COUNTRY LIVING
AND
COUNTRY THINKING
BY
GAIL HAMILTON
BOS TON
TICKNOR AND FIELDS
1864




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862. by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.
NINTH  EDITION.
UNIVE RSITY PRESS:
WELCH, B]IGELOW,  AND  COMPANI,
CAMBRIDGE.




P REFACE.
KNOW  that I can bear censure; I
think I could endure neglect: but
there is one thing which I will never
forgive, and that is, any encroachment upon my personality.. Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is
public property; whatever of himself he does
not put there is his private property, as much
as if he had never written a word. I do not
say, that any information which may be gathered, or any conjecture which may be hazarded,
concerning the man or the woman who stands
behind the mask of the author, may not be a
lawful theme of conversation, if people are interested enough to make it so; but the appearance of any such information or conjecture
in any public print, whether in the form of
book-notice or news-item, I consider an unpardonable impertinence.
As this seems to me a matter of serious importance in the minor moralities, and one in




iv              PREFACE.
which this people is verily guilty, I desire to be
clearly understood. If any person writes a book
or an article, and prefixes his name, he, in a
manner, makes an unconditional surrender of
himself. The public has perhaps the shadow
of a right to ascertain and announce his birthplace, his residence,'his wife, the color of his
eyes, the length of his beard, the precocity of
his childhood, the college at which he was graduated, the hotel in which he is spending the
summer months, and similar items - startling,
if true - which are so dear to the public. But
if he withholds himself, and writes under the signature of Apsby Jones, you, my dear Public,
have no right or title to him. That is an indication that he wishes to remain unknown. You
should respect his reticence. Though you may
have heard from your brother-in-law or your
grandmother that Apsby Jones is a Mr. Jonathan Jenkins of Kettleville, refrain scrupulously
from printing that report; for, in the first place,
you have probably been misinformed, - Jonathan Jenkins is not the man at all, and is made
to feel extremely uncomfortable; and, in the
second place, if he were the man, it would be
shamefully impolite in you to rend away the veil
in which he chose to drape himself. You may
criticise his book to the top of your bent, but
don't meddle with him. No matter if he was
your schoolmate, no matter if he descended from




PREFA CE.                v
a French refugee, no matter if he made a speech
at your picnic; you be quiet about it, - at least
till he is dead. Doubtless he was very glad to
have his book published, but doubtless he has
insurmountable objections to being published
himself.
This is a preface, Public, and you will readily see that I cannot talk as freely as I should
like, because it will never do to put you in an
ill-humor at the beginning; but you must know,
yourself, that you are very much given to illegal gossip. You have a cacoethes printendi. The
moment you get hold, by fair means or foul, of
the outermost fibre of the shred of the husk of
the semblance of a fact, you go straightway and
put it in the newspapers. You are not so much
to blame. Your fathers did it before you, and
I don't suppose you were ever tdld that it was
ill-bred; but it is.  Please not do it again.
Be very sure to know whether the name on the
title-page is a pen-name or a baptismal name.
If it is the former, confine your remarks to
the book and its relations; if it is the latter -you cannot do better than follow the
same course.
I most eagerly desire, 0 Public, your good
opinion, and especially your friendly feeling. I
shall count it one of the greatest happinesses
of my life if I succeed in pleasing you, and one
of the greatest misfortunes if I do not.  But




vi                   PREFA CE.
if you commit this sin against me, I will never
forgive you! Or, since that may be unscriptural, I will forgive you just enough to save
my own soul, but not enough to be of any use
to you.
G. H.
NOTE.
It ought perhaps to be mentioned, that portions of this volume
have appeared at different times in the National Era, the Congregationalist, and the Atlantic Monthly.




CONTENTS.
PAGE
MOVING.                                        3
THE BANK.                                     21
Mv GARDEN.....                     38
MEN AND WOMEN...   80
MY BIiDS...... 206
TOMMY......                                  230
BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN..       246
BROWN-BREAD CAKES.....                       277
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS....... 285
DOG-DAYS..                                   3  11
SUMMER GONE......   317
WINTER......335
MY FLOWER-BED...                       35I
LIGHTS AMONG THE SHADOWS OF OUR CIV:L WAR.   366








COUNTRY LIVING
AND
COUNTRY THINKING.








MOVING.
-p l  AN is like an onion.  He exists in
concentric layers. He is born a bulb,
and grows by external accretions.
The number and character of his
involutions certify to his culture and courtesy.
Those of the boor are few and coarse.  Those
of the gentleman are numerous and fine. But
strip off the scales from all, and you come to the
same germ. The core of humanity is barbarism.
Every man is a latent savage.
You may be startled and shocked; but I am
stating fact, not theory. I announce not an invention, but a discovery. You look around you,
and because you do not see tomahawks and tattooing you doubt my assertion.- But your observation is superficial.  You have not penetrated
into the secret place where souls abide.  You
are staring only at the outside layer of your
neighbors: just peel them, and see what you
will find.




4            CO UNTTi Y LI VING.
I speak from the highest possible authority,
my own experience.  Representing the gentler
half of humanity, of respectable birth, tolerable
parts, and good education, as tender-hearted as
most women, not unfamiliar with the best society,
mingling, to some extent, with those who understand and practise the minor moralities, you would
at once infer from my circumstances that I was a
very fair specimen of the better class of Americans,
- and so I am. For one that stands higher than
I in the moral, social, and intellectual scale, you
will undoubtedly find ten that stand lower. Yet
through all these layers gleam the fiery eyes of
my savage. I thought I was a Christian. I have
endeavored to do my duty to my day and generation; but of a sudden Christianity and civilization
leave me in the lurch, and the "old Adam"
within me turns out to be just such a fierce Saxon
pirate as hurtled down against the white shores
of Britain fifteen hundred years ago.
For we have been moving.
People who live in cities and move regularly
every year from one good, finished, right-side-up
house to another, will think I give a very small
reason for a very broad fact; but they do not
know what they are talking about.  They have
fallen into a way of looking upon a house only as
an exaggerated trunk, into which they pack themselves annually with as much nonchalance as if
it were only their preparation for a summer trip




MO VING.                 5
to the sea-shore.  They don't.strike root any.
where.  They don't have to tear up anything.
A man comes with cart and horses. There is a
stir in the one house, - they are gone;- there is
a stir in the other house, — they are settled; and
everything is wound up and set going to run another year. We do these things differently in the
country. We don't build a house by way of experiment, and live in it a few years, then tear it
down and build another. We live in a house till
it cracks, and then we plaster it over; then it
totters, and we prop it up; then it rocks, and we
rope it down; then it sprawls, and we clamp it;
then it crumbles, and we have a new underpinning,
- but keep living init all the time. To know what
moving really means, you must move from just such
a rickety-rackety old farm-house, where you have
clung and grown like a fungus ever since there was
anything to grow; — where your life and luggage
have crept into all the crevices and corners, and
every wall is festooned with associations thicker
than the cobwebs, though the cobwebs are pretty
thick;  where the furniture and the pictures and
the knick-knacks are so become a part and parcel
of the house, so grown with it and into it, that
you do not know they are chiefly rubbish till you
begin to move them, and they fall to pieces, and
don't know it then, but persist in packing them
up and carrying them away for the sake of auld
lang syne, till, set up again in your new abode,




6             COUNTRY LIVING.
you suddenly find that their sacredness is gone,
their dignity has degraded into dinginess, and the
faded, patched chintz sofa, that was not only comfortable, but respectable, in the old wainscoted sitting-room, has suddenly turned into "an object,"
when lang syne goes by the board, and the heirloom  is incontinently set adrift.  Undertake to
move from this tumble-down old house, strewn
thick with the debris of many generations, into a
tumble-up, peaky, perky, plastery, shingly, stary
new one, that is not half finished, and never will
be, and good enough for it, and you will perhaps
comprehend how it is that I find a great crack
in my life. On the further side are prosperity,
science, literature, philosophy, religion, society, all
the refinements, and amenities, and benevolences,
and purities of life, —in short, all the arts of
peace, and civilization, and Christianity,- and on
this side -- moving. You will also understand
why that one word comprises, to my thinking, all
the discomforts short of absolute physical torture
that can be condensed into the human lot. Condensed, did I say? If it were a condensed agony,
I could endure it.  One great, stunning, overpowering blow is undoubtedly terrible, but you
rally'all your fortitude to meet and resist it, and
when it is over, it is over, and the recuperative
forces go to work; but a trouble t~hat worries and
baffles and pricks and rasps you,' that penetrates
into all the ramifications of your life, that fills




MO VING.                 7
you with profound disgust, and fires you with
irrepressible fury, and makes of you an Ishmaelite
indeed, with your hand against every man, and
every man's hand against you, - ah I! that is the
experimentum crucis.
Such is moving, in the country, - not an act,
but a process, - not a volition, but a fermentation.
We will say that the first of September is the
time appointed for the transit.  The day approaches. It is the twenty-ninth of Ahgust.  I
prepare to take hold of the matter in earnest. I
am nipped in the bud by.learning that the woman
who was to help about the carpets cannot come,
because her baby is taken with the croup. I
have not a doubt of it. I never knew a baby
yet that did not go and have the croup, or the
colic, or the cholera infantum, just when it was
imperatively necessary that it should not have
them. But there is no help for it. I shudder,
and bravely gird myself for'the work. I tug at
the heavy, bulky, unwieldy carpets, and am covered with dust and abomination. I think carpets
are the most untidy, unwholesome nuisances in
the whole world. It is impossible to be clean
with them under your feet. You may sweep your
carpet twenty times, and raise a dust on the
twenty-first. I am sure I heard long ago of some
new fashion that was to be introduced, - some
Italian style, tiles, or mosaic-work, or something
of the sort.  I should welcome anything that




8            COUNTRY LIVING.
would dispense with these vile rags. I sigh over
the good old sanded floors that our grandmothers
rejoiced in, - and so, apotheosizing the past and
anathematizing the present, I pull away, and the
tacks tear my fingers, and the hammer slips and
lets me back with a jerk, and the dust fills my
hair and nose and eyes and mouth and lungs, and
my hands grow red and coarse and ragged and
sore and begrimed, and I pull and choke and
cough and strangle and pull.
So the carpets all come up, and the curtains
all come down. The bureaus march out of the
chamber-windows and dance on a tight-rope down
into the yard below. The chairs are set at," heads
and points."  The clothes are packed into the
trunks. The flour and meal and sugar, all the
wholesale edibles, are carted down to the new
house and stored. The forks are wrapped up,
and we eat with our fingers, and have nothing
to eat at that. Then we are informed that the
new house will not be ready short of two weeks
at least.  Unavoidable delays.  The plasterers
were hindered; the painters misunderstood orders;
the paperers have defalcated, and the universe
generally comes to a pause. It is no matter in
what faith I w. - nurtured, I am now a believer
in total depravity.  Contractors have no conscience: masons are not men of their word; carpenters are tricky; all manner of cunning workmen are bruised reeds. But there is nothing to




MOVING.                   9
do but submit and make the best of it, - a horrible kind of mechanism. We go forthwith into a
chrysalis state for two weeks. The only sign of
life is an occasional lurch towards the new house,
just sufficient to keep up tke circulation. One
day I dreamily carry down a basket of wineglasses. At another time I listlessly stuff all my
slippers into a huge pitcher, and take up the line
of march. Again a bucket is filled with tea-cups,
or I shoulder the fire-shovel.  The two weeks
drag themselves away, and the cry is still, " Unfinished!"  To prevent petrifying into a fossil
remain, or relapsing into primitive barbarism, or
degenerating into a dormouse, I rouse my energies
and determine to put my own shoulder to the
wheel and see if something cannot be accomplished. I rise early in the morning and walk
to Dan, to hire a painter who is possessed of
"gumption," "faculty."  Arrived in Dan, I am
told he is in Beersheba. Nothing daunted, I take
a short cut across the fields to-Beersheba, bearding
manifold dangers from rickety, stone-walls, strong
enough to keep women in, but not strong enough
to keep bears, bulls, and other wild beasts out,toppling enough to play the mischief with draperies, but not toppling enough to topple over
when urgently pressed to do so. But I secure
my man, and remember no more my sorrow of
bulls and stones for joy at my success.  From
Beersheba I proceed to Padan-aram to buy seven
1*




10           COUNTRY LIVING.
pounds of flour, thence to Galilee of the Gentiles
for a pound of cheese, thvence to the land of Uz
for smoked halibut, thence to the ends of the
earth for a lemon to make life tolerable, — and
the days hobble on.
" The flying gold of the ruined woodlands drives
through the air," the signal is given, and there
is no longer quiet on the Potomac. The unnatural calm gives way to an unearthly din. Once
more I bring myself to bear on the furniture and
the trumpery, and there is a small household
whirlpool. All that went before "pales its ineffectual fires." Now comes the strain upon my
temper, and my temper bends, and quivers, and
creaks, and cracks. Ithuriel touches me with his
spear; all the integuments, of my conventional,
artificial, and acquired gentleness peel off, and I
stand revealed a savage. Everything around me
sloughs off its usual habitude and becomes savage.
Looking-glasses are shivered by the dozen. A bit
is nicked out of the best China sugar-bowl. A
pin gets under the matting that is wrapped around
the centre-table, and jags horrible hieroglyphics
over the whole polished surface. The bookcase,
that we are trying to move, tilts, and trembles,
and goes over, and the old house through all her
frame gives signs of woe. A crash detonate on
the stairs brings me up from  the depths of the
closet where I am burrowing. I remember seeing
Halicarnassus disappear a moment ago with my




MO VING.                 11
lovely and beloved marble Hebe in his arms. I
rush rampant to the upper landing in time to see
him couchant on the lower. " I have broken my
leg," roars Halicarnassus, as if I cared for his leg.
A fractured leg is easily mended; but who shall
restore me the nose of my nymph, marred into
irremediable deformity and dishonor 
Occasionally a gleam of sunshine shoots athwart
the darkness to keep me back from rash deeds.
Behind the sideboard I find a little cross of dark,
bright hair, and gold and pearls, that I lost two
years ago and would not be comforted. 0 happy
days woven in with the dark, bright hair! 0
golden, pearly days, come back to me again!
" Never mind your gewgaws," interposes real life;'' what is to be done with the things in this
drawer?" Lying atop of a heap of old papers
in the front-yard waiting the match that is to
glorify them into flame, I find a letter that mysteriously disappeared long since, and caused me
infinite alarm lest indelicate eyes might see it, and
indelicate hands make ignoble use of its honest
and honorable meaning. I learn also sundry new
and interesting facts in mechanics.  I become
acquainted for the first time with the modus operandi of "roller-cloths." I never understood before how the roller got inside the towel. It was
one of those gentle domestic mysteries that repel
even while they invite investigation. I shall not
give the result of my discovery to the public. If




12            COUNTRY LI VING.
you wish very much to find out, you can move, as
I did.
But the rifts of sunshine disappear. The clouds
draw together and close in.  The savage walks
abroad once more, and I go to bed tired of life.
I have scarcely fallen asleep, when I am reluctantly, by short and difficult stages, awakened.
A rumbling, grating, strident noise first confuses,
then startles me.  Is it robbers?  Is it an earthquake?  Is it the coming of fate?  I lie rigid,
bathed in a cold perspiration. I hear the tread of
banditti on the moaning stairs. I see the flutter
of ghostly robes by the uncurtained windows. A
chill, uncanny air rushes in and grips at my damp
hair. I am nerved by the extremity of my terror.
I will die of anything but fright. I jerk off the
bedclothes, convulse into an upright posture, and
glare into the darkness. Nothing. I rise softly,
creep cautiously and swiftly over the floor, that
always creaked, but now thunders at every footfall.
A light gleams through the open door of the opposite room whence the sound issues. A familiar
voice utters an exclamation which I recognize. It
is Halicarnassus, the unprincipled scoundrel, who
is uncording a bed, dragging remorselessly through
innumerable holes the long rope whose doleful wail
came near giving me an epilepsy. My savage
lets loose the dogs of war. Halicarnassus would
fain defend himself by declaring that it is morning.
I indignantly deny it.  He produces his watch.




MOVING.                 13
A fig for his watch! I stake my consciousness
against twenty watches, and go to bed again; but
Sleep, angry goddess, once repulsed, returns- no
more. The dawn comes up the sky, and confirms
the scorned watch.  The golden daggers of the
morning prick in under my eyelids, and Halicarnassus introduces himself upon the scene once
more,. to announce, that, if I don't wish to be
corded up myself, I must abdicate that bed. The
threat does not terrify me. Indeed, nothing at the
moment seems more inviting than to be corded up
and let alone; but duty still binds me to life, and,
assuring Halicarnassus that the just law will do
that service for him, if he does not mend his ways,
I slowly emerge again into the world,- the
dreary, chaotic world, - the world that is never
at rest.
And there is hurrying to and fro, and a clang
of many voices, and the clatter of much crockery,
and a lifting and balancing and battering against
walls, and curving around corners, and sundry
contusions, and a great waste of expletives, and a
loading of wagons, and a driving of patient oxen
back and forth with me generally on the top of the
load, steadying a basket of eggs with one foot,
keeping a tin can of something from upsetting
with the other, and both arms stretched around a
very big and very square picture-frame that knocks
against my nose or my chin every time the cart
goes over a stone or drops into a rut, and the wind




14           COUNTR Y LI VING.
threatening to blow my hat off, and blowing it off,
and my "back-hair" tumbling down,- and the
old- house is at last despoiled. The rooms stand
bare and brown and desolate.  The sun, a handbreadth above the horizon, pours in through the
unblinking windows. The last load is gone.  The
last man has departed. I am left alone to lock up
the house and walk over the hill to the new home.
Then, for the first time, I remember that I am
leaving. As I pass through the door of my own
room, not regretfully, I turn. I look up and down
and through and through the place where I shall
never rest again, and I rejoice that it is so. As I
stand there, with the red, solid sunshine lying on
the floor, lying on the walls, unfamiliar in its new
profusion, the silence becomes audible. In the
still October evening there is an effort in the air.
The' dumb house is striving to find a voice. I feel
the struggle of its insensate frame. The old timbers quiver with the unusual strain.  The strong,
blind, vegetable energy agonizes to find expression,
and, wrestling like a pinioned giant, the soul of
matter throws off the weight of its superincumbent
inertia. Slowly, gently, most sorrowfully through
the golden air comes a voice that is somewhat awail, yet not untuned by love. Inarticulate at
first, I catch only the low mournfulness; but it
clears, it concentrates, it murmurs into cadence, it
syllables into intelligence, and thus the old house
speaks: —




MO VING.                 15
" Child, my child, forward to depart, stay for
one moment your eager feet. Put off from your
brow the crown which the sunset has woven, and
linger yet a little longer in the shadow which enshrouds me forever. I remember, in this parting
hour, the day of days which the tremulous years
bore in their bosom, —a day crimson with the
woodbine's happy flush, and glowing with the
maple's gold. On that day a tender, tiny life
came down, and stately Silence fled before the
pelting of baby-laughter. Faint memories of faroff olden time were softly stirred. Blindly thrilled
through all my frame a vague, dim sense of swelling buds and singing-birds and summer-gales, —
of the purple beauty of violets, the smells of fragrant earth, and the sweetness of summer dews
and darks. Many a harvest-moon since then has
filled her yellow horn, and queenly Junes crowned
with roses have paled before the sternness of Decembers. But Decembers and Junes alike bore
royal gifts to you, —gifts to the busy brain and
the awakening heart.  In dell and copse and
meadow  and gay green-wood you drank great
draughts of life. Yet, even as I watched, your
eyes grew wistful. Your lips framed questions for
which the Springs found no reply, and the sacred
mystery of living brought its sweet, uncertain pain.
Then you went away, and a shadow fell. A gleam
passed out of the sunshine and a note from the
robin's song. The knights that pranced on the




16           COUNTRY LI VlNG.
-household hearth grew faint and still, and died for
want of young eyes to mark their splendor. But
when your feet, ever and anon, turned homeward,
they used a firmer step, and I knew, that, though
the path might be rough, you trod it bravely. I
saw that you had learned how doing is a nobler
thing than dreaming, yet kept the holy fire burning in the holy place. But now you go, and there
will be no return. The stars are faded from the
sky. The leaves writhe on the greensward. The
breezes wail a dirge. The summer rain is pallid
like winter snow. And - 0 bitterest cup of all!
- the golden memories of the past have vanished
from your heart. I totter down to the grave,
while you go on from strength to strength. The
Junes that gave you life brought death to me,
and you sorrow not. 0 child of my tender care,
look not so coldly on my pain! Breathe one
sigh of regret, drop one tear of pity, before we
part! "
The mournful murmur ceased. I am not adamant.  My savage crouched out of sight among
the underbrush. I think something stirred in the
back of my eyes. There was even a suspicion of
dampness in front. I thrust my hand in my
pocket to have my handkerchief ready in case of a
catastrophe. It was an unfortunate proceeding.
My pocket was crammed full. I had to push my
fingers through all manner of rubbish, to get at
the required article, and when I got hold of it, I




MOVING.                  17
had to pull with all my might to get it out, and
when it did come, out with it came a tin box of
mustard-seed, a round wooden box of tooth-powder, a ball of twine, a paper of picture-books, and
a pair of gloves. Of course, the covers of both
the boxes came off. The seed scattered over the
floor. The tooth-powder puffed a white cloud into
my face. The ball of twine unrolled and trundled
to the other side of the room. I gathered up what
I could, but, by the time order was restored and
my handkerchief ready for use, I had no use for
it. The stirring in the back of my eyes had
stopped.  The dewiness had disappeared.  My
savage sprang out from the underbrush and brandished his tomahawk. And to the old house I
made answer as a Bushman of Caffraria might, or
a Sioux of the Prm-Pilgrimic Age: —
1" Old House, hush up! Why do you talk
stuff?'Golden memories' indeed! To hear you,
one might suppose you were an ivied castle on the
Rhine, and I a fair-haired princess, cradled in the
depths of regal luxury, feeding on the blossoms of
a thousand generations, and. heroic from inborn
royalty.'Tender care'! Did you not wake me
in the middle of the night, last summer, by trickling down water on my face from  a passing
shower? and did I not have to get up at that
unearthly hour to move the bed, and step splash
into a puddle, and come very near being floated
away? Did not the water drip, drip, drip upon
B




18          COUNTR Y LIVING.
my wvriting-desk, and soak the leather, and swell
the wood, and stain the ribbon, and spoil the paper
inside, and all because you were treacherous at
the roof and let it? Have you not made a perfect
rattery of yourself, yawning at every possible chink
and crumbling at the underpinning, and keeping
me awake night after night by the tramp of a
whole brigade of the Grand Army that slaughtered
Bishop Hatto? Whenever a breeze comes along
stout enough to make an aspen-leaf tremble, don't
you immediately go into hysterics, and rock, and
creak, and groan, as if you were the shell of an
earthquake? Don't you shrivel at every window
to let in the northeasters and all the snow-storms
that walk abroad? Whenever a needle, or a pencil, or a penny drops, don't you open somewhere
and take it in?'Golden memories'!  Leaden
memories! Wooden memories! Mudden memories! "
My savage gave a war-whoop. I turned scornfully. I swept down the staircase. I banged the
front-door. I locked it with an accent, and
mlarched up the hill. A soft sighing breathed past
me. I knew it was the old house mourning for
her departing child. The sun had disappeared,
but the western sky was jubilant in purple and
gold. The cool evening calmed me. The echoes
of the war-whoop vibrated almost tenderly along
the hushed hill-side. I paused on the summit of
the bill and looked back. Down in the valley




MOVING.                  19
stood the sorrowful house, tasting the first bitterness of perpetual desolation. The maples and the
oaks and the beech-trees hung out their flaming
banners. The pond lay dark in the shadow of
the circling hills. The years called to me, -the
happy, sun-ripe years that I had left tangled in
the apple-blossoms, and moaning among the pines,
and tinkling in the brook, and floating in the cups
of the water-lilies. They looked up at me from
the orchard, dark and cool. They thrilled across
from the hill-tops, glowing still with the glowing
sky. I heard their voice by the lilac-bush. They
smiled at me under the peach-trees, and where
the blackberries had ripened against the southern
wall. I felt them once more in the clover-smells
and the new-mown hay. They swayed again in
the silken tassels of the crisp, rustling corn. They
hummed with the bees in the garden-borders.
They sang with the robins in the cherry-trees,
and their tone was tender and passing sweet.
They besought me not to cast away their memory,
for despite of the black-browed troop whose vile
and sombre robes had mingled in with their silver
garments. They prayed me to forget, but not all.
They minded me of the sweet counsel we had
taken together, when summer came over the hills,
and walked by the water-courses. They bade me
remember the good tidings of great joy which they
had brought me when my eyes were dim with
unavailing tears. My lips trembled to their call.




20          COUNTRY LIVING.
The war-whoop chanted itself into a vesper. A
happy calm lifted from my heart and quivered
out over the valley, and a comfort settled on the sad old house, as I
stretched forth my hands, and
from my inmost soul
breathed down a
Benedicite!




THE BANK.
_~ — i  E had much ado to get it, but it was
J U!1  Ilovely when it was done. The glory
of it belongs to me. Halicarnassus, I
regret to say, to many amiable qualities does not add executive and comprehensive energy. He occasionally develops very satisfactorily
in some one direction, but I have yet to see him
become complete master of any situation.  He
does one thing, but he leaves twenty undone. So
it was in keeping with his character to hibernate
on the top of a gravel-heap. When I suggested,
in the fall, that the gravel-heap be immediately
graded and turfed, he replied that there were too
many things which mast be done before winter set
in. When winter had set in, and the things were
all done, and I repeated my suggestion, there was
no turf to be had,- nothing but snow and ice.
When the spring sun came and drank up the
snow, and the turf sprouted and thickened and
matted, and I spoke of the bank, everybody, according to Halicarnassus, was absorbed in plough



2,2          COUNTR Y LIVING.
ing and planting, and could not be lured away
to do our work. "Besides," he added, "it is
very well as it is.  Gravel has more character
than grass.  Gravel suggests strength.  Grass is
but a smooth commonplace.  Gravel is geological
and antiquitous. It carries one back to the drift
formation and a wilderness of waters. Grass is
a modern arrangement. Gravel is the naked innocence of Earth. Grass is the recourse of sinborn Shame."  I let him go on, putting a curb
to my lips. If there is anything that tries my
temper, it is to have Halicarnassus philosophize.
When he confines himself to facts and syllogisms,
he is comparatively harmless; but the moment he
strikes out into moral reflection he becomes a nuisance. He does not often do it, I allow. A certain blind instinct teaches him to cling to the earth,
and not attempt waxen wings. So I only smiled.
If I had refuted him, he would have gone on till
this time. I knew better. His theory was improvised on the spot to suit his facts, and the facts
were culpable indifference and negligence, which
no theory could convert into cardinal virtues. I
was silent, and recalled to mind my experience
in the fall, and the story in the Young Reader.
When the farmer announced his intention to reap
his field himself, the mother-bird concluded it
was time to take her nurslings and go. I determined to see what my own efforts might do towards a bank, and, without- consulting Halicar



THE BANK.                23
nassus, I walked ten miles one morning, and secured a man. A man is an indispensable thing
in the country. He was represented to me as an
excellent' gardener, if he could be kept sober. He
thought he could. make the bank in a week, and
he promised me faithfully that he would not be
drunk once in all the time. Nor was he. You
may be sure I plied him with strong coffee and
highly-spiced meats, and he did his work in the
most beautiful manner. Exultation and admiration filled my heart as I saw the gravel begin to
haul, the loam topple over upon it, the turf trundle
down upon a wheelbarrow and square itself upon
the loam, and a shapely terrace rise slowly from
the chaos of dibris. Halicarnassus enjoyed it too.
He enjoys things if he is not forced to originate
them. It is the first step which costs him. He
would live in a palace with great delight, if he
woke one morning and found himself in it; but he
would live in a cave many years before he could
bring himself to plan and construct even a logcabin. So he stood by me, and we marked the
unsightly gravel-heap transfigured into a sightly
bank, and watched the lowering clouds, and hoped
it would not rain. Premature rain would wash
away the loose turf and loam, and many hopes,
and several dollars, and it was already getting late
in the season. If it only would keep off just long
enough to get the slope finished so that the
whole should not be carried away and the work




24          COUNTR Y LIVING.
have to be done quite over again! It looked as
if it would a" pour " every minute. We watched
the menacing sky, and the gardener wielded his
knife and line and fingers and wheelbarrow, and
the slope was finished, and it did not rain, and we
breathed again. The next day wore away, and
the next, and the next, and the corners were
rounded, and the top met the slope in grassy embrace, and it did not rain. How pretty the bank
looked; how like the smooth skin veiling and
adorning the hideous skeleton was the verdant
velvet that soothed away the rough gravel. Then
we were ready for the rain. Indeed, we desired
rain to cherish the tender little rootlets of the
transplanted grass. We longed for rain to keep
the turf from cracking and crumbling away. But
it did not rain. The green turned gray in patches.
The gray struggled for a while, gave up the ghost,
and dust reigned in its stead. 0, if it would only
raini We talked of warm showers, and the pattering of drops through the cool night, and the
new life that would spring under our feet in the
morning. But it did not rain. Then we talked
of watering-pots, and available light buckets, and
we put our shoulders to the wheel, and our hands
to the pump, and gave the thirsty and dead and
dying grass a thorough drenching. And it did
not rain. The evening and the morning came,
and it was the third and fourth and fifth day, till
we ceased to count, but poured our morning and




THE BA NK.                25
evening libations with a silent, sad persistence,
and there was no rain.
Halicarnassus was very " aggravating." He pretended great solicitude for the bank. I think he
would have been sorry to see it relapse into chaos.
But did he go to work with all his might to prevent it? Not he. He made every one think he
did. He talked, and - that was all. He did not
do a penny's-worth of good. He grew tired of
pumping and carrying water after the second day.
He knew that my interest was too deeply enlisted
to permit me to slacken my exertions. He knew
that, if he did not work, I would, and he accordingly shirked. "That bank must be watered, or
it will die I " he would exclaim, with a great show
of efficiency. " Yes," I would answer, " let us
go and water it at once." "Very well. But I
have my cows to feed just now. Do you begin,
and I will presently join you." And that would
be the last of him. When it was all over, and I
resting on the sofa, he would lounge in and profess great astonishment. "I came to help you,
but you had finished," he would say. Generally
my sole reply was a steady glance, before which
he quailed and retreated, though striving to hide
his real feelings under a laugh. Sometimes, by
skilful diplomacy, I succeeded in forcing him to
draw half a dozen buckets of water, but it was a
great deal harder to work him than it was the
pump, though that creaked and wheezed and
2




26           COUNTRY LIVING.
spouted out a stream not much bigger than a
knitting-needle, and I presently gave him  over
as incorrigible. The chief hand he had in the
matter was to exacerbate me by talking before
friends about our efforts to save the bank, and by
calling out, as he passed to and fro, "You are
putting on more water there than you need," or,
" You are leaving this corner quite dry," or,
" Here, bring your watering-pot this way." It
was bad enough not to have him take hold and
help me, but it was intolerable to have him come
and order me about. The only satisfaction left
was to do the opposite thing to that which he
directed. I do not think he minded it at all. He
certainly did not issue fewer orders.  His only
object was to'keep up appearances.
As I waved my watering-pot hither and thither,
it seemed to me less strange that the old heathen
nations should have believed in two Deities, - one
of good and the other of evil, - Odin, the AllFather, and Surtur, the black one; I had to bring
the faith of eighteen centuries to bear on the point,
and even then I was not so patient as I should
have been. It might easily seem as if a good
being were trying to send rain, that grass might
grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of
man. It did try very hard to rain. Every sign
was favorable. The clouds were black and big.
In their bulging bosoms you could almost see the
tender grass-blades, and the young peas, and the




THE BANK.                 27
waving of the asparagus tops, that their scattered
treasures were going to bring forth. A night
comes and goes leaving the earth thirsty and dewless. That is a sign of rain. Innumerable worms
bore up to the surface and throw out little mounds
of soil. The fire runs up the outside of the teakettle.  Everything happens but rain, and lo!
there it comes I I felt a drop on my chin- -I
think; and certainly there another fell on my
nose. No, the clouds roll off, the worms creep
back again, the fire stays in the stove, the sun
comes out. The evilly-disposed one is victorious,
and there is no rain.
Is there not some malicious sprite who stirs up
the wind every night and morning when I want
to water the bank? It is work enough at best to
draw the water and carry it thirty yards and put
it on, but in addition the wind rises. If I stand
opposite, it whisks my dress into the water. If
I face it, it whisks the water against my dress.
In either case I am drenched, and then the dust
comes, and I am muddy. Just now a puff wrapped
my skirt directly and tightly around the spout
from whose fifty orifices the water was pouring,
and in a moment I was dripping. Have we not
a Surtur among us?
If we could stand off somewhere, and look at
creation as a whole, - that is, if we could occupy
the stand-point of the Supreme Being, or even,
perhaps, of the archangels, we should undoubtedly




28           CO UNTR Y LIVING.
say no without hesitation. We should see a grandeur in the conception of the universe, a skill in
execution, a perfect adaptation of all means to the
wisest end, such as could spring only from One
Being, and he the perfection of wisdom and of
power.  We should see everything ministering
to a common purpose, circling around a common
centre. Innumerable worlds sweep down the sky
in their appointed paths, and there is no accident.
The music of the spheres has not a jar of discord.
Within each world, doubtless, the same harmony
prevails. The microcosm is but the macrocosm
in miniature. Minuteness, as unerringly as vastness, points to one God. Nothing is done in vain.
Nothing does what it was not made to do. What
seems destruction is construction.  What seems
decay is growth. Disturbance is re-arrangement.
Death is but the unfolding of a higher life.
But it certainly seems to me that, judging simply from what we see, we should, to say the least,
be a very long while in arriving at this truth.
We learn from Revelation that there is but one
God, and then we take things as they are, and
group them around that central truth, and make
them "fadge."  Revelation laying down the theorem, we press creation into the proof; but the
unassisted human mind has always found great
difficulty in obtaining the unity of God as the
solution of the problem  of creation.  Without
Revelation, that sublime and simple truth seems




THE BANK.                 29
but blindly written on the sky and the rocks, —
seems, I say, — not that it is so written, but. our
unenlightened eyes would scarcely see more distinctly than did those Christ-anointed eyes of old,
to whom men were but as trees walking. We
should naturally suppose that, if the universe were
the thought of one mind, and the workl of one
hand, and that mind infinite in wisdom, and that
hand infinite in power, there would be everywhere
harmony, order, symmetry, finish. There would
be no clashing, no incompleteness, no incompatibility, but, as a matter of fact, there are all these.
And the theory which we should naturally form
would, I should think, be, that there are at least
two Deities, one indeed stronger than the other,
but not strong enough to hold the other in complete subjection, — not Omnipotent, not therefore
God. High and low, there seem to be indications
of two powers at work, -one a benevolent, and
one a malevolent one. In the sky, the planets
and the stars come from the kindly and wise hand
of the former. Grave and steadfast, they move
on their mighty paths with mathematical accuracy
and royal majesty. But of a sudden, from some
unexpected quarter, a herd of comets is let loose
among them, and the tricksy, capricious.sprites go
bobbing in here, there, and everywhere, doubling,
turning, and pirouetting around the stately monarchs of the sky; irreverent and elfish; now hitting Herschel a box on the ear, now giving Mer



so           COUNTRY LIVING.
cury a flap with their tails, and away again before
those dignified veterans have recovered from their
surprise enough to look about them; now getting
entangled with the satellites of Jupiter, and. now
whirling off on the double-quick through illimitable space; now rushing head-foremost straight
into the sun, and now careening over, and right
about face again; dashing in helter-skelter among
the sober old planets, threatening to hurtle against
our own little earth, and turn everything topsyturvy; curvetting and prancing among the startled
worlds; reined in just enough to feel the bit, but
not by any means enough to give a sense of secu.rity to the well-behaved citizens of the Stellar
Republic.
And how came the world that lay between Mars
and Jupiter to be broken into inch pieces, each
one setting up an orbit, and dashing around on its
own account? And who gave a wrong twirl to
the -moons of Uranus, and sent them spinning furiously backward instead of forward? And whence
came the torch that set fire to the star in Cassiopeia?  And what is become of the lost Pleiad?
And did not the new star that Tycho Brahe found
the peasants staring at, run a career that looked
very much as if some emulous and jealous power
had tried his bungling hand at world-making, and
succeeded so far as to set it going, but could neither guide nor stop it, and so it flamed and flared,
and staggered, and burned out?  And is not some




THE BANK.                 31
force continually trying to make the moon fall
into the earth, and the earth fall into the sun,
and things in general crash together and come
to grief?
We descend from the splendid, shining heavens
to our own homely, dingy, brown' little world, and
find ourselves plunged at once into a strong and
rapid current' going one way, with a strong and
rapid current in the midst of it going the other,
which of course does not make smooth sailing.
Everything seems to be conducted on the principle, " If you cannot do as you would, do as you
can."  It is all defect and compensation. It is as
if the powerful and benevolent Being had intended
to make everything on a perfect scale, and that
the malevolent and less powerful, but still mighty
Being, had struck in and marred, it all, and then
the first Being had made up the deficiency with
marvellous skill and kindness, but not so as quite
to conceal the deficiency. There is the ostrich that
set out to be a bird, but had its wings nipped in the
bud, and is only partially compensated for the loss
by a most extraordinary pair of legs. There is the
kangaroo, with his fore legs too short to signify, and
his hind legs as much too long, and who is consequently unable to walk, but manages to get on in
the world per saltum,-by extensive leaps.
Worse than this is the horrible rapacity, voracity,
and violence that crops out everywhere. - The
whole animal kingdom seems to be impelled by




32           COUNTRY LIVING.
two main motives, —to eat and not to be eaten.
The cat lies in wait for the mouse, and the dog
falls foul of the cat. The spider catches the fly,
and the chicken snaps up the spider, and the hawk
swoops away with the chicken. The alligator
lays its eggs, and the vulture goes and devours
them. The ant-lion decimates a whole colony of
ants. The ocean is a scene of constant guerilla
warfare. The big fishes eat the little ones, the
little ones eat the less, and they all eat each other.
The whale gulps down at one mouthful more individuals than there are men, women, and children in Massachusetts.
Everything that is beautiful is veined with something that is not. The country smiles with vineyards and orchards, and an earthquake comes and
swallows them up, or a volcano bursts, and blasts
and buries them  forever.  It is a fair land of
orange and pomegranate, of gorgeous flowers, brilliant birds, and magnificent beasts, but spiders as
big as sparrows, and centipedes whose touch is
death. The grand, eternal sea, invaluable for
communication, essential to life, soft under the
serene sky, sweet with the breath of the spice
islands nestling in its bosom, is treacherous and
hostile even in its friendship, nursing and nourishing in its hidden depths the whale which shall
smite your boat to fragments, and the cuttle-fish
that shall drag it down, and the shark that shall
swallow you when you get there.




THE BANK.                83
Now it certainly seems to me that, without Revelation, these things would be absolutely incomprehensible, and that the most probable hypothesis
would be that which so many pagan creeds set
forth, — that there is a Good One and an Evil
One, -an hypothesis which is indeed a shadow,
perhaps I ought rather to say, a rough likeness, of
the facts. It is the God and the Devil of Christianity, dimly revealed by creation, and distorted
by man's disturbed medium. We must believe,
because Paul affirmns it, that God has revealed himself clearly enough to make us without excuse for
not glorifying him as God; but, if not from our
original constitution, then from our original sin,
we did, and do, stand very much in need of this
direct verbal revelation to show us that his unity
is not trenched upon by the signs of duality that
appear in his works, that the good is supreme, and
the evil under subjection. With that fact laid
down in the Bible, and a general explanation of
the apparently antagonistic fact, we can adjust the
shreds of facts that come under our observation,
and establish harmony.  Given this vertebral
truth, our little branch truths join on, and there
is a plan and a Planner. But without this I fear
we should stumble grievously, as most unassisted
minds have stumbled. Standing in the very thick
of creation, it is difficult for us to'take in its great
wholeness. Mrs. Browning tells us that, if Mount
Athos had been
2*                      a




34            CO UNTRY LIVING.
" carved, as Persian Xerxes schemed,
To some colossal statue of a man,
The peasants, gathering brushwood in his ear,
Had guessed as little of any human form
Up there, as would a flock of browsing goats.
They'd have, in fact, to travel ten miles off
Or ere the giant image broke on them
Full human profile."
So it seems to me that we must have some distant stand-point, furnished by God in the natural
course of his providence, or by -a verbal revelation,
before we can read in the record of His works His
absolute omnipotence and unity. Even with revelation, we cannot always reconcile discrepancies.
Our fragment of knowledge does not enable us to
construct a system free from doubt. The existence of evil is still an unsolved problem. The
ultimatum of reason and science is an " if."  We
fall back on faith, and the reassurance of Divine
Love is, " What thou knowest not now, thou shalt
know hereafter."
Trusting in that Divine love, we take in all the
bafflings and buffetings of life, yet feel in our inmost hearts, and shout with exultant voices -
The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth. Hallelujah.  He giveth and keepeth back.  He holds
the deep in the hollow of his hand, and giving
does not impoverish him, neither does withholding
enrich him. He could give us little sprinklings
or great rains if he chose. When he does not,
there must be some reason for it. Perhaps one
object is to show us that we ought to turn our




TIIE BANK.               35
attention to modes of artificial irrigation. We are
very ignorant and careless about that, we almost
entirely "let time and chance determine."  God
gives us plenty of water in the course of the year,
but it belongs to us to distribute it properly. That
is the way God does give us things generally,
not the whole, but the basis. We must work its
completion. There is plenty of iron, but we must
dig for it, - plenty of salt, but we must separate it
from the brine, - plenty of bread, but it does not
grow in loaves. I wish people who have inventive
genius would bestir themselves. I haven't; but
I should like a little rain now and then.
I dare say another reason is to try our patience,
and also make it stronger. We have not all of us
a bank, but a good many of us have peas, and
beans, and lettuce, and morning-glory, and asters,
and young apple-trees, in which we feel a tender
interest. Can we see them dying of thirst, rolling
their tender leaves in parched distress, and yet be
quite calm and sweet-tempered,- remember that
the Lord has plenty of rain, and yet not be impatient or fret because he does not choose to bestow
it?  If there is any Achan in the camp whose
discontent keeps blessings from us, let him make
confession and repent. Let us all be content and
glad without rain,.if so be the Lord will give us
here a little and there a little.
Meanwhile there are many things to be grateful
for. Once in a while a heavy dew comes through




36          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
the drought, and the earth smiles in the early
morning. Dew is beautiful in poetry, but more
beautiful on banks when there is no rain. How
grateful should we be if our wells do not give out,
for then not only the grass, but we should suffer, — grateful, too, if our neighbors' wells do not
fail, for then they would come to ours, and bank
and gardens would stay thirsty. For men and women and little children must be served, even if
banks go by the board. Then, too, it is so pleasant to take care of grass. It is so strong and
helpful and thankful. Flowers have a languish
ing, drooping air, as if they would about as soon
die as live, if it's all the same to you; but the
grass is sturdy. It makes a desperate struggle for
existence. It pulls and tugs away at its little
thread of life with a forty-horse power. When
it is faint, and almost despairing, give it three
drops of water, and it starts up again, and is at it,
good as new. Every morning it winks and blinks
up at you cheerily, as much as to say, " Here I
am. Reckon on me. If I was born to be hay,
I'm determined not to die grass. Just you do
your part, and you may be sure I will do mine! "
Dear old grass, I knew you would, though you
did look very crisp and bunchy and desperate.
I kept faith in you, and you kept faith with me;
holding your own till the windows of heaven were
opened, and then softening and strengthening into
beauty and vigor and velvet verdancy.  Now




THE BANKM.                 87
your deft blades cleave the air. Your cloverheads breathe fragrance from their white and
purple loveliness. Your saucy buttercups
flash back his rays to the summer
sun, and through your fairy
forests I hear the
hum of many
a bee.




MY GARDEN.
CAN  speak of it calmly now; but
there have been moments when the
llightest mention of those words would
sway my soul to its profoundest depths.
I am a woman. You may have inferred this
before; but I now desire to state it distinctly,
because I like to do as I would be done by, when
I can just as well as not. It rasps a person of my
temperament exceedingly to be deceived. When
any one tells a story, we wish to know at the
outset whether the story-teller is a man or a woman. The two sexes awaken two entirely distinct
sets of feelings, and you would no more use the
one for the other than you would put on your tiny
teacups at breakfast, or lay the carving-knife by
the butter-plate. Consequently it is very exasperating to sit, open-eyed and expectant, watching the
removal of the successive swathings which hide
from you the dusky glories of an old-time princess, and, when the unrolling is over, to find it
is nothing, after all, but a great lubberly boy.




MY GA RDEN.                39
Equally trying is it to feel your interest clustering
round a narrator's manhood, all your individuality
merging in his, till, of a sudden, by the merest
chance, you catch the swell of crinoline, and there
you are. Away with such clumsiness! Let us
have everybody christened before we begin.
I do, therefore, with Spartan firmness, depose
and say that I am a woman. I am aware that I
place myself at signal disadvantage by the avowal.
I fly in the face of hereditary prejudice. I am
thrust at once beyond the pale of masculine sympathy. Men will neither credit my success nor
lament my failure, because they will consider me
poaching on their manor.  If I chronicle a big
beet, they will bring forward one twice as large.
If I mourn a deceased squash, they will mutter,
" Woman's farming!"  Shunning Scylla, I shall
perforce fall into Charybdis.  ( Vde Classical
Dictionary. I have lent mine, but I know one
was a rock and the other a whirlpool, though I
cannot state, with any definiteness, which was
which.) I may be as humble and deprecating as
I choose, but it will not avail me. A very agony
of self-abasement will be no armor against the
poisoned shafts which assumed superiority will
hurl against me.  Yet I press the arrow to my
bleeding heart, and calmly reiterate, I am a woman.
The full magnanimity of which reiteration can
be perceived only when I inform you that I could




40           COUNTRY LIVING.
easily deceive you, if I chose.  There is about
my serious style a vigor of thought, a comprehensiveness of view, a closeness of logic, and a terseness of diction, commonly supposed to pertain only
to the stronger sex. Not wanting in a certain fanciful sprightliness which is the peculiar grace of
woman, it possesses also, in large measure, that
concentrativeness which is deemed the peculiar
strength of man. Where an ordinary woman
will leave the beaten track, wandering in a thousand little by-ways of her own,- flowery and
beautiful, it is true, and leading her airy feet to
"sunny spots of greenery" and the gleam  of
golden apples, but keeping her not less surely
from the goal, — I march straight on, turning
neither to the right hand nor to the left, beguiled
into no side-issues, discussing no collateral question, but with keen eye and strong hand aiming
right at the heart of my theme. Judge thus of
the stern severity of my virtue. There is no
heroism in denying ourselves the pleasures which
we cannot compass. It is not self-sacrifice, but
self-cherishing, that turns the dyspeptic alderman
away from turtle-soup and the pdte de foie gras
to mush and milk. The hungry newsboy, regaling his nostrils with the scents that come up from
a subterranean kitchen, does not always know
whether or not he is honest, till the cook turns
away for a moment, and a steaming joint is within
reach of his yearning fingers.  It is no credit to




MY GARDEN.                 41
a weak-minded woman not to be strong-minded and
write poetry. She could not if she tried; but to
feed on locusts and wild honey that the soul may
be in better condition to fight the truth's battles,to go with empty stomach for a clear conscience'
sake,- to sacrifice intellectual tastes to womanly
duties, when the two conflict," That's the true pathos and sublime,
Of human life."
You will, therefore, no longer withhold your appreciative admiration, when, in full possession of
what theologians call the power of contrary choice,
I make the unmistakable assertion that I am a
woman.
Hope told a flattering tale when, excited and
happy, but not sated with the gayeties of a sojourn
among urban and urbane friends, I set out on my
triumphal march from the city of my visit to the
estate of my adoption. Triumphal indeed! My
pathway was strewed with roses. Feathery asparagus and the crispness of tender lettuce waved
dewy greetings from every railroad-side; green
peas crested the racing waves of Long Island
Sound, and unnumbered carrots of gold sprang
up in the wake of the ploughing steamer; till
I was wellnigh drunk with the new wine of my
own purple vintage. But I was not ungenerous.
In the height of my innocent exultation, I remembered the dwellers in cities who do all their
gardening at stalls, and in my heart I determined,




42          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
when the season should be fully blown, to invite
as many as my house could hold to share with me
the delight of plucking strawberries from their
stems and drinking in foaming health from the
balmy-breathed cows. Moreover, in the exuberance of my joy, I determined to go still further,
and despatch to those doomed ones who cannot
purchase even a furlough from burning pavements
baskets of fragrance and sweetness. I pleased myself with pretty conceits. To one who toils early
and late in an official Sahara, that the home-atmosphere may always be redolent of perfume, I would
send a bunch of long-stemmed white and crimson
rose-buds, in the midst of which he should find a
dainty note whispering, " Dear Fritz: drink this
pure glass of my overflowing June to the health
of weans and wife, not forgetting your unforgetful
friend." To a pale-browed, sad-eyed woman, who
flits from velvet carpets and broidered flounces to
t.he bedside of an invalid mother whom her slender
fingers and unslender and most godlike devotion
can scarcely keep this side the pearly gates, I
would heap a basket of summer-hued peaches
smiling up from cool, green leaves into their
straitened home, and with eyes, perchance, teardimmed, she should read, " My good Maria, the
peaches are to go to your lips, the bloom to your
cheeks, and the gardener to your heart."  Ah
me! How much grace and gladness may bud
and blossom in one little garden! Only three




MY GARDEN.                 43
acres of land, but what a crop of sunny surprises,
unexpected tenderness, grateful joys, hopes, loves,
and restful memories! - what wells of happiness,
what sparkles of mirth, what sweeps of summer in
the heart, what glimpses of the Upper Country!
Halicarnassus was there before me (in the garden, I mean, not in the spot last alluded, to). It
has been the one misfortune of my life that Halicarnassus got the start of me at the outset. With
a fair field and no favor I should have been quite
adequate to him. As it was, he was born and
began, and there was no resource left to me but
to be born and follow, which I did as fast as possible; but that one false move could never be
redeemed. I know there are shallow thinkers
who love to prate of the supremacy of mind over
matter, -who assert that circumstances are plastic
as clay in the hands of the man who knows how
to mould them. They clench their fists, and inflate their lungs, and quote Napoleon's proud
boast, -" Circumstances! I make circumstances! "
Vain babblers! Whither did this Napoleonic idea
lead? -To a barren rock in a waste of waters.
Do we need St. Helena and Sir Hudson Lowe
to refute it?  Control circumstances! I should
like to know if the most important circumstance
that can happen to a man is not to be born? and
if that is under his control, or in any way affected
by his whims and wishes? Would not Louis
XVI. have been the son of a goldsmith, if he




44          COUNTRY LIVING.
could have had his way? Would Burns have
been born a slaving, starving peasant, if he had
been consulted beforehand?  Would not the children of vice be the children of virtue, if they
could have had their choice? and would not the
whole tenor of their lives have been changed thereby? Would a good many of us have been born
at all, if we could have helped it? Control circumstances, forsooth! when a mother's sudden
terror brings an idiot child into the' world, - when
the restive eye of his great-grandfather, whom he
never saw, looks at you from your two-year-old,
and the spirit of that roving ancestor makes the
boy also a fugitive and a vagabond on the earth!
No, no. We may coax circumstances a little,
and shove them about, and make the best of them,
but there they are. We may try to get out of
their way; but they will trip us up, not once,
but many times. We may affect to tread them
under foot in the daylight, but in the night-time
they will turn again and rend us. All we can
do is first to accept them as facts, and then reason
fiom them as premises. We cannot control them,
but we can control our own use of them. We
can make them a savor of life unto life, or of
death unto death.
Application. — If mind could have been supreme over matter, Halicarnassus should, in the
first place, have taken the world at second-hand
from me, and, in the second place, he should not




MY GARDEN.                 45
have stood smiling on the front-door steps when
the coach set me down there. As it was, I made
the best of the one case by following in his foot:
steps,- not meekly, not acquiescently, but protesting, yet following, - and of the other, by smiling responsive and asking pleasantly, -
"Are the things planted yet?"' No," said Halicarnassus.
This was better than I had dared to hope.
When I saw him standing there so complacent
and serene, I felt certain that a storm was brewing,
or rather had brewed, and burst over my garden,
and blighted its fair prospects.  I was confident
that he had gone and planted every square inch of
the soil with some hideous absurdity, which would
spring up a hundred-fold in perpetual reminders
of the one misfortune to which I have alluded.
So his ready answer gave me relief, and yet
I could not divest myself of a vague fear, a sense
of coming thunder.' In spite of my endeavors,
that calm, clear face would lift itself to my view as
a mere " weather-breeder"; but I ate my supper,
unpacked my trunks, took out my papers of precious seeds, and, sitting in the flooding sunlight
under the little western porch, I poured them into
my lap, and bade Halicarnassus come to me. He
came, I am sorry to say, with a pipe in his mouth.
"Do you wish to see my jewels?" I asked,
looking as much like Cornelia as a little woman
somewhat inclined to dumpiness can.




46           CO UNTR Y LIVING.
Halicarnassus nodded assent.
"There," said I, unrolling a paper, "that is
Lychnidea acuminata.  Sometimes it flowers in
white masses, pure as a baby's soul. Sometimes
it glows in purple, pink, and crimson, intense, but
unconsuming, like Horeb's burning bush. The
old Greeks knew it well, and they baptized its
prismatic loveliness with their sunny symbolism,
and called it the Flame-Flower.  These very
seeds may have sprung centuries ago from the
hearts of heroes who sleep at Marathon; and
when their tender petals quiver in the sunlight of
my garden, I shall see the gleam of Attic armor
and the flash of fiery souls. Like heroes, too,
it is both beautiful and bold. It does not demand
careful cultivation, -no hot-house tenderness -"
" I should rather think not," interrupted Halicarnassus. "Pat Curran has his front-yard full
of it."
I collapsed at once, and asked, humbly, -
"Where did he get it?"
"Got it anywhere. It grows wild almost. It's
nothing but phlox. My opinion is, that the old
Greeks knew no more about it than that brindled
cow."
Nothing further occurring to me to be said on
the subject, I waived it, and took up another parcel, on which I spelled out, with some difficulty,
"l)Delhinium  exaltatum.  Its name indicates its
nature."




MY GARDEN.                 47
"It's an exalted dolphin, then, I suppose," said
Halicarnassus.
"Yes!" I said, dexterously catching up an
argumentum ad hominem, "it is an exalted dolphin,
- an apotheosized dolphin, - a dolphin made glorious. For, as the dolphin Catches the sunbeams
and sends them back with a thousand added splendors, so this flower opens its quivering bosom and
gathers from the vast laboratory of the sky the
purple of a monarch's robe, and the ocean's deep,
calm blue. In its gracious cup you shall see-"
"A  fiddlestick!" jerked out Halicarnassus,
profanely.  "What are you raving about such
a precious bundle of weeds for?  There is n't
a shoemaker's apprentice in the village that has
n't his seven-by-nine garden overrun with them.
You might have done better than bring cart-loads
of phlox and larkspur a thousand miles. Why
did n't you import a few hollyhocks, or a sunflower or two, and perhaps a dainty slip of cabbage? A pumpkin-vine, now, would climb over
the front-door deliciously, and a row of burdocks
would make a highly entertaining border."
The reader will bear me witness that I had met
my first rebuff with humility.  It was probably
this very humility that emboldened him to a
second attack. I determined to change my tactics, and give battle.
"Halicarnassus," said I, severely, "you are a
hypocrite. You set up for a Democrat —" -




48           COUNTRY LIVING.'" Not I," interrupted he; "I voted for Harrison
in'40, and for Fremont in'56, and —"
"Nonsense! " interrupted I, in turn; "I mean
a Democrat etymological, not a Democrat political.
You stand by the Declaration of Independence,
and believe in liberty, equality, and'raternity, and
that all men are of one blood; and here you are,
ridiculing these innocent flowers, because their
brilliant beauty is not shut up in a conservatory,
to exhale its fragrance on a fastidious few, but
blooms on all alike, gladdening the home of exile
and lightening the burden of labor."
Halicarnassus saw  that I had made a point
against him, and preserved a discreet silence.
"But you are wrong," I went on, " even if you
are right. You may laugh to scorn my floral
treasures, because they seem to you common and
unclean, but your laughter is premature. It is no
ordinary seed that you see before, ou. It sprang
from no profane soil. It came from the   the —
some kind of an office at WASHINGTON, sir! It
was given me by one whose name stands high on
the scroll of fame, - a statesman whose views are
as broad as his judgment is sound, —an orator
who holds all hearts in his hand, - a man who is
always found on the side of the feeble truth against
the strong falsehood, - whose sympathy for all
that is good, whose hostility to all that is bad, and
whose boldness in every righteous cause, make
him alike the terror and abhorrence of the op



71Y GARDEN.               49
pressor, and the hope and joy and staff of the
oppressed."
"What is his name?" said Halicarnassus,
phlegmatically.
" And-for your miserable pumpkin-vine," I went
on, " behold this morning-glory, that shall open its
barbaric splendor to the sun and mount heavenward on the sparkling chariots of the dew.  -I
took this from the white hand of a young girl in
whose heart poetry and purity have met, grace
and virtue have kissed each other, - whose feet
have danced over lilies and roses, who has " known
no sterner duty than to give caresses," and whose
gentle, spontaneous, and ever-active loveliness continually remind me that of such is the kingdom of
heaven."
"Courted yet?" asked Halicarnassus, with a
show of interest.
I transfixed him with a look, and continued, —
" This Maurandia, a climber, it may be common or it may be a king's ransom. I only know
that it is rosy-hued, and that I shall look at life
through its pleasant medium.  Some fantastic
trellis, brown and benevolent, shall knot support-'ing arms around it, and day by day it shall'twine
daintily up toward my southern window, and whisper softly of the sweet-voiced, tender-eyed woman
from whose fairy bower it came in rosy wrappings.
And this Nemophila,' blue as my brother's eyes,'
-the brave young brother whose heroism and
3                      D




50           CO UNTR Y LIVING.
manhood have outstripped his years, and who
looks forth from the dark leafiness of far Australia
lovingly and longingly over the blue waters, as
if, floating above them, he might catch the flutter
of white garments and the smile on a sister's
lip - "
"What are you going to do with'em? " put in
Halicarnassus again.
I hesitated a moment, undecided whether to be
amiable or bellicose under the provocation, but
concluded that my ends would stand a better
chance of being gained by adopting the former
course, and so answered seriously, as if I had not
been switched off the track, but was going on
with perfect continuity,"To-morrow I shall take observations. Then,
where the situation seems most favorable, I shall
lay out a garden. I shall plant these seeds in it,
except the vines and such things, which I wish to
put near the house to hide as much as possible its
garish white. Then, with every little tender shoot
that appears above the ground, there will blossom
also a pleasant memory, or a sunny hope, or an
admiring thrill."
" What do you expect will be the market-value
of that crop? "
" Wealth which an empire could not purchase,"
I answered, with enthusiasm. "But I shall not
confine my attention to flowers. I shall make the
useful go with the beautiful. I shall plant vege



MylY G A.DEN.              51
tables, — lettuce, and asparagus, and —so forth.
Our table shall be garnished with the products of
our own soil, and our own works shall praise us."
There was a pause of several minutes, during
which I fondled the seeds, and Halicarnassus enveloped himself in clouds of smoke. Presently
there was a cessation of puffs, a rift in the cloud
showed that the oracle was opening his mouth,
and directly thereafter he delivered himself of the
encouraging remark, -
" If we don't have any vegetables till we raise'em, we shall be carnivorous for some time to
come."
It was said with that provoking indifference
more trying to a sensitive mind than downright
insult. You know  it is based on some hidden
obstacle, palpable to your enemy, though hidden
from you, - and that he is calm because he knows
that the nature of things will work against you,
so that he need not interfere. If I had been less
interested, I would have revenged myself on him
by remaining silent; but I was very much interested, so I strangled my pride and said,- "Why not?"
"Land is too old for such things. Soil is n't
mellow enough."
I had always supposed that the greater part of
the main-land of our continent was of equal antiquity, and dated back alike to the alluvial period;
but I suppose our little three acres must have been




652         COUN'TR Y LIVING.
injected through the intervening strata by some
physical convulsion, from the drift, or the tertiary
formation, perhaps even from the primitive granite.
"What are you going to do?" I ventured to
inquire. "I don't suppose the land will grow any
younger by keeping."
"Plant it with corn and potatoes for at least
two years before there can be anything like a gardell."
And Halicarnassus put up his pipe and betook
himself to the house, - and I was glad of it, the
abominable bore! - to sit there and listen to my
glowing schemes, knowing all the while that they
were soap-bubbles. "Corn and potatoes," indeed!
I did n't believe a word of it. Halicarnassus always had an insane passion for corn and potatoes.
Land represented to him so many bushels of the
one or the other. Now corn and potatoes are very
well in their way, but, like every other innocent
indulgence, carried too far, become a vice; and I
more than suspected he had planned the stratagem
simply to gratify his own weakness. Corn and
potatoes, indeed!
But when Halicarnassus entered the lists against
me, he found an opponent worthy of his steel.
A few more such victories would be his ruin. A
grand scheme fired and filled my mind during the
silent watches of the night, and sent me forth in
the morning, jubilant with high resolve. Alexander might weep that he had no more worlds to




MY GARDEN.                 53
conquer; but I would create new. Archimedes
might desiderate a place to stand on, before he
could bring his lever into play; I would move the
world, self-poised. If Halicarnassus fancied that
I was cut up, dispersed, and annihilated by one
disaster, he should weep tears of blood to see me
rise, Phoenix-like, from the ashes of my dead
hopes, to a newer and more glorious life. Here,
having exhausted my classics, I took a long sweep
down to modern times, and vowed in my heart
never to give up the ship.
Halicarnassus saw that a fell purpose was working in my mind, but a certain high tragedy in my
aspect warned him to silence; so he only dogged
me around the corners of the house, eyed me
askance from the wood-shed, and peeped through
the crevices of the demented little barn. But his
vigilance bore no fruit. I but walked moodily
" with folded arms and fixed eyes," or struck out
new paths at random, so long as there were any
vestiges of his creation extant.  His time and
patience being at length exhausted, he went into
the field to immolate himself with ever new devotion on the shrine of corn and potatoes. Then
my scheme came to a head at once. In my walking, I had observed a box about three feet long,
two broad, and one foot deep, which Halicarnassus, with his usual disregard of the proprieties
of life, had used to block up a gateway that was
waiting for a gate. It was just what I wanted.




54           COUNTRY LIVING.
I straightway knocked out the few nails that kept
it in place, and, like another Samson, bore it away
on my shoulders. It was not an easy thing to
manage, as any one may find by trying, —nor
would I advise young ladies, as a general thing, to
adopt that form of exercise, —but the end, not
the means, was my object, and by skilful diplomacy I got it up the back-stairs and through
my window, out upon the roof of the porch directly below. I then took the ash-pail and the
fire-shovel, and went into the field, carefully keeping the lee-side of Halicarnassus. " Good, rich
loam" I had observed all the gardening books to
recommend; but wherein the virtue or the richness of loam consisted I did not feel competent
to decide, and I scorned to ask. There seemed
to be two kinds: one black, damp, and dismal;
the other fine, yellow, and good-natured. A little
reflection decided me to take the latter. Gold
constituted riches, and this was yellow like gold.
Moreover, it seemed to have more life in it.
Night and darkness belonged to the other, while
the very heart of sunshine and summer seemed to
be imprisoned in this golden dust. So I plied my
shovel and filled my pail again and again, bearing
it aloft with joyful labor, eager to be through
before Halicarnassus should reappear; but he got
on the trail just as I was whisking up-stairs for the
last time, and shouted, astonished,"What are you doing?"




MY GARDEN.                 55
"Nothing," I answered, with that well-known
accent which says, " Everything! and I mean
to keep doing it."
I have observed, that, in managing parents,
husbands, lovers, brothers, and indeed all classes
of inferiors, nothing is so efficacious as to let them
know at the outset that you are going to have your
own way. They may fret a little at first, and interpose a few puny obstacles, but it will be only atemporary obstruction; whereas, if you parley and
hesitate and suggest, they will but gather courage
and strength for a formidable resistance.  It is the
first step that costs. Halicarnassus understood at
once from my one small shot that I was in a mood
to be let alone, and he let me alone accordingly.
I remembered he had said that the soil was not
mellow  enough, and I determined that my soil
should be mellow, to which end I took it up by
handfuls and squeezed it through my fingers, completely pulverizing it.  It was not -disagreeable
work. Things in their right places are very seldom disagreeeble. A spider on your dress is a
horror, but a spider out-doors is rather interesting.
Besides, the loam had a fine, soft feel that was
absolutely pleasant; but a hideous black and yellow reptile with horns and hoofs, that winked up
at me from it, was decidedly unpleasant and out
of place, and I at once concluded that the soil
was sufficiently mellow  for my purposes, and
smoothed it off directly. Then; with delighted




56           COUNTR Y LIVING.
fingers, in sweeping circles, and fantastic whirls,
and exact triangles, I planted my seeds with generous profusion, determined, that, if my wilderness
did not blossom, it should not be from niggardliness of seed. But even then my box was full
before my basket was emptied, and I was very
reluctantly compelled to bring down from the
~garret another box, which had been the property
of my great-grandfather.  My great-grandfather
was, I regret to say, a barber. I would rather
never have had any. If there is anything in the
world besides worth that I reverence, it is ancestry. My whole life long have I been in search
of a pedigree, and though I run well at the beginning, I invariably stop short at the third remove by running my head into a barber's shop.
If he had only been a farmer, now, I should not
have minded. There is something dignified and
antique in land, and no one need trouble himself
to ascertain whether "farmer " stood for a closefisted, narrow-souled clodhopper, or the smiling,
benevolent master of broad acres. Farmer means
both these, I could have chosen the meaning I
liked, and it is not probable that any troublesome
facts would have floated down the years to intercept any theory I might have launched. I would
rather he had been a shoemaker; it would have
been so easy to transform him, after his lamented
decease, into a shoe-manufacturer, - and shoemanufacturers, we all know, are highly respectable




MY GARDEN.                 57
people, often become great men, and get sent to
Congress.  An apothecary might have figured
as an M. D. A green-grocer might have been
sublimated into a merchant. A dancing-master
would flourish on the family records as a professor
of the Terpsichorean art. A taker of daguerrotype portraits would never be recognized in " my
great-grandfather the artist." But a barber is unmitigated and immitigable. It cannot be shaded
off, nor toned down, nor brushed up. Besides, was
greatness ever allied to barberity? Shakespeare's
father was a wool-driver, Tillotson's a clothier,
Barrow's a- linen-draper, Defoe's a butcher, Milton's a scrivener, Richardson's a joiner, Burns's
a' farmer; but did any one ever hear of a barber's
having remarkable children?  I must say, with
all deference to my great-grandfather, that I do
wish he would have been considerate enough of
his descendants' feelings to have been born in the
old days when barbers and doctors were one, or
else have chosen some other occupation than barbering. Barber he did, however; in this very box
he kept his wigs, and, painful as it was to have
continually before my eyes this perpetual reminder
of plebeian great-grand-paternity, I consented to
it rather than lose my seeds. Then I folded my
hands in sweet, though calm satisfaction. I had
proved myself equal to the emergency, and that
always diffuses a glow of genial complacency
through the soul. I had outwitted Halicarnassus.
3*




58          COUNTRY LIVING.
Exultation number two.  He had designed to
cheat me out of my garden by a story about land,
and here was my garden ready to burst forth into
blossom under my eyes.  He said little, but I
knew he felt deeply. I caught him one.day looking out at my window with corroding envy in
every lineament.  "You might have got some
dust out of the road; it would have been nearer."
That was all he said. Even that little I did not
fully understand.
I watched, and waited, and watered, in silent
expectancy, for several days, but nothing came up,
and I began to be anxious. Suddenly I thought
of my vegetable-seeds, and determined to try
those. Of course a hanging kitchen-garden was
not to be thought of, and as Halicarnassus was
fortunately absent for a few days, I prospected on
the farm. A sunny little corner on a southern
slope smiled up at me, and seemed to offer itself
as a delightful situation for the diminutive garden
which mine must be. The soil, too, seemed as
fine and mellow as could be desired. I at once
captured an Englishman from a neighboring plantation, hurried him into my corner, and bade him
dig me and hoe me and plant me a garden as soon
as possible. He looked blankly at me for a moment, and I looked blankly at him, wondering
what lion he saw in the way.
"Them is planted with potatoes now," he
gasped, at length.




MY GARDEN.                 559'No matter," I returned, with sudden relief to
find that nothing but potatoes interfered.  " I
want it to be unplanted, and planted with vegetables, - lettuce and - asparagus - and such."
He stood hesitating.
"Will the master like it?"
"Yes," said Diplomacy, " he will be delighted."
"No matter whether he likes it or not," codiciled Conscience.  "You do it."
" I - don't exactly like - to - take the responsibility," wavered this modern Faint-Heart.
"I don't want you to take the responsibility," I
ejaculated, with volcanic vehemence. "I'11 take
ihe responsibility. You take the hoe!"
These duty-people do infuriate me. They are
so afraid to do anything that is n't laid out in a
right-angled triangle. Every path must be graded
and turfed before they dare set their scrupulous
feet in it. I like conscience, but, like corn and
potatoes, carried too far, it becomes a vice.  I
think I could commit a murder with less hesitation
than some people buy a ninepenny calico. And to
see that man stand here, balancing probabilities
over a piece of ground no bigger than a bed-quilt,
as if a nation's fate were at stake, was enough to
ruffle a calmer temper than mine. My impetuosity
impressed him, however, and he began to lay about
him vigorously with hoe and rake and lines, and,
in an incredibly short space of time, had a bit of
square flatness laid out with wonderful precision.




60          COUNTR Y LIVrING.
Meanwhile I had ransacked my vegetable-bag,
and, though lettuce and asparagus were not there,
plenty of beets and parsnips and squashes, etc.
were. I let him take his choice. He took the
first two. The rest were left on my hands. But
I had gone too far to recede. They burned in my
pocket for a few days, and I saw that I must get
them into the ground somewhere.  I could not
sleep with them in the room. They were wandering shades, craving at my hands a burial, and I
determined to put them where Banquo's ghost
would not go, —down. Down accordingly they
went, but not symmetrically nor simultaneously.
I faced Halicarnassus on the subject of the beetbed, and though I cannot say that either of us
gained a brilliant victory, yet I can say that I
kept possession of the ground; still, I did not care
to risk a second encounter. So I kept my seeds
about me continually, and dropped them surreptitiously as occasion offered. Consequently, my
garden, taken as a whole, was located where the
Penobscot Indian was born, -  all along shore."
The squashes were scattered among the corn.
The beans were tucked under the brushwood,
in the fond hope that they would climb up it.
Two tomiato-plants were lodged in the potato-field,
under the protection of some broken apple-branches
dragged thither for the purpose. The cucumbers
went down on the sheltered side of a wood-pile.
The peas took their chances of life under the sink



MY GARDEN.                 61
nose. The sweet-corn was marked off from the
rest by a broomstick,- and all took root alike
in my heart.
May I ask you now, O friend, who, I would
fain believe, have followed me thus far with no
hostile eyes, to glide in tranced forgetfulness
through the white blooms of May and the roses
of June, into the warm breath of July afternoons
and the languid pulse of August, perhaps even
into the mild haze of September and the "flying
gold" of brown October?  In narrating to you
the fruition of my hopes, I shall endeavor to preserve that calm equanimity which is the birthright
of royal minds. I shall endeavor not to be unduly' elated by success nor unduly depressed by
failure, but to state in simple language the result
of my experiments, both for an encouragement and
a warning. I shall give the history of the several
ventures separately, as nearly as I can recollect
in the order in which they grew, beginning with
the humbler ministers to our appetites, and soaring gradually into the region of the poetical and
the beautiful.
BEETS. —The beets came up, little red-veined
leaves, struggling for breath among a tangle of
Roman wormwood and garlic; and though they
exibited great tenacity of life, they also exibited
great irregularity of purpose. In one spot there
would be nothing, in an adjacent spot a whorl of




62          COUNTR Y LIVIi G.
beets, big and little, crowding and jostling and
elbowing each other, like school-boys round the
red-hot stove on a winter's morning. I knew they
had been planted in a right line, and I don't even
now comprehend why they did not come up in
a right line. I weeded them, and though freedom
from foreign growth discovered an intention of
straightness, the most casual observer could not
but see that skewiness had usurped its place. I
repaired to my friend the gardener. He said they
must be thinned out and transplanted. It went to
my heart to pull up the dear things, but I did it,
and set them down again tenderly in the vacant
spots. It was evening. The next morning I went
to them. Flatness has a new meaning to me since
that morning. You can hardly conceive that anything could look so utterly forlorn, disconsolate,
disheartened, and collapsed. In fact, they exhibited a degree of depression so entirely beyond what
the circumstances demanded, that I was enraged.
If-they had shown any symptoms of trying to live,
I could have sighed and forgiven them; but, on
the contrary, they had flopped and died without a
struggle, and I pulled them up without a pang,
comforting myself with the remaining ones, which
throve on their companions' graves, and waxed fat
and full and crimson-hearted, in their soft, brown
beds. So delighted was I with their luxuriant
rotundity, that I made an internal resolve that
henceforth I would always plant beets. True, I




MY GARDEN.                 63
cannot abide beets. Their fiagrance and their flavor are alike nauseating; but they come up, and a
beet that will come up is better than a cedar of
Lebanon that won't. In all the vegetable kingdom
I know of no quality better than this, growth,nor any quality that will atone for its absence.
PARSNIPS.- They ran the race with an indescribable vehemence that fairly threw the beets
into the shade. They trod so delicately at first
that I was quite unprepared for such enthusiasm.
Lacking the red veining, I could not distinguish
them from the weeds with any certainty, and
was forced to let both grow together till the harvest.  So both grew together, a perfect jungle.
But the parsnips got ahead, and rushed up gloriously, magnificently, bacchanalianly,- as the
winds come when forests are rended, — as the
waves come when navies are stranded.  I am,
indeed, troubled with a suspicion that their vitality has all run to leaves,'and that, when I go
down into the depths of the earth for the parsnips,
I shall find only bread of emptiness. It is a pleasing reflection that parsnips cannot be eaten till
the second year. I am told that they must lie
in the ground during the winter. Consequently
it cannot be decided whether there are any or
not till next spring. I shall in the mean time
assume and assert, without hesitation or qualification, that there are as many tubers below the




64           COUNTRY LIVING.
surface as there are leaves above it.  I shall
thereby enjoy a pleasant consciousness, and the
respect of all, for the winter; and if disappointment awaits me in the spring, time will have
blunted its keenness for me, and other people
will have forgotten the whole subject. You may
be sure I shall not remind them of it.
CUCUMBERS. —The cucumbers came up so far,
and stuck. It must have been innate depravity,
for there was no shadow of reason why they
should not keep on as they began.  They did
not. They stopped growing in the prime of life.
Only three cucumbers developed, and they hid
under the vines so that I did not see them till
they were become ripe, yellow, soft, and worthless. They are an unwholesome. fruit at best,
and I bore their loss with great fortitude.
TOMATOES. -Both dead. I had been instructed
to protect them from the frost by night and from
the sun.by day. I intended to do so ultimately,
but I did not suppose there was any emergency.
A frost came the first night and killed them,
and a hot sun the next day burned up all there
was left.   When they were both thoroughly
dead, I took great pains to cover them every
night and noon.  No symptoms of revival appearing to reward my efforts, I left them to
shift for themselves. I did not think there was




MY GARDEN.                65
any need of their dying in the first place; and
if they would be so absurd as to die without
provocation, I did not see the necessity of going
into a decline about it.  Besides, I never did
value plants or animals that have to be nursed,
and petted, and coaxed to live.  If things want
to die, I think they'd better die.  Provoked
by my indifference, one of the tomatoes flared
up, and took a new start, -put forth leaves, shot
out vines, and covered himself with fruit and
glory. The chickens picked out the heart of all
the tomatoes as soon as they ripened, which was
of no consequence, however, as they had wasted
so much time in the beginning that the autumn
frosts came upon them unawares, and there
would n't have been fruit enough ripe to be of
any account, if no chicken had ever broken a
shell.
SQUASHES. - They appeared above-ground,
large-lobed and vigorous.  Large and vigorous
appeared the bugs, all gleaming in green and
gold, like the wolf on the fold, and stopped up
all the stomata and ate up all the parenchyma,
till my squash-leaves looked as if they had grown
for the sole purpose of illustrating net-veined organizations. In consternation I sought again my
neighbor the Englishman.  He assured me he
had'em on his, too, — lots of'em.  This reconciled me to mine. Bugs are not inherently
3;




66           CO UNTR Y LIVING.
desirable, but a universal bug does not indicate
special want of skill in any one. So I was comforted. But the Englishman said they must be
killed. He had killed his. Then I said I would
kill mine, too.  How should it be done?  0,
put a shingle near the vine at night, and they
would crawl upon it to keep dry, and'go out
early in the morning and kill'em. But how to
kill them? Why, take'em right between your
thumb and finger and crush'em!
As soon as I could recover breath, I informed
him confidentially, that, if the world were one
great squash, I would n't undertake to save it in
that way. He smiled a little, but I think he was
not overmuch pleased. I asked him why I could
n't take a bucket of water and dip the shingle in
it and drown them. He said, well, I could try it.
I did try it, - first wrapping my hand in a cloth
to prevent contact with any stray bug. To my
amazement, the moment they touched the water
they all spread unseen wings and flew away, safe
and sound. I should not have been much more
surprised to see Halicarnassus soaring over the
ridge-pole. I had not the slightest idea that they
could fly. Of course I gave up the design of
drowning them. I called a council of war. One
said I must put a newspaper over them and fasten
it down at the edges; then they could n't get in.
I timidly suggested that the squashes could n't get
out. Yes, they could, he said, - they'd grow right




MY GARDEN.                67
through the paper. Another said I must surround
them with round boxes with the bottoms broken
out; for, though they could fly, they could n't steer,
and when they flew up they just dropped down
anywhere, and as there was on the whole a good
deal more land on the outside of the boxes than on
the inside, the chances were in favor of their dropping on. the outside. Another said that ashes must
be sprinkled on them. A fourth said lime was an
infallible remedy. I began with the paper, which
I secured with no little difficulty; for the wind —
the same wind, strange to say —kept blowing the
dirt at me and the paper away from me; but I
consoled myself by remembering the numberless
rows of squash-pies that should crown my labors,
and May took heart from  Thanksgiving.  The
next day I peeped under the paper, and the bugs
were a solid phalanx. I reported at head-quarters, and they asked me if I killed the bugs before
I put the paper down. I said no, I supposed it
would stifle them, -in fact, I did not think anything about it, but if I had thought anything,
that was what I thought. I was not pleased to
find I had been cultivating the bugs and furnishing them with free lodgings. I went home, and
tried all the remedies in succession.  I could
hardly decide which agreed best with the structure
and habits of the bugs, but they throve on all.
Then I tried them all at once and all o'er with a
mighty uproar. Presently the bugs went away.




68           CO UNTRY LIVING.
I am not sure that they would not have gone just
as soon, if I had let them alone. After they were
gone, the vines scrambled out and put forth some
beautiful, deep-golden blossoms. When they fell
off, that was the end of them. Not a squash,not one,- not a single squash, - not even a
pumpkin. They were all false blossoms.
APPLES.- The trees swelled into masses of
pink and white fragrance.  Nothing could exceed their fluttering loveliness or their luxuriant
promise. A few days of fairy beauty, and showers
of soft petals floated noiselessly down, covering the
earth with delicate snow; but I knew, that, though
the first blush of beauty was gone, a mighty work
was going on in a million little laboratories, and
that the real glory was yet to come. I was surprised to observe, one day, that the trees seemed
to be turning red. I remarked to Halicarnassus
that that was one of Nature's processes which I
did not remember to have seen noticed in any
botanical treatise. I thought such a change did
not occur till autumn. Halicarnassus curved the
thumb and forefinger of his right hand into an
arch, the ends of which rested on the wrist of
his left coat-sleeve. He then lifted the forefinger
high and brought it forward. Then he lifted the
thumb and brought it up behind the forefinger,
and so made them travel up to his elbow. It
seemed to require considerable exertion in the




MY GARDEN.                69
thumb and forefinger, and I watched the progress
with interest. Then I asked him what he meant
by it.
"That's the way they walk," he replied.
"Who walk?"
"The little fellows that have squatted on our
trees."
" What little fellows do you mean?"
" The canker-worms? "
" How many are there?"
"About twenty-five decillions, I should think,
as near as I can count."
"Why! what are they for?  What good do
they do?"
" O, no end.  Keep the children from eating
green apples and getting sick."
"How do they do that?"
"Eat'em themselves."
A frightful idea dawned upon me. I believe I
turned a kind of ghastly blue.
" Halicarnassus, do you mean to tell me that
the canker-worms are eating up our apples, and
that we shan't have any?"
"It looks like that exceedingly."
That was months ago, and it looks a great deal
more like it now.  I watched those trees with
sadness at my heart. Millions of brown, ugly,
villanous worms gnawed, gnawed, gnawed, at the
poor little tender leaves and buds, —held them
in foul embrace, —polluted their sweetness with




70          CO UNTRY LIVING.
hateful breath. I could almost feel the shudder
of the trees in that slimy clasp,- could almost
hear the shrieking and moaning of the young fruit
that saw its hope of happy life thus slowly consuming; but I was powerless to save. For weeks
that loathsome army preyed upon the unhappy,
helpless trees, and then spun loathsomely to the
ground, and buried itself in the reluctant, shuddering soil. A few dismal little apples escaped
the common fate; but when they rounded into
greenness and a suspicion of pulp, a boring worm
came and bored them, and they too died.  No
apple-pies at Thanksgiving. No apple-roasting in
winter evenings. No pan-pie with hot brown
bread on Sunday mornings.
CHERRIES. - They rivalled the apple-blooms in
snowy profusion, and the branches were covered
with tiny balls. The sun mounted warm and high
in the heavens, and they blushed under his ardent
gaze. I felt an increasing conviction that here
there would be no disappointment; but it soon
became palpable that another class of depredators
had marked our trees for their own. Little brown
toes could occasionally be seen peeping from the
foliage, and little bare feet left their print on the
garden-soil.  Humanity had evidently deposited
its larva in the vicinity.  There was a schoolhouse not very far away, and the children used
to draw water from an old well in a distant part




MY GARDEN.                  71
of the garden.  It was surprising to see how
thirsty they all became as the cherries ripened.
It was as if the village had simultaneously agreed
to breakfast'on salt fish. Their wooden bucket
might have been the urn of the Danaides, judging
from the time it took to fill it.  The boys were as
fleet of foot as young zebras, and presented upon
discovery no apology or justification but their
heels, -which was a wise stroke in them.  A
troop of rosy-cheeked, bright-eyed little snips in
white pantalets, caught in the act, reasoned with
in a semicircle, and cajoled with candy, were as
sweet as distilled honey, and promised with all
their innocent hearts and hands not to do so any
more.
Then the cherries were allowed to hang on the
trees and ripen. It took them a great while. If
they had been as big as hogsheads, I should think
the sun might have got through them sooner than
he did. They looked ripe long before they were
so; and, as they were very plenty, the trees presented a beautiful appearance. I bought a stack of
fantastic little baskets from a travelling Indian tribe,
at a fabulous price, for the sake of fulfilling my
long-cherished design of sending fruit to my city
friends.  After long waiting, Halicarnassus came
in one morning with a tin pail full, and said that
they were ripe at last, for they were turning purple
and falling off; and he was going to have them
gathered at once.  He had brought in the first



72           CO UNTRY LIVING.
fruits for breakfast. I put them in the best preserve-dish, twined it with myrtle, and set it in
the centre of the table.  It looked charming, —
so ruddy and rural and Arcadian. I wished we
could breakfast out-doors; but the summer was
one of unusual severity, and it was hardly prudent
thus to brave its rigor. We had cup-custards at
the close of our breakfast that morning, - very
vulgar, -but very delicious.  We reached  the
cherries at the same moment, and swallowed the
first one simultaneously. The effect was instantaneous and electric. Halicarnassus puckered his
face into a perfect wheel, with his mouth for the
hub. I don't know how I looked, but I felt badly
enough.
"It was unfortunate that we had custards this
morning," I remarked. " They are so sweet that
the cherries seem  sour by contrast.  We shall
soon get the sweet taste out of our mouths, however."
" That's so! " said Halicarnassus, who will be
coarse.
We tried another. He exhibited a similar pantomime, with improvements.  My feelings were
also the same, intensified.
"I am not in luck to-day," I said, attempting
to smile.  "I got hold of a sour cherry this
time."
"I got hold of a bitter one," said Halicarnassus.
"Mine was a little bitter, too," I added.




M Y GARDEN.                 73
" Mine was a little sour, too," said Halicarnassus.
" We shall have to try again," said I.
We did try again.
" Mine was a good deal of both this time," said
Halicarnassus.  "But we will give them  a fair
trial."
"Yes," said I, sepulchrally..
We sat there sacrificing ourselves to abstract
right for five minutes. Then I leaned back in
ity chair, and looked at Halicarnassus.  He
rested his right elbow on the table, and looked
at me.
"Well," said he at last, "how are cherries
and things?"
" Halicarnassus," said I, solemnly, " it is my
firm conviction that farming is not a lucrative
occupation.  You have no certain assurance of
return, either for labor or capital invested. Look
at it.  The bugs eat up the squashes.  The
worms eat up the apples.  The cucumbers won't
grow at all. The peas have got lost. The cherries are bitter as wormwood and sour as you in
your worst moods. Everything that is good for
anything won't grow, and everything that grows
is n't good for anything."
"My Indian corn, though," began Halicarnassus; but I snapped him up before he was fairly
under way. I had no idea of travelling in that
direction.
4




74          COUNTRY LIVING.
" What am I to do with all those baskets that
I bought, I should like to know?" I asked,
sharply.
"What did you buy them for?" he asked in
return.
"'To send cherries to the Hudsons and the
Mavericks and Fred Ashley," I replied promptly.
"Why don't you send'em, then?  There's
plenty of them, —more than we shall want."
" Because," I answered, " I have not exhausted
the pleasures of friendship.  Nor do I perceive
the benefit that would accrue from turning lifelong friends into life-long enemies."
"I'11 tell you what we can do," said Halicarnassus. "We can give a party and treat them to
cherries. They'll have to eat'em out of politeness."
" Halicarnassus," said I, "' we should be mobbed.
We should fall victims to the fury of a disappointed and enraged populace."
" At any rate," said he, " we can offer them to
chance visitors."
The suggestion seemed to me a good one,- at
any rate, the only one that held out any prospect
of relief. Thereafter, whenever friends called singly or in squads, —if the squads were not large
enough to be formidable, - we invariably set cherries before them, and with generous hospitality
pressed them to partake.- The varying phases of
emotion which they exhibited were painful to me




MY GARDEN.                 75
at first, but I at length came to taKe a morbid
pleasure in noting them.  It was a study for a
sculptor.  By long practice I learned to detect
the shadow of each coming change, where a casual observer would see only a serene expanse of
placid politeness.  I knew just where the radiance, awakened by the luscious, swelling, crimson globes, faded into doubt, settled into certainty,
glared into perplexity, fired into rage.  I saw
the grimace, suppressed as soon as begun, but
not less patent to my preternaturally keen eyes.
No one deceived me by being suddenly seized
with admiration of a view. I knew it was only
to relieve his nerves by making faces behind the
window-curtains.
I grew to take a fiendish delight in watching
the conflict, and the fierce desperation which
marked its violence.  On the one side were the
forces of fusion, a reluctant stomach, an unwilling vesophagus, a loathing palate; on the other,
the stern, unconquerable will. A natural philosopher would have gathered new proofs of the unlimited capacity of the human race to adapt itself
to circumstances, from  the debris that strewed
our premises after each fresh departure. Cherries were chucked under the sofa, into the tabledrawers, behind the books, under the lamp-mats,
into the vases, in any and every place where a
dexterous hand could dispose of them without
detection.  Yet their number seemed to suffer




76          COUNTRY LIVING.
no abatement.  Like Tityus's liver, they were
constantly renewed, though constantly consumed.
The small boys- seemed to be suffering from a fit
of conscience. In vain, we closed the blinds and
shut ourselves up in the house to give them a fair
field. Not a cherry was taken. In vain we went
ostentatiously to church all day on Sunday. Not
a twig was touched.  Finally I dropped all the
curtains on that side of the house, and avoided
that part of the garden in my walks. The cherries may be hanging there to this day, for aught
I know.
But why do I thus linger over the sad recital?
" Ab uno disce omnes."  (A  quotation from Virgil: means, "All of a piece.")  There may have
been, there probably was, an abundance of sweetcorn, but the broomstick that had marlked the spot
was lost, and I could in no wise recall either spot
or stick. Nor did I ever see or hear of the peas,
- or the beans. If our chickens, could be brought
to the witness-box, they might throw light on the
subject. As it is, I drop a natural tear, and pass
on to
THE FLOWER-GARDEN. - It appeared very
much behind time, - chiefly Roman wormwood.
I was grateful even for that.  Then tw6 rows
of four-o'-clocks became visible to the naked eye.
They are cryptogamous, it seems. Botanists have
hitherto classed them  among the Phaenogamia.




MY GARDEN.                 77
A sweet-pea and a china-aster dawdled up just
in time to get frost-bitten. ":Et prceterea nikil."
(Virgil: means, "That's all.")  I am sure it
was no fault of mine. I tended my seeds with
assiduous care.   My devotion was unwearied.
I was a very slave to their caprices. I planted
them just beneath the surface in the first place,
so that they might have an easy passage.  In
two or three days they all seemed to be lying
round loose on the top, and I planted them an
inch deep. Then I did n't see them at all for so
long that I took them up again, and planted them
half-way between. It was of no use. You cannot suit people or plants that are determined not
to be suited.
Yet, sad as my story is, I cannot regret that I
came into the country and attempted a garden.
It has been fruitful in lessons, if in nothing else.
I have seen how every evil has its compensating
good. When I am tempted to repine that my
squashes did not grow, I reflect, that, if they had
grown, they would probably have all turned into
pumpkins, or if they had stayed squashes, they
would have been stolen. When it seems a mysterious Providence that kept all my young hopes
underground, I reflect how fine an illustration I
should otherwise have lost of what Kossutll calls
the solidarity of the human race, —what Paul
alludes to, when he says, if one member suffer,
all the members suffer with it.  I recall with




:78          COUNTRY LIVIfNG.
grateful tears the sympathy of my neighbors on the
right hand and on the left, - expressed not only
by words, but by deeds.  In my mind's eye,
Horatio, I see again, the baskets of apples, and
pears, and tomatoes, and strawberries, - squashes
too heavy to lift, - and corn sweet as the dews of
Hymettus, that bore daily witness of human brotherhood.  I remember, too, the victory which I
gained over my own depraved nature. I saw my
neighbor prosper in everything he undertook. Nihil tetigit quod non crevit. Fertility found in his
soil its congenial home, and spanned it with rainbow hues. Every day I walked by his garden and
saw it putting on its strength, its beautiful garments. I had not even the small satisfaction of
reflecting that, amid all his splendid success, his life
was cold and cheerless, while mine, amid all its
failures, was full of warmth, - a reflection which,
I have often observed, seems to go a great way
towards making a person contented with his lot, -
for he had a lovely wife, promising children, and
the whole village for his friends. Yet, notwithstanding all these obstacles, I learned to look over
his garden-wall with sincere joy.
There is one provocation, however, which I
cannot yet bear with equanimity, and which I do
not believe I shall ever meet without at least a
spasm of wrath, even if my Christian character
shall ever become strong enough to preclude absolute tetanus; and I do hereby beseech all persons




MY GARDEN.                79
who would not be guilty of the sin of Jeroboam
who made Israel to sin, who do not wish to have
on their hands the burden of my ruined temper, to let me go quietly down into the valley of
humiliation and oblivion, and not pester
me, as they have hitherto done from
all parts of the North-American
continent, with the infuriating
question, " How did you
get on with your
garden?"




MEN AND WOMEN.
*  HAVE read that a stranger, passing! through certain portions of New Hampshire, was deeply impressed with the
roclky nature of the soil and scenery,
and inquired of a laborer whom he met, "What
in the world can you raise in a country like this?"
"We raise men, sir! " was the prompt reply. I
am free to confess that this sounds to me very
much like a made-up story; but it will answer
my purpose just as well, which is simply to introduce the fact, that, not having found in agricultural pursuits that eminent satisfaction which I had
pictured, I occasionally divert myself with speculations touching men and women.  After close
observation and mature deliberation, I have come
to the conclusion that, on the whole, men occupy
vantage-ground.
I like women. I love them. I glory in them.
What sight can be more impressive than one of
those magnificent creations we often read of, and
occasionally see, - stately, grand, epic, - with the




MEN AND  WOMEN.                81
blackness and beauty of night in the matchless
locks that sweep over the calm, still brow, and
all the starry splendor of a thousand nights in the
eyes that burn beneath? What can be more captivating than the opening life of a gay little blonde,
from whose soft curls the flutter never quite dies
out, whose dimpling smile is only less sweet than
her tender pensiveness? Or, passing from these
types of an extinct womanhood, whose departing
left but few traces, we see every day pretty, graceful, and elegant women; some neat, simple, and
indistinctly limned; some standing out in bold relief, with regal adornings; and in our daily walks
we jostle against countless heroines, - self-sacrificing wives, devoted mothers, noble maidens, who
bear a hidden'grief, who wrestle with a secret foe,
who silently, if need be, brave the sneer of the
world, who will die and give no sign, - and we
cannot choose but admire.  Still, narrowing the
question down to a point, this is the conclusion
of the whole matter, — high or low, rich or poor,
bond or free,
There is nothing so splendid as a splendid man 
I need not search the pages of history for facts
to confirm my position. I need not point you to
Mozart, king in the realms of song; to Napoleon,
" wrapped in the solitude of his own originality ";
to John Bunyan, standing alone on his Delectable
Mountains; to Milton, thrusting his wives behind
4*                       F




82          COUNTR Y LIVING.
him when he entered Paradise. They are confessedly unapproached and inapproachable, and
therefore would in no wise strengthen my case;
for they are unique, not as regards women only,
but the whole human race. To be a man does
not necessarily imply to be a Milton. Eighteen
hundred years furnished but one Napoleon. John
Smiths are born, married, and die by the thousand, and nothing apparently can be more commonplace than their lives. What advantage, then,
has John Smith over his wife? Precisely this.
Commonplace as is the life of John Smith, the
life of Mrs. J. S. is still more so. Small as are
his advantages and opportunities, hers are incomparably smaller; and so, whether as a man I
might have sat in kings' palaces, or ground in
the prison-house of poverty, I put on sackcloth
and ashes, bewailing my womanhood.
Now don't overwhelm me with a torrent of
platitudes about woman's opportunities for selfsacrifice, moral heroism, silent influence, might of
love, and all that cut-and-dried woman's sphereism; pray don't. I know all about it. I could write
an octavo volume on the subject, with dedication,
introduction, preface, and appendix; but just go to
your window the next rainy day, and notice the
first woman who passes. See how she is forced to
concentrate all the energies of mind and body on
herself and her casings. One delicate hand clings
desperafely to the unwieldy umbrella; the other




MEN AND IVOMEN.               83
is ceaselessly struggling to keep firm hold of the
multitudinous draperies; and if book, basket, or
bundle claim a share of her attention, her case
is pitiable indeed. Down goes one fold upon the
wet flagstone, detected only by an ominous flapping against the ankles when the garment has
become saturated, - a loosened hold on the umbrella, of which it takes advantage, and immediately sways imminent over the gutter, - a convulsive and random clutch at the petticoats. The
umbrella righted, a sudden gust of wind threatens
to bear it away, and, one hand not being sufficient
to detain it, the other involuntarily comes to the
rescue, -sweep go the draperies down on the
pavement; then another clutch, another adjustment, - forward! march!    and so on to the
dreary, draggled end.
Stalk - stalk - stalk - comes up the man behind her. Stalk- stalk,- he has passed. Stalk
— stalk - stalk, — he is out of sight before she
has passed a single block.
Of course he is. One sinewy hand lightly
poising his umbrella; water-proof overcoat " close
buttoned to the chin"; tight-fitting trousers tucked
into enormous India-rubber boots. What is the
storm to him?
Is this a small matter? Beloved friend, smaller
matters than these have swayed the world; and
ten thousand such small matters mark the childhood, youth, and maturity of twice ten thousand
small men and women.




84           COUNTR Y LIVING.
It is a very small matter for John Smith to take
a journey of six or eight hundred miles.  He
rushes home from his counting-room, office, or
workshop, fifteen minutes before the train leaves,
bids Mrs. S. put a clean shirt or two in his
valise, takes a cold luncheon, kisses the children
all round, and perhaps their mother, strides to the
station, goes in at one end just as the engine is
puffing out at the other, waits leisurely till the last
end of the last car is opposite him, throws his
valise on the platform, grasps the railing, vaults
lightly up the steps, and in half a minute is talking unconcernedly with Mr. Jones, who has probably gone through the same performance, barring
the last half-minute.
But if Mrs. John Smith wishes to pay a ten days'
visit to her mother, sixty miles away, a fortnight
is not too much time to devote to preparations.
Her wardrobe is to be thoroughly overhauled;
dresses selected, bought, made; a dressmaker consequently to be hunted up and engaged; old skirts
adjusted to new basques; collars mended, whitened, and  clear-starched; Mr. Smith's shirts,
stockings, and handkerchiefs placed where he can
lay his hands on them blindfolded, for no Smith
ever yet conceived the idea of lifting up one thing
to find another under it: the various strata of
rocks being tilted, the genus Smith seems to have
imbibed the opinion that bureau-drawers should
be arranged on the same plan. Then there are




MEN AN) TWOMEN.               85
the children to be seen to, the marketing to be arranged, Bridget to be admonished, and everything
in general wound up to go ten days without stopping or derangement. Consequently, when the
appointed morning comes, and with it the appointed coach, Mrs. Smith is not quite ready.
With one cheek flushed, and no collar, she gives
hurried directions, ties up brown-paper packages
with nervous, trembling fingers, which packages no
sooner receive the final jerk than they are discovered to be bursting out at both ends; scatters the
young folks hither and thither, running down all
who are not agile enough to get out of the way,
and is only restrained from scolding outright by a
dim vision of plunges down embankments, butting
against opposing engines, splintered bridges, flying
axles, and life-long separation from beloved ones,
to which a railroad journey now-a-days renders
one so fearfully liable. At length, the last knot is
tied, the last kiss given, and Mrs. S., anxiously
looking at her watch, stumbles over the hem of
her dress into the coach, beseeching the driver to
hurry. He politely says " Yes," but persistently
drives "No."  After what she considers unnecessary delay, she arrives at the station, hurries into
the ticket-office, tries to hurry open her portemonnaie, but, as that is governed by the MedoPersic laws of inertia and attraction, it refuses to
be hurried. Hurriedly she asks the ticket-master,
"Is the train north gone?"  His loud, clear,




86           COUNTRY LIVING.
deliberate, " No, ma'am," startles her, and before
she recovers herself, he has gone to the opposite
window.  She waits her turn again.  "How
long before it goes?"  " Twen-ty - min-utes, -
ma'am." With a sigh of mingled relief and weariness she sinks upon a sofa. Time would fail me to
follow Mrs. S. on her devious way, - to note her
anxious watch over "great box, little box, bandbox, and bundle"; her uncertainty as to which
train she is to take, and her incessant inquiries of
every man who approaches; the intense unrest
that looks out of her eyes, quivers pn her lips,
trembles in her hands, and flutters in every thread
of her garments. All these things may only
provoke a smile, but'Mrs. J. S. is tragically in
earnest.
Man, too, is independent. He goes where and
when he lists. He need not be rich to gaze upon
all the wonders of the New World, all the magnificence of the Old. He can shoulder his knapsack,
and traverse the globe. Every spot consecrated
by genius, patriotism, suffering, love, is spread
out before him. Whatever of beautiful, grand, or
glorious is to be found in art or nature, is his.
He can people his brain with memories that will
never die, adorn it with pictures whose colors will
never fade, treasure up untold wealth for his soul
to feed on in future years.
If the day's long toil leave him restless, - if
throbbing heart or aching head crave a draught




MEN AND WOMEN.                87
of pure elixir, - if the murmur of the waterfall,
the glow of the stars, or the ever-new splendor
of the moon lure him out into the night, he goes;
and the hush and solitude bring him rest and
healing; the night sweeps into his soul, and cools
the fever in his veins. The world recedes. He
stands face to face with God. He receives again
the breath of life, and becomes a living soul.
Alas for a woman! She can never do a thing
except gregariously. She has no solitude except
in the house, which is no solitude at all. She is
always at the mercy of others' whims, caprices,
tastes, business engagements, or headaches.  If
she travels, she must partially accommodate her
self to somebody's convenience. She must go in
the beaten track. Her eyes must look right on,
and her eyelids straight before her.  There are
no wild wanderings at her own sweet will, no
experimental deviations from the prescribed route,
no hazardous but delightful flying off in a tangent on the spur of the moment.  She cannot
separate herself from the past, slough off her identity, and become a new being in new scenes. She
must take her old associations with her, and-they
are a robe of oiled silk, effectually excluding the
new atmosphere which should penetrate to the
very sources of life. She cannot enj6y in quietness and silence. She is one of a party, and must
go into a rapture here and an ecstasy there, and
give a definite reason for both.  She must be




88          COUNTRY LIVING.
wakened from  a trance of delight by a lisped
"' How beautiful!" or a quotation from Byron, by
some one whose knowledge of Byron is derived
from a gilt volume of " Elegant Extracts," or the
"-American First-Class Book."  It is very appalling.
I remember well the agonizing stupidity of a
journey which I once undertook with great expectations.  Halicarnassus was obliged to leave
me on the road, and I contemplated a solitary
completion of my expedition with unbounded delight; but at the very last moment he hunted up
an old schoolmate, a planter from the South, and
consigned me to him, ready invoiced and labelled!
I yielded with a resigned and quiet despair.
He proved to be a very sensible man, and slept
most of the time, except when I spoke to him, which
I did occasionally for the sake of seeing'him jump.
He knew that it was not polite for him to sleep,
but he cherished the pleasing illusion that I did
not know it, but fancied him lost in profound meditation. Bless his dear soul!  If he only could
have known that it was the most agreeable disposition he could possibly'have made of himself, -
though, as far as my observation goes, men certainly look better awake than asleep. Slumber is
not becoming to the masculine gender. Look at
the next man you see, asleep in church.  What
absolute lack of expression; what falling jaws;
what idiocy in the bobbing head; what lack-lustre




MEN AND WOMEN.                89
vacancy about the eyes and in the- eyes, when
they slowly drag themselves open; how senseless
are the fingers, and how, when he awakes, he
half looks about, and then suddenly looks straight
at the minister for two minutes, and pretends he
has been awake all the time, just as if everybody
did n't know. It is as good as a pantomime. But
I was glad my fellow-traveller slept, for our attempts at conversation were really distressing to a
sensitive mind. He had a habit of receiving my
most trifling remarks with an air of deep solemnity,
which was very provoking. It is bad enough to
say foolish things, and to know they are foolish
when you say them; but it is a great deal worse
to have people think that you think you have said
something wise. Then he never would understand what I said the first time; consequently it
had to be repeated. Now, when you are putting
about in distress for a remark, you do often seize
hold of any platitude, and give it audible utterance, despising yourself all the while; but after
it has done duty, and you have shoved it from
you in disgust, to be forced to stretch out your
hand and draw it back once more. Eheu! Our
conversation might be daguerrotyped thus: —
I.  "This is a fine country."
He. "Ma'm? "
I.  "This is a fine country, I said!"
He. "Yes, a very fine country! "' Pause.
Profound meditation on both sides.




90           COUNTRY LIVING.
I. "Is that an eagle? " (with an attempt at
animation).
He. " Ma'Am?" (with a start, and wild, bewildered look).
I. "I asked if that was an eagle, but he is
gone now!"  (Of course he was, -a mile off.)
He. "I don't know, really. I did n't quite
see him."  Relapse into meditation.
I. "Do we change cars at B-?"
He. "Ma'am?"
I. "Do you know whether we change cars at
B  -, sir? "
He. "I don't know, but I think we do. I
will ask the conductor!"
I. "0, no! Pray don't, sir! I dare say we
shall find out when we get there." Third course
of meditation, and so on.
Whenever we did have to change cars,- and
it seemed to me as if this occurred at irregular
intervals of from ten to twenty miles - [I desire
to enter my earnest protest against it. One is
scarcely seated comfortably, with valise and satchel
on the floor, shawl on the arm, and bundles tucked
on the rack, before 1" Passengers for -. change
cars "; and up must come the satchels with a
jerk, and down the bundles with a thud, and off
we elbow our way through a crowd, across a
dusty track, into another car, where the same
process is repeated. When people are satisfactorily adjusted, why can't people be let alone?]




MEN AND WOMEN.                91
As I was saying, whenever we had to change, he
was sure to be sound asleep, and I would spare
his feelings and not wake him, knowing that the
people jostling against him in passing would do
that, and suddenly he would rouse, gaze wildly
around, and exclaim, " Are you going to get
out? " as if all the commotion was caused by me;
and I would turn from the window at which I
had been steadfastly staring, and answer calmly,
and as if I had just thought of it, " Perhaps we
would better, sir; the people seem to be -getting
out! " And so, by constant watchfulness and studied forbearance, I managed to pick up his goods
for him, and land him safely at H —, with great
respect for his many virtues, and great contempt
for his qualifications as guide and protector.
Yet I was currently reported to be travelling
under the care of Mr. Lakeman of Alabama; as if
I could n't take care of myself fifty thousand times
better than that respectable stupidity could take
care of me.
Men are strong. They do things, and don't
mind it. They can open doors in the dampest
weather. They can unstrap trunks without breaking a blood-vessel, turn keys in a moment which
women have lost their temper and lamed their
fingers over for half an hour, look down precipices and not be dizzy, knock each other prostrate
and not be stunned. You may strike them with
all your might on the chest, and it does n't hurt




92          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
them in the least (I mean if'you are a woman).
They never grow nervous and cry. They go up
stairs three at a time. They put one hand on a
four-rail fence, and leap it without touching. In
short, they do everything easily which women try
to do and cannot.
Moreover, men are so " easy to get along with."
They are good-natured, and conveniently blind and
benevolent. Women criticise you, not unjustly,
perhaps, but relentlessly. They judge you in detail, men only in the whole. If your dress is
neat, well-fitting, and well-toned, men will not
notice it, except a few man-milliners, and a few
others who ought to be, and to whose opinion we
pay no regard. If you will only sit still, hold up
your head, and speak when you are spoken to, you
can be very comfortable. I do not mean that men
cannot and do not appreciate female brilliancy;
but if you are a good listener, and in the right
receptive mood, you can spend an hour very pleasantly without it. But a woman finds out in the
first three minutes that the fringe on your dress
is not a match. In four, she has discovered that
the silk of your sleeves is frayed at the edge. In
five, that the binding of the heel of your boot is
worn out. By the sixth, she has satisfactorily ascertained, what she suspected the first moment
she " set her eyes on you," that you trimmed your
bonnet yourself. - The seventh assures her that
your collar is only "imitation "; and when you




MEN AND WOMEN.                93
part, at the end of ten minutes, she has calculated
with tolerable accuracy the cost of your dress, has
levelled her mental eyeglass at all your innocent
little subterfuges, and knows to a dead certainty
your past history, present circumstances, and future
prospects. Well, what harm if she does? None
in particular. It is only being stretched on the
rack a little while. You have no reason to be
ashamed, and you are not ashamed. Your boots
are only beginning to be shabby, and we all know
the transitory nature of galloon. Your fringe is too
dark, but you ransacked the city and did your best,
" angels could no more." You trimmed your bonnet yourself, and saved two dollars, which was
just what you intended to do. " The means were
worthy, and the end was won."  Your lace is not
real, according to the cant of the shopkeepers; but
it is real, -real cotton, real linen, real silk, or whatever the material may be, and you never pretended
it was Honiton or point; and if lace is soft and
white and fine, and sets off the throat and wrists
prettily, I don't see why it may not just as well
be made in America for two cents a yard, as in
Paris for two dollars, or two hundred. In fact,
this whole matter of lace is something entirely
beyond my comprehension. Why, I have seen
women who, in the ordinary affairs of life, were
neat to a fault, just not fall down and worship a
bit of dingy, old yellow lace, that looked fit for
nothing but the wash-tub; and, when remonstrated




94          COUNTRY LIVING.
with, excuse themselves by saying, "Why, it is
fifty or five hundred years old"; which -may be
a very lucid explanation, but I cannot say I fully
understand and appreciate it.
Men can talk " slang."  "Dry up " is nowhere
forbidden in the Decalogue. Neither the law nor
the prophets frown on " a thousand of brick." The
Sermon on the Mount does not discountenance
" knuckling to "; but between women and these
minor immoralities stands an invisible barrier of
propriety, - waves an abstract flaming sword in
the hand of Mrs. Grundy, - and we must submit
to Mrs. Grundy, though the heavens fall. But
who can reckon up the loss which we sustain?'"Dry up," — a lyric poem is sealed in that
Spartan conciseness.  Only have eyes, and you
shall see a summer brook murmuring through the
greenwood; hushed into stillness where the shadows fall darkly, flashing right merrily where sunlight glints through the mermaiden tresses of the
trees; mingling its low song with Nature's manytoned lyre; glassing in-frolicsome, ever-changing
caricature the damp,. soft mosses on its borders;
dropping a deeper purple into the cups of bending violets; flinging a roguish little spray against
the sober old rocks; cooing small white feet to
tempt its limpid depths; frisking with young lambs
in loving, cool embrace; curling around smoothfaced pebbles in perpetual overflow; singing,
dancing, hurrying, scurrying, grave and gay, till




MEN AND WOMEN.                95
the baleful dog-star rises, the loitering sun treads
slowly through the brazen heavens, and the earth
lies parched and panting in his fierce, fiery clasp.
Then the brook-music dies away.  Softly and
more softly the ripples sing themselves to sleep.
The thirsty lambs go sorrowing. The tender feet
turn back mournfully.  The white pebbles rise
hot and hard.  The mosses crisp and wither.
The violets faint and fade. The last cool moisture
breathes itself to heaven. Sweet life is quenched.
The brook is -" dried up."
What equivalent can your drawing-room grammar furnish for such a " sunny spot of greenery "?
It would be easy to go through a long list of
tabooed expressions and show how they are informed and vivified with feminine sweetness,
brawny vigor, strength of imagination, the play
of fancy, and the flash of wit. Translate them
into civilized dialect, — make them presentable at
your fireside, and immediately the virtue is gone
out of them. Can the man who simply rebukes
your proceedings compete for a moment with the
man who comes down upon you like " a thousand
of brick "?  Would not myriads of men weakly
agree to a compromise, who would start back in
horror at the insinuation of knuckling to their
opponents?
I should like to call my luggage " traps,"
and my curiosities "truck and dicker," and my
weariness "being knocked up," as well as Hali



96           CO UNTR Y LIVING.
carnassus, but I might as well rob a bank. Ah i
high-handed Mrs. Grundy, little you reck of the
sinewy giants that you banish from your table!
Little you see the nuggets of gold that lie on
the lips of our brown-fisted, shaggy-haired newsboys and cabmen!
But if men, in their strength and courage and
independence, are enviable, men in their gentleness are irresistible.  You expect it in women.
It is their attribute and characteristic. You do
not admire its presence so much as you deplore
or condemn its absence. But manly tenderness
has a peculiar charm. It is the wild ivy shooting
over the battlements of some old feudal castle,
lending grace to solidity, veiling strength with
beauty. And you meet it everywhere,- in the
house and by the wayside, in city and country,
under broadcloth and homespun. The best seat,
the finest stand-point, the warmest corner, is not
only offered, but urged upon a woman. You
may travel from one end of the country to the
other, and meet not only civility, but the most
cordial and considerate kindness.  You may be
as ugly as it is possible for virtue to be, and tired
and travel-stained and stupid, and your neighbor
of a day will show you, all the little attentions
you could claim from a father or a brother. He
will place his valise for your footstool and his
shawl for your pillow, open or close your windowblind at every turn of the road, point out every




MEN AND WOMMEN.               97
object of interest, explain everything you don't
understand, and do a thousand things to make
your journey pleasant. The roughest laborer will
step out ankle-deep in the " slosh" to give you a
firm footing; and if you have the decency to thank
him, his good-natured face will light up with as
broad a smile as if you were doing him the greatest favor in the world. When a. carpenter drags
the heavy old road-gate - which he has just unhinged to mend — half a dozen rods, to lay it across
a mud-puddle that a woman, to whom he never
spoke before and probably never will again, may
pass over dryshod, it is false to say that the age
of chivalry is gone. Talk of Sir Walter Raleigh's
gallantry! Say rather his shrewdness.  Surely
his was the most economical use to which cloak
was ever put. What wonderful politeness was
there in a risking a few yards of plush to win the
smile of a sovereign whose smiles were "money
and fame and troops of friends "?
I am aware that this universal politeness has
passed under the ban of certain of my sex, who
are pleased to consider and designate it as " dolltreatment," and resent it accordingly. They ask
no favors, despise condescensions, and demand
dues. Very well. They are doubtless conscientious. If I thought as they do, I should probably act as they do. Only I do not.
Even if this courtesy were a kind of quid pro
quo, —a-superfluity given for an essential taking
5                       G




98           COUNTR Y LIVING.
away,- a Roland of kindness, thrust upon us for
an Oliver of right, fraudulently kept back, - why,
I am afraid I must make the ignoble confession
that I - believe - I like the Roland better than
the Oliver, — that is, if we cannot have both,if rights preclude courtesy.  It is pleasanter, or,
as Englishmen would say, "jollier," to sit by the
flesh-pots of Egypt, than to starve legally in the
promised land.  Women would better improve
the rights they have, a little more, before going
mad after others that they know  not of.' It
seems to me that I have business enough on my
hands now to occupy three persons at least; and
if men will be so good as to do the law-making,
and stock-jobbing, and bribing, and quarrelling,
and stump-speaking, I will be greatly obliged to
them. It will give them employment, and take
them  off our hands for a good part of the day,
which is very convenient. As the big man said,
when asked why he let his little wife beat him,
"It amuses her, and it don't hurt me."
This is not at all heroic, I know; and I suppose, if there was the least probability that anything would ever come of it, I could work myself up to the proper pitch of indignation, and
prefer a crust of bread and the right of suffrage.
to enjoying the pleasures of slavery for a season.
But Plato says it is an awful gift of the gods that
we can become used to things; and I have become so used to this, that, notwithstanding an




MEN AND WOMEN.                 99
occasional spasm, really I am — pretty well, thank
you, butI do not believe that the stream of kindness,
which flows so continually from men to usward,
has any such polluted source. It is not underhand, as some would have us believe, nor sinister. Men do not systematically oppress us. They
mean well, only they are a little thick-headed.
As soon as they see their way clear, they will
walk in it.  Meanwhile comes in this involuntary outgushing, this innate nobility of soul, this
germ of the possible angel, which I pray God
may spring up, and bud and blossom into glorious fruitage.  Am  I enthusiastic?  I have a
right to be. A nation of men' loyal, not to grace,
beauty, magnificence, but to womanhood, to the
highest impulses of fallen human nature, to the
love element of the universe, is a thing to be
enthusiastic about. "I will indulge my sacred
fury."
I have somewhere read that, in a part of the
Jewish worship, the men say, "I thank thee, 0
God, that thou hast not made me a woman";
and the women devoutly and meekly follow, "I
thank thee, 0 God, that thou hast made me as
it pleased thee." The first is the language of
nature, the second of grace.  The first is physiology, and impracticableto us; the second, philosophy, and attainable. Let us take courage.
From  the confession of faith which I have




100          COULVTRY LIVING.
made, it will readily be inferred that I have no
petty spite to gratify, but that I speak more in
sorrow than in anger when I say that men de
sometimes act like downright —persons devoid
of sense (dictionary definition of a word which I
refrain from using for courteous reasons), and it
really is necessary to fall back on undisputed
proofs of their common sense in other matters,
to convince ourselves that this is only a mono
stultitia.
I do not blame men for not understanding
women.  It is, perhaps, not in the nature of
things.  Two organisms so delicate, yet so distinct, - so often parallel, yet so entirely integral,
-can perhaps never be thoroughly understood
objectively.  But- I do blame them  for obstinately persisting in the belief that they do when
they don't.  Instead of going quietly on their
way, and letting us go quietly on ours, giving
and receiving help when it is needed, and standing kindly aloof when it is not, they are continually projecting themselves into our sphere, putting
their officious shoulders to our wheels, poking
their prurient fingers into our pies. They seem
to have no idea that there is any corner, of our
hearts so hidden that their halfpenny tallow-candles cannot illuminate it; and, at the first symptom of doubt, the tallow-candles are accordingly
produced. Assuming that they are entirely conversant with woman's nature, conscious with all




AMEN AND WOMEN.             101
their stolidity that there is friction somewhere,
and perfectly confident that they can tinker us
up "as good as new," with the best of motives
and the clumsiest of hands, they begin forthwith
to hammer away, right and left, on the delicate
wheels and springs, till we are forced to cry out,
"Dear souls, we know you are good and honest
and sincere.  You would die for us; but your
fingers are all thumbs.  Let us alone!"  Do
you think they will?  Not they. Undaunted by
their want of success, apparently even unconscious of it, they ding on doggedly, and if continuity, persistence, inflexibility, and a continual
harping on the same string, could have reformed
us, we should have been reformed into the seventh
heaven long ago.  But God works by means.
Water does not spontaneously run up hill. No
combination of numbers can make two and two
equal five. The strength of Samson would not
enable a man to lift himself to the stars, by pulling at the strap of his boots. So the Conflict of
Ages goes on.
O, if those who are at such infinite pains to
teach woman her duties, and make her contented
with her lot, would but stop a moment to take
their reckonings, and compare notes! " Go to,
brothers; we don't seem to get on very fast.
There must be a screw loose somewhere.  Let
us investigate."
Do I flatter myself that what I may say will




102          COUNTRY LIVINOG.
have the slightest tendency to modify the views
or the practice of any one of my masculine readers, should I be so fortunate as to have any?
Not in the least.   Though I speak with the
tongues of men and of angels, yet, of six men
who should do me the honor to read me, half a
dozen, invited to deliver an address at the anniversary of a female boarding-school, would rise
slowly in their places, smile down a bland and
benignant compliment on the white-robed beauty
before them, and glide gracefully into an oily eulogium upon woman's influence, her humanizing and
elevating mission, promulgating the novel and
startling theory that her power is in her heart, not
in her arm; that she judges by intuition rather
than induction; that her sphere is not on the
rostrum, but by the fireside; that she is to rule
by love, not by fear; — interspersing some venerable fling at woman's-rights conventions and their
strong-minded leaders, quoting with unutterable
pathos,
" I called her angel, but he called her wife," -
(Query: what right has any man to be calling
another man's wife angel?) - and winding up
gloriously in a metaphoric convulsion.
Do you ask me, then, why I write? Because
I know that I shall be read by girls, and, as we
have been told nine hundred and ninety-nine
times, the girls of this generation are to be the




MlEN AND WOMEN.              103
mothers of the next, and I hope and believe that
the few crumbs I cast upon the waters will be
returned to me or mine after many days.
Boarding-school anniversaries are becoming a
part of our institutions, and the above outline is
no fancy sketch.  I, once heard a lecturer on
such an occasion introduce such an address with
the remark that he was left no choice. The subject was forced upon him by the nature of the
case; and having thus apologized at the outset,
he immediately struck the trail, and came in at
the death handsomely.  His voice was melodious, his accentuation perfect, his language elegant, his manner refined.  He did in the best
possible style what needed not to be done at all.
And he knew that it needed not to be done.
The very fact that he did apologize indicated that
he saw the necessity of apologizing. It was as
if he had said, "My dear girls, I know you are
bored to death with people's telling you what
your sphere is, but I must give the screw one
more twist. I pray you try to bear it; for what
the mischief is a man to talk about, if not this?"
This would not have been dignified, but it would
have been frank.
But I take issue on the fact.  There is a choice
of subjects. A man is not confined to this stupid
treadmill. Girls can understand and appreciate
a broader sweep of thought. One of the finest
public addresses I ever heard was on such an occa



104          COUNTRY LIVING.
sion. I have forgotten the definite theme, but it
treated of the cultivation of the beautiful, and,
strange to relate, there was not in it, as far as I
recollect, a single injunction to women to mind
their own business. Truth obliges me to confess
that, though all the good people admired it as very
beautiful, they all added, " but not appropriate."
In my opinion, however, it was appropriate. Instead of telling us to stop doing nothing, and
refrain from doing the wrong thing, he showed us
how to do a right thing; and no matter if people
do find fault with a good lecture. It only proves
that their taste is weakened by long disuse, and
must be educated up to a higher level.
That villanous old woman-hater, Alexander
Pope, avenged himself for the unpardonable superiority of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu's wit to,
his own, and her scornful and merry refusal of his
proffered love, —one shrinks from profaning the
sacred word by applying it to such mockery of
the divine passion, - by pattering rhymes against
the whole sex, as
"Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear,
And best distinguished by black, brown, or fair."
The men of to-day, with all their boasted progress, seem to have gone but a step farther. They
do indeed give us sufficient consistency to bear
whatever impress themselves shall stamp, but
acknowledge no inborn power of self-development.
Singularly enough, there is a wonderful sameness




MEN AND WOMIEN.               105
m all their stamps. If we were what men have
tried to make us, and only that, a man X his mark
would be set upon us with the uniformity of the
red cross on a flock of sheep. Now, if there were
in our seminaries only one class of girls, and that
a class reared in luxurious homes, and tempted by
mere surfeit of idleness into forbidden paths, there
would be more excuse for the monotone, though it
would still be utterly ineffectual; but, collected as
our New England schools are, - and I am speaking now of these particularly, -there is many and
many a girl in them who has come from a home
of poverty, some perhaps of ignorance, a few,
alas! of vice. He who should be the stay and
honor of his family is its weakness and shame. A
frail girl, with a strong heart and a clear brain,
throws herself in the breach.  She studies with
energy, purpose, and effect. She stands on the
threshold of womanhood, and turns to take a last
look at her girlish days. All the luring pictures
spread out by a poetical speaker her woman's
heart has already'portrayed, and she knows that
she must resolutely shut her eyes, and turn away
from them. Maiden hopes, wifely trust, mother's
love, are not for her. The sacred privacy and
dear delights of home,
"The graces and the loves that make
The music of the march of life,"
she gazes upon with tear-dimmed eyes and pale
lips; for between them and her rises a sad visin-,
5.




106          COUNTRY LIVING.
-a care-worn mother tottering graveward, brothers and sisters who will rush into rude, ignorant
and immature maturity but for her.  Her path
lies straight, but very rough. Duty points with
stern finger, "This is the way, walk ye in it,"
and with silent heroism she presses the thorn to
her heart, and gathers up her womanly robes,
trembling, but unwavering. Have you no word
for her? You roll out musical periods, exhorting
her companions to be content with the love that
waits to receive them with open arms: can you
not speak a word of comfort to her for whom no
arms shall ever be outstretched? Must she feel
herself exiled from man's sympathy, because a
man's sin forces her to assume a man's duty?
The poor ye have always with you, —the orphaned, the unfriended, the faint-hearted. They
stand alone, and see the jostling, eager, selfish
crowds go by, and draw back, shrinking and shuddering, but have no sanctuary from the throng.
Speak to them.  Give them  your sympathy.
Show them the dignity of self-respect.. From
your wiser years and your larger experience, assure them that a crown of thorns nobly worn shall
become a crown of rejoicing, to be cast before the
Lord. Strengthen the weak hands and confirm
the feeble knees, by telling them  how  duty is
greater than pleasure, integrity better than happiness, and he alone rich who is " dowered with the
hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, the love of love."




MEN AND WOMLEN.             107
0 men, 0 brothers, you talk of woman's influence,
but you do not know your own. You cannot suspect how much a woman dreads your sarcasm,
who will yet, if need be, brave it unflinchingly, —
how priceless is your sympathy and approbation to
the heart that will^yet throb just as highly without
it. Cease to exhaust yourselves on those whose
every step is watched and guarded by home affection, who face no sterner "duty than to give
caresses," who neither need nor heed your injunctions, and turn to those whose weakness must be
consolidated into strength, and to whom your appreciation would be as the breath of life.
Even those whom you do address are not benefited thereby. Upon the young girl about to leave
school for her home of comfort and peace and
plenty, you inculcate the duty of making home
happy, because you think it is the most appropriate
thing you can do. Very well, if you will only tell
her how to do it. But you do not. You utter glittering and sounding generalities. You are definite
in your. directions only where her way is straight
ahead. You bid her minister to the wants of her
parents, to rock the cradle of their declining years
gently, to tend the couch of sickness, to supply the
wants of the poor, and be a useful member of
society. To what end? All these things she is
forward to do. She dusts the parlor, sees that the
guest-chamber is aired, supplies the breakfast-table
with flowers, reads to the one or two poor old




i08          COUNTRY LIVING.
women of the village, tends her garden, teaches in
the Sunday school, and - what then? Half her
time remains on her hands. Her soul is full of
the nebule of great thoughts, lofty purposes. Can
you help her resolve them into perfect, self-radiant,
and radiating suns? From the chaos, as yet without form and void, will you teach her to evoke a
world of symmetry and beauty, which God the
Judge on the Last Day shall pronounce to be very
good?  You have a pleasant voice, and play well
on an instrument, but "How shall I make my life
noble? " is her eager cry. "How shall I wrest
from every day the heroism that it holds? What
shall I do with my Monday, and Tuesday, and
Wednesday, —with my June and September?"
Can you answer her these questions?  Can you
even mark off a section of the heavens, that she
may sweep with her telescope, to find the answer?
If you cannot, your words are as idle tales.  You
might just as well repeat your lecture as gay nuns
do their prayers,  " Our Father, which art in
heaven, &c., &c., &c., Amen."  Of what conceivable use is it to tell her that a woman's place
is the
"Sweet, safe corner by the household fire,
Behind the heads of children,"
when the very clay-of which the bricks are to be
made, with which the hearth is to be built, on
which the fire is to be kindled, around which the
children are to gather, behind whose heads she




MEN AND WOMEN.              109
is to hide, is not yet dug! This mode of talking
is all wrong, -to some useless, to others' absolutely hurtful. I have not observed that American
girls are generally too coy. They do not, to the
best of my knowledge, evince any conventual epidemic, any unnatural repugnance to the society of
men, any accountable reluctance to assume the
duties of wife and mother. A respectable middleaged gentleman, of rare intellectual endowment
and excellent moral character, tells them, sonorously and seriously, that they will probably be
married one day, and they would better be getting
ready for it. He evidently thinks the sweet little
innocents never heard or thought of such a thing
before, and would go on burying their curly heads
in books, and sicklying their rosy faces with " the
pale cast of thought" till the end of time, if he
did not stir up their pure minds by way of remembrance. My dear sir, a good many of your artless hearers think of nothing else from morning
till night. They talk of their wedding-ring long
before they can give you a definition of the circle
which is its form. They are firm believers in the,truth of the principle, that it is better to be ready
and not go, than to go and not be ready; and they
have already decided to be married in church with
the Episcopal form, because it is so much more
impressive.  To us who are behind the scenes,
and know all this, your exhortations sound, to say
the least, rather funny; and we cannot avoid the




110          COUNTRY LIVING.
faintest soupp2on of a suspicion that you are carrying coals to Newcastle.
"Of all the blind fanatics in this perverse
world," says one writer, " your professed hater of
fanaticism is the most inveterate and conspicuous;.
of all agitators, your determined foe to agitation
is the most pestilent and effective. Many an excitement has been kept up long after it would have
died a natural death, by the wrong-headed hostility
of those who had determined and proclaimed that
it should be suppressed instanter."  These men
have profound faith in the vis inerticw. Like the
dog Noble, they believe that a squirrel once in
a hole cannot by any possibility have got out
again. If women are ever caught doing a foolish thing, men evidently fancy that they must be
keeping up a steady doing it; Many years ago,
women compressed themselves suicidally in steel
and whalebone, and, though the custom is dead
and buried beyond all hope of resurrection, there
are men not a few who will go down to their
graves in the firm belief that women are killing
themselves off by thousands with tight lacing
Here and there a foolish girl is said to have been
found on damp pavements with thin shoes. Corollary: no end of homilies on. the folly and wickedness of sacrificing health to beauty. A handful
of women have occasionally amused themselves by
thrusting a long stick into the mud-puddle of society, and forthwith what a hubbub among the ani



MIEN AND W OMEN.             111
malculm! Fie! lie! Do men really believe that
the mass of women are possessed with an insane
and. insatiable desire to distingiiish themselves before the world? Nothing is farther from the truth.
A decade of years may perhaps produce as many
women who see fairer pictures than in the household fire, who find sweeter music than the lisping
voice of childhood, but such cases are very rare.
On the contrary, women need to be roused rather
than repressed. They are far too apt to be content with small attainments and ignoble ends.
This woman's rights agitation is but the natural
reaction from frivolity, aimlessness, inanity. It is
only a move too far in the right direction, or rather
an injudicious means to compass worthy ends. I
can far more readily sympathize with those who
are, blindly and blunderingly it may be, but honestly, endeavoring to right the wrong, than with
those who weakly acquiesce. When such things
as these happen without comment, - that a school
for boys and girls is changed into one for girls
only, the boys being removed with their "excellent and efficient Principal" to another, and the
girls remaining behind with their female assistant,
who receives less than half the salary of her male
predecessor, —when a father on his death-bed is
allowed by law to bequeath the only child of his
wife to strangers, and that child is torn from her
widowed bosom, and all her prayers and tears
and agony of love are of no avail, - do you won



112          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
der that a woman can help thinking, if she has
any think in her?  And if she be a woman of
energy, accustomed to act as well as think, and
if the men around her be stupid or indifferent,
is it strange that, with her burning sense of wrong,
her woman's intense hatred of injustice and sympathy with the oppressed, she should herself strive
to redress the grievance? And if so be the reins
shall slacken in her unwonted hand, - if her
feeble fingers essay in vain to stay her steed of
heaven, -if, on the sharp thorns or jagged rocks
of some untrodden mountain-side, you shall see
her womanhood lie, bleeding, shattered, formless,
-you may weep and wail, but —mock, if you
dare!
They, therefore, are right - right in their premises, though wrong in their conclusions - who
dolefully affirm our Female Conventions and things
of that kind to be the sad results of our free society.
They are the results of free society; just as the
smoke and soot and cinders belched forth by
George Stephenson's first locomotive engine were
the results of the practical application of a great
principle, - the might of matter quelled by the
might of mind. But just as the more perfect
elucidation of that principle converted this very
smoke and soot into a motive power, so will free
society, when it has learned wisdom, turn all this
surplus activity into its proper channels, and make
all things work together for good,- which is God




MEN AIND WOMEN.              113
Newspaper readers will perhaps remember a
statement, originating, I am sorry to say, in Massachusetts, but copied by our enlightened free
press as accurately, extensively, and intelligently
as a flock of sheep follow their leader over the
gap in a stone fence. I am sorry that I cannot
give the paragraph exactly; the writer seemed to
have bounced suddenly against the fact, that there
are not so many marriages in the country as there
used to be, and ought to be. Being greatly exercised thereby, he casts about for a cause and a
remedy for this deplorable state of things. In a
frenzy of haste, he seizes his cudgel, and bangs
away at whatever comes within his reach; and,
as he could not walk up and down the fine old
high street of his native city without seeing troops
of handsomely-dressed women, he " falls to " upon
female extravagance.  "I have found it! I have
found it!-" he cries with ill-concealed exultation;
and his sorrow for the fact is for a moment overpowered by rapture at his own sagacity in discovering it.  "It costs so much to support a wife,
that is the reason why the young men don't marry.
They feel that they must wait till their income
is enough to maintain a wife in the style to which
she has been accustomed. Girls think they must
begin where their mothers leave off," &c. The
mother, too, receives her share of the blame, and
generally the lion's share; for it somehow happens
in almost all these jeremiades, that the father comes
Hr




~114         CO UNTR Y LIVING.
off scot-free. Then statistics are duly produced
to show the quantity of silks, laces, velvets, and
feathers yearly imported, and the whole ends with
a dismal groan over the degeneracy of the ni,,eteenth century, and a prolonged howl for the melancholy prospects of the twentieth, in case there
should be any twentieth.
Now this is an elevated way of treating the subject, is it not? Are we not placed in a dignified
position?  They come to us with a silk in one
hand, and a husband in the other,-" Which will
you choose? You can't have both. Come, now,
there's a dear, wear calico, and it shall have a
nice little husband, so it shall."  Girls, don't do
it! There are thousands more women than men
in New England, and the chances are that you
lose both husband and dress.  The husband is
very well, but at any rate make sure of the silk.
It is your duty to dress as well and look as pretty
as you can, consistently with your other duties.
You are to be guided by what is right, not by
what a rabble of men may like. And, above all
things, don't retrench because men threaten not
to marry you unless you do. Just let them try
it, and see who will hold out the longest.
But, as a matter of fact, the statement is false,
-at least to this extent, that women are, if anything, less extravagant than men. They dress up,
not down, to their fathers', and brothers', and
husbands' wishes. I do not believe there is one




MIEN AND WOAMEN.             115
woman in five hundred in New England, who,
if frankly informed of the sources and amount of
her husband's income, would not cheerfully and
handsomely bring her expenses within it. Women
do undoubtedly spend a great deal of money;
but if their fathers or husbands give it to them
to spend, why should they be blamed?  How
many failures, I beg to know, have been laid on
the shoulders of women the last few years? But
when the numbers are counted up and handed
in, will the statistician be so good as to tell us in
how many cases the husband had been in the
habit of making his wife conversant with the state
of his affairs, - how many times the wife knew,
or had any means of knowing, what the amount
of her expenses for the year ought to be.
There are very few men who are capable of telling whether a woman is extravagant or not. It
is very dangerous to attempt to judge the cost of
her dress from its appearance. It is not the most
showy things that cost the most, nor the most simple that cost the least.  It is not the most elegantly, not even the most richly-dressed woman,
who runs up the highest bill. I know women
who tread royally in satin and velvet, who entertain magnificently, and give generously, who yet
can economically, and do merrily, spend hour
after hour in making mosquito-bars, covering. ottomans, putting locks on doors, upholstering old
chairs quite " as weel's the new," mending sewing



116          COUNTRY LIVING.
machines, and by thousands of ingenious and
happy devices saving money from animal wants,
to spend it in generous, intellectual, and social
pleasures.. If your lady-love's dress does not offend your taste, my fine fellow, never trouble
yourself about its price; for the flounces which
make you so uneasy are seven years old, and
redeemed from a dress which her mother cast
off when she went into mourning;- the velvet
basque, which you must allow to be very becoming, is the joint product of two worn-out cloaks
of her sisters; —the bonnet was made by herself
from a lace veil that has been in the family for
years, and all the while she was pricking her soft
fingers over it, she smiled unconsciously at the
thought of pleasing your eyes; and this is all the
thanks she gets for it. Insensate! Look at her
face. Is it blank? To her conversation. Is it
stale, flat, and unprofitable? Find out the stuff
of which she is made,' the texture of her soul.
If there is a jewel, wear it on your brow and in
your heart, though the casket be gold. If there
is a treasure, make it yours, though the vessel be
rarest Sevres China. If she does not love you
enough to prefer poverty with you to wealth
without you, her love is little worth.  The fault
is not that her purse is full, but that her heart
is empty.  You insult not womanhood merely,
but human nature, by supposing that the incidents of life are more valuable than life itself.




MEN AND WOMEN.               117
You discover innate meanness in that you can
conceive of a love influenced by dollars and cents.
What kind of affection, pray, is that which counts
the cost, and coolly compares chances?  If you
are a true man and she is a true woman, you will
so enfold her life, so fill her heart and her eyes,
that she will have no power to perceive any lack.
If you are not true, you have no right to marry
her or any one else. Begone!
" But," moans our editor,." a man who finds he
has married a wardrobe and a piano, and not a living, loving woman, is most egregiously taken in."
Of course he is, and deserves to be. Why did he
marry the wardrobe?  Whose fault is it?  The
world was all before him. What right has any
man to marry a woman before he knows whether
she is a wardrobe or not, — where her dress ends'and her soul begins? He has every opportunity
for knowing; and if he does not choose to take
thle trouble, let him not complain. He at least
has no cause to cry foul play. The game was not
even, inasmuch as his superiority gave him the
advantage; and if a man finds himself checkmated by a wardrobe, more shame to:him, but
don't let him come whimpering to us for pity and
sympathy. I for one feel very much as did the
old woman witnessing, with arms akimbo, the conflict between her husband and a bear, " Go it, husband! Go it, bear! I don't care which beats!"
" O, if parents in educating their daughters




118          COUNTRY LIVING.
would but insist upon their having a reasonable
notion of what it is to be a wife, rather than upon
a smattering of French, and a little thrumming
upon the piano, there would be such a revolution',"
continues our disconsolate author. (I should like
first privately to put the question, whether ally
man ever wrote upon any subject connected with
woman, without being sure, somewhere in the
course of his article, to trot out that unflagging
piano. I have heard many musical performances
in my day, but I never was so tired of hearing
any girl thrum upon a rosewood instrument, as
I am of hearing men' thrum on this imaginary
one.) But what do you mean, you talkers and
writers, in saying that girls should be educated to
be wives and mothers? Is not a wife a woman?
Is there any special course of instruction to be
followed?  Is not that education the best which
most fully develops every power,- moral, mental,
and physical? Womanhood is greater than wifehood.  It comprehends and embraces it.  The
best woman will make the best wife. If the mind
of a woman is dwarfed, and her faculties weakened by disuse, she will be an inefficient wife,
because she is an inefficient woman. If, on the
other hand, her mind is trained, her judgment
cultivated, her powers developed, she will be adequate to any emergency as woman or wife. Soul'is stronger than circumstance. If a girl is a fool
in silks, will she be any the less a fool in calico?




AIEN AND'WOMEN.             119
Does a feeble, frivolous nature grow strong and
self-reliant, by being transferred from a palace to
a cottage.  What folly is this?  Let girls be
taught to make the most of themselves.  Let
them fulfil present duties, and the future will
take care of itself. She who walks grandly as a
woman will not walk unworthily as a wife. She
who stands upright alone, will not drag her husband downward. She who guides her own life
wisely and well, will not rule her household with
an erring hand. Familiarity with the details of
domestic management will be a help, but want
of familiarity will not be an insurmountable obstacle.
I lay this down as a self-evident proposition:
a woman of sense, married to the right man, canll
do anything.
But you, 0 maidens and matrons beloved, you
are greatly to be blamed for this style of acting
and tone of thinking. You care too little to be,
and too much to seem. You must command, not
ask, respect. (You must not complain of contempt,)
so long as you are contemptible,) There is no
power to keep you permanently below or above
your. proper level. In this great rolling sea of
society, you will sink or swim according to your
specific gravity. If you are stupid and heavy,
plump you will go to the bottom where you belong. If you are light and empty,'no cargo,
no ballast, no rudder, - you will be tossed about




120          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
by every eddy, aimless and useless, except as
the toy of an hour.  You must be well proportioned, well provisioned, with adequate machinery in good working order, if you would
ride the waves proudly and make your haven
successfully. Remember this. Whatever is done
for you must be done by you. All real improvement must work from within outward. Woman's
incapacity is the only real barrier to woman's
progress.  Whenever women show  themselves
able, men will show themselves willing. This
is what you need, - strength, calibre. You do
not set half enough value on muscular power..~sthetic  young  lady-writers  and sentimental
penny-a-liners have imbibed and propagated the
idea, that feebleness and fragility are womanly
and fascinating. The result is, a legion of languid
headaches, an interesting inability to walk half
a dozen consecutive miles, a delicate horror of
open windows, northwest wind, and wholesome
rain-storms. There is no computing the amount
of charming invalidism following in the wake of
such a line as
"There is a sweetness in woman's decay," -
a lengthened sweetness long drawn out by some
compliant and imitative females. I do not, of
course, refer to real invalids, who have inherited
feeble constitutions, and, by unavoidable and often
unselfish and unceasing wear and tear, have exhausted their small capital, and to whom life is




MlEN AND WOMEN.              121
become one long scene of weariness and pain.
Heaven help them bear the burden; and they
do bear it nobly, often accomplishing what ought
to make their ruddy and robust sisters blush for
shame at their own' inefficiency. I mean women
who have every opportunity to be healthy, but
who are not healthy, —who are sick when it is
their duty to be well. A woman of twenty, in
comfortable circumstances, ought to be as much
ashamed of being dyspeptic as of being drunk.
Fathers and mothers, burdened with cares and
anxieties, may neglect physiological laws without
impugning their moral character; but for a girl,
care-free, to confess such an impeachment, is presumptive evidence of gluttony,, -laziness, or ignorance, and generally all three. This is not elegant language, I know; but when we have learned
to call things by their right names, we shall have
taken one step towards the millennium; and it
is an indisputable fact, that a great majority of
ailments arise from over-eating and under-exercising. The innumerable hosts- of nervous diseases
with which our women are afflicted are always
aggravated, and often caused, by these indulgences.
Women do not know this, and if they did, it
would be of little use, so long as they consider
illness one of the charms of beauty. Let the idea
once get firm hold, that illness is stupid and vulgar,
and a generation or two — nay, even a year or
two - would show a marked change. If a woman
6




122          COUNTRY LIVING.
is ill, let her take it for granted that it is her
first business to get well, and let her forthwith set
about it. A good stout will, a resolute purpose,
would work wonders.  "Few  persons like sick
people," says Charles Lamb; " as for me, I candidly confess I hate them." Whatever poetasters
sing, you may depend upon it, a good digestion
is " an excellent thing in a woman."
Health once re-established, let women next divest themselves of the idea that moral weakness is
an essential attribute of a well-developed character. It is a pandering to masculine prejudices
with which I have no patience. If there is anything more disagreeable than your strong-minded
women, it is she who denounces them to ingratiate
herself with men, -who obtrudes herself as not
being one of them. Whenever prominent women
are made the subject of conversation by men, if
there is a possible peg in their character or course
on which a commendation can be hung, be sure you
hang it. Scold them or spurn them privately as
much as you think they deserve, but defend them
publicly as much as you can. Scorn the meanness
of striving to attract men's admiration by affecting
little weaknesses.  "I dislike to travel alone,"
said a young lady; " I always feel as dependent as a child."  Dependent on what? Whom?
How? It is exceedingly disagreeable to be obliged
to sit on the same seat with a person who evidently does not believe that man is an amphibious ani



MEN AND WOMEN.               123
mal. It is not pleasant to elbow your way through
a mob of vociferous hackmen. You feel safer and
far more comfortable to be under the care of a good
traveller; but that the necessity of independent
and intelligent action should produce a feeling of
dependence, indicates an unsoundness somewhere
which should be looked after at once. I know no
risks in ordinary travelling so great that one should
prefer an indifferent companion to one's own society. I do not believe men apotheosize this amiable
incapacity to the extent supposed; but what if they
do? God does not. He gave every muscle and
nerve, every power and faculty, to be used. He
never intended that we should effervesce in a sigh,
or collapse to a shadow. If men think so, it only
shows that they need, as the Brahmin said, " to
have a little more intellect put into them."
The old oak quivers through all its tremulous
leaves at the passing of the softest summer breeze;
but deep hidden in the heart of its greenness flows
its sap of life; and away down under the ground
spread out its roots of strength; and it stands the
storms of a hundred years; nor does it murmur
out a less delicious music in June, because the
skirring blasts of December have no power to destroy. They make a great mistake, who think a
strong, brave, self-poised woman is unwomanly.
The stronger she is, the truer she is to her womanly instincts, —the more unswervingly does she
point to the mysterious pole-star of her woman



124         COUNTRY LIVING.
hood.  A- feeble soul loves, hates, wills, feebly
It -is only those who have borne the burden and
heat of the day who know the blessedness of the
evening-tide. It is only those who have walked
well, unsustained, who fully appreciate the unutterable happiness of leaning on a stronger arm.
Love is like the cholera, dysentery, and other
acute diseases. An emaciated, sickly nature takes
it lightly, and recovers quickly; but with your
generous, hearty, healthy, robust, vigorous souls,
it goes hard. Ten to one if they ever recover;
and when they do, they bear the scars for life.
Do not, therefore, fear to be too strong. Be not
afraid to grapple with the higher mathematics, lest
you should be called strong-minded.  " Sir! "
thundered the rhinoceros-hided Ursa Major of the
eighteenth century, " what harm does it do a man
to call him Holofernes?"  What harm, indeed,
in being called strong-minded? It is'better than
weak-minded. Do whatever you think, on mature deliberation, you ought to do. "Be sure you
are right, and then go ahead." Never mind what
men think about it. I do not mean that you are
not to try or to wish to please them. It is both
natural and proper. But do it honestly and openly.  Have a benevolent desire to give pleasure,
and it is very probable that the innocent desire to
please will be gratified.  If you cannot please
without being false to yourself, you would better
displease.  Admiration gained by slurring over




MEN AND WOMEN.               125
your convictions, or refraining from having any, is
dearly bought. Best of all, take no thought of
pleasing. Have no anxiety about it. Make yourself worthy of love, admiration, reverence, and
you will always hold trumps.
" Woman's devotion" is another theme which
has been run into the ground. Orators extol it.
Editors paragraph it. Poets rhyme it, and women
exemplify the old proverb, "Give a dog a bad
name, and kill him." But devotion, of itself, has
no moral character. It is simply stickiness, shared
in common, and to a far greater degree, by oysters,
molasses, blood-suckers, court-plaster, and officeseekers. Intelligent, voluntary devotion —devotion to a great principle endangered, to justice
though obscured, to nobility though persecuted
— is good. But a discerning public utters devout
moral reflections over a wife's devotion to her
scamp of a husband. He commits theft, and is
thrown into prison; he is unkind and brutal in his
treatment of her; or he is coolly indifferent to her
happiness, and alive to the charms of other women,
- but still she clings to him with all a woman's
devotion.
Now  I beg to ask this question.  When a
woman marries, what does she marry? Is it a
coat, moustache, and umbrella? If it is, then so
long as the coat, moustache, and umbrella are
extant, she does well to devote herself to them
with constancy and fervor. But if, as is popu



126          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
larly supposed, she marries a soul, a -heart, a
character, then, when she discovers that the soul
rung false, the heart is not there, and the character assumed, I do not see what there is to cling
to, nor where is the merit in clinging.  You
love what you think a man is, not necessarily
what he is. You cherish reverently a lock of
hair, because it once shaded the brow of an absent friend; but when you find that you have
been deceived, and that it is only from the head
of Tom, Dick, or Harry, who happened to be
tonsured at the same time and place, you cast it
from you in disgust. We admire Satan, appearing to us as an angel of light; but when the
horns protrude, shall we still cling to them with
woman's devotion? Heaven forbid! Do I then
aver that a woman may break away from her
marriage vows so soon as she becomes dissatisfied with her husband? No more than I would
advise you to burn down your house because it
is not built according to contract.  You may
alter it if you can>, and if not, you must make the
best of it as it is. But you need not admire and
extol it, just as it would have been right for you
to do if it really were what you wished and
planned it to be. A woman judges wrong in
the chief incident of her life. She makes a mistake, whose consequences are far-reaching, and
very deplorable, but she must bear them. Her
husband's neglect or refusal to fulfil his part of




MEN AND WOMEN.               127
the contract does not justify her non-fulfilment
any further than is necessary. I say than is necessary, for the promise is of such a nature that
I do not see how it is in her power to keep the
whole of it, and, consequently, what is the possible use of making it. She vows to love, honor,
and obey; but love and honor do not depend on
the will. You cannot love a man if he has not
the qualities which inspire love, nor honor him
when he ceases to be honorable. God, it is true,
commands us to love him; but his character is
such that it needs only to be considered to be
adored. Man is a long way from Divinity, and
our feelings towards him cannot be bespoken beforehand.  They are entirely contingent on his
deserts, which are variable. Therefore, a woman
promises to do what is quite beyond the sphere
of her volition, and she can neither keep nor
break her promise. But for her own soul's sake
she must maintain her integrity.  She must be
faithful and just and gentle and blameless.  If
she does more than this, —if she is so unfortunately constituted that she still prostrates herself
before the fragments of her broken and debased
idol, - she is to be pitied.  She is not to be
praised.
For a grand nature in ruins we may have a
mournful and tender reverence.  For a nature
which we thought grand, but which proved to
be petty, we have only contempt.




128          COUNTR Y LIVING.
This idea of devotion is sometimes carried to a
most unreasonable, unjust, and mischievous extent.
John Jones and Sarah Smith played together
when they were little children, and took sleighrides together when they had become great children.  He has given her innumerable ribbons
and flowers and candies, and she has worked
him a watch-case, a guard-chain, and a pair of
slippers.  Of course, they are "engaged."  So
says the world of Onionville, and so, very likely,
they think themselves.  At least, they have as
yet formed no higher ideas of happiness than to
gather flowers and work watch-cases for each
other all their lives long.'Presently  John's
father removes to the city, and John goes to
school, and subsequently to college, and then to
a theological seminary.  All this while he cherishes a beautiful and fragrant memory, and looks
forward with a young man's ardor to the time
when boyish and girlish fancy shall be moulded
into mature and undying love.  In the mean
time his mind becomes cultivated by reading and
study, his manners polished by mingling with
beauty and refinement. He visits his early home,
and rushes into the presence of Sarah Smith.
What?  Is that Sarah Smith?  Is that girl in a
green and blue broad-striped de laine dress, with
a bright plaid ribbon pinned round her neck, and
a silver watch, —is that the fair dream he has
borne in his heart these years? To be sure there




MEN AND WOMIEN.              129
are rosy cheeks and bright eyes alnd a buxom
lass; but — but — alas! poor John.   He has
shrined her in the secret chambers of his soul so
long, but his soul-love grew with his growth and
strengthened with his strength, and Sarah Smith
did not. Walking alone by the river-side where
he so often walked with her, "What shall I do? "
is the question that ever and ever recurs. He is
disappointed and miserable.  Like too many of
us, he finds his idol is but common clay, —very
common.  His happiness is turned to cinders,
ashes, and dust. Is she to be the." angel of the
house"?   Is hers the delicate ethereal nature
which is to bear him on the white wings of love
up beyond his lower level? Will she help, him
to be true to himself, to his country, to his God?
Aside from  himself, can he make her happy?
Will she not see enough of the disparity between
them to be discontented and uneasy? Will' she
not be entirely out of her sphere in the circle of
his educated and accomplished friends?   The
thought makes him hot and nervous. He becomes restless, dissatisfied, and cannot sleep o'
nights. Finally, after much debating and many
struggles, he decides that their future paths must
diverge, and he tells her so very gently and tenderly.  She has felt the same thing all along.
She knows there is something in him to which
she cannot respond.  She feels that a change
has been going on during the years of their sep6*                      I




130          COUNTRY LIVING.
aration, and that they cannot make each other
happy.  They part friends. She reverences his
superiority. He respects her good sense. When
he is gone, she goes to her own room, has a
" good cry," almost wishes she were safe in
heaven, but finally thinks she would, on the
whole, prefer to wait till her little brothers are
grown up, and on the strength of this postponement goes to bed and to sleep, —is paler than
usual for a while, but her voice soon recovers
its tone, her cheek its color, her step its elasticity, and anon she is as merry as before.
Well, what of it? Nothing, if you would only
let them  alone; nothing whatever.  But you
won't,- busy, prying, inquisitive, meddlesome,
mischief-making neighbor that you are.  You
think John left town rather suddenly, and you
fancy Sarah is a little low-spirited; and because
Satan can find nothing else for your idle hands to
do, you put this and that together, and saunter
over to Mr. Smith's, determined to ferret out the
whole matter. You find Mrs. Smith alone. You
talk indifferently on indifferent topics.  Sarah
comes in.  You say, smilingly and carelessly,
(your look is a lie, for you are intensely interested,
and you want her to think you are not,) " Well,
Sarah, I suppose that handsome young minister
is going to carry you off pretty soon, according
to all appearances."  (On the contrary, the only
reason why you came was that, according to  ll




MEN AND WOMIIEIV.            131
appearances, you suppose no such thing.) Sarah
blushes, laughs an embarrassed little laugh, hesitates a moment, and leaves the room. Her mother
says, quietly, " That is all given up."  "There I,
thought so!" leaps to your lips, but you do not
say it. You exclaim, "Do tell!" as if you never
were so surprised in your life; and though you do
not succeed in extracting the details of the occurrence, you have in the simple fact sufficient capital to do a flourishing business; so you blazon it
abroad in Onionville; and Onionville, nothing
loath, takes it up, and at every sewing-circle and
tea-party where the Smiths happen not to be present, you discuss it in all its bearings. Poor John
Jones! Every virtue is torn from him piecemeal,
till he stands before you a mere skeleton of vices;
while Sarah Smith, in your transforming hands,
becomes an angel of light. "To keep company
with her when he was nobody,'and cast her off
when he got his learning! " indignantly exclaims
one. "Yes," chimes in a second, "he feels very
grand now, -too proud to take a woman who
knows how to work. He must have a city lady,
with her flowers and her flounces."  "Well, let
him have her," says a third, "there'11 no good
come of it, mark my word. He'11 come to some
bad end. Never knew it to fail. There's Captain
David, dismissed Lucy Perkins, and married
Squire Willis's daughter. What with her boarding-school airs and high-flown notions, her pianos




132          COUNTR Y LIVING.
and her gold chains, and her new cloak every
year, she soon found the bottom of the Captain's
purse. And there's their sons now, what are they
good for?  You'll see";- and the good woman
shakes her head ominously.  Now, kind-hearted
people, I respect your sympathy, but what is the
matter? Why are you making all this ado? Do
you really mean that you would have him marry
her? Marry her in the gloom of that cloud which.
darkened his being? Marry her, when between
his soul and hers there could be no real communion? It is true, that, before he was able to read
his or her inner history, he deemed her all-sufficient; but, discovering his mistake, he would do
her irreparable wrong if he should allow her to
go on,.unknowing and unsuspecting the discovery,
— irreparable wrong, to fulfil his promise to the
letter, when he cannot to the spirit, —irreparable
wrong, to stand up before God and man, and solemnly promise love till death, knowing that at the
very moment the life of love is gone. Alas! you
would consign her to a fate compared to which the
prospect of death is but a pleasing hope,- to the
cheerless, dreary, desolate doom of an unloved
and unloving wife. He is not to be blamed. The
fault, if fault there be, is hers, not his. She knew
that he was devoting himself to study, and rising
above his former rank, and she might have -done
the same. The way was open to her, as to him.
But she preferred to go to huskings and quiltings,




MEN AND WOMEN.              133
to take care of the children, and do the dairy
work;- all very well, and quite proper, only she
must abide by the consequences.
But, in fact, what harm is done? Her happiness is not destroyed. This little incident is but
a pebble against the tide. In a year's time, the
rosy cheeks, the muscular arm, the lithe figure,
and the strong, elastic spirit, will bless the heart
and cheer the home of some thriving young farmer; and a President and all his Cabinet may yet
be chosen from the healthy, ruddy faces that will
gather every morning round her wholesome and
plentiful table. Spare your pity. Of this happy
home she will be the centre and light and stay.
In this, her appropriate position, her faculties will
be brought into full play, her abilities shown to
the best advantage. Her many and active duties
will develop vigor of mind and of body. Keen
intellects and iron nerves, for many generations,
will rise up and call her blessed. Joined to one
whom she could not appreciate, nor by whom be
appreciated, — placed in a sphere for which she
was unfitted, and which she could not adorn, her
joyous, bounding, buoyant life would be checked,
and the poor country minister's wife, harassed,
careworn, pale, and meek, would go no pleasure
tour so swiftly as her own pathway to the tomb.
I am aware that this is only the bright side of
the picture.  Every woman does not take the
matter so easily. It does not follow, however,




134          CO UNTR Y LI VING.
that the gentleman is any more at fault, or that
the lady is any more aggrieved. She may be
only less sensible and humble. Instead of doing
with all her might whatsoever her hand finds to
do, the rich and petted Ida, after parting from
her equally rich and petted Mortimer, grows languid and languishing; weeps much, seems to have
lost all interest in affairs of the world, listens attentively to discourses turning upon the instability
of all earthly friendships, but turns a deaf ear to
music, except of the It Penseroso key. Doting
friends mourn over the crushed affections and
broken heart of the dear girl.
I know I am naturally cruel. Having no superfluity of heart myself, I am apt to make too little
allowance for an excess of it in others. But,
with all sincerity and kindness, I do believe that
in nine cases out of ten it is the pride that is
mortified, rather than the heart that is broken.
Ida knows that, to all intents and purposes, she
has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting. There may be no real justice in her feeling
so.  She may be vastly superior to her lover.
Women generally are. But however that may
be, she knows that she stands before the world
as one who has given her all, and the gift has
been rejected. Barkis is not willin'.
Now if scorn and disdain were her style, you
would hear nothing of sighing and moanings; but
she is not of that calibre, so she becomes gentle,




MEN AND WOMEN.                135
pensive, and interesting. I do not blame her for
her sorrow. I do, indeed, think it would be better
for her to consider that the man who, after six
months or a year of acquaintance, is not profoundly
impressed with a sense of her superiority, cannot
be a man whose name she will be honored in assuming, and his memory, therefore, is unworthy
a regret. Still, if she choose to look at it objectively rather than subjectively, from the world's
point of view rather than her own, very well. I
only insist that she shall not insist upon our taking
her wounded self-love for, a broken heart, - her
disappointment in not becoming the jewelled mistress of a brown-stone palace, an army of negro
servants, and a coach and six, for the agony of
misplaced affections. For look you. Ida's anxious
parents, in view of her faltering tread and drooping form, call a family council. The decree goes
forth that she must travel, and anon they bear
her hither and thither; dip her in the surf at
Newport; nauseate her with the waters at Saratoga; deafen her with the roar of Niagara; enervate her with the voluptuous airs of the South;
tone her up with the breezes of the Alleghanies.
After undergoing these sundry processes of resuscitation, the whole business is " done up-" in the
twinkling of an eye, by the sudden entrance upon
the stage of a rich, handsome, mustachioed cavalier, who is smitten by the "' most musical, most
melancholy charms " of the fair sufferer, and not




136          COUNTRY LIVING.
disenchanted by the excellent name that papa
bears on Wall Street. Mirth and gayety are reinstated, a bridal veil closes the scene, and the
cracked heart is just as good as new.
You see I have little faith in dying for love. I
have, however, great faith in moping one's self to
death out of spite, or stubbornness, or false shame.
If I am wrong, I am sorry - or glad; perhaps I
ought to be glad. At any rate, I am in just that
state of mind in which I ought to be under the
circumstances. If I have injured any one's feelings by my unbelief, I most humbly beg pardon.
I dare say I shall die of unrequited love myself
some day. It would be no more than strict poetic
justice. " Doubtless God might have made a better berry than a strawberry, but doubtless God
never did."   Doubtless there might be such a
thing as dying for love, but doubtless there never
(or seldom) was. In point of fact, there is not a
great deal of marrying for love. Not that I suppose all marriages are mercenary.  Far from it.
But people marry for a thousand things, -- money
not only, but a home, beauty, genius, because others do, because it is respectable, convenient, &c.
Some of these motives are objectionable, some perhaps not. When a poor girl, after laying the wornout bodies of her father and mother in the grave,
sees no prospect before her but unremitting toil,
loneliness, poverty, and death in the dreary end,
and marries the kind old physician who has tended




MEN AND WOMEN.                137
tier parents without prospect of reward; who has
been the witness of her assiduity, watchfulness,
generosity, good cheerful sense, and real worth,
and feels that she would shed upon his widowed
hearth something of the light of other days, I am
far from blaming her.  She is not false to her
noblest nature, although perhaps, in the dreams of
her early and happy girlhood, his was not the arm
she looked to lean on. He will love her with a
fatherly love; she will return it with grateful affection, and therefore her walk in life will be higher,
her ends nobler, her benevolence more expansive,
her womanhood better developed.  Though the
ecstatic glow that flushed her morning sky, when
" Life went a-Maying,
With Youth and Hope and Poesy,"
may have faded; yet a calm serenity - " the sober
certainty of home-felt bliss " - will enwrap her in
a holy atmosphere, soft, hazy, and warm-tinted, as
the beautiful Indian-summer.
When a young man is captivated by the fall of a
graceful shoulder, or the twirl of a tiny toe, and on
the strength of it marches straightway to church,
and there promises to love and cherish, I shall not
forbid the banns:
"Hcnored well are charms to sell,
If' priests the selling do"; —
or, if more practical, and with an eye to the windward, he notes that the pretty silk is not new, but
simply colored, turned upside down, wrong side




138          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
out, with new fringe and trimmings, and new
waist and sleeves, and bethinks himself how, under
such management, his narrow cottage walls would
stretch away into stately halls, -if he can secure
the fair artisan he is doubtless lucky. I do not
object.  Their talk will be of bread and butter,
the baby's teething, and the price of turnips; but
let them marry. I do say, however,- and am I
not right? -this is not that resistless tide, which,
gathering to itself the thousand streams that ripple
through the quiet meadows of life, sweeps suddenly
over the heart, bearing down all the old landmarks
of pride and prejudice; not that raging and quenchless fire which consumes the dross of selfishness,
and fuses into a glowing devotion every power,
thought, faculty, and purpose; not that great,
deep, absorbing, passionate, deathless love, which,
hlaving once passed into a soul, can go no more
out forever.
I could wish that women were happier. This
may appear a needless wish to those who look
only on the surface; but below the smoothlyflowing surface there is an undercurrent which
the world knoweth not of. There is a restlessness, an unuttered discontent, a vague longing,
which frets and wears away the cheerfulness and
happiness of life, particularly in the young. It is
involuntary, unsought, resisted, but all-powerful.
Ah! the capacity for suffering that there is in
girls, — the capacity, too, for enjoying and for




MEN AND WOMEN.                139
acting. It is weighed and measured by those who
are armed for the conflict, girded for the race,
but for whom no conflict and no race ever wait.
It is the slow wasting away of powers that have
nothing to grasp; the silent, subtle corrosion of a
heart turned in upon itself. O girls, everywhere
waiting and watching for a day that never comes,
I have seen you. I know you. I have followed
you through the dreary days that dragged their
slow length along. I know how the. tramp of the
monotonous years seems to you the dead march:of your young aspirations, -how  the pulse of
your heart grows fainter and fainter, beneath the
swelling fountain of tears.
"My heart, and hope, and prayers, and tears,
Are all with you, are all with you,"
and therefore I have a right to bid you take heart
and hope, for this very unrest is a sign. It is
the beating of your soul against its prison-bars.
It is a token from above, — a voice from the unseen world, bidding you come up higher. It tells
you of a level you have not yet reached; of energies not yet developed; of a life not yet rounded
off to full perfection. Your soul is unconsciously
sending out feelers, and they find nothing to grasp.
The world is six thousand years old, but it has
not yet learned to use its resources. It knows
not what to do with you, and you know not what
to do with yourselves. Your pastors and teachers exhort you to fear God and keep his command.




140          COUNTRY LIVING.
ments; and you try to do it. But that does not
fill the void, does not stop the aching, nor soothe
the unrest. No, and it never will. People may
talk as much as they choose about the power of
religion, but it will not satisfy your hungry heart,
any more than it will your hungry stomach.  God
has given to every appetite its appropriate food,
to every emotion its corresponding object.  He
has given us means and ends, but we blindly work
at cross-purposes, and take wrong means for right
ones, making his word of none effect by our traditions. When we ask him for bread, he gives us
bread; his children, in all kindness, but ignorantly,
give us oftentimes a stone. Do not reproach or
think meanly of yourselves for not being happy.
If you were absorbed in dress, visiting, pleasureseeking, you would have no discontent; but would
it be better so? If you were identified with any
great work, anything which could enlist your
whole being, you feel that it would be different;
but women seldom have a great work to do. Their
work is great only in its results, in the spirit with
which it is done. It is a vast conglomeration of
little things. You are where God has placed you,
or suffered you to be placed, and for our purposes
now it is all the same. If, in truth as in poetry,
love could take up the harp of life, and smite
on all the chords with might, then this chord of
self would, trembling, pass in music out of sight,
and this would be better. This self-abnegation is




MEN AND WO MEN.              141
perhaps indispensable to womanly completeness.
Until this chord has been touched, there is no
diapason. The depths of the soul are unstirred.
There is a power lying waste, a fountain sealed.
No character can be perfect which is not symmetrical. You may, you ought to love Christ with(
an overmastering love, but the two are entirely
distinct. One cannot take the place of the other.
Every earthly affection should indeed be baptized
in the heavenly,- but only baptized, not transmuted. I do not think God ever intended it
should be.
Have I found you a remedy? No, certainly.
I have only pointed out what would be a remedy
if found, but no searching will ever bring it. It
comes unsought, if it comes at all. What good
have I done you, then? None at all so far; buthere is the point where I wish to utter a note of
warning. Here is where you are in danger of
mistaking the seeming for the real. Faint and
famishing, you will eagerly pluck the fair-looking
apple, and it will turn to dust and ashes in your
mouth. You would better have died of starvation.
Because God has made you so that love is your
life and breath, and you pant and gasp without it,
you are not to inhale a foul malaria, under the
mistaken impression that it is mountain air. If
it be pure, the more you breathe of it the better,
only be sure it is pure. Therefore do not love
indiscriminately. An over-ripe apple falls at the




142          CO UNTR Y LI VING.
first gust, whether into lily-white hands or on the
unheeding ground. Do not you so; nor be content with a slight preference, -a pale, nerveless,
flickering, uncertain emotion, that brings as many
misgivings as heart-throbs. I have heard of girls
pausing on the threshold of an engagement, " at
a stand to know what to do"! Never allow yourself to be in such a position. If you don't know
what to do, it is the very strongest of all providential indications that you are to do nothing.
By all means, give yourself the benefit of the
doubt. " Friendship with all, entangling alliances
with none," is a good motto for women as well
as for nations. Faithfully adhered to, it will keep
you free from those little attachments which insensibly but surely fritter away your- power to form
a lasting and noble one; while it will no more
prevent your soul from going out to meet its lord
and king, when his trumpet sounds, than the
seven green withes had power to restrain the Hebrew athlete when his spirit returned to him, after
its ignoble sleep on a treacherous bosom.
Do not affect a motive in love. It is not a
question of motive, but of fact. I have no faith
in marrying to do good. The end does not sanctify
the means. If you do all the good you can with
your own individuality, I do not believe God will
hold you responsible for anything more. Nor, in
my opinion, does the respectability of the sinner
diminish the enormity of the sin. I have known




MEN AND  WOMEN.               143
missionaries, excellent men, bury their poor wives
in Hindoo jungles, and return to America to replace them, just as madam sends for a China teacup to replace the one broken by a careless servant.  Men and women combine with Nature to
abhor a vacuum, and the missionary's loss is often
far more easily made up than madam the housekeeper's.  Mysterious wheels, wires, and pulleys
are set in motion by a clique of mothers in Israel
behind the scenes, the result of which is, that some
unoffending, benevolent, and practical Miss Brown
finds herself suddenly precipitated, nolens volens,
(generally volens,) into the arms of the good missionary; -he congratulating himself on the success of his business transaction; she consoling herself that she has gained an excellent husband, and
done God service, thereby killing two birds with
one stone; and the mothers aforesaid rejoicing in
their skilful matrimonial diplomacy. Now I affirm
that it is miserable business the whole of it. It
may be good manceuvring, where all manoeuvring
is out of place. It is an unholy traffic, though all
the traffickers be members of an orthodox church
in good and regular standing. It is transferring
to the head what comes under the jurisdiction of
the heart. The parties concerned may " live happily ever after," but they have no right to expect
it. Of course, if a woman marries a missionary
because she loves him, even though her love sprang
up on his first Transatlantic appearance as a wid



144          COUNTRY LIVING.
ower, and goes to Boorioboola Gha with him, because she would rather do it than stay at home
without him, there is not the slightest objection;
she is quite right; only let her say so honestly,
if she feel called upon to say anything. But when
she explains her marriage by enlarging on her
sense of duty, the poor little children who stand
in such pressing need of a mother's care, the
heathen who are perishing for lack of knowledge,
why then, I say, if these really are her motives,
she is wrong, -just as truly, though not perhaps
as greatly, wrong as she who follows the glitter
of gold. Let her take a lesson from Jane Eyre
and St. John, since she has failed to learn it from
her Bible. If the claims of the heathen urge her
so irresistibly, let her go to them untrammelled.
The cause of God is not so desperate that it needs
to be propped up by a falsehood.
Nor do I believe in marrying because, as I have
frequently heard alleged, a woman's nature is such
that she " must love somebody." In the first
place, the implied fact is a convenient little fiction.
There is no sort of necessity for your " loving
somebody." It may be very pleasant to do so;
it may be very distressing not to do so; but it
is not immediately fatal. Even if it were, never
mind. Remember Pompey's sublime words, "It
is necessary for me to go; it is not'necessary
for me to live."  Death comes to all, and the
world does not need your bodily presence so much




MEN AND WOMEN.               145
as it needs your moral heroism. If you die rather
than live falsely, you will enrich it by one great
example.  Moreover, granting that you "must
love somebody," does it inevitably follow that you
" must love " a grown man in possession of a revpectable yearly income? Look abroad at the orphans, thousands upon thousands, fatherless, motherless, to whom your love would be as the dew
of Hermon.  Christ's little ones are all around
you, - the ignorant, the uncared-for, the outcast.
Lavish on them your irrepressible affection. The
sunshine of love might melt the ice in which their
better nature is incrusted, and warm into healthy,
vigorous growth the wasting germ of many a virtue.
The idea, girls, the idea of sacrificing your whole
life to a so-so sort of person, for the sake of having "somebody to love," in a world so full of
children that the most excruciating hand-organ
will in two minutes block up the sidewalk in any
portion of any city with admiring throngs of whiteheaded urchins!
To marry for a home or for happiness is little
better. A home purchased by the sale of yourself is a dear bargain, and happiness is the most
uncertain shadow you can pursue. It is incidental. It comes upon us unexpectedly; but if we
set out determinately and definitely in pursuit of it,
it generally leads us into bogs and quagmires,
and leaves us there.
If, instead of promising to love and honor in
7                        J




146          COUNTRY LIVING.
the future, custom enjoined a woman, on her marriage-day, solemnly to aver that she did at that
moment love and honor, I verily believe there
would be fewer mock unions. I think it would
be safer to let the future build itself, taking care
to secure in the present a firm foundation, than
to take the foundation for granted, and proceed
prematurely to the superstructure. Many women,
conscientious, but vague, unaccustomed to make
distinctions, to know clearly the difference between
one thing and another, after long hesitating and
vacillating, do finally zigzag their way to church,
and make the most tremendous promises, with a
misty kind of belief that they shall be able to
keep them when the indefinitely distant trial
comes, -who, if the plain question were put to
them point-blank, "Do you now love and honor
this man? " could not find it in their hearts, and
therefore not in their consciences, to'say " Yes,"
and would thereby be saved from a lifetime of
suffering, perhaps of sin. Yet, I have heard a
Christian woman seriously advise her young friend
to accept a marriage proposal, because she "would
not be likely to do better. A superior woman must
not expect to marry her superior." I have known
a gentleman write, " I advise you, if an intelligent,
truly Christian man, who really loves you, wants
you to marry him, to do so." - And a highly moral
and religious community does not cease to warn
contumacious maidens of the danger of'' going




MEN AND WOMEN.                     147
through the woods, and picking up a crooked
stick at last."
There certainly are occasions on which, if you
cannot do as you would, it is quite proper to do
as you can.   Nothing call equal a good sweetpotato, yet you would be very foolish to throw
away mashed Irish ones, because the frost has
destroyed the more saccharine tuber. In default
of mashed Irish, roasted will have no mean flavor.
If the potato crop fails, "Boston brown bread,"
fresh from the oven, will enable you to bear the
loss with philosophical resignation, and even boiled
rice, the most unpretending of all edibles, is better
than starvation.  But a husband is not a potato,
and if you select him on the same principle, be not
surprised if you find him extremely indigestible...... as the dove, to far Palmyra flying,
From where her native founts of Antioch beam,
Weary, exhausted, longing, panting, sighing,
Lights sadly at the desert's bitter stream ";
(Perfectly right in the dove.)
" So many a soul, o'er life's drear desert faring, -
Love's pure, congenial spring unfound, unquaffed, -
Suffers, recoils, then, thirsty and despairing
Of what it would, descends, and sips the nearest draught,"
and is refreshed and strengthened, just as the shipwrecked sailor is refreshed by the mocking salt
sea-water, which he bears in frenzy to his feverparched lips.
Do you now, seeing that I have dealt chiefly




148          COUNTRY LIVING.
in negatives, ask me what shall be the token?
My dear child, how can I tell? By just as many
girl's hearts as are throbbing this wide world over
by just so many ways will love enter in and take
possession. - Keep your eye single and your heart
pure, and you will not fail to recognize the heavenly visitant.! The molecule of oxygen roams
lonely through the vast universe, yearning for its
mate, and finding no rest, till of a sudden it meets
the molecule of hydrogen in a quiet nook, when
lo! a rush, an embrace, and there is no more
either oxygen or hydrogen, but a diamond drop
of dew sparkling on the white bosom of the lily.
So, I suppose, will it be with you, when you meet
your destiny.  A flash, and it is all over. Your
heart is gone, your power is gone; power over
your blood, that plays mad pranks in your cheeks,
-over your thoughts, that hover continually about
one spot, -over your memories that wake to music
only one string, - over yourself henceforth forevermore, to be held in solution by a stronger nature
than your own. Unless your love comes upon
you thus, like' a strong man armed, do not believe
in it. If you, in cold blood, give up your name,
your independence, your individuality, for a consideration, whatever that consideration be, you
will be a wife only in name.  Priestly blessing
cannot sanctify unholy contract.  If you have
parted with your birthright, what matter whether
it was for a mess of pottage or a stalled ox?




MEN AND WOMEN.               149
I know, therefore, of no reason why a woman
should marry, except because she cannot help it,because " the spirit of life which dwelleth in the
most Secret chambers of the soul, all trembling,
speaks these words:' Behold a god more powerful
than I.'"
If your love raises arid exalts you, if it helps
you on your heavenward way, if it brings you
nearer to God, if it strengthens you to brave
endurance, stimulates you to heroic action, and
makes all greatness possible; if, in one word, it
possesses itself of you, and sweeps you up and out
from the finite to the infinite, as a wave bears
seaward the strong swimmer, powerless,- you are
safe.
If anything less than this satisfies you, if you
content yourself with a feeble, sickly sentiment,
that wilts in the sun and breaks in the storm,
your soul will surely suffer. An inferior nature
may waken feeling enough to blind you for a little
while. The cares and pleasures of a busy life may
twine their rank growth so closely as to hide from
you for a season the real barrenness of the soil
beneath. But from the one, twenty, forty years
that lie before you, shall be born a day on which
you will awake to know that you cannot give
without receiving back full measure, life for life.
And when your dream is dreamed out, you will
exclaim, more bitterly than the old dame of the
ballad, -




~150         COUNTRY LIVING.
" Yesterday I was the Lady of Linn,
And now I'm but John o' the Scales' wife."
Your demon of discontent, cast out for a while,
will return, with seven other spirits more wicked
than himself, and your last state shall be worse
than your first.
Better, a thousand times better, go wandering
all your life, than bring your household gods under
an unworthy roof-tree.
There is, then, a way that seemeth good, but
the end thereof are the ways of death. With this
you have nothing to do.
But settle the point clearly. Know just where
you stand. Have the boundary-lines accurately
defined. Be able to give a reason for the hope
and faith that are in you. Missing the crowning,
glory of womanhood, do not childishly depreciate
it. Do not try to persuade yourself or others that
you are at the utmost bound of the everlasting
hills, quite in the promised land, when in fact you
only see it through a glass darkly. Meet the fact
boldly.  Courage does not consist in feeling no
fear, but in conquering fear. There is no heroism
in marching blindfold through a thousand dangers.
He is the hero who, seeing the lions on either
side, goes straight on, because there his duty lies.
Acknowledge to yourself, "I am not happy.  I
do not like my life. I must be capable of better
things.  I am  uneasy, restless, discontented."
Then, knowing exactly the state of your case,




MIEN AND WOMEN.              151
apply to yourself comfort and healing. Remember first that God reigns. Infinite power is wielded by infinite love. The fatherly eye that sees
the sparrows as they fall, will not let you walk
in a random path. Life is a chain of sequences.
From the cradle to the grave —ay! and beyond
it  stretch the series of cause and effect; and
what thou knowest not now, thou shalt know
hereafter.
You are in a school carefully graded. When
you have passed your examination satisfactorily,
you will be promoted. Just as soon as you have
got all the discipline which your present circumstances have for you, you will be surrounded by
new. Just as soon as you are fitted for a higher
career, the gates will be flung wide open to you.
You can know exactly what is best for you only by
observing what is. You think you could do something better, something greater. Do you perfectly
accomplish everything that you undertake? Until
you perform in the best possible manner everything which it is at present your duty to do, you
have no right to complain of your contracted sphere.
Why reach out among the stars for a treasure
that lies- at your feet? Be faithful over a few
things, before you repine at not being made ruler
over many things. You may talk of opposing
friends, unfavoring circumstances, adverse fate;
but circumstances are full of Divinity, planning
and directing. We are not the children of Tate,




152          COUNTRY LIVING.
but the children of our Father in Heaven; au-; 
when the. Heaven-appointed hour is come, fate,
friend, and circumstance will swell the tide that
shall bear us out triumphantly to the bosom of the
boundless sea.
Another thing remember.  Threescore years
and ten are not the whole of life. We say that
we know it, but we act as if we knew it not.
With our. lips we affirm; but with our lives we
deny. Blind and eager, we grasp for all our good
things now. We weep and moan and faint, because for a moment we are hungry and thirsty.
We forget that God has not put us in this world
to be happy, but to be trained. It is true that
there is a great deal of happiness thrown in; and
we find it so delightful, that we are apt to substitute it for the real end of life, and mourn that
we cannot accomplish it; which is as if children,
having feasted on their Christmas candy, should
cry to be fed on it all the year round. Life is
one combined and continuous process and proof.
Riches, poverty, happiness, misery, education, ignorance, are so many chisels' to form and touchstones to try our characters. One substance stands
fire, another water. If you reverse the trial, it
is fruitless. One soul must be purified by prosperity, another by adversity; one in society, another in solitude. Who dare be so presumptuous
as to say, " This is not the right kind of test for
me. My character would be better developed




MEN AND WOM'EN.V              153
and ascertained in such and such circumstances."
" Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? "
You pant for activity and exertion. You are ingenious, constructive, fertile in devices, skilful in
combination, rapid in execution.  You want a
subject, a field, a career. Very well. Find one
or make one, if you can. Exert yourself to the
utmost.  Move heaven and earth; but, having
done all without success, decide conclusively that
your lesson is to be learned in another school,
and reflect peacefully that "they also serve who
only stand and wait." Bring this principle in,
prematurely, and you will be an indolent, inemcient cumberer of the ground. Leave it out of
view entirely, and you will be a pricking, irritating thorn in all sensible and sensitive flesh.
Apply it just at the right time, and the world
will be better for-your having lived in. it.
As for a little happiness, more or less, never
mind it. Be content to put it off. When the
Shekinah dwelt in the Holy of Holies, did the
high-priest note in passing that the porch of the
temple was shrouded in twilight? Believe what
you say you believe, that there is a life beyond
death..Weeping may endure for a night, but joy
cometh in the morning.  It is only for a little
while.  Can you not for a little while be brave to
bear and to do?  The fulness of joy, the perfection of being, belong to another world. The secret
of contentment is not the gratification nor the cru7*




154          COUNTRY LIVING.
cifixion of every right desire, but faith in their ulti
mate fulfilment.
"He who sees the future sure,
The baffling present may endure."
If God has happiness in store for you here, it will
surely come; you need not stir to find it. If he
has not, all effort is vain; no movement of yours
will bring it. Therefore be calm.
Now, if you suppose that I wish to sublimate
you into an airy nothing, —a cross between the
patient Griselda and a Romish saint, I have only
to inform you that you are entirely mistaken.
Though I would have you depend chiefly for your
happiness on the next world, I would also have
you, by all means, make the most of this. It is
very certain that there is a heaven, but earth is
also a fixed fact. It may be very pleasant to die,
but for the present your especial business is to live;
and if you can't be as happy as you would like to
be, be as happy as you can. Because you can't
get what you want, don't throw away what you
can get. Squeeze out of the world all the juice
there is in it. It is a mistake to suppose that you
must be either at the brow or at the foot of the
hill. There are many steps between, some of
which command a charming view, and all a new
horizon. Because you are not particularly happy,
don't condemn yourself to particular misery. It
is possible to sleep soundly, eat heartily, and be
on the whole very comfortable, without being in




MlEN AND TnWOMEN.            155
a rapturous frame of mind. Only, when you are
simply comfortable, don't pretend that you are tremendously happy. There is nothing to be gained
by the deception; and if there were anything, you
don't want to gain it. Do with your might whatsoever your hand finds to do. Sympathize largely.
Don't merely try to feel, but feel. Associate with
children, not to harass them by continually setting
them right, —which is of no use, since they will
inevitably and immediately fall back into their
original sin,- but make yourself one with them.
Nothing pays so well. I think it is the easiest of
all ways to amuse yourself and benefit others. But
don't confine yourself to any one class. Whenever anybody's orbit intersects yours, make something come of it. Sink a shaft wherever there is
the least probability of water. Find out the secret
place where abideth the soul of your Irish " girl."
See if there may not be something in common between you and your washerwoman, your seamstress, your chambermaid, your cook. If there is
a single plank in their platform on which you can
stand, join hands thereon, and give one throb to
the heart of humanity. Do not wait supinely for
opportunity, but go out and seek her in the highways and hedges. Be alive at every pore. Make
your soul great with unceasing benevolence. Make
common cause with virtue against temptation, with
goodness against wickedness, with right against
might. If truth is solvent in falsehood, precipitate




156          COUNTRY LIVING.
the truth, and cast out the false. Do not be intimidated because human nature is not every inch a
saint, nor cajoled because it is not every inch a
satan. This great world is a powerful diluent.
Accustom yourself to analyze, and, having decided
deliberately, maintain stoutly.  However weak,
unpopular, or ridiculed the just cause may be, let
it find in you an unflinching and impartial supporter; -impartial, for women are too apt, having
once espoused a cause, to cling to it' with woman's
devotion," right or wrong; or, having rejected it,
to fancy no good thing can come therefrom. If
you approve one thing and condemn another, both
of which Mrs. Grundy alike condemns, don't abstain from saying so for fear of being called inconsistent. If to-day you approve any measure which
yesterday you condemned, don't be afraid to say
so for fear of being deemed fickle. Is it not Ruskin who says that he has little faith in an opinion
till he has changed it three times?  Pope asks
what changing the mind is, but saying we are
wiser to-day than we were yesterday. And Ruskin again bids us say what we think to-day in
words as hard as cannon-balls, and say what we
think to-morrow in words just as hard, no matter
if one assertion flatly contradict the other. Consistency is the bugbear of small, inactive minds.
A living soul, grappling with the great truths of
the present, has no leisure to go digging among
last year's ruins to see whether the two sets dove



MEN AND WO.MEN.              157
tail exactly. Let bygones be bygones. Let the
dead past bury its dead.  A sincere and honest
life will arrange itself. All opinions and beliefs,
intelligently and conscientiously adopted, will group
themselves into a beautiful mosaic, which you cannot now see because you are too near, and must
behold one at a time; but when a stand-point in
the other world gives you the proper focal distance,
you will behold, with wonder and admiration, how
the most diverse and the most similar were alike
necessary to form a perfect and artistic whole.
There are sorrows that spring from other sources,
— hope deferred, love wasted, expectation disappointed, ambition crushed, — noiseless grief that
saps the foundation, eats into the very penetralia
of life, of which the whited walls without give no
sign, though Death riot within, - anguish that
sweeps over the soul like the desert Simoom, blasting every green thing, drinking up every fresh
fountain, leaving in its wake only blackness and
blankness,- troubles that come naturally, and
troubles that seem to have been wrenched from
their places to assail some doomed life, - troubles
that no wisdom could have averted, and troubles
wantonly and wickedly self-inflicted, yet all alike
sore evils, and of long continuance. There is in
woman a power of acute suffering, from causes
which scarcely affect the sterner nature of man.
Repulsive but merciful necessity bears down upon
his sorrow, smothering it with rude, relentless




158          CO UNTRY LIVING.
hand, indeed, but smothering it. Her quieter,
more monotonous life fans the flames, but gently,
so that though the bush is burning a long time,
yet is it not consumed. There are many, I see
them every day, whose garden of lilies and roses
is become a howling wilderness. The poetry and
sprightliness and spring of life are gone forever.
They walk, perhaps, with downcast, introverted
eyes. They are called reserved, haughty, cold,
stupid. Mere thoughtlessness would fain see if
there is blood beneath the marble, and, drawing
her bow at venture, sends an arrow quivering into
the heart of hearts, and goes on her smiling way.
But all this can and mutt be borne. The hand
that metes out the measure to us ll never yet held
false balance. Every pain is instinct with good, if
you will but have the wisdom to discern it. From
every bitter, pluck its soul of sweetness. The conflict may be fierce, but who fight for God in the
fighting grow strong. You may leave the battlefield with rent and blood-streaked robes, but with
a nervous right arm. 1" Ce n'est pas la victoire qui
fait le bonheur des nobles cceurs; c'est la combat," -
(Not the victory, but the struggle, makes the happiness of noble hearts), - says a French writer;
but upon you, if you will, wait both struggle and
victory. Strength which a placid life can never
give may be yours. Heights which unruffled souls
never attain you can climb if your feet are willing;
and from those mountain-tops you will gaze on




MEN AND WOMEN.                   159
such visions as never met the eye of dwellers in
the valley.
"Behold yon grotto where the dropping tears
Are crystallized to columns by long years;
So shall thy sorrows, child of mighty grief,
Bear up like pillars for thy soul's relief."
But if your sorrow is to be thus converted into
strength, yourself must work the change. It has
not, as many seem  to suppose, an innate, selfdeveloping, elevating power.  Whether the sculptor's chisel carve from Parian marble the purity
and grace of an ideal womanhood, or the grim visage of a churchyard Death, depends on the hand
that holds it.  The April rain falls alike on the
gray rock and the brown earth. But the one, unmindful of the treasure, yields it up to the first ray
of sunshine, the first breath of the west wind, and
anon is as gray as before. The other takes the
soft visitor to her kindly bosom, and down out of
sight the little messenger goes to where young life
is stirring in the darkness, and there works a miracle. So your grief will be to you a savor of life
unto life, or of death unto death, according as you
use it. If you nurse it, and cherish it, and brood
over it, and talk about it, it will wax greater and
greater, filling your vision, shutting out from you
all sunshine, concentrating upon itself all your
thoughts, and clinging to you, a huge excrescence,
instead of entering into your blood and nerves and
sinews, softening, refining, Christianizing. Grief,




160          COUNTRY LIVING.
it is truly said, is sacred; but grief brought forward
promiscuously, harped upon, condoled over, made
the staple of conversation, becomes rapidly profane.
Grief is a bond of union between men who, however dissimilar in other respects, are alike liable to
its attacks; but the great world rushes on, -and
cannot loiter long. You must not pull the string
too hard, or it will break. If you have a sympathizing friend to whom it would be a relief to unbosom yourself, do so; but, even then, be careful
that you do not dwell too long upon, or recur too
often to, your skeleton. Your friend will grieve
with you sincerely for a while, but will presently
outgrow you. Does this seem harsh? I trust not.
Far be it from me to wound those whom God hath
smitten.  I only say what I believe to be true,
and what, if true, it behooves you to know. It is,
moreover, best for yourself that your eyes should
not always be turned inward. To bring happiness
to others is the surest way to bring it to yourself.
Apply healing to other minds diseased, and you
will not fail to heal your own. The law of impenetrability obtains in mind as well as in matter. Sorrow cannot wholly fill the heart that is occupied
with others' welfare.  Constant melancholy, furthermore, is constant rebellion. If you will only
square yourself to God's will, you will command a
cheerful equanimity. To drag along a miserable,
fi-etful, repining, or desponding existence, is not
resignation; but she who turns away from the




MEN AND WOMAEN.              161
mound beneath which her first-born lies, back to
a world which brings only an aching sense of void,
shrinking from no duty, smiling through eyes that
will ever and anon turn wistfully heavenward,
showing her sorrow only in the softer footfall, the
added tenderness of voice, the' gentler sympathy,
the warmer pity with which she binds up the broken-hearted, —ah! she is the true victor.  On
her brow shall the crown be set.
In the old days, when our fathers were a handful of men in a great land, and foe, famine, and
pestilence threatened destruction to their lessening
ranks, they nightly laid their dead to rest, levelled
the frequent graves with surrounding earth, and
planted in the sacred soil their corn and grain,
that they might conceal their weakness from a
wary and watchful foe.
So, bury your griefs out of sight, deep, deep,
where the eye of the world cannot pierce, and
over them sow with a bountiful hand the seed of
Christian virtues, and from the ashes of your
dead hopes shall spring up a living growth of
Faith, and Patience, and Charity, and Love, beneath whose waving shadow your soul shall calmly
sit in the evening-tide of a serene life, waiting the
voice of the Lord.
But unhappiness cannot be prevented or exterminated by a "whereas, be it resolved" alone.
Action is not more the chief part of an orator than
of every other human being. It is the necessity
K




162         COUNTR Y LIVING.
of every noble nature. Change is the essence of
life, and action is continuous change,- wise action, continuous advancement. Whether grief be
real or imaginary, - and imaginary grief is real, -
employment is an excellent specific. Ah! that is
the very thing you want, - something definite to
do. Well, there is the school-house, which ninetynine girls in a hundred enter, not because they
feel that they have any particular call that way,
but because it seems to open the only loop-hole of
escape from inanity. That you have no taste for
the work is the smallest possible objection. Good,
honest people, reasoning a priori, affirm that no
one can be a good teacher unless he loves teaching.
Educational conventions and professional periodicals reiterate the statement, till they perhaps come
to believe it themselves; but it is only a popular
fallacy. In all my life, I have known but one
woman who really lovyed teaching for its own sake.
Some of the best teachers —the most respected
and the most beloved —have adopted it because
it was the only work that offered; and, hating it
most heartily, have accomplished it most successfully.  But it is far more probable that, being
young and inexperienced, you fancy teaching will
be the "' open sesame" to Paradise, - or a triple
coat of mail against all the ills that flesh is heir to;
but you may as well undeceive yourself at once.
You think it will give you the great desideratum, -
employment, occupation, something to think about.




MEN AND WOMEN.               163
Yes, it will, indeed; so much; that, if you do all
that you see standing in need of doing, you will
require the strength of Hercules and the days of
the planet Jupiter. If you are strong and healthy,
you will have the satisfaction of spending five or
six of the best years of your life in a school, and
at the expiration of that time be allowed to leave
with honor, a pale face, disordered nerves, tired
brain, and shattered constitution. The labor required in ordinary schools of the higher class is
such, that I think a woman of average physical
strength cannot spend more than four consecitive years in them without breaking down. The
draughts on the vital energy are so unceasing,
that the supply cannot equal the demand, and the
fountain is exhausted. Of course I refer only to
teachers of conscience and character. An inefficient, commonplace routinist can drone on in the
same rut, ad infinitum, and perhaps give complete
satisfaction to an astute public. So, if you have
been tenderly nursed and nurtured, if you have
indulged an appetite for sick headaches, if you
have been trained in the belief that rest should
follow labor, and that the best work can be performed by the best-conditioned animal, engage to
"wash for the ladies" at sixpence an hour, or
enter a bookbindery and be paid by the job, or dig
clams on the. sea-shore and sell them in the shell,
(which I always fancied must be a delightful occupation,) or hire yourself out as nursery-maid to




164           CO UNTR Y LI IVNG.
nine small children, but don't enter a public school,
-  and a private school is no' better, and a great
deal wvorse, since the former only devours you
piecemeal, but the latter swallows you whole, body
and soul.
But you think it will be so delightful, so juvenescent, to be surrounded by happy, joyous, bounding
children.  You can quote reams of poetry on the
subject, -
"A beautiful, and happy girl," -
" Child amid the flowers at play," -
"' A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,"-' A baby in a house is a well-spring of pleasure," etc., -
all of which I am not prepared to contradict; but
a hundred and fifty babies in a house, together,
representing every stage of infancy, from the bread
and molasses of three years old, to the nuts and
apple coquetry of thirteen, will make larger
draughts on your patience than on your poetry,
and exercise your judgment more than your imagination. You must divest yourself, as soon as
possible, of the idea that all children are little
white-winged angels, with golden curls and rosebud lips.   You must prepare yourself for diamonds in the rough, and sometimes for the rough
without the diamond. Even where there is a
diamond, you must not expect to polish it in the
twinkling of an eye. Perhaps it will not flash its
full lustre till the hand that first made way for its




MEN AND WOMEN.              165
gleaming has crumbled into dust. We have all
read any number of stories about hordes of ferocious boys, who have organized successful and successive rebellions, and ejected a long line of male
dynasties from the professional chair, but who
have suddenly been brought to roar you as
gently as any sucking dove, by the apparition
of a sweet-faced, low-voiced woman. Now, I
know that calmness and gentleness and firmness will work wonders, where passion and violence and storm have been only abbots of misrule,
-and of the whole circle of things that may
happen to you, this may happen; but I would
not advise you to set your heart upon it. If
you begin with the practical, at least, if not theological belief, that the children of men are deceitful and desperately wicked, prone to evil as the
sparks are to fly upward, you will be happily
disapp5ointed, if you are disappointed at all. Expect to meet wormwood, senna, and Epsom salts;
and if you do find the land overflowing with milk
and honey, you will be doubly delighted. Be
prepared to employ sternness of tone, severity of
manner, and anything else that may be necessary;
and if a fair trial convince you that music has
charms enough to soothe the savages, why then
all you will have to do will be to sing with all
your might and main.
I hope you will not be shocked, and think I
recommend you to turn into a kind of ogress,




166          COUNTRY LIVING.
with the appetite of the Wantley dragon, whose
ordinary dessert was
" Poor children three,
That could not with him grapple,
But at one sup he ate them up,
As one would eat an apple";
nor into a modern Medusa, with power to transform the trembling urchins to stone by a look. I
only wish to give you a hint of unpleasant possibilities, so that, if your Spanish castle should fall,
it may not bury you in the ruins. As the Cat
observed to the Ugly Duckling, " I say disagreeable things, but it is for your good." I take it
for granted that your own hearts will teach you
enough of love, and the spirit of meekness; that
your woman's nature makes it incumbent on one
to exhort you to let justice temper mercy, rather
than mercy temper justice.
There are other stones of stumbling, against
which you may as well be forewarned. Every
community that has emerged from a state of barbarism is infested with excellent and exemplary
individuals, leaning to the "goody — good," accustomed  to  take things on  trust, who  will
embrace every opportunity to speak a word, in
season and out of season, especially out of season,
on the fearful and weighty responsibilities of your
position. I advise you, as a friend, not to listen
to them. The comparative amount of your responsibility and mine, his, hers, or its, is a thing
not cognizable by human eyes.




MEN AND W 0IMEN.             167
It is not necessarily the man who comes in contact with the largest number of people who exercises the most influence.  It may be so, but it
does not follow, and we do not know whether it
is or not. When John Bunyan was cast into
Bedford jail, there were doubtless many pious
souls who mourned that the zeal and power of his
best years should be thus wasted; yet through
those prison-walls there streams a light which
will grow brighter and brighter, till lost in the
glory of the Celestial City. Every person is responsible for all the good within the scope of his
abilities, and for no more, — and none can tell
whose sphere is the largest. A mother, tending
her child in the quiet seclusion of a Virginian
home, sees no foreshadowing of a mighty destiny,
yet there comes a day when an empire's fate
trembles in the tiny hand now clasping hers. It
is therefore impertinent to assume that the responsibility of teachers, or of any one class of
people, is greater than that of any other. The
only difference is, that one influences at first
hand, another at-second or third. At every footfall, we set in motion a chored whose trembling
thrills ten thousand more, and will quiver on
eternally.  Every thought and word and deed
of every human being is followed by its inevitable
consequence; for the one we are responsible,
with the other we have- nothing to do.
You will also probably encounter a great many




168          COUNTRY LIVING.
deprecatory remarks, concerning superficial knowledge, a smattering of the sciences, &c. Fond
mammas will think they are makling a display of
great and judicious wisdom, in exhorting you to
render their infants thorough masters of whatever
study they pursue. Now I think superficial knowledge is a very good thing; and, for my own part,
I should be only too glad to be well-smattered.
In the first place, complete mastery. by schoolchildren of any one study is a moral impossibility;
not only from the organization of our school system,
but from the very structure of the human mind.
Take geography, one of the earliest and perhaps
the simplest studies attempted. Childish capacity
cannot seize it in all its bearings, nor is the attempt to present them wise.  Many things are
taught to children which it would be far better
for them to find out themselves. Let them grow
up to their difficulties naturally, instead of having
difficulties thrust upon them from without. If you
lead them  tenderly up to-a fact, they will quite
probably be indifferent, or but partially interested;
but if they run against it, they will not leave it
till they have found whence it came, and why it
is there. School life should be considered only
a preparatory course. It is a means, not an end.
It is what you work out of their minds, and not
what you put in, that is of importance.  If a boy,
at the end of his school days, has learned how to
study, if he has acquired mental, moral, and physi



MEN AND WOMEN.               169
cal self-control, his career is a success, no matter
how many or how few things he knows. Of all
the knowledge learned, he may have forgotten the
greater part; but the wisdom which that learning
brought him is his inalienable estate. You must
be content to lodge the seed, for April rain and
May sunshine and June warmth are necessary to
bring it to perfect fruitage. You may drive the
nail, but time alone can clinch it.
This charge of superficial knowledge is so often
brought up against women, that I may be pardoned
for pursuing it a little further, and asking how
many men there are in America whose knowledge
of things generally extends far beyond a smattering? I have something more than a suspicion
that, if the principle should obtain that we are to
know nothing of a science unless we know that
science thoroughly, the sphere of our knowledge
would suffer a sudden collapse. Is it indeed desirable that we should be entirely ignorant of the
history of Greece, unless we can become imbued
with the spirit of her golden age, - entirely conversant with her literature, her antiquities, her
topography, her climate, her Fauna and Flora, -
know precisely what tide of religious emotion it
was that swept over her, bearing on its crested
wave the Parthenon, - what silent influence of sun
and shade and dew and rain centred on the germ
that sprung up into that magnificent outgrowth of
national eloquence, whose fruit was Demosthenes
8




170         COUNTRY LIVING.
and his immortal compeers? Shall we not trace
the long wanderings of the heroic Ten Thousand,
and share their madness of delight, when, from
the heights of the Sacred Mountain, their eyes
beheld the sparkle and glow of the Euxine Sea,
or watch "Idalian Aphrodite beautiful" flush
from the ocean foam, to live in marble forever; or
dream in the shadow of Olympus, to the music
of that harp whose strings have not yet ceased
to quiver, - because, forsooth, we do not know in
what city Homer was born, or even whether there
was any Homer at all; what force of nature the
poetic mind of early Greece symbolized in the
Cytherean myth; what wire-pullers, lobby-members, or Hellenic Maintenon moved the lever that
thrust the Persians and the Greeks in each others'
faces?  Nay, verily. The world grew nearly six
thousand years before it flowered in Linnmeus, yet
every child in our village school-houses will listen
with appreciative eagerness while you point out to
them the different parts of a common pea-blossom,
stamen, pistil, keel, wings, and banner; every eye
will sparkle, and every little listener become a
practical botanist, and bring you specimens from
every kitchen garden in the neighborhood. The
Old World of his birth and the New World of
his adoption alike contend for Agassiz; but on
shady Saturdays in May, every brook in New
England is fringed with ichthyologists in jackets,
who will tell you the habitat, the breathing ap



MEN AND WOMEN.               171
paratus, the locomotive power, of trout and roach
and shiner and sucker for miles around. A lifetime is not too much to spend in the investigation
of the structure of the earth; but in three months
an intelligent boy can learn enough of " rock and
tree and flowing water " to give a new interest
and beauty to every landscape on which his manhood's eye may rest.  Many men have a specialty,
something towards which they are drawn by an
irresistible impulse, and to which they devote
themselves with eager and delighted zest. Shall
they therefore be ignorant of everything else?
Many more have no specialty.  They have an
accumulative, analytic, and critical power, and
roam at large through many fields. They make
no new discoveries, and establish no new generalizations, but they are delightful companions, the
appreciative welcomers and true interpreters of
the Master Spirit when he comes. None, so far
as I know, are thoroughly versed in all branches
of knowledge; few, in any one; but many, very
many, are sufficiently conversant with a large
variety to realize the words of the poet,
"My mind to me a kingdom is."
I have by no means exhausted the possible exasperations which society in general will give you,
if you decide to teach.  The man who makes
your shoes thinks it incumbent upon him to learn
the trade; the woman who trims your bonnets




172         COUNTRY LIVING.
finds it necessary to serve an apprenticeship; but
the world at large, collectively and individually,
considers itself abundantly qualified to make suggestions, offer opinions, and pass judgment on so
simple and easy a matter as teaching; nor will
any motive of delicacy prevent its doing so. You
will also have the satisfaction of knowing that you,
devoting the prime of your life, are receiving from
one to three fourths as much money as a boy preparing for his junior examination would receive in
the same situation; or a graduate, laying up money
for his medical or theological lectures. The subject grows too rapidly under my hand, and I believe I shall have to devote a separate treatise to
its discussion; but I must show you a few gleams
from the "Sunny Side," before I pass on.
In the first place, if you wish to love and to be
loved, it offers you delightful opportunity. You
will bind fresh young hearts to your own, with a
tie that time only strengthens and hallows. They
are too far removed from you to see your faults,
and they will leave you before they have acquired
discernment enough to do so. Consequently, you
will be enshrined in their memories, haloed with
a glory that is less of your deserts than of their
imaginings. They will see what you aim to be,
rather than what you are. They will mark your
standard, and not your inability to reach it. You
will be associated with their purest thoughts and
ambitions, their most innocent joys and simplest




MEN A ND WOMEN.              173
pleasures, -with all that in after days they will sigh
to remember, - with the dew and freshness of their
morning. You will also be doing godlike work, -
moulding mind, fashioning material which is indestructible. You will see your influence, as you
go on from day to day, in the awakening interest,
the brightening eye, the more thoughtful brow, the
kinder hand, and warmer heart; and below the
surface, below all that you can see, the train you
have set in motion is going noiselessly on. Without sound of hammer or axe, there is rising a
beautiful temple, meet residence for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. A lovely, gentle woman,
who went to heaven long ago, probably never
dreaming of the work she had done, perhaps
weeping that she had been but an unprofitable
servant, changed the current of at least one life,
turning it from the valley of the Shadow of
Death, through the pleasant land of Beulah; and
now, years after, a young man, her pupil, writes
thus tenderly bf her: "She has a place in my
soul, a' little inner-room, where once dwelt passion, gloom, and chaos; but when she opened it,
she gently arranged it, dispelled the gloom that
obscured the window, and till.I fall asleep her
face shall ever meet me there, with all I hold
most dear."
To be thus treasured up, not in one soul, but in
many souls; to live, not your own life only, but
hundreds and hundreds of other lives, perhaps




i74           COUNTRY LIVING.
wiser, purer, or happier than yours; to be woven
in with the warp and woof of boyhood's strong,
firm web; to gleam and flash through the finer,
subtler texture of girlhood; — this is your "exceeding great reward."
Girls generally have more or less taste for
writing. If we could believe critics on the subject, they take to poetry as naturally as ducks to
water; but we do not believe critics, because they
write from theory, not from observation, and know
little about the inner life of girls, - actual, everyday girlhood.  Of all those who are unfitted by
their organization for a life of inactivity, by their
moral sense for frivolity, by their position, possessions, or taste for manual labor, by far the larger
part will turn to the school-room rather than to
the pen. Still there are, in the aggregate, many
who cast wistful and furtive glances towards authorship. It is to them a
"Summer isle of Eden, lying in dark purple spheres of Sea," -
a Land of Promise, wreathed in golden mist, indistinctly limned, but wondrous fair. To the highspirited and finely-strung it proffers mental work
and pleasurable excitement behind an impenetrable veil.  To the poor and struggling it is a
mystic Aladdin's lamp, flashing before their dazzled eyes the gleam  of gold, paving their way to
happiness with pearls and diamonds.
Undoubtedly these castles in the air are not




MEN AND WOMEN.                175
"the baseless fabric of a vision," but, like our
thrilling novels, are founded on fact, perhaps on
just about as large a proportion of fact. There
is a charm about writing. I can conceive of few
things more delightful than to see one's self rightangled off in oblong form, on fine white paper,
with broad margins, clear type, Russian calf, and
illustrations by Darley.
if your cistern is over-full, a newspaper is a
very convenient faucet, if you can unscrew it. I
know that editors complain bitterly of the multitudinous pipes directed to their sanctums, and the
" weak, washy, everlasting flood" with which they
are inundated; but I would not hold back on that
account.  What is the use of having newspapers,
pray, if you cannot write for them? Do dry-goods
clerks complain because their counters are continually strewed with silks and muslins, -because
they are constantly obliged to arrange, and derange, and rearrange? Why, it is their business.
It is a sign of prosperity. A shop whose shelves
were always in order would be apt to close business in a month, and a newspaper which is not
sufficiently alive and active to draw into its vortex
a host of spirits from the vasty deep around it,
will soon stagnate into decay and death. Besides,
how small a portion of the whole suffering is borne
by the editor. It is absolutely appalling to think
of the hopes and fears, the aspirations and dreams,
the anxieties, tears, and heart-throbs, the watch



176          COUNTRY LIVING.
ing, waiting, and disappointment, shut up in the
"dark drawers" of editorial tables, —those terrible Black Holes of literature. And the worst
of it is, that in the great majority of cases the execution is merited. I suppose it does sometimes
happen that wheat and chaff are alike condemned.
In fact, I know it does. If you should be impertinent, and ask me how I know, I should follow the
example of the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table,
and simply say, " Nullum tui negotii." Still, as I
was remarking, if your poem is not printed, there
is a presumption, at least, that it was not worth
printing.
Men talk as if it were a sin to write, unless the
writing be of the very highest order. But are all
preachers Pauls? all soldiers Bonapartes? all actors Garricks? all statesmen Washingtons? Shall
a woman not dance unless she have the heels of an
Ellsler, or sing without the voice of a Lind, or
paint without the pencil of an Angelo? Would it
even be better so? Is there not many a man
whose pulses thrill to the notes of " Yankee Doodle," who would sit calm and impassive under
"Casta Diva "?
A certain reviewer said of a certain writer, that
her poems had done positive harm, - they had
weakened the English language and perverted the
English taste; that it would really be better if she
had never taken a pen in her hand; and then he
pronounced an anathema on the whole race of




MEN AND WOMEN.               177
feminine rhymers.  Nonsense, again!  Is the
English language more important than the English heart? Is the marble statue which the skilful
artist carves with his chisel of greater moment
than the living soul which he is to shape, " not for
an age, but for all time," - ay, and for all eternity? All over the green fields of England, and
under the blue skies of America, hearts have
throbbed and eyes have filled with tears at a woman's simple songs.  Of what use is it, then, for a
critic to rise up in his self-conceit and say, " This
is not poetry; this is all sentiment; it ought not
to be written; it is not Miltonian nor Spenserian
nor Virgilian nor Dantesque; it is not written
according to the rules of high art."
You may tell a mother that her child's features
are not Grecian, that his skin is browned and
freckled by sun and wind, that his hair is coarse
and his form ungainly; but will she clasp him to
her bosom with any the less tenderness, or will she
thenceforth cease to whisper his name in her morning and evening prayer? The object of poetry is
to please-and whom?  Not the elegant, the cultivated, the delicately-nurtured, merely; but the
poor, the homely, the ignorant, as well. It is to
polish the rough, to refine the vulgar, to ennoble
the commonplace, to scatter pearls before those
who find the path to heaven among the untrodden
ways of life. Go to now, fools, and slow of heart
to believe! There must be vessels of honor and
8 — k                 L




178           COULVTR Y LIVING.
vessels of dishonor. All stars have not the same
glory; but one star differeth from another star
in glory. Homer wrote the Iliad, and Florilla
Flowerdale writes a Sonnet to a Dew-drop; and
though the soul of the one be the basin of an
ocean, and that of the other a gill dipper, they are
both full.  There is but one Chinese wall, but
there are many stone fences; and they are entirely effectual in keeping the cows from the
meadow and the sheep from  the corn.  There
are but few St. Paul's Cathedrals, but white spires
peer heavenward from every valley; and wayworn feet tread cheerily thitherward, and many
souls are refreshed and gladdened. The nightingale is the sweetest of all birds, but we could ill
spare from our woodland chorus the notes of the
robin, the hum of the bee.
No little confusion of ideas prevails as to what
constitutes useless and useful, light and heavy literature. There are many who open-their damp
Gazettes, Journals, Chronicles, Couriers, and plod
through miles of dry, dusty, dreary political editorials, going to show that the country will sink to
remediless ruin if Jenkins is elected town-clerk,
but will rise to untold heights of glory should
the spotless Muggins radiate his splendor from
that lofty station; and they fancy themselves patriotic, absorbed in noble themes, interested only
in what is excellent and of good report. Or they
plunge into the foreign news column, litter their




MEN AND WOMEN.              179
brain with the grand dinner given by the Legation
on somebody's birthday, or the astute prophecies
of some mercantile agent, whose historical knowledge is bound up in Whelpley's Compend, concerning the ultimate. fate of Italy, the far-reaching designs of Louis Napoleon, and the balance
of power in Europe; and don't think, probably,
but have a kind of pleasant, unconscious feeling,
that they are employing their vast intellect on
abstruse and weighty matters. Or they watch- the
light-heeled Blondin on his tight rope, admire the
financial operations of enterprising scoundrels, marvel at the manifold and ingenious crimes brought
to light in New York, and call this " intelligent,"
"well-informed," —" keeping up with the times";
while they pass over the stories, the essays, the
poetry, to their wives and daughters, as light reading, quite too small for the attention of their stupendous minds.
But a story or a poem may comprehend the
whole duty of man. I have read such a one. I
recollect " Herman; or Young Knighthood," which
contained not only more wit, but more wisdom,not only more beauty, but more grandeur, -not
only more play of fancy, more power of imagination, more directness of purpose, more felicity of
expression, and more elegance of diction, but more
knowledge of human nature, more soundness of
judgment, grander conceptions of human aspirations and human capacity to love and to suffer, to




1480         COUNTRY LI'VING.
enjoy, to act, to die, and to rise again, -a vaster
sweep of thought, broader generalization, more
comprehensive views, more logical and accurate'
reasoning, nicer analysis, and a higher standard
of Christian manhood, —than you will find in a
column of your "solid reading" that would reach
from Maine to Georgia?
People must live their life, one way or another,
- on battle-field or quarter-deck; in cabinet, laboratory, pulpit, or nursery. Boys expend theirs
on Virgil and bandy; men, on farm and ledger,
with a small surplus that goes to liquidate the
claims of Smith and Jones to the suffrages of an
enlightened community. Girls read Lalla Rookh,
crochet lamp-mats, write interminable letters to
immortal female friendship, and so manage to drain
off their spare life, till, in the course of human
-events, it runs naturally to housekeeping and babies, and takes the whole force to keep the mill
a-going.
But sometimes the farm and nursery and workshop do not use up all the fluid; then, according
as it makes for itself a channel, or is pent up in
too narrow bounds, you have Shakespeare chaining the ages to his triumphal car, or Chatterton
flinging down life at sixteen years as a burden
too heavy to be borne. You have Raleigh, leaving the apple-orchards of beautiful Devon for an
unknown Land of Faery, a new Jason, wandering world-wide for a golden fleece; Spenser, walk



.IN1V  AND TVOIME'N.        181
ing with Genii in enchanted woods, and weaving
a mightier spell than they; Burns, upheaving not
only the soil with his plough, but the land with
his song; Browning, voicing on her many-stringed
lyre the "Cry of the Children" who pass through
the fire to Moloch; Bront6, chained to her desolate rock, and eating her own heart out with a
sharper than Promethean torture; Stowe, throwing open to the shuddering day a sepulchre. fuill of
dead men's bones, and all uncleanness; Sappho,
harping her own requiem on the Leucadian cliff;
Socrates, calmly quenching with hemlock the life
that would no otherwise be stayed; Dante, gazing
in rapt beatific vision on the glorified face of Beatrice; Galileo, spinning the world around in spite
of the pious dunces who sat on it in solemn conclave to hold it down; Kane, walking in silence
with the Spirit of Storms; Paul, transported with
a holy ardor, denouncing woe to himself if he rein
in the fiery words that leap to his lips; David, the
stripling, ruddy, and of a beautiful countenance,
changed by the spear-touch of an heroic purpose
from the dreaming shepherd-boy to the champion
of Israel; and William of Orange, and Alfred the
Great, and Milton, and Tasso, and Napoleon, and
Homer, and Mozart.
Corollary 1. Everybody has just so much life
to live, and if it is dammed up in one direction it
will overflow in another.
Corollary 2. Greatness, heroism, glory, spring




182          COUNTRY LIVIYG.
from what is left over and above necessity. That
is, some people have just soul enough for salt. You
cannot conceive a further diminution of their mental endowments unattended by immediate physical
decomposition.  Of course they have nothing to
spare for fame. But the highest must have body
as well as the lowest intellect. The body is the
strong cord which keeps the " animula vagula blandula" from flying off in a tangent. They cannot
live in a state of pure mind, any more than the
others can live in a state of pure matter. Consequently, there is a plane on which they both meet,
and that plane is bread and butter. But the one
never soars above it, while the other never remains.
upon it. Herein consists the difference between
the two. It is from the latter, roaming about in
the empyrean, that we get our grandeur and sublimity, our pathos. and poetry.
Corollary 3. Female authorship, instead of
being deprecated, ought to be encouraged as the
great safety-valve of society; and those who ridicule and oppose it show themselves far behind
the age in endeavoring to put down such an
army with no better Mweapon than that wherewith Samson slew a thousand Philistines fifty
centuries ago.
Many a woman with no pretensions to genius
walks her daily round, fulfils all wifely duties,
seems contented and happy in her home of peace
and plenty, who is nevertheless sometimes lonely




.MEN AND WOMEN.              183
and dispirited. There are glimmerings of somewhat higher; shadowy remembrances of girlish
aspirations and heroic purposes; a sad and eager
questioning-" Is this all? "- to the heart that
vouchsafes no reply.  This feeling can find no
vent like'poetry or music. If from  the keys of
her piano or the strings of her harp her troubled
spirit, Saul-like, shall find rest, it is well; but if
she have no spell to evoke the genius of song,
why should you forbid her to give expression by
rhythmic cadence to the feeling which, unvoiced,
will be crushed back into the soil whence it
sprang, to moulder and decay, and cast a mildew and blight on all the graces, virtues, and
affections which.should adorn and beautify life?
The little poem may be simple in thought and
rugged in outline; it may be at once consigned
to the silence of a secret drawer; but the longing is gratified, the pent-up mind has found an
outlet, and the weary woman goes on her way
rejoicing. Years afterward, when the hand that
wrote it id cold in the grave, a daughter's eyes,
it may be, will fall upon it, and a page of that
mother's history, hitherto all unrevealed, be suddenly illuminated; and between the daughter
on earth and the mother in heaven there will
be another and a golden link, which the world
knoweth not of.
Girls, do not be deceived. Write. /Write
poetry, - write in rhyme, - if it is only




184          COUNTRY LIVING.
"One, two,
Buckle my shoe;
Three, four,
Open the door."
Form the habit. It is often convenient. It is a
refuge from ennui. It may do good. Any one
of you who refrains from writing for fear of
ridicule, is a coward.   Don't be a coward.
There is not much to a woman at best. She
is not expected to have physical courage; but if
she has not moral, pray, what has she?  The
more a man tells you not to write, the more do
you write. By this, I do not mean to say that
you  must immediately publish  a volume  of
"Something, and  other Poems," though even
that I advise you to do, if you feel disposed and
can afford it.  It is better than to be talking
scandal or making flounces.  Would-be critics
lament pathetically or satirize mercilessly this
"rushing into print." It is mere selfishness on
their part. You might rush elbow deep into a
batter pudding, or bury heart and soul and
mind, beyond all hope of disinterment, beneath a
confused rubbish of unmended stockings, or by a
letter of recommendation become the fifth wife of
some hard-worked, hard-working, broken-down,
and worn-out missionary, and they would not lift
a finger to prevent.  No, girls; no.  If your
heart is stirred within you to write, write! If
you can find an editor or publisher who is will



MiEN AND WOMEN.                185
ing to print for you, print! Somewhere in the
world, a heart-string may tremble to your feeble
and unsteady touch, with a strange bliss. I do
not suppose a line of poetry was ever written,
from the New Hampshire bard's
"The beauties of nature, I positive declare
The beauties of nature are very rich and rare,"
to the stately hexameters of Britain's sturdy old
Republican, which did not bear a message of joy
or consolation to some of God's children, —
whose coming was not watched for, perhaps, by
many loving eyes, and gazed at with untiring
satisfaction. Never be concerned about readers.
You will, at all events, read it yourself, and, better than all, you will appreciate it. Your darling
Arabella will read, admire, and very probably
cut it out and place it in her scrap-book. What
is fame, more than this?
If you are a little inclined to egotism, and tolerably imaginative, you can trick yourself out in all
sorts of Protean shapes; serve yourself up in as
many different disguises as a French cook does a
ragout; and, at the same time, preserve the most
rigid reticence; because no one knows how much
is memory and how much is imagination. Or if
you have acquired the habit of entertaining views
of things, it gives you an excellent opportunity to
exhibit them; and of the many comfortable things
in the world, one of the most comfortable is to give
your views. It is so agreeable to say things, when




186           COUNTRY LIVING.
you have things to say.  Your opinions may not
be very striking, or original, or important; still it
is a relief to express them. No matter if they
have been said fifty times before; you never said
them. They were but bulky bullion. They must
go through the mint of your brain in order to
become your current coin.  The  stream  may
have  meandered  down  the mountains of life
a thousand years, and heaped together priceless
diamonds and ingots of gold, and yet fail in that
fertilizing power more valuable than all, till it
sweeps along the rich alluvial deposits that lie in
the green meadows of your own soul. It does not
satisfy your craving for the "delicacies of the season," to know that salmon and peas have been
eaten since the world began.
In so far as literature seems to you a royal road
to fame and fortune, let me entreat you not to be
deceived.  If you have been put through Watts's
"' Sixteen Rules for Gaining Knowledge and Mental Improvement" as thoroughly as I, I shall not
need to say, " Be not so weak as to imagine that
a life of learning is a life of laziness and ease."
But, besides good Dr. Watts's exhortations, the
testimony of the great mass of writers.proclaims,
"Hard the labor, small the gain,
Is in making bread from brain."
I have seen, in several modern American novers,
certain counter statements. Brilliant but obscure
young women are represented as having surrep



MIEN AND WOMEN.              187
titiously sprung a book upon an unsuspecting public, and being summarily overwhelmed with money,
and fame, and troops of distinguished friends and
patrons. I know that charming Fanny Burney
did really smuggle her Eveline into the world
without even the complicity of "Daddy Crisp,"
and that there presently fell upon her listening,
straining, but scarcely expectant ear, a rustling
among the mulberry-trees; coaches blocked up
the way to the circulating libraries; Burke sat-up
all night to watch the adventures of a young lady
upon her first entrance into the world; fops, levelled their glasses; women of fashion patronized
the shrinking authoress; and the brutal, benevolent
" Great Chamin" coiled his huge arm thrice about
her slender waist, and bound her to him forever.
Nor have I any doubt that, notwithstanding Campbell's savage toast, publishers are often honest, upright, excellent men, many of whom would gladly
bind up the wounds and bruises-which their own
hands have been forced to inflict. There are individuals among them - several I know - who are
perfbct pinks of disinterested kindness, full of goodworks and alms-deeds. Still, I think I do not err
in affirming that, as a class, they are not largely addicted to sending huge rolls of spontaneous
bank-bills to anonymous correspondents. When
you hear of men's receiving twenty, forty, or a
hundred dollars a page, and twenty and forty thousand for a volume of history or romance or science,




188            COUUNTRY LIVING.
don't think of the forty dollars simply, but of the
forty years of daily and nightly toil, research,
study, thought, contrivance, experiment, disappointment, discouragement, vexation, and heartache that have preceded them.
"The crowd, they only see the crown,
They only hear the hymn;
They mark not that the cheek is pale,
And that the eye is dim."
Do you prize the crown so highly, that you will
bear the cross?  To be purified by the poet's fire,
will you endure the anguish of the burning? Do
you worship the goddess with so true a faith, that
you will offer up yourself at her shrine?
There are obstacles without as well as within.
A  certain prejudice against female writers "still
lives." It is fine, subtle, impalpable, but real. It
is like the great ocean of air -that wraps us round.
A little of it cannot be seen; it is only in mass
that it becomes visible. It is like a far-off star;
look straight at it, and it is not there; look askance,
and it twinkles and winks at you again. It is like
the Indian in warfare; it never meets you face to
face, and takes fair aim, but, darting behind shelter,
sends a shot obliquely. It is also like the Devil;
resist it, and it will flee from you. It is indeed
vanishing every day; and as woman gravitates to
her proper place, and the elements cease to be
agitated, it will entirely disappear.  Like other'
fashions founded on whim, caprice, or injustice,




MEN AND WOMEN.               189
and not on the eternal fitness of things, it will go
from- master to man, fiom man to scullion, from
scullion to the dogs.  It has already begun its
downward progress.  Large-hearted and largebrained men, the monarchs of thought, have flung
it clean off. The ranks below them, men of small
capacities but unbounded ambition, who see in
women their own rivals, - who fear, and justly,
too, that a fair field and no favor would oust them
from seats they have questionable claim to fill and
infinite difficulty to hold, -have caught the flimsy, floating thing, and see but darkly through its
tremulous shimmer; and, with limbs tangled in its
fine, strong, invisible meshes, walk stumbling and
uncertain. So long as you will lend yourself to
the amusement of these men, - be witty, playful,
piquant, affectionate, and saucy; dance and sparkle
along their ascending pathway; circle, as brilliant
a satellite as you please, round themselves, the
central, acknowledged sun,- they will shine down
on you the most benignant and complacent condescension. But- once undertake to set up for yourself; get the troublesome idea into your head,. that
that head was given you for something more than
a series of fireworks; tell them seriously that you
have been thinking whether all play may not make
Gill a mere toy, just as it does Jack, and whether
there may not be something in the world for you
to do, - whether the purling, singing, happy brook,
that now only freshens the violets on its banks,




190          COUNTR Y LIVING.
may not, by widening and deepening the channel,
be made subservient to nobler and not less pure
uses, —whether the same vivacity, compactness,
and power that enliven the social circle, and fling
a charm around a few favored lives, may not gleam
on a broader sphere with no diminished lustre,
soften the harsh outline of some unwelcome truth
into grace and loveliness, light up some sombre
picture with golden tints, polish some hidden blade
— rusty, disused, and rusty because disused —
into Damascene gleaming, suppleness, and sharpness, and restore it once more to the armory of
God, - and lo! our respected friend, who, whilom,
found no words so sweet as fitly could express his
love, complacence, interest in your weal, admiration of your character, and pride in your reputation, cools suddenly down to zero, leans leisurely
back in his comfortable study-chair, strokes caressingly his black moustache, and, with eyes turned
contemplatively ceiling-ward, and infinite and pitying forbearance of voice and manner: "Yes"
(with an inflection indicative of mental and subjective interrogation), - "yes " (falling inflection;
interrogation not satisfactorily answered). "You
may be able to effect something. There are very
respectable authors among women." (Magnanimous concession!)  "There is no doubt that the
thing is overdone. Still —" and here, or a minute after, at furthest, he will cut an intellectual
pirouette, and, with a most frank, arch, and en



MEN AND W3 OMlEN.            191
gaging smile, inform you that, after all, he would
"rather see a ring on your third finger than an
ink-spot -on your first." Stupid!
You will often see the outcropping of this feeling in the criticisms of women's books; not that
just and generous criticism which discriminates
between the evil and the good, condemns the one
without rancor, and applauds the other without
servility, but that half-flattering, half-contemptuous, and wholly contemptible notice, whose compassionate blame and condescending praise are
alike insulting.  Such was the revenge of some
of our sleek, respectable, self-admiring male writers, when Aurora Leigh dashed in upon their
fancied security, and shivered her most knightly
yet right womanly lance against their time-honored commonplaces.  What a shaking of the
dry bones there must have been, indeed, under
the hoofs of her high-mettled steed!  But as
soon as their spirits returned to them again,
they fell a-babbling of Socialism, and Fourierism, and Chartism, and " all the others that end
in" ism; and there was poetry in the book, but
there was a deal of obscurity; and there was
felicity of expression, but there was occasional
awkwardness; and there were a great many
things, but there were also a great many 6thers;
and, on the whole, Aurora Leigh must be pronounced a failure. Self-blinded!// If Aurora Leigh
be a woman's failure, what would a woman's
success be?




192          COUNTRY LIVING.
Sometimes this prejudice takes the form of disinterested counsel, paternal and affectionate advice; but through the lion's skin, the long ears
reveal indubitably the true nature of the animal.
"Aspiring sisters," says the domestic brute before
alluded to, " why is the tone of your lucubrations
always so mournful?  If you must write, write
cheerfully. Don't let every song be a dirge. We
want to be amused when we read " (there is the ear
again); " consume in private your private griefs."
Not a doubt of it.  Beyond cavil, it would be
vastly agreeable to our private Neros,- Heaven
be praised that they are few, I know that there
are some,- who harry the life out of wife and
child, who are tyrants without the fear of assassination, because their victims are too good, or
of public opinion, because the thing is done in a
corner, or of the law, because it takes no cognizance of soul-murder, - doubtless it would be
vastly agreeable to them, that women should endure uncomplainingly.  No voice louder than
theirs in praise of her sweet self-abnegation and
silent fortitude, or in deprecation of publicly-displayed sorrow, when, in song or story, the minor
key of sadness, the outburst of long-pent-up
anguish, or the unmistakable wail of a broken
heart, sends home to their own breasts the
prophet's stern charge, "Thou art the man."
Consume in private your private griefs! No.
Take them in a bundle, and bear them to the




MEN AND  WOMEN.               193
highest mountain-top; ring the Qhurch-bells, hoist
the flags, beat the drums, and let the whole world
see the bonfire; and if the flame scorches our
sensitive friends, let them  stand back.  Why
should they flutter about it, if they don't want
their wings singed?
Do all or any of these things move you? Do
you fear to launch your bark on so unquiet a sea?
Do you shrink from  the lion without, lest you
should be slain in the street? Then by all means
remain within doors, and hold your peace. Do
not fancy that you would achieve immortality, if
you only had the chance, -that you would soar
sunward, if your wings were not pinioned.
Genius is expansive, irresistible, and irresistibly
expansive.  If it is in you, no cords can confine
it. A good book will get itself written. Authorship is not a thing to be quietly chosen, as circumstance may determine.  It chooses you; you
do'not choose it. Did Mrs. Browning sit down
in her little back parlor, and wonder whether she
would better fashion a song, or devote herself exclusively to Robert's shirts and stockings? And,
observing that she had facility in language, familiarity with the classics; knowledge of human
nature, and abundant leisure, did she forthwith
seize her pen, and tell us.' how a fairy bride from Italy,
With smells of oleander in her hair,
Was coming through the vines "?
9                        X




194          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
I trow not. I rather believe that her spirit
groaned, being burdened,- that she was but an
unwilling Sibyl, lashed on, foaming, by a fierce
Apollo. Currer Bell trod in agony the desolate
heaths of Haworth, till the consuming fire burned
deep scars in her tortured soul, before Jane Eyre
leaped, full armed, not from her throbbing brain
alone, but from her riven heart.
If prejudice, ignorance, or sloth pile a Hill
Difficulty which you hesitate to scale; if indifference, neglect, or rebuff quench your spirit's flow;
if encouragement and appreciation must be the
Aaron and Hur on either side, without whose aid
your failing hands droop, nerveless; if you fear
to speak out boldly your convictions lest you forfeit approbation; if peace and smiles and sunshine seem  to you more desirable than truth;
if you are not in and of yourself sufficient to
yourself; if a mind conscious of rectitude, of upright intentions, and honorable performance, is
not to you a sufficient guerdon, — you may be' A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command,"
but lyre and tr'ipod are not for you.  The world
awards its meed of praise to no uncertain claimant.
Only to him that hath shall be given. You go
out on a mission of high emprise, with scrip and
staff and " sandal shoon," and there are few to
say, " God bless.you."  You return in purple and
scarlet and fine linen, with gilded chariot and




MEN AND WOMEN.              19 5
horse of Arabia, and the world comes out to meet
you, with timbrels and dancing, and ministers
unto you a triumphal entrance. I'do not say that
this is wrong; only that it is. You must conquer
Fate, before Fate will bow the knee. You must
prove your royal blood, before you can wear the
royal crown; and that perhaps so late that it will
only press, cold and heavy, on aching brows.
Watchman! What of the night?  The morning cometh.
It is not for the generation among whom Elizabeth Browning has sung, and Charlotte Brontd
spoken, and Harriet Hosmer chiselled, and Rosa
Bonheur painted, and Mary Lyon taught, and
Florence Nightingale lived, to despair of woman's
achievement of her highest destinyj In whatever
direction you choose to walk, you will find that
a firm footfall has preceded yours; that a strong
hand has hewed down the giant trees, and cleared
away the tangled undergrowth, so that the forest
which once required all a man's strength and a
woman's fortitude, a child may thrid unharmed.
Thus do the strong bear the burdens of the weak.
Thus have noble women made straight, in the
desert, a highway for our God. "Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these
my brethren, ye have done it unto me."  The
costly step has been taken.
But let us not suppose that-generous ends can
be attained only on the mountain-top. To but




196          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
few is strength given to climb its rugged sides,
and clearness and breadth of vision to take in the
broad sweep of its low-lying landscape. Down in
the valley there is work to be done, - humble, yet
divine; small in the germ, yet great in the unfolding.  However simple or however difficult,
however obscure or however prominent the work
may be, matters not, provided it be God's appointed work. It is better to rule a household
well, than a kingdom ill.
"Who sweeps a room as to God's law,
Makes that and th' action fine."
The ring on a child's finger is as perfect a circle
as the zone of this round world. The Dairyman's
Daughter "just knew, and knew no more, her
Bible true," lived out her brief and simple life,
and was not, for God took her. But from her
humble island home her voice still speaks comfort
and hope to the ends of the earth.
Here and there, both in the beaten paths and
the untrodden ways, on the lowlands and the uplands of life, I meet an angel, — not in white robes,
garlanded with roses, and winged for Heaven, but
plain in calico, it may be, or grand in velvet. I
recall now the face of one whose life is to me a
constant gospel.  A  slight, pale girl, orphaned,
homeless, neglected by those who should have
watched her young years tenderly, she yet seems
to have drawn to herself, by some magnetic power,
all the good of all the persons by whom she has




MEN AND WOMEN.               197
been surrounded, and to have fed her own soul
thereon. She went to school, bearing in her mean
and scanty dress, her thin cheeks, and hard hands,
the marks of poverty and toil; and wild, thoughtless, elegantly-dressed, and carefully-nurtured girls
hushed their heedless sarcasm, softened their merry
voices, and spoke to her with love, and of her with
tears.  Shrinkingly sensitive to their opinions,
tremblingly alive to her own disadvantages, conscious as she must have been that she served a
hard taskmaster, no word of complaint ever passed
her lips. Always cheerful, modest, happy, willing
to be pleased, grateful for kindness, and patient
of any chance neglect, you might have supposed
her entirely insensible to the motives and feelings
that influence ordinary girls, were it not for the
occasional quiver of the lip, the quick, nervous
gesture, the moistened eye, and faltering tone.
She left school with disease lurking in her system,
slowly and surely undermining the citadel of life;
but she kept up her courage. She had no idea
of dying till her hour should come, and, as long
as she should live, she determined that her living should bring forth fruit. She earned money
enough to transport herself to a climate which was
pronounced favorable to her health; there, in wild
backwoods, among a rough people, who had forgotten, if they ever knew, the common refinements
of life, she opened a school. From her rude home
she wrote merry letters, describing her adventures




198          COUNTRY LIVING.
and her circumstances.  There was no talk of selfdenial, the' greatness of sacrifice, the hardship of
missionary life. Over all the harsh outline, and
the harsher filling in, she threw the veil of her
playful fancy, and few heard the mournful undertone that thrilled through the gay, sprightly song.
The new scenes and the softer air did not have the
desired effect, and a short time since she wrote to
a friend: "I have moved from -a small, quiet
school to a large, rollicking, frolicking, fun-loving
one. I am happy; I think I ought to be. Every
one is kind. But I am quite puzzled. I don't
know just what to do. If I am to teach much
longer, it would be better for me to return to
New England, and go to school awhile. I have
earned enough to keep me at school a year or so,
and I do believe I am willing to exert myself to
the utmost to improve.  But, then, this cough
increases. -It may not be long before it will have
an end. - If I go to New England, I may spend
all the life left me in acquiring knowledge, and so
lose the opportunity for usefulness that I might
have if I remained here.  Now the question is,
Which wilI bring the largest pile of wood, - the
dull axe for six hours, or the sharp one for
two?"
This is what I mean by heroism. This young
girl standing at bay, watching what she believes
to be the approach of inevitable death, asking for
no rest from toil, no indulgence for weakness and




MEN AND WOMEN.               199
weariness, no sympathy in loneliness, but only
striving to know how the little life that remains
may be turned to the best account. Brave heart!
on the wings of this soft south-wind, that murmurs
of violets in the ear of winter, I send you greeting.
In your far-off home my voice may never reach
you; but if by any chance your eyes should fall
upon these words, know that my soul does willing homage to yours, and forgive these few sentences, for the love and reverence that prompted
them.
" None but thou and I shall know."
I remember another, a stranger in a strange
land; an exile from the home of her fathers; a
fair-haired and blue-eyed girl, a warm-hearted and
whole-souled woman; of exquisite sensibility, refined taste, and elegant culture; a lover of song
and grace and beauty in any guise; a man in
strength, a martyr in endurance; performing a
father's duty to children not her own; fighting
the battle single-handed, and no holiday contest,
but a life-and-death struggle with the wolf at the
door; welcoming the cold embrace of Duty as
smilingly as if it were the warm clasp of Love;
eager eyes and ears wide open to the green fields,
the upspringing daisies, the note of bee and bird,
yet swerving not a hair's breadth from the rocky
path which her aching feet most resolutely tread;
and where I see her footprints, I know it is holy
ground.




200          COUNTR Y LIVING.
And yet another face shines on me through the
night,- a face over which the Angel of Sorrow
has swept his wing in passing, and saddened into
a beauty that is not of the earth. You, looking, see only dark eyes that flash laughter, love, or
tears; a delicate cheek, that pales and flushes at
your words; red lips, whence drop rare gems of
wit and wisdom. These are there, and I see them;
but beyond these, and deeper than these, I see
a soul that has been weighed in the balance and
not found wanting; a heart that has been wrung
by sorest anguish, and only grown more pitying
and tender; a hand that has touched every note
from highest to lowest, and learned to strike from
earthly chords most heavenly harmonies; a woman who has said to wealth and station'and ease,
" Get thee behind me! " and, mailed in her own
integrity, has dared opposing fate. It is these,
and such as these, that
" show us how divine a thing
A woman may be made."
They redeem their sex from the charge of frivolity, inanity, and feebleness, revealing to us the
capacities that lie hidden in her heart of hearts;
and it is because I have witnessed such noble living, such "extraordinary, generous seeking," that
I believe in woman; and when I see life going to
waste, - when I see a woman's soul bent on ignoble ends, frittered away on trifling toys, finding
content and happiness in things that perish with




MEN AND WOMiEN.              201
the using,- I feel, not contempt, not anger, but
sadness and sore regret:"The pity of it, lago, the pity of it."
I mourn for gold grown dim, and fine gold changed,
-for fields white to harvest, and the reapers disporting among flowers,- for a world lying in
ignorance and wickedness, and the power that
should raise and redeem it, and fit it once more
for the footsteps of its Lord, spending its strength
for naught.
O, if this latent power could be aroused! If
woman would shake off this slumber, and put on
her strength, her beautiful garments, how would
she go forth conquering and to conquer, - how
would the mountains break forth into singing, and
the trees of the field clap their hands, - how would
our sin-stained earth arise and shine, her light being come, and the glory of the Lord being risen
upon her!
One cannot do the world's work; but one can
do one's work. You may not be able to turn the
world from iniquity, but you can at least keep the
dust and rust from gathering on your own soul.
If you cannot be directly and actively engaged in
fighting the battle, you can at least polish your
armor and sharpen your weapons, to strike an
effective blow when the hour comes. You can
stanch the blood of him who has been wounded in
thle fray, - bear a cup of cold water to the thirsty
9*




202          COUNTRY LI VING.
and fainting, - give help to the conquered and
smiles to the victor.. You can gather from the
past and the present stores of wisdom, so that,
when the future demands it, you may bring forth
from your treasures things new and old. Whatever of bliss the Divinity that shapes our ends
may see fit to withhold from you, you are but
very little lower than the angels so long as you
have the
" Godlike power to do, - the godlike aim to know."
You can be forming habits of self-reliance, sound
judgment, perseverance, and endurance, which
may one day stand you in good stead. You can
so train yourself to right thinking and right acting,
that uprightness shall be your nature, truth your
impulse. His head is seldom far wrong whose
heart is always right. We bow down to mental
greatness, intellectual strength, and they are Divine gifts; but moral rectitude is stronger than
they. It is irresistible, -always in the end triumphant. There is in goodness a penetrative power
that nothing can withstand. Cunning and malice
melt away before its mild, open, steady glance.
Not alone on the fields where chivalry charges for
laurels, with helmet and breastplate and lance in
rest, can the true knight exultantly exclaim,
"My strength is as the strength of ten,
Because my heart is pure,"
but wherever man meets man, wherever there is




MEN AND WOMEN.                203
a prize to be won, a goal to be reached. Wealth
and rank and beauty may form a brilliant setting to
the diamond, but they only expose more nakedly
the false glare of the paste. Only when the king's
daughter is all glorious within, is it fitting and
proper that her clothing should be of wrought
gold.
From the great and the good of all ages rings
out the same monotone.  The high-priest of nature, the calm-eyed poet who laid his heart so
close to hers that they seemed to throb in one
pulsation, yet whose ear was always open to the:" still sad music of humanity," has given us the
promise of his life-long wisdom in these grand
words: -
"True dignity abides with him alone
Who, in the silent hour of inward thought,
Can still suspect and still revere himself."
Through the din of twenty rolling centuries
pierces the sharp, stern voice of the brave old
Greek: "Let every man, when he is about to
do a wicked action, above all things in the world
stand in awe of himself, and dread the witness
within him." All greatness and all glory, all that
earth has to give, all that heaven can proffer, lies
within the reach of the lowliest as well as the
highest; for He who spake as never man spake
has said that the very " kingdom of God is within
you."
Born to such an inheritance, will you wantonly




204          COUNTRY LIVING.
cast it away? With such a goal in prospect, will
you suffer yourself to be turned aside by the
sheen and shimmer of tinsel fruit? With earth
in possession and heaven in reversion, will you
go sorrowing and downcast, because here and there
a pearl or ruby fails you? ]Nay, rather, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching
forth unto those which are before, press forward.
Discontent and murmuring are insidious foes;
trample them under your feet. Utter no complaint, whatever betide; for complaining is a sign
of weakness. If your trouble can be helped, help
it; if not, bear it. You can be whatever you
will to be. Therefore, form and accomplish worthy
purposes. If you walk alone, let it be with no
faltering tread. Show to an incredulous world
" How grand may be Life's might,
Without Love's circling crown."
Or if the golden thread of love shine athwart the
dusky warp of duty, if other hearts depend on
yours for sustenance and strength, give to them
from your fulness no stinted measure. Let the
dew of your kindness fall on the evil and the good,
on the just and on the unjust.
Compass happiness, since happiness alone is
victory. On the fragments of your shattered plans
and hopes and love, on the heaped-up ruins of
your past, rear a stately palace, whose top shall
reach unto heaven, whose beauty shall gladden




MEN AND WOMEN.             205
the eyes of all beholders, whose doors shall stand
wide open to receive the wayworn and weary.
Life is a burden, but it is imposed by God.
What you make of it, it will be to you,
whether a millstone about your neck,
or a diadem upon your brow.
Take it up bravely, bear
it on joyfully, lay
it down triumphantly.




MY BIRDS.
TRICTLY speaking, I have n't any, -
only an old cage thrust away up garret under the eaves, - nor, in fact, do
I want any.  Do not, however, for a
moment suppose that I indulge in a sentimental
compassion for caged birds, for I don't. I consider such a thing entirely uncalled for, and misplaced. I have no doubt that a canary-bird, with
a cup of seed and a glass of water, finds every
aspiration of his soul satisfied. A sorrow's crown
of sorrow is remembering happier things. He
was born and bred in a cage, and, so far from
being discontented with a restraint of which he is
not conscious, freedom would bewilder him and
bring him to grief. But, though I do not take
into account the bird's feelings, I do mind my
own; and a prisoned bird always gives me a
cramped, asthmatic sensation, if I know what
cramp and asthma are, which I don't.
My birds, the birds that furnish my right to
that possessive pronoun, are the little darlings




MY BIRDS.                207
which this moment brighten the cold, damp,
clammy spring earth with their flutter and chirp
and song, - little, happy-hearted, hollow-boned
braves, who dare untimely frosts, and the whirling snow-wreaths which winter, forced to leave,
flings spitefully behind him, -daring the long,
cold, dismal rains which chill to the heart this
sweet May month, —merry messengers of the
storm-king, bearing the olive-leaf of peace; twittering prophecies of summer; tender little bars
struck off from the music of the spheres; faint,
sweet echoes, in their wooing and winning, their
prudence and painstaking, their tender protection and assiduous provision, of the strong, careful, passionate, loving humanity that swells and
surges beneath them.
I love birds; I do not mind if it is nothing
but a hawk or a crow, or a sooty little chimneyswallow.  I even like chickens till they become
hens and human. I cannot look with indifference
upon turkeys standing out forlorn in the rain,
too senseless to think of going in for shelter, and
so taking it helplessly, with rounded backs, drooping heads, dripping feathers, and long, bare, red,
miserable legs, quite too wretched to be ridiculous. I dote on goslings, -little soft, yellow,
downy, awkward things, waddling around with
the utmost self-complacency, landing on their
backs every third step, and kicking spasmodically till they are set right side up with care,




208         COUNTRY LIVING.
when they resume their waddle and their selfcomplacency as if nothing in the world had
happened.  The only fault one can find with
them is, that they will grow up; and goslings
grown up are nothing but geese, with their
naivetd degenerated  into stupidity, their awkwardness crystallized into vulgarity, and their
tempers unspeakably bad.  But the little birds
that sing to me from the apple-trees, and hop
about on the sunny southern slope, are not of
these.  Purer blood runs through finer veins.
Golden robins, a fiery flash of splendor, gleam in
the long grass, and put the dandelions to shame.
There are magnificent bluebirds, with their pale,
unwinking intensity of color; and homely little
redbreasts, which we all called robins when we
were young, and invested with the sanctity of
that sweet, ancestral pity which has given them a
name in our memory and a place in our hearts, till
somebody must needs flare up, and proclaim that
they are nothing but thrushes! As if this world
were in a general way such an Elysium that people can afford to make themselves unnecessarily
disagreeable.  If there is any one thing more
than another that is an unmitigated abomination
and bore, it is those persons who are always setting you right; who find their delight in pricking your little silk balloons of illusion with -their
detestable pins of facts; who are always bringing
their statistics to bear upon your enthusiasms;




MY BIRDS.               209
who go around with a yardstick and a quartmeasure to give you the cubic contents of your
rapture, demonstrating to a logical certainty that
you need not have been rapt at all; proving by
the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of
Euclid that spirits disembodied cannot have any
influence upon spirits embodied; setting up that
there is n't any Maelstrom and never was, - that
the Aurora Borealis is a common cloud reflecting
the sunlight, and turning the terrible oceanwaves that ran mountain-high when you were a
child into pitiful horse-pond shivers, never mounting above the tens.  As for me, I don't believe a word of it. I believe the equatorial line
cuts through Africa like a darning-needle, that
the Atlantic waves would drown the Himalayas
if they could get at them, that eclipses are caused
by the beast which Orion is hunting trying to
gulp down the moon, and I should not wonder
if the earth was supported on the back of a great
turtle, which hypothesis has at least the advantage of explaining satisfactorily why it is that we
all travel heavenward at such a snail's pace, and
founds in a sympathetic and involuntary attraction the aldermanic weakness for turtle-soup.
When one has been born and brought up in an
innocent belief, one does not like to have it disturbed on slight grounds; and people who have
an insane proclivity to propagandism would do
well to go to heathendom, where they will find
N




210          COUNTRY LIVING.
ample room  and verge enough in overthrowing
mischievous opinions. But no punishment is too
severe for him who roots up a thrill, and plants in
its place only a fact. Suppose it is a fact, what
then?   Facts are not necessarily truth.  Facts
are often local, incidental, deceptive. But a thrill
is the quiver of the boundless, fathomless life that
underlies humanity, - a sign and a symbol of
that infinite from which we sprang, and towards
which, perforce, we tend. Come then, my robin
redbreast! Never shall my hand rise sacrilegious
to wrest from  you heraldic honors.  Always
shall you wear an aureole of that golden light
that glimmers down the ages, the one bright spot
in a dark and deathful wood. Always shall you
sing to me angels' songs, of peace on earth, goodwill to men.
So they hop through the May mornings' shade
and sun, robins, and bluebirds, and dingy little
sparrows as thick as blackberries, at once wild and
tame, familiar yet shy, tripping, fluttering, snatching their tiny breakfasts, cocking their saucy heads
as if listening to some far-off strain, then, moved
by a sudden impulse, hopping along again in a
fork-lightning kind of way, and again coming to
a capricious full stop and silence, with momentary
interludes of short, quick, silvery jerks of head
and tail. And, as they sit and sing, - as I watch
their ceaseless busyness, their social twittering,
their energetic, heart-whole melody, their sudden




MY BIRDS.                211
flights, their graceful sweeps, and agile darts, -
I recognize the Pauline title-deeds, and, having
nothing, yet possessing all things, I say in deed
and in truth, "My birds."
But I came very near having a proprietary right
in one small family last summer. I discovered a
ground-sparrow's nest just on the overhanging
edge of the cornfield. There were three little
eggs in it, gray and mottled, atid not very pretty.
But eggs forerun birds, so I visited it regularly
every day to take observations.  All the cornpeople were sworn not to disturb it. A stick was
set up to beacon-mark the plough, away in case
of momentary forgetfulness; and, notwithstanding
all this care and caution, that selfish, cowardly
old mother-bird took a panic, shattered my hopes,
and went away leaving her helpless egglets to
their fate. Their fate was to have a hole bored
through them from stem to stern, their embryotic
souls blown remorselessly through it, and then be
transported, nest and all, to a what-not in my
room, where to this very day they stand looking
seaward, a hollow monument of the heartlessness
of birds, and of the mournful extent to which
children are -shall I say it?- humbugged by
their judicious parents. When we were young,
were we not all exhorted to be very pitiful and
of tender mercy to the birds? Was it not represented to be the height of cruelty to plunder
their nests? Were not pathetic changes rung on




212         COUNTRY LIVING.
the depth and strength of their domestic affection?
And will anybody tell me, then, why this unnatural sparrow deserted her home, that was not even
threatened? Domestic affection! I have no doubt
the story was originally trumped up to keep us
from tearing our clothes by climbing the trees. I
have come to the conclusion that, though birds
may take'on airs of tenderness, it is all a dainty
acting. They have no rights which mankind is
bound to respect, and I hereby give public notice
that I intend for the future to rob every bird's-nest
that I can lay my hands on.
I came still nearer to owning birds in the winter.
A pair of doves - pigeons, some people call them,
with perverted taste, but pigeon has no character.
It is a generic name, without history or associations. It savors of gunning and game, and nothing else. Dove is the word, bubbling up and
boiling over with the sweetness of honeymoons.
So it was not pigeons, but a pair of brown doves,'that began to make nervous raids upon our backyard when the frosts began to whiten and blacken.
They were old acquaintances of mine.  Their
summer residence had been under the roof of a
barn a few yards off, and I had watched the
process of their courtship with great interest. It
had not run smooth at all. A little dove-cot had
been constructed under the eaves, with a doorway
and platform outside for the accommodation of
any solitary who might desire to be set in families




MY BIRDS.                213
and I was startled one morning by a succession of
strange, angry, guttural sounds proceeding from
the barn. I went out. A lively scene was enacting upon the platform under the eaves. There
sat a lady-bird in the doorway, and there were
her two suitors before her, putting each other into a
terrible passion. Number One held possession of
the platform, and Number Two was making frantic
efforts to carry it by assault. Number One strutted
back and forth, ruffling his feathers, dilating his
throat, and swearing frightfully in dove dialect.
Number Two was calmer, but persistent and determined. He attacked in front and flank and rear.
He made desperate dashes from above. Whereever Number Two planted his adventurous foot,
thither Number One betook himself in great force,
and ousted him. If Number Two stole a march,
and sidled up to my lady, Number One made a
sortie and shoved him off. There was no rest for
the sole of his foot but the ridge-pole of the neighboring corn-barn, where he occasionally alighted
to take breath. Evidently both were very pluckry,
very much in love, quite conscious that they were
fighting under the eye of their mistress, and equally
determined never to show the white feather. She,
most gracious lady, all this while preserved an imperturbable and thorough-bred indifference. I have
no doubt she saw every ebb and flow of the contest, and probably had her own preferences about
the victory, but her face said nothing of it. Some



214          COUNTRY LIVING.
times she sat immovable, looking far out into the
intense inane, as if on sublimer thoughts intent
Sometimes she would rise, arch and coquettish,
jauntily shake out her plumage, and trip lightly
to and fro, displaying her fine face and figure in
the most bewilderingly charming attitudes. This
was a sure signal for her belligerent lovers to fall
to with renewed and indescribable rancor. Sometimes she gave herself up to a fascinating languor.
The silken lids would creep slowly and softly over
her brilliant eyes, as if weariness at the prolongation of a struggle in which she was so little interested had positively overpowered her.  Long
time in even scale the battle hung. But possession is nine points of the law of might, as well as
of right.  Number One fought under the immense advantage of being on the spot, and able
to rest directly after one round, and come fresh
to the next, while Number Two had to make long
journeys betweein each, with nothing to stand on
when he got there. Fighting on a firm footing
is nothing, but fighting on nothing is a good deal;
and Number Two was at length forced to desist,
leaving the fair one and her successful admirer to
devote themselves to the pursuits of peace.
Which they did with such assiduity that for
many weeks they were scarcely visible to the
naked eye; but if Fate led any to the vicinity of
the barn scaffold, they became at once conscious
of a mysterious stir and bustle and flutter, a cer



MY BIRDS.               215
tain sign that something was happening. When
the fulness of time was come, the something turned
out, or rather chipped out, to be two little brown
doves, the very image of their respected parents.
These respected parents it was who, impelled by
the res anguste domi, came foraging in our backyard. I determined to befriend them, to attach
them to me as far as possible. They surely needed
friendship and attachment if they were to stand
the long, cold Northern winter that was setting
in, and I was very sure that I should be extremely
glad of some little life to keep the genial current of
my own soul from freezing. So I made advances
by scattering a few kernels of corn on the porchroof under my chamber window. They mounted
the shed-roof and eyed it longingly. I mounted
the window-seat and eyed them. They wished
they dared, but they did n't. They were evidently suspicious of masked batteries and infernal machines.  Then I hid behind the curtain.
They stepped nearer. No appearance of hostility.
Nearer still. All quiet along the Potomac. A
twitching of wings, a stretching of neck, a settling of body for about five minutes, and down
they came to the outmost verge of the porch,
balancing themselves on the wire edge just one
second, and immediately flying back, alarmed at
their own temerity. But though retreating so
precipitately, that one onset had given them assurance, and they soon returned, stepping daintily




216          COUNTRIY LIVING.
and gingerly along, with many starts and tremors,
to where the corn lay. Then they became ridiculous.  They would shoot at a kernel, and rush
back alarmed at the noise which their beaks made
against the tin roofing.  The least breath of
wind, the buzzing of a fly, startled them. They
gobbled up the corn in a perfect hysteric of hurry,
darting about twenty times at a single kernel before they could get possession of it. I don't think
they were very skilful at best, —I am sure I
could hit better than that if I were a dove; but
they were in great trepidation of mind, and that
is not favorable to accuracy of aim.  After a
few days they became reassured, and demonstrated their confidence by bringing their young
and interesting family along with them.  Their
family, it must be confessed, were not difficult to
bring; they evinced not the slightest'backwardness.  They entered into the spirit of it at once.
They appropriated the corn with the most selfconfident alacrity. I fed them regularly twice a
day, filching their meals from the garret without
remorse. The corn had no business to be there in
the first place, tolling all the mice in the neighborhood;' and I reasoned that there was no cause
why scores of mice should overflow with milk and
honey, and a brood of doves die of starvation. So
they did not, and so daily we established more
amicable and more intimate relations. Regularly
every morning, at about eight o'clock, the swoop




MY BIRDS.                217
of their wvhite wings cleft the frosty air, click,
click, click, went their horny little toes over the
tin plating, and in a moment their little round
eyes were peering in through the window as they
perched upon the sill outside.  (I trust there is
no truth in the doctrine of the transmigration of
souls!) I believe they formed and cherished for
me a real affection, - something quite beyond the
loaf-and-fishy attachment of the general animal
race,- something, in short, sentimental and superdovian; for, after they had been abundantly fed,
they still sat on the window-sill from morning till
late in the afternoon. Through driving sleet and
snow, or wrapped in the winter sunshine, they
held their post, occasionally hopping down upon
the roof to get the kinks out of their legs, but returning soon to take up their old position. When
I spoke to them, they would flutter, and wink,
and snap their eyes, and look mightily pleased. If
I sat by the other window, round they swept to
that, nodding and cooing a " Here we are!"
But one morning - woe worth the day — I
heard a noise overhead, a wild, violent, muffled,
murderous noise of struggle and assault, and suddenly down past my window floated a tiny cloud
of white, fleecy feathers, - dripped three drops of
blood. I started up, suspicious at once of crime
and the cat. The cat's name is Moses, - a treacherous fellow, striking you when you_ caress him;
a totally depraved cat by nature, choosing evil
lo




218         COUNTRY LIVINTG.
when the good is not only better, but sweeter,
turning away from his allotted food to steal whatever he can lay his paws and claws on; a quarrelsome fellow, and cowardly, withal, attacking
where he is sure of success, and yowling frightfully where he is not. But he is a good mouser,
and you manage about cats as you do about congressmen, generals, and other public officers. If
they will do the work you want done, and do it
well, you have to take them, though they may
abuse their wives, tell lies, and be otherwise abominable. You execrate their moral character, but
you need their special ability, and you use it, not
indorsing them thereby. So we tolerated our cat,
because he would not tolerate mice, though as a
cat and a gentleman he could never be introduced
into good society.  The garret was his peculiar
haunt. There lay the golden corn in forty-thievic
profusion. Thither came the mice to levy blackmail for themselves and their little ones, and there
I feared my tender dove, lured by the tempting
repast, might have flown through the open window
and met his fate. I rushed up garret. On the
floor by the window lay a clawful of white, fleecy
feathers, clotted with blood. Yes, it must be, but
where was the murderer?  I called to Moses.
The echoes alone called back from the rafters. I
walked up and down, peering behind the boxes
and the barrels. No Moses, no dove.  Marvelling at the mystery, I turned to go, and encoun



MY BIRDS.                219
tered the gleam of two green, phosphorescent eyes,
glaring at me through the darkness under an old
bed in the corner. I went near, and lifted the
corner of the quilt. There lay the mother dove
on her back, her beautiful white and brown feathers dabbled with blood, her stiff, pathetic legs
stretched upwards and outwards, her bright eyes
closed, her fond heart still.  Over her stood the
fiend Moses, burning his fierce, fiery eyes into my
soul; and as I tarried there, bending to behold,
with my two hands resting on my two knees, pitying the dove and confounding the cat, a snip of theology came into my mind. Let not envy or bigotry
interpose a scornful smile. If the great magician
of literature could see tongues in the trees, books
in the running brooks, and sermons in stones, may
not I, who am indeed no magician, but a humble
little page, read theology in a cat's eyes?
I desire to say preliminarily that I am a Calvinist. I say it because the Atlantic Monthly has
been in sundry quarters suspected of a certain leaning the other way, and I may be suspected of leaning with it out of an ignoble subserviency. Not
that what I am about to say does at all deviate
from the right line of Orthodoxy; but "liberal
Christians " have a way of exercising their liberality to an astonishing extent on themselves. Whenever I give out anything unusually brilliant in the
line of ethics or theology, up jumps a Unitarian,
and exclaims, " That is Unitarianism."  Whatso



220          COUNTRY LIVING.
ever things are true, whatsoever things are honest?
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are
pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report, if there be any virtue,
and if there be any praise, - all the grist goes to
their mill. But what right have they, I should
like to know, to monopolize just thinking and wise
uttering? Is there nothing sensible, philosophic,
natural, judicious, catholic, in Orthodoxy? Does
every good gift and every perfect gift come from
the Gospel according to Channing, and no good
thing at all out of Emmons? Do not the " Evangelical" sometimes drop their lines into the great
ocean of truth and get a nibble? and is it' generous or liberal for the un-Evangelical to snatch
at it?'Truth belongs to him who recognizes it.
There may be certain points not held in common,
but they are few when compared to the myriads
which are the inheritance of humanity, and which
bind men together in golden bands of brotherhood.
In this rich, unfenced land, one may make perpetual
forays, and draw off laden with spoil, yet trench on
no man's rights, appropriate no man's possessions.
I must confess that the Orthodox are only too
ready to play into their opponents' hands. When
the latter take me up, the former drop me instantly. Instead of tightening their hold, and saying to their antagonists, "No, you don't!  Antichrist is not going to pre-empt all the sense and
sparkle there is in the world. We have right and




MY BIRDS.                221
title to this, and we mean to defend it against all
comers.  Go and raise your own prodigies.  We
want ours for home consumption," - they take
the Unitarians' word for it, and give me over as a
reprobate mind concerning the faith. They have
such a heresy-phobia, that heretics have only to
raise the cry, " Mad dog! " and out they tumble
with broom-stick and shillalah to bunt me down,
never stopping to inquire whether I am only
labelled mad, or whether I do indeed foam at the
mouth.
What's in a name, Miss Capulet? Everything,
my dear.
But for all this, I am not to be lured or fisticuffed away from the faith of my fathers. A Calvinist I was born, and a Calvinist I remain. It
does occur to me sometimes that I should like to
know what Calvinism is; but that is not essential.
Whatever it is, I believe in it. I accept its points,
all five of them; and if there were five thousand of
them I should accept them just the same. Original sin, total depravity, natural ability,- nothing is too hard for me. I follow wherever Calvin
leads. If he could stand it, I can.  Servetus does
not stagger me.  I could swallow a good deal
larger camel than he is, and not make faces. I
don't believe, in.the first place, that Calvin burned
Servetus, and if he did, I dare say Servetus richly
deserved it. Why could he not keep still? Why
must he needs jump from the hot water of Tou



222         COUNTRY LIVING.
louse into the frying-pan of Basle and the fire
of Geneva? Why could he not content himself
with being a doctor and killing other people, instead of turning theologian and killing himself?
It is just these very wilful, pushing, impracticable,
one-idea men that make the mischief. If people
would only eat their dinners and let things alone,
there would be no trouble. But every age and
country has its pestilent fellows, who are never
easy unless they are poking into somebody's pet
belief, or custom, or prejudice, and turning the
world upside down. Only the nineteenth century
has grown squeamish about cauterizing for disease,
and so lets it run till the whole head is sick and
the whole heart faint. Our own country furnishes
a melancholy example of this.  If Hopkins and
Phillips and Beecher, and two or three hundred
more, could have been summarily Servetized, our
friends would not now be up to their necks in
Southern mud, and slaveholders would be cracking their whips in peace over our heads and those
of their negroes. Moreover, whatever Servetus's
opinions deserved, his manners certainly merited
the stake; and I wish there could be a law passed
to-morrow, that everybody who does not try to
make himself agreeable, everybody who is arrogant, or surpercilious, or sneering, or biting, or
in any way gratuitously uncomfortable, should be
toasted on a gridiron like St. Lawrence, without
even the privilege of turning the other side to the




MY BIRDS.                223
fire, until he promises to mend his ways. For my
part, I believe I would about as soon be burnt at
the stake- I know I would rather be considerably scorched- as come in contact with those tremendous people that one sees occasionally walking up and down the earth, seeking whom they
may devour.
If I have now stated my position, and made it
sufficiently clear that I do not design to conceal or
assume any views out of deference to any institution, I will return to my muttons, as the French
say.
It chanced to me once to overhear a company
of theologians talking. They were discussing responsibility, penalty, and such things, and, as
far as an uninitiated person could gather, the gist
of it was whether babies sinned before they began,
or not till afterwards. The thing which they all
evidently agreed upon was, that beings did not
have moral responsibility till they had moral ideas,
- that is, till they knew right from wrong. This,
I am sure, all must agree to. But as I stood
steadfastly gazing at that cat, I went a step beyond, and I remembered a little girl whose education had advanced to the degree that she could
make feint of articulating single words, but was in
no wise equal to the effort of stringing two words
together. This tiny maiden, tempted of the Devil,
and aided and abetted thereby, had feloniously
abstracted a lump of sugar from the sugar-firkin,




224          COUNTR Y LIVING.
and retired behind the closet-door to enjoy her
prize. There she was overtaken in her iniquity
Her eyes looked up to see her mother's eyes fixed
on hers; and whoever saw the shame and guilt
and remorse that settled in those eyes, and spread
over that three-cent-piece of a face, - whoever,
indeed, saw the tiny figure smuggled behind the
door, or felt the unwonted silence occasioned by
her temporary withdrawal from the world, - could
have had no doubt that she knew in the half-inch
depths of her frail little heart that she was doing
wrong.  Yet how far was she morally responsible? If she had died that moment, would she not
have gone straight up to the arms of the Christ?
I verily believe so. And looking into the eyes of
Moses, my belief found confirmation there; for
Moses exhibited just as unmistakable signs of
moral ideas as did Metty. Both took what they
knew they had no right to take. Metty's mamma
called to her, and Metty did not reply, though
usually both feet and tongue were swift to meet
that voice. I called "Moses! " and silence was
my only response, though he generally leaped with
great strides to the stairs the moment the garret
door was opened. Metty took her sugar behind
the door to eat it. Moses took his bird under the
bed. Metty spoke no word of justification. No
more did Moses. The fact I believe to be, that
one was just about as morally responsible as the
other; only a human soul is grafted on, and will




MY BIRDS.                225
bud and blossom from the little girl's animal instincts, and the poor old cat will grope along forever through his blind brute life.
But he shall not have my dove to sustain him
in it, I said.  He shall not crown his grievous
transgression with festive orgies.  He shall at
least suffer the torture of seeing the prize
snatched from him in the moment of victory.
I went to the head of the stairs and gave a
general call for assistance.  Dr. Sangrado came.
Dr. Sangrado said at once that he should pick
the dove and have her cooked.- I turned away
in disgust without opening my lips.  Moses's
arrangement was but ferocity. Dr. Sangrado's
was cannibalism. He did pick her, and brought
me the wings, - two spotless, appealing white
wings. One is laid away, the other is tied with
a pink satin ribbon and hangs under my mantelpiece. If you should mistake it for an ordinary,
household wing, and should begin to sweep up
the hearth with it, you would experience a sudden difficulty of respiration.  This wing is only
a memento.  Occasionally, I apply it to such
aesthetic uses as brushing a silk cushion or a
velvet cover, but never to any profaner purposes.
The next morning I was rejoiced to hear that
Dr. Sangrado, having prepared his victim for the
vile obsequies which he designed, had hung her
in the cellar, and Moses, prowling around as
usual in search of prey, had got at the bird and
10*




226          COUNTRY LIVING.
fared sumptuosly. As concerning Moses against
the dove, I was implacable; but as concerning
Dr. Sangrado against Moses, I took sides with
the latter.  So, though I would have preferred
decent interment for my pet, I yet felt that the
worst had been spared; the king had come to his
own again, and I was content.
For one day the widower dove looked bewildered.  Then  he disappeared for three days.
Then he returned jubilant with the handsomest
dark slate-colored mate it is possible to conceive.
Her feathers gleamed and glistened in the sun,
flashing through green and purple and pink, dazzling and magnificent. Then I saw exemplified
the truth of the old adage:
"' A mother's a mother all the days of her life;
A father's a father till he gets him a new wife."
The two young doves immediately began to suffer
an unrelenting persecution, not from their stepmother, but from their father, though I dare say
she privately egged him on.  He determined to
drive them away. He chased them all around
the edge of the roof. He pecked at them furiously when they came for food as aforetime.
He would not suffer them to take a single grain
of corn in peace, while the Black Princess'settled
on her lees and waxed fat. His unnatural treatment at length effected the desired object. His
persecuted offspring took leave of him forever, the
tawny bride reigned triumphant, and he basked




MY BIRDS.               227
in the sunshine of unclouded prosperity. But his
delight was short-lived.  Swift justice overtook
him. His beautiful brunette assumed a sudden
pique and freak, and repulsed him severely. Before he had recovered from the shock of astonishment, she turned his discomfiture into annihilation by introducing a new actor to the scene, -
a handsome stranger, snow-white and resplendent.
Both set themselves remorselessly to work against
the head of the family. The chalice which he
had forced upon his innocent offspring was commended to his own lips. He tasted to the full the
bitterness of being shoved and pecked and outraged in his own home, till he fled, a brokenhearted bird, from his violated hearth. I should
have pitied him if his previous ill-behavior had
not alienated from him the sympathy of all virtuous people. As it was, I confess to a grim satisfaction in the cruel chagrin which must have
torn his bosom as he sat on the ridge-pole of the
barn, contemplating the ruin of his domestic happiness, while his faithless bride and her new companion made love to each other on my windowsill in full view. And it is surprising to see how
much love birds can make when they set about
it. They actually kissed! I should not suppose
there could be much pleasure in it. Two tenpenny nails might as well attempt caresses, but
they seemed to enjoy it.  They ran the sharp
points of their hard bills over and around each




228          COUNTRY LIVING.
other's bills, and buried their noses in each other's
feathers, and cooed and simpered, as fond and
silly as you please.  Perhaps it is this demonstrativeness that has made " dove " a term of endearment, but I suspect there may' be a good dea,
more in that application of it than comes to the
surface at once. My observations have led me
to conclude that doves are of a decidedly quarrelsome disposition, capable of developing into viragoes, termagants, and downright scolds.  Also
their tenderness, though laid on pretty thick while
it lasts, very soon gives out. Has not some close
observer, a little cynical, perhaps, given the word
its erotic turn as a delicate but sharp satire?
Since the spring has come, my doves have flown.
I neglected to feed them one day, and they left me.
When I have been from home a week at a time
they never seemed to mind it, but frequented me
as usual on my return. I suppose my offence lay
in being at home and not feeding them; and as
the mild weather and the resurrection of insectlife made it practicable for them to gratify their
resentment, they concluded to do so.
I am consoled for their absence by the advent
of those delicious little beings, those true fairies of
the air, those tiny marvels of creative power,the protest of this new world against the Transatlantic notion that its grandeur is not exalted by
a corresponding finish, - humming-birds. A paper of round, black, microscopic seeds, labelled




MY BIRDS.                229
"humming-bird balm," sent me by an honored
and valued friend, who, amid the stern duties of
life finds time for its small, sweet courtesies, was
sown in the fall, ripened through the frosts and
snows, and sprang up with the spring into green
and flowery strength. Attracted by some mysterious influence, the little birdlets come flying from
east and west and north and south. I hear their
lively chirp in the warm morning. On they dart
with rapid flight, - their forked tails fluttering,
their black eyes sparkling, their black bills aiming
straight ahead, their brown wings deepening into
royal purple, their glossy backs gleaming out a
golden-green splendor, their breasts and throats
now dazzling me with ruby fire, now throbbing like
molten gold, changing from intense black to burning orange and fiery crimson, the brilliant scales
instinct with glowing life,- more beautiful than
tongue can tell. Now he poises himself, a quivering, shining mist, above the balm. Now he thrusts
his slender tongue into the flower-cup, and rifles
its hidden honey. And now I see indeed
the force of Sidney Smith's advice to
women to give a kiss as a humming-bird runs his bill into
a honey - suckle, -
deep, but delicate.




OMMY.
OMETIMES when I am sitting in my
room, I hear a prolonged "g-a-a-h!"
Then I know  that Tommy is out.
Tommy has escaped from his keepers,
and is pursuing his investigations in the world at
large. So I go to the window, and a pink gleam
flashes up from the grass, and there, sure enough,
is Tommy, climbing up toward the house with
slow, tottering, uncertain steps, but with a face
indicative of a desperate resolve to get somewhere,
and with both arms acting as balancing-poles.
Then I call out, " rul-lo! little Tom-rnee!" and
everything changes.  The arms drop, the feet
stop, the resolution fades out of his face. He
looks blankly towards all points of the compass,
and when finally his eyes alight on me, what a
smile! An ordinary curve of his generous; Irish
lips does n't seem at all adequate to his feelings.
He smiles latitudinally and longitudinally,- away
round towards the back of his head, up to his
nose, and down into his chin. Out goes his right




TOMMlIY.              - 231
arm as far as it. can stretch, with the fat forefinger extended towards me, and a more intense
"g-a-a-h!" bursts from the little throat. Then,
with renewed energy, he resumes his travels. He
does very well so long as the ascent is gradual,
but when it.becomes abrupt, his troubles begin.
It is n't the tumbling down, however, that hurts
him. Like all the rest of us, he can do that very
easily, but it is the getting up again that plays
the mischief. He rears himself on his toes and
fingers, and there he stands, a round-backed little
quadruped, utterly at a loss what to do next;
for Tommy does not yet understand the use of
his knees. If he thinks I am looking at him, he
will stand there and squeal till he becomes convinced. that I have gone away and left him to his
own resources, which I generally do; when he
drops, or rolls, or squirms along, in some illegal
and unanatomical way, and at last stands radiant
in the porch. Then he steers straightway to the
side-lights.  Those side-lights are an unfailing
source of admiring wonder.  If somebody is on
the opposite side to play bo-peep, he is ecstatic.
If nobody is there, he is calmly blissful.
Tommy is a great nuisance during the "fall
cleaning." He is always getting into the soapsuds and hot-water generally. I volunteered once
to take charge of him. I was going to tack down
a carpet. Tommy looked on in amazement. Then
he got down on the floor, and tried to take the




232          COUNTRY LIVING.
tacks in his soft fingers. I rapped the soft fingers
with my carpet-hammer.  He gave one yell, an~l
drew them back. I kept on with my work. In
a minute, the soft fingers were creeping in among
the tacks.  Another rap, another yell, another
creep, -rap! yell! creep, -till I grew tired of
rapping, if he did not of being rapped. I suppose
I did n't hit quite hard enough, but one does n't
like to take liberties with other people's babies.
Then I took hold of him by the back of his frock
with one hand, carried him, with head and feet
hanging, to the farthest side of the room, and deposited him in a corner. I had hardly driven one
tack in, before the little rascal was rounding up
his back again under my very eyes. I gathered
him up once more, and dumped him in the corner
as before.  Evidently it was fine fun for him.
Nothing could exceed the alacrity with which he
crawled over to me. In despair, I at length put
up the tacks, and proceeded to arrange some curtain-fixtures. Tommy was suspiciously still for
several minutes, and when I went to ascertain the
cause, I found he had got a bucket of sea-sand
that had been left in the room, had emptied it on
the carpet, and was flinging it about in royal style.
I regretted to stop his enjoyment, for I have a
fondness for sand myself, but it did not seem to
be appropriate under the circumstances, and I
scooped it up as well as I could, and put it beyond
his reach. The next time I looked at him, which




TOMMIY.               233
was in about a quarter of a minute, he was exerting himself to the utmost in pushing a large pitcher
off the lower part of the wash-hand-stand.  I
caught it just as it was toppling over the brink,
and before I could get that out of harm's way,
he had tumbled a writing-desk out of a chair, scattering pens, ink, and paper in all directions. I
saw at once that, if I was going to take care of
Tommy, I must "give my mind to it."  I took
him into the kitchen, as the place best prepared
to resist his incursions. He struck a bee-line for
the stove, and covered himself with crock.  I
couldn't undertake to wash him, but I mopped
him up a little, put on his hat, and took him out
to walk.  Everything went on blithely till I
turned to go home, then he raised the standard
of rebellion. Tommy seldom cries, but he has a
gamut of most surprising squeals at his command.
On the present occasion, he exhibited them in
wonderful variety, and with remarkable compass
of sound. I might say every step was a squeal.
The neighborhood rushed to the windows, not
unreasonably fearing a repetition of the "babes
in the wood." I covered his eyes, and swung
him around rapidly three or four times, to bewilder him so that he should not know which way
he was going. But Tommy was too old a bird
to be caught by such chaff. He pulled backward,
sidewise, every way but the way he ought to
have pulled. I sat down on the root of an old




COUNTRY LIVING.
elm-tree, and gazed at him in silent despair. He
smiled back at me serene as a summer morning
but the moment I showed symptoms of starting,
he showed symptoms of squealing, till at length
I conquered my compunctions, took him up in
my arms, crock and all, and carried him home.
Tommy has a little black kitten, and the understanding between them is wonderful to see.
Whenever you see Tommy's pink dress, you may
be sure the kitty's glossy fur is not far off; and
she whisks around him, and tantalizes him in the
most provoking manner.  Sometimes they both
run a steeple-chase after her tail; kitty is too wise,
by far, to let anything so valuable as her tail get
into the clutch of those undiscriminating fingers;
but she frisks and gambols around him delightfully, and Tommy turns, too, as fast as he can,
and does n't know that the flashing tail is never
to be got hold of by him. It is surprising how
slowly children develop compared with other animnals. Tommy's kitten is a good deal younger
than he, yet she makes nothing of climbing up to
the ridge-pole of the barn after the doves, which
she never catches, or scudding up the tall cherrytree and peeping down at Tommy from the upper
branches. I believe she does it to excite his envy.
Tommy is intimate only with the kitten, but he
makes friends with the chickens, and cultivates the
acquaintance of the pig by throwing the clothespins over into his pen. An old rooster, nearly as




TOAMMI Y.              235
tall as himself, seems to have attracted his especial
regard. His efforts to catch him are persistent,
though as yet unsuccessful.  He evidently has
perfect faith in his ultimate success, however,
and every time Rooster heaves in sight, Tommy
makes a lurch after him with both arms extended.
Rooster understands perfectly how matters stand,
and preserves a dignified composure till Tommy
gets within a foot of him, when he leisurely withdraws. Tommy stops a moment, takes a survey,
and goes at it again.
The days, and the weeks, and the months pass
on, and Tommy's rich Irish blood ripens in the
summer sunshine. His tottering legs grow firmer.
His dimpled arms forebode strength. As I sit at
my window, I see the apple-trees in the orchard
grow white with bloom, and under them my best
silk umbrella is marching about, as the courts say,
without any visible means of support.  While I
gaze in astonishment, it suddenly gives a lurch,
and reveals Tommy under its capacious dome in a
seventh heaven of ecstasy. Or I am startled,
while sitting alone in the warm afternoon, by seeing a blue eye, just a naked, human eye, peering
in through the lowest chink of a closed blind
opening on the porch.  It turns out to belong
to Tommy, who, by standing on tiptoe in the
porch, can just get one eye in range. Now I see
him trotting down the lane alone, clad in a gay
scarlet frock, et prceterea nilzi, his fat little legs




236          COUNTRY LIVING.
brown with dirt, his white neck, face, and arma
mottled with the same, and his curly hair a jungle.
From his abstracted and eager manner, I infer
that he is bent on some grave errand. " Where
going, Tommy? " I call, suspicious of a secret expedition. " O-gah-gi-bah! " shouts Tommy, without slackening his pace. Out comes his mother,
with a twig, and gives chase. Tommy becomes
cognizant of a fire in the rear, and his eager walk
tumbles into a trot, for he feels that lie is verily
guilty, and knows that he is easily accessible; but
fate overtakes him, and he is borne ignominiously
back. Then his mother explains that she had just
been trying on his new frock, and had remarked
that she must get some buttons, and so Tommy
had stolen away, and was going "over-shop-getbuttons."
Accidents, we are told, will happen in the best
of families, and Tommy awoke one morning and
found that his nose was out of joint. A little,
lumpy baby sister had sadly deranged the machinery of his life, and he did n't know what to make
of it. Formerly, when he stole out-doors unawares, his pretty young mother used to run out
after him, and toss him up in her stout, bare arms
into the house. Now an old woman in a cap came,
and brought her hand down very heavily on his
sensitiveness. Then, too, he was ousted out of his
cradle by the interloper, and his life was in a fair
way of becoming a burden to him. But his good.




TOMMY.                 237
nature never failed.  To be sure, he would throw
the plates, and the flat-irons, and the coal into the
cradle, but it was probably "all in fun."  When
I went in to see "the baby," the first time, he
pointed to it with great exultation, and as soon
as the blanket was rolled down, first poked his
finger into her eyes, and then, quick as thought,
gave her a rousing slap on the cheek.  Baby
screamed, as she had a right to do, and Tommy
had the slap returned with compound interest, as
he richly deserved.
Yet, in senseless, instinctive fashion, in his wild,
Irish way, Tommy loved his baby sister. The
little life drooped and died while the roses were
yet in bloom. Tommy's baby sister was borne to
her burial, and Tommy's heart was troubled with
a blind fear. What it was he did not know, but
something was wrong.  He lingered about the
cradle where she lay, and when the tiny form was
taken up to be placed in the coffin, he plucked
wildly at her white robe, crying bitterly, and refused to be comforted.
Darling little Tommy! The very thought of
your happy face, white and soft, and fine as a lilycup, of your merry blue eyes, with their long,
curling, black eyelashes, of your bungling little
feet, and your meddlesome little fingers, warms
my heart. If I could have my way, you should
always stay just as you are now, only having your
face washed semi-occasionally. But I cannot have




238          COUNTRY LIVING.
my way, and you will by and by run to school
barefoot, and wear blue overalls, and smoke bad
tobacco in a dingy pipe, and carry a hod, and vote
the " dimmocratic ticket."
So I said last year with foolish human prophecy,
and now, behold! there is no democratic ticket
to vote, and there is no Tommy to vote it. For
Tommy is gone. Never any more while I live
shall the gleam of his shining hair light up the
greensward, or the irregular thumping of his
-copper-toed shoes bring music to my ears as he
stumbles up the yard and clatters across the
kitchen-floor.  A  dreamy October morning, all
gold and amethyst with the haze of the Indian
summer, took him beyond my sight over the blue
waters to the fair island of his fathers, which has
been to me ever since a "summer isle of Eden,
lying in dark purple spheres of sea "; and it
seemed to me for the moment that nothing would
be so delightful, nothing looked so winning, as
to leave this surging, eager, battling land, and
sail over the sea with Tommy, and live quietly in
a little brown cottage on the border of Donegal
bog, with a well-burnt pipe in the cupboard, plenty
of peat on the fire, potatoes smoking in the ashes,
a fine fat pig in the corner, and nothing to be
careful or troubled about all the days of my life.
While I grieve fbr Tommy gone, I reflect that
he would probably be a little pest if he had stayed.
Already his feet were swift to do mischief. His




TOMMY.                 239
rosy. lips could swear you' as round an oath as
any Flanders soldiers, and he beat the calf, and
chased the hens, and worried the sheep, and poked
the cow, and pulled the cat's tail, and worked the
key out of the door and lost it, and was perpetually carrying off the hoe, and making the gravel
fly, and surreptitiously possessing himself of the
whip. Fumble, rattle,- Tommy is at the door;
creak, creak, - he has got it open; thump, thump,
thump, - he is making for the whip; silence, -
he is getting it down. "Tommy! Tommy! don't
touch the whip, will you? " No," says Tommy,
stoutly, in the very act of marching off with it
firmly clasped in both hands, brandishing it right
and left, and whisking every living thing, and
dead ones too, that came in his way, or that did n't,
either, for that matter.
In the warm, moonlight evening, Tommy sits
again in a high chair in the porch, and his mother
tells me of the home to which she is going in Ireland, and of the schools which Tommy will attend,
and the books that he will study, and she promises
to send me one to look at, but I greatly fear it will
never reach me. As the conversation proceeds, I
am driven into a corner, and forced to admit that I'do not reckon among my acquisitions an acquaintance with the Irish language.  She is silent for a
moment, and never fails in the politeness of her
race; but I do not think I shall ever quite recover
the ground which that revelation cost me. I fear




2410         COUNi'R t LIVING.
me my reputation is permanently lowered. Tommy, climbing in and out of his high chair, up his
mother's neck, and down the porch steps, wiggling
everywhere, and clawing everything, takes part in
the pleasant chat. " Where are you going, Thomas,
by and by?" asks his mother, designing to show
his paces. " K-t-ty, k-t-ty," gurgles Tommy, making a dive after the kitten. " Now, Thomas," says
she, drawing him back with a strong arm, "tell'em where you're going next month, in a ship,
you know, over the water." " C6w," says Tommy, perversely, having a mortal aversion to water,
wholesale and retail. But I know a quick way to
his tongue. "Tommy, tell me where you are
going, and I'11 give you a sugar-plum."  " Irle,"
says he, with a fine brogue, rapidly coming to his
senses.  " An' tell'em what'11 your gran'father
be sayin' to you, when he sees you."  A pink peppermint in my hand becoming visible to the naked
eye, he answers promptly, "Ye! ga! Tom! wi!
ko! yah! bk! " which, being interpreted, means,
"Here comes Tom with the clock on his back,"
referring to a clock which is to be carried with
them, and which he evidently believes will be his
own personal luggage.  Sometimes his'answer
turns into " Here's Tom, coming in at the door!"
which seems to me to indicate a decided dramatic
power.  "Tommy," I say, pathetically, "I am
afraid you will forget all about me when you go
to Ireland."  "Iss," roars Tommy, backing out




TOMMY.                 241
from under his chair. "But I want you not to
forget. Stand still, now, and tell me what my
name is."  "Yah! " shouts Tommy, jumping up
and down. "Yah what?"  "Yah Yah!"  And
even when the last morning comes, - when Tommy, gay with scarlet frock and feather, and " bran
new" shoes, is borne in his mother's arms up the
steps to say his last good-by,- the hard-hearted
little pagan is utterly unmoved by her tears, and
only jounces up and down, and cries, "Ride!
Horse! " and, in virtue of a doughnut in each fist,
marches off for fatherland, triumphant.
But Ireland is glorified henceforth.  I see no
more. there want, nor squalor, nor suffering, but
verdurous meadow-depths, and a little child crowned
with myrtle and arbutus, flinging around him the
crushed wealth of daisy and primroses and gold
cups, while his upturned face, shining against the
morning sun, is as it were the face of an angel.
God bless the Irish! I cannot choose but love
them. They do unearthly things, I know, and
are a grief of heart to the sorely-tried housewives.
One whole winter did Bridget sweep my room,
and invariably set the table with the drawer toward
the wall. Never by any mistake did it happen to
come right side out. Patsy had a way of swooping up all the contents of all the wash-hand-stands,
in her regular round with broom and duster, and
distributing them again without respect of persons.
Accordingly, your own stand would be garnished
11                      P




242          COUNTRY LIVING.
with the tooth-brush of your neighbor on the right,
the nail-brush of your neighbor on the left, the
hair-brush of your neighbor above, and the hatbrush of your neighbor below. But Patsy is a
diamond in the rough. I wrote a love-letter for
her once. She came to me beaming with ruddy
shyness, and, after backing and filling for fifteen
minutes, gave me to understand that her lover was
by " the far wash of Australasian seas," and would
I write him a letter for her. He was a fond swain,
but she had been coy and coquettish, and, now
that he was so far away, her heart relented. Did
I write to him? Of course I did, conjecturing, to
the best of my ability, what manner of document
a love-letter should be, and determining that at
least it should not lack the quality which gives it
a name. So, after exhausting my own vocabulary,
I had recourse to the poets, and quoted Tennyson.
It smote me in the heart to look up when I had
read it to her, and see her beautiful almond eyes
filled with tears; for though one's own love-letters
may be a serious enough matter, one can hardly
voice another's tenderness with entire good faith.
" Oh! " said Patsy, with a sigh from the very bottom of her warm Irish heart, "them is jes' my
feelin's," and even put her head back through the
door after going out, to add, "An' sure, ye must
have had them feelin's yourself, or ye niver could
have done it."   "Ah, Patsy!" I said, —but
never mind what I said.




TOMMY.                 243
God bless the Irish! They supply an element
that is wanting to our Anglo-Saxon blood, the
easy, eloquent, picturesque race. Their rest is
such a cushion to our restlessness. As they mount
the ladder, their individualities lose outline, but
an Irish poor family is world-wide from an American poor family. The Americans will be so sharp
and angular, and clearly defined. They will have
such an air of having seen better days, and not
giving up seeing them again.  Their poverty is
self-conscious, and draws comparisons. A painful
scrubbiness is in the air. Everything is neat,
whitewashed, and made the most of.  Evidently
they are struggling against fate. They contest
every inch of ground. If you offer them assistance, you must double and turn, and ten to one
give mortal offence after all. I know these are
the very things that the books applaud, and I
suppose they are one of the bases of greatness;
but for solid comfort, give me an Irish shanty,
where all are dirty and happy and contented.
For the spare, stooping American mother, with
thin hairs pointed elbows, and never fewer than
forty years, you have the Irish matron, always
young,  red, round arms, luxuriantly full figure,
great white teeth, head set back, and peerless hair.
You are received with nonchalant courtesy, and
your " remainder biscuit " with graceful gratitude.
No care furrows any forehead. If the baby creeps
into the ashes, one blacksmithy arm whips him




244          COUNTRY LIVING.
out again as good as new. In winter the air is
warm with the mingled odor of soapsuds, boiling
cabbage, and fiagrant tobacco.  In the summer
they set their wash-tubs at the back door, and, in
a sensible scantiness of costume, rub to the robin's
song, and never seem to look forward to a possible presidency. They float across the tide acquiescent. Thus poverty is robbed of its sting.
If one must be poor, it is so much easier to be
comfortable about it. And if one is thoroughly
comfortable, what matter whether one lives in one
room or twenty?
God bless the Irish!  Their strong arms are
lifted, their warm hearts are beating, side by side
with ours, for the honor and life of their adopted
country. Does famine impend over their island
home?  We have enough and to spare. From
our bursting granaries, from our larders over-full,
let their tables be spread with plenty. Surely the
bread, the few crumbs which we cast upon the
waters, many days ago, are already returned to
us in Irish truth and loyalty. And when their
civilization and Christianity are brought abreast
of their inborn poetry, Ireland shall come forth
fair as the sun, clear as the moon, and terrible
as an army with banners.
Tommy, Tommy, I am loath to leave you. I
do not see how you can possibly grow up good;
but your angel, always beholding the face of our
Father which is in heaven, may read there plans




TOMMIY.              245
of love which my dim eyes cannot discern. To
God I commend you. Wherever you go, the Lord
give his angels charge concerning you, to keep
you in all your ways, and even though
you worship him blindly, with bell and
incense and crucifix and rosary,
may he none the less keep
your eyes from tears, your
feet from falling, and
your soul from
death.




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.
NE thing there is in the world which
I admire. It is blase people, - people, as Curtis expresses it, who have
v pumped life dry, and the pump only
wheezes, - people who are not interested in anything, - people who have gone through the whole
round of sensations, and have the satisfactory consciousness of having nothing more to feel, - people who are always self-possessed, never thrown
off their balance.  Attacked from any quarter,
they are ready. There is the English Quarterly
Reviewer. He has all things under his feet. He
is calmly superior to the world, the flesh, and so
forth. He holds in his hands the reins of the universe. He embraces the whole circle of knowledge. Nothing ever happens to which he cannot
assign its true cause and prophesy its remotest
future. He knows more of poetry than the poet,
inore of art than the artist, more of history than
the historian. He can get more out of anything
thari ever was in it. The scanty grains of infor



BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.    247
mation which you have been able to gather by
hard digging into dictionaries and grammars, and
which you reserve for grand occasions, dwindle to
nothing before the huge boulders of learning which
he scoops up and tosses about with his finger-tips
on the slightest provocation. But the seal of his
royalty is the air of quiet superiority, of having
been born to it, with which he handles his resources, and, awed by which, you abdicate at
once, feeling it an honor to be tyrannized over
by such a one. But this is a remarkable world
in many respects, and in none more so than in
a certain organic disjointedness.  Causes do not
seem to produce effects. Sequences are arbitrary.
There is general law, but a great deal of special
lawlessness. You lay all your plans to accomplish
an object, and miss of it; while the good that you
never dream of obtaining comes to you unsought.
Machines that work well in theory will not work
at all in iron. There seems to be no reason why
the stove should smoke, but it does. I knew a
man who, at twenty, was given up by his physicians. His lungs were gone, his stomach was
going, his heart was capricious,- in short, all his
internal apparatus seemed to be destroyed or deranged; it is plain that, under such circumstances,
he ought to have died.  If this were a logical
world, he would have died.  On the contrary,
he most unreasonably persisted in living, and is
now, at forty, roaming over Europe, climbing the




248          COUNTRY LIVING.
Alps, braving the Pontine Marshes, tampering with
Rhein wine, sauer-kraut, and all manner of foreign
edibles, and threatens to live out his threescore
years and ten, unless death comes to him from
without. Certainly, there is a hitch in the world
somewhere. So, though I would give any reasonable sum to be blas6 and au fait myself, I am in
fact very far from it. I often become bewildered
in cities. I lose my purse, and I lose my way,
and I almost -lose my senses.  I admire, and
am astonished.  I like to look in at shop windows, to see a monkey capering to a hand-organ,
to buy fruit of old women crouching at the corners of streets. - When I get into an omnibus, I
never can remember to get out again, and once
I rode from Boston to Cambridge three times
before I remembered to pull the strap at the place
where I wanted to be left.  I like to be in a
crowd, if I am not in a hurry (in a carriage, —I
should n't like to be on foot, and have all sorts of
people knocking against me), and see the feathers
and silks trying to get on, and can't, and men
elbowing through by the skin of their teeth, and
truckmen shouting, and wheels interlocking, and
horses pawing, and timiaid people looking scared.
That sounds rather malignant, but it is n't.  I
would not scare them myself for the sake of the
fun; but as they are scared independently of any
effort of mine, I enjoy it simply as a part of the
pantomime. Besides, I don't see any use in being




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.    249
frightened in such a case. I don't expect a coachman to have any especial regard for my individual
bones, but I do expect him to have a regard for his
own reputation as a coachman, and for his pocket,
both of which demand that he should not upset his
coach and injure his passenger, unless circumstances absolutely require it.  I take it for granted,
also, that he understands his business a great deal
better than I do; and as he doesn't fret about
my writing, I won't fret about his driving me
through a crowd. I also like, in passing through
streets, to count the windows, and see how many
stories the shops have. I like to talk with newsboys, and rag-pickers, and the little beggar-girls,
and with all sorts of out-of-the-way people.  It
seems to take you into another world. I am always awed in the presence of milliners and dressmakers. If I have an opinion before I go in, it
presents itself to them in the form of the meekest and timidest suggestion, and melts away and
evaporates before their slightest objection. There
-is something in their art perfectly incomprehensible
to me. I can understand how a locomotive engine
or a sewing-machine can be made. I think I could
make one myself, if I were educated to it, and had
the proper tools; for a ponderous machine cuts
out your work by rule, and you put it together,
one engine just like another. But a milliner'must
have creative power. She must conceive an idea
of every bonnet separately, and then, from a wil11 *




250           COUNTRY LIVING.
derness of silk and straw and lace and flowers, she
must evoke the perfect bonnet, every one separately, and every one adapted to the figure, com
plexion, and character of every separate wearer, -
and this for months and years continuously.
But of course all this is incompatible with that
air of savoir faire which is at once my admiration
and my despair. You cannot be tranquilly indifferent and keenly interested at the same time.
And how can one go up from the country, where
the quiet is a perpetual Sabbath, into the city,
where life whirls in ten thousand different forms,
and not be interested, - and not show it?  I have
had opportunities to observe my sex in the transition state, and I'am forced to say that I do not
think the female traveller is always a pleasant object
of contemplation. She is never quite free from
anxiety or bundles, and is generally pretty highly
charged with both.  She asks the conductor the
same question twice, as if she believed he might
undergo a moral reformation between the first and
second asking, and tell the truth at last, though he
told a lie at first. Sweetly patient at home, sublimely patient in great pain or peril, she is ludicrously impatient on her travels. She cannot wait
the march of events, but outstrips the present, anticipates the future, and asks the conductor " if we
change cars at B."  Trustful to a fault in the domestic circle, she becomes a very sceptic in the
cars, and never believes him unless he says " Yes."




BOST-0N  AND  OME AGAIN.    251
When he announces at B., "Passengers change
cars for the East," she steps out with alacrity upon
the platform, and immediately asks him, " Do we
change cars here?"  Acute of vision, and rapid in
perception at home, abroad a glamour seems to fall
upon her. The time-table invariably hangs upon
the station-walls, but, as if incapable of calculation,
she invariably asks the ticket-master at what hour
the train is due; and if it is five minutes late, she
goes to him again, and asks him how long before
it will arrive.  Of course, observing the inconsequence of these and similar'vagaries, I am especially careful to avoid them. You will presently
see how I succeed.
I will, however, say this in extenuation, that no
city has any moral right to be as crooked as Boston.  It is a crookedness without excuse, and
without palliation. It is crooked in cold blood,
and with malice aforethought.  It goes askew
when it might just as easily go straight. It is
illogical, inconsequent, and incoherent. Nowhere
leads to anywhere in particular. You start from
any given point, and you are just as likely to come
out at one place as another. Of course, all this can
but have an effect on the inhabitants.  Straightforwardness becomes impossible where you are
continually pitching up against sharp points. People born and bred in angles, and blind alleys, and
cross-ways, cannot fail to have a knack at tergiversation and intrigue. Diplomatists should be




252          COUNTRY LIVING.
chosen from Boston, or should at least take a preparatory course of five years there, as soldiers do
at West Point.
The number of the streets is amazing. The
Bostonians seem.to have a perfect frenzy for them.
If they can squeeze in a six-foot passage between
two houses, they are happy. Half a dozen stairs
and a brick platform is an avenue and an elysium.
They build their houses in the shape of a letter V,
with the point sticking out in front, apparently for
no other reason than the exquisite satisfaction of
having a street pass up each side; and they make
their streets crooked to look at, and then make
alleys to get there. Washington Street, the principal thoroughfare,
" Like a wounded snake drags its slow length along."
I have heard that it was originated by cows, meandering down to drink. This hypothesis may
answer in the one case, but it won't apply to the
smaller streets, for a cow could not make so acute
angles if she tried. Owing to this vaccine inability, Washington street rolls on with considerable
dignity for awhile, but it goes off into a delirium tremens down by Cornhill and Dock Square.
Everything is as shifting as a kaleidoscope. When
you set out from the Revere House, you observed
the landmarks.  There was " Oliver H. Brooks,
Eating-House," set in the middle of the road, and
peaked of course. That is easy to remember.
Bdt when you get back into the maze, the thing is




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.           253
there, to be sure, wedging itself into space, but it
is no longer Oliver H. Brooks's Eating-House; it
is B. F. Paine's Fruit of all kinds Chamois. You
go to the very spot where the Revere House stood
in the morning.  It has died and left no sign,
and a block of brick houses reigns in its stead.
When you went up Cornhill, "V. B. Palmer"
stood at the head of it in gold letters, but when
you come back V. B. has trotted off, and the various religious and publishing societies which congregate there have, in the incredibly short space
of two hours, given way to Mr. Blake's Furnishing Rooms, or the Quincy House. As for Faneuil
Hall, it is perpetually dancing a jig with Dock
Square. Places that you are in a hurry to come
at, are never "at home."  Places that you don't
want, are continually turning up. You may wander about in that benighted region for hours, and
every corner you turn, there will be Faneuil Hall
prancing before your eyes as pert and coquettish
as if each time were the first. It is always within
a stone's throw, but you never get close to it. I
don't believe anybody ever did get close to it.
And you never see it standing square. You never
have a front view, nor a side view, but always a
corner view. It must have secret springs, for if
you make a flank movement, with the sole object
of getting it in a straight line, it will manage to cut
a pirouette, and present angles. Jefferson Davis
threatened to go into winter quarters in Faneuil




25 4         CO UNTRY LIVING.
Hall. I wish he had. A sure way to stop the
rebellion without bloodshed would be to bring
him and his whole army to Faneuil Hall and
suburbs.  They never would find their way out
again. I would not blindfold them. I would
give them  every clew  that they chose. After
they were once in, Boston could just shake
herself, the clews would be good for nothing,
and Massachusetts nurseries for a thousand years
would shiver at twilight over stories of wandering
ghosts, with phantom barred flags and shadowy
Golden Circles, wandering, weeping, wailing, in
the alleys of Dock Square, and moaning ever and
anon, like Sterne's starling, " I can't get out." I
mention only Dock Square, but there are, as the
Yankees say, "lots of'em."  That one has made
the deepest impression on me, for whenever I am
lost, I drift into that, and it seems like the nightmare. I suppose it is called " Square," on the
same principle that the only man in the House
of Representatives who cannot make a speech is
called Mr. Speaker. Certainly there never was
such a misnomer as Dock Square. Dock Dodecagon would be nearer the truth, but that would
only approximate it, for a dodecagon has regular
sides, and there is not a regular side to anything,
from one end of Boston to the other, let alone
Dock Square, which has no sides at all, but consists solely of corners.
That the crookedness of Boston is not external




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.    255
only, but strikes in, there is abundant proof. You
go into a shop, -- Kinmonth's, for instance. You
founder at once in a raging sea of agitated silks
and laces and feathers.  Appalled, you turn to
Turnbull's, next door. Another sea, but something must be done.  You want sixpence worth
of galloon. At home, in your one little "cheap
cash store," you could get it, and be gone, in two
minutes; but the female population of- the rural
districts has a mortal aversion to buying anything
at home that can be bought in Boston. The
grandeur of the metropolis seems to cling around
whatever radiates from it into the country, even
though it be only a paper of pins. So, feeling very
tall, and awkward, and conspicuous, you timidly ask
the first clerk to whom you gain access for galloon.
"Back part of the store," says he, briskly, and
turns to the next comer. You color away up to
your hair, and down under your collar, feeling
guilty and ashamed, and very rustic, -as if you
ought to have known, by instinct or education,
that galloon is never to be found in the front
ranks. You flounder through the press into the
back part of the store, and repeat your request
with as much au fait as you can assume. "Back
part of the store," jerks clerk No. 2, and is off in
a twinkling, and there you are, stranded high and
dry. It turns out that what you thought was the
back part of the store is only the beginning of
another room at right angles with the first, - and




256          COUNTRY LIVING.
so you go on, and the rooms go on. You are shot
up by some pop-gun of a clerk from counter to
counter, from room to room, fondly thinking every
one to be the last, but finding in the backest part
a backer part, — (vide Milton,) -till, after making
half a dozen angles of incidence and reflection,
you get your galloon, and - there is the door
close by you!  Is Turnbull's, then, built circularly? Have you circumnavigated it till, as the
old geographies used to say, you have arrived
at the point from which you started, in an opposite direction?  In your bewilderment, this
is not difficult to believe, and you depart, but
everything without is changed. The din seems
hushed, or far off. The tide of drays and omnibuses has ebbed.  You remember that Kinmonth's was next door, - yes, there is Kinmonth's, but no longer next door; it has stepped
across the street and stands opposite, and the big
sign has dwindled into a little one.  Terrorstruck, you strike out at random, fearful lest the
Merlin, or Math, or Michael Scott, who roams in
Boston, stretch forth his wand again; sign, shop,
and city disappear before your eyes, and you
find yourself wandering among the forests and
wigwams of Shawmut.
Boston, moreover, has a way of contracting and
expanding herself that is marvellous in country
eyes. You shall, for instance, be in search of
Number Thirty-three.  Passing up the street,




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.    257
reading eagerly every sign, you count " twentyseven,, twenty-eight, twenty-nine,"- and then
there is a sudden leap over to thirty-eight!
What now? You look again, fancying you
must have made a mistake. No, this door is
certainly twenty-nine, and the next is certainly
thirty-eight, if you can read Arabic characters.
Eight houses, therefore, must be squeezed into
one brick partition-wall. You think of microscopes. You wonder if the houses are to be
pulled out one after another, as Mr. Hermanna
prestidigitates twenty apples and fifty tin cups out
of one empty old hat. Presently, you summon
courage to go into a neighboring shop, and request to be enlightened.  They inform you that
the missing numbers are attached to the doors
of rooms inside.  A most extraordinary circumstance!  It is generally supposed that a house
means a house. In Boston, however, it appears
to mean only a room. Number Ten does not
necessarily indicate the tenth house on the street.
You must fumble through the dark passages and
over the strange staircases within before you can
be sure that it does not point out the tenth room.
If we should go and do likewise in the country,
numbering and labelling every barn, corn-barn,
cider-press, pig-sty, dog-kennel, hen-coop, and
dove-cot, we should have quite a little settle
ment at every homestead.
The result of it all is, that you never know
Q




258         COUNTRY LIVING.
how much ground you have been over, nor
where you ought to stop. You make your way
to the dry-goods desk in a shop, and ask for poplins, overhaul them all, find nothing to suit, and
go on till you come to another shop, and by a
similar process are passed up to a similar desk,
and repeat your meek inquiry. "You looked at
all our poplins a few moments ago," says the clerk,
politely. You lift your eyes quickly to his face.
Yes, it is the same man and the same place that
you went to before, - and then do you not feel
amiable?  Yet you have been a Sabbath-day's
journey since then. How in the world, then,
came you back again?  Because these wary
merchants open doors and send out feelers in all
directions, and there is nothing for a poor, silly
little fly like you to do but walk into their parlors whichever way you turn.
But Boston, though crooked and inexplicable,
is not without her charms. " God made the
country and man made the town," as a general
fact.  But there is a good deal in Boston that
man never made and never will make.
Come, behold the works of the Lord. You need
not turn yourself into a polar bear with furs, live
on raw frozen walrus beef, tallow candles, and
blubber, be drawn by dogs, and sleep in a hut with
a naked Esquimaux baby for a pillow, - nor need
you brave the snakes and scorpions and hurricanes
of the tropics, or plunge full many a fathom deep




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.    259
in the ghost-enpeopled sea, -to gaze upon the
wonderful works of God; for behold they are nigh
you, even at your doors.
Right in the thick of Boston is a glass tank, big
enough to sail a small fleet, and in that tank a huge
white whale bulges his billowy bulk in a neverending round of treadmill travel. I call him huge,
but it is relatively. He is, in fact,rather diminutive for a whale, but he is prodigious for a fish.
You have studied in Parley's Geography about a
whale as big as the steeple of the meeting-house, -
an indefinite, but sublime comparison. You have
read thrilling narratives of whale captures,- long
and perilous voyages, boats stove, races run, men
submerged, shipwreck and suffering and death in
far-off, mysterious seas. Think then what a triumph of mind over matter is implied in the fact,
that for twenty-five cents you can go and sit in
your best clothes, and look at a whale. But you
must look closely, or you will not see him; he but
just heaves above the surface to breathe, and then
sinks down till he is only a white mist in the green
water. What a fortitude the poor fellow needs to
sustain his change of fortune. Surely, if any one
ever had right to complain of " reduced circumstances," it is he, wrested from the halls of his
fathers, from the forests of the vivid-tressed mermaidens, from the crystalline corridors " of his dim
water-world," to a glass tank, - admission twentyfive cents; children under ten years of age fifteen




260          COUNTRY LIVING.
cents. And what a lonely life it is! There are
sturgeons and lobsters and a dolphin, to be sure,
but they are not like " own folks." A whale cannot be expected to be hand and glove with a lobster. A sturgeon cannot enter into the feelings of
a whale.  So, as was said of Napoleon, "grand,
gloomy, and peculiar, he sits upon his throne, a
sceptred hermit, wrapped in the solitude of his
own originality."
The little dolphin is alone too, but he does not
seem to mind it. I call him little, but that is also
relative. Little beside the whale, he is a giant
among the dolphins, and he sports around the
whale, a dusky satellite, as gay as a lark, doubling,
bobbing, and seeming to take life in a very free and
easy manner.
" This is a weary world, little Dolphin," one
can fancy the melancholy whale saying, in sepulchral tones, and with that dignity of bearing which
the great are wont to employ towards the small.
"Not a bit of it, Whaley," retorts the dolphin,
cheerily, with the smart familiarity of ignorance.
"I am haunted evermore, 0 Dolphin, by the
dull brilliancy of golden memories.  Did I ever
sweep around the illimitable shores of an icy continent? Were my pearly whiteness and the splendor of my opal tints caught from the glow of an
unsetting sun? Whence come the diamond mountains, ruby-crested, that rise forever in my dreams?
Do you not remember, 0 Dolphin, a brighter sky,
a broader sea, and other shores than these? "




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.             261
"None to speak of, Whaley.  Nothing that
could hold a candle to this.  Cold as Greenland,
that's all I remember, and no nice people to look
at you. Tip-top world:'Here we go up, up, up,
Here we go down, down, downy,
Here we go backwards and forwards,
Here we go round, round, roundy.' "
And, with a double-and-twisted frisk of his tail, off
he darts, leaving his gigantic companion to roll on
his monotonous way "in slow and solemn brightness."
It is amusing to see how the other little fellows
in the tank keep out of the whale's and the dolphin's orbit. They have caught the fashion, and
revolve, but they hug the shore. I am sure they
need not be afraid, for, if there is any truth in
physiognomy, that whale is a humane and benevolent individual, and Dolphin is too good-natured,
with all his giddiness, to harm a fly. But, from
whatever cause, the "small fry" never come in
collision with their Anak brethren.  It is a very
easy matter for them to avoid it. Men have to
move on the same plane, but when haddock meets
haddock, he can dive, or soar, or pass on one side,
as he chooses, and this certainly is one of the compensations for being a fish. You encounter Mr.
Smith, and, because you are a reasoning animal,
you must keep to the right as the law directs,
though you wet your feet and get a lung-fever in




262          CO UNTRY LIVING.
consequence; but if you were only a bass or a
cod-fish, you could dart down and go under him,
or you could strike up and go over him, which
would save invaluable time, temper, and health.
Here comes Mrs. Jones under full sail, her silken
expansiveness resplendent in the morning sun.
She needs, and should receive, the whole sidewalk, and a coal-cart presses against the curbstone. What now? A smile, a bow, a graceful
undulation, one bird's-eye view of Mrs. Jones,
and you have alighted on the sidewalk behind
her, resuming your stroll with unspotted boots
and unruffled placidity..Eheu! non omnia possu
mus omnes; which means, dear unlearned readers,
who have never pushed your-researches to the last
page of Webster's Spelling-book, that, though it is
possible to be a fish, and possible to be a man, it is
not possible to be both at one and the same moment.
Around the central tank are small tanks full
of unimagined beauty. The exquisite, elaborate
forms, and the intense green of sea-plants; the
multiplied hues, shifting, flashing, dazzling, —
green, and purple, and pink, and gold, —of the
millions of little lives; the feathery waving of the
sea-anemone, the burnished scales of the humblest
*trout, the sluggish torpor of the slow, and the
-electric agility of the quick,- inspire you with
delighted wonder. Little marvellous outbursts of
life! For what service were they formed and




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.    263
fashioned? We see but one, and the ocean teems
with myriads which no human eye hath seen, or
shall see; but does not the great Creator, whose
name is Love, enjoy the happiness of his lowliest
creations-?  May not his eye dwell delighted on
the work of his hands? What presumption for
us to marvel at the production of beauty which
we cannot see! As if in the broad universe there
were no eyes but ours!
Here is a den of tortoises, excessively ugly, and
inconceivably heavy of movement. What is remarkable about a turtle is, that he is not only
sluggish, but he does not seem to try to be otherwise. He takes pains to be lazy. If he wants to
go from the upper to the lower story of his cage,
instead of climbing or jumping down, he lolls to
the edge, and then drops off. I have lost my
early faith in the fable of the hare and the tortoise.
I believe a hare could get anywhere sooner than a
tortoise, if he slept all the time.
Up and down, up and down, tramp the lions,
and the leopards, and the- bears, tramp, tramp,
tramp, -their fierce hearts beating against their
prison-bars like restless souls chained in the cage
of circumstance, hungering, thirsting, maddened,
for their native jungles, and the freedom of their
uncramped, strong limbs.  No philosophy, no
religion, gives them  resignation.  They cannot
" find, for outward Eden lost, a paradise within."
No self-control ennobles them.  Their savage




264          COUNTRY LIVING.
souls know no restraint but the iron bars
against which they press in vain. No reason for
their stolen liberty mitigates the severity of its
loss. It is nothing to them that they are daily
waiting on the pleasure and the wisdom of a
higher race.  So, perhaps, our sufferings, - the
blow that shocks us out of all conventionalities,
and the inward, silent, hidden torture, — all the
ache and agony, -" the dull, deep pain, and
constant anguish of patience," - shall work out
for other lives, if not for ours, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Time would fail me to speak of the deers, and
the snakes, and the squirrels, the porcupines, the
woodchucks, and the guinea-pigs, the rats, and
the cats, and the kangaroos. There will always
be a crowd watching the frisky little monkeys,
whose bodies are so rollicking, whose faces are
so dismal, and whose gymnastics are so almost
incredible. And if you are not too fastidious to
join the crowd, you will see some display of
-human, as well as of simic nature. A little boy
near me had long been silently devouring the
monkeys with his eyes; presently his father came
along, and, anxious that his son should —as his
old copy-books doubtless enjoined upon him -
devote every moment of his time to the acquirement of useful knowledge, began, in the regular Harry and Lucy style, to advise him to
"watch their motions, observe the variety," &c.




BOSTON AND HOME AGAIN.           265
Why,.you dear, good man, as I know you must
be, what in the world did you suppose your boy
was doing with those great wide eyes of his? Set
any boy down before a cage of monkeys, and see
if you can make him do anything else than watch
their motions!
Do not forget the seal, the sea-dog, round, fat,
and sleek, with full, pathetic eyes. What nameless tragedy, far back in the history of the race,
has left those mute, appealing eyes? - a monument more durable than brass. Fortunately, the
tragedy'has not affected his appetite, as the alacrity with which he gulps down a piece of fish as
big as your arm, and then looks up at you as
tragic and trusting as if he had not swallowed a
morsel, and you never suspected he had, abundantly testifies.  Our seal has accomplishments,
too. He jerks a waddling kind of a duck at you,
and thinks it is a bow. He flops up and turns a
crank, calling it a hand-organ. As his education
is still going on, there is no telling what attractions he may not finally attain.
So the tropics and the frozen North-land meet.
Sea and shore give up the wonders which are in
them; and in the midst of man's work and man's
devices, we say, with reverent hearts, " The earth
is full of the riches of the Lord."
And Boston is not only valuable as a depository
of curiosities and dry-goods, but she has her beautiful aspects.  I will tell you how  to arrive at
12




266.         CO UNTR Y LIVING.
one of them. Sleep soundly through a winter
night in one of those rural cities in her suburbs
that lie toward the sunset.  Rise early on the
fine, frosty morning. The snow lies six inches
deep on the ground, and is covered with ice.
Every tree is heavy fruited with gems, pale and
pearly now, but the up-coming sun shall kindle
them to prismatic fire. Take possession of some
good friend who owns a -, I have forgotten
the name, but it is a square box on runners, and
is either a pun, or a pung, or a bun, or a hung,
and coax him to harness his horse and drive you
into Boston.  Then you shall see her glorified.
The keen air clarifies your vision, thrills your
blood, and tingles through your soul.  At first,
Boston wraps herself in mist, and is a city of the
clouds, invisible to earth-born.  But the sun,
coming up from the Under-Land, sends his heralds before, and the vapor glows into amethyst.
Still the heralds come, —the sky grows rosy, the
swelling dome that crowns the three-hilled city
mounts up from the vapor sea, the church spires
shoot golden arrows into the ruddy heavens,all is soft, and sparkling, and beautiful.
Boston, you are more beautiful than this. When,
after long absence and wandering, I come over the
marshes to meet you, you are lovely as the day.
I wait for you as they that watch for the morning,
and when your stately dome curves its clear contour against the blue sky, " my heart swells and




BOSTOA A-ND HOME AGAIN.    267
my eyes are dim." Beloved Queen of my beloved
State, the archers have sorely grieved you, and
shot at you, and hated you, but your bow abides
in strength. When envious rivals traduce you, I
make no defence. " She needs none. There she
is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves." When
I am asked, " What is thy beloved more than another beloved? " I only say, "My beloved is mine,"
but I think of all the grandeur garnered there, of
all your inheritance, all your possession, and all
the promise of your future.
Yet, O Boston, I have somewhat even against
you.  There are stains upon your escutcheon.
There is blood upon your garments. I have heard
that you once, in blind fury, placed a rope around
the neck of an innocent man, and dragged him
through your streets. What tears shall wash'out
the footprints you made that day? I have heard
that iron chains once clanked around your noble
court-house, that white-haired judges passed under
the yoke, and that you let a man be dragged back
into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Do you
say that it was not your fault? Did your loyalty
to law clash with your loyalty to God? But how
was it when, not two years ago, you stood up with
deliberate intent to crush free speech? Where
then was your loyalty to law? Where was your
manhood? Where was your honor?  Where was
your chivalry? Where your high birth and breeding? With malice prepense you assembled your




268          COUNTRY LIVING.
"merchant princes," and lewd fellows of the basest
sort, and placed a knife at the throat of liberty
You stabbed the breast that cherished your infancy
You shamed the mother that bore you. The guilt,
if not the stain, of blood is at your door.
O Boston, Boston! be as crooked as you like,
waltz as bewilderingly as you will, but keep yourself pure.  Sully not your fair fame.  Play not
false to humanity. Shame not the memory of your
fathers. Make atonement to-day for the sins of
the past, if so be the Lord will yet have mercy
upon you. Now is the accepted time. Gird thy
sword upon thy thigh, and in thy majesty ride
prosperously, because of truth and meekness and
righteousness. Let thine arrows be sharp in the
hearts of the king's enemies. Love righteousness
and hate wickedness. So shall the king greatly
desire thy beauty, and make thy name to be remembered in all generations.
But shopping a~nd sight-seeing, like all things
earthly, must come to an end, and having accomplished a few of my thousand and one errands, I
- for whether I have in this narrative said " you "
or " I," it all means myself- turned my face
homeward. I did not wish to go by the direct
route, but through Salem, stopping over one train
at Melrose. Geography, I regret to say, has always been my weak point, and I was quite ignorant of the situation of Melrose, and consequently
did not know what railroad ran through it. To




BOSTON AND HOMIE AGAIN.           269
my country eyes there are railroads and depots
enough in Boston to give a separate one to every
village in the vicinity. I inquired at a shop on
Cornhill from what depot I should leave for Melrose. They advised me to take the horse cars.
I did not know horse cars went there. They believed they did; at any rate I could inquire at
the car-office just above. I started for the caroffice.  "Just above" not seeming to develop
such an institution, I went into another shop, and
asked a clerk if he could tell me where the caroffice was. He asked me what car-office. I was
vexed with myself for asking such a question, as
if, like the man who inquired the way to Boston
meeting-house, I supposed there was but one in
the city.  I answered, with as much intellectuality
and cosmopolitanism  as I could call up, "The
Melrose office."  "Why," said he, "there it is,
right there." There, sure enough, it was before
my face and eyes, in staring capitals, " Maiden and
Melrose Railroad."  I launched another thunderbolt against myself for my blindness, and went
in, determined to be on my guard and ask no
more foolish questions. A woman was transacting business with the clerk, and, while waiting,
I reflected that the question I set out with, viz.
if the cars went to Melrose, would be a foolish
one, after seeing the sign, and I would therefore
simply ask at what hour they left. Having made
this resolution I had leisure to observe the woman




270         COUNTR Y LIVING.
who was talking with the clerk. She seemed to
be rather excited. She had, it seemed, paid her
fare in the car, the conductor had not given the
right change back, and she wanted the clerk to
make it right. I could see that it was none of
his business, but she could not, and was highly
indignant at his refusal. He directed her to the
Superintendent of the road as the proper person.
She remarked, with the air of a Nemesis, that she
should not come to the office again about it.. He
seemed resigned. She went away, woman-like,
declaring with her last breath, " You owe me
twenty-three cents." He had been as polite as
could be expected, but it was not in human nature not to retort, "I don't owe you a cent," and
then, turning to a gentleman near by, he added,
"There's a woman says I owe her twenty-three
cents, and I never had any dealings with her in
my life." All my womanhood blushed at this
woman's unreasonableness; I determined to try
to obliterate the impression from his mind by the
utmost consideration and politeness; and blandly
asked, putting a good deal of sympathy for his
embarrassing position into my manner, " Will you
be so good as to tell me at what hour the cars
leave for Melrose?"
" They don't leave at all. They don't go there."
I could have borne the disappointment of fruitless search with fortitude; but to be baffled in my
magnanimity was too much. I am afraid I lost




BOSTON AND HOMlE AGAIN.    271
my temper for a moment, and that the clerk found
it in my impetuous question, " What under the
sun do you have that sign there for then?"  He
muttered something about a charter, which was
probably satisfactory to himself, but of little avail
to, my wounded feelings, and, in the chaotic -state
of my mind, I could hardly be blamed for asking
the first question that came up, "What time do
the steam-cars go to Melrose?" He did n't know,
and I perceived that I had fallen into a trap again.
Of course he did n't; he had nothing to do with
steam-cars. I went back to the original shop.
They were very polite, and looked up evidence,
and decided that the Boston and Maine Railroad
was the one. They directed me to the depot, but
they killed me with kindness, for one told me to
take this street, and another said that street was
nearer, and a third said the first street was just as
near, and they all seemed to talk together, though
I don't suppose they did, and I was conscious of
nothing but a din of "Union Street," and " Brattle Street," and "' Haymarket Square," which
quite bewildered me, though I endeavored to look
as if I comprehended everything clearly, and said
yes all round, anxious only to get out doors and
into the next shop, to inquire the way to the Boston and Maine Railroad depot. Only one thing I
understood, — that, instead of going out at the
front door, I was to go " right out this way," but
" out this way " I could see nothing but windows,




272          COUNTRY LIVING.
though, all the while they were talking, I cast
stolen glances to catch any sign of a door. I was
determined, however, not to ask another foolish
question, and merely remarked that I saw no
mode of egress that way except through the windows. Then they showed me a basement door,
through which I made good my escape, grateful
for their kindness, but not much the wiser.
By assiduous inquiry, I found my way to the
depot, and gathered my various packages together.
Observation and experience both combine to make
me a firm foe to packages. I lose half my selfrespect and all my independence unless my hands
are free. At this time, by circumstances entirely
beyond my control, I was the proprietor of five
different articles,- a package of books and paper,
cumbrous and heavy, a travelling-basket bursting
full, as I particularly dislike to see travelling-baskets, a roll of cloth, a parasol, and a bottle of yeast.
One of the pleasantest feelings in the world is that
of being master of one's position; but when one is
weighed down with bundles, one is its victim, and
I got into the cars under a deep sense of degradation, though innocent of any palpable sin. The
cars were full. I walked slowly through till a
gentleman arose and gave me his seat. Men make
so much ado about the ingratitude and impoliteness of travelling women, that I make a point of
acknowledging the smallest courtesy; but just as
I was putting on my most grateful expression to




BOSTON AND.HOME AGAIN.    273
thank him in, it suddenly occurred to me that this
seat, being next to the stove, might prove fatal to
my yeast-bottle. I had been particularly warned
not even to let it come in contact with my person
more than was necessary, lest the warmth should
make it ferment, - and to sit in front of a red-hot
air-tight stove! I could have borne to lose,the
yeast, though it was a new kind, said to be of a
superior quality, which I was taking home for
trial; nor should I have been inconsolable for the
loss of my dress, though it was my best silk; but I
did not feel that I could endure the scene. In my
consternation, I forgot to thank the gentleman, to
whom I now make this public apology and explanation. I at length managed to lift the window
about an inch and a quarter, and held the bottle in
the draft, and my peace as well as I could.
I thought Melrose was the first station from Boston, but it was not. The second one did not sound
like Melrose, and I kept my seat. Then I began
to fear that I had missed it, so I compromised with
my principles, and asked my seat-mate if he knew
which station from Boston Melrose was. He said
he did not, but should know it when he saw it.
By and by he said this was- it. I do not like to
see people, particularly women, hurry out before
cars stop, or in before passengers are out, but I
had many encumbrances and could not move rapidly, so I thought I would for once take time by
the forelock and oust move down the aisle to be
12*                  a




274          COUNTRY LIVING.
near the door when the cars stopped. I accordingly did so, and the conductor opened the dooi
and shouted, " Wy-o-ming! " aind, partly to punish
myself, and partly because of the difficulty of returning to my seat, I stood up in the aisle, covered
with shame, till we reached Melrose.
My errand there being performed, I returned to
the station in ample time, - indeed, long before the
ticket-office was opened. There was a glass window looking into the ladies' room, and a corresponding one into the gentleman's room. Presently
a large boy walked in and established communication between the office and the men's room, but
left ours alone. There were several women in the
room, who all seemed to take it very coolly, and I
was not going to be anxious. Still, as the time
passed and the window was not opened, I did think
it rather strange. By and by the whistle began to
whistle, and the cars rushed in. I supposed they
must be some branch, or extra train; but to make
certain, I said, carelessly, to an official, " This is
not the Salem train."  "Yes," was the prompt
reply.  Surprised into it, I ejaculated, "Not the
Salem train?"  "Yes," with equal promptness,
" last car."  I marched along in a most unwilling
hurry. I think there must have been at least seven
cars, and under the pressure it seemed to me that
I never should get to the last one; so I thought I
would steal into the nearest, and at the next stopping-place change to the right one. I turned aside,




BOSTON AN*D HOME AGAIN.    275
but the fellow called out, " Not that, - tile last car.
Be spry!"  If I had obeyed the impulse of the
natural heart, I should have hurled my yeast-bottle
at him, telling me to be " spry," - me who am famous for my fleetness of foot, - telling me to be
spry as if I were a barefoot pond-lily boy! My dignity and capacity were both insulted. I was vexed
with myself for having disregarded his direction,
and vexed with him for having caught me inl it.
If I had been sure that the cars would wait for me,
I should have loitered, simply to showi a proper
spirit; but as it was, there was no time for indignation, and I put my foot on the step just as the
cars started. But when I went to open the door,
there was no door there. I fumbled and stared
and rubbed my eyes, but no open sesame will unlock a door that does not exist. The conductor
came to the rescue, and directed me through a
hide-and-go-seek -chink passage, such as I never
saw or heard of before, away round on one side
of the car. In my perturbation I couldn't find it
for a while, and then I couldn't tell whether the
door was at the end or one side, and he kept saying, " There, there! " as if I knew where " there "
was. I meekly remarked that I did n't like to get
in while cars were going,- a moral reflection which
I might just as well have spared him. He said
I could n't fall off if I tried.  I knew I could,
for the railing had only one rail, and that was at
the top; but I was so utterly humiliated by such a




276          COUNTRY LIVING.
series of disasters, that I let hiln have everything
his own way, and was glad to drop into a seat at
last.
We rustics have a phrase " starched up." When
we say a man is starched up, we do not at all refel
to his linen, but to his character. We also, in
continuance of the same figure, talk of taking the
starch out of him. That was the way I felt. The
starch was completely taken out of me. I did not
become reglutinated till I impinged upon Halicarnassus. With him, whatever my feelings may be,
I find it necessary always to maintain an aspect of
superiority and self-satisfaction. If I should once
suffer him to see me discomfited by any opposing
force whatever, I should at once lose all power over
him. The sole basis of my authority is his implicit
belief in my thorough invulnerability.  Therefore, nothing and nobody as I felt myself,
I sloughed it all off when I stepped firom
the train and stood before him, an
invincible armada.  My foot
was on my native heath,
and my name was
McGregor.




BROWN-BREAD CAKES.
~ ~-_-'    ASTES differ.
Irw   ~ That is not an original remark, but
it iS a true one. The Frenchman rolls,1 as a sweet morsel under his tongue the
hind legs of a frog. To the patriotic Chinese, no
savor is so savory as that which arises from roasted
mouse or broiled puppy. The Esquimaux, plunged
into the pots and kettles of civilization, moans for
the delicious blubber and whale-oil which once
gladdened his heart. Connecticut delights in the
frying-pan. Meat, bread, rice, turnovers, apples,
potatoes, hasty-puddings, "whatever goods the
gods provide her," — and every dweller in her
valleys will attest they are neither few nor small,
-she casts incontinently into the sputtering fat,
till Connecticut joints, from constant lubrication,
acquire a suppleness which neither age, nor time,
nor travel, nor the burden of her traditionary nutmegs, clocks, and hams, can overcome.
But thou, 0 Massachusetts! land of my birth,
and thrice and four times land of my love! queen




278            COUNTRI  LIVING.
mother of men, reverent children, who turn to
thee from every shore, and bind on thy brow the
laurels they learned from  thee to win,-  will any
wanderer from thy sturdy soil ever
"Forget the sky that bent above
His childhood, like a dream of love?
The stream beneath the green hill flowing,
The broad-armed trees about it growing,"
the smoke from thousand fires ascending, with fragrant odors sweetly
blending, of thousand pans, bright, glazed, and red, a thousand pans
of hot brown-bread?
Nor is thy fame confined to thy children alone.
From the lumbering and fishing East to the miasmatic and ague-atic West, an unfortunate race,
whose veins have never throbbed with Bay State
blood, who have not sufficient ingenuity to step
out of the even tenor of their wheat-bread way,
but whose stomachs have been endowed with a
sensibility denied to their brains, weekly distend
their pliant throats with " Boston brown bread."
Can such a generation be supposed, in the highest flights of its imagination, ever to have soared
to brown-bread cakes? Is not the attempt to rouse,
in these sluggish minds, an enthusiasm for the
ambrosial food, Quixotic to the last degree? Nay,
is it possible to introduce into their stolid souls any
conception of the ethereal flavor which penetrates
my inmost frame when I sit down to a repast of
brown-bread cakes? Yet, in the great multitude
gathered from every nation under heaven, the
mighty throng that are making the wilderness of




BROWN-BREAD  CAKES.               279
this New World to bud and blossom  as the rose,
there must needs be a few who have an eye for
the curve that swells the luxuriant sides of a sweet
potato, a nose to discern the fumes that rise, incense-like, from a fair, young beefsteak, floating
in its own' savory juices, a soul to mount upwards
on the wings of smoking Mocha; and since
Bonnet: Head
Shoe:-Foot
Bay: Soul
Canvas: Faces:: Brown-bread: Brown-Bread CakesCup: Wine
Dew: Rose
Noon: Evening
Earth: Heaven
or, less mathematically, as a beautiful bonnet to
the beautiful head that bears it, or a delicate satin
shoe to the delicate foot that wears it, as the green
of the deathless bay to the lofty brow that won it,
as the canvas is to the faces that startlingly glow
upon it, as the grace of the golden cup to the
mantling wine that fills it, as the quivering globe
of dew to the regal rose that distils it, as the glare
of the midsummer noon to the scented breath of
Eden, as the homely and kindly earth to the
grand and star-lit heaven, -  so is the "home-felt
bliss" which a loaf of brown bread makes, to
the exquisite thrill of delight arising from brownbread cakes. Because of all this, I will make the
attempt.
Let me give the  modus operandi.  Of fine




280          COUNTRY LIVING.
maize flour, yellow as the locks of the lovely
Lenore, take- well, take enough - I cannot
tell exactly how much; it depends upon circumstances. Of fresh new milk, white as the brow
of the charming Arabella, take-I don't know
exactly how much of that, either; it depends
upon circumstances, particularly on the quantity
of meal. If you have not new milk, take blue
milk, provided it be sweet; or if you have
none that is sweet, sour milk will answer; or
if " your folks don't keep a cow," take water,
clear and sparkling as the eyes of the peerless
Amanda; but whether it be milk or water, let it
be scalding as the tears of the outraged Isabel.
Of molasses, sweet as the tones of the tuneful
Lisette, take — a great deal, if it is summer, in
the winter not quite so much (for the reasons
therefor, see Newton's Treatise on the Expansive
Power of ]Fluids, Vol. I. p. 175).  Of various
other substances, animal, vegetable, and mineral,
which it becomes not me to mention, — first,
because I have forgotten what they are; secondly,
because I never knew; and, thirdly, because, as
the immortal Toots remarks, " it is of no consequence,"- take whatever seems good in your
sight, and cast them together into the kneadingtrough, and knead with all your might and main.
Provide yourself, then, with a tin plate, not bright
and new, for so'will your cakes be heavy, your
crust cracked, and your soul sorrowful, but one




BROW.N-BREAD CAKES.            281
blackened by fire, and venerable with time, and
rough with service.  With your own roseate
fingers scoop out a portion of the pulpy mass.
Fear not to touch it; it is soft, yielding, and
plastic, as the heart of the affectionate Clara.
Turn it lovingly over in your hands; round it;
mould it; caress it; soften down its asperities;
smooth off its angularities; repress its bold protuberances; encourage its timid shrinkings; and
when it is smooth as the velvet cheek of Ida,
and oval as the classic face of Helen, give one
"last, long, lingering look," and lay it tenderly
in the swart arms of its tutelar plate. Repeat
the process, until your cakes shall equal the sands
on the sea-shore or the stars in the sky for multitude, or as long as your meal holds out, or till
you are tired. I am prescribing for one only.
"Ab uno disce omnes."
To the Stygian cave that yawns dismally from
the kitchen-stove, consign it without a murmur.
Item: said stove must have a prodigious crack
up and down the front. A philosophical reason
for this I am unable to give. I refer the curious
in cause and effect to Galen's deservedly celebrated Disquisition on the Relations of _Fire and
Metals, passim; also Debrauche on Dough, p. 35,
Appendix.  I only know  that the only stove
whence I ever saw brown-bread cakes issue had
an immense crack up and down the front.
[Since writing the above, a new stove has been




282           CO UNTRY LI VING.
substituted for the old one, and still brown-bread
cakes are duly marshalled every morning.  Con
sequently, you need not be particular about the
crack. Still, I would advise all amateurs to consult the authorities I have mentioned. It will be
a good exercise.]
When your cake has for a sufficient length of
time undergone the ordeal of fire, bring it again
to the blessed light of day.  If the edge be
black and blistered, like a giant tree blasted by
the lightning's stroke, or if the crust be rent and
torn as by internal convulsions, cast it away.  It
is worthless.  Trample it under foot.  Item: put
on your stoutest boots, and provide yourself with
cork soles; otherwise, the trampling may prove to
be anything but an agreeable pastime. But if the
surface be a beautiful auburn brown, crisp, brittle,
and unbroken," Joy, joy, forever! your task is done!
The gates are past, and breakfast is won ";or, as the clown said of the apple-dumplings,
" Them's the jockeys for me."
If you are an outside barbarian, ignorant of the
refinements of civilized life, you will at once proceed to cut open with your knife the steaming
cake, as you would an oyster, and thereby render
it heavy as the heart off the weeping Niobe; but
if you are a gentleman and a scholar, you will
gently sunder its clinging sides without "armed
interference," and so preserve its spongy, porous




BR OTtVN-BPEAD  CAKES.              283
texture.  To the uninitiated, one part is as good as
another; but let me confidentially whisper in your
ear, if it should be your duty to pass the plate,
present to your neighbor that side which bears the
under-crust, as that is liable to be burnt and unpalatable, and reserve to yourself the smoothlyrounded upper crust, which is deliciously toothsome. Lay your portion on your plate, crust
downward.  With your own polished knife (the
reason of this you will presently perceive) carve
from the ball of golden butter a lump of magnificent dimensions.  Be not niggardly in this respect.  Exercise toward yourself a large-hearted
generosity; for butter sinks into  itself, and in
itself is lost with wonderful rapidity, when it rests
on a pedestal of hot bread.  Press your butter,
still adhering to your knife, down into the warm,
soft bread, in various places, forming little wells,
whose walls are unctuous with the melted luxury,
and then -O   THEN! but I cannot sustain the
picture which my fancy has drawn.
"My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirred;
For the same sound is in my ears
That in those days I heard.
"Thus fares it still in our decay,
Yet mourns the wiser mind
Less for the crusts time takes away,
Than those he leaves behind."
"The bridegroom may forget the bride
Was made his wedded wife yestreen;
The monarch may forget the crown
That on his head an hour hath been."




284           COUNTRY LIVING.
but never, O brown-bread cakes! never may your
taste pass away from  my lips, your odor from
my nostrils, or your memory from my heart, till
" my eyes shall be turned to behold, for the last'time, the sun in the heavens,"
" Et dulces moriens reminiscitur Argos."
-Il



AV - COMPLANTO- FR
A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.
F things would not run into each other!so, it would be a thousand times easier
and a million times pleasanter to get:   on in the world.  Let the sheepiness
be set on one side and the goatiness on the other,
and immediately you know where you are. It is
not necessary to ask that there be any increase of
the one or any diminution of the other, but only
that each shall pre-empt its own territory and stay
there. Milk is good, and water is good, but don't
set the milk-pail under the pump.  Pleasure
softens pain, but pain imbitters pleasure; and who
would not rather have his happiness concentrated
into one memorable day, that shall gleam and glow
through a lifetime, than have it spread out over a
dozen comfortable, commonplace, humdrum forenoons and afternoons, each one as like the others
as two peas in a pod?  Since the law of compensation obtains, I suppose it is the best law for us;
but if it had been left with me, I should have
made the clever people rich and handsome, and




286         @COUNTRY LIVING.
left poverty and ugliness to the stupid people; because - don't you see?- the stupid people won't
know they are ugly, and won't care if they are
poor, but the clever people will be hampered and
tortured. I would have given the good wives to
the good husbands, and made drunken men marry
drunken women. Then there would have been
one family exquisitely happy, instead of two struggling against misery. I would have made the rosestem downy, and put all the thorns on the thistles.
I would have gouged out the jewel fiom the toad's
head, and given the peacock the nightingale's
voice, and not set everything so at half and half.
But that is the way it is. We find the world
made to our hand. The wise men marry the foolish virgins, and the splendid virgins marry dolts,
and matters in general are so mixed up, that the
choice lies between nice things about spoiled, and
-vile things that are not so bad after all, and it is
hard to tell sometimes which you like best, or
which you loathe least.
I expect to lose every friend I have in the
world by the publication of this paper —except
the dunces who are impaled in it.  They will
never read it, and if they do, will never suspect
I mean them; while the sensible and true friends,
who do me good and not evil all the days of their
lives, will think I am driving at their noble hearts,
and will at once haul off and leave me inconsolable. Still I am going to write it. You must open




A COMiPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    287
the safety-valve once in a while, even if the steam
does whiz and shriek, or there will be an explosion, which is fatal, while the whizzing and shrieking are only disagreeable.
Doubtless friendship has its advantages and its
pleasures; doubtless hostility has its isolations and
its revenges: still, if called upon to choose once
for all between friends and foes, I think, on the
whole, I should cast my vote for the foes. Twenty
enemies will hiot do you the mischief of one friend.
Enemies you always know where to find. They
are in fair and square perpetual hostility, and you
keep your armor on and your sentinels posted;
but with friends you are inveigled into a false security, and, before you know it, your honor, your
modesty, your delicacy are scudding before the
gales.  Moreover, with your friend you can never
make reprisals. If your enemy attacks you, yowl
can always strike back and hit hard. You are
expected to defend yourself against him to the
top of your bent. He is your legal opponent in
honorable warfare. You can pour hot-shot into
hirm with murderous vigor; and the more he
writhes, the better you feel. In fact, it is rather
refreshing to measure swords once in a while
with such a one. You like to exert your power
and keep yourself in practice.  You do not rejoice so much in overcoming your enemy as in
overcoming. If a marble statue could show fight,
you would just as soon fight it; but as it cannot,




288          COUNTRY LIVI~NG.
you take something that can, and something, besides, that has had the temerity to attack you,
and so has made a lawful target of itself. But
against your friend your hands are tied. He has
injured you. He has disgusted you. He has infuriated you. But it was most Christianly done.
You cannot hurl a thunderbolt, or pull a trigger,
or lisp a syllable, against those amiable monsters
who with tenderest fingers are sticking pins all
over you.  So you shut fast the doors of your
lips, and inwardly sigh for a good, stout, brawny,
malignant foe, who, under any and every circumstance, will design you harm, and on whom
you can lavish your lusty blows with a hearty
will and a clear conscience.
Your enemy keeps clear of you.  He neither
grants nor claims favors.  He awards you your
rights, -no more, no less,- and demands the
same from you.  Consequently there is no friction. Your friend, on the contrary, is continually
getting himself tangled up with you "because
he is your friend." I have heard that Shelley
was never better pleased than when his associates made free with his coats, boots, and hats for
their own use, and that he appropriated their
property in the same way. Shelley was a poet,
and perhaps idealized his friends. He saw them,
probably, in a state of pure intellect. I am not
a poet; I look at people in the concrete. The
most obvious thing about my friends is their




A COM1PLAINT OF FRIENDS.    289
avoirdupois; and I prefer that they should wear
their own cloaks and suffer me to wear mine.
There is no neck in the world that I want my
collar to span except my own.  It is very exasperating to me to go to my bookcase and miss
a book of which I am in immediate and pressing
need, because an intimate friend has carried it
off without asking leave, on the score of his intimacy.  I have not, and do not wish to have,
any alliance that shall abrogate the eighth commandment. A great mistake is lying round loose
hereabouts, -a mistake fatal to many friendships
that did run well. The common fallacy is, that
intimacy dispenses with the necessity of politeness.
The truth is just the opposite of this. The more
points of conitact there are, the more danger of
friction there is, and the more carefully should
people guard against it. If you see a man only
once a month, it is not of so vital importance that
you do not trench on his rights, tastes, or whims.
He' can bear to be crossed or annoyed occasionally. If he does not have a very high regard for
you, it is comparatively unimportant, because
your paths are generally so diverse.  But you
and the man with whom  you dine every day
have it in your power to make each other exceedingly uncomfortable. A very little dropping
will wear away rock, if it only keep at it. The
thing that you would not think of, if it occurred
only twice a year, becomes an intolerable burden
13                      s




290          COUNTRY LIVING.
when it happens twice a day. This is where
husbands and wives run aground. They take too
much for granted.  If they would but see that
they have something to gain, something to save,
as well as something to enjoy, it would be better
for them; but they proceed on the assumption
that their love is an inexhaustible tank, and not
a fountain depending for its supply on the stream
that trickles into it. So, for every little annoying
habit, or weakness, or fault, they draw on the
tank, without being careful to keep the supply
open, till they awake one morning to find the
pump dry, and, instead of love, at best, nothing
but a cold habit of complacence.  On the contrary, the more intimate friends become, whether
married or unmarried, the more scrupulously
should they strive to repress in themselves everything annoying, and to cherish both in themselves and each other everything pleasing. While
each should draw on his love to neutralize the
faults of his friend, it is suicidal to draw on his
friend's love to neutralize his own faults. Love
should be cumulative, since it cannot be stationary. If it does not increase, it decreases. Love,
like confidence, is a plant of slow growth, and of
most exotic fragility. It must be constantly and
tenderly cherished. Every noxious and foreign
element must be carefully removed from it. All
sunshine, and sweet airs, and morning dews, and
evening showers, must breathe upon it perpetual




A  COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    291
fragrances or it dies into a hideous and repulsive
deformity, fit only to be cast out and trodden
under foot of men, while, properly cultivated, it
is a Tree of Life.
Your enemy keeps clear of you, not only in business, but in society.  If circumstances thrust him
into contact with you, he is curt and centrifugal.
But your friend breaks in upon your " saintly
solitude" with perfect equanimity. He never for
a moment harbors a suspicion that he can intrude,
" because he is your friend."  So he drops in on
his way to the office to chat half an hour over the
latest news.  The half-hour is n't much in itself.
If it were after dinner, you w6uld n't mind it;
but after breakfast every moment': runs itself in
golden sands," and the break in your time crashes
a worse break in your temper. "Are you busy?"
asks the considerate wretch, adding insult to injury. What can you do? Say yes, and wound
his self-love forever?  But he has a wife and
family. You respect their feelings, smile and smile,
and are villain enough to be civil with your lips,
and hide the poison of asps under your tongue,
till you have a chance to relieve your o'ercharged
heart by shaking your fist in impotent wrath at
his retreating form. You will receive the reward
of your hypocrisy, as you richly deserve, for ten to
one he will drop in again when he comes back from
his office, and arrest you wandering in Dreamland
in the beautiful twilight. Delighted to find that




292         COUNTRY LIVING.
you are neither reading nor writing,- the absura
dolt! as if a man were n't at work unless he be
wielding a sledge-hammer! - he will preach out,
and prose out, and twaddle out another hour of
your golden eventide, "because lie is your friend."
You don't care whether he is judge or jury,
whether he talks sense or nonsense; you don't
want him  to talk at all. You don't want him
there any way. You want to be alone. If you
don't, why are you sitting there in the deepening
twilight? If you wanted him, could n't you send
for him? Why don't you go out into the drawing-room, where are music, and lights, and gay
people?  What right have I to suppose, that, because you are -not using your eyes, you are not
using your brain? What right have I to set myself up as judge of the value of your time, and so
rob you of perhaps the most delicious hour in all
your day, on pretence that it is of no use to you?
- take a pound of flesh clean out of your heart,
and trip on my smiling way as if I had not earned
the gallows?
And what in Heaven's name is the good of all
this ceaseless talk? To what purpose are you
wearied, exhausted, dragged out and out to the
very extreme of tenuity? A sprightly badinage,
-a running fire of nonsense for half an hour,
a tramp over unfamiliar ground with a familiar
guide,- a discussion of something with somebody
who knows all about it, or who, not knowing,




A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.           293
wants to learn from you, -a pleasant interchange
of commonplaces with a circle of fiiends around
the fire, at such hours as you give to society: all
this is not only tolerable, but agreeable, - often
positively delightful; but to have an indifferent
person, on no score but that of friendship, break
into your sacred presence, and suck your blood
through indefinite cycles of time, is an abomination. If he clatters on an indifferent subject, you
can do well enough for fifteen minutes, buoyed up
by the hope that he will presently have a fit, or be
sent for, or come to some kind of an end. But
when you gradually open to the conviction that
vis inertice rules the hour, and the thing which has
been is that which shall be, you wax listless; your
chariot-wheels drive heavily; your end of the pole
drags in the mud, and you speedily wallow in unmitigated disgust. If he broaches a subject on
which you have a real and deep living interest,
you shrink from unbosoming yourself to him. You
feel that it would be sacrilege. He feels nothing
of the sort. He treads over your heart-strings in
his cow-hide brogans, and does not see that they
are not whip-cords. He pokes his gold-headed
cane in among your treasures, blind to the fact
that you are clutching both arms around them, that
no gleam of flashing gold may reveal their whereabouts to him.  You draw yourself up in your
shell, projecting a monosyllabic claw occasionally
as a sign of continued vitality; but the pachyderm




294          COUNTRY LIVING.
does not withdraw, and you gradually lower into
an indignation, - smothered, fierce, intense.
Why, why, WHY Will people inundate their unfortunate victims with such "1 weak, washy, everlasting floods"?  Why will they haul everything
out into the open day? Why will they make the
Holy of Holies common and unclean? Why will
they be so ineffably stupid as not to see that there
is that which speech profanes? Why will they
lower their drag-nets into the unfathomable waters,
in the vain attempt to bring up your pearls and
gems, whose lustre would pale to ashes in the
garish light, whose only sparkle is in the deep seasoundings?  Procul, 0 procul este, profani!
0, the matchless power of silence! There are
words that concentrate in themselves the glory of
a lifetime; but there is a silence that is more precious than they. Speech ripples over the surface
of life, but silence sinks into its depths. Airy
pleasantnesses bubble up in airy, pleasant words.
Weak sorrows quaver out their shallow being, and
are not. When the heart is cleft to its core, there
is no speech nor language.
Do not now, Messrs. Bores, think to retrieve
your characters by coming into my house and sitting mute for two hours. Heaven forbid that your
blood should be found on my skirts! but I believe
I shall kill you, if you do. The only reason why
I have not laid violent hands on you heretofore is
that your vapid talk has operated as a wire to con



A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    295
duct my electricity to the receptive and kindly
earth; but if you intrude upon my magnetisms
without any such life-preserver, your future in this
world is not worth a crossed sixpence.  Your
silence would break the reed that your talk but
bruised.  The only people with whom it is a joy
to sit silent are the people with whom it is a joy to
talk. Clear out!
Friendship plays the mischief in the false ideas
of constancy which are generated and cherished in.
its name, if not by its agency. Your enemies are
intense, but temporary.  Time wears off the edge
of hostility. It is the alembic in which offences
are dissolved into thin air, and a caln indifference
reigns in their stead.  But your friends are expected to be a permanent arrangement. They
are not only a sore evil, but of long continuance.
Adhesiveness seems to be the head and front, the
bones and blood, of their creed. It is not the direc
tion of the quality, but the quality itself, which
they swear by. Only stick, it is no matter what
you stick to. Fall out with a man, and you can
kiss and be friends as soon as you like; the recording angel will set it down on the credit side
of his books. Fall in, and you are expected to stay
in, ad nfi.nituan, ad nauseam.  No matter what
combination of laws got you there, there you are,
and there you must stay, for better, for worse, till
merciful Death you do part, - or you are - " fickle."  You find a man entertaining for an hour, a




296          COUNTR Y LIVING.
week, a concert, a journey, and presto! you are
saddled with him forever. What preposterous absurdity! Do but look.at it calmly. You are
thrown into contact with a person, and, as in duty
bound, you proceed to fathom him: for every man
is a possible revelation. In the deeps of his soul
there may lie unknown worlds for you. Consequently you proceed at once to experiment on him.
It takes a little while to get your tackle in order.
Then the line begins to run off rapidly, and your
eager soul cries out, " Ah! what depth! What
perpetual calmness must be down below! What
rest is here for all my tumult! What a grand,
vast nature is this!"  Surely, surely, you are on
the high seas. Surely, you will now float serenely
down the eternities! But by and by there is a
kink. You find, that, though the line runs off so
fast, it does not go down, - it only floats out. A
current has caught it and bears it on horizontally.
It does not sink plumb. You have been deceived.
Your grand Pacific Ocean is nothing but a shallow little brook, that you can ford all the year
round, if it does not utterly dry up in the summer
heats, when you want it most; or, at best, it is a
fussy little tormenting river, that won't and can't
sail a sloop. What are you going to do about it?
You are going to wind up your lead and line,
shoulder your birch canoe, as the old sea-kings
used, and thrid the deep forests, and scale the purple hills, till you come to water again, when you




A'COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.          297
will unroll your lead and line for another essay.
Is that fickleness? What else can you do? Must
you launch your bark on the unqcuiet stream,
against whose pebbly bottom the keel continually
grates and rasps your nerves — simply that your
reputation  suffer no detriment?  Fickleness?
There was no fickleness about it.  You were
trying an experiment which you had every right to
try. As soon as you were satisfied, you stopped.
If you had stopped sooner, you would have been
unsatisfied. If you had stopped later, you would
have been dissatisfied. It is a criminal contempt
of the magnificent possibilities of life not to lay
hold of " God's occasions floating by." It is an
equally criminal perversion of them to cling tenaciously to what was only the sim ulacrum of an
occasion. A man will toil many days and nights
among the mountains to find an ingot of gold,
which, found, he bears home with infinite pains
and just rejoicing; but he would be a fool who
should lade his mules with iron-pyrites to justify
his labors, however severe.
Fickleness! what is it, that we make such an
ado about it? And what is constancy, that it
commands such usurious interest?  The one is a
foible only in its relations. The other is only
thus a virtue.'" Fickle as the winds " is our
death-seal upon a manll; but should we like our
winds unfickle?   Would  a perpetual Northeaster lay us open to perpetual gratitude,? or is
13*




298          COUNTRY LIVING.
a soft South gale to be orisoned and vespered
forevermore?
I am tired of this eternal prating of devotion
and constancy. It is senseless in itself and harmful in its tendencies. The dictate of reason is to
treat men and women as we do oranges. Suck
all the juice out and then let them go. Where is
the good of keeping the peel and pulp-cells till
they get old, dry, and mouldy?  Let them go,
and they will help feed the earth-worms and bugs
and beetles who can hardly find existence a continued banquet, and fertilize the earth which will
have you give before you receive. Thus they will
ultimately spring up in new and beautiful shapes.
Clung to with constancy, they stain your knife
and napkin, impart a bad odor to your diningroom, and degenerate into something that is neither pleasant to the eye nor good for food. I
believe in a rotation of crops, morally and socially,
as well as agriculturally. When you have taken
the measure of a man, when you have sounded
him and know that you cannot wade in him more
than ankle-deep, when you have got out of him
all that he has to yield for your soul's sustenance
and strength, what is the next thing to be done?
Obviously, pass him on; and turn you " to fresh
woods and pastures new." Do you work him an
injury? By no means. Friends that are simply
glued on, and don't grow out of, are little worth.
He has nothing more for you, nor you for him;




A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    299
but he may be rich in juices wherewithal to nourish the heart of another man, and their two lives,
set together, may have an endosmose and exosmose whose result shall be richness of soil, grandeur of growth, beauty of foliage, and perfectness
of fruit; while you and he would only have languished into aridity and a stunted crab-tree.
For my part, I desire to sweep off my old
friends with the old year, and begin the new with
a clean record. It is a measure absolutely necessary. The snake does not put on his new skin
over the old one. He sloughs off the first, before
he dons the second. He would be a very clumsy
serpent, if he did not. One cannot have successive layers of friendships any more than the snake
has successive layers of skins. One must adopt
some system to guard against a congestion of the
heart from  plethora of loves. I go in for the
much-abused fair-weather, skin-deep, April-shower
friends, -the friends who will drop off, if let
alone, - who must be kept awake to be kept at
all, -who will talk and laugh with you as long
as it suits your respective humors and you are
prosperous and happy, - the blessed butterfly-race
who flutter about your June mornings, and when
the clouds lower, and the drops patter, and the
rains descend, and the winds blow, will spread
their gay wings and float gracefully away to sunny
Southern lands, where the skies are yet blue and
the breezes violet-scented. They are not only




300          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
agreeable, but deeply wise. So long as a man
keeps his streamer flying, his sails set, and his hull
above water, it is pleasant to paddle alongside;
but when the sails split, the yards crack, and the
keel goes staggering down, by all means paddle
off. Why should you be submerged in his whirlpool? Will he drown any more easily because
you are drowning with him?  Lung is lung.  He
dies from want of air, not from want of sympathy.
When a poor fellow sits down among the ashes,
the best thing his friends can do is to stand afar
off. Job bore the loss of property, children, health,
with equanimity. Satan himself found his match
there; and for all his buffetings, Job sinned not,
nor charged God foolishly. But Job's three friends
must needs make an appointment together to come
and mourn with him and to comfort him, and after
this Job opened his mouth, and cursed his day,and no wonder.
Your friends have an intimate knowledge of you
that is astonishing to contemplate. It is not that
they know your affairs, which' he who runs may
read, but they know you. From a bit of bone,
Cuvier could predicate a whole animal, even to
the hide and hair.  Such moral naturalists are
your dear five hundred friends. It seems to yourself that you are immeasurably reticent.  You
know, of a certainty, that you project only the
smallest possible fragment of yourself. You yield
your universality to the bond of common brother



A COMPLAINT OF FRIE.NDS.    301
hood; but your individualism - what it is that
makes you you - withdraws itself naturally, involuntarily, inevitably, into the background, — the
dim- distance which their eyes cannot penetrate.
But, from the fraction which you do project, they
construct another you, call it by your name, and
pass it around for the real, the actffal you. You
bristle with jest and laughter and wild whims, to
keep them at a distance; and they fancy this to
be your every-day equipment. They think your
life holds constant carnival. It is astonishing what
ideas spring up in the heads of sensible people.
There are those who assume that a person can
never have had any grief, unless somebody has
died, or he has been disappointed in love,- not
knowing that every avenue of joy lies open to the
tramp of pain. They see the flashing coronet on
the queen's brow, and they infer a diamond woman, not recking of the human heart that throbs
wildly out of sight. They see the foam-crest on
the wave, and picture an Atlantic Ocean of froth,
and not the solemn sea that stands below in eternal equipoise. You turn to them  the luminous
crescent of your life, and they call it the whole
round globe; and so they love you with a love
that is agate, not pearl, because what they love
*in you is something infinitely below the highest.
They love you level: they have never scaled your
heights nor fathomed your depths. And when
they talk of you as familiarly as if they had taken




302          CO UN TRY LI VING.
out your auricles and ventricles, and turned them
inside out, and wrung them, and shaken them,when they prate of your transparency and openness, the abandonment with which you draw aside
the curtain and reveal the inmost thoughts of your
heart, - you, who are to yourself a miracle and a
mystery, you smile inwardly, and are content.
They are on the wrong scent, and you may pursue your plans in peace. They are indiscriminate
and satisfied. They do not know the relation of
what appears to what is. If they chance to skirt
along the coasts of your Purple Island, it will be
only chance, and they will not know it. You may
close your portholes, lower your drawbridge, and
make merry, for they will never come within gunshot of the " Round Tower of your heart."
There is no such thing as knowing a man intimately.  Every soul is, for the greater part
of its mortal life, isolated from every other.
Whether it dwell in the Garden of Eden or the
Desert of Sahara, it dwells alone. Not only do
we jostle against the street-crowd unknowing
and unknown, but we go out and come in,
we lie down and rise up, with strangers. Jupiter and Neptune sweep the heavens not more
unfamiliar to us than the worlds that circle our
own hearth-stone. Day after day, and year after
year, a person moves by your side; he sits at
the same table; he reads the same books; he
kneels in the same church. You know every




A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    303
hair of his head, every trick of his lips, every
tone of his voice; you can tell him far off by his
gait.  Without seeing him, you recognize his
step, his knock, his laugh. "Know him?  Yes,
I have known him these twenty years." No,
you don't know him.  You know his gait, and
hair, and voice.  You know  what preacher he
hears, what ticket he voted, and what were his
last year's expenses; but you don't know him.
He sits quietly in his chair, but he is in the
temple. You speak to him; his soul comes out
into the vestibule to answer you, and returns,and the gates are shut; therein you cannot
enter.  You were discussing the state of the
country; but when you ceased, he opened a
postern-gate, went down a bank, and launched
on a sea over whose waters you have no boat
to sail, no star to guide.  You have loved and
reverenced him. He has been your concrete of
truth and nobleness.  Unwittingly you touch a
secret spring, and a Blue-Beard Chamber stands
revealed. You give no sign; you meet and part
as usual; but a Dead Sea rolls between you two
forevermore.
It must be so. Not even to the nearest and
dearest can one unveil the secret place where
his soul abideth, so that there shall be no more
any winding ways or hidden chambers; but to
your indifferent neighbor, what blind alleys, and
deep caverns, and inaccessible mountains!  To




304          CO UNTRY LIVING.
him who "touches the electric chain wherewith
you're darkly bound," your soul sends back an
answering thrill. One little window is opened,
and there is short. parley.  Your ships speak
each other now and then in welcome, though
imperfect communication; but immediately you
strike out again into the great, shoreless sea,
over which you must sail forever alone. You
may shrink from  the far-reaching solitudes of
your heart, but no other foot than yours can
tread them, save those
"That, eighteen hundred years ago, were nailed,
For our advantage, to the bitter cross."
Be thankful that it is so, - that only His eye
sees whose hand formed. If we could look in,
we should be appalled at the vision. The worlds
that glide around us are mysteries too high for
us. We cannot attain to them.  The naked soul
is a sight too awful for man to look at and live.
There are individuals whose topography we would
like to know a little better, and there is danger
that we crash against each other while roaming
around in the dark; but, for all that, would we
not have the Constitution broken up. Somebody
says, "'In heaven there will be no secrets,"
which, it seems to me, would be intolerable. (If
that were a revelation from the King of Heaven,
of course I would not speak flippantly of it; but
though towards Heaven we look with reverence
and humble hope, I do not know  that Tom,




A COPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    305
Dick, and Harry's notions of it have any special
claim to our respect.) Such publicity would destroy all individuality, and undermine the foun
dations of society.  Clairvoyance - if there be
any such thing — always seemed to me a stupid
impertinence.  When people pay visits to me,
I wish them to come to the front-door, and ring
the bell, and  send up  their names.  I don't
wish them to climb in at the window, or creep
through the pantry, or, worst of all, float through
the keyhole, and catch me in undress.  So I believe that in all worlds thoughts will be the subjects of volition,- more accurately expressed
when expression is desired, but just as entirely
suppressed when we will suppression.
After all, perhaps the chief trouble arises from
a prevalent confusion of ideas as to what constitutes a man your friend. Friendship may stand
for that peaceful complacence which you feel
towards all well-behaved people who wear clean
collars and use tolerable grammar.  This is a
very good meaning, if everybody will subscribe
to it. But sundry of these well-behaved people
will mistake your civility and complacence for
a recognition of special affinity, and proceed at
once to frame an alliance offensive and defensive
while the sun and the moon shall endure. 0,
the barnacles that cling to your keel in such
waters! The inevitable result is, that they win
your intense rancor.  You would feel a genial
T




306          COUNTRY LIVING.
kindliness towards them, if they would be satisfled with that; but they lay out to be your specialty. They infer your innocent little inch to
be the standard-bearer of twenty ells, and goad
you to frenzy. I mean you, you desperate little
horror, who nearly dethroned my reason six
years ago!  I always meant to have my revenge, and here I impale you before the public.
For three months, you fastened yourself upon
me, and I could not shake you off. What availed
it me, that you were an honest and excellent
man?  Did I not, twenty times a day, wish you
had been a villain, who had insulted me, and I a
Kentucky giant, that I might have the unspeakable satisfaction of knocking you down?  But
you added to your crimes virtue.  Villany had
no part or lot in you. You were a member of
a church, in good and regular standing; you had
graduated with all the honors worth mentioning;
you had not a sin, a vice, or a fault that I knew
of; and you were so thoroughly good and repulsive that you were a great grief to me. Do
you think, you dear, disinterested wretch, that I
have forgotten how you were continually putting
yourself to horrible inconveniences on my account? Do you think I -am not now filled with
remrorse for the aversion -that rooted itself ineradicably in my soul, and which now gloats
over you, as you stand in the pillory where my
own hands have fastened you? But can Nature




A COMIPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    307
be crushed forever? Did I not ruin my nerves,
and seriously injure my temper, by the overpowering pressure I laid upon them  to keep
them quiet when you were by?  Could I not,
by the sense of coming ill through all my quivering frame, presage your advent as exactly as
the barometer heralds the approaching storm?
Those three months of agony are little atoned for
by this late vengeance; but go in peace!
Mysterious are tile ways of friendship.  It is
not a matter of reason or of choice, but of magnetisms.  You cannot always give the premises
nor the argument, but the conclusion is a palpable and stubborn fact.  Abana and Pharpar
may be broad, and deep, and blue, and grand;
but only in Jordan shall your soul wash and be
clean. A thousand brooks are born of the sunshine and the mountains: very, very few  are
they whose flow can' mingle with yours, and not
disturb, but only deepen and broaden the current.
Your friend!  Who shall describe him, or
worthily paint what he is to you? No merchant,
nor lawyer, nor farmer, nor statesman, claims
your suffrage, but a kingly soul.  He comes to
you from God, -a prophet, a seer, a revealer.
He has a clear vision.  His love is reverence.
He goes into the penetralia of your life, - not
presumptuously, but with uncovered head, unsandalled feet, and pours libations at. the innermost
shrine.  His incense is grateful.  For him the




308           CO UNTR Y LIVING.
sunlight brightens, the skies grow rosy, and all
the days are Junes.  Wrapped in his love, you
float in a delicious rest, rocked in the bosom of
purple, scented waves. Nameless melodies sing
themselves through your heart.  A  golden glow
suffuses your atmosphere. A vague, fine ecstasy
thrills to tlie sources of life, and earth lays hold
on heaven. Such friendship is worship. It elevates the most trifling services into rites. The
humblest offices are sanctified.   All things are
baptized into a new name. Duty is lost in joy.
Care veils itself in caresses. Drudgery becomes
delight.  There is no  longer anything  menial,
small, or servile. All is transformed
" Into something rich and strange."
The. homely household-ways lead through beds of
spices and orchards of pomegranates. The daily
toil among your parsnips and carrots is plucking
May violets with the dew-upon them to meet the
eyes you love upon their first awaking. In the
burden and heat of the day you hear the rustling
of summer showers and the whispering of.summer
winds. Everything is lifted up from the plane of
labor to the plane of love, and a glory spans your
life. With your friend, speech and silence are
one; for a communion mysterious and intangible
reaches across from heart to heart. The many
dig and delve in your nature with fruitless toil to
find the spring of living water: he only raises his




A COMPLAINT OF FRIENDS.    309
wand, and, obedient to the hidden power, it bends
at once to your secret. Your friendship, though
independent of language, gives to it life and light.
The mystic spirit stirs even in commonplaces, and
the merest question is an endearment. You are
quiet because your heart is over-full. You talk
because it is pleasant, not because you have anything to say. You weary of terms that are already
love-laden, and you go out into the highways and
hedges, and gather up the rough, wild, wilful
words, heavy with the hatreds of men, and fill
them to the brim with honey-dew. All things
great and small, grand or humble, you press into
your service, force them to do soldier's duty, and
your banner over them is love.
With such a friendship, presence alone is happiness; nor is absence wholly void, - for memories,
and hopes, and pleasing fancies, sparkle through
the hours, and you know the sunshine will come
back.
For such friendship one is grateful. No matter
that it comes unsought, and comes not for the
seeking. You do not discuss the reasonableness
of your gratitude.  You only know that your
whole being bows with humility and utter thankfulness to him who thus crowns you monarch of
all realms.
And the kingdom is everlasting. A weak love
dies weakly with the occasion that gave it birth;
but such friendship is born of the gods, and im



310          CO UNTRY LIV ING.
mortal. Clouds and darkness may sweep around
it, but within the cloud the glory lives undimmed.
Death has no power over it. Time cannot diminish, nor even dishonor annul it. Its direction may
have been earthly, but itself is divine. You go
back into your solitudes: all is silent as aforetime,
but you cannot forget that a Voice once resounded
there. A Presence filled the valleys and gilded
the mountain-tops, — breathed upon the plains, and
they sprang up in lilies and roses, - flashed upon
the waters, and they flowed to spheral melody,swept through the forests, and they, too, trembled
into song. And though now the warmth has
faded out, though the ruddy tints and amber clearness have paled to ashen hues, though the murmuring melodies are dead, and forest, vale, and hill
look hard and angular in the sharp air, you know
that it is not death. The fire is unquenched
beneath. You go your way not disconsolate. There needs but the Victorious
Voice. At the touch of the
Prince's lips, life shall rise
again and be perfected
forevermore.




Do G-DAYS.
OUBTLESS they have their uses, but
they are not agreeable.  That must
be conceded. There is no out-doors.
You wake in the morning with a mild
sense of strangulation, though all your windows
are open at top and bottom. You thrust your
head out into the morning air, but there is n't any.
It has all run to fog. Fog lies heavy and gray
on the grass. Trees and hills and fences are
smothered in fog. It creeps into your house, tarnishes all your gilt, swells your drawers and doors
so that you can't open them, and when you have
opened them you can't shut them. It breathes
upon your muslin curtains, and they turn into
limpsy strings. It steals into your closet, and
little blue specks and white feathery spots appear
on your pies. A pungent taste develops itself in
your pound-cake. The stray cup-custard filched
from the general larder for private circulation is a
keen and acid disappointment. Milk refuses to
curdle into cheese, and cream will tumble about




312           COUNTRY LIVING.
in your churn for hours, and come out mitigated
buttermilk at last.
Flies are rampant. If the cover is left off the
sugar-bowl, a colony of flies take immediate possession.  If your bare arm happens to be carrying
a vase of flowers with special care, a fly lights on
your elbow, and proceeds by short and easy stages
(to him) to your wrist. If you are writing, a
horde of flies institute an investigation of your
head and hands, with a special commission for
your nose. You'brush them off, and they only
rub their fore legs together, bob their heads, brush
down their wings, and go at it again.  Your
kitchen ceiling looks like huckleberries and milk.
All the while it is very warm, but not so warm as
it is sticky, only the stickiness is all on the outside. Within, you feel a constant tendency to fall
to pieces, because there is n't brace enough in the
air to hold you together. If we were English,' we
should say it was nasty weather. Being Americans, we only sigh, "Dog-days!"
But they must have their uses. Everything is
good for something. Let us see. First, they are
excellent for the complexion,- a matter in which,
whatever we say, we are all more or less interested. Bile-y, jaundice-y, sallow faces clear up into
healthy tints.  Freckles "try out."  Pale cheeks
tone up into delicate rose, and dry, parched, burning flushes tone down into a cool liquescence. All
the pores are opened, and the whole system lan



DOG-DA YS.               313
guishes in a pleasant helplessness, -pleasant, if
one has been so industrious all the year, that he
can afford to be idle during the dog-days.
Dog-days are good as tests.. Their effect on
curl-paper curls is melancholy, but natural curls
laugh them to scorn, and riot in twistings. Just
so the temper. Placidity at Christmas often dissolves in an August fog. What you thought was
amiability, may have been only oxygen. If you
wish to see whether your temper can really bear
the strains of wind and weather, just remember
how you went to the middle drawer in your
bureau for gloves, fearing you should be too late
for the cars, - how the drawer would only come
out by hitches, first one side, then the other,'and
then not at all, - how you thrust in your hand up
to the wrist, and could just not reach the gloves
with the end of your longest finger, while your
wrist was tortured by the sharp edge of the drawer
on one side, and the sharp edge of the bureau on
the other. Did you possess your soul in pa-.
tience?  When a shower came suddenly pelting
down through the fog, and you tried to close the
window, and got yourself wet through for your
pains, and could n't move it an inch for all your
shaking and pounding, - when you put your
cake into the oven to " scald," and forgot it, till
a sense of something burning travelled up-stairs
to stir your passivity, and you rushed down to
snatch too late a burnt and blackened loaf, — did
14




314         COUNTRY LIVING.
you remember the first three words of Psalm
xxxvii. 1?
In the calm complacency of a balmy spring
morning, we look down with a serene smile on the
follies of the world. We assume a calm and quiet
superiority, give it a pat on the shoulder, and say
condescendingly: "Yes, you will do very well; a
little rickety in the joints; a slight softening of the
brain; but very passable for your age." Nothing
can exceed our amiability when we are pleased
and comfortable; but, floundering up to the neck
in July, keeping the breath of life in us only by
becoming amphibious and web-footed, bound to
the earth by no stronger tie than ice-cream and
sherbet, wooing to our side every passing breeze,
as if it were the king's daughter, — then, a beflowered, bespangled, bedizened abomination, coming
betwixt the wind and our nobility, is the spear
of Ithuriel to our smiling good-nature, and we feel
disposed to pluck its eyes out with a demoniac
delight.
Dog-days can teach us trust. You have heard
of the woman who, when her horse ran away,
trusted to Providence till the breeching broke.
A good deal of our trust is like this. We call it
Providence, but it is really breeching. Not that
breeching is not a very good thing to trust to as
far as it goes, — only it is not Providence. So,
when our doors can be bolted and locked, we lie
down in peace and sleep; but when they won't go




DOG-DA YS.               315
to, and we, have to make a precarious arrangement
of sticks and strings, we feel moie keenly that we
awake because the Lord sustained us.
Dog-days are friendly to greenness. Our lawns
smile with velvet verdure.  The fog goes into the
soil and wraps it around the tender strawberryvines that we have just transplanted, and in soft
swaddling-clothes the young fruit will slumber till
next summer's sun shall bid it leap to luxuriant
life, and a creamy and glorious death. Down into
the heart of the sweet-pea, deep into the cup of
the morning-glory, steals the kindly mist, and a
pink and purple splendor crowns the rising day.
The cucumber swells its prickly sides and snuffs
the coming vinegar. The squash-vine creeps along
the ground, sorrowing that it has all turned to
pumpkin, but catching from the moist air a deeper
shade for the generous gold of its blossom. Ah!
in the laboratories of nature the fog has a great
work to do.
But the best of dog-days is their departing.
Grateful for the returning sun, and the sweet
west wind, we see a deeper blue in the sky, and
a denser green in the fields.'The tall corn waves
with statelier grace. The trees are fretted with
fresh-springing life. The earth is a billowy and
dimpled emerald, tender and smiling; but the sky
- the ever-shifting sky -is an absorbing and perpetual joy. Sometimes its sweep of stainless blue
is glorious afar. Then the dying sun leaves its




316           COUNTRY LIVING.
legacy in the west, of saffron, and amber, and
pale green. Now the clouds sail out white and
warm  into the central blue, or rush exultant,
whirling up masses of lavender rimmed with gold,
or shoot from the glowing west spires of rosy
pink, or-mount to the zenith in delicate shells of
pearl, or lie above the horizon,-passionate, breathless, and ruddy, floating in seas of fire. Anon
they group themselves in all fantastic shapes. A
turreted castle sends down shafts of light from its
pearly gates. The mailed warrior places his lance
in rest, and a couchant lion
" Scatters across the sunset air
The golden radiance of his hair."
"Cloud-land!  Gorgeous land!"  All grace of
outline, all wealth of color, are gathered there.
Tropical splendor and heavenly purity kiss each
other, and the angels of God can almost be seen
ascending and descending.
So gazing with thankful and reverent hearts,
we remember that great city, the holy, Jerusalem,
descending out of heaven from God, whose light is
like unto a stone most precious, for the glory of God
doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
So, when the west winds come laden with fragrance from the prairies, and the'cold winds blow
down from the north, bearing us healing and
strength, we will gird up our loins anew to the
work of the Lord of light, contented to rest and
stand in our lot at the end of the days.




SUMMER GONE.
HOPE, a throb, a memory, -that is
summer in these high latitudes. The
G  sorrow of her going follows close upon
the jubilee of her welcome. The lips
that part to ring out her joyous " Salve! " close,
white and tremulous, upon  leer thrice-wailed
"Vale!"  The same breath wafts her Hail! and
Farewell!
But be not cast down, 0 my soul, nor disquieted within me. The beauty that budded with the
opening spring is not yet gone, though autumn
winds wail, and chilly nights prophesy dismantled
woods. That beauty will be a joy forever. No
time, no tyranny, can rob me of the riches which
the summer brought. Wherever I go, my walls
will be always spread with pictures that no artist
can rival. I have but to close my eyes, and the
hill-sides whiten with Innocence once more. I see
again that strange, hardy, frail-looking thing, with
the soft, delicate, liquescent "feel" of a monthold baby, yet popping up its audacious little head




318          COUN7TRY LIVING.
close upon the heels of the departing snow. De.
fiant of frost, and storm, and wind, - tremulous,
mellow, luscious, - yet pure, and sweet, and
saintly, it meets me everywhere. On the very
top of the hill, where the moss is only a brown
crisp in the sun, a little clump of white richness
sways in the scented air. I put aside the dark,
dense grass under the apple-trees, down in the
moist meadow-land, and it laughs up at me with
joyful recognition. Sometimes it takes on a deep,
creamy white; sometimes it is tinted with pearl,
or lavender, or pale violet deepening at the border
into a purple rim, but always spreading purest
white around the centre, where, in a silver palace, the baby-prince lies sleeping, crowned with a
golden crown.
Here in my quiet room, with the curtains drawn
and the red fire-light setting the room aglow, I
gather them once more into a swelling wave of
white loveliness, circled with deep green moss or
the velvet purple of pansies. I do not mingle them
with other flowers, because I think it destroys their
individuality. They look crowded, and uncomfortable, and overlooked, but by themselves they
are the sweetest, happiest little company in the
world. Their talk is of the floating of angel-garments, the fathomless depths of mothers' hearts,
and the souls of little children that went to God
unstained. They are like fluttering memories'of
some sweet, strange sphere long ago, and they




SUMMER  GONE.              319
murmur rare melodies if you but lean your heart
close and listen.
Side by side with the Innocence, the purple violet rears its slender stalk and bends its swan-like
neck with a queenly condescension. This is an
age of iconoclasmx Dr. Livingstone has demolished the traditional valor of the lion, and/A1phonse Karr makes count that the violet is one of
the most ambitious and aspiring of flowers. I
marvel, however, that it needed Alphonse Karr to
show us that the violet is not modest. I do not
mean that it is in-modest, - far from it; but only
that in looking at it, modesty, humility, do not
seem to be its prevailing or most striking characteristic. I should rather say it was stateliness.
Innocence, which has never been accused of modesty, to my knowledge, conveys to me a far
stronger impression of it. It springs up with a
light, unconscious air, as if it were not thinking
about itself at all, - peeping and peering into the
great mystery of sun and sky with an investigating, curious, wide-awake, humble look, as if quite
aware that it was an ignorant little good-for-nothing of a flower, but would thankfully receive information from any quarter on any subject. Not so
the violet. It does not shoot up like the Innocence with any definite object in view, but rather
glides deliberately, having decided that, on the
whole, it may as well dispose of its elegant leisure
in that as in any way, and once up, it seems to




320           COUNTRY LIVING.
take a comprehensive survey of the universe, concludes that nothing therein is especially worthy of
its august notice, and then -does n't droop its
head as many people persist in asserting, though,
if you will but notice its two winged petals expanding laterally from a certain inward prompting, and the two upper ones flung spiritedly back
and curling over, you will see that there is no
more droop to it than there is to a- I don't think
of anything to finish my comparison with, so it
must hang as it is - and then, as I was saying, it
bows its stately head as a queen might to a chimney-sweeper who raises his tattered cap as she
rides past.
It is true that _the violet does seem to delight in
obscure, out-of-the-way places, " half hidden from
the eye "; for thoughi it does sometimes appear in
the open fields, it is shorn of its glory, — a pale,
spiritless thing, afraid of its own shadow, and
clinging so timorously to its mother Earth that
you can hardly find it in your heart to stoop and
pluck it thence; while, if you chance to leap over
an old, tumbling-down stone wall, you will see
hosts of them rising on the other side, with tall,
juicy stems, and deep, rich petals, fearless and
free. In my stroll one morning, I came unexpectedly upon a bed of- I beg everybody's pardon, but I never heard it called anything but
"skunk-cabbage."  It was in a low, swampy ravine, and I was turning vigorously away, when




SUM31MER  GONE.              321
the sudden  twinkling of flowers beckoned me
f,rward.  Treading very insecurely among the
mushy hassocks, and thrusting aside the uncouth
leaves, lo! a great army of violets rollicking under
their odorous shade, in all the intensest passionate
purple of tropical luxuriance.  Strange!  They
love the sunshine.  It nourishes their strength
and beauty. Grace of form and wealth of color
come to them from its beneficence.  They would
fade and die without it, yet they hide from it.
They pale in it.  They keep their richest bloom
for dark shady dells, where sunshine only drips
through lazily. It is no coquettish teasing, but a
real shyness, -not the petty tyranny of a weak
vanity, but the shrinking of a true heart, a-tremble in the grasp of its own passion, hiding involuntarily, in silence and solitude, from the love that
has evoked it, and that glows, and flames, and
dazzles in lambent embrace around it, yet in voiceless solitude feeding on nothing else than the fullness of that very love, drinking in its sweetness,
softening down the brilliancy to its own white
lustre, and filling up the springs of life with an
inward and unspeakable joy.
Still the place does not make, though it often
does reveal, the man.  Let many a one who
passed in his cottage for a quiet, sensible, wellbred person be raised suddenly to a palace; or,
since, notwithstanding the newspapers, we don't
have palaces in this country, say a five-story,
14*                       U




322           COUNTR Y LIVING.
brown-stone front, with income to match, and his
innate vulgarity crops out. Or vice versa, the
large-hearted, hospitable master of the aforesaid
palace, falsely so called, coming suddenly to grief
and a pittance per annum, is transformed into a
fretful, jealous, petty, and pitiful soul. The springs
of his generosity lay in his pocket, not in his heart.
His bank-book, not himself, made him a gentleman.  A  little, fat, good-natured woman is not
majestic because she dons a diadem; nor was
Godiva ever more a queen than when she swept
down the turret stairs, clad only in her loveliness.
Circumstances may veil or obscure for a time, but
cannot prematurely hide, -
" May cloud the soul with shadows, but may not
Its glory blot."
Pomp disguises meanness, and poverty shackles
grandeur; but sooner or later the heaven-lit flame
plays around the brow  of the true prince, and
reveals his royal birth,- whether it be Havelok
in the fisherman's hut, or Iulus in burning Troy.
So, little violets, wax pallid on the hill-tops if
you will, and shun the garish day. Nestle under
the shadows of gray old rocks, and verdurous,
large-leaved plantain. I know you. In your selfsought solitude your royal blood reveals itself. By
your amethystine locks, by your incense-breathing
vestments, by your princely port and mien, I read
your noble lineage. Your kinghood stands confessed.




SUIMMER GONE.             323
Still with closed eyes I see thousands of dandelions gleaming sun-ward. All the highways and
by-ways are mottled with their generous gold.
Dust cannot choke them, - can scarcely dim their
shining. On the warmest summer noon, place
one against your cheek, and it has the same cool,
soft, fresh feeling. Little curling tendrils nestle
lovingly among the petals. Young eyes untrained
to minute uses are attracted by their unblinking
gaze, and dimpled hands pluck at them with illaimed eagerness, and hold them in unsteady grasp.
Obedient to "waxen touches," their satin-smooth
stems curl in involute circles, adorning child-brows
with fantastic grace, or link themselves in tremulous chains about little white throats. When their
yellow disks round into nebulous globes of pale,
feathery softness, merry hands clutch them afresh,
and puckered red lips and puffed cheeks send out
as strong- a blast as juvenile lungs can furnish;
because, you know, if you can blow away the
down with one breath, it is a sure sign that " your
mother wants you"! Happy little lion-toothed
flower, with nothing of the lion but the tooth, and
with neither the power nor the wish to use that,woven in with the unconscious sunshine of childhood, with the memories of continual spring-time,
and innocence, and blissful ignorance, - the blessing of all baby-life be upon you! Never cease to
fringe the dusty road with sunlit smiles,- a boon
and a benediction alike to the infant and to him
that is an hundred years old.




324          COUNTRY LIVING.
All the knolls are studded with star-flower,
but you must go down on your knees. to see it,
and gather with painful care, one by one, if you
gather at all. I should let them be. They look
pretty where they are, sprinkling the somewhat
bare slope with a crystalline delicacy, and their
leaves have an elaborate, clear-cut beauty; but
they do not make much figure in a - must I
say bouquet?  O that the old English nosegay
might be reinstated in its ancient dignity, and the
stiff, foreign, unmeaning, wrong-meaning, cutand-dried bouquet ousted from the throne where
its presence is a perpetual usurpation!  It never
will be naturalized, and never is natural.  We
don't know how to pronounce it; we don't know
how to spell it; and if any of us do happen to
know, the printer does n't, and he goes straightway and spells it wrong. Let us have the nosegay, brimful of rich old meanings, replete with
associations; and reserve the foreign word for
the only thing which it fits, - namely, the round,
stiff, hard, close-clipped, tightly-squeezed horror
that comes from the hand of professional hothouse men, - solid enough to knock you down,
if thrown with sufficient force, and so ugly that
you are divided between pity for the poor little
things forced into such unnatural contiguity, —
divested of the green which relieved their brilliancy from the charge of gaudiness, and laced
into a: hideous regularity, - and wrath against the




SUIMMER GONE.               325
man who has so misused his eyes and hands as
not to be able to construct any better imitation
of the viny, sprayey, feathery, airy, slender,
pendulous lightness, winsomeness, and grace of
nature than that artificial knob.  Call that a
bouquet, and with merciful hands rend off its
swaddling-clothes, tone down its rainbow  hues
with all tints of green, from the pale tenderness
that springs up on the sunny, sheltered side of
the -wood, to the deep luxuriance that- lurks in
its unsunned and unstirred heart, and make of it
twenty nosegays, whose colors shall delight, and
whose odors shall intoxicate; in which nosegays,
as I have said, my little star-flowers would make
but a poor figure. Their stems are so short, that it
is difficult to group them with any effect. Their
tiny faces become quite hidden behind their sturdier kinsmen. But in their own haunts they lead a
quiet, noiseless life, which well repays an observer.
If you went away to foreign lands when you
were young, and your knowledge of buttercups
is only a childish memory hanginig on an obscure
peg in some inner chamber of your brain, you
will very likely —as I did —look upon the first
star-flowers that you see as juvenile buttercups,
-just as children invariably suppose mice to be
young rats, and rats adult mice; and though you
have a vague, half-unrconscious feeling that those
wee things do not quite satisfy your sense of buttercups, you will attribute it to the difference




326           COUNTR Y LIVING.
between the eyes of childhood and of maturity.
"Years dwarf so many of our grandeurs, and dim
so many of our lustres!" you will begin to sigh.
Don't. It's no such thing. Wait awhile, just
a few days, and —whence comes that shining?
Is it the twinkling of a star-flower? Not a bit.
It is the gleam  of knightly armor.  It is the
glitter of burnished gold.  There stands the real
buttercup.   Does it pale  before your young
memories?  Your memories were, on the contrary, but a faint herald of its splendor. Yon
little star-flowers might grow for an age of summers, and never attain such form and comeliness.
Their timid, delicate, soft sweetness is to the
defiant, glittering, manly beauty of buttercups
" As moonlight unto sunlight, or as water unto wine."
Think of the merry scorn with which, hiding in
the grass, they must have heard your mournful
musing on their short-comings; and the sturdy
self-confidence with which they bided their time.
No wonder they toss their heads a little saucily
as you pass by, and nod and wink at each other
in ill-concealed jubilee over your undisguised admiration. One idea concerning them, however, I
have discarded, - my belief in the traditional testship. In fact, now that I am grown up and out
of harm's way, I will say that I never did believe
it. I think if you hold a buttercup under anybody's chin, near enough, his chin will turn yel



SUMMER GONE.                   327
low, and it is no sign at all that he is inordinately fond of butter. But when I was little, I
was not as bold as an eagle, and often waived,
or at least suppressed, my convictions, for the
sake of being let alone.  Moreover, I was conscious of a weakness in the direction indicated
by the buttercups; so I suffered them to be
brought in confirmation strong, and only smiled
in outward acquiescence, but with inward protest.   I am  older now, and  have learned  that
Paul's order of sequence is best, -first pure,
then peaceable; that peace is not so precious a
treasure as to be bought at any price; that, in
fact, it is a curse
" Till the Might with the Right and the Truth shall be."
"Better war, loud war by land and by sea,
War with a thousand battles and shaking a hundred thrones."
Nay, so fearful, so deceitful, so dangerous, is the
calm of a stagnant peace, - a peace that scums
the pool in whose foul depths lurk dishonesty
and oppression and cowardice, lust and rapine
and murder, -that I rather feel
"'T is better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all."
The anemones have passed into my heart forever. Their reign was short, but they bloomed
in beautiful profusion. Almost before I thought
of looking for them, I found a bed two feet in
diameter on the edge of a swamp where I least
expected to find any. I don't suppose a soul had




328          CO UNTR Y'LIZYING.
seen them but myself, -a soul in a mortal body, I
mean, — for I dare say many of the shining ones had
looked upon them, and lent perhaps some ray of
whiteness to their pure garments; but there in their
sheltered nook, unseen, unknown, they revelled in
sunny, exuberant life, every petal springing back
with joyous eagerness. It seemed as if they gladdened at sight of me, -as if they wanted mortal
eyes to be refreshed with a glimpse of their overflowing happiness; and the breath of the soft
morning — a June morning dropped into the
stormy lap of March -t —hat gently swayed their
pliant stems, seemed to intone a song of peace on
earth, good-will toward men. I think they are
very human. Perhaps it is because we associate
them with those
" Who in their youthful beauty died."
Gazing upon their exquisite tracery, we see once
more the tender grace that grew so deep into our
hearts, but vanished from our aching eyes long
ago, — the first little baby-daughter, who learned
only in heaven how dear she was on earth; the
sister who fell asleep while the dew of life was
yet fresh on her brow; the young wife who
glided out of the arms, strong but utterly powerless, that would have held her forever; the young
moth'er who could have found her angel-garments scarcely whiter than the robes of her sacred
motherhood; - so, with tear-dimmed eyes, we
press the anemones to our white lips, and bless




SUMVMER GONE.              329
the memories, sad, yet passing sweet, which they
awaken. There is a pain which is better and
higher and holier than pleasure. Since that morning I have seen many anemones springing up from
their warm bed of dry leaves which the fall frosts
scattered and the fall winds spread, and where,
safe as in the hollow of His hand who metes out
heaven with a span, they slept to a glad resurrection; but none came so near me, none so took
hold of my strength, as the stray little cluster
that awoke first in the embrace of the sun on the
edge of that Dismal Swamp.
Faerily, daintily, bewilderingly, they troop around
me now,- the sun-born, gala-robed sprites. Advancing, receding, bending their lithe forms in
airy dances to the music of vocal brooks, rocking
dreamily back and forth in the lap of soft south
gales, surging into my soul, but mocking my
yearning arms, now pensive with dewy tears,
now laughing softly to little, cooling showers, now
drunken with the fierce wine of the northwest
wind, they circle me in elfin ring. The wild columbine flings out his scarlet banner, but gives me
no Open Sesame to the vaults where his nectared
honey is stored. The gay geranium leaps from
his lurking-place beneath the maple-trees, but
I have no charmu to bid him stay. The tawny
wood-lily glares sylvan rage, and will not be
soothed by my caresses, but his white-bosomed
sister in the valley pours crisp coolness from her




330          COUNTRY LIVING.
crystal cups, and whispers of rippling waters, and
golden sunshine glinting down the greenwood.
The spireas rise before me still and stately; the
vervain shoots at me his slender arrows, purpletipped; the honeysuckle vies with the sweet-brier
to flood me with heavenly odors; and the garden
of God is my perpetual heritage.
" We all do fade as a leaf."  The sad voice
whispers through my soul, and a shiver creeps
over from the churchyard. " How does a leaf
fade? " It is a deeper, richer, stronger voice, with
a ring and an echo in it, and the shiver levels
into peace. I go out upon the October hills and
question the Genii of the woods. "How does a
leaf fade?"  Grandly, magnificently, imperially,
so that the glory of its coming is eclipsed by the
glory of its departing; —thus the forests make
answer to-day. The tender bud of April opens its
bosom to the wooing sun. From the soft airs of
May and the clear sky of June it gathers greenness and strength. Through all the summer its
manifold lips are opened to every passing breeze,
and great draughts of health course through its
delicate veins, and meander down to the sturdy
bark, the busy sap, the tiny flower, and the maturing fruit, bearing life to the present, and treasuring up promise for the future.
Then its work is done, and it goes to its burial,
-not mournfully, not reluctantly, but joyously,




SUMMER GONE.                 331
as to a festival. Its grave-clothes wear no funereal look. It robes itself in splendor. Solomon
in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these
First there is a flash of crimson in the low lands,
then a glimmer of yellow on the hill-side, then,
rushing on, exultant, reckless, rioting in color,
grove vies with grove, till the woods are all aflame.
Here the sunlight streams through the pale gold
tresses of the maple, serene and spiritual, like the
aureole of a saint; there it lingers in bold dalliance with the dusky orange of the walnut. The
fierce heart of the tropics beats in the blood-red
branches that surge. against deep solemn walls
of cypress and juniper. Yonder, a sober, but not
sombre, russet tones down the flaunting vermilion.
The intense glow of scarlet struggles for supremacy with the quiet sedateness of brown, and the
numberless tints of year-long green come in everyvwhere to enliven, and soothe, and subdue, and
harmonize.  So the leaf fades, -brilliant, gorgeous, gay, rejoicing,- as a bride adorned for her
husband, as a king goes to his coronation.
But the frosts come whiter and whiter. The
nights grow longer and longer. Ice glitters in the
morning light, and the clouds shiver with snow.
The forests lose their flush.  The hectic dies into
sere.  The little leaf can no longer breathe the
strength-giving air, nor feel juicy life stirring in its
veins. Fainter and fainter grows its hold upon
the protecting tree. A strong wind comes and




332          COUNTRY LIVING.
loosens its last clasp, and bears it tenderly to earth.
A whirl, an eddy, a rustle, and all is over, -no,
not all, its work is not yet done. It sinks upon
the protecting earth, and, Antrus-like, gathers
strength from the touch, and begins a new life. It
joins hands with myriads of its mates, and takes
up again its work of benevolence. No longer sensitive itself to frosts and snows, it wraps in its
warm bosom the frail little anemones, and the
delicate spring beauties, that can scarcely bide the
rigors of our pitiless winters, and, nestling close
in that fond embrace, they sleep securely till the
spring sun wakens them to the smile of blue skies,
and the song of dancing brooks. Deeper into the
earth go the happy leaves, mingling with the moist
soil, drinking the gentle dews, cradling a thousand
tender lives in theirs, and springing again in new
forms, - an eternal cycle of life and death "forever spent, renewed forever."
We all do fade as a leaf. Change, thank God,
is the essence of life.  "Passing away " is written
on all things; and passing away is passing on
from  strength to strength, from  glory to glory.
Spring has its growth, summer its fruitage, and
autumn its festive in-gathering. The spring of
eager preparation waxes into the summer of noble
work; mellowing, in its turn, into the serene autumn, the golden-brown haze of October, when
the soul may robe itself in jubilant drapery,
awaiting  the  welcome command, " Come  up




SUMMER GONE.               333
highlier," where mortality shall be swallowed up
in life.
Why, then, should autumn tinge our thoughts
with sadness? We fade as the leaf, and the leaf
fades only to revivify. Though it fall, it shall rise
again. Does the bud fear to become a blossom, or
the blossom shudder as it swells into fruit, and
shall the redeemed weep that they must become
glorified? Strange inconsistency. We faint with
the burden and heat of the day. We bow down
under the crosses that are laid upon our shoulders.
We are bruised and torn by the snares and pitfalls
which beset our way, and into which our unwary
feet often fall. We are famished, and foot-sore,
and travel-stained from our long journey, and yet
we are saddened by tokens that we shall pass
away from all these. Away from sin and sorrow,
from temptation and fall, from disappointment and.
weary waiting, and a fearful looking for of evil, to
purity and holiness, and the full fruition of every
hope, -bliss which eye hath not seen, nor ear
heard, nor heart conceived, - to a world whence
all that made this dreary is forever banished, and.where all that made this delightful is forever renewed and increased, - a world where the activities and energies of the soul shall have full scope,
and love and recognition wait upon its steps forever.
Let him alone fear who does not fade as the
leaf, —him whose sources are not in God, and




334             CO UNTR Y LIVIZNG.
who does not draw  his life thence, — him  wlhose
spring is gathering no strength, whose summer is
maturing no fruit, and whose autumn shall have
no vintage. Is not this the real sorrow of us all?
not a dread of change, but a secret consciousness
of wasted power, -of disloyalty to God as the
supreme object of our love and service? Yet even
here the fading leaf brings hope. Our future is
always before us.  The past is fixed.  No tears
can wash away its facts. Let us waste no vain
regrets upon it, but, from the wisdom which its
very mistakes and sins have bequeathed us, start
afresh on the race.  Though yesterday we were
weak,' and selfish, and indolent, let us to-day, at
this moment, begin to be strong, and brave, and
helpful, and just, and generous, and considerate,
and tender, and truthfill, and pure, and patient,
and  forgiving.   "Now"  is  a  glorious  word.
"Henceforth"  is always within our grasp.
" O, my soul, look not behind thee. Thou hast work to do at last:
Let the brave toil of the Present overarch the crumbling Past.
Build thy great acts high and higher, build them in the conquered
sod,
Where thy weakness first fell bleeding, where thy first prayer rose
to God."




WV INTER.
OME people have a way, you probably,. my dear friend, among the rest, of
going into the country.  When the
sun beats down hot and hard, when
the earth gets parched and arid, when the fields
have gone gray for lack of rain, and all the little
leaves have curled themselves to dry death, and
the heavens are dull, shimmering brass, and the
roads are ankle-deep in fine, powdery dust, and
the thirsty oxen stand panting in muddy bogs that
were once pools of water, and the grasshopper has
become a burden, and your desire for everything
but ice-water has failed, - then you wrap the
chairs in brown holland, turn the pictures to the
wall, carry the silver down to tile bank, pack a
dry-goods store into your trunk, leave your cool,
blinded, shaded city house with its large rooms, its
ample baths, and its attentive well-trained servants,
join a great dusty caravan, in a little dusty, cindery, clamorous railroad-car, whirl off to a great
hotel, pitch about among hackmen and porters till




336          COUNTRY LIVIN(x.
you have ensconced yourself somewhere in a seven
by nine room, with the clatter of a legion of feet
continually above, around, beneath, and the prolonged torture of a gong forever summoning you
to the two-hundredth part of a table, when you
unpack your dry goods, and put on your flounces
and laces and diamonds, and sit up straight, gracefll, and lady-like, and dine off the same meats,
and hop with the same hoppers, and talk with the
same talkers, and see the same faces, and do the
same things you did yesterday at home; and this
you call "going into the country."
Or, being a notch lower in the social scale, and
not able to contribute your part to the splendors
of a great establishment, you go to a little village,
eight miles away, and engage a southwest chamber in a house set on a hill, without blinds, with a
tank of rain-water directly under the window, a
feather bed, wooden chairs, and red-flowered carpet, where you slumber out your mornings, simmer
out your middays, and fight out your nights with
mosquitos, —to all of which I have not the slightest
objection —if you like it. It is change, and that,
after all, is what you need; and even if you have
jumped out of the frying-pan into the fire, it will
serve to make the frying-pan more tolerable when
you go back to it. But if, having done this, you
consider that you have been in the country, that
you have exhausted nature, and that there is nothing new under the sun for you to see, why, I must




WINTER.                337
take the liberty of respectfully informing you that
you don't know what you are talking about.
Nature is very exacting. You may make her a
flying visit in August, and she will indeed unfold
to you the beauties of dew-drop, and thundershower, and evening sky; but to know her in her
wholeness, to drink in full measure the " life that
hides in marsh and wold," to conceive all her
magnificent possibilities, you must woo her from
New Year to New Year, and every New Year
shall bring you a fairer picture, a richer blessing,
than the last.
You shall look out upon a gray, frozen earth,
and a gray, chilling sky. The trees stretch forth
naked branches imploringly. The air pinches and
pierces you, a homesick desolation clasps around
your shivering, shrinking heart, and then God
works a miracle. The windows of heaven are
opened, and there comes forth a blessing. The
gray sky unlocks her treasures, and softness and
whiteness and warmth and beauty float gently
down upon the evil and the good. Through all
the long night, while you sleep, the work goes
noiselessly on. Earth puts off her earthliness, and
when the morning comes she stands before you in
the white robes of a saint. The sun hallows her
with baptismal touch, and she is glorified. There
is no longer on her pure brow anything common
or unclean. The Lord God hath wrapped her
aboiit with light as with a garment. His Divine
15                     v




338          COUNTR Y LIVING.
charity hath covered the multitude of her sins,
and there is no scar or stain, no "mark of her
shame," no "seal of her sorrow."  The far-off
hills swell their white purity against the pure blue
of the heaven. The sheeted splendor of the fields
sparkles back a thousand suns for one. The trees
lose their nakedness and misery and desolation,
and every slenderest twig is clothed upon with
glory. All the roofs are blanketed with snow;
all the fences are bordered. Every gate-post is
statuesque; every wood-pile is a marble quarry.
Harshest outlines are softened. Instead of angles,
and ruggedness, and squalor, there are billowy,
fleecy undulations. Nothing so rough, so common, so ugly, but it has been transfigured into
newness of life. Everywhere the earth has received beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Without sound of hammer or axe, without
the grating of saw or the click of chisel, prose has
been sculptured into poetry. The actual has put
on the silver veil of the ideal.
Will you look more closely?  A  part is, if
possible, more beautiful than the whole.  On the
Brobdignagian texture of your coat-sleeve, one
wandering snow-flake has alighted. Gaze at it or
ever it vanishes from your sight.  What a world
of symmetry it discloses to you! What an airy,
fairy, crystalline splendor!  What delicate spires
of feathery light shoot out from the centre with




WINTER.                 339
tiny fringes, and rosy, radiating bars. In all your
life you have never seen anything more beautiful,
more perfect, and you may stand "breast-high"
in just such marvellous radiance. Talk of robbers' caves and magic lamps! No Eastern imagination, rioting in "barbaric pearl and gold,"
can eclipse the magnificence in which you live
and move and have your being.
And there is a deeper beauty than  this.  It
is not only that the snow makes fair what was
good before, but it is a messenger of love
from heaven, bearing glad tidings of great joy.
Hope for the future comes down to the earth in
every tiny snow-flake.  Underneath, as they
span the hill-side, and  lie lightly piled in the
valleys, the earth-spirits and fairies are ceaselessly
working out their multifold plans. The grasses
hold high carnival safe under their crystal roof.
The roses and lilies keep holiday.  The snowdrops and.hyacinths, and the pink-lipped Mayflower, wait as they that watch for the morning.
The life that stirs beneath thrills to the life that
stirs above. The spring sun will mount higher
and higher in the heavens; the sweet snow will
sink down into the arms of the violets, and, at
the word of the Lord, the earth shall come up
once more as a bride adorned for her husband.
And "' as the rain cometh down, and the snow
from  heaven, and  returneth  not thither, but
watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth




340          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
and bud, that it may give seed to the sower,
and bread to the eater: so shall my word be
that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not
return unto me void, but it shall. accomplish that
which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing
whereto I sent it."
Native land! Fatherland!  Is not the word
spoken to you?
O beautiful, sorrowful country! for whom the
watch-fires of freedom have been lighted on the
hills, for whom the flames of sin lurk ghastly
and baleful in the valleys; baptized in the blood
of heroes; consecrated with the prayers of saints;
precious for your priceless past, unspeakably precious for.the hope of your mighty future; for all
your faults never more dear than now; rocked
with the throes of a mortal agony; shuddering
through all your frame in the slimy coil of a
monster; your young strength once prostrated,
but now alive, your young life poisoned, but renewed again; — shall not "Nature bring you
solace "?  Already the winter is past, the flowers
appear on the earth; the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is
heard in our land. Shall we not therein read a
sweet prophecy? The winter of your discontent
shall be made glorious summer.  You too shall
go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the
mountains and the hills shall break forth before
you into singing;, and all the trees of the field




WINTER.                 341
shall clap their hands.  Instead of the thorn
shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of'the
brier shall come up the myrtle-tree; and it shall
be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting
sign that shall not be cut off.
There is nothing like winter in the country to
develop one's resources and mature one's graces.
Blocked up by the snow, driven in by the cold,
forced to subside on yourself, it stands you in
hand to be agreeable and inventive.  If your
chimney smokes, if your door-knobs loosen and
come off, if the rain soaks through the walls, if
the roof is leaky, if holes yawn in your shoes,
if your skate-straps are too short, or your sledrunner is broken, or your note-paper gives out,
you cannot jump upon the train and go to the
next market-town to be set up again. You must
either wait for the spring or a January thaw, or
you must contrive some remedy yourself.
If your Decembers have been genially warmed
into Junes without any intervention of your own,
and you find yourself suddenly in a remote village,
under the necessity of attending to your fire oi
going without it, you will often be in that state
of mind which will demand for solace a constant
repetition of the old saw,'" It takes a fool to make
a fire." If, worse than this, you suffer yourself
to be lured by siren songs of warmth, convenience, and economy from the good old groves of




342          COUNTRY LIVING.
hickory and oak and maple, to try, like the old
man in the spelling-book, what virtue there is in
stones, you will have an admirable opportunity to
cultivate the virtue of patience; and patience is a
divine virtue. When we look at God, holy, just,
and kind, and at his creatures, rebelling against
him, cruel to each other, polluting themselves with
sin, and violating his wise laws,- and yet see how
he ever makes his sun to rise upon evil and good,
and sends his rain upon just and unjust, continuing to all alike the blessings of seed-time and
harvest,- we are ready to say, that patience is of
all virtues the most divine.
But it is not only divine, it is pre-eminently a
human virtue. It works into daily life a sweetness, a balm, a peacemaker, a consoler. It makes
home happy.  It shames vice. It disarms illtemper. It goes far to make society tolerable.
So important is this virtue esteemed in the Divine.
economy, that a large part of our experience is
framed so as to strengthen and improve it. We
deviate into no path in which we cannot find some
circumstance fitted to exercise and perfect it. It
is, however, a solemn thought, that opportunities
wasted are burdens upon our shoulders. If we
grow wicked by a means which was intended and
adapted to make us grow good, we grow a great
deal more wicked than we should if such means
had never been tried. A blessing turned into a
curse is doubly accursed. Sorrows that do not




WINTER.                 343
soften, harden. Life is full of little occasions which
may help us to grow in grace, and may show us
whether we have already done so; but neglected
or perverted, they deteriorate us.
But these reflections will not occur to you in
the early stages of your experience with coal fires.
On the contrary, you will begin your work full
of hope. Careful to follow to the letter every
direction, you are confident of success.  With
half-contemptuous commiseration, you think of
some cousin, or aunt, or friend, who has been
appalled by the lions in the way, and turned
back. You consider it a weakness of character,
rather to be pitied than severely censured. You
are charitable to all the world as you lay in
your kindlings with mathematical regularity,paper, shavings, splinters, sticks.  You  apply
the match.  A  furious roar springs up.  You
start back, half delighted, half scared. What if
the chimney should catch fire. You hustle on
the coal to smother the exceeding fierceness.  The
roar crackles, sputters, stifles, and dies the death.
There is a pause. You open the door, and peep
in furtively. A faint suggestion of flame and half
a dozen sparks. A second peep, —the flames have
disappeared, the sparks are diminished.  A third
peep, - black as Acheron. The kindlings burned
charmingly, but they mistook means and ends,
and kindled nothing. You put in your hand and
pry under the surface to see if anything is hap



344         COUNTRY LIVING.
pening. Whew! Who could imagine that anything so cold-looking could be so hot, or anything
so hard-looking could be so smutty.  But your
black fingers will be atoned for to-morrow by
three little white blisters at this moment developing under the blackness. Then you turn a crank
and let the coal down, that you may take it out
and try again. Down it comes crashing into the
drawer. You proceed to pull it out. Something
sticks.  You pull and twist, and jerk it in
vain. You are forced to thrust your arminto
the stove, and take the coal out by handfuls.
Then you begin anew, and after consuming wood
enough to heat your room  all day, and time
enough for as much more wood to grow, you
succeed in getting a fire. But you do not mind
the time spent, for you say to yourself, "It is
once for all." You flatter yourself that, once
kindled, it will stay kindled. You are doomed to
disappointment. You open the stove door in the
morning, and it is " upper, nether, and surrounding darkness," abysmpal and dismal. You have
to go through the whole process again, with the
added misery of ashes, which come, puff! into
your face, a suffocating cloud, on the slightest
provocation. You plod on for a few days. Every
separate member of your family has a separate
opinion, and proffers different advice, - all entirely
conjectural and at random. You have recourse to
the experienced. One advises you to shake down




WINTER.                 345
the old coal before you put on new, which you do
vigorously, and shake all the life out of it. Then
you are told that you must keep it quiet, and you
tread gingerly, laying in the fresh coal carefully
with your own shuddering fingers, — as if you
were planning a surprise, and designed to get it
on fire before it should know what was going on;
but the enemy is on the alert, and baffles you with
a "masterly inactivity."  Meanwhile there comes
a cold snap, and the thermometer plumps down to
zero. Everything about the house freezes solid,
and breaks. Friends who call are pressed to have
a shawl, and stop to dinner. Bores are blandly
invited, in rural formula, to "take off their coats
and make themselves at home." Then somebody
tells you that the grate must be poked to keep it
clear. Submissive, you procure a sharp stick in
lieu of a poker, which, if it exists at all, is not visible to the naked eye, and, like any Parsee, prone
on the floor you fall before your swart divinity,
and ram the stick up under the grate. Down
come the ashes in a gray shower over your sleeve
and hand, covering every thread of the one, and
filling every pore of the other; but desperately
you poke on, till light shines through. Sometimes
your exertions will be rewarded with success, and
sometimes not; and this is your great perplexity.
Everything is inconsequent. Similar causes produce dissimilar effects. You do, with slavish imitation, everything you are told to do, till it is
15f*




346          COUNTRY LIVING.
shown to be useless, when you give rein to genius
and branch off on your own account, in brilliant
and startling combinations. You shake down, and
refrain from shaking.  You poke, and you cease
poking. You set the wood on fire before you
put the coal on, and you put the coal on before
you set the wood on fire. You open everything
openable, and shut everything shutable, and you
never have any inkling of what will happen next.
There is no satisfaction when the fire does burn,
for it does not burn logically. It is an isolated
fact. It does not establish anything, nor indicate anything. No palpable reason exists why it
should burn this time, that did not apply with
equal force to the four previous occasions when
it declined burning. It ought to have gone out
last night as well as the night before. It is like
the proverbial woman,"If she will, she will, you may depend on't,
If she won't, she won't, and there's an end on't."
It is like an over sensitive man, — one of
those disagreeable unfortunates who are known
as " touchy."  If you don't treat it "'just so,"
it is all over with you. Its dignity is as ticklish
as that of our self-made aristocrats. You can
scarcely look askance at it without disturbing its
equilibrium.  You begin to believe that some
"imp of the perverse" has taken up his abode
there, -that some unhoused gnome is wreaking
vengeance on you for his violated home, — and




WINTER.                 347
you fall gradually into a pugnacious mood. You
get a way of looking at the coal as a malicious and
skilful foe, and it is a drawn battle between you.
You grow, as the country-people say, "shortwaisted." The harder it is for the coal to kindle,
the easier it becomes for you. Your conversation
turns growly and snappish. You wax dangerous.
Every inquiry as to your progress, you get to look
on as an insult. You suffer under a sense of injury. You feel as if the world and the elements
were in league against you. You are sensitive of
the slightest allusion to fire. You have a kind of
pyrophobia.
No, my dear friend, this will never do. This is
all wrong. This is the abuse, not the use, of coal.
You are wasting anthracitic opportunities for the
development of the noble virtue of patience. Be
not deceived.  Martyrdom  comes to but few.
Few are called to resist unto blood, striving
against sin, but many are called to resist unto
inconvenience, restraint, and self-denial; and an
incessant. pin-pricking is perhaps harder to bear
than the swift-descending axe, or the cranch of a
lion's jaws; and if you come off conqueror from
the one, you shall in no wise lose your reward, any
more than he who calmly faced the horrors of the
other. If the trials to which you are subjected
seem all the more severe from being so petty, remember that Rome was not built in a day, and it
is the constant, hourly chipping at the quarried




348         COUNTRY LIVING.
marble that is to rear in the end — the temple of
God. Remember, too, that however out of joint
the matter may be, fretting will never mend it. It
is bad to feel your hands growing rough, but it is
worse to let your temper keep them company. It
ruffles you to hear of stoves that run like a clock
from November to May, but it won't smooth
you to go into a rage about it.  It is aggravating to have the fire burn up and warm the room
delightfully, just as the stove-man, for whom you
have sent to see what the trouble is, arrives, and
then to have it go out as soon as he does; but
what are you going to do about it? If you are
wise, you will remember that you are only sharing
the common lot. You will think of the great
multitudes who have passed through the same
tribulations, and the summer atmosphere of a thousand happy homes will beckon you on to victory.
You will think, with admiring gratitude, of the man
who first discovered the combustibility and practicability of coal. You will see the fatherliness of
your Creator in making this wonderful provision
for you,- how the giant trees leaped heavenward
at his bidding, and at his bidding died, to become
in death your ministers. What wisdom and. benevolence wrought this marvellous work in the
great laboratories of the earth, — scooped out
those vast basins, piled therein these inexhaustible
treasures, more precious than gold, and so took
care for your comfort ages and ages before you




WINTER.                349
were born! And will you be petulant because
you carry your end of the pole a little awkwardly
at first?  Shall your orisons and vespers be the
prayer of the daughters of the horse-leech? Will
you not be content that the Lord has given you
the coal, but will you require him to work a miracle to kindle it? For you fail only because you
are fighting against the nature of things, and here
is another lesson which you may learn, - the inexorableness of law.  Not a spark of fire, not
the smallest black coal-speck on your finger, but
follows the law of its being, fixed, relentless.
Your intentions are good. You mean to do right.
But you are transgressing some chemical or mechanical law, and the dumb coal, which has never
deviated from rectitude, is a swift witness against
you. With nature, ignorance is no excuse for
transgression. The penalty follows surely on the
heels of sin. Is the law of matter more fixed than
the law of mind? If you cannot sin against lifeless stones with impunity, can you sin against a
living soul, and go scot free?  If a right purpose
will not kindle a fire without wise means, will it
fashion a son's mind? Do you not see how the
blind may mislead the blind, with utmost tenderness, to destruction?
Above all things, do not "give up."  Rise to
the height of the emergency. Be master of yourself. Get the victory over impatience; so from
the stubborn coal shall you express the oil of joy,




350         COUNTR Y LI'VING.
and find beauty for ashes. Every lambent tongue
of flame shall be to you a messenger fiom heaven,
and every day a pentecost. With a heart open to
all pure influences, you shall feel the full
force of those sweet words, "Lo! I am
with you always," and with eyes
which the Lord hath opened,
you shall see " sermons in
stones, and good in
everything."




MY FLOWER-BED.
~,~-~ _AM oppressed with a feeling that,
l  whatever welcome my literary venture
*l l.*f~ may meet, I have not, so far as appears
in this volume, made a brilliant figure
at gardening. I think, therefore, that I ought,
in justice to myself, to relate the distinguished
success which attended my second attempt. An
ordinary person would have been deterred, by so
unparalleled a series of disasters as befell me, from
ever making another endeavor; but, for my part,
I like always to retire with the honors of war.
Therefore, when February crept away to the
north, and March came breezing up from the
south, I went to a seed-shop and laid in an entire
new supply of garden ammunition.
I began on a smaller scale than before. My
ambition had not forgotten the severe lesson of
the past spring. I relinquished the idea of supplying our table with vegetables, and concluded to
devote myself solely to the department of the
beautiful. Instead of taking the whole estate for




352          COUNTRY LIVING.
a centre, and radiating over the land in all directions, I pre-empted from the waste of corn and
potato-field a corner, ill-suited, indeed, to my
desires and my dreams, but better suited, I was
forced to admit, to my inexperience.
A square piece of ground, of moderate size, was
the basis of my flower-bed. The circle described by
the drapery of a fashionably-dressed woman, standing in the centre, would be scarcely more than
contained in it.  But does not "Rare 3en " say,
" In small proportions we just beauties see,
And in small measure life may perfect be "?
It is amazing to note the interest one has in the
weather when one becomes a landed proprietor.
It is equally amazing to note the coquetry of the
weather when it becomes aware'of that fact.
With the poets, who have hitherto kept me in
Almanacs, April is a sunny, showery month; May
melts into music and warmth; and June is redolent of roses. But, 0 Messrs. Poets, you have
dealt treacherously with me, or else you have
studied nature from Chaucer, not from herself.
What did April do for me this year? Blocked
me up with a snow-storm. What did May do?
Took advantage of her name, entrapped my coalstove into the garret, then benumbed my fingers,
and turned me into a Nova-Scotian. Nay, Winter,
lingering, was not content to chill the lap of May,
but'even set young June a-shivering.  The fact is,
Spring as a figure of speech, and the prolific mother




MY FLOWER-BED.               353
of figures of speech, is a good thing; but Spring
as an institution ought to be abolished. It has
outlived its usefulness. It exists only in tradition;
and that tradition is productive of much mischief.
Our idea of it, derived chiefly from Old English
ballads, bloom with violets, and soft airs, and gay,
green woods, and frisking lambs, and goldenthroated birds. In pursuance of which idea we
get up May parties on May-day, and lay aside
our flannels, and make ourselves miserable, let
alone the rheumatisms and neuralgias and consumptions whose highway we make straight.
The blue skies, the greening fields, and the poets
aforesaid, conspire to draw us into the trap of
raw east wind and chill vapor, from which we
return with a stiff neck, a sore throat, and settled
melancholy. All this would be obviated if there
could only be a general understanding that Winter
in this latitude lasts till the Fourth of July, and
comes out in spots all summer. We should then
know what to depend upon, and the "fair, mild
days " would be so many extra blessings thrown
in. That is, the rule would be comfortable, and
the exceptions delicious; whereas now, the rule
is indifferent, and the exceptions intolerable.
Understand, I am not finding fault with the
weather, but with our nomenclature. A northeast snow-storm is a splendid thing in its way;
only don't let us pretend it is a shower of appleblossoms, and act accordingly.
W




354          COUNTRY LIVING.
But snowy April days and murky May mornings
may cultivate the divine virtue of patience, if
nothing else, I said to myself, as I stood, flowerseeds in hand, awaiting the Spring. It came at
last, or something which a vivid imagination, combined with the Almanac, could call Spring, and I
levelled and spaded and raked and squared my
flower-bed that was to be. On the north and
south I bounded it with a line of currant-bushes;
on the east and west with rose-bushes. At least,
that is what they were given to me for.  In
my heart I believed they were mere dry sticks,
but I stuck them into the ground, nothing wavering. Between the rose-sticks I set out pansyroots, and between the currant-sticks dahlias, and
whatever is the plural of gladiolus. Next came
the question of internal arrangement. You may
let a forest grow wild.  Nature will group her
trees, and drape herself with all manner of creeping mosses, and trailing berries, and sprightly
undergrowth, and you shall find nothing amiss.
But snip off a little bit of nature, and the case
is altered. A garden that you can put in your
pocket is nothing if it is not regular. You must
have a design, a diagram. I thought of a star.
But a star is a great deal easier to think of than
it is to make. If you don't believe me, I should
just like to have you try it. I have a vague impression that, if I could have got hold of a treatise
on geometry, I could have constructed one on




2MY FLO WER-BED.             355
scientific principles, and without much trouble;
but I don't suppose there was such a treatise within twenty miles; so I had to bungle with sticks
and strings. However, the result was an obvious
star. To be sure, the rays were rather " peak6d,"
and not exactly equidistant at the tips, and somewhat skewy at the centre; but it was a very good
star for all that. At least, it was more like a star
than like anything else.  Aut aster aut nullts!
When I had completed that, I put outside, between
the five rays, two gladiolus roots, a pansy, a
circle of candy-tuft, and one of lily of the valley.
Then there was nothing to do but wait. That
is the beauty of being a farmer. A little provision, a few days of hard work, and the sweet
sunshine, the soft rain, the silent dews, finish the
business. You do not have to hammer away day
after day at your lapstone or your sermon. Nature herself puts a shoulder to your wheel, and
rolls you on to fortune.
Or would, if it were not for the weeds and
chickens and bugs and worms, that choke and
peck and gnaw her gifts. A few innocent flowerseeds will make a remarkable number of enemies;
and it is surprising to see how much faster weeds
grow than flowers. I wonder what the result
would be if one should set out Roman wormwood,
and tend it carefully.  Would it forget it was a
weed, fancy itself a flower, and become shy and
sensitive? As it is, I have found it one of the




356         COUNTRY LIVING.
most enterprising of individuals. Before I thought
of looking for one of my roots or seeds, up came
this Italian bitterness, speedily followed by the
pig-plant, close on whose heels tramped the smartweed; and in a twinkling, appeared witch-grass,
and sorrel, and a mob of little villanous vines,
sprawling things, which had never been planted, and never came to anything, and had no
business there, and only gave the trouble of pulling them up.
But one warm night something happened. The
evening had given no sign; but under the silent
moon a host of tiny warriors, clad in Lincolngreen, unsheathed their sharp swords, cleft the
brown earth, and when the day dawned there
they were marshalled in knightly array, along the
white lines of my star.
I know few sensations more exquisitely satisfactory than the springing up of something which
your own hands have planted. You have, perhaps, — if you are a neophyte, - had a lurking
fear lest you might not detect the difference between the gold and the gilt, have suffered weeds
to flourish, lest, in exterminating them, you might
ignorantly exterminate something that was not a
weed; but when the gold comes, you recognize
its gleam. A flower is no more like a weed
than if it had never grown. It is pale, and soft,
and juicy, and tender.  The first lifting of its
little face above ground is a mute appeal to your




MY FLO WER-BED.              357
sympathy and protection. It would seem as if a
harsh look might crush out its little life. But
the weed is a saucy, reckless, pushing, defiant,
strong-nerved Yankee fellow.  "Here I am,"
he says, tossing his plumes six inches in the air
before you knew  he was "'anywhere round."
"Here I am.  You didn't invite me, but I
came, and brought all my brothers, and we are
going to have a rollicking time of it. You can
give me the cut direct.  O yes. But I am. not
sensitive. I am not overladen with modesty.
It is a very nice place, this world, with its
sun and dew  and rain, and I don't intend to
be driven out of it in a hurry."
I suppose every school-girl and school-boy in
New England has compared weeds and flowers
to the viceo and virtues of the human heart';
but you don't take in the full force of the illustration till you have a flower-bed of your own,
and actually see the thing going on with your
own  eyes.  Then  you make the illustration
yourself, and it seems just as fresh to you as
if nobody had ever made it before. This living
A. M. 5865, or thereabouts, is very damaging to
originality, —when it comes to writing. Adam
and Seth and Noah had the advantage of us
there. Yet as a matter of living, sun and sky,
the broad-bosomed earth and the "many-sounding sea," are newly created for every baby born.
When the world was young, the seed spake




358           COUNTRY LI IING.
vaguely of the soul. But Paul, standing in the
newly-risen light, saw what his fathers could not
see, and in unfolding leaf-buds "learned the
language  of another world."   Ever since, the
spring's resurrection is a revelation.  You lay
in the brown soil the ugly, shrivelled, insensate
seed, but under that unseemly garb the soul
of the plant keeps watch and ward.  Life is
there, hidden in death.  When the fulness of
time is come, life shall burst its cerements, and
mount upward  to  its fate, which is sunshine
and greenness, and glowing beauty, and matchless
grace.
So this mortal puts on immortality.
I suppose a professional gardener might laugh
at my flowers.  In fact, people do laugh at them
who are not professional gardeners, - for that matter, who are no gardeners at all, any more than
I am. They think I don't see them, but I do.
They think that I think a nasturtion is something very smart, and grand, and recherheh.  I
don't think anything of the sort.  I know  as
well as they that it is a very common, kitchengardeny kind of a flower. So are poppies. So
are mallows. So are lady's-delights, and bachelor's-buttons, and pinks, and candy-tuft, and
asters, and coreopsis, and roses; but what of that?
Is a thing less beautiful because it is common?
The blue sky bends over the evil and the good.
The earth unfolds her loveliness to the just and to




MY FLOWTER-BED.              359
the unjust. No title-deeds can convey possession
of the splendor or the beauty:of the universe. No
landed proprietor can fence in from lowliest eyes
the swell of the hills, or the scoop of the valleys.
No gas agent can turn off the bland breezes from
those who cannot pay monthly bills therefor. No
" merchant prince " can adorn his garden with the
grandeur and the glory of the-sea; while the clodhopper may snatch strength from its sturdy waves,
be rocked on its heaving bosoml, and sink to rest
with its surging lullaby.  God makes his most
beautiful things most common, and shall we baffle
his benevolence, spurning his blessings? A nasturtion 1" common," -with the heart of a thousand sunsets shrined in its kingly cup, or the
shadow of royal robes empurpling its " wine-dark
depths ",!  Common! shall I see less beauty in
its golden gleam because that gleam has flashed
brightness into myriads of hearts? Shall it not
rather have an added value? The hard hand of
labor, the wasted hand of disease, the restless hand
of poverty, have found peace, and hope, and joy,
in training these happy flowers to grasp the sunshine, and the glad gifts of the dew.  I see on
the folds of their scarlet banners the message of
good-will to weary souls.  Peering into those
glowing caverns, the radiant eyes of little children laugh up to meet my own, and the touch of
their tender stems is like the touch of groping
baby-fingers.  Shine on, 0 fairest messengers of




360             COUNTR Y LIVING.
Heaven, and show to all waiting, toiling, disheartened, sorrowful lives
" A strange and mystic story, -
How moistened earthly dust can wear celestial glory."
My horticultural cook-book affirms that nasturtions make a toothsome salad. I dare say. I
should like to see the individual, however, who
should venture to go browsing among my nasturtions. I am strongly opposed to Judge Lynch's
code of laws, but I think I should give that person something harder to swallow than the worst
salad he ever saw.
A poppy is not like a nasturtion, but it has a
fringed, downy beauty all its own. A mystical,
crimson languor suffuses the encircling air. Vivid
blood-red plashes stain its white bloom.   Sometimes, in riotous revelling, it hurls back the arrows
of the sun, till my dazzled eyes can hardly endure
the brightness. But pale or purple, it is enchanted
ground. Under that fretted greenery, the poets
lie asleep. Hence, far hence, all ye profaner ones!
It is not for you to tread the courts of the poppycrowned god.
"Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe,
And low, where dawning day doth never peepe,
His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed
Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe
In silver deaw his ever-drouping bed,
And, more, to lulle him in his slumber soft,
A trickling stream from high rock tumbling downe,
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swoone.




MY FLO TER-BED.               361...... Carelesse Quiet lyes
Wrapt in eternal silence farre from enimyes."
So dream the poets.  But comrfion people must
keep wide awake.
When my nasturtions came, they came with a
leap. They hardly seemed to have grown. They
lifted their broad, shield-shaped leaves, one morning, and looked as if they had always been there.
But poppies tread delicately. There is just a faint
line of green, shading the brown soil. For several
days it hardly increases.  While you are looking
at it, you persuade yourself that nothing will come
of it, - there is nothing there.  But when you
are away, you have a very strong impression that
something was there, and will " turn up." While
you are waiting further developments, the " heated'term" comes, - dry, dusty, suffocating, blinding,
baking, brazen days,- when the sun unmasks his
batteries, and opens upon you a steady fire. If
you want to know how your flowers feel about it,
go out doors barefoot, and the grass that was so
tender, and cool, and dewy in the morning, is
curled and crisp, and burns your feet. (Nevertheless, it is an excellent thing to go barefoot. Civilization is shocked at the mention of such a thing,
but Hygiene rejoices.  Physicians tell us that one
of the reasons why our Irish population are so
healthy, notwithstanding their untidy, irregular
habits, is that they go barefoot so much.  Certainly the stout friames and brawny arms of Irish16




362           COUNTRY LIVING.
women are an argument very difficult to overcome; while, in point of comfort, nothing can surpass untrammelled, unhampered feet. It stands'
to reason. Shoes are bad heat-conductors. They
confine and accumulate it; but without shoes ana
stockings it passes off as fast as it is generated,
and not only the feet, but the whole body preserves a pleasant equilibrium. People have only
to lay aside their prejudices, and their shoes and
stockings will follow, till the summer custom and
costume will be as fashionable as Nahant.)
Presently the parched look of your flower-bed
excites your compassion.  You water it, but the
water runs off the hardened surface. You loosen
the soil around, and it is a little better. In the
height of the drought the spout of the water-pot
generally comes off, and then your strong plants
are drenched with torrents, and for your weak
ones you take a colander, which is not "handy."
So you blunder on, day after day, wishing and
watching for a thunder-shower or a tin-pedler.
By and by a cloud in the west appears, rises,
spreads, and descends in beautiful and doubly welcome abundance. The dear, benevolent rain! the
kindly, saving rain! It is better than a thousand
watering-pots with the spouts all on. It does the
business so easily and so thoroughly. You hardly
wonder that
"Danae in a golden tower,
Where no love was, loved a shower."




MY FLO WER-BED.              363
You are in love with it yourself, and as you stand
silent, with smiling eyes, a silver voice begins to
well mnurmurously around you; but just here the
rumbling of wheels breaks in upon the murmurous voice, and a tin-pedler's cart heaves in sight,
blossoming with watering-pots.  Of course you
don't buy any, but it is "trying" to see them
just then. After this, however, you are in no
doubt about the poppies'.  They leap up into
rounded vigor and obviousness, and the whole
garden is quickened.
I made a mistake in my planting. I put the
seeds in too close, and the centre of my star is a
perfect tangle. The nasturtions had the advantage at the start, and they keep it; but they are
smothered in their own sweetness, and the gilias
and geraniums fairly gasp for breath. A sly little
portulacca hides under an overgrown marigold,
and cheated me for a long while. I thought several mornings that he had buds on the brink of
opening, and sometimes I surely thought I saw
buds that had opened and closed again, but that
was all, so I set a watch, and one day, just at
noon, (when I never visited him, and he thought
himself safe from intrusion,) I spied a flash of
Solferino, rushed upon him, and caught him in
the very act. Since then he has hung out his
colors quite openly. My rose sticks have prospered beyond measure. I counted fourteen buds
on one of them. My gladiolus is the delight of
my eyes,




864          COUNTRI LIVING.
"A daughter of the gods, divinely tall,
And most divinely fair."
My dahlias came up headlong, four or five in a
group. Somebody said I must break off all but
one. I rejected the Vandalism with horror. I
am a Republican and a Christian, and I would
have no Turks about that could'" bear no brother
near the throne."  It shows the weakness of
moral principle, that thlree weeks after, when I
saw a bed of dahlias twice as tall as mine, I came
home and broke mine off with a bleeding heart.
Then they shot up, and a high wind came and
twisted and prostrated them remorselessly. Then
I hunted up stakes and poles, worn-out broomsticks and dislocated hoe-handles, and tied up my
dahlias, till my flower-bed might have been taken
for a returned regiment from a thirty years' war.
Presently one of them " made an effort," and put
out a flower, which looked like an agitated turnip.
I never saw such a dismal, washed-out rag in my
life. I do not think much of dahlias.  They are
coarse and unsightly in leaf, and forlorn in flower,
and ten to one don't flower at all. I call them
nothing more than an aristocratic potato. Several
of my most beautiful and promising plants I pulled
up, because Halicarnassus said they were weeds.
I did not believe it then, and the more I think of
it, the more I do not believe it still. It was envy
on his part, not weeds on mine. Still I pulled
them up. So I lost the cream of my garden; but




MY FLOWER-BED.               365
the skim-milk that is left is ravishingly toothsome..
Dear old Earth, " tickle her with a hoe, and she
laughs with a harvest." I scarcely so much as
tickled her. I did but lay the tip of an unskilful
finger in one of her dimples, and she broke forth
before me into singing. Dear old mother'of us
all, what you were before Adam I cannot conceive, for with the burden of his curse upon you,
you are more lovely than tongue can tell, or
pencil portray, and in your bosom lie
hidden treasures of strength, and
honor, and glory, and blessing
for him who is wise to woo.
The earth is full of
the riches of
the Lord.




LIGHTS AMONG THE SHADOWS OF
OUR CIVIL WAR.
IVIL war is a very terrible thing. Because it is terrible, however, it is not
necessarily unmitigated.  Even civil
war may have its sunny side. In the
lessons which it teaches, in the sophistry which it
demolishes, in the manhood which it develops, we
may find wherewithal to stay our souls, when they
are ready to faint with the burden and heat of this
our bloody day.
And first, what has become of the people who
were always talking about the bravery, and virtue,
and hardihood, and patriotism  of our forefathers,
in sad contrast with the pusillanimity, effeminacy,
and selfishness of us their descendants? You have
doubtless heard persons, in and out of the newspapers, linger regretfully over the olden devotion
to country, sacrifice for a righteous cause, perseverance under difficulties, undaunted bravery in
battle, and unshaken fortitude in defeat.  They
would speak with reproachful admiration of the




OUR CIVIL TWAR.             367
mothers who beat their pewter spoons into bullets,
and sent their sons to battle; and then would
come a sigh over these degenerate days, when:men think of nothing but to buy and sell, and
get gain. I must say that I, for one, never did
believe one word of it. I think we are just as
good as our fathers, and always have been; but
you cannot expect martial virtues in a time of
peace, any more than you can expect the triumphs
of peace in time of war. I always believed that,
if we ever had an opportunity, we should show
ourselves just as brave, just as loyal, just as
self-sacrificing, as our fathers. Did they fight in
a holier cause than we? Did they exercise a
greater forbearance than we, so long as forbearance seemed of any avail; and when forbearance
would have been weakness, did they spring to
arms with greater alacrity?  Were they more
prodigal of men and money?  Have we not
brought forward our precious things, laying upon
the altar even our prejudices, and preferences, and
opinions? Did our fathers fight fior liberty? So
do we. Was their struggle less for themselves
than for the future?  So is ours.  We should
have got along very comfortably, letting things go
on as they have been going on.  That we might
leave to the future a righteous legacy, that we
might maintain in its integrity a righteous cause,
we have sacrificed, not only without a murmur,
but with a spontaneous and irresistible enthusiasm,




368          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor,lives just as dear, honor just -as sensitive, and
fortunes ten times as large as those of our fathers.
The " Spirit of'76" was noble; but its nobleness is rivalled and its power excelled by the
Spirit of'61. The blood of our fathers does not
run thin, and pale, and sordid in our veins. The
canker of peace has not taken out our life. Let
us have done forever with this exaltation of the
past by the depreciation of the present.  The
world is richer now in all the elements of greatness than it ever was before, and this is the
Golden Age.
Another compensation is the love of country
springing up in every Northern heart. It is to
many of us a new revelation. Love is always
creative. When a man begins to love a woman,
a new world unfolds itself to him in this.  With
every baby born, the mother is herself new-born.
When the soul awakens first to the love of Christ,
old things pass away and all things become new.
We have been living quietly under our vines and
fig-trees. We have, as the mood took us, boasted
of our government, or rebuked its administrators;
but, excepting those who have been abroad, we
never had much feeling about it one way or the
other. We have been protected by it. We have
known it only by its constant benefactions, to
which we were born, among which we were nurtured, and of which we were scarcely more con



OUR CIVIL WAR.               369
scions than of the air we breathed.  It is not that
we were especially ungrateful.  We did not love,
because there was nothing in particular to love.
The President is too short-lived to create a strong
attachment.  Yesterday he was nobody, and tomorrow he will relapse into nobody. The Senate
and House are-not peculiarly adapted to call forth
emotions of tenderness, nor can one in ordinary
times wax wildly enthusiastic over a piece of
bunting. We have no royal family to define,
concentrate, and vivify our loyalty, so it had to
go wandering for an object, or lie sleeping in the
bottom of our hearts; but the besom of war has
swept away all difficulties. We want no princely
blood now. A new love is born, strong, vigorous,
full grown in a day.  I don't know that we could
tell precisely what it is that we love now, but it
is something!  The love is there.  It swells and
surges in our hearts, it overflows our eyes.  It
quivers on every lip.  It melts down all barriers
of sect, and race, and religion, and politics. It
throbs wherever a banner floats. It thrills out in
brave, tender words, in manly deeds, in public
generosities and  private heroisms.  Selfishness
and worldliness shrivel and scorch in its white
heat, and the hearts of the nation are welded
together as the heart of one man. We are, as
we never were before, a united North. Sectional
animosities, local hatreds, petty rivalries, are swallowed up in the deep sea of universal brotherhood,
16*                       x




370          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
whose boundless extent is only made more imposing by the few traitors who are scudding under
bare poles over its heaving bosom.
There is another benefit which we would not
inaugurate civil war to procure, but in which,
since civil war has, unsought, reared his horrid
front among us, we will rejoice and be glad.
We shall, for a little while at least, be spared our
Fourth of July literature and oratory. A certain
map of the United States, probably in possession
of a good many of my readers, is adorned along
its borders with various pictures, one of which is
labelled, "An American showing to the Sovereigns of Europe the Progress of his Country."
The American stands, with one foot on a bale of
goods, pointing to the-steamers, and railroads, and
schoolhouses, and churches which mark the landscape. Louis Philippe, Victoria, Nicholas, and a
mob of kings and queens, with their crowns on,
crowd around him, mouths agape, eyes staring, in
the most intense and unroyal astonishment and
admiration.  In England the picture might be
relished as a clever caricature, but it comes too
near the simple truth for home consumption. It
is evidently sketched in perfect good faith, and is
the expression of a widely prevalent, not to say
universal feeling. We have thought, and have
not always exercised the modesty which good taste
would have suggested in saying, that
"We are the greatest nation
In all creation."




OUR CI VIL WAR.             371
No more of this for the present. We will,
indeed, congratulate each other in a quiet way,
among'" own folks," (as I have just been doing,)
on our many virtues and large capabilities, but we
will let our spread eagle go into winter quarters.
We will cease for a while to ring changes on our
"unexampled prosperity," our "commerce whitening every sea with its sails," our ingenuity filling
the world with its products, our cities springing
up in the wilderness, our great and glorious Republic, laying hold of the Atlantic with one hand
and the Pacific with the other, crowning her head
with the snows of the Northern mountains and
dipping her feet in the waters of the Southern
seas. We have had a sudden check in our career.
A strong man armed is at the door. He of our
own blood which did eat of our bread has lifted up
his heel against us. A brother has struck at his
brother, -nay, worse than this, a man has done
treason to his mother. The children whom she
has nourished and brought up tenderly have rebelled against her, and striven to cut down her
strength. Shame and confusion of face belongs to
us all, - that our soil should have nourished, our
skies spanned, and our airs sustained a treachery
so base.  We are in a death-grapple with our
own, and a most glorious victory, as surely as the
most disastrous defeat, bears in its bosom the seeds
of a profound sorrow.
Again, the cost of war is undoubtedly very




372          COUN~TRY LIVING.
great. It takes a good deal of money to begin
with, and a good deal more to carry it on, and not
a little to repair damagres after it is over. We
must contract an immense debt, but our children
must look to it. It will be their business as well
as ours. The vices, the virtues, and the debts of
the fathers are visited upon the children. The
head of Louis the Sixteenth paid for the viees and
extravagances and ambitions of the Grand Monarch. This seems an ungracious consolation, but
it is not.  Our children have the best of the bargain at that. We take the laboring oar. The
price is the price of liberty, not of slavery.  If
we dance for them the dance of death, they may
consider themselves well off if they only have to
pay the piper. But what is this debt?  Where
does our government get the money which it borrows?  It is loaned by our moneyed institutions,
our banks, our citizens. And who are the government? Citizens likewise. The people are the
sovereigns. Through their servants, chosen from
and by themselves, they borrow of themselves
twenty or a hundred millions of dollars, and there
is a great debt; but the money is owned as well
as owed by themselves. In their capacity as government, they owe money to themselves as people,
- which is, to say the least, a rather Pickwickian
kind of debt.
Moreover, a debt may be the measure of credit.
If a man owes a thousand dollars, it shows that




OUR CIVIL WAR.              373
his property is valued at that sum. The fabulous
millions of the national debt of England is the
lowest sum at which her pecuniary value to the
people of England can be rated. This strong,
pecuniary, direct interest which the people of
England have in the perpetuity of their government, is one of the bulwarks of her Constitution.
It helps to keep her throne steady when the Con
tinental thrones are tottering. Her debt is her
life insurance. The moment her government is
destroyed, the debt is wiped out, and the people,
her creditors, are bankrupt. So Louis Napoleon,
wise in his gener ation, issues his coupons, and, by
making the people the creditors of his dynasty,
makes them at the same time its firmest supporters.
And what becomes of the money borrowed by
the government?  It levies and maintains and
transports armies, and provides the munitions of
war. That is, it goes to the farmers, and butchers, and bakers, and grocers, and tailors, and
shipbuilders, and gun-makers,- straight into the
pockets of the people, just where it came from.
It is not sunk in the ocean or burned in the fire,
as a general thing. It is still in circulation, which
is the only thing money is good for.
And how is this debt to be paid, or upheld?
By taxation.
Our people have generally been opposed to
direct taxation, both politically and socially. If




374          COUNTRY LIVING.
we want a Sunday-school library, instead of tak
ing the money and buying it out and out, we get
up a fair. That is, we put ourselves to a world
of trouble to make a wilderness of knick-knacks,
that we don't want, and nobody else wants, and
then we pay twenty-five or fifty cents for the
supreme satisfaction of going to look at them, and
three or four dollars more for the pleasure of littering our houses with them, and then we are
ready to buy our library, - at five times the cost,
and five thousand times the trouble, that it would
have been had each one quietly handed in his
share of money in the first place. But each one
won't quietly hand in his share, - he won't hand
it in at all, and so you must have a fair, or go
without.  You may demonstrate twenty times
over that one course of action is better than another to accomplish a certain end, but so long as
people will not adopt the one, and will adopt the
other, what are you going to do?
In respect of taxation, the case is somewhat
similar. We pay duties on silk, and tea, and
wine, and so, ordinarily, make shift to support the
government without finding it out. But now the
times are becoming extraordinary, the newspapers
are discussing taxation, the bankers shut up their
vaults demanding taxation, financiers announce
the imperative necessity of taxation; now, therefore, let us have done with this child's play. So
long as a question of finance is but a question of




OUR CIVIL WAR.               375
here or there, we may prestidigitate it harmlessly
enough, making the burden disappear under any
pleasant name we choose, or even turning it into
a profit as featly as Mr. Hermann disposes of his
pocket-handkerchiefs, or makes a gold dollar out
of a walnut; but when it is a question of here or
nowhere, it is time to demand new measures and
new men. Is it supposed that this people is an
infant, to be frightened by a, bugbear? Are we
a nation of' pagans, to fall down before a molten
image?  Do we shrine our gold and silver in
the Holy of holies, with a " These be thy gods,
O Israel"? True, a forced taxation, a taxation
levied by alien publicans and sinners, an arbitrary,
unjust, and unrighteous taxation, we refused to
submit to eighty years ago, and we have never
repented of it since; but a tax self-imposed, im-,posed to insure the triumph of a cause in which
all our religion, all our loyalty, all our honor,
everything that is dear and sacred in life, nay,
even life itself, is concerned, should be hailed, and
shall be hailed, with acclamation.
It is true there are not wanting those who will
bemoan their heavy taxes, who seem already to
see their golden eagles putting forth the wings
which they are to take to themselves, in order
to fly away; but surely they are in a frightful
minority, and if they are not, they ought to be.
What in the world is money good for, if not
for just such a crisis as this?  It brings comfort




376          COUNTRY LIVING.
and luxury, and, to a certain extent, position and
power; but what are all these to a man whose
only child, the heir of his house and heart, lies
mangled and dying on his own door-stone?  Ali
that he prizes his money for, then, is the prompt
and efficient aid it may bring to the suffering boy.
Does he clench his hands and knit his brow, and
mourn over the expense which the surgeon's visit
will bring, and lament that the best mattress in
the house will be thoroughly spoiled, and wonder
if molasses and water won't do instead of French
brandy? Yet this is what we should do to groan
over taxes. Taxes I Every dollar that goes to
put down the rebellion is stamped with the image
and superscription of the Lord. Surely, surely,
never was moliey so honored, so glorified,- so
sanctified! A handful of gold-dust, a scrap of
rag-paper, moistened with our tears, hallowed by.
our prayers, may help to usher in the millennial
-year! Shall we grumble? Shall we not rather
lay our hand on our mouth, and our mouth in the
dust, and cry, "Will God in very deed condescend to accept so poor a gift? "  Behold heaven
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Him.
All the beasts of the forests are his, and the cattle
upon a thousand hills, - nay, the earth and they
that dwell therein; yet he is willing to associate
us with himself. As the father suffers the tiny
fingers of his son to grasp the basket, that his little
heart -may please itself by fancying that he helps




OUR CIVIL WAR.               377
carry it, and to learn early thle luxury of doing
good, so God, who spake, and the work of creation
was done, who commanded, and the heavens, and
the earth, and all the host of them stood fast, permits us to have part in the great work of the
world's redemption.  And we are to draw back,
are we? We will clutch a little longer this gold,
which of itself is as worthless as the stones of the
street, - which depends for its value solely upon
what it can do for us! We shall make a poor investment. We can, if we will, convert our money
into stocks, and bonds, and mortgages, and houses,
and carpets, and pictures, and laces, and plate, and
jewels, and we shall receive such consideration as
these will bring — when they are bought at the
price of manhood; and then we shall die, and they
will all fall off from us, and we shall go, naked
souls, into the next world, and who knoweth what
shall be after us under the sun? Or, on the other
hand, we can turn our money into loyalty, and
trust, and truth, and righteousness, and self-sacrifice, and magnanimity, and devotion to a just
cause, succor to the oppressed, strength to the
weak, a cup of cold water to Christ's little ones,
and so our money becomes for ever and ever a
part of ourselves, and the best and noblest part,
from which neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor
things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any
other creature, shall be able to separate us. O,




378         CO UNTRY LIVING.
blessed are the rich in these days, who can bring
all the firstlings of their flock for a sin-offering, and
blessed are the poor also, for a pair of turtledoves and two young pigeons may be brought forward unto the Lord, - nay, even the tenth part of
an ephah of fine flour shall be an acceptable sacrifice. Do we know that such an opportunity will
ever again be offered us to speed our wealth or
our poverty on an errand so grand? Let us not
sink below the height of the hour.
And there is another advantage which, at such
a juncture as this, taxation has above any and
every other method of raising a revenue. They
are round-about. This is direct. The disadvantage of a fair compared with a contribution-box
is, that in the first you get something which is
reckoned an equivalent for your money, - only a
flimsy toy, perhaps, but enough to conduct away
all the pleasure which the downright giving of
your money would have afforded you. You have
neither the satisfaction which arises from a "good
bargain," nor the glow which springs from the
gratification of a benevolent desire. So, even if
we could put down the rebellion by increasing
omir imports, and by other expedients of that nature, we should miss half the pleasure. We should
not be giving money to our country, we should
only be paying high prices for tea and sugar.
But with direct taxation, there would be no gobetween to rob us of all our benevolences by way




OUR  CIVIL  WAR.              379
of commission.  We should stand face to face
with the object of our solicitude and our love.
Our hearts would be warmed with the'consciousness of actual contact. We should take joyfully
the spoiling of our goods, knowing that we were
laying up treasure in heaven and on earth for ourselves and for the generations that are to come.
If there are any with whom these considerations
have no weight, they may perhaps be influenced
by another. When the nation shall give its voice
in favor of taxation, there is no appeal. You
will have to pay "whether or no."  It is only
whether you will do it jubilantly, reckoning your
cross a crown, counting it all joy to spend and be
spent in so glorious a service, and so receive back
full measure, pressed down, shaken together, and
running over; or whether you will hold back,
have your will throttled, your pride humbled, your
purse taken by storm, and get nothing for it after
all.
It remains now for the people to choose what
they will do. W6 can rise up against taxation,
save our money, and lose the day, lose the age,
lose God's grand " occasion floating by," but what
shall be the profit of such a gain?
"Gained - the infamy of fame,
Gained - a dastard's deathless name,
Gained - eternity of shame.
"Lost - desert of manly worth,
Lost -the right we had by birth,
Lost —lost -freedom for the earth."




380          CO UNTRY LIVING.
And it may be that such a withholding will
tend to the very poverty that we dread, the only
poverty which our ignoble souls can feel. " Wisdom for a man's self," says Bacon, " is, in many
branches thereof, a depraved thing.  But that
which is specially to be noted is, that those which
are lovers of themselves without a rival are many
times unfortunate; and whereas they have all their
time sacrificed to themselves, they become in the
end themselves sacrificed to the inconstancy of fortune, whose wings they thought by their self-wisdom to have pinioned."
God forbid that any of us should, standing, as
we soon shall stand, on the outer shore of the
world, and looking back over the land which was
before us a land of golden promise, see it lying
behind us a land of bitterness and desolation, -or
hear ringing in our ears a voice whose tones would
find its echo in our own hearts: ".Mene, Mene,
Tekel, Upharsin; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. Thou art weighed in' the
balance, and art found wanting."
I see but one reasonable objection to taxation.
" We are willing," it may be said, " to pour out
of our abundance, or of our poverty, to put down
the rebellion; but we are not willing even to dole
out our hard earnings to enrich dishonest contractors, lazy clerks, grasping sutlers, wasteful Congress-men, and the whole herd of unclean beasts
who feed and fatten at the public crib." But, in




0 UR CIVIL WA R             381
the first place, if we are going to wait for purity
before we provide power, we may as well give
up the whole matter at once. To suppose that
the affairs of this nation are to be carried on exclusively by disinterested patriots, is to obey Dogberry's injunction.  We may lament the fact, but
it must be recognized as a fact, and as a fact disposed of, that the world's work is, to a remarkable
extent, done with unwashen hands. It would be
a happy day for us that should see every man in
our government a Washington, but that day will
not dawn this many a year, and meanwhile we
must do the best we can with our present material.
Wheresoever the carcass is, there will the eagles
be gathered together. Wherever there is a possibility of making money without work, or wherever
salary is disproportioned to service, there the morally lame and the mentally lazy will inevitably
congregate. Wherever a business is so vast that
it must be managed by large masses of men, with
the certainty of ample remuneration, with the contingency of perquisites, and a presumption of impunity for unfaithfulness arising from the very
magnitude of the work and the numbers of the
workmen, there, until the Millennium, the great
unemployed, the unlucky, the indolent, the shabbygenteel, the unpractical and the impracticable,
Micawberian waiters for something to turn up,
lounging heirs for whom the dead men's shoes are
not yet emptied, and unjust stewards who cannot




382          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
dig, and are ashamed to beg, but not afraid to
steal, will come up like a young lion from the
swellings of Jordan, with a paw for every contract,
and a claw for every clerkship, and a maw for
every salary that can be wrenched or wormed
from the powers that be. Even with the best
intentions on the part of those with whom rests the
responsibility of selection, some ring-streaked and
spotted souls will smuggle in and usurp the places
that should be filled only by those who walk in
white.  Some dishonest and unscrupulous men
will rankle there, -men who will feather their
own nests, though they pluck their country callow
to effect it;- harpies that pollute what they cannot devour,- gulping down the very shew-bread
from off the altar, - thrusting their three-pronged
flesh-hooks even into the caldrons of sacrifice,
and bringing thereby shame and dismay upon the
whole priesthood.
But let it not be forgotten that this is not a
feature peculiar to our government. Such men
there are in all countries, a disgrace to their age
and to the race. Probably our ratio of rascalage is not larger than that of any other nation.
Probably it is smaller than most. This is surely
consolatory.
Then, also, it is evident that, after all, it is comparatively a small part of our whole expenditure
that is thus wasted, though it be large in the
aggregate; and in the working of all machinery,
allowance must be made for friction.




cUR CI VIL WAR.             383
Thus much, supposing the evil to be irremediable; but it is not.  There is no need of all this
venality.  The fact of its past existence furnishes
no argument for its present toleration, and if the
imminence of taxation shall rouse us to overthrow
it, taxation will be no disguised blessing. It is
the duty of every man to file a complaint, and to
follow it up. Let him insist that taxation and
purification and retrenchment go hand in hand.
When the burden of taxation falls, let the burden
of corruption be lifted, and all burden will disappear. To which end, let every man take hold of
the lever that is nearest to himself. If each one
would turn on the water of cleansing to his own
corner of this Augean stable, the work would soon
be done; and then, and meanwhile, let him keep
a sharp lookout - careful, but not captious, watchful, not meddlesome — that the republic receive
no harm at the hands of those servants whom his
voice and vote helped to set in place. Tocqueville
sagaciously says, that a government will be just
as corrupt as the nation will let it be; and if the
virtuous sit quietly at home, and do nothing to
preserve or reinstate public purity, they are unfaithful to their duty, and have no right to cast
the first stone.
As for retrenchment, there are a thousand ways
in which something can be accomplished, and
much will be accomplished if we all put our shoulders to the wheel. Congress is showing a faint




384          CO UNTRY'LIVING.
disposition to walk in the right path, and the
disposition should by all means be encouraged
and strengthened.  The franking system exhibits
symptoms of rapid'dlemise, and there are many
other systems there. that will bear looking into,
or rather that will not bear it, and should die the
death.  The office hours of the clerks of the departments are, I think, from nine A. M. to three
P. M., and it is a current saying among them,
that it is nine till it is ten, and three as soon as
it becomes two; and if the public work can be
done with such application, or want of application,
surely it can be done by fewer clerks, who should
render exact service; and the lowest salaries are
$ 1,200 per annum. The salaries of our higher
officers are not munificent compared with the income of the chief' magistrates of other nations.
The President is perhaps the worst-paid man in
the country, but no salary can be any offset to the
discharge of duties so onerous, and though I do
not think " we the people" have the shadow of
a right to ask for its reduction, yet, in this crisis,
it seems to me that the moral effect of a voluntary
surrender of a part of it would be so happy, that
it would amply compensate for any self-denial that
might be involved. (I trust, however, that Mr.
Lincoln will not feel constrained by my suggestion.
I certainly shall not press it to his embarrassment.)
But what we want is that President, Congress, and
people shall give a long pull, a strong pull, and a




OUR CIVIL WAR.              385
pull altogether, to get the nation out of the mire.
Money, muscle, and mind are what we need. The
muscle is on hand, the mind and money are in the
country, and must be produced. Money we can
all, or almost all, save and spare; for nearly all
of us live a great way above our necessities. I
do not advocate penuriousness. I believe in fine
houses, fine estates, fine horses, and fine clothes.
I believe it is everybody's duty to live as elegantly
as he can, consistently with his other duties. I do
not believe that the God who made everything
beautiful in its season, who painted the wing of
the butterfly, and burnished the scales of the beetle,
and tinted the petals of the rose, and pencilled the
outlines of the hills, who ordered his temple to be
made of the purest gold, the most precious wood,
the most costly scarlet, - who everywhere delights
to lavish magnificence, - I cannot believe that this
Being is most appropriately worshipped by an uncouth and homespun life. But there is a beauty
higher than speaks to the eye, and beautiful things
are beautifuil only as they converge to this higher
beauty. There is nothing more stately than the
human body, and he who disfigures it by abuse
or neglect, is guilty of sin; but more beautiful
than Apollo is the soldier, lying face forward on
the battle-field, grimed with powder, torn with
shell, smeared with blood, — since for a sacred
cause he dared to die. So we may not only innocently, but laudably, adorn our houses with the
17                      Y




3bt8         COUNTRY LIVING.
treasures of art and the wonders of skill, surrounding ourselves with whatever speaks to the eye or
the ear of loveliness and grace; but when, in order to do this, we sacrifice the soul to which they
all minister, we rob God. We misuse his bounty.
We utterly mistake the meaning of his gifts.
They have failed to do their work for us. Instead
of drawing us up higher, they have thrust us
down lower. We are sensual, when we ought to
be spiritual. We value means more than ends.
We take the hints and signs of beauty for beauty
itself. We put the incidents of life for its essence.
And what shall it profit us though we gain the
whole world and lose our inward worth?  When,
on the other hand, we sacrifice these adventitious
graces and glories that the soul which they grace
and glorify may live, - that virtue and truth and
justice may not want a man to stand before the
Lord forever, - we show a just sense of the relative value of things, and approve ourselves worthy
to be the depositary of liberty for the world.
So it irks me to hear such assertions as that a
member of Congress, or any other man, cannot
live in Washington, or any other city, on less
than three thousand dollars a year. Cannot live?
Have we not classical authority for saying that
men,an not only live, but cultivate the muses, on
a little oatmeal?  In land where corn is ten cents
a bushel, and coal fifteen, is it to be said that a
man must die of cold or hunger unless he has




OUR CIVIL WAR.               387
three thousand dollars a year?  It is absurd.  He
may not be able to give French dinners and champagne suppers, and japonica parties, and to maintain a style of corresponding expenditure; but let
him diminish his expenses. Let him put a knife
to his throat if he be a man given to such appetites. When his country is struggling for life, is
it any discredit to him to live narrowly for her
sake?  Is it not rather a credit?  Does he not
thereby give a pledge of his sincerity and his love?
What was generous living becomes heartless extravagance. What would be meanness is heroism.
Was Washington ashamed to exhibit before the
minister of the great and gay French court " that
plain and simple manner of living which accords
with the real interest and policy of men struggling
under every difficulty for the attainment of the
most inestimable blessing of life, liberty"?  Did
Luzerne, dining off the shoulder of bacon, the
almost imperceptible greens, and the contingent
apple-pie, conceive a low idea of the cause whose
champion could thus, for its sake, deny himself the
luxuries which fortune had laid at his feet? And
if, when the public good demands a reduction of
any salary, its recipient profess himself unable to
live on less, let him consider whether his life is
absolutely essential to the nation.
"I trust we have within our realme
Five hundred as good as hee."
Of course, retrenchment should be accomplished




388          COUNTRY LIVING.
wisely and justly, not injudiciously and indiscriminately.  There is that withholdeth more than it
meet, but it tendeth to poverty. Let the people
insist that abuses shall be abolished, mistakes rec
tified, extravagance discouraged, dishonesty punished. Let them be scrupulously honorable and
careful and economical in all their private measures, effectually frowning down whosoever, in public or private, loveth and maketh a lie, and then
welcome taxation! welcome self-denial! welcome
poverty, and hardship, and suffering, and death,
if, peradventure, the Lord will establish upon us
the work of our hands.
Civil war cannot be so fatal to a nation as many
have painted it. Cruel and bloody, indeed, must
be the fight when brothers fall to blows; but England has thriven on such warfare. Her soil has
been drenched again and again with the blood of
her children. More than thirty years the white roses
met the red in deadly conflict. It was eighteen
years from the battle of Edgehill to the coronation
of Charles the Second, and to-day, in all the arts
of peace and war, England stands foremost among
the nations.  When mad clouds clash in the summer sky, there is fierce strife, - the flash of deathdealing lightnings and the terrific cannonade of
the thunder, — but the earth looks up all the
fresher, the air sweeps round it all the clearer
afterwards. So we will hope that the storm shall
be as a savor of life unto life. The bolts must




0 UR CIVIL WAR.             389
fall, yet our moral atmosphere shall be purged
of its miasms, and our beloved land bloom with
a vet unknown freshness, in the light of the Sun
of Righlteousness.
"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth
peace, good-will toward men," sang the host of
heaven pouring through the pearly gates of the
Celestial City, and floating over the hill-tops of
Judaea to proclaim to a ransomed earth the glad
tidings of her redemption, - the birth of the Son
of God.
But when the fulness of time had come, and
the child that was born in the city of David had
grown into his manhood, and great multitudes followed him, what words fell on the listening ears
of his disciples, whom he was commissioning to go
to the lost sheep of the house of Israel?  "Think
not that I am come to send peace on earth; I
came not to send peace, but a sword."
Was then the song of the angels but a song of
sirens, or did the Saviour Christ repent or despair of his Divine mis/sion, and in anger resolve
to cut down the rebellious people whose hearts
were unsoftened to his love? Not so. James, a
servant of God, and of the Lord Jesus Christ,
has bridged the chasm, and in one short sentence
showed us how the stern declaration of Christ consorts with the resounding jubilance of the heavenly
hosts: " First pure, then peaceable."
So the clash and clangor of arms that suddenly




390          CO UNTRY LIVING.
cleft the usual din of our busy streets, and rent the
silences of our remote hills, and ruffled the quietness of our Puritan Sabbath, was the Gospel
the good spell, the good story - of peace, rendered
in a different, harsher, but not less emphatic lan
guage than that used by the angels. The sword
cuts, through the dense forest and the tangled
undergrowth, a highway for the Prince of Peace;
the "feverish lips" of cannon thunder out the
preparation for the Gospel of peace, and mighty
men of war herald the millennial year.
Never has our country seen a more glorious
day than that which dawned but now, bloodred in the east, but radiant with white brilliance
in the high noon which surely follows. It is the
day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice
and be glad in it. It is the day which prophets
and kings desired to see, but have not seen. It is
a day so pregnant with- grand possibilities, that it
were better for a man that a millstone were
hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned
in the depths of the sea, than that he should, by
an ill-timed forbearance, or a culpable negligence,
or an unmanly timidity, or a criminal love of
peace, turn back its near-approaching chariot,
and veil it again in the shades of a once-dispelled night.  Thrice and four times accursed
shall, he be who cries peace when there is no
peace! We feared, as we entered into the cloud,
but we have heard a voice from out the cloud,




OUR CIVIL TWAR.            391
saying, "This is my beloved Son," and though
we can see those divine lineaments but darkly,
we fear no longer. The cup which our Father
has given us, shall we not drink of it?  There
may be bitter drops, but we know that love has
mingled it, and life lies in the draught.
Many a lover of his country has'sought to allay
the fierce excitement and prevent its culmination in
blows, not for his own sake, not for his country's
sake alone, but for the sake of the world; some
with the blush of shame, some with the tear of
pity, some with the sigh of regret. "What will
the world say? " has been often asked, and oftener
thought. What will the despotisms say, to whom
we have been hitherto a reproach and a terror?
Where shall the struggling peoples look when the
star that has shone upon them for a hope and a
guide goes out in darkness? But take courage.
The star has not yet gone out in darkness, and
has no thought of going.  Those who sorrow,
and those who exult over our downfall, are alike
premature, for we are not down yet by a great
deal. On the contrary, we have been gradually,
but continually, coming up higher, advancing, with
many retrograde steps it is true, but with steady,
average progress, to an elevation whence, looking
down on the smiling valleys that lie behind, and
the grim abysses that yawn before, we can yet,
for the right's sake, with blanched cheek it may
be, but with unfaltering step, "mnarch right on,




392          COUNTR Y LIVING.
content and bold." We could not always have
done it. Not every people can do it now.
As for the world, it cannot judge us. It is not
in a position to judge-us. It has had no precedent.
England, which knows more about us than any
other nation, - which has become familiarized
by constant intercourse and a common language,
and endeared by similar aims, family quarrels,
and the strong tie of blood, - even England
cannot foyrm a clear and accurate conception of
our position.  It is the most difficult thing in
the world for her to gain a tolerable knowledge
of our geography, much less of our political and
social institutions, their bearings and necessities.
When intelligent English travellers go home and
write books about America, in which they put
Boston and Georgia side by side in the same
class, either as both cities or both States, how
can the rank and file of civilization be thought
capable of judging what the reefs are on whicb
we have struck?  It is undoubtedly true that
a very large majority of those who are watching
the progress of our struggle from abroad, watch
it as the trial of Republicanism. If we go down,
many brave hearts panting for fi-eedom will.
throb heavily, and wicked eyes, watching over
tyrannies, will gloat on our destruction; but it
is not Republicanism, not even our Republicanism, that is on trial for life, as people will presently learn.  If the nation should die to-day,




OUR CI VIL WAR.             393
(but it will not,) our experience of self-government, so far from being a failure, would be a
signal success. It has given us near a century
of freedom  and happiness.  Under it we have
grown from  a little one to be a great nation.
It has been to us a blessing, and only a blessing.
It has not only ministered to our material prosperity, but it has educated our people to a degree of self-respect and self-control, which, low
as it seems at times and in places, disagreeable
as it often is in its manifestations, is yet, in
both quantity and quality, unparalleled among
the nations. What other community would have
held itself on the brink of civil war as we did?
Two forces, -one drawing itself up in battlearray, the other quietly pursuing the avocations
of peace,-one dishonestly appropriating to itself for hostile purposes the vast wealth which
belongs to both, the other half unconscious, and
half apathetic when conscious, and, even when
aroused, contenting itself with remonstrance, and
held in check, through its loyalty to law, by
a power which it despised, - day after day,
week after week, month after month, stood face
to face and held their peace. It would seem as
if a rash act, a palpable blunder, an innocent
mistake, might at any moment hurl them into a
bloody embrace; rash acts, blunders,. and mistakes there were in lamentable profusion; feeling ran high; hearts swelled with indignation;
17*




394          COUNTRY LIVING.
each felt that the other was trampling on his
dearest rights, (at any rate each said so, and we
know that we spoke truly,) and we flamed up to
a white heat of passion; but there was no outbreak. And shall it be said of such men that
they are not fit to govern themselves?  They
have governed themselves, and, by their coolness and patience and wisdom, have shown that
they were eminently fit to govern themselves.
If the Republic falls, nevermore to rise, let no
despot's hand point to the place where it stood,
as a warning to future republics.  Nothing in
its life will have become it like the leaving it.
No circumstance of its life- hitherto can so
strongly prove the inherent strength  and dignity, not of man simply, but of men, as this
present struggle, even if it should be unto
death. The long forbearance of the people that
would not believe in treason and matricide;'the
simultaneous and spontaneous.uprising of a people
when treason and matricide spoke out in words
that could no longer be misunderstood; the sudden tempest of love and courage and sacred fury
that swept through a people when it saw the ark
of its liberties endangered, — all this shall go
down to the future, and men shall rejoice and
tyrants shall tremble at the memory of our Republic, even should it be only a memory.
No, the struggle which convulses the nation
does not aiise from evils which inhere in its sys



OUR CIVJTL JAR.              395
tem of government, and develop naturally from its
workings.  Our Republic is attacked from without, not from  within.  The rark vine which
twines its tightening coils around her, sturdy
trunk and lusty limbs is no parasite, but a foul
foreign growth.  It has indeed struck its roots
into the same soil, and spread out its tendrils to
the same breezes, but the one is a vile and shortlived weed, and the other a tree of life, whose
leaves are for the healing of the nations. The
contest arises rather from the purity and power of
Republicanism. A form of government less antagonistic to human bondage might longer hold
on the even tenor of its way, but Republicanism
is so founded on the dignity of man, the rights of
man, the sacredness of man, that it cannot exist
even with a vestige of despotism. It must have
free course to run and be glorified, or it must stop
running altogether.  We have an anomalous civilization. On the one side freedom in its purest
form, on the other, slavery in its purest; and the
genius of the one is so diverse from that of the
other, that the two cannot coexist. All the forces
of the one spring upward to. light and air. All
the forces of the other drag downward to darkness and death.  It was the inconsistencies between their own struggle for their rights and a
refusal to grant the same rights to their Negroes,
that led our fathers to banish slavery from New
England. But slavery, banished from New Eng



396              COUNTRY LIVING.
land, throve in a sunnier clime, side by side with
the freedoln of the austere North. Now the harvest is ripe. Let the mowers whet their scythes,
and the reapers put in their sickles, for one or the
other shall surely fall.  Multitudes, multitudes in
the valley of decision. For the day of the Lord
is near in the valley of decision.
Is this a day for a man to afflict his soul? to
bow  down  his head as a bulrush, and to spread
sackcloth and ashes under him?
Though "it was but a dream, yet it lightened my despair
When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right,
That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease,
The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height,
Nor America's one sole god be the millionnaire.
No more shall commerce be all in all, and Peace
Pipe on her pastoral hillock a languid note.
" And as months ran on and rumor of battle grew,'It is time, it is time, O passionate heart,' said I,
(For I cleaved to a cause that I felt to be pure and true,)
It is time, it is time!...... I wake to the higher aims
Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold,
And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames,
Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told;
And hail once more to the banner of battle unrolled!
Though many a light shall darken, and many shall weep
For those that are crushed in the clash of jarring claims,
Yet God's just wrath shall be wreaked on a giant liar;
And many a darkness into the light shall leap,
And shine in the sudden making of splendid names,
And noble thought be freer under the sun,
And the heart of a people beat with one desire;
For the peace that I deemed no peace is over and done.
By the deathful-grinning mouths of the fortress flames
The blood-red blossom of war with a heart of fire.




OUR  CIVIL  WAR.                 397
"Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind,
We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still,
And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind;
It is better to fight for the good, than to rail at the ill;
I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind,
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assigned."
In summing up the pros and cons of this war,
the deterioration of the men who are engaged in
it, and the general backsliding of society, are usually set down on the per contra side.  It is taken
for granted that morality and religion will suffer,
both with those who go and with those who stay.
And having thus put matters in train, and given
everybody to understand what is expected of
him, and that if he sins it won't be very much his
fault, seeing it is the prescribed thing to do under
the circumstances, it is very likely soldiers and
society will answer our expectations, and duly deteriorate according to the statute for. such case
made and provided.
It seems to me, however, that all this is entirely
unnecessary. I see no conclusive reason why our
men should come back to us any worse men than
they went away, or why.they should find us any
worse men than they left us. It seems to me, on
the contrary, that this is the time of all times
when we should expect, and lay our plans for, and
strive to bring about, a great revival of religion,such a revival as we have never yet felt or heard
of, so that even a whole nation shall be born into
the kingdom of heaven in a day.




398          COUNTRY LIVING.
It does not prove anything to the purpose, that
wars always have been attended with and fol
lowed by demoralization. It is a long lane that
has no turning. America is not a land of precedents. She is herself an unprecedented nation.
She has never scrupled to turn over a leaf because
it was new, and there is no reason why she should
now. If wars always have been demoralizing, it is
high time they should stop being so, and there
never was a better occasion to change this thing
than the present. There is nothing in the origin
or aim of this war to demoralize any one. Nobody has to slur over his convictions, that his
patriotism may go scot-free. Nobody is required
to forget his conscience in his country. Nobody
is forced to merge his Christianity in his citizenship. Conscience and patriotism, right and might,
all march under the same banner, and fight on the
same side. It is such a war, as has, perhaps,
never been seen outside of "Paradise Lost."  It
is a rebellion of wicked weakness against righteous
strength. It is slavery, ignorance, cruelty, barbarism, writhing under the iron tramp, and striking
its fangs into the mailed heel, of freedom, knowl —
edge, and universal human progress. Every man
and boy who goes down to battle can go in the
name of the Lord. It is no personal,animosity,
no sectional jealousy, no party pique, that should
whet the sword, and clean the rifle, and nerve the
arm.  A great cause is endangered, a great princi



OUR CI VIL WAR.            399
ple is attacked. The heart of humanity is struck
at, the battle is for the world.
And who are they that go down to the battle?
Not, as a general thing, beardless boys, with habits
and principles yet in the gristle; not the off-scouring of society mainly, though that undoubtedly
drizzles in to a considerable extent; but men with
mothers and wives and children at home, - men
who have been educated in our free schools, who
have worshipped God in our sanctuaries, who have
voted in our town-houses, and taken newspapers,
and paid taxes, and tilled farms, and built engines,
and talked politics, and heard lectures, and given
parties. They are men who have had their position and reputation in society and church; and
because they have left mother, and child, and
church, and shop, are they to begin forthwith to
swear, and drink, and turn vagabond, robber, and
roue?  Is this the strength of our boasted free
institutions? Have we been trained to a morality
that must be laid aside with the civilian's dress,
and is vice the prerogative of regimentals? Is our
religion a two-year-old child, to fly at the sight of
a uniform? Is our virtue so weak that it must be
bandaged, and bolstered, and coddled with herbtea and water-gruel, to keep the breath of life in it,
and the moment it is let out into the rough-andtumble of the world, it droops and dies? Then,
verily, we may as well have no virtue at all, and
we have made much ado about nothing.  It has




400         CO UNTRTY LIVINVG.
always been our boast and pride that we raised
men. It seems now  that we have turned out
nothing but overgrown boys. Liberty, education,
self-control, individual responsibility,, are the birthright of American freemen, and the upshot of it
is, that when they are put to the test they cannot
stand it! -Thrown upon their manhood for three
months, or three years, they have not sail enough
to keep going, nor ballast enough to keep steady!
Then let our free institutions go by the board. If,
after near a century of working, they can show no
better result than this, away with them. Despotism could hardly do worse. Let the war go, too.
Let Davis come, and Floyd, and slavery, and
stealing, and the age of pewter and pinchbeck
and all uncleanness.  A few rods more or less
deep in the slough of infamy will not make much
difference. Let us write on the door-posts of our
churches and our school-houses, " Mene, Mene,
Tekel, Upharsin," and then lock the doors, and
board up the windows, and begin new.
It is not so. I do not believe one word of it.
The eighty years' trial has not proved such an
abortion. The mountain has not labored to bring
forth such a mouse. I would not so slander our
institutions and the brave men who have gone forth
to defend them. Our soldiers are not mere machines, working according to the hands of the conductor, though they are that; they are not miserable conscripts, drafted and dragged into a quarrel




OUR CIVIL WAR.              401
of which they have no knowledge, and in which
they have no interest; they are no vain and empty
braggarts, clutching after a vague, glittering, worthless glory. They are men, and soldiers because
they are men. They are soldiers of their own free
will and choice, —soldiers of opinion and sentiment and settled purpose. They are fighting because they have decided that it is right to fight.
They understand what they are fighting for, and
what they are fighting against, and when they are
going to stop. For a specific purpose, for a limited
time, and the better to gain their objects, they have
wisely and freely delegated the partial control of
their movements to certain leaders; but they are,
every man of them, a sovereign, wrestling for a
kingdom which is his by divine right, and which
usurpers are trying to wrest from him by infernal
wrong. He is fighting for his children, and his
children's children, to the third and fourth generations. He stands in the van of a vast nation.
Behind him is a great multitude, whom no man
can number, - men and women and little children,
with eager eyes fixed steadily on him, - silent souls
of the coming ages, awaiting from his hands their
doom, - home, hope, happiness, all that makes life
desirable and heaven possible;- above him, the
heavenly hosts bending over the battlements of
the Celestial City, and hell from beneath moved
to meet him at his coming. Is this a day for a
man to relax his hold on truth and righteousness?
z




402          COUNTRY LIVING.
Is this a situation that should tempt men to slotn
and wickedness and riot? Are these the men that
shall be found wanting when weighed in such a
balance?
"I am  shamed through all my nature," when
I hear this talk of demoralization. Let us not for
a moment admit the possibility of it. Let us not
pave the way to vice by announcing that we expect
it, and don't let us expect it. Let us not put up
sign-boards and finger-posts to ruin, and map out
the country for travellers?  Let no soldier —let
no Massachusetts soldier especially - fancy that
his State will make a mock at sin.  She will be
lenient and tender and forgiving and considerate,
but not indifferent.  If he forgets or forswears his
manhood, he is no son of lhers. She does not nourish and bring up recreants. Let him remember
that every profane and obscene word loosens the
bond of love and sympathy between him and her,
and diminishes his claim to her respect. If he
steals, or lies, or drinks himself drunk, or in any
way approves himself a villain, he disgraces her.
He shames the mother who bore him, and is by so
much a bastard, and not a son. Let him not think
that, because he has bared his breast to bullet and
bayonet, he shall cover the multitude of his sins.
She will give him praise for bravery; but she will
by no means clear him of guilt. Brute courage
Ahall not save his soul from death, and the'time is
-Jast when it might save his memory froii shame.




0 URP CIVIL WAR.            403
Watchful, if loving eyes -are upon him. North or
South, in cottage or tent, Massachusetts expects
every man to do his duty. If he is a traitor.to
that, let him not suppose that his death will bring
any loss. However afflictive it may be to his family, however disastrous to himself, his State cannot mourn him. She has no tears for such as he.
Sombre hearse and nodding plume, prayer and
dirge and funeral pomp, there may. be, for, though
her blood runs base in his veins, it is still her
blood; but for the heart-felt sorrow, and sore regret, and bitter lamentation, that rise to heaven
when " a good man meets his fate," there shall be
a sense of relief and quiet acquiescence. The air
is purer by so much as his foul breath polluted it.
I know that a great deal of scum has probably
floated southward in the army; but, if reports
approximate the truth, there must be a greater
deal of good, pure sap underneath.  Many of the
unthinking and unprincipled are doubtless there,
but there must be a great number of those who
have always had the credit of sober thought and
guiding principle; and it is the nature of matter
that, when light and darkness meet, darkness must
give way. A pretty pass things have come to, if
a lamp excuses itself from shining because it is in
a dark room! What is the good of having a
lamp, if it can shine only in the daylight?  True,
light has its limit, but one little candle can throw
its beams very far in a naughty world; and I




104          COUNTR Y LIVING.
should think, according to accounts, that there are
church-members enough in the army to Christianize the world. Now let them show whether the
great revival of 1857 did anything.  Let them
show whether praying and Christian profession
mean anything. If they do, every one of these
men should be a missionary. He should not only
keep himself pure, but he should be a disinfectant.
All around him the air should be sweet and the
sky clear. Let his good works be manifest, that
his Father in heaven may be glorified. Never,
never had men such a charge to keep as have our
Christian soldiers.  They are emphatically the
Church militant.  They have laid aside every
weight of business and affection and ease; let
them lay aside the sins which easily beset thenim,
and they may become apostles and martyrs. ". Dieu
et mon droit, " I Christo et Ecelesice,"- every watchword that has quivered on the lips of saint and
hero, and is tremulous still with the love and faith
and tears and blood that it has embodied, - may
tremble on his lips, and find them not unworthy.
If he fall, he falls from a greater height to a lower
depth. Let him remember that New England is
on trial in his person. Though every other soldier
should grovel among beasts, his mother State bids
him among the rest, in shape and gesture proudly
eminent, stand like a tower. Though all others
be faithless, let him be alone faithful. Whoever
denies the Lord, she bids him not deny the Lord.




OUR  CIVIL  WAR.                   40.
She sends forth her sons to be
A glorious company, the flower of men,
To serve as model for the mighty world,
And be the fair beginning of a time.
She bids them lay their hands in hers, and swear
To break the heathen and uphold the Christ,
To ride abroad redressing human wrongs,
To speak no slander, no, nor listen to it,
To lead sweet lives in purest chastity,
Not only to keep down the base in man,
But teach high thought, and amiable words,
And courtliness, and the desire of fame,
And love of truth, and all that makes a man."
So fulfilling her behests, forever green shall be
the laurel on his brow, or, if God so will it, the
turf upon his grave.
All this our soldiers will do and be, God and
ourselves helping them. I do not believe we shall
injure or discourage them, by putting the standard
too high. If they are the men we take them to
be, they will'rise to the emergency. They will
justify the confidence we repose in them, and magnify their office.
What is our duty? First, insist on their having plenty of good food. Hunger is a great demoralizer. Secondly, insist on their having good
clothes to wear. Rags are the ally of the Devil.
Thirdly, provide them with good reading. It is
the idle hands into which Satan puts mischief.
This is more directly in our power than the first
two. Those we can only attain by roundabout
measures, by furnishing money which must go




406          COUNT' Y LIVING.
through a circuitous channel, and by sharply
supervising the supervisors, at the risk of being
often in the wrong ourselves, but with the certain
result of inducing a more thorough attention than
if we were indifferent.  Government, however,
supplies no ration of books, and the soldiers must
look directly to the people. Let them not look in
vain. Fourthly, we should stop prophesying evil
concerning them.  Prophecies often work their
own fulfilment. Fifthly, we should be good ourselves, and this is of the first importance. If we
are at any one time under any stronger bonds
than at any other to do justly, to love mercy, and
to walk humbly before God, it is now. If any
exigency can call out repentance and faith and
love, it is this. If any terrors of the law can persuade men, if any judgments can avail to turn our
feet to the testimonies of the Lord, it is the terrors
and the judgments that are abroad to-day. Our
sin entered into the world, and the death of our
beloved ones, who have been smitten down in the
beautiful promise of their youth, in the glorious
ripeness of their manhood, came by that sin. Sin,
sins, are the remote and the immediate cause of
these calamities. Some of the ramifications we
can trace, others subdivide and disappear from our
view, but not from God's. We pandered to iniquity. We have again and again clipped our
birthright, and sold the fragments for messes
of very watery pottage.  We have lightly es



oUR CIVIL WAR.             407
teemed our heritage of freedom. We have made
us idols of gold, and silver, and bank-stock, and
Yankee ingenuity, and material progress. We
have waxed fat, and kicked weak nations, and,ranted against strong ones, and exalted our own
to the heavens. We have strained out without
much ado the few little gnats that strayed into
our foreign wine, and have swallowed, without
wincing, the herds of camels that swam in our
home-brewed ale. We have protected our citizens abroad, not so much from the sacred motherhood of country, or a chivalrous and Christian
magnanimity, as from a tumid pride; for where
our citizens have received infinitely worse treatment within our own domains, we have held our
peace. Our reputation before the world was not
at stake; it was only a family matter, so we
hushed it up. As a people we have minded our
personal affairs to the neglect of national. We
have betrayed the trust which God reposed in us.
We have been false to the blood of our fathers
shed in battle. We have ignominiously suffered
the nation's weal to be managed by unworthy
hands.  Becoming disgusted with the trickery,
and venality, and selfishness, and sordidness of
politics, we have given politics over to knaves, till
the very word politician has become a term of
contumely. Instead of going into the den, and
clearing it ont,swe have stood off, and, like Pilate,
washed our hands, as if to forego action was to




408           COUNTRY LIVIATG.
forego responsibility. And here we are. Slacking sail, sleeping at the helm, neglecting our
soundings, we find ourselves among the breakers.
Sowing to the wind, we reap the whirlwind.  The
chastisement of our guilty peace is upon us. Now
let us change all this. Patriotism demands that
every man, and woman, cleanse his soul from sin.
A nation is no nobler than its individuals. Every
man who cheats, or slanders, or steals, adds to the
aggregate guilt of the nation, helps to put it beyond the pale of God's protection, and is so far a
traitor. Every voter who neglects to vote helps
to put his country into evil hands, by not exerting
his utmost to put it into good hands, and is so far
a traitor, for
" On life's current he who drifts
Is one with him who rows or sails."
Let every man see to it that the sin of the nation lies no longer at his door, that his iniquities
shall not draw down the wrath of God upon it.
Let every man, by his own upright dealings,
by his own unblemished manhood, show convincingly that he is on the side of God and his country. This is the way in which things ought to
work, and this will effectually dispose of demoralization at home.
The events of the last few months have carried
us forward by centuries. It is like one of those
great convulsions that mark the geologic ages.
After each upheaval, the earth clothed herself




OUR CIVIL WAR.               409
with new creations, each higher than the last.
She never went back on one day to the rude
organizations which were the glory of the preceding day. So we, owing to this great fissure in our
prosperity, this great change in our moral atmosphere, have to adjust ourselves to new conditions.
We shall press towards the mark for the prize of a
higher calling. We owe to God grander lives,
holier hearts, than we owed him last year.
O the glory of this new-born freedom!  O
this splendid rebound from servile acquiescence!
To have thrown off the intolerable burden! To
cower no longer before an overshadowing evil!
To rise up disenthralled! The green withes that
bound us snapped asunder at one blast of earnest resolution, and we walk joyfully, unfettered.
The thing which we greatly feared is come upon
us, and lo it is bursting with good. That fearful looking for is over. The terrible evils, war,
secession, disunion, that have been impending so
long, are here, and it is a joy to meet them face to
face like a man. We know now what their grim
features are like, what their boasted power is. *We
can grapple with them now in unrelaxing deathgripe, and we feel an added strength with every
effort. The very struggle has a stern delight.
The very consciousness of fighting for the longoppressed righteousness is an inspiration.  If by
any sacrifice we can atone for the past, if any
efforts can make restitution, they shall not be
18




410          COUNTR Y LIVING.
wanting.  God accept the penance and forgive
the sin.
Here then we stand on vantage-ground to do
battle with sin. We have the prestige of victory.
Our consciences are aroused. Our moral sensibilities have partially recovered tone.  Now strike
while the iron is hot. Now for great awakenings,
revivals, not of emotions merely, but of religion,
morality, and virtue. Let Christians bestir themselves, and the day is theirs. God's occasions are
floating by. As we have dealt with one sin, so let
us deal with every sin, - meet it, throttle it, away
with it.
It must be so. It will be so if Christians do
their duty. With nations, as with individuals, the
cross leads to the crown. Suffering is Heaven's
agent. It is coming out of great tribulation that
we shall wash our robes and make them white in
the blood of the Lamb. This sickness is not unto
death.  It is to eternal life, if we will have it so.
Trouble is perhaps an indispensable agent in the
formation of character, and we ought to come out
of this trouble like gold seven times tried. We
ought to be a greater and a wiser nation, a nobler
and an honester people, better men, better Christians. We ought to develop those heroic virtues
which spring only in troublous times. We shall
do it if Christians will be strong, and quit themselves like men.
We have every encouragement to effort.  All




OUR CIVIL WAR.               411
hearts are stirred and softened.  The air is full of
the voice of prayer. Christian mothers pray now
as they never prayed before, and mothers that
never prayed before pray now.  The tens of
thousands gone from us went from homes. They
were husbands, brothers, sons, the centres of
happy circles, the light of tender eyes.  Love
filled their knapsacks, and bade them  farewell.
Love could even make their hearts strong with
words of good cheer; but love cannot turn aside
the swift lead or the flashing steel.  God alone is
great.  He is love's last, as he should be love's
first resort.  When love can do no more, love
turns to God with earnest prayers and tears.
Every son in the field can be wrapped around
with an atmosphere of prayer. Every mother will
pray for her son, and because there are some there
who have no mothers to pray for them, let every
mother pray for all the motherless, and because
every man who fights for our country belongs to
us all, let all pray for all. Let no soldier be able
to say or to feel, "No man cares for my soul or
body."  Let the lines between God and us be
kept constantly open. Pray that our soldiers and
our citizens may be true to their cause, may be
kept from evil ways, may wax valiant in fight,
invincible in  virtue.  And this praying spirit
should not be suffered to run to waste. Let it,
from an emotion, be hardened into a principle,
a habit. Let it be penetrative and aggressive.




412          COUNT.RY LIVING.
Let all sorrowful hearts be gently led to Christ, if
they do not know the way thither.  Let the tender
promises of his Gospel fall like dew upon desolate
souls. Let our churches and our prayer-meetings
be places where grief can find consolation, where
love shall find sympathy; ignorance, instruction;
loneliness, society; discouragement, hope; repentance, assistance; and the feeblest germ of good,
that dew and rain and sunshine which shall make
it spring up and bear fruit an hundred-fold.
Let us be mindful of the bodily and spiritual
welfare of those who are gone out friom us, and
let them constantly feel that we are mindful of it,
that no forgetfulness or negligence of ours give
them excuse, or occasion, or temptation to falter.
Let us be equally mindful of those at home, remembering that we are all children of a common
Father.  Let us keep ourselves pure.  Let us
pray without ceasing. Let us do with our might,
and this affliction shall work out for us a far more
exceeding and eternal weight of glory. We shall
go on from strength to strength, till in all, and
through all, and over all, the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.  Hallelujah!
It should continually be kept in mind for our
consolation, that this war is a consequence, and not
a cause. It is the conclusion, not the commencement of a series. It is accepted, not initiated.
It is recuperative, not destructive.  I do not, of
course, mean to say that, in the Divine plan, it




OUR CIVIL WAR.              413
may not work largely as a cause; I spealk of the
fact as it presents itself to us. Florence Nightingale says that all disease is more or less a reparative process, an effort of nature to remedy a process of poisoning, or of decay, which has taken
place weeks, months, sometimes years beforehand,
unnoticed. So this war is but the subsequent of
disease. We may not survive, but it is not the
war that will kill us, but what has preceded the
war. The disease was in our blood. War is but
the reaction of our sound humanity against it. So
long as we went on peacefully, we were heaping
up wrath against the day of wrath.  The war is
only saying to the disease, "Thus far shalt thou
go, and no farther."
They, therefore, who lament it as barbaric, heathen, a relic of paganism, are not wise. It is all
that. War is always that. An appeal to force is
always the resort of savage, immature natures.
But the war does not make us savages. It only
reveals the fact that we are savages, — a thing
which it behooves us to know. The war is not
a going back. We were back before. We have
never been forward. It is true, we thought we
were. We fondly believed ourselves in the van of
civilization and Christianity, and it may have been
so; but civilization and Christianity were not so
far advanced as we thought. This war shows us
where we were, and we cry out as if it had put us
there. On the contrary, it has not only not re



414          CO UNTRY LIVING.
tarded us, but it has given us a good lift forward.
When we come out of it, if we come out at all,
we shall be a great deal farther on than we ever
were before. There will be deterioration in detail,
but we shall be on higher ground, with firmer feet,
clearer vision, stouter hearts, wiser heads. Agriculture, manufacture, and commerce may be crippled, but life will be purified and energized. We
shall be greatly improved by being distilled.
What we have to fear in this war is not rebel
batteries, or foreign bulletins, but God's sovereignty. Providence is on the side of the heaviest
battalions only when the heaviest battalions are on
the side of Providence. Nothing has yet been
revealed in the. ranks of our opponents, actual or
possible, which should dishearten us. So far as
anything we have to fight against is concerned, I
do not see that we need anticipate anything but
ultimate, and perhaps not very distant success.
But what I fear is, that more is meant than meets
the ear, or eye, or pulse of the great body of the
people. I tremble when — and only when - I
remember that God is just. The woe that I dread
does not threaten us from the South, nor from
over the sea, but from the justice, the inexorableness, of God. He is a sovereign. His broken
laws must be appeased. Who can stand in the
day of his anger? I fear lest we have sinned so
deeply, that he will hurl against us the thunderbolts of his wrath, till we be utterly consumed.




OUR CIVIL WAR.              415
It is not only the sins of the past, but of the present, that rise up in judgment against us. It is not
only slavery, and the vices which it engenders and
occasions, for which we must give account, but an
unclean spirit, whose name is Legion, who is preying upon our integrity. We have abused the good
gifts of Heaven. We have accounted the blood
of our covenant an unholy thing, and have done
despite to the. spirit of grace. Liberty has grown
to' license on our hands. Loyalty has given place
to treachery.  Our democracy is rampant and
reckless. Our free press is blatant and bloody.
Our free speech seems sometimes to have grown
idiotic. Our enterprise runs mad. Proofs multiply daily. The course pursued by some of our
newspapers is almost enough to make one sigh for
a single hour of good, thorough Austrian despotism. Love of country, fear of death, honor, prudence, delicacy, sense, seem to be swallowed up in
the desire to see, or to hear, or to tell some new
thing. Nothing is too gross for our greedy ears.
Dinner-table talk is spread out with Boswellian
minuteness on a daily newspaper, and the proprietor thinks it is a feather in his cap. Some fly of
a Congressman chances to hear a Cabinet conversation, and, with an itch for immortality, hops
straightway into the House of Representatives,
and twitters it all out. An exposed place turns
up near Washington, through which a hostile
army might safely and speedily march to our hurt,




416          COlUNTR Y LIVING.
and anon a dolt turns up alongside to proclaim it.
It is no matter that the information may enlighten
rebel brains as well as ours. He who can tell a
piece of news is the man for the times, even if we
smart for it afterwards. If anybody can, no matter how, find out anything, no matter what, his
first duty is to run and tell of it, no matter to
whom. The possession of news seems to give a
factitious importance. He who can worm himself
into the inside of anything, and then turn it wrong
side out, is a hero. It would seem as if holding
one's tongue were a deadly sin. The gossiping
propensities of village sewing-societies have long
been the theme of sarcastic comment; but sewing-societies and female tea-drinkings are deaf
mutes, compared with the great Gab Club into
which American society seems to have resolved
itself.
The war has also developed an equal inability
or disinclination in our people to mind their own
business, and let other people's alone. Civil fingers do not pry into the military arcanum quite as
much as they did before the 21st of July, 1861.
Then we were carrying on the war swimmingly,
knowing a great deal more about it than General
Scott, marching down to Richmond with drums
beating and colors flying, sweeping the South from
Washington to New Orleans, when, of a sudden,
Bull Run brought us all up standing. We rubbed
our eyes, and concluded that some things could




O UR CIVIL WAR.              417
not be done as well as others, cleared ourselves by
laying the blame vigorously on everybody else,
and have since been more modest and reticent.
-But the evil, abated,.is not destroyed. Officers
swell and strut in sudden importance at Washington hotels, and their men lie drunk in the streets.
A quartermaster sends provisions to troops, and
of thirty commissioned officers not one is to be
found in camp. Congressional busybodies, instead
of stopping at home on Sunday, and saying their
prayers, must needs tramp down to see the fight.
It may or may not have been necessary to fight
the battle on Sunday, but it certainly was not
necessary for civilians to leave their churches, and
stand agape while it was going on. It is pleasant
to reflect that at least one of them atoned for his
folly in the prisons of Virginia.'The petty schemes and petty ambitions whicl,
are constantly transpiring in our own ranks are far
more alarming than anything which has yet transpired in the rebel ranks. It was to be hoped that,
in such an emergency, all merely personal interests
would be forgotten in the general good; that every
man would put his shoulder to the nearest wheel;
that fitness would be the only recommendation to
place, and propriety the only inducement to measures. But political chicanery cannot be given up;
so there is bickering about rank, and parleying on
old party distinctions; and, while the country is
on trial for life, men dare talk on the bearing which
18*                     AA




418          COUNTRY LIVING.
such and such a movement will have on the next
Presidency!
There is another thing on which I look with
horror, as calculated to bring on us swift destruction, and indicating that we deserve it. I mean
the indulgence of what is called the war spirit.
The war spirit is utterly hateful. Just so far as it
acquires dominion over us, it will drag us down to
death. We may count it all joy that we are reckoned worthy to resist unto blood striving against
sin. We should count it all joy that God has
given us spirit ahd strength to rise up at last
against the iniquity which has overshadowed us so
long. We should feel a righteous satisfaction in
the struggle, so far as it is a struggle of right
against wrong; but coarse exultation, ghastly jesting, lust of revenge, pride of conquest, gloating
over the anticipated punishment of the rebels,
this is of the Devil, devilish. I see prints in the
shop windows which seem to me like the handwriting on the wall. I see little boys dressed in
Zouave costume, and brandishing tiny swords, and
I am sick at heart.  We are throwing a meretricious glare around the war, and concealing its true
issues. We ought not to veil from ourselves the
fact that it is solemn, terrible, momentous. We
cannot comprehend the grandeur of the interests
involved,< but we can gird ourselves to present
duty, lay aside every weight and the sins wvhich
so easily beset us, and press forward. Levity is




OU'R CIVIL WAR.             410
the result of ignorance or bravado. What I want
is, that we should be awake to the emergency.
We should put down the war-spirit, and put up
the Christ-spirit.  It is a question, not of the
strength of the people, but the virtue of the people,
which is their strength. Are there ten righteous
men to save the city? I believe there are, notwithstanding unfavorable indications. The scum
comes first to the surface, but there must be a mass
of pure liquid below, which will make itself felt.
The unanimity of the people is astonishing. Their
spirit of self-sacrifice is noble, and not to be mistaken. Only when we have bestowed our goods,
and given our bodies to be burned, let us not withhold that other gift without which this will profit
us nothing. While doing our utmost, we should
pray our utmost, for we are in the hands of God,
and not in the hands of man. We must sanctify
ourselves, if we would keep the sacred fire burning. We should humble ourselves before God,
repent of and turn from our sins, purify our motives, and count all sacrifices nothing, if at last,
tried seven times in the fire, we may stand before
Him, accepted in the beloved.
No one lesson is more clearly taught by passing
events, than the danger of tampering with iniquity.
Our fathers knew  and felt and acknowledged
that slavery was wrong. Its glaring inconsistency
with the principles for which they had fought, and
on which they proposed to found a great nation,




420          COUNTRY LIVING.
was as obvious to them as it is to the Garrison
Abolitionists.  They would gladly have exterminated it at once; but there was strong opposition,
and, in view of its expected speedy natural death,
they decided not to throw it summarily over the
ship's side, but to roll it gently down an inclined
plane — just as surely into the sea. Instead of
making it go at once, they stood upon the order of
its going. They compromised with the sum of all
villanies. They admitted it into the Constitution,
not by name, but by a well-understood euphuism.
They meant no harm. They meant only good.
They conceived themselves to be acting wisely and
rightly. Nothing was further from their thoughts
than the subsequent sudden rise and increase of
slavery. They supposed that, though they had
not killed it outright, they had but smoothed its
pathway to the tomb. What was the result?
The demoralization of the country for years, the
rebellion and treason that now stalk abroad unashamed, the blood shed in Baltimore and in
many a battle since, the earthquake shock that
quivers through all the land, - these make answer
to-day, " Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth
death." It was a little sin, -only a little yielding to wrong, for a little while, - but it has
brought forth death.
Not that we should reproach our fathers for incorporating into our national existence one baleful
element; but that we are to take warning from




OUR CIVIL  BVAR.            421
them. They had not our precedent and our lesson. They saw only as a mustard-seed this evil
which we see as a broad-spreading tree. It was
so small a compromise that doubtless it seemed to
them scarcely any compromise at all. But we
have seen how the little worm has gnawed at the
life of a nation, and carried sorrow and a fearful
looking for into thousands of families. Their motives were doubtless upright, but God's laws in
action are modified only by each other. A mother's tenderest love ruins her child by mismanagement just as thoroughly as if it were the intensest
hate. Isabella of Spain, a pure and lovely woman, a most just and gracious monarch, cherished
in her inmost heart the welfare of her people; yet
she fastened upon their necks the heavy yoke of
the Inquisition, under which they have groaned,
being burdened, now these four hundred years.
God did not hinder her from laying the axe at the
root of her kingdom, because she verily thought
she was doing him and it service. It may be said
that the original concessions were necessary; that
the war of the Revolution, with all its sacrifices
and sufferings, would have been in vain without
some such compromise; that the States would
have refused to become United States, and so the
nation would have been strangled at its birth,nay, would not have been born at all.
Here we pass from the known into the unknown. We do not know that anything of the




422          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
sort would have happened; and if it had halppened, we do not know that it was not the very
best thing that could have happened. We might
have failed to be a great power, but God is able of
the very stones to raise up powers unto himself.
"It is necessary for me to go, it is not necessary
for me to live," was Pompey's reply to the weeping friends who would have held him back from
fate. It is necessary to do right; it is not necessary to be a nation. What might have happened
had liberty been brought out from the struggle
with no blot on her escutcheon, we do not know.
She came out with one damning spot thereon, and
what has happened we do know. Sin, finished,
has brought forth death, and the end is not yet.
No. Wrong is wrong forevermore. The corrupt tree brings forth corrupt fruit, however carefully planted and constantly watered. Purity of
motive may avail the actor before God, but not
the act in his world. Consequences follow relentlessly on the heels of causes. A fact once a fact
is forever beyond our reach. What may come of
it we do not know, and it is not our province to
ascertain. We are responsible only for the fact.
Of course, I speak only of actions that have a
moral quality. There are many courses of conduct which have, of themselves, no moral quality,
and their eligibility depends entirely on the probable consequences; but when two ways are open,
one of which is right, and the other a little wrong,




OUR CIVIL WAR.             423
we are to choose the right, notwithstanding the
evils which threaten to follow.  The choice is
ours, the consequences God's. We see the evils
behind the right; we do not see the evils behind
the wrong; but the inexorable logic of God's laws
will ultimately reveal them. It may seem to you
that the wrong is but for a moment, and its effects
imperceptible; but some fact of which you never
dreamed may be travelling towards you with
swift, unerring feet, and its spear-touch shall
change your dwarf into a giant. Your little sin
shall receive an impulse that will drive it on continually, perpetuating, enlarging,' and multiplying
itself. The men of the Revolution could not see
an idea which lay hidden in Whitney's brain, but
at the appointed hour it came forth, and changed
the face and fate of slavery. The moment you do
a wrong thing, no matter though your motives be
pure, no matter even though you are unconscious
of the wrong, that moment you have put yourself out of the line of God's righteous sequences;
you have disturbed relations, destroyed balance,
broken law, and you know not where you are, nor
whither' you are drifting. But do the right thing,
and, though you may not see the way far before
you, you may surely know that you are in harmony with God, you are parallel with the line of
his laws. You are precisely where you ought to
be, and who is he that shall harm you, if ye be
followers of that which is good'?




424          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
But this "logic of events" has two sides. It
is powerful for good as for evil. An act done
with bad intentions may result in good, just as
truly as act done with good intentions may result
in evil. Let this be our hope to-day. A most
wicked war is waged by the South for the support
and extension of slavery. Glory to God in the
highest, and on earth peace, if it shall result in
the abolition of slavery. Our fathers did not take
up arms for independence, but they achieved it
before they laid them down. We did not enter
upon this war for the purpose of abolishing slavery, but every day strengthens the probability that
that will be the issue. It is not the end which the
government has in view, but it may be the end
which God has in view. Destiny marches on,
and if slavery stands in the way, slavery must go
down. There would, indeed, be a sublime, a
divine justice, in destroying this overshadowing
wrong by the very instruments relied on for its
indefinite increase. It-was begun with set purpose of wickedness, but let not him that girdeth on
his harness boast himself as he that putteth it off.
Once begun, the war and its issues passed out of
the hands of its beginners forever. It Mwill go on
according to its own irresistible laws. The voice
that evoked is powerless to lay it. The hideous
monster may become the terror and the destruction of its creators. Nor, if this is indeed in the
decrees of God, can men at the North, any more




OUR CI VIL H7WAR.            425
than mobs at the South, prevent it. The Northern mind is gradually becoming familiarized with
the thought, and the more we look at it the more
desirable it seems. The Republicans spoke truly
in affirming that they did not design to meddle
with slavery in the slave States; but twenty, fifty,
a hundred years of change have come since then,
and different premises require different conclusions. Slavery has meddled with them. Slavery
has reached out its leprous hand to strike at them,
and to pollute the fair heritage they would leave
to their children; and it is to be decided now how
best to " crush the wretch."  It is a difficult and
a dangerous problem, but it will be solved.  Just
how the bands of the oppressed are to be loosened
we do not see; nor how the victims of oppression,
freed from its fetters, shall be freed from its horrors, its vices and ignorance and barbarism; but
the same God that has used this nation to enslave
them, and shall use it to free them, —making
us, free agents as we are in our small spheres,
blind tools to work his will in his infinite sphere,
-can surely make and point out a way to preserve, protect, and enlighten his down-trodden
little ones. We must hurry slowly. We need
not borrow trouble. When the time comes, we
shall have come too.  Our present duty is to
secure and maintain the integrity of the nation.
God will strengthen and fit us for any work that
may result from the prosecution of this work,




~426         COUNTR Y LIVING.
Confident I am, that where one man, a year ago,
considered the speedy extinction of slavery feasible
a;iC desirable, one thousand watch, and wait, and
pray for it now.
Let the war go on, then. If we are not engaged in a righteous cause, may the Lord send us
defeat after defeat, disappointment after disappointment, till we weary of fighting against him, and
return repentant to his ways. I know no such
ethics as " My country, right or wrong! " save, as
has been admirably said, when right, to be kept
right, - when wrong, to be put right. If we are,
as I verily believe, armed with the sword of the
Lord, let us go on, if God please, till every inch
of our soil is free, -free to slaves, free to freemen. Let the Black Hole be cleansed, and thrown
open to the day. Let there be no corner of our
vast domain where man shall not be held sacred,
where his opinions may not find free utterance,
and his person entire safety. The South says she
may be crushed, but she cannot be conquered.
Very well. Let her be crushed, then. Just as
she pleases about that.  The hurt of the daughter
of my people is no surface wound, to be gently
bathed and tenderly bandaged. It is a deep-seated
sore, sending down its malignant influences to the
dividing asunder of soul and spirit, making the
whole head sick and the whole heart faint. If
nothing will avail but the surgeon's knife, let the
surgeon's knife cut sharp, quick, and deep. It is




OUR CI VIL WTAR.           427
better to enter into life maimed, than to die unscathed. Let us be sealed unto God, even though
we be baptized with the baptism of fire. The
North is not to be saved from the South. The
South is to be saved from herself. Her own loyal
sons are to be saved from the foes of her own
household. Her clhildren are to be saved from
the vice that creeps in upon their hearthstones,
and corrupts their blood, and poisons their manhood, and darkens their womanhood. The whole
country is to be saved from the traitors that defile
while they attack it. Every blow struck is struck
for the South as much as for the North. We
strike at the rebels and the. rebellion of the South,
and for the South. The only victory we want is
over her worst enemies. North and South will
alike, though not equally, suffer. We look for no
easy conquest. We are prepared to meet the energy of despair. We anticipate a mortal combat,
but the South must be redeemed. She must be
brought out from the Valley of the Shadow of
Death. Most gladly would we give every son
of hers the right hand of fellowship, and bid him
good luck in the name of the Lord; but if the
wrong can be wiped out only by wiping out the
men who cherish it, and the men who defend it,
God's will be done. The land shall rest and
enjoy her Sabbaths. As long as it lieth desolate,
it shall rest. It is better that a state should be
% desolation than an abomination. Men and wo



d428          COUNTRY LIVING.
nlen'and children, the innocent and the guilty
must suffer alike; but it bath been so aforetime.
It is the immutable law of God, that the penalty
of guilt shall not be monopolized by its perpetrators; but the South grinds in the prison-house,
and the redemption of her soul is precious. Not
revenge, nor hatred, nor pride, but the tenderest
love and the largest benevolence demand the sacrifice. The dumb mouths of her fettered children,
black and white, the generations that wait in the
grand and awful future, the here and the hereafter, all demand this at our hands. The justice
and truth in our own hearts demand it with so imperative a voice, that it were
" better to have fought and lost,
Than never to have fought at all."
Let us make the case our own. Is there a man,
woman, or child in Massachusetts, who would not
rather our beloved State (God bless her!) should
sink into the ocean depths forever, with her freight
of a million souls, than that she should be given
up to slavery? And should we spare any sacrifice to save others from a doom which is so fearful
to ourselves?
Let us come up to the height of this great argument. Let us be strong, and quit ourselves like
men.
I have -seen and heard deprecations of slavery
discussions at the present crisis.  " This war," it
is said, "is not a war for the abolition of slav



OUR CIVIL WAR.              429
ery, but for the existence of the government."
"Antislavery harangues will only alienate some
who are now the stanch allies of the government."  "Many will become disaffected, if the
war is made to turn slavery-ward."  "One thing
at a time." In all of which there is some truth;
but, ever since I can remember, balancing of
powers, parties, and principles has been in vogue,
and this is what we have come to.  Here, an
able leader, a world-renowned statesman, cannot be our candidate for the Presidency, because
his election will drive the South into secession.
There, a measure must be dropped, because it will
alienate certain localities. Such and such a territory must be acquired, at the price of blood, to
conciliate such an interest. Such and such a question must not be debated, because it will inflame
passions.  So we have tacked and shifted anld
beaten, and here we are plump in the middle of
the very whirlpool which our prudence was to
avoid. With all our reticence,. we are precisely
in the position which we were reticent in order to
keep out of. Now let us try another plan awhile.
Let us say what we think, and be straightforward,
and not so far-sighted for consequences, and see
where that will land us. If there are any persons
attached to this government by such a spider's
web that they will.fall off if slavery is brought in,
let them fall. Doubtless the government can stand
it, if they can. A patriotism that, at this late day,




430          COUNTRY LIVING.
will suffer itself to be cut loose from its country by
slavery discussions, is not a thing to be depended
on. Patriotism, to be good for much, must be made
of sterner stuff.
Moreover, what is true in the remarks I have
quoted applies solely to the government. Nobody
wants Mr. Lincoln to issue a proclamation announcing the object of the war to be the abolition
of slavery. It would not be true. The war is,
indeed, a war of self-defence, not of slavery extinction; but this self-defence may come to demand
the extinction of slavery as a " military necessity."
Until then, government has no right to act in the
matter.  " One thing at a time," certainly.  The
one thing on hand now'is the war, which is to be
carried vigorously on to a successful termination.
But it is to be carried on by the government; and
the readers and writers of books and of newspapers generally, the speakers and hearers in popular
assemblies, the hosts and guests in drawing-rooms,
the knots at the exchanges and the village postoffices, are not the government. Down below the
government lies the people; and while the government, at the bidding of the people, its creator and
master, is crushing rebellion, and uprooting treason, and protecting loyalty, and vindicating its own
life, "we, the people," may legally and reasonably
take counsel together that the republic nevermore
receive harm from the hand that strikes at it now.
This is alike our duty and our right. Having pro



OUR CIVIL WAR.              431
vided the sinews of war, we have nothing further
to do with it but watch and wait and pray. It is
not in our power or our province to direct its
processes. Our interference would be intermeddling. We order its existence, but we delegate its
details to other hands. Yet we hold the power.
We are responsible to God, and we shall be held
to strict account by posterity, for the direction
which that power takes. When this people wills
to put away the accursed thing, the accursed. thing
will go. While the armies are fighting, we should
plan. When they come back to us garlanded with
laurel, we should go out to meet them, not only
with grateful welcome, but with the death-warrant
in our hands of the wretch whose wrath they have
bearded, whose cunning they have foiled, and
whose power they have broken.
Has not the accursed thing filled up the measure of its iniquities? Read the roll of crimes. It
is written in blood. What woe it has wrought to
that unhappy race which has writhed under its
grinding.heel, we only a little know. Into the
secrets of that prison-house we cannot penetrate.
Over that bridge of sighs we may not pass. Ever
and anon a miasmatic blast sweeps past our startled ears. A sob, a wail, a shriek, a moan, floats
up the heavy air. A lurid light flames out, a
sickly sunshine, pale, and blue, and ghastly, flickers for a moment on the sluggish bog, but the.
silence and darkness come back. Only the All



432          CO UNTR Y LIVING.
seeing Eye discerns. God forgive us that we'have
been too insensate of our lowly brother's woe, too
unmindful of his weal.  God overrule his long
sorrow to his longer joy, as we believe He has
already begun to do, and turn away from us the
fierceness of His anger.
But what the grim Grendel has wrought for our
own race we better know. All these years he
had been working evil under the sun. Bench,
and bar, and hall, and pulpit, and counting-room,
and field, and fireside, have been tainted with his
presence. He has tampered with public and private honesty.  He has debased, degraded, and
brutalized American freemen, marring their birthright. He has turned their beautiful garden into
a wilderness. The ignorance that disgraces, the
vice that demoralizes, the barrenness that lays
waste the South, are all his work. He has made
our nation a stumbling-block, a hissing, and a byword to the nations. He has introduced discord
and brawling, insolence, rapacity, and murder,
into our national councils. The bitter hatred that
fires the South against the North is all his doing.
The financial derangement that weighs so heavily
and perplexes so fearfully, that plows furrows in
young brows, and baffles the wisdom of old experience, and scatters the fruits of life-long toil, and
imbitters homes with anxieties for the loved,- all
are of him. But the destruction of property, the
stagnation of business, the pressure of want, are




OUR CIVIL WAR.              433
the least evils of Slavery. He has despoiled us
of our honor. He has poisoned our fountains.
He has polluted our holy things.  The widespread treachery that has desolated us like a
plague, and made us feel as if the solid ground
were failing beneath our feet, had its root and rise
in him.  The broken oaths, the piled-up perjuries
that have at once exasperated and saddened us, lie
at his door. What shall a man. give in exchange
for his soul?  What woe can fall upon a nation
like the disgrace of her children?  What is the
price of a mother's blush for her son's shame?
Slavery has done more.  His hands are red
amid reeking. 0 my country! The voice of your
children's blood crieth unto you from the Everglades of Florida and the lowlands of Texas. It
was Slavery that led them and left them there to
die.  It is Slavery that arms brother against
brother to-day. Young wives are widows, young
children are fatherless, old men go mourning to
the grave, matron and maiden are desolate, because Slavery has laid the delight of their eyes in
the dust. From once fair Maryland and royal
Virginia —old and' blighted and effete before
their time under the simioom of Slavery —pale,
still forms are borne back to us, that went out
overflowing with sweet life. The youngest, the
bravest, and the best have fallen. Love and liberty and law, whatever is most beautiful, most
cherished, most sacred, this Slavery demands.
19                     B B




434          COUNTRY LIVING.
The tears of mothers, the silent anguish of whitehaired fathers, the fears and foreboding and
heart-ache that sit by uncounted firesides, mark
where his footsteps have been.
Now let us make an end; for why should we be
destroyed, we and our children? When we scotch
the snake, why not kill him, and have done with
it? We may disable him for a time; but so long
as there is life left in him, there is an accursed
thing in the midst of thee.  0 Israel, thou canst
not stand before thine enemies until ye take away
the accursed thing from  among you.  We may
crush the rebellion, and reinstate peace, but if we
leave slavery where it was, if we simply restore the
statu quo, it will be sowing to the wind, and our
children will have to reap another whirlwind, only
more violent than that which is sweeping over us.
Just as long as slavery is a part of our institutions,
just so long is there a rotten pillar in our temple,
which may at any moment give way, and bring us
to confusion and destruction. To restore peace,
leaving slavery as it was, is to put a ship on her
course when she has been lightened by the spasmodic efforts of "all hands at the pumps," without stopping the hole through which the water
rushed in. It is to weed a garden by cutting
off the witch-grass with a hoe. It is to allay
boiling and steam by pouring on cold water. We
want not only the hold emptied, but the leak
stopped. We want not only treason cut off, but




OUR CIVIL WAR.              435
its roots dug up. We want not only the steam
checked, but the fire put out, so that there may be
no more steam made. We do not want every
generation or every century to be convulsed as we
have been. Let us make a full end. If we stop
short of that, all our work will have to be done
over again at some time. There is an irrepressible
conflict between freedom and slavery. There will
be an irrepressible agitation so long as they both
live. We never can have peace with this element
of discord. We cannot serve God and mammon.
One or the other must be dethroned.  We are not
left in doubt as to which it shall be. Eighty years
of trial have revealed the true aspect and tendencies of Slavery. Arraigned at the bar of civilization and Christianity, the verdict is, " Guilty! "
In her has been found the blood of prophets and
of saints. She is become the habitation of devils,
and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of
every unclean and hateful bird. All nations have
drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication;
and I hear a voice from heaven saying, Come out
of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her
sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues; for
her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath
remembered her iniquities. Reward her even as
she rewarded you, and double unto her double
according to her works: in the cup which she hath
filled, fill to her double.
I know that even slavery has its sunny side.




436          COUNTRY LIVING.
Kindness,- benevolence, affection, devotion, selfsacrifice, are not wanting there.  Instruments of
love as well as instruments of cruelty are in that
habitation. Mail is better as well as worse than
his system.  But a luxurious vegetation springs up
orom the deadly Pontine Marshes. It was a goodly
Babylonish garment, a splendidly massive golden
wedge, shekels of fine silver, that wrought folly
in Israel.  But for all their gold and goodliness,
they were none the less an accursed thing. Moreover, the virtues that exist in slavery do not spring
from it, but in spite of it. Slavery does not cherish them. It only cannot kill them. The destruction of slavery would not be the destruction, but
the cultivation, of every good thing that is found
in it. Its abolition will be the abolition of what is
hideous, an abomination to God and man.' Everypleasant relation, every opportunity for the exercise of every virtue, will remain. Every grace
that makes slavery less repulsive will make freedom more beautiful. Every gem that adorns the
brow of slavery shall be transferred, to shine with
renewed and increasing lustre in the diadem of
freedom. Nothing will be permanently lost, but
that whose loss is infinite gain.
I know that slavery cannot be destroyed without inconvenience, and perhaps positive suffering,
on the part of many who are guiltless of its sin;
but it cannot be retained without immeasurably
greater. It is not a question between an evil and




0 UR CI VIL WAR.-            437
a good, but between an evil and an evil. It was a
great deal of trouble to stop in the enemy's country, take Israel by tribes, the tribes by families,
the families by households, the household man by
man, till Achan was taken. It was a sad thing to
bring Achan, and his sons, and his daughters, and
his oxen, and his asses, and his sheep, and his tent,
and all that he had, into the valley of Achor, alnld
stone him with stones, and- burn him with fire;
but it was a greater trouble, and a sadder thing, to
see Israel fleeing before their enemies, and the
hearts of' the people becoming as water, and the
face of the Lord turned upon them in anger. It
is hard to lose a right eye; but if thy right eye
offend thee, pluck it out, and" cast it from  thee.
It is not only no loss, it is profitable for thee that
one of thy members should perish, and not that
thy whole body should be cast into hell. In the
extirpation of the accursed thing, loyal hearts
may be alienated, undeserved indignation may be
aroused, unoffending persons may suffer, but in
the face of great events " the individual withers,
and the world is more and more." The evil will
be temporary, the good everlasting. So far as we
can, we will help our brothers bear the burden,
but the burden must be imposed. For their sakes
and for our own, for the nation's sake and for posterity's sake, we must take this weight on our
shoulders. The scenes of the last few years, culminating in the horrors of the last few months,




438          COUNTRY LI VING.
must never be repeated. It would be unspeakable
cowardice, and weakness, and selfishness, for us,
with our experience of its effects, to hand this
accursed thing down to trouble future Israels.
No opposition from any quarter must be allowed
to overbear our will to be free. All manner of
opposition from those whose affections or whose
selfishness is interested must be expected, and
met, and put aside. Slavery has glorified herself,
and lived deliciously; and it is natural that the
kings of the earth who have committed fornication
and lived deliciously with her shall bewail her,
and lament for her, when they shall see the smoke
of her burning. And the merchants of the earth
shall weep and Mourn over her; for no man
buyeth their merchandise any more. When the
fruits that her soul lusted after are departed from
her, and all things which were dainty and goodly
are departed from her, and she shall find them no
more at all, it is not strange if the merchants of
these things which were made rich by her shall
stand afar off, for the fear of her torment, weeping
and wailing, saying, Alas, alas! for in one hour
so great riches has come to naught. And every
shipmaster, and as many as trade by sea, shall
stand afar off, and cast dust on their heads, and
cry, weeping and wailing, Alas, alas! for in one
hour is she made desolate. But rejoice over her,
thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets;
for God hath avenged you on her.




OUR CIVIL TVAR.             -439
The constitutionality of slavery has been the
stumbling-block to conscientious and practical
minds.  Recognizing fully its undesirableness both
in a moral and economical point of view, they
have felt that they had neither the right nor
the power to lay their hands upon it. The only
weapon they could bring to bear against.it was
influence. This discrepancy between conscience
and the Constitution has been fruitful of conflicts
between well-disposed citizens. One extreme has
gone so far as to set aside the Constitution because
it recognized slavery. They called it a covenant
with death and an agreement with hell.  The
other extreme accepted slavery against their own
moral sense, because it was found in the Constitution, and they considered themselves bound by that
for better, for worse. Accepting its benefits, they
felt constrained to accept its drawbacks. I must
confess that the Constitution never troubled me in
the least.  It is to be interpreted either by the letter or by the spirit. If by the letter, there is no
recognition of slavery.  The word "slave" or
"slavery" does not once occur. It talks of " persons held to service," &c. It says such persons
" shall be delivered up on claim of the party to
whom such service or labor may be due." Certainly. By all means. Common honesty requires
it.  If a teacher is engaged to teach a year in
Mississippi, and falls homesick, and is so weak as
to run home instead of staying there and braving




440          COUNTR Y LIVING.
it out, stern justice should shut its eyes to his
weakness and force him to return and finish his
school. If a Northern blacksmith refuses to put
on -Southern horses the shoes which Southern
money has paid for, and rushes to his mother
State for help, let her not shield the culprit, buit
set him vi et armis before his forge and anvil. If
a clergyman stealthily and feloniously leave his
parish before his time is out, bearing with him
both salary and sermons, 0 carry him back to
old Virginia, and make him preach his barrelful.
Law and equity alike demand it, and all well-educated people will say, Amen! But what service
is due between two parties whose only contract is
force on the one side and fear on the other?
Who can show the papers wherein God made
over his ownership of his children to any man or
men?  If any slave-hunter can show to the slaveharborer a quitclaim deed from God of Sambo
or Andy, let Sambo and Andy be given up, but
not till then. When service can be proved to be
due, let service be exacted, but let not past service exacted be the proof of future service' due.
That would be to make wickedness self-generative. That would make tile fact of plunder the
justification of plunder. That would turn Christ's
"If any man take away thy coat, let him have
thy cloak also," into "If thou canst take away
any man's coat, it establishes thy claim to his cloak
also," and would make a true thief's motto of
" Whatever is is right."




OUR CIVIL WAR.               441
If it is the spirit of the Constitution that is to
be observed, we are all in delightful harmony
again. The spirit of the Constitution contemplates the speedy removal of slavery, not its increase or perpetuity. The framers of the Constitution did not design to cherish it into vigor and
power, but to break its fall. The safeguards they
threw around it were not to save it, but to make
it die easy! Those who are its firmest supporters admit this. The so-called Vice-President of
the Southern Confederacy admits that the fathers
were antislavery. They could not conceive that
a nation which had just struck the fetters from its
own limbs should rivet them on the limbs of another nation. They could not conceive that liberty should be worsted in a nation which had just
come off conqueror in its name.  Their fear was
lest liberty should degenerate into license. They
saw that there might be danger lest, in their enthusiasm for universal liberty, they might trample on
rights. So far as I remember, there are but three
allusions to slavery in the Constitution. None of
these ordain slavery. All three are rather protective. No unprejudiced reader can, I think,
deny that they are designed as breakwaters against
the rapidly and powerfully advancing tide of antislavery. The framers of the Constitution evidently believed they saw  the signs of slavery's
speedy overthrow. They seem, indeed, to have
feared lest it should be overthrown before the
19*




442           COUNTRY LIVING.
country could* be disentangled from it, and so botn
fall together. Slavery must fall, but they would
let it down softly, and give everybody time to
stand  from  under.  The Constitution was so
framed that emancipation would make not even a
verbal change necessary.  The spirit of the Constitution is essentially antislavery.
So then we are at one both as to the letter and
the spirit, though we get there in a roundabout
way, - somewhat as light travels in that instrument by which itinerant showmen enable the
astonished to read through a brick. By an arrangement of mirrors, the rays of light are so
reflected that the image to be seen, instead of going straight to the eye, turns four angles, but
comes right side up at last. (Opticians will pardon a confusion of popular and scientific language
in this illustration.  Most of my readers are not
opticians, and will not know that everything is not
just as it should be.)
If this should seem a Jesuitical and tortuous
mode of reasoning, I will simply say, that, although
I do not think so, I will not press the argument,
because I do not need it. For slavery neither
by name nor nature is ordained in the Constitution. It is recognized as a fact, but it is not established as a law. Now the recognition of a fact
does not establish a law. It was a fact that there
were persons in the country at the time who were
not free, and, though the fact could be glossed




OUR CIVIL WAR.               443
over, it could not be entirely ignored; but its
acknowledgment neither justifies nor perpetuates
it. To say that a man is not free, is a very different thing from saying that he shall not be free.
"Slaves for want of legislation are not quite
like slaves by law." So long as slavery hid its
noisome head in the Dismal Swamps of the South,
I will admit that there may have been "reason
on both sides," but the secessionists have changed
all that. Slavery, milder their lead, has abandoned
its stirring, silent, watchful passivity, and struck
openly.  Even as a transient thing, the fathers
opposed slavery, but with an opposition which its
expected speedy death made feeble.  Supposing
that it would be confined to the very limited locality where it then existed, and that it would shortly
perish before a rapidly advancing energy, education, and Christianity, they contented themselves
with rocking the cradle of its declining years and
preparing for it decent burial. But even granting
that they legislated with its perpetuity in view,
they legislated only for an institution, not for a
mortal foe. Since their time, slavery has reared
its huge form in open hostility. It has striven to
strike down the pillars of state, unconscious that
its own ruin would be involved therein. It has
attempted the life of the nation.  It has assaulted
with intent to kill. It is guilty of murder in the
first degree. Whatever constitutional right it had
to live, its wicked course has forfeited. It has no




444          COUNTRY LIVING.
more lien upon life than the murderer. Just as
well might he lift his blood-stained hands, and
plead against his gallows sentence the acknowledged right of all men to life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness, as slavery point to the Constitution for protection. A woman promises to
obey her husband, but if he goes mad and bids
her fling herself from the garret window, does her
marriage vow bind her to do it?  A man takes a
pet kitten to'please a departing friend, and promises to cherish it all his life as a memento. But
the kitten turns out to be a tiger, and puts the
man's life and the lives of his children in jeopardy; does his promise bind him? The slavery
which our fathers saw was a playful, if rather
snappish kitten, compared to the ferocious tiger
into which the accursed thing has grown. Now
lifting its fiery eyes from  rending our children's
flesh, and licking its bloody chaps, and growling
its beastly wrath, shall it find safety in the Constitution? Heaven forbid! Rather take the beast,
and with him the false prophets who deceived
them that had the mark of the beast, and them
that worshipped his image, and cast them into a
bottomless pit of reprobation, abhorrence, and infamy, in whose lowest deep a lower deep still
threatening to devour them opens wide.
I am sick at heart when I hear the word compromise. The rumors which have sometimes darkened the air seem to have had no foundation; yet,




0 UR CI VIL WAR.           445
because habit becomes a second nature, I cannot
hear them  without a thrill of dread.  I could
almost wish the word even blotted from our language. Doubtless there is such a thing as a just
and righteous compromise, — a relinquishment of
individual benefits for the general good, - a yielding of desires for the sake of peace, -a sacrifice
of prejudices, tastes, sentiments, interests, in deference to the weakness of others. But the compromises with which Americans are most familiar are
such as to whelm the word in odium. We have
not so much compromised as submitted. We have
deferred to threats till we have earned the reputation of cowards. We have incurred the contempt,
even, of those for whose sake we have given up
our principles. We have sacrificed everything to
peace, and - Heaven be praised! - we have not
got it. Besides being cowards, we have been fools.
We have been deaf to the voice of history, which
has always thundered in our ears that no nation
ever purchased a satisfactory peace. Rome bought
off her foes with gold. We have bought off ours
with honor, and the result is one. Every evil
spirit so exorcised has returned, bringing with him
seven other spirits more wicked than himself. But
the lesson went unlearned. One after another of
our great men has passed through the fire to Moloch, and the cry is still, They come. Compromise
is the rock on which our lives, our fortunes, and
our sacred honor have been stranded, and men




446          COUNT2'R Y LIVING.
dare to speak of it still.  We have seen both its
wickedness and its folly. It has outraged our
moral sense, and has not accomplished anything;
yet there are men who cling to it. Firmness in
the outset might have prevented the evil, and certainly could not have made it any worse than it is
now. If, when slavery threatened disunion, we
had but stood our ground, this quarrel might never
have arisen, or, if it arose, it might have been
speedily allayed. Every time we have staved it
off by compromises, we have been giving it ampler
"f room and verge enough;
The characters of hell to trace."
With every respite, the accursed thing has taken
breath, enlarged its lair, sharpened its claws, and
waxed fat. With every day, the arena of the contest has been widened, its results multiplied, and
its intensity and bitterness increased. It may indeed be, that, in the end, this postponement may
be seen to have resulted in good. It may be that
God will overrule the severity of the struggle to
the welfare of the combatants.  It may be that,
if the question had been sooner and more easily
settled, treason would not have been so utterly
abolished as we trust it now will be. It may have
been allowed to attain its present enormity, that
men may awake fully to its character and consequences, and trample it under foot forever. But,
although it is well enough for us to console ourselves with this reflection, the thing being done, it




OUR CIVIL WAR.              447
is no justification to the authors, and no guide for
the future. It is always right to make the best of
a bad position, but it is never right to put ourselves
in a bad position because we can make the best of
it. Judas betrayed our Saviour to the cross, and
the world was redeemed, but no thanks to Judas.
However much God may overrule our sins to carry
on his own wise purposes, we are not justified in
continuing in our sins.  Our business is to make
straight in the desert a highway for our God, - to
let our eyes look right on, and our eyelids straight
before us. If God can use evil for good, how much
more can he use good for good!
As for compromise, it is not to be so much as
named among us.  Compromise!  Compromise
with traitors! Compromise with men who have
incurred the unutterable guilt of lifting their hand
against their own mother! What fellowship hath
righteousness with unrighteousness? What commnunion hath light with darkness?  What concord
hath Christ with Belial?
It is said that these vague reports are sent out as
" feelers."  Let them be feelers! Let them feel
the indignation and abhorrence and utter loathing
of an outraged people, from whom virtue is not yet
clean gone forever; and, when they have felt this
long enough and strong enough, let them draw
back into their dens and make report.
There is probably less danger of a compromise
now than there will be after the war shall have




448          COUNTRY LIVIJNG.
been finished.  The indignity offered to our' flag
roused the patriotism and chivalry of the people,
and they are not likely to sheathe the sword till
the insult is avenged. The measure of their longsuffering is the measure of their indignation. I
think they are more awake to the importance of
crushing this rebellion than they are to the importance of eradicating its cause. I fear that, when
the war is over, a mistaken magnanimity towards
the vanquished, an eagerness to show to the South
that we are not their enemies, the lack of a full
and clear comprehension of the magnitude of the
issues involved and the bearing thereon of the continuance of slavery, will induce them to deal with
it leniently, and give it a new lease of life. I fear
that slavery now, as after the Revolutionary war,,
dreading immediate destruction, will clamor or sue
for new or renewed guaranties, and that the people, with a false generosity, will grant them, and
so let the occasion for righting themselves pass by.
Slavery will'lie bleeding and helpless at their feet,
and pity for a fallen foe will make them overlook
the enormity of his crimes and the malignity of his
nature. But slavery, in little or in great, loyal or
rebellious, tyrant or suppliant, is always and everywhere accursed, and we cannot stand till we take
away the accursed thing from among us.  Cruel
in power, subtle in weakness, its malign purpose is
ever the same.  Whether by a direct or a winding
way, it goes to one mark.  It preys and feeds and




O&UR CIVIL WAR.              449
gloats on the souls of men. Enslaved and enslaver
are alike its victims. It is of the Devii, and the
lusts of its father it will do. Armed to the teeth
to rob us of our -birthright, and speaking great,
swelling words of vanity, it is no more dangerous
than fawning at our feet and begging for guaranties. Guaranty! Yes, give it one more. Guarantee to it a swift death and a shameful burial. It
certainly seems to me that if, after our experience,
we let things go on just as they did before, we
shall richly deserve to be oppressed and despoiled
evermore. It is not enough to restrict slavery. All
our restrictions will scarcely bring it into smaller
compass than it occupied eighty years ago. But
from that acorn sprang to-day. Experience has
proved that simple restrictions are not enough.
We must not only bind it with cords, but the cords
must be continually tightened to the death.  We
should not only adopt measures that look to its
extinction, but measures that are to bring about
its extinction. Never, never again, must our beloved land receive such a stab as that from which
she is now bleeding. In what manner her redemption is to be accomplished -whether by a skilful
untwisting or a sharp and sudden cleaving of the
Gordian knot -we are neither able nor called
upon yet to decide; but let it be done. It is no
hostility to the South that shall- rid her fair borders
of the accursed thing, nor any true friendship for
the South that shall retain it there.  Fire, and
cc




450         CO UNTR Y LIVING.
earthquake, and a great and strong wind, may
accompany and retard its removal, but they are
of the Devil, and will pass away. And after
them  shall come the still, small voice of the
Lord, to approve and soothe and bless, and then
shall we have that peace whose basis is righteousness, and whose effect is quietness and assurance forever.
So far I had written weeks ago. Now, as I
take up my pen once more on this sad summer
evening, there falls upon my ear the inarticulate roar from a fearful battle-field, —the melancholy moan of wounded men; and the shadow
of a million hearts rests heavily on mine.  Be
pitiful, 0 God!
But the clangor of battle, the deathful embrace
of brothers, the wail of passion and pain and anguish, are the works and words of the accursed
thing. 0 thou accursed thing! The Lord send
upon thee cursing, vexation, and rebuke in all
that thou settest thine hand unto for to do, until
thou be destroyed, and until thou perish quickly.
The Lord make the pestilence cleave unto thee,
until he hath consumed thee from off the land.
The Lord smite thee with a consumption, and
with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with
an extreme burning, and with the sword, and
with blasting, and with mildew, that they pursue
thee till thou perish. The Lord cause thee to




OUR CI'IL WAR.             451
be smitten before thine enemies, that thou go
out one way against them, and flee seven ways
before them. The Lord smite thee with madness, and blindness, and astonishment of heart,
that thou grope at noonday, and be only oppressed, and spoiled evermore, and no man shall
save thee.
0 my people! I call heaven and earth to record
this day against you, that God bath set before you
life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore
choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.
That thou mayest love the Lord thy God, and that
thou mayest obey his voice, and that thou mayest
cleave unto him, (for he is thy life and the length
of thy days,) that thou mayest dwell in the land
which the Lord sware unto thy fathers to give
them.
Alas! sadder than any moan from battle-field,
sadder than any mother's lament, comes to me the
voice of a people that will not be wise, - the voice
and vote of a people that thrusts out the Negro
from its borders, ignores his rights, his claims, his
weakness, and says to the Most High God, "Am
I my brother's keeper? "
What we have most to fear in this war is not
iron rams nor infernal machines, but the stupidity
and wickedness of our own selves. It is this wbhich
prolongs, and must prolong, the war more than
anything which the rebels can bring into the field,
or sail or sink in the water. Such a paragraph as




-452         COUNTRY LIVING.
the following, from the New York Times, is full
of shot and shell:
"A prominent gentleman, and a Republican
office-holder, who has just returned from Cincinnati and other Western points, reports a general
development of an intense anti-Abolition sentiment in all quarters of the West, since the Wendell Phillips riot in Cincinnati. This feeling, he
reports, is based on the popular reputgnance to'Negro equality,' toward which the Abolitionists
are supposed to be tending, - no white man being
so., poor in his own esteem as not to feel himself' better than a Nigger.'"
We have no right to expect peace, we should
have no desire for peace, so long as such a frame
of mind remains. If a year of -war has done no
more for us than this, if a vear of war leaves us
still in such bonds of iniquity, a thirty-years' war
will hardly more than free us, and I pray that the
war may never cease till we are free. I should
esteem as the greatest curse with which this nation
could be accursed, the coming of a peace when
there is no peace. We welcomed this war with
a solemn joy, because we believed its crimson
hand would scatter broadcast over our country
the seeds of a new life. We believed that the
day of the Lord was nigh, when he would either
wrench up the evil or wrench up the nation.
We cannot think the last. We cannot yet read
a handwriting on the wall, " God hath numbered




OUR CIVIL WAR.              453
thy kingdom, and finished it"; nor can we believe that he has shaken this nation from centre
to circumference only to let us settle on our lees
once more, with our taste remaining in us, and
our scent not changed. Surely there is a future
for us only waiting our eye and touch. And if
in the nation the paltry and pitiful idea couched
in the closing paragraph which I have quoted
still obtains, we shall have no peace yet, though
Donelson has slain his thousands, and Pittsburg
his ten  thousands.  That miserable paganism
must be scourged  out of us.  We must be
driven by ten, and ten times ten plagues, if need
be, to' recognize that God hath made of one
blood all the nations of the earth. The hire of
our laborers, which has been kept back by fraud,
crieth, and that cry has entered into the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth.  In his hand there is a
cup, and the wine is red; and we, in such case,
the most wicked upon the face of the earth, shall
wring out and drink the dregs thereof, if we
shut our ears to that exceeding bitter cry.  In
the thunders of the cannonade that roll from
shore to shore, I hear the voice of the Lord:
" Understand, ye brutish among the people, and
ye fools, when will ye be wise?"  Every stalwart foim that sinks down upon the battle-field,
or wastes away in the hospital, is a messenger
from God, saying unto us, " Turn ye, turn ye,
for why will ye die?"  Let the land be sown




454          COUNTRY LIVING.
thicker yet with graves.  Let the bolts of Divine wrath descend swift and ceaseless, till
through all the land there shall not be a house
in which there is not one dead, rather than the
hurt of the daughter of my people should be
slightly healed. If the sword should be sheathed
before slavery receives its death-blow, —before
its vile image falls face downward on the threshold,-before our respect and deference and tenderness for it are obliterated, and its name and
memory uprooted, cast out, and trodden under
foot of men,- I should believe that God had
reserved us to a day of fiercer wrath and more
signal destruction.  I should believe that he
had given us this last golden opportunity to rid
ourselves of an incubus, a shame, a crime, and
that we, failing to embrace it, had incurred the
terrible doom, " He is joined to his idols, let him
alone."
So it seems to me that we are not yet ready
for peace,-even if peace were ready for us. We
shall not be ready for it so long as we go
a-whoring after caste, and color, and other false
gods. The war has not yet done for us what
we hoped, and prayed, and worked for such a
war to do. It has broken up our idols, but it
has not extirpated idolatry from our hearts. If
it should cease to-day, I greatly fear that we
should go wallowing in the mire again to-morrow.
We are not yet, as a people, brought straight




OUR CIVIL WAR.             455
up to an out-and-out abhorrence of slavery for
its own sake.  We have not yet been set long
enough face to face with its barbarism.  We
have not yet been lashed close enough cheek to
_cheek with its body of death.  Its slime and
stench have not gone deep enough into the secret
place where our souls abide, and turned them
sick with loathing.  We execrate the derangement and devastation which it has wrought in our
own homes, but we are not half awake to the
horrible crimes which it has committed against
the wretched race that has so long ground in its
prison-house of despair.  It lifts its head from
bending over their prostrate forms, lifts its hand
dripping with our brother's blood, and turns its
glowering gaze on us, and leaves its baleful finger-prints on our door-posts, and we spring up
shuddering, to thrust it back; but a simple folk,
whose only power to resist was patience to en'
dure, a mirthful people, made pathetic and apathetic through woe, an affectionate people, borne
down, and held down, even, by their affections,
hold out chained hands, dumb hands, beseechingly to us.  Not only because we will not be
slaves, but because they shall be free, should our
swords leap from  the scabbard, and our cannon
belch forth death. Down into the valley -of the
shadow where they have walked so long, that
sword-shine has gleamed, that cannon-roar has
echoed, and carried light and hope for their




456          COUNTRY LIVING.
darkness and dole.  It belongs to us to keep
keen blades and strong arms till hope has become fruition.  It is not enough that we fight
to preserve our government.  We must fight to
purify it.  We should fight not only for our
own lives, but for the lives of these little ones.
We must not only break the heathen, but uphold the Christ. God will certainly not forget
these poor who have cried day and night unto
him.  I tell you  that he will avenge them
speedily, and if he does not avenge them by
us, he will avenge them on us.  If we do not
fight for God, we shall fight against him, and if
haply we be found to fight against God, we shallsurely be on the losing side.
We do ill when we merge the moral aspects of
this war in its political aspects. We must act politically, but we should think morally. And only
when our politics are moral can they be truly politic. Good morals may not always be good politics, but bad morals can never be. We cannot
free slaves because we think they ought to be free,
but we can think they ought to be free. We can
bring our opinions abreast of our powers, and
shoot our desires and designs world-wide beyond
them. We can press, with our public spirit, and
our public opinion, and our private deeds, close up
behind the slowly advancing ranks of our soldiers
and our law-makers, and receive with open hands
the panting fugitives who came to them slaves,




OUR CIVTL WA R.            457
and whom they pass over to us men. These outraged people have demands upon us, though they
do not know it. They are grateful to us, though
we only discharge a late duty. We can and
should recognize their claims. We should pay,
not give.  Liberty is their due. Education is
their birthright. Withheld, it has not been forfeited. More than this, we should urge on our
soldiers and law-makers to greater deeds. Our
thoughts should be continually in advance of them,
though our acts can only follow in their wake.
Let this idle, brutal, and madly stupid talk of
fanaticism, and abolition, and emancipation cease.
Emancipation is the touchstone of this nation.
By this sign shall it be known whether we work
the works of God or of the Devil. The government that we are fighting to uphold is not the old
hulk, dismantled, water-logged, rolling, helpless,
becalmed, on slavery's dead sea of Sargossa, but a
new, strong, oaken-ribbed, iron-clad man-of-war,
with her steam up, her portholes open, her banner streaming, bearing down with her whole fire,
and force, and speed, and strength, upon that
mystery of iniquity; and her sealed orders are to
loose the bonds of the oppressor, and to let the
oppressed go free.
What do these men want, — these denouncers
of fanaticism? That slavery should be let alone?
It will not be let alone. It shall not be let alone.
There is no such thing written in the book of fate.
20




458          CO UNTR Y LI VING.
All the agitation that has been deprecated and
denounced for the last thirty, forty, fifty years is
but a ripple in a wine-glass compared with the
rage and madness, the sweep and swirl of the
heaving, seething, boiling ocean-billows that such
a settlement of the slave-question would stir up.
The infernal dragon has sown his teeth in every
valley, on every hill, by every water-course of the
North, and for every tooth springs up a man, and
every man a Garrison. For every spirit laid by
such exorcism shall come seven other spirits seventy times more rabid with antislavery virus than
the first.  Men talk about saving the country by
putting  down Abolitionism.  Have they  been
asleep for these last thirteen months? Do they
think the American people is the same people now
that it was then? Do they think the old spectre
of dissolution is going to haunt us again, and the
old farce of Union-saving to be played over?
Are they going to raise storms about the ears of
Abolitionists, as in the good old times?
Yet there is danger just here. Though thou
shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat, with
a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from
him.  Folly that is persistent, vigilant, determined, is more than a match for wisdom that is
careless, lazy, and diffusive. Weary of conflict,
longing for peace, we shall be very apt to declare
in a general way that slavery has received its
death-blow from the war, and so relax our efforts




OUR CIVIL WAR.              459
and let things work.  But a great wrong like
slavery, that appeals to indolence, and avarice,
and lust, and pride, and every evil passion and
possibility of the human heart, will stand a good
many death-blows without dying. It has received
hard knocks, but if the war stops now, what is
there to prevent slavery from girding up her loins
and starting afresh?  It is not safe to let things
work unless you have put them in good working
order.  It spoils the fabric and ruins the machinery. You must make things work right, or
they will work wrong.
We need not clamor for the immediate abolition
of slavery. But by all this most costly blood that
we have poured'out on a thrice accursed soil, we
have a right to demand that no settlement of this
controversy shall be final, which does not provide
security for the future as well as indemnity for the
past. No settlement which merely holds out inducements to abolition — which merely contemplates the possibilities of emancipation, and provides
for its contingencies — is enough. Our fathers
settled it so, and here we are. We want a plan
laid, landmarks set up, boundary-lines defined, and
a hand on the wall, visible through all the world,
writing before the doomed gaze of slavery, " Thus
far shalt thou go, and NO FARTHER! God hath
numbered thy kingdom, and FINISHED it!"  We
want a paved highway through every State, from
Maine to Texas, on which Wendell Phillips and




460          COUNTRY LIVING.
Lloyd Garrison and Beecher and Sumner and
Lovejoy may go secure, lecturing, as they go,
to all who choose to hear them. We want the
scourging of women, the stealing of children, the
crushing of men, the stifling of free speech, all
the raving and ravening of the mother of harlots
and abominations, to cease. A year of agony that
shall have done this is a year of the right hand
of the Most High. A thousand years that shall
have failed to do it are but as the small dust of
the balance.
What matters it though we do not yet know
what shall be done with these freedmen of- the
republic. The best way to find out what future
duty will be, is to do present duty. Present duty
is to free the slaves as fast as possible, and educate
them as fast as they are free, and keep our eyes
open all the while. If we do not do this, we are
more guilty than the slaveholders. They did but
accept slavery thrust upon them. We shall reject
liberty thrust upon us. God provided himself a
lamb when he would receive sacrifice. "Who shall
roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre? " asked the mournful women, for the stone
was very great. But when they came to the sepulchre, lo! the angel of the Lord had already descended from heaven, and rolled away the stone.
So let us go with sweet spices, not to embalm a
dead, but to anoint a risen Lord, in the person
of these his little ones. Never fear but that we




OUR  CIVIL  WAR.               461
shall not only find the stone rolled back, but where
we looked to see a stark corse and garments of
the grave, we shall stand face to face with
an angel, whose countenance shall be
like lightning, and his raiment
white as snow; and so this
sepulchre of death shall
be the temple of
the Lord of
life.
Cambridge: Stereotyped and Printed by Welch, fBigelow, & Co.