BACKLOG STUDIES

By Charles Dudley Warner

FIRST STUDY

I

The fire on the hearth has almost gone out in New England; thehearth has gone out; the family has lost its center; age ceases to berespected; sex is only distinguished by a difference between millinerybills and tailors' bills; there is no more toast-and-cider; the youngare not allowed to eat mince-pies at ten o'clock at night; half a cheeseis no longer set to toast before the fire; you scarcely ever see infront of the coals a row of roasting apples, which a bright little girl, with many a dive and start, shielding her sunny face from the fire withone hand, turns from time to time; scarce are the gray-haired sires whostrop their razors on the family Bible, and doze in the chimney-corner. A good many things have gone out with the fire on the hearth. 

I do not mean to say that public and private morality have vanishedwith the hearth. A good degree of purity and considerable happiness arepossible with grates and blowers; it is a day of trial, when we are allpassing through a fiery furnace, and very likely we shall be purifiedas we are dried up and wasted away. Of course the family is gone, as aninstitution, though there still are attempts to bring up a family rounda "register. " But you might just as well try to bring it up by hand, aswithout the rallying-point of a hearthstone. Are there any homesteadsnowadays? Do people hesitate to change houses any more than they doto change their clothes? People hire houses as they would a masqueradecostume, liking, sometimes, to appear for a year in a little fictitiousstone-front splendor above their means. Thus it happens that so manypeople live in houses that do not fit them. I should almost as soonthink of wearing another person's clothes as his house; unless I couldlet it out and take it in until it fitted, and somehow expressed my owncharacter and taste. But we have fallen into the days of conformity. Itis no wonder that people constantly go into their neighbors' houses bymistake, just as, in spite of the Maine law, they wear away each other'shats from an evening party. It has almost come to this, that you mightas well be anybody else as yourself. 

Am I mistaken in supposing that this is owing to the discontinuance ofbig chimneys, with wide fireplaces in them? How can a person be attachedto a house that has no center of attraction, no soul in it, in thevisible form of a glowing fire, and a warm chimney, like the heart inthe body? When you think of the old homestead, if you ever do, yourthoughts go straight to the wide chimney and its burning logs. No wonderthat you are ready to move from one fireplaceless house into another. But you have something just as good, you say. Yes, I have heard ofit. This age, which imitates everything, even to the virtues ofour ancestors, has invented a fireplace, with artificial, iron, orcomposition logs in it, hacked and painted, in which gas is burned, sothat it has the appearance of a wood-fire. This seems to me blasphemy. Do you think a cat would lie down before it? Can you poke it? Ifyou can't poke it, it is a fraud. To poke a wood-fire is more solidenjoyment than almost anything else in the world. The crowning humanvirtue in a man is to let his wife poke the fire. I do not know how anyvirtue whatever is possible over an imitation gas-log. What a sense ofinsincerity the family must have, if they indulge in the hypocrisy ofgathering about it. With this center of untruthfulness, what must thelife in the family be? Perhaps the father will be living at the rate often thousand a year on a salary of four thousand; perhaps the mother, more beautiful and younger than her beautified daughters, will rouge;perhaps the young ladies will make wax-work. A cynic might suggestas the motto of modern life this simple legend, --"just as good asthe real. " But I am not a cynic, and I hope for the rekindling ofwood-fires, and a return of the beautiful home light from them. Ifa wood-fire is a luxury, it is cheaper than many in which we indulgewithout thought, and cheaper than the visits of a doctor, made necessaryby the want of ventilation of the house. Not that I have anythingagainst doctors; I only wish, after they have been to see us in a waythat seems so friendly, they had nothing against us. 

My fireplace, which is deep, and nearly three feet wide, has a broadhearthstone in front of it, where the live coals tumble down, and apair of gigantic brass andirons. The brasses are burnished, and shinecheerfully in the firelight, and on either side stand tall shovel andtongs, like sentries, mounted in brass. The tongs, like the two-handedsword of Bruce, cannot be wielded by puny people. We burn in it hickorywood, cut long. We like the smell of this aromatic forest timber, andits clear flame. The birch is also a sweet wood for the hearth, witha sort of spiritual flame and an even temper, --no snappishness. Someprefer the elm, which holds fire so well; and I have a neighbor who usesnothing but apple-tree wood, --a solid, family sort of wood, fragrantalso, and full of delightful suggestions. But few people can afford toburn up their fruit trees. I should as soon think of lighting the firewith sweet-oil that comes in those graceful wicker-bound flasks fromNaples, or with manuscript sermons, which, however, do not burn well, bethey never so dry, not half so well as printed editorials. 

Few people know how to make a wood-fire, but everybody thinks he orshe does. You want, first, a large backlog, which does not rest on theandirons. This will keep your fire forward, radiate heat all day, andlate in the evening fall into a ruin of glowing coals, like the lastdays of a good man, whose life is the richest and most beneficent at theclose, when the flames of passion and the sap of youth are burned out, and there only remain the solid, bright elements of character. Thenyou want a forestick on the andirons; and upon these build the fire oflighter stuff. In this way you have at once a cheerful blaze, and thefire gradually eats into the solid mass, sinking down with increasingfervor; coals drop below, and delicate tongues of flame sport along thebeautiful grain of the forestick. There are people who kindle a fireunderneath. But these are conceited people, who are wedded to their ownway. I suppose an accomplished incendiary always starts a fire in theattic, if he can. I am not an incendiary, but I hate bigotry. I don'tcall those incendiaries very good Christians who, when they set fire tothe martyrs, touched off the fagots at the bottom, so as to make themgo slow. Besides, knowledge works down easier than it does up. Educationmust proceed from the more enlightened down to the more ignorant strata. If you want better common schools, raise the standard of the colleges, and so on. Build your fire on top. Let your light shine. I have seenpeople build a fire under a balky horse; but he wouldn't go, he'd be ahorse-martyr first. A fire kindled under one never did him any good. Ofcourse you can make a fire on the hearth by kindling it underneath, butthat does not make it right. I want my hearthfire to be an emblem of thebest things. 

II

It must be confessed that a wood-fire needs as much tending as a pair oftwins. To say nothing of fiery projectiles sent into the room, even bythe best wood, from the explosion of gases confined in its cells, thebrands are continually dropping down, and coals are being scatteredover the hearth. However much a careful housewife, who thinks moreof neatness than enjoyment, may dislike this, it is one of the chiefdelights of a wood-fire. I would as soon have an Englishman withoutside-whiskers as a fire without a big backlog; and I would rather haveno fire than one that required no tending, --one of dead wood thatcould not sing again the imprisoned songs of the forest, or give out inbrilliant scintillations the sunshine it absorbed in its growth. Flameis an ethereal sprite, and the spice of danger in it gives zest to thecare of the hearth-fire. Nothing is so beautiful as springing, changingflame, --it was the last freak of the Gothic architecture men torepresent the fronts of elaborate edifices of stone as on fire, bythe kindling flamboyant devices. A fireplace is, besides, a privatelaboratory, where one can witness the most brilliant chemicalexperiments, minor conflagrations only wanting the grandeur of cities onfire. It is a vulgar notion that a fire is only for heat. A chief valueof it is, however, to look at. It is a picture, framed between thejambs. You have nothing on your walls, by the best masters (the poormasters are not, however, represented), that is really so fascinating, so spiritual. Speaking like an upholsterer, it furnishes the room. And it is never twice the same. In this respect it is like thelandscape-view through a window, always seen in a new light, color, orcondition. The fireplace is a window into the most charming world I everhad a glimpse of. 

Yet direct heat is an agreeable sensation. I am not scientific enoughto despise it, and have no taste for a winter residence on MountWashington, where the thermometer cannot be kept comfortable even byboiling. They say that they say in Boston that there is a satisfactionin being well dressed which religion cannot give. There is certainly asatisfaction in the direct radiance of a hickory fire which is not to befound in the fieriest blasts of a furnace. The hot air of a furnace isa sirocco; the heat of a wood-fire is only intense sunshine, like thatbottled in Lacrimae Christi. Besides this, the eye is delighted, thesense of smell is regaled by the fragrant decomposition, and the ear ispleased with the hissing, crackling, and singing, --a liberation ofso many out-door noises. Some people like the sound of bubbling in aboiling pot, or the fizzing of a frying-spider. But there is nothinggross in the animated crackling of sticks of wood blazing on the earth, not even if chestnuts are roasting in the ashes. All the senses areministered to, and the imagination is left as free as the leapingtongues of flame. 

The attention which a wood-fire demands is one of its bestrecommendations. We value little that which costs us no trouble tomaintain. If we had to keep the sun kindled up and going by privatecorporate action, or act of Congress, and to be taxed for the support ofcustoms officers of solar heat, we should prize it more than we do. Notthat I should like to look upon the sun as a job, and have the properregulation of its temperature get into politics, where we already haveso much combustible stuff; but we take it quite too much as a matterof course, and, having it free, do not reckon it among the reasons forgratitude. Many people shut it out of their houses as if it were anenemy, watch its descent upon the carpet as if it were only a thief ofcolor, and plant trees to shut it away from the mouldering house. Allthe animals know better than this, as well as the more simple races ofmen; the old women of the southern Italian coasts sit all day in the sunand ply the distaff, as grateful as the sociable hens on the south sideof a New England barn; the slow tortoise likes to take the sun upon hissloping back, soaking in color that shall make him immortal when theimperishable part of him is cut up into shell ornaments. The capacityof a cat to absorb sunshine is only equaled by that of an Arab or anEthiopian. They are not afraid of injuring their complexions. 

White must be the color of civilization; it has so many naturaldisadvantages. But this is politics. I was about to say that, however itmay be with sunshine, one is always grateful for his wood-fire, becausehe does not maintain it without some cost. 

Yet I cannot but confess to a difference between sunlight and the lightof a wood-fire. The sunshine is entirely untamed. Where it rages mostfreely it tends to evoke the brilliancy rather than the harmonioussatisfactions of nature. The monstrous growths and the flaming colorsof the tropics contrast with our more subdued loveliness of foliage andbloom. The birds of the middle region dazzle with their contrasts ofplumage, and their voices are for screaming rather than singing. Ipresume the new experiments in sound would project a macaw's voicein very tangled and inharmonious lines of light. I suspect that thefiercest sunlight puts people, as well as animals and vegetables, onextremes in all ways. A wood-fire on the hearth is a kindler of thedomestic virtues. It brings in cheerfulness, and a family center, and, besides, it is artistic. I should like to know if an artist could everrepresent on canvas a happy family gathered round a hole in the floorcalled a register. Given a fireplace, and a tolerable artist couldalmost create a pleasant family round it. But what could he conjure outof a register? If there was any virtue among our ancestors, --and theylabored under a great many disadvantages, and had few of the aids whichwe have to excellence of life, --I am convinced they drew it mostly fromthe fireside. If it was difficult to read the eleven commandments by thelight of a pine-knot, it was not difficult to get the sweet spiritof them from the countenance of the serene mother knitting in thechimney-corner. 

III

When the fire is made, you want to sit in front of it and grow genial inits effulgence. I have never been upon a throne, --except in moments of atraveler's curiosity, about as long as a South American dictator remainson one, --but I have no idea that it compares, for pleasantness, with aseat before a wood-fire. A whole leisure day before you, a good novelin hand, and the backlog only just beginning to kindle, with uncountedhours of comfort in it, has life anything more delicious? For "novel"you can substitute "Calvin's Institutes, " if you wish to be virtuousas well as happy. Even Calvin would melt before a wood-fire. A greatsnowstorm, visible on three sides of your wide-windowed room, loadingthe evergreens, blown in fine powder from the great chestnut-tops, piledup in ever accumulating masses, covering the paths, the shrubbery, thehedges, drifting and clinging in fantastic deposits, deepening yoursense of security, and taking away the sin of idleness by making it anecessity, this is an excellent ground to your day by the fire. 

To deliberately sit down in the morning to read a novel, to enjoyyourself, is this not, in New England (I am told they don't read muchin other parts of the country), the sin of sins? Have you any right toread, especially novels, until you have exhausted the best part of theday in some employment that is called practical? Have you any right toenjoy yourself at all until the fag-end of the day, when you aretired and incapable of enjoying yourself? I am aware that this is thepractice, if not the theory, of our society, --to postpone the delightsof social intercourse until after dark, and rather late at night, whenbody and mind are both weary with the exertions of business, and whenwe can give to what is the most delightful and profitable thing in life, social and intellectual society, only the weariness of dull brains andover-tired muscles. No wonder we take our amusements sadly, and that somany people find dinners heavy and parties stupid. Our economy leaves noplace for amusements; we merely add them to the burden of a life alreadyfull. The world is still a little off the track as to what is reallyuseful. 

I confess that the morning is a very good time to read a novel, oranything else which is good and requires a fresh mind; and I take itthat nothing is worth reading that does not require an alert mind. Isuppose it is necessary that business should be transacted; though theamount of business that does not contribute to anybody's comfort orimprovement suggests the query whether it is not overdone. I know thatunremitting attention to business is the price of success, but I don'tknow what success is. There is a man, whom we all know, who built ahouse that cost a quarter of a million of dollars, and furnished it foranother like sum, who does not know anything more about architecture, or painting, or books, or history, than he cares for the rights of thosewho have not so much money as he has. I heard him once, in a foreigngallery, say to his wife, as they stood in front of a famous pictureby Rubens: "That is the Rape of the Sardines!" What a cheerful world itwould be if everybody was as successful as that man! While I am readingmy book by the fire, and taking an active part in important transactionsthat may be a good deal better than real, let me be thankful thata great many men are profitably employed in offices and bureaus andcountry stores in keeping up the gossip and endless exchange of opinionsamong mankind, so much of which is made to appear to the women at homeas "business. " I find that there is a sort of busy idleness among menin this world that is not held in disrepute. When the time comes thatI have to prove my right to vote, with women, I trust that it will beremembered in my favor that I made this admission. If it is true, as awitty conservative once said to me, that we never shall have peace inthis country until we elect a colored woman president, I desire to berectus in curia early. 

IV

The fireplace, as we said, is a window through which we look out uponother scenes. We like to read of the small, bare room, with cobwebbedceiling and narrow window, in which the poor child of genius sits withhis magical pen, the master of a realm of beauty and enchantment. I think the open fire does not kindle the imagination so much as itawakens the memory; one sees the past in its crumbling embers and ashygrayness, rather than the future. People become reminiscent and evensentimental in front of it. They used to become something else in thosegood old days when it was thought best to heat the poker red hot beforeplunging it into the mugs of flip. This heating of the poker has beendisapproved of late years, but I do not know on what grounds; if oneis to drink bitters and gins and the like, such as I understand as goodpeople as clergymen and women take in private, and by advice, I do notknow why one should not make them palatable and heat them with his ownpoker. Cold whiskey out of a bottle, taken as a prescription six timesa day on the sly, is n't my idea of virtue any more than the socialancestral glass, sizzling wickedly with the hot iron. Names are soconfusing in this world; but things are apt to remain pretty much thesame, whatever we call them. 

Perhaps as you look into the fireplace it widens and grows deep andcavernous. The back and the jambs are built up of great stones, notalways smoothly laid, with jutting ledges upon which ashes are apt tolie. The hearthstone is an enormous block of trap rock, with a surfacenot perfectly even, but a capital place to crack butternuts on. Overthe fire swings an iron crane, with a row of pot-hooks of all lengthshanging from it. It swings out when the housewife wants to hang onthe tea-kettle, and it is strong enough to support a row of pots, or amammoth caldron kettle on occasion. What a jolly sight is this fireplacewhen the pots and kettles in a row are all boiling and bubbling overthe flame, and a roasting spit is turning in front! It makes a personas hungry as one of Scott's novels. But the brilliant sight is in thefrosty morning, about daylight, when the fire is made. The coals areraked open, the split sticks are piled up in openwork criss-crossing, ashigh as the crane; and when the flame catches hold and roars up throughthe interstices, it is like an out-of-door bonfire. Wood enough isconsumed in that morning sacrifice to cook the food of a Parisian familyfor a year. How it roars up the wide chimney, sending into the air thesignal smoke and sparks which announce to the farming neighbors anotherday cheerfully begun! The sleepiest boy in the world would get up in hisred flannel nightgown to see such a fire lighted, even if he droppedto sleep again in his chair before the ruddy blaze. Then it is that thehouse, which has shrunk and creaked all night in the pinching cold ofwinter, begins to glow again and come to life. The thick frost meltslittle by little on the small window-panes, and it is seen that the graydawn is breaking over the leagues of pallid snow. It is time to blow outthe candle, which has lost all its cheerfulness in the light of day. Themorning romance is over; the family is astir; and member after memberappears with the morning yawn, to stand before the crackling, fierceconflagration. The daily round begins. The most hateful employment everinvented for mortal man presents itself: the "chores" are to be done. The boy who expects every morning to open into a new world finds thatto-day is like yesterday, but he believes to-morrow will be different. And yet enough for him, for the day, is the wading in the snowdrifts, orthe sliding on the diamond-sparkling crust. Happy, too, is he, when thestorm rages, and the snow is piled high against the windows, if he cansit in the warm chimney-corner and read about Burgoyne, and GeneralFraser, and Miss McCrea, midwinter marches through the wilderness, surprises of wigwams, and the stirring ballad, say, of the Battle of theKegs:--

 "Come, gallants, attend and list a friend Thrill forth harmonious ditty; While I shall tell what late befell At Philadelphia city. "

I should like to know what heroism a boy in an old New Englandfarmhouse--rough-nursed by nature, and fed on the traditions of the oldwars did not aspire to. "John, " says the mother, "You'll burn your headto a crisp in that heat. " But John does not hear; he is storming thePlains of Abraham just now. "Johnny, dear, bring in a stick of wood. "How can Johnny bring in wood when he is in that defile with Braddock, and the Indians are popping at him from behind every tree? There issomething about a boy that I like, after all. 

The fire rests upon the broad hearth; the hearth rests upon a greatsubstruction of stone, and the substruction rests upon the cellar. Whatsupports the cellar I never knew, but the cellar supports the family. The cellar is the foundation of domestic comfort. Into its dark, cavernous recesses the child's imagination fearfully goes. Bogies guardthe bins of choicest apples. I know not what comical sprites sit astridethe cider-barrels ranged along the walls. The feeble flicker of thetallow-candle does not at all dispel, but creates, illusions, andmagnifies all the rich possibilities of this underground treasure-house. When the cellar-door is opened, and the boy begins to descend into thethick darkness, it is always with a heart-beat as of one started uponsome adventure. Who can forget the smell that comes through the openeddoor;--a mingling of fresh earth, fruit exhaling delicious aroma, kitchen vegetables, the mouldy odor of barrels, a sort of ancestralair, --as if a door had been opened into an old romance. Do you like it?Not much. But then I would not exchange the remembrance of it for a goodmany odors and perfumes that I do like. 

It is time to punch the backlog and put on a new forestick. 

SECOND STUDY

I

The log was white birch. The beautiful satin bark at once kindled intoa soft, pure, but brilliant flame, something like that of naphtha. Thereis no other wood flame so rich, and it leaps up in a joyous, spiritualway, as if glad to burn for the sake of burning. Burning like a clearoil, it has none of the heaviness and fatness of the pine and thebalsam. Woodsmen are at a loss to account for its intense and yetchaste flame, since the bark has no oily appearance. The heat from itis fierce, and the light dazzling. It flares up eagerly like young love, and then dies away; the wood does not keep up the promise of thebark. The woodsmen, it is proper to say, have not considered it in itsrelation to young love. In the remote settlements the pine-knot is stillthe torch of courtship; it endures to sit up by. The birch-bark hasalliances with the world of sentiment and of letters. The most poeticalreputation of the North American Indian floats in a canoe made of it;his picture-writing was inscribed on it. It is the paper that naturefurnishes for lovers in the wilderness, who are enabled to convey adelicate sentiment by its use, which is expressed neither in their ideasnor chirography. It is inadequate for legal parchment, but does verywell for deeds of love, which are not meant usually to give a perfecttitle. With care, it may be split into sheets as thin as the Chinesepaper. It is so beautiful to handle that it is a pity civilizationcannot make more use of it. But fancy articles manufactured from it arevery much like all ornamental work made of nature's perishable seeds, leaves, cones, and dry twigs, --exquisite while the pretty fingers arefashioning it, but soon growing shabby and cheap to the eye. And yetthere is a pathos in "dried things, " whether they are displayed asornaments in some secluded home, or hidden religiously in bureau drawerswhere profane eyes cannot see how white ties are growing yellow and inkis fading from treasured letters, amid a faint and discouraging perfumeof ancient rose-leaves. 

The birch log holds out very well while it is green, but has notsubstance enough for a backlog when dry. Seasoning green timber or menis always an experiment. A man may do very well in a simple, let us say, country or backwoods line of life, who would come to nothing in a morecomplicated civilization. City life is a severe trial. One man is struckwith a dry-rot; another develops season-cracks; another shrinks andswells with every change of circumstance. Prosperity is said to be moretrying than adversity, a theory which most people are willing to acceptwithout trial; but few men stand the drying out of the natural sapof their greenness in the artificial heat of city life. This, be itnoticed, is nothing against the drying and seasoning process; charactermust be put into the crucible some time, and why not in this world? Aman who cannot stand seasoning will not have a high market value in anypart of the universe. It is creditable to the race, that so many men andwomen bravely jump into the furnace of prosperity and expose themselvesto the drying influences of city life. 

The first fire that is lighted on the hearth in the autumn seems tobring out the cold weather. Deceived by the placid appearance of thedying year, the softness of the sky, and the warm color of the foliage, we have been shivering about for days without exactly comprehending whatwas the matter. The open fire at once sets up a standard of comparison. We find that the advance guards of winter are besieging the house. Thecold rushes in at every crack of door and window, apparently signaledby the flame to invade the house and fill it with chilly drafts andsarcasms on what we call the temperate zone. It needs a roaring fireto beat back the enemy; a feeble one is only an invitation to themost insulting demonstrations. Our pious New England ancestors werephilosophers in their way. It was not simply owing to grace thatthey sat for hours in their barnlike meeting-houses during the winterSundays, the thermometer many degrees below freezing, with no fire, except the zeal in their own hearts, --a congregation of red noses andbright eyes. It was no wonder that the minister in the pulpit warmed upto his subject, cried aloud, used hot words, spoke a good deal of thehot place and the Person whose presence was a burning shame, hammeredthe desk as if he expected to drive his text through a two-inch plank, and heated himself by all allowable ecclesiastical gymnastics. A few oftheir followers in our day seem to forget that our modern churches areheated by furnaces and supplied with gas. In the old days it wouldhave been thought unphilosophic as well as effeminate to warm themeeting-houses artificially. In one house I knew, at least, when it wasproposed to introduce a stove to take a little of the chill from theSunday services, the deacons protested against the innovation. They saidthat the stove might benefit those who sat close to it, but it woulddrive all the cold air to the other parts of the church, and freeze thepeople to death; it was cold enough now around the edges. Blessed daysof ignorance and upright living! Sturdy men who served God by resolutelysitting out the icy hours of service, amid the rattling of windows andthe carousal of winter in the high, windswept galleries! Patient women, waiting in the chilly house for consumption to pick out his victims, andreplace the color of youth and the flush of devotion with the hecticof disease! At least, you did not doze and droop in our over-heatededifices, and die of vitiated air and disregard of the simplestconditions of organized life. It is fortunate that each generationdoes not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call ourancestors barbarous. It is something also that each age has its choiceof the death it will die. Our generation is most ingenious. From ourpublic assembly-rooms and houses we have almost succeeded in excludingpure air. It took the race ages to build dwellings that would keep outrain; it has taken longer to build houses air-tight, but we are on theeve of success. We are only foiled by the ill-fitting, insincere work ofthe builders, who build for a day, and charge for all time. 

II

When the fire on the hearth has blazed up and then settled into steadyradiance, talk begins. There is no place like the chimney-corner forconfidences; for picking up the clews of an old friendship; for takingnote where one's self has drifted, by comparing ideas and prejudiceswith the intimate friend of years ago, whose course in life has lainapart from yours. No stranger puzzles you so much as the once closefriend, with whose thinking and associates you have for years beenunfamiliar. Life has come to mean this and that to you; you have falleninto certain habits of thought; for you the world has progressed inthis or that direction; of certain results you feel very sure; youhave fallen into harmony with your surroundings; you meet day after daypeople interested in the things that interest you; you are not in theleast opinionated, it is simply your good fortune to look upon theaffairs of the world from the right point of view. When you last sawyour friend, --less than a year after you left college, --he was the mostsensible and agreeable of men; he had no heterodox notions; he agreedwith you; you could even tell what sort of a wife he would select, andif you could do that, you held the key to his life. 

Well, Herbert came to visit me the other day from the antipodes. Andhere he sits by the fireplace. I cannot think of any one I would rathersee there, except perhaps Thackery; or, for entertainment, Boswell; orold, Pepys; or one of the people who was left out of the Ark. They weretalking one foggy London night at Hazlitt's about whom they would mostlike to have seen, when Charles Lamb startled the company by declaringthat he would rather have seen Judas Iscariot than any other personwho had lived on the earth. For myself, I would rather have seen Lambhimself once, than to have lived with Judas. Herbert, to my greatdelight, has not changed; I should know him anywhere, --the same serious, contemplative face, with lurking humor at the corners of the mouth, --thesame cheery laugh and clear, distinct enunciation as of old. There isnothing so winning as a good voice. To see Herbert again, unchangedin all outward essentials, is not only gratifying, but valuable as atestimony to nature's success in holding on to a personal identity, through the entire change of matter that has been constantly takingplace for so many years. I know very well there is here no part of theHerbert whose hand I had shaken at the Commencement parting; but it isan astonishing reproduction of him, --a material likeness; and now forthe spiritual. 

Such a wide chance for divergence in the spiritual. It has been sucha busy world for twenty years. So many things have been torn up by theroots again that were settled when we left college. There were to be nomore wars; democracy was democracy, and progress, the differentiationof the individual, was a mere question of clothes; if you want to bedifferent, go to your tailor; nobody had demonstrated that there isa man-soul and a woman-soul, and that each is in reality only ahalf-soul, --putting the race, so to speak, upon the half-shell. Thesocial oyster being opened, there appears to be two shells and only oneoyster; who shall have it? So many new canons of taste, of criticism, of morality have been set up; there has been such a resurrection ofhistorical reputations for new judgment, and there have been so manydiscoveries, geographical, archaeological, geological, biological, thatthe earth is not at all what it was supposed to be; and our philosophersare much more anxious to ascertain where we came from than whither weare going. In this whirl and turmoil of new ideas, nature, which hasonly the single end of maintaining the physical identity in the body, works on undisturbed, replacing particle for particle, and preservingthe likeness more skillfully than a mosaic artist in the Vatican; shehas not even her materials sorted and labeled, as the Roman artist hashis thousands of bits of color; and man is all the while doing hisbest to confuse the process, by changing his climate, his diet, all hissurroundings, without the least care to remain himself. But the mind?

It is more difficult to get acquainted with Herbert than with an entirestranger, for I have my prepossessions about him, and do not find himin so many places where I expect to find him. He is full of criticismof the authors I admire; he thinks stupid or improper the books I mostread; he is skeptical about the "movements" I am interested in; he hasformed very different opinions from mine concerning a hundred men andwomen of the present day; we used to eat from one dish; we could n'tnow find anything in common in a dozen; his prejudices (as we callour opinions) are most extraordinary, and not half so reasonable asmy prejudices; there are a great many persons and things that I amaccustomed to denounce, uncontradicted by anybody, which he defends; hispublic opinion is not at all my public opinion. I am sorry for him. Heappears to have fallen into influences and among a set of people foreignto me. I find that his church has a different steeple on it from mychurch (which, to say the truth, hasn't any). It is a pity that such adear friend and a man of so much promise should have drifted off intosuch general contrariness. I see Herbert sitting here by the fire, with the old look in his face coming out more and more, but I do notrecognize any features of his mind, --except perhaps his contrariness;yes, he was always a little contrary, I think. And finally he surprisesme with, "Well, my friend, you seem to have drifted away from your oldnotions and opinions. We used to agree when we were together, but Isometimes wondered where you would land; for, pardon me, you showedsigns of looking at things a little contrary. "

I am silent for a good while. I am trying to think who I am. There wasa person whom I thought I knew, very fond of Herbert, and agreeing withhim in most things. Where has he gone? and, if he is here, where is theHerbert that I knew?

If his intellectual and moral sympathies have all changed, I wonder ifhis physical tastes remain, like his appearance, the same. There hascome over this country within the last generation, as everybody knows, a great wave of condemnation of pie. It has taken the character of a"movement!" though we have had no conventions about it, nor is any one, of any of the several sexes among us, running for president against it. It is safe almost anywhere to denounce pie, yet nearly everybody eatsit on occasion. A great many people think it savors of a life abroad tospeak with horror of pie, although they were very likely the foremostof the Americans in Paris who used to speak with more enthusiasm ofthe American pie at Madame Busque's than of the Venus of Milo. To talkagainst pie and still eat it is snobbish, of course; but snobbery, beingan aspiring failing, is sometimes the prophecy of better things. To affect dislike of pie is something. We have no statistics on thesubject, and cannot tell whether it is gaining or losing in the countryat large. Its disappearance in select circles is no test. The amount ofwriting against it is no more test of its desuetude, than the number ofreligious tracts distributed in a given district is a criterion of itspiety. We are apt to assume that certain regions are substantially freeof it. Herbert and I, traveling north one summer, fancied that we coulddraw in New England a sort of diet line, like the sweeping curves on theisothermal charts, which should show at least the leading pie sections. Journeying towards the White Mountains, we concluded that a line passingthrough Bellows Falls, and bending a little south on either side, wouldmark northward the region of perpetual pie. In this region pie is tobe found at all hours and seasons, and at every meal. I am not sure, however, that pie is not a matter of altitude rather than latitude, asI find that all the hill and country towns of New England are full ofthose excellent women, the very salt of the housekeeping earth, whowould feel ready to sink in mortification through their scoured kitchenfloors, if visitors should catch them without a pie in the house. Theabsence of pie would be more noticed than a scarcity of Bible even. Without it the housekeepers are as distracted as the boarding-housekeeper, who declared that if it were not for canned tomato, she shouldhave nothing to fly to. Well, in all this great agitation I find Herbertunmoved, a conservative, even to the under-crust. I dare not ask himif he eats pie at breakfast. There are some tests that the dearestfriendship may not apply. 

"Will you smoke?" I ask. 

"No, I have reformed. "

"Yes, of course. "

"The fact is, that when we consider the correlation of forces, theapparent sympathy of spirit manifestations with electric conditions, thealmost revealed mysteries of what may be called the odic force, and therelation of all these phenomena to the nervous system in man, it is notsafe to do anything to the nervous system that will--"

"Hang the nervous system! Herbert, we can agree in one thing: oldmemories, reveries, friendships, center about that:--is n't an openwood-fire good?"

"Yes, " says Herbert, combatively, "if you don't sit before it too long. "

III

The best talk is that which escapes up the open chimney and cannot berepeated. The finest woods make the best fire and pass away with theleast residuum. I hope the next generation will not accept the reportsof "interviews" as specimens of the conversations of these years ofgrace. 

But do we talk as well as our fathers and mothers did? We hear wonderfulstories of the bright generation that sat about the wide fireplacesof New England. Good talk has so much short-hand that it cannot bereported, --the inflection, the change of voice, the shrug, cannot becaught on paper. The best of it is when the subject unexpectedlygoes cross-lots, by a flash of short-cut, to a conclusion so suddenlyrevealed that it has the effect of wit. It needs the highest culture andthe finest breeding to prevent the conversation from running into merepersiflage on the one hand--its common fate--or monologue on theother. Our conversation is largely chaff. I am not sure but the formergeneration preached a good deal, but it had great practice in firesidetalk, and must have talked well. There were narrators in those days whocould charm a circle all the evening long with stories. When each daybrought comparatively little new to read, there was leisure fortalk, and the rare book and the in-frequent magazine were thoroughlydiscussed. Families now are swamped by the printed matter that comesdaily upon the center-table. There must be a division of labor, onereading this, and another that, to make any impression on it. Thetelegraph brings the only common food, and works this daily miracle, that every mind in Christendom is excited by one topic simultaneouslywith every other mind; it enables a concurrent mental action, a burstof sympathy, or a universal prayer to be made, which must be, if wehave any faith in the immaterial left, one of the chief forces in modernlife. It is fit that an agent so subtle as electricity should be theminister of it. 

When there is so much to read, there is little time for conversation;nor is there leisure for another pastime of the ancient firesides, called reading aloud. The listeners, who heard while they looked intothe wide chimney-place, saw there pass in stately procession the eventsand the grand persons of history, were kindled with the delights oftravel, touched by the romance of true love, or made restless by talesof adventure;--the hearth became a sort of magic stone that couldtransport those who sat by it to the most distant places and times, assoon as the book was opened and the reader began, of a winter's night. Perhaps the Puritan reader read through his nose, and all the littlePuritans made the most dreadful nasal inquiries as the entertainmentwent on. The prominent nose of the intellectual New-Englanderis evidence of the constant linguistic exercise of the organ forgenerations. It grew by talking through. But I have no doubt thatpractice made good readers in those days. Good reading aloud is almosta lost accomplishment now. It is little thought of in the schools. It isdisused at home. It is rare to find any one who can read, even from thenewspaper, well. Reading is so universal, even with the uncultivated, that it is common to hear people mispronounce words that you did notsuppose they had ever seen. In reading to themselves they glide overthese words, in reading aloud they stumble over them. Besides, ourevery-day books and newspapers are so larded with French that theordinary reader is obliged marcher a pas de loup, --for instance. 

The newspaper is probably responsible for making current many words withwhich the general reader is familiar, but which he rises to in theflow of conversation, and strikes at with a splash and an unsuccessfulattempt at appropriation; the word, which he perfectly knows, hooks himin the gills, and he cannot master it. The newspaper is thus wideningthe language in use, and vastly increasing the number of words whichenter into common talk. The Americans of the lowest intellectual classprobably use more words to express their ideas than the similar classof any other people; but this prodigality is partially balanced by theparsimony of words in some higher regions, in which a few phrases ofcurrent slang are made to do the whole duty of exchange of ideas; ifthat can be called exchange of ideas when one intellect flashes forthto another the remark, concerning some report, that "you know how it isyourself, " and is met by the response of "that's what's the matter, " andrejoins with the perfectly conclusive "that's so. " It requires a highdegree of culture to use slang with elegance and effect; and we are yetvery far from the Greek attainment. 

IV

The fireplace wants to be all aglow, the wind rising, the night heavyand black above, but light with sifting snow on the earth, a backgroundof inclemency for the illumined room with its pictured walls, tablesheaped with books, capacious easy-chairs and their occupants, --it needs, I say, to glow and throw its rays far through the crystal of the broadwindows, in order that we may rightly appreciate the relation of thewide-jambed chimney to domestic architecture in our climate. We fell totalking about it; and, as is usual when the conversation is professedlyon one subject, we wandered all around it. The young lady staying withus was roasting chestnuts in the ashes, and the frequent explosionsrequired considerable attention. The mistress, too, sat somewhat alert, ready to rise at any instant and minister to the fancied want of this orthat guest, forgetting the reposeful truth that people about a firesidewill not have any wants if they are not suggested. The worst of them, if they desire anything, only want something hot, and that later in theevening. And it is an open question whether you ought to associate withpeople who want that. 

I was saying that nothing had been so slow in its progress in theworld as domestic architecture. Temples, palaces, bridges, aqueducts, cathedrals, towers of marvelous delicacy and strength, grew toperfection while the common people lived in hovels, and the richestlodged in the most gloomy and contracted quarters. The dwelling-houseis a modern institution. It is a curious fact that it has only improvedwith the social elevation of women. Men were never more brilliant inarms and letters than in the age of Elizabeth, and yet they had nohomes. They made themselves thick-walled castles, with slits in themasonry for windows, for defense, and magnificent banquet-halls forpleasure; the stone rooms into which they crawled for the night wereoften little better than dog-kennels. The Pompeians had no comfortablenight-quarters. The most singular thing to me, however, is that, especially interested as woman is in the house, she has never doneanything for architecture. And yet woman is reputed to be an ingeniouscreature. 

HERBERT. I doubt if woman has real ingenuity; she has greatadaptability. I don't say that she will do the same thing twicealike, like a Chinaman, but she is most cunning in suiting herself tocircumstances. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, if you speak of constructive, creative ingenuity, perhaps not; but in the higher ranges of achievement--that ofaccomplishing any purpose dear to her heart, for instance--her ingenuityis simply incomprehensible to me. 

HERBERT. Yes, if you mean doing things by indirection. 

THE MISTRESS. When you men assume all the direction, what else is leftto us?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see a woman refurnish a house?

THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH US. I never saw a man do it, unless he wasburned out of his rookery. 

HERBERT. There is no comfort in new things. 

THE FIRE-TENDER (not noticing the interruption). Having set her mindon a total revolution of the house, she buys one new thing, not tooobtrusive, nor much out of harmony with the old. The husband scarcelynotices it, least of all does he suspect the revolution, which shealready has accomplished. Next, some article that does look a littleshabby beside the new piece of furniture is sent to the garret, and itsplace is supplied by something that will match in color and effect. Eventhe man can see that it ought to match, and so the process goes on, itmay be for years, it may be forever, until nothing of the old is left, and the house is transformed as it was predetermined in the woman'smind. I doubt if the man ever understands how or when it was done; hiswife certainly never says anything about the refurnishing, but quietlygoes on to new conquests. 

THE MISTRESS. And is n't it better to buy little by little, enjoyingevery new object as you get it, and assimilating each article to yourhousehold life, and making the home a harmonious expression of your owntaste, rather than to order things in sets, and turn your house, for thetime being, into a furniture ware-room?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, I only spoke of the ingenuity of it. 

THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I never can get acquainted with more thanone piece of furniture at a time. 

HERBERT. I suppose women are our superiors in artistic taste, and Ifancy that I can tell whether a house is furnished by a woman or aman; of course, I mean the few houses that appear to be the result ofindividual taste and refinement, --most of them look as if they had beenfurnished on contract by the upholsterer. 

THE MISTRESS. Woman's province in this world is putting things torights. 

HERBERT. With a vengeance, sometimes. In the study, for example. Mychief objection to woman is that she has no respect for the newspaper, or the printed page, as such. She is Siva, the destroyer. I have noticedthat a great part of a married man's time at home is spent in trying tofind the things he has put on his study-table. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Herbert speaks with the bitterness of a bachelor shutout of paradise. It is my experience that if women did not destroy therubbish that men bring into the house, it would become uninhabitable, and need to be burned down every five years. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I confess women do a great deal for the appearance ofthings. When the mistress is absent, this room, although everything ishere as it was before, does not look at all like the same place; it isstiff, and seems to lack a soul. When she returns, I can see that hereye, even while greeting me, takes in the situation at a glance. While she is talking of the journey, and before she has removed hertraveling-hat, she turns this chair and moves that, sets one piece offurniture at a different angle, rapidly, and apparently unconsciously, shifts a dozen little knick-knacks and bits of color, and the room istransformed. I couldn't do it in a week. 

THE MISTRESS. That is the first time I ever knew a man admit he couldn'tdo anything if he had time. 

HERBERT. Yet with all their peculiar instinct for making a home, womenmake themselves very little felt in our domestic architecture. 

THE MISTRESS. Men build most of the houses in what might be called theready-made-clothing style, and we have to do the best we can with them;and hard enough it is to make cheerful homes in most of them. You willsee something different when the woman is constantly consulted in theplan of the house. 

HERBERT. We might see more difference if women would give any attentionto architecture. Why are there no women architects?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Want of the ballot, doubtless. It seems to me that hereis a splendid opportunity for woman to come to the front. 

THE YOUNG LADY. They have no desire to come to the front; they wouldrather manage things where they are. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. If they would master the noble art, and put theirbrooding taste upon it, we might very likely compass something in ourdomestic architecture that we have not yet attained. The outside of ourhouses needs attention as well as the inside. Most of them are as uglyas money can build. 

THE YOUNG LADY. What vexes me most is, that women, married women, haveso easily consented to give up open fires in their houses. 

HERBERT. They dislike the dust and the bother. I think that women ratherlike the confined furnace heat. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Nonsense; it is their angelic virtue of submission. Wewouldn't be hired to stay all-day in the houses we build. 

THE YOUNG LADY. That has a very chivalrous sound, but I know there willbe no reformation until women rebel and demand everywhere the open fire. 

HERBERT. They are just now rebelling about something else; it seems tome yours is a sort of counter-movement, a fire in the rear. 

THE MISTRESS. I'll join that movement. The time has come when woman muststrike for her altars and her fires. 

HERBERT. Hear, hear!

THE MISTRESS. Thank you, Herbert. I applauded you once, when youdeclaimed that years ago in the old Academy. I remember how eloquentlyyou did it. 

HERBERT. Yes, I was once a spouting idiot. 

Just then the door-bell rang, and company came in. And the companybrought in a new atmosphere, as company always does, something of thedisturbance of out-doors, and a good deal of its healthy cheer. Thedirect news that the thermometer was approaching zero, with a hopefulprospect of going below it, increased to liveliness our satisfaction inthe fire. When the cider was heated in the brown stone pitcher, therewas difference of opinion whether there should be toast in it; somewere for toast, because that was the old-fashioned way, and others wereagainst it, "because it does not taste good" in cider. Herbert saidthere, was very little respect left for our forefathers. 

More wood was put on, and the flame danced in a hundred fantasticshapes. The snow had ceased to fall, and the moonlight lay in silverypatches among the trees in the ravine. The conversation became worldly. 

THIRD STUDY

I

Herbert said, as we sat by the fire one night, that he wished he hadturned his attention to writing poetry like Tennyson's. 

The remark was not whimsical, but satirical. Tennyson is a man oftalent, who happened to strike a lucky vein, which he has worked withcleverness. The adventurer with a pickaxe in Washoe may happen upon likegood fortune. The world is full of poetry as the earth is of "pay-dirt;"one only needs to know how to "strike" it. An able man can make himselfalmost anything that he will. It is melancholy to think how many epicpoets have been lost in the tea-trade, how many dramatists (thoughthe age of the drama has passed) have wasted their genius in greatmercantile and mechanical enterprises. I know a man who might have beenthe poet, the essayist, perhaps the critic, of this country, who choseto become a country judge, to sit day after day upon a bench inan obscure corner of the world, listening to wrangling lawyers andprevaricating witnesses, preferring to judge his fellow-men rather thanenlighten them. 

It is fortunate for the vanity of the living and the reputation of thedead, that men get almost as much credit for what they do not as forwhat they do. It was the opinion of many that Burns might have excelledas a statesman, or have been a great captain in war; and Mr. Carlylesays that if he had been sent to a university, and become a trainedintellectual workman, it lay in him to have changed the whole course ofBritish literature! A large undertaking, as so vigorous and dazzling awriter as Mr. Carlyle must know by this time, since Britishliterature has swept by him in a resistless and widening flood, mainlyuncontaminated, and leaving his grotesque contrivances wrecked on theshore with other curiosities of letters, and yet among the richest ofall the treasures lying there. 

It is a temptation to a temperate man to become a sot, to hear whattalent, what versatility, what genius, is almost always attributed to amoderately bright man who is habitually drunk. Such a mechanic, such amathematician, such a poet he would be, if he were only sober; andthen he is sure to be the most generous, magnanimous, friendly soul, conscientiously honorable, if he were not so conscientiously drunk. Isuppose it is now notorious that the most brilliant and promising menhave been lost to the world in this way. It is sometimes almost painfulto think what a surplus of talent and genius there would be in the worldif the habit of intoxication should suddenly cease; and what a slimchance there would be for the plodding people who have always hadtolerably good habits. The fear is only mitigated by the observationthat the reputation of a person for great talent sometimes ceases withhis reformation. 

It is believed by some that the maidens who would make the best wivesnever marry, but remain free to bless the world with their impartialsweetness, and make it generally habitable. This is one of the mysteriesof Providence and New England life. It seems a pity, at first sight, that all those who become poor wives have the matrimonial chance, andthat they are deprived of the reputation of those who would be goodwives were they not set apart for the high and perpetual office ofpriestesses of society. There is no beauty like that which was spoiledby an accident, no accomplishments--and graces are so to be envied asthose that circumstances rudely hindered the development of. Allof which shows what a charitable and good-tempered world it is, notwithstanding its reputation for cynicism and detraction. 

Nothing is more beautiful than the belief of the faithful wife that herhusband has all the talents, and could, if he would, be distinguished inany walk in life; and nothing will be more beautiful--unless this isa very dry time for signs--than the husband's belief that his wife iscapable of taking charge of any of the affairs of this confused planet. There is no woman but thinks that her husband, the green-grocer, couldwrite poetry if he had given his mind to it, or else she thinks smallbeer of poetry in comparison with an occupation or accomplishment purelyvegetable. It is touching to see the look of pride with which thewife turns to her husband from any more brilliant personal presence ordisplay of wit than his, in the perfect confidence that if the worldknew what she knows, there would be one more popular idol. How shemagnifies his small wit, and dotes upon the self-satisfied look in hisface as if it were a sign of wisdom! What a councilor that man wouldmake! What a warrior he would be! There are a great many corporalsin their retired homes who did more for the safety and success ofour armies in critical moments, in the late war, than any of the"high-cock-a-lorum" commanders. Mrs. Corporal does not envy thereputation of General Sheridan; she knows very well who really won FiveForks, for she has heard the story a hundred times, and will hear it ahundred times more with apparently unabated interest. What a generalher husband would have made; and how his talking talent would shine inCongress!

HERBERT. Nonsense. There isn't a wife in the world who has not takenthe exact measure of her husband, weighed him and settled him in her ownmind, and knows him as well as if she had ordered him after designs andspecifications of her own. That knowledge, however, she ordinarily keepsto herself, and she enters into a league with her husband, which he wasnever admitted to the secret of, to impose upon the world. In nine outof ten cases he more than half believes that he is what his wife tellshim he is. At any rate, she manages him as easily as the keeper does theelephant, with only a bamboo wand and a sharp spike in the end. Usuallyshe flatters him, but she has the means of pricking clear through hishide on occasion. It is the great secret of her power to have him thinkthat she thoroughly believes in him. 

THE YOUNG LADY STAYING WITH Us. And you call this hypocrisy? I haveheard authors, who thought themselves sly observers of women, call itso. 

HERBERT. Nothing of the sort. It is the basis on which society rests, the conventional agreement. If society is about to be overturned, it ison this point. Women are beginning to tell men what they really think ofthem; and to insist that the same relations of downright sincerity andindependence that exist between men shall exist between women and men. Absolute truth between souls, without regard to sex, has always been theideal life of the poets. 

THE MISTRESS. Yes; but there was never a poet yet who would bear to havehis wife say exactly what she thought of his poetry, any more thanhe would keep his temper if his wife beat him at chess; and there isnothing that disgusts a man like getting beaten at chess by a woman. 

HERBERT. Well, women know how to win by losing. I think that the reasonwhy most women do not want to take the ballot and stand out in the openfor a free trial of power, is that they are reluctant to change thecertain domination of centuries, with weapons they are perfectlycompetent to handle, for an experiment. I think we should be betteroff if women were more transparent, and men were not so systematicallypuffed up by the subtle flattery which is used to control them. 

MANDEVILLE. Deliver me from transparency. When a woman takes that guise, and begins to convince me that I can see through her like a ray oflight, I must run or be lost. Transparent women are the truly dangerous. There was one on ship-board [Mandeville likes to say that; he has justreturned from a little tour in Europe, and he quite often begins hisremarks with "on the ship going over;" the Young Lady declares thathe has a sort of roll in his chair, when he says it, that makes hersea-sick] who was the most innocent, artless, guileless, natural bunchof lace and feathers you ever saw; she was all candor and helplessnessand dependence; she sang like a nightingale, and talked like a nun. There never was such simplicity. There was n't a sounding-line on boardthat would have gone to the bottom of her soulful eyes. But she managedthe captain and all the officers, and controlled the ship as if she hadbeen the helm. All the passengers were waiting on her, fetching thisand that for her comfort, inquiring of her health, talking about hergenuineness, and exhibiting as much anxiety to get her ashore in safety, as if she had been about to knight them all and give them a castleapiece when they came to land. 

THE MISTRESS. What harm? It shows what I have always said, that theservice of a noble woman is the most ennobling influence for men. 

MANDEVILLE. If she is noble, and not a mere manager. I watched thiswoman to see if she would ever do anything for any one else. She neverdid. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Did you ever see her again? I presume Mandeville hasintroduced her here for some purpose. 

MANDEVILLE. No purpose. But we did see her on the Rhine; she was themost disgusted traveler, and seemed to be in very ill humor with hermaid. I judged that her happiness depended upon establishing controllingrelations with all about her. On this Rhine boat, to be sure, there wasreason for disgust. And that reminds me of a remark that was made. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Oh!

MANDEVILLE. When we got aboard at Mayence we were conscious of adreadful odor somewhere; as it was a foggy morning, we could see nocause of it, but concluded it was from something on the wharf. Thefog lifted, and we got under way, but the odor traveled with us, andincreased. We went to every part of the vessel to avoid it, but in vain. It occasionally reached us in great waves of disagreeableness. We hadheard of the odors of the towns on the Rhine, but we had no idea thatthe entire stream was infected. It was intolerable. 

The day was lovely, and the passengers stood about on deck holding theirnoses and admiring the scenery. You might see a row of them leaning overthe side, gazing up at some old ruin or ivied crag, entranced with theromance of the situation, and all holding their noses with thumb andfinger. The sweet Rhine! By and by somebody discovered that the odorcame from a pile of cheese on the forward deck, covered with a canvas;it seemed that the Rhinelanders are so fond of it that they take itwith them when they travel. If there should ever be war between usand Germany, the borders of the Rhine would need no other defense fromAmerican soldiers than a barricade of this cheese. I went to the sternof the steamboat to tell a stout American traveler what was the originof the odor he had been trying to dodge all the morning. He looked moredisgusted than before, when he heard that it was cheese; but his onlyreply was: "It must be a merciful God who can forgive a smell likethat!"

II

The above is introduced here in order to illustrate the usual effectof an anecdote on conversation. Commonly it kills it. That talk must bevery well in hand, and under great headway, that an anecdote thrown infront of will not pitch off the track and wreck. And it makes littledifference what the anecdote is; a poor one depresses the spirits, and casts a gloom over the company; a good one begets others, and thetalkers go to telling stories; which is very good entertainment inmoderation, but is not to be mistaken for that unwearying flow ofargument, quaint remark, humorous color, and sprightly interchange ofsentiments and opinions, called conversation. 

The reader will perceive that all hope is gone here of deciding whetherHerbert could have written Tennyson's poems, or whether Tennyson couldhave dug as much money out of the Heliogabalus Lode as Herbert did. Themore one sees of life, I think the impression deepens that men, afterall, play about the parts assigned them, according to their mental andmoral gifts, which are limited and preordained, and that their entrancesand exits are governed by a law no less certain because it is hidden. Perhaps nobody ever accomplishes all that he feels lies in him to do;but nearly every one who tries his powers touches the walls of his beingoccasionally, and learns about how far to attempt to spring. There areno impossibilities to youth and inexperience; but when a person hastried several times to reach high C and been coughed down, he is quitecontent to go down among the chorus. It is only the fools who keepstraining at high C all their lives. 

Mandeville here began to say that that reminded him of something thathappened when he was on the--

But Herbert cut in with the observation that no matter what a man'ssingle and several capacities and talents might be, he is controlled byhis own mysterious individuality, which is what metaphysicians call thesubstance, all else being the mere accidents of the man. And this is thereason that we cannot with any certainty tell what any person will do oramount to, for, while we know his talents and abilities, we do not knowthe resulting whole, which is he himself. THE FIRE-TENDER. So if youcould take all the first-class qualities that we admire in men andwomen, and put them together into one being, you wouldn't be sure of theresult?

HERBERT. Certainly not. You would probably have a monster. It takes acook of long experience, with the best materials, to make a dish "tastegood;" and the "taste good" is the indefinable essence, the resultingbalance or harmony which makes man or woman agreeable or beautiful oreffective in the world. 

THE YOUNG LADY. That must be the reason why novelists fail so lamentablyin almost all cases in creating good characters. They put in realtraits, talents, dispositions, but the result of the synthesis issomething that never was seen on earth before. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Oh, a good character in fiction is an inspiration. We admit this in poetry. It is as true of such creations as ColonelNewcome, and Ethel, and Beatrix Esmond. There is no patchwork aboutthem. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Why was n't Thackeray ever inspired to create a noblewoman?

THE FIRE-TENDER. That is the standing conundrum with all the women. Theywill not accept Ethel Newcome even. Perhaps we shall have to admit thatThackeray was a writer for men. 

HERBERT. Scott and the rest had drawn so many perfect women thatThackeray thought it was time for a real one. 

THE MISTRESS. That's ill-natured. Thackeray did, however, make ladies. If he had depicted, with his searching pen, any of us just as we are, Idoubt if we should have liked it much. 

MANDEVILLE. That's just it. Thackeray never pretended to make ideals, and if the best novel is an idealization of human nature, then he wasnot the best novelist. When I was crossing the Channel--

THE MISTRESS. Oh dear, if we are to go to sea again, Mandeville, I movewe have in the nuts and apples, and talk about our friends. 

III

There is this advantage in getting back to a wood-fire on the hearth, that you return to a kind of simplicity; you can scarcely imagine anyone being stiffly conventional in front of it. It thaws out formality, and puts the company who sit around it into easy attitudes of mind andbody, --lounging attitudes, --Herbert said. 

And this brought up the subject of culture in America, especially as tomanner. The backlog period having passed, we are beginning to have insociety people of the cultured manner, as it is called, or polishedbearing, in which the polish is the most noticeable thing about the man. Not the courtliness, the easy simplicity of the old-school gentleman, inwhose presence the milkmaid was as much at her ease as the countess, but something far finer than this. These are the people of unruffleddemeanor, who never forget it for a moment, and never let you forget it. Their presence is a constant rebuke to society. They are never "jolly;"their laugh is never anything more than a well-bred smile; theyare never betrayed into any enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is a sign ofinexperience, of ignorance, of want of culture. They never losethemselves in any cause; they never heartily praise any man or womanor book; they are superior to all tides of feeling and all outburstsof passion. They are not even shocked at vulgarity. They are simplyindifferent. They are calm, visibly calm, painfully calm; and it isnot the eternal, majestic calmness of the Sphinx either, but a rigid, self-conscious repression. You would like to put a bent pin in theirchair when they are about calmly to sit down. 

A sitting hen on her nest is calm, but hopeful; she has faith that hereggs are not china. These people appear to be sitting on china eggs. Perfect culture has refined all blood, warmth, flavor, out of them. Weadmire them without envy. They are too beautiful in their manners to beeither prigs or snobs. They are at once our models and our despair. Theyare properly careful of themselves as models, for they know that if theyshould break, society would become a scene of mere animal confusion. 

MANDEVILLE. I think that the best-bred people in the world are theEnglish. 

THE YOUNG LADY. You mean at home. 

MANDEVILLE. That's where I saw them. There is no nonsense about acultivated English man or woman. They express themselves sturdily andnaturally, and with no subservience to the opinions of others. There's asort of hearty sincerity about them that I like. Ages of culture on theisland have gone deeper than the surface, and they have simpler andmore natural manners than we. There is something good in the full, roundtones of their voices. 

HERBERT. Did you ever get into a diligence with a growling English-manwho had n't secured the place he wanted?

[Mandeville once spent a week in London, riding about on the tops ofomnibuses. ]

THE MISTRESS. Did you ever see an English exquisite at the San Carlo, and hear him cry "Bwavo"?

MANDEVILLE. At any rate, he acted out his nature, and was n't afraid to. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I think Mandeville is right, for once. The men of thebest culture in England, in the middle and higher social classes, are what you would call good fellows, --easy and simple in manner, enthusiastic on occasion, and decidedly not cultivated into the smoothcalmness of indifference which some Americans seem to regard as the sinequa non of good breeding. Their position is so assured that they do notneed that lacquer of calmness of which we were speaking. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Which is different from the manner acquired by those wholive a great deal in American hotels?

THE MISTRESS. Or the Washington manner?

HERBERT. The last two are the same. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Not exactly. You think you can always tell if a manhas learned his society carriage of a dancing-master. Well, you cannotalways tell by a person's manner whether he is a habitui of hotels orof Washington. But these are distinct from the perfect polish andpoliteness of indifferentism. 

IV

Daylight disenchants. It draws one from the fireside, and dissipates theidle illusions of conversation, except under certain conditions. Let ussay that the conditions are: a house in the country, with some foresttrees near, and a few evergreens, which are Christmas-trees all winterlong, fringed with snow, glistening with ice-pendants, cheerful byday and grotesque by night; a snow-storm beginning out of a darksky, falling in a soft profusion that fills all the air, its dazzlingwhiteness making a light near at hand, which is quite lost in thedistant darkling spaces. 

If one begins to watch the swirling flakes and crystals, he soon gets animpression of infinity of resources that he can have from nothing elseso powerfully, except it be from Adirondack gnats. Nothing makes onefeel at home like a great snow-storm. Our intelligent cat will quit thefire and sit for hours in the low window, watching the falling snowwith a serious and contented air. His thoughts are his own, but he is inaccord with the subtlest agencies of Nature; on such a day he is chargedwith enough electricity to run a telegraphic battery, if it could beutilized. The connection between thought and electricity has not beenexactly determined, but the cat is mentally very alert in certainconditions of the atmosphere. Feasting his eyes on the beautifulout-doors does not prevent his attention to the slightest noise in thewainscot. And the snow-storm brings content, but not stupidity, to allthe rest of the household. 

I can see Mandeville now, rising from his armchair and swinging his longarms as he strides to the window, and looks out and up, with, "Well, Ideclare!" Herbert is pretending to read Herbert Spencer's tract on thephilosophy of style but he loses much time in looking at the Young Lady, who is writing a letter, holding her portfolio in her lap, --one of hereverlasting letters to one of her fifty everlasting friends. She is oneof the female patriots who save the post-office department from beinga disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is thinking of the greatradical difference in the two sexes, which legislation will probablynever change; that leads a woman always, to write letters on her lap anda man on a table, --a distinction which is commended to the notice of theanti-suffragists. 

The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the roomwith a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the picture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and is thawing thesnow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the thermometer is 15deg. , and going down; that there is a snowdrift across the main churchentrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if it had goneinto winter quarters, religion and all. There were only ten persons atthe conference meeting last night, and seven of those were women; hewonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the parish, anyhow. 

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; butit is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about elevenhundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears the Mistress tellthe Parson that she believes he is trying to write a lecture on theCeltic Influence in Literature. The Parson says that it is a first-ratesubject, if there were any such influence, and asks why he does n't takea shovel and make a path to the gate. Mandeville says that, by George!he himself should like no better fun, but it wouldn't look well for avisitor to do it. The Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort ofchaff, keeps on writing his wife's name. 

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a present of one ofStowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on Christmas, when she had n'tcoal enough in the house to heat her gruel; and about a family behindthe church, a widow and six little children and three dogs; and he didn't believe that any of them had known what it was to be warm inthree weeks, and as to food, the woman said, she could hardly beg coldvictuals enough to keep the dogs alive. 

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket withprovisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought ina new forestick, Mandeville, who always wants to talk, and had beensitting drumming his feet and drawing deep sighs, attacked him. 

MANDEVILLE. Speaking about culture and manners, did you ever notice howextremes meet, and that the savage bears himself very much like the sortof cultured persons we were talking of last night?

THE FIRE-TENDER. In what respect?

MANDEVILLE. Well, you take the North American Indian. He is neverinterested in anything, never surprised at anything. He has by naturethat calmness and indifference which your people of culture haveacquired. If he should go into literature as a critic, he would scalpand tomahawk with the same emotionless composure, and he would donothing else. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Then you think the red man is a born gentleman of thehighest breeding?

MANDEVILLE. I think he is calm. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. How is it about the war-path and all that?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, these studiously calm and cultured people may havemalice underneath. It takes them to give the most effective "littledigs;" they know how to stick in the pine-splinters and set fire tothem. 

HERBERT. But there is more in Mandeville's idea. You bring a red maninto a picture-gallery, or a city full of fine architecture, or intoa drawing-room crowded with objects of art and beauty, and he isapparently insensible to them all. Now I have seen country people, --andby country people I don't mean people necessarily who live in thecountry, for everything is mixed in these days, --some of the best peoplein the world, intelligent, honest, sincere, who acted as the Indianwould. 

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, if I did n't know you were cynical, I should sayyou were snobbish. 

HERBERT. Such people think it a point of breeding never to speak ofanything in your house, nor to appear to notice it, however beautiful itmay be; even to slyly glance around strains their notion of etiquette. They are like the countryman who confessed afterwards that he couldhardly keep from laughing at one of Yankee Hill's entertainments. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Do you remember those English people at our house inFlushing last summer, who pleased us all so much with their apparentdelight in everything that was artistic or tasteful, who explored therooms and looked at everything, and were so interested? I suppose thatHerbert's country relations, many of whom live in the city, would havethought it very ill-bred. 

MANDEVILLE. It's just as I said. The English, the best of them, havebecome so civilized that they express themselves, in speech and action, naturally, and are not afraid of their emotions. 

THE PARSON. I wish Mandeville would travel more, or that he had stayedat home. It's wonderful what a fit of Atlantic sea-sickness will do fora man's judgment and cultivation. He is prepared to pronounce on art, manners, all kinds of culture. There is more nonsense talked aboutculture than about anything else. 

HERBERT. The Parson reminds me of an American country minister I oncemet walking through the Vatican. You could n't impose upon him with anyrubbish; he tested everything by the standards of his native place, andthere was little that could bear the test. He had the sly air of a manwho could not be deceived, and he went about with his mouth in a puckerof incredulity. There is nothing so placid as rustic conceit. There wassomething very enjoyable about his calm superiority to all the treasuresof art. 

MANDEVILLE. And the Parson reminds me of another American minister, aconsul in an Italian city, who said he was going up to Rome to have athorough talk with the Pope, and give him a piece of his mind. Ministersseem to think that is their business. They serve it in such small piecesin order to make it go round. 

THE PARSON. Mandeville is an infidel. Come, let's have some music;nothing else will keep him in good humor till lunch-time. 

THE MISTRESS. What shall it be?

THE PARSON. Give us the larghetto from Beethoven's second symphony. 

The Young Lady puts aside her portfolio. Herbert looks at the younglady. The Parson composes himself for critical purposes. Mandevillesettles himself in a chair and stretches his long legs nearly into thefire, remarking that music takes the tangles out of him. 

After the piece is finished, lunch is announced. It is still snowing. 

FOURTH STUDY

It is difficult to explain the attraction which the uncanny and eventhe horrible have for most minds. I have seen a delicate woman halffascinated, but wholly disgusted, by one of the most unseemly ofreptiles, vulgarly known as the "blowing viper" of the Alleghanies. Shewould look at it, and turn away with irresistible shuddering and theutmost loathing, and yet turn to look at it again and again, only toexperience the same spasm of disgust. In spite of her aversion, she musthave relished the sort of electric mental shock that the sight gave her. 

I can no more account for the fascination for us of the stories ofghosts and "appearances, " and those weird tales in which the dead arethe chief characters; nor tell why we should fall into converse aboutthem when the winter evenings are far spent, the embers are glazing overon the hearth, and the listener begins to hear the eerie noises in thehouse. At such times one's dreams become of importance, and people liketo tell them and dwell upon them, as if they were a link between theknown and unknown, and could give us a clew to that ghostly region whichin certain states of the mind we feel to be more real than that we see. 

Recently, when we were, so to say, sitting around the borders of thesupernatural late at night, MANDEVILLE related a dream of his which heassured us was true in every particular, and it interested us so muchthat we asked him to write it out. In doing so he has curtailed it, andto my mind shorn it of some of its more vivid and picturesque features. He might have worked it up with more art, and given it a finishwhich the narration now lacks, but I think best to insert it in itssimplicity. It seems to me that it may properly be called, A NEW "VISION OF SIN"

In the winter of 1850 I was a member of one of the leading colleges ofthis country. I was in moderate circumstances pecuniarily, though I wasperhaps better furnished with less fleeting riches than many others. I was an incessant and indiscriminate reader of books. For the solidsciences I had no particular fancy, but with mental modes and habits, and especially with the eccentric and fantastic in the intellectual andspiritual operations, I was tolerably familiar. All the literature ofthe supernatural was as real to me as the laboratory of the chemist, where I saw the continual struggle of material substances to evolvethemselves into more volatile, less palpable and coarse forms. Myimagination, naturally vivid, stimulated by such repasts, nearlymastered me. At times I could scarcely tell where the material ceasedand the immaterial began (if I may so express it); so that once andagain I walked, as it seemed, from the solid earth onward upon animpalpable plain, where I heard the same voices, I think, that Joanof Arc heard call to her in the garden at Domremy. She was inspired, however, while I only lacked exercise. I do not mean this in any literalsense; I only describe a state of mind. I was at this time of sparehabit, and nervous, excitable temperament. I was ambitious, proud, andextremely sensitive. I cannot deny that I had seen something of theworld, and had contracted about the average bad habits of young men whohave the sole care of themselves, and rather bungle the matter. It isnecessary to this relation to admit that I had seen a trifle more ofwhat is called life than a young man ought to see, but at this periodI was not only sick of my experience, but my habits were as correct asthose of any Pharisee in our college, and we had some very favorablespecimens of that ancient sect. 

Nor can I deny that at this period of my life I was in a peculiar mentalcondition. I well remember an illustration of it. I sat writing late onenight, copying a prize essay, --a merely manual task, leaving my thoughtsfree. It was in June, a sultry night, and about midnight a wind arose, pouring in through the open windows, full of mournful reminiscence, notof this, but of other summers, --the same wind that De Quincey heard atnoonday in midsummer blowing through the room where he stood, a mereboy, by the side of his dead sister, --a wind centuries old. As I wroteon mechanically, I became conscious of a presence in the room, though Idid not lift my eyes from the paper on which I wrote. Gradually I cameto know that my grandmother--dead so long ago that I laughed atthe idea--was in the room. She stood beside her old-fashionedspinning-wheel, and quite near me. She wore a plain muslin cap with ahigh puff in the crown, a short woolen gown, a white and blue checkedapron, and shoes with heels. She did not regard me, but stood facing thewheel, with the left hand near the spindle, holding lightly between thethumb and forefinger the white roll of wool which was being spun andtwisted on it. In her right hand she held a small stick. I heard thesharp click of this against the spokes of the wheel, then the hum of thewheel, the buzz of the spindles as the twisting yarn was teased by thewhirl of its point, then a step backwards, a pause, a step forward andthe running of the yarn upon the spindle, and again a backward step, the drawing out of the roll and the droning and hum of the wheel, mostmournfully hopeless sound that ever fell on mortal ear. Since childhoodit has haunted me. All this time I wrote, and I could hear distinctlythe scratching of the pen upon the paper. But she stood behind me (whyI did not turn my head I never knew), pacing backward and forward by thespinning-wheel, just as I had a hundred times seen her in childhood inthe old kitchen on drowsy summer afternoons. And I heard the step, thebuzz and whirl of the spindle, and the monotonous and dreary hum of themournful wheel. Whether her face was ashy pale and looked as if it mightcrumble at the touch, and the border of her white cap trembled in theJune wind that blew, I cannot say, for I tell you I did NOT see her. ButI know she was there, spinning yarn that had been knit into hose yearsand years ago by our fireside. For I was in full possession of myfaculties, and never copied more neatly and legibly any manuscript thanI did the one that night. And there the phantom (I use the word outof deference to a public prejudice on this subject) most persistentlyremained until my task was finished, and, closing the portfolio, I abruptly rose. Did I see anything? That is a silly and ignorantquestion. Could I see the wind which had now risen stronger, and drovea few cloud-scuds across the sky, filling the night, somehow, with alonging that was not altogether born of reminiscence?

In the winter following, in January, I made an effort to give up theuse of tobacco, --a habit in which I was confirmed, and of which I havenothing more to say than this: that I should attribute to it almost allthe sin and misery in the world, did I not remember that the old Romansattained a very considerable state of corruption without the assistanceof the Virginia plant. 

On the night of the third day of my abstinence, rendered more nervousand excitable than usual by the privation, I retired late, and laterstill I fell into an uneasy sleep, and thus into a dream, vivid, illuminated, more real than any event of my life. I was at home, andfell sick. The illness developed into a fever, and then a delirium setin, not an intellectual blank, but a misty and most delicious wanderingin places of incomparable beauty. I learned subsequently that ourregular physician was not certain to finish me, when a consultation wascalled, which did the business. I have the satisfaction of knowing thatthey were of the proper school. I lay sick for three days. 

On the morning of the fourth, at sunrise, I died. The sensation was notunpleasant. It was not a sudden shock. I passed out of my body as onewould walk from the door of his house. There the body lay, --a blank, so far as I was concerned, and only interesting to me as I was ratherentertained with watching the respect paid to it. My friends stood aboutthe bedside, regarding me (as they seemed to suppose), while I, ina different part of the room, could hardly repress a smile at theirmistake, solemnized as they were, and I too, for that matter, bymy recent demise. A sensation (the word you see is material andinappropriate) of etherealization and imponderability pervaded me, andI was not sorry to get rid of such a dull, slow mass as I now perceivedmyself to be, lying there on the bed. When I speak of my death, let mebe understood to say that there was no change, except that I passed outof my body and floated to the top of a bookcase in the corner of theroom, from which I looked down. For a moment I was interested to see myperson from the outside, but thereafter I was quite indifferent tothe body. I was now simply soul. I seemed to be a globe, impalpable, transparent, about six inches in diameter. I saw and heard everything asbefore. Of course, matter was no obstacle to me, and I went easily andquickly wherever I willed to go. There was none of that tedious processof communicating my wishes to the nerves, and from them to the muscles. I simply resolved to be at a particular place, and I was there. It wasbetter than the telegraph. 

It seemed to have been intimated to me at my death (birth I half inclineto call it) that I could remain on this earth for four weeks after mydecease, during which time I could amuse myself as I chose. 

I chose, in the first place, to see myself decently buried, to stay bymyself to the last, and attend my own funeral for once. As most of thosereferred to in this true narrative are still living, I am forbidden toindulge in personalities, nor shall I dare to say exactly how my deathaffected my friends, even the home circle. Whatever others did, I satup with myself and kept awake. I saw the "pennies" used instead of the"quarters" which I should have preferred. I saw myself "laid out, " aphrase that has come to have such a slang meaning that I smile as Iwrite it. When the body was put into the coffin, I took my place on thelid. 

I cannot recall all the details, and they are commonplace besides. Thefuneral took place at the church. We all rode thither in carriages, and I, not fancying my place in mine, rode on the outside with theundertaker, whom I found to be a good deal more jolly than he looked tobe. The coffin was placed in front of the pulpit when we arrived. Itook my station on the pulpit cushion, from which elevation I had anadmirable view of all the ceremonies, and could hear the sermon. How distinctly I remember the services. I think I could even at thisdistance write out the sermon. The tune sung was of--the usual countryselection, --Mount Vernon. I recall the text. I was rather flatteredby the tribute paid to me, and my future was spoken of gravely and askindly as possible, --indeed, with remarkable charity, considering thatthe minister was not aware of my presence. I used to beat him at chess, and I thought, even then, of the last game; for, however solemn theoccasion might be to others, it was not so to me. With what interestI watched my kinsfolks, and neighbors as they filed past for the lastlook! I saw, and I remember, who pulled a long face for the occasionand who exhibited genuine sadness. I learned with the most dreadfulcertainty what people really thought of me. It was a revelation neverforgotten. 

Several particular acquaintances of mine were talking on the steps as wepassed out. 

"Well, old Starr's gone up. Sudden, was n't it? He was a first-ratefellow. "

"Yes, queer about some things; but he had some mighty good streaks, "said another. And so they ran on. 

Streaks! So that is the reputation one gets during twenty years of lifein this world. Streaks!

After the funeral I rode home with the family. It was pleasanter thanthe ride down, though it seemed sad to my relations. They did notmention me, however, and I may remark, that although I stayed abouthome for a week, I never heard my name mentioned by any of the family. Arrived at home, the tea-kettle was put on and supper got ready. Thisseemed to lift the gloom a little, and under the influence of the teathey brightened up and gradually got more cheerful. They discussed thesermon and the singing, and the mistake of the sexton in diggingthe grave in the wrong place, and the large congregation. From themantel-piece I watched the group. They had waffles for supper, --of whichI had been exceedingly fond, but now I saw them disappear without asigh. 

For the first day or two of my sojourn at home I was here and there atall the neighbors, and heard a good deal about my life and character, some of which was not very pleasant, but very wholesome, doubtless, forme to hear. At the expiration of a week this amusement ceased to be suchfor I ceased to be talked of. I realized the fact that I was dead andgone. 

By an act of volition I found myself back at college. I floated into myown room, which was empty. I went to the room of my two warmest friends, whose friendship I was and am yet assured of. As usual, half a dozenof our set were lounging there. A game of whist was just commencing. Iperched on a bust of Dante on the top of the book-shelves, where I couldsee two of the hands and give a good guess at a third. My particularfriend Timmins was just shuffling the cards. 

"Be hanged if it is n't lonesome without old Starr. Did you cut? Ishould like to see him lounge in now with his pipe, and with feet on themantel-piece proceed to expound on the duplex functions of the soul. "

"There--misdeal, " said his vis-a-vis. "Hope there's been no misdeal forold Starr. "

"Spades, did you say?" the talk ran on, "never knew Starr was sickly. "

"No more was he; stouter than you are, and as brave and plucky as he wasstrong. By George, fellows, --how we do get cut down! Last term littleStubbs, and now one of the best fellows in the class. "

"How suddenly he did pop off, --one for game, honors easy, --he was goodfor the Spouts' Medal this year, too. "

"Remember the joke he played on Prof. A. , freshman year?" asked another. 

"Remember he borrowed ten dollars of me about that time, " said Timmins'spartner, gathering the cards for a new deal. 

"Guess he is the only one who ever did, " retorted some one. 

And so the talk went on, mingled with whist-talk, reminiscent of me, notall exactly what I would have chosen to go into my biography, but on thewhole kind and tender, after the fashion of the boys. At least I was intheir thoughts, and I could see was a good deal regretted, --so I passeda very pleasant evening. Most of those present were of my society, andwore crape on their badges, and all wore the usual crape on the leftarm. I learned that the following afternoon a eulogy would be deliveredon me in the chapel. 

The eulogy was delivered before members of our society and others, the next afternoon, in the chapel. I need not say that I was present. Indeed, I was perched on the desk within reach of the speaker's hand. The apotheosis was pronounced by my most intimate friend, Timmins, andI must say he did me ample justice. He never was accustomed to "draw itvery mild" (to use a vulgarism which I dislike) when he had his head, and on this occasion he entered into the matter with the zeal of a truefriend, and a young man who never expected to have another occasionto sing a public "In Memoriam. " It made my hair stand onend, --metaphorically, of course. From my childhood I had been extremelyprecocious. There were anecdotes of preternatural brightness, pickedup, Heaven knows where, of my eagerness to learn, of my adventurous, chivalrous young soul, and of my arduous struggles with chill penury, which was not able (as it appeared) to repress my rage, until I enteredthis institution, of which I had been ornament, pride, cynosure, andfair promising bud blasted while yet its fragrance was mingled with thedew of its youth. Once launched upon my college days, Timmins wenton with all sails spread. I had, as it were, to hold on to the pulpitcushion. Latin, Greek, the old literatures, I was perfect master of; allhistory was merely a light repast to me; mathematics I glanced at, andit disappeared; in the clouds of modern philosophy I was wrapped but notobscured; over the field of light literature I familiarly roamed asthe honey-bee over the wide fields of clover which blossom white in theJunes of this world! My life was pure, my character spotless, my namewas inscribed among the names of those deathless few who were not bornto die!

It was a noble eulogy, and I felt before he finished, though I hadmisgivings at the beginning, that I deserved it all. The effect on theaudience was a little different. They said it was a "strong" oration, and I think Timmins got more credit by it than I did. After theperformance they stood about the chapel, talking in a subdued tone, andseemed to be a good deal impressed by what they had heard, or perhaps bythoughts of the departed. At least they all soon went over to Austin'sand called for beer. My particular friends called for it twice. Thenthey all lit pipes. The old grocery keeper was good enough to say thatI was no fool, if I did go off owing him four dollars. To the credit ofhuman nature, let me here record that the fellows were touched by thisremark reflecting upon my memory, and immediately made up a purse andpaid the bill, --that is, they told the old man to charge it over tothem. College boys are rich in credit and the possibilities of life. 

It is needless to dwell upon the days I passed at college during thisprobation. So far as I could see, everything went on as if I were there, or had never been there. I could not even see the place where I haddropped out of the ranks. Occasionally I heard my name, but I must saythat four weeks was quite long enough to stay in a world that had prettymuch forgotten me. There is no great satisfaction in being dragged up tolight now and then, like an old letter. The case was somewhat differentwith the people with whom I had boarded. They were relations of mine, and I often saw them weep, and they talked of me a good deal attwilight and Sunday nights, especially the youngest one, Carrie, who washandsomer than any one I knew, and not much older than I. I never usedto imagine that she cared particularly for me, nor would she have doneso, if I had lived, but death brought with it a sort of sentimentalregret, which, with the help of a daguerreotype, she nursed into quite alittle passion. I spent most of my time there, for it was more congenialthan the college. 

But time hastened. The last sand of probation leaked out of the glass. One day, while Carrie played (for me, though she knew it not) one ofMendelssohn's "songs without words, " I suddenly, yet gently, withoutself-effort or volition, moved from the house, floated in the air, rosehigher, higher, by an easy, delicious, exultant, yet inconceivably rapidmotion. The ecstasy of that triumphant flight! Groves, trees, houses, the landscape, dimmed, faded, fled away beneath me. Upward mounting, ason angels' wings, with no effort, till the earth hung beneath me a roundblack ball swinging, remote, in the universal ether. Upward mounting, till the earth, no longer bathed in the sun's rays, went out to mysight, disappeared in the blank. Constellations, before seen from afar, I sailed among stars, too remote for shining on earth, I neared, andfound to be round globes flying through space with a velocity onlyequaled by my own. New worlds continually opened on my sight; newfieldsof everlasting space opened and closed behind me. 

For days and days--it seemed a mortal forever--I mounted up the greatheavens, whose everlasting doors swung wide. How the worlds and systems, stars, constellations, neared me, blazed and flashed in splendor, andfled away! At length, --was it not a thousand years?--I saw before me, yet afar off, a wall, the rocky bourn of that country whence travelerscome not back, a battlement wider than I could guess, the height ofwhich I could not see, the depth of which was infinite. As I approached, it shone with a splendor never yet beheld on earth. Its solid substancewas built of jewels the rarest, and stones of priceless value. Itseemed like one solid stone, and yet all the colors of the rainbow werecontained in it. The ruby, the diamond, the emerald, the carbuncle, the topaz, the amethyst, the sapphire; of them the wall was built up inharmonious combination. So brilliant was it that all the space I floatedin was full of the splendor. So mild was it and so translucent, that Icould look for miles into its clear depths. 

Rapidly nearing this heavenly battlement, an immense niche was disclosedin its solid face. The floor was one large ruby. Its sloping sides wereof pearl. Before I was aware I stood within the brilliant recess. I sayI stood there, for I was there bodily, in my habit as I lived; how, Icannot explain. Was it the resurrection of the body? Before me rose, athousand feet in height, a wonderful gate of flashing diamond. Besideit sat a venerable man, with long white beard, a robe of light gray, ancient sandals, and a golden key hanging by a cord from his waist. Inthe serene beauty of his noble features I saw justice and mercy had metand were reconciled. I cannot describe the majesty of his bearing or thebenignity of his appearance. It is needless to say that I stood beforeSt. Peter, who sits at the Celestial Gate. 

I humbly approached, and begged admission. St. Peter arose, and regardedme kindly, yet inquiringly. 

"What is your name?" asked he, "and from what place do you come?"

I answered, and, wishing to give a name well known, said I was fromWashington, United States. He looked doubtful, as if he had never heardthe name before. 

"Give me, " said he, "a full account of your whole life. "

I felt instantaneously that there was no concealment possible; alldisguise fell away, and an unknown power forced me to speak absolute andexact truth. I detailed the events of my life as well as I could, and the good man was not a little affected by the recital of my earlytrials, poverty, and temptation. It did not seem a very good life whenspread out in that presence, and I trembled as I proceeded; but I pleadyouth, inexperience, and bad examples. 

"Have you been accustomed, " he said, after a time, rather sadly, "tobreak the Sabbath?"

I told him frankly that I had been rather lax in that matter, especiallyat college. I often went to sleep in the chapel on Sunday, when I wasnot reading some entertaining book. He then asked who the preacher was, and when I told him, he remarked that I was not so much to blame as hehad supposed. 

"Have you, " he went on, "ever stolen, or told any lie?"

I was able to say no, except admitting as to the first, usual college"conveyances, " and as to the last, an occasional "blinder" to theprofessors. He was gracious enough to say that these could be overlookedas incident to the occasion. 

"Have you ever been dissipated, living riotously and keeping latehours?"

"Yes. "

This also could be forgiven me as an incident of youth. 

"Did you ever, " he went on, "commit the crime of using intoxicatingdrinks as a beverage?"

I answered that I had never been a habitual drinker, that I had neverbeen what was called a "moderate drinker, " that I had never gone to abar and drank alone; but that I had been accustomed, in company withother young men, on convivial occasions to taste the pleasures of theflowing bowl, sometimes to excess, but that I had also tasted thepains of it, and for months before my demise had refrained from liquoraltogether. The holy man looked grave, but, after reflection, said thismight also be overlooked in a young man. 

"What, " continued he, in tones still more serious, "has been yourconduct with regard to the other sex?"

I fell upon my knees in a tremor of fear. I pulled from my bosoma little book like the one Leperello exhibits in the opera of "DonGiovanni. " There, I said, was a record of my flirtation and inconstancy. I waited long for the decision, but it came in mercy. 

"Rise, " he cried; "young men will be young men, I suppose. We shallforgive this also to your youth and penitence. "

"Your examination is satisfactory, he informed me, " after a pause; "youcan now enter the abodes of the happy. "

Joy leaped within me. We approached the gate. The key turned in thelock. The gate swung noiselessly on its hinges a little open. Outflashed upon me unknown splendors. What I saw in that momentary gleamI shall never whisper in mortal ears. I stood upon the threshold, justabout to enter. 

"Stop! one moment, " exclaimed St. Peter, laying his hand on my shoulder;"I have one more question to ask you. "

I turned toward him. 

"Young man, did you ever use tobacco?"

"I both smoked and chewed in my lifetime, " I faltered, "but... "

"THEN TO HELL WITH YOU!" he shouted in a voice of thunder. 

Instantly the gate closed without noise, and I was flung, hurled, fromthe battlement, down! down! down! Faster and faster I sank in a dizzy, sickening whirl into an unfathomable space of gloom. The light faded. Dampness and darkness were round about me. As before, for days and daysI rose exultant in the light, so now forever I sank into thickeningdarkness, --and yet not darkness, but a pale, ashy light more fearful. 

In the dimness, I at length discovered a wall before me. It ran up anddown and on either hand endlessly into the night. It was solid, black, terrible in its frowning massiveness. 

Straightway I alighted at the gate, --a dismal crevice hewn into thedripping rock. The gate was wide open, and there sat-I knew him at once;who does not?--the Arch Enemy of mankind. He cocked his eye at me in animpudent, low, familiar manner that disgusted me. I saw that I was notto be treated like a gentleman. 

"Well, young man, " said he, rising, with a queer grin on his face, "whatare you sent here for?"

"For using tobacco, " I replied. 

"Ho!" shouted he in a jolly manner, peculiar to devils, "that's whatmost of 'em are sent here for now. "

Without more ado, he called four lesser imps, who ushered me within. What a dreadful plain lay before me! There was a vast city laid out inregular streets, but there were no houses. Along the streets were placesof torment and torture exceedingly ingenious and disagreeable. For milesand miles, it seemed, I followed my conductors through these horrors, Here was a deep vat of burning tar. Here were rows of fiery ovens. Inoticed several immense caldron kettles of boiling oil, upon the rimsof which little devils sat, with pitchforks in hand, and poked down thehelpless victims who floundered in the liquid. But I forbear to go intounseemly details. The whole scene is as vivid in my mind as any earthlylandscape. 

After an hour's walk my tormentors halted before the mouth of anoven, --a furnace heated seven times, and now roaring with flames. Theygrasped me, one hold of each hand and foot. Standing before the blazingmouth, they, with a swing, and a "one, two, THREE.... "

I again assure the reader that in this narrative I have set down nothingthat was not actually dreamed, and much, very much of this wonderfulvision I have been obliged to omit. 

Haec fabula docet: It is dangerous for a young man to leave off the useof tobacco. 

FIFTH STUDY

I

I wish I could fitly celebrate the joyousness of the New England winter. Perhaps I could if I more thoroughly believed in it. But skepticismcomes in with the south wind. When that begins to blow, one feels thefoundations of his belief breaking up. This is only another way ofsaying that it is more difficult, if it be not impossible, to freeze outorthodoxy, or any fixed notion, than it is to thaw it out; though it isa mere fancy to suppose that this is the reason why the martyrs, of allcreeds, were burned at the stake. There is said to be a great relaxationin New England of the ancient strictness in the direction of tolerationof opinion, called by some a lowering of the standard, and by others araising of the banner of liberality; it might be an interesting inquiryhow much this change is due to another change, --the softening of the NewEngland winter and the shifting of the Gulf Stream. It is the fashionnowadays to refer almost everything to physical causes, and this hint isa gratuitous contribution to the science of metaphysical physics. 

The hindrance to entering fully into the joyousness of a New Englandwinter, except far inland among the mountains, is the south wind. Itis a grateful wind, and has done more, I suspect, to demoralize societythan any other. It is not necessary to remember that it filled thesilken sails of Cleopatra's galley. It blows over New England every fewdays, and is in some portions of it the prevailing wind. That it bringsthe soft clouds, and sometimes continues long enough to almost deceivethe expectant buds of the fruit trees, and to tempt the robin from thesecluded evergreen copses, may be nothing; but it takes the tone out ofthe mind, and engenders discontent, making one long for the tropics; itfeeds the weakened imagination on palm-leaves and the lotus. Before weknow it we become demoralized, and shrink from the tonic of the suddenchange to sharp weather, as the steamed hydropathic patient does fromthe plunge. It is the insidious temptation that assails us when we arebraced up to profit by the invigorating rigor of winter. 

Perhaps the influence of the four great winds on character is only afancied one; but it is evident on temperament, which is not altogether amatter of temperature, although the good old deacon used to say, in hishumble, simple way, that his third wife was a very good woman, but her"temperature was very different from that of the other two. " The northwind is full of courage, and puts the stamina of endurance into aman, and it probably would into a woman too if there were a series ofresolutions passed to that effect. The west wind is hopeful; it haspromise and adventure in it, and is, except to Atlantic voyagersAmerica-bound, the best wind that ever blew. The east wind ispeevishness; it is mental rheumatism and grumbling, and curls one up inthe chimney-corner like a cat. And if the chimney ever smokes, it smokeswhen the wind sits in that quarter. The south wind is full of longingand unrest, of effeminate suggestions of luxurious ease, and perhaps wemight say of modern poetry, --at any rate, modern poetry needs a changeof air. I am not sure but the south is the most powerful of the winds, because of its sweet persuasiveness. Nothing so stirs the blood inspring, when it comes up out of the tropical latitude; it makes men"longen to gon on pilgrimages. "

I did intend to insert here a little poem (as it is quite proper to doin an essay) on the south wind, composed by the Young Lady Staying WithUs, beginning, --

 "Out of a drifting southern cloud My soul heard the night-bird cry, "

but it never got any farther than this. The Young Lady said it wasexceedingly difficult to write the next two lines, because not onlyrhyme but meaning had to be procured. And this is true; anybody canwrite first lines, and that is probably the reason we have so manypoems which seem to have been begun in just this way, that is, with asouth-wind-longing without any thought in it, and it is very fortunatewhen there is not wind enough to finish them. This emotional poem, ifI may so call it, was begun after Herbert went away. I liked it, and thought it was what is called "suggestive;" although I did notunderstand it, especially what the night-bird was; and I am afraid Ihurt the Young Lady's feelings by asking her if she meant Herbert by the"night-bird, "--a very absurd suggestion about two unsentimental people. She said, "Nonsense;" but she afterwards told the Mistress that therewere emotions that one could never put into words without the dangerof being ridiculous; a profound truth. And yet I should not like to saythat there is not a tender lonesomeness in love that can get comfort outof a night-bird in a cloud, if there be such a thing. Analysis is thedeath of sentiment. 

But to return to the winds. Certain people impress us as the winds do. Mandeville never comes in that I do not feel a north-wind vigor andhealthfulness in his cordial, sincere, hearty manner, and in hiswholesome way of looking at things. The Parson, you would say, was theeast wind, and only his intimates know that his peevishness is only aquerulous humor. In the fair west wind I know the Mistress herself, fullof hope, and always the first one to discover a bit of blue in a cloudysky. It would not be just to apply what I have said of the south wind toany of our visitors, but it did blow a little while Herbert was here. 

II

In point of pure enjoyment, with an intellectual sparkle in it, Isuppose that no luxurious lounging on tropical isles set in tropicalseas compares with the positive happiness one may have before a greatwoodfire (not two sticks laid crossways in a grate), with a veritableNew England winter raging outside. In order to get the highestenjoyment, the faculties must be alert, and not be lulled into a mererecipient dullness. There are those who prefer a warm bath to a briskwalk in the inspiring air, where ten thousand keen influences ministerto the sense of beauty and run along the excited nerves. There are, for instance, a sharpness of horizon outline and a delicacy of coloron distant hills which are wanting in summer, and which convey to onerightly organized the keenest delight, and a refinement of enjoymentthat is scarcely sensuous, not at all sentimental, and almost passingthe intellectual line into the spiritual. 

I was speaking to Mandeville about this, and he said that I was drawingit altogether too fine; that he experienced sensations of pleasure inbeing out in almost all weathers; that he rather liked to breast a northwind, and that there was a certain inspiration in sharp outlines andin a landscape in trim winter-quarters, with stripped trees, and, as itwere, scudding through the season under bare poles; but that he must saythat he preferred the weather in which he could sit on the fence bythe wood-lot, with the spring sun on his back, and hear the stir of theleaves and the birds beginning their housekeeping. 

A very pretty idea for Mandeville; and I fear he is getting to haveprivate thoughts about the Young Lady. Mandeville naturally likes therobustness and sparkle of winter, and it has been a little suspicious tohear him express the hope that we shall have an early spring. 

I wonder how many people there are in New England who know the glory andinspiration of a winter walk just before sunset, and that, too, not onlyon days of clear sky, when the west is aflame with a rosy color, whichhas no suggestion of languor or unsatisfied longing in it, but on dulldays, when the sullen clouds hang about the horizon, full of threats ofstorm and the terrors of the gathering night. We are very busy withour own affairs, but there is always something going on out-doors worthlooking at; and there is seldom an hour before sunset that has not somespecial attraction. And, besides, it puts one in the mood for the cheerand comfort of the open fire at home. 

Probably if the people of New England could have a plebiscitum on theirweather, they would vote against it, especially against winter. Almostno one speaks well of winter. And this suggests the idea that mostpeople here were either born in the wrong place, or do not know what isbest for them. I doubt if these grumblers would be any better satisfied, or would turn out as well, in the tropics. Everybody knows ourvirtues, --at least if they believe half we tell them, --and for delicatebeauty, that rare plant, I should look among the girls of the NewEngland hills as confidently as anywhere, and I have traveled as farsouth as New Jersey, and west of the Genesee Valley. Indeed, it would beeasy to show that the parents of the pretty girls in the West emigratedfrom New England. And yet--such is the mystery of Providence--no onewould expect that one of the sweetest and most delicate flowers thatblooms, the trailing arbutus, would blossom in this inhospitableclimate, and peep forth from the edge of a snowbank at that. 

It seems unaccountable to a superficial observer that the thousandsof people who are dissatisfied with their climate do not seek a morecongenial one--or stop grumbling. The world is so small, and all partsof it are so accessible, it has so many varieties of climate, that onecould surely suit himself by searching; and, then, is it worth while towaste our one short life in the midst of unpleasant surroundings and ina constant friction with that which is disagreeable? One would supposethat people set down on this little globe would seek places on it mostagreeable to themselves. It must be that they are much more content withthe climate and country upon which they happen, by the accident of theirbirth, than they pretend to be. 

III

Home sympathies and charities are most active in the winter. Comingin from my late walk, --in fact driven in by a hurrying north wind thatwould brook no delay, --a wind that brought snow that did not seem tofall out of a bounteous sky, but to be blown from polar fields, --Ifind the Mistress returned from town, all in a glow of philanthropicexcitement. 

There has been a meeting of a woman's association for Ameliorating theCondition of somebody here at home. Any one can belong to it by payinga dollar, and for twenty dollars one can become a life Ameliorator, --asort of life assurance. The Mistress, at the meeting, I believe, "seconded the motion" several times, and is one of the Vice-Presidents;and this family honor makes me feel almost as if I were a presidentof something myself. These little distinctions are among the sweetestthings in life, and to see one's name officially printed stimulateshis charity, and is almost as satisfactory as being the chairman of acommittee or the mover of a resolution. It is, I think, fortunate, andnot at all discreditable, that our little vanity, which is reckonedamong our weaknesses, is thus made to contribute to the activity of ournobler powers. Whatever we may say, we all of us like distinction; andprobably there is no more subtle flattery than that conveyed in thewhisper, "That's he, " "That's she. "

There used to be a society for ameliorating the condition of the Jews;but they were found to be so much more adept than other people inameliorating their own condition that I suppose it was given up. Mandeville says that to his knowledge there are a great many peoplewho get up ameliorating enterprises merely to be conspicuously busy insociety, or to earn a little something in a good cause. They seemto think that the world owes them a living because they arephilanthropists. In this Mandeville does not speak with his usualcharity. It is evident that there are Jews, and some Gentiles, whosecondition needs ameliorating, and if very little is really accomplishedin the effort for them, it always remains true that the charitable reapa benefit to themselves. It is one of the beautiful compensations ofthis life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helpinghimself. 

OUR NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR. Why is it that almost all philanthropists andreformers are disagreeable?

I ought to explain who our next-door neighbor is. He is the person whocomes in without knocking, drops in in the most natural way, as his wifedoes also, and not seldom in time to take the after-dinner cup of teabefore the fire. Formal society begins as soon as you lock your doors, and only admit visitors through the media of bells and servants. It islucky for us that our next-door neighbor is honest. 

THE PARSON. Why do you class reformers and philanthropists together?Those usually called reformers are not philanthropists at all. They areagitators. Finding the world disagreeable to themselves, they wish tomake it as unpleasant to others as possible. 

MANDEVILLE. That's a noble view of your fellow-men. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Well, granting the distinction, why are both apt to beunpleasant people to live with?

THE PARSON. As if the unpleasant people who won't mind their ownbusiness were confined to the classes you mention! Some of the bestpeople I know are philanthropists, --I mean the genuine ones, and not theuneasy busybodies seeking notoriety as a means of living. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. It is not altogether the not minding their ownbusiness. Nobody does that. The usual explanation is, that people withone idea are tedious. But that is not all of it. For few personshave more than one idea, --ministers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, manufacturers, merchants, --they all think the world they live in is thecentral one. 

MANDEVILLE. And you might add authors. To them nearly all the life ofthe world is in letters, and I suppose they would be astonished if theyknew how little the thoughts of the majority of people are occupied withbooks, and with all that vast thought circulation which is the vitalcurrent of the world to book-men. Newspapers have reached their presentpower by becoming unliterary, and reflecting all the interests of theworld. 

THE MISTRESS. I have noticed one thing, that the most popular persons insociety are those who take the world as it is, find the least fault, andhave no hobbies. They are always wanted to dinner. 

THE YOUNG LADY. And the other kind always appear to me to want a dinner. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. It seems to me that the real reason why reformers andsome philanthropists are unpopular is, that they disturb our serenityand make us conscious of our own shortcomings. It is only now and thenthat a whole people get a spasm of reformatory fervor, of investigationand regeneration. At other times they rather hate those who disturbtheir quiet. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Professional reformers and philanthropists areinsufferably conceited and intolerant. 

THE MISTRESS. Everything depends upon the spirit in which a reform or ascheme of philanthropy is conducted. 

MANDEVILLE. I attended a protracted convention of reformers of a certainevil, once, and had the pleasure of taking dinner with a tableful ofthem. It was one of those country dinners accompanied with green tea. Every one disagreed with every one else, and you would n't wonder atit, if you had seen them. They were people with whom good food wouldn'tagree. George Thompson was expected at the convention, and I rememberthat there was almost a cordiality in the talk about him, until onesallow brother casually mentioned that George took snuff, --when a chorusof deprecatory groans went up from the table. One long-faced maiden inspectacles, with purple ribbons in her hair, who drank five cups of teaby my count, declared that she was perfectly disgusted, and did n'twant to hear him speak. In the course of the meal the talk ran upon thediscipline of children, and how to administer punishment. I was quitetaken by the remark of a thin, dyspeptic man who summed up the matterby growling out in a harsh, deep bass voice, "Punish 'em in love!" Itsounded as if he had said, "Shoot 'em on the spot!"

THE PARSON. I supposed you would say that he was a minister. There isanother thing about those people. I think they are working against thecourse of nature. Nature is entirely indifferent to any reform. Sheperpetuates a fault as persistently as a virtue. There's a split inmy thumb-nail that has been scrupulously continued for many years, notwithstanding all my efforts to make the nail resume its old regularity. You see the same thing in trees whose bark is cut, and in melons thathave had only one summer's intimacy with squashes. The bad traits incharacter are passed down from generation to generation with as muchcare as the good ones. Nature, unaided, never reforms anything. 

MANDEVILLE. Is that the essence of Calvinism?

THE PARSON. Calvinism has n't any essence, it's a fact. 

MANDEVILLE. When I was a boy, I always associated Calvinism and calomeltogether. I thought that homeopathy--similia, etc. --had done away withboth of them. 

OUR NEXT DOOR (rising). If you are going into theology, I'm off.. 

IV

I fear we are not getting on much with the joyousness of winter. Inorder to be exhilarating it must be real winter. I have noticed that thelower the thermometer sinks the more fiercely the north wind rages, andthe deeper the snow is, the higher rise the spirits of the community. The activity of the "elements" has a great effect upon country folkespecially; and it is a more wholesome excitement than that caused bya great conflagration. The abatement of a snow-storm that grows toexceptional magnitude is regretted, for there is always the half-hopethat this will be, since it has gone so far, the largest fall of snowever known in the region, burying out of sight the great fall of 1808, the account of which is circumstantially and aggravatingly thrown in ourway annually upon the least provocation. We all know how it reads: "Somesaid it began at daylight, others that it set in after sunrise; butall agree that by eight o'clock Friday morning it was snowing in heavymasses that darkened the air. "

The morning after we settled the five--or is it seven?--pointsof Calvinism, there began a very hopeful snow-storm, one of thosewide-sweeping, careering storms that may not much affect the city, but which strongly impress the country imagination with a sense of thepersonal qualities of the weather, --power, persistency, fierceness, androaring exultation. Out-doors was terrible to those who looked out ofwindows, and heard the raging wind, and saw the commotion in all thehigh tree-tops and the writhing of the low evergreens, and could notsummon resolution to go forth and breast and conquer the bluster. Thesky was dark with snow, which was not permitted to fall peacefullylike a blessed mantle, as it sometimes does, but was blown and rent andtossed like the split canvas of a ship in a gale. The world was takenpossession of by the demons of the air, who had their will of it. Thereis a sort of fascination in such a scene, equal to that of a tempest atsea, and without its attendant haunting sense of peril; there is no fearthat the house will founder or dash against your neighbor's cottage, which is dimly seen anchored across the field; at every thundering onsetthere is no fear that the cook's galley will upset, or the screw breakloose and smash through the side, and we are not in momently expectationof the tinkling of the little bell to "stop her. " The snow rises indrifting waves, and the naked trees bend like strained masts; but solong as the window-blinds remain fast, and the chimney-tops do not go, we preserve an equal mind. Nothing more serious can happen than thefailure of the butcher's and the grocer's carts, unless, indeed, thelittle news-carrier should fail to board us with the world's dailybulletin, or our next-door neighbor should be deterred from coming tosit by the blazing, excited fire, and interchange the trifling, harmlessgossip of the day. The feeling of seclusion on such a day is sweet, butthe true friend who does brave the storm and come is welcomed with asort of enthusiasm that his arrival in pleasant weather would neverexcite. The snow-bound in their Arctic hulk are glad to see even awandering Esquimau. 

On such a day I recall the great snow-storms on the northern New Englandhills, which lasted for a week with no cessation, with no sunrise orsunset, and no observation at noon; and the sky all the while dark withthe driving snow, and the whole world full of the noise of the riotingBoreal forces; until the roads were obliterated, the fences covered, and the snow was piled solidly above the first-story windows of thefarmhouse on one side, and drifted before the front door so high thategress could only be had by tunneling the bank. 

After such a battle and siege, when the wind fell and the sun struggledout again, the pallid world lay subdued and tranquil, and the scattereddwellings were not unlike wrecks stranded by the tempest and half buriedin sand. But when the blue sky again bent over all, the wide expanse ofsnow sparkled like diamond-fields, and the chimney signal-smokes couldbe seen, how beautiful was the picture! Then began the stir abroad, and the efforts to open up communication through roads, or fields, orwherever paths could be broken, and the ways to the meeting-housefirst of all. Then from every house and hamlet the men turned out withshovels, with the patient, lumbering oxen yoked to the sleds, to breakthe roads, driving into the deepest drifts, shoveling and shouting asif the severe labor were a holiday frolic, the courage and the hilarityrising with the difficulties encountered; and relief parties, meeting atlength in the midst of the wide white desolation, hailed each other aschance explorers in new lands, and made the whole country-side ring withthe noise of their congratulations. There was as much excitement andhealthy stirring of the blood in it as in the Fourth of July, andperhaps as much patriotism. The boy saw it in dumb show from thedistant, low farmhouse window, and wished he were a man. At night therewere great stories of achievement told by the cavernous fireplace;great latitude was permitted in the estimation of the size of particulardrifts, but never any agreement was reached as to the "depth on alevel. " I have observed since that people are quite as apt to agree uponthe marvelous and the exceptional as upon simple facts. 

V

By the firelight and the twilight, the Young Lady is finishing a letterto Herbert, --writing it, literally, on her knees, transforming thus thesimple deed into an act of devotion. Mandeville says that it is bad forher eyes, but the sight of it is worse for his eyes. He begins to doubtthe wisdom of reliance upon that worn apothegm about absence conqueringlove. 

Memory has the singular characteristic of recalling in a friend absent, as in a journey long past, only that which is agreeable. Mandevillebegins to wish he were in New South Wales. 

I did intend to insert here a letter of Herbert's to the YoungLady, --obtained, I need not say, honorably, as private letters which getinto print always are, --not to gratify a vulgar curiosity, but to showhow the most unsentimental and cynical people are affected by the masterpassion. But I cannot bring myself to do it. Even in the interestsof science one has no right to make an autopsy of two loving hearts, especially when they are suffering under a late attack of the oneagreeable epidemic. 

All the world loves a lover, but it laughs at him none the less in hisextravagances. He loses his accustomed reticence; he has something ofthe martyr's willingness for publicity; he would even like to show thesincerity of his devotion by some piece of open heroism. Why should heconceal a discovery which has transformed the world to him, a secretwhich explains all the mysteries of nature and humanity? He is in thatecstasy of mind which prompts those who were never orators before torise in an experience-meeting and pour out a flood of feeling in thetritest language and the most conventional terms. I am not sure thatHerbert, while in this glow, would be ashamed of his letter in print, but this is one of the cases where chancery would step in and protectone from himself by his next friend. This is really a delicate matter, and perhaps it is brutal to allude to it at all. 

In truth, the letter would hardly be interesting in print. Love has amarvelous power of vivifying language and charging the simplest wordswith the most tender meaning, of restoring to them the power they hadwhen first coined. They are words of fire to those two who know theirsecret, but not to others. It is generally admitted that the bestlove-letters would not make very good literature. "Dearest, " beginsHerbert, in a burst of originality, felicitously selecting a word whoseexclusiveness shuts out all the world but one, and which is a wholeletter, poem, confession, and creed in one breath. What a weight ofmeaning it has to carry! There may be beauty and wit and grace andnaturalness and even the splendor of fortune elsewhere, but there is onewoman in the world whose sweet presence would be compensation for theloss of all else. It is not to be reasoned about; he wants that one; itis her plume dancing down the sunny street that sets his heart beating;he knows her form among a thousand, and follows her; he longs to runafter her carriage, which the cruel coachman whirls out of his sight. Itis marvelous to him that all the world does not want her too, and he isin a panic when he thinks of it. And what exquisite flattery is in thatlittle word addressed to her, and with what sweet and meek triumph sherepeats it to herself, with a feeling that is not altogether pity forthose who still stand and wait. To be chosen out of all the availableworld--it is almost as much bliss as it is to choose. "All that long, long stage-ride from Blim's to Portage I thought of you every moment, and wondered what you were doing and how you were looking just thatmoment, and I found the occupation so charming that I was almost sorrywhen the journey was ended. " Not much in that! But I have no doubt theYoung Lady read it over and over, and dwelt also upon every moment, andfound in it new proof of unshaken constancy, and had in that and thelike things in the letter a sense of the sweetest communion. There isnothing in this letter that we need dwell on it, but I am convinced thatthe mail does not carry any other letters so valuable as this sort. 

I suppose that the appearance of Herbert in this new light unconsciouslygave tone a little to the evening's talk; not that anybody mentionedhim, but Mandeville was evidently generalizing from the qualitiesthat make one person admired by another to those that win the love ofmankind. 

MANDEVILLE. There seems to be something in some persons that wins themliking, special or general, independent almost of what they do or say. 

THE MISTRESS. Why, everybody is liked by some one. 

MANDEVILLE. I'm not sure of that. There are those who are friendless, and would be if they had endless acquaintances. But, to take the caseaway from ordinary examples, in which habit and a thousand circumstancesinfluence liking, what is it that determines the world upon a personalregard for authors whom it has never seen?

THE FIRE-TENDER. Probably it is the spirit shown in their writings. 

THE MISTRESS. More likely it is a sort of tradition; I don't believethat the world has a feeling of personal regard for any author who wasnot loved by those who knew him most intimately. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Which comes to the same thing. The qualities, thespirit, that got him the love of his acquaintances he put into hisbooks. 

MANDEVILLE. That does n't seem to me sufficient. Shakespeare has puteverything into his plays and poems, swept the whole range of humansympathies and passions, and at times is inspired by the sweetest spiritthat ever man had. 

THE YOUNG LADY. No one has better interpreted love. 

MANDEVILLE. Yet I apprehend that no person living has any personalregard for Shakespeare, or that his personality affects many, --exceptthey stand in Stratford church and feel a sort of awe at the thoughtthat the bones of the greatest poet are so near them. 

THE PARSON. I don't think the world cares personally for any mere man orwoman dead for centuries. 

MANDEVILLE. But there is a difference. I think there is still rather awarm feeling for Socrates the man, independent of what he said, which islittle known. Homer's works are certainly better known, but no one carespersonally for Homer any more than for any other shade. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Why not go back to Moses? We've got the evening before usfor digging up people. 

MANDEVILLE. Moses is a very good illustration. No name of antiquityis better known, and yet I fancy he does not awaken the same kind ofpopular liking that Socrates does. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Fudge! You just get up in any lecture assembly andpropose three cheers for Socrates, and see where you'll be. Mandevilleought to be a missionary, and read Robert Browning to the Fijis. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. How do you account for the alleged personal regard forSocrates?

THE PARSON. Because the world called Christian is still more than halfheathen. 

MANDEVILLE. He was a plain man; his sympathies were with the people; hehad what is roughly known as "horse-sense, " and he was homely. Franklinand Abraham Lincoln belong to his class. They were all philosophers ofthe shrewd sort, and they all had humor. It was fortunate for Lincolnthat, with his other qualities, he was homely. That was the lasttouching recommendation to the popular heart. 

THE MISTRESS. Do you remember that ugly brown-stone statue of St. Antonio by the bridge in Sorrento? He must have been a coarse saint, patron of pigs as he was, but I don't know any one anywhere, or thehomely stone image of one, so loved by the people. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Ugliness being trump, I wonder more people don't win. Mandeville, why don't you get up a "centenary" of Socrates, and put uphis statue in the Central Park? It would make that one of Lincoln inUnion Square look beautiful. 

THE PARSON. Oh, you'll see that some day, when they have a museum thereillustrating the "Science of Religion. "

THE FIRE-TENDER. Doubtless, to go back to what we were talking of, the world has a fondness for some authors, and thinks of them with anaffectionate and half-pitying familiarity; and it may be that thisgrows out of something in their lives quite as much as anything intheir writings. There seems to be more disposition of personal likingto Thackeray than to Dickens, now both are dead, --a result that wouldhardly have been predicted when the world was crying over Little Nell, or agreeing to hate Becky Sharp. 

THE YOUNG LADY. What was that you were telling about Charles Lamb, the other day, Mandeville? Is not the popular liking for him somewhatindependent of his writings?

MANDEVILLE. He is a striking example of an author who is loved. Verylikely the remembrance of his tribulations has still something to dowith the tenderness felt for him. He supported no dignity and permitteda familiarity which indicated no self-appreciation of his real rank inthe world of letters. I have heard that his acquaintances familiarlycalled him "Charley. "

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a relief to know that! Do you happen to know whatSocrates was called?

MANDEVILLE. I have seen people who knew Lamb very well. One of them toldme, as illustrating his want of dignity, that as he was going home lateone night through the nearly empty streets, he was met by a roysteringparty who were making a night of it from tavern to tavern. They fellupon Lamb, attracted by his odd figure and hesitating manner, and, hoisting him on their shoulders, carried him off, singing as they went. Lamb enjoyed the lark, and did not tell them who he was. When they weretired of lugging him, they lifted him, with much effort and difficulty, to the top of a high wall, and left him there amid the broken bottles, utterly unable to get down. Lamb remained there philosophically in theenjoyment of his novel adventure, until a passing watchman rescued himfrom his ridiculous situation. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. How did the story get out?

MANDEVILLE. Oh, Lamb told all about it next morning; and when askedafterwards why he did so, he replied that there was no fun in it unlesshe told it. 

SIXTH STUDY

I

The King sat in the winter-house in the ninth month, and there was afire on the hearth burning before him.... When Jehudi had read three orfour leaves he cut it with the penknife. 

That seems to be a pleasant and home-like picture from a not very remoteperiod, --less than twenty-five hundred years ago, and many centuriesafter the fall of Troy. And that was not so very long ago, for Thebes, in the splendid streets of which Homer wandered and sang to the kingswhen Memphis, whose ruins are older than history, was its younger rival, was twelve centuries old when Paris ran away with Helen. 

I am sorry that the original--and you can usually do anything withthe "original"--does not bear me out in saying that it was a pleasantpicture. I should like to believe that Jehoiakim--for that was thesingular name of the gentleman who sat by his hearthstone--had justreceived the Memphis "Palimpsest, " fifteen days in advance of the dateof its publication, and that his secretary was reading to him thatmonthly, and cutting its leaves as he read. I should like to have seenit in that year when Thales was learning astronomy in Memphis, and Nechowas organizing his campaign against Carchemish. If Jehoiakim took the"Attic Quarterly, " he might have read its comments on the banishmentof the Alcmaeonida, and its gibes at Solon for his prohibitory laws, forbidding the sale of unguents, limiting the luxury of dress, andinterfering with the sacred rights of mourners to passionately bewailthe dead in the Asiatic manner; the same number being enriched withcontributions from two rising poets, --a lyric of love by Sappho, and anode sent by Anacreon from Teos, with an editorial note explaining thatthe Maces was not responsible for the sentiments of the poem. 

But, in fact, the gentleman who sat before the backlog in hiswinter-house had other things to think of. For Nebuchadnezzar was comingthat way with the chariots and horses of Babylon and a great crowd ofmarauders; and the king had not even the poor choice whether he wouldbe the vassal of the Chaldean or of the Egyptian. To us, this is onlya ghostly show of monarchs and conquerors stalking across vast historicspaces. It was no doubt a vulgar enough scene of war and plunder. Thegreat captains of that age went about to harry each other's territoriesand spoil each other's cities very much as we do nowadays, and forsimilar reasons;--Napoleon the Great in Moscow, Napoleon the Small inItaly, Kaiser William in Paris, Great Scott in Mexico! Men have notchanged much;--The Fire-Tender sat in his winter-garden in the thirdmonth; there was a fire on the hearth burning before him. He cutthe leaves of "Scribner's Monthly" with his penknife, and thought ofJehoiakim. 

That seems as real as the other. In the garden, which is a room of thehouse, the tall callas, rooted in the ground, stand about the fountain;the sun, streaming through the glass, illumines the many-hued flowers. Iwonder what Jehoiakim did with the mealy-bug on his passion-vine, andif he had any way of removing the scale-bug from his African acacia? Onewould like to know, too, how he treated the red spider on the Le Marquerose. The record is silent. I do not doubt he had all these insects inhis winter-garden, and the aphidae besides; and he could not smoke themout with tobacco, for the world had not yet fallen into its second stageof the knowledge of good and evil by eating the forbidden tobacco-plant. 

I confess that this little picture of a fire on the hearth so manycenturies ago helps to make real and interesting to me that somewhatmisty past. No doubt the lotus and the acanthus from the Nile grew inthat winter-house, and perhaps Jehoiakim attempted--the most difficultthing in the world the cultivation of the wild flowers from Lebanon. Perhaps Jehoiakim was interested also, as I am through this ancientfireplace, --which is a sort of domestic window into the ancientworld, --in the loves of Bernice and Abaces at the court of the Pharaohs. I see that it is the same thing as the sentiment--perhaps it is theshrinking which every soul that is a soul has, sooner or later, fromisolation--which grew up between Herbert and the Young Lady Staying WithUs. Jeremiah used to come in to that fireside very much as the Parsondoes to ours. The Parson, to be sure, never prophesies, but he grumbles, and is the chorus in the play that sings the everlasting ai ai of "Itold you so!" Yet we like the Parson. He is the sprig of bitter herbthat makes the pottage wholesome. I should rather, ten times over, dispense with the flatterers and the smooth-sayers than the grumblers. But the grumblers are of two sorts, --the healthful-toned and thewhiners. There are makers of beer who substitute for the clean bitter ofthe hops some deleterious drug, and then seek to hide the fraud by somecloying sweet. There is nothing of this sickish drug in the Parson'stalk, nor was there in that of Jeremiah, I sometimes think there isscarcely enough of this wholesome tonic in modern society. The Parsonsays he never would give a child sugar-coated pills. Mandeville says henever would give them any. After all, you cannot help liking Mandeville. 

II

We were talking of this late news from Jerusalem. The Fire-Tender wassaying that it is astonishing how much is telegraphed us from the Eastthat is not half so interesting. He was at a loss philosophically toaccount for the fact that the world is so eager to know the news ofyesterday which is unimportant, and so indifferent to that of the daybefore which is of some moment. 

MANDEVILLE. I suspect that it arises from the want of imagination. People need to touch the facts, and nearness in time is contiguity. Itwould excite no interest to bulletin the last siege of Jerusalem in avillage where the event was unknown, if the date was appended; and yetthe account of it is incomparably more exciting than that of the siegeof Metz. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. The daily news is a necessity. I cannot get along withoutmy morning paper. The other morning I took it up, and was absorbed inthe telegraphic columns for an hour nearly. I thoroughly enjoyed thefeeling of immediate contact with all the world of yesterday, untilI read among the minor items that Patrick Donahue, of the city of NewYork, died of a sunstroke. If he had frozen to death, I should haveenjoyed that; but to die of sunstroke in February seemed inappropriate, and I turned to the date of the paper. When I found it was printed inJuly, I need not say that I lost all interest in it, though why thetrivialities and crimes and accidents, relating to people I never knew, were not as good six months after date as twelve hours, I cannot say. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. You know that in Concord the latest news, excepta remark or two by Thoreau or Emerson, is the Vedas. I believe theRig-Veda is read at the breakfast-table instead of the Boston journals. 

THE PARSON. I know it is read afterward instead of the Bible. 

MANDEVILLE. That is only because it is supposed to be older. I haveunderstood that the Bible is very well spoken of there, but it is notantiquated enough to be an authority. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. There was a project on foot to put it into thecirculating library, but the title New in the second part was consideredobjectionable. 

HERBERT. Well, I have a good deal of sympathy with Concord as to thenews. We are fed on a daily diet of trivial events and gossip, ofthe unfruitful sayings of thoughtless men and women, until our mentaldigestion is seriously impaired; the day will come when no one will beable to sit down to a thoughtful, well-wrought book and assimilate itscontents. 

THE MISTRESS. I doubt if a daily newspaper is a necessity, in the highersense of the word. 

THE PARSON. Nobody supposes it is to women, --that is, if they can seeeach other. 

THE MISTRESS. Don't interrupt, unless you have something to say; thoughI should like to know how much gossip there is afloat that the ministerdoes not know. The newspaper may be needed in society, but how quicklyit drops out of mind when one goes beyond the bounds of what is calledcivilization. You remember when we were in the depths of the woods lastsummer how difficult it was to get up any interest in the files of latepapers that reached us, and how unreal all the struggle and turmoil ofthe world seemed. We stood apart, and could estimate things at theirtrue value. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Yes, that was real life. I never tired of the guide'sstories; there was some interest in the intelligence that a deer hadbeen down to eat the lily-pads at the foot of the lake the night before;that a bear's track was seen on the trail we crossed that day; evenMandeville's fish-stories had a certain air of probability; and how toroast a trout in the ashes and serve him hot and juicy and clean, andhow to cook soup and prepare coffee and heat dish-water in one tin-pail, were vital problems. 

THE PARSON. You would have had no such problems at home. Why will peoplego so far to put themselves to such inconvenience? I hate the woods. Isolation breeds conceit; there are no people so conceited as those whodwell in remote wildernesses and live mostly alone. 

THE YOUNG LADY. For my part, I feel humble in the presence of mountains, and in the vast stretches of the wilderness. 

THE PARSON. I'll be bound a woman would feel just as nobody would expecther to feel, under given circumstances. 

MANDEVILLE. I think the reason why the newspaper and the world itcarries take no hold of us in the wilderness is that we become a kind ofvegetable ourselves when we go there. I have often attempted to improvemy mind in the woods with good solid books. You might as well offer abunch of celery to an oyster. The mind goes to sleep: the senses and theinstincts wake up. The best I can do when it rains, or the trout won'tbite, is to read Dumas's novels. Their ingenuity will almost keep a manawake after supper, by the camp-fire. And there is a kind of unity aboutthem that I like; the history is as good as the morality. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I always wondered where Mandeville got his historicalfacts. 

THE MISTRESS. Mandeville misrepresents himself in the woods. I heard himone night repeat "The Vision of Sir Launfal"--(THE FIRE-TENDER. Whichcomes very near being our best poem. )--as we were crossing the lake, andthe guides became so absorbed in it that they forgot to paddle, and satlistening with open mouths, as if it had been a panther story. 

THE PARSON. Mandeville likes to show off well enough. I heard that herelated to a woods' boy up there the whole of the Siege of Troy. Theboy was very much interested, and said "there'd been a man up there thatspring from Troy, looking up timber. " Mandeville always carries the newswhen he goes into the country. 

MANDEVILLE. I'm going to take the Parson's sermon on Jonah next summer;it's the nearest to anything like news we've had from his pulpit in tenyears. But, seriously, the boy was very well informed. He'd heard ofAlbany; his father took in the "Weekly Tribune, " and he had a partialconception of Horace Greeley. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I never went so far out of the world in America yet thatthe name of Horace Greeley did n't rise up before me. One of the firstquestions asked by any camp-fire is, "Did ye ever see Horace?"

HERBERT. Which shows the power of the press again. But I have oftenremarked how little real conception of the moving world, as it is, people in remote regions get from the newspaper. It needs to be read inthe midst of events. A chip cast ashore in a refluent eddy tells no taleof the force and swiftness of the current. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I don't exactly get the drift of that last remark; butI rather like a remark that I can't understand; like the landlady'sindigestible bread, it stays by you. 

HERBERT. I see that I must talk in words of one syllable. The newspaperhas little effect upon the remote country mind, because the remotecountry mind is interested in a very limited number of things. Besides, as the Parson says, it is conceited. The most accomplished scholar willbe the butt of all the guides in the woods, because he cannot follow atrail that would puzzle a sable (saple the trappers call it). 

THE PARSON. It's enough to read the summer letters that people writeto the newspapers from the country and the woods. Isolated from theactivity of the world, they come to think that the little adventures oftheir stupid days and nights are important. Talk about that being reallife! Compare the letters such people write with the other contents ofthe newspaper, and you will see which life is real. That's one reason Ihate to have summer come, the country letters set in. 

THE MISTRESS. I should like to see something the Parson does n't hate tohave come. 

MANDEVILLE. Except his quarter's salary; and the meeting of the AmericanBoard. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I don't see that we are getting any nearer the solutionof the original question. The world is evidently interested in eventssimply because they are recent. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I have a theory that a newspaper might be published atlittle cost, merely by reprinting the numbers of years before, onlyaltering the dates; just as the Parson preaches over his sermons. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. It's evident we must have a higher order ofnews-gatherers. It has come to this, that the newspaper furnishesthought-material for all the world, actually prescribes from day to daythe themes the world shall think on and talk about. The occupation ofnews-gathering becomes, therefore, the most important. When you think ofit, it is astonishing that this department should not be in the handsof the ablest men, accomplished scholars, philosophical observers, discriminating selectors of the news of the world that is worth thinkingover and talking about. The editorial comments frequently are ableenough, but is it worth while keeping an expensive mill going to grindchaff? I sometimes wonder, as I open my morning paper, if nothing didhappen in the twenty-four hours except crimes, accidents, defalcations, deaths of unknown loafers, robberies, monstrous births, --say about thelevel of police-court news. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I have even noticed that murders have deteriorated; theyare not so high-toned and mysterious as they used to be. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. It is true that the newspapers have improved vastlywithin the last decade. 

HERBERT. I think, for one, that they are very much above the level ofthe ordinary gossip of the country. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. But I am tired of having the under-world still occupyso much room in the newspapers. The reporters are rather more alert fora dog-fight than a philological convention. It must be that the gooddeeds of the world outnumber the bad in any given day; and what a goodreflex action it would have on society if they could be more fullyreported than the bad! I suppose the Parson would call this theEnthusiasm of Humanity. 

THE PARSON. You'll see how far you can lift yourself up by yourboot-straps. 

HERBERT. I wonder what influence on the quality (I say nothing ofquantity) of news the coming of women into the reporter's and editor'swork will have. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. There are the baby-shows; they make cheerful reading. 

THE MISTRESS. All of them got up by speculating men, who impose upon thevanity of weak women. 

HERBERT. I think women reporters are more given to personal detailsand gossip than the men. When I read the Washington correspondence I amproud of my country, to see how many Apollo Belvederes, Adonises, howmuch marble brow and piercing eye and hyacinthine locks, we have in thetwo houses of Congress. 

THE YOUNG LADY. That's simply because women understand the personalweakness of men; they have a long score of personal flattery to pay offtoo. 

MANDEVILLE. I think women will bring in elements of brightness, picturesqueness, and purity very much needed. Women have a powerof investing simple ordinary things with a charm; men are bunglingnarrators compared with them. 

THE PARSON. The mistake they make is in trying to write, and especiallyto "stump-speak, " like men; next to an effeminate man there is nothingso disagreeable as a mannish woman. 

HERBERT. I heard one once address a legislative committee. The knowingair, the familiar, jocular, smart manner, the nodding and winkinginnuendoes, supposed to be those of a man "up to snuff, " and au fait inpolitical wiles, were inexpressibly comical. And yet the exhibitionwas pathetic, for it had the suggestive vulgarity of a woman in man'sclothes. The imitation is always a dreary failure. 

THE MISTRESS. Such women are the rare exceptions. I am ready to defendmy sex; but I won't attempt to defend both sexes in one. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I have great hope that women will bring into thenewspaper an elevating influence; the common and sweet life of societyis much better fitted to entertain and instruct us than the exceptionaland extravagant. I confess (saving the Mistress's presence) that theevening talk over the dessert at dinner is much more entertaining andpiquant than the morning paper, and often as important. 

THE MISTRESS. I think the subject had better be changed. 

MANDEVILLE. The person, not the subject. There is no entertainmentso full of quiet pleasure as the hearing a lady of cultivation andrefinement relate her day's experience in her daily rounds of calls, charitable visits, shopping, errands of relief and condolence. Theevening budget is better than the finance minister's. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. That's even so. My wife will pick up more news in sixhours than I can get in a week, and I'm fond of news. 

MANDEVILLE. I don't mean gossip, by any means, or scandal. A woman ofculture skims over that like a bird, never touching it with the tip of awing. What she brings home is the freshness and brightness of life. Shetouches everything so daintily, she hits off a character in a sentence, she gives the pith of a dialogue without tediousness, she mimics withoutvulgarity; her narration sparkles, but it does n't sting. The pictureof her day is full of vivacity, and it gives new value and freshness tocommon things. If we could only have on the stage such actresses as wehave in the drawing-room!

THE FIRE-TENDER. We want something more of this grace, sprightliness, and harmless play of the finer life of society in the newspaper. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder Mandeville does n't marry, and become apermanent subscriber to his embodied idea of a newspaper. 

THE YOUNG LADY. Perhaps he does not relish the idea of being unable tostop his subscription. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Parson, won't you please punch that fire, and give usmore blaze? we are getting into the darkness of socialism. 

III

Herbert returned to us in March. The Young Lady was spending the winterwith us, and March, in spite of the calendar, turned out to be a wintermonth. It usually is in New England, and April too, for that matter. AndI cannot say it is unfortunate for us. There are so many topics to beturned over and settled at our fireside that a winter of ordinary lengthwould make little impression on the list. The fireside is, after all, a sort of private court of chancery, where nothing ever does come to afinal decision. The chief effect of talk on any subject is to strengthenone's own opinions, and, in fact, one never knows exactly what he doesbelieve until he is warmed into conviction by the heat of attack anddefence. A man left to himself drifts about like a boat on a calm lake;it is only when the wind blows that the boat goes anywhere. 

Herbert said he had been dipping into the recent novels written bywomen, here and there, with a view to noting the effect upon literatureof this sudden and rather overwhelming accession to it. There was a gooddeal of talk about it evening after evening, off and on, and I can onlyundertake to set down fragments of it. 

HERBERT. I should say that the distinguishing feature of the literatureof this day is the prominence women have in its production. They figurein most of the magazines, though very rarely in the scholarly andcritical reviews, and in thousands of newspapers; to them we areindebted for the oceans of Sunday-school books, and they write themajority of the novels, the serial stories, and they mainly pour out thewatery flood of tales in the weekly papers. Whether this is to result inmore good than evil it is impossible yet to say, and perhaps it would beunjust to say, until this generation has worked off its froth, and womensettle down to artistic, conscientious labor in literature. 

THE MISTRESS. You don't mean to say that George Eliot, and Mrs. Gaskell, and George Sand, and Mrs. Browning, before her marriage and severeattack of spiritism, are less true to art than contemporary mennovelists and poets. 

HERBERT. You name some exceptions that show the bright side of thepicture, not only for the present, but for the future. Perhaps geniushas no sex; but ordinary talent has. I refer to the great body ofnovels, which you would know by internal evidence were written by women. They are of two sorts: the domestic story, entirely unidealized, and asflavorless as water-gruel; and the spiced novel, generally immoral intendency, in which the social problems are handled, unhappy marriages, affinity and passional attraction, bigamy, and the violation of theseventh commandment. These subjects are treated in the rawest manner, without any settled ethics, with little discrimination of eternal rightand wrong, and with very little sense of responsibility for what is setforth. Many of these novels are merely the blind outbursts of a natureimpatient of restraint and the conventionalities of society, and are aschaotic as the untrained minds that produce them. 

MANDEVILLE. Don't you think these novels fairly represent a socialcondition of unrest and upheaval?

HERBERT. Very likely; and they help to create and spread abroad thediscontent they describe. Stories of bigamy (sometimes disguised bydivorce), of unhappy marriages, where the injured wife, through anentire volume, is on the brink of falling into the arms of a sneakinglover, until death kindly removes the obstacle, and the two souls, whowere born for each other, but got separated in the cradle, melt andmingle into one in the last chapter, are not healthful reading for maidsor mothers. 

THE MISTRESS. Or men. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. The most disagreeable object to me in modern literatureis the man the women novelists have introduced as the leading character;the women who come in contact with him seem to be fascinated by hisdisdainful mien, his giant strength, and his brutal manner. He is broadacross the shoulders, heavily moulded, yet as lithe as a cat; has anugly scar across his right cheek; has been in the four quarters of theglobe; knows seventeen languages; had a harem in Turkey and a Fayaway inthe Marquesas; can be as polished as Bayard in the drawing-room, but isas gloomy as Conrad in the library; has a terrible eye and a witheringglance, but can be instantly subdued by a woman's hand, if it is nothis wife's; and through all his morose and vicious career has carried aheart as pure as a violet. 

THE MISTRESS. Don't you think the Count of Monte Cristo is the elderbrother of Rochester?

THE FIRE-TENDER. One is a mere hero of romance; the other is meant for areal man. 

MANDEVILLE. I don't see that the men novel-writers are better than thewomen. 

HERBERT. That's not the question; but what are women who write so largea proportion of the current stories bringing into literature? Asidefrom the question of morals, and the absolutely demoralizing mannerof treating social questions, most of their stories are vapid and weakbeyond expression, and are slovenly in composition, showing neitherstudy, training, nor mental discipline. 

THE MISTRESS. Considering that women have been shut out from thetraining of the universities, and have few opportunities for the wideobservation that men enjoy, isn't it pretty well that the foremostliving writers of fiction are women?

HERBERT. You can say that for the moment, since Thackeray and Dickenshave just died. But it does not affect the general estimate. Weare inundated with a flood of weak writing. Take the Sunday-schoolliterature, largely the product of women; it has n't as much characteras a dried apple pie. I don't know what we are coming to if the presseskeep on running. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. We are living, we are dwelling, in a grand and awfultime; I'm glad I don't write novels. 

THE PARSON. So am I. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I tried a Sunday-school book once; but I made the goodboy end in the poorhouse, and the bad boy go to Congress; and thepublisher said it wouldn't do, the public wouldn't stand that sort ofthing. Nobody but the good go to Congress. 

THE MISTRESS. Herbert, what do you think women are good for?

OUR NEXT DOOR. That's a poser. 

HERBERT. Well, I think they are in a tentative state as to literature, and we cannot yet tell what they will do. Some of our most brilliantbooks of travel, correspondence, and writing on topics in which theirsympathies have warmly interested them, are by women. Some of them arealso strong writers in the daily journals. 

MANDEVILLE. I 'm not sure there's anything a woman cannot do as well asa man, if she sets her heart on it. 

THE PARSON. That's because she's no conscience. 

CHORUS. O Parson!

THE PARSON. Well, it does n't trouble her, if she wants to do anything. She looks at the end, not the means. A woman, set on anything, will walkright through the moral crockery without wincing. She'd be a great dealmore unscrupulous in politics than the average man. Did you ever see afemale lobbyist? Or a criminal? It is Lady Macbeth who does not falter. Don't raise your hands at me! The sweetest angel or the coolest devil isa woman. I see in some of the modern novels we have been talking of thesame unscrupulous daring, a blindness to moral distinctions, a constantexaltation of a passion into a virtue, an entire disregard of theimmutable laws on which the family and society rest. And you ask lawyersand trustees how scrupulous women are in business transactions!

THE FIRE-TENDER. Women are often ignorant of affairs, and, besides, theymay have a notion often that a woman ought to be privileged more thana man in business matters; but I tell you, as a rule, that if menwould consult their wives, they would go a deal straighter in businessoperations than they do go. 

THE PARSON. We are all poor sinners. But I've another indictment againstthe women writers. We get no good old-fashioned love-stories from them. It's either a quarrel of discordant natures one a panther, and the othera polar bear--for courtship, until one of them is crippled by a railwayaccident; or a long wrangle of married life between two unpleasantpeople, who can neither live comfortably together nor apart. I suppose, by what I see, that sweet wooing, with all its torturing and delightfuluncertainty, still goes on in the world; and I have no doubt that themajority of married people live more happily than the unmarried. Butit's easier to find a dodo than a new and good love-story. 

MANDEVILLE. I suppose the old style of plot is exhausted. Everything inman and outside of him has been turned over so often that I should thinkthe novelists would cease simply from want of material. 

THE PARSON. Plots are no more exhausted than men are. Every man is a newcreation, and combinations are simply endless. Even if we did not havenew material in the daily change of society, and there were only afixed number of incidents and characters in life, invention could not beexhausted on them. I amuse myself sometimes with my kaleidoscope, butI can never reproduce a figure. No, no. I cannot say that you may notexhaust everything else: we may get all the secrets of a nature into abook by and by, but the novel is immortal, for it deals with men. 

The Parson's vehemence came very near carrying him into a sermon; andas nobody has the privilege of replying to his sermons, so none of thecircle made any reply now. 

Our Next Door mumbled something about his hair standing on end, to heara minister defending the novel; but it did not interrupt the generalsilence. Silence is unnoticed when people sit before a fire; it would beintolerable if they sat and looked at each other. 

The wind had risen during the evening, and Mandeville remarked, as theyrose to go, that it had a spring sound in it, but it was as cold aswinter. The Mistress said she heard a bird that morning singing in thesun a spring song, it was a winter bird, but it sang. 

SEVENTH STUDY

We have been much interested in what is called the Gothic revival. Wehave spent I don't know how many evenings in looking over Herbert'splans for a cottage, and have been amused with his vain efforts to coverwith Gothic roofs the vast number of large rooms which the Young Ladydraws in her sketch of a small house. 

I have no doubt that the Gothic, which is capable of infinitemodification, so that every house built in that style may be asdifferent from every other house as one tree is from every other, can beadapted to our modern uses, and will be, when artists catch its spiritinstead of merely copying its old forms. But just now we are taking theGothic very literally, as we took the Greek at one time, or as we shouldprobably have taken the Saracenic, if the Moors had not been colored. Not even the cholera is so contagious in this country as a style ofarchitecture which we happen to catch; the country is just now brokenout all over with the Mansard-roof epidemic. 

And in secular architecture we do not study what is adapted to ourclimate any more than in ecclesiastic architecture we adopt that whichis suited to our religion. 

We are building a great many costly churches here and there, weProtestants, and as the most of them are ill adapted to our forms ofworship, it may be necessary and best for us to change our religion inorder to save our investments. I am aware that this would be a gravestep, and we should not hasten to throw overboard Luther and the rightof private judgment without reflection. And yet, if it is necessary torevive the ecclesiastical Gothic architecture, not in its spirit (thatwe nowhere do), but in the form which served another age and anotherfaith, and if, as it appears, we have already a great deal of moneyinvested in this reproduction, it may be more prudent to go forward thanto go back. The question is, "Cannot one easier change his creed thanhis pew?"

I occupy a seat in church which is an admirable one for reflection, butI cannot see or hear much that is going on in what we like to call theapse. There is a splendid stone pillar, a clustered column, right infront of me, and I am as much protected from the minister as Old Put'stroops were from the British, behind the stone wall at Bunker's Hill. Ican hear his voice occasionally wandering round in the arches overhead, and I recognize the tone, because he is a friend of mine and anexcellent man, but what he is saying I can very seldom make out. Ifthere was any incense burning, I could smell it, and that would besomething. I rather like the smell of incense, and it has its holyassociations. But there is no smell in our church, except of badair, --for there is no provision for ventilation in the splendid andcostly edifice. The reproduction of the old Gothic is so complete thatthe builders even seem to have brought over the ancient air from oneof the churches of the Middle Ages, --you would declare it had n't beenchanged in two centuries. 

I am expected to fix my attention during the service upon one man, whostands in the centre of the apse and has a sounding-board behind him inorder to throw his voice out of the sacred semicircular space (where thealtar used to stand, but now the sounding-board takes the place ofthe altar) and scatter it over the congregation at large, and send itechoing up in the groined roof I always like to hear a minister who isunfamiliar with the house, and who has a loud voice, try to fill theedifice. The more he roars and gives himself with vehemence to theeffort, the more the building roars in indistinguishable noise andhubbub. By the time he has said (to suppose a case), "The Lord is inhis holy temple, " and has passed on to say, "let all the earth keepsilence, " the building is repeating "The Lord is in his holy temple"from half a dozen different angles and altitudes, rolling it andgrowling it, and is not keeping silence at all. A man who understandsit waits until the house has had its say, and has digested one passage, before he launches another into the vast, echoing spaces. I am expected, as I said, to fix my eye and mind on the minister, the central pointof the service. But the pillar hides him. Now if there were severalministers in the church, dressed in such gorgeous colors that I couldsee them at the distance from the apse at which my limited incomecompels me to sit, and candles were burning, and censers were swinging, and the platform was full of the sacred bustle of a gorgeous ritualworship, and a bell rang to tell me the holy moments, I should not mindthe pillar at all. I should sit there, like any other Goth, and enjoyit. But, as I have said, the pastor is a friend of mine, and I liketo look at him on Sunday, and hear what he says, for he always sayssomething worth hearing. I am on such terms with him, indeed we all are, that it would be pleasant to have the service of a little more socialnature, and more human. When we put him away off in the apse, and sethim up for a Goth, and then seat ourselves at a distance, scatteredabout among the pillars, the whole thing seems to me a trifle unnatural. Though I do not mean to say that the congregations do not "enjoy theirreligion" in their splendid edifices which cost so much money and arereally so beautiful. 

A good many people have the idea, so it seems, that Gothic architectureand Christianity are essentially one and the same thing. Just as manyregard it as an act of piety to work an altar cloth or to cushion apulpit. It may be, and it may not be. 

Our Gothic church is likely to prove to us a valuable religiousexperience, bringing out many of the Christian virtues. It may havehad its origin in pride, but it is all being overruled for our good. Ofcourse I need n't explain that it is the thirteenth century ecclesiasticGothic that is epidemic in this country; and I think it has attacked theCongregational and the other non-ritual churches more violently than anyothers. We have had it here in its most beautiful and dangerous forms. Ibelieve we are pretty much all of us supplied with a Gothic church now. Such has been the enthusiasm in this devout direction, that I should notbe surprised to see our rich private citizens putting up Gothic churchesfor their individual amusement and sanctification. As the day willprobably come when every man in Hartford will live in his own mammoth, five-story granite insurance building, it may not be unreasonable toexpect that every man will sport his own Gothic church. It is beginningto be discovered that the Gothic sort of church edifice is fatal tothe Congregational style of worship that has been prevalent here inNew England; but it will do nicely (as they say in Boston) for privatedevotion. 

There isn't a finer or purer church than ours any where, inside andoutside Gothic to the last. The elevation of the nave gives it even that"high-shouldered" appearance which seemed more than anything else toimpress Mr. Hawthorne in the cathedral at Amiens. I fancy that forgenuine high-shoulderness we are not exceeded by any church in the city. Our chapel in the rear is as Gothic as the rest of it, --a beautifullittle edifice. The committee forgot to make any more provision forventilating that than the church, and it takes a pretty well-seasonedChristian to stay in it long at a time. The Sunday-school is held there, and it is thought to be best to accustom the children to bad air beforethey go into the church. The poor little dears shouldn't have thewickedness and impurity of this world break on them too suddenly. If thestranger noticed any lack about our church, it would be that of a spire. There is a place for one; indeed, it was begun, and then the buildersseem to have stopped, with the notion that it would grow itself fromsuch a good root. It is a mistake however, to suppose that we do notknow that the church has what the profane here call a "stump-tail"appearance. But the profane are as ignorant of history as they are oftrue Gothic. All the Old World cathedrals were the work of centuries. That at Milan is scarcely finished yet; the unfinished spires of theCologne cathedral are one of the best-known features of it. I doubt ifit would be in the Gothic spirit to finish a church at once. We can tellcavilers that we shall have a spire at the proper time, and not a minutebefore. It may depend a little upon what the Baptists do, who are tobuild near us. I, for one, think we had better wait and see how high theBaptist spire is before we run ours up. The church is everything thatcould be desired inside. There is the nave, with its lofty and beautifularched ceiling; there are the side aisles, and two elegant rows of stonepillars, stained so as to be a perfect imitation of stucco; there isthe apse, with its stained glass and exquisite lines; and there is anorgan-loft over the front entrance, with a rose window. Nothing waswanting, so far as we could see, except that we should adapt ourselvesto the circumstances; and that we have been trying to do ever since. Itmay be well to relate how we do it, for the benefit of other inchoateGoths. 

It was found that if we put up the organ in the loft, it would hide thebeautiful rose window. Besides, we wanted congregational singing, andif we hired a choir, and hung it up there under the roof, like a cage ofbirds, we should not have congregational singing. We therefore leftthe organ-loft vacant, making no further use of it than to satisfy ourGothic cravings. As for choir, --several of the singers of the churchvolunteered to sit together in the front side-seats, and as there was noplace for an organ, they gallantly rallied round a melodeon, --or perhapsit is a cabinet organ, --a charming instrument, and, as everybody knows, entirely in keeping with the pillars, arches, and great spaces of a realGothic edifice. It is the union of simplicity with grandeur, for whichwe have all been looking. I need not say to those who have ever heard amelodeon, that there is nothing like it. It is rare, even in the finestchurches on the Continent. And we had congregational singing. And itwent very well indeed. One of the advantages of pure congregationalsinging, is that you can join in the singing whether you have a voiceor not. The disadvantage is, that your neighbor can do the same. It isstrange what an uncommonly poor lot of voices there is, even among goodpeople. But we enjoy it. If you do not enjoy it, you can change yourseat until you get among a good lot. 

So far, everything went well. But it was next discovered that it wasdifficult to hear the minister, who had a very handsome little desk inthe apse, somewhat distant from the bulk of the congregation; still, wecould most of us see him on a clear day. The church was admirably builtfor echoes, and the centre of the house was very favorable to them. Whenyou sat in the centre of the house, it sometimes seemed as if three orfour ministers were speaking. 

It is usually so in cathedrals; the Right Reverend So-and-So isassisted by the very Reverend Such-and-Such, and the good deal ReverendThus-and-Thus, and so on. But a good deal of the minister's voiceappeared to go up into the groined arches, and, as there was no one upthere, some of his best things were lost. We also had a notion that someof it went into the cavernous organ-loft. It would have been all rightif there had been a choir there, for choirs usually need more preaching, and pay less heed to it, than any other part of the congregation. Well, we drew a sort of screen over the organ-loft; but the result was notas marked as we had hoped. We next devised a sounding-board, --a sort ofmammoth clamshell, painted white, --and erected it behind the minister. It had a good effect on the minister. It kept him up straight to hiswork. So long as he kept his head exactly in the focus, his voicewent out and did not return to him; but if he moved either way, he wasassailed by a Babel of clamoring echoes. There was no opportunity forhim to splurge about from side to side of the pulpit, as some do. And ifhe raised his voice much, or attempted any extra flights, he was liableto be drowned in a refluent sea of his own eloquence. And he couldhear the congregation as well as they could hear him. All the coughs, whispers, noises, were gathered in the wooden tympanum behind him, andpoured into his ears. 

But the sounding-board was an improvement, and we advanced to boldermeasures; having heard a little, we wanted to hear more. Besides, thosewho sat in front began to be discontented with the melodeon. There aredepths in music which the melodeon, even when it is called a cabinetorgan, with a colored boy at the bellows, cannot sound. The melodeon wasnot, originally, designed for the Gothic worship. We determined to havean organ, and we speculated whether, by erecting it in the apse, wecould not fill up that elegant portion of the church, and compel thepreacher's voice to leave it, and go out over the pews. It would ofcourse do something to efface the main beauty of a Gothic church; butsomething must be done, and we began a series of experiments to test theprobable effects of putting the organ and choir behind the minister. Wemoved the desk to the very front of the platform, and erected behindit a high, square board screen, like a section of tight fence round thefair-grounds. This did help matters. The minister spoke with more ease, and we could hear him better. If the screen had been intended to staythere, we should have agitated the subject of painting it. But this wasonly an experiment. 

Our next move was to shove the screen back and mount the volunteersingers, melodeon and all, upon the platform, --some twenty of themcrowded together behind the minister. The effect was beautiful. Itseemed as if we had taken care to select the finest-looking people inthe congregation, --much to the injury of the congregation, of course, asseen from the platform. There are few congregations that can standthis sort of culling, though ours can endure it as well as any; yet itdevolves upon those of us who remain the responsibility of looking aswell as we can. 

The experiment was a success, so far as appearances went, but when thescreen went back, the minister's voice went back with it. We could nothear him very well, though we could hear the choir as plain as day. Wehave thought of remedying this last defect by putting the high screen infront of the singers, and close to the minister, as it was before. Thiswould make the singers invisible, --"though lost to sight, to memorydear, "--what is sometimes called an "angel choir, " when the singers (andthe melodeon) are concealed, with the most subdued and religious effect. It is often so in cathedrals. 

This plan would have another advantage. The singers on the platform, allhandsome and well dressed, distract our attention from the minister, and what he is saying. We cannot help looking at them, studying all thefaces and all the dresses. If one of them sits up very straight, he isa rebuke to us; if he "lops" over, we wonder why he does n't sit up; ifhis hair is white, we wonder whether it is age or family peculiarity; ifhe yawns, we want to yawn; if he takes up a hymn-book, we wonder if heis uninterested in the sermon; we look at the bonnets, and query if thatis the latest spring style, or whether we are to look for another; ifhe shaves close, we wonder why he doesn't let his beard grow; if he haslong whiskers, we wonder why he does n't trim 'em; if she sighs, we feelsorry; if she smiles, we would like to know what it is about. And, then, suppose any of the singers should ever want to eat fennel, orpeppermints, or Brown's troches, and pass them round! Suppose thesingers, more or less of them, should sneeze!

Suppose one or two of them, as the handsomest people sometimes will, should go to sleep! In short, the singers there take away all ourattention from the minister, and would do so if they were the homeliestpeople in the world. We must try something else. 

It is needless to explain that a Gothic religious life is not an idleone. 

EIGHTH STUDY

I

Perhaps the clothes question is exhausted, philosophically. I cannotbut regret that the Poet of the Breakfast-Table, who appears to havean uncontrollable penchant for saying the things you would like tosay yourself, has alluded to the anachronism of "Sir Coeur de LionPlantagenet in the mutton-chop whiskers and the plain gray suit. "

A great many scribblers have felt the disadvantage of writing afterMontaigne; and it is impossible to tell how much originality in othersDr. Holmes has destroyed in this country. In whist there are some menyou always prefer to have on your left hand, and I take it thatthis intuitive essayist, who is so alert to seize the few remainingunappropriated ideas and analogies in the world, is one of them. 

No doubt if the Plantagenets of this day were required to dress in asuit of chain-armor and wear iron pots on their heads, they would be asridiculous as most tragedy actors on the stage. The pit which recognizesSnooks in his tin breastplate and helmet laughs at him, and Snookshimself feels like a sheep; and when the great tragedian comeson, shining in mail, dragging a two-handed sword, and mouths thegrandiloquence which poets have put into the speech of heroes, thedress-circle requires all its good-breeding and its feigned love of thetraditionary drama not to titter. 

If this sort of acting, which is supposed to have come down to us fromthe Elizabethan age, and which culminated in the school of the Keans, Kembles, and Siddonses, ever had any fidelity to life, it must havebeen in a society as artificial as the prose of Sir Philip Sidney. Thatanybody ever believed in it is difficult to think, especially when weread what privileges the fine beaux and gallants of the town took behindthe scenes and on the stage in the golden days of the drama. When a partof the audience sat on the stage, and gentlemen lounged or reeled acrossit in the midst of a play, to speak to acquaintances in the audience, the illusion could not have been very strong. 

Now and then a genius, like Rachel as Horatia, or Hackett asFalstaff, may actually seem to be the character assumed by virtue of atransforming imagination, but I suppose the fact to be that gettinginto a costume, absurdly antiquated and remote from all the habits andassociations of the actor, largely accounts for the incongruity andridiculousness of most of our modern acting. Whether what is called the"legitimate drama" ever was legitimate we do not know, but the advocatesof it appear to think that the theatre was some time cast in amould, once for all, and is good for all times and peoples, like thepropositions of Euclid. To our eyes the legitimate drama of to-day isthe one in which the day is reflected, both in costume and speech, andwhich touches the affections, the passions, the humor, of the presenttime. The brilliant success of the few good plays that have been writtenout of the rich life which we now live--the most varied, fruitful, anddramatically suggestive--ought to rid us forever of the buskin-fustian, except as a pantomimic or spectacular curiosity. 

We have no objection to Julius Caesar or Richard III. Stalking about inimpossible clothes, and stepping four feet at a stride, if they want to, but let them not claim to be more "legitimate" than "Ours" or "Rip VanWinkle. " There will probably be some orator for years and years to come, at every Fourth of July, who will go on asking, Where is Thebes? buthe does not care anything about it, and he does not really expect ananswer. I have sometimes wished I knew the exact site of Thebes, so thatI could rise in the audience, and stop that question, at any rate. It islegitimate, but it is tiresome. 

If we went to the bottom of this subject, I think we should find thatthe putting upon actors clothes to which they are unaccustomed makesthem act and talk artificially, and often in a manner intolerable. 

An actor who has not the habits or instincts of a gentleman cannot bemade to appear like one on the stage by dress; he only caricatures anddiscredits what he tries to represent; and the unaccustomed clothes andsituation make him much more unnatural and insufferable than he wouldotherwise be. Dressed appropriately for parts for which he is fitted, he will act well enough, probably. What I mean is, that the clothesinappropriate to the man make the incongruity of him and his part moreapparent. Vulgarity is never so conspicuous as in fine apparel, on oroff the stage, and never so self-conscious. Shall we have, then, norefined characters on the stage? Yes; but let them be taken by menand women of taste and refinement and let us have done with thismasquerading in false raiment, ancient and modern, which makes nearlyevery stage a travesty of nature and the whole theatre a painfulpretension. We do not expect the modern theatre to be a place ofinstruction (that business is now turned over to the telegraphicoperator, who is making a new language), but it may give amusementinstead of torture, and do a little in satirizing folly and kindlinglove of home and country by the way. 

This is a sort of summary of what we all said, and no one in particularis responsible for it; and in this it is like public opinion. TheParson, however, whose only experience of the theatre was the enduranceof an oratorio once, was very cordial in his denunciation of the stagealtogether. 

MANDEVILLE. Yet, acting itself is delightful; nothing so entertainsus as mimicry, the personation of character. We enjoy it in private. I confess that I am always pleased with the Parson in the character ofgrumbler. He would be an immense success on the stage. I don't know butthe theatre will have to go back into the hands of the priests, who oncecontrolled it. 

THE PARSON. Scoffer!

MANDEVILLE. I can imagine how enjoyable the stage might be, cleared ofall its traditionary nonsense, stilted language, stilted behavior, allthe rubbish of false sentiment, false dress, and the manners oftimes that were both artificial and immoral, and filled with livingcharacters, who speak the thought of to-day, with the wit and culturethat are current to-day. I've seen private theatricals, where all theperformers were persons of cultivation, that.... 

OUR NEXT DOOR. So have I. For something particularly cheerful, commendme to amateur theatricals. I have passed some melancholy hours at them. 

MANDEVILLE. That's because the performers acted the worn stage plays, and attempted to do them in the manner they had seen on the stage. It isnot always so. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I suppose Mandeville would say that acting has got intoa mannerism which is well described as stagey, and is supposed tobe natural to the stage; just as half the modern poets write in arecognized form of literary manufacture, without the least impulse fromwithin, and not with the purpose of saying anything, but of turning outa piece of literary work. That's the reason we have so much poetrythat impresses one like sets of faultless cabinet-furniture made bymachinery. 

THE PARSON. But you need n't talk of nature or naturalness in acting orin anything. I tell you nature is poor stuff. It can't go alone. Amateuracting--they get it up at church sociables nowadays--is apt to be asnear nature as a school-boy's declamation. Acting is the Devil's art. 

THE MISTRESS. Do you object to such innocent amusement?

MANDEVILLE. What the Parson objects to is, that he isn't amused. 

THE PARSON. What's the use of objecting? It's the fashion of the day toamuse people into the kingdom of heaven. 

HERBERT. The Parson has got us off the track. My notion about the stageis, that it keeps along pretty evenly with the rest of the world; thestage is usually quite up to the level of the audience. Assumed dresson the stage, since you were speaking of that, makes people no moreconstrained and self-conscious than it does off the stage. 

THE MISTRESS. What sarcasm is coming now?

HERBERT. Well, you may laugh, but the world has n't got used to goodclothes yet. The majority do not wear them with ease. People who onlyput on their best on rare and stated occasions step into an artificialfeeling. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I wonder if that's the reason the Parson finds it sodifficult to get hold of his congregation. 

HERBERT. I don't know how else to account for the formality and vapidityof a set "party, " where all the guests are clothed in a manner towhich they are unaccustomed, dressed into a condition of vividself-consciousness. The same people, who know each other perfectlywell, will enjoy themselves together without restraint in their ordinaryapparel. But nothing can be more artificial than the behavior ofpeople together who rarely "dress up. " It seems impossible to make theconversation as fine as the clothes, and so it dies in a kind of inanehelplessness. Especially is this true in the country, where people havenot obtained the mastery of their clothes that those who live in thecity have. It is really absurd, at this stage of our civilization, thatwe should be so affected by such an insignificant accident as dress. Perhaps Mandeville can tell us whether this clothes panic prevails inthe older societies. 

THE PARSON. Don't. We've heard it; about its being one of theEnglishman's thirty-nine articles that he never shall sit down to dinnerwithout a dress-coat, and all that. 

THE MISTRESS. I wish, for my part, that everybody who has time to eata dinner would dress for that, the principal event of the day, and dorespectful and leisurely justice to it. 

THE YOUNG LADY. It has always seemed singular to me that men who workso hard to build elegant houses, and have good dinners, should take solittle leisure to enjoy either. 

MANDEVILLE. If the Parson will permit me, I should say that the chiefclothes question abroad just now is, how to get any; and it is the samewith the dinners. 

II

It is quite unnecessary to say that the talk about clothes ran into thequestion of dress-reform, and ran out, of course. You cannot converse onanything nowadays that you do not run into some reform. The Parson saysthat everybody is intent on reforming everything but himself. We are alltrying to associate ourselves to make everybody else behave as we do. Said--

OUR NEXT DOOR. Dress reform! As if people couldn't change their clotheswithout concert of action. Resolved, that nobody should put on a cleancollar oftener than his neighbor does. I'm sick of every sort of reform. I should like to retrograde awhile. Let a dyspeptic ascertain that hecan eat porridge three times a day and live, and straightway he insiststhat everybody ought to eat porridge and nothing else. I mean to getup a society every member of which shall be pledged to do just as hepleases. 

THE PARSON. That would be the most radical reform of the day. Thatwould be independence. If people dressed according to their means, actedaccording to their convictions, and avowed their opinions, it wouldrevolutionize society. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. I should like to walk into your church some Sunday andsee the changes under such conditions. 

THE PARSON. It might give you a novel sensation to walk in at any time. And I'm not sure but the church would suit your retrograde ideas. It's so Gothic that a Christian of the Middle Ages, if he were alive, couldn't see or hear in it. 

HERBERT. I don't know whether these reformers who carry the world ontheir shoulders in such serious fashion, especially the little fussyfellows, who are themselves the standard of the regeneration they seek, are more ludicrous than pathetic. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. Pathetic, by all means. But I don't know that theywould be pathetic if they were not ludicrous. There are those reformsingers who have been piping away so sweetly now for thirty years, withnever any diminution of cheerful, patient enthusiasm; their hair growinglonger and longer, their eyes brighter and brighter, and their faces, Ido believe, sweeter and sweeter; singing always with the sameconstancy for the slave, for the drunkard, for the snufftaker, for thesuffragist, --"There'sa-good-time-com-ing-boys (nothing offensive isintended by 'boys, ' it is put in for euphony, and sung pianissimo, notto offend the suffragists), it's-almost-here. " And what a brightening upof their faces there is when they say, "it's-al-most-here, " not doubtingfor a moment that "it's" coming tomorrow; and the accompanying melodeonalso wails its wheezy suggestion that "it's-al-most-here, " that"good-time" (delayed so long, waiting perhaps for the invention of themelodeon) when we shall all sing and all play that cheerful instrument, and all vote, and none shall smoke, or drink, or eat meat, "boys. " Ideclare it almost makes me cry to hear them, so touching is their faithin the midst of a jeer-ing world. 

HERBERT. I suspect that no one can be a genuine reformer and not beridiculous. I mean those who give themselves up to the unction of thereform. 

THE MISTRESS. Does n't that depend upon whether the reform is large orpetty?

THE FIRE-TENDER. I should say rather that the reforms attracted to themall the ridiculous people, who almost always manage to become the mostconspicuous. I suppose that nobody dare write out all that was ludicrousin the great abolition movement. But it was not at all comical to thosemost zealous in it; they never could see--more's the pity, for therebythey lose much--the humorous side of their performances, and that is whythe pathos overcomes one's sense of the absurdity of such people. 

THE YOUNG LADY. It is lucky for the world that so many are willing to beabsurd. 

HERBERT. Well, I think that, in the main, the reformers manage to lookout for themselves tolerably well. I knew once a lean and faithful agentof a great philanthropic scheme, who contrived to collect every year forthe cause just enough to support him at a good hotel comfortably. 

THE MISTRESS. That's identifying one's self with the cause. 

MANDEVILLE. You remember the great free-soil convention at Buffalo, in1848, when Van Buren was nominated. All the world of hope and discontentwent there, with its projects of reform. There seemed to be no doubt, among hundreds that attended it, that if they could get a resolutionpassed that bread should be buttered on both sides, it would be sobuttered. The platform provided for every want and every woe. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I remember. If you could get the millennium bypolitical action, we should have had it then. 

MANDEVILLE. We went there on the Erie Canal, the exciting andfashionable mode of travel in those days. I was a boy when we began thevoyage. The boat was full of conventionists; all the talk was of whatmust be done there. I got the impression that as that boat-load wentso would go the convention; and I was not alone in that feeling. Ican never be grateful enough for one little scrubby fanatic who was onboard, who spent most of his time in drafting resolutions and readingthem privately to the passengers. He was a very enthusiastic, nervous, and somewhat dirty little man, who wore a woolen muffler about histhroat, although it was summer; he had nearly lost his voice, and couldonly speak in a hoarse, disagreeable whisper, and he always carrieda teacup about, containing some sticky compound which he stirredfrequently with a spoon, and took, whenever he talked, in order toimprove his voice. If he was separated from his cup for ten minutes, hiswhisper became inaudible. I greatly delighted in him, for I never sawany one who had so much enjoyment of his own importance. He was fondof telling what he would do if the convention rejected such and suchresolutions. He'd make it hot for them. I did n't know but he'd makethem take his mixture. The convention had got to take a stand ontobacco, for one thing. He'd heard Gid-dings took snuff; he'd see. When we at length reached Buffalo he took his teacup and carpet-bag ofresolutions and went ashore in a great hurry. I saw him once again ina cheap restaurant, whispering a resolution to another delegate, but hedid n't appear in the convention. I have often wondered what became ofhim. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably he's consul somewhere. They mostly are. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. After all, it's the easiest thing in the world to sitand sneer at eccentricities. But what a dead and uninteresting world itwould be if we were all proper, and kept within the lines! Affairs wouldsoon be reduced to mere machinery. There are moments, even days, whenall interests and movements appear to be settled upon some universalplan of equilibrium; but just then some restless and absurd personis inspired to throw the machine out of gear. These individualeccentricities seem to be the special providences in the general humanscheme. 

HERBERT. They make it very hard work for the rest of us, who aredisposed to go along peaceably and smoothly. 

MANDEVILLE. And stagnate. I 'm not sure but the natural conditionof this planet is war, and that when it is finally towed toits anchorage--if the universe has any harbor for worlds out ofcommission--it will look like the Fighting Temeraire in Turner'spicture. 

HERBERT. There is another thing I should like to understand: thetendency of people who take up one reform, perhaps a personalregeneration in regard to some bad habit, to run into a dozen otherisms, and get all at sea in several vague and pernicious theories andpractices. 

MANDEVILLE. Herbert seems to think there is safety in a man's beinganchored, even if it is to a bad habit. 

HERBERT. Thank you. But what is it in human nature that is apt to carrya man who may take a step in personal reform into so many extremes?

OUR NEXT DOOR. Probably it's human nature. 

HERBERT. Why, for instance, should a reformed drunkard (one of thenoblest examples of victory over self) incline, as I have known thereformed to do, to spiritism, or a woman suffragist to "pantarchism"(whatever that is), and want to pull up all the roots of society, andexpect them to grow in the air, like orchids; or a Graham-bread disciplebecome enamored of Communism?

MANDEVILLE. I know an excellent Conservative who would, I think, suityou; he says that he does not see how a man who indulges in the theoryand practice of total abstinence can be a consistent believer in theChristian religion. 

HERBERT. Well, I can understand what he means: that a person is boundto hold himself in conditions of moderation and control, using and notabusing the things of this world, practicing temperance, not retiringinto a convent of artificial restrictions in order to escape the fullresponsibility of self-control. And yet his theory would certainly wreckmost men and women. What does the Parson say?

THE PARSON. That the world is going crazy on the notion of individualability. Whenever a man attempts to reform himself, or anybody else, without the aid of the Christian religion, he is sure to go adrift, andis pretty certain to be blown about by absurd theories, and shipwreckedon some pernicious ism. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I think the discussion has touched bottom. 

III

I never felt so much the value of a house with a backlog in it as duringthe late spring; for its lateness was its main feature. Everybody wasgrumbling about it, as if it were something ordered from the tailor, andnot ready on the day. Day after day it snowed, night after night it blewa gale from the northwest; the frost sunk deeper and deeper into theground; there was a popular longing for spring that was almost a prayer;the weather bureau was active; Easter was set a week earlier than theyear before, but nothing seemed to do any good. The robins sat under theevergreens, and piped in a disconsolate mood, and at last the bluejayscame and scolded in the midst of the snow-storm, as they always do scoldin any weather. The crocuses could n't be coaxed to come up, even witha pickaxe. I'm almost ashamed now to recall what we said of the weatheronly I think that people are no more accountable for what they say ofthe weather than for their remarks when their corns are stepped on. 

We agreed, however, that, but for disappointed expectations and theprospect of late lettuce and peas, we were gaining by the fire as muchas we were losing by the frost. And the Mistress fell to chanting thecomforts of modern civilization. 

THE FIRE-TENDER said he should like to know, by the way, if ourcivilization differed essentially from any other in anything but itscomforts. 

HERBERT. We are no nearer religious unity. 

THE PARSON. We have as much war as ever. 

MANDEVILLE. There was never such a social turmoil. 

THE YOUNG LADY. The artistic part of our nature does not appear to havegrown. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. We are quarreling as to whether we are in factradically different from the brutes. 

HERBERT. Scarcely two people think alike about the proper kind of humangovernment. 

THE PARSON. Our poetry is made out of words, for the most part, and notdrawn from the living sources. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. And Mr. Cumming is uncorking his seventh phial. I neverfelt before what barbarians we are. 

THE MISTRESS. Yet you won't deny that the life of the average man issafer and every way more comfortable than it was even a century ago. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. But what I want to know is, whether what we callour civilization has done any thing more for mankind at large than toincrease the ease and pleasure of living? Science has multiplied wealth, and facilitated intercourse, and the result is refinement of manners anda diffusion of education and information. Are men and women essentiallychanged, however? I suppose the Parson would say we have lost faith, forone thing. 

MANDEVILLE. And superstition; and gained toleration. 

HERBERT. The question is, whether toleration is anything butindifference. 

THE PARSON. Everything is tolerated now but Christian orthodoxy. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. It's easy enough to make a brilliant catalogue ofexternal achievements, but I take it that real progress ought to be inman himself. It is not a question of what a man enjoys, but what he canproduce. The best sculpture was executed two thousand years ago. The best paintings are several centuries old. We study the finestarchitecture in its ruins. The standards of poetry are Shakespeare, Homer, Isaiah, and David. The latest of the arts, music, culminated incomposition, though not in execution, a century ago. 

THE MISTRESS. Yet culture in music certainly distinguishes thecivilization of this age. It has taken eighteen hundred years forthe principles of the Christian religion to begin to be practicallyincorporated in government and in ordinary business, and it will take along time for Beethoven to be popularly recognized; but there is growthtoward him, and not away from him, and when the average culture hasreached his height, some other genius will still more profoundly anddelicately express the highest thoughts. 

HERBERT. I wish I could believe it. The spirit of this age is expressedby the Calliope. 

THE PARSON. Yes, it remained for us to add church-bells and cannon tothe orchestra. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a melancholy thought to me that we can no longerexpress ourselves with the bass-drum; there used to be the whole of theFourth of July in its patriotic throbs. 

MANDEVILLE. We certainly have made great progress in one art, --that ofwar. 

THE YOUNG LADY. And in the humane alleviations of the miseries of war. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. The most discouraging symptom to me in our undoubtedadvance in the comforts and refinements of society is the facilitywith which men slip back into barbarism, if the artificial and externalaccidents of their lives are changed. We have always kept a fringe ofbarbarism on our shifting western frontier; and I think there never wasa worse society than that in California and Nevada in their early days. 

THE YOUNG LADY. That is because women were absent. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. But women are not absent in London and New York, andthey are conspicuous in the most exceptionable demonstrations of socialanarchy. Certainly they were not wanting in Paris. Yes, there was a citywidely accepted as the summit of our material civilization. No city wasso beautiful, so luxurious, so safe, so well ordered for the comfortof living, and yet it needed only a month or two to make it a kind ofpandemonium of savagery. Its citizens were the barbarians who destroyedits own monuments of civilization. I don't mean to say that there wasno apology for what was done there in the deceit and fraud that precededit, but I simply notice how ready the tiger was to appear, and howlittle restraint all the material civilization was to the beast. 

THE MISTRESS. I can't deny your instances, and yet I somehow feel thatpretty much all you have been saying is in effect untrue. Not one ofyou would be willing to change our civilization for any other. In yourestimate you take no account, it seems to me, of the growth of charity. 

MANDEVILLE. And you might add a recognition of the value of human life. 

THE MISTRESS. I don't believe there was ever before diffused everywheresuch an element of good-will, and never before were women so muchengaged in philanthropic work. 

THE PARSON. It must be confessed that one of the best signs of the timesis woman's charity for woman. That certainly never existed to the sameextent in any other civilization. 

MANDEVILLE. And there is another thing that distinguishes us, or isbeginning to. That is, the notion that you can do something more with acriminal than punish him; and that society has not done its duty whenit has built a sufficient number of schools for one class, or of decentjails for another. 

HERBERT. It will be a long time before we get decent jails. 

MANDEVILLE. But when we do they will begin to be places of education andtraining as much as of punishment and disgrace. The public will provideteachers in the prisons as it now does in the common schools. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. The imperfections of our methods and means of selectingthose in the community who ought to be in prison are so great, thatextra care in dealing with them becomes us. We are beginning to learnthat we cannot draw arbitrary lines with infallible justice. Perhapshalf those who are convicted of crimes are as capable of reformation ashalf those transgressors who are not convicted, or who keep inside thestatutory law. 

HERBERT. Would you remove the odium of prison?

THE FIRE-TENDER. No; but I would have criminals believe, and societybelieve, that in going to prison a man or woman does not pass anabsolute line and go into a fixed state. 

THE PARSON. That is, you would not have judgment and retribution beginin this world. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Don't switch us off into theology. I hate to go up in aballoon, or see any one else go. 

HERBERT. Don't you think there is too much leniency toward crime andcriminals, taking the place of justice, in these days?

THE FIRE-TENDER. There may be too much disposition to condone the crimesof those who have been considered respectable. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. That is, scarcely anybody wants to see his friend hung. 

MANDEVILLE. I think a large part of the bitterness of the condemnedarises from a sense of the inequality with which justice isadministered. I am surprised, in visiting jails, to find so fewrespectable-looking convicts. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. Nobody will go to jail nowadays who thinks anything ofhimself. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. When society seriously takes hold of the reformationof criminals (say with as much determination as it does to carry anelection) this false leniency will disappear; for it partly springs froma feeling that punishment is unequal, and does not discriminate enoughin individuals, and that society itself has no right to turn a man overto the Devil, simply because he shows a strong leaning that way. A partof the scheme of those who work for the reformation of criminals isto render punishment more certain, and to let its extent depend uponreformation. There is no reason why a professional criminal, who won'tchange his trade for an honest one, should have intervals of freedom inhis prison life in which he is let loose to prey upon society. Criminalsought to be discharged, like insane patients, when they are cured. 

OUR NEXT DOOR. It's a wonder to me, what with our multitudes of statutesand hosts of detectives, that we are any of us out of jail. I nevercome away from a visit to a State-prison without a new spasm of fear andvirtue. The faculties for getting into jail seem to be ample. We wantmore organizations for keeping people out. 

MANDEVILLE. That is the sort of enterprise the women are engaged in, thefrustration of the criminal tendencies of those born in vice. I believewomen have it in their power to regenerate the world morally. 

THE PARSON. It's time they began to undo the mischief of their mother. 

THE MISTRESS. The reason they have not made more progress is that theyhave usually confined their individual efforts to one man; they are noworganizing for a general campaign. 

THE FIRE-TENDER. I'm not sure but here is where the ameliorations of theconditions of life, which are called the comforts of this civilization, come in, after all, and distinguish the age above all others. They haveenabled the finer powers of women to have play as they could not in aruder age. I should like to live a hundred years and see what they willdo. 

HERBERT. Not much but change the fashions, unless they submit themselvesto the same training and discipline that men do. 

I have no doubt that Herbert had to apologize for this remark afterwardsin private, as men are quite willing to do in particular cases; it isonly in general they are unjust. The talk drifted off into general andparticular depreciation of other times. Mandeville described a picture, in which he appeared to have confidence, of a fight between an Iguanodonand a Megalosaurus, where these huge iron-clad brutes were representedchewing up different portions of each other's bodies in a forest of thelower cretaceous period. So far as he could learn, that sort of thingwent on unchecked for hundreds of thousands of years, and was typical ofthe intercourse of the races of man till a comparatively recent period. There was also that gigantic swan, the Plesiosaurus; in fact, all theearly brutes were disgusting. He delighted to think that even the loweranimals had improved, both in appearance and disposition. 

The conversation ended, therefore, in a very amicable manner, havingbeen taken to a ground that nobody knew anything about. 

NINTH STUDY

I

Can you have a backlog in July? That depends upon circumstances. 

In northern New England it is considered a sign of summer when thehousewives fill the fireplaces with branches of mountain laurel, and, later, with the feathery stalks of the asparagus. This is often, too, the timid expression of a tender feeling, under Puritanic repression, which has not sufficient vent in the sweet-william and hollyhock at thefront door. This is a yearning after beauty and ornamentation which hasno other means of gratifying itself. 

In the most rigid circumstances, the graceful nature of woman thusdiscloses itself in these mute expressions of an undeveloped taste. Youmay never doubt what the common flowers growing along the pathway to thefront door mean to the maiden of many summers who tends them;--love andreligion, and the weariness of an uneventful life. The sacredness of theSabbath, the hidden memory of an unrevealed and unrequited affection, the slow years of gathering and wasting sweetness, are in the smellof the pink and the sweet-clover. These sentimental plants breathesomething of the longing of the maiden who sits in the Sunday eveningsof summer on the lonesome front doorstone, singing the hymns of thesaints, and perennial as the myrtle that grows thereby. 

Yet not always in summer, even with the aid of unrequited love anddevotional feeling, is it safe to let the fire go out on the hearth, inour latitude. I remember when the last almost total eclipse of the sunhappened in August, what a bone-piercing chill came over the world. Perhaps the imagination had something to do with causing the chill fromthat temporary hiding of the sun to feel so much more penetratingthan that from the coming on of night, which shortly followed. Itwas impossible not to experience a shudder as of the approach of theJudgment Day, when the shadows were flung upon the green lawn, and weall stood in the wan light, looking unfamiliar to each other. Thebirds in the trees felt the spell. We could in fancy see those spectralcamp-fires which men would build on the earth, if the sun should slowits fires down to about the brilliancy of the moon. It was a greatrelief to all of us to go into the house, and, before a blazingwood-fire, talk of the end of the world. 

In New England it is scarcely ever safe to let the fire go out; it isbest to bank it, for it needs but the turn of a weather-vane at anyhour to sweep the Atlantic rains over us, or to bring down the chill ofHudson's Bay. There are days when the steam ship on the Atlantic glidescalmly along under a full canvas, but its central fires must always beready to make steam against head-winds and antagonistic waves. Evenin our most smiling summer days one needs to have the materials of acheerful fire at hand. It is only by this readiness for a change thatone can preserve an equal mind. We are made provident and sagacious bythe fickleness of our climate. We should be another sort of people ifwe could have that serene, unclouded trust in nature which the Egyptianhas. The gravity and repose of the Eastern peoples is due to theunchanging aspect of the sky, and the deliberation and regularity of thegreat climatic processes. Our literature, politics, religion, showthe effect of unsettled weather. But they compare favorably with theEgyptian, for all that. 

II

You cannot know, the Young Lady wrote, with what longing I look back tothose winter days by the fire; though all the windows are open to thisMay morning, and the brown thrush is singing in the chestnut-tree, andI see everywhere that first delicate flush of spring, which seems tooevanescent to be color even, and amounts to little more than a suffusionof the atmosphere. I doubt, indeed, if the spring is exactly what itused to be, or if, as we get on in years [no one ever speaks of "gettingon in years" till she is virtually settled in life], its promises andsuggestions do not seem empty in comparison with the sympathies andresponses of human friendship, and the stimulation of society. Sometimesnothing is so tiresome as a perfect day in a perfect season. 

I only imperfectly understand this. The Parson says that woman is alwaysmost restless under the most favorable conditions, and that there is nostate in which she is really happy except that of change. I suppose thisis the truth taught in what has been called the "Myth of the Garden. "Woman is perpetual revolution, and is that element in the world whichcontinually destroys and re-creates. She is the experimenter and thesuggester of new combinations. She has no belief in any law of eternalfitness of things. She is never even content with any arrangement of herown house. The only reason the Mistress could give, when sherearranged her apartment, for hanging a picture in what seemed the mostinappropriate place, was that it had never been there before. Woman hasno respect for tradition, and because a thing is as it is is sufficientreason for changing it. When she gets into law, as she has come intoliterature, we shall gain something in the destruction of all our vastand musty libraries of precedents, which now fetter our administrationof individual justice. It is Mandeville's opinion that women are notso sentimental as men, and are not so easily touched with the unspokenpoetry of nature; being less poetical, and having less imagination, theyare more fitted for practical affairs, and would make less failures inbusiness. I have noticed the almost selfish passion for their flowerswhich old gardeners have, and their reluctance to part with a leaf or ablossom from their family. They love the flowers for themselves. A womanraises flowers for their use. She is destruct-ion in a conservatory. She wants the flowers for her lover, for the sick, for the poor, for theLord on Easter day, for the ornamentation of her house. She delights inthe costly pleasure of sacrificing them. She never sees a flower but shehas an intense but probably sinless desire to pick it. 

It has been so from the first, though from the first she has beenthwarted by the accidental superior strength of man. Whatever she hasobtained has been by craft, and by the same coaxing which the sun usesto draw the blossoms out of the apple-trees. I am not surprised to learnthat she has become tired of indulgences, and wants some of the originalrights. We are just beginning to find out the extent to which shehas been denied and subjected, and especially her condition among theprimitive and barbarous races. I have never seen it in a platform ofgrievances, but it is true that among the Fijians she is not, unless abetter civilization has wrought a change in her behalf, permitted to eatpeople, even her own sex, at the feasts of the men; the dainty enjoyedby the men being considered too good to be wasted on women. Is anythingwanting to this picture of the degradation of woman? By a refinement ofcruelty she receives no benefit whatever from the missionaries who aresent out by--what to her must seem a new name for Tantalus--the AmericanBoard. 

I suppose the Young Lady expressed a nearly universal feeling in herregret at the breaking up of the winter-fireside company. Society needsa certain seclusion and the sense of security. Spring opens the doorsand the windows, and the noise and unrest of the world are let in. Evena winter thaw begets a desire to travel, and summer brings longingsinnumerable, and disturbs the most tranquil souls. Nature is, in fact, asuggester of uneasiness, a promoter of pilgrimages and of excursionsof the fancy which never come to any satisfactory haven. The summer inthese latitudes is a campaign of sentiment and a season, for the mostpart, of restlessness and discontent. We grow now in hot-houses roseswhich, in form and color, are magnificent, and appear to be full ofpassion; yet one simple June rose of the open air has for the YoungLady, I doubt not, more sentiment and suggestion of love than aconservatory full of them in January. And this suggestion, leavened asit is with the inconstancy of nature, stimulated by the promises whichare so often like the peach-blossom of the Judas-tree, unsatisfying byreason of its vague possibilities, differs so essentially from the morelimited and attainable and home-like emotion born of quiet intercourseby the winter fireside, that I do not wonder the Young Lady feels as ifsome spell had been broken by the transition of her life from in-doorsto out-doors. Her secret, if secret she has, which I do not at all know, is shared by the birds and the new leaves and the blossoms on the fruittrees. If we lived elsewhere, in that zone where the poets pretendalways to dwell, we might be content, perhaps I should say drugged, bythe sweet influences of an unchanging summer; but not living elsewhere, we can understand why the Young Lady probably now looks forward to thehearthstone as the most assured center of enduring attachment. 

If it should ever become the sad duty of this biographer to write ofdisappointed love, I am sure he would not have any sensational story totell of the Young Lady. She is one of those women whose unostentatiouslives are the chief blessing of humanity; who, with a sigh heard onlyby herself and no change in her sunny face, would put behind her all thememories of winter evenings and the promises of May mornings, and giveher life to some ministration of human kindness with an assiduity thatwould make her occupation appear like an election and a first choice. The disappointed man scowls, and hates his race, and threatensself-destruction, choosing oftener the flowing bowl than the dagger, andbecoming a reeling nuisance in the world. It would be much more manly inhim to become the secretary of a Dorcas society. 

I suppose it is true that women work for others with less expectationof reward than men, and give themselves to labors of self-sacrifice withmuch less thought of self. At least, this is true unless woman goes intosome public performance, where notoriety has its attractions, and mountssome cause, to ride it man-fashion, when I think she becomes just aseager for applause and just as willing that self-sacrifice shouldresult in self-elevation as man. For her, usually, are not thoseunbought--presentations which are forced upon firemen, philanthropists, legislators, railroad-men, and the superintendents of the moralinstruction of the young. These are almost always pleasing andunexpected tributes to worth and modesty, and must be received withsatisfaction when the public service rendered has not been with a viewto procuring them. We should say that one ought to be most liable toreceive a "testimonial" who, being a superintendent of any sort, did notsuperintend with a view to getting it. But "testimonials" have becomeso common that a modest man ought really to be afraid to do his simpleduty, for fear his motives will be misconstrued. Yet there are instancesof very worthy men who have had things publicly presented to them. Itis the blessed age of gifts and the reward of private virtue. And thepresentations have become so frequent that we wish there were a littlemore variety in them. There never was much sense in giving a gallantfellow a big speaking-trumpet to carry home to aid him in hisintercourse with his family; and the festive ice-pitcher has become atoo universal sign of absolute devotion to the public interest. The lackof one will soon be proof that a man is a knave. The legislative canewith the gold head, also, is getting to be recognized as the sign of theimmaculate public servant, as the inscription on it testifies, and thesteps of suspicion must ere-long dog him who does not carry one. The"testimonial" business is, in truth, a little demoralizing, almost asmuch so as the "donation;" and the demoralization has extended even toour language, so that a perfectly respectable man is often obliged tosee himself "made the recipient of" this and that. It would be muchbetter, if testimonials must be, to give a man a barrel of flour or akeg of oysters, and let him eat himself at once back into the ranks ofordinary men. 

III

We may have a testimonial class in time, a sort of nobility here inAmerica, made so by popular gift, the members of which will all be ableto show some stick or piece of plated ware or massive chain, "of whichthey have been the recipients. " In time it may be a distinction not tobelong to it, and it may come to be thought more blessed to give thanto receive. For it must have been remarked that it is not always to thecleverest and the most amiable and modest man that the deputation comeswith the inevitable ice-pitcher (and "salver to match"), which has in itthe magic and subtle quality of making the hour in which it is receivedthe proudest of one's life. There has not been discovered any method ofrewarding all the deserving people and bringing their virtues into theprominence of notoriety. And, indeed, it would be an unreasonable worldif there had, for its chief charm and sweetness lie in the excellencesin it which are reluctantly disclosed; one of the chief pleasuresof living is in the daily discovery of good traits, nobilities, andkindliness both in those we have long known and in the chance passengerwhose way happens for a day to lie with ours. The longer I live the moreI am impressed with the excess of human kindness over human hatred, andthe greater willingness to oblige than to disoblige that one meets atevery turn. The selfishness in politics, the jealousy in letters, the bickering in art, the bitterness in theology, are all as nothingcompared to the sweet charities, sacrifices, and deferences of privatelife. The people are few whom to know intimately is to dislike. Ofcourse you want to hate somebody, if you can, just to keep your powersof discrimination bright, and to save yourself from becoming a mere mushof good-nature; but perhaps it is well to hate some historical personwho has been dead so long as to be indifferent to it. It is morecomfortable to hate people we have never seen. I cannot but think thatJudas Iscariot has been of great service to the world as a sort ofbuffer for moral indignation which might have made a collision nearerhome but for his utilized treachery. I used to know a venerable and mostamiable gentleman and scholar, whose hospitable house was always overrunwith wayside ministers, agents, and philanthropists, who loved theirfellow-men better than they loved to work for their living; and he, Isuspect, kept his moral balance even by indulgence in violent but mostdistant dislikes. When I met him casually in the street, his firstsalutation was likely to be such as this: "What a liar that Alison was!Don't you hate him?" And then would follow specifications of historicalinveracity enough to make one's blood run cold. When he was thusdischarged of his hatred by such a conductor, I presume he had not aspark left for those whose mission was partly to live upon him and othergenerous souls. 

Mandeville and I were talking of the unknown people, one rainy night bythe fire, while the Mistress was fitfully and interjectionally playingwith the piano-keys in an improvising mood. Mandeville has a good dealof sentiment about him, and without any effort talks so beautifullysometimes that I constantly regret I cannot report his language. He has, besides, that sympathy of presence--I believe it is called magnetismby those who regard the brain as only a sort of galvanic battery--whichmakes it a greater pleasure to see him think, if I may say so, than tohear some people talk. 

It makes one homesick in this world to think that there are so many rarepeople he can never know; and so many excellent people that scarcely anyone will know, in fact. One discovers a friend by chance, and cannot butfeel regret that twenty or thirty years of life maybe have been spentwithout the least knowledge of him. When he is once known, through himopening is made into another little world, into a circle of cultureand loving hearts and enthusiasm in a dozen congenial pursuits, andprejudices perhaps. How instantly and easily the bachelor doubles hisworld when he marries, and enters into the unknown fellowship of the tohim continually increasing company which is known in popular language as"all his wife's relations. "

Near at hand daily, no doubt, are those worth knowing intimately, if onehad the time and the opportunity. And when one travels he sees what avast material there is for society and friendship, of which he can neveravail himself. Car-load after car-load of summer travel goes by one atany railway-station, out of which he is sure he could choose a score oflife-long friends, if the conductor would introduce him. There arefaces of refinement, of quick wit, of sympathetic kindness, --interestingpeople, traveled people, entertaining people, --as you would say inBoston, "nice people you would admire to know, " whom you constantly meetand pass without a sign of recognition, many of whom are no doubt yourlong-lost brothers and sisters. You can see that they also have theirworlds and their interests, and they probably know a great many "nice"people. The matter of personal liking and attachment is a good deal dueto the mere fortune of association. More fast friendships and pleasantacquaintanceships are formed on the Atlantic steamships between thosewho would have been only indifferent acquaintances elsewhere, than onewould think possible on a voyage which naturally makes one as selfish ashe is indifferent to his personal appearance. The Atlantic is the onlypower on earth I know that can make a woman indifferent to her personalappearance. 

Mandeville remembers, and I think without detriment to himself, theglimpses he had in the White Mountains once of a young lady of whomhis utmost efforts could give him no further information than her name. Chance sight of her on a passing stage or amid a group on some mountainlookout was all he ever had, and he did not even know certainly whethershe was the perfect beauty and the lovely character he thought her. Hesaid he would have known her, however, at a great distance; there was toher form that command of which we hear so much and which turns out to benearly all command after the "ceremony;" or perhaps it was something inthe glance of her eye or the turn of her head, or very likely it was asweet inherited reserve or hauteur that captivated him, that filledhis days with the expectation of seeing her, and made him hasten to thehotel-registers in the hope that her name was there recorded. Whateverit was, she interested him as one of the people he would like to know;and it piqued him that there was a life, rich in friendships, no doubt, in tastes, in many noblenesses, one of thousands of such, that must beabsolutely nothing to him, --nothing but a window into heaven momentarilyopened and then closed. I have myself no idea that she was a countessincognito, or that she had descended from any greater heights than thosewhere Mandeville saw her, but I have always regretted that she went herway so mysteriously and left no glow, and that we shall wear out theremainder of our days without her society. I have looked for her name, but always in vain, among the attendants at the rights-conventions, in the list of those good Americans presented at court, among thoseskeleton names that appear as the remains of beauty in the morningjournals after a ball to the wandering prince, in the reports of railwaycollisions and steamboat explosions. No news comes of her. And soimperfect are our means of communication in this world that, foranything we know, she may have left it long ago by some private way. 

IV

The lasting regret that we cannot know more of the bright, sincere, andgenuine people of the world is increased by the fact that they are alldifferent from each other. Was it not Madame de Sevigne who said shehad loved several different women for several different qualities? Everyreal person--for there are persons as there are fruits that have nodistinguishing flavor, mere gooseberries--has a distinct quality, andthe finding it is always like the discovery of a new island to thevoyager. The physical world we shall exhaust some day, having a writtendescription of every foot of it to which we can turn; but we shall neverget the different qualities of people into a biographical dictionary, and the making acquaintance with a human being will never cease to be anexciting experiment. We cannot even classify men so as to aid us much inour estimate of them. The efforts in this direction are ingenious, butunsatisfactory. If I hear that a man is lymphatic or nervous-sanguine, Icannot tell therefrom whether I shall like and trust him. He may producea phrenological chart showing that his knobby head is the home of allthe virtues, and that the vicious tendencies are represented by holesin his cranium, and yet I cannot be sure that he will not be asdisagreeable as if phrenology had not been invented. I feel sometimesthat phrenology is the refuge of mediocrity. Its charts are almost asmisleading concerning character as photographs. And photography may bedescribed as the art which enables commonplace mediocrity to look likegenius. The heavy-jowled man with shallow cerebrum has only to inclinehis head so that the lying instrument can select a favorable focus, toappear in the picture with the brow of a sage and the chin of a poet. Of all the arts for ministering to human vanity the photographic is themost useful, but it is a poor aid in the revelation of character. Youshall learn more of a man's real nature by seeing him walk once up thebroad aisle of his church to his pew on Sunday, than by studying hisphotograph for a month. 

No, we do not get any certain standard of men by a chart of theirtemperaments; it will hardly answer to select a wife by the color of herhair; though it be by nature as red as a cardinal's hat, she may beno more constant than if it were dyed. The farmer who shuns all thelymphatic beauties in his neighborhood, and selects to wife the mostnervous-sanguine, may find that she is unwilling to get up in the wintermornings and make the kitchen fire. Many a man, even in this scientificage which professes to label us all, has been cruelly deceived inthis way. Neither the blondes nor the brunettes act according to theadvertisement of their temperaments. The truth is that men refuse tocome under the classifications of the pseudo-scientists, and all ournew nomenclatures do not add much to our knowledge. You know what toexpect--if the comparison will be pardoned--of a horse with certainpoints; but you wouldn't dare go on a journey with a man merely upon thestrength of knowing that his temperament was the proper mixture of thesanguine and the phlegmatic. Science is not able to teach us concerningmen as it teaches us of horses, though I am very far from saying thatthere are not traits of nobleness and of meanness that run throughfamilies and can be calculated to appear in individuals with absolutecertainty; one family will be trusty and another tricky through allits members for generations; noble strains and ignoble strains areperpetuated. When we hear that she has eloped with the stable-boy andmarried him, we are apt to remark, "Well, she was a Bogardus. " And whenwe read that she has gone on a mission and has died, distinguishingherself by some extraordinary devotion to the heathen at Ujiji, we thinkit sufficient to say, "Yes, her mother married into the Smiths. " Butthis knowledge comes of our experience of special families, and standsus in stead no further. 

If we cannot classify men scientifically and reduce them under a kindof botanical order, as if they had a calculable vegetable development, neither can we gain much knowledge of them by comparison. It does nothelp me at all in my estimate of their characters to compare Mandevillewith the Young Lady, or Our Next Door with the Parson. The wise man doesnot permit himself to set up even in his own mind any comparison ofhis friends. His friendship is capable of going to extremes with manypeople, evoked as it is by many qualities. When Mandeville goes intomy garden in June I can usually find him in a particular bed ofstrawberries, but he does not speak disrespectfully of the others. When Nature, says Mandeville, consents to put herself into any sort ofstrawberry, I have no criticisms to make, I am only glad that I havebeen created into the same world with such a delicious manifestation ofthe Divine favor. If I left Mandeville alone in the garden long enough, I have no doubt he would impartially make an end of the fruit of all thebeds, for his capacity in this direction is as all-embracing as it is inthe matter of friendships. The Young Lady has also her favorite patch ofberries. And the Parson, I am sorry to say, prefers to have them pickedfor him the elect of the garden--and served in an orthodox manner. Thestraw-berry has a sort of poetical precedence, and I presume that nofruit is jealous of it any more than any flower is jealous of the rose;but I remark the facility with which liking for it is transferred to theraspberry, and from the raspberry (not to make a tedious enumeration) tothe melon, and from the melon to the grape, and the grape to the pear, and the pear to the apple. And we do not mar our enjoyment of each bycomparisons. 

Of course it would be a dull world if we could not criticise ourfriends, but the most unprofitable and unsatisfactory criticism is thatby comparison. Criticism is not necessarily uncharitableness, but awholesome exercise of our powers of analysis and discrimination. It is, however, a very idle exercise, leading to no results when we set thequalities of one over against the qualities of another, and disparage bycontrast and not by independent judgment. And this method of procedurecreates jealousies and heart-burnings innumerable. 

Criticism by comparison is the refuge of incapables, and especially isthis true in literature. It is a lazy way of disposing of a young poetto bluntly declare, without any sort of discrimination of his defectsor his excellences, that he equals Tennyson, and that Scott never wroteanything finer. What is the justice of damning a meritorious novelistby comparing him with Dickens, and smothering him with thoughtless andgood-natured eulogy? The poet and the novelist may be well enough, and probably have qualities and gifts of their own which are worth thecritic's attention, if he has any time to bestow on them; and it iscertainly unjust to subject them to a comparison with somebody else, merely because the critic will not take the trouble to ascertain whatthey are. If, indeed, the poet and novelist are mere imitators ofa model and copyists of a style, they may be dismissed with suchcommendation as we bestow upon the machines who pass their lives inmaking bad copies of the pictures of the great painters. But the criticsof whom we speak do not intend depreciation, but eulogy, when they saythat the author they have in hand has the wit of Sydney Smith and thebrilliancy of Macaulay. Probably he is not like either of them, and mayhave a genuine though modest virtue of his own; but these nameswill certainly kill him, and he will never be anybody in the popularestimation. The public finds out speedily that he is not Sydney Smith, and it resents the extravagant claim for him as if he were an impudentpretender. How many authors of fair ability to interest the world havewe known in our own day who have been thus sky-rocketed into notorietyby the lazy indiscrimination of the critic-by-comparison, and then havesunk into a popular contempt as undeserved! I never see a young aspirantinjudiciously compared to a great and resplendent name in literature, but I feel like saying, My poor fellow, your days are few and fullof trouble; you begin life handicapped, and you cannot possibly run acreditable race. 

I think this sort of critical eulogy is more damaging even than thatwhich kills by a different assumption, and one which is equally common, namely, that the author has not done what he probably never intendedto do. It is well known that most of the trouble in life comes from ourinability to compel other people to do what we think they ought, and itis true in criticism that we are unwilling to take a book for what itis, and credit the author with that. When the solemn critic, like amastiff with a ladies' bonnet in his mouth, gets hold of a light pieceof verse, or a graceful sketch which catches the humor of an hour forthe entertainment of an hour, he tears it into a thousand shreds. Itadds nothing to human knowledge, it solves none of the problems oflife, it touches none of the questions of social science, it is not aphilosophical treatise, and it is not a dozen things that it might havebeen. The critic cannot forgive the author for this disrespect to him. This isn't a rose, says the critic, taking up a pansy and rending it; itis not at all like a rose, and the author is either a pretentious idiotor an idiotic pretender. What business, indeed, has the author to sendthe critic a bunch of sweet-peas, when he knows that a cabbage would bepreferred, --something not showy, but useful?

A good deal of this is what Mandeville said and I am not sure that itis devoid of personal feeling. He published, some years ago, a littlevolume giving an account of a trip through the Great West, and a veryentertaining book it was. But one of the heavy critics got hold of it, and made Mandeville appear, even to himself, he confessed, like anass, because there was nothing in the volume about geology or miningprospects, and very little to instruct the student of physicalgeography. With alternate sarcasm and ridicule, he literally bastedthe author, till Mandeville said that he felt almost like a depravedscoundrel, and thought he should be held up to less execration if he hadcommitted a neat and scientific murder. 

But I confess that I have a good deal of sympathy with the critics. Consider what these public tasters have to endure! None of us, I fancy, would like to be compelled to read all that they read, or to take intoour mouths, even with the privilege of speedily ejecting it with agrimace, all that they sip. The critics of the vintage, who pursue theircalling in the dark vaults and amid mouldy casks, give their opinion, for the most part, only upon wine, upon juice that has matured andripened into development of quality. But what crude, unrestrained, unfermented--even raw and drugged liquor, must the literary taster putto his unwilling lips day after day!

TENTH STUDY

I

It was my good fortune once to visit a man who remembered the rebellionof 1745. Lest this confession should make me seem very aged, I will addthat the visit took place in 1851, and that the man was then one hundredand thirteen years old. He was quite a lad before Dr. Johnson drank Mrs. Thrale's tea. That he was as old as he had the credit of being, I havethe evidence of my own senses (and I am seldom mistaken in a person'sage), of his own family, and his own word; and it is incredible that soold a person, and one so apparently near the grave, would deceive abouthis age. 

The testimony of the very aged is always to be received withoutquestion, as Alexander Hamilton once learned. He was trying a land-titlewith Aaron Burr, and two of the witnesses upon whom Burr relied werevenerable Dutchmen, who had, in their youth, carried the surveyingchains over the land in dispute, and who were now aged respectively onehundred and four years and one hundred and six years. Hamilton gentlyattempted to undervalue their testimony, but he was instantly put downby the Dutch justice, who suggested that Mr. Hamilton could not be awareof the age of the witnesses. 

My old man (the expression seems familiar and inelegant) had indeed anexaggerated idea of his own age, and sometimes said that he supposed hewas going on four hundred, which was true enough, in fact; but for theexact date, he referred to his youngest son, --a frisky and humorsomelad of eighty years, who had received us at the gate, and whom we had atfirst mistaken for the veteran, his father. But when we beheld the oldman, we saw the difference between age and age. The latter had settledinto a grizzliness and grimness which belong to a very aged and stuntedbut sturdy oak-tree, upon the bark of which the gray moss is thick andheavy. The old man appeared hale enough, he could walk about, his sightand hearing were not seriously impaired, he ate with relish, and histeeth were so sound that he would not need a dentist for at leastanother century; but the moss was growing on him. His boy of eightyseemed a green sapling beside him. 

He remembered absolutely nothing that had taken place within thirtyyears, but otherwise his mind was perhaps as good as it ever was, for hemust always have been an ignoramus, and would never know anything ifhe lived to be as old as he said he was going on to be. Why he wasinterested in the rebellion of 1745 I could not discover, for he ofcourse did not go over to Scotland to carry a pike in it, and he onlyremembered to have heard it talked about as a great event in the Irishmarket-town near which he lived, and to which he had ridden when a boy. And he knew much more about the horse that drew him, and the cart inwhich he rode, than he did about the rebellion of the Pretender. 

I hope I do not appear to speak harshly of this amiable old man, and ifhe is still living I wish him well, although his example was bad in somerespects. He had used tobacco for nearly a century, and the habit hasvery likely been the death of him. If so, it is to be regretted. Forit would have been interesting to watch the process of his gradualdisintegration and return to the ground: the loss of sense after sense, as decaying limbs fall from the oak; the failure of discrimination, ofthe power of choice, and finally of memory itself; the peaceful wearingout and passing away of body and mind without disease, the naturalrunning down of a man. The interesting fact about him at that time wasthat his bodily powers seemed in sufficient vigor, but that the mindhad not force enough to manifest itself through his organs. The completebattery was there, the appetite was there, the acid was eating the zinc;but the electric current was too weak to flash from the brain. And yethe appeared so sound throughout, that it was difficult to say thathis mind was not as good as it ever had been. He had stored in it verylittle to feed on, and any mind would get enfeebled by a century'srumination on a hearsay idea of the rebellion of '45. 

It was possible with this man to fully test one's respect for age, whichis in all civilized nations a duty. And I found that my feelings weremixed about him. I discovered in him a conceit in regard to his longsojourn on this earth, as if it were somehow a credit to him. In thepresence of his good opinion of himself, I could but question the realvalue of his continued life, to himself or to others. If he ever had anyfriends he had outlived them, except his boy; his wives--a century ofthem--were all dead; the world had actually passed away for him. He hungon the tree like a frost-nipped apple, which the farmer has neglected togather. The world always renews itself, and remains young. What relationhad he to it?

I was delighted to find that this old man had never voted for GeorgeWashington. I do not know that he had ever heard of him. Washington maybe said to have played his part since his time. I am not sure that heperfectly remembered anything so recent as the American Revolution. Hewas living quietly in Ireland during our French and Indian wars, and hedid not emigrate to this country till long after our revolutionary andour constitutional struggles were over. The Rebellion Of '45 was thegreat event of the world for him, and of that he knew nothing. 

I intend no disrespect to this man, --a cheerful and pleasant enoughold person, --but he had evidently lived himself out of the world, ascompletely as people usually die out of it. His only remaining valuewas to the moralist, who might perchance make something out of him. I suppose if he had died young, he would have been regretted, and hisfriends would have lamented that he did not fill out his days in theworld, and would very likely have called him back, if tears and prayerscould have done so. They can see now what his prolonged life amountedto, and how the world has closed up the gap he once filled while hestill lives in it. 

A great part of the unhappiness of this world consists in regret forthose who depart, as it seems to us, prematurely. We imagine that ifthey would return, the old conditions would be restored. But would it beso? If they, in any case, came back, would there be any place for them?The world so quickly readjusts itself after any loss, that the returnof the departed would nearly always throw it, even the circle mostinterested, into confusion. Are the Enoch Ardens ever wanted?

II

A popular notion akin to this, that the world would have any room forthe departed if they should now and then return, is the constantregret that people will not learn by the experience of others, that onegeneration learns little from the preceding, and that youth never willadopt the experience of age. But if experience went for anything, weshould all come to a standstill; for there is nothing so discouraging toeffort. Disbelief in Ecclesiastes is the mainspring of action. In thatlies the freshness and the interest of life, and it is the source ofevery endeavor. 

If the boy believed that the accumulation of wealth and the acquisitionof power were what the old man says they are, the world would very soonbe stagnant. If he believed that his chances of obtaining either were aspoor as the majority of men find them to be, ambition would die withinhim. It is because he rejects the experience of those who have precededhim, that the world is kept in the topsy-turvy condition which we allrejoice in, and which we call progress. 

And yet I confess I have a soft place in my heart for that rarecharacter in our New England life who is content with the world as hefinds it, and who does not attempt to appropriate any more of it tohimself than he absolutely needs from day to day. He knows from thebeginning that the world could get on without him, and he has never hadany anxiety to leave any result behind him, any legacy for the world toquarrel over. 

He is really an exotic in our New England climate and society, and hislife is perpetually misunderstood by his neighbors, because he sharesnone of their uneasiness about getting on in life. He is even calledlazy, good-for-nothing, and "shiftless, "--the final stigma that we putupon a person who has learned to wait without the exhausting process oflaboring. 

I made his acquaintance last summer in the country, and I have not ina long time been so well pleased with any of our species. He was a manpast middle life, with a large family. He had always been from boyhoodof a contented and placid mind, slow in his movements, slow in hisspeech. I think he never cherished a hard feeling toward anybody, norenvied any one, least of all the rich and prosperous about whom he likedto talk. Indeed, his talk was a good deal about wealth, especially abouthis cousin who had been down South and "got fore-handed" within a fewyears. He was genuinely pleased at his relation's good luck, and pointedhim out to me with some pride. But he had no envy of him, and he evincedno desire to imitate him. I inferred from all his conversation about"piling it up" (of which he spoke with a gleam of enthusiasm in hiseye), that there were moments when he would like to be rich himself; butit was evident that he would never make the least effort to be so, and Idoubt if he could even overcome that delicious inertia of mind and bodycalled laziness, sufficiently to inherit. 

Wealth seemed to have a far and peculiar fascination for him, and Isuspect he was a visionary in the midst of his poverty. Yet I suppose hehad--hardly the personal property which the law exempts from execution. He had lived in a great many towns, moving from one to another with hisgrowing family, by easy stages, and was always the poorest man in thetown, and lived on the most niggardly of its rocky and bramble-grownfarms, the productiveness of which he reduced to zero in a couple ofseasons by his careful neglect of culture. The fences of his hireddomain always fell into ruins under him, perhaps because he sat onthem so much, and the hovels he occupied rotted down during his placidresidence in them. He moved from desolation to desolation, but carriedalways with him the equal mind of a philosopher. Not even the occasionaltart remarks of his wife, about their nomadic life and his serenity inthe midst of discomfort, could ruffle his smooth spirit. 

He was, in every respect, a most worthy man, truthful, honest, temperate, and, I need not say, frugal; and he had no badhabits, --perhaps he never had energy enough to acquire any. Nor didhe lack the knack of the Yankee race. He could make a shoe, or builda house, or doctor a cow; but it never seemed to him, in this briefexistence, worth while to do any of these things. He was an excellentangler, but he rarely fished; partly because of the shortness of days, partly on account of the uncertainty of bites, but principally becausethe trout brooks were all arranged lengthwise and ran over so muchground. But no man liked to look at a string of trout better than hedid, and he was willing to sit down in a sunny place and talk abouttrout-fishing half a day at a time, and he would talk pleasantly andwell too, though his wife might be continually interrupting him by acall for firewood. 

I should not do justice to his own idea of himself if I did not add thathe was most respectably connected, and that he had a justifiable thoughfeeble pride in his family. It helped his self-respect, which no ignoblecircumstances could destroy. He was, as must appear by this time, a mostintelligent man, and he was a well-informed man; that is to say, he readthe weekly newspapers when he could get them, and he had the averagecountry information about Beecher and Greeley and the Prussian war("Napoleon is gettin' on't, ain't he?"), and the general prospect ofthe election campaigns. Indeed, he was warmly, or rather luke-warmly, interested in politics. He liked to talk about the inflated currency, and it seemed plain to him that his condition would somehow be improvedif we could get to a specie basis. He was, in fact, a little troubledby the national debt; it seemed to press on him somehow, while hisown never did. He exhibited more animation over the affairs of thegovernment than he did over his own, --an evidence at once of hisdisinterestedness and his patriotism. He had been an old abolitionist, and was strong on the rights of free labor, though he did not care toexercise his privilege much. Of course he had the proper contempt forthe poor whites down South. I never saw a person with more correctnotions on such a variety of subjects. He was perfectly willing thatchurches (being himself a member), and Sunday-schools, and missionaryenterprises should go on; in fact, I do not believe he ever opposedanything in his life. No one was more willing to vote town taxes androad-repairs and schoolhouses than he. If you could call him spirited atall, he was public-spirited. 

And with all this he was never very well; he had, from boyhood, "enjoyedpoor health. " You would say he was not a man who would ever catchanything, not even an epidemic; but he was a person whom diseases wouldbe likely to overtake, even the slowest of slow fevers. And he was n'ta man to shake off anything. And yet sickness seemed to trouble him nomore than poverty. He was not discontented; he never grumbled. I am notsure but he relished a "spell of sickness" in haying-time. 

An admirably balanced man, who accepts the world as it is, and evidentlylives on the experience of others. I have never seen a man with lessenvy, or more cheerfulness, or so contented with as little reason forbeing so. The only drawback to his future is that rest beyond the gravewill not be much change for him, and he has no works to follow him. 

III

This Yankee philosopher, who, without being a Brahmin, had, in anuncongenial atmosphere, reached the perfect condition of Nirvina, reminded us all of the ancient sages; and we queried whether a worldthat could produce such as he, and could, beside, lengthen a man's yearsto one hundred and thirteen, could fairly be called an old andworn-out world, having long passed the stage of its primeval poetry andsimplicity. Many an Eastern dervish has, I think, got immortalityupon less laziness and resignation than this temporary sojourner inMassachusetts. It is a common notion that the world (meaning the peoplein it) has become tame and commonplace, lost its primeval freshness andepigrammatic point. Mandeville, in his argumentative way, dissents fromthis entirely. He says that the world is more complex, varied, and athousand times as interesting as it was in what we call its youth, andthat it is as fresh, as individual and capable of producing odd andeccentric characters as ever. He thought the creative vim had not in anydegree abated, that both the types of men and of nations are as sharplystamped and defined as ever they were. 

Was there ever, he said, in the past, any figure more clearly cut andfreshly minted than the Yankee? Had the Old World anything to show morepositive and uncompromising in all the elements of character than theEnglishman? And if the edges of these were being rounded off, was therenot developing in the extreme West a type of men different from allpreceding, which the world could not yet define? He believed that theproduction of original types was simply infinite. 

Herbert urged that he must at least admit that there was a freshness oflegend and poetry in what we call the primeval peoples that is wantingnow; the mythic period is gone, at any rate. 

Mandeville could not say about the myths. We couldn't tell whatinterpretation succeeding ages would put upon our lives and history andliterature when they have become remote and shadowy. But we need not goto antiquity for epigrammatic wisdom, or for characters as racy of thefresh earth as those handed down to us from the dawn of history. Hewould put Benjamin Franklin against any of the sages of the mythic orthe classic period. He would have been perfectly at home in ancientAthens, as Socrates would have been in modern Boston. There might havebeen more heroic characters at the siege of Troy than Abraham Lincoln, but there was not one more strongly marked individually; not one hissuperior in what we call primeval craft and humor. He was just the man, if he could not have dislodged Priam by a writ of ejectment, to haveinvented the wooden horse, and then to have made Paris the hero of someridiculous story that would have set all Asia in a roar. 

Mandeville said further, that as to poetry, he did not know muchabout that, and there was not much he cared to read except parts ofShakespeare and Homer, and passages of Milton. But it did seem to himthat we had men nowadays, who could, if they would give their minds toit, manufacture in quantity the same sort of epigrammatic sayings andlegends that our scholars were digging out of the Orient. He did notknow why Emerson in antique setting was not as good as Saadi. Take forinstance, said Mandeville, such a legend as this, and how easy it wouldbe to make others like it:

The son of an Emir had red hair, of which he was ashamed, and wishedto dye it. But his father said: "Nay, my son, rather behave in such amanner that all fathers shall wish their sons had red hair. "

This was too absurd. Mandeville had gone too far, except in the opinionof Our Next Door, who declared that an imitation was just as good as anoriginal, if you could not detect it. But Herbert said that the closeran imitation is to an original, the more unendurable it is. But nobodycould tell exactly why. 

The Fire-Tender said that we are imposed on by forms. The nuggets ofwisdom that are dug out of the Oriental and remote literatures wouldoften prove to be only commonplace if stripped of their quaint setting. If you gave an Oriental twist to some of our modern thought, its valuewould be greatly enhanced for many people. 

I have seen those, said the Mistress, who seem to prefer dried fruit tofresh; but I like the strawberry and the peach of each season, and forme the last is always the best. 

Even the Parson admitted that there were no signs of fatigue or decay inthe creative energy of the world; and if it is a question of Pagans, hepreferred Mandeville to Saadi. 

ELEVENTH STUDY

It happened, or rather, to tell the truth, it was contrived, --for I havewaited too long for things to turn up to have much faith in "happen, "that we who have sat by this hearthstone before should all be togetheron Christmas eve. There was a splendid backlog of hickory just beginningto burn with a glow that promised to grow more fiery till long pastmidnight, which would have needed no apology in a loggers' camp, --not somuch as the religion of which a lady (in a city which shall be nameless)said, "If you must have a religion, this one will do nicely. "

There was not much conversation, as is apt to be the case when peoplecome together who have a great deal to say, and are intimate enough topermit the freedom of silence. It was Mandeville who suggested that weread something, and the Young Lady, who was in a mood to enjoy her ownthoughts, said, "Do. " And finally it came about that the Fire Tender, without more resistance to the urging than was becoming, went to hislibrary, and returned with a manuscript, from which he read the story of

MY UNCLE IN INDIA

Not that it is my uncle, let me explain. It is Polly's uncle, as Ivery well know, from the many times she has thrown him up to me, andis liable so to do at any moment. Having small expectations myself, andhaving wedded Polly when they were smaller, I have come to feel the fullforce, the crushing weight, of her lightest remark about "My Uncle inIndia. " The words as I write them convey no idea of the tone in whichthey fall upon my ears. I think it is the only fault of that estimablewoman, that she has an "uncle in India" and does not let him quietlyremain there. I feel quite sure that if I had an uncle in Botany Bay, Ishould never, never throw him up to Polly in the way mentioned. Ifthere is any jar in our quiet life, he is the cause of it; all along ofpossible "expectations" on the one side calculated to overawe the otherside not having expectations. And yet I know that if her uncle in Indiawere this night to roll a barrel of "India's golden sands, " as I feelthat he any moment may do, into our sitting-room, at Polly's feet, thatcharming wife, who is more generous than the month of May, and who hasno thought but for my comfort in two worlds, would straightway makeit over to me, to have and to hold, if I could lift it, forever andforever. And that makes it more inexplicable that she, being a woman, will continue to mention him in the way she does. 

In a large and general way I regard uncles as not out of place in thistransitory state of existence. They stand for a great many possibleadvantages. They are liable to "tip" you at school, they are resourcesin vacation, they come grandly in play about the holidays, at whichseason mv heart always did warm towards them with lively expectations, which were often turned into golden solidities; and then there is alwaysthe prospect, sad to a sensitive mind, that uncles are mortal, and, intheir timely taking off, may prove as generous in the will as theywere in the deed. And there is always this redeeming possibility in aniggardly uncle. Still there must be something wrong in the character ofthe uncle per se, or all history would not agree that nepotism is such adreadful thing. 

But, to return from this unnecessary digression, I am reminded that thecharioteer of the patient year has brought round the holiday time. Ithas been a growing year, as most years are. It is very pleasant to seehow the shrubs in our little patch of ground widen and thicken and bloomat the right time, and to know that the great trees have added a laverto their trunks. To be sure, our garden, --which I planted under Polly'sdirections, with seeds that must have been patented, and I forgot tobuy the right of, for they are mostly still waiting the finalresurrection, --gave evidence that it shared in the misfortune of theFall, and was never an Eden from which one would have required to havebeen driven. It was the easiest garden to keep the neighbor's pigs andhens out of I ever saw. If its increase was small its temptationswere smaller, and that is no little recommendation in this world oftemptations. But, as a general thing, everything has grown, except ourhouse. That little cottage, over which Polly presides with grace enoughto adorn a palace, is still small outside and smaller inside; and if ithas an air of comfort and of neatness, and its rooms are cozy and sunnyby day and cheerful by night, and it is bursting with books, and notunattractive with modest pictures on the walls, which we think do wellenough until my uncle--(but never mind my uncle, now), --and if, in thelong winter evenings, when the largest lamp is lit, and the chestnutsglow in embers, and the kid turns on the spit, and the house-plants aregreen and flowering, and the ivy glistens in the firelight, and Pollysits with that contented, far-away look in her eyes that I like to see, her fingers busy upon one of those cruel mysteries which have delightedthe sex since Penelope, and I read in one of my fascinating law-books, or perhaps regale ourselves with a taste of Montaigne, --if all this istrue, there are times when the cottage seems small; though I can neverfind that Polly thinks so, except when she sometimes says that she doesnot know where she should bestow her uncle in it, if he should suddenlycome back from India. 

There it is, again. I sometimes think that my wife believes her unclein India to be as large as two ordinary men; and if her ideas of him areany gauge of the reality, there is no place in the town large enoughfor him except the Town Hall. She probably expects him to come with hisbungalow, and his sedan, and his palanquin, and his elephants, and hisretinue of servants, and his principalities, and his powers, and hisha--(no, not that), and his chowchow, and his--I scarcely know whatbesides. 

Christmas eve was a shiny cold night, a creaking cold night, a placid, calm, swingeing cold night. 

Out-doors had gone into a general state of crystallization. Thesnow-fields were like the vast Arctic ice-fields that Kane looked on, and lay sparkling under the moonlight, crisp and Christmasy, and allthe crystals on the trees and bushes hung glistening, as if ready, at abreath of air, to break out into metallic ringing, like a million silverjoy-bells. I mentioned the conceit to Polly, as we stood at the window, and she said it reminded her of Jean Paul. She is a woman of mostremarkable discernment. 

Christmas is a great festival at our house in a small way. Among themany delightful customs we did not inherit from our Pilgrim Fathers, there is none so pleasant as that of giving presents at this season. It is the most exciting time of the year. No one is too rich to receivesomething, and no one too poor to give a trifle. And in the act ofgiving and receiving these tokens of regard, all the world is kin foronce, and brighter for this transient glow of generosity. Delightfulcustom! Hard is the lot of childhood that knows nothing of the visitsof Kriss Kringle, or the stockings hung by the chimney at night; andcheerless is any age that is not brightened by some Christmas gift, however humble. What a mystery of preparation there is in the precedingdays, what planning and plottings of surprises! Polly and I keep up thecustom in our simple way, and great is the perplexity to express thegreatest amount of affection with a limited outlay. For the excellenceof a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than in its value. As westood by the window that night, we wondered what we should receive thisyear, and indulged in I know not what little hypocrisies and deceptions. 

I wish, said Polly, "that my uncle in India would send me a camel's-hairshawl, or a string of pearls, each as big as the end of my thumb. "

"Or a white cow, which would give golden milk, that would make butterworth seventy-five cents a pound, " I added, as we drew the curtains, andturned to our chairs before the open fire. 

It is our custom on every Christmas eve--as I believe I have somewheresaid, or if I have not, I say it again, as the member from Erin mightremark--to read one of Dickens's Christmas stories. And this night, after punching the fire until it sent showers of sparks up the chimney, I read the opening chapter of "Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings, " in my bestmanner, and handed the book to Polly to continue; for I do not so muchrelish reading aloud the succeeding stories of Mr. Dickens's annualbudget, since he wrote them, as men go to war in these days, bysubstitute. And Polly read on, in her melodious voice, which is almostas pleasant to me as the Wasser-fluth of Schubert, which she often playsat twilight; and I looked into the fire, unconsciously constructingstories of my own out of the embers. And her voice still went on, in asort of running accompaniment to my airy or fiery fancies. 

"Sleep?" said Polly, stopping, with what seemed to me a sort of crash, in which all the castles tumbled into ashes. 

"Not in the least, " I answered brightly, "never heard anything moreagreeable. " And the reading flowed on and on and on, and I lookedsteadily into the fire, the fire, fire, fi.... 

Suddenly the door opened, and into our cozy parlor walked the mostvenerable personage I ever laid eyes on, who saluted me with greatdignity. Summer seemed to have burst into the room, and I was consciousof a puff of Oriental airs, and a delightful, languid tranquillity. Iwas not surprised that the figure before me was clad in full turban, baggy drawers, and a long loose robe, girt about the middle with a richshawl. Followed him a swart attendant, who hastened to spread a rug uponwhich my visitor sat down, with great gravity, as I am informed theydo in farthest Ind. The slave then filled the bowl of a long-stemmedchibouk, and, handing it to his master, retired behind him and began tofan him with the most prodigious palm-leaf I ever saw. Soon the fumes ofthe delicate tobacco of Persia pervaded the room, like some costly aromawhich you cannot buy, now the entertainment of the Arabian Nights isdiscontinued. 

Looking through the window I saw, if I saw anything, a palanquin at ourdoor, and attendant on it four dusky, half-naked bearers, who did notseem to fancy the splendor of the night, for they jumped about on thesnow crust, and I could see them shiver and shake in the keen air. Oho!thought! this, then, is my uncle from India!

"Yes, it is, " now spoke my visitor extraordinary, in a gruff, harshvoice. 

"I think I have heard Polly speak of you, " I rejoined, in an attemptto be civil, for I did n't like his face any better than I did hisvoice, --a red, fiery, irascible kind of face. 

"Yes I've come over to O Lord, --quick, Jamsetzee, lift up thatfoot, --take care. There, Mr. Trimings, if that's your name, get me aglass of brandy, stiff. "

I got him our little apothecary-labeled bottle and poured out enough topreserve a whole can of peaches. My uncle took it down without a wink, as if it had been water, and seemed relieved. It was a very pleasantuncle to have at our fireside on Christmas eve, I felt. 

At a motion from my uncle, Jamsetzee handed me a parcel which I sawwas directed to Polly, which I untied, and lo! the most wonderfulcamel's-hair shawl that ever was, so fine that I immediately drew itthrough my finger-ring, and so large that I saw it would entirely coverour little room if I spread it out; a dingy red color, but splendidin appearance from the little white hieroglyphic worked in one corner, which is always worn outside, to show that it cost nobody knows how manythousands of dollars. 

"A Christmas trifle for Polly. I have come home--as I was saying whenthat confounded twinge took me--to settle down; and I intend to makePolly my heir, and live at my ease and enjoy life. Move that leg alittle, Jamsetzee. "

I meekly replied that I had no doubt Polly would be delighted to see herdear uncle, and as for inheriting, if it came to that, I did n't knowany one with a greater capacity for that than she. 

"That depends, " said the gruff old smoker, "how I like ye. A fortune, scraped up in forty years in Ingy, ain't to be thrown away in a minute. But what a house this is to live in!"; the uncomfortable old relativewent on, throwing a contemptuous glance round the humble cottage. "Isthis all of it?"

"In the winter it is all of it, " I said, flushing up; "but in thesummer, when the doors and windows are open, it is as large as anybody'shouse. And, " I went on, with some warmth, "it was large enough justbefore you came in, and pleasant enough. And besides, " I said, risinginto indignation, "you can not get anything much better in this cityshort of eight hundred dollars a year, payable first days of January, April, July, and October, in advance, and my salary.... "

"Hang your salary, and confound your impudence and your seven-by-ninehovel! Do you think you have anything to say about the use of my money, scraped up in forty years in Ingy? THINGS HAVE GOT TO BE CHANGED!" heburst out, in a voice that rattled the glasses on the sideboard. 

I should think they were. Even as I looked into the little fireplace itenlarged, and there was an enormous grate, level with the floor, glowingwith seacoal; and a magnificent mantel carved in oak, old and brown; andover it hung a landscape, wide, deep, summer in the foreground with allthe gorgeous coloring of the tropics, and beyond hills of blue and farmountains lying in rosy light. I held my breath as I looked down themarvelous perspective. Looking round for a second, I caught a glimpse ofa Hindoo at each window, who vanished as if they had been whisked off byenchantment; and the close walls that shut us in fled away. Had cohesionand gravitation given out? Was it the "Great Consummation" of the year18-? It was all like the swift transformation of a dream, and I pinchedmy arm to make sure that I was not the subject of some diablerie. 

The little house was gone; but that I scarcely minded, for I hadsuddenly come into possession of my wife's castle in Spain. I sat in aspacious, lofty apartment, furnished with a princely magnificence. Rarepictures adorned the walls, statues looked down from deep niches, and over both the dark ivy of England ran and drooped in gracefulluxuriance. Upon the heavy tables were costly, illuminated volumes;luxurious chairs and ottomans invited to easy rest; and upon the ceilingAurora led forth all the flower-strewing daughters of the dawn inbrilliant frescoes. Through the open doors my eyes wandered intomagnificent apartment after apartment. There to the south, throughfolding-doors, was the splendid library, with groined roof, coloredlight streaming in through painted windows, high shelves stowed withbooks, old armor hanging on the walls, great carved oaken chairs about asolid oaken table, and beyond a conservatory of flowers and plants witha fountain springing in the center, the splashing of whose waters Icould hear. Through the open windows I looked upon a lawn, green withclose-shaven turf, set with ancient trees, and variegated with parterresof summer plants in bloom. It was the month of June, and the smell ofroses was in the air. 

I might have thought it only a freak of my fancy, but there by thefireplace sat a stout, red-faced, puffy-looking man, in the ordinarydress of an English gentleman, whom I had no difficulty in recognizingas my uncle from India. 

"One wants a fire every day in the year in this confounded climate, "remarked that amiable old person, addressing no one in particular. 

I had it on my lips to suggest that I trusted the day would come when hewould have heat enough to satisfy him, in permanent supply. I wish nowthat I had. 

I think things had changed. For now into this apartment, full of themorning sunshine, came sweeping with the air of a countess born, and amaid of honor bred, and a queen in expectancy, my Polly, stepping withthat lofty grace which I always knew she possessed, but which she neverhad space to exhibit in our little cottage, dressed with that eleganceand richness that I should not have deemed possible to the most Dutchduchess that ever lived, and, giving me a complacent nod of recognition, approached her uncle, and said in her smiling, cheery way, "How is thedear uncle this morning?" And, as she spoke, she actually bent down andkissed his horrid old cheek, red-hot with currie and brandy and all thebiting pickles I can neither eat nor name, kissed him, and I did notturn into stone. 

"Comfortable as the weather will permit, my darling!"--and again I didnot turn into stone. 

"Wouldn't uncle like to take a drive this charming morning?" Pollyasked. 

Uncle finally grunted out his willingness, and Polly swept away again toprepare for the drive, taking no more notice of me than if I had been apoor assistant office lawyer on a salary. And soon the carriage was atthe door, and my uncle, bundled up like a mummy, and the charming Pollydrove gayly away. 

How pleasant it is to be married rich, I thought, as I arose andstrolled into the library, where everything was elegant and prim andneat, with no scraps of paper and piles of newspapers or evidences ofliterary slovenness on the table, and no books in attractive disorder, and where I seemed to see the legend staring at me from all the walls, "No smoking. " So I uneasily lounged out of the house. And a magnificenthouse it was, a palace, rather, that seemed to frown upon and bullyinsignificant me with its splendor, as I walked away from it towardstown. 

And why town? There was no use of doing anything at the dingy office. Eight hundred dollars a year! It wouldn't keep Polly in gloves, letalone dressing her for one of those fashionable entertainments to whichwe went night after night. And so, after a weary day with nothing init, I went home to dinner, to find my uncle quite chirruped up withhis drive, and Polly regnant, sublimely engrossed in her new world ofsplendor, a dazzling object of admiration to me, but attentive and eventender to that hypochondriacal, gouty old subject from India. 

Yes, a magnificent dinner, with no end of servants, who seemed toknow that I couldn't have paid the wages of one of them, and plate andcourses endless. I say, a miserable dinner, on the edge of which seemedto sit by permission of somebody, like an invited poor relation, whowishes he had sent a regret, and longing for some of those nice littledishes that Polly used to set before me with beaming face, in the dearold days. 

And after dinner, and proper attention to the comfort for the night ofour benefactor, there was the Blibgims's party. No long, confidentialinterviews, as heretofore, as to what she should wear and what I shouldwear, and whether it would do to wear it again. And Polly went in onecoach, and I in another. No crowding into the hired hack, with all thedelightful care about tumbling dresses, and getting there in good order;and no coming home together to our little cozy cottage, in a pleasant, excited state of "flutteration, " and sitting down to talk it all over, and "Was n't it nice?" and "Did I look as well as anybody?" and "Ofcourse you did to me, " and all that nonsense. We lived in a grand waynow, and had our separate establishments and separate plans, and I usedto think that a real separation couldn't make matters much different. Not that Polly meant to be any different, or was, at heart; but, youknow, she was so much absorbed in her new life of splendor, and perhapsI was a little old-fashioned. 

I don't wonder at it now, as I look back. There was an army ofdressmakers to see, and a world of shopping to do, and a houseful ofservants to manage, and all the afternoon for calls, and her dear, dearfriend, with the artless manners and merry heart of a girl, and thedignity and grace of a noble woman, the dear friend who lived in thehouse of the Seven Gables, to consult about all manner of importantthings. I could not, upon my honor, see that there was any place for me, and I went my own way, not that there was much comfort in it. 

And then I would rather have had charge of a hospital ward than takecare of that uncle. Such coddling as he needed, such humoring of whims. And I am bound to say that Polly could n't have been more dutiful to himif he had been a Hindoo idol. She read to him and talked to him, andsat by him with her embroidery, and was patient with his crossness, andwearied herself, that I could see, with her devoted ministrations. 

I fancied sometimes she was tired of it, and longed for the old homelysimplicity. I was. Nepotism had no charms for me. There was nothing thatI could get Polly that she had not. I could surprise her with no littledelicacies or trifles, delightedly bought with money saved for thepurpose. There was no more coming home weary with office work and beingmet at the door with that warm, loving welcome which the King of Englandcould not buy. There was no long evening when we read alternately fromsome favorite book, or laid our deep housekeeping plans, rejoiced in agood bargain or made light of a poor one, and were contented and merrywith little. I recalled with longing my little den, where in themidst of the literary disorder I love, I wrote those stories for the"Antarctic" which Polly, if nobody else, liked to read. There wasno comfort for me in my magnificent library. We were all rich and insplendor, and our uncle had come from India. I wished, saving his soul, that the ship that brought him over had foundered off Barnegat Light. Itwould always have been a tender and regretful memory to both of us. Andhow sacred is the memory of such a loss!

Christmas? What delight could I have in long solicitude and ingeniousdevices touching a gift for Polly within my means, and hitting theborder line between her necessities and her extravagant fancy? A droveof white elephants would n't have been good enough for her now, if eachone carried a castle on his back. 

"--and so they were married, and in their snug cottage lived happy everafter. "--It was Polly's voice, as she closed the book. 

"There, I don't believe you have heard a word of it, " she said halfcomplainingly. 

"Oh, yes, I have, " I cried, starting up and giving the fire a jab withthe poker; "I heard every word of it, except a few at the close I wasthinking"--I stopped, and looked round. 

"Why, Polly, where is the camel's-hair shawl?"

"Camel's-hair fiddlestick! Now I know you have been asleep for an hour. "

And, sure enough, there was n't any camel's-hair shawl there, nor anyuncle, nor were there any Hindoos at our windows. 

And then I told Polly all about it; how her uncle came back, and we wererich and lived in a palace and had no end of money, but she didn't seemto have time to love me in it all, and all the comfort of the littlehouse was blown away as by the winter wind. And Polly vowed, half intears, that she hoped her uncle never would come back, and she wantednothing that we had not, and she wouldn't exchange our independentcomfort and snug house, no, not for anybody's mansion. And then andthere we made it all up, in a manner too particular for me to mention;and I never, to this day, heard Polly allude to My Uncle in India. 

And then, as the clock struck eleven, we each produced from the placewhere we had hidden them the modest Christmas gifts we had prepared foreach other, and what surprise there was! "Just the thing I needed. " And, "It's perfectly lovely. " And, "You should n't have done it. " And, then, a question I never will answer, "Ten? fifteen? five? twelve?" "My dear, it cost eight hundred dollars, for I have put my whole year into it, andI wish it was a thousand times better. "

And so, when the great iron tongue of the city bell swept over the snowthe twelve strokes that announced Christmas day, if there was anywhere ahappier home than ours, I am glad of it!