There was an old arbor in a by-place of the garden, covered with creeper and honeysuckle, and though rudely built, yet there was a quiet retirement about it that I felt would be grateful to my spirit. Its rustic fittings, its heavy old seats, its gravelled floor, had been the scene of a thousand childish gambols with my brother and sister. Old memories clung to it with a loving fondness. Even when the sports of childhood gave place to graver thoughts and occupations, the cool retirement of this rustic solitude had never failed to possess the strongest attractions for me. The songbirds built their little nests within the overhanging foliage, and swarms of bees gave melodious voices to the summer air as they hovered over its honey-yielding flowers. The past united with the present to direct my steps toward this favorite spot I entered, and, seating myself on one of the old low branches that encircled it, was looking up through the straggling vines that festooned the entrance, admiring the soft haze through, which the cloudless moon was shedding a peculiar brilliancy on all around, when I heard a step approaching from the house.

I stopped the song which I had been humming, and listened. It is said that there are steps which have music in them. I am sure, the cadences of that music which the poet has so immortalized sounded distinctly in my listening ear. It was the melody of recognition. I knew instinctively the approaching step, and in a moment Mr. Logan stood before me.

"What!" said he, extending his hand as I rose, and pressing mine with a warmth that was unusual, even retaining it until we were seated,—"ever happy! There must be a perpetual sunshine in your heart!"

"Oh, no!" I replied. "Happiness is a creation of the fireside. One does not find it in his neighbor's garden, and many times not even in his own."

"For once, dear Lizzie, I only half agree with you," he replied, again taking my hand, and pressing it in both of his.

I sought in vain to withdraw it, but he held it with an embarrassing tenacity. He had never spoken such words before, never used my name even, without the usual prefix which politeness exacts. I was glad that the moonlight found but feeble entrance into the arbor, as the blood mounted from my heart into my face, and I felt that I must be a spectacle of confusion. I cannot now remember how long this indescribable embarrassment kept possession of me, but I did summon strength to say,—

"Your language surprises me, Mr. Logan."

"But, dear Lizzie," he rejoined, "my deportment toward you ought to lessen that surprise, and become the apology for my words. Others may find no happiness in their neighbor's garden, but I have discovered that mine is concentrated in yours. You, dear Lizzie, are its fairest, choicest flower, which I seek to transplant into my own, there to flourish in the warmth of an affection such as I have felt for no one but yourself. Never has woman been so loved as you. Let me add fresh blessings to the day on which I first met you here, by claiming you as my wife."

Oh, how can I write all this? But memory covers every incident of the past with flowers. What I said in reply to that overwhelming declaration has all gone from me. I may have been silent,—I think I must have been,—under the crowd of conflicting sensations,—amazement, modesty, a happiness unspeakable,—which came thronging over my heart I cannot remember all, but I covered my face, and the tears came into my eyes. Still keeping my hand, he placed his arm around me, drew me yet closer to him,—my head fell upon his breast,—I think he must have kissed me.

If other evenings fled on hasty wings, how rapid was the flight of what remained of this! I cannot repeat the thoughts we uttered to each other, the confidences we exchanged, the glimpses of the happy future that broke upon me. Joy seemed to fill my cup even to overflowing; happiness danced before my bewildered mind; the longing of my womanly nature was satisfied with the knowledge that my affection was returned. Out of all the world in which he had to choose, he had preferred me.

That night was made restless by the very fulness of my happiness. At breakfast the next morning, Jane questioned me on my somewhat haggard looks, and was inquisitive to know if anything had happened. Somehow she was unusually pertinacious; but I parried her inquiries. I was unwilling that others, as yet, should become sharers of my joy. But when she left upon her usual duties, I put on my best attire, with all the little novelties in dress which we had recently been able to purchase, making my appearance as genteel as possible. For the first time in my life I did think that silk would be becoming, and was vexed with myself for being without it. I was now anxious to be found agreeable. But it really made no difference.

Presently a knock was heard at the front door; and on my mother's opening it, Mr. Logan entered, with a young lady whom he introduced as his sister. The room was so indifferently lighted that I could not at first distinguish her features, but, on her throwing up her veil, I instantly recognized in her my fellow-pupil at the sewing-school,—my "guide, philosopher, and friend," Miss Effie Logan!

"Two years, dear Lizzie, since we met!" she exclaimed, "and what a meeting now! You see I know it all. Henry has told me everything. I am half as happy as yourself!"

She took me in her arms, embraced me, kissed me with passionate tenderness, and called me "sister." What a recognition it was for me! Her beautiful face, lighted up with a new animation, appeared more lovely than ever. There was the same open-hearted manner of other days, now made doubly engaging by the warmest manifestation of genuine affection. I had never dreamed that Mr. Logan was the brother of whom this loving girl had so often spoken to me at the sewing-school, nor that the inexpressible happiness of calling her my sister was in store for me. But now I could readily discover resemblances which it was no wonder I had heretofore overlooked. If he, in sweetness of disposition, were to prove the counterpart of herself, what more could woman ask? It was not possible for a recognition to be more joyful than this.

My mother stood by, witnessing these incomprehensible proceedings, silent, yet anxious as to their meaning. Effie took her into the adjoining room,—she was far readier of speech than myself,—and there explained to her the mystery of my new position with Mr. Logan. She told me that my mother was overcome with surprise, for, dearly as she loved her children, she had been strangely dull in her apprehension of what had been so long enacting within her own domestic circle. But why should I amplify these homely details? They are daily incidents the world over, varied, it is true, by circumstances; for everywhere the human heart is substantially the same mysterious fountain of emotion.

A secret of this sort, once known, even to one's mother only, travels with miraculous rapidity, until the whole gaping neighborhood becomes confidentially intrusted with its keeping. It seems that ours had been more observant and suspicious than even my dear mother. But such eager care-takers of other people's affairs exist wherever human beings may chance to congregate. Humble life secured us no exemption.

Our pastor was one of the first to hear of the interesting event. It may be that Mr. Logan had given him some inkling of it beforehand, for he was early in his congratulations. Jane, as might be expected, declared that it was no surprise to her, and was sure that my mother would not think of having the wedding without indulging her in her long-coveted silk. Fred took to Mr. Logan with almost as much kindliness as even myself. Throughout the neighborhood the affair created an immense sensation, as it was currently believed that Mr. Logan was exceedingly rich, and that now I was likely to become a lady. While poor, I was only a strawberry-girl; but rich, I would be a lady! Who is to account for these false estimates of human life? Who is mighty enough to correct them?

Nothing had ever so melted down the rude stiffness of the Tetchy family as this wonderful revolution in my domestic prospects. They became amusingly disposed to sociability, as well as to inquisitiveness. But I was glad to see my mother stiffen up in proportion to their sudden condescension, for she would have nothing to do with them.

Who, among casuists, can account for the contagious sympathy that seems to govern the affections? I had often heard it said that one wedding generally leads the way to another. Not a fortnight after these important events, Jane gave a new surprise to the household by introducing to us a lover of her own. It appeared that everything had been arranged between them before we knew a word about it. The happy young man in this case was a junior partner in the factory; and this, as I had long suspected, was the great secret of her attraction there. How my mother could have been so blind to the signs of coming events, such as were developing around her, I could not understand. But both affairs were real surprises to her. If we had depended on her genius as a matchmaker, I fear that both Jane and myself would have had a very discouraging experience!

Thus the services of our pastor were likely to be in great request, for Jane insisted that he should officiate at her wedding, and Mr. Logan would think of no other for his own; and for myself, I thought it best, as this was the first time, not to let it be said that I had volunteered to make a difficulty by being contrary on such a point! Effie offered to be my bridesmaid, and Mr. Logan declared that Fred should be his first groomsman. It was a hazardous venture, Fred being as much a novice at such performances as myself,—who had never officiated even as bride! With a little tutoring, however, he turned out a surprising success. Lucy, no longer a little barefoot fruit-peddler, was promoted to be my waiting-maid.

The new year came, bringing with it silks and jewels, and the double wedding. If I write that I am married, I must add that I am still without a sewing-machine. To me the garden has been better than the needle.

There is a moral to be drawn from all that I have written, wherein it may be seen that the field of my choice is wide enough for many others. If I retire from market as a strawberry-girl, it must not be inferred that it is because the business has been overdone.



JOHN JORDAN,

FROM THE HEAD OF BAINE.

Among the many brave men who have taken part in this war,—whose dying embers are now being trodden out by a "poor white man,"—none, perhaps, have done more service to the country, or won less glory for themselves, than the "poor whites" who have acted as scouts for the Union armies. The issue of battles, the result of campaigns, and the possession of wide districts of country, have often depended on their sagacity, or been determined by the information they have gathered; and yet they have seldom been heard of in the newspapers, and may never be read of in history.

Romantic, thrilling, and sometimes laughable adventures have attended the operations of the scouts of both sections; but more difficulty and danger have undoubtedly been encountered by the partisans of the North than of the South. Operating mostly within the circle of their own acquaintance, the latter have usually been aided and harbored by the Southern people, who, generally friendly to Secession, have themselves often acted as spies, and conveyed dispatches across districts occupied by our armies, and inaccessible to any but supposed loyal citizens.

The service rendered the South by these volunteer scouts has often been of the most important character. One stormy night, early in the war, a young woman set out from a garrisoned town to visit a sick uncle residing a short distance in the country. The sick uncle, mounting his horse at midnight, rode twenty miles in the rain to Forrest's head-quarters. The result was, the important town of Murfreesboro' and a promising Major-General fell into the hands of the Confederates; and all because the said Major-General permitted a pretty woman to pass his lines on "a mission of mercy."

At another time, a Rebel citizen, professing disgust with Secession for having the weakness to be on "its last legs," took the oath of allegiance and assumed the Union uniform. Informing himself fully of the disposition of our forces along the Nashville Railroad, he suddenly disappeared, to reappear with Basil Duke and John Morgan in a midnight raid on our slumbering outposts.

Again, a column on the march came upon a wretched woman, with a child in her arms, seated by the dying embers of a burning homestead,—burning, she said, because her sole and only friend, her uncle, (these ladies seldom have any nearer kin,) "stood up stret fur the kentry." No American soldier ever refused a "lift" to a woman in distress. This woman was soon "lifted" into an empty saddle by the side of a staff-officer, who, with many wise winks and knowing nods, was discussing the intended route of the expedition with a brother simpleton. A little farther on the woman suddenly remembered that another uncle, who did not stand up quite so "stret fur the kentry," and, consequently, had a house still standing up for him, lived "plumb up thet 'ar' hill ter the right o' the high-road." She was set down, the column moved on, and—Streight's well planned expedition miscarried. But no one wasted a thought on the forlorn woman and the sallow baby whose skinny faces were so long within earshot of the wooden-headed staff-officer.

Means quite as ingenious and quite as curious were often adopted to conceal dispatches, when the messenger was in danger of capture by an enemy. A boot with a hollow heel, a fragment of corn-pone too stale to tempt a starving man, a strip of adhesive plaster over a festering wound, or a ball of cotton-wool stuffed into the ear to keep out the west wind, often hid a message whose discovery would cost a life, and perhaps endanger an army. The writer has himself seen the hollow half-eagle which bore to Burnside's beleaguered force the welcome tidings that in thirty hours Sherman would relieve Knoxville.

The perils which even the "native" scout encountered can be estimated only by those familiar with the vigilance that surrounds an army. The casual meeting with an acquaintance, the slightest act inconsistent with his assumed character, or the smallest incongruity between his speech and that of the district to which he professed to belong, has sent many a good man to the gallows. One of the best of Rosecrans's scouts—a native of East Kentucky—lost his life because he would "bounce" (mount) his nag, "pack" (carry) his gun, eat his bread "dry so," (without butter,) and "guzzle his peck o' whiskey," in the midst of Bragg's camp, when no such things were done there, nor in the mountains of Alabama, whence he professed to come. Acquainted only with a narrow region, the poor fellow did not know that every Southern district has its own dialect, and that the travelled ear of a close observer can detect the slightest deviation from its customary phrases. But he was not alone in this ignorance. Almost every Northern writer who has undertaken to describe Southern life has fallen into the same error. Even Olmstead, who has caught the idioms wonderfully, confounds the dialects of different regions, and makes a Northern Georgian "right smart," when he had been only "powerful stupid" all his life.

The professional scout generally was a native of the South,—some illiterate and simple-minded, but brave and self-devoted "poor white man," who, if he had worn shoulder-straps, and been able to write "interesting" dispatches, might now be known as a hero half the world over. Some of these men, had they been born at the North, where free schools are open to all, would have led armies, and left a name to live after them. But they were born at the South, had their minds cramped and their souls stunted by a system which dwarfs every noble thing; and so, their humble mission over, they have gone down unknown and unhonored, amid the silence and darkness of their native woods.

I hope to rescue the memory of one of these men—John Jordan, from the head of Baine—from utter oblivion by writing this article. He is now beyond the hearing of my words; but I would record one act in his short career, that his pure patriotism may lead some of us to know better and love more the much-abused and misunderstood class to which he belonged.

* * * * *

Early in the war the command of an important military expedition was intrusted to the president of a Western college. Though a young man, this scholar had already achieved a "character" and a history. Beginning life a widow's son, his first sixteen years were passed between a farm, a canal, and a black-saltern. Being an intelligent, energetic lad, his friends formed the usual hopes of him; but when he apprenticed himself to a canal-boat, their faith failed, and, after the fashion of Job's friends, they comforted his mother with the assurance that her son had taken the swift train to the Devil. But, like Job, she knew in whom she believed, and the boy soon justified her confidence. An event shortly occurred which changed the current of his life, gave him a purpose, and made him a man.

One dark midnight, as the boat on which he was employed was leaving one of those long reaches of slackwater which abound in the Ohio and Pennsylvania Canal, he was called up to take his turn at the bow. Tumbling out of bed, his eyes heavy with sleep, he took his stand on the narrow platform below the bow-deck, and began uncoiling a rope to steady the boat through a lock it was approaching. Slowly and sleepily he unwound it, till it knotted, and caught in a narrow cleft in the edge of the deck. He gave it a sudden pull, but it held fast; then another and a stronger pull, and it gave way, but sent him over the bow into the water. Down he went into the dark night and the still darker river; and the boat glided on to bury him among the fishes. No human help was near. God only could save him, and He only by a miracle. So the boy thought, as he went down saying the prayer his mother had taught him. Instinctively clutching the rope, he sunk below the surface; but then it tightened in his grasp, and held firmly. Seizing it hand over hand, he drew himself up on deck, and was again a live boy among the living. Another kink had caught in another crevice, and saved him! Was it that prayer, or the love of his praying mother, which wrought this miracle? He did not know, but, long after the boat had passed the lock, he stood there, in his dripping clothes, pondering the question.

Coiling the rope, he tried to throw it again into the crevice; but it had lost the knack of kinking. Many times he tried,—six hundred, says my informant,—and then sat down and reflected. "I have thrown this rope," he thought, "six hundred times; I might throw it ten times as many without its catching. Ten times six hundred are six thousand,—so, there were six thousand chances against my life. Against such odds, Providence only could have saved it. Providence, therefore, thinks it worth saving; and if that's so, I won't throw it away on a canal-boat. I'll go home, get an education, and be a man."

He acted on this resolution, and not long afterwards stood before a little log cottage in the depths of the Ohio wilderness. It was late at night; the stars were out, and the moon was down; but by the fire-light that came through the window, he saw his mother kneeling before an open book which lay on a chair in the corner. She was reading; but her eyes were off the page, looking up to the Invisible. "Oh, turn unto me," she said, "and have mercy upon me! give Thy strength unto Thy servant, and save the son of Thine handmaid!" More she read, which sounded like a prayer, but this is all that the boy remembers. He opened the door, put his arm about her neck, and his head upon her bosom. What words he said I do not know; but there, by her side, he gave back to God the life which He had given. So the mother's prayer was answered. So sprang up the seed which in toil and tears she had planted.

The boy worked, the world rolled round, and twelve years later Governor Dennison offered him command of a regiment. He went home, opened his mother's Bible, and pondered upon the subject. He had a wife, a child, and a few thousand dollars. If he gave his life to the country, would God and the few thousand dollars provide for his wife and child? He consulted the Book about it. It seemed to answer in the affirmative; and before morning he wrote to a friend,—"I regard my life as given to the country. I am only anxious to make as much of it as possible before the mortgage on it is foreclosed."

To this man, who thus went into the war with a life not his own, was given, on the 16th of December, 1861, command of the little army which held Kentucky to her moorings in the Union.

He knew nothing of war beyond its fundamental principles,—which are, I believe, that a big boy can whip a little boy, and that one big boy can whip two little boys, if he take them singly, one after the other. He knew no more about it; yet he was called upon to solve a military problem which has puzzled the heads of the greatest generals: namely, how two small bodies of men, stationed widely apart, can unite in the presence of an enemy, and beat him, when he is of twice their united strength, and strongly posted behind intrenchments. With the help of many "good men and true," he solved this problem; and in telling how he solved it, I shall come naturally to speak of John Jordan, from the head of Baine.

Humphrey Marshall with five thousand men had invaded Kentucky. Entering it at Pound Gap, he had fortified a strong natural position near Paintville, and, with small bands, was overrunning the whole Piedmont region. This region, containing an area larger than the whole of Massachusetts, was occupied by about four thousand blacks and one hundred thousand whites,—a brave, hardy, rural population, with few schools, scarcely any churches, and only one newspaper, but with that sort of patriotism which grows among mountains and clings to its barren hillsides as if they were the greenest spots in the universe. Among this simple people Marshall was scattering firebrands. Stump-orators were blazing away at every cross-road, lighting a fire which threatened to sweep Kentucky from the Union. That done,—so early in the war,—dissolution might have followed. To the Ohio canal-boy was committed the task of extinguishing this conflagration. It was a difficult task, one which, with the means at command, would have appalled any man not made equal to it by early struggles with hardship and poverty, and entire trust in the Providence that guards his country.

The means at command were twenty-five hundred men, divided into two bodies, and separated by a hundred miles of mountain country. This country was infested with guerrillas, and occupied by a disloyal people. The sending of dispatches across it was next to impossible; but communication being opened, and the two columns set in motion, there was danger that they would be fallen on and beaten in detail before they could form a junction. This was the great danger. What remained—the beating of five thousand Rebels, posted behind intrenchments, by half their number of Yankees, operating in the open field—seemed to the young Colonel less difficult of accomplishment.

Evidently, the first thing to be done was to find a trustworthy messenger to convey dispatches between the two halves of the Union army. To this end, the Yankee commander applied to the Colonel of the Fourteenth Kentucky.

"Have you a man," he asked, "who will die, rather than fail or betray us?"

The Kentuckian reflected a moment, then answered: "I think I have,—John Jordan, from the head of Baine."[B]

Jordan was sent for. He was a tall, gaunt, sallow man of about thirty, with small gray eyes, a fine, falsetto voice, pitched in the minor key, and his speech the rude dialect of the mountains. His face had as many expressions as could be found in a regiment, and he seemed a strange combination of cunning, simplicity, undaunted courage, and undoubting faith; yet, though he might pass for a simpleton, he talked a quaint sort of wisdom which ought to have given him to history.

The young Colonel sounded him thoroughly; for the fate of the little army might depend on his fidelity. The man's soul was as clear as crystal, and in ten minutes the Yankee saw through it. His history is stereotyped in that region. Born among the hills, where the crops are stones, and sheep's noses are sharpened before they can nibble the thin grass between them, his life had been one of the hardest toil and privation. He knew nothing but what Nature, the Bible, the "Course of Time," and two or three of Shakspeare's plays had taught him; but somehow in the mountain air he had grown to be a man,—a man as civilized nations account manhood.

"Why did you come into the war?" at last asked the Colonel.

"To do my sheer fur the kentry, Gin'ral," answered the man. "And I didn't druv no barg'in wi' th' Lord. I guv Him my life squar' out; and ef He's a mind ter tuck it on this tramp, why, it's a His'n; I've nothin' ter say agin it."

"You mean that you've come into the war not expecting to get out of it?"

"That's so, Gin'ral."

"Will you die rather than let the dispatch be taken?"

"I wull."

The Colonel recalled what had passed in his own mind when poring over his mother's Bible that night at his home in Ohio; and it decided him. "Very well," he said; "I will trust you."

The dispatch was written on tissue paper, rolled into the form of a bullet, coated with warm lead, and put into the hand of the Kentuckian. He was given a carbine, a brace of revolvers, and the fleetest horse in his regiment, and, when the moon was down, started on his perilous journey. He was to ride at night, and hide in the woods or in the houses of loyal men in the day-time.

It was pitch-dark when he set out; but he knew every inch of the way, having travelled it often, driving mules to market. He had gone twenty miles by early dawn, and the house of a friend was only a few miles beyond him. The man himself was away; but his wife was at home, and she would harbor him till nightfall. He pushed on, and tethered his horse in the timber; but it was broad day when he rapped at the door, and was admitted. The good woman gave him breakfast, and showed him to the guest-chamber, where, lying down in his boots, he was soon in a deep slumber.

The house was a log cabin in the midst of a few acres of deadening,—ground from which trees have been cleared by girdling. Dense woods were all about it; but the nearest forest was a quarter of a mile distant, and should the scout be tracked, it would be hard to get away over this open space, unless he had warning of the approach of his pursuers. The woman thought of this, and sent up the road, on a mule, her whole worldly possessions, an old negro, dark as the night, but faithful as the sun in the heavens. It was high noon when the mule came back, his heels striking fire, and his rider's eyes flashing, as if ignited from the sparks the steel had emitted.

"Dey 'm comin', Missus!" he cried,—"not haff a mile away,—twenty Secesh,—ridin' as ef de Debil wus arter 'em!"

She barred the door, and hastened to the guest-chamber.

"Go," she cried, "through the winder,—ter the woods! They'll be here in a minute."

"How many is thar?" asked the scout.

"Twenty,—go,—go at once,—or you'll be taken!"

The scout did not move; but, fixing his eyes on her face, he said,—

"Yes, I yere 'em. Thar's a sorry chance for my life a'ready. But, Rachel, I've thet 'bout me thet's wuth more 'n my life,—thet, may-be, 'll save Kaintuck. If I'm killed, wull ye tuck it ter Cunnel Cranor, at Paris?"

"Yes, yes, I will. But go: you've not a minnit to lose, I tell you."

"I know, but wull ye swar it,—swar ter tuck this ter Cunnel Cranor 'fore th' Lord thet yeres us?"

"Yes, yes, I will," she said, taking the bullet. But horses' hoofs were already sounding in the door-yard. "It's too late," cried the woman. "Oh, why did you stop to parley?"

"Never mind, Rachel," answered the scout. "Don't tuck on. Tuck ye keer o' th' dispatch. Valu' it loike yer life,—loike Kaintuck. The Lord's callin' fur me, and I'm a'ready."

But the scout was mistaken. It was not the Lord, but a dozen devils at the door-way.

"What does ye want?" asked the woman, going to the door.

"The man as come from Garfield's camp at sun-up,—John Jordan, from the head o' Baine," answered a voice from the outside.

"Ye karn't hev him fur th' axin'," said the scout. "Go away, or I'll send some o' ye whar the weather is warm, I reckon."

"Pshaw!" said another voice,—from his speech one of the chivalry. "There are twenty of us. We'll spare your life, if you give up the dispatch; if you don't, we'll hang you higher than Haman."

The reader will bear in mind that this was in the beginning of the war, when swarms of spies infested every Union camp, and treason was only a gentlemanly pastime, not the serious business it has grown to be since traitors are no longer dangerous.

"I've nothin' but my life thet I'll guv up," answered the scout; "and ef ye tuck thet, ye'll hev ter pay the price,—six o' yourn."

"Fire the house!" shouted one.

"No, don't do thet," said another. "I know him,—he's cl'ar grit,—he'll die in the ashes; and we won't git the dispatch."

This sort of talk went on for half an hour; then there was a dead silence, and the woman went to the loft, whence she could see all that was passing outside. About a dozen of the horsemen were posted around the house; but the remainder, dismounted, had gone to the edge of the woods, and were felling a well-grown sapling, with the evident intention of using it as a battering-ram to break down the front door.

The woman, in a low tone, explained the situation; and the scout said,—

"It 'r' my only chance. I must run fur it. Bring me yer red shawl, Rachel."

She had none, but she had a petticoat of flaming red and yellow. Handling it as if he knew how such articles can be made to spread, the scout softly unbarred the door, and, grasping the hand of the woman, said,—

"Good bye, Rachel. It 'r' a right sorry chance; but I may git through. Ef I do, I'll come ter night; ef I don't, git ye the dispatch ter the Cunnel. Good bye."

To the right of the house, midway between it and the woods, stood the barn. That way lay the route of the scout. If he could elude the two mounted men at the door-way, he might escape the other horsemen; for they would have to spring the barn-yard fences, and their horses might refuse the leap. But it was foot of man against leg of horse, and "a right sorry chance."

Suddenly he opened the door, and dashed at the two horses with the petticoat. They reared, wheeled, and bounded away like lightning just let out of harness. In the time that it takes to tell it, the scout was over the first fence, and scaling the second; but a horse was making the leap with him. The scout's pistol went off, and the rider's earthly journey was over. Another followed, and his horse fell mortally wounded. The rest made the circuit of the barn-yard, and were rods behind when the scout reached the edge of the forest. Once among those thick laurels, nor horse nor rider can reach a man, if he lies low, and says his prayer in a whisper.

The Rebels bore the body of their comrade back to the house, and said to the woman,—

"We'll be revenged for this. We know the route he'll take, and will have his life before to-morrow; and you—we'd burn your house over your head, if you were not the wife of Jack Brown."

Brown was a loyal man, who was serving his country in the ranks of Marshall. Thereby hangs a tale, but this is not the time to tell it. Soon the men rode away, taking the poor woman's only wagon as a hearse for their dead comrade.

Night came, and the owls cried in the woods in a way they had not cried for a fortnight. "T'whoot! t'whoot!" they went, as if they thought there was music in hooting. The woman listened, put on a dark mantle, and followed the sound of their voices. Entering the woods, she crept in among the bushes, and talked with the owls as if they had been human.

"They know the road ye'll take," she said; "ye must change yer route. Here ar' the bullet."

"God bless ye, Rachel!" responded the owl, "ye 'r' a true 'ooman!"—and he hooted louder than before, to deceive pursuers, and keep up the music.

"Ar' yer nag safe?" she asked.

"Yes, and good for forty mile afore sun-up."

"Well, here ar' suthin' ter eat: ye'll need it. Good bye, and God go wi' ye!"

"He'll go wi' ye, fur He loves noble wimmin."

Their hands clasped, and then they parted: he to his long ride; she to the quiet sleep of those who, out of a true heart, serve their country.

The night was dark and drizzly; but before morning the clouds cleared away, leaving a thick mist hanging low on the meadows. The scout's mare was fleet, but the road was rough, and a slosh of snow impeded the travel. He had come by a strange way, and did not know how far he had travelled by sunrise; but lights were ahead, shivering in the haze of the cold, gray morning. Were they the early candles of some sleepy village, or the camp-fires of a band of guerrillas? He did not know, and it would not be safe to go on till he did know. The road was lined with trees, but they would give no shelter; for they were far apart, and the snow lay white between them. He was in the blue grass region. Tethering his horse in the timber, he climbed a tall oak by the roadside; but the mist was too thick to admit of his discerning anything distinctly. It seemed, however, to be breaking away, and he would wait until his way was clear; so he sat there, an hour, two hours, and ate his breakfast from the satchel John's wife had slung over his shoulder. At last the fog lifted a little, and he saw close at hand a small hamlet,—a few rude huts gathered round a cross-road. No danger could lurk in such a place, and he was about to descend, and pursue his journey, when suddenly he heard, up the road by which he came, the rapid tramp of a body of horsemen. The mist was thicker below; so half-way down the tree he went, and waited their coming. They moved at an irregular pace, carrying lanterns, and pausing every now and then to inspect the road, as if they had missed their way or lost something. Soon they came near, and were dimly outlined in the gray mist, so the scout could make out their number. There were thirty of them,—the original band, and a reinforcement. Again they halted when abreast of the tree, and searched the road narrowly.

"He must have come this way," said one,—he of the chivalry. "The other road is six miles longer, and he would take the shortest route. It's an awful pity we didn't head him on both roads."

"We kin come up with him yit, ef we turn plumb round, and foller on t'other road,—whar we lost the trail,—back thar, three miles ter the deadnin'."

Now another spoke, and his voice the scout remembered. He belonged to his own company in the Fourteenth Kentucky. "It 'so," he said; "he has tuck t' other road. I tell ye, I'd know thet mar's shoe 'mong a million. Nary one loike it wus uver seed in all Kaintuck,—only a d——d Yankee could ha' invented it."

"And yere it ar'," shouted a man with one of the lanterns, "plain as sun-up."

The Fourteenth Kentuckian clutched the light, and, while a dozen dismounted and gathered round, closely examined the shoe-track. The ground was bare on the spot, and the print of the horse's hoof was clearly cut in the half-frozen mud. Narrowly the man looked, and life and death hung on his eyesight. The scout took out the bullet, and placed it in a crotch of the tree. If they took him, the Devil should not take the dispatch. Then he drew a revolver. The mist was breaking away, and he would surely be discovered, if the men lingered much longer; but he would have the value of his life to the uttermost farthing.

Meanwhile, the horsemen crowded around the foot-print, and one of them inadvertently trod upon it. The Kentuckian looked long and earnestly, but at last he said,—

"'Ta'n't the track. Thet 'ar' mar' has a sand-crack on her right fore-foot. She didn't take kindly to a round shoe; so the Yank, he guv her one with the cork right in the middle o' the quarter. 'Twas a durned smart contrivance; fur ye see, it eased the strain, and let the nag go nimble as a squirrel. The cork ha'n't yere,—'ta'n't her track,—and we're wastin,' time in luckin'."

The cork was not there, because the trooper's tread had obliterated it. Reader, let us thank him for that one good step, if he never take another; for it saved the scout, and, may-be, it saved Kentucky. When the scout returned that way, he halted abreast of that tree, and examined the ground about it. Right there, in the road, was the mare's track, with the print of the man's foot still upon the inner quarter! He uncovered his head, and from his heart went up a simple thanksgiving.

The horsemen gone, the scout came down from the tree, and pushed on into the misty morning. There might be danger ahead, but there surely was danger behind him. His pursuers were only half convinced that they had struck his trail; and some sensible fiend might put it into their heads to divide and follow, part by one route, part by the other.

He pushed on over the sloshy road, his mare every step going slower and slower. The poor beast was jaded out; for she had travelled sixty miles, eaten nothing, and been stabled in the timber. She would have given out long before, had her blood not been the best in Kentucky. As it was, she staggered along as if she had taken a barrel of whiskey. Five miles farther on was the house of a Union man. She must reach it, or die by the wayside; for the merciful man regardeth not the life of his beast, when he carries dispatches.

The loyalist did not know the scout, but his honest face secured him a cordial welcome. He explained that he was from the Union camp on the Big Sandy, and offered any price for a horse to go on with.

"Yer nag is wuth ary two o' my critters," said the man. "Ye kin take the best beast I've got; and when ye 'r' ag'in this way, we'll swop back even."

The scout thanked him, mounted the horse, and rode off into the mist again, without the warm breakfast which the good woman had, half-cooked, in the kitchen. It was eleven o'clock; and at twelve that night he entered Colonel Cranor's quarters at Paris,—having ridden a hundred miles with a rope round his neck, for thirteen dollars a month, hard-tack, and a shoddy uniform.

The Colonel opened the dispatch. It was dated, Louisa, Kentucky, December 24th, midnight; and directed him to move at once with his regiment, (the Fortieth Ohio, eight hundred strong,) by the way of Mount Sterling and McCormick's Gap, to Prestonburg. He would incumber his men with as few rations and as little luggage as possible, bearing in mind that the safety of his command depended on his expedition. He would also convey the dispatch to Lieutenant-Colonel Woolford, at Stamford, and direct him to join the march with his three hundred cavalry.

Hours now were worth months of common time, and on the following morning Cranor's column began to move. The scout lay by till night, then set out on his return, and at daybreak swapped his now jaded horse for the fresh Kentucky mare, even. He ate the housewife's breakfast, too, and took his ease with the good man till dark, when he again set out, and rode through the night in safety. After that his route was beset with perils. The Providence which so wonderfully guarded his way out seemed to leave him to find his own way in; or, as he expressed it, "Ye see, the Lord, He keered more fur the dispatch nor He keered fur me: and 'twas nateral He should; 'case my life only counted one, while the dispatch, it stood fur all Kaintuck."

Be that as it may, he found his road a hard one to travel. The same gang which followed him out waylaid him back, and one starry midnight he fell among them. They lined the road forty deep, and seeing he could not run the gauntlet, he wheeled his mare and fled backwards. The noble beast did her part; but a bullet struck her, and she fell in the road dying. Then—it was Hobson's choice—he took to his legs, and, leaping a fence, was at last out of danger. Two days he lay in the woods, not daring to come out; but hunger finally forced him to ask food at a negro shanty. The dusky patriot loaded him with bacon, brown bread, and blessings, and at night piloted him to a Rebel barn, where he enforced the Confiscation Act, to him then "the higher law,"—necessity.

With his fresh horse he set out again; and after various adventures and hair-breadth escapes, too numerous to mention,—and too incredible to believe, had not similar things occurred all through the war,—he entered, one rainy midnight, (the 6th of January,) the little log hut, seven miles from Paintville, where Colonel Garfield was sleeping.

The Colonel rubbed his eyes, and raised himself upon his elbow.

"Back safe?" he asked. "Have you seen Cranor?"

"Yes, Gin'ral. He can't be more 'n two days ahind o' me, nohow."

"God bless you, Jordan! You have done us great service," said Garfield, warmly.

"I thanks ye, Gin'ral," said the scout, his voice trembling, "Thet's more pay 'n I expected."

* * * * *

To give the reader a full understanding of the result of the scout's ride, I must now move on with the little army. They are only fourteen hundred men, worn out with marching, but boldly they move down upon Marshall. False scouts have made him believe they are as strong as he: and they are; for every one is a hero, and they are led by a general. The Rebel has five thousand men,—forty-four hundred infantry and six hundred cavalry,—besides twelve pieces of artillery,—so he says in a letter to his wife, which Buell has intercepted and Garfield has in his pocket. Three roads lead to Marshall's position: one at the east, bearing down to the river, and along its western bank; another, a circuitous one, to the west, coming in on Paint Creek, at the mouth of Jenny's Creek, on the right of the village; and a third between the others, a more direct route, but climbing a succession of almost impassable ridges. These three roads are held by strong Rebel pickets, and a regiment is outlying at the village of Paintville.

To deceive Marshall as to his real strength and designs, Garfield orders a small force of infantry and cavalry to advance along the river, drive in the Rebel pickets, and move rapidly after them as if to attack Paintville. Two hours after this force goes off, a similar one, with the same orders, sets out on the road to the westward; and two hours later still, another small body takes the middle road. The effect is, that the pickets on the first route, being vigorously attacked and driven, retreat in confusion to Paintville, and dispatch word to Marshall that the Union army is advancing along the river. He hurries off a thousand infantry and a battery to resist the advance of this imaginary column. When this detachment has been gone an hour and a half, he hears, from the routed pickets on the right, that the Federals are advancing along the western road. Countermanding his first order, he now directs the thousand men and the battery to check the new danger; and hurries off the troops at Paintville to the mouth of Jenny's Creek to make a stand there. Two hours later the pickets on the central route are driven in, and, finding Paintville abandoned, flee precipitately to the fortified camp, with the story that the Union army is close at their heels and occupying the town. Conceiving that he has thus lost Paintville, Marshall hastily withdraws the detachment of one thousand men to his fortified camp; and Garfield, moving rapidly over the ridges of the central route, occupies the abandoned position.

So affairs stand on the evening of the 8th of January, when a spy enters the camp of Marshall, with tidings that Cranor, with thirty-three hundred (!) men, is within twelve hours' march at the westward. On receipt of these tidings, the "big boy,"—he weighs three hundred pounds by the Louisville hay-scales,—conceiving himself outnumbered, breaks up his camp, and retreats precipitately, abandoning or burning a large portion of his supplies. Seeing the fires, Garfield mounts his horse, and, with a thousand men, enters the deserted camp at nine in the evening, while the blazing stores are yet unconsumed. He sends off a detachment to harass the retreat, and waits the arrival of Cranor, with whom he means to follow and bring Marshall to battle in the morning.

In the morning Cranor comes, but his men are footsore, without rations, and completely exhausted. They cannot move one leg after the other. But the canal-boy is bound to have a fight; so every man who has strength to march is ordered to come forward. Eleven hundred—among them four hundred of Cranor's tired heroes—step from the ranks, and with them, at noon of the 9th, Garfield sets out for Prestonburg, sending all his available cavalry to follow the line of the enemy's retreat and harass and delay him.

Marching eighteen miles, he reaches at nine o'clock that night the mouth of Abbott's Creek, three miles below Prestonburg,—he and the eleven hundred. There he hears that Marshall is encamped on the same stream, three miles higher up; and throwing his men into bivouac, in the midst of a sleety rain, he sends an order back to Lieutenant-Colonel Sheldon, who is left in command at Paintville, to bring up every available man, with all possible dispatch, for he shall force the enemy to battle in the morning. He spends the night in learning the character of the surrounding country and the disposition of Marshall's forces; and now again John Jordan comes into action.

A dozen Rebels are grinding at a mill, and a dozen honest men come upon them, steal their corn, and make them prisoners. The miller is a tall, gaunt man, and his clothes fit the scout as if they were made for him. He is a Disunionist, too, and his very raiment should bear witness against this feeding of his enemies. It does. It goes back to the Rebel camp, and—the scout goes in it. That chameleon face of his is smeared with meal, and looks the miller so well that the miller's own wife might not detect the difference. The night is dark and rainy, and that lessens the danger; but still he is picking his teeth in the very jaws of the lion,—if he can be called a lion, who does nothing but roar like unto Marshall.

Space will not permit me to detail this midnight ramble; but it gave Garfield the exact position of the enemy. They had made a stand, and laid an ambuscade for him. Strongly posted on a semicircular hill, at the forks of Middle Creek, on both sides of the road, with cannon commanding its whole length, and hidden by the trees, they were waiting his coming.

The Union commander broke up his bivouac at four in the morning and began to move forward. Reaching the valley of Middle Creek, he encountered some of the enemy's mounted men, and captured a quantity of stores they were trying to withdraw from Prestonburg. Skirmishing went on until about noon, when the Rebel pickets were driven back upon their main body, and then began the battle. It is not my purpose to describe it; for that has already been ably done, in thirty lines, by the man who won it.

It was a wonderful battle. In the history of this war there is not another like it. Measured by the forces engaged, the valor displayed, and the results which followed, it throws into the shade even the achievements of the mighty hosts which saved the nation. Eleven hundred men, without cannon, charge up a rocky hill, over stumps, over stones, over fallen trees, over high intrenchments, right into the face of five thousand, and twelve pieces of artillery!

For five hours the contest rages. Now the Union forces are driven back; then, charging up the hill, they regain the lost ground, and from behind rocks and trees pour in their murderous volleys. Then again they are driven back, and again they charge up the hill, strewing the ground with corpses. So the bloody work goes on; so the battle wavers, till the setting sun, wheeling below the hills, glances along the dense lines of Rebel steel moving down to envelop the weary eleven hundred. It is an awful moment, big with the fate of Kentucky. At its very crisis two figures stand out against the fading sky, boldly defined in the foreground.

One is in Union blue. With a little band of heroes about him, he is posted on a projecting rock, which is scarred with bullets, and in full view of both armies. His head is uncovered, his hair streaming in the wind, his face upturned in the darkening daylight, and from his soul is going up a prayer,—a prayer for Sheldon and Cranor. He turns his eyes to the northward, and his lip tightens, as he throws off his coat, and says to his hundred men,—"Boys, we must go at them!"

The other is in Rebel gray. Moving out to the brow of the opposite hill, and placing a glass to his eye, he, too, takes a long look to the northward. He starts, for he sees something which the other, on lower ground, does not distinguish. Soon he wheels his horse, and the word "RETREAT" echoes along the valley between them. It is his last word; for six rifles crack, and the Rebel Major lies on the ground quivering.

The one in blue looks to the north again, and now, floating proudly among the trees, he sees the starry banner. It is Sheldon and Cranor! The long ride of the scout is at last doing its work for the nation. On they come like the rushing wind, filling the air with their shouting. The rescued eleven hundred take up the strain, and then, above the swift pursuit, above the lessening conflict, above the last boom of the wheeling cannon, goes up the wild huzza of Victory. The gallant Garfield has won the day, and rolled back the disastrous tide which has been sweeping on ever since Big Bethel. In ten days Thomas routs Zollicoffer, and then we have and hold Kentucky.

* * * * *

Every one remembers a certain artist, who, after painting a "neighing steed," wrote underneath the picture, "This is a horse," lest it should be mistaken for an alligator. I am tempted to imitate his example, lest the reader, otherwise, may not detect the rambling parallel I have herein drawn between a Northern and a Southern "poor white man."

President Lincoln, when he heard of the Battle of Middle Creek, said to a distinguished officer, who happened to be with him,—

"Why did Garfield in two weeks do what would have taken one of you Regular folks two months to accomplish?"

"Because he was not educated at West Point," answered the West-Pointer, laughing.

"No," replied Mr. Lincoln. "That wasn't the reason. It was because, when he was a boy, he had to work for a living."

But our good President, for once, was wrong,—for once, he did not get at the core of the matter. Jordan, as well as Garfield, "had, when a boy, to work for a living." The two men were, perhaps, of about equal natural abilities,—both were born in log huts, both worked their own way to manhood, and both went into the war consecrating their very lives to their country: but one came out of it with a brace of stars on his shoulder, and honored by all the nation; the other never rose from the ranks, and went down to an unknown grave, mourned only among his native mountains. Something more than work was at the bottom of this contrast in their lives and their destinies. It was FREE SCHOOLS, which the North gave the one, and of which the South robbed the other. Plant a free school at every Southern cross-road, and every Southern Jordan will become a Garfield. Then, and not till then, will this Union be "reconstructed."

FOOTNOTES:

[B] The Baine is a small stream which puts into the Big Sandy, a short distance from the town of Louisa, Ky.



NOEL.[C]

L'Academie en respect, Nonobstant l'incorrection, A la faveur du sujet, Ture-lure, N'y fera point de rature; Noel! ture-lure-lure.

GUI-BAROZAI.

1.

Quand les astres de Noel Brillaient, palpitaient au ciel, Six gaillards, et chacun ivre, Chantaient gaiment dans le givre, "Bons amis, Allons done chez Agassiz!"

2.

Ces illustres Pelerins D'Outre-Mer, adroits et fins, Se donnant des airs de pretre, A l'envi se vantaient d'etre "Bons amis De Jean Rudolphe Agassiz!"

3.

Oeil-de-Perdrix, grand farceur, Sans reproche et sans pudeur, Dans son patois de Bourgogne, Bredouillait comme un ivrogne, "Bons amis, J'ai danse chez Agassiz!"

4.

Verzenay le Champenois, Bon Francais, point New-Yorquois, Mais des environs d'Avize, Fredonne, a mainte reprise, "Bons amis, J'ai chante chez Agassiz!"

5.

A cote marchait un vieux Hidalgo, mais non mousseux; Dans le temps de Charlemagne Fut son pere Grand d'Espagne! "Bons amis, J'ai dine chez Agassiz!"

6.

Derriere eux un Bordelais, Gascon, s'il en fut jamais, Parfume de poesie Riait, chantait plein de vie, "Bons amis, J'ai soupe chez Agassiz!"

7.

Avec ce beau cadet roux, Bras dessus et bras dessous, Mine altiere et couleur terne, Vint le Sire de Sauterne: "Bons amis, J'ai couche chez Agassiz!"

8.

Mais le dernier de ces preux Etait un pauvre Chartreux, Qui disait, d'un ton robuste, "Benedictions sur le Juste! Bons amis, Benissons Pere Agassiz!"

9.

Ils arrivent trois a trois, Montent l'escalier de bois Clopin-clopant! quel gendarme Peut permettre ce vacarme, Bons amis, A la porte d'Agassiz!

10.

"Ouvrez donc, mon bon Seigneur, Ouvrez vite et n'ayez peur; Ouvrez, ouvrez, car nous sommes Gens de bien et gentilshommes, Bons amis De la famille Agassiz!"

11.

Chut, ganaches! taisez-vous! C'en est trop de vos glouglous; Epargnez aux Philosophes Vos abominables strophes! Bons amis, Respectez mon Agassiz!

FOOTNOTES:

[C] Sent to Mr. Agassiz, with a basket of wine, on Christmas Eve, 1864.



WILHELM MEISTER'S APPRENTICESHIP.

SECOND PAPER.

In a preceding paper I have sought to trace the main lines of spiritual growth, as these appear in Goethe's great picture. But is such growth possible in this world? Do the circumstances in which modern men are placed comport with it? Or is it, perhaps, a cherub only painted with wings, and despite the laws of anatomy? These questions are pertinent. It concerns us little to know what results the crescent powers of life might produce, if, by good luck, Eden rather than our struggling century, another world instead of this world, were here. This world, it happens, is here undoubtedly; our century and our place in it are facts, which decline to take their leave, bid them good morning and show them the door how one may. Let us know, then, what of good sufficing may be achieved in their company. If Goethe's picture be only a picture, and not a possibility, we will be pleased with him, provided his work prove pleasant; we will partake of his literary dessert, and give him his meed of languid praise. But if, on the other hand, his book be written in full, unblinking view of all that is fixed and limitary in man and around him, and if, in face of this, it conduct growth to its consummation, then we may give him something better than any praise,—namely, heed.

Is it, then, written in this spirit of reality? In proof that it is so, I call to witness the most poignant reproach, save one, ever uttered against it by a superior man. Novalis censured it as "thoroughly modern and prosaic." Well, on one side, it is so,—just as modern and prosaic as the modern world and actual European civilization. What is this but to say that Goethe faces the facts? What is it but to say that he accepts the conditions of his problem? He is to show that the high possibilities of growth can be realized here. To run off, get up a fancy world, and then picture these possibilities as coming to fruition there, would be a mere toying with his readers. Here is modern civilization, with its fixed forms, its rigid limits, its traditional mechanisms. Here is this life, where men make, execute, and obey laws, own and manage property, buy and sell, plant, sail, build, marry and beget children and maintain households, pay taxes, keep out of debt, if they are wise, and go to the poorhouse, or beg, or do worse, if they are unwise or unfortunate. Here such trivialities as starched collars, blacked boots, and coats according to the mode compel attention. Society has its fixed rules, by which it enforces social continuity and connection. To neglect these throws one off the ring; and, with rare exceptions, isolation is barrenness and death. One cannot even go into the street in a wilfully strange costume, without establishing repulsions and balking relations between him and his neighbors which destroy their use to each other. Every man is bound to the actual form of society by his necessities at least, if not by his good-will.

To step violently out of all this puts one in a social vacuum,—a position in which few respire well, while most either perish or become in some degree monstrous. It is necessary that one should live and work with his fellows, if he is to obtain the largest growth. On the other hand, to be merely in and of this—a wheel, spoke, or screw, in this vast social mechanism—makes one, not a man, but a thing, and precludes all growth but such as is obscure and indirect. Thousands, indeed, have no desire but to obtain some advantageous place in this machinery. Meanwhile this enormous conventional civilization strives, and must strive, to make every soul its puppet. Let each fall into the routine, pursue it in some shining manner, asking no radical questions, and he shall have his heart's desire. "Blessed is he," it cries, "who handsomely and with his whole soul reads upwards from man to position and estate,—from man to millionnaire, judge, lord, bishop! Cursed is he who questions, who aims to strike down beneath this great mechanism, and to connect himself with the primal resources of his being! There are no such resources. It is a wickedness to dream of them. Man has no root but in tradition and custom, no blessing but in serving them."

As that assurance is taken, and as that spirit prevails, man forfeits his manhood. His life becomes mechanical. Ideas disappear in the forms that once embodied them; imagination is buried beneath symbol; belief dies of creed, and morality of custom. Nothing remains but a world-wide pantomime. Worship itself becomes only a more extended place-hunting, and man the walking dummy of society. And then, since man no longer is properly vitalized, disease sets in, consumption, decay, putrefaction, filling all the air with the breath of their foulness.

The earlier part of the eighteenth century found all Europe in this stage. Then came a stir in the heart of man: for Nature would not let him die altogether. First came recoil, complaint, reproach, mockery. Voltaire's light, piercing, taunting laugh—with a screaming wail inside it, if one can hear well—rang over Europe. "Aha, you are found out! Up, toad, in your true shape!" Then came wild, shallow theories, half true; then wild attempt to make the theories real; then carnage and chaos.

Accompanying and following this comes another and purer phase of reaction. "Let us get out of this dead, conventional world!" cry a few noble spirits, in whose hearts throbs newly the divine blood of life. "Leave it behind; it is dead. Leave behind all formal civilization; let us live only from within, and let the outward be formless,—momentarily created by our souls, momentarily vanishing."

The noblest type I have ever known of this extra-vagance, this wandering outside of actual civilization, was Thoreau. With his purity, as of a newborn babe,—with his moral steadiness, unsurpassed in my observation,—with his indomitable persistency,—by the aid also of that all-fertilizing imaginative sympathy with outward Nature which was his priceless gift,—he did, indeed, lend to his mode of life an indescribable charm. In him it came at once to beauty and to consecration.

Yet even he must leave out marriage, to make his scheme of life practicable. He must ignore Nature's demand that humanity continue, or recognize it only with loathing. "Marriage is that!" said he to a friend,—and held up a carrion-flower.

Moreover, the success of his life—nay, the very quality of his being—implied New England and its civilization. To suppose him born among the Flathead Indians were to suppose him, the Thoreau of our love and pride, unborn still. The civilization he slighted was an air that he breathed; it was implied, as impulse and audience, in those books of his, wherein he enshrined his spirit, and whereby he kept its health.

A fixed social order is indirectly necessary even to him who, by rare gifts of Nature, can stand nobly and unfalteringly aside from it. And it is directly, instantly necessary to him who, either by less power of self-support or by a more flowing human sympathy, must live with men, and must comply with the conditions by which social connection is preserved.

The problem, therefore, recurs. Here are the two terms: the soul, the primal, immortal imagination of man, on the one side; the enormous, engrossing, dehumanizing mechanism of society, on the other. A noble few elect the one; an ignoble multitude pray to its opposite. The reconciling word,—is there a reconciling word?

Here, now, comes one who answers, Yes. And he answers thus, not by a bald assertion, but by a picture wherein these opposites lose their antagonism,—by a picture which is true to both, yet embraces both, and shapes them into a unity. That is Goethe. This attempt represents the grand nisus of his life. It is most fully made in "Wilhelm Meister."

Above the world he places the growing spirit of man, the vessel of all uses, with his resource in eternal Nature. Then he seizes with a sovereign hand upon actual society, upon formal civilization, and of it all makes food and service for man's spirit. This prosaic civilization, he says, is prosaic only in itself, not when put in relation to its true end. So he first recognizes it with remorseless verity, depicts it in all its littleness and limitation; then strikes its connection with growth: and lo, the littleness becomes great in serving the greater; the harsh prosaicism begins to move in melodious measure; and out of that jarring, creaking mechanism of conventional society arise the grand rolling organ-harmonies of life.

That he succeeds to perfection I do not say. I could find fault enough with his book, if there were either time or need. There is no need: its faults are obvious. In binding himself by such unsparing oaths to recognize and admit all the outward truth of society, he has, indeed, grappled with the whole problem, but also made its solution a little cumbrous and incomplete. Nay, this which he so admits in his picture was also sufficiently, perhaps a touch more than sufficiently, admitted in his own being. He would have been a conventionalist and epicurean, unless he had been a seer. He would have been a mere man of the world, had he not been Goethe. But whereas a man of the world reads up from man to dignity, estate, and social advantage, he reverses the process, and reads up from these to man. Say that he does it with some stammering, with some want of the last nicety. What then? It were enough, if he set forth upon the true road, though his own strength fail before the end is reached. It is enough, if, falling midway, even though it be by excess of the earthly weight he bears, he still point forward, and his voice out of the dust whisper, "There lies your way!" This alone makes him a benefactor of mankind.

This specific aim of Goethe's work makes it, indeed, a novel. Conventional society and the actual conditions of life are, with respect to eternal truth, but the novelties of time. The novelist is to picture these, and, in picturing, subordinate them to that which is perpetual and inspiring. Just so far as he opens the ravishing possibilities of life in commanding reconciliation with the formal civilization of a particular time, he does his true work.

The function of the poet is different. His business it is simply to refresh the spirit of man. To its lip he holds the purest ichors of existence; with ennobling draughts of awe, pity, sympathy, and joy, he quickens its blood and strengthens its vital assimilations. The particular circumstances he uses are merely the cup wherein this wine of life is contained. This he may obtain as most easily he can; the world is all before him where to choose.

The novelist has no such liberty. His business it is to find the ideal possibilities of man here, in the midst of actual society. He shall teach us to free the heart, while respecting the bonds of circumstance. And the more strictly he clings to that which is central in man on the one hand, and the more broadly and faithfully he embraces the existing prosaic limitations on the other, the more his work answers to the whole nature of his function. Goethe has done the latter thoroughly, his accusers themselves being judges; that he has done the other, and how he has done it, I have sought to show in a preceding paper. He looks on actual men and actual society with an eye of piercing observation; he depicts them with remorseless verity; and through and by all builds, builds at the great architectures of spiritual growth.

Hence the difference between him and satirists like Thackeray, who equal him in keenness of observation, are not behind him in verity of report, while surpassing him often in pictorial effect,—but who bring to the picture out of themselves only a noble indignation against baseness. They contemn; he uses. They cry, "Fie!" upon unclean substances; he ploughs the offence into the soil, and sows wheat over it. They see the world as it is; he sees it, and through it. They probe sores; he leads forth into the air and the sunshine. They tinge the cheek with blushes of honorable shame; he paints it with the glow of wholesome activity. Their point of view is that of pathology; his, that of physiology. The great satirists, at best, give a medicine to sickness; Goethe gives a task to health. They open a door into a hospital; he opens a door out of one, and cries, "Lo, the green earth and blue heaven, the fields of labor, the skies of growth!"

On the other hand, by this relentless fidelity to observation, by his stern refusal to give men supposititious qualities and characters, by his resolute acceptance of European civilization, by his unalterable determination to practicable results, by always limiting himself to that which all superior men might be expected not merely to read of with gusto, but to do, he is widely differenced from novelists like the authoress of "Consuelo." He does not propose to furnish a moral luxury, over which at the close one may smack the lips, and cry, "How sweet!" No gardener's manual ever looked more simply to results. His aim is, to get something done, to get all done which he suggests. Accordingly, he does not gratify us with vasty magnanimities, holy beggaries voluntarily assumed, Bouddhistic "missions"; he shows us no more than high-minded, incorruptible men, fixed in their regards upon the high ends of life, established in noble, fruitful fellowship, willing and glad to help others so far as they can clearly see their way, not making public distribution of their property, but managing it so that it shall in themselves and others serve culture, health, and all well-being of body and mind. Wealth here is a trust; it is held for use; its uses are, to subserve the high ends of Nature in the spirit of man. Lothario seeks association with all who can aid him in these applications. So intent is he, that he loves Theresa because she has a genius at once for economizing means and for seeing where they may be applied to the service of the more common natures. He keeps the great-minded, penetrating, providential Abbe in his pay, that this inevitable eye may distinguish for him the more capable natures, and find out whether or how they may be forwarded on their proper paths. Here are no sublime professions, but a steady, modest, resolute, discriminate doing.

For suggestion of what one may really do, and for impelling one toward the practicable best, I find this book worth a moonful of "Consuelos." The latter work has, indeed, beautiful pictures; and simply as a picture of a fresh, sweet, young life, it is charming. But in its aim at a higher import I find it simply an arrow shot into the air, going so high, but at—nothing! If one crave a moral luxury, it is here. If he desire a lash for egoism, this, perhaps, is also here. If he is already praying the heavens for a sufficing worth and work in life, and is asking only the what and how, this book, taken in connection with its sequel, says, "Distribute your property, and begin wandering about and 'doing good.'"

I decline. After due consideration, I have fully determined to own a house, and provide each day a respectable dinner for my table, if the fates agree; to secure, still in submission to the fates, such a competency as will give me leisure for the best work I can do; to further justice and general well-being, so far as is in me to further or hinder, but always on the basis of the existing civilization; to cherish sympathy and good-will in myself, and in others by cherishing them in myself; to help another when I clearly can; and to give, when what I give will obviously do more service toward the high ends of life, in the hands of another than in my own. Toward carrying out these purposes "Consuelo" has not given me a hint, not one; "Wilhelm Meister" has given me invaluable hints. Therefore I feel no great gratitude to the one, and am profoundly grateful to the other.

It is not the mere absence of suffering, it is not a pound of beef on every peasant's plate, that makes life worth living. Health, happiness, even education, however diffused, do not alone make life worth living. Tell me the quality of a man's happiness before I can very rapturously congratulate him upon it; tell me the quality of his suffering before I can grieve over it without solace. Noble pain is worth more than ignoble pleasure; and there is a health in the dying Schiller which beggars in comparison that of the fat cattle on a thousand hills. All the world might be well fed, well clothed, well sheltered, and very properly behaved, and be a pitiful world nevertheless, were this all.

Let us get out of this business of merely improving conditions. There are two things which make life worth living. First, the absolute worth and significance of man's spirit in its harmonious completeness; and hence the absolute value of culture and growth in the deepest sense of the words. Secondly, the relevancy of actual experience and the actual world to these ends. Goethe attends to both these, and to both in a spirit of great sanity. He fixes his eye with imperturbable steadiness on the central fact, then with serene, intrepid modesty suggests the relevancy to this of the world as it is around us, and then trusts the healthy attraction of the higher to modify and better the lower. Give man, he says, something to work for, namely, the high uses of his spirit; give him next something to work with, namely, actual civilization, the powers, limits, and conditions which actually exist in and around him; and if these instruments be poor, be sure he will begin to improve upon them, the moment he has found somewhat inspiring and sufficing to do with them. Actual conditions will improve precisely in proportion as all conditions are utilized, are placed in relations of service to a result which contents the soul of men. And to establish in this relation all the existing conditions of life, natural and artificial, is the task which Goethe has undertaken.

I invite the reader to dwell upon this fact, that, the moment life has an inspiring significance, and the moment also the men, industries, and conditions around us become instrumental toward resolving that, in this moment one must begin, so far as he may, bettering these conditions. If I hire a man to work in my garden, how much is it worth to me, if he bring not merely his hands and gardening skill, but also an appreciable soul, with him! So soon as that fact is apparent, fruitful relations are established between us, and sympathies begin to fly like bees, bearing pollen and winning honey, from each heart to the other. To let a man be degraded, or stupid, or thwarted in all his inward life, when I can make it otherwise? Not unless I am insensate. To allow anywhere a disserviceable condition, when I could make it serviceable? Not in full view of the fact that all which thwarts the inward being of another thwarts me. If there be in the world a man who might write a grand book, but through ill conditions cannot write it, then in me and you a door will remain closed, which might have opened—who knows upon what treasure? With the high ends of life before him, no man can afford to be selfish. With the fact before him that formal civilization is instrumental, no man can afford to run away from it. With the fact in view that each man needs every other, and needs that every other should do and be the best he can, no one can afford to withhold help, where it can be rendered. Finally, seeing that means are limited, and that the means and services which are crammed into others, without being spiritually assimilated, breed only indigestion, no one must throw his services about at random, but see where Nature has prepared the way for him, and there in modesty do what he can.

To strike the connection, then, between the inward and the outward, between the spiritual and the conventional, between man and society, between moral possibility and formal civilization,—to give growth, with all its immortal issues, a place, and means, and opportunity,—this was Goethe's aim; and if the execution be less than perfect, as I admit, it yet suggests the whole; and if the shortcoming be due in part to his personal imperfections, which doubtless may be affirmed, it yet does not mar the sincerity of his effort. His hand trembles, his aim is not nicely sure, but it is an aim at the right object nevertheless.

There are limits and conditions in man, as well as around him, to which the like justice is done. Such are Special Character, Natural Degree and Vocation, Moral Imperfection, and Limitation of Self-Knowledge. Each of these plays a part of vast importance in life; each is portrayed and used in Goethe's picture. But, though with reluctance, I must merely name and pass them by. Enough to say here, that he sees them and sees through them. Enough that they appear, and as means and material. Nor does he merely distinguish and harp upon them, after the hard analytic fashion one would use here; but, as the violinist sweeps all the strings of his instrument, not to show that one sounds so and another so, but out of all to bring a complete melody, so does this master touch the chords of life, and, in thus recognizing, bring out of them the melodious completeness of a human soul.

One inquiry remains. What of inspirational impulse does Goethe bring to his work? He depicts growth; what leads him to do so? Is it nothing but cold curiosity? and does he leave the reader in a like mood? Or is he commanded by some imperial inward necessity? and does he awaken in the reader a like noble necessity, not indeed to write, but to live?

The inspiration which he feels and communicates is art infinite, unspeakable reverence for Personality, for the completed, spiritual reality of man. Literally unspeakable, it is the silent spirit in which he writes, sovereign in him and in his work,—the soul of every sentence, and professed in none. You find it scarcely otherwise than in his manner of treating his material. But there you may find it: the silent, majestic homage that he pays to every real grace and spiritual accomplishment of man or woman. Any smallest trait of this is delineated with a heed that makes no account of time or pains, with a venerating fidelity and religious care that unutterably imply its preciousness. Indeed, it is one point of his art to bestow elaborate, reverential attention upon some minor grace of manhood or womanhood, that one may say, "If this be of such price, how priceless is the whole!" He resorts habitually to this inferential suggestion,—puzzling hasty readers, who think him frivolously exalting little things, rather than hinting beyond all power of direct speech at the worth of the greater. In landscape paintings a bush in the foreground may occupy more space than a whole range of mountains in the distance: perhaps the bush is there to show the scale of the drawing, and intimate the greatness, rather than littleness, of the mountains.

The undertone of every page, should we mask its force in hortatives, would be,—"Buy manhood; buy verity and completeness of being; buy spiritual endowment and accomplishment; buy insight and clearness of heart and wholeness of spirit; pay ease, estimation, estate,—never consider what you pay: for though pleasure is not despicable, though wealth, leisure, and social regard are good, yet there is no tint of inherent grace, no grain nor atom of man's spiritual substance, but it outweighs kingdoms, outweighs all that is external to itself."

But hortatives and assertions represent feebly, and without truth of tone, the subtile, sovereign persuasion of the book. This is said sovereignly by not being said expressly. We are at pains to affirm only that which may be conceived of as doubtful, therefore admit a certain doubtfulness by the act of asserting. When one begins to asseverate his honesty, his hearers begin to question it. The last persuasion lies in assumptions,—not in assumptions made consciously and with effort, but in those which one makes because he cannot help it, and even without being too much aware what he does. All that a man of power assumes utterly, so that he were not himself without assuming it, he will impress upon others with a persuasion that has in it somewhat of the infinite. Jesus never said, "There is a God,"—nor even, "God is our Father,"—nor even, "Man is immortal"; he took all this as implicit basis of labor and prayer. Implicit assumptions rule the world; they build and destroy cities, make and unmake empires, open and close epochs; and whenever Destiny in any powerful soul has ripened a new truth to this degree,—made it for him an inevitable assumption—then there is in history an end and a beginning. Goethe's homage to Personality, to the full spiritual being of man, is of this degree, and is a soul of eloquence in his book.

Nor can we set this aside as a piece of blind and gratuitous sentiment. Blind and gratuitous sentiment is clearly not his forte. Every line of every page exhibits to us a man who has betaken himself, once for all, to the use of his eyes. All sentiment, as such, he ruled back, with a sovereign energy, into his heart,—and then, as it were, compelling his heart into his eyes, made it an organ for discerning truth. His head was an observatory, and every power of his soul did duty there. He enjoyed, he suffered, intensely; but behind joy and pain alike lay the sleepless questioner, demanding of each its message. And this, the supreme function, the exceeding praise and preciousness of the man, the one thing that he was born to do, and religiously did, this has been made his chief reproach.

No zealot, then, no sentimentalist, no devotee of the god Wish, have we here; but an imperturbable beholder, whose dauntless and relentless eyeballs, telescopic and microscopic by turns, can and will see what the fact is. If the universe be bad, as some dream, he will see how bad; if good, he will perceive and respect its goodness. A man, for once, equal to the act of seeing! Having, as the indispensable preliminary, encountered himself, and victoriously fought on all the fields of his being the battle against self-deception, he now comes armed with new and strange powers of vision to encounter life and the world,—ready either to soar of dive,—above no fact, beneath none, by none appalled, by none dazzled,—a falcon, whose prey is truth, and whose wing and eye are well mated. And he it is who sets that ineffable price on the being of a real man.

This is manifested in many ways, all of them silent, rather than obstreperous and obtrusive. It is shown by a certain gracious, ineffable expectation with which for the first time he approaches any human soul, as if unknown and incalculable possibilities were opening here; by a noble ceremonial which he ever observes toward his higher characters, standing uncovered in their presence; by the space in his eye, not altogether measurable, which a man of worth is perceived to fill. Each of his principal characters has an atmosphere about him, like the earth itself; each has a vast perspective, and rounds off into mystery and depths of including sky.

The common novelist holds his characters in the palm of his hand, as he would his watch; winds them up, regulates, pockets them, is exceedingly handy with them. He may continue some little, pitiful puzzle about them for his readers; but he can see over, under, around them, and can make them stop or go, tick or be silent, altogether at pleasure. To Goethe his characters are as intelligible and as mysterious as Nature herself. He sees them, studies them, and with an eye how penetrating, how subtile and sure! But over, under, and around them he would hold it for no less than a profanity to pretend that he sees. They come upon the scene to prove what they are; he and the reader study them together; and when best known, their possibilities are obviously unexhausted, the unknown remains in them still. They go forward into their future, with a real future before them, with an unexplained life to live: not goblets whose contents have been drained, but fountains that still flow when the traveller who drank from them has passed on. Jarno, for example, a man of firm and definite outlines, and drawn here with masterly distinctness, without a blur or a wavering of the hand in the whole delineation, is yet the unexplained, unexhausted Jarno, when the book closes. He goes forward with the rest, known and yet unknown, a man of very definite limitations, and yet also of possibilities which the future will ever be defining.

In this sense, the book, almost alone among novels, consists with the hope of immortality. In average novels, there is nothing left of the hero when the book ends. "He is utterly married," as "Eothen" says. Utterly, sure enough! He ends at the altar, like a burnt-out candle over which the priest puts an extinguisher to keep it from smoking. One yawns over the last page, not considering himself any longer in company. Think of giving perpetuity to such lives! What could they do but get unmarried, and begin fussing at courtship again? But when Goethe's characters leave the stage, they seem to be rather entering upon life than quitting it; possibility opens, expectation runs before them, and our interest grows where observation ceases.

Goethe looks at Personality as through a telescope, and sees it shade away, beyond its cosmic systems, into star-dust and shining nebulae; he inspects it as with a microscope, and on that side also resolves it only in part. He brings to it all the most spacious, all the most delicate interpretations of his wit, yet confessedly leaves more beyond.

Now it is this large-eyed, liberal regard of man, this grand, childlike, all-credent appreciation, which distinguishes the earlier and Scriptural literatures. Abraham fills up all the space between earth and heaven. Later, we arrive at limitations and secondary laws; we heap these up till the primal fact is obscured, is hidden by them. Then ensues an impression of man's littleness, emptiness, insignificance, utter, mechanical limitation. Then sharp-eyed gentlemen discover that man has a trick of dressing up his littleness in large terms,—liberty, intuition, inspiration, immortality,—and that he only is a philosopher, who cannot be deceived by this shallow stratagem. Your "philosopher" sees what men are made of. Populaces may fancy that man is central in the world, that he is the all-containing vessel of its uses: but your philosopher, admirable gentleman, sees through all that; he is superior to any such vulgar partiality for that particular species of insect to which he happens to belong. "A fly thinks himself the greatest of created beings," says philosopher; "man flatters himself in the same way; but I, I am not merely man, I am philosopher, and know better."

The early seers and poets had not attained to this sublime superciliousness of self-contempt; for this, of course, is a fruit to be borne only by the "progress of the species." They are still weak enough to believe in gods and godlike men, in spirit and inspiration, in the ineffable fulness and meaning of a noble life, in the cosmic relationship of man, in the divineness of speech and thought. In their books man is placed in a large light; honor and estimation come to him out of the heavens; what he does, if it be in any profound way characteristic, is told without misgiving, without fear to be superfluous; he is the care, or even the companion, of the immortals. To go forth, therefore, from our little cells of criticism and controversy, and to enter upon the pages where man's being appears so spacious and significant,—where, at length, it is really imagined,—is like leaving stove-heated, paper-walled rooms, and passing out beneath the blue cope and into the sweet air of heaven.

Quite this epic boldness and wholeness we cannot attribute to Goethe. He is still a little straitened, a little pestered by the doubting and critical optics which our time turns upon man, a little victimized by his knowledge of limitary conditions and secondary laws. Nevertheless, a noble man is not to his eye "contained between hat and boots," but is of untold depth and dimension. He indicates traits of the soul with that repose in his facts and respect for them which Lyell shows in spelling out terrestrial history, or Herschel in tracing that of the solar system. Observe how he relates the plays of a child,—with what grave, imperial respect, with what undoubting, reverential minuteness! He does not say, "Bear with me, ladies and gentlemen; I will come to something of importance soon." This is important,—the formation of suns not more so.

In this respect he stands in wide contrast to the prevailing tone of the time. It seems right and admirable that Tyndale should risk life and limb in learning the laws of glaciers, that large-brained Agassiz should pursue for years, if need be, his microscopic researches into the natural history of turtles; and were life or eyesight lost so, we should all say, "Lost, but well and worthily." But ask a conclave of sober savans to listen to reports on the natural-spiritual history of babies and little children,—ask them to join, one and all, in this piece of discovery, spending labor and lifetime in watching the sports, the moods, the imaginations, the fanciful loves and fears, the whole baby unfolding of these budding revelations of divine uses in Nature,—and see what they will think of your sanity. You may, indeed, if such be your humor, observe these matters, nay, even write books upon them, and still escape the lunatic asylum,—provided you do so in the way of pleasantry. In this case, the gravest savant, if he have children, may condescend to listen, and even to smile. But ask him to attend to this in his quality of man of science, and no less seriously than he would investigate the history of mud-worms, and you become ridiculous in his eyes.

Goethe is guiltless of this inversion of interest. Truth of outward Nature he respects; truth of the soul he reverences. He can really imagine men,—that is, can so depict them that they shall not be mere bundles of finite quantities, a yard of this and a pound of that, but so that the illimitable possibilities and immortal ancestries of man shall look forth from their eyes, shall show in their features, and give to them a certain grace of the infinite. The powers which created for the Greeks their gods are active in him, even in his observation of men; and this gives him that other eye, without which the effigies of men are seen, but never man himself. And because he has this divine eye for the inner reality of personal being, and yet also that eagle eye of his for conditions and limits,—because he can see man as central in Nature, the sum of all uses, the vessel of all significance, and yet has no "carpenter theory" of the universe,—and because he can discern the substance and the revealing form of man, while yet no satirist sees more clearly man's accidental and concealing form,—because of this, history comes in him to new blood, regaining its inspirations without forfeiture of its experience.

Carlyle has the same eye, but less creative, and tinctured always with the special humors of his temperament; yet the attitude he can hold toward a human personality, the spirit in which he can contemplate it, gives that to his books which will keep them alive, I think, while the world lasts.

Among the recent writers of prose fiction in England, I know of but one who, in a degree worth naming in this connection, has regarded and delineated persons in the large, old, believing way. That one is the author of "Counterparts." In many respects her book seems to me weak; its theories are crude, its tone extravagant. But man and woman are wonderful to her; and when she names them in full voice of admiration, one thinks he has never heard the words before. And this merit is so commanding, that, despite faults and imbecilities, it renders the book almost unique in excellence. Sarona is impossible: thanks for that noble impossibility! Impossible, he yet embodies more reality, more true suggestion of human possibility and resource, than a whole swarming limbo of the ordinary heroes of fiction,—very credible, and the more's the pity! He is finely imagined, and poorly conceived,—true, that is, to the inspiring substance of man, but not true to his limitary form: for imagination gives the revealing form, conception the form which limits and conceals.

In spite, therefore, of marked infirmities and extravagances, the book remains a superior, perhaps a great work. The writer can look at a human existence with childlike, all-believing, Homeric eyes. That creative vision which of old peopled Olympus still peoples the world for her, beholding gods where the skeptic, critical eye sees only a medical doctor and a sick woman. So is she stamped a true child of the Muse, descended on the one side from Memory, or superficial fact, but on the other from Zeus, the soul of fact; and being gifted to discern the divine halo on the brows of humanity, she rightly obtains the laurel upon her own.

Goethe, at least, rivals her in this Olympic intelligence, while he combines it with a practical wisdom far profounder, with a survey and fulness of knowledge incomparably wider and more various, with a tone tempered to the last sobriety, for the whole of actual life, which no man of the world ever surpassed, and no seer ever equalled. And thus I must abide in my opinion, that he has given us the one prose epic of the world, up to this date. In other words, he has best reconciled World with the final vessel of its uses, Man,—and best reconciled actual civilization and the fixed conditions of man with the uses of that in which all the meaning of his existence is summed, his seeing and unseen spirit.



DOCTOR JOHNS.

XXXIV.

Reuben has in many respects vastly improved under his city education. It would be wrong to say that the good Doctor did not take a very human pride in his increased alertness of mind, in his vivacity, in his self-possession,—nay, even in that very air of world-acquaintance which now covered entirely the old homely manner of the country lad. He thought within himself, what a glad smile of triumph would have been kindled upon the face of the lost Rachel, could she but have seen this tall youth with his kindly attentions and his graceful speech. May-be she did see it all,—but with far other eyes, now. Was the child ripening into fellowship with the sainted mother?

The Doctor underneath all his pride carried a great deal of anxious doubt; and as he walked beside his boy upon the thronged street, elated in some strange way by the touch of that strong arm of the youth, whose blood was his own,—so dearly his own,—he pondered gravely with himself, if the mocking delusions of the Evil One were not the occasion of his pride? Was not Satan setting himself artfully to the work of quieting all sense of responsibility in regard to the lad's future, by thus kindling in his old heart anew the vanities of the flesh and the pride of life?

"I say, father, I want to put you through now. It'll do you a great deal of good to see some of our wonders here in the city."

"The very voice,—the very voice of Rachel!" says the Doctor to himself, quickening his laggard step to keep pace with Reuben.

"There are such lots of things to show you, father! Look in this store, now. You can step in, if you like. It's the largest carpet-store in the United States, three stories packed full. There's the head man of the firm,—the stout man in a white choker; with half a million, they say: he's a deacon in Mowry's church."

"I hope, then, Reuben, that he makes a worthy use of his wealth."

"Oh, he gives thunderingly to the missionary societies," said Reuben, with a glibness that grated on the father's ear.

"You see that building yonder? That's Gothic. They've got the finest bowling-alleys in the world there."

"I hope, my son, you never go to such places?"

"Bowl? Oh, yes, I bowl sometimes: the physicians recommend it; good exercise for the chest. Besides, it's kept by a fine man, and he's got one of the prettiest little trotting horses you ever saw in your life."

"Why, my son, you don't mean to tell me that you know the keeper of this bowling-alley?"

"Oh, yes, father,—we fellows all know him; and he gave me a splendid cigar the last time I was there."

"You don't mean to say that you smoke, Reuben?" said the old gentleman, gravely.

"Not much, father: but then everybody smokes now and then. Mowry—Dr. Mowry smokes, you know; and they say he has prime cigars."

"Is it possible? Well, well!"

"You see that fine building over there?" said Reuben, as they passed on.

"Yes, my son."

"That's the theatre,—the Old Park."

The Doctor ran his eye over it, and its effigy of Shakspeare upon the niche in the wall, as Gabriel might have looked upon the armor of Beelzebub.

"I hope, Reuben, you never enter those doors?"

"Well, father, since Kean and Mathews are gone, there's really nothing worth the seeing."

"Kean! Mathews!" said the Doctor, stopping in his walk and confronting Reuben with a stern brow,—"is it possible, my son, that I hear you talking in this familiar way of play-actors? You don't tell me that you have been a participant in such orgies of Satan?"

"Why, father," says Reuben, a little startled by the Doctor's earnestness, "the truth is, Aunt Mabel goes occasionally, like 'most all the ladies; but we go, you know, to see the moral pieces, generally."

"Moral pieces! moral pieces!" says the Doctor, with a withering scowl. "Reuben! those who go thither take hold on the door-posts of hell!"

"That's the Tract Society building yonder," said Reuben, wishing to divert the Doctor, if possible, from the special object of his reflections.

"Rachel's voice!—always Rachel's voice!"—said the Doctor to himself.

"Would you like to go in, father?"

"No, my son, we have no time; and yet"—meditating, and thrusting his hand in his pocket—"there is a tract or two I would like to buy for you, Reuben."

"Go in, then," says Reuben. "Let me tell them who you are, father, and you can get them at wholesale prices. It's the merest song."

"No, my son, no," said the Doctor, disheartened by the blithe air of Reuben. "I fear it would be wasted effort. Yet I trust that you do not wholly neglect the opportunities for religious instruction on the Sabbath?"