CORNELU/' - UNIVERSITY LIBRARY ■'■' 4" •■' BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 189 1 BY HINR^ WILLIAMS SAGE>' Cornell University Library The original of tliis bool< is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022152486 Cornell University Library PS 1850.E97 V.I The complete worKs of Nathaniel Hawthorn 3 1924 022 152 486 TWICE-TOLD TALES BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY Copyright, 1851, Bt NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE. Copyright, 1879, By rose HAWTHORNE LATHROP. Copyright, 1882, £x HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. Ml tightt raterved. CONTEIS'TS. luTKODUOTORT NoTB • 1 Fbefacb , IS QTh B- Gbatu Champion 21 Sunday at Home •.32 Thb Wedding Knell 41 «, ^[Tbb Minister's Black Veil 52 •«/<; ^>The Mat-Pole of Meeet Mount 70 ^' ) The Gentle Boy 85 Mr. Higgm^bothau's Catastrophe 127 ■:> Little Annie's Kaubi^g 143 -^ ^^(Vakefield 153 i y A Bill from the Town Pump ...... 165 o ^^HE Great Carbuncle . 173 ^ The Prophetic Pictures 192 ' Datid Swan , . 211 Sights from: a Steeple 219'' The Hollow of the Three Hills ..... 22S -^i— The Toll-Gatherer's Day 234 ' The Vision of the X'ountain 242 Fancy's Show Box /..... . . 250 iJ Dr. Heidegger's Experiment . . . • . 258 — Legends op the Province House. '- I. Howe's Masquerade . . . • • • . 272 = — n. Edward Randolph's Portrait . . . . 291 '•"'— \ * III. Lady Eleanore's Mantle 307 )V . IV. Old Esther Dudley r aS8 - G CONTENTS. tut Thb Haukted Mind . . _ 848 - Ibb Villaob Unclb ^9 The AMBiTions Guest 364-s-) The Sisieb Yeabs 375 Snowflakes 389 . The Sevew Vag abqmdB 392 The White Old Maid 414, "■ Petek Goldth-waite's Tbeasube 428 -i Chippings with a Chisel 455 The Shakbb Bbidal 469 ^ Night Sketcehbs 477 ^NDICOX!S AND THB EeD CbOSS 485 — The Lilt's Quest 495 Footprints on the Sba-Shobb S04 Edward Fane's Kosebud 517 Thb Thbebfold Destint ....»•, 527 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE TWICE-TOLD TALES. On his return to his native town, Salem, after grad nating at Bowdoin College in 1825, Hawthorne de* voted himself to writing fiction. His first book was the romance of " Fanshawe," ^ which, however, made - no impression on the public. He next produced a volume of stories to which he gave the title " Seven Tales of my Native Land " ; but, after discouragiag search for a publisher, he destroyed the manuscript. Whether any of the material comBosing that work was embodied in his later short stories it is impossible to determine, on the evidence now remaining. StiU, it is not imlikely that he drew upon it, from memory, for the foundation of some among the "Twice-Told Tales." The sketches and stories now known collec- tively under this title were written mainly in a little toom in the second story of a house on Herbert Street, Salem, from the windows of which Hawthorne's birth- place on the adjoining street (Union) is visible. " In ; this disijial chamber fame was won : " so nms a pas- ' sage in the "American Note-Books." Under another date he says of it : " And here I sat a long, long time, waiting patiently for the world to know me, and some- times wondering why it did not know me sooner, ox irhether it woiild ever know me at all." 1 See vol. 11 of this edition. 8 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. The Herbert Street house was habitually referred to by the members of the Hawthorne family as being on Union Street, since the family residence and the birthplace were connected by the lots of land attached respectively to each. The mansion on Union Street has since undergone considerable alteration, a large part of it having been taken down some years ago, owing to its dilapidated condition. On Dearborn Street tihere was another house, bmlt for the mother of Hawthorne by her brother, Robert Manning, in which Hawthorne lived for about four years, though at what time precisely it is impossible to state. In the Dearborn Street house, also, he had a study; but the edifice has been removed to another site and al- tered. The Herbert Street (or, as in the Note-Books, Union Street) house was evidently the one which Hawthorne most closely associated with the production of his short stories. The earlier pieces appeared in the " Salem Gazette " newspaper, and in the "New England Magazine" (published in Boston from 1831 to 1834). Some- times they bore the author's real name, and sometimes a pseudonym was attached. Several among them pur- ported to have been written by "Ashley Allen Royce," or the " Rev. A. A. Royce." Another pen-name used by the young romancer was " Oberon " ; the choice of which may be explained by the fact that, as the late Henry W. Longfellow recalled, some of the coUege friends of Hawthorne had nicknamed him Oberon, in allusion to his personal beauty and the imaginative tone of his conversation. But notwithstanding the va- riety of names under which he thus disguised himself, his writings revealed so clear an individuiality that many persons recognized them as being the work of INTRODUCTORY NOTE. 9 (jne mind. In 1836, he went to Boston to edit a mag- aane for S. G. Goodrich, then known as a populaf compiler and publisher; and while thus engaged he wrote a large part of " Peter Parley's Universal His- tory," which passed for Goodrich's composition and attained a wide popularity. At the same time he con- tributed to the Boston " Token " several of the best of his short stories, which received high praise iu Lon- don. It was not until their issue ia book form that they attracted similar encomiums in this country. Hawthorne's original plan was to collect them in a series joined by an introduction and chapters of con- nected narrative ; the whole to be called "The Story- Teller." A part of this projected framework has been preserved in the " Mosses from an Old Manse ; " ^ and the Author there says : — With each specimen will be given a sketch of the cir- cumstances in which the story was told. Thus my air-drawn pictures will be set in a framework perhaps more valuable than the pictures themselves, since they will be embossed with groups of characteristic figures, amid the lake and mountain scenery, the villages and fertile fields, of our -aar tive land. The plan of " The Story-Teller " was, to represent a young man of apostolical bent who set out to go from town to town, giving a sermon every morning, while a friend who accompanied him was to relate in pub- lic, every afternoon, a story illustrating the text pre- viously discoursed upon by the preacher; the whole affair being announced in each place by posters, much in the manner of a travelling show. It might be sup- ' See " Passages from a Reliuquished Work," in the second vol!> nme of the Mosses. It was intended to preface *' Mr. Higginbotham'l Catattrophe." 10 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. posed that the introductioii of sermons in a book o^ fiction would offer a stumbling-block to success ; but Hawthorne evaded this obvious difficulty by merely mentioning the sermons and then giving the stories in full. Mr. Goodrich gave the scheme no encourage ment, but took the introductory portion describing the preacher and the raconteur to a magaziae. It is worth recording as a curious fact in literary history that f6r the accompanying stories which Goodrich used in his annual he gave Hawthorne about three doUars apiece. Finally, through the intervention of Mr. Horatio Bridge, who privately became responsible to this more than prudent publisher for the attendant expense, the first series of stories was given to the world in per- manent form, as a handful of disconnected composi- tions, under the general heading of " Twice-Told Tales." Possibly the title was suggested by that line, given to Lewis, the Dauphin, in " King John " : — !j* " Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale." About eight years after the first volume, a second one was issued ; but even this did not include all the productions of the early period, some of which have since been brought to Hght. A few have perhaps es- caped notice. The present writer discovered in a mu- tilated copy of the " Token," for 1835, this entry among the contents : " Alice Doane's Appeal. By the Author of ' The Gentle Boy.' " Only two pages of the story itself remained ; but they sufficed to show that the contribution was one which has hitherto found no place in the collected works. A complete copy having with some difficulty been obtained, the sketch in question will be included in the 12th volume nf the present edition. "The Gentie Boy" probably did more for th« INTRODUCTORY NOTE. H author's reputation than any other of the " Twice- Told Tales." Furthermore, as the volume containing it formed a link in his acquaintance with Miss Sophia A. Peabody, the lady whom he afterwards married, so that particular story itself was by her made the sub- ject of a drawing, which now becomes a matter of lit- erary interest. A special edition of " The Gentle Boy " was published in 1839 : it was a thin, oblong quarto in paper covers, accompanied by an illustration engraved from Miss Peabody's outline drawing. This edition, now so rare as almost to have passed out of existence, contained a brief prefa,ce by Hawthorne, in which he said : " The tale, of which a new edition is now offered to the public, was among the earliest efforts of its author's pen ; and, Httie noticed on its first appearance in one of the annuals, appears ulti- mately to have awakened the interest of a larger num- ber of readers than any of his subsequent produc- tions ; . . • there are several among the ' Twice-Told Tales ' which, on reperusal, affect him less painfully with a sense of imperfect and Hi-wrought conception than ' The Gentle Boy.' But the opinion of many . . . compels him to the conclusion that nature here led hiTTi deeper into the universal heart than art has been able to follow." A letter from Hawthorne to Longfellow, referring to the first volume of the tales, contains another remark of general interest: "I have ftnother great difficulty in the lack of materials ; for I have seen so little of the world that I have nothing but thin air to concoct my stories of. . . . Sometimes, through a peep-hole, I have caught a glimpse of the teal world, and the two or three articles in which T have portrayed these glimpses please me better tiiao the otiiers." 12 INTRODUCTORY NOTE. " The Toll-Gatherer's Day," evidently derived from minute observation of the traffic on a bridge neaf Salem ; and " Little Annie's Eamble," which is said to have had for its heroine a child from real life, were perhaps placed by the Author in this favored category. The paper entitled " A Sunday at Home " was based on a meeting-house, near the birthplace in Union Street, concerning which Hawthorne's surviving sister writes to the editor : " It never had a steeple, nor a clock, nor a bell, nor, of course, an organ. . . . But Hawthorne bestows all these incitements to devo- tion to atone for his own personal withdrawal from such influences. It was from the house on Herbert Street that he saw what he describes." But, like " The Seven Vagabonds " (founded on a trip which the Author made through part of Connecticut), such pieces as are most tinged with actuality have not in- terested readers so much as the pure invention of " David Swan," or the weird coloring of those haJf- historic records, the " Legends of the Province House." Nevertheless, looked at closely, and with due knowl- edge of the accompanying facts of Hawthorne's life at the tiine,! the whole collection affords, besides the dis- tinct unaginative pleasure to be got from it, valuable intimations as to Hawthorne's development during the first decade of his career as an author. G. P. L. » See A Study of Hawthorne, Chapter IV. PREFACE. The Author of « Twice-Told Tales " has a claim to one distiiiction, which, as none of his literary breth- ren will care about disputing it with him, he need not be afraid to mention. He was, for a good many years, the obscurest man of letters in America. These stories were published in magazines and an- nuals, extending over a period of ten or twelve years, and comprising the whole of the writer's young man- hood, without malting (so far as he has ever been aware) the slightest impression on the public. One or two among them, the " EDI from the Town Pump," in perhaps a greater degree than any other, had a pretty wide newspaper circulation ; as for the rest, he had no groimds for supposing that, on their first appearance, they met with the good or evil for- tune to be read by anybody. Throughout the time above specified, he had no incitement to literary effort in a reasonable prospect of reputation or profit, noth- ing but the pleasure itself of composition — an enjoy- ment not at all amiss iu its way, and perhaps essential to the merit of the work in hand, but which, in the long run, will hardly keep the chill out of a writer's heart, or the numbness out of his fingers. To this 14 PREFACE. total lack of sympatliy, at the age when his mind would naturally have been most effervescent, the public owe it (and it is certainly an effect not to be regretted on either part) that the Author can show nothing for the thought and industry of that portion of his life, save the forty sketches, or thereabouts, in- cluded in these volumes. Much more, indeed, he wrote ; and some very small part of it might yet be rummaged out (but it would not be worth the trouble) among the dingy pages of fifteen-or-twenty-year-old periodicals, or within the shabby morocco covers of faded souvenirs. The re- mainder of the works alluded to had a very brief ex- istence, but, on the score of brilliancy, enjoyed a fate vastly superior to that of their brotherhood, which succeeded in getting through the press. In a word, the Author burned them without mercy or remorse, and, moreover, without any subsequent regret, and had more than one occasion to marvel that such very dull stuff, as he knew his condemned manuscripts to be, should yet have possessed inflammability enough to set the chimney on fire ! After a long while the first collected volume of the " Tales " was published. By this time, if the Author had ever been greatly tormented by literary ambition (which he does not remember or believe to have been the case), it must have perished, beyond resuscitation, in the dearth of nutriment. This was fortunate ; for the success of the volume was not such as would have gratified a craving desire for notoriety. A moderate PREFACE. 15 edition was " got rid of " (to use the publisher's very significant phrase) within a reasonable time, but ap- parently without rendering the writer or his produc- tions much more generally known than before. The great bulk of the reading public probably ignored the book altogether. A few persons read it, and liked it better than it deserved. At an interval of three or four years, the second volume was published, and en- countered much the same sort of kindly, but calm, and very limited reception. The circulation of the two voltunes was chiefly confined to New England ; nor was it until long after this period, if it even yet be the case, that the Author coidd regard himself as addressing the American public, or, indeed, any pub- lic at all. He was merely writing to his known or unknown friends. As he glances over these long-forgotten pages, and considers his way of life while composing them, the Author can very clearly discern why all this was so. After so many sober years, he would have reason to be ashamed if he could not criticise his own work as fairly as another man's ; and, though it is little his business, and perhaps still less his interest, he can hardly resist a temptation to achieve something of the sort. If writers were allowed to do so, and would perform the task with perfect sincerity and unreserve, their opinions of their own productions would often be more valuable and instructive than the works them- selves. At all events, there can be no harm ia the Author's 16 PREFACE. remarking that he rather wonders how the " TwicCi Told Tales " should have gained what vogue they did than that it was so little and so gradual. They have the pale tint of flowers that blossomed in too retired a shade, — the coolness of a meditative habit, which diffuses itself through the feeling and observation of every sketch. Instead of passion there is sentiment ; and, even in what purport to be pictures of actual life, we have allegory, not always so warmly dressed in its habiliments of flesh and blood as to be taken into the reader's miad without a shiver. Whether from lack of power, or an unconquerable reserve, the Author's touches have often an effect of tameness ; the merriest man can hardly contrive to laugh at his broadest humor; the tenderest woman, one would suppose, will hardly shed warm tears at his deepest pathos. The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight at mosphere in which it was written ; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a voliune of blank pages. With the foregoing characteristics, proper to the production of a person in retirement (which hap- pened to be the Author's category at the time), the book is devoid of others that we shotdd quite as nat- uraUy look for. The sketches are not, it is hardly necessary to say, profound ; but it is rather more re- markable that they so seldom, if ever, show any design on the writer's part to make them so. They have none of the abstruseness of idea, or obscuriiy of ex PREFACE. 17 pression, which mark the written commimications of a Bolitary mind with itself. They never need translation. It is, in fact, the style of a man of society. Every sentence, so far as it embodies thought or sensibility, may be tmderstood and felt by anybody who will give himself the trouble to read it, and wiU take up the book in a proper mood. oJrM. This statement of apparently opposite peculiarities leads us to a perception of what the sketches truly are. They are not the talk of a secluded man with his own mind and heart (had it been so, they could hardly have failed to be more deeply and permanently valua- ble), but his attempts, and very imperfectly successful ones, to open an intercourse with the world. The Author would regret to be understood as speak- ing sourly or querulously of the slight mark made by his earlier literary efforts on the Public at large. It is so far the contrary, that he has been moved to write this Preface chiefly as affording him an opportunity to express how much enjoyment he has owed to these volumes, both before and since their publication. They are the memorials of very tranquil and not unhappy years. They failed, it is true, — nor could it have been otherwise, — in winning an extensive popularity. Oc- casionally, however, when he deemed them entirely forgotten, a paragraph or an article, from a native or foreign critic, would gratify his instincts of authorship ndth imexpected praise, — too generous praise, indeed, and too little alloyed with censure, which, therefore, be learned the better to inflict upon himself. And, 18 PREFACE. by the by, it is a very suspicious symptom of a defi- ciency of the popular element in a book when it calls forth no harsh criticism. This has been particularly the fortune of the "Twice-Told Tales." They made no enemies, and were so little known and talked about that those who read, and chanced to like them, were apt to conceive the sort of kindness for the book which a person naturally feels for a discovery of his own. This kindly feeling (in some cases, at least) ex- tended to the Author, who, on the internal eAddence of his sketches, came to be regarded as a nuld, shy, gen- tle, melancholic, exceedingly sensitive, and not very forcible man, hiding his blushes under an assumed name, the quaiutness of which was supposed, some- how or other, to symbolize his personal and literary traits. He is by no means certain that some of his subsequent productions have not been influenced and modified by a natural desire to fill up so amiable an outline, and to act in consonance with the character assigned to him; nor, even now, could he forfeit it without a few tears of tender sensibility. To con- clude, however : these volumes have opened the way to most agreeable associations, and to the formation of imperishable friendships ; and there are many golden threads interwoven with his present happiness, which he can follow up more or less directly, imtil he finds their commencement here ; so that his pleasant path- way among realities seems to proceed out of the Dreamland of his youth, and to be bordered with just PREFACE. 19 enough of its shadowy foliage to shelter him from the heat of the day. He is therefore satisfied with what the "Twice-Told Tales" have done fcr him, and feels it to be far better than fame. Lbnox, Jammy II, 1861. TWICE-TOLD TALES. THE GRAY CHAMPION. Thebe was once a time when New England groaned Qnder the actual pressure of heavier wrongs than those threatened ones which brought on the Revolution. James II., the bigoted successor of Charles the Vo- luptuous, had annulled the charters of all the colonies, and sent a harsh and unprincipled soldier to take away our liberties and endanger our religion. The admin- istration of Sir Edmund Andros lacked scarcely a single characteristic of tyranny: a Governor and Coimcil, holding office from the King, and wholly in- dependent of the country ; laws made and taxes lev- ied vsdthout concurrence of the people immediate or by their representatives ; the rights of private citizens violated, and the titles of all landed property declared void ; the voice of complaint stifled by restrictions on the press ; and, finally, disaffection overawed by the first band of mercenary troops that ever marched on our free soil. For two years our ancestors were kept in sullen submission by that filial love which had in- variably secured their allegiance to the mother coun- try, whether its head chanced to be a Parliament, Pro- tector, or Popish Monarch. Till these evil times, however, such allegiance had been merely nominal, imd the colonists had ruled themselves, enjoying far 22 TWICE-TOLD TALES. more freedom than is even yet the privilege of the native subjects of Great Britain. At length a rumor reached our shores that the Prince of Orange had ventured on an enterprise, the success of which would be the triumph of civil and religious rights and the salvation of New England. It was but a Honbtfnl whii^p p.r : it might be false, or the attempt might fail ; and, in either case, the man that stirred against King James would lose his head. Still the intelligence produced a marked effect. The people smiled mysteriously in the streets, and threw bold glances at their oppressors ; while far and wide there was a subdued and silent agitation, as if the slightest signal would rouse the whole land from its sluggish despondency. Aware of their danger, the rulers resolved to avert it by an imposing display of strength, and perhaps to confirm their despotism by yet harsher measures. One afternoon in April, 1689, Sir Edmund Andros and his favorite coimcillors, being warm with wine, assembled the red-coats of the Gov- ernor's Guard, and made their appearance in the streets of Boston. The sun was near setting when the march commenced. The roll of the drum at that unquiet crisis seemed to go through the streets, less as the martial music of the soldiers, than as a muster-call to the inhabitants themselves. A multitude, by various avenues, assem- bled in King Street, which was destined to be the scene, nearly a century afterwards, of another en- counter between the troops of Britain, and a people struggling against her tyranny. Though more than sixty years had elapsed since the pUgrims came, thia *rowd of their descendants still showed the strong and •ombre features of their character perhaps more strik- THE GRAY CHAMPION. 23 ingly in such a stem emergency than on happier oo casions. There were the sober garb, the general sever- ity o£ mien, the gloomy but undismayed expression, the scriptural forms of speech, and the confidence in Heaven's blessing on a righteous cause, which would have marked a band of the original Puritans, when threatened by some peril of the wilderness. Indeed it was not yet time for the old spirit to be extinct ; since there were men in the street that day who had worshipped there beneath the trees, before a house was reared to the God for whom they had become exiles. Old soldiers of the Parliament were here, too, smiling grimly at the thought that their aged arms might strike another blow against the house of Stuart. Here, also, were the veterans of King Phil- ip's war, who had burned villages and slaughtered yoimg and old, with pious fierceness, while the godly souls throughout the land were helping them with prayer. Several ministers were scattered among the crowd, which, imlike aU other mobs, regarded them with such reverence, as if there were sanctity in their very garments. These holy men exerted their influ- ence to quiet the people, but not to disperse them. Meantime, the purpose of the Governor, in disturbing the peace of the town at a period when the slightest commotion might throw the country into a ferment, was almost the universal subject of inquiry, and vari- ously explained. " Satan will strike his master-stroke presently," cried some, "because he knoweth that his time is short. All our godly pastors are to be dragged to prison ! We shall see them at a Smithfield fire io King Street ! " Hereupon the people of each parish gathered closet 24 TWICE-TOLD TALES. round their minister, who looked cahnlj upwards an4 assumed a more apostolic digniiy, as well befitted a candidate for the highest honor of his profession, tha crown of martyrdom. It was actually fancied, at that period, that New England might have a John Rogers of her own to take the place of that worthy in the Primer. " The Pope of Kome has given orders for a new St. Bartholomew ! " cried others. " We are to be massacred, man and male child ! " Neither was this rumor whoUy discredited, although the wiser class believed the Governor's object some- what less atrocious. His predecessor under the old charter, Bradstreet, a venerable companion of the first settlers, was known to be in town. There were grounds for conjecturing, that Sir Edmund Androa intended at once to strike terror by a parade of qjili- tary force, and to confound the opposite faction by possessing himself of their chief. " Stand firm for the old charter Governor ! " shouted the crowd, seizing upon the idea. "The good old Governor Bradstreet ! " While this cry was at the loudest, the people were surprised by the well-known figure of Governor Brad- street himself, a patriarch of nearly ninety, who ap- peared on the elevated steps of a door, and, with char- acteristic mildness, besought them to submit to the constituted authorities. "My children," concluded this venerable person, *' do nothing rashly. Cry not aloud, but pray for the welfare of New England, and expect patiently what the I/ord will do in this matter ! " The event was soon to be decided. All this tima the rpll of the drum had been approaching through THE GRAY CHAMPION. 25 ComMQ, louder and deeper, till with reverberations from house to house, and the regular tramp of martial footsteps, it burst into the street. A double rank of soldiers made their appearance, occupying the whole' breadth of the passage, with shoiddered matchlocks, and matches burning, so as to present a row of fires in the dusk. Their steady march was like the prog- ress of a machine, that would roll irresistibly over everything in its way. Next, moviag slowly, with a confused clatter of hoofs on the pavement, rode a party of mounted gentlemen, the central figure being Sir Edmund Andros, elderly, but erect and soldier-like. Those around him were his favorite councillors, and the bitterest foes of New England. At his right hand rode Edward Randolph, our arch-enemy, that " blasted " wretch," as Cotton Mather calls him, who achieved the downfall of our ancient government, and was fol- lowed with a sensible curse, through life and to his grave. On the other side was Bullivant, scattering ' jests and mockery as he rode along. Dudley came ' behind, with a downcast look, dreading, as well he might, to meet the indignant gaze of the people, who beheld him, their only coimtryman by birth, among the oppressors of his native land. The captain of a frigate in the harbor, and two or three civil ofiicers imder the Crown, were also there. But the figure which most attracted the public eye, and stirred up the deepest feeling, was the Episcopal clergyman of King's Chapel, riding haughtily among the magis- trates in his priestly vestments, the fitting representa- tive of prelacy and persecution, the union of church and state, and all those abominations which had driven the Puritans to the wilderness. Another guard of soldiers, in double rank, brought up the rear. 86 TWICE-TOLD TALES. The whole scene was a picture of the condition of New England, and its moral, the deformity of any government that does not grow out of the nature of things and the character of the people. On one side the religious multitude, with their sad visages and dark attire, and on the other, the group of despotic rulers, with the high churchman in the midst, and here and there a crucifix at their bosoms, all magnificently clad, flushed with wine, proud of unjust authority, and scoffing at the tmiversal groan. And the mercenary soldiers, waiting but the word to deluge the street with blood, showed the only means by which obedience could be secured. " O Lord of Hosts," cried a voice among the crowd, *' provide a Champion for thy people I " This ejaculation was loudly uttered, and served as a herald's cry, to introduce a remarkable personage. The crowd had roUed back, and were now huddled together nearly at the extremily of the street, while the soldiers had advanced no more than a third of its length. The intervening space was empty — a paved solitude, between lofty edifices, which threw almost a twilight shadow over it. Suddenly, there was seen the figure of an ancient man, who seemed to have emerged from among the people, and was walking by himself along the centre of the street, to confront the armed band. He wore the old Puritan dress, a dark cloak and a steeple-crowned hat, in the fashion of at least fifty years before, with a heavy sword upon his thigh, but a staff in his hand to assist tihe tremulous ' gait of age. When at some distance from the multitude, the old man turned slowly round, displaying a face of antique majesty, rendered doubly venerable by the hoary beard THE GRAY CHAMPION. 27 that descended on his breast. He made a gestilre at once of encouragement and warning, then turned again, and resumed his way. "Who is this gray patriarch?" asked the young men of their sires. " Who is this venerable brother ? " asked the old men among themselves. But none could make reply. The fathers of the people, those of fourscore years and upwards, were disturbed, deeming it strange that they should forget one of such evident authority, whom they must have known in their early days, the associate of Winthrop, and all the old councillors, giving laws, and making prayers, and leading them against the savage. The elderly men ought to have remembered him, too, with locks as gray in their youth, as their own were now. And the young ! How could he have passed so ut- terly from their memories — that hoary sire, the relic of long-departed times, whose awful benediction had surely been bestowed on their imcovered heads, in childhood ? " Whence did he come ? What is his purpose ? Who can this old man be ? " whispered the wondering crowd. Meanwhile, the venerable stranger, staff in hand, was pursuing his solitary walk along the centre of the street. As he drew near the advancing soldiers, and as the roll of their drum came full upon his ear, the old man raised himself to a loftier mien, while the , decrepitude of age seemed to fall from his shoulders, leaving him in gray but unbroken dignity. Now, he marched onward with a warrior's step, keeping time to the miEtary music. Thus the aged form advanced en one side, and the whole parade of soldiers and 28 TWICE-TOLD TALKS. magistrates on the other, till, when scarcely twenty yards remained between, the old man grasped his staff by the middle, and held it before him like a leader's truncheon. "Stand!" cried he. The eye, the face, and attitude of command; the solemn, yet warlike peal of that voice, fit either to rule a host ia the battle-field or be raised to God in prayer, were irresistible. At the old man's word and outstretched arm, the roU of the drum was hushed at once, and the advancing line stood still. A tremulous enthusiasm seized upon the multitude. That stately form, combining the leader and the saint, so gray, so dimly seen, in such an ancient garb, could only be- long to some old champion of the righteous cause, whom the oppressor's drum had summoned from his grave. They raised a shout of awe and exultation, and looked for the deliverance of New England. The Governor, and the gentlemen of his party, per- ceiving themselves brought to an imexpected stand, rode hastily forward, as if they would have pressed their snorting and affrighted horses right against the hoary apparition. He, however, blenched not a step, but glanciug his severe eye round the group, which half encompassed him, at last bent it sternly on Sir Edmund Andros. One would have thought that the dark old man was chief ruler there, and that the Gov- ernor and Council, with soldiers at their back, repre- senting the whole power and authority of the Crown, had no alternative but obedience. " What does this old feUow here ? " cried Edward Randolph, fiercely. " On, Sir Edmund ! Bid the sol. diers forward, and give the dotard the same choice that you give all his countrymen — to stand aside or be trampled on I " THE GRAY CHAMPION. 29 *' Nay, hay, let us show respect to the good grand' are," said BuUivant, laughing. " See you not, he is some old round-headed dignitary, who hath lain asleep these thirty years, and knows nothing of the change of times ? Doubtless, he thinks to put us down with a proclamation in Old Noll's name ! " " Are you mad, old man ? " demanded Sir Edmund Andros, in loud and harsh tones. "How dare you stay the march of King James's Governor ? " " I have stayed the march of a King himself, ere now," replied the gray figure, with stem composure. " I am here. Sir Governor, because the cry of an op- pressed people hath disturbed me in my secret place ; and beseeching this favor earnestly of the Lord, it was vouchsafed me to appear once again on earth, in the good old cause of his saints. And what speak ye of James? There is no longer a Popish tyrant on the throne of England, and by to-morrow noon, his name shall be a byword in this very street, where ye would make it a word of terror. Back, thou that wast a Gov- ernor, back ! With this night thy power is ended — to-morrow, the prison! — back, lest I foretell the scaf- fold!" The people had been drawing nearer and nearer, and drinking in the words of their champion, who spoke in accents long disused, like one imaccHstomed to converse, except with the dead of many years ago. But his voice stirred their souls. They confronted the soldiers, not wholly without arms, and ready to con- vert the very stones of the street into deadly weapons. Sir Edmund Andros looked at the old man ; then he cast his hard and cruel eye over the multitude, and beheld them burning with that lurid wrath, so diffictilt to kindle or to quench ; and again he fixed his gaze on BO TWICE-TOLD TALES. the aged form, wHch stood obscurely in an open spaceii »\rliere neither friend nor foe had thrust himself. What were his thoughts, he uttered no word which might discover. But whether the oppressor were overawed by the Gray Champion's look, or perceived his peril in the threatening attitude of the people, it is certain that he gave back, and ordered his soldiers to com- mence a slow and guarded retreat. Before anothei sunset, the Governor, and all that rode so proudly with him, were prisoners, and long ere it was known that James had abdicated, King William was proclaimed throughout New England. But where was the Gray Champion? Some re- ported that, when the troops had gone from King Street, and the people were thronging tumultuously in their rear, Bradstreet, the aged Governor, was seen to embrace a form more aged than his own. Others soberly afBirmed, that while they marvelled at the ven- erable grandeur of his aspect, the old man had faded from their eyes, melting slowly into the hues of twi- light, till, where he stood, there was an empty space. But all agreed that the hoary shape was gone. The men of that generation watched for his reappearance, in sunshine and in twilight, but, never saw b^m more, nor knew when his funeral passed, nor where his gravestone was. And who was the Gray Champion? Perhaps his name might be found in the records of that stem Court of Justice, which passed a sentence, too mighty for the age, but glorious in all after-times, for its bum- bling lesson to the monarch and its high example to the subject. I have heard, that whenever the descend- ants of the Puritans are to show the spirit of theii lires, the old man appears again. When eighly years THE GRAY CHAMPION. 81 had passed, he walked once more in King Street. Five years later, in the twiKght of an April morning, he stood on the green, beside the meeting-house, at Lex- ington, where now the obelisk of granite, with a slab of slate inlaid, commemorates the first fallen of the Revolution. And when our fathers were toiling at the breastwork on Bunker's HUl, aU through that night the old warrior walked his rounds. Long, long may it be, ere he comes again ! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should do- mestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come, for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit ; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge, that New England's sous wUl vindicate their aacastiy. SUNDAY AT HOME. Evert Sabbath morning in the summer time, I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my chamber window. First, the weather-cock begins to flash ; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect ; next, it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to the ^ded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved frame-work of the portal is marked strongly out. At length, the morning glory, in its descent from heaven, comes down the stone steps, one by one ; and there stands the steeple, glow- ing with fresh radiance, while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the nooks of the adjacent buildings. Methinks, though the same sun brightens it every fair morning, yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness f^r the Sabbath. By dwelling near a church, a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice. We naturally personify it, and conceive its massy walls, and its dim emptiness, to be instinct with a calm, and meditative, and some- what melancholy spirit. But the steeple stands fore- most, in our thoughts, as well as locally. It impresses us as a giant, with a mind comprehensive and discrimi- nating enough to care for the great and small concerns of all the town. Hourly, while it speaks a moral to the few that think, it reminds thousands of busy indi- riduals of their separate and most secret afiairs. It SUNDAY AT HOME. 83 is the steeple, too, that flings abroad the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm ; neither have glad- ness and festivity foimd a better utterance than by its tongue ; and when the dead are slowly passing to their home, the steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them welcome. Yet, in spite of this connection with human interests, what a moral loneliness, on week days, broods tound about its stately height ! It has no kindred with the houses above which it towers ; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare, the lonelier, because the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base. A glance at the body of the church deepens this impres- sion. Within, by the light of distant windows, amid refracted shadows, we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries, the silent organ, the voiceless pulpit, and the clock, which tells to solitude how time is pass- ing. Time — where man lives not — what is it but eternity? And in the church, we might suppose, are garnered up, throughout the week, aU thoughts and feelings that have reference to eternity, until the holy day comes round again, to let them forth. Might not, then, its more appropriate site be in the outskirts of the towa, with space for old trees to wave around it, and throw their solemn shadows over a quiet green ? We will say more of this, hereafter. But, on the Sabbath, I watch the earliest sun shine, and fancy that a holier brightness marks the day, when there shall be no buzz of voices on the ex- change, nor traffic in the shops, nor crowd, nor busi- ness, anywhere but at church. Many have fancied so. For my own part, whether I see it scattered down among tangled woods, or beaming broad across the fields, or hemmed in between brick buildings, or trac- ing out the figure of the oasement on my chambeB 84 TWICE-TOLD TALES. floor, still I recognize the Sabbath sunshine. And ever let me recognize it! Some illusions, and this among them, are tiie shadows of great truths. Doubts may flit around me, or seem to close their evil wings, and settle down ; but, so long as I imagine that the earth is hallowed, and the light of heaven retains its sanctity, on the Sabbath- — while that blessed sunshine lives within me — never can my soul have lost the in- stinct of its faith. If it have gone astray, it will re- turn again. I love to spend such pleasant Sabbaths, from morn- ing till night, behind the curtain of my open window. Are they spent amiss ? Every spot, so near the church as to be visited by the circling shadow of the steeple, should be deemed consecrated ground, to-day. With stronger truth be it said, that a devout heart may con* secrate a den of thieves, as an evil one may convert a temple to the same. My heart, perhaps, has not such holy, nor, I would fain trust, such impious potency. It must suffice, that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while many, whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats, have left their soids at home. But I am there, even before my friend, the sexton. At length, he comes — a man of kindly, but sombre aspect, in dark gray clothes, and hair of the same mixture — he comes and applies his key to the wide portal. Now, my thoughts may go in among the dusty pews, or ascend the pulpit, without sacrilege, but soon come forth again to enjoy the musio of the bell. How glad, yet solemn too ! All the stee- pies in town are talking together, aloft in the sunny air. and rejoicing among themselves, while their spires point heavenward. Meantime, here are the children tssembling to the Sabbath-school, which is kept some- SUNDAY AT HOME. 85 «irhere within the church. Often, while looking at the arched portal, I have been gladdened by the sight of a score of these little girls and boys, in pink, blue, yel- low, and crimson frocks, bursting 'suddenly forth into the sunshine, like a swarm of gay butterflies that had been shut up in the solemn gloom. Or I might com- pare them to cherubs, haunting that holy place. About a quarter of an hour before the second ring- ing of the bell, individuals of the congregation begin to appear. The earliest is invariably an old woman in black, whose bent frame and rounded shoulders are evidently laden with some heavy affliction, which she is eager to rest upon the altar. Would that the Sabbath came twice as often, for the sake of that sorrowful old eoul ! There is an elderly man, also, who arrives in good season, and leans against the corner of the tower, just within the line of its shadow, looking downward with a darksome brow. I sometimes fancy that the old woman is the happier of the two. After these, others drop in singly, and by twos and threes, either disappearing through the doorway, or taking their stand in its vicinity. At last, and always with an im- expected sensation, the bell turns in the steeple over- head, and throws out an irregular clangor, jarring the tower to its foimdation. As if there were magic in the sound, the sidewalks of the street, both up and down along, are immediately thronged with two long Jines of people, all converging hitherward, and stream- ing into the church. Perhaps the far-off roar of « poach draws nearer — a deeper thunder by its contrast i/ith the surrounding stillness — until it sets down the wealthy worshippers at the portal, among their hum< Hest brethren. Beyond that entrance, in theory at least, there are no distinctions of earthly rank ; nor, 86 TWICE-TOLD TALES. indeed, by lihe goodly apparel which is flaunting in the sun, would there seem to be such, on the hither side. Those pretty girls ! Why will they disturb my pious meditations ! ^ Of all days in the week, they should strive to look least fascinating on the Sabbath, instead of heightening their mortal loveliness, as if to rival the blessed angels, and keep our thoughts from heaveii. Were I the minister himself, I must needs look. One girl is white muslin from the waist up wards, and black silk downwards to her slippers ; a second blushes from topknot to shoetie, one universal scarlet; another shines of a pervading yeUow, as it she had made a garment of the sunshine. The greater part, however, have adopted a milder cheerfulness of hue. Their veils, especially when the wind raises them, give a lightness to the general effect, and make them appear like airy phantoms, as they flit up the steps, and vanish into the sombre doorway. Nearly all — though it is very strange that I should know it — wear white stockings, white as snow, and neat slippers, laced crosswise with black ribbon, pretty high above* the ankles. A white stocking is infinitely more effec- tive than a black one. Here comes the clergyman, slow and solemn, in se- vere simplicity, needing no black silk gown to denote his office. His aspect claims my reverence, but cannot win my love. Were I to picture Saint Peter keeping fast the gate of heaven, and frowning, more stem than pitiful, on the wretched applicants, that face should be my study. By middle age, or sooner, the creed has generally wrought upon the heart, or been attempered by it. As the minister passes into the church the beD holds its iron tongue, and all the low murmur of the eongregation dies away. The gray sexton looks up and SUNDAY AT HOME. 87 iown tide street, and then at my ■window curtain, where, through the small peephole, I half fancy that he has caught my eye. Now every loiterer has gone in, and the street lies asleep in the quiet sun, while a feeling of loneliness comes over me, and brings also an uneasy sense of neglected privileges and duties. O, I ought to have gone to church ! The bustle of the rising congregation reaches my ears. They are stand- ing up to pray. Could I bring my heart into unison with those who are praying in yonder church, and lift it heavenward, with a fervor of supplication, but no distinct request, would not that be the safest kind of prayer ? " Lord, look down upon me in mercy ! " With that sentiment gushing from my soul, might I not leave all the rest to Him ? Hark! the hymn. This, at least, is a portion of the service which I can enjoy better than if I sat within the walls, where the full choir and the massive melody of the organ wotdd fall with a weight upon me. At this distance it thrills through my frame and plays upon my heartstrings with a pleasure both of the sense and spirit. Heaven be praised, I know nothing of music as a science ; and the most elaborate harmonies, if they please me, please as simply as a nurse's lullaby. The strain has ceased, but prolongs itself in my mind with fanciful echoes till I start from my reverie, and find that the sermon has commenced. It is my misfortune seldom to fructify, in a regular way, by any but printed sermons. The first strong idea which the preacher utters gives birth to a train 9f thought, and leads me onward, jstep by step, quite put of hearing of the good man's voice, unless he be indeed a son of thunder. At my open window, catch? ittg now and then a sentence of the " parson's saw," 38 TWICE-TOLD TALES. I am as well situated as at the foot of the pulpit stairs. The broken and scattered fragments of this one discourse will be the texts of many sermons, preached by those colleague pastors — colleagues, but often disputants — my Mind and Heart. The former pretends to be a scholar, and perplexes me with doctrinal points ; the latter takes me on the score of feeling; and both, like several other preachers, spend their strength to very little purpose. I, their sole auditor, cannot always understand them. Suppose that a few hours have passed, and behold me still behind my curtain, just before the close of the afternoon service. The hour hand on the dial has passed beyond four o'clock. The declining sun is hid- den behind the steeple, and throws its shadow straight across the street, so that my chamber is darkened as with a cloud. Around the church-door all is solitude, and an impenetrable obscurity beyond the thresh- old. A commotion is heard. The seats are slammed down, and the pew-doors thrown back — a multitude of feet are trampling along the unseen aisles — and the congregation bursts suddenly through the portal. Foremost, scampers a rabble of boys, behind whom moves a dense and dark phalanx of grown men, and lastly, a crowd of females, with young children, and a few scattered husbands. This instantaneous outbreak of life into loneliness is one of the pleiasantest scenes of the day. Some of the good people are rubbing their eyes, thereby intimating that they have been wrapped, as it were, in a sort of holy trance by the fervor of their devotion. There is a young man a third-rate coxcom^ whose first care is always to flour- ish a white handkerchief, and brush the seat of a tight pair of black silk pantaloons, which shine as if van SUNDAY AT HOME. 89 nished. They must have been made of the stufE called " everlasting," or perhaps of the same piece as Chris- tian's garments in the " Pilgrim's Progress," for he put them on two siunmers ago, and has not yet worn the gloss off. I have taken a great liking to those black silk pantaloons. But now, with nods and greet- ings among friends, each matron takes her husband's arm and paces gravely homeward, while the girls also flutter away after arranging simset walks with their favored bachelors. The Sabbath eve is the eve of love. At length the whole congregation is dispersed. No ; here, with faces as glossy as black satin, come two sable ladies and a sable gentleman, and close in their rear the minister, who softens his severe visage, and bestows a kind word on each. Poor souls ! To them the most captivating picture of bliss in heaven is — " There we shall be white ! " AU is solitude again. But, hark! — a broken warb- ling of voices, and now, attuning its grandeur to their sweetness, a stately peal of the organ. Who are the choristers ? Let me dream that the angels, who came down from heaven, this blessed mom, to blend them- selves with the worship of the truly good, are playing and singing their farewell to the earth. On the wings of that rich melody they were borne upward. This, gentle reader, is merely a flight of poetry. A few of the singing men and singing women had lingered behind their fellows, and raised their voices fitfully, and blew a careless note upon the organ. Yet, it lifted my soul higher than aU their former strains. They are gone — the sons and daughters of music — and the gray sexton is just closing the portaL For six days more, there will be no face of man in the pews, and aisles, and galleries, nor a voice in the 40 TWICE-TOLD TALES. piilpit, nor music in the choir. Was it worth while to rear this massive edifice, to be a desert in the heart of the town, and populous only for a few hours of each seventh day ? O, but the church is a symbol of religion. May its site, which was consecrated on the day when the first tree was felled, be kept holy for- ever, a spot of solitude and peace, amid the trouble and vanity of our week-day world ! There is a moral, and a religion too, even in the silent walls. And may the steeple still point heavenward, and be decked with tiie hallowed sunshine of the Sabbath mora 1 THE WEDDING KNELL. There is a certain church in the city of New York which I have always regarded with pecuKar interest, on account of a marriage there solemnized, under very singular circumstances, in my grandmother's girlhood. That venerable lady chanced to be a spectator of the scene, and ever after made it her favorite narrative. Whether the edifice now standing on the same site be the identical one to which she referred, I am not anti- quarian enough to know ; nor woidd it be worth while to correct myself, perhaps, of an agreeable error, by reading the date of its erection on the tablet over the door. It is a stately i tion of the church, in order to deal with Mr. Hooper about the mystery, before it should grow into a scan- dal. Never did an embassy so ill discharge its duties. 'The minister received them with friendly courtesy, but became silent, after they were seated, leaving to his vis- itors the whole burden of introduciog their important business. The topic, it might be supposed, was obvi- ous enough. There was the black veil swathed round Mr. Hooper's forehead, and concealing every feature above his placid mouth, on which, at times, they could perceive the glimmering of a melancholy smile. But tibgi. piece,.9f. crape, to their imagination, seemed to' hang down before his heart^.the symbol of a fearful secret between ium,^ad them. Were the veil but cast aside, they might speak freely of it, but not till then Thus they sat a considerable time, speechless, confused, THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL. 61 and shrinking uneasily from Mr. Hooper's eye, which they felt to be fixed upon them with an invisible glance. Finally, the deputies returned abashed to their constituents, pronoimcing the matter too weighty to be handled, except by a council of the churches, if, indeed, it might not require a general synod. But there was one person in the village unappalled by the awe with which the black veil had impressed all beside herself. When the deputies returned with- out an explanation, or even venturing to demand one, she, with the calm energy of her character, determined to chase away the strange cloud that appeared to be , ' settling round Mr. Hooper, every moment more darkly it than before. As his plighted wife, it should be her privilege to know what the black veil concealed. At | the minister's first visit, therefore, she entered upon | the subject with a direct simplicity, which made the * task easier both for him and her. After he had seated himself, she fixed her eyes steadfastly upon the veil, but could discern nothing of the dreadful gloom that had so overawed the multitude : it was but a double fold of crape, hanging down from his forehead to his mouth, and slightly stirring with his breath. " No," said she aloud, and smiling, " there is noth- ing terrible in this piece of crape, except that it hides a face which I am always glad to look upon. Come, good sir, let the sun shine from behind the cloud- First lay aside your black veil : then tell me why you put it on." Mr. Hooper's smile glimmered faintly. \ " There is an hour to come," said he, " when all of ns shall cast aside our veils. Take it not amiss, be- loved friend, if I wear this piece of crape till then." "Your words are a mystery, too," returned the 82 TWICE-TOLD TALES. young lady. "Take away the veil from them, at least." " Elizabeth, I will," said he, " so far as my vow may suffer me. Know, then, this veil is a type and a sym- bol, and I am bomid to wear it ever, both in light and darkness, in solitude and before the gaze of multitudes, and as with strangers, so with my familiar friends. No mortal eye will see it withdrawn. This dismal shade must separate me from the world : even you, Elizabeth, can never come behind it ! " " What grievous affliction hath befallen you," she earnestly inquired, " that you should thus darken youi eyes forever ? " "If it be a sign of mourning," replied Mr. Hooper, " Ij..jperhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil." "But what if the world wiU not believe that it is the type of an innocent sorrow?" urged Elizabeth. "Beloved and respected as you are, there may be whispers that you hide your face under the conscious- ) ness of secret sin. For the sake of your holy office, [ do away this scandal ! " The color rose into her cheeks as she intimated the nature of the rumors that were already abroad in the vUlage. But Mr. Hooper's mildness did not forsake him. He even smiled again — that same sad smile, which always appeared like a faint glimmering of light, proceeding from the obscurity beneath the veU. "If I hide my face for sorrow, there is cause enough," he merely replied ; " and if I cover it for secret sin, ^iiat.mortal might jiot do the same? " And with this gentle, but unconquerable obstinacy did he resist all her entreaties. At length Elizabeth «at silent. For a few moments she appeared lost THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL. 63 in thought, considering, probably, what new methods might be tried to withdraw her lover from so dark a fantasy, which, if it had no other meaning, was per- haps a symptom of mental disease. Though of a"] firmer character than his own, the tears rolled down | her cheeks. But, in an instant, as it were, a new feel- } ing took the place of sorrow : her eyes were fixed in- sensibly on the black veil, when, like a sudden twihght in the air, its terrors fell around her. She arose, and stood trembling before him. " And do you feel it then, at last ? " said he mourn- fully. She made no reply, but covered her eyes with her hand, and turned to leave the room. He rushed for- ward and caught her arm. "Have patience with me, Elizabeth!" cried he, passionately. "Do not desert me, though this veil must be between us here on earth. Be mine, and hereafter there shall be no veil over my face, no dark- ness between our souls ! It is but a mortal veil — it is not for eternity ! O ! you know not how lonely I am, and how frightened, to be alone behind my black veil. Do not leave me in this miserable obscurity f or-l ever!" " Lift the veil but once, and look me in the face," said she. "Never! It cannot be!" replied Mr. Hooper. "Then farewell!" said Elizabeth. She withdrew her arm from his grasp, and slowly departed, pausing at the door, to give one long shud- dering gaze, that seemed almost to penetrate the mys- tery of the black veil. But, even amid his grief, Mr. Flooper smiled to think that only a material emblem bad separated him from happiness, though the hor- 64 TWICE-TOLD TALES. rors, which it shadowed forth, must be drawn dark^ between the fondest of lovers. From that time no attempts were made to remove Mr. Hooper's black veil, or, by a direct appeal, to dis- cover the secret which it was supposed to hide. By |)ersons who claimed a superiority to popular preju- dice, it was reckoned merely an eccentric whim, such as often mingles with the sober actions of men other- wise rational, and tinges them all with its own sem- blance of insanity. But with the multitude, good Mr. Hooper was irreparably a bugbear. He could not walk the street with any peace of mind, so conscious was he that the gentle and timid would turn aside to avoid him, and that others would make it a point of hardihood to throw themselves iu his way. The im pertinence of the latter class compelled him to give up his customary walk at sunset to the burial ground ; for when he leaned pensively over the gate, there would always be faces behind the gravestones, peep- ing at his black veil. A fable went the rounds that the stare of the dead people drove him thence. li grieved him, to the very depth of hit kind heart, to observe how the children fled from his approach, breaking up their merriest sports, while his melan- choly figure was yet afar off. Their instinetive dread caused him to feel more strongly than aught else, that a preternatural horror was interwoven with the threads , of the black crape. In truth, his own antipathy to ! the veil was known to be so great, that he never will- uigly~passed before a mirror, nor stooped to drink at a still fountain, lest, in its peaceful bosom, he shoidd be affrighted by himself. This was what gave plausi-\ bility to the whispers, that Mr. Hooper's conscience tortured him for some great crime too horrible to ba THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL, 66 entirely concealed, or otherwise tlian so obscurely in- timated. Thus, from beneath the black veil, there roUed a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him. It was said that ghost and fiend consorted with him there. With self-shudderings and outward terrors, he walked con- tinually in its shadow, groping darkly within his own soul, or gazing through a medium that saddened the whole world. Even the lawless wind, it was believed, respected his dreadful secret, and never blew aside the veil. But still good Mr. Hooper sadly smiled at the pale visages of the worldly throng as he passed by. Among all its bad influences, the black veil had the one desirable effect, of making its wearer a very effi- ^ent_clgpgyman. By the aid of his mysterious emblem "— for there was no other apparent cause — he became a man of awful power over souls that were in agony Jor^ sm. His converts always regarded him with a dread peculiar to themselves, affirming, though but figuratively, that, before he brought them to celestial iightj^they had been with him behind the black veil. Its gloom, indeed, enabled him to sympathize with all dark affections. Dying sinners cried aloud for Mr. Hooper, and would not yield their breath till he ap- peared ; though ever, as he stooped to whisper conso- lation, they shuddered at the veiled face so near their pwn. Such were tibie terrors of the black veil, even when Death had bared his visage! Strangers came long distances to attend service at his church, with the inere idle purpose of gazing at his figure, because it was forbidden them to behold his face. But many were made to quake ere they departed ! Once, during Crovemor Belcher's administration, Mr. Hooper was VOL. I. 5 B6 TWICE-TOLD TALES. appointed to preach the election sermon. Covered with his black veil, he stood before the chief magis* trate, the cotmcil, and the representatives, and wrought 40 deep an impression, that the legislative measures of that year were characterized by all the gloom and piety of our earliest ancestral sway. In this manner Mr. Hooper spent a long life, irre- proachable in outward act, yet shrouded in dismal sus- picions ; kind and loving, though unloved, and dimly i feared ; a man apart from men, shunfled in their ; health and joy, but ever summoned to their aid in mortal anguish. As years wore on, shedding their snows above his sable veil, he acquired a name throughout the New England churches, and they called him Father Hooper. Nearly all his parishioners, who were of mature age when he was settled, had been borne away by many a funeral : he had one congrega. tion in the church, and a more crowded one in the churchyard; and having wrought so late into the evening, aijd done his work so well, it was now good Father Hooper's turn to rest. Several persons were visible by the shaded candle- ' light, in the death chamber of the old clergyman^! Natural connections he had none. But there was the decorously grave, though immoved physician, seeking only to mitigate the last pangs of the patient whom he could not save. There were the deacons, and other eminentiy pious members of his church. There, also, was the Eeverend Mr. Clask, of Westbury, a young and zealous divine, who had ridden in haste to pray by the bedside of the expiring minister. There was the nurse, no hired handmaiden of death, but one whose calm affection had endured thus long 15, secrecy, in solitude, amid the chill of age, and would not per THE MINISTER'S BLACK VEIL. 67 Isb, even at the dying hour. Who, but Elizabeth 1 And there lay the hoary head of good Father Hoopei upon the death pillow, with the black veil still swathed about his brow, and reaching down over his face, so that each more difficult gasp of his faint breath paused it to stir. All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world: it had separated him from cheerfid brotherhood and woman's love, and kept him in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart ; and still it lay upon his face, as if to deepen the gloom of his darksome chamber, and shade hinn from the simshine of eternity. For some time previous, his mind had been con- fused, wavering doubtfully between the past and the present, and hovering forward, as it were, at intervals, into the indistinctness of the world to come. There had been feverish turns, which tossed him from side to side, and wore away what little strength he had. But in his most convulsive struggles, and iu the wild- est vagaries of his intellect, when no other thought retained its sober influence, he still showed an awful solicitude lest the black veil should slip aside. Even if his bewildered soul c age to the Maypole, and paid it a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its votaries danced round it, once, at least, in every month; sometimes they called it their religion, or their altar ; but always, it was the banner staff of Merry Mount. Unfortunately, there were men in the new world of a sterner faith than these Maypole worshippers. Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the corn- field till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand to shoot down the strag- gling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden who did but dream of a dance ! The selectman nodded to the constable ; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate jn the stocks ; or if he danced, it was round the whip- ping-post, which might be termed the Puritan May- pole. A party of these grim Puritans, toiling through the difficidt woods, each with a horseload of iron armor to burden his footsteps, would sometimes draw near the Bunny precincts of Merry Mount. There were the Bilken colonists, sporting round their Maypole; per- teaching a bear to dance, or striving to commuoi T8 TWICE-TOLD TALES. cate their mirtli to the g^ave Indian ; or masqueiad ing in the skins of deer and wolves, which they had hunted for that especial purpose. Often, the whole colony were playing at blindman's buff, magistrates and aU, with their eyes bandaged, except a single scapegoat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by the tinkling of the bells at his garments. Once, it is said, they were seen following a flower-decked corpse, with merriment and festive music, to his grave. But did the dead man laugh? In their quietest times, they sang ballads and told tales, for the edification of their pious visitors ; or perplexed them with juggling tricks ; or grinned at them through horse collars ; and when sport itself grew wearisome, they made game of their own stupidity, and began a yawning match. At the very least of these enormities, the men of iron shook their heads and frowned so darkly that the revellers looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud had over- cast the simshine, which was to be perpetual there. On the other hand, the Puritans affirmed that, when a psalm was pealing from their place of worship, the echo which the forest sent them back seemed often like the chorus of a jolly catch, closing with a roar of laughter. Who but the fiend, and his bond slaves, the crew of Merry Mount, had thus disturbed them ? In due time, a feud arose, stem and bitter on one side, and as serious on the other as anything could be among such light spirits as had sworn allegiance to the May- pole. The future complexion of New England was involved in this important quarrel. Should the griz- riy saints establish their jurisdiction over the gay sinners, then would their spirits darken all the clime, and make it a land of clouded visages, of hard toU, of sermon and psalm forever. But should the bauuei THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT. 79 Staff of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine would break upon the hills, and flowers would beautify the forest, and late posterity do homage to the Maypole. After these authentic passages from history, we re- turn to the nuptials of the Lord and Lady of the May. Alas ! we have delayed too long, and must darken our tale too suddenly. As we glance again at the May- pole, a solitary simbeam is fading from the summit, and leaves only a faint, golden tinge blended with the hues of the rainbow banner. Even that dim light is now withdrawn, relinquishing the whole domain of Merry Mount to the evening gloom, which has rushed 60 instantaneously from the black surrounding woods. But some of these black shadows have rushed forth in human shape. Yes, with the setting sun, the last day of mirth had passed from Merry Moimt. The ring of gay mas- quers was disordered and broken ; the stag lowered his antlers in dismay; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; the bells of the morris-dancers tinkled with tremulous affright. The Puritans had played a char- acteristic part in the Maypole mimimeries. Their darksome figures were intermixed with the wild shapes of their foes, and made the scene a picture of the moment, when waking thoughts start up amid the scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader of the hostile party stood in the centre of the circle, while the route of monsters cowered around him, like evil spirits in the presence of a dread magician. No fan- tastic foolery could look him in the face. So stern was the energy of his aspect, that the whole man, vis- age, frame, and soul, seemed wrought of iron, gifted with life and thought, yet all of one substance with his headpiece and breastplate. It was the Puritan of Puritans ; it was Endicott himself ! 80 TWICE-TOLD TALES. "Stand off, priest of Baal! " said he, with a grim frown, and laying no reverent hand upon the surplice. " I know thee, Blackstone ! ^ Thou art the man who couldst not abide the rule even of thine own corrupted church, and hast come hither to preach iniquity, and to give example of it in thy Ufe. But now shall it be seen that the Lord hath sanctified this wilderness for his peculiar people. Woe unto them that would defile it! And first, for this flower-decked abomination, the altar of thy worship ! " And with his keen sword Endicott assaulted the hallowed Maypole. Nor long did it resist his arm It groaned with a dismal soimd ; it showered leaves and rosebuds upon the remorseless enthusiast; and fimaUy, with all its green boughs and ribbons and flowers, symbolic of departed pleasures, down fell the banner staff of Merry Mount. As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky grew darker, and the woods threw forth a more sombre shadow. " There," cried Endicott, looking triumphantly on his work, " there lies the only Maypole in New Eng- land! The thought is strong within me that, by its fall, is shadowed forth the fate of light and idle mirth makers, amongst us and our posterity. Amen, saitb John Endicott." " Amen ! " echoed his followers. But the votaries of the Maypole gave one groan f oi their idol. At the soimd, the Puritan leader glanced at the crew of Comus, each a figure of broad mirth^ yet, at this moment, strangely expressive of sorrow |nd dismay. I Did Governor Endicott speak less positively, we should suspeol a mistake here. The Eev. Mr. Blackstone, though an eccentric, is not known to have been an Immoral man. We rather doubt his idea tity with the priest of Merry Mount THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT. 81 "Valiant captain," quoth Peter Palfrey, the Ancient of the band, "what order shall be taken with the prisoners ? " "I thought not to repent me of cutting down a Maypole," replied Endicott, ''yet now I could find in my heart to plant it again, and give each of these bestial pagans one other dance round their idol. It would have served rarely for a whipping-post ! " " But there are pine-trees enow," suggested the lieu- tenant. "True, good Ancient," said the leader. "Where- fore, bind the heathen crew, and bestow on them a small matter of stripes apiece, as earnest of our future justice. Set some qf the rogues in the stocks to rest themselves, so soon as Providence shall bring us to one of our own weU-ordered settlements, where such accommodations may be found. Further penalties, such as branding and cropping of ears, shall be thought of hereafter." " How many stripes for the priest?" inquired An- cient Palfrey. "None as yet," answered Endicott, bending his iron frown upon the culprit. " It must be for the Great and General Court to determine, whether stripes and long imprisonment, and other grievous penally, may atone for his transgressions. Let him look to him- seK ! For such as violate our civil order, it may be permitted us te show mercy. But woe to the wretch that troubleth our religion 1 " " And this dancing bear," resumed the officer. " Must he share the stripes of his fellows ? " " Shoot him through the head ! " said the energetio Puritan. " I suspect witchcraft in the beast." "Here be a couple of shining ones," continued 82 TWlCE-TOLD TALES. Peter Palfrey, pointing his weapon at the Lord and Lady of the May, " They seem to be of high station among these misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not be fitted with less than a double share of stripes." Endicott rested on his sword, and closely surveyed the dress and aspect of the hapless pair. There they stood, pale, downcast, and apprehensive. Yet there was an air of mutual support, and of ptire affection, seeking aid and giving it, that showed them to be man and wife, with the sanction of a priest upon their love. The youth, in the peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded staff, and thrown his arm about the Lady of the May, who leaned against his breast, too lightly to burden him, but with weight enough to express that their destinies were linked together, for good or evil. They looked first at each other, and then into the grim captain's face. There they stood, in the first hour of wedlock, while the idle pleasures, of which their companions were the emblems, had given place to the sternest cares of life, personified by the dark Puritans. But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high as when its glow was chastened by adversity. "Youth," said Endicott, "ye stand in an. evil case thou and thy maiden wife. Make ready presently, for I am minded that ye shall both have a token to remember your wedding day ! " "Stern man," cried the May Lord, "how can I move thee? Were the means at hand, I would resist to the death. Being powerless, I entreat ! Do with me as thou wilt, but let Edith go untouched ! " "Not so," replied the immitigable zealot. "We are not wont to show an idle courtesy to that sex, which raquireth the stricter discipline. What sayesi THE MAYPOLE OF MERRY MOUNT. 83 liiou, maid? Shall thy silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the penalty, besides bis own ? " " Be it death," said Edith, " and lay it all on me ! " Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor lovers stood in a woful case. Their foes were triumphant, their friends captive and abased, their home desolate, the benighted wilderness around them, and a rigorous destiny, in the shape of the Puritan leader, their only guide. Yet the deepening twilight could not altogether conceal that the iron man was softened ; he smiled at the fair spectacle of early love ; he almost sighed for the inevitable blight of early hopes. "The troubles of life have come hastily on thi^ yoimg couple," observed Endicott. " We will see how they comport themselves under their present trials ere we burden them with greater. If, among the spoil, there be any garments of a more decent fashion, let them be put upon this May Lord and his Lady, in- stead of their glistening vanities. Look to it, some of you." "And shall not the youth's hair be cut?" asked Peter Palfrey, looking with abhorrence at the love- lock and long glossy curls of the young man. " Crop it forthwith, and that in the true pumpkin- shell fashion," answered the captain. " Then bring them along with us, but more gently than their fel lows. There be qualities in the youth, which maj make him valiant to iight, and sober to toU, and pious to pray ; and in the maiden, that may fit her to be- Bome a mother in OTir Israel, bringing up babes in better nurture than her own hath been. Nor think ye, young ones, that they are the happiest, even in 3ur lifetime of a moment, who misspend it in dauo tng round a Maypole! " 84 TWICE-TOLD TALES. And Endicott, the severest Puritan of aE who laid the rock foundation of New England, lifted the wreath of roses from the ruin of the Maypole, and threw it, with his own gauntleted hand, over the heads o^'the Lord and Lady of the May. It was a deed of proph- ecy. As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gayety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest. They returned to it no more. But as their flowery garland was wreathed of the brightest roses that had grown there, so, in the tie that united .them, were intertwined all the purest and best of their early joys. They went heavenward, supporting each other along the difficult path which it was their lot to tread, and never wasted one regretful iihought on the vanities of Merry Mount. . THE GENTLE BOY. In the course of the year 1656, several of the peo- ple called Quakers, led, as they professed, by the in- ward movement of the spirit, made their appearance in New England. Their reputation, as holders of mystic and pernicious principles, having spread before them, the Puritans early endeavored tb banish, and to prevent the further intrusion of the rising sect. But the measures by which it was intended to purge the ,land of heresy, though more than sufficiently vigorous, were entirely unsuccessful. The Quakers, esteeming persecution as a divine call to the post of danger, laid claim to a holy eoUrage, imknown to the Puritans themselves, who had shunned the cross, by providing for the peaceable exercise of their religion in a distant wilderness. -Though it was the singular fact, that every nation of the earth rejected the wandering en- thusiasts who practised peace towards all men, the place of greatest uneasiness and peril, and therefore, in their eyes the most eligible, was the province of Massachusetts Bay. The fines, imprisonments, and stripes, liberally dis- tiibuted by our pious forefathers ; the popular antip- athy, so strong that it endured nearly a hundred years after actual persecution had ceased, were attractions as powerful for the Quakers, as peace, honor, and re- ward, would have been for the worldly minded. Every European vessel brought new cargoes of the sect, eager to testify against the oppression which they hoped to 86 TWICE-TOLD TALES. share ; and when shipmasters were restrained by heavy fines from affording them passage, they made long and circuitous journeys through the Indian country, and appeared in the province as if conveyed by a supernatural power. Their enthusiasm, heightened al. most to madness by the treatment which they received, produced actions contrary to the rules of decency, as well as of rational religion, and presented a singular contrast to the calm and staid deportment of their sectarian successors of the present day. The com- Inand of the spirit, inaudible except to the soul, and not to be controverted on grounds of human wisdom, was made a plea for most indecorous exhibitions, which, abstra,ctedly considered, well deserved the mod- erate chastisement of the rod. These extravagances, and the persecution which was at once their cause and consequence, continued to increase, tiU, in the year 1659, the government of Massachusetts Bay indulged two members of the Quaker sect with the crown of martyrdom. An indelible stain of blood is upon the hands of all who consented to this act, but a large share of the aw- ful responsibility must rest upon the person then at the head of the government. He was a man of narrow mind and imperfect education, and his uncompromis- ing bigotry was made hot and mischievous by violent and hasty passions; he exerted his influence indeco- rously and unjustifiably to compass the death of the enthusiasts ; and his whole conduct, in respect to them, was marked by brutal cruelty. The Quakers, whose revengeful feelings were not less deep because they were inactive, remembered this man and his associates in after times. The historian of the sect affirms that, by the wrath of Heaven, a blight fell upon the land in THE GENTLE BOY. 87 Hie vicinity of the " bloody town " of Boston, so that no wheat would grow there ; and he takes his stand, as it were, among the graves of the ancient persecu- tors, and triumphantly recounts the judgments that overtook them, in old age or at the parting hour. He tells us that they died suddenly and violently and ip madness ; but nothing can exceed the bitter mockery with which he records the loathsome disease, and "death by rottenness," of the fierce and cruel gov- ernor. On the evening of the autumn day that had wit- nessed the martyrdom of two men of the Quaker persuasion, a Puritan settler was returning from the metropolis to the neighboring country town in which he resided. The air was cool, the sky clear, and the lingering twilight was made brighter by the rays of a young moon, which had now nearly reached the verge of the horizon. The traveller, a man of middle age, wrapped in a gray frieze cloak, quickened his pa«e when he had reached the outskirts of the town, for a gloomy extent of nearly four miles lay between him and his home. The low, straw-thatched houses were scattered at considerable intervals along the road, and the country having been settled but about thirty years, the tracts of original forest still bore no small pro- portion to the cultivated grotind. The autumn wind wandered among the branches, whirling away the leaves from all except the pine-trees, and moaning as if it lamented the desolation of which it was the in- strument. The road had penetrated the mass of woods that lay nearest to the town, and was just emerging into an open space, when the traveller's eara irere saluted by a sound more mournful than even 88 TWICE-TOLD TALES. that of the wind. It was like the wailing of somt one in distress, and it seemed to proceed from beneath a tall and lonely fir-tree, in the centre of a cleared but iminclosed and uncultivated field. The Puritan jjould not but remember that this was the very spot which had been made accursed a few hours before by the execution of the Quakers, whose bodies had been thrown together into one hasty grave, beneath the tree on which they suffered. He struggled, however, against the superstitious fears which belonged to the age, and compelled himself to pause and listen. " The voice is most likely mortal, nor have I cause to tremble if it be otherwise," thought he, straining his eyes through the dim moonlight. " Methinks it is like the wailing of a child ; some infant, it may be, which has strayed from its mother, and chanced upon this place of death. For the ease of mine own con- science I must search this matter out." He therefore left the path, and walked somewhat fearfully across the field. Though now so desolate, its soil was pressed down and trampled by the thousand footsteps of those who had witnessed the spectacle of that day, all of whom had now retired, leaving the dead to their loneliness. The traveller at length reached the fir-tree, which from the middle upward was covered with living branches, although a scaffold had been erected beneath, and other preparations made for the work of death. Under this unhappy tree, which in after times was believed to drop poison with its dew, sat the one solitary mourner for innocent blood. It was a slender and light clad little boy, who leaned his face upon a hillock of fresh-turned and half-frozen earth, and waUed bitterly, yet in a sup pressed tone, as if his grief might receive the punish THE GENTLE BOY. 89 dent of crime. The Puritan, whose approach had been unperceived, laid his hand upon the child's shoulder, and addressed him compassionately. "You have chosen a dreary lodging, my poor boy, and no wonder that you weep," said he. " But dry your eyes, and teU me where your mother dwells. I promise you, if the journey be not too far, I will leave you in her arms to-night." The boy had hushed his wailing at once, and turned his face upward to the stranger. It was a pale, bright- eyed countenance, certainly not more than six years old, but sorrow, fear, and want had destroyed much of its infantile expression. The Puritan seeing the boy's frightened gaze, and feeling that he trembled under his hand, endeavored to reassure him. " Nay, if I intended to do you harm, little lad, the readiest way were to leave you here. What ! you do Aot fear to sit beneath the gallows on a new-made grave, and yet you tremble at a friend's touch. Take heart, child, and tell me what is your name and where is your home?" " Friend," rej^ed the little boy, in a sweet though faltering voice, " they call me Ilbrahim, and my home Is here." The pale, spiritual face, the eyes that seemed to mingle with the moonlight, the sweet, airy voice, and the outlandish name, almost made the Puritan believe that the boy was in truth a being which had sprung ap out cf the grave on which he sat. But perceiving that the apparition stood the test of a short mental prayer, and remembering that the arm which he had touched was lifelike, he adopted a more rational sup position. " The poor child is strif^ken in his intellect," thought he, "but verily his words are fearful in a 90 TWICE-TOLD TALES. place like this." He then spoke soothingly, intending to humor the boy's fantasy. " Your home will scarce be comfortable, Ilbrahim, this cold autumn night, and I fear you are ill-provided with food. I am hastening to a warm supper and bed, and if you will go with me you shall share them ! " " I thank thee, friend, but though I be hungry, and shivering with cold, thou wilt not give me food nor lodging," replied the boy, in the guiet tone which despair had taught him, even so young. "My father was of the people whom all men hate. They have laid binn under this heap of earth, and here is my home." The Puritan, who had laid hold of little Ilbrahim's hand, relinquished it as if he were touching a loath- some reptile. But he possessed a compassionate heart, which not even religious prejudice could harden into stone. " God forbid that I should leave this child to per- ish, though he comes of the accursed sect," said he to himself. " Do we not all spring from an evil root? Are we not all in darkness till the light doth shine upon us ? He shall not perish, neither in body, nor, if prayer and instruction may avail for him, in soul." He then spoke aloud and kindly to IlbraMm, who had again hid his face in the cold earth of the grave. " Was every door in the land shut against you, mj child, that you have wandered to this tinhallowed spot?" " They drove me forth from the prison when they took my father thence," said the boy, " and I stood afar off watching the crowd of people, and when they were gone I came hither, and f oimd only his grave. 1 knew that my father was sleeping here, and I said khis shall be my home." THE GENTLE BOY. 91 " No, child, no ; not while I have a roof over mj head, or a morsel to share with you ! " exclaimed the Puritan, whose sympathies were now fully excited. " Rise up and come with me, and fear not any harm." The boy wept afresh, and clung to the heap of earth as if the cold heart beneath it were warmer to him than any in a living breast. The traveller, how- ever, continued to entreat him tenderly, and seeming to acquire some degree of confidence, he at length arose. But his slender limbs tottered with weakness, his little head grew dizzy, and he leaned against the tree of death for support. " My poor boy, are you so feeble ? " said the Pun* tan. " When did you taste food last ? " " I ate of bread and water with my father in tne prison," replied Ilbrahim, "but they brought him none neither yesterday nor to-day, saying that; he had eaten enough to bear him to his journey's end. Trouble not thyself for my hunger, kind friend, for I have lacked food many times ere now." The traveller took the child in his arms and wrapped his cloak about him, while his heart stirred with shame and anger against the gratuitous cruelty of the instru- ments in this persecution. In the awakene;d warmth of his feelings he resolved that, at whatever risk, he would not forsake the poor little defenceless being whom Heaven had confided to his care. With this determination he left the accursed field, and resumed the homeward path from which the wailing of the boy had called him. The light and motionless burden scarcely impeded his progress, and he soon beheld the fire rays from the windows of the cottage which he, a native of a distant clime, had built in the western wil- derness. It was surrounded by a considerable extent B2 TWICE-TOLD TALES. of cultivated ground, and the dwelling was situated ia the nook of a wood-covered hill, whither it seemed to have crept for protection. "Look up, child," said the Puritan to Ilbrahim, whose faint head had sunk upon his shoulder, " there is our home." At the word " home," a thrill passed through the child's frame, but he continued silent. A few moments brought them to a cottage door, at which the owner knocked ; for at that early period, when savages were wandering everywhere among the settlers, bolt and bar were indispensable to the security of a dwelliug. The summons was answered by a bond-servant, a coarse-clad and dull-featured piece of humanity, who, after ascertaining that his master was the applicant, imdid the door, and held a flaring pine-knot torch to light him in. Farther back in the passage-way, the red blaze discovered a matronly woman, but no little crowd of children came bounding forth to greet their father's return. As the Puritan entered, he thrust aside his cloak, and displayed Ilbrahim's face to the female. " Dorothy, here is a little outcast, whom Providence hath put into our hands," observed he. " Be kind to him, even as if he were of those dear ones who have departed from us." " "What pale and bright-eyed little boy is this, To- bias ? " she inquired. " Is he one whom the wHdemess folk have ravished from some Christian mother ? " "No, Dorothy, this poor cluld is no captive from the wilderness," he replied. "The heathen savage would have given him to eat of his scanty morsel, and to drink of his birchen cup ; but Christian men, alas bad cast him out to die." THE GENTLE BOY. 93 Then he told her how he had found him beneath Jhe gallows, upon his father's grave; and how his heart had prompted him, like the speaking of an in- ward voice, to take the little outcast home, and be kind unto him. He acknowledged his resolution to feed and clothe him, as if he were his own child, and to afford him the instruction which should coimteract the pernicious errors hitherto instilled into his infant mind. Dorothy was gifted with even a quicker ten- derness than her husband, and she approved of all his doings and intentions. "Have you a mother, dear child?" she inquired. The tears burst forth from his full heart, as he at- tempted to reply ; but Dorothy at length imderstood that he had a mother, who, like the rest of her sect, was a persecuted wanderer. She had been taken from the prison a short time before, carried into the imin- habited wilderness, and left to perish there by hunger or wild beasts. This was no uncommon method of disposing of the Quakers, and they were accustomed to boast that the inhabitants of the desert were more hospitable to them than civilized man. " Fear not, little boy, you shall not need a mother, and a kind one," said Dorothy, when she had gathered this information. " Dry your tears, Ilbrahim, and be my child, as I will be your mother." The good woman prepared the little bed, from which her own children had successively been borne to another resting-place. Before Ilbrahim would consent to occupy it, he knelt down, and as Dorothy listened to his simple and affecting prayer, she marvelled ho^i" the parents that had taught it to him could have been judged worthy of death. When the boy had fallen asleep, she bent over his pale and spiritual counte M TWICE-TOLD TALES. fiance, pressed a kiss upon his white brow, drew th« bedclothes up about bis neck, and went away with a pensive gladness in her heart. Tobias Pearson was not among the earliest emi. grants from the old country. He had remained in England during the first years of the civil war, in which he had borne some share as a cornet of dra- goons, imder Cromwell. But when the ambitious de- signs of his leader began to develop themselves, he quitted the army of the Parliament, and sought a ref- uge from the strife, which was no longer holy, among the people of his persuasion in the colony of Massa- chusetts. A more worldly consideration had perhaps an influence in drawing him thither ; for New England offered advantages to men of unprosperous fortimes, as well as to dissatisfied religionists, and Pearson had hitherto found it difficult to provide for a wife and in- creasing family. To this supposed impurity of motive the more bigoted Puritans were inclined to impute the removal by death of all the children, for whose earthly good the father had been over-thoughtful. They had left their native coimtry blooming like roses, and like roses they had perished in a foreign soil. Those ex- pounders of the ways of Providence, who had thus judged their brother, and attributed his domestic sor- rows to his sin, were not more charitable when they saw him and Dorothy endeavoring to fill up the void In their hearts by the adoption of an infant of the accursed sect. Nor did they fail to conmiunicatft their disapprobation to Tobias ; but the latter, in re. ply, merely pointed at the little, quiet, lovely boy, whose appearance and deportment were indeed as pow- erful arguments as coidd possibly have been adduced in Ms own favor. Even his beauty, however, and his THE GENTLE BOY. 95 nioning manners, sometimes produced an effect ulti' mately unfavorable; for the bigots, when the outer surfaces of their iron hearts had been softened and again grew hard, affirmed that no merely natural cause could have so worked upon them. Their antipathy to the poor infant was also in- creased by the iU success of divers theological discus- sions, in which it was attempted to convince him of the errors of his sect. Ilbrahim, it is true, was not a skilful controversialist ; but the feeling of his religion was strong as instinct in him, and he could neither be enticed nor driven from the faith which his father had died for. The odium of this stubbornness was shared in a great measure by the child's protectors, insomuch that Tobias and Dorothy very shortly began to expe- rience a most bitter species of persecution, in the cold regards of many a friend whom they had valued. The common people manifested their opinions more openly. Pearson was a man of some consideration, being a representative to the General Court, and an approved lieutenant in the trainbands, yet within a week after his adoption of Ilbrahim he had been both hissed and hooted. Once, also, when walking through a solitary piece of woods, he heard a loud voice from some in- visible speaker ; and it cried, " What shall be done to the backslider? Lo ! the scourge is knotted for him, even the whip of nine cords, and every cord three knots! " These insults irritated Pearson's temper foi the moment ; they entered also into his heart, and be- came imperceptible but powerful workers towards an end which his most secret thought had not yet whis- per«d. On the second Sabbath after Ilbrahim became a V 96 TWICE-TOLD TALES. memter of their family, Pearson and his wife deemed it proper that he shoiild appear with them at public worship. They had anticipated some opposition tc* this measure from the boy, but he prepared himseU in silence, and at the appointed hour was clad in the new mourning suit which Dorothy had wrought for him. As the parish was then, and during many sub- sequent years, unprovided with a bell, the signal for the commencement of religious exercises was the beat of a drum. At the first sound of that martial call to the place of holy and quiet thoughts, Tobias and Dorothy set forth, each holding a hand of little Ilbra- him, like two parents linked together by the infant of their love. On their path through the leafless woods they were overtaken by many persons of their ao* quaiatance, all of whom avoided them, and passed hy on the other side ; but a severer trial awaited theij constancy when they had descended the hill, and dre"* near the pine-buUt and undecorated house of prayeft Around the door, from which the drummer still sen! forth his thundering summons, was drawn up a fo* midable phalanx, including several of the oldest mem bers of the congregation, many of the middle aged, and nearly all the yoimger males. Pearson found it difficult to sustain their united and disapproving gaze, but Dorothy, whose mind was differently circum- stanced, merely drew the boy closer to her, and fal- tered not in her approach. As they entered the door, they overheard the muttered sentiments of the assem- blage, and when the reviling voices of the little chil- dren smote Ilbrahim's ear, he wept. The interior aspect of the meeting-house was rude. The low ceiling, the unplastered walls, the naked wood work, and the undraperied pidpit, offered notb THE GENTLE BOY. 97 mg to excite the devotion, which, without such exter- nal aids, often remains latent in the heart. The floor of the building was occupied by rows of long, cushion- less benches, supplying the place of pews, and the broad aisle formed a sexual division, impassable ex- cept by children beneath a certain age. Pearson and Dorothy separated at the door of the meeting-house, and Ilbrahim, being within the years of infancy, was retained under the care of the latter. The wrinkled beldams involved themselves in their rusty cloaks as he passed by ; even the mild-featured maidens seemed to dread contamination ; and many a stern old man arose, and turned his repulsive and unheavenly countenance upon the gentle boy, as if the sanctuary were polluted by his presence. He was a Bweet infant of the skies that had strayed away from his home, and all the inhabitants of this miserable ivorld closed up their impure hearts against him, drew baak. their earth-soiled garments from his touch, and said, " We are holier than thou." Ilbrahim, seated by the side of his adopted mother, and retaining fast hold of her hand, assumed a grave and decorous demeanor, such as might befit a person of matured taste and understanding, who should find himself in a temple dedicated to some worship which he did not recognize, but felt himself bound to respect. The exercises had not yet commenced, however, when the boy's attention was arrested by an event, appar- ently of trifling interest. A woman, having her face muffled in a hood, and a cloak drawn completely about bor form, advanced slowly up the broad aisle and took d to move his feelings by some influence uncon- nected with the words. As she proceeded, beautiful but shadowy images would sometimes be seen, like joy TWICE-TOLD TALES. bright things moving in a turbid river; or a strong and singularly-shaped idea leaped forth, and seized at once on the understanding or the heart. But the course of her unearthly eloquence soon led her to the persecutions of her sect, and from thence the step was short to her own peculiar sorrows. She was naturally a woman of mighty passions, and hatred and revenge now wrapped themselves in the garb of piety; the character of her speech was changed, her images be- came distinct though wild, and her denunciations had an almost hellish bitterness. "The Governor and his mighty men," she said, " have gathered together, taking counsel among them- selves and saying, ' What shall we do unto this people — even unto the people that have come into this land to put our iniquity to the blush ? ' And lo ! the devil entereth into the council chamber, like a lame man of low stature and gravely apparelled, with a dark and twisted countenance, and a bright, downcast eye. And he standeth up among the rulers ; yea, he goeth to and fro, whispering to each ; and every man lends his ear, for his word is ' Slay, slay ! ' But I say unto ye, Woe to them that slay ! Woe to them that shed tiie blood of saints ! Woe to them that have slain the husband, and cast forth the child, the tender infant, to wander homeless and hungry and cold, till he die ; and have saved the mother alive, in the cruelty of their tender mercies ! Woe to them ia their lifetime ! cursed are they in the delight and pleasure of their hearts I Woe to them in their death hour, whether it come swiftly with blood and violence, or after long' and lingering pain ! Woe, in the dark house, in the rot- tenness of the grave, when the children's children shall «evile the ashes of the fathers ! Woe, woe, woe, at THE GENTLE BOY. 101 the judgment, when all the persecuted and all tiie slain in this bloody land, and the father, the mother, and the child, shall await them in a day that they cannot escape ! Seed of the faith, seed of the faith, ye whose hearts are moving with a power that ye know not, arise, wash your hands of this innocent blood ! Lift your voices, chosen ones ; cry aloud, and call down a woe and a judgment with me ! " Having thus given vent to the flood of malignity which she mistook for inspiration, the. speaker was silent. Her voice was succeeded by the hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience gen- erally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They remained stupefied, stranded as it were, in the midst of a torrent, which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its vio- lence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed her in the tone of just in- dignation and legitimate authority. " Get you down, woman, from the holy place which you profane," he said. " Is it to the Lord's house that you come to pour forth the foulness of your heart and the inspiration of the devil? Get you down, and remember that the sentence of death is on you ; yea, and shall be executed, were it but for this day's work!" " I go, friend, I go, for the voice hath had its utter. ance," replied she, in a depressed and even mild tone. " I have done my mission unto thee and to thy people. Reward me with stripes, imprisonment, or death, as ye shall be permitted." The weakness of exhausted passion caused her steps to totter as she descended the pulpit stairs. The peo* jl02 TWICE-TOLD TALES. pie, in the mean while, were stirring to and fro on th« floor of the house, whispering among themselves, and glancing towards the intruder. Many of them now recognized her as the woman who had assaulted the Governor with frightful language as he passed by the window of her prison ; they knew, also, that she was adjudged to suffer death, and had been preserved only by an involuntary banishment into the wilderness. The new outrage, by which she had provoked her fate, seemed to render further lenity impossible ; and a gen- tleman in military dress, with a stout man of inferior rank, drew towards the door of the meeting-house, and awaited her approach. Scarcely did her feet press the floor, however, when an imexpected scene occiu^red. In that moment of her peril, when every eye frowned with death, a lil tie timid boy pressed forth, and threw his arms round loit mother. " I am here, mother ; it is I, and I wiU go with th« to prison," he exclaimed. She gazed at him with a doubtful and almost fright ened expression, for she knew that the boy had been \jast out to perish, and she had not hoped to see bin face again. She feared, perhaps, that it was but one of the happy visions with which her excited fancy had often deceived her, in the solitude of the desert or in prison. But when she felt his hand warm within hei own, and heard his little eloquence of childish love, she began to know that she was yet a mother. " Blessed art thou, my son," she sobbed. " My heart was withered ; yea, dead with thee and with thy father ; ftnd now it leaps as in the first moment when I pressed fliee to my bosom." She knelt down and embraced him again and agaia THE GENTLE BOY. 103 while the joy that could find no words expressed itseU in broken accents, like the bubbles gushing up to van- ish at the surface of a deep fountain. The sorrows of past years, and the darker peril that was nigh, cast not a shadow on the brightness of that fleeting mo- ment. Soon, however, the spectators saw a change upon her face, as the consciousness of her sad estate returned, and grief supplied the fount of tears which 7oy had opened. By the words she uttered, it would seem that the indulgence of natural love had given her mind a momentary sense of its errors, and made her know how far she had strayed from duty in following the dictates of a wild fanaticism. " In a doleful hour art thou returned to me, poor boy," she said, " for thy mother's path has gone dark- ening onward, till now the end is death. Son, son, I have borne thee in my arms when my limbs were tot- tering, and I have fed thee with the food that I was fainting for ; yet I have ill performed a mother's part by thee in life, and now I leave thee no inheritance but woe and shame. Thou wilt go seeking through the world, and find aU hearts closed against thee and their sweet affections turned to bitterness for my sake. My child, my child, how many a pang awaits thy gentle spirit, and I the cause of all ! " She hid her face on Ilbrahim's head, and her long, raven hair, discolored with the ashes of her mourning, fell down about him like a veil. A low and inter- rupted moan was the voice of her heart's anguish, and \t did not fail to move the sympathies of many who mistook their involuntary virtue for a sin. Sobs were audible ia the female section of the house, and every man who was a father drew his hand across his eyes. Tobias Pearson was agitated and uneasy, but a certain 104 TWICE-TOLD TALES. feeling like the consciousness of guilt oppressed Mn\ BO that he could not go forth and offer himself as the protector of the child. Dorothy, however, had watched her husband's eye. Her miiid was free from the in- fluence that had begun to work on his, and she drew near the Quaker woman, and addressed her in the hearing of all the congregation. " Stranger, trust this boy to me, and I will be hi» mother," she said, taking Ilbrahim's hand. " Provi- dence has signally marked out my husband to protect him, and he has fed at our table and lodged under our roof now many days, till our hearts have grown very strongly unto him. Leave the tender child with us, and be at ease concemiag his welfare." The Quaker rose from the ground, but drew the boy closer to her, while she gazed earnestly in Dorothy's face. Her mild but saddened features, and neat ma- tronly attire, harmonized together, and were like a verse of fireside poetry. Her very aspect proved that she was blameless, so far as mortal could be so, in re- spect to God and man ; while the enthusiast, in her robe of sackcloth and girdle of knotted cord, had as evidentiy violated the duties of the present life and the future, by fixing her attention wholly on the latter. The two females, as they held each a hand of Ilbrahim, formed a practical allegory ; it was rational piety and unbridled fanaticism contending for the empire of a yotrog ^eart. "Thou art not of our people," said the Quaker, aaour^fiflly, " J^To, we are not of your people," replied Dorothy, with mildness, "but we are Christians, looking up« ward to the same heaven with you. Doubt not that your bf^ shall meet you there, if there be a blessing THE GENTLE BOY. 105 Ml our tender and prayerful ^danee of him. Thither, I trust, my own children have gone before me, for I also have been a mother; I am no longer so," she added, in a faltering tone, " and your son will have all my care." " But wiU ye lead him ia the path which his parents have trodden?" demanded the Quaker. "Can ye teach him the enlightened faith which his father has died for, and for which I, even I, am soon to become an unworthy martyr ? The boy has been baptized in blood ; will ye keep the mark fresh and ruddy upon his forehead ? " " I will not deceive you," answered Dorothy. " If your child become our chUd, we must breed him up in the instruction which Heaven has imparted to us ; we must pray for him the prayers of our own faith ; we must do towards him according to the dictates of our own consciences, and not of yours. Were we to act otherwise, we should abuse your trust, even in comply- ing with your wishes." The mother looked down upon her boy with a troubled countenance, and then turned her eyes up- ward to heaven. She seemed to pray internally, and the contention of her soul was evident. " Friend," she said at length to Dorothy, "I doubt not that my son shall receive all earthly tenderness at thy hands. Nay, I will believe that even thy imper- fect lights may guide him to a better world, for surely thou art on the path thither. But thou hast spoken pf a husband. Doth he stand here among this mul- titude of people? Let him come forth, for I must know to whom I commit this most precious trust." She turned her face upon the male auditors, and ifter a momentary delay, Tobias Pearson came forth 106 TWICE-TOLD TALES. from among them. The Quaker saw the dress which marked his military rank, and shook her head ; but then she noted the hesitating air, the eyes that strug- gled with her own, and were vanquished; the color that went and came, and could find no resting-place. As she gazed, an unmirthful smile spread over her features, like sunshine that grows melancholy in some desolate spot. Her lips moved inaudibly, but at length she spake. "I hear it, I hear it. The voice speaketh within me and saith, 'Leave thy child, Catharine, for his place is here, and go hence, for I have other work for thee. Break the bonds of natural affection, martyr thy love, and know that in all these things eternal wisdom hath its ends.' I go, friends ; I go. Take ye my boy, my precious jewel. I go hence, trusting that all shall be well, and that even for his infant hands there is a labor in the vineyard." She knelt down and whispered to Ilbrahim, who at first struggled and clung to his mother, with sobs and tears, but remained passive when she had kissed his cheek and arisen from the ground. Having held her hands over his head in mental prayer, she was ready to depart. " Farewell, friends in mine extremity," she said to Pearson and his wife ; " the good deed ye have done me is a treasure laid up in heaven, to be returned a thousand-fold hereafter. And farewell ye, mine ene- mies, to whom it is not permitted to harm so much as a hair of my head, nor to stay my footsteps even for a moment. The day is coming when ye shall call upon me to witness for ye to this one sin uncommitted^ tod I will rise up and answer." She turned her steps towards the door, and the men, THE GENTLE BOY. 107 irlio had stationed themselves to guard it, withdrew, l,nd suffered her to pass. A general sentiment of pity overcame the virulence of religious hatred. Sancti- Hed by her love and her affliction, she went forth, and all the people gazed after her till she had journeyed up the hill, and was lost beliind its brow. She went, the apostle of her own unquiet heart, to renew the wanderings of past years. For her voice had been already heard in many lands of Christendom ; and she had pined in the cells of a Catholic Inquisition before she felt the lash and lay in the dungeons of the Puri- tans. Her mission had extended also to the followers of the Prophet, and from them she had received the courtesy and kindness which all the contending sects of our purer religion united to deny her. Her hus- band and herself had resided many months in Turkey, where even the Sultan's countenance was gracious to them ; in that pagan land, too, was Ilbrahim's birth- place, and his oriental name was a mark of gtatitude for the good deeds of an unbeliever. When Pearson and his wife had thus acquired all the rights over Ilbrahim that could be delegated, their affection for him became like the memory of their native land, or their mild sorrow for the dead, a piece of the immovable furniture of their hearts. The boy, also, after a week or two of mental disquiet, began to gratify his protectors by many inadvertent proofs that he considered them as parents, and their house as home. Before the winter snows were melted, the per- gecuted infant, the little wanderer from a remote and heathen country, seemed native in the New England cottage, and inseparable from the warmth and security of its hearth. Under the influence of kind treatment, 108 TWICB-TOLD TALES. and in the consciousness that he was loved, Ilbrahim*^ demeanor lost a premature manliness, which had re« suited from his earlier situation ; he became more childlike, and his natural character displayed itself with freedom. It was in many respects a beautiful one, yet the disordered imaginations of both his father and mother had perhaps propagated a certain un- healthiness in the mind of the boy. In his general state, Ilbraliim would derive enjoyment from the most trifling events, and from every object about him ; he seemed to discover rich treasures of happiness, by a faculty analogous to that of the witch hazel, which points to hidden gold where all is barren to the eysc His airy gayety, coming to him from a thousand sources, communicated itself to the family, and Ilbra« him was like a domesticated sunbeam, brightening moody countenances, and chasing away the gloom from the dark corners of the cottage. On the other hand, as the susceptibility of pleasure is also that of pain, the exuberant cheerfulness of the boy's prevailing temper sometimes yielded tc moments of deep depression. His sorrows could not always be followed up to their original source, but most fre- quently they appeared to flow, though Ilbrahim was young to be sad for such a cause, from wounded love. The flightiness of his mirth rendered him often guilty of offences against the decorum of a Puritan house- hold, and on these occasions he did not invariably escape rebuke. But the slightest word of real bitter- ness, which he was infallible in distinguishing from pretended anger, seemed to sink into his heart and poison aU his enjoyments, till he became sensible that he was entirely forgiven. Of the malice, which gen- BraUy accompanies a superfluity of sensitiveness, Ilbr» THE GENTLE BOY. 109 aim was altogether destitute : when trodden upon, he would not turn; when wounded, he could but die. His mind was wanting in the stamina for seH-support ; it was a plant that would twine beautifully roimd something stronger than itself, but if repulsed, or torn away, it had no choice but to wither on the ground. Dorothy's acuteness taught her that severity would crush the spirit of the child, and she nurtured him with the gentle care of one who handles a butterfly. Her husband manifested an equal affection, although it grew daily less productive of familiar caresses. The feelings of the neighboring people, in regard to the Quaker infant and his protectors, had not under- gone a favorable change, in spite of the momentary triumph which the desolate mother had obtained over their sympathies. The scorn and bitterness, of which he was the object, were very grievous to Ilbrahim, es- pecially when any circumstance made him sensible that the children, his equals in age, partook of the enmity of their parents. His tender and social nature had already overflowed in attachments to everything about him, and still there was a residue of unappro- priated love, which he yearned to bestow upon the Uttle ones who were taught to hate him. As the warm days of spring came on, Ilbrahim was accustomed to remain for hours, silent and inactive, within hearing of the children's voices at their play ; yet, with his usual delicacy of feeling, he avoided their notice, and «rould flee and hide himself from the smallest individ- ual among them. Chance, however, at length seemed to open a medium of communication between his heart and theirs ; it was by means of a boy about two years older than Ilbrahim, who was injured by a fall from a tree in. the vicinity of Pearson's habitation. As tha 110 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Bufferer's own home was at some distance, Dorotlrf willmgly received Tiim mider her roof, and became his tender and careful nurse. Ilbrahim was the unconscious possessor of mucA skill in physiognomy, and it would have deterred him, in other circumstances, from attempting to make a friend of this boy. The countenance of the latter im- mediately impressed a beholder disagreeably, but it required some examination to discover that the cause was a very slight distortion of the mouth, and the ir- regular, broken line, and near approach of the eye« brows. Analogous, perhaps, to these trifling deformi- ties, was an almost imperceptible twist of every joint, and the tmeven prominence of the breast ; forming a body, regular in its general outline, but faulty in al- most all its details. The disposition of the boy was sullen and reserved, and the village schooLnaster stig- matized him as obtuse in intellect ; although, at a later period of life, he evinced ambition and very pe- culiar talents. But whatever might be his personal or moral irregularities. Dbrahim's heart seized upon, and clung to him, from the moment that he was brought wotmded into the cottage ; the child of perse- cution seemed to compare his own fate with that of the sufferer, and to feel that even different modes of misfortune had created a sort of relationship between them. Food, rest, and the fresh air, for which he lan- guished, were neglected ; he nestled continually by the bedside of the little stranger, and, with a fond jeal- ousy, endeavored to be the medium of all the cares that were bestowed upon him. As the boy became convalescent, Ilbrahim contrived games .suitable to his situation, or amused him by a faculty which ha had perhaps breathed in with tiie air of his barbarifl THE GENTLE BOY. Ill birthplace. It was that of reciting imaginary adven- tures, on the spur of the moment, and apparently in inexhaustible succession. His tales were of course monstrous, disjointed, and without aim ; but they were curious on accoimt of a vein of human tenderness which ran through them all, and was like a sweet, familiar face, encountered in the midst of wild and unearthly scenery. The auditor paid much attention to these romances, and sometimes interrupted them by brief remarks upon the incidents, displaying shrewd- ness above his years, mingled with a moral obliquity which grated very harshly against Ilbrahim's instinc- tive rectitude. Nothing, however, could arrest the progress of the latter's affection, and there were many proofs that it met with a response from the dark and stubborn nature on which it was lavished. The boy's parents at length removed him, to complete his cure under their own roof. Ilbrahim did not visit his new friend after his de- parture ; but he made anxious and continual inquiries respecting him, and informed himself of the day when he was to reappear among his playmates. On a pleas- ant summer afternoon, the children of the neighbor- hood had assembled in the little forest-crowned amphi- theatre behind the meeting-house, and the recovering invalid was there, leaning on a staff. The glee of a score of untainted bosoms was heard in light and airy voices, which danced among the trees like sunshine become audible ; the grown men of this weary world, as they journeyed by the spot, marvelled why life, be- ginning in such brightness, should proceed in gloom ; and their hearts, or their imaginations, answered them And said, that the bliss of childhood gushes from its Inuoceuce. But it happened that an unexpected addif 112 TWICE-TOLD TALES. don was made to the heavenly little band. It waa Ilbrahim, who came towards the children with a look of sweet confidence on his fair and spiritual face, as if, having manifested his love to one of them, he had no longer to fear a repulse from their society, A hush came over their mirth the moment they beheld him, and they stood whispeiing to each other while he drew nigh ; but, all at once, the devil of their fathers entered into the imbreeched fanatics, and sending up a fierce, shrill cry, they rushed upon the poor Quaker child. In an instant, he was the centre of a brood of baby-fiends, who lifted sticks against him, pelted him with stones, and displayed an instinct of destruction far more loathsome than the bloodthirstiness of man- hood. The invalid, in the meanwhile, stood apart from the tumult, crying out with a loud voice, "Fear not, Ilbra- him, come hither and take my hand ; " and his un- happy friend endeavored to obey him. After watch, ing the victim's struggling approach with a calm snule and unabashed eye, the foul-hearted little villain hfted his staff and struck Ilbrahim on the mouth, so forci- bly that the blood issued in a stream. The poor child's arms had been raised to guard his head from the storm of blows ; but now he dropped them at once. His per- secutors beat him down, trampled upon him, dragged him by his long, fair locks, and Ilbrahim was on the point of becoming as veritable a martyr as ever en- tered bleeding into heaven. The uproar, however, attracted the notice of a few neighbors, who put them- selves to the trouble of rescuing the little heretic, and of conveying him to Pearson's door. Ilbrahim's bodily harm was severe, but long and lareful nursing accomplished his recovery ; the injury THE GENTLE BOY. 113 done to his sensitive spirit was more serious, though not so visible. Its signs were principally of a negative character, and to be discovered only by those who had previously known him. His gait was thenceforth slow, even, and unvaried by the sudden bursts of sprightlier motion, which had once corresponded to his overflow- ing gladness; his countenance was heavier, and its former play of expression^ the dance of sunshine re- flected from moving water, was destroyed by the cloud over his existence ; his notice was attracted in a far less degree by passing events, and he appeared to find greater difficulty in comprehending what was new to him than at a happier period. A stranger, founding his judgment upon these circumstances, would have said that the dulness of the chUd's intellect widely contradicted the promise of his features ; but the secret was in the direction of Ilbrahim's thoughts, which were brooding within him when they should naturally have been wandering abroad. An attempt of Dorothy to revive his former sportiveness was the single occa- sion on which his quiet demeanor yielded to a violent display of grief ; he burst into passionate weeping, and ran and hid himself, for his heart had become so mis- erably sore that even the hand of kindness tortured it like fire. Sometimes, at night and probably in his dreams, he was heard to cry " Mother ! Mother ! " as if her place, which a stranger had supplied while H- brahim was happy, admitted of no substitute in his ex- treme affliction. Perhaps, among the many life-weary wretches then upon the earth, there was not one who combined innocence and misery like this poor, broken- hearted infant, so soon the victim of his own heavenly nature. While this melancholy change had taken place in J14 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Ilbrahim, one of an earKer origin and of different gnaraeter had come to its perfection in his adopted father. The incident with which this tale commences found Pearson in a state of religious dulness, yet men- tally disquieted, and longing for a more fervid faith than he possessed. The first effect of his kindness to Ilbrahim was to produce a softened feeling, and incip. ient love for the child's whole sect; but joined to this, and resulting perhaps from self-suspicion, was a proud and ostentatious contempt of aU their tenets and prac- tical extravagances. In the course of much thought, however, for the subject struggled irresistibly into his mind, the foolishness of the doctrine began to be less evident, and the points which had particularly offended his reason assumed another aspect, or vanished entirely away. The work within him appeared to go on even while he slept, and that which had been a doubt, when he lay down to rest, would often hold the place of a truth, confirmed by some forgotten demonstration, when he recalled his thoughts ia the morning. But while he was thus becoming assimilated to the enthusi- asts, his contempt, in nowise decreasing towards them, grew very fierce against himself ; he imagiued, also, that every face of his acquaintance wore a sneer, and that every word addressed to him was a gibe. Such was his state of mind at the period of Ilbrahim's mis- fortune ; and the emotions consequent upon that event completed the change, of which the child had been the original instrimient. In the mean time, neither the fierceness of the per- secutors, nor the infatuation of their victims, had de« creased. The dungeons were never empty ; the streets of ahnost every village echoed daily with the lash ; tht Wfe of a woman, whose mild and Christian spirit uf THE GENTLE BOY. llS eruelty could embitter, had been sacrificed ; and more innocent blood was yet to pollute the hands that were so often raised in prayer. Early after the Restoration, the English Quakers represented to Charles II. that a " vein of blood was open in his dominions ; " but though the displeasure of the voluptuous king was roused, his interference was not prompt. And now the tale must stride forward over many months, leav- ing Pearson to encotmter ignominy and misfortune; his wife to a firm endurance of a thousand sorrows ; poor Ilbrahim to pine and droop like a cankered rose- bud ; his mother to wander on a mistaken errand, neg- lectful of the holiest trust which can be conmiitted to a woman. A winter evening, a night of storm, had darkened over Pearson's habitation, and there were no cheerful faces to drive the gloom from his broad hearth. The fire, it is true, sent forth a glowing heat and a ruddy light, and large logs, dripping with half-melted snow, lay ready to be cast upon the embers. But the apart- ment was saddened in its aspect by the absence of much of the homely wealth which had once adorned it; for the exaction of repeated fines, and his own neglect of temporal affairs, had greatly impoverished the owner. And with the furniture of peace, the im- plements of war had likewise disappeared ; the sword was broken, the helm and cuirass were cast away for- ever ; the soldier had done with battles, and might not lift so much as his naked hand to guard his head. But the Holy Book remained, and the table on which it rested was drawn before the fire, while two of the persecuted sect sought comfort from its pages. He who listened, while the other read, was the 116 TWICE-TOLD TALES. master of the house, now emaciated in form, and al tered as to the expression and healthiness of his coun. tenance; for his mind had dwelt too long among visionary thoughts, and his body had been worn by imprisonment and stripes. The hale and weather, beaten old man who sat beside him had sustained less injury from a far longer course of the same mode of life. In person he was tall and' dignified, and, which alone would have made him hateful to the Puritans, his gray locks fell from beneath the broad-brimmed hat, and rested on his shoulders. As the old man read the sacred page the snow drifted against the windows, or eddied in at the crevices of the door, while a blast kept laughing in the chinmey, and the blaze leaped fiercely up to seek it. And sometimes, when the wind struck the hill at a certain angle, and swept down by the cottage across the wintry plain, its voice was the most doleful that can be conceived ; it came as if the Past were speaking, as if the Dead had contributed each a whisper, as if the Desolation of Ages were breathed in that one lamenting sound. The Quaker at length closed the book, retaining however his hand between the pages which he had been reading, while he looked steadfastly at Pearson. The attitude and features of the latter might have indicated the endurance of bodily pain ; he leaned his forehead on his hands, his teeth were firmly closed, and his frame was tremulous at intervals with a ner- vous agitation. "Friend Tobias," inquired the old man, compas- sionately, "hast thou found no comfort in these many blessed passages of Scripture ? " "Thy voice has fallen on my ear like a sound afar off and indistinct," replied Pearson without lifting his THE GENTLE BOY. 117 eyes. "Yea, and when I have hearkened carefully the words seemed cold and lifeless, and intended for another and a lesser grief than mine. Remove the book," he added, in a tone of sullen bitterness. " I have no part in its consolations, and they do but fret my sorrow the more." " Nay, feeble brother, be not as one who hath never fcnown the light," said the elder Quaker earnestly, but with mildness. "Art thou he that wouldst be content to give all, and endure all, for conscience' sake ; desiring even peculiar trials, that thy faith might be purified and thy heart weaned from worldly desires? And wilt thou sink beneath an affliction which happens alike to them that have their portion here below, and to them that lay up treasure in heaven ? Faint not, for thy burden is yet light." "It is heavy! It is heavier than I can bear!" ex- claimed Pearson, with the impatience of a variable spirit. " From my youth upward I have been a man marked out for wrath; and year by year, yea, day after day, I have endured sorrows such as others know not in their lifetime. And now I speak not of the love that has been turned to hatred, the honor to ignominy, the ease and plentifulness of all things to danger, want, and nakedness. All this I could have borne, and counted myself blessed. But when my heart was desolate with many losses I fixed it upon the child of a stranger, and he became dearer to me than all my buried ones ; and now he too must die as if my iove were poison. Verily, I am an accursed man, and I will lay me down in the dust and lift up my head no more." " Thou sinnest, brother, but it is not for me to re- buke thee ; for I also have had my hours of darkness^ 118 TWICE-TOLD TALES. wherein I have murmured against the cross," said the old Quaker. He continued, perhaps in the hope of distracting his companion's thoughts from his own sor- rows. " Even of late was the light obscured within me, when the men of blood had banished me on pain of death, and the constables led me onward from vil- lage to village towards the wilderness. A strong and cruel hand was wielding the knotted cords ; they sunk deep into the flesh, and thou mightst have tracked every reel and totter of my footsteps by the blood that followed. As we went on " — " Have I not borne all this ; and have I mur- mured ? " interrupted Pearson impatiently. "Nay, friend, but hear me," continued the other. " As we journeyed on, night darkened on our path, so that no man could see the rage of the persecutors or the constancy of my endurance, though Heaven for- bid that I should glory therein. The lights began to glimmer in tihe cottage windows, and I could discern the inmates as they gathered in comfort and security, every man with his wife and children by their own evening hearth. At length we came to a tract of fer- tile land ; in the dim light, the forest was not visible around it ; and behold ! there was a straw-thatched dwelling, which bore the very aspect of my home, far over the wild ocean, far in our own England. Then came bitter thoughts upon me; yea, remembrances that were like death to my soul. The happiness of my early days was painted to me ; the disquiet of my man- hood, the altered faith of my declining years. I re- membered how I had been moved to go forth a wan- derer when my daughter, the youngest, the dearest of my flock, lay on her dying bed, and " — " Couldst thou obey the command at such a mo laent ? " exclaimed Pearson, shuddering. THE GENTLE BOY. 119 "Yea, yea," replied lihe old man hurriedly. " I was kneeling by her bedside when the voice spoke loud within me ; but immediately I rose, and took my staff, and gat me gone. Oh ! that it were permitted me to forget her woful look when I thus withdrew my arm, and left her journeying through the dark valley alone 1 for her soul was faint, and she had leaned upon my prayers. Now in that night of horror I was assailed by the thought that I had been an erring Christian and a cruel parent; yea, even my daughter, with her pale, dying features, seemed to stand by me and whis- per, Tathier, you are deceived; go home and shelter your gray head.' O Thou, to whom I have looked in my farthest wanderings," continued the Quaker, rais- ing his agitated eyes to heaven, "inflict not upon the bloodiest of our persecutors the unmitigated agony of my soul, when I believed that all I had done and suf- fered for Thee was at the instigation of a mocking fiend ! But I yielded not ; I knelt down and wrestled with the tempter, while the scourge bit more fiercely into the flesh. My prayer was heard, and I went on in peace and joy towards the wilderness." The old man, though his fanaticism had generally all the calmness of reason, was deeply moved while reciting this tale ; and his unwonted emotion seemed to rebuke and keep down that of his companion. They sat in silence, with their faces to the fire, imag- ining, perhaps, in its red embers new scenes of perse- cution yet to be encountered. The snow still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spa- cious chimney and hissed upon the hearth. A cautious footstep might now and then be heard in a neighbor- mg apartment, and the sound invariably drew the eyeg f20 TWICE-TOLD TALES. of both Quakers to the door which led thither. "Whe< a fierce and riotous gust of wind had led his thoughts, by la natural association, to homeless travellers on such a night, Pearson resumed the conversation. " I have well-nigh sunk under my own share of this trial," observed he, sighing heavily; "yet I would that it might be doubled to me, if so the child's mother could be spared. Her wounds have been deep and many, but this will be the sorest of all." " Fear not for Catharine," replied the old Quaker, " for I know that valiant woman, and have seen how she can bear the cross. A mother's heart, indeed, is strong in her, and may seem to contend mightily with her faith ; but soon she will stand up and give thanks that her son has been thus early an accepted sacrifice. The boy hath done his work, and she will feel that he is taken hence in kindness both to him and her. Blessed, blessed are they that with so little suffering can enter into peace ! " The fitful rush of the wind was now disturbed by a portentous sound ; it was a quick and heavy knocMng at the outer door. Pearson's wan countenance grew paler, for many a visit of persecution had taught him what to dread ; the old man, on the other hand, stood up erect, and his glance was firm as that of the tried soldier who awaits his enemy. " The men of blood have come to seek me," he ob. served with calmness. " They have heard how I was ;noved to return from banishment ; and now am I to be led to prison, and thence to death. It is an end I have long looked for. I wiU open unto them, lest . they say, ' Lo, he feareth I ' " "Nay, I win present myself before them," said Pearson, with recovered fortitude. " It may be that THE OENTLE EOT. 121 Siey seek me alone, and know not that thou abidest with me." " Let us go boldly, both one and the other," rejoined his companion. " It is not fitting that thou or I should shrink." They therefore proceeded through the entry to the door, which they opened, bidding the applicant " Come in, in God's name ! " A furious blast of wind drove the storm mto their faces, and extinguished the lamp ; they had barely time to discern a figure, so white from head to foot with the drifted snow that it seemed like Winter's self, come in human shape, to seek refuge from its own desolation, " Enter, friend, and do thy errand, be it what it fliay," said Pearson. "It must needs be pressing, Bince thou oomest on such a bitter night." " Peace be with this household," said the stranger, when they stood on the floor of the inner apartment. Pearson started, the elder Quaker stirred the slum- bering embers of the fire tiU they sent up a clear and lofty blaze ; it was a female voice that had spoken ; it was a female form that shone out, cold and wintry, in that comfortable light. " Catiharine, blessed woman ! " exclaimed the old man, " art thou come to this darkened land again ? art thou come to bear a valiant testimony as in former years ? The scourge hath not prevailed against thee, and from the dungeon hast thou come forth triumph- ant ; but strengthen, strengthen now thy heart, Cath- arine, for Heaven will prove thee yet this once, ere thou go to thy reward." " Eejoice, friends ! " she replied. " Thou who hast tong been of our people, and thou whom, a little child hath led to us, rejoice ! Lo ! I come, the messenger Z22 TWICE-TOLD TALES. of glad tidings, for the day of persecution is overpast The heart of the king, even Charles, hath been moved in gentleness towards us, and he hath sent forth hia letters to stay the hands of the men of blood. A ship's company of our friends hath arrived at yonder town, and I also sailed joyfully among them." As Catharine spoke, her eyes were roaming about the room, in search of ViiTn for whose sake securiiy was dear to her. Pearson made a silent appeal to the old man, nor did the latter shrink from the painful task assigned him. " Sister," he began, in a softened yet perfectly calm tone, " thou tellest us of His love, manifested in tem- poral good ; and now must we speak to thee of that selfsame love, displayed in chastenings. Hitherto, Catharine, thou hast been as one journeying in a darksome and difficult path, and leading an infant by the hand ; fain wouldst thou have looked heavenward continually, but still the cares of that littie child have drawn thine eyes and thy affections to the earth. Sister! go on rejoicing, for his tottering footsteps shall impede thine own no more." But the unhappy mother was not thus to be con- soled ; she shook like a leaf, she turned white as the very snow that hung drifted into her hair. The firm old man extended his hand and held her up, keeping his eye upon hers, as if to repress any outbreak of passion. "I am a woman, I am but a woman ; will He try me above my strength?" said Catharine very quickly, and almost in a whisper. "I have been wounded sore: I have suffered much; many things in the body; many in the mind ; crucified in myself, and in thenr that were dearest to me. Surely," added she, with a THE GENTLE BOY. 123 long shudder, " He hath spared me in this one thing." She broke forth with sudden and irrepressible vio- lence. " TeU me, man of cold heart, what has God done to me ? Hath He cast me down, never to rise again? Hath He crushed my very heart in his hand? And thou, to whom I committed my child, how hast thou fulfilled thy trust ? Give me back the boy, well, sound, alive, alive ; or earth and Heaven shall avenge me!" The agonized shriek of Catharine was answered by the faint, the very faint, voice of a child. On this day it had become evident to Pearson, to his aged guest, and to Dorothy, that Ilbrahim's brief and troubled pilgrimage drew near its close. The two former would willingly have remained by him, to make use of the prayers and pious discourses which they deemed appropriate to the time, and which, if they be impotent as to the departing traveller's recep- tion in the world whither he goes, may at least sus- tain him in bidding adieu to earth. But though Ilbra- him uttered no complaint, he was disturbed by the faces that looked upon him ; so that Dorothy's entrea- ties, and their own conviction that the child's feet might tread heaven's pavement and not soil it, had induced the two Quakers to remove. Ilbrahim then closed his eyes and grew calm, and, except for now and then a kind and low word to his nurse, might have been thought to slumber. As nightfall came on, however, and the storm began to rise, something seemed to trouble the repose of the boy's mind, and to render his sense of hearing active and acute. If a passing wind lingered to shake the casement, he strove to turn his head towards it : if the door jarred to and &o upon its hinges, he looked long and auxiousljr 124 TWICE-TOLD TALES. thitherward ; if the heavy voice of the old man, as ha read the Scriptures, rose but a little higher, the child almost held his dying breath to listen ; if a snow-drift swept by the cottage, with a soimd like the trailing of a garment, Ilbrahim seemed to watch that some visitant should enter. But, after a little time, he relinquished whatever secret hope had agitated him, and with one low, com- plaining whisper, turned his cheek upon the pillow. He then addressed Dorothy with his usual sweetness, and besought her to draw near him ; she did so, and Ilbrahim took her hand in both of his, grasping it with a gentle pressure, as if to assure himself that he retained it. At intervals, and without disturbing the repose of his countenance, a very faint trembling passed over him from head to foot, as if a mUd but somewhat cool wind had breathed upon him, and made him shiver. As the boy thus led her by the hand, in his quiet progress over the borders of eter- nity, Dorothy almost imagined that she coxdd discern the near,, though dim, delightf ulness of the home he was about to reach ; she wotdd not have enticed the little wanderer back, though she bemoaned herself that she must leave him and return. But just when Ilbrahim's feet were pressing on the soil of Paradise he heard a voice behind him, and it recalled him a few, few paces of the weary path which he had travelled. As Dorothy looked upon his features, she perceived that their placid expression was again disturbed ; her own thoughts had been so wrapped in him, that all sounds of the storm, and of human speech, were lost to her ; but when Catharine's shriek pierced through the room, the boy strove to raise himself. " Friend, she is come 1 Open unto her 1 " cried he THE GENTLE BOY. 128 In a moment his mother was kneeling by the bed- side ; she drew Ilbrahim to her bosom, and he nestled there, with no violence of joy, but contentedly, as if he were hushing himself to sleep. He looked into het face, and reading its agony, said, with feeble earnest- ness, " Mourn not, dearest mother. I am happy now.'' Ajid with these words the gentle boy was dead. The king's mandate to stay the New England per- secutors was effectual in preventing further martyr- doms; but the colonial authorities, trusting in the remoteness of their situation, and perhaps in the sup posed instability of the royal government, shortly re- newed their severities in all other respects. Cathar rlne's fanaticism had become wilder by the sundering of all human ties ; and wherever a scourge was lifted there was she to receive the blow ; and whenever a dungeon was unbarred thither she came, to cast her- self upon the floor. But in process of time a more Christian spirit — a spirit of forbearance, though not of cordiality or approbation — began to pervade the land in regard to the persecuted sect. And then, when the rigid old Pilgrims eyed her rather in pity than in wrath; when the matrons fed her with the fragments of their children's food, and offered her a lodging on a hard and lowly bed; when no little crowd of schoolboys left their sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast ; then did Catharine return to Pear- son's dwelling and made that her home. As if Ilbrahim's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes ; as if his gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true religion, her fierce and vin- dictive nature was softened by the same griefs whicl tad once irritated it. When the course of years had 126 TWICE-TOLD TALES. made the features of the unobtrusive mourner familial in the settlement, she became a subject of not deep, but general, interest; a being on whom the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which are not costly, yet manifest good will ; and when at last she died, a long train of her once bitter persecutors fol- lowed her, with decent sadness and tears that were not painful, to her place by Ilbrahim's green and sunken grave. ME. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE. A TOUNG fellow, a tobacco pedlar by trade, was on his way from Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the Deacon of the Shaker settlement, to the vUlage of Parker's Falls, on Salmon Eiver. He had a neat little cart, painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on each side panel, and an Indian chief, holding a pipe and a golden tobacco stalk, on the rear. The pedlar drove a smart little mare, and was a young man of excellent character, keen at a bargain, but none the worse liked by the Yankees ; who, as I have heard them say, would rather be shaved with a sharp razor than a dull one. Especially was he be- loved by the pretty girls along the Connecticut, whose favor he used to court by presents of the best smok- ing tobacco in his stock ; knowing well that the coun- try lasses of New England are generally great per- formers on pipes. Moreover, as will be seen in the course of my story, the pedlar was inquisitive, and something of a tattler, always itching to hear Hie news and anxious to tell it again. After an early breakfast at Morristown, the tobacco pedlar, whose name was Dominicus Pike, had trav- elled seven miles through a solitary piece of woods, without speaking a word to anybody but himself and his little gray mare. It being nearly seven o'clock, he was as eager to hold a morning gossip as a city shop- keeper to read the morning paper. An opportunity seemed at hand when, after lighting a cigar with a 128 TWICE-TOLlf TALES. Bun-glass, he looked up, and perceived a man coming over the brow of the hill, at the foot of which the ped- lar had stopped his green cart. Dominicus watched him as he descended, and noticed that he carried a bundle over his shoulder on the end of a stick, and travelled with a weary, yet determined pace. He did not look as if he had started in the freshness of the momiug, but had footed it all night, and meant to do the same all day. "Good morning, mister," said Dominicus, when within speaking distance. "You go a pretty good jog. What 's the latest news at Parker's Falls ? " The man pulled the broad brim of a gray hat over his eyes, and answered, rather sullenly, that he did not come from Parker's Falls, which, as being the limit of his own day's journey, the pedlar had natu rally mentioned in his inquiry. " Well then," rejoined Dominicus Pike, " let 's have the latest news where you did come from. I 'm not particular about Parker's Falls. Any place will an- swer." Being thus importuned, the traveller — who was as ill looking a fellow as one would desire to meet in a solitary piece of woods — appeared to hesitate a little, as if he was either searching his memory for news, or weighing the expediency of telling it. At last, mount- ing on the step of the cart, he whispered in the ear of Dominicus, though he might have shouted aloud and no other mortal would have heard him. " I do remember one little trifle of news," said he. ^ Old Mr. Higginbotham, of Kimballton, was murdered in his orchard, at eight o'clock last night, by an Irish- man and a nigger. They strung him up to the branch of a St. Michael's pear-tree, where nobody would find him till the morning." MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE. 129 As soon as this horrible intelligence was commu- nicated, the stranger betook himself to his journey again, with more speed than ever, not even turning his head when Dominicus invited hiTn to smoke a Spanish cigar and relate all the particulars. The ped- lar whistled to his mare and went up the hill, ponder- ing on the doleful fate of Mr. Higginbotham whom he had known in the way of trade, having sold him many a bimch of long nines, and a great deal of pigtail, lady's twist, and fig tobacco. He was rather astonished at the rapidity with which the news had spread. Kim- ballton was nearly sixty miles distant in a straight line ; the murder had been perpetrated only at eight o'clock the preceding night ; yet Dominicus had heard of it at seven in the morning, when, in all probability, poor Mr. Higginbotham's own family had but just discov- ered his corpse, hanging on the St. Michael's pear- tree. The stranger on foot must have worn seven- league boots to travel at such a rate. " 111 news flies fast, they say," thought Dominicus Pike ; " but this beats railroads. The fellow ought to be hired to go express with the President's Message." The difficulty was solved by supposing that the nar- j*ator had made a mistake of one day in the date of the occurrence ; so that our friend did not hesitate to introduce the story at every tavern and country store along the road, expending a whole bunch of Spanish wrappers among at least twenty horrified audiences. He foimd himself invariably the first bearer of the in- telligence, and was so pestered with questions that he could not avoid filling up the outline, tUl it became q[uite a respectable narrative. He met with one piece pf corroborative evidence. Mr. Higginbotham was a trader ; and a former clerk of his, to whom Dominicus 130 TWICE-TOLD TALES. related the facts, testified that the old gentleman was accustomed to return home through the orchard about nightfall, with the money and valuable papers of the store in his pocket. The clerk manifested but little grief at Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe, hinting, what the pedlar had discovered in his own dealings with him, that he was a crusty old fellow, as close aa a vice. His property would descend to a pretty niece who was now keeping school in Kimballton. What with telling the news for the public good, and driving bargains for his own, Dominicus was so much delayed on the road that he chose to put up at a tav- ern, about five miles short of Parker's Falls. After supper, lighting one of his prime cigars, he seated him- self in the bar-room, and went through the story oi the murder, which had grown so fast that it took him half an hour to tell. There were as many as twenty people in the room, nineteen of whom received it all for gospel. But the twentieth was an elderly farmer, who had arrived on horseback a short time before, and was now seated in a corner smoking his pipe. When the story was concluded, he rose up very deliberately, brought his chair right in front of Dominicus, and stared him full in the face, puffing out the vilest to- bacco smoke the pedlar had ever smelt. "Will you make affidavit," demanded he, in the tone of a country justice taking an examination, " that old Squire Higginbotham of Kimballton was murdered in his orchard the night before last, and found hang ing on his great pear-tree yesterday morning? " " I teU the story as I heard it, mister," answered Dominicus, dropping his half-burnt cigar; "I don'i Bay that I saw the thing done. So I can't take mj tath that he was murdered exactly ia that way." MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE. 131 "But I can take mine," said the farmer, "that ii Sqtiire Higginbotham was murdered night before last, I drank a glass of bitters with his ghost this morning. Being a neighbor of mine, he called me into his store, as I was riding by, and treated me, and then asked me to do a little business for him on the road. He did n't seem to know any more about his own murder than I did." " Why, then, it can't be a fact ! " exclaimed Domini., cus Pike. "I guess he 'd have mentioned, if it was," said the old farmer; and he removed his chair back to the Domer, leaving Dominicus quite down in the mouth. Here was a sad resurrection of old Mr. Higgin- botham I The pedlar had no heart to mingle in the conversation any more, but comforted himself with a glass of gin and water, and went to bed whtere, all night long, he dreamed of hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree. To avoid the old farmer (whom he so de- tested that his suspension would have pleased him bet- ter than Mr. Higginbotham's), Dominicus rose in the gray of the morning, put the little mare into the green cart, and trotted swiftly away towards Parker's Falls. The fresh breeze, the dewy road, and the pleasant summer dawn, revived his spirits, and might have en- couraged him to repeat the old story had there been anybody awake to hear it. But he met neither ox team, light wagon chaise, horseman, nor foot traveller, tin, just as he crossed Salmon River, a man came trudging down to the bridge with a btmdle over his shoulder, on the end of a stick. " Good morning, mister," said the pedlar, reining \n his mare. " If you come from KimbaUton or that neighborhood, may be you can tell me the real fact i32 TWICE-TOLD TALES. ftbout this affair of old Mr. Higginbotham. "Was tha old fellow actually murdered two or three nights ago, by an Irishman and a nigger ? " Dominicus had spoken in too great a hurry to ob- serve, at first, that the stranger himself had a deep tinge of negro blood. On hearing this sudden ques- tion, the Ethiopian appeared to change his skin, its yellow hue becoming a ghastly white, while, shaking and stammering, he thus replied : — " No ! no ! There was no colored man ! It was an Irishman that hanged him last night, at eight o'clock. I came away at seven ! His folks can't have looked for him in the orchard yet." Scarcely had the yellow man spoken, when he inter- rupted himself, and though he seemed weary enough before, continued his journey at a pace which would have kept the pedlar's mare on a smart trot. Do- minicus stared after him in great perplexity. If the murder had not been committed till Tuesday night, who was the prophet that had foretold it, in all its circumstances, on Tuesday morning ? If Mr. Higgin- botham's corpse were not yet discovered by his own family, how came the mulatto, at above thirty miles' distance, to know that he was hanging in the orchard, especially as he had left Kimballton before the un- fortunate man was hanged at all ? These ambiguous circumstances, with the stranger's siu-prise and terror, made Dominicus think of raising a hue and cry after him, as an accomplice in the murder ; since a murder, it seemed, had really been perpetrated. "But let the poor devil go," thought the pedlar. " I don't want his black blood on my head ; and hang ing the nigger would n't unhang Mr. Higginbotham \Jnhaug the^old gentleman ! It 's a sin, I know ; but MR. HIGGINBOTHAM' S CATASTROPHE. 183 1 should hate to have him come to life a second timo and give me the lie ! " With these meditations, Dominicus Pike drove into the street of Parker's Falls, which, as everybody knows, is as thriving a village as three cotton factories and a slitting null can make it. The machinery was not ia motion, and but a few of the shop doors un- barred, when he alighted in the stable yard of th& tavern, and made it his first business to order the mare four quarts of oats. His second duty, of course, was to impart Mr. Higginbotham's catastrophe to the hostler. He deemed it advisable, however, not to be too positive as to the date of the direful fact, and also to be uncertain whether it were perpetrated by an Irishman and a mulatto, or by the son of Erin alone. Neither did he profess to relate it on his own author- ity, or that of any one person ; but mentioned it as a report generally diffused. The story ran through the town like fire among girdled trees, and became so much the universal talk that nobody could tell whence it had originated. Mr. Higginbotham was as well known at Parker's Falls as any citizen of the place, being part owner of the slitting mill, and a considerable stockholder in the cotton factories. The inhabitants felt their own pros- perity interested in his fate. Such was the excite- ment, that the Parker's Falls Gazette anticipated its regular day of publication, and came out with half a form of blank paper and a column of double pica emphasized with capitals, and headed HOEKID MUEDER OF ME. HIGGINBOTHAM ! Among other dreadful details, the printed account described the mark of the cord round the dead man's neck, and stated the niunber of thousand dollars of which h< (34 TWICE-TOLD TALES. bad been robbed ; there was much pathos also aboiil the affliction of his niece, who had gone from ona fainting fit to another, ever since her uncle was found hanging on the St. Michael's pear-tree with his pock- ets inside out. The village poet likewise commemo- rated the young lady's grief in seventeen stanzas of a ballad. The selectmen held a meeting, and, in con- sideration of Mr. Higginbotham's claims on the town, determined to issue handbills, offering a reward of five hundred dollars for the apprehension of his mm- derers, and the recovery of the stolen property. Meanwhile the whole population of Parker's Falls, consistiag of shopkeepers, mistresses of boarding- houses, factory girls, millmen, and school boys, rushed into the street and kept up such a terrible loquaciiy as more than compensated for the silence of the cotton machines, which refrained from their usual din out of respect to the deceased. Had Mr. Higgiabotham cared about posthiunous renown, his untimely ghost would have exulted in this tumult. Our friend Do- minicus, in his vanity of heart, forgot bis intended pre- cautions, and mounting on the town pump, announced himself as the bearer of the authentic intelligence which had caused so wonderful a sensation. He im- mediately became the great man of the moment, and had just begun a new edition of the narrative, with a voice like a field preacher, when the mail stage drove into the village street. It had travelled all night, and must have shifted horses at Kimballton, jit three in the morning. " Now we shall hear all the particulars," shouted the crowd. The coach nunbled up to the piazza of the tavern, followed by a thousand people ; for if any man hai MR. HIGGINBOTHAWS CATASTROPHE. 135 Deen minding his own business till then, he now left it at sixes and sevens, to hear the news. ' The pedlar, foremost in the race, discovered two passengers, both of whom had been startled from a comfortable nap to find themselves in the centre of a mob. Every man assailing them with separate questions, all pro- pounded at once, the couple were struck speechless, though one was a lawyer and the other a young lady. " Mr. Higginbotham ! Mr. Higginbotham ! Tell us the particulars about'old Mr. Higginbotham ! " bawled the mob. " What is the coroner's verdict ? Are the murderers apprehended ? Is Mr. /Higginbotham's nieeia come out of her fainting fits? Mr. Higgin- botham ! Mr. Higginbotham ! ! " The coachman said not a word, except to swear awfully at the hostler for not bringing him a fresh team of horses. The lawyer inside had generally his wits about him even when asleep ; the first thing he did, after learning the cause of the excitement, was to pro- duce a large, red pocket-book. Meantime Dominicus Pike, being an extremely polite yoimg man, and also suspecting that a female tongue would teU the story as glibly as a lawyer's, had handed the lady out of the coach. She was a fine, smart girl, now wide awake and bright as a button, and had such a sweet pretty mouth, that Dominicus would almost as lief have heard a love tale from it as a tale of murder. " Gentiemen and ladies," said the lawyer to the shopkeepers, the mUlmen, and the factory girls, " I can assure you that some unaccountable mistake, or, more probably, a wilful falsehood, maliciously contrived to injure Mr. Higginbotham's credit, has excited this Biagular uproar. We passed through Kimballton at three o'clock this morning, and most certainly should 136 TWICE-TOLD TALES. have been informed of the murder had any been pe» petrated. But I have proof nearly as strong as Mr. Higginbotham's own oral testimony, in the negative. Here is a note relating to a suit of his in the Con- necticut courts, which was delivered me from that gentleman himself. I find it dated at ten o'clock last evening." So saying, the lawyer exhibited the date and signa- ture of the note, which irrefragably proved, either that this perverse Mr. Higginbotham was alive when he wrote it, or — as some deemed the more probable case, of two doubtful ones — that he was so absorbed in worldly business as to continue to transact it even after his death. But unexpected evidence was forth- coming. The young lady, after listening to the ped- lar's explanation, merely seized a moment to smooth her gown and put her curls in order, and then ap- peared at the tavern door, making a modest signal to be heard. " Good people," said she, " I am Mr. Higginbot- ham's niece." A wondering murmur passed through the crowd on beholding her so rosy and bright ; that same unhappy niece, whom they had supposed, on the authoriiy of the Parker's Falls Gazette, to be lying at death's door in a fainting fit. But some shrewd fellows had doubted, aJl along, whether a yA;^^^^q Go qiiJPitlSlQj^bed, foolish man; and, on the mor WAKEFIELD. 157 row, if thou wilt be wise, get thee home to good Mrs. Wakefield, and teU her the truth. Remove not thy- self, even for a little week, from thy place in her chaste bosom. Were she. for a single moment, to deem thee dead, or lost, or lastingly divided from her, thou wouldst be wofuUy conscious of a change in thy true wife forever after. It is perilous to make a chasm in human affection s ; not th at they gape so lon^ a nd wide — but so quickly close again ! ' , jOmost j?epentin g of his frolic, or whatever it may/- be termed, W akelieliMles down betimes, and starting! from his first nap, spreads forth his arms into the wide and solitary waste of the unaccustomed bed. " No," — thinks he, gathering the bedclothes about him, — ' x will not sleep alone another night." In the morning he rises earlier than usual, and sets~~ himself to consider what he really means to do. Such are his loose and rambling modes of thought that he/ has taken this very singular step with the conscious- ^ ness of a purpose, indeed, but without being able to define it sufficiently for his own contemplation. The vagueness of the project, and the convulsive effort with^ which he plunges into the execution of it, are equally characteristic of a feeble-mindea man. Wakefield sifts his ideas, however, as minutely as he may, and finds ,- jimsdf-cuiioua ^ know t he progress of matters at homo - " how his exemplary wife will endure her widow- hood of a week; and, briefly, how the little sphere of creatures and circumstances, in which he was a central object, will be affected by his removal. A morbid vanity, therefore, lies nearest the bottom of the affair. But, how is he to attain his ends? Not, certainly, by keeping close in this comfortable lodging, where, though he slept and awoke in the next street to his i58 TWICE-TOLD TALES. home, ho is as effectually abroad as if the stage-coacl had been whirliag him away all night. Yet, should he reappear, the whole project is knocked in the head. His poor brains being hopelessly puzzled with this di- lemma, he at length ventures out, partly resolving to cross the head of the street, and send one hasty glance towards his forsaken domicile. Habit— ;f OT^ he is a -©an_4jf-hftbits — takes him by the hand, and guides him, wholly unaware, to his own door, where, just at the critical moment, he is aroused by the scraping of his foot, upon the step. Wakefield ! whither are you going? '^ ^^^ v«-'i'«'\ — At that instant his fate was turning on the pivot. Little dreaming of the doom to which his first back- ward step devotes him, he hurries away, breathless with agitation hitherto unfelt, and hardly dares turn Jiis head at the distant corner. Can it be that nobody caught sight of him ? WiU not the whole household — the decent Mrs. Wakefield, the smart maid servant, and the dirty little footboy — raise a hue and cry, through London streets, in pursuit of their fugitive lord and master? Wonderful escape! He gathers courage to pause and'look homeward, but is perplexed with a sense of change about the familiar edifice, such as affects us all, when, after a separation of months or years, we again see some hill or lake, or work of art, with which we were friends of old. In ordinary cases, this indescribable impression is caused by the compar- ison and contrast between our imperfect reminiscences and the reality. In Wakefield, the magic of a single night has wrought a similar transformation, because, in that brief period, a great moral change has been effecte d. But this is a secret from himself. Befora leaving the spot, he catches a far and momentary WAKEFIELD. 159 glimpse of Ms wife, passing athwart the front window, with her face turned towards the head of the street..^ rhe cr afty nincompoo p takes to his heels, scared with<;^ the idea thai, amoiig a thousand such atoms of mor- '^ taJity, her eye must have detected him. Kight glad is / his heart, though his brain be somewhat dizzy, when he finds himself by the coal fire^T^Slodgings. \^» j So much for the commencement of this long whim- wham. After the initial conception, and the stirring np of the man's sluggish temperament to put it in practice, the whole matter evolves itself in a natural train. We may suppose him, as the result of deep^ deliberation, buying a new wig, of reddish hair, and'^, selecting sundry garments, in a fashion imlike his cus-^ tomary suit of brown, from a Jew's old-clothes bag.^ It is accomplished. Wakefield is another man. The new system being now established, a retrograde move- ment to the old would be almost as difficult as the step that placed him in his unparalleled position. Further- more, he is rendered obstinate by a sulkiness occasion- ally incident to his temper, and brought on at present by the inadequate sensation which he conceives to have been produced in the bosom of Mrs. Wakefield. He will not go back until she be frightened half to death. Well ; twice or thrice has she passed before his sight, each time with a heavier step, a paler cheek, and more anxious brow ; and in the third week of his non-appearance he detects a portent of evU entering the house, in ^^he^ guise of an apothecary. Next day the knocker is muffled. "Towaf3s"iiightfall comes the chariot of a physician, and deposits its big-wigged and solenm burden at Wakefield's door, whence, after a quarter of an hour's visit, he emerges, perchance the herald of a funeral. Dear woman! Will she die! 160 TWICE-TOLD TALE?'. Bj this time, Wakefield is excited to something like energy of feeling, hut still Ungers away from his wife's bedside, pleading with his conscience that she must not be disturbed at such a juncture. If aught else re- strains him, he does not know it. In the course of a few weeks she gradually recovers ; the crisis is over ; her heart is sad, perhaps, but quiet ; and, let him re- turn soon or late, it will never be feverish for him again. Such ideas glimmer through the mist of Wake- field's mind, and render him indistinctly conscious that an almost impassable guK divides his hired apart- ment from his former home. " It is but in the next street ! " he sometimes says. Fool ! it is ra another world . Hitherto, he has put off his return from one particular day to another ; henceforward, he leaves the precise time undetermined. Not to-morrow — prob- ably next week — pretty soon. Poor man ! The dead have nearly as much chance of revisiting their earthly homes as the self-banished Wakefield. Would that I had a folio to write, instead of an article of a dozen pages! Then might I exemplify how an influence beyond ou r control lays its strong hand on every deed which we do, and weaves its con- sequencesmto"aBr ironliss ue of necessity . Wakefield IS spell-boimd. We must leave him, for ten years or BO, to haunt around his house, without once crossing the threshold, and to be faithful to his wife, with all the affection of which his heart is capable, while he is slowly fading out of hers. Long since, it must be re- marked, h g had lost the perception of singularity in - - bio oond wieit. ~~ — — ~~ " Now for a scene ! Amid the throng of a London street we distinguish a man, now waxing elderly, with lew characteristics to attract careless observers, yet WAKEFIELD. 161 bearing, in his whole aspect, the handwriting of no common fate, for such as have the skill to read it. He is meagre; his low and narrow forehead is deeply wrinkled; his eyes, small and lustreless, sometimes wander apprehensively about him, but oftener seem to look inward. He bends his head, and moves with air^ indescribable obliquity of gait, as if unwiUingJxLjiis- < glay_his-luU fEoiiifc-tO"thej5[prld. Watch hiw) long- enough to see what we have described, and.you will allo w that jarcumstances — which often produce re- markable men from ^atup^s ordinary handiwork — have produced one such here. Next, leaving him to sidle along the footwalk, cast your eyes in the opposite direction, where a portly female, considerably in the wane of life, with a prayer-book in her hand, is pro-, ceeding to yonder church. She has the, placid_mien of ^settled widowhood. Her regrets have either died away, - or have become so essential to her heart, that they^ would be poorly exchanged for joy. Just as tibe leaji i man and well-conditioned woman are passing, a slight - obstruction occurs, and brings these two figures di- rectly in contact. Their hands touch ; the pressure of the crowd forces her bosom against his shoulder ; they , stand, face to face, staring into each other's eyes. Af- ter a ten years' separation, thus Wakefield meets his. wife! The throng eddies away, and carries them asunder. The sober Avidow, resuming her former pace, proceeds to church, but pauses in the portal, and throws a per- plexed glance along the street. She passes in, how- ever, opening her prayer-book as she goes. And the man ! with so wild a face that busy and selfish Lon- , don stands to gaze after him, he hurries to his lodgings, '^ bolts the door, and throws himseK upon the bed. Th« VOL. I. 11 162 TWICE-TOLD TALES. latent feelings of years break out; his feeble mind ao- quires a brief energy from their strength ; all the mis> erable strangeness of his life is revealed to him at a glance: and he cries out, passionately, " Wakefield 1 Wakefieldi -You_are mad ! " Perhaps he was so. ^e singularity of his situation must have so moulded him to himself, that, considered in regard to his fellow-creatures and the business of life, he could not be said to possess his right mind. He had contrived, or rather he had happened, to dis- sever himself from the world — to vanish — to give up his place and privileges with living men, without being admitted among the dead. The life of a hermit is nowise parallel to his. He was in the bustle of the city, as of old; but^tha coaiw^^swejltiQLaad^sgw hjin not ; he was, we may figuratively say, always beside his wife and at his hearth, yet must never feel the warmth of the one nor the affection of the other. It was Wakefield's imprecedented fate to retain his original share of hiunan sympathies, and to be still involved in human interests, while he had lost his reciprocal influ- ence on them. It would be a most curious speculation to trace out the effect of such circumstances on his heart and intellect, separately, and in unison. Yet, changed as he was, he would seldom be conscious of it, but deem himself the same man as ever ; glimpses of the truth, indeed, would come, but only for the mo- ment ; and still he would keep saying, " I shall soon go back ! " — nor reflect that he had been saying so for twenty years. I conceive, also, that these twenty years would ap fear, in the retrospect, scarcely longer than the week to which Wakefield had at first limited his absence tie would look on the affair as no more than an inter- WAKEFIELD. 163 hade in the maia business of his life. When, after a little while more, he should deem it time to reenter his parlor, his wife would clap her h ands for joy, on be- holding the mid dle-aged_ Mr.JW^a3i»fiek[. Alas, wbai: a mistake ! 3^o"ld Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should be young men, aU of us, and till Doomsday. One eveniag, in the twentieth year since he vanished, Wakefield is taking his customary walk towards the dwelling which he still calls his own. It is a gusty night of autumn, with frequent showers that patter down upon the pavement, and are gone before a man can put up his umbrella. Pausing near the house, Wakefield discerns, through the parlor windows of the second floor, the red glow and the glimmer and fitful flash of a comfortable fire. On the ceiling appears a grotesque shadow of good Mrs. Wakefield. The cap, the nose and chin, and the broad waist, form an ad- mirable caricature, which dances, moreover, with the up-flickering and down-sinking blaze, almost too mer-< rily for the shade of an elderly widow. At this instant a shower chances to fall, and is driven, by the unman- nerly gust, full into Wakefield's face and bosom. He is quite penetrated with its autumnal chill. Shall he stand, wet and shivering here, when his own hearth has a good fire to warm him, and his own wife will run to fetch the gray coat and small-clothes, which, doubtless, she has kept carefully in the closet of their bed cham- ber? No! Wakefield is no such fool. He ascends the steps — heavily ! — for twenty years have stiffened his legs since he came down — but he knows it not. Stay, Wakefield ! Would you go to the sole home that is left you? Then step into your grave! The door opens. As he passes in, we have a parting 164 TWICE-TOLD TALES. glimpse of his visage, and recognize the crafty smiley which was the precursor of the little joke that he has ever since been playing off at bis wife's expense. How vmmercifully has he quizzed the poor woman! Well, a good night's rest to Wakefield ! This happy event — supposing it to be such — could «nly have occurred at an unpremeditated moment. We will not foUow our friend across the threshold. He has left us much food for thought, a portion of which shall lend its wisdom to a moral, and be shaped into a figure. Amid the seeming confusion of out mysterious world, individuals a*e so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearftd risk of losing his place forever. Like Wakefield, he may become, as it were, the Out caAt of the Universe. A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. (ScEKB — tke comer of two principal streets.^ The Town Pump talking through its nose.) Noon, by the' North clock! Noon, by the east! High noon, too, by these hot sunbeams which fall, scarcely aslope, upon my head, and almost make the wa,ter bubble and smoke in the trough xmder my nose. Truly, we public characters have a tough time of it ! And, among aU the town officers, chosen at March meeting, where is he that sustains, for a single year, the burden of such manifold duties as are imposed, in perpetuity, upon the Town Pump ? The title of " town treasurer " is rightfully mine, as guardian of the best treasure that the town has. The overseers of the poor ought to make me their chairman, since I provide bountifully for the pauper, without expense to him that pays taxes. I am at the head of the fire de- partment, and one of the physicians to the board of health. As a keeper of the peace, all water drinkers will confess me equal to the constable. I perform some of the duties of the town clerk, by promulgating public notices, when they are posted on my front. To speak within bounds, I am the chief person of the municipality, and exhibit, moreover, an admirable pat- tern to my brother officers, by the cool, steady, up- right, downright, and impartial discharge of my busi- ness, and the constancy with which I stand to my post, Simmier or winter, nobody seeks me in vain ; for, aU 1 Essex and Washington Streets, Salem. 166 TWICE-TOLD TALES. day long, I am seen at the busiest comer, just above the market, stretching out my arms to rich and poor alike ; and at night, I hold a lantern over my head, both to show where I am, and keep people out of the gutters. At this sultry noontide, I am cupbearer to the parched populace, for whose benefit an iron goblet is chained to my waist. Like a dram seller on the mall, at muster day, I cry aloud to all and sundry, in my plainest accents, and at the very tiptop of my voice : Here it is, gentlemen! Here is the good liquor! Walk up, walk up, gentlemen, walk up, walk up! Here is the superior stuff I Here is the unadulterated ale of father Adam — better than Cognac, Hollands, Jamaica, strong beer, or wine of any price ; here it is, by the hogshead or the single glass, and not a cent to pay ! Walk up, gentlemen, walk up, and help your- selves ! It were a pity if all this outcry should draw no customers. Here they come. A hot day, gentlemen ! QuafE, and away again, so as to keep yourselves in a nice cool sweat. You, my friend, will need another cupful, to wash the dust out of your throat, if it be as thick there as it is on your cowhide shoes. I see that you have trudged half a score of miles to-day ; and, like a wise man, have passed by the taverns, and stopped at the running brooks and well curbs. Othe^ wise, betwixt heat without and fire within, you would have been burned to a cinder, or melted down to noth- ing at all, in the fashion of a jelly-fish. Drink, anJ make room for that other fellow, who seeks my aid t< quench the fiery fever of last night's potations, whicl he drained from no cup of mine. Welcome, most rubicund sir I You and I have been great strangers A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. 167 hitherto ; nor, to confess the truth, will my nose be anxious for a closer intimacy, till the fiunes of your breath be a little less potent. Mercy on you, man ! the water absolutely hisses down your red-hot gullet, and is converted quite to steam in the miniature tophet which you mistake for a stomach. Fill again, and tell me, on the word of an honest toper, did you ever, in cellar, tavern, or any kind of a dram shop, spend the price of your children's food for a sv/ig half so delicious? Now, for the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good-by ; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply at the old stand. Who next? O, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and may your heart and tongue never be scorched with a fiercer thirst than now ! There, my dear child, put down the cup, and yield your place to this elderly gentleman, who treads so tenderly over the paving- stones, that I suspect he is afraid of breaking them. What ! he limps by, without so much as thanking me, as if my hospitable offers were meant only for people who have no wine cellars. Well, well, sir — no harm done, I hope ! Go draw the cork, tip the decanter ; but, when your great toe shall set you a-roaring, it will be no affair of mine. If gentlemen love the pleas- ant titOlation of the gout, it is all one to the Town Pump. This thirsty dog, with his red tongue lolling out, does not scorn my hospitality, but stands on his hind legs, and laps eagerly out of the trough. Seo how lightly he capers away again ! Jowler, did youi worship ever have the gout ? 168 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Are you all satisfied? Then vipe your moutliH, my good friends ; and, while my spout has a moment's leisure, I will delight the town with a few historical reminiscences. In far antiqmty, beneath a darksome shadow of venerable boughs, a spring bubbled out of the leaf-strewn earth, in Ae very spot where you now behold me, on the sunny pavement. The water was as bright and clear, and deemed as precious, as liquid diamonds. The Indian sagamores drank of it from time immemorial, till the fatal deluge of the fire water burst upon the red men, and swept their whole race away from the cold fountains. Endicott and his fol- lowers came next, and often knelt down to drink, dip- ping their long beards in the spring. The richest goblet, then, was of birch bark. Governor Winthrop, after a journey afoot from Boston, drank here, out of the hollow of his hand. The elder Higginson here wet his palm, and laid it on the brow of the first town- bom child. For many years it was the watering-place, and, as it were, the washbowl of the vicinity — whither all decent folks resorted, to purify their visages and gaze at them afterwards — at least the pretty maidens did — in the mirror which it made. On Sabbath days, whenever a babe was to be baptized, tihe sexton filled his basia here, and placed it on the communion table of the humble meeting-house, which partly covered the site of yonder stately brick one. Thus, one generation after another was consecrated to Heaven by its waters, and cast their waxing and waning shadows into its glassy bosom, and vanished from the earth, as if mor- tal life were but a flitting image in a fountain. Finally, the fountain vanished also. Cellars were dug on all sides, and cartioads of gravel flung upon its soiu-ce^ Vfhence qozed a turbid stream, forming a mud puddley A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. 169 at the comer of two streets. In the hot months, when its refreshment was most needed, the dust flew in douds over the forgotten birthplace of the waters, now their grave. But, in the course of time, a Town Pump was svmk into the source of the ancient spring ; and when the first decayed, another took its place — and then another, and still another — till here stand I, gentlemen and ladies, to serve you with my iron goblet- Drink, and be refreshed ! The water is as pure and cold as that which slaked the thirst of the red sagamore beneath the aged boughs, though now the gem of the wilderness is treasured under these hot stones, where no shadow falls but from the brick buildings. And be it the moral of my story, that, as this wasted and long-lost fountain is now known and prized again, so shall the virtues of cold water, too little valued since your fathers' days, be recognized by all. Your pardon, good people! I must interrupt my stream of eloquence, and spout forth a stream of water, to replenish the trough for this teamster and his two yoke of oxen, who have come from Topsfield, or somewhere along that way. No part of my busi- ness is pleasanter than the watering of cattle. Look ! how rapidly they lower the watermark on the sides of the trough, till their capacious stomachs are moistened with a gallon or two apiece, and they can afford time to breathe it in, with sighs of cahn enjoyment. Now they roll their quiet eyes around the brim of their monstrous drinking vessel. An ox is your true toper. But I perceive, my dear auditors, that you are im- patient for the remainder of my discourse. Impute it, I beseech you, to no defect of modesty, if I insist a little longer on so fruitful a topic as my own multifa- rious merits. It is altogether for your good. The 170 TWICE-TOLD TALES. better you think of me, the better men and women will you find yourselves. I shall say nothing of my all-important aid on washing days ; though, on that account alone, I might call myself the household god of a hundred families. Far be it from me also to hint, my respectable friends, at the show of dirty faces which you would present, without my pains to keep you clean. Nor will I remind you how often, when the midnight bells make you tremble for your combus- tible town, you have fled to the Town Pump, and found me always at my post, firm amid the confusion, and ready to drain my vital current in your behalf. Neither is it worth while to lay much stress on my claims to a medical diploma, as the physician whose simple rule of practice is preferable to all iihe nauseous lore which has found men sick or left them so, since the days of Hippocrates. Let us take a broader view of my beneficial influence on mankind. No; these are trifles compared with iSae merits which wise men concede to me — if not in my single self, yet as the representative of a class — of being the grand reformer of the age. Prom my spout, and such spouts as mine, must flow the stream that shall cleanse our earth of the vast portion of its crime and anguish, which has gushed from the fiery fountains of the still. In this mighty enterprise, the cow shall be my great confederate. Milk and water! The Town Pump and the Cow! Such is the glorious copartnership that shall tear down the distilleries and brewhouses, uproot the vineyards, shatter the cider presses, ruin the tea and coffee trade, and, finally, monopolize the whole business of quenching thirst. Blessed consiraunation! Then, Poverty shall pass away from the land, finrUng no hovel so wretched where her squalid form may A RILL FROM THE TOWN PUMP. 171 shelter itself. Then Disease, for lack of other victims, shall gnaw its own heart, and die. Then Sin, if she do not die, shall lose half her strength. Until now, che frenzy of hereditary fever has raged in the human blood, transmitted from sire to son, and rekindled, in every generation, by fresh draughts of liquid flame. When that inward fire shall be extinguished, the heat of passion cannot but grow cool, and war — the drunk- enness of nations — perhaps will cease. At least, there will be no war of households. The husband and wife, drinking deep of peaceful joy, — a calm bliss of tem- perate affections, — shall pass hand in hand through life, and lie down, not reluctantly, at its protracted close. To them, the past will be no turmoil of mad dreams, nor the future an eternity of such moments as follow the delirium of the dnmkard. Their dead faces shall express what their spirits were, and are to be, by a lingering smile of memory and hope. Ahem! Dry work, this speechifying; especially to em impractised orator. I never conceived, till now, what toil the temperance lecturers undergo for my sake. Hereafter, they shall have the business to themselves. Do, some kind Christian, piunp a stroke or two, just to wet my whistle. Thank you, sir ! My dear hearers, when the world shall have been regenerated by my instrumentality, you will collect your useless vats and liquor casks into one great pile, and make a bonfire in honor of the Town Pump. And, when I shall have decayed, like my predecessors, then, if you revere my memory, let a marble fountain, richly sculptured, take my place upon this spot. Such monuments should be erected everywhere, and inscribed with the names ^ of the distinguished champions of my cause. Now tiAten, for something very important is to come next 172 TWICE-TOLD TALES. There are two or three honest friends of mine — and true friends, I know, they are — who nevertheless, by their fiery pugnacity in my behalf, do put me in fear- ful hazard of a broken nose or even a total overthrow upon the pavement, and the loss of the treasure which I guard. I pray you, gentlemen, let this fault be amended. Is it decent, think you, to get tipsy with zeal for temperance, and take up the honorable cause of the Town Pump in the style of a toper fighting for his brandy bottle? Or, can the excellent qualities of cold water be not otherwise exemplified than by plung- ing, slapdash, into hot water, and wofully scalding yourselves and other people ? Trust me, they may. In the moral warfare which you are to wage — and, in- deed, in the whole conduct of your lives — you cannot choose a better example than myself, who have never permitted the dust and sultry atmosphere, the turbu- lence and manifold disquietudes of the world around me, to reach that deep, calm well of purity, which may be called my soul. And whenever I pour out that soul, it is to cool earth's fever or cleanse its stains. One o'clock ! Nay, then, if the dinner beU begins to speak, I may as well hold my peace. Here comes a pretty young girl of my acquaintance, with a large stone pitcher for me to fill. May she draw a husband, while drawing her water, as Eachel did of old. Hold out your vessel, my dear! There it is, full to the brim ; so now run home, peeping at your sweet image in the pitcher as you go ; and forget not, in a glass of my own liquor, to drink — " Success to the Towh PumpI" THE GREAT CARBUNCLE » A MYSTEET OF THE WHITE MOtTNTAINS. At nightfall, once in the olden time, on the rugged lide of one of the Crystal Hills, a party of adventurera were refreshing themselves, after a toilsome and fruit- less quest for the Great Carbuncle. They had come thither, not as friends nor partners in the enterprise, but each, save one youthful pair, impelled by his own selfish and solitary longing for this wondrous gem. Their feeling of brotherhood, however, was strong enough to induce them to contribute a mutual aid in building a rude hut of branches, and kindling a great fire of shattered pines, that had drifted down the head- long current of the Amonoosuck, on the lower bank of which they were to pass the night. There was but one of their number, perhaps, who had become so estranged from natural sympathies, by the absorbing spell of the pursuit, as to acknowledge no satisfaction at the sight of human faces, in the remote and solitary region whither they had ascended. A vast extent of wilder- ness lay between them and the nearest settlement, while a scant mile above their heads was that black verge where the hills throw off their shaggy mantle ti forest trees, and either robe themselves in clouds * The Indian tradition, on which this somewhat extravagant tale is founded, is both too wild and too beautiful to be adequately wrought spin prose. Sullivan, in his History of Maine, written since the Kev- tlutioQ, remarks, that even then the existence of the Great Carbunclfl Vas not entirely discredited. Z74 TWICE-TOLD TALES. or tower nakied into the sky. The roar of the Amoi Qoosuck would have been too awful for endurance if only a solitary man had listened, while the mountain stream talked with the wind. The adventurers, therefore, exchanged hospitable greetings, and welcomed one another to the hut, where each man was the host, and all were the guests of the whole company. They spread their individual sup- plies of food on the flat surface of a rock, and partook of a general repast ; at the close of which, a sentiment of good fellowship was perceptible among the party, though repressed by the idea, that the renewed search for the Great Carbuncle must make them strangers again in the morning. Seven men and one young woman, they warmed themselves together at the fire, which extended its bright wall along the whole front of their wigwam. As they observed the various and contrasted figures that made up the assemblage, each man looking like a caricature of himself, in the un- steady light that flickered over him, they came mutu- ally to the conclusion, that an odder society had never met, in city or wilderness, on mountain or plain. The eldest of the group, a tall, lean, weather-beaten man, some sixty years of age, was clad in the skins of wild animals, whose fashion of dress he did well to imitate, since the deer, the wolf, and the bear, had long been his most intimate companions. He was on6 of those ill-fated mortals, such as the Indians told of, whom, in their early youth, the Great Carbuncle smote with a peculiar madness, and became the passionate dream of their existence. All who visited that region Knew him as the Seeker, and by no other name. As none could remember when he first took up the search, iihere went a fable in the valley of the Saco, that ias THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 175 Ms inordinate lust after the Great Carbuncle, he had been condemned to wander among the mountains till the end of time, still with the same feverish hopes at sunrise — the same despair at eve. Near this misera- ble Seeker sat a little elderly personage, wearing a high-crowned hat, shaped somewhat like a crucible. He was from beyond the sea, a Doctor Cacaphodel, who had wilted and dried himself into a mummy by continually stooping- over charcoal furnaces, and in- haling imwholesome fumes dtiring his researches in chemistry and alchemy. It was told of him, whether truly or not, that, at the commencement of his studies, he had drained his body of aU its richest blood, and wasted it, with other inestimable ingredients, in an unsuccessful experiment — and had never been a well man since. Another of the adventurers was Mastei Ichabod Pigsnort, a weighty merchant and selectman of Boston, and an elder of the famous Mr. Norton's church. His enemies had a ridiculous story that Mas- ter Pigsnort was accustomed to spend a whole hour after prayer time, every morning and evening, in wal- lowing naked among an immense quantity of pine-tree shillings, which were the earliest silver coinage of Mas- sachusetts. The fourth whom we shall notice had no name that his companions knew of, and was chiefly distinguished by a sneer that always contorted his thin visage, and by a prodigious pair of spectacles, which were supposed to deform and discolor the whole face of nature, to this gentleman's perception. The fifth adventurer likewise lacked a name, which was the greater pity, as he appeared to be a poet. He was a bright-eyed man, but wofully pined away, which was no more than natural, if, as some people affirmed, hia ordinary diet was fog, morning mist, and a slice of the 17.6 TWICE-TOLD TALES. densest cloud ■within his reach, sauced with moonshine^ whenever he could get it. Certain it is, that the po- etry which flowed from him had a smack of all these dajiities. The sixth of the party was a young man of haughty mien, and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress, and gleamed intensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the Lord de Vere, who, when at home, was said to spend much of his time in the burial vault of his dead progenitors, rummaging their mouldy coffins ia search of all the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust ; so that, be- sides his own share, he had the collected haughtiness of his whole line of ancestry. Lastly, there was a handsome youth in rustic garb, and by his side a blooming little person, in whom a delicate shade of maiden reserve was just melting into the rich glow of a young wiffe's affection. Her name was Hannah, and her husband's Matthew; two homely names, yet well enough adapted to the simple pair, who seemed strangely out of place among the whimsi- cal fraternity whose wits had been set agog by the Great Carbuncle. Beneath the shelter of one hut, in the bright blaze of the same fire, sat this varied group of adventurers, all so intent upon a single object, that, of whatever else they began to speak, their closing words were sure to be illuminated with the Great Carbuncle. Several related the circmnstances that brought them thither. One had listened to a traveller's tale of this marvellous stone in his own distant country, and had immediately been seized with such a thirst for behold- ing it as could only be quenched in its iatensest THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 177 fcistre. Another, so long ago as when the famous Captain Smith visited these coasts, had seen it blazing far at sea, and had felt no rest in all the intervening years till now that he took up the search. A third, being encamped on a hunting expedition full forty miles south of the White Mountains, awoke at mid- night, and beheld the Great Carbuncle gleaming like a meteor, so that the shadows of the trees fell back- ward from it. They spoke of the innumerable at- tempts which had been made to reach the spot, and of the singular fatality which had hitherto withheld suc- cess from all adventurers, though it might seem so easy to f oUow to its source a light that overpowered the moon, and almost matched the sun. It was ob- servable that each smiled scornfully at the madness of every other in anticipating better fortune than the past, yet nourished a scarcely hidden conviction that he would himself be the favored one. As if to allay their too sanguine hopes, they recurred to the Indian traditions that a spirit kept watch about the gem, and bewildered those who sought it either by removing it from peak to peak of the higher hills, or by calling up a mist from the enchanted lake over which it hung. But these tales were deemed unworthy of credit, all professing to believe that the search had been bafded by want of sagacity or perseverance in the adventur- ers, or such other causes as might naturally obstruct the passage to any given point among the intricacies of forest, vaUey, and mountain. In a pause of the conversation the wearer of the prodigious spectacles looked round upon the party, making each individual, in turn, the object of the Bneer which invariably dwelt upon his countenance. " So, feUow-pUgrims," said he, " here we are, seven •sou %. '» 178 TWICE-TOLD TALES. wise men, and one fair damsel — who, doubtless, is as wise as any graybeard of tbe company : here we are, I say, all bound on the same goodly enterprise. Me> thinks, now, it were not amiss that each of us declare what he proposes to do with the Great Carbuncle, provided he have the good hap to clutch it. What says our friend in the bear skin? How mean you, good sir, to enjoy the prize which you have been seek- ing, the Lord knows how long, among the Crystal HiUs?" " How enjoy it ! " exclaimed the aged Seeker, bit- terly. " I hope for no enjoyment from it ; that foUy has passed long ago ! I keep up the search for this accursed stone because the vain ambition of my youth has become a fate upon me in old age. The pur- suit alone is my strength, — the energy of my soul, — ■ the warmth of my blood, — and the pith and marrow of my bones ! Were I to turn my back upon it I should fall down dead on the hither side of the Notch, which is the gateway of this mountain region. Yet not to have my wasted lifetime back again would I give up my hopes of the Great Carbuncle ! Having foimd it, I shall bear it to a certain cavern that I wot of, and there, grasping it in my arms, lie down and die, and keep it buried with me forever." " O wretch, regardless of the interests of science ! " cried Doctor Cacaphodel, with philosophic indigna- tion. " Thou art not worthy to behold, even from afar off, the lustre of this most precious gem that ever was concocted in the laboratory of Nature. Mine ia / the sole purpose for which a wise man may desire the possession of the Great Carbuncle. Immediately on iibtaining it — for I have a presentiment, good people ibat the prize is reserved to crown my scientific repu THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 1T9 fcation — I shall return to Europe, and employ my re- maining years in reducing it to its first elements. A portion o£ the stone will I grind to impalpable pow- der ; other parts shall be dissolved in acids, or what- ever solvents will act upon so admirable a composi- tion ; and the remainder I design to melt in the cruci- ble, or set on fire with the blow-pipe. By these various methods I shall gain an accurate analysis, and finally bestow the result of my labors upon the world in a folio volume." " Excellent ! " quoth the man with the spectacles. " Nor need you hesitate, learned sir, on account of the necessary destruction of the gem ; since the perusal of your folio mayjteach every mother's son of us to concoct a Great Qarbuncle of his own." " But, verily," said Master Ichabod Pigsnort, " for mine own part I object to the making of these coun- terfeits, as being calculated to reduce the marketable value of the true gem. I tell ye frankly, sirs, I have an interest in keeping up the price. Here have I quitted my regular traffic, leaving my warehouse in the care of -my clerks, and putting my credit to great hazard, and, furthermore, have put myself in peril of death or captivity by the accursed heathen savages — and aU this without daring to ask the prayers of the congregation, because the quest for the Great Car- buncle is deemed little better than a traffic with the Evil One. Now think ye that I would have done this grievous wrong to my soul, body, reputation, and es- tate, without a reasonable chance of profit ? " " Not I, pious Master Pigsnort," said the man with the spectacles. " I never laid such a great foUy to thy charge." " Truly, I hope not," said the merchant. " Now, V 180 TWICE-TOLD TALES. as touching this Great Carbuncle, I am free to own that I have never had a glimpse of it ; but be it only the hundredth part so bright as people tell, it vriU surely outvalue the Great Mogul's best diamond, which he holds at an incalculable sum. Wherefore, I am minded to put the Great Carbuncle on shipboard, and voyage with it to England, France, Spain, Italy, or into Heathendom, if Providence should send me thither, and, in a word, dispose of the gem to the best bidder among the potentates of the earth, that he may place it among his crown jewels. If any of ye have a wiser plan, let him expoimd it." " That have I, thou sordid man ! " exclaimed the poet. " Dost thou desire nothing brighter than gold that thou wouldst transmute all this ethereal lustre into such dross as thou wallowest in already ? For myself, hiding the jewel under my cloak^ I shall hie me back to my attic chamber, in one of the darksome alleys of London. There, night and day, will I gaze upon it; my soul shall drink its radiance; it shall be diffused throughout my intellectual powers, and gleam brightly in every line of poesy that I indite. Thus, long ages after I am gone, the splendor of the Great Carbuncle will blaze around my name ! " " Well said. Master Poet ! " cried he of the specta- cles. " Hide it under thy cloak, sayest thou ? Why, it wiU gleam through the holes, and make thee look like a jack-o'-lantern ! " " To think ! " ejaculated the Lord de Vere, rather to himself than his companions, the best of whom he held utterly unworthy of his intercourse — "to think that a fellow in a tattered cloak should talk of convey, ing the Great Carbimcle to a garret in Grub Street t Have not I resolved within myself that the whole THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 181 earth contains no fitter ornament for the great hall of my ancestral castle? There shall it flame for ages, \/ making a noonday of midnight, glittering on the suits of armor, the banners, and escutcheons, that hang around the wall, and keeping bright the memory of heroes. Wherefore have all other adventurers sought the prize in vain but that I might win it, and make it a symbol of the glories of our lofty line? And never, on the diadem of the White Mountains, did the Grreat Carbuncle hold a place half so honored as is reserved for it in the hall of the De Veres ! " " It is a noble thought," said the Cynic, with an ob- sequious sneer. " Yet, might I presume to say so, the gem would make a rare sepulchral lamp, and would display the glories of your lordship's progenitors more truly in the ancestral vault than in the castle hall." " Nay, forsooth," observed Matthew, the young rus- tic, who sat hand in hand with his bride, " the gentle- man has bethought himseK of a profitable use for this bright stone. Hannah here and I are seeking it for a like pturpose." " How, fellow I " exclaimed his lordship, in surprise. " What castle hall hast thou to hang it in? " " No castle," replied Matthew, " but as neat a cot- tage as any within sight of the Crystal Hills. Ye must know, friends, that Hannah and I, being wedded the last week, have taken up the search of the Great Carbuncle, because we shall need its light in the long winter evenings ; and it will be such a pretty thing to ^ show the neighbors when they visit us. It wiU shine through the house so that we may pick up a pin in any comer, and wiU set all the windows aglowing as if there were a great fire of pine knots ia the chimney. And then how pleasant, when we awake in the nighi^ lo be able to see one another's faces I " 182 TWICE-TOLD TALES. There was a general smile among the adventureig sit the simplicity of the young couple's project in re- gard to this wondrous and invaluable stone, with which the greatest monarch on earth might have been proud to adorn his palace. Especially the man with specta- cles, who had sneered at all the company in turn, now twisted his visage into such an expression of ill-nat- ured mirth, that Matthew asked him, rather peevishly, what he himself meant to do with the Great Car- buncle. " The Great Carbuncle ! " answered the Cynic, with ineffable scorn. "Why, you blockhead, there is no such thing in rerum natura. I have come three thou- sand miles, and am resolved to set my foot on every peak of these mountains, and poke my head into every chasm, for the sole purpose of demonstrating to the satisfaction of any man one whit less an ass than thy self that the Great Carbimcle is all a humbug ! " Vain and foolish were the motives that had brought most of the adventurers to the Crystal Hills; but none so vain, so foolish, and so impious too, as that of the scoffer with the prodigious spectacles. He was one of those wretched and evil men whose yeaming;s are downward to the darkness, instead of heaven- ward, and who, could they but extinguish the lights which God hath kindled for us, would count the mid- night gloom their chiefest glory. As the Cynic spoke, several of the party were startled by a gleam of red jiplendor, that showed the huge shapes of the sur- rounding mountains and the rock-bestrewn bed of the turbulent river with an illumination unlike that of their fire on the trunks and black boughs of the forest trees. They listened for the roU of thunder, tut heard nothing, and were glad that the tempest THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 188 tame not near them. The stars, those dial-points of heaven, now warned the adventurers to close their eyes on the blazing logs, and open them, in dreams, to the glow of the Great Carbuncle. The young married couple had taken their lodgings in the farthest comer of the wigwam, and were sepa- rated from the rest of the party by a curtain of curiously-woven twigs, such as might have hung, in deep festoons, around the bridal-bower of Eve. The modest little wife had wrought this piece of tapestry while the other guests were talking. She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke from visions of unearthly radiance to meet the more blessed light of one another's eyes. They awoke at the same instant, and with one happy smile beam- ing over their two faces, which grew brighter with their consciousness of the reality of life and love. But no sooner did she recoUect where they were, than the bride peeped through the interstices of the leafy curtain, and saw that the outer room of the hut was deserted. "Up, dear Matthew!" cried she, in haste. "The strange folk are all gone ! Up, this very minute, or we shall lose the Great Carbuncle ! " In truth, so Httle did these poor young people de- serve the mighty prize which had lured them thither, that they had slept peacefully all night, and till the smnmits of the hills were glittering with sunshine; while the other adventurers had tossed their limbs in feverish wakefulness, or dreamed of climbing preci- pices, and set off to realize their dreams with the earliest peep of dawn. But Matthew and Hannah, after their calm rest, were as light as two young deer, and merely stopped to say their prayers and wash 184 TWICE-TOLD TALES. themselves in a cold pool of the Amonoosuck, «nil then to taste a morsel of food, ere they turned their faces to the mountain-side. It was a sweet emblem of conjugal aflfection, as they toiled up the difficult as- cent, gathering strength from the mutual aid which they afforded. After several little accidents, such as a torn robe, a lost shoe, and the entanglement of Han- nah's hair in a bough, they reached the upper verge of the forest, and were now to pursue a more adventu. rous course. The innumerable trunks and heavy fo- liage of the trees had hitherto shut in their thoughts, which now shrank affrighted from the region of wind and cloud and naked rocks and desolate sunshine, that rose immeasurably above them. They gazed back at the obscure wilderness which they had traversed, and longed to be buried again in its depths rather than trust themselves to so vast and visible a solitude. " Shall we go on?" said Matthew, throwing his arm round Hannah's waist, both to protect her and to com- fort his heart by drawing her close to it. But the little bride, simple as she was, had a woman's love of jewels, and could not forego the hope of possessing the very brightest in the world, in spite of the perils with which it must be won. " Let us climb a little higher," whispered she, yet tremulously, as she turned her face upward to the lonely sky. " Come, then," said Matthew, mustering his manly courage and drawing her along with him, for she be- came timid again the moment that he grew bold. And upward, accordingly, went the pilgrims of the Great Carbiincle, now treading upon the tops and thickly-interwoven branches of dwarf pines, wMch, by the growth of centuries, though mossy with age, had THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 185 barely reached three feet in altitude. Next, they came to masses and fragments of naked rock heaped (confusedly together, like a cairn reared by giants in memory of a giant chief. In this bleak realm of upper air nothing breathed, nothing grew ; there was no life but what was concentrated in their two hearts ; they had climbed so high that Nature herself seemed no longer to keep them company. She lingered be- neath them, within the verge of the forest trees, and sent a farewell glance after her children as they strayed where her own green footprints had never been. But soon they were to be bidden from her eye. Densely and dark the mists began to gather below, casting black spots of shadow on the vast landscape, and sailing heavily to one centre, as if the loftiest mountain peak had summoned a council of its kindred clouds. Finally, the vapors welded iihemselves, as it were, into a mass, presenting the appearance of a pavement over which the wanderers might have trodden, but where they would vainly have sought an avenue to the blessed earth which they had lost. And the lovers yearned to behold that green earth again, more intensely, alas! than, beneath a clouded sky, they had ever desired a glimpse of heaven. They even felt it a relief to their desolation when the mists, creeping gradually up the mountain, concealed its lonely peak, and thus annihilated, at least for them, the whole region of visible space. But they drew closer together, with a fond and melancholy gaze, dreading lest the universal cloud should snatch them from each other's sight. Still, perhaps, they would have been resolute to njlimb as far and as high, between earth and heaveU, as they could find foothold, if Hannah's strength h^ \. 186 TWICE-TOLD TALES. not begun to fail, and with tliat, her courage alsa Her breath grew short. She refused to burden hel husband with her weight, but often tottered against his side, and recovered herself each time by a feebler effort. At last, she sank down on one of the rocky steps of the acclivity. "We are lost, dear Matthew," said she, mournfully. "We shall never find our way to the earth again. And oh how happy we might have been in our cot- tage ! " "Dear heart! — we will yet be happy there," an- swered Matthew. " Look ! In this direction, the sun- shine penetrates the dismal mist. By its aid, I can direct our course to the passage of the Notch. Let us go back, love, and dream no more of the Great Carbuncle ! " "The sun cannot be yonder," said Hannah, with despondence. "By this time it must be noon. If there could ever be any sunshine here, it would come from above our heads." " But look ! " repeated Matthew, in a somewhat altered tone. " It is brightening every moment. If not simshine, what can it be ? " Nor could the young bride any longer deny that a radiance was breaking through the mist, and changing its dim hue to a dusky red, which continually grew more vivid, as if brilliant particles were interfused with the gloom. Now, also, the cloud began to roll away from the mountain, while, as it heavily with- drew, one object after another started out of its im- penetrable obscurity into sight, with precisely the ef- fect of a new creation, before the indistinctness of thf aid chaos had been completely swallowed up. As the process went on, they saw the gleaming of water closa THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 187 lit their feet, and found themselves on the very border of a mountain lake, deep, bright, clear, and calmly beautiful, spreading from brim to brim of a basin that tad been scooped out of the solid rock. A ray of glory flashed across its surface. The pilgrims looked whence it should proceed, but closed their eyes with a thrill of awful admiration, to exclude the fervid splendor that glowed from the brow of a cliff impend- ing over the enchanted lake. For the simple pair had reached that lake of mystery, and found the long- sought shrine of the Great Carbtmcle ! They threw their arms around each other, and trembled at their own success ; for, as the legends of this wondrous gem rushed thick upon their memory, they felt themselves marked out by fate — and the jjonsciousness was fearful. Often, from childhood up- ward, they had seen it shining like a distant star. And now that star was throwing its intensest lustre on their hearts. They seemed changed to one another's eyes, in the red brilliancy that flamed upon their cheeks, (vhile it lent the same fire to the lake, the rocks, and sky, and to the mists which had rolled back before its power. But, with their next glance, they beheld an object that drew their attention even from the mighty Btone. At the base of the cliff, directly beneath the Great Carbuncle, appeared the figure of a man, with his arms extended in the act of climbing, and his face turned upward, as if to drink the full gush of splendor. But he stirred not, no more than if changed to marble, " It is the Seeker," whispered Hannah, convulsively grasping her husband's arm. " Matthew, he is dead." " The joy of success has killed him," replied Mat- thew, trembling violentiy. " Or, perhaps, the veij Ught of the Great Carbuncle was death 1 " 188 TWICE-TOLD TALES. " The Great Carbuncle," cried a peevish voice be« hind them, " The Great Humbug ! If you have found it, prithee point it out to me." They turned their heads, and there was the Cynic, with his prodigious spectacles set carefully on his nose, staring now at the lake, now at the rocks, now at the distant masses of vapor, now right at the Great Carbuncle itself, yet seemingly as unconscious of its light as if all the scattered clouds were condensed about his person. Though its radiance actually threw the shadow of the unbeliever at his own feet, as he turned his back upon the glorious jewel, he would not be convinced that there was the least glimmer there. " Where is your Great Humbug ? " he repeated. " I challenge you to make me see it ! " " There," said Matthew, incensed at such perverse blindness, and turning the Cynic round towards the illuminated cliff. " Take off those abominable spec* tacles, and you cannot help seeing it ! " Now these colored spectacles probably darkened the Cynic's sight, in at least as great a degree as the smoked glasses through which people gaze at an eclipse. With resolute bravado, however, he snatched them from his nose, and fixed a bold stare f uU upon the ruddy blaze of the Great Carbuncle. But scarcely had he encountered it, when, with a deep, shuddering groan, he dropped his head, and pressed both hands across his miserable eyes. Thenceforth there was, in very truth, no light of the Great Carbuncle, nor any other light on earth, nor light of heaven itself, for the poor Cynic. So long accustomed to view all objects through a medium that deprived them of every glimpse of brightness, a single flash of so glorious a phenom* enon, striking upon his naked vision, had blinded hia foi"ver. THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 189 " Matthew," said Hannah, clinging to him, " let ua go hence I " Matthew saw that she was faint, and kneeling down, supported her in his arms, while he threw some of the thrillingly cold water of the enchanted lake upon her face and bosom. It revived her, but coidd not reno< vate her courage. " Yes, dearest ! " cried Matthew, pressing her tremu- lous form to his breast, — "we will go hence, and return to our hxmible cottage. The blessed simshine and the quiet moonlight shall come through our win- dow. We will kindle the cheerful glow of our hearth, at eventide, and be happy in its light. But never, again will we desire more light than all the world may share with us." " No," said his bride, " for how could we live by day, or sleep by night, in this awful blaze of the Great Carbuncle ' " Out of the hollow of their hands, they drank each a draught from the lake, which presented them its waters nncontaminated by an earthly lip. Then, lending their guidance to the blinded Cynic, who uttered not a word, and even stifled his groans in his own most wretched heart, they began to descend the mountain. Yet, as they left the shore, till then untrodden, of the spirit's lake, they threw a farewell glance towards the cliff, and beheld the vapors gathering in dense volumes, through which the gem burned duskily. As touching the other pilgrims of the Great Car- Duncle, the legend goes on to tell, that the worshipful Master Ichabod Pigsnort soon gave up the quest as a desperate speculation, and wisely resolved to betake himself again to his warehouse, near the town dock, in Boston. But, as he passed through the Notch of the i90 TWICE-TOLD TALES. mountains, a war party of Indians captured our un lucky merchant, and carried him to Montreal, thera bolding him in bondage, till, by the payment of a heavy ransom, h6 had wofuUy subtracted from his hoard of pine-tree shillings. By his long absence, moreover, his affairs had become so disordered that, for the rest of his life, instead of wallowing in silver, he had seldom a sixpence worth of copper. Doctor Cacaphodel, the alchemist, returned to his laboratory with a prodigious fragment of granite, which he ground to powder, dissolved in acids, melted in the crucible, and burned with the blow-pipe, and published the re- suit of his experiments in one of the heaviest folios of the day. And, for all these purposes, the gem itself could not have answered better than the granite. The poet, by a somewhat similar mistake, made prize of % great piece of ice, which he found in a sunless chasm of the mountains, and swore that it corresponded, in aU points, with his idea of the Great Carbuncle. The critics say, that, if his poetry lacked the splendor of the gem, it retained all the coldness of the ice. The Lord de Vere went back to his ancestral hall, where he contented himself with a wax-lighted chandelier, and filled, in due course of time, another coffin in the ancestral vault, As the funeral torches gleamed within that dark receptacle, there was no need of the Great Carbimcle to show the vanity of earthly pomp. The Cynic, having cast aside his spectacles, wan- dered about the world, a miserable object, and ^as punished with an agonizing desire of light, for the wil ful blindness of his former life. The whole night long, ne would lift his splendor-blasted orbs to the moon and stars ; he turned his face eastward, at simrise, aj duly as a Persian idolater ; he made a pilgrimage to THE GREAT CARBUNCLE. 191 Rome, to witness the magnificent illumination of St Peter's Church; and finally perished in the great fire of London, into the midst of which he had thrust him- self, with the desperate idea of catching one feeble ray {rom the blaze that was kindling earth and heaven. Matthew and his bride spent many peaceful yeara, and were fond of telling the legend of the Great Car- ouncle. The tale, however, towards the close of their lengthened lives, did not meet with the full credence that had been accorded to it by those who remembered the ancient lustre of the gem. For it is afiirmed that, from the hour when two mortals had shown themselves so simply wise as to reject a jewel which would have dimmed all earthly things, its splendor waned. When other pilgrims reached the cliff, they found only an opaque stone, with particles of mica glittering on its Surface. There is also a tradition that, as the youth- ful pair departed, the gem was loosened from the fore- head of the cliff, and fell into the enchanted lake, and that, at noontide, the Seeker's form may still be seen to bend over its quenchless gleam. Some few believe that this inestimable stone is blaz- mg as of old, and say that they have caught its radi^ once, like a flash of summer lightning, far down tha valley of the Saco. And be it owned that, many a mile from the Crystal Hills, I saw a wondrous light around their summits, and was lured, by the faith of poesy, to be the latest pilgrim of the Great Cas BUNCLB ; THE PROPHETIC PICTUKES.^ " But this painter ! " cried Walter Ludlow, with animation. " He not only excels in his peculiar art, but possesses vast acquirements in all other learning and science. He talks Hebrew with Dr. Mather, and gives lectures in anatomy to Dr. Boylston. In a word he will meet the best instructed man among us on his own ground. Moreover, he is a polished gentleman — a citizen of the world — yes, a true cosmopolite; for he will speak like a native of each clime and coun- try of the globe except our own forests, whither he ia now going. Nor is all this what I most admire in him." " Indeed ! " said Elinor, who bad listened with a woman's interest to the description of such a man. " Yet this is admirable enough." " Surely it is," replied her lover, " but far less so than his natural gift of adapting himself to every variety of character, insomuch that all men — and all women too, Elinor — shaU find a mirror of themselves in this wonderful painter. But the greatest wonder is yet to be told." "Nay, if he have more wonderful attributes than these," said Elinor, laughing, " Boston is a perilous abode for the poor gentleman. Are you telling me of a painter or a wizard ? " I This story was suggested by an anecdote of Stuart, related in Dnn« top's History of the Arts of Design, — a most entertaining book to tha general reader, and a deeply interesting one, we should think, to tb« utist. THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 193 " In truth," answered he, " that question might be asked much more seriously than you suppose. They Bay that he paints not merely a man's features, but his mind and heart. He catches the secret sentiments and passions, and throws them upon the canvas, like sun- shine — or perhaps, in the portraits of dark-souled men, like a gleam of infernal fire. It is an awful gift," added Walter, lowering his voice from its tone of en- thusiasm. " I shall be almost afraid to sit to him.'' " Walter, are you in earnest? " exclaimed Elinor. " For Heaven's sake, dearest Elinor, do not let him paint the look which you now wear," said her lover, smiling, though rather perplexed. " There : it is pass- ing away now, but when you spoke you seemed fright- ened to death, and very sad besides. What were you thinking of?" " Notiiing, nothing," answered Elinor hastily. " You paint my face with your own fantasies. Well, come for me to-morrow, and we will visit this wonderful artist." But when the young man had departed, it cannot be denied that a remarkable expression was again visible on the fair and youthful face of his mistress. It was a sad and anxious look, little in accordance with what should have been the feelings of a maiden on the eve of wedlock. Yet Walter Ludlow was the chosen of her heart. "A look!" said Elinor to herself. "No wonder that it startled him, if it expressed what I sometimes feeL I know, by my own experience, how frightful a look may be- But it was all fancy. I thought noth- ing o£ it at the time — I have seen nothing of it since «— I did but dream it." And she busied herself about the embroidery of a VOL I. u 194 TWICE-TOLD TALES. ruff, in which she meant that her portrait should b« taken. The painter, of whom they had been speaking, was not one of those native artists who, at a later period than this, borrowed their colors from the Indians, and manufactured their pencils of the fm-s of wild beasts. Perhaps, if he could have revoked his life and prear- ranged his destiny, he might have chosen to belong to that school without a master, in the hope of being at least original, since there were no works of art to imi- tate nor rules to follow. But he had been bom and educated in Europe. People said that he had studied the grandeur or beauty of conception, and every touch of the master hand, in all the most famous pictures, in cabinets and galleries, and on the walls of churches, till there was nothing more for his powerful mind to learn. Art could add nothing to its lessons, but Nat- ure might. He had therefore visited a world whither none of his professional brethren had preceded him, to feast his eyes on visible images that were noble and picturesque, yet had never been transferred to canvas. America was too poor to afford other temp- tations to an artist of eminence, though many of the colonial gentry, on the painter's arrival, had expressed a wish to transmit their lineaments to posterity by means of his skill. Whenever such proposals were made, he fixed his piercing eyes on the applicant, and seemed to look him through and through. If he be- held only a sleek and comfortable visage, though there were a gold-laced coat to adorn the picture and golden guineas to pay for it, he civilly rejected the task and the reward. But if the face were the index of any thing uncommon, in thought, sentiment, or experience; or if he met a beggar in the street, mth a white beard THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 195 imd a furrowed brow; or if sometimes a child hap- pened to look up and smile, he would exhaust all the art on them that he denied to wealth. Pictorial skill being so rare in the colonies, the painter became an object of general curiosity. If few or none could appreciate the technical merit of his productions, yet there were points, in regard to which the opinion of the crowd was as valuable as the refined judgment of the amateur. He watched the effect that each picture produced on such untutored beholders, and derived profit from their remarks, while they would as soon have thought of instructing Nature herself as him who seemed to rival, her. Their admiration, it must be owned, was tinctured with the prejudices of the age and country. Some deemed it an offence against the Mosaic law, and even a presumptuous mockery of the Creator, to briug into existence such lively images of his creatures. Others, frightened at the art which could raise phantoms at will, and keep the form of the dead among the living, were inclined to consider the painter as a magician, or perhaps the famous Black Man, of old witch times, plotting mis- chief in a new guise. These foolish fancies were more than half believed among the mob. Even in superior circles his character was invested with a vague awe, partly rising like smoke wreaths from the popular superstitions, but chiefly caused by the varied knowl- edge and talents which he made subservient to his profession. Being on the eve of marriage, Walter Ludlow and Elinor were eager to obtain their portraits, as the first of what, they doubtless hoped, would be a long series of family pictures. The day after the conversation above recorded they visited the painter's rooms. A 196 TWICE-TOLD TALES. servant ushered them into an apartment, where, thongk the artist himseH was not visible, there were person- ages whom they could hardly forbear greeting with reverence. They knew, indeed, that the whole assem- bly were but pictures, yet felt it impossible to separate the idea of life and intellect from such striking coun- terfeits. Several of the portraits were known to them, either as distinguished characters of the day or their private acquaintances. There was Governor Burnet, looking as if he had just received an undutiful com- munication from the House of Representatives, and were inditing a most sharp response. Mr. Cooke hung beside the ruler whom he opposed, sturdy, and some- what puritanical, as befitted a popular leader. The ancient lady of Sir William Phipps eyed them from the wall, in ruff and farthingale, — an imperious old dame, not unsuspected of witchcraft. John Winslow, then a very young man, wore the expression of war- like enterprise, which long afterwards made him a dis- tinguished general. Their personal friends were rec- ognized at a glance. In most of the pictures, the whole mind and character were brought out on the countenance, and concentrated into a single look, so that, to speak paradoxically, the originals hardly re- sembled themselves so strikingly as the portraits did. Among these modem worthies there were two old bearded Saints, who had almost vanished into the dark- ening canvas. There was also a pale, but imfaded Madonna, who had perhaps been worshipped in Rome, and now regarded the lovers with such a mild and holy look that they longed to worship too. " How singular a thought," observed Walter Lud- low, "that this beautiful face has been beautiful foi above two hundred years ! Oh, if all beauty would eik dure 80 well I Do you not envy her, Elinor ? " THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 197 "If earth were heaven, I might," she replied. " But where all things fade, how miserable to be the one that could not fade ! " "This dark old St. Peter has a fierce and ugly scowl, saint though he be," continued Walter. " He troubles me. But the Virgin looks kindly at us." " Yes ; but very sorrowfully, methinks," said Elinor. The easel stood beneath these three old pictures, sustaining one that had been recently commenced. After a little inspection, they began to recognize the features of their own minister, the Rev, Dr. Cohnan, growing into shape and life, as it were, out of a cloud. '* Kind old man ! " exclaimed Elinor. " He gazes at me as if he were about to utter a word of paternal advice." " And at me," said Walter, " as if he were about to shake his head and rebuke me for some suspected in- iquity. But so does the original. I shall never feel quite comfortable under his eye till we stand before him to be married." They now heard a footstep on the floor, and turning, beheld the painter, who had been some moments in the room, and had listened to a few of their remarks. He was a middle-aged man, with a countenance well worthy of his own pencU. Indeed, by the picturesque, though careless arrangement of his rich dress, and, perhaps, because his soul dwelt always among painted shapes, he looked somewhat like a portrait himself. His visitors were sensible of a kindred between the artist and his works, and felt as if one of the pictures had stepped from the canvas to salute them. Walter Ludlow, who was slightly known to the yiainter, explained the object of their visit. While he spoke, a sunbeam was falling athwart his figure and 298 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Elinor's, witih so happy an effect that they also seemed living pictures of youth and beauty, gladdened by bright fortune. The artist was evidently struck. " My easel is occupied for several ensuing days, and my stay in Boston must be brief," said he, thought- fidly; then, after an observant glance, he added: " but your wishes shall be gratified, though I disap- point the Chief Justice and Madam Oliver. I must not lose this opportunity, for the sake of painting a few ells of broadcloth and brocade." The painter expressed a desire to introduce both their portraits into one picture, and represent them engaged in some appropriate action. This plan would have delighted the lovers, but was necessarily rejected, because so large a space of canvas woidd have been imfit for the room which it was intended to decorate. Two half-length portraits were therefore fixed upon. After they had taken leave, Walter Ludlow asked Elinor, with a smile, whether she knew what an influ- ence over their fates the painter was about to acquire. " The old women of Boston affirm," continued he, "that after he has once got possession of a person's face and figure, he may paint him in any act or situa- tion whatever — and the picture will be prophetic. Do you believe it ? " " Not quite," said Elinor, smiling. " Yet if he has such magic, there is something so gentle in his man- ner that I am sure he will use it well." It was the painter's choice to proceed with both the portraits at the same time, assigning as a reason, in the mystical language which he sometimes used, thai the faces threw light upon each other. Accordingly he gave now a touch to Walter, and now to Elinor, fuad the features of one and the other began to start THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 199 forth so vividly that it appeared as if his triumphant Brt would actually disengage them from the canvas. Amid the rich light and deep shade, they beheld their phantom selves. But, though the likeness promised to be perfect, they were not quite satisfied with the expression ; it seemed more vague than in most of the painter's works. He, however, was satisfied with the prospect of success, and being much interested in the lovers, employed his leisure moments, unknown to them, in making a crayon sketch of their two figures. During their sittings, he engaged them in conversation, and kindled up their faces with characteristic traits, which, though continually varying, it was his purpose to combine and fix. At length he announced that at their next visit both the portraits would be ready for delivery. " If my pencil will but be true to my conception, in the few last touches which I meditate," observed he, " these two pictures will be my very best performances. Seldom, indeed, has an artist such subjects." While speaking, he stiU bent his penetrative eye Upon them, nor withdrew it till they had reached the bottom of the stairs. Nothing, in the whole circle of human vanities, takes stronger hold of the imagination than this affair of having a portrait painted. Yet why should it be so? The looking-glass, the polished globes of the andirons, the mirror-like water, and all other reflecting surfaces, continually present us with portraits, or rather ghosts of ourselves, which we glance at, and straightway for get them. But we forget them only because they vanish. It is the idea of duration — of earthly im- mortality — that gives such a mysterious interest to our own portraits. Walter and Elinor were not in- 200 TWICE-TOLD TALES. sensible to this feeling, and hastened to the painter's room, punctually at the appointed hour, to meet those pictured shapes which were to be their representatives with posterity. The sunshine flashed after them into the apartment, but left it somewhat gloomy as they closed the door. Their eyes were immediately attracted to their por- traits, which rested against the farthest waJl of the room. At the first glance, through the dim light and the distance, seeing themselves in precisely their nat- ural attitudes, and with all the air that they recognized so well, they uttered a simultaneous exclamation of delight. "There we stand," cried Walter, enthusiastically, "fixed in sunshine forever! No dark passions can gather on our faces 1 " "No," said Elinor, more calmly; "no dreary change can sadden us." This was said while they were approaching, and had yet gained only an imperfect view of the pictures. The painter, after saluting them, busied himself at a table in completing a crayon sketch, leaving his visit- ors to form their own judgment as to his perfected labors. At intervals, he sent a glance from beneath his deep eyebrows, watching their countenances in profile, witii his pencil suspended over the sketch. They had now stood some moments, each in front of the other's picture, contemplating it with entranced attention, but without uttering a word. At length, Walter stepped forward — then back — viewing Eli- nor's portrait in various lights, and finally spoke. " Is there not a change ? " said he, in a doubtful and meditative tone. "Yes; the perception of it grpws more vivid tfep longer I look. It is certainly THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 201 the same picture that I saw yesterday ; the dress — the features — all are the same ; and yet something is altered." " Is then the picture less like than it was yester- day ? " inquired the painter, now drawing near, with irrepressible interest. " The features are perfect, Elinor," answered Wal- ter, " and, at the first glance, the expression seemed also hers. But, I could fancy that the portrait has changed countenance, while I have been looking at it. The eyes are fixed on mine with a strangely sad and anxious expression. Nay, it is grief and terror ! Is this like Elinor ? " " Compare the living face with the pictured one," said the painter. Walter glanced sidelong at his mistress, and started. Motionless and absorbed — fascinated, as it were — in contemplation of Walter's portrait, Elinor's face had assumed precisely the expression of which he had just been complaining. Had she practised for whole hours before a mirror, she could not have caught the look so successfully. Had the picture itself been a mirror, it could not have thrown back her present aspect with stronger and more melancholy truth. She appeared quite unconscious of the dialogue between the artist and her lover. " Elinor," exclaimed Walter, in amazement, " what change has come over you?" She did not hear him, nor desist from her fixed gaze, till he seized her hand, and thus attracted her notice ; then, with a sudden tremor, she looked from ihe picture to the face of the original. " Do you see no change in your portrait ? " asked she. 202 TWICE-TOLD TALES. "In mine? — None ! " replied Walter, examining it " But let me see ! Yes ; there is a slight change — an improvement, I think, in the picture, though none in the likeness. It has a livelier expression than yester- day, as if some bright thought were flashing from the eyes, and about to be uttered from the lips. Now that I have caught the look, it becomes very decided." While he was intent on these observations, Elinor turned to the painter. She regarded him with grief and awe, and felt that he repaid her with sympathy and commiseration, though wherefore, she could but vaguely guess. " That look ! " whispered she, and shuddered. " How came it there ? " " Madam," said the painter, sadly, taking her hand, and leading her apart, " in both these pictures, I have painted what I saw. The artist — the true artist — must look beneath the exterior. It is his gift — hisi proudest, but often a melancholy one — to see the in- most soul, and, by a power indefinable even to him- self, to make it glow or darken upon the canvas, in glances that express the thought and sentiment of years. Would that I might convince myself of error in the present instance ! " They had now approached the table, on which were heads in chalk, hands ahnost as expressive as ordinary faces, ivied church towers, thatched cottages, old thim- der-stricken trees. Oriental and antique costume, and all such picturesque vagaries of an artist's idle mo- ments. Turning them over, with seeming careless- ness, a crayon sketch of two figures was disclosed. " If I have failed," continued he — " if your heart does not see itself reflected in your own portrait — if you have no secret cause to trust my delineation of the THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 203 other — it is not yet too late to alter them. I might change the action of these figures too. But would it ijiflaence the event ? " He directed her notice to the sketch. A thrill ran through Elinor's frame ; a shriek was upon her lips ; but she stifled it, with the self-command that becomes habitual to all who hide thoughts of fear and anguish within their bosoms. Turning from the table, she perceived that Walter had advanced near enough to have seen the sketch, though she coidd not determine whether it had caught his eye. " We wiU not have the pictures altered," said she, hastily. " If mine is sad, I shall but look the gayer for the contrast." " Be it so," answered the painter, bowing. " May four griefs be such fanciful ones that only your pict- ure may mourn for them ! For your joys — may they be true and deep, and paint themselves upon this lovely face till it quite belie my art ! " After the marriage of Walter and Elinor, the pict- ures formed the two most splendid ornaments of their abode. They hung side by side, separated by a nar- row panel, appearing to eye each other constantly, yet always returning the gaze of the spectator. Trav- elled gentlemen, who professed a laiowledge of such subjects, reckoned these among the most admirable specimens of modern portraiture ; wliile common ob- servers compared them with iJie originals, feature by feature, and were rapturous in praise of the likeness. But it was on a third class — neither travelled con- noisseurs nor common observers, but people of natural sensibility — that the pictures wrought their strongest tffect. Such persons might gaze carelessly at first, but, becoming interested, would return day after day, 204 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and study these painted faces like the pages of a mys* tic volume. Walter Ludlow's portrait attracted their earliest notice. In the absence of himself and his bride, they sometimes disputed as to the expression which the painter had intended to throw upon the features ; all agreeing that there was a look of earnest import, though no two explained it alike. There was less diversity of opinion in regard to Elinor's picture. They differed, indeed, in their attempts to estimate the nature and depth of the gloom that dwelt upon her face, but agreed that it was gloom, and alien from the natural temperament of their youthful friend. A certain fanciful person announced, as the result of much scrutiny, that both these pictures were parts of one design, and that the melancholy strength of feel- ing, in Elinor's countenance, bore reference to the more vivid emotion, or, as he termed it, the wild pas- sion, in that of Walter. Though unskilled in the art, he even began a sketch, in which the action of the twa figures was to correspond with their mutual expre* sion. It was whispered among friends that, day by day, Elinor's face was assuming a deeper shade of pensive- ness, which threatened soon to render her too true a counterpart of her melancholy picture. Walter, on the other hand, instead of acquiring the vivid look which the painter had given him on the canvas, became reserved and downcast, with no outward flashes of emotion, however it might be smouldering within. In course of time, Elinor hung a gorgeous curtain of pur- ple silk, wrought with flowers and fringed with heavy golden tassels, before the pictures, under pretence that the dust would tarnish their hues, or the light dim them. It was enough. Her visitors felt, that the THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 205 massive folds of the silk must never be withdrawB, nor the portraits mentioned in her presence. Time wore on; and the painter came again. He had been far enough to the north to see the silver cas- cade of the Crystal Hills, and to look over the vast round of cloud and forest from the summit of New England's loftiest mountain. But he did not profane that scene by the mockery of his art. He had also lain in a canoe on the bosom of Lake George, making his soul the mirror of its loveliness and grandeur, till not a picture in the Vatican was more vivid than his recollection. He had gone with the Indian hunters to Niagara, and there, again, had flung his hopeless pencil down the precipice, feeling that he could as soon paint the roar, as aught else that goes to make up the won- drous cataract. In truth, it was seldom his impulse to copy natural scenery, except as a framework for the delineations of the htunan form and face, instinct with thought, passion, or suffering. With store of such his adventurous ramble had enriched him : the stem dig- nity of Indian chiefs; the dusky loveliness of In- dian girls ; the domestic life of wigwams ; the stealthy march; the battle beneath gloomy pine-trees; the frontier fortress with its garrison ; the anomaly of the old French partisan, bred in courts, but grown gray in shaggy deserts; such were the scenes and portraits that he had sketched. The glow of perilous moments ; flashes of wild feeling ; struggles of flerce power, — love, hate, grief, frenzy ; in a word, all the worn-out heart of the old earth had been revealed to him under a new form. His portfolio was filled with graphic illustrations of the volume of his memory, which genius would transmute into its own substance, and imbue with immortality. He felt that the deep wisdom in his art, which he had sought so far, was found. 206 TWICE-TOLD TALES. But amid stem or lovely nature, in the perils of the forest or its overwhelming peacefulness, still there had been two phantoms, the companions of his way. Like I all other men around whom an engrossing purpose wreathes itself, he was insulated from the mass of' human Idnd. He had no aim — no pleasure — no sympathies — but what were ultimately connected with i his art. Though gentie in manner and upright in in- tent and action, he did not possess kindly feelings ; his heart was cold ; no living creature could be brought near enough to keep him warm. For these two beings, however, he had felt, in its greatest intensity, the sort of interest which always allied him to the subjects of his pencil. He had pried into their souls with his keenest insight, and pictured the result upon their features with his utmost skill, so as barely to fall short of that standard which no genius ever reached, his own severe conception. He had caught from the duskiness of the future — at least, so he fancied — a feai-fid secret, and had obscurely revealed it on the portraits. So much of himself — of his imagination and all other powers — had been lavished on the study of Walter and Elinor, that he almost regarded them as creations of his own, like the thousands with which he had peopled the realms of Picture. Therefore did they flit through the twilight of the woods, hover on the mist of waterfalls, look forth from the mirror of the lake, nor melt away in the noontide sun. They haunted his pictorial fancy, not as mockeries of life, nor pale goblins of the dead, but in the guise of por- traits, each with the unalterable expression which his magic had evoked from the caverns of the soul. He could not recross the Atiantic till he had again beheld the originals of those airy pictures. THE PROPHETIC PICTURES. 207 "O glorious Art!" thus mused tHe enthusiastic painter as he trod the street, "thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable forms, that wander in nothingness, start into being at thy beck. The dead live again. Thou recallest them to their old scenes, and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a bet- ter life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeting moments of History. With thee there is no Past, for, at thy touch, all that is great becomes forever present; and illustrious men live through long ages, in the visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. O potent Art! as thou bringest the faintly revealed Past to stand in that narrow strip of simlight, which we call Now, canst thou summon the shrouded Future to meet her there? Have I not achieved it? Am I not thy Prophet?" Thus, with a proud, yet melancholy fervor, did he almost cry aloud, as he passed through the toilsome street, among people that knew not of his reveries, nor, could understand nor care for them. It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him by whose example he may regiUate ( himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes wiU become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the real- ity, of a madman. Reading other bosoms with an acuteness almost preternatural, the painter failed to see the disorder of his own. "And this should be the house," said he, looking up and down the front, before he knocked. "Heaven help my brains ! That picture ! Methinks it will never vanish. Whether I look at the windows or the door, there it is framed within them, painted strongly, and glowing in the richest tints — the faces of the Dortraits — the fiexires and action of the sketch ! " 208 TWICE-TOLD TALES. He knocked. "The Portraits! Axe they within?" inquired he of the domestic ; then recollecting himself — " your master and mistress ! Are they at home ? " " They are, sir," said the servant, adding, as he no- ticed that picturesque aspect of which the painter could never divest himself, "and the Portraits too ! " The guest was admitted into a parlor, communi- cating by a central door with an interior room of the same size. As the first apartment was empty, he passed to the entrance of the second, within which his eyes were greeted by those living personages, as well as their pictured representatives, who had long been the objects of so singular an interest. He invol- untarily paused on the threshold. They had not perceived his approach. Walter and Elinor were standing before the portraits, whence the former had just flung back the rich and voliuninous folds of the silken curtain, holding its golden tassel with one hand, while the other grasped timt of his bride. The pictures, concealed for months, gleamed forth again in undiminished splendor, appearing to throw a sombre light across the room, rather than to be disclosed by a borrowed radiance. That of Elinor had been almost prophetic. A pensiveness, and next a gentle sorrow, had successively dwelt upon her coun- tenance, deepening, with the lapse of time, into a quiet anguish. A mixture of affright would now have made it the very expression of the portrait. Walter's face was moody and dull, or animated only by fitful flashes, which left a heavier darkness for their momentary iUiunlnation. He looked from Elinor to her portrait, and thence to his own, in the contemplation of which he finally stood absorbed. rilE PROPRHTIO /'ICTURES. 209 The painter seemed to hear the step of Destiny approaching behind him, on its progress towards its victims. A strange thought darted into his mind. Was not his own the form in which that destiny had embodied itself, and he a chief agent of the coming 8vil which he had foreshadowed ? Still, Walter remained silent before the picture, communing with it as with his own heart, and aban* doning himself to the spell of evil influence that the painter had cast upon the features. Gradually his eyes kindled ; while as Elinor watched the increasing wildness of his face, her own assumed a look of ter- ror ; and when at last he turned upon her, the resem- blance of both to their portraits was complete. " Our fate is upon us ! " howled Walter. " Die ! " Drawing a knife, he sustained her, as she was sink- ing to the ground, and aimed it at her bosom. In the action, and iu the look and attitude of each, the painter beheld the figures of his sketch. The picture, with all its tremendous coloring, was finished. " Hold, madman ! " cried he, sternly. He had advanced from the door, and interposed himself between the wretched beings, with the same sense of power to regulate their "destiny as to alter a scene upon the canvas. He stood like a magician, controlling tiie phantoms which he had evoked. " What ! " muttered Walter Ludlow, as he relapsed from fierce excitement into silent gloom, " Does Fate impede its own decree ? " " Wretched lady ! " said the painter, " did I not warn you ? " " You did," replied Elinor, calmly, as her terror gave place to the quiet grief which it had disturbed. "But— Ilovedhim!" VOL.. I. 11 210 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Is there not a deep moral in the tale ? Could the result of one, or all our deeds, be shadowed forth and set before us, some would call it Fate, and hurry on- ward, others be swept along by their passionate de- ,' sires, and none be turned aside bj the FbofhexiO PiCTUBBS. DAVID SWAN. A FAMTASY. We can be but partially acquainted even with th« events wHch actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable other events — if such they may be called — which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying their near approach, by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be too full of hope and fear, exultation or . disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true^ serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan. We have nothing to do with David until we find him, at the age of twenty, on the high road from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small tiealer in the grocery line,, was to take him be- hind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents, and had received an ordinary school education, with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy. After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade, and await the coming up of the stage-coach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared « little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the 212 TWICE-TOLD TALES. midst, and sucH a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer but David Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips, and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons, tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sun- beams could not reach him ; the dust did not yet rise from the road after the heavy rain of yesterday ; and his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured drowsily beside him ; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky over head ; and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he did not dream of. While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other peo- ple were wide awake, and passed to and fro, afoot, on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles, along the sunny road by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there ; some merely glanced that way, without admit- ting the slumberer among their busy thoughts ; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose hearts were brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluiiy on David Swan. A middle- aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked charming in his sleep. A tem- perance lecturer saw him, and wrought poor David into the texture of his evening's discourse, as an awful instance of dead drunkenness by the roadside. But censure, praise, merriment, scorn, and indifference were all one, or rather all nothing, to David Swan. He had slept only a few moments when a brown carriage, drawn by a handsome pair of horses, bowled DAVID SWAN. 213 easily along, and was brought to a stand-still nearly in front of David's resting-place. A linchpin had fallen out, and permitted one of the wheels to slide off. The damage was slight, and occasioned merely a mo- mentary alarm to an elderly merchant and his wife, who were returning to Boston in the carriage. While the coachman and a servant were replacing the wheel, the lady and gentleman sheltered themselves beneath the maple-trees, and there espied the bubbling fount- ain, and David Swan asleep beside it. Impressed with the awe which the hiunblest sleeper usually sheds around him, the merchant trod as lightly as the gout would allow; and his spouse took good heed not to rustle her silk gown, lest David should start up all of a sudden. " How soundly he sleeps ! " whispered the old gen- tleman. "From what a depth he draws that easy breath! Such sleep as that, brought on without an opiate, would be worth more to me than half my in- come ; for it would suppose health and an imtroubled mind.'" "And youth, besides," said the lady. "Healthy and quiet age does not sleep thus. Our slumber is no more like his than our wakefulness." The longer they looked the more did this elderly couple feel interested in the imknown youth, to whom the wayside and the maple shade were as a secret chamber, with the rich gloom of damask curtains brooding over him. Perceiving that a stray simbeam glimmered down upon his face, the lady contrived to twist a branch aside, so as to iutercept it. And hav- mg done this little act of kindness, she began to feel like a mother to him. "Providence seems to have laid him here," whi» 214 TWICE-TOLD TALES. pered she to her husband, "and to have brought U8 hither to find him, after our disappointment in our cousin's son. Methinks I can see a likeness to our departed Henry. Shall we waken him ? " " To what purpose ? " said the merchant, hesitating. ** We know nothing of the youth's character." " That open countenance ! " replied his wife, in the same hushed voice, yet earnestly. "This innocent sleep!" While these whispers were passing, the sleeper's heart did not throb, nor his breath become agitated, nor his features betray the least token of interest. Yet Fortune was bending over him, just ready to let fall a burden of gold. The old merchant had lost his only son, and had no heir to his wealth except a dis« tant relative, with whose conduct he was dissatisfied. In such cases, people sometimes do stranger things than to act the magician, and awaken a young man to splendor who fell asleep in poverty. " Shall we not waken him ? " repeated the lady, persuasively. "The coach is ready, sir," said the servant, behind. The old couple started, reddened, and hurried away, mutually wondering that they should ever have dreamed of doing anything so very ridiculous. The merchant threw himself back in the carriage, and oc- cupied his mind with the plan of a magnificent asylum for unfortunate men of business. Meanwhile, David Swan enjoyed his nap. The carriage could not have gone above a mile or two, when a pretty young girl came along, with a tripping pace, which showed precisely how her little heart was dancing in her bosom. Perhaps it was this meny kind of motion that caused — is there any harm DAVID SWAN. 215 In saying it ? — her garter to slip its knot. Conscious that the silken girth — if silk it were — was relaxing its hold, she tnmed aside into the shelter of the maple- trees, and there found a young man asleep by the spring! Blushing as red as any rose that she should have intruded into a gentleman's bedchamber, and for such a purpose, too, she was about to make her escape on tiptoe. But there was peril near the sleeper. A monster of a bee had been wandering overhead — buzz, buzz, buzz — now among the leaves, now flashing through the strips of simshine, and now lost in the dark shade, till finally he appeared to be settling on the eyelid of David Swan. The sting of a bee is some- times deadly. As free hearted as she was innocent, the girl attacked the intruder with her handkerchief, brushed him soundly, and drove him from beneath the maple shade. How sweet a picture ! This good deed accomplished, with quickened breath, and a deeper blush, she stole a glance at the youthful stranger for whom she had been battling with a dragon in the air. "He is handsome ! " thought she, and blushed redder yet. How could it be that no dream of bliss grew so .strong within him, that, shattered by its very strength, it should part asunder, and allow him to perceive the girl among its phantoms ? Why, at least, did no smile of welcome brighten upon his face ? She was come, tiie maid whose soul, according to the old and beauti- ful idea, had been severed from his own, and whom» in all his vague but passionate desires, he yearned to meet. Her, only, could he love with a perfect love ; iiim, only, could she receive into the depths of her feeart ; and now her image was faintly blushing in the 216 TWICE-TOLlJ TALES. fountain, by Ms side ; should it pass away, its happj lustre would never gleam upon his life again. " How sound he sleeps ! " murmured the girl. She departed, but did not trip along the road so lightly as when she came. Now, this girl's father was a thriving country mep chant in the neighborhood, and happened, at that identical time, to be looking out for just such a young man as David Swan. Had David formed a wayside acquaintance with the daughter, he would have become the father's clerk, and all else' in natural succession. So here, again, had good fortune — the best of for- tunes — stolen so near that her garments brushed against him ; and he knew nothing of the matter. The girl was hardly out of sight when two men turned aside beneath the maple shade. Both had dark faces, set off by cloth caps, which were drawn down aslant over their brows. Their dresses were shabby, yet had a certain smartness. These were a couple of rascals who got their living by whatever the devil sent them, and now, in the interim of other business, had staked the joint profits of their next piece of villany on a game of cards, which was to have been decided here imder the trees. But, finding David asleep by the spring, one of the rogues whispered to his fellow, — " Hist ! — Do you see that bundle under his head ? " The other villain nodded, winked, and leered. " I '11 bet you a horn of brandy," said the first, " that ihe chap has either a pocket-book, or a snug little hoard of small change, stowed away amongst his shirts. And if not there, we shall find it in his pantaloons pocket." " But how if he wakes ? " said the other. DAVID SWAN. 217 Hia companion thrust aside his waistcoat, pointed *o the handle of a dirk, and nodded. " So be it ! " muttered the second villain. They approached the unconscious David, and, while one pointed the dagger towards his heart, the other began to search the bundle beneath his head. Their two faces, grim, wrinkled, and ghastly with guilt and fear, bent over their victim, looldng horrible enough to be mistaken for fiends, should he suddenly awake. Nay, had the villains ^anced aside into the spring, even they would hardly have known themselves as reflected there. But David Swan had never worn a more tranquil aspect, even when asleep on his mother's breast. " I must take away the bundle," whispered one. " If he stirs, I 'U strike," muttered the other. But, at this moment, a dog, scenting along the ground, came in beneath the maple-trees, and gazed alternately at each of these wicked men, and then at the quiet sleeper. He then lapped out of the fountain. " Pshaw ! " said one villain. " We can do nothing now. The dog's master must be close behind." " Let 's take a drink and be off," said the other. The man with the dagger thrust back the weapon into his bosom, and drew forth a pocket pistol, but not of that kind which kills by a single discharge. It was a flask of liquor, with a block-tin tumbler screwed upon the mouth. Each drank a comfortable dram, and left the spot, with so many jests, and such Laughter at their unaccomplished wickedness, that they might be said to have gone on their way re 'oicing. In a few hotirs they had forgotten the whole affair, nor once imagined that the recording angel had 218 TWICE-TOLD TALES. rmtten down the crime of murder against their sonla, in letters as durable as eternity. As for David Swan, he still slept quietly, neither conscious of the shadow of death when it hung over him, nor of the glow of renewed life when that shadow was withdrawn. He slept, but no longer so quietly as at first. An hour's repose had snatched, from his elastic frame, the weariness with which many hours of toil had bur- dened it. Now he stirred — now, moved his lips, without a soimd — now, talked, in an inward tone, to the noonday spectres of his dream. But a noise of wheels came rattling louder and louder along the road, until it dashed through the dispersing mist of David's slumber — and there was the stage^joach. He started up with all his ideas about him. "Halloo, driver ! — Take a passenger?" shouted he. " Eoom on top ! " answered the driver. Up mounted David, and bowled away merrily towards Boston, without so much as a parting glance at that fountain of dreamlike vicissitude. He knew not that a phantom of Wealth had thrown a golden hue upon its waters — nor that one of Love had sighed softly to their murmur — nor that one of Death had threatened to crimson them with his blood — all, in the brief hour since he lay down to sleep. Sleep- ing or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen. Does it not argue a superintending Providence that, while view, less and unexpected events thrust themselves contin- ually athwart our path, there should stiU be regularity enough in mortal life to render foresight even pas tiaUy available? SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE. So I I have climbed high, and my reward is smaBL Here I stand, with wearied knees, earth, indeed, at a dizzy depth below, but heaven far, far beyond me still. Oh that I could soar up into the very zenith, where man never breathed, nor eagle ever flew, and vrhere the ethereal azure melts away from the eye, and appears only a deepened shade of nothingness ! And yet I shiver at that cold and solitary thought. What clouds are gathering in the golden west, with direful intent against the brightness and the warmth of this summer afternoon ! They are ponderous air ships, black as death, and freighted with the tempest ; and at intervals their thunder, the signal guns of that unearthly squadron, rolls distant along the deep of heaven. These nearer heaps of fleecy vapor — me- thinks I could roll and toss upon them the whole day long ! — seem scattered here and there for the repose of tired pilgrims through the sky. Perhaps — for who can tell ? — beautiful spirits are disporting them- selves there, and will bless my mortal eye with the brief appearance of their curly locks of golden light, and laughing faces, fair and faint as the people of a rosy dream. Or, where the floating mass so imper- fectly obstructs the color of the firmament, a slender foot and fairy limb, resting too heavily upon the frail support, may be thrust through, and suddenly with« drawn, while longing fancy follows them in vain. Tender again is an airy archipelago, where the sun 220 TWICE-TOLD TALES. beams love to linger va. their journeyings tlirough space. Every one of those little clouds has been dipped and steeped in radiance, which the slightest pressure might disengage in sUvery profusion, like water wnmg from a searmaid's hair. Bri^t they are as a yoimg man's visions, and, like them, would be realized in dullness, obscurity, and tears. I will loob on them no more. In three parts of the visible circle, whose centre is this spire, I discern cultivated fields, villages, white country seats, the waving lines of rivulets, little placid lakes, and here and there a rising ground, that would fain be termed a hill. On the fourth side is the sea, stretching away towards a viewless boundary, blue and calm, except where the passing anger of a shadow flits across its surface, and is gone. Hitherward, a broad inlet penetrates far into the land ; on the verge of the harbor, formed by its extremity, is a town ; and over it am I, a watchman, aU-heeding and tmheeded. Oh that the multitude of chimneys could speak, like those of Madrid, and betray, in smoky whispers, the secrets of all who, since their first foundation, have assembled at the hearths within ! Oh that the Limp- ing Devil of Le Sage would perch beside me here, extend his wand over this contiguity of roofs, uncove* every chamber, and make me familiar with their in- habitants! The most desirable mode of existence might be that of a spiritualized Paul Piy, hovering iavisible round man and woman, witnessing their deeds, searching into their hearts, borrowing brightness from ■iheir felicity and shade from their sorrow, and retaia- ing no emotion peculiar to himself. But none of these things are possible ; and if I would know the interioi of brick walls, or the mystery of human bosoms, I cav but guess. SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE. 221 Yonder is a fair street, extending north and south. The stately mansions are placed each on its carpet of vrerdant grass, and a long flight of steps descends from every door to the pavement. Ornamental trees — the broad-leafed horse-chestnut, the elm so lofty and bend- bg, the graceful but infrequent willow, and others whereof I know not the names — grow thrivingly among brick and stone. The oblique rays of the sun are intercepted by these green citizens, and by the houses, so that one side of the street is a shaded and pleasant walk. On its whole extent there is now but a single passenger, advancing from the upper end ; and he,- unless distance and the medium of a pocket spy- glass do him more than justice, is a fine young man of twenty. He saunters slowly forward, slapping his left hand with his folded gloves, bending his eyes upon the pavement, and sometimes raising them to throw a glance before him. Certainly, he has a pen- sive air. Is he in doubt, or in debt ? Is he, if the question be allowable, in love ? Does he strive to be melancholy and gentleman-like? Or, is he merely overcome by the heat ? But I bid him farewell for the present. The door of one of the houses — an aris- tocratic edifice, with curtains of purple and gold wav- ing from the windows, is now opened, and down the steps come two ladies, swinging their parasols, and lightly arrayed for a summer ramble. Both are yoimg, both are pretty, but methinks the left-hand lass is the fairer of the twain ; and, though she be so serious at this moment, I could swear that tliere is a treasure of gentle fun within her. They stand talking a little while upon the steps, and finally proceed up the street. Meantime, as their faces are now turned from me, J may look elsewhere. 222 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Upon that wharf, and down the corresponding street, is a busy contrast to the quiet scene which I have just noticed. Business evidently has its centre there, and many a man is wasting the summer aiteiv noon in labor and anxiely, in losing riches or in gain' ing them, when he would be wiser to flee away to some pleasant country village, or shaded lake in the forest, or wild and cool sea-beach. I see vessels unlading at the wharf, and precious merchandise strewn upon the ground, abimdantly as at the bottom of the sea, that market whence no goods return, and where there is no captain nor supercargo to render an account of sales. Here, the clerks are diligent with their paper and pencils, and sailors ply the block and tackle tiiab hang over the hold, accompanying their toU with cries, long drawn and roughly melodious, tiU the bales and ptmcheons ascend to upper air. At a little distance a group of gentlemen are assembled round the door of a warehouse. Grave seniors be they, and I would wager — if it were safe in these times to be responsi- ble for any one — that the least eminent among them might vie with old Vicentio, that incomparable traf- ficker of Pisa. I can even select the wealthiest of the company. It is the elderly personage, in somewhat rusty black, with powdered hair, the superfluous white- ness of which is visible upon the cape of his coat. His twenty ships are wafted on some of their many courses by every breeze that blows, and his name — I will venture to say, though I know it not — is a famil- lar sound among the far separated merchants of Europe and the Indies. But I bestow too much of my attention in this quar- ter. On looking again to the long and shady walk, I perceive that the two fair girls have encountered iht SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE. 223 jroong man. After a sort of shyness in the recognition, he turns back with them. Moreover, he has sanctioned my taste in regard to his companions by placing him- self on the inner side of the pavement, nearest the Venus to whom I — enacting, on a steeple top, the part of Paris on the top of Ida — adjudged the golden apple. In two streets, converging at right angles towards my watchtower, I distinguish three different proces- sions. One is a proud array of voluntary soldiers, in bright uniform, resembling, from the height whence 1 look down, the painted veterans that garrison the win- dows of a toyshop. And yet, it stirs my heart ; their regular advance, their nodding plumes, the sunflash on their bayonets and musket barrels, the roU of their drums ascending past me, and the fife ever and anon piercing through — these things have wakened a war- like fire, peaceful though I be. Close to their rear marches a battalion of school-boys, ranged in crooked and irregular platoons, shouldering sticks, thumping a harsh and unripe clatter from an instrument of tin, and ridiculously aping the intricate manoeuvres of the foremost band. Nevertheless, as slight difPerences are scarcely perceptible from a church spire, one might be tempted to ask, " Which are the boys ? " — or rather, " "Which the men ? " But, leaving these, let us turn to the third procession, which, though sadder in out- ward show, may excite identical reflections in the thoughtful mind, ft is a funeral. A hearse, drawn by a black and bony steed, and covered by a dusty paU ; two or three coaches rumbling over the stones, their drivers half asleep; a dozen couple of careless mourners in their every-day attire ; such was not the Jashion of our fathers, when they carried a friend t« 224 TWICE-TOLD TALES. his grave. There is now no doleful clang of the bell to proclaim sorrow to the town. Was the King of Terrors more awful in those days than in our own, that wisdom and philosophy have been able to produce this change? Not so. Here is a proof that he retains his proper majesty. The military men and the mili- tary boys are wheeling round the corner, and meet the funeral full in the face. Immediately the drum is silent, all but the tap that regulates each simultaneous footfall. The soldiers yield the path to the dusty hearse and unpretending train, and the children quit their ranks, and cluster on the sidewalks, with timo- rous and instinctive curiosity. The mourners enter the churchyard at the base of the steeple, and pause by an open grave among the burial stones; the lightning glimmers on them as they lower down the coffin, and the thunder rattles heavily while they throw the earth upon its lid. Verily, the shower is near, and I trem- ble for the young man and the girls, who have now disappeared from the long and shady street. How various are the situations of the people covered by the roofs beneath me, and how diversified are the events at this moment befalling them ! The new born, the aged, the dying, the strong in life, and the recent dead, are in the chambers of these many mansions. The full of hope, the happy, the miserable, and the desperate, dwell together within the circle of my glance. In some of the houses over which my eyes roam so coldly, guilt is entering into hearts that are still tenanted by a debased and trodden virtue, — guilt is on the very edge of commission, and the im- pending deed might be averted ; guilt is done, and the criminal wonders if it be irrevocable. There are broad thoughts struggling in my mind, and, were I able to SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE. 225 give them distinctness, they would make their way in eloquence. Lo ! the raindrops are descending. The clouds, within a little time, have gathered over all the sky, hanging heavily, as if about to drop in one unbroken mass upon the earth. At intervals, the lightning flashes from their brooding hearts, quivers, disappears, and then comes the thunder, travelling slowly after its twin-born flame. A strong wind has sprung up, howls through the darkened streets, and raises the dust in dense bodies, to rebel against the ap- proaching storm. The disbanded soldiers fly, the fu- neral has already vanished like its dead, and all people hurry homeward — all that have a home ; while a few lounge by the corners, or trudge on desperately, at their leisure. In a narrow lane, which communicates with the shady street, I discern the rich old mer- chant, putting himseK to the top of his speed, lest the rain should convert his hair powder to a paste. Un- happy gentleman ! By the slow vehemence and pain- ful moderation wherewith he journeys, it is but too evident that Podagra has left its thrilling tenderness in his great toe. But yonder, at a far more rapid pace, come three other of my acquaintance, the two pretty girls and the young man, unseasonably interrupted in their walk. Their footsteps are supported by the risen dust, — the wind lends them its velocity, — they fly like three sea-birds driven landward by the tempestu- ous breeze. The ladies would not thus rival Atalanta if they but knew that any one were at leisure to ob- serve them. Ah ! as they hasten onward, laughing i the angry face of nature, a sudden catastrophe ha chanced. At the corner where the narrow lane enters into the street, they come plump against the old mer- ^ant, whose tortoise motion has just brought him to VOL. 1. 15 226 TWICE-TOLD TALES. that point. He likes not the sweet encounter; the darkness of the whole air gathers speedily upon his visage, and there is a pause on both sides. Finally, he thrusts aside the youth with little courtesy, seizes an arm of each of the two girls, and plods onward, like a magician with a prize of captive fairies. AU this is easy to be understood. How disconsolate the poor lover stands ! regardless of the rain that threatens an exceeding damage to his well-fashioned habiMments, till he catches a backward glance of mirth from a bright eye, and turns away with whatever comfort it conveys. The old man and his daughters are safely housed, and now the storm lets loose its fury. In every dwell- ing I perceive the faces of the chambermaids as they shut down the windows, excluding the impetuous shower, and shrinking away from the quick fiery glare. The large drops descend with force upon the slated roofs, and rise again in smoke. There is a rush and roar, as of a river through the air, and muddy streams bubble majestically along the pave- ment, whirl their dusky foam into the kennel, and disappear beneath iron grates. Thus did Aiethusa sink. I love not my station here aloft, in the midst of the tumult which I am powerless to direct or quell, with the blue lightning wrinkling on my brow, and the thunder muttering its first awful syllables in my ear. I will descend. Yet let i^i^ give another glance to the sea, where the foam breaks out in long white lines upon a broad expaiise of blackness, or boils up in far distant points, like snowy mountain tops in the eddies of a fiood ; and let me look once more at the green plain, and little hills of the country, over which the giant of the storm is striding in robes of mist, and at SIGHTS FROM A STEEPLE. 227 the town, whose obscured and desolate streets might beseem a city of the dead ; and turning a single mo- ment to the sky, now gloomy as an author's prospects, I prepare to resume my station on lower earth. But stay I A little speck of azure has widened in the western heavens ; the sunbeams find a passage, and go rejoicing through the tempest ; and on yonder darkest cloud, bom, like hallowed hopes, of the glory of another world and the trouble and tears of thiS) brightens forth the Bainbow I THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS. In those strange old times, when fantastic dreams and madmen's reveries were realized among the actual circumstances of life, two persons met together at an appointed hour and place. One was a lady, graceful in form and fair of feature, though pale and troubled, and smitten with an imtimely blight in what shotdd have been the fuUest bloom of her years ; the other was an ancient and meanly-dressed woman, of ill-favored aspect, and so withered, shrunken, and de- crepit, that even the space since she bejgan to decay must have exceeded the ordinary term of human existence. In the spot where they encountered, no mortal could observe them. Three little hills stood near each other, and down in the midst of them sunk a hollow basin, almost mathematically circular, two or three hundred feet in breadth, and of such depth that a stately cedar might but just be visible above the sides. Dwarf pines were numerous upon the hills, and partly fringed the outer verge of the intermediate hollow, within which there was nothing but the brown grass of October, and here and there a tree trunk that had fallen long ago, and lay mouldering with no green successor from its roots. One of these masses of decaying wood, formerly a majestic oak, rested close beside a pool of green and sluggish water at the bottom of the basin. Such scenes as this (so gray tradition tells) were once the resort of the Power of Evil and his plighted subjects ; and here, at midnight THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS. 229 or on the dim verge of evening, they were said to stand round the mantling pool, disturbing its putrid waters in the performance of an impious baptismal rite. The chill beauty of an autumnal sunset was now gilding the three lull-tops, whence a paler tint stole down their sides into the hollow. " Here is our pleasant meeting come to pass," said the aged crone, " according as thou hast desired. Say quickly what thou wouldst have of me, for there is but a short hour that we may tarry here." As the old withered woman spoke, a smile glim- mered on her countenance, like lamplight on the wall of a sepulchre. The lady trembled, and cast her eyes upward to the verge of the basin, as if meditating to return with her purpose unaccomplished. But it was not so ordained. " I am a stranger in this land, as you know," said she at length. " Whence I come it matters not ; but I have left those behind me with whom my fate was intimately bound, and from whom I am cut off for- ever. There is a weight in my bosom that I cannot away with, and I have come hither to inquire of their welfare." "And who is there by this green pool that can bring thee news from the ends of the earth ? " cried the old woman, peering into the lady's face. "Not from my lips mayst thou hear these tidings ; yet, be thou bold, and the daylight shall not pass away from yonder hiU-top before thy wish be granted." " I will do your bidding though I die," replied the lady desperately. The old woman seated herself on the trunk of the fallen tree, threw aside the hood that shrouded her gray looks, and beckoned her companion to draw near. 830 TWICE-TOLD TALES. " Eiieel down," she said, " and lay your forehead on my knees." She hesitated a moment, but the anxiety that had long been kindling burned fiercely up within her. As she knelt down, the border of her garment was dipped into the pool ; she laid her forehead on the old woman's knees, and the latter drew a cloak about the lady's face, so that she was in darkness. Then she heard the muttered words of prayer, in the midst of which she started, and would have arisen. "Let me flee, — let me flee and hide myself, that they may not look upon me ! " she cried. But, with returning recollection, she hushed herself, and was still as death. For it seemed as if other voices — familiar in in- fancy, and unforgotten through many wanderings, and in all the vicissitudes of her heart and fortune — were mingling with the accents of the prayer. At first the words were faint and indistinct, not rendered so by distance, but rather resembling the dim pages of a book which we strive to read by an imperfect and gradually brightening light. In such a manner, as the prayer proceeded, did those voices strengthen upon the ear ; till at length the petition ended, and the con- versation of an aged man, and of a woman broken and decayed like himself, became distinctly audible to the lady as she knelt. But those strangers appeared not to stand in the hollow depth between the three hiUs. Their voices were encompassed and reechoed by the walls of a chamber, the windows of which were rattling in the breeze ; the regular vibration of a clock, the crackling of a fire, and the tinkling of the embers as they fell among the ashes, rendered the scene al- most as vivid as if painted to the eye. By a melanr THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS. 281 choly hearth sat these two old people, the man calmly despondent, the woman querulous and tearful, and their words were all of sorrow. They spoke of a daughter, a wanderer they knew not where, bearing dishonor along with her, and leaving shame and afflic- tion to bring tibeir gray heads to the grave. They alluded also to other and more recent woe, but in the midst of their talk their voices seemed to melt into the sound of the wind sweeping mournfully among the au- tumn leaves ; and when the lady lifted her eyes, there was she kneeling in the hollow between three hills. "A weary and lonesome time yonder old couple have of it," remarked the old woman, smiling in the lady's face. " And did you also hear them ? " exclaimed she, a sense of intolerable humiliation triumphing over her agony and fear. " Yea ; and we have yet more to hear," replied the old woman. " Wherefore, cover thy face quickly." Again the withered hag poured forth the monoto- nous words of a prayer that was not meant to be ac- ceptable in heaven ; and soon, in the pauses of hei' breath, strange murmurings began to thicken, grad- ually increasing so as to drown and overpower the charm by which they grew. Shrieks pierced through the obscurity of sound, and were succeeded by the singing of sweet female voices, which, in their turn, gave way to a wild roar of laughter, broken suddenly by groanings and sobs, forming altogether a ghastly confusion of terror and mourning and mirth. Chains were rattling, fierce and stern voices uttered threats, and the scourge resounded at their command. All these noises deepened and became substantial to the listener's ear, till she could distinguish every soft and TWICE-TOLD TALES. dreamy accent of the love songs tliat died causelessly into funeral hynms. She shuddered at the unpro- voked wrath which blazed up like the spontaneous kindling of flame, and she grew faint at the fearful merriment raging miserably around her. In the midst of this wild scene, where unboun'd passions jostled e&ch other in a drunken career, there was one solemn voice of a man, and a manly and melodious voice it might once have been. He went to and fro continually, and his feet sounded upon the floor. In each member of that frenzied company, whose own burning thoughts had become their exclusive world, he sought an auditor for the story of his individual wrong, and interpreted their laughter and tears as hia reward of scorn or pity. He spoke of woman's per- fidy, of a wife who had broken her holiest vows, of a home and heart made desolate. Even as he went on, the shout, the laugh, the shriek, the sob, rose up in unison, till they changed into the hollow, fitful, and uneven sound of the wind, as it fought among the pine- trees on those three lonely lulls. The lady looked up, and there was the withered woman smiling in her face. " Couldst thou have thought there were such merry times in a mad-house ? " iaquired the latter. " True, true," said the lady to herself ; " there is mirth within its waUs, but misery, misery without." ""Wouldst thou hear more?" demanded the old wom94.. "There is one other voice I would fain listen to again," replied tjie lady, faintly. " Then, lay dowij thy head speedily upon my knees, that tho^ n^ayst get thee hence before the hour be past." The go|deQ skirts pf day wer? yet lingering upon THE HOLLOW OF THE THREE HILLS. 233 file Mils, but deep shades obscured the hollow and the pool, as if sombre night were rising thence to over- ipread the world. Again that evil woman began to weave her spell. Long did it proceed unanswered, till the knoUing of a bell stole in among the intervals of her words, like a clang that had travelled far over valley and rising ground, and was just ready to die in the air. The lady shook upon her companion's knees as she heard that boding sound. Stronger it grew and sadder, and deepened into the tone of a death bell, knolling dolefully from some ivy-mantled tower, and bearing tidings of mortality and woe to the cot- tage, to the hall, and to the solitary wayfarer, that all might weep for the doom appointed in turn to them. Then came a measiu-ed tread, passing slowly, slowly on, as of mourners with a coffin, their garments trail- ing on the ground, so that the ear could measure the length of their melancholy array. Before them went the priest, reading the burial service, while the leaves of his book were rustling in the breeze. And though ao voice but his was heard to speak aloud, still there were revilings and anathemas, whispered but distinct, from women and from men, breathed against the daughter who had wrung the aged hearts of her par- ents, — the wife who had betrayed the trusting fond- ness of her husband, — the mother who had sinned against natural affection, and left her child to die. The sweeping sound of the funeral train faded away , like a thin vapor, and the wind, that just before had seemed to shake the coffin pall, moaned sadly round the verge of the Hollow between three Hills. But irhen the old woman stirred the kneeling lady, she lifted not her head. " Here has been a sweet hour's sport ! " said the iithered crone, chuckling to herself. THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAT. A SKETCH OF TKANSITOEY LIFE. Methinks, for a person whose instinct bids hiin rather to pore over the current of life than to plunge into its tumultuous waves, no undesirable retreat were a toll-house beside some thronged thoroughfare of the land. In youth, perhaps, it is good for the observer to run about the earth — to leave the track of his foot" steps far and wide — to mingle himself with the action of numberless vicissitudes ; and, finally, in some calm solitude, to feed a musing spirit on all that he has seen and felt. But there are natures too indolent, or too sensitive, to endure the dust, the sunshine, or the rain, the turmoil of moral and physical elements, to which all the wayfarers of the world expose themselves. For such a man, how pleasant a miracle, could life be made to roll its variegated length by the threshold of his own hermitage, and the great globe, as it were, perform its revolutions and shift its thousand scenes before his eyes without whirling him onward in its course. If any mortal be favored with a lot analogous to this, it is the toll-gatherer. So, at least, have I often fancied, while lounging on a bench at the door of a small square edifice, which stands between shore and shore in the midst of a long bridge. Beneath the timbers ebbs and flows an arm of the sea ; while above, like the life-blood through a great artery, the travel of the north and east is continually throbbing. Sitting oa THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY. 235 the aforesaid bench I amuse myself with a conception, illustrated by numerous pencil sketches in the air, of the toll-gatherer's day. In the morning — dim, gray, dewy summer's morn — the distant roll of ponderous wheels begins to mingle with my old friend's slumbers, creaking more and more harshly through the midst of his dream, and gradually replacing it with realities. Hardly con- scious of the change from sleep to wakefulness, he finds himself partly clad and throwing wide the toll- gates for the passage of a fragrant load of hay. The timbers groan beneath the slow-revolving wheels ; one sturdy yeoman stalks beside the oxen, and, peering from the summit of the hay, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house, is seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles long. The toU is paid — creak, creak, again go the wheels, and the huge haymow van- ishes into the morning mist. As yet, nature is but half awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from the shore with a rattling thunder of the wheels and a confused clatter of hoof s^ comes the never-tiring mail, which has hurried onward at the same headlong, restless rate, all through the quiet night. The bridge resounds in one continued peal as the coach rolls on without a pause, merely af- fording the toll-gatherer a glimpse at the sleepy pas- sengers, who now bestir their torpid limbs and snuff a cordial in the briny air. The morn breathes upon them and blushes, and they forget how wearily the iarkness toiled away. And behold now the fervid day, in his bright chariot, glittering aslant over the waves, nor scorning to throw a tribute of his golden beams on the toll-gatherer's little hermitage. Tha 206 TWICE-TOLD TALES. old man looks eastward, and (for he is a moralizer) frames a simile of the stage-coach and the sun. While the world is rousing itself, we may glance slightly at the scene of our sketch. It sits above the bosom of the broad flood, a spot not of earth, but in the midst of waters, which rush with a murmuring sound among the massive beams beneath. Over the door is a weather-beaten board, inscribed with the rates of toU, in letters so nearly effaced that the gild- ing of the sunshine can hardly make them legible. Beneath the window is a wooden bench, on which a long succession of weary wayfarers have reposed them- selves. Peeping within doors, we perceive the white* washed walls bedecked with sundry lithographic prints and advertisements of various import, and the immense showbill of a wandering caravan. And there sits our good old toll-gatherer, glorified by the early sunbeams. He is a man, as his aspect may announce, of quiet soul, and thoughtful, shrewd, yet simple mind, wh<», of the wisdom which the passing world scatters along the wayside, has gathered a reasonable store. Now the sun smiles upon the landscape, and earth smiles back again upon the sky. Frequent, now, are the travellers. The toll-gatherer's practised ear can distinguish the weight of every vehicle, the number of its wheels, and how many horses beat the resound- ing timbers with their iron tramp. Here, in a sub- stantial family chaise, setting forth betimes to take advantage of the dewy road, come a gentleman and his wife, with their rosy-cheeked little girl sitting glad- Bomely between them. The bottom of the chaise is heaped with multifarious band-boxes, and carpet-bags, and beneath the axle swings a leathern trunk, dusty with yesterday's journey. Next appears a four-wheeled THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY. 237 eariyall, peopled with a round half dozen of prettj girls, all drawn by a single horse, and driven by a single gentleman. Luckless wight, doomed, through a whole summer day, to be the butt of mirth and mis- chief among the frolicsome maidens 1 Bolt upright in a sulky rides a thiu, sour-visaged man, who, as he pays his toU, hands the toU-gatherer a printed card to stick upon the wall. The vinegar-faced traveller proves to be a manufacturer of pickles. Now paces slowly from timber to timber a horseman clad iu black, with a meditative brow, as of one who, whith- ersoever his steed might bear him, would still journey through a mist of brooding thought. He is a country preacher, going to labor at a protracted meeting. The next object passing townward is a butcher's cart, can- opied with its arch of snow-white cotton. Behind comes a " sauceman," driving a wagon f uU of new po- tatoes, green ears of com, beets, carrots, turnips, and summer squashes ; and next, two wrinkled, withered, witch-looking old gossips, in an antediluvian chaise, drawn by a horse of former generations, and going to peddle out a lot of huckleberries. See there, a man trundling a wheelbarrow load of lobsters. And now a milk cart rattles briskly onward, covered with green canvas, and conveying the contributions of a whole herd of cows in large tin canisters. But let aU these pay their toll and pass. Here comes a spectacle that causes the old toll-gatherer to smile benignantly, as if the travellers brought sunshine with them and lav- ished its gladsome influence all along the road. It is a barouche of the newest style, the varnished panels of which reflect the whole moving panorama of the landscape, and show a picture, likewise, of oui Iriend, with his visage broadened, so that his medita 238 TWICE-TOLD TALES. tive smile is transformed to grotesque merriment Within, sits a youth, fresh as the summer mom, and beside him a young lady in white, with white gloves upon her slender hands, and a white veil flowing down over her face. But methinks her blushing cheek bums through the snowy veil. Another white-robed virgin sits in front. And who are these, on whom, and on all that appertains to them, the dust of earth seems never to have settled ? Two lovers, whom the priest has blessed this blessed mom, and sent them forth, with one of the bridemaids, on the matrimonial tour. Take my blessing too, ye happy ones ! May the sky not frown upon you, nor clouds bedew you with their chill and sullen rain! May the hot stin kindle no fever in your hearts ! May your whole life's pilgrim- age be as blissful as this first day's journey, and its close be gladdened with even brighter anticipations than those which hallow your bridal night ! They pass ; and ere the reflection of their joy has faded from his face, another spectacle throws a melan- choly shadow over the spirit of the observing man. In a close carriage sits a fragile figure, muffled carefully, and shrinking even from the mild breath of stunmer. She leans against a manly form, and his arm enfolds her, as if to guard his treasure from some enemy. Let but a few weeks pass, and when he shall strive to em- brace that loved one, he will press only desolation to his heart. And now has morning gathered up her dewy pearls and fled away. The sim roUs blazing through the sky, and cannot find a cloud to cool his face with. The horses toil sluggishly along the bridge, and heave their glistening sides in short quick pantings, when the reins are tightened at the ^x>ll-house. Glisten, too, the faces THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY. 239 of the travellers. Their garments are thicklj bestrewn with dust ; their whiskers and hair look hoary ; their throats are choked with the dusty atmosphere which they have left behind them. No air is stirring on the road. Nature dares draw no breath, lest she should inhale a stifling cloud of dust. "A hot and dusty day ! " cry the poor pilgrims, as they wipe their be- grimed foreheads, and woo the doubtful breeze which, the river bears along with it. " Awful hot ! Dreadful dusty ! " answers the sympathetic toll-gatherer. They start again to pass through the fiery furnace, while he reenters his cool henuitage, and besprinkles it with a pail of briny water from the stream beneath. He thinks within himself that the sun is not so fierce here as elsewhere, and that the gentle air does not forget him in these sultry days. Yes, old friend ; and a quiet heart will make a dog-day temperate. He hears a weary footstep, and perceives a traveller with pack and staff, who sits down upon the hospitable bench, and re- moves the hat from his wet brow. The toll-gatherer administers a cup of cold water, and discovering his guest to be a man of homely sense, he engages him in profitable talk, uttering the maxims of a philosophy which he has found in his own soul, but knows not how it came there. And as the wayfarer makes ready to resume his journey, he tells him a sovereign remedy for blistered feet. Now comes the noontide hour — of all the hours nearest akin to midnight ; for each has its own calm- ness and repose. Soon, however, the world begins to turn again upon its axis, and it seems the busiest epoch of the day ; when an accident impedes the march of sublunary things. The draw being lifted to permit the passage of a schooner, laden with wood from th« 240 TWICE-TOLD TALES. eastern forests, she sticks immovably, right athwart the bridge ! Meanwhile, on both sides of the chasm, a throng of impatient travellers fret and fume. Here are two sailors in a gig, with the top thrown back, both puffing cigars, and swearing all sorts of forecastl« oaths; there, in a smart chaise, a dashingly dressed gentleman and lady, he from a tailor's shopboard and she from a milliner's back room — the aristocrats of a summer afternoon. And what are the haughtiest of us but the ephemeral aristocrats of a summer's day ? Here is a tin pedlar, whose glittering ware bedazzles all beholders, like a travelling meteor or opposition sun ; and on the other side a seller of spruce beer, which brisk liquor is confined in several dozen of stone bottles. Here comes a party of ladies on horseback, in green riding habits, and gentlemen attendant ; and there a flock of sheep for the market, pattering over the bridge with a multitudinous clatter of their little hoofs. Here a Frenchman, with a hand organ on his shoulder ; g,nd there an itinerant Swiss jeweller. On this side, heralded by a blast of clarions and bugles, appears a train of wagons, conveying all the wild beasts of a caravan ; and on that, a company of summer sol- diers, marching from village to village on a festival campaign, attended by the " Brass band." Now look at the scene, and it presents an emblem of the myste- rious confusion, the apparently insolvable riddle, in which individuals, or the great world itself, seem often to be involved. What miracle shall set all things right again? But see ! the schooner has thrust her bulky carcass through the chasm; the draw descends; horse and foot pass onward, and leave the bridge vacant from end to end. "And thus," muses the toll-gatherer, THE TOLL-GATHERER'S DAY. 241 " have I found it with all stoppages, even though the universe seemed to be at a stand." The sage old man I Far westward now the reddening sun throws a broad sheet of splendor across the flood, and to the eyes of distant boatmen gleams brightly among the timbers of the bridge. Strollers come from the town to quaff the freshening breeze. One or two let down long lines, and haul up flapping flounders, or cunners, or small cod, or perhaps an eel. Others, and fair girls among them, with the flush of the hot day still on their cheeks, bend over the railing and watch the heaps of seaweed floating upward with the flowing tide. The horses now tramp heavily along the bridge, and wist- fully bethink them of their stables. Best, rest, thou weary world 1 for to-morrow's round of toil and pleas- ure will be as wearisome as to-day's has been; yet both shall bear thee onward a day's march of eternity. Now the old toll-gatherer looks seaward, and discerns the light-house kindling on a far island, and the stars, too, kindling in the sky, as if but a little way beyond; and mingling reveries of heaven with remembrances of earth, the whole procession of mortal travellers, all the dusty pilgrimage vrhich he has witnessed, seems like a flitting show of phantoms for his thoughtful soul to muse upon. vol.. I. 16 THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN. At fifteen I became a resident in a country ToUaga, more than a hundred miles from home. The morning after my arrival — a September morning, but warm and bright as any in July — I rambled into a wood of oaks, with a few walnut-trees intermixed, forming the closest shade above my head. The ground was rockvj uneven, overgrown with bushes and clumps of young saplings, and traversed only by cattle paths. The track which I chanced to follow led me to a crystal spring, with a border of grass as freshly green as on May morning, and overshadowed by the limb of a great oak. One solitary sunbeam found its way down, and played like a goldfish in the water. From my childhood I have loved to gaze into a spring. The water fiUed a circular basin, small but deep, and set round with stones, some of which were covered with slimy moss, the others naked, and of variegated hue, reddish, white, and brown. The bot- tom was covered with coarse sand, which sparkled in the lonely sunbeam, and seemed to illuminate tiie spring with an unborrowed light. In one spot the gush of the water violently agitated the sand, but with- out obscuring the fountain, or breaking the glassiness if its surface. It appeared as if some living creature were about to emerge — the Naiad of the spring, per- haps — in the shape of a beautiful yoimg woman, with a gown of filmy water moss, a belt of rainbow drops, lud a cold, pui'e, passionless couiiteuance. How would THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN. 24S the beholder shiver, pleasantly yet fearfully, to see her sitting on one of the stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples, and throwing up water to sparkle in the sun ! Wherever she laid her hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist as with morning dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful housewife, to clear the fountain of with- ered leaves, and bits of slimy wood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of com left by cattle in drinking, till the bright sand, in the bright water, was like a treasury of diamonds. But, should the in- truder approach too near, he would find only the drops of a sununer shower glistening about the spot where he had seen her. Reclining on the border of grass, where the dewy goddess should have been, I bent forward, and a pair of eyes met mine within the watery mirror. They were the reflection of my own. I looked again, and lo! another face, deeper in the fountain than my own image, more distinct in all the featui-es, yet faint as thought. The vision had the aspect of a fair young girl, with locks of paly gold. A mirthful expression laughed in the eyes and dimpled over the whole shad- owy countenance, till it seemed just what a fountain would be, if, while dancing merrily into the sunshine, it should assume the shape of woman. Through the dim rosiness of the cheeks I could see the brown leaves, the slimy twigs, the acorns, and the sparkling sand. The solitary sunbeam was diffused among the golden hair, which melted into its faint brightness, and became a glory round that head so beautiful ' My description can give no idea how suddenly the fountain was thus tenanted, and how soon it was left desolate. I breathed, and there was the face ! I held ^ 244 TWICE-TOLD TALES. my breath, and it was gone! Had It pass<>d away, or faded into nothing? I doubted whether it had evet My sweet readers, what a dreamy and delicious hour did I spend, where that vision found and left me! For a long time I sat perfectly still, waiting till it should reappear, and fearful that the slightest motion, or even the flutter of my breath, might frighten it away. Thus have I often started from a pleasant dream, and then kept quiet in hopes to wile it back. Deep were my musings, as >to the race and attributes of that etiiereal being. Had I created her? Was she the daughter of my fancy, akin to those strange shapes which peep under the lids of children's eyes? And did her beauty gladden me, for that one moment, and then die? Or was she a water nymph within the fountain, or fairy, or woodland goddess, peeping over my shoulder, or the ghost of some forsaken maid who had drowned herself for love ? Or, in good truth, had a lovely girl, with a warm heart and lips that would bear pressure, sto> len softly behind me, and thrown her image into the spring ? I watched and waited, but no vision came again. I departed, but with a spell upon me which drew ma back, that same afternoon, to the haunted spring There was the water gushing, the sand sparkling, and the sunbeam glimmering. There the vision was not, but only a great frog, the hermit of that solitude, who immediately withdrew his speckled snout and made himself invisible, all except a pair of long legs, beneath a stone. Methought he had a devilish look ! I could have slain him as an enchantei who kept the mysterious beauty imprisoned in dis fountain. THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN. 245 Sad and heavy, I was returning to the village. Between me and the church spire rose a little hill, and on its summit a group of trees, insulated from all the rest of the wood, with their own share of radiance hovering on them from the west, and their own solitary- shadow falling to the east. The afternoon being far declined, the sunshine was almost pensive, and the shade almost cheerful ; glory and gloom were mingled in the placid light ; as if the spirits of the Day and Evening had met in friendship under those trees, and found themselves akin. I was admiring the picture, when the shape of a young girl emerged from behind the clump of oaks. My heart knew her ; it was the Vision ; but so distant and ethereal did she seem, so unmixed with earth, so imbued with the pensive glory of the spot where she was standing, that my spirit sunk within me, sadder than before. How could I ever reach her ? While I gazed, a sudden shower came pattering down upon the leaves. In a moment the air was fuU of brightness, each raindrop catching a portion of sunlight as it fell, and the whole gentle shower ap- pearing like a mist, just substantial enough to bear the burden of radiance. A rainbow, vivid as Niagara's, was painted in the air. Its southern limb came down before the group of trees, and enveloped the fair Vision, as if the hues of heaven were the only gar- ment for her beauty. When the rainbow vanished, she, who had seemed a part of it, was no longer there. Was her existence absorbed in nature's love- liest phenomenon, and did her pure frame dissolve away in the varied light ? Yet, I would not despair of her return ; for, robed in the rainbow, she was tha emblem of Hope. 246 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Thus did tiie vision leave me ; and many a doleful day succeeded to the parting moment. By the spring, and in the wood, and on the hill, and through the vil- lage ; at dewy simrise, burning noon, and at that magic hour of sunset when she had vanished from my sight, I sought her, but in vain. Weeks came and went, months rolled away, and she appeared not in them. I imparted my mystery to none, but wandered to and fro, or sat in solitude, like one that had caught a glimpse of heaven^ and could take no more joy on BartLr' I withdrew into an inner world, where my thoughts lived and breathed, and the Vision in the nudst of them. Without intending it, I became at onoe the author and hero of a romance, conjuring up rivals, imagining events, the actions of others and my own, and experiencing every change of passion, till jealousy and despair had their end in bliss. Oh, had I the burning fancy of my early youth, with man- 'lood's colder gift, &e power of expression, your hearts, sweet ladies, should flutter at my tale! In the middle of January I was siunmoned home. The day before my departure, visiting the spots which had been hallowed by the Vision, I found that the spring had a frozen bosom, and nothing but the snow and a glare of winter sunshine on the hill of the rain- bow. " Let me hope," thought I, " or my heart will be as icy as the fountain, and the whole world as desolate as this snowy hill." Most of the day was spent in preparing for the journey, which was to commence at four o'clock the next morning. About an hour after supper, when all was in readiness, I descended from my chamber to the sitting-room, to take leave of the old clergyman and his family with whom I had been an inmate. A gust of wind blew out my lamp as I passed through the entry. THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN. 24^1 According to their invariable custom, so pleasant a one when the fire blazes cheerfully, the fainily were Bitting in the parlor, with no other light than what came from the hearth. As the good clergyman's scanty stipend compelled him to use all sorts of econ- omy, the foundation of his fires was always a large heap of tan, or ground bark, which would smoulder away, from morning till night, with a duU warmth and no flame. This evening the heap of tan was newly put on, and surmounted with three sticks of red oak, full of moisture, and a few pieces of dry pine, that had not yet kindled. There was no light, except the little that came sullenly from two half-burned brands, without even glimmering on the andirons. But I knew the position of the old minister's arm- chair, and also where his wife sat, with her knitting- work, and how to avoid his two daughters, one a stout country lass, and the other a consumptive girl. Grop- ing through the gloom, I found my own place next to that of the son, a learned collegian, who had come home to keep school in the village during the winter vacation. I noticed that there was less room than usual, to-night, between the collegian's chair and mine. As people are 'always taciturn in the dark, not a word was said for some time after my entrance. Noth- ing broke the stillness but the regular click of the matron's knitting-needles. At times, the fire threw out a brief and dusky gleam, which twinkled on the old man's glasses, and hovered doubtfully round our circle, but was far too faint to portray the individuals who composed it. Were we not like ghosts ? Dreamy AS the scene was, might it not be a type of the mode tn which departed people, who had known and loved 248 TWICE-TOLD TALES. each other here, would hold communion in eternity? We were aware of each other's presence, not by sight, nor sound, nor touch, but by an inward consciousness. Would it not be so among the dead ? The silence was interrupted by the consumptive daughter, addressing a remark to some one in the circle whom she called Eachel. Her tremulous and decayed accents were answered by a single word, but in a voice that made me start, and bend towards the spot whence it had proceeded. Had I ever heard that sweet, low tone ? If not, why did it rouse up so many old recollections, or mockeries of such, the shadows of things familiar, yet tmknown, and £01 my mind with confused images of her features who had spoken, though buried in the gloom of the parlor? Whom had my heart recognized, that- it throbbed so ? I listened to catch her gentle breathing, and strove, by the intensity of my gaze, to picture forth a shape where none was visible. Suddenly the dry pine caught ; the fire blazed up with a ruddy glow; and where the darkness had been, there was she — the Vision of the Fountain ! A spirit of radiance only, she had vanished with the rainbow, and appeared again in the firelight, perhaps to flicker with the blaze, and be gone. Yet, her cheek was rosy and Jife-like, and her features, in the bright warmth of the room, were even sweeter and tenderer than my recollection of them. She knew me 1 The mirthful expression that had laughed in her eyes and dimpled over her countenance, when I beheld her faint beauty in the fountain, was laughing and dimpling there now. One moment our glance mingled — the next, down rolled the heap of tan upon the kindled wood — and darkness snatched away the Daughter of the Ldght- snd gave her back to me no more I THE VISION OF THE FOUNTAIN. 249 Fair ladies, there is nothing more to tell. Must the simple mystery be revealed, then, that Eachel was ihe daughter of the village squire, and had left home for a boarding-school, the morning after I arrived and returned the day before my departure? If I transformed her to an angel, it is what every youth- ful lover does for his mistress. Therein consists the essence of my story. But slight the change, sweet aiaids, to make angels of yourselves I FANCY'S SHOW BOX. A MOBAUTT. What is Gtiilt? A staia upon tiie soul. And it b a point of vast interest whether the soul may con- tract such stains, in all their depth and flagrancy, from deeds which may have been plotted and resolved upon, but which, physically, have never had existence. Must the fleshly hand and visible frame of man set its seal to the evil designs of the soul, in order to give them their entire validity against the sinner? Or, while none but crimes perpetrated are cognizable be- fore an earthly tribunal, will guilty thoughts — of which guilty deeds are no more than shadows — will these draw down the full weight of a condemning sentence, in the supreme court of eternity? In the solitude of a midnight chamber or in a desert, afar from men or in a church, while the body is kneeling, the soul may pollute itself even with those crimes which we are accustomed to deem altogether camaL If this be true, it is a fearful truth. Let us illustrate the subject by an imaginary exam- ple. A venerable gentleman, one Mr. Smith, who had long been regarded as a pattern of moral excellence, was warming his aged blood with a glass or two of generous wine. His children being gone forth about their worldly business, and his grandchildren at school, he sat alone, in a deep, luxurious arm-chair, with his feet beneath a richly-carved mahogany table. Some FANCY'S SHOW BOX. 251 old people have a dread of solitude, and when bettec company may not be had, rejoice even to hear the quiet breathing of a babe, asleep upon the carpet But Mr. Smith, whose silver hair "was the bright sym- bol of a life unstained, except by such spots as are inseparable from human nature, had no need of a babe to protect him by its purity, nor of a grown per- son to stand between him and.his own soul. Never- theless, either Manhood must converse with Age, or Womanhood must soothe him with gentle cares, or Infancy must sport around his chair, or his thoughts win stray into the misty region of the past, and the old man be chiU and sad. Wine wiU not always cheer | him. Such might have been the case with Mr. Smith, , when, through the brilliant medium of his glass of old Madeira, he beheld three figures entering the room. These were Fancy, who had assumed the garb and as- pect of an itinerant showman, with a box of pictures on her back ; and Memory, in the likeness of a clerk, with a pen behind her ear, an inkhom at her button- hole, and a huge manuscript volume beneath her arm ; and lastly, behind the other two, a person shrouded in ^ a dusky mantle, which concealed both face and form. But Mr. Smith had a shrewd idea that it was Con- science. How kind of Fancy, Memory, and Conscience to visit the old gentleman, just as he was beginning to imagine that the wine had neither so bright a sparkle nor so excellent a flavor as when himself and the liquor were less aged ! Through the dim length of the apartment, where crimson curtains muffled the glare of simshine and created a rich obscurity, the three guests drew near the silver-haired old man. Memory, with a finger between the leaves of her huge volume^ 252 TWICE-TOLD TALES. placed herself at his right hand. Conscience, with her face still hidden in the dusky mantle, took her station on the left, so as to be next his heart ; while Fancy set down her picture box upon the table, with the magni< fying glass convenient to his eye. We can sketch merely the outlines of two or three out of the many pictures which, at the pulling of a string, successively peopled the box with the semblances of living scenes. One was a moonlight picture : in the oackground, a lowly dwelling; and in front, partly shadowed by a tree, yet besprinkled with flakes of radiance, two youth- ful figures, male and female. The young man stood with folded arms, a haughty smile upon his lip, and a gleam of triumph in his eye, as he glanced downward at the kneeling girl. She was almost prostrate at his feet, evidently sinking under a weight of shame and anguish, which hardly allowed her to lift her clasped hands in supplication. Her eyes she could not lift. But neither her agony, nor the lovely features on which it was depicted, nor the slender grace of the form which it convulsed, appeared to soften the obduracy of the young man. He was the personification of trium- phant scorn. Now, strange to say, as old Mr. Smith peeped through the magnifying glass, which made the objects start out from the canvas with magical decep- tion, he began to recognize the farm-house, the tree, and both the figures of the picture. The young man, in times long past, had often met his gaze within the looking-glass ; the girl was the very image of his first love — his cottage love — his Martha Burroughs ! Mr. Smith was scandalized. " O vile and slanderous pict ure ! " he exclaims. " When have I triimiphed over ruined innocence ? Was not Martha wedded, in hei teens, to David Tomkias, who won her girlish love^ FANCY'S SHOW BOX. 253 and long enjoyed her affection as a mfe ? And evei since his death she has lived a reputable widow!" Meantime, Memory was turning over the leaves of her volume, rustling them to and fro with imcertain fingers, until, among the earlier pages, she found one which had reference to this picture. She reads it, close to the old gentleman's ear ; it is a record merely of sin- ful thought, which never was embodied in an act; but whUe Memory is reading. Conscience imveils her face, and strikes a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith. Though not a death-blow, the torture was extreme. The exhibition proceeded. One after another, Fancy displayed her pictures, all of which appeared to havf been painted by some malicious artist on pur- pose to vex Mr. Smith. Not a shadow of proof could have been adduced, in any earthly court, that he was guilty of the slightest of those sins which were thus made to stare him in the face. In one scene there was a table set out, with several bottles, and glasses half filled with wine, which threw back the dull ray of an expiring lamp. There had been mirth and rev- elry, imtil the hand of the clock stood just at mid- night, when murder stepped between the boon com- panions. A young man had fallen on the floor, and lay stone dead, with a ghastly wound crushed into his temple, while over him, with a delirium of mingled rage and horror in his countenance, stood the youth- ful likeness of Mr. Smith. The murdered youth wore the features of Edward Spencer ! " What does this rascal of a painter mean?" cries Mr. Smith, pro- voked beyond all patience. "Edward Spencer was my earliest and dearest friend, true to me as I to him, through more than half a century. Neither I, nor any •ther, ever murdered him. Was he not alive within 264 TWICE-TOLD TALES. five years, and did he not, in token of our long friend ship, bequeath me his gold-headed cane and a mourn* ing ring?" Again had Memory been turning ove* her volume, and fixed at lengtih upon so confused a page that she surely must have scribbled it when she was tipsy. The purport was, however, that while Mr. Smith and Edward Spencer were heating their young blood with wine, a quarrel had flashed up between them, and Mr. Smith, in deadly wrath, had flung a bottle at Spencer's head. True, it missed its aim, and merely smashed a looking-glass; and the next morning, when the incident was imperfectly remem- bered, they had shaken bands with a hearty laugh. Yet, again, while Memory was reading. Conscience unveiled her face, struck a dagger to the heart of Mr. Smith, and quelled his remonstrance with her iron frown. The pain was quite excruciating. Some of the pictures had been painted with so doubtful a touch, and in colors so faint and pale, that the subjects could barely be conjectured. A duU, semi-transparent mist had been thrown over the sur- face of the canvas, into which the figures seemed to vanish, while the eye sought most earnestly to fix them. But in every scene, however dubiously por- trayed, Mr. Smith was invariably haunted by his own lineaments, at various ages, as in a dusty mirror. Af- ter poring several minutes over one of these blurred and almost indistinguishable pictures, he began to see that the painter had intended to represent him, now in the decline of Kfe, as stripping the clothes from the backs of three half-starved children. "ReaUy, this puzzles me ! " quoth Mr. Smith, with the irony of conscious rectitude. , " Asking pardon of the painter, I pronounce him a fool, as well as a scandalous knave^ FANCY'S SHOW BOX. 255 A. man of my standing in the world to be robbing little children of their clothes! Kidiculousl" But while he spoke, Memory had searched her fatal vol- ume, and found a page, which, with her sad, cahn voice, she poured into his ear. It was not altogether inapplicable to the misty scene. It told how Mr. Smith had been grievously tempted by many devilish sophistries, on the ground of a legal quibble, to com- mence a lawsuit against three orphan children, joint heirs to a considerable estate. Fortunately, before he was quite decided, his claims had turned out nearly as devoid of law as justice. As Memory ceased to read. Conscience again thrust aside her mantle, and would have struck her victim with the envenomed dagger, only that he struggled and clasped his hands before his heart. Even then, however, he sustained an ugly gash. Why should we foUow Fancy through the whole series of those awful pictures ? Painted by an artist of wondrous power, and terrible acquaintance with the secret soul, they embodied the ghosts of all the never perpetrated sins that had glided through the lifetime of Mr. Smith. And could such beings of cloudy fantasy, so near akin to nothingness, give valid evidence against him at the day of judgment? Be that the case or not, there is reason to believe that one truly penitential tear would have washed away each hatefid picture, and left the canvas white as snow. But Mr. Smith, at a prick of Conscience too keen to be endured, bellowed aloud, with impatient agony, and suddenly discovered that his three guests were gone. There he sat alone, a silver-haired and highly-venerated old man, in the rich gloom of the crimson-curtained room, with no box of pictures on 256 TWICE-TOLD TALES. the table, but only a decanter of most excellent Mar deira. Yet his heart still seemed to fester with the venom of the dagger. Nevertheless, the mifortimate old gentleman might have argued the matter with Conscience, and alleged many reasons wherefore she should not smite him so pitilessly. Were we to take up his cause, it should be somewhat in the following fashion : A scheme of guilt, till it be put in execution, greatly resembles a train of incidents in a projected tale. The latter, in order to produce a sense of reality in the reader's mind, must be conceived with such proportionate strength by the author as to seem, in the glow of fancy, more like truth, past, present, or to come, than purely fiction. The prospective sinner, on the other hand, weaves his plot of crime, but seldom or never feels a perfect certainty that it wiU be executed. There is a dreaminess diffused about his thoughts; in a dream, as it were, he strikes the death-blow into his victim's heart, and starts to find an indelible blood-staia on his hand. Thus a novel writer or a dramatist, in creating a villain of romance and fitting him with evil deeds, and the villain of actual life, in projecting crimes that will be perpetrated, may almost meet each other half-way between reality and fancy. V It is not until the crime is accomplished that guilt clinches its gripe upon the guilty heart, and claims it for its own. Then, and not before, sin is actually felt and acknowledged, and, if unaccompanied by repent- "^ ance, grows a thousand-fold more virulent by its self- consciousness. Be it considered, also, that men often over-estimate their capacity for evilv At a distance, while its attendant circumstances do not press upon their notice, and its results are dimly seen, they caa FANCY'S SHOW BOX. 257 bear to contemplate it. They may take the steps which lead to crime, impelled by the same sort of mental action as in working oat a mathematical prob< lem, yet be powerless with compunction at the final moment. They knew not what deed it was that they deemed themselves resolved to do. In truth, there is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve, either for good or evil, except at the very mo- ment of execution. Let us hope, therefore, that all the dreadful consequences of sin will not be incurred, unless the act have set its seal upon the thought. Yet, with the slight fancy work which we have framed, some sad and awful truths are interwoven. Man must not disclaim his brotherhood, even with the guiltiest, since, though his hand be clean, his heart has surely been polluted by the flitting phantoms of iniquity. He must feel that, when he shall knock at the gate of heaven, no semblance of an unspotted Ufa can entitle him to entrance there. Penitence must kneel, and Mercy come from the footstool of the throne, or that golden gate will never open ! VOL. I. 17 DB. HEIDEGGEE'S EXPERIMENT. That very singular man, old Dr. Heidegger,, onoB Invited four venerable friends to meet him in hia study. There were three white-bearded gentlemen,, Mr. Medboume, Colonel KiUigrew, and Mr. Gas-] coigne, and a withered gentlewoman, whose name was the Widow Wycherly. They were all melancholy old creatures, who had been imf ortunate in life, and whose greatest misfortune it was that they were not long ago in their graves. Mr. Medboume, in the vigor of his age, had been a prosperous merchant, but had lost bis all by a frantic speculation, and was now little bet- ter than a mendicant. Colonel Killigrew had wasted his best years, and his health and substance, in the pursuit of sinful pleasures, which had ^ven birth to a brood of pains, such as the gout, and divers other torments of soul and body. Mr. Gascoigne was a ruined politician, a man of evil fame, or at least had been so till time had buried him from the knowledge of the present generation, and made him obscure in- stead of infamous. As for the Widow Wycherly, tradition tells us that she was a great beauty in her day ; but, for a long while past, she had lived in deep seclusion, on account of certain scandalous stories which had prejudiced the gentry of the town against her. It is a circumstance worth mentioning that each of these three old gentlemen, Mr. Medboume, Colo- nel Killigrew, and Mr. Gascoigne, were early lovers of the Widow Wycherly, and had once been on the DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 259 (raint of cutting each other's throats for her sake. And, before proceeding further, I will merely hint that Dr. Heidegger and all his four guests were sometimes thought to be a little beside themselves, — as is not imfrequently the case with old people, when worried /ither by present troubles or woful recollections. " My dear old friends," said Dr. Heidegger, motion- ing them to be seated, " I am desirous of your assist- ance in one of those little experiments with which I amuse myself here in my study." If all stories were true. Dr. Heidegger's study must have been a very curious place. It was a dim, old- fashioned chamber, festooned with cobwebs, and be- sprinkled with antique dust. Around the walls stood several oaken bookcases, the lower shelves of which were filled with rows of gigantic folios and black- letter quartos, and the upper with little parchment- covered duodecimos. Over the central bookcase was a bronze bust of Hippocrates, with which, according to some authorities, Dr. Heidegger was accustomed to hold consultations in all difficult cases of his practice. In the obscurest comer of the room stood a tall and narrow oaken closet, with its door ajar, within which doubtfully appeared a skeleton. Between two of the bookcases hung a looking-glass, presenting its high and dusty plate within a tarnished gilt frame. Among many wonderful stories related of this mirror, it was fabled that the spirits of all the doctor's deceased pacients dwelt within its verge, and would stare him in the face whenever he looked thitherward. The op- posite side of the chamber was ornamented with the full-length portrait of a young lady, arrayed in the faded magnificence of silk, satin, and brocade, and with a visage as faded as her dress. Above haJf a £60 TWICE-TOLD TALES. century ago, Dr. Heidegger had been on the point of marriage with this young lady ; but, being affected with some slight disorder, she had swallowed one of her lover's prescriptions, and died on the bridal even- ing. The greatest curiosity of the study remains to be mentioned ; it was a ponderous folio volume, bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic ; and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it, merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor, and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror; while the brazen head of Hippocrates frowned, and said, — "For- bear ! " Such was Dr. Heidegger's study. On the summer afternoon of our tale a small round table, as black as ebony, stood in the centre of the room, sustaining a cut-glass vase of beautiful form and elaborate work- manship. The sunshine came through the window- between the heavy festoons of two faded damask cur- tains, and fell directly across this vase ; so that a mild splendor was reflected from it on the ashen visages of the five old people who sat around. Four champagne glasses were also on the table. "My dear old friends," repeated Dr. Heidegger, " may I reckon on your aid in performing an exceed- ingly curious experiment ? " Now Dr. Heidegger was a very strange old gentle- man, whose eccentricity had become the nucleus for a thousand fantastic stories. Some of these fables, to my shame be it spoken, might possibly be traced back to my own veracious self ; and if any passages of tb« DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 261 present tale should startle the reader's faith, I must be content to bear the stigma of a fiction monger. When the doctor's four guests heard him talk of hia proposed experiment, they anticipated nothing more wonderful than the murder of a mouse in an air pump, or the examination of a cobweb by the microscope, or some similar nonsense, with which he was constantly in the habit of pestering his intimates. But without waiting for a reply. Dr. Heidegger hobbled across the chamber, and returned with the same ponderous foHo, bound in black leather, which common report aifiimed to be a book of magic. Undoing the silver clasps, he opened the volume, and took from among its black- letter pages a rose, or what was once a rose, though now the green leaves and crimson petals had assumed one brownish hue, and the ancient flower seemed ready to crumble to dust in the doctor's hands. " This rose," said Dr. Heidegger, with a sigh, " this aame withered and crumbling flower, blossomed five and fifty years ago. It was given me by Sylvia Ward, whose portrait hangs yonder ; and I meant to wear it in my bosom at our wedding. Five and fifty years it has been treasured between the leaves of this old vol- ume. Now, would you deem it possible that this rose of half a century could ever bloom again ? " " Nonsense ! " said the Widow Wycherly, with a peevish toss of her head. " You might as well ask whether an old woman's wrinkled face could ever bloom again." " See ! " answered Dr. Heidegger. He uncovered the vase, and threw the faded rose into the water which it contained. At first, it lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to im- bibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a singulai f62 TWICE-TOLD TALES. ehange began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred, and assumed a deepening tinge of crim- son, as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber ; the slender stalk and twigs of foliage be- came green ; and there was the rose of half a century, looking as fresh as when Sylvia Ward had first given It to her lover. It was scarcely fuU blown ; for some of its delicate red leaves curled modestly around its moist bosom, within which two or three dewdrops were sparkling. "That is certainly a very pretty deception," said the doctor's friends ; carelessly, however, for they had witnessed greater miracles at a conjurer's show ; " pray how was it effected ? " " Did you never hear of the ' Foxmtain of Youth? ' " asked Dr. Heidegger, " which Ponce De Leon, the Spanish adventurer, went in search of two or three centuries ago ? " " But did Ponce De Leon ever find it ? " said the Widow Wycherly. " No," answered Dr. Heidegger, " for he never sought it in the right place. The famous Fountain of Youth, if I am rightly informed, is situated in the southern part of the Floridian peninsula, not far from Lake Macaco. Its source is overshadowed by several gigantic magnolias, which, though numberless centu- ries old, have been kept as fresh as violets by the vir- tues of this wonderful water. An acquaintance of mine, knowing my curiosity in such matters, has sent me what you see in the vase." " Ahem ! " said Colonel Killigrew, who believed not a word of the doctor's story ; " and what may be th« effect of this fluid on the human frame ? " "You shall judge for yourself, my dear coloneV DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 268 replied Dr. Heidegger ; " and all of you, my respected friends, are welcome to so much of this admirable fluid as may restore to you the bloom of youth. For my own part, having had much trouble in growing •id, I am in no hurry to grow yoimg again. With Jrour permission, therefore, I will merely watch the progress of the experiment." While he spoke, Dr. Heidegger had been filling the four champagne glasses with the water of the Fount- ain of Youth. It was apparently impregnated with an effervescent gas, for little bubbles were continually ascending from the depths of the glasses, and burst- ing in silvery spray at the surface. As the liquor dif- fused a pleasant perfume, the old people doubted not that it possessed cordial and comfortable properties ; and though utter sceptics as to its rejuvenescent power, they were inclined to swallow it at once. But Dr. Heidegger besought them to stay a moment. " Before you drink, my respectable old friends," said he, " it would be weU that, with the experience of a lifetime to direct you, you should draw up a few general rules for your guidance, in passing a second time through the perils of youth. Think what a sin and shame it would be, if, with your peculiar advan- tages, you should not become patterns of idrtue and wisdom to all the young people of the age ! " The doctor's four venerable friends made him no jnswer, except by a feeble and tremulous laugh ; so very ridiculous was the idea that, knowing how closely repentance treads behind the steps of error, they should ever go astray again. "'Drink, then," said the doctor, bowing: "I re« joice that I have so well selected the subjects of mj experiment." 264 TWICE-TOLD TALES. With palsied hands, they raised the glasses to theij lips. The liquor, if it really possessed such virtues as Dr. Heidegger imputed to it, could not have been bestowed on four human beings who needed it more wofuUy. They looked as if they had never known what youth or pleasure was, but had been the offspring of Nature's dotage, and always the gray, decrepit, sap- less, miserable creatures, who now sat stooping round the doctor's table, without life enough in their souls or bodies to be animated even by the prospect of grow- ing young again. They drank off the water, and re- placed their glasses on the table. Assuredly there was an almost immediate improve- ment in the aspect of the party, not unlike what might have been produced by a glass of generous wine, to- gether with a sudden glow of cheerful sunshine bright- ening over all their visages at once. There was a healthful suffusion on their cheeks, instead of the ashen hue that had made them look so corpse-like. They gazed at one another, and fancied that some magic power had really begun to smooth away the deep and sad inscriptions which Father Time had been so long engraving on their brows. The Widow Wych- erly adjusted her cap, for she felt almost like a woman again. "Grive us more of this wondrous water!" cried they, eagerly. " We are younger — but we are still too old I Quick — give us more ! " " Patience, patience ! " quoth Dr. Heidegger, who sat watching the experiment with philosophic cool- ness. "You have been a long time growing old. Surely, you might be content to grow young in haU an hour ! But the water is at your service." Again he filled their glasses with the liquor of DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 265 f outh, enough of which still remained in the vase to turn half the old people in the city to the age of their own grandchildren. While the bubbles were yet sparkling on the brim, the doctor's four guests snatched their glasses from the table, and swallowed the contents at a single gulp. Was it delusion ? even while the draught was passing down their throats, it seemed to have wrought a change on their whole sys- tems. Their eyes grew clear and bright ; a dark shade deepened among their silvery locks, they sat around the table, three gentlemen of middle age, and a woman, hardly beyond her buxom prime. " My dear widow, you are charming ! " cried Colonel KUligrew, whose eyes had been fixed upon her face, while the shadows of age were flitting from it like darkness from the crimson daybreak. The fair widow knew, of old, that Colonel Killi- grew's compliments were not always measured by sober truth ; so she started up and ran to the mirror, Btill dreading that the ugly visage of an old woman would meet her gaze. Meanwhile, the three gentle- men behaved in such a manner as proved that the water of the Fountain of Youth possessed some intoxi- cating qualities ; unless, indeed, their exhilaration of spirits were merely a lightsome dizziness caused by the sudden removal of the weight of years. Mr. Gas- coigne's mind seemed to run on political topics, but whether relating to the past, present, or future, could not easily be determined, since the same ideas and phrases have been in vogue these fifty years. Now he rattled forth full-throated sentences about patriotism, aational glory, and the people's right ; now he mut« tered some perilous stuff or other, in a sly and doubt< f ul whisper, so cautiously that even his own conscience TWICE-TOLD TALES. could scarcely catcli the secret ; and now, again, he spoke in measured accents, and a deeply deferential tone, as if a royal ear were listening to his well-turned periods. Colonel Killigrew all this time had been trolling forth a jolly bottle song, and ringing his glass in symphony with the chorus, while his eyes wandered toward the buxom figure of the Widow Wycherly On the other side of the table, Mr. Medboume was involved in a calculation of dollars and cents, with which was strangely intermingled a project for sup- plying the East Indies with ice, by harnessing a team of whales to the polar iceberg s. ^ As for the Widow Wycherly, she stood before the mirror courtesying and simpering to her own image, and greeting it as the friend whom she loved better than all the world beside. She thrust her face close to the glass, to see whether some long-remembered wrinkle or crow's foot had indeed vanished. She ex- amined whether the snow had so entirely melted from her hair that the venerable cap cotdd be safely thrown aside. At last, turning briskly away, she came with a sort of dancing step to the table. " My dear old doctor," cried she, " pray favor me with another glass ! " " Certainly, my dear madam, certainly ! " replied the complaisant doctor ; " see ! I have already filled the glasses." There, in fact, stood the four glasses, brimful of tiiis wonderful water, the delicate spray of which, as it effervesced from the surface, resembled the tremulous glitter of diamonds. It was now so nearly simset that the chamber had grown duskier than ever ; but a mild and moonlike splendor gleamed from within die vase, and rested alike on the four guests and oa DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 267 the doctor's venerable figure. He sat in a higli> backed, elaborately-carved, oaken arm-chair, with a gray dignity of aspect that might have well befitted that very Father Time, whose power had never been disputed, save by this fortunate company. Even while quafiing the third draught of the Fountain of Youth, they were almost awed by the expression of his mysterious visage. But, the next moment, the exhilarating gush of young life shot through their veins. They were now in the happy prime of youth. Age, with its miserable train of cares and sorrows and diseases, was remembered only as the trouble of a dream, from which they had joyously awoke. The fresh gloss of the soul, so early lost, and without which the world's successive scenes had been but a gallery of faded pict- ures, again threw its enchantment over all their pros- pects. They felt like new-created beings in a new- created imiverse. " We are young ! We are young ! " they cried exultingly. Youth, like the extremity of age, had effaced the strongly-marked characteristics of middle life, and mutually assimilated them all. They were a group of merry youngsters, almost maddened with the ex- uberant frolicsomeness of their years. The most sin- gular effect of their gayety was an impulse to mock the infirmity and decrepitude of which they had so lately been the victims. They laughed loudly at their old-fashioned attire, the wide-skirted coats and flapped waistcoats of the young men, and the ancient cap and gown of the blooming girl. One limped across the floor like a gouty grandfather ; one set a pair of spec- tacles astride of his nose, and pretended to pore ovei 268 TWICE-TOLD TALES. the black-letter pages of the book of magic ; a third seated himself in an arm-chair, and strove to imitate the venerable dignity of Dr. Heidegger. Then all shouted mirthfully, and leaped about the room. The Widow Wycherly — if so fresh a damsel could be called a widow — tripped up to the docter's chair, with a mischievous merriment in her rosy face. " Doctor, you dear old soul," cried she, " get up and dance with me ! " And then the four yoimg people laughed louder than ever, to think what a queer figure the poor old doctor would cut. "Pray excuse me," answered the doctor quietly. "I am old and rheumatic, and my dancing days were over long ago. But either of these gay young gentlemen will be glad of so pretty a part- ner." " Dance with me, Clara ! " cried Colonel Killigrew. *' No, no, I win be her partner ! " shouted Mr. Gascoigne. " She promised me her hand, fifty years ago I " exclaimed Mr. Medbourne. They all gathered round her. One caught both her hands in his passionate grasp — another threw his arm about her waist — the third buried his hand among the glossy curls that clustered beneath the' widow's cap. Blushing, panting, struggling, chiding, laughing, her warm breath fanning each of their faces by turns, she strove to disengage herself, yet still remained in their triple embrace. Never was there a livelier picture of youthful rivalship, with bewitching beauty for the prize. Yet, by a strange deception, owing to the duskiness of the chamber, and tlie antique dresses which they still wore, the tall mirror is said to have reflected the figures of DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 269 the three old, gray, withered grandsires, ridiculously contending for the skinny ugliness of a shriTelled grandam. But they were yoimg: their burning passions proved them so. Inflamed to madness by the co- quetry of the girl-widow, who neither granted nor quite withheld her favors, the three rivals began tc interchange threatening glances. Still keeping hold of the fair prize, they grappled fiercely at one an- other's throats. As they struggled to and fro, the table was overturned, and the vase dashed into a thou- sand fragments. The precious Water of Youth flowed in a bright stream across the floor, moistening the wings of a butterfly, which, grown old in the decKae of summer, had alighted there to die. The insect flut- tered lightly through the chamber, and settled on the snowy head of Dr. Heidegger. "Come, come, gentlemen! — come. Madam Wych- erly," exclaimed the doctor, " I really must protest against this riot." They stood still and shivered; for it seemed as if gray Time were calling them back from their sunny youth, far down into the dull and darksome vale of years. They looked at old Dr. Heidegger, who sat in Ms carved arm-chair, holding the rose of half a cent- ury, which he had rescued from among the fragments of the shattered vase. At the motion of his hand, the four rioters resinned their seats ; the more readily, be- cause their violent exertions had wearied them, youth- ful though they were. " My poor Sylvia's rose ! " ejaculated Dr. Heideg- ger, holding it in the light of the sunset clouds; "it uppears to be fading again." And BO it was. Even while the party were looking 270 TWICE-TOLD TALES. at it, the flower continued to shrivel up, till it becamA as dry and fragile as when the doctor had first thrown it into the vase. He shook off the few drops of moist* lu-e which clung to its petals. " I love it as well thus as in its dewy freshness," observed he, pressing the withered rose to his with- ered lips. While he spoke, the butterfly fluttered down from the doctor's snowy head, and fell upon the floor. His guests shivered again. A strange dullness, whether of the body or spirit they could not teU, was creeping gradually over them all. They gazed at one another, and fancied that each fleeting moment snatched away a charm, and left a deepening furrow where none had been before. Was it an illusion? Had the changes of a lifetime been crowded into sc brief a space, and were they now four aged people, sitting with their old friend. Dr. Heidegger? "Are we grown old again, so soon?" cried they, dolefully. In truth they had. The Water of Youth possessed merely a virtue more transient than that of wine. The delirium which it created had effervesced away. Yes I they were old again. With a shuddering impulse, that showed her a woman stUl, the widow clasped her skinny hands before her face, and wished that the coffin lid were over it, since it could be no longer beautiful. " Yes, friends, ye are old again," said Dr. Heideg- ger, " and lo ! the Water of Youth is all lavished on the ground. Well — I bemoan it not ; for if the foimt- ain gushed at ipy very doorstep, I would not stoop to bathe my lips in it — no, though its delirimn were f oi years instead of moments. Such is the lesson ye hava laught me I " DR. HEIDEGGER'S EXPERIMENT. 271 But the doctor's four friends had taught no such lesson to themselves. They resolved forthwith to make a pilgrimage to Florida, and quaff at morning, noon, and night, from the Fountain of Youth. Note. — In an English review, not long since, I have been accnsed of plaeiarizing the idea of this story from a chapter in one of the nov- els Ox Alexandre Dumas. There has undoubtedly been a plagiarism on one side or the other; but as my story was written a good deal more than twenty years ago, and as the novel is of considerably more recent date, I take pleasure in thinking that M. Dumas has done me the honor to appropriate one of the fanciful conceptions of my earlier days. He is heartily welcome to it ; nor is it the only instance, by many, in which the great French romancer has exercised the privi- lege of commanding genius by confiscating the intellectnal property af less famous people to his own use and behoof. filepCemier, 1860. LEGENDS OP THE PROVINCE HOUSE I. HOWE'S MASQUERADE. One afternoon, last summer, while walking along W^ashington Street, my eye was attracted by a sign- board protruding over a narrow axohway, nearly oppo bite the Old South Church. The sign represented the front of a stately edifice, which was designated as the " Old Province House, kept by Thomas Waite." I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose, long en tertalned, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the old royal governors of Massachusetts ; and en< tering the arched passage, which penetrated . through the middle of a brick row of shops, a few steps trans- ported me from the busy heart of modern Boston into a small and secluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied by the square front of the Province House, three stories high, and surmounted by a cupola, on the top of which a gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow bent and his arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this attitude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him »n his long sentinel's watch over the city. The Province House is constructed of brick, which seems recently to have been overlaid with a coat ol \ight-colored paint. A flight of red freestone steps, HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 273 fenced in by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron, ascends from the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a balcony, with an iron balustrade of eimilar pattern and workmanship to that beneath. These letters and figures — 16 P. S. 79 — are wrought into the iron work of the balcony, and probably ex- press the date of the edifice, with the initials of its founder's name. A wide door with double leaves ad- mitted me into the hall or entry, on the right of which is the entrance to the bar-room. It was in this apartment, I presume, that the an- cient governors held their levees, with vice-regal pomp, surrounded by the military men, the councillors, the judges, and other officers of the crown, while all the loyalty of the province thronged to do them honor. But Uie room, in its present condition, cannot boast even of faded magnificence. The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy paint, and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow into which the Province House, is thrown by the brick block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the glare of the festal torches, which have been extinguished from the era of the Revolution. The most venerable and orna- mental object is a chimney-piece set roimd with Dutch tiles of blue-figured China, representing scenes from Scripture ; and, for aught I know, the lady of PownaU or Bernard may have sat beside this fire-place, and told her children the story of each blue tile. A bar in modem style, well replenished with decanters, bot ties, cigar boxes, and net-work bags of lemons, and provided with a beer piunp and a soda fount, extends aiong one side of the room. At my entrance, an eld- erly person was smacking his lips with a zest which ^OL. I. 18 £74 TWICE-TOLD TALES. satisfied me that the cellars of the Province Hons( still hold good liquor, though doubtless of other vint« ages than were quaffed by the old governors. AfteJ sipping a glass of port sangaree, prepared by the skil- ful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I besought that wor- thy successor and representative of so many historic personages to conduct me over their time honored mansion. He readily complied; but, to confess the truth, I was forced to draw strenuously upon my imagination, in order to find aught that was interesting in a house which, without' its historic associations, would have seemed merely such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of decent city boarders, and old-fashioned country gentlemen. The chambers, which were prob" ably spacious in former times, are now cut up by partitions, and subdivided into little nooks, each af- fording scanty room for the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a single lodger. The great staircase, however, may be termed, without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and magnificence. It winds through ,the midst of the house by flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square land- ing-place, whence the ascent is continued towards the cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, bor- ders the staircase with its quaintly twisted and inter- twined pillars, from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots, or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and the surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon, with several windows, and a doot opening upon the roof. From this station, as I pleased HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 275 myself with imagining, Gage may have beheld his dis- astrous victory on Bvmker Hill (unless one of the tri- mountains intervened), and Howe have markfed the approaches of Washington's besieging army; although the buildings siace erected in the vicinity have shut out almost every object, save the steeple of the Old South, which seems aknost within arm's length. De- scending from the cupola, I paused in the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak framework, so much more massive than the frames of modem houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The brick walls, the materials of which were imported from Holland, and the timbers of the mansion, are still as sound as ever ; but the floors and other interior parts being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the whole, and build a new house within the ancient frame and brick work. Among other inconveniences of the present edifice, mine host mentioned that any jar or motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out of the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that be- neath it. We stepped forth from the great front window into the balcony, where, in old times, it was doubtless the custom of the king's representative to show himself to a loyal populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up hats with stately bendings of his dignified person. In those days the front of the Province House looked upon the street ; and the whole site now occupied by the brick range of stores, as well as the present court, yard, was laid out in grass plats, overshadowed by trees and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now, the old aristocratic edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modem building ; at one of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses, sewing 276 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and chatting and laughing, with now and then a car© less glance towards the balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly gen- tleman above mentioned, the smack of whose lips had spoken so favorably for Mr. Waite's good liquor, was still lounging in his chair. He seemed to be, if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the house, who might be supposed to have his regular score at the bar, his summer seat at the open window, and his prescrip* tive comer at the winter's fireside. Being of a socia- ble aspect, I ventured to address him with a remark calculated to draw forth his historical reminiscences, if any such were in his mind ; and it gratified me to discover, that, between memory and tradition, the old gentleman was really possessed of some very pleasant gossip about the Province House. The portion of his talk which chiefly interested me was the outline of the following legend. He professed to have received it at one or two removes from an eye-witness ; but this de- rivation, together vrith the lapse of time, must have afforded opportimities for many variations of the nar- rative ; so that despairing of literal and absolute trutili, I have not scrupled to make such further changes as seemed conducive to the reader's profit and delight. At one of the entertainments given at the Province House, during the latter part of the siege of Boston, there passed a scene which has never yet been satis- factorily explained. The officers of the British army, and the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were collected within the beleaguered town, had been mvited to a masked ball ; for it was the policy of Sii William Howe to hide the distress and danger of tht HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 277 period, and the desperate aspect of the siege, undei an ostentation of festivity. The spectacle of this even- ing, if the oldest members of the provincial court cir- cle might be believed, was the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred in the annals of the gov- ernment. The brilliantly-lighted apartments were thronged with figures that seemed to have stepped from the dark canvas of historic portraits, or to have flitted forth from the magic pages of romance, or at least to have flown hither from one of the London theatres, without a change of garments. Steeled knights of the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth, and high-ruffled ladies of her court, were mingled with characters of comedy, such as a party- colored Merry Andrew, jingling his cap and bells ; a Falstaff, almost as provocative of laughter as his pro- totype ; and a Don Quixote, with a bean pole for a lance, and a pot lid for a shield. But the broadest merriment was excited by a group of figures ridiculously dressed in old regimentals, which seemed to have been purchased at a military rag fair, or pilfered from some receptacle of the cast- off clothes of both the French and British armies. Portions of their attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg, and the coats of most recent cut might have been rent and tattered by sword, ball, or bayonet, as long ago as Wolfe's vi ctoryj One of these worthies — a tall, lank figure, brandishing a rusty sword of immense longitude — purported to be no less a personage than General George Washing- ton ; and the other principal officers of the American army, such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuyler, Ward and Heath, were represented by similar scarecrows. An interview in the mock heroic style, between the 278 TWICE-TOLD TALE&. rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief, was received with immense applause, which came loudest of all from the loyalists of the colony. There was one of the guests, however, who stood apart, eye- ing these antics sternly and scornfully, at once with a frown and a bitter smile. \ It was an old man, formerly of high station and great repute in the province, and who had been a very famous soldier in his day. Some surprise had been expressed that a person of Colonel JolifEe's known whig principles, though now too old to take an active part in the contest, should have remained in Boston during the siege, and especially that he should consent to show himself in the mansion of Sir William Howe. But thither he had come, with a fair granddaughter imder his arm ; and there, amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stem old figure, the best sus- tained character in the masquerade, because so well representing the antique spirit of his native land. The other guests affirmed that Colonel Joliffe's black pu;ritanical scowl threw a shadow round about him ; although in spite of his sombre influence their gayety continued to blaze higher, like — (an ominous com- parison) — the flickering brilliancy of a lamp which has but a little while to bum. Eleven strokes, full half an hour ago, had pealed from the clock of the Old South, when a rumor was circulated among the company that some new spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited, which should put a fitting close to the splendid festivities of the night. "What new jest has your Excellency in hand?" isked the Kev. Mather Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had not kept him from the entertainment "Trust me, sir, I have already laughed more than HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 279 Imseeins my cloth at your Homeric confabulation with fonder ragamuffin General of the rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and I must throw off my cler- ical wig and band." "Not so, good Doctor Byles," answered Sir Wil- liam Howe ; " if mirth were a crime, you had never gained your doctorate in divinity. As to this new foolery, I know no more about it than yourself ; per- haps not so much. Honestly now, Doctor, have you not stirred up the sober brains of some of your coun- trymen to enact a scene in our masquerade ? " " Perhaps," slyly remarked the granddaughter of Colonel Joliffe, whose high spirit had been stung by many taunts against New England, — " perhaps we are to have a mask of allegorical figures. Victory, with trophies from Lexington and Bunker HiU — Plenty, with her overflowing horn, to typify the pres- ent abundance in this good town — and Glory, with a wreath for his Excellency's brow." Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would have answered with one of his darkest frowns had they been uttered by lips that wore a beard. He was spared the necessity of a retort, by a singular inter- ruption. A sound of music was heard without the house, as if proceeding from a full band of military instruments stationed in the street, playing not such a festal strain as was suited to the occasion, but a slow funeral march. The drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets poured forth a wailing breath, wliich at once hushed the merriment of the auditors, filling aU with wonder, and some with apprehension. The idea occurred to many that either the funeral proces bion of some great personage had halted ia front of (he Province House, or that a corpse, in a velvet 280 TWICE-TOLD TALES. covered and gorgeously-decorated coffin, waa abont ta be borne from lihe portal. After listening a moment, Sir William Howe called, in a stern voice, to the leader of the musicians, who had hitherto enlivened the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies. The mad was drum-major to one of the British regi- ments. "Dighton," demanded the general, "what meant this foolery ? Bid your band silence that dead march — or, by my word, they shall have sufficient cause for their lugubrious strains ' Silence it, sirrah ! " "Please your honor," answered the drum-major, whose rubicund visage had lost all its color, " the fault is none of mine. I and my band are all here together and I question whether there be a man of us that could play that march without book. I never heard it but once before, and that was at the funeral of his late Majesty, King George the Second." " Well, well I " said Sir William Howe, recovering his composure — " it is the prelude to some masquei ading antic. Let it pass." A figure now presented itself, but among the Ckany fantastic masks that were dispersed through the apart- ments none could tell precisely from whence it came. It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge, and having the aspect of a steward or principal do- mestic in the household of a nobleman or great Eng- lish landholder. This figure advanced to the outer door of the mansion, and throwing both its leaves wide open, withdrew a little to one side and looked back towards the grand staircase as if expecting some person to descend. At the same time the music in the street sounded a loud and doleful summons. The tyes of Sir William Howe and his guests being d» HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 281 rected to the staircase, there appeared, on the uppeiw most landing-place Hiat was discernible from the bot- tom, several personages descending towards the door. The foremost was a man of stem visage, wearing a steeple-crowned hat and a skull-cap beneath it; a dark cloak, and huge wrinkled boots that came half-way up his legs. Under his arm was a rolled-up banner, which seemed to be the banner of England, but strangely rent and torn ; he had a sword in his right hand, and grasped a Bible in his left. The next figure was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad raff, over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought velvet, and a doublet and hose of black satin. He carried a roU of manuscript in his hand. Close behind these two came a young man of very striking countenance and demeanor, with deep thought and contemplation on his brow, and perhaps a flash of en- thusiasm in his eye. His garb, like that of his prede- cessors, was of an antique fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon his ruff. In the same group with these were three or four others, all men of dignity and evident command, and bearing themselves like person- ages who were accustomed to the gaze of the multitude. It was the idea of the beholders that these figures went to join the mysterious funeral that had halted in front of the Province House; yet that supposition seemed to be contradicted by the air of triumph with which they waved their hands, as they crossed the threshold and vanished through the portal. " In the devil's name what is this ? " muttered Sir VTiUiam Howe to a gentleman beside him ; " a pro- cession of the regicide judges of King Charles the martyr?" " These," said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence al 282 TWICE-TOLD TALES. most for the first time that evening, — " these, if I in terpret them aright, are the Puritan governors — thtf rulers of the old original Democracy of Massachusetts. Endicott, with the banner from which he had torn the symbol of subjection, and Winthrop, and Sir Henry Vane, and Dudley, Haynes, BeUingham, and Lev- erett." " Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his ruff ? " asked Miss Joliffe. "Because, in after years," answered her grand- father, "he laid down the wisest head in England upon the block for the principles of liberty." " Will not your Excellency order out the guard ?" whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British officers^ had now assembled round the General. " There may \e a plot under this mummery." " Tush ! we have nothing to fear," carelessly replied Sir William Howe. " There can be no worse treason in the matter than a jest, and that somewhat of the dullest. Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best policy would be to laugh it off. See — here come more of these gentry." Another group of characters had now partly de- scended the staircase. The first was a venerable and white-bearded patriarch, who cautiously felt his way downward with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and stretching forth his gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man's shoulder, came a tall, soldier-like figure, equipped with a plumed cap of steel, a bright breast- plate, and a long sword, which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen a stout man, dressed in rich Bad courtly attire, but not of courtly demeanor ; hia igait had the swinging motion of a seaman's walk and chancing to stumble on the staircase, he suddenl;^ HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 283 grew wratMul, and was heard to mutter an oath. He was followed by a noble-looking personage in a curled wig, such as are represented in the portraits of Queen Anne's time and earlier ; and the breast of his coat was decorated with an embroidered star. While ad- vancing to the door, he bowed to the right hand and to the left, in a very gracious and insinuating style ; but as he crossed the threshold, unlike the early Puri- tan governors, he seemed to wring his hands with sorrow. "Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Doctor Byles," said Sir William Howe. " What worthies are these?" " If it please your Excellency they lived somewhat before my day," answered the doctor ; " but doubtless lOur friend, the Colonel, has been hand and glove with them." "Their living faces I never looked upon," said Colonel JoUffe, gravely; "although I have spoken face to face with many rulers of this land, and shall greet yet another with an old man's blessing ere I die. But we talk of these figures. I take the venerable patriarch to be Bradstreet, the last of the Puritans, who was governor at ninety, or thereabouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros, a tyrant, as any New England school-boy will tell you ; and therefore the people cast him down from his high seat into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William Phipps, shepherd, cooper, sea-cap- tain, and governor — may many of his countrymen rise fts high from as low an origin ! Lastly, you saw the gracious Earl of BeUamont, who ruled us under King WiUiam." " Bat what is the meaning of it all? " asked Lord , Percy; £84 TWICE-TOLD TALES. "Now, were I a rebel," said Miss Joliffe, haU aloud, "1 might fancy that lihe ghosts of these ancient governors had been summoned to form the funeral procession of royal authority in New England." Several other figures were now seen at the turn of the staircase. The one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious, and somewhat crafty expression of face, and in spite of his loftiness of manner, which was evidently the result both of an ambitious spirit and of long con- tinuance in high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a greater than himself. A few steps be- hind came an officer in a scarlet and embroidered uni- form, cut in a fashion old enough to have been worn by the Duke of Marlborough. His nose had a rubi- cund tinge, which, together with the twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover of the wine cup and good fellowship ; notwithstanding which to- kens he appeared ill at ease, and often glanced around him as if apprehensive of some secret mischief. Next came a portly gentleman, wearing a coat of shaggy cloth, lined with silken velvet ; he had sense, shrewd- ness, and humor in his face, and a folio volume under his arm ; but hi^ aspect was that of a man vexed and tormented beyond all patience^ and harassed almost to death. He went hastily down, and was followed by a dignified person, dressed in a purple velvet suit, with very rich embroidery ; his demeanor would have possessed much stateliness, only that a grievous fit of the gout compelled him to hobble from stair to stair, with contortions of face and body. When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the staircase, he shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him steadfastly, until the gouty gentleman had reached the threshold, made % gesture of anguish and despair, and vanished into HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 285 lihe outer gloom, whither the funeral music summoned him. "Governor Belcher! — my old patron! — in hia very shape and dress ! " gasped Doctor Byles. " This is an awful mockery ! " " A tedious foolery, rather," said Sir "William Howe, with an air of indifference. " But who were the three that preceded him?" "Governor Dudley, a cunning politician — yet his craft once brought him to a prison," replied Colonel Joliffe. " Governor Shute, formerly a Colonel under Marlborough, and whom the people frightened out of the province; and learned Governor Burnet, whom the legislature tormented into a mortal fever." "Methinks they were miserable men, these royal governors of Massachusetts," observed Miss Jolifie. " Heavens, how dim the light grows ! " It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which illuminated the staircase now burned dim and dusk, ily : so that several figures, which passed hastily down the stairs and went forth from the porch, appeared rather like shadows than persons of fleshly substance. Sir William Howe and his guests stood at the doors of the contiguous apartments, watching the progress of this singular pageant, with various emotions of anger, contempt, or half-acknowledged fear, but still with an anxious curiosity. The shapes which now seemed hastening to join the mysterious procession were recognized rather by striking peculiarities of dress, or broad characteristics of manner, than by any perceptible resemblance of features to their proto- types. Their faces, indeed, were invariably kept in deep shadow. But Doctor Byles, and other gentle" men who had long been familiar with the successivf 286 TWICE-TOLD TALES. rulers of the province, were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, of Pownall, of Sir Francis Eemard, and of the weU-remembered Hutchinson; thereby con- fessing that the actors, whoever they might be, in this spectral march of governors, had succeeded in putting on some distant portraiture of the real personages. As they vanished from the door, stiU did these shad- ows toss their arms into the gloom of night, with a dread expression of woe. Following the mimic repre- sentative of Hutchinson came a military figure, hold- ing before his face the cocked hat which he had taken from his powdered head; but his epaulettes and othei insignia of rank were those of a general officer, and something in his mien reminded the beholders of one who had recently been master of the Province House, and chief of all the land. " The shape of Gage, as true as in a looking-glass," exclaimed Lord Percy; turning pale. "No, surely," cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysteric* ally; "it could not be Gage, or Sir William would have greeted his old comrade in arms ! Perhaps he will not suffer the next to pass unchallenged." "Of that be assured, young lady," answered Sii William Howe, fixing his eyes, with a very marked expression, upon the immovable visage of her grand- father. " I have long enough delayed to pay the cere- monies of a host to these departing guests. The next that takes his leave shall receive due courtesy." A wild and dreary burst of music came through the open door. It seemed as if the procession, which had been gradually filling up its ranks, were now about to move, and that this loud peal of the wailing trumpets, |.nd roU of the muffled drums, were a call to soma loiterer to make haste. Many eyes, by an irresistible HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 287 impulse, were turned upon Sir William Howe, as if It were he whom the dreary music siunmoned to the funeral of departed power. " See I — here comes the last I " whispered Miss Joliffe, pointing her tremulous finger to the staircase. A figure had come into view as if descending the stairs; although so dusky was the region whence it emerged, some of the spectators fancied that they had seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself amid the gloom. Downward the figure came, with a stately and martial tread, and reaching the lowest stair was observed to be a tall man, booted and wrapped in a military cloak, which was drawn up aroimd the face so as to meet the flapped brim of a laced hat. The features, therefore, were completely hidden. But the British officers deemed that they had seen that mili- tary cloak before, and even recognized the frayed em- broidery on the collar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which protruded from the folds of the cloak, and glittered in a vivid gleam of light. Apart from these trifling particulars, there were characteris- tics of gait and bearing which impelled the wondering guests to glance from the shrouded figure to Sir Wil- liani Howe, as if to satisfy themselves that their host had not suddenly vanished from the midst of them. With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow they saw the General draw his sword and advance to meet the figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped one pace upon the floor. " Villain, unmuffle yoiurself ! '' cried he. " You pass no farther ! " The figure, without blenching a hair's breadth from tne sword which was pointed at his breast, made a solemn pause and lowered the cape of the cloak from 288 TWICE-TOLD TALES. about his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectaton to catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evidently seen enough. The sternness of his counte- nance gave place to a look of wild amazement, if not horror, while he recoUed several steps from the figure, and let fall his sword upon the floor. The martial shape again drew the cloak about his features and passed on ; but reaching the threshold, with his back towards the spectators, he was seen to stamp his foot and shake his clinched hands in the air. It was after- wards affirmed that Sir William Howe had repeated that seKsame gesture of rage and sorrow, when, for the last time, and as the last royal governor, he passed through the portal of the Province House. "Hark! — the procession moves," said Miss Joliife. The music was dying away along the street, and its dismal strains were mingled with the knell of mid- night from the steeple of the Old South, and with the roar of artillery, which announced that the beleaguer- ing army of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height than before. As the deep boom of the cannon smote upon his ear, Colonel Joliffe raised him- self to the full height of his aged form, and smiled sternly on the British GeneraL " Would your Excellency inquire further into the mystery of the pageant ? " said he. " Take care of your gray head ! " cried Sir William Howe, fiercely, though with a quivering lip. " It ha? stood too long on a traitor's shoulders ! " " You aiust make haste to chop it off, then," calmly replied the Colonel ; " for a few hours longer, and not all the power of Sir William Howe, nor of his master, shall cause one of these gray hairs to fajl. The em- «ire of Britain in this ancient province is at its last aoWE'S MASQUERADE. 289 gasp to-night ; — almost while I speak it is a dead corpse ; — and methinks the shadows o£ the old gov- ernors are fit mourners at its fmieral ! " With these words Colonel Joliife threw on his cloak, and drawing his granddaughter's arm within his own, retired from the last festival that a British ruler ever held in the old province of Massachusetts Bay. It was supposed that the Colonel and the young lady possessed some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious pageant of that night. However this might be, such knowledge has never become general. The actors in the scene have vanished into deeper obscur- ity than even that wild Indian band who scattered the cargoes of the tea ships on the waves, and gained a place in history, yet left no names. But superstition, among other legends of this mansion, repeats the won- drous tale, that on the anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture the ghosts of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide through the portal of the Province House. And, last of all, comes a figure shrouded in a military cloak, tossing his clinched hands into the air, and stamping his iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone steps, with a semblance of feverish despair, but without the sound of a foot-tramp. When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentle- man were hushed, I drew a long breath and looked round the room, striving, with the best energy of my imagination, to throw a tinge of romance and historio grandeur over the realities- of the scene. But my nostrils snuffed up a scent of cigar smoke, clouds of which the narrator had emitted by way of visible em. blem, I suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tal* VOL. I U 290 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Moreover, my gorgeous fantasies were \fiofully dis- turbed by the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey punch, which Mr. Thomas Waite was min- gling for a customer. Nor did it add to the picture esqne appearance of the panelled walls that the slate of the Brookline stage was suspended against them, instead of the armorial escutcheon of some far-de- scended governor. A stage-driver sat at one of the windows, reading a penny paper of the day — the Boston Times — and presenting a figure which could nowise be brought into any picture of " Times in Bos- ton " seventy or a hundred years ago. On the win dow seat lay a bundle, neatly done up in brown paper, the direction of which 1 had the idle curiosity to read. " Miss Susan Huggins, at the Peovincb House." A pretty chambermaid, no doubt. In truth, it is des- perately hard work, when we attempt to throw the speU of hoar antiquity over localities with which the living world, and the day that is passing over us, have aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the stately stair- case down which the procession of the old governors had descended, and as I emerged through the vener- able portal whence their figures had preceded me, it gladdened me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. Then, diving through the narrow archway, a few strides transported me into the densest ^ong ol Washington Street. LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE. n. EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. The old legendary guest of the Province Hou^ abode in my remembrance from midsmnmer till Janu- ary. One idle evening last winter, confident that he would be found in the snuggest corner of the bar- room, I resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to deserve well of my country by snatching from oblivion some else unheard-of fact of history. The night was chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by almost a gale of wind, which whistled along Washington Street, causing the gas-lights to flare and flicker within the lamps. As I hurried onward, my fancy was busy with a comparison between the present aspect of the street and that which it probably wore when the British gov- ernors inhabited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick edifices in those times were few, till a succession of destructive fires had swept, and swept again, the wooden dwellings and warehouses from the most pop- ulous quarters of the town. The buildings stood in- sulated and independent, not, as now, merging their separate existences into connected ranges, with a front of tiresome identity, — but each possessing features oi its own, as if the owner's individual taste had shaped it, — and the whole presenting a picturesque irregular- ity, the absence of which is hardly compensated by any beauties of our modern architecture. 'Such a scene, 292 TWICE-TOLD TALES. dimly vanishing from the eye by the ray of here and there a tallow candle, glimmering through the small panes of scattered windows, would form a sombre con- trast to the street as I beheld it, with the gas-lights blazing from corner to corner, flaming within the shops, and throwing a noonday brightness through the huge plates of glass. But the black, lowering sky, as I turned my eyes upward, wore, doubtless, the same visage as when it fr/wned upon the ante-revolutionary New Englanders. Tne wintry blast had the same shriek that was familiar to their ears. The Old South Church, too, still pointed its antique spire into the darkness, and was lost be- tween earth and heaven ; and as I passed, its clock, which had warned so many generations how transitory was their lifetime, spoke heavily and slow the same unregarded moral to myself. " Only seven o'clock," thought I. "My old friend's legends will scarcely kill the hours 'twixt this and bedtime." Passing through the narrow arch, I crossed the court- yard, the confined precincts of which were made visi- ble by a lantern over the portal of the Province House. On entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected, the old tradition monger seated by a special good fire of anthracite, compelling clouds of smoke from a corpu- lent cigar. He recognized me with evident pleasure ; for my rare properties as a patient listener invariably make me a favorite with elderly gentlemen and ladies of narrative propensities. Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired miae host to favor us with a glass apiece of whiskey punch, which was speedily prepared, steaming hot, with a slice of lemon at the bottom, a dark-red stratum of port wine upon the surface, and a sprink- ling of nutmeg strewn over all. As we touched cm EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 293 glasses togetiher, my legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr. Bela Tiffany ; and I rejoiced at the oddity of the name, because it gave his image and character a sort of individuality in my conception. The old gentleman's draught acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it overflowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead people, and traits of ancient' manners, some of which were childish as a nurse's lul- laby, while others might have been worth the notice of the grave historian. Nothing impressed me more than a story of a black mysterious picture, which used to hang in one of the chambers of the Province House, directly above the room where we were now sitting. The following is as correct a version of the fact as the reader would be likely to obtain from any other source, although, assuredly, it has a tinge of romance approach- ing to the marvellous. In one of the apartments of the Province House there was long preserved an ancient picture, the frame of which was as black as ebony, and the canvas itself so dark with age, damp, and smoke, that not a touch of the painter's art could be discerned. Time had thrown an impenetrable veil over it, and left to tradi- tion and fable and conjecture to say what had once been there portrayed. During the rule of many suc- cessive governors, it had hung, by prescriptive and ^undisputed right, over the mantel-piece of the same chamber ; and it stUl kept its place when Lieutenant- Governor Hutchinson assumed the administration of the proArince, on the departure of Sir Francis Bernard. The Lieutenant-Governor sat, one afternoon, resting ids head against the carved back of his stately anur £94 TWICE-TOLD TALES. thair, and gazing np ijioughtfully at the void blackness of the pictm-e. It was scarcely a time for such inactive musing, when affairs of the deepest moment required the ruler's decision ; for, within that very hour Hutch- inson had received intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet, bringing three regiments from Halifax to overawe the insubordination of the people. These troops awaited his permission to Occupy the fortress of Castle William, and the town itself. Yet, instead of affixing his signature to an official order, there sat the Lieutenant-Governor, so carefully scrutinizing the black waste of canvas that his demeanor attracted the notice of two young persons ;who attended him. One, wearing a military dress of bufE, was his kinsman, Francis Lii^ coin, the Provincial Captain of Castle William ; the other, who sat on a low stool beside his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece. She was clad entirely in white, a pale, ethereal creature, who, though a native of New England, had been educated abroad, and seemed not merely a stranger from another clime, but almost a being from another world. For several years, until left an orphan, she had dwelt with her father in sunny Italy, and there had ac- quired a taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and paint- ing which she found few opportunities of gratifying in the imdecorated dwellings of the colonkd gentry. It was said that the early productions of her own pen- cil exhibited no inferior genius, though, perhaps, the rude atmosphere of New England had cramped her hand, and dimmed the glowing colors of her fancy. But observing her uncle's steadfast gaze, which ap- peared to search through the mist of years to discovei the subject of the picture, her curiosity was excited. " Is it known, my dear uncle," inquired she, " whal EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 295 fliis old picture once represented ? Possibly, could it be made visible, it might prove a masterpiece of some great artist — else, why has it so long held such a con- spicuous place ? " As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom (for he was as attentive to all the humors and caprices of Alice as if she had been his own best-beloved child), did not immediately reply, the yoimg Captain of Cas- tle William took that office upon himself. " This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin," said he, " has been an heirloom in the Province House from time immemorial. As to the painter, I can tell you nothing; but, if half the stories told of it be true, not one of the great Italian masters has ever produced 80 marvellous a piece of work as that before you." Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the strange fables and fantasies which, as it was impossi- ble to refute them by ocular demonstration, had grown to be articles of popular belief, in reference to this old picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the best accredited, accounts, stated it to be an origi- nal and authentic portrait of the Evil One, taken at a witch meeting near Salem ; and that its strong and terrible resemblance had been confirmed by several of the confessing wizards and witches, at their trial, in open court. It was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit or demon abode behind the blackness of the picture, and had shown himself, at seasons of public calamity, to more than one of the royal governors Shirley, for instance, had beheld this ominous appari- tion, on the eve of General Abercrombie's shamefid imd bloody defeat under the walls of Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the Province House had taught glimpses of a visage frowning down upon them, 296 TWICE-TOLD TALES. at morning or evening twilight, — or in the depths of night, while raMng up the fire that glimmered on the hearth beneath; although, if any were bold enough to hold a torch before the picture, it would appear as black and midistinguishable as ever. The oldest in- habitant of Boston recollected that his father, in whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out of sight, had once looked upon it, but would never suffer him- self to be questioned as to the face which was there represented. In connection with such stories, it was remarkable that over the top of the frame there were some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating that a veil had formerly hung down before the picture, until the duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it. But, after aU, it was the most singular part of the affair that so many of the pompous governors of Mas- sachusetts had allowed the obliterated picture to re- main in the state chamber of the Province House. " Some of these fables are really awful," observed Alice Vane, who had occasionally shuddered, as well as smiled, while her cousin spoke. " It would be al- most worth while to wipe away the black surface of the canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so formidable as those which fancy paints instead of it." " But would it be possible," inquired her cousin, " to restore this dark picture to its pristine hues ? " " Such arts are known iit Italy," said Alice. The Lieutenant-Governor had roused himself from his abstracted mood, and listened with a smUe to the conversation of his young relatives. Yet his voice had something peculiar in its tones when he under- took the explanation of the mystery. "I am sorry, Alice, to destroy your faith in the tegends of which you are so fond," remarked he ; " but EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 297 toy antiquarian researches have long since made me acquainted with the subject of this picture — if picture it can be called — which is no more visible, nor ever wiU be, than the face of the long buried man whom it once represented. It was the portrait of Edward Randolph, the founder of this house, a person famous in the history of New England." "Of that Edward Randolph," exclaimed Captain Lincoln, " who obtained the repeal of the first pro- vincial charter, under which our forefathers had en- joyed almost democratic privileges ! He that was styled the arch-enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held in detestation as the destroyer of our liberties ! " "It was the same Randolph," answered Hutchin- son, moving uneasily in his chair. " It was his lot to taste the bitterness of popular odium." "Our annals tell us," continued the Captain of Castle William, "that the curse of the people fol- lowed this Randolph where he went, and wrought evil in all the subsequent events of his life, and that its effect was seen likewise in the manner of his death. They say, too, that the inward misery of that curse worked itself outward, and was visible on the wretched man's countenance, making it too horrible to be looked upon. If so, and if this picture truly represented his aspect, it was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered over it." " These traditions are folly to one who has proved, as I have, how little of historic truth lies at the bot- tom," said the Lieutenant-Governor. " As regards the life and character of Edward Randolph, too im- plicit credence has been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who — I must say it, though some of his blood runs 298 TWICE-TOLD TALES. in my veins — has filled our early history with old women's tales, as fanciful and extravagant as those of Greece or Rome." " And yet," whispered Alice Vane, " may not such fables have a moral? And, methinks, if the visage of this portrait be so dreadfid, it is not without a cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the Province House. When the rulers feel themselves irresponsible, it were well that they should be re- minded of the awful weight of a people's curse." The Lieutenant-Governor started, and gazed for a moment at his niece, as if her girlish fantasies had struck upon some feeling in his own breast, which all his policy or principles could not entirely subdue. He knew, indeed, lihat Alice, in spite of her foreign education, retained the native sympathies of a New England girl. " Peace, silly child," cried he, at last, more harshly than he had ever before addressed the gentle Alice. " The rebuke of a king is more to be dreaded than the clamor of a wild, misguided multitude. Captain Lincoln, it is decided. The fortress of Castle Wil- liam must be occupied by the royal troops. The two remaining regiments shall be billeted in the town, or encamped upon the Common. It is time, after years of tumult, and almost rebellion, that his majesty's gov- ernment should have a wall of strength about it." " Trust, sir — trust yet awhile to the loyalty of the people," said Captain Lincoln ; " nor teach them that they can ever be on other terms with British soldiers than those of brotherhood, as when they fought side by side through the French War. Do not convert the streets of your native town into a camp. Think twice before you give up old Castle William, tihe key o{ EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 299 (he province, into other keeping than that of true-bom New Englanders." " Young man, it is decided," repeated Hutchinson, rising from his chair. " A British officer will be in attendance this evening, to receive the necessary in- structions for the disposal of the troops. Your pres- ence also will be required. Till then, farewell." With these words the Lieutenant-Governor hastily left the room, while Alice and her cousin more slowly followed, whispering together, and once pausing to glance back at the mysterious picture. The Captain of Castle William fancied that the girl's air and mien were such as might have belonged to one of those spirits of fable — fairies, or creatures of a more antique mythology — who sometimes mingled their agency with mortal affairs, half in caprice, yet with a sensi- bility to human weal or woe. As he held the door for her to pass, Alice beckoned to the picture and smiled. " Come forth, dark and evil Shape ! " cried she. "Itis thinehoiu?!" In the evening, Lieutenant-Governor Hiitchinson sat in the same chamber where the foregoing scene had occurred, surroimded by several persons whose various interests had smnmoned them together. There were the Selectmen of Boston, plain, patriarchal fa- thers of the people, excellent representatives of the old puritanical founders, whose sombre strength had stamped so deep an impress upon the New England character. Contrasting with these were one or two members of Coimcil, richly dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered waistcoats and other magnificence of the time, and making a somewhat ostentatious display of courtier-like ceremonial. In attendance, likewise, was a major of the British army, awaiting the Lieu 300 TWICE-TOLD TALES. tenant-Governor's orders for the landing of the troops, which still remained on board the transports. Tlie Captain of Castle William stood beside Hutchinson's chair with folded arms, glancing rather haughtily at the British officer, by whom he was soon to be super- seded in his command. On a table, in the centre of the chamber, stood a branched silver candlestick, throwing down the glow of half a dozen wax-lights upon a paper apparently ready for the Lieutenant- Governor's signature. Partly shrouded in the voliuninous folds of one of the window curtains, which fell from the ceiling to the floor, was seen tlie white drapery of a lady's roba It may appear strange that Alice Vane shoidd havt been there at such a time ; but there was something so childlike, so wayward, in her singular character, so apart from ordinary rules, that her presence did not surprise the few who noticed it. Meantime, the chair- man of the Selectmen was addressing to the Lieuten- ant-Governor a long and solemn protest against the reception of the British troops into the town. " And if your Honor," concluded this excellent but somewhat prosy old gentleman, " shall see fit to per- sist in bringing these mercenary sworders and mus- keteers into our quiet streets, not on our heads be the responsibiliiy. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one drop of blood be shed, that blood shall be an eternal stain upon your Honor's memory. You, sir, have written with an able pen the deeds of our forefathers. The more to be desired is it, therefore, that yourself shoidd deserve honorable mention, as a true patriot and upright ruler, when your own doings shall be written down in history." "I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 301 desire to stand well in the annals of my country," replied Hutchinson, controlling his impatience into loitrtesy, " nor know I any better method of attaining that end than by withstanding the merely temporary spirit of mischief, which, with your pardon, seems to have infected elder men than myself. Would you have me wait tiU the mob shall sack the Province House, as they did my private mansion ? Trust me, sir, the time may come when you will be glad to flee for protection to the king's banner, the raising of which is now so distasteful to you." " Yes," said the British major, who was impatiently expecting the Lieutenant-Governor's orders. "The demagogues of this Province have raised the devil and cannot lay him again. We will exorcise him, in God's name and the king's." "If you meddle with the devil, take care of his claws ! " answered the Captain of Castle William, stirred by the taimt against his countrymen. "Craving your pardon, young sir," said the ven- erable Selectman, " let not an evil spirit enter into your words. We wiU strive against the oppressor with prayer and fasting, as our forefathers would have done. Like them, moreover, we will submit to what- ever lot a wise Providence may send us, — always, af- ter our own best exertions to amend it." " And there peep forth the devil's claws ! " muttered Hutchinson, who well understood the nature of Puri- tan submission. "This matter shall be expedited forthwith. When there shall be a sentinel at every comer, and a court of guard before the town house, a loyal gentleman may venture to walk abroad. What to me is the outcry of a mob, in this remote province of the realm ? The king is my master, and England 802 TWICE-TOLD TALES. is my country ! Upheld by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the rabble, and defy them ! " He snatched a pen, and was about to affix his sig- nature to the paper that lay on the table, when the Captain of Castle William placed his hand upon his shoulder. The freedom of the action, so contrary to the ceremonious respect which was then considered due to rank and dignity, awakened general surprise, and in none more than in the Lieutenant-Governor himself. Looking angrily up, he perceived that his young relative was pointing his finger to the opposite wall. Hutchinson's eye followed the signal ; and he saw, what had hitherto been unobserved, that a black silk curtain was suspended before the mysterious pict< ure, so as completely to conceal it. His thoughts im- mediately recurred to the scene of the preceding af- ternoon ; and, in his surprise, confused by indistinct emotions, yet sensible that his niece must have had an agency in this phenomenon, he called loudly upon her. " Alice ! — come hither, Alice! " No sooner had he spoken than Alice Vane glided from her station, and pressing one hand across her eyes, with the other snatched away the sable curtain that concealed the portrait. An exclamation of sur- prise burst from every beholder ; but the Lieutenant- Governor's voice had a tone of horror. " By Heaven ! " said he, in a low, inward murmur, speaking rather to himself than to those around him, "if the spirit of Edward Randolph were to appear amo^g us from the place of torment, he could not wear more of the terrors of hell upon his face ! " " For some wise end," said the aged Selectman, sol- enmly, "hath Providence scattered away the mist of EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 803 fears that had so long hid this dreadful effigy. Until this hour no living man hath seen what we behold I " Within the antique frame, which so recently had inclosed a sable waste of canvas, now appeared a visi- ble picture, still dark, indeed, in its hues and shadings, but thrown forward in strong relief. It was a half- length figure of a gentleman in a rich but very old- fashioned dress of embroidered velvet, with a broad ruff and a beard, and wearing a hat, the brim of which overshadowed his forehead. Beneath this cloud the eyes had a peculiar glare, which was almost Ufelike. The whole portrait started so distinctly out of the background, that it had the effect of a person look- ing down from the wall at the astonished and awe- stricken spectators. The expression of the face, if any words can convey an idea of it, was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and exposed to the bitter hatred and laughter and withering scorn of a vast stirrounding multitude. There was the struggle of defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by the crush- ing weight of ignominy. The torture of the soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed as if the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of imme- morial years, had been all the time acquiring an in- tenser depth and darkness of expression, till now it gloomed forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present hour. Such, if the wild legend may be cred- ited, was the portrait of Edward Randolph, as he ap- peared when a people's curse had wrought its iiifluence upon his nature. " 'T would drive me mad — that awful face! " said Hutchinson, who seemed fascinated by the contempla- tion of it. *' Be warned, then ! " whispered Alice. " He tram- 804 TWICE-TOLD TALES. pled on a people's rights. Behold his punishment— and avoid a crime like his ! " The Lieutenant-Governor actually trembled for an instant ; but, exerting his energy — which was not, however, his most characteristic feature — he strove to shake off the spell of Randolph's coimtenance. " Girl ! " cried he, laughing bitterly as he turned to Alice, " have you brought hither your painter's art — your Italian spirit of intrigue — your tricks of stage effect — and think to influence the councils of rulers and the affairs of nations by such shallow con- trivances ? See here ! " " Stay" yet a while," said the Selectman, as Hutch- inson again snatched the pen ; " for if ^ver mortal man received a warning from a tormented soul, your Honor is that man ! " " Away ! " answered Hutchinson fiercely. " Though yonder senseless picture cried 'Forbear! ' — it should not move me ! " Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face (which seemed at that moment to intensify the horror of its miserable and wicked look), he scrawled on the paper, in characters that betokened it a deed of des- peration, the name of Thomas Hutchinson. Then, it is said, he shuddered, as if that signature had granted away his salvation. "It is done," said he; and placed his hand upon his brow. " May Heaven forgive the deed," said the soft, sad accents of Alice Vane, like the voice of a good spirit flitting away. When morning came there was a stifled whisper through the household, and spreading thence about the town, that the dark, mysterious picture had started EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 305 from the wall, and spoken face to face with Lieutenant- Governor Hutchinson. If such a miracle had been wrought, however, no traces of it remained behind, for within the antique frame nothing could be discerned save the impenetrable cloud, which had covered the canvas since the memory of man. If the figure had, indeed, stepped forth, it had fled back, spirit-like, at the daydawn, and hidden itself behind a century's ob- scurity. The truth probably was, that Alice Vane's secret for restoring the hues of the picture had merely effected a temporary renovation. But those who, in that brief interval, had beheld the awful visage of Ed- ward Bandolph, desired no second glance, and ever afterwards trembled at the recollection of the scene, as if an evil spirit had appeared visibly among them. And as for Hutchinson, when, far over the ocean, his dying hour drew on, he gasped for breath, and com- plained that he was choking with the blood of the Boston Massacre; and Francis Lincoln, the former Captain of Castle William, who was standing at his bedside, perceived a likeness in his frenzied look to that of Edward Eandolph. Did his broken spirit feel, at that dread hour, the tremendous burden of a Peo- ple's curse? At the conclusion of this miraculous legend, I in- quired of mine host whether the picture still remained in the chamber over our heads ; but Mr. TifEany in- formed me that it had long since been removed, and was supposed to be hidden in some out-of-the-way cor- ner of the New England Museum. Perchance some 3urious antiquary may light upon it there, and, with ihe assistance of Mr. Howorth, the picture cleaner, FOk I. so 806 TWICE-TOLD TALES. may supply a not unnecessary proof of the authenticity of the facts here set down. During the progress of the story a storm had been gathering abroad, and rag- ing and rattling so loudly in the upper regions of the Province House, that it seemed as if all the old gov- ernors and great men were nmning riot above stairs while Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them below. In the course of generations, when many people have lived and died in an ancient house, the whisl^g of the wind through its crannies, and the creaking of its beams and rafters, become strangely like the tones of the human voice, or thundering laughter, or heavy footsteps treading the deserted chambers. It is as if the echoes of half a century were revived. Such were the ghostly sounds that roared and murmured in our ears when I took leave of the circle round the fireside of the Province House, and plunging down the door steps, fought my way homeward against a drifting snow-storm. LEGENDS OF THE PEOVINCE HOUSE. III. LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. Mine excellent friend, the landlord of the Province House, was pleased, the other evening, to invite Mr, Tiffany and myself to an oyster supper. This slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he handsomely ob- served, was far less than the ingenious tale-teller, and I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had fairly earned, by the public notice which our joint lucubra- tions had attracted to his establishment. Many a cigar had been smoked within his premises — many a glass of wine, or more potent aqua vitas, had been quaffed — many a dinner had been eaten by curious strangers, who, save for the fortunate conjunction, of Mr. Tiffany and me, would never have ventured through that darksome avenue which gives access to the historic precincts of the Province House. In short, if any credit be due to the courteous assurances pf Mr. Thomas Waite, we had brought his forgotten mansion almost as effectually into public view as if we had thrown down the vulgar range of shoe shops and dry goods stores, which hides its aristocratic front from Washington Street. It may be unadvisable, however, to speak too loudly of the increased custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite shotdd find it difficult to renew the lease on so favorable terms as heretofore. Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. 808 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Tiffany nor myself felt any scruple in doing full jua tice to the good things that were set before us. K the feast were less magnificent than those same panelled walls had witnessed in a by-gone century, — if mine host presided with somewhat less of state than might have befitted a successor of the royal Governors, — if the guests made a less imposing show than the be- wigged and powdered and embroided dignitaries, who erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table, and now sleep, within their armorial tombs on Copp's Hill, or round King's Chapel, — yet never, I may boldly say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the Province House, from Queen Anne's days to the Revolution. The occasion was rendered more inter- esting by the presence of a venerable personage, whose own actual reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe, and even supplied him with a doubt- ful anecdote or two of Hutchinson. He was one of that small, and now all but extinguished, class, whose attachment to royalty, and to the colonial institutions and customs that were connected with it, had never yielded to the democratic heresies of after times. The yoimg queen of Britain has not a more loyal subject in her realm — perhaps not one who would kneel be- fore her throne with such reverential love — as this old grandsire, whose head has whitened beneath the mild sway of the Republic, which still, in his mel- lower moments, he terms a usurpation. Yet prej- udices so obstinate have not made him an ungentle or impracticable companion. If the truth must be told, the life of the aged loyalist has been of such a scrambling and unsettled character, — he has had so little choice of friends and been so often destitute of any, — that I doubt whether he would refuse a cup of LAHY ELEANORS 'S MANTLE. 809 tdndness with either Oliver Cromwell or John Han* eock, — to say nothing of any democrat now upon the Btage. In another paper of this series I may perhapi give the reader a closer glimpse of his portrait. Our host, in due season, uncorked a bottle of Ma- deira, of such exquisite perfume and admirable flavor that he surely must have discovered it in an ancient bin, down deep beneath the deepest cellar, where some jolly old butler stored away the Governor's choicest wine, and forgot to reveal the secret on his death-bed. Peace to his red-nosed ghost, and a libation to his memory ! This precious liquor was imbibed by Mr. Tiffany with peculiar zest ; and after sipping the third glass, it was his pleasure to give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet raked from the storehouse where he keeps such matters. With some suitable adornments from my own fancy, it ran pretty much a(> follows. Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the gov. emment of Massachusetts Bay, now nearly a hundred and twenty years ago, a yoimg lady of rank and fov™ tune arrived from England, to claim his protection atA her guardian. He was her distant relative, but thu nearest who had survived the gradual extinction of heo family ; so that no more eligible shelter could be f ounrf for the rich and high-bom Lady Eleanore Rochcliff* than within the Province House of a transatlantic colony. The consort of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as a mother to her childhood, and was now anxious to receive her, in the hope that a beautiful young woman would be exposed to infinitely less peril from the primitive socdety of New England than amid 810 TWICE-TOLD TALES. the artifices and corruptions of a court. If either th« Governor or his lady had especially consulted theii own comfort, they would probably have sought to de^ volve the responsibility on other hands \ since, witl some noble and splendid traits of character, Lady El eanore was remarkable for a harsh, unyielding pride, a haughty consciousness of her hereditary and per- sonal advantages, which made her almost incapable of control. Judging from many traditionary anecdotes, this peculiar temper was hardly less than a mono- mania ; or, if the acts which it inspired were those of a sane person, it seemed due from Providence that pride so sinful should be followed by as severe a retribution. That tinge of the marvellous, which is thrown over so many of these half-forgotten legends, has probably imparted an additional wildness to the strange story of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at Newport, whence Lady Eleanore was conveyed to Boston in the Governor's coach, attended by a small escort of gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage, with its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled through Comhill, surrounded by the prancing steeds of half a dozen cavaliers, with swords dangling to their stirrups and pistols at their holsters. Through the large glass windows of the coach,^as it rolled along, the people could discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely combining an al- most queenly stateliness with the grace and beauty of a maiden in her teens. A singular tale had gone abroad among the ladies of the province, that their fair rival was indebted for much of the irresistible charm of hei appearance to a certain article of dress — an embroid- ered mantle — which had been wrought by the most LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 811 fikilful artist in London, and possessed even magical properties of adornment. On the present occasion, however, she owed nothing to the witchery of dress, being clad in a riding habit of velvet, which would have appeared stiff and ungraceful on any other form. The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and the whole cavalcade came to a pause in front of the contorted iron balustrade that fenced the Province House from the public street. It was an awkward coincidence that the bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a funeral ; so that, instead of a glad- some peal with which it was customary to announce the arrival of distinguished strangers. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a doleful clang, as if calam- ity had come embodied in her beautiful person. " A very great disrespect ! " exclaimed Captain Langford, an English of&cer, who had recently brought dispatches to Governor Shute. "The fu- neral should have been deferred, lest Lady Eleanore's spirits be affected by such a dismal welcome." "With your pardon, sir," replied Doctor Clarke, a physician, and a famous champion of the popular party, " whatever the heralds may pretend, a dead beg- gar must have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers high privileges." These remarks were intei;changed while the speak- ers waited a passage through the crowd, which had gathered on each side of the gateway, leaving an open avenue to the portal of the Province House. A black slave in livery now leaped from behind the coach, and threw open the door ; while at the same moment Gov- ernor Shute descended the flight of steps from his mansion, to assist Lady Eleanore in alighting. But tbe Governor's stately approach was anticipated in a 812 TWICE-TOLD TALES. manner that excited general astonishment. A pale yomig man, with his black hair all in disorder, rushed from the throng, and prostrated himself beside the coach, thus offering his person as a footstool for Lady Eleanore Kochcliffe to tread upon. She held back an instant, yet with an expression as if doubting whether the yoimg man were worthy to bear the weight of her footstep, rather than dissatisfied to receive such awful reverence from a fellow-mortal. " Up, sir," said the Governor, sternly, at the same time lifting his cane over the intruder. " What means the Bedlamite by this freak ? " " Nay," answered lady Eleanore playfully, but with more scorn than pity in her tone, " your Excellency shall not strike him. When men seek only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily granted — and so well deserved ! " Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam on a cloud, she placed her foot upon the cowering form, and ex- tended her hand to meet that of the Governor. There was a brief interval, during which Lady Eleanore retained this attitude ; and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of aristocracy and hereditary pride trampling on human sympa^es and the kindred of ■ nature, than these two figures presented at that mo- ment. Yet the spectators were so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did pride seem to the exist- ence of such a creature, that they gave a simultaneous acclamation of applause. "Who is this insolent young fellow?" inquired Captain Langford, who still remained beside Doctor Clarke. "If he be in his senses, his impertinence demands the bastinado. If mad. Lady Eleanore should be secured from further inconvenience, by his confinement" LADY ELE AN ORE'S MANTLE. 81S "His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the Doo- tor ; " a youth of no birth or fortune, or other advan- tages, save the mind and soul that nature gave him ; and being secretary to our colonial agent in London, it was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. He loved her — and her scorn has driven him mad." " He was mad so to aspire," observed the EngHsh officer. " It may be go," said Doctor Clarke, frowning as he spoke. " But I teU you, sir, I coidd weU-nigh doubt the justice of the Heaven above us if no signal humili- ation overtake this lady, who now treads so haughtily into yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our common nature, which envelops all human souls. See, if that nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring her level with the lowest ! " "Never!" cried Captain Langford indignantly — *• neither in life, nor when they lay her with her ancestors." Not many days afterwards the Governor gave a ball in honor of Lady Eleanore EochclilEe. The principal gentry of the colony received invitations, which were distributed to their residences, far and near, by mes- sengers on horseback, bearing missives sealed with all the formality of official dispatches. Li obedience to the summons, there was a general gathering of rank, wealth, and beauty ; and the wide door of the Province House had seldom given admittance to more numerous and honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's ball. Without much extravagance of eu- logy, the spectacle might even be termed splendid; Cor, according to the fashion of the times, the ladies Sl4 TWICE-TOLD TALES. shone in rich silks and satins, outspread over wide* projecting hoops ; and the gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery, laid unsparingly upon the purple, or scar- let, or sky-blue velvet, which was the material of their coats and waistcoats. The latter article of dress was of great importance, since it enveloped the wearer's body nearly to the knees, and was perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole year's income, in golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste of the present day — a taste symbolic of a deep change in the whole system of society — would look upon almost any of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous ; although that evening the guests sought their reflections in tiie pier- glasses, and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the glittering crowd. What a pity that one of the stately mirrors has not preserved a picture of the . scene, which, by the very traits that were so transi- tory, might have taught us much that would be worth knowing and remembering! Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could convey to us some faint idea of a garment, already noticed in this legend, — the Lady Eleanore's embroid- ered mantle, — which the gossips whispered was in- vested with magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace to her figure each time that she put it on ! Idle fancy as it is, this mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around my image of her, partly from its fabled virtues, and partly because it was the handi- work of a dying woman, and, perchance, owed the fan- tastic grace of its conception to the delirium of ap- proaching death. After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady Eleanore Eochcliffe stood apart from the mob guests, insulating herself within a small and distia LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 315 fished circle, to whom she accorded a more cordial ' favor than to the general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance vividly over the scene, bringiag out its brilliant points in strong relief ; but she gazed carelessly, and with now and then an expression of , weariness or scorn, tempered with such feminine grace that her auditors scarcely perceived the moral deform- ity of which it was the utterance. She beheld the spectacle not with vulgar ridicule^ as disdaining to be pleased with the provincial mockery of a court festival, but with the deeper scorn of one whose spirit held it- self too high to participate in the enjoyment of other human souls. Whether or no the recollections of those who saw her that evening were influenced by the strange events with which she was subsequently connected, so it was that her figure ever after recurred to them as marked by something wild and unnatural, — although, at the time, the general whisper was of her exceeding beauty, and of the indescribable charm which her mantle threw around her. Some close ob- servers, indeed, detected a feverish flush and alternate paleness of countenance, with a corresponding flow and revulsion of spirits, and once or twice a painful and helpless betrayal of lassitude, as if she were on the point of sinking to the ground- Then, with a nervous shudder, she seemed to arouse her energies and threw some bright and playful yet half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation. Tljere was so strange a character- istic in her manners and sentiments that it astonished every right-minded listener ; till looking in her face, a lurking and incomprehensible glance and smile per- plexed them with doubts both as to her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore EochclilEe'a eircle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen remained 816 TWICE-TOLD 2' ALES. in it. These were Captain Langford, the Englist officer before mentioned ; a Virginian planter, who had come to Massachusetts on some political errand ; s young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a British earl; and, lastly, the private secretary of Governor Shute, whose obsequiousness had won a sort of toler- ance from Lady Eleanore. At different periods of the evening the liveried servants of the Province House passed among the guests, bearing huge trays of refreshments and French and Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Eochcliffe, who refused to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of Champagne, had sunk back into a large damask chair, apparently overwearied either with the excitement of the scene or its tedium, and while, for an instant, she was unconscious of voices, lighter and music, a young man stole forward, and knelt down at her feet. He bore a salver in his hand, on which was a chased silver goblet, filled to the brim with wine, which he offered as reverentially as to a crowned queen, or rather with the awful devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol. Conscious that some one toiiched her robe. Lady Eleanore started, and unclosed her ; eyes upon the pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of Jervase Helwyse. " Why do you haunt me thus ? " said she, in a lan- guid tone, but with a kindlier feeling than she ordina- rily permitted herself to express. " They tell me that I have done you harm." " Heaven knows if that be so," replied the young man solemnly. "But, Lady Eleanore, in requital of that harm, if such there be, and for your oAvn earthly and heavenly welfare, I pray you to take one sip of this holy wine, and then to pass the goblet round LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 817 tmong the guests. And this shall be a symbol that you have not sought to withdraw yourself from the chain of human sympathies — which whoso would shake off must keep company with fallen angels." '' " Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental vessel? " exclaimed the Episcopal clergyman. This question drew the notice of the guests to the silver cup, which was recognized as appertaining to the communion plate of the Old South Church; and, for aught that could be known, it was bamming over with the consecrated wine. " Perhaps it is poisoned," half whispered the Gov- ernor's secretary. " Pour it down the villain's throat ! " cried the Vir- ginian fiercely. " Turn him out of the house ! " cried Captain Lang- ford, seizing Jervase Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder that the sacramental cup was overturned, and its contents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore's mantle. "Whether knave, fool, or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the fellow should go at large." " Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no hairm," said Lady Eleanore, with a faint and weary smile. " Take him out of my sight, if such be your pleasure ; for I can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at him ; whereas, in aU decency and conscience, it would become me to weep for the mischief I have wrought ! " But while the by-standers were attempting to lead away the unfortunate young man, he broke from them, and with a wild, impassioned earnestness, offered a new and equally strange petition to Lady Eleanore. It was no other than that she should throw off the mantle, which, while he pressed the silver cup of wine upon her, she had drawn more closely around her form, s« »8 almost to shroud herself within it. B18 TVHCE-TOLD TALES. " Cast it from you ! " exclaimed Jervase Helwyse^ clasping his hands in an agony of entreaty. " It may not yet be too late ! Grive the accursed garment to the flames ! " But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the rich folds of the embroidered mantle over her head, in such a fashion as to give a completely new aspect to her beautiful face, which — half hidden, half revealed — seemed to belong to some being of mysterious char- acter and purposes. " Farewell, Jervase Helwyse ! " said she. " Keep my image in your remembrance, as you behold it now." " Alas, lady ! " he replied, in a tone no longer wild, but sad as a funeral beU. "We must meet shortly, when your face may wear another aspect — and that shall be the image that must abide within me." He made no more resistance to the violent efforts of the gentlemen and servants, who almost dragged him out of the apartment, and dismissed him roughly from the iron gate of the Province House. Captain Lang- ford, who had been very active in this affair, was re- turning to the presence of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he encountered the physician. Doctor Clarke, with whom he had held some casual talk on the day of her arrival. The Doctor stood apart, separated from Lady Eleanore by the width of the room, but eying her with such keen sagacity that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him credit for the discovery of some deep secret. "You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms of this queenly maiden," said he, hoping thus to draw forth the physician's hidden knowledge. " God forbid ! " answered Doctor Clarke, with a grav« LADY ELEANOEE'S MANTLE. 819 smile ; " and if you be wise you will put up the same prayer for yourself. Woe to those who shall be smit- ten by this beautiful Lady Eleanorel But yonder stands the Governor — and I have a word or two for his private ear. Good night ! " He accordingly advanced to Governor Shute, and addressed him in so low a tone that none of the by-standers could catch a word of what he said, al- though the sudden change of his Excellency's hitherto cheerful visage betokened that the communication could be of no agreeable import. A very few moments : afterwards it was announced to the guests that an un- foreseen circumstance rendered it necessary to put a premature close to the festival. The ball at the Province House supplied a topic of conversation for the colonial metropolis for some days after its occurrence, and might still longer have been the general theme, only that a subject of all-engrossing interest thrust it, for a time, from the public recollec- tion. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic, which, in that age and long before and afterwards, was wont to slay its hundreds and thousands on both sides of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which we speak, it was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, in- somuch that it has left its traces — its pit-marks, to us? an appropriate figure — on the history of the country, the affairs of which were thrown into confusion bj its ravages. At first, unlike its ordinary course, the disease seemed to confine itself to the higher circles of society, selecting its victims from among the proud, the well-bom, and the wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers, and lying down with the slumberers in silken beds. Some of the most distinguished guests »f the Province House — even those whom the haughtj 820 TWICE-TOLT> TALES. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthj of her favor — were stricken by this fatal scourge. It was noticed, with an ungenerous bitterness of feeling, that the four gentlemen — the Virginian, the British officer, the young clergyman, and the Governor's se- cretary — who had been her most devoted attendants on the evening of the ball, were the foremost on whom the plague stroke fell. But the disease, pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be exclusively a pre- rogative of aristocracy. Its red brand was no longer conferred like a noble's star, or an order of knight- hood. It threaded its way through the narrow and crooked streets, and entered the low, mean, darksome dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the artisans and laboring classes of the town. It compelled rich and poor to feel themselves brethren then ; and stalk- ing to and fro across the Three HiUs, with a fierceness which made it almost a new pestilence, there was that mighty conqueror — that scourge and horror of our forefathers — the SmaU-Pox ! We cannot estimate the affright which this plague inspired of yore, by contemplating it as the f angless monster of the present day. We must remember, rather, with what awe we watched the gigantic foot- steps of the Asiatic cholera, striding from shore to shore of the Atlantic, and marching like destiny upon cities far remote which flight had already half depopu- ,lated. There is no other fear so horrible and unhu- manizing as that which makes man dread to breathe heaven's vital air lest it be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend lest the gripe of the pes- tilence should clutch him. Such was the dismay that now followed in the track of the disease, or ran before it throughout the town. Graves were hastily dug, and LADY ELE ANDRE'S MANTLE. 321 the pestilential relics as hastily covered, because the dead were enemies of the living, and strove to draw them headlong, as it were, into their own dismal pit. The public councils were suspended, as if mortal wis- dom might relinquish its devices, now that an un- earthly usurper had found his way into the ruler's mansion. Had an enemy's fleet been hovering on the coast, or his armies trampling on our soil, the people would probably have committed their defence to that same direful conqueror who had wrought their own calamity, and would permit no interference with his sway. This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs. It was a blood-red flag, that fluttered in the tainted air, over the door of every dwelling into which the Small-Pox had entered. Such a banner was long since waving over the portal of the Province House; for thence, as was proved by tracking its footsteps back, had all this dreadful mischief issued. It had been traced back to a lady's luxurious chamber — to the proudest of the proud — to her that was so delicate, and hardly owned herself of earthly mould — to the haughty one, who took her stand above human sympathies — to Lady Eleanore! There remained no room for doubt that the contagion had lurked in that gorgeous mantle, which threw so strange a grace around her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor had been conceived in the delirious brain of a woman on her death-bed, and was the last toil of her stiffening fingers, which had interwoven fate and misery ;Brith its golden threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now bruited far and wide. The people raved against the Lady Eleanore, and cried out that her pride and scorn had evoked a fiend, and that, between them both, this VOL. I. ax TWICE-TOLD TALES. monstrous evil had been bom. At times, their raga and despair took the semblance of grinning mirth; and whenever the red flag of the pestilence was hoisted over another and yet another door, they clapped their hands and shouted through the streets, in bitter mock- ery : " Behold a new triumph for the Lady Eleanore ! " One day, in the midst of these dismal times, a wild figure approached the portal of the Province House, and folding his arms, stood contemplating the scarlet banner which a passing breeze shook fitfully, as if to fling abroad the contagion that it typified. At length, climbing one of the pillars by means of the iron bal- ustrade, he took down the flag and entered the man- sion, waving it above his head. At the foot of the staircase he met the Governor, booted and spurred, with his cloak drawn around him, evidently on the point of setting forth upon a journey. " Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here ? " ex- claimed Shute, extending his cane to guard himself from contact. "There is nothing here but Death. Back — or you will meet him ! " " Death will not touch, me, the banner-bearer of the pestilence I " cried Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag aloft. "Death, and the Pestilence, who wears the aspect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through the streets to-night, and I must march before them with this banner ! " " Why do I waste words on the feUow ? " muttered the Governor, drawing his cloak across his mouth. " What matters his miserable life, when none of us are sure of twelve hours' breath ? On, fool, to your own destruction ! " He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immedi- ately ascended the staircase, but, on the first landing LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 823 place, was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand upon his shoulder. Looking fiercely up, with a madman's impulse to struggle with and rend asunder his oppo- nent, he found himself powerless beneath a calm, stem eye, which possessed the mysterious property of quell- ing frenzy at its height. The person whom h& had now encountered was the physician, Doctor Clarke, the duties of whose sad profession had led him to the Province House, where he was an infrequent guest in more prosperous times. " Young man, what is your purpose ? " demanded he. " I seek the Lady Eleanore," answered Jervase Helwyse, submissively. " All have fled from her," said the physician. " Why do you seek her now ? I tell you, youth, her nurse fell death-stricken on the threshold of that fatal chamber. Know ye not, that never came such a curse to our shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore ? — that her breath has filled the air with poison ? — that she has shaken pestilence and death upon the land, from the folds of her accursed mantle ? " " Let me look upon her ! " rejoined the mad youth, more wildly. " Let me behold her, in her awful beauty, clad in the regal garments of the pestilence ! She and Death sit on a throne together. Let me kneel down before them I " " Poor youth ! " said Doctor Clarke ; and, moved by a deep sense of human weakness, a smile of caus- tic humor curled his lip even then. " Wilt thou stUl worship the destroyer and sul-round her image with fantasies the more magnificent, the more evil she has wrought ? Thus man doth ever to hi^ tyrants. Ap- proach, then! Madness, as I ha,ve noted, has that 324 TWICE-TOLD TALES. good efficacy, that it will guard you from contagion— and perchance its own cure may be found in yonder chamber." Ascending another flight of stairs, he threw open a door and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he should enter. The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cher- ished a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in state, unharmed herself by the pestilential influence, which, as by enchantment, she scattered round about her. He dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was not dimmed, but brightened into superhuman splendor. With such anticipations, he stole reverentially to the door at which the physician stood, but paused upon the threshold, gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened chamber. " Where is the Lady Eleanore ? " whispered he. " Call her," replied the physician. " Lady Eleanore ! — Princess ! — Queen of Death ! " cried Jervase Helwyse, advancing three steps into the chamber. " She is not here ! There, on yonder table, I behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore upon her bosom. There " — and he shuddered — " there hangs her mantle, on which a dead woman embroidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where is the Lady Eleanore ? " Something stirred within the silken curtains of a canopied bed; and a low moan was uttered, which, listening intently, Jervase Helwyse began to distin- guish as a woman's voice, complaining dolefully of thirst. He fancied, even, that he recognized its tones. "My throat! — my throat is scorched," murmured the voice. " A drop of water ! " "What thing art thou?" said the brain-stricken ^outh, drawing near the bed and tearing asunder its LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 325 mrtains. " Whose voice hast thou stolen for thy muiv murs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanoro could be conscious of mortal infirmity ? Fie ! Heap of diseased mortality, why lurkest thou in my lady's chamber ? " "O Jervase Helwyse," said the voice — and as J^ spoke the figure contorted itseK, struggling to hide iti. blasted face — " look not now on the woman you once loved! The curse of Heaven hath stricken me, be* cause I would not call man my brother, nor woman sister. I wrapped myself in priDb as in a mantle, and scorned the sympathies of nature ; and therefore has nature made this wretched body the medium of a dreadful sympathy. You are avenged — they are all avenged — Nature is avenged — for I am Eleanore Eochcliffe ! " The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness lurking at the bottom of his heart, mad as he was, for a blighted and ruined Hfe, and love that had been paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jervase Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched girl, and the chamber echoed, the curtains of the bed were shaken, with his outburst of insane merriment. "Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore!" he cried. " All have been her victims I Who so worthy to be the final victim as herself ? " Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intel- lect, he snatched the fatal mantle and rushed from the chamber and the house. That night a procession passed, by torchlight, through the streets, bearing in the midst the figure of a woman, enveloped with a richly embroidered mantle ; while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse, waving the fed flag of the pestilence. Arriving opposite the Province House, the mob burned 826 TWICE-TOLD TALES. the effigy, and a strong wind came and swept awaj the ashes. It was said that, from that very hour, the pestilence abated, as if its sway had some mysterious connection, from the first plague stroke to the last, with Lady Eleanore's Mantle. A remarkable imcer- tainty broods over that imhappy lady's fate. There is a belief, however, that in a certain chamber of this mansion a female form may sometimes be duskily dis- cerned, shrinking into the darkest comer and muf- fling her face within an embroidered mantle. Suppos- ing the legend true, can this be other than the once proud Lady Eleanore ? Mine host and the old loyalist and I bestowed no little warmth of applause upon this narrative, in which we had all been deeply interested ; for the reader can scarcely conceive how unspeakably the effect of such a tale is heightened when, as in the present case, we may repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who tells it. For my own part, knowing how scrupu- lous is Mr. Tiffany to settle the foundation of his facts, I could not have believed him one whit the more faith- fully had he professed himself an eye-witness of the doings and sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some sceptics, it is true, might demand documentary evi- dence, or even require him to produce the embroidered mantle, forgetting that — Heaven be praised ^^ it was consumed to ashes. But now the old loyalist, whose blood was warmed by the good cheer, began to talk, in his turn, about the traditions of the Province House, and hinted that he, if it were agreeable, might add a few reminiscences to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no cause to dread a rival, immediately besought LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 327 him to favor us with a specimen ; my own entreaties, of course, were u;"ged to the same effect ; and our venerable guest, well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited only the return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned forth to provide accommodations for several new arrivals. Perchance the public — but be this as its own caprice and ours shall settle the matter — may read the result in another Tale of iSaa Province House. LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE. IV. OLD ESTHEK DUDLEY. OuB host having resumed the chair, he, as well as Mr. Tiffany and myself, expressed much eagerness to be made acquainted with the story to which the loyal- ist had alluded. That venerable man first of aU saw fit to moisten his throat with another glass of wiae, and then, tumiag his face towards our coal fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into the depths of its cheerful glow. Finally, he poured forth a great flu- ency of speech. The generous liquid that he had im- bibed, while it warmed his age-chilled blood, likewise took off the chill from his heart and mind, and gave Aim an energy to thiak and feel, which we could hardly have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more excitable than those of a younger man ; or at least, the same degree of feeling manifested itself by more visible effects than if his judgment and will had possessed tiie potency of meridian life. At the pa- thetic passages of his narrative he readily melted into tears. When a breath of indignation swept across his spirit the blood flushed his withered visage even to the roots of his white hair; and he shook his clinched fist at the trio of peaceful auditors, seeming to fancy eno' mies in those who felt very kindly towards the deso- l^^ old ^QuL Sut ever ^nd anon, sometimes in the OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 329 midst of his most eajnest talk, this ancient person's intellect woiald wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in hand, and groping for it amid misty shad- ows. Then would he cackle forth a feeble laugh, and express a doubt whether his wits — for by that phrase it pleased our ancient friend to signify his mental powers — were not getting a little the worse for wear. Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist's story required more rcAdsion to render it fit for the public eye than those of the series which have preceded it ; nor should it be concealed that the sentiment and tone of the affair may have undergone some slight, or per- chance more than slight, metamorphosis, in its trans- mission to the reader through the medimn of a thor- ough-going democrat. The tale itself is a mere sketch, with no involution of plot, nor any great interest of events, yet possessing, if I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over the mind which the shadow of the old Province House flings upon the loiterer in its court-yard. The hour had come — the hour of defeat and hu- miliation — when Sir William Howe was to pass over the threshold of the Province House, and embark, with no such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself, on board the British fleet. He bade his ser- vants and military attendants go before him, and lin- gered a moment in the loneliness of the mansion, to quell the fierce emotions that struggled in his bosom as with a death throb. Preferable, then, would he have deemed his fate, had a warrior's death left him a claim to the narrow territory of a grave within the soil which the King had ^ven him to defend. With S30 TWICE-TOLD TALE^. an ominous perception that, as his departing footsteps echoed adown the staircase, the sway of Britain was passing forever from New England, he smote his clinched hand on his brow, and cursed the destiny that had flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon him. " Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his tears of rage, " that the rebels were even now at the doorstep ! A blood-stain upon the floor should then bear testimony that the last British ruler was faithful to his trust." The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his ex- clamation. " Heaven's cause and the King's are one," it said. " Go forth, Sir William Howe, and trust in Heaven to bring back a Boyal Governor in triumph." Subduing, at once, the passion to which he had yielded only in the faith that it was unwitnessed. Sir William Howe became conscious that an aged woman, leaning on a gold-headed staff, was standing betwixt him and the door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost immemorial years in this mansion, tmtil her presence seemed as inseparable from it as the recollections of its history. She was the daughter of an ancient and once eminent family, which had fallen into poverty and decay, and left its last de- scendant no resource save the bounty of the King, nor any shelter except within the walls of the Province House. An office in the household, with merely nom- inal duties, had been assigned to her as a pretext foi the payment of a small pension, the greater part ol which she expended in adorning herself with an an- tique magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther Dudley's gentle blood were acknowledged by all the OLT) ESTHER DUDLEY. 331 Miccessive Governors ; and they treated her -with the ■junctilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand, 4ot always with success, from a neglectful world. The only actual share which she assumed in the business of the mansion was to glide through its passages and public chambers, late at night, to see that the servants had dropped no fire from their flaring torches, nor left embers crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was this invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush of midnight that caused the super- stition of the times to invest the old woman with at- tributes of awe and mystery ; fabling that she had en- tered the portal of the Province House, none knew whence, in the train of the first Royal Grovemor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the last should have departed. But Sir William Howe, if he ever heard this legend, had forgotten it. "Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering here?" asked he, with some severity of tone. " It is my pleasure to be the last in this mansion of the King." " Not so, if it please your Excellency," answered the time-stricken woman. " This roof has sheltered me long. I will not pass from it until tiiey bear me to the tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there for old Esther Dudley, save the Province House or the grave ? " " Now Heaven forgive me ! " said Sir WiUiam Howe to himself. " I was about to leave this wretched old creature to starve or beg. Take this, good Mis- tress Dudley," he added, putting a purse into her hands. " King George's head on these golden guineas is sterling yet, and will contiuue so, I warrant you, even should the rebels crown John Hancock theii king. That purse wiU buy a better shelter than the Province House can now afford." 832 TWICE-TOLD TALES. " While the burden of life remains upon me, I wiH have no other shelter than this roof," persisted Esthei Dudley, striking her staff upon the floor vdth a gesfr are that expressed immovable resolve. "And when your Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the porch to welcome you." " My poor old friend ! " answered the British Gen- eral, — and aU his manly and martial pride could no longer restrain a gush of bitter tears. " This is an evil hour for you and me. The Province which the King intrusted to my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune — - perchance in disgrace — to return no more. And you, whose present being is incorporated with the past — who have seen Governor after Gov- ernor, in stately pageantry, ascend these steps — whose whole life has been an observance of majestic cere- monies, and a worship of the King — how will you endure the change ? Come with us ! Bid farewell to a land that has shaken off its allegiance, and live still under a royal government, at Halifax." " Never, never ! " said the pertinacious old dame. ** Here will I abide ; and King George shall still have one true subject in his disloyal ProAdnce." " Beshrew the old fool ! " muttered Sir William Howe, growing impatient of her obstinacy, and ashamed of the emotion into which he had been betrayed. " She is the very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could exist nowhere but in this musty edifice. Well, then. Mistress Dudley, since you will needs tarry, I give the Province House in charge to you. Take this key, and keep it safe until myself, oi some other Eoyal Governor, shall demand it of you.' Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the heavy key of the Province House, and delivering ii OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 833 bto the old lady's hands, drew his cloak aromid him for departure. As the General glanced back at Es- ther Dudley's antique figure, he deemed her well fitted for such a charge, as being so perfect a representative of the decayed past — of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith and feelings, all fallen into oblivion or scorn — of what had once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded magnificence- Then Sir William Howe strode forth, smiting his clinched hands together, in the fierce anguish of his spirit ; and old Esther Dudley was left to keep watch in the lonely Province House, dwelling there with memory ; and if Hope ever seemed to fiit around her, still was it Memory in disgtdse. The total change of affairs that ensued on the de- parture of the British troops did not drive the vener- able lady from her stronghold. There was not, for many years afterwards, a Governor of Massachusetts ; and the magistrates, who had charge of such matters, saw no objection to Esther Dudley's residence in the Province House, especially as they must otherwise have paid a hireling for taking care of the premises, which with her was a labor of love. And so they left her the undisturbed mistress of the old historic edifice. Many and strange were the fables which the gossips whispered about her, in all the chimney comers of the town. Among the time-worn articles of furniture that had been left in the mansion there was a tall, antique mirror, which was well worthy of a tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme of one. The gold of its heavily-wrought frame was tarnished, and its surface so blurred, that the old woman's figure, when- ever she paused before it, looked indistinct and ghost- ^e. But it was the general belief that Esther could 334 TWICE-TOLD TALES. 3ause the Governors of the overthrown dynasty, wit! the beautiful ladies who had once adorned their festi- vals, the Indian chiefs who had come up to the Prov- ince House to hold council or swear allegiance, the grim Provincial warriors, the severe clergymen — in short, aU the pageantry of gone days — all the figures that ever swept across the broad plate of glass in former times — she could cause the whole to reappear, and people the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life. Such legends as these, together with the singularity of her isolated existence, her age, and the infirmity that each added winter fixing upon her, made Mistress Dudley the object both of fear and pity ; and it was partly the result of either sentiment that, amid all the angry license of the times, neither wrong nor insult ever fell upon her unprotected head. Indeed, there was so much haughtiness in her demeanor to- wards intruders, among whom she reckoned all per- sons acting under the new authorities, that it was really an affair of no small nerve to look her in the face. And to do the people justice, stem republicans as they had now become, they were well content that the old gentlewoman, in her hoop petticoat and faded embroidery, should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and overthrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embodying a history in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt year after year in the Province House, still reverencing all that others had flung aside, still faithful to her King, who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her post, might be said to retain one true subject in New England, and one spot of the em- oire that had been wrested from him. And did she dwell there in utter loneliness ? Eumoi said, not so. Whenever her chiU and withered heart OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 835 desired warmth, she was wont to summon a black slave of Governor Shirley's from the blurred mirror, and send him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar in those deserted chambers. Forth went the sable messenger, with the starlight or the moonshine gleaming through him, and did his errand in the burial ground, knocking at the iron doors of tombs, or upon the marble slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within : " My mistress, old Esther Dudley, bids you to the Province House at midnight." And punct- ually as the clock of the Old South told twelve came the shadows of the Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dud- leys, all the grandees of a by-gone generation, gliding beneath the portal into the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them as if she likewise were a shade. Without vouching for the truth of such tradi- tions, it is certain that Mistress Dudley sometimes as- sembled a few of the stanch, though crestfallen, old tories, who had lingered in the rebel town during those days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a cobwebbed bottle, containing liquor that a royal Governor might have smacked his lips over, they quaffed healths to the King, and babbled treason to the Sepublic, feel- ing as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor, they stole timorously homeward, and an- swered not again if the rude mob reviled them in the street. Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests were the children of the town. Towards them she was never stem. A kindly and loving nature, hindered elsewhere from its free course by a thousand rocky prejudices, lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of gingerbread of her own making, stamped 336 TWICE-TOLD TALES. wiiih a royal crown, she tempted their sunny sportive* ness beneath the gloomy portal of the Province House, and would often beguile them to spend a whole play< day there, sitting in a circle round the verge of her hoop petticoat, greedily attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark, mysterious mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings that graver people had long ago forgotten, rubbing their eyes at the world around them as if they had gone astray into ancient times, and become children of the past. At home, when their parents asked where they had loi- tered such a weary while, and with whom they had been at play, the children would talk of all the de- parted worthies of the Province, as far back as Gov- ernor Belcher and the haughty dame of Sir William Fhipps. It would seem as though they had been sit- ting on the knees of these famous personages, whom the grave had hidden for half a century, and had toyed with the embroidery of their rich waistcoats, or rogu- ishly pulled the long curls of their flowing wigs. " But Governor Belcher has been dead this many a year," would the mother say to her little boy. " And did you really see him at the Province House ? " " Oh yes, dear mother ! yes ! " the half-dreaming child would answer. "But when old Esther had doi^e speaking about him he faded away out of his chair." Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she led them by the hand into the chambers of her own desolate heart, and made childhood's fancv discern the ghosts that haimted there. Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and never regulating her mind by a proper reference to present things, Esther Dudley appears to have grown OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 337 partially crazed. It was found that she had no right sense of the progress and true state of the Kevolution- ary War, but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain were victorious on every field, and destined to be rJtimately triumphant. Whenever the town re- joiced for a battle won by Washington, or Gates, or Morgan, or Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the Province House, as through the ivory gate of dreams, became metamorphosed into a strange tale of the prowess of Howe, Clinton, or ComwaUis. Sooner or later it was her invincible belief the colo- nies would be prostrate at the footstool of the King. Sometimes she seemed to take for granted that such was already the case. On one occasion, she startled the towns-people by a brilliant illumination of the Province House, with candles at every pane of glass, and a transparency of the King's initials and a crown of light in the great balcony window. The figure of the aged woman in the most gorgeous of her mildewed velvets and brocades was seen passing from casement to casement, until she paused before the balcony, and flourished a huge key above her head. Her wrinkled visage actually gleamed with triumph, as if the soul within her were a festal lamp. " What means this blaze of light ? What does old Esther's joy portend ? " whispered a spectator. " It is frightful to see her gliding about the chambers, and rejoicing there without a soul to bear her company." " It is as if she were making merry in a tomb,"' said another. " Pshaw ! It is no such mystery," observed an old man, after some brief exercise of memory. " Mis- tress Dudley is keeping jubilee for the King of Eng- land's birthday." VOL. V. 22 838 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Then iihe people laughed aloud, and would hav« thrown mud against the blazing transparency of the King's crown and initials, only that they pitied the poor old dame, who was so dismally triumphant amid the wreck and ruin of the system to which she apper- tained. Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary staircase that wound upward to the cupola, and thence strain her dimmed eyesight seaward and countr3rward, watching for a British fleet, or for the march of a grand procession, with the King's banner floating over it. The passengers in the street below would discern her anxious visage, and send up a shout, " When the golden Indian on the Province House shall shoot bis arrow, and when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then look for a Royal Governor again ! " — for this had grown a byword through the town. And at last, after long, long years, old Esther Dudley knew, or perchance she only dreamed, that a Royal Governor was on the eve of returning to the Province House, to receive the heavy key which Sir William Howe had committed to her charge. Now it was the fact that intelligence bearing some faint analogy to Esther's version of it was current among the towns- people. She set the mansion in the best order that her means allowed, and, arraying herseK in silks and tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred mirro. to admire her own mag-nificence. As she gazed, the gray and withered lady moved her ashen lips, mur- muring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within the mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the household friends of memory, and bidding them rejoice with her and come forth to meet the Governor Aiid while absorbed in this communion, Mistress Dud- OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 339 ley heard the tramp of many footsteps in the street, find, looking out at the window, beheld what she con- strued as the Royal Governor's arrival. " O happy day ! O blessed, blessed hour! " she ex- claimed. " Let me but bid him welcome within the portal, and my task in the Province House, and on earth, is done ! " Then with tottering feet, which age and tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went, 80 that the sound was as if a train of spectral courtiers were thronging from the dim mirror. And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the wide door should be flung open, all the pomp and splendor of by-gone times would pace majestically into the Province House, and the gilded tapestry of the past would be bright- ened by the sunshine of the present. She turned the key — withdrew it from the lock — unclosed the door ■ — and stepped across the threshold. Advancing up the court-yard appeared a person of most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther interpreted them, of gen- tle blood, high rank, and long-accustomed authority, even in his walk and every gesture. He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe, which, however, did not lessen the stateliness of his gait. Around and behind him were people in plain civic dresses, and two or three war-worn veterans, evidently officers of rank, arrayed in a uniform of blue and buff. But Esther Dudley, firm in the belief that had fastened its roots about her heart, beheld only the principal personage, and never doubted that this was the long-looked-for Governor, to whom she was to surrender up her charge. As he approached, she involuntary sank down an her knees and tremblingly held forth the heavj bey. 340 TWICE-TOLD TALES. "Receive my trust! take it qtiioklyl" cried she, " for methiaks Death is striving to snatch away m,» triumph. But he comes too late. Thank Heaven foi this blessed hour ! God save King George! " "That, Madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up at such a moment," replied the unknown guest of the Province House, and courteously removing his hat, he offered his arm to raise the aged woman. " Yet, in reverence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven forbid that any here shoidd say you nay. Over the realms which still acknowledge his sceptre, God save King George ! " Esther Dudley started to her feet, and hastily clutching back the key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the stranger ; and dimly and doubtfully, as if sud- denly awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes half recognized his face. Years ago she had known him among the gentry of the province. But the ban of the King had fallen upon him ! How, then, came the d6omed victim here ? Proscribed, excluded from mercy, the monarch's most dreaded and hated foe, this New England merchant had stood triumphantly against a kingdom's strength ; and his foot now trod upon humbled Royalty, as he ascended the steps of the Province House, the people's chosen Governor of Mas- sachusetts. " Wretch, wretch that I am I " muttered the old woman, with such a heart-broken expression that the tears gushed from the stranger's eyes. " Have I bid- den a traitor welcome ? Come, Death ! come quickly ! ^ " Alas, venerable lady ! " said Governor Hancock, Mending her his support with all the reverence that a eourtier would have shown to a queen. " Your lifa Vuis been prolonged until the world has changed OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 341 BTOtind you. You have treasured up all that time has rendered worthless — the principles, feelings, man- ners, modes of being and acting, which another gen- eration has flung aside — and you are a symbol of the past. And I, and these around me — we represent a new race of men — living no longer in the past, scarcely in the present — but projecting our lives for- ward into the future. Ceasing to model ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith and principle to press onward, onward ! Yet," continued he, turning to his attendants, " let us reverence, for the last time, the stately and gorgeous prejudices of the tottering Past ! " While the Republican Governor spoke, he had con- tinued to support the helpless form of Esther Dudley ; her weight grew heavier against his arm ; but at last, with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient woman sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The key of the Province House fell from her grasp, and clanked against the stone. " I have been faithful imto death," murmured she. « God save the King ! " " She hath done her office ! " said Hancock solemnly. " We will follow her reverently to the tomb of her an- cestors; and then, my fellow-citizens, onward — on- ward I We are no longer children of the Past ! " As the old loyalist concluded his narrative, the en- thusiasm which had been fitfully flashing within his sunken eyes, and quivering across his wrinkled visage, faded away, as if aU the lingering fire of his soul were extinguished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the man- tel-piece threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as 342 TWICE-TOLD TALES. speedily as it shot upward, compeUing our eyes to grope for one another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam, had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the Province House, when the spirit of old Esther Dudley took its flight. And now, again, the clock of the Old South threw its voice of ages on the breeze, knoUing the hourly knell of the Fast, crying out far and wide through the multitudi- nous ci^y, and filling our ears, as we sat in the dusky chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone. In that same mansion — in that very chamber — what a volume of history had been told ofE into hours, by the same voice that was now trembling in the air. Many a Governor had heard those midnight accents, and longed to exchange his stately cares for slumber. And as for mine host and Mr. Bela Tiffany and the old loyalist and me, we had babbled about dreams of the past, until we almost fancied that the clock was still striking in a bygone century. Neither of us would have wondered, had a hoop-pettiooated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered into the chamber, walking her rounds in the hush of midnight, as of yore, and mo- tioned us to quench the fading embers of the fire, and leave the historic precincts to herself and her kindred shades. But as no such vision was vouchsafed, I re- tired unbidden, and would advise Mr. Tiffany to lay hold of another auditor, being resolved not to show my face in the Province House for a good while hence — if ever. THE HAUNTED MIND. What a singular moment is the first one, when yon have hardly begun to recollect yourself, after starting from midnight slumber ? By unclosing your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised the personages of your dream in full convocation round your bed, and catch one broad glance at them before they can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that realm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport, and behold its ghostly inhabitants and wondrous scenery, with a perception of their strangeness such as you never attain while the dream is undisturbed. The distant sound of a church clock is borne faintly on the wind. You question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower that stood within the precincts of your dream. While yet in suspense, another clock flings its heavy clang over the slumbering town, with so full and distinct a sound, and such a long murmur in the peighboring air, that you are certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest comer. You count the strokes — one — two, and there they cease, with a booming sound, like the gathering of a third stroke within the beU. If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the whole night, it would be this. Since your sober bedtime, at eleven, you have had rest enough to take Dff tihe pressure of yesterday's fatigue; while before 844 TWICE-TOLD TALES. you, till the sun comes from " far Cathay " to brighten your window, there is almost the space of a summer night ; one hour to be spent in thought, with the mind's eye half shut, and two in pleasant dreams, and two in that strangest of enjoyments, the forget- fulness alike of joy and woe. The moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and appears so dis- tant that the plunge out of a warm bed into the frosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay. Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the past ; to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future- You have found an intermediate space, where the business of life does not intrude ; where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the present ; a spot where Father Time, when he thinks nobody is watching him, sits down by the wayside to take breath. Oh, that he would fall asleep, and let mortals live on without growing older ! Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the slightest motion would dissipate the fragments of your slmnber. Now, being irrevocably awake, you peep through the half-drawn window curtain, and observe that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in frostwork, and that each pane presents something like a frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace out the analogy while waiting the smumons to break- fast. Seen through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery moimtain peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the most conspicuous object is the stee- ple ; the white spire of which directs you to the wintry lustre of the firmament. You may almost distinguish the figures on the clock that has just told the hour. Such a frosty sky, and the snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the frozen street, aU white, and the dis THE HAUNTED MIND. 345 tent water hardened Into rock, might make you shiver, even under four blankets and a woollen comforter. Yet look at that one glorious star ! Its beams are dis- tinguishable from all the rest, and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed, with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though not so accurate an outline. You sink down and muffle your head in the clotiies, shivering all the while, but less from bodily chill than the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even for the thoughts to venture abroad. You specu- late on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the slug- gish ecstasy of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but delicious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah ! that idea has brouight a hideous one in its train. You think how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow coffins, through the drear winter of the grave, and cannot persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor shiver, when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks, and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb. That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude, and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour. In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners, whom they hide. Bat some- times, and oftenest at midnight, these dark receptacles axe flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength ; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or control- ling them ; then pray that your griefs ma,y slumberi 846 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. It is too late I A funeral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the mind become dim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sister's likeness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweetness in her melau' choly features, and grace in the flow of her sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveliness, with dust among her golden hair, and her bright garments all faded and defaced, stealing from your glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach ; she was your fondest Hope, but a delusive one ; so call her Disap- pointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of iron authority; there is no name for him unless it be Fatality, an eip- blem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes ; a demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at the outset of life, and were bound his slave forever, by once obeying him. See ! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touch- ing the sore place in your heart ! Do you remember any act of enormous foUy at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth ? Then rec- ognize your Shame. Pass, wretched band ! Well for the wakeful one, if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround him, the devils of a guUty heart, that holds its hell within itself. What if Remorse should assume the features of an injured friend? What if the fiend should come in woman's garments, with a pale beauty amid sin and desolation, and lie down by your side ? What if he should stand. at your bed's foot, in the THE HAUNTED MIND. 347 likeness of a corpse, with a bloody stain upon the shroud ? Sufficient, without such guUt, is this nIght-> mare of the soul ; this heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits ; this wintry gloom about the heart ; this indis- tinct horror of the mind, blending itself with the dark- ness of the chamber. By a desperate effort you start upright, breaking from a sort of conscious sleep, and gazing wildly roimd the bed, as if the fiends were anywhere but in your haunted mind. At the same moment, the sliun- bering embers on the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates the whole outer room, and flickers through the door of the bed-chamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity. Your eye searches for whatever may remind you of the living world. With eager minuteness you take note of the table near the fireplace, the book with an ivory knife between its leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat, and the fallen glove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it the whole scene is gone, though its image remains an instant in your mind's eye, when darkness has swallowed the reality. Throughout the chamber there is the same obscurity as before, but not the same gloom within your breast. As your head falls back upon the pil- low, you think — in a whisper be it spoken — how pleasant, m these night solitudes, would be the rise and fall of a softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, imparting its peacefulness to your troubled one, as if the fond sleeper were involving you in her dream. Her influence is over you, though she have no exist- ence but in that momentary image. You sink down in a flowery spot, on the borders of sleep and wakeful- 848 TWICE-TOLD TALES. ness, wliile your thoughts rise before you in pictulres, all disconnected, yet aU assimilated by a pervading gladsomeness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgeous squadrons that glitter in the sun is succeeded by the merriment of children round the door of a school- house, beneath the glimmering shadow of old trees, at the corner of a rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a summer shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autumnal wood, and look upward at the brightest of all rainbows, overarching the unbroken sheet of snow, on the American side of Niagara. Your mind struggles pleasantly between the dancing radi- ance round the hearth of a young man and his recent bride, and the twittering flight of birds in spring about their new-made nest. You feel the merry bomid- ing of a ship before the breeze, and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls as they twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid ball-room, and find yourself in the brilliant circle of a crowded theatre as the curtain falls over a light and airy scene. With an involuntary start you seize hold on con- sciousness, and prove yourself but half awake, by run- ning a doubtful parallel between human life and the hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge from mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can but imperfectly control, and are borne onward to another mystery.. Now comes the peal of the distant clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge farther into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of a tem- porary death. Your spirit has departed, and strays, like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world, beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay. So cahn, perhaps, will be the final change ; so undisturbed, as if among familiar things the entrance of the soul to its Eternal home ! THE VILLAGE UNCLE. AX JMAGTSARY KBTBOSPEGT. Comb ! another log upon the hearth. True, our lit fcle parlor is comfortable, especially here, where the old man sits in his old arm-chair; but on Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance higher up the chimney, and send a shower of sparks into the outer darkness. Toss on an armful of those dry oak chips, the last rel- ics of the Mermaid's knee timbers, the bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and clearer be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest in the village, and the light of our household mirth flash far across the bay to Nahant. And now, come, Susan, come, my children, draw your chairs round me, aU of you. There is a dimness over your figures ! You sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the blaze, vhich eddies about you like a flood, so that you all iave the look of visions, or people that dwell only in the firelight, and will vanish from existence as completely is your own shadows when the flame shall sink among the embers. Hark ! let me listen for the swell of the surf; it should be audible a mile inland on a nighf like this. Yes ; there I catch the sound, but only an uncertain murmur, as if a good way down over the beach ; though, by the almanac, it is high tide at eight o'clock, and the billows must now be dashing within thirty yards of our door. Ah ! the old man's ears are failing him ; and so is his eyesight, and perhaps hia 850 TWICE-TOLD TALES. mind ; else you would not all be so shadowy in the blaze of his Thanksgiving fire. How strangely the past is peeping over the shoulders of the present ! To judge by my recollections, it is but a few moments since I sat in another room ; yonder model of a vessel was not there, nor the old chest of drawers, nor Susan's profile and mine, in that gilt frame ; nothing, in short, except this same fire, which glinimered on books, papers, and a picture, and half discovered my solitary figure in a looking-glass. But it was paler than my rugged old self, and younger, too, by almost half a century. Speak to me, Susan ; speak, my beloved ones ; for the scene is glimmering on my sight again, and as it brightens you fade away. Oh, I should be loath to lose my treasure of past happiness, and become once more what I was then ; a hermit in the depths of my own mind ; sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes, and anon a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read ; a man who had wandered out of the real world and got into its shadow, where his troubles, joys, and vicissitudes were of such slight stuff that he hardly knew whether he lived, or only dreamed of liv- ing. Thank Heaven, I am an old man now, and have done with all such vanities. Still this dimness of mine eyes ! Come nearer, Susan, and stand before the fullest blaze of the hearth. Now I behold you illuminated from head to foot, in your clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of gray hair across your forehead, and a quiet smile about your mouth, while the eyes alone are concealed by the red gleam of the fire upon your spectacles. There, you made me tremble again ! When the fiame quivered, my sweet Susan, you quivered with it, and grew indis- tinct, as if melting into the warm light, that my last THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 351 glimpse of you might be as visionary as the first was, full many a year since. Do you remember it ? You stood on the little bridge over the brook that nms across King's Beach into the sea. It was twilight; the waves rolling in, the wind sweeping by, the crim- son clouds fading in the west, and the silver moon brightening above the lull; and on the bridge were you, fluttering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away at your pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the viewless wind, a creature of the ocean foam and the crimson light, whose merry life was spent in dan- cing on the crests of the billows, that threw up their spray to support your footsteps. As I drew nearer I fancied you akin to the race of mermaids, and thought how pleasant it would be to dweU with you among the quiet coves, in the shadow of the cliffs, and to roam along secluded beaches of the purest sand ; and when our northern shores grew bleak, to haunt the islands, green and lonely, far amid summer seas. And yet it gladdened me, after all this nonsense, to find you noth- ing but a pretty young girl, sadly perplexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your petticoats. Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues, before I could see her as she really was. Now, Susan, for a sober picture of our village ! It was a small collection of dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the sea, with the rockweed and marine plants that it vomits after a storm, or to have come ashore among the pipe staves and other lumber which had been washed from the deck of an eastern schooner. There was just space for the narrow and sandy street, between the beach in front and a precipitous hill that lifted its 362 TWICE-TOLD TALES. rocky forehead in the rear, among a waste of juniper bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The village was picturesque in the variety of its edifices, though all were rude. Here stood a little old hovel, buUt perhaps of driftwood; there a row of boat-houses ; and beyond them a two-story dwelling, of dark and weather-beaten aspect, the whole intermixed with one or two snug cottages, painted white, a sufficiency of pigsties, and a shoemaker's shop. Two grocery stores stood opposite each other, in the centre of the village. These were the places of resort, at their idle hours, of a hardy throng of fishermen, in red baize shirts, oU- clotli trousers, and boots of brown leather covering the whole leg ; true seven-league boots, but fitter to wade the ocean than walk the earth. The wearers seemed amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt water to sun themselves ; nor would it have been wonderfid to see tlieir lower limbs covered with clusters of little shell-fish, such as cling to rocks and old ship timber over which the tide ebbs and flows. When their fleet of boats was weather-bound, the butchers raised their price, and the spit was busier than the frying-pan : for this was a place of fish, and known as such, to all the country roimd about ; the very air was fishy, being perfumed with dead scnlpins, hardheads, and dogfish strewn plentifully on the beach. You see, children, the village is but little changed since your mother and I were young. How like a dream it was, when I bent over a pooJ of water one pleasant morning, and saw that tie ocean had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisher- man ! There were the tarpaiding, the baize shirt, the oil cloth trousers and seven-league boots, and there my own features, but so reddened with sunburn and sear THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 353 breezes, that methought I had another face, and on other shoulders too. The sea-gulls and the loons and I had now all one trade ; we skimmed the crested waves and sought our prey beneath them, the man with as keen enjoyment as the birds. Always, when the east grew purple, I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff, and rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge, or, perhaps beyond Egg Hock ; often, too, did I anchor off Dread Ledge, a spot of peril to ships unpiloted ; and sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tacked across the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of Scituate. Ere nightfall, I hauled my skiff high and dry on the beach, laden with red rock cod, or the white-bellied ones of deep water; haddock, bearing the black marks of Saint Peter's fingers near the gills ; the long-bearded hake, whose liver holds oil enough for a midnight lamp ; and now and then a mighty halibut, with a back broad as my boat. In the autumn, I trolled and caught those lovely iish, the mackerel. When the wind was high, — when the whale-boats, anchored off the Point, nodded their slender masts at each other, and the do- ries pitched and tossed in the surf, — when Nahant Beach was thundering three miles off, and the spray broke a himdred feet in air round the distant base of Egg Rock, — when the brimful and boisterous sea threatened to tumble over the street of our village, — then I made a holiday on shore. Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartjett's store, attentive to the yarns of Uncle Parker ; uncle to the whole village by right of seniority, but of southern blood, with no Idndred in New England. His figure is before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel barrel : a lean old man, of great height, but bent with years, VOL. I. 23 354 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken limbs ; furrowed also, and weather-worn, as if every gale, for the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest ; a shipmate of the Mying Dutchman. After innumerable voyages aboard men-of-war and merchant-men, fishing schooners and chebacco boats, the old salt had become master of a handcart, which he daily trundled about the vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the streets of Salem. One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been blown out with gim- powder, and the other did but glimmer in its socket. Turning it upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French, and battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down by a spike naU through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and goose-like fowl, which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an inter- minable winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened himself, amid polar snows, with the rum and sugar saved from the wreck of a West India schooner. And wrathfully did he shake his fist, as he related how a party of Cape Cod men had robbed him and his companions of their lawful spoil, and sailed away with every keg of old Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow. Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood who are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails, to mislead the mariner along the dangerous shores of the Cape. Even now, I seem to see the group of fishermen, with that old salt in the midst. One fellow sits aa THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 855 the counter, a second bestrides an oil barrel, a third loUs at his length on a parcel of new cod lines, and another has planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of salt, which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They are a likely set of men. Some have voyaged to the East Indies or the Pacific, and most of them have sailed in Marblehead schooners to New- foundland ; a few have been no farther than the Mid- dle Banks, and one or two have always fished along the shore ; but, as Uncle Parker used to say, they have all been christened in salt water, and know more than men ever learn in the bushes. A curious figure, by way of contrast, is a fish dealer from far-up country, listening with eyes wide open to narratives that might startle Sinbad the Sailor. Be it well with you, my brethren ! Ye are all gone, some to your graves ashore, and others to the depths of ocean ; but my faith is strong that ye are happy ; for whenever I behold your forms, whether in dream or vision, each departed friend is puf&ng his long nine, and a mug of the right black strap goes round from lip to lip. But where was the mermaid in those delightful times ? At a certain window near the centre of the village appeared a pretty display of gingerbread men and horses, picture-books and ballads, small fish- hooks, pins, needles, sugar-plums, and brass thimbles, articles on which the young fishermen used to expend their money from pure gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the coimter! A slender maiden, though the child of rugged parents, she had the slimmest of all waists, brown hair curling on her neck, and a com- plexion rather pale, except when the sear-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became beauty-spots beneath her eyelids. How was it, Susan, that you talked and acted 356 TWICE-TOLD TALES. SO carelessly, yet always for the best, doing whatever was right in your own eyes, and never once doing wrong in mine, nor shocked a taste that had been mor- bidly sensitive till now ? And whence had you that happiest gift of brightening every topic with an un- sought gayety, quiet but irresistible, so that even gloomy spirits felt your sxmshine, and did not shriiik from it ? Nature wrought the charm. She paade you a frank, simple, kind-hearted, sensible, and mirthful girl. Obeying nature, you did free things without indelicacy, displayed a maiden's thoughts to every eye, and proved yourself as ianoeent as naked Eve. It was beautiful to observe how her simple and happy nature mingled itself with mine. She kindled a domestic fire within my heart, and took up her dwell- ing there, even in that chill and lonesome cavern, hung round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me warmth of feeling, while the influence of my mind made her contemplative. I taught her to love the moonlight hour, when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth as a great mirror and slept in a trans- parent shadow; while beyond Nahant the wind rippled the dim ocean into a dreamy brightness, which grew faint afar off without becoming gloomier. I held her hand and pointed to the long surf wave, as it rolled calmly on the beach, in an unbroken line of silver; we were silent together till its deep and peaceful mur- mur had swept by us. When the Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the cliffs, I led the mermaid thither, and told her that those huge, gray, shattered rocks, and her native sea, that raged forever like a storm against them, and her own slender beauty in 80 stem a scene, were aU combined into a strain of poetry. But on the Sabbath eve, when her mothet THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 357 hsA gone eaxly to bed, and her gentle sister had smiled and left us, as we sat alone by the quiet hearth, with household things around, it was her turn to make me feel that here was a deeper poetry, and that this was the dearest hour of all. Thus went on our wooing till I had shot wild fowl enough to feather our bridal bed, and the Daughter of the Sea was mine. I buUt a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a gateway in the form of a Gothic arch, by setting up a whale's jaw-bones. We bought a heifer with her first calf, and had a little garden on the hiU-side, to supply itis with potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor, small and neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in one gilt frame, and with shells and pretty pebbles on the mantel-piece, selected from the sea's treasury of such things, on Nahant Beach. On the desk, beneath the looking-glass, lay the Bible, which I had begun to read aloud at the book of Genesis, and the singing-book that Susan used for her evening psalm. Except the almanac, we had no other litera- ture. All tliat I heard of books was when an Indian history, or tale of shipwreck, was sold by a pedlar or wandering subscription man, to some one in the Vil- lage, and read through its owner's nose to a slumber- 9US auditory. Like my brother fishermen, I grew into the belief that all human erudition was collected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and solemn phiz, as he passed to his little school-house amid a waste of sand, might have gained him a diploma from any college in New England. In truth I dreaded him. When our children were old enough to claim his care, you remember, Susan, how I frowned, though you were pleased, at this learned man's encomiums on their proficiency. I feared to trust them even with the alphabet ; it was the key to a fatal treasure. 858 TWICE-TOLD TALES. But I loved to lead them by their little hands along the beach, and point to nature in the vast and tiie minute, the sky, the sea, the green earth, the pebbles, and the shells. Then did I discourse of the mighty works and coextensive goodness of the Deity, with the simple wisdom of a man whose mind had profited by lonely days upon the deep, and his heart by the strong and pure affections of his evening home. Sometimes my voice lost itself in a tremulous depth ; for I felt His eye upon me as I spoke. Once, while my wife and all of us were gazing at ourselves, in the mirror left by the tide in a hoUow of the sand, I pointed to the pictured heaven below, and bade her observe how religion was strewn everywhere in our path; since even a casual pool of water recalled the idea of that home whither we were travelling, to rest forever with our children. SuddeiJy, your image, Susan, and all the little faces made up of yours and mine, seemed to fade away and vanish around me, leaving a pale visage like my own of former days within the frame of a large looking-glass. Strange illusion ! My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with the present and absorb the future, tUl the whole lies before me at a glance. My manhood has long been waning with a stanch decay ; my earlier contem- poraries, after lives of unbroken health, are all at rest, without having known the weariness of later age ; and now, with a wrinkled forehead and thin white hair as badges of my dignity, I have become the patriarch, the Uncle of the village. I love that name ; it wid ens the circle of my sympathies ; it joins aU the youth- ful to my household in the kindred of affection. Like Uncle Parker, whose rheumatic bones were dashed against Egg Eock, fuU forty years ago, I am THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 369 a spinner of long yams. Seated on the gunwale of a dory, or on the sunny side of a boat-house, where the warmth is grateful to my limbs, or by my own hearth, when a friend or two are there, I overflow with talk, and yet am never tedious. With a broken voice I give utterance to much wisdom. Such, Heaven be praised ! is the vigor of my faculties, that many a for- gotten usage, and traditions ancient in my youth, and early adventures of myself or others, hitherto effaced by things more recent, acquire new distinctness in my memory. I remember the happy days when the had- dock were more numerous on all the fishing grounds than sculpins in the surf; when the deep-water cod swam close in shore, and the dogfish, with his poison- ous horn, had not learned to take the hook. I can number every equinoctial storm in which the sea has overwhelmed the street, flooded the cellars of the vil- lage, and hissed upon our kitchen hearth. I give the history of the great whale that was landed on Whale Beach, and whose jaws, being now my gateway, will last for ages after my coffin shall have passed beneath them. Thence it is an easy digression to the halibut, scarcely smaller than the whale, which ran out six cod lines, and hauled my dory to the mouth of Boston Har- bor, before I could touch him with the gaff. If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversa- tion, I tell how a friend of mine was taken out of his boat by an enormous shark ; and the sad, true tale of a young man on the eve of marriage, who had been nine days missing, when his drowned body floated into the very pathway, on Marblehead Neck, that had often led him to the dwelling of his bride, — as if the drip- ping corpse would have come where the mourner was. With such awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil 860 TWICE-TOLD TALES. his TOWS ! Another favorite story is of a crazy maiden who conversed with angels and had the gift of proph- ecy, and whom all the village loved and pitied, though she went from door to door accusing us of sin, exhort- ing to repentance, and foretelling our destruction by flood or earthquake. If the young men boast their knowledge of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of pilots who knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste, and could have steered blindfold to any port between Boston and Mount Desert, guided only by the rote of the shore, — the peculiar sound of the surf on each island, beach, and line of rocks, along the coast. Thus do I talk, and all my auditors grow wise while they deem it pastime. I recollect no happier portion of my life than this, my calm old age. It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of a valley, where, late in the autumn, the grass is greener than in August, and iutermixed with golden dandelions that have not been seen till now, since the first warmth of the year. But with me the verdure and the flowers are not frost-bitten in the midst of win- ter. A playfulness has revisited my mind ; a sympa- thy with the yoimg and gay ; an unpainful interest in the business of others ; a light and wandering curi- osity ; arising, perhaps, from the sense that my toil on earth is ended, and the brief hour till bedtime may be spent in play. Still I have fancied that there is a depth of feeling and reflection under this superficial levity peculiar to one who has lived long and is soon to die. Show me anything that woidd make an infant smile, and you shall behold a gleam of mirth over the hoary ruin of my visage. I can spend a pleasant hour in the sun, watching the sports of the village children THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 361 on the edge of the surf : now they chase the retreat- ing wave far down over the wet sand ; now it steals softly up to kiss their naked feet ; now it comes on- ward with threatening front, and roars after the laugh- ing crew, as they scamper beyond its reach. Why should not an old man be merry too, when the great sea is at play with those little children ? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure party of young men and girls, strolling along the beach after an early supper at the Point. Here, with handkerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap of eel-grass, entangled in which is a dead skate, so oddly accoutred with two legs and a long tail that they mistake him for a drowned animal. A few steps farther the ladies scream, and the gentlemen make ready to protect them against a young shark of the dogfish kind, roll- ing with a lifelike motion in the tide that has thrown him up. Next, they are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon load of live lobsters, packed in rock- weed for the country market. And when they reach the fleet of dories, just hauled ashore after the day's fishing, how do I laugh in my sleeve, and sometimes roar outright, at the simplicity of these young folks and the sly humor of the fishermen ! In winter, when our village is thrown into a bustle by the arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers, bargaining for frozen fish, to be transported hundreds of miles, and eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada, I am a pleased but idle spectator in the throng. For I launch my boat no more. When the shore was solitary I have found a pleas- ure that seemed even to exalt my mind, in observing the sports or contentions of two guUs, as they wheeled and hovered about each other, with hoarse screams, 862 TWICE-TOLD TALES. one moment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring aloft, till their white bosoms melted into the upper sunshine. In the calm of the summer sun- set I drag my aged limbs, with a little ostentation of activity, because I am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. Thete I see the white sails of many a ves- sel, outward bound or homeward from afar, and th. black trail of a vapor behind the eastern steamboat j there, too, is the sun going down, but not in gloom, and there the illimitable ocean mingling with the sky, to remind me of Eternity. But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and pleasant talk, that comes between the dusk and the lighted candle, by my glowing fireside. And never, even on the first Thanksgiving night, when Susan and I sat alone with our hopes, nor the second, when a stranger had been sent to gladden us, and be the visi- ble image of our affection, did I feel such joy as now. All that belong to me are here ; Death has taken none, nor Disease kept them away, nor Strife divided them from their parents or each other ; with neither poverty nor riches to disturb them, nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have kept New England's festi- val round the patriarch's board. For I am a patriarch ! Here I sit among my descendants, in my old arm-chair and immemorial comer, while the firelight throws an appropriate glory round my venerable frame. Susan ! My children ! Something whispers me that this hap- piest hour must be the final one, and that nothing re- mains but to bless you all, and depart with a treasure of recollected joys to heaven. Will you meet me there ? Alas ! your figures grow indistinct, fading into pictures on the air, and now to fainter outlines, while the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar room^ THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 363 imd shows the book that I flung do\m, and the sheet that I left half written, some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to the looking-glass and perceive myself alone, unless those be the mermaid's features retiring into the depths of the mirror with a tender and melancholy smile. Ah ! one feels a chillness, not bodily, but about the heart, and, moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind him, after these pastimes. I can imagine precisely how a magician would sit down in gloom and terror, after dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or distant people, and strippiug his cavern of the un- real splendor which had changed it to a palace. And now for a moral to my reverie. Shall it be that, since fancy can create so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream on from youth to age, than to awake and strive doubtfully for something real. Oh the slight tissue of a dream can no more preserve us from the stem reality of misfortime than a robe of cobjreb could repel the wintry blast. Be this the moral then. In chaste and warm affections, humble wishes, and honest toil for some useful end, there is health for the mind, and quiet for the heart, the pro» pect of a happy life, and the fairest hope of heaven. THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. One September night a family had gathered raymd their hearth, and piled it high with the driftwood oj-' mountain streams, the dry cones of the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees that had come crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober gladness ; the children laughed; the eldest daughter was the image of Happiness at seventeen; and the aged grand mother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was the image of Happiness grown old. They had found the " herb, heart' s-ease," in the bleakest spot of all New England. This family were situated in the Notch of the White HUls, where the wind was sharp throughout the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter, — giving their cottage all its fresh inclemency before it de- scended on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot and a dangerous one ; for a moimtain tow- ered above their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble down its sides and startle them at mid- night. The daughter had just uttered some simple jest that filled thein all with mirth, when the wind came through the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage — ■ rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and lamen- tation, before it passed into the valley. For a moment it saddened them, though there was nothing imusual in tihe tones. But the family were glad again when they THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 365 perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveller, whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast which heralded his approach, and wailed as he was entering, and went moaning away from the door. Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people held daily converse with the world. The romantic pass of the Notch is a great artery, through which the life- blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing between Maine, on one side, and the Green Mountains and the shores of the St. Lawrence, on the other. The stage-coach always drew up before the door of the cottage. The wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused here to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness might not utterly overcome him ere he could pass through the cleft of the moxmtain, or reach the first house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way to Portland market, would put up for the night ; and, if a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime, and steal a hiss from the mountain maid at parting. It was one of those primitive tav- erns where the traveller pays only for food and lodg- ing, but meets with a homely kindness beyond all price. When the footsteps were heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children, and all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs. The door was opened by a young man. His face at first wore the melancholy expression, almost despond- ency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road, at nightfall and alone, but soon "brightened up when he saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the little 366 TWICE-TOLD TALES. child that held out its arms to him. One glance ani* smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocen* familiarity with the eldest daughter. " Ah, iJiis fire is the right thing ! " cried he; "espe cially when there is such a pleasant circle round it. 1 am quite benumbed; for the Notch is just like the pipe of a great pair of bellows ; it has blown a terrible blast in my face aU the way from Bartlett." " Then you are going towards Vermont? " said the master of the house, as he helped to take a light knap- sack off the young man's shoulders. " Yes ; to Burlington, and far enough beyond," re- plied he. " I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford's to-night; but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as this. It is no matter ; for, when I saw this good fire, and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled it on purpose for me, and were waiting my arrival So I shall sit down among you, and make myself at home." The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair to the fire when something like a heavy footstep was heard without, rushing down the steep side of the mountain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a leap in passing the cottage as to strike the op- posite precipice. The femily held their breath, be- cause iihey knew the sound, and their guest held his by instinct. " The old momitain has thrown a stone at us, for fear we should forget him," said the landlord, recover- ing himself. "He sometimes nods his head and threatens to come down ; but we are old neighbors, and agree together pretty well upon the whole. Be- sides we have a sure place of refuge hard by if ha should be coming in good earnest." THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 367 Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his supper of bear's meat ; and, by his natural felicity of manner, to have placed himself on a footing of Idnd- ness with the whole family, so that they talked as freely together as if he belonged to their mountain brood. He was of a proud, yet gentle spirit — haughtr- and reserved among the rich and great ; but ever ready to stoop his head to the lowly cottage door, and be like a brother or a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of the Notch he f oimd warmth and simpliciiy of feeling, the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry of native growth, which they had gath- ered when they little thought of it from the mountain peaks and chasms, and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous abode. He had travelled far and alone ; his whole life, indeed, had been a solitary path ; for, with the lofty caution of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those who might otherwise have been his companions. The family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that consciousness of unity among themselves, and separation from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle, should still keep a holy place where no stranger may intrude. But this evening a prophetic sympathy impelled the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart before the simple moimtaineers, and constrained them to answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth ? . The secret of the young man's character was a high and abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope; and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, 868 TWICE-TOLD TALES. that, obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on all his pathway, — though not, perhaps, while he was treading it. But when posterity should gaze back into the gloom of what was now the present, they would trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as meaner glories faded, and confess that a gifted one had passed from his cradle to his tomb with none to recognize him. " As yet," cried the stranger — his cheek glowing and his eye flashing with enthusiasm — "as yet, I have done nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow, none would know so much of me as you : that a nameless youth came up at nightfall from the valley of the Saeo, and opened his heart to you-in the evening, and passed through the Notch by sunrise, and was seen no more. Not a soul would ask, ' Who was he? Whither did the wanderer go?' But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come ! I shall have built my montunent ! " There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gush' ing forth amid abstracted reverie, which enabled the family to understand this yoimg man's sentiments, though so foreign from their own. With quick sensi- bility of the ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been betrayed. " You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daughter's hand, and laughing himself. " You think my ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze my- self to death on the top of Mount WashingbDn, onlj that people might spy at me from the coimtry round about. And, truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man's statue ! " " It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl, blushing, "and be comfortable and contented, though nobody thinks about us." THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 369 " I suppose," said Iter father, after a fit of musing, * there is something natural in what the young man says ; and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have felt just the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has set my head running on things that are pretty certain never to come to pass." " Perhaps they may," observed the wife. " Is the man thinking what he will do when he is a widower ? " " No, no ! " cried he, repelling the idea with re- proachful kindness. " When I think of your death, Esther, I think of mine, too. But I was wishing we had a good farm in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Little- ton, or some other township roimd the White Mount- ains ; but not where they could tiunble on our heads. I should want to stand well with my neighbors and be called Squire, and sent to General Court for a term or two ; for a plain, honest man may do as much good there as a lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart, I might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all crying aroimd me. A slate gravestone would suit me as well as a marble one — with just my name and age, and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian." " There now ! " exclaimed the stranger ; " it is our nature to desire a monument, be it slate or marble, or a pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the imi- versal heart of man." " We 're in a strange way, to-night," said the wife, with tears in her eyes. " They say it 's a sign of something, when folks' minds go a wandering so. Hark to the children ! " They listened accordingly. The younger children VOL. L 24 870 TWICE-TOLD TALES. had been put to bed in another room, but with an open door between, so that they could be heard talk- ing busily among themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the infection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each other in wild wishes, and childish projects of what they would do when they came to be men and women. At length a little boy, instead of addressing hia brothers and sisters, called out to his mother. " I '11 teU you what I wish, mother," cried he. " I want you and father and grandma'm, and all of us, and the stranger too, to start right away, and go and take a drink out of the basin of the Hume ! " Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of leaving a warm bed, and dragging them from a cheer- ful fire, to visit the basin of the Flume, — a brook, which tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch. The boy had hardly spoken when a wagon rattled along the road, and stopped a moment before the door. It appeared to contain two or three men, who were cheering their hearts with the rough chorus of a song, which resounded, in broken notes, between the cliffs, while the singers hesitated whether to con- tinue their journey or put up here for the night." " Father," said the girl, " they are calling you by name." But the good man doubted whether they had really called him, and was unwilling to show himseK too solicitous of gain by inviting people to patronize his house. He therefore did not hurry to the door ; and the lash being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the Notch, still singing and laughing, though their music and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the mountain. THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 371 " There, mother ! " cried the boy, again. " They 'd have given us a ride to the Flume." Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy .or a night ramble. But it happened that a light cloud passed over the daughter's spirit ; she looked gravely into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a sigh. It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to re- press it. Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom. The stranger asked what she had been thinking of. "Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile. " Only I felt lonesome just then." " Oh, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other people's hearts," said he, half seriously. " Shall I tell the secrets of yours ? For I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth, and com- plains of lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these feelings into words ? " " They would not be a girl's feelings any longer if they could be put into words," replied the mountain nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye. All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts, so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth ; for women worship such gentle dignity as his ; and the proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is often- est captivated by simplicity like hers. But while they spoke softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the lightsome shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden's nature, the wind through the Notch took a deeper and drearier sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the choral strain of the spirits of the blast, who in old Indian times had their dwelling among S72 TWICE-TOLD TALES. these mountains, and made their heights and recesses a sacred region. There was a wail along the road, as if a funeral were passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw pine branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about them fondly, and caressed tliem all. There were the little faces of the children, peeping from their bed apart, and here the father's frame of strength, the mother's subdued and careful mien, the high-browed youth, the budding girl, and the good old grandam, stiU knitting in the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from her task, and, with fingers ever busy, was the next to speak. " Old folks have their notions," said she, " as weD as young ones. You 've been wishing and planning ; and letting your heads run on one thing and another, tiU you 've set my mind a wandering too. Now what should an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two before she comes to her grave ? Children, it will haunt me night and day till I tell you." " What is it, mother ? " cried the husband and wife at once. Then the old woman, with an air of mystery which drew the circle closer round the fire, informed them that she had provided her grave-clothes some years be- iaie, — a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff, and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since her wedding day. But this evening an old supersti- tion had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said, in her younger days, that if anything were amiss with a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap did not set right, the corpse in the cofiin and beneath the clods would strive to put up its cold hands and arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous. THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 378 " Don't talk so, grandmother I " said the girl, shud- dering. " Now," — continued the old woman, with singula! earnestness, yet smiling strangely at her own f oUy, — " I want one of you, my children — when your mothei is dressed and in the coffin — I want one of you to hold a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all 'a right?" " Old and young, we dream of graves and monu- ments," murmured the stranger youth. "I wonder how mariners feel when the ship is sinking, and they, imknoTvn and undistinguished, are to be buried to- gether in the ocean — that wide and nameless sep- ulchre?" For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception so engrossed the minds of her hearers that a sound abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated group were conscious of it. The house and all within it trembled ; the foundations of the earth seemed to be shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance, and remained an instant, pale, affrighted, with- out utterance, or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simidtaneously from all their lips. "TheSHde! TheSKde!" The simplest words must intimate, but not portray, the unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The vio- tuns rushed from their cottage, and sought refuge in what they deemed a safer spot — where, in contemplar tion -of such an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared. Alas! they had quitted their security, and fled right into the pathway of destruction. Down 874 TWICE-TOLD TALES. came lihe whole side of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin. Just before it reached the house, the stream broke into two branches — shivered not a window there, but overwhehned the whole viciaity, blocked up the road, and annihilated everything in its dreadftd course. Long ere the thunder of the great Slide had ceased to roar among the mountains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the victims were at peace. Their bodies were never found. The next morning, the light smoke was seen steal- ing from the cottage chimney up the mountain side. Within, the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs in a circle round it, as if the inhabit- ants had but gone forth to view the devastation of the Slide, and would shortly return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape. All had left separate tokens, by which those who had known the family were made to "shed a tear for each. Who has not heard their name ? The story has been told far and wide, and will forever be a legend of these mountains. Poets have sung their fate. There were circumstances which led some to sup- pose that a stranger had been received into the cottage on this awfid night, and had shared the catastrophe of aU its inmates. Others denied that there were suffi- cient grounds for such a conjecture. Woe for the high-souled youth, with his dream of Earthly Immor- tality! His name and person utterly unknown; his history, his way of life, his plans, a mystery never to be solved, his death and his existence equally a doubt! Whose was the agony of that death moment? THE SISTER YEARS. Last night, between eleyen and twelve o'clock, when the Old Year was leaving her final footprints on the borders of Time's empire, she found herself in possession of a few spare moments, and sat down — of all places in the world — on the steps of our new City Hall. The wintry moonlight showed that she looked weary of body and sad of heart, like many an- other wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been exposed to much foul weather and rough usage, were in very ill condition ; and as the hurry of her journey had never before allowed her to take an instant's rest, her shoes were so worn as to be scarcely worth the mending. But, after trudging only a little distance farther, this poor Old Year was destined to enjoy a long, long sleep. I forgot to mention that, when she seated herself on the steps, she deposited by her side a very capacious bandbox, in which, as is the custom among travellers of her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable property. Besides this luggage, there was a folio book under her arm, very much resembling the annual volume of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees, and resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her hands, the weary, bedraggled, world-worn Old Year heaved a heavy sigh, and ap- peared to be taking no very pleasant retrospect of her past existence. While she thus awaited the midnight knell that was to stmimon her to the iimumerable sisterhood of 876 TWICE-TOLD TALES. departed Years, there came a young maiden treading lightsomely on tiptoe along the street, from the direc- tion of the Eailroad Depot. She was evidently a stranger, and perhaps had come to town by the even- ing train of cars. There was a smiling cheerfulness in this fair maiden's face, which bespoke her fuUy confident of a kind reception from the multitude of people with whom she was soon to form acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons and other vanities, which were likely soon to be rent away by the fierce storms or to fade in the hot sunshine, amid which she was to pursue her changeful course. But still she was a wonderfully pleasant looking figure, and had so much promise and such an indescribable hopefulness in her aspect, that hardly anybody could meet her without an- ticipating some very desirable thing — the consumma- tion of some long-sought good — from her Mnd offices. A few dismal characters there may be, here and there about the world, who have so often been trifled with by young maidens as promising as she, that they have now ceased to pin any faith upon the skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have great faith in her ; and should I live to see fifty more such, still, from each of these successive sisters, I shaU reckon upon receiving something that will be worth living for. The New Year — for this young maiden was no less a personage — carried all her goods and chattels in a basket of no great size or weight, which hung upon her arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with great affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the City Hall, waiting for the signal to begin her rambles through the world. The two were own sisters, being both granddaughters of Time; and though one THE SISTER TEARS. 377 looked so much older than the other, it was rather owing to hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but a twelvemonth's difference between them. " Well, my dear sister," said the New Year, after the first salutations, " you look almost tired to death. What have you been about during yoiur sojourn in this part of Infinite Space ? " " Oh, I have it aU recorded here in my Book of Chronieles," answered the Old Year, in a heavy tone. " There is nothing that would amuse you ; and you will soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from your own personal experience. It is but tire- some reading." Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio, and glanced at them by the light of the moon, feeling an irresistible spell of interest in her own biography, although its incidents were remembered without pleas- ure. The volume, though she termed it her Book of Chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the " Salem Gazette " for 1838 ; in the accuracy of which journal this sagacious Old Year had so much confi- dence that she deemed it needless to record her his^ tory with her own pen. " What have you been doing in the political way? " asked the New Year. " Why, my course here in the United States," said the Old Year, — " though perhaps I ought to blush at the confession, — my political course, I must acknowl- edge, has been rather vaciUatory, sometimes inclining towards the Whigs — then causing the Administra- tion party to shout for triumph — and now again up- lifting what seemed the almost prostrate banner of the Opposition ; so that historians will hardly know 378 TWICE-TOLD TALES. what to make of me in this respect. But the Loco Focos " — " I do not like these party nicknames," interrupted her sister, who seemed remarkably touchy about some points. " Perhaps we shall part in better humor if we avoid any political discussion." " With ail my heart," replied the Old Year, who had already been tormented half to death with squab- bles of this kind. " I care not if the names of Whig or Tory, with their interminable brawls about Banks and the Sub-Treasury, Abolition, Texas, the Florida War, and a million of other topics — which you will learn soon enough for your own comfort — I care not, I say, if no whisper of these matters ever reaches my ears again. Yet they have occupied so large a share of my attention that I scarcely know what else to tell you. There has indeed been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where blood has streamed in the names of Liberty and Patriotism ; but it must remain for some future, perhaps far distant Year, to teU whether or no those holy names have been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much depresses me, in my view of mortal affairs, as to see high energies wasted, and human life and happiness thrown away, for ends that appear oftentimes unwise, and still oftener remain un- accomplished. But the wisest people and the best keep a steadfast faith that the progress of Mankind is onward and upward, and that the toil and anguish of the path serve to wear away the imperfections of the Inmiortal Pilgrim, and will be felt no more when they have done their office." " Perhaps," cried the hopeful New Year, — " pei> haps I shall see that happy day ! " " I doubt whether it be so close at hand," answered THE SISTER YEARS. 879 the Old Year, gravely smiling. " You will soon grow weary of looking for that blessed consummation, and 'wiR turn for amusement (as has frequently been my own practice) to the affairs of some sober little city, like this of Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the new City Hall, which has been completed imder my administration ; and it would make you laugh to see how the game of politics, of which the Capitol at Washington is the great chess-board, is here played in miniature. Burning Ambition finds its fuel here; here Patriotism speaks boldly in the people's behalf, and virtuous Economy demands retrenchment in the emoluments of a lamplighter; here the Aldermen range their senatorial dignity around the Mayor's chair of state, and the Common Council feel that they have liberty in charge. In short, human weakness and strength, passion and policy, Man's tendencies, his aims and modes of pursuing them, his individual charactei and his character in the mass, may be studied almost as well here as on the theatre of na- tions : and with this great advantage, that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its LiUputian scope still makes the beholder smile." " Have you done much for the improvement of the City?" asked the New Year. "Judging from what little I have seen, it appears to be ancient and time- worn." " I have opened the Eailroad," said the elder Year, ' and haK a dozen times a day you will hear the bell (which once summoned the Monks of a Spanish Con- vent to their devotions) annoimcing the arrival or departure of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much livelier expression than when I first beheld her. Strangers rumble down from Boston by hundreds 380 TWICE-TOLD TALES. at a time. New faces tkrong in Essex Street. Rail' road hacks and omnibuses rattle over the pavements. There is a perceptible increase of oyster shops, and other establishments for the accommodation of a tran- sitory diurnal multitude. But a more important change awaits the venerable town. An immense ao- cuiijulation of musty prejudices wiU be carried off by the free circulation of society. A peculiarity of char- acter, of which the inhabitants themselves are hardly sensible, will be rubbed down and worn away by the attrition of foreign substances. Much of the result will be good ; there Trill likewise be a few things not so good. Whether for better or worse, there will be a probable diminution of the moral influence of wealth, and the sway of an aristocratic class, which, from an era far beyond my memory, has held firmer dominion here than in any other New England town." The Old Year having talked away nearly all of her little remaining breath, now closed her Book of Chronicles, and was about to take her departure. But her sister detained her a while longer, by inquiring the contents of the huge bandbox which she was so painfully lugging along with her. "These are merely a few trifles," replied the Old Year, "which I have picked up in my rambles, and am going to deposit in the receptacle of things past and forgotten. We sisterhood of Years never carry anything really valuable out of the world with us. Here are patterns of most of the fashions which I brought into vogue, and which have already lived out their allotted term. You wiU supply their place with others equally ephemeral. Here, put up in little China pots, like rouge, is a considerable lot of beauti- ful women's bloom, which the disconsolate fair ones THE SISTER YEARS. 381 owe me a bitter grudge for stealing. I have likewise a quantity of men's dark hair, instead of which, I have left gray locks, or none at all. The tears of widows and other afflicted mortals, who have received com- fort during the last twelve months, are preserved in some dozens of essence bottles, well corked and sealed. I have several bundles of love-letters, eloquently breathing an eternity of burning passion, which grew cold and perished almost before the ink was dry. Moreover, here is an assortment of many thousand broken promises, and other broken ware, all very light and packed into little space. The heaviest articles in my possession are a large parcel of disappointed hopes, which a little while ago were buoyant enough to have inflated Mr. Lauriat's balloon." " I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket," remarked the New Year. " They are a sweet-smeUing flower — a species of rose." " They soon lose their perfume," replied the sombre Old Year, " What else have you brought to insure a welcome from the discontented race of mortals?" " Why, to say the truth, little or nothing else," said her sister, with a smile, — " save a few new Annuals and Almanacs, and some New Year's gifts for the children. But I heartily wish well to poor mortals, and mean to do all I can for their improvement and happiness." " It is a good resolution," rejoined the Old Year ; " and, by the way, I have a plentiful assortment of good resolutions, which have now grown so stale and musty that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only for fear that the City authorities would send Con- stable Mansfield with a warrant after me, I should toss them into the street at once. Many other matters go 882 TWICE-TOLD TALES. to make up the contents of my bandbox, but the wholo lot would not fetch a single bid, even at an auction of wom-out furniture ; and as they are worth nothing either to you or anybody else, I need not trouble you with a longer catalogue." " And must I also pick up such worthless luggage in my travels ? " asked the New Year. " Most certainly -and well, if you have no heavier load to bear," replied the other. "And now, my dear sister, I must bid you farewell, earnestly advising and exhorting you to expect no gratitude nor good-will from this peevish, unreasonable, inconsiderate, ill-intending, and worse-behaving world. However warmly its in- habitants may seem to welcome you, yet, do what you may, and lavish on them what means of happiness you please, they will still be complaining, still craving what it is not in your power to give, still looking forward to Gome other Year for the accomplishment of projects which ought never to have been formed, and which, if successful, would only provide new occasions of dis- 3ontent. If these ridiculous people ever see anything tolerable in you, it will be after you are gone iov- ever." "But I," cried the fresh-hearted New Year, "I shall try to leave men wiser than I find them. I will offer them freely whatever good gifts Providence per- mits me to distribute, and will teU them to be thankful for what they have, and humbly hopeful for more ; and surely, if they are not absolute fools, they will conde- scend to be happy, and will allow me to be a happy Year. For my happiness must depend on them." " Alas for you, then, my poor sister ! " said the Old Year, sighing, as she uplifted her burden. "We. grandchildren of Time, are born to trouble. Happi- THE SISTER YEARS. 383 Bess, they say, dwells in the mansions of Eternity; but we can only lead mortals thither, step by step, with reluctant murmurings, and ourselves must perish ob the threshold. But hark ! my task is done." The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson's church struck twelve ; there was a response from Dr. Mint's, in the opposite quarter of the city ; and while the strokes were yet dropping into the air, the Old Year either flitted or faded away, — and not the wis- dom and might of Angels, to say nothing of the re- morseful yearnings of the millions who had used her ill, could have prevailed with that departed Year to return one step. But she, in the company of Time and all her kindred, must hereafter hold a reckoning with Mankind. So shall it be, likewise, with the maid- enly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to strike, arose from the steps of the City Hall, and set out rather timorously on her earthly course. " A happy New Year ! " cried a watchman, eying her figure very questionably, but without the least suspicion that he was addressing the New Year bx person, " Thank you kindly ! said the New Year ; and she gave the watchman one of the roses of hope from her basket. " May this flower keep a sweet smell, long after I have bidden you good-by." Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent streets ; and such as were awake at the moment heard her footfall, and said, — " The New Year is come I " Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers they quaffed her health. She sighed, however, to perceive tiat the air was tainted — as the atmosphere of this world must continually be — with the dying breaths of mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to 384 TWICE-TOLD TALES. bury them. But there were millions left alive to rejoice at her coming; and so she pursued her way with confidence, strewing emblematic flowers on the doorstep of almost every dwelling, which some persona will gather up and wear in their bosoms, and others wiU trample under foot. The Carrier Boy can only say further that, early this morning, she fiUed his bas- ket with New Year's Addresses, assuring him that the whole City, with our new Mayor, and the Aldermen and Common Council at its head, would make a general rush to secure copies. Kind Patrons, will not yoi t» ^m the pledge of the NEW YEAfi ? SNOW-FLAKES. Theke is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the tnoming ! — and, through the partially frosted win- dow panes, I love to watch the gradual beginning of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere. These are not the big flakes, heavy with moisture, which melt as they touch the ground, and are porten- tous of a soaking rain. It is to be, in good earnest, a wintry storm. The two or three people visible on the sidewalks have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty fortitude, which is evidently assumed in antici- pation of a comfortless and blustering day. By night- fall, or at least before the sun sheds another glimmer- ing snule upon us, the street and our little garden will be heaped with mountain snow-drifts. The soil, al- ready frozen for weeks past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid upon it; and, to a northern eye, the landscape will lose its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own, when Mother Earth, like her children, shall have put on the fleecy garb of her winter's wear. The cloud spirits are slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed, there is barely a rime like hoarfrost over the brown surface of the street ; the withered grass of the grass-plat is still discernible ; and the slated roofs of the houses do but begin to look gray instead of black. VOL. I 36 386 TWICE-TOLD TALES. All the snow that has yet fallen within the circumfeu ence of my view, were it heaped up together, would hardly equal the hillock of a grave. Thus gradually, by silent and stealthy influences, are great changes wrought. These little snow particles, which the storm spirit flings by handfuls through the air, will bury the great earth under their accumulated mass, nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for dreary months. We, likewise, shall lose sight of our mother's familial visage, and must content ourselves with looking heaven- ward the oftener. Now, leaving the storm to do his appointed office, let us sit down, pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it may seem, there is an influence productive of cheerfulness, and favorable to imaginative thought, in the atmosphere of a snowy day. The native of a southern clime may woo the muse beneath the heavy shade of summer foliage, reclining on banks of turf, while the sound of singing birds and warbling rivulets chimes in with the music of his soul. In our brief summer, I do not think, but only exist in the vague enjoyment of a dream. My hour of inspiration — if that hour ever comes — is when the green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles high up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down among the glowing heaps of ashes. When the casement rattles in th« gust, and the snow-flakes or the sleety raindrops pell hard against the window panes, then I spread out my sheet of paper, wilii the certainty that thoughts and fancies wiU gleam forth upon it like stars at twilight, or like violets in May, — perhaps to fade as soon. However traiisitory their glow, they at least shine amid the darksome shadow which ^e clouds of thi SNOW-FLAKES. 38l outward sky fling through the room. Blessed, there- fore, and reverently welcomed by me, her true-'bom son, be New England's winter, which makes us, one and all, the nurslings of the storm, and sings a famil- iar lullaby even in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look we forth again, and see how much of Ids task the storm spirit has done. Slow and sure ! He has the day, perchance the week, before him, and may take his own time to ac- complish Nature's burial in snow. A smooth mantle is scarcely yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry stocks of annuals still thrust themselves through the white surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless rose-bushes stand shivering in a shallow snow-drift, looking, poor things ! as disconsolate as if they possessed a human consciousness of the dreary scene. This is a sad time for the shrubs that do not perish with the siunmer ; they neither live nor die ; what they retain of life seems but the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower shrubs in midwinter ! The roofs of the houses are now all white, save where the eddying wind has kept them bare at the bleak cor- ners. To discern the real intensity of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object, — as yonder spire, — and observe bow the riotous gust fights with the descending snow throughout the intervening space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured; then, again, we have a distinct, but transient, glimpse of the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost ; and now the dense wreaths sweep between, as if demons were fling- ing snow-drifts at each other in mid-air. Look next into the street, where we have an amusing parallel to the combat of those fancied demons in the upper re- gions. It is a snow battle of school-boys. What <• B88 TWICE-TOLD TALES. pretty satire on war and military glory might be writ ten, in the form of a child's story, by describing the snow-baU fights of two rival schools, the alternate de*- feats and victories of each, and the final trimnph of one party, or perhaps of neither ! What pitched bat- tles, worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains ! What storming of fortresses, built all of massive snow blocksl What feats of individual prowess, and embodied on- sets of martial enthusiasm ! And when some well-con- tested and decisive victory had put a period to the war, both armies should unite to build a lofly monu- ment of snow upon the battle-field and crown it with the victor's statue, hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few days or weeks thereafter the passer-by would observe a shapeless mound upon the level common ; and, unmindful of the famous victory, would ask, — "How came it there? Who reared it? And what means it ? " The shattered pedestal of many a battle monument haa provoked these questions when none coidd answer. Turn we again to the fireside, and sit musing there, lending our ears to the wind, till perhaps it shall seem like an articulate voice, and dictate wild and airy mat- ter for the pen. Woidd it might inspire me to sketch out the personification of a New England winter! And that idea, if I can seize the snow-wreathed fig- ures that flit before my fancy, shall be the theme of the next page. How does Winter herald his approach ? By the shrieking blast of latter autumn, which is Nature's cry of lamentation, as the destroyer rushes among the shivering groves where she has lingered, and scatters the sear leaves upon the tempest. When that cry ia beard, the people wrap themselves in cloaks, au^ SNOW-FLAKES. 889 shake their heads disconsolately, saying, — "Winter is at hand ! " Then the axe o£ the woodcutter echoes sharp and diligently in the forest ; then the coal merchants rejoice, because each shriek of Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal per ton ; then the peat smoke spreads its aromatic fragrance through the atmosphere. A few days more ; and at eventide the children look out of the window, and dimly perceive the flaxmting of a snowy mantle in the air. It is stem Winter's vesture. They crowd around the hearth, and cling to their mother's gown, or press between their father's knees, affrighted by the hollow roaring voice that bellows adown the wide flue of the chimney. It is the voice of Winter ; and when par- ents and children hear it, they shudder and exclaim, — " Winter is come ! Cold Winter has begun his reign already ! " Now, throughout New England, each hearth becomes an altar, sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the immitigable deily who tyran- nizes over forest, country side, and town. Wrapped in his white mantle, his staff a huge icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed snow-drift, he travels over the land, in the midst of the northern blast ; and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon his path I There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape of ice, on the spot where Winter overtook him. On strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad lakes, which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary empire is established ; all around stretches the deso- lation of the Pole. Yet not imgrateful be his New England children — for Winter is our sire, though a stem and rough one — not ungrateful even for the se- verities which have nourished our unyielding strength of character. And let us thank him, too, for the 390 TWICE-TOLD TALES. sleigh-rides, cheered by the music of merry bells -^ for the craxjkling and rustling hearth, when the ruddj firelight gleams on hardy Manhood and the blooming cheek of Woman — for all the home enjoyments, and the kindred virtues, which flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve, when, after some seven months of storm and bitter frost. Spring, in the guise of a flower- crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful, and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often, ere he will give up his empire, old Winter rushes fiercely back, and hurls a snow-drift at the shrinking form of Spring ; yet, step by step, he is compelled to retreat northward, and spends the summer months within the Arctic circle. Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind, have made the winter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile, the storm has raged without abatement, and now, as the brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser volumes to and fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill there is a layer of snow reaching half way up the lowest pane of glass. The garden is one unbroken bed. Along the street are two or three spots of uncovered earth, where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it elsewhere to the fence tops, or piling huge banks against the doors of houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen with the wind. And now the jingling of bells, a sluggish sound, responsive to the horse's toilsome progress through the imbroken drifts, announces the passage of a sleigh, with a boy dinging behind, and ducking his head to escape detec- tion by the driver. Next comes a sledge, laden witF SNOW-FLAKES. 391 Irood for some unthrifty housekeeper, whom winter has surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage now struggles along the uneven street ? A Bable hearse, bestrewn with snow, is bearing a dead man through the storm to his frozen bed. Oh, how Oreary is a burial in winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth for her poor child ! Evening — the early eve of December — begins to spread its deepening veil over the comfortless scene, the firelight gradually brightens, and throws my flick- ering shadow upon the waUs and ceiling of the cham- ber ; but still the storm rages and rattles against the windows. Alas ! I shiver, and think it time to be disconsolate. But, taking a farewell glance at dead nature in her shroud, I perceive a flock of snow-birds skimming lightsomely through the tempest, and flit- ting from drift to drift, as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of summer. Whence come they ? Where do they build their nests and seek their food ? Why, having airy wings, do they not foUow summer around the earth, instead of making themselves the playmates of the storm, and fluttering on the dreary verge of the winter's eve ? I know not whence they come, nor why ; yet my spirit has been cheered by ihat wandering flock of snow-birds. THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. Bambling on foot In the spring of my life and the Bummer of the year, I came one afternoon to a point which gave me the choice of three directions. Straight before me the main road extended its dusty length to Boston ; on the left a branch went towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey a trifle of twenty or thirty miles ; while, by the right-hand path I might have gone over hills and lakes to Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stamford. On a level spot of grass, at the foot of the guide-post, appeared an object which, though locomotive on a dif- ferent principle, reminded me of Grulliver's portable mansion dinong the Brobdignags. It was a huge cov- ered wagon, or, more properly, a small house on wheels, with a door on one side and a window shaded by green blinds on the other. Two horses, munching provender out of the baskets which muzzled them, were fastened near the vehicle : a delectable sovmd of music proceeded from the interior ; and I immediately conjectured that this was some itinerant show halting at ihe confluence of the roads to intercept such idle travellers as myself. A shower had long been climb- ing up the western sky, and now hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a point of wisdom to seek shelter here. " Halloo ! Who stands guard here? Is the door- keeper asleep ? " cried I, approaching a ladder of tw« or three steps which was let down from the wagon. THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 893 The music ceased at my smnmons, and there ap peared at the door, not the sort of figure that I had mentally assigned to the wandering showman, hut a most respectable old personage, whom I was sorry to have addressed in so free a style. He wore a snuff- colored coat and smallclothes, with white top-boots, 'and exhibited the mild dignity of aspect and manner which may often be noticed in aged schoolmasters, and sometimes in deacons, selectmen, or other poten- tates of that kind. A small piece of silver was my passport within his premises, where I found only one other person, hereafter to be described. " This is a dull day for business," said the old gen- tleman, as he ushered me in ; " but I merely tarry here to refresh the cattle, being bound for the camp- meeting at Stamford." Perhaps the movable scene of this narrative is still peregrinating New England, and may enable the reader to test the accuracy of my description. The spectacle — for I will not use the unworthy term of puppet show — consisted of a multitude of littie peo- ple assembled on a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every kind, in the attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair ladies and gay gentlemen standing ready for the dance ; a company of foot-sol- diers formed a line across the stage, looking stem, grim, and terrible enough, to make it a pleasant con- sideration that they were but three inches high ; and conspicuous above the whole was seen a Merry An- drew, in the pointed cap and motley coat of his pro- fession. All the inhabitants of this mimic world were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like that people who one moment were alive in the midst of their business and delights, and the next were trana 894 TWICE-TOLD TALES. formed to statues, preserving an eternal semblance of labor that was ended, and pleasure that could be felt no more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the handle of a barrel organ, the first note of which produced a most enlivening effect upon the figures, jnd awoke them all to their proper occupations and amusements. By the self-same impulse the tailor plied his needle, the blacksmith's hammer descended upon the anvil, and the dancers whirled away on feathery tiptoes ; the company of soldiers broke into platoons, retreated from the stage, and were succeeded by a troop of horse, who came prancing onward with such a sound of trumpets and trampling of hoofs as might have startled Don Quixote himself ; while an old toper, of inveterate ill habits, uplifted his black bottle and took off a hearty swig. Meantime the Merry An- drew began to caper and turn somersets, shaking his sides, nodding his head, and winking his eyes in as life-like a manner as if he were ridiculing the non- sense of all human affairs, and making fun of the whole multitude beneath him. At length the old magician (for I compared the showman to Prospero entertaining his guests with a mask of shadows) paused that I might give utterance to my wonder. " What an admirable piece of work is this ! " ex- claimed I, Hfting up my hands in astonishment. Indeed I liked the spectacle, and was tickled with the old man's gravity as he presided at it, for I had none of that foolish wisdom which reproves every occupation that is not useful in this world of vanities. If there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly ihan most men, it is that of thro^dng myself mentally into situations foreign to my own, and detecting, with ft cheerful eye, the desirable circumstances of eacb THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 395 I eould have envied the life of this gray-headed show- man, spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable adventure, in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through the sands of Cape Cod, and some- times over the rough forest roads of the north and east, and halting now on the green before a village meeting-house, and now in a paved square of the me- tropolis. How often must his heart have been glad- dened by the delight of children as they viewed these animated figures ! or his pride indulged by harangu- ing learnedly to grown men on the mechanical powers which produced such wonderful effects, or his gal- lantry brought into play (for this is an attribute which such grave men do not lack) by the visits of pretty maidens ! And then with how fresh a feeling must he return, at intervals, to his own peculiar home 1 " I would I were assured of as happy a life as his," thought I. Though the showman's wagon might have accom- modated fifteen or twenty spectators, it now contained only himself and me, and a third person at whom I threw a glance on entering. He was a neat and thin young man of two or three and twenty ; his drab hat, and green frock coat with velvet collar, were smart, though no longer new ; while a pair of green specta cles that seemed needless to his brisk little eyes gave him something of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing me a sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced with a bow, and drew my atten- tion to some books in a comer of the wagon. Thesa he forthwith began to extol with an amazing volubil- ity of well-sounding words, and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart, as being myself one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed his stock required 896 TWICE-TOLD TALES. some considerable powers of commendation in tha salesman ; there were several ancient friends of mine, the novels of those happy days when my affections wavered between the Scottish Chiefs and Thomas Thumb ; besides a few of later date, whose merits had not been acknowledged by the public. I was glad to find that dear little venerable volume, the New Eng- land Primer, looking as antique as ever, though in its thousandth new edition; a bundle of superannuated gilt picture-books made such a child of me, that partly for the glittering covers, and partly for the fairy tales within, I bought the whole ; and an assortment of ballads and popular theatrical songs drew largely on my purse. To balance these expenditures, I med. died neither with sermons, nor science, nor moraliiy, though volumes of each were there ; nor with a Life of Franklin in the coarsest of paper, but so showily bound that it was emblematical of the Doctor himself, in tlie court-dress which he refused to wear at Paris ; nor with Webster's Spelling-Book, nor some of By- ron's minor poems, nor half a dozen little Testaments at twenty-five cents each. Thus far the collection might have been swept from some great bookstore, or picked up at an evening auc- tion room ; but there was one small blue-covered pam- phlet, which the pedlar handed me with so peculiar an air, that I purchased it immediately at his own price ! and then, for the first time, the thought struck me, that I had spoken face to face with the veritable an. thor of a printed book. The literary man now evinced a great kindness for me, and I ventured to inquire which way he was travelling. "Oh," said he, "I keep company vdth this old gentleman here, and we are moving now towards the camp-meeting at Stamford." THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 397 He then explained to me that for the present season «e had rented a comer of the wagon as a bookstore, which, as he wittily observed, was a true Circulating Library, since there were few parts of the country where it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan exceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the many imcommon felicities in the life of a book pedlar, especially when his character resembled that of the individual before me. At a high rate was to be reckoned the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a passing stranger, and made him aware that a man of literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was travelling the country in a show- man's wagon. A more valuable, yet not infrequent, triumph, might be won in his conversations with some eklorly clergyman, long vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back settlement of New England, who, as he recruited liis library from the pedlar's stock of ser- mons, would exhort him to seek a college education and become the first scholar in his class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his sensations when, talking po- etry while he sold spelling-books, he should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart, of a fair country Bchoolmistress, herself an unhonored poetess, a wearer of blue stockings which none but himself took pains to look at. But the scene of his completest glory would be when the wagon had halted for the night, and his stock of books was transferred to some crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend to the multi- farious company, whether traveller from the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler, works suited to each particular taste and capacity ; proving, all the TWICE-TOLD TALES. while, by acute criticism and profound remark, tlialk the lore in his books was even exceeded by that in his brain. Thus happily would he traverse the land; some- times a herald before the march of Mind ; sometimes walking arm in arm with awful Literature ; and reap- ing everywhere a harvest of real and sensible popular- ity, which the secluded bookworms, by whose toil he lived, could never hope for. " If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fix- ing myself in adamantine resolution, "it shall be as a travelling bookseller." •Though it was still mid afternoon, the air had now grown dark about us, and a few drops of rain cama down upon the roof of our vehicle, pattering like the feet of birds that had flown thither to rest. A sound of pleasant voices made us listen, and there soon ap- peared half-way up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel, whose rosy face was so cheerful that even amid the gloomy light it seemed as if the sun- beams were peeping imder her bonnet. We next saw the dark and handsome features of a young man, who, with easier gallantry than might have been expected in the heart of Yankee land, was assisting her into the wagon. It became immediately evident to us, when the two strangers stood within the door, that lar a knot of people as could have been selected from THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 413 all his heterogeneous auditors. Indeed, considering that we might all be classified under the general head of Vagabond, there was great diversity of character among the grave old showman, the sly, prophetic beg- gar, the fiddling foreigner and his merry damsel, the smart bibliopolist, the sombre Indian, and myself, the, itinerant novelist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even fancied that a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of the preacher's mouth. " Good people," answered he, " the camp-meeting is broke up." So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed and rode westward. Our union being thus nullified by the removal of its object, we were sundered at once to the four winds of heaven. The fortune-teller giv- ing a nod to all, and a peculiar wink to me, departed on his northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took the Stamford road. The old showman and his literary coadjutor were already tackling their horses to the wagon, with a design to peregrinate southwest along the sea-coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel took their laughing leave, and pursued the eastern road, which I had that day trodden ; as they passed away, the young man played a lively strain and the girl's happy spirit broke into a dance : and thus, dissolving, as it were, into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant pair departed from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow thrown across my mind, yet en- vious of the light philosophy of my late companions, I joined myself to the Penobscot Indian and set forth towards the distant city. THE WHITE OLD MAID. The moonbeams came through two deep and nar row windows, and showed a spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor ; the ghostly light, through the other, slept upon a bed, falling between the heavy silken curtains, and illuminating the face of a young man. But, how quifetly the slumberer lay ! how pale his features I and how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame ! Yes ; it was a corpse, in its burial clothes. Suddenly, the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight, as the door of the chamber opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph, as she bent over the pale corpse — pale as itself — and pressed her living lips to the cold ones of the dead ? As she drew back from that long kiss, her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive to her own. StiU an illusion ! The silken curtain had waved, a second time, betwixt the dead face and the moonlight, as another fair young girl un- closed the door, and glided, ghost-Uke, to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both beautif id, with the "lale beauty of the dead between them. But she who THE WHITE OLD MAID. 415 had first entered was proud and stately, and the other a soft and fragile thing. " Away ! " cried the lofty one. " Thou hadst him living ! The dead is mine ! " " Thine ! " returned the other, shuddering. " Well hast thou spoken ! The dead is thine ! " The proud girl started, and stared into her face with a ghastly look. But a wild and mournful ex- pression passed across the features of the gentle one ; and weak and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head pillowed beside that of the corpse, and her hair mingling with his dark locks. A creature of hope and joy, the first draught of sorrow had bewildered her. " Edith ! " cried her rival. Edith groaned, as with a sudden compression of the heart; and removing her cheek from the dead youth's pillow, she stood upright, fearfully encountering the eyes of the lofty girl. " Wilt thou betray me? " said the latter, calmly. " Till the dead bid me speak, I vnU be silent," an- swered Edith. " Leave us alone together ! Go, and live many years, and then return, and teU me of thy life. He, too, wiU be here ! Then, if thou teUest of sufferings more than death, we will both forgive thee." " And what shall be the token ? " asked the proud girl, as if her heart acknowledged a meaning in these wild words. « This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the dark, clustering curls that lay heavily on the deac man's brow. The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of the corpse, and appointed a day and hour, far, far in time to come, for their next meeting in that cham- ber. The statelier girl gave one deep look at the mo 416 TWICE-TOLD TALES. tionless countenance, and departed — yet turned again and trembled ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead lover frowned upon her. And Edith, too ! Was not her white form fading into the moon- light? Scorning her own weaJniess she went forth, and perceived that a negro slave was waiting in the passage with a wax -light, which he held between her face and his own, and regarded her, as she thought, with an ugly expression of merriment. Lifting his torch on high, the slave lighted her down the stair- case, and undid the portal of the mansion. The yoimg clergyman of the town had just ascended the steps, and bowing to the lady, passed in without a word. Years, many years, rolled on; the world seemed new again, so much older was it grown since the night when those pale girls had clasped their hands across the bosom' of the corpse. In the interval, a lonely woman had passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by aU the town as the " Old Maid in the Winding Sheet." A taint of insanity had affected her whole life, but so quiet, sad, and gentle, so utterly free from violence, that she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies, immolested by <3ie world, with whose business or pleasures she had nought to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into the daylight, except to follow funerals. Whenever a corpse was borne along the street in sunshine, rain, or snow: whether a pompous train of the rich and proud thronged after it, or few and humble were the mourn ers, behind them came the lonely woman in a long white garment which the people called her shroud. She took no place among the kindred or the friends, but stood at the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the rear of the procession, as one whose THE WHITE OLD MAID. 417 earthly charge it was to haunt the house of monmiiig, and be ihe shadow of affliction, and see that the dead were duly buried. So long had this been her custom that the inhabitants of the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as the coffin pall, or the very corpse itself, and augured Ul of the sinner's destiny unless the "Old Maid in the Winding Sheet" came gliding, like a ghost, behind. Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal party with her pale presence, ap- pearing suddenly in the illuminated hall, just as the priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy man, be- fore her lover had been dead a year. Evil was the omen to that marriage ! Sometimes she stole forth by moonlight and visited the graves of venerable Integ- rity, and wedded Love, and virgin Innocence, and every spot where the ashes of a hind and faithful heart were mouldering. Over the hillocks of those favored dead would she stretch out her arms, with a gesture, as if she were scattering seeds; and many believed that she brought them from the garden of Paradise ; for the graves which she had visited were green be- neath the snow, and covered with sweet flowers from April to November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse upon the tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad, peaceful, and fantastic life, till few were so old as she, and the people of later generations won- dered how the dead had ever been buried, or mourners had endured their grief, without the "Old Maid in the Winding Sheet." Still years went on, and still she followed funerals, and was not yet summoned to her own festival of death. One afternoon the great street of the town was all alive with business and bustle, though the sun DOW gilded only the upper half of the church spire, VOL. I. 27 418 TWICE-TOLD TALES. having left tlie housetops and loftiest trees in shadow. The scene was cheerful and animated, in spite of tha sombre shade between the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants, in white wigs and laced velvet ; the bronzed faces of searcaptains ; the foreign garb and air of Spanish Creoles ; and the disdainful port of natives of Old England ; all contrasted witli the rough aspect of one or two back settlers, negoti- ating sales of timber from forests where axe had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swelling roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying with lofty grace to the punctilious obeisances of the gentlemen. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre not far from an old mansion that stood somewhat back from the pavement, surrounded by neglected grass, with a strange air of loneliness, rather deepened than dispelled by the throng so near it. Its site would have been suitably occupied by a magnificent Ex- change or a brick block, lettered all over with various signs ; or the large house itseU might have made a noble tavern, with the " King's Arms " swinging be- fore it, and guests in every chamber, instead of the present solitude. But owing to some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion had been long without a tenant, decaying from year to year, and throwing the stately gloom of its shadow over the busiest part of the town. Such was the scene, and such the time, when a figure unlike any that have been described was observed at a distance down the street. " I espy a strange sail, yonder," remarked a Liver- pool captain ; " that woman in tiie long white gap ment!" THE WHITE OLD MAID. 419 The sailor seemed much struck by the ohject, as were several others who, at the same moment, caught a glimpse of the figure that had attracted his notice. Almost immediately the various topics of conversa- tion gave place to speculations, in an undertone, on this unwonted occurrence. " Can there be a funeral so late this afternoon ? " inquired some. They looked for the signs of death at every door — the sexton, the hearse, the assemblage of black-clad relatives — all that makes up the woful pomp of fu- nerals. They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt spire of the church, and wondered that no clang pro- ceeded from its bell, which had always tolled till now when this figure appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that a corpse was to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor was iJiere any token of a fimeral, except the apparition of the " Old Maid in the Winding Sheet." " What may this portend ? " asked each man of his neighbor. All smiled as they put the question, yet with a cer- tain trouble in their eyes, as if pestilence or some other wide calamity were prognosticated by the un- timely intrusion among the living of one whose pres- ence had always been associated with death and woe. What a comet is to the earth was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved on, while the hum of sur- prise was hushed at her approach, and the proud and the humble stood aside, that her white garment might not wave against them. It was a long, loose robe, of spotless purity. Its wearer appeared very old, pale, emaciated, and feeble, yet glided onward without the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of hes 420 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Bourse a little rosy boy burst forth from a door, and ran, with open arms, towards the ghostly woman, seem- ing to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips. She made a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expres- sion of no earthly sweetness, so that the chUd shivered and stood awe-struck, rather than affrighted, while the Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have been polluted even by an infant's touch; perhaps her kiss would have been death to the sweet boy within a year. " She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious. " The child put forth his arms and could not grasp her robe!" The wonder was increased when the Old Maid passed beneath the porch of the deserted mansion, as- cended the moss-covered steps, lifted the iron knocker, and gave three raps. The people could only conjec- ture that some old remembrance, troubling her bewil- dered brain, had impelled the poor woman hither to visit the friends of her youth ; all gone from their home long since and forever, unless their ghosts still haunted it — fit company for the " Old Maid in the Winding Sheet." An elderly man approached the steps, and, reverently uncovering his gray locks, es sayed to explain the matter. "None, Madam," said he, "have dwelt in thii house these fifteen years agone — no, not since the death of old Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral you may remember to have followed. His heirs, being ill agreed among themselves, have let the mansion- house go to ruin." The Old Maid looked slowly round with a slight gesture of one hand, and a finger of the other upon her lip, appearing more shadow-like than ever in the THE WHITE OLD MAID. 421 obscurity of the porch. But again she lifted the ham- mer, and gave, this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was now heard coming down the stair- case of the old mansion, which all conceived to have been so long untenanted ? Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and infirm person, the step approached, more distinct on every downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell on the inside ; the door was opened. One upward glance towards the church spire, whence the sunshine had just faded, was the last that the people saw of the " Old Maid in the Winding Sheet." " Who undid the door?" asked many. This question, owing to the depth of shadow be- neath the porch, no one could satisfactorily answer. Two or three aged men, while protesting against an. inference which might be drawn, affirmed that the person within was a negro, and bore a singular resem- blance to old Csesar, formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death some thirty years before. " Her summons has waked up a servant of the old family," said one, half seriously. " Let us wait here," replied another. " More guests will knock at the door, anon. But the gate of the graveyard should be thrown open ! " Twilight had overspread the town before the crowd began to separate, or the comments on this incident were exhausted. One after another was wending hi? way homeward, when a coach — no common spectacle in those days — drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned equipage, hanging close to the groimd, with arms on the panels, a footman behind, and a grave, corpulent coachman seated high in front — the whole ■ giving an idea of solemn state and dignity 422 TWICE-TOLD TALES. There was something awful in the heavy nunbling of the wheels. The coach rolled down the street, tUl, coming to the gateway of the deserted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to the ground. " Whose grand coach is this ? " asked a very in- quisitive body. The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of the old house, gave three raps with the iron ham- mer, and returned to open the coach door. An old man, possessed of the heraldic lore so cotamon in that day, examined the shield of arms on the panel. " Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flower- de-luces," said he; then whispered the name of the family to whom these bearings belonged. The last inheritor of his honors was recently dead, after a long residence amid the splendor of the British court, where his birth and wealth had given him no mean station. " He left no child," continued the herald, " and these arms, being in a lozenge, betoken that the coach ap- pertains to his widow." Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made, had not the speaker suddenly been struck dimib by the stern eye of an ancient lady who thrust forth her head from the coach, preparing to descend. As she emerged, the people saw that her dress was magnifi- cent, and her figure dignified, in spite of age and in- firmity — a stately ruin but with a look, at once, of pride and wretchedness. Her strong and rigid feat- ures had an awe about them, imlike that of the white Old Maid, but as of something evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed cane; the door BWimg open as she ascended — and the light of a torch glittered on the embroidery of her dress, and gleamed on the pillars of the porch. After a momen THE WHITE OLD MAID. 423 lary pause — a glance backwards — and then a des- perate effort — she went in. The decipherer of the coat of arms had ventured up the lowest step, and shrinking back immediately, pale and tremulous, af- firmed that the torch was held by the very image of old Caesar. " But such a hideous grin," added he, " was never seen on the face of mortal man, black or white I It will haunt me till my dying day." Meantime, the coach had wheeled round, with a prodigious clatter on the pavement, and rimibled up the street, disappearing in the twilight, while the ear still tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone, when the people began to question whether the coach and attendants, the ancient lady, the spectre of old Caesar, and the Old Maid herseK, were not all a strangely combined delusion, with some dark purport in its mys- tery. The whole town was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd continually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows of the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon. The elders, glad to indulge the narrative propensity of age, told of the long-faded splendor of the family, the entertainments they had given, and the guests, the greatest of the land, and even titled and noble ones from abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These graphic reminis- sences seemed to call up the ghosts of those to whom they referred. So strong was the impression on some of the more imaginative hearers, that two or three were seized with trembling fits, at one and the same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard three other raps of the iron knocker. " Impossible ! " exclaimed others. " See ! The noon shines beneath the porch, and shows every paxt 424 TWICE-TOLD TALES. of it, except in the narrow shade of that pillar. There is no one there ! " " Did not the door open ? " whispered one of these fanciful persons. " Didst thou see it, too ? " said his companion, in a startled tone. But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea that a third visitant had made application at the door of the deserted house. A few, however, adhered to this new marvel, and even declared that a red gleam like that of a torch had shone through the great front wind.ow, as if the negro were lighting a guest up the staircase. This, too, was pronounced a mere fantasy. But at once the whole multitude started, and each man beheld his own terror painted in the faces of all the rest. " What an awful thing is this ! " cried they. A shriek too fearfully distinct for doubt had been heard within the mansion, breaking forth suddenly, and succeeded by a deep stillness, as if a heart had burst in giAong it utterance. The people knew not whether to fly from the very sight of the house, or to rush trembling in, and search out the strange mys- tery. Amid their confusion and affright, they were somewhat reassured by the appearance of their cleiv gyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint, who had taught them and their fathers the way to heay^ft for more than the space of an ordinary Ufe- tin^e, He was a reverend figure, with long, white hair -i^poH bis shoulders, a white beard upon his breast, and a back so bent over his staff that he seemed to be looking downward continually, as if to choose a proper grave for his weaiy frame. It was some time t^fpre the good old jn^jj, beijtg deaf and of impaired THE WHITE OLD MAID. 425 intellect, could be made to comprehend such portions of the affair as were comprehensible at all. But, when possessed of the facts, his energies assumed un- expected vigor. " Verily," said the old gentleman, " it will be fitting that I enter the mansion-house of the worthy Colonel Fenwicke, lest any harm should have befallen that true Christian woman whom ye caU the ' Old Maid in the Winding Sheet.' " Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the steps of the mansion, with a torch-bearer behind him. It was the elderly man who had spoken to the Old Maid, and the same who had afterwards explained the shield of arms and recognized the features of the ne- gro. Like their predecessors, they gave three raps Mrith the iron hammer. " Old Caesar cometh not," observed the priest. " Well I wot he no longer doth service in this man- sion. " Assuredly, then, it was something worse, in old Caesar's likeness ! " said the other adventurer. "Be it as God wiUs," answered the clergyman. " See ! my strength, though it be much decayed, hath sufficed to open this heavy door. Let us enter and pass up the staircase." Here occmred a singular exemplification of the dreamy state of a very old man's mind. As they ascended the wide flight of stairs, the aged clergy- man appeared to move with caution, occasionally standing aside, and oftener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus practising all the gestures of one who makes his way through a throng. Beaching the head of the staircase, he looked around with sad and solemn benignity, laid aside his staff, bared his 426 TWICE-TOLD TALES. hoary locks, and was evidently on the point of com mencing a prayer. " Eeverend Sir," said his attendant, who conceived this a very suitable prelude to their further search, " would it not be well that the people join with us in prayer ? " " Welladay ! " cried the old clergyman, staring strangely around him. "Art thou here with me, and none other? Verily, past times were present to me, and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircase. Of a truth, I saw the shades of many that are gone. Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one after another, and the ' Old Maid in the Winding Sheet ' hath seen them to their graves ! " Being now more thoroughly awake to their present purpose, he took his staff and struck forcibly on the floor, till there came an echo from each deserted cham- ber, but no menial to answer their summons. They therefore walked along the passage, and again paused, opposite to the great front window through which waa seen the crowd, in the shadow and partial moonlight of the street beneath. On their right hand was the open door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left. The clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the latter. "Within that chamber," observed he, "a whole life-time since, did I sit by the death-beid of a goodly young man, who, being now at the last gasp " — Apparently there was some powerful excitement in the ideas which had now flashed across his mind. He snatched the torch from his companion's hand, and threw open the door with such sudden violence that the flame was extinguished, leaving them no other THE WHITE OLD MAID. 427 Gght than the moonbeams, which fell through two windows into the spacious chamber. It was sufficient to discover all that could be known. In a high-backed oaken arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her breast, and her head thrown back, sat the "Old Maid in the Winding Sheet." The stately- dame had fallen on her knees, with her forehead on the holy knees of the Old Maid, one hand upon the floor and the other pressed convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of hair, once sable, now dis- colored with a greenish mould. As the priest and lay- man advanced into the chamber, the Old Maid's feat- ures assumed such a semblance of shifting expression that they trusted to hear the whole mystery explained by a single word. But it was only the shadow of a tattered curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight. " Both dead ! " said the venerable man. " Then who shall divulge the secret ? Methinks it glimmers to and fro in my mind, like the light and shadow across the Old Maid's face. And now 't is gone ! " PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. " And so, Peter, you won't even consider of th» business ? " said Mr. John Brown, buttoning his sur. tout over the snug rotundity of his person, and draw ing on his gloves. " You positively refuse to let me have this crazy old house, and the land under and ad- joining, at the price named ? " "Neither at that, nor treble the sum," responded the gaunt, grizzled, and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite. " The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must find another site for your brick block, and be content to leave my es- tate with the present owner. Next summer, I intend to put a splendid new mansion over the cellar of the old house." " Pho, Peter ! " cried Mr. Brown, as he opened the kitchen door ; " content yourself with building castles in the air, where house-lots are cheaper than on earth, to say nothing of the cost of bricks and mortar. Such foundations are solid enough for your edifices, while this underneath us is just the thing for mine ; and so we may both be suited. What say you again?" " Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown," an- swered Peter Goldthwaite. " And as for castles in the air, mine may not be as magnificent as that sort of architecture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr. Brown, as the very respectable brick block with dry goods stores, tailors' shops, and banking rooms on the lower floor, and lawyers' offices in the second story, which you are so anxious to substitute." PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 429 " And the cost, Peter, eh?" said Mr. Brown, as he withdrew, in something of a pet. "That, I suppose, will be provided for, off-hand, by drawing a check on Bubble Bank!" John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly known to the conunercial world between twenty and thirty years before, under the firm of Goldthwaite & Brown; which copartnership, however, was speedily dissolved by the natural incongruiiy of its constituent parts. Since that event, John Brown, with exactly the qualities of a thousand other John Browns, and by just such plodding methods as they used, had pros- pered wonderfully, and become one of the wealthiest John Browns on earth. Peter Goldthwaite, on the con- trary, after innumerable schemes, which ought to have collected all the coin and paper currency of the coun- try into his coffers, was as needy a gentleman as ever wore a patch upon his elbow. The contrast between him and his former partner may be briefly marked ; for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always had it ; while Peter made luck the main condition of his projects, and always missed it. While the means held out, his speculations had been magnificent, but were chiefly confined, of late years, to such small business as adventures in the lottery. Once he had gone on a gold-gathering expedition somewhere to the South, and ingeniously contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than ever; while others, doubtless, were filling theirs with native bullion by thb handful. More recently he had expended a legacy of a thousand or two of dollars in purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the proprietor of a province; which, however, so far as Peter could find out, was situated irhere he might have had an empire for the same 430 TWICE-TOLD TALES. money, — in the clouds. From a search after this val uable real estate Peter returned so gaunt and thread' bare that, on reaching New England, the scarecrows in the cornfields beckoned to him, as he passed by. "They did but flutter in the wind," quoth Peter Goldthwaite. No, Peter, they beckoned, for the scare- crows knew their brother ! At the period of our story his whole visible income would not have paid the tax of the old mansion in which we find him. It was one of those rusty, moss- grown, many-peaked wooden houses, which are scat- tered about the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed second story projecting over the foun- dation, as if it frowned at the novelty around it. This old paternal edifice, needy as he was, and though, being centrally situated on the principal street of the town, it would have brought him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own reasons for never parting with, either by auction or private sale. There seemed, indeed, to be a fatality that connected him with his birthplace ; for, often as he had stood on the verge of ruin, and standing there even now, he had not yet taken the step beyond it which would have compeUed him to surrender the house to his creditors. So here he dwelt with bad luck till good should come. Here then in his kitchen, the only room where a spark of fire took off the chiU of a November even- ing, poor Peter Goldthwaite had just been visited by his rich old partner. At the close of their interview, Peter, with rather a mortified look, glanced down- wards at his dress, parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Goldthwaite & Brown. His upper gar- ment was a mixed surtout, wofuUy faded, and patched with newer stuff on each elbow ; beneath this he wore PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 431 a threadbare black coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced with others of a different pattern ; and lastly, though he lacked not a pair of gray pantaloons, they were very shabby ones, and had been partially turned brown by the frequent toasting of Peter's shins before a scanty fire. Peter's person was in keeping with his goodly apparel. Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pdle-cheeked, and lean-bodied, he was the perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy schemes and empty hopes, till he could neither live on such unwholesome trash, nor stomach more substantial food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crack- brained simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very brilliant figure in the world, had he employed his imagination in the airy business of poetry, instead of making it a demon of mischief in mercantile pur- suits. After all, he was no bad feUow, but as harm- less as a child, and as honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman which nature meant him for, as an irregular life and depressed circumstances will permit any man to be. As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth, looking round at the disconsolate old kitchen, his eyes began to kindle with the illumination of an enthusi- asm that never long deserted him. He raised his hand, clinched it, and smote it energetically against the smoky panel over the fireplace. "The time is come!" said he. "With such a treasure at command, it were folly to be a poor man any longer. To-morrow morning I will begin with the garret, nor desist till I have torn the house down ! " Deep in the chimney-comer, like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a littie old woman, mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite 432 TWICE-TOLD TALES. kept his toes from being frostbitten. As the feet were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a castofiE flannel petticoat, to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid, upwards of sixty years of age, fifty-five of wliich she had sat in that same chim- ney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter's grandfather had taken her from the almshouse. She had no friend but Peter, nor Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as Peter might have a shelter for his own head, Tabitha would know where to shelter hers; or, being homeless elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand and bring him to her native home, the almshouse. Shoxdd it ever be necessary, she loved him well enough to feed him with her last morsel, and clothe him with her under petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old woman, and, though never infected with Peter's flightiness, had become so accus- tomed to his freaks and foUies that she viewed them all as matters of course. Hearing him threaten to tear the house down, she looked quietly up from her work. " Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter," said she. " The sooner we have it all down the better," said Peter Goldthwaite. " I am tired to death of living in this cold, dark, windy, smoky, creaking, groaning, dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man when we get into my splendid brick mansion, as, please Heaven, we shall by this time next autumn. You shall have a room on the sunny side, old Tabby, finished and furnished as best may suit your own no- tions." " I should like it pretty much such a room as this kitchen," answered Tabitha. " It wiU never be like PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 438 home to me till the chimney-comer gets as black with smoke as this ; and that won't be these hundred years. How much do you mean to lay out on the house, Mr. Peter?" " What is that to the purpose ? " exclaimed Peter, loftily. " Did not my great-granduncle, Peter Gold- thwaite, who died seventy years ago, and whose name- sake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty such?" " I can't say but he did, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha, threading her needle. Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference to an immense hoard of the precious metals, which was said to exist somewhere in the cellar or walls, or under the floors, or in some concealed closet, or other out-of-the-way nook of the house. This wealth, accord- ing to tradition, had been accumulated by a former Peter Goldthwaite, whose character seems to have borne a remarkable similitude to that of the Peter of our story. Like him he was a wild projector, seeking to heap up gold by the bushel and the cartload, in- stead of scraping it together, coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too, his projects had almost invaria- bly failed, and, but for the magnificent success of the final one, would have left him with hardly a coat and pair of breeches to his gaunt and grizzled person. Reports were various as to the nature of his fortunate speculation : one intimating that the ancient Peter had made the gold by alchemy ; another, that he had con- jured it out of people's pockets by the black art ; and A, third, still more unaccountable, that the devil had given him free access to the old provincial treasury. It was affirmed, however, that some secret impediment had debarred him from the enjoyment of his richeS) 434 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and that he had a motive for concealing them frons his heir, or at any rate had died without disclosing tha place of deposit. The present Peter's father had faith enough in the story to cause the cellar to be dug over, Peter himself chose to consider the legend as an indis' putable truth, and, amid his many troubles, had this one consolation that, should all other resources faO, he might build up his fortunes by tearing his house down. Yet, unless he felt a lurking distrust of the golden tale, it is difficult to account for his permitting the paternal roof to stand so long, since he had never yet seen the moment when his predecessor's treasure would not have found plenty of room in his own strong box. But now was the crisis. Should he delay the search a little longer, the house would pass from the lineal heir, and with it the vast heap of gold, to re- main in its burial-place, tUl the ruin of the aged walls should discover it to strangers of a future generation. " Yes ! " cried Peter Goldthwaite, again, " to-mor. row I will set about it." The deeper he looked at the matter the more cer- tain of success grew Peter. His spirits were natur- ally so elastic that even now, in the blasted autumn of his age, he could often compete with the spring-time gayety of other people. Enlivened by his brightening prospects, he began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin, with the queerest antics of his lean limbs, and gesticidations of his starved features. Nay, in the exuberance of his feelings, he seized both of Tab- itha's hands, and danced the old lady across the floor, till the oddity of her rhetunatic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was echoed back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter Goldthwaite were laughing in every one. Finally he bounded upward PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 43i) almost out o£ sight, into the smoke that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and, alighting safely on the floor again, endeavored to resume his customary gravity. "To-morrow, at sunrise," he repeated, taking his lamp to retire to bed, " I '11 see whether this treasure be hid in the wall of the garret." " And as we 're out of wood, Mr. Peter," said Tab- itha, puffing and panting with her late gymnastics, " as fast as you tear the house down, I '11 make a fire with the pieces." Gorgeous that night were the dreams of Peter Goldtliwaite ! At one time he was turning a ponder- ous key in an iron door not unlike the door of a sepulchre, but which, being opened, disclosed a vault heaped up with gold coin, as plentifully as golden com in a granary. There were chased goblets, also, and tureens, salvers, dinner dishes, and dish covers of gold, or silver gilt, besides chains and other jewels, incalcu- lably rich, though tarnished with the damps of the vault ; for, of all the wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried in the earth or sunken in the sea, Peter Goldthwaite had found it in this one treas- ure-place. Anon, he had returned to the old house as poor as ever, and was received at the door by the gaunt and grizzled figure of a man whom he might have mistaken for himself, only that his garments were of a much elder fashion. But the house, with- out losing its former aspect, had been changed into a palace of the precious metals. The floors, walls, and ceiling were of burnished silver ; the doors, the win- dow frames, the cornices, the balustrades, and the steps of the staircase, of pure gold ; and silver, with gold bottoms, were the chairs, and gold, standing on silver legs, the high chests of drawers, and silver the 436 TWICE-TOLD TALES. bedsteads, with blankets of woven gold, and sheets of silver tissue. The house had evidently been trans- muted by a single touch ; for it retained all the marks that Peter remembered, but in gold or silver instead of wood ; and the initials of his name, which, when a boy, he had cut in the wooden door-post, remained as deep in the pillar of gold. A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite except for a certain ocular deception, which, whenever he glanced backwards, caused the house to darken from its glittering mag- nificence into the sordid gloom of yesterday. Up, betimes, rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer, and saw, which he had placed by his bedside, and hied him to the garret. It was but scantily lighted up, as yet, by the frosty fragments of a simbeam, which began to glimmer through the almost opaque bull's-eyes of the window. A moralizer might find abundant themes for his speculative and impracticable wisdom in a garret. There is the limbo of departed fashions, aged trifles of a day, and whatever was valu- able only to one generation of men, and which passed to the garret when that generation passed to the grave, not for safe keeping, but to be out of the way. Peter saw piles of yellow and musty account-books, in parch- ment covers, wherein creditors, long dead and buried, had written the names of dead and buried debtors in ink now so faded that their moss-grown tombstones were more legible. He found old moth-eaten gar- ments all in rags and tatters, or Peter woidd have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty sword, not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small French rapier, which had never left its scabbard tiU it lost it. Here were canes of twenty different sorts, but no gold-headed ones, and shoe-buckles of various pattern PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 437 and material, but not silver nor set with precious stones. Here was a large box full of shoes, with high heels and peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a mul- titude of phials, half -filled with old apothecaries' stuff, which, when the other half had done its business on Peter's ancestors, had been brought hither from th^ death chamber. Here — not to give a longer inven- tory of articles that will never be put up at auction — was the fragment of a full-length looking-glass, which, by the dust and dimness of its surface, made the pict- ure of these old things look older than the reality. When Peter, not knowing that there was a mirror there, caught the faint traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the former Peter Goldthwaite had come back, either to assist or impede his search for the hidden wealth. And at that moment a strange notion glimmered through his brain that he was the identical Peter who had concealed the gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, however, he had unacoimtably forgotten. " Well, Mr. Peter ! " cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs. " Have you torn the house down enough to heat the teakettle ? " "Not yet, old Tabby," answered Peter; "but that's soon done — as you shall see." With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and laid about him so vigorously that the dust flew, the boards crashed, and, in a twinkling, the old woman had an apron full of broken rubbish. " We shall get our winter's wood cheap," quoth Tabitha. The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat down all before him, smiting and hewing at the joists and timbers, unclinching spike-nails, ripping and tear- 3tS8 TWICE-TOLD TALES. ing away boards, mth a tremendous racket, from morning till night. He took care, however, to leave the outside shell of the house untouched, so that the neighbors might not suspect what was going on. Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made him happy while it lasted, had Peter been hap- pier than now. Perhaps, after all, there was some- thing in Peter Goldthwaite's turn of mind, which brought him an inward recompense for all the exter- nal evil that it caused. If he were poor, Ul-clad, even hungry, and exposed, as it were, to be utterly annihi- lated by a precipice of impending ruin, yet only his body remained, in these miserable circumstances, while his aspiring soul enjoyed the sunshine of a bright fu- turity. It was his nature to be always yoimg, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him so. Gray hairs were nothing, no, nor wrinkles, nor infirmity ; he might look old, indeed, and be somewhat disagree- ably connected with a gaunt old figure, much the worse for wear ; but the true, the essential Peter was a yoimg man of high hopes, just entering on the world. At the kindling of each new fire, his burnt-out youth rose afresh from the old embers and ashes. It rose exulting now. Having lived thus long — not too long, but just to the right age — a susceptible bachelor, with warm and tender dreams, he resolved, so soon as the hidden gold should flash to light, to go a-wooing, and win the love of the fairest maid in town. What heart could resist him ? Happy Peter Goldthwaite ! Every evening — as Peter had long absented him- self from his former lounging-places, at insurance offi- ces, news-rooms, and bookstores, and as the honor of bis company was seldom requested in private circles — he and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by thfl PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 439 Ktchen hearth. This was always heaped plentifully with the rubbish of his day's labor. As the founda- tion of the fire, there would be a goodly-sized backlog of red oak, which, after being sheltered from rain or damp above a century, still hissed with the heat, and distilled streams of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down within a week or two. Next these were large sticks, sound, black, and heavy, which had lost the principle of decay, and were indestructible ex- cept by fire, wherein they glowed like red-hot bars of iron. On this solid basis, Tabitha would rear a lighter stBueture, composed of the splinters of door panels, ornamented mouldings, and such quick combustibles, which caught like straw, and threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue, making its sooty sides visi- ble almost to the chimney-top. Meantime, the gleam of the old kitchen would be chased out of the cob webbed corners, and away from the dusky cross-beams overhead, and driven nobody could teU whither, while Peter smiled like a gladsome man, and Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age. All this, of course, was but an emblem of the bright fortune which the de- struction of the house would shed upon its occupants. While the dry pine was flaming and crackling, like an irregular discharge of fairy musketry, Peter sat looking and listening, in a pleasant state of excite- ment. But, when the brief blaze and uproar were suc- ceeded by the dark-red glow, the substantial heat, and the deep singing sound, which were to last through- out the evening, his humor became talkative. One night, the hundredth time, he teased Tabitha to teU him something new about his great-granduncle. " You have been sitting in that chimney-comei fifty-five years, old Tabby, and must have heard many 440 TWICE-TOLD TALES. a tradition about him," said Peter. " Did not you tell me that, when you first came to the house, there was an old woman sitting where you sit now, who had been housekeeper to the famous Peter Goldthwaite? " " So there was, Mr. Peter," answered Tabitha, " and she was near about a hundred years old. She used to say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite had often spent a sociable evening by the kitchen fire — pretty much as you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter." " The old fellow must have resembled me in more points than one," said Peter, complacently, "or he never woidd have grown so rich. But, methinks, he might have invested the money better than he did — no interest ! — nothing but good security ! — and the house to be torn down to come at it ! What made binn hide it so snug. Tabby ? " "Because he could not spend it," said Tabitha; "for as often as he went to unlock the chest, the Old Scratch came behind and caught his arm. The money, they say, was paid Peter out of his purse ; and he wanted Peter to give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter swore he would not do." " Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner," remarked Peter. " But this is all nonsense, Tabby ! I don't believe the story." " Well, it may not be just the truth," said Tabitha; "for some folks say that Peter did make over the house to the Old Scratch, and that's the reason it has always been so imlucky to them that lived in it. And as soon as Peter had given him the deed, the ehest flew open, and Peter caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and behold ! — there was nothing in his fist but a parcel of old rags." " Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby 1 " cried PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 441 Peter in great wrath. " They were as good golden guineas as ever bore the effigies of the king of Eng- land. It seems as if I could recollect the whole cir- cumstance, and how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was, thrust in my hand, or his hand, and drew it out all of a, blaze with gold. Old rags, indeed ! " But it was not an old woman's legend that would discourage Peter Goldthwaite. All night long he slept among pleasant dreams, and awoke at daylight with a joyous throb of the heart, which few are for- tunate enough to feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day he labored hard without wasting a moment, except at meal times, when Tabitha summoned him to the pork and cabbage, or such other sustenance as she had picked up, or Providence had sent them. Being a truly pious man, Peter never failed to ask a blessing ; if the food were none of the best, then so much the more earnestly, as it was more needed ; — nor to re- turn thanks, if the dinner had been scanty, yet for the good appetite, which was better than a sick stomach at a feast. Then did he hurry back to his toil, and, m a moment, was lost to sight in a cloud of dust from the old walls, though sufficiently perceptible to the ear by the clatter which he raised in the midst of it. How enviable is the consciousness of being usefully em- ployed! Nothing troubled Peter; or nothing but those phantoms of the mind which seem like vague recollections, yet have also the aspect of presentiments. He often paused, with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to himself, — " Peter Goldthwaite, did you never strike this blow before ? " — or, " Peter, what need of tearing the whole house down ? Think a little while, and you will remember where the gold is hidden." Pays and weeks passed on, however, without any re- 442 TWICE-TOLD TALES. markable discovery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean, gray rat peeped forth at the lean, gray man, wondering what devil had got into the old house, which had al- ways been so peaceable till now. And, occasionally, Peter sympathized with the sorrows of a female mouse, who had brought five or six pretty, little, soft and delicate young ones into the world just in time to see them crushed by its ruin. But, as yet, no treas- ure! By this time, Peter, being as determined as Fate and as diligent as Time, had made an end with the uppermost regions, and got down to the second story, where he was busy in one of the front chambers. It had formerly been the state bed-chamber, and was honored by tradition as the sleeping apartment of Governor Dudley, and many other eminent guests. The furniture was gone. There were remnants of faded and tattered paper-hangings, but larger spaces of bare wall ornamented with charcoal sketches, chiefly of people's heads in profile. These beiag specimens of Peter's youthful genius, it went more to his heart to obliterate them than if they had been pictures on a church wall by Michael Angelo. One sketch, how- ever, and that the best one, affected him differently. It represented a ragged man, partly supporting hun- self on a spade, and bending his lean body over a hole in the earth, with one hand extended to grasp some- thing that he had found. But close behind him, with a fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure with horns, a tufted tail, and a cloven hoof. " Avaunt, Satan ! " cried Peter. " The man shall have his gold ! " Uplifting his axe, he hit the homed gentleman such a blow on the head as not only demolished him, but PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 443 the treasure-seeker also, and caused the whole scene to vanish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite through the plaster anA laths, and discovered a cavity. " Mercy on us, Mr. Peter, are you quarrelling with the Old Scratch ? " said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel to put under the pot. Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down a further space of the wall, and laid open a. small closet or cupboard, on one side of the fireplace, about breast high from the ground. It contained nothing but a brass lamp, covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parchment. While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized the lamp, and began to rub it with her apron. " There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha," said Peter. " It is not Aladdin's lamp, though I take it to be a token of as much luck. Look here. Tabby ! " Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her nose, which was saddled with a pair of iron-bound spec- tacles. But no sooner had she began to puzzle over it than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding both her hands against her sides. " You can't make a fool of the old woman ! " cried she. " This is your own handwriting, Mr. Peter ! the same as in the letter you sent me from Mexico." "There is certainly a considerable resemblance," said Peter, again examining the parchment. "But you know yourself, Tabby, that this closet must have been plastered up before you came to the house, or I came into the world. No, this is old Peter Gold- thwaite's writing ; these columns of pounds, shillings, and pence are his figures, denoting the amount of the treasure ; and this at the bottom is, doubtless, a refer- ence to the place of conceaJment. But the ink has 444 TWICE-TOLD TALES. either faded or peeled off, so that it is absolutely illeg ible. What a pity ! " " Well, this lamp is as good as new. That 's some comfort," said Tabitha. " A lamp ! " thought Peter. " That indicates light on my researches." For the present, Peter felt more inclined to ponder on this discovery than to resmne his labors. After Tabitha had gone down stairs, he stood poring over the parchment, at one of the front windows, which was so obscured with dust that the sun could barely throw an imcertain shadow of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it open, and looked out upon the great street of the town, while the sun looked in at his old house. The air, though mild, and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a dash of water. It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow lay deep upon the house-tops, but was rapidly dissolv. ing into millions of water-drops, which sparkled down- wards through the sunshine, with the noise of a sum- mer shower beneath the eaves. Along the street, the trodden snow was as hard and solid as a pavement of white marble, and had not yet grown moist in the spring-like temperature. But when Peter thrust forth his head, he saw that the inhabitants, if not the town, were already thawed out by this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter weather. It gladdened him — a gladness with a sigh breathing through it — to see the stream of ladies, gliding along the slippery sidewalks, with their red cheeks set off by quilted hoods, boas, and sable capes, like roses amidst a new kind of foliage. The sleigh-bells jingled to and fro continually: sometimes announcing the arrival of a sleigh from Vermont, laden with the frozen bodies of PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 445 porkers, or sheep, and perhaps a deer or two ; some- times of a regular market-man, with chickens, geese, and turkeys, comprising the whole colony of a bam yard ; and sometimes of a farmer and his dame, who had come to town partly for the ride, partly to go a-shopping, and partly for the sale of some eggs and butter. This couple rode in an old-fashioned square sleigh, which had served them twenty winters, and stood twenty summers in the sun beside their door. Now, a gentleman and lady skimmed the snow in an eleigant car, shaped somewhat like a cockle-shell. Now, a stage-sleigh, with its cloth curtains thrust aside to admit the sun, dashed rapidly down the street, whirling in and out among the vehicles that obstructed its passage. Now came, round a comer, the similitude of Noah's ark on runners, being an immense open sleigh with seats for fifty people, and drawn by a dozen horses. This spacious receptacle was popidous with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry girls and boys, and merry old folks, all alive with fun, and grinning to the full width of their mouths. They kept up a buzz of babbling voices and low laughter, and sometimes burst into a deep, joyous shout, which the spectators answered with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys let drive their snowballs right among the pleasure party. The sleigh passed on, and, when concealed by a bend of the street, was still audible by a distant cry of merriment. Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was constituted by all these accessories : the bright sun, the flashing water-drops, the gleaming snow, the cheer- ful multitude, the variety of rapid vehicles, and the jingle jangle of merry bells which made the heart iance to their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen, 446 TWICE-TOLD TALES. except that peaked piece of antiquity, Peter Gold< thwaite's house, which might well look sad externally, since such a terrible consumption was preying on its insides. And Peter's gaunt fig^e, half visible in the projecting second story, was worthy of his house. " Peter ! How goes it, friend Peter ? " cried a voice across the street, as Peter was drawing in his head. " Look out here, Peter ! " Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown, on the opposite sidewalk, portly and comforta- ble, with his furred cloak thrown open, disclosing a handsome surtout beneath. His voice had directed the attention of the whole town to Peter Goldthwaite's window, and to the dusty scarecrow which appeared at it. " I say, Peter," cried Mr. Brown again, " what the devil are you about there, that I hear such a racket whenever I pass by? You are repairing the old house, I suppose, — making a new one of it, — eh ? " " Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown," re- plied Peter. " If I make it new, it will be new in- side and out, from the cellar upwards." " Had not you better let me take the job ? " said Mr. Brown, significantly. " Not yet ! " answered Peter, hastily shutting the window ; for, ever since he had been in search of the treasure, he hated to have people stare at him. As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet proud of the secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty smile shone out on Peter's visage, with pre- cisely iJie effect of the dim simbeams in the squalid chamber. He endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had probably worn, when he gloried io the building of a strong house for a home to many PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 447 generations of his posterity. But the chamber was very dark to his snow-dazzled eyes, and very dismal too, in contrast with the living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief glimpse into the street had given him a forcible impression of the manner in which the world kept itself cheerful and prosperous- by social pleasures and an intercourse of business, while he, in seclusion, was pursuing an object that might possibly be a phantasm, by a method which most people woTild call madness. It is one great ad- vantage of a gregarious mode of Kfe that each person rectifies his mind by other minds, and squares his con« duct to that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in eccentricity. Peter Goldthwaite had exposed him- self to this influence by merely looking out of the window. For a while, he doubted whether there were any hidden chest of gold, and, in that case, whether he was so exceedingly wise to tear the house down, only to be convinced of its non-existence. But this was momentary. Peter, the Destroyer, resumed the task which fate had assigned him, nor faltered again till it was accomplished. In the course of his search, he met with many things that are usually found in the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are not. What seemed most to the purpose was a rusty key, which had been thrust into a chink of the wall, with a wooden label appended to the handle, bearing the initials, P. G. Another singular discovery was that of a bottle of wine, waUed up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the family, that Peter's grand- father, a jovial officer in the old French War, had set aside many dozens of the precious liquor for the ben- efit of topers then unborn. Peter needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and therefore kept the wine to glad 448 TWICE-TOLD TALES. den his success. Many halfpence did he pick up, that had been lost through the cracks of the floor, and some few Spanish coins, and the half of a broken six- pence, which had doubtless been a love token. There was likewise a silver coronation medal of George the Third. But old Peter Goldthwaite's strong box fled from one dark comer to another, or otherwise eluded the second Peter's clutches, till, should he seek much farther, he must burrow into the earth. We will not follow him in his triumphant progress, step by step. Suffice it that Peter worked like a steam-engine, and finished, in that one winter, the job which aU the former inhabitants of the house, with time and the elements to aid them, had only half done in a century. Except the kitchen, every room and chamber was now gutted. The house was nothing but a shell, — the apparition of a house, — as unreal as the painted edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of a great cheese, in which a mouse had dwelt and nibbled till it was a cheese no more. And Peter was the mouse. What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burned up ; for she wisely considered that, without a house, they should need no wood to warm it ; and therefore economy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said to have dissolved in smoke, and flown up among the clouds, through the great black flue of the kitchen chimney. It was an admirable parallel to the feat of the man who jumped down his own throat. On the night between the last day of winter and the flrst of spring, every chink and cranny had been ransacked, except within the precincts of the kitchen. This fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had set in some hours before, and was still driven PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 449 and tossed about the atmosphere by a real hurricane, which fought against the house as if the prince of thei air, in person, were putting the final stroke to Peter's labors. The framework being so much weakened, and the inward props removed, it would have been no marvel if, in some stronger wrestle of the blast, the rotten walls of the edifice, and all the peaked roofs, had come crushing down upon the owner's head. He, however, was careless of the peril, but as wild and rest- less as the night itself, or as the flame that quivered up the chimney at each roar of the tempestuous wind. « The wine, Tabitha ! " he cried. " My grandfather's rich old wine ! We will drink it now ! " Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the chimney-comer, and placed the bottle before Pe- ter, close beside the old brass lamp, which had like- wise been the prize of his researches. Peter held it before his eyes, and, looking through the liquid me- dium, beheld the kitchen illuminated with a golden glory, which also enveloped Tabitha and gilded her silver hair, and converted her mean garments into robes of queenly splendor. It reminded him of his golden dream. "Mr. Peter," remarked Tabitha, "must the wine be drunk before the money is found ? " " The money is found ! " exclaimed Peter, with a sort of fierceness. "The chest is within my reach. I will not sleep, till I have turned this key in the rusty lock. But, first of all, let us drink ! " There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the neck of the bottle with old Peter Goldthwaite's rusty key, and decapitated the sealed cork at a single blow. He then filled two little china teacups, which Tabitha had brought from the cupboard. So dear voi» I. 20 450 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and brilliant was this aged wine that it shone within the cups, and rendered the sprig of scarlet flowers, at the bottom, of each, more distinctly visible than when there had been no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume wasted itself round the kitchen. " Drink, Tabitha ! " cried Peter. " Blessings on the honest old fellow who set aside this good liquor for you and me ! And here 's to Peter Goldthwaite's memory ! " " And good cause have we to remember him," quoth Tabitha, as she drank. How many years, and through what changes of fortune and various calamity, had that bottle hoarded up its effervescent joy, to be quaffed at last by two such boon companions ! A portion of the happiness of the former age had been kept for them, and was now set free, in a crowd of rejoicing visions, to sport amid the storm and desolation of the present time. Until they have finished the bottle, we must turn our eyes elsewhere. It so chanced that, on this stormy night, Mr. John Brown found himself ill at ease in his wire-cushioned arm-chair, by the glowing grate of anthracite which heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good sort of a man, and kind and pitiful whenever the mis- fortunes of others happened to reach his heart through the padded vest of his own prosperity. This evening he had thought much about his old partner, Peter Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries, and continual ill luck, the poverty of his dwelling, at Mr. Brown's last visit, and Peter's crazed and haggard aspect when he had talked with him at the window. " Poor fellow ! " thought Mr. John Brown. " Poor, erackbralned Peter Goldthwaite! For old acquaint PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 451 ance' sake, I ought to have taken care that he was comfortable this rough muter." These feelings grew so powerful that, in spite of the inclement weather, he resolved to visit Peter Goldthwaite immediately. The strength of the im- pulse was really singular. Every shriek of the blast seemed a summons, or would have seemed so, had Mr. Brown been accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in the wind. Much amazed at such active be- nevolence, he huddled himself in his cloak, muffled his throat and ears in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus fortified, bade defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just weathering the corner, by Peter Goldthwaite's house, when the hurricane caught him off his feet, tossed him face downward into a snow bank, and proceeded to bury his protuberant part be- neath fresh drifts. There seemed little hope of his reappearance earlier than the next thaw. At the same moment his hat was snatched away, and whirled aloft into some far distant region, whence no tidings have as yet returned. Nevertheless Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a pas- sage through the snow-drift, and, with his bare head bent against the storm, floundered onward to Peter's door. There was such a creaking and groaning and rattling, and such an ominous shaking throughout the crazy edifice, that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He therefore entered, with out ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen. His intrusion, even there, was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest, which, apparently, they had just dragged from a caviiy, or concealed closet, on the left 452 TWICE-TOLD TALES. side of the clumney. By the lamp in the old woman's hand, Mr. Brown saw that the chest was barred and clamped with iron, strengthened with iron plates and studded with iron nails, so as to be a fit receptacle in which the wealth of one century might be hoarded up for the wants of another. Peter Goldthwaite was in- serting a key into the lock. " O Tabitha ! " cried he, with tremulous rapture, "how shall I endure the eifulgenee? The gold! — the bright, bright gold I Methinks I can remember my last glance at it, just as the iron-plated lid fell down. And ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in secret, and gathering its splendor against this glorious moment ! It will flash upon us Uke the noonday sun ! " " Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter ! " said Tabitha, with somewhat less patience than usual. "But, for mercy's sake, do turn the key ! " And, with a strong effort of both hands, Peter did force the rusty key through the intricacies of the rusty lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean time, had drawn near, and thrust his eager visage between those of the other two, at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No sudden blaze illuminated the kitchen. " What 's here ? " exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her spectacles, and holding the lamp over the open chest. " Old Peter Goldthwaite's hoard of old rags." " Pretty much so. Tabby," said Mr. Brown, lifting a handful of the treasure. Oh, what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter Goldthwaite raised, to scare himself out of his scanty wits withal ! Here was the semblance of an incalculable sum, enough to purchase the whole town, and build every street anew, but which, vast as it waB, PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 453 no sane man would have given a soKd sixpence for. What then, in sober earnest, were the delusive treas. urea of the chest? Why, here were old provincial bUls of credit, and treasury notes, and biUs of land, banks, and all other bubbles of the sort, from the first issue, above a century and a half ago, down nearly to the Revolution. Bills of a thousand poimds were intermixed with parchment pennies, and worth no more than they. "And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite's treas- ure!" said John Brown. "Your namesake, Peter, was something like yourself ; and, when the provincial currency had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per cent., he bought it up in expectation of a rise. I have heard my grandfather say that old Peter gave his father a mortgage of this very house and land, to raise cash for his silly project. But the currency kept sinking, till nobody would take it as a gift; and there was old Peter Goldthwaite, like Peter the second, with thou- sands in his strong box and hardly a coat to his back. He went mad upon the strength of it. But, never mind, Peter ! It is just the sort of capital for build- ing castles in the air." " The house will be down about our ears ! " cried Tabitha, as the wind shook it with increasing violence. " Let it fall ! " said Peter, folding his arms, as he seated himself upon the chest. " No, no, my old friend Peter," said John Brown. " I have house room for you and Tabby, and a safe vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow we wiU try to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house. Eeal estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty handsome price." "And I," observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviv- 454 TWICE-TOLD tAlES. ing spirits, "have a plan for laying out the cash to great advantage." " Why, as to that," muttered John Brown to him- self, " we must apply to the next court for a guardian to take care of the solid cash; and if Peter insists upon speculating, he may do it, to his heart's content, with old Petee Goldthwaite's Tbeasuke." CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. Passing a summer, several years since, at Edgar town, on the island of Martha's Viaeyard, I became acquainted with a certain carver of tombstones, who had travelled and voyaged thither from the interior of Massachusetts, in search of professional employment. The speculation had turned out so successful that my friend expected to transmute slate and marble into silver and gold, to the amoimt of at least a thousand dollars, during the few months of his sojourn at Nan- tucket and the Vineyard. The secluded life^ and the simple and primitive spirit which stiU characterizes the inhabitants of those islands, especially of Martha's Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bus- tle of the world can elsewhere afford to beings of the past. Yet while every family is anxious to erect a me- morial to its departed members, the untainted breath of ocean bestows such health and. length of days upon the people of the isles, as would cause a melancholy dearth of business to a resident artist in that line. His own monument, recording his death by starva- tion, would probably be an early specimen of his sldll. Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an article of imported merchandise. In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgar- tOAvn — where the dead have lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned to its orig- inal barrenness — in that ancient burial-giound I no 456 TWICE-TOLD TALES. ticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated a century back or more, have bor- ders elaborately carved with flowers, and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's heads, cross-bones, scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortal- ity, with here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward. These productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the colonial skill of the day, and were probably carved in London, and brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely isle. The more recent monu- ments are mere slabs of slate, in the ordinary style, without any superfluous flourishes to set o£E the bald inscriptions. But others — and those far the most im- pressive both to my taste and feelings — were roughly hewn from the gray rocks of the island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives. On some there were merely the initials of a name ; some were inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme, in deep letters, which the moss and wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliterate. These, these were graves where loved ones slept ! It is an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of monu- mental eulogies ; but when affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor, then we may be sure that they copy from the record on their hearts. My acquaintance, the sculptor, — he may share that title with Greenough, siace the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael, — had found a ready mar- ket for all his blank slabs of marble, and full occupa^ tion in lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly man, a descendant of the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with a certain simplicity and single- qpss bpth of h§J|xt a»4 iWid, which, methinks, is more CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 467 rarely found among us Yankees than in any other community of people. In spite of his gray head and wrinMed brow, he was quite like a child in aU matters save what had some reference to his own business ; he seemed, unless my fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation than as people in want of tomb- stones ; and his literary attainments evidently compre- hended very little, either of prose or poetry, which had not, at one time or other, been inscribed on slate or marble, ffis sole task and office among the immortal pilgrims of the tomb — the duty for which Providence had sent the old man into the world as it were with a chisel in his hand — was to label the dead bodies, lest their names should be forgotten at the resurrection. Yet he had not failed, within a narrow scope, to gather a few sprigs of earthly, and more than earthly, wisdom, — the harvest of many a grave. And lugubrious as his calling might appear, he was as cheerful an old soul as health and integrity and lack of care could make him, and used to set to work upon one sorrowfid inscription or another with that sort of spirit which impels a man to sing at his labor. On the whole I found Mr. Wigglesworth an entertain- ing, and often instructive, if not an interesting, char- acter ; and partly for lihe charm of his society, and still more because his work has an invariable attrac- tion for " man that is bom of woman," I was accus- tomed to spend some hours a day at his workshop. The quaintness of his remarks, and their not infre- quent truth — a truth condensed and pointed by the limited sphere of his view — gave a raciness to his talk, which mere worldliness and general cultivation would at once have destroyed. Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits 468 TWICE-TOLD TALES. of the various qualities of marble, numerous slabs of which were resting against the walls of the shop ; or sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly, without a word on either side, while I watched how neatly his chisel struck out letter after letter of the names of the Nortons, the Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial families of the Vineyard. Often, with an artist's pride, the good old sculptor would speak of favorite productions of his skill which were scattered throughout the village graveyards of New England. But my chief and most instructive amuse- ment was to witness his interviews with his customers, who held interminable consultations about the form and fashion of the desired monuments, the buried ex. cellence to be commemorated, the anguish to be ex- pressed, and finally, the lowest price in dollars and cents for which a marble transcript of their feelings mig'ht be obtained. Really, my mind received many fresh ideas which, perhaps, may remain in it even longer than Mr. Wigglesworth's hardest marble will retain the deepest strokes of his chisel. An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her first love who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean no less than forty years before. It was singular that so strong an impression of early feeling should have survived through the changes of her sub- sequent life, in the course of which she had been a wife and a mother, and, so far as I could judge, a com- fortable and happy woman. Eeflecting within myself, it appeared to me that this lifelong sorrow — as, in all good faith, she deemed it — was one of the most for- tunate circumstances of her history. It had given an ideality to her mind ; it had kept her purer and less earthly than she would otherwise have been, by draw CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 459 ing a portion of her sympathies apart from earth. Amid the throng of enjoyments and the pressure of worldly care, and all the warm materialism of this life, she had communed with a vision, and had been the better for such intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her maturity, and loving him with a far more real affection than she ever could have felt for this dream of her girlhood, there had still been an imaginative faith to the ocean-buried, so that an ordinary character had thus been elevated and refined. Her sighs had been the breath of heaven to her soul. The good lady earnestly desired that the proposed monument should be ornamented with a carved border of marine plants, intertwined with twisted sea^sheUs, such as were probably waving over her lover's skeleton, or strewn around it in the far depths of the Pacific. But Mr. Wigglesworth's chisel being inadequate to the task, she was forced to content herself with a rose hanging its head from a broken stem. After her de- parture, I remarked that the symbol was none of the most apt. " And yet," said my friend the sculptor, fembodying in this image the thoughts that had been passing through my own mind, " that broken rose has shed its sweet smell through forty years of the good woman's life." It was seldom that I could find such pleasant food for contemplation as in the above instance. None of the applicants, I think, affected me more disagreeably than an old man who came, with his fourth wife hang- ing on his arm, to bespeak gravestones for the three former occupants of his marriage-bed. I watched with some anxiety to see whether his remembrance of either were more affectionate than of the other twok 460 TWICE-TOLD TALES. but could discover no symptom o£ the Mnd. The three monuments were all to be of the same material and form, and each decorated, in bass-relief, with two weeping willows, one of these sympathetic trees bend- ing over its fellow, which was to be broken in the midst and rest upon a sepulchral urn. This, indeed, was Mr. Wigglesworth's standing emblem of conjugal bereave- ment. I shuddered at the gray polygamist who had so utterly lost the holy sense of individuality in wed- lock, that methought he was fain to reckon upon his fingers how many women, who had once slept by his side, were now sleeping in their graves. There was even — if I wrong him it is no great matter — a glance sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were inclined to drive a thriftier bargain by bespeaking four grave- stones m a lot. I was better pleased with a rough old whaluig captain, who gave directions for a broad mar- ble slab, divided into two compartments, one of which was to contain an epitaph on his deceased wife, and the other to be left vacant, till death should engrave his own name there. As is frequently the case among the whalers of Martha's Vineyard, so much of this storm-beaten widower's life had been tossed away on distant seas, that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent scarce three, and those at scattered in- tervals, beneath his own roof. Thus the wife of his youth, though she died in his and her declining age, retained the bridal dew-drops fresh around her memory. My observations gave me the idea, and Mr. Wiggles- worth confirmed it, that husbands were more faithful in setting up memorials to their dead wives than wid- ows to their dead husbands. I was not ill-natured enough to fancy that women, less than men, feel so sure of their constancy as to be willing to give a CHIPPmaS WITH A CHISEL. 461 pledge of it in marble. It is more probably the fact that while men are able to reflect upon their lost companions as remembrances apart from themselves, women, on the other hand, are conscious that a por- tion of their being has gone with the departed whith- ersoever he has gone. Soul clings to soid ; the living dust has a sympathy with the dust of the grave ; and, by the very strength of that sympathy, the wife of the dead shrinks the more sensitively from reminding the world of its existence. The link is already strong enough; it needs no visible symbol. And though a shadow walks ever by her side, and the touch of a dull hand is on her bosom, yet life, and perchance its nat- ural yearnings, may still be warm within her, and in- spire her with new hopes of happiness. Then would she mark out the grave, the scent of which woidd be perceptible on the pillow of the second bridal ? No — but rather level its green moimd with the surrounding earth, as if, when she dug up again her buried heart, the spot had ceased to be a grave. Yet, in spite of these sentimentalities, I was prodigiously amused by an incident, of which I had not the good fortime to be a witness, but which Mr. Wigglesworth related with considerable humor. A gentlewoman of the town, receiving news of her husband's loss at sea, had be- spoken a handsome slab of marble, and came daily to watch the progress of my friend's chisel. One after- noon, when the good lady and the sculptor were in the very midst of the epitaph, which the departed spirit might have been greatly comforted to read, who should walk into the workshop but the deceased him- self, in substance as well as spirit! He had been picked up at sea, and stood in no present need of tombstone or epitaph. 462 TWICE-TOLD TALES. "And how," inquired I, "did his wife bear th« shock of joyful surprise ? " " Why," said the old man, deepening the grin of a death's-head, on which his chisel was just then em- ployed, " I really felt for the poor woman ; it was one of my best pieces of marble — and to be thrown away on a living man ! " A comely woman, with a pretty rosebud of a daughter, came to select a gravestone for a twin daughter, who had died a month before. I was im- pressed with the different nature of their feelings for the dead ; the mother was calm and wofiUly resigned, fidly conscious of her loss, as of a treasiu-e which she had not always possessed, and, therefore, had been aware that it might be taken from her; but the daugh- ter evidently had no real knowledge of what death's doings were. Her thoughts knew, but not her heart. It seemed to me, that by the print and pressure which the dead sister had left upon the survivor's spirit, her feelings were almost the same as if she still stood side by side and arm in arm vrith the departed, looking at the slabs of marble ; and once or twice she glanced around with a sunny smile, which, as its sister smile had faded forever, soon grew confusedly overshad. owed. Perchance her consciousness was truer than her reflection — perchance her dead sister was a closei companion than in life. The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth about a suitable epitaph, and finally chose an ordinary verse of ill-matched rhymes, which had already been inscribed upon innumerable tombstones. But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses, we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds a profound and individual purport in what seems CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 463 BO vague ai7d inexpressive, unless interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew, though the selfsame words may have served for a thousand graves. " And yet," said I afterwards to Mr. "Wigglesworih, "they might have made a better choice than this. While you were discussing the subject, I was struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the lips of both mother and daughter. One of these would have formed an inscription equally orig- inal and appropriate." " No, no," replied the sculptor, shaking his head ; " there is a good deal of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry; and so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones. And somehow, they seem to stretch to suit a great grief, and shrink to fit a small one." It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took place between Mr. Wigglesworth and his customers. A shrewd gentlewoman, who kept a tavern in the town, was anxious to obtain two or three gravestones for the deceased members of her family, and to pay for these solemn commodities by taking the scidptor to board. Hereupon a fantasy arose in my mind of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone, carving one of his own plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of cross-bones, and drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps a lachrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn, while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man he laughed heartily, and pro- nounced my humor to be of the right sort. " I have lived at such a table all my days," said he* *' and eaten no small quantity of slate and marble." 464 TWICE-TOLD TALES. " Hard fare ! " rejoined I, siniliiig ; " but you seemed to have foimd it excellent of digestion, too." A man of fifty, or thereabouts, with a harsh, un- pleasant countenance, ordered a stone for the grave of his bittter enemy, with whom he had waged warfare half a lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The secret of this phenomenon was, that hatred had become the sustenance and enjoyment of the poor wretch'e sotd ; it had supplied the place of all kindly affections ; it had been really a bond of sympathy between himself and the man who shared the passion ; and when its object died the unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead. He expressed a purpose of being buried side by sidfe with his enemy. " I doubt whether their dust will mingle," remarked the old sculptor to me ; for often there was an earthli- ness in his conceptions. " Oh yes," replied I, who had mused long upon the incident ; " and when they rise again, these bitter foes may find themselves dear friends. Methinks what they mistook for hatred was but love under a mask." A gentleman of antiquarian propensities provided a memorial for an Indian of Chabbiquidick, one of the few of untainted blood remaining in that region, and said to be an hereditary chieftain, descended from the sachem who welcomed Governor Mayhew to the Vine- yard. Mr. Wigglesworth exerted his best skill to carve a broken bow and scattered sheaf of arrows, in mem- ory of the himters and warriors whose race was ended here ; but he likewise sculptured a cherub, to denote that the poor Indian had shared the Christian's hope of immortaKty. " Why," observed I, taking a perverse view of the winged boy and tlie bow and arrows, " it looks more like Cupid's tomb than an Indian chief's I " CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 465 " You talk nonsense," said the sculptor, with the offended pride of art ; he then added with his usual good nature, " How can Cupid die when there are such pretty maidens in the Vineyard ? " "Very true," answered I — ^^and for the rest of the day I thought of other matters than tombstones. At our next meeting I found him chiselling an open book upon a marble headstone, and concluded that it was meant to express the erudition of some black- letter clergyman of the Cotton Mather school. It turned out, however, to be emblematical of the script- ural knowledge of an old woman who had never read anything but her Bible : and the montmient was a trib- ute to her piety and good works from the Orthodox church, of which she had been a member. In strange contrast with this Christian woman's memorial was that of an infidel, whose gravestone, by his own di- rection, bore an avowal of his belief that the spirit within him would be extinguished like a flame, and that the nothingness whence he sprang would receive him again. Mr. Wigglesworth consulted me as to the propriety of enabling a dead man's dust to utter this dreadful creed. "If I thought," said he, "that a single mortal would read the inscription without a shudder, my chisel should never cut a letter of it. But when the grave speaks such falsehoods, the soul of man will know the truth by its own horror." " So it will," said I, struck by the idea ; " the poor infidel may strive to preach blasphemies from his grave ; but it will be only another method of impress- ing the soul with a consciousness of immortality." There was an old man by the name of Norton, noted throughout the island for his greath wealth, vol.. I. 30 466 TWICE-TOLD TALES. which he had accumulated by the exercise of strong and shrewd faculties, combined with a most penurious disposition. This wtetched miser, conscious that he had not a friend to be mindful of him in his grave, had himself taken the needful precautions for posthumous remembrance, by bespeaking an immense slab of white marble, with a long epitaph in raised letters, the whole to be as magnificent as Mr. Wigglesworth's skill could make it. There was something very char- acteristic in this contrivance to have his money's worth even from his own tombstone, which, indeed, Afforded him more enjoyment in the few months that he lived thereafter, than it probably will in a whole century, now that it is laid over his bones. This inci- dent reminds me of a young girl, — a pale, slender, fee- ble creature, most unlike the other rosy and healthful damsels of the Vineyard, amid whose brightness she was fading away. Day after day did the poor maiden come to the sculptor's shop, and pass from one piece of marble to another, till at last she pencilled her name upon a slender slab, which, I think, was of a more spotless white than all the rest. I saw her no more, but soon afterwards found Mr. Wigglesworth cutting her virgin name into the stone which she had chosen. "She is dead — poor girl," said he, interrupting the tune which he was whistling, " and she chose a good piece of stuff for her headstone. Now which of these slabs would you lUce best to see your own name upon?" " Why, to teU you the truth, my good Mr. Wiggles- worth," replied I, after a moment's pause, — for the {ibruptness of the question had somewhat startled me, — "to be quite sincere with you, I care little or noth CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 467 ing about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat inclined to scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monimients at all over the dust that once was human. The weight of tliese heavy marbles, though unfelt by the dead corpse of the enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the spirit of the survivor, and causes liim to connect the idea of death with the dungeon- like imprisonment of the tomb, instead of with the freedom of the skies. Every gTavestone that you ever made is the visible symbol of a mistaken system. Our thoughts should soar upward with the butterfly — not linger with the exuviae that confined him. In truth and reason, neither those whom we call the living, and still less the departed, have anything to do with the grave." " I never heard anything so heathenish ! " said Mr. Wigglesworth, perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his notions and feelings, and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his whole life's labor; "would you forget your dead friends, the moment they are under the sod ? " " They are not under the sod," I rejoined ; " then why should I mark the spot where there is no treasure hidden! Forget them? No! But to remember them aright, I would forget what they have cast oif . And to gain the truer conception of Death, I would forget the Grave!" But stUl the good old sculptor murmured, and stum- bled, as it were, over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life. Whether he were right or wrong, I had grown the wiser from oiir companionship, and from my observations of nature and character as displayed by those who came, with their old griefs or their new ones, to get them recorded upon his slabs of 468 TWICE-TOLD TALES. marble. And yet, with my gain of wisdom, I had likewise gained perplexity; for there was a strange doubt in my mind, whether the dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and regrets, have not as much real comfort in them — leaving religious influences out of the question — as what we term life's joys. THE SHAKER BRIDAL. One day, in the sick chamber of Father Ephraim, who had been forty years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect. Individuals had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon, from Canterbury, Harvard, and Alfred, and from all the other localities where this strange people have fertilized the rugged hiUs of New England by their systematic industry. An elder was likewise there, who had made a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a vil- lage of the faithful in Kentucky, to visit his spiritual kindred, the children of the sainted mother Ann. Ha had partaken of the homely abundance of ^eir tables, had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred dance, every step of which is be- lieved to alienate the enthusiast from earth, and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss. His breth- ren of the north had now courteously invited him to be present on an occasion, when the concurrence of every eminent member of their commimity was pecul- iarly desirable. The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy chair, not only hoary headed and infirm with age, but _ worn down by a lingering disease, which, it was evi- dent, woidd very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to other hands. At his footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the Shaker garb. " My brethren,'* said Father Ephraim to the sui* 470 TWICE-TOLD TALES. rounding elders, feebly exerting himself to utter these few words, " here are the son and daughter to whom I woidd commit the trust of which Providence is about to lighten my weary shoulders. Eead their faces, I pray you, and say whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice aright." Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candi- dates with a most scrutinizing gaze. The man, whose name was Adam Colbum, had a face sunburnt with labor in the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful, and traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely reached middle age. There was some- thing severe in his aspect, and a rigidity throughout his person, characteristics that caused him generally to be taken for a school-master; which vocation, in fact, he had formerly exercised for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson, was somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister almost invariably is, and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart. " This pair are still in the summer of their years," observed the elder from Harvard, a shrewd old man. " I would like better to see the hoar-frost of autunm on their heads. Methinks, also, they will be exposed to peculiar temptations, on account of the carnal de- sires which have heretofore subsisted between them." "Nay, brother," said the elder from Canterbury, " the hoar-frost and the black-frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha, even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields, while they are yet green. And why should we question the wisdom of our venerable Father's purpose although this pair, in their early youth, have loved one anothei THE SHAKER BRIDAL. 471 as the world's people love? Axe there not many brethren and sisters among us, who have lived long together in wedlock, yet, adopting our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spiritual affection ? " Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha had rendered it inexpedient that they should now pre- side together over a Shaker village, it was certainly most singular that such should be the final result of many warm and tender hopes. Children of neighbor- ing families, their affection was older even than their school-days ; it seemed an innate principle, interfused among all their sentiments and feelings, and not so much a distinct remembrance, as connected with their whole volume of remembrances. But, just as they reached a proper age for their union, misfortunes had fallen heavily on both, and made it necessary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare subsistence. Even under these circumstances, Martha Pierson would probably have consented to unite her fate with Adam Colbum's, and, secure of the bliss of mutual love, would patiently have awaited the less important gifts of fortune. But Adam, being of a calm and cautious character, was loath to relinquish the advan- tages which a single man possesses for raising himself in the world. Year after year, therefore, their mar- riage had been deferred. Adam Colbum had followed many vocations, had travelled far, and seen much of the world and of life. Martha had earned her bread sometimes as a seamstress, sometimes as help to a farmer's wife, sometimes as school-mistress of the vil- lage children, sometimes as a nurse or watcher of the sick, thus acquiring a varied experience, the ultimate use of which she little anticipated. But nothing had gone prosperously with either of the lovers; at no 472 TWICE-TOLD TALES. subsequent moment would matrimony Iiave been 84 prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the opening bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still they had held fast their mutual faith. Martha might have been the wife of a man who sat among the senators of his native state, and Adam could have won the hand, as he had unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and comely widow. But neither of them de- sired good fortune save to share it with the other. At length that calm despair which occurs only in a strong and somewhat stubborn character, and yields to no second spring of hope, settled down on the spirit of Adam Colbum. He sought an interview with Martha, and proposed that they should join the Society of Shakers. The converts of this sect are oftener driven within its hospitable gates by worldly misfortime than drawn thither by fanaticism, and are received without nnquisition as to their motives. Martha, faithful still, had placed her hand in that of her lover, and accom- panied him to the Shaker village. Here the natural (capacity of each, cultivated and strengthened by the difficulties of their previous lives, had soon gained them an important rank in the Society, whose members are generally below the ordinary standard of intelligence. Their faith and feelings had, in some degree, become assimilated to those of their fellow-worshippers. Adam Colbum gradually acquired reputation, not only in the management of the temporal affairs of the Society, but as a clear and efficient preacher of their doctrines. Martha was not less distinguished in the duties proper to her sex. Finally, when the infirmities of Father Ephraim had admonished him to seek a successor in his patriarchal office, he thought of Adam and Martha^ and proposed to renew, in their persons, the piimitivA TH]E SHAKER BRIDAL. 478 form of Shalier government, as established by Mother Ann. They were to be the Father and Mother of the village. The simple ceremony, which would consti- tute them such, was now to be performed. " Son Adam, and daughter Martha," said the vener- able Father Ephraim, fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon them, " if ye can conscientiously undertake this charge, speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your fitness." " Father," replied Adam, speaking with the calm- ness of his character, " I came to your village a disap- pointed man, weary of the world, worn out with con- , tinual trouble, seeking only a security against evil fortune, as I had no hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success were almost dead within me. I came hither as a man might come to a tomb, willingj to lie down in its gloom and coldness, for the sake of ' its peace and quiet. There was but one earthly affec- tion in my breast, and it had grown calmer since my youth ; so that I was satisfied to bring Martha to be my sister, in our new abode. We are brother and sister ; nor would I have it otherwise. And in this peaceful village I have found aU that I hoped for, — all that I desire. I will strive, with my best strength, for the spiritual and temporal good of our community. My conscience is not doubtful in this matter. I am \ ready to receive the trust." " Thou hast spoken well, son Adam," said the Fa- ther. " God win bless thee in the office which I am about to resign." "But our sister!" observed the elder from Har- vard, "hath she not likewise a gift to declare hei sentiments?" Martha started, and moved her lips, as if she would 474 TWICE-TOLD TALES. have made a formal reply to this appeal. But, had she attempted it, perhaps the old recollections, the long-repressed feelings of childhood, youth, and wom- anhood, might have gushed from her heart, in words that it would have been profanation to utter there. " Adam has spoken," said she hurriedly ; " his sen- timents are likewise mine." But while speaking these few words, Martha grew so pale that she looked fitter to be laid in her cofQn than to stand in the presence of Father Ephraim and the elders ; she shuddered, also, as if there were some- thing awful or horrible in her situation and destiny. It required, indeed, a more than feminine strength of nerve, to sustain the fixed observance of men so ex- I alted and famous throughout the sect as these were. ! They had overcome their natural sympathy with hu- ; man frailties and affections. One, when he joined the I Society, had brought with him his wife and children, but never, from that hour, had spoken a fond word to the former, or taken his best-loved child upon his knee. Another, whose family refused to follow him, had been enabled — such was his gift of holy forti- tude — to leave them to the mercy of the world. The youngest of the elders, a man of about fifty, had been bred from infancy in a Shaker village, and was said never to have clasped a woman's hand in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie than the cold fra- ternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim was the most awful character of all. In his youth he had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by Mother Ann herself, and had partaken of the wild fanaticism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered, at the firesides of the village, that Mother Ann had been compelled to sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot irop before it could be purified from earthly passions. THE SHAKER BRIDAL. 475 However that might be, poor Martha had a woman's heart, and a tender one, and it quailed within her, as she looked round at those strange old men, and from them to the cahn features of Adam Colbum, But perceiving that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she wasped for breath, and again spoke. " With what strength is left me by my many troubles," said she, " I am ready to undertake this charge, and to do my best in it." "My children, join your hands," said Father Ephraim. They did so. The elders stood up around, and the Father feebly raised himself to a more erect position, but continued sitting in his great chair. " I have bidden you to join your hands," said he, "not in earthly affection, for ye have cast off its chains forever ; but as brother and sister in spiritual love, and helpers of one another in your allotted task. Teach unto others the faith which ye have re- ceived. Open wide your gates, — I deliver you the keys thereof, — open them wide to aU who will give up the iniquities of the world, and come hither to lead lives of purity and peace. Eeceive the weary ones, who have known the vanity of earth, — receive the little children, that they may never learn that misera- ble lesson. And a blessing be upon your labors ,• so that the time may hasten on, when the mission of \ Mother Ann shall have wrought its fuU effect, — when / children shall no more be bom and die, and the last I survivor of mortal race, some old and weary man like I me, shall see the sun go down, nevermore to rise on a r world of sin and sorrow ! " The aged Father sank back exhausted, and the sur- rounding elders deemed, with good reason, that the 476 TWICE-TOLD TALES. hour was come when the new heads of the village must enter on their patriarchal duties. In their atten- tion to Father Ephraim, their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson, who grew paler and paler, imnoticed even by Adam Colbum. He, indeed, had withdrawn his hand from hers, and folded his arms with a sense of satisfied ambition. But paler and paler grew Mar- tha by his side, till, like a corpse in its burial clothes, she sank down at the feet of her early lover; for, after many trials firmly borne, her heart could enduH the weight of its desolate agony no longer. NIGHT SKETCHES. BENEATH AN UMBRELLA. Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement, — call it which you will, — is a book of travels, de- scribing scenes the most unlike that sombre one which is mistily presented through the windows. I have experienced that fancy is then most successful in im- parting distiuct shapes and vivid colors to the objects which the author has spread upon his page, and that his words become magic spells to summon up a thou-i sand varied pictures. Strange landscapes glimmerl through the familiar walls of the room, and outlandish figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred pre- cincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it has space enough to contain the ocean-like circtunf erence of an Arabian desert, its parched sands tracked by the long line of a caravan, with the camels patiently jour- neying through the heavy simshine. Though my ceil- ing be not lofty, yet I can pile up the mountains of Central Asia beneath it, till their summits shine far above the clouds of the middle atmosphere. And with my humble means, a wealth that is not taxable, I can transport hither the magnificent merchandise of an Oriental bazaar, and call a crowd of purchasers from distant countries to pay a fair profit for the precious articles which are displayed on all sides. True it is, Uowever, that amid the bustle of traffic, or whatevel 478 TWICE-TOLD TALES. else may seem to be going on around me, the rain-drops will occasionally be heard to patter against my window panes, which look forth upon one of the quietest streets in a New England town. After a time, too, the vis ions vanish, and will not appear again at my bidding. Then, it being nightfall, a gloomy sense of xmreaJity depresses my spirits, and impels me to venture out, before the clock shall strike bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not entirely made up of such shad- owy materials as have busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so long among fantasies, that the things vdthout him will seem as unreal as those within. When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth, tightly buttoning my shaggy overcoat, and hoisting my umbrella, the silken dome of which immediately resounds vdth the heavy drumming of the invisible rain-drops. Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth and cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear obscurity and chill discomfort into which I am about to plunge. Now come fearful augu- ries, inniunerable as the drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry shame upon me I should turn back within doors, resume my elbow-chair, my slippers, and my book, pass such an evening of sluggish enjoyment as the day has been, and go to bed inglorious. The same shivering reluctance, no doubt, has quelled, for a moment, the adventurous spirit of many a traveller, when his feet, which were destined to measure the earth around, were leaving their last tracks in the home paths. In my own case poor human nature may be allowed a few misgivings. I look upward, and discern no sky, Dot even an unfathomable void, but only a black, im- NIGHT SKETCHES. 479 penetrable nothingness, as though heaven and all its lights were blotted from the system of the universe. It is as if Nature were dead, and the world had put on black, and the clouds were weeping for her. With their tears upon my cheek, I turn my eyes earthward, but find little consolation here below. A lamp is burning dimly at the distant corner, and throws just enough of light along the street to show and exag- gerate by so faintly showing the perils and difficulties which beset my path. Yonder dingily white remnant of a huge snow-bank, — which will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days of March, — over or through that wintry waste must I stride onward. Beyond lies a certaia Slough of Despond, a concoc- tion of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep, leg-deep, neck-deep, — in a word, of unknown bottom, — on which the lamplight does not even glimmer, but which I have occasionally watched in the gradual growth of its horrors from morn till nightfall. Should I flounder into its depths, farewell to upper earth I And hark ! how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream, the turbulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam of the lamp, but elsewhere brawls noisily through the densest gloom. Oh, should I be swept away in fording that impetuous and unclean torrent, the coroner will have a job with an unfortvmate gen- tleman who would fain end his troubles anywhere but in a mud puddle ! Pshaw ! I will linger not another instant at arm's- length from these dim terrors, which grow more ob*- Bcurely formidable the longer I delay to grapple with them. Now for the onset ! And lo ! witii little dam- age, save a dash of rain in the face and breast, a splash of mud high up the pantaloons, and the left 180 TWICE-TOLD TALES. boot full of ice-cold water, behold me at the cornei of the street. The lamp throws down a circle of red light aroxmd me : and twinkling onward from comer to corner I discern other beacons marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a lonesome and dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy defiance to the storm, with their blinds all closed, even as a man winks when he faces a spattering gust. How loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin spouts ! The puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me from various quarters at once. I have often observed that this comer is a haunt and loitering-place for those winds which have no work to do upon the deep, dash- ing ships against our iron-bound shores ; nor in the forest, tearing up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at their vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser freaks of mischief. See, at this moment, how they assail yonder poor woman, who is passing just within the verge of the lamplight! One blast struggles for her imibrella, and turns it wrong side outward ; another whisks the cape of her cloak across her eyes ; while a third takes most unwarrantable lib- erties with the lower part of her attire. Happily the good dame is no gossamer, but a figure of rotundity and fleshly substance ; else would these aerial tor- mentors whirl her aloft, like a vriteh upon a broom- stick, and set her down, doubtless, in the filthiest ken- nel hereabout. From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the centre of the town. Here there is almost as brilliant an illumination as when some great victory has been won, either on the batfls-field or at the polls. Two rows of shops, with windows down nearly to the ground, cast a glow from side to side, while the black NIGHT SKETCHES. 481 night hangs overhead like a canopy, and thus keeps the splendor from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The rain-drops glitter, as if the sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mor- tals throw aroxmd their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till they forget the impen* etrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can be dispelled only by radiance from above. And after all it is a cheerless scene, and cheerless are the wanderers in it. Here comes one who has so long been familiar with tempestuous weathsr that he takes the bluster of the storm for a friendly greeting, as if it should say, " How fare ye, brother ? " He is a retired sea-cap' tain, wrapped in some nameless garment of the pea- jacket order, and is now laying his course towards the Marine Insurance Office, there to spin yams of gale and shipwreck with a crew of old sea^ogs like him- self. The blast will put in its word among their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them. Next I meet an unhappy slipshod gentleman, with a cloak flimg hastily over his shoulders, running a race wiUi boisterous winds, and striving to glide between the drops of rain. Some domestic emergency or other has blown this miserable man from his warm fireside in quest of a doctor I See that little vagabond — how carelessly he has taken his stand right underneath a spout, whUe staring at some object of curiosity in a shop-window ! Surely the rain is his native element ; he must have fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed to do. Here is a picture, and a pretty one. A young man and a girl, both enveloped in cloaks, and huddled b© TOt. I. 31 482 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Heath the scanty protection of a cotton tunbrella. She wears rubber overshoes, but he is in his dancing pumps ; and they are on their way, no doubt, to some cotillon party, or subscription ball at a dollar a head, refreshments included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy tempest, lured onward by a vision of fes- tal splendor. But, ah I a most lamentable disaster. Bewildered by che red, blue, and yeUow meteors, in an apothecary's window, they have stepped upon a slippery remnant of ice, and are precipitated into a confluence of swollen floods, at the comer of two streets. Luckless lovers ! Were it my nature to be other than a looker-on in life, I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be, I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic story of your fate as shall call forth tears enough to drown you both anew. Do ye touch bottom, my young friends? Yes ; they emerge like a water nymph and a river deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths of the dark pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, discon- solate, abashed, but with love too warm to be chilled by the cold water. They have stood a test which proves too strong for many. Faithful, though over head and ears in trouble ! Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow from the varied aspect of mortal affairs, even as my figure catches a gleam from the lighted windows, or is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that mine is altogether a chameleon spirit, with no hue of its own. Now I pass into a more retired street, where the dwellings of wealth and poverty are intermingled, presenting a range of strongly contrasted pictures. Here, too, may be foimd the golden mean. Through yonder casement I discern a family circle, — the graudr NIGHT SKETCHES. 483 mother, the parents, and the children, — all flicker- ing, shadow-like, in the glow of a wood fire. Bluster, fierce blast, and beat, thou wintry rain, against the window panes I Ye cannot damp the enjoyment of that fireside. Surely my fate is hard that I should be wandering homeless here, taking to my bosom night and storm and solitude, instead of wife and children. Peace, murmurer ! Doubt not that darker guests are sitting round the hearth, though the warm blaze hides all but blissful images. Well; here is still a brighter scene. A stately mansion illuminated for a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and alabaster lamps in every room, and sunny landscapes hanging round the walls. See ! a coach has stopped, whence emerges a slender beauty, who, canopied by two um- brellas, glides within the portal, and vanishes amid lightsome thrills of music. Will she ever feel the night wind and the rain ? Perhaps, — perhaps ! And will Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud man- sion ? As surely as the dancers will be gay within its halls to-night. Such thoughts sadden, yet satisfy my heart ; for they teach me that the poor man in this mean, weather-beaten hovel, without a fire to cheer him, may call the rich his brother, — brethren by Sor- row, who must be an inmate of both their households, — brethren by Death, who will lead them both to other homes. Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now have I reached the utmost limits of the town, where the last lamp struggles feebly with the dark- ness, like the farthest star that stands sentinel on the borders of uncreated space. It is strange what sen- sations of sublimity may spring from a very humble tource. Such are suggested by this hollow roar of a 484 TWICE-TOLD TALES. Bubterraneau cataract, where the mighty stream of a kennel precipitates itself beneath an iron grate, and is seen no more on earth. Listen awhile to its voice of mystery, and fancy will magnify it till you start and smile at the illusion. And now another sound, — the rumbling of wheels, — as the mail-coach, outward bound, rolls heavily off the pavement, and splashes through the mud and water of the road. All night long the poor passengers will be tossed to and fro be- tween drowsy watch and troubled sleep, and will dream of their own quiet beds, and awake to find them- selves still jolting onward. Happier my lot, who will straightway hie me to my familiar room, and toast myself comfortably before the fire, musing and fit- fully dozing, and fancying a strangeness in such sights as all may see. But first let me gaze at this solitary figure who comes hitherward with a tin lantern, which throws the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground about him. He passes fearlessly into the un- known gloom, whither I will not follow him. This figure shall supply me with a moral, where- with, for lack of a more appropriate one, I may wind up my sketch. He fears not to tread the dreary path before him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the fireside of his home, will light him back to that same fireside again. And thus we, night wanderers through a stormy and dismal world, if we bear the lamp of Faith, enkindled at a celestial fire, it will surely lead us home to that heaven whence its radi- ance was borrowed. ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. At noon of an autumnal day, more than two cen- turies ago, the English colors were displayed by the Btandard-bearer of the Salem trainband, which had mustered for martial exercise imder the orders of John Endicott. It was a period when the religious exiles were accustomed often to buckle on their armor, and practise the handling of their weapons of war. Since the first settlement of New England, its pros- pects had never been so dismal. The dissensions between Charles the First and his subjects were then, and for several years afterwards, confined to the floor of Parliament. The measures of the King and min- istry were rendered more tyrannically violent by an opposition, which had not yet acquired sufficient confi- dence in its own strength to resist royal injustice with the sword. The bigoted and haughty primate. Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, controUefl' the religious affairs of the realm, and was consequently invested with powers which might have wrought the utter ruin of the two Puritan colonies, Plymouth and Massachu- setts. There is evidence on record that our fore- fathers perceived their danger, but were resolved that their infant country should not fall without a struggle, even beneath the giant strength of the King's right arm. Such was the aspect of the times when the folds of the English banner, with the Eed Cross in its field. Tare flimg out over a company of Puritans. Their 486 TWICE-TOLD TALES. leader, lihe famous Endicott, was a man of stem and resolute countenance, the effect of which was height- ened by a grizzled beard that swept the upper portion of his breastplate. Tliis piece of armor was so highly polished that the whole surrounding scene had its image in the glittering steel. The central object in the mirrored picture was an edifice of hiunble archi- tecture with neither steeple nor bell to proclaim it— what nevertheless it was — the house of prayer. A token of the perils of the wilderness was seen in the grim head of a wolf, which had just been slain within the precincts of the town, and according to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed on the porch of the meeting-house. The blood was still plashing on the doorstep. There happened to be visible, at the same noontide hour, so many other characteristics of the times and manners of the Puritans, that we must endeavor to represent them in a sketch, though far less vividly than they were reflected in the polished breast- plate of John Endicott. In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that important engine of Puritanic authority, the whipping- post — with the soil around it well trodden by the feet of evil doers, who had there been disciplined. At one corner of the meeting-house was the pillory, and at the other the stocks ; and, by a singular good fortune for our sketch, the head of an Episcopalian and suspected Catholic was grotesquely incased in the former ma- chine ; whUe a fellow-criminal, who had boisterously quaffed a health to the king, was confined by the legs In the latter. Side by side, on the meeting-house steps, stood a male and a female figure. The man was i tail, lean, haggard personification of fanaticism, bear ing on his breast this label, — A Wanton Gosfelleb, ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 487 ~^-wliicli betokened that he had dared to ^ve inter- pretations of Holy Writ unsanctioned by the infallible judgment of the civil and religious rulers. His aspect showed no lack of zeal to maintain his heterodoxies,, even at the stake. The woman wore a cleft stick' on her tongue, in appropriate retribution for having wagged that unruly member against the elders of the church ; and her countenance and gestures gave much cause to apprehend that, lihe moment the stick should be removed, a repetition of the offence would demand new ingenuity in chastising it. The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced , to undergo their various modes of ignominy, for the space of one hour at noonday. But among the crowd were several whose pimishment would be life-long; some, whose ears had been cropped, like those of puppy dogs ; others, whose cheeks had been branded with the initials of their misdemeanors ; one, with his nostrils slit and seared ; and anotlier, with a halter about his neck, which he was forbidden ever to take off, or to conceal beneath his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously tempted to affix the other end of the rope to some convenient beam or bough. There was likewise a young woman, with no mean share of beauty, whose doom it was to wear the letter A on the brsast of her gown, in the eyes of aU the world and her ira children. And even her own children knew what that initial signified. Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature had embroidered the JEatal token in scarlet cloth, with golden thread and the nicest- art of needlework; so that the capital A might have been thought to mean Admirable, or anything lather tiian Adulteress. Let not the reader argue, from any of these evi 488 TWICE-TOLD TALES. dences of iniquity, that the times of the Puritans were more vicious than our own, when, as we pass along the very street of this sketch, we discern no badge of infamy on man or woman. It was the policy of our ancestors to search out even the most secret sins, and expose them to shame, without fear or favor, in the broadest light of the noonday sun. Were such the custom now, perchance we might find materials for a no less piquant sketch than the above. Except the malefactors whom we have described, and the diseased or infirm persons, the whole male population of the town, between sixteen years and sixty, were seen in the ranks of the trainband. A few stately savages, in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian, stood gazing at the spectacle. Their flint-headed arrows were but childish weapons compared with the matchlocks of the Piuitans, and would have rattled harmlessly against the steel caps and hammered iron breastplates which inclosed each soldier in an individual fortress. The valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride at his sturdy followers, and prepared to renew the martial toils of the day. " Come, my stout hearts ! " quoth he, drawing his Bword. " Let us show these poor heathen that we can handle our weapons like men of might. Well for them, if they put us not to prove it in earnest ! " The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and eg^h man drew the heavy butt of his matchlock close te feis left foot, thus awaiting the orders of the captain. But, as Endicott glanced right and left along tiie froqt, he discovered a personage at some little diBt^ce widi whom it behooved him to hold a parley. Jt was aii eldprly gentleman, wearing a blach ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 489 cloak and band, and a high-crowned hat, beneath which was a velvet skull-cap, the whole being the garb of a Puritan minister. This reverend person bore a staff which seemed to have been recently cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired as if he had been travelling on foot through the swamps of the wilder- ness. His aspect was perfectly that of a pilgrim, heightened also by an apostoHo dignity. Just as Endi- cott perceived him he laid aside his staff, and stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain which gushed into the sunshine about a score of yards from the comer of the meeting-house. But, ere the good man drank, he turned his face heavenward in thankfulness, and then, holding back his gray beard with one hand, he scooped up his simple draught in the hollow of the other. " "What, ho ! good Mr. Williams," shouted Endi- cott. " You are welcome back again to our town of peace. How does our worthy Governor Winthrop? And what news from Boston ? " "The Governor hath his health, worshipful Sir," answered Roger Williams, now resuming his staff, and drawing near. " And for the news, here is a letter, which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, his Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it con- tains tidings of much import ; for a ship arrived yes- terday from England." Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem and of course known to all the spectators, had now reached the spot where Endicott was standing under the banner of his company, and put the Governor's epistle into his hand. The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop's coat of arms. Endicott hastily unclosed the letter and began to read, whUe, as his eye passed down the page, a nrrathful change came over his manly countenance 490 TWICE-TOLD TALES. The blood glowed through it, till it seemed to be kind, ling with an internal heat; nor was it unnatural ta suppose that his breastplate would likewise become red- hot with the angry fire of the bosom which it covered. Arriving at the conclusion, he shook the letter fiercely in his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag above his head. "Black tidings these, Mr. Williams," said he; " blacker never came to New England. Doubtless you know their purport? " "Yea, truly," replied Roger Williams; "for the. Governor consulted, respecting this matter, with my brethren in the ministry at Boston ; and my opinion was likewise asked. And his Excellency entreats you by me, that the news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be stirred up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the King and the Archbishop a handle against us." " The Governor is a wise man — a wise man, and a meek and moderate," said Endicott, setting his teeth grimly. "Nevertheless, I must do according to my own best judgment. There is neither man, woman, nor child in New England, but has a concern as dear as life in these tidings ; and if John Endicott's voice be loud enough, man, woman, and child shall hear them. Soldiers, wheel into a hollow square! Ho, good people ! Here are news for one and all of you." The soldiers closed in around their captain; and he and Roger Williams stood together under the banner of the Red Cross ; while the women and the aged men pressed forward, and the mothers held up their chil- dren to look Endicott in the face. A few taps of tha drum gave signal for silence and attention. ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 491 "Fellow-soldiers, — fellow-exiles," began Endicott, speaking under strong excitement, yet powerfully re- straining it, " wherefore did ye leave your native coim- try? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green and fertile fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls, where we were bom and bred, the churchyards where our forefathers lie buried ? Wherefore have we come hither to set up our own tombstones in a wilder- ness? A howling wilderness it is ! The wolf and the bear meet us within halloo of our dwellings. The sav- age lieth in wait for us ia the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots of the trees break our ploughshares, when we would till the earth. Our children cry for bread, and we must dig in the sands of the sea-shore to satisfy them. Wherefore, I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil and wintry sky ? Was it not for the enjoyment of our civil rights ? Was it not for liberty to worship God according to our conscience ? " "Call you this liberty of conscience?" interrupted a voice on the steps of the meeting-house. It was the Wanton Gospeller. A sad and quiet smile flitted across the mild visage of Roger Williams. But Endicott, in the excitement of the moment, shook his sword wrathf ally at the culprit — an ominous gest- ure from a man like him. "What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave?" cried he. "I said liberty to worship God, not license to profane and ridicule him. Break not in upon my speech, or I will lay thee neck and heels till this time to-morrow ! Hearken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed rhapsodist. As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and have come to a land Rrhereof the old world hath scarcely heard, that we 492 TWICE-TOLD TALES. might make a new world unto onrselves, and painfully geek a path from hence to heaven. But what think ye now? This son of a Scotch tyrant — this grandson of a Papistical and adulterous Scotch woman, whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always save an anointed head from the block " — "Nay, brother, nay," interposed Mr. WiUiams; " thy words are not meet for a secret chamber, far less for a public street." " Hold thy peace, Roger Williams ! " answered En- dicott, imperiously. " My spirit is wiser than thine for the business now in hand. I tell ye, fellow-exiles, that Charles of England, and Laud, our bitterest per- secutor, arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pur- sue us even hither. They are taking coimsel, saith this letter, to send over a governor-general, in whose breast shall be deposited all the law and equity of the land. They are nunded, also, to establish the idola- trous forms of English Episcopacy; so that, when Laud shall kiss the Pope's toe, as cardinal of Some, he may deliver New England, bound hand and foot, into the power of his master ! " A deep groan from the auditors, — a sound of wrath, as well as fear and sorrow, — responded to this intel- ligence. " Look ye to it, brethren," resumed Endicott, with increasing energy. " If this king and this arch-prelate have their will, we shall briefly behold a cross on the spire of this tabernacle which we have builded, and a high altar within its walls, with wax tapers bumins; round it at noonday. We shall hear the sacring bell, and the voices of the Romish priests saying the mass. But think ye. Christian men, that these abominations may be suffered without a sword drawn ? without a ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 493 jhot fired ? without blood spilt, yea, on the Very stairs of the pulpit ? No, — be ye strong of hand and stout of heart ! Here we stand on our own soil, which we have bought with our goods, which we have won with our swords, which we have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with the sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our prayers to the God that brought us hither ! Who shall enslave us here ? What have we to do with this mitred prelate, — with this crowned king ? What have we to do with Eng- land?" Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of the people, now fuU of his own spirit, and then turned suddenly to the standard-bearer, who stood close behind him. " Officer, lower your banner ! " said he. The officer obeyed ; and, brandishing his sword, Endicott thrust it through the cloth, and, with his left hand, rent the Red Cross completely out of the banner He then waved the tattered ensign above his head. " Sacrilegious wretch ! " cried the high-churchman in the pillory, unable longer to restrain himself, " thou hast rejected the symbol of our holy religion! " " Treason, treason ! " roared the royalist in the stocks. " He hath defaced the King's banner ! " " Before God and man, I wiU avouch the deed," answered Endicott. "Beat a flourish, drummer! — shout, soldiers and people! — in honor of the ensign of New England. Neither Pope nor Tyrant hath part in it now ! " With a cry of triumph, the people gave their sanc- tion to one of the boldest exploits which our history records. And forever honored be the name of Endi- «ottI We look back through the mist of ages, and 494 TWICE-TOLD TALES. recognize in the reading of the Red Cross from New England's banner the first omen of that deliverance which our fathers consummated after the bones of the stem Puritan had lain more than a century in the dust. THE LILY'S QttEST. AN APOLOGTJE. Two lovers, once upon a time, had planned a little Bummer-house, in the form of an antique temple, which it was their purpose to consecrate to aU manner of re- fined and innocent enjoyments. There they would hold pleasant intercourse with one another and the circle of their familiar friends ; there they would give festivals of delicious fruit; there they would hear lightsome music, intermingled with the strains of pathos which make joy more sweet ; there they would read poetry and fiction, and permit their own minds to flit away in day-dreams and romance ; there, in short — for why should we shape out the vague sunshine of their hopes? — there all pure delights were to cluster like roses among the pillars of the edifice, and blossom ever new and spontaneously. So, one breezy and cloudless after- noon, Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set out upon a ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess together, seeking a proper site for their Temple of Happiness. They were themselves a fair and happy spectacle, fit priest and priestess for such a shrine ; although, making poetry of the pretty name of Lilias, Adam Forrester was wont to call Tier Lily, because her form was as fragile, and her cheek almost as pale. As they passed hand in hand down the avenue of drooping elms ttat led from the portal of Lilias Fay's paternal mansion, they seemed to glance like winged 496 TWICE-TOLD TALES. creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter brightness where the deep shadows fell. But setting forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was a dismal figure, wrapped ia a black velvet cloak that might have been made of a coffin pall, and with a sombre hat such as mourners wear drooping its broad brim over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them, the lovers well knew who it was that followed, but wished from their hearts that he had been elsewhere, as being a companion so strangely unsuited to their joyous errand. It was a near relative of Lilias Fay, an old man by the name- of Walter Gascoigne, who had long labored under the burden of a melancholy spirit, which was sometimes maddened into absolute insanity, and always had a tinge of it. What a con- trast between the young pilgrims of bliss and their imbidden associate ! They looked as if moulded of heaven's sunshine, and he of earth's gloomiest shade ; they flitted along like Hope and Joy roaming hand in hand through life ; while his darksome figure stalked behind, a type of all the woful influences which life could fling upon them. But the three had not gone far when they reached a spot that pleased the gentla Lily, and she paused. " What sweeter place shall we find than this?" said she. " Why should we seek farther for the site of our Temple?" It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though imdistinguished by any very prominent beauties, be- ing merely a nook in the shelter of a hill, with the prospect of a distant lake in one direction, and of a church spire in another. There were vistas and path- ways leading onward and onward into tibe green wood- lands, and vanishing away in the glimmering shade THE LILY'S QUEST. 497 The Temple, if erected here, would look towards the west : so that the lovers could shape all sorts of mag- nificent dreams out of the purple, violet, and gold of the sunset sky ; and few of their anticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy. " Yes," said Adam Forrester, " we might seek all day and find no lovelier spot. We will bmld our Temple here." But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand on the very site which they proposed to cover with a marble floor, shook his head and frowned ; and the young man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to blight the spot, and desecrate it for their airy Tem- ple, that his dismal figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to some scattered stones, the remnants of a former structure, and to flowers such as young girls delight to nurse in their gardens, but which had now relapsed into the wild simplicity of nature. "Not here! " cried old Walter Gascoigne. " Here, long ago, other mortals built their Temple of Happi- ness. Seek another site for yours ! " " What ! " exclaimed Lilias Fay. " Have any ever planned such a Temple save ourselves ? " " Poor child ! " said her gloomy kinsman. " In one shape or other, every mortal has dreamed your dream." Then he told the lovers how, not, indeed, an antique Temple, but a dwelling, had once stood there, and that a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting forever at the fireside, and poisoning all their house- hold mirth. Under this type, Adam Forrester and liilias saw that the old man spake of Sorrow. He told of nothing that might not be recorded in the history »f almost every household ; and yet his hearers felt 498 TWICE-TOLD TALES. as if no sunshine ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so deep a stain ; or, at least, that no joyous Temple should be built there. " This is very sad," said the Lily, sighing. "Well, there are lovelier spots than this," said Adam Forrester, soothingly, — " spots which sorrow has not blighted." So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gas- coigne followed them, looking as if he had gathered up all the gloom of the deserted spot, and was bearing it as a burden of inestimable treasure. But still they rambled on, and soon found themselves in a rocky deU through the midst of which ran a streamlet with ripple and foam, and a continual voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild retreat, walled on either side with gray precipices, which would have frowned somewhat too sternly, had not a profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crevices, and wreathed glad- some foliage around their solemn brows. But the chief joy of the dell was in the little stream, which seemed like the presence of a blissful child, with noth- ing earthly to do save to babble merrily and disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow, and throw the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all. "Here, here is the spot ! " cried the two lovers with one voice as they reached a level space on the brink of a small cascade. " This glen was made on purpose for our Temple ! " " And the glad song of the brook will be always in our ears," said Lilias Fay , " And its long melody shall sing the bliss of ouj lifetime," said Adam Forrester, " Ye must bmld no Temple here ! " murmured then ilismal companion. THE LILY'S QUEST. 499 And there again was the old lunatic, standing just on the spot where they meant to rear their lightsome dome, and looking like the embodied symbol of some great woe, that, in forgotten days, had happened there. And, alas ! there had been woe, nor that alone. A yoxmg man, more than a himdred years before, had lured hither a girl that loved him, and on this spot bad murdered her, and washed his bloody hands in the stream which sung so merrily. And ever since the victim's death shrieks were often heard to echo between the cliffs. " And see I " cried old Gascoigne, " is the stream yet pure from the stain of the murderer's hands ? " "Methinks it has a tinge of blood," faintly an- swered the Lily ; and being as slight as the gossamer, she trembled and clung to her lover's arm, whispering, " Let us flee from this dreadful vale ! " " Come, then," said Adam Forrester, as cheerily as he could, " we shall soon find a happier spot." They set forth again, yoimg Pilgrims on that quest which millions — which every child of Earth — has tried in turn. And were the Lily and her lover to be more fortunate than all those millions ? For a long time it seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old lunatic still glided behind them ; and for every spot that looked lovely in their eyes, he had some legend of human wrong or suffering, so miserably sad that his auditors could never afterwards connect the idea of joy with the place where it had happened. Here, a heart-broken woman, kneeling to her child, had been spurned from his feet ; here, a desolate old creature had prayed to the evil one, and had received a fiend- ish malignity of soul in answer to her prayer ; here, i new-born infant, sweet blossom of life, had been 500 TWICE-TOLD TALES. found dead, with the impress of its mother's fingeri round its throat ; and here, vmder a shattered oak, two lovers had been stricken by lightning, and fell black- ened corpses in each other's arms. The dreary Gas- coigne had a gift to know whatever evil and lament, able thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth; and when his funereal voice had told the tale, it ap- peared like a prophecy of future woe as well as a tra- dition of the past. And now, by their sad demeanor, you would have fancied that the pilgrim lovers were seeking, not a temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and their posterity. " Where in this world," exclaimed Adam Forrester, despondingly, " shall we buUd our Temple of Happi- ness ? " " Where in this world, indeed ! " repeated Lilias Fay ; and being faint and weary, the more so by the heaviness of her heart, the Lily drooped her head and sat down on the summit of a knoU, repeating, " Where in this world shall we build our Temple ?" " Ah I have you already asked yourselves that ques- tion ? " said their companion, his shaded features grow- ing even gloomier with the smile that dwelt on them ; " yet there is a place, even in this world, where ye may build it." While the old man spoke, Adam Forrester and Lilias had carelessly thrown their eyes aroimd, and perceived that the spot where they had chanced to pause possessed a quiet charm, which was well enough adapted to their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of ground, with a certain regularity of shape, that had perhaps been bestowed by art ; and a group of trees, which almost surrounded it, threw theii pensive shadows across and far beyond, although soma THE LILY'S QUEST. 601 Boftened glory of the sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion, wherein the lovers would dwell together, appeared on one side, and the ivied church, where they were to worship, on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the ground they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see that a pale lily was growing at their feet. " We will build our Temple here," said they, simul- taneously, and with an indescribable conviction that they had at last found the very spot. Yet, while they uttered this exclamation, the young man and the Lily turned an apprehensive glance at their dreary associate, deeming it hardly possible that some tale of earthly affliction should not make those precincts loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the group, with his sable cloak muffling the lower part of his visage, and his sombre hat over- shadowing his brows. But he gave no word of dissent from their purpose ; and an inscrutable smile was ac- cepted by the lovers as a token that here had been no footprint of guilt or sorrow to desecrate the site of their Temple of Happiness. In a little time longer, while summer was still in its prime, the fairy structure of the Temple arose on the summit of the knoU, amid the solemn shadows of the trees, yet often gladdened with bright sunshine. It was built of white marble, with slender and grace- ful pillars supporting a vaulted dome; and beneath the centre of this dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined marble, on which books and music might be strewn. But there was a fantasy among the people of the neighborhood that the edifice was planned after tn ancient mausoleum and was intended for' a tomb^ 502 TWICE-TOLD TALES. and that the central slab of dark-veined marble waa to be inscribed with the names of buried ones. They doubted, too, whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a creature of this earth, being so very delicate, and growing every day more fragile, so that she looked as if the summer breeze should snatch her up and waft her heavenward. But still she watched the daily growth of the Temple ; and so did old Wal- ter Gascoigne, who now made that spot his continual haunt, leaning whole hours together on his staff, and giving as deep attention to the work as though it had been indeed a tomb. In due time it was finished, and a day appointed for a simple rite of dedication. On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had taken leave of his mistress, he looked back to- wards the portal of her dwelling, and felt a strange thnll of fear; for he imagined that, as the setting sunbeams faded from her figure, she was exhaling away, and that something of her ethereal substance was withdrawn with each lessening gleam of Hght. With his farewell glance a shadow had fallen over the portal and Lilias was invisible. His foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the time, and so it proved ; for the sweet earthly form, by which the Lily had been manifested to the world, was found lifeless the next morning in the Temple, with her head resting on her arms, which were folded upon the slab of dark- veined marble. The chill winds of the earth had long since breathed a blight into this beautiful flower, so that a loving hand had now transplanted it, to blos- som brightly in the garden of Paradise. But alas, for the Temple of Happiness! In his un. utterable grief, Adam Forrester had no purpose more at heart than to convert this Temple of many delight THE LILY'S QUEST. 503 ful hopes into a tomb, and bury his dead mistress there. And lo ! a wonder ! Digging a grave beneath the Temple's marble floor, the sexton found no Adrgin earth, such as was meet to receive the maiden's dust, but an ancient sepulchre, in which were treasured up the bones of generations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten ancestors was the LUy to be laid. And when the funeral procession brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld old Walter Gascoigne standing beneath the dome of the Temple, with his cloak of pall and face of darkest gloom ; and where- ever that figure might take its stand the spot wotdd seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as they lowered the coffin down. "And so," said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange smile in which his insanity was wont to gleam forth, " you have found no better foundation for your tappiness than on a grave ! " But as the Shadow of Affliction spoke, a vision of Hope and Joy had its birth in Adam's mind, even from the old man's taunting words ; for then he knew what was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and himself had acted ; and the mystery of Life and Death was opened to him. " Joy ! joy ! " he cried, throwing his arms towards heaven, " on a grave be the site of our Temple ; and now our happiness is for Eternity ! " With those words, a ray of sunshine broke through the dismal sky, and glimmered down into the sepul- chre; while, at the same moment, the shape of old Walter Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his gloom, symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide there, now that the darkest riddle of humanity 4ras read. FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. It must; be a spirit mucli unlike my own which can keep itself in health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world, to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At intervals, and not unf requent ones, the forest and the ocean sum- mon me — one with the roar of its waves, the other with the murmur of its boughs — forth from the haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile ere I could stand beneath the shadow of even one prime- val tree, much less be lost among the multitude of hoary tnmks, and hidden from earth and sky by the mystery of darksome foliage. Nothing is wiiMn my daily reach more like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near some suburban farm-house. When, therefore, the yearning for seclusion becomes a neces- sily within me, I am drawn to th^ sea-shore, which extends its line of rude rocks and seldom trodden sands for leagues around our bay. Setting forth at my last ramble on a September morning, I bound my- self with a hermit's vow to interchange no thoughts with man or woman, to share no social pleasure, but to derive all that day's enjoyment from shore and sea and slqr, — from my soul's communion with thesefand from fantasies and recoUections, or anticipated reali- ties. Surely here is enough to feed a hiunau spirit for a single day. Farewell, then, busy world 1 Till your evening lights shall shine along the street, — till ihey gleam upon my searflushed face as I tread home- FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE. 605 ward, — free me from yoiir ties, and let me be a peaceful outlaw. Highways and cross paths are hastily traversed; and, clambering down a crag, I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the fuU extent of the broad, blue, simny deep' ! A greeting and a homage to the Sea 1 I de- scend over its margin and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe ray brow. That far-resound- ing roar is Ocean's voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let us pace to- gether — the reader's fancy arm-in-arm with mine — this noble beach, which extends a nule or more from that craggy promontory to yonder rampart of broken rocks. In front, the sea ; in the rear, a precipitous bank, the grassy verge of which is breaking away, year after year, and flings down its tufts of verdure upon the barrenness below. The beach itself is a broad space of sand, brown and sparkling, with hardly any pebbles intermixed. Near the water's edge there is a wet margin,, which glistens brightly in the sun- shine, and reflects objects like a mirror ; and as we tread along the glistening border, a dry spot flashes around each footstep, but grows moist again as we lift our feet. In some spots the sand receives a complete impression of the sole — square toe and all ; else- where it is of such marble firmness that we must stanSp heavily to leave a print even of the iron-shod heel. Along the whole of this extensive beach gam- bols the surf wave ; now it makes a feint of dashing onward in a fury, yet dies away with a meek murmur, and does but kiss the strand ; now, after many such ftbortive efforts, it rears itself up in an unbroken line, 50G TWICE-TOLD TALES. heightening as it advances, without a speck of foam on its green crest. With how fierce a roar it flings itseK forward, and rushes far up the beach ! As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf I remember that I was startled, as Robinson Crusoe might have been, by the sense that human life was within the magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the remote distance of the beach, appearing like sea- nymphs or some airier things such as might tread upon the feathery spray, was a group of girls. Hardly had I beheld them when they passed into the shadow of the rocks and vanished. To comfort myself — for truly I would fain have gazed a while longer — I made acquaintance with a flock of beach birds. These little citizens of the sea and air preceded me by about a stone's throw along the strand, seeking, I suppose, for food upon its margin. Yet, with a philosophy which mankind would do well to imitate, they drew a con- tinual pleasure from their toil for a subsistence. The sea was each little bird's great playmate. They chased it downward as it swept back, and again ran up swiftly before the impending wave, which some- times overtook them and bore them off their feet. But they floated as Ughdy as one of their own feathers on the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings they seemed to rest on the evanescent spray. Their images — long-legged little figures, with gray backs and snowy bosoms — were seen as distinctly as the realities in the mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced they flew a score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recommenced their dalliance with the surf wave ; and thus they bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant fantasies, till, at its extremity, they took wing over the ocean and were gone. After forming a FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEASHORE. 607 friendship with these small surf spirits, it is really worth a sigh to find no memorial of them save their multitudinous little tracks in the sand. When we have paced the length of the beach it is pleasant and not unprofitable to retrace our steps, and recall the whole mood and occupation of the mind during the former passage. Our tracks being all dis- cernible will guide us with an observing consciousness through every unconscious wandering of thought and fancy. Here we followed the surf in its reflux to pick up a shell which the sea seemed loath to relin- quish. Here we found a sea-weed, with an immense brown leaf, and trailed it behiud us by its long snake- like stalk. Here we seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and counted the many claws of the queer monster. Here we dug iato the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon the surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while examining a jelly-fish which the waves, having just tossed it up, now sought to snatch away again. Here we trod along the brink of a fresh-water brooklet which flows across the beach, becoming shal- lower and more shallow, till at last it sinks into the sand and perishes in the effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some vagary appears to have be- wildered us ; for our tracks go round and round and are confusedly intermingled, as if we haA found a labyrinth upon the level beach. And here, amid our idle pastime, we sat down upon almost the only stone that breaks the surface of the sand, and were lost in an unlooked-for and overpowering conception of the majesty and awfulness of the great deep. Thus, by tracking our footprints in the sand, we track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal a glance upon it, when it never dreams of being so observed. Such glances always make us wiser. 508 TWICE-TOLD TALES. This extensive beach affords room for another plea» ant pastime. With your staff you may write verses — love verses, if they please you best — and consecrate them with a woman's name. Here, too, may be in- scribed thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushinga from the heart's secret places, which you would not pour upon the sand without the certainly that, almost ere the sky has looked upon them, the sea will wash them out. Stir not hence till tnt record be effaced. Now — for there is room enough on your canvas — draw huge faces — huge as that of the Sphinx on Egyptian sands — and fit them with bodies of cor- responding immensity, and legs which might stride half-way to yonder island. Child's play becomes mag- nificent on so grand a scale. But, after all, the most fascinating employment is simply to write your name in the sand. Draw the letters gigantic, so that two strides may barely measure them, and three for the long strokes ! Cut deep that the record may be per- manent! Statesmen and warriors and poets have spent their strength in no better cause than this. Is it accomplished ? Ketum then in an hour or two and seek for this mighty record of a name. The sea will have swept over it, even as time rolls its effacing waves over the names of statesmen and warriors and poets. Hark, the surf wave laughs at you ! Passing from the beach I begin to clamber over the crags, making my difficult way among the ruins of a rampart shattered and broken by the assaults of a fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of atti- tude : some of them have their feet in the foam, and are shagged half-way upward with sea-weed; some have been hollowed almost into caverns by the un- ireaxied toil of the sea, which can afEord to spend cen FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 509 '■uries in wearing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble. One huge rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a giant's tombstone, on which the veins resemble inscriptions, but in an unknown tongue. We will fancy them the forgotten characters of an antedi- luvian race ; or else that Nature's own hand has here recorded a mystery, which, could I read her language, would make mankind the wiser and the happier. How many a thing has troubled me with that same idea ! Pass on and leave it unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue, which might seem to have been hewn through the very heart of an enormous crag, affording passage for the rising sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with tumultuous foam, and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare and glistening. In this chasm there was once an intersecting vera of softer stone, which the waves have gnawed away piecemeal, while the granite walls remaia entire on either side. How sharply, and with what harsh clamor, does the sea rake back the pebbles, as it momentarily withdraws into its own depths ! At intervals the floor of the chasm is left nearly dry; but anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are seen struggling to get in at once; two hit the walls athwart, while one rushes straight through, and all three thunder as if with rage and triumph. They heap the chasm with a snow-drift of foam and spray. While watching this scene, I can never rid myself of the idea that a monster, endowed with life and fierce energy, is striving to burst his way through the narrow pass. And what a contrast, to look through the stormy chasm, and catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond ! Many interesting discoveries may be made among these broken cliffs. Once, for example, I found a 510 TWICE-TOLD TALES. dead seal, which a recent tempest haxl tossed into the nook of the rocks, where his shaggy carcass lay rolled in a heap of eel-grass, as if the sea-monster sought to hide himself from my eye. Another time, a shark seemed on the point of leaping from the surf to swal- low me ; nor did I, wholly without dread, approach near enough to ascertain that the man-eater had al- ready met his own death from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble I encountered a bird — a large gray bird — but whether a loon, or a wild goose, or the identical albatross of the Ancient Mariner, was beyond my ornithology to decide. It reposed so natur- ally on a bed of dry sea-weed, with its head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive, and trod softly lest it should suddenly spread its wings skyward. But the sea-bird would soar among the clouds no more, nor ride upon its native waves, so I drew near and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for a remembrance. Another day, I discovered an immense bone wedged into a chasm of the rocks; it was at least ten feet long, curved like a cimeter, bejewelled with barnacles and small shell-fish, and partly covered with a growth of sea-weed. Some leviathan of former ages had used this ponderous mass as a jawbone. Curiosities of a minuter order may be observed in a deep reservoir, which is replenished with water at every tide, but be- comes a lake among the crags, save when the sea is at its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin grow marine plants, some of which tower high beneath the water and cast a shadow in the sunshine. Small fishes dart to and fro, and hide themselves among the sea- weed ; there is also a solitary crab, who appears to lead the life of a hermit, communiag with none of the other denizens of the place ; and likewise several five FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 511 fingers — for I know no other name than that which children give them. If your imagination be at all ac- customed to such freaks, you may look down into the depths of this pool, and fancy it the mysterious depth of ocean. But where are the hulks and scattered tim- bers of sunken ships ? — where the treasures that old Ocean hoards ? — where the corroded cannon ? — where the corpses and skeletons of seamen who went down in storm and battle ? On the day of my last ramble (it was a September day, yet as warm as summer), what should I behold as I approached the above described basin but three girls sitting on its margiu, and — yes, it is veritably so — laving their snowy feet in the sunny water I These, these are the warm realities of lihose three visionary shapes that flitted from me on the beach. Hark ! their merry voices as they toss up the water with their feet ! They have not seen me. I must shrink behind tliis rock and steal away again. In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is something in this encounter that makes the heart flutter with a strangely pleasant sensation. I know these girls to be realities of flesh and blood, yet, glanciag at them so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with the ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to gaze down from some high crag, and watch a group of children, gathering pebbles and pearly shells, and playing with the surf, as with old Ocean's hoary beard. Nor does it infringe upon my seclusion to see yonder boat at anchor off the shore, swinging dreamily to and fro, and rising and sinking with the alternate swell; while the crew — four gen tlemen, in roundabout jackets — are busy with their fishing-lines. But, with an inward antipathy and a 512 TWICE-TOLD TALES. headlong flight, dp I eschew iihe presence of any medt tative stroller like myself, known by his pilgrim staff, his sauntering step, his shy demeanor, his observant yet abstracted eye. From such a man, as if another self had scared me, I scramble hastily over the rooks, and take refuge in a nook which many a secret hour has given me a right to call my own. I would do battle for it even with the churl that should produce the title deeds. Have not my musings melted into its rocky walls and sandy floor, and made them a portion of myself ? It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a rough, high precipice, which almost encircles and shuts in a little space of sand. In front, the sea appears as between- the pillars of a portal. In the rear, the preci- pice is broken and intermixed with earth, which gives nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs, but to trees, that gripe the rock with their naked roots, and seem to struggle hard for footing and for soil enough to live upon. These are fir-trees; but oaks hang their heavy branches from above, and thro* down acorns on the beach, and shed their withering foliage upon the waves. At this autumnal season the precipice is decked with variegated splendor ; trailing wreaths of scarlet flaunt from the summit downward ; tufts of yellow-flowering shrubs, and rose-bushes, with their reddened leaves and glossy seed berries, sprout from each crevice ; at every glance, I detect some new light or shade of beauty, all contrasting with the stem, gray rock. A rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cistern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining haU. And what the feast ? A few bis- suits made savory by soaking them in sea-water, a tuft FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 613 of samphire gathered from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By this time the little rill has filled its reservoir again ; and, as I quaff it, I thank God more heartily than for a civic banquet, that He gives me the healthful appetite to make a feast of bread and water. Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the sand, and, basking in the sunshine, let my mind disport itself at will. The walls of this my hermitage have no tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes fancy that they have ears to hear them, and a soul to sympathize. There is a magic in this spot. Dreams haimt its precincts and fiit around me in broad sun- light, nor require that sleep shall blindfold me to real objects ere these be visible. Here can I frame a story of two lovers, and make their shadows live before me and be mirrored in the tranquil water, as they tread along the sand, leaving no footprints. Here, should I win it, I can summon up a single shade, and be myself her lover. Yes, dreamer, — but your lonely heart will be the colder for such fancies. Sometimes, too, the Past comes back and finds me here, and in her train come faces which were gladsome when I knew them, yet seem not gladsome now. Would that my hiding- place were lonelier, so that the past might not find me ! Get ye all gone, old friends, and let me listen to the murmur of the sea, — a melancholy voice, but less sad than yours. Of what mysteries is it telling ? Of sunken ships and whereabouts they lie ? Of isl- ands afar and undiscovered, whose tawny children are unconscious of other islands and of continents, and deem the stars of heaven their nearest neighbors? Nothing of all this. "What then? Has it talked for BO many ages and meant nothing all the while ? No : VOL. I. 33 514 TWICE-TOLD TALES. for those ages find utterance in the sea's nnchanguig voice, and warn the listener to withdraw his interest from mortal vicissitades, and let the infinite idea of eternity pervade his soul. This is wisdom; and, there fore, will I spend the next half hour in shaping litfle boats of driftwood, and launching them on voyages across the cove, with a feather of a sea-gull for a saU. If the voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an oc- cupation as to build ships of five hundred tons, and launch them forth upon the main, bound to "far Cathay." Yet, how would the merchant sneer at me .' And, after all, can such philosophy be true? Me- thinks, I could find a thousand arg^uments against it. Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock, mid-deep in the surf — see ! he is somewhat wrathful, — he rages and roars and foams — let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let me exercise my oratory like him of Athens, who bandied words with an angry sea and got the victory. My maiden speech is a triumphant one ; for the gentleman in sea-weed has nothing to offer in re- ply, save an immitigable roaring. His voice, indeed, wUl be heard a long while after mine is hushed. Once more I shout and the cliffs reverberate the sound. Oh, what joy for a shy man to feel himself so solitary, that he may lift his voice to its highest pitch without haz- ard of a listener ! But, hush ! — be silent, my good friend ! — whence comes that stifled laughter? It was musical, — but how should there be such music in my solitude? Looking upwards, I catch a glimpse of three faces, peeping from the summit of the diff, like angels between me and their native sky. Ah, fair girls, you may make yourselves merry at my eloquence, — but it was my turn to smile when I saw your whita feet in the pool ! Let us keep each other's secrets. FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 515. The sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, except a gleam upon the sand just where it meets the sea. A crowd of gloomy fantasies will come and haunt me if I tarry longer here in the darkening twilight of these gray rocks. This is a dismal" place in some moods of the mind. CHmb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause a moment on the brink, gazing down into that hollow chamber by the deep where we have been, what few can be, sufficient to our own pas- time — yes, say the word outright ! — seK-sufficient to our own happiness. How lonesome looks the recess now, and dreary too — like all other spots where hap- piness has been ! There lies my shadow in the depart- ing sunshine with its head upon the sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit ! a hit ! I clap my hands in triumph, and see ! my shadow clapping its unreal hands, and claiming the triumph for itself. What a simpleton must I have been all day, since my own shadow makes a mock of my fooleries ! Homeward ! homeward ! It is time to hasten home. It is time ; it is time ; for as the sun sinks over the western wave, the sea grows melancholy, and the surf has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray, and not of earth, in their remoteness amid the desolate waste. My spirit wanders forth afar, but finds no resting-place and comes shivering back. It is time that I were hence. But grudge me not the day that has been spent in seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the great sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds my friends, and the wiad has told me his secrets, and airy shapes have flitted around me in my hermitage. Such companionship works an effect upon a man's character, as if he had been •dmitted to the society of creatures that are not 516 TWICE-TOLD T'ALES. mortal. And when, at noontide, I tread the crowded streets, the influence of this day wiQ still be felt ; so that I shall walk among men kindly and as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but yet shall not melt into the indistinguishable mass of human-kind. I shall think my own thoughts, and feel my own emotions, and possess my individuality unviolated. But it is good, at the eve of such a day, to feel and know that there are men and women in the world. That feeling and that knowledge are mine at this moment ; for, on the shore far below me, the fishing party have landed from their skiff, and are cooking their scaly prey by a fire of driftwood, kindled in the angle of two rude rocks. The three visionary girls are likewise there. In the deepening twilight, while the surf is dashed near their hearth, the ruddy gleam of the Ere throws a strange air of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is with pebbles and sea^weed, and exposed to the "melancholy main." Moreover, as the smoke climbs up the precipice, it brings with it a savory smell from a pan of fried fish and a black kettle of chowder, and reminds me that my dinner was nothing but bread and water, and a tuft of samphire and an apple. Methinks the paxty might find room for another guest at that flat rock which serves them for a table ; and if spoons be scarce, I could pick up a clamshell on the beach. They see me now ; and — the blessing of a hungry man upon him! — one of, them sends up a hospitable shout — halloo. Sir Soli- tary ! come down and sup with us ! The ladies wave their handkerchiefs. Can I decline ? No ; and be il owned, after all my solitary joys, that this is the sweet- est moment of a Day by the Sea-Shore. EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. Theee 18 haxdly a more difficult exercise of fancy than, while gazing at a figure of melancholy age, to recreate its youth, and, without entirely obliterating the identity of form and features, to restore those graces which time has snatched away. Some old people, especially women, so age-worn and woful are they, seem never to have been young and gay. It is easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold them now, with sympathies only for pain and grief, to watch at death-beds and weep at funerals. Even the sable garments of their widowhood appear essential to their existence; all their attributes com- bine to render them darksome shadows, creeping strangely amid the simshine of hmnau life. Yet it is no unprofitable task to take one of these doleful creat- ures, and set fancy resolutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken the silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose color, and repair the shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy maiden shall be seen in the old matron's elbow-chair. The miracle being wrought, then let the years roU back again, each sad- der than the last, and the whole weight of age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure. Wrin- kles and furrows, the handwriting of Time, may thus be deciphered, and found to contain deep lessons of thought and feeling. Such profit might be derived by a skilful observer from my much-respected friend, 518 TWICE-TOLD TALES. the Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute, who has breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying breaths these forty years. See! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth, with her gown, and upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering thriftily into her person the whole warmth of the fire, which, now at nightfall, begins to dissi- pate the autumnal chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers capriciously in front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms of her wrinkled visage, and then permitting a ghostly dimness to mar the outlines of her venerable figure. And Nurse Toothaker holds a teaspoon in her right hand, with which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her left, whence steams a vapory fragrance, abhorred of temperance societies. Now she sips — now stirs — now sips again. Her sad old heart has need to be revived by the rich infusion of Geneva, which is mixed half and half with hot water, in the tumbler. All day long she has been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her home only when the spirit of her patient left the clay and went homeward too. But now are her melancholy medita- tions cheered, and her torpid blood warmed, and her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous years, by a draught from the true Fountain of Youth in a case bottle. It is strange that men should deem that fount a fable, when its liquor fills more bottles than the congress water ! Sip it again, good nurse, and see whether a second draught will not take off another score of years, and perhaps ten more, and show us, in your high-backed chair, the blooming damsel who plighted troths with Edward Fane. Get you gone, Age and Widowhood ! Come back, unwedded Youth! But, alas ! t^e charm will not work. In spite of fancy's EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 519 most potent spell, I can see only an old dame cower- ing over the fire, a picture of decay and desolation, while the November blast roars at her in the chimney, and fitful showers rush suddenly against the window. Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton — such was the pretty maiden name of Nurse Toothaker — ■ possessed beauty that would have gladdened this dim and dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her the heart of Edward Fane, who has since made so great a figure in the world and is now a grand old gentleman, with powdered hair, and as gouty as a lord. These early lovers thought to have walked hand in hand through life. They had wept together for Edward's little sister Mary, whom Eose tended in her sickness, partly because she was the sweetest child that ever lived or died, but more for love of him. She was but three years old. Being such an infant, Death coidd not embody his terrors in her little corpse ; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead child's brow, though chill, as she curled the silken hair around it, nor to take her tiny hand and clasp a flower within its fin- gers. Afterward, when she looked through the pane of glass in the coffin lid, and beheld Mary's face, it seemed not so much like death, or life, as like a wax- work, wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep, and dreaming of its mother's smile. Eose thought her too fair a thiog to be hidden in the grave, and wondered that an angel did not snatch up little Mary's coffin, and bear the slumbering babe to heaven, and bid her wake immortal. But when the sods were laid on little Mary, the heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the fantasy, that, in grasping the child's cold fimgers, her virgin hand had exchanged a first greeting with mortality, and could never lose the 520 TWICE-TOLD TALES eariMy taint. How many a greeting since ! But as yet, she was a fair young girl, with the dew-drops of fresh feeling in her bosom; and instead of Rose, which seemed too mature a name for her half-opened beauty, her lover called her Rosebud. The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Ed- ward Fane. His mother was a rich and haughty dame with all the aristocratic prejudices of colonial times. She scorned Bose Grafton's humble parentage, and caused her son to break his faith, though, had she let him choose, he would have prized his Eosebud above the richest diamond. The lovers parted, and have seldom met again. Both may have visited the same mansions, but not at the same time; for one was bid- den to the festal hall, and the other to the sick-cham- ber ; he was the guest of Pleasure and Prosperity, and she of Anguish. Eose, after their separation, was long secluded within the dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with the revengeful hope of break- ing her false lover's heart. She went to her bride- groom's arms with bitterer tears, they say, than young girls ought to shed at the threshold of the bridal chamber. Yet, though her husband's head was getting gray, and his heart had been chilled with an autumnal frost, Bose soon began to love him, and wondered at her own conjugal affection. He was all she had to love ; there were no children. In a year or two, poor Mr. Toothjiker was visited with a wearisome infirmity, which settled in his joints, and niadfi him weaker than a child. He crept forth about his business, and came home at dinner time and eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a wife's heart, but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull footstep with a melancholy dub of his staff. We must EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 521 pardon his pretty wife, if she sometimes blushed to own him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked for the appearance of some old, old man ; but he dragged his nerveless limbs into the parlor — and there was Mr. Toothaker ! The disease increasing, he never went into the simshine, save with a staff in his right hand and his left on his wife's shoulder, bearing heavily downward, like a dead man's hand. Thus, a slender woman, still looking maiden-like, she supported his tall, broad-chested frame along the path- way of their little garden, and plucked the roses for her gray-haired husband, and spoke soothingly, as to an infant. His mind was palsied vdth his body ; its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few months more, she helped him up the staircase, with a pause at every, step, and a longer one upon the landing-place, and a heavy glance behind, as he crossed the threshold of his chamber. He knew, poor man, that the pre- cincts of those four walls would thenceforth be his world — his world, his home, his tomb — at once a dwelling and a burial-place, till he were borne to a darker and a narrower one. But Rose was with him in the tomb. He leaned upon her in his daily passage from the bed to the chair by the fireside, and back again from the weary chair to the joyless bed — his bed and hers — their marriage-bed; till even this short journey ceased, and his head lay all day upon the pillow, and hers aU night beside it. How long poor Mr. Toothaker was kept in misery! Death seemed to draw near the door, and often to lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust his ugly skull into the chamber, nodding to Eose, and pointing at her hus- band, but stiU delayed to enter. ''This bedridden wretch cannot escape me ! " quoth Death. "I wiU g«' 522 TWICE-TOLD TALES. forth and run a race with the swift, and fight a battle with the strong, and come back for Toothaker at my leisure ! " Oh, when the deliverer came so near, in the dull anguish of her worn-out sympathies, did she never long to cry, " Death, come in ! " But, no ! We have no right to ascribe such a wish to our friend Eose. She never failed in a wife's duty to her poor sick husband. She murmured not, though a glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her as him, nor answered peevishly, though his complaining accents roused her from her sweetest dream, only to share his wretchedness. He knew her faith, yet nour- ished a cankered jealousy ; and when the slow disease had chilled all his heart, save one lukewarm spot, which Death's frozen fingers were searching for, his last words were : " What would my Rose have done for her first love, if she has been so true and kind to a sick old man like me ! " And then his poor soul crept away, and left the body lifeless, though hardly more so than for years before, and Eose a widow, though in truth it was the wedding-night that wid- owed her. She felt glad, it must be owned, when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because his corpse had retained such a likeness to the man half alive, that she heark- ened for the sad murmur of his voice, bidding her shift his pillow. But all through the next winter, though the grave had held him many a month, she fancied him calling from that cold bed, " Eose ! Rose 1 come put a blanket on my feet ! " So now the Rosebud was the Widow Toothaker. Her troubles had come early, and, tedious as they seemed, had passed before all her bloom was fled She was still fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or- with a widow's cheerful gravity, she might have won EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 623 a ■widower, stealing iato his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But the Widow Toothaker had no such projects. By her watchings and continual cares her heart had become knit to her first husband with a constancy which changed its very nature, and made her love him for his infirmities, and infirmity for his sake. When the palsied old man was gone, even her early lover could not have supplied his place. She had dwelt in a sick-chamber, and been the companion of a half -dead wretch, till she could scarcely breathe in a free air, and felt ill at ease with the healthy and the happy. She missed the fragrance of the doctor's stuff. She walked the chamber with a noiseless foot- fall. If visitors came in she spoke in soft and sooth- ing accents, and was startled and shocked by their loud voices. Often, in the lonesome evening, she looked timorously from the fireside to the bed, with al- most a hope of recognizing a ghastly face upon the pU- low. Then went her thoughts sadly to her husband's grave. If one impatient throb had wronged him in his lifetime, — if she had secretly repined because her buoyant youth was imprisoned with his torpid age, — if ever, while slumbering beside him, a treacherous dream had admitted another into her heart, — yet the sick man had been preparing a revenge which the dead now claimed. On his painful pillow he had east a spell around her ; his groans and misery had proved more captivating charms than gayety and youthfui grace; in his semblance Disease itself had won the Eosebud for a bride ; nor could his death dissolve the nuptials. By that indissoluble bond she had gained a home in every sick-chamber, and nowhere else: there were her brethren and sisters ; thither her husband summoned her with that voice which had seemed to 524 TWICE-TOLD TALES. issue from the grave of Tootihaker. At length sht recognized her destiny. We have beheld her as the maid, the vdfe, the widow ; now we see her in a separate and insulated character ; she was, in all her attributes, Nurse Tooth- aker. And Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled lips, could make known her experience in that capacity. What a history might she record of the great sicknesses in which she has gone hand in hand with the exterminating angel ! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted a red banner on almost every house along the street. She has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one. Where would be Death's triumph, if none lived to weep ? She can speak of strange maladies that have broken out, as if sponta- neously, but were found to have been imported from foreign lands, with rich silks and other merchandise, the costliest portion of the cargo. And once, she rec- ollects, the people died of what was considered a new pestilence, till the doctors traced it to the ancient grave of a young girl, who thus caused many deaths a hundred years after her own burial. Strange, that such black mischief should lurk in a maiden's grave ! She loves to tell how strong men fight with fiery fevers, utterly refusing to give up their breath ; and how consumptive virgins fade out of the world, scarcely reluctant, as if their lovers were wooing them to a far country. Tell us, thou fearful woman I tell us the death secrets ! Fain would I search out the meaning of words, faintly gasped with intermingled sobs and broken sentences, half audibly spoken be tween earth and the judgment seat I EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 525 An awful woman! She is the patron saint of young physicians, and the bosom friend of old ones. In the mansions where she enters, the inmates provide themselves black garments ; the coffin maker follows her ; and the bell toUs as she comes away from the threshold. Death himself has met her at so many a bedside, that he puts forth his bony hand to greet Nurse Toothaker. She is an awful woman ! And, oh! is it conceivable, that this handmaid of human infirmity and affliction — so darkly stained, so thor- oughly imbued with all that is saddest in the doom of mortals — can ever again be bright and gladsome, even though bathed in the sunshine of eternity ? By her long communion with woe has she not forfeited her inheritance of immortal joy ? Does any germ of bliss survive within her ? Hark ! — an eager knocking at Nurse Toothaker's door. She starts from her drowsy reverie, sets aside the empty tumbler and teaspoon, and lights a lamp at the dim embers of the fire. Eap, rap, rap ! again ; and she hurries adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can be at death's door now, since there Is such an earnest messenger at Nurse Toothaker's. Again the peal resounds, just as her hand is on the lock. " Be quick, Nurse Toothaker ! " cries a man on the doorsteps ; " old General Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach, and has sent for you to watch by his death-bed. Make haste, for there is no time to lose ! " " Fane ! Edward Fane ! And has he sent for me at last? I am ready! I wiU. get on my cloak ftnd begone. So," adds the sable-gowned, ashen-vi&- aged, funereal old figure, " Edward Fane remembers his Eosebud ! " Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss 526 TWICE-TOLD TALES. within her. Her long-hoarded constancy — her mein> ory of the bliss that was — remaining amid the gloom of her after life like a sweet-smelltag flower in a cof- fin, is a symbol that all may be renewed. In some happier clime the Bosebud may reviTe again with, all the dewdrops in its bosom. THE THREEFOLD DESTINT. A FAIBT LEGEND. I HAVE sometimes produced a singular and not un- pleasing effect, so far as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in which the spirit and mechanism of the fairy legend should be combined with the characters and manners of familiar life. In the little tale which foUows, a subdued tinge of the wild and wonderful is thrown over a sketch of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped, without entirely obliterating the sober hues of nature. Rather than a story of events claiming to be real, it may be considered as an allegory, such as the writers of the last century would have expressed in the shape of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to give a more life-like warmth than could be infused into those fanciful productions. In the twilight of a summer eve, a tall, dark figure, over which long and remote travel had thrown an out- landish aspect, was entering a village, not in " Fairy Londe," but within our own familiar boundaries. The staff on which this traveller leaned had been his com- panion from the spot where it grew, in the jungles of Hindostan; the hat that overshadowed his sombre brow had shielded him from the suns of Spain : but his cheek had been blackened by the red-hot wind of BH Arabian desert, and had felt the frozen breath of an Arctic region. Long sojourning amid wild and 528 TWICE-TOLD TALES. dangerons men, he still wore beneath his vest the ata^ ghan which he had once struck into the throat of a Turkish robber. In every foreign clime he had lost something of his New England characteristics; and, perhaps, from every people he had unconsciously bor- rowed a new peculiarity ; so that when the world-wart- derer again trod the street of his native village it is no wonder that he passed unrecognized, though excit- ing the gaze and curiosity of all. Yet, as his arm casually touched that of a yoimg woman who was wending her way to an evening lecture she started, and almost uttered a cry. " Ralph Cranfield ! " was the name that she half articulated. "Can that be my old playmate. Faith Egerton?" thought the traveller, looking round at her figure, but without pausing. Ealph Cranfield, from his youth upward, had felt himself marked out for a high destiny. He had im- bibed the idea — we say not whether it were revealed to him by witchcraft, or in a dream of prophecy, or that his brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon him as the oracles of a Sibyl ! — but he had im- bibed the idea, and held it firmest among his articles of faith, that three marvellous events of his life were to be confirmed to him by three signs. The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the one on which his youthful imagination had dwelt most fondly, was the discovery of the maid who alone, of all the maids on earth, could make him happy by her love. He was to roam around the world till he should meet a beautiful woman wearing on her bosom a jewel in the shape of a heart ; whether of pearl, or ruby, oi emerald, oi carbimcle, or a changeful opal, or perhapa THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 529 a priceless diamond, Kalph Cranfield Uttle cared, so long as it were a heart of one peculiar shape. On encountering this lovely stranger, he was bound to address her thus: "Maiden, I have brought you a heavy heart. May I rest its weight on you?" And if she were his fated bride — if their kindred souls were destined to form a union here below, which all eternity should only bind more closely — she would reply, with her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, — " This token, which I have worn so long, is the assur- ance that you may ! " And, secondly, Kalph Cranfield had a firm belief that there was a mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the earth, of which the burial-place would be revealed to none but him. When his feet should press upon the mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him pointing downward — whether carved of marble, or hewn in gigantic dimensions on the side of a rocky precipice, or perchance a hand of flame in empty air, he could not teU ; but, at least, he would discern a hand, the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the Latin word Effode — Dig I and digging there- abouts, the gold in coin or ingots, the precious stones, or of whatever else the treasure might consist, would be certain to reward his toil. The third and last of the miraculous events in the life of this high-destined man was to be the attainment of extensive influence and sway over his fellow-crea- tures. Whether he were to be a king and founder of an hereditary throne, or the victorious leader of a peo- ple contending for their freedom, or the apostle of a purified and regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show. As messengers of the sign by which Ealph Cranfield might recognize the simunons, three vener- TOL. I. 34 '630 TWICE-TOLD TALES. able men were to claim audience of him. The chief among them, a dignified and majestic person, arrayed, it may be supposed, in the flowing garments of an an- cient sage, would be the bearer of a wand or prophet's rod. With this wand, or rod, or staff, the venerable sage would trace a certain figure in the air, and then proceed to make known his heaven-instructed message; which, if obeyed, must lead to glorious results. With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his imaginative youth, Ralph Cranfleld had set forth to seek the maid, the treasure, and the venerable sage with his gift of extended empire. And had he foimd them ? Alas ! it was not with the aspect of a triumph- ant man, who had achieved a nobler destiny than all his fellows, but rather with the gloom of one strug- gling against peculiar and continual adversity, that he now passed homeward to his mother's cottage. He had come back, but only for a time, to lay aside the pilgrim's staff, trusting that his weary manhood would regain somewhat of the elasticity of youth, in the spot where his threefold fate had been foreshown him. There had been few changes in the village; for it was not one of those thriving places where a year's prosperity makes more than the havoc of a century's decay ; but like a gray hair in a young man's head, an antiquated little town, full of old maids, and aged ebns, and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to be the changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had a more majestic spread ; the weather-blackened houses were adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss ; and doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the burial ground, inscribed with names that had once been familiar in the village street. Yet, summing up all the mischief that ten years had wrought, it seemed THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 631 scarcely more than if Ealph Cranfield had gone forth that very morning, and dreamed a day-dream till the twilight, and then turned back again. But his heart grew cold because the village did not remember him as he remembered the village. " Here is the change ! " sighed he, striking his hand upon his breast. " Who is this man of thought and care, weary with world-wandering and heavy with dis- appointed hopes ? The youth returns not, who went forth so joyously I " And now Ealph Cranfield was at his mother's gate, in front of the small house where the old lady, with slender but sufficient means, had kept herself com- fortable during her son's long absence. Admitting himself within the enclosure, he leaned against a great, old tree, trifling with his own impatience, as people often do in those intervals when years are summed into a moment. He took a minute survey of the dwelling — its windows brightened with the sky gleam, its doorway, with the half of a millstone for a step, and the faintly-traced path waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with his childhood's friend, the old tree against which he leaned; and glancing his eye adown its trtmk, beheld something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a half oblit- erated inscription — the Latin word Effode — which he remembered to have carved in the bark of the tree, with a whole day's toil, when he had first begun to muse about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted a rather singular coincidence, that the bark just above the inscription, had put forA an excrescence, shaped not unlike a hand, with the forefinger pointing ob- liquely at the word of fate. Such, at least, was its appearance in the dus^ light. 532 TWICE-TOLD TALES. "Now a credulous man," said Balph Cranfield care- lessly to himself, "might suppose that the treasure which I have sought round the world lies buried, after all, at the very door of my mother's dwelling. That would be a jest indeed ! " More he thought not about the matter ; for now the door was opened, and an elderly woman appeared on the threshold, peering into the dusk to discover who it might be that had intruded on her premises, and was standing in the shadow of her tree. It was Salph Cranfield's mother. Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one to her joy and the other to his rest, — if quiet rest be found. But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled brow ; for his sleep and his wakefulness had alike been full of dreams. All the fervor was rekindled with which he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold mystery of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to have awaited him beneath his mother's roof, and thronged riotously around to welcome his return. In the well-remembered chamber, on the pillow where his infancy had slumbered, he had passed a wilder night than ever in an Arab tent, or when he had re- posed his head in the ghastly shades of a haunted for- est. A shadowy maid had stolen to his bedside, and laid her finger on the scintillating heart ; a hand of flame had j;lowed amid the darkness, pointing down- ward to a mystery within the earth ; a hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand, and beckoned the dreamer onward to a chair of state. The same phantoms, though fainter in the daylight, still flitted about the cottage, and mingled among the crowd of familiar faces that were drawn thither by the news of Balph Cran- field's return, to bid him welcome for his mother's THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 533 sake. There they found him, a tall, dark, stately man of foreign aspect, courteous in demeanor and mild of speech, yet with an abstracted eye, which seemed often to snatch a glance at the invisible. Meantime the widow Cranfield went bustling about the house, full of joy that she again had somebody to love, and be careful of, and for whom she might vex and tease herself with the petty troubles of daily life. It was nearly noon when she looked forth from the door, and descried three personages of note coming along the street, through the hot sunshine and the masses of elm-tree shade. , At length they reached her gate and undid the latch. " See, Ealph ! " exclaimed she, with maternal pride, " here is Squire Hawkwood and the two other select- men, coming on purpose to see you ! Now do teU them a good long story about what you have seen in foreign parts." The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawk- wood, was a very pompous, but excellent old gentle- man, the head and prime mover in all the affairs of the village, and universally acknowledgejfi to be one of the sagest men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion even then becoming antiquated, a three- cornered hat, and carried a silver-headed cane, the use of which seemed to be rather for flourishing in the air than for assisting the progress of his legs. His two companions were elderly and respectable yeomen, who, retaining an ante-revolutionary reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a little in the Squire's rear. As they approached along the pathway, Ealph Cran^ field sat in an ogken elbow chair, half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors, and enveloping their homely figures in the misty romance that pervaded bis mental world. 584 TWICE-TOLD TALES. " Here," fihought he, smiling at the conceit, "here come three elderly personages, and the first of the three is a venerable sage with a staff. What if this embassy should bring me the message of my fate ! " While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered, Ealph rose from his seat and advanced a few steps to receive them , and his stately figure and dark coun- tenance, as he bent courteously towards his guests, had a natural dignity, contrasting well with the bustling importance of the Squire. The old gentleman, accord- ing to invariable custom, gave an elaborate prelim- inary flourish with his cane in the air, then removed his three-cornered hat in order to wipe his brow, and finally proceeded to make known his errand. "My colleagues and myself," began the Squire, " are burdened with momentous duties, being jointly selectmen of this village. Our minds, for the space of three days past, have been laboriously bent on the selection of a suitable person to fill a most important office, and take upon himself a charge and rule which, wisely considered, may be ranked no lower than those of kings and potentates. And whereas you, our native townsman, are of good natural intellect, and well cultivated by foreign travel, and that certain va- garies and fantasies of your youth are doubtless long ago corrected; taking all these matters, I say, into due Consideration, we are of opinion that Providence hath sent you hither, at this juncture, for our very purpose." During this harangue, Cranfield gazed fixedly at the speaker, as if he beheld something mysterious and unearthly in his pompous little figure, and as if the Squire had worn the flowing robes of an ancient sage^ instead of a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoati THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 535 velvet breeches and silk stockings. Nor was his won- der without sufficient cause ; for the flourish of the Squire's staff, marvellous to relate, had described pre- cisely the signal in the air which was to ratify the message of the prophetic Sage whom Cranfield had sought around the world. ' "And what," inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor in his voice, " what may this office be, which is to equal me with kings and potentates? " "No less than instructor of our village school," an- swered Squire Hawkwood; "the office being now vacant by the death of the venerable Master Whita- ker, after a fifty years' incumbency." " I win consider of your proposal," replied Ealph Cranfield, hurriedly, " and will make known my de- cision within three days." After a few more words the village dignitary and his companions took their leave. But to Cranfield's fancy their images were still present, and became more and more invested with the dim awfulness of figures which had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterwards had shown themselves in his waking moments, assuming homely aspects among familiar things. His mind dwelt upon the features of the Squire, till they grew confused with those of the vis- ionary Sage, and one appeared but the shadow of the other. The same visage, he now thought, had looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops ; the same form had beckoned to him among the colon- nades of the Alhambra ; the same figure had mistUy revealed itself through the ascending steam of the Great Geyser. At every effort of his memory he rec- ognized some trait of the dreamy Messenger of Des- tiny in this pompous, bustling, seU-importaut, little 536 TWICE-TOLD TALES. great man of the village. Amid such musings Balph Cranfield sat all day in the cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his mother's thousand ques- tions about his travels and adventures. At sunset he roused himself to take a stroll, and, passing the a,ged elm-tree, his eye was again caught by the sem- blance of a hand pointing downward at the half-ob- literated inscription. As Cranfield walked down the street of the viUagBj the level sunbeams threw his shadow far before him ; and he fancied that as his shadow walked among dis* tant objects, so had there been a presentiment stalking in advance of him throughout his life. And when he drew near each object, over which his tall shadow had preceded him, still it proved to be one of the fanuliai recollections of his infancy and youth. Every crook in the pathway was remembered. Even the more tran- sitory characteristics of the scene were the same as in by-gone days. A company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and refreshed him with their fra- grant breath. " It is sweeter," thought he, " than the perfume which was wafted to our ship from the Spice Islands." The round little figure of a child roUed from a doorway, and lay laughing almost be- neath Cranfield's feet. The dark and stately man stooped down and, lifting the infant, restored him to his mother's arms. " The children," said he to him- self — and sighed and smiled — " the children are to be my charge I " And while a flow of natural feeling gushed like a well-spring in his heart, he came to a dwelling which he could nowise forbear to enter. A Bweet voice, which seemed to come from a deep and tender soul, was warbling a plaintive little air within. He bent his head and passed through the lowlj THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 537 door. As his foot sounded upon the threshold, a young woman advanced from the dusky interior of the house, at first hastily, and then with a more uncer- tain step, till they met face to face. There was a singular contrast in tbcir two figures : he dark and picturesque — one who had battled with the world, whom aU. suns had shone upon, and whom all winds had blown on a varied course ; she neat, comely, and quiet — quiet eve» in her agitation, as if aU her emotions had been pubdued to the peaceful tenor of her life. Yet theii faces, all unlike as they were, had an expression that seemed not so alien, a glow of kindred feeling flashing upward anew from half-extin- guished embers. " You are welcome home ! " said Faith Egerton. But Cranfield did not immediately answer ; for his eye had been caught by an ornament in the shape of a Henrt wldch Faith wore as a brooch upon her bosons. The material was the ordinary white quartz ; and lie recollected having himself shaped it out of one of those Indian arrowheads which are so often found ia the ancient haunts of the red men. It was precisely on the pattern of that worn by the visionary Maid. When Cranfield departed on his shadowy search he had bestowed this brooch, in a gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton. " So, Faith, you have kept the Heart I " said he at length. "Yes," said she, blushing deeply; then more gayly, " and what else have you brought me from beyond the sea?" " Faith ! " replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated words by an uncontrollable impulse, "I have br ught you nothing but a heavy heart 1 May I rest 11/ weight on you 2." B38 TWICE-TOLD TALES. " This token which I have worn so long," said Faith, laying her tremulous finger on the Heart, "ig the assurance that you may ! " " Faith ! Faith ! " cried Cranfield, clasping her in his arms, " you have interpreted my wild and weary dream ! " ' Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the mysterious treasure, he was to till the earth around his mother's dwelling, and reap its products ! Instead of warlike command, or regal or religious sway, he was to rule over the village children 1 And now the visionary Maid had faded from his fancy, and in her place he saw the playmate of his childhood! Would all who cherish such wild wishes but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperifrjT, and happiness, within those precincts and in that station where Providence itself has cast liieir lot. Happy they who read the riddle without ', weary world search, or a lifetime spent in vain ! THE BnX