"Colonel Reybold," faltered that old wreck of manly beauty and of promise long departed, "Old Beau's passing in his checks. The chant coves will be telling to-morrow what they know of his life in the papers, but I've dropped a cold deck on 'em these twenty years. Not one knows Old Beau, the Bloke, to be Tom Basil, cadet at West Point in the last generation. I've kept nothing of my own but my children's good name. My little boy never knew me to be his father. I tried to keep the secret from my daughter, but her affection broke down my disguises. Thank God! the old rounder's deal has run out at last. For his wife he'll flash her diles no more, nor be taken on the vag."

"Basil," said Reybold, "what trust do you leave to me in your family?"

Mrs. Basil strove to interpose, but the dying man raised his voice:

"Tryphonee can go home to Fauquier. She was always welcome there—without me. I was disinherited. But here, Colonel! My last drop of blood is in the girl. She loves you."

A rattle arose in the sinner's throat. He made an effort, and transferred his daughter's hand to the Congressman's. Not taking it away, she knelt with her future husband at the bedside and raised her voice:

"Lord, when Thou comest into Thy kingdom, remember him!"



HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.

(See note at end of poem.)

I.—THE MANOR.

"My corn is gathered in the bins," The Lord Augustin Herman said; "My wild swine romp in chincapins; Dried are the deer and beaver skins; And on Elk Mountain's languid head The autumn woods are red.

"So in my heart an autumn falls; I stand a lonely tree unleaved; And to my hermit manor walls The wild-goose from the water calls, As if to mock a man bereaved: My years are nearly sheaved.

"Go saddle me the Flemish steed My brother Verlett gave to me, What time his sister did concede Her dainty hand to hear me plead! Poor soul! she's mouldering by the sea And I with misery."

The slave man brought the wild-maned horse All wilder that with stags he grazed— Bred from the seed the knightly Norse Rode from Araby. Like remorse The eyes in his gray forehead blazed, As on his lord he gazed.

"Now guard ye well my lands and stock; Slack not the seine, ply well the axe; The eagle circles o'er the flock; The Indian at my gates may knock: The firelock prime for his attacks; I ride the sunrise tracks."

Swift as a wizard on a broom, The strong gray horse and rider ran, Adown the forest stripped of bloom. By stump and bough that scarce gave room To pass the woodman's caravan, Rode the Bohemian.

"Lord Herman, stay," the brewer cried, "And Huddy's friendly flagon clink!" And martial Hinoyossa spied The horseman, moving with the tide That ebbed from Appoquinimink, Nor stopped to rest or drink.

"Where rides old Herman?" Beekman mused; "That railing wife has turned his head." "He keeps the saddle as he used, In younger days, when he enthused Three provinces," Pierre Alricks said, "And mapped their landscapes spread."

Broad rose Zuydt River as the sail Above his periauger flew; Loud neighed the steed to snuff the gale; But Herman saw not, swift and pale, Two carrier pigeons, winging true North-east, across the blue.

They quit the cage of Stuyvesant's spy, And lurking Willems' message bore: ("This morn rode Herman rapid by, Tow'rd Amsterdam, to satisfy Yet wider titles than he tore From shallow Baltimore!")

II.—REPLEVIN.

The second sunset at his back From Navesink Highlands threw the shade Of horse and Herman, long and black, Across the golden ripples' track, Where with the Kills the ocean played A measured serenade;

There where to sea a river ran, Between tall hills of brown and sand, A mountain island rose to span The outlet of the Raritan, And made a world on either hand, Soft as a poet planned:

Fair marshes pierced with brimming creeks, Where wild-fowl dived to oyster caves; And shores that swung to wooded peaks, Where many a falling water seeks The cascade's plunge to reach the waves, And greenest farmland laves:

Deep tide to every roadstead slips, And many capes confuse the shore, Yet none do with their forms eclipse Yon ocean, made for royal ships, Whose swells on silver beaches roar And rock forevermore.

Old Herman gazed through lengthening shades Far up the inland, where the spires, Defined on rocky palisades, Flung sunset from their burnished blades, And with their bells in evening choirs Breathed homesick men's desires:

"New Amsterdam! 'tis thine or mine— The foreground of this stately plan! To me the Indian did assign Totem on totem, line on line— Both Staten and the groves that ran Far up the Raritan.

"By spiteful Stuyvesant long restrained, Now, while the English break his power, Be Achter Kill again regained And Herman's title entertained, Here float my banner from my tower, Here is my right, my hour!"

III.—THE SQUATTERS.

He scarce had finished, when a rush, Like partridge through the stubble, broke, And armed men trod down the brush; A harsh voice, trembling in the hush, As it must either stab or choke, Imperiously spoke:

"Ye conquered men of Achter Kill, Whose farms by loyal toil ye got, True Dutchmen! give this traitor will— And he is yours to loose or kill— All that ye have he will allot Anew—field, cradle, cot.

"Years past, beyond our Southern bounds, On States' commission sent by me, He mapped the English papists' grounds, And like a Judas, o'er our wounds, Our raiment parted openly: This is the man ye see!

"Yet followed by my sleepless age, Fast as he rode my pigeons sped— Straight as the ravens from their cage, Straight as the arrows of my rage, Straight as the meteor overhead That strikes a traitor dead."

They bound Lord Herman fast as hate, And bore him o'er to Staten Isle; Behind him closed the postern gate, And round him pitiless as fate, Closed moat and palisade and pile: "Thou diest at morn," they smile.

IV.—STUYVESANT.

Morn broke on lofty Staten's height, O'er low Amboy and Arthur Kill; And ocean dallying with the light, Between the beaches leprous white, And silent hook and headland hill, And Stuyvesant had his will;

One-legged he stood, his sharp mustache Stiff as the sword he slashed in ire; His bald crown, like a calabash, Fringed round with ringlets white as ash, And features scorched with inner fire; Age wore him like a briar.

"Bring the Bohemian forth!" he cried; "Old man, thy moments are but few." "So much the better, Dutchman! bide Thy little time of aged pride, Thy poor revenges to pursue— Thy date is hastening, too.

"No crime is mine, save that I sought A refuge past thy jealous ken, And peaceful arts to strangers taught, And mine own title hither brought, Before the laws of Englishmen, A banished denizen.

"Yet that thy churlish soul may plead A favor to a dying foe, I'll ask thee, Stuyvesant, ere I bleed, Let me once more on my gray steed Thrice round the timbered enceinte go: Fire, when I tell thee so!"

"What freak is this?" quoth Stuyvesant grim. Quoth Herman, "'Twas a charger brave— Like my first bride in eye and limb— A wedding-gift; indulge the whim! And from his back to plunge, I crave, A bridegroom, in her grave."

Then muttered the uneasy guard: "We rob an old man of his lands, And slay him. Sure his fate is hard, His dying plea to disregard!" "Ride then to death!" Stuyvesant commands; "Unbind his horse, his hands!"

V.—THE LEAP.

The old steed darted in the fort, And neighed and shook his long gray mane; Then, seeing soldiery, his port Grew savage. With a charger's snort, Upright he reared, as young again And scenting a campaign.

Hard on his nostrils Herman laid An iron hand and drew him down, Then, mounting in the esplanade, The rude Dutch rustics stared afraid: "By Santa Claus! he needs no crown, To look more proud renown!"

Lame Stuyvesant, also, envious saw How straight he sat in courteous power, Like boldness sanctified by law, And age gave magisterial awe; Though in his last and bitter hour, Of knightliness the flower.

His gray hairs o'er his cassock blew, And in his peak'd hat waved a plume; A horn swung loose and shining through High boots of buckskin, as he drew The rein, a jewel burst to bloom: The signet ring of doom.

'Thrice round the fort! Then as I raise This hand, aim all and murder well!' His head bends low; the steed's eyes blaze, But not less bright do Herman's gaze, As circling round the citadel, He peers for hope in hell.

Fast were the gates; no crevice showed. The ramparts, spiked with palisades, Grew higher as once round he rode; The arquebusiers prime the load, And drop to aim from ambuscades; No latch, no loophole aids.

But one small hut its chimney thrust Between the timbers, close as they; Twice round and with a desperate trust Lord Herman muttered: "die I must: There, CHARGE!" and spurred through beam and clay— "By heaven! he is away!"

VI.—THE KILLS.

In clouds of dust the muskets fire, And volleying oaths old Stuyvesant from: "Turn out! In yonder Kills he'll mire, Or drown, unless the fiends conspire. Mount! Follow! Still he must succumb— That tide was never swum."

Through hut and chimney, down the ditch And up the bank, plunge horse and man; And down the Kills of bramble pitch, Oft-stumbling, those old gray knees which, Hunting the raccoon, led the van; Now, limp yet game he ran.

But cool and supple, Herman sat, His mind at work, his frame the horse's, And knew with each pulsation, that Past foe and fen, past crag, and flat, And marsh, the steed he nearer forces To the broad sea's recourses.

"Old friend," he thought, "thou art too weak To try the Kills and drown, or falter, The while from shore their marksmen seek My heart. (Once o'er the Chesapeake I paddled oarless.) Lest the halter Be mine, I must not palter—

"Thou diest, though my marriage-gift: I still can swim. Poor Joost, adieu!" Ere ceased the heartfelt sigh he lift, The prospect widened: all adrift, The salty sluice burst into view, Where grappling tides fought through,

And sucked to doom the venturous bear, And from his ferry swept the rower— How wide, how terrible, how fair! Yet how inspiriting the air— How tempts the long salt grass the mower! How treacherous the shore!

Far up the right spread Newark Bay, To lone Secaucus wooded rock; Nor could the Kill von Kull convey Passaic's mountain flood away: In Arthur Kill the surges choke, The wild tides interlock.

O'er Arthur Kill the Holland farms Their gambril roofs, red painted, show; Beyond the newer Yankee swarms— His cider-presses spread their arms. Before, the squatter; back, the foe; And the dark waters flow.

As that salt air the stallion felt, He whimpers gayly, as if still is Upon his sight his native Scheldt, Or Skagger Rack, or Little Belt,— Their waving grass and silver lilies, Where browsed the amorous fillies.

And o'er the tide some lady nags Blew back his challenge. Scarce could Herman Hold in his seat. "By John of Prague's True faith!" he thought, "thy spirit lags Not, Joost! Thy course thyself determine!" And plunges like a merman.

Leander's spirit in the steed Inspired his stroke, not Herman's fear; And fast the island shores recede, Fast rise the rider's spirits freed, The golden mainland draws more near— "O gallant horse! 'tis here!"

VII.—ELUSION.

Across the Kills the muskets crack— "Ha! ha!" Lord Herman waves his beaver: "Die of thy spleen ere I come back, Old Stuyvesant!" With a noise of wrack The fort blew up of his aggriever!— But not without retriever.

For from the smoke two pigeons fly, One south, one westward, separating, And straight as arrows crossed the sky, With silent orders ("He must die Who comes hereafter. Lie in waiting!") Their snowy pinions freighting.

They warn the men of Minisink; They warn the Dutchmen of Zuydt River. Now speed to Jersey's farther brink, Old horse, old master, ere ye shrink!— Or ambushed fall ere moonrise quiver, On paths where ye shall shiver.

On went the twain till past the ford That red-walled Raritan led over, And lonely woodland shades explored. Unarmed with firelock or with sword, Free-hearted rode the forest rover, Of all wild kind the drover:

Fled deer and bear before his coming, The wild-cat glared, the viper hissed; And died the long day's insect-drumming. Where things of night began their humming, And witchly phantoms went to tryst, Was Herman exorcist.

"No land so tangled but my eye Can map its confines and its courses; Yet on life's map who can espy Where hides his foe—where he shall die?" So Herman said, and his resources Resigned unto his horse's.

All night the steed instinctive travelled— His weary rider wept for him— Through unseen gulfs the whirlwind ravelled, Up moonlit beds of streamlets gravelled, Till halting every bleeding limb, He stands by something dim,

And will not stir till morning breaks. "What is't I see, low clustering there, Beyond those broadening bays and lakes, That yonder point familiar makes?— Is it New Amstel, lowly fair, And this the Delaware?"

VIII.—THE ECHO.

Lord Herman hugged his horse with pride; He raised his horn and blew so loudly, That more than echoes back replied: Horns answered louder; horsemen cried, And muskets banged, as if avowedly On Stuyvesant's errand proudly!

"Die, traitor; fleer! though thou 'scape Our ambush on thy devil's racer, Caught here upon this marshy cape, Thy bones the muskrat's brood shall scrape, The sturgeon suck—Death thy embracer!" So shouts each sanguine chaser.

To die in sight of Amstel's walls, And gallant Joost to die beside him?— O foolish blast, such fate that calls! O river that the heart appalls! Dear Joost may live. And they bestride him? "By hell! none else shall ride him!

"My steed, thy limbs like mine are sore! Few years are left us ere the billows Roll over both. Come but once more, And to the bottom or the shore, Bear me and thee to happy pillows, Or 'neath the water willows!"

He strokes old Joost. He bends him low. He winds his horn and laughs derision. One spring!—they've cleared the bog and sloe, And down the ebb tide buoyant go— That stately tide. So like a vision Of home, to Norse and Frisian,

Where full a league spread Maas and Rhine, And in the marsh the rice-birds twitter; The long cranes pasture and the kine Loom lofty in the misty shine Of dawn and reedy islands glitter: Yet death all where is bitter.

Ere out of range a volley peals, But greed too great made aye a blunder. His horse Lord Herman's self conceals, Yet once his horse and he go under, And rise again. No wound he feels. They hold their fire in wonder!

Short of the mark the bullets splash: "Now drown thee, wizard! at thy pleasure," The Dutchmen hiss through teeth they gnash. He answers not; for o'er the plash Of waves he hears Joost's gasping measure Of breath's fast wasting treasure.

IX.—PEGASUS.

The sighs when dying comrades fall, Struck by the foe, are only sad; They leaped the ditch and climbed the wall, And shared the purpose of us all; The fame they have; the joy they had: "Rest in thy tracks, brave lad!"

But thou, poor beast! unknown to fame, Whose heart is reached while ours is bounding, Amidst the victory's acclaim— By thee we kneel with more of shame, That bore us through the fight resounding, And dumbly took our wounding!

Lord Herman saw the blood drops seethe, The nag's neck droop, the nostril bubble, And loosed the bridle from his teeth; Yet swam the old legs underneath, Invincibly. The gap they double; But further swim in trouble.

And lovely Nature stretched her aid, Her sympathetic tow and eddy; The oars of air with azure blade, And silent gravities persuade And waft them onward, slow and steady— On duteous deeds aye ready.

High leaped the perch. The hawk screamed joy. Under Joost's belly musically The ripples broke. Bright clouds convoy The brute that man would but destroy, And all instinctive agents rally Strong and medicinally.

In vain! The gurgling waters suck That old life under. Herman swimming Seized but the horse tail. Like a buck Breasting a lake in wild woods' pluck, Joost rose, the glaze his bright eyes dimming, And blood his sockets brimming.

Then voices speak and women cry. The treading feet find soil to stand. Above them the green ramparts lie, And twixt their shadows and the sky, The wondering burghers crowd the strand, And Herman help to land:

"Now to Newcastle's English walls, Hail, Herman! and thy matchless stud!" Joost staggers up the bank and falls, And dying to his master crawls. Yields up his long solicitude, And spills his veins of blood.

In Herman's arms his neck is prest, With martial pride his dark eye glazes; He feels the hand he loves the best Stroke fondly, and a chill of rest, As if he rolled in pasture daisies And heard in winds his praises:

"O couldst thou speak, what wouldst thou say? I who can speak am dumb before thee. Thine eyes that drink Olympian day Where steeds of wings thy soul convey, With pride of eagles circling o'er thee: Thou seest I adore thee!

"Bound to thy starry home and her Who brought me thee and left earth hollow! An honored grave thy bones inter, And painting shall thy fame confer, Ere in thy shining track I follow, Thou courser of Apollo!"

NOTE TO HERMAN OF BOHEMIA MANOR.[1]

The singular incident of this poem was published in 1862, in Rev. John Lednum's "Personal Rise of Methodism," and in the following words:

"It is said that the Dutch had him (Herman) a prisoner of war, at one time, under sentence of death, in New York. A short time before he was to be executed, he feigned himself to be deranged in mind, and requested that his horse should be brought to him in the prison. The horse was brought, finely caparisoned. Herman mounted him, and seemed to be performing military exercises, when, on the first opportunity, he bolted through one of the large windows, that was some fifteen feet above ground, leaped down, swam the North River, ran his horse through Jersey, and alighted on the bank of the Delaware, opposite Newcastle, and thus made his escape from death and the Dutch. This daring feat, tradition says, he had transferred to canvas—himself represented as standing by the side of his charger, from whose nostrils the blood was flowing."—Page 277.

Such a singular and improbable story attracted great local attention, and in 1870, Francis Vincent, publishing his "History of Delaware," wrote: "The author found this incident in both Lednum and Foot, and has seen a copy of this painting. It is in the possession of James R. Oldham, Esq., of Christiana Bridge, the only male descendant of Herman in Delaware State. He is the seventh in descent from Augustin Herman."—Page 469.

In 1875, Rev. Charles P. Mallery, of Chesapeake City, a part of the Bohemia Manor, wrote in the Elkton (Md.) Democrat as follows: "Herman resided on the Manor for more than twenty years, during which time he once rode to New York on the back of his favorite horse, to reclaim his long-neglected possessions there. He found his land occupied by squatters.... They secured him, as they thought, for the night; but he soon found means to escape by leaping his horse through a forced opening, swimming the North River, and continuing his flight through New Jersey until he reached the shore opposite Newcastle, where he swam his horse across the Delaware and was safe.... Dr. Spotswood, of Newcastle, told me that there was a tradition in his town that the horse was buried there." Augustin Herman made the first drawing of New Amsterdam, and early maps of Maryland and New England. He was the first speculator in city real estate in America.

[Footnote 1: The Bohemia Manor is a tract of 18,000 acres of the best land on the Delaware peninsula. It was granted to Augustine Herman, Bohemian, whose tombstone, now lying in the yard of Richard Bayard, on the site of Herman's park, bears date 1661. He received the manor for making an early map of Maryland, and granted a part of the land to the sect of Labadists. In the course of a century it became the homestead of Senator Richard Bassett, heir of the last lord of the manor, and of his son-in-law, Senator James A. Bayard, the first. Herman was the principal historic personage about the head of the Chesapeake, and was Peter Stuyvesant's diplomatist to New England as well as Maryland. The argument he made for the priority of the Dutch settlement on the Delaware was the basis of the independence of Delaware State. The legend of his escape from New York is told in several local books and newspapers, and it was the subject of one of his paintings, as he was both draughtsman and designer. G. A. T.]

In 1876 I visited the relics of Herman on the Manor, and observed the topography and foliage. I then undertook to put this legend into verse, but struck a short, ill-accommodating stanza, in which I nevertheless persevered until the tale was told. I found that Herman had bought, in 1652, "the Raritan Great Meadows and the territory along the Staten Island Kills from Ompoge, or Amboy, to the Pechciesse Creek, and a tract on the south side of the Raritan, opposite Staten Island" (see Broadhead, page 537). It at once occurred to me to put the seat of Herman's capture by squatters on this property, and to take Staten Island's bold scenery as a contrast to that of the head of the Chesapeake, whence Herman had ridden. He could, besides, more reasonably swim the Kills than the North River with a horse, as a gentle prelude to swimming the Delaware.

One year before buying the above property (see Broadhead's "History of New York," page 526), Peter Stuyvesant vindictively persecuted Herman, Lockerman, and others, who retired to Staten Island to brood. These men belonged to "the popular party." I therefore had a hint to make Stuyvesant himself the incarcerator of Herman in a fort, and the most available period seemed to be subsequent to the capture of Dutch New York by the English, but before the Dutch settlements on the Delaware were yielded. Stuyvesant surrendered New York September 8th, 1664. It was not until October 10th that Newcastle on the Delaware surrendered. The theory of the poem is that Herman, hearing New York to be English, like Maryland where he resided, repaired to his possessions. Stuyvesant rallies the squatters against him and makes use of a fort on Staten Island, not yet noticed by the English, as Herman's place of punishment. On Herman's escape this fort is blown up. When Herman returns to Newcastle, it is no longer Dutch, but English. Four days is the time of the action. The device of the carrier pigeons is possibly an anachronism, and also the age of Herman. I have aimed to make the story reasonable, if not creditable.



KIDNAPPED.

A celebrated apostle of the Methodist sect, on the Eastern shore of Maryland, was the Rev. Titus Bates. He had been twenty-six years engaged in the ministry, and was now a bronzed, worn, failing man, consumed by the zeal of his order, but still anxious to continue his work and die at his post. Like all his tribe, he was an itinerant, moving from town to town every second year—these towns being his places of abode, while his fields of labor were called "circuits," and comprised many houses of worship scattered through the surrounding district. He had chosen his wife with reference to his vocation, and she was equally earnest with himself. She attended the sick, prayed with the dying, taught Sabbath-schools, and organized religious meetings among the women. They had but one son, Paul, an odd, silent little fellow, who was thought to be more bashful than bright; but his parents loved him tenderly, and argued the highest usefulness from his still, sober, thoughtful habits. He was of a singularly dark complexion, with fine black eyes and curling hair, and he was now old enough to ride to and fro with his father upon the long pastoral journeys.

Paul's sixth birthday occurred on a raw Sunday in December. He had been promised, as a special treat on that occasion, a visit to Hogson's Corner, an old meeting-house near the bay-side, twenty miles distant. His mother woke him at an early hour, and, while he breakfasted, the gray pony Bob came to the door in the "sulky." His mother bade him to be a good boy, and kissed him; he took his seat upon a stool at his father's feet, and watched the stone parsonage fade quickly out of sight. The last houses of the town vanished; they passed some squalid huts of free negroes; and when, after an hour, they came to a grim, solitary hill, the snow began to fall. It beat down very fast, whitening the frozen furrows in the fields, making pyramids of the charred stumps, and bleaching the sinuous "worm-fences" which bordered the road. After a while, they found a gate built across the way, and Paul leaped out to open it. The snow was deep on the other side, and the little fellow's strength was taxed to push it back; but he succeeded, and his father applauded him. Then there were other gates; for there were few public highways here, and the routes led through private fields. It seemed that he had opened a great many gates before they came to the forest, and then Paul wrapped his chilled wet feet in the thick buffalo hide, and watched the dreary stretches of the pines moan by, the flakes still falling, and the wheels of the sulky dragging in the drifts. The road was very lonely; his father hummed snatches of hymns as they went, and the little boy shaped grotesque figures down the dim aisles of the woods, and wondered how it would be with travellers lost in their depths. He was not sorry when they reached the meeting-house—a black old pile of planks, propped upon logs, with a long shelter-roof for horses down the side of the graveyard. A couple of sleighs, a rough-covered wagon, called a "dearbourn," and several saddled horses, were tied beneath the roof. Two very aged negroes were seen coming up one of the cross-roads, and the shining, surging Chesapeake, bearing a few pale sails, was visible in the other direction. Some boors were gossiping in the churchyard, slashing their boots with their riding-whips; one lean, solemn man came out to welcome the preacher, addressing him as "Brother Bates;" and another led the sulky into the wagon-shed, and treated Bob to some ears of corn, which he needed very much.

Then they all repaired to the church, which looked inside like a great barn. The beams and shingles were bare; some swallows in the eaves flew and twittered at will; and a huge stove, with branching pipes, stood in the naked aisle. The pews were hard and prim, and occupied by pinch-visaged people; the pulpit was a plain shelf, with hanging oil-lamps on either side; and over the door in the rear projected a rheumatic gallery, where the black communicants were boxed up like criminals. A kind old woman gave Paul a ginger-cake, but his father motioned him to put it in his pocket; and after he had warmed his feet, he was told to sit in the pew nearest the preacher on what was called the "Amen side." Then the services began, the preacher leading the hymns, and the cracked voices of the old ladies joining in at the wrong places. But after a while a venerable negro in the gallery tuned up, and sang down the shrill swallows with natural melody. The prayers were long, and broken by ejaculations from the pews. The text was announced amid profound silence, after everybody had coughed several times, and then the itinerant launched into his sermon. At first it was dry and argumentative, then burdened with divisions and quotations, but in the end he closed the great book, and made one of those fierce, feeling appeals—brimming with promises of grace and threatenings of hell—in words so homely that all felt them true, while the wild, interpolated cries of the believers thrilled and terrified the young.

Little Paul heard with pale lips these grim, religious revelations, and his child's fancy conjured up awful pictures of worlds beyond the grave. He wondered that the birds dared riot in the roof: the sky in the gable window was full of cloudy marvels; and the snow beat under the door, like a shroud blown out of one of the churchyard tombs. The closing prayer was said at last, the unconverted walked away, but five or six communicants remained to tell their experience in the class-meeting. Paul's father gave him permission to go into the yard if he liked, and the boy got into the sulky, beneath the buffalo, and heard the sobs and hymns floating dismally on the wind. Grim shapes thronged his mind again, wherein the Bible stories were mingled with tales of ghosts and strange nursery fables. They chased each other in and out, generating others as they went, and then came drowsiness, and Paul slept.

The class-meeting lasted an hour. It was very fervent and demonstrative; and when it was over the kind old lady who had given Paul the gingerbread asked the preacher home to dinner. She said that roasted turkey, wild duck, and pumpkin-pie were waiting for them; and Mr. Bates thought fondly what a treat it would be for Paul on his birthday. He was to preach again that afternoon, seven miles away, and so moved briskly toward the sulky.

"The poor fellow is asleep," said the preacher, seeing that the curling head was not thrust up at his approach. "I wonder of what he dreams?" He drew near as he spoke. Old Bob was munching his corn sedately; the sulky had a saucy air; the robe nestled in the front, with the tiny stool peeping from a corner; but Paul was not there. The preacher called aloud; the horses raised their ears in reply, and the wheels crackled in the frozen crust. He called again; some sleigh-bells jingled merrily, and then the pines moaned. He looked into the other vehicles; he watched for the little foot-tracks in the snow; he ran back to the old church, and searched beneath every pew.

"Brethren—sisters," he cried, "I cannot find my boy!" and his voice was tremulous. They gathered round him and some said that Paul had ridden away with the worldly lads; others, that he was hiding mischievously. But one silent bystander looked into the drifts, and traced four great boot-marks close to the sulky. He followed them across the road into the pines, and out into the road again, where they were lost in the multitude of impressions. "Brother," he faltered, "God give you strength! your boy has been stolen—kidnapped!"

The old man staggered, but the kind old lady caught him, and as he leaned upon her shoulder his face grew hard and blanched; then he removed his hat, and his gray hair streamed over his gaunt features. "Let us pray!" he said.

The preacher plodded to his next appointment as if he had still a child, and his sermon was as full and straightforward. He announced his bereavement from the pulpit when he had done, and the whole country was alarmed and excited. He bore the tidings to his desolate home, and his stricken wife heard it with a stern resignation. Thenceforward he preached more of the burning pit, and less of the golden city; his eyes were full of fierce light, and his visage grew long and ghastly. He denied himself all joys and comforts; his prayers rang in the midnight through the gloomy parsonage; and he toiled in the ministry as if reckless of life, and anxious to lose it in his Master's service. The end came at last; the world closed over the grim couple, and they hoped through the grave's portal to find their child.

When Paul awoke from his nap in the sulky, he found himself far in the forest, and moving swiftly forward. A huge negro, with bloodshot eyes, was transferring him to an evil-looking white man, and he struggled in the latter's arms, crying for his papa.

The negro drew a long knife from his breast and flourished it before Paul's face. "Hold um jaw, or I kill um dead!" he muttered. "Got um grave dug out yer."

"O yer young yerlin!" said the other man, boxing Paul's ears, "yer don't know yer own father, don't yer? I'm yer parpa!"

"You are not," cried Paul. "Where are you taking me? Where is the church, and the sulky, and old Bob?"

The negro drove his knife so close to Paul's throat that the boy flinched and shrieked.

"You dare to say fader to anybody," yelled the negro, "and I cut yo' heart out! You dare to tell yer name, or yer fader's name, or wha yo come from, and I cut yo' eyes out! I cut yo' heart and eyes out—do yo' yar?"

The lad was cowed into cold, tearless terror; he shrank from the glittering edge, and trembled at the giant's murderous expression. He thought they had brought him to this lonely spot to slay him, and he embraced silence as the only chance for his young life. He wondered if this were not one of his wild imaginings, or if it had not something to do with the punishment pronounced in the morning's fierce sermon.

The two men came to a ruined cabin after awhile; it was buried in deep shade; the logs were worm-eaten, and the clay chimney had fallen down. They climbed by a creaking ladder into the loft and laid Paul upon a ragged bed. A young negro woman and her child were there, and the boy saw that her foot was shackled to the floor, for the chain rattled as she moved. They gave him a piece of beef and a corn-cake, and stripping him of his tidy clothes, dressed him in the coarse blue drilling worn by slaves. The two men drank frequently from the same bottle, talking in low tones, and after a time both of them lay down and slept. The woman dandled her child to and fro, for it moaned painfully, and the pines without made a deep dirge. No birds trilled or screamed in this desert place, but a roaring as of loud waters was borne now and then on the twilight; it was the bay close below them, making thunder upon the beach.

When Paul woke from his second sleep he was on the deck of a vessel. The shore lay beneath him, and the waves heaved behind. It was night; the snow-flakes still filtered through the profound darkness, and the wind whistled in the rigging. A red lantern moved along the beach; some voices were heard speaking together, and one of them said: "Don't be afraid of the boy; I have sold lots paler than him. Lick him smartly if he gammons, and he'll tell no tales."

Then they lifted the anchor aboard; the tide floated off the sloop; they were soon scudding before the wind under a freezing starlight. Two weary days passed over Paul, of travel by land and water. They came to the city of Richmond at last, and marched him with five other unfortunates to the common slave-pen. It was situated in a squalid suburb, surrounded by a high spiked wall, and entered by an office from which a watchman could observe the interior through two grated doors. The pen consisted of a paved area open to the sky, except on one side, where it was protected by a shelving roof, and of a jail or den. The latter was walled up in a corner, but its inmates could look out upon the area through a window in the door, and their savage features revealed at the bars so terrified Paul that he retreated to the opposite corner, afraid to look towards them. Now and then they howled and blasphemed; for two were delirious from drunkenness and one was desperate from rage, and as they moved like tigers to and fro, their irons clanked behind them, dragging on the stone floor. A number of women were huddled together beneath the roof, some as fair as Paul, others as black as ebony. Some had babes at their breasts, others had no regard for their offspring, but sat stolidly apart while their children cried for nourishment. In the open place a bevy of the coarser inmates were holding a rude dance, a large gray-haired man patted time or "juber" with his feet and hands, calling the figures huskily aloud; while the women, with bright turbans tied around their heads, grinned and screamed with glee as they followed the measure with their large, heavy shoes.

Their efforts were directed not so much to grace as to strength, for some kept up the dance for a whole hour, divesting themselves of parcels of clothing as they proceeded, and breathing hard as if weary to exhaustion. The men applauded vociferously, coupling the names of the performers with wild ejaculations, but subsiding when the keeper appeared at the door occasionally to command less noise. Remote from the bacchanals crouched a serious group of negroes, who sang religious melodies, quite oblivious of their wild associates; and in still another quarter a humorous fellow was enlivening his constituents with odd sayings and stories. Paul's heart sank within him as he looked upon these scenes. A sense of his degradation rushed over his young mind, and he threw himself upon the stones with his head in his hands, and wept hot tears of bitterness. Henceforth he should be a creature, a thing, a slave! He must know no ambition but indolence, no bliss but ignorance, no rest but sleep, no hope but death! Long leagues must interpose between himself and his home; he should never kiss his mother again, or kneel with his father in the holiness of prayer. The recollections of his childhood would be crushed out by agonizing experiences of bondage; he would forget his name and the face of his friends, and at last preserve only the horrible consciousness that he was the chattel of his master!

The uproar continued far into the night; one poor creature was delivered of a child in the hazy light of the morning. Paul was too young to think much of the matter, for his own sorrows engrossed him; but he often recurred, in his subsequent career, to the romance of that bondwoman, and the soul which first felt the breath of life in the precincts of the slave shamble. What a childhood must it have had to look back upon—cradled in disgrace, sung to sleep with the simple melodies of grief, bred for no high purposes, but with the one distinct and dreadful idea of gain—to be filched from that dusky bosom when its little limbs had first essayed motion, that its feeble lips might lisp the accents of servility. Days and weeks passed over Paul, but he found no opportunity to tell his story. They kept him purposely that he might forget it, or feel the hopelessness of relating it. Other wretches came and went, till there remained none of the original inmates of his prison, and he learned to mingle with his coarse companions, joining sometimes in their gayety, and the high walls stood forever between his dreams and the sky till the sombre shadows were printed upon his heart.

The boy's turn came at length. He climbed the auction block before the gaping multitude, and leaped to show his suppleness. They were pleased with his still serious manner, the paleness of his skin, his thoughtful eyes, and the shining ringlets of his hair. Bids were bandied briskly upon him, and the auctioneer rattled glibly of the rare lot to be sold.

"Who owns the boy?" cried a bystander.

"Colonel James Purnell, of the Eastern shore," answered the auctioneer. "His mother is a likely piece that will be in the market presently."

Tears came to Paul's eyes, but he held down the great sob that started to his throat, and called lustily: "It is a wicked story! My father is white, and my mother is white! I am not a slave, and they have stolen me!"

A loud, long laugh broke from the crowd, and the trader cracked a merry joke, which helped the pleasantry.

"We may call that a 'white lie,'" he said; "but it is a peart lad, and the air with which he told it is worth a cool hundred! Going at four hundred dollars—four hundred," etc.

The bidding recommenced. The article rose in esteem, and Paul was pushed from the block into the arms of a tall, angular person, who led him into the city. That afternoon he was placed in a railway carriage, and on the third night he was quartered in Mobile, at the dwelling of his purchaser. The tall person proved to be the agent of a rich old lady—a childless widow—who required a handsome, active lad, to wait upon her person, and make a good appearance in the drawing-room.

She had many servants; but Paul was not compelled to associate with them, and his duties were light, though menial. When his mistress went out to walk, he must carry her spaniel in his arms. He must stand behind her at dinner, wielding a fly-brush of peacock's feathers. He must run errands, and be equally ready to serve her whims and satisfy her wants. She was not harsh, but very petulant; and had Paul been hasty or high-tempered, his lot might have been a bitter one. On the contrary, he was quiet, docile, and bashful, and he pleased her marvellously. If he sometimes wept for the happy past, or felt a child's strong yearning for something to love, he hid his grief from those about him, and sought that consolation which the world cannot take away in the simple prayers he had conned from his mother. He was a slave, but not a negro. His pleasures were not theirs, for he had quick intelligence, and he shrank from their loud, lewd glee. Their blood had thickened through generations of bondage, and trained in the harness of beasts, they had become creatures of draught. His had rippled bright and brisk through generations of freedom, and a year could not drag him to their level. He had learned to read and write, and it was his habit to stand at the window in his leisure moments, adding to his information from some pleasant book; but his mistress supposed that he was looking at the pictures merely, till one day, entering the dining-room softly, she heard him reading aloud. He had a sweet, boy's voice, which somewhat pacified the anger she felt at such presumption in a slave; and though at first rebuking him, she reconsidered the matter during the evening, and bade him read to her from a new novel. Henceforward Paul gained favor, and his mistress found it convenient to employ him as an amanuensis. She released him from menial duties, and gave him neat attire, and it was wonderful how well these accessories became him. He was unassuming, as before, submitting with patience to his lot; and at length he became indispensable to Mrs. Everett. Her attachment to books of fiction amounted to dissipation, and the part that he bore in their perusal filled his warm imagination till his fancies were brighter than romance—they became poetry. The one great grief of his life touched his whole face with a pensive melancholy, but he forebore to tell them his true history again, preferring to wait for some golden moment when he might be believed and emancipated.

From the beginning Mrs. Everett's agent disliked him. Wait was a Northern adventurer, cool, courageous, and ambitious, who had settled in the South with the resolution of becoming rich, and he had pursued his purpose with steady inflexibility. He was not a bad man, but a bitter one, and Paul had in some sort divided Mrs. Everett's esteem from him. Previously he had been her sole and undisputed adviser, and as she was readily influenced, he hoped, in course of time, to be acceptable as her second husband. He was young and manly, and she was giddy and middle-aged. Her relatives held him in contempt, but he had proved his courage, and they did not care to cross him. But with the coming of Paul he had lost somewhat of her regard, and he had laid it to the boy's charge. Paul read his calm purpose in his keen eyes, and he shuddered at the thought of some day falling into his relentless hands. He labored to conciliate his enemy, but with little effect, until one afternoon, Wait told him to obtain permission from Mrs. Everett and come to the office. He dictated some ambiguous letters to Paul, and gave him many papers to burn, meanwhile inspecting a pair of long pistols which he took from a portmanteau. It was late in the afternoon when he had done, and then he bade Paul take the case of pistols, slip quietly into the street, and walk straight on till he was overtaken. He obeyed, not without suspicion, and when he reached the city limits found the agent, to his great surprise, seated in a carriage. Two other persons attended him, and one, who was bald and wore glasses, had a case of surgical instruments lying at his feet. Paul climbed to the driver's box, and they dashed along by the water-side, meeting a second carriage on their way. The last rays of sunset were streaming over the low landscape when both carriages stopped, their occupants dismounted, and Wait came to the front and reached up his hand to Paul.

"Good-by, boy," he said in a tone of unwonted tenderness; "remain here a moment and you will see me again!"

They filed along a dyke separating two swamps, and turning down to the beach, were hidden behind a line of cypress trees. For a few moments Paul only heard the roar of the surf, the noise of the distant town, and the short breathing of the sedate negro beside him. Then there were shouts, as of a person counting rapidly, and two reports so close that one seemed the echo of the other. A few minutes afterward the agent appeared, leaning upon the arms of his attendants. He was divested of coat and vest, and as he came nearer, bareheaded, Paul saw that his face was colorless and working as from deadly pain. His shirt was perforated close to the collar, and the blood flowing beneath had stained it to his waist, and dripped in a runnel from his boots. He fainted when he had taken his seat; and as the carriage rolled away, Paul looked back toward the duelling-ground, and beheld two men bearing upon their shoulders a stiff, straight burden, wrapped in a cloak.

The second carriage passed him, driven swiftly, and it seemed to emit a chill draught upon Paul like the damp wind from a tomb; it was the presence of death, at whose very mention we grow cold.

Wait had vindicated his courage, but at the expense of his life. He lingered on in agony many days; and Paul so pitied him that he stole into his darkened chamber and begged to do him kindnesses. The grim man lay implacable, waiting for death; but one night as he writhed with the dew upon his forehead, Paul heard him mutter, "My God! my mother!"

The boy remembered a quaint text of Scripture: "Save me, O God! for the waters have come in unto my soul;" and he repeated it in the strong man's ear. "Go on," cried Wait, rising upon his elbow; "I have heard that before: tell me the rest."

"I have the good book here," replied Paul. "I am sure it will be pleasant to you, sir, if you will let me read."

"Do so, boy; I used to know it well. An old friend taught those strange words to me, but I have forgotten them now."

Paul read some soothing and beautiful Psalms, which took his companion's mind back to his native mountains, and the white spire of the village church where he had worshipped with his mother. The hard lines melted in his face as he listened, but Paul fell upon a bitter verse, and the agent's conscience began to trouble him. He could not look into the boy's eyes, for they seemed to rebuke him, and at last he commanded Paul to stop.

It was midnight. They heard the great clock in the hall strike twelve, and all the household slumbered.

"Go to your mistress's room," said Wait; "tell her that I must see her now—she must come at once. The morning may never come to me. Go; God bless you!"

He called Paul back when he had got to the door, and added falteringly:

"My boy, do you say your prayers?"

"Yes, sir."

"Would you mind thinking of me when you say them to-night?"

"I do so every night, sir."

"Good-night!"

Paul heard the agent sobbing as he stole away; but when he knocked at Mrs. Everett's door she answered petulantly, and at first she refused to rise. She had little self-denial; it would pain her to enter a dying chamber; and she would have left Wait to perish, had not some strange passage from the romance entered her head of dead folk, with secrets on their minds, haunting the living. It would be very terrible to be haunted, and the old woman was frightened into obedience. When she returned her mind was disquieted, and she made Paul stay in her room to compose her with cheerful talk. Finally she fell asleep, and he hastened to the agent's chamber. It was very dark within, and he waited a moment that the other might recognize him. Wait seemed to be in deep slumber, though Paul could not hear him breathe; but as the lad ventured to place his head upon the quilt, it encountered a hand so cold and hard that it seemed to be marble. Paul knew that he need no longer remember his enemy in his prayers.

What transpired between his mistress and her agent at this dying interview Paul could not surmise, but he believed that it concerned himself. He perceived that Mrs. Everett treated him more considerately afterward; and many times, as he looked up from a long silence, he found her regarding him inquisitively. She asked him strange questions once, bearing upon his early life, and he was almost encouraged to reveal the secret of his birth; but she seemed to divine his purpose, and changed the theme. Something troubled her, he knew; and when he applied himself to conciliate and cheer her, at those moments she suffered most. Had she loved the stern, ambitious man whose closed chamber still chilled her mansion? Was it because she was childless, and travelling graveward? Or did she cherish a mother's feeling for Paul, and wish that he was of her race, and worthy to be her son? Toward each of these theories he inclined, favoring the last, and finally he concluded that she did not love, but feared him. He had grown tall and manly. An individual beauty, rather of mind than of face, developed in him, and his mistress had been prodigal of favors, so that his dress and ornaments corresponded with his person. He might have ruled, rather than served in her dwelling; but content with the recognition of his equality, he maintained the same modest guise, and his mistress felt an uneasy pride in his promotion. One day he found her weeping, and when he spoke she answered bitterly:

"Paul, you have ceased to love me; you are ungrateful; you wish to be free—you would leave me!"

He responded pleasantly—for he had become familiar with such moods—that he had found a new romance which he would read. It was not a long story, but a thrilling one, and based upon the simple narrative of Joseph in bondage. The outline was true, the details were fabulous, and the old lady marvelled that a theme so trite could be so well embellished. He read far into the night, and she bade him leave the book upon her table, that she might peruse it again.

"It is manuscript," he said, "and this is the only copy."

"Why, Paul," she said, "how came you by it?"

"I wrote it myself."

Paul was indeed the author, having filled in the sorrows of his hero from his own experiences. Mrs. Everett was loud in its praises; she was sure that it indicated genius, and she lay awake that night meditating an act of charity and of justice. She would make a free man of Paul, and he should find in far lands that equality which he could not obtain in his own. They would journey together. He should have means and advantages, and become her protege and heir. But the strong self-love defeated this resolve. If Paul were not bound to her by law, he might forsake her, and she could not bear to lose him, for he had become a part of her heart; but when she broached the matter, Paul gave his parole never to leave her without consent.

He was still a slave, with the taint of a trampled race in his blood, and he said nothing to Mrs. Everett of his origin. They crossed the seas; they dwelt in pleasant places, beneath soft skies; and Paul grew in knowledge. But his patron was still harassed by some deep remorse. She hurried him from city to city like the fabled apostate, and at length fell sick in London, on the eve of their return to America. Paul gleaned from her ravings in delirium the cause of her unrest. Wait had made known to her on the night of his decease the secret of the young man's origin, and had conjured her to do justice to the lad. Her self-love had deterred her in consummating this duty, and conscience had therefore tortured her. She was enabled to reach New York, where she left the preacher's son the bulk of her property, and received his gratitude and forgiveness before she died.

Paul was free—haunted no longer by premonitions of future suffering; and his first impulse was to return to the Eastern shore and discover his desolate parents. His recollections of them were imperfect. He preserved many trifling circumstances, though more important events were forgotten; but as he made his way to the old village his heart beat high. There were the negro quarters, the cornfields, the twisting fences, and, at last, the shady stone parsonage—recollections they seemed of objects beheld in a foggy dream. They directed him to the Methodist Church—a prim, square structure in the centre of the village—a tavern on one side, a court-house and market on the other; and when the sexton threw open a window, the bleared light fell upon a marble slab set in the wall:

"Near this spot lie the remains of REV. TITUS BATES, for two years Pastor of this Congregation, and of PEGGY, his Wife. 'They have ceased from their labors, and their works do follow them.'"

Paul's hopes fell. He walked through the village friendless, and, impelled by his swift-coming fancies, strolled far into the suburbs. A crowd was collected round a squalid negro cabin, and, less by interest than by instinct, he bent his steps toward it.

"What is the matter, friend?" he asked of a bystander.

"The boys hez scented kidnappers to this shanty," answered the man; "and by doggy! they going to trap 'em!"

The mob seemed to be fearfully incensed as Paul pushed close to the scene. There were said to be two of the man-stealers, both of whom had been very daring and successful. He heard their names called as Peter Gettis and Dave Goule, and the opinion was expressed that the first-named would not yield without a desperate struggle. The mob was hot and clamorous, and while a selected committee entered the den to search it, the rest brandished clubs and knives, and yelled for justice and blood. Word came at length that the kidnappers were concealed beneath the floor of the cabin; and at the hint, a score of stalwart fellows began to pull up the planks, while their associates formed a wide circle around, prepared to prevent escape.

Finally, the cry arose: "Here they air! This is them! Drag 'em out! Whoo-oop!"

The men within the cabin rushed through the doors and windows as if pursued, and a stalwart negro, with bloodshot eyes, almost naked, and flourishing a huge knife, staggered to the threshold, and glared fiercely round him.

The circle stood firm; some were clubbing their cudgels, others lifting their blades, and here and there along the line rang out the click of a pistol.

"Come, Pete," cried one of the ringleaders; "you're treed, Pete! Don't be a fool, but give yourself in."

The negro gnashed his teeth, and his wild eyes glared like coals of fire.

"Do you give me faih-play?" he bellowed, extending the knife.

"Yes, Pete, yes," answered the multitude.

"Then look heah," answered the wretch, drawing his knife across his throat. He staggered into the air like an ox, cursing as he came. They parted to avoid him, and as he reached a fence, a few rods from the cabin, he leaned upon it, and swaying to and fro, raised his horrible eyes to the sky.

Paul recognized his ancient captor with a thrill and a silent prayer. Vengeance had come in His own good time, and Paul felt no bitterness toward the poor fellow, but prayed forgiveness for his slipping soul.

The second offender burrowed so remotely that the mob could not drag him from his covert. They struck at him with knives, and hired dogs to creep beneath the logs and rend him, but in vain. At length one of the ringleaders obtained a torch, and the cabin was fired in several places. The flames spouted into the night, bursting from the small windows, and the roof fell in with a crash, scattering ashes and red-hot coals. They could hear the shriek of the victim now, and he was seen dancing among the fire-brands, for the blaze encircled him like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered together—the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands, and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the thunder of his executioners' huzzas.

Paul did not reveal himself. He left the village stealthily, and journeyed northward. Years afterwards a name was added to the tablet in the old church:

"Here lie also the Remains of the REV. PAUL BATES. 'He went about doing good.'"



THE JUDGE'S LAST TUNE.

The Judge took down his fiddle, And put his feet on the stove, And heaved a sigh from his middle That might have been fat, or love; He leaned his head on the mantel, And bent his ear to the strings, And the tender chords awakened The echoes of many things.

The Bar had enjoyed the measure, The Bench and Senate had been Amused at the simple pleasure He drew from his violin; But weary of power and duty, He had laid them down with a sigh, Exhausted of life the beauty, And he fiddled he knew not why.

In the days when passion budded, And she in the churchyard lain Came over his books as he studied With an exquisite pang of pain, He played to his sons their mother's Old favorites ere she wed; Those tunes, like hundreds of others, Were requiems of the dead.

They lay in the kirk's inclosure: All three, in the shadows dim, In a cenotaph's cynosure That waited for only him, Who sat with his fiddle tuning On the spot where his fame was won, On the empty world communing, Without a wife or a son.

And he drew his bow so plaintive And loud, like a human cry, That the light of the shutter darkened From somebody passing by. A young man peeped at the pensive Great man, so familiar known; His features, if inoffensive, Were like to the judge's own.

"Come in," cried the politician— "Come not," his soul would have said— "Thou bringest to me a vision Of a sin ere thy mother wed, When I, wild boy from college, Her humble desert o'ercame, And we hid the guilty knowledge Beneath thy father's name."

The youth delayed no longer, His sense of music strong, Nor knew of his mother's wronger, Nor that she had known a wrong; Deep in the grave the secret Her husband might never guess. He stood before his father With a loyal gentleness.

"What tune, fair boy, desirest My old friend's worthy son?— Say but what thou requirest, And for father's sake 'tis done." "Oh! Judge, our State's defender, Whose life has all been power, Play me the tune most tender, When thou felt thy greatest hour!"

The old man thought a minute, Irresolutely stirred, As if his fiddle's humor Changed like a mocking-bird; Then, as his tears came raining Upon the plaintive chords, He played the invitation To the sinner, of his Lord's.

"Come, poor and needy sinners, And weak and sick, and sore, The patient Jesus lingers To draw you through the door." It was a tune remembered From old revival nights, In crowded country churches, Where dimly blew the lights.

And boys grew superstitious To hear the mourners wail. The great man, self-degraded, So sighed his contrite tale In notes that failed for sobbing, To feel Heaven's sentence well, That took away his Isaac And blessed the Ishmael.

* * * * *

Low in the tomb of glory The old man's ashes lie— Unuttered this my story, Unwritten to human eye; And the young man, blessed and blessing, Walks over the shady town, The evil passions repressing, And his head bent humbly down.

Perhaps he marvels why treasure Of the judge to his credit is set, And an old revival measure Should have been the statesman's pet. But he hears the invitation, And sees the streaming eyes Of the old man lost to the nation, And forgiven beyond the skies.



DOMINION OVER THE FISH.

"A gift-book for Christmas. A poem preferred. Limited text, and profuse illustration." What should it be?

As if by invocation, the Ancient Mariner rose before me! He stood in the doorway of my office, and held me with his glittering eye. He lifted his skinny hand to his long gray beard, and then gravely tipped his oiled hat. "The reader for Spry, Stromboli, and Smith?"

I had that honor, and handed him a chair. He sat in it after the manner of a flounder, concentrated his eye upon me like a star-fish, and produced a roll of manuscript with the fluttering claws of a lobster. Then he stirred and squirmed, like an elderly eel, looking distrustfully into the vestibule. I closed the door and begged to be informed of his business.

"I have a great work for you," he said mysteriously, proffering his manuscript. As he leaned over to do this, I saw a shining something on the top of his head, but the thick white hair concealed it when he resumed his place. The manuscript smelled as if it had contained mackerel, and looked as if it had come from the bottom of the sea. I found, curiously enough, some fish-scales adhering to it, and its title very oddly confirmed these testimonies—"Five Years in the Great Deep."

I glanced at the author with some surprise. He was the quaintest of mariners, and if I had met him leagues under the sea, I should have thought him in his proper element. His locks were like dry sea-weed; his cheeks were so swollen that they might have contained gills, but this was probably tobacco. When he wiped his nose with a handkerchief like a scoop-net, some shells and pebbles fell from his pocket, and his ears flapped like a pair of ventrals. I remarked as he pursued the lost articles over the floor, that he wore a microscope strapped in a leathern case, and a geological hammer belted to his side. He walked as if habituated to swimming, and when he shrugged his shoulders I expected to see a dorsal fin burst out of the back of his jacket. He might have been sixty years of age, but looked much older, and behaved like a well-born person, though, superficially judged, he might have lived in Billingsgate.

"A good title for a fiction," I said encouragingly.

"I never penned a line of fiction in my life," exclaimed my visitor sternly.

Referring to the copy again, I saw that it purported to be the work of "Rudentia Jones, Fellow of the Palaeontologic Society, Entomologist to the Institute for Harmonizing the Universes, and Ruler of Subaqueous Creation, excepting the Finny Mammalia."

"Ah! I see," said I; "a capital title for a satire!"

"Life is too grave, and science too sacred," replied my visitor, "for the indulgence of idle banterings. The work is mine; I am its hero; and it is all true." He wore so earnest a face, and looked so directly and intelligently at me, that I forebore to smile. "I have travelled in strange countries," he said; "Nature has been bountiful in her revelations to me, indeed; my experiences have been so individual, that I sometimes discredit them myself. I do not complain that others ridicule them."

He spoke in the manner of one devoted to his species; and an easy dignity, which some trace to high birth and the consciousness of dominion, became him very naturally. The eldest of the admirals, or old Neptune himself, could not have seemed more kingly; but once or twice he started at a noise from the publishing-house, as if longing to get back to his legitimate brine. I told him to leave the manuscript in my hands for a fortnight, that I might form an opinion as to its claims for publication.

"No!" he said quickly. "It is not a girl's romance, or a boy's poem, or the strollings of a man-errant: it is of such rare value that gold cannot purchase it; it is so priceless that I cannot own it myself; it is like the air, or the water, or the light, or the magnet—the property of all the peoples. It must not leave my sight. I must read it to you now!"

He literally held me with his eye. He stood erect dilating, until he seemed to reach the height of a mainmast, as long and lank and brown as the subject of the veritable rime; and his ears, contracted, flapped like the pectorals of a flying-fish. It was uncertain whether he was going to fly or swim, or seize and shake me. I believed him to be either a lunatic or an apparition; but when the frenzy of the moment was over, he became a very harmless, kindly, and grave old gentleman, who begged my pardon for transgressing decorum in the enthusiasm for his "great work." He still smelled abominably of fish, but I could not take it into my heart to be harsh with this most pertinacious of authors.

I had been but a short time in the service of Spry, Stromboli & Smith, and my nerves had not yet been exercised by sensitive and eccentric writers. I had led a vagabond career myself, and had frequent reason, in my incipient literary days, to be grieved with publishers' "readers;" and when promoted to the same exalted place, I resolved to be charitable, careful, and obliging—to do as I would be done by—to crush no delicate Keats, to enrage no Johnson, by slight, prejudice, or deprecation. But to suffer the infliction of a crack-brained old naturalist, repeating an interminable manuscript in my own office, went beyond my best resolve! Still there was little to do. It would be a paltry task to select a poem for illustration, and had not this same Ancient Mariner suggested an admirable one?

"I can grant your request in part, Mr. Jones," I said at length; "you may read one hour; and if at the end of that period I do not think favorably of your article, you must promise to read no further."

The old gentleman gave his parole at once, took a pair of great green spectacles from a sea-grass case, and blowing his nose again, rained pebbles and marine shells over the whole office. When he took the manuscript from my hand, I saw the shining something distinctly on the top of his head; and when he sat back to read, he was a perfect copy of a dry old king-fish, looking through a pair of staring, glaring, green eyes. Without more ado, and in a rippling kind of voice, as of the rushing of deep water, the old naturalist read the following introduction to a most wonderful manuscript:

"At a very early period of my life I manifested an inclination for the study of the sciences. In my eighteenth year I submitted a theory of inter-stellar telegraphing to the Gymnotian Academy. It was my purpose to have placed the papers simultaneously before the scientific bodies of each of the seven planets in our constellation, but having no capital, the design failed, though I was complimented thereupon by the 'Institute for Harmonizing the Universes,' and elected a contributing member of that society. For several years I petitioned annually for outfit and transportation to Scilly Islands,[2] on the Ecliptic Circle, where I purposed to develop my scheme of transferring a portion of our globe to the system of Orion. In this I was opposed by the Palaeontologic Society, on the ground that some valuable fossils were presumed to be there; and Parliament, opining that my protests were subversive of the law of gravity, rejected them. A number of projects, each of which, I firmly believe, would have benefited my kind, and facilitated correspondence between all created beings, terminated unfortunately, and my relatives at length placed it out of my power to continue these philanthropic exertions. For some years I was denied the ear of man, and in the interval my hair grew gray and my body a trifle faint. But the lofty impulses of youth survived. My mind could not be imprisoned, and I held communication with the stars through the grating of my chamber in the still midnight. At last the relief came. I had long prayed for it! My deliverer was Sirius, the brightest of the celestial intelligences. He shone upon my window bars with an intense concentrated light, and they reddened and melted before daybreak. I fled to Glasgow in the month of April, 184-, and obtained a captain's clerkship on the whaler Crimson Dragon.

[Footnote 2: This group of Scilly Islands is in the South Pacific; not off Land's End.]

"We took in water at the Shetland Islands, and sailing north-westward, skirted the coast of Greenland, whence, cruising in a southerly direction, we lay off Labrador, and waited for our prey. Our crew was fifty men, all told. Our captain had been a whaler thirty-eight years, and had killed five hundred and six animals or eight more than the renowned Scoresby. We carried seven light-boats for actual service, and twenty-seven thousand feet, or more than five miles, of rope. Three men kept watch, day and night, in the 'crow's-nest,' at the maintop; but though we beat along the whole coast, through Davis' Strait, and among the mighty icebergs of Baffin's Bay, we saw no cetaceous creatures, save twice some floundering porpoises, and thrice a solitary grampus. With these beings I endeavored to open communication, but they made no intelligible responses. The stars also of this latitude failed to comprehend my signals, from which I concluded that they were less intelligent than those of more temperate skies. But with the animalcules of the sea I obtained most gratifying relations. A series of experiments with the infusoria satisfied me that they were not loath to an exchange of information, and finally they followed the ship by myriads, so that all the waves were full of fire, which the sailors remarked; and fearful of being observed, I ceased my experiments for a time.

"On the evening of the fifth Saturday of our cruise, I waited till the changing of the watch; then I stole noiselessly upon deck, and secreted myself behind a life-boat which hung at the side of the vessel. The helmsman was nodding silently upon his tiller; two seamen sat motionless upon the bow, and the lookout party in the crow's-nest talked mutteringly of our ill-luck as they scanned the horizon. The Northern Lights were pulsing like some great radiating heart, and the sea was alternately flame and shadow. The headlands of Labrador lay to the south—bare, boundless, precipitous; and to the east a glittering iceberg floated slowly towards us, like a palace of gold and emerald. The ship rolled calmly upon the long swells, the ripples plashing in low lulling monotone, and her hull and spars were reflected darkly beneath me. I drew a long gray hair from my temple, and subjected it to a gentle friction between my palm and finger; then I pricked my wrist, and leaning forward, placed it against my heart: five blood-drops—symbols of the five types of organized creation—fell simmering into the depths, and the scintillant hair, floating after them, described a true spiral. In an instant the Aurora grew bright to blindness; there was a rush of infinite stars, and a host of beautiful beings fluttered to the surface of the sea, within the shadow of the ship! A gull darted along the water, and in the far distance I heard the bellow of the huge Greenland whale. All animate nature had acknowledged my message; I had touched the nerve of the universes!

"'Blow me if there warn't a whale, Ben!' said one of the men in the maintop.

"'My eyes! but it wor like it,' replied the other.

"Fearful of being remarked, I slipped below, a second time disappointed, but with such exultant feelings that I tried in vain to sleep. The intimacy of species and their common language, lost in the degeneracy of the first human beings, were about to be restored by me. Confusion had overcome the counsels of the countless things which had talked and dwelt together in the past, but science was about to win back from sin the great secret of communication. I should translate the scream of eagles and the cooing of doves; I should hear the gossip of my household kittens, and speak familiarly with the mighty hippopotami. The serpent should teach me his traditions, and the multitude of mollusks should develop the mysteries of their sluggish vitality; nay, the plurality of worlds should be demonstrated, and with the combined intelligences of all the systems, we should wrest the mysteries of life, matter, and eternity from their Divine repository!

"I lay awake all night revelling in these anticipations, and at dawn was quite weak of body. It was now the Sabbath, and at nine o'clock all hands were summoned to the poop-deck for the customary worship. I lay upon a coil of rope, when the mate commenced to read the service, and a deep drowsiness came over me. The lesson was a part of the first chapter of Genesis—the weird history of creation. He had reached the twenty-eighth verse when I dropped asleep. It could have been only an instant's forgetfulness, for when I awoke he had not finished the reading of the same verse, but in that instant a vision had passed before me.

"A female of marvellous beauty rose from the water. I had seen the long green locks, the eyes of azure, and the glossy neck—it was Tethys, the queen of the sea-nymphs. She was begotten of humidity in the remote beginning, and seemed even now cloudy and incorporeal. Euripius, the divinity of whirlpools, lay in the waves at her feet, projecting a spectrum of spray, in an arch, above her head.

"'Man,' she said, or rather rippled, for it was like the even voice of waters, 'your love of nature, the boundlessness of your kindness, the daring of your speculation, the profoundness of your introspection, have made you one of us. Awake, and hear our decree!'

"She melted into vapor, and disappeared. I opened my eyes. The crew were grouped about the deck, the mate was reading the lesson, the words which I heard were: 'Have dominion over the fish!'

"'A fall! a fall!' was shouted from the maintop. The men on watch had discovered the long-expected prey.

"'Man the boats!' cried the captain; 'all hands be spry! Where away, look out?'

"'Sou'-west!' answered the crow's-nest, 'about two leagues. There must be hoceans of 'em! They 'eave like water-spouts, and, lor! how they lobtail!'

"The seven boats were arranged in curved shape, so as to form a semicircle around the animals; and the captain's, of which I took the helm, formed the left tip of the crescent. We pulled steadily for a half-hour over a smooth sea, and came at length so close to our victims that we could count them. Truly it was 'a fall'! A few cubs played recklessly around the surface; but there was an enormous bull, whose bulk was much greater than that of the ship's hull, which came once in full view, dived vertically, and beat the water with his terrible tail, making such billows that a storm seemed to be raging. The other animals swam in the froth and foam thus developed, now plunging to the far depths, now shooting their huge bodies into the air, and falling with a splash, as of the emptying of the ocean. The scene was so exciting that even my wonderful discoveries passed out of mind. Our oars dipped noiselessly; the crews were silent; the harpooners stood, each in the bow of his launch, with naked weapons extended, waiting to strike. The first opportunity occurred to the launch on our extreme right. At the distance of twenty yards the executioner hurled his javelin full into the back of the great bull; a roar ensued and a frightful leap. The other creatures repeated the agonized cry, and they swam southward with the velocity of a ship under full sail.

"'Now, lads, bend your oars!' shouted the captain through his trumpet. The entire length of rope unwound directly from the reel or 'bollard' of the first launch, and the line of a second boat was attached forthwith; a third and a fourth were annexed, but the whale exhibited no sign of exhaustion, and dragged his pursuers like the wind. A fifth and a sixth line spun out. The captain's cheek grew pale, and he opened his clasp-knife with a curse upon his lips. There remained the line of our boat alone: unless the monster stopped within ten minutes, we should lose every foot of the ship's cordage, and this last rope would have to be severed. Tremulously a seaman attached it; it was whirled out as if by a locomotive. The oars moved like light, but no human activity could approach that of our victim. He nearly swamped the launch, and the friction of the bollard threatened to set it ablaze.

"'What devil of the deep is this?' said the captain, bending forward with his blade. The sailors ceased with hot faces, and stared aghast. I seemed to hear calling voices; I grew faint and blind. The bollard snapped with a dead, dull sound; I was entangled in the stout twine, and tossed into the sea. Some oars were thrown overboard, that I might be buoyed up. Three of the launches were turned toward me, and the seamen called aloud that I should keep up courage. But the line pulled me downward; my heart ceased to beat; I beheld with indescribable terror the pale surface receding, and the dark shapes of the vessels above me were finally lost to view. I knew that at the first inhalation the brine would fill my mouth and lungs; I held my breath hard, and tried to pray. Down, down, down into the blue depths—a cycle of protracted years it seemed! My ears were stunned with strange noises; my lips parted, and at length the sea rushed into my throat; for an instant I seemed to strangle, but I did not perish.

"The fluid was mysteriously expelled from me. I breathed as freely of the water as a moment before I had breathed of the air! A weight was lifted from my brain, which had before been crushing it, and my temples grew suddenly cool. A spiracle had developed at the apex of my cranium, and I exuded water through a cavity or 'blow-hole' in the top of my head, like the cetacea around me!"

The naturalist here paused and ran his hand through his hair. The shining something among his gray locks revealed itself as a plate of silver, circular in shape, covering what had evidently been an opening in the skull. He looked less like a man than ever, and when, consulting a glutinous old chronometer, like a jellyfish, he found that his hour was passing, he begged so earnestly to be allowed to finish his "Introduction," that I gave him leave. A boy coming in with copy so frightened him, however, that I thought he was going to turn upon his stomach, and swim away through the window.

"I became sensible directly of three organic changes: my heels clave together, my feet flattened, and my toes turned out, like a caudal fin; my integument grew thick and hard, and my blood thin and chill. But these conditions being novel to me, and my fears only equalled by my wonder as yet, I was paralyzed, and continued to sink. I had descended about one hundred fathoms, and was experiencing a strange oppression, as of the forcing together of my bones, when I heard a sonorous voice close below me say! 'If you go any deeper, you will sustain a pressure of twenty atmospheres, and may not get back at all.'"

I looked beneath, and to my horror a huge whale was coming upward with extended jaws. His half-human eyes were turned benignantly upon me; but he was evidently in pain, and from a point in his back, where a broken harpoon still remained, gouts of blood curdled upward, coloring the water. His vocal power lay in his spiracle, and he said again:

"'I should have been asphyxiated in five minutes.'

"'Who is it that speaks?' I faltered. 'Leviathan, king of the sea, be merciful!'

"'I am called New England Tom by the creatures of the upper element,' answered the whale, 'although falsely thought to be of the family of the Spermaceti; but though my exploits have recommended me to my species, I am not equal to the high title you have given me. That is possessed by you and our sovereign Jonah only!'

"The conviction rushed upon me that I had, indeed, 'dominion over the fish'!

"'I have suffered this wound for your majesty's sake,' said the whale again; 'for I had been deputed to wait in this latitude for your arrival, and convey you to our sovereign. But though I am now in the third century of my age, I can survive a dozen such prickings, and if I chose could shiver the Crimson Dragon with a blow of my tail, as in 1804 I stove the Essex, and made driftwood of her spars.'

"In an instant I was seated within the mighty maw of this famous monster. His jaw-bones were forty feet in length; the roof of his mouth was fifteen feet high, and formed of a spacious arch of 'balleen,' or whale-bone. His crescent-shaped tail, thirty-five feet from tip to tip, swept the depths twice or thrice; and when we emerged into the air, the blood spouted from his pores, and he threw cataracts of water through his spiracle. I saw the Crimson Dragon some miles away, but there were no traces of her boats. The crews of the launches were fathoms deep in the ocean!

"I passed the cape of Greenland, rounded the base of Mount Hecla, and was escorted to the abode of the king of the cetacea by a multitude of his subjects. A submarine island, forty fathoms from the surface, had been occupied three thousand years by this venerable person. He came out to meet me upon the back of a mighty 'rorqual,' and a body-guard of four hundred picked narwhals swam before him. Fifty white whales surrounded their monarch, and a host of dolphins, grampuses, and porpoises brought up the rear. Banners of dyed seal-skin bore his arms—three gourds, argent, upon a field vert; and with these were carried as trophies the wrecks of ships, including the identical shallop whence he was expelled on the voyage to Tarshish. But, marvellous beyond all, the 'great fish' (falsely so translated, since no cetaceous creature can be denominated a fish) into which he was received still lived, and accompanied him. It was now the eldest of the species, but very sprightly, and burdened with dignities. The Seer-King saluted gravely, and gave me a draught of spirits, distilled from the fronds of a rare sea-tangle. His long tenure in the deep had obliterated much of the similitude to man, but his memory of terrestrial matters was extraordinary. The weeds were wrapped about his head after the manner of a crown, and he carried a sceptre of walrus tusk. He told me that his original three days' experience under the sea had so cooled his blood, that the suns of Nineveh parched him, and he had cried for cooling water. I informed him that Nineveh no longer existed, at which he was gratified beyond measure; for his only knowledge of events happening on the earth had been derived from the wrecks which had sunk into his domain. I found that he was badly informed upon matters of science, and he heard my theories of harmonizing the universes with impatience. In his days, he said, no such ideas were broached, and he was indifferent to the intellectual development of his subjects.

"My visit was brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral grandeur about it—a mighty cavern beneath the waves—yet the glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ready to depart.

"An escort of 'thrashers,' or grampuses, accompanied me. The Seer-King would have detached a cohort of white whales, but the animosity of my tribes might have provoked combat. I left the cetacea with some foreboding. They were allied in some degree to man; they were capable of some human impressions; their blood was warm like mine; they breathed with lungs; they had double hearts; and nourished kindness for their offspring. But I was now about to be delivered over to the cold, cruel, gluttonous tribes of the fish. The family of sharks received me. They could not be counted for multitude. The terrible requiem of the storm—the cannibal white shark—welcomed me with open jaws; the blue shark flung up his caudal for joy; the fox-shark lashed the sea; the northern shark glared through his purblind orbs; the hammer-head dilated his yellow irides; the purple dog-fish made a low purring huzza; and the spotted eyes of the monk-fish glistened with satisfaction. The hound-shark, the basking-shark, and the port-beagle were not less loyal; and these, the most perfectly organized of my cartilaginous tribes, handed me over to the deep-swimming Norwegian 'sea-rat.' Thus I kept steadily southward, the water growing warmer hour by hour, now riding on the serrated snouts of saw-fishes, now moving in the midst of battalions of sword-fish, now acknowledged by the great pike, now vaulting above the surface on the backs of flying-fish, now clinging to the spines of sturgeons, now passing through illimitable shoals of cod, now borne by the swift sea-salmon, now dazzled by the golden scales of the carp, now passing over miles of flat-fish, now hailed by monster conger-eels, now swimming down files of leering hippocampuses, now received by congregations of staid aldermanic lobsters. The torpedo telegraphed my coming to the tribes before, and at last I reached my abode, on the line of the equator, in mid-Atlantic.

"The magnitude and beauty of my court no mind can realize. A truncated cone of granitic rock, whose base extended to the profoundest depths of the sea—even to the region of perpetual fire—formed with its upper plane a circular lagoon at the surface of the ocean. Geysers or volcanoes of fresh water gurgled up through the centre of this palace, and vast submarine groves, intermixed with meadows, extended for leagues along its sides. My household consisted entirely of silver and golden carp, but my guards were of the loyal and gentle, yet courageous and powerful xiphias (sword-fish). These barred the unlicensed ingress of my subjects, and if the adventurous foot of man should profane my lagoon, I could close its inlet and cover it with floods. The dim aisles of the waters were full of wonderful lights: combinations of colors, unknown above, were here developed in gigantic fuci, around whose boles the scarlet tangle climbed, and parasites of purple and emerald played upon their rinds. Some of these forests pointed upward toward the sun; some grew downward, deriving light and heat from the incandescent gulfs. My state apartments were built of coral, in wondrous architecture, and trumpet-weed clothed their battlements. Some cavernous recesses were lit with constellations of shining zoophytes, and there were floors of pearl, studded with diamonds. I could stroll through marvellous arch-ways, gathering jewels at every step, or wander in my royal meadows, among the wrecks and spoils of hurricanes; or rising through the mellow depths, sit among the palms of the lagoon, watching the white sails of ships or studying the awfulness of the storm.

"For a time I secluded myself, theorizing upon the policy of my government. My dominions were vast and venerable; they comprehended two thirds of the surface of the globe; no deluges had destroyed them, and they had been peopled ages before the coming of man. Life here inhabited forms, vegetable and animal, to which the greatest terrestrials were puny. But the darkness which of old rested on the face of the deep, now shadowed its depths. There was no mind here. These gigantic beings were shapes without souls. How should I reason with creatures who could not feel, whose heads could not know till to-morrow that their members had been severed to-day—some of whom, in a single moment, passed their whole existences, and fulfilled all the functions of eating, drinking, and generating—who were not only incapable of thoughts, affections, and emotions, but who could not see, smell, hear, taste, or touch? But such subjects are among the afflictions of all wise rulers, and I resolved to conclude upon nothing till I had visited every part of my dominions.