"It is very popular, Miss Eve," answered Aristabulus, advancing from a window, where he had been whispering assent. "This fashion takes universally and is getting to prevail in all denominations."

Eve turned involuntarily, and to her surprise she perceived that the editor of the Active Inquirer was added to their party. The salutations, on the part of the young lady, were distant and stately, while Mr. Dodge, who had not been able to resist public opinion, and had actually parted with his moustachios, simpered, and wished to have it understood by the spectators, that he was on familiar terms with all the family.

"It may be popular, Mr. Bragg," returned Eve, as soon as she rose from her profound curtsey to Mr. Dodge; "but it can scarcely be said to be seemly. This is, indeed, changing the order of things, by elevating the sinner, and depressing the saint."

"You forget, Miss Eve, that under the old plan, the people could not see; they were kept unnaturally down, if one can so express it, while nobody had a good look-out but the parson and the singers in the front row of the gallery. This was unjust."

"I do not conceive, sir, that a good look-out, as you term it, is at all essential to devotion, or that one cannot as well listen to instruction when beneath the teacher, as when above him."

"Pardon me, Miss;" Eve recoiled, as she always did, when Mr. Bragg used this vulgar and contemptuous mode of address; "we put no body up or down; all we aim it is a just equality—to place all, as near as possible, on a level."

Eve gazed about her in wonder; and then she hesitated a moment, as if distrusting her ears.

"Equality! Equality with what? Surely not with the ordained ministers of the church, in the performance of their sacred duties! Surely not with the Deity!"

"We do not look at it exactly in this light, ma'am. The people build the church, that you will allow, Miss Effingham; even you will allow this, Mr. Effingham."

Both the parties appealed to, bowed a simple assent to so plain a proposition, but neither spoke.

"Well, the people building the church very naturally ask themselves for what purpose it was built?"

"For the worship of God," returned Eve with a steady solemnity of manner that a little abashed even the ordinarily indomitable and self-composed Aristabulus.

"Yes, Miss; for the worship of God and the accommodation of the public."

"Certainly," added Mr. Dodge; "for the public accommodation and for public worship;" laying due emphasis on the adjectives.

"Father, you, at least, will never consent to this?"

"Not readily, my love. I confess it shocks all my notions of propriety to see the sinner, even when he professes to be the most humble and penitent, thrust himself up ostentatiously, as if filled only with his own self-love and self-importance."

"You will allow, Mr. Effingham," rejoined Aristabulus, "that churches are built to accommodate the public, as Mr. Dodge has so well remarked."

"No, sir; they are built for the worship of God, as my daughter has so well remarked."

"Yes, sir; that, too, I grant you"

"As secondary to the main object—the public convenience, Mr. Bragg unquestionably means;" put in John Effingham, speaking for the first time that morning on the subject.

Eve turned quickly, and looked towards her kinsman. He was standing near the table, with folded arms, and his fine face expressing all the sarcasm and contempt that a countenance so singularly calm and gentleman-like, could betray.

"Cousin Jack," she said earnestly, "this ought not to be."

"Cousin Eve, nevertheless this will be."

"Surely not—surely not! Men can never so far forget appearances as to convert the temple of God into a theatre, in which the convenience of the spectators is the one great object to be kept in view!"

"You have travelled, sir," said John Effingham, indicating by his eye that he addressed Mr. Dodge, in particular, "and must have entered places of worship in other parts of the world. Did not the simple beauty of the manner in which all classes, the great and the humble, the rich and the poor, kneel in a common humility before the altar, strike you agreeably, on such occasions; in Catholic countries, in particular?"

"Bless me! no, Mr. John Effingham. I was disgusted at the meanness of their rites, and really shocked at the abject manner in which the people knelt on the cold damp stones, as if they were no better than beggars."

"And were they not beggars?" asked Eve, with almost a severity of tone: "ought they not so to consider themselves, when petitioning for mercy of the one great and omnipotent God?"

"Why, Miss Effingham, the people will rule; and it is useless to pretend to tell them that they shall not have the highest seats in the church as well as in the state. Really, I can see no ground why a parson should be raised above his parishioners. The new-order churches consult the public convenience, and place every body on a level, as it might be. Now, in old times, a family was buried in its pew; it could neither see nor be seen; and I can remember the time when I could just get a look of our clergyman's wig, for he was an old-school man; and as for his fellow-creatures, one might as well be praying in his own closet. I must say I am a supporter of liberty, if it be only in pews."

"I am sorry, Mr. Dodge," answered Eve, mildly, "you did not extend your travels into the countries of the Mussulmans, where most Christian sects might get some useful notions concerning the part of worship, at least, that is connected with appearances. There you would have seen no seats, but sinners bowing down in a mass, on the cold stones, and all thoughts of cushioned pews and drawing-room conveniences unknown. We Protestants have improved on our Catholic forefathers in this respect; and the innovation of which you now speak, in my eyes is an irreverent, almost a sinful, invasion of the proprieties of the temple."

"Ah, Miss Eve, this comes from substituting forms for the substance of things," exclaimed the editor. "For my part, I can say, I was truly shocked with the extravagancies I witnessed, in the way of worship, in most of the countries I visited. Would you think it, Mr. Bragg, rational beings, real bona fide living men and women, kneeling on the stone pavement, like so many camels in the Desert," Mr. Dodge loved to draw his images from the different parts of the world he had seen, "ready to receive the burthens of their masters; not a pew, not a cushion, not a single comfort that is suitable to a free and intelligent being, but every thing conducted in the most abject manner, as if accountable human souls were no better than so many mutes in a Turkish palace."

"You ought to mention this in the Active Inquirer," said Aristabulus.

"All in good time, sir; I have many things in reserve, among which I propose to give a few remarks, I dare say they will be very worthless ones, on the impropriety of a rational being's ever kneeling. To my notion, gentlemen and ladies, God never intended an American to kneel."

The respectable mechanics who stood around the table did not absolutely assent to this proposition, for one of them actually remarked that "he saw no great harm in a man's kneeling to the Deity;" but they evidently inclined to the opinion that the new- school of pews was far better than the old.

"It always appears to me, Miss Effingham," said one, "that I hear and understand the sermon better in one of the low pews, than in one of the old high-backed things, that look so much like pounds."

"But can you withdraw into yourself better, sir? Can you more truly devote all your thoughts, with a suitable singleness of heart, to the worship of God?"

"You mean in the prayers, now, I rather conclude?"

"Certainly, sir, I mean in the prayers and the thanksgivings."

"Why, we leave them pretty much to the parson; though I will own it is not quite as easy leaning on the edge of one of the new-school pews as on one of the old. They are better for sitting, but not so good for standing. But then the sitting posture at prayers is quite coming into favour among our people, Miss Effingham, as well as among yours. The sermon is the main chance, after all."

"Yes," observed Mr. Gouge, "give me good, strong preaching, any day, in preference to good praying. A man may get along with second-rate prayers, but he stands in need of first-rate preaching."

"These gentlemen consider religion a little like a cordial on a cold day," observed John Effingham, "which is to be taken in sufficient doses to make the blood circulate. They are not the men to be pounded in pews, like lost sheep, not they?"

"Mr. John will always have his say;" one remarked: and then Mr. Effingham dismissed the party, by telling them he would think of the matter.

When the mechanics were gone, the subject was discussed at some length between those that remained—all the Effinghams agreeing that they would oppose the innovation, as irreverent in appearance, unsuited to the retirement and self-abasement that best comported with prayer, and opposed to the delicacy of their own habits; while Messrs. Bragg and Dodge contended to the last that such changes were loudly called for by the popular sentiment—- that it was unsuited to the dignity of a man to be 'pounded,' even in a church—and virtually, that a good, 'stirring' sermon, as they called it, was of far more account, in public worship, than all the prayers and praises that could issue from the heart or throat.

Chapter XIV.

"We'll follow Cade—we'll follow Cade."

MOB.

"The views of this Mr. Bragg, and of our old fellow-traveller, Mr. Dodge, appear to be peculiar on the subject of religious forms," observed Sir George Templemore, as he descended the little lawn before the Wigwam, in company with the three ladies, Paul Powis, and John Effingham, on their way to the lake. "I should think it would be difficult to find another Christian, who objects to kneeling at prayer."

"Therein you are mistaken, Templemore," answered Paul; "for this country, to say nothing of one sect which holds it in utter abomination, is filled with them. Our pious ancestors, like neophytes, ran into extremes, on the subject of forms, as well as in other matters. When you go to Philadelphia, Miss Effingham, you will see an instance of a most ludicrous nature—ludicrous, if there were not something painfully revolting mingled with it—of the manner in which men can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel; and which, I am sorry to say, is immediately connected with our own church."

It was music to Eve's ears, to hear Paul Powis speak of his pious ancestors, as being American, and to find him so thoroughly identifying himself with her own native land; for, while condemning so many of its practices, and so much alive to its absurdities and contradictions, our heroine had seen too much of other countries, not to take an honest pride in the real excellencies of her own. There was, also, a soothing pleasure in hearing him openly own that he belonged to the same church as herself.

"And what is there ridiculous in Philadelphia, in particular, and in connection with our own church?" she asked. "I am not so easily disposed to find fault where the venerable church is concerned."

"You know that the Protestants, in their horror of idolatry, discontinued, in a great degree, the use of the cross, as an outward religious symbol; and that there was probably a time when there was not a single cross to be seen in the whole of a country that was settled by those who made a profession of love for Christ, and a dependence on his expiation, the great business of their lives?"

"Certainly. We all know our predecessors were a little over-rigid and scrupulous on all the points connected with outward appearances."

"They certainly contrived to render the religious rites as little pleasing to the senses as possible, by aiming at a sublimation that peculiarly favours spiritual pride and a pious conceit. I do not know whether travelling has had the same effect on you, as it has produced on me; but I find all my inherited antipathies to the mere visible representation of the cross, superseded by a sort of solemn affection for it, as a symbol, when it is plain, and unaccompanied by any of those bloody and minute accessories that are so often seen around it in Catholic countries. The German Protestants, who usually ornament the altar with a cross, first cured me of the disrelish I imbibed, on this subject, in childhood."

"We, also, I think, cousin John, were agreeably struck with the same usage in Germany. From feeling a species of nervousness at the sight of a cross, I came to love to see it; and I think you must have undergone a similar change; for I have discovered no less than three among the ornaments of the great window of the entrance tower, at the Wigwam."

"You might have discovered one, also, in every door of the building, whether great or small, young lady. Our pious ancestors, as Powis calls them, much of whose piety, by the way, was any thing but meliorated with spiritual humility or Christian charity, were such ignoramuses as to set up crosses in every door they built, even while they veiled their eyes in holy horror whenever the sacred symbol was seen in a church."

"Every door!" exclaimed the Protestants of the party.

"Yes, literally every door, I might almost say certainly every panelled door that was constructed twenty years since. I first discovered the secret of our blunder, when visiting a castle in France, that dated back from the time of the crusade. It was a chateau of the Montmorencies, that had passed into the hands of the Conde family by marriage; and the courtly old domestic, who showed me the curiosities, pointed out to me the stone croix in the windows, which has caused the latter to be called croisees, as a pious usage of the crusaders. Turning to a door, I saw the same crosses in the wooden stiles; and if you cast an eye on the first humble door that you may pass in this village, you will detect the same symbol staring you boldly in the face, in the very heart of a population that would almost expire at the thoughts of placing such a sign of the beast on their very thresholds."

The whole party expressed their surprise; but the first door they passed corroborated this account, and proved the accuracy of John Effingham's statements. Catholic zeal and ingenuity could not have wrought more accurate symbols of this peculiar sign of the sect; and yet, here they stood, staring every passenger in the face, as if mocking the ignorant and exaggerated pretension which would lay undue stress on the minor points of a religion, the essence of which was faith and humility.

"And the Philadelphia church?" said Eve, quickly, so soon as her curiosity was satisfied on the subject of the door; "I am now more impatient than ever, to learn what silly blunder we have also committed there."

"Impious would almost be a better term," Paul answered. "The only church spire that existed for half a century, in that town, was surmounted by a mitre, while the cross was studiously rejected!"

A silence followed; for there is often more true argument in simply presenting the facts of a case, than in all the rhetoric and logic that could be urged, by way of auxiliaries. Every one saw the egregious folly, not to say presumption, of the mistake; and at the moment, every one wondered how a common-sense community could have committed so indecent a blunder. We are mistaken. There was an exception to the general feeling in the person of Sir George Templemore. To his church-and-state notions, and anti-catholic prejudices, which were quite as much political as religious, there was every thing that was proper, and nothing that was wrong, in rejecting a cross for a mitre.

"The church, no doubt, was Episcopal, Powis," he remarked, "and it was not Roman. What better symbol than the mitre could be chosen?"

"Now I reflect, it is not so very strange," said Grace, eagerly, "for you will remember, Mr. Effingham, that Protestants attach the idea of idolatry to the cross, as it is used by Catholics."

"And of bishops, peers in parliament, church and state, to a mitre."

"Yes, but the church in question I have seen; and it was erected before the war of the revolution. It was an English rather than an American church."

"It was, indeed, an English church, rather than an American; and Templemore is very right to defend it, mitre and all."

"I dare say, a bishop officiated at its altar?"

"I dare say—nay, I know, he did; and, I will add, he would rather that the mitre were two hundred feet in the air, than down on his own simple, white-haired, apostolical-looking head. But enough of divinity for the morning; yonder is Tom with the boat, let us to our oars."

The party were now on the little wharf that served as a village- landing, and the boatman mentioned lay off, in waiting for the arrival of his fare. Instead of using him, however, the man was dismissed; the gentlemen preferring to handle the oars themselves. Aquatic excursions were of constant occurrence in the warm months, on that beautifully limpid sheet of water, and it was the practice to dispense with the regular boatmen, whenever good oarsmen were to be found among the company.

As soon as the light buoyant skiff was brought to the side of the wharf, the whole party embarked; and Paul and the baronet taking the oars, they soon urged the boat from the shore.

"The world is getting to be too confined for the adventurous spirit of the age," said Sir George, as he and his companion pulled leisurely along, taking the direction of the eastern shore, beneath the forest-clad cliffs of which the ladies had expressed a wish to be rowed; "here are Powis and myself actually rowing together on a mountain lake of America, after having boated as companions on the coast of Africa, and on the margin of the Great Desert. Polynesia, and Terra Australis, may yet see us in company, as hardy cruisers."

"The spirit of the age is, indeed, working wonders in the way you mean," said John Effingham. "Countries of which our fathers merely read, are getting to be as familiar as our own homes to their sons; and, with you, one can hardly foresee to what a pass of adventure the generation or two that will follow us may not reach."

"Vraiment, c'est fort extraordinaire de se trouver sur un lac Americain," exclaimed Mademoiselle Viefville.

"More extraordinary than to find one's self on a Swiss lake, think you, my dear Mademoiselle Viefville?"

"Non, non, mais tout aussi extraordinaire pour une Parisienne."

"I am now about to introduce you, Mr. John Effingham and Miss Van Cortlandt excepted," Eve continued, "to the wonders and curiosities of this lake and region. There, near the small house that is erected over a spring of delicious water, stood the hut of Natty Bumppo, once known throughout all these mountains as a renowned hunter; a man who had the simplicity of a woodsman, the heroism of a savage, the faith of a Christian, and the feelings of a poet. A better than he, after his fashion, seldom lived."

"We have all heard of him," said the baronet, looking round curiously; "and must all feel an interest in what concerns so brave and just a man. I would I could see his counterpart."

"Alas!" said John Effingham, "the days of the 'Leather-stockings' have passed away. He preceded me in life, and I see few remains of his character in a region where speculation is more rife than moralizing, and emigrants are plentier than hunters. Natty probably chose that spot for his hut on account of the vicinity of the spring: is it not so. Miss Effingham?"

"He did; and yonder little fountain that you see gushing from the thicket, and which comes glancing like diamonds into the lake, is called the 'Fairy Spring,' by some flight of poetry that, like so many of our feelings, must have been imported; for I see no connection between the name and the character of the country, fairies having never been known, even by tradition, in Otsego."

The boat now came under a shore where the trees fringed the very water, frequently overhanging the element that mirrored their fantastic forms. At this point, a light skiff was moving leisurely along in their own direction, but a short distance in advance. On a hint from John Effingham, a few vigorous strokes of the oars brought the two boats near each other.

"This is the flag-ship," half whispered John Effingham, as they came near the other skiff, "containing no less a man than the 'commodore.' Formerly, the chief of the lake was an admiral, but that was in times when, living nearer to the monarchy, we retained some of the European terms; now, no man rises higher than a commodore in America, whether it be on the ocean or on the Otsego, whatever may be his merits or his services. A charming day, commodore; I rejoice to see you still afloat, in your glory."

The commodore, a tail, thin, athletic man of seventy, with a white head, and movements that were quick as those of a boy, had not glanced aside at the approaching boat, until he was thus saluted in the well-known voice of John Effingham. He then turned his head, however, and scanning the whole party through his spectacles, he smiled good-naturedly made a flourish with one hand, while he continued paddling with the other, for he stood erect and straight in the stern of his skiff, and answered heartily—

"A fine morning, Mr. John, and the right time of the moon for boating. This is not a real scientific day for the fish, perhaps; but I have just come out to see that all the points and bays are in their right places."

"How is it, commodore, that the water near the village is less limpid than common, and that even up here, we see so many specks floating on its surface?"

"What a question for Mr. John Effingham to ask on his native water! So much for travelling in far countries, where a man forgets quite as much as he learns, I fear." Here the commodore turned entirely round, and raising an open hand in an oratorical manner, he added,—"You must know, ladies and gentlemen, that the lake is in blow."

"In blow, commodore! I did not know that the lake bore its blossoms."

"It does, sir, nevertheless. Ay, Mr. John, and its fruits, too; but the last must be dug for, like potatoes. There have been no miraculous draughts of the fishes, of late years, in the Otsego, ladies and gentlemen; but it needs the scientific touch, and the knowledge of baits, to get a fin of any of your true game above the water, now-a-days. Well, I have had the head of the sogdollager thrice in the open air, in my time; though I am told the admiral actually got hold of him once with his hand."

"The sogdollager," said Eve, much amused with the singularities of the man, whom she perfectly remembered to have been commander of the lake, even in her own infancy; "we must be indebted to you for an explanation of that term, as well as for the meaning of your allusion to the head and the open air."

"A sogdollager, young lady, is the perfection of a thing. I know Mr. Grant used to say there was no such word in the dictionary; but then there are many words that ought to be in the dictionaries that have been forgotten by the printers. In the way of salmon trout, the sogdollager is their commodore. Now, ladies and gentlemen, I should not like to tell you all I know about the patriarch of this lake, for you would scarcely believe me; but if he would not weigh a hundred when cleaned, there is not an ox in the county that will weigh a pound when slaughtered."

"You say you had his head above water?" said John Effingham.

"Thrice, Mr. John. The first time was thirty years ago; and I confess I lost him, on that occasion, by want of science; for the art is not learned in a day, and I had then followed the business but ten years. The second time was five years later: and I had then been fishing expressly for the old gentleman, about a month. For near a minute, it was a matter of dispute between us, whether he should come out of the lake or I go into it; but I actually got his gills in plain sight. That was a glorious haul! Washington did not feel better the night Cornwallis surrendered, than I felt on that great occasion!"

"One never knows the feelings of another, it seems. I should have thought disappointment at the loss would have been the prevailing sentiment on that great occasion, as you so justly term it."

"So it would have been, Mr. John, with an unscientific fisherman; but we experienced hands know better. Glory is to be measured by quality, and not by quantity, ladies and gentlemen; and I look on it as a greater feather in a man's cap, to see the sogdollager's head above water, for half a minute, than to bring home a skiff filled with pickerel. The last time I got a look at the old gentleman, I did not try to get him into the boat, but we sat and conversed for near two minutes; he in the water, and I in the skiff."

"Conversed!" exclaimed Eve, "and with a fish, too! What could the animal have to say!"

"Why, young lady, a fish can talk as well as one of ourselves; the only difficulty is to understand what he says. I have heard the old settlers affirm, that the Leather-stocking used to talk for hours at a time, with the animals of the forest."

"You knew the Leather-stocking, commodore?"

"No, young lady, I am sorry to say I never had the pleasure of looking on him even. He was a great man! They may talk of their Jeffersons and Jacksons, but I set down Washington and Natty Bumppo as the two only really great men of my time."

"What do you think of Bonaparte, commodore?" inquired Paul.

"Well, sir, Bonaparte had some strong points about him, I do really believe. But he could have been nothing to the Leather-stocking, in the woods! It's no great matter, young gentleman, to be a great man among your inhabitants of cities—what I call umbrella people. Why, Natty was almost as great with the spear as with the rifle; though I never heard that he got a sight of the sogdollager."

"We shall meet again this summer, commodore," said John Effingham; "the ladies wish to hear the echoes, and we must leave you."

"All very natural, Mr. John," returned the commodore, laughing, and again flourishing his hand in his own peculiar manner. "The women all love to hear the echoes, for they are not satisfied with what they have once said, but they like to hear it over again. I never knew a lady come on the Otsego, but one of the first things she did was to get paddled to the Speaking Rocks, to have a chat with herself. They come out in such numbers, sometimes, and then all talk at once, in a way quite to confuse the echo. I suppose you have heard, young lady, the opinion people have now got concerning these voices."

"I cannot say I have ever heard more than that they are some of the most perfect echoes known;" answered Eve, turning her body, so as to face the old man, as the skiff of the party passed that of the veteran fisherman.

"Some people maintain that there is no echo at all, and that the sounds we hear come from the spirit of the Leather-stocking, which keeps about its old haunts, and repeats every thing we say, in mockery of our invasion of the woods. I do not say this notion is true, or that it is my own; but we all know that Natty did dislike to see a new settler arrive in the mountains, and that he loved a tree as a muskrat loves water. They show a pine up here on the side of the Vision, which he notched at every new-comer, until reaching seventeen, his honest old heart could go no farther, and he gave the matter up in despair."

"This is so poetical, commodore, it is a pity it cannot be true. I like this explanation of the 'Speaking Rocks,' much better than that implied by the name of 'Fairy Spring.'"

"You are quite right, young lady," called out the fisherman, as the boats separated still farther; "there never was any fairy known in Otsego; but the time has been when we could boast of a Natty Bumppo."

Here the commodore flourished his hand again, and Eve nodded her adieus. The skiff of the party continued to pull slowly along the fringed shore, occasionally sheering more into the lake, to avoid some overhanging and nearly horizontal tree, and then returning so closely to the land, as barely to clear the pebbles of the narrow strand with the oar.

Eve thought she had never beheld a more wild or beautifully variegated foliage, than that which the whole leafy mountainside presented. More than half of the forest of tall, solemn pines, that had veiled the earth when the country was first settled, had already disappeared; but, agreeably to one of the mysterious laws by which nature is governed, a rich second growth, that included nearly every variety of American wood, had shot up in their places. The rich Rembrandt-like hemlocks, in particular, were perfectly beautiful, contrasting admirably with the livelier tints of the various deciduous trees. Here and there, some flowering shrub rendered the picture gay, while masses of the rich chestnut, in blossom, lay in clouds of natural glory among the dark tops of the pines.

The gentlemen pulled the light skiff fully a mile under this overhanging foliage, occasionally frightening some migratory bird from a branch, or a water-fowl from the narrow strand. At length, John Effingham desired them to cease rowing, and managing the skiff for a minute or two with the paddle which he had used in steering, he desired the whole party to look up, announcing to them that they were beneath the 'Silent Pine.'

A common exclamation of pleasure succeeded the upward glance; for it is seldom that a tree is seen to more advantage than that which immediately attracted every eye. The pine stood on the bank, with its roots embedded in the earth, a few feet higher than the level of the lake, but in such a situation as to bring the distance above the water into the apparent height of the tree. Like all of its kind that grows in the dense forests of America, its increase, for a thousand years, had been upward; and it now stood in solitary glory, a memorial of what the mountains which were yet so rich in vegetation had really been in their days of nature and pride. For near a hundred feet above the eye, the even round trunk was branchless, and then commenced the dark-green masses of foliage, which clung around the stem like smoke ascending in wreaths. The tall column-like tree had inclined to wards the light when struggling among its fellows, and it now so far overhung the lake, that its summit may have been some ten or fifteen feet without the base. A gentle, graceful curve added to the effect of this variation from the perpendicular, and infused enough of the fearful into the grand, to render the picture sublime. Although there was not a breath of wind on the lake, the currents were strong enough above the forest to move this lofty object, and it was just possible to detect a slight, graceful yielding of the very uppermost boughs to the passing air.

"This pine is ill-named," cried Sir George Templemore, "for it is the most eloquent tree eye of mine has ever looked on!"

"It is, indeed, eloquent," answered Eve; "one hears it speak even now of the fierce storms that have whistled round its tops—of the seasons that have passed since it extricated that verdant cap from the throng of sisters that grew beneath it, and of all that has passed on the Otsego, when this limpid lake lay, like a gem embedded in the forest. When the Conqueror first landed in England, this tree stood on the spot where it now stands! Here, then, is at last, an American antiquity!"

"A true and regulated taste, Miss Effingham," said Paul, "has pointed out to you one of the real charms of the country. Were we to think less of the artificial, and more of our natural excellencies, we should render ourselves less liable to criticism."

Eve was never inattentive when Paul spoke; and her colour heightened, as he paid this compliment to her taste, but still her soft blue eye was riveted on the pine.

"Silent it may be, in one respect, but it is, indeed, all eloquence in another," she resumed, with a fervour that was not lessened by Paul's remark. "That crest of verdure, which resembles a plume of feathers, speaks of a thousand things to the imagination."

"I have never known a person of any poetry, who came under this tree," said John Effingham, "that did not fall into this very train of thought. I once brought a man celebrated for his genius here, and, after gazing for a minute or two at the high, green tuft that tops the tree, he exclaimed, 'that mass of green waved there in the fierce light when Columbus first ventured into the unknown sea.' It is, indeed, eloquent; for it tells the same glowing tale to all who approach it—a tale fraught with feeling and recollections."

"And yet its silence is, after all, its eloquence," added Paul; "and the name is not so misplaced as one might at first think."

"It probably obtained its name from some fancied contrast to the garrulous rocks that lie up yonder, half concealed by the forest. If you will ply the oars, gentlemen, we will now hold a little communion with the spirit of the Leather-stocking."

The young men complied; and in about five minutes, the skiff was off in the lake, at the distance of fifty rods from the shore, where the whole mountainside came at one glance into the view. Here they lay on their oars, and John Effingham called out to the rocks a "good morning," in a clear distinct voice. The mocking sounds were thrown back again, with a closeness of resemblance that actually startled the novice. Then followed other calls and other repetitions of the echoes, which did not lose the minutest intonation of the voice.

"This actually surpasses the celebrated echoes of the Rhine," cried the delighted Eve; "for, though those do give the strains of the bugle so clearly, I do not think they answer to the voice with so much fidelity."

"You are very right, Eve," replied her kinsman, "for I can recall no place where so perfect and accurate an echo is to be heard as at these speaking rocks. By increasing our distance to half a mile, and using a bugle, as I well know, from actual experiment, we should get back entire passages of an air. The interval between the sound and the echo, too, would be distinct, and would give time for an undivided attention. Whatever may be said of the 'pine,' these rocks are most aptly named; and if the spirit of Leather-stocking has any concern with the matter, he is a mocking spirit."

John Effingham now looked at his watch, and then he explained to the party a pleasure he had in store for them. On a sort of small, public promenade, that lay at the point where the river flowed out of the lake, stood a rude shell of a building that was called the "gun- house." Here, a speaking picture of the entire security of the country, from foes within as well as from foes without, were kept two or three pieces of field artillery, with doors so open that any one might enter the building, and even use the guns at will, although they properly belonged to the organized corps of the state.

One of these guns had been sent a short distance down the valley; and John Effingham informed his companions that they might look momentarily for its reports to arouse the echoes of the mountains. He was still speaking when the gun was fired, its muzzle being turned eastward. The sound first reached the side of the Vision, abreast of the village, whence the reverberations reissued, and rolled along the range, from cave to cave, and cliff to cliff, and wood to wood, until they were lost, like distant thunder, two or three leagues to the northward. The experiment was thrice repeated, and always with the same magnificent effect, the western hills actually echoing the echoes of the eastern mountains, like the dying strains of some falling music.

"Such a locality would be a treasure in the vicinity of a melo- dramatic theatre," said Paul, laughing, "for certainly, no artificial thunder I have ever heard has equalled this. This sheet of water might even receive a gondola."

"And yet, I fear one accustomed to the boundless horizon of the ocean, might in time weary of it," answered John Effingham, significantly.

Paul made no answer; and the party rowed away in silence.

"Yonder is the spot where we have so long been accustomed to resort for Pic-Nics," said Eve, pointing out a lovely place, that was beautifully shaded by old oaks, and on which stood a rude house that was much dilapidated, and indeed injured, by the hands of man. John Effingham smiled, as his cousin showed the place to her companions, promising them an early and a nearer view of its beauties.

"By the way, Miss Effingham," he said, "I suppose you flatter yourself with being the heiress of that desirable retreat?"

"It is very natural that, at some day, though I trust a very distant one, I should succeed to that which belongs to my dear father."

"Both natural and legal, my fair cousin; but you are yet to learn that there is a power that threatens to rise up and dispute your claim."

"What power—human power, at least—can dispute the lawful claim of an owner to his property? That Point has been ours ever since civilized man has dwelt among these hills; who will presume to rob us of it?"

"You will be much surprised to discover that there is such a power, and that there is actually a disposition to exercise it. The public— the all-powerful omnipotent, overruling, law-making, law-breaking public—has a passing caprice to possess itself of your beloved Point; and Ned Effingham must show unusual energy, or it will get it?"

"Are you serious, cousin Jack?"

"As serious as the magnitude of the subject can render a responsible being, as Mr. Dodge would say."

Eve said no more, but she looked vexed, and remained almost silent until they landed, when she hastened to seek her father, with a view to communicate what she had heard. Mr. Effingham listened to his daughter, as he always did, with tender interest; and when she had done, he kissed her glowing cheek, bidding her not to believe that which she seemed so seriously to dread, possible.

"But, cousin John would not trifle with me on such a subject, father," Eve continued; "he knows how much I prize all those little heir-looms that are connected with the affections."

"We can inquire further into the affair, my child, if it be your desire; ring for Pierre, if you please."

Pierre answered, and a message was sent to Mr. Bragg, requiring his presence in the library.

Aristabulus appeared, by no means in the best humour, for he disliked having been omitted in the late excursion on the lake, fancying that he had a community-right to share in all his neighbour's amusements, though he had sufficient self-command to conceal his feelings.

"I wish to know, sir," Mr. Effingham commenced, without introduction, "whether there can be any mistake concerning the ownership of the Fishing Point on the west side of the lake."

"Certainly not, sir; it belongs to the public."

Mr. Effingham's cheek glowed, and he looked astonished: but he remained calm.

"The public! Do you gravely affirm, Mr. Bragg, that the public pretends to claim that Point?"

"Claim, Mr. Effingham! as long as I have resided in this county, I have never heard its right disputed."

"Your residence in this county, sir, is not of very ancient date, and nothing is easier than that you may be mistaken. I confess some curiosity to know in what manner the public has acquired its title to the spot. You are a lawyer, Mr. Bragg, and may give an intelligible account of it."

"Why, sir, your father gave it to them in his lifetime. Every body, in all this region, will tell you as much as this."

"Do you suppose, Mr. Bragg, there is any body in all this region who will swear to the fact? Proof, you well know, is very requisite even to obtain justice."

"I much question, sir, if there be any body in all this region that will not swear to the fact. It is the common tradition of the whole country; and, to be frank with you, sir, there is a little displeasure, because Mr. John Effingham has talked of giving private entertainments on the Point."

"This, then, only shows how idly and inconsiderately the traditions of the country take their rise. But, as I wish to understand all the points of the case, do me the favour to walk into the village, and inquire of those whom you think the best informed in the matter, what they know of the Point, in order that I may regulate my course accordingly. Be particular, if you please, on the subject of title, as one would not wish to move in the dark."

Aristabulus quitted the house immediately, and Eve, perceiving that things were in the right train, left her father alone to meditate on what had just passed. Mr. Effingham walked up and down his library for some time, much disturbed, for the spot in question was identified with all his early feelings and recollections; and if there were a foot of land on earth, to which he was more attached than to all others, next to his immediate residence, it was this. Still, he could not conceal from himself, in despite of his opposition to John Effingham's sarcasms, that his native country had undergone many changes since he last resided in it, and that some of these changes were quite sensibly for the worse. The spirit of misrule was abroad, and the lawless and unprincipled held bold language, when it suited their purpose to intimidate. As he ran over in his mind, however, the facts of the case, and the nature of his right, he smiled to think that any one should contest it, and sat down to his writing, almost forgetting that there had been any question at all on the unpleasant subject.

Aristabulus was absent for several hours, nor did he return until Mr. Effingham was dressed for dinner, and alone in the library, again, having absolutely lost all recollection of the commission he had given his agent.

"It is as I told you, sir—the public insists that it owns the Point; and I feel it my duty to say, Mr. Effingham, that the public is determined to maintain its claim."

"Then, Mr. Bragg, it is proper I should tell the public that it is not the owner of the Point, but that I am its owner, and that I am determined to maintain my claim."

"It is hard to kick against the pricks, Mr. Effingham."

"It is so, sir, as the public will discover, if it persevere in invading a private right."

"Why, sir, some of those with whom I have conversed have gone so far as to desire me to tell you—I trust my motive will not be mistaken——"

"If you have any communication to make, Mr. Bragg, do it without reserve. It is proper I should know the truth exactly."

"Well, then, sir, I am the bearer of something like a defiance; the people wish you to know that they hold your right cheaply, and that they laugh at it. Not to mince matters, they defy you."

"I thank you for this frankness, Mr. Bragg, and increases my respect for your character. Affairs are now at such a pass, that it is necessary to act. If you will amuse yourself with a book for a moment, I shall have further occasion for your kindness."

Aristabulus did not read, for he was too much filled with wonder at seeing a man so coolly set about contending with that awful public which he himself as habitually deferred to, as any Asiatic slave defers to his monarch. Indeed, nothing but his being sustained by that omnipotent power, as he viewed the power of the public to be, had emboldened him to speak so openly to his employer, for Aristabulus felt a secret confidence that, right or wrong, it was always safe in America to make the most fearless professions in favour of the great body of the community. In the mean time, Mr. Effingham wrote a simple advertisement, against trespassing on the property in question, and handed it to the other, with a request that he would have it inserted in the number of the village paper that was to appear next morning. Mr. Bragg took the advertisement, and went to execute the duty without comment.

The evening arrived before Mr. Effingham was again alone, when, being by himself in the library once more, Mr. Bragg entered, full of his subject. He was followed by John Effingham, who had gained an inkling of what had passed.

"I regret to say, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced, "that your advertisement has created one of the greatest excitements it has ever been my ill-fortune to witness in Templeton."

"All of which ought to be very encouraging to us, Mr.. Bragg, as men under excitement are usually wrong."

"Very true, sir, as regards individual excitement, but this is a public excitement."

"I am not at all aware that the fact, in the least alters the case. If one excited man is apt to do silly things, half a dozen backers will be very likely to increase his folly."

Aristabulus listened with wonder, for excitement was one of the means for effecting public objects, so much practised by men of his habits, that it had never crossed his mind any single individual could be indifferent to its effect. To own the truth, he had anticipated so much unpopularity, from his unavoidable connexion with the affair, as to have contributed himself in producing the excitement, with the hope of "choking Mr. Effingham off," as he had elegantly expressed it to one of his intimates, in the vernacular of the country.

"A public excitement is a powerful engine, Mr. Effingham!" he exclaimed, in a sort of politico pious horror.

"I am fully aware, sir, that it may be even a fearfully powerful engine. Excited men, acting in masses, compose what are called mobs, and have committed a thousand excesses."

"Your advertisement is, to the last degree, disrelished; to be very sincere, it is awfully unpopular!"

"I suppose it is always what you term an unpopular act, so far as the individuals opposed are concerned, to resist aggression."

"But they call your advertisement aggression, sir."

"In that simple fact exist all the merits of the question. If I own this property, the public, or that portion of it which is connected with this affair, are aggressors; and so much more in the wrong that they are many against one; if they own the property, I am not only wrong, but very indiscreet."

The calmness with which Mr. Effingham spoke had an effect on Aristabulus, and, for a moment, he was staggered. It was only for a moment, however, as the pains and penalties of unpopularity presented themselves afresh to an imagination that had been so long accustomed to study the popular caprice, that it had got to deem the public favour the one great good of life.

"But they say, they own the Point, Mr. Effingham."

"And I say, they do not own the Point, Mr. Bragg; never did own it; and, with my consent, never shall own it."

"This is purely a matter of fact," observed John Effingham, "and I confess I am curious to know how or whence this potent public derives its title. You are lawyer enough, Mr. Bragg, to know that the public can hold property only by use, or by especial statute. Now, under which title does this claim present itself."

"First, by use, sir, and then by especial gift."

"The use, you are aware, must be adverse, or as opposed to the title of the other claimants. Now, I am a living witness that my late uncle permitted the public to use this Point, and that the public accepted the conditions. Its use, therefore, has not been adverse, or, at least, not for a time sufficient to make title. Every hour that my cousin has permitted the public to enjoy his property, adds to his right, as well as to the obligation conferred on that public, and increases the duty of the latter to cease intruding, whenever he desires it. If there is an especial gift, as I understand you to say, from my late uncle, there must also be a law to enable the public to hold, or a trustee; which is the fact?"

"I admit, Mr. John Effingham, that I have seen neither deed nor law, and I doubt if the latter exist. Still the public must have some claim, for it is impossible that every body should be mistaken."

"Nothing is easier, nor any thing more common, than for whole communities to be mistaken, and more particularly when they commence with excitement."

While his cousin was speaking, Mr. Effingham went to a secretary, and taking out a large bundle of papers, he laid it down on the table, unfolding several parchment deeds, to which massive seals, bearing the arms of the late colony, as well as those of England, were pendent.

"Here are my titles, sir," he said, addressing Aristabulus pointedly; "if the public has a better, let it be produced, and I shall at once submit to its claim."

"No one doubts that the King, through his authorized agent, the Governor of the colony of New-York, granted this estate to your predecessor, Mr. Effingham; or that it descended legally to your immediate parent; but all contend that your parent gave this spot to the public, as a spot of public resort."

"I am glad that the question is narrowed down within limits that are so easily examined. What evidence is there of this intention, on the part of my late father?"

"Common report; I have talked with twenty people in the village, and they all agree that the 'Point' has been used by the public, as public property, from time immemorial."

"Will you be so good, Mr. Bragg, as to name some of those who affirm this."

Mr. Bragg complied, naming quite the number of persons he had mentioned, with a readiness that proved he thought he was advancing testimony of weight.

"Of all the names you have mentioned," returned Mr. Effingham, "I never heard but three, and these are the names of mere boys. The first dozen are certainly the names of persons who can know no more of this village than they have gleaned in the last few years; and several of them, I understand, have dwelt among us but a few weeks; nay, days."

"Have I not told you, Ned," interrupted John Effingham, "that, an American 'always' means eighteen months, and that 'time immemorial' is only since the last general crisis in the money market!"

"The persons I have mentioned compose a part of the population, sir," added Mr. Bragg, "and, one and all, they are ready to swear that your father, by some means or other, they are not very particular as to minutiae, gave them the right to use this property."

"They are mistaken, and I should be sorry that any one among them should swear to such a falsehood. But here are my titles—let them show better, or, if they can, any, indeed."

"Perhaps your father abandoned the place to the public; this might make a good claim."

"That he did not, I am a living proof to the contrary; he left it to his heirs at his death, and I myself exercised full right of ownership over it, until I went abroad. I did not travel with it in my pocket, sir, it is true; but I left it to the protection of the laws, which, I trust, are as available to the rich as to the poor, although this is a free country."

"Well, sir, I suppose a jury must determine the point, as you seem firm; though I warn you, Mr. Effingham, as one who knows his country, that a verdict, in the face of a popular feeling, is rather a hopeless matter. If they prove that your late father intended to abandon or give this property to the public, your case will be lost."

Mr. Effingham looked among the papers a moment, and selecting one, he handed it to Mr. Bragg, first pointing out to his notice a particular paragraph.

"This, sir, is my late father's will," Mr. Effingham said mildly; "and, in that particular clause, you will find that he makes a special devise of this very 'Point,' leaving it to his heirs, in such terms as to put any intention to give it to the public quite out of the question. This, at least, is the latest evidence I, his only son, executor, and heir possess of his final wishes; if that wondering and time-immemorial public of which you speak, has a better, I wait with patience that it may be produced."

The composed manner of Mr. Effingham had deceived Aristabulus, who did not anticipate any proof so completely annihilating to the pretensions of the public, as that he now held in his hand. It was a simple, brief devise, disposing of the piece of property in question, and left it without dispute, that Mr. Effingham had succeeded to all the rights of his father, with no reservation or condition of any sort.

"This is very extraordinary!" exclaimed Mr. Bragg, when he had read the clause seven times, each perusal contributing to leave the case still clearer in favour of his employer, the individual, and still stronger against the hoped-for future employers, the people. "The public ought to know of this bequest of the late Mr. Effingham."

"I think it ought, sir, before it pretended to deprive his child of his property; or, rather, it ought to be certain, at least, that there was no such devise."

"You will excuse me, Mr. Effingham, but I think it is incumbent on a private citizen, in a case of this sort, when the public has taken up a wrong notion, as I now admit is clearly the fact as regards the Point, to enlighten it, and to inform it that it does not own the spot."

"This has been done already, Mr. Bragg, in the advertisement you had the goodness to carry to the printers, although I deny that there exists any such obligation."

"But, sir, they object to the mode you have chosen to set them right."

"The mode is usual, I believe in the case of trespasses."

"They expect something different, sir, in an affair in which the public is—is—is—all—"

"Wrong," put in John Effingham, pointedly. "I have heard something of this out of doors, Ned, and blame you for your moderation. Is it true that you had told several of your neighbours that you have no wish to prevent them from using the Point, but that your sole object is merely to settle the question of right, and to prevent intrusions on your family when it is enjoying its own place of retirement?"

"Certainly, John, my only wish is to preserve the property for those to whom it is especially devised, to allow those who have the best, nay, the only right to it, its undisturbed possession, occasionally, and to prevent any more of that injury to the trees that has been committed by some of those rude men, who always fancy themselves so completely all the public, as to be masters, in their own particular persons, whenever the public has any claim. I can have no wish to deprive my neighbours of the innocent pleasure of visiting the Point, though I am fully determined they shall not deprive me of my property."

"You are far more indulgent than I should be, or perhaps, than you will be yourself, when you read this."

As John Effingham spoke, he handed his kinsman a small handbill, which purported to call a meeting for that night, of the inhabitants of Templeton, to resist his arrogant claim to the disputed property. This handbill had the usual marks of a feeble and vulgar malignancy about it, affecting to call Mr. Effingham, "one Mr. Effingham," and it was anonymous.

"This is scarcely worth our attention, John," said Mr. Effingham, mildly. "Meetings of this sort cannot decide a legal title, and no man who respects himself will be the tool of so pitiful an attempt to frighten a citizen from maintaining his rights."

"I agree with you, as respects the meeting, which has been conceived in ignorance and low malice, and will probably end, as all such efforts end, in ridicule. But——"

"Excuse me, Mr. John," interrupted Aristabulus, "there is an awful excitement! Some have even spoken of Lynching!"

"Then," said Mr. Effingham, "it does, indeed, require that we should be more firm. Do you, sir, know of any person who has dared to use such a menace?"

Aristabulus quailed before the stern eye of Mr. Effingham, and he regretted having communicated so much, though he had communicated nothing but the truth. He stammered out an obscure and half- intelligible explanation, and proposed to attend the meeting in person, in order that he might be in the way of understanding the subject, without falling into the danger of mistake. To this Mr. Effingham assented, as he felt too indignant at this outrage on all his rights, whether as a citizen or a man, to wish to pursue the subject with his agent that night. Aristabulus departed, and John Effingham remained closeted with his kinsman until the family retired. During this long interview, the former communicated many things to the latter, in relation to this very affair, of which the owner of the property, until then, had been profoundly ignorant.

Chapter XV.

"There shall be, in England, seven half-penny loaves sold for a penny, the three-hooped pot shall have ten hoops; and I will make it felony to drink small beer: all the realm shall be in common, and, in Cheapside shall my palfrey go to grass."—JACK CADE.

Though the affair of the Point continued to agitate the village of Templeton next day, and for many days, it was little remembered in the Wigwam. Confident of his right, Mr. Effingham, though naturally indignant at the abuse of his long liberality, through which alone the public had been permitted to frequent the place, and this too, quite often, to his own discomfort and disappointment, had dismissed the subject temporarily from his mind, and was already engaged in his ordinary pursuits. Not so, however, with Mr. Bragg. Agreeably to promise, he had attended the meeting; and now he seemed to regulate all his movements by a sort of mysterious self-importance, as if the repository of some secret of unusual consequence. No one regarded his manner, however; for Aristabulus, and his secrets, and opinions, were all of too little value, in the eyes of most of the party, to attract peculiar attention. He found a sympathetic listener in Mr. Dodge, happily; that person having been invited, through the courtesy of Mr. Effingham, to pass the day with those in whose company, though very unwillingly on the editor's part certainly, he had gone through so many dangerous trials. These two then, soon became intimate, and to have seen their shrugs, significant whisperings, and frequent conferences in corners, one who did not know them, might have fancied their shoulders burthened with the weight of the state.

But all this pantomime, which was intended to awaken curiosity, was lost on the company in general. The ladies, attended by Paul and the Baronet, proceeded into the forest on foot, for a morning's walk, while the two Messrs. Effinghams continued to read the daily journals, that were received from town each morning, with a most provoking indifference. Neither Aristabulus, nor Mr. Dodge, could resist any longer; and, after exhausting their ingenuity, in the vain effort to induce one of the two gentlemen to question them in relation to the meeting of the previous night, the desire to be doing fairly overcame their affected mysteriousness, and a formal request was made to Mr. Effingham to give them an audience in the library. As the latter, who suspected the nature of the interview, requested his kinsman to make one in it, the four were soon alone, in the apartment so often named.

Even now, that his own request for the interview was granted, Aristabulus hesitated about proceeding until a mild intimation from Mr. Effingham that he was ready to hear his communication, told the agent that it was too late to change his determination.

"I attended the meeting last night, Mr. Effingham," Aristabulus commenced, "agreeably to our arrangement, and I feel the utmost regret at being compelled to lay the result before a gentleman for whom I entertain so profound a respect."

"There was then a meeting?" said Mr. Effingham, inclining his body slightly, by way of acknowledgment for the other's compliment.

"There was, sir; and I think, Mr. Dodge, we may say an overflowing one."

"The public was fairly represented," returned the editor, "as many as fifty or sixty having been present."

"The public has a perfect right to meet, and to consult on its claims to anything it may conceive itself entitled to enjoy," observed Mr. Effingham; "I can have no possible objection to such a course, though I think it would have consulted its own dignity more, had it insisted on being convoked by more respectable persons than those who, I understand, were foremost in this affair, and in terms better suited to its own sense of propriety."

Aristabulus glanced at Mr. Dodge, and Mr. Dodge glanced back at Mr. Bragg, for neither of these political mushrooms could conceive of the dignity and fair-mindedness with which a gentleman could view an affair of this nature.

"They passed a set of resolutions, Mr. Effingham;" Aristabulus resumed, with the gravity with which he ever spoke of things of this nature. "A set of resolutions, sir!"

"That was to be expected," returned his employer, smiling; "the Americans are a set-of-resolutions-passing people. Three cannot get together, without naming a chairman and secretary, and a resolution is as much a consequence of such an 'organization,'—I believe that is the approved word,—as an egg is the accompaniment of the cackling of a hen."

"But, sir, you do not yet know the nature of those resolutions!"

"Very true, Mr. Bragg; that is a piece of knowledge I am to have the pleasure of obtaining from you."

Again Aristabulus glanced at Steadfast, and Steadfast threw back the look of surprise, for, to both it was matter of real astonishment that any man should be so indifferent to the resolutions of a meeting that had been regularly organized, with a chairman and secretary at its head, and which so unequivocally professed to be the public.

"I am reluctant to discharge this duty, Mr. Effingham, but as you insist on its performance it must be done. In the first place, they resolved that your father meant to give them the Point."

"A decision that must clearly settle the matter, and which will destroy all my father's own resolutions on the same subject. Did they stop at the Point, Mr. Bragg or did they resolve that my father also gave them his wife and children?"

"No, sir, nothing was said concerning the latter."

"I cannot properly express my gratitude for the forbearance, as they had just as good a right to pass this resolution, as to pass the other."

"The public's is an awful power, Mr. Effingham!"

"Indeed it is, sir, but fortunately, that of the republic is still more awful, and I shall look to the latter for support, in this 'crisis'—that is the word, too, is it not, Mr. John Effingham?"

"If you mean a change of administration, the upsetting of a stage, or the death of a cart-horse; they are all equally crisises, in the American vocabulary."

"Well, Mr. Bragg, having resolved that it knew my late father's intentions better than he knew them himself, as is apparent from the mistake he made in his will, what next did the public dispose of, in the plenitude of its power?"

"It resolved, sir, that it was your duty to carry out the intentions of your father."

"In that, then, we are perfectly of a mind; as the public will most probably discover, before we get through with this matter. This is one of the most pious resolutions I ever knew the public to pass. Did it proceed any farther?"

Mr. Bragg, notwithstanding the long-encouraged truckling to the sets of men, whom he was accustomed to dignify with the name of the public, had a profound deference or the principles, character, and station of Mr. Effingham, that no sophistry, or self-encouragement in the practices of social confusion, could overcome; and he paused before he communicated the next resolution to his employers. But perceiving that both the latter and his cousin were quietly waiting to hear it, he was fain to overcome his scruples.

"They have openly libelled you, by passing resolutions declaring you to be odious."

"That, indeed, is a strong measure, and, in the interest of good manners and of good morals, it may call for a rebuke. No one can care less than myself, Mr. Bragg, for the opinions of those who have sufficiently demonstrated that their opinions are of no value, by the heedless manner in which they have permitted themselves to fall into this error; but it is proceeding too far, when a few members of the community presume to take these liberties with a private individual, and that, moreover, in a case affecting a pretended claim of their own; and I desire you to tell those concerned, that if they dare to publish their resolution declaring me to be odious, I will teach them what they now do not appear to know, that we live in a country of laws. I shall not prosecute them, but I shall indict them for the offence, and I hope this is plainly expressed."

Aristabulus stood aghast! To indict the public was a step he had never heard of before, and he began to perceive that the question actually had two sides. Still, his awe of public meetings, and his habitual regard for popularity, induced him not to give up the matter, without another struggle.

"They have already ordered their proceedings to be published, Mr. Effingham!" he said, as if such an order were not to be countermanded.

"I fancy, sir, that when it comes to the issue, and the penalties of a prosecution present themselves, their readers will begin to recollect their individuality, and to think less of their public character. They who hunt in droves, like wolves, are seldom very valiant when singled out from their pack. The end will show."

"I heartily wish this unpleasant affair might be amicably settled," added Aristabulus.

"One might, indeed, fancy so," observed John Effingham, "since no one likes to be persecuted."

"But, Mr. John, the public thinks itself persecuted, in this affair."

"The term, as applied to a body that not only makes, but which executes, the law, is so palpably absurd, that I am surprised any man can presume to use it. But, Mr. Bragg, you have seen documents that cannot err, and know that the public has not the smallest right to this bit of land."

"All very true, sir; but you will please to remember, that the people do not know what I now know."

"And you will please to remember, sir, that when people choose to act affirmatively, in so high-handed a manner as this, they are bound to know what they are about. Ignorance in such a matter, is like the drunkard's plea of intoxication; it merely makes the offence worse."

"Do you not think, Mr. John, that Mr. Effingham might have acquainted these citizens with the real state of the case? Are the people so very wrong that they have fallen into a mistake?"

"Since you ask this question plainly, Mr. Bragg, it shall be answered with equal sincerity. Mr. Effingham is a man of mature years; the known child, executor, and heir of one who, it is admitted all round, was the master of the controverted property. Knowing his own business, this Mr. Effingham, in sight of the grave of his fathers, beneath the paternal roof, has the intolerable impudence—"

"Arrogance is the word, Jack," said Mr. Effingham, smiling.

"Aye, the intolerable arrogance to suppose that his own is his own; and this he dares to affirm, without having had the politeness to send his title-deeds, and private papers, round to those who have been so short a time in the place, that they might well know every thing that has occurred in it for the last half century. Oh thou naughty, arrogant fellow, Ned!"

"Mr. John, you appear to forget that the public has more claims to be treated with attention, than a single individual. If it has fallen into error, it ought to be undeceived."

"No doubt, sir; and I advise Mr. Effingham to send you, his agent, to every man, woman and child in the county, with the Patent of the King, all the mesne conveyances and wills, in your pocket, in order that you may read them at length to each individual, with a view that every man, woman and child, may be satisfied that he or she is not the owner of Edward Effingham's lands!"

"Nay, sir, a shorter process might be adopted."

"It might, indeed, sir, and such a process has been adopted by my cousin, in giving the usual notice, in the newspaper, against trespassing. But, Mr. Bragg, you must know that I took great pains, three years since, when repairing this house, to correct the mistake on this very point, into which I found that your immaculate public had fallen, through its disposition to know more of other people's affairs, than those concerned knew of themselves."

Aristabulus said no more, but gave the matter up in despair. On quitting the house, he proceeded forthwith, to inform those most interested of the determination of Mr. Effingham, not to be trampled on by any pretended meeting of the public. Common sense, not to say common honesty, began to resume its sway, and prudence put in its plea, by way of applying the corrective. Both he and Mr. Dodge, however, agreed that there was an unheard-of temerity in thus resisting the people, and this too without a commensurate object, as the pecuniary value of the disputed point was of no material consequence to either party.

The reader is not, by any means, to suppose that Aristabulus Bragg and Steadfast Dodge belonged to the same variety of the human species, in consequence of their unity of sentiment in this affair, and certain other general points of resemblance in their manner and modes of thinking. As a matter of necessity each partook of those features of caste, condition, origin, and association that characterize their particular set; but when it came to the nicer distinctions that mark true individuality, it would not have been easy to find two men more essentially different in character. The first was bold, morally and physically, aspiring, self-possessed, shrewd, singularly adapted to succeed in his schemes where he knew the parties, intelligent, after his tastes, and apt. Had it been his fortune to be thrown earlier into a better sphere, the same natural qualities that rendered him so expert in his present situation, would have conduced to his improvement, and most probably would have formed a gentleman, a scholar, and one who could have contributed largely to the welfare and tastes of his fellow-creatures. That such was not his fate, was more his misfortune than his fault, for his plastic character had readily taken the impression of those things that from propinquity alone, pressed hardest on it. On the other hand Steadfast was a hypocrite by nature, cowardly, envious, and malignant; and circumstances had only lent their aid to the natural tendencies of his disposition. That two men so differently constituted at their births, should meet, as it might be in a common centre, in so many of their habits and opinions, was merely the result of accident and education.

Among the other points of resemblance between these two persons, was that fault of confounding the cause with the effects of the peculiar institutions under which they had been educated and lived. Because the law gave to the public, that authority which, under other systems, is entrusted either to one, or to the few they believed the public was invested with far more power than a right understanding of their own principles would have shown. In a word, both these persons made a mistake which is getting to be too common in America, that of supposing the institutions of the country were all means and no end. Under this erroneous impression they saw only the machinery of the government, becoming entirely forgetful that the power which was given to the people collectively, was only so given to secure to them as perfect a liberty as possible, in their characters of individuals. Neither had risen sufficiently above vulgar notions, to understand that public opinion, in order to be omnipotent, or even formidable beyond the inflictions of the moment, must be right; and that, if a solitary man renders himself contemptible by taking up false notions inconsiderately and unjustly, bodies of men, falling into the same error, incur the same penalties, with the additional stigma of having acted as cowards.

There was also another common mistake into which Messrs. Bragg and Dodge had permitted themselves to fall, through the want of a proper distinction between principles. Resisting the popular will, on the part of an individual, they considered arrogance and aristocracy, per se, without at all entering into the question of the right, or the wrong. The people, rightly enough in the general signification of the term, they deemed to be sovereign; and they belonged to a numerous class, who view disobedience to the sovereign in a democracy, although it be in his illegal caprices, very much as the subject of a despot views disobedience to his prince.

It is scarcely necessary to say, that Mr. Effingham and his cousin viewed these matters differently. Clear headed, just-minded, and liberal in all his practices, the former, in particular, was greatly pained by the recent occurrence; and he paced his library in silence, for several minutes after Mr. Bragg and his companion had withdrawn, really too much grieved to speak.

"This is, altogether, a most extraordinary procedure, John," he at length observed, "and, it strikes me, that it is but an indifferent reward for the liberality with which I have permitted others to use my property, these thirty years; often, very often, as you well know, to my own discomfort, and to that of my friends."

"I have told you, Ned, that you were not to expect the America on your return, that you left behind you on your departure for Europe. I insist that no country has so much altered for the worse, in so short a time."

"That unequalled pecuniary prosperity should sensibly impair the manners of what is termed the world, By introducing suddenly lame bodies of uninstructed and untrained men and women into society, is a natural consequence of obvious causes; that it should corrupt morals, even, we have a right to expect, for we are taught to believe it the most corrupting influence under which men can live; but, I confess, I did not expect to see the day, when a body of strangers, birds of passage, creatures of an hour, should assume a right to call on the old and long-established inhabitants of a country, to prove their claims to their possessions, and this, too, in an unusual and unheard-of manner, under the penalty of being violently deprived of them!"

"Long established!" repeated John Effingham, laughing; "what do you term long established? Have you not been absent a dozen years, and do not these people reduce everything to the level of their own habits. I suppose, now, you fancy you can go to Rome or Jerusalem, or Constantinople, and remain four or five lustres, and then come coolly back to Templeton. and, on taking possession of this house again, call yourself an old resident."

"I certainly do suppose I have that right. How many English, Russians, and Germans, did we meet in Italy, the residents of years, who still retained all their natural and local right and feelings!"

"Ay, that is in countries where society is permanent, and men get accustomed to look on the same objects, hear the same names, and see the same faces for their entire lives. I have had the curiosity to inquire, and have ascertained that none of the old, permanent families have been active in this affair of the Point, but that all the clamour has been made by those you call the birds of passage. But what of that? These people fancy everything reduced to the legal six months required to vote; and that rotation in persons is as necessary to republicanism as rotation in office."

"Is is not extraordinary that persons who can know so little on the subject, should be thus indiscreet and positive?"

"It is not extraordinary in America. Look about you, Ned, and you will see adventurers uppermost everywhere; in the government, in your towns, in your villages, in the country, even. We are a nation of changes. Much of this, I admit, is the fair consequence of legitimate causes, as an immense region, in forest, cannot be peopled on any other conditions. But this necessity has infected the entire national character, and men get to be impatient of any sameness, even though it be useful. Everything goes to confirm this feeling, instead of opposing it. The constant recurrences of the elections accustom men to changes in their public functionaries; the great increase in the population brings new faces; and the sudden accumulations of property place new men in conspicuous stations. The architecture of the country is barely becoming sufficiently respectable to render it desirable to preserve the buildings, without which we shall have no monuments to revere. In short, everything contributes to produce such a state of things, painful as it may be to all of any feeling, and little to oppose it."

"You colour highly, Jack; and no picture loses in tints, in being retouched by you."

"Look into the first paper that offers, and you will see the young men of the country hardily invited to meet by themselves, to consult concerning public affairs, as if they were impatient of the counsels and experience of their fathers. No country can prosper, where the ordinary mode of transacting the business connected with the root of the government, commences with this impiety."

"This is a disagreeable feature in the national character, certainly; but we must remember the arts employed by the designing to practise on the inexperienced."

"Had I a son, who presumed to denounce the wisdom and experience of his father, in this disrespectful mariner, I would disinherit the rascal!"

"Ah, Jack, bachelor's children are notoriously well educated, and well mannered. We will hope, however, that time will bring its changes also, and that one of them will be a greater constancy in persons, things, and the affections."

"Time will bring its changes, Ned; but all of them that are connected with individual rights, as opposed to popular caprice, or popular interests, are likely to be in the wrong direction."

"The tendency is certainly to substitute popularity for the right, but we must take the good with the bad; Even you, Jack, would not exchange this popular oppression for any other system under which you have lived."

"I don't know that—I don't know that. Of all tyranny, a vulgar tyranny is to me the most odious."

"You used to admire the English system, but I think observation has lessened your particular admiration in that quarter;" said Mr. Effingham, smiling in a way that his cousin perfectly understood.

"Harkee, Ned; we all take up false notions in youth, and this was one of mine; but, of the two, I should prefer the cold, dogged domination of English law, with its fruits, the heartlessness of a sophistication without parallel, to being trampled on by every arrant blackguard that may happen to traverse this valley, in his wanderings after dollars. There is one thing you yourself must admit; the public is a little too apt to neglect the duties it ought to discharge, and to assume duties it has no right to fulfil."

This remark ended the discourse.

Chapter XVI.

Her breast was a brave palace, a broad street, Where all heroic, ample thoughts did meet, Where nature such a tenement had ta'en, That other souls, to hers, dwelt in 'a lane.

JOHN NORTON.

The village of Templeton, it has been already intimated, was a miniature town. Although it contained within the circle of its houses, half-a-dozen residences with grounds, and which were dignified with names, as has been also said, it did not cover a surface of more than a mile square; that disposition to concentration, which is as peculiar to an American town, as the disposition to diffusion is peculiar to the country population, and which seems almost to prescribe that a private dwelling shall have but three windows in front, and a facade of twenty-five feet, having presided at the birth of this spot, as well as at the birth of so many of its predecessors and contemporaries. In one of its more retired streets (for Templeton had its publicity and retirement, the latter after a very village fashion, however,) dwelt a widow— bewitched of small worldly means, five children, and of great capacity for circulating intelligence. Mrs. Abbott, for so was this demi-relict called, was just on the verge of what is termed the "good society" of the village, the most uneasy of all positions for an ambitious and ci-devant pretty woman to be placed in. She had not yet abandoned the hope of obtaining a divorce and its suites; was singularly, nay, rabidly devout, if we may coin the adverb; in her own eyes she was perfection, in those of her neighbours slightly objectionable; and she was altogether a droll, and by no means an unusual compound of piety, censoriousness, charity, proscription, gossip, kindness, meddling, ill-nature, and decency.

The establishment of Mrs. Abbott, like her house, was necessarily very small, and she kept no servant but a girl she called her help, a very suitable appellation, by the way, as they did most of the work of the menage in common. This girl, in addition to cooking and washing, was the confidant of all her employer's wandering notions of mankind in general, and of her neighbours in particular; as often, helping her mistress in circulating her comments on the latter, as in anything else.

Mrs. Abbott knew nothing of the Effinghams, except by a hearsay that got its intelligence from her own school, being herself a late arrival in the place. She had selected Templeton as a residence on account of its cheapness, and, having neglected to comply with the forms of the world, by hesitating about making the customary visit to the Wigwam, she began to resent, in her spirit at least, Eve's delicate forbearance from obtruding herself, where, agreeably to all usage, she had a perfect right to suppose she was not desired. It was in this spirit, then, that she sat, conversing with Jenny, as the maid of all work was called, the morning after the conversation related in the last chapter, in her snug little parlour, sometimes plying her needle, and oftener thrusting her head out of a window which commanded a view of the principal street of the place, in order to see what her neighbours might be about.

"This is a most extraordinary course Mr. Effingham has taken concerning the Point," said Mrs. Abbott, "and I do hope the people will bring him to his senses. Why, Jenny, the public has used that place ever since I can remember, and I have now lived in Templeton quite fifteen months.—What can induce Mr. Howel to go so often to that barber's shop, which stands directly opposite the parlour windows of Mrs. Bennett—one would think the man was all beard."

"I suppose Mr. Howel gets shaved sometimes," said the logical Jenny.

"Not he; or if he does, no decent man would think of posting himself before a lady's window to do such a thing.—Orlando Furioso," calling to her eldest son, a boy of eleven, "run over to Mr. Jones's store, and listen to what the people are talking about, and bring me back the news, as soon as any thing worth hearing drops from any body; and stop as you come back, my son, and borrow neighbour Brown's gridiron. Jenny, it is most time to think of putting over the potatoes."

"Ma'—" cried Orlando Furioso, from the front door, Mrs. Abbott being very rigid in requiring that all her children should call her 'ma',' being so much behind the age as actually not to know that 'mother' had got to be much the genteeler term of the two; "Ma'," roared Orlando Furioso, "suppose there is no news at Mr. Jones's store?"

"Then go to the nearest tavern; something must be stirring this fine morning, and I'm dying to know what it can possibly be. Mind you bring something besides the gridiron back with you. Hurry, or never come home again as long as you live! As I was saying, Jenny, the right of the public, which is our right, for we are a part of the public, to this Point, is as clear as day, and I am only astonished at the impudence of Mr. Effingham in pretending to deny it. I dare say his French daughter has put him up to it. They say she is monstrous arrogant!"

"Is Eve Effingham, French," said Jenny, studiously avoiding any of the usual terms of civility and propriety, by way of showing her breeding—"well, I had always thought her nothing but Templeton born!"

"What signifies where a person was born? where they live, is the essential thing; and Eve Effingham has lived so long in France, that she speaks nothing but broken English; and Miss Debby told me last week, that in drawing up a subscription paper for a new cushion to the reading-desk of her people, she actually spelt 'charity' 'carrotty.'"

"Is that French, Miss Abbott?"

"I rather think it is, Jenny; the French are very niggardly, and give their poor carrots to live on, and so they have adopted the word, I suppose. You, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann, (Bianca-Alzuma-Ann!)"

"Marm!"

"Byansy-Alzumy-Ann! who taught you to call me marm! Is this the way you have learned your catechism? Say, ma', this instant."

"Ma'."

"Take your bonnet, my child, and run down to Mrs. Wheaton's, and ask her if any thing new has turned up about the Point, this morning; and, do you hear, Byansy-Alzumy-Ann Abbott—how the child starts away, as if she were sent on a matter of life and death!"

"Why, ma', I want to hear the news, too."

"Very likely, my dear, but, by stopping to get your errand, you may learn more than by being in such a hurry. Stop in at Mrs. Green's, and ask how the people liked the lecture of the strange parson, last evening—and ask her if she can lend me a watering-pot, Now, run, and be back as soon as possible. Never loiter when you carry news, child."

"No one has a right to stop the man, I believe, Miss Abbott," put in Jenny, very appositely.

"That, indeed, have they not, or else we could not calculate the consequences. You may remember, Jenny, the pious, even, had to give up that point, public convenience being; too strong for them. Roger- Demetrius-Benjamin!"—calling to a second boy, two years younger than his brother—"your eyes are better than mine—who are all those people collected together in the street. Is not Mr. Howel among them?"

"I do not know, ma'!" answered Roger-Demetrius-Benjamin, gaping.

"Then run, this minute, and see, and don't stop to look for your hat. As you come back, step into the tailor's shop and ask if your new jacket is most done, and what the news is? I rather think, Jenny, we shall find out something worth hearing, in the course of the day. By the way, they do say that Grace Van Cortlandt, Eve Effingham's cousin, is under concern."

"Well, she is the last person I should think would be troubled about any thing, for every body says she is so desperate rich she might eat off of silver, if she liked; and she is sure of being married, some time or other."

"That ought to lighten her concern, you think. Oh! it does my heart good when I see any of those flaunty people right well exercised! Nothing would make me happier than to see Eve Effingham groaning fairly in the spirit! That would teach her to take away the people's Points."

"But, Miss Abbott, then she would become almost as good a woman as you are yourself,"

"I am a miserable, graceless, awfully wicked sinner! Twenty times a day do I doubt whether I am actually converted or not. Sin has got such a hold of my very heart-strings, that I sometimes think they will crack before it lets go. Rinaldo-Rinaldini-Timothy, my child, do you toddle across the way, and give my compliments to Mrs. Hulbert, and inquire if it be true that young Dickson, the lawyer, is really engaged to Aspasia Tubbs or not? and borrow a skimmer, or a tin pot, or any thing you can carry, for we may want something of the sort in the course of the day. I do believe, Jenny, that a worse creature than myself is hardly to be found in Templeton."