Читать книгу: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865», страница 10

"This reminds me," says Mr. Pierpont, in the note referred to, "that Colonel William Alston, the father of Joseph, who married Miss Burr, once told me, at his own table, that, soon after the marriage of his son to Miss Burr, her father, Colonel Burr, had told him, (Colonel Alston,) that, rather than have had his daughter marry otherwise than to his mind, he would have made her the mistress of some gentleman of rank or fortune, who would have placed her in the station in society for which he had educated her.

"I believe, however," he adds, in a postscript, "that not even parental authority or influence could ever have brought the beautiful and accomplished Miss Theodosia Burr thus to prostitute herself to her father's ambitious purposes."

In speaking of Burr, one day, and of his wonderful strength of character and keenness of observation, he broke away suddenly, called him an "atrocious scoundrel," and then asked me about his life and history. Then it was that the kind-hearted, benevolent old man underwent a sudden transfiguration. He trembled all over; his clear eyes lighted up; his white hair was like a glory about his face; and he seemed like one of the Hebrew Prophets, in his terrible denunciations of the heartless manslayer, and the shameless, boastful profligate.

Our very pleasant, and, to me, most profitable intercourse for a year and a half was brought to an end by the happening of two or three incidents. His fat housekeeper, who ruled him with a rod of iron, and insulted Mrs. Austin and others, undertook to manage me in the same way, and got packed off in consequence, though I did all I could to keep the secret, and prevent the catastrophe; but he insisted on knowing why I left him, and he applied to the secretaries, who were witnesses of the whole transaction. The philosopher was indignant, and insisted on her making me a suitable apology. I said I wanted no apology, having made up my mind to go on my journey. She refused, and he cut her adrift, after having been so dependent upon her, I know not how many years, that he would allow her to say, "The pan is put away," when he asked for more of a favorite dish,—fried parsley,—which he had prepared for Dr. Macculloch, the geologist, who at one time could eat nothing else. She was reinstated, however, within two or three years after I left him.

The other incident was this. Mr. Bentham had urged me to write a paper for the "Westminster Review," of which Dr. Bowring and Mr. Henry Southern were the editors. I did so, and took for my text four or five orations by Webster, Everett, and Sprague, and then launched out upon the subject of Jurisprudence, of the Militia System, as it prevailed here at the time,—a monstrous folly, and a monstrous outrage upon the rights of man,—and of Slavery. The proof came without a word of alteration or amendment. Of course I had nothing to do but correct any verbal errors. But, lo! when the article appeared, not only had changes been made, passages struck out, and various emendations worked in, but I was made to say the very reverse of what I did say, and to utter opinions which I never entertained, and for which I have had to suffer from that day to this among my countrymen.

For example. The editor, who had never seen the pamphlets, as he proves by calling them "books," interpolates the following, which, as I have said before, I have had to answer for:—

"Violent exaggeration is the character of American literature at the present day, and, compared with the chaster and more rational style of our best writers, the style of the North American authors is usually the rant and unmeaning vehemence of a strolling Thespian, when placed beside the calm, appropriate, and expressive delivery of an accomplished actor." Bear in mind that the samples I gave were from Webster, and Everett, and Sprague!—three of our coldest and clearest crystals, and among the least impassioned, and certainly the least extravagant, of our orators. "Sometimes," the editor adds, with a show of relenting at last, "sometimes the reader will find these remarkable parts the worst, and sometimes the best of the paragraph, and often composed in a spirit worthy of a less vitiated expression."⁴

This was a little too much; but, owing to the expostulations of Mr. Bentham, who had wasted about twenty or twenty-five thousand dollars on the "Westminster Review," without a hope of getting a sixpence in return, I consented to overlook the outrage. But my confidence in the amiable Dr. Bowring was ended forever. We had a short interview, but no intimacy after this, and I had begun to think of Northern Europe more seriously than ever, when at last the tiff with the housekeeper settled the question,—the Doctor declaring, though he knew from Mr. Bentham's own lips how much he desired me to stay, and how unwilling he was to part with me, that he, Mr. Bentham, said that he would as lief have a rattlesnake under his roof!

A FAREWELL TO AGASSIZ

 
How the mountains talked together,
Looking down upon the weather,
When they heard our friend had planned his
Little trip among the Andes!
How they'll bare their snowy scalps
To the climber of the Alps,
When the cry goes through their passes,
"Here comes the great Agassiz!"
"Yes, I'm tall," says Chimborazo,
"But I wait for him to say so,—
That's the only thing that lacks,—he
Must see me, Cotopaxi!"
"Ay! ay!" the fire-peak thunders,
"And he must view my wonders!
I'm but a lonely crater,
Till I have him for spectator!"
The mountain hearts are yearning,
The lava-torches burning,
The rivers bend to meet him,
The forests bow to greet him,
It thrills the spinal column
Of fossil fishes solemn,
And glaciers crawl the faster
To the feet of their old master!
 
 
Heaven keep him well and hearty,
Both him and all his party!
From the sun that broils and smites,
From the centipede that bites,
From the hail-storm and the thunder,
From the vampire and the condor,
From the gust upon the river,
From the sudden earthquake shiver,
From the trip of mule or donkey,
From the midnight howling monkey,
From the stroke of knife or dagger,
From the puma and the jaguar,
From the horrid boa-constrictor
That has scared us in the pictur',
From the Indians of the Pampas,
Who would dine upon their grampas,
From every beast and vermin
That to think of sets us squirming,
From every snake that tries on
The traveller his p'ison,
From every pest of Natur',
Likewise the alligator,
And from two things left behind him,
(Be sure they'll try to find him,)—
The tax-bill and assessor,—
Heaven keep the great Professor!
 
 
May he find, with his apostles,
That the land is full of fossils,
That the waters swarm with fishes
Shaped according to his wishes,
That every pool is fertile
In fancy kinds of turtle,
New birds around him singing,
New insects, never stinging,
With a million novel data
About the articulata,
And facts that strip off all husks
From the history of mollusks.
 
 
And when, with loud Te Deum,
He returns to his Museum,
May he find the monstrous reptile
That so long the land has kept ill
By Grant and Sherman throttled,
And by Father Abraham bottled,
(All specked and streaked and mottled
With the scars of murderous battles,
Where he clashed the iron rattles
That gods and men he shook at,)
For all the world to look at!
 
 
God bless the great Professor!
And Madam too, God bless her!
Bless him and all his band,
On the sea and on the land,
As they sail, ride, walk, and stand,—
Bless them head and heart and hand,
Till their glorious raid is o'er,
And they touch our ransomed shore!
Then the welcome of a nation,
With its shout of exultation,
Shall awake the dumb creation,
And the shapes of buried æons
Join the living creatures' pæans,
While the mighty megalosaurus
Leads the palæozoic chorus,—
God bless the great Professor,
And the land his proud possessor,—
Bless them now and evermore!
 

THE FORGE

CHAPTER I

"One more horse to shoe, Sandy. The man's late, but he's come a matter of ten mile, perhaps, over the cross road by Derby, yonder. Lead the critter up, boy, and give a look at the furnace."

I stooped to replenish the glowing fire, then turned toward the door, made broad and high for entrance of man and beast, and giving a coarse frame to the winter landscape without. The trees fluttered their snow-plumed wings in the chill wind; on the opposite hill a red light glared a response to our glowing smithy. It was the eye of elegant luxury confronting the eye of toil; for it shone from the windows of the only really fine mansion for miles around. I had always felt grateful to those stone walls for standing there, surrounded by old trees on lawn and woodland, an embodiment to my imagination of all I had heard or read of stately homes, and a style of life remote from my own, and fascinating from its very mystery.

But I anticipate. My glance travelled over the intervening stretch of level country, wrapped in its winding-sheet of snow, and stopped at a tall figure confronting me, leading by the bridle the finest horse I had ever seen.

"Well, young man, shall you or I lead in the horse?" he asked, haughtily; "that light on the hill must be reached before an hour goes by, if I would keep an engagement"; and tossing me the bridle, as he spoke, he drew carelessly toward the forge.

The few villagers whose day's work was ended, or whose business called them to the smithy, suddenly remembered waiting wives and children at home, the bit of supper spread for their return, or the evening gossip at the tavern; and thinking the matter they came for could wait the morning, since the smith was busy, gave way, and left only the stranger, my master, myself, and the noble horse grouped around the forge.

"Look alive, Sandy! you'd better keep at it steady, if you want to git to your schoolin' to-night," growled the blacksmith, in an undertone; for he, too, had a memory for the smoking dish at home, and would gladly stop work to eat of it.

So I busied myself at once collecting the needed materials, while the smith proceeded to lift the horse's leg and examine the foot. The animal resisted the attempt, however, by plunging in the most violent manner.

"Confound the beast!" muttered the blacksmith, as he dodged to escape a kick.

"I thought as much," said the stranger, quietly. "The horse is very particular as to who handles him. I shall have to hold his foot, I suppose"; and with rather a scornful smile, as if the dislike of his horse to my master confirmed his own, he stepped up and held out a slender brown hand.

The horse lifted his foot, and gently dropped it on the outstretched palm. No bird ever settled more trustfully on its nest.

My master swore an oath or two by way of astonishment, and then, seizing his shoe, approached again. But the scene was repeated with even more violence on the part of the horse: he pranced, reared, shook his head, and snorted at the smith, who again drew off.

"I sha'n't get off to-night," murmured the stranger, impatiently.

"Let me try," I said. "Horses have their fancies, as well as people. He'll like me, may-be."

"May-be he will," laughed my master, hoarsely; "but you're not a boss at puttin' a shoe on. A dumb critter might take a shine to you, who's one of their kind." And again he laughed at his own wit.

"Step up and try," exclaimed the stranger, impatiently.

I grasped the leg firmly in my hand; the horse made no resistance, and I began my work.

"Well, seein' as you've made friends with the critter, I'll be the gainer and take a bit of supper," said my master, after a dogged stare. "Be sure you put it on strong, Sandy. I don't say as I'll charge any more, though I'd make a man pay for showin' he'd a spite agin me, let alone a dumb critter." And taking his hat from a peg, he walked off, leaving me, with the sparks flying from the forge, busy at the shoe, and the stranger, with one arm across the neck of the horse, watching me.

Ten minutes of silent work, and, as I loosened my grasp on the leg for a moment, I met the eye of the gentleman, who, I was conscious, had been watching me narrowly.

"The horse likes you," he said, pleasantly, here again as though he shared the feeling.

"Yes," I replied. "Is he in the habit of doing as he did to-night with strangers?"

"He is fastidious, if you know what that means,—as fond of gentlemen as his master," he returned, so pleasantly, that, when I looked up, reddening at the cool assumption of the speech, blacksmith's apprentice though I was, my eye fell beneath the amused glance of his.

"I'm not a gentleman," I said, after a pause,—a little resentfully, I fear; "but I'm not a clown, like my master."

"No, that one can see at a glance," he replied. "You may be a gentleman for aught I see to the contrary; but it requires a great deal to make one.—What school was that the blacksmith spoke of?"

"It is a village class kept by a young lady who rides over from the hillside twice a week to teach us poor fellows something. I'm learning to draw," I added,—the frankness coaxed out of me by a sympathy implied rather than expressed.

"And you are sorry enough to lose any of this lesson," he said, kindly, as I put the horse's foot, firmly shod, upon the ground. "There is the regular pay which goes to the smith, I suppose; and here is a ten-dollar bill for you, if you have the sense to take it. I don't know what kind of a youth you may be; but you have a good head and face, and evidently are superior to the people about you. You don't feel obliged to use their language or lead their life because you are thrown with them, I suppose; but neither are you obliged to leave this work because you are better than the man who calls himself your master. Learn all you can and get a smithy of your own. A good blacksmith is as respectable as a good artist," he said, looking at me keenly, as he mounted his horse, and then rode rapidly through the village street.

CHAPTER II

I was no proud-spirited hero to work my way independently in the world, but a poor blacksmith's apprentice, glad of every penny honestly earned or kindly given; so I handled my bill over and over again with real pleasure. Amos Bray, my master, was about as well to do as any man in the village, its doctor excepted; but I doubted if Amos ever had a ten-dollar bill over and above the quarter's expenses to spend as he liked.

The smithy often glowed with the double fire of its forge and my fancy. I walked about with a picture-gallery in my brain, and was usually led into its rather meagre display whenever the past was recalled or the future portrayed. The smithy hung there, in warmth and brightness, a genuine Rembrandt of light and shadow, filled with many an odd, picturesque group on winter evenings, or just at twilight, when the fire had died away to its embers. My master had gone home, and work was over; the village children in gay woollen garments and with ruddy faces crowded round the door, fringing brightly the canopy of darkness within.

Again, when, after days of monotonous work, I felt a benumbing sense of being but a part of the world's giant machinery, chosen because the mobility and suppleness of human material worked by the steam-power of the brain were more than a match even for the durability and unwearied stroke of steel or iron, the warm blood rushed back, life throbbed again with its endless ebbs and flows of desire and disappointment, as my master's daughter, with her golden hair and innocent eyes, summoned us to dinner, breaking like blue sky and sunshine through the cloud-rifts of our toil.

But now the smithy was not merely idealized, it was transformed. The stranger, whose haughty bearing and address had changed to kindly and appreciative words, had filled it with a new presence and excited new hopes.

Pleased as I was with the unexpected gift of money, the stranger's hint of my superiority to those around me was a more generous bounty still. I had been jeered at for years by the village boys, because I never followed my master to the tavern in the evenings to listen to the gossip there and learn to drink my mug of beer, and because I rarely talked with any one except a few of the village children more modest than the rest.

The alphabet of my mind, like that of the race, was first found in the hieroglyphics of the pencil; and by its aid I communicated with my little friends more frequently than by word, drawing pictures for them with chalk on the rude walls of the smithy, and carving images of the various devices my experience or imagination suggested out of wood with my master's jack-knife.

From this group of children had arisen a constant companion and sympathizer in my master's daughter. In leisure hours we explored the woods together, or she sat beside me while I pored over the few old books which were my father's sole legacy to me.

During the last winter and this, however, my evenings had been almost constantly occupied in study and sketching at the class to which I have alluded. What an endless store of drawing-materials now loomed before me! And what a swelling of heart I experienced at the thought that the aims for which I had been taunted by the villagers were acknowledged by my new friend as a ground of superiority!

I was startled from these pleasing dreams by my master's voice.

"Hullo there, Sandy! where's the money for that job? He's a mean one, if he a'n't made it double."

Instinctively I thrust my ten-dollar bill into one pocket, as I drew the pay for the horseshoeing from the other. He swore a little as I handed it to him, but he knew me well enough never to doubt my honesty; and, as I was leaving, he called, with a gruff kindness,—the only approach to courtesy of which he was capable,—

"Hurry up, Sandy; Miss Bray can't git Sary Ann to bed till she sees you, and you're late for your schoolin' besides."

So I ground my way quickly through the snow, choosing the middle of the street, because it was less worn, and helped me better to work off my unusual excitement.

My master's cottage stood on the same street with his smithy. In fact, this Main Street was, as its name indicated, the principal thoroughfare of Warren; the real village life all centred here; and it contained, besides the stores and the church, the dwellings of the more prosperous inhabitants. The smithy being at one end, on the outskirts, as it were, of the social and gay life, Mr. Bray had been able to rent it for a low sum, although more pleasantly situated than any other building on the street. Here the land made a slight ascent, giving a more extended view of the valley and distant hills than at any other point. The business character of this street mingled oddly in summer with the rural life around it. At several right-angles, green and mossy lanes, arched by venerable elms, seemed to be offering their crooked elbows to lead it back to the simple pastoral life from which it sprang.

Bordering these sequestered paths, which were dignified by the title of streets, were cottages surrounded by small inclosures, whose proprietors cultivated vegetables, hens, pigs, and cows,—these last being, quite unconsciously, the true surveyors of Warren; for, in direct obedience to pathways they had worn when traversing the fields to and from their homes, chewing the quiet cud of meditation, had the buildings been erected. Outside these lanes, again, were the larger land-owners, whose farms formed the outer circle of our life.

Annie Bray was fond of penetrating beyond these various circles of social existence, and wandering far off to the woods and hills, whose ring of emerald, studded now and then with the turquoise of some forest-lake, inclosed us as in a basin.

As I entered the kitchen of the cottage, Mrs. Bray, a stout woman of forty, the oracle of her sex in the village as to matters of domestic economy and dress,—which last was of a more costly and varied material than the others could afford, abounding in many-colored prints, and a stuff gown for Sunday wear,—made her appearance, her apron covered with flour, an incrustation of dough on each particular finger, which it always destroyed my appetite to see.

"Well, Sandy, I'm glad you've come. You've jest sp'iled Sary Ann. There she sets a-nid-nid-noddin' on that stool, and won't stir to bed till she sees Sandy."

There, by the stove, sat the blacksmith's blue-eyed daughter, a proof that God sometimes interferes with hereditary botch-work, and makes a child fresh and fair, letting her, like a delicate flower in noisome marsh or stagnant water, draw pure, nourishing juices out of elements poisonous to anything less impregnated with Himself.

To be sure, through ignorance of the nature of the child intrusted to them, the blacksmith and his wife blundered with her tender soul and beautiful body. One of their most heinous crimes against her, in my estimation, had been in the bestowal of the name of Sary Ann,—a filial compliment paid by Mrs. Bray to the mother who bore her. Then they dressed her in the brightest of red or orange, so that Nature, which had tinted her complexion brightly, though delicately, seemed forever to be put to shame by the brazen garments which infolded her. They called her 'sp'iled,' when her innocent eyes filled with tears at her father's oaths or her mother's coarse scolding; and though her tender beauty touched the rough smith with a kind of awe, he often said, "Such pootty gals a'n't of much use. I mistrust if Sary Ann will ever 'arn her livin'."

Anxious as I was to get to my class this evening, I could not neglect my little friend; so, going hurriedly to her, I said, as I bent over the head which at every breath of sleep waved like a pale golden flower on its stalk,—

"Good night, Annie. To-morrow evening I'll be home earlier, and then we can have our lesson together."

And she, quite satisfied, held up her face for a kiss, and rose to leave the room.

"Your supper is a-warmin' in the stove, Sandy," said Mrs. Bray; but I did not wait either to eat it or to chat with her about the stranger whose horse I had shod, and who interested her because she thought he might have given "Amos" extra pay. Reminding her of my lesson, I pushed up the rickety stairs to my attic, and began as quickly as possible to make those preparations for meeting the teacher which the young men of the class, impelled by a rude kind of gallantry, never failed to observe, and which they described by the expressive term of "smartenin' up."