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The Brick Moon, et. al.
by Edward Everett Hale
February, 1999 [Etext #1633]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Brick Moon, et. al., by Hale
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The Brick Moon
and Other Stories
by EDWARD EVERETT HALE
Short Story Index Reprint Series
Preface
To read these stories again, thirty and more years after
they were written, is to recall many memories, sad or
glad, with which this reader need not be interrupted.
But I have to make sure that they are intelligible to
readers of a generation later than that for which they
were written.
The story of The Brick Moon was begun in my dear
brother Nathan's working-room in Union College,
Schenectady, in the year 1870, when he was professor of
the English language there. The account of the first
plan of the moon is a sketch, as accurate as was needed,
of the old chat and dreams, plans and jokes, of our
college days, before he left Cambridge in 1838. As I
learned almost everything I know through his care and
love and help, directly or indirectly, it is a pleasure
to say this here. The story was published in the
"Atlantic Monthly," in 1870 and 1871. It was the last
story I wrote for that magazine, before assuming the
charge of "Old and New," a magazine which I edited from
1870 to 1876, and for which I wrote "Ten Times One is
Ten," which has been printed in the third volume of this
series.
Among the kind references to "The Brick Moon" which
I have received from sympathetic friends, I now recall
with the greatest pleasure one sent me by Mr. Asaph Hall,
the distinguished astronomer of the National Observatory.
In sending me the ephemeris of the two moons of Mars,
which he revealed to this world of ours, he wrote, "The
smaller of these moons is the veritable Brick Moon."
That, in the moment of triumph for the greatest
astronomical discovery of a generation, Dr. Hall should
have time or thought to give to my little parable,--this
was praise indeed.
Writing in 1870, I said, as the reader will see on
page 66, that George Orcutt did not tell how he used a
magnifying power of 700. Nor did I choose to tell then,
hoping that in some fortunate winter I might be able
myself to repeat his process, greatly to the convenience
of astronomers who have not Alvan Clark's resources at
hand, or who have to satisfy themselves with glass lenses
of fifteen inches, or even thirty, in diameter. But no
such winter has come round to me, and I will now give
Orcutt's invention to the world. He had unlimited
freezing power. So have we now, as we had not then.
With this power he made an ice lens, ten feet in
diameter, which was easily rubbed, by the delicate hands
of the careful women around him, to precisely the
surface which he needed. Let me hope that before next
winter passes some countryman or countrywoman of mine
will have equalled his success, and with an ice lens will
surpass all the successes of the glasses of our time.
The plan of "Crusoe in New York" was made when I was
enjoying the princely hospitality of Henry Whitney
Bellows in New York. The parsonage in that city
commanded a view of a "lot" not built on, which would
have given for many years a happy home to any disciple of
Mayor Pingree, if a somewhat complicated social order had
permitted. The story was first published in Frank
Leslie's illustrated paper. In reading it in 1899, I am
afraid that the readers of a hard, money generation may
not know that "scrip" was in the sixties the name for
small change.
I regard a knowledge of every detail of the original
Robinson Crusoe as well-nigh a necessity in education.
Girls may occasionally be excused, but never boys. It
ought to be unnecessary, therefore, to say that some of
the narrative passages of Crusoe in New York are taken,
word for word, from the text of Defoe. If I do state
this for the benefit of a few unfortunate ladies who are
not familiar with that text, it is because I think no one
among many courteous critics has observed it.
"The Survivor's Story" is one of eight short stories
which were published in the first Christmas number of
"Old and New."
Of the other stories I think no explanation is
needed, but such as was given at the time of their
publication and is reprinted with each of them here.
EDWARD E. HALE.
ROXBURY, July 6, 1899.
CONTENTS
THE BRICK MOON
CRUSOE IN NEW YORK
BREAD ON THE WATERS
THE LOST PALACE
99 LINWOOD STREET
IDEALS
THANKSGIVING AT THE POLLS
THE SURVIVOR'S STORY
THE BRICK MOON
[From the papers of Captain FREDERIC INGHAM.]
I
PREPARATION
I have no sort of objection now to telling the whole
story. The subscribers, of course, have a right to
know what became of their money. The astronomers may
as well know all about it, before they announce any
more asteroids with an enormous movement in
declination. And experimenters on the longitude may as
well know, so that they may act advisedly in attempting
another brick moon or in refusing to do so.
It all began more than thirty years ago, when we were
in college; as most good things begin. We were studying
in the book which has gray sides and a green back, and is
called "Cambridge Astronomy" because it is translated
from the French. We came across this business of the
longitude, and, as we talked, in the gloom and glamour of
the old South Middle dining-hall, we had going the usual
number of students' stories about rewards offered by the
Board of Longitude for discoveries in that matter,--
stories, all of which, so far as I know, are lies. Like
all boys, we had tried our hands at perpetual motion.
For me, I was sure I could square the circle, if they
would give me chalk enough. But as to this business of
the longitude, it was reserved for Q.[1] to make the
happy hit and to explain it to the rest of us.
[1] Wherever Q. is referred to in these pages my
brother Nathan is meant. One of his noms de plume
was Gnat Q. Hale, because G and Q may be silent letters.
I wonder if I can explain it to an unlearned world,
which has not studied the book with gray sides and a
green cambric back. Let us try.
You know then, dear world, that when you look at the
North Star, it always appears to you at just the same
height above the horizon or what is between you and the
horizon: say the Dwight School-house, or the houses in
Concord Street; or to me, just now, North College. You
know also that, if you were to travel to the North Pole,
the North Star would be just over your head. And, if you
were to travel to the equator, it would be just on your
horizon, if you could see it at all through the red,
dusty, hazy mist in the north, as you could not. If you
were just half-way between pole and equator, on the line
between us and Canada, the North Star would be half-way
up, or 45@ from the horizon. So you would know there
that you were 45@ from the equator. Then in Boston, you
would find it was 42@ 20' from the horizon. So you know
there that you are 42@ 20' from the equator. At Seattle
again you would find it was 47@ 40' high, so our friends
at Seattle know that they are at 47@ 40' from the
equator. The latitude of a place, in other words, is
found very easily by any observation which shows how high
the North Star is; if you do not want to measure the
North Star, you may take any star when it is just to
north of you, and measure its height; wait twelve hours,
and if you can find it, measure its height again. Split
the difference, and that is the altitude of the pole, or
the latitude of you, the observer.
"Of course we know this," says the graduating world.
"Do you suppose that is what we borrow your book for, to
have you spell out your miserable elementary astronomy?"
At which rebuff I should shrink distressed, but that a
chorus of voices an octave higher comes up with, "Dear
Mr. Ingham, we are ever so much obliged to you; we did
not know it at all before, and you make it perfectly
clear."
Thank you, my dear, and you, and you. We will not
care what the others say. If you do understand it, or do
know it, it is more than Mr. Charles Reade knew, or he
would not have made his two lovers on the island guess at
their latitude, as they did. If they had either of them
been educated at a respectable academy for the Middle
Classes, they would have fared better.
Now about the longitude.
The latitude, which you have found, measures your
distance north or south from the equator or the pole. To
find your longitude, you want to find your distance
east or west from the meridian of Greenwich. Now, if any
one would build a good tall tower at Greenwich, straight
into the sky,--say a hundred miles into the sky,--of
course if you and I were east or west of it, and could
see it, we could tell how far east or west we were by
measuring the apparent height of the tower above our
horizon. If we could see so far, when the lantern with
a Drummond's light, "ever so bright," on the very top of
the tower, appeared to be on our horizon, we should know
we were eight hundred and seventy-three miles away from
it. The top of the tower would answer for us as the North
Star does when we are measuring the latitude. If we were
nearer, our horizon would make a longer angle with the
line from the top to our place of vision. If we were
farther away, we should need a higher tower.
But nobody will build any such tower at Greenwich, or
elsewhere on that meridian, or on any meridian. You see
that to be of use to the half the world nearest to it, it
would have to be so high that the diameter of the world
would seem nothing in proportion. And then, for the
other half of the world you would have to erect another
tower as high on the other side. It was this difficulty
that made Q. suggest the expedient of the Brick Moon.
For you see that if, by good luck, there were a ring
like Saturn's which stretched round the world, above
Greenwich and the meridian of Greenwich, and if it would
stay above Greenwich, turning with the world, any one
who wanted to measure his longitude or distance from
Greenwich would look out of window and see how high this
ring was above his horizon. At Greenwich it would be
over his head exactly. At New Orleans, which is quarter
round the world from Greenwich, it would be just in his
horizon. A little west of New Orleans you would begin to
look for the other half of the ring on the west instead
of the east; and if you went a little west of the Feejee
Islands the ring would be over your head again. So if we
only had a ring like that, not round the equator of the
world,--as Saturn's ring is around Saturn,--but vertical
to the plane of the equator, as the brass ring of an
artificial globe goes, only far higher in proportion,--
"from that ring," said Q., pensively, "we could calculate
the longitude."
Failing that, after various propositions, he
suggested the Brick Moon. The plan was this: If from
the surface of the earth, by a gigantic peashooter, you
could shoot a pea upward from Greenwich, aimed northward
as well as upward; if you drove it so fast and far that
when its power of ascent was exhausted, and it began to
fall, it should clear the earth, and pass outside the
North Pole; if you had given it sufficient power to get
it half round the earth without touching, that pea would
clear the earth forever. It would continue to rotate
above the North Pole, above the Feejee Island place,
above the South Pole and Greenwich, forever, with the
impulse with which it had first cleared our atmosphere
and attraction. If only we could see that pea as it
revolved in that convenient orbit, then we could measure
the longitude from that, as soon as we knew how high the
orbit was, as well as if it were the ring of Saturn.
"But a pea is so small!"
"Yes," said Q., "but we must make a large pea." Then
we fell to work on plans for making the pea very large
and very light. Large,--that it might be seen far away
by storm-tossed navigators: light,--that it might be the
easier blown four thousand and odd miles into the air;
lest it should fall on the heads of the Greenlanders or
the Patagonians; lest they should be injured and the
world lose its new moon. But, of course, all this lath-
and-plaster had to be given up. For the motion through
the air would set fire to this moon just as it does to
other aerolites, and all your lath-and-plaster would
gather into a few white drops, which no Rosse telescope
even could discern. "No," said Q. bravely, "at the least
it must be very substantial. It must stand fire well,
very well. Iron will not answer. It must be brick; we
must have a Brick Moon."
Then we had to calculate its size. You can see, on
the old moon, an edifice two hundred feet long with any
of the fine refractors of our day. But no such
refractors as those can be carried by the poor little
fishermen whom we wanted to befriend, the bones of whose
ships lie white on so many cliffs, their names
unreported at any Lloyd's or by any Ross,
Themselves the owners and their sons the crew.
On the other hand, we did not want our moon two hundred
and fifty thousand miles away, as the old moon is, which
I will call the Thornbush moon, for distinction. We did
not care how near it was, indeed, if it were only far
enough away to be seen, in practice, from almost the
whole world. There must be a little strip where they
could not see it from the surface, unless we threw it
infinitely high. "But they need not look from the
surface," said Q.; "they might climb to the mast-head.
And if they did not see it at all, they would know that
they were ninety degrees from the meridian."
This difficulty about what we call "the strip,"
however, led to an improvement in the plan, which made it
better in every way. It was clear that even if "the
strip" were quite wide, the moon would have to be a good
way off, and, in proportion, hard to see. If, however,
we would satisfy ourselves with a moon four thousand
miles away, THAT could be seen on the earth's surface
for three or four thousand miles on each side; and twice
three thousand, or six thousand, is one fourth of the
largest circumference of the earth. We did not dare have
it nearer than four thousand miles, since even at that
distance it would be eclipsed three hours out of every
night; and we wanted it bright and distinct, and not of
that lurid, copper, eclipse color. But at four
thousand miles' distance the moon could be seen by a belt
of observers six or eight thousand miles in diameter.
"Start, then, two moons,"--this was my contribution to
the plan. "Suppose one over the meridian of Greenwich,
and the other over that of New Orleans. Take care that
there is a little difference in the radii of their
orbits, lest they `collide' some foul day. Then, in most
places, one or other, perhaps two will come in sight. So
much the less risk of clouds: and everywhere there may be
one, except when it is cloudy. Neither need be more than
four thousand miles off; so much the larger and more
beautiful will they be. If on the old Thornbush moon old
Herschel with his reflector could see a town-house two
hundred feet long, on the Brick Moon young Herschel will
be able to see a dab of mortar a foot and a half long, if
he wants to. And people without the reflector, with
their opera-glasses, will be able to see sufficiently
well." And to this they agreed: that eventually there
must be two Brick Moons. Indeed, it were better that
there should be four, as each must be below the horizon
half the time. That is only as many as Jupiter has. But
it was also agreed that we might begin with one.
Why we settled on two hundred feet of diameter I
hardly know. I think it was from the statement of dear
John Farrar's about the impossibility of there being a
state house two hundred feet long not yet discovered, on
the sunny side of old Thornbush. That, somehow, made
two hundred our fixed point. Besides, a moon of two
hundred feet diameter did not seem quite unmanageable.
Yet it was evident that a smaller moon would be of no
use, unless we meant to have them near the world, when
there would be so many that they would be confusing, and
eclipsed most of the time. And four thousand miles is a
good way off to see a moon even two hundred feet in
diameter.
Small though we made them on paper, these two-
hundred-foot moons were still too much for us. Of course
we meant to build them hollow. But even if hollow there
must be some thickness, and the quantity of brick would
at best be enormous. Then, to get them up! The pea-
shooter, of course, was only an illustration. It was
long after that time that Rodman and other guns sent iron
balls five or six miles in distance,--say two miles, more
or less, in height.
Iron is much heavier than hollow brick, but you can
build no gun with a bore of two hundred feet now,--far
less could you then. No.
Q. again suggested the method of shooting oft the
moon. It was not to be by any of your sudden explosions.
It was to be done as all great things are done,--by the
gradual and silent accumulation of power. You all know
that a flywheel--heavy, very heavy on the circumference,
light, very light within it--was made to save up power,
from the time when it was produced to the time when it
was wanted. Yes? Then, before we began even to
build the moon, before we even began to make the brick,
we would build two gigantic fly-wheels, the diameter of
each should be "ever so great," the circumference heavy
beyond all precedent, and thundering strong, so that no
temptation might burst it. They should revolve, their
edges nearly touching, in opposite directions, for years,
if it were necessary, to accumulate power, driven by some
waterfall now wasted to the world. One should be a
little heavier than the other. When the Brick Moon was
finished, and all was ready, IT should be gently rolled
down a gigantic groove provided for it, till it lighted
on the edge of both wheels at the same instant. Of
course it would not rest there, not the ten-thousandth
part of a second. It would be snapped upward, as a drop
of water from a grindstone. Upward and upward; but the
heavier wheel would have deflected it a little from the
vertical. Upward and northward it would rise, therefore,
till it had passed the axis of the world. It would, of
course, feel the world's attraction all the time, which
would bend its flight gently, but still it would leave
the world more and more behind. Upward still, but now
southward, till it had traversed more than one hundred
and eighty degrees of a circle. Little resistance,
indeed, after it had cleared the forty or fifty miles of
visible atmosphere. "Now let it fall," said Q., inspired
with the vision. "Let it fall, and the sooner the
better! The curve it is now on will forever clear
the world; and over the meridian of that lonely
waterfall,--if only we have rightly adjusted the gigantic
flies,--will forever revolve, in its obedient orbit,
the--
BRICK MOON,
the blessing of all seamen,--as constant in all change
as its older sister has been fickle, and the second
cynosure of all lovers upon the waves, and of all girls
left behind them." "Amen," we cried, and then we sat in
silence till the clock struck ten; then shook each other
gravely by the hand, and left the South Middle dining-
hall.
Of waterfalls there were plenty that we knew.
Fly-wheels could be built of oak and pine, and hooped
with iron. Fly-wheels did not discourage us.
But brick? One brick is, say, sixty-four cubic
inches only. This moon,--though we made it hollow,--
see,--it must take twelve million brick.
The brick alone will cost sixty thousand dollars!
The brick alone would cost sixty thousand dollars.
There the scheme of the Brick Moon hung, an airy vision,
for seventeen years,--the years that changed us from
young men into men. The brick alone, sixty thousand
dollars! For, to boys who have still left a few of their
college bills unpaid, who cannot think of buying that
lovely little Elzevir which Smith has for sale at
auction, of which Smith does not dream of the value,
sixty thousand dollars seems as intangible as sixty
million sestertia. Clarke, second, how much are sixty
million sestertia stated in cowries? How much in
currency, gold being at 1.37 1/4/? Right; go up. Stop,
I forget myself!
So, to resume, the project of the Brick Moon hung in
the ideal, an airy vision, a vision as lovely and as
distant as the Brick Moon itself, at this calm moment of
midnight when I write, as it poises itself over the
shoulder of Orion, in my southern horizon. Stop! I
anticipate. Let me keep--as we say in Beadle's Dime
Series--to the even current of my story.
Seventeen years passed by, we were no longer boys,
though we felt so. For myself, to this hour, I never
enter board meeting, committee meeting, or synod, without
the queer question, what would happen should any one
discover that this bearded man was only a big boy
disguised? that the frockcoat and the round hat are none
of mine, and that, if I should be spurned from the
assembly, as an interloper, a judicious public, learning
all the facts, would give a verdict, "Served him right."
This consideration helps me through many bored meetings
which would be else so dismal. What did my old copy
say?--
"Boards are made of wood, they are long and narrow."
But we do not get on!
Seventeen years after, I say, or should have said,
dear Orcutt entered my room at Naguadavick again. I had
not seen him since the Commencement day when we
parted at Cambridge. He looked the same, and yet not the
same. His smile was the same, his voice, his tender look
of sympathy when I spoke to him of a great sorrow, his
childlike love of fun. His waistband was different, his
pantaloons were different, his smooth chin was buried in
a full beard, and he weighed two hundred pounds if he
weighed a gramme. O, the good time we had, so like the
times of old! Those were happy days for me in
Naguadavick. At that moment my double was at work for me
at a meeting of the publishing committee of the
Sandemanian Review, so I called Orcutt up to my own
snuggery, and we talked over old times; talked till tea
was ready. Polly came up through the orchard and made
tea for us herself there. We talked on and on, till
nine, ten at night, and then it was that dear Orcutt
asked me if I remembered the Brick Moon. Remember it? of
course I did. And without leaving my chair I opened the
drawer of my writing-desk, and handed him a portfolio
full of working-drawings on which I had engaged myself
for my "third"[1] all that winter. Orcutt was delighted.
He turned them over hastily but intelligently, and said:
"I am so glad. I could not think you had forgotten. And
I have seen Brannan, and Brannan has not forgotten."
"Now do you know," said he, "in all this railroading of
mine, I have not forgotten. When I built the great
tunnel for the Cattawissa and Opelousas, by which we
got rid of the old inclined planes, there was never a
stone bigger than a peach-stone within two hundred miles
of us. I baked the brick of that tunnel on the line with
my own kilns. Ingham, I have made more brick, I believe,
than any man living in the world!"
[1] "Every man," says Dr. Peabody, "should have a
vocation and an avocation." To which I add,"A third."
"You are the providential man," said I.
"Am I not, Fred? More than that," said he; "I have
succeeded in things the world counts worth more than
brick. I have made brick, and I have made money!"
"One of us make money?" asked I, amazed.
"Even so," said dear Orcutt; "one of us has, made
money." And he proceeded to tell me how. It was not in
building tunnels, nor in making brick. No! It was by
buying up the original stock of the Cattawissa and
Opelousas, at a moment when that stock had hardly a
nominal price in the market. There were the first
mortgage bonds, and the second mortgage bonds, and the
third, and I know not how much floating debt; and worse
than all, the reputation of the road lost, and deservedly
lost. Every locomotive it had was asthmatic. Every car
it had bore the marks of unprecedented accidents, for
which no one was to blame. Rival lines, I know not how
many, were cutting each other's throats for its
legitimate business. At this juncture dear George
invested all his earnings as a contractor, in the
despised original stock,--he actually bought it for 3 1/4
per cent,--good shares that had cost a round hundred
to every wretch who had subscribed. Six thousand eight
hundred dollars--every cent he had--did George thus
invest. Then he went himself to the trustees of the
first mortgage, to the trustees of the second, and to the
trustees of the third, and told them what he had done.
Now it is personal presence that moves the world.
Dear Orcutt has found that out since, if he did not know
it before. The trustees who would have sniffed had
George written to them, turned round from their desks,
and begged him to take a chair, when he came to talk with
them. Had he put every penny he was worth into that
stock? Then it was worth something which they did not
know of, for George Orcutt was no fool about railroads.
The man who bridged the Lower Rapidan when a freshet was
running was no fool.
"What were his plans?"
George did not tell--no, not to lordly trustees--what
his plans were. He had plans, but he kept them to
himself. All he told them was that he had plans. On
those plans he had staked his all. Now, would they or
would they not agree to put him in charge of the running
of that road, for twelve months, on a nominal salary?
The superintendent they had had was a rascal. He had
proved that by running away. They knew that George was
not a rascal. He knew that he could make this road pay
expenses, pay bond-holders, and pay a dividend,--a thing
no one else had dreamed of for twenty years. Could
they do better than try him?
Of course they could not, and they knew they could
not. Of course they sniffed and talked, and waited, and
pretended they did not know, and that they must consult,
and so forth and so on. But of course they all did try
him, on his own terms. He was put in charge of the
running of that road.
In one week he showed he should redeem it. In three
months he did redeem it!
He advertised boldly the first day: "Infant
children at treble price."
The novelty attracted instant remark. And it showed
many things. First, it showed he was a humane man, who
wished to save human life. He would leave these
innocents in their cradles, where they belonged.
Second, and chiefly, the world of travellers saw that
the Crichton, the Amadis, the perfect chevalier of the
future, had arisen,--a railroad manager caring for the
comfort of his passengers!
The first week the number of the C. and O.'s
passengers was doubled: in a week or two more freight
began to come in, in driblets, on the line which its
owners had gone over. As soon as the shops could turn
them out, some cars were put on, with arms on which
travellers could rest their elbows, with head-rests where
they could take naps if they were weary. These excited
so much curiosity that one was exhibited in the museum
at Cattawissa and another at Opelousas. It may not
be generally known that the received car of the American
roads was devised to secure a premium offered by the
Pawtucket and Podunk Company. Their receipts were
growing so large that they feared they should forfeit
their charter. They advertised, therefore, for a car in
which no man could sleep at night or rest by day,--in
which the backs should be straight, the heads of
passengers unsupported, the feet entangled in a vice, the
elbows always knocked by the passing conductor. The
pattern was produced which immediately came into use on
all the American roads. But on the Cattawissa and
Opelousas this time-honored pattern was set aside.
Of course you see the result. Men went hundreds of
miles out of their way to ride on the C. and O. The
third mortgage was paid off; a reserve fund was piled up
for the second; the trustees of the first lived in dread
of being paid; and George's stock, which he bought at 3
1/4, rose to 147 before two years had gone by! So was it
that, as we sat together in the snuggery, George was
worth well-nigh three hundred thousand dollars. Some of
his eggs were in the basket where they were laid; some he
had taken out and placed in other baskets; some in nests
where various hens were brooding over them. Sound eggs
they were, wherever placed; and such was the victory of
which George had come to tell.
One of us had made money!
On his way he had seen Brannan. Brannan, the pure-
minded, right-minded, shifty man of tact, man of brain,
man of heart, and man of word, who held New Altona in the
hollow of his hand. Brannan had made no money. Not he,
nor ever will. But Brannan could do much what he pleased
in this world, without money. For whenever Brannan
studied the rights and the wrongs of any enterprise, all
men knew that what Brannan decided about it was well-nigh
the eternal truth; and therefore all men of sense were
accustomed to place great confidence in his prophecies.
But, more than this, and better, Brannan was an
unconscious dog, who believed in the people. So, when he
knew what was the right and what was the wrong, he could
stand up before two or three thousand people and tell
them what was right and what was wrong, and tell them
with the same simplicity and freshness with which he
would talk to little Horace on his knee. Of the
thousands who heard him there would not be one in a
hundred who knew that this was eloquence. They were fain
to say, as they sat in their shops, talking, that Brannan
was not eloquent. Nay, they went so far as to regret
that Brannan was not eloquent! If he were only as
eloquent as Carker was or as Barker was, how excellent he
would be! But when, a month after, it was necessary for
them to do anything about the thing he had been speaking
of, they did what Brannan had told them to do;
forgetting, most likely, that he had ever told them,
and fancying that these were their own ideas, which, in
fact, had, from his liquid, ponderous, transparent, and
invisible common sense, distilled unconsciously into
their being. I wonder whether Brannan ever knew that he
was eloquent. What I knew, and what dear George knew,
was, that he was one of the leaders of men!
Courage, my friends, we are steadily advancing to the
Brick Moon!
For George had stopped, and seen Brannan; and Brannan
had not forgotten. Seventeen years Brannan had
remembered, and not a ship had been lost on a lee-shore
because her longitude was wrong,--not a baby had wailed
its last as it was ground between wrecked spar and cruel
rock,--not a swollen corpse unknown had been flung up
upon the sand and been buried with a nameless epitaph,--
but Brannan had recollected the Brick Moon, and had, in
the memory-chamber which rejected nothing, stored away
the story of the horror. And now George was ready to
consecrate a round hundred thousand to the building of
the Moon; and Brannan was ready, in the thousand ways in
which wise men move the people to and fro, to persuade
them to give to us a hundred thousand more; and George
had come to ask me if I were not ready to undertake with
them the final great effort, of which our old
calculations were the embryo. For this I was now to
contribute the mathematical certainty and the lore
borrowed from naval science, which should blossom and
bear fruit when the Brick Moon was snapped like a cherry
from the ways on which it was built, was launched into
the air by power gathered from a thousand freshets, and,
poised at last in its own pre-calculated region of the
ether, should begin its course of eternal blessings in
one unchanging meridian!
Vision of Beneficence and Wonder! Of course I
consented.
Oh that you were not so eager for the end! Oh that
I might tell you, what now you will never know,--of the
great campaign which we then and there inaugurated! How
the horrible loss of the Royal Martyr, whose longitude
was three degrees awry, startled the whole world, and
gave us a point to start from. How I explained to George
that he must not subscribe the one hundred thousand
dollars in a moment. It must come in bits, when "the
cause" needed a stimulus, or the public needed
encouragement. How we caught neophyte editors, and
explained to them enough to make them think the Moon was
well-nigh their own invention and their own thunder.
How, beginning in Boston, we sent round to all the men of
science, all those of philanthropy, and all those of
commerce, three thousand circulars, inviting them to a
private meeting at George's parlors at the Revere. How,
besides ourselves, and some nice, respectable-looking old
gentlemen Brannan had brought over from Podunk with him,
paying their fares both ways, there were present only
three men,--all adventurers whose projects had failed,--
besides the representatives of the press. How, of these
representatives, some understood the whole, and some
understood nothing. How, the next day, all gave us
"first-rate notices." How, a few days after, in the
lower Horticultural Hall, we had our first public
meeting. How Haliburton brought us fifty people who
loved him,--his Bible class, most of them,--to help fill
up; how, besides these, there were not three persons whom
we had not asked personally, or one who could invent an
excuse to stay away. How we had hung the walls with
intelligible and unintelligible diagrams. How I opened
the meeting. Of that meeting, indeed, I must tell
something.
First, I spoke. I did not pretend to unfold the
scheme. I did not attempt any rhetoric. But I did not
make any apologies. I told them simply of the dangers of
lee-shores. I told them when they were most dangerous,--
when seamen came upon them unawares. I explained to them
that, though the costly chronometer, frequently adjusted,
made a delusive guide to the voyager who often made a
harbor, still the adjustment was treacherous, the
instrument beyond the use of the poor, and that, once
astray, its error increased forever. I said that we
believed we had a method which, if the means were
supplied for the experiment, would give the humblest
fisherman the very certainty of sunrise and of sunset in
his calculations of his place upon the world. And I said
that whenever a man knew his place in this world, it
was always likely all would go well. Then I sat down.
Then dear George spoke,--simply, but very briefly.
He said he was a stranger to the Boston people, and that
those who knew him at all knew he was not a talking man.
He was a civil engineer, and his business was to
calculate and to build, and not to talk. But he had come
here to say that he had studied this new plan for the
longitude from the Top to the Bottom, and that he
believed in it through and through. There was his
opinion, if that was worth anything to anybody. If that
meeting resolved to go forward with the enterprise, or if
anybody proposed to, he should offer his services in any
capacity, and without any pay, for its success. If he
might only work as a bricklayer, he would work as a
bricklayer. For he believed, on his soul, that the
success of this enterprise promised more for mankind than
any enterprise which was ever likely to call for the
devotion of his life. "And to the good of mankind," he
said, very simply, "my life is devoted." Then he sat
down.
Then Brannan got up. Up to this time, excepting that
George had dropped this hint about bricklaying, nobody
had said a word about the Moon, far less hinted what it
was to be made of. So Ben had the whole to open. He did
it as if he had been talking to a bright boy of ten years
old. He made those people think that he respected
them as his equals. But, in fact, he chose every
word, as if not one of them knew anything. He explained,
as if it were rather more simple to explain than to take
for granted. But he explained as if, were they talking,
they might be explaining to him. He led them from point
to point,--oh! so much more clearly than I have been
leading you,--till, as their mouths dropped a little open
in their eager interest, and their lids forgot to wink in
their gaze upon his face, and so their eyebrows seemed a
little lifted in curiosity,--till, I say, each man felt
as if he were himself the inventor, who had bridged
difficulty after difficulty; as if, indeed, the whole
were too simple to be called difficult or complicated.
The only wonder was that the Board of Longitude, or the
Emperor Napoleon, or the Smithsonian, or somebody, had
not sent this little planet on its voyage of blessing
long before. Not a syllable that you would have called
rhetoric, not a word that you would have thought
prepared; and then Brannan sat down.
That was Ben Brannan's way. For my part, I like it
better than eloquence.
Then I got up again. We would answer any questions,
I said. We represented people who were eager to go
forward with this work. (Alas! except Q., all of those
represented were on the stage.) We could not go forward
without the general assistance of the community. It was
not an enterprise which the government could be asked to
favor. It was not an enterprise which would yield
one penny of profit to any human being. We had
therefore, purely on the ground of its benefit to
mankind, brought it before an assembly of Boston men and
women.
Then there was a pause, and we could hear our watches
tick, and our hearts beat. Dear George asked me in a
whisper if he should say anything more, but I thought
not. The pause became painful, and then Tom Coram,
prince of merchants, rose. Had any calculation been made
of the probable cost of the experiment of one moon?
I said the calculations were on the table. The brick
alone would cost $60,000. Mr. Orcutt had computed that
$214,729 would complete two flywheels and one moon. This
made no allowance for whitewashing the moon, which was
not strictly necessary. The fly-wheels and water-power
would be equally valuable for the succeeding moons, it
any were attempted, and therefore the second moon could
be turned off, it was hoped, for $159,732.
Thomas Coram had been standing all the time I spoke,
and in an instant he said: "I am no mathematician. But
I have had a ship ground to pieces under me on the
Laccadives because our chronometer was wrong. You need
$250,000 to build your first moon. I will be one of
twenty men to furnish the money; or I will pay $10,000
to-morrow for this purpose, to any person who may be
named as treasurer, to be repaid to me if the moon is not
finished this day twenty years."
That was as long a speech as Tom Coram ever made.
But it was pointed. The small audience tapped applause.
Orcutt looked at me, and I nodded. "I will be
another, of the twenty men," cried he. "And I another,"
said an old bluff Englishman, whom nobody had invited;
who proved to be a Mr. Robert Boll, a Sheffield man, who
came in from curiosity. He stopped after the meeting;
said he should leave the country the next week, and I
have never seen him since. But his bill of exchange came
all the same.
That was all the public subscribing. Enough more
than we had hoped for. We tried to make Coram treasurer,
but he refused. We had to make Haliburton treasurer,
though we should have liked a man better known than he
then was. Then we adjourned. Some nice ladies then came
up, and gave, one a dollar, and one five dollars, and one
fifty, and so on,--and some men who have stuck by ever
since. I always, in my own mind, call each of those
women Damaris, and each of those men Dionysius. But
those are not their real names.
How I am wasting time on an old story! Then some of
these ladies came the next day and proposed a fair; and
out of that, six months after, grew the great Longitude
Fair, that you will all remember, if you went to it, I am
sure. And the papers the next day gave us first-rate
reports; and then, two by two, with our subscription-
books, we went at it. But I must not tell the details of
that subscription. There were two or three men who
subscribed $5,000 each, because they were perfectly
certain the amount would never be raised. They wanted,
for once, to get the credit of liberality for nothing.
There were many men and many women who subscribed from
one dollar up to one thousand, not because they cared a
straw for the longitude, nor because they believed in the
least in the project; but because they believed in
Brannan, in Orcutt, in Q., or in me. Love goes far in
this world of ours. Some few men subscribed because
others had done it: it was the thing to do, and they must
not be out of fashion. And three or four, at least,
subscribed because each hour of their lives there came up
the memory of the day when the news came that the---- was
lost, George, or Harry, or John, in the----, and they
knew that George, or Harry, or John might have been at
home, had it been easier than it is to read the courses
of the stars!
Fair, subscriptions, and Orcutt's reserve,--we
counted up $162,000, or nearly so. There would be a
little more when all was paid in.
But we could not use a cent, except Orcutt's and our
own little subscriptions, till we had got the whole. And
at this point it seemed as if the whole world was sick of
us, and that we had gathered every penny that was in
store for us. The orange was squeezed dry!
II
HOW WE BUILT IT
The orange was squeezed dry! And how little any of us
knew,--skilful George Orcutt, thoughtful Ben Brannan,
loyal Haliburton, ingenious Q., or poor painstaking
I,--how little we knew, or any of us, where was another
orange, or how we could mix malic acid and tartaric
acid, and citric acid and auric acid and sugar and
water so as to imitate orange-juice, and fill up the
bank-account enough to draw in the conditioned
subscriptions, and so begin to build the MOON. How
often, as I lay awake at night, have I added up the
different subscriptions in some new order, as if that
would help the matter: and how steadily they have come
out one hundred and sixty-two thousand dollars, or even
less, when I must needs, in my sleepiness, forget
somebody's name! So Haliburton put into railroad
stocks all the money he collected, and the rest of us
ground on at our mills, or flew up on our own wings
towards Heaven. Thus Orcutt built more tunnels, Q.
prepared for more commencements, Haliburton calculated
more policies, Ben Brannan created more civilization,
and I, as I could, healed the hurt of my people of
Naguadavick for the months there were left to me of my
stay in that thriving town.
None of us had the wit to see how the problem was to
be wrought out further. No. The best things come to us
when we have faithfully and well made all the
preparation and done our best; but they come in some way
that is none of ours. So was it now, that to build the
BRICK MOON it was necessary that I should be turned out
of Naguadavick ignominiously, and that Jeff. Davis and
some seven or eight other bad men should create the Great
Rebellion. Hear how it happened.
Dennis Shea, my Double,--otherwise, indeed, called by
my name and legally so,--undid me, as my friends
supposed, one evening at a public meeting called by poor
Isaacs in Naguadavick. Of that transaction I have no
occasion here to tell the story. But of that transaction
one consequence is that the BRICK MOON now moves in
ether. I stop writing, to rest my eye upon it, through
a little telescope of Alvan Clark's here, which is always
trained near it. It is moving on as placidly as ever.
It came about thus. The morning after poor Dennis,
whom I have long since forgiven, made his extraordinary
speeches, without any authority from me, in the Town Hall
at Naguadavick, I thought, and my wife agreed with me,
that we had better both leave town with the children.
Auchmuty, our dear friend, thought so too. We left in
the seven o'clock Accommodation for Skowhegan, and so
came to Township No. 9 in the 3d Range, and there for
years we resided. That whole range of townships was set
off under a provision admirable in its character, that
the first settled minister in each town should receive
one hundred acres of land as the "minister's grant,"
and the first settled schoolmaster eighty. To No. 9,
therefore, I came. I constituted a little Sandemanian
church. Auchmuty and Delafield came up and installed me,
and with these hands I built the cabin in which, with
Polly and the little ones, I have since spent many happy
nights and days. This is not the place for me to publish
a map, which I have by me, of No. 9, nor an account of
its many advantages for settlers. Should I ever print my
papers called "Stay-at-home Robinsons," it will be easy
with them to explain its topography and geography.
Suffice it now to say, that, with Alice and Bertha and
Polly, I took tramps up and down through the lumbermen's
roads, and soon knew the general features of the lay of
the land. Nor was it long, of course, before we came out
one day upon the curious land-slides, which have more
than once averted the flow of the Little Carrotook River,
where it has washed the rocks away so far as to let down
one section more of the overlying yielding yellow clay.
Think how my eyes flashed, and my wife's, as,
struggling though a wilderness of moosewood, we came out
one afternoon on this front of yellow clay! Yellow clay
of course, when properly treated by fire, is brick! Here
we were surrounded by forests, only waiting to be burned;
yonder was clay, only waiting to be baked. Polly looked
at me, and I looked at her, and with one voice, we cried
out, "The MOON!"
For here was this shouting river at our feet, whose
power had been running to waste since the day when the
Laurentian hills first heaved themselves above the hot
Atlantic; and that day, I am informed by Mr. Agassiz, was
the first day in the history of this solid world. Here
was water-power enough for forty fly-wheels, were it
necessary to send heavenward twenty moons. Here was
solid timber enough for a hundred dams, yet only one was
necessary to give motion to the fly-wheels. Here was
retirement,--freedom from criticism, an escape from the
journalists, who would not embarrass us by telling of
every cracked brick which had to be rejected from the
structure. We had lived in No. 9 now for six weeks, and
not an "own correspondent" of them all had yet told what
Rev. Mr. Ingham had for dinner.
Of course I wrote to George Orcutt at once of our
great discovery, and he came up at once to examine the
situation. On the whole, it pleased him. He could not
take the site I proposed for the dam, because this very
clay there made the channel treacherous, and there was
danger that the stream would work out a new career. But
lower down we found a stony gorge with which George was
satisfied; he traced out a line for a railway by which,
of their own weight, the brick-cars could run to the
centrings; he showed us where, with some excavations, the
fly-wheels could be placed exactly above the great mill-
wheels, that no power might be wasted, and explained to
us how, when the gigantic structure was finished, the
BRICK MOON would gently roll down its ways upon the rapid
wheels, to be launched instant into the sky!
Shall I ever forget that happy October day of
anticipation?
We spent many of those October days in tentative
surveys. Alice and Bertha were our chain-men,
intelligent and obedient. I drove for George his stakes,
or I cut away his brush, or I raised and lowered the
shield at which he sighted and at noon Polly appeared
with her baskets, and we would dine al fresco, on a
pretty point which, not many months after, was wholly
covered by the eastern end of the dam. When the field-
work was finished we retired to the cabin for days, and
calculated and drew, and drew and calculated. Estimates
for feeding Irishmen, estimates of hay for mules,--George
was sure he could work mules better than oxen,--estimates
for cement, estimates for the preliminary saw-mills,
estimates for rail for the little brick-road, for wheels,
for spikes, and for cutting ties; what did we not
estimate for--on a basis almost wholly new, you will
observe. For here the brick would cost us less than our
old conceptions,--our water-power cost us almost
nothing,--but our stores and our wages would cost us much
more.
These estimates are now to me very curious,--a
monument, indeed, to dear George's memory, that in the
result they proved so accurate. I would gladly print
them here at length, with some illustrative cuts, but
that I know the impatience of the public, and its
indifference to detail. If we are ever able to print a
proper memorial of George, that, perhaps, will be the
fitter place for them. Suffice it to say that with the
subtractions thus made from the original estimates,--even
with the additions forced upon us by working in a
wilderness,--George was satisfied that a money charge of
$197,327 would build and start THE MOON. As soon as we
had determined the site, we marked off eighty acres,
which contained all the essential localities, up and down
the little Carrotook River,--I engaged George for the
first schoolmaster in No. 9, and he took these eighty
acres for the schoolmaster's reservation. Alice and
Bertha went to school to him the next day, taking lessons
in civil engineering; and I wrote to the Bingham trustees
to notify them that I had engaged a teacher, and that he
had selected his land.
Of course we remembered, still, that we were near
forty thousand dollars short of the new estimates, and
also that much of our money would not be paid us but on
condition that two hundred and fifty thousand were
raised. But George said that his own subscription was
wholly unhampered: with that we would go to work on the
preliminary work of the dam, and on the flies. Then, if
the flies would hold together,--and they should hold if
mortise and iron could hold them,--they might be at
work summers and winters, days and nights, storing up
Power for us. This would encourage the subscribers, it
would encourage us; and all this preliminary work would
be out of the way when we were really ready to begin upon
the MOON.
Brannan, Haliburton, and Q. readily agreed to this
when they were consulted. They were the other trustees
under an instrument which we had got St. Leger[1] to draw
up. George gave up, as soon as he might, his other
appointments; and taught me, meanwhile, where and how I
was to rig a little saw-mill, to cut some necessary
lumber. I engaged a gang of men to cut the timber for
the dam, and to have it ready; and, with the next spring,
we were well at work on the dam and on the flies! These
needed, of course, the most solid foundation. The least
irregularity of their movement might send the MOON awry.
[1] The St. Leger of these stories was Francis Brown
Hayes, H. C. 1839.
Ah me! would I not gladly tell the history of every
bar of iron which was bent into the tires of those flies,
and of every log which was mortised into its place in the
dam, nay, of every curling mass of foam which played in
the eddies beneath, when the dam was finished, and the
waste water ran so smoothly over? Alas! that one drop
should be wasted of water that might move a world,
although a small one! I almost dare say that I remember
each and all these,--with such hope and happiness did I
lend myself, as I could, each day to the great
enterprise; lending to dear George, who was here and
there and everywhere, and was this and that and
everybody,--lending to him, I say, such poor help as I
could lend, in whatever way. We waked, in the two cabins
in those happy days, just before the sun came up, when
the birds were in their loudest clamor of morning joy.
Wrapped each in a blanket, George and I stepped out from
our doors, each trying to call the other, and often
meeting on the grass between. We ran to the river and
plunged in,--oh, how cold it was!--laughed and screamed
like boys, rubbed ourselves aglow, and ran home to build
Polly's fire beneath the open chimney which stood beside
my cabin. The bread had risen in the night. The water
soon boiled above the logs. The children came laughing
out upon the grass, barefoot, and fearless of the dew.
Then Polly appeared with her gridiron and bear-steak, or
with her griddle and eggs, and, in fewer minutes than
this page has cost me, the breakfast was ready for Alice
to carry, dish by dish, to the white-clad table on the
piazza. Not Raphael and Adam more enjoyed their
watermelons, fox-grapes, and late blueberries! And, in
the long croon of the breakfast, we revenged ourselves
for the haste with which it had been prepared.
When we were well at table, a horn from the cabins
below sounded the reveille for the drowsier workmen.
Soon above the larches rose the blue of their smokes; and
when we were at last nodding to the children, to say
that they might leave the table, and Polly was folding
her napkin as to say she wished we were gone, we would
see tall Asaph Langdon, then foreman of the carpenters,
sauntering up the valley with a roll of paper, or an
adze, or a shingle with some calculations on it,--with
something on which he wanted Mr. Orcutt's directions for
the day.
An hour of nothings set the carnal machinery of the
day agoing. We fed the horses, the cows, the pigs, and
the hens. We collected the eggs and cleaned the hen-
houses and the barns. We brought in wood enough for the
day's fire, and water enough for the day's cooking and
cleanliness. These heads describe what I and the
children did. Polly's life during that hour was more
mysterious. That great first hour of the day is devoted
with women to the deepest arcana of the Eleusinian
mysteries of the divine science of housekeeping. She who
can meet the requisitions of that hour wisely and bravely
conquers in the Day's Battle. But what she does in it,
let no man try to say! It can be named, but not
described, in the comprehensive formula, "Just stepping
round."
That hour well given to chores and to digestion, the
children went to Mr. Orcutt's open-air school, and I to
my rustic study,--a separate cabin, with a rough square
table in it, and some book-boxes equally rude. No man
entered it, excepting George and me. Here for two hours
I worked undisturbed,--how happy the world, had it
neither postman nor door-bell!--worked upon my Traces of
Sandemanianism in the Sixth and Seventh Centuries, and
then was ready to render such service to The Cause and to
George as the day might demand. Thus I rode to Lincoln
or to Foxcroft to order supplies; I took my gun and lay
in wait on Chairback for a bear; I transferred to the
hewn lumber the angles or bevels from the careful
drawings: as best I could, I filled an apostle's part,
and became all things to all these men around me. Happy
those days!--and thus the dam was built; in such Arcadian
simplicity was reared the mighty wheel; thus grew on each
side the towers which were to support the flies; and
thus, to our delight not unmixed with wonder, at last we
saw those mighty flies begin to turn. Not in one day,
nor in ten; but in a year or two of happy life,--full of
the joy of joys,--the "joy of eventful living."
Yet, for all this, $162,000 was not $197,000, far
less was it $250,000; and but for Jeff. Davis and his
crew the BRICK MOON would not have been born.
But at last Jeff. Davis was ready. "My preparations
being completed," wrote General Beauregard, "I opened
fire on Fort Sumter." Little did he know it,--but in
that explosion the BRICK MOON also was lifted into the
sky!
Little did we know it, when, four weeks after, George
came up from the settlements, all excited with the
news! The wheels had been turning now for four days,
faster of course and faster. George had gone down for
money to pay off the men, and he brought us up the news
that the Rebellion had begun.
"The last of this happy life," he said; "the last,
alas, of our dear MOON." How little he knew and we!
But he paid off the men, and they packed their traps
and disappeared, and, before two months were over, were
in the lines before the enemy. George packed up, bade us
sadly good-by, and before a week had offered his service
to Governor Fenton in Albany. For us, it took rather
longer; but we were soon packed; Polly took the children
to her sister's, and I went on to the Department to offer
my service there. No sign of life left in No. 9, but the
two gigantic Fly-Wheels, moving faster and faster by day
and by night, and accumulating Power till it was needed.
If only they would hold together till the moment came!
So we all ground through the first slow year of the
war. George in his place, I in mine, Brannan in his,--we
lifted as we could. But how heavy the weight seemed! It
was in the second year, when the second large loan was
placed, that Haliburton wrote to me,--I got the letter,
I think, at Hilton Head,--that he had sold out every
penny of our railroad stocks, at the high prices which
railroad stocks then bore, and had invested the whole
fifty-nine thousand in the new Governments. "I could
not call a board meeting," said Haliburton, "for I am
here only on leave of absence, and the rest are all away.
But the case is clear enough. If the government goes up,
the MOON will never go up; and, for one, I do not look
beyond the veil." So he wrote to us all, and of course
we all approved.
So it was that Jeff. Davis also served. Deep must
that man go into the Pit who does not serve, though
unconscious. For thus it was that, in the fourth year of
the war, when gold was at 290, Haliburton was receiving
on his fifty-nine thousand dollars seventeen per cent
interest in currency; thus was it that, before the war
was over, he had piled up, compounding his interest, more
than fifty per cent addition to his capital; thus was it
that, as soon as peace came, all his stocks were at a
handsome percentage; thus was it that, before I returned
from South America, he reported to all the subscribers
that the full quarter-million was secured: thus was it
that, when I returned after that long cruise of mine in
the Florida, I found Polly and the children again at No.
9, George there also, directing a working party of nearly
eighty bricklayers and hodmen, the lower centrings well-
nigh filled to their diameter, and the BRICK MOON, to the
eye, seeming almost half completed.
Here it is that I regret most of all that I cannot
print the working-drawings with this paper. If you will
cut open the seed-vessel of Spergularia Rubra, or any
other carpel that has a free central placenta, and
observe how the circular seeds cling around the circular
centre, you will have some idea of the arrangement of a
transverse horizontal section of the completed MOON. Lay
three croquet-balls on the piazza, and call one or two of
the children to help you poise seven in one plane above
the three; then let another child place three more above
the seven, and you have the CORE of the MOON
completely. If you want a more poetical illustration, it
was what Mr. Wordsworth calls a mass
"Of conglobated bubbles undissolved."
Any section through any diameter looked like an
immense rose-window, of six circles grouped round a
seventh. In truth, each of these sections would reveal
the existence of seven chambers in the moon,--each a
sphere itself,--whose arches gave solidity to the whole;
while yet, of the whole moon, the greater part was air.
In all there were thirteen of these moonlets, if I am so
to call them; though no one section, of course, would
reveal so many. Sustained on each side by their groined
arches, the surface of the whole moon was built over
them and under them,--simply two domes connected at the
bases. The chambers themselves were made lighter by
leaving large, round windows or open circles in the parts
of their vaults farthest from their points of contact, so
that each of them looked not unlike the outer sphere of
a Japanese ivory nest of concentric balls. You see
the object was to make a moon, which, when left to its
own gravity, should be fitly supported or braced within.
Dear George was sure that, by this constant repetition of
arches, we should with the least weight unite the
greatest strength. I believe it still, and experience
has proved that there is strength enough.
When I went up to No. 9, on my return from South
America, I found the lower centring up, and half full of
the working-bees,--who were really Keltic laborers,--all
busy in bringing up the lower half-dome of the shell.
This lower centring was of wood, in form exactly like a
Roman amphitheatre if the seats of it be circular; on
this the lower or inverted brick dome was laid. The
whole fabric was on one of the terraces which were heaved
up in some old geological cataclysm, when some lake gave
way, and the Carrotook River was born. The level was
higher than that of the top of the fly-wheels, which,
with an awful velocity now, were circling in their wild
career in the ravine below. Three of the lowest
moonlets, as I have called them,--separate croquet-balls,
if you take my other illustration,--had been completed;
their centrings had been taken to pieces and drawn out
through the holes, and were now set up again with other
new centrings for the second story of cells.
I was received with wonder and delight. I had
telegraphed my arrival, but the despatches had never
been forwarded from Skowhegan. Of course, we all had a
deal to tell; and, for me, there was no end to inquiries
which I had to make in turn. I was never tired of
exploring the various spheres, and the nameless spaces
between them. I was never tired of talking with the
laborers. All of us, indeed, became skilful bricklayers;
and on a pleasant afternoon you might see Alice and
Bertha, and George and me, all laying brick together,--
Polly sitting in the shade of some wall which had been
built high enough, and reading to us from Jean Ingelow or
Monte-Cristo or Jane Austen, while little Clara brought
to us our mortar. Happily and lightly went by that
summer. Haliburton and his wife made us a visit; Ben
Brannan brought up his wife and children; Mrs. Haliburton
herself put in the keystone to the central chamber, which
had always been named G on the plans; and at her
suggestion, it was named Grace now, because her mother's
name was Hannah. Before winter we had passed the
diameter of I, J, and K, the three uppermost cells of
all; and the surrounding shell was closing in upon them.
On the whole, the funds had held out amazingly well.
The wages had been rather higher than we meant; but the
men had no chances at liquor or dissipation, and had
worked faster than we expected; and, with our new brick-
machines, we made brick inconceivably fast, while their
quality was so good that dear George said there was never
so little waste. We celebrated Thanksgiving of that year
together,--my family and his family. We had paid
off all the laborers; and there were left, of that busy
village, only Asaph Langdon and his family, Levi Jordan
and Levi Ross, Horace Leonard and Seth Whitman with
theirs. "Theirs," I say, but Ross had no family. He was
a nice young fellow who was there as Haliburton's
representative, to take care of the accounts and the pay-
roll; Jordan was the head of the brick-kilns; Leonard, of
the carpenters; and Whitman, of the commissariat,--and a
good commissary Whitman was.
We celebrated Thanksgiving together! Ah me! what a
cheerful, pleasant time we had; how happy the children
were together! Polly and I and our bairns were to go to
Boston the next day. I was to spend the winter in one
final effort to get twenty-five thousand dollars more if
I could, with which we might paint the MOON, or put on
some ground felspathic granite dust, in a sort of paste,
which in its hot flight through the air might fuse into
a white enamel. All of us who saw the MOON were so
delighted with its success that we felt sure "the
friends" would not pause about this trifle. The rest of
them were to stay there to watch the winter, and to be
ready to begin work the moment the snow had gone.
Thanksgiving afternoon, how well I remember it,--that
good fellow, Whitman, came and asked Polly and me to
visit his family in their new quarters. They had moved
for the winter into cells B and E, so lofty, spacious,
and warm, and so much drier than their log cabins.
Mrs. Whitman, I remember, was very cheerful and
jolly; made my children eat another piece of pie, and
stuffed their pockets with raisins; and then with great
ceremony and fun we christened room B by the name of
Bertha, and E, Ellen, which was Mrs. Whitman's name. And
the next day we bade them all good-by, little thinking
what we said, and with endless promises of what we would
send and bring them in the spring.
Here are the scraps of letters from Orcutt, dear
fellow, which tell what more there is left to tell:--
"December 10th.
". . . After you left we were a little blue, and hung
round loose for a day or two. Sunday we missed you
especially, but Asaph made a good substitute, and Mrs.
Leonard led the singing. The next day we moved the
Leonards into L and M, which we christened Leonard and
Mary (Mary is for your wife). They are pretty dark, but
very dry. Leonard has swung hammocks, as Whitman did.
"Asaph came to me Tuesday and said he thought they
had better turn to and put a shed over the unfinished
circle, and so take occasion of warm days for dry work
there. This we have done, and the occupation is good for
us. . . ."
"December 25th.
I have had no chance to write for a fortnight. The
truth is, that the weather has been so open that I let
Asaph go down to No. 7 and to Wilder's, and engage five-
and-twenty of the best of the men, who, we knew, were
hanging round there. We have all been at work most of
the time since, with very good success. H is now wholly
covered in, and the centring is out. The men have named
it Haliburton. I is well advanced. J is as you left it.
The work has been good for us all, morally."
"February 11th.
". . . We got your mail unexpectedly by some
lumbermen on their way to the 9th Range. One of them has
cut himself, and takes this down.
"You will be amazed to hear that I and K are both
done. We have had splendid weather, and have worked half
the time. We had a great jollification when K was closed
in,--called it Kilpatrick, for Seth's old general. I
wish you could just run up and see us. You must be
quick, if you want to put in any of the last licks.
"March 12th.
"DEAR FRED,--I have but an instant. By all means
make your preparations to be here by the end of the month
or early in next month. The weather has been faultless,
you know. Asaph got in a dozen more men, and we have
brought up the surface farther than you could dream. The
ways are well forward, and I cannot see why, if the
freshet hold off a little, we should not launch her by
the 10th or 12th. I do not think it worth while to wait
for paint or enamel. Telegraph Brannan that he must be
here. You will be amused by our quarters. We, who were
the last outsiders, move into A and D to-morrow, for a
few weeks. It is much warmer there.
"Ever yours,
G. O."
I telegraphed Brannan, and in reply he came with his
wife and his children to Boston. I told him that he
could not possibly get up there, as the roads then were;
but Ben said he would go to Skowhegan, and take his
chance there. He would, of course, communicate with me
as soon as he got there. Accordingly I got a note from
him at Skowhegan, saying he had hired a sleigh to go over
to No. 9; and in four days more I got this letter:--
March 27th.
DEAR FRED,--I am most glad I came, and I beg you to
bring your wife as soon as possible. The river is very
full, the wheels, to which Leonard has added two
auxiliaries, are moving as if they could not hold out
long, the ways are all but ready, and we think we must
not wait. Start with all hands as soon as you can. I
had no difficulty in coming over from Skowhegan. We did
it in two days.
This note I sent at once to Haliburton; and we got
all the children ready for a winter journey, as the
spectacle of the launch of the MOON was one to be
remembered their life long. But it was clearly
impossible to attempt, at that season, to get the
subscribers together. Just as we started, this despatch
from Skowhegan was brought me,--the last word I got from
them:--
Stop for nothing. There is a jam below us in the
stream, and we fear back-water.
ORCUTT.
Of course we could not go faster than we could. We
missed no connection. At Skowhegan, Haliburton and I
took a cutter, leaving the ladies and children to follow
at once in larger sleighs. We drove all night, changed
horses at Prospect, and kept on all the next day. At No.
7 we had to wait over night. We started early in the
morning, and came down the Spoonwood Hill at four in the
afternoon, in full sight of our little village.
It was quiet as the grave! Not a smoke, not a man,
not an adze-blow, nor the tick of a trowel. Only the
gigantic fly-wheels were whirling as I saw them last.
There was the lower Coliseum-like centring, somewhat
as I first saw it.
But where was the Brick Dome of the MOON?
"Good Heavens! has it fallen on them all?" cried I.
Haliburton lashed the beast till he fairly ran down
that steep hill. We turned a little point, and came out
in front of the centring. There was no MOON there! An
empty amphitheatre, with not a brick nor a splinter
within!
We were speechless. We left the cutter. We ran up
the stairways to the terrace. We ran by the familiar
paths into the centring. We came out upon the ways,
which we had never seen before. These told the story too
well! The ground and crushed surface of the timbers,
scorched by the rapidity with which the MOON had slid
down, told that they had done the duty for which they
were built.
It was too clear that in some wild rush of the waters
the ground had yielded a trifle. We could not find that
the foundations had sunk more than six inches, but that
was enough. In that fatal six inches' decline of the
centring, the MOON had been launched upon the ways just
as George had intended that it should be when he was
ready. But it had slid, not rolled, down upon these
angry fly-wheels, and in an instant, with all our
friends, it had been hurled into the sky!
"They have gone up!" said Haliburton; "She has gone
up!" said I;--both in one breath. And with a common
instinct, we looked up into the blue.
But of course she was not there.
--------
Not a shred of letter or any other tidings could we
find in any of the shanties. It was indeed six weeks
since George and Fanny and their children had moved into
Annie and Diamond,--two unoccupied cells of the MOON,--so
much more comfortable had the cells proved than the
cabins, for winter life. Returning to No. 7, we found
there many of the laborers, who were astonished at what
we told them. They had been paid off on the 30th, and
told to come up again on the 15th of April, to see the
launch. One of them, a man named Rob Shea, told me that
George kept his cousin Peter to help him move back into
his house the beginning of the next week.
And that was the last I knew of any of them for
more than a year. At first I expected, each hour, to
hear that they had fallen somewhere. But time passed by,
and of such a fall, where man knows the world's surface,
there was no tale. I answered, as best I could, the
letters of their friends; by saying I did not know where
they were, and had not heard from them. My real thought
was, that if this fatal MOON did indeed pass our
atmosphere, all in it must have been burned to death in
the transit. But this I whispered to no one save to
Polly and Annie and Haliburton. In this terrible doubt
I remained, till I noticed one day in the "Astronomical
Record" the memorandum, which you perhaps remember, of
the observation, by Dr. Zitta, of a new asteroid, with an
enormous movement in declination.
III
FULFILMENT
Looking back upon it now, it seems inconceivable that
we said as little to each other as we did, of this
horrible catastrophe. That night we did not pretend to
sleep. We sat in one of the deserted cabins, now
talking fast, now sitting and brooding, without
speaking, perhaps, for hours. Riding back the next day
to meet the women and children, we still brooded, or we
discussed this "if," that "if," and yet others. But
after we had once opened it all to them,--and when we
had once answered the children's horribly naive
questions as best we could,--we very seldom spoke to
each other of it again. It was too hateful, all of it,
to talk about. I went round to Tom Coram's office one
day, and told him all I knew. He saw it was dreadful
to me, and, with his eyes full, just squeezed my hand,
and never said one word more. We lay awake nights,
pondering and wondering, but hardly ever did I to
Haliburton or he to me explain our respective notions
as they came and went. I believe my general impression
was that of which I have spoken, that they were all
burned to death on the instant, as the little aerolite
fused in its passage through our atmosphere. I believe
Haliburton's thought more often was that they were
conscious of what had happened, and gasped out their
lives in one or two breathless minutes,--so horribly
long!--as they shot outside of our atmosphere. But it
was all too terrible for words. And that which we could
not but think upon, in those dreadful waking nights, we
scarcely whispered even to our wives.
Of course I looked and he looked for the miserable
thing. But we looked in vain. I returned to the few
subscribers the money which I had scraped together
towards whitewashing the moon,--"shrouding its guilty
face with innocent white" indeed! But we agreed to spend
the wretched trifle of the other money, left in the
treasury after paying the last bills, for the largest
Alvan Clark telescope that we could buy; and we were
fortunate in obtaining cheap a second-hand one which
came to the hammer when the property of the Shubael
Academy was sold by the mortgagees. But we had, of
course, scarce a hint whatever as to where the miserable
object was to be found. All we could do was to carry the
glass to No. 9, to train it there on the meridian of No.
9, and take turns every night in watching the field, in
the hope that this child of sorrow might drift across it
in its path of ruin. But, though everything else seemed
to drift by, from east to west, nothing came from south
to north, as we expected. For a whole month of spring,
another of autumn, another of summer, and another of
winter, did Haliburton and his wife and Polly and I glue
our eyes to that eye-glass, from the twilight of evening
to the twilight of morning, and the dead hulk never hove
in sight. Wherever else it was, it seemed not to be on
that meridian, which was where it ought to be and was
made to be! Had ever any dead mass of matter wrought
such ruin to its makers, and, of its own stupid inertia,
so falsified all the prophecies of its birth! Oh, the
total depravity of things!
It was more than a year after the fatal night,--if it
all happened in the night, as I suppose,--that, as I
dreamily read through the "Astronomical Record" in the
new reading-room of the College Library at Cambridge, I
lighted on this scrap:--
"Professor Karl Zitta of Breslau writes to the
Astronomische Nachrichten to claim the discovery
of a new asteroid observed by him on the night of
March 31st.
App. A. R. App. Decl.
Bresl. M. T. h. m. s. h. m. s. @ ' " Size.
March 31 12 53 51.9 15 39 52.32 -23 50 26.1 12.9
April 1 1 3 2.1 15 39 52.32 -23 9 1.9 12.9
He proposes for the asteroid the name of Phoebe. Dr.
Zitta states that in the short period which he had for
observing Phoebe, for an hour after midnight, her motion
in R. A. seemed slight and her motion in declination very
rapid."
After this, however, for months, nay even to this
moment, nothing more was heard of Dr. Zitta of Breslau.
But, one morning, before I was up, Haliburton came
banging at my door on D Street. The mood had taken him,
as he returned from some private theatricals at
Cambridge, to take the comfort of the new reading-room at
night, and thus express in practice his gratitude to the
overseers of the college for keeping it open through all
the twenty-four hours. Poor Haliburton, he did not sleep
well in those times! Well, as he read away on the
Astronomische Nachrichten itself, what should he find
but this in German, which he copied for me, and then, all
on foot in the rain and darkness, tramped over with, to
South Boston:--
"The most enlightened head professor Dr. Gmelin
writes to the director of the Porpol Astronomik at
St. Petersburg, to claim the discovery of an asteroid in
a very high southern latitude, of a wider inclination of
the orbit, as will be noticed, than any asteroid yet
observed.
"Planet's apparent {alpha} 21^h. 20^m. 51^s.40.
Planet's apparent {delta}-39@ 31' 11".9. Comparison star
{alpha}.
"Dr. Gmelin publishes no separate second observation,
but is confident that the declination is diminishing.
Dr. Gmelin suggests for the name of this extra-zodiacal
planet `Io,' as appropriate to its wanderings from the
accustomed ways of planetary life, and trusts that the
very distinguished Herr Peters, the godfather of so many
planets, will relinquish this name, already claimed for
the asteroid (85) observed by him, September 15, 1865."
I had run down stairs almost as I was, slippers and
dressing-gown being the only claims I had on society.
But to me, as to Haliburton, this stuff about "extra-
zodiacal wandering" blazed out upon the page, and though
there was no evidence that the "most enlightened" Gmelin
found anything the next night, yet, if his "diminishing"
meant anything, there was, with Zitta's observation,--
whoever Zitta might be,--something to start upon. We
rushed upon some old bound volumes of the Record and
spotted the "enlightened Gmelin." He was chief of a
college at Taganrog, where perhaps they had a spyglass.
This gave us the parallax of his observation. Breslau,
of course, we knew, and so we could place Zitta's,
and with these poor data I went to work to construct,
if I could, an orbit for this Io-Phoebe mass of brick and
mortar. Haliburton, not strong in spherical
trigonometry, looked out logarithms for me till
breakfast, and, as soon as it would do, went over to Mrs.
Bowdoin, to borrow her telescope, ours being left at No.
9.
Mrs. Bowdoin was kind, as she always was, and at noon
Haliburton appeared in triumph with the boxes on P.
Nolan's job-wagon. We always employ P., in memory of
dear old Phil. We got the telescope rigged, and waited
for night, only, alas! to be disappointed again. Io had
wandered somewhere else, and, with all our sweeping back
and forth on the tentative curve I had laid out, Io would
not appear. We spent that night in vain.
But we were not going to give it up so. Phoebe might
have gone round the world twice before she became Io;
might have gone three times, four, five, six,--nay, six
hundred,--who knew? Nay, who knew how far off Phoebe-
Io was or Io-Phoebe? We sent over for Annie, and
she and Polly and George and I went to work again. We
calculated in the next week sixty-seven orbits on the
supposition of so many different distances from our
surface. I laid out on a paper, which we stuck up on the
wall opposite, the formula, and then one woman and one
man attacked each set of elements, each having the
Logarithmic Tables, and so in a week's working-time the
sixty-seven orbits were completed. Seventy-seven
possible places for Io-Phoebe to be in on the
forthcoming Friday evening. Of these sixty-seven, forty-
one were observable above our horizon that night.
She was not in one of the forty-one, nor near it.
But Despair, if Giotto be correct, is the chief of
sins. So has he depicted her in the fresco of the Arena
in Padua. No sin, that, of ours! After searching all
that Friday night, we slept all Saturday (sleeping after
sweeping). We all came to the Chapel, Sunday, kept awake
there, and taught our Sunday classes special lessons on
Perseverance. On Monday we began again, and that week we
calculated sixty-seven more orbits. I am sure I do not
know why we stopped at sixty-seven. All of these were on
the supposition that the revolution of the Brick Moon, or
Io-Phoebe, was so fast that it would require either
fifteen days to complete its orbit, or sixteen days, or
seventeen days, and so on up to eighty-one days. And,
with these orbits, on the next Friday we waited for the
darkness. As we sat at tea, I asked if I should begin
observing at the smallest or at the largest orbit. And
there was a great clamor of diverse opinions. But little
Bertha said, "Begin in the middle."
"And what is the middle?" said George, chaffing the
little girl.
But she was not to be dismayed. She had been in and
out all the week, and knew that the first orbit was of
fifteen days and the last of eighty-one; and, with true
Lincoln School precision, she said, "The mean of the
smallest orbit and the largest orbit is forty-eight
days."
"Amen!" said I, as we all laughed. "On forty-eight
days we will begin."
Alice ran to the sheets, turned up that number, and
read, "R. A. 27@ 11'. South declination 34@ 49'."
"Convenient place," said George; "good omen, Bertha,
my darling! If we find her there, Alice and Bertha and
Clara shall all have new dolls."
It was the first word of pleasantry that had been
spoken about the horrid thing since Spoonwood Hill!
Night came at last. We trained the glass on the
fated spot. I bade Polly take the eye-glass. She did
so, shook her head uneasily, screwed the tube northward
herself a moment, and then screamed, "It is there! it is
there,--a clear disk,--gibbous shape,--and very sharp on
the upper edge. Look! look! as big again as Jupiter!"
Polly was right! The Brick Moon was found!
Now we had found it, we never lost it. Zitta and
Gmelin, I suppose, had had foggy nights and stormy
weather often. But we had some one at the eye-glass all
that night, and before morning had very respectable
elements, good measurements of angular distance when we
got one, from another star in the field of our lowest
power. For we could see her even with a good French
opera-glass I had, and with a night-glass which I used to
carry on the South Atlantic Station. It certainly
was an extraordinary illustration of Orcutt's engineering
ability, that, flying off as she did, without leave or
license, she should have gained so nearly the orbit of
our original plan,--nine thousand miles from the earth's
centre, five thousand from the surface. He had always
stuck to the hope of this, and on his very last tests of
the Flies he had said they, were almost up to it. But
for this accuracy of his, I can hardly suppose we should
have found her to this hour, since she had failed, by
what cause I then did not know, to take her intended
place on the meridian of No. 9. At five thousand miles
the MOON appeared as large as the largest satellite of
Jupiter appears. And Polly was right in that first
observation, when she said she got a good disk with that
admirable glass of Mrs. Bowdoin.
The orbit was not on the meridian of No. 9, nor did
it remain on any meridian. But it was very nearly South
and North,--an enormous motion in declination with a very
slight RETROGRADE motion in Right Ascension. At five
thousand miles the MOON showed as large as a circle two
miles and a third in diameter would have shown on old
Thornbush, as we always called her older sister. We
longed for an eclipse of Thornbush by B. M., but no such
lucky chance is on the cards in any place accessible to
us for many years. Of course, with a MOON so near us the
terrestrial parallax is enormous.
Now, you know, dear reader, that the gigantic
reflector of Lord Rosse, and the exquisite fifteen-
inch refractors of the modern observatories, eliminate
from the chaotic rubbish-heap of the surface of old
Thornbush much smaller objects than such a circle as I
have named. If you have read Mr. Locke's amusing Moon
Hoax as often as I have, you have those details fresh in
your memory. As John Farrar taught us when all this
began,--and as I have said already,--if there were a
State House in Thornbush two hundred feet long, the first
Herschel would have seen it. His magnifying power was
6450; that would have brought this deaf and dumb State
House within some forty miles. Go up on Mt. Washington
and see white sails eighty miles away, beyond Portland,
with your naked eye, and you will find how well he would
have seen that State House with his reflector. Lord
Rosse's statement is, that with his reflector he can see
objects on old Thornbush two hundred and fifty-two feet
long. If he can do that he can see on our B. M. objects
which are five feet long; and, of course, we were beside
ourselves to get control of some instrument which had
some approach to such power. Haliburton was for at once
building a reflector at No. 9; and perhaps he will do it
yet, for Haliburton has been successful in his paper-
making and lumbering. But I went to work more promptly.
I remembered, not an apothecary, but an observatory,
which had been dormant, as we say of volcanoes, now for
ten or a dozen years,--no matter why! The trustees
had quarrelled with the director, or the funds had given
out, or the director had been shot at the head of his
division,--one of those accidents had happened which will
happen even in observatories which have fifteen-inch
equatorials; and so the equatorial here had been left as
useless as a cannon whose metal has been strained or its
reputation stained in an experiment. The observatory at
Tamworth, dedicated with such enthusiasm,--"another
light-house in the skies," had been, so long as I have
said, worthless to the world. To Tamworth, therefore, I
travelled. In the neighborhood of the observatory I took
lodgings. To the church where worshipped the family
which lived in the observatory buildings I repaired;
after two Sundays I established acquaintance with John
Donald, the head of this family. On the evening of the
third, I made acquaintance with his wife in a visit to
them. Before three Sundays more he had recommended me to
the surviving trustees as his successor as janitor to the
buildings. He himself had accepted promotion, and gone,
with his household, to keep a store for Haliburton in
North Ovid. I sent for Polly and the children, to
establish them in the janitor's rooms; and, after writing
to her, with trembling eye I waited for the Brick Moon to
pass over the field of the fifteen-inch equatorial.
Night came. I was "sole alone"! B. M. came, more
than filled the field of vision, of course! but for that
I was ready. Heavens! how changed. Red no longer,
but green as a meadow in the spring. Still I could see--
black on the green--the large twenty-foot circles which
I remembered so well, which broke the concave of the
dome; and, on the upper edge--were these palm-trees?
They were. No, they were hemlocks, by their shape, and
among them were moving to and fro---------- flies? Of
course, I cannot see flies! But something is moving,--
coming, going. One, two, three, ten; there are more than
thirty in all! They are men and women and their
children!
Could it be possible? It was possible! Orcutt and
Brannan and the rest of them had survived that giddy
flight through the ether, and were going and coming on
the surface of their own little world, bound to it by its
own attraction and living by its own laws!
As I watched, I saw one of them leap from that
surface. He passed wholly out of my field of vision, but
in a minute, more or less, returned. Why not! Of course
the attraction of his world must be very small, while he
retained the same power of muscle he had when he was
here. They must be horribly crowded, I thought. No.
They had three acres of surface, and there were but
thirty-seven of them. Not so much crowded as people are
in Roxbury, not nearly so much as in Boston; and,
besides, these people are living underground, and have
the whole of their surface for their exercise.
I watched their every movement as they approached the
edge and as they left it. Often they passed beyond it,
so that I could see them no more. Often they sheltered
themselves from that tropical sun beneath the trees.
Think of living on a world where from the vertical heat
of the hottest noon of the equator to the twilight of the
poles is a walk of only fifty paces! What atmosphere
they had, to temper and diffuse those rays, I could not
then conjecture.
I knew that at half-past ten they would pass into the
inevitable eclipse which struck them every night at this
period of their orbit, and must, I thought, be a luxury
to them, as recalling old memories of night when they
were on this world. As they approached the line of
shadow, some fifteen minutes before it was due, I counted
on the edge thirty-seven specks arranged evidently in
order; and, at one moment, as by one signal, all thirty-
seven jumped into the air,--high jumps. Again they did
it, and again. Then a low jump; then a high one. I
caught the idea in a moment. They were telegraphing to
our world, in the hope of an observer. Long leaps and
short leaps,--the long and short of Morse's Telegraph
Alphabet,--were communicating ideas. My paper and pencil
had been of course before me. I jotted down the
despatch, whose language I knew perfectly:--
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
By "I understand" they meant the responsive signal
given, in all telegraphy, by an operator who has received
and understood a message.
As soon as this exercise had been three times
repeated, they proceeded in a solid body--much the most
apparent object I had had until now--to Circle No. 3, and
then evidently descended into the MOON.
The eclipse soon began, but I knew the MOON'S path
now, and followed the dusky, coppery spot without
difficulty. At 1.33 it emerged, and in a very few
moments I saw the solid column pass from Circle No. 3
again, deploy on the edge again, and repeat three times
the signal:--
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
It was clear that Orcutt had known that the edge of
his little world would be most easy of observation, and
that he had guessed that the moments of obscuration and
of emersion were the moments when observers would be most
careful. After this signal they broke up again, and I
could not follow them. With daylight I sent off a
despatch to Haliburton, and, grateful and happy in
comparison, sank into the first sleep not haunted by
horrid dreams, which I had known for years.
Haliburton knew that George Orcutt had taken with him
a good Dolland's refractor, which he had bought in
London, of a two-inch glass. He knew that this would
give Orcutt a very considerable power, if he could only
adjust it accurately enough to find No. 9 in the 3d
Range. Orcutt had chosen well in selecting the "Saw-Mill
Flat," a large meadow, easily distinguished by the
peculiar shape of the mill-pond which we had made. Eager
though Haliburton was to join me, he loyally took moneys,
caught the first train to Skowhegan, and, travelling
thence, in thirty-six hours more was again descending
Spoonwood Hill, for the first time since our futile
observations. The snow lay white upon the Flat. With
Rob. Shea's help, he rapidly unrolled a piece of black
cambric twenty yards long, and pinned it to the crust
upon the snow; another by its side, and another. Much
cambric had he left. They had carried down with them
enough for the funerals of two Presidents. Haliburton
showed the symbols for "I understand," but he could not
resist also displaying ..-- .--, which are the dots and
lines to represent O. K., which, he says, is the
shortest message of comfort. And not having exhausted
the space on the Flat, he and Robert, before night closed
in, made a gigantic O. K., fifteen yards from top to
bottom, and in marks that were fifteen feet through.
I had telegraphed my great news to Haliburton on
Monday night. Tuesday night he was at Skowhegan.
Thursday night he was at No. 9. Friday he and Rob.
stretched their cambric. Meanwhile, every day I slept.
Every night I was glued to the eye-piece. Fifteen
minutes before the eclipse every night this weird dance
of leaps two hundred feet high, followed by hops of
twenty feet high, mingled always in the steady order I
have described, spelt out the ghastly message: "Show `I
understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
And every morning, as the eclipse ended, I saw the
column creep along to the horizon, and again, as the duty
of opening day, spell out the same:--
"Show `I understand' on the Saw-Mill Flat."
They had done this twice in every twenty-four hours
for nearly two years. For three nights steadily I read
these signals twice each night; only these, and nothing
more.
But Friday night all was changed. After "Attention,"
that dreadful "Show" did not come, but this cheerful
signal:--
"Hurrah. All well. Air, food, and friends! what
more can man require? Hurrah."
How like George! How like Ben Brannan! How like
George's wife! How like them all! And they were all
well! Yet poor _I_ could not answer. Nay, I could
only guess what Haliburton had done. But I have never,
I believe, been so grateful since I was born.
After a pause, the united line of leapers resumed
their jumps and hops. Long and short spelled out:--
"Your O. K. is twice as large as it need be."
Of the meaning of this, lonely _I_ had, of course,
no idea.
"I have a power of seven hundred," continued George.
How did he get that? He has never told us. But this I
can see, that all our analogies deceive us,--of views of
the sea from Mt. Washington, or of the Boston State House
from Wachusett. For in these views we look through forty
or eighty miles of dense terrestrial atmosphere. But
Orcutt was looking nearly vertically through an
atmosphere which was, most of it, rare indeed, and pure
indeed, compared with its lowest stratum.
In the record-book of my observations these
despatches are entered as 12 and 13. Of course it was
impossible for me to reply. All I could do was to
telegraph these in the morning to Skowhegan, sending them
to the care of the Moores, that they might forward them.
But the next night showed that this had not been
necessary.
Friday night George and the others went on for a
quarter of an hour. Then they would rest, saying, "two,"
"three," or whatever their next signal time would be.
Before morning I had these despatches:--
14. "Write to all hands that we are doing well.
Langdon's baby is named Io, and Leonard's is named
Phoebe."
How queer that was! What a coincidence! And they
had some humor there.
15 was: "Our atmosphere stuck to us. It weighs
three tenths of an inch--our weight."
16. "Our rain-fall is regular as the clock. We have
made a cistern of Kilpatrick."
This meant the spherical chamber of that name.
17. "Write to Darwin that he is all right. We began
with lichens and have come as far as palms and hemlocks."
These were the first night's messages. I had
scarcely covered the eye-glasses and adjusted the
equatorial for the day, when the bell announced the
carriage in which Polly and the children came from the
station to relieve me in my solitary service as janitor.
I had the joy of showing her the good news. This night's
work seemed to fill our cup. For all the day before,
when I was awake, I had been haunted by the fear of
famine for them. True, I knew that they had stored away
in chambers H, I, and J the pork and flour which we had
sent up for the workmen through the summer, and the corn
and oats for the horses. But this could not last
forever.
Now, however, that it proved that in a tropical
climate they were forming their own soil, developing
their own palms, and eventually even their bread-fruit
and bananas, planting their own oats and maize, and
developing rice, wheat, and all other cereals, harvesting
these six, eight, or ten times--for aught I could see--in
one of our years,--why, then, there was no danger of
famine for them. If, as I thought, they carried up with
them heavy drifts of ice and snow in the two chambers
which were not covered in when they started, why, they
had waters in their firmament quite sufficient for all
purposes of thirst and of ablution. And what I had seen
of their exercise showed that they were in strength
sufficient for the proper development of their little
world.
Polly had the messages by heart before an hour was
over, and the little girls, of course, knew them sooner
than she.
Haliburton, meanwhile, had brought out the Shubael
refractor (Alvan Clark), and by night of Friday was in
readiness to see what he could see. Shubael of course
gave him no such luxury of detail as did my fifteen-inch
equatorial. But still he had no difficulty in making out
groves of hemlock, and the circular openings. And
although he could not make out my thirty-seven flies,
still when 10.15 came he saw distinctly the black square
crossing from hole Mary to the edge, and beginning its
Dervish dances. They were on his edge more precisely
than on mine. For Orcutt knew nothing of Tamworth, and
had thought his best chance was to display for No. 9. So
was it that, at the same moment with me, Haliburton also
was spelling out Orcutt & Co.'s joyous "Hurrah!"
"Thtephen," lisps Celia, "promith that you will look
at yon moon [old Thombush] at the inthtant I do." So was
it with me and Haliburton.
He was of course informed long before the Moores'
messenger came, that, in Orcutt's judgment, twenty feet
of length were sufficient for his signals. Orcutt's
atmosphere, of course, must be exquisitely clear.
So, on Saturday, Rob. and Haliburton pulled up all
their cambric and arranged it on the Flat again, in
letters of twenty feet, in this legend:--
RAH. AL WEL.
Haliburton said he could not waste flat or cambric on
spelling.
He had had all night since half-past ten to consider
what next was most important for them to know; and a very
difficult question it was, you will observe. They had
been gone nearly two years, and much had happened. Which
thing was, on the whole, the most interesting and
important? He had said we were all well. What then?
Did you never find yourself in the same difficulty?
When your husband had come home from sea, and kissed you
and the children, and wondered at their size, did you
never sit silent and have to think what you should say?
Were you never fairly relieved when little Phil said,
blustering, "I got three eggs to-day." The truth is,
that silence is very satisfactory intercourse, if we only
know all is well. When De Sauty got his original cable
going, he had not much to tell after all; only that
consols were a quarter per cent higher than they were
the day before. "Send me news," lisped he--poor lonely
myth!--from Bull's Bay to Valentia,--"send me news; they
are mad for news." But how if there be no news worth
sending? What do I read in my cable despatch to-day?
Only that the Harvard crew pulled at Putney yesterday,
which I knew before I opened the paper, and that there
had been a riot in Spain, which I also knew. Here is a
letter just brought me by the mail from Moreau, Tazewell
County, Iowa. It is written by Follansbee, in a good
cheerful hand. How glad I am to hear from Follansbee!
Yes; but do I care one straw whether Follansbee planted
spring wheat or winter wheat? Not I. All I care for is
Follansbee's way of telling it. All these are the
remarks by which Haliburton explains the character of the
messages he sent in reply to George Orcutt's autographs,
which were so thoroughly satisfactory.
Should he say Mr. Borie had left the Navy Department
and Mr. Robeson come in? Should he say the Lords had
backed down on the Disendowment Bill? Should he say the
telegraph had been landed at Duxbury? Should he say
Ingham had removed to Tamworth? What did they care for
this? What does anybody ever care for facts? Should he
say that the State Constable was enforcing the liquor law
on whiskey, but was winking at lager? All this would
take him a week, in the most severe condensation,--
and for what good? as Haliburton asked. Yet these were
the things that the newspapers told, and they told
nothing else. There was a nice little poem of Jean
Ingelow's in a Transcript Haliburton had with him. He
said he was really tempted to spell that out. It was
better worth it than all the rest of the newspaper stuff,
and would be remembered a thousand years after that was
forgotten. "What they wanted," says Haliburton, "was
sentiment. That is all that survives and is eternal."
So he and Rob. laid out their cambric thus:--
RAW. AL WEL. SO GLAD.
Haliburton hesitated whether he would not add, "Power
5000," to indicate the full power I was using at
Tamworth. But he determined not to, and, I think,
wisely. The convenience was so great, of receiving the
signal at the spot where it could be answered, that for
the present he thought it best that they should go on
as they did. That night, however, to his dismay,
clouds gathered and a grim snow-storm began. He got no
observations; and the next day it stormed so heavily
that he could not lay his signals out. For me at
Tamworth, I had a heavy storm all day, but at midnight
it was clear; and as soon as the regular eclipse was
past, George began with what we saw was an account of
the great anaclysm which sent them there. You observe
that Orcutt had far greater power of communicating with
us than we had with him. He knew this. And it was
fortunate he had. For he had, on his little world,
much more of interest to tell than we had on our large
one.
18. "It stormed hard. We were all asleep, and knew
nothing till morning; the hammocks turned so slowly."
Here was another revelation and relief. I had always
supposed that if they knew anything before they were
roasted to death, they had had one wild moment of horror.
Instead of this, the gentle slide of the MOON had not
wakened them, the flight upward had been as easy as it
was rapid, the change from one centre of gravity to
another had of course been slow,--and they had actually
slept through the whole. After the dancers had rested
once, Orcutt continued:--
19. "We cleared E. A. in two seconds, I think. Our
outer surface fused and cracked somewhat. So much the
better for us."
They moved so fast that the heat of their friction
through the air could not propagate itself through the
whole brick surface. Indeed, there could have been but
little friction after the first five or ten miles. By E.
A. he means earth's atmosphere.
His 20th despatch is: "I have no observations of
ascent. But by theory our positive ascent ceased in two
minutes five seconds, when we fell into our proper orbit,
which, as I calculate, is 5,109 miles from your mean
surface."
In all this, observe, George dropped no word of
regret through these five thousand miles.
His 21st despatch is: "Our rotation on our axis is
made once in seven hours, our axis being exactly vertical
to the plane of our own orbit. But in each of your daily
rotations we get sunned all round."
Of course, they never had lost their identity with
us, so far as our rotation and revolution went: our
inertia was theirs; all the fatal, Fly-Wheels had given
them was an additional motion in space of their own.
This was the last despatch before daylight of Sunday
morning; and the terrible snow-storm of March, sweeping
our hemisphere, cut off our communication with them, both
at Tamworth and No. 9, for several days.
But here was ample food for reflection. Our friends
were in a world of their own, all thirty-seven of them
well, and it seemed they had two more little girls added
to their number since they started. They had plenty of
vegetables to eat, with prospect of new tropical
varieties according to Dr. Darwin. Rob. Shea was sure
that they carried up hens; he said he knew Mrs. Whitman
had several Middlesexes and Mrs. Leonard two or three
Black Spanish fowls, which had been given her by some
friends in Foxcroft. Even if they had not yet had time
enough for these to develop into Alderneys and venison,
they would not be without animal food.
When at last it cleared off, Haliburton had to
telegraph: "Repeat from 21"; and this took all his
cambric, though he had doubled his stock. Orcutt replied
the next night:
22. "I can see your storms. We have none. When we
want to change climate we can walk in less than a minute
from midsummer to the depth of winter. But in the inside
we have eleven different temperatures, which do not
change."
On the whole there is a certain convenience in such
an arrangement. With No. 23 he went back to his story:--
It took us many days, one or two of our months, to
adjust ourselves to our new condition. Our greatest
grief is that we are not on the meridian. Do you know
why?"
Loyal George! He was willing to exile himself and
his race from the most of mankind, if only the great
purpose of his life could be fulfilled. But his great
regret was that it was not fulfilled. He was not on the
meridian. I did not know why. But Haliburton, with
infinite labor, spelt out on the Flat,
CYC. PROJECT. AD FIN.,
by which he meant, "See article Projectiles in the
Cyclopaedia at the end"; and there indeed is the only
explanation to be given. When you fire a shot, why
does it ever go to the right or left of the plane in
which it is projected? Dr. Hutton ascribes it to a
whirling motion acquired by the bullet by friction
with the gun. Euler thinks it due chiefly to the
irregularity of the shape of the ball. In our case the
B. M. was regular enough. But on one side, being
wholly unprepared for flight, she was heavily stored
with pork and corn, while her other chambers had in
some of them heavy drifts of snow, and some only a few
men and women and hens.
Before Orcutt saw Haliburton's advice, he had sent us
24 and 25.
24. "We have established a Sandemanian church, and
Brannan preaches. My son Edward and Alice Whitman are to
be married this evening."
This despatch unfortunately did not reach Haliburton,
though I got it. So, all the happy pair received for our
wedding-present was the advice to look in the Cyclopaedia
at article Projectiles near the end.
25 was:--
"We shall act `As You Like It' after the wedding.
Dead-head tickets for all of the old set who will come."
Actually, in one week's reunion we had come to
joking.
The next night we got 26:
"Alice says she will not read the Cyclopaedia in the
honeymoon, but is much obliged to Mr. Haliburton for his
advice."
"How did she ever know it was I?" wrote the matter-
of-fact Haliburton to me.
27. "Alice wants to know if Mr. Haliburton will not
send here for some rags; says we have plenty, with little
need for clothes."
And then despatches began to be more serious again.
Brannan and Orcutt had failed in the great scheme for the
longitude, to which they had sacrificed their lives,--if,
indeed, it were a sacrifice to retire with those they
love best to a world of their own. But none the less did
they devote themselves, with the rare power of
observation they had, to the benefit of our world. Thus,
in 28:
"Your North Pole is an open ocean. It was black,
which we think means water, from August 1st to September
29th. Your South Pole is on an island bigger than New
Holland. Your Antarctic Continent is a great cluster of
islands."
29. "Your Nyanzas are only two of a large group of
African lakes. The green of Africa, where there is no
water, is wonderful at our distance."
30. "We have not the last numbers of `Foul Play.'
Tell us, in a word or two, how they got home. We can see
what we suppose their island was."
31. "We should like to know who proved Right in `He
Knew He was Right.'"
This was a good night's work, as they were then
telegraphing. As soon as it cleared, Haliburton
displayed,--
BEST HOPES. CARRIER DUCKS.
This was Haliburton's masterpiece. He had no room
for more, however, and was obliged to reserve for the
next day his answer to No. 31, which was simply,
SHE.
A real equinoctial now parted us for nearly a week,
and at the end of that time they were so low in our
northern horizon that we could not make out their
signals; we and they were obliged to wait till they had
passed through two-thirds of their month before we could
communicate again. I used the time in speeding to No. 9.
We got a few carpenters together, and arranged on the
Flat two long movable black platforms, which ran in and
out on railroad-wheels on tracks, from under green
platforms; so that we could display one or both as we
chose, and then withdraw them. With this apparatus we
could give forty-five signals in a minute, corresponding
to the line and dot of the telegraph; and thus could
compass some twenty letters in that time, and make out
perhaps two hundred and fifty words in an hour.
Haliburton thought that, with some improvements, he could
send one of Mr. Buchanan's messages up in thirty-seven
working-nights.
IV
INDEPENDENCE
I own to a certain mortification in confessing that
after this interregnum, forced upon us by so long a
period of non-intercourse, we never resumed precisely
the same constancy of communication as that which I
have tried to describe at the beginning. The apology
for this benumbment, if I may so call it, will suggest
itself to the thoughtful reader.
It is indeed astonishing to think that we so readily
accept a position when we once understand it. You buy a
new house. You are fool enough to take out a staircase
that you may put in a bathing-room. This will be done in
a fortnight, everybody tells you, and then everybody
begins. Plumbers, masons, carpenters, plasterers,
skimmers, bell-hangers, speaking-tube men, men who make
furnace-pipe, paper-hangers, men who scrape off the old
paper, and other men who take off the old paint with
alkali, gas men, city-water men, and painters begin. To
them are joined a considerable number of furnace-men's
assistants, stovepipe-men's assistants, mason's
assistants, and hodmen who assist the assistants of the
masons, the furnace-men, and the pipe-men. For a day or
two these all take possession of the house and reduce it
to chaos. In the language of Scripture, they enter
in and dwell there. Compare, for the details, Matt. xii.
45. Then you revisit it at the end of the fortnight, and
find it in chaos, with the woman whom you employed to
wash the attics the only person on the scene. You ask
her where the paper-hanger is; and she says he can do
nothing because the plaster is not dry. You ask why the
plaster is not dry, and are told it is because the
furnace-man has not come. You send for him, and he says
he did come, but the stove-pipe man was away. You send
for him, and he says he lost a day in coming, but that
the mason had not cut the right hole in the chimney. You
go and find the mason, and he says they are all fools,
and that there is nothing in the house that need take two
days to finish.
Then you curse, not the day in which you were born,
but the day in which bath-rooms were invented. You say,
truly, that your father and mother, from whom you inherit
every moral and physical faculty you prize, never had a
bath-room till they were past sixty, yet they thrived,
and their children. You sneak through back streets,
fearful lest your friends shall ask you when your house
will be finished. You are sunk in wretchedness, unable
even to read your proofs accurately, far less able to
attend the primary meetings of the party with which you
vote, or to discharge any of the duties of a good
citizen. Life is wholly embittered to you.
Yet, six weeks after, you sit before a soft-coal fire
in your new house, with the feeling that you have always
lived there. You are not even grateful that you are
there. You have forgotten the plumber's name; and if you
met in the street that nice carpenter that drove things
through, you would just nod to him, and would not think
of kissing him or embracing him.
Thus completely have you accepted the situation.
Let me confess that the same experience is that with
which, at this writing, I regard the BRICK MOON. It is
there in ether. I cannot keep it. I cannot get it down.
I cannot well go to it,--though possibly that might be
done, as you will see. They are all very happy there,--
much happier, as far as I can see, than if they lived in
sixth floors in Paris, in lodgings in London, or even in
tenement-houses in Phoenix Place, Boston. There are
disadvantages attached to their position; but there are
also advantages. And what most of all tends to our
accepting the situation is, that there is "nothing that
we can do about it," as Q. says, but to keep up our
correspondence with them, and to express our sympathies.
For them, their responsibilities are reduced in
somewhat the same proportion as the gravitation which
binds them down,--I had almost said to earth,--which
binds them down to brick, I mean. This decrease of
responsibility must make them as light-hearted as the
loss of gravitation makes them light-bodied.
On which point I ask for a moment's attention. And
as these sheets leave my hand, an illustration turns up
which well serves me. It is the 23d of October.
Yesterday morning all wakeful women in New England were
sure there was some one under the bed. This is a certain
sign of an earthquake. And when we read the evening
newspapers, we were made sure there had been an
earthquake. What blessings the newspapers are,--and how
much information they give us! Well, they said it was
not very severe, here, but perhaps it was more severe
elsewhere; hopes really arising in the editorial mind
that in some Caraccas or Lisbon all churches and the
cathedral might have fallen. I did not hope for that.
But I did have just the faintest feeling that IF--if
if--it should prove that the world had blown up into six
or eight pieces, and they had gone off into separate
orbits, life would be vastly easier for all of us, on
whichever bit we happened to be.
That thing has happened, they say, once. Whenever
the big planet between Mars and Jupiter blew up, and
divided himself into one hundred and two or more
asteroids, the people on each one only knew there had
been an earthquake when and after they read their morning
journals. And then, all that they knew at first was that
telegraphic communication had ceased beyond--say two
hundred miles. Gradually people and despatches came in,
who said that they had parted company with some of the
other islands and continents. But, as I say, on each
piece the people not only weighed much less, but were
much lighter-hearted, had less responsibility.
Now will you imagine the enthusiasm here, at Miss
Hale's school, when it should be announced that
geography, in future, would be confined to the study of
the region east of the Mississippi and west of the
Atlantic,--the earth having parted at the seams so named.
No more study of Italian, German, French, or Sclavonic,--
the people speaking those languages being now in
different orbits or other worlds. Imagine also the
superior ease of the office-work of the A. B. C. F. M.
and kindred societies, the duties of instruction and
civilizing, of evangelizing in general, being reduced
within so much narrower bounds. For you and me also, who
cannot decide what Mr. Gladstone ought to do with the
land tenure in Ireland, and who distress ourselves so
much about it in conversation, what a satisfaction to
know that Great Britain is flung off with one rate of
movement, Ireland with another, and the Isle of Man with
another, into space, with no more chance of meeting again
than there is that you shall have the same hand at whist
to-night that you had last night! Even Victoria would
sleep easier, and I am sure Mr. Gladstone would.
Thus, I say, were Orcutt's and Brannan's
responsibilities so diminished, that after the first I
began to see that their contracted position had its
decided compensating ameliorations.
In these views, I need not say, the women of our
little circle never shared. After we got the new
telegraph arrangement in good running-order, I observed
that Polly and Annie Haliburton had many private
conversations, and the secret came out one morning, when,
rising early in the cabins, we men found they had
deserted us; and then, going in search of them, found
them running the signal boards in and out as rapidly as
they could, to tell Mrs. Brannan and the bride, Alice
Orcutt, that flounces were worn an inch and a half
deeper, and that people trimmed now with harmonizing
colors and not with contrasts. I did not say that I
believed they wore fig-leaves in B. M., but that was my
private impression.
After all, it was hard to laugh at the girls, as
these ladies will be called, should they live to be as
old as Helen was when she charmed the Trojan senate (that
was ninety-three, if Heyne be right in his calculations).
It was hard to laugh at them because this was simple
benevolence, and the same benevolence led to a much more
practical suggestion when Polly came to me and told me
she had been putting up some baby things for little Io
and Phoebe, and some playthings for the older children,
and she thought we might "send up a bundle."
Of course we could. There were the Flies still
moving! or we might go ourselves!
[And here the reader must indulge me in a long
parenthesis. I beg him to bear me witness that I never
made one before. This parenthesis is on the tense that
I am obliged to use in sending to the press these
minutes. The reader observes that the last transactions
mentioned happen in April and May, 1871. Those to be
narrated are the sequence of those already told.
Speaking of them in 1870 with the coarse tenses of the
English language is very difficult. One needs, for
accuracy, a sure future, a second future, a paulo-post
future, and a paulum-ante future, none of which does this
language have. Failing this, one would be glad of an a-
orist,--tense without time,--if the grammarians will not
swoon at hearing such language. But the English tongue
hath not that, either. Doth the learned reader remember
that the Hebrew--language of history and prophecy--hath
only a past and a future tense, but hath no present? Yet
that language succeeded tolerably in expressing the
present griefs or joys of David and of Solomon. Bear
with me, then, O critic! if even in 1870 I use the so-
called past tenses in narrating what remaineth of this
history up to the summer of 1872. End of the
parenthesis.]
On careful consideration, however, no one volunteers
to go. To go, if you observe, would require that a man
envelop himself thickly in asbestos or some similar non-
conducting substance, leap boldly on the rapid Flies, and
so be shot through the earth's atmosphere in two seconds
and a fraction, carrying with him all the time in a non-
conducting receiver the condensed air he needed, and
landing quietly on B. M. by a precalculated orbit. At
the bottom of our hearts I think we were all afraid.
Some of us confessed to fear; others said, and said
truly, that the population of the Moon was already dense,
and that it did not seem reasonable or worth while, on
any account, to make it denser. Nor has any movement
been renewed for going. But the plan of the bundle of
"things" seemed more feasible, as the things would not
require oxygen. The only precaution seemed to be that
which was necessary for protecting the parcel against
combustion as it shot through the earth's atmosphere. We
had not asbestos enough. It was at first proposed to
pack them all in one of Professor Horsford's safes. But
when I telegraphed this plan to Orcutt, he demurred.
Their atmosphere was but shallow, and with a little too
much force the corner of the safe might knock a very bad
hole in the surface of his world. He said if we would
send up first a collection of things of no great weight,
but of considerable bulk, he would risk that, but he
would rather have no compact metals.
I satisfied myself, therefore, with a plan which I
still think good. Making the parcel up in heavy old
woollen carpets, and cording it with worsted cords, we
would case it in a carpet-bag larger than itself and fill
in the interstice with dry sand, as our best non-
conductor; cording this tightly again, we would renew the
same casing with more sand; and so continually offer
surfaces of sand and woollen, till we had five separate
layers between the parcel and the air. Our calculation
was that a perceptible time would be necessary for
the burning and disintegrating of each sand-bag. If each
one, on the average, would stand two-fifths of a second,
the inner parcel would get through the earth's atmosphere
unconsumed. If, on the other hand, they lasted a little
longer, the bag, as it fell on B. M., would not be unduly
heavy. Of course we could take their night for the
experiment, so that we might be sure they should all be
in bed and out of the way.
We had very funny and very merry times in selecting
things important enough and at the same time bulky and
light enough to be safe. Alice and Bertha at once
insisted that there must be room for the children's
playthings. They wanted to send the most approved of the
old ones, and to add some new presents. There was a
woolly sheep in particular, and a watering-pot that Rose
had given Fanny, about which there was some sentiment;
boxes of dominos, packs of cards, magnetic fishes, bows
and arrows, checker-boards and croquet sets. Polly and
Annie were more considerate. Down to Coleman and Company
they sent an order for pins, needles, hooks and eyes,
buttons, tapes, and I know not what essentials. India-
rubber shoes for the children Mrs. Haliburton insisted on
sending. Haliburton himself bought open-eye-shut-eye
dolls, though I felt that wax had been, since Icarus's
days, the worst article in such an adventure. For the
babies he had india-rubber rings: he had tin cows and
carved wooden lions for the bigger children, drawing-
tools for those older yet, and a box of crochet tools for
the ladies. For my part I piled in literature,--a set of
my own works, the Legislative Reports of the State of
Maine, Jean Ingelow, as I said or intimated, and both
volumes of the "Earthly Paradise." All these were packed
in sand, bagged and corded,--bagged, sanded and corded
again,--yet again and again,--five times. Then the whole
awaited Orcutt's orders and our calculations.
At last the moment came. We had, at Orcutt's order,
reduced the revolutions of the Flies to 7230, which was,
as nearly as he knew, the speed on the fatal night. We
had soaked the bag for near twelve hours, and, at the
moment agreed upon, rolled it on the Flies and saw it
shot into the air. It was so small that it went out of
sight too soon for us to see it take fire.
Of course we watched eagerly for signal time. They
were all in bed on B. M. when we let fly. But the
despatch was a sad disappointment.
107. "Nothing has come through but two croquet balls
and a china horse. But we shall send the boys hunting in
the bushes, and we may find more."
108. "Two Harpers and an Atlantic, badly singed. But
we can read all but the parts which were most dry."
109. "We see many small articles revolving round us
which may perhaps fall in."
They never did fall in, however. The truth was that
all the bags had burned through. The sand, I suppose,
went to its place, wherever that was. And all the other
things in our bundle became little asteroids or aerolites
in orbits of their own, except a well-disposed score or
two, which persevered far enough to get within the
attraction of Brick Moon and to take to revolving there,
not having hit quite square, as the croquet balls did.
They had five volumes of the "Congressional Globe"
whirling round like bats within a hundred feet of their
heads. Another body, which I am afraid was "The Ingham
Papers," flew a little higher, not quite so heavy. Then
there was an absurd procession of the woolly sheep, a
china cow, a pair of india-rubbers, a lobster Haliburton
had chosen to send, a wooden lion, the wax doll, a
Salter's balance, the "New York Observer," the bow and
arrows, a Nuremberg nanny-goat, Rose's watering-pot, and
the magnetic fishes, which gravely circled round and
round them slowly and made the petty zodiac of their
petty world.
We have never sent another parcel since, but we
probably shall at Christmas, gauging the Flies perhaps to
one revolution more. The truth is, that although we have
never stated to each other in words our difference of
opinion or feeling, there is a difference of habit of
thought in our little circle as to the position which the
B. M. holds. Somewhat similar is the difference of
habit of thought in which different statesmen of
England regard their colonies.
Is B. M. a part of our world, or is it not? Should
its inhabitants be encouraged to maintain their
connections with us, or is it better for them to "accept
the situation" and gradually wean themselves from us and
from our affairs? It would be idle to determine this
question in the abstract: it is perhaps idle to decide
any question of casuistry in the abstract. But, in
practice, there are constantly arising questions which
really require some decision of this abstract problem for
their solution.
For instance, when that terrible breach occurred in
the Sandemanian church, which parted it into the Old
School and New School parties, Haliburton thought it very
important that Brannan and Orcutt and the church in B. M.
under Brannan's ministry should give in their adhesion to
our side. Their church would count one more in our
registry, and the weight of its influence would not be
lost. He therefore spent eight or nine days in
telegraphing, from the early proofs, a copy of the
address of the Chautauqua Synod to Brannan, and asked
Brannan if he were not willing to have his name signed to
it when it was printed. And the only thing which
Haliburton takes sorely in the whole experience of the
Brick Moon, from the beginning, is that neither Orcutt
nor Brannan has ever sent one word of acknowledgment of
the despatch. Once, when Haliburton was very low-
spirited, I heard him even say that he believed they had
never read a word of it, and that he thought he and Rob.
Shea had had their labor for their pains in running the
signals out and in.
Then he felt quite sure that they would have to
establish civil government there. So he made up an
excellent collection of books,--De Lolme on the British
Constitution; Montesquieu on Laws; Story, Kent, John
Adams, and all the authorities here; with ten copies of
his own address delivered before the Young Men's Mutual
Improvement Society of Podunk, on the "Abnormal Truths of
Social Order." He telegraphed to know what night he
should send them, and Orcutt replied:--
129. "Go to thunder with your old law-books. We have
not had a primary meeting nor a justice court since we
have been here, and, D. V., we never will have."
Haliburton says this is as bad as the state of things
in Kansas, when, because Frank Pierce would not give them
any judges or laws to their mind, they lived a year or so
without any. Orcutt added in his next despatch:--
130. "Have not you any new novels? Send up Scribe
and the `Arabian Nights' and `Robinson Crusoe' and the
`Three Guardsmen,' and Mrs. Whitney's books. We have
Thackeray and Miss Austen."
When he read this, Haliburton felt as if they
were not only light-footed but light-headed. And he
consulted me quite seriously as to telegraphing to them
"Pycroft's Course of Reading." I coaxed him out of that,
and he satisfied himself with a serious expostulation
with George as to the way in which their young folks
would grow up. George replied by telegraphing Brannan's
last sermon, I Thessalonians iv. II. The sermon had
four heads, must have occupied an hour and a half in
delivery, and took five nights to telegraph. I had
another engagement, so that Haliburton had to sit it all
out with his eye to Shubael, and he has never entered on
that line of discussion again. It was as well, perhaps,
that he got enough of it.
The women have never had any misunderstandings. When
we had received two or three hundred despatches from B.
M., Annie Haliburton came to me and said, in that pretty
way of hers, that she thought they had a right to their
turn again. She said this lore about the Albert Nyanza
and the North Pole was all very well, but, for her part,
she wanted to know how they lived, what they did, and
what they talked about, whether they took summer
journeys, and how and what was the form of society where
thirty-seven people lived in such close quarters. This
about "the form of society" was merely wool pulled over
my eyes. So she said she thought her husband and I had
better go off to the Biennial Convention at Assampink, as
she knew we wanted to do, and she and Bridget and
Polly and Cordelia would watch for the signals, and would
make the replies. She thought they would get on better
if we were out of the way.
So we went to the convention, as she called it, which
was really not properly a convention, but the Forty-fifth
Biennial General Synod, and we left the girls to their
own sweet way.
Shall I confess that they kept no record of their own
signals, and did not remember very accurately what they
were? "I was not going to keep a string of `says I's'
and `says she's,'" said Polly, boldly. "it shall not be
written on my tomb that I have left more annals for
people to file or study or bind or dust or catalogue."
But they told us that they had begun by asking the
"bricks" if they remembered what Maria Theresa said to
her ladies-in-waiting.[1] Quicker than any signal had
ever been answered, George Orcutt's party replied from
the Moon, "We hear, and we obey." Then the women-kind
had it all to themselves. The brick-women explained at
once to our girls that they had sent their men round to
the other side to cut ice, and that they were manning the
telescope, and running the signals for themselves, and
that they could have a nice talk without any bother about
the law-books or the magnetic pole. As I say, I do
not know what questions Polly and Annie put; but--to give
them their due--they had put on paper a coherent record
of the results arrived at in the answers; though, what
were the numbers of the despatches, or in what order they
came, I do not know; for the session of the synod kept us
at Assampink for two or three weeks
[1] Maria Theresa's husband, Francis, Duke of
Tuscany, was hanging about loose one day, and the
Empress, who had got a little tired, said to the maids of
honor, "Girls, whenever you marry, take care and choose
a husband who has something to do outside of the house."
Mrs. Brannan was the spokesman. "We tried a good
many experiments about day and night. It was very funny
at first not to know when it would be light and when
dark, for really the names day and night do not express
a great deal for us. Of course the pendulum clocks all
went wrong till the men got them overhauled, and I think
watches and clocks both will soon go out of fashion. But
we have settled down on much the old hours, getting up,
without reference to daylight, by our great gong, at your
eight o'clock. But when the eclipse season comes, we
vary from that for signalling.
"We still make separate families, and Alice's is the
seventh. We tried hotel life and we liked it, for there
has never been the first quarrel here. You can't quarrel
here, where you are never sick, never tired, and need not
be ever hungry. But we were satisfied that it was nicer
for the children and for all round to live separately and
come together at parties, to church, at signal time, and
so on. We had something to say then, something to teach,
and something to learn.
"Since the carices developed so nicely into flax, we
have had one great comfort, which we had lost before, in
being able to make and use paper. We have had great fun,
and we think the children have made great improvement in
writing novels for the Union. The Union is the old Union
for Christian work that we had in dear old No. 9. We
have two serial novels going on, one called `Diana of
Carrotook,' and the other called `Ups and Downs'; the
first by Levi Ross, and the other by my Blanche. They
are really very good, and I wish we could send them to
you. But they would not be worth despatching.
"We get up at eight; dress, and fix up at home; a
sniff of air, as people choose; breakfast; and then we
meet for prayers outside. Where we meet depends on the
temperature; for we can choose any temperature we want,
from boiling water down, which is convenient. After
prayers an hour's talk, lounging, walking, and so on; no
flirting, but a favorite time with the young folks.
"Then comes work. Three hours' head-work is the
maximum in that line. Of women's work, as in all worlds,
there are twenty-four in one of your days, but for my
part I like it. Farmers and carpenters have their own
laws, as the light serves and the seasons. Dinner is
seven hours after breakfast began; always an hour long,
as breakfast was. Then every human being sleeps for an
hour. Big gong again, and we ride, walk, swim,
telegraph, or what not, as the case may be. We have
no horses yet, but the Shanghaes are coming up into very
good dodos and ostriches, quite big enough for a trot for
the children.
"Only two persons of a family take tea at home. The
rest always go out to tea without invitation. At 8 P. M.
big gong again, and we meet in `Grace,' which is the
prettiest hall, church, concert-room, that you ever saw.
We have singing, lectures, theatre, dancing, talk, or
what the mistress of the night determines, till the
curfew sounds at ten, and then we all go home. Evening
prayers are in the separate households, and every one is
in bed by midnight. The only law on the statute-book is
that every one shall sleep nine hours out of every
twenty-four.
"Only one thing interrupts this general order. Three
taps on the gong means `telegraph,' and then, I tell you,
we are all on hand.
"You cannot think how quickly the days and years go
by!"
Of course, however, as I said, this could not last.
We could not subdue our world and be spending all our
time in telegraphing our dear B. M. Could it be
possible--perhaps it was possible--that they there had
something else to think of and to do besides attending to
our affairs? Certainly their indifference to Grant's
fourth Proclamation, and to Mr. Fish's celebrated
protocol in the Tahiti business, looked that way. Could
it be that that little witch of a Belle Brannan really
cared more for their performance of "Midsummer
Night's Dream," or her father's birthday, than she cared
for that pleasant little account I telegraphed up to all
the children, of the way we went to muster when we were
boys together? Ah well! I ought not to have supposed
that all worlds were like this old world. Indeed, I
often say this is the queerest world I ever knew.
Perhaps theirs is not so queer, and it is I who am the
oddity.
Of course it could not last. We just arranged
correspondence days, when we would send to them, and they
to us. I was meanwhile turned out from my place at
Tamworth Observatory. Not but I did my work well, and
Polly hers. The observer's room was a miracle of
neatness. The children were kept in the basement.
Visitors were received with great courtesy; and all the
fees were sent to the treasurer; he got three dollars and
eleven cents one summer,--that was the year General Grant
came there; and that was the largest amount that they
ever received from any source but begging. I was not
unfaithful to my trust. Nor was it for such infidelity
that I was removed. No! But it was discovered that I
was a Sandemanian; a Glassite, as in derision I was
called. The annual meeting of the trustees came round.
There was a large Mechanics' Fair in Tamworth at the
time, and an Agricultural Convention. There was no
horse-race at the convention, but there were two
competitive examinations in which running horses
competed with each other, and trotting horses
competed with each other, and five thousand dollars was
given to the best runner and the best trotter. These
causes drew all the trustees together. The Rev. Cephas
Philpotts presided. His doctrines with regard to free
agency were considered much more sound than mine. He
took the chair,--in that pretty observatory parlor, which
Polly had made so bright with smilax and ivy. Of course
I took no chair; I waited, as a janitor should, at the
door. Then a brief address. Dr. Philpotts trusted that
the observatory might always be administered in the
interests of science, of true science; of that science
which rightly distinguishes between unlicensed liberty
and true freedom; between the unrestrained volition and
the freedom of the will. He became eloquent, he became
noisy. He sat down. Then three other men spoke, on
similar subjects. Then the executive committee which had
appointed me was dismissed with thanks. Then a new
executive committee was chosen, with Dr. Philpotts at the
head. The next day I was discharged. And the next week
the Philpotts family moved into the observatory, and
their second girl now takes care of the instruments.
I returned to the cure of souls and to healing the
hurt of my people. On observation days somebody runs
down to No. 9, and by means of Shubael communicates with
B. M. We love them, and they love us all the same.
Nor do we grieve for them as we did. Coming home
from Pigeon Cove in October with those nice Wadsworth
people, we fell to talking as to the why and wherefore of
the summer life we had led. How was it that it was so
charming? And why were we a little loath to come back to
more comfortable surroundings? "I hate the school," said
George Wadsworth. "I hate the making calls," said his
mother. "I hate the office hour," said her poor husband;
"if there were only a dozen I would not mind, but
seventeen hundred thousand in sixty minutes is too many."
So that led to asking how many of us there had been at
Pigeon Cove. The children counted up all the six
families,--the Haliburtons, the Wadsworths, the
Pontefracts, the Midges, the Hayeses, and the Inghams,
and the two good-natured girls, thirty-seven in all,--and
the two babies born this summer. "Really," said Mrs.
Wadsworth, "I have not spoken to a human being besides
these since June; and what is more, Mrs. Ingham, I have
not wanted to. We have really lived in a little world of
our own."
"World of our own!" Polly fairly jumped from her
seat, to Mrs. Wadsworth's wonder. So we had--lived in a
world of our own. Polly reads no newspaper since the
"Sandemanian" was merged. She has a letter or two tumble
in sometimes, but not many; and the truth was that she
had been more secluded from General Grant and Mr.
Gladstone and the Khedive, and the rest of the
important people, than had Brannan or Ross or any of
them!
And it had been the happiest summer she had ever
known.
Can it be possible that all human sympathies can
thrive, and all human powers be exercised, and all human
joys increase, if we live with all our might with the
thirty or forty people next to us, telegraphing kindly to
all other people, to be sure? Can it be possible that
our passion for large cities, and large parties, and
large theatres, and large churches, develops no faith nor
hope nor love which would not find aliment and exercise
in a little "world of our own"?
CRUSOE IN NEW YORK
PART I
I was born in the year 1842, in the city of New York,
of a good family, though not of that country, my father
being a foreigner of Bremen, who settled first in
England. He got a good estate by merchandise, and
afterward lived at New York. But first he had married
my mother, whose relations were named Robinson, a very
good family in her country--and from them I was named.
My father died before I can remember--at least, I
believe so. For, although I sometimes figure to myself
a grave, elderly man, thickset and wearing a broad-
brimmed hat, holding me between his knees and advising me
seriously, I cannot say really whether this were my
father or no; or, rather, whether this is really some one
I remember or no. For my mother, with whom I have lived
alone much of my life, as the reader will see, has talked
to me of my father so much, and has described him to me
so faithfully, that I cannot tell but it is her
description of him that I recollect so easily. And
so, as I say, I cannot tell whether I remember him or no.
He never lost his German notions, and perhaps they
gained in England some new force as to the way in which
boys should be bred. At least, for myself, I know that
he left to my mother strict charge that I should be bound
'prentice to a carpenter as soon as I was turned of
fourteen. I have often heard her say that this was the
last thing he spoke to her of when he was dying; and with
the tears in her eyes, she promised him it should be so.
And though it cost her a world of trouble--so changed
were times and customs--to find an old-fashioned master
who would take me for an apprentice, she was as good as
her word.
I should like to tell the story of my apprenticeship,
if I supposed the reader cared as much about it as I do;
but I must rather come to that part of my life which is
remarkable, than hold to that which is more like the life
of many other boys. My father's property was lost or was
wasted, I know not how, so that my poor mother had but a
hard time of it; and when I was just turned of twenty-one
and was free of my apprenticeship, she had but little to
live upon but what I could bring home, and what she could
earn by her needle. This was no grief to me, for I was
fond of my trade, and I had learned it well. My old
master was fond of me, and would trust me with work of a
good deal of responsibility. I neither drank nor
smoked, nor was I over-fond of the amusements which took
up a good deal of the time of my fellow-workmen. I was
most pleased when, on pay-day, I could carry home to my
mother ten, fifteen, or even twenty dollars--could throw
it into her lap, and kiss her and make her kiss me.
"Here is the oil for the lamp, my darling," I would
say; or, "Here is the grease for the wheels"; or, "Now
you must give me white sugar twice a day." She was a
good manager, and she made both ends meet very well.
I had no thought of leaving my master when my
apprenticeship was over, nor had he any thought of
letting me go. We understood each other well, he liked
me and I liked him. He knew that he had in me one man
who was not afraid of work, as he would say, and who
would not shirk it. And so, indeed, he would often put
me in charge of parties of workmen who were much older
than I was.
So it was that it happened, perhaps some months after
I had become a journeyman, that he told me to take a gang
of men, whom he named, and to go quite up-town in the
city, to put a close wooden fence around a vacant lot of
land there. One of his regular employers had come to
him, to say that this lot of land was to be enclosed, and
the work was to be done by him. He had sent round the
lumber, and he told me that I would find it on the
ground. He gave me, in writing, the general
directions by which the fence was ordered, and told me to
use my best judgment in carrying them out. "Only take
care," said he, "that you do it as well as if I was there
myself. Do not be in a hurry, and be sure your work
stands."
I was well pleased to be left thus to my own
judgment. I had no fear of failing to do the job well,
or of displeasing my old master or his employer. If I
had any doubts, they were about the men who were to work
under my lead, whom I did not rate at all equally; and,
if I could have had my pick, I should have thrown out
some of the more sulky and lazy of them, and should have
chosen from the other hands. But youngsters must not be
choosers when they are on their first commissions.
I had my party well at work, with some laborers whom
we had hired to dig our post-holes, when a white-haired
old man, with gold spectacles and a broad-brimmed hat,
alighted from a cab upon the sidewalk, watched the men
for a minute at their work, and then accosted me. I knew
him perfectly, though of course he did not remember me.
He was, in fact, my employer in this very job, for he was
old Mark Henry, a Quaker gentleman of Philadelphia, who
was guardian of the infant heirs who owned this block of
land which we were enclosing. My master did all the
carpenter's work in the New York houses which Mark Henry
or any of his wards owned, and I had often seen him
at the shop in consultation. I turned to him and
explained to him the plans for the work. We had already
some of the joists cut, which were to make the posts to
our fence. The old man measured them with his cane, and
said he thought they would not be long enough.
I explained to him that the fence was to be eight
feet high, and that these were quite long enough for
that.
"I know," he said, "I know, my young friend, that my
order was for a fence eight feet high, but I do not think
that will do."
With some surprise I showed him, by a "ten-foot
pole," how high the fence would come.
"Yes, my young friend, I see, I see. But I tell
thee, every beggar's brat in the ward will be over thy
fence before it has been built a week, and there will be
I know not what devices of Satan carried on in the
inside. All the junk from the North River will be hidden
there, and I shall be in luck if some stolen trunk, nay,
some dead man's body, is not stowed away there. Ah, my
young friend, if thee is ever unhappy enough to own a
vacant lot in the city, thee will know much that thee
does not know now of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
Thee will know of trials of the spirit and of the temper
that thee has never yet experienced."
I said I thought this was probable, but I thought
inwardly that I would gladly be tried that way. The old
man went on:--
"I said eight feet to friend Silas, but thee may say
to him that I have thought better of it, and that I have
ordered thee to make the fence ten feet high. Thee may
say that I am now going to Philadelphia, but that I will
write to him my order when I arrive. Meanwhile thee will
go on with the fence as I bid thee."
And so the old man entered his cab again and rode
away.
I amused myself at his notion, for I knew very well
that the street-boys and other loafers would storm his
ten-foot wall as readily as they would have stormed the
Malakoff or the Redan, had they supposed there was
anything to gain by doing it. I had, of course, to
condemn some of my posts, which were already cut, or to
work them in to other parts of the fence. My order for
spruce boards was to be enlarged by twenty per cent by
the old man's direction, and this, as it happened, led to
a new arrangement of my piles of lumber on my vacant
land.
And all this it was which set me to thinking that
night, as I looked on the work, that I might attempt
another enterprise, which, as it proved, lasted me for
years, and which I am now going to describe.
I had worked diligently with the men to set up some
fifty feet of the fence where it parted us from an alley-
way, for I wanted a chance to dry some of the boards,
which had just been hauled from a raft in the North
River. The truckmen had delivered them helter-
skelter, and they lay, still soaking, above each other on
our vacant lot.
We turned all our force on this first piece of fence,
and had so much of it done that, by calling off the men
just before sundown, I was able to set up all the wet
boards, each with one end resting on the fence and the
other on the ground, so that they took the air on both
sides, and would dry more quickly. Of course this left
a long, dark tunnel underneath.
As the other hands gathered up their tools and made
ready to go, a fellow named McLoughlin, who had gone out
with one of the three months' regiments not long before,
said:--
"I would not be sorry to sleep there. I have slept
in many a worse place than that in Dixie"; and on that he
went away, leaving me to make some measurements which I
needed the next day. But what he said rested in my mind,
and, as it happened, directed the next twelve years of my
life.
Why should not I live here? How often my mother had
said that if she had only a house of her own she should
be perfectly happy! Why should not we have a house of
our own here, just as comfortable as if we had gone a
thousand miles out on the prairie to build it, and a
great deal nearer to the book-stores, to the good music,
to her old friends, and to my good wages? We had talked
a thousand times of moving together to Kansas, where I
was to build a little hut for her, and we were to be
very happy together. But why not do as the minister had
bidden us only the last Sunday--seize on to-day, and take
what Providence offered now?
I must acknowledge that the thought of paying any
ground rent to old Mr. Henry did not occur to me then--
no, nor for years afterward. On the other hand, all that
I thought of was this,--that here was as good a chance as
there was in Kansas to live without rent, and that rent
had been, was still, and was likely to be my bugbear,
unless I hit on some such scheme as this for abating it.
The plan, to be short, filled my mind. There was
nothing in the way of house-building which I shrank from
now, for, in learning my trade, I had won my Aladdin's
lamp, and I could build my mother a palace, if she had
needed one. Pleased with my fancy, before it was dark I
had explored my principality from every corner, and
learned all its capabilities.
The lot was an oblong, nearly three times as long as
it was wide. On the west side, which was one of the
short sides, it faced what I will call the Ninety-ninth
Avenue, and on the south side, what I will call Fernando
Street, though really it was one of the cross-streets
with numbers. Running to the east it came to a narrow
passage-way which had been reserved for the accommodation
of the rear of a church which fronted on the street just
north of us. Our back line was also the back line of the
yards of the houses on the same street, but on our
northeast corner the church ran back as far as the back
line of both houses and yards, and its high brick wall--
nearly fifty feet high--took the place there of the ten-
foot brick wall, surmounted by bottle-glass, which made
their rear defence.
The moment my mind was turned to the matter, I saw
that in the rear of the church there was a corner which
lay warmly and pleasantly to the southern and western
sun, which was still out of eye-shot from the street,
pleasantly removed from the avenue passing, and only
liable to inspection, indeed, from the dwelling-houses on
the opposite side of our street,--houses which, at this
moment, were not quite finished, though they would be
occupied soon.
If, therefore, I could hit on some way of screening
my mother's castle from them--for a castle I called it
from the first moment, though it was to be much more like
a cottage--I need fear no observation from other
quarters; for the avenue was broad, and on the other side
from us there was a range of low, rambling buildings--an
engine-house and a long liquor-saloon were two--which had
but one story. Most of them bad been built, I suppose,
only to earn something for the land while it was growing
valuable. The church had no windows in the rear, and
that protected my castle--which was, indeed, still in the
air--from all observation on that side.
I told my mother nothing of all this when I went
home. But I did tell her that I had some calculations to
make for my work, and that was enough. She went on,
sweet soul! without speaking a word, with her knitting
and her sewing at her end of the table, only getting up
to throw a cloth over her parrot's cage when he was
noisy; and I sat at my end of the table, at work over my
figures, as silent as if I had been on a desert island.
Before bedtime I had quite satisfied myself with the
plan of a very pretty little house which would come quite
within our space, our means, and our shelter. There was
a little passage which ran quite across from east to
west. On the church side of this there was my mother's
kitchen, which was to be what I fondly marked the
"common-room." This was quite long from east to west,
and not more than half as long the other way. But on the
east side, where I could have no windows, I cut off, on
its whole width, a deep closet; and this proved a very
fortunate thing afterward, as you shall see. On the west
side I made one large square window, and there was, of
course, a door into the passage.
On the south side of the passage I made three rooms,
each narrow and long. The two outside rooms I meant to
light from the top. Whether I would put any skylight
into the room between them, I was not quite so certain;
I did not expect visitors in my new house, so I did not
mark it a "guest-room " in the plan. But I thought
of it as a store-room, and as such, indeed, for many
years we used it; though at last I found it more
convenient to cut a sky-light in the roof there also.
But I am getting before my story.
Before I had gone to bed that night I had made a
careful estimate as to how much lumber I should need, of
different kinds, for my little house; for I had, of
course, no right to use my master's lumber nor Mr.
Henry's; nor had I any thought of doing so. I made out
an estimate that would be quite full, for shingles, for
clapboards, white pine for my floors and finish,--for I
meant to make a good job of it if I made any,--and for
laths for the inside work. I made another list of the
locks, hinges, window furniture and other hardware I
should need; but for this I cared less, as I need not
order them so soon. I could scarcely refrain from
showing my plan to my mother, so snug and comfortable did
it look already; but I had already determined that the
"city house" should be a present to her on her next
birthday, and that till then I would keep it a secret
from her, as from all the world; so I refrained.
The next morning I told my master what the old Quaker
had directed about the fence, and I took his order for
the new lumber we should need to raise the height as was
proposed. At the same time I told him that we were all
annoyed at the need of carrying our tools back and forth,
and because we could only take the nails for one
day's use; and that, if he were willing, I had a mind to
risk an old chest I had with the nails in it and a few
tools, which I thought I could so hide that the wharf-
rats and other loafers should not discover it. He told
me to do as I pleased, that he would risk the nails if I
would risk my tools; and so, by borrowing what we call a
hand-cart for a few days, I was able to take up my own
little things to the lot without his asking any other
questions, or without exciting the curiosity of
McLoughlin or any other of the men. Of course, he would
have sent up in the shop-wagon anything we needed; but it
was far out of the way, and nobody wanted to drive the
team back at night if we could do without. And so, as
night came on, I left the men at their work, and having
loaded my hand-cart with a small chest I had, I took that
into the alley-way of which I told you before, carried my
box of tools into the corner between the church and our
fence, under the boards which we had set up that day, and
covered it heavily, with McLoughlin's help, with joists
and boards, so that no light work would remove them, if,
indeed, any wanderer of the night suspected that the box
was there. I took the hand-cart out into the alley-way
and chained it, first by the wheel and then by the
handle, in two staples which I drove there. I had
another purpose in this, as you shall see; but most of
all, I wanted to test both the police and the
knavishness of the neighborhood by seeing if the
hand-cart were there in the morning.
To my great joy it was, and to my greater joy it
remained there unmolested all the rest of the week in
which we worked there. For my master, who never came
near us himself, increased our force for us on the third
day, so that at the end of the week, or Saturday night,
the job was nearly done, and well done, too.
On the third day I had taken the precaution to throw
out in the inside of our enclosure a sort of open fence,
on which I could put the wet boards to dry, which at
first I had placed on our side fence. I told McLoughlin,
what was true enough, that the south sun was better for
them than the sun from the west. So I ran out what I may
call a screen thirty-five feet from the church, and
parallel with it, on which I set up these boards to dry,
and to my great joy I saw that they would wholly protect
the roof of my little house from any observation from the
houses the other side of the way while the workmen were
at work, or even after they were inhabited.
There was not one of the workmen with me who had
forethought enough or care for our master's interest to
ask whose boards those were which we left there, or why
we left them there. Indeed, they knew the next Monday
that I went up with the Swede, to bring back such lumber
was we did not use, and none of them knew or cared how
much we left there.
For me, I was only eager to get to work, and that day
seemed very long to me. But that Monday afternoon I
asked my master if I might have the team again for my own
use for an hour or so, to move some stuff of mine and my
mother's, and he gave it to me readily.
I had then only to drive up-town to a friendly
lumberman's, where my own stuff was already lying waiting
for me to load up, with the assistance of the workmen
there, and to drive as quickly as I could into the church
alley. Here I looked around, and seeing a German who
looked as if he were only a day from Bremen, I made signs
to him that if he would help me I would give him a piece
of scrip which I showed him. The man had been long
enough in the country to know that the scrip was good for
lager. He took hold manfully with me, and carried my
timbers and boards into the enclosure through a gap I
made in the fence for the purpose. I gave him his money
and he went away. As he went to Minnesota the next day,
he never mentioned to anybody the business he had been
engaged in.
Meanwhile, I had bought my hand-cart of the man who
owned it. I left a little pile of heavy cedar logs on
the outside, spiking them to each other indeed, that they
should not be easily moved. And to them and to my posts
I padlocked the hand-cart; nor was it ever disturbed
during my reign in those regions. So I had easy method
enough when I wanted a bundle or two of laths, or a
bunch of shingles, or anything else for my castle, to
bring them up in the cool of the evening, and to
discharge my load without special observation. My pile
of logs, indeed, grew eventually into a blind or screen,
which quite protected that corner of the church alley
from the view of any passer-by in Fernando Street.
Of that whole summer, happy and bright as it all was,
I look back most often on the first morning when I got
fairly to work on my new home. I told my mother that for
some weeks I should have to start early, and that she
must not think of getting up for my breakfast. I told
her that there was extra work on a job up-town, and that
I had promised to be there at five every day while the
summer lasted. She left for me a pot of coffee, which I
promised her I would warm when the time for breakfast and
dinner came; and for the rest, she always had my dinner
ready in my tin dinner-pail. Little did she know then,
sweet saint! that I was often at Fernando Street by half-
past three in the first sweet gray of those summer days.
On that particular day, it was really scarcely light
enough for me to find the nail I drew from the plank
which I left for my entrance. When I was fairly within
and the plank was replaced, I felt that I was indeed
"monarch of all I surveyed." What did I survey? The
church wall on the north; on the south, my own screen of
spruce boards, now well dry; on the east and west, the
ten-foot fences which I had built myself; and over
that on the west, God's deep, transparent sky, in which
I could still see a planet whose name I did not know. It
was a heaven, indeed, which He had said was as much mine
as his!
The first thing, of course, was to get out my frame.
This was a work of weeks. The next thing was to raise
it. And here the first step was the only hard one, nor
was this so hard as it would seem. The highest wall of
my house was no higher than the ten-foot fence we had
already built on the church alley. The western wall, if,
indeed, a frame house has any walls, was only eight feet
high. For foundations and sills, I dug deep post-holes,
in which I set substantial cedar posts which I knew would
outlast my day, and I framed my sills into these. I made
the frame of the western wall lie out upon the ground in
one piece; and I only needed a purchase high enough, and
a block with repeating pulleys strong enough, to be able
to haul up the whole frame by my own strength,
unassisted. The high purchase I got readily enough by
making what we called a "three-leg," near twenty feet
high, just where my castle was to stand. I had no
difficulty in hauling this into its place by a solid
staple and ring, which for this purpose I drove high in
the church wall. My multiplying pulley did the rest; and
after it was done, I took out the staple and mended the
hole it had made, so the wall was as good as ever.
You see it was nobody's business what shanty or what
tower old Mark Henry or the Fordyce heirs might or might
not put on the vacant corner lot. The Fordyce heirs were
all in nurseries and kindergartens in Geneva, and indeed
would have known nothing of corner lots had they been
living in their palace in Fourteenth Street. As for Mark
Henry, that one great achievement by which he rode up to
Fernando Street was one of the rare victories of his
life, of which ninety-nine hundredths were spent in
counting-houses. Indeed, if he had gone there, all he
would have seen was his ten-foot fence, and he would have
taken pride to himself that he had it built so high.
When the day of the first raising came, and the frame
slipped into the mortises so nicely, as I had
foreordained that it should do, I was so happy that I
could scarcely keep my secret from my mother. Indeed,
that day I did run back to dinner. And when she asked me
what pleased me so, I longed to let her know; but I only
smoothed her cheeks with my hands and kissed her on both
of them, and told her it was because she was so handsome
that I was so pleased. She said she knew I had a secret
from her, and I owned that I had, but she said she would
not try to guess, but would wait for the time for me to
tell her.
And so the summer sped by. Of course I saw my
sweetheart, as I then called my mother, less and
less. For I worked till it was pitch-dark at the castle;
and after it was closed in, so I could work inside, I
often worked till ten o'clock by candlelight. I do not
know how I lived with so little sleep; I am afraid I
slept pretty late on Sundays. But the castle grew and
grew, and the common-room, which I was most eager to
finish wholly before cold weather, was in complete order
three full weeks before my mother's birthday came.
Then came the joy of furnishing it. To this I had
looked forward all the summer, and I had measured with my
eye many a bit of furniture, and priced, in an unaffected
way, many an impossible second-hand finery, so that I
knew just what I could do and what I could not do.
My mother had always wanted a Banner stove. I knew
this, and it was a great grief to me that she had none,
though she would never say anything about it.
To my great joy, I found a second-hand Banner stove,
No. 2, at a sort of old junk-shop, which was, in fact, an
old curiosity shop not three blocks away from Ninety-
ninth Avenue. Some one had sold this to them while it
was really as good as new, and yet the keeper offered it
to me at half-price.
I hung round the place a good deal, and when the man
found I really had money and meant something, he took me
into all sorts of alleys and hiding-places, where he
stored his old things away. I made fabulous
bargains there, for either the old Jew liked me
particularly, or I liked things that nobody else wanted.
In the days when his principal customers were wharf-rats,
and his principal business the traffic in old cordage and
copper, he had hung out as a sign an old tavern-sign of
a ship that had come to him. His place still went by the
name of "The Ship," though it was really, as I say, a
mere wreck, a rambling, third-rate old furniture shop of
the old-curiosity kind.
But after I had safely carried the Banner to my new
house, and was sure the funnel drew well, and that the
escape of smoke and sparks was carefully guarded, many a
visit did I make to The Ship at early morning or late in
the evening, to bring away one or another treasure which
I had discovered there.
Under the pretence of new-varnishing some of my
mother's most precious tables and her bureau, I got them
away from her also. I knocked up, with my own hatchet
and saw, a sitting-table which I meant to have permanent
in the middle of the room, which was much more convenient
than anything I could buy or carry.
And so, on the 12th of October, the eve of my
mother's birthday, the common-room was all ready for her.
In her own room I had a new carpet and a new set of
painted chamber furniture, which I had bought at the
maker's, and brought up piece by piece. It cost me
nineteen dollars and a half, for which I paid him in
cash, which indeed he wanted sadly.
So, on the morning of the 13th of October, I kissed
my mother forty times, because that day she was forty
years old. I told her that before midnight she should
know what the great surprise was, and I asked her if she
could hold out till then.
She let me poke as much fun at her as I chose,
because she said she was so glad to have me at breakfast;
and I stayed long after breakfast, for I had told my
mother that it was her birthday, and that I should be
late. And such a thing as my asking for an hour or two
was so rare that I took it quite of course when I did
ask. I came home early at night, too. Then I said,--
"Now, sweetheart, the surprise requires that you
spend the night away from home with me. Perhaps, if you
like the place, we will spend tomorrow there. So I will
take Poll in her cage, and you must put up your night-
things and take them in your hand."
She was surprised now, for such a thing as an outing
over night had never been spoken of before by either of
us.
"Why, Rob," she said, "you are taking too much pains
for your old sweetheart, and spending too much money for
her birthday. Now, don't you think that you should
really have as good a time, say, if we went visiting
together, and then came back here?"
For, you see, she never thought of herself at all; it
was only what I should like most.
"No, sweetheart dear," said I. "It is not for me,
this 13th of October, it is all for you. And to-night's
outing is not for me, it is for you; and I think you will
like it and I think Poll will like it, and I have leave
for to-morrow, and we will stay away all to-morrow."
As for Tom-puss, I said, we would leave some milk
where he could find it, and I would leave a bone or two
for him. But I whistled Rip, my dog, after me. I took
Poll's cage, my mother took her bag, and locked and left
her door, unconscious that she was never to enter it
again.
A Ninety-ninth Avenue car took us up to Fernando
Street. It was just the close of twilight when we came
there. I took my mother to Church Alley, muttered
something about some friends, which she did not
understand more than I did, and led her up the alley in
her confused surprise. Then I pushed aside my movable
board, and, while she was still surprised, led her in
after me and slid it back again.
"What is it, dear Rob? Tell me--tell me!"
"This way, sweetheart, this way!" This was all I
would say.
I drew her after me through the long passage, led her
into the common-room, which was just lighted up by the
late evening twilight coming in between the curtains of
the great square window. Then I fairly pushed her to the
great, roomy easy-chair which I had brought from The
Ship, and placed it where she could look out on the
evening glow, and I said,--
"Mother, dear, this is the surprise; this is your new
home; and, mother dear, your own boy has made it with his
own hands, all for you."
"But, Rob, I do not understand--I do not understand
at all. I am so stupid. I know I am awake. But it is
as sudden as a dream!"
So I had to begin and to explain it all,--how here
was a vacant lot that Mark Henry had the care of, and how
I had built this house for her upon it. And long before
I had explained it all, it was quite dark. And I lighted
up the pretty student's-lamp, and I made the fire in the
new Banner with my own hands.
And that night I would not let her lift a kettle, nor
so much as cut a loaf of bread. It was my feast, I said,
and I had everything ready, round to a loaf of birthday-
cake, which I had ordered at Taylor's, which I had myself
frosted and dressed, and decorated with the initials of
my mother's name.
And when the feast was over, I had the best surprise
of all. Unknown to my mother, I had begged from my Aunt
Betsy my own father's portrait, and I had hung that
opposite the window, and now I drew the curtain that hid
it, and told my sweetheart that this and the house were
her birthday presents for this year!
. . . . . . . .
And this was the beginning of a happy life, which
lasted nearly twelve years. I could make a long story of
it, for there was an adventure in everything,--in the way
we bought our milk, and the way we took in our coals.
But there is no room for me to tell all that, and it
might not interest other people as it does me. I am sure
my mother was never sorry for the bold step she took when
we moved there from our tenement. True, she saw little
or no society, but she had not seen much before. The
conditions of our life were such that she did not like to
be seen coming out of Church Alley, lest people should
ask how she got in, and excepting in the evening, I did
not care to have her go. In the evening I could go with
her. She did not make many calls, because she could not
ask people to return them. But she would go with me to
concerts, and to the church parlor meetings, and
sometimes to exhibitions; and at such places, and on
Sundays, she would meet, perhaps, one or another of the
few friends she had in New York. But we cared for them
less and less, I will own, and we cared more and more for
each other.
As soon as the first spring came, I made an immense
effort, and spaded over nearly half of the lot. It was
ninety feet wide and over two hundred and sixty long--more
than half an acre. So I knew we could have our own fresh
vegetables, even if we never went to market. My mother
was a good gardener, and she was not afraid even to
hoe the corn when I was out of the way. I dare say that
the people whom the summer left in the street above us
often saw her from their back windows, but they did not
know--as how should they?--who had the charge of this
lot, and there was no reason why they should be surprised
to see a cornfield there. We only raised green corn. I
am fond of Indian cake, but I did not care to grind my
own corn, and I could buy sweet meal without trouble. I
settled the milk question, after the first winter, by
keeping our own goats. I fenced in, with a wire fence,
the northwest corner of our little empire, and put there
a milch goat and her two kids. The kids were pretty
little things, and would come and feed from my mother's
hand. We soon weaned them, so that we could milk their
mother; and after that our flock grew and multiplied, and
we were never again troubled for such little milk as we
used.
Some old proprietor, in the old Dutch days, must have
had an orchard in these parts. There were still left two
venerable wrecks of ancient pear-trees; and although they
bore little fruit, and what they bore was good for
nothing, they still gave a compact and grateful shade.
I sodded the ground around them and made a seat beneath,
where my mother would sit with her knitting all the
afternoon. Indeed, after the sods grew firm, I planted
hoops there, and many a good game of croquet have she and
I had together there, playing so late that we longed
for the chance they have in Sybaris, where, in the
evening, they use balls of colored glass, with fireflies
shut up inside.
On the 11th of February, in the year 1867, my old
master died, to my great regret, and I truly believe to
that of his widow and her children. His death broke up
the establishment, and I, who was always more of a
cabinet-maker or joiner than carpenter or builder, opened
a little shop of my own, where I took orders for
cupboards, drawers, stairs, and other finishing work, and
where I employed two or three German journeymen, and was
thus much more master of my own time. In particular, I
had two faithful fellows, natives of my own father's town
of Bremen. While they were with me I could leave them a
whole afternoon at a time, while I took any little job
there might be, and worked at it at my own house at home.
Where my house was, except that it was far uptown, they
never asked, nor ever, so far as I know, cared. This
gave me the chance for many a pleasant afternoon with my
mother, such as we had dreamed of in the old days when we
talked of Kansas. I would work at the lathe or the bench
and she would read to me. Or we would put off the bench
till the evening, and we would both go out into the
cornfield together.
And so we lived year after year. I am afraid that we
worshipped each other too much. We were in the
heart of a crowded city, but there was that in our lives
which tended a little to habits of loneliness, and I
suppose a moralist would say that our dangers lay in that
direction.
On the other hand, I am almost ashamed to say that,
as I sat in a seat I had made for myself in old Van der
Tromp's pear-tree, I would look upon my corn and peas and
squashes and tomatoes with a satisfaction which I believe
many a nobleman in England does not enjoy.
Till the youngest of the Fordyce heirs was of age,
and that would not be till 1880, this was all my own. I
was, by right of possession and my own labors, lord of
all this region. How else did the writers on political
economy teach me that any property existed!
I surveyed it with a secret kind of pleasure. I had
not abundance of pears; what I had were poor and few.
But I had abundance of sweet corn, of tomatoes, of peas,
and of beans. The tomatoes were as wholesome as they
were plentiful, and as I sat I could see the long shelves
of them which my mother had spread in the sun to ripen,
that we might have enough of them canned when winter
should close in upon us. I knew I should have potatoes
enough of my own raising also to begin the winter with.
I should have been glad of more. But as by any good
day's work I could buy two barrels of potatoes, I did not
fret myself that my stock was but small.
Meanwhile my stock in bank grew fast. Neither my
mother nor I had much occasion to buy new clothes. We
were at no charge for house-rent, insurance, or taxes.
I remember that a Spanish gentleman, who was fond of me,
for whom I had made a cabinet with secret drawers, paid
me in moidores and pieces-of-eight, which in those times
of paper were a sight to behold.
I carried home the little bag and told my mother that
this was a birthday present for her; indeed, that she was
to put it all in her bed that night, that she might say
she had rolled in gold and silver. She played with the
pieces, and we used them to count with as we played our
game of cribbage.
"But really, Robin, boy," said she, "it is as the
dirt under our feet. I would give it all for three or
four pairs of shoes and stockings, such as we used to buy
in York, but such as these Lynn-built shoes and steam-
knit stockings have driven out of the market."
Indeed, we wanted very little in our desert home.
And so for many years we led a happy life, and we
found more in life than would have been possible had we
been all tangled up with the cords of artificial society.
I say "we," for I am sure I did, and I think my dear
mother did.
But it was in the seventh year of our residence in
the hut that of a sudden I had a terrible shock or
fright, and this I must now describe to you. It
comes in about the middle of this history, and it may end
this chapter.
It was one Sunday afternoon, when I had taken the
fancy, as I often did of Sundays, to inspect my empire.
Of course, in a certain way, I did this every time I
climbed old Van der Tromp's pear-tree, and sat in my
hawk's-nest there. But a tour of inspection was a
different thing. I walked close round the path which I
had made next the fence of the enclosure. I went in
among my goats,--even entered the goat-house and played
with my kids. I tried the boards of the fence and the
timber-stays, to be sure they all were sound. I had
paths enough between the rows of corn and potatoes to
make a journey of three miles and half a furlong, with
two rods more, if I went through the whole of them. So
at half-past four on this fatal afternoon I bade my
mother good-by, and kissed her. I told her I should not
be back for two hours, because I was going to inspect my
empire, and I set out happily.
But in less than an hour--I can see the face of the
clock now: it was twenty-two minutes after five--I flung
myself in my chair, panting for breath, and, as my mother
said, as pale as if I had seen a ghost. But I told her
it was worse than that.
I had come out from between two high rows of corn,
which wholly covered me, upon a little patch which lay
warm to the south and west, where I had some melons
a-ripening, and was just lifting one of the melons, to be
sure that the under surface did not rot, when close
behind it I saw the print of a man's foot, which was very
plain to be seen in the soft soil.
I stood like one thunderstruck, or as if I had seen
an apparition. I listened; I looked round me. I could
hear nothing but the roar of the omnibuses, nor could I
see anything. I went up and down the path, but it was
all one. I could see no other impression but that one.
I went to it again, to see if there were any more, and to
observe if it might not be my fancy. But there was no
room for that, for there was exactly the print of an
Englishman's hobnailed shoe,--the heavy heel, the prints
of the heads of the nails. There was even a piece of
patch which had been put on it, though it had never been
half-soled.
How it came there I knew not; neither could I in the
least imagine. But, as I say, like a man perfectly
confused and out of myself, I rushed home into my hut,
not feeling the ground I went upon. I fled into it like
one pursued, and, as my mother said, when I fell into my
chair, panting, I looked as if I had seen a ghost.
It was worse than that, as I said to her.
PART II
I cannot well tell you how much dismay this sight of a
footprint in the ground gave me, nor how many sleepless
nights it cost me. All the time I was trying to make
my mother think that there was no ground for anxiety,
and yet all the time I was showing her that I was very
anxious. The more I pretended that I was not troubled,
the more absent-minded, and so the more troubled, I
appeared to her. And yet, if I made no pretence, and
told her what I really feared, I should have driven her
almost wild by the story of my terrors. To have our
pretty home broken up, perhaps to be put in the
newspapers--which was a lot that, so far, we had always
escaped in our quiet and modest life--all this was more
than she or I could bear to think of.
In the midst of these cogitations, apprehensions, and
reflections, it came into my thoughts one day, as I was
working at my shop down-town with my men, that all this
might be a chimera of my own, and that the foot might be
the print of my own boot as I had left it in the soil
some days before when I was looking at my melons. This
cheered me up a little, too. I considered that I could
by no means tell for certain where I had trod and where
I had not, and that if at last this was the print of my
own boot, I had played the part of those fools who strive
to make stories of spectres, and then are themselves
frightened at them more than anybody else.
So I returned home that day in very good spirits. I
carried to my mother a copy of Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper, which had in it some pictures that I knew
would please her, and I talked with her in as light-
hearted a way as I could, to try to make her think that
I had forgotten my alarm. And afterward we played two or
three games of Egyptian solitaire at the table, and I
went to bed unusually early. But, at the first break of
day, when I fancied or hoped that she was still asleep,
I rose quickly, and half-dressing myself, crept out to
the melon-patch to examine again the imprint of the foot
and to make sure that it was mine.
Alas! it was no more mine than it was Queen
Victoria's. If it had only been cloven, I could easily
have persuaded myself whose it was, so much grief and
trouble had it cost me. When I came to measure the mark
with my own boot, I found, just as I had seen before,
that mine was not nearly so large as this mark was.
Also, this was, as I have said, the mark of a heavy
brogan--such as I never wore--and there was the mark of
a strange patch near the toe, such as I had never seen,
nor, indeed, have seen since, from that hour to this
hour. All these things renewed my terrors. I went home
like a whipped dog, wholly certain now that some one had
found the secret of our home: we might be surprised in it
before I was aware; and what course to take for my
security I knew not.
As we breakfasted, I opened my whole heart to my
mother. If she said so, I would carry all our little
property, piece by piece, back to old Thunberg, the junk-
dealer, and with her parrot and my umbrella we would go
out to Kansas, as we used to propose. We would give up
the game. Or, if she thought best, we would stand on the
defensive. I would put bottle-glass on the upper edges
of the fences all the way round.
There were four or five odd revolvers at The Ship,
and I would buy them all, with powder and buck-shot
enough for a long siege. I would teach her how to load,
and while she loaded I would fire, till they had quite
enough of attacking us in our home. Now it has all gone
by, I should be ashamed to set down in writing the
frightful contrivances I hatched for destroying these
"creatures," as I called them, or, at least, frightening
them, so as to prevent their coming thither any more.
"Robin, my boy," said my mother to me, when I gave
her a chance at last, "if they came in here to-night--
whoever `they' may be--very little is the harm that they
could do us. But if Mr. Kennedy and twenty of his police
should come in here over the bodies of--five times five
are twenty-five, twenty-five times eleven are--two
hundred and seventy-five people whom you will have killed
by that time, if I load as fast as thee tells me I
can, why, Robin, my boy, it will go hard for thee and me
when the day of the assizes comes. They will put
handcuffs on thy poor old mother and on thee, and if they
do not send thee to Jack Ketch, they will send thee to
Bloomingdale."
I could not but see that there was sense in what she
said. Anyway, it cooled me down for the time, and I
kissed her and went to my work less eager, and, indeed,
less anxious, than I had been the night before. As I
went down-town in the car, I had a chance to ask myself
what right I had to take away the lives of these poor
savages of the neighborhood merely because they entered
on my possessions. Was it their fault that they had not
been apprenticed to carpenters? Could they help
themselves in the arrangements which had left them
savages? Had any one ever given them a chance to fence
in an up-town lot? Was it, in a word, I said to myself--
was it my merit or my good luck which made me as good as
a landed proprietor, while the Fordyce heirs had their
education? Such thoughts, before I came to my shop, had
quite tamed me down, and when I arrived there I was quite
off my design, and I concluded that I had taken a wrong
measure in my resolution to attack the savages, as I had
begun to call men who might be merely harmless loafers.
It was clearly not my business to meddle with them
unless they first attacked me. This it was my
business to prevent; if I were discovered and attacked,
then I knew my duty.
With these thoughts I went into my shop that day, and
with such thoughts as these, and with my mother's good
sense in keeping me employed in pleasanter things than
hunting for traces of savages, I got into a healthier way
of thinking.
The crop of melons came in well, and many a good
feast we had from them. Once and again I was able to
carry a nice fresh melon to an old lady my mother was
fond of, who now lay sick with a tertian ague.
Then we had the best sweet corn for dinner every day
that any man had in New York. For at Delmonico's itself,
the corn the grandees had had been picked the night
before, and had started at two o'clock in the morning on
its long journey to town. But my mother picked my corn
just at the minute when she knew I was leaving my shop.
She husked it and put it in the pot, and by the time I
had come home, had slipped up the board in the fence that
served me for a door, and had washed my face and hands in
my own room, she would have dished her dinner, would have
put her fresh corn upon the table, covered with a pretty
napkin; and so, as I say, I had a feast which no nabob in
New York had. No indeed, nor any king that I know of,
unless it were the King of the Sandwich Islands, and I
doubt if he were as well served as I.
So I became more calm and less careworn, though
I will not say but sometimes I did look carefully to see
if I could find the traces of a man's foot; but I never
saw another.
Unless we went out somewhere during the evening, we
went to bed early. We rose early as well, for I never
lost the habits of my apprenticeship. And so we were
both sound asleep in bed one night when a strange thing
happened, and a sudden fright came to us, of which I must
tell quite at length, for it made, indeed, a very sudden
change in the current of our lives.
I was sound asleep, as I said, and so, I found, was
my mother also. But I must have been partly waked by
some sudden noise in the street, for I knew I was sitting
up in my bed in the darkness when I heard a woman
scream,--a terrible cry,--and while I was yet startled,
I heard her scream again, as if she were in deadly fear.
My window was shaded by a heavy green curtain, but in an
instant I had pulled it up, and by the light of the moon
I seized my trousers and put them on.
I was well awake by this time, and when I flung open
the door of my house, so as to run into my garden, I
could hear many wild voices, some in English, some in
German, some in Irish, and some with terrible cries,
which I will not pretend I could understand.
There was no cry of a woman now, but only the howling
of angry or drunken men, when they are in a rage with
some one or with each other. What startled me was
that, whereas the woman's cry came from the street south
of me, which I have called Fernando Street, the whole
crowd of men, as they howled and swore, were passing
along that street rapidly, and then stopped for an
instant, as if they were coming up what I called Church
Alley. There must have been seven or eight of them.
Now, it was by Church Alley that my mother and I
always came into our house, and so into our garden. In
the eight years, or nearly so, that I had lived there, I
had by degrees accumulated more and more rubbish near the
furthest end of the alley as a screen, so to speak, that
when my mother or I came in or out, no one in the street
might notice us. I had even made a little wing-fence out
from my own, to which my hand-cart was chained. Next
this I had piled broken brickbats and paving-stones, and
other heavy things, that would not be stolen. There was
the stump and the root of an old pear-tree there, too
heavy to steal, and too crooked and hard to clean or saw.
There was a bit of curbstone from the street, and other
such trash, which quite masked the fence and the hand-
cart.
On the other side--that is, the church side, or the
side furthest from the street--was the sliding-board in
the fence, where my mother and I came in. So soon as it
was slid back, no man could see that the fence was not
solid.
At this moment in the night, however, when I
found that this riotous, drunken crew were pausing
at the entrance of Church Alley, as doubting if they
would not come down, I ran back through the passage,
knocking loudly for my mother as I passed, and coming to
my coal-bin, put my eye at the little hole through which
I always reconnoitred before I slid the door. I could
see nothing, nor at night ought I to have expected to do
so.
But I could hear, and I heard what I did not expect.
I could hear the heavy panting of one who had been
running, and as I listened I heard a gentle, low voice
sob out, "Ach, ach, mein Gott! Ach, mein Gott!" or words
that I thought were these, and I was conscious, when I
tried to move the door, that some one was resting close
upon it.
All the same, I put my shoulder stoutly to the cross-
bar, to which the boards of the door were nailed; I slid
it quickly in its grooves, and as it slid, a woman fell
into the passage.
She was wholly surprised by the motion, so that she
could not but fall. I seized her and dragged her in,
saying, "Hush, hush, hush!" as I did so. But not so
quick was I but that she screamed once more as I drew to
the sliding-door and thrust in the heavy bolt which held
it.
In an instant my mother was in the passage with a
light in her hand. In another instant I had seized the
light and put it out. But that instant was enough for
her and me to see that here was a lovely girl, with
no hat or bonnet on, with her hair floating wildly, both
her arms bleeding, and her clothes all stained with
blood. She could see my mother's face of amazement, and
she could see my finger on my mouth, as with the other I
dashed out the candle. We all thought quickly, and we
all knew that we must keep still.
But that unfortunate scream of hers was enough.
Though no one of us all uttered another sound, this was
like a "view-halloo," to bring all those dogs down upon
us. The passage was dark, and, to my delight, I heard
some of them breaking their shins over the curbstone and
old pear-tree of my defences. But they were not such
hounds as were easily thrown off the scent, and there
were enough to persevere while the leaders picked
themselves up again.
Then how they swore and cursed and asked questions!
And we three stood as still as so many frightened
rabbits. In an instant more one of them, who spoke in
English, said he would be hanged if he thought she had
gone into the church, that he believed she had got
through the fence; and then, with his fist, or something
harder, he began trying the boards on our side, and
others of them we could hear striking those on the other
side of the alley-way.
When it came to this, I whispered to my mother that
she must never fear, only keep perfectly still. She
dragged the frightened girl into our kitchen, which
was our sitting-room, and they both fell, I know not how,
into the great easy-chair.
For my part, I seized the light ladder, which always
hung ready at the door, and ran with it at my full speed
to the corner of Fernando Street and the alley. I
planted the ladder, and was on the top of the fence in an
instant
Then I sprang my watchman's rattle, which had hung by
the ladder, and I whirled it round well. It wholly
silenced the sound of the swearing fellows up the
passage, and their pounding. When I found they were
still, I cried out:--
"This way, 24! this way, 47! I have them all penned
up here! Signal the office, 42, and bid them send us a
sergeant. This way, fellows--up Church Alley!"
With this I was down my ladder again. But my gang of
savages needed no more. I could hear them rushing out of
the alley as fast as they might, not one of them waiting
for 24 or 47. This was lucky for me, for as it happened
I was ten minutes older before I heard two patrolmen on
the outside, wondering what frightened old cove had been
at the pains to spring a rattle.
The moonlight shone in at the western window of the
kitchen, so that as I came in I could just make out the
figure of my mother and of the girl, lying, rather than
sitting, in her lap and her arms. I was not afraid to
speak now, and I told my mother we were quite safe again,
and she told the poor girl so. I struck a match and
lighted the lamp as soon as I could. The poor,
frightened creature started as I did so, and then fell on
her knees at my mother's feet, took both her hands in her
own, and seemed like one who begs for mercy, or, indeed,
for life.
My poor, dear mother was all amazed, and her eyes
were running with tears at the sight of the poor thing's
terror. She kissed her again and again; she stroked her
beautiful golden hair with her soft hands; she said in
every word that she could think of that she was quite
safe now, and must not think of being frightened any
more.
But it was clear in a moment that the girl could not
understand any language that we could speak. My mother
tried her with a few words of German, and she smiled
then; but she shook her head prettily, as if to say that
she thanked her, but could not speak to her in that way
either. Then she spoke eagerly in some language that we
could not understand. But had it been the language of
Hottentots, we should have known that she was begging my
mother not to forsake her, so full of entreaty was every
word and every gesture.
My dear, sweet mother lifted her at last into the
easy-chair and made her lie there while she dipped some
hot water from her boiler and filled a large basin in her
sink. Then she led the pretty creature to it, and washed
from her arms, hands, and face the blood that had
hardened upon them, and looked carefully to find what her
wounds were. None of them were deep, though there
were ugly scratches on her beautiful arms; they were cut
by glass, as I guessed then, and as we learned from her
afterward. My mother was wholly prepared for all such
surgery as was needed here; she put on two bandages where
she thought they were needed, she plastered up the other
scratches with court-plaster, and then, as if the girl
understood her, she said to her, "And now, my dear child,
you must come to bed; there is no danger for you more."
The poor girl had grown somewhat reassured in the
comfortable little kitchen, but her terror seemed to come
back at any sign of removal; she started to her feet,
almost as if she were a wild creature. But I would defy
any one to be afraid of my dear mother, or indeed to
refuse to do what she bade, when she smiled so in her
inviting way and put out her hand; and so the girl went
with her, bowing to me, or dropping a sort of courtesy in
her foreign fashion, as she went out of the door, and I
was left to see what damage had been done to my castle by
the savages, as I called them.
I had sprung the rattle none too soon; for one of
these rascals, as it proved--I suppose it was the same
who swore that she had not gone into the church--with
some tool or other he had in his hand, had split out a
bit of the fence and had pried out a part of a plank. I
had done my work too well for any large piece to give
way. But the moment I looked into my coal-bin I saw that
something was amiss. I did not like very well to go
to the outside, but I must risk something; so I took out
a dark lantern which I always kept ready. Sure enough,
as I say, the fellow had struck so hard and so well that
he had split out a piece of board, and a little coal even
had fallen upon the passage-way. I was not much
displeased at this, for if he thought no nearer the truth
than that he had broken into a coal-bin of the church,
why, he was far enough from his mark for me. After
finding this, however, I was anxious enough, lest any of
them should return, not to go to bed again that night;
but all was still as death, and, to tell the truth, I
fell asleep in my chair. I doubt whether my mother
slept, or her frightened charge.
I was at work in the passage early the next morning
with some weather-stained boards I had, and before nine
o'clock I had doubled all that piece of fence, from my
wing where my hand-cart was to the church, and I had
spiked the new boards on, which looked like old boards,
as I said, with tenpenny nails; so that he would be a
stout burglar who would cut through them unless he had
tools for his purpose and daylight to work by. As I was
gathering up my tools to go in, a coarse, brutal-looking
Irishman came walking up the alley and looked round. My
work was so well done, and I had been so careful to leave
no chips, that even then he could not have guessed that
I had been building the fence anew, though I fancied
he looked at it. He seemed to want to excuse himself for
being there at all, and asked me, with an oath and in a
broad Irish brogue, if there were no other passage
through. I had the presence of mind to say in German,
"Wollen sie sprechen Deutsch?" and so made as if I
could not understand him; and then, kneeling on the
cellar-door of the church, pretended to put a key into
the lock, as if I were making sure that I had made it
firm.
And with that, he turned round with another oath, as
if he had come out of his way, and went out of the alley,
closely followed by me. I watched him as long as I
dared, but as he showed no sign of going back to the
alley, I at last walked round a square with my tools, and
so came back to my mother and the pretty stranger.
My mother had been trying to get at her story. She
made her understand a few words of German, but they
talked by signs and smiles and tears and kisses much more
than by words; and by this time they understood each
other so well that my mother had persuaded her not to go
away that day.
Nor did she go out for many days after; I will go
before my story far enough to say that. She had, indeed,
been horribly frightened that night, and she was as loath
to go out again into the streets of New York as I should
be to plunge from a safe shore into some terrible,
howling ocean; or, indeed, as one who found himself safe
at home would be to trust himself to the tender
mercies of a tribe of cannibals.
Two such loving women as they were were not long in
building up a language, especially as my mother had
learned from my father and his friends, in her early
life, some of the common words of German--what she called
a bread-and-butter German. For our new inmate was a
Swedish girl. Her story, in short, was this:--
She had been in New York but two days. On the voyage
over, they had had some terrible sickness on the vessel,
and the poor child's mother had died very suddenly and
had been buried in the sea. Her father had died long
before.
This was, as you may think, a terrible shock to her.
But she had hoped and hoped for the voyage to come to an
end, because there was a certain brother of hers in
America whom they were to meet at their landing, and
though she was very lonely on the packet-ship, in which
she and her mother and a certain family of the name of
Hantsen--of whom she had much to say--were the only
Swedes, still she expected to find the brother almost as
soon, as I may say, as they saw the land.
She felt badly enough that he did not come on board
with the quarantine officer. When the passengers were
brought to Castle Garden, and no brother came, she felt
worse. However, with the help of the clerks there, she
got off a letter to him, somewhere in Jersey, and
proposed to wait as long as they would let her, till he
should come.
The second day there came a man to the Garden, who
said he was a Dane, but he spoke Swedish well enough. He
said her brother was sick, and had sent him to find her.
She was to come with her trunks, and her mother's, and
all their affairs, to his house, and the same afternoon
they should go to where the brother was.
Without doubt or fear she went with this man, and
spent the day at a forlorn sort of hotel which she
described, but which I never could find again. Toward
night the man came again and bade her take a bag, with
her one change of dress, and come with him to her
brother.
After a long ride through the city, they got out at
a house which, thank God! was only one block from
Fernando Street. And there this simple, innocent
creature, as she went in, asked where her brother was, to
meet only a burst of laughter from one or two coarse-
looking men, and from half-a-dozen brazen-faced girls
whom she hated, she said, the minute she saw them.
Except that an old woman took off her shawl and cloak
and bonnet, and took away from her the travelling things
she had in her hand, nobody took any care of her but to
laugh at her, and mock her if she dared say anything.
She tried to go out to the door to find even the
Dane who had brought her there, but she was given to
understand that he was coming again for her, and that she
must wait till he came. As for her brother, there was no
brother there, nor had been any. The poor girl had been
trapped, and saw that she had been trapped; she had been
spirited away from everybody who ever heard of her
mother, and was in the clutches, as she said to my mother
afterward, of a crew of devils who knew nothing of love
or of mercy.
They did try to make her eat and drink,--tried to
make her drink champagne, or any other wine; but they had
no fool to deal with. The girl did not, I think, let her
captors know how desperate were her resolutions. But her
eyes were wide open, and she was not going to lose any
chance. She was all on the alert for her escape when, at
eleven o'clock, the Dane came at last whom she had been
expecting so anxiously.
The girl asked him for her brother, only to be put
off by one excuse or another, and then to hear from him
the most loathsome talk of his admiration, not to say his
passion, for her.
They were nearly alone by this time, and he led her
unresisting, as he thought, into another smaller room,
brilliantly lighted, and, as she saw in a glance, gaudily
furnished, with wine and fruit and cake on a side-
table,--a room where they would be quite alone.
She walked simply across and looked at herself in the
great mirror. Then she made some foolish little
speech about her hair, and how pale she looked. Then she
crossed to the sofa, and sat upon it with as tired an air
as he might have expected of one who had lived through
such a day. Then she looked up at him and even smiled
upon him, she said, and asked him if he would not ask
them for some cold water.
The fellow turned into the passage-way, well pleased
with her submission, and in the same instant the girl was
at the window as if she had flown across the room.
Fool! The window was made fast, not by any moving
bolt, either. It was nailed down, and it did not give a
hairs-breadth to her hand.
Little cared she for that. She sat on the window-
seat, which was broad enough to hold her; she braced her
feet against the foot of the bedstead, which stood just
near enough to her; she turned enough to bring her
shoulder against the window-sash, and then with her whole
force she heaved herself against the sash, and the entire
window, of course, gave way.
The girl caught herself upon the blind, which swung
open before her. She pulled herself free from the sill
and window-seat, and dropped fearless into the street.
The fall was not long. She lighted on her feet and
ran as only fear could teach her to run. Where to, she
knew not; but she thought she turned a corner before she
heard any voices from behind.
Still she ran. And it was when she came to the
corner of the next street that she heard for the first
time the screams of pursuers.
She turned again, like a poor hunted hare as she was.
But what was her running to theirs? She was passing our
long fence in Fernando Street, and then for the first
time she screamed for help.
It was that scream which waked me.
She saw the steeple of the church. She had a dim
feeling that a church would be an asylum. So was it that
she ran up our alley, to find that she was in a trap
there.
And then it was that she fell against my door, that
she cried twice, "Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" and that the
good God, who had heard her, sent me to draw her in.
We had to learn her language, in a fashion, and she
to learn ours, before we understood her story in this
way. But at the very first my mother made out that the
girl had fled from savages who meant worse than death for
her. So she understood why she was so frightened at
every sound, and why at first she was afraid to stay with
us, yet more afraid to go.
But this passed off in a day or two. She took to my
mother with a sort of eager way which showed how she must
have loved her own mother, and how much she lost when she
lost her. And that was one of the parts of her sad story
that we understood.
No one, I think, could help loving my mother; but
here was a poor, storm-tossed creature who, I might say,
had nothing else to love, seeing she had lost all trace
of this brother, and here was my mother, soothing her,
comforting her, dressing her wounds for her, trying to
make her feel that God's world was not all wickedness;
and the girl in return poured out her whole heart.
When my mother explained to her that she should not
let her go away till her brother was found, then for the
first time she seemed perfectly happy. She was indeed
the loveliest creature I ever put my eyes on.
She was then about nineteen years old, of a delicate
complexion naturally, which was now a little browned by
the sea-air. She was rather tall than otherwise, but her
figure was so graceful that I think you never thought her
tall. Her eyes were perhaps deep-set, and of that
strange gray which I have heard it said the goddesses in
the Greek poetry had. Still, when she was sad, one saw
the less of all this. It was not till she forgot her
grief for the instant in the certainty that she might
rest with my mother, so that her whole face blazed with
joy, that I first knew what the perfect beauty of a
perfect woman was.
Her name, it seemed, was Frida,--a name made from the
name of one of the old goddesses among the Northmen, the
same from whom our day Friday is named. She is the half-
sister of Thor, from whom Thursday is named, and the
daughter of Wodin, from whom Wednesday is named.
I knew little of all this then, but I did not wonder
when I read afterward that this northern goddess was the
Goddess of Love, the friend of song, the most beautiful
of all their divinities,--queen of spring and light and
everything lovely.
But surely never any one took fewer of the airs of a
goddess than our Frida did while she was with us. She
would watch my mother, as if afraid that she should put
her hand to a gridiron or a tin dipper. She gave her to
understand, in a thousand pretty ways, that she should be
her faithful, loving, and sincere. servant. If she would
only show her what to do, she would work for her as a
child that loved her. And so indeed she did. My dear
mother would laugh and say she was quite a fine lady now,
for Frida would not let her touch broom nor mop, skimmer
nor dusting-cloth.
The girl would do anything but go out upon an errand.
She could not bear to see the other side of the fence.
What she thought of it all I do not know. Whether she
thought it was the custom in America for young men to
live shut up with their mothers in enclosures of half an
acre square, or whether she thought we two made some
peculiar religious order, whose rules provided that one
woman and one man should live together in a convent or
monastery of their own, or whether she supposed half New
York was made up, as Marco Polo found Pekin, of
cottages or of gardens, I did not know, nor did I much
care. I could see that here was provided a companion for
my mother, who was else so lonely, and I very soon found
that she was as much a companion for me.
So soon as we could understand her at all, I took the
name of her brother and his address. When he wrote last
he was tending a saw-mill at a place about seven miles
away from Tuckahoe, in Jersey. But he said he was going
to leave there at once, so that they need not write
there. He sent the money for their passage, and
promised, as I said, to meet them at New York.
This was a poor clew at the best. But I put a good
face on it, and promised her I would find him if he could
be found. And I spared no pains. I wrote to the
postmaster at Tuckahoe, and to a minister I heard of
there. I inquired of the Swedish consuls in New York and
Philadelphia. Indeed, in the end, I went to Tuckahoe
myself, with her, to inquire. But this was long after.
However, I may say here, once for all, to use an old
phrase of my mother's, we never found "hide nor hair" of
him. And although this grieved Frida, of course, yet it
came on her gradually, and as she had never seen him to
remember him, it was not the same loss as if they had
grown up together.
Meanwhile that first winter was, I thought, the
pleasantest I had ever known in my life. I did not have
to work very hard now, for my business was rather
the laying out work for my men, and sometimes a nice job
which needed my hand on my lathe at home, or in some
other delicate affair that I could bring home with me.
We were teaching Frida English, my mother and I, and
she and I made a great frolic of her teaching me Swedish.
I would bring home Swedish newspapers and stories for
her, and we would puzzle them out together,--she as much
troubled to find the English word as I to find out the
Swedish. Then she sang like a bird when she was about
her household work, or when she sat sewing for my mother,
and she had not lived with us a fortnight before she
began to join us on Sunday evenings in the choruses of
the Methodist hymns which my mother and I sang together.
So then we made her sing Swedish hymns to us. And before
she knew it, the great tears would brim over her deep
eyes and would run down in pearls upon her cheek.
Nothing set her to thinking of her old home as those
Sunday evenings did. Of a Sunday evening we could make
her go out with us to church sometimes. Not but then she
would half cover her face with a veil, so afraid was she
that we might meet the Dane. But I told her that the
last place we should find him at would be at church on
Sunday evening.
I have come far in advance of my story, that I might
make any one who reads this life of mine to understand
how naturally and simply this poor lost bird nestled down
into our quiet life, and how the house that was
built for two proved big enough for three. For I made
some new purchases now, and fitted up the little middle
chamber for Frida's own use. We had called it the "spare
chamber" before, in joke. But now my mother fitted
pretty curtains to it, and other hangings, without
Frida's knowledge. I had a square of carpet made up at
the warehouse for the middle of the floor, and by making
her do one errand and another in the corner of the garden
one pleasant afternoon in November, we had it all
prettily fitted up for her room before she knew it. And
a great gala we made of it when she came in from
gathering the seeds of the calystegia, which she had been
sent for.
She looked like a northern Flora as she came in, with
her arms all festooned by the vines she had been pulling
down. And when my mother made her come out to the door
she had never seen opened before, and led her in, and
told her that this pretty chamber was all her own, the
pretty creature flushed crimson red at first, and then
her quick tears ran over, and she fell on my mother's
neck and kissed her as if she would never be done. And
then she timidly held her hand out to me, too, as I stood
in the doorway, and said, in her slow, careful English,--
"And you, too--and you, too. I must tank you both,
also, especially. You are so good--so good to de poor
lost girl!" That was a very happy evening.
But, as I say, I have gone ahead of my story. For
before we had these quiet evenings we were fated to have
many anxious ones and one stormy one.
The very first day that Frida was with us, I felt
sure that the savages would make another descent upon us.
They had heard her scream, that was certain. They knew
she had not passed them, that was certain. They knew
there was a coal-bin on the other side of our fence, that
was certain. They would have reason enough for being
afraid to have her at large, if, indeed, there were no
worse passion than fear driving some of them in pursuit
of her. I could not keep out of my mind the beastly look
of the Irishman who asked me, with such an ugly leer on
his face, if there were no passage through. Not that I
told either of the two women of my fears. But, all the
same, I did not undress myself for a week, and sat in the
great easy-chair in our kitchen through the whole of
every night, waiting for the least sound of alarm.
Next to the savages, I had always lived in fear of
being discovered in my retreat by the police, who would
certainly think it strange to find a man and his mother
living in a shed, without any practicable outside door,
in what they called a vacant lot.
But I have read of weak nations in history which were
fain to call upon one neighbor whom they did not like to
protect them against another whom they liked less.
I made up my mind, in like wise, to go round to the
police-station nearest me.
And so, having dressed myself in my black coat, and
put on a round hat and gloves, I bought me a Malacca
walking-stick, such as was then in fashion, and called
upon the captain in style. I told him I lived next the
church, and that on such and such a night there was a
regular row among roughs, and that several of them went
storming up the alley in a crowd. I said, "Although your
men were there as quick as they could come, these fellows
had all gone before they came." But then I explained
that I had seen a fellow hanging about the alley in the
daytime, who seemed to be there for no good; that there
was a hand-cart kept there by a workman, who seemed to be
an honest fellow, and, perhaps, all they wanted was to
steal that; that, if I could, I would warn him. But
meanwhile, I said, I had come round to the station to
give the warning of my suspicions, that if my rattle was
heard again, the patrolmen might know what was in the
wind.
The captain was a good deal impressed by my make-up
and by the ease of my manner. He affected to be
perfectly well acquainted with me, although we had never
happened to meet at the Century Club or at the Union
League. I confirmed the favorable impression I had made
by leaving my card, which I had had handsomely engraved:
"MR. ROBINSON CRUSOE." With my pencil I added my
down-town address, where, I said, a note or telegram
would find me.
I was not a day too soon with my visit to this
gentleman. That very night, after my mother and Frida
had gone to bed, as I sat in my easychair, there came
over me one of those strange intimations which I have
never found it safe to disregard. Sometimes it is of
good, and sometimes of bad. This time it made me certain
that all was not well. To relieve my fears I lifted my
ladder over the wall and dropped it in the alley. I
swung myself down and carried it to the very end of the
alley, to the place where I had dragged poor Frida in.
The moon fell on the fence opposite ours. My wing-fence
and hand-cart were all in shade. But everything was safe
there.
Again I chided myself for my fears, when, as I looked
up the alley to the street, I saw a group of four men
come in stealthily. They said not a word, but I could
make out their forms distinctly against the houses
opposite.
I was caught in my own trap!
Not quite! They had not seen me, for I was wholly in
shadow. I stepped quickly in at my own slide. I pushed
it back and bolted it securely, and with my heart in my
mouth, I waited at my hole of observation. In a minute
more they were close around me, though they did not
suspect I was so near.
They also had a dark-lantern, and, I thought,
more than one. They spoke in low tones; but as they
had no thought they had a hearer quite so near, I could
hear all they said.
"I tell you it was this side, and this is the side I
heard their deuced psalm-singing day before yesterday."
"What if he did hear psalm-singing? Are you going to
break into a man's garden because he sings psalms? I
came here to find out where the girl went to; and now you
talk of psalm-singing and coal-bins." This from another,
whose English was poor, and in whom I fancied I heard the
Dane. It was clear enough that be spoke sense, and a
sort of doubt fell on the whole crew; but speaker No. 1,
with a heavy crowbar he had, smashed into my pine wall,
as I have a right to call it now, with a force which made
the splinters fly.
"I should think we were all at Niblo's," said a man
of slighter build, "and that we were playing Humpty
Dumpty. Because a girl flew out of a window, you think
a fence opened to take her in. Why should she not go
through a door? and he kicked with his foot upon the
heavy sloping cellar-door of the church, which just rose
a little from the pavement. It was the doorway which
they used there when they took in their supply of coal.
The moon fell full on one side of it. To my surprise it
was loose and gave way.
"Here is where the girl flew to, and here is
where Bully Bigg, the donkey, let her slip out of
his fingers. I knew he was a fool, but I did not know he
was such a fool," said the Dane (if he were the Dane).
I will not pretend to write down the oaths and foul
words which came in between every two of the words I have
repeated.
"Fool yourself!" replied the Bully; "and what sort of
a fool is the man who comes up a blind alley looking
after a girl that will not kiss him when he bids her?"
"Anyway," put in another of the crew, who had just
now lifted the heavy cellar-door, "other people may find
it handy to hop down here when the `beaks' are too near
them. It's a handy place to know of in a dark night, if
the dear deacons do choose to keep it open for a poor
psalm-singing tramp, who has no chance at the station-
house. Here, Lopp, you are the tallest,--jump in and
tell us what is there;" and at this moment the Dane
caught sight of my unfortunate ladder, lying full in the
moonlight. I could see him seize it and run to the
doorway with it with a deep laugh and some phrase of his
own country talk, which I did not understand.
"The deacons are very good," said the savage who had
lifted the cellar-door. "They make everything handy for
us poor fellows."
And though he had not planted the ladder, he was the
first to run down, and called for the rest to follow.
The Dane was second, Lopp was third, and "The
Bully," as the big rascal seemed to be called by
distinction, was the fourth.
I saw him disappear from my view with a mixture of
wonder and terror which I will not describe. I seized my
light overcoat, which always hung in the passage. I
flung open my sliding-door and shut it again behind me.
I looked into the black of the cellar to see the
reflections from their distant lanterns, and without a
sound I drew up my ladder. Then I ran to the head of the
alley and sounded my rattle as I would have sounded the
trumpet for a charge in battle. The officers joined me
in one moment.
"I am the man who spoke to the captain about these
rowdies. Four of them are in the cellar of the church
yonder now."
"Do you know who?"
"One they called Lopp, and one they called Bully
Bigg," said I. "I do not know the others' names."
The officers were enraptured.
I led them, and two other patrolmen who joined us, to
the shelter of my wing-wall. In a few minutes the head
of the Dane appeared, as he was lifted from below. With
an effort and three or four oaths, he struggled out upon
the ground, to be seized and gagged the moment he stepped
back. With varying fortunes, Bigg and Lopp emerged, and
were seized and handcuffed in turn. The fourth
surrendered on being summoned.
What followed comes into the line of daily life and
the morning newspaper so regularly that I need not
describe it. Against the Dane it proved that endless
warrants could be brought immediately. His lair of
stolen baggage and other property was unearthed, and
countless sufferers claimed their own. I was able to
recover Frida's and her mother's possessions--the locks
on the trunks still unbroken. The Dane himself would
have been sent to the Island on I know not how many
charges, but that the Danish minister asked for him that
he might be hanged in Denmark, and he was sent and hanged
accordingly.
Lopp was sent to Sing-Sing for ten years, and has not
yet been pardoned.
Bigg and Cordon were sent to Blackwell's Island for
three years each. And so the land had peace for that
time.
That winter, as there came on one and another idle
alarm that Frida's brother might be heard from, my heart
sank with the lowest terror lest she should go away. And
in the spring I told her that if she went away I was sure
I should die. And the dear girl looked down, and looked
up, and said she thought--she thought she should, too.
And we told my mother that we had determined that Frida
should never go away while we stayed there. And she
approved.
So I wrote a note to the minister of the church which
had protected us so long, and one night we slid the
board carefully, and all three walked round, fearless of
the Dane, and Frida and I were married.
It was more than three years after, when I received
by one post three letters, which gave us great ground for
consultation. The first was from my old friend and
patron, the Spaniard. He wrote to me from Chicago, where
he, in his turn, had fallen in with a crew of savages,
who had stripped him of all he had, under the pretext of
a land-enterprise they engaged him in, and had left him
without a real, as he said. He wanted to know if I could
not find him some clerkship, or even some place as
janitor, in New York.
The second letter was from old Mr. Henry in
Philadelphia, who had always employed me after my old
master's death. He said that the fence around the lot in
Ninety-ninth Avenue might need some repairs, and he
wished I would look at it. He was growing old, he said,
and he did not care to come to New York. But the Fordyce
heirs would spend ten years in Europe.
The third letter was from Tom Grinnell.
I wrote to Mr. Henry that I thought he had better let
me knock up a little office, where a keeper might sleep,
if necessary; that there was some stuff with which I
could put up such an office, and that I had an old
friend, a Spaniard, who was an honest fellow, and if he
might have his bed in the office, would take
gratefully whatever his services to the estate proved
worth. He wrote me by the next day's mail that I might
engage the Spaniard and finish the office. So I wrote to
the Spaniard and got a letter from him, accepting the
post provided for him. Then I wrote to Tom Grinnell.
The last day we spent at our dear old home, I
occupied myself in finishing the office as Friend Henry
bade me. I made a "practicable door," which opened from
the passage on Church Alley. Then I loaded my hand-cart
with my own chest and took it myself, in my working
clothes, to the Vanderbilt Station, where I took a brass
check for it.
I could not wait for the Spaniard, but I left a
letter for him, giving him a description of the way I
managed the goats, and directions to milk and fatten
them, and to make both butter and cheese.
At half-past ten a "crystal," as those cabs were then
called, came to the corner of Fernando Street and Church
Alley, and so we drove to the station. I left the key of
the office, directed to the Spaniard, in the hands of the
baggage-master.
When I took leave of my castle, as I called it, I
carried with me for relics the great straw hat I had
made, my umbrella, and one of my parrots; also I forgot
not to take the money I formerly mentioned, which had
lain by me so long useless that it was grown rusty
and tarnished, and could scarcely pass for money till it
had been a little rubbed and handled. With these relics
and with my wife's and mother's baggage and my own chest,
we arrived at our new home.
BREAD ON THE WATERS
A WASHINGTON CHRISTMAS
[No. This story also is "Invented Example." But it
is founded on facts. It is a pleasure to me, writing
fifty-four years after the commission intrusted to me by
the late Mrs. Fales, to say that that is a real name, and
that her benevolence at a distance is precisely
represented here.
Perhaps the large history of the world would be
differently written but for that kindness of hers.
I was a very young clergyman, and the remittance she
made to me was the first trust of the same kind which had
ever been confided to me.]
CHAPTER I
MAKE READY
"Only think, Matty, papa passed right by me when I was
sitting with my back to the fire and stitching away on
his book-mark without my once seeing him! But he was
so busy talking to mamma that he never saw what I was
doing, and I huddled it under a newspaper before he
came back again. Well, I have got papa's present done,
but I cannot keep out of mamma's way. Matty, dear, if
I will sit in the sun and keep a shawl on, may I not
sit in your room and work? It is not one bit cold
there. Really, Matty, it is a great deal warmer
than it was yesterday."
"Dear child," said Matty, to whom everybody came so
readily for advice and help, "I can do better for you
than that. You shall come into the study; papa will be
away all the morning, and I will have the fire kept up
there,--and mamma shall never come near you."
All this, and a thousand times more of plotting and
counterplotting, was going on among four children and
their elders in a comfortable, free-and-easy seeming
household in Washington, as the boys and girls, young men
and young women were in the last agonies of making ready
for Christmas. Matty is fully entitled to be called a
young woman, when we see her. She has just passed her
twenty-first birthday. But she looks as fresh and pretty
as when she was seventeen, and certainly she is a great
deal pleasanter though she be wiser. She is the oldest
of the troop. Tom, the next, is expected from Annapolis
this afternoon, and Beverly from Charlotte. Then come
four boys and girls whose ages and places the reader must
guess at as we go on.
The youngest of the family were still young enough to
write the names of the presents which they would be glad
to receive, or to denote them by rude hieroglyphs, on
large sheets of paper. They were wont to pin up these
sheets on certain doors, which, by long usage in this
free-and-easy family, had come to be regarded as the
bulletin-boards of the establishment. Well-nigh
every range of created things had some representation on
these bulletins,--from an ambling pony round to a "boot-
buttenner," thus spelled out by poor Laura, who was
constantly in disgrace, because she always appeared
latest at the door when the children started for church,
to ride, or for school. The youngsters still held to the
theory of announcing thus their wants in advance. Horace
doubted whether he were not too old. But there was so
much danger that nobody would know how much he needed a
jig-saw, that he finally compromised with his dignity,
wrote on a virgin sheet of paper, "gig-saw," signed his
name, "Horace Molyneux, Dec. 21," and left his other
presents to conjecture.
And of course at the very end, as Santa Claus and his
revels were close upon them, while the work done had been
wonderful, that which we ought to have done but which we
had left undone, was simply terrible. Here were pictures
that must be brought home from the frame-man, who had
never pretended he would send them; there were ferns and
lycopodiums in pots which must be brought home from the
greenhouse; here were presents for other homes, which
must not only be finished, but must be put up in paper
and sent before night, so as to appear on other trees.
Every one of these must be shown to mamma, an approved by
her and praised; and every one must be shown to dear
Matty, and praised and approved by her. And yet by
no accident must Matty see her own presents or dream that
any child has remembered her, or mamma see HERS or
think herself remembered.
And Matty has all her own little list to see to,
while she keeps a heart at leisure from itself to soothe
and sympathize. She has to correct the mistakes, to
repair the failures, to respect the wonder, to refresh
the discouragement, of each and all the youngsters. Her
own Sunday scholars are to be provided with their
presents. The last orders are to be given for the
Christmas dinners of half-a-dozen families of vassals,
mostly black or of some shade of black, who never forgot
their vassalage as Christmas came round. Turkey,
cranberry, apples, tea, cheese, and butter must be sent
to each household of these vassals, as if every member
were paralyzed except in the muscles of the jaw. But,
all the same, Matty or her mother must be in readiness
all the morning and afternoon to receive the visits of
all the vassals,--who, so far as this form of homage
went, did not seem to be paralyzed at all.
For herself, Matty took possession of the dining-
room, as soon as she could clear it of the breakfast
equipage, of the children and of the servants, and here,
with pen and ink, with wrapping-paper and twine, with
telegraph blanks and with the directory, and with Venty
as her Ariel messenger--not so airy and quick as Ariel,
but quite as willing--Matty worked her wonders, and
gave her audiences, whether to vassals from without or
puzzled children from within.
Venty was short for Ventidius. But this name, given
in baptism, was one which Venty seldom heard.
Matty corded up this parcel, and made Venty cord up
that; wrote this note of compliment, that of inquiry,
that of congratulation, and sent Venty on this, that, and
another errand with them; relieved Flossy's anxieties and
poor Laura's in ways which have been described; made sure
that the wagon should be at the station in ample time for
Beverly's arrival; and at last, at nearly one o'clock,
called Aunty Chloe (who was in waiting on everybody as a
superserviceable person, on the pretence that she was
needed), bade Aunty pick up the scraps, sweep the floor,
and bring the room to rights. And so, having attended to
everybody beside herself, to all their wishes and hopes
and fears, poor Matty--or shall I say, dear Matty--ran
off to her own room, to finish her own presents and make
her own last preparations.
She had kept up her spirits as best she could all the
morning, but, at any moment when she was alone, her
spirits had fallen again. She knew it, and she knew why.
And now she could not hold out any longer. She and her
mother, thank God, never had any secrets. And as she ran
by her mother's door she could not help tapping, to be
sure if she had come home.
Yes, she had come home. "Come in!" and Matty ran in.
Her mother had not even taken off her hat or her
gloves. She had flung herself on the sofa, as if her
walk had been quite too much for her; her salts and her
handkerchief were in her hands, and when she saw it was
Matty, as she had hoped when she spoke, she would not
even pretend she had not been in tears.
In a moment Matty was on her knees on the floor by
the sofa, and somehow had her left arm round about her
mother's neck.
"Dear, dear mamma! What is it, what is the matter?"
"My dear, dear Matty," replied her mother, just
succeeding in speaking without sobs, and speaking the
more easily because she stroked the girl's hair and
caressed her as she spoke, "do not ask, do not try to
know. You will know, if you do not guess, only too soon.
And now the children will be better, and papa will get
through Christmas better, if you do not know, my
darling."
"No, dear mamma," said Matty, crossing her mother's
purpose almost for the first time that she remembered,
but wholly sure that she was right in doing so,--"No,
dear mamma, it is not best so. Indeed, it is not, mamma!
I feel in my bones that it is not!" This she said with
a wretched attempt to smile, which was the more ghastly
because the tears were running down from both their
faces.
"You see I have tried, mamma. I knew all day
yesterday that something was wrong, and at breakfast this
morning I knew it. And I have had to hold up--with the
children and all these people--with the feeling that any
minute the hair might break and the sword fall. And I
know I shall do better if you tell me. You see the boys
will be here before dark, and of course they will see,
and what in the world shall I say to them?"
"What, indeed?" said her poor mother. "Terrible it
is, dear child, because your father is so wretched. I
have just come from him. He would not let me stay, and
yet for the minute I was there, I saw that no one else
could come in to goad him. Dear, dear papa, he is so
resolute and brave, and yet any minute I was afraid that
he would break a blood-vessel and fall dead before me.
Oh, Matty, Matty, my darling, it is terrible!"
And this time the poor woman could not control
herself longer, but gave way to her sobs, and her voice
fairly broke, so that she was inarticulate, as she laid
her cheek against her daughter's on the sofa.
"What is terrible? Dear mamma, you must tell me!"
"I think I must tell you, Matty, my darling. I
believe if I cannot tell some one, I shall die."
Then Mrs. Molyneux told the whole horror to Matty.
Here was her husband charged with the grossest
plunder of the treasury, and now charged even in the
House of Representatives. It had been whispered about
before, and had been hinted at in some of the lower
newspapers, but now even a committee of Congress had
noticed it, and had "given him an opportunity to clear
himself." There was no less a sum than forty-seven
thousand dollars, in three separate payments, charged to
him at the Navy Department as long ago as the second and
third years of the Civil War. At the Navy they had his
receipts for it. Not that he had been in that department
then any more than he was now. He was then chief clerk
in the Bureau of Internal Improvement, as he was now
Commissioner there. But this was when the second Rio
Grande expedition was fitted out; and from Mr. Molyneux's
knowledge of Spanish, and his old connection with the
Santa Fe trade, this particular matter had been intrusted
to him.
"Yes, dear mamma!"
"Well, papa has it all down on his own cashbook; that
book he carries in his breast-pocket. There are the
three payments, and then all the transfers he made to the
different people. One, was that old white-haired
Spaniard with the harelip, who used to come here at the
back door, so that he should not be seen at the
Department. But it was before you remember. The others
were in smaller sums. But the whole thing was done in
three weeks, and then the expedition sailed, and papa had
enough else to think of, and has never thought of it
since, till ten or fifteen days ago, when somebody in the
Eleventh Auditor's office discovered this charge, and his
receipt for this money."
"Well, dear mamma?"
"Well, dear child, that is all, but that now the
newspapers have got hold of it, and the Committee on
Retrenchment, who are all new men, with their reputations
to make, have got hold of it, and some of them really
think, you know, that papa has stolen the money!" And
she broke down crying again.
"But he can show his accounts, mamma!" What are his
accounts worth? He must show the vouchers, as they are
called. He must show these people's receipts, and what
has become of these people; what they did with the money.
He must show everything. Well, when the `Copperhead'
first spoke of it--that was a fortnight ago--papa was
really pleased. For he said it would be a good chance to
bring out a piece of war history. He said that in our
Bureau we had never had any credit for the Rio Grande
successes, that they were all our thunder; because
THEN he could laugh about this horrid thing. He said
the Navy had taken all the boners, while we deserved them
all. And he said if these horrid `Copperhead' and
`Argus' and `Scorpion' people would only publish the
vouchers half as freely as they published the charges, we
should get a little of the credit that was our due."
"Well, mamma, and what is the trouble now?"
"Why, papa was so sure that he would do nothing until
an official call came. But on Monday it got into
Congress. That hairy man from the Yellowstone brought in
a resolution or something, and the Committee was ordered
to inquire. And when the order came down, papa told Mr.
Waltsingham to bring him the papers, and, Matty, the
papers were not there!"
"Stolen!" cried Matty, understanding the crisis for
the first time.
"Yes--perhaps--or lost--hidden somewhere. You have
no idea of the work of those days night work and all
that. Many a time your father did not undress for a
week."
"And now he must remember where he put a horrid pile
of papers, eleven, twelve years ago. Mamma, that pile is
stolen. That odious Greenhithe stole it. He lives in
Philadelphia now, and he has put up these newspapers to
this lie."
Mr. Greenhithe was an underclerk in the Internal
Improvement Bureau, who had shown an amount of attention
to Miss Matty, which she had disliked and had refused to
receive. She had always said he was bad and would come
to a bad end, and when he was detected in a low trick,
selling stationery which he had stolen from the supply
room, and was discharged in disgrace, Matty had said it
was good enough for him.
These were her reasons for pronouncing at once
that he had stolen the vouchers and had started the
rumors.
"I do not know. Papa does not know. He hardly tries
to guess. He says either way it is bad. If the vouchers
are stolen, he is in fault, for he is responsible for the
archives; if he cannot produce the vouchers, then all the
country is down on him for stealing. I only hope," said
poor Mrs. Molyneux, "that they won't say our poor old
wagon is a coach and six;" and this time she tried to
smile.
And now she had told her story. All last night,
while the children were asleep, Mr. Molyneux had been at
the office, even till four o'clock in the morning, taking
old dusty piles from their lairs and searching for those
wretched vouchers. And mamma had been waiting--shall one
not say, had been weeping?--here at home. That was the
reason poor papa had looked so haggard at breakfast this
morning.
This was all mamma had to tell. She had been to the
office this morning, but papa would not let her stay. He
must see all comers, just as if nothing had happened, was
happening, or was going to happen.
Well! Matty did make her mother take off her jacket
and her hat and her gloves. She even made her drink a
glass of wine and lie down. And then the poor girl
retired to her own room, with such appetite as she might
for taking the last stitches in worsted work, for
stippling in the lights into drawings, for writing
the presentation lines in books, and for doing the
thousand little niceties in the way of finishing touches
which she had promised the children to do for them.
Her dominant feeling--yes, it was a dominant passion,
as she knew--was simply rage against this miserable
Greenhithe, this cowardly sneak who was thus taking his
revenge upon her, because she had been so cold to him.
Or was it that he made up to her because he was already
in trouble at the Office and hoped she would clear him
with her father? Either way he was a snake and a
scorpion, but he had worked out for himself a terrible
revenge. Poor Matty! She tried to think what she could
do, how she could help, for that was the habit of her
life. But this was now hard indeed. Her mind would not
now take that turn. All that it would turn to was to the
wretched and worse than worthless question, what
punishment might fall on him for such utter baseness and
wickedness.
All the same the children must have their lunch, and
they must not know that anything was the matter. Oh
dear! this concealment was the worst of all!
So they had their lunch. And poor Matty counselled
again, and helped again, and took the last stitches, and
mended the last breaks, and waited and wondered, and
tried to hope, till at five o'clock an office messenger
came up with this message.
4.45 P.M.
DEAR MATTY,--I shall not come up to dinner. There is
pressing work here. Tell mamma not to sit up for me. I
have my key.
I have no chance to get my things for the children.
Will you see to it? Here is twenty dollars, and if you
need more let them send in the bill. I had only thought
of that jig-saw--was it?--that Horace wants. See that
the dear fellow has a good one.
Love to all and ever yours,
PAPA.
"Poor, dear papa," said Matty aloud, shedding tears
in spite of herself. "To be thinking of jig-saws and
children in all this horrid hunt! As if hunting for
anything was not the worst trial of all, always." And at
once the brave girl took down her wraps and put on her
walking-shoes, that her father's commissions might be met
before their six-o'clock dinner. And she determined that
first of all she would meet Tom at the station.
At the station she met Tom; that was well. Matty had
not been charged to secrecy; that was well. She told him
all the story, not without adding her suspicions, and
giving him some notion of her rage.
And Tom was angry enough,--there was a crumb of
comfort there. But Tom went off on another track. Tom
distrusted the Navy Department. He had been long enough
at Annapolis to doubt the red tape of the bureaus with
which his chiefs had to do. "If the navy had the
money, the navy had the vouchers," that was Tom's theory.
He knew a chief clerk in the navy, and Tom was going at
once round there.
But Matty held him in check at least for the moment.
Whatever else he did, he must come home first; he must
see mamma and he must see the children, and he must have
dinner. She had not told him yet how well he looked, and
how handsome he was.
But after Tom had seen them he slipped off, pretended
he had unfinished preparations to make, and went right to
the Department, forced his way in because he was Mr.
Molyneux's son, and found his poor father with Zeigler,
the chief clerk, still on this wretched and fruitless
overhaul of the old files. Tom stated frankly, in his
off-hand, business-like way, what his theory was.
Neither Zeigler nor Tom's father believed in it in the
least. Tom knew nothing, they said; the Navy paid the
money, but the Navy was satisfied with our receipt, and
should be.
Tom continued to say, "If the Navy paid the money the
Navy must have the vouchers;" and at last, more to be rid
of him than with any hope of the result, Mr. Molyneux let
the eager fellow go round to his friend, Eben Ricketts,
and see if Eben would not give an hour or two of his
Christmas to looking up the thing. Mr. Molyneux even
went so far as to write a frank line to Mr. Ricketts, and
enclosed a letter which he had had that day from the
chairman of the House Committee,--a letter which was
smooth enough in the language, but horrible enough in the
thing.
Ah me! Had not Ricketts read it all already in the
evening "Argus"? He was willing, if he could, to serve.
So he with Tom went round and found the Navy Department
messenger, and opened and lighted up the necessary rooms,
and they spent three hours of their Christmas there.
Meanwhile Beverly had arrived from Norfolk. He had a
frolic with the children, and then called his mother and
Matty away from them.
"What in thunder is the matter?" said the poor boy.
And they told him. How could they help telling him?
And so soon as the story was finished, the boy had his
coat on and was putting on his boots. He went right down
to his father's office, he made old Stratton admit him,
and told his father he too had reported for duty.
CHAPTER II
CHRISTMAS MORNING
And at last Christmas morning dawned,--gray enough and
grim enough.
In that house the general presenting was reserved for
evening after dinner,--when in olden days there had
always been a large Christmas-tree lighted and
dressed for the children and their little friends. As
the children had grown older, and the trees at the
Sunday-school and elsewhere had grown larger, the family
tree had grown smaller, and on this day was to be simply
atypical tree, a little suggestion of a tree, between the
front windows; while most of the presents of every sort
and kind were to be dispersed--where room could be made
for them--in any part of the front parlors. All the
grand ceremonial of present-giving was thus reserved to
the afternoon of Christmas, because then it was certain
papa would be at home, Tom and Beverly would both be
ready, and, indeed, as the little people confessed, they
themselves would have more chance to be quite prepared.
But none the less was the myth of Santa Claus and the
stockings kept up, although that was a business of less
account, and one in which the children themselves had no
share, except to wonder, to enjoy, and to receive. You
will observe that there is a duality in most of the
enjoyments of life,--that if you have a long-expected
letter from your brother who is in Yokohama, by the same
mail or the next mail there comes a letter from your
sister who is in Cawnpore. And so it was of Christmas at
this Molyneux house. Besides the great wonders, like
those wrought out by Aladdin's slave of the lamp, there
were the wonders, less gigantic but not less exquisite,
of the morning hours, wrought out by the slave of
the ring. How this series of wonders came about, the
youngest of the children did not know, and were still
imaginative enough and truly wise enough not to inquire.
While, then, the two young men and their father were
at one or the other Department, now on step-ladders,
handing down dusty old pasteboard boxes, now under
gaslights, running down long indexes with inquiring
fingers and unwinking eyes, Matty and her mother watched
and waited till eleven o'clock came, not saying much of
what was on the hearts of both, but sometimes just
recurring to it, as by some invisible influence,--an
influence which would overcome both of them at the same
moment. For the mother and daughter were as two sisters,
not parted far, even in age, and not parted at all in
sympathy. For occupation, they were wrapping up in thin
paper a hundred barley dogs, cats, eagles, locomotives,
suns, moons, and stars,--with little parcels of nuts,
raisins, and figs, large red apples, and bright Florida
oranges,--all of which were destined to be dragged out of
different stockings at daybreak.
"And now, dear, dear mamma," said Matty, "you will go
to bed,--please do, dear mamma." This was said as she
compelled the last obstinate eagle to accept his fate and
stay in his wrapping-paper, from which he had more than
once struggled out, with the instincts of freedom.
"Please do, dear mamma; I will sort these all
out, and will be quite sure that each has his own.
At least, let us come upstairs together. I will comb
your hair for you; that is one of the little comforts.
And you shall get into bed and see me arrange them, and
if I do it wrong you can tell me."
Poor mamma, she yielded to her--as who does not
yield, and because it was easier to go upstairs than to
stay. And the girl led her up and made herself a toilet
woman indeed, and did put her worn-out mamma into bed,
and then hurried to the laundry, where she was sure she
could find what Diana had been bidden to reserve there--a
pair of clean stockings belonging to each member of the
family. The youngest children, alas, who would need the
most room for their spread-eagles and sugar locomotives,
had the smallest feet and legs. But nature compensates
for all things, and Matty did not fail to provide an
extra pair of her mother's longest stockings for each of
"the three," as the youngest were called in the councils
of their elders. So a name was printed by Santa Claus on
a large red card and pinned upon each receptacle, FLOSSY
or LAURA, while all were willing to accept of his
bounties contained within, even if they did not recognize
yarn or knitting as familiar. Matty hurried back with
their treasures. She brought from her own room the large
red tickets, already prepared, and then, on the floor by
her mother's bedside, assorted the innumerable parcels,
and filled each stocking full.
Dear girl! she had not wrongly guessed. There was
just occupation enough, and just little enough, for the
poor mother's anxious, tired thought. Matty was wise.
She asked fewer and fewer questions; fewer and fewer she
made her journeys to the great high fender, where she
pinned all these stiff models of gouty legs. And when
the last hung there quietly, the girl had the exquisite
satisfaction of seeing that her mother was fast asleep.
She would not leave the room. She turned the gas-light
down to a tiny bead. She slipped off her own frock, put
on her mother's heavy dressing-gown, lay down quietly by
her side without rousing her, and in a little while--for
with those so young this resource is well-nigh sure--she
slept too.
It was five o'clock when she was wakened by her
father's hand. He led her out into his own dressing-
room, and before she spoke she kissed him!
She knew what his answer would be. She knew that
from his heavy face. But all the same she tried to
smile, and she said,
"Found?"
"Found? No, no, dear child, nor ever will be. How
is mamma?"
And Matty told him, and begged him to come and sleep
in her own little room, because the children would come
in in a rout at daybreak. But no! he would not hear to
that. "Whatever else is left, dear Matty, we have each
other. And we will not begin--on what will be a new
life to all of us--we will not begin by 'bating a jot of
the dear children's joys. Matty, that is what I have
been thinking of all the way as I walked home. But maybe
I should not have said it, but that Beverly said it just
now to me. Dear fellow! I cannot tell you the comfort
it was to me to see him come in! I told him he should
not have come, but he knew that he made me almost happy.
He is a fine fellow, Matty, and all night long he has
shown the temper and the sense of a man."
For a moment Matty could not say a word. Her eyes
were all running over with tears. She kissed her father
again, and then found out how to say, "I shall tell him
what you say, papa, and there will be two happy children
in this house, after all."
So she ran to Beverly's room, found him before he was
undressed, and told him. And the boy who was just
becoming a man, and the girl who, without knowing it, had
become a woman, kissed each other; held each other for a
minute, each by both hands, looked each other so lovingly
in the eyes, comforted each other by the infinite comfort
of love, and then said good-night and were asleep. Tom
had stolen to bed without waking his mother or his
sister, some hours before.
Yes! They all slept. The little ones slept, though
they had been so certain that they should not sleep one
wink from anxiety. This poor jaded man slept
because he must sleep. His poor wife slept because she
had not slept now for two nights before. And Matty and
Tom and Beverly slept because they were young and brave
and certain and pure, and because they were between
seventeen and twenty-two years of age. This is all to
say that they could seek God's help and find it. This is
to say that they were well-nigh omnipotent over earthly
ills,--so far, at the least, that sleep came when sleep
was needed.
But not after seven o'clock! Venty and Diana had
been retained by Flossy and Laura to call them at five
minutes of seven, and Laura and Flossy had called the
others. And at seven o'clock, precisely, a bugle-horn
sounded in the children's quarters, and then four
grotesque riders, each with a soldier hat made of
newspaper, each with a bright sash girt round a dressing-
gown, each with bare feet stuck into stout shoes, came
storming down the stairs, and as soon as the lower floor
was reached, each mounted on a hobby-horse or stick, and
with riot not to be told came knocking at Matty's door,
at Beverly's, and at Tom's. And these all appeared, also
with paper soldier hats upon their heads, and girt in
some very spontaneous costume, and so the whole troop
proceeded with loud fanfaron and drumbeat to mamma's door
and knocked for admission, and heard her cheery "Come
in." And papa and mamma had heard the bugle-calls, and
had wrapped some sort of shawls around their
shoulders, and were sitting up in bed, they also with
paper soldier hats upon them; and one scream of "Merry
Christmas" resounded as the doors flew open,--and then a
wild rampage of kissing and of hugging as the little ones
rushed for the best places they could find on the bed--
not to say in it. This was the Christmas custom.
And Tom rolled up a lounge on one side of the bed,
which after a fashion widened it, and Beverly brought up
his mother's easy-chair, which had earned the name of
"Moses' seat," on the other side, and thus, in a minute,
the great broad bed was peopled with the whole family, as
jolly, if as absurd, a sight as the rising sun looked
upon. And then! Flossy and Beverly were deputed to go
to the fender, and to bring the crowded, stiff stockings,
whose crackle was so delicate and exquisite; and so,
youngest by youngest, they brought forth their treasures,
not indeed gold, frankincense, and myrrh, but what
answered the immediate purposes better, barley cats,
dogs, elephants and locomotives, figs, raisins, walnuts,
and pecans.
Yes, and for one noisy half-hour not one person
thought of the cloud which hung over the house only the
night before!
But such happy forgetfulness cannot last forever.
There was the Christmas breakfast. And Tom tried to tell
of Academy times, and Beverly tried to tell stories
of the University. But it was a hard pull. The lines
under papa's eyes were only too dark. And all of a
sudden he would start, and ask some question which showed
that he did not know what they were talking of. Matty
had taken care to have the newspapers out of the way; but
everybody knew why they were out of the way,--and perhaps
this made things worse. Poor blundering Laura must needs
say, "That is the good of Christmas, that there are no
horrid newspapers for people to bother with," when
everybody above Horace's age knew that there were papers
somewhere, and soon Horace was bright enough to see what
he had not been told in words,--that something was going
wrong.
And as soon as breakfast was done, Flossy cried out,
"And now papa will tell us the story of the bear! Papa
always tells us that on Christmas morning. Laura, you
shall come; and, Horace, you shall sit there." And then
her poor papa had to take her up and kiss her, and say
that this morning he could not stop to tell stories, that
he had to go to the Department. And then Flossy and
Laura fairly cried. It was too bad. They hated the
Department. There never could be any fun but what that
horrid old Department came in. And when Horace found
that Tom was going to the Department too, and that Bev
meant to go with him, he was mad, and said he did not see
what was the use of having Christmas. Here he had tin-
foil and plaster upstairs, and little Watrous had
lent him a set of government medals, and they should have
such a real good time if Bev would only stay. He wished
the Department was at the bottom of the Potomac. Matty
fairly had to take the scolding boy out of the room.
Mr. Molyneux, poor fellow, undertook the soothing of
Flossy. "Anyway, old girl, you shall meet me as you go
to church, and we will go through the avenue together,
and I will show you the new Topsy girl selling cigars at
Pierre's tobacco shop. She is as big as Flossy. She has
not got quite such golden hair, but she never says one
word to her papa, because she is never cross to him."
"That's because he is never kind to her," said the
quick child, speaking wiser than she knew.
For Matty, she got a word with Tom, and he too
promised that they would be away from the Department in
time to meet the home party, and that all of them should
go to church together.
CHAPTER III
CHURCH AND SERMON
And, accordingly, as Mrs. Molyneux with her little troop
crossed F Street, they met the gentlemen all coming
toward them. They broke up into groups, and Tom and
Matty got their first real chance for talk since they had
parted the night before. No! Tom had found no clue
at the Navy Department. And although Eben Ricketts had
been good as gold, and had stayed and worked with Tom
till long after midnight, Eben had only worked to show
good-will, for Eben had not the least faith that there
was any clue there. Eben had said that if old Mr.
Whilthaugh, who knew the archive rooms through and
through, had not been turned out, they could do in
fifteen minutes what had cost them six hours, and that
old Mr. Whilthaugh, without looking, could tell whether
it was worth while to look. But old Mr. Whilthaugh had
been turned out, and Eben, even, did not know precisely
what had become of him. He thought he had gone back into
Pennsylvania, where his wife came from, but he did not
know.
"But, Matty, if nothing turns up to-day, I go to
Pennsylvania to-morrow to find this old Mr. Whilthaugh.
For I shall die if I stay here; and all the Eben
Rickettses in the world will never persuade me that the
vouchers are not in that archive-room. If the Navy did
the work, the Navy must have the vouchers."
Then Matty ventured to ask what she and her mother
had wondered about once and again,--why these particular
bits of paper were so necessary. Surely other vouchers,
or certified copies, or books of account could be found
somewhere!
"Yes! I know; you would say so. And if it were all
yesterday, and was all in these lazy times of peace,
you would say true. But you see, in the first place,
this is ever so long ago. Then, in the second place, it
was in the heat of war, when everything was on a gigantic
scale, and things had to be done in unheard-of ways.
Then, chiefly, this particular business involved the
buying up of I do not know who among the Rebels there in
Texas, and among their allies on the other side the Rio
Grande. This old Spaniard, whom mamma remembers, and
whom I just remember, he was the chief captain among the
turncoats, and there were two or three others, F. F. men
in their places,--"First Family men," that means, you
know; but after they did this work they did not stay in
their places long. No! papa says he was mighty careful;
that he had three of the scoundrels sworn before
notaries, or rather before one notary, and had their
receipts and acknowledgments stamped with his notary's
seal. Still, it did not do to have a word said in public
then. And after everything succeeded so perfectly, after
the troops landed without a shot, and found all the base
ready for them, corn and pork just where they wanted
it,--why, then everybody was too gratified to think of
imagining, as they do now, that papa had stolen that
money that bought the pork and the corn."
"I wish they were only half as grateful now," he
said, after a pause.
"Tom," said Matty, eagerly, "who was that notary?"
"I thought of that, too," said Tom. "There is no
doubt who it was. It was old Gilbert; you must remember
his sign, just below Faulkner's on the avenue. But in
the first place, Gilbert died just after our taking
Richmond. In the second place, he never knew what the
papers were--and he executed twenty such sets of papers
every day, very likely. All he could say, at the very
best, would be that at such a time father brought in an
old Spaniard and two or three other greasers, and that he
took their acknowledgments of something."
"I do not know that, Tom," said the girl, without
flinching at his mannish information. "If notaries in
Washington are anything like notaries in novels, that man
kept a record or register of his work. If he was not
very unlike everybody else who lives and works here, he
left a very destitute widow when he died. Tom, I shall
go after church and hunt up the Widow Gilbert. I shall
ask her for her husband's books, and shall tell her why
I want them."
The girl dropped her voice and said: "Tom, I shall
ask her IN HIS NAME."
"God grant it does any good, dear girl," said he.
"Far be it from me to say that you shall not try--"
But here he stopped speaking, for he felt Matty's arm
shake in his, and her whole frame trembled. Tom had only
to keep his eyes before him to see why.
Mr. Greenhithe, Matty's old admirer, the clerk who
had been dismissed for stealing, was just entering the
church, and even touched his hat to her as she went by.
Tom resisted his temptation to thrash him then and
there. He said,--
"Matty, I believe I will tackle that man!"
"Oh, Tom!"
"Yes, Matty, I can keep my temper, and he cannot keep
his. He has one advantage over most knaves, that he is
not only a knave of the first water, but he is sometimes
a fool, too. If it were only decent and right to take
him into Downing's saloon, and give him just one more
glass of whiskey than the blackguard would care to pay
for, I could get at his whole story."
"But, Tom, I thought you were so sure the Navy had
the papers!"
"Well! well!" said Tom, a little annoyed, as eager
people are when other eager people remember their words
against them. "I was sure--I was wholly sure--till I
left Eben Ricketts. But after that--well, of course, we
ought to pull every string."
"Tom!" This with a terrible gulp.
"Tom, you don't think I ought to speak with him!"
"Matty!"
"Why, Tom, yes; if he does know--if he is holding
this up in terror, Tom, I could make him do what I chose
once, Tom. You don't think I ought to try?"
"Matty, if you ever speak to that snake again, I will
thrash him within an inch of his life, and I will never
say a word to you as long as you live."
"That's my dear Tom!" And, hidden as they were, and
crying as she was under her veil, she flung her arms
around him and kissed him.
"All the same," said Tom, after he had kissed her
again and again,--"all the same, I shall find out, after
church, where the snake is staying. I shall go to the
hotel and take a cigar. I shall offer him one, and he is
so mean and stingy that he will take it. Perhaps this
may be one of his fool days. Perhaps somebody else will
treat him to the whiskey. No, Matty! honor bright, _I_
will not, though that ten cents might give us all a Merry
Christmas. Honor bright, I will not treat. But I am not
a saint, Matty! If anybody else treats, I must not be
expected to be far away."
Then he wiped her eyes with his own handkerchief and
led her in to the service. Their own pew was already
full. He had to take her back into Dr. Metcalf's pew.
So Matty was spared one annoyance which was prepared
for her.
Directly in front of her father's pew, sitting in the
most conspicuous seat on the other side of the aisle, was
the hateful Mr. Greenhithe.
Had he put himself there to watch Matty's face?
If he did, he was disappointed. If he had
persuaded himself he was to see a pale cheek or
tearful eyes, or that he was going to compel her to drop
her veil, he had reckoned quite without his host.
Whenever he did look that way, all he saw was the face of
Master Horace. Horace was engaged in counting the large
tassels on his side of the pulpit curtains; in counting,
also, the number of small tassels between them, and from
the data thus obtained, in calculating how many tassels
there must be on all the curtains to the pulpit, and how
many on the curtains behind the rail to the chancel. Mr.
Greenhithe, therefore, had but little comfort in studying
Horace's face.
Just as the Creed was finished, when the rest of the
church was still, the sexton led up the aisle a grim-
looking man, with a shaggy coat and a very dirty face,
and brought him close to the door of Mr. Molyneux's pew--
as if he would fain bring him in. Mr. Molyneux was at
the end of the pew, but happened to be turning away from
the aisle, and the sexton actually touched him. He
turned round and looked at the stranger,--evidently did
not know him,--but with the instinct of hospitality,
stepped into the aisle and offered him his seat. The
stranger was embarrassed; hesitated as if he would speak,
then shook his head in refusal of the attention, and
crossing the aisle, took a seat offered him there, in
full sight of Mr. Molyneux, and, indeed, of Matty.
Poor girl! The trifle--of course it was a trifle--
upset her sadly.
Was the man a marshal or a sheriff? Would they
really arrest her father on Christmas Day, in church?
CHAPTER IV
IS THIS CHRISTMAS?
Yes; it was, as you have said, a very curious Christmas
service for all those people.
What Horace turned his mind to, at intervals, has
been told.
Of the elder members of our little company who sat
there near the head of the side aisle, it may be said, in
general, that they did their best to keep their hearts
and minds engaged in the service, and that sometimes they
succeeded. They succeeded better while they could really
join in the hymns and the prayers than they did when it
came to the sermon. Good Dr. Gill, overruled by one of
those lesser demons, whose work is so apparent though so
inexplicable in this finite world, had selected for the
text of his sermon of gladness the words, "Search and
look." And so it happened--it was what did not often
happen with him--he must needs repeat those words often,
at the beginning and end, indeed, of every leading
paragraph of the sermon. Now this duty of searching and
looking had been just what all the elder members of
the Molyneux family had been solidly doing--each in his
way or hers, directly or by sympathy--in the last forty-
eight hours. To get such relief as they might from it,
they had come to church, to look rather higher if they
could. So that it was to them more a misfortune than a
matter of immediate spiritual relief that their dear old
friend, who loved each one of them with an intimate and
peculiar love, happened to enlarge on his text just as he
did.
If poor Mr. Molyneux, by dint of severe self-command,
had succeeded in abstracting his thoughts from disgrace
almost certain,--from thinking over, in horrible variety,
the several threads of inquiry and answer by which that
disgrace was to be avoided or precipitated,--how was it
possible to maintain such abstraction, while the worthy
preacher, wholly unconscious of the blood he drew with
every word, ground out his sentences in such words as
these:--
"Search and look, my brethren. Time passes faster
than we think. Our gray hairs gather apace above our
foreheads. And the treasure which we prized beyond price
in years bygone has perhaps, amid the cares of this
world, or in the deceitfulness of riches, been thrust on
one side, neglected, at last forgotten. How is it with
you, dear friends? Are you the man? Are you the woman?
Have you put on one side the very treasure of your
life,--as some careless housewife might lay aside on
a forgotten shelf this parcel or that, once so precious
to her? Dear friends, as the year draws to a close,
awaken from such neglect! Brush away the dust from these
forgotten caskets! Lift them from their hiding-places
and set them forth, even in your Christmas festivities.
Search and look!"
Poor Mrs. Molyneux had never wished before so
earnestly that a sermon might be done. She dared not
look round to see her husband for a while, but after one
of these invocations--not quite so terrible as the rest,
perhaps--she stole a glance that way, to find--that she
might have spared her anxiety. Two nights of "searching
and looking" had done their duty by the poor man, and
though his head was firm braced against the column which
rose from the side of their pew, his eyes were closed,
and his wife was relieved by the certainty that he was
listening, as those happy members of the human family
listen who assure me that they hear when their lids are
tight pressed over their eyeballs. As for Beverly, he
was assuming the resolute aspect of a sailor under fire,
and was imagining himself taking the whole storm of Fort
Constantine as he led an American squadron into the Bay
of Sevastopol. Tom did not know what the preacher said,
but was devising the method of his interview with
Greenhithe. Matty did know. Dear girl! she knew very
well. And with every well-rounded sentence of the sermon
she was more determined as to the method of her
appeal to Mrs. Gilbert, the widow of the notary. She
would search and look there.
Yes! and it was well for every one of them that they
went to that service. The sermon at the worst was but
twenty minutes. "Twenty minutes in length," said
Beverly, wickedly, "and no depth at all." But that was
not true nor fair; nor was that, either way, the thing
that was essential. By the time they had all sung
"Praise God from whom all blessings flow,"
even before the good old Doctor had asked for Heaven's
blessing upon them, it had come. To Mr. Molyneux it
had come in an hour's rest of mind, body, and soul. To
Matty it had come in an hour's calm determination. To
Mrs. Molyneux it had come in the certainty that there
is One Eye which sees through all hiding-places and
behind all disguises. To the children it had come,
because the hour had called up to them a hundred memories
of Galilee and Nazareth, of Mary Mother, and of children
made happy, to supplement and help out their legends of
Santa Claus. Yes, and even Beverly the brave, and Tom
the outraged, as they stood to receive the benediction of
the preacher, were more of men and less of firebrands
than they were. They all stood with reverence; they
paused a moment, and then slowly walked down the aisle.
"Where is your father, Horace?" said Mrs. Molyneux,
a little anxiously, as she came where she could
speak aloud. Horace was waiting for her.
"Papa? He went away with the gentleman who came in
after service began; they crossed the street and took a
carriage together."
"And did papa leave no message?"
"Why, no; he did not turn round. The strange man--
the man in the rough coat--just touched him and spoke to
him half-way down the aisle. Then papa whispered to him
and he whispered back. Then, as soon as they came into
the vestibule here, papa led him out at that side door,
and did not seem to remember me. They almost ran across
the street, and took George Gibb's hack. I knew the
horses."
"That's too bad," said Laura; "I thought papa would
walk home with us and tell us the story of the bears."
Poor Mrs. Molyneux thought it was too bad, too; but
she said nothing.
And Matty, when she joined her mother, said,--
"I shall feel a thousand times happier, mamma, if I
go and see Mrs. Gilbert now." And she explained who Mrs.
Gilbert was. "Perhaps it may do some good. Anyway, I
shall feel as if I were doing something. I will be home
in time to finish the tree and things, for Horace will
like to help me."
And the poor girl looked her entreaties so eagerly
that her mother could not but assent to her plan.
So she made Beverly go up the avenue with her,--Beverly,
who would have swum the Potomac and back for her, had she
asked him,--as he was on his way to join his father at
the Bureau.
As they came out upon the broad sidewalk, that odious
Greenhithe, with some one whom Beverly called a
blackguard of his crew, pushed by them, and he had the
impudence to turn and touch his hat to Matty again.
Matty's hand trembled on Beverly's arm, but she would
not speak for a minute, only she walked slower and
slower.
Then she said: "I am so afraid, Bev, that Tom and he
will get into a quarrel. Tom declares he will go into
Willard's and find out whether he does know anything."
But Beverly, very mannish, tried to reassure her and
make her believe that Tom would be very self-restrained
and perfectly careful.
On Christmas Day the Jew's dry-goods store, which had
taken the place of old Mr. Gilbert's notary's office, was
closed--not perhaps so much from the Israelite's
enthusiasm about Christmas as in deference to what in New
England is called "the sense of the street." Matty,
however, acting from a precise knowledge of Washington
life, rang boldly at the green door adjacent, Beverly
still waiting to see what might turn up; and when a brisk
"colored girl" appeared, Matty inquired if Mrs. Munroe
was at home.
Now all that Matty knew of Mrs. Munroe was that her
name was on a well-scoured brass plate on the door.
Mrs. Munroe was in. Beverly said he would wait in
the passage. Mrs. Munroe proved to be a nice, motherly
sort of a person, who, as it need hardly be said, was
stone-deaf. It required some time for Matty to adjust
her speaking apparatus to the exigency, but when this was
done, Mrs. Munroe explained that Mr. Gilbert was dead,--
that an effort had been made to continue the business
with the old sign and the old good will, under the
direction of a certain Mr. Bundy, who had sometimes been
called in as an assistant. But Mr. Bundy, after some
years, paid more attention to whiskey than he did to
notarying, and the law business had suffered. Finally,
Mr. Bundy was brought home by the police one night with
a broken head, and then Mrs. Gilbert had withdrawn the
signs, cancelled the lease, turned Mr. Bundy out-of-
doors, and retired to live with a step-sister of her
brother's wife's father near the Arsenal; good Mrs.
Munroe was not certain whether on Delaware Avenue, or
whether on T Street, U Street, or V Street. And, indeed,
whether the lady's name were Butman before she married
her second husband, and Lichtenfels afterward--or whether
his name were Butman and hers Lichtenfels, Mrs. Munroe
was not quite sure. Nor could she say whether Mr.
Gilbert took the account books and registers --there
were heaps on heaps of them, for Mr. Gilbert had been a
notary ever since General Jackson's day--or whether Bundy
did not take them, or whether they were not sold for old
paper, Mrs. Munroe was not sure. For all this happened--
all the break-up and removal--while Mrs. Munroe was on a
visit to her sister not far from Brick Church above
Little Falls, on your way to Frederic. And Mrs. Munroe
offered this visit as a constant apology for her not
knowing more precisely every detail of her old friend's
business.
This explanation took a good deal of time, through
all of which poor Beverly was fretting and fuming and
stamping his cold feet in the passage, hearing the
occasional questions of his sister, uttered with thunder
tone in the "setting-room" above, but hearing no word of
the placid widow's replies.
When Matty returned and held a consultation with him,
the question was, whether to follow the books of account
to Georgetown, where Mr. Bundy was understood to be still
residing, or to the neighborhood of the Arsenal, in the
hope of finding Mrs. Gilbert, Mrs. Lichtenfels, or Mrs.
Butman, as the case might be. Readers should understand
that these two points, both unknown to the young people,
are some six miles asunder, the original notary's office
being about half-way between them. Beverly was more
disposed to advise following the man. He was of a mind
to attack some one of his own sex. But the
enterprise was, in truth, Matty's enterprise. Beverly
had but little faith in it from the beginning, and Matty
was minded to follow such clue as they had to Mrs.
Gilbert, quite sure that, woman with woman, she should
succeed better with her than, man with man, Beverly with
Bundy. Beverly assented to this view the more willingly,
because Matty was quite willing to undertake the quest
alone. She was very brave about it indeed. "Plenty of
nice people at the Arsenal," or near it, whom she could
fall back upon for counsel or information. So they
parted. Matty took a street car for the east and south,
and Beverly went his ways to the Bureau of Internal
Improvement to report for duty to his father.
This story must not follow the details of Matty's
quest for the firm of "Gilbert, Lichtenfels, or Butman."
Certain it is that she would never have succeeded had she
rested simply on the directory or on such crude
information as Mrs. Munroe had so freely given. But
Matty had an English tongue in her head,--a courteous,
which is to say a confiding, address with strangers; she
seemed almost to be conferring a favor at the moment when
she asked one, and she knew, in this business, that there
was no such word as fail. After one or two false
starts--some very stupid answers, and some very blunt
refusals--she found her quarry at last, by as simple a
process as walking into a Sunday-school of colored
children, where she heard singing in the basement of
a little chapel.
In a few words Matty explained her errand to the
Superintendent, and that it was necessary that she should
find Mrs. Gilbert before dark.
"Ting!" one stroke of the bell called hundreds of
eager voices to silence.
"Who knows where Mrs. Gilbert lives? Is it at Mrs.
Butman's house or Mrs. Lichtenfels'?"
Twenty eager hands contended with each other for the
honor of giving the information, and in three minutes
more, Matty, all encouraged by her success, was on her
way.
And Mrs. Gilbert was at home. Good fortune number
two! Matty's star was surely in the ascendant! Matty
sent in her card, and the nice old lady presented herself
at once, remembered who Matty was, remembered how much
business Mr. Molyneux used to bring to the office, and
how grateful Mr. Gilbert always was. She was so glad to
see Matty, and she hoped Mr. Molyneux was well, and Mrs.
Molyneux and all those little ones! She used to see them
every Sunday as they went to church, if they went on the
avenue.
Thus encouraged, Matty opened on her sad story, and
was fairly helped from stage to stage by the wonder,
indignation, and exclamations of the kind old lady. When
Matty came to the end, and made her understand how much
depended on the day-book, register, and ledger of her
husband, it was a fair minute before she spoke.
"We will see, my dear, we will see. I wish it may be
so, but I 'm all afeard. It would not be like him, my
dear. It would not be like any of them. But come with
me, my dear, we will see--we will see."
Then, as Matty followed her, through devious ways,
out through the kitchen, across a queer bricked yard,
into a half stable, half woodshed, which the good woman
unlocked, she went on talking:--
"You see, my dear child, that though notaries are
called notaries, as if it were their business to give
notice, the most important part of their business is
keeping secrets. Now, when a man's note goes to protest,
the notary tells him what has happened, which he knew
very well before; and then he comes to the notary and
begs him not to tell anybody else, and of course he does
not. And the business of a notary's account books, as my
husband used to say, is to tell just enough, and not to
tell any more.
"Why, my dear child, he would not use blotting-paper
in the office,--he would always use sand. `Blotting-
paper! Never!' he would say; 'Blotting-paper tells
secrets!'"
With such chatter they came to the little chilly
room, which was shelved all around, and to Matty's glad
eyes presented rows of green and blue and blue and red
boxes,--and folio and quarto books of every date, from
1829 to 1869, forty years in which the late Mr. Gilbert
had been confirming history, keeping secret what he
knew, but making sure what, but for him, might have been
doubted by a sceptic world.
Things were in good order. Mrs. Gilbert was proud to
show that they were in good order. The day-book for 1863
was at hand. Matty knew the fatal dates only too well.
And the fatal entries were here!
How her heart beat as she began to read!
Cr.
To Thomas Molyneux Esq., (B. I. I.) official
authentication of signature of Felipe Gazza . . . $1.25
Same, authentication of signature of Jose B. Du
Camara . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25
Same, authentication of signature of Jacob H.
Cole . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.25
And this was all! Poor Matty copied it all, but all the
time she begged Mrs. Gilbert to tell her if there was not
some note-book or journal that would tell more. And kind
Mrs. Gilbert looked eagerly for what she called the
"Diry." At the proper dates on the cash-book, at
intervals of a week or two, Matty found similar entries--
the names of the two Spaniards appearing in all these--
but other names in place of Cole's just as Tom had told
her already. By the time she had copied all of these,
Mrs. Gilbert had found the "Diry." Eager, and yet heart-
sick, Matty turned it over with her old friend.
This was all:--
"Mr. Molyneux here. Very private. Papers in R. G. E."
And then followed a little burst of unintelligible
short-hand.
Poor Matty! She could not but feel that here would
not be evidence good for anything, even in a novel. But
she copied every word carefully, as a chief clerk's
daughter should do. She thanked the kind old lady, and
even kissed her. She looked at her watch. Heavens! how
fast time had gone! and the afternoons were so short!
"Yes, my dear Miss Molyneux; but they have turned, my
dear, the day is a little longer and a little lighter."
Did the old lady mean it for an omen, or was it only
one of those chattering remarks on meteors and weather
change of which old age is so fond? Matty wondered, but
did not know. Fast as she could, she tripped bravely on
to the avenue for her street car.
"The day is longer and lighter."
Meanwhile Tom was following his clue in the public
rooms at Willard's, to which, as he prophesied, Mr.
Greenhithe had returned after the unusual variation in
his life of a morning spent in the sanctuary. Tom bought
a copy of the Baltimore "The Sun," and went into one of
the larger rooms resorted to by travellers and loafers,
and sat down. But Mr. Greenhithe did not appear there.
Tom walked up and down through the passages a little
uneasily, for he was sure the ex-clerk had come into the
hotel. He went up and looked in at the ladies'
sitting-rooms, to see if perhaps some Duchess of
Devonshire, of high political circles, had found it worth
while to drag Mr. Greenhithe up there by a single hair.
No Mr. Greenhithe! Tom was forced to go down and drink
a glass of beer to see if Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty.
But at that moment, though Mr. Greenhithe was generally
thirsty in the middle of the day, and although many men
were thirsty at the time Tom hung over his glass of
lager, Mr. Greenhithe was not thirsty there. It was only
as Tom passed the billiard-room that he saw Mr.
Greenhithe was playing a game of billiards, by way of
celebrating the new birth of a regenerated world.
What to do now! Tom could not, in common decency, go
in to look on at the game of a man he wanted to choke.
Yet Tom would have given all his chances for rank in the
Academy to know what Greenhithe was talking about. Tom
slowly withdrew.
As he withdrew, whom should be meet but one of his
kindest friends, Commodore Benbow? When the boys made
their "experimental cruise" the year before, they had
found Commodore Benbow's ship at Lisbon. The Commodore
had taken a particular fancy to Tom, because he had known
his mother when they were boy and girl. Tom had even
been invited personally to the flag-ship, and was to have
been presented at Court, but that they sailed too soon.
To tell the whole truth, the Commodore was not
overpleased to see his protege hanging about the bar
and billiard-room on Christmas Day. For himself, his
whole family were living at Willard's, but he knew Tom's
father was not living there, and he thought Tom might be
better employed.
Perhaps Tom guessed this. Perhaps he was in despair.
Anyway he knew "Old Benbow," as the boys called him,
would be a good counsellor. In point of statistics "Old
Benbow" was just turned forty, had not a gray hair in his
head, could have beaten any one of Tom's class, whether
in gunning or at billiards, could have demonstrated every
problem in Euclid while they were fiddling over the
forty-seventh proposition. He was at the very prime of
well-preserved power, but young nineteen called him "Old
Benbow," as young nineteen will, in such cases.
Bold with despair, or with love for his father, Tom
stopped "Old Benbow" and asked him if he would come into
one of the sitting-rooms with him. Then he made this
venerable man his confidant. The Commodore had seen the
slurs in the "Scorpion" and the "Argus" and the "Evening
Journal." "A pity," said he, "that Newspaper Row, that
can do so much good, should do so much harm. What is
Newspaper Row? Three or four men of honor, three or four
dreamers, three or four schoolboys, three or four fools,
and three or four scamps. And the public, Molyneux,--
which is to say you and I,--accept the trumpet blast
of one of these heralds precisely as we do that of
another. Practically," said he, pensively, "when we were
detached to serve with the 33d Corps in Mobile Bay, I
found I liked the talk of those light-infantry men who
had been in every scrimmage of the war, quite as much as
I did that of the bandmen who played the trumpets on
parade. But this is neither here nor there. I thought
of coming round to see your father, but I knew I should
bother him. What can I do, my boy?"
Then Tom told him, rather doubtfully, that he had
reason to fear that Mr. Greenhithe was at the bottom of
the whole scandal. He said he wished he did not think
that Mr. Greenhithe had himself stolen the papers. "If
I am wrong, I want to know it," said he; "if I am right,
I want to know it. I do not want to be doing any man
injustice. But I do not want to keep old Eben Ricketts
down at the department hunting for a file of papers which
Greenhithe has hidden in his trunk or put into the fire."
"No!--no!--no, indeed," said "old Benbow," musing.
"No!--No!--No!--"
Then after a pause, "Tom," said he, "come round here
in an hour. I know that young fellow your friend is
playing with, and I wish he were in better company than
he is. I think I know enough of the usages of modern
society to `interview' him and his companion, though
times have changed since I was of your age in that
regard. Come here in an hour, or give me rather more,
come here at half-past two, and we will see what we
will see."
So Tom went round to the Navy Department, and here he
found the faithful Eben--faithful to him, though utterly
faithless as to any success in the special quest which
was making the entertainment of the Christmas holiday.
Vainly did Tom repeat to him his formula,--
"If the Navy did the work, the Navy has the vouchers."
"My dear boy," Eben Ricketts repeated a hundred
times, "though the Navy did the work, the Navy did not
provide the pork and beans; it did not arrange in advance
for the landing, least of all did it buy the greasers.
I will look where you like, for love of your father and
you; but that file of vouchers is not here, never was
here, and never will be found here."
An assistant like this is not an encouraging
companion or adviser.
And, in short, the vouchers were not found in the
Navy Department, in that particular midday search. At
twenty-five minutes past two Tom gave it up unwillingly,
bade Eben Ricketts good-by, washed from his hands the
accretions of coal-dust, which will gather even on
letter-boxes in Navy Departments, and ran across in front
of the President's House, to Willard's. He looked up at
the White House, and wondered how the people there were
spending their Christmas Day.
Commodore Benbow was waiting for him. He took him up
into his own parlor.
"Molyneux, your Mr. Greenhithe is either the most
ingenious liar and the best actor on God's earth, or he
knows no more of your lost papers than a child in heaven.
"I went back to the billiard-room, after you left me.
I walked up to Millet--that was Lieutenant Millet playing
with Greenhithe--and I shook hands. He had to introduce
me to your friend. Then I asked them both to come here,
told Millet I had some papers from Montevideo that he
would be glad to see, and that I should be glad of a call
when they had done their game. Well, they came. I am
sorry to say your friend--"
"Oh, don't, my dear Commodore Benbow, don't call him
my friend, even in a joke; it makes me feel awfully."
"I am glad it does," said the Commodore, laughing.
"Well, I am very sorry to say that the black sheep had
been drinking more of the whisky downstairs than was good
for him; and, no fault of mine, he drank more of my
Madeira than he should have done, and, Tom, I do not
believe he was in any condition to keep secrets. Well,
first of all, it appeared that he had been in Bremen and
Vienna for six months. He only arrived in New York
yesterday morning."
Tom's face fell.
"And, next--you may take this for what it is worth--
but I believe he spoke the truth for once; he
certainly did if there is any truth in liquor or in
swearing. For when I asked Millet what all this stuff
about your father meant, Greenhithe interrupted, very
unnecessarily and very rudely, and said, with more oaths
than I will trouble you with, that the whole was a damned
lie of the newspaper men; that they had lied about him
(Greenhithe) and now were lying about old Molyneux; that
Molyneux had been very hard on him and very unjust to
him, but he would say that he was honest as the clock--
honest enough to be mean. And that he would say that to
the committee, if they would call on him, and so on and
so on."
"Much good would he do before the committee," said
poor Tom.
And thus ended Tom's branch of the investigation.
"Come to me, if I can help you, my boy," said Old Benbow.
"It is always the darkest, old fellow, the hour before
day."
Tom was astronomer enough to know that this old saw
was as false as most old saws. But with this for his
only comfort, he returned to the bureau to seek Beverly
and his father.
Neither Beverly nor his father was there! Tom went
directly home. His mother was eager to see him.
She had come home alone, and, save Horace and Laura
and Flossy and Brick, she had seen nobody but a messenger
from the bureau.
Brick was the family name for Robert, one of the
youngest of this household.
Of Beverly's movements the story must be more briefly
told. They took more time than Tom's; as much indeed as
his sister's, after they parted. But they were conducted
by means of that marvel of marvels, the telegraph,--the
chief of whose marvels is that it compels even a long-
winded generation like ours to speak in very short metre.
Beverly began with Mr. Bundy at Georgetown.
Georgetown is but a quiet place on the most active of
days. On Christmas Day Beverly found but little stirring
out of doors.
Still, with the directory, with the advice of a
saloon-keeper and the information of a police officer,
Beverly tracked Mr. Bundy to his lair.
It was not a notary's office, it was a liquor shop of
the lowest grade, with many badly painted signs, which
explained that this was "Our House," and that here Mr.
Bundy made and sold with proper license--let us be
grateful--Tom and Jerry, Smashes, Cocktails, and did
other "deeds without a name." On this occasion, however,
even the door of "Our House" was closed. Mr. Bundy had
gone to a turkey-shooting match at Fairfax Court House.
The period of his return was very doubtful. He had never
done anything but keep this drinking-room since old Mrs.
Gilbert turned him out of doors.
With this information Master Beverly returned to
town. He then began on his own line of search. Relying
on Tom's news, he went to the office of the Western
Union Telegraph and concocted this despatch, which he
thought a masterpiece.
GREENSBURG, Westmoreland Co., Pa.
TO ROBERT JOHN WHILTHAUGH:
When and where can I see you on important business?
Answer.
BEVERLY MOLYNEUX, for THOMAS MOLYNEUX.
Then he took a walk, and after half an hour called at
the office again. The office was still engaged in
calling Greensburg. Greensburg was eating its Christmas
dinner. But at last Greensburg was called. Then Beverly
received this answer:--
Whilthaugh has been dead more than a year.
GREENSBURG.
To which Beverly replied:--
Where does his wife live, or his administrator?
To which Greensburg, having been called a second time
with difficulty, replied:--
His wife is crazy, and we never heard of any property.
GREENSBURG.
With this result of his investment as a non-dividend
member of the great Western Union Mutual Information
Club, Beverly returned home, chewing the cud of sweet and
bitter fancies.
"There is no speech nor language," sang the choir in
St. Matthews as he passed, "where their voice is not
heard. Their line is gone out through all the
earth--" And Tom heard no more, as he passed on.
As he walked, almost unwillingly, up the street to
the high steps of his father's house, Matty, out of
breath, overtook him.
"What have you found, Bev?"
"Nothing," said the boy, moodily. And poor Matty had
to confess that she had hardly more to tell.
They came into the house by the lower entrance, that
they need not attract their mother's attention. But she
was on the alert. Even Horace and the younger children
knew by this time that something was wrong.
Horace's story about the strange man and papa was the
last news of papa. Papa had not been at the bureau. The
bureau people waited for him till two, and he did not
come. Then Stratton had come round to see if he was to
keep open any longer. Stratton had told Mrs. Molyneux
that her husband had not been there since church.
Where in the world was he?
Poor Mrs. Molyneux had not known where to send or to
go. She had just looked in at the Doctor's, but he was
not there.
Tom had appeared first to her tedious waiting. Tom
would not tell her, but he even went and looked in on
Newspaper Row, which he had been abusing so. For Tom's
first thought was that a formal information had been
lodged somewhere, and that his father was arrested.
But Newspaper Row evidently was unsuspicious of any
arrest.
Tom even walked down to the old jail, and made an
absurd errand to see the Deputy-Marshal. But the Deputy-
Marshal was at his Christmas dinner.
Tom told all this in the hall to Beverly and to
Matty.
Everything had failed, and papa was gone. Who could
the man in the shaggy coat be?
The three went together into the parlor.
For a little, Matty and Horace and Tom and Beverly
then made a pretence of arranging the tree. But, in
truth, Mrs. Molyneux, in the midst of all her care, had
done that, while they were all away.
Dinner was postponed half an hour, and they gathered,
all in the darkness, looking at the sickliest blaze that
ever rambled over half-burned Cumberland coal.
The Brick came climbing up on Tom's knees and bade
him tell a story; but even Laura saw that something was
wrong, and hushed the child, and said she and Flossy
would sing one of their carols. And they sang it, and
were praised; and they sang another, and were praised.
But then it was quite dark, and nobody had any heart to
say one word.
"Where is papa?" said the Brick.
"Where indeed?" everybody wanted to say, and no one
did.
But then the door-bell rang, and Chloe brought in a
note.
"He's waiting for an answer, mum."
And Tom lighted the gas. It popped up so bright that
little Flossy said,--
"The people that sat in darkness saw a great light--"
This was just as Mrs. Molyneux tore open the note.
For the instant she could not speak. She handed it to
the three.
"FOUND
"Home in half an hour!
"All right! thank God!
T. M."
"Saw a great light, indeed!" said Horace, who, for
once, felt awed.
CHAPTER V
THIS IS CHRISTMAS
For half a minute, as it seemed afterwards, no one
spoke. Then Matty flew to her mother, and flung her
arms around her neck, and kissed her again and again.
Tom hardly knew what he was doing; but he recovered
self-command enough to know that he must try to be manly
and businesslike,--and so he rushed downstairs to find
the man who brought the note. It proved to be a man he
did not know. Not a messenger from the bureau, not one
from the Navy Department, least of all, an aid of
the Assistant Marshal's. He was an innocent waiter from
the Seaton House, who said a gentleman called him and
gave him the note, told him to lose no time, and gave him
half a dollar for coming. He had asked for an answer,
though the gentleman had not told him to do so.
Tom wrote: "Hurrah! All's well! All at home.--T."
and gave this note to the man.
They all talked at once, and then they sat still
without talking. The children--must it be confessed?--
asked all sorts of inopportune questions. At last Tom
was even fain to tell the story of the bear himself, by
way of silencing the Brick and Laura; and with much
correction from Horace, had got the bear well advanced in
smelling at the almond-candy and the figs, when a
carriage was heard on the street, evidently coming
rapidly towards them. It stopped at the door. The bear
was forgotten, as all the elders in this free-and-easy
family rushed out of the parlor into the hall.
Papa was there, and was as happy as they. With papa,
or just behind him, came in the man with the rough coat,
whose face at church had been so dirty, whose face now
was clean. To think that papa should have brought the
Deputy-Marshal with him! For by the name of "the Deputy-
Marshal" had this mysterious stranger been spoken of in
private by the two young men since the fatal theory had
been advanced that he had come into the church to arrest
Mr. Molyneux.
The unknown, with great tact, managed to keep in the
background, while Mrs. Molyneux kissed her husband, and
while Matty kissed him, and while among them they pulled
off his coat. But Mr. Molyneux did not forget. He made
a chance in a moment for saying, "You must speak to our
friend who has brought me here; no one was ever so
welcome at a Christmas dinner. Mr. Kuypers, my dear, Mr.
Kuypers, Matty dear; these are my boys, Mr. Kuypers."
Then the ladies welcomed the stranger, and the boys
shook hands with him. Mr. Molyneux added, what hardly
any one understood: "It is not every friend that travels
two thousand miles to jog a friend's memory."
And they all huddled into the parlor. But in a
moment more, Mrs. Molyneux had invited Mr. Kuypers to go
upstairs to wash himself, and he, with good feeling,
which he showed all the evening, gladly took himself out
of the way, and so, as Tom returned from showing him to
his room, the parlor was filled with "those God made
there," as the little boy used to say, and with none
beside.
"Now tell us all about it, dear papa," cried Tom.
"I was trying to tell your mother. But there is not
much to tell. Poor Mr. Kuypers had travelled all the way
from Colorado, the minute he heard I was in trouble.
Yesterday he bought the `Scorpion' in the train, and
found the Committee was down on us. He drove here from
the station as soon as the train came in. He missed you
here, and drove by mistake to Trinity. That made
him late with us, and so, as the service had begun, he
waited till it was done."
"Well!" said Bev, perhaps a little impatiently.
"But so soon as we were going out he touched me, and
said he had come to find me, in the matter of the Rio
Grande vouchers. Do you know, Eliza, I can afford to
laugh at it now, but at the moment I thought he was a
deputy of the Sergeant-at-Arms?"
"There!" screamed Tom, "I said he was a deputy-marshal!"
"I said, `Certainly;' and I laughed, and said they
seemed to interest all my friends. Then he said, `Then
you have them? If I had known that, I would have spared
my journey.' This threw me off guard, and I said I
supposed I had them, but I could not find them. And he
said eagerly--this was just on the church steps--`But I
can.'
"Then he said he had a carriage waiting, and he bade
me jump in.
"So soon as we were in the carriage he explained,
what I ought to have remembered, but could not then
recollect for the life of me, that after General Trebou
returned from Texas, there was a Court of Inquiry, and
that there was some question about these very supplies,
the beans and the coffee particularly; they had nothing
to do with the landing nor with the Mexicans. And the
Court of Inquiry sent over one day from the War
Department, where they were sitting, to our office for an
account, because we were said to have it. Mr.
Kuypers was their messenger to us, and because we had
bound them all together, the whole file was sent as it
was. He took them, and as it happened, he looked them
over, and what was better, he remembered them. Where our
receipt is, Heaven knows!
"Well, that Court of Inquiry was endless, as those
army inquiries always are. Mr. Kuypers was in attendance
all the time. He says he never shall forget it, if other
people do.
"So, as soon as he saw that we were in trouble at the
bureau--that I was in trouble, I mean," said Mr.
Molyneux, stoutly, "he knew that he knew what nobody else
knew,--that the vouchers were in the papers of that Court
of Inquiry."
"And he came all the way to tell? What a good
fellow!"
"Yes, he came on purpose. He says he could not help
coming. He says he made two or three telegrams; but
every time he tried to telegraph, he felt as if he were
shirking. And I believe he was right. I believe we
should never have pulled through without him. `Personal
presence moves the world,' as Eli Thayer used to say."
"And you found them?" asked Mrs. Molyneux, faintly
essaying to get back to the story.
"Oh Yes, we found them; but not in one minute. You
see, first of all, I had to go to the chief clerk at the
War Department and get the department opened on a
holiday. Then we had no end of clerks to disturb at
their Christmas dinners, and at last we found a good
fellow named Breen who was willing to take hold with Mr.
Kuypers. And Mr. Kuypers himself," here he dropped his
voice, "why, we have not three men in all the departments
who know the history of this government or the system of
its records as he does.
"Once in the office, he went to work like a master.
Breen was amazed. Why! We found those documents in less
than half an hour!
"Then I sent Breen with a note to the Secretary. He
was good as gold; came down in his own carriage,
congratulated me as heartily--well almost as heartily as
you do, Tom--and took us both round, with the files, to
Mr. McDermot, the Chairman of the House Committee. He
was dining with his mess, at the Seaton House, but we
called him out, and I declare, I believe he was as much
pleased as we were.
"I only stopped to make him give me a receipt for the
papers, because they all said it was idle to take copies,
and here we are!"
On the hush that followed, the Brick made his way up
on his father's knee and said,--
"And now, papa, will you tell us the story of the
bear? Tom does not tell it very well."
They all laughed,--they could afford to laugh now;
and Mr. Molyneux was just beginning upon the story of the
bear, when Mr. Kuypers reappeared. He had in this short
time revised his toilet, and looked, Mr. Molyneux said in
an aside, like the angel of light that he was. "Bears!"
said he, "are there any bears in Washington? Why,
it was only last Monday that I killed a bear, and I ate
him on Tuesday."
"Did you eat him all?" asked the Brick, whose
reverence for Mr. Kuypers was much more increased by this
story than by any of the unintelligible conversation
which had gone before. But just as Mr. Kuypers began on
the story of the bear, Chloe appeared with beaming face,
and announced that dinner was ready.
That dinner, which this morning every one who had any
sense had so dreaded, and which now seemed a festival
indeed!
Well! there was great pretence in fun and form in
marshalling. And Mr. Kuypers gave his arm to Matty, and
Horace his to Laura, and Beverly his to Flossy, and Tom
brought up the rear with the Brick on his shoulders. And
Mr. Molyneux returned thanks and asked a blessing all
together. And then they fell to, on the turkey and on
the chicken pie. And they tried to talk about Colorado
and mining; about Gold Hill and Hale-and-Norcross, and
Uncle Sam and Overman and Yellow Jacket. But in spite of
them all, the talk would drift back to Bundy and his
various signs, "Our House" and Tom and Jerry; to the wife
of Mr. Whilthaugh; to Commodore Benbow; to old Mrs.
Gilbert and Delaware Avenue. And this was really quite
as much the fault of Mr. Kuypers as it was of any of the
Molyneux family. He seemed as much one of them as did
Tom himself. This anecdote of failure and that of
success kept cropping out. Walsingham's high-bred and
dignified enthusiasm for the triumph of the office, and
the satisfaction that Eben Ricketts would feel when he
was told that the Navy never had the vouchers,--all were
commented on. Then Mr. Molyneux would start and say, "We
are talking shop again. You say the autumn has been mild
in the mountains;" and then in two minutes they would be
on the trail of "Search and Look" again.
It was in one of these false starts that Mr. Kuypers
explained why he came, which in Horace's mind and perhaps
in the minds of the others had been the question most
puzzling of all.
"Why," said Horace, bluntly, "had you ever heard of
papa before!"
"Had I heard of him? " said Mr. Kuypers. "I think
so. Why, my dear boy, your father is my oldest and
kindest friend!" At this exclamation even Mrs. Molyneux
showed amazement. Tom laid down his fork and looked to
see if the man was crazy, and Mr. Molyneux himself was
thrown off his balance.
Mr. Kuypers was a well-bred man, but this time he
could not conceal his amazement. He laid down knife and
fork both, looked up and almost laughed, as he said with
wonder,--
"Don't you know who I am?"
"We know you are our good angel to-day," said Mrs.
Molyneux, bravely; "and that is enough to know."
"But don't you know why I am here, or what sent me?"
Mr. Molyneux said that he understood very well that
his friend wanted to see justice done, and that he had
preferred to see to this in person.
"I thought you looked queer," said Mr. Kuypers,
frankly; "but still, I did not know I was changed. Why,
don't you remember Bruce? You remember Mrs. Chappell,
surely."
"Are you Bruce?" cried Mr. Molyneux; and he fairly
left his chair and went round the table to the young man.
"Why, I can see it now. But then--why, you were a boy,
you know, and this black beard--"
"But pray explain, pray explain," cried Tom. "The
mysteries increase on us. Who is Mrs. Chappell, and, for
that matter, who is Bruce, if his real name be not
Kuypers?"
And they all laughed heartily. People got back their
self-possession a little, and Mr. Kuypers explained.
"I am Bruce Kuypers," said he, "though your father
does not seem to remember the Kuypers part."
"No," said Mr. Molyneux, "I cannot remember the
Kuypers part, but the Bruce part I remember very well."
"My mother was Mrs. Kuypers before she married Mr.
Chappell, and Mr. Chappell died when my brother Ben was
six years old, and little Lizzy was a baby."
"Lizzy was my godchild," said Mrs. Molyneux, who now
remembered everything.
"Certainly she was, Mrs. Molyneux, and last month
Lizzy was married to as good a fellow as ever presided
over the melting of ingots. We marry them earlier at the
West than you do here."
"Where Lizzie would have been," he said more gravely,
addressing Tom again, "where my mother would have been,
or where I should have been but for your father and
mother here, it would be hard to tell. And all to-day I
have taken it for granted that to him, as to me, this has
been one part of that old Christmas! Surely you
remember?" he turned to Mrs. Molyneux.
Yes, Mrs. Molyneux did remember, but her eyes were
all running over with tears and she did not say so.
"Mr. Molyneux," said Bruce Kuypers, again addressing
Tom, "seventeen years ago this blessed day, there was a
Christmas morning in the poor old tenement above
Massachusetts Avenue such as you never saw, and such as
I hope you never may see.
"There was fire in the stove because your father had
sent the coal. There was oatmeal mush on the table
because your father paid my mother's scot at your
father's grocer.
"But there was not much jollity in that house, and
there were no Christmas presents, but what your mother
had sent to Bruce and Ben and Flora, and even to the
baby. Still we kept up such courage as we could.
It was a terribly cold day, and there was a wet storm.
"All of a sudden a carriage stopped at the door, and
in came your father here. He came to say that that day's
mail had brought a letter from Dr. Wilder of the navy,
conveying the full certificate that William Chappell's
death was caused by exposure in the service. That
certificate was what my mother needed for her pension.
She never could get it, but your father here had sifted
and worried and worked. The `Macedonian' arrived
Thursday at New York, and had Dr. Wilder on board, and
Friday afternoon your father had Wilder's letter, and he
left his own Christmas dinner to make light my mother's
and mine. That was not all. Your father, as he came,
had stopped to see Mr. Birdsall, who was the Speaker of
the House. He had seen the Speaker before, and had said
kind things about me. And that day the Speaker told him
to tell me to come and see him at his room at the Capitol
next day. Oh! how my mother dressed me up! Was there
ever such a page seen before! What with your father's
kind words and my dear mother's extra buttons, the
Speaker made me his own page the next day, and there I
served for four years. It was then that I was big enough
to go into the War Department, and Mr. Goodsell--he was
the next Speaker, if you remember--recommended me there.
"After that," said Bruce Kuypers, modestly, if I did
not see you so often, but I used to see you
sometimes, and I did not think"--this with a roguish
twinkling of the eye--"that you forgot your young friends
so soon."
"I remember you," said Tom. "I used to think you
were the grandest man in Washington. You gave me the
first ride on a sled I ever had, when there was some
exceptional fall of snow."
"I think we all remember Mr. Kuypers now," said
Matty, and she laughed while she blushed; "he always
bought things for our stockings. I have a Noah's Ark
upstairs now, that he gave me. In my youngest days I had
a queer mixture of the name Bruce and the name Santa
Claus. I believe I thought Santa Claus' name was
Nicholas Bruce. I am sure I did not know that Mr. Bruce
had any other name."
"If you had said you were Mr. Chappell," said Mr.
Molyneux, "I should have known you in a minute."
"But I was not," said the young man, laughing.
"Well, if you had said you were `Bruce,' I should
have known."
"Dear me, yes; but I have been a man so long, and at
Gem City nobody calls me Bruce, but my mother and Lizzy.
So I said `Mr. Kuypers,' forgetting that I had ever been
a boy. But now I am in Washington again, I shall
remember that things change here very fast in ten years.
And yet not so fast as they change at the mines."
And now everybody was at ease. How well Mrs.
Molyneux recalled to herself what she would not
speak of that Christmas Day of which Mr. Kuypers told his
story! It was in their young married life. She had her
father and mother to dine with her, and the event was
really a trial in her young experience. And then, just
as the old folks were expected, her husband came dashing
in and had asked her to put dinner a little later because
he had had this good news for the poor Widow Chappell,
and she had to tell her father and mother, when they
came, that they must all wait for his return.
The Widow Chappell was one of those waifs who seem
attracted to Washington by some fatal law. It had been
two or three months before that Mr. Molyneux had been
asked to hunt her up and help her. A letter had come,
asking him to do this, from Mrs. Fales, in Roxbury, and
Mrs. Fales had sent money for the Chappells. But the
money had gone in back rent, and shoes, and the rest, and
the wolf was very near the Chappells' door, when the
telegraph announced the "Macedonian." Mr. Molyneux had
telegraphed instanter to this Dr. Wilder. Dr. Wilder had
some sense of Christmas promptness. He remembered poor
Chappell perfectly, and mailed that night a thorough
certificate. This certificate it was which Mr. Molyneux
had carried to the poor old tenement of Massachusetts
Avenue, and this had made happy that Christmas Day--and
this.
"Why," said Mr. Bruce Kuypers, almost as if he were
speaking aloud, "it seems so queer that Christmas
comes and goes with you, and you have forgotten all about
that stormy day, and your ride to Mrs. Chappell's!
"Why, at our place, we drink Mr. Molyneux's health
every Christmas Day, and I am afraid the little ones used
to think that you had a red nose, a gray beard, and came
down the chimney!"
"As, at another place," said Matty, "they thought of
Mr. Bruce--of Noah's Ark memory."
"Anyway," said Mr. Molyneux, "any crumbs of comfort
we scattered that day were BREAD UPON THE WATERS."
Of Mr. Kuypers's quick journey the main points have
been told. Six days before, by some good luck, which
could hardly have been expected, the "Gem City Medium's"
despatch from Washington was full enough to be
intelligible. It was headed, "ANOTHER SWINDLER NAILED."
It said that Mr. Molyneux, of the Internal Improvement
office, had feathered his nest with $500,000 during
the war, in a pretended expedition to the Rio Grande. It
had now been discovered that there never was any such
expedition, and the correspondent of the Associated Press
hoped that justice would be done.
The moment Bruce Kuypers read this he was anxious.
Before an hour passed he had determined to cross to the
Pacific train eastward. Before night he was in a
sleeping-car. Day by day as he met Eastern papers, he
searched for news of the investigation. Day by day he
met it, but thanks to his promptness he had arrived in
time. It was pathetic to hear him describe his
anxiety from point to point, and they were all hushed to
silence when he told how glad he was when he found he
should certainly appear on Christmas Day.
After the dinner, another procession, not wholly
unlike the rabble rout of the morning, moved from the
dining-room to the great front parlor, where the tree was
lighted, and parcels of gray and white and brown lay
round on mantel, on piano, on chairs, on tables, and on
the floor.
No; this tale is too long already. We will not tell
what all the presents were to all the ten,--to Venty,
Chloe, Diana, and all of their color. Only let it tell
that all the ten had presents. To Mr. Kuypers's
surprise, and to every one's surprise, indeed, there were
careful presents for him as for the rest, but it must be
confessed that Horace and Laura had spelled Chipah a
little wildly. The truth was that each separate person
had feared that he would feel a little left on one
side,--he to whom so much was due on that day. And each
person, severally, down to the Brick himself, had gone
secretly, without consulting the others, to select from
his own possessions something very dear, and had wrapped
it up and marked it for the stranger. When Mr. Kuypers
opened a pretty paper, to find Matty's own illustrated
Browning, he was touched indeed. When in a rough brown
paper he found the Brick's jack-knife labelled "FOR THE
MAN," the tears stood in his eyes.
The next day the "Evening Lantern" contained this
editorial article:--
"The absurd fiasco regarding the accounts of Mr.
Molyneux, which has occupied the correspondents of the
periodical press for some days, and has even been
adverted to in New York journals claiming the title of
metropolitan, came to a fit end at the Capitol yesterday.
The wiseacre owls who started it did not see fit to put
in an appearance before the committee. Mr. Molyneux
himself sent to the Chairman a most interesting volume of
manuscript, which is, indeed, a valuable historical
memorial of times that tried men's souls. The committee
and other gentlemen present examined this curious record
with great interest. Not to speak of the minor details,
an autograph letter of the lamented Gen. Trebou gives
full credit to the Bureau of Internal Improvement for the
skill with which they executed the commission given them
in a department quite out of their line. Our brethren of
the `Argus' will be pleased to know that every grain of
oats and every spear of straw paid for by, the now famous
$47,000, are accounted for in detail. The authenticated
signatures of the somewhat celebrated Camara and Gazza
and the mythical Captain Cole appear. Very valuable
letters, throwing interesting light on our relations with
the Government of Mexico, from the pens of the lamented
Adams and Prigg, show what were the services of those
Spanish turncoats and their allies.
"We cannot say that we regret the attention which has
thus been given to a very important piece of history, too
long neglected in the rush of more petty affairs.
We take the occasion, however, to enter our protest
once more against this preposterous system of
`Resolutions,' in which, as it were in echo to every
niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the
House degrades itself to the work of the common
scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation
into some subject where all well informed persons are
fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure,
etc., etc., etc. to the end of that chapter.'"
But I fear no one at the Molyneux mansion had "the
lantern." They had "found a man," and did not need a
lantern to look farther.
It was as Mr. Molyneux had said: he had cast his
Bread upon the Waters, and he had found it after many
days.
THE LOST PALACE
THE LOST PALACE
[From the Ingham Papers.]
"Passengers for Philadelphia and New York will change
cars."
This annoying and astonishing cry was loudly made in
the palace-car "City of Thebes," at Pittsburg, just as
the babies were well asleep, and all the passengers
adapting themselves to a quiet evening.
"Impossible!" said I, mildly, to the "gentlemanly
conductor," who beamed before me in the majesty of gilt
lace on his cap, and the embroidered letters P. P. C.
These letters do not mean, as in French, "to take leave,"
for the peculiarity of this man is, that he does not
leave you till your journey's end: they mean, in
American, "Pullman's Palace Car." "Impossible!" said I;
"I bought my ticket at Chicago through to Philadelphia,
with the assurance that the palace-car would go through.
This lady has done the same for herself and her children.
Nay, if you remember, you told me yourself that the `City
of Thebes' was built for the Philadelphia service, and
that I need not move my hat, unless I wished, till we
were there."
The man did not blush, but answered, in the well-
mannered tone of a subordinate used to obey,
Here are my orders, sir; telegram just received here
from headquarters: `"City of Thebes" is to go to
Baltimore.' Another palace here, sir, waiting for you."
And so we were trans-shipped into such chairs and berths
as might have been left in this other palace, as not
wanted by anybody in the great law of natural selection;
and the "City of Thebes" went to Baltimore, I suppose.
The promises which had been made to us when we bought our
tickets went to their place, and the people who made them
went to theirs.
Except for this little incident, of which all my
readers have probably experienced the like in these days
of travel, the story I am now to tell would have seemed
to me essentially improbable. But so soon as I
reflected, that, in truth, these palaces go hither, go
thither, controlled or not, as it may be, by some distant
bureau, the story recurred to me as having elements of
vraisemblance which I had not noticed before. Having
occasion, nearly at the same time, to inquire at the
Metropolitan station in Boston for a lost shawl which had
been left in a certain Brookline car, the gentlemanly
official told me that he did not know where that car was;
he had not heard of it for several days. This again
reminded me of "The Lost Palace." Why should not one
palace, more or less, go astray, when there are thousands
to care for? Indeed had not Mr. Firth told me, at
the Albany, that the worst difficulty in the
administration of a strong railway is, that they cannot
call their freight-cars home? They go astray on the line
of some weaker sister, which finds it convenient to use
them till they begin to show a need for paint or repairs.
If freight-cars disappear, why not palaces? So the story
seems to me of more worth, and I put it upon paper.
It was on my second visit to Melbourne that I heard
it. It was late at night, in the coffee-room of the
Auckland Arms, rather an indifferent third-class house,
in a by-street in that city, to which, in truth, I should
not have gone had my finances been on a better scale than
they were. I laid down, at last, an old New York
"Herald," which the captain of the "Osprey" had given me
that morning, and which, in the hope of home-news, I had
read and read again to the last syllable of the
"Personals." I put down the paper as one always puts
down an American paper in a foreign land, saying to
myself, "Happy is that nation whose history is
unwritten." At that moment Sir Roger Tichborne, who had
been talking with an intelligent-looking American on the
other side of the table, stretched his giant form, and
said he believed he would play a game of billiards before
he went to bed. He left us alone; and the American
crossed the room, and addressed me.
"You are from Massachusetts, are you not?" said he.
I said I had lived in that State.
"Good State to come from," said he. "I was
there myself for three or four months,--four months
and ten days precisely. Did not like it very well; did
not like it. At least I liked it well enough: my wife
did not like it; she could not get acquainted."
"Does she get acquainted here?" said I, acting on a
principle which I learned from Scipio Africanus at the
Latin School, and so carrying the war into the enemy's
regions promptly. That is to say, I saw I must talk with
this man, and I preferred to have him talk of his own
concerns rather than of mine.
"O sir, I lost her,--I lost her ten years ago! Lived
in New Altoona then. I married this woman the next
autumn, in Vandalia. Yes, Mrs. Joslyn is very well
satisfied here. She sees a good deal of society, and
enjoys very good health."
I said that most people did who were fortunate enough
to have it to enjoy. But Mr. Joslyn did not understand
this bitter sarcasm, far less resent it. He went on,
with sufficient volubility, to give to me his impressions
of the colony,--of the advantages it would derive from
declaring its independence, and then from annexing itself
to the United States. At the end of one of his periods,
goaded again to say something, I asked why he left his
own country for a "colony," if he so greatly preferred
the independent order of government.
Mr. Joslyn looked round somewhat carefully, shut the
door of the room in which we were now alone,--and
were likely, at that hour of the night, to be alone,--and
answered my question at length, as the reader will see.
"Did you ever hear of the lost palace?" said he a
little anxiously.
I said, no; that, with every year or two, I heard
that Mr. Layard had found a palace at Nineveh, but that
I had never heard of one's being lost.
"They don't tell of it, sir. Sometimes I think they
do not know themselves. Does not that seem possible?"
And the poor man repeated this question with such
eagerness, that, in spite of my anger at being bored by
him, my heart really warmed toward him. "I really think
they do not know. I have never seen one word in the
papers about it. Now, they would have put something in
the papers,--do you not think they would? If they knew
it themselves, they would."
"Knew what?" said I, really startled out of my
determination to snub him.
"Knew where the palace is,--knew how it was lost."
By this time, of course, I supposed he was crazy.
But a minute more dispelled that notion; and I beg the
reader to relieve his mind from it. This man knew
perfectly well what he was talking about, and never, in
the whole narration, showed any symptom of mania,--a
matter on which I affect to speak with the intelligence
of the "experts" indeed.
After a little of this fencing with each other, in
which he satisfied himself that my ignorance was not
affected, he took a sudden resolution, as if it were a
relief to him to tell me the whole story.
"It was years on years ago," said he. "It was when
they first had palaces."
Still thinking of Nimrod's palace and Priam's, I said
that must have been a great while ago.
"Yes, indeed," said he. "You would not call them
palaces now, since you have seen Pullman's and Wagner's.
But we called them palaces then. So many looking-
glasses, you know, and tapestry carpets and gold spit-
boxes. Ours was the first line that run palaces."
I asked myself, mentally, of what metal were the
spit-boxes in Semiramis's palace; but I said nothing.
"Our line was the first line that had them. We were
running our lightning express on the `Great Alleghanian.'
We were in opposition to everybody, made close
connections, served supper on board, and our passengers
only were sure of the night-boat at St. Louis. Those
were the days of river-boats, you know. We introduced
the palace feature on the railroad; and very successful
it was. I was an engineer. I had a first-rate
character, and the best wages of any man on the line.
Never put me on a dirt-dragger or a lazy freight loafer,
I tell you. No, sir! I ran the expresses, and nothing
else, and lay off two days in the week, besides. I don't
think I should have thought of it but for Todhunter,
who was my palace conductor."
Again this IT, which bad appeared so mysteriously in
what the man said before. I asked no question, but
listened, really interested now, in the hope I should
find out what IT was; and this the reader will learn. He
went on, in a hurried way:--
"Todhunter was my palace conductor. One night he was
full, and his palace was hot, and smelled bad of whale-
oil. We did not burn petroleum then. Well, it was a
splendid full moon in August; and we were coming down
grade, making up the time we had lost at the Brentford
junction. Seventy miles an hour she ran if she ran one.
Todhunter had brought his cigar out on the tender, and
was sitting by me. Good Lord! it seems like last week.
"Todhunter says to me, `Joslyn,' says he, `what's the
use of crooking all round these valleys, when it would be
so easy to go across?' You see, we were just beginning
to crook round, so as to make that long bend there is at
Chamoguin; but right across the valley we could see the
stern lights of Fisher's train: it was not more than half
a mile away, but we should run eleven miles before we
came there."
I knew what Mr. Joslyn meant. To cross the mountain
ranges by rail, the engineers are obliged to wind up one
side of a valley, and then, boldly crossing the head of
the ravine on a high arch, to wind up the other side
still, so that perhaps half an hour's journey is
consumed, while not a mile of real distance is made.
Joslyn took out his pencil, and on the back of an
envelope drew a little sketch of the country; which, as
it happened, I still preserve, and which, with his
comments, explains his whole story completely. "Here we
are," said he. "This black line is the Great
Alleghanian,--double track, seventy pounds to the yard;
no figuring off there, I tell you. This was a good
straight run, down grade a hundred and seventy-two feet
on the mile. There, where I make this X, we came on the
Chamoguin Valley, and turned short, nearly north.
So we ran wriggling about till Drums here, where we
stopped if they showed lanterns,--what we call a flag-
station. But there we got across the valley, and worked
south again to this other X, which was, as I say, not
five-eighths of a mile from this X above, though it had
taken us eleven miles to get there."
He had said it was not more than half a mile; but
this half-mile grew to five-eighths as he became more
accurate and serious.
"Well," said he, now resuming the thread of his
story, "it was Todhunter put it into my head. He owns he
did. Todhunter says, says he, `Joslyn, what's the use of
crooking round all these valleys, when it would be so
easy to go across?'
"Well, sir, I saw it then, as clear as I see it now.
When that trip was done, I had two days to myself,--one
was Sunday,--and Todhunter had the same; and he came
round to my house. His wife knew mine, and we liked
them. Well, we fell talking about it; and I got down the
Cyclopaedia, and we found out there about the speed of
cannon-balls, and the direction they had to give them.
You know this was only talk then; we never thought what
would come of it; but very curious it all was."
And here Mr. Joslyn went into a long mathematical
talk, with which I will not harass the reader, perfectly
sure, from other experiments which I have tried with
other readers, that this reader would skip it all if
it were written down. Stated very briefly, it amounted
to this: In the old-fashioned experiments of those days,
a cannon-ball travelled four thousand and one hundred
feet in nine seconds. Now, Joslyn was convinced, like
every other engineman I ever talked to, that on a steep
down-grade he could drive a train at the rate of a
hundred miles an hour. This is thirteen hundred and
fourteen feet in nine seconds,--almost exactly one-third
of the cannon-ball's velocity. At those rates, if the
valley at Chamoguin were really but five-eighths of a
mile wide, the cannon-ball would cross it in seven or
eight seconds, and the train in about twenty-three
seconds. Both Todhunter and Joslyn were good enough
mechanics and machinists to know that the rate for
thirty-three hundred feet, the width of the valley, was
not quite the same as that for four thousand feet; for
which, in their book, they had the calculations and
formulas; but they also knew that the difference was to
their advantage, or the advantage of the bold experiment
which had occurred to both of them when Todhunter had
made on the tender his very critical suggestion.
The reader has already conceived the idea of this
experiment. These rash men were wondering already
whether it were not possible to leap an engine flying
over the Chamoguin ravine, as Eclipse or Flying Childers
might have leaped the brook at the bottom of it. Joslyn
believed implicitly, as I found in talk with him,
the received statement of conversation, that Eclipse, at
a single bound, sprang forty feet. "If Eclipse, who
weighed perhaps one thousand two hundred, would spring
forty feet, could not my train, weighing two hundred
tons, spring a hundred times as far?" asked he
triumphantly. At least, he said that he said this to
Todhunter. They went into more careful studies of
projectiles, to see if it could or could not.
The article on "Gunnery" gave them just one of those
convenient tables which are the blessing of wise men and
learned men, and which lead half-trained men to their
ruin. They found that for their "range," which was, as
they supposed, eleven hundred yards, the elevation of a
forty-two pounder was one degree and a third; of a nine-
pounder, three degrees. The elevation for a railway
train, alas! no man had calculated. But this had
occurred to both of them from the beginning. In
descending the grade, at the spot where, on his little
map, Joslyn made the more westerly X, they were more than
eleven hundred feet above the spot where he had made his
second, or easterly X. All this descent was to the
advantage of the experiment. A gunner would have said
that the first X "commanded" the second X, and that a
battery there would inevitably silence a battery at the
point below.
"We need not figure on it," said Todhunter, as Mrs.
Joslyn called them in to supper. "If we did, we
should make a mistake. Give me your papers. When I go
up, Monday night, I'll give them to my brother Bill. I
shall pass him at Faber's Mills. He has studied all
these things, of course; and he will like the fun of
making it out for us." So they sat down to Mrs. Joslyn's
waffles; and, but for Bill Todhunter, this story would
never have been told to me, nor would John Joslyn and
"this woman" ever have gone to Australia.
But Bill Todhunter was one of those acute men of whom
the new civilization of this country is raising thousands
with every year; who, in the midst of hard hand-work, and
a daily duty which to collegians and to the ignorant men
among their professors seems repulsive, carry on careful
scientific study, read the best results of the latest
inquiry, manage to bring together a first-rate library of
reference, never spend a cent for liquor or tobacco,
never waste an hour at a circus or a ball, but make their
wives happy by sitting all the evening, "figuring," one
side of the table, while the wife is hemming napkins on
the other. All of a sudden, when such a man is wanted,
he steps out, and bridges the Gulf of Bothnia; and people
wonder, who forget that for two centuries and a half the
foresighted men and women of this country have been
building up, in the face of the Devil of Selfishness on
the one hand, and of the Pope of Rome on the other, a
system of popular education, improving every hour.
At this moment Bill Todhunter was foreman of Repair
Section No. II on the "Great Alleghanian,"--a position
which needed a man of first-rate promptness, of great
resource, of good education in engineering. Such a man
had the "Great Alleghanian" found in him, by good luck;
and they had promoted him to their hardest-worked and
best-paid section,--the section on which, as it happened,
was this Chamoguin run, and the long bend which I have
described, by which the road "headed" that stream.
The younger Todhunter did meet his brother at Faber's
Mills, where the repair-train had hauled out of the way
of the express, and where the express took wood. The
brothers always looked for each other on such occasions;
and Bill promised to examine the paper which Joslyn had
carefully written out, and which his brother brought to
him.
I have never repeated in detail the mass of
calculations which Bill Todhunter made on the suggestion
thus given to him. If I had, I would not repeat them
here, for a reason which has been suggested already. He
became fascinated with the problem presented to him.
Stated in the language of the craft, it was this:
Given a moving body, with a velocity eight thousand
eight hundred feet in a minute, what should be its
elevation that it may fall eleven hundred feet in the
transit of five-eighths of a mile?" He had not only
to work up the parabola, comparatively simple, but he had
to allow for the resistance of the air, on the
supposition of a calm, according to the really admirable
formulas of Robins and Coulomb, which were the best be
had access to. Joslyn brought me, one day, a letter from
Bill Todhunter, which shows how carefully he went into
this intricate inquiry.
Unfortunately for them all, it took possession of
this spirited and accomplished young man. You see, he
not only had the mathematical ability for the calculation
of the fatal curve, but, as had been ordered without any
effort of his, he was in precisely the situation of the
whole world for trying in practice his own great
experiment. At each of the two X X of Joslyn's map, the
company had, as it happened, switches for repair-trains
or wood-trains. Had it not, Bill Todhunter had ample
power to make them.
For the "experiment," all that was necessary was,
that under the pretext of re-adjusting these switches, he
should lay out that at the upper X so that it should run,
on the exact grade which he required, to the western edge
of the ravine, in a line which should be the direct
continuation of the long, straight run with which the
little map begins.
An engine, then, running down that grade at the
immense rapidity practicable there, would take the switch
with its full speed, would fly the ravine at precisely
the proper slopes, and, if the switch had been
rightly aligned, would land on the similar switch at the
lower X. It would come down exactly right on the track,
as you sit precisely on a chair when you know exactly how
high it is.
"If." And why should it not be rightly aligned, if
Bill Todhunter himself aligned it? This he was well
disposed to do. He also would align the lower switch,
that at the lower X, that it might receive into its
willing embrace the engine on its arrival.
When the bold engineer had conceived this plan, it
was he who pushed the others on to it, not they who urged
him. They were at work on their daily duty, sometimes
did not meet each other for a day or two. Bill Todhunter
did not see them more than once in a fortnight. But
whenever they did meet, the thing seemed to be taken more
and more for granted. At last Joslyn observed one day,
as he ran down, that there was a large working-party at
the switch above Drums, and he could see Bill Todhunter,
in his broad sombrero, directing them all. Joslyn was
not surprised, somehow, when he came to the lower switch,
to find another working-party there. The next time they
all three met, Bill Todhunter told them that all was
ready if they were. He said that he had left a few
birches to screen the line of the upper switch, for fear
some nervous bungler, driving an engine down, might be
frightened, and "blow" about the switch. But he said
that any night when the others were ready to make
the fly, he was; that there would be a full moon the next
Wednesday, and, if there was no wind, he hoped they would
do it then.
"You know," said poor Joslyn, describing it to me, "I
should never have done it alone; August would never have
done it alone; no, I do not think that Bill Todhunter
himself would have done it alone. But our heads were
full of it. We had thought of it and thought of it till
we did not think of much else; and here was everything
ready, and neither of us was afraid, and neither of us
chose to have the others think he was afraid. I did say,
what was the truth, that I had never meant to try it with
a train. I had only thought that we should apply to the
supe, and that he would get up a little excursion party
of gentlemen,--editors, you know, and stockholders,--who
would like to do it together, and that I should have the
pleasure and honor of taking them over. But Todhunter
poohed at that. He said all the calculations were made
for the inertia of a full train, that that was what the
switch was graded for, and that everything would have to
be altered if any part of the plan were altered.
Besides, he said the superintendent would never agree,
that he would insist on consulting the board and the
chief engineer, and that they would fiddle over it till
Christmas.
"`No,' said Bill, `next Wednesday, or never! If you
will not do it then, I will put the tracks back
again.' August Todhunter said nothing; but I knew he
would do what we agreed to, and he did.
"So at last I said I would jump it on Wednesday
night, if the night was fine. But I had just as lief own
to you that I hoped it would not be fine. Todhunter--
Bill Todhunter, I mean--was to leave the switch open
after the freight had passed, and to drive up to the
Widow Jones's Cross Road. There he would have a lantern,
and I would stop and take him up. He had a right to stop
us, as chief of repairs. Then we should have seven miles
down-grade to get up our speed, and then--we should see!
"Mr. Ingham, I might have spared myself the hoping
for foul weather. It was the finest moonlight night that
you ever knew in October. And if Bill Todhunter had
weighed that train himself, he could not have been better
pleased,--one baggage-car, one smoking-car, two regular
first-class, and two palaces: she run just as steady as
an old cow! We came to the Widow Jones's, square on
time; and there was Bill's lantern waving. I slowed the
train: he jumped on the tender without stopping it. I
`up brakes' again, and then I told Flanagan, my fireman,
to go back to the baggage-car, and see if they would lend
me some tobacco. You see, we wanted to talk, and we
didn't want him to see. `Mr. Todhunter and I will feed
her till you come back,' says I to Flanagan. In a
minute after he had gone, August Todhunter came forward
on the engine; and, I tell you, she did fly!
"`Not too fast,' said Bill, `not too fast: too fast
is as bad as too slow.'
"`Never you fear me,' says I. `I guess I know this
road and this engine. Take out your watch, and time the
mile-posts,' says I; and he timed them. `Thirty-eight
seconds,' says he; `thirty-seven and a half, thirty-six,
thirty-six, thirty-six,'--three times thirty-six, as we
passed the posts, just as regular as an old clock! And
then we came right on the mile-post you know at Old
Flander's. `Thirty-six,' says Bill again. And then she
took the switch,--I can hear that switch-rod ring under
us now Mr. Ingham,--and then--we were clear!
"Wasn't it grand? The range was a little bit up,
you see, at first; but it seemed as if we were flying
just straight across. All the rattle of the rail
stopped, you know, though the pistons worked just as true
as ever; neither of us said one word, you know; and she
just flew--well, as you see a hawk fly sometimes, when he
pounces, you know, only she flew so straight and true!
I think you may have dreamed of such things. I have; and
now,--now I dream it very often. It was not half a
minute, you know, but it seemed a good long time. I said
nothing and they said nothing; only Bill just squeezed my
hand. And just as I knew we must be half over,--for I
could see by the star I was watching ahead that we
were not going up, but were falling again,--do you think
the rope by my side tightened quick, and the old bell on
the engine gave one savage bang, turned right over as far
as the catch would let it, and stuck where it turned!
Just that one sound, everything else was still; and then
she landed on the rails, perhaps seventy feet inside the
ravine, took the rails as true and sweet as you ever saw
a ship take the water, hardly touched them, you know,
skimmed--well, as I have seen a swallow skim on the sea;
the prettiest, well, the tenderest touch, Mr. Ingham,
that ever I did see! And I could just hear the
connecting rods tighten the least bit in the world behind
me, and we went right on.
"We just looked at each other in the faces, and we
could not speak; no, I do not believe we spoke for three
quarters of a minute. Then August said, `Was not that
grand? Will they let us do it always, Bill?' But we
could not talk then. Flanagan came back with the
tobacco, and I had just the wit to ask him why he had
been gone so long. Poor fellow! he was frightened enough
when we pulled up at Clayville, and he thought it was
Drums. Drums, you see, was way up the bend, a dozen
miles above Clayville. Poor Flanagan thought we must
have passed there while he was skylarking in the baggage-
car, and that he had not minded it. We never stopped at
Drums unless we had passengers, or they. It was what
we call a flag-station. So I blew Flanagan up, and
told him he was gone too long.
"Well, sir, at Clayville we did stop,--always stopped
there for wood. August Todhunter, he was the palace
conductor; he went back to look to his passengers. Bill
stayed with me. But in a minute August came running
back, and called me off the engine. He led me forward,
where it was dark; but I could see, as we went, that
something was to pay. The minute we were alone he
says,--
"`John, we've lost the rear palace.'
"`Don't fool me, August,' says I.
"`No fooling, John,' says he. `The shackle parted.
The cord parted, and is flying loose behind now. If you
want to see, come and count the cars. The "General
Fremont" is here all right; but I tell you the "James
Buchanan" is at the bottom of the Chamoguin Creek.'
"I walked back to the other end of the platform, as
fast as I could go and not be minded. Todhunter was
there before me, tying up the loose end of the bell-cord.
There was a bit of the broken end of the shackle twisted
in with the bolt. I pulled the bolt and threw the iron
into the swamp far as I could fling her. Then I nodded
to Todhunter and walked forward just as that old goose at
Clayville had got his trousers on, so he could come out,
and ask me if we were not ahead of time. I tell you,
sir, I did not stop to talk with him. I just rang `All
aboard!' and started her again; and this time I run
slow enough to save the time before we came down to
Steuben. We were on time, all right, there."
Here poor Joslyn stopped a while in his story; and I
could see that he was so wrought up with excitement that
I had better not interrupt, either with questions or with
sympathy. He rallied in a minute or two, and said,--
"I thought--we all thought--that there would be a
despatch somewhere waiting us. But no; all was as
regular as the clock. One palace more or less,--what did
they know, and what did they care? So daylight came. We
could not say a word, you know, with Flanagan there; and
we only stopped, you know, a minute or two every hour;
and just then was when August Todhunter had to be with
his passengers, you know. Was not I glad when we came
into Pemaquid,--our road ran from Pemaquid across the
mountains to Eden, you know,--when we came into Pemaquid,
and nobody had asked any questions?
"I reported my time at the office of the master of
trains, and I went home. I tell you, Mr. Ingham, I have
never seen Pemaquid Station since that day.
"I had done nothing wrong, of course. I had obeyed
every order, and minded every signal. But still I knew
public opinion might be against me when they heard of the
loss of the palace. I did not feel very well about it,
and I wrote a note to say I was not well enough to take
my train the next night; and I and Mrs. Joslyn went
to New York, and I went aboard a Collins steamer as
fireman; and Mrs. Joslyn, she went as stewardess; and I
wrote to Pemaquid, and gave up my place. It was a good
place, too; but I gave it up, and I left America.
Bill Todhunter, he resigned his place too, that same
day, though that was a good place. He is in the Russian
service now. He is running their line from Archangel to
Astrachan; good pay, he says, but lonely. August would
not stay in America after his brother left; and he is now
captain's clerk on the Harkaway steamers between Bangkok
and Cochbang; good place he says, but hot. So we are all
parted.
"And do you know, sir, never one of us ever heard of
the lost palace!"
Sure enough, under that very curious system of
responsibility, by which one corporation owns the
carriages which another corporation uses, nobody in the
world has to this moment ever missed "The Lost Palace."
On each connecting line, everybody knew that "she" was
not there; but no one knew or asked where she was. The
descent into the rocky bottom of the Chamouin, more than
fifteen hundred feet below the line of flight, had of
course been rapid,--slow at first, but in the end rapid.
In the first second, the lost palace had fallen sixteen
feet; in the second, sixty-four; in the third, one
hundred and forty-four; in the fourth, two hundred and
fifty-six; in the fifth, four hundred feet; so that
it must have been near the end of the sixth second of its
fall, that, with a velocity now of more than six hundred
feet in a second, the falling palace, with its
unconscious passengers, fell upon the rocks at the bottom
of the Chamoguin ravine. In the dead of night, wholly
without jar or parting, those passengers must have been
sleeping soundly; and it is impossible, therefore, on any
calculation of human probability, that any one of them
can have been waked an instant before the complete
destruction of the palace, by the sudden shock of its
fall upon the bed of the stream. To them the accident,
if it is fair to call it so, must have been wholly free
from pain.
The tangles of that ravine, and the swamp below it,
are such that I suppose that even the most adventurous
huntsman never finds his way there. On the only occasion
when I ever met Mr. Jules Verne he expressed a desire to
descend there from one of his balloons, to learn whether
the inhabitants of "The Lost Palace" might not still
survive, and be living in a happy republican colony
there,--a place without railroads, without telegrams,
without mails, and certainly without palaces. But at the
moment when these sheets go to press, no account of such
an adventure has appeared from his rapid pen.
9 LINWOOD STREET
A CHRISTMAS STORY
A gray morning, the deck wet, the iron all beaded with
frost, all the longshoremen in heavy pea-jackets or
cardigans, the whole ship in a bustle, and the favored
first-class passengers just leaving.
One sad-looking Irish girl stands with her knit hood
already spotted with the rime, and you cannot tell
whether those are tears which hang from her black
eyelashes or whether the fog is beginning to freeze
there. What you see is that the poor thing looks right
and left and up the pier and down the pier, and that in
the whole crowd--they all seem so selfish--she sees
nobody. Hundreds of people going and coming, pushing and
hauling, and Nora's big brother is not there, as he
promised to be and should be.
Mrs. Ohstrom, the motherly Swedish woman, who has
four children and ten tin cups and a great bed and five
trunks and a fatuous, feckless husband makes time,
between cousins and uncles and custom-house men and
sharpers, to run up every now and then to say that Nora
must not cry, that she must be easy, that she has spoken
to the master and the master has said they are three
hours earlier than they were expected. And all this
was so kindly meant and so kindly said that poor Nora
brushed the tears away, if they were tears, and thanked
her, though she did not understand one word that dear
Mrs. Ohstrom said to her. What is language, or what are
words, after all?
And the bright-buttoned, daintily dressed little
ship's doctor, whom poor Nora hardly knew in his shore
finery,--he made time to stop and tell her that the ship
was too early, and that she must not worry. Father, was
it, she was waiting for? "Oh, brother! Oh, he will be
sure to be here! Better sit down. Here is a chair.
Don't cry. I am afraid you had no breakfast. Take this
orange. It will cheer you up. I shall see you again."
Alas! the little doctor was swept away and forgot
Nora for a week, and she "was left lamenting."
For one hour went by, and two, and three. The
Swedish woman went, and the doctor went, and the girl
could see the captain go, and the mate that gave them
their orders every morning. The custom-house people
began to go. The cabs and other carriages for the gentry
had gone long before.
And poor Nora was left lamenting.
Then was it that that queer Salvation Army girl, with
a coal-scuttle for a bonnet, came up again. She had
smiled pleasantly two or three times before, and had
asked Nora to eat a bun. Poor Nora broke down and
cried heartily this time. But the other was patient and
kind, and said just what the others had said. Only she
did not go away. And she had the sense to ask if Nora
knew where the brother lived.
"Why, of course I do, miss. See, here is the
paper."
And the little soldier lass read it: "99 Linwood
Street, Boston."
"My poor child, what a pity you did not let us see it
before!"
Alas and alas! Nora's box was of the biggest. But
the army lass flinched at nothing.
An immense wagon, with two giant horses, loaded with
the most extraordinary chests which have been seen since
the days of the Vikings. Piled on the top were many
feather-beds, and on the top of the feather-beds a
Scandinavian matron. With Mike, the good-natured
teamster, who was at once captain and pilot of this
craft, the army lass had easily made her treaty, when he
was told the story. He was to carry Nora and her outfit
to the Linwood Street house after he had taken these
Swedes to theirs. "And indade it will not be farr, miss.
There 's a shorrt cut behind Egan's, if indade he did not
put up a tinimint house since I was that way." And with
new explanations to Nora that all was right, that indeed
it was better this way than it would have been had her
brother been called from his work, she was lifted,
without much consent of her own, to the driver's seat,
and her precious "box" was so placed that she could
rest her little feet upon it.
Nora had proudly confided to the friendly lass the
assurance that she had money, had even shown a crisp $2
bill which had been sent to her for exigencies.
But when the lass made the contract with Mike
Dermott, the good fellow said he should take Nora and her
box for the love of County Cork. "Indade, indade, I
don't take money from the like of her."
And so they started, with the Swedish men walking on
one side of the cart with their rifles, keeping a good
lookout for buffaloes and red Indians and grizzly bears,
as men landing in a new country which they were to
civilize. More sailing for there was the ferry to cross
to old Boston. Much waiting, for there was a broken-down
coal-wagon in Salutation Alley. Long conference between
Nora and Mike, in which he did all the talking and she
all the listening, as to home rule and Mr. McCarthy, and
what O'Brien thought of this, and what Cunniff thought of
that. Then an occasional question came in Swedish from
the matron above their heads, and was followed by a reply
in Celtic English from Mike, each wholly ignorant of the
views or wishes of the others. And occasionally the
escort of riflemen, after some particular attack of
chaff, in words which they fortunately did not
understand, looked up to their matron, controller, and
director, exchanged words with her, and then studied
the pavement again for tracks of buffalo. A long hour of
all this, the stone and brick of the city giving way to
green trees between the houses as they come to
Dorchester.
Poor Nora looks right and looks left, hoping to meet
her big brother. She begins to think she shall remember
him. Everybody else looks so different from Fermoy that
he must look like home.
But there is no brother.
There is at last a joyful cry as the Swedish matron
and the riflemen recognize familiar faces. And Mike
smiles gladly, and brings round the stout bays with a
twitch, so that the end of the cart comes square to the
sidewalk. Somebody produces a step-ladder, and the
Swedish matron, with her bird-cage in her hand, descends
in triumph. Much kissing, much shaking of hands, much
thanking of God, more or less reverent. Then the cords
are cut, beds flung down, the giant boxes lifted, the
sons of Anak only know how. The money covenanted for is
produced and paid, and Mike mounts lightly to Nora's
side.
"And now, Nora, my child, wherr is the paper? For in
two minutes we 'll soon be therr, now that this rubbish
is landed."
And he read on the precious paper, "John McLaughlin,
99 Linwood Street."
Strange to say, the paper said just what it had said
two hours before.
"And now, my dear child, we will be therr in ten
minutes, if only we can cross back of Egan's."
And although they could not cross back of Egan's, for
Egan had put up a "tinimint" house since Mike had passed
that way, yet in ten minutes Linwood Street had been
found. No. 99 at last revealed itself, between Nos. 7
and 2,--a great six-story wooden tinder-box, with
clothes-lines mysterious behind, open doors in front,
long passages running through, three doors on each side
of a passage, and the wondering heads of eleven women who
belonged to five different races and spoke in six
different languages appearing from their eleven windows,
as Mike and Nora and the two bays all stopped at one and
the same moment at the door.
Mike was already anxious about his time, for he was
to be at the custom-house an hour away or more at eleven
sharp. But he selected a certain Widow Flynn from the
eleven white-capped women; he explained to her briefly
that John McLaughlin was to be found; he told Nora for
the thirty-seventh time that all was right and that she
must not cry; he looked at his watch again, rather
anxiously, mounted his box, and drove swiftly away.
He was the one thread which bound Nora to this world.
And this thread broke before her eyes.
Mrs. Flynn affected to be cheerful. But she was not
cheerful. Mrs. Flynn was a prominent person in her
sodality. And well she knew that if any John
McLaughlin in those parts were expecting any sister from
home, she should know him and where he lived. Well she
knew, also, that John McLaughlin, the mason, was born in
Glasgow; that John McLaughlin, who is on the city work,
had all his family around him, and, most distinct of all,
she knew that no McLaughlin, sisterless or many-sistered,
lived in this beehive which she lived in, though it were
99 Linwood Street. Into her own cell of that beehive,
however, she took poor, sad, desolate Nora. Into the
hallway she bade the loafing neighbor boys bring Nora's
trunk; in a language Nora could hardly understand she
explained to her that all would be well as soon as the
policeman passed by. She sent Mary Murphy, who happened
to be at home from school, for a pint of milk, and so
compelled Nora to drink a cup of tea and to eat a biscuit
and a dropped egg, while they waited for the policeman.
Of course he knew of seven John McLaughlins. He even
went to the drug-store and looked in the Boston Directory
to find that there were there the names of sixty-one
more. But not one of them lived in Linwood Street, as
they all knew already. All the same Nora was charged not
to cry, to drink more tea and eat more bread and butter.
The "cop" said he would look in on three of the Johns
whom he knew, and intelligent boys now returning from
school were sent to the homes of the other four to
interrogate them as to any expected sister. Within an
hour, now nearly one o'clock, answers were received
from all the seven. No one of them expected chick or
child from Fermoy.
But the "cop" had a suggestion to make. His pocket
list of names of streets revealed another Linwood
Street--in Roxbury; not this one in Dorchester. Be it
known to unlearned readers, who in snug shelter in
Montana follow along this little tale, that Roxbury and
Dorchester are both parts of that large municipality
called Boston. Though no John McLaughlin was in the
directory for 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, was not that
the objective? Poor Nora was questioned as to Roxbury.
She was sure she never heard of it.
But the clue was too good to be lost, and the
authority of the friendly "cop" was too great to be
resisted. He telephoned to the central office that Nora
McLaughlin, just from Ireland, had been found, in a
fashion, but that no one knew where to put her. Then he
stopped a milkman from Braintree, who delivered afternoon
milk for invalids.
Was he not going through Roxbury?
Of course he was.
Would he not take this lost child to 99 Linwood Street?
Of course he would. Milkmen, from their profession,
have hearts warm toward children.
Well, if he were to take her, he had better take her
trunk too.
To which illogical proposal the milkman
acceded--on the afternoon route there is so much
less milk to take than there is in the morning.
So Nora was lifted into the milk-wagon. In tears she
kissed good Mrs. Flynn. The boys and girls assembled to
bid her good-by, and even she had a hope for a few
moments that her troubles were at an end.
At 99 Linwood Street, Roxbury, they were preparing
for the Review Club.
The Review Club met once a fortnight at half-past two
o'clock at the house of one or another of the members.
They first arranged the little details of the business.
Then the hostess read, or made some one read, the scraps
which seemed most worthy in the reviews and magazines of
the last issues, and at four the husbands and brothers
and neighbors generally dropped in, and there was
afternoon tea.
"You are sure you have cream enough, Ellen?"
"Oh, yes, mum."
"All kinds of tea, you know, that which the Chinese
gentlemen sent, and be sure of the chocolate for Mrs.
Bunce."
"Indeed yes, mum."
"And let me know just before you bring up the hot
water." Doorbell rings. "There is Mrs. Walter now!"
No, it wasn't Mrs. Walter. She came three minutes
after. But before she came, Howells, the milkman, had
lifted Nora from her seat. As the snow fell fast on the
doorsteps, he carried her carefully up to the door,
and even by the time Ellen answered the bell he had the
heavy chest, dragging it over the snow by the stout rope
at one end.
Ellen was amazed to find this group instead of Mrs.
Walter. She called her mistress, who heard Howells's
realistic story with amazement, not to say amusement.
"You poor dear child!" she cried at once. "Come in
where it is dry! John McLaughlin? No, indeed! Who can
John McLaughlin be? Ellen, what is Mike's last name?"
Mike was the choreman, who made the furnace fire and
kept the sidewalk.
"Mike's name, mum? I don't know, mum. Mary will
know, mum."
And for the moment Ellen disappeared to find Mary.
"Never mind, never mind. Come in, you poor child.
You are very good to bring her, Mr. Howells, very good
indeed. We will take care of her. Is it going to
storm?"
Mr. Howells thought it was going to storm, and turned
to go away. At that moment Mrs. Walter arrived, the
first comer of the Review Club. And Nora's new hostess
had to turn to her guests, while Ellen in the last cares
for the afternoon table had to comfort Nora by spasms.
It was left for Margaret the chambermaid to pump out--or
to screw out, as you choose--the details of the story
from the poor frightened waif, who seemed more astray
than ever.
John McLaughlin? No. Nobody knew anything about
him. The last choreman was named McManus, but he went to
Ottawa three years ago!
And while the different facts and doubts were
canvassed in the kitchen, upstairs they settled the
Bulgarian question, the origin of the natives of
Tasmania, and the last questions about realism.
Only the mind of the lady of the house returned again
and again to questions as to the present residence of
John McLaughlin.
For in spite of the gathering snow and the prospect
of more, the members of the Review Club had followed fast
on Mrs. Walters and gathered in full force.
The hostess, though somewhat preoccupied, was
courteous and ready.
Only the functions of the club, as they went forward,
would be occasionally interrupted. Thus she would read
aloud "as in her private duty bound"--
"`The peasantry were excited, but were held in check
by promises from Stambuloff. The emissaries of the
Czar--'
"Mrs. Goodspeed, would you mind reading on? Here is
the place. I see my postman pass the window."
And so, moving quickly to the front door, she
interviewed the faithful Harrington, dressed, heaven
knows why, in Confederate uniform of gray. For
Harrington had served his four years on the loyal side.
Four times a day did Harrington with his letter-bag
renew the connection of this household with the world and
other worlds.
"Dear Mr. Harrington, I thought you could tell us.
Here is a girl named Nora McLaughlin, and here is her
trunk, both left at the door by the milkman, and we do
not know anything about where she belongs."
"Insufficient address?" asked Harrington,
professionally.
"Exactly. All she knows is that her brother is named
John."
"A great many of them are," said Harrington, already
writing on his memorandum book, and in his memory fixing
the fact that a large, two-legged living parcel,
insufficiently addressed, had been left at the wrong door
for John McLaughlin; also a trunk, too large for delivery
by the penny post.
"I will tell the other men, and if I was you I would
send to the police."
"Would you mind telling the first officer you meet?
I hate to send my girls out." And so she returned to
Bulgaria.
But Bulgaria was ended, and Mrs. Conover handed her
an article on "Antarctic Discovery." She was again
reading:--
"Under these circumstances Captain Wilkes, who had
collected a boatload of stones from the front of the
glacier," when she gave back the "Forum" to Mrs. Conover.
"Would you mind going on just a minute? " she said, and
ran out to meet the icecream man. So soon as he had
left his tins she said,--
"Mr. Fridge, would you mind stopping at the Dudley
School as you go home and telling Miss Lougee that there
is a lost girl here?" etc.
Good Mr. Fridge was most eager to help, and the
hostess returned, took the book again and read on with
"the temperature, as they observed it, was 99 degrees C.;
but, as the alcohol in their tins was frozen at the
moment, there seemed reason to suspect the correctness of
this observation."
And a shiver passed over the Review Club.
Thus far the powers of confusion and error seemed to
have been triumphant over poor Nora, or such was the
success of that power who uses these agencies, if the
reader prefer to personify him.
But the time had come to turn his left flank and to
attack his forces in the rear, for the postman now took
the field,--that is to say, Harrington, good fellow,
finished his third delivery, four good miles and nine-
tenths of a furlong, snow two inches deep, three, four,
six, before he was done, and then returned to his branch
office to report.
"Two-legged parcel; insufficient address; 99 Linwood
Street! Jim, what ever come to that letter that went to
99 Linwood Street with insufficient address six weeks
ago?"
"Linwood Street? Insufficient address? Foreign
letter? Why, of course, you know, went back to the
central office."
"I guess it did," said Harrington, grimly; "so I must
go there too."
This meant that after Harrington had gone his rounds
again on delivery route No. 6, four more miles and nine-
tenths more of a furlong, 313 doorbells and only 73 slit
boxes, snow now ranging from 6 inches to 12 on the
sidewalks, and breast-deep where there was a chance for
drifting, when all this was well done, so that Harrington
had no more duties to Uncle Sam, he could take Nora
McLaughlin's work in hand, and thus defeat the prince of
evil.
To the central office by a horse-car. Blocked once
or twice, but well at the office at 7.30 in the evening.
Christmas work heavy, so the whole home staff is on
duty. That is well. Enemy of souls loses one point
there.
Blind-letter clerks all here. Insufficient-delivery
men both here. Chief of returned bureau here. All
summoned to the foreign office as Harrington tells his
story. Indexes produced, ledgers, journals, day-books,
and private passbooks. John McLaughlin's biography
followed out on 67 of the different avatars in which his
personality has been manifested under that name. False
trail here--clue breaks there--scent fails here, but at
last--a joyful cry from Will Search:--
"Here you are! Insufficient address. November 1.
Queenstown letter--`Linwood, to John McLaughlin. Try
Dorchester. Try Roxbury. Try East Boston. Try
Somerville'-- and there it stops, and was not returned."
"Try Somerville!"
In these words great light fell over the eager
circle. Not because Somerville is the seat of an insane
hospital. No! But because it is not in the Boston
Directory.
If you please, Somerville is an independent city, and
so, unless John McLaughlin worked in Boston, if he lived
in Somerville, he would not be in the Boston Directory.
Not much! Somerville has its own seven John
McLaughlins besides those Boston ones.
"I say, Harry, Tom, Dick--somebody fetch Somerville
Directory!"
Dick flew and returned with the book.
"Here you be! `John McLaughlin, laborer, 99 Linwood
Street!
"Victory!"
Satan's forces tremble, and as the different officers
return to their desks "even the ranks of Tuscany" in that
well-bred office "can scarce forbear to cheer."
As for Harrington, he bids good-by, wraps his tartan
around him, and is out in the snow again. Where Linwood
Street is he "knows no more than the dead." But somebody
will know.
Somerville car. Draw of bridge open. Man falls into
the river and has to be rescued. Draw closes. Snow-
drift at Margin Street. Shovels. Drift open. Centre of
Somerville. Apothecary's shop open. "Please, where is
Linwood Street?"
"Take your second left, cross three or four streets,
turn to the right by the water-pipe, take the third
right, go down hill by the schoolhouse and take second
left, and you come out at 11 Linwood Street."
All which Harrington does. He experiences one
continual burst of joy that his route does not take him
through these detours daily. But his professional
experience is good for him. We have no need to describe
his false turns. Even aniseed would have been useless in
that snow. At last, just as the Somerville bells ring
for nine o'clock, Harrington also rings triumphant at the
door of the little five-roomed cottage, where his lantern
has already revealed the magic number 99.
Ring! as for a gilt-edged special delivery! Door
thrown open by a solid man with curly red hair, unshaven
since Sunday, in his shirtsleeves and with kerosene lamp
in his hand.
"Are you John McLaughlin?"
"Indade I am; the same."
"And where's your sister Nora?"
The good fellow, who had been stern before, broke
down. "And indade I was saying to Ellen it's an awful
night for 'em all in the gale off the coast in the ship.
The holy Virgin and the good God take care of 'em!"
"They have taken care of them," said Harrington,
reverently. "The ship is safe in dock, and your sister
Nora is in Roxbury, at 99 Linwood Street!"
And a broad grin lighted his face as he spoke the words.
There was joy in every bed and at every door of the
five rooms. Then John hastily donned coat, cardigan, and
ulster. He persuaded Harrington to drink a cup of red-
hot tea which was brewing on the stove. While the good
fellow did so, and ate a St. Anne's bun, which Mrs.
McLaughlin produced in triumph, John was persuading
Hermann Gross, the expressman next door, to put the gray
into a light pung he had for special delivery. By the
time Harrington went to the door two lanterns were
flitting about in the snow-piled yard behind the two
houses.
Harrington assisted in yoking the gray. In five
minutes he and John were defying the gale as they sped
across the silent bridge, bound south to Roxbury. Poor
little Nora was asleep in the parlor on the sofa. She
had begged and begged that she need not be put to bed,
and by her side her protector sat reading about the
antarctic. But of a sudden Harrington reappeared.
Is it Santa Claus?
Indeed it is! Beard, hat, coat, all white with snow!
And Santa Claus has come for the best present he will
deliver that evening!
Dear little Nora is wrapped in sealskins and other
skins, mauds and astrakhan rugs. She has a hot brick at
her feet, and Pompey, the dog, is made to lie over them,
so John McLaughlin No. 68 takes her in triumph to 99
Linwood Street.
That was a Christmas to be remembered! And Christmas
morning, after church, the Brothers of St. Patrick, which
was the men's society, and the Sodality of St. Anne's,
which was the women's, determined on a great Twelfth-
night feast to celebrate Nora's return.
It was to show "how these brethren love one another."
They proposed to take the rink. People didn't use
it for skating in winter as much as in summer.
Nora was to receive, with John McLaughlin and his
wife to assist. The other 74 John McLaughlins were to
act as ushers.
The Salvation Army came first, led by the lass who
found Michael.
Procession No. 2 was Mike and the teamsters who
"don't take nothing for such as she."
Third, in special horse-cars, which went through from
Dorchester to Somerville by a vermilion edict from the
West End Company, the eleven families of that No. 99.
They stopped in Roxbury to pick up Ellen and the hostess
of the Review Club.
Fourth, all the patrolmen who had helped and all who
tried to help, led by "cop" No. 47.
Fifth, all the school children who had told the story
and had made inquiries.
Sixth, the man who made the Somerville Directory.
Seventh and last, in two barouches, Harrington and
the chiefs of staff at the general post-office. And the
boys asked Father McElroy to make a speech to all just
before the dancing began.
And he said: "The lost sheep was never lost. She
thought she was lost in the wilderness, but she was at
home, for she was met by the Christmas greeting of the
world into which the dear Lord was born!"
NOTE.--It may interest the reader to know that the
important part of this story is true.
IDEALS
CHAPTER I
IN ACCOUNT
I have a little circle of friends, among all my other
friends quite distinct, though of them. They are four
men and four women; the husbands more in love with
their wives than on the days when they married them,
and the wives with their husbands. These people live
for the good of the world, to a fair extent, but much,
very much, of their lives is passed together. Perhaps
the happiest period they ever knew was when, in
different subordinate capacities, they were all on the
staff of the same magazine. Then they met daily at the
office, lunched together perforce, and could make
arrangements for the evening. But, to say true, things
differ little with them now, though that magazine long
since took wings and went to a better world.
Their names are Felix and Fausta Carter, Frederic and
Mary Ingham, George and Anna Haliburton, George and Julia
Hackmatack.
I get the children's names wrong to their faces--
except that in general their name is Legion, for they are
many--so I will not attempt them here.
These people live in very different houses, with very
different "advantages," as the world says. Haliburton
has grown very rich in the rag and paper business, rich
enough to discard rag money and believe in gold. He even
spits at silver, which I am glad to get when I can.
Frederic Ingham will never be rich. His regular income
consists in his half-pay as a retired brevet officer in
the patriot service of Garibaldi of the year 1859. For
the rest, he invested his money in the Brick Moon, and,
as I need hardly add, insured his life in the late
Continental Insurance Company. But the Inghams find just
as much in life as the Haliburtons, and Anna Haliburton
consults Polly Ingham about the shade of a flounce just
as readily and as eagerly as Polly consults her about the
children's dentistry. They are all very fond of each
other.
They get a great deal out of life, these eight,
partly because they are so closely allied together. Just
two whist-parties, you see; or, if they go to ride, they
just fill two carriages. Eight is such a good number--
makes such a nice dinner-party. Perhaps they see a
little too much of each other. That we shall never know.
They got a great deal of life, and yet they were not
satisfied. They found that out very queerly. They have
not many standards. Ingham does take the "Spectator;"
Hackmatack condescends to read the "Evening Post;"
Haliburton, who used to be in the insurance business, and
keeps his old extravagant habits, reads the "Advertiser"
and the "Transcript;" all of them have the
"Christian Union," and all of them buy "Harper's Weekly."
Every separate week of their lives they buy of the boys,
instead of subscribing; they think they may not want the
next number, but they always do. Not one of them has
read the "Nation" for five years, for they like to keep
good-natured. In fact, they do not take much stock in
the general organs of opinion, and the standard books you
find about are scandalously few. The Bible, Shakespeare,
John Milton; Polly has Dante; Julia has "Barclay's
Apology," with ever so many marks in it; one George has
"Owen Felltham," and the other is strong on Marcus
Aurelius. Well, no matter about these separate things;
the uniform books besides those I named, in different
editions but in every house, are the "Arabian Nights" and
"Robinson Crusoe." Hackmatack has the priceless first
edition. Haliburton has Grandville's (the English
Grandville). Ingham has a proof copy of the Stothard.
Carter has a good copy of the Cruikshank.
If you ask me which of these four I should like best,
I should say as the Laureate did when they gave him his
choice of two kinds of cake, "Both's as good as one."
Well, "Robinson Crusoe" being their lay gospel and
creed, not to say epistle and psalter, it was not queer
that one night, when the election had gone awfully, and
the men were as blue as that little porcelain Osiris of
mine yonder, who is so blue that he cannot stand on
his feet--it was not queer, I say, that they turned
instinctively to "Robinson Crusoe" for relief.
Now, Robinson Crusoe was once in a very bad box
indeed, and to comfort himself as well as he could, and
to set the good against the evil, that he might have
something to distinguish his case from worse, he stated
impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts and
miseries, thus:--
EVIL. GOOD.
I am cast upon a horrible But I am alive, and not
desolate island, void of all drowned as all my hope of
recovery. ship's company were.
I am singled out and separated, But I am singled out,
as it were, from all the world, to too, from the ship's crew
be miserable. to be spared from death.
And so the debtor and creditor account goes on.
Julia Hackmatack read this aloud to them--the whole
of it--and they agreed, as Robinson says, not so much for
their posterity as to keep their thoughts from daily
poring on their trials, that for each family they would
make such a balance. What might not come of it? Perhaps
a partial nay, perhaps a perfect cure!
So they determined that on the instant they would go
to work, and two in the smoking-room, two in the dining-
room, two in George's study, and two in the parlor, they
should in the next halfhour make up their lists of good
and evil. Here are the results:--
FREDERIC AND MARY INGHAM.
GOOD. EVIL.
We have three nice boys But the door-bell rings all
and three nice girls. the time.
We have enough to eat, But the coal bill is awful,
drink, and wear. and the Larrabee furnace has
given out. The firm that made
it has gone up, and no castings
can be got to mend it.
We have more books than But our friends borrow our
we can read, and do not care books, and only return odd
to read many newspapers. volumes.
We have many very dear But we are behindhand 143
friends--enough. names on our lists of calls.
We have health in our But the children may be
family. sick. The Lowndes children are.
We seem to be of some But Mrs. Hogarth has left
use in the world. Fred $200 for the poor, and he
is afraid he shall spend it wrong.
The country has gone to the
dogs.
GEORGE AND ANNA HALIBURTON.
GOOD. EVIL.
We have a nice home in You cannot give a cup of
town, and one in Sharon, and coffee to a beggar but he sends
a sea-shore place at Little five hundred million tramps to
Gau, and we have friends the door.
enough to fill them.
We have some of the nicest A great many people call
children in the world. whose names we have forgotten.
We have enough to do, and We have to give a party to
not too much. all our acquaintance every year,
which is horrid.
Business is good enough, We do not do anything we
though complaining. want to do, and we do a great
deal that we do not want to do.
George had added, "And there
is no health in us." But Anna
marked that out as wicked.
The children are all well. People vote as if they were
possessed.
GEORGE AND JULIA HACKMATACK
GOOD. EVIL.
We have eight splendid The plumbers' work always
children. gives way at the wrong time,
and the plumbers' bills are awful.
We have money enough, The furnace will not heat the
though we know what to do house unless the wind is at the
with more. southwest. None of the chimneys
draw well.
George will not have to go We hate the Kydd School.
to Bahia next year. The master drinks and the first
assistant lies. But we live in
that district; so the boys have
to go there.
Tom got through with scarlet Lucy said "commence" yesterday,
fever without being deaf. Jane said "gent," Walter said
"Bully for you," and Alice said
"nobby." And what is coming we
do not know.
Dr. Witherspoon has accepted How long any man can live
the presidency of Tiberias under this government I do
College in Alaska. not know.
FELIX AND FAUSTA CARTER
GOOD. EVIL.
Governments are stronger But as the children grow
every year. Money goes farther bigger, their clothes cost
than it did. more.
All the boys are good and But the children get no
well. So are the girls. good at school, except
They are splendid children. measles, whooping-cough, and
scarlet fever.
Old Mr. Porter died last But the gas-meter lies;
week, and Felix gets promotion and the gas company wants to
in the office. have it lie.
The lost volume of Fichte But the Athenaeum is always
was left on the door-step last calling in its books to examine
night by some one who rang the them, and making us say where
bell and ran away. It is rather Mr. Fred Curtis's books are.
wet, but when it is bound will As if we cared.
look nicely.
The mistress of the Arbella But our drains smell
School is dead. awfully, though the Board of
Health says they do not.
We have to go to evening
parties among our friends, or
seem stuck up. We hate to go,
and wish there were none. We
had rather come here.
The increasing
worthlessness of the franchise.
With these papers they gathered all in the study just
as the clock struck nine, and, in good old Boston
fashion, Silas was bringing in some hot oysters. They
ate the oysters, which were good--trust Anna for that--
and then the women read the papers, while the smoking men
smoked and pondered.
They all recognized the gravity of the situation.
Still, as Julia said, they felt better already. It was
like having the doctor come: you knew the worst, and
could make ready for it.
They did not discuss the statements much. They had
discussed them too much in severalty. They did agree
that they should be left to Felix to report upon the next
evening. He was, so to speak, to post them, to strike
out from each side the quantities which could be
eliminated, and leave the equations so simplified that
the eight might determine what they should do about it--
indeed, what they could do about it.
The visitors put on their "things"--how strange that
that word should once have meant "parliaments!"--kissed
good-by so far as they were womanly, and went home.
George Haliburton screwed down the gas, and they went to bed.
CHAPTER II
STRIKING THE BALANCE
The next night they went to see Warren at the Museum.
That probably helped them. After the play they met by
appointment at the Carters'. Felix read his
REPORT.
1. NUMBER.--There are twenty-one reasons for
congratulation, twenty-four for regret. But of the
twenty-four, four are the same; namely, the cursed
political prospect of the country. Counting that as one
only, there are twenty-one on each side.
2. EVIL.--The twenty-one evils may be classified
thus: political, 1; social, 12; physical, 5; terrors, 3.
All the physical evils would be relieved by living in
a temperate climate, instead of this abomination, which
is not a climate, to which our ancestors were sold by the
cupidity of the Dutch.
The political evil would be ended by leaving the
jurisdiction of the United States.
The social evils, which are a majority of all, would
be reduced by residence in any place where there were not
so many people.
The terrors properly belong to all the classes. In
a decent climate, in a country not governed by its vices,
and a community not crowded, the three terrors would be
materially abated, if not put to an end.
Respectfully submitted,
FELIX CARTER.
How they discussed it now! Talk? I think so! They
all talked awhile, and no one listened. But they had to
stop when Phenice brought in the Welsh rare-bit (good
before bed, but a little indigestible, unless your
conscience is stainless), and Felix then put in a word.
"Now I tell you, this is not nonsense. Why not do
what Winslow and Standish and those fellows thought they
were doing when they sailed? Why not go to a climate
like France, with milder winters and cooler summers than
here? You want some winter, you want some summer."
"I hate centipedes and scorpions," said Anna.
"There's no need of them. There's a place in Mexico,
not a hundred miles from the sea, where you can have your
temperature just as you like."
"Stuff!"
"No, it is not stuff at all," said poor Felix,
eagerly. "I do not mean just one spot. But you live in
this valley, you know. If you find it is growing hot,
you move about a quarter of a mile to another place
higher up. If you find that hot, why you have another
house a little higher. Don't you see? Then, when winter
comes, you move down."
"Are there many people there?" asked Haliburton; "and
do they make many calls?"
"There are a good many people, but they are a gentle
set. They never quarrel. They are a little too high up
for the revolutions, and there is something
tranquillizing about the place; they seldom die,
none are sick, need no aguardiente, do what the head of
the village tells them to do--only he never has any
occasion to tell them. They never make calls."
"I like that," said Ingham. That patriarchal system
is the true system of government."
"Where is this place?" said Anna, incredulously.
"I have been trying to remember all day, but I can't.
It is in Mexico, I know. It is on this side of Mexico.
It tells all about it in an old `Harper'--oh, a good many
years ago--but I never bound mine; there are always one
or two missing every year. I asked Fausta to look for
it, but she was busy. I thought," continued poor Felix,
a little crestfallen, "one of you might remember."
No, nobody remembered; and nobody felt much like
going to the public library to look, on Carter's rather
vague indications. In fact, it was a suggestion of
Haliburton's that proved more popular.
Haliburton said he had not laid in his coal. They
all said the same. "Now," said he, "the coal of this
crowd for this winter will cost a thousand dollars, if
you add in the kindling and the matches, and patching the
furnace pots and sweeping the chimneys."
To this they agreed.
"It is now Wednesday. Let us start Saturday for
Memphis, take a cheap boat to New Orleans, go thence to
Vera Cruz by steamer, explore the ground, buy the houses
if we like, and return by the time we can do without
fires next spring. Our board will cost less than it
would here, for it is there the beef comes from. And the
thousand dollars will pay the fares both ways."
The women, with one voice, cried, "And the children?"
"Oh yes," cried the eager adventurer. "I had
forgotten the children. Well, they are all well, are
they not?"
Yes; all were well.
"Then we will take them with us as far as Yellow
Springs, in Ohio, and leave them for the fall and winter
terms at Antioch College. They will be enough better
taught than they are at the Kydd School, and they will
get no scarlet fever. Nobody is ever sick there. They
will be better cared for than my children are when they
are left to me, and they will be seven hundred miles
nearer to us than if they were here. The little ones can
go to the Model School, the middling ones to the Academy,
and the oldest can go to college. How many are there,
Felix?"
Felix said there were twenty-nine.
"Well," said the arithmetical George, "it is the
cheapest place I ever knew. Why, their Seniors get along
for three hundred dollars a year, and squeeze more out of
life than I do out of twenty thousand. The little ones
won't cost at that rate. A hundred and fifty dollars for
twenty-nine children; how much is that, Polly?"
"Forty-three hundred and fifty dollars, of course,"
said she.
"I thought so. Well, don't you see, we shall save
that in wages to these servants we are boarding here, of
whom there are eleven, who cost us, say, six dollars a
week; that is, sixty-six dollars for twenty weeks is
thirteen hundred and twenty dollars. We won't buy any
clothes, but live on the old ones, and make the children
wear their big brothers' and sisters'. There's a saving
of thirty-seven hundred dollars for thirty-seven of us.
Why, we shall make money! I tell you what, if you'll do
it, I'll pay all the bills till we come home. If you
like, you shall then each pay me three-quarters of your
last winter's accounts, and I'll charge any difference
to profit and loss. But I shall make by the bargain."
The women doubted if they could be ready. But it
proved they could. Still they did not start Saturday;
they started Monday, in two palace-cars. They left the
children, all delighted with the change, at Antioch on
Wednesday--a little tempted to spend the winter there
themselves; but, this temptation well resisted, they sped
on to Mexico.
CHAPTER III
FULFILMENT
Such a tranquil three days on the Mississippi, which
was as an autumn flood, and revealed himself as indeed
King of Waters! Such delightful three days in
hospitable New Orleans! Might it not be possible to
tarry even here? "No," cried the inexorable George.
"We have put our hand to the plough. Who will turn
back?" Two days of abject wretchedness on the Gulf of
Mexico. "Why were we born? Why did we not die before
we left solid land?" And then the light-house at Vera Cruz.
"Lo, land! and all was well."
What a splendid city! Why had nobody told them of
this queen on the sea-shore? Red and white towers,
cupolas, battlements! It was all like a story-book.
When they landed, to be sure, it was not quite so big a
place as they had fancied from all this show; but for
this they did not care. To land--that was enough. Had
they landed on a sand-spit, they would have been in
heaven. No more swaying to and fro as they lay in bed,
no more stumbling to and fro as they walked. They
refused the amazed Mexicans who wanted them to ride to
the hotel. To walk steadily was in itself a luxury.
And then it was not long before the men had selected
the little caravan of horses and mules which were to
carry them on their expedition of discovery. Some valley
of paradise, where a man could change his climate from
midwinter to midsummer by a journey of a mile. Did the
consul happen to have heard of any such valley?
Had he heard of them? He had heard of fifty.
He had not, indeed, heard of much else. How could
he help hearing of them?
Could the consul, then, recommend one or two valleys
which might be for sale? Or was it, perhaps, impossible
to buy a foothold in such an Eden?
For sale! There was nothing in the country, so far
as the friend knew to whom the consul presented them,
which was not for sale. Anywhere in Queretaro; or why
should they not go to the Baxio? No; that was too flat
and too far off. There were pretty places round Xalapa.
Oh, plenty of plantations for sale. But they need not go
so far. Anywhere on the rise of Chiquihiti.
Was the friend quite sure that there were no plumbers
in the regions he named?
"Never a plumber in Mexico."
Any life-insurance men?
"Not one." The prudent friend did not add, "Risk too high."
Were the public schools graded schools or district schools?
"Not a public school in six provinces."
Would the neighbors be offended if we do not call?
"Cut your throats if you did."
Did the friend think there would be many tramps?
The friend seemed more doubtful here, but suggested
that the occasional use of a six-shooter reduced the
number, and gave a certain reputation to the premises
where it was employed which diminished much tramping
afterward, and said that the law did not object to this
method.
They returned to a dinner of fish, for which Vera
Cruz is celebrated. "If what the man says be true," said
Ingham, "we must be very near heaven."
It was now in November. Oh, the glory of that ride,
as they left Vera Cruz and through a wilderness of color
jogged slowly on to their new paradise!
"Through Eden four glad couples took their way."
Higher and higher. This wonder and that. Not a blade
of grass such as they ever saw before, not a chirping
cricket such as they ever heard before; a hundred
bright-winged birds, and not one that they had ever
seen before. Higher and higher. Trees, skies, clouds,
flowers, beasts, birds, insects, all new and all
lovely.
The final purchase was of one small plantation, with
a house large enough for a little army, yet without a
stair. Oranges, lemons, pomegranates, mangoes, bananas,
pine-apples, coffee, sugar--what did not ripen in those
perennial gardens? Half a mile above there were two
smaller houses belonging to the same estate; half a mile
above, another was purchased easily. This was too cold
to stay in in November, but in June and July and August
the temperature would be sixty-six, without change.
They sent back the mules. A telegram from Vera Cruz
brought from Boston, in fifteen days, the best books
in the world, the best piano in the world, a few boxes of
colors for the artists, a few reams of paper, and a few
dozen of pencils for the men. And then began four months
of blessed life. Never a gas-bill nor a water-leak,
never a crack in the furnace nor a man to put in coal,
never a request to speak for the benefit of the Fenians,
never the necessity of attending at a primary meeting.
The ladies found in their walks these gentle Mexican
children, simple, happy, civil, and with the strange idea
that the object for which life is given is that men may
live. They came home with new wealth untold every day--
of ipomoea, convolvulus, passion-flowers, and orchids.
The gentlemen brought back every day a new species, even
a new genus,--a new illustration of evolution, or a new
mystery to be accounted for by the law of natural
selection. Night was all sleep; day was all life.
Digestion waited upon appetite; appetite waited upon
exercise; exercise waited upon study; study waited upon
conversation; conversation waited upon love. Could it be
that November was over? Can life run by so fast? Can it
be that Christmas has come? Can we let life go by so
fast? Is it possible that it is the end of January? We
cannot let life go so fast. Really, is this St.
Valentine's Day! When ever did life go so fast?
And with the 1st of March the mules were ordered, and
they moved to the next higher level. The men and women
walked. And there, on the grade of a new climate,
they began on a new botany, on new discoveries, and happy
life found new forms as they began again.
So sped April and so sped May. Life had its
battles,--oh yes, because it was life. But they were not
the pettiest of battles. They were not the battles of
prisoners shut up, to keep out the weather, in cells
fifteen feet square. They fought, if they fought, with
God's air in their veins, and God's warm sunshine around
them, and God's blue sky above them. So they did what
they could, as they wrote and read and drew and painted,
as they walked and ran and swam and rode and drove, as
they encouraged this peon boy and taught that peon girl,
smoothed this old woman's pillow and listened to that old
man's story, as they analyzed these wonderful flowers, as
they tasted these wonderful fruits, as they climbed these
wonderful mountains, or, at night, as they pointed the
telescope through this cloudless and stainless sky.
With all their might they lived. And they were so
many, and there were so many round them to whom their
coming was a new life, that they lived in love, and every
day drank in of the infinite elixir.
But June came. The mules are sent for again. Again
they walked a quarter of a mile. And here in the little
whitewashed cottage, with only a selection from the books
below, with two guitars and a flute in place of the
piano,--here they made ready for three weeks of June.
Only three weeks; for on the 29th was the
Commencement at Antioch, and Jane and Walter and Florence
were to take their degrees. There would need five days
from Vera Cruz to reach them. And so this summer was to
be spent in the North with them, before October should
bring all the children and the parents to the land of the
open sky. Three busy weeks between the 1st and the 22d,
in which all the pictures must be finished, Ingham's
novel must be revised, Haliburton's articles completed,
the new invention for measuring power must be gauged and
tested, the dried flowers must be mounted and packed, the
preserved fruits must be divided for the Northern
friends. Three happy weeks of life eventful, but life
without crowding, and, above all, without interruption.
"Think of it," cried Felix, as they took their last walk
among the lava crags, the door-bell has not rung all this
last winter.'"
"`This happy old king
On his gate he did swing,
Because there was never a door-bell to ring.'"
This was Julia's impromptu reply.
CHAPTER IV
HOME AGAIN
So came one more journey. Why can we not go and come
without this musty steamer, these odious smells, this
food for dogs, and this surge--ah, how remorseless!--of
the cruel sea?
But even this will end. Once more the Stars and
Stripes! A land of furnaces and of waterpipes, a land of
beggars and of caucuses, a land of gas-meters and of
liars, a land of pasteboard and of cards, a land of
etiquettes and of bad spelling, but still their country!
A land of telegraphs, which told in an instant, as they
landed on the levee, that all the twenty-nine were well,
and begged them to be at the college on Tuesday evening,
so as to see "Much Ado about Nothing." For at Antioch
they act a play the night before Commencement. A land of
Pullman's palace-cars. And lo! they secured sections 5
and 6, 7 and 8, in the "Mayflower." Just time to kiss
the baby of one friend, and to give a basket of guavas to
another, and then whir for Cincinnati and Xenia and
Yellow Springs!
How beautiful were the live-oaks and the magnolias!
How fresh the green of the cotton! How black the faces
of the little negroes, and how beyond dispute the perfume
of the baked peanuts at the stations where sometimes they
had to stop for wood and water! Even the heavy pile of
smoke above Cincinnati was golden with the hopes of a
new-born day as they rushed up to the Ohio River, and as
they crossed it. And then, the land of happy homes! It
was Kapnist who said to me that the most favored places
in the world were the larger villages in Ohio. He had
gone everywhere, too. Xenia, and a perfect breakfast at
the station, then the towers of Antioch, then the
twenty-nine children waving their handkerchiefs as
the train rushes in!
How much there was to tell, to show, to ask for, and
to see! How much pleasure they gave with their
cochineal, their mangoes, their bananas, their hat-bands
for the boys, and their fans for the girls! Yes; and how
much more they took from nutbrown faces, from smiles
beaming from ear to ear, from the boy so tall that he
looked down upon his father, from the girl so womanly
that you asked if her mother were not masquerading. "You
rascal Ozro, you do not pretend that those trousers were
made for you? Why, my boy, you disgrace the family." "I
hope not, papa; I had ninety-eight in the botany
examination, passed with honors in Greek, and we beat the
Buckeye Club to nothing in the return match yesterday."
"You did, you little beggar?" the proud papa replied.
"You ran all the better, I suppose, because you had
nothing to trip you." And so on, and so on. The
children did not live in paradise, perhaps, but this
seems very like the kingdom come!
And after commencements and the president's party, up
to the Yellow Springs platform came two unusual palaces,
specially engaged. And one was named the "Valparaiso,"
and the other, as it happened, the "Bethlehem." And they
took all the children, and by good luck Mrs. Tucker was
going also, and three or four of the college girls, and
they took them. So there were forty-two in all. And
they sped and sped, without change of cars, save as
Bethlehem visited Paradise and Paradise visited
Bethlehem, till they came to New Salem, which is the
station men buy tickets for when they would go to the
beach below Quonochontaug, where the eight and the
twenty-nine were to make their summer home before the
final emigration.
They do not live at Quonochontaug, but to that post-
office are their letters sent. They live in a hamlet of
their own, known to the neighbors as the Little Gau.
Four large houses, whitewashed without and within, with
deep piazzas all around, the roofs of which join the
roofs of the houses themselves, and run up on all sides
to one point above the centre. In each house a hall some
twenty feet by fifty, and in the hall,--what is not in
the hall?--maybe a piano, maybe a fish-rod, maybe a rifle
or a telescope, a volume of sermons or a volume of songs,
a spinning-wheel, or a guitar, or a battledore. You
might ask widely for what you needed, for study or for
play, and you would find it, though it were a deep divan
of Osiat or a chibouque from Stamboul--you would find it
in one of these simple whitewashed halls.
Little Gau is so near the sea-shore that every day
they go down to the beach to bathe, and the beach is so
near the Gulf Stream that the swim is--well, perfection.
Still, the first day the ladies would not swim. They had
the trunks to open, they said, and the closets to
arrange. And the four men and the fourteen boys went to
that bath of baths alone. And as Felix, the cynic
grumbler, ran races naked on the beach with his boy
and the boy beat him, even Felix was heard to say, "How
little man needs here below to be perfectly happy!"
And at the Little Gau they spent the months from the
Fourth of July to the 13th of October--two great days in
history--getting ready for Mexico. New sewing-machines
were bought, and the fall of the stream from the lake was
taught to run the treadles. No end of clothing was got
ready for a country which needs none; no end of memoranda
made for the last purchases; no end of lists of books
prepared, which they could read in that land of leisure.
And on the 14th of October, with a passing sigh, they
bade good-by to boats and dogs and cows and horses and
neighbors and beaches--almost to sun and moon, which had
smiled on so much happiness, and went back to Boston to
make the last bargains, to pay the last bills, and to say
the last good-byes.
After one day of bill-paying and house-advertising
and farewelling, they met at Ingham's to "tell their
times." And Julia told of her farewell call on dear Mrs.
Blake.
"The saint!" said she; "she does not see as well as
she did. But it was just lovely there. There was the
great bronze Japanese stork, which seemed so friendly,
and the great vases, and her flowers as fresh as ever,
and her books everywhere. She found something for Tom
and Maud to play with, just as she used to for Ben and
Horace. And we sat and talked of Mexico and Antioch and
everything. I asked her if her eyes troubled her,
and I was delighted because it seems they do not trouble
her at all. She told all about Swampscott and her
grandchildren. I asked her if the dust never troubled
them on Gladstone Street, but she says it does not at
all; and she told all about her son's family in Hong-
Kong. I asked her if the failure of Rupee & Lac annoyed
them, and she said not at all, and I was so glad, for I
had been so afraid for them; and then she told about how
much they were enjoying Macaulay. Then I asked her if
the new anvil factory on the other side of the street did
not trouble her, and she said not at all. And when I
said, `How can that be?' she said, `Why, Julia dear, we
do not let these things trouble us, don't you see. If I
were you, I would not let such things trouble me.'"
George Haliburton laid down his knife as Julia told
the story. "Do you remember Rabia at Mecca? Yes, they
all remembered Rabia at Mecca:--
"Oh heart, weak follower of the weak,
That thou shouldst traverse land and sea;
In this far place that God to seek
Who long ago had come to thee!"
"Why should we not stay here, and not let these
things trouble us?"
Why not, indeed?
And they stayed.
ONE CENT
A CHRISTMAS STORY
DOWN
Mr. Starr rose very early that day. The sun was not
up. Yet, certainly, it was too light to strike a match.
Ah, Mr. Starr, a match may be an economy!
So it was that when, as always, the keys jingled out
from his trousers pockets upon the floor, and the money
as well, one cent rolled under the bureau unseen by Mr.
Starr. He went down to his work now, after he had
gathered up the rest of the money and the keys, and
answered yesterday's letters.
Then, of course, he could loiter over his breakfast.
But not too long. Clara, his wife, was in good
spirits, and the boys were very jolly, but Mr. Starr, all
the same, did the duty next his hand. He "kissed her
good-by," and started down-town. Edgar stopped, him to
ask for fifty cents for his lunch; the postman wanted
fifteen for an underpaid parcel; Susan, the maid, asked
for ten for some extra milk; and then he kissed his hand
to the parlor window, and was off.
No! He was not off.
For Clara threw up the window and waved her lily
hand. Mr. Starr ran back to the door. She flung it
open.
"My dear John, here is your best coat. That coat you
have on has a frayed button. I saw it yesterday, and I
cannot bear to have you wear it at the Board."
"Dear Clara, what a saint you are!" One more kiss,
and Mr. Starr departed.
And loyally he did the duty next his hand. He
stopped and signed the sewerage petition; he looked in on
poor Colt and said a cheerful word to him; he bade
Woolley, the fruit man, send a barrel of Nonesuches to
old Mrs. Cowen; he was on time at the Board meeting, took
the chair, and they changed the constitution. He looked
in at the office and told Mr. Freemantle he should be
late, but that he would look at the letters when he came
back, and then, ho! for East Boston!
If only you knew, dear readers, that to East Boston
you must go by a ferry-boat, as if it were named
Greenbush, or Brooklyn, or Camden.
As Mr. Starr took the street car after he had crossed
the ferry, to go into the unknown parts of East Boston,
he did notice that he gave the conductor his last ticket.
But what of that? "End of the route" came, and he girded
his loins, trudged over to the pottery he was in search
of, found it at last, found the foreman and gave his
orders, and then, through mud unspeakable, waded
back to the street car. He was the only passenger.
No wonder! The only wonder was that there was a car.
"Ticket, sir," said the conductor, after half a mile.
MR. STARR (SMILING). I have no ticket, but you
may sell me a dollar's worth. (FEELS FOR POCKETBOOK.)
Hello! I have not my pocketbook; changed my coat.
CONDUCTOR (SAVAGELY). They generally has changed
their coats.
MR. STARR (WITH DIGNITY, OFFERING A FIVE-CENT
NICKEL). There's your fare, man.
CONDUCTOR. That won't do, mud-hopper. Fare's
six cents.
MR. STARR (WELL REMEMBERING THE CENT, WHICH IS,
ALAS UNDER THE BUREAU, AND GROVELLING FOR IT IN BOTH
POCKETS). I have a cent somewhere.
CONDUCTOR (STOPPING CAR AND RETURNING FIVE-CENT
PIECE). We've had enough of you tramps who change your
coats and cannot find your pennies. You step off--and
step off mighty quick.
Mr. Starr declines; when they come to Maverick Square
he will report the man to the superintendent, who knows
him well. Slight scuffle. Mr. Starr resists. Conductor
calls driver. Mr. Starr is ejected. Coat torn badly and
hat thrown into mud. Car departs.
TABLEAU.
SCENE II
UP
(MUDDY STREET IN EAST BOSTON. Mr. STARR, WIPING
HIS HAT WITH HIS HANDKERCHIEF, SOLUS.)
MR. STARR. If only Clara had not been so anxious
about the Board meeting! (EYES FIVE-CENT PIECE.)
Where can that penny be? (SEARCHES IN POCKETS, IS
SEARCHING WHEN--)
(ENTER R. H. U. E. SPAN OF WILD HORSES, SWIFTLY
DRAGGING A CARRYALL. IN THE CARRYALL TWO CHILDREN
SCREAMING. SPEED OF HORSES, 2.41.)
MR. STARR. Under the present circumstances life
is worthless, or nearly so. Let me bravely throw it
away!
(RUSHES UPON THE SPAN. CATCHES EACH HORSE BY THE BIT,
AND BY SHEER WEIGHT CONTROLS THEM. HORSES ON THEIR
METTLE; Mr. Starr ON HIS. ENTER, RUNNING, JOHN
CRADOCK.)
JOHN CRADOCK. Whoa, whoa! Ha! they stop. How
can I thank you, my man? You have saved my children's
lives.
MR. STARR (STILL HOLDING BITS). You had better
take the reins.
John Cradock mounts the seat, seizes reins, but is
eager to reward the poor, tattered wretch at their heads.
Passes reins to right hand, and with left feels for a
half eagle, which he throws, with grateful words, to Mr.
Starr. Mr. Starr leaves the plunging horses, and
they rush toward Prescott Street. (EXEUNT JOHN
CRADOCK, HORSES AND CHILDREN.)
Half amused, half ashamed, Mr. Starr picks up the
coin, which he also supposes to be half an eagle.
It proves to be a bright penny, just from the mint.
Mr. Starr lays it with delight upon the five-cent
nickel.
(ENTER A STREET CAR, L. H. L. E. Mr. STARR WAVES
HIS HAND WITH DIGNITY, AND ENTERS CAR. PAYS HIS FARE,
SIX CENTS, AS HE PASSES CONDUCTOR.)
In fifteen minutes they are at Maverick Square. Mr.
Starr stops the car at the office of Siemens & Bessemer,
and enters. Meets his friend Fothergill.
FOTHERGILL. Bless me, Starr, you are covered
with mud! Pottery, eh? Runaway horse, eh? No matter;
we are just in time to see Wendell off. William, take
Mr. Starr's hat to be pressed. Put on this light
overcoat, Starr. Here is my tweed cap. Now, jump in,
and we will go to the "Samaria" to bid Wendell good-by.
And indeed they both found Wendell. Mr. Starr bade
him good-by, and advised him a little about the man be
was to see in Dresden. He met Herr Birnebaum, and talked
with him a little about the chemistry of enamels. Oddly
enough, Fonseca was there, the attache, the same whom
Clara had taken to drive at Bethlehem. Mr. Starr talked
a little Spanish with him. Then they were all rung
onshore.
TABLEAU: DEPARTING STEAMER. CROWD WAVES
HANDKERCHIEFS.
SCENE III
CHRISTMAS--THE END
At Mr. Starr's Christmas dinner, beside their cousins
from Harvard College and their second cousins from
Wellesley College and their third cousins from Bradford
Academy, they had young Clifford, the head book-keeper.
As he came in, joining the party on their way home from
church, he showed Mr. Starr a large parcel.
"It's the `Alaska's' mail, and I thought you might
like to see it."
"Ah, well!" said Mr. Starr, "it is Christmas, and I
think the letters can wait, at least till after dinner."
And a jolly dinner it was. Turkey for those who
wished, and goose for those who chose goose. And when
the Washington pie and the Marlborough pudding came, the
squash, the mince, the cranberry-tart, and the blazing
plum-pudding, then the children were put through their
genealogical catechism.
"Will, who is your mother's father's mother's father?"
"Lucy Pico, sir!" and then great shouting. Then was
it that Mr. Starr told the story which the reader has
read in scene one,--of the perils which may come when a
man has not a penny. He did not speak hastily, nor cast
reproach on Clara for her care of the button. Over
that part of the story he threw a cautious veil. But to
boys and girls he pointed a terrible lesson of the value
of one penny.
"How dangerous, papa, to drop it into a box for the
heathen!"
But little Tom found this talk tiresome, and asked
leave to slip away, teasing Clifford as he went about
some postage-stamps Clifford had promised him.
"Go bring the parcel I left on the hall table, and
your papa will give you some Spanish stamps."
So the boy brought the mail.
"What in the world is this?" cried Mr. Starr, as he
cut open the great envelope; and more and more amazed he
was as he ran down the lines:--
"`Much Esteemed and Respected Senor, Don JOHN STARR,
Knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece:
"`SENOR,--It is with true yet inexpressible
satisfaction that I write this private note, that I may
be the first of your friends in Madrid to say to you that
the order for your creation as a Knight Companion of the
much esteemed and truly venerable Order of the Golden
Fleece passed the seals of the Chancellerie yesterday.
His Majesty is pleased to say that your views on the
pacification of Porto Rico coincide precisely with his
own; that the hands of the government will be
strengthened as with the force of giants when he
communicates them to the very excellent and much
honored governor of the island, and that, as a mark of
his confidence, he has the pleasure of sending to you the
cordon of the order, and of asking your acceptance.'
"My dear Lady Dulcinea del Toboso, that is what came
to you when that Cradock man threw a cent into the mud
for me."
"But, papa, what are the other letters?"
"Oh, yes, what are they? Here is English; it's from
Wendell. H'm--h'm--h'm. Shortpassage. Worcestershire--
h'm--Wedgewood--h'm--Staffordshire--h'm. Why, Clara,
George, listen:
"`I suppose you will not be surprised when I say that
your suggestion made on the deck of the `Samaria,' as to
oxalate of strontium, was received with surprise by Herr
Fernow and Herr Klee. But such is the respect in which
suggestions from America are now held, that they ordered
a trial at once in the Royal kilns, the result of which
are memoranda A and B, enclosed. They are so much
delighted with these results that they have formed a
syndicate with the Winkels, of Potsdam, and the
Schonhoffs, of Berlin, to undertake the manufacture in
Germany; and I am instructed to ask you whether you will
accept a round sum, say 150,000 marks, for the German
patent, or join them, say as a partner, with twenty per
cent of stock in their adventure.'
"I think so," said Mr. Starr. "That is what the
bright penny comes to at compound interest. Let us try
Birnebaum's letter."
"`GOTTFRIEED BIRNEBAUM to JOHN STARR:
"`MY HONORED SIR,--I am at a loss to express to you
the satisfaction with which I write. The eminently
practical suggestions which you made to me so kindly and
freely, as we parted, have, indeed, also proved
themselves undoubtedly to be of even the first import.
It has to me been also, indeed, of the very first
pleasure to communicate them, as I said indeed, to the
first director in charge at the works at Sevres, as I
passed through Paris, and now yet again, with equal
precision also and readiness, to the Herr first fabricant
at Dresden. Your statement regarding the action of the
oxides of gold, in combination with the tungstate of
bdellium, has more than in practice verified itself. I
am requested by the authorities at Dresden to ask the
acceptance, by your accomplished and highly respected
lady, of a dinner-set of their recent manufacture, in
token small of their appreciation, renewed daily, of your
contribution so valuable to the resources of tint and
color in their rooms of design; and M. Foudroyant, of
Sevres, tells me also, by telegraph of to-day, that to
the same much esteemed and highly distinguished lady he
has shipped by the `San Laurent' a tea-service, made to
the order of the Empress of China, and delayed only by
the untoward state of hostilities, greatly to be
regretted, on the Annamite frontier.'"
Mr. Starr read this long-winded letter with
astonishment.
"Well, Dulcinea, you will be able to give a dinner-
party to the King of Spain when he comes to visit you at
Toboso.
"So much for Brother Cradock's penny."
"Dear John, till I die I will never be afraid to call
you back when your buttons are tattered."
"And for me," said little Jack, "I will go now and
look under the bureau for the lost cent, and will have it
for my own."
(ENTER SERVANTS, R. H. L. E., I WITH THE DRESDEN
CHINA.
THEY MEET OTHER SERVANTS, L. H. L. E., WITH THE
SEVRES CHINA.)
TABLEAU.
CURTAIN.
THANKSGIVING AT THE POLLS
A THANKSGIVING STORY
I
Frederick Dane was on his way towards what he called
his home. His home, alas, was but an indifferent attic
in one of the southern suburbs of Boston. He had been
walking; but he was now standing still, at the well-known
corner of Massachusetts and Columbus Avenues.
As often happens, Frederick Dane had an opportunity
to wait at this corner a quarter of an hour. As he
looked around him on the silent houses, he could not but
observe the polling-booth, which a watchful city
government had placed in the street, a few days before,
in preparation for the election which was to take place
three weeks afterward. Dane is of an inquiring temper,
and seeing that the polling-booth had a door and the door
had a keyhole, he tried in the keyhole a steel key which
he had picked up in Dock Square the day before. Almost
to his surprise, the key governed the lock at once, and
he found himself able to walk in.
He left the door wide open, and the gaslight
streaming in revealed to him the aspect of the cells
arranged for Australian voting. The rails were all in
their places, and the election might take place the very
next day. It instantly occurred to Dane that he might
save the five cents which otherwise he would have given
to his masters of the street railway, and be the next
morning three miles nearer his work, if he spent the
night in the polling-cabin. He looked around for a
minute or two, and found some large rolls of street
posters, which had been left there by some disappointed
canvasser the year before, and which had accompanied one
cell of the cabin in its travels. Dane is a prompt man,
and, in a minute more, he had locked the door behind him,
had struck a wax taper which he had in his cigar-box, had
rolled the paper roll out on the floor, to serve as a
pillow. In five minutes more, covered with his heavy
coat, he lay on the floor, sleeping as soundly as he had
slept the year before, when he found himself on the lee
side of an iceberg under Peary's command.
This is perhaps unnecessary detail, by way of saying
that this is the beginning of the arrangement which a
city, not very intelligent, will make in the next century
for unsettled people, whose own houses are not agreeable
to them. There exist in Boston at this moment three or
four hundred of the polling-booths,--nice little houses,
enough better than most of the peasantry of most of
Europe ever lived in. They are, alas, generally packed
up in lavender and laid away for ten months of the
year. But in the twentieth century we shall send them
down to the shores of islands and other places where
people like to spend the summer, and we shall utilize
them, not for the few hours of an election only, but all
the year round. This will not then be called
"Nationalism," it will be called "Democracy;" and that is
a very good name when it is applied to a very good thing.
Dane was an old soldier and an old seaman. He was
not troubled by disagreeable dreams, and in the morning,
when the street-cars began to travel, he was awaked a
little after sunrise, by their clatter on the corner. He
felt well satisfied with the success of his experiment,
and began on a forecast, which the reader shall follow
for a few weeks, which he thought, and thought rightly,
would tend to his own convenience, possibly to that of
his friends.
Dane telegraphed down to the office that he should be
detained an hour that morning, went out to his home of
the day before at Ashmont, paid his landlady her scot,
brought in with him his little possessions in a valise to
the office, and did not appear at his new home until
after nightfall.
He was then able to establish himself on the basis
which proved convenient afterwards, and which it is worth
while to explain to a world which is not too well housed.
The city had provided three or four chairs there, a
stove, and two tables. Dane had little literature, but,
as he was in the literary line himself, he did not
care for this so much; men who write books are not
commonly eager to read books which are worse than their
own. At a nine-cent window of a neighboring tinman's he
was able to buy himself the few little necessities which
he wanted for housekeeping. And not to detain the reader
too long upon merely fleshly arrangements, in the course
of a couple of hours of Tuesday evening and Wednesday
evening, he had fitted up his convenient if not pretty
bower with all that man requires. It was easy to buy a
mince pie or a cream cake, or a bit of boiled ham or
roast chicken, according as payday was near or distant.
One is glad to have a tablecloth. But if one have a
large poster warning people, a year before, that they
should vote the Prohibition ticket, one's conscience is
not wounded if this poster, ink down, takes the place
which a tablecloth would have taken under other
circumstances. If there is not much crockery to use,
there is but little to wash. And, in short, as well
trained a man of the world as Dane had made himself
thoroughly comfortable in his new quarters before the
week was over.
II
At the beginning Frederick's views were purely
personal, or, as the preachers say, selfish. Here was
an empty house, three miles nearer his work than his
hired attic was, and he had taken possession. But
conscience always asserts itself, and it was not long
before he felt that he ought to extend the benefits of
this new discovery of his somewhat further. It really
was a satisfaction to what the pulpits call a "felt
want" when as he came through Massachusetts Avenue on
Thursday evening, he met a boy and a girl, neither of
them more than ten years old, crying on the sidewalk.
Dane is sympathetic and fond of children. He stopped
the little brats, and satisfied himself that neither
had had any supper. He could not understand a word of
the language in which they spoke, nor could they
understand him. But kindness needs little spoken
language; and accordingly Frederick led them along to
his cabin, and after waiting, as he always did, a
minute or two, to be sure that no one was in sight, he
unlocked the door, and brought in his little
companions.
It was clear enough that the children were such waifs
and strays that nothing surprised them, and they readily
accepted the modest hospitalities of the position. Like
all masculine housekeepers, Frederick had provided three
times as much food as he needed for his own physical
wants, so that it was not difficult to make these
children happy with the pieces of mince pie and lemon pie
and cream cake and eclairs which were left from his
unknown festivals of the day before. Poor little things,
they were both cold and tired, and, before half an hour
was over, they were snugly asleep on and under a pile of
Prohibition posters.
III
Fortunately for Frederick Dane, for the nine years
before he joined Peary, he had lived in the city of
Bagdad. He had there served as the English interpreter
for the Caliph of that city. The Caliph did most of
his business at night, and was in the habit of taking
Mr. Dane with him on his evening excursions. In this
way Mr. Dane had made the somewhat intimate
acquaintance of Mr. Jaffrey, the private secretary of
the Caliph; and he had indeed in his own employment for
some time, a wide-awake black man, of the name of
Mezrour, who, for his "other place," was engaged as a
servant in the Caliph's household. Dane was thus not
unfamiliar with the methods of unexpected evening
visits; and it was fortunate for him that he was so.
The little children whom he had picked up, explained to
him, by pantomime which would have made the fortune of
a ballet-girl, that they were much more comfortable in
their new home than they had been in any other, and
that they had no wish to leave it. But by various
temptations addressed to them, in the form of barley
horses and dogs, and sticks of barber's candy, Dane,
who was of a romantic and enterprising disposition,
persuaded them to take him to some of their former
haunts.
These were mostly at the North End of Boston,
and he soon found that he needed all his
recollections of Bagdad for the purpose of conducting any
conversation with any of the people they knew best. In
a way, however, with a little broken Arabic, a little
broken Hebrew, a great deal of broken China, and many
gesticulations, he made acquaintance with two of their
compatriots, who had, as it seemed, crossed the ocean
with them in the same steerage. That is to say, they
either had or had not; but for many months Mr. Dane was
unable to discover which. Such as they were, however,
they had been sleeping on the outside of the upper attic
of the house in Salutation Alley where these children had
lodged, or not lodged, as the case might be, during the
last few days. When Mr. Dane saw what were called their
lodgings, he did not wonder that they had accepted pot-
luck with him.
It is necessary to explain all this, that the reader
may understand why, on the first night after the arrival
of these two children, the population of the polling-
booth was enlarged by the presence of these two Hebrew
compatriots. And, without further mystery, it may be as
well to state that all four were from a village about
nine hundred and twenty-three miles north of Odessa, in
the southern part of Russia. They had emigrated in a
compulsory manner from that province, first on account of
the utter failure of anything to eat there; second, on
account of a prejudice which the natives of that country
had contracted against the Hebrew race.
The two North End friends of little Ezra and Sarah
readily accepted the invitation of the two children to
join in the College Settlement at the corner of the two
avenues. The rules of the institution proved attractive,
and before a second week was well advanced ten light
excelsior mattresses were regularly rolled up every
morning as the different inmates went to their duties;
while, as evening closed in, eight cheerful companions
told stories around the hospitable board.
IV
It is no part of this little tale to follow, with Mr.
Stevenson's magic, or with that of the Arabian Nights,
the fortunes from day to day of the little circle.
Enough that men of Hebrew race do not prove lazy
anywhere. Dane, certainly, gave them no bad example.
The children were at once entered in a neighboring
school, where they showed the quickness of their race.
They had the advantage, when the week closed and began,
that they could attend the Sabbath school provided for
them by the Hebrews on Saturday and the several Sunday-
schools of the Parker Memorial, the Berkeley Temple,
and the other churches of the neighborhood. The day
before the election, Frederick Dane asked Oleg and
Vladimir to help him in bringing up some short boards,
which they laid on the trusses in the roof above them.
On the little attic thus prepared, they stored
their mattresses and other personal effects before the
great election of that year began. They had no
intention of interfering, even by a cup of cold coffee,
with the great wave of righteous indignation which, on
that particular day of that particular year, "swept
away, as by a great cosmic tidal flood, the pretences
and ambitions, etc., etc., etc." These words are cited
from Frederick Dane's editorial of the next morning, and
were in fact used by him or by some of his friends,
without variations, in all the cosmic changes of the
elections of the next six years.
V
But so soon as this election was well over, the country
and the city settled down, with what Ransom used to
call "amazin'" readiness to the new order, such as it
was. Only the people who "take up the streets"
detached more men than ever to spoil the pavement. For
now a city election was approaching. And it might be
that the pavers and ditchers and shovellers and
curbstone men and asphalt makers should vote wrong.
Dane and his settlement were well aware that after this
election they would all have to move out from their
comfortable quarters. But, while they were in, they
determined to prepare for a fit Thanksgiving to God,
and the country which makes provision so generous for
those in need. It is not every country, indeed,
which provides four hundred empty houses, every autumn,
for the convenience of any unlodged night-editor with a
skeleton key, who comes along.
He explained to his companions that a great festival
was near. They heard this with joy. He explained that
no work would be done that day,--not in any cigar-shop or
sweating-room. This also pleased them. He then, at some
length, explained the necessity of the sacrifice of
turkeys on the occasion. He told briefly how Josselyn
and the fathers shot them as they passed through the sky.
But he explained that now we shoot them, as one makes
money, not directly but indirectly. We shoot our
turkeys, say, at shooting-galleries. All this proved
intelligible, and Frederick had no fear for turkeys.
As for Sarah and Ezra, he found that at Ezra's boys'
club and at Sarah's girls' club, and each of her Sabbath-
school classes and Sunday-school classes, and at each of
his, it had been explained that on the day before
Thanksgiving they must come with baskets to places named,
and carry home a Thanksgiving dinner.
These announcements were hailed with satisfaction by
all to whom Dane addressed them. Everything in the
country was as strange to them as it would have been to
an old friend of mine, an inhabitant of the planet Mars.
And they accepted the custom of this holiday among the
rest. Oddly enough, it proved that one or two of them
were first-rate shots, and, by attendance at
different shooting-galleries, they brought in more than
a turkey apiece, as Governor Bradford's men did in 1621.
Many of them were at work in large factories, where it
was the custom of the house to give a roasted turkey and
a pan of cranberry sauce to each person who had been on
the pay-list for three months. One or two of them were
errand men in the market, and it was the practice of the
wholesale dealers there, who at this season become to a
certain extent retailers, to encourage these errand men
by presenting to each of them a turkey, which was
promised in advance. As for Dane himself, the
proprietors of his journal always presented a turkey to
each man on their staff. And in looking forward to his
Thanksgiving at the polls, he had expected to provide a
twenty-two pound gobbler which a friend in Vermont was
keeping for him. It may readily be imagined, then, that,
when the day before Thanksgiving came, he was more
oppressed by an embarrassment of riches than by any
difficulty on the debtor side of his account. He had
twelve people to feed, himself included. There were the
two children, their eight friends, and a young Frenchman
from Paris who, like all persons of that nationality who
are six months in this country, had found many enemies
here. Dane had invited him to dinner. He had arranged
that there should be plates or saucers enough for each
person to have two. And now there was to be a chicken-
pie from Obed Shalom, some mince pies and
Marlborough pies from the Union for Christian Work, a
turkey at each end of the board; and he found he should
have left over, after the largest computation for the
appetites of the visitors, twenty-three pies of different
structure, five dishes of cranberry sauce, three or four
boxes of raisins, two or three drums of figs, two roasted
geese and eleven turkeys. He counted all the turkeys as
roasted, because he had the promise of the keeper of the
Montgomery House that he would roast for him all the
birds that were brought in to him before nine o'clock on
Thanksgiving morning.
VI
Having stated all this on a list carefully written,
first in the English language and second in the
language of the Hebrews, Frederick called his fellow-
lodgers together earlier than usual on the evening
before Thanksgiving Day. He explained to them, in the
patois which they used together, that it would be
indecent for them to carry this supply of food farther
than next Monday for their own purposes. He told them
that the occasion was one of exuberant thanksgiving to
the God of heaven. He showed them that they all had
great reason for thanksgiving. And, in short, he made
three heads of a discourse which might have been
expanded by the most eloquent preacher in Boston
the next day, and would have well covered the twenty-
five minutes which the regulation would have required
for a sermon. He then said that, as they had been
favored with much more than they could use for their own
appetites, they must look up those who were not so well
off as themselves.
He was well pleased by finding that he was
understood, and what he said was received with applause
in the various forms in which Southern Russia applauds on
such occasions. As for the two children, their eyes were
wide open, and their mouths, and they looked their
wonder.
Frederick then proposed that two of their number
should volunteer to open a rival establishment at the
polling-booth at the corner of Gates Street and Burgoyne
Street, and that the company should on the next day
invite guests enough to make another table of twelve. He
proposed that the same course should be taken at the
corner of Shapleigh and Bowditch Streets, and yet again
at the booth which is at the corner of Curtis Avenue and
Quincy Street. And he said that, as time would press
upon them, they had better arrange to carry a part at
least of the stores to these places that evening. To
this there was a general assent. The company sat down to
a hasty tea, administered much as the Israelites took
their last meal in Egypt; for every man had on his long
frieze coat and his heavy boots, and they were eager for
the active work of Thanksgiving. For each the
stewards packed two turkeys in a basket, filled in
as far as they could with other stores, and Frederick
headed his procession.
It was then that he was to learn, for the first time,
that he was not the only person in Boston.
It was then that he found out that the revelation
made to one man is frequently made to many.
He found out that he was as wise as the next fellow,
but was no wiser; was as good as the next fellow, but was
no better; and that, in short, he had no special patent
upon his own undertaking,
The little procession soon arrived at the corner of
Shapleigh and Bowditch Streets. Whoever had made the
locks on the doors of the houses had been content to use
the same pattern for all. It proved, therefore, that the
key of No. 237 answered for No. 238, and it was not
necessary to open the door with the "Jimmy" which Simeon
had under his ulster.
But on the other hand, to Frederick's amazement, as
he threw the door open, he found a lighted room and a
long table around which sat twelve men, guised or
disguised in much the same way as those whom he had
brought with him. A few moments showed that another
leader of the people had discovered this vacant home a
few weeks before, and had established there another
settlement of the un-homed. As it proved, this gentleman
was a Mashpee Indian. He was, in fact, the member of the
House of Representatives from the town of Mashpee for the
next winter. Arriving in Boston to look for
lodgings, he, not unnaturally, met with a Mohawk, two
Dacotahs, and a Cherokee, who, for various errands, had
come north and east. A similarity of color, not to say
of racial relations, had established a warm friendship
among the five, and they had brought together gradually
twelve gentlemen of copper color, who had been residing
in this polling-booth since the second day after the
general election. Their fortune had not been unlike that
of Frederick and his friends, and at this moment they
were discussing the methods by which they might
distribute several brace of ducks which had been sent up
from Mashpee, a haunch of venison which had come down
from above Machias, and some wild turkeys which had
arrived by express from the St. Regis Indians of Northern
New York. At the moment of the arrival of our friends,
they were sending out two of their number to find how
they might best distribute thus their extra provender.
These two gladly joined in the little procession, and
all went together to the corner of Quincy Street and
Curtis Avenue. There a similar revelation was made, only
there was some difficulty at first in any real mutual
understanding. For here they met a dozen, more or less,
of French Canadians. These gentlemen had left their
wives and their children in the province of Quebec, and,
finding themselves in Boston, had taken possession of the
polling-booth, where they were living much more
comfortably than they would have lived at home.
They too had been well provided for Thanksgiving, both by
their friends at home and by their employers, and had
been questioning as to the distribution which they could
make of their supplies. Reinforced by four of their
number, the delegation in search of hungry people was
increased to fourteen in number, and with a certain
curiosity, it must be confessed, they went together to
try their respective keys on No. 311.
Opening this without so much as knocking at the door
to know if here they might not provide the "annex" or
"tender" which they wished to establish, they found, it
must be confessed without any amazement or amusement, a
company of Italians under the charge of one Antonio Fero,
who had also worked out the problem of cheap lodgings,
and had established themselves for some weeks here.
These men also had been touched, either by some priest's
voice or other divine word, with a sense of the duties of
the occasion, and were just looking round to know where
they might spread their second table. Five of them
joined the fourteen, and the whole company, after a rapid
conversation, agreed that they would try No. 277 on the
other side of the Avenue. And here their fortunes
changed.
For here it proved that the "cops" on that beat,
finding nights growing somewhat cold, and that there was
no provision made by the police commissioners for a club-
room for gentlemen of their profession, had themselves
arranged in the polling-booth a convenient place for
the reading of the evening newspapers and for conference
on their mutual affairs. These "cops" were unmarried
men, and did not much know where was the home in which
the governor requested them to spend their Thanksgiving.
They had therefore determined to spread their own table
in their club-room, and this evening had been making
preparations for a picnic feast there at midnight on
Thanksgiving Day, when they should be relieved from their
more pressing duties. They also had found the liberality
of each member of the force had brought in more than
would be requisite, and were considering the same subject
which had oppressed the consciences of the leaders of the
other bands.
No one ever knew who made the great suggestion, but
it is probable that it was one of these officials, well
acquainted with the charter of the city of Boston and
with its constitution and by-laws, who offered the
proposal which was adopted. In the jealousy of the
fierce democracy of Boston in the year 1820, when the
present city charter was made, it reserved for itself
permission to open Faneuil Hall at any time for a public
meeting. It proves now that whenever fifty citizens
unite to ask for the use of the hall for such a meeting,
it must be given to them. At the time of which we are
reading the mayor had to preside at every such meeting.
At the "Cops'" club it was highly determined that the
names of fifty citizens should at once be obtained,
and that the Cradle of Liberty should be secured for the
general Thanksgiving.
It was wisely resolved that no public notice should
be given of this in the journals. It was well known that
that many-eyed Argus called the press is very apt not to
interfere with that which is none of its business.
VII
And thus it happened that, when Thanksgiving Day came,
the worthy janitor of Faneuil Hall sent down his
assistant to open it, and that the assistant, who meant
to dine at home, found a good-natured friend from the
country who took the keys and lighted the gas in his
place. Before the sun had set, Frederick Dane and
Antonio Fero and Michael Chevalier and the Honorable
Mr. Walk-in-the-Water and Eben Kartschoff arrived with
an express-wagon driven by a stepson of P. Nolan.
There is no difficulty at Faneuil Hall in bringing out
a few trestles and as many boards as one wants for
tables, for Faneuil Hall is a place given to
hospitality. And so, before six o'clock, the hour
assigned for the extemporized dinner, the tables were
set with turkeys, with geese, with venison, with mallards
and plover, with quail and partridges, with cranberry and
squash, and with dishes of Russia and Italy and Greece
and Bohemia, such as have no names. The Greeks brought
fruits, the Indians brought venison, the Italians
brought red wine, the French brought walnuts and
chestnuts, and the good God sent a blessing. Almost
every man found up either a wife or a sweetheart or a
daughter or a niece to come with him, and the feast went
on to the small hours of Friday. The Mayor came down on
time, and being an accomplished man, addressed them in
English, in Latin, in Greek, in Hebrew, and in Tuscan.
And it is to be hoped that they understood him.
But no record has ever been made of the feast in any
account-book on this side the line. Yet there are those
who have seen it, or something like it, with the eye of
faith. And when, a hundred years hence, some antiquary
reads this story in a number of the "Omaha
Intelligencer," which has escaped the detrition of the
thirty-six thousand days and nights, he will say,--
"Why, this was the beginning of what we do now! Only
these people seem to have taken care of strangers only
one month in the twelve. Why did they not welcome all
strangers in like manner, until they had made them feel
at home? These people, once a year, seem to have fed the
hungry. Would it not have been simpler for them to
provide that no man should ever be hungry? These people
certainly thanked God to some purpose once a year; how
happy is the nation which has learned to thank Him always!"
THE SURVIVOR'S STORY
Fortunately we were with our wives.
It is in general an excellent custom, as I will
explain if opportunity is given.
First, you are thus sure of good company.
For four mortal hours we had ground along, and
stopped and waited and started again, in the drifts
between Westfield and Springfield. We had shrieked out
our woes by the voices of five engines. Brave men had
dug. Patient men had sat inside and waited for the
results of the digging. At last, in triumph, at eleven
and three quarters, as they say in "Cinderella," we
entered the Springfield station.
It was Christmas Eve!
Leaving the train to its devices, Blatchford and his
wife (her name was Sarah), and I with mine (her name was
Phebe), walked quickly with our little sacks out of the
station, ploughed and waded along the white street, not
to the Massasoit--no, but to the old Eagle and Star,
which was still standing, and was a favorite with us
youngsters. Good waffles, maple syrup ad lib., such
fixings of other sorts as we preferred, and some liberty.
The amount of liberty in absolutely first-class
hotels is but small. A drowsy boy waked, and turned up
the gas. Blatchford entered our names on the register,
and cried at once, "By George, Wolfgang is here, and
Dick! What luck!" for Dick and Wolfgang also travel with
their wives. The boy explained that they had come up the
river in the New Haven train, were only nine hours behind
time, had arrived at ten, and had just finished supper
and gone to bed. We ordered rare beefsteak, waffles,
dip-toast, omelettes with kidneys, and omelettes without;
we toasted our feet at the open fire in the parlor; we
ate the supper when it was ready; and we also went to
bed; rejoicing that we had home with us, having travelled
with our wives; and that we could keep our Merry
Christmas here. If only Wolfgang and Dick and their
wives would join us, all would be well. (Wolfgang's wife
was named Bertha, and Dick's was named Hosanna,--a name
I have never met with elsewhere.)
Bed followed; and I am a graceless dog that I do not
write a sonnet here on the unbroken slumber that
followed. Breakfast, by arrangement of us four, at nine.
At 9.30, to us enter Bertha, Dick, Hosanna, and Wolfgang,
to name them in alphabetical order. Four chairs had been
turned down for them. Four chops, four omelettes, and
four small oval dishes of fried potatoes had been
ordered, and now appeared. Immense shouting, immense
kissing among those who had that privilege, general
wondering, and great congratulating that our wives were
there. Solid resolution that we would advance no
farther. Here, and here only, in Springfield itself,
would we celebrate our Christmas Day.
It may be remarked in parenthesis that we had learned
already that no train had entered the town since eleven
and a quarter; and it was known by telegraph that none
was within thirty-four miles and a half of the spot, at
the moment the vow was made.
We waded and ploughed our way through the snow to
church. I think Mr. Rumfry, if that is the gentleman's
name who preached an admirable Christmas sermon in a
beautiful church there, will remember the platoon of four
men and four women who made perhaps a fifth of his
congregation in that storm,--a storm which shut off most
church-going. Home again: a jolly fire in the parlor,
dry stockings, and dry slippers. Turkeys, and all things
fitting for the dinner; and then a general assembly, not
in a caravansary, not in a coffee-room, but in the
regular guests' parlor of a New England second-class
hotel, where, as it was ordered, there were no
"transients" but ourselves that day; and whence all the
"boarders" had gone either to their own rooms or to other
homes.
For people who have their wives with them, it is not
difficult to provide entertainment on such an occasion.
"Bertha," said Wolfgang, "could you not entertain us
with one of your native dances?"
"Ho! slave," said Dick to Hosanna, "play upon the
virginals." And Hosanna played a lively Arab air on the
tavern piano, while the fair Bertha danced with a spirit
unusual. Was it indeed in memory of the Christmas of her
own dear home in Circassia?
All that, from "Bertha" to "Circassia," is not so.
We did not do this at all. That was all a slip of the
pen. What we did was this. John Blatchford pulled the
bell-cord till it broke (they always break in novels, and
sometimes they do in taverns). This bell-cord broke.
The sleepy boy came; and John said, "Caitiff, is there
never a barber in the house?" The frightened boy said
there was; and John bade him send him. In a minute the
barber appeared--black, as was expected--with a shining
face, and white teeth, and in shirt-sleeves, and broad
inquiry.
"Do you tell me, Caesar," said John, "that in your
country they do not wear their coats on Christmas Day?"
"Sartin, they do, sah, when they go outdoors."
"Do you tell me, Caesar," said Dick, "that they have
doors in your country?"
"Sartin, they do," said poor Caesar, flurried.
"Boy," said I, "the gentlemen are making fun of you.
They want to know if you ever keep Christmas in your
country without a dance."
"Never, sah," said poor Caesar.
"Do they dance without music?"
"No, sah; never."
"Go, then," I said, in my sternest accents,--"go
fetch a zithern, or a banjo, or a kit, or a hurdy-gurdy,
or a fiddle."
The black boy went, and returned with his violin.
And as the light grew gray, and crept into the darkness,
and as the darkness gathered more thick and more, he
played for us, and he played for us, tune after tune; and
we danced--first with precision, then in sport, then in
wild holiday frenzy. We began with waltzes--so great is
the convenience of travelling with your wives--where
should we have been, had we been all sole alone, four
men? Probably playing whist or euchre. And now we began
with waltzes, which passed into polkas, which subsided
into other round dances; and then in very exhaustion we
fell back in a grave quadrille. I danced with Hosanna;
Wolfgang and Sarah were our vis-a-vis. We went
through the same set that Noah and his three boys danced
in the ark with their four wives, and which has been
danced ever since, in every moment, on one or another
spot of the dry earth, going round it with the sun, like
the drum-beat of England--right and left, first two
forward, right hand across, pastorale--the whole
series of them; we did them with as much spirit as if it
had been on a flat on the side of Ararat, ground yet too
muddy for croquet. Then Blatchford called for
"Virginia Reel," and we raced and chased through that.
Poor Caesar began to get exhausted, but a little flip
from downstairs helped him amazingly. And after the flip
Dick cried, "Can you not dance `Money-Musk'?" And in one
wild frenzy of delight we danced "Money-Musk" and "Hull's
Victory" and "Dusty Miller" and "Youth's Companion," and
"Irish jigs" on the closet-door lifted off for the
occasion, till the men lay on the floor screaming with
the fun, and the women fell back on the sofas, fairly
faint with laughing.
All this last, since the sentence after "Circassia,"
is a mistake. There was not any bell, nor any barber,
and we did not dance at all. This was all a slip of my
memory.
What we really did was this:
John Blatchford said, "Let us all tell stories." It
was growing dark and he put more logs on the fire.
Bertha said,--
"Heap on more wood, the wind is chill;
But let it whistle as it will,
We'll keep our merry Christmas still."
She said that because it was in "Bertha's Visit,"--a
very stupid book, which she remembered.
Then Wolfgang told
THE PENNY-A-LINER'S STORY
[Wolfgang is a reporter, or was then, on the staff of
the "Star."]
When I was on the "Tribune" [he never was on the
"Tribune" an hour, unless he calls selling the "Tribune"
at Fort Plains being on the "Tribune." But I tell the
story as he told it. He said:] When I was on the
"Tribune," I was despatched to report Mr. Webster's great
reply to Hayne. This was in the days of stages. We had
to ride from Baltimore to Washington early in the morning
to get there in time. I found my boots were gone from my
room when the stage-man called me, and I reported that
speech in worsted slippers my wife had given me the week
before. As we came into Bladensburg, it grew light, and
I recognized my boots on the feet of my fellow-
passenger,--there was but one other man in the stage. I
turned to claim them, but stopped in a moment, for it was
Webster himself. How serene his face looked as he slept
there! He woke soon, passed the time of day, offered me
a part of a sandwich, for we were old friends,--I was
counsel against him in the Ogden case. Said Webster to
me, "Steele, I am bothered about this speech; I have a
paragraph in it which I cannot word up to my mind;" and
he repeated it to me. "How would this do?" said he.
"`Let us hope that the sense of unrestricted freedom may
be so intertwined with the desire to preserve a
connection of the several parts of the body politic, that
some arrangement, more or less lasting, may prove in a
measure satisfactory.' How would that do?"
I said I liked the idea, but the expression seemed
involved.
"And it is involved," said Webster; "but I can't
improve it."
"How would this do?" said I.
"`LIBERTY AND UNION, NOW AND FOREVER, ONE AND
INSEPARABLE!'"
"Capital!" he said, "capital! write that down for
me." At that moment we arrived at the Capitol steps. I
wrote down the words for him, and from my notes he read
them, when that place in the speech came along.
All of us applauded the story.
Phebe then told
THE SCHOOLMISTRESS'S STORY
You remind me of the impression that very speech made
on me, as I heard Henry Chapin deliver it at an
exhibition at Leicester Academy. I resolved then that I
would free the slave, or perish in the attempt. But how?
I, a woman--disfranchised by the law? Ha! I saw!
I went to Arkansas. I opened a "Normal College, or
Academy for Teachers." We had balls every second
night, to make it popular. Immense numbers came. Half
the teachers of the Southern States were trained there.
I had admirable instructors in oil painting and music--
the most essential studies. The arithmetic I taught
myself. I taught it well. I achieved fame. I achieved
wealth; invested in Arkansas five per cents. Only one
secret device I persevered in. To all--old and young,
innocent girls and sturdy men--I so taught the
multiplication table that one fatal error was hidden in
its array of facts. The nine line is the difficult one.
I buried the error there. "Nine times six," I taught
them, "is fifty-six." The rhyme made it easy. The
gilded falsehood passed from lip to lip, from State to
State,--one little speck in a chain of golden verity. I
retired from teaching. Slowly I watched the growth of
the rebellion. At last the aloe blossom shot up--after
its hundred years of waiting. The Southern heart was
fired. I brooded over my revenge. I repaired to
Richmond. I opened a first-class boarding-house, where
all the Cabinet and most of the Senate came for their
meals; and I had eight permanents. Soon their brows
clouded. The first flush of victory passed away. Night
after night they sat over their calculations, which all
came wrong. I smiled--and was a villain! None of their
sums would prove. None of their estimates matched the
performance! Never a muster-roll that fitted as it
should do! And I--the despised boarding-mistress--I
alone knew why! Often and often, when Memminger has
said to me, with an oath, "Why this discordancy in our
totals?" have my lips burned to tell the secret! But no!
I hid it in my bosom. And when at last I saw a black
regiment march into Richmond, singing "John Brown," I
cried, for the first time in twenty years, "Six times
nine is fifty-four," and gloated in my sweet revenge.
Then was hushed the harp of Phebe, and Dick told his story.
THE INSPECTOR OF GAS-METERS' STORY
Mine is a tale of the ingratitude of republics. It
is well-nigh thirty years since I was walking by the
Owego and Ithaca Railroad,--a crooked road, not then
adapted to high speed. Of a sudden I saw that a long
cross timber, on a trestle, high above a swamp, had
sprung up from its ties. I looked for a spike with which
to secure it. I found a stone with which to hammer the
spike. But at this moment a train approached, down hill.
I screamed. They heard! But the engine had no power to
stop the heavy train. With the presence of mind of a
poet, and the courage of a hero, I flung my own weight on
the fatal timber. I would hold it down, or perish. The
engine came. The elasticity of the pine timber whirled
me in the air! But I held on. The tender crossed.
Again I was flung in wild gyrations. But I held on.
"It is no bed of roses," I said; "but what act of
Parliament was there that I should be happy?" Three
passenger cars and ten freight cars, as was then the
vicious custom of that road, passed me. But I held on,
repeating to myself texts of Scripture to give me
courage. As the last car passed, I was whirled into the
air by the rebound of the rafter. "Heavens!" I said, "if
my orbit is a hyperbola, I shall never return to earth."
Hastily I estimated its ordinates, and calculated the
curve. What bliss! It was a parabola! After a flight
of a hundred and seventeen cubits, I landed, head down,
in a soft mud-hole!
In that train was the young U. S. Grant, on his way
to West Point for examination. But for me the armies of
the Republic would have had no leader.
I pressed my claim, when I asked to be appointed
Minister to England. Although no one else wished to go,
I alone was forgotten. Such is gratitude with republics!
He ceased. Then Sarah Blatchford told
THE WHEELER AND WILSON'S OPERATIVE'S STORY
My father had left the anchorage of Sorrento for a
short voyage, if voyage it may be called. Life was
young, and this world seemed heaven. The yacht bowled on
under tight-reefed staysails, and all was happy.
Suddenly the corsairs seized us; all were slain in my
defence; but I--this fatal gift of beauty bade them spare
my life!
Why linger on my tale? In the Zenana of the Shah of
Persia I found my home. "How escape his eye?" I said;
and, fortunately, I remembered that in my reticule I
carried one box of F. Kidder's indelible ink. Instantly
I applied the liquid in the large bottle to one cheek.
Soon as it was dry, I applied that in the small bottle,
and sat in the sun one hour. My head ached with the
sunlight, but what of that? I was a fright, and I knew
all would be well.
I was consigned, so soon as my hideous deficiencies
were known, to the sewing-room. Then how I sighed for my
machine! Alas! it was not there; but I constructed an
imitation from a cannon-wheel, a coffee-mill, and two
nut-crackers. And with this I made the underclothing for
the palace and the Zenana.
I also vowed revenge. Nor did I doubt one instant
how; for in my youth I had read Lucretia Borgia's
memoirs, and I had a certain rule for slowly slaying a
tyrant at a distance. I was in charge of the Shah's own
linen. Every week I set back the buttons on his shirt
collars by the width of one thread; or, by arts known to
me, I shrunk the binding of the collar by a like
proportion. Tighter and tighter with each week did the
vice close around his larynx. Week by week, at the
high religious festivals, I could see his face was
blacker and blacker. At length the hated tyrant died.
The leeches called it apoplexy. I did not undeceive
them. His guards sacked the palace. I bagged the
diamonds, fled with them to Trebizond, and sailed thence
in a caique to South Boston. No more! such memories
oppress me.
Her voice was hushed. I told my tale in turn.
THE CONDUCTOR'S STORY
I was poor. Let this be my excuse, or rather my
apology. I entered a Third Avenue car at Thirty-sixth
Street, and saw the conductor sleeping. Satan tempted
me, and I took from him his badge, 213. I see the hated
figures now. When he woke, he knew not he had lost it.
The car started, and he walked to the rear. With the
badge on my coat I collected eight fares within, stepped
forward, and sprang into the street. Poverty is my only
apology for the crime. I concealed myself in a cellar
where men were playing with props. Fear is my only
excuse. Lest they should suspect me, I joined their
game, and my forty cents were soon three dollars and
seventy. With these ill-gotten gains I visited the gold
exchange, then open evenings. My superior intelligence
enabled me to place well my modest means, and at
midnight I had a competence. Let me be a warning to all
young men. Since that night I have never gambled more.
I threw the hated badge into the river. I bought a
palace on Murray Hill, and led an upright and honorable
life. But since that night of terror the sound of the
horse-cars oppresses me. Always since, to go up town or
down, I order my own coupe, with George to drive me; and
never have I entered the cleanly, sweet, and airy
carriage provided for the public. I cannot; conscience
is too much for me. You see in me a monument of crime.
I said no more. A moment's pause, a few natural
tears, and a single sigh hushed the assembly; then
Bertha, with her siren voice, told
THE WIFE OF BIDDEFORD'S STORY
At the time you speak of I was the private governess
of two lovely boys, Julius and Pompey--Pompey the senior
of the two. The black-eyed darling! I see him now. I
also see, hanging to his neck, his blue-eyed brother, who
had given Pompey his black eye the day before. Pompey
was generous to a fault; Julius parsimonious beyond
virtue. I, therefore, instructed them in two different
rooms. To Pompey I read the story of "Waste not, want
not." To Julius, on the other hand, I spoke of the
All-love of his great Mother Nature, and her profuse
gifts to her children. Leaving him with grapes and
oranges, I stepped back to Pompey, and taught him how to
untie parcels so as to save the string. Leaving him
winding the string neatly, I went back to Julius, and
gave him ginger-cakes. The dear boys grew from year to
year. They outgrew their knickerbockers, and had
trousers. They outgrew their jackets, and became men;
and I felt that I had not lived in vain. I had conquered
nature. Pompey, the little spendthrift, was the honored
cashier of a savings-bank, till he ran away with the
capital. Julius, the miser, became the chief croupier at
the New Crockford's. One of those boys is now in Botany
Bay, and the other is in Sierra Leone!
"I thought you were going to say in a hotter place,"
said John Blatchford; and he told his story.
THE STOKER'S STORY
We were crossing the Atlantic in a Cunarder. I was
second stoker on the starboard watch. In that horrible
gale we spoke of before dinner, the coal was exhausted,
and I, as the best-dressed man, was sent up to the
captain to ask him what we should do. I found him
himself at the wheel. He almost cursed me, and bade me
say nothing of coal, at a moment when he must keep
her head to the wind with her full power, or we were
lost. He bade me slide my hand into his pocket, and take
out the key of the after freight-room, open that, and use
the contents for fuel. I returned hastily to the engine-
room, and we did as we were bid. The room contained
nothing but old account books, which made a hot and
effective fire.
On the third day the captain came down himself into
the engine-room, where I had never seen him before,
called me aside, and told me that by mistake he had given
me the wrong key; asking me if I had used it. I pointed
to him the empty room; not a leaf was left. He turned
pale with fright. As I saw his emotion, he confided to
me the truth. The books were the evidences or accounts
of the British national debt; of what is familiarly known
as the Consolidated Fund, or the "Consols." They had
been secretly sent to New York for the examination of
James Fiske, who had been asked to advance a few millions
on this security to the English Exchequer, and now all
evidence of indebtedness was gone!
The captain was about to leap into the sea. But I
dissuaded him. I told him to say nothing; I would keep
his secret; no man else knew it. The government would
never utter it. It was safe in our hands. He
reconsidered his purpose. We came safe to port and did--
nothing.
Only on the first quarter-day which followed, I
obtained leave of absence, and visited the Bank of
England, to see what happened. At the door was this
placard, "Applicants for dividends will file a written
application, with name and amount, at desk A, and proceed
in turn to the Paying Teller's Office." I saw their
ingenuity. They were making out new books, certain that
none would apply but those who were accustomed to. So
skilfully do men of government study human nature.
I stepped lightly to one of the public desks. I took
one of the blanks. I filled it out, "John Blatchford,
L1747 6s. 8d." and handed it in at the open trap. I
took my place in the queue in the teller's room. After
an agreeable hour, a pile, not thick, of Bank of England
notes was given to me; and since that day I have
quarterly drawn that amount from the maternal government
of that country. As I left the teller's room, I observed
the captain in the queue. He was the seventh man from
the window, and I have never seen him more.
We then asked Hosanna for her story.
THE N. E. HISTORICAL GENEALOGIST'S STORY
"My story," said she, "will take us far back into the
past. It will be necessary for me to dwell on some
incidents in the first settlement of this country, and I
propose that we first prepare and enjoy the Christmas
tree. After this, if your courage holds, you shall hear
an over-true tale." Pretty creature, how little she
knew what was before us!
As we had sat listening to the stories, we had been
preparing for the tree. Shopping being out of the
question, we were fain from our own stores to make up our
presents, while the women were arranging nuts, and blown
egg-shells, and popcorn strings from the stores of the
Eagle and Star. The popping of corn in two corn-poppers
had gone on through the whole of the story-telling. All
being so nearly ready, I called the drowsy boy again,
and, showing him a very large stick in the wood-box,
asked him to bring me a hatchet. To my great joy he
brought the axe of the establishment, and I bade him
farewell. How little did he think what was before him!
So soon as he had gone I went stealthily down the stairs,
and stepping out into the deep snow, in front of the
hotel, looked up into the lovely night. The storm had
ceased, and I could see far back into the heavens. In
the still evening my strokes might have been heard far
and wide, as I cut down one of the two pretty Norways
that shaded Mr. Pynchon's front walk, next the hotel. I
dragged it over the snow. Blatchford and Steele lowered
sheets to me from the large parlor window, which I
attached to the larger end of the tree. With infinite
difficulty they hauled it in. I joined them in the
parlor, and soon we had as stately a tree growing there
as was in any home of joy that night in the river
counties.
With swift fingers did our wives adorn it. I should
have said above, that we travelled with our wives, and
that I would recommend that custom to others. It was
impossible, under the circumstances, to maintain much
secrecy; but it had been agreed that all who wished to
turn their backs to the circle, in the preparation of
presents, might do so without offence to the others. As
the presents were wrapped, one by one, in paper of
different colors, they were marked with the names of
giver and receiver, and placed in a large clothes-basket.
At last all was done. I had wrapped up my knife, my
pencil-case, my lettercase, for Steele, Blatchford, and
Dick. To my wife I gave my gold watch-key, which
fortunately fits her watch; to Hosanna, a mere trifle, a
seal ring I wore; to Bertha, my gold chain; and to Sarah
Blatchford, the watch which generally hung from it. For
a few moments we retired to our rooms while the pretty
Hosanna arranged the forty-nine presents on the tree.
Then she clapped her hands, and we rushed in. What a
wondrous sight! What a shout of infantine laughter and
charming prattle! for in that happy moment were we not
all children again?
I see my story hurries to its close. Dick, who is
the tallest, mounted a step-ladder, and called us by name
to receive our presents. I had a nice gold watch-key
from Hosanna, a knife from Steele, a letter-case from
Phebe, and a pretty pencil-case from Bertha. Dick had
given me his watch-chain, which he knew I fancied;
Sarah Blatchford, a little toy of a Geneva watch she
wore; and her husband, a handsome seal ring,--a present
to him from the Czar, I believe; Phebe, that is my
wife,--for we were travelling with our wives,--had a
pencil-case from Steele, a pretty little letter-case from
Dick, a watch-key from me, and a French repeater from
Blatchford; Sarah Blatchford gave her the knife she
carried, with some bright verses, saying that it was not
to cut love; Bertha, a watch-chain; and Hosanna, a ring
of turquoise and amethysts. The other presents were
similar articles, and were received, as they were given,
with much tender feeling. But at this moment, as Dick
was on the top of the flight of steps, handing down a red
apple from the tree, a slight catastrophe occurred.
The first thing I was conscious of was the angry hiss
of steam. In a moment I perceived that the steam-boiler,
from which the tavern was warmed, had exploded. The
floor beneath us rose, and we were driven with it through
the ceiling and the rooms above,--through an opening in
the roof into the still night. Around us in the air were
flying all the other contents and occupants of the Star
and Eagle. How bitterly was I reminded of Dick's flight
from the railroad track of the Ithaca and Owego Railroad!
But I could not hope such an escape as his. Still my
flight was in a parabola; and, in a period not longer
than it has taken to describe it, I was thrown senseless,
at last, into a deep snow-bank near the United
States Arsenal.
Tender hands lifted me and assuaged me. Tender teams
carried me to the City Hospital. Tender eyes brooded
over me. Tender science cared for me. It proved
necessary, before I recovered, to amputate my two legs at
the hips. My right arm was wholly removed, by a delicate
and curious operation, from the socket. We saved the
stump of my left arm, which was amputated just below the
shoulder. I am still in the hospital to recruit my
strength. The doctor does not like to have me occupy my
mind at all; but he says there is no harm in my compiling
my memoirs, or writing magazine stories. My faithful
nurse has laid me on my breast on a pillow, has put a
camel's-hair pencil in my mouth, and, feeling almost
personally acquainted with John Carter, the artist, I
have written out for you, in his method, the story of my
last Christmas.
I am sorry to say that the others have never been found.
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Brick Moon, et. al., by Hale
