To say that the first person is weary but vindicates the sagacity of our father, who steals down to our side and whispers, "You may go out, Fred, if you are tired." But curiosity compels us to remain after the congregation is dismissed, that we may hear the class-meeting experiences.

Those solemn corollaries to the service thrill me with their recollection even now. The almost empty church echoing the sobs of the weary, and heart-bruised, and spirit-broken; the pinched, hard faces of the older people telling their bitter trials in bereavement, misappreciation, and poverty. But bursting through all, that unconquerable enthusiasm which lends to the face more than the glow of intelligence, and to the heart more than the recompense of riches; the timid utterance of the younger converts, outlining the rebellious instincts of their tempted bodies, and their need of more faith, grace, and help divine. While these speak in order, the bald-headed chorister interpolates appropriate snatches of psalms, and the preacher cries, "Patience, my brother! All will be well! Hope on, hope ever!"

At last the impatient negroes in the gallery have their opportunity, and roll down thunders of exuberant piety, which, by their natural, almost inspired eloquence, pathos, and vehemence, stir even their masters to ejaculations of praise.

How must such spiritually social reunions cheer the long, hard lives of these poor, remote believers! He was a profound statesman who, projecting a gospel for the lowly, devised the class-meeting as an outlet for their suppressed emotions, sympathies, and sorrows.

However, it is all over, and there is quite a dispute after the "class" as to who shall have the pastor's company to dinner. It is a piece of fine diplomacy to determine this. Policy dictates the most influential; feeling, the most reverend and poor. But the interest of the church is paramount; a compliment or a promise appeases the vanity of the humbler, and we follow the double team of the great landholder, Tibbet, and are soon sitting before his roaring fire.

Itinerants are notoriously big eaters. Our father keeps a weather eye on the provender as it is brought in smoking, and it being soon apparent that the dinner is to be orthodox, if not apostolic, his social attributes improve wonderfully. He breaks out in little spurts of anecdote, not entirely secular, nor yet too didactic to be jovial. They run upon young Brother Bolt, who once, after an unusual happy "revival" night, to show his great faith, tried to leap over a creek and doused himself to the ears; upon the great controversialist, Whanger, who, being invited to preach in a "High Church" pulpit, improved the occasion to trace apostolic succession as far back as Pope Joan; upon the first intelligent contraband of his kind, whose mistress affirmed that if one's ill deeds were numerically greater than his good ones he would be—jammed, and if the contrary, saved, and who responded, "Spose'n dey boff de same, missus?"

These are told with inimitable spirit and mimicry, as want of clerical wit is a direct impeachment of the validity of one's "call" to preach; and when the table is filled, and with outstretched hands the blessing said, our father gets a universal compliment for his carving. There is roast turkey, with rich stuffing, bright cranberry sauce, and savory pies of pumpkin, mince, and persimmon, cider to wash down the mealy ripeness of the sweet potato, and at the end transparent quinces drowned in velvet cream. How glibly goes the time! We play with a young miss, who shows us her library, in which, we are sorry to say, a book about pirates deeply absorbs us. But at last the sulky comes to the door; we say good-by with touched full hearts, and pass hummingly to appointment No. 2.

This is "Sand Hill," perhaps, or "Mumpson Town," or "Ebenezer," or "Dry Pond;" and when we have mustered again in the afternoon, and in the evening for the third time, turn Sal's head toward the parsonage, and sail along in the night, cold and worn, past fields of stubble, over which the wind sweeps, past negro cabins, watching like human things upon us, through dreary woods where the tall pines rock against the stars and the clouds sail whitely by like witches going to a rendezvous, past cheerful homes, gleaming light and rest and worldly competence, the owners whereof have heard no deep command to carry the gospel into wildernesses, or hearing disobeyed. And all the while our father sings softly to himself, looking now and then at us who are his cross, and again into the shining constellations which hide his crown.

But we "preacher's sons," by which name we are universally distinguished, have our own crosses as well. It is generally agreed that much ought to be expected of us and little obtained. Let one of us play truant from school, or use a naughty word in play, or make marbles a source of revenue, or fight on the common when provoked, or steal a cherry, and the fact travels our town over like a telegram. We once suffer greatly in repute by selling our neighbor's old iron and brass to an itinerant pedler, and are alleged to have run up a debit account of one dime with an old negro who sells spruce beer and "horse cakes"—whereafter we fail.

The church people, much to our dissatisfaction, present us with castaway coats and boots, which we are made to wear, and once or twice, when we encounter Margot in this shape, we burst into tears and run home to hide our wounded vanity in the stable loft. There, in the "mow," while we devise bitter and futile conspiracies against society, the mare, munching her fodder, looks up at us with patient eyes, as if to say: "Am I not also mortified for the faith?" But we are cut to the heart to think that Margot may contrast us with better-dressed boys, and therefore think us of little spirit, learning, and courage. It is for you, pretty coquette, that we carry many scandals and scars! We do not quite love you, Margot; but we are foolishly vain and sensitive, and your eyes are very beautiful!

Still we are acknowledged at school to be "smart." All preacher's sons are so by common concession, and though we may not visit the circus, like others, we get abundance of free tickets for concerts, panoramas, and glass-blowers. Once, indeed, the great Chippewa chief, Haw-waw-many-squaw, having thrown the town into consternation by placards of himself scalping his enemies and smoking their tobacco, makes a triumphal entry into the main street at full gallop, and pitching his tent before the court-house, walks into the parsonage—war plumes, moccasins, and all—gives us complimentary seats, and eats the better half of our dinner. This incident is a source of pride to ourself beyond any thing experienced by any urchin besides. We boast of it frequently, and, being disliked therefor, commit several impromptu scalpings on our own account.

Vagabonds unnumbered beg our hospitality, and get it. Some of these it would be difficult to determine, either as to profession or destination. Many of them are systematic pensioners upon the preacher, and plead devotion to our denomination as a means of gaining our hearts. They have the gossip of the "Conference" at their tongues' ends, and lead our family devotion with the grace and hypocrisy of Belial.

The weddings that we hold are frequent and various. Runaway couples come to us, blushing and short-winded, satisfy us of their lawful age, are united, and pass into the moon, leaving a five-dollar bill behind them. We cannot quite find it in our hearts, even at this late day, to forgive those numerous candidates for felicity who hold the par value of a wedding ceremony to be no more than two dollars. Yet, though we grieve to admit it, two dollars is the average fee. At one time the negro population, anxious to be wived by a white preacher, makes inroads upon us en masse to the detriment of decorum and our carpets. We summarily shut down upon this business when we find that their fees come to but half a dollar a pair.

However, the year drifts by, and we are greatly concerned to know if it is the sentiment of Swan Neck that we shall continue its pastor another year. Old Yeasty, Margot's father, as we are aware, feels himself slighted because we do not call upon him of Sundays to make the closing prayers; for Yeasty's prayer is a sermon under another name, and runs the morning into twilight; but a sly compliment that we pay him in a diplomatic sermon at the end of the conference year brings him round all right, and back we go to Swan Neck.

So with burying the dead and writing their obituaries; making the babes pure with that holy sprinkling which gives them, dying early, to a Christian immortality; launching our thunders upon the bold, softening the hearts of the errant, mingling with our unbending creed the more pliable ethics of worldly graces, and, in a word, walking like Saint John on the savage border of civilization, to thrill the brutal and unlettered with the tidings of one just day to come—our itinerant lives drift on till the marble slab in the meeting-house wall writes the itinerant's only human memorial.

We have dreamed our last. Burst from the narrow chrysalis which we would gladly rebuild again, the seething, churning sea is before us and around us; we only catch, like the strains of bells through the fog, the hum of hymns, the drowsy murmur of the buzzing Sabbath-school, and the nasal ring of the itinerant's summer sermon. Margot is married to Chough, our whilom colleague, and makes her migration in his Bedouin train, and does not know how once she thrilled us. The tuning-fork is rusty, and the chorister in his coffin may hear, if he can, his successor stirring the birds in the roof with his sonorous melody. All are at rest, and we live on—moving, moving, moving—so deeply fastened into our natures are our early instincts; but every night we say the same parsonage prayer, and every morning look upon the wall where hangs the grave, grim features we revere—the Itinerant Preacher.



CHESTER RIVER.

Wise is the wild duck winging straight to thee, River of summer! from the cold Arctic sea, Coming, like his fathers for centuries, to seek The sweet, salt pastures of the far Chesapeake.

Soft 'twixt thy capes like sunset's purple coves, Shallow the channel glides through silent oyster groves, Round Kent's ancient isle, and by beaches brown, Cleaving the fruity farms to slumb'rous Chestertown.

Long ere the great bay bore the Baltimores, Yielded thy virgin tide to Virginian oars; Elsewhere the word went, "Multiply! increase!" Long ago thy destinies were perfect as thy peace.

Still, like thy water-fowl, dearly do I yearn, In memory's migration once more to return, Where the dull old college from the gentle ridge, O'erlooks the sunny village, the river, and the bridge.

On the pier decrepit I do loiter yet, With my crafty crab-lines and my homespun net, Till the silver fishes in pools of twilight swam, And stars played round my bait in the coves of calm.

Sweet were the chinquapins growing by thy brink, Sweet the cool spring-water in the gourd to drink, Beautiful the lilies when the tide declined, As if night receding had left some stars behind.

But when the peach tints vanished from the plain, Or struggled no longer the shad against the seine, Every reed in thy march into music stirred, And to gold it blossomed in a singing bird.

Eden of water-fowl! clinging to thy dells Ages of mollusks have yielded their shells, While, like the exquisite spirits they shed, Ride the white swans in the surface o'erhead.

Silent the otter, stealing by thy moon, Through the fluttered heron, hears the cry of the loon; Motionless the setter in thy dawnlight gray Shows the happy hidden cove where the wild duck play.

Homely are thy boatmen, venturing no more In their dusky pungies than to Baltimore, Happy when the freshet from northern mountains sweeps, And strews the bay with lumber like wrecks upon the deeps.

Not for thy homesteads of a former space, Not for thy folk of supposititious race; Something I love thee, river, for thy rest, More for my childhood buried in thy breast.

From the mightier empire of the solid land, A pilgrim infrequent I seek thy fertile strand, And with a calm affection would wish my grave to be Where falls the Chester to the bay, the bay unto the sea.



OLD WASHINGTON ALMSHOUSE.

A stranger in Washington, looking down the wide outer avenue named "Massachusetts," which goes bowling from knoll to knoll and disappears in the unknown hills of the east, has no notion that it leads anywhere, and gives up the conundrum. On the contrary, it points straight to the Washington Asylum, better known as the District Poor-House, an institution to become hereafter conspicuous to every tourist who shall prefer the Baltimore and Potomac to the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad; for the new line crosses the Eastern Branch by a pile-bridge nearly in the rear of the poor-house, and let us hope that when the whistle, like

"the pibroch's music, thrills To the heart of those lone hills,"

the dreary banks and bluffs of the Eastern Branch will show more frequent signs of habitation and visitation.

To visit the poor-house one must have a "permit" from the mayor, physician, or a poor commissioner. Provided with this, he will follow out Pennsylvania Avenue over Capitol Hill, until nearly at the brink of the Anacostia or Eastern Branch, when by the oblique avenue called "Georgia" he will pass to his right the Congressional burying-ground, and arriving at the powder magazine in front, draw up at the almshouse gate, a mile and a quarter from the palace of Congress.

It is a smart brick building, four stories high, with green trimmings, standing on the last promontory of some grassy commons beloved of geese and billygoats. The short, black cedars, which appear to be a species of vegetable crape, give a stubby look of grief to the region round the poor-house, and, thickest at the Congressional Cemetery, screen from the paupers the view of the city. Across the plains, once made populous by army hospitals, few objects move except funeral processions, creeping toward the graveyard or receding at a merry gait, and occasional pensioners, out on leave, coming home dutifully to their bed of charity. The report of some sportsman's gun, where he is rowing in the marshes of the gray river, sometimes raises echoes in the high hills and ravines of the other shore, where, many years ago, the rifles of Graves and Cilley were heard by every partisan in the land. Now the tall forts, raised in the war, are silent and deserted; the few villas and farm-houses look from their background of pine upon the smart edifice on the city shore, and its circle of hospitals nearer the water, and its small-pox hospital a little removed, and upon the dead-house and the Potter's Field at the river brink. We all know the melancholy landscape of a poor-house.

The Potter's Field preceded the poor-house on this site by many years. The almshouse was formerly erected on M Street, between Sixth and Seventh, and, being removed here, it burned to the ground in the month of March, fourteen years ago, when the present brick structure was raised. The entire premises, of which the main part is the almshouse garden, occupy less than fifty acres, and the number of inmates is less than two hundred, the females preponderating in the proportion of three to one. Under the same roof are the almshouse and the work-house, the inmates of the former being styled "Infirmants," and of the latter "Penitents." The government of the institution is vested in three commissioners, to whom is responsible the intendent, Mr. Joseph F. Hodgson, a very cheerful and practical-looking "Bumble."

Every Wednesday the three commissioners meet at this almshouse and receive the weekly reports of the intendent, physician, and gardener. Once every year these officers, and the matron, wagoner, and baker are elected. Sixteen ounces of bread and eight ounces of beef are the ration of the district pauper. The turnkey, gate-keeper, chief watchmen, and chief nurses, are selected from the inmates. The gates are closed at sunset, and the lights go out at eight P.M. all winter. The inmates wear a uniform, labelled in large letters "Work-house," or "Washington Asylum."

The poor-house is an institution coeval with the capital. We are told that while crabbed old Davy Burns, the owner of the most valuable part of the site of Washington City, was haggling with General Washington over his proportion of lots, his neglected and intemperate brother, Tommy, was an inmate of the poor-house.

Thus, while the Romulus of the place married his daughter to a Congressman, and was buried in a "mausoleum" on H Street, Remus died without the walls and mingled his ashes, perhaps, with paupers.

The vaunted metropolis of the republican hopes of mankind—for such was Washington, the fabulous city, advertised and praised in every capital of Western Europe—drew to its site artists, adventurers, and speculators from all lands. From Thomas Law, a secretary of Warren Hastings, who wasted the earnings of India on enterprises here, to a Frenchman who died on the guillotine for practising with an infernal machine upon the life of Napoleon Bonaparte, the long train of pilgrims came and saw and despaired, and many of them, perhaps, lie in the Potter's Field. Old books and newspapers, chary on such personal questions, contain occasional references as to some sculptor's suicide, or to the straits of this or that French officer, a claimant about Congress; and we know that Major L'Enfant, who conceived the plan of the place, sought refuge with a pitying friend and died here penniless. The long war of twenty years in Europe brought to America thousands in search of safety and rest, and to these the magnetism of the word "capital" was often the song of the siren wiling them to the poor-house. By the time Europe had wearied of the sword, the fatality attending high living, large slave-tilled estates, the love of official society, and the defective education of the young men of tide-water Virginia and Maryland, produced a new class of native-born errants and broken profligates at Washington, and many a life whose memories began with a coach-and-four and a park of deer ended them between the coverlets of a poor-house bed. The old times were, after all, very hollow times! We are fond of reading about the hospitality of the Madisonian age, but could so many have accepted it if all were prosperous?

In our time, work being the fate and the redemption of us all, the District Almshouse contains few government employes. Now and then, as Mr. Hodgson told us, some clerk, spent with sickness or exhausted by evil indulgences, takes the inevitable road across the vacant plains and eats his pauper ration in silence or in resignation; but the age is better, not, perhaps, because the heart of man is changed, but in that society is organized upon truer principles of honor, of manfulness, and of labor. The class of well-bred young men who are ashamed to admit that they must earn their living, and who affect the company of gamesters and chicken-fighters, has some remnants left among us, but they find no aliment in the public sentiment, and hear no response in the public tone. Duelling is over; visiting one's relatives as a profession is done; thrift is no more a reproach, and even the reputation of being a miser is rather complimentary to a man. The worst chapters of humanity in America are those narrating the indigence of the old agricultural families on the streams of the Chesapeake; the quarterly sale of a slave to supply the demands of a false understanding of generosity; the inhuman revelling of one's friends upon the last possessions of his family, holding it to be a jest to precipitate his ruin; the wild orgies held on the glebe of some old parish church, horses hitched to the gravestones, and punch mixed in the baptismal font; and at the last, delirium, impotence, decay! Let those who would understand it read Bishop Meade, or descend the Potomac and Rappahannock, even at this day, and cross certain thresholds.

The Washington poor-house seems to be well-arranged, except in one respect: under the same roof, divided only by a partition and a corridor, the vicious are lodged for punishment and the unfortunate for refuge.

We passed through a part of the building where, among old, toothless women, semi-imbecile girls—the relicts of error, the heirs of affliction—three babies of one mother were in charge of a strong, rosy Irish nurse. Two of them, twins, were in her lap, and a third upon the floor halloaing for joy. Such noble specimens of childhood we had never seen; heads like Caesar's, eyes bright as the depths of wells into which one laughs and receives his laughter back, and the complexions and carriage of high birth. The woman was suckling them all, and all crowed alternately, so that they made the bare floors and walls light up as with pictures. A few yards off, though out of hearing, were the thick forms of criminals, drunkards, wantons, and vagrants, seen through the iron bars of their wicket, raising the croon and song of an idle din, drumming on the floor, or moving to and fro restlessly. Beneath this part of the almshouse were cells where bad cases were locked up. The association of the poor and the wicked affected us painfully.

Strolling into the syphilitic wards, where, in the awful contemplation of their daily, piecemeal decay, the silent victims were stretched all day upon their cots; among the idiotic and the crazed; into the apartments of the aged poor, seeing, let us hope, blessed visions of life beyond these shambles; and drinking in, as we walked, the solemn but needful lesson of our own possibilities and the mutations of our nature, we stood at last among the graves of the almshouse dead—those who have escaped the dissecting-knife. Scattered about, with little stones and mounds here and there, under the occasional sullen green of cedars, a dead-cart and a spade sticking up as symbols, and the neglected river, deserted as the Styx, plashing against the low banks, we felt the sobering melancholy of the spot and made the prayer of "Give me neither poverty nor riches!"

1871.



OLD ST. MARY'S.

This is the river. Like Southampton water It enters broadly in the woody lands, As if to break a continent asunder, And sudden ceasing, lo! the city stands: St. Mary's—stretching forth its yellow hands Of beach, beneath the bluff where it commands In vision only; for the fields are green Above the pilgrims. Pleasant is the place; No ruin mars its immemorial face. As young as in virginity renewed, Its widow's sorrows gone without a trace, And tempting man to woo its solitude.

The river loves it, and embraces still Its comely form with two small arms of bay, Whereon, of old, the Calvert's pinnace lay, The Dove—dear bird!—the olive in its bill, That to the Ark returned from every gale And found a haven by this sheltering hill.[4]

Lo! all composed, the soft horizons lie Afloat upon the blueness of the coves, And sometimes in the mirage does the sky Seem to continue the dependent groves, And draw in the canoe that careless roves Among the stars repeated round the bow. Far off the larger sails go down the world, For nothing worldly sees St. Mary's now; The ancient windmills all their sails have furled, The standards of the Lords of Baltimore, And they, the Lords, have passed to their repose; And nothing sounds upon the pebbly shore Except thy hidden bell, Saint Inigo's.

[Footnote 4: The Catholic settlers of Maryland had a ship called The Ark, and a pinnace called The Dove.]

There in a wood the Jesuits' chapel stands Amongst the gravestones, in secluded calm. But, Sabbath days, the censer's healing balm, The Crucified with His extended hands, And music of the masses, draw the fold Back to His worship, as in days of old.

Upon a cape the priest's house northward blinks, To see St. Mary's Seminary guard The dead that sleep within the parish yard, In English faith—the parish church that links The present with the perished, for its walls Are of the clay that was the capital's, When halberdiers and musketeers kept ward, And armor sounded in the oaken halls.

A fruity smell is in the school-house lane; The clover bees are sick with evening heats; A few old houses from the window pane Fling back the flame of sunset, and there beats The throb of oars from basking oyster fleets, And clangorous music of the oyster tongs, Plunged down in deep bivalvulous retreats, And sound of seine drawn home with negro songs.

Night falls as heavily in such a clime As tired childhood after all day's play, Waiting for mother who has passed away, And some old nurse, with iterated rhyme Of hymns or topics of the olden time, Lulls wonder with her tenderness to rest: So, old St. Mary's! at the close of day, Sing thou to me, a truant, on thy breast.

THE END