One or two of the good old ladies, with a sad misconception of the force that was in him, and of the divine aid which seemed vouchsafed to him during the service, came to him, as he passed out, to give him greeting and a word of condolence. For that time only he passed them by, as if they had been wooden images. His spirit had been strained to its uttermost, and would bear no more. He made his way home with an ungainly, swift gait,—home to the dear bedside,—down upon his knees,—struggling with his weakness,—praying.

At the tea-hour Esther knocked; but in vain. An hour after, his boy came,—came at the old woman's suggestion, (who had now the care of him,) and knelt by his side.

"Reuben,—my boy!"

"She's in heaven, isn't she, father?"

"God only knows, my son. He hath mercy on whom He will have mercy."

Small as he was, the boy flushed at this:—

"I think it's a bad God, if she isn't in heaven.'

"Nay, Reuben, little one, blaspheme not: His ways are not as our ways. Kiss her now, and we will sit down to our supper."

And so they passed out together to their lonely repast. It had been a cheerful meal in days gone, this Sunday's supper. For the dinner, owing to the scruples of the parson, was but a cold lunch always; and in the excited state in which the preacher found himself between services, there was little of speech; even Reuben's prattle, if he ventured upon it, caught a quick "Hist!" from the mamma. But with the return of Esther from the afternoon Bible-class, there was a big fire lighted in the kitchen, and some warm dishes served, such as diffused an appetizing odor through the house. The clergyman, too, wore an air of relief, having preached his two sermons, and showing a capital appetite, like most men who have acquitted themselves of a fatiguing duty. Besides which, the parson guarded that old New England custom of beginning his Sabbath at sundown on Saturday,—so that, by the time the supper of Sunday was fairly over, Reuben could be counting it no sin, if he should steal a run into the orchard. Nay, it is quite probable that the poor little woman who was dead had always welcomed cheerily the opened door of Sunday evening, and the relaxing gravity, as night fell, of her husband's starched look.

What wonder, if she had loved, even as much as the congregational singing, the music of the birds at the dusk of a summer's day? It was hard measure which many of the old divines meted out, in excluding from their ideas of worship all alliance with the charms of Nature, or indeed with any beauties save those which were purely spiritual. It is certain that the poor woman had enjoyed immensely those Sabbath-evening strolls through the garden and orchard, hand in hand with Reuben and the minister,—with such keen and exhilarating sense of God's goodness, of trust in Him, of hope, as was not invariably wakened by the sermons of her Benjamin.

On the evening of which we speak, the father and son walked down the orchard alone. The birds sang their merriest as day closed in; and as they turned upon their walk, and the good man saw through the vista of garden and orchard a bright light flitting across an upper window of his house, the mad hope flashed upon him for an instant (such baseless fancies will sometimes possess the calmest minds) that she had waked,—his Rachel,—and was there to meet him. The next moment the light and the hope were gone. His fingers gave such a convulsive grip upon the hand of his little boy that Reuben cried out with pain, "Papa, papa, you hurt me!"

The parson bent down and kissed him.



ANCIENT MINING ON THE SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR.

In the month of March, 1848, Samuel O. Knapp and J.B. Townsend discovered, from tracks in the snow, that a hedgehog had taken up his winter-quarters in a cavity of a ledge of rocks, about twelve miles from Ontonagon, Lake Superior, in the neighborhood of the Minnesota Copper Mine. In order to capture their game, they procured a pick and shovel, and commenced an excavation by removing the vegetable mould and rubbish that had accumulated about the mouth of what proved to be a small cavern in the rock. At the depth of a few feet they discovered numerous stone hammers or mauls; and they saw that the cavern was not a natural one, but had been worked out by human agency, and that the stone implements, found in great profusion in and about it, were the tools used in making the excavation. Further examination developed a well-defined vein of native copper running through the rock; and it was evidently with a view of getting this metal that this extensive opening had been made.

This was the first instance where "ancient diggings"—as they are familiarly called in the Lake Superior region—were ever recognized as such; and this artificial cavern presents the most conclusive proofs that a people in the remote past worked those mines. Upon the discovery of this mine, attention was at once directed to numerous other cavities and depressions in the surface of the earth at this and other points, and the result was that nearly a hundred ancient pits were found, and in all of them mining-tools of various kinds. These ancient mines or pits are not restricted to one locality, but extend over the entire length of the copper region, from the eastern extremity of Keweenaw Point to the Porcupine Mountains, a distance of nearly one hundred miles.

In some of the ancient diggings, the stone hammers have the marks of hard usage, fractured or battered faces, and a large proportion of them are broken and unfit for use; but in other pits the hammers are all sound, and many of them have the appearance of never having been used. These hammers, or mauls, which are of various sizes, and not uniform in shape, are water-worn stones, of great hardness, similar in all respects to those that are found in abundance on the shore of the Lake, or in the gravel-banks of that region. They are generally trap-rock, embracing the varieties of gray, porphyritic, hornblendic, sienitic, and amygdaloidal trap, and appear to have had no labor expended upon them except the chiselling of a groove around the middle for the purpose of attaching a withe to serve as a handle. In a few instances, I have noticed small hammers, usually egg-shaped, without a groove; and the battered or worn appearance at one end was all that induced the belief that they were ever used for hammering.

These hammers are usually from six to eight inches in length, and from eight to twelve inches in circumference, and weigh from four to eight pounds; but I have measured specimens that were twenty-four inches in circumference at the groove, and would weigh thirty pounds. It seems hardly probable that one man could wield so ponderous a tool; and from the fact that some of the large mauls have two grooves around them, it is presumed that two men were employed in using them.

Stone hammers are found in all the ancient diggings, and in some instances the number is almost incredible. From the pits near the Minnesota mines it is estimated that ten cart-loads have been removed; I was informed that a well there was entirely stoned up with them, and from the great number still remaining I am inclined to believe the report. A still greater number are said to have been found at the Mesnard and Pontiac Mines, in the Portage Lake district. Farther east, in the vicinity of the Cliff and Central Mines, they are also abundant; and it would seem, from the circumstance of their being invariably found in the pits, that the law among the ancient miners was similar to the one adopted by the adventurers in California a few years since, who established their claims by leaving their tools upon the land or in the pits where they were digging for gold.

In addition to the stone implements, copper chisels, wedges, or "gads," are often found in the abandoned mines; and in the vicinity, as well as in places more remote, other copper relics are found, consisting of knives, spear-points, and rings, like the bracelets of the present day. In a collection at the Douglas House, in Houghton, Portage Lake, are ornaments of this kind, and also some spear-heads, nicely wrought and similar in shape and size to the blade of a spontoon. But I have never seen a copper relic that had the appearance of having been melted. They invariably appear to have been cut and hammered into shape from a mass of native copper.

Colonel Charles Whittlesey, of Cleveland, Ohio, who has examined these "ancient diggings," has several interesting relics, some of which he has figured and described in the thirteenth volume of the "Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge." In the Vermont State Cabinet is a spear-head of native copper, about six inches long, which was found in Williston, Vermont, in 1843.

It may be proper here to remark, that the copper in these relics is tougher than that which has been fused, and so is the native copper of Lake Superior; and occasionally in these copper relics blotches and grains of native silver are found. These circumstances serve to establish the fact, that the material of which the implements were made was obtained at Lake Superior; for there, and nowhere else in America, is native silver found in grains, and sometimes in considerable masses, imbedded in a matrix of native copper. I well remember, when a boy, reading an article relating to the "Lost Arts," in which the fact was stated, that a piece of metal consisting of pure copper and silver had been found in Hamilton County, Ohio, and that a copper knife had been found in one of the ancient mounds at Marietta, which had distinct blotches of pure silver in it. The writer of the article claimed that the people who manufactured that knife were in the possession of an art, now lost, by which copper and silver could be melted and indiscriminately mixed, but upon cooling would separate and remain distinct and pure, instead of forming an alloy. The discovery of native copper and silver similarly associated in the Lake Superior mines has not only destroyed this theory, but has established beyond a doubt the locality whence that copper knife, and other relics found in the ancient mounds and elsewhere, were obtained.

Billets of wood that bear the marks of a tolerably sharp-cutting tool are often found in the old mines where water has been suffered to remain since their abandonment. In the Waterbury Mine wooden shovels were found about three and one half feet long, some of which were much worn upon the blade, and appeared as though they had been used for scraping together and throwing out the refuse rock and dirt from the mine.[A] At the same locality a wooden bowl was found, the side being so worn as to show conclusively that it had been used for baling water from the mine. Similar implements have been found at the mines in the Portage Lake and Ontonagon districts. When first found, these wooden implements appear sound, and being thoroughly saturated with water are heavy and can be handled without breaking; but when dried they often crack and warp so as to retain little of their original form and appearance. It is to be regretted that but few of these wooden relics were saved and properly preserved by those who found them. In a few instances the wooden withe or handle has been found attached to the hammers, but upon being dried they usually fall to pieces.

At the Hilton Mine in the Ontonagon district, in October, 1863, as the men were removing the vegetable mould that had accumulated in one of the old pits, they found at the depth of about nine feet a leather bag, which was eleven inches long and seven inches wide. It was lying upon a mass of native copper which the ancient miners had unsuccessfully attempted to remove from its parent vein. The bag was in a remarkable state of preservation, the leather being quite pliable and as tough as sheepskin. It was made up with the hair inside, was sewed across the bottom and up one side with a leather string, and near the top holes were cut and a leather string inserted to close the mouth by drawing it together. The bag was empty, but from its appearance I judged that it had been used for transporting copper or other mineral,—the leather in places showing marks of much service, and the hair being almost entirely worn off. I was unable to determine what kind of skin it was, but inclined to the belief that it was from the walrus, as the short, stubby hairs more closely resembled those of that animal than of any other with which I am acquainted. At the time I saw the bag,—the day after it was discovered,—it was in the possession of C. M. Sanderson, Esq., the agent of the Knowlton Mine; but I hear it has since been taken to Boston and sold.

In several of the ancient mines considerable masses of pure copper detached from the main lode have been found, which were left there by those who mined it. At the Central Mine, not far from Eagle Harbor, a mass of copper was found in one of these old pits that weighed forty-six tons. Every portion of the surface was smooth, and appeared as though it had been hammered by those who detached it from its original vein. In the Mesnard Mine, in the Portage Lake district, a detached mass of copper was found that weighed eighteen tons, hammered smooth like the mass before named.

But the most interesting specimen was found in an old pit near the Minnesota Mine. In removing the accumulated leaves and vegetable mould, the workmen, at the depth of eighteen feet, discovered a mass of copper ten feet long, three feet wide, and more than a foot thick, weighing six tons. On removing the earth around the mass, it was found to rest upon skids, or timbers, piled up to the height of about five feet. These timbers, having been constantly covered with water, were in a good state of preservation, and at the ends showed plainly the marks of the tool used in cutting them. It was thought by those who saw the billets when they were plump, that they were a species of oak; but the few remaining pieces which I have seen were so cracked and shrivelled that I have been unable to form an opinion as to the kind of wood. This mass of copper, like all others found in those ancient pits, was divested of all its ragged points, and hammered perfectly smooth. There was nothing in its appearance to show that it had ever been cut from another mass; but upon clearing out the rubbish from the bottom of the mine, which was about twenty-six feet below the surface, a vein of pure metal was found from which this had evidently been taken.

A few unfinished jobs have been found in these ancient pits, which throw some light upon the manner in which the work was carried on. In two instances there were projecting masses somewhat resembling urns, or inverted short-necked bottles, and completely smoothed by hammering, especially at the thinner portion or neck. It appears that the ancient miners first removed the rock from around the veins of copper. This was done by building fires upon or about it, and, when heated, crumbling it by throwing on water. By means of stone mauls the fragments were broken up and removed. When the vein was sufficiently exposed on all sides, a point was selected where the copper was thinner or narrower than the average of the vein. Here they commenced cutting off a mass, and by patient and long-continued hammering severed the two portions of the vein. In all the ancient mines which I have visited there is abundant evidence that fire was extensively used in the removal of rock; for not only do the rocks give proof of having been heated, but charcoal and ashes are invariably found at the bottom of all the rock excavations.

In general, the mining was done by surface openings along the line of the outcrop of the vein; but occasionally adits are driven into the rock, similar to the one first discovered at the Minnesota Mine before alluded to.

The surface mines are usually nearly filled with leaves and vegetable mould that have accumulated during the centuries that have elapsed since their abandonment, and till within a few years a heavy growth of timber covered the land; hence the numerous slight depressions that occurred along the line of the vein excited no suspicion that they were artificial excavations. By the closest observers they were regarded as natural depressions, caused either by the disintegration of the underlying rock or the peculiar manner in which the overlying drift was deposited. In many of these depressions, which have proved to be abandoned mines, trees of enormous size are found growing, some of which are ascertained, by counting their concentric rings, to be four hundred years old. At the Hilton Mine, directly over the leather bag before alluded to, there was a hemlock-tree about three feet in diameter. I noticed the stump of a tree nearly four feet in diameter in a gap near the Rockland Mine, where a hill had been actually cut asunder by these ancient miners, and a deep valley formed by the removal of the rock. Until very recently this valley was not recognized as an ancient mine; for, being ten rods in width, and cutting nearly at right angles across the strata of the rock that formed the hill, it was considered too extensive to have been made by human hands, and was supposed to be the result of natural causes. But about two years since, during a very dry time, a destructive fire swept through the woods, and so completely burned up all the vegetable matter accumulated there as to expose the underlying rock, and reveal its true character. After the fire had done its work, it was found that copper veins, which had been worked, ran through the rock in the gap, and that the great bank upon the south side of the hill, which was supposed to be a terraced gravel bank, proved to be a vast accumulation of "attle," or refuse stone, that had been taken from the artificial gap and deposited there. The stones forming this immense pile are generally small, and appear to have been broken up by heating to facilitate their removal from the mine, and possibly may have been again broken, with the hope of finding copper in them. In the midst of the pile I noticed several stone hammers, or mauls, some of them measuring twenty inches in girth around their grooves, and one I brought away weighing thirty pounds.

When examining this locality, I was struck with a significant fact, tending to show the long time that must have elapsed since the abandonment of these mines. I noticed in many instances that the artificial groove around the hammers was nearly obliterated upon the upper side, while upon the lower side, less exposed to the abrading agency of the atmosphere and rains, the groove presented a comparatively fresh appearance, and even the slight markings made by the tool that cut them were quite distinct. When I removed the overlying rock, and found a grooved maul in a protected spot, the groove was generally as fresh as though it had been made but a few months before. The compact nature of the stone of which these hammers are made, and their ability to resist the action of weather and moisture, prove conclusively that much time has been required to disintegrate their surface so as to obliterate the artificial work which has been expended upon them.

I feel unwilling to leave this subject without instituting an inquiry relative to the time when these mines were wrought, and the people who worked them. Many who have been taught to regard the present roving tribes of Indians as instinctively wise in matters of medicine and mining are ready to award to that race the credit of having worked these mines; but, inasmuch as even a traditional knowledge of their existence was unknown to the Indians at the time the Jesuit missionaries visited that region in the sixteenth century, we incline to the opinion that an other and distinct race worked them. I am unable to see why the descendants of a people residing in the same country, and subject to the same wants, should abandon the half-worked mines which their ancestors had opened, and even fail to hand down to their posterity a tradition of their existence. If copper was in such demand that the ancestors of the present race of Chippeways were induced to work so perseveringly to obtain it, why did not the children continue to work, at least enough to finish the jobs already commenced by their progenitors? We cannot consistently attribute the Herculean labor expended on these mines to the ancestors of the indolent race of North American Indians. We incline, rather, to the opinion that the miners were the mound-builders, who resided south of the mines, and ultimately found a home in Mexico. The condition in which the mines were left favors this theory; for in many instances unfinished jobs are found,—as in the case of the mass of copper upon skids at the Minnesota Mine, and the half-severed veins in other mines. May we not reasonably suppose that the miners came from the South and worked during the summer months, returning to their homes in winter? The circumstance that no traces of their habitations or burial-places have ever been discovered in the immediate vicinity of the mines leads to the inference that they came from a distance; and the fact that copper rings, chisels, and knives, and occasionally stone hammers, are found in the ancient mounds that extend in an unbroken line from Ohio to Mexico, induces the belief that the ancient miners and the ancient mound-builders were the same people.

It is said that artificial mounds are found in British America; and I was informed of one upon the banks of the Ontonagon River, about six miles from its mouth, but was unable to visit the spot. It is well known that they are quite abundant in Wisconsin, and extend the entire length of the Mississippi Valley.

It is a noticeable fact that as we proceed south we find the mounds generally larger and more symmetrical than those in more northern latitudes. It would seem that the people who constructed those in British America, in moving southward, (for we strongly suspect that this people originally crossed Behring's Strait from Asia,) improved in their style of building, and, on arriving at the Ohio River, had so far improved as to be able to construct those interesting works at Marietta, Moundville, and other points in that region. It was not till about the time they reached the Ohio Valley that they manufactured pottery. In that valley, and thence to Mexico, fragments of earthen ware are very common; and in the mounds entire vessels are not unfrequently found. Upon reaching Mexico, the mounds are seen to be still further improved in size and form, and specimens of ancient pottery are more abundant. The great mound or pyramid at Cholula, which is a fair type of the mounds in Mexico, is fourteen hundred and twenty-three feet square at the base, and one hundred and seventy-seven feet high, being larger than the celebrated pyramids of Egypt. This immense structure is said to have been built by the Toltecs, a people who, according to tradition, as communicated to the Spaniards, entered Mexico from the North in the year A.D. 648, and established their capital on the northern confines of the great valley of Mexico, at Tula, the remains of which city were visible, and a record made of them, at the time of the Conquest by Cortes.

This people were said to have possessed a good knowledge of agriculture, and were well instructed in many useful mechanic arts. They mixed gold and copper, and were experts in working these metals. For a period of four hundred years they occupied the territory of Mexico or Anahuac; but secession, and the attendant evils of war, pestilence, and famine, greatly reduced their numbers, and the race disappeared from the land to give place to their successors, the Aztecs, who also emigrated from the North. Remnants of the Toltec race are said to have migrated still farther south, and to have spread over Central America; and the remarkable correspondence of dates inclines us to the belief that the famous Manco Capac, whom the Peruvians worshipped as the founder of their empire, may have been a wanderer from that once happy, but then unfortunate people. The useful arts, which he made known to the semi-barbarous people among whom he settled, instead of originating in the great luminary of the day, and being brought to earth by a "child of the Sun," as they were taught, are far more likely to have been cultivated by the Toltecs in the days of their prosperity, and, on the dissolution of their government, transmitted by those who, fearing the result, had fled and taken refuge with the credulous Peruvians. Whether the stupendous ruins of temples found at Mitla, Palenque, and Uxmal were the work of the Toltecs or the Aztecs, is immaterial. It is sufficient for the purposes of this paper to show that a people inhabited Mexico prior to and at the time of the Conquest, who were far in advance of the roving tribes of Indians that subsisted in the more northern and eastern portions of North America.

At the time of the conquests of Mexico and Peru, numerous cities were found in those countries, and magnificent temples and palaces abounded, some of which were richly decorated with massive images of solid gold, others ornamented with fantastic and sometimes hideous figures carved out of the solid rock. But what is remarkable, no iron implements were used, nor did the inhabitants have the least knowledge of its use, notwithstanding iron ore was plentifully distributed through the country in which they lives. Not a trace of iron has ever been found in those grand ruins of Yucatan visited by Stephens and Catherwood; nor do the ruins of the holy city, Cuzco, give evidence that implements of iron were used in its construction. But the people of these countries were acquainted with many of the metals, and the Spanish invaders found numerous silver, tin, and copper mines that had been worked by them. All the deep, winding galleries of these mines were driven without the aid of iron, steel, or gunpowder. It is said that an alloy of tin and copper was used for their edge-tools; and with the aid of a silicious sand or dust, they were enabled to cut and polish amethysts, emeralds, porphyry, and other hard substances. With these implements the elaborate carving in the stone temples of Palenque and the other ruined cities of Central America was executed. The great calendar-stone, which in 1790 was disinterred in the city of Mexico, was nicely wrought out of a block of dark porphyry, that is estimated to have weighed fifty tons, and must have been transported several leagues; for the nearest point where porphyry of that character is found is upon the shores of Lake Chalco, many miles distant from the city of Mexico. In the absence of iron, some tough metal would be in requisition for the tools and machinery necessary in the execution and removal of such a gigantic and elaborate work. In many abandoned quarries in Mexico and Central America unfinished blocks of granite and porphyry are found, which are supposed to have been the work of the Toltecs, and abandoned by them at the time of the invasion of the fierce Aztec. Assuming this to be the fact, we can readily conceive why the half-raised mass of copper in the Minnesota Mine should also be abandoned; for a people suddenly scattered as the Toltecs were—so suddenly as to leave temples half finished, and blocks of stone half hewn—would have no further use for copper tools; and hence the raw material would no longer have a value. In the abandoned quarries near Mitla, amid fragments of pillars and architraves and half-finished blocks of granite, copper axes, chisels, and wedges were found in abundance; but the same inordinate love of money that prompted adventurers to flock to Chiriqui, a few years since, to rob the ancient burying-grounds of their golden idols, induced others to search the old quarries and mines of Mexico and Central America, and take from them any relics that were intrinsically valuable.

In Mexico, the mounds were built so that their summits were visible from every portion of the surrounding city, in order that the inhabitants might continually have in view the sacred fires that were ever kept burning on each side of the sacrificial altar. The same is strikingly true of the mounds at the West; for they are invariably placed so that their summits occupy a commanding position,—a circumstance that has induced many to suppose them to have been built for military purposes, and to have served as watch-towers. But when we reflect that the attacks of savage or half-civilized peoples are usually made in the night-time, we shall hardly suppose these structures were raised for any such purpose. The Pyramid of Cholula is composed of alternate layers of brick and clay, or possibly of burnt and unburnt brick; and others in Mexico are built of unburnt brick. Many of the mounds in the West are of clay,—perhaps of unburnt brick,—in situations where clay is not so abundant as other earths.

I recollect visiting Circleville, Ohio, when it was really a Circle-ville. An octagonal court-house stood upon an ancient mound, and the dwellings and stores were built upon an ancient circular wall of earth that encompassed an area around the mound. South of this circular inclosure, and joining it, was a square inclosure of several acres, surrounded by a wall about ten feet high. What is remarkable, this square wall—and we presume the same is true also of the mound and circular wall—was built of clay, perhaps of unburnt brick, that must have been transported a considerable distance; for no clay exists upon that alluvial bottom, and the nearest point where it is found is three fourths of a mile distant, across a considerable creek. On a subsequent visit to this place, I found the people using the clay from the wall of the square inclosure for making brick, and streets had been cut across the circular inclosure, so that the city is no longer entitled to the name of Circleville. In many instances, the ruined cities of Central America have inclosures resembling those at Circleville, surrounding the Teocallis, or sacred temples, which almost invariably stand upon mounds, or, as they are commonly called, pyramids.

With these many points of resemblance, the conclusion is irresistible, that the mounds of the West were but the germs of the more symmetrical pyramids of Mexico and Central America, and that the people who constructed them were, in intelligence and civilization, far in advance of the roving tribes of North American Indians who inhabited the country at the time of its discovery.

If it be true, as tradition informs us, that the Toltecs were a cultivated race, even more advanced than the Aztecs who occupied Mexico at the time of the Conquest, we may reasonably suppose that a metal so valuable to them as copper would be in great demand, and that mines of it, even at a remote distance, would be worked by a people, the construction of whose religious temples and royal palaces, and, it would seem, their nationality even, depended upon its possession.

Other evidence might be adduced to show that the extensive mining-pits on the shores of Lake Superior were not the work of the indolent and untutored race of Indians who now inhabit that region, nor of their ancestors, but of a people comparatively well acquainted with the mechanic arts. Our article, however, has already extended beyond the limits contemplated. I therefore leave the subject, with the hope that the few hints here thrown out may awaken other and abler minds to its investigation.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] See Col. Whittlesey's Report, Vol. XIII. Smithsonian Contributions.



TO A POET ON HIS BIRTHDAY,

FEBRUARY 27.

O singer, musical and strong, Why should a faint and faltering line Seek through the happy realms of song To celebrate thy voice divine?

The tribute bears its own reply, And speaks for many a voiceless one, Of hearts disburdened of a sigh Wherever thy brave accents run;

And blessing brings for youthful hours, When maidens dreamed their early dreams, And boys awakened, crowned with flowers, Plucked walking by thy sunlit streams;

For all of Nature's pictured calm, The children's hour, the fireside scene, For our frail lives' undying psalm, And wandering sweet Evangeline;

Praises for all; yet first for thee, O lover with the kindling eye! Quick to discern the minstrelsy Where planets sway and star-fires die.

O prophet of a nobler world! Thy song shall cheer the hill and plain, Till sunset's glowing wings are furled On faded joys and vanished pain.



NEEDLE AND GARDEN.

THE STORY OF A SEAMSTRESS WHO LAID DOWN HER NEEDLE AND BECAME A STRAWBERRY-GIRL.

WRITTEN BY HERSELF.

CHAPTER III.

My experience as a seamstress thus far subjected me to mere trials of temper, or mortifications of personal pride, but never to the calamities which sometimes fall so heavily on others in a like position. Hence, while spared the latter, I was too much disposed to magnify the former: for, let our trials be few and light as they may, we are generally prone to consider them the greatest that could befall. The griefs of others, their losses, their calamities, as has often been well said, we can all bear with surprising fortitude: it is only our own that we are disposed to regard as unendurable. But in this time of discouragement there were cases brought to my notice, the severity of which fairly humbled me in the dust, filling my heart with thankfulness at the exemption extended to us, and showing me that afflictions are really great or insignificant only by comparison.

One sleety wintry night the low wail of a new-born infant was heard issuing from a bundle of ragged clothing which some poor creature had laid down on the doorstep of a house in a small by-street not many squares from our own. The house was occupied in part by a man named Varick, who had a wife and several children. This man had been an industrious mechanic, but had for two years been pursuing the downward path to ruin, a confirmed victim of the bottle. He had been forced by the destitution thus brought upon himself to abandon a snug abode in a decent street for the squalor of a rickety shell in a mean locality, and was now prostrate on his bed, dying of rapid consumption. By what mysterious providence a new-born babe should thus be sent to such a man's door is beyond my comprehension. But the wife of Varick, softer of heart than its mother, took in the shivering waif, adopted it in place of one only a few weeks older, which she had buried two days previous, and resisted all urgency of the few friends she had to send it to the almshouse.

My mother had long known Mrs. Varick. She regarded her with great interest, and had frequently visited the family, watching the progress of her husband's decline, and sympathizing with her in her incessant labor as a seamstress. Varick did nothing but drink,—she did nothing but work. The trials, the sufferings, the absolute privations which she underwent for two years, it would be difficult to describe. Her domestic labors, with the care of a sick husband, watching him by night as well as by day, left her little time or energy to devote to the needle. Yet she toiled unceasingly for the shops. Scanty indeed were their prices, scantier were her earnings, and scantier still the daily fare which the poor needle-woman was able to set before her children. Many times they cried themselves to sleep with hunger. I doubt not that the dying husband shared in these privations, as well as suffered for want of many comforts which his situation demanded. Strangely enough, in the midst of this accumulated misery, the woman's heart went out with an unconquerable sympathy for the foundling so unexpectedly left at her door. So far from proving an additional incumbrance, it seemed to be a positive comfort.

Hearing of the circumstance, my mother went immediately to see the family, taking me with her. They were quartered in a single large room of an old frame-house which was crowded with tenants of all descriptions. We found Varick on his bed, evidently very near his end. But, alas! the unhappy man, expressed the utmost horror of dying. He made no request for spiritual aid or counsel,—no mention of religion, no reference to eternity. The Saviour's name, or any allusion to the salvation which came by him, never passed his lips. Every thought was of the earth,—how to live, not how to die. I shuddered as I saw and heard him. At intervals he reached out his hand impatiently for a vial of medicine, then inquired when the doctor would come. His whole dependence was on the arm of flesh. Neither wife nor visitor ventured to direct his attention to the fact of his rapidly approaching end; for he was stubborn and repulsive. The door seemed to be shut, no more to be opened,—we could do nothing for him.

Yet while this horrible scene was passing before us, there were loud noises in the next room, penetrating the thin board partition at the head of Varick's bed. A drunken brawl was going on, with oaths and imprecations that alarmed all but the sick man and his wife, with now and then a sharp pounding on the partition, as if some one's head were being violently beaten against it. Overhead another similar disturbance occurred. Then there was a crowd of squalid faces peering in at the windows at us; for decent visitors were rare in the depraved locality of that forlorn tenant-house. Altogether, the scene sickened and almost frightened me.

My mother gave Mrs. Varick a basket filled with simple comforts she had brought with her; and we were about taking our leave, when the door opened, and a religious-looking man, dressed in black, entered the room, bowed to us, spoke familiarly to Mrs. Varick, and approached the bedside of the dying man. Presently he sank upon his knees, and in language most appropriate to the spiritual hardness and destitution of poor Varick, invoked the Throne of Grace in his behalf. Though the outcries and turmoil around and above were continued, yet I lost no word of this deeply affecting prayer. It touched my heart and heightened the solemnity of the occasion. My own supplications went up in silence to the mercy-seat on behalf of the dying man. I knew that my mother's would be equally fervent; and from the reverential responses of the sobbing wife, it was clear to me that hers were not withheld.

She was standing very near to me when the minister rose to his feet. Turning to her, he said in a low voice,—

"Madam, I perceive that you are to have a funeral here very shortly. I am an undertaker, and shall be glad to take charge of furnishing the coffin and whatever else may be needed."

He put a card into her hand, and left us. I cannot describe the revulsion of feeling which this uncouth and abrupt transition from spiritual to carnal things occasioned in my mind. The shock was so violent as to dissipate at once the solemn impression which the man's excellent prayer had made. The heart-stricken wife could make no reply, except by tears. It was well that the dying man was unable to catch the mercenary drift of the religious exercises he had heard.

That night he died. When we reached there the next morning, several of the low crowd who herded in other apartments of this great tenement-house were already offering to bargain with the widow for her husband's clothes. The thing was so inexpressibly shocking that my mother interposed and compelled them to desist and leave us alone. By degrees we learned more of the actual condition of the family. It appeared that Varick had in better days become a member of a beneficial society which allowed forty dollars to a widow for the funeral expenses of her husband. The harpies of the tenement-house had become acquainted with this circumstance, and while one set was seeking to obtain possession of the dead man's clothes, another was practising every art to steal from the widow the little beneficiary fund with which he was to be buried. Through all her difficulties the poor needle-woman had managed to pay the society's dues, foreseeing what the end would be, and she was now entitled to draw the forty dollars. My mother immediately obtained from her an order for the money, drew it, kept it from the rapacious set who watched for it, and made it an efficient means of immediate comfort.

The ministerial undertaker was of course present at the funeral. He was evidently as keen after business as he was powerful in prayer. When the hour for moving from the house had arrived, he approached the widow and whispered to her that he could not think of letting the coffin leave the premises until some one had become surety for the payment of his bill! My mother and myself both sat near the widow, and heard this extraordinary and ill-timed demand. I was amazed and disgusted at the indecency of the man in not urging it at the proper time, and pressing it at so improper a one. But my mother told him to proceed, and that she would pay the bill.

All these enormities were new things to me. I had seen nothing, I had imagined nothing, so every way terrible as came within my notice under the squalid roof of this poor needle-woman. But my mother had long been in the habit of penetrating into the abodes of the sick and destitute; and though shocked by the new combination of religion and trade which she here witnessed, yet she regarded it only as a fresh development of the selfishness and hypocrisy of human nature. This poor woman and her family must live. How, thought I, is she to do so in this season of declining prices of the only work she is able to perform? If she could survive such a crisis so uncomplainingly, and be willing to take to her bosom the helpless foundling left upon her doorstep, what cause was there for me to complain? Sorrows gathered all round her pathway, while only blessings clustered about mine. I learned a lesson of thankfulness that has never been forgotten.

If there had been need of such exhibitions of positive distress as teachers of contentment, others were not wanting within my little circle. One of my cousins, a girl of my own age, ambitious to support herself, had been successful in obtaining a situation as saleswoman in a highly fashionable shop, where the most costly goods were sold in large quantities, and to which, of course, the most dashing customers resorted. I always thought her a truly beautiful girl. She was tall and eminently graceful, her face expressing the virtue and intelligence of her mind: for I cannot understand that true beauty can exist without these corresponding mental harmonies, any more than a shadow without the substance.

My taste in such matters may be defective, because it lacks the cultivation which fashion gives. Such as I possess is altogether natural. To my primitive apprehension, therefore, the attractions of a finely formed neck or arm receive no addition from being encircled by chains of gold or bracelets of pearls. When charmed with the appearance of a beautiful woman in simple robes, who is there, if told that the profuse expenditure that would have been required to cover her with brilliants had been employed in charity,—that she had used it as a fund to relieve the wants of the needy, to minister to the sick, to comfort the widow, to support and educate the destitute orphan,—who is there that would not feel the loftier emotions of his nature mingling with his admiration?

At home my cousin had been seated at her needle, but in her new employment she found herself compelled to stand. There was neither bench nor chair nor stool behind the counter, on which she could for a moment rest a body which had never been accustomed to so long-continued and unnatural a strain upon its powers. It was the peremptory order of the wealthy proprietor that no girl employed in the shop should on any occasion sit down. There were soft stools for the repose of customers who had money to spend, but not even a block for the weary saleswoman who had money to earn. The rich lady, who had promenaded the street until fatigued by the exertion of displaying her new bonnet over miles of pavement, came in and rested herself while pricing goods she did not intend to buy. There was a seat for all such. The unoccupied saleswoman had been seeking relief from the strain upon her muscles by leaning back against the shelves, but on the entrance of a customer she must be all obsequiousness. While she might have rested, she was unfeelingly forbidden to do so. Now the customer must be waited on, no matter how completely she may be overcome by fatigue or prostrated by lassitude. Either was sufficient to destroy her spirits; the combination of the two, springing from a fixed cause, was sure to undermine her health.

My cousin suffered keenly from this almost unexampled cruelty. She came home at night worn out by the strain upon her muscular system. Her spine was the seat of a chronic uneasiness. All day she was upon her feet, being allowed no other rest than such as she might get by leaning against the shelving. At the week's end she was fairly overcome. Sunday was hardly a day of recreation, because she was rarely free from pain induced by this unintermitted standing. All this was suffered for the sum of four dollars a week. It is true that she had earned less at her needle, but then her health had been remarkable for its robustness. Her increased earnings now were the price of that health.

Nor were others among the saleswomen less dangerously affected than herself. Some, of feeble organization, quickly broke down, under this unnatural discipline, and abandoned the shop, sometimes rendered temporary invalids, sometimes permanently disabled, while but few returned to fill their thankless places. Reading, while in the shop, whether employed or not, was out of the question, as that also was strictly prohibited. There was therefore no recreation either of body or mind, even when it might have been harmlessly permitted. It was either work or absolute idleness, but in no case rest or relaxation.

Under this monstrous system of torture my cousin at length broke down so completely that she, too, was compelled to leave the establishment. Her resolute spirit led her to endure it too long. When she did give up, it was in the hope that entire rest would bring relief. But it never came. Her physical organization, strong as it was by nature, had been so deranged that recuperation was impossible. Medicine could do nothing for her. A curvature of the spine had been established,—she soon became unable to sit up,—and at this writing she lies comparatively helpless in her bed, still beautiful in her helplessness. Her health was permanently ruined by the barbarism of a man so destitute of sympathy for a working-girl as to deny her the cheap privilege of sitting down when she could do him no good by standing up. Yet the great establishment is still continued, with all its gorgeous display of plate-glass windows, its polished counters, its wealth of costly goods, and its long array of tortured saleswomen.

These instances of complicated affliction among needle-women by no means embrace all that came under my notice. They were so numerous that it was impossible for me to avoid seeing and feeling that no such grief had been permitted to come over me. I trust that my heart was sufficiently grateful for this immunity,—for I became satisfied, that, if we were to thank God for all His blessings, we should have little time to complain of misfortunes. I know that I endeavored to be so. I labored to take a cheering view of what we then considered a very gloomy prospect. And this disposition to contrast our condition with that of others, while it taught me wisdom, brought with it a world of consolation. I saw that there was a bright side to everything,—that the sky was oftener blue than black; and my floral experiences in the garden taught me that it was the sunshine, and not the cloud, that makes the flower. It became my study to look only on the bright side of things, convinced, that, if the present were a little overcast, there was a future for us that would be all delightful. I was full of hope; and the eye of hope can discover a star in the thickest darkness, a rainbow even in the blackest cloud.

Hence I went cheerfully to learn the art of operating a sewing-machine, in which I soon became so expert as to prove a profitable pupil. There were from a dozen to twenty learners beside myself, some few of whom were educated and agreeable girls, the daughters of families moving in genteel circles, who had come there with a sensible ambition to acquire a thorough knowledge of the art. With these I formed a very pleasant acquaintance, so that my apprenticeship of a few weeks, instead of being a dull and lifeless probation, calculated to depress my spirits, was really an agreeable episode in my quiet career, cheering by its new associations, and invigorating by reason of the unmistakable evidences occurring almost daily that a sewing-girl was probably the last machine whose labor was to become obsolete.

The fame of these schools for female operatives went all over the country, and attracted crowds of visitors. Some of these were fine ladies of superficial minds, who came from mere curiosity, so as to be able to say that they had seen a sewing-machine. I was often struck with the shallow, unmeaning questions which these butterflies of fashion propounded to us. Some of them made the supercilious, but disreputable boast, that they had never taken a stitch in the whole course of their lives. But the great throng of inquirers consisted of women who had families dependent on their needles, and of young girls like myself, obliged also to depend upon the labor of their fingers. All such were deeply interested in the new art, and their inquiries were practical and to the point. They expressed the same astonishment, on seeing the rapidity with which the machine performed its work, that I had felt when first beholding it.

With so great a throng continually around us, asking questions, stopping the machines to examine the sewing, and begging for scraps with a row of stitches made in them, which they might take away to inspect at leisure, as well as to exhibit to others, there were days when the pupils were able to produce only a very small amount of work. But we soon discovered that this deficiency made but little difference to our teacher. The school was in reality a mere show-shop, a place of exhibition established by the machine-makers, in which to display and advertise their wares more thoroughly to the public. We pupils were the unconscious mouthpieces of the manufacturers. We paid the teacher for the privilege of learning to work the machines, and the manufacturers paid her a commission for all that she disposed of. Between the two sets of contributors to her purse she must have done a profitable business. She was at no expense except for rent, as the manufacturers loaned her the machines, while we did all the work. She had more orders for the latter than we could get through with, as the demand from the tailors was so urgent as to show very plainly that the great proportion of all the future sewing was to be done by the machine instead of by hand.

When I first went into this schoolroom I noticed a number of unemployed machines arranged in one part of it. After a week's apprenticeship, I observed some of them leaving the room every day, while new ones came in to occupy the vacant places. The first had been sold, the last were also to be disposed of, and this active sale continued as long as I remained. The fact was very apparent, that this public exhibition of the capacity of the new machine was operating on the community as the most efficient mode of advertising that could have been adopted. The machines went everywhere, over city and country, even at the monstrous prices demanded for them. Many fashionable ladies became purchasers, thinking, no doubt, that clothing could be made up by merely cutting it out and placing it before the machine.

Thus the most ingeniously potent agencies were invoked to bring the new invention rapidly and extensively into use. Its real merit happened to be such that it fulfilled all the promises with which it had been presented to the public. Hence it became a fixture in every great establishment where sewing-women were usually employed. As the latter acquired a knowledge of the machine, each of these establishments became a school in which new hands were converted into skilful operatives, until the primary schools, like that where I had been instructed, were abandoned from lack of pupils.

But I picked up a great many useful ideas at the school, besides acquiring, as already remarked, a new and assured confidence in the future prospects of the sewing-woman. It seemed clear to my mind, that, under the new order of things, the needle was still to be plied by her; whatever work it was to do would be superintended and directed by her. It was in reality only a new turn given to an old employment. Moreover, it struck me that more of it would be called for than ever, because I had noticed that the speed of the machine in making stitches had already led to putting treble and quadruple the usual number into some garments. Having achieved the useful, it was quickly applied to the ornamental. Clothing was not to be made up, in the future, as plainly as it had been in the past. Hence the prospect of more work being required involved the probability of a greater demand for female labor. But whether it was to be more remunerative,—whether the sewing-girl who might turn out ten times as much in a day as she formerly did would receive an increase of wages in any degree proportioned to the increase of work performed, was a problem which the future alone could solve. I did not believe that any such measure of justice would be accorded to her. It would be to the men, but not to the women. Yet I was willing to take the future on trust, for it now looked infinitely brighter than ever.

Among the pupils of this school was a young lady of twenty, whose affable and sociable disposition won strongly on my admiration, while her robust good sense commanded my utmost respect. The machines we operated were close to each other, so that I had the good fortune to have constant opportunities of conversing with her. Her name was Effie Logan, and she was one of three daughters of a merchant who had acquired an ample competency. In company with his wife, he came once or twice a week to visit the school and see his daughter at work. With great consideration for me, Miss Effie introduced me to her parents, at the same time adding some highly complimentary explanations as to who I was, and how attentive I had been in teaching her to use the machine. This adoption of me as her friend established a sort of good feeling in the parents toward me, so that at each visit to the school they greeted me in a way so cordial as greatly to attach me to them. It was an unexpected kindness from an entirely new quarter, and increased my affection for Miss Effie.

Her parents, it appeared, were having all their children taught an art or profession of some kind. One of the daughters, having a talent for drawing, was learning the art of engraving on wood. The youngest, being passionately fond of flowers, and possessed of great artistic genius, was a regular apprentice in an artificial-flower manufactory. Miss Effie, the eldest, had had her musical talent so cultivated under a competent master, that she was now qualified to act as organist in a church, or to teach a class of pupils at the piano; but not satisfied with this, she had insisted on being instructed in the use of the sewing-machine. Both she and her parents seemed so wholly free from the false pride which wealth so frequently engenders in the American mind, that she came, without the least hesitation, to a public school, and sat down as a learner beside the very humblest of us. When her parents came to inspect her work, I am certain they were gratified with all they saw of what she was doing.

I confess that the whole conduct of this family was as great a surprise to me as it was a comfort and encouragement. Mrs. Logan always made the kindest inquiries about my parents, but in the politest way imaginable,—no impertinent questions, but such as showed that she felt some interest in me. I think that Effie must have spoken very favorably of me to her parents when at home, but I could not understand why, as I was not near so affable and pleasant in my manners as she was. But an intimacy had grown up between us; she had won my whole confidence; and as confidence usually begets confidence, so she probably took to me from the force of that harmony of thought and feeling which comes spontaneously from communion of congenial souls.

One day the teacher of the school had been called out on other business, leaving me to attend to visitors and customers. The throng that morning was so great that it was full two o'clock before I found time to sit down, hungry enough, to the slight dinner I had brought with me in a little basket. I had taken only the first mouthful, when Miss Effie came in from dining at home. She drew her chair close up to me, her sweet face blooming with the roses of perfect health, and her bright eyes sparkling with animation and intelligence. Much as I admired and loved her, I thought she had never before looked so perfectly beautiful.

"Lizzie," she said, taking in her hand a spool of cotton to adjust on her machine, "how I like this work! Pa intends to buy me a machine as soon as I have completed my apprenticeship here. He don't believe there is any real gentility in the idleness of a girl who, because she happens to be rich, or to have great expectations, chooses to do nothing but fritter away her time on company and parties and dress and trifles unworthy of a sensible woman. He has brought us all up to think as he does. He tells us that every woman should be so educated, that, if at any time compelled by reverse of fortune to support herself, she would be able to do so. Why, he made us all learn the old story of the Basket-Maker before we were ten years old. It was only last week that he said there was no knowing what might happen to us girls,—you know, Lizzie, there are three of us,—that some day we might possibly be married."

I am sure that the faintest of all innocent blushes rose up from the half-conscious heart of the truly lovely speaker as she uttered the word, giving to her cheeks a tinge of crimson that added new beauty to the soft expression which her countenance habitually wore.

"Possibly, did you say, Miss Effie?" I interposed. "You might have said probably,—but would have been nearer the truth, if you had said certainly."

"Oh, Lizzie, how you talk!" she rejoined; and there was an unmistakable deepening of her blushes. But in a moment she resumed:—

"Pa remembers how his mother was left a widow with five young children, but with neither trade nor money, and how both she and he had to struggle for a mere subsistence, she at keeping boarders, and he as apprentice to a mean man, who gave him only the smallest weekly pittance. He says that we shall never go out into the world as destitute of resources as his mother was, and so we all have what may really be called trades. My brother is in the counting-house, keeping the books, and is provided for. But you don't know how we have all been laughed at by our acquaintances, and sneered at by impudent people, who, though not at all acquainted with us, undertake to prescribe what we should and what we should not do. They call us work-women! With them, work of any kind is regarded as degrading, especially if done by a woman, and more especially if she is to be paid for it."

"Ah, Miss Effie, you have touched the weak spot of our national character," I responded.

"Yes," she resumed, "it is the misfortune of American women to entertain the idea that working for a living is dishonorable, and never to be done, unless one be driven to it by actual want. Why, even when positively suffering for want of food and fuel, I have known some to conceal or disguise the fact of their working for others by all sorts of artifice. To suffer in secret was genteel enough, but to work openly was disgraceful! A girl of my acquaintance was accidentally discovered to be selling her work at a public depository, and forthwith went to apologizing for doing so, as if she had been guilty of a crime, instead of having nobly striven to earn a living. The ridiculous pride of another seduced her into a falsehood: she declared that the work she had been selling for her own support was for the benefit of a church. This senseless pride exists in all classes. From the sham gentility it spreads to the daughters of workingmen. They are educated to consider work as a disgrace, and hence the idle lives so many of them lead. It is the strangest thing imaginable, that parents who rose from poverty to independence by the hardest kind of bodily labor should thus bring up their children. No such teaching was ever given to me. I can sit here at my machine, and look the finest lady of my acquaintance in the face. She may some day wish that she had been my fellow-apprentice."

"Where do our girls learn this notion of its being disgraceful for a woman to support herself?" I inquired.

"Learn it? It is taught them everywhere," she responded. "I sometimes think it is born with them. They drink it in with their mother's milk. They grow up with it as a daily lesson,—the lesson of avoiding work, and of considering it delicate and genteel and refined to say that they never cooked a meal, or swept the parlor, or took a stitch with the needle, actually priding themselves upon the amount of ignorance of useful things that they can exhibit. They make the grand mistake of assuming that sensible men will admire them for this display of folly. So they drag on until there occurs a prospect of marriage, when they suddenly wake up to a consciousness of their utter unfitness to become the head of a family. Why, I know at this moment a young lady of this description, who expects in a few months to become a wife, and whose cultivated ignorance of household duties is now the ridicule of her mother's cook and chambermaid. The prospect of marriage alarmed her for her total ignorance of domestic duties. She had never made her own bed, or dusted the furniture; and as to getting up a dinner, she knew even less than a squaw. She is now vainly seeking to acquire, within a few months, those branches of domestic knowledge which she has been a whole life neglecting and despising. She hated work: it was not genteel. Yet she is eagerly plunging into marriage with the first man who has offered himself, foolish enough, no doubt, to suppose that in her new position she will have even less to look after. Formerly, she did nothing: now, she expects to do even less.

"But what," continued Miss Effie, "is this poor creature to do, if death or poverty or vice should overtake her husband, and she should be thrown on her own slender resources? She is driven, to seek employment of some kind,—to attend in a shop, (for somehow that is considered rather more genteel than, most other occupations,) or to sew, or to fold books, or do something else. But she knows nothing of these several arts; and employers want skilled labor, not novices. She once boasted that she had never been obliged to work, and now she realizes how much such absurd boasting is worth. What then? Why, greater privation and suffering, because of her total unfitness for any station in which she might otherwise, obtain a living,—the extremity of this destitution being sometimes such that she is driven to the last shame to which female virtue can be made to submit."

"You say, Miss Effie, that these foolish lessons are taught by the mothers; but do the fathers inculcate no wiser ones? Have they nothing to say as to the proper training of their daughters?" I inquired, deeply interested in all she said. She knew a great deal more than I did. And why should she not know more? Was she not full two years older?

"The fathers do, in many cases, teach better lessons than these; but their good effects are too commonly neutralized by the persistent vanity and pride of the mothers. Even the fathers are too neglectful of the future welfare of their daughters. The sons are suitably cared for, because of the generally accepted understanding that every man must support himself. They are therefore trained to a profession, or to some useful branch of business. But the daughters are expected to be supported by their future husbands, hence are taught to wait and do nothing until the husbands come along. If these conveniences should offer within a reasonable time, and do well and prosper, the result is agreeable enough. But no sort of provision is made for the husband's not showing himself, or, if he does, for his subsequent loss by death, or for his turning out either unfortunate or a vagabond. Even the daughter's natural gifts, often very brilliant ones, are left uncultivated. If she has a talent for music, she receives only a superficial knowledge of the piano, instead of such an education as would qualify her to teach. No one expects her to work, it is true; but why not fit her for it, nevertheless? Another develops a talent for nursing, the rare and priceless qualification of being efficient in the sick-room. Why not cultivate this talent, and enlarge its value by the study of medicine? The parents are rich enough to give to these talents the fullest development. They do so with those of their sons; why refuse in the case of their daughters? Our sex renders us comparatively helpless, excluding us from many avenues to profitable employment where we should be at all times welcome, if the unaccountable pride of parents did not shut us out by refusing to have us so taught that we could enter them. The prejudice against female labor begins with parents; and the unreflecting vanity and rashness of youth give it a fatal hold on us. My parents have never entertained it. They have taught us that there is more to be proud of in being dependent solely on our own exertions than in living idle lives on either their means or those of any husband who may happen to have enough of his own."

"It is very odd, Miss Effie," I replied, "for you to entertain these opinions, they are so different from those of rich people; and it is very encouraging to me to hear you express them. But I should have expected nothing less noble from you, you are so good and generous."

"Why, Lizzie, what do you mean?" she exclaimed. "It is not goodness, but merely common sense. What brought me here to be a pupil in this school? Not the desire to do good to others, but to improve myself,—a little selfishness, after all."

"But," I inquired, "will this unnatural prejudice against the respectability of female labor ever die out? You know that I am to be a sewing-girl, not from choice, like you, but from necessity. You learn the use of a machine only as a prop to lean upon in a very remote contingency; I, to make it the staff for all my future life. You will continue to be a lady,—indeed, Miss Effie, you never can be anything else,—but I shall be only a sewing-girl. The prejudice will never attach to you, but it will always cling to me. How cruel it seems that the world should consider as ladies all who can afford to be idle, and all working-women as belonging to a lower class, because God compels them to labor for the life He has given them!"

"Dear Lizzie," she exclaimed, in tones so modulated to extreme softness as to show that her feelings had been deeply touched both by the matter and the manner of my inquiry, "you must banish all such thoughts from your mind. For His own wise purposes, God has placed you in a position in which you have a mission of some kind to fulfil. That position is an honorable one, because it requires you to labor, and it is none the less honorable because others are not required to do so. They also have their several missions, which we cannot understand. If it be regarded as mean for women to work, it is in the pride of man that so false a standard of respectability has been set up, not in the word or wisdom of God. To which shall we pay the most respect? The former, we know, brings constant bitterness; the latter, we know equally well, is unchangeably good. As it is our duty to submit to it here, so, through the Saviour, is it our only trust hereafter. It is not labor that degrades us, but temper, behavior, character. If all these be vicious, can mere money or exemption from labor make them respectable? You know it cannot.

"You," she continued, in a tone so impressive, that, even amid the clatter of twenty machines around me, not a word was lost,—"you may be sure that this prejudice against women working for their own support will never die out. It is one of those excrescences of the human mind that cannot be extirpated. It is a distortion of the reasoning faculty itself, unworthy of a sensible person, and is generally exhibited only by those who, while boasting of exemption for themselves, have really little or nothing else to boast of. It is the infirmity of small minds, not a peculiarity of great ones. Prejudices are like household vermin, and the human mind is like the traps we set for them. They get in with the greatest facility, but find it impossible to get out. Beware of entertaining them yourself, Lizzie. Shun everything like repining at what you call your position as a sewing-girl. Take care of your conscience, for it will be your crown. Labor for contented thoughts and aspirations, for they will bring you rest. Your heart can be made happy in itself, if you so choose, and your best happiness will always be found within your own bosom."

"Do not misunderstand me, Miss Effie," I replied; "I was not repining, but merely asking an explanation. My mother has sought to teach me not only contentment, but thankfulness for for my condition."

"Indeed," she responded, "both you and I have abundant cause for thankfulness to God for the multitude of mercies He is extending to us. You know how this poor girl behind us, Lucy Anderson, is situated," raising her hand and pointing over her shoulder toward a thin, pale girl of seventeen, who was working a machine.

"I do not know her history," I answered.

"Well," said Miss Effie, "that girl's mother was a washerwoman." She did the heavy washing for a very rich man's family. They put her into an open shed, on a cold, damp pavement. This work she had been doing for them for several years, in the same bleak place, and in all weathers. While warm and comfortable herself, the pampered mistress of the family gave no thought to the dangerous exposure to which she subjected this slave of the washtub. Thus working all day, in thin shoes, on damp bricks, and while a penetrating easterly rain was falling, the poor woman was next morning laid up with the worst form of rheumatism. Medicine and nursing were of no avail. She became bedridden,—the disease attacked all the joints of her frame, ossification succeeded, and in the end she was unable to move either her body or limbs. Every joint was stiff and rigid. The vital organs alone were spared. For twelve years she has been in that condition,—she is so now,—my mother saw her only yesterday. Can you imagine anything more terrible? Poor, dependent on her daily earnings, with young children around her, and a widow, only think of her agonies of mind and body! Yet, among the vital powers still left to this afflicted woman, was the power to approach the Throne of Grace in prayer so acceptable that the answer was that peace which passeth all understanding. The body had been disabled; but the mind had been quickened to a new and saving activity, she had drawn nearer to God."

What could I do but listen in mute attention to this heart-awakening recital? I looked round at Lucy Anderson in lively sympathy with what I had heard. How little did her appearance give token of the deep domestic grief that must have settled upon her young heart! How deceptive is the human countenance! Though pale and fragile, yet her face sparkled with cheerfulness.

Miss Effie went on with her story; she was mistress of the art of conversation; and conversation is sometimes a serious matter; for there are persons with whom an hour's talk would weaken one more than a day's fasting, but not so with Miss Effie. She resumed by saying,

"Would you believe that the rich family in whose service this poor washerwoman destroyed her health have never called, nor even sent, to know how she was getting on? When she first failed to take her usual two-days' stand at the washtub, they inquired the reason of her absence, but there all concern ended. They sought out a new drudge; the gap was filled to their liking, and the world moved on as gayly as aforetime. They gave up no personal ease or comfort that they might see or minister to the suffering woman ; they denied themselves no luxury for her sake. Yet the money they spent in giving a single party would have kept this family for a twelvemonth. The cost of their ostentatious greenhouse would have paid for a nurse, and educated the two orphan boys until able to go to trades. They had seen these twin boys tied to the washtub in their own bleak shed, that the mother might pursue her labor without interruption; yet as they gave no thought to the widow, so the orphans never intruded on their recreations. Now, Lizzie, such people are unprofitable servants in the sight of God. And if the ostrich were to strip off their feathers, the silkworm their dresses, the kid their gloves, and the marten demand his furs, what would be their state in the sight of man? Bare unto nakedness! This unlawful love for lawful things is one of the besetting snares of the great enemy of souls."

If I had ever been addicted to repining, or had had no lessons to teach me how wrong the habit was, here was a new one to induce contentment. But I had been preserved from all such temptations. The strong good sense displayed by Miss Logan in our frequent conversations not only informed my understanding on a variety of subjects, but gave my thoughts a new turn, and powerfully encouraged me to perseverance. She infused into me new life and cheerfulness. Such women are the jewels of society. Their strong minds, regulated by a judicious education at the hands of sensible parents, become brilliant as well as trustworthy guides to all who may be fortunate enough to come within the circle which they illuminate. It is such women that have been, and must continue to be, the mothers of great men. Mind must be transmissible by inheritance, and chiefly from the mother; else the histories of statesmen, heroes, and distinguished men in the various walks of life, would not so uniformly record the virtues of the women from whose maternal teachings their eminence was to be traced.

The company of sewing-girls collected together in this school-room was of course a very miscellaneous one. The faces were changing almost daily, some by expiration of their apprenticeship, and some by being sent away as troublesome, incompetent, or vicious. All who left us had their places immediately filled from a list of candidates which the teacher had in a book, so that, while one throng of learners was departing, another was entering. If one could have gone into the domestic history of all the girls who came and went even during my short stay, he would have found some experiences to surpass anything that has ever occurred to me. I do not know how it happened, but most of these girls were quite desirous of making my acquaintance, and of their own motion became extremely sociable. I was sociable in return, from an instinct of my nature. I never lost anything by thus meeting them halfway in the endeavor to be polite and affable, but on the contrary learned much, gained much, and secured invaluable friends. Nor did I ever repel the amicable approaches even of the most humble, as I very early discovered that none were so ignorant as not to be able to communicate some little item of knowledge to which I had been a stranger.

There was a lady among these pupils who was in many respects very different from all the others. I think her age must have been at least thirty-five. I did not ask if it were so; and as she never mentioned it herself, that circumstance was hint enough for me to remain silent. I never could understand why so many women are so amusingly anxious to conceal their age, sometimes becoming quite affronted when even a conjecture is hazarded on the subject. This lady was unmarried; perhaps that may have been one reason for her unwillingness to speak of her age. But was not I unmarried, and what repugnance have I ever felt to avowing mine?

However, Miss Hawley was extremely sociable with me, though certainly old enough to be my mother, and made me the depositary of many incidents in her life. She was the eldest of three sisters, all orphans, all unmarried, all dependent on themselves for a living, and all, at one time, so absurdly proud, that, in the struggle to keep up appearances, and conceal from their acquaintances the fact that they were doing this or that thing for a maintenance, they subjected themselves to privations which embarrassed much of their efforts, while they failed to secure the concealment they sought. Though women of undoubted sense and excellent education, yet they acted as foolishly as the ostrich, which, when hunted to cover, thrusts his head into a bush, and is weak enough to think that his whole body is concealed, when it stands out not only a target, but a fixed one, for the hunter's rifle. So these women took it for granted, that, if they ran to the cover of a chamber from which all visitors should be excluded, their acquaintances would be ignorant of how they occupied their time, or by what means they lived.

Yet they could not fail to be aware that everybody who knew anything of them knew their history also,—that it was notorious that their father, a merchant, had died not worth a cent, and that they had been compelled to abandon the fine house in which he had kept up a style so expensive as greatly to increase the hardship of their subsequent destitution. Like a thousand others, he had lived up to the limit of his income. No doubt, all of them might have been well married, but for the lavish habits as to fashion and expenditure in which they indulged themselves. These might be afforded by their father so long as his annual gains continued large. But the many worthy young men who visited and admired them refused to entertain the idea of marriage with girls whose mere personal outfit cost a sum equal to the year's salary of a first-class clerk, or the annual profits of one who had just commenced business for himself. They held that the girl whose habits were so expensive should bring with her a fortune large enough to support them, or remain as she was, taking the sure consequences on her own shoulders, and not throwing them on theirs. They were in fact afraid of girls who manifestly had no prudence, no economy, and who appeared to be wholly unconscious that the only admiration worth securing is that of the good and wise.

But the vices of the old mode of living clung to them in their new and humbler abode, keeping them slaves to a new set of appearances. They had never done any work of consequence, hardly their own sewing. What was even worse, they had been brought up to consider work, for a lady, disgraceful. Women might work, but not ladies; or when the latter undertook it, they ceased to be such, and certainly so, if working for a living. No pride could have been more tyrannous or absurd than this. For a whole year after their father's death, it ruled them with despotic supremacy. They prided themselves on doing nothing, and subsisted on the sale of trinkets, jewelry, and books, which they had acquired in palmier days. The circle of acquaintances for whose good opinion they submitted to these humiliating sacrifices knew all the while that the life they were living was a sham; but they themselves seemed wholly unconscious of it, as well as of the light in which it was regarded by those about them.

Why should such a woman come to a school like this, where a willingness to work was a condition of admission, and that work to be done in public? What could bring about so strange a reversal of thought and habit? One of her sisters had recently died, after a protracted illness, during which her heart had been mercifully smitten with a conviction of the hollowness and sinfulness of her previous life. Its idle, trifling, aimless tendency had been set before her in all its emptiness. She saw that she had been living without God, bound up in the love of temporal things, and so effectually ensnared by worldly pride that her whole fear had been of man, instead of her Creator. Thus in mercy called to judgment, that grace, of whose saving efficacy we have the divine assurance, brought repentance of sin, and led her to the Saviour, and, abasing herself at his cross, the heavy burden was lifted from her heart. Her condemnation of the frivolous lives that she and her sisters had been leading was so earnest and impressive, that, aided by the continual prayers of a truly contrite heart for pardon for herself and awakened consciences for them, they also were brought to Christ. This mighty transformation accomplished, her mission seemed to be fulfilled, and she passed into the unseen world in peaceful assurance of forgiveness and acceptance. Thus, though our lots are cast in places seemingly diverse and barren, each has his own specific duty to perform, some appointed mission to fulfil, though exactly what it is may not be apparent to us. As fellow-workers in the world, if we make it our chief study to do the Master's will, that which is thus required of us will in His own time so unfold itself to our spiritual understanding that we cannot be deceived respecting it.

I am satisfied that between the functions of life, as developed in the material and moral world, there is an analogy as instructive as it is beautiful. It overcomes external circumstances by the power of an invisible law. Philosophers have discovered that the human body maintains a uniform temperature, whether it shiver in the snow-hut of the Esquimaux, or drip with perspiration in the cane-fields of the tropics. But let life depart, and it falls to that of the surrounding objects. Decay immediately begins. So, when religious vitality is maintained in the heart, the corrupting influences of the world remain inoperative. This vitality having been infused into the heart of Miss Hawley, the fervor of her spirit rose to a higher temperature than that of all surrounding objects. She could no longer assimilate with them.

If her strong personal pride, her obsequious deference to appearances and the opinion of the world, were henceforth overcome or kept in subjection, it was only as she took up the cross in obedience to the convictions of duty. She told me it was the hardest trial of her life to come to this public school; it was the greatest cross to her natural affections she had ever experienced. But the bitterness of the cup had now measurably passed away from her. Strength came with animating promptitude as the answer to prayer. Her spiritual life became more healthy and vigorous as her approaches to the mercy-seat were humble and frequent. Cheerfulness became an ever-present attendant. She had put all pride behind her, and because of her abasement had risen above the world. Henceforth she was to support herself by her own acknowledged labor. She had been so changed by the grace of God in her heart, that she regarded with astonishment the secret insincerities she had formerly been guilty of in seeking to conceal the extent of the necessity to which she had been reduced. I have never seen nor heard of her since I left the school; but the remembrance of her subdued and patient spirit cannot soon be effaced.

How true it is, as some one has beautifully said, that infinite toil would not enable us to sweep away a mist, but that by ascending a little we may often look over it altogether,—and that so it is with our moral improvement! We wrestle fiercely with vicious habits that would have no hold on us, if we ascended to a higher moral atmosphere. Another has declared that at five years of age the father begins to rub the mother out of his child; that at ten the schoolmaster rubs out the father; that at twenty a trade or a profession rubs out the schoolmaster; that at twenty-five the world rubs out all its predecessors, and gives a new education, till we are old enough and wise enough to take religion and common sense for our pastors, when we employ the rest of our lives in unlearning what we have previously learned.

The contrast between the two ladies with whom I was thus fortunate enough to become intimately acquainted was so remarkable that it could not fail to make an impression on me. It was evident that education, the training which each had received at the parental fireside, had led them into widely divergent paths of thought and conduct. Both were possessed of sterling good sense; both had lived in affluence; both, so far as mere school-learning was concerned, had been thoroughly educated. Had Miss Logan received the same training as Miss Hawley, it may be fairly assumed that she would have fallen a victim to the same pride and folly; and had the latter been trained at home as carefully and as sensibly as the former, who can doubt, that, with the same substratum of good sense, she would have proved as great a comfort to herself and as shining an example to others? I am sure it was a lesson to me, convincing me anew, that, where faith and works do not go together, both are wanting, and that, if they once part company, each of them must die.

When, at the termination of my brief apprenticeship, the time came for me to leave the school and to part from Miss Effie,—she to go to her elegant home, I to the little old brick house in the fields, and with prospects so entirely different from hers,—I am sure it was the hardest trial I had yet been called upon to bear. I should never see her again. I had no longings for the life she led; for as yet I had harbored no other thought than that of perfect contentment with my own. But her society was so delightful, the tone of her mind so lofty, her condescension so grateful, her whole manners so captivating, that I looked upon her as my guide, philosopher, and friend, and I cried bitterly when I left her.



MEMORIES OF AUTHORS.

A SERIES OF PORTRAITS FROM PERSONAL ACQUAINTANCE.

MISS LANDON.

With unmingled pain I write the name of Laetitia Elizabeth Landon,—the L. E. L., whose poems were for so long a period the delight of all readers, old and young.

We were among the few friends who knew her intimately. But it was not in her nature to open her heart to any one; her large organ of "secretiveness" was her bane; she knew it and deplored it; it was the origin of that misconception which embittered her whole life, the mainspring of that calumny which made fame a mockery and glory a deceit. But I may say, that, when slander was busiest with her reputation, we had the best means to confute it,—and did. For some years there was not a single week during which, on some day or other, morning or evening, she was not a guest at our house; yet this blight in her spring-time undoubtedly led to the fatal marriage which eventuated in her mournful and mysterious death.

The calumny was of that kind which most deeply wounds a woman. How it originated, it was at the time, and is of course now, impossible to say. Probably its source was nothing more than a sneer, but it bore Dead-Sea fruit. A slander more utterly groundless never was propagated. It broke off an engagement that promised much happiness with a gentleman, then eminent, and since famous, as an author: not that he at any time gave credence to the foul and wicked rumor; but to her "inquiry" was a sufficient blight, and by her the contract was annulled.

The utter impossibility of its being other than false could have been proved, not only by us, but by a dozen of her intimate friends, whose evidence would have been without question and conclusive. She was living in a school for young ladies: seen daily by the ladies who kept that school, and by the pupils. In one of her letters to Mrs. Hall, she writes, "I have lived nearly all my life, since childhood, with the same people. The Misses Lance were strict, scrupulous, and particular,—moreover, from having kept a school so long, with habits of minute observation. The affection they feel for me can hardly be undeserved. I would desire nothing more than to refer to their opinion." Dr. Thomson, her constant medical friend and adviser, testified long afterwards to her "estimable qualities, generous feelings, and exalted virtues." It would, indeed, have been easy to obtain proof abundant; but in such cases the very effort to lessen the evil augments it; there was no way of fighting with a shadow; it was found impossible to trace the rumor to any actual source. Few then, and perhaps none now, can tell how deeply the poisoned arrow entered her heart. If ever woman was, Laetitia Landon was, "done to death by slanderous tongues."