"Dear me!" said Miss Manners, "I hope you haven't hurt yourself, Sir?"

"I have fear that I am hurt, Madame," said he, trying to smile. "I cannot to move but it pains me."

"Where is it? Is it your leg or your arm? Try and move one at a time," said Miss Lucinda, promptly.

The left leg was helpless, it could not answer to the effort, and the stranger lay back on the ground pale with the pain. Miss Lucinda took her lavender-bottle out of her pocket and softly bathed his head and face; then she took off her sack and folded it up under his head, and put the lavender beside him. She was good at an emergency, and she showed it.

"You must lie quite still," said she; "you must not try to move till I come back with help, or your leg will be hurt more."

With that she went away, and presently returned with two strong men and the long shutter of a shop-window. To this extempore litter she carefully moved the Frenchman, and then her neighbors lifted him and carried him into the parlor, where Miss Lucinda's chintz lounge was already spread with a tight-pinned sheet to receive the poor man, and while her helpers put him to bed she put on her bonnet and ran for the doctor.

Doctor Colton did his best for his patient, but pronounced it an impossibility to remove him till the bone should be joined firmly, as a thorough cure was all-essential to his professional prospects. And now, indeed, Miss Lucinda had her hands full. A nurse could not be afforded, but Monsieur Leclerc was added to the list of old Israel's "chores," and what other nursing he needed Miss Lucinda was glad to do; for her kind heart was full of self-reproaches to think it was her pig that had knocked down the poor man, and her mop-handle that had twisted itself across and under his leg, and aided, if not caused, its breakage. So Israel came in four or five times a day to do what he could, and Miss Lucinda played nurse at other times to the best of her ability. Such flavorous gruels and porridges as she concocted! such tisanes after her guest's instructions! such dainty soups, and sweetbreads, and cutlets, served with such neatness! After his experience of a second-rate boarding-house, Monsieur Leclerc thought himself in a gastronomic paradise. Moreover, these tiny meals were garnished with flowers, which his French taste for color and decoration appreciated: two or three stems of lilies-of-the-valley in their folded green leaves, cool and fragrant; a moss-rosebud and a spire of purple-gray lavender bound together with ribbon-grass; or three carnations set in glittering myrtle-sprays, the last acquisition of the garden.

Miss Lucinda enjoyed nursing thoroughly, and a kindlier patient no woman ever had. Her bright needle flew faster than ever through the cold linen and flaccid cambric of the shirts and cravats she fashioned, while he told her, in his odd idioms, stories of his life in France, and the curious customs both of society and cuisinerie, with which last he showed a surprising acquaintance. Truth to tell, when Monsieur Leclerc said he had been a member of the Duc de Montmorenci's household, he withheld the other half of this truth,—that he had been his valet-de-chambre: but it was an hereditary service, and seemed to him as different a thing from common servitude as a peer's office in the bedchamber differs from a lackey's. Indeed, Monsieur Leclerc was a gentleman in his own way,—not of blood, but of breeding; and while he had faithfully served the "aristocrats," as his father had done before him, he did not limit that service to their prosperity, but in their greatest need descended to menial offices, and forgot that he could dance and ride and fence almost as well as his young master. But a bullet from a barricade put an end to his duty there, and he hated utterly the democratic rule that had overturned for him both past and future, so he escaped, and came to America, the grand resort of refugees, where he had labored, as he best knew how, for his own support, and kept to himself his disgust at the manners and customs of the barbarians. Now, for the first time, he was at home and happy. Miss Lucinda's delicate fashions suited him exactly; he adored her taste for the beautiful, which she was unconscious of; he enjoyed her cookery, and though he groaned within himself at the amount of debt he was incurring, yet he took courage from her kindness to believe she would not be a hard creditor, and, being naturally cheerful, put aside his anxieties and amused himself as well as her with his stories, his quavering songs, his recipes for pot-au-feu, tisane, and pates, at once economical and savory. Never had a leg of lamb or a piece of roast beef gone so far in her domestic experience, a chicken seemed almost to outlive its usefulness in its various forms of reappearance, and the salads he devised were as wonderful as the omelets he superintended, or the gay dances he played on his beloved violin, as soon as he could sit up enough to manage it. Moreover,—I should say mostover, if the word were admissible,—Monsieur Leclerc lifted a great weight before long from Miss Lucinda's mind. He began by subduing Fun to his proper place by a mild determination that completely won the dog's heart. "Women and spaniels," the world knows, "like kicking"; and though kicks were no part of the good man's Rareyfaction of Fun, he certainly used a certain amount of coercion, and the dog's lawful owner admired the skill of the teacher and enjoyed the better manners of the pupil thoroughly; she could do twice as much sewing now, and never were her nights disturbed by a bark, for the dog crouched by his new friend's bed in the parlor and lay quiet there. Toby was next undertaken, and proved less amenable to discipline; he stood in some slight awe of the man who tried to teach him, but still continued to sally out at Miss Lucinda's feet, to spring at her caressing hand when he felt ill-humored, and to claw Fun's patient nose and his approaching paws when his misplaced sentimentality led him to caress the cat; but after a while a few well-timed slaps administered with vigor cured Toby of his worst tricks, though every blow made Miss Lucinda wince, and almost shook her good opinion of Monsieur Leclerc: for in these long weeks he had wrought out a good opinion of himself in her mind, much to her own surprise; she could not have believed a man could be so polite, so gentle, so patient, and above all so capable of ruling without tyranny. Miss Lucinda was puzzled.

One day, as Monsieur Leclerc was getting better, just able to go about on crutches, Israel came into the kitchen, and Miss Manners went out to see him. She left the door open, and along with the odor of a pot of raspberry-jam scalding over the fire, sending its steams of leaf- and insect-fragrance through the little house, there came in also the following conversation.

"Israel," said Miss Lucinda, in a hesitating and rather forlorn tone, "I have been thinking,—I don't know what to do with Piggy. He is quite too big for me to keep. I'm afraid of him, if he gets out; and he eats up the garden."

"Well, that is a consider'ble swaller for a pig, Miss Lucindy; but I b'lieve you're abaout right abaout keepin' on him. He is too big,—that's a fact; but he's so like a human cre'tur', I'd jest abaout as lieves slarter Orrin. I declare, I don't know no more 'n a taown-haouse goose what to do with him!"

"If I gave him away, I suppose he would be fatted and killed, of course?"

"I guess he'd be killed, likely; but as for fattenin' on him, I'd jest as soon undertake to fatten a salt codfish. He's one o' the racers, an' they're as holler as hogsheads: you can fill 'em up to their noses, ef you're a mind to spend your corn, and they'll caper it all off their bones in twenty-four haours. I b'lieve, ef they was tied neck an' heels an' stuffed, they'd wiggle thin betwixt feedin'-times. Why, Orrin, he raised nine on 'em, and every darned critter's as poor as Job's turkey, to-day: they a'n't no good. I'd as lieves ha' had nine chestnut rails,—an' a little lieveser, 'cause they don't eat nothin'."

"You don't know of any poor person who'd like to have a pig, do you?" said Miss Lucinda, wistfully.

"Well, the poorer they was, the quicker they'd eat him up, I guess,—ef they could eat such a razor-back."

"Oh, I don't like to think of his being eaten! I wish he could be got rid of some other way. Don't you think he might be killed in his sleep, Israel?"

This was a little too much for Israel. An irresistible flicker of laughter twitched his wrinkles and bubbled in his throat.

"I think it's likely 'twould wake him up," said he, demurely. "Killin's killin', and a cre'tur' can't sleep over it 's though 't was the stomach-ache. I guess he'd kick some, ef he was asleep,—and screech some, too!"

"Dear me!" said Miss Lucinda, horrified at the idea. "I wish he could be sent out to run in the woods. Are there any good woods near here, Israel?"

"I don't know but what he'd as lieves be slartered to once as to starve, an' be hunted down out in the lots. Besides, there a'n't nobody as I knows of would like a hog to be a-rootin' round amongst their turnips and young wheat."

"Well, what I shall do with him I don't know!" despairingly exclaimed Miss Lucinda. "He was such a dear little thing when you brought him, Israel! Do you remember how pink his pretty little nose was,—just like a rosebud,—and how bright his eyes looked, and his cunning legs? And now he's grown so big and fierce! But I can't help liking him, either."

"He's a cute critter, that's sartain; but he does too much rootin' to have a pink nose now, I expect;—there's consider'ble on't, so I guess it looks as well to have it gray. But I don't know no more 'n you do what to do abaout it."

"If I could only get rid of him without knowing what became of him!" exclaimed Miss Lucinda, squeezing her forefinger with great earnestness, and looking both puzzled and pained.

"If Mees Lucinda would pairmit?" said a voice behind her.

She turned round to see Monsieur Leclerc on his crutches, just in the parlor-door.

"I shall, Mees, myself dispose of Piggee, if it please. I can. I shall have no sound; he shall to go away like a silent snow, to trouble you no more, never!"

"Oh, Sir! if you could! But I don't see how!"

"If Mees was to see, it would not be to save her pain. I shall have him to go by magique to fiery land."

Fairy-land, probably! But Miss Lucinda did not perceive the equivoque.

"Nor yet shall I trouble Meester Israyel. I shall have the aid of myself and one good friend that I have; and some night when you rise of the morning, he shall not be there."

Miss Lucinda breathed a deep sigh of relief.

"I am greatly obliged,—I shall be, I mean," said she.

"Well, I'm glad enough to wash my hands on't," said Israel. "I shall hanker arter the critter some, but he's a-gettin' too big to be handy; 'n' it's one comfort abaout critters, you ken get rid on 'em somehaow when they're more plague than profit. But folks has got to be let alone, excep' the Lord takes 'em; an' He don't allers see fit."

What added point and weight to these final remarks of old Israel was the well-known fact that he suffered at home from the most pecking and worrying of wives, and had been heard to say in some moment of unusual frankness that he "didn't see how't could be sinful to wish Miss Slater was in heaven, for she'd be lots better off, and other folks too!"

Miss Lucinda never knew what befell her pig one fine September night; she did not even guess that a visit paid to Monsieur by one of his pupils, a farmer's daughter just out of Dalton, had anything to do with this enlevement; she was sound asleep in her bed up-stairs, when her guest shod his crutches with old gloves, and limped out to the garden-gate by dawn, where he and the farmer tolled the animal out of his sty and far down the street by tempting red apples, and then Farmer Steele took possession of him, and he was seen no more. No, the first thing Miss Lucinda knew of her riddance was when Israel put his head into the back-door that same morning, some four hours afterward, and said, with a significant nod,—

"He's gone!"

After all his other chores were done, Israel had a conference with Monsieur Leclerc, and the two sallied into the garden, and in an hour had dismantled the low dwelling, cleared away the wreck, levelled and smoothed its site, and Monsieur, having previously provided himself with an Isabella-grape-vine, planted it on this forsaken spot, and trained it carefully against the end of the shed: strange to say, though it was against all precedent to transplant a grape in September, it lived and flourished. Miss Lucinda's gratitude to Monsieur Leclerc was altogether disproportioned, as he thought, to his slight service. He could not understand fully her devotion to her pets, but he respected it, and aided it whenever he could, though he never surmised the motive that adorned Miss Lucinda's table with such delicate superabundance after the late departure, and laid bundles of lavender-flowers in his tiny portmanteau till the very leather seemed to gather fragrance.

Before long, Monsieur Leclerc was well enough to resume his classes, and return to his boarding-house; but the latter was filled, and only offered a prospect of vacancy in some three weeks after his application; so he returned home somewhat dejected, and as he sat by the little parlor-fire after tea, he said to his hostess, in a reluctant tone,—

"Mees Lucinda, you have been of the kindest to the poor alien. I have it in my mind to relieve you of this care very rapidly, but it is not in the Fates that I do. I have gone to my house of lodgings, and they cannot to give me a chamber as yet I have fear that I must yet rely me on your goodness for some time more, if you can to entertain me so much more of time?"

"Why, I shall like to, Sir," replied the kindly, simple-hearted old maid. "I'm sure you are not a mite of trouble, and I never can forget what you did for my pig."

A smile flitted across the Frenchman's thin, dark face, and he watched her glittering needles a few minutes in silence before he spoke again.

"But I have other things to say of the most unpleasant to me, Mees Lucinda. I have a great debt for the goodness and care you to me have lavished. To the angels of the good God we must submit to be debtors, but there are also of mortal obligations. I have lodged in your mansion for more of ten weeks, and to you I pay yet no silver, but it is that I have it not at present—I must ask of your goodness to wait."

The old maid's shining black eyes grew soft as she looked at him.

"Why!" said she, "I don't think you owe me much of anything, Mr. Leclerc. I never knew things last as they have since you came. I really think you brought a blessing. I wish you would please to think you don't owe me anything."

The Frenchman's great brown eyes shone with suspicious dew.

"I cannot to forget that I owe to you far more than any silver of man repays; but I should not think to forget that I also owe to you silver, or I should not be worthy of a man's name. No, Mees! I have two hands and legs. I will not let a woman most solitary spend for me her good self."

"Well," said Miss Lucinda, "if you will be uneasy till you pay me, I would rather have another kind of pay than money. I should like to know how to dance. I never did learn, when I was a girl, and I think it would be good exercise."

Miss Lucinda supported this pious fiction through with a simplicity that quite deceived the Frenchman. He did not think it so incongruous as it was. He had seen women of sixty, rouged, and jewelled, and furbelowed, foot it deftly in the halls of the Faubourg St. Germain in his earliest youth; and this cheery, healthy woman, with lingering blooms on either cheek, and uncapped head of curly black hair but slightly strewn with silver, seemed quite as fit a subject for the accomplishment. Besides, he was poor,—and this offered so easy a way of paying the debt he had so dreaded! Well said Solomon,—"The destruction of the poor is their poverty!" For whose moral sense, delicate sensitivenesses, generous longings, will not sometimes give way to the stringent need of food and clothing, the gall of indebtedness, and the sinking consciousness of an empty purse and threatening possibilities?

Monsieur Leclerc's face brightened.

"Ah! with what grand pleasure shall I teach you the dance!"

But it fell dark again as he proceeded,—

"Though not one, nor two, nor three, nor four quarters shall be of value sufficient to achieve my payment."

"Then, if that troubles you, why, I should like to take some French lessons in the evening, when you don't have classes. I learned French when I was quite a girl, but not to speak it very easily; and if I could get some practice and the right way to speak, I should be glad."

"And I shall give you the real Parisien tone, Mees Lucinda!" said he, proudly. "I shall be as if it were no more an exile when I repeat my tongue to you!"

And so it was settled. Why Miss Lucinda should learn French any more than dancing was not a question in Monsieur Leclerc's mind. It is true, that Chaldaic would, in all probability, be as useful to our friend as French; and the flying over poles and hanging by toes and fingers, so eloquently described by the Apostle of the Body in these "Atlantic" pages, would have been as well adapted to her style and capacity as dancing;—but his own language, and his own profession! what man would not have regarded these as indispensable to improvement, particularly when they paid his board?

During the latter three weeks of Monsieur Leclerc's stay with Miss Lucinda he made himself surprisingly useful. He listed the doors against approaching winter breezes,—he weeded in the garden,—trimmed, tied, trained, wherever either good office was needed,—mended china with an infallible cement, and rickety chairs with the skill of a cabinet-maker; and whatever hard or dirty work he did, he always presented himself at table in a state of scrupulous neatness: his long brown hands showed no trace of labor; his iron-gray hair was reduced to smoothest order; his coat speckless, if threadbare; and he ate like a gentleman, an accomplishment not always to be found in the "best society," as the phrase goes,—whether the best in fact ever lacks it is another thing. Miss Lucinda appreciated these traits,—they set her at ease; and a pleasanter home-life could scarce be painted than now enlivened the little wooden house. But three weeks pass away rapidly; and when the rusty portmanteau was gone from her spare chamber, and the well-worn boots from the kitchen-corner, and the hat from its nail, Miss Lucinda began to find herself wonderfully lonely. She missed the armfuls of wood in her wood-box, that she had to fill laboriously, two sticks at a time; she missed the other plate at her tiny round table, the other chair beside her fire; she missed that dark, thin, sensitive face, with its rare and sweet smile; she wanted her story-teller, her yarn-winder, her protector, back again. Good gracious! to think of an old lady of forty-seven entertaining such sentiments for a man!

Presently the dancing-lessons commenced. It was thought advisable that Miss Manners should enter a class, and, in the fervency of her good intentions, she did not demur. But gratitude and respect had to strangle with persistent hands the little serpents of the ridiculous in Monsieur Leclerc's soul, when he beheld his pupil's first appearance. What reason was it, O rose of seventeen, adorning thyself with cloudy films of lace and sparks of jewelry before the mirror that reflects youth and beauty, that made Miss Lucinda array herself in a brand-new dress of yellow muslin-de-laine strewed with round green spots, and displace her customary hand-kerchief for a huge tamboured collar, on this eventful occasion? Why, oh, why did she tie up the roots of her black hair with an unconcealable scarlet string? And most of all, why was her dress so short, her slipper-strings so big and broad, her thick slippers so shapeless by reason of the corns and bunions that pertained to the feet within? The "instantaneous rush of several guardian angels" that once stood dear old Hepzibah Pynchon in good stead was wanting here,—or perhaps they stood by all-invisible, their calm eyes softened with love deeper than tears, at this spectacle so ludicrous to man, beholding in the grotesque dress and adornments only the budding of life's divinest blossom, and in the strange skips and hops of her first attempts at dancing only the buoyancy of those inner wings that goodness and generosity and pure self-devotion were shaping for a future strong and stately flight upward. However, men, women, and children do not see with angelic eyes, and the titterings of her fellow-pupils were irrepressible; one bouncing girl nearly choked herself with her hand-kerchief trying not to laugh, and two or three did not even try. Monsieur Leclerc could not blame them,—at first he could scarce control his own facial muscles; but a sense of remorse smote him, as he saw how unconscious and earnest the little woman was, and remembered how often those knotty hands and knobbed feet had waited on his need or his comfort. Presently he tapped on his violin for a few moments' respite, and approached Miss Lucinda as respectfully as if she had been a queen.

"You are ver' tired, Mees Lucinda?" said he.

"I am a little, Sir," said she, out of breath. "I am not used to dancing; it's quite an exertion."

"It is that truly. If you are too much tired, is it better to wait? I shall finish for you the lesson till I come to-night for a French conversation?"

"I guess I will go home," said the simple little lady. "I am some afraid of getting rheumatism; but use makes perfect, and I shall stay through next time, no doubt."

"So I believe," said Monsieur, with his best bow, as Miss Lucinda departed and went home, pondering all the way what special delicacy she should provide for tea.

"My dear young friends," said Monsieur Leclerc, pausing with the uplifted bow in his hand, before he recommenced his lesson, "I have observe that my new pupil does make you much to laugh. I am not so surprise, for you do not know all, and the good God does not robe all angels in one manner; but she have taken me to her mansion with a leg broken, and have nursed me like a saint of the blessed, nor with any pay of silver except that I teach her the dance and the French. They are pay for the meat and the drink, but she will have no more for her good patience and care. I like to teach you the dance, but she could teach you the saints' ways, which are better. I think you will no more to laugh."

"No! I guess we won't!" said the bouncing girl with great emphasis, and the color rose over more than one young face.

After that day Miss Lucinda received many a kind smile and hearty welcome, and never did anybody venture even a grimace at her expense. But it must be acknowledged that her dancing was at least peculiar. With a sanitary view of the matter, she meant to make it exercise, and fearful was the skipping that ensued. She chassed on tiptoe, and balanced with an indescribable hopping twirl, that made one think of a chickadee pursuing its quest of food on new-ploughed ground; and some late-awakened feminine instinct of dress, restrained, too, by due economy, indued her with the oddest decorations that woman ever devised. The French lessons went on more smoothly. If Monsieur Leclerc's Parisian ear was tortured by the barbarous accent of Vermont, at least he bore it with heroism, since there was nobody else to hear; and very pleasant, both to our little lady and her master, were these long winter evenings, when they diligently waded through Racine, and even got as far as the golden periods of Chateaubriand. The pets fared badly for petting in these days; they were fed and waited on, but not with the old devotion; it began to dawn on Miss Lucinda's mind that something to talk to was preferable, as a companion, even to Fun, and that there might be a stranger sweetness in receiving care and protection than in giving it.

Spring came at last. Its softer skies were as blue over Dalton as in the wide fields without, and its footsteps as bloom-bringing in Miss Lucinda's garden as in mead or forest. Now Monsieur Leclerc came to her aid again at odd minutes, and set her flower-beds with mignonette borders, and her vegetable-garden with salad herbs of new and flourishing kinds. Yet not even the sweet season seemed to hurry the catastrophe that we hope, dearest reader, thy tender eyes have long seen impending. No, for this quaint alliance a quainter Cupid waited,—the chubby little fellow with a big head and a little arrow, who waits on youth and loveliness, was not wanted here. Lucinda's God of Love wore a lank, hard-featured, grizzly shape, no less than that of Israel Slater, who marched into the garden one fine June morning, earlier than usual, to find Monsieur in his blouse, hard at work weeding the cauliflower-bed.

"Good mornin', Sir! good mornin'!" said Israel, in answer to the Frenchman's greeting. "This is a real slick little garden-spot as ever I see, and a pootty house, and a real clever woman too. I'll be skwitched, ef it a'n't a fust-rate consarn, the hull on't. Be you ever a-goin' back to France, Mister?"

"No, my goot friend. I have nobody there. I stay here; I have friend here: but there,—oh, non! je ne reviendrai pas! ah, jamais! jamais!"

"Pa's dead, eh? or shamming? Well, I don't understand your lingo; but ef you're a-goin' to stay here, I don't see why you don't hitch hosses with Miss Lucindy."

Monsieur Leclerc looked up astonished.

"Horses, my friend? I have no horse!"

"Thunder 'n' dry trees! I didn't say you hed, did I? But that comes o' usin' what Parson Hyde calls figgurs, I s'pose. I wish't he'd use one kind o' figgurin' a leetle more; he'd pay me for that wood-sawin'. I didn't mean nothin' about hosses. I sot out fur to say, Why don't ye marry Miss Lucindy?"

"I?" gasped Monsieur,—"I, the foreign, the poor? I could not to presume so!"

"Well, I don't see 's it's sech drefful presumption. Ef you're poor, she's a woman, and real lonesome too; she ha'n't got nuther chick nor child belongin' to her, and you're the only man she ever took any kind of a notion to. I guess 't would be jest as much for her good as yourn."

"Hush, good Is-ray-el! it is good to stop there. She would not to marry after such years of goodness: she is a saint of the blessed."

"Well, I guess saints sometimes fellerships with sinners; I've heerd tell they did; and ef I was you, I'd make trial for 't. Nothin' ventur', nothin' have."

Whereupon Israel walked off, whistling.

Monsieur Leclerc's soul was perturbed within him by these suggestions; he pulled up two young cauliflowers and reset their places with pigweeds; he hoed the nicely sloped border of the bed flat to the path, and then flung the hoe across the walk, and went off to his daily occupation with a new idea in his head. Nor was it an unpleasant one. The idea of a transition from his squalid and pinching boarding-house to the delicate comfort of Miss Lucinda's menage, the prospect of so kind and good a wife to care for his hitherto dreaded future,—all this was pleasant. I cannot honestly say he was in love with our friend; I must even confess that whatever element of that nature existed between the two was now all on Miss Lucinda's side, little as she knew it. Certain it is, that, when she appeared that day at the dancing-class in a new green calico flowered with purple, and bows on her slippers big enough for a bonnet, it occurred to Monsieur Leclerc, that, if they were married, she would take no more lessons! However, let us not blame him; he was a man, and a poor one; one must not expect too much from men, or from poverty; if they are tolerably good, let us canonize them even, it is so hard for the poor creatures! And to do Monsieur Leclerc justice, he had a very thorough respect and admiration for Miss Lucinda. Years ago, in his stormy youth-time, there had been a pair of soft-fringed eyes that looked into his as none would ever look again,—and they murdered her, those mad wild beasts of Paris, in the chapel where she knelt at her pure prayers,—murdered her because she knelt beside an aristocrat, her best friend, the Duchess of Montmorenci, who had taken the pretty peasant from her own estate to bring her up for her maid. Jean Leclerc had lifted that pale shape from the pavement and buried it himself; what else he buried with it was invisible; but now he recalled the hour with a long, shuddering sigh, and, hiding his face in his hands, said softly, "The violet is dead,—there is no spring for her. I will have now an amaranth,—it is good for the tomb."

Whether Miss Lucinda's winter dress suggested this floral metaphor let us not inquire. Sacred be sentiment,—when there is even a shadow of reality about it!—when it becomes a profession, and confounds itself with millinery and shades of mourning, it is—"bosh," as the Turkeys say.

So that very evening Monsieur Leclerc arrayed himself in his best, to give another lesson to Miss Lucinda. But, somehow or other, the lesson was long in beginning; the little parlor looked so home-like and so pleasant, with its bright lamp and gay bunch of roses on the table, that it was irresistible temptation to lounge and linger. Miss Lucinda had the volume of Florian in her hands, and was wondering why he did not begin, when the book was drawn away, and a hand laid on both of hers.

"Lucinda!" he began, "I give you no lesson to-night. I have to ask. Dear Mees, will you to marry your poor slave?"

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Lucinda.

Don't laugh at her, Miss Tender-eyes! You will feel just so yourself some day, when Alexander Augustus says, "Will you be mine, loveliest of jour sex?" only you won't feel it half so strongly, for you are young, and love is Nature to youth, but it is a heavenly surprise to age.

Monsieur Leclerc said nothing. He had a heart after all, and it was touched now by the deep emotion that flushed Miss Lucinda's face, and made her tremble so violently,—but presently he spoke.

"Do not!" said he. "I am wrong. I presume. Forgive the stranger!"

"Oh, dear!" said poor Lucinda again,—"oh, you know it isn't that! but how can you like me?"

There, Mademoiselle! there's humility for you! you will never say that to Alexander Augustus!

Monsieur Leclerc soothed this frightened, happy, incredulous little woman into quiet before very long; and if he really began to feel a true affection for her from the moment he perceived her humble and entire devotion to him, who shall blame him? Not I. If we were all heroes, who would be valet-de-chambre? if we were all women, who would be men? He was very good as far as he went; and if you expect the chivalries of grace out of Nature, you "may expect," as old Fuller saith. So it was peacefully settled that they should be married, with a due amount of tears and smiles on Lucinda's part, and a great deal of tender sincerity on Monsieur's. She missed her dancing-lesson next day, and when Monsieur Leclerc came in the evening he found a shade on her happy face.

"Oh, dear!" said she, as he entered.

"Oh, dear!" was Lucinda's favorite aspiration. Had she thought of it as an Anglicizing of "O Dieu!" perhaps she would have dropped it; but this time she went on headlong, with a valorous despair,—

"I have thought of something! I'm afraid I can't! Monsieur, aren't you a Romanist?"

"What is that?" said he, surprised.

"A Papist,—a Catholic!"

"Ah!" he returned, sighing, "once I was bon Catholique,—once in my gone youth; after then I was nothing but the poor man who bats for his life; now I am of the religion that shelters the stranger and binds up the broken poor."

Monsieur was a diplomatist. This melted Miss Lucinda's orthodoxy right down; she only said,—

"Then you will go to church with me?"

"And to the skies above, I pray," said Monsieur, kissing her knotty hand like a lover.

So in the earliest autumn they were married, Monsieur having previously presented Miss Lucinda with a delicate plaided gray silk for her wedding attire, in which she looked almost young; and old Israel was present at the ceremony, which was briefly performed by Parson Hyde in Miss Manners's parlor. They did not go to Niagara, nor to Newport; but that afternoon Monsieur Leclerc brought a hired rockaway to the door, and took his bride a drive into the country. They stopped beside a pair of bars, where Monsieur hitched his horse, and, taking Lucinda by the hand, led her into Farmer Steele's orchard, to the foot of his biggest apple-tree. There she beheld a little mound, at the head and foot of which stood a daily rose-bush shedding its latest wreaths of bloom, and upon the mound itself was laid a board on which she read,

"Here lie the bones of poor Piggy."

Mrs. Lucinda burst into tears, and Monsieur, picking a bud from the bush, placed it in her hand, and led her tenderly back to the rockaway.

That evening Mrs. Lucinda was telling the affair to old Israel with so much feeling that she did not perceive at all the odd commotion in his face, till, as she repeated the epitaph to him, he burst out with,—"He didn't say what become o' the flesh, did he?"—and therewith fled through the kitchen-door. For years afterward Israel would entertain a few favored auditors with his opinion of the matter, screaming till the tears rolled down his cheeks,—

"That was the beateree of all the weddin'-towers I ever heerd tell on. Goodness! it's enough to make the Wanderin' Jew die o' larfin'!"

* * * * *

A SOLDIER'S ANCESTRY.

When Nadir asked a princess for his son, And Delhi's throne required his pedigree, He stared upon the messenger as one Who should have known his birth of bravery.

"Go back," he cried, in undissembled scorn, "And bear this answer to your waiting lord:— 'My child is noble! for, though lowly born, He is the son and grandson of the Sword!'"



FIBRILIA.

There are not a few timid souls who imagine that England is falling into decay. Our Cousin John is apt to complain. He has been accustomed to enlarge upon his debts, his church-rates and poor-rates, his taxes on air, light, motion, "everything, from the ribbons of the bride to the brass nails of the coffin," upon the wages of his servants both on the land and the water, upon his Irish famine and exodus, and his vast expenses at home and abroad. And when we consider how small is his homestead, a few islands in a high latitude inferior to those of Japan in size and climate, and how many of his family have left him to better their condition, one might easily conclude that he had passed his meridian, and that his prospects were as cloudy as his atmosphere.

But our Cousin John, with a strong constitution, is in a green old age, and still knows how to manage his property.

Within the last two years he has quietly extinguished sixty millions of his debts in terminable annuities. He has improved his outlying lands of Scotland and Ireland, ransacked the battle-fields of Europe for bone-dust and the isles of the Pacific for guano, and imported enough to fertilize four millions of acres, and, not content with the produce of his home-farm, imports the present year more than four millions of tons of grain and corn to feed nineteen millions of his people.

He has carried his annual exports up to six hundred and thirty millions of dollars, and importing more than he exports still leaves the world his debtor. He has a strong fancy for new possessions, and selects the most productive spots for his plantations. When he desired muslin, calico, and camel's-hair shawls for his family, he put his finger on India; and when he called for those great staples of commerce, indigo, saltpetre, jute, flax, and linseed, India sent them at his bidding. When he required coffee, he found Ceylon a Spice Island, and at his demand it furnished him with an annual supply of sixty millions of pounds. He required more sugar for his coffee, and by shipping a few coolies from Calcutta and Bombay to the Mauritius, once the Isle of France, it yields him annually two hundred and forty million pounds of sugar, more than St. Domingo ever yielded in the palmy days of slavery. He wanted wool, and his flocks soon overspread the plains of Australia, tendering him the finest fleeces, and his shepherds improved their leisure not in playing like Tityrus on the reed, but in opening for him mines of copper and gold. He had his eye on California, but Fremont was too quick for him, and he now contents himself with pocketing a large proportion of her gold, to say nothing of the silver of Mexico and Peru.

Wherever there is a canal to be excavated, a railway to be built, or a line of steamers to be established, our Cousin John is ready with a full purse to favor the enterprise. He turns even his sailors and soldiers to good account: the other day he subdued one hundred and fifty millions of rebels in the Indies, and then we find him dictating a treaty of peace and a tribute to the Emperor of China from the ruins of his summer-palace and the walls of Pekin. Although generally well disposed, especially towards his kith and kin this side the water, he is choleric, and if his best customers treat him ill, he does not hesitate to knock them down. Although dependent on Russia for his hemp and naval stores, and on China for his raw silk and teas, he suffers no such considerations to deter him from fighting, and usually gets some advantage when he comes to terms. He is belting the world with colonies, and forming agencies for his children wherever he can send the messengers of his commerce. At this very moment he is considering whether he shall transport coolies from China to Australia, Natal, or the Feegee Islands, to raise his cotton and help put down Secession and export-duties, or whether he shall give a new stimulus to India cotton by railways and irrigation. He seems to prosper in all his business; for the "Edinburgh Review" reports him worth six thousand millions of pounds, at least,—a very comfortable provision for his family.

The wealth and power of Great Britain are supposed to rest upon her mines of iron and coal. These undoubtedly help to sustain the fabric. With her iron and coal, she fashions and propels the winged Mercuries of her commerce; with these and the clay that underlies her soil, she erects her factories and workshops; these form the Briarean arms by which she fabricates her tissues. But it is by more minute columns than these, it is by the hollow tubes revealed by the microscope, the fibres of silk, wool, and flax, hemp, jute, and cotton, that she sustains the great structure of her wealth. These she spins, weaves, and prints into draperies which exact a tribute from the world. During the year 1860 Great Britain imported or produced a million tons of such fibres, an amount equal to five million bales of cotton, more than one-half of which were in cotton alone. These fibres it is our purpose to examine.

* * * * *

The thread of the silk-worm came early into use. The Chinese ascribe its introduction to the wife of one of their emperors, to whom divine honors were subsequently paid. Until the Christian era silk was little known in Europe or Western Asia. It is mentioned but three times in the common version of the Old Testament, and in each case the accuracy of the translation is questioned by German critics. It is, however, distinctly alluded to by St. John, by Aristotle, and by the poets who flourished at the court of Augustus, Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, and is referred to by the writers of the first four centuries. Tertullian, in his homily on Female Attire, tells the ladies,—"Clothe yourselves with the silk of truth, with the fine linen of sanctity, and the purple of modesty." The golden-mouthed St. Chrisostom writes in his Homilies,—"Does the rich man wear silken shawls? His soul is in tatters." "Silken shawls are beautiful, but they are the production of worms."

The silken thread was early introduced. Galen recommends it for tying blood-vessels in surgical operations, and remarks that the rich ladies in the cities of the Roman Empire generally possessed such thread; he alludes also to shawls interwoven with gold, the material of which is brought from a distance, and is called Sericum, or silk. Down to the time of the Emperor Aurelian silk was of great value, and used only by the rich. His biographer informs us that Aurelian neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment composed wholly of silk, nor presented any to others, and when his own wife begged him to allow her a single shawl of purple silk, he replied,—"Far be it from me to permit thread to be balanced with its weight in gold!"—for a pound of gold was then the price of a pound of silk.

Silk is mentioned in some very ancient Arabic inscriptions; but down to the reign of the Emperor Justinian was imported into Europe from the country of the Seres, a people of Eastern Asia, supposed to be the Chinese, from, whom it derived its name. During the reign of Justinian two monks brought the eggs of the silkworm to Byzantium from Serinda in India, and the manufacture of silk became a royal monopoly of the Roman Empire.

From Greece the culture of silk was gradually carried into Italy and Spain, and English abbots and bishops often returned from Rome with vestments of silk and gold. Silken threads are attached to the covers of ancient English manuscripts. Silk in the form of velvet may be seen on some of the ancient armor in the Tower of London; and portions of silk garments were found in 1827 in the Cathedral of Durham, on opening the tomb of St. Cuthbert. The use of silk, however, was so rare in England down to the time of the Tudors, that a pair of silk hose formed an acceptable present to Queen Elizabeth.

The principal supply of raw silk is now derived from China, where silks are much worn, and there Marco Polo several centuries since found silk robes in very general use. Japan also abounds in silk, and the late Japanese embassy and suite were arrayed in garments of that material.

The annual consumption of raw silk in Great Britain now averages seven millions of pounds, and the value of the annual export of silk fabrics is not far from ten millions of dollars.

The manufacture of silk was introduced into England by the French Protestants who were driven into exile on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Their descendants are still found in London and Coventry, where the silk-trade has been long established, and is now going through the ordeal to which it has been exposed by the new treaty with France.

The French undoubtedly take the lead in silk fabrics, for which they are admirably qualified by exquisite taste and great artistic skill; but the silk manufacture in England is now so interwoven, in many of its branches, with the manufacture of wool and cotton, and aided by improved machinery, that it may be considered as firmly established.

Our own climate is well adapted to the silk-worm, and we have had our Morus-multicaulis fever; but so light is the freight on silk compared with its value, that we must defer our hope of any extended growth until the price of labor in Europe approaches nearer to our own, or until the excess of production in other branches shall divert genius into this channel, in which it will eventually cheapen production by machinery as it has done in other enterprises.

* * * * *

We read in the classics of the Colchian and Milesian fleeces, of the soft wools of Italy, and of the transfer of sheep from Italy to Bastica, in Spain. Italy and Spain were both adapted to sheep husbandry. Virgil writes,—

"Hic gelidi fontes, hie mollia prata, Lycori";

while Spain, with her alternations of hill and dale and her varying climate, was eminently fitted for the pasturage of sheep. Even in ancient times Spain furnished wool of great fineness and of various colors, and cloths like the modern plaids were woven there from wool of different shades. Sometimes the Spanish sheep was immersed alive in the Tyrian purple.

In modern times, the sheep of Spain have been introduced into France and Germany, and from them have sprung the French merino and Saxony varieties. These again have been exported to Natal and Australia.

Before the American Revolution, the sheep of this country furnished a wool so coarse that English travellers reported that America could never compete with England in broadcloth. But when the French armies overran Spain, the vast flocks of merinos which annually traversed the country in search of fresh pasturage were driven into Portugal, and by the enterprise of Messrs. Jarvis, Derby, and Humphrey, large numbers of them were imported into our Northern States. These have improved our wool, until now it surpasses the English in fineness.

The fine-wool sheep thrive most in a dry climate and elevated country. We learn from Strabo, Columella, and Martial, that the fine wool of Italy was raised principally among the Apennines; and in Spain, Estremadura, a part of the ancient Baetica, is still famous for its wool. There the Spanish flocks winter, and thence in spring are sent to pasture in the mountains of Leon and Asturias. Other flocks are led in the same season from great distances to the heights of the Sierra Morena, where the vegetation is remarkably favorable to improvement of the wool.

In this country, the elevated lands of Texas and New Mexico are admirably adapted to the fine-wool sheep; and upon the head-waters of the Missouri and the Yellowstone is another district much resembling the Spanish sheep-walks, where the mountain-sheep and the antelope still predominate.

When Caesar invaded England he found there great numbers of flocks, and for many centuries wool was the great staple of English exports; but during the reign of Queen Elizabeth numerous artisans were driven from Brabant and Flanders by the Duke of Alva, and the manufacture of wool, which had enriched the Low Countries, was permanently established in England.

With the progress of agriculture, the turnip-culture enabled Great Britain to increase the number of her sheep; but they were raised more for the market than for their fleeces, which were rarely fine, and the demand for wool soon exceeded the supply. England then opened her ports to the free importation of wool from every region, and now annually manufactures two hundred millions of pounds, twice the amount manufactured in this country, of which two-thirds are drawn from distant lands, and her export of woollens for 1860 exceeded one hundred millions of dollars.

The same policy which has built up this vast manufacture, namely, the free importation of the raw material and of every article used in its manufacture, with a moderate duty on foreign cloths, will enable us to compete with England. Our farmers' wives prefer the sheep-husbandry to the care of the dairy; much of our land furnishes cheap pasturage, and the prices of mutton are remunerative; but many of the low grades of wool come from abroad, and the mill-owner will not embark largely in the manufacture, unless he can purchase his materials as cheaply as his foreign competitor.

* * * * *

Cotton is mentioned by Herodotus five centuries before the Christian era. He alludes to the cotton-trees of India, and describes a cuirass sent from Egypt to the King of Sparta embellished with gold and with fleeces from trees. Theophrastus, the disciple of Aristotle, notices the growth of cotton both in India and Arabia, and observes that the cotton-plants of India have a leaf like the black mulberry, and are set on the plains in rows, resembling vines in the distance. On the Persian Gulf he noticed that they bore no fruit, but a capsule about the size of a quince, which, when ripe, expanded so as to set free the wool, which was woven into cloth of various kinds, both very cheap and of great value.

The cotton-plant was observed by the Greeks who accompanied Alexander in his march to India: and his officers have left a description of the cotton dress and turban which formed the costume of the natives at that remote period.

Cotton early found its way into Egypt, then the seat of arts and of commerce; for Pliny in his "Natural History" informs us that "in Upper Egypt, towards Arabia, there grows a shrub which some call Gossypion and others Xylon. It is small, and bears a fruit resembling the filbert, within which is a downy wool that is spun into thread. There is nothing to be preferred to these stuffs for whiteness or softness. Beautiful garments are made from them for the priests of Egypt."

The troops of Anthony wore cotton when he visited Cleopatra, and she was arrayed in vestments of fine muslin. It was soon after used for the sails of vessels, and the Romans employed it for awnings in the Forum and the Amphitheatres.

It was cultivated at an early period in the Levant, whence it was gradually introduced into Sicily, France, and England.

Arabian travellers who reached China in the ninth century did not observe the cotton-plant in that country, but found the natives clad in silk.

The cotton-plant, although indigenous in India, has also been found growing spontaneously in many parts of Africa. It was discovered by Columbus in Hispaniola, and among the presents sent by Cortes to Charles V. were cotton mantles, vests, and carpets of various figures, and in the conquest of Mexico the Indian allies wore armor of quilted cotton, impervious to arrows.

The plant of India resembles that of America in most particulars. It is there often placed in alternate rows with rice, and after the rice-harvest is over puts forth a beautiful yellow flower with a crimson eye in each petal; this is succeeded by a green pod filled with a white pulp, which as it ripens turns brown, and then separates into several divisions containing the cotton. A luxuriant field, says Forbes in his "Oriental Memoirs," "exhibits at the same time the expanding blossom, the bursting capsule, and the snowy fleeces of pure cotton, and is one of the most beautiful objects in the agriculture of Hindostan."

The manufacture of cotton in India, with very simple machinery, was early brought to high perfection. Travellers in the ninth century describe muslins in India which were of such fineness that they might be drawn through a ring of moderate size; and Tavernier speaks of turbans, composed of thirty-five ells of the cloth, which would weigh but four ounces. Muslin has been sold in India for five hundred rupees the piece, so fine, that, when laid upon the grass after the dew had fallen, it was no longer visible. The patience, the nice sense of touch, and the flexible fingers of the Hindoos have with the simplest means achieved results in this branch of manufacture which have not been surpassed by any people.

But this manufacture is now breathing its last; the cotton-gin, the spinning-frame, the mule with its countless spindles, and the power-loom are fearful competitors; and although British India still produces quite as much cotton as our Southern States, and while she exports at least eight hundred thousand bales annually to England and China, continues at the same time to make the larger part of her own clothing, flourishing cities, like Dacca and Delhi, once the seat of manufactures, are going to decay, and a large proportion of her people, willing to toil at six cents per day in occupations that have been transmitted for centuries in the same families, are either driven to the culture of the fields or compelled to spin and weave for a pittance the jute which is converted into gunny-cloth.

When India muslins and calicoes were first imported into England, they met with a formidable opposition. They had suddenly become fashionable, and threatened to supersede the long-established woollens; and the nation, in its wisdom, first prohibited the importation of these fabrics, and then subjected them to a duty of sixpence per yard. In France, Amiens, Rouen, and Paris protested against cotton as ruinous to the country. But it has surmounted all these obstacles, is firmly established in both nations, and now its manufacture gives support to one-seventh part of the population of Great Britain, employs there thirty-four millions of spindles, consumes annually two and a half million bales of the raw material, and sends abroad, in addition to thread and yarn, twenty-eight hundred million yards of fabrics, of the aggregate value of two hundred and thirty millions of dollars.

In 1856, Great Britain derived her supply of cotton from the following countries, namely:—

From the United States 71 per cent. " the East Indies 19 " " " Brazil 5 " " " Egypt 4-1/2 " " " the West Indies 1/2 " "

But while her supply from India in the twelve years from 1845 to 1857 increased nearly two hundred per cent, namely, from two hundred thousand to six hundred thousand bales, she has increased her exports of cotton fabrics to that country to such an extent, that, for every pound she imports, she returns a pound of thread and cloth enhanced at least fourfold in value, while she returns to the United States in cotton fabrics less than three per cent, of the cotton she receives from them. And since 1857 such improvements have been made in the cotton-mills of New England, that we now consume more than a million of bales annually, and our production and export are rapidly increasing.

Some curious alternations have attended the growth and manufacture of cotton. As machinery has improved and the cost of goods diminished, the price of cotton has advanced and a strong stimulus been given to its production.

New States have consequently been opened to its culture, and the alluvial lands of Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas have been devoted to the plant. Slaves have thus been attracted from the Middle States and diverted from the less profitable culture of wheat and tobacco to the cotton-fields. Half a century since, the Middle States contained two-thirds of the negroes of the Union; but under the census of 1860 two millions and a half of slaves are now found south of North Carolina, and but a million and a half north of the Cotton States. In the Cotton States the negroes nearly equal the white population; in the Border States the whites are at least four to one. In the Cotton States the slaves and the culture of cotton are increasing at the rate of at least five per cent.; in the Border States the slave population is either stationary or retrograde, and the future of those States is clearly indicated. Down to a recent period the march of the planter and his forces across the Cotton States has been like that of an invading army. Vast forests of heavy timber have been felled, land rapidly exhausted and abandoned, and new fields opened and soon deserted for a virgin soil.

But with the increased demand of the last seven years for cotton, and with the enhanced price of the slave, which rises at least one hundred dollars with each advance of a cent per pound on cotton, more permanent improvements have been made, railways have been opened, and at least fifty thousand tons of guano and cotton-seed have been annually applied to the exhausted cotton-fields of the Carolinas and Georgia. Under these appliances the crops of the United States have kept pace with the manufacture, and in 1859 rose to the amount of twenty-one hundred millions of pounds, thus replenishing the markets that had been recently exhausted, and actually exceeding the entire consumption for the same year of both Europe and America.

But the crops fluctuate from year to year, and a less favorable season for 1860, accompanied by an increase of at least ten per cent. in spindles, leaves the supply barely equal to the demand, while the diminished crop, and the cry of Secession at the South, with the introduction of an export-duty, have alarmed the spinners of England and led them to consider the effects of a deficiency and to seek new sources of supply.

With the progress of trade the price of the middling cotton of America for the last fifteen years has varied at Liverpool from fourpence to ninepence per pound, and now stands at seven and a halfpence by the last quotations. As the stock accumulates or the sale of goods is checked, the price naturally declines, and a check is given to production. As the stock declines or goods advance, an impetus is given to prices, the culture is extended, and cotton flows in from Egypt and India. When the cotton of Bombay commands more than fivepence per pound at Liverpool, it flows in a strong current from India to Manchester. Should the export-duty be levied in the Cotton States, it may well be presumed that the burden will fall principally upon the planter, and give an additional stimulus to the growth of India, and a new incentive to the British Government to start the culture in other colonies.

The gentlemen of the South sometimes imagine that Old England, as well as New England, is entirely dependent upon cotton, and that society there would be disintegrated, if the crop in the Cotton States should be withheld for a single year. But the Northern mills have usually six months' supply; and Great Britain holds upon an average enough for three months in her ports, for two months at her mills, and as much more upon the ocean. The English spinner, too, can not only reduce his time one-fourth without stopping, but can reduce his consumption another fourth by raising his numbers and increasing the fineness of his cloth; and as he draws one-fourth of his supply from other countries, it is obvious that he might hold out for nearly two years without a bale from America.

Could the cotton-planter hold out any longer? Let it not be forgotten that the Embargo was voted to bring England to terms by withholding rice, cotton, wheat, and naval stores, but proved a signal failure. We reaped from it no harvests, and were put back by it at least six years in our national progress; while England enjoyed the carrying-trade of the world, which we had abandoned, and drew her supplies from Russia and India while our crops perished in our own warehouses.

The vast export of cotton goods from Great Britain to India has now liberated at least half a million bales of cotton for the supply of England in addition to what India previously furnished; and as the export of goods to India and China continues to increase, the surplus of cotton must rise with it. But India is able to treble her production. It is true that the staple of her cotton suffers from the dry summers, that her land is but half tilled by ploughs consisting of a simple beam of wood with two prongs and a single handle, that she has been destitute of roads and facilities for transportation, that her lands are held at oppressive rents, that American planters there have failed to make good cotton, and that the annual yield of her soil is as small as that of the exhausted fields of South Carolina. But still she produces at least four million bales of cotton, and great changes are now in progress: railways are pervading the country; canals are being dug for irrigating, and irrigation quadruples the crop, while it improves the staple; and the diversion of a few districts from the ordinary crops, with improved tillage, will increase the production to an indefinite extent.

The latest intelligence from India apprises us that in one large cotton district the American planters have at length succeeded, and American cotton is now growing there on one hundred and forty-six thousand acres.

IN DARWAR.

In American Cotton. In Native Kupas. Total. 1851 31,688 acres 223,314 acres 255,002 1860 146,320 " 230,677 " 377,003

In Africa, also, the export of cotton is on the increase; and Egypt is erecting new works to retain and direct the overflow of the Nile, which will augment her exports.

There is a belt around the earth's surface of at least sixty degrees in width, adapted in great part to the culture of cotton. Great Britain now commands capital, while China and India overflow with labor. Let Great Britain divert a few millions of this capital and but half a million of coolies to any fertile area of five thousand square miles within this belt, and she can in a few years double her supply of cotton, and command the residue of her importation at reasonable prices.

Among these spots none is more promising than Central America, where the cotton-plant is perennial, and a single acre, as we are assured by Mr. Squier, yields semiannually a bale of superior cotton. But let us hope that the South may abandon her dream of a Southern Empire, and the chimera which now haunts her, that the Northerner is hostile to the Southerner, when in reality he has no such feeling, but merely recoils from institutions which he believes to be at variance with moral and material progress.

Hemp, or Cannabis sativa, from which we possibly derive the modern term canvas, was known to the ancients and used by them for rope and cordage and occasionally for cloth. It was found early in Thrace, in Caria, and upon the Rhone. Herodotus says that garments were made of it by the Thracians "so much like linen that none but an experienced person could tell whether they were made of hemp or of flax."

Moschion, who flourished two centuries before the Christian era, states that the celebrated ship Syracusia built by Hiero II. was provided with rope made from the hemp of the Rhone. Although the plant is indigenous in Northern India, where it is cultivated for its narcotic qualities, it is adapted to a southern climate; and we may safely infer that it was not a native of either Italy, Greece, or Asia Minor, but was doubtless introduced into Caria by the active trade between the Euxine and Miletus. Cloth of hemp is still worn by boatmen upon the Danube; but although its fibre is nearly as delicate as that of flax and cotton, it is used principally for cordage, for which purpose it is imported from the interior of Russia into England and the United States. In 1858 the entire importation into Great Britain was forty-four thousand tons. A large amount is now raised in Missouri and Kentucky, whose soil is admirably adapted to the hemp-plant. Hemp grows freely in Bologna, Romagna, and Naples, and the Italians have a saying, that "it may be grown everywhere, but cannot be produced fit for use in heaven or on earth without manure." The Italian hemp is aided by irrigation.

The plant is annual, and attains a height of three to ten feet, according to the soil and climate. Its stalk is hollow, filled with a soft pith, and surrounded by a cellular texture coated with a delicate membrane which runs parallel to the stalk and is covered by a thin cuticle. In Russia the seed is sown in June and gathered in September.

The Manila hemp (Musa textilis) does not appear to have been known to the ancients, and is now found in the Philippine Islands, the Indian Archipelago, and Japan, regions unexplored by the ancients. It is also found at the base of the Himalaya Mountains. It is a large herbaceous plant, which requires a warm climate, and is cut after a growth of eighteen months. The outer layers or fibres of the plant are called the bandola, which is used in the fabrication of cordage; the inner layers have a more delicate fibre called the lupis, which is woven into fine fabrics; while the intermediate layers, termed tupoz, are made into cloth of different degrees of fineness.

The filaments, after they are gathered, are separated by a knife, and rendered soft and pliable by beating them with a mallet; their ends are then gummed together, after which they are wound into balls, and the finer qualities are woven without going through the process of spinning. With the produce of this plant the natives pay their tribute, purchase the necessaries of life, and provide themselves with clothing.

The imports of this article into Great Britain in 1859 were very considerable, while the United States also imported a very large amount. It is used for cordage by the ships of both countries. In one respect it differs from wool, cotton, and hemp, the fibres of all of which are found by the microscope to consist of tubes, while the filaments of the Musa textilis, although often fine, are in no case hollow, and consequently are less flexible and divisible than other fibres.

Within the last twenty years, a new export from India, in the shape of Jute and its fabrics, has grown up from insignificance into commercial importance, and is now among the chief exports of the country. This article demands our particular attention, as it requires but four months for its production, furnishes a very large supply of textile material, is raised at one-fifth the expense of cotton, and has been sold in India as low as one cent per pound.

Jute is generally grown as an after-crop in India upon high ground, and flourishes best in a hot and rainy season. The seed is sown broadcast in April or May, when there is sufficient rain to moisten the ground. When the plant is a foot and a half high it is weeded. It rises on good soil to the height of twelve feet, and flowers between August and September. The stems are usually three-fourths of an inch in diameter. The leaves have long foot-stalks, the flowers are small and yellow, and the capsules short and globose, containing five cells for the seed. The fruit ripens in September and October. The average yield in fibre to the acre is from four hundred to seven hundred pounds. When the crop is ripe, the stems are cut close to the root, made up into bundles, and deposited for a week in some neighboring pond or stream.

The process of separating the fibre from the stem is thus described by Mr. Healy in the "Journal of Agriculture for India";—

"The native operator, standing up to his middle in water, takes as many of the sticks in his hands as he can grasp, and removing a small portion of the bark from the end next the roots, and grasping them together, he with a little management strips off the whole from end to end, without breaking either stem or fibre. He then, swinging the bark around his head, dashes it repeatedly against the surface of the water, drawing it towards him to wash off the impurities."

The filaments are then hung up to dry in the sun, often in lengths of twelve feet, and when dried the jute is ready for the market.

The color at first is a pure white, but gradually changes to yellow. The fibre, which is fine and delicate, is tubular, like that of flax and cotton, and is easily wrought; but its tenacity is not equal to that of other textile materials, although it is substituted in many fabrics for wool, flax, and cotton. A large portion of the crop, which already exceeds two hundred thousand tons, is exported to England as it comes from the field, and is there used in the manufacture both of wool and cotton to cheapen the fabric. The vigilant eye will often detect it in woollen manufactures, in shawls, and even in sail-cloths; but when spun with cotton or wool, it is very difficult to discover its presence.

A few years since, there was a great reduction in the price of plaid shawls from England, which took the dealers by surprise, as the cost was previously supposed to have reached the lowest point; but a close examination of the threads elicited the fact that the manufacturer had adroitly twisted in with his wool a liberal allowance of jute, costing but two or three cents a pound when wool cost thirty, and thus reduced the price of the fabric.

By the use of shoddy in the manufacture of woollens, and of jute in both cotton and woollen fabrics, the English artisan saves many millions of pounds both of wool and cotton. In those districts of India where British skill and commercial enterprise have checked the manufacture of muslin and calicoes, the Hindoos of all classes find in the culture and manufacture of jute employment for all, "from the palanquin-bearer and husbandman down to the Hindoo widow, saved by the interposition of England from the funeral pile, but condemned by custom for the residue of her days literally to sackcloth and ashes." The fine and long-stapled jute is reserved for the export trade, for which it bears a comparatively high price; the residue is spun and woven by these classes as a domestic manufacture; it is made into gunny-cloth, which is circulated through the globe, forms the bagging for our corn, wheat, and cotton on their voyage to distant ports, and finally makes its last appearance as paper.

The long stems of the jute are highly esteemed in India; they resemble willow wands, are useful for basket-work and fencing, for trellis-work and the support of vines, and to make a charcoal which is valued for the manufacture of gunpowder.

The export of jute from India to England for 1859 was sixty thousand tons. The export of gunny-cloth from India to the United States in the same year amounted to several millions of pieces.

Why should not this valuable plant be introduced into America? It requires the same season and soil as our Indian corn, and would doubtless flourish in the rich alluvial lands of the West, and furnish a very cheap and useful domestic manufacture for our Western farmers.

The term Linen is doubtless derived from Linum, the classic and botanic name of flax. In Holy Writ, Moses called down the hail upon the growing flax of Lower Egypt, and Isaiah speaks of those "that work in fine flax." According to Herodotus, the ancient Egyptians wore linen. Plutarch informs us that the priests of Isis wore linen on account of its purity, and mentions a tradition that flax was used for clothing "because the color of its blossom resembles the ethereal blue which surrounds the world"; and he adds, that the priests of Isis were buried in their sacred vestments. An eminent cotton-spinner, who subjected four hundred specimens of mummy-cloth to the microscope, has ascertained that they were all linen; and even now, when aspiring cotton has contested its superiority, and claimed to be more healthful and more beneficial to the human frame, the choicest drapery of our tables and couches, and many of our most costly and elegant articles of dress, are fabricated from flax.

Flax is sown in the spring and harvested in the summer, and requires but three months for its growth. While cotton grows in hot climates only, flax grows both under the tropics and in temperate climates, and as far north as Russia, Ireland, and Canada; and while at the South it runs mostly to seed, the best varieties are produced in Normandy, Belgium, and Poland.

In another particular flax has the advantage over cotton. While the latter, under the ordinary course of cultivation in South Carolina, yields but one bale to four acres, and in virgin soil rarely more than one bale to two acres, flax yields in good soil from five to eight hundred pounds of fibre to the acre, which may be converted into flax-cotton by modern machinery; and as the product has but three per cent. waste, while cotton loses eleven per cent. in its manufacture, the flax-cotton which is produced from a single acre is the equivalent of one to two bales of cotton.

With these important advantages, namely, its adaptation to a northern climate where the white man can labor, and a capacity for yielding so large an amount of fibre, flax holds a high place in the list of textile materials.

Flax can be raised with very moderate expense up to the time of harvest. If the soil is free from weeds, it requires little more preparation, care, or expense for its culture than wheat or barley. But from this point onward a large expenditure of labor is requisite, which greatly enhances the cost, carrying it up as high as ten to twenty cents per pound, according to the degree of fineness; for the filaments must be separated from the stem by immersion in water, must be kept in parallel lines, and prepared for the spindle by skilful and long-continued labor.

To insure the best quality, it must be pulled and bound in bundles before it is entirely ripe, thus impairing the value of the seed, while the edible and nutritious portion of the stalk is lost or injured in the water.

For many years it was spun on the little wheel, but of late years improved machinery has been applied at Belfast, Leeds, Dundee, and other cities of Great Britain; yet nearly a third of the value is lost in the broken filaments, which are reduced to tow in its preparation for the spindle. With a fibre at least as fine and delicate as that of cotton, its full value to the world will not be demonstrated until it is effectually cottonized.

In its present state, however, it has come into very extensive use. More than eighty thousand tons were, in 1859, imported into Great Britain, and many acres are there devoted to its culture. The consumption in that country is estimated to exceed one hundred and sixty thousand tons, a quantity equivalent to eight hundred thousand bales of cotton. In addition to this, ten millions of bushels of flax-seed are annually crushed in Great Britain, a large portion of which is drawn from India.

The culture of flax was introduced into this country early in the last century by the Scotch, who crossed over to Ireland under Elizabeth and Cromwell, and soon after the siege of Derry transferred their arts and their industry to this country. Several colonies of these were planted in Pennsylvania and Tennessee, and a large colony was established at Natfield, New Hampshire, upon a tract twelve miles square, one of the best sections of the State, situate in the area between Manchester, Lowell, Lawrence, and Exeter. Here every farmer cultivated his field of barley and flax, here every woman had her little wheel, and the article formed the currency of the place;—notes were given payable in spinning-wheels. Girls were seen beetling the linen on the grass; and when the harvest over, the men mounted their horses, and with well-filled saddle-bags threaded the by-roads of the forest to find a market in Boston, Lynn, Salem, or Newburyport. Fortunes were thus accumulated and a flourishing academy and two Presbyterian societies are now sustained by funds thus acquired by the Pinkerton family. But as the wages of girls gradually rose from two shillings to two dollars per week with the invention of the cotton-gin, the power-loom, and the spinning-jenny, the culture of flax was gradually abandoned, the seat of manufactures removed from the hills to the waterfalls, and the flax-fields converted into market-gardens or milk-farms. The town of Derry, once the great seat of New-England manufactures, is now principally distinguished for the Stark, Rogers, and Reed it gave to the French War and the Revolution, for the Bells, Dinsmores, Wilsons, and Pattersons it has given to the halls of legislation, and the McKeens, McGregors, Morisons, and Nesmiths it has furnished to commerce or the Church.

At the present rates of labor, the culture of flax cannot be revived in this region until the mode of curing and dressing it is cheapened; and there is reason to hope that this revolution is at hand.

At the present moment flax is raised both in India and Ohio for the seed alone. An acre of ripened flax yields from ten to twenty bushels of seed, and each bushel affords nearly or quite two gallons of linseed-oil. The well-ripened seed is most prolific in oil.

It has been supposed by some that flax exhausts the soil. It is undoubtedly true that it does best under a rotation of crops, and that the ingredients it withdraws from the soil should be restored to preserve its fertility. But the reduction of the plant to ashes shows that its chemical components can be restored at a cost of three dollars per acre, while the properties withdrawn by the seed can be easily supplied by returning in other fertilizers the equivalent for half a ton of flax-seed. If the oil-cake be consumed upon the farm, little more than the above and its product in manure will be required.

The ashes of the flax-plant have been analyzed. Dr. Royle, of England, a distinguished writer upon fibrous plants, assures us that the following compound will supply to one acre all that the plant requires, and leave the land as fertile as before the flax was gathered:—

lbs. s. d. Muriate of Potash 30 cost 2 6 Common Salt 28 " 0 3 Burned Plaster of Paris 34 " 0 6 Bone-Dust 54 " 3 3 Epsom Salts 56 " 4 0 10 6

It has been ascertained by the microscope that wool, cotton, hemp, jute, and flax are composed of minute fibres, each of which forms a hollow tube, and there is a close resemblance between the tubes of each,—the tube of the cotton, however, collapsing as it ripens. These tubes in the jute and flax are closely cemented together, and the term Fibrilia has been applied to fibres of the plant when reduced to a short staple like cotton. The process for effecting this result is very accurately described in a work just published, entitled "Fibrilia." The patentees of this invention claim that their process, in the space of twenty-four hours, converts the flax and tow, as they come from the threshing-mill, into an article which may be spun and woven by the same machinery as cotton. The article produced and lately exhibited at public meetings resembles cotton in its appearance and qualities, with the advantage that it wastes less in the manufacture, has more lustre, and receives a superior color. The patentees and their friends further claim that this cotton can be raised in all temperate latitudes, at the rate of four to eight hundred pounds per acre, and profess within the past year to have manufactured twelve thousand pounds.

These statements have been confidently made at public meetings in the State House of Massachusetts, and it is understood that a mill containing one hundred looms, half of which are now in operation, has been erected at Roxbury, under the direction of gentlemen who are familiar with the manufacture. Should the same results be obtained on a large scale which have attended the manufacture of the first few bales, the first step in a great revolution will be effected.

By the process of Mr. S.M. Allen of Boston, the great outlay of labor which has usually attended the culture and preparation of flax is avoided. When the plant has attained its full height of twenty to thirty inches, and its seed is ripened, it is harvested like grass with a mowing-machine, dried like hay or oats in the field, and then carried to the threshing-mill. After the seed is separated, the stalk is transferred to a patent brake, moved by two or four horses, and costing from three to four hundred dollars. This machine is composed of several sets of fluted iron rollers, between which the stalk passes from one set to another, the rollers gradually diminishing in size, but increasing in rapidity of motion, by means of which the woody texture of the plant is effectually broken and separated. The filaments are then carried through a coarse card or picker. The shives are thus separated, and two tons of stalks reduced to half a ton of linten, which may be either taken at once to the retort or baled for shipment. When the flax is thus reduced by the farmer to linten, the article is reputed to be worth to the manufacturer four cents a pound, or at least twenty dollars for the product of an acre yielding a single ton of flax-straw.

According to this statement the farmer would realize from his crop at least as follows:—

Estimated value of seed, 14 bushels, at $1.25 $17.50 Estimated value of 500 lbs. of linten, at 4 cts. 20.00 Estimated value of 3/4 of a ton of shives from unrotted stems, valuable for cattle, at $8.00 per ton 6.00

Produce of an acre $43.50

And this produce would be realized with little more labor than a crop of oats or wheat, returning less than twenty-five dollars to the acre. Unless the soil should be foul, no weeding would be required, while the breaking would cost little more than a second threshing, and a second crop of turnips can be taken from the same soil.

From the patent brake and the picker the linten is carried to a retort, which may hold from five hundred to three thousand pounds of fibre,—the capacity of one hundred cubic feet being required for each thousand pounds; and the retort, which may be made from boiler-plates, costs from three hundred to fifteen hundred dollars. Here the linten is put into a hot bath of air forced through heated water, and thus charged with moisture, which softens the filaments and diminishes the cohesion of the fibres. After this air-bath, pure water of the temperature of one hundred and forty to one hundred and sixty degrees is admitted into the retort, and the linten is immersed in it for five or six hours.

After this steeping process is completed, the water is let off from below, and pure water admitted from above under pressure, until the color begins to change; the fibre is then steeped for three or four hours in a weak solution of soda-ash; the alkali is washed out by the admission of pure water alternating with steam, and, if necessary to complete the bleaching, a weak solution of chlorine is applied. All this may be effected without removing the linten from the retort. The product is then dried as in ordinary drying-rooms.

When dried, it is carried again through a set of cards, and a piece of machinery termed a railway-head, with positive draught, which can be set so as to give any length of staple, and to present the flax-cotton thus produced in any form required for spinning, either separately or mixed with cotton or wool, and thus adapted to the machinery used in the manufacture of either of these articles. The cost of this process, from the brake to the final production of the cotton, is set by the patentee, after leaving him a fair profit, at three cents per pound of cotton; and if we add this to the cost of the linten, and allow for freight and storage, the entire cost of the fibrilia is but eight cents per pound, or two-thirds of the present price of middling cotton.

The idea of modifying the filaments of flax and hemp so as to convert them into cotton is by no means a new one. As long ago as 1747 it was proposed to convert flax into cotton by boiling it in a solution of caustic potash, and subsequently washing it with soap; and in 1775 Lady Moira, aided by T.B. Bailey, actually converted some refuse flax into cotton by boiling it in alkali. The result was, that the fibres seemed to be set at liberty from each other; after which it was carded on cotton cards, spun, and woven as cotton.

The Chevalier Claussen, as recently as 1850, claimed to have discovered the process, and actually took out a patent; but his invention, which consisted in boiling the cut and crushed stems of the flax in a solution of caustic soda, turned out a failure,—the cutting, crushing, and boiling processes proving alike defective.

New discoveries are the result of repeated trials; perseverance usually prevails; and if States are to secede at pleasure and withhold their cotton, and no other good uses can be found for flax or hemp, why should not their fibres secede also,—be set at liberty and resolve themselves into a cotton state?

We might pass from the fibrous plants, and the metamorphosis of flax into cotton, to the Pinna, whose fibres grow in the sea on the coast of Italy, and anchor the huge shell-fish to the rock or the sand. These fibres are brought up by divers, and woven into beautiful fabrics. We might repeat the tale of the crab which lives with this shell-fish, and apprises his blind housekeeper of the approach of danger,—a tale confirmed by ancient and modern naturalists,—for there are strange doings in the sea as well as upon the land. We might also dilate upon China grass, which is manufactured in the East into delicate fabrics. But our limits compel us to defer these topics.



NAT TURNER'S INSURRECTION.

During the year 1831, up to the twenty-third of August, the Virginia newspapers were absorbed in the momentous problems which then occupied the minds of intelligent American citizens:—What General Jackson should do with the scolds, and what with the disreputables,—Should South Carolina be allowed to nullify? and would the wives of Cabinet Ministers call on Mrs. Eaton? It is an unfailing opiate, to turn over the drowsy files of the "Richmond Enquirer", until the moment when those dry and dusty pages are suddenly kindled into flame by the torch of Nat Turner. Then the terror flares on increasing, until the remotest Southern States are found shuddering at nightly rumors of insurrection,—until far-off European colonies, Antigua, Martinique, Caraccas, Tortola, recognize by some secret sympathy the same epidemic alarms,—until the very boldest words of freedom are reported as uttered in the Virginia House of Delegates with unclosed doors,—until an obscure young man named Garrison is indicted at Common Law in North Carolina, and has a price set upon his head by the Legislature of Georgia. The insurrection revived in one agonizing reminiscence all the distresses of Gabriel's Revolt, thirty years before; and its memory endures still fresh, now that thirty added years have brought the more formidable presence of General Butler. It is by no means impossible that the very children or even confederates of Nat Turner may be included at this moment among the contraband articles of Fort Monroe.

Near the southeastern border of Virginia, in Southampton County, there is a neighborhood known as "The Cross Keys". It lies fifteen miles from Jerusalem, the county-town or "court-house", seventy miles from Norfolk, and about as far from Richmond. It is some ten or fifteen miles from Murfreesboro in North Carolina, and about twenty-five from the Great Dismal Swamp. Up to Sunday, the twenty-first of August, 1831, there was nothing to distinguish it from any other rural, lethargic, slipshod Virginia neighborhood, with the due allotment of mansion-houses and log-huts, tobacco-fields and "old-fields", horses, dogs, negroes, "poor white folks", so called, and other white folks, poor without being called so. One of these last was Joseph Travis, who had recently married the widow of one Putnam Moore, and had unfortunately wedded to himself her negroes also.

In the woods on the plantation of Joseph Travis, upon the Sunday just named, six slaves met at noon for what is called in the Northern States a picnic and in the Southern a barbecue. The bill of fare was to be simple: one brought a pig, and another some brandy, giving to the meeting an aspect so cheaply convivial that no one would have imagined it to be the final consummation of a conspiracy which had been for six months in preparation. In this plot four of the men had been already initiated,—Henry, Hark or Hercules, Nelson, and Sam. Two others were novices, Will and Jack by name. The party had remained together from twelve to three o'clock, when a seventh man joined them,—a short, stout, powerfully built person, of dark mulatto complexion and strongly-marked African features, but with a face full of expression and resolution. This was Nat Turner.

He was at this time nearly thirty-one years old, having been born on the second of October, 1800. He had belonged originally to Benjamin Turner,—whence his last name, slaves having usually no patronymic,—had then been transferred to Putnam Moore, and then to his present owner. He had, by his own account, felt himself singled out from childhood for some great work; and he had some peculiar marks on his person, which, joined to his great mental precocity, were enough to occasion, among his youthful companions, a superstitious faith in his gifts and destiny. He had great mechanical ingenuity also, experimentalized very early in making paper, gunpowder, pottery, and in other arts which in later life he was found thoroughly to understand. His moral faculties were very strong, so that white witnesses admitted that he had never been known to swear an oath, to drink a drop of spirits, or to commit a theft. And in general, so marked were his early peculiarities, that people said "he had too much sense to be raised, and if he was, he would never be of any use as a slave." This impression of personal destiny grew with his growth;—he fasted, prayed, preached, read the Bible, heard voices when he walked behind his plough, and communicated his revelations to the awe-struck slaves. They told him in return, that, "if they had his sense, they would not serve any master in the world."

The biographies of slaves can hardly be individualized; they belong to the class. We know bare facts; it is only the general experience of human beings in like condition which can clothe them with life. The outlines are certain, the details are inferential. Thus, for instance, we know that Nat Turner's young wife was a slave; we know that she belonged to a different master from himself; we know little more than this, but this is much. For this is equivalent to saying that by day or by night that husband had no more power to protect her than the man who lies bound upon a plundered vessel's deck has power to protect his wife on board the pirate-schooner disappearing in the horizon; she may be reverenced, she may be outraged; it is in the powerlessness that the agony lies. There is, indeed, one thing more which we do know of this young woman: the Virginia newspapers state that she was tortured under the lash, after her husband's execution, to make her produce his papers: this is all.

What his private experiences and special privileges or wrongs may have been, it is therefore now impossible to say. Travis was declared to be "more humane and fatherly to his slaves than any man in the county"; but it is astonishing how often this phenomenon occurs in the contemporary annals of slave insurrections. The chairman of the county court also stated, in pronouncing sentence, that Nat Turner had spoken of his master as "only too indulgent"; but this, for some reason, does not appear in his printed Confession, which only says, "He was a kind master, and placed the greatest confidence in me." It is very possible that it may have been so, but the printed accounts of Nat Turner's person look suspicious: he is described in Governor Floyd's proclamation as having a scar on one of his temples, also one on the back of his neck, and a large knot on one of the bones of his right arm, produced by a blow; and although these were explained away in Virginia newspapers as being produced by fights with his companions, yet such affrays are entirely foreign to the admitted habits of the man. It must, therefore, remain an open question, whether the scars and the knot were produced by black hands or by white.

Whatever Nat Turner's experiences of slavery might have been, it is certain that his plans were not suddenly adopted, but that he had brooded over them for years. To this day there are traditions among the Virginia slaves of the keen devices of "Prophet Nat". If he was caught with lime and lamp-black in hand, conning over a half-finished county-map on the barn-door, he was always "planning what to do, if he were blind", or "studying how to get to Mr. Francis's house." When he had called a meeting of slaves, and some poor whites came eavesdropping, the poor whites at once became the subjects for discussion; he incidentally mentioned that the masters had been heard threatening to drive them away; one slave had been ordered to shoot Mr. Jones's pigs, another to tear down Mr. Johnson's fences. The poor whites, Johnson and Jones, ran home to see to their homesteads, and were better friends than ever to Prophet Nat.

He never was a Baptist preacher, though such vocation has often been attributed to him. The impression arose from his having immersed himself, during one of his periods of special enthusiasm, together with a poor white man named Brantley. "About this time", he says in his Confession, "I told these things to a white man, on whom it had a wonderful effect, and he ceased from his wickedness, and was attacked immediately with a cutaneous eruption, and the blood oozed from the pores of his skin, and after praying and fasting nine days he was healed. And the Spirit appeared to me again, and said, as the Saviour had been baptized, so should we be also; and when the white people would not let us be baptized by the Church, we went down into the water together, in the sight of many who reviled us, and were baptized by the Spirit. After this I rejoiced greatly and gave thanks to God."

The religious hallucinations narrated in his Confession seem to have been as genuine as the average of such things, and are very well expressed. It reads quite like Jacob Behmen. He saw white spirits and black spirits contending in the skies, the sun was darkened, the thunder rolled. "And the Holy Ghost was with me, and said, 'Behold me as I stand in the heavens!' And I looked and saw the forms of men in different attitudes. And there were lights in the sky, to which the children of darkness gave other names than what they really were; for they were the lights of the Saviour's hands, stretched forth from east to west, even as they were extended on the cross on Calvary, for the redemption of sinners." He saw drops of blood on the corn: this was Christ's blood, shed for man. He saw on the leaves in the woods letters and numbers and figures of men,—the same symbols which he had seen in the skies. On May 12, 1828, the Holy Spirit appeared to him and proclaimed that the yoke of Jesus must fall on him, and he must fight against the Serpent when the sign appeared. Then came an eclipse of the sun in February, 1831: this was the sign; then he must arise and prepare himself, and slay his enemies with their own weapons; then also the seal was removed from his lips, and then he confided his plans to four associates.

When he came, therefore, to the barbecue on the appointed Sunday, and found, not these four only, but two others, his first question to the intruders was, How they came thither. To this Will answered manfully, that his life was worth no more than the others, and "his liberty was as dear to him." This admitted him to confidence, and as Jack was known to be entirely under Hark's influence, the strangers were no bar to their discussion. Eleven hours they remained there, in anxious consultation: one can imagine those terrible dusky faces, beneath the funereal woods, and amid the flickering of pine-knot torches, preparing that stern revenge whose shuddering echoes should ring through the land so long. Two things were at last decided: to begin their work that night, and to begin it with a massacre so swift and irresistible as to create in a few days more terror than many battles, and so spare the need of future bloodshed. "It was agreed that we should commence at home on that night, and, until we had armed and equipped ourselves and gained sufficient force, neither age nor sex was to be spared: which was invariably adhered to."