OF THB 
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 University of California Berkeley 
 

 
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UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION; 
 
 EARTHLY CARE, 
 A HEAVENLY DISCIPLINE; 
 
 AND 
 
 OTHER SKETCHES. 
 
 BY 
 
 MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. 
 
 AUTHOB 01 "TWCLE TOM'S CABIN," "THE MATFLOWEE," &0. 
 
 of $8li8. Xtotot's 
 
 WILLIS P. HAZARD, 178 CHESTNUT ST., 
 
 PHILADELPHIA. 
 
 1853. 
 
Stereotyped by S L o T E & MOONEY, Philadelphia. 
 KITE & WALTON, Printers, 
 
PAGE 
 
 ACCOUNT OP MRS. BEECHER STOWE AND HER 
 
 FAMILY, 5 
 
 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION, - - - - 30 
 
 EARTHLY CARE, A HEAVENLY DISCIPLINE, - 43 
 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES IN THE COUNTRY, - 56 
 CHILDREN, - ..... 79 
 
 THE TWO BIBLES, ------ 84 
 
 LETTER FROM MAINE, NO. 1, - - - - 92 
 
 LETTER FROM MAINE, NO. 2, - - - - 103 
 
 CHRISTMAS, OR THE GOOD FAIRY, - - 109 
 
 (iii) 
 
 M313745 
 
nf 3Jh& 3J 
 {tuft {in /Jimilt[. 
 
 BY AN ALABAMA MAN. 
 
 THE family to which Mrs. Stowe belongs, is 
 more widely and favourably known than almost 
 any other in the United States. It consists of 
 the following persons : 
 
 1. Rev. Lyman Beecher, the father, Doctor of 
 Divinity, ex-President of Lane Theological Semi- 
 nary, and late pastor of a Presbyterian Church 
 at Cincinnati, Ohio. 
 
 2. Rev. William Beecher, pastor at Chilicothe, 
 Ohio. 
 
 3. Rev. Edward Beecher, pastor at Boston, 
 Massachusetts. 
 
 4. Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, pastor at Brook- 
 lyn, Long Island. 
 
 5. Rev. Charles Beecher, pastor at Newark, 
 New Jersey. 
 
 (5) 
 
6 ACCOUNTOF 
 
 6. Rev. Thomas Beecher, pastor at Williams- 
 burg, New Jersey. 
 
 7. Rev. George Beecher, deceased several 
 years since. His death was caused by the ac- 
 cidental discharge of a gun. At the time he 
 was one of the most eminent men in the Western 
 Church. 
 
 8. Mr. James Beecher, engaged in commercial 
 business at Boston. 
 
 9. Miss Catharine Beecher. 
 
 10. Mrs. Harriet B. Stowe. 
 
 11. Mrs. Perkins. 
 
 12. Mrs. Hooker. 
 
 Twelve ! the apostolic number. And of the 
 twelve, seven apostles of the pulpit, and two of 
 the pen, after the manner of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury. Of the other three, one has been swept 
 into commerce by the strong current setting that 
 way in America; and the other two, wives of 
 lawyers of respectable standing, and mothers of 
 families, have been absorbed by the care and 
 affections of domestic life. They are said to be 
 no way inferior, in point of natural endowments, 
 to the nine who have chosen to play their parts 
 in life before a larger public. Indeed, persons 
 
MRS. BEBCHER STOWE. 7 
 
 who know intimately all the twelve, are puzzled 
 to assign superiority to any one of them. With 
 the shades of difference which always obtain 
 between individual characters, they bear a strik- 
 ing resemblance to each other, not only physically, 
 but intellectually and morally. All of them are 
 about the common size the doctor being a trifle 
 below it, and some of the sons a trifle above it 
 neither stout nor slight, but compactly and rug- 
 gedly built. Their movements and gestures have 
 much of the abruptness and want of grace com- 
 mon in Yankee land, where the opera and danc- 
 ing school are considered as institutions of Satan. 
 Their features are large and irregular, and though 
 not free from a certain manly beauty in the men, 
 are scarcely redeemed from homeliness in the 
 women by the expression of intelligence and wit 
 which lights them up, and fairly sparkles in their 
 bluish gray eyes. 
 
 All of them have the energy of character, 
 restless activity, strong convictions, tenacity of 
 purpose, deep sympathies, and spirit of self-sacri- 
 fice, which are such invaluable qualities in the 
 character of propagandists. It would be impos- 
 sible for the theologians among them to be mem- 
 
8 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 bers of any other church than the church militant. 
 Father and sons, they have been in the thickest 
 of the battles fought in the church and by it ; 
 and always have moved together in solid column. 
 To them questions of scholastic theology are 
 mummeries, dry and attractionless ; they are prac- 
 tical, living in the real present, dealing with ques- 
 tions which palpitate with vitality. Temperance, 
 foreign and home-missions, the influence of com- 
 merce on public morality, the conversion of young 
 men, the establishment of theological seminaries, 
 education, colonization, abolition, the political 
 obligations of Christians; on matters such as 
 these do the Beechers expend their energies. 
 Nor do they disdain taking an active part in pub- 
 lic affairs; one of them was appointed at New 
 York City to address Kossuth on his arrival. 
 What is remarkable is that, though they have 
 come in violent collision with many of the abuses 
 of American society, their motives have never 
 been seriously attacked. This exemption from 
 the ordinary lot of reformers is owing not only 
 to their consistent disinterestedness, but to a cer- 
 tain Yankee prudence, which prevents their ad- 
 vancing without being sure of battalions behind 
 
MRS. BEECHEE STOWE. 9 
 
 them ; and also to a reputation the family has 
 agquired for eccentricity. As public speakers 
 they are far above mediocrity ; not graceful, but 
 eloquent, with a lively scorn of the mean and 
 perception of the comic, which overflow in pun- 
 gent wit and withering satire ; and sometimes, in 
 the heat of extemporaneous speaking, in biting 
 sarcasm. Their style of oratory would often 
 seem, to a staid, church-going Englishman, to 
 contrast too strongly with the usual decorum of 
 the pulpit. 
 
 Nine of the Beechers are authors. They are 
 known to the reading and religious public of the 
 United States, by reviews, essays, sermons, ora- 
 tions, debates, and discourses on a great variety 
 of subjects, chiefly of local or momentary inter- 
 est. All of these productions are marked by 
 vigorous thought ; very few by that artistic ex- 
 cellence, that conformity to the laws of the ideal, 
 which alone confer a lasting value on the creations 
 of the brain. Many of them are controversial, 
 or wear an aggressive air which is unmistakable. 
 Those which are of durable interest, and of a 
 high order of literary merit, are six temperance 
 sermons by Dr. Beecher ; a volume of practical 
 1* 
 
10 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 sermons by the same ; the " Virgin and her Son," 
 an imaginative work by Charles Beecher, with an 
 introduction by Mrs. Stowe; some articles on 
 Biblical literature, by Edward Beecher ; " Truth 
 stranger than Fiction," and other tales, by Miss 
 Catharine Beecher; "Domestic Economy," by 
 the same ; " Twelve Lectures to Young Men,'' by 
 Henry Ward Beecher ; " An Introduction to the 
 Works of Charlotte Elizabeth," by Mrs. Stowe, 
 being a collection of stories originally published 
 in the newspapers ; and " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 I am sorry not to be able to place in this category 
 many letters, essays, and addresses on Education, 
 and particularly those from the pen of Catharine 
 Beecher. Before Mrs. Stowe's last book, her 
 celebrity was hardly equal to her maiden sister's. 
 Catharine had a wider reputation as an authoress, 
 and her indefatigable activity in the cause of 
 education had won for her very general esteem. 
 I may add in this connection that it is to her the 
 United States are indebted for the only exten- 
 sively useful association for preparing and send- 
 ing capable female teachers to the west. She 
 had the energy and the tact to organize and put 
 it in successful operation. 
 
MRS. BEECHEE STOWE. 11 
 
 Such is the family, in the bosom of which Mrs. 
 Stowe's character has been formed. We cannot 
 dismiss it without pausing before the venerable 
 figure of the father, to whom the honour of de- 
 termining the bent of the children properly be- 
 longs. Dr. Lyman Beecher is now seventy-eight 
 years old. Born before the American Revolu- 
 tion, he has been, until recently, actively and 
 ably discharging duties which would be onerous 
 to most men in the prime of life. He was the 
 son of a New England blacksmith, and was 
 brought up to the trade of his father. He had 
 arrived at mature age when he quitted the anvil, 
 and began his collegiate studies at Yale College, 
 New Haven. Ten years later, we find him pastor 
 of the church at Litchfield, and rising into fame 
 as a pulpit orator. His six sermons on temper- 
 ance extended his reputation through the United 
 States ; I might say through Europe, for they 
 ran rapidly through several editions in England, 
 and were translated into several languages on the 
 Continent. Being now favourably known, he was 
 called to the pastoral charge of the most influen- 
 tial Presbyterian Church at Boston, where he re- 
 mained until 1832. In that year, a project long 
 
12 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 entertained by that portion of the Presbyterian 
 Church, whose active and enlightened piety and 
 liberal tendencies had gained for it the name of 
 New School, was put into execution; the Lane 
 Theological and Literary Seminary was founded. 
 Its object being to prepare young men for the 
 gospel ministry, such facilities for manual labour 
 were offered by it, as to make it feasible for any 
 young man of industry to defray, by his own 
 exertions, a large part of the expenses of his 
 own education. Dr. Beecher had long been re- 
 garded as the only man competent to direct an 
 institution which, it was fondly hoped, would de- 
 monstrate the practicability of educating mind 
 and body at the same time, infuse new energy 
 into the work of domestic and foreign missions, 
 and revolutionize the Presbyterian church. A 
 large corps of learned and able professors was 
 selected to aid him. The Doctor removed to his 
 new home in the immediate neighbourhood of 
 Cincinnati, and remained there until 1850, and 
 with what success in his chief object we shall 
 hereafter see. 
 
 A certain eccentricity of manner and charac- 
 ter, and sharpness of repartee, have given rise to 
 
MRS. BEECHEE STOWE. 13 
 
 hundreds of amusing anecdotes respecting Dr. 
 Beecher. Some of them paint the man. 
 
 His lively sense of the comic elements in every- 
 thing, breaks out on the most unlikely occasions. 
 One dark night, as he was driving home with h*is 
 wife and Mrs. Stowe in the carriage, the whole 
 party was upset over a hank about fifteen feet 
 high. They had no sooner extricated themselves 
 from the wreck, than Mrs. Beecher and Mrs. 
 Stowe, who were unhurt, returned thanks for their 
 providential escape. " Speak for yourselves," 
 said the doctor, who was feeling his bruises, " I 
 have got a good many hard bumps, any how." 
 
 In many matters he is what Miss Olivia would 
 have called "shiftless." None of the Goldsmith 
 family were more so. No appeal to him for 
 charity, or a contribution to a good cause, ever 
 goes unresponded to, so long as he has any money 
 in his pockets. As the family income is not un- 
 limited, this generosity is sometimes productive 
 of inconvenience. One day his wife had given 
 him from the common purse twenty-five or thirty 
 dollars in bills, with particular instructions to buy 
 a coat, of which he stood in need. He went 
 down to the city to make the purchase, but stop- 
 
14 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 ping on the way to a meeting in behalf of foreign 
 missions, the box was handed round, and in went 
 his little roll of bills. He forgot his coat in his 
 anxiety for the Sandwich Islanders. 
 
 Well do I remember the first time I heard him 
 preach. It was seventeen years ago. From early 
 childhood I had been taught to reverence the name 
 of the great divine and orator, and I had long 
 promised myself the pleasure of listening to him. 
 My first Sunday morning in Cincinnati found me 
 sitting with his congregation. The pastor was 
 not as punctual as the flock. Several minutes 
 had elapsed after the regular hour for beginning 
 the service, when one of the doors opened, and I 
 saw a hale looking old gentleman enter. As he 
 pulled off his hat, half a dozen papers covered 
 with notes of sermons fluttered down to the floor. 
 The hat appeared to contain a good many more. 
 Stooping down and picking them up deliberately, he 
 came scuttling down, along the aisle, with a step 
 so quick and resolute as rather to alarm certain 
 prejudices I had on the score of clerical solem- 
 nity. Had I met him on a parade ground, I 
 should have singled him out as some general in 
 undress, spite of the decided stoop contracted in 
 
MRS. BEECHEE STOWE. 15 
 
 study ; the iron-gray hair brushed stiffly towards 
 the back of the head ; the keen, sagacious eyes, 
 the firm, hard lines of the brow and wrinkled 
 visage, and the passion and power latent about 
 the mouth, with its long and scornful under-lip, 
 bespoke a character more likely to attack than to 
 defend, to do than to suffer. His manner did not 
 change my first impression. The ceremonies pre- 
 liminary to the sermon were dispatched in rather 
 a summary way. A petition in the long prayer 
 was expressed so pithily I have never forgotten 
 it. I forget now what reprehensible intrigue our 
 rulers were busy in at the time, but the doctor, 
 after praying for the adoption of various useful 
 measures, alluded to their conduct in the follow- 
 ing terms: "And, Lord! grant we "may not 
 despise our rulers ; and grant that they may not 
 act so, that we can't help it." It may be doubted 
 whether any English Bishop has ever uttered a 
 similar prayer for King and Parliament. To de- 
 liver his sermon, the preacher stood bolt upright, 
 stiff as a musket. At first, he twitched off and 
 replaced his spectacles a dozen times in as many 
 minutes with a nervous motion, gesturing mean- 
 while with frequent pump handle strokes of his 
 
16 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 right arm; but as he went on, his unaffected 
 language began to glow with animation, his simple 
 style became figurative and graphic, and flashes 
 of irony lighted up the dark groundwork of his 
 Puritanical reasoning. Smiles and tears chased 
 each other over the faces of many in the audience. 
 His peroration was one of great beauty and power. 
 I have heard him hundreds of times since, and he 
 has never failed to justify his claim to the title of 
 " the old man eloquent." 
 
 Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, about 
 the year 1812. After the removal of the family 
 to Boston, she enjoyed the best educational ad- 
 vantages of that city. With the view of prepar- 
 ing herself for the business of instruction, she 
 acquired all the ordinary accomplishments of 
 ladies, and much of the learning usually reserved 
 for the stronger sex. At an early age she began 
 to aid her eldest sister, Catharine, in the manage- 
 ment of a flourishing female school, which had 
 been built up by the latter. When their father 
 went West, the sisters accompanied him, and 
 opened a similar establishment in Cincinnati. 
 
 This city is situated on the northern bank of 
 the Ohio. The range of hills which hugs the 
 
MRS. BEECIIER STOWE. IT 
 
 river for hundreds of miles above, here recedes 
 from it in a semi-circle, broken by a valley and 
 several ravines, leaving a basin several square 
 miles in surface. This is the site of the busy 
 manufacturing and commercial town which, in 
 1832, contained less than forty thousand inhabi- 
 tants, and at present contains more than one hun- 
 dred and twenty thousand a rapid increase, 
 which must be attributed, in a great measure, to 
 the extensive trade it carries on with the slave 
 States. The high hill, whose point, now crowned 
 with an observatory, overhangs the city on the 
 east, stretches away to the east and north in a 
 long sweep of table-land. On this is situated 
 Lane Seminary Mrs. Stowe's home for eighteen 
 long years. Near the Seminary buildings, and 
 on the public road, are certain comfortable brick 
 residences, situated in yards green with tufted 
 grass, and half concealed from view by accacias, 
 locusts, rose-bushes, and vines of honeysuckle 
 and clematis. These were occupied by Dr. 
 Beecher, and the Professors. There are other 
 residences more pretending in appearance, occu- 
 pied by bankers, merchants and men of fortune. 
 The little village thus formed is called Walnut 
 
18 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 Hills, and is one of the prettiest in the environs 
 of Cincinnati. 
 
 For several years after her removal to this 
 place, Harriet Beecher continued to teach in con- 
 nection with her sister. She did so until her 
 marriage with the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, Profes- 
 sor of Biblical Literature in the Seminary of 
 which her father was President. This gentleman 
 was already one of the most distinguished eccle- 
 siastical savans in America. After graduating 
 with honour at Bowdoin College, Maine, and 
 taking his theological degree at Andover, he had 
 been appointed Professor, at Dartmouth College, 
 New Hampshire, whence he had been called to 
 Lane Seminary. Mrs. Stowe's married life has 
 been of that equable and sober happiness so com- 
 mon in the families of Yankee clergymen. It 
 has been blessed with a numerous offspring, of 
 whom five are still living. Mrs. Stowe has known 
 the fatigues of watching over the sick bed, and 
 her heart has felt that grief which eclipses all 
 others that of a bereaved mother. Much of her 
 time has been devoted to the education of her 
 children, while the ordinary household cares have 
 devolved on a frjend or distant relative, who has 
 
MRS. BEECHERSTOWE. 19 
 
 always resided with her. She employed her 
 leisure in contributing occasional pieces, tales and 
 novelettes to the magazines and newspapers. Her 
 writings were of a high moral tone, and deservedly 
 popular. Only a small portion of them are com- 
 prised in the volume " The Mayflower'' already 
 mentioned. This part of Mrs. Stowe's life spent 
 in literary pleasures, family joys and cares, and 
 the society of the pious and intelligent, would 
 have been of as unalloyed happiness as mortals 
 can expect, had it not been darkened at every in- 
 stant by the baleful shadow of slavery. 
 
 The "peculiar institution" was destined to 
 thwart the grand project in life of Mrs. Stowe's 
 husband and father. When they relinquished 
 their excellent positions in the East in order to 
 build up the great Presbyterian Seminary for the 
 Ohio and Mississippi valley, they did so with 
 every prospect of success. Never did a literary 
 institution start under finer auspices. The num- 
 ber and reputation of the professors had drawn 
 together several hundred students from all parts 
 of the United States ; not sickly cellar-plants of 
 boys sent by wealthy parents, but hardy and in- 
 telligent young men, most of whom, fired by the 
 
20 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 ambition of converting the world to Christ, were 
 winning their way through privations and toil, to 
 education and ministerial orders. They were the 
 stuff out of which foreign missionaries and revival 
 preachers are made. Some of them were known 
 to the public as lecturers: Theodore D. Weld 
 * was an oratorical celebrity. For a year all went 
 well. Lane Seminary was the pride and hope of 
 the church. Alas for the hopes of Messrs. 
 Beecher and Stowe ! this prosperity was of short 
 duration. 
 
 The Drench Revolution of 1830, the agitation 
 in England for reform, and against colonial slavery, 
 the fine and imprisonment by American courts of 
 justice, of citizens who had dared to attack the 
 slave trade carried on under the federal flag, had 
 begun to direct the attention of a few American 
 philanthropists to the evils of slavery. Some 
 years before, a society had been formed for the 
 purpose of colonizing free blacks on the coast of 
 Africa. It had been patronized by intelligent 
 slaveholders, who feared the contact of free 
 blacks with their human chattels ; and by feeble 
 or ignorant persons in the North, whose con- 
 sciences impelled them to act on slavery in some 
 
MRS. BEECHER STOWE. 21 
 
 way, and whose prudence or ignorance *of the 
 question led them to accept the plan favoured by 
 slaveholders. However useful to Africa the emi- 
 gration to its shores of intelligent, moral, and 
 enterprising blacks may be, it is now universally 
 admitted that colonization, as a means of extin- 
 guishing slavery, is a drivelling absurdity. These 
 were the views of the Abolition Convention, 
 which met at Philadelphia in 1833, and set on 
 foot the agitation which has since convulsed the 
 Union. 
 
 The President of that Convention, Mr. Arthur 
 Tappan, was one of the most liberal donors of 
 Lane Seminary. He forwarded its address to the 
 students; and in a few weeks afterwards the 
 whole subject was up for discussion amongst them. 
 At first there was little interest. But soon the 
 fire began to burn. Many of the students had 
 travelled or taught school in the slave States ; a 
 goodly number were sons of slaveholders, and 
 some were owners of slaves. They had seen 
 slavery, and had facts to relate, many of which 
 made the blood run chill with horror. Those 
 spread out on the pages of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," 
 reader, and which your swelling heart and over- 
 
22 ACCOUNTOF 
 
 flowing eyes would not let you read aloud, are 
 cold in comparison. The discussion was soon 
 ended, for all were of accord ; but the meetings 
 for the relation of facts were continued night 
 after night and week after week. What was at 
 first sensibility grew into enthusiasm ; the feeble 
 flame had become a conflagration. The slave 
 owners among the students gave liberty to their 
 slaves; the idea of going on foreign missions 
 was scouted at, because there were heathens at 
 home ; some left their studies and collected the 
 coloured population of Cincinnati into churches, 
 and preached to them ; others gathered the young 
 men into evening schools, and the children into 
 day schools, and devoted themselves to teaching 
 them ; others organized benevolent societies for 
 aiding them, and orphan asylums for the desti- 
 tute and abandoned children ; and others again, 
 left all to aid fugitive slaves on their way to Ca- 
 nada, or to lecture on the evils of slavery. The 
 fanatacism was sublime ; every student felt him- 
 self a Peter the hermit, and acted as if the aboli- 
 
 
 
 tion of slavery depended on his individual ex- 
 ertions. 
 
 At first the discussion had been encouraged by 
 
MRS. BEECHER STOWE. 23 
 
 the President and Professors; but when they saw 
 it swallowing up everything like regular study, 
 they thought it high time to stop. It was too 
 late ; the current was too strong to be arrested. 
 The commercial interests of Cincinnati took the 
 alarm manufacturers feared the loss of their 
 Southern trade. Public sentiment exacted the 
 suppression of the discussion and excitement. 
 Slaveholders came over from Kentucky, and urged 
 the mob on to violence. For several weeks there 
 was imminent danger that Lane Seminary, and 
 the houses of Drs. Beecher and Stowe, would be 
 burnt or pulled down by a drunken rabble. These 
 must have been weeks of mortal anxiety for Har- 
 riet Beecher. The board of trustees now inter- 
 fered, and allayed the excitement of the mob by 
 forbidding all further discussion of slavery in the 
 Seminary. To this the students responded by 
 withdrawing en masse. Where hundreds had 
 been, there was left a mere handful. Lane Semi- 
 nary was deserted. For seventeen years after 
 this, Dr. Beecher and Professor Stowe remained 
 there, endeavouring in vain to revive its prospe- 
 rity. In 1850 they returned to the Eastern 
 States, the great project of their life defeated. 
 
24 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 After a short stay at Bowdoin College, Maine, 
 Professor Stowe accepted an appointment to the 
 chair of Biblical literature in the Theological 
 Seminary at Andover, Massachusetts, an institu- 
 tion which stands, to say the least, as high as any 
 in the United States. 
 
 These events caused a painful reaction in the 
 feelings of the Beechers. Repulsed alike by the 
 fanaticism they had witnessed among the foes, 
 and the brutal violence among the friends of sla- 
 very, they thought their time for action had not 
 come, and gave no public expression of their ab- 
 horrence of slavery. They waited for the storm 
 to subside, and the angel of truth to mirror his 
 form in tranquil waters. For a long time they 
 resisted all attempts to make them bow the knee 
 to slavery, or to avow themselves abolitionists. 
 It is to this period Mrs. Stowe alludes, when she 
 says, in the closing chapter of her book : " For 
 many years of her life the author avoided all 
 reading upon, or allusion to, the subject of sla- 
 very, considering it as too painful to be inquired 
 into, and one which advancing light and civiliza- 
 tion would live down." The terrible and dramatic 
 scenes which occurred in Cincinnati, between 1835 
 
MRS. BEECIIER STOWE. 25 
 
 and 1847, were calculated to increase the repug- 
 nance of a lady to mingling actively in the melee. 
 That city was the chief battle-ground of freedom 
 and slavery. Every month there was something 
 to attract attention to the strife ; either a press 
 destroyed, or a -house mobbed, or a free negro 
 kidnapped, or a trial for freedom before the 
 courts, or the confectionary of an English abo- 
 litionist riddled, or a public discussion, or an 
 escape of slaves, or an armed attack on the 
 negro quarter, or a negro school-house razed to 
 the ground, or a slave in prison, and killing his 
 wife and children to prevent their being sold to 
 the .South. The abolition press, established there 
 in 1835 by James G. Birney, whom, on account 
 of his mildness, Miss Martineau called " the gen- 
 tleman of the abolition cause," and continued by 
 Dr. Bailey, the moderate and able editor of the 
 National Ura, of Washington city, in which Uncle 
 Tom's Cabin first appeared in weekly numbers, 
 was destroyed five times. On one occasion, the 
 Mayor dismissed at midnight the rioters, who had 
 also pulled down the houses of some colored peo- 
 ple, with the following pithy speech : " Well, boys, 
 let's go home ; we've done enough." One of these 
 2 
 
26 ACCOUNT OF 
 
 mobs deserves particular notice, as its victims 
 enlisted deeply the sympathies of Mrs. Stowe. 
 In 1840, the slave catchers, backed by the riff- 
 raff of the population, and urged on by certain 
 politicians and merchants, attacked the quarters 
 in which the negroes reside. Some of the houses 
 were battered down by cannon. For several days 
 the city was abandoned to violence and crime. 
 The negro quarters were pillaged and sacked; 
 negroes who attempted to defend their property 
 were killed, and their mutilated bodies cast into 
 the streets ; women were violated by ruffians, and 
 some afterwards died of the injuries received ; 
 houses were burnt, and men, women, and children 
 were abducted in the confusion, and hurried into 
 slavery. From the brow of the hill on which she 
 lived, Mrs. Stowe could hear the cries of the vic- 
 tims, the shouts of the mob, and the reports of 
 the guns and cannon, and could see the flames of 
 the conflagration. To more than one of the 
 trembling fugitives she gave shelter, and wept 
 bitter tears with them. After the fury of the. 
 mob was spent, many of the coloured people 
 gathered together the little left them of worldly 
 goods, and started for Canada. Hundreds passed 
 
MRS. BEECHER STOWE. 27 
 
 in front of Mrs, Stowe's house. Some of them 
 were in little wagons ; some were trudging along 
 on foot after the household stuff ; some led their 
 children by the hand ; and there were even mo- 
 thers who walked on, suckling their infants, and 
 weeping for the dead or kidnapped husband they 
 had left behind. 
 
 This road, which ran through Walnut Hills, 
 and within a few feet of Mrs. Stowe's door, was 
 one of the favourite routes of " the under-ground 
 railroad," so often alluded to in Uncle Tom's 
 Cabin. This name was given to a line of Quakers 
 and other abolitionists, who, living at intervals of 
 10, 15 or 20 miles between the Ohio river and 
 the Northern lakes, had formed themselves into a 
 sort of association to aid fugitive slaves in their 
 escape to Canada. Any fugitive was taken by 
 night on horseback, or in covered wagons, from 
 station to station, until he stood on free soil, and 
 found the fold of the lion banner floating over 
 him, and the artillery of the British empire be- 
 tween him and slavery. The first station north 
 of Cincinnati was a few miles up Mill Creek, at 
 the house of the pious and honest-hearted John 
 Vanzandt, who figures in chapter nine of Uncle 
 
28 ACCOUNTOF 
 
 Tom's Cabin, as John Van Trompe. Mrs. Stowe 
 must have often been roused from her sleep by 
 the quick rattle of the covered wagons, and the 
 confused galloping of the horses of constables 
 and slave-catchers in hot pursuit. " Honest 
 John" was always ready to turn out with his team, 
 and the hunters of men were not often adroit 
 enough to come up with him. He sleeps now in 
 the obscure grave of a martyr. The " gigantic 
 frame," of which the novelist speaks, was worn 
 down at last by want of sleep, exposure, and 
 anxiety; and his spirits were depressed by the 
 persecutions which were accumulated on him. 
 Several slave owners, who had lost their -property 
 by his means, sued him in the United States 
 Courts for damages; and judgment after judg- 
 ment stripped him of his farm, and all his property. 
 During her long residence on the frontier of 
 the slave States, Mrs. Stowe made several visits 
 to them. It was then, no doubt, she made the 
 observations which have enabled her to paint no- 
 ble, generous, and humane slaveholders, in the 
 characters of Wilson, the manufacturer, Mrs. 
 Shelby and her son George, St. Clair and his 
 daughter Eva, the benevolent purchaser at the 
 
MRS. B EEC HER STOWE. 29 
 
 New Orleans auction sale, the mistress of Susan 
 and Emeline, and Symes, who helped Eliza and 
 her boy up tfie river bank. Mrs. Stowe has ob- 
 served slavery in every phase; she has seen 
 masters and slaves at home, New Orleans markets, 
 fugitives, free coloured people, pro-slavery politi- 
 cians and priests, abolitionists, and colonizationists. 
 She and her family have suffered from it; seven- 
 teen years of her life have been clouded by it. 
 For that long period she stifled the strongest emo- 
 tions of her heart. No one but her intimate 
 friends knew their strength. She has given them 
 expression at last. Uncle Toms Cabin is the ago- 
 nizing cry of feelings pent up for years in the 
 heart of a true woman. 
 
A SKETCH. 
 
 IT may be gratifying to those who desire to 
 think well of human nature, to know that the lead- 
 ing incidents of the subjoined sketch are literal 
 matters of fact, occurring in the city of Cincin- 
 nati, which have come within the scope of the 
 writer's personal knowledge the incidents have 
 merely been clothed in a dramatic form, to present 
 them more vividly to the reader. 
 
 In one of the hotel parlors of our queen city, a 
 young gentleman, apparently in no very easy 
 frame of mind, was pacing up and down the room, 
 looking alternately at his watch and out of the 
 window, as if expecting somebody. At last he 
 rang the bell violently, and a hotel servant soon 
 appeared. 
 
 " Has my man Sam come in yet ?" he inquired. 
 
 The polished yellow gentleman to whom this 
 was addressed, answered with a polite, but some- 
 
 (30) 
 
UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 31 
 
 what sinister smirk, that nothing had been seen 
 of him since early that morning. 
 
 " Lazy dog ! full three hours since I sent him 
 
 off to B street, and I have seen nothing of 
 
 him since." 
 
 The yellow gentleman remarked with consola- 
 tory politeness, that " he hoped Sam had not run 
 away" adding, with an ill-concealed grin, that 
 "them boys was mighty apt to show the clean 
 heel when they come into a free State." 
 
 "Oh, no: I'm quite easy as to that," returned 
 the young gentleman ; " I'll risk Sam's ever being 
 willing to part from me. I brought him because 
 I was sure of him." 
 
 " Don't you be too sure,'' remarked a gentleman 
 from behind, who had been listening to the con- 
 versation. " There are plenty of mischief-making 
 busybodies on the trail of every southern gentle- 
 man, to interfere with his family matters, and de- 
 coy off his servants." 
 
 " Didn't I see Sam talking at the corner with 
 the Quaker Simmons ?" said another servant, who 
 meanwhile had entered. 
 
 "Talking with Simmons, was he?" remarked 
 the last speaker, with irritation; "that rascal 
 
32 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 
 
 Simmons does nothing else, I believe, but tote 
 away gentlemen's servants. Well, if Simmons 
 has got him, you may as well be quiet ; you'll not 
 see your fellow again in a hurry.' 1 
 
 " And who the deuce is this Simmons ?" said 
 our young gentleman, who, though evidently of a 
 good natured mould, was now beginning to wax 
 wroth ; " and what business has he to interfere 
 with other v people's affairs ?" 
 
 " You had better have asked those questions a 
 few days ago, and then you would have kept a 
 closer eye on your fellow ; a meddlesome, canting, 
 Quaker rascal, that all these black hounds run to, 
 to be helped into Canada, and nobody knows 
 where all." 
 
 The young gentleman jerked out his watch with 
 increasing energy, and then walking fiercely up 
 to the coloured waiter, who was setting the dinner 
 table with an air of provoking satisfaction, he 
 thundered at him, "You rascal, you understand 
 this matter ; I see it in your eyes." 
 
 Our gentleman of colour bowed, and with an 
 air of mischievous intelligence, protested that he 
 never interfered with other gentlemen's matters, 
 while sundry of his brethren in office looked un- 
 utterable things out of the corners of their eyes. 
 
UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 33 
 
 " There is some cursed plot hatched up among 
 you," said the young man. "You have talked 
 Sam into it ; I know he never would have 
 thought of leaving me unless he was put up to it. 
 Tell me now," he resumed, " have you heard Sam 
 say anything about it ? Come, be reasonable," he 
 added, in a milder tone, " you shall find your ac- 
 count in it." 
 
 Thus adjured, the waiter protested he would be 
 happy to give the gentleman any satisfaction in 
 his power. The fact was, Sam had been pretty 
 full of notions lately, and had been to see Sim- 
 mons, and in short, he should not wonder if he 
 never saw any more of him. 
 
 And as hour after hour passed, the whole day, 
 the whole night, and no Sam was forthcoming, the 
 truth of the surmise became increasingly evident. 
 
 Our young hero, Mr. Alfred B , was a good 
 
 deal provoked, and strange as the fact may seem, 
 a good deal grieved too, for he really loved the 
 fellow. " Loved him !" says some scornful zealot ; 
 "a slaveholder love his slave!" Yes, brother; 
 why not ? A warm-hearted man will love his 
 dog, his horse, even to grieving bitterly for their 
 loss, and why not credit the fact that such a one 
 
 2 
 
34 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 
 
 may love the human creature whom custom has 
 placed on the same level. The fact was, Alfred 
 B did love this young man ; he had been ap- 
 propriated to him in childhood ; and Alfred had 
 always redressed his grievances, fought his battles, 
 got him out of scrapes, and purchased for him, 
 with liberal hand, indulgences to which his com- 
 rades were strangers. He had taken pride to 
 dress him smartly, and as for hardship and want, 
 they had never come near him. 
 
 " The poor, silly, ungrateful puppy !" solilo- 
 quized he, "what can he do with himself? Con- 
 found that Quaker, and all his meddlesome tribe 
 been at him with their bloody -bone stories, I sup- 
 pose Sam knows better, the scamp halloa, 
 there," he called to one of the waiters, " where 
 does this Simpkins Simon Simmons, or what 
 d'ye call him, live?" 
 
 "His shop is No. 5, on G. street." 
 
 " Well, I'll go at him, and see what business he 
 has with my affairs." 
 
 The Quaker was sitting at the door of his shop, 
 with a round, rosy, good-humoured face, so ex- 
 pressive of placidity and satisfaction, that it was 
 difficult to approach in ireful feeling. 
 
UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 35 
 
 "Is your name Simmons?" demanded Alfred, 
 in a voice whose natural urbanity was somewhat 
 sharpened by vexation. 
 
 "Yes, friend; what dost thou wish?" 
 
 " I wish to inquire whether you have seen any- 
 thing of my coloured fellow, Sam; a man of 
 twenty-five, or thereabouts, lodging at the Pearl 
 street House ?" 
 
 " I rather suspect that I have," said the Quaker, 
 in a quiet, meditative tone, as if thinking the mat- 
 ter over with himself. 
 
 " And is it true, sir, that you, have encouraged 
 and assisted him in his efforts to get out of my 
 service ?" 
 
 " Such, truly, is the fact, my friend." 
 
 Losing patience at this provoking equanimity, 
 our young friend poured forth his sentiments 
 with no inconsiderable energy, and in terms not 
 the most select or pacific, all which our Quaker 
 received with that placid, full-orbed tranquillity of 
 countenance, which seemed to say, "Pray, sir, re- 
 lieve your mind ; don't be particular, scold as hard 
 as you like.' 5 The singularity of this expression 
 struck the young man, and as his wrath became 
 gradually spent, he could hardly help laughing at 
 
36 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 
 
 the tranquillity of his opponent, and he gradually 
 changed his tone for one of expostulation. " What 
 motive could induce you, sir, thus to incommode a 
 stranger, and one who never injured you at all?" 
 
 " I am sorry thou art incommoded," rejoined 
 the Quaker. "Thy servant, as thee calls him, 
 came to me, and I helped him, as I would any 
 other poor fellow in distress." 
 
 " Poor fellow !" said Alfred, angrily ; " that's 
 the story of the whole of you. I tell you there 
 is not a free negro in your city so well off as my 
 Sam is, and always has been, and he'll find it out 
 before long." 
 
 " But tell me, friend, thou mayest die as well as 
 another man; thy establishment may fall into 
 debt, as well as another man's ; and thy Sam may 
 be sold by the Sheriff for debt, or change hands 
 in dividing the estate, and so, though he was bred 
 easily, and well cared for, he may come to be a 
 field hand, under hard masters, starved, beaten, 
 overworked such things do happen sometimes, do 
 they not ?" 
 
 " Sometimes, perhaps they do," replied the 
 young man. 
 
 " Well, look you, by our laws in Ohio, thy Sam 
 
UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 37 
 
 is now a free man ; as free as I or thou ; he hath 
 a strong back, good hands, good courage, can earn 
 his ten or twelve dollars a month or do better. 
 Now taking all things into account, if thee were 
 in his place, what would thee do would thee go 
 back a slave, or try thy luck as a free man ?" 
 
 Alfred said nothing in reply to this, only after 
 a while he murmured half to himself, " I thought 
 the fellow had more gratitude, after all my kind- 
 ness." * 
 
 " Thee talks of gratitude," said the Quaker, 
 "now how does that account stand ? Thou hast 
 fed, and clothed, and protected this man ; thou 
 hast not starved, beaten, or abused him that 
 would have been unworthy of thee ; thou hast 
 shown him special kindness, and in return he has 
 given thee faithful service for fifteen or twenty 
 years ; all his time, all his strength, all he could 
 do or be, he has given thee, and ye are about 
 even." The young man looked thoughtful, but 
 made no reply. 
 
 " Sir," said he at last, " I will take no unfair 
 advantage of you ; I wish to get my servant once 
 more ; can I do so ?" 
 
 " Certainly. I will bring him to thy lodgings 
 
38 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 
 
 this evening, if thee wish it. I know thee will do 
 what is fair," said the Quaker. 
 
 It were difficult to define the thoughts of the 
 young man, as he returned to his lodgings. Natu- 
 rally generous and humane, he had never dreamed 
 that he had rendered injustice to the human be- 
 ings he claimed as his own. Injustice and oppres- 
 sion he had sometimes seen with detestation, in 
 other establishments ; but it had been his pride 
 that they were excluded from his own. It had 
 been his pride to think that his indulgence and 
 liberality made a situation of dependence on him 
 preferable even to liberty. 
 
 The dark picture of possible reverses which the 
 slave system hangs over the lot of the most fa- 
 voured slaves, never occurred to him. Accord- 
 ingly, at six o'clock that evening, a light tap at 
 the door of Mr. B.'s parlor, announced the Quaker, 
 and hanging back behind him, the reluctant Sam, 
 who, with all his newly-acquired love of liberty, 
 felt almost as if he were treating his old master 
 rather shabbily, in deserting him. 
 
 " So, Sam," said Alfred, " how is this ? they 
 say you want to leave me." 
 
 " Yes, master." 
 
UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 39 
 
 " Why, what's the matter, Sam ? haven't I al- 
 ways been good to you ; and has not my father 
 always been gooa to you?" 
 
 " Oh yes, master ; very good." 
 
 "Have you not always had good food, good 
 clothes, and lived easy ?" 
 
 "Yes, master." 
 
 " And nobody has ever abused you ?" 
 
 "No, master." 
 
 " Well, then, why do you wish to leave me ?" 
 
 "Oh, massa, I want to be a free man." 
 
 "Why, Sam, ain't you well enough off now?" 
 
 " Oh, massa may die ; then nobody knows who 
 get me ; some dreadful folks, you know, master, 
 might get me, as they did Jim Sanford, and no- 
 body to take my part. No, master, I rather be 
 free man." 
 
 Alfred turned to the window, and thought a few 
 moments, and then said, turning about, "Well, 
 Sam, I believe you are right. I think, on the 
 whole, I'd like best to be a free man myself, and I 
 must not wonder that you do. So, for ought I 
 see, you must go ; but then, Sam, there's your 
 wife and child." Sam's countenance fell. 
 
 "Never mind, Sam. I will send them up to 
 you." 
 
40 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 
 
 "Oh, master!" 
 
 " I will ; ut you must remember now, Sam, 
 you have got both yourself and them to take care 
 of, and have no master to look after you ; be 
 steady, sober, and industrious, and then if ever 
 you get into distress, send word to me, and I'll 
 help you." Lest any accuse us of over-colouring 
 our story, we will close it by extracting a passage 
 or two from the letter which the generous young 
 man the next day left in the hands of the Quaker, 
 for his emancipated servant. We can assure our 
 readers that we copy from the original document, 
 which now lies before us : 
 
 DEAR SAM I am just on the eve of my de- 
 parture for Pittsburg ; I may not see you again 
 for a long time, possibly never, and I leave this 
 letter with your friends, Messrs. A. and B., for 
 you, and herewith bid you an affectionate fare- 
 well. Let me give you some advice, which is, 
 now that you are a free man, in a free State, be 
 obedient as you were when a slave ; perform all 
 the duties that are required of you, and do all 
 you can for your own future welfare and respecta- 
 bility. Let me assure you that I have the same 
 
UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 41 
 
 good feeling towards you that you know I always 
 had ; and let me tell you further, that if ever you 
 want a friend, call or write to me, and I will be 
 that friend. Should you be sick, and not able to 
 work, and want money to a small amount at dif- 
 ferent times, write to me, and I will always let you 
 have it. I have not with me at present much 
 money, though I will leave with my agent here, 
 the Messrs. W., five dollars for you ; you must 
 give them a receipt for it. On my return from 
 Pittsburg, I will call and see you if I have time ; 
 fail not to write to my father, for he made you a 
 good master, and you should always treat him 
 with respect, and cherish his memory so long as 
 you liye. Be good, industrious, and honourable, 
 and if unfortunate in your undertakings, never 
 forget that you have a friend in me. Farewell, 
 and believe me your affectionate young master 
 and friend. ALFRED B . 
 
 That dispositions as ingenuous and noble as that 
 of this young man, are commonly to be found 
 either in slave States or free, is more than we dare 
 to assert. But when we see such found, even 
 among those who are born and bred slaveholders, 
 
42 UNCLE SAM'S EMANCIPATION. 
 
 we cannot but feel that there is encouragement 
 for a fair, and mild, and brotherly presentation 
 of truth, and every reason to lament hasty and 
 wholesale denunciations. The great error of con- 
 troversy is, that it is ever ready to assail persons 
 rather than principles. The slave system, as a 
 system, perhaps concentrates more wrong than 
 any other now existing, and yet those who live 
 under and in it may be, as we see, enlightened, 
 generous, and amenable to reason. If the sys- 
 tem alone is attacked, such minds will be the first 
 to perceive its evils, and to turn against it ; but 
 if the system be attacked through individuals, 
 self-love, wounded pride, and a thousand natural 
 feelings, will be at once enlisted for its preserva- 
 tion. We therefore subjoin it as the moral of our 
 story, that a man who has had the misfortune to 
 be born and bred a slaveholder, may be enlight- 
 ened, generous, humane, and capable of the most 
 disinterested regard to the welfare of his slave. 
 
(Pun, n Jhwttlt); Bisriplitu, 
 
 NOTHING is more frequently felt and spoken 
 of as a hindrance to the inward life of devotion, 
 than the " cares of life;" and even upon the 
 showing of our Lord himself, the cares of the 
 world are the thorns that choke the word, and 
 render it unfruitful. 
 
 And yet, if this is a necessary and inevitable 
 result of worldly cares, why does the providence 
 of God so order things that they form so large 
 and unavoidable a part of every human experi- 
 ence ? Why is the physical system of man framed 
 with such daily, oft-returning wants ? Why has 
 God arranged an outward system, which is a con- 
 stant diversion from the inward a weight on its 
 wheels a burden on its wings and then com- 
 manded a strict and rigid inwardness and spiritu- 
 ality ? Why has he placed us where the things 
 that are seen and temporal must unavoidably have 
 so much of our thoughts, and time, and care, and 
 yet told us, " Set your affections on things above, 
 
 (43) 
 

 44 EARTHLY CARE. 
 
 and not on things on the earth;" "Love not the 
 world, neither the things in the world?" And 
 why does one of our brightest examples of Chris- 
 tian experience, as it should be, say, " While we 
 look not at the things which are seen, but at the 
 things which are not seen : for the things which 
 are seen are temporal, but the things which are 
 not seen are eternal ?" 
 
 The Bible tells us that our whole existence here 
 is disciplinary ; that this whole physical system, 
 by which our spirit is connected with all the joys 
 and sorrows, hopes, and fears, and wants which 
 form a part of it, is designed as an education to 
 fit the soul for its immortality. Hence, as worldly 
 care forms the greater part of the staple of every 
 human life, there must be some mode of viewing 
 and meeting it, which converts it from an enemy 
 of spirituality into a means of grace and spiritual 
 advancement. 
 
 Why, then, do we so often hear the lamenta- 
 tion, " It seems to me as if I could advance to 
 the higher stages of Christian life, if it were not 
 for the pressure of my business, and the multitude 
 of my worldly cares ?" Is it not God, Chris- 
 tian ! who, in his providence, has laid these cares 
 
EARTHLY CARE, 45 
 
 upon thee, and who still holds them about thee, 
 and permits no escape from them? If God's 
 great undivided object is thy spiritual improve- 
 ment, is there not some misapprehension or wrong 
 use of these cares, if they do not tend to advance 
 it ? Is it not even as if a scholar should say, I 
 could advance in science were it not for all the 
 time and care which lessons, and books, and lec- 
 tures require ? 
 
 How, then, shall earthly care become heavenly 
 discipline? How shall the disposition of the 
 weight be altered so as to press the spirit upward 
 towards God, instead of downward and away? 
 How shall the pillar of cloud which rises between 
 us and Him, become one of fire, to reflect upon 
 us constantly the light of his countenance, and to 
 guide us over the sands of life's desert ? 
 
 It appears to us that the great radical difficulty 
 lies in a wrong belief. There is not a genuine 
 and real belief of the presence and agency of God 
 in the minor events and details of life, which is 
 necessary to change them from secular cares into 
 spiritual blessings. 
 
 It is true there is much loose talk about an 
 overruling Providence ; and yet, if fairly stated, 
 
46 EAKTHLY CARE. 
 
 the belief of a great many Christians might be 
 thus expressed: God has organized and set in 
 operation certain general laws of matter and mind, 
 which work out the particular results of life, and 
 over these laws he exercises a general supervision 
 and care, so that all the great affairs of the world 
 are carried on after the counsel of his own will : 
 and, in a certain general sense, all things are 
 working together for good to those that love God. 
 But when some simple-minded and child-like 
 Christian really proceeds to refer all the smaller 
 events of life to God's immediate care and agency, 
 there is a smile of incredulity and it is thought 
 that the good brother displays more Christian 
 feeling than sound philosophy. 
 
 But as the life of every individual is made up 
 of fractions and minute atoms as those things, 
 which go to affect habits and character, are small 
 and hourly recurring, it comes to pass, that a 
 belief in Providence so very wide and general is 
 altogether inefficient for consecrating and render- 
 ing sacred the great body of what comes in con- 
 tact with the mind in the experience of life. 
 Only once in years does the Christian, with this 
 kind of belief, hear the voice of the Lord speak- 
 
EARTHLY CAKE. 47 
 
 ing to him. When the hand of death is laid on 
 his child, or the bolt strikes down the brother by 
 his side ; then, indeed, he feels that^God is draw- 
 ing near ; he listens humbly for the inward voice 
 that shall explain the meaning and need of this 
 discipline. When, by some unforeseen occur- 
 rence, the whole of his earthly property is swept 
 away, and he becomes a poor man, this event, in 
 his eyes, assumes sufficient magnitude to have 
 come from God, and to have a design and mean- 
 ing; but when smaller comforts are removed, 
 smaller losses are encountered, and the petty 
 every- day vexations and annoyances of life press 
 about him, he recognises no God, and hears no 
 voice, and sees no design. Hence John Newton 
 says, "Many Christians, who bear the loss of 
 a child or the destruction of all their property 
 with the most heroic Christian fortitude, are en- 
 tirely vanquished and overcome by the breaking 
 of .a dish, or the blunders of a servant, and show 
 so unchristian a spirit, that we cannot but wonder 
 at them." 
 
 So when the breath of slander, or the pressure 
 of human injustice, comes so heavily on a man, 
 as really to threaten loss of character, and de- 
 
48 EARTHLY CAEE. 
 
 struction of his temporal interests, he seems 
 forced to recognise the hand and voice of God 
 through the veil of human agencies, and in time- 
 honoured words to say 
 
 When men of spite against me join, 
 They are the swofd, the hand is thine. 
 
 But the smaller injustice, and fault-finding, which 
 meets every one more or less in the daily inter- 
 course of life the overheard remark the implied 
 censure too petty perhaps to be even spoken of 
 these daily-recurring sources of disquietude and 
 unhappiness are not referred to God's providence, 
 nor considered as a part of his probation and dis- 
 cipline. Those thousand vexations which come 
 upon us through the unreasonableness, the care- 
 lessness, the various constitutional failings or ill 
 adaptedness of others to our peculiarities of cha- 
 racter, from a very large item of the disquietudes 
 of life, and yet how very few look beyond the 
 human agent, and feel that these are trials com- 
 ing from God. Yet it is true, in many cases, that 
 these so-called minor vexations form the greater 
 part, and, in some cases, the only discipline of 
 life ; and to those who do not view them as indi- 
 
EARTHLY CARE. 49 
 
 vidually ordered or permitted by God, and com- 
 ing upon them by design, their affliction really 
 fi cometh of the dust," and their trouble springs 
 " out of the ground ;" it is sanctified and relieved 
 by no Divine presence and aid, but borne alone, 
 and in a mere human spirit, and by mere human 
 reliances ; it acts on the mind as a constant diver- 
 sion and hindrance, instead of moral discipline. 
 
 Hence, too, arises a coldness, and generality, 
 and wandering of mind in prayer. The things 
 that are on the heart, that are distracting the 
 mind, that have filled the heart so full that there 
 is no room for anything else, are all considered 
 too small and undignified to come within the pale 
 of a prayer : and so, with a wandering mind and a 
 distracted heart, the Christian offers up his prayer 
 for things which he thinks he ought to want, and 
 makes no mention of those which he really does 
 want. He prays that God would pour out his 
 Spirit on the heathen, and convert the world, and 
 build up his kingdom everywhere, when perhaps 
 a whole set of little anxieties and wants and vex- 
 ations are so distracting his thoughts, that he 
 hardly knows what he has been saying. A faith- 
 less servant is wasting his property, a careless or 
 
50 EARTHLY CARE. 
 
 blundering workman has spoiled a lot of goods, a 
 child is vexatious or unruly, a friend has made 
 promises and failed to keep them, an acquaintance 
 has made unjust or satirical remarks, some new 
 furniture has been damaged or ruined by careless- 
 ness in the household ; but all this trouble forms 
 no subject matter for prayer, though there it is 
 all the while lying like lead on the heart, and 
 keeping it down so that it has no power to expand 
 and take in anything else. , But were God in 
 Christ known and regarded as the soul's familiar 
 Friend; were every trouble of the heart, as it 
 rises, breathed into His bosom ; were it felt that 
 there is not one of the smallest of life's troubles 
 that has not been permitted by Him, and per- 
 mitted for specific good purpose to the soul, how 
 much more heart-work would there be in prayer ; 
 how constant, how daily might it become, how it 
 might settle and clear the atmosphere of the soul, 
 how it might so dispose and lay away many anx- 
 ieties which now take up their place there, that 
 there might be room for the higher themes and 
 considerations of religion !] 
 
 Many sensitive and fastidious natures are worn 
 away by the constant friction of what are called 
 
EARTHLY CARE. 51 
 
 little troubles. Without any great affliction, they 
 feel that all the flower and sweetness of their life 
 is faded; their eye grows dim, their cheek care- 
 worn, and their spirit loses hope and elasticity, 
 and becomes bowed with premature age ; and in 
 the midst of tangible and physical comfort, they 
 are restless and unhappy. The constant under- 
 current of little cares and vexations, which is 
 slowly wearing out the finer springs of life, is seen 
 by no one ; scarcely ever do they speak of these 
 things to their nearest friends. Yet were there 
 a friend, of a spirit so discerning as to feel and 
 sympathize in all these things, how much of this 
 repressed electric restlessness would pass off 
 through such a sympathizing mind. 
 
 Yet among human friends this is all but impos- 
 sible, for minds are so diverse that what is a trial 
 and a care to one, is a matter of sport and amuse- 
 ment to another, and all the inner world breathed 
 into a human ear, only excites a surprised or con- 
 temptuous pity. To whom then shall the soul 
 turn who will feel that to be affliction, which 
 each spirit knows to be so ? If the soul shut 
 itself within itself, it becomes morbid; the fine 
 chords of the mind and nerves, by constant wear, 
 
52 EARTHLY CARE. 
 
 X 
 
 become jarring and discordant : hence fretfulness, 
 discontent, and habitual irritability steal over the 
 sincere Christian. 
 
 But to the Christian who really believes in the 
 agency of God in the smallest events of life, con- 
 fides in his love and makes his sympathy his 
 refuge, the thousand minute cares and perplexities 
 of life become each one a fine affiliating bond 
 between the soul and its God. Christ is known, 
 not by abstract definition, and by high-raised 
 conceptions of the soul's aspiring hours, but 
 known as a man knoweth his friend ; he is known 
 by the hourly wants he supplies known by every 
 care with which he momentarily sympathises, 
 every apprehension which relieves, every tempta- 
 tion which he enables us to surmount. We learn 
 to know Christ as the infant child learns to know 
 its mother and father, by all the helplessness and 
 all the dependence which are incident to this 
 commencement of our moral existence ; and as we 
 go on thus year by year, and find in every chang- 
 ing situation, in every reverse, in every trouble, 
 from the lightest sorrow to those which wring our 
 soul from its depths, that he is equally present, 
 and that his gracious aid is equally adequate, our 
 
EARTHLY CARE. 53 
 
 faith seems gradually almost to change to sight, 
 and Christ's sympathy, his love and care, seem to 
 us more real than any other source of reliance ; 
 and multiplied cares and trials are only new ave- 
 nues of acquaintance between us and Heaven. 
 
 Suppose, in some bright vision unfolding to our 
 view, in tranquil evening or solemn midnight, the 
 glorified form of some departed friend should 
 appear to us with the announcement, " This year 
 is to be to you one of special probation and disci- 
 pline, with reference to perfecting you for a hea- 
 venly state. Weigh well and consider every inci- 
 dent of your daily life, for not one is to fall out 
 by accident, but each one shall be a finished and 
 indispensable link in a bright chain that is to draw 
 you upward to the skies." 
 
 With what new eyes should we now look on our 
 daily lot ! and if we found in it not a single 
 change the same old cares, the same perplexities, 
 the same uninteresting drudgeries still with what 
 new meaning would every incident be invested, 
 and with what other and sublimer spirit could we 
 meet them! Yet, if announced by one rising 
 from the dead with the visible glory of a spiritual 
 world, this truth could be asserted no more clearly 
 
54 EARTHLY CARE. 
 
 and distinctly- than Jesus Christ has stated it 
 already. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground 
 without our Father not one of them is forgotten 
 by him ; and we are of more value than many 
 sparrows yea, even the hairs of our head are all 
 numbered. Not till belief in these declarations, 
 in their most literal sense, becomes the calm and 
 settled habit of the soul, is life ever redeemed 
 from drudgery and dreary emptiness, and made 
 full of interest, meaning, and Divine significance. 
 Not till then do its grovelling wants, its wearing 
 cares, its stinging vexations, become to us minis- 
 tering spirits each one, by a silent but certain 
 agency, fitting us for a higher and perfect sphere. 
 
EARTHLY CARE. 55 
 
 HYMN. 
 
 NEARER, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 E'en though it be a cross 
 That raiseth me"; 
 
 Still all my song shall be, 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 Though like a wanderer, 
 
 The sun gone down, 
 
 Darkness comes over me, 
 My rest a stone, 
 
 Yet in my dreams I'd be 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
 There let my way appear 
 
 Steps unto heav'n ; 
 
 All that Thou sendest me 
 In mercy giv'n ; 
 
 Angels to beckon me 
 
 Nearer, my God, to Thee, 
 Nearer to Thee ! 
 
Irjinlnr'a Sltottttra in tjp 
 
 "1$ we could only live in the country," said my 
 wife, "Low much easier it would be to lire.'' 
 
 "And how much cheaper I 7 ' said I. 
 
 " To have a little place of our own, and raise 
 our own things !" said my wife : " dear me ! I am 
 heart-sick when I think of the old place at home, 
 and father's great garden. What peaches and 
 melons we used to have what green peas and 
 corn ! Now one has to buy every cent's worth of 
 these things and how they taste ! Such wilted, 
 miserable corn ! Such peas ! Then, if we lived 
 in the country, we should have our own cow, and 
 milk and cream in abundance our own hens and 
 chickens. We could have custard and ice cream 
 every day !" 
 
 " To say nothing of the trees and flowers, and 
 all that," said I. 
 
 The result of this little domestic duet was 
 that my wife and I began to ride about the city of 
 - - to look up some pretty interesting cottage 
 
 (56) 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTU RES. 57 
 
 where our visions of rural bliss might be realized. 
 Country residences near the city we found to 
 bear rather a high price ; so that it was no easy 
 matter to find a situation suitable to the length of 
 our purse ; till, at last, a judicious friend suggested 
 a happy expedient 
 
 "Borrow a few hundred," he said, "and give 
 your note you can save enough very soon, to 
 make the difference. When you raise everything 
 you eat, you know it will make your salary -go a 
 wonderful deal further." 
 
 " Certainly it will," said I. " And what can be 
 more beautiful than to buy places by the simple 
 process of giving one's note 'tis so neat, and 
 handy, and convenient !" 
 
 " Why," pursued my friend, " there is Mr. B., 
 my next door neighbour 'tis enough to make one 
 sick of life in the city to spend a week out on his 
 farm. Such princely living as one gets ; and he 
 assures me that it costs him very little scarce 
 anything, perceptible, in fact !" 
 
 " Indeed," said I, " few people can say that." 
 
 " Why," said my friend, " he has a couple of 
 peach trees for every month, from June till frost, 
 that furnish as many peaches as he and his wife 
 3* 
 
58 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 and ten children can dispose of. And then he has 
 grapes, apricots, &c. ; and last year his wife sold 
 fifty dollars 'worth from her strawberry patch, and 
 had an abundance for the table besides. Out of 
 the milk of only one cow they had butter enough 
 to sell three or four pounds a week, besides abund- 
 ance of milk and cream ; and madam has the but- 
 ter for her pocket money. This is the way coun- 
 try people manage.' 7 
 
 " Glorious !" thought I. And my wife and I 
 could scarce sleep all night, for the brilliancy of 
 our anticipations ! 
 
 To be sure our delight was somewhat damped 
 the next day by the coldness with which my good 
 old uncle, Jeremiah Standfast, who happened 
 along at precisely this crisis, listened to our 
 visions. 
 
 " You'll find it pleasant, children, in the sum- 
 mer-time," said the hard-fisted old man, twirling 
 his blue checked pocket handkerchief; "but I'm 
 sorry you've gone in debt for the land." 
 
 " Oh ! but we shall soon save that it's so much 
 cheaper living in the country!" said both of us 
 together. 
 
 " Well, as to that, I don't think it is to city- 
 bred folks." 
 
A S CHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 59 
 
 Here I broke in with a flood of accounts of 
 Mr. B.'s peach trees, and Mrs. B.'s strawberries, 
 butter, apricots, &c., &c. ; to which the old gentle- 
 man listened with such a long, leathery, unmoved 
 quietude of visage as quite provoked me, and gave 
 me the worst possible opinion of his judgment. I 
 was disappointed too ; for, as he was reckoned one 
 of the best practical farmers in the county, I had 
 counted on an enthusiastic sympathy with all my 
 agricultural designs. 
 
 "I tell you what, children," he said, "a body 
 can live in the country, as you say, amazin' cheap ; 
 but, then, a body must know how" and my uncle 
 spread his pocket handkerchief thoughtfully out 
 upon his knees, and shook his head gravely. 
 
 I thought him a terribly slow, stupid old body, 
 and wondered how I had always entertained so 
 high an opinion of his sense. 
 
 " He is evidently getting old !" said I to my 
 wife; "his judgment is not what it used to be." 
 
 At all events, our place was bought, and we 
 moved out, well pleased, the first morning in 
 April, not at all remembering the ill savor of that 
 day for matters of wisdom. Our place was a 
 pretty cottage, about two miles from the city, with 
 
60 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 grounds that have been tastefully laid out. There 
 was no lack of winding paths, arbors, flower bor- 
 ders, and rose-bushes, with which my wife was 
 especially pleased. There was a little green lot, 
 strolling off down to a brook, with a thick grove 
 of trees at the end, where our cow was to be 
 pastured. 
 
 The first week or two went on happily enough 
 in getting our little new pet of a house into trim- 
 ness and good order ; for, as it had been long for 
 sale, of course there was any amount of little re- 
 pairs that had been left to amuse the leisure 
 hours of the purchaser. Here a door-step had 
 given way, and needed replacing ; there a shutter 
 hung loose, and wanted a hinge ; abundance of 
 glass needed setting ; and, as to the painting and 
 papering, there was no end to that ; then my wife 
 wanted a door cut here, to make our bed-room 
 more convenient, and a china closet knocked up 
 there, where no china closet before had been. 
 We even ventured on throwing out a bay window 
 from our sitting-room, because we had luckily 
 lighted on a workman who was so cheap that it 
 was an actual saving of money to employ him. 
 And to be sure our darling little cottage did lift 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 61 
 
 up its head wonderfully for all this garnishing 
 and furbishing. I got up early every morning, 
 and nailed up the rose-bushes, and my wife got 
 up and watered the geraniums, and both flattered 
 ourselves and each other on our early hours and 
 thrifty habits. But soon, like Adam and Eve in 
 Paradise, we found our little domain to ask more 
 hands than ours to get it into shape. "So," says I 
 to my wife, " I will bring out a gardener when I 
 come next time, and he shall lay it out, and get 
 it into order ; and after that, I can easily keep it 
 by the work of my leisure hours." 
 
 Our gardener was a very sublime sort^ of a 
 man an Englishman, and, of course, used to lay- 
 ing out noblemen's places, and we became as grass- 
 hoppers in our own eyes, when he talked of Lord 
 this and that's estate, and began to question us 
 about our carriage-drive and conservatory, and we 
 could with difficulty bring the gentleman down to 
 any understanding of the humble limits of our ex- 
 pectations merely to dress out the walks and lay 
 out a kitchen garden, and plant potatoes, turnips, 
 beets, and carrots, was quite a descent for him. 
 In fact, so strong were his aesthetic preferences, 
 that he persuaded my wife to let him dig all the 
 
62 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 turf off from a green square opposite the bay -win- 
 dow, and to lay it out into divers little triangles, 
 resembling small pieces of pie, together with cir- 
 cles, mounds, and various other geometrical orna- 
 ments, the planning and planting of which soon 
 engrossed my wife's whole soul. The planting of 
 the potatoes, beets, carrots, &c., was intrusted to 
 a raw Irishman ; for, as to me, to confess the 
 truth, I began to fear that digging did not agree 
 with me. It is true that I was exceedingly vigor- 
 ous at first, and actually planted with my own 
 hands two or three long rows of potatoes ; after 
 which I got a turn of rheumatism in my shoulder 
 which lasted me a week. Stooping down to plant 
 beets and radishes gave me a vertigo, so that I 
 was obliged to content myself with a general super- 
 intendence of the garden ; that is to say, I charged 
 my Englishman to see that my Irishman did his 
 duty properly, and then got on to my horse and 
 rode to the city. But about one part of the mat- 
 ter I must say I was not remiss and that is, in 
 the purchase of seed and garden utensils. Not a 
 day passed that I did not come home with my 
 pockets stuffed with choice seeds, roots, &c., and 
 the variety of my garden utensils was unequalled. 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 63 
 
 There was not a pruning-hook of any pattern, not 
 a hoe, rake, or spade, great or small, that I did 
 not have specimens of; and flower seeds and bulbs 
 were also forthcoming in liberal proportions. In 
 fact, I had opened an account at a thriving seed 
 store ; for when a man is driving a business on a 
 large scale, it is not always convenient to hand out 
 the change for every little matter, and buying 
 things on account is as neat and agreeable a mode 
 of acquisition as paying bills with one's note. 
 
 " You know we must have a cow," said my wife, 
 the morning of our second week. Our friend the 
 gardener, who had now worked with .us at the 
 rate of two dollars a day for two weeks, was at 
 hand in a moment in our emergency. We wanted 
 to buy a cow, and he had one to sell a wonder- 
 ful cow, of a real English breed. He would not 
 sell her for any money, except to oblige particular 
 friends ; but as we had patronized him, we should 
 have her for forty dollars. How much we were 
 obliged to him ! The forty dollars were speedily 
 forthcoming, and so also was the cow. 
 
 "What makes her shake her head in that 
 way?" said my wife, apprehensively, as she ob- 
 served the interesting beast making sundry de- 
 
64 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 monstrations -with her horns. " I hope she's mild 
 and gentle." 
 
 The gardener fluently demonstrated that the 
 animal was a pattern of all the softer graces, and 
 that this head-shaking was merely a little nervous 
 affection consequent on the embarrassment of a 
 new position. We had faith to believe almost 
 anything at this time, and therefore came from, 
 the barn-yard to the house as much satisfied with 
 our purchase as Job with his three thousand 
 camels and five hundred yoke of oxen. Her quon- 
 dam master milked her for us the first evening, 
 out of a delicate regard to her feelings as a 
 stranger, and we fancied that we discerned forty 
 dollars' worth of excellence in the very quality of 
 the milk. 
 
 But alas ! the next morning our Irish girl came 
 in with a most rueful face : " And is it milking 
 that baste you'd have me be after ?" she said ; 
 " sure, and she won't let me come near her.'' 
 
 "Nonsense, Biddy!" said I, " you frightened 
 her, perhaps; the cow is perfectly gentle ;" and 
 with the pail on my arm I sallied forth. The 
 moment madam saw me entering the cow-yard, 
 she greeted me with a very expressive flourish of 
 her horns. 
 
ASCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 65 
 
 " This won't do," said I, and I stopped. The 
 lady evidently was serious in her intentions of 
 resisting any personal approaches. I cut a cudgel, 
 and putting on a bold face, marched towards her, 
 while Biddy followed with her milking-stool. Ap- 
 parently, the beast saw the necessity of tempo- 
 rizing, for she assumed a demure expression, and 
 Biddy sat down to milk. I stood sentry, and if 
 the lady shook her head, I shook my stick, and 
 thus the milking operation proceeded with tolera- 
 ble serenity and success. 
 
 " There !" said I, with dignity, when the froth- 
 ing pail was full to the brim. " That will do ? 
 Biddy/' and I dropped my stick. Dump ! came 
 madam's heel on the side of the pail, and it 
 flew like a rocket into the air, while the milky 
 flood showered plentifully over me, in a new 
 broadcloth riding-coat that I had assumed for the 
 first time that morning. " Whew 1" said I, as 
 soon as I could get my breath from this extraordi- 
 nary shower-bath ; "what's all this?" My wife 
 came running toward the cow-yard, as I stood 
 with the milk streaming from my hair, filling my 
 eyes, and dropping from the tip of my nose ! and 
 she and Biddy performed a recitative lamentation 
 
66 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 over me in alternate strophes, like the chorus in 
 a Greek tragedy. Such was our first morning's 
 experience; but as we had announced our bar- 
 gain with some considerable flourish of trumpets 
 among our neighbours and friends, we concluded 
 to hush the matter up as much as possible. 
 
 " These very superior cows are apt to be cross ;" 
 said I; "we must bear with it as we do with the 
 eccentricities of genius ; besides, when she gets 
 accustomed to us, it will be better." 
 
 Madam was therefore installed into her pretty 
 pasture-lot, and my wife contemplated with plea- 
 sure the picturesque effect of her appearance re- 
 clining on the green slope of the pasture-lot, or 
 standing ancle-deep in the gurgling brook, or re- 
 clining under the deep shadows of the trees she 
 was, in fact, a handsome cow, which may account, 
 in part, for some of her sins ; and this considera- 
 tion inspired me with some degree of indulgence 
 toward her foibles. 
 
 But when I found that Biddy could never suc- 
 ceed in getting near her in the pasture, and that 
 any kind of success in the milking operations re- 
 quired my vigorous personal exertions morning 
 and evening, the matter wore a more serious as- 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 67 
 
 pect, and I began to feel quite pensive and appre- 
 hensive. It is very well to talk of the pleasures 
 of the milkmaid going out in the balmy freshness 
 of the purple dawn ; but imagine a poor fellow 
 pulled out of bed on a drizzly, rainy morning, and 
 equipping himself for a scamper through a wet 
 pasture-lot, rope in hand, at the heels of such a 
 termagant as mine ! In fact, madam established 
 a regular series of exercises, which had all to be 
 gone through before she would suffer herself to 
 be captured ; as, first, she would station herself 
 plump in the middle of a marsh, which lay at the 
 lower part of the lot, and look very innocent and 
 absent-minded, as if reflecting on some sentimen- 
 tal subject. " Suke ! Suke ! Suke !" I ejaculate 
 cautiously, tottering along the edge of the marsh, 
 and holding out an ear of corn. The lady looks 
 gracious, and comes forward, almost within reach 
 of my hand. I make a plunge to throw the rope 
 over her horns, and away she goes, kicking up 
 mud and water into my face in her flight, while I, 
 losing my balance, tumble forward into the marsh. 
 I pick myself up, and, full of wrath, behold her 
 placidly chewing the cud on the other side, with 
 the meekest air imaginable, as who should say, 
 
68 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 " I hope you are not hurt, sir." I dash through 
 swamp and bog furiously, resolving to carry all 
 by coup de main. Then follows a miscellaneous 
 season of dodging, scampering, and bo-peeping 
 among the trees of the grove, interspersed with 
 sundry occasional races across the bog aforesaid. 
 I always wondered how I caught her every day, 
 when I had tied her head to one post and her 
 heels to another, I wiped the sweat from my brow 
 and thought I was paying dear for the eccentrici- 
 ties of genius. A genius she certainly was, for 
 besides her surprising agility, she had other tal- 
 ents equally extraordinary. There was no fence 
 that she could not take down ; nowhere that she 
 could not go. She took the pickets off the garden 
 fence at her pleasure, using her horns as handily 
 as I could use a claw hammer. Whatever she has 
 a mind to, whether it were a bite in the cabbage 
 garden, or a run in the corn patch, or a foraging 
 expedition into the flower borders, she made her- 
 self equally welcome and at home. Such a scam- 
 pering and driving, such cries of " Suke here" and 
 " Suke there," as constantly greeted our ears 
 kept our little establishment in a constant commo- 
 tion. At last, when she one morning made a 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 69 
 
 plunge at/ the skirts of a new broadcloth frock 
 coat, and carried 'off one flap on her horns, my pa- 
 tience gave out, and I determined to sell her. 
 
 As, however, I had made a good story of my 
 misfortunes among my friends and neighbours, and 
 amused them with sundry whimsical accounts of 
 my various adventures in the cow-catching line, 
 I found when I came to speak of selling, that 
 there was a general coolness on the subject, and 
 nobody seemed disposed to be the recipient of my 
 responsibilities. In short, I was glad, at last, to 
 get fifteen dollars for her, and comforted myself 
 with thinking that I had at least gained twenty- 
 five dollars' worth of experience in the transac- 
 tion, to say nothing of the fine exercise. 
 
 I comforted my soul, however, the day after, by 
 purchasing and bringing home to my wife a fine 
 swarm of bees. 
 
 "Your bee, now," says I, "is a really classical 
 insect, and breathes of Virgil and the Augustan 
 age and then, she is a domestic, tranquil, placid 
 creature ! How beautiful the murmuring of a 
 hive near our honeysuckle of a calm summer 
 evening ! Then they are tranquilly and peace- 
 fully amassing for us their stores of sweetness, 
 
70 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 while they lull us with their murmurs. What a 
 beautiful image of disinterested benevolence !" ' 
 
 My wife declared that I was quite a poet, and 
 the bee-hive was duly installed near the flower- 
 pots, that the delicate creatures might have the 
 full benefit of the honeysuckle and mignonette. 
 My spirits began to rise. I bought three differ- 
 ent treatises on the rearing of bees, and also one 
 or two new patterns of hives, and proposed to rear 
 my bees on the most approved model. I charged 
 all the establishment to let me know when there 
 was any indication of an emigrating spirit, that I 
 might be ready to receive the new swarm into my 
 patent mansion. 
 
 Accordingly, one afternoon, when I was deep 
 in an article that I was preparing for the North 
 American Review, intelligence was brought me that 
 a swarm had risen. I was on the alert at once, 
 and discovered on going out that the provoking 
 creatures had chosen the top of a tree about thirty 
 feet high to settle on. Now, my books had care- 
 fully instructed me just how to approach the 
 swarm and cover them with a new hive, but I had 
 never contemplated the possibility of the swarm 
 being, like Haman's gallows, forty cubits high. 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 71 
 
 I looked despairingly upon the smooth-bark tree, 
 which rose like a column, full twenty feet, without 
 branch or twig. " What is to be done ?" said I, 
 appealing to two or three neighbours. At last, at 
 the recommendation of one of them, a ladder was 
 raised against the tree, and, equipped with a shirt 
 outside of my clothes, a green veil over my head, 
 and a pair of leather gloves in my hand, I went 
 up with a saw at my girdle to saw off the branch 
 on which they had settled, and lower it by a rope 
 to a neighbour, similarly equipped, who stood be- 
 low with the hive. 
 
 As a result of this manoeuvre the fastidious little 
 insects were at length fairly installed at house- 
 keeping in my new patent hive, and, rejoicing in 
 my success, I again sat down to my article. 
 
 That evening my wife and I took tea in our ho- 
 neysuckle arbour, with our little ones and a friend 
 or two, to whom I showed my treasures, and expa- 
 tiated at large on the comforts and conveniences 
 of the new patent hive. 
 
 But alas for the hopes of man ! The little un- 
 grateful wretches, what must they do but take ad- 
 vantage of my oversleeping myself the next morn- 
 ing, to clear out for new quarters without so much 
 
72 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 as leaving me a P. P. C. Such was the fact ; at 
 eight o'clock I found the new patent hive as good 
 as ever ; but the bees I have never seen from that 
 day to this ! 
 
 "The rascally little conservatives!" said I; "I 
 believe that they have never had a new idea from 
 the days of Yirgil down, and are entirely unpre- 
 pared to appreciate improvements." 
 
 Meanwhile the seeds began to germinate in our 
 garden, when we found, to our chagrin, that, be- 
 tween John Bull and Paddy, there had occurred 
 sundry confusions in the several departments. 
 Radishes had been planted broadcast, carrots and 
 beets arranged in hills, and here and there a 
 whole paper of seed appeared to have been planted 
 bodily. My good old uncle, who, somewhat to my 
 confusion, made me a call at this time, was greatly 
 distressed and scandalized by the appearance of 
 our garden. But, by a deal of fussing, transplant- 
 ing, and replanting, it was got into some shape and 
 order. My uncle was rather troublesome, as care- 
 ful old people are apt to be annoying us by per- 
 petual inquiries of what we gave for this, and that, 
 and running up provoking calculations on the 
 final cost of matters, and we began to wish that 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 73 
 
 his visit might be as short as would be conve- 
 nient. 
 
 But when, on taking leave, he promised to send 
 us a fine young cow of his own raising, our hearts 
 rather smote us for our impatience. 
 
 " 'Taint any of your new breeds, nephew," said 
 the old man, "yet I can say that she's a gentle, 
 likely young crittur, and better worth forty dol- 
 lars than many a one that's cried up for Ayrshire or 
 Durham ; and you shall be quite welcome to her." 
 
 We thanked him, as in duty bound, and thought 
 that if he was full of old-fashioned notions, he was 
 no less full of kindness and good will. 
 
 And now, with a new cow, with our garden be- 
 ginning to thrive under the gentle showers of 
 May, with our flower-borders blooming, my wife 
 and I began to think ourselves in Paradise. But 
 alas ! the same sun and rain that warmed our fruit 
 and flowers brought up from the earth, like sulky 
 gnomes, a vast array of purple-leaved weeds, that 
 almost in a night seemed to cover the whole sur- 
 face of the garden beds. Our gardeners both be- 
 ing gone, the weeding was expected to be done by 
 me one of the anticipated relaxations of my lei- 
 sure hours. 
 
74 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 " Well," said I, in reply to a gentle intimation 
 from my wife, " when "my article is finished, I'll 
 take a day and weed all up clean." 
 
 Thus days slipped by, till at length the article 
 was dispatched, and I proceeded to my garden. 
 Amazement ! who could have possibly foreseen that 
 anything earthly could grow so fast in a few days ! 
 There were no bounds, no alleys, no beds, no dis- 
 tinction of beet and carrot, nothing but a flourish- 
 ing congregation of weeds nodding and bobbing 
 in the' morning breeze, as if to say, " We hope 
 you are well, sir we've got the ground, you see !" 
 I began to explore, and to hoe, and to weed. Ah ! 
 did anybody ever try to clean a neglected carrot 
 or beet bed, or bend his back in a hot sun over 
 rows of weedy onions ! He is the man to feel for 
 my despair ! How I weeded, and sweat, and 
 sighed ! till, when high noon came on, as the re- 
 sult of all my toils, only three beds were cleaned ! 
 And how disconsolate looked the good seed, thus 
 unexpectedly delivered from its sheltering tares, 
 and laid open to a broiling July sun ! Every ju- 
 venile beet and carrot lay flat down, wilted and 
 drooping, as if, like me, they had been weeding 
 instead of being weeded. 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 75 
 
 " This weeding is quite a serious matter," said 
 I to my wife ; "the fact is, I must have help about 
 it!" 
 
 "Just what I was myself thinking," said my 
 wife. " My flower-borders are all in confusion, 
 and my petunia mounds so completely overgrown, 
 that nobody would dream what they were meant 
 for !" 
 
 In short it was agreed between us that we 
 could not afford the expense of a full-grown man 
 to keep our place, yet we must reinforce ourselves 
 by the addition of a boy, and a brisk youngster 
 from the vicinity was pitched upon as the happy 
 addition. This youth was a fellow of decidedly 
 quick parts, and in one forenoon made such a 
 clearing in our garden that I was delighted bed 
 after bed appeared to view, all cleared and 
 dressed .out with such celerity that I was quite 
 ashamed of my own slowness, until, on examina- 
 tion, I discovered that he had, with great imparti- 
 ality, pulled up both weeds and vegetables. 
 
 This hopeful beginning was followed up by a 
 succession of proceedings which should be recorded 
 for the instruction of all who seek for help from 
 the race of. boys. Such a loser of all tools, great 
 
76 A SCHOLAB'S ADVENTUKES. 
 
 and small such an invariable leaver-open of all 
 gates, and a letter down of bars such a personi- 
 fication of all manner of anarchy and ill luck 
 had never before been seen on the estate. His 
 time, while I was gone to the city, was agreeably 
 diversified with roosting on the fence, swinging on 
 the gates, making poplar whistles for the children, 
 hunting eggs, and eating whatever fruit happened 
 to be in season, in which latter accomplishment he 
 was certainly quite distinguished. After about 
 three weeks of this kind of joint gardening, we 
 concluded to dismiss master Tom from the firm, 
 and employ a man. 
 
 " Things must be taken care of," said I, " and 
 I cannot do it. 'Tis out of the question." And 
 so the man was secured. 
 
 But lam making a long story, and may chance 
 to outrun the sympathies of my readers. Time 
 would fail me to tell of the distresses manifold 
 that fell upon me of cows dried up by poor 
 milkers, of hens that wouldn't set at all, and hens 
 that despite all law and reason wonld set on one 
 egg, of hens that having hatched families straight- 
 way led them into all manner of high grass and 
 weeds, by which means numerous young chicks 
 
A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 77 
 
 caught premature colds and perished ! and how 
 when I, with manifold toil, had driven one of 
 these inconsiderate gadders into a coop, to teach 
 her domestic habits, the rats came down upon her, 
 and slew every chick in one night ! how my pigs 
 were always practising gymnastic exercises over 
 the fence of the stye, and marauding in the gar- 
 den. (I wonder that Fourier never conceived the 
 idea of having his garden-land ploughed by pigs, for 
 certainly they manifest quite a decided elective 
 attraction for turning up the earth.) 
 
 When autumn came, I went soberly to market in 
 the neighbouring city, and bought my potatoes 
 and turnips like any other man, for, between- all 
 the various systems of gardening pursued, I was 
 obliged to confess that my first horticultural 
 effort was a decided failure. But though all my 
 rural visions had proved illusive, there were some 
 very substantial realities. My bill at the seed 
 store, for seeds, roots, and tools, for example, had 
 run up to an amount that was perfectly unac- 
 countable ; then there were various smaller items, 
 such as horse-shoeing, carriage-mending for he 
 who lives in the country and does business in the 
 city must keep his vehicle and appurtenances. I 
 
78 A SCHOLAR'S ADVENTURES. 
 
 had always prided myself on being an exact man, 
 and settling every account, great and small, with 
 the going out of the old year, but this season I 
 found myself sorely put to it. In fact, had not I 
 received a timely lift from my good old uncle, I 
 had made a complete break-down. The old gen- 
 tleman's troublesome habit of ciphering and cal- 
 culating, it seems, had led him beforehand to 
 foresee that I was not exactly in the money-making 
 line, nor likely to possess much surplus revenue to 
 meet the note which I had given for my ^place, 
 and therefore he quietly paid it himself, as I dis- 
 covered when, after much anxiety and some sleep- 
 less nights, I went to the holder to ask for an ex- 
 tension of credit. 
 
 " He was right after all," said I to my wife, 
 " ' to live cheap in the country, a body must know 
 how.'" 
 
" A little child shall lead them." 
 
 ONE cold market morning I looked into a milli- 
 ner's shop, and there I saw a hale, hearty, well- 
 browned young fellow from the country, with his 
 long cart whip, and lion shag coat, holding up 
 some little matter, and turning it about on his 
 great fist. And what do you suppose it was ? A 
 baby's bonnet! A little, soft, blue satin hood, 
 with a swan's down border, white as the new fallen 
 snow, with a frill of rich blonde around the edge. 
 
 By his side stood a very pretty woman holding, 
 with no small pride, the baby for evidently it 
 was the baby. Any one could read that fact in 
 every glance, as they looked at each other, and 
 then at the large unconscious eyes, and fat dim- 
 pled cheeks of the little one. 
 
 It was evident that neither of them had ever 
 seen a baby like that before. 
 
 " But really, Mary," said the young man, "isn't 
 three dollars very high?" 
 
 Mary very prudently said nothing, but taking 
 
 79 
 
80 CHILDREN. 
 
 the little bonnet, tied it on the little head, and 
 held up the little baby. The man looked, and 
 without another word down went the three dollars ; 
 all that the last week's butter came to; and 
 as they walked out of the shop, it is hard to 
 say which looked the most delighted with the 
 bargain. 
 
 "Ah," thought I, "a little child shall lead 
 them." 
 
 Another day, as I was passing a carriage fac- 
 tory along one of our principal back streets, I saw 
 a young mechanic at work on a wheel. The rough 
 body of a carriage stood beside him, and there, 
 wrapped up snugly, all hooded and cloaked, sat a 
 little dark-eyed girl, about a year old, playing 
 with a great shaggy dog. As I stopped, the man 
 looked up from his work and turned admiringly 
 toward his little companion, as much as to say, 
 " See what I have got here !" 
 
 "Yes," thought I, "and if the little lady ever 
 gets a glance from admiring swains as sincere as 
 that, she will be lucky." 
 
 Ah ! these children, little witches, pretty even 
 in all their faults and absurdities. See, for ex- 
 ample, yonder little fellow in a haughty fit ; he 
 
CHILDREN. 81 
 
 has shaken his long curls over his deep .blue eyes ; 
 the fair brow is bent in a frown ; the rose-leaf lip 
 is pursed up in infinite defiance ; and the white 
 shoulder thrust naughtily forward. Can any but a 
 child look so pretty, even in their naughtiness ? 
 
 Then comes the instant change ; flashing smiles 
 and tears, as the good comes back all in a rush, 
 and you are overwhelmed with protestations, pro- 
 mises, and kisses ! They are irresistible, too, these 
 little ones. They pull away the scholar's pen ; 
 tumble about his paper; make somersets over 
 his books ; and what can he do ? They tear 
 up newspapers ; litter the carpets ; break, pull, 
 and upset, and then jabber unimaginable Eng- 
 lish in self-defiance, and what can you do for 
 yourself ? 
 
 " If I had a child," says the precise man, "you 
 should see." 
 
 He does have a child, and his child tears up 
 his papers, tumbles over his things, and pulls his 
 nose, like all other children, and what has the 
 precise man to say for himself? Nothing; he 
 is like every body else ; " a little child may lead 
 him." 
 
 The hardened heart of the worldly man is un- 
 
82 CHILDREN. 
 
 locked by the guileless tones and simple caresses 
 of his son ; but he repays it in time, by imparting 
 to his boy all the crooked tricks and callous 
 maxims which have undone himself. 
 
 Go to the jail to the penitentiary, and find 
 there the wretch most sullen, brutal, and hardened. 
 Then look at your infant son. Such as he is to 
 you, such to some mother was this man. That 
 hard hand was soft and delicate ; that rough voice 
 was tender and lisping ; fond eyes followed him as 
 he played, and he was rocked and cradled as 
 something holy. There was a time when his 
 heart, soft and unworn, might have opened to 
 questionings of God and Jesus, and been sealed 
 with the seal of Heaven. But harsh hands seized 
 it ; fierce goblin lineaments were impressed upon 
 it ; and all is over with him forever ! 
 
 So of the tender, weeping child, is made the 
 callous, heartless man ; of the all-believing child, 
 the sneering sceptic ; of the beautiful and modest, 
 the shameless and abandoned ; and this is what 
 the world does for the little one. 
 
 There was a time when the divine One stood 
 on earth, and little children sought to draw near 
 to him. But harsh human beings stood between 
 
CHILDREN. 83 
 
 him and them, forbidding their approach. Ah! 
 has it not always been so ? Do not even we 
 with our hard and unsubdued feeling, our worldly 
 and unscriptural habits and maxims, stand like a 
 dark screen between our little child and its Sa- 
 viour, and keep even from the choice bud of our 
 hearts, the sweet radiance which might unfold it 
 for paradise? "Suffer little children to come 
 unto me, and forbid them not," is still the voice 
 of the Son of God, but the cold world still closes 
 around and forbids. When of old, disciples would 
 question their Lord of the higher mysteries of his 
 kingdom, he took a little child and set him in the 
 midst, as a sign of him who should be greatest in 
 Heaven. That gentle teacher remains still to us. 
 By every hearth and fireside, Jesus still sets the 
 little child in the midst of us. 
 
 Wouldst thou know, parent, what is that faith 
 which unlocks heaven ? Go not to wrangling po- 
 lemics, or creeds and forms of theology, but draw 
 to thy bosom thy little one, and read in that clear 
 trusting eye the lesson of eternal life. Be only 
 to thy God as thy child is to thee, and all is done ! 
 Blessed shalt thou be indeed, " when a little child 
 shall lead thee !" 
 
IT was a splendid room. Rich curtains swept 
 down to the floor in graceful folds, half excluding 
 the light, and shedding it in soft hues over the 
 fine old paintings on the walls, and over the broad 
 mirrors that reflect all that taste can accomplish 
 by the hand of wealth. Books, the rarest and 
 most costly, were around, in every form of gor- 
 geous binding and gilding, and among them, glit- 
 tering in ornament, lay a magnificent Bible a 
 Bible too beautiful in its appearance, too showy, too 
 ornamental, ever to have been meant to be read 
 a Bible which every visitor should take up, and 
 exclaim, " What a beautiful edition ! what superb 
 binding !" and then lay it down again. 
 
 And the master of the house was lounging on a 
 sofa, looking over a late review for he was a man 
 of leisure, taste, and reading but then, as to 
 reading the Bible ! that forms, we suppose, no 
 part of the pretensions of a man of letters. The 
 
 Bible certainly he considered it a very respecta- 
 
 84 
 
THE Two BIBLES. 35 
 
 ble book a fine specimen of ancient literature, 
 an admirable book- of moral precepts but then, 
 as to its divine origin he had not exactly made up 
 his mind some parts appeared strange and in- 
 consistent to his reason, others were very re- 
 volting to his taste true, he had never studied it 
 very attentively, yet such was his general impres- 
 sion about it but on the whole, he thought it well 
 enough to keep an elegant copy of it on his draw- 
 ing-room table. 
 
 So much for one picture, now for another. 
 
 Come with us into this little dark alley, and up 
 a flight of ruinous stairs. It is a bitter night, and 
 the wind and snow might drive through the cre- 
 vices of the poor room, were it not that careful 
 hands have stopped them with paper or cloth. 
 But for all this little carefulness, the room is bitter 
 cold cold even with those few decaying brands 
 on the hearth, which that sorrowful woman is try- 
 ing to kindle with her breath. Do you see that 
 pale little thin girl, with large bright eyes, who is 
 crouching so near her mother ? hark ! how she 
 coughs now listen : 
 
 "Mary, my dear child," says the mother, 
 "do keep that shawl close about you, you are 
 
86 THE Two BIBLES. 
 
 cold, I know," and the woman shivers as she 
 speaks. 
 
 " No, mother, not very," replies the child, again 
 relapsing into that hollow, ominous cough "I 
 wish you wouldn't make me always wear your 
 shawl when it is cold, mother." 
 
 " Dear child, you need it most how you cough 
 to-night," replies the mother, "it really don't seem 
 right for me to send you up that long street, now 
 your shoes have grown so poor ; I must go myself 
 after this." 
 
 " Oh ! mother, you must stay with the baby ; 
 what if he should have one of those dreadful fits 
 while you are gone ; no, I can go very well, I have 
 got used to the cold, now." 
 
 "But, mother, I'm cold," says a little voice 
 from the scanty bed in the corner, " mayn't I get 
 up and come to the fire ?" 
 
 " Dear child, it would not warm you it is 
 very cold here, and I can't make any more fire 
 to-night." 
 
 " Why can't you, mother ? there are four whole 
 sticks of wood in the box, do put one on, and let's 
 get warm once." 
 
 "No, my dear little Henry," says the mother, 
 
THE Two BIBLES. 87 
 
 soothingly, " that is all the wood mother has, and 
 I haven't any money to get more." 
 
 And now wakens the sick baby in the little cra- 
 dle, and mother and daughter are both for some 
 time busy in attempting to supply its little wants, 
 and lulling it again to sleep. 
 
 And now look you well at that mother. Six 
 months ago she had a husband, whose earnings 
 procured for her both the necessaries and com- 
 forts of life her children were clothed, fed, and 
 schooled, without thought of ners. But husband- 
 less and alone, in the heart of a great busy city, 
 with feeble health, and only the precarious re- 
 sources of her needle, she had come rapidly down 
 from comfort to extreme poverty. Look at her 
 now, as she is to-night. She knows full well that 
 the pale bright-eyed girl, whose hollow cough con- 
 stantly rings in her ears, is far from well. She 
 knows that cold, and hunger, and exposure of 
 every kind, are daily and surely wearing away her 
 life, and yet what can she do ? Poor soul, how 
 many times has she calculated all her little re- 
 sources, to see if she could pay a doctor, and get 
 medicine for Mary yet all in vain. She knows 
 that timely medicine, ease, fresh air, and warmth, 
 
88 THE Two BIBLES. 
 
 might save her but she knows that all these 
 things are out of the question for her. She feels, 
 too, as a mother would feel, wfren she sees her 
 once rosy, happy little boy, becoming pale, and 
 anxious, and fretful ; and even when he teases her 
 most, she only stops her work a moment, and 
 strokes his poor little thin cheeks, and thinks what 
 a laughing, happy little fellow he once was, till 
 she has not a heart to reprove him. And all this 
 day she has toiled with a sick and fretful baby in 
 her lap, and her little, shivering, hungry boy at 
 her side, whom poor Mary's patient artifices can- 
 not always keep quiet ; she has toiled over the last 
 piece of work which she can procure from the 
 shop, for the man has told her that after this he 
 can furnish no more. And the little money that 
 is to come from this is already proportioned out 
 in her mind, and after that she has no human 
 prospect of more. 
 
 But yet the woman's face is patient, quiet, firm. 
 Nay, you may even see in her suffering eye some- 
 thing like peace ; and whence comes it ? I will 
 tell you. 
 
 There is a Bible in that room, as well as in the 
 rich man's apartment. Not splendidly bound, to 
 
THE Two BIBLES. 89 
 
 be sure, but faithfully read a plain, homely, much 
 worn book. 
 
 Hearken now, while she says to her children, 
 " Listen to me, my dear children, and I will read 
 you something out of this book. ' Let not your 
 heart be troubled, in my Father's house are many 
 mansions.' So you see, my children, we shall not 
 always live in this little, cold, dark room. Jesus 
 Christ has promised to take us to a better home." 
 
 " Shall we be warm there, all day ?" says the little 
 boy earnestly, " and shall we have enough to eat ?" 
 
 "Yes, dear child," says the mother, " listen to 
 what the Bible says, ' They shall hunger no more, 
 neither thirst any more, for the Lamb which is in 
 the midst of them shall feed them ; and God shall 
 wipe away all tears from their eyes.' " 
 
 "I am glad of that," said little Mary, "for 
 mother, I never can bear to see you cry." 
 
 "But, mother," says little Henry, "won't God 
 send us something to eat to-morrow ?" 
 
 " See," says the mother, " what the Bible says, 
 1 Seek ye not what ye shall eat, nor what ye shall 
 drink, neither be of anxious mind. For your Fa- 
 ther knoweth that ye have need of these things. 
 
 "But, mother," says little Mary, "if God is 
 
90 THE Two BIBLES. 
 
 our Father, and loves us, what does he let us be 
 so poor for?" 
 
 "Nay," says the mother, "our Lord Jesus 
 Christ was as poor as we are, and God certainly 
 loved him." 
 
 " Was he,' mother ?" 
 
 " Yes, children, you remember how he said, 
 1 The Son of Man hath not where to lay his head.' 
 And it tells us more than once, that Jesus was 
 hungry when there was none to give him food." 
 
 " Oh ! mother, what should we do without the 
 Bible !" says Mary. 
 
 Now if the rich man who had not yet made up 
 his mind what to think of the Bible, should visit 
 this poor woman, and ask her on what she grounded 
 her belief of its truth, what could she answer ? 
 Could she give the argument from miracles and 
 prophecy ? Can she account for all the changes 
 which might have taken place in it through trans- 
 lators and copyists, and prove that we have a 
 genuine and uncorrupted version ? Not she ! But 
 how then does she know that it is true ? How, 
 say you ? How does she know that she has warm 
 life-blood in her heart ? How does she know that 
 there is such a thing as air and sunshine ? 
 
THE Two BIBLES. 91 
 
 She does not believe these things, she knows 
 them ; and in like manner, with a deep heart-con- 
 sciousness, she is certain that the words of her 
 Bible are truth and life. Is it by reasoning that 
 the frightened child, bewildered in the dark, knows 
 its mother's voice ? No ! Nor is it by reasoning 
 that the forlorn and distressed human heart kno^ws 
 the voice of its Saviour, and is still. 
 
 Go when the child is lying in its mother's arms, 
 and looking up trustfully in her face, and see if 
 you can puzzle him with metaphysical difficulties 
 about personal identity, until you can make him 
 think that it is not his mother. Your reasonings 
 may be conclusive your arguments unanswera- 
 ble but after all, the child sees his mother there, 
 and feels her arms around him, and his quiet un- 
 reasoning belief on the subject, is precisely of the 
 same kind which the little child of Christianity 
 feels in the existence of his Saviour, and the reality 
 of all those blessed truths which he has told in his 
 word. 
 
1il\n /mm 3SUiit*. In.l. 
 
 TO THE EDITOR OP THE NATIONAL ERA. 
 
 THE fashionable complaint of neuralgia has kept 
 back from your paper many " thoughts, motions, 
 and revolutions" of the brain, which, could they 
 have printed themselves on paper, would have 
 found their way towards you. Don't you suppose, 
 in the marvellous progress of this fast-living age, 
 the time will ever come, when, by some metaphy- 
 sical daguerreotype process, the thoughts and im- 
 ages of the brain shall print themselves on paper, 
 without the intervention of pen and ink ? Then, 
 how many brilliancies, now lost and forgotten be- 
 fore one gets time to put them through the slow 
 process of writing, shall flash upon us ! Our poets 
 will sit in luxurious ease, with a quire of paper in 
 their pockets, and have nothing to do but lean 
 back in their chairs, and go off in an ecstacy, and 
 lo ! they will find it all written out, commas and 
 
 all, ready for the printer. What a relief, too, to 
 
 92 
 
LETTER FROM MAINE. 93 
 
 multitudes of gentle hearts, whose friends in this 1 
 busy age are too hurried to find much time for 
 writing. / Your merchant puts a sheet of paper in- J 
 side of Ms vest over his heart, of course and in 
 the interval between selling goods and pricing 
 stocks, thinks warm thoughts towards his wife or 
 lady-love and at night draws forth a long letter, 
 all directed for the post. ! How convenient ! 
 "Would that some friend of humanity would offer a 
 premium for the discovery ! 
 
 The spiritual rapping fraternity, who are aufait 
 in all that relates to man's capabilities, and who 
 are now speaking ex cathedra of all things celes- 
 tial and terrestrial, past, present, and to come, can 
 perhaps immediately settle the minutiae of such an 
 arrangement. One thing is quite certain : that I 
 if every man wore a sheet of paper in his bosom, 
 on which there should be a true and literal ver- 
 sion of all his thoughts, even for one day, in a 
 great many cases he would be astounded on read- 
 ing it over. Are there not many who would there 
 see, in plain, unvarnished English, what their 
 patriotism, disinterestedness, generosity, friend- 
 ship, and religion actually amounts to ? Let us 
 fancy some of our extra patriotic public men com- 
 
94 LETTEE FROM MAINE. 
 
 paring such a sheet with their speeches. We 
 have been amused, sometimes, at the look of blank 
 astonishment with which men look for the first 
 time on their own daguerreotype. Is that me ? 
 Do I look so ? . Perhaps this inner daguerreo- 
 type might prove more surprising still. " What, 
 I think that ? I purpose so and so ? What 
 a troublesome ugly machine ! I'll have nothing 
 to do with it !" 
 
 But to drop that subject, and start another. J It 
 seems to us quite wonderful, that in all the ecsta- 
 cies that have been lavished on American scenery, 
 this beautiful State of Maine should have been 
 so much neglected ; for nothing is or can be 
 more wildly, peculiarly beautiful particularly the 
 scenery of the sea-coast. A glance at the map 
 will show one the peculiarity of these shores. It 
 is a complicated network and labyrinth of islands 
 the sea interpenetrating the land in every fanci- 
 ful form, through a belt of coast from fifteen to 
 twenty miles wide. The effect of this, as it lies 
 on the map, and as it lives and glows in reality, 
 is as different as the difference between the poetry 
 of life and its dead matter of fact. 
 
 But supposing yourself almost anywhere in 
 
LETTEE FROM MAINE. 95 
 
 Maine, -within fifteen miles of the shore, and you 
 start for a ride to the sea side, you will then be in 
 a fair way to realize it. The sea, living, beau- 
 tiful, and life-giving, seems, as you ride, to be 
 everywhere about you behind, before, around. 
 Now it rises like a lake, gemmed with islands, and 
 embosomed by rich swells of woodland. Now 
 you catch a peep of it on your right hand, among 
 tufts of oak and ' maple, and anon it spreads on 
 your left to a majestic sheet of silver, among rocky 
 shores, hung with dark pines, hemlocks, and 
 spruces. 
 
 The sea shores of Connecticut and Massachu- 
 setts have a kind of baldness and barenness which 
 you never see here. As you approach the ocean 
 there, the trees seem to become stunted and few 
 in number, but here the sea luxuriates, swells, and 
 falls, in the very lap of the primeval forest. 
 The tide water washes the drooping branches of 
 the oak and maple, and dashes itself up into whole 
 hedges of luxuriant arbor vitse. 
 
 No language can be too enthusiastic to paint the 
 beauty of the evergreens in these forests The 
 lordly spruce, so straight, so tall, so perfectly de- 
 fined in its outline, with its regal crest of cones, 
 
96 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 sparkling with the clear exuded gum, and bearing 
 on its top that " silent finger" which Elliot de- 
 scribes as " ever pointing up to God" the ancient 
 white pine with its slender whispering leaves, the 
 feathery larches, the rugged and shaggy cedars 
 all unite to form such a " goodly fellowship," that 
 one is inclined to think for the time that no son 
 of the forest can compare with them. But the 
 spruce is the prince among them all. Far or 
 near, you see its slender obelisk of dark green, 
 rising singly amid forests of oak or maple, or mar- 
 shalled together in serried ranks over distant hills, 
 or wooding innumerable points, whose fantastic 
 outlines interlace the silvery sea. The heavy 
 blue green of these distant pines forms a beautiful 
 contrast to the glitter of the waters, and affords a 
 fine background, to throw out the small white 
 wings of sail boats, which are ever passing from 
 point to point among these bays and harbors. 
 One of the most peculiar and romantic features 
 of these secluded wood-embosomed waters of 
 Maine is this sudden apparition of shipping and 
 sea craft, in such wild and lonely places, that they 
 seem to you, as the first ships did to the simple 
 savages, to be visitants from the spirit land. 
 
LETTER FROM MAINE. 97 
 
 You are riding in a lonely road, by some bay that 
 seems to you like a secluded inland lake ; you check 
 your horse, to notice the fine outline of the vari- 
 ous points, when lo ! from behind one of them, 
 swan-like, with wings all spread, glides in a ship 
 from India or China, and wakes up the silence, by 
 tumbling her great anchor into the water. A 
 ship, of itself a child of romance a dreamy, cloud- 
 like, poetic thing and that ship connects these 
 piney hills and rocky shores, these spruces and 
 firs, with distant lands of palm and spice, and 
 speaks to you, in these solitudes, of groves of 
 citron and olive. We pray the day may never 
 come when any busy Yankee shall find a substi- 
 tute for ship sails, and take from these spirits of 
 the wave their glorious white wings, and silent, 
 cloud-like movements, for any fuss and sputter of 
 steam and machinery. It will be just like some 
 Yankee to do it. That race will never rest till 
 everything antique and poetic is drilled out of the 
 world. The same spirit which yearns to make 
 Niagara a mill-seat, and use all its pomp and 
 pow'er of cloud, and spray, and rainbow, and its 
 voices of many waters, for accessories to a cotton 
 factory, would, we suppose, be right glad to trans- 
 
98 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 form the winged ship into some disagreeable 
 greasy combination of machinery, if it would only 
 come cheaper. The islands along the coast of 
 Maine are a study for a tourist. The whole sail 
 along the shores is through a never ending 
 labyrinth of these some high and rocky, with 
 castellated sides, bannered with pines some rich- 
 ly wooded with forest trees and others, again, 
 whose luxuriant meadow land affords the finest 
 pasturage for cattle. Here are the cottages of 
 fishermen, who divide their time between farming 
 and fishing, and thus between land and water 
 make a very respectable amphibious living. These 
 people are simple-hearted, kindly, hardy, with a 
 good deal of the genial broad-heartedness that 
 characterizes their old father, the ocean. When 
 down on one of these lonely islands once, we 
 were charmed to find, in a smaH cottage, one of 
 the prettiest and most lady-like of women. Her 
 husband owned a fishing-smack ; and while we 
 were sitting conversing in the house, in came a 
 damsel from the neighborhood, arrayed, in all 
 points, cap-a-pie, according to the latest city 
 fashions. The husband came home from a trip 
 while we were there. He had stopped in Portland, 
 
LETTER FROM MAINE. 99 
 
 and brought home a new bonnet for his wife, of 
 the most approved style, and a pair of gaiter 
 shoes for his little girl. One of our company was 
 talking with him, congratulating him on his re- 
 tired situation. 
 
 " You can go all about, trading in your vessel, 
 and making money," he said, "and here on this 
 retired island there is no way to spend it, so you 
 must lay up a good deal." 
 
 " Don't khow about that," said the young man ; 
 " there's women and girls everywhere ; and they 
 must have their rings, and their pins, and para- 
 sols and ribbons. There's ways enough for money 
 to go." 
 
 On Sunday mornings, these islanders have out 
 their sail-boats, and all make sail for some point 
 where there is a church. They spend the day in 
 religious service, and return at evening. Could 
 one wish a more picturesque way of going to 
 meeting of a calm summer morning ? 
 
 So beautiful a country, one would think, must 
 have nurtured the poetic sentiment ; and Maine, 
 accordingly, has given us one of our truest poets 
 Longfellow. Popular as his poetry is, on a first 
 reading, it is poetry that improves and grows on 
 
100 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 one by acquaintance and study ; and more par- 
 ticularly should be studied under the skies and 
 by the seas of that State whose beauty first in- 
 spired it. No one who views the scenery of 
 Maine artistically, and then studies the poems 
 of Longfellow, can avoid seeing that its hues and 
 tones, its beautiful word-painting, and the exquisite 
 variety and smoothness of its cadences, have been 
 caught, not from books and study, but from a 
 long and deep heart communion with Nature. 
 We recollect seeing with some indignation, a few 
 years ago, what seemed to us a very captious criti- 
 cism on Longfellow ; and it simply occurred to 
 us then, that if the critic had spent as much time 
 in the forest as the poet, and become as familiar 
 with the fine undertones of Nature, such a critique 
 never would have appeared. A lady who has 
 lately been rambling with us among the scenery 
 of Maine, and reading Longfellow's poems, said, 
 the other day " He must have learned his mea- 
 sure from the sea; there is just its beautiful ripple 
 in all his verses" a very beautiful and very just 
 criticism. There are some fine lines in Evange- 
 line, that give us the pine forests of Maine like a 
 painting : 
 
LETTER FROM MAINE. 101 
 
 " This is the forest primeval the murmuring pines and 
 
 the hemlocks 
 Bearded with moss and with garments green, indistinct 
 
 in the twilight 
 
 Stand like Druids of Eld, with voices sad and prophetic, 
 Stand like harpers hoar, with beards that rest on their 
 
 bosoms : 
 Loud from its rocky caverns, the deep-voiced neighboring 
 
 ocean 
 Speaks, and in accents disconsolate answers the wail of the 
 
 forest/' 
 
 Drawn to the very life ! "We have seen those 
 very Druids graybeards, dusky garments and 
 all, on the shores of Maine, many a time ; and if 
 anybody wants to feel the beauty and grandeur 
 of the picture, he must go to some of those wild 
 rocky islands there. 
 
 Longfellow's poetry has the true seal of the 
 bard in this : that while it is dyed rich as an old 
 cathedral window in tints borrowed in foreign 
 language and literature tints caught in the fields 
 of Spain, Italy, and Germany yet, after all, the 
 strong dominant colors are from fields and scenes 
 of home. So truly is he a poet of Maine, that we 
 could wish to see his poems in every fisherman's 
 cottage, through all the wild islands, and among 
 
102 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 all the romantic bays and creeks of that beautiful 
 shore. 
 
 It would be a fine critical study to show how 
 this undertone of native imagery and feeling 
 passes through all that singular harmony which 
 the poet's scholarcraft has enabled him to compose 
 from the style of many nations ; and some day 
 we have it in heart to do this in a future letter. 
 At present we will not bestow any further tedious- 
 ness upon you. 
 
 Very truly, H. B. S. 
 
THE last letter from Maine ! how painful a word 
 this may be, only those who can fully appreciate 
 this beautiful, hospitable, noble-hearted State, can 
 say. 
 
 Maine stands as a living disproval of the* re- 
 ceived opinion, that Northern latitudes chill the 
 blood, or check the flow of warm and social feel- 
 ing. There is a fullness, a frankness, and free- 
 dom, combined with simplicity, about the social 
 and domestic life of this State, which reminds 
 me of the hospitality and generosity of Kentucky, 
 more than anything else, and yet has added to it 
 that stability and intelligent firmness peculiar to 
 the atmosphere of New England. Perhaps it is 
 because Maine, like Kentucky, is yet but a half- 
 settled State, and has still a kind of pioneer, 
 backwoods atmosphere about it. All impulses 
 . which come from the great heart of nature, from 
 the woods, the mountains, or the ocean, are al- 
 
 (103) 
 
104 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 ways pure and generous and those influences in 
 Maine are yet stronger than the factitious second- 
 hand and man-made influences of artificial life. 
 
 Truly, whether we consider the natural beauty 
 of Maine, or the intellectual clearness and deve- 
 lopment of her common people, or the unsophisti- 
 cated simplicity of life and manners there, or the 
 late glorious example which she has set in the eyes 
 of all the nations of the earth, one must say she 
 is well worthy of her somewhat aspiring motto 
 the North Star ! and the significant word, 
 "Dirigo!" 
 
 DIRIGO. That word is getting to have, in this 
 day, a fullness of meaning, that perhaps was not 
 contemplated when it was assumed into her es- 
 cutcheon for Maine is indeed the North Star, 
 and the guiding hand in a movement that is to 
 regenerate all nations and from all nations the 
 cry for her guidance begins to be heard. 
 
 It is said that the very mention of the State of 
 Maine, in temperance gatherings in England, now 
 raises tumults of applause, and that Neal Dow 
 has been sent for even as far as Berlin, to carry 
 the light of this new gospel of peace on earth, 
 and good will to men. 
 
LETTEE FBOM MAINE. 105 
 
 The last election in Maine, taken altogether, is 
 the most magnificent triumph of principle, pure 
 principle, that the world ever saw. Thousands 
 and tens of thousands of money had been sent by 
 liquor dealers in other States to bribe voters it 
 had been triumphantly asserted that votes in 
 Maine could be had for two dollars a head but 
 when they came to try the thing practically upon 
 her sturdy old farmers and fishermen, they then 
 got quite a new idea of what a Maine man was. 
 The old aquatic farmers, who inherit all the noble 
 traits both of sea and land, shook their hands 
 most emphatically from holding bribes, and the 
 mountain farmers showed that in the course of 
 their agricultural life and experiments they had 
 learned, among other things, the striking difference 
 between wheat and chaff. No ! no ! bribing was 
 plainly " no go" in Maine ; the money was only 
 taken by a few poor, harmless loafers, of the kind 
 who roost on rail fences on a sunny day, or lean 
 up against barns, when for obvious reasons they 
 are in no condition to roost, and who are espe- 
 cially interested in the question of the rights of 
 women to saw wood. 
 
 The election in Maine is an era in the history 
 5* 
 
106 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 of elections, because there, for once, men of prin- 
 ciple forsook all party lines and measures, to vote 
 for PRINCIPLE alone. Whigs voted for Democrats, 
 Democrats for Whigs, with sole reference to their 
 relation to the temperance cause, and thus a great 
 and memorable victory was gained. Party is the 
 great Anti-Christ of a republican government, 
 and the discipline of party has hitherto been so 
 stringent that it really has been impossible to de- 
 termine the sentiment of a Christian man by his 
 vote, except so far as it might signify the opinion 
 of the party with which they were connected. 
 Maine, in agreement with her motto, " Dirigo" 
 has set the example of two very great and 
 important things. One is, that this traffic may 
 be suppressed by law; and the other is, that 
 men of principle can vote out of their party and 
 the second suggestion is quite equal in value with 
 the first. For if men can vote out of their party 
 for one great question of right, they can for an- 
 other ; and the time is not distant, we trust, when 
 the noble State of Maine will apply the same 
 liberty to other subjects. 
 
 While I have been writing this, an invisible 
 spirit has been walking in our forests, and lo, the 
 
LETPEK FROM MAINE. 107 
 
 change ! The serrated ranks of spruces are 
 lighted with brilliant forms of trees, flame coloured, 
 yellow, scarlet, all shining out between the un- 
 changed steel blue of the old evergreens. If one 
 wants the perfection of American forest scenery, 
 he must have for the rainbow illumination of au- 
 tumn, a background of sombre black green like 
 ours. Fancy the graceful indentations, the thou- 
 sand lake-like beautiful bays of this charming 
 shore, now reflecting in their mirror this hourly 
 brightening, pageant fancy the ships gliding in 
 and out from Jeddo, China, California, England ! 
 and you can fancy the regret and longing of 
 heart with which I leave a coast so beautiful. 
 Fancy that you see dwellings, speaking alike of 
 simplicity and of refinement imagine families 
 where intelligence, heartiness, warm hospitality, 
 and true Christian principle, all conspire to make 
 your visit a pleasure, and your departure a regret, 
 and you can fancy a more intimate reason of the 
 sorrow with which I write myself no longer a resi- 
 dent of that State. But as I leave it, I cannot 
 but express the wish that every family, and every 
 individual may remember the glory which their 
 State has now, and the character which it has 
 
108 LETTER FROM MAINE. 
 
 now to sustain in the eyes of the whole civilized 
 world. 
 
 The women of Maine have had no small influ- 
 ence in deciding the triumph of the cause which 
 sheds such lustre on their State. All women, as 
 a natural thing, are friends and advocates of the 
 cause of temperance, a cause involving so much 
 to sons, brothers, and husbands ; and the Maine 
 women have acted most decidedly and nobly in its 
 support. 
 
 To the "North Star" now the eyes of all the 
 world are turning, and we must look to it to guide 
 us in everything that is right and noble. May 
 that star be seen as plainly leading the generous 
 cause of freedom ! that cause whose full success 
 shall wipe from the American escutcheon its only 
 national stain. H. E. B. S. 
 
, nr 
 
 " OH, dear ! Christmas is coming in a fortnight, 
 and I have got to think up presents for every- 
 body !" said young Ellen Stuart, as she leaned 
 languidly back in her chair. " Dear me ! ' it's so 
 tedious ! Everybody has got everything that can 
 be thought of." 
 
 " Oh, no !" said her confidential adviser, Miss 
 Lester, in a soothing tone. " You have means of 
 -buying everything you can fancy, and when 
 every shop and store is glittering with all manner 
 of splendors, you cannot surely be at a loss." 
 
 " Well, now, just listen. To begin with, there's 
 mamma ! what can I get for her ? I have thought 
 of ever so many things. She has three card-cases, 
 four gold thimbles, two or three gold chains, two 
 writing desks of different patterns ; and then, as 
 to rings, brooches, boxes, and all other things, I 
 should think she might be sick of the sight of 
 them. I am sure I am," said she, languidly gazing 
 on her white and jewelled fingers. 
 
 (109) 
 
110 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 This view of the case seemed rather puzzling to 
 the adviser, and there was silence for a few mo- 
 ments, when Eleanor, yawning, resumed 
 
 " And then there's cousins Ellen and Mary I 
 suppose they will be coming down on me with a 
 whole load of presents ; and Mrs. B. will send me 
 something she did last year; and then there's 
 cousins William and Tom I must get them 
 something, and I would like to do it well enough, 
 if I only knew what to get ! 
 
 "Well," said Eleanor's aunt, who had been 
 sitting quietly rattling her knitting needles during 
 this speech, " it's a pity that you had not such a 
 subject to practice on as I was when I was a girl 
 presents did not fly about in those days as they 
 do now. I remember when I was ten yea,rs old, 
 my father gave sister Mary and me a most mar- 
 vellously ugly sugar dog for a Christmas gift, and 
 we were perfectly delighted with it the very idea 
 of a present was so new to us." 
 
 " Dear aunt, how delighted I should be if I had 
 any such fresh unsophisticated body to get pres- 
 ents for ! but to get and get for people that have 
 more than they know what to do with now to add 
 pictures, books, and gilding, when the centre- 
 
CHRISTMAS. Ill 
 
 tables are loaded with them now and rings and 
 jewels, when they are a perfect drug ! I wish 
 myself that I were not sick, and sated, and tired 
 with having everything in the world given me !" 
 
 " Well, Eleanor," said her aunt, " if you really 
 do want unsophisticated subjects to practise on, I 
 can put you in the way of it. I can show you 
 more than one family to whom you might seem to 
 be a very good fairy, and where such gifts as you 
 could give with all ease would seem like a magic 
 dream." 
 
 " Why, that would really be worth while, aunt." 
 "Look right across the way," said her aunt. 
 " You see that building." 
 
 " That miserable combination of shanties ? 
 Yes I" 
 
 " Well, I have several acquaintances there who 
 have never been tired of Christmas gifts, or gifts 
 of any other kind. I assure you, you could make 
 quite a sensation over there." 
 
 " Well, who is there ? Let us know !' 
 " Do you remember Owen, that used to make 
 your shoes?" 
 
 "Yes, I remember something about him." 
 
 " Well, he has fallen into a consumption, and 
 
112 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 cannot work any more, and he and his wife and 
 three little children live in one of the rooms over 
 there." 
 
 " How do they get along ?" 
 
 " His wife takes in sewing sometimes, and some- 
 times goes out washing. Poor Owen ! I was over 
 there yesterday; he looks thin and wistful, and 
 his wife was saying that he was parched with con- 
 stant fever, and had very little appetite. She had, 
 with great self-denial, and by restricting herself 
 almost of necessary food, got him two or three 
 oranges, and the poor fellow seemed so eager after 
 them." 
 
 "Poor fellow!" said Eleanor, involuntarily. 
 
 "Now, said her aunt, "suppose Owen's wife 
 should get up on Christmas morning, and find at 
 the door a couple of dozen of oranges, and some of 
 those nice white grapes, such as you had at your 
 party last week, don't you think it would make a 
 sensation ?" 
 
 "Why, yes, I think very likely it might; but 
 who else, aunt ? You spoke of a great many." 
 
 " Well, on the lower floor there is a neat little 
 room, that is always kept perfectly trim and tidy ; 
 it belongs to a young couple who have nothing 
 
CHRISTMAS. 113 
 
 beyond the husband's day wages to live on. They 
 are, nevertheless, as cheerful and chipper as a 
 couple of wrens, and she is up and down half a 
 dozen times a day, to help poor Mrs. Owen. She 
 has a baby of her own about five months old, and 
 of course does all the cooking, washing, and iron- 
 ing for herself and husband ; and yet, when Mrs. 
 Owen goes out to wash, she takes her baby and 
 keeps it whole days for her." 
 
 " I'm sure she deserves that the good fairies 
 should smile on her," said Eleanor; "one baby 
 exhausts my stock of virtue very rapidly." 
 
 "But you ought to see her baby," said aunt 
 E. ? "so plump, so rosy, and good-natured, and al- 
 ways clean as a lily. This baby is a sort of house- 
 hold shrine ; nothing is too sacred and too good 
 for it ; and I believe the little, thrifty woman feels 
 only one temptation to be extravagant, and that 
 is to get some ornaments to adorn this little di- 
 vinity." 
 
 " Why, did she ever tell you so ?' 
 
 a No; but one day when I was coming down 
 stairs, the door of their room was partly open, and 
 I saw a pedlar there with open box. John, the 
 husband, was standing with a little purple cap on 
 
114 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 his hand, which he was regarding with mystified, 
 admiring air, as if he did'nt quite comprehend ft, 
 and trim little Mary gazing at it with longing 
 eyes." 
 
 "I think we might get it," said John. 
 
 "Oh, no," said she, regretfully; "yet I wish 
 we could, it's so pretty!" 
 
 " Say no more, aunt. I see the good fairy must 
 pop a cap into the window on Christmas morning. 
 Indeed, it shall be done. How they will wonder 
 where it came from, and talk about it for months 
 to come !" 
 
 "Well, then," continued her aunt, "in the 
 next street to ours there is a miserable building, 
 that looks as if it were just going to topple over ; 
 and away up in the third story, in a little room 
 just under the eaves, live two poor, lonely old 
 women. They are both nearly on to ninety. I 
 was in there day before yesterday. One of them 
 is constantly confined to her bed with rheumatism, 
 the other, weak and feeble, with failing sight and 
 trembling hands, totters about her only helper ; 
 and they are entirely dependent on charity." 
 
 " Can't they do anything ? Can't they knit ?" 
 said Eleanor. 
 
CHRISTMAS. 115 
 
 " You are young and strong, Eleanor, and have 
 quick eyes and nimble fingers ; how long would it 
 take you to knit a pair of stockings?" 
 
 " I !" said Eleanor. " What an idea ! I never 
 tried, but I think I could get a pair done in a 
 week, perhaps !" 
 
 " And if somebody gave you twenty-five cents 
 for them, and out of this you had to get food, and 
 pay room rent, and buy coal for your fire, and oil 
 for your lamp" 
 
 " Stop, aunt, for pity's sake !" 
 
 " Well, I will stop, but they can't ; they must 
 pay so much every month for that miserable shell 
 they live in, or be turned into the street. The 
 meal and flour that some kind person sends goes 
 off for them just as it does for others, and they 
 must get more or starve, and coal is now scarce 
 and high priced." 
 
 " Oh, aunt, I'm quite convinced, I'm sure ; 
 don't run me down and annihilate me with all 
 these terrible realities. What shall I do to play 
 a good fairy to these poor old women ?" 
 
 "If you will give me full power, Eleanor, I will 
 put up a basket to be sent to them, that will give 
 them something to remember all winter." 
 
116 CH K IST MA s. 
 
 " Oh, certainly I will. Let me see if I can't 
 think of something myself." 
 
 " Well, Eleanor, suppose, then, some fifty, or 
 sixty years hence, if you were old, and your 
 father, and mother, and aunts, and uncles, now so 
 thick around you, laid cold and silent in so many 
 graves you have somehow got away off to a 
 strange city, where you were never known you 
 live in a miserable garret, where snow blows at 
 night through the cracks, and the fire is very 
 apt to go out in the old cracked stove ; you sit 
 crouching over the dying embers the evening be- 
 fore Christmas nobody to speak to you, nobody 
 to care for you, except another poor old soul who 
 lies moaning in the bed now, what would you 
 like to have sent you ?" 
 
 "Oh, aunt, what a dismal picture !" 
 
 " And yet, Ella, all poor, forsaken old women 
 are made of young girls, who expected it in their 
 youth as little as you do, perhaps I" 
 
 " Say no more, aunt. I'll buy let me see a 
 comfortable warm shawl for each of these poor 
 women ; and I'll send them let me see oh ! some 
 tea nothing goes down with old women like tea ; 
 and I'll make John wheel some coal over to them ; 
 
r 
 
 CHRISTMAS. 117 
 
 and, aunt, it would not be a very bad thought to 
 send them a new stove. I remember the other day, 
 when mamma was pricing stoves, I saw some, such 
 nice ones, for two or three dollars." 
 
 " For a new hand, Ella, you work up the idea 
 very well," said her aunt. 
 
 "But how much ought I to give, for any one 
 case, to these women, say ?" 
 
 " How much did you give last year for any sin- 
 gle Christmas present ?" 
 
 " Why, six or seven dollars, for some; those 
 elegant souvenirs were seven dollars ; that ring I 
 gave Mrs. B was ten." 
 
 " And do you suppose Mrs. B was any 
 
 happier for it?" 
 
 "No, really, I don't think she cared much 
 about it ; but I had to give her something, because 
 she had sent me something the year before, and I 
 did not want to send sfpaltry present to any one 
 in her circumstances." 
 
 " Then, Ella, give ten to any poor, distressed, 
 suffering creature who really needs it, and see in 
 how many forms of good such a sum will appear. 
 That one hard, cold, glittering diamond ring, that 
 now cheers nobody, and means nothing, that you 
 

 118 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 give because you must, and she takes because she 
 must, might, if broken up into smaller sums, send 
 real warm and heart-felt gladness through many 
 a cold and cheerless dwelling, and through many 
 an aching heart." 
 
 " You are getting to be an orator, aunt ; but 
 don't you approve of Christmas presents among 
 friends and equals ?" 
 
 "Yes, indeed," said her aunt, fondly stroking 
 her head. " I have had some Christmas presents 
 that did me a world of good a little book mark, 
 for instance, that a certain niece of mine worked 
 for me with wonderful secrecy, three years ago, 
 when she was not a young lady with a purse full 
 of money that book mark was a true Christmas 
 present ; and my young couple across the way are 
 plotting a profound surprise to each other on 
 Christmas morning. John has contrived, by an 
 hour of extra work every night, to lay by enough 
 j to get Mary a new calico dress ; and she, poor 
 soul, has bargained away the only thing in the 
 jewelry line she ever possessed, to be laid out on 
 j^a new hat for him." 
 
 - " I know, too, a washerwoman who has a poor 
 lame boy a patient, gentle little fellow who has 
 
CHRISTMAS. 119 
 
 lain quietly for weeks and months in his little 
 crib, and his mother is going to give him a splen-. 
 did Christmas present." 
 " What is it, pray ?" 
 
 " A whole orange ! Don't laugh. She will pay 
 
 ten whole cents fo^r it ; for it shall be none of your 
 
 cpmmon oranges, but a picked one of the very best 
 
 going ! She has put by the money, a cent at a 
 
 time, for a whole month ; and nobody knows which 
 
 will be happiest in it, Willie or his mother. These 
 
 are such Christmas presents as I like to think of 
 
 j gifts coming from love, and tending to produce 
 
 " Jove ; these are the appropriate gifts of the day. 
 
 " But don't you think that it's right for those 
 who have money, to give expensive presents, sup- 
 posing always as you say, they are given from real 
 affection?" 
 
 " Sometimes, undoubtedly. The Saviour did 
 not condemn her who broke an alabaster-box of 
 ointment very precious simply as a proof of 
 love, even although the suggestion was made, 
 i this migfyt have been sold for three hundred 
 pence, and given to the poor.' I have thought he 
 would regard with sympathy the fond efforts which 
 human love sometimes makes to express itself by 
 
120 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 gifts, the rarest and most costly. How I rejoiced 
 with all my heart, when Charles Elton gave his 
 poor mother that splendid Chinese shawl a,nd gold 
 watch because I knew they came from the very 
 fullness of his heart to a mother that he could not 
 do too much for a mother thatj^as done and suf- 
 fered everything for him. In some such cases, 
 when resources are ample, a costly gift seems to 
 have a graceful appropriateness ; but I cannot ap- 
 prove of it, if it exhausts all the means of doing 
 for the poor ; it is better, then, to give a simple 
 offering, and to do something for those who really 
 need it." 
 
 Eleanor looked thoughtful ; her aunt laid down 
 her knitting, and said, in a tone of gentle serious- 
 ness: 
 
 "Whose birth does Christmas commemorate, 
 Ella?" 
 
 fl Our Saviour's, certainly, aunt." 
 
 j " Yes," said her aunt. "And when and how 
 was he born ? in a stable ! laid in a manger ; thus 
 born, that in all ages he might be kno^wn as the 
 brother and friend of the poor. And surely it 
 seems but appropriate to commemorate His birth- 
 day by an especial remembrance of the lowly, 
 
CHEISTMAS. 121 
 
 the poor, the outcast, and distressed ; and if Christ 
 should come back to our city on a Christmas day, 
 where should we think it most appropriate to his 
 character to find him? Would he be carrying 
 splendid gifts to splendid dwellings, or would he 
 be gliding about in the cheerless haunts of the des- 
 olate, the poor, the forsaken, and the sorrowful?" 
 
 And here the conversation ended. 
 
 ***** 
 
 " What sort of Christmas presents is Ella buy- 
 ing ?" said cousin Tom, as the waiter handed in a 
 portentous-looking package, which had been just 
 rung in at the door. 
 
 "Let's open it," said saucy Will. " Upon my 
 word, two great gray blanket shawls ! These 
 must be for you and me, Tom ! And what's this ? 
 A great bolt of cotton flannel and gray yarn stock- 
 ings !" 
 
 The door bell rang again, and the waiter brought 
 in another bulky parcel, and deposited it on the 
 marble-topped centre table. 
 
 "What's here?" said Will, cutting the cord! 
 " Whew! a perfect nest of packages! oolong tea! 
 oranges ! grapes ! white sugar ! Bless me, Ella 
 must be going to housekeeping !" 
 
122 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 " Or going crazy !" said Tom : " and on my 
 word," said he, looking out of the window, " there's 
 a drayman ringing at our door, with a stove, with 
 a tea-kettle set in the top of it !" 
 
 "Ella's cook stove, of course," said Will; and 
 just at this moment the young lady entered, with 
 her purse hanging gracefully over her hand. 
 
 " Now, boys, you are too bad !" she exclaimed, 
 as each of the mischievous youngsters were gravely 
 marching up and down, attired in a gray shawl. 
 
 "Did'nt you get them for us? We thought 
 you did," said both. 
 
 * " Ella, I want some of that cotton flannel, to 
 make me a pair of pantaloons," said Tom. 
 
 "I say, Ella," said Will, " when are you going 
 to housekeeping? Your cooking stove is stand- 
 ing down in the street ; 'pon my word, John is 
 loading some coal on the dray with it." 
 
 " Ella, isn't that going to be sent to my office ?" 
 said Tom; " do you know I do so languish for a 
 new stove with a tea-kettle in the top, to heat a 
 fellow's shaving water !" 
 
 Just then, another ring at the door, and the 
 grinning waiter handed in a small brown paper 
 parcel for Miss Ella. Tom made a dive at it, and 
 
CHRISTMAS. 123 
 
 staving off the brown paper, developed a jaunty 
 little purple velvet cap, with silver tassels. 
 
 " My smoking cap ! as I live," said he," only I 
 shall have to wear it on my thumb, instead of my 
 head too small entirely," said he, shaking his 
 head gravely. 
 
 "Come, you saucy boys," said aunt E , en- 
 tering briskly, "what are you teasing Ella for?" 
 
 " Why, do see this lot of things, aunt ? What 
 in the world is Ella going to do with them?" 
 
 " Oh ! I know !" 
 
 " You know ; then I can guess, aunt, it is some j 
 of your charitable works. You are going to make | 
 a juvenile Lady Bountiful of El, eh?" 
 
 Ella, who had colored to the roots of her hair 
 at the expose of her very unfashionable Christ- 
 mas preparations, now took heart, and bestowed a 
 ?ery gentle and salutary little cuff on the saucy 
 head that still wore the purple cap, and then 
 hastened to gather up her various purchases. 
 
 "Laugh away," said she, gaily; "and a good 
 many others will laugh, too, over these things. I 
 got them to make people laugh people that are 
 not in the habit of laughing !" 
 
 "Well, well, I see into it," said Will; "and I 
 
124 CHRISTMAS. 
 
 tell you I think right well of the idea, too. There 
 are worlds of money wasted at this time of the. 
 year, in getting things that nobody wants, and 
 nobody cares for after they are got ; and I am 
 glad, for my part, that you are going to get up a 
 variety in this line ; in fact, I should like to give 
 you one of these stray leaves to help on," said he, 
 dropping a $10 note into her paper. I like to en- 
 courage girls to think of something besides breast- 
 pins and sugar candy." 
 
 But our story spins on too long. If anybody 
 wants to see the results of Ella's first attempts at 
 good fairy ism ) they can call at the doors of two or 
 three old buildings on Christmas morning, and 
 they shall hear all about it. 
 
GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY