"Yes," said the young Philistine harper; "if the Greek should sing one of the Hebrew's songs, you would know he had borrowed it, in a moment."

"And so, if it were the other way."

"Of course," said their old captain, joining in this conversation. "Homer, if you call him so, sings the thing made: David sings the maker. Or, rather, Homer thinks of the thing made: David thinks of the maker, whatever they sing."

"I was going to say that Homer would sing of cities; and David, of the life in them."

"It is not what they say so much, as the way they look at it. The Greek sees the outside,—the beauty of the thing; the Hebrew—"

"Hush!"

For David and his new friend had been talking too. Homer had told him of the storm at sea they met a few days before; and David, I think, had spoken of a mountain-tornado, as he met it years before. In the excitement of his narrative he struck the harp, which was still in his hand, and sung:—

"Then the earth shook and trembled, The foundations of the hills moved and were shaken, Because He was wroth; There went up a smoke out of his nostrils, And fire out of his mouth devoured; It burned with living coal. He bowed the heavens also, and came down, And darkness was under his feet; He rode upon a cherub and did fly, Yea, he did fly upon the wings of the wind. He made darkness his resting-place, His pavilion were dark waters and clouds of the skies; At the brightness before him his clouds passed by, Hail-stones and coals of fire. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, And the highest gave his voice; Hail-stones and coals of fire. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them, And he shot out his lightnings, and discomfited them. Then the channels of waters were seen, And the foundations of the world were made known, At thy rebuke, O Lord! At the blast of the breath of thy nostrils. He sent from above, he took me, He drew me out of many waters."

"Mine were but a few verses," said Homer. "I am more than repaid by yours. Imagine Neptune, our sea-god, looking on a battle:—

"There he sat high, retired from the seas; There looked with pity on his Grecians beaten; There burned with rage at the god-king who slew them. Then he rushed forward from the rugged mountains, Quickly descending; He bent the forests also as he came down, And the high cliffs shook under his feet. Three times he trod upon them, And with his fourth step reached the home he sought for.

"There was his palace, in the deep waters of the seas, Shining with gold, and builded forever. There he yoked him his swift-footed horses; Their hoofs are brazen, and their manes are golden. He binds them with golden thongs, He seizes his golden goad, He mounts upon his chariot, and doth fly: Yes! he drives them forth into the waves! And the whales rise under him from the depths, For they know he is their king; And the glad sea is divided into parts, That his steeds may fly along quickly; And his brazen axle passes dry between the waves, So, bounding fast, they bring him to his Grecians."[C]

And the poets sank again into talk.

"You see it," said the old Philistine. "He paints the picture. David sings the life of the picture."

"Yes: Homer sees what he sings; David feels his song."

"Homer's is perfect in its description."

"Yes; but for life, for the soul of the description, you need the Hebrew."

"Homer might be blind; and, with that fancy and word-painting power of his, and his study of everything new, he would paint pictures as he sang, though unseen."

"Yes," said another; "but David—" And he paused.

"But David?" asked the chief.

"I was going to say that he might be blind, deaf, imprisoned, exiled, sick, or all alone, and that yet he would never know he was alone; feeling as he does, as he must to sing so, of the presence of this Lord of his!"

"He does not think of a snow-flake, but as sent from him."

"While the snow-flake is reminding Homer of that hard, worrying, slinging work of battle. He must have seen fight himself."

They were hushed again. For, though they no longer dared ask the poets to sing to them,—so engrossed were they in each other's society,—the soldiers were hardly losers from this modest courtesy. For the poets were constantly arousing each other to strike a chord, or to sing some snatch of remembered song. And so it was that Homer, apropos of I do not know what, sang in a sad tone:—

"Like leaves on trees the race of man is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground: Another race the following spring supplies; They fall successive, and successive rise. So generations in their course decay, So flourish these, when those have passed away."[D]

David waited for a change in the strain; but Homer stopped. The young Hebrew asked him to go on; but Homer said that the passage which followed was mere narrative, from a long narrative poem. David looked surprised that his new friend had not pointed a moral as he sang; and said simply, "We sing that thus:—

"As for man, his days are as grass; As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth; For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone, And the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord Is from everlasting to everlasting Of them that fear him; And his righteousness Unto children's children, To such as keep his covenant, As remember his commandments to do them!"

Homer's face flashed delighted. "I, like you, 'keep his covenant,'" he cried; and then without a lyre, for his was still in David's hands, he sang, in clear tone:—

"Thou bid'st me birds obey;—I scorn their flight, If on the left they rise, or on the right! Heed them who may, the will of Jove I own, Who mortals and immortals rules alone!"[E]

"That is more in David's key," said the young Philistine harper, seeing that the poets had fallen to talk together again. "But how would it sound in one of the hymns on one of our feast-days?"

"Who mortals and immortals rules alone."

"How, indeed?" cried one of his young companions. "There would be more sense in what the priests say and sing, if each were not quarrelling for his own,—Dagon against Astarte, and Astarte against Dagon."

The old captain bent over, that the poets might not hear him, and whispered: "There it is that the Hebrews have so much more heart than we in such things. Miserable fellows though they are, so many of them, yet, when I have gone through their whole land with the caravans, the chances have been that any serious-minded man spoke of no God but this 'He' of David's."

"What is his name?"

"They do not know themselves, I believe."

"Well, as I said an hour ago, God's man or Dagon's man,—for those are good names enough for me,—I care little; but I should like to sing as that young fellow does."

"My boy," said the old man, "have not you heard him enough to see that it is not he that sings, near as much as this love of his for a Spirit he does not name? It is that spirited heart of his that sings."

"You sing like him? Find his life, boy; and perhaps it may sing for you."

"We should be more manly men, if he sang to us every night."

"Or if the other did," said an Ionian sailor.

"Yes," said the chief. "And yet, I think, if your countryman sang every night to me, he would make me want the other. Whether David's singing would send me to his, I do not feel sure. But how silly to compare them! As well compare the temple in Accho with the roar of a whirlwind—"

"Or the point of my lance with the flight of an eagle. The men are in two worlds."

"O, no! that is saying too much. You said that one could paint pictures—"

"—Into which the other puts life. Yes, I did say so. We are fortunate that we have them together."

"For this man sings of men quite as well as the other does; and to have the other sing of God—'

"—Why, it completes the song. Between them they bring the two worlds together."

"He bows the heavens, and comes down," said the boy of the olive-harp, trying to hum David's air.

"Let us ask them—"

And just then there rang along the valley the sound of a distant conch-shell. The soldiers groaned, roused up, and each looked for his own side-arms and his own skin.

But the poets talked on unheeding.

The old chief knocked down a stack of lances; but the crash did not rouse them. He was obliged himself to interrupt their eager converse.

"I am sorry to break in; but the night-horn has sounded to rest, and the guard will be round to inspect the posts. I am sorry to hurry you away, sir," he said to David.

David thanked him courteously.

"Welcome the coming, speed the parting guest," said Homer, with a smile.

"We will all meet to-morrow. And may to-night's dreams be good omens!"

"If we dream at all," said Homer again:—

"Without a sign his sword the brave man draws, And asks no omen but his country's cause."

They were all standing together, as he made this careless reply to the captain; and one of the young men drew him aside, and whispered that David was in arms against his country.

Homer was troubled that he had spoken as he did, But the young Jew looked little as if he needed sympathy. He saw the doubt and regret which hung over their kindly faces; told them not to fear for him; singing, as he bade them good night, and with one of the Carmel-men walked home to his own outpost:—

"The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion, The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the bear, He will deliver me."

And he smiled to think how his Carmelite companion would start, if he knew when first he used those words.

So they parted, as men who should meet on the morrow.

But God disposes.

David had left to-morrow's dangers for to-morrow to care for. It seemed to promise him that he must be in arms against Saul. But, unlike us in our eagerness to anticipate our conflicts of duty, David waited.

And the Lord delivered him. While they were singing by the brookside, the proud noblemen of the Philistine army had forced an interview with their king; and, in true native Philistine arrogance, insisted that "this Hebrew" and his men should be sent away.

With the light of morning the king sent for the minstrel, and courteously dismissed him, because "the princes of the Philistines have said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.'"

So David marched his men to Ziklag.

And David and Homer never met on earth again.

NOTE.—This will be a proper place to print the following note, which I was obliged to write to a second cousin of Miss Dryasdust after she had read the MS. of the article above:—

"DEAR MADAM:—I thank you for your kind suggestion, in returning my paper, that it involves a piece of impossible history. You inform me, that, according to the nomenclatured formulas and homophonic analogies of Professor Gouraud, of never-to-be-forgotten memory, "A NEEDLE is less useful for curing a DEAF HEAD, than for putting ear-rings into a Miss's lily-ears"; and that this shows that the second king of Judah, named David (or Deaf-head) began to reign in 1055 B.C., and died 1040 B.C.'; and further, that, according to the same authority, 'Homer flourished when the Greeks were fond of his POETRY'; which, being interpreted, signifies that he flourished in 914 B.C., and, consequently, could have had no more to do with David than to plant ivy over his grave, in some of his voyages to Phoenicia.

"I thank you for the suggestion. I knew the unforgetting professor; and I do not doubt that he remembered David and Homer as his near friends. But, of course, to such a memory, a century or two might easily slip aside.

"Now, did you look up Clement? And did you not forget the Arundelian Marbles? For, if you will take the long estimates, you will find that some folks think Homer lived as long ago as the year 1150, and some that it was as 'short ago' as 850. And some set David as long ago as 1170, and some bring him down to a hundred and fifty years later. These are the long measures and the short measures. So the long and short of it is, that you can keep the two poets 320 years apart, while I have rather more than a century which I can select any night of, for a bivouac scene, in which to bring them together. Believe me, my dear Miss D., always yours, &c.

"Confess that you forgot the Arundelian Marbles!"



THE SOUTH AMERICAN EDITOR

[I am tempted to include this little burlesque in this collection simply in memory of the Boston Miscellany, the magazine in which it was published, which won for itself a brilliant reputation in its short career. There was not a large staff of writers for the Miscellany, but many of the names then unknown have since won distinction. To quote them in the accidental order in which I find them in the table of contents, where they are arranged by the alphabetical order of the several papers, the Miscellany contributors were Edward Everett, George Lunt, Nathan Hale, Jr., Nathaniel Hawthorne, N.P. Willis, W.W. Story, J.R. Lowell, C.N. Emerson, Alexander H. Everett, Sarah P. Hale, W.A. Jones, Cornelius Matthews, Mrs. Kirkland, J.W. Ingraham, H.T. Tuckerman, Evart A. Duyckinck, Francis A. Durivage, Mrs. J. Webb, Charles F. Powell, Charles W. Storey, Lucretia P. Hale, Charles F. Briggs, William E. Channing, Charles Lanman, G.H. Hastings, and Elizabeth B. Barrett, now Mrs. Browning, some of whose earliest poems were published in this magazine. These are all the contributors whose names appear, excepting the writers of a few verses. They furnished nine tenths of the contents of the magazine. The two Everetts, Powell, William Story, and my brother, who was the editor, were the principal contributors. And I am tempted to say that I think they all put some of their best work upon this magazine.

The misfortune of the Miscellany, I suppose, was that its publishers had no capital. They had to resort to the claptraps of fashion-plates and other engravings, in the hope of forcing an immediate sale upon persons who, caring for fashion-plates, did not care for the literary character of the enterprise. It gave a very happy escape-pipe, however, for the high spirits of some of us who had just left college, and, through my brother's kindness, I was sometimes permitted to contribute to the journal. In memory of those early days of authorship, I select "The South American Editor" to publish here. For the benefit of the New York Observer, I will state that the story is not true. And lest any should complain that it advocates elopements, I beg to observe, in the seriousness of mature life, that the proposed elopement did not succeed, and that the parties who proposed it are represented as having no guardians or keepers but themselves. The article was first published in 1842.]

* * * * *

It is now more than six years since I received the following letter from an old classmate of mine, Harry Barry, who had been studying divinity, and was then a settled minister. It was an answer to a communication I had sent him the week before.

"TOPSHAM, R.I. January 22, 1836.

"To say the truth, my dear George, your letter startled me a little. To think that I, scarcely six months settled in the profession, should be admitted so far into the romance of it as to unite forever two young runaways like yourself and Miss Julia What's-her-name is at least curious. But, to give you your due, you have made a strong case of it, and as Miss —— (what is her name, I have not yours at hand) is not under any real guardianship, I do not see but I am perfectly justified in complying with your rather odd request. You see I make a conscientious matter of it.

"Write me word when it shall be, and I will be sure to be ready. Jane is of course in my counsels, and she will make your little wife feel as much at home as in her father's parlor. Trust us for secrecy.

"I met her last week—"

But the rest of the letter has nothing to do with the story.

The elopement alluded to in it (if the little transaction deserves so high-sounding a name) was, in every sense of the words, strictly necessary. Julia Wentworth had resided for years with her grandfather, a pragmatic old gentleman, to whom from pure affection she had long yielded an obedience which he would have had no right to extort, and which he was sometimes disposed to abuse. He had declared in the most ingenuous manner that she should never marry with his consent any man of less fortune than her own would be; and on his consent rested the prospect of her inheriting his property.

Julia and I, however, care little for money now, we cared still less then; and her own little property and my own little salary made us esteem ourselves entirely independent of the old gentleman and his will.

His intention respecting the poor girl's marriage was thundered in her ears at least once a week, so that we both knew that I had no need to make court to him, indeed, I had never seen him, always having met her in walking, or in the evening at party, spectacle, concert, or lecture. He had lately been more domineering than usual, and I had but little difficulty in persuading the dear girl to let me write to Harry Barry, to make the arrangement to which he assented in the letter which I have copied above. The reasoning which I pressed upon her is obvious. We loved each other,—the old gentleman could not help that; and as he managed to make us very uncomfortable in Boston, in the existing state of affairs, we naturally came to the conclusion that the sooner we changed that state the better. Our excursion to Topsham would, we supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him; but we knew it would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of maidenly compunction and granddaughterly compassion on Julia's part, we outvoted him.

I have said that I had no fortune to enable me to come near the old gentleman's beau ideal of a grandson-in-law. I was then living on my salary as a South American editor. Does the reader know what that is? The South American editor of a newspaper has the uncontrolled charge of its South American news. Read any important commercial paper for a month, and at the end of it tell me if you have any clear conception of the condition of the various republics (!) of South America. If you have, it is because that journal employs an individual for the sole purpose of setting them in the clearest order before you, and that individual is its South American editor. The general-news editor of the paper will keep the run of all the details of all the histories of all the rest of the world, but he hardly attempts this in addition. If he does, he fails. It is therefore necessary, from the most cogent reasons, that any American news office which has a strong regard for the consistency or truth of its South American intelligence shall employ some person competent to take the charge which I held in the establishment of the Boston Daily Argus at the time of which I am speaking. Before that enterprising paper was sold, I was its "South American man"; this being my only employment, excepting that by a special agreement, in consideration of an addition to my salary, I was engaged to attend to the news from St. Domingo, Guatemala, and Mexico.[F]

Monday afternoon, just a fortnight after I received Harry Barry's letter, in taking my afternoon walk round the Common, I happened to meet Julia. I always walked in the same direction when I was alone. Julia always preferred to go the other way; it was the only thing in which we differed. When we were together I always went her way of course, and liked it best.

I had told her, long before, all about Harry's letter, and the dear girl in this walk, after a little blushing and sighing, and half faltering and half hesitating and feeling uncertain, yielded to my last and warmest persuasions, and agreed to go to Mrs. Pollexfen's ball that evening, ready to leave it with me in my buggy sleigh, for a three hours' ride to Topsham, where we both knew Harry would be waiting for us. I do not know how she managed to get through tea that evening with her lion of a grandfather, for she could not then cover her tearful eyes with a veil as she did through the last half of our walk together. I know that I got through my tea and such like ordinary affairs by skipping them. I made all my arrangements, bade Gage and Streeter be ready with the sleigh at my lodgings (fortunately only two doors from Mrs. Pollexfen's) at half-past nine o'clock, and was the highest spirited of men when, on returning to those lodgings myself at eight o'clock, I found the following missives from the Argus office, which had been accumulating through the afternoon.

No. 1.

"4 o'clock, P.M.

"DEAR SIR:—The southern mail, just in, brings Buenos Ayres papers six days later, by the Medora, at Baltimore.

"In haste, J.C."

(Mr. C. was the gentleman who opened the newspapers, and arranged the deaths and marriages; he always kindly sent for me when I was out of the way.)

No. 2.

"5 o'clock, P.M.

"DEAR SIR:—The U.S. ship Preble is in at Portsmouth; latest from Valparaiso. The mail is not sorted.

"Yours, J.D."

(Mr. D. arranged the ship news for the Argus.)

No. 3.

"6 o'clock, p.m.

"DEAR SIR:—I boarded, this morning, off Cape Cod, the Blunderhead, from Carthagena, and have a week's later papers.

"Truly yours, J.E."

(Mr. E. was the enterprising commodore of our news-boats.)

No. 4.

"6-1/4 o'clock, P.M.

"DEAR SIR:—I have just opened accidentally the enclosed letter, from our correspondent at Panama. You will see that it bears a New Orleans post-mark. I hope it may prove exclusive.

"Yours, J.F."

(Mr. F. was general editor of the Argus.)

No. 5.

"6-1/2 o'clock, P.M.

"DEAR SIR:—A seaman, who appears to be an intelligent man, has arrived this morning at New Bedford, and says he has later news of the rebellion in Ecuador than any published. The Rosina (his vessel) brought no papers. I bade him call at your room at eight o'clock, which he promised to do.

"Truly yours, J.G."

(Mr. G. was clerk in the Argus counting-room.)

No 6.

"7-1/2 o'clock, P.M.

"Dear Sir:—The papers by the Ville de Lyon, from Havre, which I have just received, mention the reported escape of M. Bonpland from Paraguay, the presumed death of Dr. Francia, the probable overthrow of the government, the possible establishment of a republic, and a great deal more than I understand in the least.

"These papers had not come to hand when I wrote you this afternoon. I have left them on your desk at the office.

"In haste, J.F."

I was taken all aback by this mass of odd-looking little notes. I had spent the afternoon in drilling Singelton, the kindest of friends, as to what he should do in any probable contingency of news of the next forty-eight hours, for I did not intend to be absent on a wedding tour even longer than that time; but I felt that Singleton was entirely unequal to such a storm of intelligence as this; and, as I hurried down to the office, my chief sensation was that of gratitude that the cloud had broken before I was out of the way; for I knew I could do a great deal in an hour, and I had faith that I might slur over my digest as quickly as possible, and be at Mrs. Pollexfen's within the time arranged.

I rushed into the office in that state of zeal in which a man may do anything in almost no time. But first, I had to go into the conversation-room, and get the oral news from my sailor; then Mr. H.; from one of the little news-boats, came to me in high glee, with some Venezuela Gazettes, which he had just extorted from a skipper, who, with great plausibility, told him that he knew his vessel had brought no news, for she never had before. (N.B. In this instance she was the only vessel to sail, after a three months' blockade.) And then I had handed to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, and the police and municipal reporters immediately after him, screwed out their lamps and went home; then the editor himself, then the legislative reporters, then the commercial editors, then the ship-news conductor, and left me alone.

I envied them that they got through so much earlier than usual, but scratched on, only interrupted by the compositors coming in for the pages of my copy as I finished them; and finally, having made my last translation from the last Boletin Extraordinario, sprang up, shouting, "Now for Mrs. P.'s," and looked at my watch. It was half past one![G] I thought of course it had stopped,—no; and my last manuscript page was numbered twenty-eight! Had I been writing there five hours? Yes!

Reader, when you are an editor, with a continent's explosions to describe, you will understand how one may be unconscious of the passage of time.

I walked home, sad at heart. There was no light in all Mr. Wentworth's house; there was none in any of Mrs. Pollexfen's windows;[H] and the last carriage of her last relation had left her door. I stumbled up stairs in the dark, and threw myself on my bed. What should I say, what could I say, to Julia? Thus pondering, I fell asleep.

If I were writing a novel, I should say that, at a late hour the next day, I listlessly drew aside the azure curtains of my couch, and languidly rang a silver bell which stood on my dressing-table, and received from a page dressed in an Oriental costume the notes and letters which had been left for me since morning, and the newspapers of the day.

I am not writing a novel.

The next morning, about ten o'clock, I arose and went down to breakfast. As I sat at the littered table which every one else had left, dreading to attack my cold coffee and toast, I caught sight of the morning papers, and received some little consolation from them. There was the Argus with its three columns and a half of "Important from South America," while none of the other papers had a square of any intelligibility excepting what they had copied from the Argus the day before. I felt a grim smile creeping over my face as I observed this signal triumph of our paper, and ventured to take a sip of the black broth as I glanced down my own article to see if there were any glaring misprints in it. Before I took the second sip, however, a loud peal at the door-bell announced a stranger, and, immediately after, a note was brought in for me which I knew was in Julia's hand-writing.

"DEAR GEORGE:—Don't be angry; it was not my fault, really it was not. Grandfather came home just as I was leaving last night, and was so angry, and said I should not go to the party, and I had to sit with him all the evening. Do write to me or let me see you; do something—"

What a load that note took off my mind! And yet, what must the poor girl have suffered! Could the old man suspect? Singleton was true to me as steel, I knew. He could not have whispered,—nor Barry; out that Jane, Barry's wife. O woman! woman! what newsmongers they are! Here were Julia and I, made miserable for life, perhaps, merely that Jane Barry might have a good story to tell. What right had Barry to a wife? Not four years out of college, and hardly settled in his parish. To think that I had been fool enough to trust even him with the particulars of my all-important secret! But here I was again interrupted, coffee-cup still full, toast still untasted, by another missive.

"Tuesday morning.

"SIR:—I wish to see you this morning. Will you call upon me, or appoint a time and place where I may meet you?

"Yours, JEDEDIAH WENTWORTH."

"Send word by the bearer."

"Tell Mr. Wentworth I will call at his house at eleven o'clock."

The cat was certainly out; Mrs. Barry had told, or some one else had, who I did not know and hardly cared. The scene was to come now, and I was almost glad of it. Poor Julia! what a time she must have had with the old bear!

* * * * *

At eleven o'clock I was ushered into Mr. Wentworth's sitting-room. Julia was there, but before I had even spoken to her the old gentleman came bustling across the room, with his "Mr. Hackmatack, I suppose"; and then followed a formal introduction between me and her, which both of us bore with the most praiseworthy fortitude and composure, neither evincing, even by a glance, that we had ever seen or heard of each other before. Here was another weight off my mind and Julia's. I had wronged poor Mrs. Barry. The secret was not out—what could he want? It very soon appeared.

After a minute's discussion of the weather, the snow, and the thermometer, the old gentleman drew up his chair to mine, with "I think, sir, you are connected with the Argus office?"

"Yes, sir; I am its South American editor.'

"Yes!" roared the old man, in a sudden rage. "Sir, I wish South America was sunk in the depths of the sea!"

"I am sure I do, sir," replied I, glancing at Julia, who did not, however, understand me. I had not fully passed out of my last night's distress.

My sympathizing zeal soothed the old gentleman a little, and he said more coolly, in an undertone: "Well, sir, you are well informed, no doubt; tell me, in strict secrecy, sir, between you and me, do you—do you place full credit—entire confidence in the intelligence in this morning's paper?"

"Excuse me, sir; what paper do you allude to? Ah! the Argus, I see. Certainly, sir; I have not the least doubt that it is perfectly correct."

"No doubt, sir! Do you mean to insult me?—Julia, I told you so; he says there is no doubt it is true. Tell me again there is some mistake, will you?" The poor girl had been trying to soothe him with the constant remark of uninformed people, that the newspapers are always in the wrong. He turned from her, and rose from his chair in a positive rage. She was half crying. I never saw her more distressed. What did all this mean? Were one, two, or all of us crazy?

It soon appeared. After pacing the length of the room once or twice, Wentworth came up to me again, and, attempting to appear cool, said between his closed lips: "Do you say you have no doubt that Rio Janeiro is strictly blockaded?"

"Not the slightest in the world," said I, trying to seem unconcerned.

"Not the slightest, sir? What are you so impudent and cool about it for? Do you think you are talking of the opening of a rose-bud or the death of a mosquito? Have you no sympathy with the sufferings of a fellow-creature? Why, sir!" and the old man's teeth chattered as he spoke, "I have five cargoes of flour on their way to Rio, and their captains will—Damn it, sir, I shall lose the whole venture."

The secret was out. The old fool had been sending flour to Rio, knowing as little of the state of affairs there as a child.

"And do you really mean, sir," continued the old man, "that there is an embargo in force in Monte Video?"

"Certainly, sir; but I'm very sorry for it."

"Sorry for it! of course you are;—and that all foreigners are sent out of Buenos Ayres?"

"Undoubtedly, sir. I wish—"

"Who does not wish so? Why, sir, my corresponding friends there are half across the sea by this time. I wish Rosas was in—and that the Indians have risen near Maranham?"

"Undoubtedly, sir."

"Undoubtedly! I tell you, sir, I have two vessels waiting for cargoes of India-rubbers there, under a blunder-headed captain, who will do nothing he has not been bidden to,—obey his orders if he breaks his owners. You smile, sir? Why, I should have made thirty thousand dollars this winter, sir, by my India-rubbers, if we had not had this devilish mild, open weather, you and Miss Julia there have been praising so. But next winter must be a severe one, and with those India-rubbers I should have made—But now those Indians,—pshaw! And a revolution in Chili?"

"Yes, sir."

"No trade there! And in Venezuela?"

"Yes, sir"

"Yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir! Sir, I am ruined. Say 'Yes, sir,' to that. I have thirteen vessels at this moment in the South American trade, sir; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Half of them will be taken by the piratical scoundrels; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. Their insurance will not cover them; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. The other half will forfeit their cargoes, or sell them for next to nothing; say 'Yes, sir,' to that. I tell you I am a ruined man, and I wish the South America, and your daily Argus, and you—"

Here the old gentleman's old-school breeding got the better of his rage, and he sank down in his arm-chair, and, bursting into tears, said: "Excuse me, sir,—excuse me, sir,—I am too warm."

We all sat for a few moments in silence, but then I took my share of the conversation. I wish you could have seen the old man's face light up little by little, as I showed him that to a person who understood the politics and condition of the mercurial country with which he had ignorantly attempted to trade, his condition was not near so bad as he thought it; that though one port was blockaded, another was opened; that though one revolution thwarted him, a few weeks would show another which would favor him; that the goods which, as he saw, would be worthless at the port to which he had sent them, would be valuable elsewhere; that the vessels which would fail in securing the cargoes he had ordered could secure others; that the very revolutions and wars which troubled him would require in some instances large government purchases, perhaps large contracts for freight, possibly even for passage,—his vessels might be used for transports; that the very excitement of some districts might be made to turn to our advantage; that, in short, there were a thousand chances open to him which skilful agents could readily improve. I reminded him that a quick run in a clipper schooner could carry directions to half these skippers of his, to whom, with an infatuation which I could not and cannot conceive, he had left no discretion, and who indeed were to be pardoned if they could use none, seeing the tumult as they did with only half an eye. I talked to him for half an hour, and went into details to show that my plans were not impracticable. The old gentleman grew brighter and brighter, and Julia, as I saw, whenever I stole a glance across the room, felt happier and happier. The poor girl had had a hard time since he had first heard this news whispered the evening before.

His difficulties were not over, however; for when I talked to him of the necessity of sending out one or two skilful agents immediately to take the personal superintendence of his complicated affairs, the old man sighed, and said he had no skilful agents to send.

With his customary suspicion, he had no partners, and had never intrusted his clerks with any general insight into his business. Besides, he considered them all, like his captains, blunder-headed to the last degree. I believe it was an idea of Julia's, communicated to me in an eager, entreating glance, which induced me to propose myself as one of these confidential agents, and to be responsible for the other. I thought, as I spoke, of Singleton, to whom I knew I could explain my plans in full, and whose mercantile experience would make him a valuable coadjutor. The old gentleman accepted my offer eagerly. I told him that twenty-four hours were all I wanted to prepare myself. He immediately took measures for the charter of two little clipper schooners which lay in port then; and before two days were past, Singleton and I were on our voyage to South America. Imagine, if you can, how these two days were spent. Then, as now, I could prepare for any journey in twenty minutes, and of course I had no little time at my disposal for last words with Mr. and—Miss Wentworth. How I won on the old gentleman's heart in those two days! How he praised me to Julia, and then, in as natural affection, how he praised her to me! And how Julia and I smiled through our tears, when, in the last good-bys, he said he was too old to write or read any but business letters, and charged me and her to keep up a close correspondence, which on one side should tell all that I saw and did, and on the other hand remind me of all at home.

* * * * *

I have neither time nor room to give the details of that South American expedition. I have no right to. There were revolutions accomplished in those days without any object in the world's eyes; and, even in mine, only serving to sell certain cargoes of long cloths and flour. The details of those outbreaks now told would make some patriotic presidents tremble in their seats; and I have no right to betray confidence at whatever rate I purchased it. Usually, indeed, my feats and Singleton's were only obtaining the best information and communicating the most speedy instructions to Mr. Wentworth's vessels, which were made to move from port to port with a rapidity and intricacy of movement which none besides us two understood in the least. It was in that expedition that I travelled almost alone across the continent. I was, I think, the first white man who ever passed through the mountain path of Xamaulipas, now so famous in all the Chilian picturesque annuals. I was carrying directions for some vessels which had gone round the Cape; and what a time Burrows and Wheatland and I had a week after, when we rode into the public square of Valparaiso shouting, "Muera la Constitucion,—Viva Libertad!" by our own unassisted lungs actually raising a rebellion, and, which was of more importance, a prohibition on foreign flour, while Bahamarra and his army were within a hundred miles of us. How those vessels came up the harbor, and how we unloaded them, knowing that at best our revolution could only last five days! But as I said, I must be careful, or I shall be telling other people's secrets.

The result of that expedition was that those thirteen vessels all made good outward voyages, and all but one or two eventually made profitable home voyages. When I returned home, the old gentleman received me with open arms. I had rescued, as he said, a large share of that fortune which he valued so highly. To say the truth, I felt and feel that he had planned his voyages so blindly, that, without some wiser head than his, they would never have resulted in anything. They were his last, as they were almost his first, South American ventures. He returned to his old course of more methodical trading for the few remaining years of his life. They were, thank Heaven, the only taste of mercantile business which I ever had. Living as I did, in the very sunshine of Mr. Went worth's favor, I went through the amusing farce of paying my addresses to Julia in approved form, and in due time received the old gentleman's cordial assent to our union, and his blessing upon it. In six months after my return, we were married; the old man as happy as a king. He would have preferred a little that the ceremony should have been performed by Mr. B——, his friend and pastor, but readily assented to my wishes to call upon a dear and early friend of my own.

Harry Barry came from Topsham and performed the ceremony, "assisted by Rev. Mr. B."

G.H.

ARGUS COTTAGE, April 1, 1842.



THE OLD AND THE NEW, FACE TO FACE.

A THUMB-NAIL SKETCH.

[This essay was published in Sartain's Magazine, in 1852, as "A Thumb-nail Sketch," having received one of ten premiums which Mr. Sartain offered to encourage young writers. It had been written a few years earlier, some time before the studies of St. Paul's life by Conybeare and Howson, now so well known, were made public. The chronology of my essay does not precisely agree with that of these distinguished scholars. But I make no attempt now either to recast the essay or to discuss the delicate and complicated questions which belong to the chronology of Paul's life or to that of Nero; for there is no question with regard to the leading facts. At the end of twenty years I may again express the wish that some master competent to the greatest themes might take the trial of Paul as the subject of a picture.]

* * * * *

In a Roman audience-chamber, the old civilization and the new civilization brought out, at the very birth of the new, their chosen champions.

In that little scene, as in one of Rembrandt's thumb-nail studies for a great picture, the lights and shades are as distinct as they will ever be in the largest scene of history. The champions were perfect representatives of the parties. And any man, with the soul of a man, looking on, could have prophesied the issue of the great battle from the issue of that contest.

The old civilization of the Roman Empire, just at that time, had reached a point which, in all those outward forms which strike the eye, would regard our times as mean indeed. It had palaces of marble, where even modern kings would build of brick with a marble front to catch the eye; it counted its armies by thousands, where we count ours by hundreds; it surmounted long colonnades with its exquisite statues, for which modern labor digs deep in ruined cities, because it cannot equal them from its own genius; it had roads, which are almost eternal, and which, for their purposes, show a luxury of wealth and labor that our boasted locomotion cannot rival. These are its works of a larger scale. And if you enter the palaces, you find pictures of matchless worth, rich dresses which modern looms cannot rival, and sumptuous furniture at which modern times can only wonder. The outside of the ancient civilization is unequalled by the outside of ours, and for centuries will be unequalled by it. We have not surpassed it there. And we see how it attained this distinction, such as it was. It came by the constant concentration of power. Power in few hands is the secret of its display and glory. And thus that form of civilization attained its very climax in the moment of the greatest unity of the Roman Empire. When the Empire nestled into rest, after the convulsions in which it was born; when a generation had passed away of those who had been Roman citizens; when a generation arose, which, excepting one man, the emperor, was a nation of Roman subjects,—then the Empire was at its height of power, its centralization was complete, the system of its civilization was at the zenith of its success.

At that moment it was that there dawned at Rome the first gray morning-light of the new civilization.

At that moment it was that that short scene, in that one chamber, contrasted the two as clearly as they can be contrasted even in long centuries.

There is one man, the emperor, who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the old. That man is brought face to face with another who is a precise type, an exact representative, of the new.

Only look at them as they stand there! The man who best illustrates the old civilization owes to it the most careful nurture. From his childhood he has been its petted darling. Its principal is concentration under one head. He is that head. When he is a child, men know he will be emperor of the world. The wise men of the world teach him; the poets of the world flatter him; the princes of the world bow to him. He is trained in all elegant accomplishments; he is led forward through a graceful, luxurious society. His bearing is that of an emperor; his face is the face of fine physical beauty. Imagine for yourself the sensual countenance of a young Bacchus, beautiful as Milton's devils; imagine him clad in splendor before which even English luxury is mean; arrayed in jewels, to which even Eastern pomp is tinsel; imagine an expression of tired hate, of low, brutal lust, hanging on those exquisite licentious features, and you have before you the type of Roman civilization. It is the boy just budding into manhood, whom later times will name as the lowest embodiment of meanness and cruelty! You are looking upon Nero!

Not only is this man an exact type of the ancient civilization, its central power, its outside beauty, but the precise time of this sketch of ours is the exact climax of the moral results of the ancient civilization. We are to look at Nero just when he has returned to Rome from a Southern journey.[I] That journey had one object, which succeeded. To his after-life it gives one memory, which never dies. He has travelled to his beautiful country palace, that he might kill his mother!

We can picture to ourselves Agrippina, by knowing that she was Nero's mother, and our picture will not fail in one feature. She has all the beauty of sense, all the attraction of passion. Indeed, she is the Empress of Rome, because she is queen of beauty—and of lust. She is most beautiful among the beautiful of Rome; but what is that beauty of feature in a state of whose matrons not one is virtuous, of whose daughters not one is chaste? It is the beauty of sense alone, fit adornment of that external grandeur, of that old society.

In the infancy of her son, this beautiful Agrippina consulted a troop of fortune-tellers as to his fate; and they told her that he would live to be Emperor of Rome, and to kill his mother. With all the ecstasy of a mother's pride fused so strangely with all the excess of an ambitious woman's love of power, she cried in answer, "He may kill me, if only he rules Rome!"[J]

She spoke her own fate in these words.

Here is the account of it by Tacitus. Nero had made all the preparations; had arranged a barge, that of a sudden its deck might fall heavily upon those in the cabin, and crush them in an instant. He meant thus to give to the murder which he planned the aspect of an accident. To this fatal vessel he led Agrippina. He talked with her affectionately and gravely on the way; "and when they parted at the lakeside, with his old boyish familiarity he pressed her closely to his heart, either to conceal his purpose, or because the last sight of a mother, on the eve of death, touched even his cruel nature, and then bade her farewell."

Just at the point upon the lake where he had directed, as the Empress sat in her cabin talking with her attendants, the treacherous deck was let fall upon them all. But the plot failed. She saw dead at her feet one of her favorites, crushed by the sudden blow. But she had escaped it. She saw that death awaited them all upon the vessel. The men around sprang forward, ready to do their master's bidding in a less clumsy and more certain way. But the Empress, with one of her attendants, sprang from the treacherous vessel into the less treacherous waves. And there, this faithful friend of hers, with a woman's wit and a woman's devotion, drew on her own head the blows and stabs of the murderers above, by crying, as if in drowning, "Save me, I am Nero's mother!" Uttering those words of self-devotion, she was killed by the murderers above, while the Empress, in safer silence, buoyed up by fragments of the wreck, floated to the shore.

Nero had failed thus in secret crime, and yet he knew that he could not stop here. And the next day after his mother's deliverance, he sent a soldier to her palace, with a guard; and there, where she was deserted even by her last attendant, without pretence of secrecy, they put to death the daughter and the mother of a Caesar. And Nero only waits to look with a laugh upon the beauty of the corpse, before he returns to resume his government at Rome.

That moment was the culminating moment of the ancient civilization. It is complete in its centralizing power; it is complete in its external beauty; it is complete in its crime. Beautiful as Eden to the eye, with luxury, with comfort, with easy indolence to all; but dust and ashes beneath the surface! It is corrupted at the head! It is corrupted at the heart! There is nothing firm!

This is the moment which I take for our little picture. At this very moment there is announced the first germ of the new civilization. In the very midst of this falsehood, there sounds one voice of truth; in the very arms of this giant, there plays the baby boy who is to cleave him to the ground. This Nero slowly returns to the city. He meets the congratulations of a senate, which thank him and the gods that he has murdered his own mother. With the agony of an undying conscience torturing him, he strives to avert care by amusement. He hopes to turn the mob from despising him by the grandeur of their public entertainments. He enlarges for them the circus. He calls unheard-of beasts to be baited and killed for their enjoyment. The finest actors rant, the sweetest musicians sing, that Nero may forget his mother, and that his people may forget him.

At that period, the statesmen who direct the machinery of affairs inform him that his personal attention is required one morning for a state trial, to be argued before the Emperor in person. Must the Emperor be there? May he not waste the hours in the blandishments of lying courtiers, or the honeyed falsehoods of a mistress? If he chooses thus to postpone the audience, be it so; Seneca, Burrhus, and his other counsellors will obey. But the time will come when the worn-out boy will be pleased some morning with the almost forgotten majesty of state. The time comes one day. Worn out by the dissipation of the week, fretted by some blunder of his flatterers, he sends for his wiser counsellors, and bids them lead him to the audience-chamber, where he will attend to these cases which need an Emperor's decision. It is at that moment that we are to look upon him.

He sits there, upon that unequalled throne, his face sickly pale with boyish debauchery; his young fore head worn with the premature sensual wrinkles of lust; and his eyes bloodshot with last night's intemperance. He sits there, the Emperor-boy, vainly trying to excite himself, and forget her, in the blazonry of that pomp, and bids them call in the prisoner.

A soldier enters, at whose side the prisoner has been chained for years. This soldier is a tried veteran of the Praetorian cohorts. He was selected, that from him this criminal could not escape; and for that purpose they have been inseparably bound. But, as he leads that other through the hall, he looks at him with a regard and earnestness which say he is no criminal to him. Long since, the criminal has been the guardian of his keeper. Long since, the keeper has cared for the prisoner with all the ardor of a new-found son's affection.

They lead that gray-haired captive forward, and with his eagle eye he glances keenly round the hall. That flashing eye has ere now bade monarchs quail; and those thin lips have uttered words which shall make the world ring till the last moment of the world shall come. The stately Eastern captive moves unawed through the assembly, till he makes a subject's salutation to the Emperor-judge who is to hear him. And when, then, the gray-haired sage kneels before the sensual boy, you see the prophet of the new civilization kneel before the monarch of the old! You see Paul make a subject's formal reverence to Nero![K]

Let me do justice to the court which is to try him. In that judgment-hall there are not only the pomp of Rome, and its crime; we have also the best of its wisdom. By the dissolute boy, Nero, there stands the prime minister Seneca, the chief of the philosophers of his time; "Seneca the saint," cry the Christians of the next century. We will own him to be Seneca the wise, Seneca almost the good. To this sage had been given the education of the monster who was to rule the world. This sage had introduced him into power, had restrained his madness when he could, and with his colleague had conducted the general administration of the Empire with the greatest honor, while the boy was wearing out his life in debauchery in the palace. Seneca dared say more to Nero, to venture more with him, than did any other man. For the young tiger was afraid of his old master long after he had tasted blood. Yet Seneca's system was a cowardly system. It was the best of Roman morality and Greek philosophy, and still it was mean. His daring was the bravest of the men of the old civilization. He is the type of their excellences, as is Nero the model of their power and their adornments. And yet all that Seneca's daring could venture was to seduce the baby-tyrant into the least injurious of tyrannies. From the plunder of a province he would divert him by the carnage of the circus. From the murder of a senator he could lure him by some new lust at home. From the ruin of the Empire, he could seduce him by diverting him with the ruin of a noble family. And Seneca did this with the best of motives. He said he used all the power in his hands, and he thought he did. He was one of those men of whom all times have their share. The bravest of his time, he satisfied himself with alluring the beardless Emperor by petty crime from public wrong; he could flatter him to the expedient. He dared not order him to the right.

But Seneca knew what was right. Seneca also had a well-trained conscience, which told him of right and of wrong. Seneca's brother, Gallio, had saved Paul's life when a Jewish mob would have dragged him to pieces in Corinth; and the legend is that Seneca and Paul had corresponded with each other before they stood together in Nero's presence, the one as counsellor, the other as the criminal.[L] When Paul arose from that formal salutation, when the apostle of the new civilization spoke to the tottering monarch of the old, if there had been one man in that assemblage, could he have failed to see that that was a turning-point in the world's history? Before him in that little hall, in that little hour, was passing the scene which for centuries would be acted out upon the larger stage.

Faith on the one side, before expediency and cruelty on the other! Paul before Seneca and Nero! He was ready to address Nero, with the eloquence and vehemence which for years had been demanding utterance.

He stood at length before the baby Caesar, to whose tribunal he had appealed from the provincial court of a doubting Festus and a trembling Agrippa.

And who shall ask what words the vigorous Christian spoke to the dastard boy! Who that knows the eloquence which rung out on the ears of astonished Stoics at Athens, which commanded the incense and the hecatombs of wandering peasants in Asia, which stilled the gabbling clamor of a wild mob at Jerusalem,—who will doubt the tone in which Paul spoke to Nero! The boy quailed for the moment before the man! The gilded dotard shrunk back from the home truths of the new, young, vigorous faith: the ruler of a hundred legions was nothing before the God-commissioned prisoner.

No; though at this audience all men forsook Paul, as he tells us; though not one of the timid converts were there, but the soldier chained at his side,—still he triumphed over Nero and Nero's minister.

From that audience-hall those three men retire. The boy, grown old in lust, goes thence to be an hour alone, to ponder for an hour on this God, this resurrection, and this truth, of which the Jew, in such uncourtly phrase, has harangued him. To be alone, until the spectre of a dying mother rises again to haunt him, to persecute him and drive him forth to his followers and feasters, where he will try to forget Paul and the Saviour and God, where he would be glad to banish them forever. He does not banish them forever! Henceforward, whenever that spectre of a mother comes before him, it must re-echo the words of God and eternity which Paul has spoken. Whenever the chained and bleeding captive of the arena bends suppliant before him, there must return the memory of the only captive who was never suppliant before him, and his words of sturdy power!

And Seneca? Seneca goes home with the mortified feelings of a great man who has detected his own meanness.

We all know the feeling; for all God's children might be great, and it is with miserable mortification that we detect ourselves in one or another pettiness. Seneca goes home to say: "This wild Easterner has rebuked the Emperor as I have so often wanted to rebuke him. He stood there, as I have wanted to stand, a man before a brute.

"He said what I have thought, and have been afraid to say. Downright, straightforward, he told the Emperor truths as to Rome, as to man, and as to his vices, which I have longed to tell him. He has done what I am afraid to do. He has dared this, which I have dallied with, and left undone. What is the mystery of his power?"

Seneca did not know. Nero did not know. The "Eastern mystery" was in presence before them, and they knew it not!

What was the mystery of Paul's power?

Paul leaves them with the triumph of a man who has accomplished the hope of long years. Those solemn words of his, "After that, I must also see Rome," expressed the longing of years, whose object now, in part, at least, is gratified. He must see Rome!

It is God's mission to him that he see Rome and its Emperor. Paul has seen with the spirit's eye what we have seen since in history,—that he is to be the living link by which the electric fire of life should pass first from religious Asia to quicken this dead, brutish Europe. He knows that he is God's messenger to bear this mystery of life eternal from the one land to the other, and to unfold it there. And to-day has made real, in fact, this his inward confidence. To-day has put the seal of fact on that vision of his, years since, when he first left his Asiatic home. A prisoner in chains, still he has to-day seen the accomplishment of the vows, hopes, and resolutions of that field of Troy, most truly famous from the night he spent there. There was another of these hours when God brings into one spot the acts which shall be the argument of centuries of history. Paul had come down there in his long Asiatic journeys,—Eastern in his lineage, Eastern in his temperament, Eastern in his outward life, and Eastern in his faith,—to that narrow Hellespont, which for long ages has separated East from West, tore madly up the chains which would unite them, overwhelmed even love when it sought to intermarry them, and left their cliffs frowning eternal hate from shore to shore. Paul stood upon the Asian shore and looked across upon the Western. There were Macedonia and the hills of Greece, here Troas and the ruins of Ilium. The names speak war. The blue Hellespont has no voice but separation, except to Paul. But to Paul, sleeping, it might be, on the tomb of Achilles, that night the "man of Macedonia" appears, and bids him come over to avenge Asia, to pay back the debt of Troy.

"Come over and help us." Give us life, for we gave you death. Give us help for we gave you ruin. Paul was not disobedient to the heavenly vision. The Christian Alexander, he crosses to Macedon with the words of peace instead of war,—the Christian shepherd of the people, he carries to Greece, from Troy, the tidings of salvation instead of carnage, of charity instead of license. And he knows that to Europe it is the beginning of her new civilization, it in the dawn of her new warfare, of her new poetry, of her reign of heroes who are immortal.

That faith of his, now years old, has this day received its crowning victory. This day, when he has faced Nero and Seneca together, may well stand in his mind as undoing centuries of bloodshed and of license.

And in this effort, and in that spiritual strength which had nerved him in planning it and carrying it through, was the "Asian mystery." Ask what was the secret of Paul's power as he bearded the baby Emperor, and abashed the baby Philosopher? What did he give the praise to, as he left that scene? What was the principle in action there, but faith in the new life, faith in the God who gave it!

We do not wonder, as Seneca wondered, that such a man as Paul dared say anything to such a boy as Nero! The absolute courage of the new faith was the motive-power which forced it upon the world. Here were the sternest of morals driven forward with the most ultra bravery.

Perfect faith gave perfect courage to the first witnesses. And there was the "mystery" of their victories.

And so, in this case, when after a while Seneca again reminded Nero of his captive, poor Nero did not dare but meet him again. Yet, when he met him again in that same judgment-hall, he did not dare hear him long; and we may be sure that there were but few words before, with such affectation of dignity as he could summon, he bade them set the prisoner free.

Paul free! The old had faced the new. Each had named its champion. And the new conquers!



THE DOT AND LINE ALPHABET.

[This sketch was originally published in the Atlantic Monthly for October, 1858, just at the time that the first Atlantic Cable, whose first prattle had been welcomed by the acclamations of a continent, gasped its last under the manipulations of De Sauty. It has since been copied by Mr. Prescott in his valuable hand-book of the electric telegraph.

The war, which has taught us all so much, has given a brilliant illustration of the dot and line alphabet, wholly apart from the electric use of it, which will undoubtedly be often repeated. In the movements of our troops under General Foster in North Carolina, Dr. J.B. Upham of Boston, the distinguished medical director in that department, equally distinguished for the success with which he has led forward the musical education of New England, trained a corps of buglers to converse with each other by long and short bugle-notes, and thus to carry information with literal accuracy from point to point at any distance within which the tones of a bugle could be heard. It will readily be seen that there are many occasions in military affairs when such means of conversation might prove of inestimable value. Mr. Tuttle, the astronomer, on duty in the same campaign, made a similar arrangement with long and short flashes of light.]

* * * * *

Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its name from the Atlantic Monthly, I read in the September number of that journal the revelations of an observer who was surprised to find that he had the power of reading, as they run, the revelations of the wire. I had the hope that he was about to explain to the public the more general use of this instrument,—which, with a stupid fatuity, the public has as yet failed to grasp. Because its signals have been first applied by means of electro-magnetism, and afterwards by means of the chemical power of electricity, the many-headed people refuses to avail itself, as it might do very easily, of the same signals for the simpler transmission of intelligence, whatever the power employed.

The great invention of Mr. Morse is his register and alphabet. He himself eagerly disclaims any pretension to the original conception of the use of electricity as an errand-boy. Hundreds of people had thought of that and suggested it: but Morse was the first to give the errand-boy such a written message, that he could not lose it on the way, nor mistake it when he arrived. The public, eager to thank Morse, as he deserves, thanks him for something he did not invent. For this he probably cares very little; nor do I care more. But the public does not thank him for what he did originate,—this invaluable and simple alphabet. Now, as I use it myself in every detail of life, and see every hour how the public might use it, if it chose, I am really sorry for this negligence,—both on the score of his fame, and of general convenience.

Please to understand, then, ignorant Reader, that this curious alphabet reduces all the complex machinery of Cadmus and the rest of the writing-masters to characters as simple as can be made by a dot, a space, and a line, variously combined. Thus, the marks .— designate the letter A. The marks —... designate the letter B. All the other letters are designated in as simple a manner.

Now I am stripping myself of one of the private comforts of my life, (but what will one not do for mankind?) when I explain that this simple alphabet need not be confined to electrical signals. Long and short make it all,—and wherever long and short can be combined, be it in marks, sounds, sneezes, fainting-fits, canes, or children, ideas can be conveyed by this arrangement of the long and short together. Only last night I was talking scandal with Mrs. Wilberforce at a summer party at the Hammersmiths. To my amazement, my wife, who scarcely can play "The Fisher's Hornpipe," interrupted us by asking Mrs. Wilberforce if she could give her the idea of an air in "The Butcher of Turin." Mrs. Wilberforce had never heard that opera,—indeed, had never heard of it. My angel-wife was surprised,—stood thrumming at the piano,—wondered she could not catch this very odd bit of discordant accord at all,—but checked herself in her effort, as soon as I observed that her long notes and short notes, in their tum-tee, tee,—tee-tee, tee-tum tum, meant, "He's her brother." The conversation on her side turned from "The Butcher of Turin," and I had just time on the hint thus given me by Mrs. I. to pass a grateful eulogium on the distinguished statesman whom Mrs. Wilberforce, with all a sister's care, had rocked in his baby-cradle,—whom, but for my wife's long and short notes, I should have clumsily abused among the other statesmen of the day.

You will see, in an instant, awakening Reader, that it is not the business simply of "operators" in telegraphic dens to know this Morse alphabet, but your business, and that of every man and woman. If our school committees understood the times, it would be taught, even before phonography or physiology, at school. I believe both these sciences now precede the old English alphabet.

As I write these words, the bell of the South Congregational strikes dong, dong, dong,—dong, dong, dong, dong,—dong,—dong. Nobody has unlocked the church-door. I know that, for I am locked up in the vestry. The old tin sign, "In case of fire, the key will be found at the opposite house," has long since been taken down, and made into the nose of a water-pot. Yet there is no Goody Two-Shoes locked in. No one except me, and certainly I am not ringing the bell. No! But, thanks to Dr. Channing's Fire Alarm,[M] the bell is informing the South End that there is a fire in District Dong-dong-dong,—that is to say, District No. 3. Before I have explained to you so far, the "Eagle" engine, with a good deal of noise, has passed the house on its way to that fated district. An immense improvement this on the old system, when the engines radiated from their houses in every possible direction, and the fire was extinguished by the few machines whose lines of quest happened to cross each other at the particular place where the child had been building cob-houses out of lucifer-matches in a paper warehouse. Yes, it is a very great improvement. All those persons, like you and me, who have no property in District Dong-dong-dong, can now sit at home at ease;—and little need we think upon the mud above the knees of those who have property in that district and are running to look after it. But for them the improvement only brings misery. You arrive wet, hot/or cold, or both, at the large District No. 3, to find that the lucifer-matches were half a mile away from your store,—and that your own private watchman, even, had not been waked by the working of the distant engines. Wet property holder, as you walk home, consider this. When you are next in the Common Council, vote an appropriation for applying Morse's alphabet of long and short to the bells. Then they can be made to sound intelligibly. Daung ding ding,—ding,—ding daung,—daung daung daung, and so on, will tell you as you wake in the night that it is Mr. B.'s store which is on fire, and not yours, or that it is yours and not his. This is not only a convenience to you and a relief to your wife and family, who will thus be spared your excursions to unavailable and unsatisfactory fires, and your somewhat irritated return,—it will be a great relief to the Fire Department. How placid the operations of a fire where none attend except on business! The various engines arrive, but no throng of distant citizens, men and boys, fearful of the destruction of their all. They have all roused on their pillows to learn that it is No. 530 Pearl Street which is in flames. All but the owner of No. 530 Pearl Street have dropped back to sleep. He alone has rapidly repaired to the scene. That is he, who stands in the uncrowded street with the Chief Engineer, on the deck of No. 18, as she plays away. His property destroyed, the engines retire,—he mentions the amount of his insurance to those persons who represent the daily press, they all retire to their homes,—and the whole is finished as simply, almost, as was his private entry in his day-book the afternoon before.[N]

This is what might be, if the magnetic alarm only struck long and short, and we had all learned Morse's alphabet. Indeed, there is nothing the bells could not tell, if you would only give them time enough. We have only one chime, for musical purposes, in the town. But, without attempting tunes, only give the bells the Morse alphabet, and every bell in Boston might chant in monotone the words of "Hail Columbia" at length, every Fourth of July. Indeed, if Mr. Barnard should report any day that a discouraged 'prentice-boy had left town for his country home, all the bells could instantly be set to work to speak articulately, in language regarding which the dullest imagination need not be at loss,

"Turn again, Higginbottom, Lord Mayor of Boston!"

I have suggested the propriety of introducing this alphabet into the primary schools. I need not say I have taught it to my own children,—and I have been gratified to see how rapidly it made head, against the more complex alphabet, in the grammar schools. Of course it does;—an alphabet of two characters matched against one of twenty-six,—or of forty-odd, as the very odd one of the phonotypists employ! On the Franklin-medal day I went to the Johnson-School examination. One of the committee asked a nice girl what was the capital of Brazil. The child looked tired and pale, and, for an instant, hesitated. But, before she had time to commit herself, all answering was rendered impossible by an awful turn of whooping-cough which one of my own sons was seized with,—who had gone to the examination with me. Hawm, hem hem;—hem hem hem;—hem, hem;—hawm, hem hem;—hem hem hem;—hem, hem,—barked the poor child, who was at the opposite extreme of the school-room. The spectators and the committee looked to see him fall dead with a broken blood-vessel. I confess that I felt no alarm, after I observed that some of his gasps were long and some very staccato;—nor did pretty little Mabel Warren. She recovered her color,—and, as soon as silence was in the least restored, answered, "Rio is the capital of Brazil,"—as modestly and properly as if she had been taught it in her cradle. They are nothing but children, any of them,—but that afternoon, after they had done all the singing the city needed for its annual entertainment of the singers, I saw Bob and Mabel start for a long expedition into West Roxbury,—and when he came back, I know it was a long featherfew, from her prize school-bouquet, that he pressed in his Greene's "Analysis," with a short frond of maiden's hair.

I hope nobody will write a letter to "The Atlantic," to say that these are very trifling uses. The communication of useful information is never trifling. It is as important to save a nice child from mortification on examination-day, as it is to tell Mr. Fremont that he is not elected President. If, however, the reader is distressed, because these illustrations do not seem to his more benighted observation to belong to the big bow-wow strain of human life, let him consider the arrangement which ought to have been made years since, for lee shores, railroad collisions, and that curious class of maritime accidents where one steamer runs into mother under the impression that she is a light house. Imagine the Morse alphabet applied to a steam-whistle, which is often heard five miles. It needs only long and short again. "Stop Comet," for instance, when you send it down the railroad line, by the wire, is expressed thus:

... — . . ....,... . . — —- . —

Very good message, if Comet happens to be at the telegraph station when it comes! But what if Cornel has gone by? Much good will your trumpery message do then! If, however, you have the wit to sound your long and short on an engine-whistle, thus;—Scre scre, scre; screeee; scre scre; scre scre scre scre scre; scre scre scre,—scre scre; screeeee screeeee; scre; screeeee;—why, then the whole neighborhood, for five miles around, will know that Comet must stop, if only they understand spoken language,—and among others, the engineman of Comet will understand it; and Comet will not run into that wreck of worlds which gives the order,—with the nucleus of hot iron and his tail of five hundred tons of coal.—So, of the signals which fog-bells can give, attached to light-houses. How excellent to have them proclaim through the darkness, "I am Wall "! Or of signals for steamship-engineers. When our friends were on board the "Arabia" the other day, and she and the "Europa" pitched into each other,—as if, on that happy week, all the continents were to kiss and join hands all round,—how great the relief to the passengers on each, if, through every night of their passage, collision had been prevented by this simple expedient! One boat would have screamed, "Europa, Europa, Europa," from night to morning,—and the other, "Arabia, Arabia, Arabia,"—and neither would have been mistaken, as one unfortunately was, for a light-house.

The long and short of it is, that whoever can mark distinctions of time can use this alphabet of long-and-short, however he may mark them. It is therefore within the compass of all intelligent beings, except those who are no longer conscious of the passage of time, having exchanged its limitations for the wider sweep of eternity. The illimitable range of this alphabet, however, is not half disclosed when this has been said. Most articulate language addresses itself to one sense, or at most to two, sight and sound. I see, as I write, that the particular illustrations I have given are all of them confined to signals seen or signals heard. But the dot-and-line alphabet, in the few years of its history, has already shown that it is not restricted to these two senses, but makes itself intelligible to all. Its message, of course, is heard as well as read. Any good operator understands the sounds of its ticks upon the flowing strip of paper, as well as when he sees it As he lies in his cot at midnight, he will expound the passing message without striking a light to see it But this is only what may be said of any written language. You can read this article to your wife, or she can read it, as she prefers; that is, she chooses whether it shall address her eye or her ear. But the long-and-short alphabet of Morse and his imitators despises such narrow range. It addresses whichever of the five senses the listener chooses. This fact is illustrated by a curious set of anecdotes,—never yet put in print, I think,—of that critical despatch which in one night announced General Taylor's death to this whole land. Most of the readers of these lines probably read that despatch in the morning's paper. The compositors and editors had read it. To them it was a despatch to the eye. But half the operators at the stations heard it ticked out, by the register stroke, and knew it before they wrote it down for the press. To them it was a despatch to the ear. My good friend Langenzunge had not that resource. He had just been promised, by the General himself (under whom he served at Palo Alto), the office of Superintendent of the Rocky Mountain Lines. He was returning from Washington over the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, on a freight-train, when he heard of the President's danger. Langenzunge loved Old Rough and Ready,—and he felt badly about his own office, too. But his extempore train chose to stop at a forsaken shanty-village on the Potomac, for four mortal hours, at midnight. What does he do, but walk down the line into the darkness, climb a telegraph-post, cut a wire, and applied the two ends to his tongue, to taste, at the fatal moment, the words, "Died at half past ten." Poor Langenzunge! he hardly had nerve to solder the wire again. Cogs told me that they had just fitted up the Naguadavick stations with Bain's chemical revolving disk. This disk is charged with a salt of potash, which, when the electric spark passes through it, is changed to Prussian blue. Your despatch is noiselessly written in dark blue dots and lines. Just as the disk started on that fatal despatch, and Cogs bent over it to read, his spirit-lamp blew up,—as the dear things will. They were beside themselves in the lonely, dark office; but, while the men were fumbling for matches, which would not go, Cogs's sister, Nydia, a sweet blind girl, who had learned Bain's alphabet from Dr. Howe at South Boston, bent over the chemical paper, and smelt out the prussiate of potash, as it formed itself in lines and dots to tell the sad story. Almost anybody used to reading the blind books can read the embossed Morse messages with the finger,—and so this message was read at all the midnight way-stations where no night-work is expected, and where the companies do not supply fluid or oil. Within my narrow circle of acquaintance, therefore, there were these simultaneous instances, where the same message was seen, heard, smelled, tasted, and felt. So universal is the dot-and-line alphabet,—for Bain's is on the same principle as Morse's.

The reader sees, therefore, first, that the dot-and-line alphabet can be employed by any being who has command of any long and short symbols,—be they long and short notches, such as Robinson Crusoe kept his accounts with, or long and short waves of electricity, such as these which Valentia is sending across to the Newfoundland bay, so prophetically and appropriately named "The Bay of Bulls." Also, I hope the reader sees that the alphabet can be understood by any intelligent being who has any one of the five senses left him,—by all rational men, that is, excepting the few eyeless deaf persons who have lost both taste and smell in some complete paralysis. The use of Morse's telegraph is by no means confined to the small clique who possess or who understand electrical batteries. It is not only the torpedo or the Gymnotus electricus that can send us messages from the ocean. Whales in the sea can telegraph as well as senators on land, if they will only note the difference between long spoutings and short ones. And they can listen, too. If they will only note the difference between long and short, the eel of Ocean's bottom may feel on his slippery skin the smooth messages of our Presidents, and the catfish, in his darkness, look fearless on the secrets of a Queen. Any beast, bird, fish, or insect, which can discriminate between long and short, may use the telegraph alphabet, if he have sense enough. Any creature, which can hear, smell, taste, feel, or see, may take note of its signals, if he can understand them. A tired listener at church, by properly varying his long yawns and his short ones, may express his opinion of the sermon to the opposite gallery before the sermon is done. A dumb tobacconist may trade with his customers in an alphabet of short-sixes and long-nines. A beleaguered Sebastopol may explain its wants to the relieving army beyond the line of the Chernaya, by the lispings of its short Paixhans and its long twenty-fours.



THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE RESOLUTE.

[I had some opportunities, which no other writer for the press had, I believe, of examining the Resolute on her return from that weird voyage which is the most remarkable in the history of the navies of the world. And, as I know of no other printed record of the whole of that voyage than this, which was published in the Boston Daily Advertiser of June 11, 1856, I reprint it here. Readers should remember that the English government abandoned all claim on the vessel; that the American government then bought her of the salvors, refitted her completely, and sent her to England as a present to the Queen. The Queen visited the ship, and accepted the present in person. The Resolute has never since been to sea. I do not load the page with authorities; but I studied the original reports of the Arctic expeditions carefully in preparing the paper, and I believe it to be accurate throughout.

The voyage from New London to England, when she was thus returned, is strictly her last voyage. But when this article was printed its name was correct.]

* * * * *

It was in early spring in 1852, early on the morning of the 21st of April, that the stout English discovery ship Resolute, manned by a large crew, commanded by a most manly man, Henry Kellett, left her moorings in the great river Thames, a little below the old town of London, was taken in tow by a fussy steam-tug, and proudly started as one of a fine English squadron in the great search of the nations for the lost Sir John Franklin. It was late in the year 1855, on the 24th of December, that the same ship, weather-worn, scantily rigged, without her lighter masts, all in the trim of a vessel which has had a hard fight with wind, water, ice, and time, made the light-house of New London,—waited for day and came round to anchor in the other river Thames, of New England. Not one man of the English crew was on board. The gallant Captain Kellett was not there; but in his place an American master, who had shown, in his way, equal gallantry. The sixty or seventy men with whom she sailed were all in their homes more than a year ago. The eleven men with whom she returned had had to double parts, and to work hard to make good the places of the sixty. And between the day when the Englishmen left her, and the day the Americans found her, she had spent fifteen months and more alone. She was girt in by the ice of the Arctic seas. No man knows where she went, what narrow scapes she passed through, how low her thermometers marked cold;—it is a bit of her history which was never written. Nor what befell her little tender, the "Intrepid," which was left in her neighborhood, "ready for occupation," just as she was left. No man will ever tell of the nip that proved too much for her,—of the opening of her seams, and her disappearance beneath the ice. But here is the hardy Resolute, which, on the 15th of May, 1854, her brave commander left, as he was ordered, "ready for occupation,"—which the brave Captain Buddington found September 10, 1855, more than a thousand miles from there, and pronounced still "ready for occupation";—and of what can be known of her history from Old London to New London, from Old England's Thames to New England's Thames, we will try to tell the story; as it is written in the letters of her old officers and told by the lips of her new rescuers.

For Arctic work, if ships are to go into every nook and lane of ice that will yield at all to wind and steam, they must be as nearly indestructible as man can make them. For Arctic work, therefore, and for discovery work, ships built of the teak wood of Malabar and Java are considered most precisely fitted. Ships built of teak are said to be wholly indestructible by time. To this we owe the fact, which now becomes part of a strange coincidence, that one of the old Captain Cook's ships which went round the world with him has been, till within a few years, a whaling among the American whalers, revisiting, as a familiar thing, the shores which she was first to discover. The English admiralty, eager to fit out for Arctic service a ship of the best build they could find, bought the two teak-built ships Baboo and Ptarmigan in 1850,—sent them to their own dock-yards to be refitted, and the Baboo became the Assistance,—the Ptarmigan became the Resolute, of their squadrons of Arctic discovery.

Does the reader know that in the desolation of the Arctic shores the Ptarmigan is the bird most often found? It is the Arctic grouse or partridge,[O] and often have the ptarmigans of Melville Island furnished sport and even dinners to the hungry officers of the "Resolute," wholly unconscious that she had ever been their god-child, and had thrown off their name only to take that which she now wears.

Early in May, 1850, just at the time we now know that brave Sir John Franklin and the remnant of his crew were dying of starvation at the mouth of Back's River, the "Resolute" sailed first for the Arctic seas, the flag-ship of Commodore Austin, with whose little squadron our own De Haven and his men had such pleasant intercourse near Beechey Island. In the course of that expedition she wintered off Cornwallis Island,—and in autumn of the next year returned to England.

Whenever a squadron or a man or an army returns to England, unless in the extreme and exceptional case of complete victory over obstacle invincible, there is always dissatisfaction. This is the English way. And so there was dissatisfaction when Captain Austin returned with his ships and men. There was also still a lingering hope that some trace of Franklin might yet be found, perhaps some of his party. Yet more, there were two of the searching ships which had entered the Polar seas from Behring's Straits on the west, the "Enterprise" and "Investigator," which might need relief before they came through or returned. Arctic search became a passion by this time, and at once a new squadron was fitted out to take the seas in the spring of 1852. This squadron consisted of the "Assistance" and "Resolute" again, which had been refitted since their return, of the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer," two steamships used as tenders to the "Assistance" and "Resolute" respectively, and of the "North Star," which had also been in those regions, and now went as a storeship to the rest of the squadron. To the command of the whole Sir Edward Belcher was appointed, an officer who had served in some of the earlier Arctic expeditions. Officers and men volunteered in full numbers for the service, and these five vessels therefore carried out a body of men who brought more experience of the Northern seas together than any expedition which had ever visited them.

Of these, Captain Henry Kellett had command of the "Resolute," and was second in seniority to Sir Edward Belcher, who made the "Assistance" the flag-ship. It shows what sort of man he was, to say that for more than ten years he spent only part of one in England, and was the rest of the time in an antipodean hemisphere or a hyperborean zone. Before brave Sir John Franklin sailed, Captain Kellett was in the Pacific. Just as he was to return home, he was ordered into the Arctic seas to search for Sir John. Three years successively, in his ship the "Herald," he passed inside Behring's Straits, and far into the Arctic Ocean. He discovered "Herald Island," the farthest land known there. He was one of the last men to see McClure in the "Investigator" before she entered the Polar seas from the northwest. He sent three of his men on board that ship to meet them all again, as will be seen, in strange surroundings. After more than seven years of this Pacific and Arctic life, he returned to England, in May or June, 1851, and in the next winter volunteered to try the eastern approach to the same Arctic seas in our ship, the "Resolute." Some of his old officers sailed with him.

We know nothing of Captain Kellett but what his own letters, despatches, and instructions show, as they are now printed in enormous parliamentary blue-books, and what the despatches and letters of his officers and of his commander show. But these papers present the picture of a vigorous, hearty man, kind to his crew and a great favorite with them, brave in whatever trial, always considerate, generous to his officers, reposing confidence in their integrity; a man, in short, of whom the world will be apt to hear more. His commander, Sir Edward Belcher, tried by the same standard, appears a brave and ready man, apt to talk of himself, not very considerate of his inferiors, confident in his own opinion; in short, a man with whom one would not care to spend three Arctic winters. With him, as we trace the "Resolute's" fortunes, we shall have much to do. Of Captain Kellett we shall see something all along till the day when he sadly left her, as bidden by Sir Edward Belcher, "ready for occupation."

With such a captain, and with sixty-odd men, the "Resolute" cast off her moorings in the gray of the morning on the 21st of April, 1852, to go in search of Sir John Franklin. The brave Sir John had died two years before, but no one knew that, nor whispered it. The river steam-tug "Monkey" took her in tow, other steamers took the "Assistance" and the "North Star"; the "Intrepid" and "Pioneer" got up their own steam, and to the cheers of the little company gathered at Greenhithe to see them off, they went down the Thames. At the Nore, the steamship "Desperate" took the "Resolute" in charge, Sir Edward Belcher made the signal "Orkneys" as the place of rendezvous, and in four days she was there, in Stromness outer harbor. Here there was a little shifting of provisions and coal-bags, those of the men who could get on shore squandered their spending-money, and then, on the 28th of April, she and hers bade good by to British soil. And, though they have welcomed it again long since, she has not seen it from then till now.

The "Desperate" steamer took her in tow, she sent her own tow-lines to the "North Star," and for three days in this procession of so wild and weird a name, they three forged on westward toward Greenland,—a train which would have startled any old Viking had he fallen in with it, with a fresh gale blowing all the time and "a nasty sea." On the fourth day all the tow-lines broke or were cast off however, Neptune and the winds claimed their own, and the "Resolute" tried her own resources. The towing steamers were sent home in a few days more, and the squadron left to itself.

We have too much to tell in this short article to be able to dwell on the details of her visits to the hospitable Danes of Greenland, or of her passage through the ice of Baffin's Bay. But here is one incident, which, as the event has proved, is part of a singular coincidence. On the 6th of July all the squadron, tangled in the ice, joined a fleet of whalers beset in it, by a temporary opening between the gigantic masses. Caught at the head of a bight in the ice, with the "Assistance" and the "Pioneer," the "Resolute" was, for the emergency, docked there, and, by the ice closing behind her, was, for a while, detained. Meanwhile the rest of the fleet, whalers and discovery ships, passed on by a little lane of water, the American whaler "McLellan" leading. This "McLellan" was one of the ships of the spirited New London merchants, Messrs. Perkins & Smith, another of whose vessels has now found the "Resolute" and befriended her in her need in those seas. The "McLellan" was their pioneer vessel there.

The "North Star" of the English squadron followed the "McLellan." A long train stretched out behind. Whalers and government ships, as they happened to fall into line,—a long three quarters of a mile. It was lovely weather, and, though the long lane closed up so that they could neither go back nor forward,—nobody apprehended injury till it was announced on the morning of the 7th that the poor "McLellan" was nipped in the ice and her crew were deserting her. Sir Edward Belcher was then in condition to befriend her, sent his carpenters to examine her,—put a few charges of powder into the ice to relieve the pressure upon her,—and by the end of the day it was agreed that her injuries could be repaired, and her crew went on board again. But there is no saying what ice will do next. The next morning there was a fresh wind, the "McLellan" was caught again, and the water poured into her, a steady stream. She drifted about unmanageable, now into one ship, now into another, and the English whalemen began to pour on board, to help themselves to such plunder as they chose. At the Captain's request, Sir Edward Belcher put an end to this, sent sentries on board, and working parties, to clear her as far as might be, and keep account of what her stores were and where they went to. In a day or two more she sank to the water's edge and a friendly charge or two of powder put her out of the way of harm to the rest of the fleet. After such a week spent together it will easily be understood that the New London whalemen did not feel strangers on board one of Sir Edward's vessels when they found her "ready for occupation" three years and more afterwards.