Alfred LeiahfonHowe.
o
¥*2 tlje jsarne JMxtljor.
IP, YES, AND PERHAPS. A Volume of Stories.
lvol, lGmo. $1.50.
THE INGHAM PAPERS.
1 yoI. 16mo. $ 1.50.
SYBARIS, AND OTHER HOMES.
1 vol, 16mo. $ 1.50.
HOW TO DO IT.
1 vol. Small 16mo, $ 1.25.
lent, post-paid, to any address on receipt of price by the publishers,
JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
124 Tremont Street, Bostc
HIS LEVEL BEST,
AND
OTHER STORIES.
BY
EDWARD E. HALE.
BOSTON:
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1873.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872,
BY JAMES R. OSGOOD & CO.,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
University Press: Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
Cambridge.
PREFACE.
The first of these stories has never before been
pnblished. The others have had a circulation more
or less limited in different journals.
“ The Queen of California/’ as will be seen, is my
translation, from the “ Sergas of Esplandian,” of every
passage relating to the imagined island of “ Cali-
fornia” Since the first publication of that trans-
lation the principal public libraries of this country
have obtained copies of that romance,
E. E. H.
November 30, 1872.
CONTENTS.
Page
His Level Best 1
The Brick Moon 30
Water Talk ......... 125
Mouse and Lion 144
The Modern Sindbad 172
A. Tale of a Salamander . . . . . . 211
The Queen of California 234
Confidence 281
HIS LEVEL BEST.
[Strictly speaking these notes are only part of a story. They
are fragment s, taken not quite at hazard, from the diary of an
unfortunate gentleman, now resident in the poor-house, a culti-
vated man of amiable disposition, and formerly of comfortable
or sufficient property. How he lost that property his own mem-
oranda will show us.
If any one should ask me what this memoir teaches, I should
have to say, as I should say of most life, that it teaches a great
many things. I suppose it teaches the folly of a constant re-
mark, that if people mean well all will go well ; but I should
not print it here to teach that simple lesson. If it teaches, also,
the absurdity of the pressure which some of the organizations of
society make upon the best of its individual members, I shall be
glad of that. Most of all, I hope that it may teach some young
man or some young woman that it is better to do the whole of
one duty than a part of many ; that it is better to compel soci-
ety and to make circumstance obey you, than it is to yield to
fashion or to dictation the use of your talent, of your money, or
of your time.]
My story begins where most stories end, — with a
wedding.
It begins with my wedding. My wife was married
at the same time.
i
A
2
HIS LEVEL BEST.
Our friends all said that the eircumstances were
most auspicious. Certainly I thought so. I loved her.
She loved me. Better than either, we had not been
attached in youth, and so were not beginning to get
tired of each other. We were not like each other.
That, as my Aunt Joanna said, was so much the bet-
ter. She said that, when she bought a box of hooks
and eyes, she was always disappointed if they proved
to be all eyes or all hooks. She said that a hook
and an eye held together much more firmly than two
hooks did, or two eyes.
I had a little property, perhaps sixty-two thousand
dollars, and a trifle of three hundred and ninety-seven
or thereabout more. My wife had an independent
property in her own right'of sixty-one thousand nine
hundred and one dollars. It seemed as if I were a
little the superior in this, but on her wedding-night
one of her uncles gave her a five-hundred-dollar bill,
which made her rather the richer of the two.
Ho one gave me anything on our wedding-night,
with a single exception which I shall mention. She
had a great many presents. Her father gave her to
me, and she was not a thing. I counted that much
the best present of the occasion.
My wife and I had no causes for dissent, and we
have never quarrelled from that hour to this. We
have faithfully followed each other s fortunes. True,
we have been parted, but not by ourselves. I am now
in the Male Department of the poor-house, Dormitory
HIS LEVEL BEST.
3
B, native whites. She is in the Female Department,
also Dormitory B, native whites also. The children
are in what is known as the Nursery Department,
also Dormitory B, native whites also.
We have been married seven years, and have known
no material difference of opinions. Tiffs we have had,
but not quarrels. I own to tiffs, but I do not own to
quarrels. There was no reason why we should quarrel.
We both had good appetites and good health. We were
both fond of books, and yet we did not always want to
read the same book at a time. We had the same views
on papal infallibility, on the doctrine of election, on
regeneration, on the fall of man, on the vicarious atone-
ment, on baptism, and on the future life.
In a paper to be read before a mixed audience, I do
not think it proper or desirable to state what those
views were; but mine were hers and hers were mine.
We went to the same church, we taught in the same
Sunday school, and believed in the same — minister.
Under these circumstances we were married. There
was a large attendance, and the minister married us
first-rate. I have no fault to find with the minister.
Then they all congratulated us. I sometimes wonder
if they would congratulate us now, if they came down
to see the poor-house some day with the Board of
Overseers of the Poor, and I should be detailed to see
to their horses, and my wife to wait at table when they
had the collation. But they congratulated us then.
Then her uncle gave her the five-hundred-dollar bill,
4
HIS LEVEL BEST.
in a little aside, and lie told her that she had every-
thing heart could wish, — a pretty home and a good
husband. He meant me. Then he said she must not
be unmindful of others, but must be willing to do what-
ever other people wanted her to do for the good of
those around her, indeed, for the good of the world.
And she cried a little, and she said she would.
Then, in a little joking, her father came to me and
said he thought I ought to be sufficiently obliged to
him for giving Gertrude to me. But he was going to
add to the obligation. Then he took out a little bit
of paper. I thought it was a check. He made a little
speech, in which he s^id that he had got much comfort,
and I think an occasional nap, from reading regularly
the “ Evening Post,” which was the leading evening
paper of our town. He had been to the office that day
and subscribed for it for five years in my name. And
this bit of paper was the receipted bill of the publisher
for five years.
It was not a check.
I observed, while he was doing this, that my father
was handing Gertrude a little bit of paper. All the
people thought that was a check. But it was not. It
was not the same as mine, however. My father always
read in the morning tlie “ Daily Times,” which was the
leading morning paper of our town. He had subscribed
for that for six years in her name, and he was giving
the publisher’s receipt to her.
By and by the wedding was done. The minister
HIS LEVEL BEST.
5
kissed her and he bade me good by. “ Boothby,” he
said to me, “ I don’t know when I have seen such a
lucky fellow. The best of it is, I know you won’t be
selfish. You will not hide your talent in a napkin.
You are not one of the kind to say no — no — no , be-
cause you have a pretty house and a pretty wife. How
you have a position in society, you must assist in all
good objects.”
" In all good objects ! ” At the moment it did not
occur to me how many all meant, and I said, “ I ’ll
do my Level Best, Doctor.” So he went away, and I
have done that very thing ever since, as I said I would.
By and by they were all gone, and we took a car-
riage and drove to our new home.
Life began on us very gently. We were not to
receive our friends for a fortnight. Those of them
who remembered our existence thought we had gone
on a journey. Beally we were journeying round the
town in each others eompany. We had an excellent
breakfast the first day, which did honor to my wife’s
housekeeping. Then I read aloud the new daily to
her, while she washed her new cups and saucers. I
never read the paper so conscientiously before, and so
I was surprised to find how many duties I owed to
society, which I had never before performed, indeed
had never thought of. You see that is what the news-
paper is for. It is the keeper of the people’s conscience,
6
HIS LEVEL BEST.
and it tells them all what in the aggregate everybody
thinks they ought to do. So as I read on Gertrude
and I found that there was no danger but even the
day of the honeymoon would be eventful enough, if
we only did what all people of conscience and intelli-
gence were expected to do, and if we kept up to the
demand which an enlightened public opinion made
on the people of our town.
Thus the “ Daily Times ” said that morning: “ All of
our readers who are interested in fine art should go
to-day to witness the * Court of Death,’ which is on
exhibition for the last time at Watkins’s Hall. This
noble painting will be rolled up at nine this evening,
previous to its transfer to the private gallery of the
Emperor of Russia.”
So Gertrude and I agreed that, as we were really
interested in .fine art, we would go at noon. The
newspaper said we must go, and we had rather go at
that time.
Then, in another column, I read that “ every intelli-
gent person knew that it was quite time that some-
thing was done to prevent cruelty to animals in the
city; that all such persons were invited to meet at
the Coliseum Hall at one.” The editor expressed his
conviction that they would all go.
I told Gertrude it would be a nice opportunity to
meet all the intelligent, people in the town, whom I
had never met together, and we agreed to go there at
one.
HIS LEVEL BEST.
7
Then it said, under the “ musical ” head, that it was
sure the readers had not forgotten that the fourth Sym-
phony Concert was to take place that afternoon. It
was quite right about me ; for, as I never knew it be-
fore, I could not have forgotten it. It said that all
persons who had any love of music ought to go, if
only to encourage the deserving conductor; and that
they would be more than rewarded by the performance
of the Eleventh Symphony in D-Flat; and that all the
rest of the music would be thrown in for nothing. So
Gertrude ordered her dinner earlier than we had in-
tended, for the “ Times ” said that if we did not go early
we could not get seats. This proved to be a mistake;
but we acted on the editor’s misapprehension.
These three engagements made, I went about my
affairs and Gertrude about hers. We did not mean
to torment each other, as Maria Theresa and her hus-
band did, because he had nothing to do.
But I had not been at my new desk in my new study
five minutes, wondering what I should do with my new
ink and my new papers, when there was a tap at the
door and my new wife came in. She was very pretty,
— did I say so before ? She had on a lovely pink mom-
ing-dress, and a trig little collar round her neck, and I
thought the best thing I could do was to kiss her. But
she said no, I must not do that; that she was sorry to
interrupt me, but this was business. A poor girl had
come begging. She was the oldest of seven sisters,
and her father had been killed on the railroad, and her
8
HIS LEVEL BEST.
mother was in the insane asylum. Her rent was be-
hindhand; she needed seven dollars, and a gentleman
whose name she had forgotten had given her six, and
had recommended her to come to us for the seventh.
Neither of us could think who this gentleman was.
But we were not going to be stingy the day after our
wedding. So we had the girl in, and I made notes of
her story. I was sorry to find that her breath smelt
a little of gin, which showed a defect in her education.
I told her we would come and see her, that we never
gave any money at the door, and I took down her ad-
dress. She had forgotten the'name of the street she
lived in, and the house had no number, but it was
convenient to the Catholic church and was across the
way from the grocer’s. Her landlord was named James
Flaherty, and I could not miss the house, she said. So
I agreed to call before night, and I felt pleased that I
could do something so soon to carry out my promise
to the parson.
So that day was quite fully occupied in advance,
even before we started on it. We had not much corre-
spondence yet, only a few letters to write in answer
to presents. I wrote some for Gertrude while people
did not know her handwriting. We found that, by a
misunderstanding, two letters, signed Gertrude Booth-
by, went to Mrs. Senator Foster, and two to Horace
James. But this was better than if it had been the
other way.
I went to the post-office before going to the “ Court
HIS LEVEL BEST.
9
of Death.” I found there a notice that our class would
meet to pass resolutions of sympathy with Green’s
widow that evening; also that the graduates of the
Dummer Aeademy would meet to organize on Friday
evening; the trustees.of the Humane Society had
elected me a member, and would meet Saturday even-
ing; that I was chosen into the Historical Society,
which would meet Monday evening; and that all the
citizens of the town would meet to take measures to
prevent the drainage job on Tuesday evening. There
was another notice that they would all meet at another
place, to concert measures for carrying forward the
great sewerage improvement, the same evening. It
was rather difficult going to both, but the halls were
not far distant from each other, so I put down both on
my memorandum-book.
[Mr. Boothby’s notes go on from day to day of the honey-
moon, showing that he and his Gertrude did not in the least
lack the joy of eventful living. He describes at some length
his difficulty in finding Mary Williams, convanient the Catholic
church, opposite the grocery. Indeed, in that effort he failed
entirely, though he invested an hour in it. Before many days
he and his wife established a system of memoranda, and of
division of labor. She read aloud the “ Evening Post ” to him
while they were so fortunate as to have any time together, and
he, who had a knack at whittling, carved his cigar-boxes into
parlor ornaments. Then he made little notes of what was ex-
pected of every good citizen, of every lover of his race, of all
ladies of fashion, of any man who had a heart bigger than a
sixpence, of all the descendants of John Cotton, of whom he
1 *
10
HIS LEVEL BEST.
was one ; of aU the family of Elder Brewster, of whom his wife
was one ; of all members of the human family, to which they
both belonged ; of the resident s in Ward XVI. ; of the people
who were affected by the bone-burning nuisance, of the loyal
members of the Church of Christ, of the active members of the
Republican party, of persons interested in the temperance re-
form, of gentlemen who did not mean to have politics made a
trade of, and of such lesser calls as the evening paper made on
him and on her. They then sorted these out, and arrayed them
as best they could. When they could go together, they did.
If no gentlemen were admitted to these meetings, she went
alone. When no ladies were admitted, he went alone. Event-
ually, lack of time compelled them to discharge all such duties
separately, from the mere impossibility of being in more than
four places at the same time. But they did their level best, and
attended as many as was possible.
Mr. Boothby soon saw that if he had committed himself to
any profession, he would have had no time for these public cares
and pleasures ; but, on the other hand, he had not been married
six months before he found the unexpected necessity of the most
careful bookkeeping and economy, that he might meet the pecu-
niary calls with honor, which his gallant determination to do his
level best made upon him. His diary of a few hours will best
illustrate these calls.]
March ll, 1863.
Professor Tonrnefort is just entering on his grand
enterprise for publishing colored pictures of all the
humming-birds in the southern tropics. The paper
says it will be of immense credit to the United States
that this book shall be publisked here. Even the Em-
peror of Russia refused to undertake it, the expense
was so large. But now the Academy of ISTaturals has
HIS LEVEL BEST.
11
taken it up, and it is hoped that every man of public
spirit will order a copy. It is only twenty-five dollars
a year, and may last thirty-four years. Sent my check
to honorary treasurer.
Paid assessment to the Natural History Society.
Wish I could ever get to their meetings. Asked the
collector what advantages members had above non-
members, when I found I had to buy the Transactions
as other people do. He told me members only were
admitted to the library on Tuesday afternoons, all
other days being the publicis days. Mem. To go next
Tuesday afternoon. .
Paid assessment to Technological Society, to Genea-
logical Society, to Philological Society, to Anthropo-
logical Society, to Theological Library, to Physiological
.Institute, and to the Logical Necessity. They have
taken a suggestion of mine, and all now employ the
same collector, which is a convenience, one check and
visit answering for all.
Interesting call from the agent for the College for
educating Mammals. The State will give them a
hundred thousand dollars, if they can raise another
hundred by subscription. I am afraid they have to
pay a pretty large commission to their agents. Sub-
scribed twenty-five dollars, which seemed to be what
they expected. The man said he should like cash, be-
. cause he “ wanted to buy a new vest and pair of pants.”
So I gave him the money, though I don’t see what
that has to do with it.
12
HIS LEVEL BEST.
Eev. Mr. Izaaks came in. He is secretary for the
Society for teaching Children not to eat with their
Knives. He brought a line from our good Dr. South,
saying that he lioped that all the members of his
parish whom God had blessed with abundance would
do something for this estimable man. I did not quite
see why subscribing to the society should help the
secretary. But Dr. South probably knows. Gave five
dollars as an annual subscriber.
Paid annual subscriptions to Humane Society, Hos-
pital for Children, People’s Beading-Room, Hospital
for Infants, Scandinavian Emigrant Society, Hospital
for Girls, Old Women’s Home, Hospital for Boys, Old
Men’s Home, Hospital for Young Persons between Ages
of Fourteen and Twenty, Old Colored Women’s Home,
Hospital for Adults, Old Colored Men’s Home, Hospi-
tal for Aged Men, Home for Indians and Turanian
Eaces, Hospital for Aged Women, Home for Diseharged
and Disconnected Aryans, and the newly-founded Home
for Kanakas. This last is a very interesting charity.
The whalers bring home these from the Sandwich Isl-
ands, and they cannot bear the climate here. As none
of them are rich, they have, of course, never paid taxes
for ten years, so they cannot go into the poor-house.
How singular it is that the poor-house should be an
institution mainly for the support and relief of prop-
erty-holders ! This makes it necessary to have a sepa-
rate asylum for the Kanakas.
And so on.
HIS LEVEL BEST.
13
[After a year’s experience at this very unsatisfactory aver-
aging of one’s duties to the world, Mr. Boothby seems to have
thought of another course for a moment, to see if there were not
a best better than a level best. He seems to have thought for a
moment that a man’s own judgment of his duty was better than
any public’s judgment ; that a man had better right to divide
his own time than any newspaper had 5 and that it was better
to do one thing throughly or thoroughly, than to help a hundred
men to do a thousand tliings languidly. But I am sorry to say
that he tested this about a certain great concert, to which neither
he nor his wife wanted to go. She said it was the fashion, and
they must go. So they went. But she said she thought he
might give up looking in at club every afternoon. But when
he said, “ Everybody did,” she gave way. He bid in tiekets for
the first performance at the opera of u Debt and the Devil,”
because Gertrude said, “ They say that everybody is going.”
Boothby asked who they were, and Gertrude could not tell ;
but he found out afterwards that it was Mr. and Mrs. Grundy,
whom he did not know, and indeed never saw. She said there
was a man named Jawkins, who said so too.
There are some curious memoranda of Mr. Boothby’s on what
he calls the tides. He means the general laws which bring in
on one day all the assessment people, on one day all the West-
ern College people, on one day all the foreign professors, on
one day all the bores, and on one day all the butterflies.
It will never answer to read his speeulations in full, but I
will select a few illustrations from a letter of Introduction
Day.]
“ Veey odd; I had just got to my desk when a gen-
tleman came in, — a Swede, with a letter to me from
Fergus, our Yice-Consul at Nord-Koping. I have not
seen Fergus since we graduated. This gentleman speaks
14
HIS LEVEL BEST.
no English, but we got on quite well in German. A
very interesting man. Asked him to dinner.
Yery odd ; I had just got back to my writing when
an interesting man came in, — a Bohemian, late pro-
fessor at Buda, turned out on account of his views
regarding the Sacrament. Brings me a letter from Acs,
Kossuth’s chaplain. He spoke no German, but we
talked in Latin. Mem. He will dine with us to-morrow.
Yery odd; I -had just resumed my letter to Fisk
and Hatch, when a gentleman brought me a letter from
Bev. Mr. Cozzens, the missionary. This is a Dutch
planter from Table Bay. Yery interesting man. Does
not understand English nor French, but we made out
by signs very well. Says he will dine here to-morrow.
After he left I began my letter again about selling
out my 10-40s, when a dark-eolored gentleman came
in, who proved to be a Japanese prince, with a friendly
note from an old friend, Matateeset. Spoke no English,
but knew a little French, and we got on quite well.
Says he will take tea with us or dine in a friendly w T ay
some day this week.
After he was gone I went back to my letter; but it
was too late for the midday mail, and so I went to the
monthly meeting of the Soldiers’ Home, where I am
vice-president. Sat there an hour, but we did no busi-
ness for want of a quorum.
[I asked Mrs. Boothby about this dinner-party on the last
visit I made to Dormitory B, Female Department (white fe-
HIS LEVEL BEST.
15
males), and she gave me a very interesting account of it. In
his eagerness to do his very best by these gentlemen intrusted
to him from different parts of the world, Mr. Boothby had for-
gotten that the plumber was to be in the house the next day, to
take down the range and the water back, and that they were to
have a cold dinner. Or, more accurately, Mrs. Boothby, in her
determination to do the right thing at the right time, had ordered
the plumber to come, and had not mentioned it to her husband.
As they were to have a cold dinner and no company, Mrs.
Boothby had thought it a good day to have two dress-makers,
who would dine with them. Fortunately these young women
were both deaf and dumb. Mrs. Boothby arranged as well as
she could. She sent to a restaurant for her dinner, which was
a little cold, and they got through very well. Just as they were
sitting down, her aunt and her aunt’s sister and the sister’s two
children happened in, on their way home from Bye. So they
had to put another board into the table.
Just as they got through the oysters, Dr. South, the minister,
dropped in, with a Brahmin gentleman, one of the first-fruits of
the Serampore mission. He never expected an invitation, they
were always so glad to see him. u I was a little afraid the din-
ner would not hold out,” said poor Mrs. Boothby to me, as she
told me the story, 11 but my husband did not care. He said we
were doing our best, and we could do no more.”
I asked Mrs. Boothby how the gentlemen talked with each
other, — if there was no difficulty about language. She said
there was a little trouble when the Bohemian professor addressed
the deaf-and-dumb dress-maker in Latin, but that in general they
did very well. Mrs. Boothby herself said nothing. The Dutch
planter talked Dutch across the table to the Japanese prince ;
the Japanese prince spoke French to Mr. Boothby ; Mr. Booth-
by spoke German to the Swede ; the Swede spoke Danish to
Dr. South ; and Dr. South spoke Latin to the Bohemian. He
said nothing after his failure with the dress-maker. None of
16
HIS LEVEL BEST.
tliem talked in their own languages, but all did their best, —
their level best. The only misfortune was that they had been
seated as it happened, and the conversation had to be across
the table.
But Mr. Boothby said it was impossible, in our modern civ-
ilization, to choose on what day letters of introduction should
come. You must do the best you could with them, and that
was all.]
Good-hearted though he was, poor Mr. Boothby sometimes
got a sad repulse. He had written to Asaph Ferguson to ask
him to subscribe to the Kanakas’ Hospital, and he got this re-
buff, which I find preserved among his papers.
Dear John : — I will see you hanged first. If you
go on as you do, befriending every cause only because
it is a good cause, I am likely to see you hanged. You
say you do your level best, and I belie ve you. ISTow
level best is a sort of best I despise as much as I do
level country. I had rather have a sort of best which
knows what ups and downs are.
Boothby* which do you like best, a horizon where
there are four or five mountain-peaks and as many
valleys between, or one which is a dead level ? ■ You
like the mountains best. So do I. I hate your In-
diana prairies.
Boothby, your practice reminds me of poor Stickin-
themud’s preaching. It is all too good. He begins
on a high plane, — too high, as I think, — and then
he goes on and on and on and on, like a canal-boat
HIS LEVEL BEST.
17
on one long level, and we all go to sleep and we
all wake up, and we wonder why lie has not done.
But Bobert Collyer begins where we are, and goes
up and up and up, and we try to follow him, even
to the gate of heaven. The first thing we know, we
are almost there. But in a minute he is down again,
just on our own level, and he has got some little
baby in his arms who stumbled before, and but for
him would have been lost; and then it is up again,
up again, up again, till those who are pure in heart
enough see God. But he will not stay even there. He
is down again, seeking the lost and looking after them.
So next thing you know he is at your workshop door
in his talk again, and has you in his hand, and eoaxes
you and leads you, and leads you and lifts you, till you
are in the clear air once more, and see as you are seen
and know as you are known. Up and down, up and
down, up and down; that is better than Stickinthe-
mud’s high level.
I wish to heaven, Boothby, you would give up your
level best; and even if you had some days of mere
getting ready, why there would be some things which
you would do terribly well
[But I eannot see in his notes that poor Mr. Boothby ever
acted on this lesson. It came too late. Indeed, if he had
acted on it, I should not be telling you the story now. His
wife’s health broke down, before many years, under her exer-
tions. It was not the charities, she said to me, once when I
was in Department B (W. F.), so much as it was the lessons.
18
HIS LEVEL BEST.
Great numbers of people came who wanted to open elasses.
There was a new method of learning German, and no one who
had any interest in modern literature was excusable, the “ Post ”
said, if he did not join the class. Then there was a man who
had invented a new short-hand, which was “the reform of
modern times,’’ and he explained to Mr. Boothby and his wife
that if they did not take lessons, it was because they were
selfish cumberers of the ground, who did not believe in the
Golden Rule. There was a French gentleman, a professor in
the University of Paris, who was starving. Mrs. Boothby of-
fered his child a frock, but she would not take it because it was
alpaca, and her father would not allow her to wear any but silk.
So Mrs. Boothby asked what she could do, and she found that
their susceptibilities would be least injured if she went to the
class in French conversation, and so on. She went to so many
elasses for the benefit of the teachers that she got, poor woman,
very little benefit herself, unless dreadful headaches, earned in
the cause, did her some good morally. Mr. Boothby took no
lessons, except in boxing, fencing, and the use of the broad-
sword ; but he subscribed annually to the Lyceum, the Parker
Fraternity, the Bay State Course, the Citizens’ Course, the
Mercantile Course, the Tremont Temple Course, the Berkeley
Course, the North End Course, and the South End Course, and
so, as you see, his education was not wholly neglected. He did
not go to the Lowell Leetures, unless they had them in the
afternoon.]
Hebe is one terrible story,— almost too cruel to
print here, — which will show how impossible even
a man as generous as he finds it to hold to his best
determination. It will show how there are cases in
which "the man is greater than humanity,” when
HIS LEVEL BEST.
19
the duty next your hand appears to yon greater, and
therefore is greater, than dnty to all the world beside.
There was one of Boothby’s many societies, to which
he gave not only his purse but his heart. It was the old
Washingtonian Society. Boothby was not President
or Treasurer, nor Past Grand nor Most Worthy there.
He was only a High Private,—the best thing, I think,
that a man can be, — nothing less and nothing more.
He liked to go in and see the new recruits, and hear
them tell their stories. One night a man named Breck
came in,—handsome dog, taller than Carter, and weigh-
ing a hundred more than he does, — hair black, lip
well cut, and really loving eyes, — and lie made a little
speech. He said liquor had damned him, but, so help
him God, he would never touch anything but water
again. Boothby sat near him, shook hands with him
when he had done, said something kind; but he saw
the poor wretch was only a bundle of bare nerves, that
he was speaking on nerve, living on nerve, and was no
more able to stand to his oath than is a fly to take the
load of Atlas. Boothby asked where he was going.
“ Going/’ said the poor creature, “ where should I go ?
Home ? I have lost my home forever.”
“Then,” said Boothby, “come to mine.” And he
hurried him out of the hall. He found a cab a square
away, and they rode home, none too soon. He got poor
Breck a cup of tea and another, but it was hard work
to get him to bed.
Hot twenty minutes, before Boothby heard a crash
20
HIS LEVEL BEST.
there; rushed up, and all his fears were true. The
poor fellow was wild with horror. He was crouehing
in the corner; he was chattering, he was hissing, like
a beast or a bird; he was shivering, and tearing his
shirt to pieces. When he saw his friend with a lamp
he cried out with joy, “ You have saved me, you have
saved me.” The good man soothed him, calmed t rim ,
humored him, put him to bed again, and promised not
to desert him, not to take the light away again; sat
ehafing his hands and crooning to him. If he might
only go to sleep. Sleep ! No 1 No sleep for him.
The horrid phantoms of the pit — snakes and scorpi-
ons, flies and hornets, dragons and griffins — seemed
all around him again, and it was almost by force that
his friend held him down, by every change of de-
vice that even for an instant he dispelled the visions.
He rung for a servant. Before an hour was over he
had Morton, the doctor, there. For an hour or two
more they two worked together on the poor wretch,
•and when Morton left at midnight, it was to say, “ It
is life or death with him. If you see him asleep for an
hour or two before morning, you save him; but if not,
no.” And so poor Boothby girt himself for a night of
horrors. He told poor Breck I know not how many
stories of adventure. He pretended to read to him
novels, by Scott, and Dumas, and Dickens, making up
the tale as he went on. He repeated “ Marmion,” and
“The Corsair,” and the “Lord of the Isles.” He sang
to him old hymns. And yet, with every ten minutes,
HIS LEVEL BEST.
21
poor Breek would start in agony, and cover Ms head
with his blankets, and beg Ms friend not to desert Mm
now the devils had come again. Then that friend
prayed with him. And the poor shattered brain and
nerves, that would still themselves to nothing else,
would be hushed for prayer; and lips that knew more
of oaths than of devotion could calmly say, as when he
prayed by Ms mother’s knee, “ Lead us not into temp-
tation, but deliver us from evil,’’ and “Now I lay me
down to sleep.” And there was a Spirit with those
two that heard and answered. As the clock struck
half past five, the watcher turned to give to the patient
the stated sedative, and was sure then, thank God, that
he was sleeping! Sleeping! And for five minutes he
slept, ten, half an hour, an hour. Surely that is day-
light. Yes, it is daylight, and he sleeps on. Seven
o’clock, eight o’clock, and he sleeps on.
My friend had given orders that no foot should
mount that stairway till Morton, the doctor, came. It
is Ms wife’s story wMch I am to follow now. At half
past seven a common councilman rang at the door.
“ Husband down, Mrs. Boothby ? ” “ He has a sick
friend.” “ Call him just one minute; my horse won’t
stand.” “ Indeed, Mr. Williams, I cannot call him.”
“Not for a minute ? ” “Not for a minute.” And the
councilman went away in a rage. “ Boothby was al-
ways a selfish dog.” The builder next door came.
“ Please, ma’am, ask the old man to step out a minute
about our fence.” “ Indeed, Mr. Cade, he is with a
22
HIS LEVEL BEST.
sick friend.” “0, only a minute, you know!” "I can-
not call him at all, Mr. Cade.” “ Then he may go to
hell, for a purse-proud aristocrat as he is ” Ring the
third. “Would Mr. Boothby he so kind as to head
the call for the Woman’s Suffrage Convention ? ” In-
deed, Mrs. Wolstoncroft, he is with a sick friend.”
“ Then if you would just take the pen up to him.”
“ I do not dare disturb him, madam.” And Mrs. Wol-
stoncroft goes away, raging at an excuse so shabby for
a dereliction of duty so cowardly and so mean.
“ I lost my election to the Senate,” said Boothby;
“ I had a nuisance built next my garden ; I was abused
like a pickpocket in two or three conventions. But
somehow I did not care. Poor Breck pulled through.
We got him on quassia and iron. And, what was more,
we got him to believe in men and women. That was
best of all.”
“ You saved him, if you lost yourself,” said I.
“Very much, so,” said he, pluckily; “but that is
what comes to a man when he fails to do his level best.”
And I thought worse things might happen to him.
[In that adventure poor Boothby made one friend. I think
he never made another. A great many people used him, but
nobody but Breck loved him. Now I certainly do not say that
making friends is the business of life, but I have learned that the
depth and sincerity of a man’s friendships are the best test of
his success in life. Now friendships come only where you have
given your whole self to your friend in the occasion which has
HIS LEVEL BEST.
23
called you together. If you only give a part and retain some-
thing, you make an acquaintance, hut you make no friend. Mr.
Boothby, in his level life, made a great many acquaintances, hut
only one friend, as it proved, alas, when the crisis came, and
he made him hy violating his rule of life.
The result, in this regard, is a little like that of a missionary-
meeting, where nohody pledges his whole life to the cause, hut
where a hundred people pledge each the ten-thousandth part of
a life. The result of such a meeting, if you will multiply the
fraction hy the number of the assembly, is a strenuous effort to
save the hundredth part of a soul. But, alas, souls are indi-
visible !"1
I have intimated already that Mr. Boothby’s readi-
ness to do his level best for each and every scheme, —
or, in the phrase of his beloved pastor, “ to help all good
objects,” — made serious inroads in his finances at an
early date. His diaries are full of allusions to these
difficulties, now difficult to comprehend. He soon found
his outgoes larger than his income. He had, however,
plenty of acquaintances who were bank directors, and,
for a man of assured position like him, it was not diffi-
cult to borrow money, — only temporarily, you know,
— while he always had some scheme of economy which
was going to set all right and square in another year.
Or, on the other hand, when he relucted from asking
such accommodation, it was always easy again to sell a
few 5-2 Os or 10-40s, to take up any note which fell due
or to make his bank account look respectable. Only
this relief, unfortunately, reduced the permanent in-
24
HIS LEVEL BEST.
come. He had always — and knew he had — his wife’s
property to fall back upon, although he was ashamed
to think of that. Yet it was a comfort, of course, to
know that if anything did happen to him, and to what
he was pleased to call his investments, she and the
children would be all safe, indeed well off, with her
sixty-two thousand dollars.
In this calculation there was but one mistake, which
was this, that it was all wrong from the beginning to
the end. Mr. and Mrs. Boothby had started on the
theory that they were to be wholly independent of
each other in matters of money. He did nothing
about her property, and she nothing about his. True,
they disliked to trade with each other at breakfast.
He did not like to say, “My dear, if you will give*
me a cup of your coffee, I can pay you for it with a
nice cut of my beef,” as is the way with those who
logically carry out the modern theories. So they ar-
ranged that he should pay the bills one month and she
another; and, until the last, they tried to surprise each
other with new and dainty devices for the table. But,
for the rest, they lived up to the lofty idea of individ-
uality. He would not tyrannize over her, nor would
she grape-vine around him.
It is to be hoped that great good may come to soci-
ety from this mutual understanding of theirs. But
unfortunately great misery came to them. For Booth-
by’s dividends grew less and less, Ms notes payable
became larger and larger, the annual expense of house-
HIS LEVEL BEST.
25
keeping grew with the number of'his children, and
the demands of the various societies, the Ontological
and Frontological, and the rest, knew no end. Then,
in the midst of his perplexities for money, certain
thunderbolts would fall unexpectedly. Thus, he was
never ready for taxes; and all of a sudden, because our
Southern friends wanted to be let alone, there came
two tax-bills in a year instead of one. Then he had a
great many memorial statues to subscribe to. He could
never remember the day s when the mortgage payments
on his house were due. And as for his life insurance,
as long as he paid it at all, it seemed to him as if
he paid it every Monday. Still his wife and children
were not beggars, he said. There was Gertrude’s prop-
erty to fall back upon.
But at last the last bolt fell. Some of his notes had
been protested. The money for Ms mortgage was long
overdue. He brought himself to sell off his last ewe
lamb, — some 5-2Os which he had nursed as his heart’s
blood. As he returned from down State Street, where
he had been for this purpose, to his amazement he saw
Gertrude getting into a cab. Her veil was down; but
it was surely she. Ile knew that blue bow and that
sea-green merino. He stopped the driver, threw the
door open, and sprang in to find her sobbing.
“ My own heart/ 7 said he, “ what is the matter ? 7r
“ 0 my dear, dear John/ 7 said she, with her head on
his shoulder, “ your poor Gertrude is a beggar! 77 And
then she told him alL
2
26
HIS LEVEL BEST.
' What with subscriptions, and stockings for Alfred,
and testimonial, and shoes for John, and regular con-
tributions, and petticoats for Fanny, and benefit con-
certs, and bonnets for Jane, what with this that was
necessary, and that that was not necessary, poor Ger-
trude had worked through her little eompetency side
by side with John, and she had just now met her last
rebuff, a little before he met his. She had been down
to Baring and Kothschild’s to order the sale of her last
7-3 Os, only to be told that they were all sold on her
order three months before. Poor Gertrude, she kept all
her accounts in her head, and so she was ten thousand
dollars poorer than she thought she was. That is, she
possessed nothing but a loving heart, a loving husband,
and four loving children.
“Dear Gertrude/ 5 said John, after she had had her
fit of crying out, “ you have spent all your money. I
have spent all mine. You have sold all your stocks.
I have sold mine. You have not a penny. Neither
have I. But you have done your level best. And so
have I.”
“ Have we nothing, then, dear John ? ”
“ Dearest, when the house is sold, when our debts
are all paid, we shall still have
“ A Settlement . 55
“ Pray, what is a settlement ? ” said Gertrude.
“Dearest, because we have been rich, because for
five years we have paid taxes, because we have lived
HIS LEVEL BEST.
27
ten years without removing our home, the town will
care for us now in the poor-house.
“ Had we been poor, dearest, had we had to move
for work from place to place, the town would now
have turned us out of its borders.”
“And we have each other,” said Gertrude. “We
have not meant to do wrong. We meant to do right.”
And so was it that they found themselves with their
children in the poor-house.
Yet I, as I have looked over these papers, have thought
that if Mr. Boothby had learned or tried to do one
thing well, instead of doing all things poorly, it would
have been better for him. Had he forged bolts well,
or painted carriages well, or set types well, or had he
well tied up bleeding arteries, or set broken arms, or
had he well painted pictures or preached the Gospel,
and then to one and another Peter, asking him to try
politics, or social science, or general philanthropy, if
he had said, “ Get thee behind me, Satan,” I think he
would have done better. Of my own daily duties, I
find I look back every night with most satisfaction
to those rebuffs I give every day to men who want to
hang back themselves while other men are working.
I say to them, “ Put your own shoulder to the wheel.
There is no Jupiter and no Juno to help you, no God
of whom I know, unless you give your own life to the
cause in which you would enlist me.” Thev say to me,
28
HIS LEVEL BEST.
“ It is only your name we want,” as they said to poor
Boothby. And I say to them, “ You will never have
my name, you will never have any honest man’s name,
unless you have hi m and the whole of him.” And I
have written out these notes in the faint hope that
I might persuade some young woman or some young
man that it is better to do one thing well than two
things by halves ; better to learn one thing thoroughly
than to get a smattering of two ; better to stick to one
duty till it is finished, than to make two beginnings ;
better to stand loyally to the post God has pointed out,
than to try to serve here and there and everywhere.
There are no secrets which yield to commonplace or
superficial inquiry. But there are none which do not
answer the resolute student, who pledges his life to
his investigation. There are no evils healed by the
commonplace resolutions of commonplace conventions,
where a hundred people offer each the thousandth part
of a life for the endeavor. But no one evil stands
against the resolute purpose of one loyal man. Let
society tell you, in its namby-pamby editorials, what
is everybody’s business, and you will find laid down
for you in its neutral colors a picture of very level
backgrounds, of very vague middle distances, whose
foregrounds are crowded with undecided groups of
dreamers, who are all preparing to begin to try. But
do you tell society how you mean to serve mankind,
find your own place and strike your own blow, and
society will meekly obey each true word you speak,
and will fall into order at your requisition.
HIS LEVEL BEST.
29
Hold to the level best which the commonplace of
society demands of you, and you come out on the
quagmire flat of the dismal swamp of worthless inde-
cision.
Ask God to show your duty, and do that duty well;
and from that point you mount to the very peak of
vision. It may be that you plant there another beacon-
light for the world !
THE BRICK MOON.
FROM THE PAPERS OF CAPTAIN FREDERIC INGHAM.
I. — PREPARATION.
I have no sort of objection now to telling the whole
story. The subscriber, of course, have a right to know
what became of their money. The astronomers may
as well know all about it, before they announce any
more asteroids with an enormous movement in deeli-
nation. And experimenters on the longitude may as
well know, so that they may act advisedly in attempt-
ing another brick moon or in refusing to do so.
It all began more than thirty years ago, when we
were in college ; as most good things begin. We were
studying in the book which has gray sides and a green
back, and is called “ Cambridge Astronomy ” because
it is translated from the French. We came across this
business of the longitude, and, as we talked, in the
gloom and glamour of the old South Middle dining-
hall, we had going the usual number of students’ sto-
ries about rewards offered by the Board of Longitude
for discoveries in that matter, — stories, all of which,
so far as I know, are lies. Like all boys, we had tried
our hands at perpetual motion. For me, I was sure I
THE BRICK MOON.
31
could square the circle, if they would give me chalk
enough. But as to this .business of the longitude, it
was reserved for Q. to make the happy hit and to ex-
plain it to the rest of us.
I wonder if I can explain it to an unlearned world,
which has not studied the book with gray sides and a
green cambric back. Let us try.
You know then, dear world, that when you look at
the North Star, it always appears to you at just the
same height above the horizon or what is between you
and the horizon : say the Dwight School-house, or the
houses in Concord Street; or to me, just now, North
College. You know also that, if you were to travel
to the North Pole, the North Star would be just over
your head. And, if you were to travel to the equator,
it would be just on your horizon, if you could see it at
all through the red, dusty, hazy mist in the north, —
as you could not. If you were just half-way between
pole and equator, on the line between us and Canada,
the North Star would be half-way up, or 45° from the
horizon. So you would know there that you were 45°
from the equator. There in Boston, you would find it
was 42° 20' from the horizon. So you know there that
you are 42° 20' from the equator. At Seattle again you
would find it was 47° 40' high, so our friends at Seattle
know that they are at 47° 40' from the equator. The
latitude of a place, in other words, is found very easily
by any observation which shows how high the North
Star is ; if you do not want to measure the North Star,
32
THE BBICK MOON.
you may take any star when it is just to north of you,
and measure its height; wait twelve hours, and if you
can find it, measure its height again. Split the differ-
ence, and that is the altitude of the pole, or the latitude
of you, the observer.
“ Of course we know this,” says the graduating world.
“ Do you suppose that is what we borrow your book
for, to have you spell out your miserable elementary
astronomy ? ” At which rebuff I should shrink dis-
tressed, but that a chorus of voices an octave higher
comes up with, "Dear Mr. Ingham, we are ever so
much obliged to you; we did not know it at all before,
and you make it perfectly clear.”
Thank you, my dear, and you, and you. We will
not care what the others say. If you do understand
it, or do know it, it is more than Mr. Charles Eeade
knew, or he would not have made his two lovers on the
island guess at their latitude, as they did. If they had
either of them been educated at a respectable academy
for the Middle Classes, they would have fared better.
Now about the longitude.
The latitude, which you have found, measures your
distance north or south from the equator or the pole.
To find your longitude, you want to find your distance
east or west from the meridian of Greenwich. Now if
any one would build a good tall tower at Greenwich,
straight into the sky, — say a hundred miles into the
sky, — of course if you and I were east or west of it,
and could see it, we could tell how far east or west we
THE BBICK MOON.
33
were by measuring the apparent height of the tower
above our horizon. If we could see so far, when the
lantern with a Drummond’s light, “ ever so bright,” on
the very top of the tower, appeared to be on our hori-
zon, we should know we were eight hundred and sev-
enty-three miles away from it. The top of the tower
would answ r er for us as the North Star does when we
are measuring the latitude. If we were nearer, our
horizon would make a longer angle with the line from
the top to our place of vision. If we were farther
away, we should need a higher tower.
But nobody will build any such tower at Greenwich,
or elsewhere on that meridian, or on any meridian. You
see that to be of use to the half the world nearest to it,
it w T ould have to be so high that the diameter of the
world -would seem nothing in proportion. And then,
for the other half of the world you would have to erect
another tower as high on the other side. It was this
difficulty that made Q. suggest the expedient of the
Brick Moon.
Bor you see that if, by good luck, there were a ring
like Saturn’s which stretched round the world, above
Greenwich and the meridian of Greenwich, and if it
would stay above Greenwich, turning with the world,
any one who wanted to measure his longitude or dis-
tance from Greenwich would look out of window and
see how high this ring was above his horizon. At
Greenwich it would be over his head exactly. At New
Orleans, which is quarter round the world from Green-
2 * • C
34
THE BRICK MOON.
wich, it would be just in his horizon. A little west
of New Orleans you would begin to look for the other
half of the ring on the west instead of the east; and
if you went a little west of the Feejee Islands the ring
would be over your head again. So if we only had a
ring like that, not round the equator of the world, —
as Saturn’s ring is around Saturn,—but vertical to the
plane of the equator, as the brass ring of an artificial
globe goes, only far higher in proportion, — “ from that
ring,” said Q., pensively, “ we could calculate the Ion-
gitude.”
Failing that, after various propositions, he suggested
the Brick Moon. The plan was this: If from the sur-
face of the earth, by a gigantic pea-shooter, you could
shoot a pea upward from Greenwich, aimed northward
as well as upward; if you drove it so fast and far that
when its power of ascent was exhausted, and it began
to fall, it should clear the earth, and pass outside the
North Pole; if you had given it sufficient power to
get it half round the earth without touching, that pea
would clear the earth forever. It would continue to
rotate above the North Pole, above the Feejee Island
place, above the South Pole and Greenwich, forever,
with the impulse with which it had first cleared our
atmosphere and attraction. If only we could see that
pea as it revolved in that convenient orbit, then we
could measure the longitude from that, as soon as we
knew how high the orbit was, as well as if it were the
ring of Saturn.
THE BEXCK MOON.
35
“ But a pea is so small! ”
“ Yes,” said Q., “ but we must make a large pea.”
Then we fell to work on plans for making the pea very
large and very light. Large, — that it might be seen
far away by storm-tossed navigators : light, — that it
might be the easier blown four thousand and odd miles
into the’ air; lest it should fall on the heads of the
Greenlanders or the Patagonians ; lest they should be
injured and the world lose its new moon. But, of
course, all this lath-and-plaster had to be given up.
For the motion through the air would set fire to this
moon just as it does to other aerolites, and all your
lath-and-plaster would gather into a few white drops,
which no Bosse telescope even could discern. “ FTo,”
said Q. bravely, “ at the least it must be very substan-
tiaL It must stand fire well, very well. Iron will not
answer. It must be brick; we must have a Brick
Moon.
Then we had to calculate its size. You can see, on
the old moon, an edifice two hundred feet long with any
of the fine refractors of our day. But no such refract-
ors as those can be carried by the poor little fishermen
whom we wanted to befriend, the bones of whose ships
lie white on so many cliffs, their names unreported at
any Lloyd’s or by any Boss, — themselves the owners
and their sons the crew. On the other hand, we did
not want our moon two hundred and fifty thousand
miles away, as the old moon is, which I will call the
Thornbush moon, for distinction. We did not care
36
THE BRICK MOON.
how near it was, indeed, if it were only far enough
away to be seen, in practice, from almost the whole
world. There must be a little strip where they could
not see it from the surface, unless we threw it infi-
nitely high. “ But they need not look from the sur-
face,” said Q.; “ they might climb to the mast-head.
And if they did not see it at all, they would know that
they were ninety degrees from the meridian.”
This diffieulty about what we call “ the strip,” how-
ever, led to an improvement in the plan, which made
it better in every way. It was clear that even if “ the
strip ” were quite wide, the moon would have to be a
good way off, and, in proportion, hard to see. If, how-
ever, we would satisfy ourselves with a moon four
thousand miles away, that could be seen on the earth’s
surface for three or four thousand miles on each side ;
and twice three thousand, or six thousand, is one fourth
of the largest circumference of the earth. We did not
dare have it nearer than four thousand miles, since
even at that distance, it would be eclipsed three hours
out of every night; and we wanted it bright and dis-
tinct, and not of that lurid, copper, eclipse color. But
at four thousand miles’ distance the moon could be
seen by a belt of observers six or eight thousand miles
in diameter. “ Start, then, two moons,” — this was my
contribution to the plan. “ Suppose one over the me-
ridian of Greenwich, and the other over that of ISTew
Orleans. Take care that there is a little difference in
the radii of their orbits, lest they ‘ collide ’ some foul
THE BRICK MOON.
37
day. Then, in most places, one or other, perhaps two
will come in sight. So much the less risk of clouds :
and everywhere there may be one, except when it is
cloudy. Neither need be more than four thousand
miles off; so much the larger and more beautiful will
they be. If on the old Thornbush moon old Herschel
with his reflector could see a town-house two hundred
feet long, on the Brick Moon young Herschel will be
able to see a dab of mortar a foot and a half long, if
he wants to. And people without the reflector, with
their opera-glasses, will be able to see sufficiently well”
And to this they agreed: that eventually there must
be two Brick Moons. Indeed, it were better that there
should be four, as each must be below the horizon half
the time. That is only as many as Jupiter has. But
it was also agreed that we might begin with one.
Why we settled on two hundred feet of diameter I
hardly know. I think it was from the statement of
dear John Farrar’s about the impossibility of there
being a state house two hundred feet long not yet dis-
covered, on the sunny side of old Thornbush. That,
somehow, made two hundred our fixed point. Besides,
a moon of two hundred feet diameter did not seem
quite unmanageable. Yet it was evident that a smaller
moon would be of no use, unless we meant to have
them near the world, when there would be so many
that they would be confusing, and eclipsed most of the.
time. And four thousand miles is a good way off to
see a moon even two hundred feet in diameter.
38
THE bbick moon.
Small though we made them on paper, these two-
hundred-foot moons were still too much for us. Of
course we meant to build them hollow. But even if
hollow there must be some thickness, and the quantity
of brick would at best be enormous. Then, to get them
up ! The pea-shooter, of course, was only an illustra-
tion. It was long after that time that Rodman and
other guns sent iron balls five or six miles in distance,
— say two miles, more or less, in height.
Iron is much heavier than hollow brick, but you can
build no gun with a bore of two hundred feet now, —
far less could you then. No. Q. again suggested the
method of shooting off the moon. It was not to be by
any of your sudden explosions. It was to be done as
all great things are done, — by the gradual and silent
accumulation of power. You all know that a fly-wheel
— heavy, very heavy on the circumference, light, very
light within it — was made to save up power, from
the time when it was produced to the time when it
was wanted. Yes ? Then, before we began even to
build the moon, before we even began to make the
brick, we would build two gigantic fly-wheels, the di-
ameter of each should be “ ever so great/' the circum-
ference heavy beyond all precedent, and thundering
strong, so that no temptation might burst it. They
should revolve, their edges nearly touching, in oppo-
site directions, for years, if it were necessary, to accu-
mulate power, driven by some waterfall now wasted to
the world. One should be a little heavier than the
THE BRICK MOON.
39
other. When the Brick Moon was finished, and all
was ready, it should be gently rolled down a gigantic
groove provided for it, till it lighted on the edge of
both wheels at the same instant. Of course it would
not rest there, not the ten-thousandth part of a second.
It would be snapped upward, as a drop of water from
a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the heavier
wheel would have deflected it a little from the verti-
cal. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore,
till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of
course, feel the world’s attraction all the time, which
would bend its flight gently, but still it would leave
the world more and more behind. Upward still, but
now southward, till it had traversed more than one
hundred and eighty degrees of a circle. Little resist-
ance, indeed, after it had cleared the forty or fifty
miles of visible atmosphere. “Now let it fall,’’ said
Q., inspired with the vision. “ Let it fall, and the
sooner the better ! The curve it is now on will for-
ever clear the world; and over the meridian of that
lonely waterfall, — if only we have rightly adjusted
the gigantic flies, — will forever revolve, in its obedi-
ent orbit, the Brick Moon, the blessing of all seamen,
■— as constant in all change as its older sister has been
fickle, and the second cynosure of all lovers upon the
waves, and of all girls left behind them.” “ Amen,”
we cried, and then we sat in silence till the clock
struck ten; then shook each other gravely by the
hand, and left the South Middle dining-hall.
40
THE BRICK MOOH.
Of waterfaUs there were plenty that we knew.
Fly-wheels eonld be built of oak and pine, and
hooped with iron. Fly-wheels did not diseourage
us.
But brick ? One brick is, say, sixty-four cubic
inches only. This moon, — though we made it hol-
low, — see, — it must take twelve million brick.
The brick alone will cost sixty thousand dollars I
The brick alone would cost sixty thousand dollars.
There the scheme of the Brick Moon hung, an airy
vision, for seventeen years, — the years that changed
us from young men into men. The brick alone, sixty
thousand dollars! For, to boys who have still left a
few of their college bills unpaid, who cannot think of
buying that lovely little Elzevir which Smith has for
sale at auction, of which Smith does not dream of the
value, sixty thousand dollars seems as intangible as
sixty million^ sestertia. Clarke, second, -how much are
sixty million sestertia stated in cowries ? How much
in currency, gold being *at 1.37| ? Bight; go up.
Stop, I forget myself S
So, to resume, the project of the Brick Moon hung
in the ideal, an airy vision, a vision as lovely and as
distant as the Brick Moon itself, at this calm moment
of midnight when I write, as it poises itself over the
shoulder of Orion, in my southern horizon. Stop ! I
THE BRICK MOON.
41
anticipate. Let me keep — as we say in Beadle’s Dime
Series — to the even current of my story.
Seventeen years passed by, we were no longer boys,
though we felt so. For myself, to this hour, I never
enter board meeting, committee meeting, or synod,
without the queer question, what would happen should
any one discover that this bearded man was only a
big boy disguised ? that the frock-coat and the round
hat are none of mine, and that, if I should be spurned
. from the assembly as an interloper, a judicious public,
learning all the facts, would give a verdict, “Served
kim right.” This consideration helps me through
many bored meetings which would be else so dis-
mal. What did my old copy say ? “ Boards are made
of wood, they are long and narrow.” But we do not
get on I
Seventeen years after, I say, or should have said,
dear Orcutt entered my room at ISTaguadavick again.
I had not seen him since the Commencement day
when we parted at Cambridge. He looked the same,
and yet not the same. His smile was the same, his
voice, Ms tender look of sympathy when I spoke to him
of a great sorrow, his childlike love of fun. His waist-
band was different, his pantaloons were different, his
smooth chin was buried in a full beard, and he weighed
two hundred pounds if he weighed a gramme. 0, the
good time we had, so like the times of old! Those
were happy day s for me in Naguadavick. At that
moment my double was at work for me at a meeting
42
THE BRICK MOON.
of the publishing committee of the Sandemanian Be-
view, so I called Orcutt up to my own snuggery, and
we talked over old times; talked till tea was ready.
Polly came up through the orchard and made tea for
us herself there. We talked on and on, till nine, ten
at night, and then it was that dear Orcutt asked me
if I remembered the Brick Moon. Eemember it ?
of course I did. And without leaving my chair I
opened the drawer of my writing-desk, and handed
him a portfolio full of working-drawings on which I
had engaged myself for my “ third ” * all that winter.
Orcutt was delighted. He turned them over hastily
but intelligently, and said: (f I am so glad. I could
not think you had forgotten. And I have seen Bran-
nan, and Brannan has not forgotten.” “Flow do you
know/’ said he, “ in all this railroading of mine, I have
not forgotten. I have learned many things that will
help. When I built the great tunnel for the Catta-
wissa and Opelousas, by which we got rid of the old
inclined planes, there was never a stone bigger than a
peach-stone within two hundred miles of us. I baked
the brick of that tunnel on the line with my own
kilns. Ingham, I have made more brick, I believe,
than any man living in the world ! ”
“ You are the providential man,” said I.
“ Am I not, Fred ? More than that,” said he; “ I
have succeeded in things the world counts worth more
* “Every man,” says Dr. Peabody, “should have a vocation and
an avocation.” To which I add, “A third.”
THE BRICK MOON.
43
than brick. I have made brick, and I have made
money! ”
“ One of us make money ? ” asked I, amazed.
“ Even so/’ said dear Oructt; “ one of us has made
money/’ And he proceeded to tell me how. It was
not in building tunnel s, nor in making brick. No ! It
was by buying up the original stock of the Cattawissa
and Opelousas, at a moment when that stock had
hardly a nominal price in the market. There were
the first mortgage bonds, and the second mortgage
bonds, and the third, and I know not how much float-
ing debt; and, worse than all, the reputation of the
road lost, and deservedly lost. Every locomotive it
had was asthmatic. Every car it had bore the marks
of unprecedented accidents, for which no one was to
blame. Eival lines, I know not how many, were
cutting each others throats for its legitimate busi-
ness. At this juncture, dear George invested all his
earnings as a contractor, in the despised original stock,
— he actually bought it for per cent,'—good shares
that had cost a round hundred to every wretch who
had subscribed. Six thousand eight hundred dollars
— every cent he had — did George thus invest. Then
he went himself to the trustees of the first mortgage,
to the trustees of the second, and to the trustees of the
third, and told them what he had done.
Now it is personal presence that moves the world.
Dear Orcutt has found that out since, if he did not
know it before. The trustees who would have snlffed
44
THE BRICK MOON.
had George written to them, turned round from their
desks, and begged him to take a chair, when he came
to talk with them. Had he put every penny he was
worth into that stock ? Then it was worth something
which they did not know of, for George Orcutt was no
fool about railroads. The man who bridged the Lower
Eapidan when a freshet was running was no fool.
“ What were his plans ? ”
George did not tell — no, not to lordly trustees —
what his plans were. He had plans, but he kept them
to himself. All he told them was that he had plans.
On those plans he had staked his all. How would
they or would they not agree to put him in charge of
the running of that road, for twelve months, on a nom-
inal salary. The superintendent they had had was a
rascal. He had proved that by running away. They
knew that George was not a rascal. He knew that
he could make this road pay expenses, pay bond-
holders, and pay a dividend, — a thing no one else
had dreamed of for twenty years. Could they do
better than try him ?
Of course they could not, and they knew they could
not. . Of course, they sniffed and talked, and waited,
and pretended they did not know, and that they must
consult, and so forth and so on. But of course they
all did try him, on his own terms. He was put in
charge of the running of that road.
In one week he showed he should redeem it. In
three months he did redeem it!
THE BRICK MOON.
45
He advertised boldly the first day: “ Infant chil-
dren at treble price.”
The novelty attracted instant remark. And it
showed many things. First, it showed he was a
humane man, who wished to save human life. He
would leave these innoeents in their cradles, where
they belonged.
Second, and chiefly, the world of travellers saw that
the Crichton, the Amadis, the perfect chevalier of the
future, had arisen, — a railroad manager caring for the
comfort of his passengers !
The first week the number of the C. and O/s pas-
sengers was doubled: in a week or two more freight
began to come in, in driblets, on the line which its
owners had gone over. As soon as the shops could
turn them out, some cars w&re, put on, with arms on
which, travellers could rest their elbows, with head-
rests where they could take naps if they were weary.
These excited so much curiosity that one was exhib-
ited in the museum at Cattawissa and another at
Opelousas. It may not be generally known that
the received car of the American roads was devised
to secure a premium offered by the Pawtucket and
Podunk Company. Their receipts were growing so
large that they feared they should forfeit their charter.
They advertised, therefore, for a car in which no man
could sleep at night or rest by day,—in which the
backs should be straight, the heads of passengers
unsupported, the feet entangled in a vice, the elbows
46
THE BRICK MOON.
always knocked by tbe passing conductor. The pat-
tern was produced which, immediately came into use
on all the American roads. But on the Cattawissa and
Opelousas this time-honored pattern was set aside.
Of course you see the result. Men went hundreds
of miles out of their way to ride on the C. and 0. The
third mortgage was paid off; a reserve fund was piled
up for the second; the trustees of the first lived in
dread of being paid; and George’s stock, which he
bought at 3|, rose to 147 before two years had gone
by! So was it that, as we sat together in the
snuggery, George was worth wellnigli three hundred
thousand dollars. Some of his eggs were in the
basket where they were laid; some he had taken
out and placed in other baskets ; some in nests where
various hens were brooding over them.- Sound eggs
they were, wherever placed; and such was the victory
of which George had come to tell.
One of us had made money!
On his way he had seen Brannan. Brannan, the
pure-minded, right-minded, shifty man of tact, man of
brain, man of heart, and man of word, who held New
Altona in the hollow of his hand. Brannan had made
no money. Not he, nor ever will. But Brannan could
do much what he pleased in this world, without money.
For whenever Brannan studied the rights and the
wrongs of any enterprise, all men knew that what
Brannan decided about it was wellnigh the eternal
truth; and therefore all men of sense were accustomed
THE BRICK MOON.
47
to place great confidence in his prophecies. But, more
than this, and better, Brannan was an unconscious dog,
who believed in the people. So, when he knew what
was the right and what was the wrong, he could stand
up before two or three thousand people and tell them
what was right and what was wrong, and tell them
with the same simplicity and freshness with which he
would talk to little Horace on his knee. Of the thou-
sands who heard him there would not be one in a hun-
dred who knew that this was eloquence. They were
fain to say, as they sat in their shops, talking, that
Brannan was not eloquent. Hay, they went so far as
to regret that Brannan was not eloquent! If he were
only as eloquent as Carker was or as Barker was, how
excellent he would be! But when, a month after, it
was necessary for them to do anything about the thing
he had been speaking of, they did what Brannan had
told them to do; forgetting, most likely, that he had
ever told them, and fancying that these were their own
ideas, which, in fact, had, from his liquid, ponderous,
transparent, and invisible common sense, distilled un-
consciously into their being. I wonder whether Bran-
nan ever knew that he was eloquent. What I knew,
and what dear George knew, was, that he was one of
the leaders of men !
Courage, my friends, we are steadily advancing to
the Brick Moon!
Bor George had stopped, and seen Brannan; and
Brannan had not forgotten. Seventeen years Brannan
48
THE BRICK MOON.
had remembered, and not a ship had been lost on a
lee-shore because her longitude was wrong, — not a
baby had wailed its last as it was ground between
wrecked spar and cruel rock, — not a swollen corpse
unknown had been flung up upon the sand and been
buried with a nameless epitaph, — but Brannan had
recolleeted the Brick Moon, and had, in the memory-
chamber which rejected nothing, stored away the story
of the horror. And now, George was ready to conse-
crate a round hundred thousand to the building of the
Moon; and Brannan was ready, in the thousand ways
in which wise men move the people to and fro, to per-
suade them to give to us a hundred thousand more;
and George had come to ask me if I were not ready to
undertake with them the final great effort, of which
our old calculations were the embryo. For this I was
now to contribute the mathematical certainty and the-
lore borrowed from naval science, which should blos-
som and bear fruit when the Brick Moon was snapped
like a cherry from the ways on which it was built, was
launched into the air by power gathered from a thou-
sand freshets, and, poised at last in its own pre-calcu-
lated region of the ether, should begin its course of
eternal blessings in one unchanging meridian !
Vision of Beneficence and Wonder! Of course I
consented.
O that you were not so eager for the end! O that
I might tell you, what now you will never know, —
of the great campaign which we then and there inau-
THE BRICK MOON.
49
gurated ! How the horrible loss of the Royal Martyr,
whose longitude was three degrees awry, startled the
whole world, and gave us a point to start from. How
I explained to George that he must not subscribe the
one hundred thousand dollars in a moment. It must
come in bits, when “ the cause ” needed a stimulus, or
the public needed encouragement. How we caught
neophyte editors, and explained to them enough to
make them think the Moon was wellnigh their own
invention and their own thunder. How, beginning in
Boston, we sent round to all the men of science, all
those of philanthropy, and all those of commerce,
three thousand circulars, inviting them to a private
meeting at George’s parlors at the Revere. How, be-
sides ourselves, and some nice, respectable-looking old
gentlemen Brannan had brought over from Podunk
with him, paying their, fares both ways, there were
present only three men, — all adventurers whose proj-
ects had failed,—besides the representatives of the
press. How, of these representatives, some understood
the whole, and some understood nothing. How, the
next day, all gave us “ first-rate notices” How, a
few days after, in the lower Horticultural Hall, we had
our first public meeting. How Haliburton brought us
fifty people who loved him, — his Bible class, most of
them, —to help fill up ; how, besides these, there were
not three persons whom we had not asked personally,
or one who could invent an excuse to stay away. How
we had hung the walls with intelligible and unin-
3 D
50
THE BRICK MOON.
telligible diagrams. How I opened the meeting. Of
that meeting, indeed, I must tell something.
First, I spoke. I did not pretend to unfold the
scheme. I did not attempt any rhetoric. But I did
not make any apologies. I told them simply of the
dangers of lee-shores. I told them when they were
most dangerous, — when seamen came upon themuna-
wares. I explained to them that, though the costly
chronometer, frequently adjusted, made a delusive
guide to the voyager who often made a harbor, still
the adjustment was treacherous, the instrument be-
yond the use of the poor, and that, once astray, its
error increased forever. I said that we believed we
had a method which, if the means were supplied for
the experiment, would give the humblest fisherman
the very certainty of sunrise and of sunset in his cal-
culations of his place upon the world. And I said
that whenever a man knew his place in this world, it
was always likely all would go well. Then I sat down.
Then dear George spoke,—simply, but very briefly,
He said he was a stranger to the Boston people, and
that those who knew him at all knew he was not a
talking man. He was a civil engineer, and Ms busi-
ness was to calculate and to build, and not to talk.
But he had come here to say that he had studied this
new plan for the longitude from the Top to the Bot-
tom, and that he believed in it through and through.
There was his opinion, if that was worth anything to
anybody. If that meeting resolved to go forward with
THE BRICK MOON.
51
the enterprise, or if anybody proposed to, he should
offer his services in any capacity, and without any pay*
for its success. If he might only work as a bricklayer,
he would work as a bricklayer. For he believed, on
his soul, that the success of this enterprise promised
more for mankind than any enterprise which was ever
likely to call for the devotion of his life. “ And to the
good of mankind,” he said, very simply, “ my life is
devoted.” Then he sat down.
Then Brannan got up. Up to this time, excepting
that George had dropped this hint about bricklaying,
nobody had said a word about the Moon, far less hinted
what it was to be made of. So Ben had the whole to
open, He did it as if he had been talking to a bright
boy of ten years old. He made those people think
that he respected them as his equals. But, in fact, he
chose every word, as if not one of them knew anything.
He explained, as if it were rather more simple to ex-
plain than to take for granted. But he explained as
if, were they talking, they might be explaining to him.
He led them from point to point, — oh 1 so much more
clearly than I have been leading you, — till, as their
mouths dropped a little open in their eager interest,
and their lids forgot to wink in their gaze upon his
face, and so their eyebrows seemed a little lifted in
curiosity, — till, I say, each man felt as if he were him-
self the inventor, who had bridged difficulty after diffi-
culty; as if, indeed, the whole were too simple to be
called difficult or complicated. The only wonder was
52
THE BKICK MOON.
that the Board of Longitude, or the Emperor Napoleon,
or the Smithsonian, or somebody, had not sent this
little planet on its voyage of blessing long before. Not
a syllable that you would have ealled rhetoric, not a
word that you would have thought prepared; and then
Brannan sat down.
That was Ben Brannan’s way.. For my part, I like
it better than eloquence.
Then I got up again. We would answer any ques-
tions, I said. We represented people who were eager
to go forward with this work. (Alas! except Q., all
of those represented were on the stage.) We could
not go forward without the general assistance of the
community. It was not an enterprise which the gov-
ernment could be asked to favor. It was not an enter-
prise which would yield one penny of profit to any
human being. We had therefore, purely on the ground
of its benefit to mankind, brought it before an assem-
bly of Boston men and women.
Then there was a pause, and we could hear our
watches tick, and our hearts beat. Dear George asked
me in a whisper if he should say anything more, but
I thought not. The pause became painful, and then
Tom Coram, prince of merchants, rose. Had any cal-
dilation been made of the probable cost of the experi-
ment of one moon ?
I said the calculations were on the table. The brick
alone would cost $ 60,000. Mr. Orcutt had computed
that $ 214,729 would complete two fly-wheels and one
THE BRICK MOON.
53
moon. This made no allowance for whitewashing the
moon, which was not strictly necessary. The fly-
wheels and water-power would be equally valuable
for the suceeeding moons, if any were attempted, and
therefore the second moon could be turned off, it was
hoped, for $ 159,732.
Thomas Coram had been standing all the time I
spoke, and in an instant he said: “ I am no mathe-
matician. But I have had a ship ground to pieces
under me on the Laccadives because our chronometer
was wrong. You need $ 250,000 to build your first
moon. I will be one of twenty men to furnish the
money; or I will pay $ 10,000 to-morrow for this pur-
pose, to any person who may be named, as treasurer,
to be repaid to me if the moon is not finished this day
twenty years.”
That was as long a speech as Tom Coram ever made.
But it was pointed. The small audience tapped ap-
plause.
Orcutt looked at me, and I nodded. “ I will be an-
other of the twenty men,” cried he. “ And I another,”
said an old bluff Englishman, whom nobody had in-
vited; who proved to be a Mr. Robert Boll, a Sheffield
man, who came in from curiosity. He stopped after
the meeting; said he should leave the country the next
week, and I have -never seen him since. But his bill
of exchange came all the same.
That was all the public subscribing. Enough more
than we had hoped for. We tried to make Coram
54
THE BRICK MOON.
treasurer, but he refused. We had to make Haliburton
treasurer, though we should have liked a man better
known than he then was. Then we adjourned. Some
nice ladies then came up, and gave, one a dollar, and
one five dollars, and one fifty, and so on, — and some
men who have stuck by ever since. I always, in my
own mind, call each of those women Damaris, and
each of those men Dionysius. But those are not their
real names.
How I am wasting time on an old story! Then
some of these ladies came the next day and proposed
a fair; and out of that, six months after, grew the
great Longitude Fair, that you will all remember, if
you went to it, I am sure. And the papers the next day
gave us first-rate reports; and then, two by two, with
our subscription-books, we went at it. But I must not
tell the details of that subscription. There were two
or three men who subscribed $ 5,000 each, because
they were perfectly certain the amount would never
be raised. They wanted, for once, to get the credit of
liberality for nothing. There were many men and
many women who subscribed from one dollar up to
one thousand, not because they eared a straw for the
longitude, nor because they believed in the least in
the project; but because they believed in Brannan, in
Orcutt, in Q., or in me. Love goes far in this world
of ours. Some few men subscribed because others had
done it: it was the thing to do, and they must not be
out of fashion. And three or four, at least, subscribed
THE BBICK MOON.
55
because each hour of their lives there came up the
memory of the day when the news came that the
was lost, George, or Harry, or John, in the and
tliey knew that George, or Harry, or John might have
been at home, had it been easier than it is to read the
courses of the stars !
■ Fair, subscriptions, and Orcutt’s reserve,—we count-
ed up $ 162,000, or nearly so. There would be a little
more when all was paid in.
But we could not use a cent, except Orcutt’s and
our own little subscriptions, till we had got the whole.
And at this point it seemed as if the whole world was
sick of us, and that we had gathered every penny that
was in store for us. The orange was squeezed dry!
n — HOW WE BUILT IT.
The orange was squeezed dry! And how little any
of us knew, — skilful George Orcutt, thoughtful Ben
Brannan, loyal Haliburton, ingenious Q., or poor pains-
taldng I, — how little we knew, or any of us, where
was another orange, or how we could mix malic acid
and tartaric acid, and citric acid and auric acid and
sugar and water so as to imitate orange-juice, and fill
up the bank-account enough to draw in the conditioned
subscriptions, and so begin to build the Moon. How
often, as I lay awake at night, have I added up the
56
THE BRICK MOON.
different subscription in some new order, as if that
would help the matter: and how steadily they have
come out one hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars,
or even less, when I must needs, in my sleepiness, for-
get somebody’s name ! So Haliburton put into railroad
stocks all the money he collected, and the rest of us
ground on at our mills, or flew up on our own wings
towards Heaven. Thus Orcutt built more tunnels, Q.
prepared for more commencements, Haliburton calcu-
lated more policies, Ben Brannan created more civili-
zation, and I, as I could, healed the hurt of my people
of Haguadavick for the months there were left to me
of my stay in that thriving town.
Hone of us had the wit to see how the problem was
to be wrought out further. Ho. The best things come
to us when we have faithfully and well made all the
preparation and done our best; but they come in some
way that is none of ours. So was it now, that to build
the Brick Moon it was necessary that. I should be
turned out of Haguadavick ignominiously, and that
Jeff. Davis and some seven or eight other bad men
should create the Great Bebellion. Hear how it hap-
pened.
Dennis Shea, my Double, ■— otherwise, indeed, called
by my name and legally so, — undid me, as my friends
supposed, one evening at a public meeting called by
poor Isaacs in Haguadavick. Of that transaction I
have no occasion here to tell the story. But of that
transaction one consequence is that the Brick Moon
THE BKICK' MOON.
57
now moves in ether. I stop writing, to rest my eye
upon it, through a little telescope of Alvan Clark’s
here, which is always trained near it. It is moving
on as placidly as ever.
It came about thus. The morning after poor Dennis,
whom I have long since forgiven, made his extraordinary
speeches, without any autliority from me, in the Town
Hall at Haguadavick, I thought, and my w T ife agreed
with me, that we had better both leave town with the
children. Auchmuty, our dear friend, thought so' too.
We left in the ten-thirty Accommodation for Skowhe-
gan, and so came to Township Ho. 9 in the 3d Eange,
and there for years we resided. That whole range of
townships was set off under a provision admirable in
its character, that the first settled minister in each
town should receive one hundred acres of land as the
“ minister 5 s grant, 5 ’ and the first settled schoolmaster
eighty. To Ho. 9, therefore, I came. I constituted a
little Sandemanian church. Auchmuty and Delafield
came up and installed me, and with these hands I
built the cabin in which, with Polly and the little
ones, I have since spent many happy niglits and days.
This is not the place for me fo publish a map, which
I have by me, of Ho. 9, nor an account of its many
advantages for settlers. Should I ever print my papers
called “ Stay-at-home Eobinsons, 55 it will be easy with
•them to explain its topography and geography. Suffice
it now to say, that, with Alice and Bertha and Polly,
I took tramps up and down through the lumbermen’s
3 *
58
THE BRICK MOON.
roads, and soon knew the general features of the lay
of the land. Nor was it long, of course, before we
came out one day upon the curious land-slides, which
have more than once averted the flow of the Little Car-
rotook River, where it has washed the rocks away so
far as to let down one section more of the overlying
yielding yellow clay.
Think how my eyes flashed, and my wife’s, as, strug-
gling through a wilderness of moosewood, we came out
one afternoon on this front of yellow clay! Yellow
clay, of course, when properly treated by fire, is brick!
Here we were surrounded by forests, only waiting to
be burned; yonder was clay, only waiting to be baked.
Polly looked at me, and I looked at her, and with one
voice, we cried out, “ The Moon ! ”
Tor here was this shouting river at our feet, whose
power had been running to waste since the day when
the Laurentian hills first heaved themselves above the
hot Atlantic; and that day, I am informed by Mr.
Agassiz, was the first day in the history of this solid
world. Here was water-power enough for forty fly-
wheels, were it necessary to send heavenward twenty
moons. Here was solid timber enough for a hundred
dams, yet only one was necessary to give motion to
the fly-wheels. Here was retirement, ■— freedom from
criticism, an escape from the journalists, who would
not embarrass us by telling of every cracked brick
which had to be rejected from the structure. We had
lived in No. 9 now for six weeks, and not an “ own
THE BKICK MOON.
59
correspondent ” of them all had yet told what Eev.
Mr. Ingham had for dinner.
Of course I wrote to George Orcutt at once of our
great discovery, and he came up at once to examine
the situation. On the whole, it pleased him. He could
not take the site I proposed for the dam, because this
very clay there made the channel treacherous, and there
was danger that the stream would work out a new
career. But lower down we found a stony gorge with
which George was satisfied; he traced out a line for a
railway by which, of their own weight, the brick-cars
could run to the centrings; he showed us where, with
some excavations, the fly-wheels could be placed ex-
actly above the great mill-wheels, that no power might
be wasted, and explained to us how, when the gigantic
structure was finished, the Beick Moon would gently
roll down its ways upon the rapid wheels, to be launched
instant into the sky!
Shall I ever forget that happy October day of antici-
pation ?
We spent many of those October day s in tentative
surveys. Alice and Bertha were our chain-men, intel-
ligent and obedient. I drove for George his stakes, or
I cut away his brush, or I raised and lowered the shield
at which he sighted; and at noon Polly appeared with
her baskets, and we would dine al fresco , on a pretty
point which, not many months after, was wholly cov-
ered by the eastern end of the dam. When the field-
work was finished we retired to the cabin for days, and
60
THE BRICK MOON.
calculated and drew, and drew and calculated. Esti-
mates for feeding Irishmen, estimates of hay for mules,
— George was sure he could work mules better than
oxen, — estimates for cement, estimates for the prelim-
inary saw-mills, estimates for rail for the little brick-
road, for wheels, for spikes, and for cutting ties ; what
did we not estimate for — on a basis almost wholly
new, you will observe. For here the brick would cost
us less than our old conception^, — our water-power
cost us almost nothing, — but our stores and our wages
would cost us much more.
These estimates are now to me very curious, — a
monument, indeed, to dear George’s memory, that in
the result they proved so accurate. I would gladly
print them here at length, with some illustrative cuts,
but that I know the impatience of the public, and its
indifference to detail. If we are ever able to print a
proper memorial of George, that, perhaps, will be the
fitter place for them. Suifice it to say that with the
subtractions thus made from the original estimates, —
even with the additions forced upon us by working
in a wilderness, — George was satisfied that a money
charge of $197,327 would build and start the Moon.
As soon as we had determined the site, we marked off
eighty acres, which contained all the essential local-
ities, np and down the little Carrotook Kiver, — I
engaged George for the first schoolmaster in No. 9,
and he took these eighty acres for the schoolmaster’s
reservation. Alice and Bertha went to school to him
THE BRICK MOON.
61
the next day, taking lessons in civil engineering; and
I wrote to the Bingham trustees to notify them that I
had engaged a teacher, and that he had selected his
land.
Of course we remembered, still, that we were near
forty thousand dollars short of the new estimates, and
also that much of our money would not be paid us but
on condition that two hundred and fifty thousand were
raised. But George said that his own subscription
was wholly unhampered: with that we would go to
work on the preliminary work of the dam, and on the
flies. Then, if the flies would hold together, — and
they should hold if mortise and iron could hold them,
— they might be at work summers and winters, days
and niglits, storing up Power for us. This would en-
courage the subscriber, nay, would encourage us; and
all this preliminary work would be out of the way
when we were really ready to begin upon the Moon.
Brannan, Haliburton, and Q. readily agreed to this
when they were consulted. They were the other
trustees under an instrument which we had got St.
Leger to draw up. George gave up, as soon as he
might, his other appointments; and taught me, mean-
while, where and how I was to rig a little saw-mill, to
cut’some necessary lumber. I engaged a gang of men
to cut the timber for the dam, and to have it ready;
and, with the next spring, we were well at work on
the dam and on the flies! These needed, of course,
the most solid foundation. The least irregularity of
their movement might send the Moon awry.
62
THE BRICK MOON.
Ah me! would I not gladly tell tlie history of every
bar of iron which, was bent into the tires of those flies,
and of every log which was mortised into its place in
the dam, nay, of every curling mass of foam which
played in the eddies beneath, when the dam was
finished, and the waste water ran so smoothly over ?
Alas! that one drop should be wasted of water that
might move a world, although a small one ! I almost
dare say that I remember each and all these,— : with
such hope and happiness did I lend myself, as I could,
each day to the great enterprise; lending to dear
George, who was here and there and everywhere, and
was this and that and everybody, — lending to him, I
say, such poor help as I could .lend, in whatever way.
We waked, in the two cabins, in those happy days,
just before the sun came up, when the birds were in
their loudest clamor of morning joy. Wrapped each
in a blanket, George and I stepped out from our doors,
each trying to call the other, and often meeting on the
grass between. We ran to the river and plunged in,
— 0, how cold it was! — laughed and screamed like
boys, rubbed ourselves aglow, and ran home to build
Polly’s fire beneath the open chimney which stood
beside my cabin. The bread had risen in the night.
The water soon boiled above the logs. The children
came, laughing, out upon the grass, barefoot, and fear-
less of the dew. Then Polly appeared with her grid-
iron and bear-steak, or with her griddle and eggs, and,
in fewer minutes than this page has cost me, the break-
THE BRICK MOON.
63
fast was ready for Alice to carry, dish hy dish, to the
white-clad table on the piazza. Not Eaphael and
Adam more enjoyed their watermelons, fox-grapes, and
late blueberries ! And, in the long croon of the break-
fast, lingering at the board, we revenged ourselves for
the haste with which it had been prepared.
When we were well at table, a horn from the cabins
below sounded the reveille for the drowsier workmen.
Sopn above the larches rose the blue of their smokes;
and when we were at last nodding to the children, to
say that they might leave the table, and Polly was
folding her napkin as to say she wished we were gone,
we would see tall Asaph Langdon, then foreman of
the earpenters, sauntering up the valley with a roll
of paper, or an adze, or a shingle with some calcula-
tions on it, — with something on which he wanted
Mr. Orcutt’s directions for the day.
An hour of nothings set the carnal machinery of the
day agoing. We fed the horses, the cows, the pigs,
and the hens. We collected the eggs and cleaned the
hen-houses and the barns. We brought in wood
enough for the day 5 s fire, and water enough for the
day’s cooking and cleanliness. These heads describe
what I and the children did. Polly’s life during that
hour was more mysterious. That great first hour of
the day is devoted with women to the deepest arcana
of the Eleusinian mysteries of the divine science of
housekeeping. She who can meet the requisitions
of that hour wisely and bravely conquers in the Day s
64
THE BRICK MOON.
Battle. But what she does in it, let no ■man try to
say! It can be named, but not described, in the com-
prehensive formula, “ Just stepping round/'
That hour well given to chores and to digestion, the
children went to Mr. Orcutt’s open-air school, and I to
my rustic study, — a separate cabin, with a rough
square table in it, and some book-boxes equally rude.
No man entered it, excepting George and me. Here
for two hours I worked undisturbed, — how happy the
world, had it neither postman nor door-bell! — worked
upon my Traees of Sandemanianism in the Sixth and
Seventh Centuri.es, and then was ready to render such
service to The Cause and to George as the day might
demand. Thus I rode to Lincoln or to Fox croft to
order supplies; I took my gun and lay in wait on
Chairback for a bear; I transferred to the hewn lumber
the angles or bevels from the careful drawings: as best
I could, I filled an apostle's part, and became all things
to all these men around me. Happy those days! —
and thus the dam was built; in such Arcadian sim-
plicity was reared the mighty wheel; thus grew on
each side the towers which were to support the flies;
and thus, to our delight not unmixed with wonder, at
last we saw those mighty flies begin to turn. Not in
one day, nor in ten; but in a year or two of happy
life, — full of the joy of joys, — the “joy of eventful
living."
Yet, for all this, $162,000 was not $197,000, far
less was it $250,000; and but for Jeff. Davis and
THE BRICK MOON.
65
his crew the Brick Moon would not have been
born.
But at last Jeff. Davis was ready. “My prepara-
tions being completed,” wrote General Beauregard, “ I
opened fire on Fort Sumter/’ Little did he know it,
•—but in that explosion the Brick Moon also was
lifted into tlie sky!
Little did we know it, when, four weeks after,
George came up from the settlements, all excited with
the news ! The wheels had been turning now for four
days, faster of course and faster. George had gone
down for money to pay off the men, and he brought
us up the news that the Rebellion had begun.
“ The last of this happy life,” he said; “ the last,
alas, of our dear Moon.” How little he knew and we !
But he paid off the men, and they packed their
traps and disappeared, and, before two months were
over, were in the lines before the enemy. George
packed up, bade us sadly good by, and before a week
had offered his service to Governor Fenton in Albany.
For us, it took rather longer; but we were soon packed;
Polly took the children to her sister’s, and I went on
to the Department to offer my service there. Ho sign
of life left in Ho. 9, but the two gigantic Fly-Wheels,
moving faster and faster by day and by night, and
accumulating Power till it was needed. If only they
would hold together till the moment came!
So we all ground through the first slow year of the
war. George in his place, I in mine, Brannan in his,
66
THE BRICK MOON.
— we lifted as we could. But liow heavy the weight
seemed ! It was in the second year, when the second
large loan was placed, that Halibnrton wrote to me, —
I got the letter, I think, at Hilton Head, — that he
had sold out every penny of our railroad stocks, at the
high prices which railroad stocks then bore, and had
invested the whole fifty-nine thousand in the new
Governments. “I could not call a board meeting, n
said Haliburton, “ for I am here only on leave of ab-
sence, and the rest are all away. But the case is clear
enough. If the government goes up, the Moon will
never go up; and, for one, I do not look beyond the
veil” So he wrote to us all, and of course we all
approved.
So it was that Jeff. Davis also served. Deep must
that man go into the Pit who does not serve, though
unconscious. Por thus it was that, in the fourth year
of the war, when gold was at 290, Haliburton was
receiving on his fifty-nine thousand dollars seventeen
per cent interest in currency; thus was it that, before
the war was over, he had piled up, compounding his
interest, more than fifty per cent addition to his
capital; thus was it that, as soon as peace came, all
his stocks were at a handsome percentage; thus was it
that, before I returned from South America, he reported
to all the subscribers that the full quarter-million was
secured; thus was it that, when I returned after that
long cruise of mine in the Florida, I found Polly and
the children again at Ho. 9, George there also, direct-
THE BRICK MOON.
67
ing a working party of nearly eighty bricklayers and
hodmen, the lower centrings wellnigh filled to their
diameter, and the Brick Moon, to the eye, seeming
almost half completed.
Here it is that I regret most of all that I cannot
print the working-drawings with this paper. If you
will cut open the seed-vessel of Spergularia Bubra,
or any other carpel that has a free central placenta,
and observe how the circular seeds cling around the
circular centre, you will have some idea of the arrange-
ment of a transverse horizontal section of the com-
pleted Moon. Lay three croquet-balls on the piazza,
and call one or two of the children to help you poise
seven in one plane above the three; then let another
child place three more above the seven, and you have
the core of the Moon completely. If you want a more
poetical illustration, it was what Mr. Wordsworth calls
a mass
“Of conglobated bubbles undissolved.”
Any section through any diameter looked like an
immense rose-window, of six circles grouped round a
seventh. In truth, each of these sections would reveal
the existence of seven chambers in the moon, — each
a sphere itself,—-whose arches gave solidity to the
whole; while yet, of the whole moon, the greater part
was air. In all there were thirteen of these moonlets,
if I am so to call them; though no one section, of
course, would reveal so many. Sustained on each
side by their groined arches, the surface of the whole
68
THE BRICK MOON.
moon was built over tbem and under them, — simply
two domes connected at the bases. The chambers
themselves were made lighter by leaving large, round
Windows or open circles in the parts of their vaults
farthest from their points of contact, so that each of
them looked not unlike the outer sphere of a Japanese
ivory nest of concentric balls. You see the object was
to make a moon, which, when left to its own gravity,
should be fitly supported or braced within. Dear
George was sure that, by this constant repetition of
arches, we should with the least weight unite the
greatest strength. I believe it still, and experience
has proved that there is strength enough.
When I went up to No. 9, on my return from South
America, I found the lower centring up, and half full
of the working-bees, — who were really Keltic labor-
ers, — all busy in bringing up the lower half-dome of
the shell. This lower centring was of wood, in form
exactly like a Eoman amphitheatre if the seats of it
be circular; on this the lower or inverted brick dome
was laid. The whole fabric was on one of the terraces
which were heaved up in some old geological cata-
clysm, when some lake gave way, and the Carrotook
Eiver was born. The level w r as higher than that of the
top of the fly-wheels, which, with an awful velocity now,
were circling in their wild career in the ravine below.
Three of the lowest moonlets, as I have called them, —
separate croquet-balls, if you take my other illustra-
tion, — had been completed; their centrings had been
THE BRICK MOON.
69
taken to pieces and drawn out through the holes, and
were now set up again with other new centrings for
the second story of cells.
I was received with wonder and delight. I had
telegraphed my arrival, hut the despatches had never
been forwarded from Skowhegan. Of course, we all
had a deal to tell; and, for me, there was no end to
inquiries which I had to make in turn. I was never
tired of exploring the various spheres, and the name-
less spaces between them. I was never tired of talking
with the laborers. All of us, indeed, became skilful
bricklayers; and on a pleasant afternoon you might
see Alice and Bertha, and George and me, all laying
brick together, — Polly sitting in the shade of some
wall which had been built high enough, and reading
to us from Jean Ingelow or Monte-Cristo or Jane
Austen, while little Clara brought to us our mortar.
Happily and lightly went by that summer. Halibur-
ton and his wife made us a visit; Ben Brannan brought
up his wife and children; Mrs. Haliburton herself put
in the keystone to the central chamber, which had
always been named G, on the plans; and at her sug-
gestion, it was named Grace now, because her mother’s
name was Hannah. Before winter we had passed the
diameter of I, J, and K, the three uppermost cells of
all; and the surrounding shell was closing in upon them.
On the whole, the funds had held out amazingly well.
The wages had been rather higher than we meant; but
the men had no chances at liquor or dissipation, and
70
THE EEICK MOON.
had worked faster than we expected; and, with onr
new brick-machines, we made brick inconceivably
fast, while their quality was so good that dear George
said there was never so little waste. We celebrated
Thanksgiving of that year together, — my family and
his family. We had paid off all the laborers; and
there were left, of that busy village, only Asaph Lang-
don and his family, Levi Jordan and Levi Eoss, Horace
Leonard and Seth Whitman with theirs. “ Theirs,” I
say, but Eoss had no family. He was a nice young
fellow who was there as Haliburton’s representative,
to take care of the accounts and the pay-roll; Jordan
was the head of the brick-kilns; Leonard, of the car-
penters ; and Whitman, of the commissariat, — and a
good commissary Whitman was.
We celebrated Thanksgiving together! Ah me!
what a cheerful, pleasant time we had; how happy
the children were together! Polly and I and our
bairns were to go to Boston the next day. I was to
spend the winter in one final effort to get twenty-five
thousand dollars more if I could, with which we might
paint the Moon, or put on some ground felspathie
granite dust, in a sort of paste, which in its hot flight
through the air might fuse into a white enamel All
of us who saw the Moon were so delighted with its
success that we felt sure “ the friends ” would not
pause about this trifle. The rest of them were to stay
there to watch the winter, and to be ready to begin
work the moment the snow had gone. Thanksgiving
THE BRICK MOON.
71
afternoon, — how well I remember it, — that good
fellow, Whitman, came and asked Polly and me to
visit his family in their new quarters. They had
moved for the winter into eells B and E, so lofty,
spacious, and warm, and so much drier than their log
cabins. Mrs. Whitman, I remember, was very cheer-
ful and jolly; made my children eat another piece of
pie, and stuffed their pockets with raisins; and then
with great ceremony and fun we christened room B
by the name of Bertha, and E, Ellen, which was Mrs.
Whitman’s name. And the next day we bade them
all good by, little thinking what we said, and with
endless promises of what we would send and bring
them in the spring.
Here are the scraps of letters from Orcutt, dear fel-
low, which tell what more there is left to tell: —
“ December 10th.
“. . . . After you left we were a little blue, and hung
round loose for a day or two. Sunday we missed you
especially, but Asaph made a good substitute, and Mrs.
Leonard led the singing. The next day we moved the
Leonards into L and M, which we christened Leonard
and Mary (Mary is for your wife). They are pretty
dark, but very dry. Leonard has swung hammocks, as
Whitman did.
“ Asaph came to me Tuesday and said he thought
they had better turn to and put a shed over the unfin-
ished circle, and so take occasion of warm days for dry
72
THE BRICK MOON.
work there. This we have done, and the occupation
is good for us. . . . ”
“December 25tli.
“ I have had no chance to write for a fortnight. The
truth is, that the weather has been so open that I let
Asaph go down to No. 7 and to Wilder’s, and engage
five-and-twenty of the best of the men, who, we knew,
were hanging round there. We have all been at work
most of the time since, with very good success. H is
now wholly covered in, and the centring is out. The
men have named it Haliburton. I is well advanced.
J is as you left it. The work has been good for us all,
morally.”
“ February ll tb.
“. . . . We got your mail unexpectedly by some lum-
bermen on their way to the 9th Eange. One of them
has cut himself, and takes this down.
“ You will be amazed to hear that I and K are both
done. We have had splendid weather, and have worked
half the time. We had a great jollification when K
was closed in, — called it Kilpatrick, for Seth’s old
general. I wish you could just run up and see us.
You must be quick, if you want to put in any of the
last licks. . . . .”
“March 12th.
“Dear Bred, — I have but an instant. By all
means make your preparations to be here by the end
of the month or early in next month. The weather
has been faultless, you know. Asaph got in a dozen
TIIE BRICK MOON.
73
more men, and we have brought up the surface farther
than you could dream. The ways are well forward,
and I cannot see why, if the freshet hold off a little,
we should not launch her by the 10th or 12th. I do
not think it worth while to wait for paint or enamel.
Telegraph Brannan that he must be here. You will
be amused by our quarters. We, w T ho were the last
outsiders, move into A and D to-morrow, for a few
weeks. It is much warmer there.
“ Ever yours,
« G. 0.”
I telegraphed Brannan, and in reply he came with
his wife and his children to Boston. I told him that
he could not possibly get up there, as the roads then
were; but Ben said he would go to Skowhegan, and
take his chance there. He would, of course, commu-
nicate with me as soon as he got there. Accordingly
I got a note from him at Skowhegan, saying he had
hired a sleigh to go over to No. 9 ; and in four days
more I got this letter : —
“March 27th.
“ Dear Fred, — I am most glad I came, and I beg
you to. bring your wife as soon as possible. The river
is very full, the wheels, to which Leonard has added
two auxiliaries, are moving as if tliey could not hold
out long, the ways are all but ready, and we think we
must not wait. Start with all hands as soon as you
can. I had no difficulty in coming over from Skow-
hegan. We did it in two days.”
4
74
THE BRICK MOON.
This note I sent at once to Haliburton; and we got
all the children ready for a winter journey, as the spec-
tacle of the launch of the Moon was one to be remern-
bered their life long. But it was clearly impossible to
attempt, at that season, to get the subscribers together.
Just as we started, this despatch from Skowhegan was
brought me, — the last word I got from them : —
“ Stop for nothing. There is a jam below us in the
stream, and we fear back-water.
“ Okcutt.”
Of course we could not go faster than we could. We
missed no connection. At Skowhegan, Haliburton and
I took a cutter, leaving the ladies and children to fol-
low at once in larger sleighs. We drove all night,
changed horses at Prospect, and kept on all the next
day. At ISTo. 7 we had to wait over night. We started
early in the morning, and came down the Spoonwood
Hill at four in the afternoon, in full sight of our little
village.
It was quiet as the grave ! Hot a smoke, not a man,
not an adze-blow, nor the tick of a trowel. Only the
gigantic fly-wheels were whirling as I saw them last.
There was the lower Coliseum-like centring, some-
what as I first saw it.
But where was the Brick Dome of the Moon ?
“ Good Heavens ! has it fallen on them all ? ” cried I.
Haliburton lashed the beast till he fairly ran down
that steep hill. We turned a little point, and came
THE BRICK MOON.
75
out in front of the centring. There was no Moon
there ! An empty amphitheatre, with not a brick nor
a splinter within!
We were speechless. We left the cutter. We ran
up the stairways to the terrace. We ran by the famil-
iar paths into the centring. We came out upon the
ways, which we had never seen before. These told
the story too well! The ground and crushed surface
of the timbers, scorched by the rapidity with which
the Moon had slid down, told that they had done the
duty for which they were built.
It was too clear that in some wild rush of the waters
the ground had yielded a trifle. We could not find
that the foundations had sunk more than six inches,
but that was enough. In that fatal six inches’ decline
of the centring, the Moon had been launched ujpon the
ways just as George had intended that it should be
when he was ready. But it had slid, not rolled, down
upon these angry fly-wheels, and in an instant, with
all our friends, it had been hurled into the sky !
“ They have gone up ! ” said Haliburton; “ She has
gone up ! ” said I; — both in one breath. And with
a common instinct, we looked up into the blue.
But of course she was not there.
Not a shred of letter or any other tidings could we
find in any of the shanties. It was indeed six weeks
since George and Fanny and their children had moved
into Annie and Diamond, — two unoccupied cells of
76
THE BRICK MOON.
the Moon, — so much more comfortable had the cells
proved than the cabins, for winter life. Eeturning to
No. 7, we found there many of the laborers, who were
astonished at what we told them. They had been paid
off on the 30th, and told to come up again on the 15th
of April, to see the launch. One of them, a man named
Eob Shea, told me that George kept his cousin Peter
to help him move back into his house the beginning
of the next week.
And that was the last I knew of any of them for
more than a year. At first I expected, each hour, to
hear that they had fallen somewhere. But time passed
by, and of such a fall, where man knows the world’s
surface, there was no tale. I answered, as best I could,
the letters of their friends, by saying I did not know
where they were, and had not heard from them. My
real thought was, that if this fatal Moon did indeed
pass our atmosphere, all in it must have been burned
to death in the transit. But this I whispered to no
one save to Polly and Annie and Haliburton. In this
terrible doubt I remained, till I noticed one day in the
“ Astronomical Eecord ” the memorandum, which you
perhaps remember, of the observation, by Dr. Zitta, of
a new asteroid, with an enormous movement in decli-
nation.
THE BRICK MOON.
77
m. — FULFILMENT.
Looking back upon it now, it seems inconceivable
that we said as little to each other as we did, of this
horrible catastrophe. That night we did not pretend
to sleep. We sat in one of the deserted cabins, now
talking fast, now sitting and brooding, without speak-
ing, perhaps, for hours. Eiding back the next day to
meet the women and children, we still brooded, or we
discussed this “ if,” that “ if,” and yet others. .But af-
ter we had once opened it all to them, — and when
we had once answered the children s horribly naive
questions as best we could, — we very seldom spoke
to each other of it again. It was too hateful, all of it,
to talk about. I went round to Tom Coram’s office
one day, and told him all I knew. He saw it was
dreadful to me, and, with his eyes full, just squeezed
my hand, and never said one word more. We lay
awake nights, pondering and wondering, but hardly
ever did I to Haliburton or he to me explain our re-
spective notions as tliey came and went. I believe
my general impression was that of which I have
spoken, that tliey were all burned to death on the in-
stant, as the little aerolite fuSed in its passage through
our atmosphere. I believe Haliburton’s thought more
often was that they were conscious of what had hap- ■
pened, and gasped out their lives in one or two breath-
less minutes, — so horribly long! — as they shot out-
78
THE BRICK MOON.
side of our atmosphere. But it was all too terrible for
words. And that which we could not but think upon,
in those dreadful waking nights, we scarcely whispered
even to our wives.
Of course I looked and he looked for the miserable
thing. But we looked in vain. I returned to the few
subscribers the money which I had scraped together to-
wards whitewashing the moon, — “ shrouding its guilty
face with innocent white 55 indeed I But we agreed to
spend the wretched trifle of the other money, left in
the treasury after paying the last bills, for the largest
Alvan Clark telescope that we could buy; and we
were fortunate in obtaining cheap a second-hand one
which came to the hammer when the property of the
Shubael Academy was sold by the mortgagees. But
we had, of course, scarce a. hint whatever as to where
the miserable object was to be found. All we could
do was to carry the glass to No. 9, to train it there on
the meridian of No. 9, and take turns every night in
watching the field, in the hope that this child of sor-
row might drift across it in its path of ruin. But,
though everything else seemed to drift by, from east
to west, nothing came from south to north, as we ex-
pected. Bor a whole month of spring, another of au-
tumn, another of summer, and another of winter, did
Haliburton and his wife and Polly and I glue our eyes
to that eye-glass, from the twilight of evening to the twi-
light of morning, and the dead hulk never hove in sight.
Wherever else it was, it seemed not to be on that me-
THE BRICK MOON.
79
ridian, which, was where it ought to be and was made
to be ! Had ever any dead mass of matter wrought
such ruin to its makers, and, of its own stupid inertia,
so falsified all the prophecies of its birth! 0, the total
depravity of things!
It was more than a year after the fatal night, — if
it all happened in the night, as I suppose, — that, as
I dreamily read through the “ Astronomical Eecord ”
in the new reading-room of the College Library at
Cambridge, I lighted on this scrap : —
“ Professor Karl Zitta of Breslau writes to the As -
tronomische NachricMen to claim the discovery of a
new asteroid observed by Mm on the night of March
Bresl. M. T.
h.
m. s.
App. A. H. App. Deel.
h. m. s. o / u
Size.
March 31
12
53 51.9
15 39 52.32 —23 50 26.1
12.9
April 1
1
3 2.1
15 39 52.32 —23 9 1.9
12.9
He proposes
for the asteroid the name of Phoebe.
Dr.
Zitta states that in the short period which he had
for observing Phoebe, for an hour after midnight, her
motion in E. A. seemed slight and her motion in dec-
lination very rapid.”
After this, however, for months, nay even to tMs
moment, nothing more was heard of Dr. Zitta of
Breslau.
But, one morning, before I was up, Haliburton came
banging at my door on D Street. The mood had taken
80
THE - BKICK MOON.
him, as he returned from some private theatrical at
Cambridge, to take the comfort of the new reading-
room at night, and thus express in practice bis grati-
tnde to the overseers of the college for keeping it open
through all the twenty-four hours. Poor Haliburton,
he did not sleep well in those times ! Well, as he read
away on the Astronomische Nachrichten itself, what
should he find but this in German, which he copied
for me, and then, all on foot in the rain and darkness,
tramped over with, to South Boston: —
“The most enlightened head professor Dr. Gmelin
writes to the director of the Porpol Astronomik at St.
Petersburg, to claim the discovery of an asteroid in a
very high southern latitude, of a wider inclination
of the orbit, as will be noticed, than any asteroid yet
observed.
“ Planet’s apparent a 21 h< 20 m - 51 9 \40. Planet’s ap-
parent 8 —39° 3 T ll".9. Comparison star a.
“ Dr. Gmelin publishes no separate second observa-
tion, but is confident that the declination is diminish-
ing. Dr. Gmelin suggests for the name of this extra-
zodiacal planet “ Io,” as appropriate to its wanderings
from the accustomed ways of planetary life, and trusts
that the very distinguished Herr Peters, the godfather
of so many planets, will relinquish this name, already
claimed for the asteroid (85) observed by him, Septem-
ber 15, 1865.”
I had run down stairs almost as I was, slippers and
dressing-gown, being the only claims I had on society.
THE BKICK MOON.
81
But to me, as to Haliburton, this stuff about “ extra-
zodiacal wandering” blazed out upon the page, and
though there was no evidence that the “ most enlight-
ened ” Gmelin found anything the next night, yet, if
his “ diminisliing ” meant anything, there was, with
Zitta’s observation, — whoever Zitta might be, — some-
tiling to start upon. We rushed upon some old bound
volumes of the Record and spotted the “ enlightened
Gmelin.” He was chief of a college at Taganrog, where
perhaps they had a spyglass. This gave us the paral-
lax of his observation. Breslau, of course, we knew,
and so we could place Zitta’s, and with these poor
data I went to work to construct, if I could, an orbit
for this Io-Phoebe mass of brick and mortar. Halibur-
ton, not strong in spherical trigonometry, looked out
logarithms for me till breakfast, and, as soon as it
would do, went over to Mrs. Bowdoin, to borrow her
telescope, ours being left at No. 9.
Mrs. Bowdoin was kind, as ske always was, and at
noon Haliburton appeared in triumph with the boxes
on P. Nolan’s job-wagon. We always employ P., in
memory of dear old Phil. We got the telescope rigged,
and waited for night, only, alas! to be disappointed
again. Io had wandered somewhere else, and, with
all our sweeping back and forth on the tentative curve
I had laid out, Io would not appear. We spent that
night in vain.
But we were not going to give it up so. Phoebe
might have gone round the world twice before she
4 *
F
82
THE BRICK MOON.
became Io; might have gone three times, four, five, six,
— nay, six hundred, — who knew ? Hay, who knew
how far off Phoeb-Io was or Io-Phoebe ? We sent over
for Annie, and she and Polly and George and I went
to work again. We calculated in the next week sixty-
seven orbits on the supposition of so many different
distances from our surface. I laid out on a paper,
which we stuck up on the wall opposite, the formula,
and then one woman and one man attached each set
of elements, each having the Logarithmic Tables, and
so in a weeks working-time, the sixty-seven orbits
were completed. Sixty-seven possible places for Io-
Phoebe to be in on the forthcoming Friday evening,
Of these sixty-seven, forty-one were observable above
our horizon that night.
She was not in one of the forty-one, nor near it.
But Despair, if Giotto be correct, is the chief of
sins. So has he depicted her in the fresco of the
Arena in Padua. Ho sin, that, of ours ! After search-
ing all that Priday night, we slept all Saturday (sleep-
ing after sweeping). We all came to the Chapel,
Sunday, kept awake there, and taught our Sunday
classes special lessons on Perseverance. On Monday
we began again, and that week we calculated sixty-
seven more orbits. I am sure I do not know why we
stopped at sixty-seven. All of these were on the sup-
position that the revolution of the Brick Moon, or
Io-Phoebe, was so fast that it would require either
fifteen days to complete its orbit, or sixteen days, or
THE BRICK MOON.
83
seventeen days, and so on np to eighty-one days.
And, with these orbits, on the next Friday we waited
for the darkness. As we sat at tea, I asked if I
should begin observing at the smallest or at the largest
orbit. And there was a great clamor of diverse opin-
ions. But little- Bertha said, " Begin in the middle.’’
“ And what is the middle ? ” said George, chaffing
the little girl.
But she was not to be dismayed. She had been in
and out all the week, and knew that the first orbit
was of fifteen days and the last of eighty-one; and,
with true Lincoln School precision, she said, “ The
mean of the smallest orbit and the largest orbit is
forty-eight days.”
“ Amen ! ” said I, as we all laughed. “ On forty-
eight days we will begin.”
Alice ran to the sheets, turned up that number, and
read, “B. A. 27° ll'. South declination 34° 49V’
“ Convenient place,” said George; “ good omen, Ber-
tha, my darling! If we find her there, Alice and
Bertha and Clara shall all have new dolls.”
It was the first word of pleasantry that had been
spoken about the horrid thing since Spoonwood
Hill!
Hight came at last. We trained the glass on the
fated spot. I bade Polly take the eye-glass. She did
so, shook her head uneasily, screwed the tube north-
ward herself a moment, and then screamed, "It is
there! it is there, — a clear disk, — gibbous shape, —
84
THE BRICK MOON. -
and very sharp on the upper edge. Look! look! as
big again as Jupiter! ”
Polly was right! The Brick Moon was found!
Now we had found it, we never lost it. Zitta and
Gmelin, I suppose, had had foggy nighfcs and stormy
weather often. But we had some one at the eye-glass
all that night, and before morning had very respectable
elements, good measurements of angular distance when
we got one, and another star in the field of our lowest
power. . Bor we could see her even with a good French
opera-glass I had, and with a night-glass which I used
to carry on the South Atlantic Station. It certainly
was an extraordinary illustration of Orcutt’s engineer-
ing ability, that, flying off as she'did, without leave or
license, she should have gained so nearly the orbit
of our original plan, — nine thousand miles from the
earth’s centre, five thousand from the surface. Fie
had always stuck to the hope of this, and on his very
last tests of the Flies he had said they were almost up
to it. But for this accuracy of his, I can hardly sup-
pose we should have found her to this hour, since she
had failed, by what cause I then did not know, to take
her intended place on the meridian of No. 9. At five
thousand miles’ the Moon appeared as large as the
largest satellite of Jupiter appears. And Polly was
right in that first observation, when she said she
got a good disk with that admirable glass of Mrs.
Bowdoin.
The orbit was not on the meridian of No. 9, nor did
THE BRICK MOON.
85
it- remain on any meridian. But it was very nearly
South and North, — an enormous motion in declination
with a very slight retrograde motion in Bight Aseen-
sion. At five thousand miles the Moon showed as
large as a circle two miles and a third in diameter
would have shown on old Thornbush, as we always
called her older sister. We longed for an eclipse of
Thornbusli hy B. M., but no such lucky chance is on
the cards in any place accessible to us for many years.
Of course, with a Moon so near us the terrestrial par-
allax is enormous.
Now, you know, dear reader, that the gigantic re-
fiector of Lord Bosse, and the exquisite fifteen-inch
refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate from
the chaotic rubbish-lieap of the surface of old Thorn-
bush much smaller objects than such a circle as I have
named. If you have read Mr. Locke’s amusing Moon
Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh
in your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all
this began, — and as I have said already, — if there
were a State House in Thornbush two hundred feet
long, the first Hersehel would have seen it. His mag-
nifying power was 0450 ; that would have brought this
deaf and dumb State House within some forty miles.
Go up on Mt. Washington and see white sails eighty
miles away, beyond Portland, with your naked eye,
and you will find how well he would have seen that
State House with his reflector. Lord Bosse’s state-
ment is, that with his reflector he can see objects on
86
THE BRICK MOON.
old Thornbush two hundred and fifty-two feet long.
If he can do that he can see on our B. M. objects
which are five feet long; and, of course, we were
beside ourselves to get control of some instrument
which had some approach to such power. Haliburton
was for at once building a reflector at No. 9; and per-
haps he will do it yet, for Haliburton has been suc-
cessful in his paper-making and lumbering. But I
went to work more promptly.
I remembered, not an apothecary, but an observa-
tory, which had been dormant, as we say of volcanoes,
now for ten or a dozen years, — no matter why ! The
trustees had quarrelled with the director, or the funds
had given out, or the director had been shot at the
head of his division,— one of those accidents had
happened which will happen even in observatories
which have fifteen-ineh equatorials; and so the equa-
torial here had been left as useless as a cannon whose
metal has been strained or its reputation stained in an
experiment. The observatory at Tamworth, dedicated
with such enthusiasm, — “ another light-house in the
sldes,” — had been, so long as I have said, worthless
to the world. To Tamworth, therefore, I travelled. In
the neighborhood of the observatory I took lodgings. To
the church where worsliipped the family which lived in
the observatory buildings I repaired; after two Sundays
I established acquaintance with John Donald, the head
of this family. On the evening of the third, I made
acquaintance with his wife in a visit to them. Before
THE BRICK MOON.
87
three Sundays more he had reeommended me to the
surviving trustees as his successor as janitor to the
buildings. He himself had accepted promotion, and
gone, with his household, to keep a store for Halibur-
ton in North Ovid. I sent for Polly and the children,
to establish them in the janitor’s rooms; and, after
waiting to her, with trembling eye I waited for the
Brick Moon to pass over the field of the fifteen-inch
equatorial.
Night came. I was “ sole alone! ” B. M. came,
more than filled the field of vision, of course! but for
that I was ready, Heavens ! how changed. Bed no
longer, but green as a meadow in the spring. Still I
could see — black on the green — the large twenty-
foot circles which I remembered so well, which broke
the concave of the dome; and, on the upper edge —
were these palm-trees ? They were. No, they were
hemlocks by their shape, and among them were mov-
ing to and fro flies ? Of course, I cannot
see flies ! But something is moving, — coming, going.
One, two, three, ten; there are more than thirty in all!
They are men and women and their children!
Could it be possible ? It was possible ! Orcutt and
Brannan and the rest of them had survived that giddy
flight through the ether, and were going and coming
on the surface of their own little world, bound to it by
its own attraction and living by its own laws !
As I watched, I saw one of them leap from that sur-
face. He passed wholly out of my field of vision, but
88
THE BRICK MOON.
in a minute, more or less, retnrned. Why not! Of
course, the attraction of his world must be very small,
while he retained the same power of muscle lie had
when he was here. They must be horribly crowded,
I thought. No. They had three acres of surface, and
there were but thirty-seven of them. Not so much
crowded as people are in Roxbury, not nearly so
much as in Boston; and, besides, these people are
living underground, and have the whole of their sur-
face for their exercise.
I watched their every movement as they approached
the edge and as they left it. Often they passed be-
yond it, so that I could see them no more. Often they
sheltered themselves from that tropical sun beneath
the trees. Think of living on a world where from the
vertical heat of the hottest noon of the equator to the
twilight of the poles is a walk of only fifty paces !
What atmosphere they had, to temper and diffuse
those rays, I could not then conjecture.
I knew that at half past ten they would pass into
the inevitable eclipse which struck them every night
at this period of their orbit, and must, I thought, be a
luxury to them, as recalling old memories of night
when they were on this world. As they approached
the line of shadow, some fifteen minutes before it was
due, I counted on the edge thirty-seven specks arranged
evidently in order; and, at one moment, as by one sig-
nal, all thirty-seven jumped into the air, — high jumps.
THE BRICK MOON.
89
Again they did it, and again. Then a low jump; then
a high one. I caught the idea in a moment. They
were telegrapliing to our world, in the hope of an ob-
server. Long leaps and short leaps,— the long and
short of Morse’s Telegraph Alphabet, — were commu-
nicating ideas. My paper and pencil had been of
course before me. I jotted down the despatch, whose
language I knew perfectly: —
“ Show ‘ I understand ’ on the Saw-Mill Flat.”
% “ Show f I understand’ on the Saw-Mill Flat.”
“ Show ‘ I understand’ on the Saw-Mill Flat.”
By “ I understand ” they meant the responsive sig-
nal given, in all telegraphy, by an operator who has
received and understood a message.
As soon as this exercise had been three times re-
peated, they proceeded in a solid body — much the
most apparent object I had had until now — to Circle
ISTo. 3, and then evidently descended into the Moon.
The eclipse soon began, but I knew the Moon’ s path
now, and followed the dusky, coppery spot without
difficulty. At 1.33 it emerged, and in a very few
moments I saw the solid column pass from Circle
No. S again, deploy on the edge again, and repeat
three times the signal: —
“ Show * I understand’ on the Saw-Mill Flat.”
“ Show ‘ I understand’ on the Saw-Mill Flat.”
“ Show ‘ I understand ’ on the Saw-Mill Flat.”
It was clear that Orcutt had known that the edge
of his little world would be most easy of observation,
90
THE BKICK MOON.
and that he had guessed that the moments of obscura-
tion and of emersion were the moments when observers
would be most careful. After this signal they broke
up again, and I could not follow them. With daylight
I sent off a despatch to Haliburton, and, grateful and
happy in comparison, sank into the first sleep not
haunted by horrid dreams, which I had known for
years.
Haliburton knew that George Orcutt had taken with
him a good Dolland’s refractor, which he had bought
in London, of a two-inch glass. He knew that this
would give Orcutt a very considerable power, if he
could only adjust it accurately enough to find No. 9
in the 3d Range. Orcutt had chosen well in selecting
the “ Saw-Mill Flat/’ a large meadow, easily clistin-
guished by the peculiar shape of the mill-pond which
we had made. Eager though Haliburton was, to join
me, he loyally took moneys, caught the first train to
Skowhegan, and, travelling thence, in thirty-six hours
more was again descending Spoonwood Hill, for the
first time since our futile observations. The snow lay
white upon the Flat. With Eob. Shea’s help, he rap-
idly unrolled a piece of black cambric twenty yards
long, and pinned it to the crust upon the snow; an-
other by its side, and another. Much cambric had he
left. They had carried down with them enough for
the funerals of two Presidents. Haliburton showed
the symbols for “ I understand,” but he could not re-
THE BKICK MOON.
91
sist also displaying ♦ • — • —, which are the dots and
lines to represent 0. K., which, he says, is the shortest
message of comfort. And not having exhausted the
space on the Flat, he and Robert, before night closed
in, made a gigantic ©. K., fifteen yards from top to
bottom, and in marks that were fifteen feet through.
I had telegraphed my great news to Haliburton on
Monday night. Tuesday night he was at Skowhegan.
Thursday night he was at No. 9. Friday he and Eob.
stretched their cambric. Meanwhile, every day I slept.
Every night I was glued to the eye-piece. Fifteen
minutes before the eclipse every night this weird
dance of leaps two hundred feet high, followed by
hops of twenty feet high, mingled always in the
steady order I have described, spelt out the ghastly
message: —
“ Show ‘ I understand ’ on the Saw-Mill Flat”
And every morning, as the eclipse ended, I saw the
column creep along to the horizon, and again, as the
duty of opening day, spell out the same : —
“ Show ‘ I understand ’ on the Saw-Mill Flat ”
They had done this twice in every twenty-four hours
for nearly two years. For three nights steadily, I read
these signals twice each night; only these, and nothing
more.
But Friday night all was changed. After “ Atten-
tion,” that dreadful “Show” did not come, hut this
cheerful signal: —
‘5 Hurrah. All well. Air, food, and friends ! what
more can man require ? Hurrah.”
92
THE BRICK MOON.
How like George ! How like Ben Brannan ! How
like George’s wife ! How like them all! And they
were all well! Yet poor I could not answer. Nay,
I could only guess what Haliburton had done. But I
have never, I believe, been so grateful since I was
born I
After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed
their jumps and hops. Long and short spelled out: —
“ Your 0. K. is twice as large as it need be/'
Of the meaning of this, lonely I had, of course, no
idea.
“I have a power of seven hundred,” continued
George. How did he get that ? He has never told
us. But this I can see, that all our analogies deceive
us, — of views of the sea from Mt. Washington, or of
the Boston State House from Wachusett. For in these
views we look through forty or eighty miles of dense
terrestrial atmosphere. But Oreutt was looking nearly
vertically through an atmosphere which was, most of
it, rare indeed, and pure indeed, compared with its
lowest stratum.
In the record-book of my observations these de-
spatehes are entered as 12 and 13. Of course it was
impossible for me to reply. All I could do was to
telegraph these in the morning to Skowhegan, sending
them to the care of the Moores, that they might for-
ward them. But the next night showed that this had
not been necessary.
Friday night George and the others went on for a
THE BRICK MO OX.
93
quarter of an hour. Then they would rest, saying,
“two,” "three,” or whatever their next signal time
would be. Before morning I had these despatclies : —
14. "Write to all hands that we are doing well.
Langdon’s baby is named Io, and Leonard’s is named
Phoebe.”
How queer that was ! What a coincidence ! And
they had some humor there.
15 was: "Our atmosphere stuck to us. It weighs
three tenths of an inch — our weight.”
1G. " Our rain-fall is regular as the clock. We have
made a cistern of Kilpatrick.”
This meant the spherical chamber of that name.
17. "Write to Darwin that he is all right. We
began with lichens and have come as far as palms and
hemlocks.”
These were the first night’s messages. I had scarcely
covered the eye-glasses, and adjusted the equatorial
for the day, when the bell announced the carriage in
which Polly and the children came from the station
to relieve me in my solitary service as janitor. I had
the joy of showing her the good news. This night’s
work seemed to fill our cup. Dor all the day before,
when I was awake, I had been haunted by the fear of
famine for them. True, I knew that they had stored
away in ehambers H, I, and J the pork and flour
which we had sent up for the workmen through the
summer, and the corn and oats for the horses. But
this could not last forever.
94
THE BRICK MOON.
'Now, however, that it proved that in a tropical
climate they were forming their own soil, developing
their own palms, and eventually even their "bread-fruit
and bananas, planting their own oats and maize, and
developing rice, wheat, and all other cereals, harvest-
ing these six, eight, or ten times — for aught I could
see — in one of our years, — why then, there was no
danger of famine for them. If, as I thought, they
carried up with them heavy drifts of ice and snow in
the two chambers which were not covered in when
they started, why, they had waters in their firmament
quite sufficient for all purposes of thirst and of ablu-
tion. And what I had seen of their exercise showed
that they were in strength sufficient for the proper
development of their little world.
Polly had the messages by heart before an hour was
over, and the little girls, of course, knew them sooner
than she.
Haliburton, meanwhile, had brought out the Shubael
refractor (Alvan Clark), and by night of Friday was in
readiness to see what he could see. Shubael of course
gave him no such luxury of detail as did my fifteen-
inch equatorial. But still he had no diffieulty in
making out groves of hemlock, and the circular open-
ings. And although he could not make out my thirty-
seven flies, still when 10.15 came he saw distinctly
the black square crossing from hole Mary to the edge,
and begin its Dervish dances. They were on his edge
THE BRICK MOON.
95
more precisely than on mine. For Orcntt knew noth-
ing of Tamwortli, and had thought his best chance was
to display for No. 9. So was it that, at the same
moment with me, Haliburton also was spelling out
Orcutt & Co/s joyous “ Hurrah ! ”
“Thtephen,” lisps Celia, “promith that you will
look at yon moon [old Thornbush] at the inthtant I
do.” So was it with me and Haliburton.
He was of course informed long before the Moores’
messenger came, that, in Orcutt’s judgment, twenty
feet of length were sufficient for his signals. Orcutt’s
atmosphere, of course, must be exquisitely clear.
So, on Saturday, Bob. and Haliburton pulled up all
their cambric and arranged it on the Flat again, in
letters of twenty feet, in this legend: —
EAH. AL WEL.
Haliburton said he could not waste flat or cambric on
spelling.
He had had all night since half past ten to consider
what next was most important for them to know; and
a very difficult question it was, you will observe,
They had been gone nearly two years, and much had
happened. Which thing was, on the whole, the most
interesting and important ? He had said we were
all well. What then?
.Did you never find yourself in the same diffieulty ?
When your husband had come home from sea, and
kissed you and the children, and wondered at their
96
THE BRICK MOON.
size, did you never sit silent, and have to think what
you should say? Were you never fairly relieved
when little Phil said, blustering, “ I got three eggs to-
day” The truth is, that silence is very satisfactory
intercourse, if we only know all is well. When De
Sauty got his original cable going, he had not much to
tell after all; only that consols were a quarter per cent
higher than they were the day before. “Send me
news,” lisped he — poor lonely myth ! — from BulTs
Bay to Yalentia, — “send me news; they are mad for
news.” But how if there be no news worth sending ?
What do I read in my cable despatch to-day ? Only
that the Harvard crew pulled at Putney yesterday,
which I knew before I opened the paper, and that
there had been a riot in Spain, which I also knew.
Here is a letter just brought me by the mail from
Moreau, Tazewell County, Iowa. It is written by
Follansbee, in a good cheerful hand. How glad I am
to hear from Follansbee ! Yes; but do I care one
straw whether Follansbee planted spring wheat or
winter wheat ? Hot I. All I care for is Follansbee’s
way of telling it. All these are the remarks by which
Haliburton explains the character of the messages he
sent in reply to George Oreutt’s autographs, which
were so thoroughly satisfactory.
Should he say Mr. Borie had left the Ha vy Depart-
ment, and Mr. Eobeson come in ? Should he say the
Lords had backed down on the Disendowment Bill ?
Should he say the telegraph had been landed at Dux-
THE BRICK MOON.
97
bury ? Should he say Ingham had removed to Tam-
worth ? What did they care for this ? What does
anybody ever care for facts ? Should he say that the
State Constable was enforcing the liquor law on whis-
key, but was winking at lager ? All this would take
him a week, in the most severe condensation, — and
for what good ? as Haliburton asked. Yet these were
the things that the newspapers told, and they told
nothing else. There was a nice little poem of Jean
Ingelow’s in a Transcript Haliburton had with him.
He said he was really tempted to spell that out. It
was better worth it than all the rest of the newspaper
stuff, and would be remembered a thousand years after
that was forgotten. “ What they wanted,” says Hali-
burton, “ was sentiment. That is all that survives and
is eternal.” So ’ he and Eob. laid out their cambric
thus: —
RAH. AL WEL. SO GLAD.
Haliburton hesitated whether he would not add,
“ Power 5000,” to indicate the full power I was using
at Tamworth. But he determined not to, and, I
think, wisely. The convenience was so great, of re-
ceiving the signal at the spot where it could be
answered, that for the present he thought it best that
they should go on as they did. That night, however,
to his dismay, clouds gathered and a grim snow-storm
began. He got no observations; and the next day it
stormed so heavily that he could not lay his signals
5 G
98
THE BRICK MOON.
out. For me at Tamworth, I had a heavy storm all
day, but at midnight it was clear; and as soon as the
regular eclipse was past George began with what we
saw was an account of the great anaclysm which sent
them there. You observe that Orcutt had far greater
power of communicating with us than we had with
him. He knew this. And it was fortunate he had.
For he had, on his little world, much more of interest
to tell than we had, on our large one.
18. “It stormed hard. We were all asleep, and
knew nothing till morning; the hammocks turned so
slowly/’
Here was another revelation and relief. I had
always supposed that, if they knew anything before
they were roasted to death, they had had one wild
moment of horror. Instead of this,* the gentle slide
of the Moon had not wakened them, the flight upward
had been as easy as it was rapid, the change from one
centre of gravity to another had of course been slow,
— and they had actually slept through the whole. After
the dancers had rested once, Orcutt continued: —
19. “We cleared E. A. in two seconds, I think. Our
outer surface fused and cracked somewhat. So much
the better for us.”
They moved so fast that the heat of their friction
through the air could not propagate itself through the
whole brick surface. Indeed, there could have been
but little friction after the first five or ten miles. By
E. A. he means earth’s atmosphere.
THE BRICK MOON. 99
His 20 th despatch is: “I have no observation of
ascent. But by theory our positive ascent ceased in
two minute s five seconds, when we fell into our proper
orbit, which, as I calculate, is 5,109 miles from your
mean surface.”
In all this, observe, George clropped no word of re-
gret through these five thousand miles.
His 21st despatch is : “ Our rotation on our axis is
made once in seven hours, our axis being exactly ver-
tical to the plane of our own orbit. But in each of
your daily rotations we get sunned all round.”
Of course, they never had lost their identity with us,
so far as our rotation and revolution went: our inertia
was theirs ; all the fatal Fly-Wheels had given them
was an additional motion in space of their own.
This was the last despatch before daylight of Sunday
morning; and the terrible snow-storm of March, sweep-
ing our hemisphere, cut off our communication with
them, both at Tam worth and Ho. 9, for several day s.
But here was ample food for reflection. Our friends
were in a world of their own, all thirty-seven of them
well, and it seemed they had two more little girls
added to their number since they started. They had
plenty of vegetables to eat, with prospect of new tropi-
cal varieties according to Dr. Darwin. Bob. Shea was
sure that they carried up hens ; he said he knew Mrs.
Whitman had several Middlesexes and Mrs. Leonard
two or three Black Spanish fowls, which had been
given her by some friends in Foxcroft. Even if they
100
THE BRICK MOON.
had not yet had time enough for these to develop into
Alderneys and venison, they would not be without
animal food.
When at last it cleared off, Haliburton had to tele-
graph: “ Eepeat from 21 ” ; and this took all his cam-
brie, though he had doubled his stock. Oreutt replied
the next night: —
22. “ I can see your storms. We have none. When
we want to change climate we can walk in less than a
minute from midsummer to the depth of winter. But
in the inside we have eleven different temperatures,
which do not change.”
On the whole 'there is a certain convenience in such
an arrangement. With No. 23 he went back to his
story: —■
“ It took us many days, one or two of our months,
to adjust ourselves to our new condition. Our great-
est grief is that we are not on the meridian. Do you
know why ? ”
Loyal George ! He was willing to exile himself and
his race from the most of mankind, if only the great
purpose of his life could be fulfilled. But his great
regret was that it was not fulfilled. He was not on
the meridian. I did not know why. But Haliburton,
with infinite labor, spelt out on the Flat,
CYC. PROJECT. AD FIN.,
by which he meant, “ See article Projectiles in the
Cyclopaedia at the end ” ; and there indeed is the only
THE BRICK MOON.
101
explanation to be given. When you fire a shot, why
does it ever go to the right or left of the plane in
which it is projected? Dr. Hutton ascribes it to a
whirling motion acquired by the bullet by friction
with the gun. Euler thinks it due chiefly to the ir-
regularity of the shape of the ball. In our case the
B. M. was regular enough. But on one side, being
wholly unprepared for flight, she was heavily stored
with pork and corn, while her other chambers had in
some of them heavy drifts of snow, and some only a
few men and women and hens.
Before Orcutt saw Haliburton’s advice, he had sent
us 24 a,nd 25.
24. “We have established a Sandemanian church,
and Brannan preaches. My son Edward and Alice
Whitman are to be married this evening. 5 '
This despatch unfortunately did not reach Halibur-
ton, though I got it. So, all the happy pair received
for our wedding-present was the advice to look in the
Cyclopaedia at article Projectiles near the end.
25 was: —
“We shall act ‘As You Like It 5 after the wedding.
Dead-head tickets for all of the old set who will come. 55
Actually, in one week’s reunion we had come to
joking.
The next night we got 26 : —
' “ Alice says she will not read the Cyclopaedia in the
honeymoon, but is much obliged to Mr. Haliburton for
his advice. 55
102
THE BRICK MOON.
“ How did she ever know it was I ?” wrote the mat-
ter-of-fact Halihnrton to me.
27. “ Alice wants to know if Mr. Haliburton will
not send here for some rags; says we have plenty,
with little need for clothes/’
And then despatches began to be more serions again.
Brannan and Orcutt had failed in the great scheme for
the longitude, to which they had sacrificed their lives,
— if, indeed, it were a sacrifice to retire with those
they love best to a world of their own. But none the
less did they devote themselves, with the rare power
of observation they had, to the benefit of our world.
Thus, in 28 : —
“ Your Horth Pole is an open ocean. It was black,
which we think means water, from August 1st to
September 29th. Your South Pole is on an island
bigger than Hew Holland. Your Antarctic Continent
is a great cluster of islands.”
29. “ Your Hyanzas are only two of a large group
of African lakes. The green of Africa, where there is
no water, is wonderful at our distance.”
30. “ We have not the last numbers of ‘ Foul Play/
Tell us, in a word or two, how they got home. We
can see what we suppose their island was.”
31. “We should like to know who proved Eight in
‘ He Knew He was Eight/ ”
This was a good niglit’s work, as they were then
telegraphing. As soon as it cleared, Haliburton dis-
played, —
THE BfUCK MOON.
103
BEST HOPES. CARRIER DUCKS.
This was Haliburton’s masterpiece. He had no
room for more, however, and was obliged to reserve
for the next day his answer to ‘No. 31, which was
simply,
SHE.
A real equinoctial now parted ns for nearly a week,
and at the end of that time they were so low in onr
northern horizon that we could not make out their
signals; we and they were obliged to wait till they had
passed through two thirds of their month before we
could communicate again. I used the time in speed-
ing to No. 9. We got a few carpenters together, and
arranged on the. Flat two long movable black platforms,
which ran in and out on railroad-wheels on tracks, from
under green platforms; so that we could display one
or both as we chose, and then withdraw them. With
this apparatus we could give forty-five signals in a
minute, corresponding to the line and dot of the tele-
graph; and thus could compass some twenty letters in
that time, and make out perhaps two hundred and
fifty words in an hour. Haliburton thought that, with
some improvements, he could send one of Mr. Buchan-
an s messages up in thirty-seven working-nights.
104
THE BKICK MOON.
IV. — INDEPENDENCE.
I own to a certain mortification in confessing that
after this interregnum, forced upon ns by so long a
period of non-intercourse, we never resumed pre-
cisely the same constancy of communication as that
which I have tried to describe at the beginning. The
apology for this benumbment, if I may so call it, will
suggest itself to the thoughtful reader.
It is indeed astonishing to think that we so readily
accept a position when we once understand it. You
buy a new house. You are fool enough to take out a
staircase that you may put in a bathing-room. This
will be done in a fortnight, everybody tells you, and
then everybody begins. Plumbers, masons, carpenters,
plasterers, skimmers, bell-hangers, speaking-tube men,
men who make furnace-pipe, paper-hangers, men who
scrape off the old paper, and other men who take off
the old paint with alkali, gas men, city water men, and
painters begin. To them are joined a considerable
number of furnace-men’s assistants, stovepipe-men’s
assistants, mason’s assistants, and hodmen who assist
the assistants of the masons, the furnace-men, and the
pipe-men. Tor a day or two these all take possession
of the house and reduce it to chaos. In the language
of Scripture, they enter in and dwell there. Compare,
for the details, Matt. xii. 45. Then you revisit it at
the end of the fortnight, and find it in chaos, with the
THE BRICK MOON.
105
woman whom yon employed to wash, the attics the
only person on the scene. Yon ask her where the
paper-hanger is ; and she says he can do nothing be-
canse the plaster is not dry. Yon ask why the plaster
is not dry, and are told it is becanse the fnrnace-man
has not come. Yon send for him, and he says he did
come, bnt the stove-pipe man was away. Yon send for
him, and he says he lost a day in coming, bnt that the
mason had not cnt the right hole in the chimney. You
go and find the mason, and he says they are all fools,
and that there is nothing in the honse that need take
two days to finish.
Then yon curse, not the day in which yon were born,
but the day in which bath-rooms were invented. Yon
say, truly, that yonr father and mother, from whom yon
inherit every moral and physical facnlty yon prize,
never had a bath-room till they were past sixty, yet
they thrived, and their children. Yon sneak through
back streets, fearful lest yonr friends shall ask yon
when yonr honse will be finished. Yon are sunk in
wretchedness, unable even to read yonr proofs accu-
rately, far less able to attend the primary meetings of
the party with which yon vote, or to discharge any
of the dnties of a good citizen. Life is wholly ernbit-
tered to yon.
Yet, six weeks after, yon sit before a soft-coal fire,
in yonr new honse, with the feeling that yon have
always lived there. Yon are not even grateful that yon
are there. Yon have forgotten the plumber’s name;
5 *
106
THE BRICK MOON.
and if yon met in tlie street that nice carpenter that
drove things through, yon would jnst nod to him, and
would not think of kissing him or embracing him.
Thus completely have yon accepted the sitnation.
Let me confess that the same experience is that with
which, at this writing, I regard the Brick Moon. It
is there in ether. I cannot keep it. I cannot get it
down. I cannot well go to it, — though possibly that
might be done, as yon will see. They are all very
happy there, — much happier, as far as I can see, than
if they lived in sixth floors in Paris, in lodgings in
London, or even in tenement-houses in Phoenix Place,
Boston. There are disadvantage attached to their po-
sition; but there are also advantages. And what most
of all tends to our accepting the sitnation is, that there
is “ nothing that we can do about it,” as Q. says, but
to keep up our correspondence with them, and to ex-
press our sympathies.
For them, their responsibilities are reduced, in some-
what the same proportion as the gravitation which binds
them down, — I had almost said to earth,—which
binds them down to brick, I mean. This decrease of
responsibility must make them as light-hearted as the
loss of gravitation makes them light-bodied.
On which point I ask for a moment’s attention. And
as these sheets leave my hand, an illustration turns up,
which well serves me. It is the 23d of October. Yes-
terday morning all wakeful women in Hew England
were sure there was some one under the bed. This is
THE BRICK MOON.
107
a certain sign of an earthquake. And when we read
the evening newspapers we were made sure there had
been an earthquake. What blessings the newspapers
are, -— and how much information they give us ! Well,
they said it was not very severe here, but perhaps it
was more severe elsewhere; hopes really arising in
the editorial mind, that in some Caraccas or Lisbon
all churches and the cathedral might have fallen. I
did not hope for that. But I did have just the faint-
est feeling, that if —if—if—it should pro ve that the
world had blown up into six or eight pieces, and they
had gone off into separate orbits, life would be vastly
easier for all of us, on whichever bit we happened to be.
That thing has happened, they say, once. Whenever
the big planet between Mars and Jupiter blew up, and
divided himself into one hundred and two or more
asteroids, the people on each one only knew there had
been an earthquake, until they read their morning
journals. And then, all that they knew at first was
that telegraphic communication had ceased beyond —
say two hundred miles. Gradually people and de-
spatches came in, who said that they had parted com-
pany with some of the other islands and continents.
But, as I say, on each piece the people not only weighed
much less, but were much lighter-liearted, had less
responsibility.
Now will you imagine the enthusiasm here, at Miss
Hale’s school, when it should be announced that ge-
ography, in future, would be confined to the study of
108
THE BKICK MOON.
the region east of the Mississippi and west of the
Atlantic, — the earth having parted at the seams so
named. No more study of Italian, German, Trench,
or Sclavonic, — the people speaking those languages
being now in different orbits or other worlds. Im-
agine also the superior ease of the office-work of the A.
B. C. F. M. and kindred societies, the duties of instruc-
tion and civilizing, of evangelizing in general, being
reduced within so much narrower bounds. Tor you
and me also, who cannot decide what Mr. Gladstone
ought to do with the land tenure in Ireland, and who
distress ourselves so much about it in conversation,
what a satisfaction to know that Great Britain is flung
off with one rate of movement, Ireland with another,
and the Isle of Man with another, into space, with no
more chance of meeting again than there is that you
shall have the same hand at whist to-night that you
had last night! Even Yictoria would sleep easier,
and I am sure Mr. Gladstone would.
Thus, I say, were Or cutt’s and Brannan’s responsi-
bihties so diminished, that after the first I began to
see that their contracted position had its decided com-
pensating ameliorations.
In these views, I need not say, the women of our
little circle never shared. After we got the new tele-
graph arrangement in good running-order, I observed
that Polly and Annie Haliburton had many private
conversations, and the secret came out one morning,
when, rising early in the cabins, we men found they
THE BRICK MOON.
109
had deserted us; and then, going in search of them,
found them .running the signal boards in and out as
rapidly as they could, to tell Mrs. Brannan and the
bride Alice Orcutt that flounces were worn an inch
and a half deeper, and that people trimmed now with
harmonizing colors and not with contrasts. I did not
say that I believed they wore fig-leaves in B. M., but
that was my private impression.
After all, it was hard to laugh at the girls, as these
ladies will be called, should they live to be as old as
Helen was when she charmed the Trojan senate (that
was ninety-three, if Heyne be right in his calculations).
It was hard to laugh at them, because this was simple
benevolence, and the same benevolence led to a much
more practical suggestion, when Polly came to me and
told me she had been putting up some baby things for
little lo and Phcebe, and some playthings for the older
children, and she thought we might “ send up a bundle. 5 ’
Of course we could. There were the Plies still mov-
ing! or we might go ourselves!
[And here the reader must indulge me in a long parenthesis.
I beg him to bear me witness that I never made one before.
This parenthesis is on the tense that I am obliged to use in
sending to the press these minutes. The reader observes that
the last transactions mentioned happen in April and May,
1871. Those to be narrated are the sequence of those already
told. Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses of the
English language is very difficult. One needs, for accuracy, a
pure future, a second future, a paulo-post future, and a paulum-
110
THE BRICK MOON.
ante future, none of which does this language have. Failing
this, one would be glad of an a-orist, — tense without time, —
if the grammarians will not swoon at hearing such language.
But the English tongue hath not that either. Doth the learned
reader remember that the Hebrew, — language of history and
prophecy, — hath only a past and a future tense, but hath no
present? Yet that language succeeded tolerably in expressing
the present griefs or joys of David and of Solomon. Bear with
me, then, O critic! if even in 1870 I use the so-called past
tenses in narrating what remaineth of this history up to the
summer of 1872. End of the parenthesis.]
On careful consideration, however, no one volunteers
to go. To go, if you observe, would require that a man
envelope himself thickly in asbestos or some similar
non-conducting substance, leap boldly on the rapid
Flies, and so be shot through the earth’s atmosphere
in two seconds and a fraction, carrying with him all
the time in a non-conducting receiver the condensed
air he needed, and landing quietly on B. M. by a pre-
calculated orbit. At the bottom of our hearts I think
we were all afraid. Some of us confessed to fear;
others said, and said truly, that the population of the
Moon was already dense, and that it did not seem
reasonable or worth while, on any account, to make it
denser. Nor has any movement been renewed for
going. But the plan of the bundle of “things”
seemed more feasible, as the things would not require
oxygen. The only precaution seemed to be that
which was necessary for protecting the parcel against
combustion as it shot through the earth’s atmosphere.
THE BRICK MOON.
Ill
We had not asbestos enough. It was at first pro-
posed to pack them all in one of Professor Horsford’s
safes. But when I telegraphed this plan to Orcutt,
he demurred. Their atmosphere was but shallow, and
with a little too much force the corner of the safe
might knock a very bad hole in the surface of his
world. He said if we would send up first a collection
of things of no great weight, but of considerable bulk,
he would risk that, but he would rather have no com-
pact metals.
I satisfied myself, therefore, with a plan which I
still think good. Making the parcel up in heavy old
woollen carpets, and cording it with worsted cords, we
would case it in a carpet-bag larger than itself, and
fill in the interstice with dry sand, as our best non-
conductor; cording this tightly again, we would renew
the same casing, with more sand; and so continually
offer surfaces of sand and woollen, till we had five
separate layers between the parcel and the air. Our
calculation was that a perceptible time would be
necessary for the burning and disintegrating of each
sand-bag. If each one, on the average, would stand
two fifths of a second, the inner parcel would get
through the earth’s atmosphere unconsumed. If, on
the other hand, they lasted a little longer, the bag, as
it fell on B. M., would not be unduly heavy. Of
course we could take their night for the experiment,
so. that we might be sure they should all be in bed
and out of the way.
112
THE BRICK MOON.
We had very funny and very merry times in select-
ing things important enough and at the same time
bulky and light enough to be safe. Alice and Bertha
at once insisted that there must be room for the
children’s playthings. They wanted to send the most
approved of the old ones, and to add some new
presents. There was a woolly sheep in particular,
and a watering-pot that Bose had given Fanny, about
which there was some sentiment; boxes of dominos,
packs of cards, magnetic fishes, bows and arrows,
checker-boards and croquet sets. Polly and Annie
were more considerate. Down to Coleman and Com-
pany they sent an order for pins, needles, hooks and
eyes, buttons, tapes, and I know not what essentials.
India-rubber shoes for the children Mrs. Haliburton
insisted on sending. Haliburton himself bought open-
eye-shut-eye dolls, though I felt that wax had been,
since Icarus’s days, the worst article in such an ad-
venture. For the babies he had india-rubber rings:
he had tin cows and carved wooden lions for the
bigger children, drawing-tools for those older yet, and
a box of crochet tools for the ladies. For my part I
piled in literature, — a set of my own works, the Legis-
lative Beports of the State of Maine, Jean Ingelow,
as I said or intimated, and both volumes of the Earthly
Paradise. All these were packed in sand, bagged, and
corded, — bagged, sanded, and corded again, — yet
again and again, — five times. Then the whole
awaited Orcutt’s orders and our calculations.
THE BRICK MOON.
113
At last the moment came. We had, at Grcutt’s
order, reduced the revolutions of the Flies to 7230,
which was, as nearly as he knew, the speed on the
fatal night. We had soaked the hag for near twelve
hours, and, at the moment agreed upon, rolled it on
the Flies, and saw it shot into the air. It was so
small that it went out of sight too soon for us to see
it take fire.
Of course we watched eagerly for signal time. They
were all in bed on B. M. when we let fly. But the
despatch was a sad disappointment.
107. “Nothing has come through but two croquet
balls and a china horse. But we shall send the boys
hunting in the bushes, and we may find more. 55
108. “ Two Harpers and an Atlantic, badly singed.
But we can read all but the parts which were most
dry.”
109. “We see many small articles revolving round
us which may perhaps fall in. 55
They never did fall in, however. The truth was,
that all the bags had burned through. The sand, I
suppose, went to its own place, wherever that was.
And all the other things in our bundle became little
asteroids or aerolites in orbits of their own, except
a well-disposed score or two, which persevered far
enough to get within the attraction of Brick Moon,
and to take to revolving there, not having hit quite
square, as the croquet balls did. They had five
volumes of the Congressional Globe whirling round
114
THE BRICK MOON.
like bats within a hundred feet of their heads. An-
other body, which I am afraid was “The Ingham
Papers,” flew a little higher, not quite so heavy. Then
there was an absurd procession of the woolly sheep, a
china cow, a pair of india-rubbers, a lobster Haliburton
had chosen to send, a wooden lion, the wax doll, a
Salter’s balance, the New York Observer, the bow and
arrows, a Nuremberg nanny-goat, Eose’s watering-pot,
and the magnetic fishes, which gravely circled round
and round them slowly, and made the petty zodiac of
their petty world.
We have never sent another parcel since, but we
probably shall at Christmas, gauging the Flies perhaps
to one revolution more. The truth is, that although
we have never stated to each other in words our dif-
ference of opinion or feeling, there is a difference of
habit of thought in our little circle as to the posi-
tion which the B. M. holds. Somewhat similar is
the difference of habit of thought in which different,
statesmen of England regard their colonies.
Is B. M. a part of our world, or is it not ? Should
its inhabitants be encouraged to maintain their con-
nections with us, or is it better for them to “ accept
the situation ” and gradually wean themselves from us
and from our affairs ? It would be idle to determine
this question in the abstract: it is perhaps idle to
decide any question of casuistry in the abstract. But,
in practice, there are constantly arising questions which
really require some decision of this abstract problem
for their solution.
THE BRICK MOON.
115
For instance, when that terrible breach occurred in
the Sandemanian church, which parted it into the Old
School and New School parties, Haliburton thought
it very important that Brannan and Orcutt and the
church in B. M. under Brannan’s ministry should
give in their adhesion to our side. Their church
would count one more in our registry, and the weight
of its influence would not be lost. Tie therefore spent
eight or nine days in telegraphing, from the early
proofs, a copy of the address of the Chatauque Synod
to Brannan, and asked Brannan if he were not willing
to have his name signed to it when it was printed.
And the only thing which Haliburton takes sorely in
the whole experience of the Brick Moon, from the
beginning, is that neither Orcutt nor Brannan has
ever sent one word of acknowledgment of the de-
spatch. Once, when Haliburton was very low-spirited,
I heard him even say that he believed they had never
read a word of it, and that he thought he and Bob.
Shea had had their labor for their pains in running
the signals out and in.
Then he felt quite sure that they would have to
establish civil government there. So he made up an
excellent collection of books, — De Lolme on the
British Constitution; Montesquieu on Laws; Story,
Kent, John Adams, and all the authorities here; with
ten copies of his own address delivered before the
Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Society of Podunk,
on the “ Abnormal Truths of Social Order/’ He tele-
116
THE BKICK MOON.
graphed to know what night he should send them, and
Orcutt replied: —
129. “ Go to thunder with your old law-books. We
have not had a primary meeting nor a justice court
since we have been here, and, D. V., we never will
have/'
Haliburton says this is as bad as the state of things
in Kansas, when, because Frank Pierce would not give
them any judges or laws to their mind, they lived a
year or so without any. Orcutt added in his next
despatch: —
130. “Have not you any new novels ? Send up
Scribe and the Arabian Nights and Robinson Crusoe
and the Three Guardsmen, and Mrs. Whitney’s books.
We have Thackeray and Miss Austen.”
When he read this, Haliburton felt as if they
were not only light-footed, but light-headed. And he
consulted me quite seriously as to telegraphing to
them “Pycroft’s Course of Reading.” I coaxed him
out of that, and he satisfied himself with a serious ex-
postulation with George as to the way in which their
young folks would grow up. George replied by tele-
graphing Brannan’s last sermon, 1 Thessalonians iv. ll.
The sermon had four heads, must have occupied an
hour and a half in delivery, and took five nights to
telegraph. I had another engagement, so that Hali-
burton had to sit it all out with his eye to Shubael:
and he has never entered on that line of discussion
again. It was as well, perhaps, that he got enough
of it.
THE BRICK MOON.
117
The women have never had any misunderstandings.
"When we had received two or three hundred despatches
from B. M., Annie Haliburton came to me and said,
in that pretty way of hers, that she thought- they had
a right to their turn again. She said this lore about
the Albert Nyanza and the North Pole was all very
well, but, for her part, she wanted to know how they
lived, what they did, and what they talked about,
whether they took summer journey s, and how and
what was the form of society where thirty-seven
people lived in such close quarters. This about “the
form of society 5 ' was merely wool pulled over my
eyes. So she said she thought her husband and I
had better go off to the Biennial Convention at As-
sampink, as she knew we wanted to do, and she and
Bridget and Polly and Cordelia would watch for the
signals, and would make the replies. She thought
they would get on better if we were out of the way.
So we went to the convention, as she called it,
which was really not properly a convention, but the
Porty-fifth Biennial General Synod, and we left the
girls to their own sw r eet way.
Shall I confess that they kept no record of their
own signals, and did not remember very accurately
what they w r ere ? “I w r as not going to keep a string
of ‘says IV and ‘says she 5 s, 5 55 said Polly, boldly.
“ It shall not be written on my tomb that I have left
more annals for people to file or study or bind or dust
or catalogue . 55 But they told us that they had begun
118
THE BRICK MOON.
by asking the “bricks” if they remembered what
Maria Theresa said to her ladies-in-waiting.* Quieker
than any signal had ever been answered, George Or-
cntt’s party replied from the moon, “We hear, and we
obey/’ Then the women-kind had it all to them-
selves. The briek-women explained at once to onr
girls that they had sent their men round to the other
side to cut ice, and that they were manning the tele-
scope, and running the signals for themselves, and
that they could have a nice talk without any bother
about the law-books or the magnetic pole. As I say,
I do not know what questions Polly and Annie put;
but, — to give them their due, — they had put on
paper a coherent record of the results arrived at in
the answers; though, what were the numbers of the
despatches, or in what order they came, I do not
know; for the session of the synod kept us at Assam-
pink for two or three weeks.
Mrs. Brannan was the spokesman. “We tried a
good many experiments about day and night. It was
very funny at first, not to know when it would be
light and when dark, for really the names day and
night do not express a great deal for us. Of course
the pendulum clocks all went wrong till the men got
* Maria Theresa’s husband, Francis, Duke of Tuscany, was hang-
ing about loose one day, and the Empress, who had got a little tired,
said to the maids of honor, “ Girls, whenever you marry, take care
and choose a husband who has something to do outside of the
house.”
THE BRICK MOON.
119
them overhauled, and I think watches and clocks both
■will soon go out of fashion. But we have settled down
on much the old hours, getting up, without reference
to daylight, by our great gong, at your eight o’clock.
But when the eclipse season comes, we vary from that
for signalling.
“ We still make separate families, and Alice’s is the
seventh. We tried hotel life, and we liked it, for
there has never been the first quarrel here. You can’t
quarrel here, where you are never sick, never tired,
and need not be ever hungry. But we were satisfied
that it was nicer for the children, and for all round, to
live separately, and come together at parties, to church,
at signal time, and so on. We had something to say
then, something to teach, and something to learn.
“ Since the cariees developed so nicely into flax, we
have had one great comfort, which we had lost before,
in being able to make and use paper. We have had
great fun, and we think the children have made great
improvement in writing novels for the Union. The
Union is the old Union for Christian work that we
had in dear old hTo. 9. We have two serial novels
going on, one called ‘ Diana of Carrotook,’ and the
other called ‘ Ups and. Downs ’; the first by Levi Boss,
and the other by my Blanche. They are really very
good, and I wish we could send them to you. But
they would not be worth despatching.
“We get up at eight; dress, and fix up at home; a
sniff of air, as people choose; breakfast; and then we
120
THE BRICK MOON.
meet for prayers outside. Where we meet depends on
the temperature; for we can ehoose any temperature
we want, from boiling water down, which is conven-
ient. After prayers an hour’s talk, lounging, walking,
and so on; no flirting, but a favorite time with the
young folks.
“ Then comes work. Three hours’ head-work is the
maximum in that line. Of women’s work, as in all
worlds, there are twenty-four in one of your days, but
for my part I like it. Farmer s and carpenters have
their own laws, as the light serves and the seasons.
Dinner is seven hours after breakfast began; always
an hour long, as breakfast was. Then every human
being sleeps for an hour. Big gong again, and we
ride, walk, swim, telegraph, or what not, as the case
may be. We have no horses yet, but the Shanghaes
are coming up into very good dodos and ostriches,
quite big enough for a trot for the children.
“ Only two persons of a family take tea at home.
The rest always go out to tea without invitation. At
8 p. M. big gong again, and we meet in ‘ Grace/ which
is the prettiest hall, church, concert-room, that you
ever saw. We have, singing, lectures, theatre, dancing,
talk, or what the mistress of the night determines, till
the curfew sounds at ten, and then we all go home.
Evening prayers are in the separate households, and
every one is in bed by midnight. The only law on
the statute-book is that every one shall sleep nine
hours out of every twenty-four.
THE BRICK MOON.
121
“Only one thing interrupts this general order.
Three taps on the gong means ‘ telegraph/ and then, I
tell you, we are all on hand.
“ You eannot think how quickly the days and years
go by!”
Of course, however, as I said, this could not last.
We could not subdue our world, and be spending all
our time in telegraphing our dear B. M. Could it be
possible ? — perhaps it was possible, — that they there
had something else to think of and to do, besides at-
tending to our affairs. Certainly their indifference to
Grants fourth Proclamation, and to Mr. Pish’s cele-
brated protocol in the Tahiti business, looked that
way. Could it be that that little witch of a Belle
Brannan really eared more for their performance of
Midsummer Hight’s Dream, or her father’s birthday,
than she eared for that pleasant little account I tele-
graphed up to all the children, of the way we went to
muster when we were boys together ? Ah well! I
ought not to have supposed that all worlds were
like this old world. Indeed, I often say this is the
queerest world I ever knew. Perhaps theirs is not
so queer, and it is I who am the oddity.
Of course it could not last. We just arranged cor-
respondence days, when we would send to them, and
they to us. I was meanwhile turned out from my
place at Tamworth Observatory. Hot but I -did my
work well, and Polly hers. The observer^ room was
a miracle of neatness. The children were kept in the
6
122
THE BKICK MOON.
basement. Visitors were received with great cour-
tesy; and all the fees were sent to the treasurer; he got
three dollars and eleven cents one summer, — that was
the year General Grant came there; and that was
the largest amount that they ever received from any
source hut begging. I was not unfaithful to my trust.
Nor was it for such infidehty that I was removed.
No! But it was discovered that I was a Sandema-
man; a Glassite, as in derision I was called. The
annual meeting of the trustees came round. There
was a large Mechanics’ Fair in Tamworth at the time,
and an Agricultural Convention. There was no horse-
race at the convention, but there were two competi-
tive examinations in which running horses competed
with each other, and trotting horses competed with
each other, and five thousand dollars was given to the
best runner and the best trotter. These causes drew
all the trustees together. The Bev. Cephas Philpotts
presided. His doctrines with regard to free agency
were considered much more sound than mine. He
took the chair, — in that pretty observatory parlor,
which Polly had made so bright with smilax and ivy.
Of course I took no chair; I waited, as a janitor
should, at the door. Then a brief address. Dr. Phil-
potts trusted that the observatory might always be
administered in the interests of science, of true
science; of that science which rightly distinguishes
between unlicensed liberty and true freedom; between
the unrestrained volition and the freedom of the will.
THE BRICK MOON.
123
He became eloquent, be became noisy. He sat down.
Then three other men spoke, on similar subjects.
Then the executive committee which had appointed
me was dismissed with thanks. Then a new execu-
tive committee was chosen, with Dr. Philpotts at the
head. The next day I was discharged. And the next
week the Philpotts family moved into the observatory,
and their second girl now takes care of the instru-
ments.
I returned to the cure of souls and to healing the
hurt of my people. On observation days somebody
runs down to No. 9, and by means of Shubael com-
municates with B. M. We love them, and they love
us all the same.
Nor do we grieve for them as we did. Coming
home from Pigeon Cove in October, with those nice
Wadsworth people, we fell to talking as to the why
and wherefore of the summer life we had led. How
was it that it was so charming ? And why were we a
little loath to come back to more comfortable surround-
ings ? “ I hate the school,” said George Wadsworth.
“ I hate the making calls,” said his mother. “ I hate
the office hour,” said her poor husband; “if there
were only a dozen I would not mind, but seven-
teen hundred thousand in sixty minutes is too many.”
So that led to asking how many of us there had been
at Pigeon Cove. The children counted up all the six
families, — the Haliburtons, the Wadsworths, the Pon-
tefracts, the Midges, the Hayeses, and the Inghams,
124
THE BRICK MOON.
and the two good-natured girls, — thirty-seven in all,
— and the two babies born this summer. “ Keally,”
said Mrs. Wadsworth, “ I have not spoken to a human
being besides these since June; and what is more,
Mrs. Ingham, I have not wanted to. We have really
lived in a little world of our own.”
“ World of our own! ” Polly fairly jumped from her
seat, to Mrs. Wadsworth’s wonder. So we had —
lived in a world of our own. Polly reads no news-
paper since the “ Sandemanian ” was merged. She
has a letter or two tumble in sometimes, but not
many; and the truth was that she had been more se-
eluded from General Grant and Mr. Gladstone and
the Khedive, and the rest of the important people,
than had Brannan or Eoss or any of them!
And it had been the happiest summer she had ever
known.
Can it be possible that all human sympathies can
thrive, and all human powers be exercised, and all
human joys increase, if we live with all our might
with the thirty or forty people next to us, telegraphing
kindly to all other people, to be sure ? Can it be
possible that our passion for large cities, and large
parties, and large theatres, and large churclies, develops
no faith nor hope nor love which would not find ali-
inent and exercise in a little “ -world of our own ” ?
WATER TALK.
A True Story.
I.
Asaph Ferguson and I were in the sea just out-
side the breakers on Matoonoc Beach in Rhode Island.
I take it this is just the finest bath possible in New
England, which is to say, of course, in the United
States, which is, I suppose, in the world, though I am
not perfectly sure about the surf south of the La Plata
River.
Ferguson thought we had had enough fooling in the
breakers, — said he had come into the water for exer-
cise, — and proposed a pull along the shore, outside
the white crests, toward Stony Point, to which I
agreed. And he fell to talking about the disappear-
ance of a Creole girl from the pier; she had been
advertised as lddnapped, in the papers.
“ Did I ever tell you my story of the disappearance
of that Boothby child — English child ?” said I. No
— Ferguson said — not if he remembered the name.
So as we swam on I told him just as I tell it to you.
“ These Boothbys were English spinners, of the
better sort, from Manchester. They came over in the
126
WATER TALK.
midst of that awful strike which Mrs. Gaskell immor-
talized in ‘ Mary Barton/ I have talked with them
about, that very strike. Well, the strike did not im-
prove their fortunes much, but some committee of
workmen, or employers, poor-boards, landlords, or
somebody, sent them all, bag and baggage, paralytic
mother, half-witted father, and deaf-and-dumb niece,
over to America. That is a convenience of an old
country, that you have a new one under your lee.
Well, they landed at Boston, and at Boston the
philanthropists thought they must be sent to the
West. ‘Great country, the West! 5 So they were
sent to the West. But in those day s, sending them
to the West, when the Boston philanthropists did
it, meant giving them all seeoM-class tickets to
Worcester, forty miles away. The Boston philanthro-
pists are not apt now to get them so far. I was a
minister in Worcester then, so before a year was over
somebody reported the Boothbys to me.
“They had got along, at first, sufficiently well. I
don’t remember where the half-witted father was, nor
the deaf-and-dumb niece; somewhere or other at the
public charge I suppose. The man and his wife had
some sort of work in some sort of mill, when there
came a drought and everybody shut off work, — as bad
as the Manchester strike. Then he got discouraged
and half starved, and they all were half starved, and
they had in the house with them a bad case of typhus,
and they all got frightened about that; all this, mark
WATER TALK.
127
you, before they consulted any people of sense, or not
a word of this that I am going to tell you need have
happened."
“ O, need not it ? " asked Ferguson, rather indif-
ferently, as if lie did not much care whether it hap-
pened or not. But he turned over on his right side,
and began swimming with the hand-over-hand stroke.
So did I. And as I had got started, I went on. I
knew he would be interested before I was done.
“ They took bad advice, or rather they took none at
all. They agreed that the sick father should go to the
town poor-house; and he was so sick that he could
not be sent far away. So the people there had to take
care of him till he mended. He saw that things
looked comfortably there, — there were some children
lie got fond of, — and when he came back he per-
suaded his wife to send their little Bessy there till
the man who had the fever was well. And my story
is about Bessy/'
“O, is it?" said Ferguson, rather lazily. "I
thought it was about Boothby. I think we had bet-
ter go home."
“ It is about Bessy Boothby; her first name is Bessy,
and her last name is Boothby. They were more used
to workhouse life in England than our laboring people
are here, and they thought no shame to have the child
at the poor-house for a few weeks, pretty much as the
grandfather was at one asylum and the niece, if she
was a niece, at another. So Bessy was sent to the
128
WATER TALK.
town poor-house also. This, you see, was before any
of us knew them, or no such blunder would have been
made / 5
“Blunder ? 55 said Ferguson; "I see no blunder.
They all appear to have been poor. What is a poor-
house for but for poor people ? 55 And Ferguson lay
over on his breast again, and began swimming with
General Krastromm’s stroke. So did I.
“ A poor-house for poor people ? My dear Asaph,
that shows you do not understand the law of settle-
ments, — as how should you, being only an attorney-
at-law. There never were but three men in Massa-
chusetts who understood it. Governor Andrew was
one, and he is dead. Another of the three is in Lon-
don. And the third is — not in Massachusetts at this
moment. She should not have gone to the poor-
house, because she had no settlement in Worcester / 5
“ I thought you said they had settled there / 5
“ So I did. But that has nothing to do with it; and
if you keep interrupting me, you will never hear your
story / 5
Asaph muttered that he thought it was my story.
But I did not mind him, but lay over on my back,
and struck into the Dexiteron-proteron stroke while he
went on with the Baron.
“ No! she had no settlement. And so, before she
had been at the poor-house a week, she was sent to
the State Poor-house in Monson / 5
“ Why, had she a settlement in Monson ? 55
WATEK TALK.
129
“ You must not interrupt! She had no settlement
at all. That was the reason she went to Monson.
Boothby and his wife knew she was there, but they
were lied to; and they supposed Monson was just out
of sight, the other side of Chandler Hill, so they stuck
to their business. The mills got open again, they
moved into a new tenement, they whitewashed it
nicely, and then, of a Sunday morning, Boothby in-
quired his way to Monson, to find that it was thirty
miles away.
“ Boothby did not like this; he had to lose a day
going there. But he bought his ticket and went. He
found three hundred children, and found a master and
staff, but he found no Bessy Boothby.”
“ Blown up in the cars ? ” asked Asaph, beginning
to. be just a little interested.
“ Wait, and you shall know ; that is the end of the
story. She was not blown up in the cars. She had
been there, and was on the books. But she was not
there now.”
“Dead?”
“ You must not interrupt. She was not dead.”
“ Bun away ? ”
“ You must not interrupt. She had not run away ”
“ Small-pox, and off at the infirmary ? ”
“ She had been vaccinated in her youth. Ho, sir.
She had been kidnapped, and kidnapped under the
eyes of the authorities. Very cheap they were. And
although Thomas Boothby was rather a seedy-looking
2* i
130
WATER TALK.
man, and as stupid as some other Englishmen I have
known, the authorities did not dare to bully him.
Massachusetts had some stiff statutes just then about
kidnapping and the accessories to kidnapping. Are
you aware, by the way, that f kid ’ in the vernacular
means ‘ child,’ and to ‘ nap ’ is to ‘ nab ’ in the San-
skrih? This child had been nabbed under their eyes.
“ All they could say was that some very nice people
took her. c Indeed they were nice. They were ex-
traordinarily nice. And they had a very nice team.
The kerridge, you can’t think, Mr. Boothby, what a
nice kerridge it was, and the horses, two Morgan bays.
If you had seen the kerridge, Mr. Boothby, I am quite
sure you would be pleased.’
“ But poor Boothby had not seen the carriage, and
he was not pleased at all. He stormed and he swore,
and he swore and he stormed. But swearing and
storming did no good. How could it ? These people
had let the child go to some blackguards who had
given them false names. How could they tell what
they did not know ? ”
“ I say,” said Asaph, “ the women are waving their
towels. They want us to come in. Let ’s pull ashore.’’
So we pulled ashore through the breakers again,
and the women had many tales to tell us. How
Mabel had been thrown over by the breakers. • How
Grace had swum ten strokes without putting her feet
to the ground, and how Abigail had been looking on,
and had not noticed a great tall rounder from the sea,
WATER TALK.
131
and had got her month full in consequence. And in
the midst of these interruption I had no chance to
finish the story of Bessy Boothby.
n.
I was a little annoyed, to tell the truth, that Asaph
Ferguson asked me no further question about Bessy
Boothby. We led the ladies up the beach, filled their
pails with salt water, carried the pails across to the
bathing-house, wiped and dressed. All through this
process Asaph was talking about the circulation, and
the reaction, and the qualities of crash towels, and a
bathing burnouse he had from Egypt. And he seemed
to have forgotten that I had left my little heroine in a
very unaccounted-for condition. When we got up to
Willowdell, where we were staying, he found a despatch
summoning him to sit on a reference in Washington,
A nice place, that, in August! and good enough for
him! For if he had not interrupted he would have
heard all the story; or if he had asked me, I could
have told him as we rode home.
It happened, however, ten days after, that we were
both of us at York Harbor, in Maine. It is a nice
place; it was better known in Fernando Gorges’s time
than it is now, under the title of the city of Gorgiana.
This city, in fact, still remains, in the guise of three
or four almost deserted houses and a grass-grown Main
132
WATER TALK.
Street. Well, the ocean is as near as it was in Gorges’s
day, if there are not so many ships in the hay as he
hoped there would be. Within an arrow-shot of the
Marshall House, where we were staying, is an excel-
lent beach; and as I undressed, I was not surprised to
see Ferguson come down and join me. We played in
the breakers a little while, then swam out beyond
them; and I proposed to him to swim across to a little
point which makes out at the farther end of the beach,
which we did. The water is a great deal colder on
that shore than at Newport or Matoonoc, so that you
need a steady, long pull to keep you warm.
We had just started, when Asaph soothed my
wounded pride a little, by saying, “ What did you tell
me happened to that English child you were talking
about at Matoonoc ? ”
I was a little grim, and I said, “ I did not tell you
what happened to her. 5 '
“Well, I am glad to hear you say so. I know I
did not remember. What did happen to her, and how
came she to be kidnapped ? ”
So I got my revenge, though I got no apology;
and I resumed my little story. I will tell it to you
more briefly than I did to him, for we have not twenty
minutes of salt-water before us.
Boothby came back to Worcester enraged He told
his story to foreman, superintendent, and finally to
the owner of the rnills. They were all stiff Free-
Soilers, and they did not mean to have such things
WATER TALK.
133
happen in Massachusetts; and Mr. Slater, the manu-
facturer, told the story at the next meeting of the
hank directors, and then he and Mr. Stephens, Presi-
dent of the hank, took up poor Boothby’s case as if it
had been their own, and they then sent for me. You
see they wanted somebody who knew something about
the law of settlement. This was the first time I ever
heard of Boothby.
Well, we wrote a stiff letter to the Master of the
house at Monson. And we got a pretty meek one
from him. But he knew nothing, and so he could not
tell much, not being a regular correspondent of a daily
journal. Then we sent up a young lawyer there; but
he learned nothing, because there was nothing to learn.
Then we wrote a thundering letter to the Master, and
threatened a complaint to the governor and Council,
which at that moment we meant to make. This time
the Master came down to see, well frightened, — for
Stephens and Slater were men as good as their word,
to say nothing of me; and, whatever else liappened,
this Master did not want to be dismissed in disgrace.
To tell the truth, Ms story was not a bad one. He
w T as green in his place, and not used to the ways of
the people who came to inspect Ms children and
wunted to take them aw r ay. Nothing was clearer or
more guarded than the law of Massachusetts, by wMch
he was bound. He had no right to put the child into
the hands of any person outside the State; no right to
intrust her to persons not known to him, unless they
134
WATER TALK,
brought testimonial from satisfactory persons, prop-
erly approved by official persons. But this Mr. and
Mrs. Pendleton, as the nabbers ealled themselves, af-
fected high and mighty ways. They were surprised,
indeed, that our poor Master of Paupers was not ac-
quainted with their reputation, — intimated mildly
that it “argued himself unknown.” Every one in
Boston knew them, and in their own neighbor-
hood. In fact, they pretended to come from a town
not thirty miles away. They were pleased with poor
Bessy, and wanted to adopt her; were eager, for eer-
tain personal reasons, to take her then, — something
about the birthday of the dear child they had lost.
The Master showed them the statutes, and they were
quite amused at the idea of their producing credentials
from the selectmen; it was much more probable that
the selectmen would need testimonials from Mr. and
Mrs. Pendleton. But if that were the law, of course
they wanted to observe every formality. So, on the
spot, they executed all the papers; and the Master, on
his part, did the same; and they undertook, by the
next day’s mail, to send up the missing testimonial,
whatever it was. And so they drove away with those
handsome bays, and that beautiful “ kerridge.”
“ If you had only seen the kerridge, Mr. Stephens I”
But Mr. Stephens eared no more for the carriage
than did Boothby; nor did I. It became pretty clear,
however, that we should not advance our point by
making a row in public. We should only put the
WATER TALK.
135
kidnappers more on their guard. For there were no
such people as the Pendletons at Millbury, or what-
ever the town was that they hailed from. The elegant
“kerridge” proved to have been hired at a livery-
stable there, and there the trail was lost. The poor
Master had traeed it as far as that, when his testi-
monials had failed. But then he knew his own
blunder, and his only hope then was that nobody
would ever overhaul his affairs in the matter of
Boothby kidnapped. The less he said the better. So,
by the time the new firm of Boothby, Slater, Stephens,
and I were on the trail, it was very cold. Who was
to remember whether a man, woman, and child did or
did not take the train to and through Worcester, or
to and through Providence, on a given day, or what
became of them ?
The unlicensed and illegal foolery, now known as
the detective system, was not then much developed,
nor would it have helped us much if it had been.
But a man was engaged, and paid, who had some
shrewdness in such things, who followed out a good
many false scents, one or two of which, at one time or
another, promised a good deal. But each and all of
them came to nothing. I, who have since seen a
much fresher scent lost in Paris, by the much-vaunted
French police, never wondered that, in the freedom
of Massachusetts life, poor Bessy Boothby was lost
through and through.
At this point, Asaph Ferguson, who had, to give
136
WATER TALK.
him his due, stuck to his work pretty steadily, and
had never once interrupted, broke in, “ Then you never
found her ? Then I guess we had better go home.
Don’t you feel cold ? ”
“ I did not say we never found her. You are al-
ways a great deal too quick. I said she was clean
lost, and so she was. The man who was paid to fol-
low up the scent gave it up. Slater and Stephens
paid poor Boothby his wages while he went trading
up and down the country; but at last even he had no
further lines of inquiry to propose, and he had to stop
from mere failure of ingenuity. My part in the busi-
ness had been simply to advise, and to write bullying
letters to the Master of the poor-house. But, as I
said, he had nothing more to tell, and he told it. If
it had been in a fairy-tale, Mr. and Mrs. Boothby would
have started on foot, resolved to seek for little Bessy
through the world till they found her. But it was
not in a fairy-tale. It was in a world where they
worked for their living, and where they would have
deserted five children in searching for one, and prob-
ably, also, would have gone away from the one while
they were searching/’
“Well,” said Asaph, “let us go ashore. You can
tell me the rest while we are dressing.”
But, in fact, while we were dressing, the unsenti-
mental creature began talking to me about minority
representation, and so lie lost Ms chance then to hear
the rest of the story.
WATER TALK.
137
That evening he was telegraphed to go to Memphis
to take some depositions. A nice place in the end of
August! but good enough for such an unsentimental
listener.
m.
Although I did end that last chapter in such a
vindictive way, I was glad that poor Asaph Ferguson
did not get yellow fever in Memphis. We were all
glad to see him again; very thin, and very brown, and
very hungry. We were spending September in a
lovely house there is in Summer Place, in Lynn, just
where Naliant Beach joins on. You are so high that
you can see the fingers of the Eight Arm of Massa-
chusetts. I mean you can see Cape Cod itself some-
times. You are so high that you throw Egg Eock
right down upon the water, and your horizon line is
high above it. Yet your garden terraces run down
close to the surf-beaten beach, and as you sit every
day you can see ten thousand happy men, women, and
children, savages again, dash into the surf, and renew
their life as, in that simplest way, they measure them-
selves with the infinite.
Of course it was not long before we took Asaph
down to the shore. It was one of those hot days with
which September is so apt to begin. The habit was
to undress at the house, and wear a sort of domino
138
WATER TALK.
down to the beach, which you then and there left,
with a black man, Theodore, to watch them all, lest
you shared the fate of the unlucky Emperor Jovinian.
Hot a bad plan.
Ah, was not the water delicious ! Were it always
so, I would never have maligned Hahant bathing, as I
may or may not have done in these pages. Were it
always so, the human race would assemble on the
shores of the sea, and “ going into water/’ as the boys
call it, would be the only duty of a new civilization.
We played with the children, and gave them swim-
ming lessons; we let the waves wash us up on the
shore; we stood and let the surf roll on us, and then
Asaph pretended he wanted to swim to Egg Rock.
All nonsense; it is three miles away. But I knew his
humor, and we stretched out to sea.
"Well/’ said he, “how did you find her?” You
see, though, he had pretended he did not care for
Bessy Boothby, he had carried her all through those
depositions. And here he was, almost ready to offer
himself in marriage to her. That was what I gained
by waiting. Did not I know my man ?
“ I did not say we found her,” said I. “ But I will
tell you what happened. For where she is now I
know no more than you do.” Did I fancy it, or did a
blank chill come on Asaph ? Had he, perhaps, meant
to offer himself in marriage, and started now because
his hopes were blighted ? Or did he, may be, strike
one of those shiny medusas with his little toe ? I
know not.
WATER TALE.
139
But I told the rest of the story just as I now tell it
to you.
I heard no more of Bessy Boothby for years. I
wrote down in my note-book the facts I tell you of.
They are there now. Then I forgot them. My life in
Worcester ended. I moved to Boston, and became
minister of a church there. I had been there a year
or two, and was going up from the vestry to service
with my gown on, one Sunday afternoon, when Mr.
Herrick, the sexton, called me back, and said a gentle-
man wanted to see me.
“ I can t help it,” said I.' “ Tell him he must wait
till after service.”
“I have told him so, sir, but he says it is very
important. It is Mr. Melcher.”
“ I don’t care who he is. It is three o’clock, and
the organ is now playing. He may see me here at
half past four, or he may see me to-morrow.”
“ I wish you would say so, Mr. Hale. He will not
go away.”
So I pushed by the baize door, and said in pretty
short metre to the man that he must see that it was
time for service, and that I could not see him.
“ I know I am very late, sir,” said he; “ but it is
really important I should have the child to-day, and
they will not give her to me without your order.”
“ I know nothing of any child,” said I, with the
austerity of an archbishop. “ I only know that it is
after three o’clock, and I ought to be in the pulpit,
140
WATER TALK.
and I wish yon a good afternoon.” And I turned
away.
“ Pray stop, Mr. Hale, pray stop. All I want is
your signature. If you would only sign an order to
the Children’s Home, so that they will give me this
Bessy' Boothby.”
“ Give you who ? ” said I, turning round from my
arehiepiscopal stride.
“ Give me this Bessy Boothby,” said the poor man.
" You are the director for this month, and they will
not give her to me without your order.”
“ I am the director for September,” said I; “ to-day
is September 30th. Ho. I don't think they would
give her to you without my order! I should be sorry
to see them!” For I thought of Bessy Boothby’s his-
tory. "How came Bessy Boothby there? and who
are you ? and how do you know anything about
her?”
“ Why, I,” said the man, “ am the Representative in
the General Court from Sandersville. And Mr. and
Mrs. Boothby live in Sandersville. And I want to
carry Bessy to them by the first train to-morrow.
That ’s the reason I want your signature to-day.”
“ Mr. and Mrs. Boothby don’t live in Sandersville,”
said I austerely, resolved to find the guilty kidnapper.
" They live in Worcester.”
" They used to live in Worcester,” said the imper-
turbable M. G. C., “ but now they work in Sanders’s
Mill in Sandersville.”
WATER TALK.
141
“Please, sir” interrupted Mr. Herrick, the sexton,
“ the organ has heen playing ten minutes ”
“Yes, yes, I’ll be up in a minute. We must make
haste. How came Bessy Boothby at our Children^
Home ? ”
“Why, the people at Charlestown, Hew Hampshire,
thought she was not well treated. She had been
adopted by a man and woman there who were no
better than they should be. And the neighbors
watched the child, and they did not like these people.
And at last, I believe, the man died. And the woman
did not seem to have much to live on, and the neigh-
bors went in and told her that they did not mean to
let her have the child.”
Enter Mr. Herrick again. In a loud aside, “ Please,
Mr. Hale, Mr. Brown has played fifteen minutes; he
has sent down to know if you are here.”
“Tell him to play the Hundred and Nineteenth
Psalm with Dr. Madan’s variations.” And Mr. Her-
rick departed.
The member of the Gr. C. began again: “ The neigh-
bors told this woman she should not keep her, I mean,
should not keep Bessy Bootliby. She said she did
not want to, and they might have her. They wrote
down to your asylum.”
Enter Mr. Herrick. Loud aside again, “ Will you
write down the Psalm for Mr. Brown, Mr. Hale ? ”
“ O no, no! Mr. Herrick, I will really he up in a
moment. They wrote down — ? ”
142
WATER TALK.
“ They wrote down to your asylum, and your asylum
took her, and she has been here a fortnight. But
Mr. Boothby was always watching all the asylums,
so he has found her, and all that we want is your order
for letting her go back to him.”
Sure enough, here was a note in Mrs. Gwynne’s well-
known hand, telling me that the whole case was looked
up, and the parties perfectly authenticated; that she
was satisfied, and the other director for the month was
satisfied. If I had no other views for Bessy Boothby,
she wished I would sign. So I signed, the member of
the General Court went on his way rejoicing, I went
up stairs and relieved Mr. Brown, and I believe that
is the first and last time that I have ever been late at
a service in the South Congregational Church, and, till
now, I have never told anybody why.
But I think if they and Mr. Brown should have
known that his long voluntary was the means of
bringing Bessy Boothby to her father and mother one
day earlier, they would all agree that the voluntary
was an acceptable offering.
The next day but one I got a note telling me that
Bessy and the other Boothbys were reunited.
If you want to know how happy was the reunion,
you must draw on your imagination, for that is all I
ever had to draw upon in that matter.
This was the story I told Asaph, and he said he
thought we had better turn and pull home. So we
did. And if he went and proffered marriage to Bessy
WATER TALK.
143
Boothby, it is since I saw tim. But, as I count, she
must now be about twenty years old.
Please observe, that if I had driven the man away
without hearing his story, neither you nor I would
ever have known what became of Bessy Boothby.
Por I went out of office that very day. The 30th of
September was my last day of office for a year.
MOUSE AND LION.
CHAPTER I.
“Thebe are two pretty girls,” said I.
“ Yes,” said Mrs. Merriam. “ They are pretty, and
they are nice. Tliey leave me next montli, and I do
not know what I shall do without them. They have
"been with me ever since the school began.’' Tor we
were talking in her pretty parlor in Clinton Avenue,
Brooklyn, where she had “ kept school ” now — and a
boarding-school at that — for six years.
“ Who are they ? ”
“Their names are Henrietta and Margaret. But
the girls call them ‘ Ettie ’ and f Grettie,’ and they call
themselves the Mouse and the Lion.”
“ Mouse and Lion ? ” inquired I. “ Which is Mouse
and which is Lion ? ”
“ You think it a very mild Lion and a very tall
Mouse, whichever name belongs to either. The truth
is, and their great boast is, that they are absolutely of
a size; and, if they could escape good old Katie’s
watch and ward, they could wear each other’s frocks,
shoes, gloves, and the rest, indefinitely. But she is
flint, as you say, about that. Mouse and Lion?
7
j
MOUSE' AND LION.
145
Neither of them will often own to being Mouse, and
each of them claims to be Lion. There are forty
pretty stories the girls tell about it. Here is one : —
“ Henrietta there, with the blue neck-tie, draws
nicely. I make them all draw in ink a good deal,
and one winter she got up with great care a set of
copies from Ketzsch’s outlines of 'The Crusaders/
which were to be a birthday present to her mother.
Then she patiently translated the whole German
poem, which, if you know it, is pretty long, and copied
it very neatly, so that the drawings and the text might
arriye together on the very day of the birthday. There
was a nice box, and every detail was carried out per-
fectly. Poor child, she and Gretchen there, got it out
to show some one the night before, and Henrietta had
it on her desk in her own room to improve something
in the illumination of a letter, which she did. Before
she put it up, she was called off, or turned round,' or
something; her sleeve caught the corner of the open
writing-desk; the illuminating-ink bottle, of course,
upset, and one blotch of crimson ink ran down, over,
under, through every precious page of the thirty pages
of copying, to which she had given the last month.
It was one of those villanous successes of the “ total
depravity of things.” There was not one sheet of her
manuscript but had just a tinge somewhere !
"And, of course, her brother was to call for the box
early the next morning, and was to carry it himself to
St. Charetin.
146
MOUSE AND LION.
“ 0, how the poor girls cried! Of course, they
rushed across the passage to my room. I was just
going to bed. But there was nothing to be done. I
told them in the morning I would try to see all right,
but that they must go to bed. Her mother would en-
joy the drawings alone, and they were not hurt. And
go to bed they did. Meggie undressed poor Etta, —
they always sleep together; said her prayers for her,
poor sobbing child; took her in her arms like a baby,
cooed to her, cried with her, kissed her, soothed her,
and really sung her to sleep with * Sleep, baby, sleep. 5
“ And then, when she was sure she was asleep, arid
that I was asleep, she dressed herself in the dark, went
up stairs, and got one of the girls to call down old
Arvedson, our porter, gave him her orders, — after
eleven o’clock at night, — made him go rout up some
shop they knew about, and match the precious paper
that was spoiled. About one o’clock he came home
with it. And that child, before seven in the morning,
had copied ‘ The Crusaders ’ again; and had it waiting,
all but the first page, for Etta to see when she waked
from her dead-beat. She had had wit to leave the
first page for Etta’s own handwriting, though neither
you nor I could tell one from the other, were we bank
cashiers.
“ 0 dear! what a time it was again when they came,
and Meggie eonfessed to me. You see it was the
most outrageous thing ever done in the school. But
Etta was so proud of her; and smoothed her hair, and
MOUSE AND LION.
147
kept turning round to look at her so grandly, and said
such pretty things that poor Meggie did say, for once,
‘ Why, I am only the little mouse who gnawed your
net for you/ And then Etta danced a saraband, and
said, f Am not I a fine lion ? ’ And so I had to for-
give Gretchen and send her to bed, not as punishment,
but as reward; and the present was all ready when
Horace came. And that was the first time the girls
were ever called f The Mouse and the Lion/ Some-
times one is Mouse, and sometimes the other. The
other girls say they get into scrapes all the time, each
for the fun of being helped out by the other. Margie
says that when she is stupid at the blackboard she can
always pull through if she knows Etta knows what
she ought to do, and is looking into the back of her
head. And, as Etta always does know, that is very
good for Margie/’
This was the first I ever happened to hear of these
two girls, though I knew Mrs. Merriam so well. Mrs.
Merriam was what we call “ one of the original Ten/’
That means that she was one of ten of Henry Wads-
worth’s friends who had happened to meet in the
North Colchester Station-house after his funeral She
told me this story of the “ Mouse and the Lion/’ I
often told it to one and another young friend of mine;
and one day I asked her what had become of them
both in five years more. So is it that she tells me
their story; which, if you please, we will print without
any more quotation-marks than shall be quite neces-
sary.
148
MOUSE AND LION.
CHAPTER II.
MRS. MERRIAM BEGINS.
I HAD determined to keep this schooL
“ Thus from her lofty couch the tale began.”
I had hired the house. I had sent my cireulars
north, east, west, and south. I had hired old Gustav
Arvedson, and had engaged the teaeliers. I had
answered many and many a letter of inquiry; and
through many and many a hot summer day I had
waited here, reading “ Shirley,” while no one came to
inquire. At last it was October. School was to begin
on the 5th, Monday. In no case, said the circular,
will the number of pupils exceed twelve. Ho, indeed.
It would not exceed twelve, that was very clear. Tor
now, on the 1st of October, even if the girl came from
Cuba, who spoke no English, and whose friends had
been so undecided about her coming, there would be
but eight.
Twelve iron bedsteads up stairs; twelve silver spoons
and forks for the girls, — for we were above requiring
them in the advertisement; twelve chairs for them in
the dining-room; twelve other chairs in the school-
room, — not desks, we were above school-desks also ;
and only eight, at the outside, to fill chairs, bedsteads,
napkin-rings, forks, and spoons !
MOUSE AND LION.
149
Well, people say I am good-natured! Perhaps I
am. Of this I am sure, I am proud.
What I did was this. I took the newspaper. I
sent out and bought two others — Brooklyn “ Union,”
New York “ Herald ” ; yes, I bought the “ Herald.” The
“ Tribune ” I had. I looked and looked. And I made a
list of the worst accidents, and the worst murders, and
the worst “ locals ” that I could find for that day. I
had on my little? book at least twenty stories of misery.
The next day I took a carriage, and the next, and the
next. I went to house after house, to see the widows
of men who had tumbled off* scaffolds. I called on
city missionaries, and coroners, and local reporters,
and policemen, and police captains, and justiees of the
peace. I went to Castle Garden, and spent a day
there among the children who had been left orphans
by a horrid ship-fever passage of the “Montcalm.”
And a,t the end of my three days I had in the dining-
room yonder, sitting in four of the chairs, four of the
dirtiest girls you ever saw, all eating large ginger-
cakes, looking in wonder at each other. Two of them
were “ spacheless,” one of them was muette , and one
of them was stumme, for immediate purposes; that
is, though they all had tongues in their heads, they
were all frightened to death, and could not say one
word to each other. And so the account was com-
plete. “ In no case .will the number of pupils exceed
twelve.” And in no case will it be less than twelve,
unless the Cuban girl or her friends break down. So
150
MOUSE AND LION.
far I had succeeded. I had had these girls given to
me by their relatives, and bound to me by sundry and
various guardians pro hac vice , as such people are ealled
by processes, circumlocutory, but sure, of certain pro-
bate or surrogates’ courts, and they were mine till they
were eighteen. So the school was full.
FTo ! I do not mean to say that I had run in debt
about it. I might be a fool; but I was not a liar. I
had gone first of all to May Tileston. Found her;
that was a good omen. She was just as lovely as she
was sensible. I told her my scrapes and my plan. I
told her I wanted to pick four girls out of the gutter
and fill up with them. I told her that there was a
hint in “ Wliewell ” that Charity would do a much
more practical thing if, instead of taking crowded Z
from his layer, and squeezing liim into Y’s layer,
which was almost as crowded, Charity, while she was
about it, would lift him bodily to As level, where
there was no crowd at all, and where the world wanted
him. “ Always plenty of room higher up/’ as Mr.
Webster said to the young lawyer. I told May that I
was going to give these four girls the best training
that I knew how to give; that, for bread and butter
and jam, they were to have as much and as good as
any of my scholars. “But,” said I, “I cannot do
things by halves. They are not to be demeaned in
the school; and they are to have as nice clothes as the
others ought to have, and as much pocket-money as
the others ought to have, and to go to the opera as
MOUSE AND LION.
151
often as the others ought to go/ 5 I told her that I
had not money enough for this; and I had come to
her to ask if she would not like to provide two hun-
dred dollars a year for the dress and spending-money
of one of them. If she would, I would bully my
Uncle Salem to make him undertake one. I would
write to Mr. Ingham to see if he did not know some
one who would take one; and then I thought I would
go to Mrs. Yan Astrachan.
“ Child, 55 said Mary, — and she looked like a sibyl,
she was inspired, — “ do no such thing. Let me take
them all. I know just how much you want for each
of them. You want $ 237 a year. I know just how
much my Mary cost for those things the year she was
thirteen; these girls will cost the same. I will give
you now my check for $ 237; and I will send you my
check for that sum once a quarter, till you say “ stop. 55
That shall be my part. You do yours, and it will be
lovely. Is it not charming? Tell me all about it.
Where shall you find the girls ? 55
So that part got settled. And so is it that Mar-
garet came into my school. She was one of the two
“ spacheless 55 ones who ate the gingerbread — of
Emerald parentage.
152
MOUSE AND LION.
CHAPTER III.
THE BISHOP OF THYATIBA.
No, I do not know what the mothers of the others
would have said. I never asked them. I do know
that these four waifs and strays brought to the school
just as many and just as few bad habits as the eight
others did; for the Cuban girl came. She was an
orphan too. In six months you could not have told
which was waif and which was not. And the school
got the benefit of good French talk, good German talk;
and, as you saw in Margie, an element of native com-
mon sense and efficiency which perhaps it would not
have had, had all the girls been born, as you say, in
the purple.
Katy and I had two busy days in dressing our four
new dolls, who had open-eyes-shut-eyes, and who in
two days were no longer “ spacheless.” But even in
those days there was ready-made clothing in New
York for women-kind; and before the other scholars
came, these little witches were as well dressed, their
trunks and bureaux were as well furnished, and they
were as pretty to look at as the best of the cabin-win-
dow scholars. I must not tell their story. Suffice it
to say they were all of them a comfort to me. One
of them, the youngest, was rather stupid; but they
were all affectionate, and I was never sorry for a
MOUSE AND LION.
153
minute that I took them. They were then eight, nine,
eleven, and twelve years old. Margaret was the oldest
of them all. Little Delia, who was Margaret’s second
cousin, only left me last year.
Well, at first I kept the four “ waifs” a little more
under my own eye out of school hours. Delia slept
with me; Margaret slept in that dressing-room which
opens from mine. But, as the school warmed up, and
the girls came to know each other, I saw that between
Henrietta and Meggie there was forming one of those
undissolvable harmonies foreordained in Heaven.
Fred Ingham says they are the choicest illustration
of the Communion of the Saints. Mrs. Primrose used
to say they were like hook and eye, that the people
held together in all strain, because they were wholly
unlike each- other. Certainly Etta and Gretchen are
wholly unlike, except in size. Etta is quick as a
flash, Gretchen is slow and very sure. Etta appre-
hends, and Gretchen comprehends. Etta will sit down
on the floor and tell Gretchen a whole string of her
observations, questionings, difficulties, and amaze-
ments; and Gretchen will listen, and listen, and
listen, and wonder how such things ever came into
Etta’s head, and then she will wait a minute and pro-
nounce some really grand, all-embracing “ Law of the
Instrument,” in which every one of these difficulties
and problems finds its place, so that for the hour poor
inquiring Etta is wholly comforted.
Well, I say, I saw they were drifting together. I
7 *
154
MOUSE AND LION.
think Tasso "was the book.” Etta was to study
Italian, because ber mother wished it; and I bad
given ber Margie as a companion in study. That was
one of the advantages of being absolute over the four
waifs, as you call tbem. The girls came together over
“ Graglia ” and by the third or fourth canto, without
compact, promise, or word exchanged, they were in-
dissolubly one. Their fate was sealed for time and
eternity.
From that time they looked out words in the same
dictionary, once for both; they learned the same
poetry; they read from the same Bible ; they sang
from the same hymn-book. When the Staples sisters
left, there came, of course, a petition that they might
have for their own the double-bedded corner-room.
Then they could say all their prayers together; and
they promised, so prettily, that they would not talk
more than they could possibly help at night, — not
one bit more than I should think reasonable.
It was quite early in this “ Communion of the
Saints ” that an immense event oecurred. The Bishop
of Thyatira, I will call him, came to call on me.
There was another single-breasted-coated gentleman
with him, to show him the way; and they came in a
carriage, and the quiet of the house was quite up-
turned. And it proved that the Bishop of Thyatira
was Irisli by birth, though he had not been in Munster
since he was ten years old, but for a visit. He had
been in Borne, and I know not where else, and had at
MOUSE AND LION.
155
last become a bishop in partibus ; and, at some unex-
plained lull in liis duties of bishopping, he had set ont
to look up his father and mother and brothers and
sisters. Now it turned out, by certain and infallible
signs, that one of the sisters had gone to America; and
some years after, the Bishop, passing through New
York, on his way to Puget Sound, bethought him of
her, and hunted up the same Margaret Tyler, or tried
to do so; only to find that her husband was dead, and
she. But some clew or other made it clear that our
Gretchen was her daughter; and the Bishop, getting
my address from some surrogate, persevered to Clinton
Avenue, as I have said. Fortunately, Etta and Mar-
gie were both out. My hen’s feathers were a good
deal ruffled; but I did not show that to him, or his
faithful Achates, no, nor to the girls after he had
gone. But when I explained at tea-time, there was
terrible commotion. Margaret was perfectly sure he
was going to take her away to be a nun; in fact, she
was not certain but she was to be built into a niche
by masons, like Constance, on the title-page of her
“Marmion” I never had such a time, — scolding and
laughing and soothing, and trying to make her promise
that she would behave properly when he came the
next day. All she would say was that she would tear
his eyes out, if he were her uncle fifty times over.
And she did not believe he was her uncle. “ There
were twenty-nine Margaret Tylers in the Directory;
why did he not go after some of their girls, to make
156
MOUSE AND LION.
nuns of them ? Would not I be in the room with
her?”
Not at all. I was never in the room with them
when their relations called.
He was her relation, and she must reeeive him like
a lady.
“ But he will have thumbscrews under the sleeves
of his surplice, and hot pincers in his boots, and I
shall be haled before the Inquisition before you know
it,” sobbed and laughed poor Margaret. “ Besides, if
he was not a bishop, if he was only a young man with
patterns from the thread store, I should be frightened
to death. The other girls are used to uncles. But I
ain’t. I hate uncles. I do not see what they are
good for.”
There was no pacifying her but by telling her that
Etta might be present at this fatal interview. And
Etta in private promised her to take a paper-cutter of
bronze, which was the only weapon they could find,
and thrust it into the heart of the familiar, if he tried
to “ hale them away.”
So the Bishop of Thyatira came again, with his
friend. Two nice, gentlemanly 'men as you ever saw,
though not without that “ certain air of condescension ”
which Mr. Lowell observes in all foreigners. I or-
dered cake and fruit, and.sent for the girls, and retired.
Slight surprise, I think, on the Bisliop’s face at Etta’s
appearance. Had he, then, two nieces to care for ?
Indeed, I have wondered whether the visit were not
MOUSE AND LION.
157
as much a bore to him as to me. He had doubtless
many other things on hand and in heart. Doubtless
he had discovered many other nieces and nephews;
doubtless he had many purchases to make for Puget
Sound; doubtless his time in New York was horribly
limited. Still, as matter of conscience, he was willing
to look up his niece. But were there two nieces ?
“Why two bootjacks V ’ as Joe Miller has it.
Margaret was very shy, and dropped her eyes, and
only said, “ Yes, sir,” to his first question. But that
voluble little Etta, with her French blood all at the
fore, boldly fell on her knees and asked him for his
blessing on both of them.
Dear, nice, simple man, he was delighted! Mar-
garet would not kneel down, but he put his arm round
her in a fatherly way, and gave them both a blessing
which I am sure did them no harm. And, before he
well knew it, Etta, the little minx, with a pertness
that turned my hair gray when she told of it, spoke
to him in French, and that pleased him, — for his
French was by this time much better than his Irish;
asked meek little questions about his mission, and the
Indians, and the routes thither; and got him talking,
dear simple soul, on the things that really interested
him, and put in her Incroydbles and her Est-il -
possibles in the most engaging way, and lured him
from minute to minute, till the shy familiar, who did
not fully understand the position, had to inform his
lordship that they should miss their appointment with
158
MOUSE AND LION.
my Lord Cross John (as the “ Journal of Commerce ”
used to call Bishop Hughes, irreverently). The dear
Bishop of Thyatira was quite amazed.
“ 0, he must not go ! indeed, he must not go ! ” said
the impetuous Etta, — Margaret dumb and amazed all
the while, — his lordship must eat a banana. And
would the friend of his lordship not eat an orange ?
Henrietta was very sorry, but the pension was strict;
she could only offer them water. Would they drink
a glass of water ? If they observed, there was ice,
American ice, in the water. And their lordships must
not go before they had granted one great favor. They
had brought down Margaret’s “ Thomas k Kempis”
and Etta’s “F4n£Lon” Would his lordship write his
autograph in each of them ? It would remind them
of the day they had his blessing. She had pen and
ink here. Would he not write a little text on the first
page of each book ? He was so kind. He would not
forget them in his prayers ? Or would he perhaps
come again?
Well! I do not know. To this hour Etta is sure
that in no point did she say more than she would
have said to Bishop Simpson himself, or any lonely
Methodist padre who came in. She says, if the Bishop
chose to think she meant any more, it was because he
was himself planning evil, and that his evil plans
closed his eyes so that he did not see. Any way, the
dear soul —for I now count him as one of the saints,
for the simple reason that from that moment to this I
MOUSE AND LION.
159
have never seen his face — abandoned all thought of
abduction, if he ever had any. He saw that his niece
was well off. He saw there were Madonnas and Holy
Families on the walls. He saw she had “ k Kempis ”
and “F£n41on”; and, not knowing much of the
Church Universal, he thought, perhaps, she was on
the high road into that Catholic Church which is not
universal. Any way, he left his autograph in the two
books, with two lines from the “Glories of Mary”
He went away extending an apostolic benediction on
the ends of his two fingers to Etta and Gretchen. The
familiar went with him. Etta shouted “ Yictoria ” as
the hall door closed, and Gretchen cried,
“ How could you be so bold ? ” said I to Etta.
“ Why, dear auntie,” said she, “ I had seen them at
St. Charetin ever since I was as big as a fly. I was
very glad of a chance to have a religious conversation
with a bishop alone. They think it is their business
to take care of young girls. So it is; unless it be-
comes the business of young girls to take care of
them! ”
So the Bishop of Thyatira went to Puget Sound.
160
MOUSE AND LION.
CHAPTER IV.
MISS champernoon’s defeat.
Of course, I would never have permitted this for a
moment. I was not afraid of the Bishop. . The child
was mine by all law and justice, and all the bishops
and all the uncles in the world could not take her
away. Etta steadily justified herself. “No; there
was not any intent to deceive. There was only a
determination that a bishop should know what a free
religion was, and that we could get the good of any-
thing without going into his tabernacle.” But I would
not appro ve of her French, and her taking all the talk
away from Gretchen. “Why had she said ‘Vie-
toria 9 ? ” And she knew she was in disgrace. But I
need not say that Gretchen loved her all the more for
that. And to this hour Gretchen would tell you that
but for Etta she would have been forced into the car-
riage that day and have been compelled to enter a
convent on Nootka Sound. “ You gnawed my net for
me S you gnawed my net for me ! ” she said, sobbing
and laughing, as she fell asleep that night in Henri-
etta’s arms.
And so it always went on. The girls all led a very
simple life, so that it took all a school-girl’s wit to
construct adventures out of their daily walks and his-
tory. As I came to be sure of them, of course I
MOUSE AND LION.
161
trusted them; and those whom I trusted went and
came as your children go and come. Their adventures
would hardly be more terrible than coming to the
Wall Street Eerry without a penny — “ without one
penny, Mrs. Merriam ” — for fare. And, if this hap-
pened when Etta waited there, why, by some miracle,
Meggie invariably descended from the clouds with the
needed coins; or, if Meggie were the penniless one,
Etta was the angel. If Etta were bored to death at
one of Mrs. Talmadge’s sociables by that persevering
Eollo Holiday, Margaret had arts known to herself of
compelling him to speak to her. If William Williams
wanted to make Margaret waltz with him, she was
always at liberty to say she was engaged; and when
the time came, lo ! it was a standing engagement of
many years, by which she waltzed with nobody but
Etta. I do not think they ever prompted each other
at recitations. But Etta said she did not know any-
thing but what Meggie had told her; and Meggie
really knew that she knew nothing but what Etta had
taught her.
They led a very happy life, — happiest of all, I sup-
pose, because it had this double aspect, in which each
of them was saved from carrying along any of the
selfish worries and burdens. Strange to say, if you
would take their own version of life, the “ great grief
of all,” as Etta called it, was a certain invitation for
their last Christmas holidays. They had looked for-
ward to great pleasure in spending these holidays
162
MOUSE AND LION.
together here. Holidays at school are not generally
thought so pleasant; but they said they had all New
York to see, and they had a novel to write, and wanted
to see a New York New-Year’s day, and I know not
what all. St. Charetin was far away; and word had
come that Etta might stay this time, if Mrs. Merriam
were willing. Joy, joy, joy! Joy sadly interrupted,
alas ! by a very proper invitation from Etta’s aunt, at
Llewellyn Park, that Etta and her young friend would
join their Christmas party. Worst of all, a letter from
mamma to say that Etta, at least, must go!
O dear! how they hated it. And at last I was
coaxed into sending word with them that they were
only to stay five or six days ; and then, with unutter-
able groans of terror and disappointment, they went
their way on what Mr. Ingham calls St. Yictoria’s day.
They returned in time for New-Year’s calls, with a
hundred tales of perils from which Etta had extricated
Margie, and pitfalls from which Margie had saved
Etta.
Most terrible of all had been a state dinner. This
awful event had parted them for hours ! Actually one
gentleman had handed out Henrietta, and another gen-
tleman had handed out Margaret! And the girls
could not sit by each other, nor even see each other,
and had to do their most proper and very best all alone.
The gentlemen were nice, however; so they would
have got along very well, but that, of a sudden,'in a
lull in the talk, a Miss Champernoon — a dreadful
MOUSE AND LION.
163
Boston girl, who was thirty-five years old, looked forty-
five, and pretended to be twenty-five—must needs
speak to Henrietta, “ right across that great table, Mrs.
Merriam. Only think how brazen she was ! 55 and say,
“ I see you do not play classical music, Miss Henri-
etta. Are you not fond of classical music ? ”
Poor Henrietta ! Why had not the Champernoon
fired the first barrel of her revolver at her ? It would
have been far less dreadful.
“ But I hated her, Mrs. Merriam; and that just gave
me strength to say, like a fool, that I was very fond of
the Stabat Mater , from which I had played a scrap
before dinner/'
Miss Champernoon smiled in irony, and said patron-
izingly, “ Of course, Bossini is very well. I think it
very pretty myself. But does not Mrs. Merriam let
you play any classical music ? ”
“ Think of her sneering at you, Aunty dear / 5 said
Etta, telling of the tournament. "I was so mad I
know I was red with rage, and I could not speak; and
all was still, when, just think, Aunty dear, Gretchen
struck in with, “ Don't you call Mozart classical, Miss
Champernoon ? Mitridate is by Mozart. I believe
you heard Henrietta play in that duet from Mitri -
date.
“ Was n't it splendid, Auntie ? And then that fierce
beast turned upon her to devour her, and I went free.
You should have seen old Boston's amazement
when somebody spoke who had not been spoken to.
164
MOUSE AND LION.-
She raised her eyebrows with sheer astonishment, as
she would if the poker had spoken to her, and looked
half amused and all surprised, as if she would say,
‘ Eeally, this thing can make itself understood.' But
she had to do something about Mitridate , for
Gretchen had hit her well there; so, with John
Hancock’s own grandeur, she said, f O well, yes, I
am fond of Mozart; but, if Mrs. Merriam would let
her young people sometimes hear Bach; if, indeed,
they could hear him well rendered.’
“ And Gretchen said, Auntie, — just as if she had
been a queen; and old Boston had been kissing her
hand, — that Mrs. Merriam always took us to the Phil-
harmonic coneerts, and that she believed Mrs. Merriam
thought that the classical music was best appreciated
when people thoroughly enjoyed the romantic. And
then she said to that impudent Champernoon, f Do
you remember what Marx says about the effect of the
chapel music on Bach himself ? ’ And old Champ had
to confess she had never read Marx at all. So Gretch-
en conquered her, and trampled her into the ground.
She did not speak for half an hour, and poor unworthy
I was saved from instant death! ”
“ My dear Peg," said I, “ how did you dare quote
Marx to anybody ? ”
“ O," said Peg, laughing, “ it was a piece of cheap
cyclopaedia learning, as good as Ogre Champ’s any
day. We taught her how to come down on our dear
Auntie! ”
MQUSE AND LION.
165
This was the greatest victory of the visit; but all
the victories were, as theirs were always, Patroclus’s
in the cause of Achilles, and Achilles’s in the cause of
Patroclus. I do not know, looking back on it, but
I left them too much to each other. But how could I
have done differently? Each for herself was really
too shy, but each for the other was incapable of fear.
Eose Ferguson made a picture of Etta holding back four
omnibus horses, while Gretchen picked herself from
the mud; not that it ever happened, but Eose said it
would happen some day. Any way, whether I am
right or wrong, they had six happy, lovely years of it.
Part they must, part they did. But because they
knew how to bear each other’s burdens they bore their
own none the less, when the time came. And so their
life was a double life, with a fourfold power; a life
many sided, indeed of infinite sides, because they had
seen the vision, and could now never live for them-
selves alone, or die for themselves alone.
Ah, well! and it was all too good to last. Etta had
to leave the school, and Margie would not stay longer.
She said she must go to the wars. Etta’s mother was
eager that she should come and spend a year there.
But no, there were two reasons why not. Gretchen
said she must begin life, — that was what she called
the selfish reason; and she knew she must serve the
country, — that, after all, was the true reason. Then
Etta pleaded very hard with her mother that she might
go to the Sea Islands also, and teach the little black
166
MOUSE AND LION.
folks, as Gretchen was going to do. But, no. She got
a kind, sensible letter from her mother, explaining
quietly that it was not her country; that there were
plenty of people to be taught in regions where Etta’s
home was, providentially; and that she and Etta’s
father had lived without their own child quite as long
as they wanted to. I tried to explain to the two girls
that they could not dress and undress each other
always, and could not always fight each other’s battles;
but I knew perfectly well that I made a disgraceful
botch of it. Of course, I did remind them that to true
love there is no parting; that they could take care of •
each other still, though the big world were between.
It was a sad enough parting; but, for all that, it was.
Etta went to St. Charetin, and G-retchen went to Hil-
ton Head; and both of them were to correspond for-
ever with each other, and almost as constantly with
me. And, indeed, they did. And so the story, which
is not a story, is almost at an end.
MOUSE AND LION.
167
CHAPTER V.
TWO WEDDINGS.
After two years, dear Meggie came back to me, —
came home, as the dear child said. But twenty years
old is twenty years old; and she had not been at the
Sea Islands two years without finding her other des-
tiny. She had met there with Tayler Wildair. He
was a Pennsylvania captain at first, and afterward he*
had come back there on some sort of land commission;
and they had found out, woe 's me ! that they were not
to be two, but one. A loyal Christian gentleman was
Tayler Wildair, is, and will be. All which, of course,
had been written to St. Charetin.
And of course, at the same time, it appeared by
gradual dawn of letters, first, that Mr. Munroe had
spent an evening with the family at St. Charetin; then
that Mr. Munroe and his friend, Lacretelle, had come
on a short visit; then that Mr. Lacretelle and his
friend had come on a longer visit; then that various
sleigh-rides and hops and other entertainments were
made for “ Horace’s friends ” or for “ the gentlemen,”
— for by this time Mr. Munroe was never mentioned;
till at last it appeared that “ Herbert ” had asked Etta
to marry him, and she said she would. And then,
without diffieulty, I guessed that Herbert’s last name
was not Lacretelle, but Munroe. Ah, well! She
168
MOUSE AND LION.
would not be further from me in Kent than she was
in Canada.
And so Gretchen went to that wedding at St. Chare-
tin, and was a bridesmaid. And I had the funniest
letter in the world from Etta, telling how, to the
last, Gretchen brought her out from scrapes which
she forever got into. And Mr. and Mrs. Munroe
took the steamboat for Montreal at their own river
landing, on their way to England; and poor, crying
Gretchen threw the last slipper after them, never
to see them again, most likely, and came back to
me.
And poor I had to be as cheerful as I could, and get
her ready for her own wedding. For dear Tayler had
an excellent appointment as acting president of a horse-
railway company in Melbourne; and they were to be
married at once, and he was to take her out in the
next Panama steamer. Really, the big earth was to
be between the two girls in its very biggest. And we
made the old Clinton Avenue house look as pretty as we
could; and little Delia and Tayler’s sisters were brides-
maids, and dear Dr. Earley came and married them.
We were as cheerful as we knew how to be, and pre-
tended to be a great deal more cheerful than we were.
Wildair had just got nice letters describing the new
home. It was to be a little out of the city, a semi-
detached house, not far from Admiral KutusofFs, and
in sight of the cricket-ground, and quite a nice garden
and all that (how many such letters the girls show
MOUSE AND LION.
169
me); and they would keep house very pleasantly.
And I kissed my darling, and kissed her ; and blessed
her, and blessed her; and sent her half round the
world, and thanked God for the millionth time for the
day I read of her poor father’s death in the New York
“Herald.”
CHAPTEE LAST.
MY FIRST LETTER FROM MARGARET.
‘‘At Sea, Gulf of Mexico, October ll.
f< Dear Auntie : I am better now, and able to
enjoy the breeze on deck. A pleasant Mr. Dutton is
here, who is on his way back to the Kermadeck Isl-
ands. Tayler knew him in the army; and he has a
great deal to tell us about the pleasant native habits
and all his island life. Of course,'I know that Mel-
bourne is very different; but still I begin to feel that
I belong to the other side of the world. There are
several English gentlemen going to the colony, but no
ladies. Still, dear Auntie, I promise you I .will be
very brave, and at least, I will not be homesick before
I get there. Tayler is so kind, and thinks of every-
thing beforehand! They have just called me to see
the Vanderbilt exchange signals with us; and now I
must get ready for dinner.
8
170
MOUSE AND LION.
“ Panama, October 19.
. . . . “ We all got safely across by eleven o’clock,
and we are to stay in this quaint old place till to-mor-
row morning; because the steamer does not sail till
then, and Tayler says I shall see quite enough of my
state-room before I have done with it. So I am talk-
ing Spanish with the chamber-girl. I have had my first
real disappointment. I was quite sure of a letter from
Etta here; and, indeed, thought there might be more
than one. But none can be found. Tayler has been
to the English consul. Of course, a thousand things
may have prevented. What I hope is, that she is in
Switzerland. If Herbert only could get a fortnight’s
holiday for that, it would be so nice for both of them.
What is provoking is, that one English mail has been
taken down by mistake to Lima, and will not be back
here till Monday, when we shall be far away. Ah, well!
as you say, dear Auntie, what difference in a little paper,
more or less, when I know my darling prays God for
me twenty times la day, as I for her, and sees nothing
but to say what her own Gretchen would think of it:
Herbert says, you know, she buys her gloves to match
my dresses! ”
Then the letter became, in its next chapter, a sea
letter, with the sea changes not unfamiliar to. the read-
er of a Pacific voyage, happily ended at Melbourne on
the day of November; and then the wonders and
perplexities and fun of new housekeeping in a strange
land filled its last page, leaving room only for these
postscripts: —
MOUSE AND LION.
171
“ Dear Auntie : Who do you think is in the other
part of the house ? The things kept coming, and looked
very queer and English. And when the carriage
came with the people to our portico, you know, I
could not help looking to see what my neighbor looked
like, and when the coachman handed the lady down,
who should she be but Etta!
“ Always, your darling
“ Gketchen.”
“Deak Auntie: Is it not splendid?
“ Your own, own darling
“ Etta.”
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
THIRTY-ONE STATES IN THIRTY DAYS.
[ Mr. Greenfeli/s jotirnal was originally publislied in the At-
lantie Almanac. A Western editor, while approving the prompt-
ness of the travellers, expressed his regret that persons of such
intelligence should have taken so few notes, or published so few.
Doubtless this is to be regretted; but as Mr. Adams has well said,
the moment people do anything which is worth telling, the doing
consumes so much time that they have none left to write it down.
It is for this reason that the task of writing devolves so often on
people who have nothing to tell. The ease of travel in our times
enables men of family to see strange lands without leaving their
families at home. And it enables men who are in the midst of
large business arrangements, by selecting what in business we call
the dull season, to absent themselves from home for a few weeks,
and in those few weeks to view, or as it is better called, to do , a
continent. The mind looks back with sympathy, indeed, on the
ignorance of the people a century ago, when John Carver took
two years and a half to go from Boston to Detroit, from Detroit
to Marquette, from Marquette to St. Paul, and from St. Paul
back to Boston. If he had only invested in a single copy of
Appleton’s or the Official Railway Guide, he would have learned
how to do it in a fortnight, and could have taken his family with
him, most of the time in a palace car.
Another obliquity of ancient travel has been relieved by the
invention of the time-table and the perfection of the Waltham
watch, used, as may be learned from our advertising sheet, on all
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
173
railroads in all Habitable worlds. Sindbad the Sailor, besides
great sufferings on the seas and on the lands, endured the greater
misery of having to spend much of his time at stations. When-
ever, by some unusual fortune, he did turn up at a point known
to commerce, it inevitably proved that the ship for Balsora had
sailed the day before, and that but one ship sailed in a year. So
Sindbad had to adjust himself for the remaining three hundred
and fifty-tliree day s (the Mussulman calendar being lunar) to
his journal and to his whittling. Supposing this happened to
kim seven times in each voyage, he must have spent forty-nine
Mussulman years minus forty-nine days (say, on a rough calcula-
tion, forty-seven Christian years, four months, and twenty days) at
these places, where they had no Atlantic Almanac s at the news-
rooms, not even a Beadle’sDime Series, or New York “ Observer ”
and where, therefore, fortunately for us, he was obliged to make
up his own serials, or die of ennui. Let it be mentioned, in pass-
ing, that if all people knew what good fun it is to make up your
own novels, there would be but little market for the wares of
those who write for the journals. It may be perhaps surmised
that this will be the cause for the demise of the novel and the
tale of the present generation, which may die out from the litera-
ture of another as completely as Amadis and Esplandian and
Metis and Galien have died from this. Such loss of time at way-
stations may be considered now as substantially unknown; and
the traveller who leaves Soho Square on the 10th of June for his
holiday, informing his junior partner that he shall be back on the
5th of August, is as sure that he shall keep that promise as he is
that any other promise of Greenfell & Co. will not go to protest.
This preface is unnecessarily long for the introduction of the
work which we have the honor to lay before the world. In point
of fact, Mr. Greenfell had made his plans with such precision for
the holiday which he had arranged for his wife and family, that
he missed no single connection, and was able to visit thirty-one
States of this continent in the course of thirty days, of which he
174
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
spent three in Washington. He has favored us with the sketch
of his observations and those of his family, much more condensed
than Sindbad’s, if not so marvellous. That one can leave home
and return to it in safety, and make observations so philosophical
upon a country so dissimilar in its institutions to his own, may
certainly be regarded as one of the peculiar triumphs of our
modern civilization.
We have not materially abridged the journal. We trusted that
work to the regular law of journals of travel, which, like streams
of other sweet sirups, generally run fine by degrees and beautiful-
ly less. As for removing from the journal the air of condescen-
sion which an American shows in England, and an Englishman
in America, of his very nature, we have found that impossible. It
seems worth while to print it as it stands, as an illustration of the
breadth and depth of the information which is gained under our
modern systems of travel, so much more reliable than Sindbad’s,
although the published narratives may not be to the full as
entertaining.
Mr. Greenfell landed at Halifax, and by the Carlotta steamer
came to Portland on the 24th of June. We omit the sea journal,
and the accounts of Nova Scotia and New JBrunswiek, that we
may begin with Maine.]
ME. GREENFELL’S JOURNAL.
I. THE NORTHERN STATES.
THE STATE OF MAINE
Is generally named first among the States of New Eng-
land, which are generally named first among the
United States. This State, or a part of it, was the
matter of discussion settled by the Ashburton treaty.
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
175
It is evident that another arrangement than that then
made 'would have been much more convenient and
natural. Here are Mrs. Greenfell and myself, with our
children, on our way from Halifax to Montreal. We
wish to go by the Portland and Montreal Eailway.
How foolish that our luggage should be inspected at
the custom-house at Portland, and again when we enter
Canada ! How much simpler if Maine and the north-
ern part of Canada had been assigned to England in
that treaty!
We arrived in Portland in the Carlotta steamer from
Halifax, looked round us as we rode to Mrs. Jones’s
inn, here called a boarding-house. We were glad, after
the rough night, to sleep in good beds on shore. Took
a walk in the morning; and in the afternoon, by the
Grand Trunk Eailway, started for Montreal at ten
minutes past one, American time. Unfortunately,
just as we left the inn, George found that he had not
his hat. He had come from the Carlotta in his travel-
ling-cap, and, till this moment, no one had observed
that he had left the hat on the steamer. He hurried
to the dock to find it, expecting to meet us at the ‘sta-
tion, but failed to overtake us. Undoubtedly he will
overtake us by the next train. The station really
looked somewhat like home. We were pleased to
learn that the railway, which is a section of the
Grand Trunk Eoad, is leased by an English company,
and run by Englishmen. The servants were civil and
attentive. The road is broad gauge. The carriages
176
THE MODEKN SINDBAD.
are all open, like those in Switzerland. We sat to-
gether, however, and found a good deal of amusement
from watching, our fellow-travellers.
The railway runs through Maine for nearly ninety
miles, giving us good opportunity to study the industry
and manners and customs of this State. The principal
towns in Maine are Falmouth, Cumberland, Yarmouth
Junction, North Yarmouth, Pownal, New Gloucester,
Danville Junction, Mechanicsville, Oxford, Paris, Bry-
ant’s Pond, Locke’s Mills, Gilead, and Bethel. Of
these, Mechanicsville is much the most considerable.
The others are small places, of which the chief trade
seems to be in deal and timber, of which we saw much
from the Windows, and a sort of nut ealled peanuts,
and lozenges, of which specimens were brought for sale
into the cars. The'population is very sparse. In the
latter part of the ride, a young man next to me pointed
out to me the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
NEW HAMPSHIRE.
A little before six we entered the State of New
Hampshire, which is even less populous apparently
than Maine. It was an unexpected pleasure to us to
find that we had so arranged our route, purely by acci-
dent, that it gives us a complete view of the finest moun-
tain region in the United States. We saw the highest
peaks, which are named Washington, Adams, Jefferson,
Carter, Madison, Monroe, King, Crawford, and Cherry,
from successive Presidents of the United States, who
THE MODERN SINDBAD,
177
have borne these names. We asked for Mt. Lincoln,,
Mt. Davis, and Mt. Grant, but were told they were
not in sight. The lavish wastefulness of the people
leaves fine water-privileges, close by the railway, un-
used, except for some deal saw~miUs, which are worked
by the fall. I called the attention of some of our fel-
low-travellers to very fine positions which might be
used to advantage. We were not able to make any
long explorations; but at Gorham the girls collected
Trifolium repens (vulg., White Clover).
Trifolium pratense (vulg., Red Clover).
They tell me that the timber is largely coniferous.
At ten o'clock we arrived at Island Pond in Vermont;
but as I shall have a fuller opportunity of examining
that State when we revisit it, I will not here enter our
observations. Servants came in, and arranged beds for
us to sleep upon, while the train was in motion. It
was quite dark in this latitude at ten; and as we were
all tired, we slept, without much intermission, until
half past six in the morning, when a loud voice in-
formed us that we had arrived in Montreal.
MONTREAL.
This city, although not the capital of the Dominion,
is a place of large trade and population. In a very
curious cab, or fictcrc , we rode at once to the St. Law-
rence Hall, where, under the Union Jack, we felt once
more quite at home. We had been more than twelve
hours under the jurisdiction of another power. I sent
178
THE MODEKN SINDBAD.
a line to our old correspondent, Mr. William Brydges,
who came round to the hotel soon after breakfast, and
showed us every attention.
Here we spent Sunday, attending St. John’s Church,
with Mr. and Mrs. Brydges. The large number of
Catholic churches gives a very foreign appearance to
the Sunday.
Mr. Brydges and Mrs. Tyrwhitt have pressed us
most cordially to make a longer stay, proposing excur-
sions in every direction; but our plans are definitely
made, involving sailing from New York on the 24th
proximo, and we were obliged to decline. I regretted
leaving the more, because a telegram from George in-
formed me that he could not join us until Tuesday
morning. I replied by bidding him cross the country,
and meet us at Concord, in New Hampshire, where
our party will be complete again.
We bade these new friends good-by with great re-
gret, and at half past three on Monday left Montreal
for a military post called Rouse’s Point, on the frontier
of Canada and the United States. The railway car-
riages are still open from end to end, like that of the
Grand Trunk; the railway gauge, however, is narrower.
The country is flat and fertile. The vegetation is
abundant, and the prospect for a good crop of grain
seems good. At a place called Lacadie, which Ellen
thinks is the scene of one of Mr. Longfellow’s poems,
a peasant of the French population entered the car-
riage with a little girl: a black rag around her straw
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
179
tat told the sad tale that her mother had died. The
man seemed unused to children, hut in his rough way
comforted her with lozenges and pop-eorn, a sort of
white blossom with a yellow centre, eaten dry, though
tasteless if it have no salt or sugar added.* At a
larger town, called St. John’s, he left the carriage and
the child, asking me, of all persons, to see to her. The
child screamed horribly, and I had neither nuts nor
flowers. I looked through the window to see the
wretched father drinking in the station-house. I called
to him; but he did not seem to understand my lan-
guage, though he had spoken intelligible broken Eng-
lisli only the moment before. The bell struck, the guard
cried, “ All on board ! ” the child screamed louder than
ever, and for sixty horrible seconds I had the certainty
that, in a land of whose customs I knew nothing, and
whose laws are not well adjusted, I had assumed the
charge of a female child. I turned to consult Mrs.
Greenfell, when the face of the Canadian met and re-
assured me. He travelled with us as far as St. Ar-
mand.
Before leaving Montreal our trunks had been ex-
amined by a United States officer of customs; and be-
fore we arrived at St. Alban s another officer looked
through the carriages to see that we had no smuggled
articles with us,
* "We learned afterwards, from Bancroft’s History, that this is a
custom of the natives, who sent bags of this corn as token of hos-
pitality.
180
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
VERMONT.
We had passed through the northeast comer of Yer-
mont yesterday. To-day we entered it a little after
six in the afternoon, on the extreme northwest, and by
the Central Eailway, followed up the valley of the
Winooski Eiver, and passed through the middle of the
State, as the name of the railway implies. I under-
stand that Winooski is the Indian for onion, and that
in English this pretty little stream is called the Onion
Eiver. St. Alban s is a thriving town, with a fine
station-house and a large inn. We made some stay
there, and, from the number of people around the sta-
tion, inferred the existence of a large population. It
was the scene of a considerable action in the late war, in
which the Confederates were victorious. We left about
sunset, and soon found ourselves, in the gathering dark-
ness, in the gorges of the Green Mountains, from
which the State takes its name, having been named by
Erench-Canadians, in whose language vert signifies
green, and mont a mountain. Sleeping-berths were
again arranged, — on quite a different plan from those
of yesterday. I was able to take two compartments,
as they are called. In one of them Mrs. G. slept in a
lower berth, and I in the berth above, as we had done
in our state-room in the Europa. In the other, Ellen
and Maud divided the berths in the same way.
If all the towns in Vermont are as thriving as St.
Alban’s, it must be much more populous than Maine
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
181
or New Hampshire. The darkness, however, in both
our journey s through it, prevented our examining other
places as carefully as we did that town. We left the
State a little after midnight, at a place called White
Eiver Junction; but I did not wake, as I had intended,
to witness the crossing of the Connecticut Eiver. Tired
out by the hospitalities of our Canadian friends, I slept
till morning, and then found that we were approaching
Lowell, in Massachusetts, having passed through New
Hampshire without waking. I regretted this the less
on my own account, because we had seen that State so
thoroughly on Friday; but, to my perplexity and sur-
prise, I found, on going wholly through the train, no
sign of George, who was to have met us at Concord. I
inquired carefully of the guard, who is here called the
conductor, and he recollected no such person there.
Whether he was there, and could not find us, or
whether he failed to arrive there in time, I do not
yet know.
From Lowell to Boston is twenty-six miles. We
arrived between eight and nine, and drove at once to
the Eevere House. We were all sadly in need of
baths, and glad to take them. They are supplied by
what is called Cochituate water, drawn by the city
from a lake of that name. I asked if it was near Wen-
ham Lake, but found no one who knew. At nine we
met, with good appetite for breakfast.
182
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
THE COMMONWEALTH OF MASSACHUSETTS.
Thus far we had unfortunately missed the capitals
of all the American States we had seen. The capital
of Maine is Augusta, that of the Dominion is Ottawa,
that of Vermont, Montpelier; and we had not been
able to visit either of these towns. Concord is the
capital of New Hampshire, and at that place we spent
two hours this morning. I have already explained the
misfortune by which it happened that I lost so favor-
able an opportunity in sleep. We are now more for-
tunate. Boston is the capital of the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts. We saw from the train this morn-
ing a monument erected at Bunker Hill, the scene of
one of the battles of the rebellion; and, so soon as I
have finished writing, we are to go to see th q State
House, the Town House, the Coliseum, and the other
public buildings. I get no tidings of George, but may
do so after we have met Mr. Nevers
I finish this entry at ten at night, in the waters of
the State of Connecticut. A busy day has given me
no earlier opportunity. We unfortunately missed Mr.
Lousada, the Queen’s consul, as we had missed Mr.
Murray in Portland; but I sent my card to- our corre-
spondents, Nevers and Littlewood, and before we had
done our breakfast 'Mr. Nevers called. He seemed
disturbed, as they all do, to find our time so short, but
ordered a carriage at once; and under his guidance we
saw the city and neighborhood to much advantage.
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
183
We spent an hour or more in the State House. The
Legislature has just adjourned; hut we saw several
of the offieers of State, and for the first time I feel
as if I understood the politics of this country. We
visited the Coliseum, which is a place for musical
entertainments, the Funnel Hall, which is a market
and town house, where are some curious pictures and
a carved wooden eagle. We drove out of town to the
Park, made a visit to the Historical Library and an-
other Public Library, to a Primary School and a Gram-
mar School, drove to Cambridge and back, and after-
wards met a pleasant company at Mr. Hevers’s house
at dinner. We called at Fields and Osgood’s, my pub-
lishers. Unfortunately Mr. Fields is in Europe, and I
missed the other partners; but by leaving the first
three States of my book, I am able to secure copyright
for them by printing them while I reside in this coun-
try. At half past five we took the train to Stonington,
whiph enabled us to see most of the State of Ehode
Island. We took a steam-packet at Stonington, in
Connecticut, and have now had supper, and I am
writing in the cabin while the ladies have retired. I
am sorry to say George has not yet overtaken us. Just
as we left the Eevere House I got a telegram from him
at Montreal. I have bidden him meet us at Hew
York, and we look to see him to-morrow.
The population of Massachusetts is dense, given
mostly to manufactures. One gentleman told me at
dinner their only exports were ice and granite, another
184
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
that their principal business was in ready-made cloth-
ing, yet another that they were mostly engaged in
shipping houses ready-made to Eio Janeiro, and an-
other that they looked on the manufacture of pianos
as their strong point. I had no opportunity to ex-
amine statistics on these subjects. The conversation
turned principally at dinner on the exercises at the
Commencement at the University. We had had an
opportunity of spending nearly quarter of an hour in
the church there. We heard part of an oration on
Philistinism, by Mr. McLeod, a Confederate officer,
who on this occasion received the highest honors of.
this college. I am scarcely willing here to enter into
an argument on the subject, as I did not hear the
whole of his address. The Governor of the State,
and one of the historians of the country, received the
honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. Mr. Revers had
told me, in joke, that perhaps it would be given to
me ; but this was only a pleasantry; for my presence
on the occasion was purely accidental, and could not
have been known to the government of the IJniver-
sity. We regretted that we could not remain to be
present at the dinner of the Alumni.
RHODE ISLAND.
is the smallest State in the United States, and the
richest in the world; so I was told by a gentleman
who sat next me. It has four capitals, of which we
passed through two, Providence and Kingston. Near
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
185
Kingston, King Philip was taken prisoner in the late
war. The spot was pointed out to me by a fellow-
traveller. This interesting fact shows, what is not gen-
erally understood in England, that republican institu-
tions have not been universal in America till a period
quite recent. I asked what became of King Philips
family, and was told his sons were sold into slavery.
They must, however, have been soon emancipated, as
slavery now exists no longer.
CONNECTICUT
is known as the land of steady habits. We arrived in
it at about five minutes before nine, coming from
Westerly, in Rhode Island. Stonington should have
been named “ Easterly,” as the most eastern town in
Connecticut. It is a well-lighted State, lighted with
gas. The people seemed prompt and orderly. We
had no difficulty with the luggage, the vans which
earried it being pushed upon the packet while we
walked on board. We were interested in all we saw
of Connecticut, and were sorry we could not remain
longer.
n. THE MIDDLE STATES.
NEW YORK.
We woke early, and passed along the East River by
many of the public buildings of Kew York to the
dock on the other river called the Kor th River, though
it should be called the West River, because it is to the
186
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
west of the city. We saw no eabs at the landing-
place, but I found in a large coach conveyance to the
Westminster Hotel. Here I had telegraphed to George
to meet me; and in the hope of seeing him we so far
changed our plans as to give up a day to this place,
but without avail, for what reason we do not know;
but by some unfortunate detention he has been held
back, and we are obliged to leave without him.
Under the lead of our good friend, Mr. Ashcraft
Ashcroft, we were able to see the more important
points of the city. I called with him on Mr. Bu-
chanan, the consul of her Majesty, but unfortunately
missed him. The next day Mr. Ashcroft was so kind
as to send me quite a full series of the Hew York
journals. By studying them, and by full conversa-
tions with intelligent gentlemen afterwards, I obtained
some views more correct than I had had before, and I
insert them here, as I prepare my journal for the
press.
Hew York is nominally governed by several Boards,
and by a Mayor, all of whom, according to the most
of these journals, are chosen from the ranks of the
most profligate of men; and they are all absolutely
governed by what is here known as “ the ring.” This
“ring” also governs the Governor of the State, Mr.
Hoffman, who would seem to be another of the most
profligate of men. Strange to say, “the ring” also
intimidates and controls General Grant and his Cabi-
net, who appear to be, as I am distressed to learn from
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
187
these writers, all men of the lowest personal character,
and to the last degree vacillating in their purposes,
living, indeed, in constant fear of this “ ring ” and of
the press of New York City. It seems fortunate for
the country and the world, therefore, that the charge
of this press has fallen into the hands of the most
pure and high-minded and courageous men living.
They evidently do not fear “ the ring/’ although “ the
ring ” controls every other interest and institution in
the country; the Exchange, the Church, and the schools,
all being subservient to it. I cannot but wish that the
press of all countries might be managed by wise men
as beneficent as these writers represent themselves.
NEW JERSEY,
as will be seen by the accompanying map,* lies be-
tween the southeastern part of New York and Penn-
sylvania. Its principal production is said to be
peaches; but I observed no peach-trees in the part
which we crossed through. We were not, the children
said, out of sight of a house all the way. We stopped
first at Elizabeth, which I suppose to have been named
in honor of good Queen Bess ; but nobody I spoke to
knew anything about the origin of the name. Here
we crossed diagonally the road to Philadelphia. Plain-
field is a place, of whose inhabitants I do not know
the number, in a flat and warm region of country.
* We omit the map, which is a transcript of that in Appleton’s
Railroad Guide.
188
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
Somerville seems to be a manufacturing town; I no-
ticed a sign of a maker of oval photograph frames.
After crossing a wooded ridge, we came out on Phil-
ipsburg, where we found large iron-works; and here
we crossed the river into
PENNSYLVANIA.
I regretted, when it was too late, that none of us
had set foot in New Jersey after landing: we had in
our eyes some of the soil.
In Pennsylvania we crossed to Harrisburg, the seat
of government, where we saw the dome, or circular
tower, of the State House. I was much interested, at
the station, in seeing five or six stout workmen change
the water-tanks which are provided for passengers in
the “cars,” taking out the empty ones, and filling them
with Wenham ice and water, brought in by the hy-
drants by a long hose. Ellen calculated that the con-
sumption of each “ car” must be about fifty gallons. Of
this I confess I drank a good deal myself. At Altoona,
at eight and a half in the evening (twenty-two min-
utes after three, by London time), we again took sleep-
ing-“ cars,” where, instead of blankets above the sheets,
we had what are called comforters,—rugs quilted
of cotton-wool. We are now so used to this system
of travel that I did not wake till half past six in the
morning (twenty-two minutes after one, London time),
near Newcastle, in Ohio. In Pennsylvania we crossed
the anthracite coal country, where we were quite cool;
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
189
met a thunder-storm in the valley of the Susquehanna,
not far below the Yale of Wyoming, which we were
sorry not to see. * The prodnctions of Pennsylvania are
coal, iron, wheat, and rye.
Of the flora of the day the report is, that the daisies
are gigantic ; they have long, high stems. My daugh-
ters also observed in seed
Taraxacum Dens-leonis (vulg., Dandelion),
which they had before seen in blossom, and, in blos-
som now,
Ranunculus acris (vulg., Buttercup),
Linum usitatissimum (vulg., Common Flax),
and a white flower, and a purple marsh-flower, of which
they did not know the names; and unfortunately none
grew near the dining-station, or in the neighborhood
of Harrisburg.
WEST VIRGINIA-
Between one and two in the morning we passed that
portion of West Virginia known as the Pan Handle.
West Virginia sided with the Federals in the late war,
and was rewarded by being set off from Virginia as a
separate State of the Union. It was too dark for me
to make much observation of the soil or the inhab-
itants, even had I been awake; and we collected no
specimens for the hortus-siccus. The climate seemed
to us all very warm, and the air close; there is an odor
of eoal-oil or naphtha in it, which may result from our
190
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
proximity to the oil-wells. We left it by a bridge at
Steubenville, over the Ohio Biver.* This river takes
its name from an Indian word signifying the beauti-
ful, and gives that name to the State of Ohio, which
we next entered. *
m. THE WESTERN STATE S.
OHIO.
On leaving the atmosphere of the sleeping-" car,”
which, as I have said, was somewhat close, and going
forward to stand upon the platform of the train, I was
struck with the appropriateness of the name. The
country seemed newer, to take the American word,
than any we had yet passed; yet we were seldom out
of sight of houses or cabins. The log-cabin, as its
name implies, is built of logs. At Denison the train
stopped for half an hour for our breakfast. The coffee
was very bad; the steak was thin and tough; the eggs
were very good; and we were very hungry. The table-
cloth was spotless, to Mrs. G.’s great delight and mine.
She expressed her pleasure to me, because we had
learned from a fellow-traveller that intelligent travel-
lers in this country always travelled on Monday or
Tuesday, that they might have clean table-cloths and
towels. I had regretted that we should not be able to
* We omit in the American edition a drawing of this bridge, which
has been reduced by Miss Ellen from the company’s “posters.”
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
191
lie over till next Monday, after I learned this; but our
arrangements would not permit.
The capital of the State, which we passed through,
is Columbus. Here is also the State Prison, which we
saw, but could not visit. It is the custom in America
to have the State Prisons in the towns where the legis-
lative bodies meet, perhaps to keep them in terror. A
gentleman next me asked if there was not “ something
extra ” about the State House. I told him I did not
know; but from the question I infer that the size of
the Legislature, or the extent of the government, may
require what we call “an annex” to the building.
We left Columbus with regret, for Indianapolis and
Chicago.
INDIANA.
A desire to see as many seats of government as
possible led me to take a longer route than necessary,
and to pass through Indianapolis. The name denotes
that it is the city of Indiana. It stands on a flat, and
is very hot. The streets are regularly laid out, as I
believe are those of most towns in America. As we
waited for the train to Chicago, Mrs. G. and I and the
girls took a little walk in the city. I am not sure
whether we saw the State House or not. I accosted a
native whom we met, and asked, “ Would you show
me, please, the way to the State House ? ” His reply
was, “ Which ? ” From this I inferred that, as at
Columbus, there are two State Houses, in different
parts of the town. Possibly the senate, which corre-
192
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
sponds to the House of Lords, sits in one, and the Com-
mons in the other; hut I am sure it was not so in
Boston. Unfortunately we had no time to continue
the inquiry. We left this interesting capital without
regret, at about dark.
The people of Indiana, as I had before learned, are
called “ Hoosiers ; ” but when I addressed a lad in, the
railway carriage, and asked him if he were “ a Hoosier,”
I found he was displeased. I suppose he came from
some other State, but he would not explain himself.
In crossing from Indianapolis to Chicago, we passed
over a long prairie country; but unfortunately it was
too dark for us to make out much of the scenery.
The wheat and oats are abundant in the States of
Ohio and Indiana. The Indian corn, which was the
grain of the Indians, is so little advanced that we can-
not as yet understand its growth.
ILLINOIS.
It seems to be our fortune to arrive in the large
cities to breakfast; and the girls say they shall remem-
ber America as the country of shower-baths and bath-
tubs. We had, however, no such opportunity in Ohio;
and after forty-six hours of scarcely broken travel from
Hew York, we were glad of the welcome of the Tre-
mont House in Chicago. We met at a late breakfast,
at nine o’clock, and found a telegram from George.
The fine fellow arrived at the Westminster at Hew
York the day we left, too late for ns. He has taken
9
M
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
193
the New York and Erie route to this city, and we shall
meet him to-night. Till then we shall scarcely feel
that our journey is begun.
I called on the consul as soon as breakfast was over,
but missed him. With the ladies, however, I visited
the new tunnel under the river which makes the
harbor, which seemed to us short indeed in com-
parison with Sir Isambert Brunel’s masterpiece, but is
a creditable work for a new country. It is not yet
quite completed. We went to the top of the City
Hall, "and, in company with a gentleman I met at the
hotel by the name of Jones, we visited one of the
curious elevators which pump up corn from the vessels
and canal-boats, and deliver it again. We also visited
the water-works which supply the city with water
from the depths of the lake. Mr. Jones offered to
show us the neighborhood of the city; and we rode
along Wabash Avenue, their finest street, quite into
the country. He showed me some fine sites for build-
ing, if I wished to settle here; but we told him that
Mrs. G. would never be satisfied far from Bloomsbury
Square.
Mr. Leadbetter called while we were out, and we
dined at the hotel. We then agreed, as we had seen
the city so thoroughly, and as I wished to visit Michi-
gan, that we would ride out on the eastward train to
Michigan City, which is on the frontier of that State,
meet George, and return with him.
194
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
MICHIGAN.
I can hardly regret tMs determination, though we
were not so fortunate as to meet my son. There are
two trains through Michigan it appears, which, at the
moment we started, I had not noticed in the Official
Guide, which is the American Bradshaw. George had
taken the Michigan Southern, and we were on the
Michigan Central.
Michigan is a level State, so that, although Michi-
gan City is scarcely within its lines, I was able to see
a good deal of it by mounting on a wood-" car ” while
we remained at the station. The business seems to be
conducted mostly by railway. The motto of the State
is, Si jpeninsulam amcenam quceris , circumspice , " If
you are seeking a pleasant peninsula, look round.”
This I did for a few minutes, and confess I was
somewhat disappointed. The bustle and confusion of
a large railway junction is anything but pleasant.
We had but a few minutes to remain in Michigan City.
The eastward train there meets the express train from
Cincinnati to Chicago; and by this train we returned
to that city, arriving a little before ten o’clock, but not
having seen my son.
It subsequently proved that lie had arrived in the
city, and at the Tremont House, a little after eight
o’clock. Some one at the office of the inn told h i m
that we had taken the train for Davenport, in Iowa;
and, without sufficient inquiry, scarcely snatching his
THE MODEKN SINDBAD.
195
supper, lie rode to the station of that road to catch the
express. On our arrival at the hotel we were told that
a gentleman had inquired for us, but I supposed it was
Mr. Leadbetter again. Just as I was retiring for the
night, however, while looking casually on the register
which is kept open at all American inns, for the in-
formation of the police, public and private, I saw
George’s familiar name. They assured me that he had
gone to Iowa. My first thought was to start in pur-
suit the next morning. But on consultation with Mrs.
G., we agreed it would be better to telegraph him to
meet us at La Crosse in Wisconsin.
I defer my conclusions on Illinois till we visit it
again.
WISCONSIN.
After a day in Wisconsin we feel that we see indeed
a new country. The girls no longer report that we are
“ almost never ” out of sight of a house. Long prairie
reaches where we are out of sight of a tree, stretches
of woodland, sometimes, which it seems. hopeless to
break into, teach us what the settlers encounter.
Janesville, Madison, and Portage City are the largest
towns we have seen. La Crosse, where we are, is the
chief city of the Democratic party in America; but I
have unfortunately no letters here, and, being an inland
town, there is no English consul. It is late as I write,
our arrival, at the hotel being at midnight, so that I
can scarcely speak of the city. Sunday, the 4th of
July, is the anniversary of the separation of these
196
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
States from the crown of England, and is generally
celebrated as a holiday. The celebration this year is
postponed until to-morrow, except by the Germans,
who prefer to celebrate to-day. We have attended
service at the Episcopal church.
MINNESOTA.
We had here, on the whole, a favorable opportunity
to examine the trade and productions of this new
State, which received its State government as lately as
1857. After breakfast, as we walked from the hotel to
see the flow of the great Mississippi Eiver, we noticed
a ferry-boat starting for La Crescent, a town oppo-
site La Crosse on‘the western side. It must not be
supposed that the inhabitants of Minnesota are “Ma-
hometans. But the name La Crosse having been given
to the Wisconsin town by some early missionary, I
suppose the name of La Crescent was seized upon here,
in allusion to a popular prejudice here that towns on
the west side of great rivers increase , while those on
the east side are less rapid in their growth.
As we loitered by the river-side, the blowing of
steam and ringing of the bell announced that a river
steamer, the General Logan, was^ about to begin her
voyage to St. Louis. The ladies are so tired of travel
by land that I went on board to inquire as to her
departure, and secured passage on her for my family.
She will touch at the river landings, and we can take
up George at Prairie du Cliien (the Dog’s Prairie), or at
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
197
Dunleith, or at Rock River. I have telegraphed him
to wait ns at one of these points.
Minnesota seems to be a State of dealers in timber
and rough wood, of ferry-men and other boatmen. A
railroad runs from La Crescent to Rushford.
IOWA.
We sent our luggage to the General Logan, but she
did not leave her moorings till near two o’clock, al-
though we were on board four hours, and were con-
stantly assured that she would go “ right away,” which,
in the language of this country, means “ directly.”
The girls would have been glad to improve this time
in botanizing. We have pleasant state-rooms opening
on a balcony called the guard, which looks upon the
river.
The recent rains have made the river very high; and,
as the captain had no landing to make before we ar-
rived at Prairie du Chien, we reached that town before
evening. Meanwhile we had had an opportunity to
see much of Minnesota and Iowa from the deck of
the boat as we passed by. Harvest is just beginning
through all this country; and in one or two cases,
where farms approach the river, we could see the reap-
ers, no longer with their sickles, but trotting round in
their little go-carts, gathering in the wheat and other
grain. It is still so wet, however, that there is some'
delay about the harvest. Before arriving at Prairie du
Chien we were able to land at Iowa, at places known
198
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
as Hogg’s Landing and Wilmot’s Creek. It does not
differ, as far as we could see, from the country on the
other side. The day has been very hot.
We had to wait but little at Prairie du Chien, and,
soon after dark, were on our way again. The ladies
enjoyed the comparative stillness of the steamboat
berths, and we slept late. Going on deck, I found that
our run had been very rapid in the night, and we were
approaching the celebrated bridge at Eock Island.
Here we expected to meet George; and we left our
friendly Captain Parsons, and landed here.
We were again disappointed. I could learn nothing
of George at any of the hotels. There is no railway
below Eock Island on the river shore; and it seemed
certain that he had attempted to strike us at Pulton,
higher up the stream. I telegraphed him at that point
to await us there. We were fortunate enough to be
able to strike a pleasant evening train up the river,
and, before dark, again had retraced our course and
arrived in Pulton.
At Pulton, on the hotel book, was his name ! The
keeper of the hotel said he had inquired after the Gen-
eral Logan on arriving, and, learning that she had
passed down the stream, had taken another boat which
was passing, and had followed us to Eock Island!
Ellen declares that at this very spot on the river the
same adventure happened to Evangeline in one of Mr.
Longfellow’s poems. But Maud thinks this was lower
down, at a spot which we shall visit in a few days. I
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
199
telegraphed him at once not to attempt to overtake ns
here, but to await our arrival at St. Louis.
I was obliged to do this that we might secure
passage by daylight in the train for Omaha in Nebras-
ka, which leaves Clinton, opposite this place, at seven
o’clock every morning. This we succeeded in doing;
and after a little more than twenty-four hours, having
tried the sleeping-“ car ” again, on yet a different ar-
rangement, we find ourselves in Omaha.
NEBRASKA.
We have been travelling with four young men who
are on their way to Porthos, where they have estab-
lished their families. I was sorry not to visit that place
with them, as it is to be the commercial capital of
the whole country within a few years. I was very
fortunate in meeting these gentlemen, who kindly
gave me a full account of it. It is on the Missouri
Liver, just half-way between the two oceans; and when
railroads, now contemplated in each direction, are
finished, it will be the great entrepot of Eastern and
Western trade. It is also half-way between the Gulf
of Mexico and the parallel of 54° north latitude,
and must be always a great centre of the trade North
and South. Whether the Seat of Government is soon
removed there or not, Porthos must become a great
mercantile city, and nothing would have interested me
more than a visit to it.
Of course, also, the temptation is very great to leave
200
THE MODEKN SINDBAD.
Omaha westward, and cross the continent to San Fran-
cisco by the Union Pacific Bailway just now opened.
Four days would carry us to the Pacific Ocean, and in
five more we could return to St. Louis, adding thus five
to our list of States visited. But the plans we made
in London do not permit this extension of time. To
see the Southern States thoroughly will require all the
time I have between this and July 24th, on which day
our berths are taken in the New York steamer. With
reluctance, therefore, we turn eastward at nine o’clock,
Omaha time, which is twenty-four minutes after two
by London time. We have travelled more than one
quarter round the world.
Finding, after breakfast, a boat with steam up, about
to start for the lower landings, we enjoyed a day’s sail
between Kansas and Missouri, arriving at St. Joseph
early enough the next morning to take an express train
for Kansas City. We entered this city by a new bridge
over the Missouri River, finished and opened on Satur-
day last. We went on shore at Elwood, in Kansas,
and by starlight had a fine view of that State.
We have thus made a survey of all the States gen-
erally known as the Loyal or Northern States in the
late contest. Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, Dela-
ware, and Maryland were generally in the hands of the
Pederals, but were known as Border States. These we
are yet to visit, as well as the Gulf States and Ar-
kansas and the Carolinas. I see that I have nowhere
summed up our view of Illinois. It is a State rapidly
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
201
growing in population, with large supplies of provisions
for all parts of the world.
IV. THE SOUTHERN STATE S.
If I ahridge my sketehes of this interesting region,
it is not that our notes were less thorough than in the
region we have passed. Our route will be best under-
stood if I speak of it once for all. Crossing Missouri
in an afternoon and night, we took the fine steam-
packet Gray Eagle at St. Louis, and, in a sail down
the Mississippi of a day and a half, reached Cairo, at
the southern point of Illinois. At Cairo we spent
Sunday, and, leaving early Monday morning by steam-
packet, landed at Columbus in Kentucky, whence to
Memphis by rail is about nine hours; and thus we ex-
amined Kentucky and Tennessee. By a ferry-boat at
Memphis we crossed into Arkansas; and thus at the
landing we were able to study that interesting State.
By rail again to Vicksburg, in Mississippi, is two hun-
dred and ninety-one miles : here by ferry we crossed
into Louisiana, returning to Vicksburg. Twenty hours
more thence took us to Mobile, in Alabama, and a
steamboat excursion to the opposite side of the bay
permittee! us to land in Florida. From Mobile to
Montgomery, to Atlanta, in Georgia, through Augusta
to Branchville and Wilmington in the Carolinas, is a
fatiguing railway ride, by day and night, of sixty-eight
hours, — three nights and two days. At Wilmington
202
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
what is called the Great Northern Line took us to
Weldon, thence to Richmond, in Virginia, and to
Washington, the capital of the Federal States in the
war, and now of the re-united country. Of all this re-
gion I will now speak in detail.
KANSAS.
Our impressions of Kansas are of a warm, low coun-
try with little timber. The settlements are new. The
people seem to deal mostly in wood for steamboats.
MISSOURI.
We saw this State thoroughly, passing from Kansas
City in the west to St. Louis in the east, and coasting
the eastern line on the river. We passed through the
capital, Jefferson. There is but one State House. The
trade of the State seems to be mostly periodicals, cheap
novels, novels bound in cloth, candies in papers of dif-
ferent kinds, figs in wooden boxes, chewing tobacco,
and maple-sugar. These were offered to us freely in
the “ cars.” The climate is warm.
KENTUCKY
was one of the doubtful States in the war, and is not
thoroughly reconstructed. The climate is very hot.
TENNESSEE.
The same remarks apply to Tennessee. We saw
cotton growing here for the first time. The girls were
much interested in the growth of this useful plant.
The weather was too hot for long excursions.
THE MODEBN SINDBAD.
203
MISSISSIPPI.
This is one of the Gulf States. We found the
climate hot, as we had expected. At the station at
Yicksburg I offered, in pay for my tickets, some of
the bonds of the State, which had been placed in my
hands for negotiation by the father of my wife. The
tieket-seller was very angry, and asked if I saw any-
thing green. This was an allusion to the Federal cur-
rency, the bills of which are printed with a green back.
I was obliged to give this instead of the bonds.
LOUISIANA.
The soil appeared to be fertile, but the climate, like
that of the other Gulf States, is very warm. There
are many venomous inseets. We killed many mos-
quitoes. We saw here the remains of some of General
Grant’s works.
I must interrupt the order of my narrative, to say
that at Yicksburg we were doomed to another disap-
pointment in regard to George. At St. Louis we had
felt sure of meeting him. But, on our arrival at the
Planters’ House, we found a note from him saying that
his friend, Mr. Morley, had invited him to visit the
stupendous iron-mines a few hours from the city. It
so happened that the Gray Eagle had been recom-
mended to me as a specially fine boat; I telegraphed
to George, therefore, to bid him cross from the Iron
Mountain and meet us at Cairo, which he could do
more easily than he could return to St. Louis. Un-
204
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
fortunately he missed my despatch, returned to St.
Louis, failed to overtake us at Cairo, and, by I know
not what misfortune, again at Yicksburg. We shall
certainly find him at Washington.
ALABAMA.
This State is distinguished for its cotton, and for
being the seat of the chief government of the Confed-
eracy early in the war. I called on the English con-
sul at Mobile, but he was absent. We found it too
hot for much visiting, but in a pleasure steamer made
an agreeable excursion to
FLORID A.
This State was bought of Spain by the Americans.
The land is low, and the climate hot in July, at which
time we visited it.
GEORGIA.
In Georgia we came into higher country. Atlanta,
which takes its name from the Atlantic Ocean, which
is supposed to be named from the fabled Atlas, is a
thriving manufacturing town, which has doubled since
the war, when it was captured by Sherman.’ We saw
many of the field-works of the Generalis. It was too
warm, however, for much study of the scenes of interest.
SOUTH CAROLINA
is known as the Palmetto State. It is the State which
fired the South. We thought it might well have done
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
205
so, for the climate is oppressively warm. The chief
production is cotton.
NORTH CAROLINA
is known as the Eip Yan Winkle State, and was
thought cool by the Confederates, as I was told by an
officer of high rank. We thought it, on the other hand,
very warm. The chief productions are pitch and pea-
nuts. We had longer opportunity to see this State
than most of the Southern *States. We arrived at
Wilmington at five o’clock, or thereabouts, Sunday
morning. I would willingly have avoided travelling
at all on that day; but at Branchville, where we had
intended to spend it, there is absolutely no sleeping
accommodation for travellers.
We attended St. John’s church in the evening, but
had not the pleasure of making any acquaintance. I
did not like to call on the consul; and we spent the
day quietly at our hotel.
VIRGINIA.
This was the largest of the Confederate States till
the western half, West Virginia, was cut off. We
found it even warmer than that State. Eichmond is
a beautiful city, with fine water-power, not much im-
proved, on account of the heat of the climate. We
passed through it about dark, but could see the prison
and State House. I think there is but one State
House, though there are two prisons.
206
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
From Richmond we went to Acquia Creek and the
Potomac River; and there, after a continuous railway
ride of five days and more, only broken by our excur-
sion at Mobile, we gladly took berths on the steamboat
again, for Washington. This closes our review of the
Confederate States, all of which, except Texas, we
have been able to visit.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA. WASHINGTON.
At Washington we found the weather extremely
hot, and not well fitted for excursions. The ladies,
however, did not regret this so much, as they were a
good deal exhausted by the rapidity of our recent
movements. I called on our minister, Mr. Thornton;
but he had, unfortunately, removed to Newburyport,
in Massachusetts, with his family, for the hot weather.
President Grant was also absent at Long Branch, a
watering-place not far from New York; so that we lost
the opportunity to see him.
The Congress is not in session. It sits every alter-
nate summer; but, unfortunately for us, this is the
summer when it does not sit. I regretted this the less,
having had the opportunity I have described to study
the legislative customs of the country in Massa-
chusetts.
We visited the Patent Office, where are a great
number of models of inventions; the Capitol, which is
a large building of marble; the Smithsonian Institute,
which stands in a large garden; and what is known as
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
207
the East Eoom at the White House. The West Room,
I know not why, is not shown to visitors.
If I were to come to America again, I think I should
spend all my time in this or some other city. I have
now so far acquainted myself with the outline of the
country that I feel better prepared for a more quiet
post of observation. We waited here for George till
the last moment; but were obliged, on the morning of
the 23d, to leave without him.
MARYLAND.
Leaving home, as we came to call Washington,
at seven o’clock on the morning of Friday, we ar-
rived in New York at five o’clock the same after-
noon. This enabled us to cross the State of Mary-
land from southwest to northeast, and to pass
through the historic city of Baltimore. Baltimore is
known as the Monumental City, as I learned from the
newspapers; but, though we saw one or two shot-
towers, we saw neither monument, nor do I know
for what they were built. Judging from the popula-
tion at the station, the white and black races are about
evenly represented.
DELAWARE.
We have been very much interested in this State.
The stay of the train at Wilmington is nearly ten
minutes; and we were able to walk into one of the
streets of that curious old town. An ancient church
208
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
is in sight from the train. Delaware is mostly in-
habited by negroes, who seem to spend most of their
lives at the station, with nothing to do there.
PENNSYLVANIA AND NEW JERSEY.
I have little to add to the account of these States
which I have already given. Philadelphia is a large
city, built mostly of brick. We passed through Tren-
ton, the capital of New Jersey. It has but one State
House.
Arrived once more at the Westminster Hotel, after
our parting absence of a month, to our great joy we
met George ! He had arrived at Washington before
us, direct from Memphis. At the Legation they had
assured him that we had been and gone. It must have
been that Greenfell of Liverpool, of Greenfell, Atwood,
& Greenfell, who is somewhere in this country, had
ealled, and left his card. George, therefore, had hur-
ried to this city, and resolved, as he said, not to leave
the Westminster for an instant, day or night, till we
should arrive.
It was the easier for George to do this, because in
the same hotel was residing a charming young lady
from New Madrid, in Missouri, with whose family
he had travelled from Memphis. Anticipating the
pleasure it would give his mother and me to gain a
daughter in America, George had offered to this dear
girl all he had to offer, while they rested a day in
Washington. With the approval of her estimable
N
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
209
parents, slie had accepted the proposal; and, as I write
these lines, at twelve o’clock at night, I have just left
the young people together, having wished them every
blessing.
George will remain some months in America. His
mother, his sisters, and I sail to-morrow morning.
His hat looks well, but not so well as when he
started.
To resume my observations. I do not wonder that
the inhabitants of this country are thin and short-
lived. I have not slept well five nights since I landed
here. I do wonder that they are so tall, for their beds
are but six feet long. I do not wonder that they are
dyspeptic; for a constant diet of sandwiches, figs,
candies, and praslins must be very injurious in the
course of years. I do wonder that they make money;
for the necessity of telegraphing is constant, and the
charges are exorbitant.
I have visited thirty-one States of the Union, and
have conversed with citizens of all the others. I have
visited also the District of Columbia, and Washington,
the capital of the country. I have also visited Mont-
gomery and Eichmond, the two capitals of the Confed-
eracy. I have visited fourteen of the capitals of
States, if I am right in the impression that Kingston
is one of the capitals of Ehode Island. In Boston I
was able, just after the adjournment of the Legislature,
210
THE MODERN SINDBAD.
to see the arrangements of the different branches of the
government
But there is no place like home. And of this we
are more satisfied than ever. We have acquainted
ourselves with the customs of a republic, and are more
than ever willing to adapt ourselves to those of the
good city of London.
Saturday, July 2Uh .— Thirty days from our landing
from the Carlotta, in Portland, we set sail for England,
in the stanch ship City of London. Happy be the
omen of a name so like home!
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
It -was a clear,-cold night in February, when a young
man, well muffled, returned to his comfortable, book-
lined study from making a social, neighborly evening
call. He evidently professed to be a student; for the
room was filled with heaps of books and papers, and the
table strewed with the happiest abundance of unar-
ranged volumes. Indeed, it was not merely a profes-
sion: it was clear that he had studied, and studied hard.
The comfortable look which he assumed as he sank into
his easy-chair, and dragged his light table up to him to
write, showed that he felt himself at home, and that
he knew what the piles of books around him were,
and was glad to return to their society. He warmed
his hands at his bright fire, opened his note-book,
looked at the last entry he had made, tore it out and
burnt it, and wrote rapidly a few lines ; then dropping
his pen, began to stare at his fire eagerly, and sunk
into a deep revery. The entry in the diary was
this: —
“Mr. Austin told a queer tradition to-night about
the glass-houses in the valley. This is what the work-
212
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
men there call the salamander night. It seems that
all glass-blowers lielieve that a salamander will emerge
from any fire which bnrns more than forty day s and
nights; and that accordingly, from fear of seeing one,
they always extinguish the fires in their furnaces on
the fortieth night after they have kindled them. To-
night there is no glare from the valley; and Austin
says that this is the cause. It is an odd idea,”
Hardly had he written the last words, when, by a
sudden transition of feeling, he began to think in a
much more respectful manner of the tradition of the
glass-blowers. “ What strange ideas we have,” said he
to himself, “ about popular opinion. I argue, men who
call themselves wiser than I argue, that there is a
distinction between right and wrong, because every
one in the world has, in some way, made it. I argue,
and they argue, that there is a God, on similar grounds.
I believe, and they really believe, that there is an ex-
ternal world; that effect depends on cause, not because
we can prove it, but because we always have believed
it, and because all the rest of the world believes it.
And yet, when the affair in question is of rather less
consequence, all the weight of popular opinion goes
for nothing. Nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand
and odd men out of a million in this world believe in
the visible reappearance of departed spirits; and yet
because Sir David Brewster never saw a ghost, I must
believe that thousands of men who have, have been
dreaming. And yet, out of the thousand people near-
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
213
est me at this moment, I could not, I suppose, find ten
who would dare to sleep to-night in the burying-
ground yonder. I might take voyage after voyage, and
never find a sailor who would tell me he knew there
was no such thing as a mermaid; and yet because
some German doctor, who never saw or tasted salt
water, asserts that the thing is an anatomical impossi-
bility, I am expected to fold my hands quietly, and say,
‘ What superstitious beings sailors are ! ’ I might travel
among our North American Indians, and hear all
their traditions and opinions related without variation
through all the different tribes; yet no civilized person
would blame me for pronouncing on my own author-
ity, without attempting a whisper of argument, with-
out a shadow of premise, or an attempt at reasoning,
that they were all contemptible because merely the
superstitious prejudices of ignorant savages.” He
went on to call up crowds of instances where general
prejudice had proved right, and the wise men not far
from wrong: such as Dr. Lardner’s views on steam
navigation; the reappearance of the dragons of the
romancers, so long banished from reputable society, in'
the Sauria of the geological -cabinets; the tale of
Charles II., his fish, and the Eoyal Academy; the
great sea-snake of the Norse traditions; the sailor’s
tales of the Flying Dutchman and the commentary of
modern science; the Italian tradition about the ex-
istence of Herculanseum and Pompeii, long before it
was discovered that they were not wholly destroyed.
214
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER,
He remembered bow many of the antiquated prescrip-
tions of the old empirical physicians had been con-
demned by modern science only to rise again to light
as that science advanced further. All the old charla-
tans of past centuries gave doses of burnt sponge to
their consumptive patients : modern science thought it
as ridiculous as if they had given hemlock, till Sir
Humphrey discovered iodine in sponge, and Dr. Some-
body found iodine one of his most powerful remedies.
He remembered how ably naturalists had demonstrated
the non-existence of the Unicorn, who fights so gal-
lantly for the crown, beyond the fancy of the heralds
or the sign-painters, unless in the unwieldy form
of the clumsy rhinoceros; and that the demonstra-
tion was hardly over when they were called to examine
the animal itself, in the Gnus, or horned horses, of
modern menageries.
“ So,” said he to himself, “ in this matter of the fur-
naces there, Mr. Austin talks of the workmen s super-
stition; and his little bride laughs, and calls it a pretty
idea; and staid Mr. Dubbado frowns, and says the
ignorance of the laboring classes is distressing; and
good Parson Drury says their superstition is more so;
and I, cold-blooded wretch, talk of the superiority of this
legend, in matter-of-factness and dignity, to the milk-
and-water traditions that fill out the annuals. Why
have not these workmen a better right to know what
they are about than we have ? What right have we to
say that they are making fools of themselves ? They
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
215
have always dealt with fire: we never have. Their
fathers did the same: ours never did. Their tradi-
tion must have some shadow of foundation. Some
shadow ? — a strong foundation. Must have ? — does
have one. I will prove it myself. Why be afraid of
a poor salamander ? I will begin my experiment to-
night. Forty days from this will be — the 27th of
March/’ He worked himself into such an excitement
by the train of thought of which we have only given
an outline, that he spoke these last words aloud, pacing
backwards and forwards across his room. He imme-
diately began to investigate his library to see if he
could find there any aid in his undertaking.
The table was soon piled with volumes ; and although
in many of them he had found nothing to satjsfy his
euriosity, yet his eye rested on two or three with
peculiar satisfaction. Lord Bacon says, “ The salaman-
der lives in fire, and has power to extinguish it.” Said
the student, “ Lord Bacon was a wise man, though he
puts that in his book which he cannot prove.”
Pliny says, “ The salamander is an animal shaped
like a lizard, never coming forth but after heavy show-
ers and in overcast weather. It is so deficient in
feeling that its touch extinguishes the fire around it,
as ice would.” And Pliny was a wise man, but at the
same time a timid one; for he adds a farrago of non-
sense about the poisonous properties of the animal. The
student turned all this over in Ms mind, and praised
Bacon and ridiculed Pliny; for he was but a man; and
216
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
Bacon had countenanced, while Pliny had rather
frowned at, his undertaking. He read hut little more;
he paused a moment on Pliny’s matter-of-fact account
of the phoenix, and found in it corroboration for his
newly formed theory; he read a little in some Oriental
fables, and found frequent mention of his new pet;
and then, turning aside from his books, throwing him-
self back in his well-stuffed easy-chair, and gazing on
his brilliant fire, he began to think.
He began to think, not in tangible words, or rhetor-
ical sentences, like the hero of a second-rate novel, not
aloud, like the hero of a tragedy, but, like a sensible,
imaginative man, in air-castles, in brilliant fancy bub-
bles, his mind in an instant running where the swift-
est shorthand of the tersest language could not
overtake it in years. He wondered why men should
suppose that earth and water were the only life-sup-
porting elements; and then incidentally he asked him-
self whether any spirits of air were hovering round
him at the instant, and watching his actions and reflec-
tions. Were there any around him, and who were
they ? Should he never be watching over friends, see-
ing their conduct and thoughts, and guiding their
destiny, himself invisible ? He liked to believe it:
he did believe it; and he w^ent on to think of his
dear mother and sisters. What were they doing now ?
Were they not thinking of him, and of the time when
he should return home again ? The bright fire re-
called him to his salamander friend; and, as he gazed,
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
217
he despised the fearful superstition which had induced
men to give up the knowledge of a known animal once
known; to relinquish a secret they had discovered;
to sink into ignorance where they had had sure knowl-
edge; and then his fancy ran through a long labyrinth
of ideas leading from the hint of lost knowledge, of
which the books of Li vy, the Alexandrian Library, the
six books of the Sibyl, the lost sacred volumes of our
religion, the manufacture of Greek fire, stained glass,
Yenice glass, the voyages of the old Northmen, the
wanderings of the Ten Tribes, and a hundred other such
mysteries, were the turning corners of the clew. No
pen could sketch the different mazes into which he ran
from every one of these corners in the minute before
his bright light once more bade him recollect himself.
Then he wondered whether he ought to pity the sala-
mander. Had he always lived there ? was he solitary
or social ? were his forty days an imprisonment or a
pleasure; and were his happiest moments those when
he escaped from, or returned to, his fire ? Perhaps the
few minutes of escape were the only moments allowed
him to recollect himself and his own nature: he might
be different, entirely different, when without from when
within the flame; and if so, how long might his exile
last ? And here the student paused to think of the
Saturday night’s hour in the legend of the Onyx King,
and to wish once more that his might have been the
finger to wear that jewel. Keeurring again to the
salamander, he asked himself what could be its nature.
10
218
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
■Would it be mild or ferocious ? -would it perceive bis
presence ? would it attempt to avoid him ? might it not
seek his protection ? and then flashed across his mind
the question, Might it not be intelligent, intellectual ?
might it not have a mind, a language ? Why should
it not ? did it not ?
And here the student was carried away by the in-
tensity of his feelings: he rose from his chair, and began
pacing his room, backward and forward, and attempted
to form a slight imagination of the glorious results of
such a discovery as he hoped. But he was too much
excited by the suddenness and grandeur of the idea to
think composedly or connectedly. Wild visions con-
nected with it were constantly rising before him. That
he should converse with a being from another element
of our world — an element hitherto neglected, despised,
in natural history, yet the most singular and wonder-
ful of all — was not improbable ! Thus much was clear.
Further than this it would be hard to follow him. He
revelled long in wild dreams of the imagination, till
at length, exhausted by the excitement aroused by the
new idea, he felt quite willing to retire to sleep.
Days passed on, and the student gained more con-
trol of his ideas than he had had on the night when the
wonder of his embryo discovery had first burst on him.
Day and night his fire burned with an unusual glow,
never extinguished on any emergency. Yet he did not
neglect his usual routine of stucly; but often, when his
head ached and his eyes tired from poring over the
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
219
dreary tomes that made his mental daily bread, he would
not strive to rouse himself when the letters grew dim
before him, but would let his mind run astray to his
fiery friend. Often and often did he think of his
singular destiny; often and often did he endeavor to
imagine his habits of life, duty, and action; and then
h e would laugh at himself for trying to conjecture
that respecting which a few weeks at latest would
give him full information. And often from the animal
he would turn to think of the pleasure of the dis-
covery, — the pleasure, the honor of it: his ambition
could point to nothing higher than the just elevation
of the man who should discover to mankind an animal
from a new world, perhaps an intellectual, moral,
social being. What floods of new light might this one
discovery not pour on disputed questions in ethics,
physics, and metaphysics ! Man has attained to a eer-
tain point of knowledge, derived from some few intui-
tions and certainties, by one fixed course. Who could
tell at what point some other being might arrive, from
some other intuitions, by another course ? How much
would their mutual discoveries elucidate the doubts
and fears of each ! How honorable his station, in the
opinion of both races, who should be the means of
opening so desirable a communion, who, disregarding
popular prejudice or fear, should throw open the little
door' between two such vast worlds of thought! - The
student gloried in the dreams of such ambition; and
after his first delight at his happy discovery, such
dreams often followed.
220
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
It was in such, a frame of mind that he one day
wrote home to his mother. His letter, which had heen
cheerful in an unusual degree, closed with these
words: —
“ And if, my dear mother, that should turn up of a
sudden which should give us all once more the com-
petence that for your sake I have so often regretted,
which should give me at once that station in society,
that reputation, which has so often been declared my
due by the kindness you and my sisters feel for me,
without my passing through much more of that
heavy drudgery of study which has so often made me
repine, — God knows how unreasonably, — it would
be not more singular than many things which have
happened in this world of ours. Who knows that it
may not be so ? ”
With this letter he walked to the post-office.
There he received one from home, full of that kind
affection that none but a real family circle can inspire.
The day was one of those lovely, spring-like days
which February will have, when Miss Mitford and
such fortunate people find violets, when everybody
thinks of May, and the dullest person’s spirits rise
much higher than par. The student read his letter at
the post-office, then continued his walk. He was
cheered by his good tidings from home and the pleas-
antness of everything around hint, and he enjoyed the
beauty of the day to the utmost. He had left his
room close and hot, for the fire still burned as brightly
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
221
as ever; and he was glad to breathe the clear, fresh
air, and faney it springtime. He walked to the glass-
houses, recently his favorite stroll. He liked to look
in at the Windows and see the workmen moulding the
melted glass, and to wonder at the intensity of the heat
of their furnaces, — they strengthened what were now
his favorite theories; and on this day he watched them
with more than usual eagerness. As he walked home
he built his castle higher than ever in the air, and was
in the most cheerful frame of mind when he entered
the house in which were his lodgings.
In the passage-way, as he entered, he met Mrs.
Mumler, his landlady, brush and water-pail in hand.
He was about to pass her with his usual civil saluta-
tion merely, when she stopped to say, “ I have been
arranging your room, sir; and as the day was fine
and you were out, I gave it a good airing, threw
open the Windows, cleared out all the fire, and have
polished up the grate nicely. I knew you would
want no fire before night; but it can be made at any
time.”
The student had just self-possession enough to thank
her for her well-meant exertions, and then hurried
into his room, looked at the cheerless polished grate,
and, throwing himself into a chair, he cried like a
child.
He was not, however, a man to be easily discour-
aged: his fire soon burned brightly again; and, al-
though he often checked the wildness of his imagina-
222
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
tions by recollections of Ms disappointments, be still
revelled in the new field of the faney world that his
strange idea had thrown open upon him. His general
reading assumed the-train of his new ideas. He would
pore eagerly over the passages in the ehronieles of the
old voyagers wMeh told Mm how Columbus paced the
deck of Ms vessel on the Mght of his magnificent dis-
covery, when he had seen the light on the shore of St.
Salvador, and knew that the next sun would disclose
to him a new world. He ransacked volumes to read
the private history of Nicholas Flamel, the reputed
discoverer of the philosopher’s stone, and felt that he
could recall Ms feelings when he first saw the copper
sous wMch he was working upon take the form and
reality of gold. In his more doubtful moments he
called up Robert Fulton’s feelings, when he had started
on the Hudson in his new steam-barge amid the de-
rision of the spectators, and had had the mortification to
see it stop after the first few evolutions of the engine.
But as he read further, he would flatter himself that he
was rather in Fulton’s condition when, after he had put
in the defective rivet, the boat moved slowly and •with
digrnty up the stream; and he asked himself what
might be the importance of his discovery, which should
introduce a new living creature to man’s knowledge,
and that, perhaps, as he loved to persuade himself; an
intelligent creature, when Fulton’s mere application of
the glorious handiwork of Watt had produced such an
influence on the externals of society.
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
223
One bright evening, as he returned from a call on
Mr. Austin, he had been star-gazing, admiring the full
moon, and the brilliant, pure, good-natured look of
Jupiter, till he began to think of Newton and his glo-
rious diseoveries. He remembered his disappointment
when all his hopes for those diseoveries were crushed
by the error of one of the details on which his theory
rested, and wondered if his fate would be to wait like
Newton twenty years between the idea which sug-
gested, and the success which should consummate, his
daring discovery. And then he remembered that, when
Newton came to the conclusion of the whole, he had
not nerve to go through the mechanical details of cal-
culation necessary to substantiate his theory, but was
obliged to trust a friend with these minutiae. He re-
membered how, when the centring was to be struck from
the great arch at Notre Dame, the architect was too
heartsick from anxiety to conduct the operation him-
self, but awaited, half dead, the report of his nephew,
who took his place. He felt as if he should feel the
same weakness, and was thinking over all the short list
of his acquaintances to decide whom he should call
in, in such an emergency, when he reached his home.
The passages and staircase were crowded; the house
was filled with smoke; and when he reached his room
he learned that, from a defect in the flue, the lathing
above the grate had taken fire and endangered the
safety of the house. He was obliged to rejoice, how-
ever, with the rest, that they had so soon succeeded in
224
A TALK OF A SALAMANDER.
extinguishing the flames, although his own grate looked
as cheerless as ever.
“ There ’s nothing of the least value hurt,” chattered
Mrs. Mumler, as she left the room with the last of the
extinguishers. “ We will soon have your room looking
as nicely as ever.”
“Nothing of value !” muttered the student. “What
is value, then ? ” and he threw his head on his arms,
and was lost in "bitter thought.
4 The room was repaired, and the fire burned once
more. The student watched it as carefully as ever;
but he was not the sanguine enthusiast that he was on
the first week of his experiment. He was resolved to
continue his experiment as a duty which he owed
himself and his race; but many days passed before
he could raise his imagination of its cheering results
so high as he had done before. Weeks passed on, how-
ever, and his spirits rose. Another salamander day
was observed at the glass-house, and the fire was again
extinguished there. Spring drew nearer; but his grate
was still filled with coals, and he constantly gave out
peremptory orders, in the sternest tones that his mild
voice could assume, that his fire should never be ex-
tinguished. Three, four weeks he counted; five, — and
then he began to reckon in days with a painful anxiety
for the coming of the fortieth. He felt as if he were
the hero of the old Arabian tale, the fate of whose life
was to be determined in forty days, and who lived to
the last hour to be killed by the fall of a fruit-knife.
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
225
The student knew that the result of all his hopes and
expectations was at hand. He could not wonder at
the creations of the old romancers; for he could imagine
now that every kind of difficulty, in these few days,
might come between him and the accomplishment of
his desires. He felt that he should hardly recover
from another disappointment. Again he turned to the
history of Columbus, and imagined his feelings when
his rebellious sailors would give him but three days’
longer westward sailing. What might not three days
bring forth ?
Years before, he had been in a burning house; and,
while he heard the blows of an axe falling on the
locked door to open him an escape, he had felt his
head grow more and more giddy from the clouds of
smoke around him, and had known that, unless he
could preserve his senses a few minutes longer, his
hours were counted. He felt once more the agonizing
doubt which he had felt then; but now it was for
days, while it was then only for minutes. When the
idea of his experiment had first crossed his mind, it
was merely as a casual theory, which, inquiring and
philosophical as he was, he did not choose to let escape
him. As day by day had passed, he had roused him-
self to a more distinct conception of its importance,
and vacillated between more sanguine hopes, and more
disheartening doubts, as to its success. The disap-
pointments he had undergone had made his doubts
preponderate; but they had not at all diminished the
10* o
226
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
eagerness with which he awaited the result. It was
now no longer to him merely a curious inquiry in
science nor even an investigation whose results upon
society and philosophy might he important: it was the
one subject in which all his thoughts and hopes and
imaginations centred. He thought of little else, he
dreamed of nothing else; now his hopes heat high and
exultingly, and now he felt deeply despondent. He
felt the strongest desire for the approach of the fatal
hour, and yet the greatest dread of its passage; for it
might pass in vain.
The fortieth day came. Without, it was mild and
lovely as the hrightest day of April could he. Within
his room the air was thick and close and hot; and he
sat there with the fearfully anxious air of a gambler
who is determined to play out a desperate game. He
had resolved that he would not leave his fire that day.
Who could tell with precise accuracy of the appearance
of the animal? It could know nothing of day and
night; and hy a moment’s carelessness he might ren-
der fruitless the care of weeks. There he sat, hour
after hour, haggard, anxious, and impatient, entirely
unable to fix his attention on anything but that raging
fame.
They say that the Duke of Wellington, at Waterloo,
looked oftener at his watch than anywhere else; for he
knew that if his squares would hold firm till night he
need care for nothing more. The student looked con-
stantly at his. He knew that by midnight the agony
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
227
must be over; and lie knew that lie could not bear such
suspense mucli longer. As be sat, he attempted to im-
agine what would be the most hospitable reception he
could give to the stranger; and as he had always sup-
posed that his only object in leaving the fire at . all
was to refresh himself from its intolerable heat, he
placed a large vessel of water on the hearth as the
most agreeable attention with which he could receive
him. 1 He lighted no lamp when evening came on; for
he would not torture it by light in the moment of its
need. He tried to read: he might as well have tried
to fly. Eead! He could think of nothing but his
suffering friend, could feel nothing but sympathy
for him in that hour of his agony. He took his pen
to write a few words of memoranda in his note-book;
but before he knew it, he had dropped it from his
hand, and was gazing earnestly, without flinching, on’
the raging flame.
It was about eight o'clock in the evening when he
heard a rap at his door, which opened immediately
without his call. Mrs. Mumler had come, terrified
and Hurried, to say that her youngest child had just
fallen into the kitchen fire, and to beg that he would
be good enough to go for the physician, for he was the
only person besides herself in the house, and she was
really afraid that the poor child was dying.
Header, should you have hesitated ? The student
did not; his kindness of heart and true charity were
strong even then against all temptation. He showed,
228
A TALE OP A SALAMANDER
too, a surprising zeal; for lie went and retumed sooner
than any one could have believed possible. He
brought the physician, saw that his prescriptions were
attended to, begged Mrs. Mumler to send him any-
where else that she might wish, and returned to his
vigils hy the fire.
The first person who ever imagined the possibility
of a transit of Yenus was a young man named Horrox,
who calculated that of 1639. His authorities were so
vague that he could only compute that it would occur
on Sunday, the 24th of November. Sunday morning,
accordingly, he began to watch to see Yenus cross the
face of the sun; but he saw the surface still clear and
untouched when he heard the bell for church; and he
had enough of what he thought principle to leave his
darling observation, and go to the worship of his God.
After service he returned to the watch with the con-
sciousness that the whole which he had anticipated for.
years might have passed while he was at church. The
student had a similar overwhelming feeling as he re-
turned from the bedside of that suffering child. He
knew that it was possible, probable, that all his bright-
est hopes had looked forward to might have occurred
and gone by in the hour while he was gone. The sal-
amander might have left the fire and returned, in his
absence: the chances were that he had done so; and
yet, though the probability of success was much less
than before, he must still gaze on. He would have
sacrifieed anything to relieve that doubt. He remem-
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
229
bered how Copernicus roused himself from his death-
bed to see the last sheet of his great work, and lay
down to die. He felt that, with his certainty that his
great object was accomplished, he could die. He
remembered Horrox, and tried to console himself with
his success. He knew that he had watched again till
the afternoon church service, and then, doubtful
whether the transit had or had not taken place, went
once more to his devotions. When he returned, he
was amply rewarded: he saw distinctly that the planet
had just entered on the sun’s disk; and the sight was
enough to make him forget all his self-devoted sacri-
fice. The half-heartbroken student tried to believe
that his fortune would be the same. At all events, he
knew he had done his duty.
As he sat pondering thus, he 'fancied he heard
another call from his landlady. He ran to the door,
and opened it. Ho one had spoken: it was only
fancy. Just as he closed the door, a bright glare
lighted up the room and then was gone, while he
heard a sharp hissing from the water on the hearth.
He felt that the moment had come; and as soon as
the thick clouds of steam had passed off which were
rising from the water, he bent down to examine his
welcome friend.
* * * * #
On the evening of the 16th of May, the student
was taking, with his friend Mr. Austin, his first walk
after his recovery from the violent fever which had
230
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
preyed on him for some weeks, and had nearly over-
come his constitution, weakened as it had been by his
previous watchings. Through his whole illness the
Austins had shown him every kindness* They were
his nearest friends, and they had shown themselves-
truly such; and this evening Mr. Austin had induced
the invalid to take a little stroll, to breathe the fresh,
dry, spring air, and see the beauty of the sunset.
The student was not, however, in good spirits.
Even the freshness of springtime failed to exhilarate
him. Austin, who was desirous to turn his reflections
from off some of the disagreeable features of his pres-
ent situation, on which he seemed inclined to dwell,
had spoken cheerily of an anticipated visit from his
relations, of the beauty of the sunset, of the freshness
and brightness of'everything as spring opened, — but
without removing the heaviness on his young friend’s
mind, till, as they made a sharp turn in the road
which led over a hillside, he pointed out the glass-
works in the valley below them, and said, "It is
another salamander night. Do you see, the furnaces
are extinguished.”
The poor student shuddered; hut he evidently made
an exertion to take some more decided part in the con-
versation, and, in a manner at least, to guide it. “ So
it is,” he said. “ By the way, do you own any stock
in those works ? Fettyplace told me he thought it
was surer property than most such.”
“ I own a few shares, which pay pretty welL Why
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
231
do you ask ? Do you think a factory with a legend
attached, more reputable than a more commonplace
one?”
The invalid exerted himself to say, “ 0, I hardly
thought of the legend ! Pray, how is Mrs. Austin to-
night ? ”
"Well, perfectly well. Do you remember how
amused she was, that evening last winter, when I told
her and you the glass-blowers’ tale ? She was quite
delighted with it, and went so far as to go over to the
workmen's cottages, and talk with some of their wives
about it. She said she had never met with a real-life
superstition before."
“ I suppose not, from her early education. Has she
heard from her friends lately ? ”
“ Her cousin is staying with her now. They have
both of them been counting days till to-night should
come. My wife has told her live superstition so often
that she feels a strong interest in it now, and has in-
spired her friend with the same. Indeed, although I
have known the tale so long, it never made half the
effect upon me that it has lately, since she has talked
so much about it. I wonder that you, who are so im-
aginative, have never thought of it since that night
last winter."
"0, it has passed my mind, sometimes. What is
your new cousin’s name ? ”
Austin did not heed this forced interrogatory, sug-
gested by a desperate but vain desire to change his
232
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
train of thought and conversation. “ I wonder,” said
he, “ if there may not be some ground for this work-
men s superstition. Strange that it should exist with-
out any, stranger that no one should test it! Why
should no one ? I will, myself. A month’s watching,
or a trifle more, may make an important discovery. I
claim your congratulations for my idea. You pretend
to be a philosopher and a theorizer; and yet I shall be
before you, after all, in a useful discovery! Useful! a
glorious discovery! Faith! what a grand thing it
would be — don't you see it ? — to draw a real sala-
mander from his prison! Why, to me it seems grand
beyond conception. If you had thought of it, with
your energy, you would have made yourself a great
man before now, by this simple idea. What will Mrs.
Austin say ? You shall watch with me the fortieth
night, and see him.”
He turned to his young friend as he spoke, and saw
that he was ghastly pale and almost fainting. In reply
to the fears he expressed, that he had made him walk
too far for a person in his weak state of health, the
student said, with an almost fearful energy, “ ISTo ! no !
I am better now. But, Frank, don’t try it! don’t try
it!”
“ You are tired,” said Austin, quite alarmed. “We
have walked too far. Let us cross home by this short
cut. After a night’s rest you will feel stronger.”
“ Frank Austin, you think my mind is wandering.
I am as sane at this moment as you are; and I beg
A TALE OF A SALAMANDER.
233
you, as you love yourself, and your own peace of mind
through life, as you love me, as you love your wife,
not to try this rash experiment. Experiment ? Say,
rather, this fearful certainty.”
“ What do you mean ? Why do you take it so
seriously? The idea has but just struck me as a
mater of curious inquiry. I supposed you would like
to start such a fine, bold theory, you are so good at
seheming,” said Austin, hoping to bring back his young
friend’s ideas to a firmer tone.
“ The idea struck me nearly three months since.
With me, as I say, it is no longer an experiment, but
a certainty; and the only gratification my trial has left
me is the ability it has given me to warn my friends
against following my example. More than this I can
not, ought not, say. But let me implore you, Austin,
to give up the idea. Not that you could not carry
through the experiment as well as any man; not that
you, or any man, could not bear the suspense of it; but
there is more than this, and you ought not, you must
not, attempt it. Austin,” he added more calmly, lay-
ing his hand on his friend’s shoulder, “you will not?
promise me you will not.”
“ Certainly,” said Austin, glad to see him more calm:
“ it was only a passing fancy. Since you make a point
of it, I do not care for it.”
And they returned home.
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
[In the winter of 1862,1 read for the first time the Spanish
romance of the “ Sergas of Esplandian.” It is sometimes cited
as the fifth book of Amadis of Gaul, but is by Garcia Ordonez
de Montalvo, the translator of Amadis, — a workman very in-
ferior to Lobeira, who must be rated, I think, very highly among
the writers of narrative. Coming to the allusion, in this forgot-
ten romance, to “ the island of California, very near to the Ter-
restrial Paradise,” I saw at once that here was the origin of the
name of the State of California, long sought for by the antiqua-
rians of that State, but long forgotten. For the romance seems
to have been published in 1510, —the edition of 1521 is now in
existence, — while our California, even the peninsula of that
name, was not discovered by the Spaniards till 1526, and was not
named California till 1535.
At the next meeting of the American Antiquarian Society, I
called their attention to this derivation of the name; and it has
since been universally recognized as the origin of the name now
so familiar to us. The romance of u Esplandian ” is now so rare
that I translated for the Atlantic Monthly all the parts which
relate to the Queen of California, and I now republish them.
The reader may be interested in examining first the history of
the discussion of the subject, and then of the romance.]
The name of California was given by Cortez, who
discovered the peninsula in the year 1535. For the
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
235
statement that he named it, we have the authority of
Herrera.* It is proved, I think, that the expedition
of Mendoza, in 1532, did not see California: it is eer-
tain that they gave it no name. Humboldt saw, in
the archives of Mexico, a statement in manuscript
that it was discovered in 1526 ;-f* hut for this there is
no other authority. It is certain that the name does
not appear till 1535.
Ho etymology of this name has been presented
satisfactory to the historians. Venegas,;}; the Jesuit
historian of California, writing in 1758, sums up the
matter in these words: “ The most ancient name is
California, used by Bernal Diaz, limited to a single
bay. I could wish to gratify the reader by the ety-
mology and true origin of this name; but in none of
the various dialects of the natives could the mission-
aries find the least traces of such a name being given
by them to the country, or even to any harbor, bay,
or small part of it. Nor can I subscribe to the ety-
mology of some writers, who suppose the name to be
given to it by the Spaniards, on their feeling an un-
usual heat at their first landing here; that they thence
ealled the country California , compounding the two
Latin words calida and fornax> < a hot furnace/ I
* Decade VIII. Book VI.
t It would be very desirable to have a new examination of the
manuscript alluded to.
£ The work of Yenegas is chiefly due to the labors of Father An-
dres Marcos Buniel, according to Greenhow.
236
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
believe few will think the adventurers could boast of
so much literature/’
I believe the Californian authors of our own time
agree with Yenegas in rejecting this forced etymology.
The word to be made from it should be “ Calidafor-
nacia.” Dr. Bushnell, who says the heat of the in-
terior valleys is that of a baker’s furnace/speaks of a
region which Cortez never saw. It must be recol-
lected, that, though Bernal Diaz only uses the name
for the bay, we have Herrera s better authority for
saying that Cortez gave it to the peninsula. But
neither peninsula nor bay is the oven described by Dr.
BushneH.
Clavigero, in his “ History of California,” after giv-
ing this etymology, offers as an alternative the follow-
ing, as the opinion “ of the learned Jesuit, D. Giuseppe
Compoi ” : “ He believes that the name is composed of
the Spanish word cala, which means f a little cove of
the sea ’; and the Latin fornix , which means ‘ the
vault of a building/ ” He thinks these words are thus
applied, “ because, within Cape St. Lucas there is a
little cove of the sea, towards the western part of
which rises a rock, so worn out that on the upper part
of the hollow is seen a vault, as perfect as if made by
art Cortez, therefore, observing this cala, or cove, and
this vault, probably called this port California , or cala
and fornix ,— speaking half in Spanish, half in Latin.”
Clavigero suggests, as an improvement on this some-
what wild etymology, that Cortez may have said Cala
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
237
fornax , u Cove furnace,”— speaking, as in the Jesuit’s
suggestion, in two languages.
I am told that the Rev. Dean Trench, in one of his
etymological works, suggests the Greek koXt) iropvela,
— implying that the province seemed to the ear ly set-
tlers to have the attractions of a “ beautiful adultery.”
I have not myself found this passage; but I remember
that Mr. Powers, the sculptor, represents California as
a naked woman, seductive in front, but concealing a
thorn-bush in her hands behind; and he describes his
statue as intended to represent her false seductions.
Of this etymology, it is enough to say that Cortez and
his men knew nothing of the seductions, — never find-
ing gold or anything else tempting there; and that the
theory requires more, yet worse, scholarship at their
hands than that of calida fornax .
Of all such speculations, Mr. Greenhow says very
fitly, “ None of them are satisfactory, or even in-
genious”
It is in the worthless romance of the “ Sergas of
Esplandian,” the son of Amadis of Gaul, — a book
long since deservedly forgotten, — that there is to be
found the source from which the adventurers trans-
ferred the name “ California ” to the new region of their
discovery.
Towards the close of this romance, the various
Christian knights assemble to defend the Emperor of
the Greeks and the city of Constantinople against the
238
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
attacks of the Turks and Infidels. On this occasion,
in a romance published first in 1510, — twenty-five
years before Cortez discovered the American Califor-
nia, — the name appears with precisely our spelling, in
the following passage : —
Sefgas , ch. 157. — “ Know that, on the right hand of
the Indies, there is an island called California, very
near to the Terrestrial Paradise, which was peopled
with black women, without any men among them, be-
cause they were accustomed to live after the fashion
of Amazons. They were of strong and hardened
bodies, of ardent courage, and of great force. The
island was the strongest in the world, from its steep
rocks and great cliffs. Their arms were all of gold;
and so were the caparisons of the wild beasts which
they rode, after having tamed them; for in all the
island there is no other metal. They lived in eaves
very well worked out; they had many ships, in
which they sailed to other parts to carry on their
forays.” ....
In the paper to which these paragraphs are an in-
troduction, I have translated every passage in the
“ Esplandian ” which relates to the Queen of Cali-
fornia, — the name appearing, as will be seen, in several
distinct passages in the history.
This romance, as I have said, is believed to have
been printed first in 1510. No copies of this edition,
however, are extant. But of the edition of 1519 a
copy is preserved; and there are copies of successive
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
239
editions of 1521, 1525, and 1526 ; in which last year
two editions were published, — one at Seville, and the
other at Burgos. All of these are Spanish.
It follows, almost certainly, that Cortez and his fol-
lowers, in 1535, must have been acquainted with the
romance ; and, as they sailed up the west side of Mex-
ico, they supposed they were precisely at the place
indicated, — “in the right hand of the Indies/ 5 It
will be remembered also, that, by sailing in the same
direction, Columbus, in his letter to the sovereigns,
says, “ he shall be sailing towards the Terrestrial Para-
dise/ 5 * We need not suppose that Cortez believed
the romance, more than we do; though we assert that
he borrowed a name from it to indicate the peninsula
he found “ on the right side of the Indies, near to the
Terrestrial Paradise/ 5 If it is necessary to analyze
very carefully his motive for borrowing a name from a
romance then so generally known, it will be enough
to say that this romance credited the “ Island of Cali-
fornia 55 with great treasures of gold, and that it placed
it very near the East Indies, in quest of which all the
adventurers of that time were sailing. There is, how-
ever, no more reason for giving a serious motive for
such a nomenclature than there is for the motive
with which La Salle or his companions gave the name
of La Chine to the point in Canada from which they
hoped to reach China.
It is not strange that ecclesiastical historians, like
* See Appendix to this paper.
240
THE QUEEN OF CALIFOKNIA.
Yenegas, should, in the eighteenth century, have lost
sight of this origin of the name. It was not until
1683 that the Jesuit fraternity sueeeeded in planting
an establishment there. Even then, their establish-*
ment was not permanent. Por a century and a half,
therefore, after Cortez s discovery, the province was
of no value to any one, and its name was of as little
interest. Long before the Jesuits planted it, the
romance which gave it name was forgotten.
After 1542 no edition of the “Sergas of Esplandian”
was printed in Spain, so far as we know, till 1575;
and, after that of 1587, none for two hundred and
seventy years more. The reaction had come. When
the curate burned the books of Don Quixote, he
burned this among the rest: he saved “Amadis of
Gaul, 55 but he burned “ Esplandian. 55 “ We will not
spare the son, 55 said he, “ for the virtues of his father. 55
These words show Cervantes 5 s estimate of it as early
as 1605. It is not surprising, then, that an ecclesiastic
like Yenegas should not know, in 1758, the wild geogra-
phy of the romance two centuries and more after it was
written. D’Herbelay, the early French paraphraser of
this romance, retains the whole story of the queen,
but transfers the situation of California to the source
of the Eiver Borysthenes, near the descent of the Ei-
phean Mountains.
The only effort to introduce it to modern readers, in
any European country, until the recent Spanish reprint
of 1857, is in the -wretched paraphrase hy Tressan,
THE QUEEN OF CALIFOKNIA.
241
published in France in the last century. This author,
as if to add to the probability of the tale, omits the
name “ California” in each of the passages relating to
it; so that, even in his forgotten work, we do not get
hold of the lost clew.
The original work is now so rare that the copies in
the valuable collection of Mr. Ticknor (now in the
Boston Public Library) were till lately the only ones
in Massachusetts. To that kind courtesy which opened
his invaluable stores to every student, and illustrated
it from the treasures of his own studies, am I indebted
for all the authorities of value which I am able to
cite here. In the large public libraries of the city of
New York, I found in 1862 no copy of any of these
romances, which made the lay literature of the first
century after printing was invented; but in the small
yet well-seleeted library of the Free Academy of New
York, and in that of Congress, are the “ Amadis ” and
“ Esplandian,” in the recent Spanish edition edited by
D. Pascal de Gayangos; and the same edition is now,
in 1872, in the Boston Library.
In ascribing to the “ Esplandian ” the origin of the
name “ California,” I know that I furnish no etymology
for that word. I have not found the word in any
earlier romances. I will only suggest that the root
Calif > the Spanish spelling for the sovereign of the
Mussulman power of the time, was in the mind of the
author as he invented these Amazon allies of the In-
fidel power.
li
p
242
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA,
The following is the account above referred to, with every-
thing from the “ Esplandian ” which relates to the 44 Queen of
California.”
I can see the excitement which'this title aronses as it
is flashed across the sierras, down the valleys, and into
the various reading-rooms and parlors of the Golden
City of the Golden State. As the San Francisco
“ Bulletin ” announces some day, that in the “ Atlantic
Monthly,” issued in Boston the day before, one of the
articles is on “ The Queen of California,” what contest,
in every favored circle of the most favored of lands,
who the Queen may be ! Is it the blond maiden who
took a string of hearts with her in a leash, when she
left us one sad morning ? is it the hardy, brown adven-
turess, who, in her bark-roofed lodge, serves us out our
boiled dog daily, as we come home from our water-
gullies, and sews on for us weekly the few buttons
which we still find indispensable in that toil? is it
some Jessie of the lion-heart, heroine of a hundred days
or of a thousand ? is it that witch with gray eyes, cun-
ningly hidden, — were they puzzled last night, or were
they all wisdom crowded ? ■— as she welcomed me, and
as she bade me good by ? Good Heavens ! how many
Queens of California are regnant this day ! and of any
one of them this article might be written.
No, Senores ! No, CabaUeros ! Throng down to the
wharves to see the Golden Era or the Cornelius’s Cof-
fin, or whatever other mail-steamer may bring these
words to your longing eyes. Open to the right and
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
243
left as Adams’s express messenger carries tlie earliest
copy of the “ Atlantic Monthly/’ sealed with the red-
dest wax, tied with the reddest tape, from the “Corner
Store direct to him who was once the light and life of
the Corner Store, who now studies eschscholtzias
through a telescope thirty-eight miles away on Monte
Diablo ! * Eush upon the newsboy who then brings
forth the bale of this Journal for the Multitude, to
find that the Queen of California of whom we write
is no modern queen, but that she reigned some five
hundred and fifty-five years ago. Her precise contem-
poraries were Amadis of Gaul, the Emperor Esplan-
dian, and the Sultan Badiaro. And she flourished , as
the books say, at the time when this sultan made his
unsuccessful attack on the city of Constantinople, —
all of which she saw, part of which she was.
She was not petite, nor blond, nor golden-haired.
She was large, and black as the ace of clubs. But the
prejudice of color did not then exist even among the
most brazen-faced or the most copper-headed. For, as
you shall learn, she was reputed the most beautiful of
women; and it was she, 0 Californians ! who wedded
the gallant Prince Talanque, — your first-known king.
The supporters of the arms of the beautiful shield of
the State of California should be, on the right, a knight
armed cap-a-pie , and, on the left, an Amazon sable,
clothed in skins, as you shall now see.
* In a letter from Starr King, written not long before I wrote these
words, lie spoke of seeing the color of Monte Diablo change when the
eschscholtzias were in bloom.
244 THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
Mr. E. E. Hale, of Boston, sent to the Antiquarian
Society last year a paper which, sliows that the name
of California was known to literature before it was
given to our peninsula by Cortez. Cortez discovered
the peninsula in 1535, and seems to have called it
California then. But Mr. Hale shows that, twenty-
five years before that time, in a romance called the
“Deeds of Esplandian,” the name of California was
given to an island “on the right hand of the Indies”
This romance was a sequel, or fifth book, to the cele-
brated romance of “ Amadis of Gaul.” Such books
made the principal reading of the young blades of that
day who could read at all. It seems clear enough that
Cortez and his friends, coming to the point farthest
to the west then known, — which all of them, from
Columbus down, supposed to be the East Indies, —
gave to their discovery the name, familiar to romantic
adventurers, of California , to indicate their belief that
it was on the “right hand of the Indies.” Just so
Columbus called his discoveries “ the Indies ”; just
so was the name “ El Dorado ” given to regions which
it was hoped would prove to be golden. The romance
had said, that, in the whole of the romance-island of
California, there was no metal but gold. Cortez, who
did not find a pennyweight of dust in the real Califor-
iiia, still had no objection to giving so golden a name
to his discovery.
Mr. Hale, with that brevity which becomes anti-
quarians, does not go into any of the details of the
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
245
life and adventures of the Queen of California as the
romance describes them. We propose, in this paper, to
supply from it this reticency of his essay.
The reader must understand, then, that, in this ro-
mance, printed in 1510, sixty years or less after Con-
stantinople really fell into the hands of the Turks, the
author describes a pretended assault made upon it by
the Infidel powers, and the rallying for its rescue of
Amadis and Perion and Lisuarte, and all the princes
of chivalry with whom the novel of “ Amadis of Gaul”
has dealt. They succeed in driving away the Pagans,
“ as you shall hear.” In the midst of this great
crusade, every word of which, of course, is the most
fictitious of fiction, appear the episodes which describe
California and its Queen.
First, of California itself here is the description: —
“ How you are to hear the most extraordinary thing
that ever was heard of in any chronicles, or in the
memory of man, by which the city would have been
lost on the next day, but that where the danger came,
there the safety came also. Know, then, that, on the
right hand of the Indies, there is an island called Cali-
fornia, very close to the side of the Terrestrial Para-
dise,* and it was peopled by black women, without
* This was according to the eosmogony of the days when Columbus
sailed on his fourth voyage, in which he hoped to pass through what
w T e now know as the Isthmus of Panama, and sail northwestward. He
wrote to his king and queen that thus he should come as near as men
could come to “the Terrestrial Paradise.” On this curious subject I
venture to add to this article a paper which I submitted to the Ameri-
can Antiquarian Soeiety, at its meeting in April, 1872.
246
TEE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
any man among them, for they lived in tlie fashion of
Amazons. They were of strong and hardy bodies, of
ardent courage and great force. Their island was the
strongest in all the world, with its steep cliffs and
rocky shores. Their arms were all of gold, and so was
the harness of the wild beasts which they tamed and
rode. For, in the whole island, there was no metal
but gold. They lived in eaves wrought out of the rock
with much labor. They had many ships with which
they sailed out to other countries to obtain booty.
“ In this island, called California, there were many
griffins, on account of the great ruggedness of the
country, and its infinite host of wild beasts, such as
never were seen in any other part of the world. And
when these griffins were yet small, the women went
out with traps to take them. They covered themselves
over with very thick hides, and when they had caught
the little griffins, they took them to their eaves, and
brought them up there; And being themselves quite
a match for the griffins, they fed them with the men
whom they took prisoners, and with the boys to whom
they gave birth, and brought them up with such arts
that they got much good from them, and no harm.
Every man who landed on the island was immediately
devoured by these griffins; and although they had had
enough, none the less would they seize them, and carry
them high up in the air in their flight; and when they
were tired of carrying them, would let them fall any-
where as soon as they died ”
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
247
These griffins are the Monitors of the story, or, if
the reader pleases, the Merrimacs. After this descrip-
tion, the author goes on to introduce us to our Queen.
Observe, O reader, that, although very black and very
large, she is very beautiful. Why did not Powers
carve his statue of California out of the blackest of
Egyptian marbles ? Try once more, Mr. Powers ! We
have found her now. Evpr)tca/j,ev.
“Now, at the time when those great men of the Pa-
gans sailed with their great fleets, as the history has
told you, there reigned in this island of California a
Queen, very large in person, the most beautiful of all
of them, of blooming years, and in her thoughts desir-
ous of achieving great things, strong of limb, and of
great courage, more than any of those who had filled
her throne before her. She heard tell that all the
greater part of the world was moving in this onslaught
against the Christians. She did not know what Chris-
tians were; for she had no knowledge of any parts of
the world excepting those which were close to her.
But she desired to see the world and its various peo-
pie; and thinking, that, with the great strength of her-
self and of her women, she should have the greater
part of their plunder, either from her rank or from her
prowess, she began to talk with all of those who were
most skilled in war, and told them that it would be
well, if, sailing in their great fleets, they also entered
on this expedition, in which all these great princes
and lords were embarking. She animated and excited
248
THE QTJEEN OF CALIFOBNIA.
them, showing tliem the great profits and honors which
they would gain in this enterprise, — above all, the
great fame which would be theirs inwall the world;
while, if they stayed in their island, doing nothing but
what their grandmothers did, they were really buried
alive, — they were dead while they lived, passing their
days without fame and without glory, as did the very
brutes”
Now, the people of California were as willing then
to embark in distant expeditions of honor as they are
now. And the first battalion that ever sailed from the
ports of that country was thus provided.
“So much did this mighty Queen, Calafia, say to
her people, that she not only moved them to consent
to this enterprise, but they were so eager to extend
their fame through other lands that they begged her to
hasten to sea, so that they might earn all these honors,
in alliance with such great men. The Queen, seeing
the readiness of her subjects, without any delay gave
order that her great fleet should be provided with food,
and with arms all of gold, — more of everything than
was needed. Then she commanded that her largest
vessel should be prepared with gratings of the stoutest
timber; and she bade place in it as many as five hun-
dred of these griffins, of which I tell you that, from
the time they were born, they were trained to feed on
men. And she ordered that the beasts on which she
and her people rode should be embarked, and all the
best-armed women and those most skilled in war whom
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
249
she had in her island. And then, leaving such force
in the island that it should be secure, with the others
she went to sea. And they made such haste that they
arrived at the fleets of the Pagans the night after the
battle of which I have told you; so that they were
received with great joy, and the fleet was visited at
once by many great lords, and they were welcomed
with great acceptance. She wished to know at once
in what condition affairs were, asking many questions,
which they answered fully. _ Then she said, —
“ ‘ You have fought this city with your great forees,
and you cannot take it; now, if you are willing, I wish
to try what my forees are worth to-morrow, if you will
give orders accordingly/
“All these great lords said that they would give
such commands as she should bid them.
“'Then send word to all your other captains that
they shall to-morrow on no account leave their eamps,
they nor their people, until I command them; and you
shall see a combat more remarkable than you have
ever seen or heard of/
“Word was sent at once to the great Sultan of
Liquia, and the Sultan of Halapa, who had command
of all the men who were there; and they gave these
orders to all their people, wondering much what was
the thought of this Queen.”
Up to this moment, it may be remarked, these Mon-
itors, as we have called the griffins, had never been
fairly tried in any attack on fortified towns. The Du-
11*.
250
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
pont of the fleet, whatever her name may have been,
may well have looked with some curiosity on the issue.
The experiment was not wholly successful, as will be
seen.
“ When the night had passed and the morning came,
the Queen Calafia sallied on shore, she and her women,
armed with that armor of gold, all adorned with the
most precious stones, — which are to be found in the
island of California like stones of the field for their
abundance. And they mounted on their fierce beasts,
caparisoned as I have told you; and then she ordered
that a door should be opened in the vessel where the
griffins were. They, when they saw the field, rushed
forward with great haste, showing great pleasure in
flying through the air, and at once caught sight of the
host of men who were close at hand. As they were
famished, and knew no fear, each griffin pounced upon
his man, seized him in his claws, carried him high into
the air, and began to devour him. They shot many
arrows at them, and gave them many great blows with
lances and with swords. But their feathers were so
tight joined and so stout, that no one could strike
through to their flesh.” (This is Armstrong versus
Monitor.) “For their own party, this was the most
lovely chase and the most agreeable that they had
ever seen till then; and as the Turks saw them flying
on high with their enemies, they gave such loud and
clear shouts of joy as pierced the heavens. And it
was the most sad and bitter thing for those in the city,
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
251
when the father saw the son lifted in the air, and the
son his father, and the brother his brother; so that
they all wept and raved, as was sad indeed to see.
“ When the griffins had flown through the air for a
while, and had dropped their prizes, some on the earth
and some on the sea, they turned, as at first, and, with-
out any fear, seized up as many more; at which their
masters had so much the more joy, and the Christiana
so much the more misery. What shall I tell you?
The terror was so great among them all that, while
some hid themselves away under the vaults of the
towers for safety, all the others disappeared from the
ramparts, so that there were none left for the defence.
Queen Calafia saw this, and, with a loud voice, she
bade the two Sultans, who commanded the troops,
send for the ladders, for the city was taken. At once
they all rushed forward, placed the ladders, and
mounted upon the wall. But the griffins, who had
already dropped those whom they had seized before,
as soon as they saw the Turks, having no knowledge
of them, seized upon them just as they had seized
upon the Christians, and, flying through the air, carried
them up also, when, letting them fall, no one of them
escaped death. Thus were exchanged the pleasure and
the pain. For those on the outside now were those
who mourned in great sorrow for those who were so
handled; and those who were within, who, seeing their
enemies advance on every side, had thought they were
beaten, now took great* comfort. So, at this moment,
252
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
as those on the ramparts stopped, panic-struck, fearing
that they should die as their comrades did, the .Chris-
tians leaped forth, from the vaults where they were
hiding, and quickly slew many of the Turks who were
gathered on the walls, and compelled the rest to leap
down, and then sprang back to their hiding-places, as
they saw the griffins return.
“ When Queen Calafia saw this she was very sad; and
she said, ‘ O ye idols in whom I believe and whom I
worship, what is this which has happened as favorably
to my enemies as to my friends ? I believed that with
your aid and with my strong forces and great munition
I should be able to destroy them. But it has not so
proved.’ And she gave orders to her women that
they should mount the ladders and struggle to gain
the towers and put to the sword all those who took
refuge in them to be secure from the griffins. They
obeyed their Queen’s commands, dismounted at. once,
placing before their breasts such breastplates as no
weapon could pierce, and, as I told you, with the
armor all of gold which covered their legs and their
arms. Quickly they crossed the plain, and mounted
the ladders lightly, and possessed themselves of the
whole circuit of the walls, and began to fight fiercely
with those who had taken refuge in the vaults of the
towers. But they defended themselves bravely, being
indeed in quarters well protected, with but narrow
doors. And those of the city, who were in the streets
below, shot at the women with arrows and darts, which
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
253
pierced them through the sides, so that they received
many wounds, because their golden armor was so
weak” (This is Keokuk versus Armstrong.) * “ And
the griffins returned, flying above them, and would not
leave them.
“ When Queen Calafia saw this, she cried to the
Sultans, ‘ Make your troops mount, that they may de-
fend mine against these fowls of mine who have dared
attack them/ At once the Sultans eommanded their
people to ascend the ladders and gain the circle and
the towers, in order that by night the whole host might
join them, and they might gain the city. The soldiers
rushed from their camps, and mounted on the wall
where the women were fighting; but when the grif-
fins saw them, at once they seized on them as raven-
ously as if all that day they had not caught anybody.
And when the women threatened them with their
knives, they were only the more enraged, so that, al-
though they took shelter for themselves; the griffins
dragged them out by main strength, lifted them up into
the air, and then let them fall, — so that they all died.
The fear and panic of the Pagans were so great that,
much more quickly than they had mounted, did they
descend, and take refuge in their camp. The Queen,
seeing this rout without remedy, sent at once to com-
mand those who held watch and guard on the griffins,
* It is perhaps already forgotten that the plated ship Keokuk did
not withstand the Armstrong bolts as well as the turrets of the
Monitors.
254
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
that they should recall them, and shut them up in the
vessel. They, then, hearing the Queen’s command,
mounted on top of the mast, and ealled them with
loud voices in their languageand they, as if they had
been human beings, all obeyed, and obediently returned
into their cages.”
The first day’s attack of these flying Monitors on
the beleaguered city was not, therefore, a distinguished
success. The author derives a lesson from it, which
we do not translate, but recommend to the students of
present history. It fills a whole chapter, of which the
title is, “ Exhortation addressed by the author to the
Christians, setting before their eyes the great obedience
which these griffins, brute animals, rendered to those
who had instructed them.”
The Sultans may have well doubted whether their
new ally was quite what she had claimed to be. She
felt this herself, and said to them, —
“ ( Since my coming has caused you so much injury,
I wish that it may cause you equal pleasure. Com-
mand your people that they shall sally out, and we will
go to the city against those knights who dare to appear
before us, and we will let them press on the most severe
combat that they can, and I, with my people, will take
the front of the battle.’
“ The Sultans gave command at once to all of their
soldiers who had armor, that they should rush forth
immediately, and should join in mounting upon the
rampart, now that these birds were encaged again.
THE QUEEN OF CALIFOKNIA.
255
And they, with the horsemen, followed close upon
Queen Calafia, and immediately the army rushed forth,
and pressed upon the wall; hut not so prosperously as
they had expected, because the people of the town were
already there in their harness; and, as the Pagans mount-
ed upon their ladders, the Christians threw them back,
whence very many of them were killed and wounded.
Others pressed forward with their iron picks and other
tools, and dug fiercely in the circuit of the wall.
These were very much distressed and put in danger by
the oil and other things which were thrown upon
them, but not so much but that they succeeded in
maldng many breaches and openings. But when this
came to the ears of the Emperor, who always kept
command of ten thousand horsemen, he commanded
all of them to defend these places as well as they could.
So that, to the grief of the Pagans, the people repaired
the breaches with many timbers and stones and piles
of earth.
“ When the Queen saw this repulse, she rushed with
her own attendants with great speed to the gate Aqui-
lena, which was guarded by Horandel * She herself
went in advance of the others, wholly covered with
one of those shields which we have told you they wore,
and with her lance held strongly in her hand. Horan-
del, when he saw her coming, went forth to meet her,
and they met so vehemently that their lances were
* Norandel was the half-brother of Amadis, both of them being
sons of Lisuarte, King of England.
256 THE QUEEN OE CALIEOKNIA.
■broken in pieces, and yet neither of them fell. Nor an-
del at once put hand upon his sword, and the Queen
upon her great knife, of which the blade was more
than a palm broad, and they gave each other great
blows. At once they all joined in a meUe, one against
another, all so confused and with such terrible blows
that it was a great marvel to see it; and if some of the
women fell upon the ground, so did some of the cava-
liers. And if this history does not tell in extent which
of them fell, and by what blow of each, showing the
great force and courage of the combatants, it is because
their number was so great, and they fell so thick, one
upon another, that that great master, Helisabat, who
saw and described the scene, could not determine what
in particular passed in these exploits, except in a few
very rare affairs, like this of the Queen and Norandel,
who both joined fight as you have heard ”
It is to the great master Helisabat that a grateful
posterity owes all these narratives and the uncounted
host of romances which grew from them. For, in the
first place, he was the skilful leech who cured all the
wounds of all the parties of distinction who were not
intended to die; and, in the second place, his notes
furnish the m&moires pour servir, of which all the
writers say they availed themselves. The originals,
alas! are lost.
“ The tumult was so great that at once the battle
between these two was ended, those on each side com-
ing to the aid of their chief. Then, I tell you that
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
257
the things that this Queen did in arms, like slaying
knights, or throwing them wounded from their horses,
as she pressed audaciously forward among her enemies,
were such, that it cannot be told nor believed that any
woman has ever shown such prowess.
“ And as she dealt with so many noble knights, and
no one of them left her without giving her many and
heavy blows, yet she received them all upon her very
strong and hard shield.
“ When Talanque and Maneli * saw what this woman
was doing, and the great loss which those of their own
party were receiving from her, they rushed out upon
her, and struck her with such blows as if. they con-
sidered her possessed. And her sister, who was named
Liota, who saw this, rushed in, like a mad lioness, to
her succor, and pressed the knights so mortally that,
to the loss of their honor, she drew Calafia from their
power, and placed her among her own troops again.
And at this time you would have said that the people
of the fleets had the advantage, so that, if it had not
been for the mercy of God and the great force of the
Count Frandalo and his companions, the city would
have been wholly lost. Many fell dead on both sides,
but many more of the Pagans, because they had the
weaker armor.
“ Thus,” continues the romance, “ as you have heard,
went on this attack and cruel battle till nearly night.
At this time there was no one of the gates open, ex-
* Maneli was son of Cildadan, King of Ireland.
Q
258
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
cepting that which ISTorandel guarded. As to the
others, the knights, having been withdrawn from them,
ought, of course, to have bolted them; yet it was very
different, as I will tell you. For, as the two Sultans
greatly desired to see these women fight, they had bid-
den their own people not to enter into the lists. But
when they saw how the day was going, they pressed
upon the Christians so fiercely that gradually they
might all enter into the city; and, as it was, more, than
a hundred men and women did enter. And God, who
guided the Emperor, having directed him to keep the
other gates shut, knowing in what way the battle fared,
he pressed them so hardly with his knights that, kill-
ing some, he drove the others out. Then the Pagans #
lost many of their people, as they- slew them from the
towers, — more than two hundred of the women being
slain. And those within also were not without great
loss, since ten of the eruzados were killed, which gave
great grief to their companions. These were Ledaderin
de Eajarque, Trion and Imosil de Borgona, and the two
sons of Isanjo. All the people of the city having re-
turned, as I tell you, the Pagans also retired to their
camps, and the Queen Calafia to her fleet, since she
had not yet taken quarters on shore. And the other
people entered into their ships; so that there was no
more fighting that day.”
I have translated this passage at length, because it
gives the reader an idea of the romantic literature of
that day, — literally its only literature, excepting books
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
259
of theology or of devotion. Over acres of such read-
ing, served out in large folios, — the yellow-covered
novels of their time, — did the Pizarros and Balboas
and Cortezes and other young blades while away the
weary hours of their camp life. Glad enough was
Cortez out of such a tale to get the noble name of his
great discovery.
The romance now proceeds to bring the different
princes of chivalry from the West, as it has brought
Calafia from the East. As soon as Amadis arrives at
Constantinople, he sends for his son Esplandian, who
was already in alliance with the Emperor of Greece.
The Pagan Sultan of Liquia, and the Queen Calafia,
hearing of their arrival, send them the following chal-
lenge : —
“ Radiaro, Sultan of Liquia, shield and rampart of
the Pagan Law, destroyer of Christians, cruel enemy
of the enemies of the Gods, and the very Mighty Queen
Calafia, Lady of the great island of California, famous
for its great abundance of gold and precious stones:
we have to announce to you, Amadis of Gaul, King of
Great Britain, and you his son, Knight of the Great
Serpent, that we are come into these parts with the
intention of destroying this city of Constantinople, on
account of the injury and loss which the much hon-
ored King Amato of Persia, our cousin and friend, has
received from this bad Emperor, giving him favor and
aid because a part of his territory has been taken away
from him by fraud. And as our desire in this thing is
260
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
also to gain glory and fame in it, so also has fortune
treated ns favorably in that regard, for we know the
great news, which has gone through all the world, of
your great chivalry. We have agreed, therefore, if it
is agreeable to you, or if your might is sufficient for it,
to attempt a battle of our persons against yours in
presence of this great company of the nations, the
conquered to submit to the will of the conquerors, or
to go to any place where they may order. And if you
refuse this, we shall be able, with much cause, to join
all your past glories to our own, counting them as
being gained by us, whence it will clearly be seen in
the future how the victory will be on our side.”
This challenge was taken to the Christian camp by
a black and beautiful damsel, richly attired, and was
discussed there in council. Amadis put an end to the
discussion by saying, —
“ ‘ My good lords, as the affairs of men, like those of
nations, are in the hands and will of God, whence no
one can escape but as He wills, if we should in any
way withdraw from this demand, it would give great
courage to our enemies, and, more than this, great in-
jury to our honor; especially so in this country, where
we are strangers, and no one has seen what our power
is, which in our own land is notorious, so that, while
there we may be esteemed for courage, here we should
be judged the greatest of cowards. Thus, placing con-
fidence in the merey of the Lord, I determine that
the battle shall take place without delay/
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
261
“ ‘ If this is your wish/ said King Lisuarte and King
Perion, ‘ so may it be, and may God help you with His
grace! ’
“ Then the King Amadis said to the damsel, —
“ ' Friend, tell your lord and the Queen Calafia that
we desire the battle with those arms that are most
agreeable to them; that the field shall be this field,
divided in the middle, — I giving my word that for
nothing which may happen will we be suceored by our
own. And let them give the same order to their own;
and if they wish the battle now, now it shall be/
“ The damsel departed with this reply, which she
repeated to those two princes. And the Queen Calafia
asked her how the Christians appeared.
“ ‘ Very nobly/ replied she; 'for they are all hand-
some and well armed. Yet I tell you, Queen, that,
among them, this Knight of the Serpent [Esplandian,
son of Amadis] is such as neither the past nor the
present, nor, I believe, any who are to come, have ever
seen one so handsome and so elegant, nor will see in
the days which are to be. 0 Queen, what shall I say to
you, but that, if he were of our faith, we might believe
that our Gods had made him with their own hands,
with all their power and wisdom, so that he laeks in
nothing ? ’
“ The Queen, who heard her, said, —
“ ‘ Damsel, my friend, your words are too great/
“ ‘ It is not so/ said she ; ‘ for, excepting the sight of
him, there is nothing else which can give account of
his great excellence/
262
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
“ < Then I say to yon/ said the Queen, e that I will
not fight with such a man until I have first seen and
talked with him; and I make this request to the Sul-
tan, that he will gratify me in this thing, and arrange
that I may see him/
“ The Sultan said, —
“ ‘ I will do everything, O Queen, agreeably to your
wish/
“ ‘ Then/ said the damsel, ‘ I will go and obtain that
which you ask for, according to your desire/
“ And, turning her horse, she approached the camp
again, so that all thought that she brought the agree-
ment for the battle. But as she approached, she called
the Kings to the door of the tent, and said, —
“ ‘ King Amadis, the Queen Calafia demands of you
that you give order for her safe conduct, that she may
come to-morrow morning and see your son/
“ Amadis began to laugh, and said to the Kings, —
“ f How does this demand seem to you ? ’
“ ‘ I say, let her come/ said King Lisuarte: ‘ it is a
very good thing to see the most distinguished woman
in the world/
“ ‘ Take this for your reply/ said Amadis to the dam-
sel; ‘ and say that she shall be treated with all truth
and honor/
“ The damsel, having received this message, returned
with great pleasure to the Queen, and told her what it
was. The Queen said to the Sultan, —
“ ‘ Wait and prosper, then, till I have seen him ; and
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
263
charge your people that in the mean time there may
be no outbreak/
“ ‘ Of that/ he said, ‘ you may be secure/
“ At once she returned to her ships; and she spent
the whole night thinking whether she would go with
arms or without them. But at last she determined
that it would be more dignified to go in the dress of a
woman. And when the morning came she rose, and
directed them to bring one of her dresses, all of gold,
with many precious stones, and a turban wrought with
great art. It had a volume of many folds, in the man-
ner of a toca , and she placed it upon her head as if it
had been a - hood [capellina ]; it was all of gold, em-
broidered with stones of great value. They brought
out an animal which she rode, the strangest that ever
was seen. It had ears as large as two shields; a broad
forehead which had but one eye, like a mirror; the
openings of its nostrils were very large, but its nose
was short and blunt. From its mouth turned up two
tusks, each of them two palms long. Its color was
yellow, and it had many violet spots upon its skin, like
an ounce. It was larger than a dromedary, had its
feet cleft like those of an ox, and ran as swiftly as the
wind, and skipped over the rocks as lightly, and held
itself erect on any part of them, as do the mountain-
goats. Its food was dates and figs and phas, and noth-
ing else. Its flank and haunches and breast were very
beautiful. On this animal, of which you have thus
heard, mounted this beautiful Queen, and there rode
264
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
behind her two thousand women of her train, dressed
in the very richest clothes. There brought up the rear
twenty damsels clothed in uniform, the trains of whose
dresses extended so far that, falling from each beast,
they dragged four fathoms on the ground.
“ With this equipment and ornament the Queen pro-
ceeded to the Emperor’s camp, where she saw all the
Kings, who had come out upon the plain. They had
seated themselves on very rich chairs, upon cloth of
gold, and they themselves were armed, because they
had not much confidence in the promises of the Pa-
gans. So they sallied out to receive her at the door
of the tent, where she was dismounted into the arms
of Don Quadragante ;* and the two Kings, Lisuarte
and Perion, took her by the hands, and placed her be-
tween them in a chair. When she was seated, looking
from one side to the other, she saw Esplandian next to
King Lisuarte, who held him by the hand; and from
the superiority of his beauty to that of all the others,
she knew at once who he was, and said to herself, ‘ O,
my Gods! what is this ? I declare to you, I have
never seen any one who can be compared to him, nor
shall I ever see any one.’ And he turning his beauti-
ful eyes upon her beautiful face, she perceived that the
rays which leaped out from his resplendent beauty,
entering in at her eyes, penetrated to her heart in such
a way, that, if she were not conquered yet by the great
* Quadragante was a distinguished giant, who had been conquered
by Amadis, and was now his sure friend.
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA,
265
force of arms, or by the great attacks of her enemies,
she was softened and broken by that sight and by her
amorous passion, as if she had passed between mallets
of iron. And as she saw this, she reflected that, if
she stayed longer, the great fame which she had ac-
quired as a manly cavalier, by so many dangers and
labors, would be greatly liazarded. She saw that by
any delay she should expose herself to the risk of dis-
honor, by being turned to that native softness which
women of nature consider to be an ornament; and
therefore resisting, with great pain, the feelings which
she had subjected to her will, she rose from her seat,
and said, —
“ ‘ Knight of the Great Serpent, for two exeellences
which distinguish you above all mortals I have made
inquiry. The first, that of your great beauty, which,
if one has not seen, no relation is enough to tell the
greatness of; the other, the valor and force of your
brave heart. The one of these I have seen, which is
such as I have never seen nor could hope to see,
though many years of searching should be granted me.
The other shall be made manifest on the field, against
this valiant Kadiaro, Sultan of Liquia. Mine shall be
shown against this mighty king your father; and if
fortune grant that we come alive from this battle, as
we hope to come from other battles, then I will talk
with you, before I return to my home, of some things
of my own affairs/
“ Then, turning towards the Kings, she said to them,
12
266
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
“‘Kings, rest in good health. I go hence to that
place where you shall see me with very different dress
from this which I now wear, hoping that in that field
the King Amadis, who trusts in fickle fortune that he
may never be conquered hy any knight, however val-
iant, nor by any beast, however terrible, may there be
conquered by a woman/
“ Then taking the two older Kings by the hand, she
permitted them to help her mount upon her strange
steed/’
At this point the novel assumes a tone of high vir-
tue ( yirtus , mannishness, prejudice of the more brutal
sex) on the subject of woman’s rights, in especial of
woman’s right to fight in the field with gold* armor,
lance in rest, and casque closed. We will show the
reader, as she follows us, how careful she must be, if,
in any island of the sea which has been slipped by,
unknown, by the last five centuries, she ever happen to
meet a cavalier of the true school of chivalry.
Esplandian himself would not in any way salute the
Queen Calafia, as she left him, Kor was this a cop-
perhead prejudice of color; for that prejudice was not
yet known.
“ He made no reply to her, both because he looked
at her as something strange, however beautiful she
appeared to him, and because he saw her come thus in
arms, so different from the style in which a woman
should have come. For he considered it as very dis-
honorable that she should, attempt anything so differ-
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
267
ent from what the word of God commanded her, that
the woman should be in subjection to the man, but
rather should prefer to be the ruler of all men, not by
her courtesy, but by force of arms, and, above all, be-
'cause he hated to place himself in relations with her,
because she was one of the infidels whom he mortally
despised and had taken a vow to destroy/’
The romance t*hen goes into an account of the prep-
arations for the contest on both sides.
After all the preliminaries were arranged, “ they sep-
arated for a little, and rode together furiously in full
career. The Sultan struck Esplandian in the shield
with so hard a blow that a part of the lance passed
through it for as much as an ell, so that all who saw it
thought that it had passed through the body. But it
was not so, but the lance passed under the arm next
the .body, and went out on the other side without
touching him. But Esplandian, who knew that his
much-loved lady was looking on [Leonorina, the
daughter of the Emperor of Constantinople], so struck
the Sultan 5 s shield that the iron passed through it and
struck him on some of the strongest plates of his
armor, upon which the spear turned. But, with the
force of the encounter, it shook him so roughly from
the saddle that it rolled him upon the ground, and so
shook the helmet as to tear it off from his head; and
thus Esplandian passed by him very handsomely, with-
out receiving any stroke himself. The Queen rushed
upon Amadis, and he upon her, and, before they met,
268
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
each, pointed lance at the other, and they received the
blows upon their shields in such guise that her spear
flew in pieces, while that of Amadis slipped off and
was thrown on one side. Then they both met, shield
to shield, with such force that the Queen was thrown
upon the ground, and the horse of Amadis was so
wounded that he fell with his head cut in two, and
held Amadis with one leg under him. When Esplan-
dian saw this, he leaped from his horse and saved him
from that peril. Meanwhile, the Queen, being put to
her defence, put hand to her sword, and joined herself
to the Sultan, who had raised himself with great diffi-
culty, because his fall was very heavy, and stood there
with his sword and helmet in his hand. They came
on to fight very bravely; but Esplandian, standing, as
I told you, in presence of the Infanta whom he prized
so much, gave the Sultan such hard pressure with such
heavy blows, that, although he was one of the bravest
knights of the Pagans, and by his own prowess had
won many dangerous battles, and was very dexterous
in that art, yet all this served him for nothing; he
could neither give nor parry blows, and constantly lost
ground. The Queen, who had joined fight with Ama-
dis, began giving him many fierce blows, some of
which he received upon his shield, while he let others
be lost; yet he would not put his hand upon his
sword, but, instead of that, took a fragment of the
lance which she had driven through his shield, and
struck her on the top of the helmet with it, so that in
a little while he had knocked the crest away.”
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
269
We wamed those of our fair readers who may have
occasion to defend their rights at the point of the
lance, that the days of chivalry or the cavaliers of
chivalry would be very unhandsome in applying to them
the rules of the tourney. Amadis, it will be observed
here, does not condescend to use his sword against a
woman. And this is not from tenderness, but from
contempt. For when the Queen saw that he only took
the broken truncheon of his lance to her, she fairly
asked him why.
“ ‘ How is this, Amadis ? ’ she said. 1 Do you consider
my force so slight that you think to conquer me with
sticks ? ’
“ And he said to her, —
“ ‘ Queen, I have always been in the habit of serving
women and aiding them; and as you are a woman, if
I should use any weapon against you, I should deserve
to lose all the honors I have ever gained/
“‘ What, then ! ’ said the Queen, ‘ do you rank me
among them ? You shall see !’
“And taking her sword in both her hands, she
struck him with great rage. Amadis raised his shield
and received the blow upon it, which was so brave and
strong that the shield was cut in two. Then, seeing
her joined to him so closely, he passed his stick into
his left hand, seized her by the rim of the shield, and
pulled her so forcibly that, breaking the great thongs
by which she held upon it, he took it from her, lifting
it up in one hand, and forced her to kneel with one
270
THE QUEEN OF CALIFOENIA.
knee on the ground; and when she lightly sprang up,
Amadis threw away his own shield, and, seizing the
other, took the stick, and sprang to her, saying, —
“ ‘ Queen, yield yourself my prisoner, now that your
Sultan is conquered/
“ She turned her head, and saw that Esplandian had
the Sultan already surrendered as his prize. But she
said, f Let me try fortune yet one more turn J ; and
then, raising her sword with both her hands, she struck
upon the crest of his helmet, ^thinking she could cut it
and his head in two. But Amadis warded the blow
very lightly and turned it off, and struck her so heavy
a stroke with that fragment of the lance upon the crest
of her helmet that he stunned her, and made her
sword fall from her hands. Amadis seized the sword,
and, when she was thus disarmed, caught at her hel-
met so strongly that he dragged it from her head, and
said, —
<{< STow are you my prisoner ?’
“ ‘ Yes/ replied she; ‘ for there is nothing left for
me to do/
“At this moment Esplandian came to them with
the Sultan, who had surrendered himself; and, in sight
of all the army, they repaired to the royal encamp-
ment, where they were received with great pleasure,
not only on account of the great victory in battle,
which, after the great deeds in arms which they had
wrought before, as this history has shown, they did not
regard as very remarkable, but because they took this
THE QUEEN OF CALIFOKNIA.
271
success as a good omen for the future. The King
Amadis asked the Count Gandalin to lead their prison-
ers to the Infanta Leonorina, in his behalf and that of
his son Esplandian, and to say to her that he begged
her to do honor to the Sultan, because he was so great
a prince and so strong a knight, and, withal, very
noble; and to do honor to the Queen, became she toas
a woman ; and to say that he trusted in God that thus
they should send to her all those whom they took cap-
tive alive in the battles which awaited them. *
“ The Count took them in charge, and, as the city
was very near, they soon arrived at the palace. Then,
coming into the presence of the Infanta, he delivered
to her the prisoners, and gave the message with which
he was intrusted. The Infanta replied to him, —
“ f Tell King Amadis that I thank him greatly for
this present which he sends me; that I am sure that the
good fortune and great courage which appear in this
adventure will appear in those which await us; and
that we are very desirous to see him here, that, when
we discharge our obligation to his son, we may have
him as a judge between us/
“ The Count kissed her hand, and returned to the
royal camp. Then the Infanta sent to the Empress,
her mother, for a rich robe and head-dress, and, having
disarmed the Queen, made her array herself in them;
and she did the same for the Sultan, having sent for
other robes from the Emperor, her father, and having
dressed their wounds with certain preparations made
272
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
by Master Helisabat. Then tbe Queen, though of so
great fortune, was much astonished to see the great
beauty of Leonorina, and said, —
“ ‘ I tell you, Infanta, that in the same measure in
which I was astonished to see the beauty of your cav-
alier, Esplandian, am I now overwhelmed, beholding
yours. If your deeds correspond to your appearance,
I hold it no dishonor to be your prisoner/
“ f Queen/ said the Infanta, ‘I hope the God in
whom I trust will so direct events that I shall be able
to fulfil every obligation which conquerors acknowl-
edge toward those who submit to them/ ”
With this chivalrous little conversation the Queen
of California disappears from the romance, and conse-
quently from all written history, till the very ddnoue-
ment of the whole story, where, when the rest is
“ wound up,” she is wound up also, to be set a-going
again in her own land of California. And if the chroni-
clers of California find no records of her in any of the
griffin eaves of the Black Canon, it is not our fault,
but theirs. Or, possibly, did she and her party suffer
shipwreck on the return passage from Constantinople
to the Golden Gate ? Their probable route must have
been through the iEgean, over Lebanon and Anti-Leb-
anon to the Euphrates (“ I will sail a fleet over the
Alps,” said Cromwell), down Chesney’s route to the
Persian Gulf, and so home.
After the Sultan and the Queen are taken prisoners,
there are reams of terrific fighting, in which King
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
273
Lisuarte and King Perion and a great many other peo-
pie are killed; but finally the “ Pagans” are all routed,
and the Emperor of Greece retiree into a monastery,
having united Esplandian with his daughter Leonorina,
and ahdicated the throne in their favor. Among the
first acts of their new administration is the disposal of
Calafia.
“ As soon as the Queen Calafia saw these nuptials,
having no more hope of him whom she so much loved
[Esplandian], for a moment her courage left her; and
coming before the new Emperor and these great lords,
she thus spoke to them: —
“ ‘ I am a queen of a great kingdom, in which there
is the greatest abundance of all that is most valued
in the world, such as gold and precious stones. My
lineage is very old, — for it comes from royal blood so
far back that there is no memory of the beginnings of
it, — and my honor is as perfect as it was at my birth.
My fortune has brought me into these countries, whence
I hoped to bring away many captives, but where I am
myself a captive. I do not say of this captivity in
which you see me, that, after all the great experiences
of my life, favorable and adverse, I had believed that
I was strong enough to parry the thrusts of fortune;
but I have found that my heart was tried and afflicted
in my imprisonment, because the great beauty of this
new Emperor overwhekned me in the moment that
my eyes looked upon him. I trusted in my greatness,
and that immense wealth which excites and unites so
274
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
many, that, if I would turn to your religion, I might
gain him for a husband; but when I came into the
presence of this lovely Empress, I regarded it as eer-
tain that they belonged to each other by their equal
rank; and that argument, which showed the vanity
of my thoughts, brought me to the determination in
which I now stand. And since Eternal Fortune has
taken the direction of my passion, I, throwing all my
own strength into oblivion, as the wise do in. those
affairs which have no remedy, seek, if it please you, to
take for my husband some other man, who may be the
son of a king, to be of such power as a good knight
ought to have ; and I will become a Christian. For,
as I have seen the ordered order of your religion, and
the great disorder of all others, I have seen that it is
clear that the law which you follow must be the truth
while that which we follow is lying and falsehood/
“ When the Emperor had heard all this, embracing
her, with a smile he said, ‘ Queen Calafia, my good
friend, till now you have had from me neither word
nor argument; for my condition is such that I cannot
permit my eyes to look, without terrible hatred, upon
any but those who are in the holy law of truth, nor
wish well to such as are out of it. But now that the
Omnipotent Lord has had such mercy on you as to
give you such knowledge that you become his ser-
vant, you excite in me at once the same love as if the
King, my father, had begotten ns both. And as for
this you ask, I -will give you, by my troth, a knight
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
275
who is even more complete in valor and in lineage
than you have demanded/
“Then, taking by the hand Talanque, his cousin,
the son of the King of Sobradisa, —very large he was
of person, and very handsome withal, — he said, —
“ 1 Queen, here you see one of my cousins, son of the
King wiiom you here see, — the brother of the King
my father: take him to yourself, that I may secure
to you the good fortune which you will bring to him/
“ The Queen looked at him, and, finding his appear-
ance good, said, —
“i am content with his presence, and well satisfied
with his lineage and person, since you assure me of
them. Be pleased to summon for me Liota, my sister,
who is with my fleet in the harbor, that I may send
orders to her that there shall be no movement among
my people/
“ The Emperor sent the Admiral Tartarie for her
immediately, and he, having found her, brought her
with him, and placed her before the Emperor. The
Queen Calafia told her all her wish, commanding her
and entreating her to confirm it. Her sister, Liota,
kneeling upon the ground, kissed her hands, and said
that there was no reason why she should make any
explanation of her will to those who were in her ser-
vice. The Queen raised her and embraced her, with
the tears in her eye s, and led her by the hand to Ta-
lanque, saying, —
“ ‘ Thou shalt be my lord, and the lord of my land,
276
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
which is a very great kingdom ; and, for thy sake, this
island shall change the Custom which for a very long
time it has preserved, so that the natural generations of
men and women shall succeed henceforth, in place of
the order in which the men have been separated so
long. And if you have here any friend whom you
greatly love, who is of the same rank with you, let
him be betrothed to my sister here ; and no long time
shall pass, before, with thy help, she shall be queen of
a great land/
“ Talanque greatly loved Maneli the Prudent, both
because they were brothers by birth and because they
held the same faith. He led him forth, and said to
her,—
“ ‘ My Queen, since the Emperor, my lord, loves this
knight as much as he loves me, and as much as I love
thee, take him, and do with him as you would do by
me/
“ f Then, I ask/ said she, * that we, accepting your
religion, may become your wives/
“Then the Emperor Esplandian and the several
Kings, seeing their wishes thus confirmed, took the
Queen and her sister to the chapel, turned them into
Christians, and espoused them to those two so famous
knights; and thus they converted all who were in
the fleet. And immediately they gave order, so that
Talanque, taking the fleet of Don Galaor, his father,
and Maneli that of King Cildadan, with all their peo-
pie, garnished and furnished with all things necessary,
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
277
set sail with, their wives, plighting their faith to the
Emperor that, if he should need any help from them,
they would give it as to their own brother.
“What happened to them afterwards, I must be
excused from telling; for they passed through many
very strange achievements of the greatest valor; they
fought many battles, and gained many kingdoms, of
which, if we should give the story, there would be dan-
ger that we should never have done”
With this tantalizing statement, California and the
Queen of California pass from romance and from his-
tory. But, some twenty-five years after these words
were written and published by Garcia Ordonez de Mon-
talvo, Cortez and his braves happened upon the penin-
sula, which they thought an island, which stretches
down between the Gulf of California and the sea.
This romance of Esplandian was the yellow-covered
novel of their day; Talanque and Maneli were their
Aramis and Athos. “ Come,” said some one, “ let us
name the new island California: perhaps some one
will find gold here yet, and precious stones.” And
so, from the romance, the peninsula, and the gulf,
and afterwards the State, got their name. And they
have rewarded the romance by giving to it in these
later days the fame of being godmother of a great
republic.
The antiquarians of California have universally, we
believe, recognized this as the origin of her name,
since Mr, Hale called attention to this rare romance.
278
THE QUEEN OE CALIFORNIA.
As, even now, there are not perhaps half a dozen
copies of it in America, we have transferred to. our
pages every word which belongs to that primeval
history of California and her Queen,
NOTE.
[From the Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, October, 1872.]
THE COSMOGONY OF DANTE AND COLUMBUS.
When Columbus sailed on his fourth voyage, he wrote to Fer-
dinand and Isabella a letter which contains the following state-
ment with regard to the South Sea, then undiscovered, known
to us as the Pacific Ocean : —
“ I believe that if I should pass under the equator, in arriving
at this higher region of which I speak, I should find there a
milder temperature and a diversity in the stars and in the wa-
ters. Not that I believe that the highest point is navigable
whence these currents flow, nor that we can mount there, because
I am convinced that there is the terrestrial paradise, whence no
one can enter but by the will of God.”
This curious passage, of which the language seems so mysti-
cal, represents none the less the impression which Columbus had
of the physical cosmogony of the undiscovered half of the world.
It is curious to observe that the most elaborate account of this
cosmogony, and that by which alone it has been handed down to
the memory of modern times, is that presented in Dante’s “ Di-
vina Commedia,” where he represents the mountain of Purgatory,
at the antipodes of Jerusalem, crowned by the Terrestrial Para-
dise. It is this paradise of which Columbus says, “ No one can
enter it but by the will of God.”
Of Dante’s Cosmogony a very accurate account is given by
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
279
Miss Rossetti in her essay on Dante, recently published, to
•which she gives the name of “ The Shadow of Dante.” Her
statement is in these words: —
“ Dante divides our globe into two elemental hemispheres, —
the Eastern, chiefly of land; the Western, almost wholly of wa-
ter. In the midst of the inhabited land-hemisphere he places
Jerusalem, within the same hemisphere, so that its central and
Hell’s lowest point is exactly under Jerusalem; he places Hell
in the midst of the uninhabited sea-hemisphere ; .he places Pur-
gatory, as the antipodes to Jerusalem, distant from it by the
whole diameter of the globe. Thus, on and within the earth,
are situated the temporal and the eternal prison-house of sin. Nei-
ther, in Dante's view, formed part of God’s original creation,
wherein sin was not; but the fall of Lucifer at once produced the
one and prepared the other, convulsing and inverting the world
which God had made. The rebel Seraph fell headlong from
Heaven directly above the Western hemisphere, till then a con-
tinent, in whose midst was Eden; and Earth, in the twofold
horror of his sight and presence, underwent a twofold change.
First, to veil her face, she brought in upon herself the vast floods
of the Eastern sea-hemisphere, transferring to their place all her
dry land, save Eden, which thus was left insulated in mid-ocean.
And secondly, to escape his contact as he sank and sank through
her surface, through her bowels, till the middle of his colossal
frame, having reached the centre of gravity, remained there fixed
from the sheer physical impossibility of sinking any lower, she
caused a vast mass of her internal substance to flee before his
face, and, leaving eternally void the space it once had occupied
to form the inverted pit-cone of Hell, she heaved it up directly
under Eden, amid the new waste of waters, to form the towering
mountain-cone on whose peak the Terrestrial Paradise should
thenceforth, to the end of time, sit by, above all elemental strife,
and whose sides should, after the Redemption of Man, furnish the
Purgatorial stair whereby his foot might aspire once more to
tread, his eye to contemplate, his regained inheritance.”
280
THE QUEEN OF CALIFORNIA.
The allusion thus made by Columbus to the mystical cosmog-
ony on which Dante wrought, is, I suppose, the last serious allu-
sion made to it, as to a matter of fact, by any geographer. On
the other hand, I am not aware that any of the distinguished
critics of Dante have called attention to the fact, that, so late as
the year 1503, a navigator so illustrious as Columbus was still
conducting his voyages on the supposition that Dante’s cosmog-
ony was true in fact. All readers of later voyages will remember
how often, without any reference to this cosmogony, the islands
of the Southern Pacific have been spoken of as a terrestrial par-
adise. It may be worthy, therefore, of remark, that the precise
antipodes of Jerusalem, which, according to the cosmogony of
Dante, would be the place of the summit of the terrestrial para-
dise, is just south of Tahiti and southwest of Piteairn’s Island, the
two points where different enthusiasts among modern navigators
have fancied that their terrestrial paradise was found. These
islands are, in fact, the nearest land to the spot which Columbus,
in the half mystical and half geographical letter which I have
cited, indicates as the terrestrial paradise.
It is to be remembered, also, that it has been proved that the
Pacific islands have grown up on the crests of extinct volcanoes.
Mr. Longfellow’s note to the “ Purgatorio ” thus describes the
mountain which Columbus expected to find there : —
“ The mountain of Purgatory is a vast conical mountain, rising
steep and high from the waters of the Southern Ocean, at a point
antipodal to Mount Sion, in Jerusalem. Around it run seven
terraces, on which are punished severally the Seven Deadly Sins.
Hough stairways, cut in the rock, lead up from terrace to terrace,
and on the summit is the garden of the Terrestrial Paradise/ 7 —
Longfellow 1 s first Note to the Purgatorio , Vot 77, Div. Com., p. 159.
E. E. H.
CONFIDENCE.
Dear little Janet! And you want me to tell her
story ? Why, she would say there was no story to
tell
I say “ Dear little Janet! ” For all that, she is a
woman grown now; and the last time I saw her there
was a great bouncing Donald in her lap. For a' that,
and for a’ that, she will always be “ little Janet ” to
me.
There never was a child who showed so fully what
the woman was to prove. The first time I ever saw
her was one day when her father had fallen in with
me on a cross-road in the Piscataquis valley: that is
far away, forty miles above Bangor in Maine. He was
on his hay-cart: I was sitting on a log. We nodded
to each other; and he, seeing my knapsack and stick,
asked if I would not mount with him, which I did;
and so, before long, we came up to his cheerful, ram-
bling, great shingle-palace of a house, where I had
already promised to pass the night with him. We
brought up in front of the barn, from which we had
already heard shouts of “ Coop ! Coop! ” Who should
282
CONFIDENCE.
appear at a little three-cornered window in the gable
but little Janet, flaxen curls flying wild about ber head.
“Hurrah!” said “Miss Janet” “Hurrah!” said her
father: “jump, birdie! ” and, before poor cockney I well
understood the order, the child flew out of the window,
down into his arms, and they both rolled over and oyer
in the hay. I have seen many a jump into hay-carts,
— nay, have made my share; but I never saw such a
flight as that. And even then it was not the distance
which seemed most surprising: it was the absolute
promptness, so perfectly fearless : —
“ Hers not to make reply,
Hers not to question why.”
He said “ Jump! ” and she jumped, not because
she calculated the height, or had done it before, but
because he told her to, and she loved and trusted him.
That was little Janet all over.
How, steadiness like that and readiness like that
breed steadiness and readiness. It seems queer to me
that I had never seen Janet before, I have seen her so
much and so often since. I had not seen her long, be-
fore I found that I trusted her as implicitly as she did
me : indeed, there was not a man who worked on the
farm who had not absolute confidence in the child, or
was not sure of her promptness, punctually, and affec-
tion. Hor was it men or women alone who felt so.
The horses and the cows — nay, the pigs and the hens
— all knew her cheerful voice and her ready attend-
CONFIDENCE.
283
ance and her steady hand. Jotham said she could
collar and harness that cross brute “ Mad March ”; that
she would climb into the manger, and put the wretch’s
collar on, and put the bit in his mouth, because she
was such a lady. I know she could do it; and of
course Mad March let her do it; for he could have
eaten her, had he been carnivorous, and hardly know,
he had tasted food. But it was not because she was a
lady, but because her easy confidence, as I say, created
the same confidence in all.
Do you remember Miss Yonge’s pretty story of Miss
Keble ? The little wxens trusted her so entirely that
they came to pick the red berries which were printed
on her muslin dress; and when they found 'they could
not get any of them off, they flew down, and crept
up under the skirt, thinking they should get at
the berries on the other side. I have seen the little
birds do that with Janet, — not such wrens as those,
because there are none in Maine, but some little
witches not so much bigger than an English wren,
whose name I do not know. Wren or no wren, they
knew Janet, even if she did not know their name nor
they hers.
The pretty picture Mr. Billings has made of her just
represents both sides. I mean, she trusted the birds,
and the birds trusted her. In the picture you see just
how it was. This little whistler has fascinated her,
and she has fascinated him. He knows she will not
hurt him; and it almost seems as if she were listening
284
CONFIDENCE.
to him, and learning from him, as, in the “Arabian
Nights,” and in the German fairy-tales, the girls of the
real blue blood understand all the language of cater-
pillar, cricket, grasshopper, toad, frog, weasel, pussy-
cat, tomtit, ostrich, camelopard, and all other verte-
brates or invertebrates. Dear little Janet! she is as
good a fairy as the best of them.
After the haymow flight, when she was as big a girl
as Mr. Billings has made her, we had many a tramp
together up brook, through moose-wood, and over
mountain. I have seen her pass from rock to rock on
one of the ridges of Ktaadn, with no thought of taking
a staff, with no kind of uneasiness, though she were
just on the sheer edge of that precipice which you
remember, perhaps, on the southern face of Ktaadn. I
have seen it fifty miles away. Yes: and I have seen the
child’s father fell a pine-tree a hundred and fifty years
old, that we might walk dry-shod across a stream; and,
the moment it fell, little Janet was the first to swing
herself upon the trunk, to run across as lightly as one
of her own little birds would; and in ten seconds was
beckoning and waving her hand from the rocks on
the other shore. We could not hear a word she said
for the rush of the rapids in the gorge below. Her
father, who worships her, — as well he may, —used to
tell a story of an experience of theirs in a sort of out-
lying station he had, half shanty and half lumber-camp,
just on the edge of the woods. Mrs. Trevor had gone
up with him and Janet and the children; and they
CONFIDENCE.
285
were to have a sort of picnic frolic for tliree or four
days. But one of the little boys was not well; so
their mother had taken them all home, leaving Janet
to cook for her father, who had something in hand.
Poor fellow ! In the middle of the second morning,
as he pried up a heavy sill from its resting-place, the
ground gave way under him, his bar slipped, and he
and the log rolled down together in the hole he had
made, — poor Trevor underneath, and Ms leg broken
just above the ankle. Janet was with him in two
seconds; but she could not free him, nor could five
others like her. “She did not wait long,” he said.
Off she went like a bird, down to McMurtrie’s pas-
ture, a mile and a half down the intervale: — over
the root-fence, into the pasture, and then, threading
through the high ferns, she began to call, “ Dan! Dan!
Dan ! ” ISTow, Dan was a vicious old stallion whom
McMurtrie chose to keep ranging in his pasture and
in the woods. When McMurtrie or any of Ms men
wanted Dan, which was perhaps four times in a sum-
mer, it took a peck of salt, and lurings and chasings,
lariats and lassos indescribable, to woo him and to
win him. And now tMs child — for Janet was still
not woman grown — only called Dan two or three
times, and down through the underbrush came the
great hulking creature, glowering at her; and, as she
slowly walked up to him with a handful of raspberries,
he did not turn away; and then and there he stood
and she stood, — she on a rough boulder, he nibbling
286
CONFIDENCE.
at the fruit; she rubbing Ms head between the ears,
he whinnying with satisfaction that he had company.
And at last, when Janet thought the entente cordiale
was attained, she coolly put her little green scarf
through his mouth, beMnd his great teeth, and, be-
fore he knew it, she had flung herself on his back and
was away. They were not long making the six miles
to the village. As she came in by the saw-mill, she
met Dr. Kittredge. She told him her story; and in
three minutes he and four or five other men were in a
lumber-wagon on their way to the rescue. Kittredge
told me this himself. They asked the girl if she
would not go with them; but Janet said, No: some-
body must take Dan back to the pasture; and so she
went ahead of the party. Poor Trevor was released
in less than two hours from the time he fell.
But you want to know how Wildair first met her.
It is John Wildair, remember, — not Taylor: Taylor is
in Australia. John is Taylor s brother. That is just
the way with you young people. All you care about
is the love-making and the wedding. Now, I might
entertain you for an hour with pleasant accounts of
how the Trevors came into the Piscataquis valley, and
how I came to be there, and of the origin of the Trevor
family; and you would skip it all to see how the story
turned out, and who married them. Only Helen, of
all of you, would read about the early history of Com-
wall; and she would do it, not because she wanted to
know, but from love of me.
CONFIDENCE.
287
Well, John Wildair first saw Janet on hoard a Ken-
nebec steamer, — literally on hoard, if you will rightly
consider the derivation of that term. John Wildair
was sitting on the deck, at Bath, watching as the pas-
sengers came on board. And two men brought an old
lady, in a chair, down the wharf and upon the deck;
and Janet came with her, and wrapped her up warm,
and coddled her, and made her feel quite at home.
Then the old lady wished she had some of the oranges
which a German woman was selling on the wharf;
and Janet ran ashore to buy them. While the Ger-
man fiddled about the change, the boat cast off, the
captain’s bell struck, and they had fairly pulled the
gangway in, when Janet came running back with her
fruit.
Did she stop ? Not she !
“ Please run it on again,” she said; and the wharf-
hands obeyed her,—just as Dan obeyed her in the
pasture. And the little bird, as I called her before, ran
right over the board, — the boat moving the end along
steadily as she did so, — and sprang upon the deck,
as perfectly unconscious as if she had been walking
the floor. Years after John Wildair tried to make
her remember it: but she did not remember it at
all; said, indeed, there was nothing to remember. She
said there was no danger, and consequently no cour-
age; that the plank would remain on the boat fully
five seconds, and the slowest woman in Christendom
could have crossed in two. Still, John Wildair won-
288
CONFIDENCE.
dered when lie saw her do it; and, as I believe, ad-
mired her, then and there, that she did not spend ten
seconds first in inquiries of the wharf-men whether or
no it would be safe to cross the gangway.
But John was destined to see her again far, far
away.
Tom Trevor went to the war in the Forty-seventh
Maine Bifles. Tom was the wild-cat, black-haired
brother that dared everything and went every-
where. And after that horrid carnage at BelTs
Ford, when the lists of the Forty-seventh were
printed, Tom’s name was among the missing. Dead,
perhaps ? Janet said, “ No, not dead.” She was
sure he was not dead. If he had been shot, some
man would have seen him fall, and would have told
of it; for they all liked Tom. No: Janet, with all
her own clear-sightedness, which is what Mr. Billings
and I call “ Confidence,” pronounced that he was in
a Rebel prison. Then the next thing for her to do was
to go and find him. Her father would not hear of it;
for, as I said, he worshipped Janet. But, because peo-
pie are fain to obey those whom they worship, he had
to do as Janet bade him before he knew it; and in
fewer days than it has taken me to tell this story, as
w r e say when we write in the Dime Series, Janet was
in Washington, hesieging Knapp at the Sanitary, and
Stanton in his den, and General Townsend in his, for
some sort of pass that would carry her across the lines.
Little good did she get of that. Of course, there was
CONFIDENCE.
289
no pass for her of any kind or sort; and they all told
her, with great tenderness, that she would have done
much better to stay at home.
But Janet did not go home, for all that. By this
time they knew, and she knew, that Tom Trevor was
in Richmond, in Hospital Ho. 21, where were onr
wounded prisoners. Whether he was there because
he was sick, or because he was wounded, she did not
know, nor could anybody learn; but he was there.
What Janet did was to go up to; Harper’s Eerry.
Then she turned up at Stanton and Lexington, and,
one fine day, appeared in Lynchburg, — quite comfort-
ably within Rebel territory, — very seedy, and speaking
very bad English and very good French. She called
on all the ministers in Lynchburg; she waited at
Lynchburg till she could be sure whether they would
not want her as a teacher in the academy. Mean-
while she knit stockings like fury for the wounded;
and in the hospital there was not a volunteer nurse
as ready and careful as Janet, nor so universal a
favorite as she. And so it happened, that when, in
the spring of ’64, Butler struck in so suddenly at Ber-
muda Hundred, and fought the battle of the fog; and
when the wounded began to be sent to the rear from the
Wilderness and Spottsylvania; when Dr. MacGregor
and Mr. Harris went down to Richmond with fresh
spring vegetables for the wounded, — Mile. Laeretelle,
whom you and I know better as Janet, went with
them, with express charges to look after certain
13 s
290
CONFIDENCE.
wounded of the Twenty-ninth Virginia, Nobody
could go in without Dr. MacGregor’s pass; but he
would take Mile. Lacretelle anywhere.
That was the way it happened that Janet, after she
had carried to Adam Clement the stockings his mother
had sent, and to Jesse Burton the head-rest Mary
sent, and the boxes of home-baked cakes to Jo Strat-
ton and Walt Victor, and the letters to twenty others,
whom she found in one hospital and another, appointed
herself to duty one day at Hospital HSTo. 21, with a
note from Dr. MacGregor to our good friend, Dr. Sam-
pie, who was in charge there. The note said that she
was a perfect nurse, and could speak French and Ger-
man well. Sample had little to do with French or
with German; but he had no surplus of perfect nurses.
And so it was, that, one morning when Tom Trevor
was waiting for his breakfast of mush and molasses,
it was brought to him, not by the nice, red-turbaned
black woman who brought it Monday, but by a tiny
little white woman, in the full dress of a sister of
charity. Tom hopped a foot off his bed when the
sister of charity turned round on him; but the sister
of charity magnetized Tom also, so that his “ Janet! ”
died unspoken. But from that moment, I can tell
you, Tom began to get well.
So did John Wildair, who lay in the next bed; and
so did all the Smiths and the Joneses and the rest,
with whom this story has nothing to do. Never was
there such a sunshiny place as was that ward of No. 21,
CONFIDENCE.
291
till they were all packed up and packed off, and sent
back into the country.
And then ! Why, by that time Mile. Laeretelle had
her way as perfectly as any red-tapist of them all.
Hot Dr. Sample nor Dr. MacGregor could draw up
requisitions with more formality, insist on preee-
dent more precisely, or do as he chose more certainly,
than could the French nurse. She never asked for
anything that was not right; and, when she asked
for anything, she asked as if she were certain it was
to be granted. So the end was, that it always was
granted. Tom Trevor was assigned to Lynchburg.
Dear me ! how John Wildair wished that he could be
assigned to Lynchburg. He would have given his
hand had he dared to ask her to assign him to Lynch-
burg. And the only reason he did not dare was his
fear that she would find out, by his asking, how it was
as a matter of life and death for him to go there. Queer
human nature ! He hoped she knew she was all in all
to him; and yet that was the one thing he did not tell
her, and was so afraid she would find out. Why was
he afraid ? Why ? O, it is the old, old story. What
if she did find out, and then moved Tom into Ward A,
and let Eebecca come into Ward B in her place,—
what would John Wildair do then, poor thing ? So
John Wildair did not say one word; and so he was
assigned to Lewisburg when they were assigned to
Lynchburg.
Die of a broken heart ? Not a bit of it. He did
292
CONFIDENCE.
not die at all; lie got well. He bribed a black brother
to let him out of a window; and be stole a horse, and
rode him thirty miles before daylight. Then he slept
all day in a barn ; and then he stole another horse, and
then another : and so he turned up at Harper’s Ferry;
and so he was in Battery Seven in front of Petersburg;
and so he marched under Ord to Appomattox Court
House; and so, when Janet brought poor Tom, still
limping, down to our lines, and hunted up the Forty-
seventh Maine, John Wildair was in command, because
he ranked every officer left in the field. And did not
John Wildair tell her then how glad he was to see
her!
Yes. And she was glad to see him! And John
had her and Tom sent back to the field-hospital in an
old carryall, and in the evening came down to see
how Tom had borne the journey. And after that he
took Janet out to see the sunset behind the river; and
they walked and they walked, and John told her how
desolate all life had been to him since she and Tom
went to Lynchburg, and begged her, by the love he
bore her, never to leave him again, without saying
he might come after her.
I don’t know what he said to her; but I know, that,
after the Porty-seventh was paid off, I married them
both, and that there, according to all rule, this story
ought to end.
When Mr. Billings sent the painting to John to
look at, and said it was named “ Confidence,” Janet
CONFIDENCE.
293
asked if “ Confidence ” was not Latin for “ Brass ” But
John said “No”: he said that it was a word which
meant Faith and Love mixed together. And we hung
the picture above the mantel in the dining-room; and,
as we sat looking at it, the brothers and sisters came
in for prayers, and old Chloe brought in the little
Donald. And old Grandfather Trevor opened the old
Bible he brought from Cornwall, and he read, —
“ I give unto you power to tread on serpents
and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy,
and nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
THE END.
Cambridge : Electrotyped and Printed by Welch, Bigelow, & Co.
*4
MENDERY *»m> 2 2 19£
813 H13h
3 "1353 01
^00077 □
815 HALE.
H13h His level best.
FEB 2 7 1945
/Qcrdbt^
Dian n e 4 £ 1 e h
¥3111
Aju^t- U'C L &\ S lQ'C
7
*V 7 /fe> ±L± Alt
^amie .cAv -^£7-
1
circff
( CrOlL
CIRC