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Mr. Hardesty breathed once more like a freeman; and muttering deep anathemas against the inhospitable house and all its inmates, he stole quietly along, with his bootless feet buried at each step in the snow. Leaving the more frequented streets, and worming his way through bypaths and dark alleys; now turning a corner, under the direful apprehension of meeting some acquaintance, and now darting this way or that to avoid a random snow-ball, he pursued his painful way until he reached home, where he knocked and was admitted by Master John.

The grocer bolted in, rushed into his counting-room, and throwing off his cloak, stared wildly at the bewildered boy. ‘What do you think of that, John?’ pointing to his denuded extremities. ‘How does that become your old master, Sir?’

Master John, frightened partly at the anomalous appearance of the grocer, and partly at the sternness of his voice and manner, started back to the remotest corner of the room, but said nothing.

‘What’s the matter now, you little fool?’ said his master. ‘Are you afraid of old Tom Hardesty? If you are, you needn’t be; nobody need be afraid of such an old coward as I am—darned if they need!’ And feeling that he was growing melancholy, he determined to subdue the propensity, and to that end commenced cutting the complicated figure entitled a pigeon-wing. This exhilarating sport soon restored the grocer’s good humor, and he laughed heartily and made such a racket altogether, that the boy gradually approached him to inquire what it all meant, how he had spent his Christmas, what had become of his breeches, and all about it.

‘Here, John,’ said Mr. Hardesty, seating himself by the fire, ‘sit here and I’ll tell you all about it. But what an old fool I am! Here’s twenty-four blessed hours gone, and the d–l a bit or a drop have I had since last night at supper. Is this my house or not, John? for I’ve forgot every thing except one, and wouldn’t swear I ain’t dreaming, and haven’t been all day.’

The boy gave him every assurance that he was at home.

‘Well, John,’ pursued the master, ‘I think the last time I was here—it may be a year, or it may be more—I’ll be hanged if I know—but I rather think there was a lot of prime cheese, and a few barrels of crackers. You haven’t sold ’em all, John?’

John smiled, and answered negatively.

‘I rather think, too, there were several casks of best three-year-old whiskey, prime lot; any of that left, John?’

John pointed, in reply, to a row of casks in one corner that answered the description.

‘No! stop, Sir!’ said Mr. Hardesty, soliloquizing; ‘I think she said Madeira was good for it. Yes, John, I’ll take a little of the Madeira, if you’ve any on hand.’

John opened a cupboard door, and producing a black quart-bottle, assured Mr. Hardesty it was nearly full.

‘That’ll do, Sir,’ said the grocer. ‘Set the table; never mind the cloth. Crackers and cheese and old Madeira, and ‘away with melancholy.’’

In a few minutes the table was spread according to directions, after which Mr. Hardesty seated himself near it and did ample justice to the simple fare.

‘You see, John,’ said the old gentleman, when his appetite was somewhat assuaged, ‘it’s all on account of that old, ugly, and infernal Peggy Sidebottom. Here’s hoping she may—may never drown her sorrows in the flowing bowl!’

The grocer drank this toast with infinite gusto and replenished his glass.

‘Well, Sir, as I was about saying, I went there last night to spend an hour in a little sociable chat, and was about taking leave–’ At this point the speaker was interrupted by several violent raps at the door.

‘Who’s that?’ inquired Mr. Hardesty, draining his glass.

‘It’s me,’ said a voice from without.

‘What do you want?’ said Mr. Hardesty.

‘Nothin’; what do you want?’

‘Who the d–l are you?’ said the grocer, in a voice of thunder.

‘Dick!’ replied the voice.

‘Dick what?’

‘Dick Sidebottom!’

‘What do you want here?’ said the grocer, rising and pacing the floor. ‘John, where’s my cow-hide? Clear yourself, you little rascal, or I’ll–’

‘But I’ve got your breeches and your boots, Sir,’ said Dick.

‘Oh! you have, have you?’—and Mr. Hardesty threw aside the cow-hide, and opened the door. Dick marched boldly in, deposited his plunder on a chair, and then looked Mr. Hardesty full in the face with a glance of perfect innocence. The owner of the recovered booty picked them up, examined them closely to satisfy himself of their identity, and without saying a word, put them on in their appropriate places. This done, he surveyed himself with a smile of approbation, and felt that he was indeed Mr. Hardesty once more. After helping Dick to a highly sweetened draught from the contents of the black bottle, he begged of him a detailed account of the affair of the lost boots and breeches. This Dick proceeded to give; by telling, in his peculiar and highly figurative manner, how his aunt had first suggested the feat to him; how he had risen while Mr. Hardesty was asleep, secured the booty, and hid it in an adjoining hay-loft; how his aunt had promised him a Christmas pie, and though often requested thereto, had failed to comply; how she had inflicted personal chastisement on him for some trivial offence; and how, on reflecting what a kind-hearted old gentleman Mr. Hardesty was, and what a crabbed old thing Aunt Peggy was, he had repented of his theft, and determined to make restitution at the earliest opportunity; ‘and there they are on you,’ said Dick, in conclusion, ‘and that’s all about it.’

Mr. Hardesty listened with due attention to this detail, and then sat for some time in silence.

‘And you can swear to all this in a court of justice, can you?’

‘Certainly, Sir.’

‘And you’ll do it when called on?’

Dick bowed his head in assent.

‘Good!’ said Mr. Hardesty, grasping the boy’s hand. ‘Take a little more of this,’ he continued, filling Dick’s glass. ‘Your aunt shall suffer for this yet, if there’s any law or justice in the land.’

‘Ain’t there no law,’ inquired Dick, pausing in his draught, ‘for suing an old lady for ’sault and batterhim?’

‘No, Dicky, I fear not in your case; but if I get any damages, I’ll give you half.’

Dick drained the contents of his glass, and shaking hands most cordially with Mr. Hardesty and Master John, bade them good night. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the last surviving male heir of the Sidebottoms was gloriously drunk in less than an hour, and made such a demonstration of that fact to his sober and discreet aunt, that she caused his head to be soused repeatedly in cold water, and then flogged him into sobriety.

It is not to be supposed that the disappearance of the village grocer from his usual post for a whole day together, and particularly on Christmas, that busiest of all days, failed to excite a degree of general curiosity and inquisitiveness as to the cause of his absence; but to the many inquiries of his friends touching that subject, he only replied by shaking his head and saying that time would show. Enough had leaked out, however, to satisfy the public that the affair was shrouded in a mystery that was worth the trouble of penetrating; so that when on the morning of the first of January immediately succeeding the year that had just closed, Mr. Thomas Hardesty and Miss Margaret Sidebottom were summoned each by three lusty cheers from the town-crier to appear before his worship the police judge of Idleberg, the populace rushed to the scene of judicial conflict, until the humble and contracted audience-chamber was crowded to overflowing.

The witnesses summoned in the case were Mrs. Jenkins, Jake Crow, and Master Dick Sidebottom. In due time the defendant came into court, leaning on the arm of her next friend and privy counsellor, Mrs. Jenkins, who as usual was attended by a bevy of young Jenkinses. Before embarking in this trying embassy, the ladies, by the way, had gone to the Madeira bottle; the one complaining of a pain in the breast, and the other of general nervousness. Mr. Hardesty was unattended, and so were his remaining witnesses.

The warrant gravely charged the defendant with stealing or causing to be stolen from the plaintiff, on the night of the twenty-fourth of December last past, a pair of boots and a pair of breeches, whose respective values were duly set forth. The reading of this document created quite a sensation throughout the court-room. Mrs. Jenkins was called and sworn. She deposed that on the night specified in the warrant, she had taken tea at the defendant’s house; that she was suddenly called home, missing thereby a great deal of anticipated pleasure; that the defendant passed the next day, being Christmas-day, at her (witness’s) house; and witness did not at any time see defendant steal or cause to be stolen from plaintiff the said boots and breeches, nor did she believe Miss Sidebottom to be capable of such an act; ‘and particular,’ she said in conclusion, ‘from such a pitiful old scamp as Tom Hardesty;’ and glancing around triumphantly at the audience, and scornfully at the plaintiff, she waited for the court’s cross-questions.

‘Is that all you know about the case, Madam?’ inquired his worship, smiling.

That was all.

‘You can retire. Call Jake Crow.’

Mr. Crow stood in no need of being called, as he marched up to the judge immediately, and deposed that on the last Christmas-eve night, he had called at defendant’s house for Mrs. Jenkins, as old Jenkins had been knocked on the head and carried home drunk. (At this Mrs. Jenkins looked like a carnation pink, and commenced fanning herself violently with her pocket-handkerchief.) Witness, however, did not enter the house, and knew nothing whatever of the matter in dispute.’

‘You can retire, Mr. Crow. Call Richard Sidebottom.’

Dick had managed, with his usual restlessness, to retire some time before this from the crowded room, and was breathing the pure air and playing his boyish pranks in a distant part of the town. The officer who was despatched for the young gentlemen returned presently, lugging him by the coat-collar. After being introduced to the court by the usual solemnities, Dick proceeded to give in detail the events of the memorable night, as already known to the reader. He also gave an interesting account of the defendant’s oft-repeated cruelties to himself personally; how on Christmas night he had restored the stolen articles to plaintiff, and how the rightful proprietor was wearing the same in court.

A general hurrah and stamping of feet succeeded the delivery of this testimony; at which the judge frowned, and the constable cried ‘Order!’ with all his lungs.

‘Mr. Hardesty,’ said the judge, when order was restored, ‘do you feel disposed to prosecute this suit? I fear I must dismiss the warrant, on the ground that the court can furnish no relief in the case. What say you?’

Mr. Hardesty arose. ‘May it please your worship, the time was, and I care not who knows it, when I entertained for the defendant in this cause feelings of the most profound respect and admiration. And I had been led to hope that my passion was not altogether disregarded; that Miss Sidebottom would one day become Mrs. Hardesty. And this, Sir, as detailed to you by the last witness, her own nephew, is the treatment I have received!’ The speaker paused and applied his pocket handkerchief to his eyes. The audience was touched. ‘It ain’t the temporary loss of my breeches; it ain’t the long weary hours I spent shivering in that closet; it ain’t the wading home bare-footed in the snow; it ain’t the finger of scorn some gentlemen may p’int at me now, that wounds my heart; but it’s feeling and knowing that the woman I loved better than my own life; the woman I would have lived for, or died for, to make her happy; that that very woman–’ He could say no more; his feelings overpowered him, and he sat down.

Miss Sidebottom’s sympathies were evidently touched throughout this harangue. Until now, she had been rocking to and fro in her seat, and when Mr. Hardesty concluded, she rushed through the crowd, threw herself on his neck, and kissed him passionately.

‘Clear the room!’ bawled his worship, starting to his feet. ‘Clerk,’ he continued, addressing that official personage, who was standing near, ‘write me a license to unite Thomas Hardesty and Margaret Sidebottom in the holy bands of matrimony. I know they are of age, and don’t need any guardeens.’

The judge sat down, convulsed by his own wit, while the clerk proceeded to his task. The loving pair looked up and smiled through their tears. ‘I loved you, Tom, all the time; I did indeed. It was all in fun, dear man—indeed it was!’ Tom Hardesty threw his arms around her neck, and pressed her head to his bosom.

‘Come!’ said his worship, after reading the license, ‘none of your hysterics here, but stand up and be married.’ And married they were; and the bride, in consideration of her cruelty, paid the costs of the suit and the marriage fees; and off they marched homeward, amid the deafening huzzas of the multitude that was gathered in the street.

Happy New-Year! that sealed Tom Hardesty’s happiness! Many a changing season has come and gone since then, and nobody knows but they are the happiest couple in Idleberg. Mr. Hardesty’s first domestic advice to his bride was to decline Mrs. Jenkins’s farther acquaintance, which she did most readily. The old gentleman has long since despaired of having an heir direct, but has promised John, who is prospering behind his old master’s counter, that he and Belinda shall marry before long. Mr. Richard Sidebottom is one of the ‘reformed drunkards,’ and eschews Madeira especially. He is now an attorney, in embryo, and gives ample promise of carrying into his profession all the acuteness and cunning which distinguished his exploits on the memorable night that opened this chapter in the biography of Mr. Tom Hardesty.

WINTER EVENING

 
The fire is burning cheerly bright, the room is snug and warm,
We keep afar the wintry night, and drive away the storm;
And when without the wanderer pines, and all is dark and chill,
We sit securely by the fire, and sparkling glasses fill.
 
 
And ever as the hollow wind howls through the moaning trees,
Strange feelings on the boding heart with sudden chillness seize:
But brightly blazes then the hearth, and freely flows the wine;
And laugh of glee, and song of mirth, then wreathe their merry twine.
 
 
We think not how the dashing sleet beats on the crusted pane,
We care not though the drifting snow whirls o’er the heath amain;
But haply, while our hearts are bright, far struggling through the waste,
Some traveller seeks our window’s light, with long and fruitless haste.
 
 
Hark his halloo! we leave the fire, and hurry forth to save:
A short half hour, and he had found beneath the snow a grave.
Pile on the wood!—feed high the flame!—bring out our choicest store!
The traveller’s heart grows warm again; his spirit droops no more.
 

J. G. P.

SONG OF THE NEW YEAR

BY MRS. R. S. NICHOLS

 
I have come, I have come from a shadowy clime,
An heir of the monarch Earth’s children call Time;
With years yet unborn, I have stood in the hall
That was reared by our sire, awaiting his call:
Last eve, as I lay on his bosom at rest,
I saw slowly rise a white cloud in the west;
Now through the blue ether, through regions of space,
It floated up softly, with fairy-like grace,
And paused ’neath the light of the white-shining stars,
Whose rays pierced its centre, like clear silver bars;
The winds revelled round it, unchecked in their mirth,
As it hung, like a banner, ’mid heaven and earth.
 
 
The soft fleecy folds of the clouds swept aside,
The winds ceased their revels, and mournfully sighed;
A car slowly rolled down the pathway of Time,
A bell slowly tolled a funereal chime:
A sound in the air, and a wail on the breeze,
Swift as wave follows wave on tempest-tossed seas;
Thin shadows swept by in that funeral train,
As glide o’er old battle-grounds ghosts of the slain.
I saw the dim spectres of long-buried years—
The Seasons close followed, in mourning and tears.
 
 
Arrayed in his armor, death-darts in his hand,
The grim King of Terrors strode on with the band,
While cold, stark and ghastly, there lay on his bier
The death-stricken form of the hoary Old Year!
How bent was his figure, how furrowed his brow,
How weary he looked from his pilgrimage now!
The phantoms of Passion, of Hope and Despair,
With dark, waving plumage, encircled him there;
The Months stood around, and the bright dancing Hours
On spirit-wings floated, like birds among flowers.
A voice sweet as music now smote on my ear:
‘Go forth in thy beauty, thou unspotted Year!
The old Year hath died ‘mid rejoicings and mirth,
That rocked the stern heart of the rugged old Earth!
The midnight is passing; away to thy car!
Thou’lt sail by the lustre of morning’s bright star;
Away!’ And I rose from the bosom of Time,
And fled through the gates of that shadowy clime;
My car sped along on the wings of the wind,
While Winter, old man! tottered slowly behind.
 
 
The sky’s eastern portals impeded my flight,
When Morning rose up from the arms of the Night;
The dawn faintly glowed, and I saw the old Earth,
And sailed in my kingdom, a monarch at birth!
‘Then give me wild music, the dance and the song,
For ever!’ I shouted, while whirling along:
‘I have come, I have come from a shadowy clime,
A breath of the monarch Earth’s children call Time!’
 

Cincinnati, December, 1843.

ON COLOUR

 
Full angel-like the birdis sang their hours¹
Within their curtains green, within their bowers
        Apparelled with white and red, with bloomys sweet.
Enamell’d was the field with all coloùrs:
The pearlit drops shook as in silver showers,
        While all in balm did branche and leavis fleit.²
        Depart fra’ Phœbus did Aurora greit;
Her chrystal tears I saw hing on the flowers
    Which he, for love, all drank up with his heat.
 

Dunbar.

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

1. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;

2. He leadeth me beside the still waters; He restoreth my soul.

A Psalm of David.

As I walk over the surface of this fair Earth, an erring and a wayward being, at times dejected by the trials of a solitary and an almost abortive life, or sustained or elevated by its prosperous incidents; I sometimes think that no one other blessing of existence hath ever comforted my heart and restored my soul so much, as the pleasures and delights of Colour. It is my wealth, my joy, my faculty, my fountain!

The recreative pleasure that others find in Music, although this is not denied is less to me than to them, a restorative and a balm. Music excites, arouses me; melts me into weakness, or animates me into passionate exertion; but it is in the green pasture and beside the still waters, in bowers apparelled with white and red; it is in the tints with which autumn is bedecked, and Day expires; that I feel I shall not want, and that God restoreth my soul! And it is among huge and solitary mountain masses of grey castellated rock, in the crevices of which the stinted pine, and the cedar with its brown and tattered trunk, struggle out a hard and scanty existence and are yet covered with never-fading verdure—mountains to which the Saviour of mankind might have retired to meditate and pray—that I feel that the Lord is my Shepherd, and shall bring me to the green pastures, and lead me beside the still waters; my Rock! my fortress! and my high tower!

Sometimes my heart takes a fancy altogether for brown hues; and as you cannot at all times command these in the country, I seat myself down quietly in front of a precious Cuyp with which God hath endowed me, and that (except the sky and water) is composed entirely of them in every gradation and shade; and when I rise up from the contemplation of it, I feel that it is in brown hues that God restoreth my soul.

Sometimes I dwell upon the silvery trunk of the birch-tree, or upon the darker hue of the beech. Sometimes my soul drinks the full beauties of the umbrageous chestnut; or revels in the golden berries, and the graceful branches that seem overladen with them, of the mountain-ash. As I grow old I wave often in the grey pendulous mosses of the South, or stand in thought under the gigantick branches of the live oak, with all its leaves of laurel, and its heroick gesture. Good God! I say, when I think that we might all have been born, ate, drank, smoked, grown up, built, propagated, and died, as thoroughly and effectually as we now do, and all these precious objects of our sight and joy been made for us—out of the one desolate colour of an old pipe!

And Water—that element of Life, that upon the plaintain-leaf looks so like a molten mass of diamond that you can hardly persuade yourself it is aught else, might as well have been created of a mere drab quaker-colour; or not even as bright as a bit of Quartz Rock! and yet have satisfied our thirst as well as if it had gushed forth from the limpid sources of the Croton; or been drawn from the transparent body of Lake George; or from those mountain streams of sparkling chrystal that, in alternate shade and gleams of light of tropical brilliancy, bound and gush and dance their way downward from rock to rock to the sound of their own musick, and make themselves into rivers of joy as they descend along the Grand Etang of the Island of Grenada!

And Wine, that God hath sent to make glad the heart of man, and hath blessed it in the cup; and which might perhaps have had the same hilarious effect, though it were of the dingy colour of the ashes of the grate by which I sit; but which, for our more perfect happiness, He hath made to outvie the Topaz and the Ruby, in its lustre and its varied hue!

There are many of us who have this one quality, the love of colour, in common with the magnificent David, whose precious inspiration I have quoted at the head of my Essay, and who in a thousand passages interweaves it like a golden thread amid his works; but as in the minds of many others, it may be a blessing only half appreciated, I have thought that a few words upon this subject might fall not unfruitfully upon the heart, perchance of some one young Reader of this article, just opening to the knowledge of this peculiar work of the great Master of mankind, Colour.

Even Music, although itself an occupation revealed to us as of the Angels of Light, is, except perhaps as they enjoy it—with whom poetry and modulated sound adapted to the thought are inseparably one—even music is less refined, less gentle, perfect, unobtrusive. For the enjoyment of Colour involves no possible interruption of another’s tastes; no outbreak upon the quiet stillness of the day; no intrusion on ‘the ear of night;’ nor yet any expression, that by pouring abroad the sensations, might diminish the deep earnestness of the soul; which, all sight, all ear, becomes the Recipient. The enjoyment of colour is the Spirit within us listening to the language of God! to the mute expression of His unspeakable Love! Colour—the conception He hath chosen for His bow of promise in the Heavens! by which He decorates the Earth, and tells of Himself in the ocean, and in the sky, and by which He restoreth the Soul of man!

And in that state of celestial existence which attends the redeemed Soul disenthralled from ‘the body of this death,’ is it to be doubted, that among the joys that ‘the eye hath never seen, nor the heart conceived,’ there exist colours beautiful beyond all earthly wealth of imagination; beyond the poet’s fancy and the painter’s dream? There where the pure gold of which the city is constructed, is transparent as glass, and each gate is one pearl, and the very foundations of the walls are of jasper, and chalcedony, sapphire, emerald, ruby, amethyst and topaz; and the glory of God is the light that lightens it!

But it is not to another world that the joys of colour are postponed, nor even to another climate that we need look for the precious satisfaction that they impart. We have not the carpets of flowers of rainbow tints, that spread themselves over whole prairies of Texas and Mexico, but what a gem upon the bosom of Earth when it is unexpectedly found among us is the blue campanula! And the small white lily of the valley, sheltered and concealed in its green leaves like a hidden tear of Joy, and almost as rare! And the bright and graceful lobelia cardinalis that loves the neighbourhood of the still waters. And the fringed gentian of a tint so cerulean that our true poet derives it from the firmament; as his own spirit, if left to approach its kindred element, might claim affinity with the overshadowing expanse of celestial life!³

I speak not to thee of the gorgeous sunsets and of those piles of massy clouds of living and ever-varying colours on which the Day pillows himself to rest in a luxurious repose; but open thine heart upon the Eastern bank of the Hudson at the grey of morning, and look with the Sun upon the opposite shore; and as the mists arise and are dispelled from before thee, there shall come change after change of colour neutral and calm and slowly warming into beauty, until a violet haze shall rest upon the hill-tops and the cliffs that might outvie the golden haze of Italy, and that shall raise thy thoughts in silent thankfulness, and educate thee to enjoy the untold treasuries of colour that glow in upper Heaven; and hope shall spring forth renewed within thee; and sorrow shall fade from thy widowed, or thy childless heart; the peace which passeth understanding shall come over thee; and God even thine own God shall bless thee; and to thine eyes, now opened to the wonders of His goodness, all the ends of the Earth shall shew forth His praise!

John Waters.