Through the streets of Rome trotted in brown garb and great unloveliness a frequent monk, brave and true; and each of these, I was led by the feminine members of the family, to regard as a probable demon, eager for my intellectual blood. A fairer sight were the Penitents, in neat buff clothes of monastic outline, their faces covered with their hoods, whose points rose overhead like church steeples, two holes permitting the eyes to peep with beetle glistenings upon you. They went hurryingly along, called from their worldly affairs; and my mother imparted to me her belief that they were somewhat free of superstition because undoubtedly clean. Sometimes processions of them, chanting, came slowly through the city, bearing the dead to burial. I did not know, then, that the chanting was the voicing of good, honest, Bible-derived prayers; I thought it was child's play, useless and fascinating. In the churches the chanting monks and boys impressed me differently. Who does not feel, without a word to reveal the fact, the wondrous virtue of Catholic religious observance in the churches? The holiness of these regions sent through me waves of peace. I stepped softly past the old men and women who knelt upon the pavements, and gazed longingly upon their simpler spiritual plane; I drew back reluctantly from the only garden where the Cross is planted in visible, reverential substance. For the year ensuing this life in Rome, I entertained the family with dramatic imitations of religious chants, grumbling out at sundown the low, ominous echoings of the priests, answered by the treble, rapid and trustful, of the little choristers, gladly picturing to myself as I did so the winding processions in St. Peter's.

In the square beneath our windows, during Lent, booths were set, and countless flat pancake-looking pieces of dough were caught up by a white-capped and aproned cook, with a long-handled spoon, and fried in olive oil placed in a caldron at the booth's door, to be served to passers in the twinkling of an eye. I watched this process until I grew to regard Lent as a tiresome custom. Having tested the cakes, I found them to be indistinct in taste, for all their pretty buff tint, and the dexterous twist of the cook's wrist as he dumped them and picked them up. If they had been appetizing I should have been sharply interested in the idea of becoming a Catholic, but their entire absence of relish convinced me that the Italians lacked mental grasp and salvation at a single swoop: and this in spite of the fact that one of my mother's most valued friends, Mrs. Ward, had lately joined the Church. It was her husband who said of her, "Whatever church has Anna, has St. Anna!" Perhaps the most exquisite speech ever uttered by a husband.

Before this serious season of pancakes, which was all Lent was to me at the time of which I speak, the Carnival had rushed upon my sight, carrying all our friends through its whirlpool. Every gay cloth, shawl, and mat that could be brought into service I had rejoiced to see displayed upon the balconies. A narrow, winding street the Corso seemed, being so full, and the houses so high; and a merry blue strip of heaven far away overhead, glancing along the housetops, assured us space still existed. Sudden descents of flowers upon one's shoulders and lap in the carriage, from a window or a passer, or a kindly feeling stranger in another carriage, made one start in mirthful response. Sudden meetings with dear friends, or friends who seemed almost dear in the cheerful hurly-burly, became part of the funny scrimmage. At each side-street sat on a stony standing horse a beautifully proportioned and equipped guard, in gleaming helmet and calm demeanor.

To stand or sit at the windows beside the show was an experience full of pleasure; and if the window was on a level with the heads of the huddling passers, one could be in all the merriment yet not jostled; one could easily pick out a pretty woman or a handsome man to whom to throw a bouquet; and one could see energetic revelers, already well supplied with flowers, reaching high windows with bouquets by means of those wooden contrivances which can be extended or contracted at will, and look like impracticable ladders. The fair recipient at the lattice never failed to respond with an ecstatic smile if this Jacob's ladder had been sufficiently long to reach her welcoming hand. Meantime, many bunches of flowers, some large and elegant, some small and merely gay of color, were being thrown aloft or flung downward, making fountains and cataracts of flowers. Sometimes these bouquets fell into the street dejectedly, upon whose pavement little ragamuffins were always ready to pounce for them, and sell them again as fast as possible to passers who had exhausted their supply, had become mad with the Carnival, and caught sight, in that very moment, of some cherished comrade to whom they wished to throw a greeting. There was an intoxicating enjoyment in being singled out as the recipient of fragrant flowers, sent with a laugh of the eyes; or of a handful of sugared almonds, tossed with a gay shout of compliment. If the passer who thus honored us was a complete stranger, meeting us for this one moment in racial kindness, we felt the untrammeled bonhomie which, God knows, we were expected to feel as a matter of course not for a moment only, but for life.

Upon all these things I delighted to think and afterwards to ponder, because I realized that they were of vital interest to the intelligence which was to me greatest and dearest.



CHAPTER XIII

ITALIAN DAYS: II

Between our two winters in Rome we spent the summer in Florence, to which we journeyed by carriage over a road that was hung like a rare gallery with landscapes of the most picturesque description, and bordered close at hand by many a blue or crimson or yellow Italian anemone with its black centre. This experience was all sunshine, all pastime. On the way, stopping at Lake Thrasymene, my mother wrote:—

May 29, 1858.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,—I have just been watching the moon rise over the lake, exactly opposite the window of our parlor. We thought to go out and see the moonlight this evening, when I saw on the horizon what seemed a mighty conflagration, which I immediately supposed must be the moon, though I had never seen it look so red. The clouds were of a fiery splendor, and then the flaming rim of the moon appeared above the mountains, like the shield of some warrior of the great battle between Flaminius and Hannibal on this spot, rising with its ghostly invisible hero to see how it was now on the former field of blood. The "peace supreme" that reigns here this evening distances all thought of war and terror. We left Perugia this afternoon at three o'clock, with the finest weather. Our drive was enchanting all the way, along rich valleys and up mountains. And when climbing mountains we have two milk-white steers which majestically draw us along. Their eyes are deep wells of dark, peaceful light, that seem to express broad levels of rich waving grain, pure lapsing streams, olives and vines, and every other sign of plenty and quiet husbandry, with no end of dawns, twilights, and cool thickets. The golden age of rural life slumbers in their great orbs. Byron calls them "the purest gods of gentle waters."

June 7. Here we are, then, in enchanting Florence! I shall try to send you a journal by the Bryants, who are here now. The Brownings are close by, and we are going to see them soon. The language has yet to be made in which to describe beautiful, beautiful Florence, with its air of nectar and sherbet and soft odors, its palaces, Arno, and smooth streets, arched bridges, and all its other charms and splendors. . . .

We were hot in the city of Florence. My only consolation was to eat unnumbered cherries and apricots, for I did not as yet like the figs. My brother and I sometimes had a lurid delight in cracking the cherry and apricot stones and devouring the bitter contents, with the dreadful expectation of soon dying from the effects. Altogether I considered our sojourn in the town house, Casa del Bello, a morose experience; but it was, fortunately, short. My mother had a different feeling: she wrote home to America, "It is a delightful residence." Without doubt it contained much engaging finery. Three parlors, giving upon a garden, were absorbed into the "study" for my father alone; and my mother was greatly pleased to find that fifteen easy-chairs were within reach of any whim for momentary rest between the campaigns of sight-seeing. To add to my own arbitrary shadow and regret of that time, the garden at the rear of the house was to me clamp; full of green things and gracefully drooping trees, doubtless, but never embracing a ray of sunshine. Yet it was hot; all was relaxing; summer prevailed in one of its ill-humored moods. To make matters worse, my brother had caught in this Dantesque garden a brown bird, whether because sick or lame I know not. But an imprisoned bird it certainly was; and its prison consisted of a small, cell-like room, bare of anything but the heart-broken glances of its occupant. My father objected to the capture and caging of birds, and looked with cold disapproval upon the hospitable endeavor of my brother to lengthen the existence of a little creature that was really safer in the hands of Dame Nature. Presently the bird from the sad garden died, and then indeed Florence became intolerable to me! I wandered through the long, darkish hall that penetrated our edifice from front to back, and I sometimes emerged into the garden's bosky sullenness in my unsmiling misery. Again my mother's testimony proves my mind to have been strangely influenced by what to her was a garden full of roses, jessamine, orange and lemon trees, and a large willow-tree drooping over a fountain in its midst, with a row of marble busts along a terrace: altogether a place that should have filled me with kittenish glee. The "Note-Books," to be sure, suggest that it harbored malaria. I looked with painful disappointment upon the unceasing dishes of fresh purple figs, which everybody else seemed to enjoy. I saw pale golden wine poured from poetic bottles braided with strands of straw, like pretty girls' heads of flaxen hair; and I was surprised that my father had the joyousness to smile, though sipping what he was later to call "Monte Beni Sunshine."

That nothing of misery might be excluded from my dismal round of woe, the only people whom I could go to see were the Powers family, living opposite to us. Mr. Powers petrified me by the sang-froid with which he turned out, and pointed out, his statues. Great artists are apt to be like reflections from a greater light,—they know more about that light, than about themselves; but Mr. Powers seemed to me to defy art to lord it over his splendid mechanical genius, the self he managed so well. To prove beyond a doubt that material could not resist him, he would step from the studio into an adjoining apartment, and strike off button-like bits of metal from an iron apparatus which he had invented. It was either buttons or Venuses with him, indifferently, as I supposed.

Gray to me, though "bright" to my mother, were the galleries and narrow halls of marble busts, where started back into this life old Medicean barbarians, of imperial power and worm-like ugliness; presided over, as I looked upon them in memory during my girlhood, by that knightly form of Michel Angelo's seated Lorenzo de' Medici, whose attitude and shadowed eyes seem to express a lofty disapproval of such a world.

A morning dawned when the interest in living again became vigorous. A delicate-looking, essentially dignified young gentleman, the Count da Montauto, seeming considerably starved, but fascinatingly blue-blooded, appeared in our tiresome house. I heard that we were to remove to a villa at Bellosguardo, a hill distant fifteen minutes' drive from the city, where the summer was reasonable; and as the count owned this haunt of refreshment, I became enthusiastically tender in my respect for him. For years afterwards my sensibilities were exercised over the question as to where the count was put while we enjoyed the space and loveliness of Montauto; I did not know that he had a palace in town. His sad, sweetly resentful glance had conveyed to me the idea, "Must I still live, if I live beneath my rank, and as a leaser of villas?"

One day, happy day, we toiled by carriage, between light-colored walls, sometimes too high for any view,—that once caused my mother a three hours' walk, because of a misturn,—over little hot, dusty roads, out and up to the villa. My father and brother had already walked thither; and my brother's spirits, as he stood beside the high iron gateway, in front of the gray tower which was the theme, or chief outline, of the old country-seat, were pleasant to witness, and illustrated my own pent-up feelings. He shouted and danced before the iron bars of the gate like a humanized note of music, uncertain where it belonged, and glad of it. Our very first knowledge of Montauto was rich and varied, with the relief from pretentiousness which all ancient things enjoy, and with the appealing sweetness of time-worn shabbiness. The walls of the hall and staircase were of gray stone, as were the steps which led echoingly up to the second story of the house. My sister exclaims in delight concerning the whole scene: "This villa,—you have no idea how delightful it is! I think there must be pretty nearly a hundred rooms in it, of all shapes, sizes, and heights. The walls are never less than five feet thick, and sometimes more, so that it is perfectly cool. I should feel very happy to live here always. I am sitting in the loggia, which is delightful in the morning freshness. Oh, how I love every inch of that beautiful landscape!" The tower and the adjacent loggia were the features that preeminently sated our thirst for suggestive charm, and they became our proud boast and the chief precincts of our daily life and social intercourse. The ragged gray giant looked over the road-walls at its foot, and beyond and below them over the Arno valley, rimmed atop with azure distance, and touched with the delicate dark of trees. Internally, the tower (crowned, like a rough old king of the days of the Round Table, with a machicolated summit) was dusty, broken, and somewhat dangerous of ascent. Owls that knew every wrinkle of despair and hoot-toot of pessimism clung to narrow crevices in the deserted rooms, where the skeleton-like prison frameworks at the unglazed windows were in keeping with the dreadful spirits of these unregenerate anchorites. The forlorn apartments were piled one above the other until the historic cylinder of stone opened to the sky. In contrast to the barrenness of the gray inclosures, through the squares of the windows throbbed the blue and gold, green and lilac, of Italian heavens and countryside.

At the dangers of the stairway my father laughed, with flashing glances. He always laughed (it was a sound peculiarly passionate and low, full, yet unobtrusive) at dangers in which he could share himself, although so grave when, in the moral turmoil, he was obliged to stand and watch uneven battle; not the less sorry for human nature because weakness comes from our ignoring the weapons we might have used. But on those trembling stairs he approved of the risk we ran, while cautioning me not to drop through one of the holes, and then stumbled within an inch of breaking his own neck, and laughed again. "While gropingly descending these crazy steps one dusky evening, I gratified Julian exceedingly by hitting my nose against the wall," he admits in the "Note-Books." Who would not enjoy seeing a monarch come to so humble a contact with the bulwarks of his tower? Especially if he were royal enough not to take offense at one's mirth, as this one never did. Reaching the topmost heights of the stone pile, shaggy with yellow moss, we eagerly pressed to the battlements and drank in the view, finding all Florence spread out before us, far down from the breeze and light and prospect of our perch,—understanding the joy of falcons that are long hooded, and then finally look.

On one side of the tower was the lawn, hemmed round by a somewhat high semicircular stone wall. In front of it was Florence, pinnacled and roof-crowded, across the gentle valley. Not far away rose Galileo's rival tower, and the habitations of one or two friends. On another side of the keep the valley clipped more decidedly; and in the foreground clustered a collection of trees upon a grassy slope, divided from the villa lawn by a low wall, over which my father and mother sometimes bought grapes, figs, pomegranates, and peaches grown upon the place, which were smilingly offered by the count's contadini. These from their numbers were unrecognizable, while their prices for the exquisite fruit were so small that it was a pleasure to be cheated. Behind the tower stretched lengthily the house, its large arched doorway looking upon all comers with a frown of shadow. Still further behind basked a bevy of fruit gardens and olive-tree dotted hill-sides with their vines of the grape. We used to sit on the lawn in the evenings, and sometimes received guests there; looking at the sky, moon, comet, and stars ("flowers of light," my mother called them) as if they were new. Any mortal might have been forgiven for so regarding them, in the sapphire glory of an Italian night. My mother's untiring voice of melodious enthusiasm echoed about the group in ejaculations of praise.

In connection with the comet my elders spoke of war and misery, of which it was accused of being the messenger. My child's heart already knew the iron truth, and was not astonished at the intrusion of such a thought, that beauty and peace must always entertain the herald of the other country—the dark one. There was a sadness about Italy, although it lay under "the smile of God," as my father calls its sunshine. He and my mother often mention this shadow, as before remarked, in their records. At times the cause seems to them to come from the "incubus" of the Catholic religion, although they both believed it capable of being wholly perfect. Glorious scenes were constantly soothing this sense of human sorrow, scenes such as cannot be found in regions outside the Church. In the Basilica of San Spirito my mother came upon several visible lovelinesses of elaborate devotion, which with her limpid purity of justice she enthusiastically notes down. She entered the church one day for coolness and rest, and, recognizing its "noble" beauties, she described, in her journal already printed, "a function going on before one of the side-chapels—the burial service of a child. The coffin was covered with a white satin pall, embroidered with purple and gold. The officiating priests were in robes of white satin and gold, and the altar was alight with candles, besides those borne by young boys in white tunics. This scene in the aisle was a splendid picture in the soft gloom of the church; and when the organ burst forth in a kind of tender rapture, rolling pearly waves of harmony along the large spaces, and filling the dome with the foam and spray of interlacing measures, it seemed as if angels were welcoming the young child to heaven." The pettiness of a brief burial service in a private parlor or in a meagre meeting-house would not have touched her heart so profoundly, because it would not have recalled heaven so impressively in all its grandeur and tenderness. She evidently perceived here the sweet and even cheering veracity of a devotion that is glad to remember all the possibilities of reverent observance, each motion and aspect of which have a reference to God and to religious history. Again San Spirito gave her an insight into the dignity of painstaking worship. "While we were walking about, the priests and monks of the Order of St. Augustine, who have a convent attached, came in a procession from the sacristy, and knelt down in their sweeping black robes upon the marble pavement, in two lines, one behind the other, and chanted aloud their Ave Maria. It was a wonderful picture." She still clung to the Puritanical idea that in religion itself, "What looks so wondrous, wondrous fair, His providence has taught us to fear. . . . Angels only are fit to live as monks pretend to live." But she contradicts this theory. No one was more adapted than she to perceive the godliness of the monastic sacrifice, when she realized the object of it. Among her dearest friends and verified ideals were Mr. George Bradford, who always reminded me of a priest of the true type; and Miss Hoar, whose vestal soul, celebrating constant rites over the memory of her dead betrothed, made her the image of a nun. This welcome delicacy and loftiness of self-consecration my mother also observed in the ranks of the sometimes harshly criticised friars. At Fiesole, "A young monk unveiled the picture for us. He was very courteous, and had an air of unusual goodness and sincerity. He is one of those who 'bear witness.' As a matter of course I offered him a fee for his trouble, but he made a sad and decided gesture of refusal, that was very surprising and remarkable; for it was impossible to gainsay him, and I felt embarrassed that I had thought of the gold that perishes in the presence of the heavenly picture and the holy youth. I wish I knew his history." I also wish she had known it, for it would have unveiled for her the most beautiful facts about other holy youths of our own day, as well as similar facts of earlier days,—truths whose purity would have rapt her thought even more deeply than Fra Angelico's purity in art, uncurtained by brave and humble hands for her sight. It is to be observed that her views and tacit beliefs and my father's are identical. They did not really believe that Italy was under an "incubus;" they felt the physical weight of Catholicity, or the Cross, and half guessed its spiritual spring.

Some of the rooms at Montauto I studiously avoided. The forlorn cavern of a parlor, or ball-room, I remember to have seen only once. There was a painful vacuum where good spirits ought to have been. Along the walls were fixed seats, like those in the apse of some morally fallen cathedral, and they were covered with blue threadbare magnificence that told the secrets of vanity. Heavy tables crowded down the centre of the room. I came, saw, and fled. The oratory was the most thrilling place of all. It opened out of my sister's room, which was a large, sombre apartment. It was said to attract a frequently seen ghost by the force of its profound twilight and historic sorrows; and my sister, who was courageous enough to startle a ghost, highly approved of this corner of her domain. But she suddenly lost her buoyant taste for disembodied spirits, and a rumor floated mistily about that Una had seen the wretched woman who could not forget her woes in death. In "Monte Beni" this oratory is minutely pictured, where "beneath the crucifix . . . lay a human skull . . . carved in gray alabaster, most skillfully done . . . with accurate imitation of the teeth, the sutures, the empty eye-caverns." Everywhere the intense picturesqueness gave material, at Montauto, for my father's romance. Stella, whom he invited into the story without changing her name, was a sympathetic object in my now somewhat alarmed and lonely days. I call her an "object," because I could not understand a word she said, and she soon gave up opening her lips when we were together. She looked kind, in spite of her rocky hardness of Italian feature, and she fed me on dried melon-seeds when I was at the lowest tide of depression. Sometimes she was to be found at the well, close to the entrance-arch. There the faithful servant let down a bucket by its heavy chain with a doomsday clank. The sunlight revealed the smallness and brilliancy and number of her black braids and the infinite multitude of her wrinkles, as well as the yellowness of her dangling gold earrings and the texture of her parchment-like arms, which were the color of glossy brown leaves. Sometimes she would awaken me from soporific melancholy by allowing herself to be found upon her knees in her bedroom, a bare and colorless abode, her great black crucifix hanging in majestic solitude upon the wall above her handsome old head. I thought her temporarily insane to pray so much, and at all to an audience; but I recognized the gentleness of the attacks, and I somehow loved her for them. Even to the ignorance of error truth can be beautiful. An extremely attractive little Italian maid, of sixteen or less, used also to be found on her knees before the crucifix.

Stella was obliged to drive this dark-eyed butterfly to her devotions. If I discovered her, I had no reverence, and tried unmercifully to interrupt her soft whispers. Stella's loving revenge for my wickedness was to give me a tiny wax sleeping Bambino, surrounded by flowers under a convex glass, whose minute face had a heaven of smiling forgiveness in it. Often I surreptitiously studied the smile on the sleeping face. I felt that He loved us even during His sleep; and I cherished the gaze of shining gladness with which Stella herself had placed this treasure in my hand, which could so simply quicken sluggish thought.

To give a clearer glimpse of the villa, which with our life there became one of the most precious of our memories, and a glimpse also of one or two people and events, I will insert this letter from my mother:—

August 14, 1858.

MY DEAR ELIZABETH,—Una and Rose were getting pale for the first time in their lives, and Mr. Hawthorne was languid and weary of the city life, and an English lady, a friend of the Brownings, told us of this villa, which the Count da Montauto wished to let this summer, though never before, and so we tried for it and got it. It is a most enchanting situation, and the villa is immensely large and very nice. We have an old mediaeval tower at the oldest end, in which Savonarola was confined, and from its summit we have a view which one might dream of, but seldom see. We are so high, however, that from the first floor we have a sweeping view, and look down on the most sumptuous valley of the Arno from our western windows,—a level plain, cultivated every inch with grapes and olives and other fruits; and all round rise up soft hills, and the Apennines afar off where the sun sets. We see the noble white steers slowly moving in the valley, among the trees, ploughing as in the days of Cincinnatus. An infinite peace and quiet reign. We hear birds, and in the evening the cue owl utters his melodious, melancholy one note. The world does not disturb us. The air is as pure and fresh as air can possibly be, blowing from the sweet, carefully tended plain, and sweeping down from the mountains. Near us is the villa and tower of Aurora Leigh, just at the end of our estate, and farther off is Galileo's tower, where he studied the heavens. Northeast from us lies the beautiful Florence, burning in the bottom of the cup of hills, with all its domes and campaniles, palaces and churches. Fiesole, the cradle of Florence, is visible among the heights at the east, and San Miniato, with its grove of cypresses, is farther off to the south. There is no end of beauty and interest, and the view becomes ideal and poetic the moment the sun begins its decline; for then the rose and purple mists drape the hills, and mountains—the common earth—turn to amethysts, topazes, and sapphires, and words can never convey an idea of the opaline heavens, which seem to have illimitable abysses of a penetrable substance, made up of the light of pearls.

Literally and carefully I speak of the light of pearls, with the opaline changes. I am quite happy that I have seized the image. The effect is of a roundness with the confused yet clear outline of a pearl, an outline which also is not one, and the light looks living and absorbing. One evening, after the sun went down, rays of blue and rose came from it in a half-wheel shape, so ineffably delicate that if we looked too pryingly they were not there, but if we glanced unawares there they were. It was more like the thought of them than the realities. This summer we have our first sight of Italian sunsets, for we were assured we should have fever if we were out at the hour in Rome. We began by watching them from the bridges over the Arno, which are perhaps the finest points of view, because the river is added. It flows east and west, and so we have all the glory by standing on either of the bridges. The arches, the reflections in the waters, the city's palaces and churches, the distant hills, all come in for a part of the pomp and splendor,—all that man can do, all that God has done, for this lovely land.

Una's chamber is in the tower [but approached from the house], a large, lofty, vaulted chamber, with an oratory attached, full of Madonnas, pyxes, "and all sorts," as Mr. Browning says. There is a regular chapel besides. Mr. Hawthorne has a delightful suite of study, saloon, dressing-room, and chamber, away from all the rest of the family.

August 25. Last evening Miss Ada Shepard and I went to a neighboring villa to see some table-turning, which I have never seen, nor anything appertaining to spirits. Mr. Frank Boott was there and a Fleming, Una's drawing-master. We tried patiently for two hours with the table, but though it trembled and wavered, nothing came of it; so Miss Shepard then took a pencil and paper for the spirits to write, if they would. [The attempt on Miss Shepard's part was now, and always afterwards, successful. My mother speaks of several somewhat vulgar spirits who caused great merriment.] Then Ada felt quite a different and new power seize her hand, rapidly writing: "Who?" "Mother." "Whose mother?" "Mrs. Hawthorne's. My dear child, I am with you. I wish to speak to you. My dearest child, I am near you. I am oftener with you than with any one." Ada's hand was carried forcibly back to make a strong underline beneath "near," and it was all written with the most eager haste, so that it agitated the medium very much, and me too; for I had kept aloof in mind, because Mr. Hawthorne has such a repugnance to the whole thing. Mrs. Browning is a spiritualist. Mr. Browning opposes and protests with all his might, but he says he is ready to be convinced. Mrs. Browning is wonderfully interesting. She is the most delicate sheath for a soul I ever saw. One evening at Casa Guidi there was a conversation about spirits, and a marvelous story was told of two hands that crowned Mrs. Browning with a wreath through the mediumship of Mr. Hume. Mr. Browning declared that he believed the two hands were made by Mr. Hume and fastened to Mr. Hume's toes, and that he made them move by moving his feet. Mrs. Browning kept trying to stem his flow of eager, funny talk with her slender voice, but, like an arrowy river, he rushed and foamed and leaped over her slight tones, and she could not succeed in explaining how she knew they were spirit hands. She will certainly be in Rome next winter, unless she goes to Egypt. You would be infinitely charmed with Mrs. Browning, and with Mr. Browning as well. The latter is very mobile, and flings himself about just as he flings his thoughts on paper, and his wife is still and contemplative. Love, evidently, has saved her life. I think with you that "'Aurora Leigh' overflows with well-considered thought;" and I think all literature does not contain such a sweet baby, so dewy, so soft, so tender, so fresh. Mr. Hawthorne read me the book in Southport, but I have read it now again, sitting in our loggia, with Aurora's tower full in view. . . .

This loggia opened widely to the air on two sides, so that the opalescent views were framed in oblong borders of stone that rested our rejoicing eyes. Under the stone shade, in the centre of the Raphaelesque distances, many mornings were passed ideally. Visitors often joined us here. Among them was Miss Elizabeth Boott, afterwards Mrs. Duveneck, who came with her little sketch-book. She made a water-color portrait of my father, which, as the young artist was then but a girl, looked like a cherub of pug-nosed, pink good nature, with its head loose. I can see that little sketch now, and I feel still a wave of the dizziness of my indignation at its strange depiction of a strong man reduced to dollhood. Miss Boott being a true artist in the bud, there was, of course, the eerie likeness of some unlike portraits. It became famous with us all as the most startling semblance we had ever witnessed. I sincerely wish that the ardor with which the young girl made her sketch could have been used later on a portrait, which certainly would have been superbly honest and vigorous, like all the work that has come from her wonderfully noble nature and her skillful perception. Another young lady appeared against the Raphaelesque landscape. She was very pretty in every way, and my mother was delighted to have her present, and showered endearing epithets upon her. Her large brown eyes were alluring beyond words, and her features pathetically piquant and expressive. Her face was rather round, pale, and emphatically saddened by the great sculptor Regret. She sat in picturesque attitudes, her cheek leaning against her hand, and her elbow somewhere on the back or arm of her chair; yet her positions were never excessive, but eminently gentle. She had been disappointed in love, and one was sure it was not in the love of the young man. She was too pretty to die, but she could look sad, and we all liked to have her with us, and preferred her charming misery to any other mood.

The roads going to and fro between the cream-colored stone walls of the surrounding country were unsparingly hot. I can feel now the flash of sunbeams that made me expect to curl up and die like a bit of vegetation in a flame. I tried to feel cooler when I saw the peasant women approaching, bent under their loads of wheat or of brush. If they had no shading load, it made me gasp to observe that their Tuscan hats, as large as cart-wheels and ostensibly meant to shadow their faces, were either dangling in their hands or flapping backward uselessly. It seemed to be no end of a walk to Florence, and the drive thither was also detestable,—all from the heat and dust, and probably only at that time of year. The views of many-colored landscape, hazy with steaming fields, were lovely if you could once muster the energy to gaze across the high road-walls when the thoroughfare sank clown a declivity. After a while there were cottages, outside of which ancient crones sat knitting like the wind, or spinning as smoothly as machines, by the aid of a distaff. Little girls, who were full-fledged peasant women in everything but size, pecked away at their knitting of blue socks, proud of their lately won skill and patient of the undesired toil. They were so small and comely and conformable, and yet conveyed such an idea of volcanic force ready to rebel, that they entranced me. Further inside the heart of the city upstarted the intoxications of sin and the terrible beggars with their maimed children. I never lost the impressions of human wrong there gathered into a telling argument. The crowded hurry and the dirty creatures that attend commercial greed and selfish enjoyment in cities everywhere weltered along the sidewalks and unhesitatingly plunged into the mud of the streets. It seemed to me even then that something should be done for the children maimed by inhuman fathers, and for their weeping mothers too. My father did not forget in his art the note he found in beautiful Florence, though it was too sad to introduce by a definite exposition, and falls upon the ear, in "Monte Beni," like a wordless minor chord.

I sometimes went with my mother when she called at Casa Guidi, where the Brownings lived. I had a fixed idea that Galileo belonged to their family circle; and I had a vision of him in my mind which was quite as clear as Mrs. Browning ever was (although I sat upon her lap), representing him as holding the sun captive in his back yard, while he blinked down upon it from a high prison of his own. The house, as I recall it, seemed to have a network of second-story piazzas, and the rooms were very much shadowed and delightfully cool. Mr. Browning was shining in the shadow, by the temperate brightness of mind alone, and ever talking merrily. Cultivated English folk are endowed with sounding gayety of voice, but he surpassed them all, as the medley of his rushing thought and the glorious cheer of his perception would suggest. Mrs. Browning was there: so you knew by her heavy dark curls and white cheeks, but doubted, nevertheless, when you came to meet her great eyes, so dreamy that you wondered which was alive, you or she. Her hand, usually held up to her cheek, was absolutely ghostlike. Her form was so small, and deeply imbedded in a reclining-chair or couch-corner, that it amounted to nothing. The dead Galileo could not possibly have had a wiser or more doubtfully attested being as a neighbor. If the poor scientist had been there to assert that Mrs. Browning breathed, he would probably have been imprisoned forthwith by another incredulous generation. My mother speaks, on her second visit to Rome, of the refreshment of Mr. Browning's calls, and says that the sudden meetings with him gave her weary nerves rest during the strain of my sister's illness. She could not have rejoiced in his spirited loveliness more than the little girl by her side, who sometimes languished for direct personal intercourse in all the panorama of pictures and statues, and friends absorbed in sight-seeing. I had learned to be grateful for art and ruins, if only they were superlative of their kind. I put away a store of such in my fancy. But Mr. Browning was a perfection which looked at me, and moved vigorously! For many years he associated himself in my mind with the blessed visions that had enriched my soul in Italy, and continued to give it sustenance in the loneliness of my days when we again threw ourselves upon the inartistic mercies of a New England village. He grouped himself with a lovely Diana at the Vatican, with some of Raphael's Madonnas and the statue of Perseus, with Beatrice Cenci and the wildflowers of our journeys by vettura, besides a few other faultless treasures deeply appreciated by me. We all noticed Mr. Browning's capacity for springing through substances and covering space without the assistance of time.

My mother says in her little diary of Rome, "I met Mr. Browning; or rather, he rushed at me from a distance, and seemed to come through a carriage in his way." It was as if he longed to teach people how to follow his thoughts in poetry, as they flash electrically from one spot to another, thinking nothing of leaping to a mountain-top from an inspection of "callow nestlings," or any other tender fact of smallest interest. Not one of all the cherubs of the great masters had a sunnier face, more dancing curls, or a sweeter smile than he. The most present personality was his; the most distant, even when near, was the personality he married. I have wondered whether the Faun would have sprung with such untainted jollity into the sorrows of to-day if Mr. Browning had not leaped so blithely before my father's eyes. "Browning's nonsense," he writes, "is of a very genuine and excellent quality, the true babble and effervescence of a bright and powerful mind; and he lets it play 'among his friends with the faith and simplicity of a child."

I think I must be right in tracing one of the chief enchantments of the story of Dr. Grimshawe to these months upon the hill of Bellosguardo. For at Montauto one of the terrors was the cohort of great spiders. There is no word in the dictionary so large or so menacing as a large spider of the Dr. Grimshawe kind. Such appear, like exclamations, all over the world. I saw one as huge and thrilling as these Italian monsters on the Larch Path at the Wayside, a few years later; but at Montauto they really swaggered and remained. We perceive such things from a great distance, as all disaster may be perceived if we are not more usefully employed. A presentiment whispers, "There he is!" and looking unswervingly in the right direction, there he is, to be sure. I could easily have written a poor story, though not a good novel, upon the effectiveness of these spiders, glaring in the chinks of bed-curtains, or moving like shadows upon the chamber wall or around the windows, and I can guess my father's amusement over them. They were as large as plums, with numerous legs that spread and brought their personality out to the verge of impossibility. I suppose they stopped there, but I am not sure. No wonder the romancer humorously added a touch that made a spider of the doctor himself, with his vast web of pipe-smoke!

The great romance of "Monte Beni" is thus referred to by Mr. Motley and his wife; I give a few sentences written by the latter, a friend of many years' standing, and I insert Mr. Motley's letter entire:—

WALTON-ON-THAMES, April 13, 1860.

DEAREST SOPHIA,—My pen continues to be the same instrument of torture to me that you remember it always was in my youth, when I used to read your letters with such wonder and delight. This spell is still upon me, for I appreciate the magic of your mind now as much as I did then, and have treasured up every little bit of a note that you wrote me in Rome. I like your fresh feminine enthusiasm, and always feel better and happier under its influence. . . . I am glad that you were so much pleased with Lothrop's letter of praise and thanksgiving; a poor return at best for the happiness we had derived from reading Mr. Hawthorne's exquisite romance. . . . I shall not now attempt to add any poor words of mine to his expressive ones, except to assure you of my deep sympathy for the infinite content and joy you must feel in this new expression of your husband's genius. We were so much pleased to find that he was willing to come to us in London, which we hardly dared to hope for. . . . At least I can promise to attend to him as little as possible. . . . We have taken for the season a small house in Hertford Street, 31, which belongs to Lady Byron, who has fitted it up for her grand-daughter, Lady Annabella King. . . . The eldest brother, Lord Ockham, is a mechanic, and is now working in a machine-shop in Blackwall Island, where he lives. This eccentric course is rather, I fear, the development of a propensity for low company and pursuits than from anything Peter the Greatish there is about him. His father, who is the quintessence of aristocracy, has cast him off. . . . Lothrop was very much gratified by all the fine things you said about him, and so was I; for praise from you means something and is worth having, because it comes from the heart. There is another volume written, . . . but another must be written before either is published.

Ever your affectionate M. E. M.

The "letter of praise and thanksgiving" referred to above is as follows:—

WALTON-ON-THAMES.

MY DEAR HAWTHORNE,—I can't resist the impulse to write a line to you, in order to thank you for the exquisite pleasure I have derived from your new romance. Everything that you have ever written, I believe, I have read many times; and I am particularly vain of having admired "Lights from a Steeple," when I first read it in the "Boston Token," several hundred years ago, when we were both younger than we are now; and of having detected and cherished, at a later day, an "Old Apple Dealer," whom I believe that you have unhandsomely thrust out of your presence, now you are grown so great. But the romance of "Monte Beni" has the additional charm for me that it is the first book of yours that I have read since I had the privilege of making your personal acquaintance. My memory goes back at once to those (alas, not too frequent, but that was never my fault) walks we used to take along the Tiber or in the Campagna, during that dark period when your Una was the cause of such anxiety to your household and to all your friends; and it is delightful to get hold of the book now, and know that it is impossible for you any longer, after waving your wand, as you occasionally did then, indicating where the treasure was hidden, to sink it again beyond the plummet's sound. I admire the book exceedingly. I don't suppose that it is a matter of much consequence to you whether I do or not, but I feel as much disposition to say so as if it were quite an original and peculiar idea of my own, and as if the whole world were not just now saying the same thing. I suppose that your ears are somewhat stunned with your praises, appearing as you do after so long an interval; but I hope that, amid the din, you will not disdain the whisper from such sincere admirers as I am myself, and my wife and daughter are. I don't know which of the trio is the warmest one, and we have been fighting over the book, as it is one which, for the first reading at least, I did not like to hear aloud. I am only writing in a vague, maundering, uncritical way, to express sincere sympathy and gratitude, not to exhibit any dissenting powers, if I have any. If I were composing an article for a review, of course I should feel obliged to show cause for my admiration, but I am now only obeying an impulse. Permit me to say, however, that your style seems, if possible, more perfect than ever. Where, oh where is the godmother who gave you to talk pearls and diamonds? How easy it seems till anybody else tries! Believe me, I don't say to you half what I say behind your back; and I have said a dozen times that nobody can write English but you. With regard to the story, which has been slightly criticised, I can only say that to me it is quite satisfactory. I like those shadowy, weird, fantastic, Hawthornesque shapes flitting through the golden gloom which is the atmosphere of the book. I like the misty way in which the story is indicated rather than revealed. The outlines are quite definite enough, from the beginning to the end, to those who have imagination enough to follow you in your airy flights; and to those who complain, I suppose nothing less than an illustrated edition, with a large gallows on the last page, with Donatello in the most pensive of attitudes, his ears revealed at last through a white nightcap, would be satisfactory.

I beg your pardon for such profanation, but it really moves my spleen that people should wish to bring down the volatile figures of your romance to the level of an every-day novel. It is exactly the romantic atmosphere of the book in which I revel. You who could cast a glamour over the black scenery and personalities of ancient and of modern Massachusetts could hardly fail to throw the tenderest and most magical hues over Italy, and you have done so. I don't know that I am especially in love with Miriam or Hilda, or that I care very much what is the fate of Donatello; but what I do like is the air of unreality with which you have clothed familiar scenes without making them less familiar. The way in which the two victims dance through the Carnival on the last day is very striking. It is like a Greek tragedy in its effect, without being in the least Greek. As I said before, I can't single out any special scene, description, or personage by which to justify or illustrate my feeling about the book. That I could do better after a second reading, when it would be easy to be coldly critical. I write now just after having swallowed the three volumes almost at a draught; and if my tone is one of undue exhilaration, I can only say it was you gave me the wine. It is the book—as a whole—that I admire, and I hope you will forgive my saying so in four pages instead of four words.

Is there any chance of our seeing you this summer? We expect to be in London next month. It will be very shabby of you not to let us have a glimpse of you; but I know you to be capable of any meanness in that line. At any rate, you can have little doubt how much pleasure it will give us. Pray don't answer this if it is in the least a bore to you to do so. I know that you are getting notes of admiration by the bushel, and I have no right to expect to hear from you. At the same time it would be a great pleasure to me to hear from you, for old (alas, no,—new) acquaintance' sake.

I remain very sincerely yours,

J. L. MOTLEY.

Of the discussions about "Monte Beni" I remember hearing a good deal, as my mother laughingly rehearsed passages in letters and reviews which scolded about Hawthorne's tantalizing vagueness and conscienceless Catholicity. My parents tried to be lenient towards the public, whose excitement was so complimentary, if its usually heavy inability to analyze its best intellectual wine was fatiguing. My father never for a moment expected to be widely understood, although he no doubt hoped to be so in certain cases. He must have easily deduced something in the way of chances for appreciative analysis from prevalent literature. He struck me as a good deal like an innocent prisoner at the bar, and if I had not been a member of his family I might have been sorry for him. As it was, I felt convinced that he could afford to be silent, patient, indifferent, now that his work was perfected. My mother put into words all that was necessary of indignation at people's desire for a romance or a "penny dreadful" that would have been temporary and ineffective. Meantime, such rewards as Mr. Motley offered weighed down the already laden scales on the side of artistic wealth.

Perhaps it will not be impertinent for me to remark, in reference to this admirable and delightful letter, that its writer here exemplifies the best feelings about Hawthorne's art without quite knowing it. We see him bubbling glad ejaculations in the true style of an Omar Khayyam who has drained the magic cup handed to him. It is delicious to hear that he was not sure he cared about the personages of a story that had clutched his imagination and heart, until he reeled a little with responsive enchantment; though it is hard to say about what he cared if not about the romancer's powerful allies, who carried his meaning for him. Mr. Motley tries to attribute to the scenes he knew so well in reality, under their new guise of dreamy vividness, the spell which came, I believe, from the reality of moral grandeur, in both its sin and its holiness, but which we so entirely ignore every precious hour by sinking to the realities of bricks and common clay. Miriam and Donatello may seem at first glance like visions; but I have always been taught that their spell lay in our innate sense that they were ourselves, as we really are. The wine of great truth is at first the most heady of all, making its revelations shimmer.



CHAPTER XIV

THE WAYSIDE

In order to give an idea of how it happened that our family could return from Europe to Concord with a few great expectations, I will rehearse somewhat of the charm which had been found in the illustrious village when my father and mother first knew it. There a group of people conversed together who have left an echo that is still heard. There also is still heard "the shot fired round the world," which of course returned to Concord on completing its circuit. But even the endless concourse of visitors, making the claims of any region wearisomely familiar, cannot diminish the simple solemnity of the town's historical as well as literary importance; and indeed it has so many medals for various merit that it is no wonder its residents have a way of speaking about it which some of us would call Bostonian. Emerson, Thoreau, Channing, and Alcott dispersed a fragrance that attracted at once, and all they said was resonant with charity and courage.

The first flash of individuality from Emerson could hardly fail to suggest that he resembled the American eagle; and he presided over Concord in a way not unlike our glorious symbol, the Friend of Light. It must have been exhilarating to look forward to many years in Emerson's hamlet. My earliest remembered glimpse of him was when he appeared—tall, side-slanting, peering with almost undue questioning into my face, but with a smile so constant as to seem like an added feature, dressed in a solemn, slender, dark overcoat, and a dark, shadowing hat—upon the Concord highroad; the same yellow thoroughfare which reaches out to. Lexington its papyrus-strip of history. At the onset of Emerson—for psychic men do attack one with their superiority—awe took possession of me; and, as we passed (a great force and a small girl) I wondered if I should survive. I not only did so, but felt better than before. It then became one of my happiest experiences to pass Emerson upon the street. A distinct exaltation followed my glance into his splendid face. Yet I caviled at his self-consciousness, his perpetual smile. I complained that he ought to wait for something to smile at. I could not be sure that he was privately enjoying some joke from Greek fun-makers, remembered under a Concord elm. After a time, I realized that he always had something to smile for, if not to smile at; and that a cheerful countenance is heroic. By and by I learned that he always could find something to smile at, also; for he tells us, "The best of all jokes is the sympathetic contemplation of things by the understanding, from the philosopher's point of view." But, in my unenlightened state, when I saw him begin to answer some question, however trivial, with this smile, slowly, very slowly growing, until it lit up his whole countenance with a refulgent beam before he answered (the whole performance dominated by a deliberation as great and brilliant as the dawn), I argued that this good cheer was out of proportion; that Emerson should keep back a smile so striking and circumstantial for rare occasions, such as enormous surprise; or, he should make it the precursor to a tremendous roar of laughter. I have yet to learn that any one heard him laugh aloud,—which pastime he has called, with certainly a familiar precision that indicates personal experience, a "pleasant spasm," a "muscular irritation."

In maturer years I believed that his smile brought refreshment, encouragement, and waves of virtue to those who saw it. To be sure, it was a sort of questioning; sometimes even quizzical; sometimes only a safeguard; but it was eminently kind, and no one else could do it. His manner was patronizing, in spite of its suavity; but it grew finer every spring, until it had become as exquisitely courteous as Sir Philip Sidney's must have been. The arch of his dark eyebrows sometimes seemed almost angry, being quickly lifted, and then bent in a scowl of earnestness; but as age advanced this sternness of brow grew to be, unchangeably, a calm sweep of infinite kindness.

It was never so well understood at The Wayside that its owner had retiring habits as when Alcott was reported to be approaching along the Larch Path, which stretched in feathery bowers between our house and his. Yet I was not aware that the seer failed at any hour to gain admittance,—one cause, perhaps, of the awe in which his visits were held. I remember that my observation was attracted to him curiously from the fact that my mother's eyes changed to a darker gray at his advents, as they did only when she was silently sacrificing herself. I clearly understood that Mr. Alcott was admirable; but he sometimes brought manuscript poetry with him, the dear child of his own Muse, and a guest more unwelcome than the enfant terrible of the drawing-room. There was one particularly long poem which he had read aloud to my mother and father; a seemingly harmless thing, from which they never recovered. Out of the mentions made of this effusion I gathered that it was like a moonlit expanse, quiet, somnolent, cool, and flat as a month of prairies. Rapture, conviction, tenderness, often glowed upon Alcott's features and trembled in his voice. I believe he was never once startled from the dream of illusive joy which pictured to him all high aims as possible of realization through talk. Often he was so happy that he could have danced like a child; and he laughed merrily like one; and the quick, upward lift of his head, which his great height induced him to hold, as a rule, slightly bent forward,—this rapid, playful lift, and the glance, bright and eager though not deep, which sparkled upon you, were sweet and good to see. Yet I have noticed his condition as pale and dolorous enough, before the event of his noble daughter's splendid success. But such was not his character; circumstances had enslaved him, and he appeared thin and forlorn by incongruous accident, like a lamb in chains. He might have been taken for a centenarian when I beheld him one day slowly and pathetically constructing a pretty rustic fence before his gabled brown house, as if at the unreasonable command of some latter-day Pharaoh. Ten years afterward he was, on the contrary, a Titan: gay, silvery-locked, elegant, ready to begin his life over again.

Alcott represented to me a fairy element in the up-country region in which I so often saw him. I heard that he walked the woods for the purpose of finding odd coils of tree-roots and branches, which would on the instant suggest to him an ingenious use in his art of rustic building. It was rumored that nobody's outlying curios in this line were safe under his eye, and that if you possessed an eccentric tree for a time, it was fated to close its existence in the keeping of Alcott. I imagined his slightly stooping, yet tall and well-grown figure, clothed in black, and with a picturesque straw hat, twining itself in and out of forest aisles, or craftily returning home with gargoyle-like stems over his shoulders. The magic of his pursuit was emphasized by the notorious fact that his handiwork fell together in the middle, faded like shadows from bronze to hoary pallor; its longevity was a protracted death. In short, his arbors broke under the weight of a purpose, as poems become doggerel in the service of a theorist. Truly, Alcott was completely at the beck of illusion; and he was always safer alone with it than near the hard uses of adverse reality. I well remember my astonishment when I was told that he had set forth to go into the jaws of the Rebellion after Louisa, his daughter, who had succumbed to typhus fever while nursing the soldiers. His object was to bring her home; but it was difficult to believe that he would be successful in entering the field of misery and uproar. I never expected to see him again. Almost the only point at which he normally met this world was in his worship of apple-trees. Here, in his orchard, he was an all-admirable human being and lovely to observe. As he looked upon the undulating arms or piled the excellent apples, red and russet, which seemed to shine at his glance, his figure became supple, his countenance beamed with a ruby and gold akin to the fruit. In his orchard by the highroad, with its trees rising to a great height from a basin-shaped side lawn (which may originally have been marshy ground), he seemed to me a perfect soul. We all enjoyed greatly seeing him there, as we wended to and from our little town. No doubt the garden of children at the beginning of his career inspired him likewise; and in it he must have shown the same tender solicitude and benevolence, and beamed upon his young scholars with a love which exquisitely tempered his fantastical suppositions.

He often spoke humbly, but he never let people think he was humble. His foibles appeared to me ridiculous, and provoked me exceedingly,— the brave cat of the proverb must be my excuse,—but I awakened to the eternal verity that some such husks are rather natural to persons of purely distinctive minds, perhaps shielding them. And I think one comes to value a bent blessed with earnest unconsciousness; a not too clever Argus vision; a childlike gullibility and spontaneity. This untarnished gullibility and gentle confidence, for all his self-laudations, Alcott had, and when he did not emerge either from his apple orchard or his inspirations he was essentially wholesome, full of an ardent simplicity, and a happy faith in the capacities given him by his Creator. So that his outline is one of much dignity, in spite of the somewhat capricious coloring of his character; the latter being not unlike the efforts of a nursery artist upon a print of "The Father of His Country," for whom, as he stands proudly upon the page, a green coat and purple pantaloons were not intended, and are only minor incidents of destiny.

Mr. Ellery Channing was, I am sure, the townsman who was most gladly welcome. My parents felt great admiration and friendliness for him, and it would be a sacrifice on my own part not to mention this companion of theirs, although I must beg his pardon for doing so. There is no doubt that Concord would have hung with several added pounds of weight upon our imaginations if it had not been for him. Over his tender-heartedness, as I saw him in the old days, played delicious eccentricities, phosphorescent, fitful, touch-me-not antics of feeling. I was glad to meet the long glance of his gray, dazzling eyes, lowered gracefully at last. The gaze seemed to pass through me to the wall, and beyond even that barrier to the sky at the horizon line. It did not disturb me; it had been too kindly to criticise, or so I thought. No doubt Mr. Channing had made his little regretful, uncomplimentary notes in passing, but it was characteristic of his exquisite comradeship towards all that we did not fear his eyes. I say comradeship, although the power which I believed touched him with its wand so mischievously had induced him to drop (as a boy loses successively all his marbles) all his devoted friends, without a word of explanation, because without a shadow of reason; the only thing to be said about it being that the loss was entirely voluntary on the part of this charming boy. He would cease to bow, as he passed. Then he found the marbles again, pocketed them as if nothing had happened, smiled, called, and hob-nobbed. A man's high-water mark is his calibre; and at high-water mark Mr. Channing's sea was to us buoyant, rich-tinted, sunlit; a great force, darkening and dazzling with beautiful emotions. He was in those days devoted to the outer air, and to the wonders of the nature we do not often understand, even when we trap it and classify it. He always invited his favorites to walk with him, and I once had the honor of climbing a very high hill by his side, in time to look at a Concord sunset, which I myself realized was the finest in the world.

Another peculiar spirit now and then haunted us, usually sad as a pine-tree—Thoreau. His enormous eyes, tame with religious intellect and wild with the loose rein, making a steady flash in this strange unison of forces, frightened me dreadfully at first. The unanswerable argument which he unwittingly made to soften my heart towards him was to fall desperately ill. During his long illness my mother lent him our sweet old music-box, to which she had danced as it warbled at the Old Manse, in the first year of her marriage, and which now softly dreamed forth its tunes in a time-mellowed tone. When he died, it seemed as if an anemone, more lovely than any other, had been carried from the borders of a wood into its silent depths, and dropped, in solitude and shadow, among the recluse ferns and mosses which are so seldom disturbed by passing feet. Son of freedom and opportunity that he was, he touched the heart by going to nature's peacefulness like the saints, and girding upon his American sovereignty the hair-shirt of service to self-denial. He was happy in his intense discipline of the flesh, as all men are when they have once tasted power—if it is the power which awakens perception of the highest concerns. His countenance had an April pensiveness about it; you would never have guessed that he could write of owls so jocosely. His manner was such as to suggest that he could mope and weep with them. I never crossed an airy hill or broad field in Concord, without thinking of him who had been the companion of space as well as of delicacy; the lover of the wood-thrush, as well as of the Indian. Walden woods rustled the name of Thoreau whenever we walked in them.

When we drove from the station to The Wayside, in arriving from Europe, on a hot summer day, I distinctly remember the ugliness of the un-English landscape and the forlornness of the little cottage which was to be our home. Melancholy and stupid days immediately followed (at least they were so in my estimation). I marveled at the amount of sand in the flower-borders and at the horrifying delinquencies of our single servant.

For some years I was eager to use all the eloquence I could muster in my epistles to girl friends, in England or anywhere, as to the paucity of life in Concord. Perhaps the following extracts from two letters, one written at Bath, England, and the other at Concord, and never sent, but kept by my mother from the flames with many more of my expressions in correspondence, may convey the feelings of the whole family:—

31 CHARLES STREET, BATH, ENGLAND.

DEAR HANNAH [Redcar Hannah],—When I go home I think that I shall never have such a nice time as when I go home; for I shall have such a big garden, and I shall have little and big girls to come and see me. Never on earth shall I have such a nice time as when I am at home.

After the transition:—

CONCORD, MASS.

I am in Concord now, and long to see you again, but I suppose that it is useless to think of it. I am going out, after I have done my lessons, to have a good time.—A very good time indeed, to be sure, for there was nothing but frozen ground, and I had to be doing something to keep myself warm, and I had to come back after a little while. I do not know how to keep myself warm. Happy are you who keep warm all the time in England. The frost has made thick leaves on our windows everywhere, and you can hardly see through them.

I tried to bring the stimulus of great events into the Concord life by writing stories, of which I would report the progress to my one or two confidantes. My father overheard some vainglorious boasts from my lips, one afternoon, when the windows of the little library where he sat were open; and the small girl who listened to me, wide-eyed, and I myself, proud and glad to have reached a thrilling denouement, were standing beside the sweet-clover bed, not dreaming of anything more severe than its white bloom. A few minutes afterwards, my father hung over me, dark as a prophetic flight of birds. "Never let me hear of your writing stories!" he exclaimed, with as near an approach to anger as I had ever seen in him. "I forbid you to write them!" But I believe this command only added a new attraction to authorship, agreeably haunting me as I beckoned imaginary scenes and souls out of chaos. An oasis bloomed at remote seasons, when we went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Fields in Boston. My mother writes of my reviving, and even becoming radiant, as soon as a visit of this fragrant nature breathed upon me. I joyously begin a letter of my mother's with the following greeting: "As soon as we got to Boston. My dear, dear Papa. We will write to you very promptly indeed. We have got here safely, and are also very glad to get here. We had some rich cake and sherry as soon as we got here.—[My mother proceeds:] Annie glided in upon us, looking excellently lovely. Heart's-Ease [Mr. Fields] appeared just before dinner. He declares that the 'Consular Experiences' is superb.—I write in the deep green shade of this wood of a library. We all went to church through the hot sunshine. Mr. Fields walked on the sunny side, and when Mrs. Fields [Mrs. Meadows was the playful name by which we called her] asked him why, he said, 'Because it makes us grow so. Oh, I am growing so fast I can scarcely get along!' Mr. Fields said it made him very sleepy to go to church, and he thought it was because of the deacons.—He says the world is wild with rapture over your 'Leamington Spa.' He did not know how to express his appreciation of it.—We met Mr. Tom Appleton at the gallery, and he was very edifying. There is a good portrait by Hunt. Mr. Appleton called it 'big art,' which took my fancy, it being so refreshing after hearing so much said about 'high art.' There is a portrait of Hunt by himself, which has a line about the brow that is Michelangelic; 'the bars of Michelangelo.' A head of Fremont was handsome, but showing a man incapable of large combinations. He looks eagle-like and loyal and brilliant, but not wise. We felt quite glorious with the war news, and were surprised to see so few flags flying. To breakfast we had Mr. Dysie. It was pleasant to hear his English brogue—a slight excess of Henry Bright's Lancashire accent. To tea we had Mr. and Mrs. Bartol, and Mr. Fields was so infinitely witty that we all died at the tea-table. Mr. Bartol, in gasps, assured him that he had contrived a way to save the food by keeping us in convulsions during the ceremony of eating, and killing us off at the end. Annie had on a scarlet coronet that made her look enchanting, and Mr. Fields declared she was Moses in the burning bush. Oh, do delay the acacia blossoms till I come! Give a sky full of love to Una and Julian."

My father also tasted the piquant flavors of merriment and luxury in this exquisite domicile of Heart's-Ease and Mrs. Meadows.

And at The Wayside, too, we had delightful pleasures, in the teeth and front of simplicity and seclusion, sandy flower-borders, rioting weeds, and intense heats. Concord itself could gleam occasionally, even outside of its perfect Junes and Octobers, as we can see here in the merry geniality of Louisa Alcott, who no more failed to make people laugh than she failed to live one of the bravest and best of lives. In return for a package of birthday gifts she sent us a poem, from which I take these verses:—

"The Hawthorne is a gracious tree From latest twig to parent root, For when all others leafless stand It gayly blossoms and bears fruit. On certain days a friendly wind Wafts from its spreading boughs a store Of canny gifts that flutter in Like snowflakes at a neighbor's door.

"The spinster who has just been blessed Finds solemn thirty much improved, By proofs that such a crabbed soul Is still remembered and beloved. Kind wishes 'ancient Lu' has stored In the 'best chamber' of her heart, And every gift on Fancy's stage Already plays its little part.

"Long may it stand, the friendly tree, That blooms in autumn and in spring, Beneath whose shade the humblest bird May safely sit, may gratefully sing. Time will give it an evergreen name, Axe cannot harm it, frost cannot kill; With Emerson's pine and Thoreau's oak Will the Hawthorne be loved and honored still!"

My mother's records, moreover, in letters to her husband, refer to the humble labors that almost filled up her devoted year (her daughters tried to imitate her example), and these references indicate the difference we felt between Europe and home:—

Rose raised all the echoes of the county by screaming with joy over her blooming crocuses, which she found in her garden. The spring intoxicates her with "remembering wine." She hugs and kisses me almost to a mummy, with her raptures. Little spots of green grass choke her with unutterable ecstasy.

September 9, 1860. Julian illuminated till tea-time; and after tea I read to both him and Rose a chapter of Matthew, and told them about Paul.—Rosebud has been drawing wonderfully on the blackboard recognizable portraits of Mr. Bennoch, her beloved Charlotte Marston, and Julian. Ben Mann appeared with a letter from dear Nona [Una]; and with one from Bentley, England, modestly asking of thee a book, to publish!—The weeds in the garden now exceed belief. There is not a trace to be seen of the melon or cucumber vines, or squashes, or of the beans towards the lane. All are completely overtopped by gigantic plants, like the Anakins overrunning the Israelites. Such riot of uninvited guests I never imagined. I shall try to do something, but I fear my puny might will not effect much against such hordes. The wet and heat together produce such growths as I never saw except in Cuba. There is a real forest at the back door, between the house and the terraces. The greenness is truly English and Irish.—I picked forty ears of corn to-day.—We all met at the Alcotts' at tea-time. It was a clear, frosty air that bit me as I went in through the sunset. We had a delightful visit. Mr. Alcott was sweet and benign as possible, and Mrs. Alcott looked like Jupiter Olympus.—General Hitchcock has been gone about an hour. Baby had got me some exquisite roses from Mr. Bull's, of various shades from deep crimson to light pink, and I arranged a flat glass dish full on the Roman mosaic table, and a tall glass on the white marble table, and a glass on the Hawthorne tea-table, while the illuminated crocus [a vase] was splendid with dahlias and tiger-lilies beneath the Transfiguration. So the drawing-room looked lovelily, and a fine rose-odor was diffused. All the blinds were open and the shades up, and a glory of greenness refreshed the eyes outside on the plumy, bowery hill and lawn. In this charming apartment I received my General. The most beautiful light of life beamed from his face at my recognition of his ideas, and at any expression of mine which showed a unity with his; or rather with truth. His quiet eyes have gathered innumerable harvests, and his observations are invaluable because impersonal. [He had made a study of the alchemists, and all mystical philosophy.]—Elizabeth Hoar spent the whole of yesterday morning with me. We talked Roman and Florentine talk. She thought our house the most fascinating of mansions. She is always full of St. Paul's charity. On the Roman table was a glass dish of exquisite pond-lilies, which Una brought from the river this morning; and out of the centre of the lilies rose a tall glass of superb cardinal-flowers. On the white table was a glass dish of balsams of every shade of red, from deep crimson through scarlet to pale pink, over to purple and up to white.—Una returned to-day from Boston. She has had a nice visit, and seen many persons, all of whom expressed to her unbounded adoration of you. "Why mamma, how everybody loves, adores him!" said she. Of course.—I had a call from the dancing-master, a most debonair individual, all smile and bow and curvets. I wish you could have seen the man. It was the broad caricature of elegant manners. How funny things are! I can hear you say, "Natur' is cur'ous."—I looked in upon Edith Emerson's party, and she had a large table spread with flowers, cake, and sugar-plums, beneath the trees, and a dozen children were running and laughing round a "pretty Poll," who scolded at them all. Mrs. Emerson was flitting like the spirit of a Lady Abbess in and out, in winged lace headdress and black silk. Your letter was a bomb of joy to me last evening.—I have taken heaps of your clothes to mend. What a rag-fair your closet was—and you did not tell me! Mrs. Alcott brought me some beer made of spruce only, and it was nice. Thou shalt have thy own beer, when you come home.—Bab went to see Mrs. Alcott, and I resumed weeding. At seven I heard thirteen cannon-shots, and did not understand it. Then I possessed The Wayside all alone till near eight of the evening. Not a sound but birds' last notes was to be heard. It was strange and sweet. I thought of you in a sea-breeze with felicity. At about eight I heard little feet racing along the Larch Path, and Baby came to view. She read aloud to me some of your "Virtuoso's Collection," and then to bed, celestial.—A letter came from Mr. Bennoch. He wails like Jeremiah over our war, and longs for a letter from you. He sends cartes de visite of himself and his wife. He looks uncommonly dumpy, with a pair of winged whiskers of astounding effect, and the expression of his face is blandly seraphic.

[From my mother's diary.] January 1, 1862. Letter and wine from General Pierce. I heard Mr. Emerson's lecture on War. Furious wind—There is a lovely new moon; a golden boat.—Papa read "The Heart of Mid-Lothian" aloud in the evening.—I wish I knew whether the lines of my hand are like those of Sir Thomas Browne's.

—My husband has made an anagram of my name: "A hope while in a storm, aha!"—General Pierce arrived at noon. I went to the Town Hall to hear the Quintette Club play the Fifth Symphony of Beethoven. Mrs. Alcott came with us. Bright moonlight at midnight. General Pierce remained all night.—My husband made an anagram of the General's name, "Princelie Frank."

—My husband read aloud to me "Sir Launcelot Greaves." Papa read "Anne of Geierstein."—I prepared Julian for acting Bluebeard; and Ellen Emerson lent me the gear. We worked hard all day.—We received the photographs of Una and myself. Mine of course uncomely.—Mr. Ticknor came to dine; and Mr. Burchmore [son of Stephen Burchmore, whose tales at the Custom House were so inimitable] also came.—My husband is not well. I have been very anxious about him; but he is better this evening, thank God.—My right hand is so bad that I have to bathe it in arnica all the time, for I have worn it out by making shoes [and other ornamented articles for a masquerade to which her children were to go].

[The letters to my father continue.] Ellen and Edith Emerson took tea with Una, and they went home early, at about eight. At ten I heard a man's step and a ring at the door-bell. I went to the door, and not opening it, in a voice of command asked, "Who is it?" No reply. I again fiercely inquired, "WHO IS IT?" "Is Ellen here?" pleaded the surprised, quiet voice of Mr. Emerson! I immediately unlocked my portcullis, and in the lowest tone of woman begged the Sage to excuse my peremptory challenge.—The Masquerade was worth the great trouble taken in preparing for it. Una was quite gorgeous with her glittering embroideries of silver and gold, and her exquisite turban gleaming with precious stones and pearls. The most delicate roses bloomed in her cheeks, and her eyes were like two large radiant stars. She danced with Sir Kenneth of Scotland, personated admirably by Edward Emerson, in armor of black and gold, severe and simple.—[My sister adds her own delighted reference to my mother's.] "Oh, father! I did have the most awfully jolly time at the Masquerade that ever anybody had. It was the most perfectly Arabian Nights' scene, and the Princess Scheherezade [herself] at last saw in very fact one of the scenes that her glowing fancy had painted; but being now freed from the fear of death, her mind had lost its terrific stimulus and returned to its normal condition, or perhaps was a little duller than usual from being so long overtaxed; at all events, she did not compose a new story on the occasion, as might have been expected. A great many people spoke to me of the splendor of my dress. Mamma was so delighted with the becomingness of my black velvet jacket, that she has bought me a splendid dress of the same, and has sent for a bushel of seed-pearls to trim it with. The little bill for these items is awaiting you on your desk. I shall set up for a queen for the rest of my life, and if you are still going to call me Onion, you must find out the Persian for it."

[The diary resumes.] My husband read to me his paper on his visit to Washington. Dr. George B. Loring and Mr. Pike [of Salem] came to tea in the evening. Mr. Thoreau died this morning.—The funeral services were in the church. Mr. Emerson spoke. Mr. Alcott read from Mr. Thoreau's writings. The body was in the vestibule, covered with wildflowers. We went to the grave. Thence my husband and I walked to the Old Manse and Monument. Then I went to see Annie Fields at Mr. Emerson's.—Fog and sultry. Brobdingnag dropping from eaves.—Superb morning. My husband transplanted sunflowers [of which he was immensely fond, though lilies-of-the-valley were his favorites].—My husband and Julian went to Boston; and Julian walked home in eight and a half hours [twenty miles].—Una's party took place to-night. Papa illuminated it with his presence.—Pleasant day. Papa magnanimously picked some strawberries.—I went on the hilltop with my husband all the morning [of a Sunday in June].—Our wedding-day. It is very hot and smoky. We think it the smokes of battles.—Very warm and fine. Mr. Alcott worked all day, lacking three hours [in constructing a rustic seat at the foot of our hill]. I went on the hilltop with my husband for a long time. Ineffable felicity.—A perfectly lovely day. I read "Christ the Spirit." Rose had a discourse from the Sermon on the Mount; the four verses about giving alms. We have very nice discourses [my mother's]. Una went to church.—Mr. George Bradford came to see us. Una and Julian went to the Emersons' in the evening.—Read again "Leamington Spa." Inimitable, fascinating.—Thanksgiving Day. We invited Ellery Channing, but he could not come.—Julian and I went to Boston. When I came home I found my husband looking very ill. Julian has gone on a visit to the Fields's.—My husband quite ill. Everything seems sad, when he is ill. I sewed all day.—My husband seems much better. He went up on the hill. Papa and the children played whist in the evening, while I read Charles Reade.—Celia cleared the old attic to-day. I found my dear hanging astral, that lighted my husband in his study at the Old Manse, and also Una's baby socks.—Judge Hoar came to invite my husband to tea with Mr. Eustis and Mr. Bemis and Mr. Emerson. He would not go.—I read ominous news of the war, which quite saddened and alarmed me. I read "Christ the Spirit."—I read about Alchemy and Swedenborg. Ellery Channing came to tea and spent the evening. He asked me if he might bring General Barlow to tea on Tuesday.

It was almost immediately after our return home that the first notes of the requiem about to envelop us fell through the sound of daily affairs, at long intervals, because my father, from that year, began to grow less and less vigorous.

There are many references in my mother's diaries and letters to my father's enforced monotony, and also to his gradually failing health, which, by the very instinct of loving alarm, we none of us analyzed as fatal; though, from his expression of face, if for no other reason, I judge he himself understood it perfectly. Death sat with him, at his right hand, long before he allowed his physical decline to change his mode of life. He tried to stem the tide setting against him, because it is the drowning man's part, even if hopeless. He walked a great deal upon the high hill-ridge behind the house, his dark, quietly moving figure passing slowly across the dim light of the mingled sky and branches, as seen from the large lawn, around which the embowered terraces rose like an amphitheatre. A friend tells me that, from a neighboring farm, he sometimes watched my father in an occupation which he had undertaken for his health. A cord of wood had been cut upon the hill, and he deliberately dragged it to the lower level of his dwelling, two logs at a time, by means of a rope. Along the ridge and down the winding pine-flanked path he slowly and studiously stepped, musing, looking up, stopping to solve some point of plot or morals; and meanwhile the cord of wood changed its abiding-place as surely as water may wear away a stone. But his splendid vigor paled, his hair grew snowy white, before the end. My mother wrote to him in the following manner from time to time, when he was away for change of scene:—

September 9, 1860. My crown of glory. This morning I waked to clouds and rain, but for myself I did not care, as you were not here to be depressed by it. There was a clear and golden sunset, making the loveliest shadows and lights on the meadows and across my straight path [over the field to the willows, between firs], and now the stars shine.—The way in which Concordians observe Fast is by loafing about the streets, driving up and down, and dawdling generally. No one seems to mourn over his own or his country's sins. Such behavior must disturb our Puritan fathers even on the other side of the Jordan.—In the evening Julian brought me a letter. "It is from New York," said he, "but not from papa." But my heart knew better, though I did not know the handwriting. I clashed it open, and saw "N. H.," and then, "I am entirely well," not scratched out. Thank God! . . . The sun has not shone to-day, and there is now a stormy wind that howls like a beast of prey over its dead. It is the most ominous, boding sound I ever heard.

March 15, 1862. The news of your appetite sends new life into me, and immediately increases my own.

July. I am afraid you have been in frightful despair at this rainy day. It has flooded here in sheets, with heavy thunder. But I have snatched intervals to weed. I could see and hear everything growing around me in the warm rain. The army corn has hopped up as if it were parched. The yellow lilies are reeling up to the skies. Pig-weed has become camelopard weed. . . . Alas that you should be insulted with dried-apple pie and molasses preserves! Oh, horror! I thought that you would have fresh fruit and vegetables. Pray go to a civilized house and have decent fare.—I know it will do you immense good to make this journey. You should oftener make such visits, and then you would "like things" better. Your spirits get below concert pitch by staying in one place so long at a time. I am glad Leutze keeps you on [to paint Hawthorne's portrait]. Do not come home till the middle of September. Just remember how hot and dead it is here in hot weather, and how you cannot bear it.—I do not think I have a purer pleasure and completer satisfaction, nowadays, than I am conscious of when I get you fairly away from Concord influences. I then sit down and feel rested through my whole constitution. All care seems at an end. I would not have had you here yesterday for all England. It was red-hot from morn to dewy eve. We burned without motion or sound. But you were in Boston, and not under this hill. If you wish me to be happy, you must consent to spend the dog-days at the sea.—After a cool morning followed a red-hot day. It seemed to me more intolerable than any before. You could not have borne such dead weather. The house was a refrigerator in comparison to the outdoor atmosphere.—We have had some intolerably muggy days. That is, they would have been so, if you had not been at the sea.—You have been far too long in one place without change, and I am sure you will get benefit under such pleasant conditions as being the guest of Mr. and Mrs. [Horatio] Bridge, and a witness of such new phases of life as those in Washington.—Splendors upon splendors have been heaped into this day. Loads of silky plumed corn or even sheaves of cardinal-flowers cannot be compared to the new sunshine and the magnificent air which have filled the earth from early dawn. The brook that became a broad river in the flood of yesterday made our landscape perfect. It seemed to me that I must dance and sing, and now I know it was because you were writing to me. Rose and I went down the straight path [called later the Cathedral Aisle] to look at the fresh river. I delayed to be embroidered with gold sun over and over, and through and through. At the gate I was arrested by the tower, also illustrious with the glory of the atmosphere, and very pretty indeed, lifting its nice, shapely head above the decrepit old ridge-pole of the ancient house.—I took my saw and went on a lovely wander, with a fell intent against all dead and confusing branches. How infinitely sweet it is to have access to this woodland virtue! It does me measureless good; and I am sure such air as we have on these fine days must be the effect of heroic and gentle deeds, and is a pledge that there are not tens only, but tens of thousands of heroes on this earth, keeping it in life and being.—Your letter has kindled us all up into lamps of light to-day. But I am wholly dissatisfied with your boarding-house, so full of deaf women, and violin din, and schoolgirls! Pray change your residence and have peace. You will curse your stars if you have to "bellow" for three weeks, when you so hate to speak even in your natural inward tone.—Mary has just sent me a note, saying that there is a paragraph in the paper about your being at Washington, and that the President [Lincoln] received you with especial graciousness. Stay as long as you can, and get great good. I cannot have you return yet.—The President has had a delicious palaver with a deputation of black folk, talking to them as to babies. I suspect the President is a jewel. I like him very well.—If it were not such a bore, I could wish thou mightest be President through this crisis, and show the world what can be done by using two eyes, and turning each thing upside down and inside out, before judging and acting. I should not wonder if thy great presence in Washington might affect the moral air and work good. If you like the President, then give him my love and blessing.—The President's immortal special message fills me with unbounded satisfaction. It is so almost superhumanly wise, moderate, fitting, that I am ready to believe an angel came straight from heaven to him with it. He must be honest and true, or an angel would not come to him. Mary Mann says she thinks the message feeble, and not to the point. But I think a man shows strength when he can be moderate at such a moment as this. Thou hadst better give my high regards to the President. I meant to write to him; but that mood has passed. I wish to express my obligations for the wisdom of his message.



CHAPTER XV

THE ARTIST AT WORK

I was once asked to write of my father's "literary methods," and the idea struck me as delightfully impossible. I wish I knew just what those methods were—I might hope to write a romance. But as the bird on the tree-bough catches here and there a glimpse of what men are about, although he hardly aspires to plough the field himself, or benefit by human labor until the harvest comes, so I have observed some facts and gathered some notions as to how my father thought out his literary work.

One method of obtaining his end was to devote himself constantly to writing, whether it brought him money or not. He might not have seemed to be working all the time, but to be enjoying endless leisure in walking through the country or the city streets. But even a bird would have had more penetration than to make such a mistake as to think this. Another wise provision was to love and pity mankind more than he scorned them, so that he never created a character which did not possess a soul—the only puppet he ever contrived of straw, "Feathertop," having an excellent soul until the end of the story. Still another method of gaining his success was to write with a noble respect for his own best effort, on which account he never felt satisfied with his writing unless he had exerted every muscle of his faculty; unless every word he had written seemed to his severest self-criticism absolutely true. He loved his art more than his time, more than his ease, and could thrust into the flames an armful of manuscript because he suspected the pages of weakness and exaggeration.

One of his methods of avoiding failure was to be rigorous in the care of his daily existence. A preponderance of frivolous interruption to a modicum of thorough labor at thinking was a system utterly foreign to him. He would not talk with a fool; as a usual thing he would not entertain a bore. If thrown with these common pests, he tried, I think, to study them. And they report that he did so very silently. But he did not waste his time, either by politely chattering with people whom he meant to sneer at after they had turned their backs, or in indulgences of loafing of all sorts which leave a narcotic stupidity in their wake. He had plenty of time, therefore, for thought, and he could think while walking either in the fresh air, or back and forth in his study. Men of success detest inactivity. It is a hardship for them to be as if dead for a single moment. So, when my father could not walk out-of doors during meditation, he moved back and forth in his room, sturdily alert, his hands clasped behind him, quietly thinking, his head either bent forward or suddenly lifted upward with a light in his gray eyes.

He wrote principally in the morning, with that absorption and regularity which characterize the labor of men who are remembered. When his health began to show signs of giving way, in 1861, it was suggested by a relative, whose intellect, strength of will, and appetite for theories were of equally splendid proportions, that my father only needed a high desk at which to stand when writing, to be restored to all his pristine vigor. With his usual tolerance of possible wisdom he permitted such a desk to be arranged in the tower-study at The Wayside; but with his inexorable contempt for mistakes of judgment he never, after a brief trial, used it for writing. Upon his simple desk of walnut wood, of which he had nothing to complain, although it barely served its purpose, like most of the inexpensive objects about him, was a charming. Italian bronze ink-stand, over whose cover wrestled the infant Hercules in the act of strangling a goose—in friendly aid of "drivers of the quill." My father wrote with a gold pen, and I can hear now, as it seems, the rapid rolling of his chirography over the broad page, as he formed his small, rounded, but irregular letters, when filling his journals, in Italy. He leaned very much on, his left arm while writing, often holding the top of the manuscript book lovingly with his left hand, quite in the attitude of a boy. At the end of a sentence or two he would sometimes unconsciously bow his head, as if bidding good-by to a thought well rid of for the present in its new garb of ink.

In writing he had little care for paper and ink. To be sure, his large, square manuscript was firmly bound into covers, and the paper was usually of a neutral blue; and when I say that he had little care for his mechanical materials I mean that he had no servile anxiety as to how they looked to another person, for I am convinced that he himself loved his manuscript books. There was a certain air of humorous respect about the titles, which he wrote with a flourish, as compared with the involved minuteness of the rest of the script, and the latter covers every limit of the page in a devoted way. His letters were formed obscurely, though most fascinatingly, and he was almost frolicsome in his indifference to the comfort of the compositor. Still he had none of the frantic reconsiderations of Scott or Balzac. If he made a change in a word it was while it was fresh, and no one could obliterate what he had written with a more fearless blot of the finger, or one which looked more earnest and interesting. There was no scratching nor quiddling in the manner with which he fought for his art. Each day he thought out the problems he had set himself before beginning to write, and if a word offended him, as he recorded the result, he thrust it back into chaos before the ink had dried. I think that the manuscript of "Dr. Grimshawe's Secret" is an exception, to some extent. There are many written self-communings and changes in it. My father was declining in health while it was being evolved. But yet, in "The Dolliver Romance," the last work of all in process of development, written while he was physically breaking down, we see the effect of will and heroic attempt. It is the most beautiful of his compositions, because his mind was greater at that time than ever, and because death could not frighten him, and in its very face he desired to complete the proof of his whole power, as the dying soldier rises to the greatest act of his life, having given his life-blood for his country's cause. Though the script of this manuscript is extremely difficult to read, the speculation had evidently been done before taking up the pen. I am not sure but that my father sometimes destroyed first drafts, of which his family knew nothing. Indeed, we have his own word for it that "he passed the day in writing stories and the night in burning them." Nevertheless, his tendency we know to have been that of thinking out his plots and scenes and characters, and transcribing them rapidly without further change.

Since he did not write anything wholly for the pleasure of creative writing, but had moral motives and perfect artistic harmony to consider, he could not have indulged in the spontaneous, passionate effusions which are the substance of so much other fiction. He was obliged to train his mind to reflection and judgment, and therefore he never tasted luxury of any kind. The mere enjoyment of historical settings in all their charm and richness, rehabilitated for their own sake or for worldly gain; and that of caricatures of the members of the human family, because they are so often so desperately funny; the gloating over realistic pictures of life as it is found, because life as it is found is a more absorbing study than that of geology or chemistry; the tasting of redundant scenes of love and intrigue, which flatter the reader like experiences of his own,—these excesses he was not willing to admit to his art, a magic that served his literary palate with still finer food. He wrote with temperateness, and in pitying love of human nature, in the instinctive hope of helping it to know and redeem itself. His quality was philosophy, his style forgiveness. And for this temperate and logical and laconic work—giving nothing to the world for its mere enjoyment, but going beyond all that to ennoble each reader by his perfect renunciation of artistic claptrap and artistic license—for this aim he needed a mental method that could entirely command itself, and, when necessary, weigh and gauge with the laborious fidelity of a coal-surveyor, before the account was rendered with pen and ink upon paper. When he brought within his art the personality of a human devil, he honored its humanity, and proved that the real devil is quite another thing. In fact, perhaps he would not have permitted the above epithet. In one of her letters my mother remarks, "I think no sort of man can be called a devil, unless it be a slanderer."