrary, with the mere side results of his study, or what may be called the chips and shavings of his real work, he created a prosperity quite beyond anything that his simple-ramded predecessor had ever hoped for, even at the most san- guine epoch of his life. The young man's adventurous endowments were miraculously alive, and connecting themselves with his remarkable ability for solid research, and perhaps his conscience being as yet imperfectly de- veloped (as it sometimes lies dormant in the young), he spared not to produce compounds which, if the names were anywise to be trusted, would supersede all other remedies, and speedily render any medicine a needless thing, making the trade of apothecary an untenable one, and the title of Doctor obsolete. Whether there was real efficacy in these nostrums, and whether their author himself had faith in them, is more than can safely be said ; but at all events, the public believed in them, and thronged to the old and dim sign of the Brazen Serpent, which, though hitherto familiar to them and their fore- fathers, now seemed to shine with auspicious lustre, as if its old Scriptural virtues were renewed. If any faith was to be put iu human testimony, many marvellous THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 35 cures were really performed, the fame of M^hicli spread far and wide, aud caused demands for these medicines to come in from places far beyond the precincts of the little town. Our old apothecary, now degraded by the overshadowing influence of his grandson's character to a position not much above that of a shop-boy, stood be- hind the counter with a face sad and distrustful, and yet with an odd kind of fitful excitement in it, as if he would have liked to enjoy this new prosperity, had he dared. Then his venerable figure was to be seen dispensing these questionable compounds by the single bottle and by the dozen, wronging his simple conscience as he dealt out what he feared was trash or worse, shrinking from the reproachful eyes of every ancient physician who might chance to be passing by, but withal examining closely the silver or the New England coarsely printed bills which he took in payment, as if apprehensive that the delusive character of the commodity which he sold might be balanced by equal counterfeiting in the money re- ceived, or as if his faith in all things were shaken. Is it not possible that this gifted young man had in- deed found out those remedies which Nature has pro- vided and laid away for the cure of every ill ? The disastrous termination of the most brilliant epoch that ever came to the Brazen Serpent must be told in a few words. One night, Edward Dolliver's young wife awoke, and, seeing the gray dawn creeping into the chamber, while her husband, it should seem, was still engaged in his laboratory, arose in her night-dress, and went to the door of the room to put in her gentle re- monstrance against such labor. There she found him 36 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. dead, — sunk down out of his cLair upon the hearth, where were some ashes, apparently of burnt manuscripts, which appeared to comprise most of those included in Dr. Swinnerton's legacy, though one or two had fallen near the heap, and lay merely scorched beside it. It seemed as if he had thrown them into the fire, under a sudden impulse, in a great hurry and passion. It may be that he had come to the perception of something fatally false and deceptive in the successes which he had appeared to win, and was too proud and too conscien- tious to survive it. Doctors were called in, but had no power to revive him. An inquest was held, at which the jury, under the instruction, perhaps, of those same revengeful doctors, expressed the opinion that the poor young man, being given to strange contrivances with poisonous drugs, had died by incautiously tasting them himself. This verdict, and the terrible event itself, at once deprived the medicines of all their popularity ; and the poor old apothecary was no longer under any ne- cessity of disturbing his conscience by selling them. They at once lost their repute, and ceased to be in any demand. In the few instances in which they were tried the experiment was followed by no good results; and even those individuals who had fancied themselves cured, and had been loudest in spreading the praises of these beneficent compounds, now, as if for the utter demolition of the poor youth's credit, suffered under a recurrence of the worst symptoms, and, in more than one case, per- ished miserably : insomuch (for the days of witchcraft were still within the memory of living men and women) it was the general opinion that Satan had been person- THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 37 ally concerned in this affliction, and that the Brazen Ser- pent, so long honored among them, was really the type of his subtle malevolence and perfect iniquity. It was rumored even that all preparations that came from the shop were harmful, — that teeth decayed that had been made pearly white by the use of the young chemist's dentifrice, — that cheeks were freckled that had been changed to damask roses by his cosmetics, — that hair turned gray or fell off that had become black, glossy, and luxuriant from the application of his mixtures, — that breath which his drugs had sweetened had now a sulphurous smell. Moreover, all the money heretofore amassed by the sale of them had been exhausted by Ed- ward Dolliver in his lavish expenditure for the processes of his study; and nothing was left for Pansie, except a few valueless and unsalable bottles of medicine, and one or two others, perhaps more recondite than their in- ventor had seen fit to offer to the public. Little Pan- sie's mother lived but a short time after the shock of the terrible catastrophe; and, as we began our story with saying, she was left with no better guardianship or sup- port than might be found in the efforts of a long super- annuated man. Nothing short of the simplicity, integrity, and piety of Grandsir Dolliver's character, known and acknowl- edged as far back as the oldest inhabitants remembered anything, and inevitably discoverable by the dullest and most prejudiced observers, in all its natural manifesta- tions, could have protected him in still creeping about the streets. So far as he was personally concerned, however, all bitterness and suspicion had speedily passed 38 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. away ; and there remained still the careless and neglect- ful good-will, and the prescriptive reverence, not alto- gether reverential, which the world heedlessly awards to the unfortunate individual who outlives his generation. And now that we have shown the reader sufficiently, or at least to the best of our knowledge, and perhaps at tedious length, what was the present position of Grandsir Dolliver, we may let our story pass onward, though at such a pace as suits the feeble gait of an old man. The peculiarly brisk sensation of this morning, to which we have more than once alluded, enabled the Doctor to toil pretty vigorously at his medicinal herbs, — his catnip, his vervain, and the like ; but he did not turn his attention to the row of mystic plants, with which so much of trouble and sorrow either was, or appeared to be, connected. In truth, his old soul was sick of them, and their very fragrance, which the warm sunshine made strongly perceptible, was odious to his nostrils. But the spicy, homelike scent of his other herbs, the English simples, was grateful to him, and so was the earth-smell, as he turned up the soil about their roots, and eagerly snuffed it in. Little Pansie, on the other hand, perhaps scandaUzed at great-grandpapa's neglect of the prettiest plants in his garden, resolved to do her small utmost towards balancing his injustice ; so, with an old shingle, fallen from the roof, which she had appropriated as her agricultural tool, she began to dig aboat them, pulling up the weeds, as she saw grand- papa doing. The kitten, too, with a look of elfish sa- gacity, lent her assistance, plying her paws with vast haste THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 39 %nd efficiency at the roots of one of the shrubs. This particular one was much smaller than the rest, perhaps because it was a native of the torrid zone, and required greater care than the others to make it flourish ; so that, shrivelled, cankered, and scarcely showing a green leaf, both Pansie and the kitten probably mistook it for a Weed. After their joint efforts had made a pretty big trench about it, the little girl seized the shrub with both hands, bestriding it with her plump little legs, and giv- ing so vigorous a pull, that, long accustomed to be trans- planted annually, it came up by the roots, and little Pansie came down in a sitting posture, making a broad impress on the soft earth. " See, see, Doctor ! " cries Pansie, comically enough giving him his title of cour- tesy, — " look, grandpapa, the big, naughty weed ! " Now the Doctor had at once a peculiar dread and a peculiar value for this identical shrub, both because his grandson's investigations had been applied more ardently to it than to all the rest, and because it was associated in his mind with an ancient and sad recollection. Por he had never forgotten that his wife, the early lost, had once taken a fancy to wear its flowers, day after day, through the whole season of their bloom, in her bosom, where they glowed like a gem, and deepened her some- what pallid beauty with a richness never before seen in it. At least such was the effect which this tropical flower imparted to the beloved form in his memory, and thus it somehow both brightened and w'ronged her. This had happened not long before her death ; and whenever, in, the subsequent years, this plant had brought its an- nual flower, it had proved a kind of talisman to bring 40 THE DOLLIVEU ROMANCE. up the image of Bessie, radiant with this glow that did not really belong to her naturally passive beauty, quickly interchanging with another image of her form, with the snow of death on cheek and forehead. This reminiscence had remained among the things of which the Doctor was always conscious, but had never breathed a word, through the whole of his long life, — a sprig of sensibility tliat perhaps helped to keep him tenderer and purer than other men, who entertain no such follies. And the sight of the shrub often brought back the faint, golden gleam of her hair, as if her spirit were in the sunlights of the garden, quivering into view and out of it. And there- fore, when he saw what Pansie bad done, he sent forth a strange, inarticulate, hoarse, tremulous exclamation, a sort of aged and decrepit cry of mingled emotion. " Naughty Pansie, to pull up grandpapa's flower ! " said he, as soon as he could speak. " Poison, Pansie, poison ! Pling it away, child ! " And dropping his spade, the old gentleman scrambled towards the little girl as quickly as his rusty joints would let him, — while Pansie, as apprehensive and quick of motion as a fawn, started up with a shriek of mirth and fear to escape him. It so happened that the garden- gate was ajar ; and a puff of wind blowing it wide open, she escaped through this fortuitous avenue, followed by great-grandpapa and the kitten. " Stop, naughty Pansie, stop ! " shouted our old friend. " You will tumble into the grave ! " The kit- ten, with the singular sensitiveness tliat seems to affect it at every kind of excitement, was now on her back. And, indeed, this portentous warning was better THE DOLLIVER UOMANCE. 41 grounded and had a more literal meaning than might be supposed ; for the swinging gate communicated with the burial-ground, and almost directly in little Pausie's track there was a newly dug grave, ready to receive its tenant that afternoon. Pansie, however, fled onward with out- stretched arms, half in fear, half in fun, plying her round little legs with wonderful promptitude, as if to escape Time or Death, in the person of Grandsir Dolliver, and happily avoiding the ominous pitfall that lies in every person's path, till, hearing a groan from her pursuer, she looked over her shoulder, and saw that poor grandpapa had stumbled over one of the many hillocks. She then suddenly wrinkled up her little visage, and sent forth a full-breathed roar of sympathy and alarm. " Grandpapa has broken his neck now ! " cried little Pansie, amid her sobs. " Kiss grandpapa, and make it well, then," said the old gentleman, recollecting her remedy, and scrambling up more readily than could be expected. " Well," he murmured to himself, " a hair's-breadth more, and I should have been tumbled into yonder grave. Poor little Pansie ! what wouldst thou have done then ? " "Make the grass grow over grandpapa," answered Pansie, laughing up in his face. "Poh, poh, child, that is not a pretty thing to say," said grandpapa, pettishly and disappointed, as people are apt to be when they try to calculate on the fitful sym- pathies of childhood. "Come, you must go in to old Martha now." The poor old gentleman was in the more haste to leave the spot because he found himself standing right in 42 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. front of bis own peculiar row of gravestones, consisting of eight or nine slabs of slate, adorned with carved bor- ders rather rudely cut, and the earliest one, that of his Bessie, bending aslant, because the frost of so many winters had slowly undermined it. Over one grave of the row, that of his gifted grandson, there was no memorial. He felt a strange repugnance, stronger than he had ever felt before, to linger by these graves, and had none of the tender sorrow mingled with high and tender hopes that had sometimes made it seem good to him to be there. Such moods, perhaps, often come to the aged, when the hardened earth-crust over their souls shuts them out from spiritual influences. Taking the child by the hand, — her little effervescence of infantile fun having passed into a downcast humor, though not well knowing as yet what a dusky cloud of disheartening fancies arose from these green hillocks, — he went heavily toward the garden-gate. Close to its threshold, so that one who was issuing forth or entering must needs step upon it or over it, lay a small flat stone, deeply embedded in the ground, and partly covered with grass, inscribed with the name of " Dr. John Swinnerton, Physician." " Ay," said the old man, as the well-remembered figure of his ancient instructor seemed to rise before him in his grave-apparel, with beard and gold-headed cane, black velvet doublet and cloak, " here lies a man who, as peo- ple have thought, had it in his power to avoid the grave ! He had no little grandchild to tease him. He had the choice to die, and chose it." So the old gentleman led Pansie over the stone, and THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 43 carefully closed the gate ; and, as it happened, he forgot the uprooted shrub, which Pausie, as she ran, had flung away, and which had fallen into the open grave ; and when the funeral came that afternoon, the coffin was let down upon it, so that its bright, inauspicious flower never bloomed again. ANOTHER FRAGMENT OF THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE* E secret ! " and he kept his stern eye fixed upon him, as the coach began to move. "Be secret! " repeated the apothecary. "I know not any secret that he has confided to me thus far, and as for his nonsense (as I will be bold to style it now he is gone), about a medicine of long life, it is a thing I forget in spite of myself, so very empty and trashy it is. I wonder, by the by, that it never came into my head to give the Colonel a dose of the cordial whereof I partook last night. I have no faith that it is a valuable medi- cine — little or none — and yet there has been an un- wonted briskness in me all the morning." Then a simple joy broke over his face — a flickering sunbeam among his wrinkles — as he heard the laughter of the little girl, who was running rampant with a kitten in the kitchen. " Pansie ! Pansie ! " cackled he, " grandpapa has sent away the ugly man now. Come, let us have a frolic in the garden." And he whispered to himself again, " That is a cordial * Never before printed. THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 45 yonder, and I will take it according to the prescription, knowing all the ingredients." Then, after a moment's thought, he added, " All, save one." So, as he had declared to himself his intention, that night, when little Pansie had long been asleep, and his small household was in bed, and most of the quiet, old- fashioned townsfolk likewise, this good apothecary went into his laboratory, and took out of a cupboard in the wall a certain ancient-looking bottle, which was cased over with a network of what seemed to be woven silver, like the wicker-woven bottles of our days. He had pre- viously provided a goblet of pure water. Before opening the bottle, however, he seemed to hesitate, and pondered and babbled to himself; having long since come to that period of life, when the bodily frame, having lost much of its value, is more tenderly cared for, than when it was a perfect and inestimable machine. " I triturated, I infused, I distilled it myself in these very rooms, and know it — know it all — all the ingre- dients, save one. They are common things enough — comfortable things — some of them a little queer — one or two that folks have a prejudice against — and then there is that one thing that I don't know. It is foolish in me to be dallying with such a mess, which I thought was a piece of quackery, while that strange visitor bade me do it, — and yet, what a strength has come from it ! He said it was a rare cordial, and methinks it has bright- ened up my weary life all day, so that Pansie has found me the fitter playmate. And then the dose — it is so absurdly small ! I will try it again." He took the silver stopple from the bottle, and with a 46 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. practised hand, tremulous as it was with age, so that one would have thought it must have shaken the liquor into a perfect shower of misapplied drops, he dropped — I have heard it said — only one single drop into the goblet of water. It fell into it with a dazzling brightness, Uke a spark of ruby flame, and subtly diffusing itself through the whole body of water, turned it to a rosy hue of great brilliancy. He held it up between his eyes and the light, and seemed to admire and wonder at it. " It is very odd," said he, " that such a pure, bright liquor should have come out of a parcel of weeds that mingled their juices here. The thing is a folly, — it is one of those compositions in which the chemists — the cabaHsts, perhaps — used to combine what they thought the virtues of many plants, thinking that something would result in the whole, which was not in either of them, and a new efficacy be created. Whereas, it has been the teaching of my experience, that one virtue counteracts another, and is the enemy of it. I never believed the former theory, even when that strange madman bade me do it. And what a thick, turbid matter it was, until that last ingredient, — that powder which he put in with his own hand ! Had he let me see it, I would first have ana- lyzed it, and discovered its component parts. The man was mad, undoubtedly, and this may have been poison. But its effect is good. Poh ! I will taste again, because of this weak, agued, miserable state of mine ; though it is a shame in me, a man of decent skill in my way, to believe in a quack's nostrum. But it is a comfortable kind of thing." Meantime, that single drop (for good Dr. Dolliver had THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 47 immediately put a stopper into the bottle) diffused a sweet odor through the chamber, so that the ordinary fragrances and scents of apothecaries' stuff seemed to be controlled and influenced by it, and its bright potency also dispelled a certain dimness of the antiquated room. The Doctor, at the pressure of a great need, had given incredible pains to the manufacture of this medicine ; so that, reckoning the pains rather than the ingredients (all except one, of which he was not able to estimate the cost nor value), it was really worth its weight in gold. And, as it happened, he had bestowed upon it the hard labor of his poor life, and the time that was necessary for the support of his family, without return; for the customers, after playing off this cruel joke upon the old man, had never come back ; and now, for seven years, the bottle had stood in a corner of the cupboard. To be sure, the silver-cased bottle was worth a trifle for its silver, and still more, perhaps, as an antiquarian knick- knack. But, all things considered, the honest and sim- ple apothecary thought that he might make free with the liquid to such small extent as was necessary for himself. And there had been something in the concoction that had struck him ; and he had been fast breaking lately ; and so, in the dreary fantasy and lonely recklessness of his old age, he had suddenly bethought himself of this medicine (cordial, — as the strange man called it, which had come to him by long inheritance in his family) and he had determined to try it. And again, as the night before, he took out the receipt — a roll of antique parch- ment, out of which, provokingly, one fold had been lost — and put on his spectacles to puzzle out the passage. 48 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. Guttam unicam in aquam puram, two gills. " If the Colonel should hear of this," said Dr. Dolliver, "he might fancy it his nostrum of long life, and insist on hav- ing the bottle for his own use. The foolish, fierce old gentleman ! He has grown very earthly, of late, else he would not desire such a thing. And a strong desire it must be to make him feel it desirable. For my part, I only wish for something that, for a short time, may clear my eyes, so that I may see little Pansie's beauty, and quicken my ears, that I may hear her sweet voice, and give me nerve, while God keeps me here, that I may live longer to earn bread for dear Pansie. She provided for, I would gladly lie down yonder with Bessie and our chil- dren. Ah ! the vanity of desiring lengthened days ! — There ! — I have drunk it, and methinks its final, subtle flavor hath strange potency in it." The old man shivered a little, as those shiver who have just swallowed good liquor, while it is permeating their vitals. Yet he seemed to be in a pleasant state of feel- ing, and, as was frequently the case with this simple soul, in a devout frame of mind. He read a chapter in the Bible, and said his prayers for Pansie and himself, before he went to bed, and had much better sleep tlian usually comes to people of his advanced age ; for, at that period, sleep is diffused through their wakefulness, and a dim and tiresome half-perception through their sleep, so that the only result is weariness. Nothing very extraordinary happened to Dr. Dolliver or his small household for some time afterwards. He was favored with a comfortable winter, and thanked Heaven for it, and put it to a good use (at least he intended THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 49 it so) by concocting drugs ; which perhaps did a little towards peopling the graveyard, into which his windows looked ; but that was neither his purpose nor his fault. None of the sleepers, at all events, interrupted their slumbers to upbraid him. He had done according to his own artless conscience and the recipes of licensed physi- cians, and he looked no further, but pounded, triturated, infused, made electuaries, boluses, juleps, or whatever he termed his productions, with skill and diligence, thanking Heaven that he was spared to do so, when his contemporaries generally were getting incapable of simi- lar efforts. It struck him with some surprise, but much gratitude to Providence, that his sight seemed to be grow- ing rather better than worse. He certainly could read the crabbed handwriting and hieroglyphics of the physi- cians with more readiness than he could a year earlier. But he had been originally near-sighted, with large, pro- jecting eyes ; and near-sighted eyes always seem to get a new lease of light, as the years go on. One thing was perceptible about the Doctor's eyes, not only to himself in the glass, but to everybody else ; namely, that they had an unaccustomed gleaming brightness in them ; not so very bright either, but yet so much so, that little Pansie noticed it,' and sometimes, in her playful, roguish way, climbed up into his lap, and put both her small palms over them ; telling Grandpapa that he had stolen some- body else's eyes, and given away his own, and that she liked his old ones better. The poor old Doctor did his best to smile through his eyes, and so to reconcile Pansie to their brightness : but still she continually made the same silly remonstrance, so that he was fain to put on a pair 3 D 50 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. of green spectacles, when he was going to play with Pausie, or took her ou his knee. Nay, if he looked at her, as had always been his custom, after she was asleep, in order to see that all was well with her, the little child would put up her hands, as if he held a light that was flashing on her eyeballs ; and unless he turned away his gaze quickly, she would wake up in a fit of crying. On the whole, the apothecary had as comfortable a time as a man of his years could expect. The air of the house and of the old graveyard seemed to suit him. What so seldom happens in man's advancing age, his night's rest did him good, whereas, generally, an old man wakes up ten times as nervous and dispirited as he went to bed, just as if, during his sleep he had been working harder than ever he did in the daytime. It had been so with the Doctor himself till within a few months. To be sure, he had latterly begun to practise various rules of diet and exercise, which commended themselves to his approbation. He sawed some of his own fire-wood, and fancied that, as was reasonable, it fatigued him less day by day. He took walks with Pansie, and though, of course, her little footsteps, treading on the elastic air of childhood, far outstripped his own, still the old man knew that he was not beyond the recuperative period of life, and that exercise out of doors and proper food can do somewhat towards retarding the approach of age. He was inclined, also, to impute much good effect to a daily dose of Santa Cruz rum (a liquor much in vogue in that day), which he was now in the habit of quaffing at the meridian hour. All through the Doctor's life he had THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 51 eschewed strong spirits ; " But after seventy," quoth old Dr. DoUiver," a man is all the better in head and stomach for a little stimulus " ; and it certainly seemed so in his case. Likewise, I know not precisely how often, but complying punctiliously with the recipe, as an apothecary naturally would, he took his drop of the mysterious cor- dial. He was inclined, however, to impute little or no effi- cacy to this, and to laugh at himself for having ever thought otherwise. The dose was so very minute ! and he had never been sensible of any remarkable eifect on taking it, after all. A genial warmth, he sometimes fan- cied, diffused itself throughout him, and perhaps contin- ued during the next day. A quiet and refreshing night's rest followed, and alacritous waking in the morning ; but all this was far more probably owing, as has been already hinted, to excellent and well-considered habits of diet and exercise. Nevertheless he still continued the cordial with tolerable regularity, — the more, because on one or two occasions, happening to omit it, it so chanced that he slept wretchedly, and awoke in strange aches and pains, torpors, nervousness, shaking of the hands, blearedness of sight, lowness of spirits and other ills, as is the mis- fortune of some old men ; who are often threatened by a thousand evil symptoms that come to nothing, forebod- ing no particular disorder, and passing away as unsatis- factorily as they come. At another time, he took two or three drops at once, and was alarmingly feverish in con- sequence. Yet it was very true, that the feverish symp- toms were pretty sure to disappear on his renewal of the medicine. " Still it could not be that," thought the old 52 THE DOLIVER ROMANCE. man, a hater of empiricism (in whicli, however, is con- tained all hope for man), and disinclined to beheve in any- thing that was not according to rule and art. And then, as aforesaid, the dose was so ridiculously small ! Sometimes, however, he took, half laughingly, another view of it, and felt disposed to think that chance might really have thrown in his way a very remarkable mixture, by which, if it had happened to him earlier in life, he might have amassed a larger fortune, and might even have raked together such a competency as would have prevented his feeling much uneasiness about the future of little Pansie. Peeling as strong as he did nowadays, he might reasonably count upon ten years more of life, and in that time the precious liquor might be exchanged for much gold. "Let us see ! " quoth he, "by what attrac- tive name shall it be advertised ? ' The old man's cor- dial ? ' That promises too little. Poh, poh ! I would stain my honesty, my fair reputation, the accumulation of a lifetime, and befool my neighbor and the public, by any name that would make them imagine I had found that ridiculous talisman that the alchemists have sought. The old man's cordial, — that is best. And five shillings sterling the bottle. That surely were not too costly, and would give the medicine a better reputation and higher vogue (so foolish is the world), than if I were to put it lower. I will think further of this. But pshaw, pshaw ! " " What is the matter, Grandpapa," said little Pansie, who had stood by him, wishing to speak to him at least a minute, but had been deterred by his absorption, " Why do you say ' Pshaw ' ? " THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 53 " Pshaw ! " repeated Grandpapa, " tliere is one ingre- dient that I don't know." So this very hopeful design was necessarily given up, but that it had occurred to Dr. Dolliver, was perhaps a token that his mind was in a very vigorous state ; for it had been noted of him through life, that he had little enterprise, little activity, and that for the want of these things, his very considerable skill in his art had been almost thrown away, as regarded his private affairs, when it might easily have led him to fortune. Whereas, here in his extreme age, he had first bethought himself of a way to grow rich. Sometimes this latter spring causes — as blossoms come on the autumnal tree — a spurt of vigor, or untimely greenness, when Nature laughs at her old child, half in kindness and half in scorn. It is observable, however, I fancy, that after such a spurt, age comes on with redoubled speed, and that the old man has only run forward with a show of force, in order to fall into his grave the sooner. Sometimes, as he was walking briskly along the street, with little Pansie clasping his hand, and perhaps frisking rather more than became a person of his venerable years, he had met the grim old wreck of Colonel Dabney, moving goutily, and gathering wrath anew with every touch of his painful foot to the ground ; or driving by in his carriage, showing an ashen, angry, wrinkled face at the window, and frowning at him — the apothecary tliought — with a peculiar fury, as if he took umbrage at his audacity in being less broken by age than a gen- tleman like himself. The apothecary could not help feeling as if there were some unsettled quarrel or dispute 54 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. between liimself and the Colonel, he could not tell what or vrhj. The Colonel always gave him a haughty nod of half- recognition ; and the people ui the street, to whom he w'as a familiar object, would say, " The worshipful Colonel begins to find himself mortal like the rest of us. He feels his years." " He 'd be glad, I warrant," said one, " to change with you, Doctor. It shows what difference a good life makes in men, to look at him and you. You are half a score of years his elder, methinks, and yet look what temperance can do for a man. By my credit, neighbor, seeing how brisk you have been lately, I told my wife you seemed to be growing younger. It does me good to see it. We are about of an age, I think, and I like to notice how we old men keep young and keep one another in heart. I myself — ahem — ahem — feel younger this season than for these five years past." "It rejoices me that you feel so," quoth the apothe- cary, who had just been thinking that this neighbor of his had lost a great deal, both in mind and body, within a short period, and rather scorned him for it. " Indeed, I find old age less uncomfortable than I supposed. Little Pansie and I make excellent companions for one another." And then, dragged along by Pansie's little hand, and also impelled by a certain alacrity that rose with him in the morning, and lasted till his healthy rest at night, he bade farewell to his contemporary, and hastened on ; while the latter, left behind, was somewhat irritated as he looked at the vigorous movement of the apothecary's legs. THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 55 "He need not make such a show of briskness neither/' muttered he to himself. "This touch of rheumatism troubles me a bit just now, but try it on a good day, and I 'd walk with him for a shilling. Pshaw ! I '11 walk to his funeral yet." One day, while the Doctor, with the activity that be- stirred itself in him nowadays, was mixing and manu- facturing certain medicaments that came in frequent demand, a carriage stopped at his door, and he recog- nized the voice of Colonel Dabney, talking in his cus- tomary stern tone to the woman who served him. And, a moment afterwards, the coach drove away, and he ac- tually heard the old dignitary lumbering up stairs, and bestowing a curse upon each particular step, as if that ■were the method to make them soften and become easier when he should come down again. " Pray, your wor- ship," said the Doctor from above, " let me attend you below stairs." " No," growled the Colonel, " I '11 meet you on your own ground. I can climb a stair yet, and be hanged to you." So saying, he painfully finished the ascent, and came into the laboratory, where he let himself fall into the Doctor's easy-chair, with an anathema on the chair, the Doctor and himself ; and staring round through the dusk, he met the wide-open, startled eyes of little Pansie, who had been reading a gilt picture-book in the corner. " Send away that child, Dolliver," cried the Colonel, angrily. " Confound her, she makes my bones ache. I hate everything young." 56 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. " Lord, Colonel," the poor apothecary ventured to say, "there must be young people in the world as well as old ones. 'T is my mind, a man's grandchildren keep him warm round about him." " I have none, and want none," sharply responded the Colonel ; " and as for young people, let me be one of them, and they may exist, otherwise not. It is a cursed bad arrangement of the world, that there are young and old here together." When Pansie had gone away, which she did with any- thing but reluctance, having a natural antipathy to this monster of a Colonel, the latter personage tapped with his crutch-handled cane on a chair that stood near, and nodded in an authoritative way to the apothecary to sit down in it. Dr. Dolliver complied submissively, and the Colonel, with dull, unkindly eyes, looked at him sternly, and with a kind of intelligence amid the aged stolidity of his aspect, that somewhat puzzled the Doc- tor. In this way he surveyed him all over, like a judge, when he means to hang a man, and for some reason or none, the apothecary felt his nerves shake, beneath this steadfast look. " Aha ! Doctor ! " said the Colonel at last, with a dolt- ish sneer, " you bear your years well." " Decently well. Colonel ; I thank Providence for it," answered the meek apothecary. " I should say," quoth the Colonel, " you are younger at this moment than when we spoke together two or three years ago. I noted then that your eyebrows were a handsome snow-white, such as befits a man who has passed beyond his threescore years and ten, and live THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 57 years more. Why, they are getting dark again, Mr. Apothecary." " Nay, your worship must needs be mistaken there," said the Doctor, with a timorous chackle. "It is many a year since I have taken a deliberate note of my wretched old visage in a glass, but I remember they were white when I looked last." " Come, Doctor, I know a thing or two," said the Colonel, with a bitter scoff; "and what's this, you old rogue ? Why, you 've rubbed away a wrinkle since we met. Take off those infernal spectacles, and look me in the face. Ha! I see the devil in your eye. How dare you let it shine upon me so ? " "On my conscience. Colonel," said the apothecary, strangely struck with the coincidence of this accusation with little Pansie's complaint, "1 know not what you mean. My sight is pretty well for a man of my age. We near-sighted people begin to know our best eyesight, when other people have lost theirs." "Ah! ah! old rogue," repeated the insufferable Colo- nel, gnashing his ruined teeth at him, as if, for some incomprehensible reason, he wished to tear him to pieces and devour him. "I know you. You are taking the life away from me, villain ! and I told you it was my inheritance. And I told you there was a Bloody Foot- step, bearing its track down through my race." "I remember nothing of it," said the Doctor, in a quake, sure that tiie Colonel was in one of his mad fits, " And on the word of an honest man, I never wronged you in my life, Colonel." " We shall see," said the Colonel, whose wrinkled vis' 3* 58 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. age grew absolutely terrible "with its hardness ; and his dull eyes, without losing their dulness, seemed to look through him. " Listen to me, sir. Some ten years ago, there came to you a man on a secret business. He had an old, musty bit of parchment, on which were written some words, hardly legible, in an antique hand, — an old deed, it might have been, — some family document, and here and there the letters were faded away. But this man had spent his life over it, and he had made out the meaning, and he interpreted it to you, and left it with you, only there was one gap, — one torn or obliterated place. Well, sir, — and he bade you, with your poor little skill at the mortar, and for a certain sum, — ample repayment for such a service, — to manufacture this medicine, — this cordial. It was an ajffair of months. And just when you thought it finished, the man came again, and stood over your cursed beverage, and shook a powder, or dropped a lump into it, or put in some ingre- dient, in which was all the hidden virtue, — or, at least, it drew out all the hidden virtue of the mean and common herbs, and married them into a wondrous efficacy. This done, the man bade you do certain other things with the potation, and went away " — the Colonel hesitated a mo- ment — "and never came back again." "Surely, Colonel, you are correct," said the apothe- cary ; much startled, however, at the Colonel's showing himself so well acquainted with an incident which he had supposed a secret with himself alone. Yet he had a lit- tle reluctance in owning it, although he did not exactly understand why, since the Colonel had, apparently, no rightful claim to it^ at all events. THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. 59 " That medicine, that receipt," continued his visitor, " is my hereditary property, and I challenge you, on your peril, to give it up." " But what if the orignial owner should call upon me for it," objected Dr. Dolliver. " I '11 warrant you against that," said the Colonel ; and the apothecary thought there was something ghastly in his look and tone. "Why, 'tis ten year, you old fool ; and do you think a man with a treasure like that in his possession would have waited so long ? " " Seven years it was ago," said the apothecary, " Sep- tern annis passatis : so says the Latin." " Curse your Latin," answers the Colonel. " Pro- duce the stuff. You have been violating the first rule of your trade, — taking your own drugs, — your own, in one sense ; mine by the right of three hundred years. Bring it forth, I say ! " " Pray excuse me, worthy Colonel," pleaded the apoth- ecary ; for though convinced that the old gentleman was only in one of his insane fits, when he talked of the value of this concoction, yet he really did not like to give up the cordial, which perhaps had wrought him some bene- fit. Besides, he had at least a claim upon it for much trouble and skill expended in its composition. This he suggested to the Colonel, who scornfully took out of his pocket a net-work purse, with more golden guineas in it than the apothecary had seen in the whole seven years, and was rude enough to fling it in his face. " Take that," thundered he, " and give up the thing, or I will have you in prison before you are an hour older. Nay," he continued, growing paie, which was his mode of 60 THE DOLLIVEH ROMANCE. showing terrible wrath ; since all through life, till ex- treme age quenched it, his ordinary face had been a blazing red, " I '11 put you to death, you villain, as I 've a right ! " And thrusting his hand into his waistcoat- pocket, lo ! the madman took a small pistol from it, which he cocked, and presented at the poor apothecary. The old fellow quaked and cowered in his chair, and would indeed have given his whole shopful of better concocted medicines than this, to be out of this danger. Besides, there were the guineas; the Colonel had paid him a princely sum for what was probably worth nothing. " Hold ! hold ! '* cried he as the Colonel, with stern eye pointed the pistol at his head. " You shall have it." So he rose all trembling, and crept to that secret cupboard, where the precious bottle — since precious it seemed to be — was reposited. In all his life, long as it had been, the apothecary had never before been threat- ened by a deadly weapon ; though many as deadly a thing had he seen poured into a glass, without winking. And so it seemed to take his heart and life away, and he brought the cordial forth feebly, and stood tremu- lously before the Colonel, ashy pale, and looking ten years older than his real age, instead of five years younger, as he had seemed just before this disastrous in- terview Math the Colonel. " You look as if you needed a drop of it yourself," said Colonel Dabney, with great scorn, "But not a drop shall you have. Already have you stolen too much," said he, lifting up the bottle, and marking the space to which the liquor had subsided in it in conse- quence of the minute doses with which the apothecary THE DOLLIVER HOMANCE. 61 had made free. " Fool, had you taken your glass like a man, you might have been young again. Now, creep on, the few months you have left, poor, torpid knave, and die ! Come — a goblet ! quick ! " He clutched the bottle meanwhile voraciously, miserly, eagerly, furiously, as if it were his life that he held in his grasp ; angry, impatient, as if something long sought were within his reach, and not yet secure, — with longing thirst and desire ; suspicious of the world and of fate ; feeling as if an iron hand were over him, and a crowd of violent robbers round about him, struggling for it. At last, unable to wait longer, just as the apothecary was tottering away in quest of a drinking-glass, the Colonel took out the stopple, and lifted the flask itself to his lips. " For Heaven's sake, no ! " cried the Doctor. " The dose is one single drop ! — one drop, Colonel, one drop ! " "Not a drop to save your wretched old soul," re- sponded the Colonel ; probably thinking that the apoth- ecary was pleading for a small share of the precious liquor. He put it to his lips, and, as if quenching a lifelong thirst, swallowed deep draughts, sucking it in with desperation, till void of breath, he set it down upon the table. The rich, poignant perfume spread it- self through the air. The apothecary, with an instinctive carefulness that was rather ludicrous under the circumstances, caught up the stopper, which the Colonel had let fall, and forced it into the bottle to prevent any farther escape of virtue. He then fearfully watched the result of the madman's potation. 62 THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. The Colonel sat a moment in his chair, panting for breath; then started to his feet with a prompt vigor that contrasted widely with the infirm and rheumatic movements that had heretofore characterized him. He struck his forehead violently with one hand, and smote his chest with the other : he stamped his foot thunder- ously on the ground; then he leaped up to the ceiling, and came down with an elastic bound. Then he laughed, a wild, exulting ha ! ha ! with a strange triumphant roar that filled the house and re-echoed through it; a sound full of fierce, animal rapture, — enjoyment of sen- sual life mixed up with a sort of horror. After all, real as it was, it was like the sounds a man makes in a dream. And this, while the potent draught seemed still to be making its way through his system ; and the fright- ened apothecary thought that he intended a revengeful onslaught upon himself. Einally, he uttered a loud, un- earthly screech, in the midst of which his voice broke, as if some unseen hand were throttling him, and, start- ing forward, he fought frantically, as if he would clutch the life that was being rent away, — and fell forward w^ih a dead thump upon the floor. " Colonel! Colonel!" cried the terrified Doctor. The feeble old man, with difficulty, turned over the heavy frame, and saw at once, with practised eye, tliat he was dead. He set him up, and the corpse looked at him with angry reproach. He was so startled, that his subsequent recollections of the moment were neither distinct nor steadfast ; but he fancied, though he told the strange impression to no one, that on his first glimpse of the face, with a dark flush of what looked like rage THE DOLLIVEE, ROMANCE. 63 still upon it, it was a young man's face that he saw, — a face with all the passionate energy of early manhood ; — the capacity for furious anger which the man had lost half a century ago, crammed to the brim with vigor till it became agony. But the next moment, if it were so (which it could not have been), the face grew ashen, withered, shrunken, more aged than in life, though still the murderous fierceness remained, and seemed to be petrified forever upon it. After a moment's bewilderment, Dolliver ran to the window, looking to the street, threw it open, and called loudly for assistance. He opened also another window, for the air to blow through, for he was almost stifled with the rich odor of the cordial which filled the room, and was now exuded from the corpse. He heard the voice of Pansie, crying at the door, which was locked, and, turning the key, he caught her in his arms, and hastened with her below stairs, to give her into the charge of Martha, who seemed half stupe- fied with a sense of something awful that had occurred. Meanwhile, there was a rattling and a banging at the street portal, to which several people had been attracted both by the Doctor's^ outcry from the window, and by the awful screech, in which the Colonel's spirit (if, indeed, he had that divine part), had just previously taken its flight. He let them in, and, pale and shivering, ushered them up to the death-chamber, where one or two, with a more delicate sense of smelling than the rest, snuffed the atmosphere, as if sensible of an unknown fragrance, yet appeared afraid to breathe, when tliey saw the -^errific 64} THE DOLLIVER ROMANCE. countenance, leaning back against the chair, and eying tliem so truculently. I would fain quit the scene and have done with the Colonel, who, I am glad, has happened to die at so early a period of the narrative. I therefore hasten to say that a coroner's inquest was held on the spot, though every- body felt that it was merely ceremonial, and that the testimony of their good and ancient townsman, Dr. Dolliver, was amply sufficient to settle the matter. The verdict was, "Death by the visitation of God." The apothecary gave evidence that the Colonel, without asking leave, and positively against his advice, had drunk a quantity of distilled spirits ; and one or two servants, or members of the Colonel's family, testified that he had been in a very uncomfortable state of mind for some days past, so that they fancied he was insane. Therefore nobody thought of blaming Dr. Dolliver for what had happened ; and if the plain truth must be told, every- body who saw the wretch was too well content to be rid of him, to trouble themselves more than was quite neces- sary about the way in which the incumbrance had been removed. The corpse was taken to the mansion in order to receive a magnificent funeral ; and Dr. Dolliver was left outwardly in quiet, but much disturbed and indeed almost overwhelmed inwardly by what had happened. Yet it is to be observed, that he had accounted for the death with a singular dexterity of expression, when he attributed it to a dose of distilled spirits. What kind of distilled spirits were those, Doctor ? and will you ven- ture to take any more of them ? TALES AND SKETCHES. SKETCHES FROM MEMORY. I. THE INLAND PORT. T was a bright forenoon, when I set foot on the beach at Burlington, and took leave of the two boatmen in whose httle skiff I had voyaged since daylight from Peru. Not that we had come that morning from South America, but only from the New York shore of Lake Champlain. The highlands of the coast behind us stretched north and south, in a double range of bold, blue peaks, gazing over each other's shoul- ders at the Green Mountains of Vermont. The latter are far the loftiest, and, from the opposite side of the lake, had displayed a more striking outline. We were now almost at their feet, and could see only a sandy beach sweeping beneath a woody bank, around the semicircular Bay of Burlington. * Second series. The first series was added to the revised edition of the Mosses from an Old Manse. 68 TALES AND SKETCHES. The painted lighthouse on a small green island, the wharves and warehouses, with sloops and schooners moored alongside, or at anchor, or spreading their can- vas to the wind, and boats rowing from point to point, reminded me of some fishing-town on the sea-coast. But I had no need of tasting the water to convince my- self that Lake Champlain was not an arm of the sea ; its quality was evident, both by its silvery surface, when unruffled, and a faint but unpleasant and sickly smell, forever steaming up in the sunshine. One breeze of the Atlantic with its briny fragrance would be worth more to these inland people than all the perfumes of Arabia. On closer inspection the vessels at the wharves looked hardly seaworthy, — there being a great lack of tar about the seams and rigging, and perhaps other deficiencies, quite as much to the purpose. I observed not a single sailor in the port. There were men, indeed, in blue jackets and trousers, but not of the true nautical fashion, such as dangle before slop- shops ; others wore tight pantaloons and coats prepon- derously long-tailed, — cutting very queer figures at the masthead ; and, in short, these fresh-water fellows had about the same analogy to the real *' old salt " with his tarpaulin, pea-jacket, and sailor-cloth trousers, as a lake fish to a Newfoundland cod. Nothing struck me more in Burlington, than the great number of Irish emigrants. They have filled the British Provinces to the brim, and still continue to ascend the St. Lawrence in infinite tribes overflowing by every out- let into the States. At Burlington, they swarm in huts and mean dwellings near the lake, lounge about the THE INLAND PORT. G9 wharves, and elbow the native citizens entirely out of competition in tlieir 'own line. Every species of mere bodily labor is the prerogative of these Irish, Such is their multitude in comparison with any possible demand for their services, that it is difficult to conceive how a third part of tliem should earn even a daily glass of whiskey, which is doubtless their first necessary of life, — daily bread being only the second. Some were angling in the lake, but had caught only a few perch, which little fishes, without a miracle, would be nothing among so many. A miracle there certainly must have been, and a daily one, for the subsistence of these wandering hordes. The men exhibit a lazy strength and careless merriment, as if they had fed well hitherto, and meant to feed better hereafter; the women strode about, uncovered in the open air, with far plumper waists and brawnier limbs as well as bolder faces, than our shy and slender females ; and their progeny, which was innumerable, had the reddest and the roundest cheeks of any children in America. While we stood at the wharf, the bell of a steamboat gave two preliminary peals, and she dashed away for Plattsburgh, leaving a trail of smoky breath behind, and breaking the glassy surface of the lake before her. Our next movement brought us into a handsome and busy square, the sides of which were filled up with white houses, brick stores, a church, a court-house, and a bank. Some of these edifices had roofs of tin, in the fashion of Montreal, and glittered in the sun with cheerful splendor, imparting a lively effect to the whole square. One brick building, designated in large letters as the custom-house, 70 TALES AND SKETCHES. remiBded us tliat this inland village is a port of entry, largely concerned in foreign trade and holding daily intercourse with the British empire. In this border country the Canadian bank-notes circulate as freely as our own, and British and American coin are jumbled into the same pocket, the effigies of the King of England being made to kiss those of the Goddess of Liberty. Perhaps there was an emblem in the involuntary con- tact. There was a pleasant mixture of people in the square of Burlington, such as cannot be seen elsewhere, at one view ; merchants from Montreal, British officers from the frontier garrisons, Erench Canadians, wandering Irish, Scotchmen of a better class, gentlemen of the South on a pleasure tour, country squires on business ; and a great throng of Green Mountain boys, with their horse- wagons and ox-teams, true Yankees in aspect, and look- ing more superlatively so, by contrast with such a variety of foreigners. II. ROCHESTER. HE gray but transparent evening rather shaded than obscured the scene, leaving its stronger features visible, and even improved by the medium through which I beheld them. The volume of water is not very great, nor the roar deep enough to be termed grand, though such praise might have been ap- propriate before the good people of Rochester had ab- stracted a part of the unprofitable sublimity of the cascade. The Genesee has contributed so bountifully to their canals and mill-dams, that it approaches the precipice with diminished pomp, and rushes over it in foamy streams of various width, leaving a broad face of the rock msulated and unwashed, between the two main branches of the falling river. Still it was an impressive sight, to one who had not seen Niagara. I confess, however, that my chief interest arose from a legend, connected with these falls, which will become poetical in the lapse of years, and was already so to me as I pictured the catastrophe out of dusk and soHtude. It was from a platform, raised over the naked island of the cliff, in the middle of the cataract 72 TALES AND SKETCHES. that Sam Patch took his last leap, and alighted in the other world. Strange as it may appear, — that any un- certainty should rest upon his fate which was consum- mated in the sight of thousands, — many will tell you that the illustrious Patch concealed himself in a cave under the falls, and has continued to enjoy posthumous renown, without foregoing the comforts of this present life. But the poor fellow prized the shout of the multi- tude too much not to have claimed it at the instant, had he survived. He will not be seen again, unless his ghost, in such a twilight as when I was there, should emerge from the foam, and vanish among the shadows that fall from cliff to cliff. How stern a moral may be drawn from the story of poor Sam Patch ! Why do we call him a madman or a fool, when he has left his memory around the falls of the Genesee, more permanently than if the letters of his name had been hewn into the forehead of the precipice ? Was the leaper of cataracts more mad or foolish than other men who throw away life, or misspend it in pursuit of empty fame, and seldom so triumphantly as he ? That which he won is as invaluable as any except the unsought glory, spreading like the rich perfume of richer fruit from various and useful deeds. Thus musing, wise in theory, but practically as great a fool as Sam, I lifted my eyes and beheld the spires, warehouses, and dwellings of Rochester, half a mile distant on both sides of the river, indistinctly cheerful, with the twinkling of many lights amid the fall of the evening The town had sprung up like a mushroom, but no ROCHESTER. 73 presage of decay could be drawn from its hasty growth. Its edifices are of dusky brick, and of stone that will not be grayer in a hundred years than now ; its churches are Gothic ; it is impossible to look at its worn pavements and conceive how lately the forest leaves have been swept away. The most ancient town in Massachusetts ap- pears quite Uke an affair of yesterday, compared with Rochester. Its attributes of youth are the activity and eager life with which it is redundant. The whole street, sidewalks and centre, was crowded with pedestrians, horsemen, stage-coaches, gigs, light wagons, and heavy ox-teams, all hurrying, trotting, rattling, and rumbling, in a throng that passed continually, but never passed away. Here, a country wife was selecting a churn from several gayly painted ones on the sunny sidewalk ; there, a farmer was bartering his produce ; and, in two or three places, a crowd of people were showering bids on a vociferous auctioneer. I saw a great wagon and an ox- chain knocked off to a very pretty woman. Numerous were the lottery offices, — those true temples of Mammon, — where red and yellow bills offered splendid fortunes to the world at large, and banners of painted cloth gave notice that the "lottery draws next Wednesday." At the ringing of a bell, judges, jurymen, lawyers, and clients, elbowed each other to the court-house, to busy themselves with cases that would doubtless illustrate the state of society, had I the means of reporting them. The number of public houses benefited the flow of tempo- rary population ; some were farmer's taverns, — cheap, homely, and comfortable ; others were magnificent hotels, with negro waiters, gentlemanly landlords in black broad- 4 74 TALES AND SKETCHES. clotli, and foppish bar-keepers in Broadway coats, with chased gold watches in their waistcoat-pockets. I caught one of these fellows quizzing me through an eye-glass. The porters were lumbering up the steps with baggage from the packet boats, while waiters plied the brush on dusty travellers, who, meanwhile, glanced over the in- numerable advertisements in the daily papers. In short, everybody seemed to be there, and all had something to do, and were doing it with all their might, except a party of drunken recruits for the Western mili- tary posts, principally Irish and Scotch, though they wore Uncle Sam's gray jacket and trousers. I noticed one other idle man. He carried a rifle on his shoulder and a powder-horn across his breast, and appeared to stare about him with confused wonder, as if, while he was listening to the wind among the forest boughs, the hum and bustle of an instantaneous city had surrounded him III. A NIGHT SCENE. HE steamboat in which I was passenger fo\ Detroit had put into the mouth of a small river, where the greater part of the night would be spent in repairing some damages of the machinery. As the evening was warm, though cloudy and very dark, I stood on deck, watching a scene that would not have attracted a second glance in the daytime, but be- came picturesque by the magic of strong light and deep shade. Some wild Irishmen were replenishing our stock of wood, and had kindled a great fire on the bank to illu- minate their labors. It was composed of large logs and dry brushwood, heaped together with careless profusion, blazing fiercely, spouting showers of sparks into the darkness, and gleaming wide over Lake Erie, — a beacon for perplexed voyagers leagues from land. All around and above the furnace, there was total obscurity. No trees or other objects caught and re- flected any portion of the brightness, which thus wasted itself in the immense void of night, as if it quivered from 76 TALES AND SKETCHES. the expiring embers of the world, after the final confla- gratiou. But the Irishmen were continually emerging from the dense gloom, passing through the lurid glow, and vanishing into the gloom on the other side. Some- times a whole figure would be made visible, by the shirt- sleeves and light-colored dress ; others were but half seen, like imperfect creatures ; many flitted, shadow-like, along the skirts of darkness, tempting fancy to a vain pursuit ; and often, a face alone was reddened by the fire, and stared strangely distinct, with no traces of a body. In short these wild Irish, distorted and exaggerated by the blaze, now lost in deep shadow, now bursting into sud- den splendor, and now struggling between light and darkness, formed a picture which might have been trans- ferred, almost unaltered, to a tale of the supernatural. As they all carried lanterns of wood, and often flung sticks upon the fire, the least imaginative spectator would at once compare them to devils condemned to keep alive the flames of their own torments. FRAGMENTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. I. Y poor friend "Oberon"* — for let me be allowed to distiuguish him by so quaint a name — sleeps with the silent ages. He died calmly. Though his disease was pulmonary, his life did not flicker cut like a wasted lamp, sometimes shooting up into a strange temporary brightness ; but the tide of being ebbed away, and the noon of his existence waned till, in the simple phraseology of Scripture, "he was not." The last words he said to me were, " Burn ray papers, — all that you can find in yonder escritoire; for I fear there are some there which you may be betrayed into publishing. I have published enough ; as for the old disconnected journal in your possession — " But here my poor friend was checked in his utterance by that same hollow cough which would never let him alone. So he coughed himself tired, and sank to slumber. I watched * See the sketch or story entitled " The Devil in Manu- script," in "The Snow-Image, and other Twice-Told Tales." 78 TALES AND SKETCHES. from that midnight hour till high noon on the morrow for his waking. The chamber was dark; till, longing for light, I opened the window-shutter, and the broad day looked in on the marble features of the dead. I religiously obeyed his instructions with regard to the papers in the escritoire, and burned them in a heap without looking into one, though sorely tempted. But the old journal I kept. Perhaps in strict conscience I ought also to have burned that; but casting my eye over some half-torn leaves the other day, I could not resist an impulse to give some fragments of it to the public. To do this satisfactorily, I am obliged to twist this thread, so as to string together into a semblance of order my Oberon's " random pearls." If anybody that holds any commerce with his fellow- men can be called solitary, Oberon was a " solitary man." He lived in a small village at some distance from the metropolis, and never came up to the city except once in three months for the purpose of looking into a book- store, and of spending two hours and a half with me. In that space of time I would tell him all that I could remember of interest which had occurred in the interim of his visits. He would join very heartily in the con- versation ; but as soon as the time of his usual tarrying had elapsed, he would take up his hat and depart. He was unequivocally the most original person I ever knew. His style of composition was very charming. No tales that have ever appeared in our popular journals have been so generally admired as his. But a sadness was on his spirit ; and this, added to the shrinking sensi- tiveness of his nature, rendered him not misanthropic, JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 79 but singularly averse to social intercourse. Of the dis- ease, which was slowly sapping the springs of his life, he first became fully conscious after one of those long abstractions in which he was wont to indulge. It is remarkable, however, that his first idea of this sort, instead of deepening his spirit with a more melancholy hue, restored him to a more natural state of mind. He had evidently cherished a secret hope that some impulse would at length be given him, or that he would muster sufficient energy of will to return into the world, and act a wiser and happier part than his former one. But life never called the dreamer forth; it was Death that whispered him. It is to be regretted that this por- tion of his old journal contains so few passages relative to this interesting period ; since the little which he has recorded, though melancholy enough, breathes the gen- tleness of a spirit newly restored to communion with its kind. If there be anything bitter in the following reflec- tions, its source is in human sympathy, and its sole object is himself. " It is hard to die without one's happiness ; to none more so than myself, whose early resolution it had been to partake largely of the joys of hfe, but never to be burdened with its cares. Vain philosophy ! The very hardships of the poorest laborer, whose whole existence seems one long toil, has something preferable to my best pleasures. " Merely skimming the surface of life, I know nothing, by my own experience, of its deep and warm realities. I have achieved none of those objects which the instinct of mankind especially prompts them to pursue, and the 80 TALES AND SKETCHES. accomplisliment of which must therefore beget a native satisfaction. The truly wise, after all their speculations, will be led into the common path, and, in homage to the human nature that pervades them, will gather gold, and till the earth, and set out trees, and build a house. But I have scorned such wisdom. I have rejected, also, the settled, sober, careful gladness of a man by his own fire- side, with those around him whose welfare is committed to his trust and all their guidance to his fond authority. Without influence among serious affairs, my footsteps were not imprinted on the earth, but lost in air ; and I shall leave no son to inherit my share of life, with a bet- ter sense of its privileges and duties, when his father should vanish like a bubble ; so that few mortals, even the humblest and the weakest, have been such ineffectual shadows in the world, or die so utterly as I must. Even a young man's bliss has not been mine. With a thou- sand vagrant fantasies, I have never truly loved, aiid perhaps shall be doomed to loneliness throughout the eternal future, because, here on earth, my soul has never married itself to the soul of woman. " Such are the repinings of one who feels, too late, that the sympathies of his nature have avenged them- selves upon him. They have prostrated, with a joyless life and the prospect of a reluctant death, my selfish pur- pose to keep aloof from mortal disquietudes, and be a pleasant idler among care-stricken and laborious men. I have other regrets, too, savoring more of my old spirit. The time has been when I meant to visit every region of the earth, except the poles and Central Africa. I had a strange longing to see the Pyramids, To Persia and JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 81 Arabia, and all the gorgeous East, I owed a pilgrimage for the sake of their magic tales. And England, the land of my ancestors ! Once I had fancied that my sleep would not be quiet in the grave unless I should return, as it were, to my home of past ages, and see the very cities, and castles, and battle-fields of history, and stand within the holy gloom of its cathedrals, and kneel at the shrines of its immortal poets, there asserting myself tbeir hereditary countryman. This feehng lay among the deepest in my heart. Yet, with this homesickness for the father-land, and all these plans of remote travel, — which I yet believe that my peculiar instinct impelled me to form, and upbraided me for not accomplishing, — • the utmost limit of my wanderings has been little more than six hundred miles from my native village. Thus, in whatever way I consider my life, or what must be termed such, I cannot feel as if I had lived at all. " I am possessed, also, with the thought that I have never yet discovered the real secret of my powers ; that there has been a mighty treasure within my reach, a mine of gold beneath my feet, worthless because I have never known how to seek for it ; and for want of perhaps one fortunate idea, I am to die * Unwept, unhonored, and unsung.' " Once, amid the troubled and tumultuous enjoyment of my life, there was a dreamy thought that haunted me, — the terrible necessity imposed on mortals to grow old, or die. I could not bear the idea of losing one youthful grace. True, I saw other men, who had once been young and now were old, enduring their age with equa- 4* F 82 TALES AND SKETCHES. iiimity, because each year reconciled them to its own added weight. But for myself, I felt that age would be not less miserable, creeping upon me slowly, than if it fell at once. I sometimes looked in the glass, and en- deavored to fancy my clieeks yellow and interlaced with furrows, my forehead wrinkled deeply across, the top of my head bald and polished, my eyebrows and side-locks iron gray, and a grisly beard sprouting on my chin. Shuddering at the picture, I changed it for the dead face of a young man, with dark locks clustering heavily round its pale beauty, which would decay, indeed, but not with years, nor in the sight of men. The latter visage shocked me least. " Such a repugnance to the hard conditions of long life is common to all sensitive and thoughtful men, who minister to the luxury, the refinements, the gayety and lightsomeness, to anything, in short, but the real necessi- ties of their fellow-creatures. He who has a part in the serious business of life, though it be only as a shoemaker, feels himself equally respectable in youth and in age, and therefore is content to live and look forward to wrinkles and decrepitude in their due season. It is far otherwise with the busy idlers of the world. I was particularly liable to this torment, being a meditative person in spite of my levity. The truth could not be concealed, nor the contemplation of it avoided. With deep in- quietude I became aware that what was graceful now, and seemed appropriate enough to my age of flowers, would be ridiculous in middle life ; and that the world, so indulgent to the fantastic youtli, would scorn the bearded man, still telling love-tales, loftily ambitious of JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 83 a maiden's tears, and squeezing out, as it were, with his brawny strengtli, the essence of roses. And in his old age the sweet lyrics of Anacreon made the girls laugh at his white hairs the more. With such sentiments, con- scious that my part in the drama of life was fit only for a youthful performer, I nourished a regretful desire to be summoned early from the scene. I set a limit to myself, the age of twenty-five, few years indeed, but too many to be thrown away. Scarcely had I thus fixed the term of my mortal pilgrimage, than the thought grew into a presentiment that, when the space should be completed, the world would have one butterfly the less, by my far flight. " O, how fond I was of Hfe, even while allotting, as my proper destiny, an early death ! I loved the world, its cities, its villages, its grassy roadsides, its wild forests, its quiet scenes, its gay, warm, enlivening bustle; in every aspect, I loved the world so long as I could behold it with young eyes and dance through it with a young heart. The earth had been made so beautiful, that I longed for no brighter sphere, but only an ever- youthful eternity in this. I clung to earth as if my be- ginning and ending were to be there, unable to imagine any but an earthly happiness, and choosing such, with all its imperfections, rather than perfect bliss which might be alien from it. Alas ! I had not yet known that weari- ness by which the soul proves itself ethereal." Turning over the old journal, I open, by chance, upon a passage which affords a signal instance of the morbid fancies to which Oberon frequently yielded himself. Dreams like the following were probably engendered by 84 TALES AND SKETCPIES. the deep gloom sometimes thrown over his mind by his reflections on death. " I dreamed that one bright forenoon I was walking through Broadway, and seeking to cheer myself with tlie warm and busy life of that far-famed promenade. Here a coach thundered over the pavement, and there an un- wieldy omnibus, with spruce gigs rattling past, and horsemen prancing through all the bustle. On the side- walk people were looking at the rich display of goods, the plate and jewelry, or the latest caricature in the book- seller's windows ; while fair ladies and whiskered gentle- men tripped gayly along, nodding mutual recognitions, or shrinking from some rough countryman or sturdy laborer whose contact might have ruffled their finery. I found myself in this animated scene, with a dim and misty idea that it was not my proper place, or that I had ventured into the crowd with some singularity of dress or aspect which made me ridiculous. Walking in the sunshine, I was yet cold as death. By degrees, too, I perceived myself the object of universal attention, and, as it seemed, of horror and affright. Every face grew pale ; the laugh was hushed, and the voices died away in broken syllables ; the people in the shops crowded to the doors with a ghastly stare, and the passengers on all sides fled as from an embodied pestilence. The horses reared and snorted. An old beggar-woman sat before St. Paul's Church, with her withered palm stretched out to all, but drew it back from me, and pointed to the graves and monuments in that populous churchyard. Three lovely girls whom I had formerly known, ran shrieking across the street, A personage in black, whom • JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 85 I was about to overtake, suddenly turned his Lead and showed the features of a long-lost friend. He gave me a look of horror and was gone. " I passed not one step farther, but threw my eyes on a looking-glass which stood deep within the nearest shop. At first glimpse of my own figure I awoke, with a horri- ble sensation of self-terror and self-loathing. No wonder that the affrighted city fled ! I had been promenading Broadway in my shroud ! " I should be doing injustice to my friend's memory, were 1 to publish other extracts even nearer to insanity than this, from the scarcely legible papers before me. I gather from them — for I do not remember that he ever related to me the circumstances — that he once made a journey, chiefly on foot, to Niagara. Some conduct of the friends among whom he resided in his native village was constructed by him into oppression. These were the friends to whose care he had been committed by his parents, who died when Oberon was about twelve years of age. Though he had always been treated by them with the most uniform kindness, and though a favorite among the people of the village rather on account of the sympathy which they felt in his situation than from any merit of his own, such was the waywardness of his temper, that on a slight provocation he ran away from the home that sheltered him, expressing openly his deter- mination to die sooner than return to the detested spot. A severe illness overtook him after he had been absent about four months. While ill, he felt how unsoothing were the kindest looks and tones of strangers. He rose from his sick-bed a better man, and determined upon a 86 TALES AND SKETCHES. speedy self-atonement by returning to his native town. There he lived, sohtary and sad, but forgiven and cher- ished by his friends, till the day he died. That part of the journal which contained a description of this journey is mostly destroyed. Here and there is a fragment. I cannot select, for the pages are very scanty ; but I do not withhold the following fragments, because they indi- cate a better and more cheerful frame of mind than the foregoing. "On i-eaching the ferry -house, a rude structure of boards at the foot of the cliff, I found several of those wretches devoid of poetry, and lost some of my own poetry by contact with them. The hut was crowded by a party of provincials, — a simple and merry set, who had spent the afternoon fishing near the Falls, and were bar- tering black and white bass and eels for the ferryman's whiskey. A greyhound and three spaniels, brutes of much more grace and decorous demeanor than their masters, sat at the door. A few yards off, yet wholly unnoticed by the dogs, was a beautiful fox, whose coun- tenance betokened all the sagacity attributed to him in ancient fable. He had a comfortable bed of straw in an old barrel, whither he retreated, flourishing his bushy tail as I made a step towards him, but soon came forth and surveyed me with a keen and intelligent eye. 'The Canadians bartered their fish and drank their whiskey, and were loquacious on trifling subjects, and merry at simple jests, with as little regard to the scenery as they could have to the flattest part of the Grand Canal. . Nor JOURNAL OF A SOLITARY MAN. 87 was I entitled to despise them ; for I amused myself with all those foolish matters of fishermen, and dogs, and fox, just as if Sublimity and Beauty were not married at that place and moment ; as if their nuptial band were not the brightest of all rainbows on the opposite shore ; as if the gray precipice were not frowning above my head and Niagara thundering around me. "The grim ferryman, a black-whiskered giant, half drunk withal, now thrust the Canadians by main force out of his door, launched a boat, and bade me sit in the stern-sheets. Where we crossed the river was white with foam, yet did not offer much resistance to a straight passage, which brought us close to the outer edge of the American falls. The rainbow vanished as we neared its misty base, and when I leaped ashore, the sun had left all Niagara in shadow." "A sound of merriment, sweet voices and girlish laughter, came dancing through the solemn roar of wa- ters. In old times, when the Erench, and afterwards the English, held garrisons near Niagara, it used to be deemed a feat worthy of a soldier, a- frontier man, or an Indian, to cross the rapids to Goat Island. As the country became less rude and warlike, a long space in- tervened, in which it was but half believed, by a faint and doubtful tradition, that mortal foot had never trod this wild spot of precipice and forest clinging between two cataracts. The island is no longer a tangled forest, but a grove of stately trees, with grassy intervals about their roots and woodland paths among their trunks. 50 TALES AND SKETCHES. There was neither soldier nor Indian here now, but a vision of three lovely girls, running brief races through the broken sunshine of the grove, hiding behind the trees, and pelting each other with the cones of the pine. When their sport had brought them near me, it so hap- pened that one of the party ran up and shook me by the hand, — a greeting which I heartily returned, and would have done the same had it been tenderer. I had known this wild little black-eyed lass in my youth and her child- hood, before I had commenced my rambles. "We met on terms of freedom and kindness, which elder ladies might have thought unsuitable with a gen- tleman of my description. When I alluded to the two fair strangers, she shouted after them by their Christian names, at which summons, with grave dignity, they drew near, and honored me with a distant courtesy. They were from the upper part of Vermont. Whether sisters, or cousins, or at all related to each other, I cannot tell ; but they are planted in my memory like ' two twin roses on one stem,' with the fresh dew in both their bosoms ; and when I would have pure and pleasant thoughts, I think of them. Neither of them could have seen sev- enteen years. They both were of a height, and that a moderate one. The rose-bloom of their cheeks could iiardly be called bright in her who was the rosiest, nor faint, though a shade less deep, in her companion. Both had delicate eyebrows, not strongly defined, yet some- what darker than their hair; both had small sweet mouths, maiden mouths, of not so warm and deep a tint as ruby, but only red as the reddest rose; each had those gems, the rarest, the most precious, a pair of clear. JOURNAL OP A SOLITARY MAN. 89 soft bright blue eyes. Their style of dress was similar ; one had on a black silk gown, with a stomacher of vel- vet, and scalloped cuffs of the same from the wrist to the elbow; the other wore cuffs and stomaclier of the like pattern and material, over a gown of crimson silk. The dress was rather heavy for their slight figures, but suited to September. They and the darker beauty all carried their straw bonnets in their hands." I cannot better conclude these fragments than with poor Oberon's description of his return to his native village after his slow recovery from his illness. How beautifully does he express his penitential emotions ! A beautiful moral may be indeed drawn from the early death of a sensitive recluse, who had shunned the ordi- nary avenues of distinction, and with splendid abilities sank to rest into an early grave, almost unknown to mankind, and without any record save what my pen hastily leaves upon these tear-blotted pages. ^^M U'^Ml ^ 1 II. MY HOME RETURN. HEN the stage-coach had gamed the summit of the hill, I alighted to perform the small re- mainder of my journey on foot. There had not been a more delicious afternoon than this in all the train of summer, the air being a sunny perfume, made up of balm and warmth, and gentle brightness. The oak and walnut trees over my head retained their deep masses of foliage, and the grass, though for months the pasturage of stray cattle, had been revived with the freshness of early June by the autumnal rains of the preceding week. The garb of autumn, indeed, resembled that of spring. Dandelions and butterflies were sprinkled along the road- side like drops of brightest gold in greenest grass, and a star-shaped little flower of blue, with a golden centre. Ill a rocky spot, and rooted under the stone walk, there was one wild rose-bush bearing three roses very faintly tinted, but blessed with a spicy fragrance. The same tokens would have announced that the year M^as brighten- ing into the glow of summer. There were violets too, though few and pale ones. But the breath of September MY HOME RETURN. 91 was diffused through the mild air, and became percepti- ble, too thrillinglj for my enfeebled frame, whenever a little breeze shook out the latent coolness. " I was standing on the hill at the entrance of my native village, whence I had looked back to bid farewell, and for- ward to the pale mist-bow that overarched my path, and was the omen of my fortunes. How I had misinterpreted that augury, the ghost of hope, with none of hope's bright hues ! Nor could I deem that all its portents were yet accomplished, though from the same western sky the declining sun shone brightly in my face. But I was calm and not depressed. Turning to the village, so dim and dream-like at my last view, I saw the white houses and brick stores, the intermingled trees, the foot- paths with their wide borders of grass, and the dusty road between ; all a picture of peaceful gladness in the sunshine. " ' Why have I never loved my home before ? ' thought I, as my spirit reposed itself on the quiet beauty of the scene. " On the side of the opposite hill was the graveyard, sloping towards the farther extremity of the village. The sun shone as cheerfully there as on the abodes of the living, and showed all the little hillocks and the burial-stones, white marble or slate, and here and there a tomb, with the pleasant grass about them all. A single tree was tinged with glory from the west, and threw a pensive shade behind. Not far from where it fell was the tomb of my parents, whom I had hardly thought of in bidding adieu to the village, but had remembered them more faithfully among the feelings that drew me home- 92 TALES AND SKETCHES. ward. At my departure their tomb Lad been hidden in the morning mist. Beholding it in the sunshine now, I felt a sensation through my frame as if a breeze had tlirown the coolness of September over me, though not a leaf was stirred, nor did the thistle-down take flight. Was I to roam no more through this beautiful world, but only to the other end of the village ? Then let me he down near my parents, but not with them, because I love a green grave better than a tomb. " Moving slowly forward, I heard shouts and laughter, and perceived a considerable throng of people, who came from behind the meeting-house and made a stand in front of it. Thither all the idlers in the village were congre- gated to witness the exercises of the engine company, this being the afternoon of their monthly practice. They deluged the roof of the meeting-house, till the water fell from the eaves in a broad cascade ; then the stream beat against the dusty windows like a thunder-storm ; and sometimes they flung it up beside the steeple, sparkling in an ascending shower about the weathercock. For variety's sake the engineer made it undulate horizon- tally, like a great serpent flying over the earth. As his last effort, being roguishly inclined, he seemed to take aim at the sky, falling short rather of which, down came the fluid, transformed to drops of silver, on the thickest crowd of the spectators. Then ensued a prodigious rout and mirthful uproar, with no little wrath of the surly ones, whom this is an infallible method of distinguishing. The joke afforded infinite amusement to the ladies at the windows and some old people under the hay-scales, I also laughed at a distance, and was glad to find myself MY HOME RETURN. 93 susceptible, as of old, to the simple mirth of such a scene. " Bat the thoughts that it excited were not all mirth- ful. I had witnessed hundreds of such spectacles in my youth, and one precisely similar only a few days before my departure. And now, the aspect of the village being the same, and the crowd composed of my old acquaint- ances, I could hardly realize that years had passed, or even months, or that the very drops of water were not falling at this moment, which had been flung up then. But I pressed the conviction home, that, brief as the time appeared, it had been long enough for me to wander away and return again, with my fate accomplished, and little more hope in this world. The last throb of an adventurous and wayward spirit kept me from repining. I felt as if it were better, or not worse, to have com- pressed my enjoyments and sufferings into a few wild years, and then to rest myself in an early grave, than to have chosen the untroubled and ungladdened course of the crowd before me, whose days were all alike, and a long lifetime like each day. But the sentiment startled me. For a moment I doubted whether my dear-bought wisdom were anything but the incapacity to pursue fresh follies, and whether, if health and strength could be restored that niglit, I should be found in the village after to-morrow's dawn. " Among other novelties, I had noticed that the tavern was now designated as a Temperance House, in letters extending across the whole front, witli a smaller sign promising Hot Coffee at all hours, and Spruce Beer to lodgers gratis. There were few new buildings, except a 94 TALES AND SKETCHES. Methodist cliapel and a printing-office, with a bookstore in the lower story. Tlie golden mortar still ornamented the apothecary's door, nor had the Indian Chief, with his gilded tobacco stalk, been relieved from doing sentinel's duty before Dominicus Pike's grocery. The gorgeous silks, though of later patterns, were still flaunting like a banner in front of Mr. Nightingale's dry-goods store. Some of the signs introduced me to strangers, whose predecessors had failed, or emigrated to the West, or removed merely to the other end of the village, trans- ferring their names from the sign-boards to slabs of marble or slate. But, on the whole, death and vicissi- tude had done very little. There were old men, scat- tered about the street, who had been old in my earliest reminiscences; and, as if their venerable forms were permanent parts of the creation, they appeared to be hale and hearty old men yet. The less elderly were more altered, having generally contracted a stoop, with hair wofully thinned and whitened. Some I could hardly recognize; at my last glance they had been boys and girls, but were young men and women when I looked again ; and there were happy little things too, rolling about on the grass, whom God had made since my departure. "But now, in my lingering course I had descended the hill, and began to consider, painfully enough, how I should meet my townspeople, and what reception they would give me. Of many an evil prophecy, doubtless, had I been the subject. And would they salute me with a roar of triumph or a low hiss of scorn, on behold- ing their worst anticipations more than accomphshed ? MY HOME RETURN. 95 " ' No/ said I, ' they will not triumph over me. And should they ask the cause of my return, I will tell them that a man may go far and tarry long away, if his health be good and his hopes high ; but that when flesh and spirit begin to fail, he remembers his birthplace and the old burial-ground, and hears a voice calling him to come home to his father and mother. They will know, by my wasted frame and feeble step, that I have heard the sum- mons and obeyed. And, the first greetings over, they will let me walk among them unnoticed, and linger in the sunshine while I may, and steal into my grave in peace.' " With these reflections I looked kindly at the crowd, and drew off my glove, ready to give my hand to the first that should put forth his. It occurred to me, also, that some youth among them, now at the crisis of his fate, might have felt his bosom thrill at my example, and be emulous of my wild life and worthless fame. But I would save him. " ' He shall be taught,' said I, ' by my life, and by my death, that the world is a sad one for him who shrinks from its sober duties. My experience shall warn him to adopt some great and serious aim, such as manhood will cling to, that he may not feel himself, too late, a cumberer of this overladen earth, but a man among men. I will beseech him not to follow an eccentric path, nor, by step- ping aside from the highway of human afiairs, to relin- quish his claim upon human sympathy. And often, as a text of deep and varied meaning, I will remind him that he is an American.' " By this time I had drawn near the meeting-house, and perceived that the crowd were beginning to recog- nize me." 96 TALES AND SKETCHES. These are the last words traced by his hand. Has not so chastened a spirit found true communion with the pure in Heaven ? " Until of late, I never could believe that I was seriously ill : the past, I thought, could not extend its misery beyond itself ; life was restored to me, and should not be missed again. I had day-dreams even of wedded happiness. StOl, as the days wear on, a faintness creeps through my frame and spirit, recalling the consciousness that a very old man might as well nourish hope and young desire as I at twenty-four. Yet the consciousness of my situation does not always make me sad. Sometimes I look upon the world with a quiet interest, because it cannot concern me personally, and a loving one for the same reason, because nothing selfish can interfere with the sense of brotherhood. Soon to be all spirit, I have already a spiritual sense of human na- ture, and see deeply into the hearts of mankind, discov- ering what is bidden from the wisest. The loves of young men and virgins are known to me, before the first kiss, before the whispered word, with the birth of the first sigh. My glance comprehends the crowd, and pen- etrates the breast of the solitary man. I think better of the world than formerly, more generously of its virtues, more mercifully of its faults, with a higher estimate of its present happiness, and brighter hopes of its destiny. My mind has put fortli a second crop of blossoms, as the trees do in the Indian summer. No winter will destroy their beauty, for they are fanned by the breeze and fresh- ened by the shower that breathes and falls in the gardens of Paradise ! " fcrtV. C^^JJ^Vjh^;^ ^^^M^s^^^J^ !sj^ » ^ ^<^^fi ^^B^f^^^^ J^^^B ^^Syi^^^^ MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 1 1 i EVER, did a pilgrim approach Niagara with deeper enthusiasm than mine. I had lingered away from it, and wandered to other scenes, because my treasury of anticipated enjoyments, compris- ing all the wonders of the world, had nothmg else so magnificent, and I was loath to exchange the pleasures of hope for those of memory so soon. At length the day came. The stage-coach, with a Frenchman and my- self on the back seat, had already left Lewiston, and in less than an hour would set us down in Manchester. I began to listen for the roar of the cataract, and trembled with a sensation like dread, as the moment drew nigh, when its voice of ages must roll, for the first time, on my ear. The Erench gentleman stretched himself from the window, and expressed loud admiration, while, by a sudden impulse, I threw myself back and closed my eyes. When the scene shut in, I was glad to think, that for me the whole burst of Niagara was yet in futurity. We rolled on, and entered the village of Manchester, border- ing on the falls. I am quite ashamed of myself here. Not that I ran, like a madman to the falls, and plunged into the thickest 5 G 98 TALES AND SKETCHES. of the spray, — never stopping to breathe, till breathing was impossible : not that I committed this, or any other suitable extravagance. On the contrary, I alighted vrith perfect decency and composure, gave my cloak to the black waiter, pointed out my baggage, and inquired, not the nearest way to the cataract, but about the dinner- hour. The interval was spent in arranging my dress. Within the last fifteen minutes, my mind had grown strangely benumbed, and my spirits apathetic, with a slight depression, not decided enough to be termed sad- ness. My enthusiasm was in a deathlike slumber. With- out aspiring to immortality, as he did, I could have imi- tated that English traveller, who turned back from the point where he first heard the thunder of Niagara, after crossing the ocean to behold it. Many a Western trader, by the by, has performed a similar act of heroism with more heroic simplicity, deeming it no such wonderful feat to dine at the hotel and resume his route to Buf- falo or Lewiston, while the cataract was roaring un- seen. Such has often been my apathy, when objects, long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach. After dinner — at which an unwonted and perverse epicurism detained me longer than usual — I lighted a cigar and paced the piazza, minutely attentive to the aspect and business of a very ordinary village. Finally, with reluctant step, and the feeling of an in- truder, I walked towards Goat Island. At the toll- house, there were further excuses for delaying the inev- itable moment. My signature was required in a huge ledger, containing similar records innumerable, many of MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 99 which I read. The skin of a great sturgeon, and other fishes, beasts, and reptiles ; a collection of minerals, such as lie in heaps near the falls ; some Indian moccasons, and other trifles, made of deer-skin and embroidered with beads; several newspapers from Montreal, New York, and Boston ; — all attracted me in turn. Out of a number of twisted sticks, the manufacture of a Tuscarora Indian, I selected one of curled maple, curiously convo- luted, and adorned with the carved images of a snake and a fish. Using this as my pilgrim's staff, I crossed the bridge. Above and below me were the rapids, a river of impetuous snow, with here and there a dark rock amid its whiteness, resisting all the physical fury, as auy cold spirit did the moral influences of the scene. On reaching Goat Island, which separates the two great segments of the falls, I chose the right-hand path, and followed it to the edge of the American cascade. There, while the falling sheet was yet invisible, I saw the vapor that never vanishes, and the Eternal Rainbow of Niagara. It was an afternoon of glorious sunshine, without a cloud, save those of the cataracts. I gained an insulated rock, and beheld a broad sheet of brilliant and unbroken foam, not shooting in a curved line from the top of the precipice, but falling headlong down from height to depth. A narrow stream diverged from the main branch, and hurried over the crag by a channel of its own, leav- ing a little pine-clad island and a streak of precipice, between itself and the larger sheet. Below arose the mist, on which was painted a dazzling sun-bow with two concentric shadows, — one, almost as perfect as the origi- L.ofC. 100 TALES AND SKETCHES. nal brightness ; and the other, drawn faintly round the broken edge of the cloud. Still I had not half seen Niagara. Following the verge of the island, the path led me to the Horseshoe, where the real, broad St. Lawrence, rushing along on a level with its banks, pours its whole breadth over a con- cave line of precipice, and thence pursues its course be- tween lofty crags towards Ontario. A sort of bridge, two or three feet wide, stretches out along the edge of the descending sheet, and hangs upon the rising mist, as if that were the foundation of the frail structure. Here I stationed myself in the blast of wind, which the rushing river bore along with it. The bridge was tremulous be- neath me, and marked the tremor of the solid earth. I looked along the whitening rapids, and endeavored to distinguish a mass of water far above the falls, to follow it to their verge, and go down with it, in fancy, to the abyss of clouds and storm. Casting my eyes across the river, and every side, I took in the whole scene at a glance, and tried to comprehend it in one vast idea. After an hour thus spent, I left the bridge, and, by a staircase, winding almost interminably round a post, de- scended to the base of the precipice. Prom that point, my path lay over slippery stones, and among great frag- ments of the cliff, to the edge of the cataract, where the wind at once enveloped me in spray, and perhaps dashed the rainbow round me. Were my long desires fulfilled ? And had I seen Niagara ? O that I had never heard of Niagara till I beheld it ! Blessed were the wanderers of old, who heard its deep roar, sounding through the woods, as the summons to MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 101 an unknown wonder, and approached its awful brink, in all the freshness of native feeling. Had its own myste- rious voice been the first to warn me of its existence, then, indeed, I might have knelt down and worshipped. But I had come thither, haunted with a vision of foam and fury, and dizzy cliffs, and an ocean tumbling down out of the sky, — a scene, in short, which nature had too much good taste and calm simplicity to realize. My mind had struggled to adapt these false conceptions to the reality, and finding the eff'ort vain, a wretched sense of disappointment weighed me down. I climbed the precipice, and threw myself on the earth, feeling that I was unworthy to look at the Great Falls, and care- less about beholding them again All that night, as there has been and will be, for ages past and to come, a rushing sound was heard, as if a great tempest were sweeping through the air. It min- gled with my dreams, and made them full of storm and whirlwind. Whenever I awoke, and heard this dread sound in the air, and the windows rattling as with a mighty blast, I could not rest again, till looking forth, 1 saw how bright the stars were, and that every leaf in the garden was motionless. Never was a summer night more calm to the eye, nor a gale of autumn louder to the ear. The rushing sound proceeds from the rapids, and the rattling of the casements is but an effect of the vibration of the whole house, shaken by the jar of the cataract. The noise of the rapids draws the attention from the true voice of Niagara, which is a dull, muffled thunder, resounding between the cliffs. I spent a wake- ful hour at midnight, in distinguishing its reverberations^ 102 TALES AND SKETCHES. and rejoiced to find that my former awe and enthusiasm were reviving. Gradually, and after much contemplation, I came to know, by my own feelings, that Niagara is indeed a won- der of the world, and not the less wonderful, because time and thought must be employed in comprehending it. Casting aside all preconceived notions, and prepa- ration to be dire-struck or delighted, the beholder must stand beside it in the simplicity of his heart, suffering the mighty scene to work its own impression. Night after night, I dreamed of it, and was glad- dened every morning by the consciousness of a growing capacity to enjoy it. Yet I will not pretend to the all- absorbing enthusiasm of some more fortunate spectators, nor deny that very trifling causes would draw my eyes and thoughts from the cataract. The last day that I was to spend at Niagara, before my departure for the Far West, I sat upon the Table Rock. This celebrated station did not now, as of old, project fifty feet beyond the line of the precipice, but was shattered by the fall of an immense fragment, which lay distant on the shore below. Still, on the utmost verge of the rock, with my feet hanging over it, I felt as if suspended in the open air. Never before had my mind been in such perfect unison with the scene. There were intervals, when I was conscious of nothing but the great river, rolling calmly into the abyss, rather descending than precipitating itself, and acquiring tenfold majesty from its unhurried motion. It came like the march of Destiny. It was not taken by surprise, but seemed to have anticipated, in all its course through the broad MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. 103 lakes, that it must pour their collected waters down this height. The perfect foam of the river, after its descent, and the ever-varying shapes of mist, rising up, to become clouds in the sky, would be the very picture of confusion, were it merely transient, like the rage of a tempest. But when the beholder has stood awhile, and perceives no lull in the storm, and considers that the vapor and the foam are as everlasting as the rocks which produce them, all this turmoil assumes a sort of calmness. It soothes, while it awes the mind. Leaning over the cliff, I saw the guide conducting two adventurers behind the falls. It was pleasant, from that high seat in the sunshine, to observe them struggling against the eternal storm of the lower regions, with heads bent down, now faltering, now pressing forward, and finally swallowed up in their victory. After their disappearance, a blast rushed out with an old hat, which it had swept from one of their heads. The rock, to which they were directing their unseen course, is marked, at a fearful distance on the exterior of the sheet, by a jet of foam. The attempt to reach it appears both poetical and perilous to a looker-on, but may be accomplished without much more difficulty or hazard, than in stem- ming a violent northeaster. In a few moments, forth came the children of the mist. Dripping and breathless, they crept along the base of the cliff, ascended to the guide's cottage, and received, I presume, a certificate of their achievement, with three verses of sublime poetry on the back. My contemplations were often interrupted by strangers, who came down from Forsyth's to take their first view 104 TALES AND SKETCHES. of the falls. A short, ruddy, middle-aged gentleman, fresh from Old England, peeped over the rock, and evinced his approbation by a broad grin. His spouse, a very robust lady, afforded a sweet example of mater- nal solicitude, being so intent on the safety of her little boy that she did not even glance at Niagara. As for the child, he gave himself wholly to the enjoyment of a stick of candy. Another traveller, a native American, and no rare character among us, produced a volume of Captain Hall's tour, and labored earnestly to adjust Niagara to the captain's description, departing, at last, without one new idea or sensation of his own. The next comer was provided, not with a printed book, but with a blank sheet of foolscap, from top to bottom of which, by means of an ever-pointed pencil, the cataract was made to thunder. In a little talk, which we had to- gether, he awarded his approbation to the general view, but censured the position of Goat Island, observing that it should have been thrown farther to the right, so as to vriden the American falls, and contract those of the Horseshoe. Next appeared two traders of Michigan, who declared, that, upon the whole, the sight was worth look- ing at ; there certainly was an immense water-power here ; but that, after all, they would go twice as far to see the noble stone-works of Lockport, where the Grand Canal is locked down a descent of sixty feet. They were suc- ceeded by a young fellow, in a homespun cotton dress, with a staff in his hand, and a pack over his shoulders. He advanced close to the edge of the rock, where his atten- tion, at first wavering among the different components of the scene, finally became fixed in the angle of the Horse- MY VISIT TO NIAGARA. "** 105 shoe falls, which is, indeed, the central point of interest. His whole soul seemed to go forth and be transported thither, till the staff slipped from his relaxed grasp, and falling down — down — down — struck upon the frag- ment of the Table Rock. In this manner I spent some hours, watching the varied impression, made by the cataract, on those who disturbed me, and returning to unwearied contemplation, when left alone. At length my time came to depart. There is a grassy footpath, through the woods, along the summit of the bank, to a point whence a causeway, hewn in the side of the precipice, goes winding down to the Ferry, about half a mile below the Table Rock. The sun was near setting, when I emerged from the shadow of the trees, and began the descent. The indirectness of my downward road continually changed the point of view, and showed me, in rich and repeated succession, now, the whitening rapids and majestic leap of the main river, which appeared more deeply massive as the light departed ; now, the lovelier picture, yet still sublime, of Goat Island, with its rocks and grove, and the lesser falls, tumbling over the right bank of the St. Lawrence, like a tributary stream ; now, the long vista of the river, as it eddied and whirled between the cliffs, to pass through Ontario toward the sea, and everywhere to be wondered at, for this one unrivalled scene. The golden sunshine tinged the sheet of the American cascade, and painted on its heaving spray the broken semicircle of a rainbow, heaven's own beauty crowning earth's sublimity. My steps were slow, and I paused long at every turn of the descent, as one lingers and pauses, who discerns u 5* 106 TALES AND SKETCHES. brighter and brightening excellence in what he must soon behold no more. The solitude of the old wilderness now reigned over the whole vicinity of the falls. My enjoyment became the more rapturous, because no poet shared it, nor wretch devoid of poetry profaned it; but the spot so famous through the world was all my own! THE ANTIQUE RING. ES, indeed : the gem is as bright as a star, and curiously set," said Clara Pemberton, examin- ing an antique ring, which her betrothed lover had just presented to her, with a very pretty speech. " It needs only one thing to make it perfect." " And what is that ? " asked Mr. Edward Caryl, secretly anxious for the credit of his gift. " A modern setting, perhaps ? " " O, no ! That would destroy the charm at once," re- plied Clara. " It needs nothing but a story. I long to know how many times it has been the pledge of faith between two lovers, and whether the vows, of which it was the symbol, were always kept or often broken. Not that I should be too scrupulous about facts. If you happen to be unacquainted with its authentic history, so much the better. May it not have sparkled upon a queen's finger ? Or who knows but it is the very ring which Posthumus received from Imogen ? In short, you must kindle your imagination at the lustre of this dia- mond, and make a legend for it." Now such a task — and doubtless Clara knew it — was 108 TALES AND SKETCHES. the most acceptable that could have heen imposed on Edward Caryl. He was one of that multitude of young gentlemen — limbs, or rather twigs of the law — whose names appear in gilt letters on the front of Tudor's Buildings, and other places in the vicinity of the Court House, which seem to be the haunt of the gentler as well as the severer Muses. Edward, in the dearth of clients, was accustomed to employ his much leisure in assisting the growth of American Literature, to which good cause he had contributed not a few quires of the finest letter-paper, containing some thought, some fancy, some depth of feeling, together with a young writer's abundance of conceits. Sonnets, stanzas of Tennysonian sweetness, tales imbued with German mysticism, versions from Jean Paul, criticisms of the old English poets, and essays smacking of Dialistic philosophy, were among his multifarious productions. The editors of the fashionable periodicals were familiar with his autography, and in- scribed his name in those brilliant bead-rolls of ink- stained celebrity, which illustrate the first page of their covers. Nor did fame withhold her laurel. Hillard had included him among the lights of the New England me- tropolis, in his Boston Book ; Bryant had found room for some of his stanzas, in the Selections from American Poetry ; and Mr. Griswold, in his recent assemblage of the sons and daughters of song, had introduced Edward Caryl into the inner court of the temple, among his four- score choicest bards. There was a prospect, indeed, of his assuming a still higher and more independent posi- tion. Interviews had been held with Ticknor, and a correspondence with the Harpers, respecting a proposed THE ANTIQUE RING. 109 volume, chiefly to consist of Mr. Caryl's fugitive pieces in the Magazines, but to be accompanied with a poem of some length, never before published. Not improbably, the public may yet be gratified with this collection. Meanwhile, we sum up our sketch of Edward Caryl, by pronouncing him, though somewhat of a carpet knight in literature, yet no unfavorable specimen of a generation of rising writers, whose spirit is such that we may rea- sonably expect creditable attempts from all, and good and beautiful results from some. And, it will be observed, Edward was the very man to write pretty legends, at a lady's instance, for an old-fashioned diamond ring. He took the jewel in his hand, and turned it so as to catch its scintillating radiance, as if hoping, in accordance with Clara's suggestion, to light up his fancy with that star- like gleam. " Shall it be a ballad ? — a tale in verse ? " he inquired. " Enchanted rings often glisten in old English poetry, I think something may be done with the subject ; but it is fitter for rhyme than prose," " No, no," said Miss Pemberton, " we will have no more rhyme than just enough for a posy to the ring. You must tell the legend in simple prose ; and when it is finished, I will make a little party to hear it read." The young gentleman promised obedience ; and going to his pillow, with his head full of the familiar spirits that used to be worn in rings, watches, and sword-hilts, he had the good fortune to possess himself of an available idea in a dream. Connecting this with what he himself chanced to know of the ring's real history, his task was done. Clara Pemberton invited a select few of her 110 TALES AND SKETCHES. friends, all holding the stanchest faith in Edward's gen- ius, and therefore the most genial auditors, if not alto- gether the fairest critics, that a writer could possibly desire. Blessed be woman for her faculty of admiration, and especially for her tendency to admire with her heart, when man, at most, grants merely a cold approval with his mind ! Drawing his chair beneath the blaze of a solar lamp, Edward Caryl untied a roll of glossy paper, and began as follows : — THE LEGEND. After the death-warrant had been read to the Earl of Essex, and on the evening before his appointed execu- tion, the Countess of Shrewsbury paid his lordship a visit, and found him, as it appeared, toying childishly with a ring. The diamond, that enriched it, glittered like a Httle star, but with a singular tinge of red. The gloomy prison-chamber in the Tower, with its deep and narrow windows piercing the walls of stone, was now all that the earl possessed of worldly prospect; so that there was the less wonder that he should look steadfastly into the gem, and moralize upon earth's deceitful splen- dor, as men in darkness and ruin seldom fail to do. But the shrewd observations of the countess, — an artful and unprincipled woman, — the pretended friend of Essex, but who had come to glut her revenge for a deed of scorn which he himself had forgotten, — her keen eye detected a deeper interest attached to this jewel. Even while expressing his gratitude for her remembrance of a THE ANTIQUE RING. Ill ruiued favorite, and condemned criminal, the earl's glance reverted to the ring, as if all that remained of time and its affairs were collected within that small golden circlet. " My dear lord," observed the countess, " there is surely some matter of great moment wherewith this ring is connected, since it so absorbs your mind. A token, it may be, of some fair lady's love, — alas, poor lady, once richest in possessing such a heart ! Would you that the jewel be returned to her? " " The queen ! the queen ! It was her Majesty's own gift," replied the earl, still gazing into the depths of the gem. " She took it from her finger, and told me, with a smile, that it was an heirloom from her Tudor ances- tors, and had once been the property of Merlin, the British wizard, who gave it to the lady of his love. His art had made this diamond the abiding-place of a spirit, which, though of fiendish nature, was bound to work only good, so long as the ring was an unviolated pledge of love and faith, both* with the giver and receiver. But should love prove false, and faith be broken, then the evil spirit would work his own devilish will, until the ring were purified by becoming the medium of some good and holy act, and again the pledge of faithful love. The gem soon lost its virtue ; for the wizard was mur- dered by the very lady to whom he gave it." " An idle legend ! " said the countess. " It is so," answered Essex, with a melancholy smile. " Yet the queen's favor, of which this ring was the sym- bol, has proved my ruin. When death is nigh, men converse with dreams and shadows. 1 have been gazing into the diamond, and fancying — but you will laugh at 112 TALES AND SKETCHES. me — that I might catch a glimpse of the evil spirit there. Do you observe this red glow, — dusky, too, amid all the brightness ? It is the token of his pres- ence ; and even now, methinks, it grows redder and duskier, like an angry sunset." Nevertheless, the earl's manner testified how slight was his credence in the enchanted properties of the ring. But there is a kind of playfulness that comes in moments of despair, when the reahty of misfortune, if entirely felt, would crush the soul at once. He now, for a brief space, was lost in thought, while the countess contemplated him with malignant satisfaction. "This ring," he resumed, in another tone, "alone remains, of all that my royal mistress's favor lavished upon her servant. My fortune once shone as brightly as the gem. And now, such a darkness has fallen around me, methinks it would be no marvel if its gleam — the sole light of my prison-house — were to be forthwith extinguished ; inasmuch as my last earthly hope depends upon it." "How say you, my lord?" asked the Countess of Shrewsbury. "The stone is bright; but there should be strange magic in it, if it can keep your hopes alive, at this sad hour. Alas ! these iron bars and ramparts of the Tower are unlike to yield to such a spell." Essex raised his head involuntarily; for there was something in the countess's tone that disturbed him, although he could not suspect that an enemy had in- truded upon the sacred privacy of a prisoner's dungeon, to exult over so dark a ruin of such once brilliant for- tunes. He looked her in the face, but saw nothing to THE ANTIQUE RING. 113 awaken his distrust. It would have required a keener eye than even Cecil's to read the secret of a countenance, which had been worn so long in the false light of a court, that it was now little better than a mask, telling any story save the true one. The condemned nobleman again bent over the ring, and proceeded : — "It once had power in it, — this bright gem, — the magic that appertains to the talisman of a great queen's favor. She bade me, if hereafter I should fall into her disgrace, — how deep soever, and whatever might be the crime, — to convey this jewel to her sight, and it should plead for me. Doubtless, with her piercing judgment, she had even then detected the rashness of my nature, and foreboded some such deed as has now brought de- struction upon my head. And knowing, too, her own hereditary rigor, she designed, it may be, that the mem- ory of gentler and kindlier hours should soften her heart in my behalf, when my need should be the greatest. I have doubted, — I have distrusted, — yet who can tell, even now, what happy influence this ring might have ? " " You have delayed full long to show the ring, and plead her Majesty's gracious promise," remarked the countess, — " your state being what it is." " True," replied the earl : " but for my honor's sake, I was loath to entreat the queen's mercy, while I might hope for life, at least, from the justice of the laws. If, on a trial by my peers, I had been acquitted of meditat- ing violence against her sacred life, then would. I have fallen at her feet, and presenting the jewel, have prayed no other favor than that my love and zeal should be put to the severest test. But now — it were confessing too 114 TALES AND SKETCTIES. much — it were cringing too low — to beg tlie miserable gift of life, on no other score than the tenderness which her Majesty deems me to have forfeited ! " " Yet it is your only hope," said the countess. "And besides," continued Essex, pursuing his own reflections, " of what avail will be this token of womanly feeling, when, on the other hand, are arrayed the all-pre- vailing motives of state policy, and the artifices and in- trigues of courtiers, to consummate my downfall ? Will Cecil or Raleigh suffer her heart to act for itself, even if the spirit of her father were not in her ? It is in vain to hope it." But still Essex gazed at the ring with an absorbed attention, that proved how much hope his sanguine tem- perament had concentrated here, when there was none else for him in the wide world, save what lay in the compass of that hoop of gold. The spark of brightness within the diamond, which gleamed like an intenser than earthly fire, was the memorial of his dazzling career. It had not paled with the waning sunshine of his mistress's favor; on the contrary, in spite of its remarkable tinge of dusky red, he fancied that it never shone so brightly. The glow of festal torches, — the blaze of perfumed lamps, — bonfires that had been kin- dled for him, when he was the darling of the people, — the splendor of the royal court, where he had been the peculiar star, — all seemed to have collected their moral or material glory into the gem, and to burn with a radi- ance caught from the future, as well as gathered from the past. That radiance might break forth again. Burst- ing from the diamond, into which it was now narrowed. THE ANTiqUE RING. 115 it might beam first upon the gloomy walls of the Tower, — then wider, wider, wider, — till all England, and the seas around her cUffs, should be gladdened with the light. It was such an ecstasy as often ensues after long depression, and has been supposed to precede the cir- cumstances of darkest fate that may befall mortal man. The earl pressed the ring to his heart as if it were indeed a talisman, the habitation of a spirit, as the queen had playfully assured him, — but a spirit of happier influences than her legend spake of. " 0, could I but make my way to her footstool ! '* cried he, waving his hand aloft, while he paced the stone pavement of his prison-chamber with an impetuous step. " I might kneel down, indeed, a ruined man, con- demned to the block, but how should I rise again ? Once more the favorite of Elizabeth ! — England's proud- est noble! — with such prospects as ambition never aimed at ! Why have I tarried so long in this weary dun- geon ? The ring has power to set me free ! The palace wants me ! Ho, jailer, unbar the door ! " But then occurred the recollection of the impossibility of obtaining an interview with his fatally estranged mis- tress, and testing the influence over her affections, which he still flattered himself with possessing. Could he step beyond the limits of his prison, the world would be all sunshine ; but here was only gloom and death. " Alas ! " said he, slowly and sadly, letting his head fall upon his hands. " I die for the lack of one blessed word." The Countess of Shrewsbury, herself forgotten amid the earl's gorgeous visions, had watched him with an 116 TALES AND SKETCHES. aspect tliat could have betrayed nothing to the most suspicious observer ; unless that it was too calm for humanity, while witnessing the flutterings, as it were, of a generous heart in the death-agony. She now ap- proached him. "My good lord/' she said, "what mean you to do?" " Nothing, — my deeds are done ! " replied he, de- spondingly ; " yet, had a fallen favorite any friends, I would entreat one of them to lay this ring at her Majesty's feet; albeit with little hope, save that, here- after, it might remind her that poor Essex, once far too highly favored, was at last too severely dealt with." " I will be that friend," said the countess. " There is no time to be lost. Trust this precious ring with me. This very night the queen's eye shall rest upon it ; nor shall the efficacy of my poor words be wanting, to strengthen the impression which it will doubtless make." The earl's first impulse was to hold out the ring. But looking at the countess, as she bent forward to receive it, he fancied that the red glow of the gem tinged all her face, and gave it an ominous expression. Many passages of past times recurred to his memory. A preternatural insight, perchance caught from approaching death, threw its momentary gleam, as from a meteor, all round his position. "Countess," he said, "I know not wherefore 1 hesi- tate, being in a plight so desperate, and having so little choice of friends. But have you looked into your own heart ? Can you perform this office Math the truth — THE ANTIQUE RING. 117 tlie earnestness — the zeal, even to tears, and agony of spirit — wlierewith the holy gift of human life should be pleaded for ? Woe be unto you, should you undertake this task, and deal towards me otherwise than with utmost faith ! For your own soul's sake, and as you would have peace at your death-hour, consider well in what spirit you receive this ring ! " The countess did not shrink. " My lord ! — my good lord ! " she exclaimed, " wrong not a woman's heart by these suspicions. You might choose another messenger ; but who, save a lady of her bedchamber, can obtain access to the queen at this un- timely hour ? It is for your life, — for your life, — else I would not renew my offer." " Take the ring," said the earl. " Believe that it shall be in the queen's hands before the lapse of another hour," replied the countess, as she received this sacred trust of life and death. " To-mor- row morning look for the result of my intercession." She departed. Again the earl's hopes rose high. Dreams visited his slumber, not of the sable-decked scaffold in the Tower-yard, but of canopies of state, ob- sequious courtiers, pomp, splendor, the smile of the once more gracious queen, and a light beaming from the magic gem, which illuminated his whole future. History records how foully the Countess of Shrews- bury betrayed the trust, which Essex, in his utmost need, confided to her. She kept the ring, and stood in the presence of Elizabeth, that night, without one attempt to soften her stern hereditary temper in behalf of the former favorite. The next day the earl's noble head 118 TALES AND SKETCHES. rolled upon the scaffold. On her death-bed, tortured, at last, with a sense of the dreadful guilt which she had taken upon her soul, the wicked countess sent for Eliza- beth, revealed the story of the ring, and besought for- giveness for her treachery. But the queen, still obdu- rate, even while remorse for past obduracy was tugging at her heart-strings, shook the dying woman in her bed, as if struggling with death for the privilege of wreaking her revenge and spite. The spirit of the countess passed away, to undergo the justice, or receive the mercy, of a higher tribunal; and tradition says, that the fatal ring was found upon her breast, where it had imprinted a dark red circle, resembling the effect of the intensest heat. The attendants, who prepared the body for burial, shuddered, whispering one to another, that the ring must have derived its heat from the glow of infernal fire. They left it on her breast, in the coffin, and it went with that guilty woman to the tomb. Many years afterward, when the church, that con- tained the monuments of the Shrewsbury family, was desecrated by Cromwell's soldiers, they broke open the ancestral vaults, and stole whatever was valuable from the noble personages who reposed there. Merlin's antique ring passed into the possession of a stout sergeant of the Ironsides, who thus became subject to the in- fluences of the evil spirit that still kept his abode within the gem's enchanted depths. The sergeant was soon slain in battle, thus transmitting the ring, though without any legal form of testament, to a gay cavalier, who forth- with pawned it, and expended the money in liquor, which speedily brought him to 1h^ grave. We next catch the THE ANTIQUE RING. 119 sparkle of the magic diamond at various epochs of the merry reign of Charles the Second. But its sinister for- tune still attended it. From whatever hand this ring of portent came, and whatever finger it encircled, ever it was the pledge of deceit between man and man, or man and woman, of faithless vows, and unhallowed passion; and whether to lords and ladies, or to village-maids, — for sometimes it found its way so low, — still it brouglit nothing but sorrow and disgrace. No purifying deed was done, to drive the fiend from his bright home in this little star. Again, we hear of it at a later period, when Sir Robert Walpole bestowed the ring, among far richer jewels, on the lady of a British legislator, whose political honor he wished to undermine. Many a dismal and un- happy tale might be wrought out of its other adventures. All this while, its ominous tinge of dusky red had been deepening and darkening, until, if laid upon white paper, it cast the mingled hue of night and blood, strangely illu- minated with scintillating light, in a circle round about. But this peculiarity only made it the more valuable. Alas, the fatal ring ! When shall its dark secret be discovered, and the doom of ill, inherited from one pos- sessor to another, be finally revoked ? The legend now crosses the Atlantic, and comes down to our own immediate time. In a certain church of our city, not many evenings ago, there was a contribution for a charitable object. A fervid preacher had poured out his whole soul in a rich and tender discourse, which had at least excited the tears, and perhaps the more effectual sympathy, of a numerous audience. While the choristers sang sweetly, and the organ poured forth its melodious 120 TALES AND SKETCHES. thunder, the deacons passed up and down the aisles, and along the galleries, presenting their mahogany boxes, in which each person deposited whatever sum he deemed it safe to lend to tlie Lord, in aid of human wretchedness. Charity became audible, — chink, chink, chink, — as it fell, drop by drop, into the common receptacle. There was a hum, — a stir, — the subdued bustle of people putting their hands into their pockets ; while, ever and anon, a vagrant coin fell upon the floor, and rolled away, with long reverberation, into some inscrutable corner. At length, all havhig been favored with an opportunity to be generous, the two deacons placed their boxes on the communion-table, and thence, at the conclusion of the services, removed them into the vestry. Here these good old gentlemen sat down together, to reckon the accumulated treasure. " Fie, fie. Brother Tilton," said Deacon Trott, peep- ing into Deacon Tilton's box, " what a heap of copper you have picked up ! Really, for an old man, you must have had a heavy job to lug it along. Copper ! copper ! cop- per ! Do people expect to get admittance into heaven at the price of a few coppers ? " " Don't wrong them, brother," answered Deacon Til- ton, a simple and kindly old man, " Copper may do more for one person, than gold will for another. In the gal- leries, where I present my box, we must not expect such a harvest as you gather among the gentry in the broad- aisle, and all over the floor of the church. My people are chiefly poor mechanics and laborers, sailors, seam- stresses, and servant-maids, with a most uncomfortable intermixture of roguisii school-boys." THE ANTIQUE RING. 121 "Well, well," said Deacon Trott ; "but there is a great deal, Brother Tilton, in the method of presenting a contribution-box. It is a knack that comes by nature, or not at all." They now proceeded to sum up the avails of the even- ing, beginning with the receipts of Deacon Trott. In good sooth, that worthy personage had reaped an abun- dant harvest, in which he prided himself no less, appar- ently, than if every dollar had been contributed from his own individual pocket. Had the good deacon been meditating a jaunt to Texas, the treasures of the ma- hogany box might have sent him on his way rejoicing. There were bank-notes, mostly, it is true, of the smallest denominations in the giver's pocket-book, yet making a goodly average upon the whole. The most splendid con- tribution was a check for a hundred dollars, bearing the name of a distinguished merchant, whose liberality was duly celebrated in the newspapers of the next day. No less than seven half-eagles, together with an English sov- ereign, glittered amidst an indiscriminate heap of silver ; the box being polluted with nothing of the copper kind, except a single bright new cent, wherewith a little boy had performed his first charitable act. " Very well ! very well indeed ! " said Deacon Trott, self-approvingly. " A handsome evening's work ! And now, Brother Tilton, let 's see whether you can match it." Here was a sad contrast ! They poured forth Deacon Til- ton's treasure upon the table, and it really seemed as if the whole copper coinage of the country, together with an amazing quantity of shop-keeper's tokens, and English and Irish half-pence, mostly of base metal, had been 6 122 TALES AND SKETCHES. congregated into the box. There was a very substantial pencil-case, and the semblance of a shilling ; but the latter proved to be made of tin, and the former of Ger- man-silver. A gilded brass button was doing duty as a gold coin, and a folded shopbill had assumed the char- acter of a bank-note. But Deacon Tilton's feelings were much revived by the aspect of another bank-note, new and crisp, adorned with beautiful engravings, and stamped with the indubitable word. Twenty, in large black letters. Alas ! it was a counterfeit. In short, the poor old Dea- con was no less unfortunate than those who trade with fairies, and whose gains are sure to be transformed into dried leaves, pebbles, and other valuables of that kind. " I believe the Evil One is in the box," said he, with some vexation. " Well done, Deacon Tilton ! " cried his Brother Trott, with a hearty laugh. "You ought to have a statue in copper." "Never mind, brother," replied the good Deacon, recovering his temper. "I'll bestow ten dollars from my own pocket, and may heaven's blessing go along with it. But look ! what do you call this ? " Under the copper mountain, which it had cost them so much toil to remove, lay an antique ring ! It was en- riched with a diamond, which, so soon as it caught the light, began to twinkle and glimmer, emitting the whitest and purest lustre that could possibly be conceived. It was as brilliant as if some magician had condensed the brightest star in heaven into a compass fit to be set in a ring, for a lady's delicate finger. " How is this ? " said Deacon Trott, examining it care- THE ANTIQUE RING. 123 fully, in tlie expectation of finding it as worthless as the rest of his colleague's treasure. " Why, upon my word, this seems to be a real diamond, and of the purest water. Whence could it have come ? " " Really, I cannot tell," quoth Deacon Tilton, " for my spectacles were so misty that all faces looked alike. But now I remember, there was a flash of light came from the box, at one moment ; but it seemed a dusky red, instead of a pure white, like the sparkle of this gem. Well ; the ring will make up for the copper ; but I wish the giver had thrown its history into the box along with it." It has been our good luck to recover a portion of that history. After transmitting misfortune from one pos- sessor to another, ever since the days of British Merlin, the identical ring which Queen Elizabeth gave to the Earl of Essex was finally thrown into the contribution- box of a New England church. The two deacons depos- ited it in the glass case of a fashionable jeweller, of whom it was purchased by the humble rehearser of this legend, in the hope that it may be allowed to sparkle on a fair lady's finger. Purified from the foul fiend, so long its inhabitant, by a deed of unostentatious charity, and now made the symbol of faithful and devoted love, the gentle bosom of its new possessor need fear no sorrow from its influence. " Very pretty ! — Beautiful ! — How original ! — How sweetly written ! — What nature ! — What imagination ! — What power ! — What pathos ! — What exquisite humor ! " — were the exclamations of Edward Caryl's 124 TALES AND SKETCHES. kind and generous auditors, at the conclusion of the legend. " It is a pretty tale/' said Miss Pemberlon, who, con- scious that her praise was to that of all others as a dia- mond to a pebble, was therefore the less liberal in award- ing it. " It is really a pretty tale, and very proper for any of the Annuals. But, Edward, your moral does not satisfy me. What thought did you embody in the ring ? " " Clara, this is too bad ! " replied Edward, with a half-reproachful smile. " You know that I can never separate the idea from the symbol in which it manifests itself. However, we may suppose the Gem to be the human heart, and the Evil Spirit to be Falsehood, which, in one guise or another, is the fiend that causes all the sorrow and trouble in the world. I beseech you to let this suffice." . "It shall," said Clara, kindly. "And, believe me, whatever the world may say of the story, I prize it far above the diamond which enkindled your imagination." 1 i I f GRAVES AND GOBLINS. JOW talk we of graves and goblins ! Fit themes, — start not ! gentle reader, — fit for a ghost like me. Yes ; though an earth-clogged fancy is laboring with these conceptions, and an earthly hand will write them down, for mortal eyes to read, still their essence flows from as airy a ghost as ever basked in the pale starlight, at twelve o'clock. Judge them not by the gross and heavy form in which they now appear. They may be gross, indeed, with the earthly pollution con- tracted from the brain, through which they pass ; and heavy with the burden of mortal language, that crushes all the finer intelligences of the soul. This is ho fault of mine. But should aught of ethereal spirit be perceptible, yet scarcely so, glimmering along the dull train of words, — should a faint perfume breathe from the mass of clay, — then, gentle reader, thank the ghost, who thus embod- ies himself for your sake ! Will you believe me, if I say that all true and noble tlioughts, and elevated imagina- tions, are but partly the offspring of the intellect which seems to produce them ? Sprites, that were poets once, and are now all poetry, hover round the dreaming bard, and become his inspiration ; buried statesmen lend their 126 TALES AND SKETCHES. wisdom, gathered on earth and mellowed in the grave, to the historian; and when the preacher rises nearest to the level of his mighty subject, it is because the prophets of old days have communed with him. Who has not been conscious of mysteries within his mind, mysteries of truth and reality, which will not wear the chains of language ? Mortal, then the dead were with you ! And thus shall the earth-dulled soul, whom I inspire, be con- scious of a misty brightness among his thoughts, and strive to make it gleam upon the page, — but all in vain. Poor author ! How will he despise what he can grasp, for the sake of the dim glory that eludes him ! So talk we of graves and goblins. But, what have ghosts to do with graves? Mortal man, wearing the dust which shall require a sepulchre, might deem it more a home and resting-place than a spirit can, whose earthly clod has returned to earth. Thus philosophers have reasoned. Yet wiser they who adhere to the ancient sentiment, that a phantom haunts and hallows the mar- ble tomb or grassy hillock where its material form was laid. Till purified from each stain of clay ; till the pas- sions of the living world are all forgotten ; till it have less brotherhood with the wayfarers of earth, than with spirits that never wore mortality, — the ghost must linger round the grave. O, it is a long and dreary watch to some of us ! Even in early childhood, I had selected a sweet spot, of shade and glimmering sunshine, for my grave. It was no burial-ground, but a secluded nook of virgin earth, where I used to sit, whole summer afternoons, dreaming about life and death. My fancy ripened prematurely. GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 127 and taught me secrets which I could not otherwise have known. I pictured the coming years, — they never came to me, indeed ; but I pictured them like life, and made this spot the scene of all that should be brightest, in youth, manhood, and old age. There, in a little while, it would be time for me to breathe the bashful and burn- ing vows of first-love ; thither, after gathering fame abroad, I would return to enjoy the loud plaudit of the world, a vast but unobtrusive sound, like the booming of a distant sea ; and thither, at the far-off close of life, an aged man would come, to dream, as the boy was dreaming, and be as happy in the past as he was in fu- turity. Finally, when all should be finished, in that spot so hallowed, in that soil so impregnated with the most precious of my bliss, there was to be my grave. Me- thought it would be the sweetest grave tliat ever a mor- tal frame reposed in, or an ethereal spirit haunted. There, too, in future times, drawn thither by the spell which I had breathed around the place, boyhood would sport and dream, and youth would love, and manhood would enjoy, and age would dream again, and my ghost would watch but never frighten them. Alas, the vanity of mortal projects, even when they centre in the grave! I died in my first youth, before I had been a lover ; at a distance, also, from the grave which fancy had dug for me ; and they buried me in the thronged cemetery of a town, where my marble slab stands unnoticed amid a hundred others. And there are coffins on each side of mine ! " Alas, poor ghost ! " will the reader say. Yet I am a happy ghost enough, and disposed to be contented 128 TALES AND SKETCHES. with my grave, if tlie sexton will but let it be my own, and bring no other dead man to dispute my title. Earth has left few stains upon me, and it will be but a short time that I need haunt the place. It is good to die in early youth. Had I lived out threescore years and ten, or half of them, my spirit would have been so earth- incrusted, that centuries might not have purified it for a better home than the dark precincts of the grave. Mean- time, there is good choice of company amongst us. From twilight till near sunrise, we are gliding to and fro, some in the graveyard, others miles away ; and would we speak with any friend, we do but knock against his tombstone, and pronounce the name engraved on it : in an instant, there the shadow stands ! Some are ghosts of considerable antiquity. There is an old man, hereabout ; he never had a tombstone, and is often puzzled to distinguish his own grave ; but here- abouts he haunts, and long is doomed to haunt. He was a miser in his lifetime, and buried a strong box of ill-gotten gold, almost fresh from the mint, in the coin- age of William and Mary. Scarcely was it safe, when the sexton buried the old man and his secret with him. I could point out the place where the treasure lies ; it was at the bottom of the miser's garden ; but a paved thoroughfare now passes beside the spot, and the corner- stone of a market-house presses right down upon it. Had the workmen dug six inches deeper, they would have found the hoard. Now thither must this poor old miser go, whether in starlight, moonshine, or pitch darkness, and brood above his worthless treasure, recalling all the petty crimes by which he gained it. Not a coin must GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 129 he fail to reckon in his memory, nor forget a pennyworth of the sin that made up the sum, though his agony is such as if the pieces of gold, red-hot, were stamped into his naked soul. Often, while he is in torment there, he hears the steps of living men, who love the dross of earth as well as he did. May they never groan over their miserable wealth like him ! Night after night, for above a hundred years, hath he done this penance, and still must he do it, till the iron box be brought to light, and each separate coin be cleansed by grateful tears of a widow or an orphan. My spirit sighs for his long vigil at the corner of the market-house ! There are ghosts whom I tremble to meet, and cannot think of without a shudder. One has the guilt of blood upon him. The soul which he thrust untimely forth has long since been summoned from our gloomy graveyard, and dwells among the stars of heaven, too far and too high for even the recollection of mortal anguish to ascend thither. Not so the murderer's ghost ! It is his doom to spend all the hours of darkness in the spot which he stained with innocent blood, and to feel the hot stream — hot as when it first gushed upon his hand — incorporat- ing itself with his spiritual substance. Thus his horrible crime is ever fresh within him. Two other wretches are condemned to walk arm in arm. They were guilty lovers in their lives, and still, in death, must wear the guise of love, though hatred and loathing have become their very nature and existence. The pollution of their mutual sin remains with them, and makes their souls sick continu- ally. 0, that I might forget all the dark shadows which haunt about these graves ! This passing thought 6* I 130 TALES AND SKETCHES. of them has left a stain, and will weigh me down among dust and sorrow, beyond the time that my own transgres- sions would have kept me here. There is one shade among us, whose high nature it is good to meditate upon. He lived a patriot, and is a patriot still. Posterity has forgotten him. The simple slab, of red freestone, that bore his name, was broken long ago, and is now covered by the gradual accumula- tion of the soil. A tuft of thistles is his only monument. This upright spirit came to his grave, after a lengthened life, with so little stain of earth, that he might, abitiost immediately, have trodden the pathway of the sky. But his strong love of country chained him down, to share its vicissitudes of weal or woe. With such deep yearning in his soul,, he was unfit for heaven. That noblest virtue has the effect of sin, and keeps his pure and lofty spirit in a penance, which may not terminate till America be again a wilderness. Not that there is no joy for the dead patriot. Can he fail to experience it, while he contem- plates the mighty and increasing power of the land, which he protected in its infancy ? No ; there is much to glad- den him. But sometimes I dread to meet him, as he returns from the bedchambers of rulers and politicians, after diving into their secret motives, and searching out their aims. He looks round him with a stern and awful sadness, and vanishes into his neglected grave. Let nothing sordid or selfish defile your deeds or thoughts, ye great men of the day, lest ye grieve the noble dead. Eew ghosts take such an endearing interest as this, even in their own private affairs. It made me rather sad, at first, to find how soon the flame of love expires GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 131 amid the chill damps of the tomb ; so much the sooner, the more fiercely it may have burned. Eorget your dead mistress, youth ! She has already forgotten you. Maiden, cease to weep for your buried lover! He will know nothing of your tears, nor value them if he did. Yet it were blasphemy to say that true love is other than immortal. It is an earthly passion, of which I speak, mingled with little that is spiritual, and must therefore perish with the perishing clay. When souls have loved, there is no falsehood or forgetfulness. Maternal affection, too, is strong as adamant. There are mothers here, among us, who might have been in heaven fifty years ago, if they could forbear to cherish earthly joy and sorrow, reflected from the bosoms of their children. Husbands and wives have a comfortable gift of oblivion, especially when secure of the faith of their living halves. Jealousy, it is true, will play the devil with a ghost, driving him to the bedside of secondary wedlock, there to scowl, unseen, and gibber inaudible remonstrances. Dead wives, how- ever jealous in their lifetime, seldom feel this posthumous torment so acutely. Many, many things, that appear most important while we walk the busy street, lose all their interest the mo- ment we are borne into the quiet graveyard which bor- ders it. For my own part, my spirit had not become so mixed up with earthly existence, as to be now held in an unnatural combination, or tortured much with retrospec- tive cares. I still love my parents and a younger sister, who remain among the living, and often grieve me by their patient sorrow for the dead. Each separate tear of theirs is an added weight upon my soul, and lengthens lo2 TALES AND SKETCHES. my stay among the graves. As to other matters, it exceedingly rejoices me, that my summons came before I had time to write a projected poem, which was highly im- aginative in conception, and could not have failed to give me a triumj)liant rank in the choir of our native bards. Nothing is so much to be deprecated as posthumous re- nown. It keeps the immortal spirit from the proper bliss of his celestial state, and causes him to feed upon the im- pure breath of mortal man, till sometimes he forgets that there are starry realms above him. Few poets — infatu- ated that they are ! — soar upward while the least whis- per of their name is heard on earth. On Sabbath even- ings, my sisters sit by the fireside, between our father and mother, and repeat some hymns of mine, which they have often heard from my own lips, ere the tremulous voice left them forever. Little do they think, those dear ones, that the dead stands listening in the glimmer of the firelight, and is almost gifted with a visible shape by the fond intensity of their remembrance. Now shall the reader know a grief of the poor ghost that speaks to him; a grief, but not a helpless one. Since I have dwelt among the graves, they bore the corpse of a young maiden hither, and laid her in the old ancestral vault, which is hollowed in the side of a grassy bank. It has a door of stone, with rusty iron hinges, and above it, a rude sculpture of the family arms, and inscriptions of all their names who have been buried there, including sire and son, mother and daughter, of an ancient colonial race. All of her lineage had gone before, and when the young maiden followed, the portal was closed forever. The night after her burial, when the GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 133 other ghosts were flitting about their graves, forth came the pale virgin's shadow, with the rest, but knew not whither to go, nor whom to haunt, so lonesome had she been on earth. She stood by the ancient sepulchre, looking upward to the bright stars, as if she would, even then, begin her flight. Her sadness made me sad. That night and the next, I stood near her, in the moonshine, but dared not speak, because she seemed purer than all the ghosts, and fitter to converse with angels than with men. But the third bright eve, still gazing upward to the glory of the heavens, she sighed, and said, " When will my mother come for me ? " Her low, sweet voice emboldened me to speak, and she was kind and gentle, though so pure, and answered me again. From that time, always at the ghostly hour, I sought the old tomb of her fathers, and either found her standing by the door, or knocked, and she appeared. Blessed creature, that she was ; her chaste spirit hallowed mine, and imparted such a celestial buoyancy, that I longed to grasp her hand, and fly, — upward, aloft, aloft ! I thought, too, that she only lingered here, till my earthlier soul should be purified for heaven. One night, when the stars threw down the light that shadows love, I stole forth to the accustomed spot, and knocked, with my airy fingers, at her door. She answered not. Again I knocked, and breathed her name. Where was she? At once, the truth fell on my miserable spirit, and crushed it to the earth, among dead men's bones and mouldering dust, groaning in cold and desolate agony. Her penance was over ! She had taken her trackless flight, and had found a home in the purest radiance of the upper stars, leaving 134? TALES AND SKETCHES. me to knock at the stone portal of the darksome sepul- chre. But I know — I know, that angels hurried her away, or surely she would have whispered ere she fled ! She is gone ! How could the grave imprison that unspotted one ! But her pure, ethereal spirit will not quite forget me, nor soar too high in bliss, till I ascend to join her. Soon, soon be that hour ! I am weary of tlie earth-damps ; they burden me ; they choke me ! Already, I can float in the moonshine ; tlie faint starlight will almost bear up my footsteps ; the perfume of flowers, which grosser spirits love, is now too earthly a luxury for me. Grave ! Grave ! thou art not my home. I must flit a little longer in thy night gloom, and then be gone, — far from the dust of the living and tlie dead, — far from the corruption that is around me, but no more within ! A few times, I have visited the chamber of one who walks, obscure and lonely, on his mortal pilgrimage. He will leave not many living friends, when he goes to join the dead, where his thoughts often stray, and he might better be. I steal into his sleep, and play my part among the figures of his dreams. I glide through the moonlight of his waking fancy, and whisper concep- tions, which, with a strange thrill of fear, he writes down as his own. I stand beside him now, at midnight, tell- ing these dreamy truths with a voice so dream-like, that he mistakes them for fictions of a brain too prone to such. Yet he glances behind him and shivers, while the lamp burns pale. Farewell, dreamer, — waking or sleep- ing ! Your brightest dreams are fled ; your mind grows too hard and cold for a spiritual guest to enter ; you are GRAVES AND GOBLINS. 13 J eartlil3% too, and have all the sins of earth. The ghost will visit 3'ou uo more. But where is the maiden, holy and pure, though wear- ing a form of clay, that would have me bend over her pillow at midnight, and leave a blessing there ? With a silent invocation, let her summon me. Shrink not, maiden, when I come ! In life, I was a high-souled youth, meditative, yet seldom sad, full of chaste fancies, and stainless from all grosser sin. And now, in death, I bring no loathsome smell of the grave, nor ghostly ter- rors, — but gentle, and soothing, and sweetly pensive influences. Perhaps, just fluttering for the skies, my visit may hallow the wellsprings of thy thought, and make thee heavenly here on earth. Then shall pure dreams and holy meditations bless thy life ; nor thy sainted spirit linger round the grave, but seek the upper stars, and meet me there ! DR. BULLIVANT. HIS person was not eminent enough, either by nature or circumstance, to deserve a public memorial simply for his own sake, after the lapse of a century and a half from the era in which he flourished. His character, in the view which we pro- pose to take of it, may give a species of distinctness and point to some remarks on the tone and composition of New England society, modified as it became by new ingredients from the eastern world, and by the attrition of sixty or seventy years over the rugged peculiarities of the original settlers. We are perhaps accustomed to employ too sombre a pencil in picturing the earlier times among the Puritans, because at our cold distance, we form our ideas almost wholly from their severest fea- tures. It is like gazing on some scenes in the land which we inherit from them ; we see the mountains, rising sternly and with frozen summits up to heaven, and the forests, waving in massy depths where sunshine seems a profanation, and we see the gray mist, like the duski- ness of years, shedding a chill obscurity over the whole; but the green and pleasant spots in the hollow of the hills, the warm places in the heart of what looks deso- DR. BULLIVANT. 137 late, are hidden from our eyes. Still, however, a pre- vailing characteristic of the age was gloom, or some- thing which cannot be more accurate^ expressed than by that term, and its long shadow, falling over all the intervening years, is visible, though not too distinctly, upon ourselves. Without material detriment to a deep and solid happiness, the frolic of the mind was so habitu- ally chastened, that persons have gained a nook in his- tory by the mere possession of animal spirits, too exu- berant to be confined within the established bounds. Every vain jest and unprofitable word was deemed an item in the account of criminality, and whatever wit, or semblance thereof, came into existence, its birthplace was generally the pulpit, and its parent some sour old Genevan divine. The specimens of humor and satire, preserved in the sermons and controversial tracts of those days, are occasionally the apt expressions of pun- gent thou^its ; but oftener they are cruel torturings and twistings of trite ideas, disgusting by the wearisome in- genuity^ which constitutes their only merit. Among a people where so few possessed, or were allowed to exer- cise, the art of extracting the mirth which lies hidden like latent caloric in almost everything, a gay apothe- cary, such as Dr. BuUivant, must have been a phenome- non. We will suppose ourselves standing in Cornhill, on a pleasant morning of the year 1670, about the hour when the shutters are unclosed, and the dust swept from the doorsteps, and when Business rubs its eyes, and begins to plod sleepily through the town. The street, instead of running between lofty and continuous piles of brick. 138 TALES AND SKETCHES. is but partially lined witli wooden buildings of various heights and architecture, in each of which the mercantile department is connected with the domicile, like the gin- gerbread and candy shops of an after-date. The signs have a singular appearance to a stranger's eye. These are not a barren record of names and occupations yel- low letters on black boards, but images and hieroglyph- ics, sometimes typifying the principal commodity offered for sale, though generally intended to give an arbi- trary designation to the establishment. Overlooking the bearded Saracens, the Indian Queens, and the wooden Bibles, let us direct our attention to the white post newly erected at the corner of the street, and sur- mounted by a gilded countenance which flashes in the early sunbeams like veritable gold. It is a bust of ^s- culapius, evidently of the latest London manufacture; and from the door behind it steams forth a mingled smell of musk and assafoetida and other drugs of potent perfume, as if an appropriate sacrifice were just laid upon the altar of the medical deity. I'ive or six idle people are already collected, peeping curiously in at the glittering array of gallipots and phials, and deciphering the labels which tell their contents in the mysterious and imposing nomenclature of ancient physic. They are next attracted by the printed advertisement of a Panacea, promising life but one day short of eternity, and youth and health commensurate. An old man, his head as white as snow, totters in with a hasty clattering of his staff, and becomes the earliest purchaser, hoping that his wrinkles will disappear more swiftly than they gathered. The Doctor (so styled by courtesy) shows the upper DR. BULLIVANT. 139 half of his person behind the counter, and appears to be a slender and rather tall man ; his features are difficult to describe, possessing nothing peculiar, except a flexi- bility to assume all characters in turn, while his eye, sln-ewd, quick, and saucy, remains the same throughout. Whenever a customer enters the shop, if he desire a box of pills, he receives with them an equal number of hard, round, dry jokes, — or if a dose of salts, it is mingled with a portion of the salt of Attica, — or if some hot. Oriental drug, it is accompanied by a racy word or two that tingle on the mental palate, — all without the least additional cost. Then there are twistings of mouths which never lost their gravity before. As each pur- chaser retires, the spectators see a resemblance of his visage pass over that of the apothecary, in which all the ludicrous points are made most prominent, as if a magic looking-glass had caught the reflection, and were making sport with it. Unwonted titterings arise and strengthen into bashful laughter, but are suddenly hushed as some minister, heavy-eyed from his last night's vigil, or magis- trate, armed with the terror of the whipping-post and pillory, or perhaps the governor himself, goes by like a dark cloud intercepting the sunshine. About this period, many causes began to produce an important change on and beneath the surface of colonial society. The early settlers were able to keep within the narrowest limits of their rigid principles, because they had adopted them in mature life, and from their own deep conviction, and were strengthened in them by that species of enthusiasm, which is as sober and as enduring as reason itself. But if their immediate successors fol- 140 TALES AND SKETCHES. lowed the same line of conduct, they were confined to it, in a great degree, by habits forced upon them, and by the severe rule under which they were educated, and in short more by restraint than by the free exercise of the imagination and understanding. When therefore the old original stock, the men who looked heavenward without a wandering glance to earth, had lost a part of their domestic and public influence, yielding to infirmity or death, a relaxation naturally ensued in their theory and practice of morals and religion, and became more evident with the daily decay of its most strenuous opponents. This gradual but sure operation was assisted by the in- creasing commercial importance of the colonies, whither a new set of emigrants followed unworthily in the track of the pure-hearted Pilgrims. Gain being now the allure- ment, and almost the only one, since dissenters no longer dreaded persecution at home, the people of New England could not remain entirely uncontaminated by an extensive intermixture with worldly men. The trade carried on by the colonists (in the face of several ineffi- cient acts of Parliament) with the whole maritime world, must have had a similar tendency ; nor are the desperate and dissolute visitants of the country to be forgotten among the agents of a moral revolution. Preebooters from the West Indies and the Spanish Main, — state criminals, implicated in the numerous plots and con- spiracies of the period, — felons, loaded with private guilt, — numbers of these took refuge in the provinces, where the authority of the English King was obstructed by a zealous spirit of independence, and where a bound- less wilderness enabled them to defy pursuit. Thus the - DR. BULLIVANT. 141 new population, temporary and permanent, was exceed- ingly unlike the old, and far more apt to disseminate their own principles than to imbibe those of the Puritans. All circumstances unfavorable to virtue acquired double strength by the licentious reign of Charles II. ; though perhaps the example of the monarch and nobility was less likely to recommend vice to the people of New Eng- land than to those of any other part of the British Em- pire. The clergy and the elder magistrates manifested a quick sensibility to the decline of godliness, their appre- hensions being sharpened in this particular no less by a holy zeal than because their credit and iniluence were intimately connected with the primitive character of the country. A Synod, convened in the year 1679, gave its opinion that the iniquity of the times had drawn down judgments from Heaven, and proposed methods to assuage the Divine wrath by a renewal of former sanctity. But neither the increased numbers nor the altered spirit of the people, nor the just sense of a free- dom to do wrong, within certain limits, would now have permitted the exercise of that inquisitorial strictness, which had been wont to penetrate to men's firesides and watch their domestic life, recognizing no distinction be- tween private ill conduct and crimes that endanger the community. Accordingly, the tide of worldly principles encroached more and more upon the ancient landmarks, hitherto esteemed the outer boundaries of virtue. So- ciety arranged itself into two classes, marked by strong shades of difference, though separated by an uncertain line : in one were included the small and feeble rem- 142 TALES AND SKETCHES. nant of the first settlers, many of their immediate de- scendants, the whole body of the clergy, and all whom a gloomy temperament, or tenderness of conscience, or timidity of thouglit, kept up to the strictness of their fathers ; the other comprehended the new emigrants, the gay and thoughtless natives, the favorers of Episcopacy, and a various mixture of liberal and enlightened men with most of the evil-doers and unprincipled adventurers in the country. A vivid and rather a pleasant idea of New England manners, when this change had become decided, is given in the journal of John Dunton, a cock- ney bookseller, who visited Boston and other towns of Massachusetts with a cargo of pious publications, suited to the Puritan market. Making due allowance for the flippancy of the writer, which may have given a livelier tone to his descriptions than truth precisely warrants, and also for his character, which led him chiefly among the gayer inhabitants, there still seems to have been many who loved the winecup and the song, and all sorts of delightful naughtiness. But the degeneracy of the times had made far less progress in the interior of the country than in the seaports, and until the people lost the elective privilege, they continued the government in the hands of those upright old men who had so long possessed their confidence. Uncontrollable events, alone, gave a temporary ascendency to persons of another stamp. James II., during the four years of his despotic reign, revoked the charters of the American colonies, arrogated the appointment of their magistrates, and annulled all those legal and proscriptive rights whicli had hitherto constituted them nearly independent states. DR. BULLIVANT. 143 Among the foremost advocates of the royal usurpations was Dr. Biillivaiit. Gifted with a smart and ready intel- lect, busy and bold, he acquired great influence in the new government, and assisted Sir Edmund Andros, Ed- ward Randolph, and five or six others, to browbeat the council, and misrule the Northern provinces according to their pleasure. The strength of the popular hatred against this administration, the actual tyranny that was exercised, and the innumerable fears and jealousies, well grounded and fantastic, which harassed the country, may be best learned from a work of Increase Mather, the " Remarkable Providences of the Earlier Days of Amer- ican Colonization." The good divine (though writing when a lapse of nearly forty years should have tamed the fierceness of party animosity) speaks with the most bitter and angry scorn of " 'Pothecary Bullivant," who probably indulged his satirical propensities, from the seat of power, in a manner which rendered him an especial object of public dislike. But the people were about to play off a piece of practical fun on the Doctor and the whole of his coadjutors, and have the laugh all to them- selves. By the first faint rumor of the attempt of the Prince of Orange on the throne, the power of James was annihilated in the colonies, and long before the abduction of the latter became known, Sir Edmund An- dros, Governor-General of New England and New York, and fifty of the most obnoxious leaders of the court party, were tenants of a prison. We will visit our old acquaintance in his adversity. The scene now represents a room of ten feet square, the floor of which is sunk a yard or two below the level 144 TALES AND SKETCHES. of the ground ; the walls are covered with a dirty and crumbling plaster, on which appear a crowd of ill-favored and lugubrious faces done in charcoal, and the autographs and poetical attempts of a long succession of debtors and petty criminals. Other features of the apartment are a deep fireplace (superfluous in the sultriness of the sum- mer's day), a door of hard-hearted oak, and a narrow window high in the wall, where the glass has long been broken, while the iron bars retain all their original strength. Through this opening come the sound of pass- ing footsteps in the public street, and the voices of chil- dren at play. The furniture consists of a bed, or rather an old sack of barley straw, thrown down in the corner farthest from the door, and a chair and table, both aged and infirm, and leaning against the side of the room, besides lending a friendly support to each other. The atmosphere is stifled and of an ill smell, as if it had been kept close prisoner for half a century, and had lost all its pure and elastic nature by feeding the tainted breath of the vicious and the sighs of the mifortunate. Such is the present abode of the raan of medicine and politics, and his own appearance forms no contrast to the accom- paniments. His wig is unpowdered, out of curl, and put on awry ; the dust of many weeks has worked its way into the web of his coat and small-clothes, and his knees and elbows peep forth to ask why they are so ill clad ; his stockings are ungartered, his shoes down at the heel, his waistcoat is without a button, and discloses a shirt as dingy as the remnant of snow in a showery April day. His shoulders have become rounder, and his whole per- son is more bent and drawn together, since we last saw DR. BULLIVANT. 145 him, and his face has exchanged the glory of wit and humor for a sheepish duhiess. At intervals, the Doctor walks the room, with an irregular and shuffling pace; anon, he throws himself flat on the sack of barley straw, muttering very reprehensible expressions between his teeth ; then again he starts to his feet, and journeying from corner to corner, finally sinks into the chair, forget- ful of its three-legged infirmity till it lets him down upon the floor. The grated window, his only medium of inter- course with the world, serves but to admit additional vexations. Every few moments the steps of the passen- gers are heard to pause, and some well-known face ap- pears in the free sunshine behind the iron bars, brimful of mirth and drollery, the owner whereof stands on tiptoe to tickle poor Dr. Bullivant with a stinging sarcasm. Then laugh the little boys around the prison door, and the wag goes chuckHng away. The apothecary would fain retaliate, but all his quips and repartees, and sharp and facetious fancies, once so abundant, seem to have been transferred from himself to the sluggish brains of his enemies. While endeavoring to condense his whole intellect into one venomous point, in readiness for the next assailant, he is interrupted by the entrance of the turnkey with the prison fare of Indian bread and water. With these dainties we leave him. When the turmoil of the Revolution had subsided, and the authority of William and Mary was fixed on a quiet basis throughout the colonies, the deposed governor and some of his partisans were sent home to the new court, and the others released from imprisonment. The New- Englanders, as a people, are not apt to retain a revenge- 7 J 146 TALES AND SKETCHES. ful sense of injury, and nowhere, perhaps, could a poli- tician, however odious in his power, live more peacefully in his nakedness and disgrace. Dr. Bullivant returned to his former occupation, and spent rather a desirable old age. Though he sometimes hit hard with a jest, yet few thought of taking offence ; for whenever a man habitually indulges his tongue at the expense of all his associates, they provide against the common annoyance by tacitly agreeing to consider his sarcasms as null and void. Thus for many years, a gray old man with a stoop in his gait, be continued to sweep out his shop at eight o'clock in summer mornings, and nine in the winter, and to waste whole hours in idle talk and irreverent merriment, mak- ing it his glory to raise the laughter of silly people, and his delight to sneer at them in his sleeve. At length, one pleasant day, the door and shutters of his establish- ment kept closed from sunrise till sunset, and his cronies marvelled a moment, and passed on ; a week after, the rector of King's Chapel said the death-rite over Dr. Bullivant ; and within the month a new apothecary, and a new stock of drugs and medicines, made their appear- .C^ ^.1 1