After a pause, the poor girl went on:—

"There was a great military review, an encampment. She was tempted out to see it. Of a sudden by some mistake, a ramrod was fired from a careless soldier's gun, and it pierced her through her heart. I tell you, Felix, it pinned my baby frock into the wound, so that they could not part me from her till it was cut away.

"Of course every one was filled with horror. Nobody claimed poor me, the baby. But the battalion, the Montgomery Battalion, it was, which had, by mischance, killed my mother, adopted me as their child. I was voted 'Fille du Regiment.' They paid an assessment annually, which the colonel expended for me. A kind old woman nursed me."

"She was your Betsy Myers," interrupted I.

"And when I was old enough I was sent into Connecticut, to the best of schools. This lasted till I was sixteen. Fortunately for me, perhaps, the Montgomery Battalion then dissolved. I was finding it hard to answer the colonel's annual letters. I had my living to earn,—it was best I should earn it. I declined a proposal to go out as a missionary. I had no call. I answered one of Miss Beecher's appeals for Western teachers. Most of my life since has been a school-ma'am's. It has had ups and downs. But I have always been proud that the Public was my godfather; and, as you know," she said, "I have trusted the Public well. I have never been lonely, wherever I went. I tried to make myself of use. Where I was of use I found society. The ministers have been kind to me. I always offered my services in the Sunday schools and sewing-rooms. The school committees have been kind to me. They are the Public's high chamberlains for poor girls. I have written for the journals. I won one of Sartain's hundred-dollar prizes—"

"And I another," interrupted I.

"When I was very poor, I won the first prize for an essay on bad boys."

"And I the second," answered I.

"I think I know one bad boy better than he knows himself," said she. But she went on. "I watched with this poor Miss Stillingfleet the night she died. This absurd 'distribution' had got hold of her, and she would not be satisfied till she had transferred that strange ticket, No. 2,973, to me, writing the indorsement which you have heard. I had had a longing to visit New York and Hoboken again. This ticket seemed to me to beckon me. I had money enough to come, if I would come cheaply. I wrote to my father's business partner, and enclosed a note to his only sister. She is Mrs. Mason. She asked me, coldly enough, to her house. Old Mr. Grills always liked me,—he offered me escort and passage as far as Troy or Albany. I accepted his proposal, and you know the rest."

When I told Fausta my story, she declared I made it up as I went along. When she believed it,—as she does believe it now,—she agreed with me in declaring that it was not fit that two people thus joined should ever be parted. Nor have we been, ever!

She made a hurried visit at Mrs. Mason's. She prepared there for her wedding. On the 1st of November we went into that same church which was our first home in New York; and that dear old raven-man made us

ONE!



A PIECE OF POSSIBLE HISTORY.

[This essay was first published in the Monthly Religious Magazine, Boston, for October, 1851. One or another professor of chronology has since taken pains to tell me that it is impossible. But until they satisfy themselves whether Homer ever lived at all, I shall hold to the note which I wrote to Miss Dryasdust's cousin, which I printed originally at the end of the article, and which will be found there in this collection. The difficulties in the geography are perhaps worse than those of chronology.]

A summer bivouac had collected together a little troop of soldiers from Joppa, under the shelter of a grove, where they had spread their sheep-skins, tethered their horses, and pitched a single tent. With the carelessness of soldiers, they were chatting away the time till sleep might come, and help them to to-morrow with its chances; perhaps of fight, perhaps of another day of this camp indolence. Below the garden slope where they were lounging, the rapid torrent of Kishon ran brawling along. A full moon was rising above the rough edge of the Eastern hills, and the whole scene was alive with the loveliness of an Eastern landscape.

As they talked together, the strains of a harp came borne down the stream by the wind, mingling with the rippling of the brook.

"The boys were right," said the captain of the little company. "They asked leave to go up the stream to spend their evening with the Carmel-men; and said that they had there a harper, who would sing and play for them."

"Singing at night, and fighting in the morning! It is the true soldier's life," said another.

"Who have they there?" asked a third.

"One of those Ziklag-men," replied the chief. "He came into camp a few days ago, seems to be an old favorite of the king's, and is posted with his men, by the old tomb on the edge of the hill. If you cross the brook, he is not far from the Carmel post; and some of his young men have made acquaintance there."

"One is not a soldier for nothing. If we make enemies at sight, we make friends at sight too."

"Echish here says that the harper is a Jew."

"What!—a deserter?"

"I do not know that; that is the king's lookout. Their company came up a week ago, were reviewed the day I was on guard at the outposts, and they had this post I tell you of assigned to them. So the king is satisfied; and, if he is, I am."

"Jew or Gentile, Jehovah's man or Dagon's man," said one of the younger soldiers, with a half-irreverent tone, "I wish we had him here to sing to us."

"And to keep us awake," yawned another.

"Or to keep us from thinking of to-morrow," said a third.

"Can nobody sing here, or play, or tell an old-time story?"

There was nobody. The only two soldiers of the post, who affected musical skill, were the two who had gone up to the Carmelites' bivouac; and the little company of Joppa—catching louder notes and louder, as the bard's inspiration carried him farther and farther away—crept as far up the stream as the limits of their station would permit; and lay, without noise, to catch, as they best could, the rich tones of the music as it swept down the valley.

Soothed by the sound, and by the moonlight, and by the summer breeze, they were just in mood to welcome the first interruption which broke the quiet of the night. It was the approach of one of their company, who had been detached to Accho a day or two before; and who came hurrying in to announce the speedy arrival of companions, for whom he bespoke a welcome. Just as they were to leave Accho, he said, that day, on their return to camp, an Ionian trading-vessel had entered port. He and his fellow-soldiers had waited to help her moor, and had been chatting with her seamen. They had told them of the chance of battle to which they were returning; and two or three of the younger Ionians, enchanted at the relief from the sea's imprisonment, had begged them to let them volunteer in company with them. These men had come up into the country with the soldiers, therefore; and he who had broken the silence of the listeners to the distant serenade had hurried on to tell his comrades that such visitors were on their way.

They soon appeared on foot, but hardly burdened by the light packs they bore.

A soldier's welcome soon made the Ionian sailors as much at home with the men of the bivouac, as they had been through the day with the detachment from the sea-board. A few minutes were enough to draw out sheep-skins for them to lie upon, a skin of wine for their thirst, a bunch of raisins and some oat-cakes for their hunger; a few minutes more had told the news which each party asked from the other; and then these sons of the sea and these war-bronzed Philistines were as much at ease with each other as if they had served under the same sky for years.

"We were listening to music," said the old chief, "when you came up. Some of our young men have gone up, indeed, to the picket yonder, to hear the harper sing, whose voice you catch sometimes, when we are not speaking."

"You find the Muses in the midst of arms, then," said one of the young Ionians.

"Muses?" said the old Philistine, laughing. "That sounds like you Greeks. Ah! sir, in our rocks here we have few enough Muses, but those who carry these lances, or teach us how to trade with the islands for tin."

"That's not quite fair," cried another. "The youngsters who are gone sing well; and one of them has a harp I should be glad you should see. He made it himself from a gnarled olive-root." And he turned to look for it.

"You'll not find it in the tent: the boy took it with him. They hoped the Ziklag minstrel might ask them to sing, I suppose."

"A harp of olive-wood," said the Ionian, "seems Muse-born and Pallas-blessed."

And, as he spoke, one of the new-comers of the Philistines leaned over, and whispered to the chief: "He is a bard himself, and we made him promise to sing to us. I brought his harp with me that he might cheer up our bivouac. Pray, do you ask him."

The old chief needed no persuasion; and the eyes of the whole force brightened as they found they had a minstrel "of their own" now, when the old man pressed the young Ionian courteously to let them hear him: "I told you, sir, that we had no Muses of our own; but we welcome all the more those who come to us from over seas."

Homer smiled; for it was Homer whom he spoke to,—Homer still in the freshness of his unblinded youth. He took the harp which the young Philistine handed to him, thrummed upon its chords, and as he tuned them said: "I have no harp of olive-wood; we cut this out, it was years ago, from an old oleander in the marshes behind Colophon. What will you hear, gentlemen?"

"The poet chooses for himself," said the courtly old captain.

"Let me sing you, then, of the Olive Harp"; and he struck the chords in a gentle, quieting harmony, which attuned itself to his own spirit, pleased as he was to find music and harmony and the olive of peace in the midst of the rough bivouac, where he had come up to look for war. But he was destined to be disappointed. Just as his prelude closed, one of the young soldiers turned upon his elbow, and whispered contemptuously to his neighbor: "Always olives, always peace: that's all your music's good for!"

The boy spoke too loud, and Homer caught the discontented tone and words with an ear quicker than the speaker had given him credit for. He ended the prelude with a sudden crash on the strings, and said shortly, "And what is better to sing of than the olive?"

The more courteous Philistines looked sternly on the young soldier; but he had gone too far to be frightened, and he flashed back: "War is better. My broadsword is better. If I could sing, I would sing to your Ares; we call him Mars!"

Homer smiled gravely. "Let it be so," said he; and, in a lower tone, to the captain, who was troubled at the breach of courtesy, he added, "Let the boy see what war and Mars are for."

He struck another prelude and began. Then was it that Homer composed his "Hymn to Mars." In wild measure, and impetuous, he swept along through the list of Mars's titles and attributes; then his key changed, and his hearers listened more intently, more solemnly, as in a graver strain, with slower music, and an almost awed dignity of voice, the bard went on:—

"Helper of mortals, hear! As thy fires give The present boldnesses that strive In youth for honor; So would I likewise wish to have the power To keep off from my head thy bitter hour, And quench the false fire of my soul's low kind, By the fit ruling of my highest mind! Control that sting of wealth That stirs me on still to the horrid scath Of hideous battle!

"Do thou, O ever blessed! give me still Presence of mind to put in act my will, Whate'er the occasion be; And so to live, unforced by any fear, Beneath those laws of peace, that never are Affected with pollutions popular Of unjust injury, As to bear safe the burden of hard fates, Of foes inflexive, and inhuman hates!"

The tones died away; the company was hushed for a moment; and the old chief then said gravely to his petulant follower, "That is what men fight for, boy." But the boy did not need the counsel. Homer's manner, his voice, the music itself, the spirit of the song, as much as the words, had overcome him; and the boasting soldier was covering his tears with his hands.

Homer felt at once (the prince of gentlemen he) that the little outbreak, and the rebuke of it, had jarred the ease of their unexpected meeting. How blessed is the presence of mind with which the musician of real genius passes from song to song, "whate'er the occasion be!" With the ease of genius he changed the tone of his melody again, and sang his own hymn, "To Earth, the Mother of all."

The triumphant strain is one which harmonizes with every sentiment; and he commanded instantly the rapt attention of the circle. So engrossed was he, that he did not seem to observe, as he sang, an addition to their company of some soldiers from above in the valley, just as he entered on the passage:—

"Happy, then, are they Whom thou, O great in reverence! Are bent to honor. They shall all things find In all abundance! All their pastures yield Herds in all plenty. All their roofs are filled With rich possessions. High happiness and wealth attend them, While, with laws well-ordered, they Cities of happy households sway; And their sons exult in the pleasure of youth, And their daughters dance with the flower-decked girls, Who play among the flowers of summer! Such are the honors thy full hands divide; Mother of Gods and starry Heaven's bride!"[1]

A buzz of pleasure and a smile ran round the circle, in which the new-comers joined. They were the soldiers who had been to hear and join the music at the Carmel-men's post. The tones of Homer's harp had tempted them to return; and they had brought with them the Hebrew minstrel, to whom they had been listening. It was the outlaw David, of Bethlehem Ephrata.

David had listened to Homer more intently than any one; and, as the pleased applause subsided, the eyes of the circle gathered upon him, and the manner of all showed that they expected him, in minstrel-fashion, to take up the same strain.

He accepted the implied invitation, played a short prelude, and taking Homer's suggestion of topic, sang in parallel with it:—

"I will sing a new song unto thee, O God! Upon psaltery and harp will I sing praise to thee. Thou art He that giveth salvation to kings, That delivereth David, thy servant, from the sword. Rid me and save me from those who speak vanity, Whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood,— That our sons may be as plants in fresh youth; That our daughters may be as corner-stones,— The polished stones of our palaces; That our garners may be full with all manner of store; That our sheep may bring forth thousands and ten thousands in the way; That there may be no cry nor complaint in our streets. Happy is the people that is in such a case; Yea, happy is the people whose God is the Lord!"

The melody was triumphant; and the enthusiastic manner yet more so. The Philistines listened delighted,—too careless of religion, they, indeed not to be catholic in presence of religious enthusiasm; and Homer wore the exalted expression which his face seldom wore. For the first time since his childhood, Homer felt that he was not alone in the world!

Who shall venture to tell what passed between the two minstrels, when Homer, leaving his couch, crossed the circle at once, flung himself on the ground by David's side, gave him his hand; when they looked each other in the face, and sank down into the rapid murmuring of talk, which constant gesture illustrated, but did not fully explain to the rough men around them? They respected the poets' colloquy for a while; but then, eager again to hear one harp or the other, they persuaded one of the Ionian sailors to ask Homer again to sing to them.

It was hard to persuade Homer. He shook his head, and turned back to the soldier-poet.

"What should I sing?" he said.

They did not enter into his notion: hearers will not always. And so, taking his question literally, they replied, "Sing? Sing us of the snow-storm, the storm of stones, of which you sang at noon."

Poor Homer! It was easier to do it than to be pressed to do it; and he struck his harp again:—

"It was as when, some wintry day, to men Jove would, in might, his sharp artillery show; He wills his winds to sleep, and over plain And mountains pours, in countless flakes, his snow. Deep it conceals the rocky cliffs and hills, Then covers all the blooming meadows o'er, All the rich monuments of mortals' skill, All ports and rocks that break the ocean-shore. Rock, haven, plain, are buried by its fall; But the near wave, unchanging, drinks it all. So while these stony tempests veil the skies, While this on Greeks, and that on Trojans flies, The walls unchanged above the clamor rise."[2]

The men looked round upon David, whose expression, as he returned the glance, showed that he had enjoyed the fragment as well as they. But when they still looked expectant, he did not decline the unspoken invitation; but, taking Homer's harp, sang, as if the words were familiar to him:—

"He giveth snow like wool; He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes; He casteth forth his ice like morsels; Who can stand before his cold? He sendeth forth his word, and melteth them; He causeth his wind to blow, and the waters flow."

"Always this 'He,'" said one of the young soldiers to another.

"Yes," he replied; "and it was so in the beginning of the evening, when we were above there."

"There is a strange difference between the two men, though the one plays as well as the other, and the Greek speaks with quite as little foreign accent as the Jew, and their subjects are the same."

"Yes," said the young Philistine harper; "if the Greek should sing one of the Hebrew's songs, you would know he had borrowed it, in a moment."

"And so, if it were the other way."

"Of course," said their old captain, joining in this conversation. "Homer, if you call him so, sings the thing made: David sings the maker. Or, rather, Homer thinks of the thing made: David thinks of the maker, whatever they sing."

"I was going to say that Homer would sing of cities; and David, of the life in them."

"It is not what they say so much, as the way they look at it. The Greek sees the outside,—the beauty of the thing; the Hebrew—"

"Hush!"

For David and his new friend had been talking too. Homer had told him of the storm at sea they met a few days before; and David, I think, had spoken of a mountain-tornado, as he met it years before. In the excitement of his narrative he struck the harp, which was still in his hand, and sung:—

"Then the earth shook and trembled, The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken, Because He was wroth; There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, And fire out of his mouth devoured; It burned with living coal. He bowed the heavens also, and came down, And darkness was under his feet; He rode upon a cherub and did fly, Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his resting-place, His pavilion were dark waters and clouds of the skies; At the brightness before him his clouds passed by, Hail-stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, And the highest gave his voice; Hail-stones and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them, And he shot out his lightnings, and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters were seen, And the foundations of the world were made known, At thy rebuke, O Lord! At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above, he took me, He drew me out of many waters."

"Mine were but a few verses," said Homer. "I am more than repaid by yours. Imagine Neptune, our sea-god, looking on a battle:—

"There he sat high, retired from the seas; There looked with pity on his Grecians beaten; There burned with rage at the god-king who slew them. Then he rushed forward from the rugged mountains, Quickly descending; He bent the forests also as he came down, And the high cliffs shook under his feet. Three times he trod upon them, And with his fourth step reached the home he sought for.

"There was his palace, in the deep waters of the seas, Shining with gold, and builded forever. There he yoked him his swift-footed horses; Their hoofs are brazen, and their manes are golden. He binds them with golden thongs, He seizes his golden goad, He mounts upon his chariot, and doth fly: Yes! he drives them forth into the waves! And the whales rise under him from the depths, For they know he is their king; And the glad sea is divided into parts, That his steeds may fly along quickly; And his brazen axle passes dry between the waves, So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians."[3]

And the poets sank again into talk.

"You see it," said the old Philistine. "He paints the picture. David sings the life of the picture."

"Yes: Homer sees what he sings; David feels his song."

"Homer's is perfect in its description."

"Yes; but for life, for the soul of the description, you need the Hebrew."

"Homer might be blind; and, with that fancy and word-painting power of his, and his study of everything new, he would paint pictures as he sang, though unseen."

"Yes," said another; "but David—" And he paused.

"But David?" asked the chief.

"I was going to say that he might be blind, deaf, imprisoned, exiled, sick, or all alone, and that yet he would never know he was alone; feeling as he does, as he must to sing so, of the presence of this Lord of his!"

"He does not think of a snow-flake, but as sent from him."

"While the snow-flake is reminding Homer of that hard, worrying, slinging work of battle. He must have seen fight himself."

They were hushed again. For, though they no longer dared ask the poets to sing to them,—so engrossed were they in each other's society,—the soldiers were hardly losers from this modest courtesy. For the poets were constantly arousing each other to strike a chord, or to sing some snatch of remembered song. And so it was that Homer, apropos of I do not know what, sang in a sad tone:—

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground: Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise. So generations in their course decay, So flourish these, when those have passed away."[4]

David waited for a change in the strain; but Homer stopped. The young Hebrew asked him to go on; but Homer said that the passage which followed was mere narrative, from a long narrative poem. David looked surprised that his new friend had not pointed a moral as he sang; and said simply, "We sing that thus:—

"As for man, his days are as grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, And the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord Is from everlasting to everlasting Of them that fear him; And his righteousness Unto children's children, To such as keep his covenant, As remember his commandments to do them!"

Homer's face flashed delighted. "I, like you, 'keep his covenant,'" he cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands, he sang, in clear tone:—

"Thou bid'st me birds obey;—I scorn their flight, If on the left they rise, or on the right! Heed them who may, the will of Jove I own, Who mortals and immortals rules alone!"[5]

"That is more in David's key," said the young Philistine harper, seeing that the poets had fallen to talk together again. "But how would it sound in one of the hymns on one of our feast-days?"

"Who mortals and immortals rules alone."

"How, indeed?" cried one of his young companions. "There would be more sense in what the priests say and sing, if each were not quarrelling for his own,—Dagon against Astarte, and Astarte against Dagon."

The old captain bent over, that the poets might not hear him, and whispered: "There it is that the Hebrews have so much more heart than we in such things. Miserable fellows though they are, so many of them, yet, when I have gone through their whole land with the caravans, the chances have been that any serious-minded man spoke of no God but this 'He' of David's."

"What is his name?"

"They do not know themselves, I believe."

"Well, as I said an hour ago, God's man or Dagon's man,—for those are good names enough for me,—I care little; but I should like to sing as that young fellow does."

"My boy," said the old man, "have not you heard him enough to see that it is not he that sings, near as much as this love of his for a Spirit he does not name? It is that spirited heart of his that sings."

"You sing like him? Find his life, boy; and perhaps it may sing for you."

"We should be more manly men, if he sang to us every night."

"Or if the other did," said an Ionian sailor.

"Yes," said the chief. "And yet, I think, if your countryman sang every night to me, he would make me want the other. Whether David's singing would send me to his, I do not feel sure. But how silly to compare them! As well compare the temple in Accho with the roar of a whirlwind—"

"Or the point of my lance with the flight of an eagle. The men are in two worlds."

"O, no! that is saying too much. You said that one could paint pictures—"

"—Into which the other puts life. Yes, I did say so. We are fortunate that we have them together."

"For this man sings of men quite as well as the other does; and to have the other sing of God—"

"—Why, it completes the song. Between them they bring the two worlds together."

"He bows the heavens, and comes down," said the boy of the olive-harp, trying to hum David's air.

"Let us ask them—"

And just then there rang along the valley the sound of a distant conch-shell. The soldiers groaned, roused up, and each looked for his own side-arms and his own skin.

But the poets talked on unheeding.

The old chief knocked down a stack of lances; but the crash did not rouse them. He was obliged himself to interrupt their eager converse.

"I am sorry to break in; but the night-horn has sounded to rest, and the guard will be round to inspect the posts. I am sorry to hurry you away, sir," he said to David.

David thanked him courteously.

"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest," said Homer, with a smile.

"We will all meet to-morrow. And may to-night's dreams be good omens!"

"If we dream at all," said Homer again:—

"Without a sign his sword the brave man draws, And asks no omen but his country's cause."

They were all standing together, as he made this careless reply to the captain; and one of the young men drew him aside, and whispered that David was in arms against his country.

Homer was troubled that he had spoken as he did. But the young Jew looked little as if he needed sympathy. He saw the doubt and regret which hung over their kindly faces; told them not to fear for him; singing, as he bade them good night, and with one of the Carmel-men walked home to his own outpost:—

"The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me."

And he smiled to think how his Carmelite companion would start, if he knew when first he used those words.

So they parted, as men who should meet on the morrow.

But God disposes.

David had left to-morrow's dangers for to-morrow to care for. It seemed to promise him that he must be in arms against Saul. But, unlike us in our eagerness to anticipate our conflicts of duty, David waited.

And the Lord delivered him. While they were singing by the brookside, the proud noblemen of the Philistine army had forced an interview with their king; and, in true native Philistine arrogance, insisted that "this Hebrew" and his men should be sent away.

With the light of morning the king sent for the minstrel, and courteously dismissed him, because "the princes of the Philistines have said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.'"

So David marched his men to Ziklag.

And David and Homer never met on earth again.

NOTE.—This will be a proper place to print the following note, which I was obliged to write to a second cousin of Miss Dryasdust after she had read the MS. of the article above:—

"DEAR MADAM:—I thank you for your kind suggestion, in returning my paper, that it involves a piece of impossible history. You inform me, that, 'according to the nomenclatured formulas and homophonic analogies of Professor Gouraud, of never-to-be-forgotten memory, "A NEEDLE is less useful for curing a DEAF HEAD, than for putting ear-rings into a Miss's lily-ears"; and that this shows that the second king of Judah, named David (or Deaf-head) began to reign in 1055 B.C., and died 1040 B.C.'; and further, that, according to the same authority, 'Homer flourished when the Greeks were fond of his POETRY'; which, being interpreted, signifies that he flourished in 914 B.C., and, consequently, could have had no more to do with David than to plant ivy over his grave, in some of his voyages to Phoenicia.

"I thank you for the suggestion. I knew the unforgetting professor; and I do not doubt that he remembered David and Homer as his near friends. But, of course, to such a memory, a century or two might easily slip aside.

"Now, did you look up Clement? And did you not forget the Arundelian Marbles? For, if you will take the long estimates, you will find that some folks think Homer lived as long ago as the year 1150, and some that it was as 'short ago' as 850. And some set David as long ago as 1170, and some bring him down to a hundred and fifty years later. These are the long measures and the short measures. So the long and short of it is, that you can keep the two poets 320 years apart, while I have rather more than a century which I can select any night of, for a bivouac scene, in which to bring them together. Believe me, my dear Miss D., always yours, &c.

"Confess that you forgot the Arundelian Marbles!"

FOOTNOTES:

[1] After Chapman.

[2] After Cowper and Pope. Long after!

[3] Iliad, vi.

[4] Iliad, vi.—POPE.

[5] Iliad, xii., after Sotheby.



THE SOUTH AMERICAN EDITOR

[I am tempted to include this little burlesque in this collection simply in memory of the Boston Miscellany, the magazine in which it was published, which won for itself a brilliant reputation in its short career. There was not a large staff of writers for the Miscellany, but many of the names then unknown have since won distinction. To quote them in the accidental order in which I find them in the table of contents, where they are arranged by the alphabetical order of the several papers, the Miscellany contributors were Edward Everett, George Lunt, Nathan Hale, Jr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, N. P. Willis, W. W. Story, J. R. Lowell, C. N. Emerson, Alexander H. Everett, Sarah P. Hale, W. A. Jones, Cornelius Matthews, Mrs. Kirkland, J. W. Ingraham, H. T. Tuckerman, Evart A. Duyckinck, Francis A. Durivage, Mrs. J. Webb, Charles F. Powell, Charles W. Storey, Lucretia P. Hale, Charles F. Briggs, William E. Channing, Charles Lanman, G. H. Hastings, and Elizabeth B. Barrett, now Mrs. Browning, some of whose earliest poems were published in this magazine. These are all the contributors whose names appear, excepting the writers of a few verses. They furnished nine tenths of the contents of the magazine. The two Everetts, Lowell, William Story, and my brother, who was the editor, were the principal contributors. And I am tempted to say that I think they all put some of their best work upon this magazine.

The misfortune of the Miscellany, I suppose, was that its publishers had no capital. They had to resort to the claptraps of fashion-plates and other engravings, in the hope of forcing an immediate sale upon persons who, caring for fashion-plates, did not care for the literary character of the enterprise. It gave a very happy escape-pipe, however, for the high spirits of some of us who had just left college, and, through my brother's kindness, I was sometimes permitted to contribute to the journal. In memory of those early days of authorship, I select "The South American Editor" to publish here. For the benefit of the New York Observer, I will state that the story is not true. And lest any should complain that it advocates elopements, I beg to observe, in the seriousness of mature life, that the proposed elopement did not succeed, and that the parties who proposed it are represented as having no guardians or keepers but themselves. The article was first published in 1842.]

It is now more than six years since I received the following letter from an old classmate of mine, Harry Barry, who had been studying divinity, and was then a settled minister. It was an answer to a communication I had sent him the week before.

"TOPSHAM, R. I., January 22, 1836.

"To say the truth, my dear George, your letter startled me a little. To think that I, scarcely six months settled in the profession, should be admitted so far into the romance of it as to unite forever two young runaways like yourself and Miss Julia What's-her-name is at least curious. But, to give you your due, you have made a strong case of it, and as Miss —— (what is her name, I have not yours at hand) is not under any real guardianship, I do not see but I am perfectly justified in complying with your rather odd request. You see I make a conscientious matter of it.

"Write me word when it shall be, and I will be sure to be ready. Jane is of course in my counsels, and she will make your little wife feel as much at home as in her father's parlor. Trust us for secrecy.

"I met her last week—"

But the rest of the letter has nothing to do with the story.

The elopement alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and which he was sometimes disposed to abuse. He had declared in the most ingenuous manner that she should never marry with his consent any man of less fortune than her own would be; and on his consent rested the prospect of her inheriting his property.

Julia and I, however, care little for money now, we cared still less then; and her own little property and my own little salary made us esteem ourselves entirely independent of the old gentleman and his will.

His intention respecting the poor girl's marriage was thundered in her ears at least once a week, so that we both knew that I had no need to make court to him; indeed, I had never seen him, always having met her in walking, or in the evening at party, spectacle, concert, or lecture. He had lately been more domineering than usual, and I had but little difficulty in persuading the dear girl to let me write to Harry Barry, to make the arrangement to which he assented in the letter which I have copied above. The reasoning which I pressed upon her is obvious. We loved each other,—the old gentleman could not help that; and as he managed to make us very uncomfortable in Boston, in the existing state of affairs, we naturally came to the conclusion that the sooner we changed that state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's part, we outvoted him.

I have said that I had no fortune to enable me to come near the old gentleman's beau ideal of a grand-son-in-law. I was then living on my salary as a South American editor. Does the reader know what that is? The South American editor of a newspaper has the uncontrolled charge of its South American news. Read any important commercial paper for a month, and at the end of it tell me if you have any clear conception of the condition of the various republics (!) of South America. If you have, it is because that journal employs an individual for the sole purpose of setting them in the clearest order before you, and that individual is its South American editor. The general-news editor of the paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he does, he fails. It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons, that any American news office which has a strong regard for the consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ some person competent to take the charge which I held in the establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I am speaking. Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its "South American man"; this being my only employment, excepting that by a special agreement, in consideration of an addition to my salary, I was engaged to attend to the news from St. Domingo, Guatemala, and Mexico.[6]

Monday afternoon, just a fortnight after I received Harry Barry's letter, in taking my afternoon walk round the Common, I happened to meet Julia. I always walked in the same direction when I was alone. Julia always preferred to go the other way; it was the only thing in which we differed. When we were together I always went her way of course, and liked it best.

I had told her, long before, all about Harry's letter, and the dear girl in this walk, after a little blushing and sighing, and half faltering and half hesitating and feeling uncertain, yielded to my last and warmest persuasions, and agreed to go to Mrs. Pollexfen's ball that evening, ready to leave it with me in my buggy sleigh, for a three hours' ride to Topsham, where we both knew Harry would be waiting for us. I do not know how she managed to get through tea that evening with her lion of a grandfather, for she could not then cover her tearful eyes with a veil as she did through the last half of our walk together. I know that I got through my tea and such like ordinary affairs by skipping them. I made all my arrangements, bade Gage and Streeter be ready with the sleigh at my lodgings (fortunately only two doors from Mrs. Pollexfen's) at half-past nine o'clock, and was the highest spirited of men when, on returning to those lodgings myself at eight o'clock, I found the following missives from the Argus office, which had been accumulating through the afternoon.

No. 1.

"4 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:—The southern mail, just in, brings Buenos Ayres papers six days later, by the Medora, at Baltimore.

"In haste, J. C."

(Mr. C. was the gentleman who opened the newspapers, and arranged the deaths and marriages; he always kindly sent for me when I was out of the way.)

No. 2.

"5 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:— The U. S. ship Preble is in at Portsmouth; latest from Valparaiso. The mail is not sorted.

"Yours, J. D."

(Mr. D. arranged the ship news for the Argus.)

No. 3.

"6 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:—I boarded, this morning, off Cape Cod, the Blunderhead, from Carthagena, and have a week's later papers.

"Truly yours, J. E."

(Mr. E. was the enterprising commodore of our news-boats.)

No. 4.

"6-1/4 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:—I have just opened accidentally the enclosed letter, from our correspondent at Panama. You will see that it bears a New Orleans post-mark. I hope it may prove exclusive.

"Yours, J. F."

(Mr. F. was general editor of the Argus.)

No. 5.

"6-1/2 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:—A seaman, who appears to be an intelligent man, has arrived this morning at New Bedford, and says he has later news of the rebellion in Ecuador than any published. The Rosina (his vessel) brought no papers. I bade him call at your room at eight o'clock, which he promised to do.

"Truly yours, J. G."

(Mr. G. was clerk in the Argus counting-room.)

No. 6.

"7-1/2 o'clock, P. M.

"DEAR SIR:—The papers by the Ville de Lyon, from Havre, which I have just received, mention the reported escape of M. Bonpland from Paraguay, the presumed death of Dr. Francia, the probable overthrow of the government, the possible establishment of a republic, and a great deal more than I understand in the least.

"These papers had not come to hand when I wrote you this afternoon. I have left them on your desk at the office.

"In haste, J. F."

I was taken all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had spent the afternoon in drilling Singleton, the kindest of friends, as to what he should do in any probable contingency of news of the next forty-eight hours, for I did not intend to be absent on a wedding tour even longer than that time; but I felt that Singleton was entirely unequal to such a storm of intelligence as this; and, as I hurried down to the office, my chief sensation was that of gratitude that the cloud had broken before I was out of the way; for I knew I could do a great deal in an hour, and I had faith that I might slur over my digest as quickly as possible, and be at Mrs. Pollexfen's within the time arranged.

I rushed into the office in that state of zeal in which a man may do anything in almost no time. But first, I had to go into the conversation-room, and get the oral news from my sailor; then Mr. H., from one of the little news-boats, came to me in high glee, with some Venezuela Gazettes, which he had just extorted from a skipper, who, with great plausibility, told him that he knew his vessel had brought no news, for she never had before. (N.B. In this instance she was the only vessel to sail, after a three months' blockade.) And then I had handed to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, and the police and municipal reporters immediately after him, screwed out their lamps and went home; then the editor himself, then the legislative reporters, then the commercial editors, then the ship-news conductor, and left me alone.

I envied them that they got through so much earlier than usual, but scratched on, only interrupted by the compositors coming in for the pages of my copy as I finished them; and finally, having made my last translation from the last Boletin Extraordinario, sprang up, shouting, "Now for Mrs. P.'s," and looked at my watch. It was half past one![7] I thought of course it had stopped,—no; and my last manuscript page was numbered twenty-eight! Had I been writing there five hours? Yes!

Reader, when you are an editor, with a continent's explosions to describe, you will understand how one may be unconscious of the passage of time.

I walked home, sad at heart. There was no light in all Mr. Wentworth's house; there was none in any of Mrs. Pollexfen's windows;[8] and the last carriage of her last relation had left her door. I stumbled up stairs in the dark, and threw myself on my bed. What should I say, what could I say, to Julia? Thus pondering, I fell asleep.

If I were writing a novel, I should say that, at a late hour the next day, I listlessly drew aside the azure curtains of my couch, and languidly rang a silver bell which stood on my dressing-table, and received from a page dressed in an Oriental costume the notes and letters which had been left for me since morning, and the newspapers of the day.

I am not writing a novel.

The next morning, about ten o'clock, I arose and went down to breakfast. As I sat at the littered table which every one else had left, dreading to attack my cold coffee and toast, I caught sight of the morning papers, and received some little consolation from them. There was the Argus with its three columns and a half of "Important from South America," while none of the other papers had a square of any intelligibility excepting what they had copied from the Argus the day before. I felt a grim smile creeping over my face as I observed this signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to take a sip of the black broth as I glanced down my own article to see if there were any glaring misprints in it. Before I took the second sip, however, a loud peal at the door-bell announced a stranger, and, immediately after, a note was brought in for me which I knew was in Julia's handwriting.

"DEAR GEORGE:—Don't be angry; it was not my fault, really it was not. Grandfather came home just as I was leaving last night, and was so angry, and said I should not go to the party, and I had to sit with him all the evening. Do write to me or let me see you; do something—"

What a load that note took off my mind! And yet, what must the poor girl have suffered! Could the old man suspect? Singleton was true to me as steel, I knew. He could not have whispered,—nor Barry; but that Jane, Barry's wife. O woman! woman! what newsmongers they are! Here were Julia and I, made miserable for life, perhaps, merely that Jane Barry might have a good story to tell. What right had Barry to a wife? Not four years out of college, and hardly settled in his parish. To think that I had been fool enough to trust even him with the particulars of my all-important secret! But here I was again interrupted, coffee-cup still full, toast still untasted, by another missive.

"Tuesday morning.

"SIR:—I wish to see you this morning. Will you call upon me, or appoint a time and place where I may meet you?

"Yours, JEDEDIAH WENTWORTH."

"Send word by the bearer."

"Tell Mr. Wentworth I will call at his house at eleven o'clock."

The cat was certainly out; Mrs. Barry had told, or some one else had, who I did not know and hardly cared. The scene was to come now, and I was almost glad of it. Poor Julia! what a time she must have had with the old bear!

At eleven o'clock I was ushered into Mr. Wentworth's sitting-room. Julia was there, but before I had even spoken to her the old gentleman came bustling across the room, with his "Mr. Hackmatack, I suppose"; and then followed a formal introduction between me and her, which both of us bore with the most praiseworthy fortitude and composure, neither evincing, even by a glance, that we had ever seen or heard of each other before. Here was another weight off my mind and Julia's. I had wronged poor Mrs. Barry. The secret was not out—what could he want? It very soon appeared.

After a minute's discussion of the weather, the snow, and the thermometer, the old gentleman drew up his chair to mine, with "I think, sir, you are connected with the Argus office?"

"Yes, sir; I am its South American editor."

"Yes!" roared the old man, in a sudden rage. "Sir, I wish South America was sunk in the depths of the sea!"

"I am sure I do, sir," replied I, glancing at Julia, who did not, however, understand me. I had not fully passed out of my last night's distress.

My sympathizing zeal soothed the old gentleman a little, and he said more coolly, in an undertone: "Well, sir, you are well informed, no doubt; tell me, in strict secrecy, sir, between you and me, do you—do you place full credit—entire confidence in the intelligence in this morning's paper?"

"Excuse me, sir; what paper do you allude to? Ah! the Argus, I see. Certainly, sir; I have not the least doubt that it is perfectly correct."

"No doubt, sir! Do you mean to insult me?—Julia, I told you so; he says there is no doubt it is true. Tell me again there is some mistake, will you?" The poor girl had been trying to soothe him with the constant remark of uninformed people, that the newspapers are always in the wrong. He turned from her, and rose from his chair in a positive rage. She was half crying. I never saw her more distressed. What did all this mean? Were one, two, or all of us crazy?

It soon appeared. After pacing the length of the room once or twice, Wentworth came up to me again, and, attempting to appear cool, said between his closed lips: "Do you say you have no doubt that Rio Janeiro is strictly blockaded?"

"Not the slightest in the world," said I, trying to seem unconcerned.

"Not the slightest, sir? What are you so impudent and cool about it for? Do you think you are talking of the opening of a rose-bud or the death of a mosquito? Have you no sympathy with the sufferings of a fellow-creature? Why, sir!" and the old man's teeth chattered as he spoke, "I have five cargoes of flour on their way to Rio, and their captains will—Damn it, sir, I shall lose the whole venture."

The secret was out. The old fool had been sending flour to Rio, knowing as little of the state of affairs there as a child.

"And do you really mean, sir," continued the old man, "that there is an embargo in force in Monte Video?"

"Certainly, sir; but I'm very sorry for it."

"Sorry for it! of course you are;—and that all foreigners are sent out of Buenos Ayres?"

"Undoubtedly, sir. I wish—"

"Who does not wish so? Why, sir, my corresponding friends there are half across the sea by this time. I wish Rosas was in —— and that the Indians have risen near Maranham?"

"Undoubtedly, sir."

"Undoubtedly! I tell you, sir, I have two vessels waiting for cargoes of India-rubbers there, under a blunder-headed captain, who will do nothing he has not been bidden to,—obey his orders if he breaks his owners. You smile, sir? Why, I should have made thirty thousand dollars this winter, sir, by my India-rubbers, if we had not had this devilish mild, open weather, you and Miss Julia there have been praising so. But next winter must be a severe one, and with those India-rubbers I should have made—But now those Indians,—pshaw! And a revolution in Chili?"

"Yes, sir."

"No trade there! And in Venezuela?"

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir! Sir, I am ruined. Say 'Yes, sir,' to that. I have thirteen vessels at this moment in the South American trade, sir; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Half of them will be taken by the piratical scoundrels; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Their insurance will not cover them; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. The other half will forfeit their cargoes, or sell them for next to nothing; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. I tell you I am a ruined man, and I wish the South America, and your daily Argus, and you—"

Here the old gentleman's old-school breeding got the better of his rage, and he sank down in his arm-chair, and, bursting into tears, said: "Excuse me, sir,—excuse me, sir,—I am too warm."

We all sat for a few moments in silence, but then I took my share of the conversation. I wish you could have seen the old man's face light up little by little, as I showed him that to a person who understood the politics and condition of the mercurial country with which he had ignorantly attempted to trade, his condition was not near so bad as he thought it; that though one port was blockaded, another was opened; that though one revolution thwarted him, a few weeks would show another which would favor him; that the goods which, as he saw, would be worthless at the port to which he had sent them, would be valuable elsewhere; that the vessels which would fail in securing the cargoes he had ordered could secure others; that the very revolutions and wars which troubled him would require in some instances large government purchases, perhaps large contracts for freight, possibly even for passage,—his vessels might be used for transports; that the very excitement of some districts might be made to turn to our advantage; that, in short, there were a thousand chances open to him which skilful agents could readily improve. I reminded him that a quick run in a clipper schooner could carry directions to half these skippers of his, to whom, with an infatuation which I could not and cannot conceive, he had left no discretion, and who indeed were to be pardoned if they could use none, seeing the tumult as they did with only half an eye. I talked to him for half an hour, and went into details to show that my plans were not impracticable. The old gentleman grew brighter and brighter, and Julia, as I saw, whenever I stole a glance across the room, felt happier and happier. The poor girl had had a hard time since he had first heard this news whispered the evening before.

His difficulties were not over, however; for when I talked to him of the necessity of sending out one or two skilful agents immediately to take the personal superintendence of his complicated affairs, the old man sighed, and said he had no skilful agents to send.

With his customary suspicion, he had no partners, and had never intrusted his clerks with any general insight into his business. Besides, he considered them all, like his captains, blunder-headed to the last degree. I believe it was an idea of Julia's, communicated to me in an eager, entreating glance, which induced me to propose myself as one of these confidential agents, and to be responsible for the other. I thought, as I spoke, of Singleton, to whom I knew I could explain my plans in full, and whose mercantile experience would make him a valuable coadjutor. The old gentleman accepted my offer eagerly. I told him that twenty-four hours were all I wanted to prepare myself. He immediately took measures for the charter of two little clipper schooners which lay in port then; and before two days were past, Singleton and I were on our voyage to South America. Imagine, if you can, how these two days were spent. Then, as now, I could prepare for any journey in twenty minutes, and of course I had no little time at my disposal for last words with Mr. and—Miss Wentworth. How I won on the old gentleman's heart in those two days! How he praised me to Julia, and then, in as natural affection, how he praised her to me! And how Julia and I smiled through our tears, when, in the last good-bys, he said he was too old to write or read any but business letters, and charged me and her to keep up a close correspondence, which on one side should tell all that I saw and did, and on the other hand remind me of all at home.

I have neither time nor room to give the details of that South American expedition. I have no right to. There were revolutions accomplished in those days without any object in the world's eyes; and, even in mine, only serving to sell certain cargoes of long cloths and flour. The details of those outbreaks now told would make some patriotic presidents tremble in their seats; and I have no right to betray confidence at whatever rate I purchased it. Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's were only obtaining the best information and communicating the most speedy instructions to Mr. Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move from port to port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none besides us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first white man who ever passed through the mountain path of Xamaulipas, now so famous in all the Chilian picturesque annuals. I was carrying directions for some vessels which had gone round the Cape; and what a time Burrows and Wheatland and I had a week after, when we rode into the public square of Valparaiso shouting, "Muera la Constitucion,—Viva Libertad!" by our own unassisted lungs actually raising a rebellion, and, which was of more importance, a prohibition on foreign flour, while Bahamarra and his army were within a hundred miles of us. How those vessels came up the harbor, and how we unloaded them, knowing that at best our revolution could only last five days! But as I said, I must be careful, or I shall be telling other people's secrets.

The result of that expedition was that those thirteen vessels all made good outward voyages, and all but one or two eventually made profitable home voyages. When I returned home, the old gentleman received me with open arms. I had rescued, as he said, a large share of that fortune which he valued so highly. To say the truth, I felt and feel that he had planned his voyages so blindly, that, without some wiser head than his, they would never have resulted in anything. They were his last, as they were almost his first, South American ventures. He returned to his old course of more methodical trading for the few remaining years of his life. They were, thank Heaven, the only taste of mercantile business which I ever had. Living as I did, in the very sunshine of Mr. Wentworth's favor, I went through the amusing farce of paying my addresses to Julia in approved form, and in due time received the old gentleman's cordial assent to our union, and his blessing upon it. In six months after my return, we were married; the old man as happy as a king. He would have preferred a little that the ceremony should have been performed by Mr. B——, his friend and pastor, but readily assented to my wishes to call upon a dear and early friend of my own.

Harry Barry came from Topsham and performed the ceremony, "assisted by Rev. Mr. B."

G. H.

ARGUS COTTAGE, April 1, 1842.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] I do not know that this explanation is at all clear. Let me, as the mathematicians say, give an instance which will illustrate the importance of this profession. It is now a few months since I received the following note from a distinguished member of the Cabinet:—

"WASHINGTON, January —, 1842.

"DEAR SIR:—We are in a little trouble about a little thing. There are now in this city no less than three gentlemen bearing credentials to government as Charges from the Republic of Oronoco. They are, of course, accredited from three several home governments. The President signified, when the first arrived, that he would receive the Charge from that government, on the 2d proximo, but none of us know who the right Charge is. The newspapers tell nothing satisfactory about it. I suppose you know: can you write me word before the 2d?

"The gentlemen are: Dr. Estremadura, accredited from the 'Constitutional Government,'—his credentials are dated the 2d of November; Don Paulo Vibeira, of the 'Friends of the People,' 5th of November; M. Antonio de Vesga, 'Constitution of 1823,' October 27th. They attach great importance to our decision, each having scrip to sell. In haste, truly yours."

To this letter I returned the following reply:—

"SIR:—Our latest dates from Oronoco are to the 13th ultimo. The 'Constitution of '23' was then in full power. If, however, the policy of our government be to recognize the gentlemen whose principals shall be in office on the 2d proximo, it is a very different affair.

"You may not be acquainted with the formulas for ascertaining the duration of any given modern revolution. I now use the following, which I find almost exactly correct.

"Multiply the age of the President by the number of statute miles from the equator, divide by the number of pages in the given Constitution; the result will be the length of the outbreak, in days. This formula includes, as you will see, an allowance for the heat of the climate, the zeal of the leader, and the verbosity of the theorists. The Constitution of 1823 was reproclaimed on the 25th of October last. If you will give the above formula into the hands of any of your clerks, the calculation from it will show that that government will go out of power on the 1st of February, at 25 minutes after 1, P. M. Your choice, on the 2d, must be therefore between Vibeira and Estremadura; here you will have no difficulty. Bobadil (Vibeira's principal) was on the 13th ultimo confined under sentence of death, at such a distance from the capital that he cannot possibly escape and get into power before the 2d of February. The 'Friends of the People,' in Oronoco, have always moved slowly; they never got up an insurrection in less than nineteen days' canvassing; that was in 1839. Generally they are even longer. Of course, Estremadura will be your man.

"Believe me, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,

"GEORGE HACKMATACK."

The Cabinet had the good sense to act on my advice. My information proved nearly correct, the only error being one of seven minutes in the downfall of the 1823 Constitution. This arose from my making no allowance for difference of longitude between Piaut, where their government was established, and Opee, where it was crushed. The difference of time between those places is six minutes and fifty-three seconds, as the reader may see on a globe.

Estremadura was, of course, presented to the President, and sold his scrip.

[7] Newspaper men of 1868 will be amused to think that half past one was late in 1836. At that time the "Great Western Mail" was due in Boston at 6 P. M., and there was no later news except "local," or an occasional horse express.

[8] The reader will observe the Arcadian habits of 1836, when the German was yet unknown.



THE OLD AND THE NEW, FACE TO FACE.

A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH.

[This essay was published in Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "A Thumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr. Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a few years earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life by Conybeare and Howson, now so well known, were made public. The chronology of my essay does not precisely agree with that of these distinguished scholars. But I make no attempt now either to recast the essay or to discuss the delicate and complicated questions which belong to the chronology of Paul's life or to that of Nero; for there is no question with regard to the leading facts. At the end of twenty years I may again express the wish that some master competent to the greatest themes might take the trial of Paul as the subject of a picture.]

In a Roman audience-chamber, the old civilization and the new civilization brought out, at the very birth of the new, their chosen champions.

In that little scene, as in one of Rembrandt's thumbnail studies for a great picture, the lights and shades are as distinct as they will ever be in the largest scene of history. The champions were perfect representatives of the parties. And any man, with the soul of a man, looking on, could have prophesied the issue of the great battle from the issue of that contest.

The old civilization of the Roman Empire, just at that time, had reached a point which, in all those outward forms which strike the eye, would regard our times as mean indeed. It had palaces of marble, where even modern kings would build of brick with a marble front to catch the eye; it counted its armies by thousands, where we count ours by hundreds; it surmounted long colonnades with its exquisite statues, for which modern labor digs deep in ruined cities, because it cannot equal them from its own genius; it had roads, which are almost eternal, and which, for their purposes, show a luxury of wealth and labor that our boasted locomotion cannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enter the palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses which modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern times can only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We have not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained this distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into rest; after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation arose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman subjects,—then the Empire was at its height of power, its centralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at the zenith of its success.

At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first gray morning-light of the new civilization.

At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber, contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long centuries.

There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.

Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates the old civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhood he has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under one head. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperor of the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of the world flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained in all elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful, luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times will name as the lowest embodiment of meanness and cruelty! You are looking upon Nero!

Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilization, its central power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this sketch of ours is the exact climax of the moral results of the ancient civilization. We are to look at Nero just when he has returned to Rome from a Southern journey.[9] That journey had one object, which succeeded. To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. He has travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill his mother!

We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero's mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all the beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is the Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty—and of lust. She is most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty of feature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whose daughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of sense alone, fit adornment of that external grandeur, of that old society.

In the infancy of her son, this beautiful Agrippina consulted a troop of fortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he would live to be Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all the ecstasy of a mother's pride fused so strangely with all the excess of an ambitious woman's love of power, she cried in answer, "He may kill me, if only he rules Rome!"[10]

She spoke her own fate in these words.

Here is the account of it by Tacitus. Nero had made all the preparations; had arranged a barge, that of a sudden its deck might fall heavily upon those in the cabin, and crush them in an instant. He meant thus to give to the murder which he planned the aspect of an accident. To this fatal vessel he led Agrippina. He talked with her affectionately and gravely on the way; "and when they parted at the lakeside, with his old boyish familiarity he pressed her closely to his heart, either to conceal his purpose, or because the last sight of a mother, on the eve of death, touched even his cruel nature, and then bade her farewell."

Just at the point upon the lake where he had directed, as the Empress sat in her cabin talking with her attendants, the treacherous deck was let fall upon them all. But the plot failed. She saw dead at her feet one of her favorites, crushed by the sudden blow. But she had escaped it. She saw that death awaited them all upon the vessel. The men around sprang forward, ready to do their master's bidding in a less clumsy and more certain way. But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprang from the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there, this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion, drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated to the shore.

Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could not stop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he sent a soldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was deserted even by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy, they put to death the daughter and the mother of a Caesar. And Nero only waits to look with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse, before he returns to resume his government at Rome.

That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient civilization. It is complete in its centralizing power; it is complete in its external beauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden to the eye, with luxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all; but dust and ashes beneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head! It is corrupted at the heart! There is nothing firm!

This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this very moment there is announced the first germ of the new civilization. In the very midst of this falsehood, there sounds one voice of truth; in the very arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to cleave him to the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He meets the congratulations of a senate, which thank him and the gods that he has murdered his own mother. With the agony of an undying conscience torturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turn the mob from despising him by the grandeur of their public entertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-of beasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actors rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, and that his people may forget him.

At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the Emperor be there? May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lying courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress? If he chooses thus to postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other counsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy will be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The time comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellers, and bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment that we are to look upon him.

He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with boyish debauchery; his young forehead worn with the premature sensual wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance. He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in the prisoner.

A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years. This soldier is a tried veteran of the Praetorian cohorts. He was selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for that purpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads that other through the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness which say he is no criminal to him. Long since, the criminal has been the guardian of his keeper. Long since, the keeper has cared for the prisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son's affection.

They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye he glances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bade monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The stately Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a subject's salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him. And when, then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! You see Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero![11]

Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In that judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we have also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, there stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. We will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world. This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their excellences, as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments. And yet all that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the baby-tyrant into the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a province he would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the murder of a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the ruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin of a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said he used all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of those men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time, he satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crime from public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared not order him to the right.

But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother, Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged him to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul had corresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero's presence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[12] When Paul arose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the new civilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there had been one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that that was a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that little hall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centuries would be acted out upon the larger stage.

Faith on the one side, before expediency and cruelty on the other! Paul before Seneca and Nero! He was ready to address Nero, with the eloquence and vehemence which for years had been demanding utterance.

He stood at length before the baby Caesar, to whose tribunal he had appealed from the provincial court of a doubting Festus and a trembling Agrippa.

And who shall ask what words the vigorous Christian spoke to the dastard boy! Who that knows the eloquence which rung out on the ears of astonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense and the hecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the gabbling clamor of a wild mob at Jerusalem,—who will doubt the tone in which Paul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment before the man! The gilded dotard shrunk back from the home truths of the new, young, vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred legions was nothing before the God-commissioned prisoner.

No; though at this audience all men forsook Paul, as he tells us; though not one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained at his side,—still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's minister.

From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old in lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on this God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of a dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive him forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Paul and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever. He does not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre of a mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity which Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the arena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the only captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of sturdy power!

And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a great man who has detected his own meanness.

We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and it is with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one or another pettiness. Seneca goes home to say: "This wild Easterner has rebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him. He stood there, as I have wanted to stand, a man before a brute.

"He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright, straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left undone. What is the mystery of his power?"

Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The "Eastern mystery" was in presence before them, and they knew it not!

What was the mystery of Paul's power?

Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished the hope of long years. Those solemn words of his, "After that, I must also see Rome," expressed the longing of years, whose object now, in part, at least, is gratified. He must see Rome!

It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul has seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,—that he is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should pass first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. He knows that he is God's messenger to bear this mystery of life eternal from the one land to the other, and to unfold it there. And to-day has made real, in fact, this his inward confidence. To-day has put the seal of fact on that vision of his, years since, when he first left his Asiatic home. A prisoner in chains, still he has to-day seen the accomplishment of the vows, hopes, and resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famous from the night he spent there. There was another of these hours when God brings into one spot the acts which shall be the argument of centuries of history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiatic journeys,—Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament, Eastern in his outward life, and Eastern in his faith,—to that narrow Hellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore madly up the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even love when it sought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs frowning eternal hate from shore to shore. Paul stood upon the Asian shore and looked across upon the Western. There were Macedonia and the hills of Greece, here Troas and the ruins of Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellespont has no voice but separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, it might be, on the tomb of Achilles, that night the "man of Macedonia" appears, and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt of Troy.

"Come over and help us." Give us life, for we gave you death. Give us help for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon with the words of peace instead of war,—the Christian shepherd of the people, he carries to Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation instead of carnage, of charity instead of license. And he knows that to Europe it is the beginning of her new civilization, it is the dawn of her new warfare, of her new poetry, of her reign of heroes who are immortal.

That faith of his, now years old, has this day received its crowning victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may well stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and of license.

And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved him in planning it and carrying it through, was the "Asian mystery." Ask what was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby Emperor, and abashed the baby Philosopher? What did he give the praise to, as he left that scene? What was the principle in action there, but faith in the new life, faith in the God who gave it!

We do not wonder, as Seneca wondered, that such a man as Paul dared say anything to such a boy as Nero! The absolute courage of the new faith was the motive-power which forced it upon the world. Here were the sternest of morals driven forward with the most ultra bravery.

Perfect faith gave perfect courage to the first witnesses. And there was the "mystery" of their victories.

And so, in this case, when after a while Seneca again reminded Nero of his captive, poor Nero did not dare but meet him again. Yet, when he met him again in that same judgment-hall, he did not dare hear him long; and we may be sure that there were but few words before, with such affectation of dignity as he could summon, he bade them set the prisoner free.