Pepin—What is wind?

Albinus—The mover of air; the agitation of water; the dryer of the earth.

Pepin—What is the earth?

Albinus—The mother of growth; the nourisher of the living; the storehouse of life; the effacer of all.

Pepin—What is the sea?

Albinus—The path of adventure; the bounds of the earth; the division of lands; the harbor of rivers; the source of rains; a refuge in danger; a pleasure in enjoyment.

Pepin—What are rivers?

Albinus—A ceaseless motion; a refreshment to the sun; the waters of the earth.

Pepin—What is water?

Albinus—The supporter of life; the cleanser of filth.

Pepin—What is fire?

Albinus—An excessive heat; the nurse of growing things; the ripener of crops.

Pepin—What is cold?

Albinus—The trembling of our members.

Pepin—What is frost?

Albinus—An assailer of plants; the destruction of leaves; a fetter to the earth; a bridger of streams.

Pepin—What is snow?

Albinus—Dry water.

Pepin—What is winter?

Albinus—An exile of summer.

Pepin—What is spring?

Albinus—A painter of the earth.

Pepin—What is summer?

Albinus—That which brings to the earth a new garment, and ripens the fruit.

Pepin—What is autumn?

Albinus—The barn of the year.



A LETTER FROM ALCUIN TO CHARLEMAGNE

(Written in the year 796)

I, your Flaccus, in accordance with your entreaty and your gracious kindness, am busied under the shelter of St. Martin's, in bestowing upon many of my pupils the honey of the Holy Scriptures. I am eager that others should drink deep of the old wine of ancient learning; I shall presently begin to nourish still others with the fruits of grammatical ingenuity; and some of them I am eager to enlighten with a knowledge of the order of the stars, that seem painted, as it were, on the dome of some mighty palace. I have become all things to all men (1 Cor. i. 22) so that I may train up many to the profession of God's Holy Church and to the glory of your imperial realm, lest the grace of Almighty God in me should be fruitless (1 Cor. xv. 10) and your munificent bounty of no avail. But your servant lacks the rarer books of scholastic learning, which in my own country I used to have (thanks to the generous and most devoted care of my teacher and to my own humble endeavors), and I mention it to your Majesty so that, perchance, it may please you who are eagerly concerned about the whole body of learning, to have me dispatch some of our young men to procure for us certain necessary works, and bring with them to France the flowers of England; so that a graceful garden may not exist in York alone, but so that at Tours as well there may be found the blossoming of Paradise with its abundant fruits; that the south wind, when it comes, may cause the gardens along the River Loire to burst into bloom, and their perfumed airs to stream forth, and finally, that which follows in the Canticle, whence I have drawn this simile, may be brought to pass... (Canticle v. 1, 2). Or even this exhortation of the prophet Isaiah, which urges us to acquire wisdom:—"A11 ye who thirst, come to the waters; and you who have not money, hasten, buy and eat: come, without money and without price, and buy wine and milk" (Isaiah iv. 1.)

And this is a thing which your gracious zeal will not overlook: how upon every page of the Holy Scriptures we are urged to the acquisition of wisdom; how nothing is more honorable for insuring a happy life, nothing more pleasing in the observance, nothing more efficient against sin, nothing more praiseworthy in any lofty station, than that men live according to the teachings of the philosophers. Moreover, nothing is more essential to the government of the people, nothing better for the guidance of life into the paths of honorable character, than the grace which wisdom gives, and the glory of training and the power of learning. Therefore it is that in its praise, Solomon, the wisest of all men, exclaims, "Better is wisdom than all precious things, and more to be desired" (Prov. viii. 11 seq). To secure this with every possible effort and to get possession of it by daily endeavor, do you, my lord King, exhort the young men who are in your Majesty's palace, that they strive for this in the flower of their youth, so that they may be deemed worthy to live through an old age of honor, and that by its means they may be able to attain to everlasting happiness. I, myself, according to my disposition, shall not be slothful in sowing the seeds of wisdom among your servants in this land, being mindful of the injunction, "Sow thy seed in the morning, and at eventide let not thy hand cease; since thou knowest not what will spring up, whether these or those, and if both together, still better is it" (Eccles. xi. 6). In the morning of my life and in the fruitful period of my studies I sowed seed in Britain, and now that my blood has grown cool in the evening of life, I still cease not; but sow the seed in France, desiring that both may spring up by the grace of God. And now that my body has grown weak, I find consolation in the saying of St. Jerome, who declares in his letter to Nepotianus, "Almost all the powers of the body are altered in old men, and wisdom alone will increase while the rest decay." And a little further he says, "The old age of those who have adorned their youth with noble accomplishments and have meditated on the law of the Lord both day and night becomes more and more deeply accomplished with its years, more polished from experience, more wise by the lapse of time; and it reaps the sweetest fruit of ancient learning." In this letter in praise of wisdom, one who wishes can read many things of the scientific pursuits of the ancients, and can understand how eager were these ancients to abound in the grace of wisdom. I have noted that your zeal, which is pleasing to God and praiseworthy, is always advancing toward this wisdom and takes pleasure in it, and that you are adorning the magnificence of your worldly rule with still greater intellectual splendor. In this may our Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself the supreme type of divine wisdom, guard you and exalt you, and cause you to attain to the glory of His own blessed and everlasting vision.



HENRY M. ALDEN

(1836-)

Henry Mills Alden, since 1864 the editor of Harper's Magazine, was born in Mount Tabor, Vermont, November 11th, 1836, the eighth in descent from Captain John Alden, the Pilgrim. He graduated at Williams College, and studied theology at Andover Seminary, but was never ordained a minister, having almost immediately turned his attention to literature. His first work that attracted attention was an essay on the Eleusinian Mysteries, published in the Atlantic Monthly. The scholarship and subtle method revealed in this and similar works led to his engagement to deliver a course of twelve Lowell Institute lectures at Boston, in 1863 and 1864, and he took for his subject 'The Structure of Paganism.' Before this he had removed to New York, had engaged in general editorial work, and formed his lasting connection with the house of Harper and Brothers.

As an editor Mr. Alden is the most practical of men, but he is in reality a poet, and in another age he might have been a mystic. He has the secret of preserving his life to himself, while paying the keenest attention to his daily duties. In his office he is immersed in affairs which require the exercise of vigilant common-sense, and knowledge of life and literature. At his home he is a serene and optimistic philosopher, contemplating the forces that make for our civilization, and musing over the deep problems of man's occupation of this earth. In 1893 appeared anonymously a volume entitled 'God in His World,' which attracted instantly wide attention in this country and in England for its subtlety of thought, its boldness of treatment, its winning sweetness of temper, and its exquisite style. It was by Mr. Alden, and in 1895 it was followed by 'A Study of Death,' continuing the great theme of the first,—the unity of creation, the certainty that there is in no sense a war between the Creator and his creation. In this view the Universe is not divided into the Natural and the Supernatural: all is Natural. But we can speak here only of their literary quality. The author is seen to be a poet in his conceptions, but in form his writing is entirely within the limits of prose; yet it is a prose most harmonious, most melodious, and it exhibits the capacity of our English tongue in the hand of a master. The thought is sometimes so subtle as to elude the careless reader, but the charm of the melody never fails to entrance. The study of life and civilization is profound, but the grace of treatment seems to relieve the problems of half their difficulty.

His wife did not live to read the exquisite dedication given below.

From 'A Study of Death,' copyright 1895, by Harper and Brothers

A DEDICATION

TO MY BELOVED WIFE

My earliest written expression of intimate thought or cherished fancy was for your eyes only; it was my first approach to your maidenly heart, a mystical wooing, which neglected no resource, near or remote, for the enhancement of its charm, and so involved all other mystery in its own.

In you, childhood has been inviolate, never losing its power of leading me by an unspoken invocation to a green field, ever kept fresh by a living fountain, where the Shepherd tends his flock. Now, through a body racked with pain, and sadly broken, still shines this unbroken childhood, teaching me Love's deepest mystery.

It is fitting, then, that I should dedicate to you this book touching that mystery. It has been written in the shadow, but illumined by the brightness of an angel's face seen in the darkness, so that it has seemed easy and natural for me to find at the thorn's heart a secret and everlasting sweetness far surpassing that of the rose itself, which ceases in its own perfection.

Whether that angel we have seen shall, for my need and comfort, and for your own longing, hold back his greatest gift, and leave you mine in the earthly ways we know and love, or shall hasten to make the heavenly surprise, the issue in either event will be a home-coming; if here, yet already the deeper secret will have been in part disclosed; and if beyond, that secret, fully known, will not betray the fondest hope of loving hearts. Love never denied Death, and Death will not deny Love.

From 'A Study of Death,' copyright 1895, by Harper and Brothers

THE DOVE AND THE SERPENT

The Dove flies, and the Serpent creeps. Yet is the Dove fond, while the Serpent is the emblem of wisdom. Both were in Eden: the cooing, fluttering, winged spirit, loving to descend, companion-like, brooding, following; and the creeping thing which had glided into the sunshine of Paradise from the cold bosoms of those nurses of an older world—Pain, and Darkness, and Death—himself forgetting these in the warmth and green life of the Garden. And our first parents knew naught of these as yet unutterable mysteries, any more than they knew that their roses bloomed over a tomb: so that when all animate creatures came to Adam to be named, the meaning of this living allegory which passed before him was in great part hidden, and he saw no sharp line dividing the firmament below from the firmament above; rather he leaned toward the ground, as one does in a garden, seeing how quickly it was fashioned into the climbing trees, into the clean flowers, and into his own shapely frame. It was upon the ground he lay when that deep sleep fell upon him from which he woke to find his mate, lithe as the serpent, yet with the fluttering heart of the dove.

As the Dove, though winged for flight, ever descended, so the Serpent, though unable wholly to leave the ground, tried ever to lift himself therefrom, as if to escape some ancient bond. The cool nights revived and nourished his memories of an older time, wherein lay his subtile wisdom, but day by day his aspiring crest grew brighter. The life of Eden became for him oblivion, the light of the sun obscuring and confounding his reminiscence, even as for Adam and Eve this life was Illusion, the visible disguising the invisible, and pleasure veiling pain.

In Adam the culture of the ground maintained humility. He was held, moreover, in lowly content by the charm of the woman, who was to him like the earth grown human; and since she was the daughter of Sleep, her love seemed to him restful as the night. Her raven locks were like the mantle of darkness, and her voice had the laughter of streams that lapsed into unseen depths.

But Eve had something of the Serpent's unrest, as if she too had come from the Under-world, which she would fain forget, seeking liberation, urged by desire as deep as the abyss she had left behind her, and nourished from roots unfathomably hidden—the roots of the Tree of Life. She thus came to have conversation with the Serpent.

In the lengthening days of Eden's one Summer these two were more and more completely enfolded in the Illusion of Light. It was under this spell that, dwelling upon the enticement of fruit good to look at, and pleasant to the taste, the Serpent denied Death, and thought of Good as separate from Evil. "Ye shall not surely die, but shall be as the gods, knowing good and evil." So far, in his aspiring day-dream, had the Serpent fared from his old familiar haunts—so far from his old-world wisdom!

A surer omen would have come to Eve had she listened to the plaintive notes of the bewildered Dove that in his downward flutterings had begun to divine what the Serpent had come to forget, and to confess what he had come to deny.

For already was beginning to be felt "the season's difference," and the grave mystery, without which Paradise itself could not have been, was about to be unveiled,—the background of the picture becoming its foreground. The fond hands plucking the rose had found the thorn. Evil was known as something by itself, apart from Good, and Eden was left behind, as one steps out of infancy.

From that hour have the eyes of the children of men been turned from the accursed earth, looking into the blue above, straining their vision for a glimpse of white-robed angels.

Yet it was the Serpent that was lifted up in the wilderness; and when He who "became sin for us" was being bruised in the heel by the old enemy, the Dove descended upon Him at His baptism. He united the wisdom of the Serpent with the harmlessness of the Dove. Thus in Him were bound together and reconciled the elements which in human thought had been put asunder. In Him, Evil is overcome of Good, as, in Him, Death is swallowed up of Life; and with His eyes we see that the robes of angels are white, because they have been washed in blood.

From 'A Study of Death,' copyright 1895, by Harper and Brothers

DEATH AND SLEEP

The Angel of Death is the invisible Angel of Life. While the organism is alive as a human embodiment, death is present, having the same human distinction as the life, from which it is inseparable, being, indeed, the better half of living,—its winged half, its rest and inspiration, its secret spring of elasticity, and quickness. Life came upon the wings of Death, and so departs.

If we think of life apart from death our thought is partial, as if we would give flight to the arrow without bending the bow. No living movement either begins or is completed save through death. If the shuttle return not there is no web; and the texture of life is woven through this tropic movement.

It is a commonly accepted scientific truth that the continuance of life in any living thing depends upon death. But there are two ways of expressing this truth: one, regarding merely the outward fact, as when we say that animal or vegetable tissue is renewed through decay; the other, regarding the action and reaction proper to life itself, whereby it forever springs freshly from its source. The latter form of expression is mystical, in the true meaning of that term. We close our eyes to the outward appearance, in order that we may directly confront a mystery which is already past before there is any visible indication thereof. Though the imagination engaged in this mystical apprehension borrows its symbols or analogues from observation and experience, yet these symbols are spiritually regarded by looking at life on its living side, and abstracted as far as possible from outward embodiment. We especially affect physiological analogues because, being derived from our experience, we may the more readily have the inward regard of them; and by passing from one physiological analogue to another, and from all these to those furnished by the processes of nature outside of our bodies, we come to an apprehension of the action and reaction proper to life itself as an idea independent of all its physical representations.

Thus we trace the rhythmic beating of the pulse to the systole and diastole of the heart, and we note a similar alternation in the contraction and relaxation of all our muscles. Breathing is alternately inspiration and expiration. Sensation itself is by beats, and falls into rhythm. There is no uninterrupted strain of either action or sensibility; a current or a contact is renewed, having been broken. In psychical operation there is the same alternate lapse and resurgence. Memory rises from the grave of oblivion. No holding can be maintained save through alternate release. Pulsation establishes circulation, and vital motions proceed through cycles, each one of which, however minute, has its tropic of Cancer and of Capricorn. Then there are the larger physiological cycles, like that wherein sleep is the alternation of waking. Passing from the field of our direct experience to that of observation, we note similar alternations, as of day and night, summer and winter, flood and ebb tide; and science discloses them at every turn, especially in its recent consideration of the subtle forces of Nature, leading us back of all visible motions to the pulsations of the ether....

In considering the action and reaction proper to life itself, we here dismiss from view all measured cycles, whose beginning and end are appreciably separate; our regard is confined to living moments, so fleet that their beginning and ending meet as in one point, which is seen to be at once the point of departure and of return. Thus we may speak of a man's life as included between his birth and his death, and with reference to this physiological term, think of him as living, and then as dead; but we may also consider him while living as yet every moment dying, and in this view death is clearly seen to be the inseparable companion of life,—the way of return, and so of continuance. This pulsation, forever a vanishing and a resurgence, so incalculably swift as to escape observation, is proper to life as life, does not begin with what we call birth nor end with what we call death (considering birth and death as terms applicable to an individual existence); it is forever beginning and forever ending. Thus to all manifest existence we apply the term Nature (natura), which means "forever being born"; and on its vanishing side it is moritura, or "forever dying." Resurrection is thus a natural and perpetual miracle. The idea of life as transcending any individual embodiment is as germane to science as it is to faith.

Death, thus seen as essential, is lifted above its temporary and visible accidents. It is no longer associated with corruption, but rather with the sweet and wholesome freshness of life, being the way of its renewal. Sweeter than the honey which Samson found in the lion's carcass is this everlasting sweetness of Death; and it is a mystery deeper than the strong man's riddle.

So is Death pure and clean, as is the dew that comes with the cool night when the sun has set; clean and white as the snowflakes that betoken the absolution which Winter gives, shriving the earth of all her Summer wantonness and excess, when only the trees that yield balsam and aromatic fragrance remain green, breaking the box of precious ointment for burial.

In this view also is restored the kinship of Death with Sleep.

The state of the infant seems to be one of chronic mysticism, since during the greater part of its days its eyes are closed to the outer world. Its larger familiarity is still with the invisible, and it seems as if the Mothers of Darkness were still withholding it as their nursling, accomplishing for it some mighty work in their proper realm, some such fiery baptism of infants as is frequently instanced in Greek mythology, tempering them for earthly trials. The infant must needs sleep while this work is being done for it; it has been sleeping since the work began, from the foundation of the world, and the old habit still clings about it and is not easily laid aside....

That which we have been considering as the death that is in every moment is a reaction proper to life itself, waking or sleeping, whereby it is renewed, sharing at once Time and Eternity—time as outward form, and eternity as its essential quality. Sleep is a special relaxation, relieving a special strain. As daily we build with effort and design an elaborate superstructure above the living foundation, so must this edifice nightly be laid in ruins. Sleep is thus a disembarrassment, the unloading of a burden wherewith we have weighted ourselves. Here again we are brought into a kind of repentance, and receive absolution. Sleep is forgiveness.

From 'A Study of Death,' copyright 1895, by Harper and Brothers

THE PARABLE OF THE PRODIGAL

I

Standing at the gate of Birth, it would seem as if it were the vital destination of all things to fly from their source, as if it were the dominant desire of life to enter into limitations. We might mentally represent to ourselves an essence simple and indivisible that denies itself in diversified manifold existence. To us, this side the veil, nay, immeshed in innumerable veils that hide from us the Father's face, this insistence appears to have the stress of urgency, as if the effort of all being, its unceasing travail, were like the beating of the infinite ocean upon the shores of Time; and as if, within the continent of Time, all existence were forever knocking at new gates, seeking, through some as yet untried path of progression, greater complexity, a deeper involvement. All the children seem to be beseeching the Father to divide unto them His living, none willingly abiding in that Father's house. But in reality their will is His will—they fly, and they are driven, like fledglings from the mother-nest.

II

The story of a solar system, or of any synthesis in time, repeats the parable of the Prodigal Son, in its essential features. It is a cosmic parable.

The planet is a wanderer (planes), and the individual planetary destiny can be accomplished only through flight from its source. After all its prodigality it shall sicken and return.

Attributing to the Earth, thus apparently separated from the Sun, some macrocosmic sentience, what must have been her wondering dream, finding herself at once thrust away and securely held, poised between her flight and her bond, and so swinging into a regular orbit about the Sun, while at the same time, in her rotation, turning to him and away from him—into the light, and into the darkness, forever denying and confessing her lord! Her emotion must have been one of delight, however mingled with a feeling of timorous awe, since her desire could not have been other than one with her destination. Despite the distance and the growing coolness she could feel the kinship still; her pulse, though modulated, was still in rhythm with that of the solar heart, and in her bosom were hidden consubstantial fires. But it was the sense of otherness, of her own distinct individuation, that was mainly being nourished, this sense, moreover, being proper to her destiny; therefore, the signs of her likeness to the Sun were more and more being buried from her view; her fires were veiled by a hardening crust, and her opaqueness stood out against his light. She had no regret for all she was surrendering, thinking only of her gain, of being clothed upon with a garment showing ever some new fold of surprising beauty and wonder. If she had remained in the Father's house—like the elder brother in the Parable—then would all that He had have been hers, in nebulous simplicity. But now, holding her revels apart, she seems to sing her own song, and to dream her own beautiful dream, wandering, with a motion wholly her own, among the gardens of cosmic order and loveliness. She glories in her many veils, which, though they hide from her both her source and her very self, are the media through which the invisible light is broken into multiform illusions that enrich her dream. She beholds the Sun as a far-off, insphered being existing for her, her ministrant bridegroom; and when her face is turned away from him into the night, she beholds innumerable suns, a myriad of archangels, all witnesses of some infinitely remote and central flame—the Spirit of all life. Yet, in the midst of these visible images, she is absorbed in her individual dream, wherein she appears to herself to be the mother of all living. It is proper to her destiny that she should be thus enwrapped in her own distinct action and passion, and refer to herself the appearances of a universe. While all that is not she is what she really is,—necessary, that is, to her full definition,—she, on the other hand, from herself interprets all else. This is the inevitable terrestrial idealism, peculiar to every individuation in time—the individual thus balancing the universe.

III

In reality, the Earth has never left the Sun; apart from him she has no life, any more than has the branch severed from the vine. More truly it may be said that the Sun has never left the Earth.

No prodigal can really leave the Father's house, any more than he can leave himself; coming to himself, he feels the Father's arms about him—they have always been there—he is newly appareled, and wears the signet ring of native prestige; he hears the sound of familiar music and dancing, and it may be that the young and beautiful forms mingling with him in this festival are the riotous youths and maidens of his far-country revels, also come to themselves and home, of whom also the Father saith: These were dead and are alive again, they were lost and are found. The starvation and sense of exile had been parts of a troubled dream—a dream which had also had its ecstasy, but had come into a consuming fever, with delirious imaginings of fresh fountains, of shapes drawn from the memory of childhood, and of the cool touch of kindred hands upon the brow. So near is exile to home, misery to divine commiseration—so near are pain and death, desolation and divestiture, to "a new creature," and to the kinship involved in all creation and re-creation.

Distance in the cosmic order is a standing-apart, which is only another expression of the expansion and abundance of creative life; but at every remove its reflex is nearness, a bond of attraction, insphering and curving, making orb and orbit. While in space this attraction is diminished—being inversely as the square of the distance—and so there is maintained and emphasized the appearance of suspension and isolation, yet in time it gains preponderance, contracting sphere and orbit, aging planets and suns, and accumulating destruction, which at the point of annihilation becomes a new creation. This Grand Cycle, which is but a pulsation or breath of the Eternal life, illustrates a truth which is repeated in its least and most minutely divided moment—that birth lies next to death, as water crystallizes at the freezing-point, and the plant blossoms at points most remote from the source of nutrition.



THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

(1836-)

A poet in verse often becomes a poet in prose also, in composing novels; although the novelist may not, and in general does not, possess the faculty of writing poems. The poet-novelist is apt to put into his prose a good deal of the same charm and the same picturesque choice of phrase and image that characterize his verse; while it does not follow that the novelist who at times writes verse—like George Eliot, for example—succeeds in giving a distinctly poetic quality to prose, or even wishes to do so. Among authors who have displayed peculiar power and won fame in the dual capacity of poet and of prose romancer or novelist, Sir Walter Scott and Victor Hugo no doubt stand pre-eminent; and in American literature, Edgar Allan Poe and Oliver Wendell Holmes very strikingly combine these two functions. Another American author who has gained a distinguished position both as a poet and as a writer of prose fiction and essays is Thomas Bailey Aldrich.



It is upon his work in the form of verse, perhaps, that Aldrich's chief renown is based; but some of his short stories in especial have contributed much to his popularity, no less than to his repute as a delicate and polished artificer in words. A New Englander, he has infused into some of his poems the true atmosphere of New England, and has given the same light and color of home to his prose, while imparting to his productions in both kinds a delightful tinge of the foreign and remote. In addition to his capacities as a poet and a romancer, he is a wit and humorist of sparkling quality. In reading his books one seems also to inhale the perfumes of Arabia and the farther East, blended with the salt sea-breeze and the pine-scented air of his native State, New Hampshire.

He was born in the old seaside town of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 11th, 1836; but moved to New York City in 1854, at the age of seventeen. There he remained until 1866; beginning his work quite early; forming his literary character by reading and observation, by the writing of poems, and by practice and experience of writing prose sketches and articles for journals and periodicals. During this period he entered into associations with the poets Stedman, Stoddard, and Bayard Taylor, and was more or less in touch with the group that included Walt Whitman, Fitz-James O'Brien, and William Winter. Removing to Boston in January, 1866, he became the editor of Every Saturday, and remained in that post until 1874, when he resigned. In 1875 he made a long tour in Europe, plucking the first fruits of foreign travel, which were succeeded by many rich and dainty gatherings from the same source in later years. In the intervals of these wanderings he lived in Boston and Cambridge; occupying for a time James Russell Lowell's historic house of Elmwood, in the semi-rural university city; and then established a pretty country house at Ponkapog, a few miles west of Boston. This last suggested the title for a charming book of travel papers, 'From Ponkapog to Pesth.' In 1881 he was appointed editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and continued to direct that famous magazine for nine years, frequently making short trips to Europe, extending his tours as far as the heart of Russia, and gathering fresh materials, for essay or song. Much of his time since giving up the Atlantic editorship has been passed in voyaging, and in 1894-5 he made a journey around the world.

From the beginning he struck with quiet certainty the vein that was his by nature in poetry; and this has broadened almost continually, yielding richer results, which have been worked out with an increasing refinement of skill. His predilection is for the picturesque; for romance combined with simplicity, purity, and tenderness of feeling, touched by fancy and by occasional lights of humor so reserved and dainty that they never disturb the pictorial harmony. The capacity for unaffected utterance of feeling on matters common to humanity reached a climax in the poem of 'Baby Bell,' which by its sympathetic and delicate description of a child's advent and death gave the author a claim to the affection^ of a wide circle; and this remained for a long time probably the best known among his poems. 'Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book' is another of the earlier favorites. 'Spring in New England' has since come to hold high rank both for its vivid and graceful description of the season, for its tender fervor of patriotism, and for its sentiment of reconciliation between North and South. The lines on 'Piscataqua River' remain one of the best illustrations of boyhood memories, and have something of Whittier's homely truth. In his longer narrative pieces, 'Judith' and 'Wyndham Towers,' cast in the mold of blank-verse idyls, Mr. Aldrich does not seem so much himself as in many of his briefer flights. An instinctive dramatic tendency finds outlet in 'Pauline Paulovna' and 'Mercedes'—the latter of which, a two-act piece in prose, has found representation in the theatre; yet in these, also, he is less eminently successful than in his lyrics and society verse.

No American poet has wrought his stanzas with greater faithfulness to an exacting standard of craftsmanship than Mr. Aldrich, or has known better when to leave a line loosely cast, and when to reinforce it with correction or with a syllable that might seem, to an ear less true, redundant. This gives to his most carefully chiseled productions an air of spontaneous ease, and has made him eminent as a sonneteer. His sonnet on 'Sleep' is one of the finest in the language. The conciseness and concentrated aptness of his expression also—together with a faculty of bringing into conjunction subtly contrasted thoughts, images, or feelings—has issued happily in short, concentrated pieces like 'An Untimely Thought,' 'Destiny,' and 'Identity,' and in a number of pointed and effective quatrains. Without overmastering purpose outside of art itself, his is the poetry of luxury rather than of deep passion or conviction; yet, with the freshness of bud and tint in springtime, it still always relates itself effectively to human experience. The author's specially American quality, also, though not dominant, comes out clearly in 'Unguarded Gates,' and with a differing tone in the plaintive Indian legend of 'Miantowona.'

If we perceive in his verse a kinship with the dainty ideals of Theophile Gautier and Alfred de Musset, this does not obscure his originality or his individual charm; and the same thing may be said with regard to his prose. The first of his short fictions that made a decided mark was 'Marjorie Daw.' The fame which it gained, in its separate field, was as swift and widespread as that of Hawthorne's 'The Gentle Boy' or Bret Harte's 'Luck of Roaring Camp.' It is a bright and half-pathetic little parody on human life and affection; or perhaps we should call it a parable symbolizing the power which imagination wields over real life, even in supposedly unimaginative people. The covert smile which it involves, at the importance of human emotions, may be traced to a certain extent in some of Mr. Aldrich's longer and more serious works of fiction: his three novels, 'Prudence Palfrey,' 'The Queen of Sheba,' and 'The Stillwater Tragedy.' 'The Story of a Bad Boy,' frankly but quietly humorous in its record of the pranks and vicissitudes of a healthy average lad (with the scene of the story localized at old Portsmouth, under the name of Rivermouth), a less ambitious work, still holds a secure place in the affections of many mature as well as younger readers. Besides these books, Mr. Aldrich has published a collection of short descriptive, reminiscent, and half-historic papers on Portsmouth,—'An Old Town by the Sea'; with a second volume of short stories entitled 'Two Bites at a Cherry.' The character-drawing in his fiction is clear-cut and effective, often sympathetic, and nearly always suffused with an agreeable coloring of humor. There are notes of pathos, too, in some of his tales; and it is the blending of these qualities, through the medium of a lucid and delightful style, that defines his pleasing quality in prose.

[The following selections are copyrighted, and are reprinted by permission of the author, and Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers.]

DESTINY

Three roses, wan as moonlight, and weighed down Each with its loveliness as with a crown, Drooped in a florist's window in a town.

The first a lover bought. It lay at rest, Like flower on flower, that night, on Beauty's breast.

The second rose, as virginal and fair, Shrunk in the tangles of a harlot's hair.

The third, a widow, with new grief made wild, Shut in the icy palm of her dead child.

IDENTITY

Somewhere—in desolate wind-swept space— In Twilight-land—in No-man's land— Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand.

"And who are you?" cried one, agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. "I know not," said the second Shape, "I only died last night!"

PRESCIENCE

The new moon hung in the sky, the sun was low in the west, And my betrothed and I in the churchyard paused to rest— Happy maiden and lover, dreaming the old dream over: The light winds wandered by, and robins chirped from the nest.

And lo! in the meadow sweet was the grave of a little child, With a crumbling stone at the feet and the ivy running wild— Tangled ivy and clover folding it over and over: Close to my sweetheart's feet was the little mound up-piled.

Stricken with nameless fears, she shrank and clung to me, And her eyes were filled with tears for a sorrow I did not see: Lightly the winds were blowing, softly her tears were flowing— Tears for the unknown years and a sorrow that was to be!

ALEC YEATON'S SON

GLOUCESTER, AUGUST, 1720

/* The wind it wailed, the wind it moaned, And the white caps flecked the sea; "An' I would to God," the skipper groaned, "I had not my boy with me!"

Snug in the stern-sheets, little John Laughed as the scud swept by; But the skipper's sunburnt cheek grew wan As he watched the wicked sky.

"Would he were at his mother's side!" And the skipper's eyes were dim. "Good Lord in heaven, if ill betide, What would become of him!

"For me—my muscles are as steel, For me let hap what may; I might make shift upon the keel Until the break o' day.

"But he, he is so weak and small, So young, scarce learned to stand— O pitying Father of us all, I trust him in thy hand!

"For thou who markest from on high A sparrow's fall—each one!— Surely, O Lord, thou'lt have an eye On Alec Yeaton's son!"

Then, helm hard-port; right straight he sailed Towards the headland light: The wind it moaned, the wind it wailed, And black, black fell the night.

Then burst a storm to make one quail, Though housed from winds and waves— They who could tell about that gale Must rise from watery graves!

Sudden it came, as sudden went; Ere half the night was sped, The winds were hushed, the waves were spent, And the stars shone overhead.

Now, as the morning mist grew thin, The folk on Gloucester shore Saw a little figure floating in Secure, on a broken oar!

Up rose the cry, "A wreck! a wreck! Pull mates, and waste no breath!"— They knew it, though 'twas but a speck Upon the edge of death!

Long did they marvel in the town At God his strange decree, That let the stalwart skipper drown And the little child go free!

MEMORY

My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings, And yet recalls the very hour— 'Twas noon by yonder village tower. And on the last blue noon in May— The wind came briskly up this way, Crisping the brook beside the road; Then, pausing here, set down its load Of pine-scents, and shook listlessly Two petals from that wild-rose tree.

TENNYSON (1890)

I

Shakespeare and Milton—what third blazoned name Shall lips of after ages link to these? His who, beside the wild encircling seas, Was England's voice, her voice with one acclaim, For threescore years; whose word of praise was fame, Whose scorn gave pause to man's iniquities.

II

What strain was his in that Crimean war? A bugle-call in battle; a low breath, Plaintive and sweet, above the fields of death! So year by year the music rolled afar, From Euxine wastes to flowery Kandahar, Bearing the laurel or the cypress wreath.

III

Others shall have their little space of time, Their proper niche and bust, then fade away Into the darkness, poets of a day; But thou, O builder of enduring rhyme, Thou shalt not pass! Thy fame in every clime On earth shall live where Saxon speech has sway.

IV

Waft me this verse across the winter sea, Through light and dark, through mist and blinding sleet, O winter winds, and lay it at his feet; Though the poor gift betray my poverty, At his feet lay it; it may chance that he Will find no gift, where reverence is, unmeet.



SWEETHEART, SIGH NO MORE

It was with doubt and trembling I whispered in her ear. Go, take her answer, bird-on-bough, That all the world may hear— Sweetheart, sigh no more!

Sing it, sing it, tawny throat, Upon the wayside tree, How fair she is, how true she is, How dear she is to me— Sweetheart, sigh no more!

Sing it, sing it, and through the summer long The winds among the clover-tops, And brooks, for all their silvery stops, Shall envy you the song— Sweetheart, sigh no more!

BROKEN MUSIC

"A note All out of tune in this world's instrument."

AMY LEVY.

I know not in what fashion she was made, Nor what her voice was, when she used to speak, Nor if the silken lashes threw a shade On wan or rosy cheek.

I picture her with sorrowful vague eyes, Illumed with such strange gleams of inner light As linger in the drift of London skies Ere twilight turns to night.

I know not; I conjecture. 'Twas a girl That with her own most gentle desperate hand From out God's mystic setting plucked life's pearl— 'Tis hard to understand.

So precious life is! Even to the old The hours are as a miser's coins, and she— Within her hands lay youth's unminted gold And all felicity.

The winged impetuous spirit, the white flame That was her soul once, whither has it flown? Above her brow gray lichens blot her name Upon the carven stone.

This is her Book of Verses—wren-like notes, Shy franknesses, blind gropings, haunting fears; At times across the chords abruptly floats A mist of passionate tears.

A fragile lyre too tensely keyed and strung, A broken music, weirdly incomplete: Here a proud mind, self-baffled and self-stung, Lies coiled in dark defeat.

ELMWOOD

In Memory of James Russell Lowell

Here, in the twilight, at the well-known gate I linger, with no heart to enter more. Among the elm-tops the autumnal air Murmurs, and spectral in the fading light A solitary heron wings its way Southward—save this no sound or touch of life. Dark is the window where the scholar's lamp Was used to catch a pallor from the dawn.

Yet I must needs a little linger here. Each shrub and tree is eloquent of him, For tongueless things and silence have their speech. This is the path familiar to his foot From infancy to manhood and old age; For in a chamber of that ancient house His eyes first opened on the mystery Of life, and all the splendor of the world. Here, as a child, in loving, curious way, He watched the bluebird's coming; learned the date Of hyacinth and goldenrod, and made Friends of those little redmen of the elms, And slyly added to their winter store Of hazel-nuts: no harmless thing that breathed, Footed or winged, but knew him for a friend. The gilded butterfly was not afraid To trust its gold to that so gentle hand, The bluebird fled not from the pendent spray. Ah, happy childhood, ringed with fortunate stars! What dreams were his in this enchanted sphere, What intuitions of high destiny! The honey-bees of Hybla touched his lips In that old New-World garden, unawares.

So in her arms did Mother Nature fold Her poet, whispering what of wild and sweet Into his ear—the state-affairs of birds, The lore of dawn and sunset, what the wind Said in the tree-tops—fine, unfathomed things Henceforth to turn to music in his brain: A various music, now like notes of flutes, And now like blasts of trumpets blown in wars. Later he paced this leafy academe A student, drinking from Greek chalices The ripened vintage of the antique world. And here to him came love, and love's dear loss; Here honors came, the deep applause of men Touched to the heart by some swift-winged word That from his own full heart took eager flight— Some strain of piercing sweetness or rebuke, For underneath his gentle nature flamed A noble scorn for all ignoble deed, Himself a bondman till all men were free.

Thus passed his manhood; then to other lands He strayed, a stainless figure among courts Beside the Manzanares and the Thames. Whence, after too long exile, he returned With fresher laurel, but sedater step And eye more serious, fain to breathe the air Where through the Cambridge marshes the blue Charles Uncoils its length and stretches to the sea: Stream dear to him, at every curve a shrine For pilgrim Memory. Again he watched His loved syringa whitening by the door, And knew the catbird's welcome; in his walks Smiled on his tawny kinsmen of the elms Stealing his nuts; and in the ruined year Sat at his widowed hearthside with bent brows Leonine, frosty with the breath of time, And listened to the crooning of the wind In the wide Elmwood chimneys, as of old. And then—and then....

The after-glow has faded from the elms, And in the denser darkness of the boughs From time to time the firefly's tiny lamp Sparkles. How often in still summer dusks He paused to note that transient phantom spark Flash on the air—a light that outlasts him!

The night grows chill, as if it felt a breath Blown from that frozen city where he lies. All things turn strange. The leaf that rustles here Has more than autumn's mournfulness. The place Is heavy with his absence. Like fixed eyes Whence the dear light of sense and thought has fled, The vacant windows stare across the lawn. The wise sweet spirit that informed it all Is otherwhere. The house itself is dead.

O autumn wind among the sombre pines, Breathe you his dirge, but be it sweet and low. With deep refrains and murmurs of the sea, Like to his verse—the art is yours alone. His once—you taught him. Now no voice but yours! Tender and low, O wind among the pines. I would, were mine a lyre of richer strings, In soft Sicilian accents wrap his name.

SEA LONGINGS

The first world-sound that fell upon my ear Was that of the great winds along the coast Crushing the deep-sea beryl on the rocks— The distant breakers' sullen cannonade. Against the spires and gables of the town The white fog drifted, catching here and there At overleaning cornice or peaked roof, And hung—weird gonfalons. The garden walks Were choked with leaves, and on their ragged biers Lay dead the sweets of summer—damask rose, Clove-pink, old-fashioned, loved New England flowers Only keen salt-sea odors filled the air. Sea-sounds, sea-odors—these were all my world. Hence is it that life languishes with me Inland; the valleys stifle me with gloom And pent-up prospect; in their narrow bound Imagination flutters futile wings. Vainly I seek the sloping pearl-white sand And the mirage's phantom citadels Miraculous, a moment seen, then gone. Among the mountains I am ill at ease, Missing the stretched horizon's level line And the illimitable restless blue. The crag-torn sky is not the sky I love, But one unbroken sapphire spanning all; And nobler than the branches of a pine Aslant upon a precipice's edge Are the strained spars of some great battle-ship Plowing across the sunset. No bird's lilt So takes me as the whistling of the gale Among the shrouds. My cradle-song was this, Strange inarticulate sorrows of the sea, Blithe rhythms upgathered from the Sirens' caves. Perchance of earthly voices the last voice That shall an instant my freed spirit stay On this world's verge, will be some message blown Over the dim salt lands that fringe the coast At dusk, or when the tranced midnight droops With weight of stars, or haply just as dawn, Illumining the sullen purple wave, Turns the gray pools and willow-stems to gold.

A SHADOW OF THE NIGHT

Close on the edge of a midsummer dawn In troubled dreams I went from land to land, Each seven-colored like the rainbow's arc, Regions where never fancy's foot had trod Till then; yet all the strangeness seemed not strange, At which I wondered, reasoning in my dream With twofold sense, well knowing that I slept. At last I came to this our cloud-hung earth, And somewhere by the seashore was a grave, A woman's grave, new-made, and heaped with flowers; And near it stood an ancient holy man That fain would comfort me, who sorrowed not For this unknown dead woman at my feet. But I, because his sacred office held My reverence, listened; and 'twas thus he spake:— "When next thou comest thou shalt find her still In all the rare perfection that she was. Thou shalt have gentle greeting of thy love! Her eyelids will have turned to violets, Her bosom to white lilies, and her breath To roses. What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower, or winged air. If this befalls our poor unworthy flesh, Think thee what destiny awaits the soul! What glorious vesture it shall wear at last!" While yet he spoke, seashore and grave and priest Vanished, and faintly from a neighboring spire Fell five slow solemn strokes upon my ear. Then I awoke with a keen pain at heart, A sense of swift unutterable loss, And through the darkness reached my hand to touch Her cheek, soft-pillowed on one restful palm— To be quite sure!

OUTWARD BOUND

I leave behind me the elm-shadowed square And carven portals of the silent street, And wander on with listless, vagrant feet Through seaward-leading alleys, till the air Smells of the sea, and straightway then the care Slips from my heart, and life once more is sweet. At the lane's ending lie the white-winged fleet. O restless Fancy, whither wouldst thou fare? Here are brave pinions that shall take thee far— Gaunt hulks of Norway; ships of red Ceylon; Slim-masted lovers of the blue Azores! 'Tis but an instant hence to Zanzibar, Or to the regions of the Midnight Sun: Ionian isles are thine, and all the fairy shores!

REMINISCENCE

Though I am native to this frozen zone That half the twelvemonth torpid lies, or dead; Though the cold azure arching overhead And the Atlantic's never-ending moan Are mine by heritage, I must have known Life otherwhere in epochs long since fled; For in my veins some Orient blood is red, And through my thought are lotus blossoms blown. I do remember ... it was just at dusk, Near a walled garden at the river's turn, (A thousand summers seem but yesterday!) A Nubian girl, more sweet than Khoorja musk, Came to the water-tank to fill her urn, And with the urn she bore my heart away!

PERE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM

Near the Levee, and not far from the old French Cathedral in the Place d'Armes, at New Orleans, stands a fine date-palm, thirty feet in height, spreading its broad leaves in the alien air as hardily as if its sinuous roots were sucking strength from their native earth.

Sir Charles Lyell, in his 'Second Visit to the United States,' mentions this exotic:—"The tree is seventy or eighty years old; for Pere Antoine, a Roman Catholic priest, who died about twenty years ago, told Mr. Bringier that he planted it himself, when he was young. In his will he provided that they who succeeded to this lot of ground should forfeit it if they cut down the palm."

Wishing to learn something of Pere Antoine's history, Sir Charles Lyell made inquiries among the ancient Creole inhabitants of the faubourg. That the old priest, in his last days, became very much emaciated, that he walked about the streets like a mummy, that he gradually dried up, and finally blew away, was the meagre and unsatisfactory result of the tourist's investigations. This is all that is generally told of Pere Antoine.

In the summer of 1861, while New Orleans was yet occupied by the Confederate forces, I met at Alexandria, in Virginia, a lady from Louisiana—Miss Blondeau by name—who gave me the substance of the following legend touching Pere Antoine and his wonderful date-palm. If it should appear tame to the reader, it will be because I am not habited in a black ribbed-silk dress, with a strip of point-lace around my throat, like Miss Blondeau; it will be because I lack her eyes and lips and Southern music to tell it with.

When Pere Antoine was a very young man, he had a friend whom he loved as he loved his life. Emile Jardin returned his passion, and the two, on account of their friendship, became the marvel of the city where they dwelt. One was never seen without the other; for they studied, walked, ate, and slept together.

Thus began Miss Blondeau, with the air of Fiammetta telling her prettiest story to the Florentines in the garden of Boccaccio.

Antoine and Emile were preparing to enter the Church; indeed, they had taken the preliminary steps, when a circumstance occurred which changed the color of their lives. A foreign lady, from some nameless island in the Pacific, had a few months before moved into their neighborhood. The lady died suddenly, leaving a girl of sixteen or seventeen, entirely friendless and unprovided for. The young men had been kind to the woman during her illness, and at her death—melting with pity at the forlorn situation of Anglice, the daughter—swore between themselves to love and watch over her as if she were their sister.

Now Anglice had a wild, strange beauty that made other women seem tame beside her; and in the course of time the young men found themselves regarding their ward not so much like brothers as at first. In brief, they found themselves in love with her.

They struggled with their hopeless passion month after month, neither betraying his secret to the other; for the austere orders which they were about to assume precluded the idea of love and marriage. Until then they had dwelt in the calm air of religious meditations, unmoved except by that pious fervor which in other ages taught men to brave the tortures of the rack and to smile amid the flames. But a blonde girl, with great eyes and a voice like the soft notes of a vesper hymn, had come in between them and their ascetic dreams of heaven. The ties that had bound the young men together snapped silently one by one. At last each read in the pale face of the other the story of his own despair.

And she? If Anglice shared their trouble, her face told no story. It was like the face of a saint on a cathedral window. Once, however, as she came suddenly upon the two men and overheard words that seemed to burn like fire on the lip of the speaker, her eyes grew luminous for an instant. Then she passed on, her face as immobile as before in its setting of wavy gold hair.

"Entre or et roux Dieu fit ses longs cheveux."

One night Emile and Anglice were missing. They had flown—but whither, nobody knew, and nobody save Antoine cared. It was a heavy blow to Antoine—for he had himself half resolved to confess his love to Anglice and urge her to fly with him.

A strip of paper slipped from a volume on Antoine's priedieu, and fluttered to his feet.

"Do not be angry," said the bit of paper, piteously; "forgive us, for we love." ("Pardonnez-nous, car nous aimons.")

Three years went by wearily enough. Antoine had entered the Church, and was already looked upon as a rising man; but his face was pale and his heart leaden, for there was no sweetness in life for him.

Four years had elapsed, when a letter, covered with outlandish postmarks, was brought to the young priest—a letter from Anglice. She was dying;—would he forgive her? Emile, the year previous, had fallen a victim to the fever that raged on the island; and their child, Anglice, was likely to follow him. In pitiful terms she begged Antoine to take charge of the child until she was old enough to enter the convent of the Sacre-Coeur. The epistle was finished hastily by another hand, informing Antoine of Madame Jardin's death; it also told him that Anglice had been placed on board a vessel shortly to leave the island for some Western port.

The letter, delayed by storm and shipwreck, was hardly read and wept over when little Anglice arrived.

On beholding her, Antoine uttered a cry of joy and surprise—she was so like the woman he had worshiped.

The passion that had been crowded down in his heart broke out and lavished its richness on this child, who was to him not only the Anglice of years ago, but his friend Emile Jardin also.

Anglice possessed the wild, strange beauty of her mother—the bending, willowy form, the rich tint of skin, the large tropical eyes, that had almost made Antoine's sacred robes a mockery to him.

For a month or two Anglice was wildly unhappy in her new home. She talked continually of the bright country where she was born, the fruits and flowers and blue skies, the tall, fan-like trees, and the streams that went murmuring through them to the sea. Antoine could not pacify her.

By and by she ceased to weep, and went about the cottage in a weary, disconsolate way that cut Antoine to the heart. A long-tailed paroquet, which she had brought with her in the ship, walked solemnly behind her from room to room, mutely pining, it seemed, for those heavy orient airs that used to ruffle its brilliant plumage.

Before the year ended, he noticed that the ruddy tinge had faded from her cheek, that her eyes had grown languid, and her slight figure more willowy than ever.

A physician was consulted. He could discover nothing wrong with the child, except this fading and drooping. He failed to account for that. It was some vague disease of the mind, he said, beyond his skill.

So Anglice faded day after day. She seldom left the room now. At last Antoine could not shut out the fact that the child was passing away. He had learned to love her so!

"Dear heart," he said once, "What is't ails thee?"

"Nothing, mon pere," for so she called him.

The winter passed, the balmy spring had come with its magnolia blooms and orange blossoms, and Anglice seemed to revive. In her small bamboo chair, on the porch, she swayed to and fro in the fragrant breeze, with a peculiar undulating motion, like a graceful tree.

At times something seemed to weigh upon her mind. Antoine observed it, and waited. Finally she spoke.

"Near our house," said little Anglice—"near our house, on the island, the palm-trees are waving under the blue sky. Oh, how beautiful! I seem to lie beneath them all day long. I am very, very happy. I yearned for them so much that I grew ill—don't you think it was so, mon pere?

"Helas, yes!" exclaimed Antoine, suddenly. "Let us hasten to those pleasant islands where the palms are waving."

Anglice smiled. "I am going there, mon pere."

A week from that evening the wax candles burned at her feet and forehead, lighting her on the journey.

All was over. Now was Antoine's heart empty. Death, like another Emile, had stolen his new Anglice. He had nothing to do but to lay the blighted flower away.

Pere Antoine made a shallow grave in his garden, and heaped the fresh brown mold over his idol.

In the tranquil spring evenings, the priest was seen sitting by the mound, his finger closed in the unread breviary.

The summer broke on that sunny land; and in the cool morning twilight, and after nightfall, Antoine lingered by the grave. He could never be with it enough.

One morning he observed a delicate stem, with two curiously shaped emerald leaves, springing up from the centre of the mound. At first he merely noticed it casually; but presently the plant grew so tall, and was so strangely unlike anything he had ever seen before, that he examined it with care.

How straight and graceful and exquisite it was! When it swung to and fro with the summer wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if little Anglice were standing there in the garden.

The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot, wondering what manner of blossom it would unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden. One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face like a sailor's, leaned over the garden rail, and said to him, "What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir!"

"Mon Dieu!" cried Pere Antoine starting, "and is it a palm?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the man. "I didn't reckon the tree would flourish in this latitude."

"Ah, mon Dieu!" was all the priest could say aloud; but he murmured to himself, "Bon Dieu, vous m'avez donne cela!"

If Pere Antoine loved the tree before, he worshiped it now. He watered it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his arms. Here were Emile and Anglice and the child, all in one!

The years glided away, and the date-palm and the priest grew together—only one became vigorous and the other feeble. Pere Antoine had long passed the meridian of life. The tree was in its youth. It no longer stood in an isolated garden; for pretentious brick and stucco houses had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They looked down scowling on the humble thatched roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him off his land. But he clung to it like lichen and refused to sell.

Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he laughed at them. Sometimes he was hungry, and cold, and thinly clad; but he laughed none the less.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" said the old priest's smile.

Pere Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit under the pliant, caressing leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab; and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even in death Pere Antoine was faithful to his trust: the owner of that land loses it if he harm the date-tree.

And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. May the hand wither that touches her ungently!

"Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice," said Miss Blondeau tenderly.

MISS MEHETABEL'S SON

I

THE OLD TAVERN AT BAYLEY'S FOUR-CORNERS

You will not find Greenton, or Bayley's Four-Corners as it is more usually designated, on any map of New England that I know of. It is not a town; it is not even a village: it is merely an absurd hotel. The almost indescribable place called Greenton is at the intersection of four roads, in the heart of New Hampshire, twenty miles from the nearest settlement of note, and ten miles from any railway station. A good location for a hotel, you will say. Precisely; but there has always been a hotel there, and for the last dozen years it has been pretty well patronized—by one boarder. Not to trifle with an intelligent public, I will state at once that, in the early part of this century, Greenton was a point at which the mail-coach on the Great Northern Route stopped to change horses and allow the passengers to dine. People in the county, wishing to take the early mail Portsmouth-ward, put up over night at the old tavern, famous for its irreproachable larder and soft feather-beds. The tavern at that time was kept by Jonathan Bayley, who rivaled his wallet in growing corpulent, and in due time passed away. At his death the establishment, which included a farm, fell into the hands of a son-in-law. Now, though Bayley left his son-in-law a hotel—which sounds handsome—he left him no guests; for at about the period of the old man's death the old stage-coach died also. Apoplexy carried off one, and steam the other. Thus, by a sudden swerve in the tide of progress, the tavern at the Corners found itself high and dry, like a wreck on a sand-bank. Shortly after this event, or maybe contemporaneously, there was some attempt to build a town at Greenton; but it apparently failed, if eleven cellars choked up with debris and overgrown with burdocks are any indication of failure. The farm, however, was a good farm, as things go in New Hampshire, and Tobias Sewell, the son-in-law, could afford to snap his fingers at the traveling public if they came near enough—which they never did.

The hotel remains to-day pretty much the same as when Jonathan Bayley handed in his accounts in 1840, except that Sewell has from time to time sold the furniture of some of the upper chambers to bridal couples in the neighborhood. The bar is still open, and the parlor door says PARLOUR in tall black letters. Now and then a passing drover looks in at that lonely bar-room, where a high-shouldered bottle of Santa Cruz rum ogles with a peculiarly knowing air a shriveled lemon on a shelf; now and then a farmer rides across country to talk crops and stock and take a friendly glass with Tobias; and now and then a circus caravan with speckled ponies, or a menagerie with a soggy elephant, halts under the swinging sign, on which there is a dim mail-coach with four phantomish horses driven by a portly gentleman whose head has been washed off by the rain. Other customers there are none, except that one regular boarder whom I have mentioned.

If misery makes a man acquainted with strange bed-fellows, it is equally certain that the profession of surveyor and civil engineer often takes one into undreamed-of localities. I had never heard of Greenton until my duties sent me there, and kept me there two weeks in the dreariest season of the year. I do not think I would, of my own volition, have selected Greenton for a fortnight's sojourn at any time; but now the business is over, I shall never regret the circumstances that made me the guest of Tobias Sewell, and brought me into intimate relations with Miss Mehetabel's Son.

It was a black October night in the year of grace 1872, that discovered me standing in front of the old tavern at the Corners. Though the ten miles' ride from K—— had been depressing, especially the last five miles, on account of the cold autumnal rain that had set in, I felt a pang of regret on hearing the rickety open wagon turn round in the road and roll off in the darkness. There were no lights visible anywhere, and only for the big, shapeless mass of something in front of me, which the driver had said was the hotel, I should have fancied that I had been set down by the roadside. I was wet to the skin and in no amiable humor; and not being able to find bell-pull or knocker, or even a door, I belabored the side of the house with my heavy walking-stick. In a minute or two I saw a light flickering somewhere aloft, then I heard the sound of a window opening, followed by an exclamation of disgust as a blast of wind extinguished the candle which had given me an instantaneous picture en silhouette of a man leaning out of a casement.

"I say, what do you want, down there?" inquired an unprepossessing voice.

"I want to come in; I want a supper, and a bed, and numberless things."

"This isn't no time of night to go rousing honest folks out of their sleep. Who are you, anyway?"

The question, superficially considered, was a very simple one, and I, of all people in the world, ought to have been able to answer it off-hand; but it staggered me. Strangely enough, there came drifting across my memory the lettering on the back of a metaphysical work which I had seen years before on a shelf in the Astor Library. Owing to an unpremeditatedly funny collocation of title and author, the lettering read as follows:—"Who am I? Jones." Evidently it had puzzled Jones to know who he was, or he wouldn't have written a book about it, and come to so lame and impotent a conclusion. It certainly puzzled me at that instant to define my identity. "Thirty years ago," I reflected, "I was nothing; fifty years hence I shall be nothing again, humanly speaking. In the mean time, who am I, sure enough?" It had never before occurred to me what an indefinite article I was. I wish it had not occurred to me then. Standing there in the rain and darkness, I wrestled vainly with the problem, and was constrained to fall back upon a Yankee expedient.

"Isn't this a hotel?" I asked finally.

"Well, it is a sort of hotel," said the voice, doubtfully. My hesitation and prevarication had apparently not inspired my interlocutor with confidence in me.

"Then let me in. I have just driven over from K—— in this infernal rain. I am wet through and through."

"But what do you want here, at the Corners? What's your business? People don't come here, leastways in the middle of the night."

"It isn't in the middle of the night," I returned, incensed. "I come on business connected with the new road. I'm the superintendent of the works."

"Oh!"

"And if you don't open the door at once, I'll raise the whole neighborhood—and then go to the other hotel."

When I said that, I supposed Greenton was a village with a population of at least three or four thousand, and was wondering vaguely at the absence of lights and other signs of human habitation. Surely, I thought, all the people cannot be abed and asleep at half past ten o'clock: perhaps I am in the business section of the town, among the shops.

"You jest wait," said the voice above.

This request was not devoid of a certain accent of menace, and I braced myself for a sortie on the part of the besieged, if he had any such hostile intent. Presently a door opened at the very place where I least expected a door, at the farther end of the building, in fact, and a man in his shirt-sleeves, shielding a candle with his left hand, appeared on the threshold. I passed quickly into the house, with Mr. Tobias Sewell (for this was Mr. Sewell) at my heels, and found myself in a long, low-studded bar-room.

There were two chairs drawn up before the hearth, on which a huge hemlock back-log was still smoldering, and on the unpainted deal counter contiguous stood two cloudy glasses with bits of lemon-peel in the bottom, hinting at recent libations. Against the discolored wall over the bar hung a yellowed hand-bill, in a warped frame, announcing that "the Next Annual N.H. Agricultural Fair" would take place on the 10th of September, 1841. There was no other furniture or decoration in this dismal apartment, except the cobwebs which festooned the ceiling, hanging down here and there like stalactites.

Mr. Sewell set the candlestick on the mantel-shelf, and threw some pine-knots on the fire, which immediately broke into a blaze, and showed him to be a lank, narrow-chested man, past sixty, with sparse, steel-gray hair, and small, deep-set eyes, perfectly round, like a fish's, and of no particular color. His chief personal characteristics seemed to be too much feet and not enough teeth. His sharply cut, but rather simple face, as he turned it towards me, wore a look of interrogation. I replied to his mute inquiry by taking out my pocket-book and handing him my business-card, which he held up to the candle and perused with great deliberation.

"You're a civil engineer, are you?" he said, displaying his gums, which gave his countenance an expression of almost infantile innocence. He made no further audible remark, but mumbled between his thin lips something which an imaginative person might have construed into, "If you're a civil engineer, I'll be blessed if I wouldn't like to see an uncivil one!"

Mr. Sewell's growl, however, was worse than his bite,—owing to his lack of teeth, probably—for he very good-naturedly set himself to work preparing supper for me. After a slice of cold ham, and a warm punch, to which my chilled condition gave a grateful flavor, I went to bed in a distant chamber in a most amiable mood, feeling satisfied that Jones was a donkey to bother himself about his identity.

When I awoke, the sun was several hours high. My bed faced a window, and by raising myself on one elbow I could look out on what I expected would be the main street. To my astonishment I beheld a lonely country road winding up a sterile hill and disappearing over the ridge. In a cornfield at the right of the road was a small private graveyard, inclosed by a crumbling stone wall with a red gate. The only thing suggestive of life was this little corner lot occupied by death. I got out of bed and went to the other window. There I had an uninterrupted view of twelve miles of open landscape, with Mount Agamenticus in the purple distance. Not a house or a spire in sight. "Well," I exclaimed, "Greenton doesn't appear to be a very closely packed metropolis!" That rival hotel with which I had threatened Mr. Sewell overnight was not a deadly weapon, looking at it by daylight. "By Jove!" I reflected, "maybe I'm in the wrong place." But there, tacked against a panel of the bedroom door, was a faded time-table dated Greenton, August 1st, 1839.

I smiled all the time I was dressing, and went smiling downstairs, where I found Mr. Sewell, assisted by one of the fair sex in the first bloom of her eightieth year, serving breakfast for me on a small table—in the bar-room!

"I overslept myself this morning," I remarked apologetically, "and I see that I am putting you to some trouble. In future, if you will have me called, I will take my meals at the usual table d'hote."

"At the what?" said Mr. Sewell.

"I mean with the other boarders."

Mr. Sewell paused in the act of lifting a chop from the fire, and, resting the point of his fork against the woodwork of the mantel-piece, grinned from ear to ear.

"Bless you! there isn't any other boarders. There hasn't been anybody put up here sence—let me see—sence father-in-law died, and that was in the fall of '40. To be sure, there's Silas; he's a regular boarder; but I don't count him."

Mr. Sewell then explained how the tavern had lost its custom when the old stage line was broken up by the railroad. The introduction of steam was, in Mr. Sewell's estimation, a fatal error. "Jest killed local business. Carried it off, I'm darned if I know where. The whole country has been sort o' retrograding ever sence steam was invented."

"You spoke of having one boarder," I said.

"Silas? Yes; he come here the summer 'Tilda died—she that was 'Tilda Bayley—and he's here yet, going on thirteen year. He couldn't live any longer with the old man. Between you and I, old Clem Jaffrey, Silas's father, was a hard nut. Yes," said Mr. Sewell, crooking his elbow in inimitable pantomime, "altogether too often. Found dead in the road hugging a three-gallon demijohn. Habeas corpus in the barn," added Mr. Sewell, intending, I presume, to intimate that a post-mortem examination had been deemed necessary. "Silas," he resumed, in that respectful tone which one should always adopt when speaking of capital, "is a man of considerable property; lives on his interest, and keeps a hoss and shay. He's a great scholar, too, Silas: takes all the pe-ri-odicals and the Police Gazette regular."

Mr. Sewell was turning over a third chop, when the door opened and a stoutish, middle-aged little gentleman, clad in deep black, stepped into the room.

"Silas Jaffrey," said Mr. Sewell, with a comprehensive sweep of his arm, picking up me and the new-comer on one fork, so to speak. "Be acquainted!"

Mr. Jaffrey advanced briskly, and gave me his hand with unlooked-for cordiality. He was a dapper little man, with a head as round and nearly as bald as an orange, and not unlike an orange in complexion, either; he had twinkling gray eyes and a pronounced Roman nose, the numerous freckles upon which were deepened by his funereal dress-coat and trousers. He reminded me of Alfred de Musset's blackbird, which, with its yellow beak and sombre plumage, looked like an undertaker eating an omelet.

"Silas will take care of you," said Mr. Sewell, taking down his hat from a peg behind the door. "I've got the cattle to look after. Tell him if you want anything."

While I ate my breakfast, Mr. Jaffrey hopped up and down the narrow bar-room and chirped away as blithely as a bird on a cherry-bough, occasionally ruffling with his fingers a slight fringe of auburn hair which stood up pertly round his head and seemed to possess a luminous quality of its own.

"Don't I find it a little slow up here at the Corners? Not at all, my dear sir. I am in the thick of life up here. So many interesting things going on all over the world—inventions, discoveries, spirits, railroad disasters, mysterious homicides. Poets, murderers, musicians, statesmen, distinguished travelers, prodigies of all kinds turning up everywhere. Very few events or persons escape me. I take six daily city papers, thirteen weekly journals, all the monthly magazines, and two quarterlies. I could not get along with less. I couldn't if you asked me. I never feel lonely. How can I, being on intimate terms, as it were, with thousands and thousands of people? There's that young woman out West. What an entertaining creature she is!—now in Missouri, now in Indiana, and now in Minnesota, always on the go, and all the time shedding needles from various parts of her body as if she really enjoyed it! Then there's that versatile patriarch who walks hundreds of miles and saws thousands of feet of wood, before breakfast, and shows no signs of giving out. Then there's that remarkable, one may say that historical colored woman who knew Benjamin Franklin, and fought at the battle of Bunk—no, it is the old negro man who fought at Bunker Hill, a mere infant, of course, at that period. Really, now, it is quite curious to observe how that venerable female slave—formerly an African princess—is repeatedly dying in her hundred and eleventh year, and coming to life again punctually every six months in the small-type paragraphs. Are you aware, sir, that within the last twelve years no fewer than two hundred and eighty-seven of General Washington's colored coachmen have died?"

For the soul of me I could not tell whether this quaint little gentleman was chaffing me or not. I laid down my knife and fork, and stared at him.

"Then there are the mathematicians!" he cried vivaciously, without waiting for a reply. "I take great interest in them. Hear this!" and Mr. Jaffrey drew a newspaper from a pocket in the tail of his coat, and read as follows:—"It has been estimated that if all the candles manufactured by this eminent firm (Stearine & Co.) were placed end to end, they would reach 2 and 7-8 times around the globe. Of course," continued Mr. Jaffrey, folding up the journal reflectively, "abstruse calculations of this kind are not, perhaps, of vital importance, but they indicate the intellectual activity of the age. Seriously, now," he said, halting in front of the table, "what with books and papers and drives about the country, I do not find the days too long, though I seldom see any one, except when I go over to K—— for my mail. Existence may be very full to a man who stands a little aside from the tumult and watches it with philosophic eye. Possibly he may see more of the battle than those who are in the midst of the action. Once I was struggling with the crowd, as eager and undaunted as the best; perhaps I should have been struggling still. Indeed, I know my life would have been very different now if I had married Mehetabel—if I had married Mehetabel."

His vivacity was gone, a sudden cloud had come over his bright face, his figure seemed to have collapsed, the light seemed to have faded out of his hair. With a shuffling step, the very antithesis of his brisk, elastic tread, he turned to the door and passed into the road.

"Well," I said to myself, "if Greenton had forty thousand inhabitants, it couldn't turn out a more astonishing old party than that!"

II

THE CASE OF SILAS JAFFREY

A man with a passion for bric-a-brac is always stumbling over antique bronzes, intaglios, mosaics, and daggers of the time of Benvenuto Cellini; the bibliophile finds creamy vellum folios and rare Alduses and Elzevirs waiting for him at unsuspected bookstalls; the numismatist has but to stretch forth his palm to have priceless coins drop into it. My own weakness is odd people, and I am constantly encountering them. It was plain that I had unearthed a couple of very queer specimens at Bayley's Four-Corners. I saw that a fortnight afforded me too brief an opportunity to develop the richness of both, and I resolved to devote my spare time to Mr. Jaffrey alone, instinctively recognizing in him an unfamiliar species. My professional work in the vicinity of Greenton left my evenings and occasionally an afternoon unoccupied; these intervals I purposed to employ in studying and classifying my fellow-boarder. It was necessary, as a preliminary step, to learn something of his previous history, and to this end I addressed myself to Mr. Sewell that same night,

"I do not want to seem inquisitive," I said to the landlord, as he was fastening up the bar, which, by the way, was the salle a manger and general sitting-room—"I do not want to seem inquisitive, but your friend Mr. Jaffrey dropped a remark this morning at breakfast which—which was not altogether clear to me."

"About Mehetabel?" asked Mr. Sewell, uneasily.

"Yes."

"Well, I wish he wouldn't!"

"He was friendly enough in the course of conversation to hint to me that he had not married the young woman, and seemed to regret it."

"No, he didn't marry Mehetabel."

"May I inquire why he didn't marry Mehetabel?"

"Never asked her. Might have married the girl forty times. Old Elkins's daughter, over at K——. She'd have had him quick enough. Seven years, off and on, he kept company with Mehetabel, and then she died."

"And he never asked her?"

"He shilly-shallied. Perhaps he didn't think of it. When she was dead and gone, then Silas was struck all of a heap—and that's all about it."

Obviously Mr. Sewell did not intend to tell me anything more, and obviously there was more to tell. The topic was plainly disagreeable to him for some reason or other, and that unknown reason of course piqued my curiosity.

As I was absent from dinner and supper that day, I did not meet Mr. Jaffrey again until the following morning at breakfast. He had recovered his bird-like manner, and was full of a mysterious assassination that had just taken place in New York, all the thrilling details of which were at his fingers' ends. It was at once comical and sad to see this harmless old gentleman, with his naive, benevolent countenance, and his thin hair flaming up in a semicircle, like the footlights at a theatre, reveling in the intricacies of the unmentionable deed.

"You come up to my room to-night," he cried, with horrid glee, "and I'll give you my theory of the murder. I'll make it as clear as day to you that it was the detective himself who fired the three pistol-shots."

It was not so much the desire to have this point elucidated as to make a closer study of Mr. Jaffrey that led me to accept his invitation. Mr. Jaffrey's bedroom was in an L of the building, and was in no way noticeable except for the numerous files of newspapers neatly arranged against the blank spaces of the walls, and a huge pile of old magazines which stood in one corner, reaching nearly up to the ceiling, and threatening to topple over each instant, like the Leaning Tower at Pisa. There were green paper shades at the windows, some faded chintz valances about the bed, and two or three easy-chairs covered with chintz. On a black-walnut shelf between the windows lay a choice collection of meerschaum and brier-wood pipes.

Filling one of the chocolate-colored bowls for me and another for himself, Mr. Jaffrey began prattling; but not about the murder, which appeared to have flown out of his mind. In fact, I do not remember that the topic was even touched upon, either then or afterwards.

"Cozy nest this," said Mr. Jaffrey, glancing complacently over the apartment. "What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and bluebirds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last spring. In summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round. I take it very easy here, I can tell you, summer and winter. Not much society. Tobias is not, perhaps, what one would term a great intellectual force, but he means well. He's a realist—believes in coming down to what he calls (the hardpan); but his heart is in the right place, and he's very kind to me. The wisest thing I ever did in my life was to sell out my grain business over at K——, thirteen years ago, and settle down at the Corners. When a man has made a competency, what does he want more? Besides, at that time an event occurred which destroyed any ambition I may have had. Mehetabel died."

"The lady you were engaged to?"

"No, not precisely engaged. I think it was quite understood between us, though nothing had been said on the subject. Typhoid," added Mr. Jaffrey, in a low voice.

For several minutes he smoked in silence, a vague, troubled look playing over his countenance. Presently this passed away, and he fixed his gray eyes speculatively upon my face.

"If I had married Mehetabel," said Mr. Jaffrey, slowly, and then he hesitated. I blew a ring of smoke into the air, and, resting my pipe on my knee, dropped into an attitude of attention. "If I had married Mehetabel, you know, we should have had—ahem!—a family."

"Very likely," I assented, vastly amused at this unexpected turn.

"A Boy!" exclaimed Mr. Jaffrey, explosively.

"By all means, certainly, a son."

"Great trouble about naming the boy. Mehetabel's family want him named Elkanah Elkins, after her grandfather; I want him named Andrew Jackson. We compromise by christening him Elkanah Elkins Andrew Jackson Jaffrey. Rather a long name for such a short little fellow," said Mr. Jaffrey, musingly.

"Andy isn't a bad nickname," I suggested.

"Not at all. We call him Andy, in the family. Somewhat fractious at first—colic and things. I suppose it is right, or it wouldn't be so; but the usefulness of measles, mumps, croup, whooping-cough, scarlatina, and fits is not clear to the parental eye. I wish Andy would be a model infant, and dodge the whole lot."

This suppositions child, born within the last few minutes, was plainly assuming the proportions of a reality to Mr. Jaffrey. I began to feel a little uncomfortable. I am, as I have said, a civil engineer, and it is not strictly in my line to assist at the births of infants, imaginary or otherwise. I pulled away vigorously at the pipe, and said nothing.

"What large blue eyes he has," resumed Mr. Jaffrey, after a pause; "just like Hetty's; and the fair hair, too, like hers. How oddly certain distinctive features are handed down in families! Sometimes a mouth, sometimes a turn of the eye-brow. Wicked little boys over at K—— have now and then derisively advised me to follow my nose. It would be an interesting thing to do. I should find my nose flying about the world, turning up unexpectedly here and there, dodging this branch of the family and reappearing in that, now jumping over one great-grandchild to fasten itself upon another, and never losing its individuality. Look at Andy. There's Elkanah Elkins's chin to the life. Andy's chin is probably older than the Pyramids. Poor little thing," he cried, with sudden indescribable tenderness, "to lose his mother so early!" And Mr. Jaffrey's head sunk upon his breast, and his shoulders slanted forward, as if he were actually bending over the cradle of the child. The whole gesture and attitude was so natural that it startled me. The pipe slipped from my fingers and fell to the floor.

"Hush!" whispered Mr. Jaffrey, with a deprecating motion of his hand. "Andy's asleep!"

He rose softly from the chair, and walking across the room on tiptoe, drew down the shade at the window through which the moonlight was streaming. Then he returned to his seat, and remained gazing with half-closed eyes into the dropping embers.

I refilled my pipe and smoked in profound silence, wondering what would come next. But nothing came next. Mr. Jaffrey had fallen into so brown a study that, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when I wished him good-night and withdrew, I do not think he noticed my departure.

I am not what is called a man of imagination; it is my habit to exclude most things not capable of mathematical demonstration: but I am not without a certain psychological insight, and I think I understood Mr. Jaffrey's case. I could easily understand how a man with an unhealthy, sensitive nature, overwhelmed by sudden calamity, might take refuge in some forlorn place like this old tavern, and dream his life away. To such a man—brooding forever on what might have been, and dwelling wholly in the realm of his fancies—the actual world might indeed become as a dream, and nothing seem real but his illusions. I dare say that thirteen years of Bayley's Four-Corners would have its effect upon me; though instead of conjuring up golden-haired children of the Madonna, I should probably see gnomes and kobolds, and goblins engaged in hoisting false signals and misplacing switches for midnight express trains.

"No doubt," I said to myself that night, as I lay in bed, thinking over the matter, "this once possible but now impossible child is a great comfort to the old gentleman,—a greater comfort, perhaps, than a real son would be. Maybe Andy will vanish with the shades and mists of night, he's such an unsubstantial infant; but if he doesn't, and Mr. Jaffrey finds pleasure in talking to me about his son, I shall humor the old fellow. It wouldn't be a Christian act to knock over his harmless fancy."