Twice-told tales

HAWTHORNE'S

TWICE TOLD

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NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

BOSTON:

JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,

Late Ticknor & Fields, and Fields, Osgood, & Co.
1876.

COPYRIGHT, 1851.

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.

UNIVERSITY PRESS: WELCH, BIGELOW, & Co.,
CAMBRIDGE.

8RLF

CONTENTS OP VOL. II.

LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE.
I. HOWE'S MASQUERADE .
II. EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT

III. LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE .

IV. OLD ESTHER DUDLEY
THE HAUNTED MIND

THE VILLAGE UNCLE ....

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST

THE SISTER YEARS ....

SNOW-FLAKES

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS
THE WHITE OLD MAID .
PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE.

PAGE

7

26

42

62

77

83

98

109

119

126

148

162

VI CONTEXTS.

CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL
THE SHAKER BRIDAL .
NIGHT SKETCHES

ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS .
THE LILY'S QUEST .
FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE .
EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD
THE THREEFOLD DESTINY .

. 188

201
. 209

217
. 226

235
. 248

257

TWICE TOLD TALES.

LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUGE.

HOWE'S MASQUERADE.

NE afternoon, last summer, whila walking along
Washington Street, my eye was attracted by a
sign-board protruding over a narrow archway,
nearly opposite the Old South Church. The sign repre-
sented the front of a stately edifice, which was designated
as the "OLD PROVINCE HOUSE, kept by Thomas Waite."
I was glad to be thus reminded of a purpose, long enter-
tained, of visiting and rambling over the mansion of the
old royal governors of Massachusetts ; and entering the
arched passage, which penetrated through the middle of
a brick row of shops, a few steps transported me from
the busy heart of modern Boston into a small and se-
cluded court-yard. One side of this space was occupied
by the square front of the Province House, three stories
high, and surmounted by a cupola, 011 the top of which a

8 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

gilded Indian was discernible, with his bow bent and his
arrow on the string, as if aiming at the weathercock on
the spire of the Old South. The figure has kept this at-
titude for seventy years or more, ever since good Deacon
Drowne, a cunning carver of wood, first stationed him on
his long sentinel's watch over the city.

The Province House is constructed of brick, which
seems recently to have been overlaid with a coat of light-
colored paint. A flight of red freestone steps, fenced in
by a balustrade of curiously wrought iron, ascends from
the court-yard to the spacious porch, over which is a bal-
cony, with an iron balustrade of similar pattern and work-
manship to that beneath. These letters and figures —
16 P. S. 7(«) — are wrought into the iron-work of the
balcony, and probably express the date of the edifice,
with the initials of its founder's name. A wide door with
double leaves admitted me into the hall or entry, on the
right of which is the entrance to the bar-room.

It was hi this apartment, I presume, that the ancient
governors held their levees, with vice-regal pomp, sur-
rounded by the military men, the councillors, the judges,
and other officers of the crown, while all the loyalty of
the province thronged to do them honor. But the room,
in its present condition, cannot boast even of faded mag-
nificence. The panelled wainscot is covered with dingy
paint, and acquires a duskier hue from the deep shadow
into which the Province House is thrown by the brick
block that shuts it in from Washington Street. A ray
of sunshine never visits this apartment any more than the
glare of the festal torches which have been extinguished
from the era of the Revolution. The most venerable and
ornamental object is a chimney-piece set round with
Dutch tiles of blue-figured China, representing scenes
from Scripture ; and, for aught 1 know, the lady of

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 9

Pownall or Bernard may have sat beside this fireplace,
and told her children the story of each blue tile. A bar
in modern style, well replenished with decanters, bottles,
cigar-boxes, and network bags of lemons, and provided
with a beer-pump and a soda-fount, extends along one
side of the room. At my entrance, an elderly person
was smacking his lips, with a zest which satisfied me that
the cellars of the Province House still hold good liquor,
though doubtless of other vintages than were quaffed by
the old governors. After sipping a glass of port sangaree,
prepared by the skilful hands of Mr. Thomas Waite, I be-
sought that worthy successor and representative of so
many historic personages to conduct me over their time-
honored mansion.

He readily complied ; but, to confess the truth, I was
forced to draw strenuously upon my imagination, in order
to find aught that was interesting in a house which, with-
out its historic associations, would have seemed merely
such a tavern as is usually favored by the custom of
decent city boarders and old-fashioned country gentle-
man. The chambers, which were probably spacious in
former times, are now cut up by partitions, and subdi-
vided into little nooks, each affording scanty room for
the narrow bed and chair and dressing-table of a singb
lodger. The great staircase, however, may be termed,
without much hyperbole, a feature of grandeur and mag-
nificence. It winds through the midst of the house by
flights of broad steps, each flight terminating in a square
landiug-place, whence the ascent is continued towards the
cupola. A carved balustrade, freshly painted in the lower
stories, but growing dingier as we ascend, borders the
staircase with its quaintly twisted and intertwined pillars,
from top to bottom. Up these stairs the military boots,
or perchance the gouty shoes, of many a governor have
1 *

10 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

trodden, as the wearers mounted to the cupola, which
afforded them so wide a view over their metropolis and
tli3 surrounding country. The cupola is an octagon, with
several windows, and a door opening upon the roof.
From this station, as I pleased myself with imagining,
Gage may have beheld his disastrous victory on Bunker
Hill (unless one of the tri-mountains intervened), and
Howe have marked the approaches of Washington's be-
sieging army ; although the buildings, since erected in
the vicinity, have shut out almost every object, save the
steeple of the Old South, which seems almost within
arm's length. Descending from the cupola, 1 paused in
the garret to observe the ponderous white-oak frame-
work, so much more massive than the frames of modern
houses, and thereby resembling an antique skeleton. The
bricjt walls, the materials of which were imported from
Holland, and the timbers of the mansion, are still as
sound as ever; but the floors and other interior parts
being greatly decayed, it is contemplated to gut the
whole, and build a new house within the ancient frame
nnd brick-work. Among other inconveniences of the
present edifice, mine host mentioned that any jar or
motion was apt to shake down the dust of ages out
of the ceiling of one chamber upon the floor of that
beneath it.

We stepped forth from the great front window into the
balcony, where, in old times, it was doubtless the custom
of the king's representative to show himself to a loyal
populace, requiting their huzzas and tossed-up hats with
s'ately bendings of his dignified person. In those days,
the front of the Province House looked upon the street;
and the whole site now occupied by the brick range of
stores, as well as the present court -yard, was laid out in
grass-plats, overshadowed by trees and bordered by a

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 11

wrought-iron fence. Now, the old aristocratic edifice
hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern
building ; at one of the back windows I observed some
pretty tailoresses, sewing, and chatting, and laughing,
with now and then a careless glance towards the balcony.
Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where
the elderly gentleman above mentioned, the smack of
whose lips had spoken so favorably for Mr. Waite's good
liquor, was still lounging in his chair. He seemed to be,
if not a lodger, at least a familiar visitor of the house,
who might be supposed to have his regular score at the
bar, his summer seat at the open window, and his pre-
scriptive corner at the winter's fireside. Being of a
sociable aspect, I ventured to address him with a remark,
calculated to draw forth his historical reminiscences, if
any such were in his mind ; and it gratified me to dis-
cover, that, between memory and tradition, the old gen-
tleman was really possessed of some very pleasant gossip
about the Province House. The portion of his talk which
chiefly interested me was the outline of the following
legend. He professed to have received it at one or two
removes from an eye-witness ; but this derivation, to-
gether with the lapse of time, must have afforded oppor-
tunities for many variations of the narrative ; so that,
despairing of literal and absolute truth, I have not scru-
pled to make such further changes as seemed conducive
to the reader's profit and delight.

At one of the entertainments given at the Province
House, during the latter part of the siege of Boston,
ihere passed a scene which has never yet been satis-
factorily explained. The officers of the British army,

12 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

and the loyal gentry of the province, most of whom were
collected within the beleagured town, had been invited
to a masked ball ; for it was the policy of Sir William
Howe to hide the distress and danger of the period, and
the desperate aspect of the siege, under an ostentation
of festivity. The spectacle of this evening; if the oldest
members of the provincial court circle might be believed,
was the most gay and gorgeous affair that had occurred
in the annals of the government. The brilliantly lighted
apartments were thronged writh figures that seemed to
have stepped from the dark canvas of historic portraits,
or to have flitted forth from the magic pages of romance,
or at least to have flown hither from one of the London
theatres, without a change of garments. Steeled knights
of the Conquest, bearded statesmen of Queen Elizabeth,
and high-ruffled ladies of her court, were mingled with
characters of comedy, such as a party-colored Merry
Andrew, jingling his cap and bells ; a Falstaff, almost as
provocative of laughter as his prototype ; and a Don
Quixote, with a bean-pole for a lance and a potlid for a
shield.

But the broadest merriment was excited by. a group
of figures ridiculously dressed in old regimentals, which
seemed to have been purchased at a military rag-fair, or
pilfered from some receptacle of the cast-off clothes of
both the French and British armies. Portions of their
attire had probably been worn at the siege of Louisburg,
and the coats of most recent cut might have been rent
and tattered by sword, ball, or bayonet, as long ago as
Wolfe's victory. One of these worthies — a tall, lank
figure, brandishing a rusty sword of immense longitude
— purported to be no less a personage than General
George Washington ; and the other principal officers of
the American army, such as Gates, Lee, Putnam, Schuy-

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 13

ler, Ward, and Heath, were represented by similar scare-
crows. An interview in the mock-heroic style, between
the rebel warriors and the British commander-in-chief,
was received with immense applause, which came loudest
of all from the loyalists of the colony. There was one
of the guests, however, who stood apart, eying thes3
antics sternly and scornfully, at once with a frown and a
bitter smile.

It was an old man, formerly of high station and great
repute in the province, and who had been a very famous
soldier in his day. Some surprise had been expressed,
that a person of Colonel Joliffe's known whig principles,
though now too old to take an active part in the contest,
should have remained in Boston during the siege, and
especially that hs should consent to show himself in the
mansion of Sir William Howe. But thither he had come,
with a fair granddaughter under his arm ; and there,
amid all the mirth and buffoonery, stood this stern old
figure, the bsst sustained character in the masquerade, be-
cause so well representing the antique spirit of his native
land. The other guests affirmed that Colonel Joliffe's
black puritanical scowl threw a shadow round about
him; although in spite of his sombre influence, their
gayety continued to blaze higher, like (an ominous
comparison) the flickering brilliancy of a lamp which
has but a little while to burn. Eleven strokes, full half
an hour ago, had pealed from the clock of the Old South,
when a rumor was circulated among the company that
some new spectacle or pageant was about to be exhibited,
which should put a fitting close to the splendid festivities
of the night.

" What new jest has your Excellency in hand ? " asked
the llev. Mather Byles, whose Presbyterian scruples had
not kept him from the entertainment. " Trust me, sir,

14 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

I have already lauglied more than beseems my cloth, at
your Homeric confabulation with yonder ragamuffin gen-
eral of the rebels. One other such fit of merriment, and
I must throw off my clerical wig and band."

" Not so, good Dr. Byles," answered Sir William
Howe ; " if mirth were a crime, you had never gained
your doctorate in divinity. As to this new foolery, I
know no more about it than yourself; perhaps not so
much. Honestly now, Doctor, have you not stirred up
the sober brains of some of your countrymen to enact a
scene in our masquerade ? "

" Perhaps," slyly remarked the granddaughter of Col-
onel Joliffe, whose high spirit had been stung by many
taunts against New England, — " perhaps we are to have
a mask of allegorical figures. Victory, with trophies from
Lexington and Bunker Hill, — Plenty, with her over-
flowing horn, to' typify the present abundance in this
good town, — and Glory, with a wreath for his Excel-
lency's brow."

Sir William Howe smiled at words which he would
have answered with one of his darkest frowns, had they
been uttered by lips that wore a beard. He was spared
the necessity of a retort, by a singular interruption. A
sound of music was heard without the house, as if pro-
ceeding from a full band of military instruments stationed
in the street, playing, not such a festal strain as was
suited to the occasion, but a slow funeral march. The
drums appeared to be muffled, and the trumpets poured
forth a wailing breath, which at once hushed the merri-
ment of the auditors, filling all with wonder and some
with apprehension. The idea occurred to many, that
either the funeral procession of some great personage had
halted in front of the Province House, or that a corpse,
in a velvet-covered and gorgeously decorated coffin, was

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 15

about to be borne from the portal. After listening a
moment, Sir William Howe called, in a stern voice, to
the leader of the musicians, who had hitherto enlivened
the entertainment with gay and lightsome melodies.
The man was drum-major to one of the British regi-
ments.

" Dighton," demanded the general, " what means this
foolery ? Bid your baud silence that dead march ; or,
by my word, they shall have sufficient cause for their
lugubrious strains ! Silence it, sirrah ! "

"Please your Honor," answered the drum-major,
whose rubicund visage had lost all its color, " the fault
is none of mine. I and my band are all here together ;
and I question whether there be a man of us that could
play that march without book. I never heard it but
once before, and that was at the funeral of his late
Majesty, King George the Second."

" Well, well ! " said Sir William Howe, recovering
his composure ; " it is the prelude to some masquerad-
ing antic. Let it pass."

A figure now presented itself, but, among the many
fantastic masks that were dispersed through the apart-
ments, none could tell precisely from whence it carne.
It was a man in an old-fashioned dress of black serge,
and having the aspect of a steward, or principal domestic
in the household of a nobleman, or great English land-
holder. This figure advanced to the outer door of the
mansion, and throwing both its leaves wide open, with-
drew a little to one side and looked back towards the
grand staircase, as if expecting some person to descend.
At the same time, the music in the street sounded a loud
and doleful summons. The eyes of Sir William Howe
and his guests being directed to the staircase, there
appeared, on the uppermost landing-place that was dis-

16 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

cernible from the bottom, several personages descending
towards the door. The foremost was a man of stern
visage, wearing a steeple-crowned hat and a skullcap
beneath it; a dark cloak, and huge wrinkled boots that
came half-way up his legs. Under his arm was a rolled-
up banner, which seemed to be the banner of England,
but strangely rent and torn ; he had a sword in his right
hand, and grasped a Bible in his left. The next figure
was of milder aspect, yet full of dignity, wearing a broad
ruff", over which descended a beard, a gown of wrought
velvet, and a doublet and hose of black satin. He car-
ried a roll of manuscript in his hand. Close behind
these two came a young man of very striking counte-
nance and demeanor, witli deep thought and contempla-
tion on his brow, and perhaps a flash of enthusiasm in
his eye. His garb, like that of his predecessors, was of
an antique fashion, and there was a stain of blood upon
his ruff. In the same group with these were three or
four others, all men of dignity and evident command,
and bearing themselves like personages who were accus-
tomed to the gaze of the multitude. It was the idea of
the beholders, that these figures went to join the myste-
rious funeral that had halted in front of the Province
House; yet that supposition seemed to be contradict ed
by the air of triumph with which they waved their hands,
as they crossed the threshold and vanished through the
portal.

" In the Devil's name, what is this ? " muttered Sir
William Howe to a gentleman beside him; "a pro-
cession of the regicide judges of King Charles the
martyr?"

" These," said Colonel Joliffe, breaking silence almost
for the first time that evening, — "these, if I interpret
them aright, are the Puritan governors, — the rulers of

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 17

the old, original democracy of Massachusetts. Endi-
cott, with the banner from which lie had torn the sym-
bol of subjection, and Winthrop, and Sir Henry Vane,
and Dudley, Haynes, Bellingham, arid Lsverett."

" Why had that young man a stain of blood upon his
ruff ? " asked Miss Joliffe.

" Because, in after years," answered her grandfather,
"he laid down the wisest head in England upon the
block, for the principles of liberty."

" Will not your Excellency order out the guard ? "
whispered Lord Percy, who, with other British officers,
had now assembled round the general. " There may be
a plot under this mummery."

"Tush! we have nothing to fear," carelessly replied
Sir William Howe. " There can be no worse treason in
the matter than a jest, and that somewhat of the dullest.
Even were it a sharp and bitter one, our best policy
would be to laugh it off. See, here come more of these
gentry."

Another group of characters had now partly descend-
ed the staircase. The first was a venerable and white-
boarded patriarch, who cautiously felt his way downward
with a staff. Treading hastily behind him, and stretch-
ing forth his gauntleted hand as if to grasp the old man's
shoulder, came a tall, soldier-like figure, equipped with
a plumed cap of steel, a bright breastplate, and a long
sword, which rattled against the stairs. Next was seen
a stout man, dressed in rich and courtly attire, but not
of courtly demeanor; his gait had the swinging motion
of a seaman's walk ; and cha«cmg to stumble on the
staircase, he suddenly grew wrathful, and was heard to
mutter an oath. He was followed by a noble-looking
personage in a curled wig, such as are represented in the
portraits of Queen Anne's time and earlier ; and the

18 . TWICE-TOLD TALES.

breast of his coat was decorated with an embroidered
star. While advancing to the door, lie bowed to the
right hand and to the left, in a very gracious and insin-
uating style; but as he crossed the threshold, unlike the
early Puritan governors, he seemed to wring his hands
with sorrow.

" Prithee, play the part of a chorus, good Dr. Bylcs,"
said Sir William Howe. " What worthies are these ? "

" If it please your Excellency, they lived somewhat
before my day," answered the Doctor ; " but doubtless
our friend, the Colonel, has been hand in glove with
them."

"Their living faces I never looked upon," said Colonel
Joliffc, gravely ; " although I have spoken face to face
with many rulers of this land, and shall greet yet another
with an old man's blessing, ere I die. But we talk of
these figures. I take the venerable patriarch to be Brad-
street, the last of the Puritans, who was governor at
ninety, or thereabouts. The next is Sir Edmund Andros,
a tyrant, as any New England school-boy will tell you ;
and therefore the people cast him down from his high scat
into a dungeon. Then comes Sir William Phipps, shep-
herd, cooper, sea-captain, and governor: may many of
his countrymen rise as high, from as low an origin !
Lastly, you saw the gracious Earl of Bellamont, who
ruled us under King William."

" But what is the meaning of it all ? " asked Lord
Percy.

" Now, were I a rebel," said Miss Jolific, half aloud,
" I might fancy that the ghosts of these ancient govern-
ors had been summoned to form the funeral procession of
royal authority in New England."

Several other figures were now seen at the turn of the
staircase. The one in advance had a thoughtful, anxious,

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 19

and somewhat crafty expression of face ; and in spite of
his loftiness of manner, which was evidently the result
both of an ambitious spirit and of long continuance in
high stations, he seemed not incapable of cringing to a
greater than himself. A few steps behind came an officer
in a scarlet and embroidered uniform, cut in a fashion old
enough to have been worn by the Duke of Marlborougli.
His nose had a rubicund tinge, which, together with the
twinkle of his eye, might have marked him as a lover of
the wine-cup and good-fellowship ; notwithstanding which
tokens, he appeared ill at ease, and often glanced around
him, as if apprehensive of some secret mischief. Next
came a portly gentleman, wearing a coat of shaggy cloth,
lined with silken velvet ; he had sense, shrewdness, and
humor in his face, and a folio volume under his arm ; but
his aspect was that of a man vexed and tormented beyond
all patience and harassed almost to death. He went
hastily down, and was followed by a dignified person,
dressed in a purple velvet suit, with very rich embroidery ;
his demeanor would have possessed much stateliness, only
that a grievous fit of the gout compelled him to hobble
from stair to stair, with contortions of face and body.
When Dr. Byles beheld this figure on the staircase, he
shivered as with an ague, but continued to watch him
steadfastly, until the gouty gentleman had reached the
threshold, made a gesture of anguish and despair, and
vanished into the outer gloom, whither the funeral music
summoned him.

" Governor Belcher ! — my old patron ! — in his very
shape and dress ! " gasped Dr. Byles. " This is an awful
mockery ! "

"A tedious foolery, rather," said Sir William Howe,
with an air of indifference. " But who were the three
that precedsd him ? "

20 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

"Governor Dudley, a cunning politician, — yet his
craft once brought him to a prison," replied Colonel
Joliffe ; " Governor Shute, formerly a colonel under
Marlborough, and whom the paople frightened out of the
province; and learned Governor Burnet, whom the Legis-
lature tormented into a mortal fever."

"Methiuks they were miserable men, these royal
governors of Massachusetts," observed Miss Joliife.
" Heavens, how dim the light grows ! "

It was certainly a fact that the large lamp which illu-
minated the staircase now burned dim and duskily : so
that several figures, which passed hastily down the stairs
and went forth from the porch, appeared rather like
shadows than persons of fleshly substance. Sir William
Howe and his guests stood at the doors of the contigu-
ous apartments, watching the progress of this singular
pageant, with various emotions of anger, contempt, or
half-acknowledged fear, but still with an anxious curios-
ity. The shapes, which now seemed hastening to join the
mysterious procession, were recognized rather by striking
peculiarities of dress, or broad characteristics of manner,
than by any perceptible resemblance of features to their
prototypes. Their faces, indeed, were invariably kept in
deep shadow. But Dr. Byles, and other gentlemen who
had long been familiar with the successive rulers of the
province, were heard to whisper the names of Shirley, of
Pownall, of Sir Francis Bernard, and of the well-remem-
bered Hutchinson; thereby confessing that the actors,
whoever they might be, in this spectral march of govern-
ors, had succeeded in putting on some distant portraiture
of the real personages. As they vanished from the door,
still did these shadows toss their arms into the gloom
of night, with a dread expression of woe. Following
the mimic representative of Hutchinson came a military

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 21

figure, holding before his face the cocked hat which lie
had taken from his powdered head ; but his epaulets and
other insignia of rank were those of a general officer ;
and something in his mien reminded the beholders of one
who had recently been master of the Province House, and
chief of all the land.

" The shape of Gag3, as true as in a looking-glass ! "
exclaimed Lord Percy, turning pale.

" No, surely," cried Miss Joliffe, laughing hysterically ;
" it could not be Gage, or Sir William would have greeted
his old comrade in arms ! Perhaps he will not suffer the
next to pass unchallenged."

" Of that be assured, young lady," answered Sir Wil-
liam Howe, fixing his eyes, with a very marked expression,
upon the immovable visage of her grandfather. " I have
long enough delayed to pay the ceremonies of a host to
these departing guests. The next that takes his leave
shall receive due courtesy."

A wild and dreary burst of music came through the
open door. It seemed as if the procession, which had
been gradually filling up its ranks, were now about to
move, and that this loud peal of the wailing trumpets,
and roll of the muffled drums, were a call to some loiterer
to make haste. Many eyes, by an irresistible impulse,
were turned upon Sir William Howe, as if it were he
whom the dreary music summoned to the funeral of de-
parted power.

" See ! — here comes the last ! " whispered Miss Joliffe,
pointing her tremulous finger to the staircase.

A figure had come into view as if descending the
stairs; although so dusky was the region whence it
emerged, some of the spectators fancied that they had
seen this human shape suddenly moulding itself amid
the gloom. Downward the figure came, with a stately

22 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

and martial tread, and reaching the lowest stair was ob-
served to be a tall man, booted and wrapped in a mili-
tary cloak, which was drawn up around the face so as
to meet the flapped brim of a laced hat. The features,
therefore, were completely hidden. But the British offi-
cers deemed that they had seen that military cloak be-
fore, and even recognized the frayed embroidery on the
collar, as well as the gilded scabbard of a sword which
protruded from the folds of the cloak, and glittered in
a vivid gleam of light. Apart from these trifling par-
ticulars, there were characteristics of gait and bearing
which impelled the wondering guests to glance from
the shrouded figure to Sir William Howe, as if to sat-
isfy themselves that their host had not suddenly vanished
from the midst of them.

With a dark flush of wrath upon his brow, they saw
the general draw his sword and advance to meet the
figure in the cloak before the latter had stepped one
pace upon the floor.

"Villain, unmuffle yourself!" cried he. "You pass
no farther ! "

The figure, without blenching a hair's-breadth from
the sword which was pointed at his breast, made a
solemn pause and lowered the cape of the cloak from
about his face, yet not sufficiently for the spectators to
catch a glimpse of it. But Sir William Howe had evi-
dently seen enough. The sternness of his countenance
gave place to a look of wild amazement, if not horror,
while he recoiled several steps from the figure, and let
fall his sword upon the floor. The martial shape again
drew the cloak about his features and passed on; but
reaching the threshold, with his back towards the spec-
tators, lie was seen to stamp his foot and shake his
clinched hands in the air. It was afterwards affirmed

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 23

that Sir William Howe had repeated that self-same ges-
ture of rage and sorrow, when, for the last time, and
as the last royal governor, he passed through the portal
of the Province House.

" Hark ! — the, procession moves," said Miss Joliffe.

The music was dying away along the street, and its
dismal strains were mingled with the knell of midnight
from the steeple of the Old South, and with the roar of
artillery, which announced that the beleaguering army
of Washington had intrenched itself upon a nearer height
than before. As the daep boom of the cannon smote
upon his ear, Colonel Joliffe raised hiinsslf to the full
height of his aged form, and smiled sternly on the Brit-
ish general.

" Would your Excellency inquire further into the mys-
tery of the pageant ? " said he.

" Take care of your gray head ! " cried Sir William
Howe, fiercely, though with a quivering lip. " It has
stood too long on a traitor's shoulders ! "

" You must make haste to chop it off, then," calmly
replied the Colonel; "for a few hours longar, and not
all the power of Sir William Howe, nor of his master,
shall cause one of these gray hairs to fall. The empire
of Britain, in this ancient province, is at its last gasp
to-iiight ; almost while I speak it is a daad corpse ;
and methiuks the shadows of the old governors are fit
mourners at its funeral ! "

With these words Colonel Joliffe threw on his cloak,
and drawing his granddaughter's arm within his own,
retired from the last festival that a British ruler ever
held in the old province of Massachusetts Bay. It was
supposed that the Colonel and the young lady possessed
some secret intelligence in regard to the mysterious
pageant of that night. However this might be, such

24 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

knowledge Las never become general. The actors in
the scene have vanished into deeper obscurity than even
that wild Indian baud who scattered the cargoes of the
tea-ships on the waves, and gained a place in history,
yet left no names. But superstition, among other legends
of this mansion, repeats the wondrous tale, that on the
anniversary night of Britain's discomfiture, the ghosts
of the ancient governors of Massachusetts still glide
through the portal of the Province House. And, last
of all, comes a figure shrouded in a military cloak, toss-
ing his clinched hands into the air, and stamping his
iron-shod boots upon the broad freestone steps with a
semblance of feverish despair, but without the sound of
a foot-tramp.

When the truth-telling accents of the elderly gentle-
man were hushed, I drew a long breath and looked
round the room, striving, with the best energy of my
imagination, to throw a tinge of romance and historic
grandeur over the realities of the scene. But my nos-
trils snuffed up a scent of cigar-smoke, clouds of which
the narrator had emitted by way of visible emblem, I
suppose, of the nebulous obscurity of his tale. More-
over, my gorgeous fantasies were wofully disturbed by
the rattling of the spoon in a tumbler of whiskey punch,
which Mr. Thomas Waite was mingling for a customer.
Nor did it add to the picturesque appearance of the pan-
elled walls, that the slate of the Brookline stage was
suspended against them, instead of the armorial es-
cutcheon of some far-descended governor. A stage-
driver sat at one of the windows, reading a penny paper
of the day, — the Boston Times, — and presenting a fig-
ure which could nowise be brought into any picture of

HOWE'S MASQUERADE. 25

"Times in Boston," seventy or a hundred years ago.
On the window-seat lay, a bundle, neatly done up in
brown paper, the direction of which I had the idle curi-
osity to read. " Miss SUSAN HUGGINS, at the PROVINCE
HOUSE." A pretty chambermaid, no doubt. In truth,
it is desperately hard work, when we attempt to throw
the spell of hoar antiquity over localities with which
the living world, and the day that is passing over us,
have aught to do. Yet, as I glanced at the stately stair-
case, down which the procession of the old governors
had descended, and as I emerged through the venerable
portal, whence their figures had preceded me, it glad-
dened me to be conscious of a thrill of awe. Then
diving through the narrow archway, a few strides trans-
ported me into ths dsnsest throng of Washington Street.

LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE.

II.

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT.

|HE old legendary guest of the Province House
abode in my remembrance from midsummer till
I January. One idle evening, last winter, confi-
dent that he would be found in the snuggest comer of the
bar-room, I resolved to pay him another visit, hoping to
deserve well of my country by snatching from oblivion
some else unheard-of fact of history. The night was
chill and raw, and rendered boisterous by almost a gale
of wind, which whistled along Washington Street, caus-
ing the gaslights to flare and flicker within the lamps.
As I hurried onward, my fancy was busy with a compar-
ison between the present aspect of the street, and that
which it probably wore when the British governors in-
habited the mansion whither I was now going. Brick
edifices in those times were few, till a succession of de-
structive fires had swept, and swept again, the wooden
dwellings and warehouses from the most populous quar-
ters of the town. The buildings stood insulated and in-
dependent, not, as now, merging their separate existences
into connected ranges, with a front of tiresome identity,

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 27

but each possessing features of its own, as if the own-
er's individual taste had shaped it, and the whole pre-
senting a picturesque irregularity, the absence of which
is hardly compensated by any beauties of our modern
architecture. Such a scene, dimly vanishing from the
eye by the ray of here and there a tallow candle, glim-
mering through the small panes of scattered windows,
would form a sombre contrast to the street as I beheld
it, with the gaslights blazing from corner to corner, flam-
ing within the shops, and throwing a noonday brightness
through the huge plates of glass.

But the black, lowering sky, as I turned my eyes
upward, wore, doubtless, the same visage as when it
frowned upon the ante-Revolutionary New-Euglauders.
The wintry blast had the same shriek that was familiar
to their ears. The Old South Church, too, still pointed
its antique spire into the darkness, and was lost between
earth and heaven ; and as I passed, its clock, which had
warned so many generations how transitory was their
lifetime, spoke heavily and slow ths sams unregarded
moral to myself. "Only seven o'clock," thought I.
"My old friend's legends will scarcely kill the hours
'twixt this and bedtime."

Passing through tha narrow arch, I crossed the court-
yard, the confined precincts of which were made visible
by a lantern over the portal of the Province House. On
entering the bar-room, I found, as I expected, the old
tradition-monger seated by a special good fire of anthra-
cite, compelling clouds of smoke from a corpulent cigar.
He recognized me with evident pleasure ; for my rare
properties as a patient listener invariably make me a
favorite with elderly gentlemen and ladies of narrative
propensities. Drawing a chair to the fire, I desired
mine host to favor us with a glass apieco of whiskey

2$ TWICE-TOLD TALES.

punch, which was speedily prepared, steaming hot, with
a slice of lemon at the bottom, a dark red stratum of
port wine upon the surface, and a sprinkling of nutmeg
strewn over all. As we touched our glasses together,
my legendary friend made himself known to me as Mr.
Bela Tiffany ; and I rejoiced at the oddity of the name,
because it gave his image and character a sort of individ-
uality in my conception. The old gentleman's draught
acted as a solvent upon his memory, so that it over-
flowed with tales, traditions, anecdotes of famous dead
people, and traits of ancient manners, some of which
were childish as a nurse's lullaby, while others might
have been worth the notice of the grave historian.
Nothing impressed me more than a story of a black mys-
terious picture, which used to hang in one of the cham-
bers of the Province House, directly above the room
where we were now sitting. The following is as correct
a version of the fact as the reader would be likely to ob-
tain from any other source, although, assuredly, it has a
tinge of romance approaching to the marvellous.

In one of the apartments of the Province House there
was long preserved an ancient picture, the frame of
which was as black as ebony, and the canvas itself so
dark with age, damp, and smoke, that not a touch of the
painter's art could be discerned. Time had thrown %an
impenetrable veil over it, and left to tradition and fable
and conjecture to say what had once been there por-
trayed. During the rule of many successive governors
it had hung, by prescriptive and undisputed right, over
the mantel-piece of the same chamber ; and it still kept
its place when Lieuteuant-GDvernor Hutchinson assumed

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 29

the administration of the province, on the departure of
Sir Francis Bernard.

The Lieutenant-Governor sat, one afternoon, resting
his head against the carved back of his stately arm-chair,
and gazing up thoughtfully at the void blackness of the
picture. It was scarcely a time for such inactive musing,
when affairs of the deepest moment required the ruler's
decision ; for, within that very hour, Hutchinson had re-
ceived intelligence of the arrival of a British fleet, bring-
ing three regiments from Halifax to overawe the in-
subordination of the people. These troops awaited his
permission to occupy the fortress of Castle William and
the town itself. Yet, instead of affixing his signature to
an official order, there sat the Lieutenant-Governor, so
carefully scrutinizing the black waste of canvas, that his
demeanor attracted the notice of two young persons who
attended him. One, wearing a military dress of buff,
was his kinsman, Francis Lincoln, the Provincial Cap-
tain of Castle William ; the other, who sat on a low stool
beside his chair, was Alice Vane, his favorite niece.

She was clad entirely in white, a pale, ethereal crea-
ture, who, though a native of New England, had been
educated abroad, and seemed not merely a stranger from
another clime, but almost a being from another world.
For several years, until left an orphan, she had dwelt
with her father in sunny Italy, and there had acquired a
taste and enthusiasm for sculpture and painting, which
she found few opportunities of gratifying in the uudeco-
rated dwellings of the colonial gentry. It was said that
the early productions of her own pencil exhibited no
inferior genius, though, perhaps, the rude atmosphere of
New England had cramped her hand, and dimmed the
glowing colors of her fancy. But observing her uncle's
steadfast gaze, which appeared to search through the mist

30 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

of years to discover the subject of the picture, her curi-
osity was excited.

" Is it known, my dear uncle," inquired she, " what
this old picture once represented? Possibly, could it
be made visible, it might prove a masterpiece of some
great artist; else, why has it so long held such a con-
spicuous place ? "

As her uncle, contrary to his usual custom (for he
was as attentive to all the humors and caprices of
Alice as if she had been his own best-beloved child),
did not immediately reply, the young captain of Castle
WiUkun took that office upon himself.

"This dark old square of canvas, my fair cousin,"
said he, " lias been an heirloom in the Province House
from time immemorial. As to the painter, I can tell you
nothing ; but if half the stories told of it be true, not
one of the great Italian masters has ever produced so
marvellous a piece of work as that before you."

Captain Lincoln proceeded to relate some of the
strange fables and fantasies, which, as it was impossible
to refute them by ocular demonstration, had grown to
be articles of popular belief, in reference to this old
picture. One of the wildest, and at the same time the
best accredited accounts, stated it to be an original and
authentic portrait of the Evil One, taken at a witch
meeting near Salem; and that its strong and terrible
resemblance has been confirmed by several of the con-
fessing wizards and witches, at their trial, in open court.
It was likewise affirmed that a familiar spirit, or demon,
abode behind the blackness of the picture, and had shown
himself, at seasons of public calamity, to more than one
of the royal governors. Shirley, for instance, had be-
held this ominous apparition, on the eve of General
Abercrombie's shameful and bloodv defeat under the

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 31

walls of Ticonderoga. Many of the servants of the
Province House had caught glimpses of a visage frown-
ing down upon them, at morning or evening twilight,
or in the depths of night, while raking up the fire that
glimmered on the hearth beneath ; although, if any were
bold enough to hold a torch before the picture, it would
appear as black and undistinguishable as ever. The old-
est inhabitant of Boston recollected that his father, in
whose days the portrait had not wholly faded out of
sight, had once looked upon it, but would never suffer
himself to be questioned as to the face which was there
represented. In connection with such stories, it was
remarkable that over the top of the frame there were
some ragged remnants of black silk, indicating that a
veil had formerly hung down before the picture, until
the duskiness of time had so effectually concealed it.
But, after all, it was the most singular part of the affair,
that so many of the pompous governors of Massachu-
setts had allowed the obliterated picture to remain in
the state chamber of the Province House.

" Some of these fables are really awful," observed
Alice Vane, who had occasionally shuddered, as well as
smiled, while her cousin spoke. "It would be almost
worth while to wipe away the black surface of the
canvas, since the original picture can hardly be so for-
midable as those which fancy paints instead of it."

" But would it be possible," inquired her cousin, " to
restore this dark picture to its pristine hues ? "

" Such arts are Known in Italy," said Alice.

The Lieutenant-Governor had roused himself from
his abstracted mood, and listened with a smile to the
conversation of his young relatives. Yet his voice had
something peculiar in its tones, when he undertook the
explanation of the mystery.

32 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

" I am sorry," Alice, to destroy your faith in the
legends of which you are so fond," remarked he ; " but
my antiquarian researches have long since made me
acquainted with the subject of this picture, — if picture
it can be called, — which is no more visible, nor ever
will be, than the face of the long-buried man whom it
once represented. It was the portrait of Edward Ran-
dolph, the founder of this house, a person famous in
the history of New England."

" Of that Edward Randolph," exclaimed Captain Lin-
coln, " who obtained the repeal of the first provincial
charter, under which our forefathers had enjoyed almost
democratic privileges! He that was styled the arch-
enemy of New England, and whose memory is still held
in detestation, as the destroyer of our liberties ! "

" It was the same Randolph," answered Hutchinson,
moving uneasily in his chair. " It was his lot to taste
the bitterness of popular odium."

"Our annals tell us," continued the Captain of Cas-
tle William, " that the curse of the people followed this
Randolph where he went, and wrought evil in all the
subsequent events of his life, and that its effect was
seen likewise in the manner of his death. They say,
too, that the inward misery of that curse worked itself
outward, and was visible on the wretched man's coun-
tenance, making it too horrible to be looked upon. If
so, and if this picture truly represented his aspect, it
was in mercy that the cloud of blackness has gathered
over it."

"These traditions are folly, to one who has proved,
as I have, how little of historic truth lies at the bottom,"
said the Lieutenant-Governor. " As regards the life and
character of Edward Randolph, too implicit credence has
been given to Dr. Cotton Mather, who — I must say it,

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 33

though some of his blood runs in my veins — has filled
our early history with old women's tales, as fanciful and
extravagant as those of Greece or Rome."

" And yet," whispered Alice Vane, " may not such
fables have a moral ? And, methinks, . if the visage
of this portrait be so dreadful, it is not without a
cause that it has hung so long in a chamber of the
Province House. When the rulers feel themselves irre-
sponsible, it were well that they should be reminded of
the awful weight of a people's curse."

The Lieutenant-Governor started, and gazed for a mo-
ment at his niece, as if her girlish fantasies had struck
upon some feeling in his own breast, which all his pol-
icy or principles could not entirely subdue. He knew,
indeed, that Alice, in spite of her foreign education,
retained the native sympathies of a New England girl.

"Peace, silly child," cried he, at last, more harshly
than he had ever before addressed the gentle Alice.
" The rebuke of a king is more to be dreaded than the
clamor of a wild, misguided multitude. Captain Lincoln,
it is decided. The fortress of Castle William must b?
occupied by the Royal troops. The two remaining regi-
ments shall be billeted in the town, or encamped upon
the Common. It is time, after years of tumult, and
almost rebellion, that his Majesty's government should
have a wall of strength about it."

" Trust, sir, — trust yet awhile to the loyalty of the
people," said Captain Lincoln ; " nor teach them that
they can ever be*on other terms with British soldiers
than those of brotherhood, as when they fought side by
side through the French war. Do not convert the streets
of your native town into a camp. Think twice before you
give up old Castle William, the key of the province, into
other keeping than that of true-bom New-Englanders."
2* c

84 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

"Young man, it is decided," repeated Hutcliinson,
rising from his chair. " A British officer will be in
attendance this evening to receive the necessary instruc-
tions for the disposal of the troops. Your presence also
•will be required. Till then, farewell."

With these words the Lieutenant -Governor hastily left
the room, while Alice and her cousin more slowly fol-
lowed, whispering together, and once pausing to glance
back at the mysterious picture. The Captain of Castle
William fancied that the girl's air and mien were such as
might have belonged to one of those spirits of fable —
fairies, or creatures of a more antique mythology — who
sometimes mingled their agency with mortal atfairs, half
in caprice, yet with a sensibility to human weal or woe.
As he held the door for her to pass, Alice beckoned to
the picture and smiled.

"Come forth, dark and evil Shape ! " cried she. "It
is thine hour! "

In the evening, Lieutenant-Governor Hutcliinson sat
iu the same chamber Avhere the foregoing scene had
occurred, surrounded by several persons whose various
interests had summoned them together. There were the
Selectmen of Boston, plain, patriarchal fathers of the
people, excellent represantatives of the old puritanical
founders, whose sombre strength had stamped so deep
an impress upon the New England character. Contrast-
ing with these were one or two members of Council,
richly dressed in the white wigs, the embroidered waist-
coats, and other magnificence of the time, and making a
somewhat ostentatious display of courtier-like ceremonial.
In attendance, likewise, was a major of the British army,
awaiting the Lieutenant-Governor's orders for the land-
ing of the troops, which still remained on board the
transports. The Captain of Castle William stood beside

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. ' 35

Hutchinson's chair, with folded arms, glancing rather
haughtily at the British officer, by whom he was soon to
b«3 superseded in his command. On a table, in the cen-
tre of the chamber, stood a branched silver candlestick,
throwing down the glow of half a dozen wax-lights upon
a paper apparently ready for the Lieutenant-Governor's
signature.

Partly shrouded in the voluminous folds of one of the
window-curtains, which fell from the ceiling to the floor,
was seen the white drapery of a lady's robe. It may
appear strange that Alice Vane should have been there,
at such a time ; but there was something so childlike, so
wayward, in her singular character, so apart from ordi-
nary rules, that her presence did not surprise the few who
noticed it. Meantime, the chairman of the Selectmen
Avas addressing to the Lieutenant-Governor a long and
solemn protest against the reception of the British troops
into the town..

"And if your Honor," concluded this excellent but
somewhat prosy old gentleman, " shall see fit to persist
in bringing these mercenary sworders and musketeers
into our quiet streets, not on our heads be the responsi-
bility. Think, sir, while there is yet time, that if one
drop of blood be shed, that blood shall be an eternal
stain upon your Honor's memory. You, sir, have writ-
ten, with an able pen, the deeds of our forefathers. The
more to be desired is it, therefore, that yourself should
deserve honorable mention, as a true patriot and upright
ruler, when your *own doings shall be written down in
history."

"I am not insensible, my good sir, to the natural de-
sire to stand well in the annals of my country," replied
Hutchiiison, controlling his impatience into courtesy,
" nor know I any better mathod of attaining that end

30 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

than by withstanding the merely temporary spirit of
mischief, which, with your pardon, seems to have infected
elder men than myself. Would you have me wait till
the mob shall sack the Province House, as they did my
private mansion? Trust me, sir, the time may come
when you will be glad to flee for protection to the King's
banner, the raising of which is now so distasteful to you."

"Yes," said the British major, who was impatiently
expecting the Lieutenant-Governor's orders. " The dem-
agogues of this province have raised the devil, and cannot
lay him again. We will exorcise him, in God's name
and the King's."

" If you meddle with the Devil, take care of his claws ! "
answered the Captain of Castle William, stirred by the
taunt against his countrymen.

" Craving your pardon, young sir," said the venerable
Selectman, " let not an evil spirit enter into your words.
We will strive against the oppressor with prayer and
fasting, as our forefathers would have done. Like them,
moreover, we will submit to whatever lot a wise Provi-
dence may send us, — always, after our own best exer-
tions to amend it."

"And there peep forth the Devil's claws! " muttered
Hutchinson, who well understood the nature of Puritan
submission. " This matter shall be expedited forthwith.
When there shall be a sentinel at every corner, and a
court of guard before the town-house, a loyal gentleman
may venture to walk abroad. What to me is the outcry
of a mob, in this remote province of the realm ? The
King is my master, and England is my country ! Upheld
by their armed strength, I set my foot upon the rabble,
and defy them ! "

He snatched a pen, and was about to affix his signature
to the paper that lay on the table, when the Captain of

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 37

Castle William placed his hand upon his shoulder. The
freedom of the action, so contrary to the ceremonious
respect which was then considered due to rank and dig-
nity, awakened general surprise, and in none more than
in the Lieutenant-Governor himself. Looking angrily
up, he perceived that his young relative was pointing his
finger to the opposite wall. Hutchinson's eye followed
the signal ; and he saw, what had hitherto been unob-
served, that a black silk curtain was suspended before
the mysterious picture, so as completely to conceal it.
His thoughts immediately recurred to the scene of the pre-
ceding afternoon ; and, in his surprise, confused by indis-
tinct emotions, yet sensible that his niece must have had
an agency in this phenomenon, he called loudly upon her.

" Alice ! — come hither, Alice ! "

No sooner had he spoken than Alice Vane glided from
her station, and pressing one hand across her eyes, with
the other snatched away the sable curtain that concealed
the portrait. An exclamation of surprise burst from
every beholder ; but the Lieutenant-Governor's voice had
a tone of horror.

"By Heaven," said he, in a low, inward murmur,
speaking rather to himself than to those around him, " if
the spirit of Edward Randolph were to appear among us
from the place of torment, he could not wear more of the
terrors of hell upon his face ! "

"For some wise end," said the aged Selectman, sol-
emnly, " hath Providence scattered away the mist of years
that had so long nid this dreadful effigy. Until this hour
no living man hath seen what we behold ! "

Within the antique frame, which so recently had en-
closed a sable waste of canvas, now appeared a visible
picture, still dark, indeed, in its hues and shadings, but
thrown forward in strong relief. It was a half-length

38 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

figure of a gentleman in a rich, but very old-fashioned
dress of embroidered velvet, with a broad ruff and a
beard, and wearing a hat, the brim of which over-
shadowed his forehead. Beneath this cloud the eyes had
a peculiar glare which was almost life-like. The whole
portrait started so distinctly out of the background, that
it had the effect of a person looking down from the wall
at the astonished and awe-stricken spectators. The ex-
pression of the face, if any words can convey an idea of it,
was that of a wretch detected in some hideous guilt, and
exposed to the bitter hatred and laughter and withering
scorn of a vast surrounding multitude. There was the
struggle of defiance, beaten down and overwhelmed by
the crushing weight of ignominy. The torture of the
soul had come forth upon the countenance. It seemed
as if the picture, while hidden behind the cloud of imme-
morial years, had been all the time acquiring an intenser
depth and darkness of expression, till now it gloomed
forth again, and threw its evil omen over the present
hour. Such, if the wild legend may be credited, was the
portrait of Edward Randolph, as he appeared -when a
people's curse had wrought its influence upon his nature.

" 'T would drive me mad, — that awful face ! " said
Hutchinson, who seemed fascinated by the contemplation
of it,

" Be warned, then ! " whispered Alice. " He trampled
on a people's rights. Behold his punishment, — and avoid
a crime like his ! "

The Lieut enant -Governor actually trembled for an in-
stant ; but, exerting his energy, — which was not, how-
ever, his most characteristic feature, — he strove to shake
off the spell of Randolph's countenance.

" Girl ! " cried he, laughing bitterly, as he turned to
Alice, " have you brought hither your painter's art, —

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 39

your Italian spirit of intrigue, — your tricks of stage effect,
— and think to influence the councils of rulers and the
affairs of nations by such shallow contrivances ? See
here ! "

" Stay yet awhile," said the Selectman, as Hutchinson
again snatched the pen; "for if ever mortal man re-
ceived a warning from a tormented soul, your Honor is
that man ! "

" Away ! " answered Hutchinson, fiercely. " Though
yonder senseless picture cried, ' Forbear ! ' it should not
move me ! "

Casting a scowl of defiance at the pictured face (which
seemed, at that moment, to intensify the horror of its
miserable and wicked look), he scrawled on the paper,
in characters that betokened it a deed of desperation,
the name of Thomas Hutchinsou. Then, it is said, he
shuddered, as if that signature had granted away his sal-
vation.

" It is done," said he ; and placed his hand upon his
brow.

"May Heaven forgive the deed," said the soft, sad ac-
cents of Alice Vane, like the voice of a good spirit flitting
away.

When morning came there was a stifled whisper
through the household, and spreading thence about the
town, that the dark, mysterious picture had started from
the wall, and spoken face to face with Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor Hutchiuson^ If such a miracle had been wrought,
however, no traces of it remained behind ; for within the
antique frame, nothing could be discerned, save the im-
penetrable cloud which had covered the canvas since the
memory of man. If the figure had, indeed, stepped forth,
it had fled back, spirit-like, at the daydawn, and hidden
itself behind a century's obscurity. The truth probably

40 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

was, that Alice Vane's secret for restoring the hues of
the picture had merely effected a temporary renovation.
But those who, in that brief interval, had beheld the aw-
ful visage of Edward Randolph, desired no second glance,
and ever afterwards trembled at the recollection of the
scene, as if an evil spirit hud appeared visibly among
them. And as for Hutchiuson, when, far over the ocean,
his dying hour drew on, he gasped for breath, and com-
plained that he was choking with the blood of the Boston
massacre ; and Francis Lincoln, the former Captain of
Castle William, who was standing at his bedside, per-
ceived a likeness in his frenzied look to that of Edward
Randolph. Did his broken spirit feel, at that dread hour,
the tremendous burden of a People's curse ?

At the conclusion of this miraculous legend, I inquired
of mine host whether the picture still remained in the
chamber over our heads ; but Mr. Tiffany informed me
that it had long since been removed, and was supposed
to be hidden in some out-of-the-way corner of the New
England Museum. Perchance some curious antiquary
may light upon it there, and, with the assistance of Mr.
Howorth, the picture-cleaner, may supply a not unneces-
sary proof of the authenticity of the facts here set down.
During the progress of the story a storm had been gath-
ering abroad, and raging and rattling so loudly in the
upper regions of the Province House, that it seemed as
if all the old governors and great men were running riot
above stairs, while Mr. Bela Tiffany babbled of them
below. In the course of generations, when many people
have lived and died in an ancient house, the whistling of
the wind through its crannies, and the creaking of its

EDWARD RANDOLPH'S PORTRAIT. 41

beams and rafters, become strangely like the tones of the
human voice, or thundering laughter, or heavy footsteps
treading the deserted chambers. It is as if the echoes
of half a century were revived. Such were the ghostly
sounds that roared and murmured in our ears, when I
took leave of the circle round the fireside of the Province
House, and plunging down the doorsteps, fought my
way homeward against a drifting snow-storm. .

LEGENDS OF THE PROVINCE HOUSE.

III.
LADY ELEANOEE'S MANTLE.

IIS'E excellent, friend, the landlord of the Province
House, was pleased, the other evening, to invite
Mr. Tiffany and myself to an oyster-supper.
This slight mark of respect and gratitude, as he hand-
somely observed, was far less than the ingenious tale-
teller, and I, the humble note-taker of his narratives, had
fairly earned, by the public notice which our joint lucu-
brations had attracted to his establishment. Many a
cigar had been smoked within his premises, — many a
glass of wine, or more potent aqua vita?, had been quaffed,
— many a dinner had been eaten by curious strangers,
who, save for the fortunate conjunction of Mr. Tiffany
and me, would never have ventured through that dark-
some avenue, which gives access to the historic precincts
of the Province House. In short, if any credit be due
to the courteous assurances of Mr. Thomas Waite, we
had brought his forgotten mansion almost as effectually
into public view as if we had thrown down the vulgar
range of shoe-shops and dry-goods stores, which hides its
aristocratic front from Washington Street. It may be

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 43

unadvisable, however, to speak too loudly of the in-
creased custom of the house, lest Mr. Waite should find
it difficult to renew the lease on so favorable terms as
heretofore.

Being thus welcomed as benefactors, neither Mr. Tiffany
nor myself felt any scruple in doing full justice to the good
things that were set before us. If the feast were less
magnificent than those same panelled walls had witnessed
in a bygone century, — if mine host presided with some-
what less of state, than might have befitted a successor of
the royal governors, — if the guests made a less imposing
show than the bewigged and powdered and embroidered
dignitaries, who erst banqueted at the gubernatorial table,
and now sleep within their armorial tombs on Copp's
Hill or round King's Chapel, — yet never, I may boldly
say, did a more comfortable little party assemble in the
Province House, from Queen Anne's days to the Revo-
lution. The occasion was rendered more interesting by
the presence of a venerable personage, whose own actual
reminiscences went back to the epoch of Gage and Howe,
and even supplied him with a doubtful anecdote or two
of Hutchiiison. He was one of that small, and now all
but extinguished class, whose attachment to royalty, and
to the colonial institutions and customs that were con-
nected with it, had never yielded to the democratic here-
sies of after times. The young queen of Britain has not
a more loyal subject in her realm — perhaps not one who
would kneel before her throne with such reverential love
— than this old*grandsire, whose head has whitened be-
neath the mild sway of the Republic, which still, in his mel-
lower moments, he terms a usurpation. Yet prejudices
so obstinate have not made him an ungentle or impracti-
cable companion. If the truth must be told, the life of
the aged loyalist has been of such a scrambling and un-

44 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

settled character, — he has had so little choice of friends,
and been so often destitute of any, — that I doubt whether
he would refuse a cup of kindness with either Oliver
Cromwell or John Hancock ; to say nothing of any demo-
crat now upon the stage. In another paper of this series,
I may perhaps give the reader a closer glimpse of his
portrait.

Our host, in due season, uncorked a bottle of Madeira,
of such exquisite perfume and admirable flavor, that he
surely must have discovered it in an ancient bin, down
deep beneath the deepest cellar, where some jolly old
butler stored away the Governor's choicest wine, and
forgot to reveal the secret on his death-bed. Peace to
his red-nosed ghost, and a libation to his memory ! This
precious liquor was imbibed by Mr. Tiffany with peculiar
zest ; and after sipping the third glass, it was his pleasure
to give us one of the oddest legends which he had yet
raked from the storehouse where he keeps such matters.
With some suitable adornments from my own fancy, it
ran pretty much as follows.

Not long after Colonel Shute had assumed the govern-
ment of Massachusetts Bay, now nearly a hundred and
twenty years ago, a young lady of rank and fortune ar-
rived from England, to claim his protection as her guar-
dian. He was her distant relative, but the nearest who
had survived the gradual extinction of her family ; so
that no more eligible shelter could be found for the rich
and high-born Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, than within the
Province House of a Transatlantic colony. The consort
of Governor Shute, moreover, had been as a mother to
her childhood, and was now anxious to receive her, in the

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 45

hope that a beautiful young woman would be exposed to
infinitely less peril from the primitive society of New
England, than amid the artifices and corruptions of a
court. If either the Governor or his lady had especially
consulted their own comfort, they would probably have
sought to devolve the responsibility on other hands ;
since with some noble and splendid traits of character,
Lady Eleanore was remarkable for a harsh, unyielding
pride, a haughty consciousness of her hereditary and
personal advantages, which made her almost incapable of
control. Judging from many traditionary anecdotes, this
peculiar temper was hardly less than a monomania ; or,
if the acts which it inspired were those of a sane person,
it seemed due from Providence that pride so sinful should
be followed by as severe a retribution. That tinge of the
marvellous, which is thrown over so many of these half-
forgotten legends, has probably imparted an additional
wildness to the strange story of Lady Eleanore Roch-
cliffe.

The ship in which she came passenger had arrived at
Newport, whence Lady Eleanore was conveyed to Boston
in the Governor's coach, attended by a small escort of
gentlemen on horseback. The ponderous equipage, with
its four black horses, attracted much notice as it rumbled
through Cornhill, surrounded by the prancing steeds of
half a dozen cavaliers, with swords dangling to their stir-
rups and pistols at their holsters. Through the large
glass windows of the coach, as it rolled along, the people
could discern the figure of Lady Eleanore, strangely com-
bining an almost queenly stateliness with the grace and
beauty of a maiden in her teens. A singular tale had
gone abroad among the ladies of the province, that their
fair rival was indebted for much of the irresistible charm
of her appearance to a certain article of dress, — an em-

46 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

broidered mantle, — which had been wrought by the most
skilful artist in London, and possessed even magical prop-
erties of adornment. On the present occasion, however,
she owed nothing to the witchery of dress, being clad in
a riding-habit of velvet, which would have appeared stiff
and ungraceful on any other form.

The coachman reined in his four black steeds, and Ihe
whole cavalcade came to a pause in front of the contorted
iron balustrade that fenced the Province House from the
public street. It was an awkward coincidence, that the
bell of the Old South was just then tolling for a funeral ;
so that, instead of a gladsome peal with which it \vas
customary to announce the arrival of distinguished
strangers, Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe was ushered by a
doleful clang, as if calamity had come embodied in her
beautiful person.

" A very great disrespect ! " exclaimed Captain Lang-
ford, an English officer, who had recently brought de-
spatches to Governor Shute. " The funeral should have
been deferred, lest Lady Eleanore.'s spirits be affected by
such a dismal welcome."

" With your pardon, sir," replied Dr. Clarke, a physi-
cian, and a famous champion of the popular party,
" whatever the heralds may pretend, a dead beggar must
have precedence of a living queen. King Death confers
high privileges."

These remarks were interchanged while the speakers^
waited a passage through the crowd, which had gathered
on eacli side of the gateway, leaving an open avenue to
the portal of the Province House. A black slave in liv-
ery now leaped from behind the coach, and threw open
the door ; while at the same moment Governor Shute
descended the flight of steps from his mansion, to assist
Lady Eleanore in alighting. But the Governor's stately

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 47

approach was anticipated in a manner that excited gen-
eral astonishment. A pale young man, with his black
hair all in disorder, rushed from the throng, and pros-
trated himself beside the coach, thus offering his person
as a footstool for Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe to tread
upon. She held back an instant ; yet with an expres-
sion as if doubting whether the young man were worthy
to bear the weight of her footstep, rather than dissatis-
fied to receive such awful reverence from a fellow-
mortal.

"Up, sir," said the Governor, sternly, at the same
time lifting his cane over the intruder. " What means
the Bedlamite by this freak ? "

" Nay," answered Lady Eleanore, playfully, but with
more scorn than pity in her tone, " your Excellency shall
not strike him. When men seek only to be trampled
upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily
granted — and so well deserved ! "

Then, though as lightly as a sunbeam on a cloud, she
placed her foot upon the cowering form, and extended her
hand to meet that of the Governor. There was a brief
interval, during which Lady Eleanore retained this atti-
tude ; and never, surely, was there an apter emblem of
aristocracy and hereditary pride trampling on human
sympathies and the kindred of nature, than these two
figures presented at that moment. Yet the spectators
were so smitten with her beauty, and so essential did
pride seem to the existence of such a creature, that they
gave a simultaneous acclamation of applause.

" Who is this insolent young fellow ? " inquired Cap-
tain Langford, who still remained beside Dr. Clarke.
" If he be in his senses, his impertinence demands the
bastinado. If mad, Lady Eleanore should be secured
from further inconvenience, by his confinement."

48 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

" His name is Jervase Helwyse," answered the Doc-
tor ; " a youth of no birth or fortune, or other advan-
tages, save the mind and soul that nature gave him;
and being secretary to our colonial agent in London, it
was his misfortune to meet this Lady Eleanore lloch-
cliffe. He loved her, — and her scorn has driven him
mad."

"He was mad so to aspire," observed the English
officer.

"It may be so," said Dr. Clarke, frowning as he
spoke. "But I tell you, sir, I could wellnigh doubt the
justice of the Heaven above us, if no signal humiliation
overtake this lady, who now treads so haughtily into
yonder mansion. She seeks to place herself above the
sympathies of our common nature, which envelops all
human souls. See, if that nature do not assert its claim
over her in some mode that shall bring her level with
the lowest ! "

" Never ! " cried Captain Langford, indignantly ; " nei-
ther in life, nor when they lay her with her ances-
tors."

Not many days afterwards the Governor gave a ball
in honor of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe. The principal
gentry of the colony received invitations, which were
distributed to their residences, far and near, by messen-
gers on horseback, bearing missives sealed with all the
formality of official despatches. In obedience to the
summons, there was a general gathering of rank, wealth,
and beauty ; and the wide door of the Province House
had seldom given admittance to more numerous and
honorable guests than on the evening of Lady Eleanore's
ball. Without much extravagance of eulogy, the spectacle
might even be termed splendid; for, according to the
fashion of the times, the ladies shone in rich silks and

LADY ELE ANDRE'S MANTLE. 49

satins, outspread over wide-projecting hoops; and the
gentlemen glittered in gold embroidery, laid unsparingly
upon the purple, or scarlet, or sky-blue velvet, which
was the material of their coats and waistcoats. The lat-
ter article of dress was of great importance, since .it en-
veloped the wearer's body nearly to the knees, and was
perhaps bedizened with the amount of his whole year's
income, in golden flowers and foliage. The altered taste
of the present day — a taste symbolic of a deep change
in the whole system of society — would look upon almost
any of those gorgeous figures as ridiculous ; although that
evening the guests sought their reflections in the pier-
glasses, and rejoiced to catch their own glitter amid the
glittering crowd. What a pity that one of the stately
mirrors has not preserved a picture of the scene, which,
by the very traits that were so transitory, might have
taught us much that would be worth knowing and re-
membering !

Would, at least, that either painter or mirror could
convey to us some faint idea of a garment, already no-
ticed in this legend, — the Lady Eleanore's embroidered
mantle, — which the gossips whispered was invested with
magic properties, so as to lend a new and untried grace
to her figure each time that she put it on ! Idle fancy as
it is, this mysterious mantle has thrown an awe around
my image of her, partly from its fabled virtues, and
partly because it was the handiwork of a dying woman,
and, perchance, owed the fantastic grace of its concep-
tion to the delirium* of approaching death.

After the ceremonial greetings had been paid, Lady
Eleanore Rochcliffe stood apart from the mob of guests,
insulating herself within a small and distinguished circle,
to whom she accorded a more cordial favor than to the
general throng. The waxen torches threw their radiance

VOL. II. 3 D

50 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

vividly over the scene, bringing out its brilliant points in
strong relief ; but she gazed carelessly, and with now
and then an expression of weariness or scorn, tempered
with such feminine grace, that her auditors scarcely per-
ceived the moral deformity of which it was the utterance.
She beheld the spectacle not with vulgar ridicule, as dis-
daining to be pleased with the provincial mockery of a
court festival, but with the deeper scorn of one whose
spirit held itself too high to participate in the enjoyment
of other human souls. Whether or no the recollections
of those who saw her that evening were influenced by
the strange events with which she was subsecfueutly con-
nected, so it was that her figure ever after recurred to
them as marked by something wild and unnatural ; al-
though, at the time, the general whisper was of her ex-
ceeding beauty, and of the indescribable charm which
her mantle threw around lier. Some close observers, in-
deed, detected a feverish flush and alternate paleness of
countenance, with a corresponding flow and revulsion of
spirits, and once or twice a painful and helpless betrayal
of lassitude, as if she were on the point of sinking to the
ground. Then, with a nervous shudder, she seemed to
arouse her energies, and threw some bright and playful,
yet half-wicked sarcasm into the conversation. There
was so strange a characteristic in her manners and sen-
timents, that it astonished every right-minded listener ;
till looking in her face, a lurking and incomprehensible
glance and smile perplexed them with doubts both as to
her seriousness and sanity. Gradually, Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe's circle grew smaller, till only four gentlemen
remained in it. These wrere Captain Langford, the Eng-
lish officer before mentioned ; a Virginian planter, who
had come to Massachusetts on some political errand ; a
young Episcopal clergyman, the grandson of a British

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 51

Earl; and lastly, the private secretary of Governor
Slmte, whose obsequiousness had won a sort of toler-
ance from Lady Eleanore.

At diiferent periods of the evening the liveried ser-
vants of the Province House passed among the guests,
bearing huge trays of refreshments, and French and
Spanish wines. Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, who refused
to wet her beautiful lips even with a bubble of cham-
pagne, had sunk back into a large damask chair, appar-
ently overwearied either with the excitement of the
scene or its tedium ; and while, for an instant, she was
unconscious of voices, laughter, and music, a young man
stole forward, and knelt down at her feet. He bore a
salver in his hand, on which was a chased silver goblet,
filled to the brim with wine, which he offered as rev-
erentially as to a crowned queen, or rather with the
awful devotion of a priest doing sacrifice to his idol.
Conscious that some one touched her robe, Lady
Eleauore started, and unclosed her eyes upon the
pale, wild features and dishevelled hair of Jervase Hel-
wyse.

" Why do you haunt me thus ? " said she, in a languid
tone, but with a kindlier feeling than she ordinarily per-
mitted herself to express. " They tell me that I have
done you harm."

" Heaven knows if that be so," replied the young man,
solemnly. " But, Lady Eleanore, in requital of that
harm, if such there be, and for your own earthly and
heavenly welfare, T pray you to take one sip of this holy
wine, and then to pass the goblet round among the
guests. And this shall be a symbol that you have not
sought to withdraw yourself from the chain of human
sympathies, — which whoso would shake off must keep
company with fallen angels."

52 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

" Where has this mad fellow stolen that sacramental
vessel ? " exclaimed the Episcopal clergyman.

This question drew the notice of the guests to the
silver cup, which was recognized as appertaining to the
communion plate of the Old South Church ; and for
aught that could be known, it was brimming over with
the consecrated wine.

"Perhaps it is poisoned," half whispered the Govern-
or's secretary.

" Pour it down the villain's throat ! " cried the Vir-
ginian, fiercely.

" Turn him out of the house ! " cried Captain Lang-
ford, seizing Jervase Helwyse so roughly by the shoulder
that the sacramental cup was overturned, and its con-
tents sprinkled upon Lady Eleanore's mantle. " Wheth-
er knave, fool, or Bedlamite, it is intolerable that the
fellow should go at- large."

" Pray, gentlemen, do my poor admirer no harm," said
Lady Eleauore, with a faint and weary smile. "Take
him out of my sight, if such be your pleasure ; for I
can find in my heart to do nothing but laugh at him ;
whereas, in all decency and conscience, it would become
me to weep for the mischief I have wrought ! "

But while the by-standers were attempting to lead
away the unfortunate young man, he broke from them,
and with a wild, impassioned earnestness, offered a new
and equally strange petition to Lady Eleanore. It was
no other than that she should throw off the mantle,
which, while he pressed the silver cup of wine upon
her, she had drawn more closely around her form, so
as almost to shroud herself within it.

" Cast it from you ! " exclaimed Jervase Helwyse, clasp-
ing his hands in an agony of entreaty. " It may not yet
be too late ! Give the accursed garment to the flames ! "

LADY ELEANOUE'S MANTLE. 53

But Lady Eleanore, with a laugh of scorn, drew the
rich folds of the embroidered mantle over her head, in
such a fashion as to give a completely new aspect to
her beautiful face, which — half hidden, half revealed —
seemed to belong to some being of mysterious character
and purposes.

"Farewell, Jervase Helwyse ! " said she. "Keep my
image in your remembrance, as you behold it now."

" Alas, lady ! " he replied, in a tone no longer
wild, but sad as a funeral bell. "We must meet
shortly, when your face may wear another aspect ;
and that shall be the image that must abide within
me."

He made no more resistance to the violent efforts of
the gentlemen and servants, who almost dragged him
out of the apartment, and dismissed him roughly from
the iron gate of the Province House.. Captain Langford,
who had been very active in this affair, was returning
to the presence of Lady Eleanore Rochcliffe, when he
encountered the physician, Dr. Clarke, with whom he
had held some casual talk on the day of her arrival.
The Doctor stood apart, separated from Lady Eleanore
by the width of the room, but eying her with such keen
sagacity, that Captain Langford involuntarily gave him
credit for the discovery of some deep secret.

" You appear to be smitten, after all, with the charms
of this queenly maiden," said he, hoping thus to draw
forth the physician's hidden knowledge.

"God forbid! "#answered Dr. Clarke, with a grave
smile ; " and if you be wise, you will put up the same
prayer for yourself. Woe to those who shall be smitten
by this beautiful Lady Eleanore ! But yonder stands
the Governor, and I have a word or two for his pri-
vate ear. Good night ! "

54 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

He accordingly advanced to Governor Sliute, and ad-
dressed him in so low a tone that none of the by-standers
could catch a word of what he said ; although the sud-
den change of his Excellency's hitherto cheerful visage
betokened that the communication could be of no agree-
able import. A very few moments afterwards, it was
announced to the guests that an unforeseen circumstance
rendered it necessary to put a premature close to the
festival.

The ball at. the Province House supplied a topic of
conversation for the colonial metropolis, for some days
after its occurrence, and might still longer have been
the general theme, only that a subject of all-engrossing
interest thrust it, for a time, from the public recollec-
tion. This was the appearance of a dreadful epidemic,
which, in that age, and long before and afterwards, was
wont to slay its hundreds and thousands, on both sides
of the Atlantic. On the occasion of which we speak, it
was distinguished by a peculiar virulence, insomuch that
it has left it's traces — its pit-marks, to use an appro-
priate figure — on the history of the country, the affairs
of which were thrown into confusion by its ravages. At
first, unlike its ordinary course, the disease seemed to
confine itself to the higher circles of society, selecting
its victims from among the proud, the well-born, and
the wealthy, entering unabashed into stately chambers,
and lying down with the slumberers in silken beds.
Some of the most distinguished guests of the Province
House — even those whom the haughty Lady Eleanore
Rochcliffe had deemed not unworthy of her favor — were
stricken by this fatal scourge. It was noticed, with an
ungenerous bitterness of feeling, that the four gentlemen
— the Virginian, the British officer, the young clergy-
man, and the Governor's secretary — who had been her

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 55

most devoted attendants on the evening of the ball were
the foremost on whom the plague-stroke fell. But the
disease, pursuing its onward progress, soon ceased to be
exclusively a prerogative of aristocracy. Its red brand
was no longer conferred, like a noble's star, or an order
of knighthood. It threaded its way through the narrow
and crooked streets, and entered the low, mean, dark-
some dwellings, and laid its hand of death upon the
artisans and laboring classes of the town. It compelled
rich and poor to feel themselves brethren, then; and
stalking to and fro across the Three Hills, with a fierce-
ness which made it almost a new pestilence, there was
that mighty conqueror — that scourge and horror of our
forefathers — the Small-Pox !

We cannot estimate the affright which this plague in-
spired of yore, by contemplating it as the fangless mon-
ster of the present day. We must remember, rather,
with what awe we watched the gigantic footsteps of the
Asiatic cholera, striding from shore to shore of the At-
lantic, and marching like destiny upon cities far remote,
which flight had already half depopulated. There is no
other fear so horrible and unhumanizing, as that which
makes man dread to breathe Heaven's vital air, lest it
be poison, or to grasp the hand of a brother or friend,
lest the gripe of the pestilence should clutch him. Such
was the dismay that now followed in the track of the
disease, or ran before it throughout the town. Graves
were hastily dug, and the pestilential relics as hastily
covered, because the dead were enemies of the living,
and strove to draw them headlong, as it were, into their
own dismal pit. The public councils were suspended,
as if mortal wisdom might relinquish its devices, now
that an unearthly usurper had found his way into the
ruler's mansion. Had an enemv's fleet been hovering

56 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

on the coast, or bis armies trampling on our soil, the
people would probably have committed their defence to
that same direful conqueror, who had wrought their own
calamity, and would permit no interference with his
sway. This conqueror had a symbol of his triumphs.
It was a blood-red flag, that fluttered in the tainted air,
over the door of every dwelling into which the Small-
Pox had entered.

Such a banner was long since waving over the portal
of the Province House ; for thence, as was proved by
tracking its footsteps back, had all this dreadful mis-
chief issued. It had been traced back to a lady's luxu-
rious chamber, — to the proudest of the proud, — to her
that was so delicate, and hardly owned herself of earthly
mould, '• — to the haughty one, who took her stand above
human sympathies, — to Lady Eleanore ! There re-
mained no room for doubt, that the contagion had lurked
in that gorgeous mantle, which threw so strange a grace
around her at the festival. Its fantastic splendor had
been conceived in the delirious brain of a woman on her
death-bed, and was the last toil of her stiffening fingers,
which had interwoven fate and misery with its golden
threads. This dark tale, whispered at first, was now
bruited far and wide. The people raved against the
Lady Eleanore, and cried out that her pride and scorn
had evoked a fiend, and that, between them both, this
monstrous evil had been born. At times, their rage and
despair took the semblance of grinning mirth ; and when-
ever the red flag of the pestilence was hoisted over
another, and yet another door, they clapped their
hands and shouted through the streets in bitter mock-
ery, "Behold a new triumph for the Lady Elea-
iiore ! "

One day, in the midst of these dismal times, a wild

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 57

figure approached the portal of the Province House, and
folding his arms, stood contemplating the scarlet banner,
which a passing breeze shook fitfully, as if to fling abroad
the contagion that it typified. At length, climbing one
'of the pillars by means of the iron balustrade, he took
down the flag, and entered the mansion, waving it above
his head. At the foot of tlie staircase he met the Gov-
ernor, booted and spurred, with his cloak drawn around
him, evidently ou the point of setting forth upon a
journey.

" Wretched lunatic, what do you seek here ? " ex-
claimed Shute, extending his cane to guard himself from
contact. " There is nothing here but Death. Back, —
or you will meet him ! "

"Death will not touch me, the banner-bearer of the
pestilence ! " cried Jervase Helwyse, shaking the red flag
aloft. "Death and the Pestilence, who wears the as-
pect of the Lady Eleanore, will walk through the streets
to-night, and I must march before them with this ban-
ner ! "

" Why do I waste words on the fellow ? " muttered
the Governor, drawing his cloak across his mouth.
" What matters his miserable life, when none of us are
sure of twelve hours' breath ? On, fool, to your own
destruction ! "

He made way for Jervase Helwyse, who immediately
ascended the staircase, but, on the first landing-place,
was arrested by the firm grasp of a hand upon his
shoulder. Looking fiercely up, with a madman's im-
pulse to struggle with and rend asunder his opponent,
lie found himself powerless beneath a calm, stem eye,
which possessed the mysterious property of quelling
frenzy at its height. The person whom he had now
encountered was the physician, Dr. Clarke, the duties
3*

58 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

of whose sad profession had led him to the Province
House, where he was an infrequent guest in more pros-
perous times.

" Young man, what is your purpose ? " demanded he.

"I seek the Lady Eleanore," answered Jervase Hel-
wyse, submissively.

" All have fled from her," said the physician. " "Win-
do you seek her now r* I tell you, youth, her nurse fell
death-stricken on the threshold of that fatal chamber.
Know ye not, that never came such a curse to our
shores as this lovely Lady Eleanore ? — that her breath
has filled the air with poison ? — that she has shaken
pestilence and death upon the land, from the folds of her
accursed mantle ? "

"Let me look upon her!" rejoined the mad youth,
more wildly. " Let me behold her, in her awful beauty,
clad in the regal garments of the pestilence ! She and
Death sit on a throne together. Let me kneel down be-
fore them ! "

" Poor youth ! " said Dr. Clarke ; and, moved by a
deep sense of human weakness, a smile of caustic hu-
mor curled his lip even then. " Wilt thou still worship
the destroyer, and surround her image with fantasies the
more magnificent, the more evil she has wrought ? Thus
man doth ever to his tyrants ! Approach, then! Mad-
ness, as I have noted, has that good efficacy, that it will
guard you from contagion ; and perchance its own cure
may be found in yonder chamber."

Ascending another flight of stairs, he threw open a
door, and signed to Jervase Helwyse that he should en-
ter. The poor lunatic, it seems probable, had cherished
a delusion that his haughty mistress sat in state, un-
harmed herself by the pestilential influence, which, as
by enchantment, she scattered round about her. He

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 59

dreamed, no doubt, that her beauty was not dimmed,
but brightened into superhuman splendor. With such
anticipations, he stole reverentially to the door at which
the physician stood, but paused upon the threshold,
gazing fearfully into the gloom of the darkened cham-
ber.

" Where is the Lady Eleauore ? " whispered he.

" Call her," replied the physician.

" Lady Eleanore ! — Princess ! — Queen of Death ! "
cried Jervase Helwyse, advancing three steps into the
chamber. " She is not here ! There, on yonder table, I
behold the sparkle of a diamond which once she wore
upon her bosom. There," — and he shuddered, —
" there hangs her mantle, on which a dead woman em-
broidered a spell of dreadful potency. But where is the
Lady Eleanore F "

Something stirred within the silken curtains of a cano-
pied bed ; and a low moan was uttered, which, listening
intently, Jervase Helwyse began to distinguish as a wo-
man's voice, complaining dolefully of thirst. He fancied,
even, that he recognized its tones.

" My throat ! — my throat is scorched," murmured
the voice. "A drop of water!"

" What thing art thou ? " said the brain-stricken
youth, drawing near the bed and tearing asunder its
curtains. " Whose voice hast thou stolen for thy
murmurs and miserable petitions, as if Lady Eleanore
could be conscious of mortal infirmity ? Fie ! Heap
of diseased mortality, why lurkest thou in my lady's
chamber ? "

"O Jervase Helwyse," said the voice, — and as it
spoke, the figure contorted itself, struggling to hide
its blasted face, — "look not now on the woman you
once loved I The curse of Heaven hath stricken me,

60 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

because I would not call man my brother, nor woman
sister. I wrapped myself in PRIDE as in a MANTLE, and
scorned the sympathies of nature; and therefore has
nature made this wretched body the medium of a dread-
ful sympathy. You are avenged, — they are all avenged,
— nature is avenged, — for I am Eleauore Koch-
cliffe ! "

The malice of his mental disease, the bitterness
lurking at the bottom of his heart, mad as he was,
for a blighted and ruined life, and love that had been
paid with cruel scorn, awoke within the breast of Jer-
vase Helwyse. He shook his finger at the wretched
girl, and the chamber echoed, the curtains of the
bed were shaken, with his outburst of insane merri-
ment.

" Another triumph for the Lady Eleanore ! " he cried.
"All have been her victims ! TV ho so worthy to be the
final victim as herself? "

Impelled by some new fantasy of his crazed intellect,
he snatched the fatal mantle and rushed from the cham-
ber and the house. That night, a procession passed, by
torchlight, through the streets, bearing in the midst the
figure of a woman, enveloped with a richly embroidered
mantle ; while in advance stalked Jervase Helwyse, wav-
ing the red flag of the pestilence. Arriving opposite the
Province House, the mob burned the effigy, and a strong
\vincf came and swept away the ashes. It was said, that,
from that very hour, the pestilence abated, as if its sway
had some mysterious connection, from the first plague-
stroke to the last, with Lady Eleanore's Mantle. A re-
markable uncertainty broods over that unhappy lady's
fate. There is a belief, however, that, in a certain
chamber of this mansion, a female form may sometimes be
duskily discerned, shrinking into the darkest earner, and

LADY ELEANORE'S MANTLE. 61

muffling her face within an embroidered mantle. Sup-
posing the legend true, can this be other than the once
proud Lady Eleanore ? »

Mine host, and the old loyalist, and I bestowed no
little warmth of applause upon this narrative, in which
we had all been deeply interested; for the reader can
scarcely conceive how unspeakably the effect of such a
tale is heightened, when, as in the present case, we may
repose perfect confidence in the veracity of him who
tells it. For my own part, knowing how scrupulous
is Mr. Tiffany to settle the foundation of his facts, I
could not have believed him one whit the more faith-
fully, had he professed himself an eye-witness of the
doings and sufferings of poor Lady Eleanore. Some
sceptics, it is true, might demand documentary evidence,
or even require him to produce the embroidered mantle,
forgetting that — Heaven be praised — it was consumed
to ashes. But now the old loyalist, whose blood was
warmed by the good cheer, began to talk, in his turn,
about the traditions of the Province House, and hinted
that he, if it were agreeable, might add a few reminis-
cences to our legendary stock. Mr. Tiffany, having no
cause to dread a rival, immediately besought him to
favor us with a specimen ; my own entreaties, of course,
were urged to the same effect ; and our venerable guest,
well pleased to find willing auditors, awaited only the
return of Mr. Thomas Waite, who had been summoned
forth to provide accommodations for several new arrivals.
Perchance the public — but be this as its own caprice
and ours shall settle the matter — may read the result
in another Tale of the Province House.

LEGENDS OP THE PROVINCE HOUSE.

IV.
OLD ESTHER DUDLEY.

|UK host having resumed the chair, he, as well
as Mr. Tiffany and myself, expressed much
eagerness to be made acquainted with the story
to which the loyalist had alluded. That venerable man
first of all saw fit to moisten his throat with another
glass of wine, and then, turning his face towards our
coal-fire, looked steadfastly for a few moments into the
depths of its cheerful glow. Finally, he poured forth a
great fluency of speech. The generous liquid that he
had imbibed, while it warmed his age-chilled blood, like-
wise took off the chill from his heart and mind, and gave
him an energy to think and feel, which we could hardly
have expected to find beneath the snows of fourscore
winters. His feelings, indeed, appeared to me more
excitable than those of a younger man ; or, at least,
the same degree of feeling manifested itself by more
visible effects, than if his judgment and will had pos-
sessed the potency of meridian life. At the pathetic
passages of his narrative, he readily melted into tears.
When a breath of indignation swept across his spirit,

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 63

the blood flushed his withered visage even to the roots
of his white hair ; and he shook his clinched fist at the
trio of peaceful auditors, seeming to fancy enemies
in those who felt very kindly towards the desolate old
soul. But ever and anon, sometimes in the midst
of his most earnest talk, this ancient person's intellect
would wander vaguely, losing its hold of the matter in
hand, and groping for it amid misty shadows. Then
would he cackle forth a feeble laugh, and express a
doubt whether his wits — for by. that phrase it pleased
our ancient friend to signify his mental powers — were
not getting a little the worse for wear.

Under these disadvantages, the old loyalist's story re-
quired more revision to render it fit for the public eye,
than those of the series which have preceded it; nor
should it be concealed, that the sentiment and tone of the
affair may have undergone some slight, or perchance more
than slight metamorphosis, in its transmission to the
reader through the medium of a thorough-going demo-
crat. The tale itself is a mere sketch, with no involution
of plot, nor any great interest of events, yet possessing, if
I have rehearsed it aright, that pensive influence over the
mind, which the shadow of the old Province House flings
upon the loiterer in its court-yard.

The hour had come — the hour of defeat and humilia-
tion— when Sir William Howe was to pass over the
threshold of the Province House, and embark, with no
such triumphal ceremonies as he once promised himself,
on board the British fleet. He bade his servants and
military attendants go before him, and lingered a moment
in the loneliness of the mansion, to quell the fierce emo-

64 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

tions that struggled in his bosom as with a death-throb.
Preferable, then, would he have deemed his fate, had a
warrior's death left him a claim to the narrow territory
of a grave, within the soil which the King had given him
to defend. With an ominous perception that, as his de-
parting footsteps echoed adown the staircase, the sway of
Britain was passing forever from New England, lie smote
his clinched hand on his brow, and cursed the destiny
that had flung the shame of a dismembered empire upon
him.

" Would to God," cried he, hardly repressing his .tears
of rage, " that the rebels were even now at the doorstep !
A blood-stain upon the floor should then bear testimony
that the last British ruler was faithful to his trust."

The tremulous voice of a woman replied to his ex-
clamation.

"Heaven's cause and the King's are one," it said.
" Go forth, Sir William Howe, and trust in Heaven to
bring back a Royal Governor in triumph."

Subduing at once the passion to which he had yielded
only in the faith that it was unwitnessed, Sir William
Howe became conscious that an aged woman, leaning on
a gold-headed staff, was standing betwixt him and the
door. It was old Esther Dudley, who had dwelt almost
immemorial years in this mansion, until her presence
seemed as inseparable from it as the recollections of its
history. She was the daughter of an ancient and once
eminent family, which had fallen into poverty and decay,
and left its last descendant no resource save the bounty
of the King, nor any shelter except within the walls of
the Province House. An office in the household, with
merely nominal duties, had been assigned to her as a
pretext for the payment of a small pension, the greater
part of which she expended in adorning herself with an

OLD ESTHEIl DUDLEY. 65

antique magnificence of attire. The claims of Esther
Dudley's gentle blood were acknowledged by all the suc-
cessive governors ; and they treated her with the punc-
tilious courtesy which it was her foible to demand, not
always with success, from a neglectful world. The only
actual share which she assumed in the business of the
mansion was to glide through its passages and public
chambers, late at night, to see that the servants had
dropped no fire from their flaring torches, nor left embers
crackling and blazing on the hearths. Perhaps it was
this invariable custom of walking her rounds in the hush
of midnight, that caused the superstition of the times to
invest the old woman with attributes of awe and mystery ;
fabling that she had entered the portal of the Province
House, none knew whence, in the train of the first royal
governor, and that it was her fate to dwell there till the
last should have departed. But Sir William Howe, if he
ever heard this legend, had forgotten it.

" Mistress Dudley, why are you loitering nere ? "
asked he, with some severity of tone. " It is my pleas-
ure to be the last in this mansion of the King."

" Not so, if it please your Excellency," answered the
time - stricken woman. "This roof has sheltered me
long. 1 will not pass from it until they bear me to the
tomb of my forefathers. What other shelter is there
for old Esther Dudley, save the Province .House or the
grave ? "

" Now Heaven forgive me ! " said Sir William Howe
to himself. "I was about to leave this wretched old
creature to starve or beg. Take this, good Mistress
Dudley," he added, putting a purse into her hands.
" King George's head on these golden guineas is sterling
yet, and will continue so, I warrant you, even should the
rebels crown John Hancock their king. That purse will

66 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

buy a better shelter than the Province House can now
afford."

"While the burden of life remains upon me, I will
have no other shelter than this roof," persisted Esther
Dudley, striking her staff upon the floor, with a gesture
that expressed immovable resolve. " And when your
Excellency returns in triumph, I will totter into the
porch to welcome you."

" My poor old friend ! " answered the British General ;
and all his manly and martial pride could no longer re-
strain a gush of bitter tears. " This is an evil hour for
you and me. The province which the King intrusted to
my charge is lost. I go hence in misfortune — perchance
in disgrace — to return no more. And you, whose pres-
ent being is incorporated with the past, — who have
seen governor after governor, in stately pageantry, ascend
these steps, — whose whole life has been an observance of
majestic ceremonies, and a worship of the King, — how
will \ou endure the change ? Come with us ! Bid fare-
well to a land that has shaken off its allegiance, and live
still under a royal government, at Halifax."

" Never, never ! " said the pertinacious old dame.
" Here will I abide ; and King George shall still have one
true subject in his disloyal province."

" Beshrew the old fool ! " muttered Sir William Howe,
growing impatient of her obstinacy, and ashamed of the
emotion into which he had been betrayed. " She is the
very moral of old-fashioned prejudice, and could exist
nowhere but in this musty edifice. Well, then, Mistress
Dudley, since you will needs tarry, I give the Province
House in charge to you. Take this key, and keep it safe
until myself, or some other royal governor, shall demand
it of you."

Smiling bitterly at himself and her, he took the heavy

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 67

key of the Province House, and delivering it into the old
lady's hands, drew his cloak around him for departure.
As the General glanced back at Esther Dudley's antique
figure, he deemed her well fitted for such a charge, as
being so perfect a representative of the decayed past, —
of an age gone by, with its manners, opinions, faith, and
feelings, all fallen into oblivion or scorn, — of what had
once been a reality, but was now merely a vision of faded
magnificence. Then Sir William Howe strode forth,
smiting his clinched hands together, in the fierce anguish
of his spirit : and old Esther Dudley was left to keep
watch in the lonely Province House, dwelling there with
memory ; and if Hope ever seemed to flit around her, still
it was Memory in disguise.

The total change of affairs that ensued on the depart-
ure of the British troops did not drive the venerable lady
from her stronghold. There was not, for many years
afterwards, a governor of Massachusetts ; and the magis-
trates, who had charge of such matters, saw no objection
to Esther Dudley's residence in the Province House, es-
pecially as they must otherwise have paid a hireling for
taking care of the premises, which with her was a labor
of love. And so they left her, the undisturbed mistress
of the old historic edifice. Many and strange were the
fables which the gossips whispered about her, in all the
chimney -comers of the town. Among the time-worn
articles of furniture that had been left in the mansion,
there was a tall, antique mirror, which was well worthy
of. a tale by itself, and perhaps may hereafter be the theme
of one. The gold of its heavily wrought frame was tar-
nished, and its surface so blurred, that the old woman's
figure, whenever she paused before it, looked indistinct
and ghost-like. But it was the general belief that Esther
could cause the governors of the overthrown dynasty,

68 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

with the beautiful ladies who had once adorned their
festivals, the Indian chiefs who had come up to the
Province House to hold council or swear allegiance, the
grim provincial warriors, the severe clergymen, — in
short, all the pageantry of gone days, — all the figures
that ever swept across the broad plate of glass in former
times, — she could cause the whole to reappear, and peo-
ple the inner world of the mirror with shadows of old life.
Such legends as these, together with the singularity of
her isolated existence, her age, and the infirmity that each
added winter flung upon her, made Mistress Dudley the
object both of fear and pity ; and it was partly the result
of either sentiment, that, amid all the angry license of the
times, neither wrong nor insult ever fell upon her unpro-
tected head. Indeed, there was so much haughtiness in
her demeanor towards intruders, among whom she reck-
oned all persons acting under the new authorities, that it
was really an affair of no small nerve to look her in the
face. And to do the people justice, stern republicans as
they had now become, they were well content that the old
gentlewoman, in her hoop petticoat and faded embroidery,
should still haunt the palace of ruined pride and over-
thrown power, the symbol of a departed system, embody-
ing a history in her person. So Esther Dudley dwelt,
year after year, in the Province House, still reverencing
all that others had flung aside, still faithful to her King,
who, so long as the venerable dame yet held her post,
might be said to retain one true subject in New England,
and one spot of the empire that had been wrested from
him.

And did she dwell there in utter loneliness ? Rumor
said, not so. Whenever her chill and withered heart
desired warmth, she was wont to summon a black slave
of Governor Shirley's from the blurred mirror, and send

OLD ESTHER, DUDLEY. 69

him in search of guests who had long ago been familiar
in those deserted chambers. Forth went the sable mes-
senger, with the starlight or the moonshine gleaming
through him, and did his errand in the burial-ground,
knocking at the iron doors of tombs, or upon the marble
slabs that covered them, and whispering to those within,
" My mistress, old Esther Dudley, bids you to the. Prov-
ince House at midnight." And punctually as the clock
of the Old South told twelve, came the shadows of the
Olivers, the Hutchinsons, the Dudleys, all the grandees
of a bygone generation, gliding beneath the portal into
the well-known mansion, where Esther mingled with them
as if she likewise were a shade. Without vouching for
the truth of such traditions, it is certain that Mistress
Dudley sometimes assembled a few of the stanch, though
crestfallen old tories who had lingered in the rebel town
during those days of wrath and tribulation. Out of a
cobwebbed bottle, containing liquor that a royal governor
might have smacked his lips over, they quaffed healths to
the King, and babbled treason to the Republic, feeling
as if the protecting shadow of the throne were still flung
around them. But, draining the last drops of their liquor,
they Stole timorously homeward, and answered not again,
if the rude mob reviled them in the street.

Yet Esther Dudley's most frequent and favored guests
were the children of the town. Towards them she was
never stern. A kindly and loving nature, hindered else-
where from its free course by a thousand rocky preju-
dices, lavished itself upon these little ones. By bribes of
gingerbread of her own making, stamped with a royal
crown, she tempted their sunny sportiveness beneath the
gloomy portal of the Province House, and would often
beguile them to spend a whole play-day there, sitting in
a circle round the verge of her hoop petticoat, greedily

70 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

attentive to her stories of a dead world. And when these
little boys and girls stole forth again from the dark, mys-
terious mansion, they went bewildered, full of old feelings
that graver people had long ago forgotten, rubbing their
eyes at the world around them as if they had gone astray
into ancient times, and become children of the past. At
home, when their parents asked where they had loitered
such a weary while, and with whom they had been at
play, the children would talk of all the departed worthies
of the province, as far back as Governor Belcher, and
the haughty dame of Sir William Phipps. It would
seem as though they had been sitting on the knees of
these famous personages, whom the grave had hidden
for half a century, and had toyed with the embroidery of
their rich waistcoats, or roguishly pulled the long curls
of their flowing wigs. " But Governor Belcher has been
dead this many a year," would the mother say to her
little boy. " And did you really see him at the Province
House ? " " O, yes, dear mother ! yes ! " the half-
dreaming child would answer. " But when old Esther
had done speaking about him he faded away out of his
chair." Thus, without affrighting her little guests, she
led them by the hand into the chambers of her own'deso^
late heart, and made childhood's fancy discern the ghosts
that haunted there.

Living so continually in her own circle of ideas, and
never regulating her mind by a proper reference to
present things, Esther Dudley appears to have grown
partially crazed. It was found that she had no right
sense of the progress and true state of the Revolutionary
War, but held a constant faith that the armies of Britain
were victorious on every field, and destined to be ulti-
mately triumphant. Whenever the town rejoiced for a
battle won by Washington,- or Gates, or Morgan, or

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 71

Greene, the news, in passing through the door of the
Province House, as through the ivory gate of dreams,
became metamorphosed into a strange tale of the prowess
of Howe, Clinton, or Cornwallis. Sooner or later, it
was her invincible belief, the colonies would be prostrate
at the footstool of the King. Sometimes she seemed to
take for granted that such was already the case. On
one occasion, she startled the towns-people by a brill-
iant illumination of the Province House, with candles at
every pane of glass, and a transparency of the King's
initials and a crown of light, in the great balcony win-
dow. The figure of the aged woman, in the most gor-
geous of her mildewed velvets and brocades, was seen
passing from casement to casement, until she paused be-
fore the balcony, and flourished a huge key above her
head. Her wrinkled visage actually gleamed with tri-
umph, as if the soul within her were a festal lamp.

"What means this blaze of light? What does old
Esther's joy portend ? " whispered a spectator. " It is
frightful to see her gliding about the chambers, and re-
joicing there without a soul to bear her company."

" It is as if she were making merry in a tomb," said
another.

"Pshaw! It is no such mystery," observed an old
man, after some brief exercise of memory. " Mistress
Dudley is keeping jubilee for the King of England's
birthday."

Then the people laughed aloud, and would have
thrown mud against the blazing transparency of the
King's crown and initials, only that they pitied the
poor old dame, who was so dismally triumphant amid •
the wreck and ruiii of tha system to which she apper-
tained.

Oftentimes it was her custom to climb the weary stair-

72 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

case that wound upward to the cupola, and thence strain
her dimmed eyesight seaward and countryward, watching
for a British fleet, or for the inarch of a grand proces-
sion, with the King's banner floating over it. The pas-
sengers in the street below would discern her anxious
visage, and send up a shout, " When the golden In-
dian on the Province House shall shoot his arrow, and
when the cock on the Old South spire shall crow, then
look for a royal governor again ! " — for this had grown
a byword through the town. And at last, after long,
long years, old Esther Dudley knew, or perchance she
only dreamed, that a royal governor was on the eve of
returning to the Province House, to receive the heavy
key which Sir William Howe had committed to her
charge. Now it was the fact, that intelligence bearing
some faint analogy to Esther's version of it, was current
among the towns-people. She set the mansion in the
best order that her means allowed, and arraying herself
in silks and tarnished gold, stood long before the blurred
mirror to admire her own magnificence. As she gazed,
the gray and withered lady moved her ashen lips, mur-
muring half aloud, talking to shapes that she saw within
1 he mirror, to shadows of her own fantasies, to the house-
hold friends of memory, and bidding them rejoice with
her, and come forth to meet the governor. And while
absorbed in this communion, Mistress Dudley heard the
tramp of many footsteps in the street, and looking out
at the window, beheld what she construed as the royal
governor's arrival.

" O happy day ! O blessed, blessed hour ! " she ex-
claimed. " Let me but bid him welcome within the por-
tal, and my task in the Province House, and on earth,
is done ! "

Then with tottering feet, which age and tremulous joy

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. 73

caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand stair-
case, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went, so that
the sound was as if a train. of spectral courtiers were
thronging from the dim mirror. And Esther Dudley
fancied, that as soon as the wide door should be flung
open, all the pomp and splendor of bygone times would
pace majestically into the Province House, and the gilded
tapestry of tha past would be brightened by the sunshine
of the present. She turned the key, — withdrew it from
the lock, — unclosed the door, — and stepped across the
threshold. Advancing up the court-yard appeared a
person of most dignified mien, with tokens, as Esther
interpreted them, of gentle blood, high rank, and long-
accustomed authority, even in his walk and every ges-
ture. He was richly dressed, but wore a gouty shoe,
which, however, did not lessen the stateliuess of his gait.
Around and behind him were people in plain civic
dresses, and two or three war-worn veterans, evidently
officers of rank, arrayed in a uniform of blue and buff.
But Esther Dudley, hrm in the belief that had fastened
its roots about her heart, beheld only the principal per-
sonage, and never doubted that this Was the long-looked -
for governor, to whom she was to surrender up her
charge. As he approached, she involuntarily sank down
on her knees, and tremblingly held forth the heavy key.

" Receive my trust ! take it quickly ! " cried she ;
" for methinks Death is striving to snatch away my tri-
umph. But he comes too late. Thank Heaven for this
blessed hour! God save King George!"

" That, madam, is a strange prayer to be offered up
at such a moment," replied the unknown guest of the
Province House, and courteously removing his hat, he
offered his arm to raise the aged woman. •" Yet, in rev-
erence for your gray hairs and long-kept faith, Heaven

VOL. II. 4

74 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

forbid that any here should say you nay. Over the
realms which still acknowledge his sceptre, God save
King George ! "

Esther Dudley started to her feet, and hastily clutch-
ing back the key, gazed with fearful earnestness at the
stranger; and dimly and doubtfully, as if suddenly
awakened from a dream, her bewildered eyes half rec-
ognized his face. Years ago, she had known. him among
the gentry of the province. But the ban of the King
had fallen upon him ! How, then, came the doomed
victim here ? Proscribed, excluded from mercy, the
monarch's most dreaded and hated foe, this New Eng-
land merchant had stood triumphantly against a king-
dom's strength ; and his foot now trod upon humbled
royalty, as he ascended the steps of the Province House,
the people's chosen governor of Massachusetts.

"Wretch, wretch that I am ! " muttered the old wo-
man, with such a heart-broken expression, that the tears
gushed from the stranger's eyes. " Have I bidden a
traitor welcome ? Come, Death ! come quickly ! "

" Alas, venerable lady ! " said Governor Hancock,
lending her his support with all the reverence that a
courtier would have shown to a queen. " Your life has
been prolonged until the world has changed around you.
You have treasured up all that time has rendered worth-
less, — the principles, feelings, manners, modes of being
and acting, which another generation has flung aside, —
and you are a symbol of the past. And I, and these
around me, — we represent a new race of men, — living
no longer in the past, scarcely in the present, — but pro-
jecting our lives forward into the future. Ceasing to
model ourselves on ancestral superstitions, it is our faith
and principle- to press onward, onward! Y~et," continued
he, turning to his attendants, "let us reverence, for the

OLD ESTHER DUDLEY. » 75

last time, the stately and gorgeous prejudices of the
tottering Past ! "

While the republican governor spoke, he had con-
tinued to support the helpless form of Esther Dudley ;
her weight grew heavier against his arm ; ' but at last,
with a sudden effort to free herself, the ancient woman
sank down beside one of the pillars of the portal. The
key of the Province House fell from her grasp, and
clanked against the stone.

" I have been faithful unto death,'5 murmured she.
" God save the King ! "

" She hath done her office ! " said Hancock, solemnly.
" We will follow her reverently to the tomb of her an-
cestors ; and then, my fellow-citizens, onward, — oil ward !
We are no longer children of the Past ! "

As the old loyalist concluded his narrative, the enthu-
siasm which had been fitfully flashing within his sunken
eyes, and quivering across his wrinkled visage, faded
away, as if all the lingering fire of his soul were extin-
guished. Just then, too, a lamp upon the mantel-piece
threw out a dying gleam, which vanished as speedily as
it shot upward, compelling our eyes to grope for one
another's features by the dim glow of the hearth. With
such a lingering fire, methought, with such a dying gleam,
had the glory of the ancient system vanished from the
Province House, when the spirit of old Esther Dudley
took its flight. And now, again, the clock of the Old
South threw its voice of ages on the breeze, knolling the
hourly knell of the Past, crying out far and wide through
the multitudinous city, and filling our ears, as we sat in
the dusky chamber, with its reverberating depth of tone.

76 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

In that same mansion, — in that very chamber, — what
a volume of history had been told off into hours, by the
same voice that was now trembling in the air. Many a
governor had heard those midnight accent s, and longed
to exchange his stately cares for slumber. And as for
mine host, and Mr. Bela Tiffany, and the old loyalist,
and me, we had babbled about dreams of the past, until
we almost fancied that the clock was still striking in a
bygone century. Neither of us would have wondered,
had a hoop-petticoated phantom of Esther Dudley tottered
into the chamber, walking her rounds in the hush of
midnight, as of yore, and motioned us to quench the
fading embers of the fire, and leave the historic precincts
to herself and her kindred shades. But as no such vision
was vouchsafed, I retired unbidden, and would advise
Mr. Tiffany to lay hold of another auditor, being resolved
not to show my face in the Province House for a good
while hence, — if ever.

THE HAUNTED MIND.

ill AT a singular moment is the first one, when
you have hardly begun to recollect yourself
after starting from midnight slumber ! By un-
closing your eyes so suddenly, you seem to have surprised
the personages of your dream in full convocation round
your bed, and catcli one broad glance at them before they
can flit into obscurity. Or, to vary the metaphor, you
find yourself, for a single instant, wide awake in that
realm of illusions, whither sleep has been the passport,
and behold its ghostly inhabitants and w^ondrous scenery,
with a perception of their strangeness, such as you never
attain while the dream is undisturbed. The distant sound
of a church-clock is borne faintly on the wind. You
question with yourself, half seriously, whether it has
stolen to your waking ear from some gray tower, that
stood within the precincts of your dream. While yet in
suspense, another clock flings its heavy clang over tho
slumbering town, with so full and distinct a sound, and
such a long murmur in the neighboring air, that you are
certain it must proceed from the steeple at the nearest
corner. You count the strokes — one — two, and there
they cease, with a booming sound, like the gathering of
a third stroke within the bell.

78 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

If you could choose an hour of wakefulness out of the
whole night, it would be this. Since your sober bedtime,
at eleven, you have had rest enough to take off the press-
ure of yesterday's fatigue ; while before you, till the sun
comes from " far Cathay" to brighten your window, there
is almost the space of a summer night ; one hour to be
spent in thought, with the mind's eye half shut, and two
in pleasant dreams, and two in that strangest of enjoy-
ments, the forgetfulness alike of joy and woe. The
moment of rising belongs to another period of time, and
appears so distant, that the plunge out of a warm bed
into the frosty air cannot yet be anticipated with dismay.
Yesterday has already vanished among the shadows of the
past ; to-morrow has not yet emerged from the future.
You have found an intermediate space, where the busi-
ness of life does not intrude ; where the passing moment
lingers, and becomes truly the present ; a spot where
Father Time, when he thinks nobody is watching him,
sits down by the wayside to take breath. O that he
would fall asleep, and let mortals live on without growing
older !

Hitherto you have lain perfectly still, because the
slightest motion would dissipate the fragments of your
slumber. Now, being irrevocably awake, you peep
through the half-drawn window-curtain, and observe
that the glass is ornamented with fanciful devices in
frostwork, and that each pane presents something like a
frozen dream. There will be time enough to trace out the
analogy, while waiting the summons to breakfast. Seen
through the clear portion of the glass, where the silvery
mountain-peaks of the frost scenery do not ascend, the
most conspicuous object is the steeple, the white spire of
which directs you to the wintry lustre of the firmament.
You may almost distinguish the figures on the clock that

THE HAUNTED MIND. 79

1ms just told the hour. Such a frosty sky, and the
snow-covered roofs, and the long vista of the frozen
street, all white, and the distant water hardened into
rock, might make you shiver, even under four blankets
and a woollen comforter. Yet look at that one glorious
star ! Its beams are distinguishable from all the rest,
and actually cast the shadow of the casement on the bed,
with a radiance of deeper hue than moonlight, though
not so accurate an outline.

You sink down and muffle your head in the clothes,
shivering all the while, but less from bodily chill than
the bare idea of a polar atmosphere. It is too cold even
for the thoughts to venture abroad. You speculate on
the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like
an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy
of inaction, and drowsily conscious of nothing but deli-
cious warmth, such as you now feel again. Ah! that
idea has brought a hideous one in its train. You think
how the dead are lying in their cold shrouds and narrow
coffins, through the drear winter of the grave, and can-
not persuade your fancy that they neither shrink nor
shiver, when the snow is drifting over their little hillocks,
and the bitter blast howls against the door of the tomb.
That gloomy thought will collect a gloomy multitude,
and throw its complexion over your wakeful hour.

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a
dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above
may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried
ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes,
and oftenest at midnight, these dark receptacles are flung
wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a
passive sensibility, but no active strength ; when the
imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas,
without the power of selecting or controlling them ; then

80 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

pray that your griefs may slumber, and the brotherhood
of remorse not break their chain. It is too late ! A fu-
neral train comes gliding by your bed, in which Passion
and Feeling assume bodily shape, and things of the mind
become dim spectres to the eye. There is your earliest
Sorrow, a pale young mourner, wearing a sister's like-
ness to first love, sadly beautiful, with a hallowed sweet-
ness in her melancholy features, and grace in the flow of
her sable robe. Next appears a shade of ruined loveli-
ness, with dust among her golden hair, and her bright
garments all faded and defaced, stealing from your
glance with drooping head, as fearful of reproach ; she
was your fondest. Hope, but a delusive one; so call her
Disappointment now. A sterner form succeeds, with a
brow of wrinkles, a look and gesture of iron authority ;
there is no name for him unless it be Fatality, an em-
blem of the evil influence that rules your fortunes; a
demon to whom you subjected yourself by some error at
the outset of life, and were bound his slave forever, by
once obeying him. See ! those fiendish lineaments gra-
ven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mock-
ery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the
sore place in your heart ! Do you remember any act of
enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the
remotest cavern of the earth ? Then recognize your
SliMme.

Pass, wretched baud ! Well for the wakeful one,
if, riotously miserable, a fiercer tribe do not surround
him, the devils of a guilty heart, that holds its hell
within itself. What if Remorse should assume the
features of an injured friend ? What if the fiend stiould
come in woman's garments, with a pale beauty amid sin
and desolation, and lie down by your side ? What if he
should stand at your bed's foot, in the likeness of a

THE HAUNTED MIND. 81

corpse, with a bloody stain upon the shroud ? Sufficient
without such guilt is this nightmare of the soul ; this
heavy, heavy sinking of the spirits ; this wintry gloom
about the heart ; this indistinct horror of the mind,
blending itself with the darkness of the chamber.

By a desperate effort, you start upright, breaking from
a sort of conscious sleep, and gazing wildly round the
bed, as if the fiends were anywhere but in your haunted
mind. At the same moment, the slumbering embers on
the hearth send forth a gleam which palely illuminates
the whole outer room, and flickers through the door of
the bedchamber, but cannot quite dispel its obscurity.
Your eye searches for whatever may remind you of the
living world. With eager minuteness, you take note of
the table near the fireplace, the book with an ivory knife
between its leaves, the unfolded letter, the hat, and the
fallen glove. Soon the flame vanishes, and with it the
whole scene is gone, though its image remains an instant
in your mind's eye, when darkness has swallowed the
reality. Throughout the chamber, there is the same ob-
scurity as before, but not the same gloom within your
breast. As your head falls back upon the pillow, you
think — in a whisper be it spoken — how pleasant in
these night solitudes would be the rise and fall of a
softer breathing than your own, the slight pressure of a
tenderer bosom, the quiet throb of a purer heart, impart-
ing its peace fulness to your troubled one, as if the fond
sleeper were involving you in her dream.

Her influence is over you, though she have no exist-
ence but in that momentary image. You sink down in
a flowery spot, on the borders of sleep and wakefulness,
while your thoughts rise before you in pictures, all dis-
connected, yet all assimilated by a pervading gladsome-
ness and beauty. The wheeling of gorgaous squadrons,
4* -F"

82 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

that glitter in the sun, is succeeded by the merriment
of children round the door of a school-house, beneath
the glimmering shadow of old trees, at the corner of a
rustic lane. You stand in the sunny rain of a summer
shower, and wander among the sunny trees of an autum-
nal wood, and look upward at the brightest of all rain-
bows, overarching the unbroken sheet of snow, on the •
American side of Niagara. Your mind struggles pleas-
antly between the dancing radiance round the hearth of
a young man and his recent bride, and the twittering
flight of birds in spring, about their new-made nest.
You feel the merry bounding of a ship before the
breeze; and watch the tuneful feet of rosy girls, as
they twine their last and merriest dance in a splendid
ballroom ; and find yourself in the brilliant circle of a
crowded theatre, as the curtain falls over a light and
airy scene.

With an involuntary start, you seize hold on con-
sciousness, and prove yourself but half awake, by run-
ning a doubtful parallel between human life and the
hour which has now elapsed. In both you emerge
from mystery, pass through a vicissitude that you can
but imperfectly control, and are borne onward to an-
other mystery. Now comes the peal of the distant
clock, with fainter and fainter strokes as you plunge
further into the wilderness of sleep. It is the knell of
a temporary death. Your spirit has departed, and strays
like a free citizen, among the people of a shadowy world,
beholding strange sights, yet without wonder or dismay.
So calm, perhaps, will be the final change; so undis-
turbed, as if among familiar things, the entrance of the
soul to its Eternal home !

THE VILLAGE UNCLE.

AN IMAGINARY RETROSPECT.

OME ! another log upon the hearth. True, our
little parlor is comfortable, especially here, where
the old man sits in his old arm-chair; but on
Thanksgiving night the blaze should dance higher up
the chimney, and send a shower of sparks into the
outer darkness. Toss on an armful of those dry oak
chips, the last relics of the Mermaid's knee-timbers, the
bones of your namesake, Susan. Higher yet, and clearer
be the blaze, till our cottage windows glow the ruddiest
in the village, and the light of our household mirth
flash far across the bay to Nahant. And now, come,
Susan, come, my children, draw your chairs round me,
all of you. There is a dimness over your figures ! You
sit quivering indistinctly with each motion of the blaze,
which eddies about you like a flood, so that you all have
the look of visions, or people that dwell only in the fire-
light, aiid will vanish from existence, as completely as
your own shadows, when the flame shall sink among
the embers. Hark ! let ma listen for the swell of the
surf- it should be audible a mile inland, on a night like
this. Yes ; there I catch the sound, but only an uncer-
tain murmur, as if a good way dDwn over the beach ;

84 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

though, by the almanac, it is high tide at eight o'clock,
'and the billows must now be dashing within thirty yards
of our door. Ah ! the old man's ears are failing him ;
• and so is his eyesight, and perhaps his mind ; else you
would not all be so shadowy, in the blaze of his Thanks-
giving fire.

How strangely the Past is peeping over the shoulders
of the Present ! To judge by my recollections, it is but
a few moments since I sat in another room ; yonder
model of a vessel was not there, nor the old chest of
drawers, nor Susan's profile and mine, in that gilt frame ;
nothing, in short, except this same fire, which glimmered
on books, papers, and a picture, and half discovered my
solitary figure in a looking-glass. But it was paler than
my rugged old self, and younger, too, by almost half a
century. Speak to me, Susan ; speak, my beloved ones ;
for the scene is glimmering on my sight again, and as
it brightens you fade away. O, I should be loath to
lose my treasure of past happiness, and become once
more what I was then ; a hermit in the depths of my
own mind; sometimes yawning over drowsy volumes,
and anon a scribbler of wearier trash than what I read ;
a man who had wandered out of the real world and got
into its shadow, where his troubles, joys, and vicissitudes
were of such slight stuff, that he hardly knew whether
he lived, or only dreamed of living. Thank Heaven,
I am an old man now, and have done with all such
vanities !

Still this dimness of mine eyes ! Come nearer, Susan,
and stand before the fullest blaze of the hearth. Now
I behold you illuminated from head to foot, in your
clean cap and decent gown, with the dear lock of gray
hair across your forehead, and a quiet smile about your
mouth, while the eyes alone are concealed, by the led

THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 85

gleam of the fire upon your spectacles. There, you
made me tremble again ! When the flame quivered,
my sweet Susan, you quivered with it, and grew indis-
tinct, as if melting into the warm light, that my last
glimpse of you might be as visionary as the first was,
full many a year since. Do you remember it ? You
stood on the little bridge, over the brook, that runs
across King's Beach into the sea. It was twilight ; the
waves rolling in, the wind sweeping by, the crimson
clouds fading in the west, and the silver moon bright-
ening above the hill ; and on the bridge were you, flut-
tering in the breeze like a sea-bird that might skim away
at your pleasure. You seemed a daughter of the view-
less wind, a creature of' the ocean foam and the crimson
light, whose merry life was spent in dancing on the crests
of the billows, that threw up their spray to support your
footsteps. As I drew nearer, I fancied you akin to the
racs of mermaids, and thought how pleasant it would be
to dwell with you among the quiet coves, in the shadow
of the cliffs, and to roam along secluded beaches of the
purest sand, and when our northern shores grew bleak,
to haunt the islands, green and lonely, far amid summer
seas. And yet it gladdened me, after all this nonsense,
to find you nothing but a pretty young girl, sadly per-
plexed with the rude behavior of the wind about your
petticoats.

Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in
my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind and
coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues, before I could
see her as she really was. Now, Susan, for a sober
picture of our village ! It was a small collection of
dwellings that seemed to have been cast up by the
sea, with the rock-weed and marine plants that it vom-
its after a storm, or to have come ashore among the

50 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

pipe-staves and other lumber, which had been washed
from the deek of an Eastern schooner. There was just
space for the narrow and sandy street between the
beach in front, and a precipitous hill that lifted its
rocky forehead in the rear, among a waste of juniper-
bushes and the wild growth of a broken pasture. The
village was picturesque, in the variety of its edifices,
though all were rude. Here stood a little old hovel,
built, perhaps, of drift-wood, there a row of boat-houses,
and beyond them a two-story dwelling, of dark and
weather-beaten aspect, the whole intermixed with one
or two snug cottages, painted white, a sufficiency of
pigsties, and a shoemaker's shop. Two grocery-stores
stand opposite each other, in the centre of the village.
These were the places of resort, at their idle hours, of
a hardy throng of fishermen, in red baize shirts, oil-
cloth trousers, and boots of brown leather covering the
whole leg ; true seven-league boots, but fitter to Avade
the ocean than walk the earth. The wearers seemed
amphibious, as if they did but creep out of salt water
to sun themselves; nor would it have been wonderful
to see their lower limbs covered with clusters of little
shellfish, such as cling to rocks and old ship-timber
over which the tide ebbs and flows. "When their fleet
of boats was weather-bound, the butchers raised their
price, and the spit was busier than the frying-pan ; for
this was a place of fish, and known as such, to all the
country round about ; the very air was fishy, being
perfumed with dead sculpins, hardheads, and dogfish,
strewn plentifully on the beach. You see, children,
the village is but little changed, since your mother and
I were young.

How like a dream it was, when I bent over a pool
of water, one pleasant morning, and saw that the ocean

THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 87

had dashed its spray over me and made me a fisherman !
There were the tarpauling, the baize shirt, the oil-cloth
trousers and seven-league boots, and there my own fea-
tures, but so reddened with sunburn and sea-breezes,
that methought I had another face, and on other shoul-
ders too. The sea-gulls and the loons, and I, had now
all one trade ; we skimmed the crested waves and sought
our prey beneath them, the man with as keen enjoy-
ment as the birds. Always, when the east grew purple,
I launched my dory, my little flat-bottomed skiff, and
rowed cross-handed to Point Ledge, the Middle Ledge,
or, perhaps, beyond Egg Rock ; often, too, did I anchor
off Dread Ledge, a spot of peril to ships unpiloted ; and
sometimes spread an adventurous sail and tracked across
the bay to South Shore, casting my lines in sight of
Scituate. Ere nightfall, I hauled my skiff high and dry
on the beach, laden with red rock-cod, or the white-
bellied ones of deep water ; haddock, bearing the black
marks of St. Peter's fingers near tiie gills ; the long-
bearded hake, whose liver holds oil enough for a mid-
night lamp; and now and then a mighty halibut, with
a back broad as my boat. In the autumn, I trolled and
caught those lovely fish, the mackerel. When the wind
was high, — when the whale-boats, anchored off the
Point, nodded their slender masts at each other, and
the dories pitched and tossed in 'the surf, — when Na-
hant Beach was thundering three miles off, and the
spray broke a hundred feet in air, round the distant
base of Egg Rock, — when the brimful and boisterous
sea threatened to tumble over the street of our village,
— then I made a holiday on shore.

Many such a day did I sit snugly in Mr. Bartlett's
store, attentive to the yarns of Uncle Parker ; uncle to
the whole village, by right of seniority, but of Southern

88 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

blood, with no kindred in New England. His figure is
before me now, enthroned upon a mackerel-barrel; a
lean old man, of great height, but bent with years, and
twisted into an uncouth shape by seven broken limbs ;
furrowed also, and weather-worn, as if every gale, for
the better part of a century, had caught him somewhere
on the sea. He looked like a harbinger of tempest, a
shipmate of the Flying Dutchman. After innumerable
voyages aboard men-of-war and merchant-men, fishing-
schooners and chebacco-boats, the old salt had become
master of a handcart, which he daily trundled about the
vicinity, and sometimes blew his fish-horn through the
streets of Salem. One of Uncle Parker's eyes had been
blown out with gunpowder, and the other did but glim-
mer in its socket. Turning it upward as he spoke, it
was his delight to tell of cruises against the French, and
battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antago-
nist used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each
fastened down by a spike-nail through his trousers, and
there to fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the
delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and goose-like
fowl, which the sailors catch with hook and line on the
Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on an intermina-
ble winter at the Isle of Sables, where he had gladdened
himself, amid polar snows, with the rum and sugar saved
from the wreck of a West India schooner. And wrath-
fully did he shake his fist, as he related how a party of
Cape Cod men had robbed him and his companions of
their lawful spoil, and sailed away with every keg of old
Jamaica, leaving him not a drop to drown his sorrow.
Villains they were, and of that wicked brotherhood who
are said to tie lanterns to horses' tails, to mislead the
mariner along the dangerous shores of the Cape.

Even now I seem to see the group of fishermen, with

THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 89

that old salt in the midst. One fellow sits on the coun-
ter, a second bestrides an oil-barrel, a third lolls at his
length on a parcel of new cod-lines, and another has
planted the tarry seat of his trousers on a heap of salt,
which will shortly be sprinkled over a lot of fish. They
are a likely set of men. Some have voyaged to the East
Indies or the Pacific, and most of them have sailed in
Marblehead schooners to Newfoundland ; a few have been
no farther than the Middle Banks, and one or two have
always fished along the shore ; but, as Uncle Parker used
to say, they have all been christened in salt water, and
know more than men ever learn in the bushes. A curi-
ous figure, by way of contrast, is a fish-dealer from far-
up country, listening with eyes wide open to narratives
that might startle Sindbad the sailor. Be it well with
you, my brethren ! Ye are all gone, some to your graves
ashore, and others to the depths of ocean ; but my faith
is strong that ye are happy ; for whenever I behold your
forms, whether in dream or vision, each departed friend
is puffing his long-nine, and a mug of the right black-
strap goes round from lip to lip.

But where was the mermaid in those delightful times ?
At a certain window near the centre of the village ap-
peared a pretty display of gingerbread men and horses,
picture-books and ballads, small fish-hooks, pins, needles, '
sugar-plums, and brass thimbles, articles on which the
young fishermen used to expend their money from pure
gallantry. What a picture was Susan behind the coun-
ter ! A slender maiden,- though the child of rugged
parents, she had the slimmest of all waists, brown hair
curling on her neck, and a complexion rather pale, except
when the sea-breeze flushed it. A few freckles became
beauty-spots beneath her eyelids. How was it, Susan,
that you talked and acted so carelessly, yet always for the

90 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

best, doing whatever was right iii your own eyes, and never
once doing wrong in mine, nor shocked a taste that had
been morbidly sensitive till now ? And whence had you
that happiest gift, of brightening every topic with an un-
sought gayety, quiet but irresistible, so that even gloomy
spirits felt your sunshine, and did not shrink from it ?
Nature wrought the charm. She made you a frank, sim-
ple, kind-hearted, sensible, and mirthful girl. Obeying
nature, you did free things without indelicacy, displayed
a nuddcn's thoughts to every eye, and proved yourself as
innocent as naked Eve.

It was beautiful to observe, how her simple and
happy nature mingled itself with mine. She kindled a
domestic fire within my heart, and took up her dwell-
ing there, even in that chill and lonesome cavern hung
round with glittering icicles of fancy. She gave me
warmth of feeling, while the influence of my mind made
her contemplative. I taught her to love the moonlight
hour, when the expanse of the encircled bay was smooth
as a great mirror and slept in a transparent shadow ;
while beyond Nahant, the wind rippled the dim ocean
into a dreamy brightness, which grew faint afar off, with-
out becoming gloomier. I held her hand and pointed
to the long surf wave, as it rolled calmly on the beach, in
an unbroken line of silver ; we were silent together, till
its deep and peaceful murmur had swept by us. When
the. Sabbath sun shone down into the recesses of the
cliffs, I led the mermaid thither, and told her that those
huge, gray, shattered rocks, and her native sea, that
raged forever like a storm against them, and her own
slender beauty, in so stern a scene, were all combined
into a strain of poetry. But on the Sabbath eve, when
her mother had gone early to bed, and her gentle sister
had smiled and left us, as we sat alone by the quiet hearth,

THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 91

with household tilings around, it was her turn to make
me feel that here was a deeper poetry, and that this was
the dearest hour of all. Thus went on our wooing, till
I had shot wild-fowl enough to feather our bridal bed,
and the Daughter of the Sea was mine.

I built a cottage for Susan and myself, and made a
gateway in the form of a Gothic arch, by setting up a
whale's jaw-bones. We bought a heifer with her first
calf, and had a little garden on the hillside, to supply us
with potatoes and green sauce for our fish. Our parlor,
small and neat, was ornamented with our two profiles in
one gilt frame, and with shells and pretty pebbles on the
mantel-piece, selected from the sea's treasury of such
things, on Nahant Beach. On the desk, beneath the
looking-glass, lay the Bible, which I had begun to read
aloud at the Book of Genesis, and the singing-book that
Susan used for her evening psalm. Except the almanac,
we had no other literature. All that I heard of books,
was when an Indian history, or tale of shipwreck, was
sold by a pedler or wandering subscription-man, to some
one in the village, and read through its owner's nose to
a slumberous auditory. Like my brother fishermen, I
grew into the belief that all human erudition was col-
lected in our pedagogue, whose green spectacles and
solemn phiz, as he passed to his little school-house, amid
a waste of sand, might have gained him a diploma from
any college in New England. In truth I dreaded him.
When our children were old enough to claim his 'care,
you remember, Susan, how I frowned, though you were
pleased, at this learned man's encomiums on their pro-
ficiency. I feared to trust them even with the alphabet ;
it was the key to a fatal treasure.

But I loved to lead them by their little hands along
the beach, and point to nature in the vast and the minute,

92 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

the sky, the sea, the green earth, the pebbles, and the
shells. Then did I discourse of the mighty works and
coextensive goodness of the Deity, with the simple wis-
dom of a man whose mind had profited by lonely days
upon the deep, and his heart by the strong and pure
aflections of his evening home. Sometimes my voice
lost itself in a tremulous depth ; for I felt His eye upon
ine as I spoke. Once, while my wife and all of us were
gazing at ourselves, in the mirror left by the tide in a
hollow of the sand, I pointed to tlie pictured heaven
below, and bade her observe how religion was' strewn
everywhere in our path; since even a casual pool of
water recalled the idea of that home whither we were
travelling, to rest forever with our children. Suddenly,
your image, Susan, and all the little faces made up of
yours and mine, seemed to fade away and vanish around
me, leaving a pale visage like my own of former days
within the frame of a large looking-glass. Strange illu-
sion!

My life glided on, the past appearing to mingle with
the present and absorb the future, till the whole lies
before me at a glance. My manhood has long been
waning with a stanch decay ; my earlier contemporaries,
after lives of unbroken health, are all at rest, without
having known the weariness of later age ; and now, with
a wrinkled forehead and thin white hair as badges of
my dignity, I have become the patriarch, the Uncle of the
village. I love that name; it widens the circle of my
sympathies ; it joins all the youthful to my household, in
the kindred of affection.

Like Uncle Parker, whose rheumatic bones were dashed
against Egg Hock, full forty years ago, I am a spinner
of long yarns. Seated on the gunwale of a dory, or on
the sunny side of a boat-house, where the warmth is

THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 93

grateful to my limbs, or by my own hearth, when a friend
or two are there, I overflow with talk, and yet am never
tedious. With a broken voice I give utterance to much
wisdom. Such, Heaven be praised ! is the vigor of my
faculties, that many a forgotten usage, and traditions
ancient in my youth, and e.arly adventures of myself or
others, hitherto effaced by things more recent, acquire
new distinctness in my memory. I remember the happy
days when the haddock were more numerous on all the
fishing-grounds than sculpins in the surf; when the d^ep-
water cod swam close in shore, and the dogfish, jpth his
poisonous horn, had not learned to take the hook. I can
number every equinoctial storm, in which the sea has
overwhelmed the street, flooded the cellars of the villaga,
and hissed upon our kitchen hearth. I give the history
of the great whale that was landed on Whale Beach, and
whose jaws, being now my gateway, will last for ages
after my coffin shall have passed beneath them. Thence
it is an easy digression to the halibut, scarcely smaller
than the whale, which ran out six cod-lines, and hauled
my dory to the mouth of Boston Harbor, before I could
touch him with the gaff.

If melancholy accidents be the theme of conversation,
I tell how a friend of mine was taken out of his boat by
an enormous shark ; and the sad, true tale of a young
man on the eve of marriage, who had been nine days
missing, when his drowned body floated into the very
pathway, on Marblehead Neck, that had often led him
to the dwelling of his bride ; as if the dripping corpse
would have come where the mourner was. With such
awful fidelity did that lover return to fulfil his vows !
Another favorite story is of a crazy maiden, who con-
versed with angels and had the gift of prophecy, and
whom all the village loved and pitied, though she went

94 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

from door to door accusing us of sin, exhorting to
repentance, and foretelling our destruction by flood or
earthquake. If the young men boast their knowledge
of the ledges and sunken rocks, I speak of pilots, who
knew the wind by its scent and the wave by its taste,
and could have steered blindfold to any port between
Boston and Mount Desert, guided only by the rote of
the shore ; the peculiar sound of the surf on each island,
beach, and line of rocks, along the coast. Thus do I
talk, and all my auditors grow wise, while they deem it
pastime.

I recollect no happier portion of my life, than this, my
calm old age. It is like the sunny and sheltered slope of
a valley, where, late in the autumn, the grass is greener
than in August, and intermixed with golden dandelions,
that have not been seen till now, since the first warmth
of the year. But with me, the verdure and the flowers
are not frostbitten in the midst of winter. A playfulness
has revisited my mind ; a sympathy with the young and
gay ; an unpainful interest in the business of others ; a
light and wandering curiosity ; arising, perhaps, from the
sense that my toil on earth is ended, and the brief hour
till bedtime may be spent in play. Still, I have fancied
that there is a depth of feeling and reflection, under this
superficial levity, peculiar to one who has lived long, and
is soon to die.

Show me anything that would make an infant smile,
and you shall behold a gleam of mirth over the hoary
ruin of my visage. I can spend a pleasant hour in the
sun, watching the sports of the village children, on the
edge of the surf; now they chase the retreating wave far
down over the wet sand ; now it steals softly up to kiss
their naked feet ; now it comes onward with threatening
front, aud roars after the laughing crew, as they scamper

THE VILLAGE UNCLE. 95

beyond its reach. Why should not an old man be merry
too, when the great sea is at play with those little chil-
dren ? I delight, also, to follow in the wake of a pleasure-
party of young men and girls, strolling along the beach
after an early supper at the Point. Here, with hand-
kerchiefs at nose, they bend over a heap of eel-grass, en-
tangled in which is a dead skate, so oddly accoutred with
two legs and a long tail, that they mistake him for a
drowned animal. A few steps farther, the ladies scream,
and the gentlemen make ready to protect them against a
young shark of the dogfish kind, rolling with a life-like
motion in the tide that has thrown him up. Next, they
are smit with wonder at the black shells of a wagon-load
of live lobsters, packed in rock-weed for the country mar-
ket. And when they reach the fleet of dories, just hauled
ashore after the day's fishing, how do I laugh in my sleeve,
and sometimes roar outright, at the simplicity of these
young folks and the sly humor of the fishermen! In
winter, when our village is thrown into a bustle by the
arrival of perhaps a score of country dealers, bargaining
for frozen fish, to be transported hundreds of miles, and
eaten fresh in Vermont or Canada, I am a pleased but
idle spectator in the throng. "For I launch my boat no
more.

When the shore was solitary, I have found a pleasure
that seemed even to exalt my mind, in observing the
sports or contentions of two gulls, as they wheeled and
hovered about each other, with hoarse screams, one mo-
ment flapping on the foam of the wave, and then soaring
aloft, till their white bosoms melted into the upper sun-
shine. In the calm of the summer sunset, I drag my
aged limbs, with a little ostentation of activity, because I
am so old, up to the rocky brow of the hill. There I see
the white sails of many a vessel, outward bound or home-

96 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

ward from afar, and the black trail of a vapor behind the
eastern steamboat ; there, too, is the sun, going down,
but not in gloom, and there the illimitable ocean mingling
with the sky, to remind me of eternity.

But sweetest of all is the hour of cheerful musing and
pleasant talk, that comes between the dusk and the lighted
candle, by my glowing fireside. And never, even on the
first Thanksgiving night, when Susan and I sat alone with
our hopes, nor the second, when a stranger had been sent
to gladden us, and be the visible image of our affection,
did I feel such joy as now. All that belong to me are
here; Death has taken none, nor Disease kept them
away, nor Strife divided them from their parents or each
other ; with neither poverty nor riches to disturb them,
nor the misery of desires beyond their lot, they have kept
New England's festival round the patriarch's board. For
I am a patriarch ! Here I sit among my descendants, in
my old arm-chair and immemorial corner, while the fire-
light throws an appropriate glory round my venerable
frame. Susan ! My children ! Something whispers me,
that this happiest hour must be the final one, and that
nothing remains but to bless you all, and depart with a
treasure of recollected joys to heaven. Will you meet
me there ? Alas ! your figures grow indistinct, fading
into pictures on the air, and now to fainter outlines, while
the fire is glimmering on the walls of a familiar room, and
shows the book that I flung down, and the sheet that I
left half written, some fifty years ago. I lift my eyes to
the looking-glass, and perceive myself alone, unless those
be the mermaid's features, retiring into the depths of the
mirror, with a tender and melancholy smile.

Ah ! one feels a dullness, not bodily, but about the
heart, and, moreover, a foolish dread of looking behind
him, after these pastimes. I can imagine precisely how

THE VILLAGE UXCLE. 97

a magician would sit down in gloom and terror, after
dismissing the shadows that had personated dead or dis-
tant people, and stripping his cavern of the unreal splendor
which had changed it to a palace. And now for a moral
to my revery. Shall it be, that, since fancy can create
so bright a dream of happiness, it were better to dream
on from youth to age, than to awake and strive doubt-
fully for something real ! O, the slight tissue of a dream
can no more preserve us from the stern reality of misfor-
tune, than a robe of cobweb could repel the wintry blast.
Be this the moral, then. In chaste and warm affections,
humble wishes, and honest toil for some useful end, there
is health for the mind, and quiet for the heart, the pros-
pect of a happy life, and the fairest hope of hsaven.

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST.

NE September night, a family lind gathered
round their hearth, and piled it high with the
drift-wood of mountain streams, the dry cones
of the pine, and the splintered ruins of great trees, that
had come crashing down the precipice. Up the chimney
roared the fire, and brightened the room with its broad
blaze. The faces of the father and mother had a sober
gladness ; the children laughed ; the eldest daughter was
the image of Happiness at seventeen ; and the aged
grandmother, who sat knitting in the warmest place, was
the image of Happiness grown old. They had found
the "herb, heart's-ease," in the bleakest spot of all
New England. This family were situated in the Notch
of the White Hills, where the wind was sharp through-
out the year, and pitilessly cold in the winter, — giving
their cottage all its fresh inclemency, before it descended
on the valley of the Saco. They dwelt in a cold spot
and a dangerous one ; for a mountain towered above
their heads, so steep, that the stones would often rumble
down its sides, and startle them at midnight.

The daughter had just uttered some simple jest, that
filled them all with mirth, when the wind came through
the Notch and seemed to pause before their cottage, —
rattling the door, with a sound of wailing and lamenta-

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 99

tion, before it passed into the valley. For a moment,
it saddened them, though there was nothing unusual in
the tones. But the family were glad again, when they
perceived that the latch was lifted by some traveller,
whose footsteps had been unheard amid the dreary blast,
which heralded his approach, and wailed as he was en-
tering, and went moaning away from the door.

Though they dwelt in such a solitude, these people
held daily converse with the world. The romantic pass
of the Notch is a great artery, through which the life-
blood of internal commerce is continually throbbing, be-
tween Maine on one side and the Green Mountains and
the shores of the St. Lawrence on the other. The stage-
coach always drew up before the door of the cottage.
Tlie wayfarer, with no companion but his staff, paused
lure to exchange a word, that the sense of loneliness
might not utterly overcome him, ere he could pass
through the cleft of the mountain, or reach the first
house in the valley. And here the teamster, on his way
to Portland market, would put up for the night ; and, if
a bachelor, might sit an hour beyond the usual bedtime,
and steal a kiss from the mountain-maid, at parting. It
was one of those primitive taverns, where the traveller
pays only for food and lodging, but meets with a homely
kindness, beyond all price. When the footsteps were
heard, therefore, between the outer door and the inner
one, the whole family rose up, grandmother, children,
and all, as if about to welcome some one who belonged
to them, and whose fate was linked with theirs.

The door was opened by a young man. His face at
first wore the melancholy expression, almost despond-
ency, of one who travels a wild and bleak road, at
nightfall and alone, but soon brightened up. when he
saw the kindly warmth of his reception. He felt his

100 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

heart spring forward to meet them all, from the old
woman, who wiped a chair with her apron, to the little
child that held out its arms to him. One glance and
smile placed the stranger on a footing of innocent famil-
iarity with the eldest daughter.

" Ah, this fire is the right thing ! " cried he ; " espe-
cially when there is such a pleasant circle round it. I
am quite benumbed ; for the Notch is just like the pipe
of a great pair of bellows ; it has blown a terrible blast
in rny face, all the way from Bartlett."

"Then you are going towards Vermont?" said the
master of the house, as he helped to take a light knap-
sack off the young man's shoulders.

" Yes ; to Burlington, and far enough beyond," re-
plied he. " I meant to have been at Ethan Crawford's
to-night ; but a pedestrian lingers along such a road as
this. It is no matter ; for, when I saw this good fire,
and all your cheerful faces, I felt as if you had kindled
it on purpose for me, and were waiting my arrival. So
I shall sit down among you, and make myself at home."

The frank-hearted stranger had just drawn his chair
to the fire, when something like a heavy footstep was
heard without, rushing down the steep side of the moun-
tain, as with long and rapid strides, and taking such a
leap, in passing the cottage, as to strike the opposite
precipice. The family held their breath, because they
knew the sound, and their guest held his, by instinct.

" The old mountain has thrown a stone at us, for fear
we should forget him," said the landlord, recovering
himself. " He sometimes nods his head, and threatens
to come down ; but we are old neighbors, and agree
together pretty well, upon the whole. Besides, we have
a sure place of refuge, hard by, if he should be coming in
good earnest."

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 101

Let us now suppose the stranger to have finished his
supper of bear's meat ; and, by his natural felicity of
manner, to have placed himself on a footing of kindness
with the whole family, so that they talked as freely to-
gether, as if he belonged to their mount ain brood. He
was of a proud, yet gentle spirit, — haughty and reserved
among the rich and great ; but ever rjeady to stoop his
head to the lowly cottage door, and be like a brother or
a son at the poor man's fireside. In the household of
the Notch, he found warmth and simplicity of feeling,
the pervading intelligence of New England, and a poetry
of native growth, which they had gathered, when they
little thought of it, from the mountain peaks and chasms,
.and at the very threshold of their romantic and dangerous
abode. He had travelled far and alone ; his whole life,
indeed, had been a solitary path ; for, with the lofty cau-
tion of his nature, he had kept himself apart from those
who might otherwise have been his companions. The
family, too, though so kind and hospitable, had that con-
sciousness of unity among themselves, and separation
from the world at large, which, in every domestic circle,
should still keep a holy place, where no stranger may in-
trude. But, this evening, a prophetic sympathy impelled
the refined and educated youth to pour out his heart
before the simple mountaineers, and constrained them to
answer him with the same free confidence. And thus it
should have been. Is not the kindred of a common fate
a closer tie than that of birth ?

The secret of the young man's character was, a high
and abstracted ambition. He could have borne to live
an undistinguished life, but not to be forgotten in the
grave. Yearning desire had been transformed to hope ;
and hope, long cherished, had become like certainty, that,
obscurely as he journeyed now, a glory was to beam on

102 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

all his pathway, — though not, perhaps, while he was
treading it. But, when posterity should gaze back into
the gloom of what was now the present, they would
trace the brightness of his footsteps, brightening as
meaner glories faded, and confess, that a gifted one had
passed from his cradle to his tomb, with none to recog-
nize him.

"As yet," cried the stranger, his cheek glowing and
his eye flashing with enthusiasm, — "as yet, I have done
nothing. Were I to vanish from the earth to-morrow,
none would know so much of me as you ; that a nameless
youth came up, at nightfall, from the valley of the Saco,
and opened his heart to you in the evening, and passed
through the Notch, by sunrise, and was seen no more.
Not a soul would ask, 'Who was he? Whither did
the wanderer go ? ' But, I cannot die till I have achieved
my destiny. Then, let Death come ! I shall have built
my monument ! " *

There was a continual flow of natural emotion, gushing
forth amid abstracted revery, which enabled the family
to understand this young man's sentiments, though so
foreign from their own. With quick sensibility of the
ludicrous, he blushed at the ardor into which he had been
betrayed.

" You laugh at me," said he, taking the eldest daugh-
ter's hand, and laughing himself. "You think my
ambition as nonsensical as if I were to freeze myself
to death on the top of Mount Washington, only that
people might spy at me from the country round about.
And truly, that would be a noble pedestal for a man's
statue ! "

" It is better to sit here by this fire," answered the girl,
blushing, " and be comfortable and contented, though no-
body thinks about us."

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 103

"I suppose," said her father, after a fit of musing,
" there is something natural in. what the young man says ;
and if my mind had been turned that way, I might have
felt just the same. It is strange, wife, how his talk has
set my head running on things that are pretty certain
never to come to pass."

"Perhaps they may," observed the wife. "Is the man
think ing what he will do when he is a widower ? "

" No, no ! " cried he, repelling the idea with reproach-
ful kindness. " When I think of your death, Esther, I
think of mine, too. But I was wishing we had a good
farm, in Bartlett, or Bethlehem, or Littleton, or some
other township round the White Mountains ; but not
where they could tumble on our heads. I should want
to stand well with my neighbors, and be called Squire,
and sent to General Court for a term or two; for a
plain, honest man may do as much good there as a
lawyer. And when I should be grown quite an old
man, and you an old woman, so as not to be long apart,
1 might die happy enough in my bed, and leave you all
crying around me. A slate gravestone would suit me
as well as a marble one, — with just my name and age,
and a verse of a hymn, and something to let people
know that I lived an honest man and died a Christian.*'

" There now ! " exclaimed the stranger ; " it is our
nature to desire a monument, be it slate, or marble, or a
pillar of granite, or a glorious memory in the universal
heart of man."

" We 're in a strange way, to-night," said the wife,
with tears in her eyes. " They say it 's a sign of some-
thing, when folks' minds go a wandering so. Hark to
the children ! "

They listened accordingly. The younger children had
been put to bed in another room, but with an open door

104 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

between, so that they could be heard talking busily among
themselves. One and all seemed to have caught the in-
fection from the fireside circle, and were outvying each
other in wild wishes and childish projects of what they
would do when they came to be men and women. At
length, a little boy, instead of addressing his brothers and
sisters, called out to his mother.

" I '11 tell you what I wish, mother," cried he. " I
want you and father and grandma'm, and all of us, and
the stranger too, to start right away, and go and take a
drink out of the basin of the Flume ! "

Nobody could help laughing at the child's notion of
leaving a warm bed, and dragging them from a cheerful
fire, to visit the basin of the Flume, — a brook which
tumbles over the precipice, deep within the Notch. The
boy had hardly, spoken, when a wagon rattled along the
road, and stopped a moment before the door. It ap-
peared to contain two or three men, who were cheering
their hearts with the rough chorus of a song, which re-
sounded, in broken notes, between the cliifs, while the
singers hesitated whether to continue their journey, or
put up here for the night.

"Father," said the girl, "they are calling you by
name."

But the good man doubted whether they had really
called him, and was unwilling to show himself too solici-
tous of gain, by inviting people to patronize his house.
He therefore did not hurry to the door ; and the lash
being soon applied, the travellers plunged into the
Notch, still singing and laughing, though their music
and mirth came back drearily from the heart of the
mountain.

" There, mother ! " cried the boy, again. " They 'd
have given us a ride to the Flume."

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 105

Again they laughed at the child's pertinacious fancy
for a night ramble. But it happened, that a light cloud
passed over the daughter's spirit; she looked gravely
into the fire, and drew a breath that was almost a sigh.
It forced its way, in spite of a little struggle to repress it.
Then starting and blushing, she looked quickly round the
circle, as if they had caught a glimpse into her bosom.
The stranger asked what she had been thinking of.

"Nothing," answered she, with a downcast smile.
" Only I felt lonesome just then."

" 0, I have always had a gift of feeling what is in other
people's hearts ! " said he, half seriously. " Shall I tell
the secrets of yours ? For I know what to think, when
a young girl shivers by a warm hearth, and complains of
lonesomeness at her mother's side. Shall I put these
feelings into words?"

"They would not be a girl's feelings any longer, if
they could be put into words," replied the mountain
nymph, laughing, but avoiding his eye.
* All this was said apart. Perhaps a germ of love was
springing in their hearts, so pure that it might blossom
in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth ; for
women worship such gentle dignity as his ; and the
proud, contemplative, yet kindly soul is oftenest capti-
vated by simplicity like hers. But, while they spoke
softly, and he was watching the happy sadness, the light-
some shadows, the shy yearnings of a maiden's nature,
the wind, through the Notch, took a deeper and drearier
sound. It seemed, as the fanciful stranger said, like the
choral strain of the spirits of the blast, who, in old In-
dian times, had their dwelling among these mountains,
and made their heights and recesses a sacred region.
There was a wail, along the road, as if a funeral were
passing. To chase away the gloom, the family threw
5*

106 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

pine branches on their fire, till the dry leaves crackled
and the flame arose, discovering once again a scene of
peace and humble happiness. The light hovered about
them fondly, and caressed them all. There were the lit-
tle faces of the children, peeping from their bed apart,
and here the father's frame of strength, the mother's
subdued and careful mien, the high -browed youth, the
budding girl, and the good old grandam, still knitting in
the warmest place. The aged woman looked up from
her task, and, with fingers ever busy, was the next to
speak.

" Old folks have their notions," said she, " as well as
young ones. You 've been wishing and planning ; and
letting your heads run on one thing and another, till
you 'vc set my mind a wandering too. Now what should
an old woman wish for, when she can go but a step or two
before she comes to her grave ? Children, it will hauut
me night and day, till I tell you."

" What is it, mother ? " cried the husband and wife,
at once. •

Then the old woman, with an air of mystery, which
drew the circle closer round the fire, informed them
that she had provided her graveclothes some years
before, — a nice linen shroud, a cap with a muslin ruff,
and everything of a finer sort than she had worn since
her wedding-day. But, this evening, an old supersti-
tion had strangely recurred to her. It used to be said,
in her younger days, that, if anything were amiss with
a corpse, if only the ruff were not smooth, or the cap
did "not set right, the corpse, in the coifin and beneath
the clods, would strive to put up its cold hands and
arrange it. The bare thought made her nervous.

" Don't talk so, grandmother ! " said the girl, shud-
dering.

THE AMBITIOUS GUEST. 107

" Now," continued the old woman, with singular ear-
nestness, yet smiling strangely at her own folly, " I
want one of you, my children, — when your mother
is dressed, and in the coffin, — I want one of you to hold
a looking-glass over my face. Who knows but I may
take a glimpse at myself, and see whether all 's right ? "

" Old and young, we dream of graves and monuments,"
murmured the stranger youth. " I wonder how mari-
ners feel, when the ship is sinking, and they, unknown
and undistinguished, are to be buried together in the
ocean, — that wide and nameless sepulchre ? "

For a moment, the old woman's ghastly conception
so engrossed the minds of her hearers, that a sound,
abroad in the night, rising like the roar of a blast, had
grown broad, deep, and terrible, before the fated group
were conscious of it. The house, and all within it,
trembled ; the foundations of the earth seemed to be
shaken, as if this awful sound were the peal of the last
trump. Young and old exchanged one wild glance, and
remained an instant, pale, affrighted, without utterance,
or power to move. Then the same shriek burst simulta-
neously from all their lips.

" The Slide ! The Slide ! "

The simplest words must intimate, but not portray,
the unutterable horror of the catastrophe. The victims
rushed from their cottage, and sought refuge in what
they deemed a safer spot, — where, in contemplation of
sucli an emergency, a sort of barrier had been reared.
Alas ! they had quitted their security, and fled right into
the pathway of destruction. Down came the whole side
of the mountain, in a cataract of ruin. Just before it
reached the house, the stream broke into two branches,
— shivered not a window there, but overwhelmed the
whole vicinity, blocked up the road, and annihilated

108 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

everything in its dreadful course. Long ere the thunder
of that great Slide had ceased to roar among the moun-
tains, the mortal agony had been endured, and the vic-
tims were at peace. Their bodies were never found.

The next morning, the light smoke was seen stealing
from the cottage chimney, up the mountain-side. Within,
the fire was yet smouldering on the hearth, and the chairs
in a circle round it, as if the inhabitants had but gone forth
to view the devastation of the Slide, "and would shortly
return, to thank Heaven for their miraculous escape.
All had left separate tokens, by which those who had
known the family were made to shed a tear for each.
Who has not heard their name ? The story has been
told far and wide, and will forever be a legend of these
mountains. Poets have sung their fate.

There were circumstances which led some to suppose
that a stranger had been received into the cottage on this
awful night, and had shared the catastrophe of all its in-
mates. Others denied that there were sufficient grounds
for such a conjecture. Woe, for the high-souled youth,
with his dream of earthly immortality ! His name and
person utterly unknown ; his history, his way of life, his
plans, a mystery never to be solved ; his death and his
existence equally a doubt ! Whose was the agony of
that death moment ?

THE SISTER YEARS.

|A.ST night, between eleven and twelve o'clock,
when the Old Year was leaving her final foot-
prints on the borders of Time's empire, she
found herself in possession of a few spare moments, and
sat down — of all places in the world — on the steps of
our new City Hall. The wintry moonlight showed that
she looked weary of body, and sad of heart, like many
another wayfarer of earth. Her garments, having been
exposed to much foul weather, and rough usage, were
in very ill condition; and as the hurry of her journey
had never before allowed her to take an instant's rest,
her shoes were so worn as to be scarcely worth the
mending. But, after trudging only a little distance far-
ther, this poor Old Year was destined to enjoy a long,
long sleep. I forgot to mention, that when she seated
herself on the steps, she deposited by her side a very
capacious bandbox, in which, as is the custom among
travellers of her sex, she carried a great deal of valuable
property. Besides this luggage, there was a folio book
under her arm, very much resembling the annual volume
of a newspaper. Placing this volume across her knees,
and resting her elbows upon it, with her forehead in her
hands, the weary, bedraggled, world-worn Old Year
heaved a heavy sigh, and appeared to be taking no very
pleasant retrospect of her past existence.

110 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

While she thus awaited the midnight knell, that was
to summon her to the innumerable sisterhood of departed
Years, there came a young maiden treading lightsomely
on tiptoe along the street, from the direction of the Rail-
road Depot. She was evidently a stranger, and perhaps,
had come to town by the evening train of cars. There
was a smiling cheerfulness in this fair maiden's face,
which bespoke her fully confident of a kind reception
from the multitude of people, with whom she was soon
to form acquaintance. Her dress was rather too airy
for the season, and was bedizened with fluttering ribbons
and other vanities, which were likely soon to be rent
away by the fierce storms, or to fade in the hot sunshine,
amid which she was to pursue her changeful course.
But still she was a wonderfully pleasant looking figure,
and had so much promise and such an indescribable
hopefulness in her aspect, that hardly anybody could
meet her without anticipating some very desirable thing
— the consummation of some long-sought good — from
her kind offices. A few dismal characters there may be,
here and there about the world, who have so often been
trifled with by young maidens as promising as she,
that they have now ceased to pin any faith upon the
skirts of the New Year. But, for my own part, I have
great faith in her; and should I live to see fifty more
such, still, from each of those successive sisters, I shall
reckon upon receiving something that will be worth living
for.

The New Year — for this young maiden was no less
a personage — carried all her goods and chattels in a
basket of no great size or weight, which hung upon her
arm. She greeted the disconsolate Old Year with great
affection, and sat down beside her on the steps of the
City Hall, waiting for the signal to begin her rambles

THE SISTER YEARS. Ill

through the world. The two were own sisters, being
both granddaughters of Time ; and though one looked
so much older than the other, it was rather owing to
hardships and trouble than to age, since there was but
a twelvemonth's difference between them.

"Well, my dear sister," said the New Year, after the
first salutations, "you look almost tired to death. What
have you been about during your sojourn in this part of
Infinite Space ? "

"O, I have it all recorded here in my Book of
Chronicles," answered the Old Year, in a heavy tone.
" There is nothing that would amuss you ; and you will
soon get sufficient knowledge of such matters from
your own personal experience. It is but tiresome
reading."

Nevertheless, she turned over the leaves of the folio,
and glanced at them by the light of the moon, feeling
an irresistible spell of interest in her own biography,
although its incidents were remembered without pleas-
ure. The volume, though she termed it her Book of
Chronicles, seemed to be neither more nor less than the
Salem Gazette for 1838 ; in the accuracy of which jour-
nal this sagacious Old Year had so much confidence, that
she deemed it needless to record her history with her
own pen.

" What have you been doing in the political way ? "
asked the New Year.

" Why, my course here in the United States," said
the Old Year, — " though perhaps I ought to blush at
the confession, — my political course, I must acknowl-
edge, has been rather vacillatory, sometimes inclining
towards the Whigs, — then causing the Administration
party to shout for triumph, — and now again uplifting
what seemed the almost prostrate banner of the Oppo-

112 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

sition ; so that historians will hardly know what to make
of me, in this respect. But the Loco Focos —

"I do not like these party nicknames," interrupted
her sister, who seemed remarkably touchy about some
points. "Perhaps we shall part in better humor, if we
avoid any political discussion."

" With all my heart," replied the Old Year, who had
already been tormented half to death with squabbles of
this kind. " I care not if the names of Whig or Tory,
with their interminable brawls about Banks and the Sub-
Treasury, Abolition, Texas, the Florida War, and a mil-
lion of other topics, — which you will learn soon enough
for your own comfort, — I care not, I say, if no whisper
of these matters ever reaches my ears again. Yet they
have occupied so large a share of my attention, that I
scarcely know what else to tell you. There has indeed
been a curious sort of war on the Canada border, where
blood has streamed in the names of Liberty and Patriot-
ism ; but it must remain for some future, perhaps far
distant Year, to tell whether or no those holy names have
been rightfully invoked. Nothing so much depresses
me, in my view of mortal affairs, as to see high energies
wasted, and human life and happiness thrown away, for
ends that appear oftentimes unwise, and still oftener
remain unaccomplished. But the wisest people and the
best keep a steadfast faith that the progress of Mankind
is onward and upward, and that the toil and anguish of
the path serve to wear away the imperfections of the Im-
mortal Pilgrim, and will be felt no more, when they have
done their office."

" Perhaps," cried the hopeful New Year, — " perhaps
I shall see that happy day ! "

" I doubt whether it be so close at hand," answered
the Old Year, gravely smiling. " You will soon grow

THE SISTER YEARS. 113

weary of looking for that blessed consummation, and
wilt turn for amusement (as lias frequently been my
own practice) to the affairs of some sober little city,
like this of Salem. Here we sit on the steps of the
new City Hall, which has been completed under my
administration ; and it would make you laugh to see
how the game of politics, of which the Capitol at
Washington is the great chess-board, is here played
in miniature. Burning Ambition finds its fuel here ;
here Patriotism speaks boldly in the people's behalf,
and virtuous Economy demands retrenchment in the
emoluments of a lamplighter ; here the Aldermen range
their senatorial dignity around the Mayor's chair of state,
and the Common Council feel that they have liberty in
charge. In short, human weakness and strength, pas-
sion and policy, Man's tendencies, his aims and modes
of pursuing them, his individual character, and his
character in the mass, may be studied almost as well
here as on the theatre of nations ; and with this great
advantage, that, be the lesson ever so disastrous, its
Liliputian scope still makes the beholder smile."

"Have you done much for the improvement of the
City ? " asked the New Year. " Judging from what
little I have seen, it appears to be ancient and time-
worn."

" I have opened the Railroad," said the elder Year,
" and half a dozen times a day, you will hear the bell
(which once summoned the Monks of a Spanish Con-
vent to their devotions) announcing the arrival or de-
parture of the cars. Old Salem now wears a much
livelier expression thaii when I first beheld her. Stran-
gers rumble down from Boston by hundreds at a time.
New faces throng in Essex Street. Railroad-hacks and
omnibuses rattle over the pavements. There is a per-

114 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

ceptible increase of oyster-shops, and other establish-
ments for the accommodation of a transitory diurnal
multitude. But a more important change awaits the
venerable town. Au immense accumulation of musty
prejudices will be carried off by the free circulation of
society. A peculiarity of character, of which the in- .
habitants themselves are hardly sensible, will be rubbed
down and worn away by the attrition of foreign sub-
stances. Much of the result will be good; there will
likewise be a few things not so good. Whether for
better or worse, there will be a probable diminution of
the moral influence of wealth, and the sway of an aris-
tocratic class, which, from an era far beyond my mem-
ory, has held firmer dominion here than in any other
New England town."

The Old Year having talked away nearly all of her
little remaining breath, now closed her Book of Chroni-
cles, and was about to take her departure. But her
sister detained her awhile longer, by inquiring the con-
tents of the huge bandbox, which she was so painfully
lugging along with her.

"These are merely a few trifles," replied the Old
Year, "which I have picked up in my rambles, and
am going to deposit, in the receptacle of things past
and forgotten. We sisterhood of Years never carry any-
thing really valuable out of the world with us. Here
are patterns of most of the fashions which I brought
into vogue, and which have already lived out their
allotted term. You will supply their place, with others
equally ephemeral. Here, put up in little China pots,
like rouge, is a considerable lot of beautiful women's
bloom, which the disconsolate fair ones owe me a bitter
grudge for stealing. I have likewise a quantity of men's
dark hair, instead of which, I have left gray locks, or

THE SISTER YEARS. 115

none at all. The tears of widows and other afflicted
mortals, who have received comfort during the last
twelve months, are preserved in some dozens of essence-
bottles, well corked and sealed. I have several bundles of
love-letters, eloquently breathing an eternity of burning
passion, which grew cold and perished, almost before
the ink was dry. Moreover, here is an assortment of
many thousand broken promises, and other broken ware,
all very light and packed into little space. The heaviest
articles in my possession are a large parcel of disap-
pointed hopes, which, a little while ago, were buoyant
enough to have inflated Mr. Lauriat's balloon."

" I have a fine lot of hopes here in my basket,"
remarked the New Year. " They are a sweet-smelling
flower, — a species of rose."

" They soon lose their perfume," replied the sombre
Old Year. " What else have you brought to insure a
welcome from the discontented race of mortals?"

"Why, to say the truth, little or nothing else," said
her sister, with a smile, — " save a few new Annuals
and Almanacs, and some New Year's gifts for the
children. But I heartily wish well to poor mortals,
and mean to do all I can for their improvement and
happiness."

" It is a good resolution," rejoined the Old Year ;
" and, by the way, I have a plentiful assortment of good
resolutions, which have now grown so stale and musty,
that I am ashamed to carry them any farther. Only for
fear that the City authorities would send Constable
Mansfield, with a warrant after me, I should toss them
into the street at once. Many other matters go to make
up the contents of my bandbox ; but the whole lot would
not fetch a single bid, even at an auction of worn-out
furniture ; and as they are worth nothing either to you

116 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

or anybody else, I need not trouble you with a longer
catalogue."

" And must I also pick up such worthless luggage in
my travels ? " asked the New Year.

" Most certainly ; and well, if you have no heavier
load to bear," replied the other. " And now, my dear
sister, I must bid you farewell, earnestly advising and
exhorting you to expect no gratitude nor good-will from
this peevish, unreasonable, inconsiderate, ill-intending, and
worse-behaving world. However warmly its inhabitants
may seem to welcome you, yet, do what you may, and
lavish on them what means of happiness you please, they
will still be complaining, still craving what it is not in
your power to give, still looking forward to some other
Year for the accomplishment of projects which ought
never to have been formed, and which, if successful,
would only provide new occasions of discontent. If
these ridiculous people ever see anything tolerable in
you, it will be after you are gone forever."

" But I," cried the fresh-hearted New Year, — "I shall
try to leave men wiser than I find them. I will offer them
freely whatever good gifts Providence permits me to dis-
tribute, and will tell them to be thankful for what they
have, and humbly hopeful for more ; and surely, if they
are not absolute fools, they will condescend to be happy,
and will allow me to be a happy Year. For my happiness
must depend on them."

" Alas for you, then, my poor sister ! " said the Old
Year, sighing, as she uplifted her burden. " We grand-
children of Time are born to trouble. Happiness, they
say, dwells in the mansions of Eternity ; but we can only
lead mortals thither, step by step, with reluctant mur-
murings, and ourselves must perish on the threshold.
But hark! my task is done."

THE SISTER YEARS. 117

The clock in the tall steeple of Dr. Emerson's church
struck twelve ; there Avas a response from Dr. Flint's, in
the opposite quarter of the city ; and while the strokes
were yet dropping into the air, the Old Year either flitted
or faded away ; and not the wisdom and might of Angels,
to say nothing of the remorseful yearnings of the millions
who had used her ill, could have prevailed with that
departed Year to return one step. But she, in the com-
pany of Time and all her kindred, must hereafter hold a
reckoning with Mankind. So shall it be, likewise, with
the maidenly New Year, who, as the clock ceased to
strike, arose from the steps of the City Hall, and set out
rather timorously on her earthly course.

" A happy New Year ! " cried a watchman, eying her
figure very questionably, but without the least suspicion
that he was addressing the New Year in person.

" Thank you kindly ! " said the New Year ; and she
gave the watchman one of the roses of hope from her
basket. " May this flower keep a sweet smell, long after
I have bidden you good by."

Then she stepped on more briskly through the silent
streets ; and such as were awake at the moment, heard
her footfalf, and said, " The New Year is come ! "
Wherever there was a knot of midnight roisterers, they
quaffed her health. She sighed, however, to perceive
that the air was tainted — as the atmosphere of this
world must continually be — with, the dying breaths of
mortals who had lingered just long enough for her to
bury them. But there were millions left alive, to rejoice
at her coming ; and so she pursued her way with con-
fidence, strewing emblematic flowers on the doorstep of
almost every dwelling, which some persons will gather
up and wear in their bosoms, and others will trample
under foot. The Carrier Boy can only say further, that,

118

TWICE-TOLD TALES.

early this morning, she filled his basket with New Year's
Addresses, assuring him that the whole City, with our
new Mayor, and the Aldermen and Common Council at
its head, would make a general rush to secure copies.
Kind Patrons, will not you redeem the pledge of the
NEW YEAR?

SNOW-FLAKES.

|HERE is snow in yonder cold gray sky of the
morning ! — and, through the partially frosted
_ window-panes, I love to watch the gradual
beginning of the storm. A few feathery flakes are scat-
tered widely through the air, and hover downward with
uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now
whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
These are not the big flakes, heavy with moisture, which
melt as they touch the ground, and are portentous of a
jsoaking rain. It is to be, in good earnest, a wintry
storm. The two or three people, visible on the side-
walks, have an aspect of endurance, a blue-nosed, frosty
fortitude, which is evidently assumed in anticipation of a
comfortless and blustering day. By nightfall, or at least
before the sun sheds another glimmering smile upon us,
the street and our little garden will be heaped with
mountain snow-drifts. The soil, already frozen for weeks
past, is prepared to sustain whatever burden may be laid
upon it ; and, to a northern eye, the landscape will lose
its melancholy bleakness and acquire a beauty of its own,
when Mother Earth, like her children, shall have put on
the fleecy garb of her winter's wear. The cloud-spirits
are slowly weaving her white mantle. As yet, indeed,
there is barely a rime like hoarfrost over the brown

120 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

surface of the street ; the withered green of the grass-plat
is still discernible ; and the slated roofs of the houses do
but begin to look gray, instead of black. All the snow
that has yet fallen within the circumference of my view,
were it heaped up together, would hardly equal the hil-
lock of a grave. Thus gradually, by silent and stealthy
influences, are great changes wrought. These little snow-
particles, which the storm -spirit flings by handfuls through
the air, will bury the great earth under their accumulated
mass, nor permit her to behold her sister sky again for
dreary months. We, likewise, shall lose sight of our
mother's familiar visage, and must content ourselves with
looking heavenward the ofteuer.

Now, leaving the storm to do his appointed office, let
us sit down, pen in hand, by our fireside. Gloomy as it
may seem, there is an influence productive of cheerful-
ness, and favorable to imaginative thought, in the atmos-
phere of a snowy day. The native of a southern clime
may woo the muse beneath the heavy shade of summer
foliage, reclining on banks of turf, while the sound o£
singing birds and warbling rivulets chimes in with the
music of his soul. In our brief summer, I do not think,
but only exist in -the vague enjoyment of a dream. My
hour of inspiration — if that hour ever comes — is when
the green log hisses upon the hearth, and the bright
flame, brighter for the gloom of the chamber, rustles
high up the chimney, and the coals drop tinkling down
among the growing heaps of ashes. When the casement
rattles in the gust, and the snow-flakes or the sleety rain-
drops pelt hard against the window-panes, then I spread
out my sheet of paper, with the certainty that thoughts
and fancies will gleam forth upon it, like stars at twilight,
or like violets in May, — perhaps to fade as soon. How-
ever transitory their glow, they at least shine amid the

SNOW-FLAKES. 121

darksome shadow which the clouds of the outward sky
fling through the room. Blessed, therefore, and rever-
ently welcomed by me, her true-born sou,' be New
England's winter, which makes ns, one and all, the
nurslings of the storm, and sings a familiar lullaby even
in the wildest shriek of the December blast. Now look
we forth again, and see how much of his task the storm-
spirit has done.

Slow and sure ! He has the day, perchance the week,
before him, and may take his own time to accomplish
Nature's burial in snow. A smooth mantle is scarcely
yet thrown over the withered grass-plat, and the dry
stalks of annuals still thrust themselves through the
white surface in all parts of the garden. The leafless
rose-bushes stand shivering in a shallow snow-drift, look-
ing, poor things ! as disconsolate as if they possessed a
human consciousness of the dreary scene. This is a sad
time for the shrubs that do not perish with the summer ;
they neither live nor die ; what they retain of life seems
but the chilling sense of death. Very sad are the flower
shrubs in midwinter ! The roofs of the houses are now
all white, save where the eddying wind has kept them
bare at the bleak corners. To discern the real intensity
of the storm, we must fix upon some distant object, — as
yonder spire, — and observe how the riotous gust fights
with the descending snow throughout the intervening
space. Sometimes the entire prospect is obscured ;
then, again, we have a distinct, but transient glimpse of
the tall steeple, like a giant's ghost ; and now the dense
wreaths sweep between, as if demons were flinging snow-
drifts at each other, in mid-air. Look next into the street,
where we have seen an amusing parallel to the combat of
those fancied demons in the upper regions. It is a snow-
battle of school-boys. What a pretty satire on war and

VOL. II. 6

122 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

military glory might be written, in the form of a child's
story, by describing the snowball-fights of two rival
schools, the alternate defeats and victories of each, and the
final triumph of one party, or perhaps of neither ! What
pitched battles, worthy to be chanted in Homeric strains !
What storming of fortresses, bnilt all of massive snow-
blocks ! What feats of individual prowess, and embod-
ied onsets of martial enthusiasm ! And when some well-
contested and decisive victory had put a period to the
war, both armies should unite to build a lofty monument
of snow upon the battle-field, and crown it with the vic-
tor's statue, hewn of the same frozen marble. In a few
days or weeks thereafter, the passer-by would observe a
shapeless mound upon the level common ; and, unmind-
ful of the famous victory, would ask, " How came it
there? Who reared it?" And what means it?" The
shattered pedestal of many a battle monument has pro-
voked these questions, when none could answer.

Turn we again to the fireside, and sit musing there,
lending our ears to the wind, till perhaps it shall seem
like an articulate voice, and dictate wild and airy matter
for the pen. Would it might inspire me to sketch out
the personification of a New England winter ! And that
idea, if I can seize the snow-wreathed figures that flit
before my fancy, shall be the theme of the next page.

How does Winter herald his approach ? By the shriek-
ing blast of latter autumn, which is Nature's cry of lamen-
tation, as the destroyer rushes among the shivering groves
where she has lingered, and scatters the sear leaves upon
the tempest. When that cry is heard, the people wrap
themselves in cloaks, and shake their heads disconsolately,
saying, " Winter is at hand ! " Then the axe of the
woodcutter echoes sharp and diligently in the forest;
then the coal-merchants rejoice, because each shriek of

SNOW-FLAKES. 123

Nature in her agony adds something to the price of coal
per ton; then the peat-smoke spreads its aromatic fra-
grance through the atmosphere. A few days more ; and
at eventide, the children look out of the window, and
dimly perceive the flaunting of a snowy mantle in the air.
It Is stern Winter's vesture. They crowd around the
hearth, and cling to their mother's gown, or press be-
tween their father's knees, affrighted by the hollow roar-
ing voice, that bellows adown the wide flue of the chimney.
It is the voice of Winter ; and when parents and children
hear it, they shudder and exclaim, " Winter is come !
Cold Winter has begun his reign already ! " Now,
throughout New England, each hearth becomes an altar,
sending up the smoke of a continued sacrifice to the im-
mitigable deity who tyrannizes over forest, country side,
and town. Wrapped in his white mantle, his staff a huge
icicle, his beard and hair a wind-tossed snow-drift, he
travels over the land, in the midst of the northern blast ;
and woe to the homeless wanderer whom he finds upon
his path ! There he lies stark and stiff, a human shape
of ice, on the spot where Winter overtook him. On
strides the tyrant over the rushing rivers and broad lakes,
which turn to rock beneath his footsteps. His dreary em-
pire is established ; all around stretches the desolation of
the Pole. Yet not ungrateful be his New England chil-
dren, — for Winter is our sire, though a stern and rough
one, — not ungrateful even for the severities, which have
nourished our unyielding strength of character. And let
us thank him, too, for the sleigh-rides, cheered by the
music of merry bells ; for the crackling and rustling
hearth, when the ruddy firelight gleams on hardy Man-
hood and the blooming cheek of Woman; for all the
home enjoyments, and the kindred virtues, which flourish
in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve, when, after some

124 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

seven months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the
guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away
the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the hand-
ful, and strewing green grass on the path behind him.
Often, ere he will give up his empire, old Winter rushes
fiercely back, and hurls a snow-drift at the shrinking form
of Spriug ; yet, step by step, he is compelled to retreat
northward, and spends the summer months within the
Arctic circle.

Such fantasies, intermixed among graver toils of mind,
have made the winter's day pass pleasantly. Meanwhile,
the storm has raged without abatement, and now, as the
brief afternoon declines, is tossing denser volumes to and
fro about the atmosphere. On the window-sill, there is a
layer of snow, reaching half-way up the lowest pane of
glass. The garden is one unbroken bed. Along the
street are two or three spots of uncovered earth, where
the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it else-
where to the fence-tops, or piling huge banks against the
doors of houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now strid-
ing mid-leg deep across a drift, now scudding over the bare
ground, while his cloak is swollen with the wind. And
now the jingling of bells, a sluggish sound, responsive
to the horse's toilsome progress through the unbroken
drifts, announces the passage of a sleigh, with a boy
clinging behind, and ducking his head to escape detec-
tion by the driver. Next comes a sledge, laden with
•wood for some unthrifty housekeeper, whom winter has
surprised at a cold hearth. But what dismal equipage
now struggles along the uneven street ? A sable hearse,
bestrewn with snow, is bearing a dead man through the
storm to his frozen bed. O, how dreary is a burial in
winter, when the bosom of Mother Earth has no warmth
for her poor child !

SNOW-FLAKES.

Evening — the early eve of December — begins to
spread its deepening veil over the comfortless scene ; the
firelight gradually brightens, and throws my, flickering
shadow upon the walls and ceiling of the chamber ; but
still the storm rages and rattles against the windows.
Alas! I shiver, and think it time to be disconsolate.
But, taking a farewell glance at dead Nature in her
shroud, I perceive a flock of snow-birds, skimming light-
somely through the tempest, and flitting from drift to
drift, as sportively as swallows in the delightful prime of
summer. Whence come they ? Where do they build
their nests, and seek their food ? Why, having airy
wings, do they not follow summer around the earth, in-
stead of making themselves the playmates of the storm,
and fluttering on the dreary verge of the winter's eve ?
I know not whence they come, nor why ; yet my spirit
has been cheered by that wandering flock of snow-birds.

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS.

RAMBLING on foot in the spring of my life and
the summer of the year, I came one afternoon

to a point which gave me the choice of three

directions. Straight before me, the main road extended
its dusty length to Boston ; on the left a branch went
towards the sea, and would have lengthened my journey
a trifle of twenty or thirty miles ; while by the right-
hand path, I might have gone over hills and lakes to
Canada, visiting in my way the celebrated town of Stam-
ford. On a level spot of grass, at the foot of the guide-
post, appeared an object, which, though locomotive on
a different principle, reminded me of Gulliver's portable
mansion among the Brobdignags. It was a huge covered
wagon, or, more properly, a small house on wheels, with
a door on one side and a window shaded by green blinds
on the other. Two horses, munching provender out of
the baskets which muzzled them, were fastened near the
vehicle : a delectable sound of music proceeded from the
interior ; and I immediately conjectured that this was
some itinerant show, halting at the confluence of the
roads to intercept such idle travellers as myself. A
shower had long been climbing up the western sky, and
now hung so blackly over my onward path that it was a
point of wisdom to seek shelter here.

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 127

" Halloo ! Who stands guard here ? Is the door-
keeper asleep ? " cried I, approaching a ladder of two
or three steps Avhicli was let down from the wagon.

The music ceased at my summons, and there appeared
at the door, not the sort of figure that I had mentally
assigned to the wandering showman, but a most respec-
table old personage, whom I was sorry to have addressed
in so free a style. He wore a snuff-colored coat and
small-clothes, with white-top boots, and exhibited the
mild dignity of aspect and manner which may often be
noticed in aged schoolmasters, and sometimes in deacons,
selectmen, or other potentates of that kind. A small
piece of silver was my passport within his premises,
where I found only one other person, hereafter to be
described.

" This is a dull day for business," said the old gentle-
man, as he ushered me in ; " but I merely tarry here to
refresh the cattle, being bound for the camp-meeting at
Stamford."

Perhaps the movable, scene of this narrative is still
peregrinating New England, and may enable the reader
to test the accuracy of my description. The spectacle
— for I will not use the unworthy term of puppet-show
• — consisted of a multitude of little people assembled on
a miniature stage. Among them were artisans of every
kind, in the attitudes of their toil, and a group of fair
ladies and gay gentlemen standing ready for the dance;
a company of foot-soldiers formed a line across the stage,
looking stern, grim, and terrible enough, to make it a
pleasant consideration that they were but three inches
high ; and conspicuous above the whole was seen a
Merry-Andrew, in the pointed cap and motley coat of
his profession. All the inhabitants of this mimic world
were motionless, like the figures in a picture, or like

128 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

that people who one moment were alive in the midst of
their business and delights, and the next were trans-
formed to statues, preserving an eternal semblance of
labor that was ended, and pleasure that could be felt no
more. Anon, however, the old gentleman turned the
handle of a barrel-organ, the first note of which produced
a most enlivening effect upon the figures, and awoke
them all to their proper occupations and amusements.
By the self-same impulse the tailor plied his needle, the
blacksmith's hammer descended upon the anvil, and the
dancers whirled away on feathery tiptoes ; the company
of soldiers broke into platoons, retreated from the si age,
and were succeeded by a troop of horse, who came pran-
cing onward with such a sound of trumpets and trampling
of hoofs, as might have startled Don Quixote himself;
while an old toper, of inveterate ill habits, uplifted his
black bottle and took off a hearty swig. Meantime the
Merry-Andrew began to caper and turn somersets, shak-
ing his sides, nodding his head, and winking his eyes in
as life-like a manner as if he were ridiculing the nonsense
of all human affairs, and making fun of the whole multi-
tude beneath him. At length the old magician (for I
compared the showman to Prospero, entertaining his
guests with a mask of shadows) paused that I might
give utterance to my wonder.

" What an admirable piece of work is this ! " ex-
claimed I, lifting up my hands in astonishment.

Indeed, I liked the spectacle, and was tickled with
the old man's gravity as he presided at it, for I had
none of that foolish wisdom which reproves every occu-
pation that is not useful in this world of vanities. If
there be a faculty which I possess more perfectly than
most men, it is that of throwing myself mentally into
situations foreign to my own, and detecting, with a

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 129

cheerful eye, the desirable circumstances of each. I
could have envied the life of this gray-headed showman,
spent as it had been in a course of safe and pleasurable
adventure, in driving his huge vehicle sometimes through
the sands of Cape Cod, and sometimes over the rough
forest roads of the north and east, and halting now on
the green before a village meeting-house, and now in a
paved square of the metropolis. How often must his
heart have been gladdened by the delight of children,-
as they viewed these animated figures ! or his pride
indulged, by haranguing learnedly to grown men on
the mechanical powers which produced such wonderful
effects ! or his gallantry brought into play (for this is
an attribute which such grave men do not lack) by the
visits of pretty maidens! And then with how fresh -a
feeling must he return, at intervals, to his own peculiar
home !

"I would I were assured of as happy a life as his,"
thought I.

Though the showman's wagon might have accommo-
dated fifteen or twenty spectators, it now contained only
himself and me, and a third person at whom I threw a
glance on entering. He was a neat and trim young man
of two or three and twenty ; his drab hat, and green
frock-coat with velvet collar, were smart, though no
longer new ; while a pair of green spectacles, that
seemed needless to his brisk little eyes, gave him some-
thing of a scholar-like and literary air. After allowing
me a sufficient time to inspect the puppets, he advanced
with a bow, and drew my attention to some books in a
corner of the wagon. These he forthwith began to ex-
tol, with an amazing volubility of well-sounding words,
and an ingenuity of praise that won him my heart, as
being myself one of the most merciful of critics. Indeed,
6* i

130 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

liis stock required some considerable powers of commen-
dation in the salesman ; there were several ancient friends
of mine, the novels of those happy days when my affec-
tions wavered between the Scottish Chiefs and Thomas
Thumb ; besides a few of later date, whose merits had
not been acknowledged by the public. I was glad to
find that dear little venerable volume, the New England
Primer, looking as antique as ever, though in its thou-
sandth new edition ; a bundle of superannuated gilt pic-
ture-books made such a child of me, that, partly for the
glittering covers, and partly for the fairy-tales within, I
bought the whole ; and an assortment of ballads and
popular theatrical songs drew largely on my purse. To
balance these expenditures, I meddled neither with ser-
mons, nor science, nor morality, though volumes of each
were there ; nor with a Life of Franklin in the coarsest
of paper, but so showily bound that it was emblemati-
cal of the Doctor himself, in the court dress which he
refused to wear at Paris ; nor with Webster's Spelling-
Book, nor some of Byron's minor poems, nor half a
dozen little Testaments at twenty-five cents each.

Thus far the collection might have been swept from
some great bookstore, or picked up at an evening auc-
tion-room; but there was one small blue-covered pam-
phlet, which the pedler handed me with so peculiar an
air, that I purchased it immediately at his own price ;
and then, for the first time, the thought struck me, that
I had spoken face to face with the veritable author of
a printed book. The literary man now evinced a great
kindness for me, and I ventured to inquire which way
he was travelling.

" O," said he, " I keep company with this old gentle-
man here, and we are moving now towards the camp-
meeting at Stamford ! "

THE SEVEX VAGABOXDS. 131

He then explained to me, that for the present season
he had rented a corner of the wagon as a bookstore,
which, as he wittily observed, was a true Circulating
Library, since there were few parts of the country where
it had not gone its rounds. I approved of the plan ex-
ceedingly, and began to sum up within my mind the
many uncommon felicities in the life of a book-pedler,
especially when his character resembled that of the in-
dividual before me. At a high rate was to be reckoned
the daily and hourly enjoyment of such interviews as the
present, in which he seized upon the admiration of a
passing stranger, and made him aware that a man of
literary taste, and even of literary achievement, was
travelling the country in a showman's wagon. A more
valuable, yet not infrequent triumph, might be won
in his conversation with some elderly clergyman, long
vegetating in a rocky, woody, watery back settlement of
New England, who, as he recruited his library from the
pedler's stock of sermons, would exhort him to seek a
college education and become the first scholar in his
class. Sweeter and prouder yet would be his sensations,
when, talking poetry while he sold spelling-books, he
should charm the mind, and haply touch the heart of
a fair country schoolmistress, herself an unhonored
poetess, a wearer of blue stockings which none but
himself took pains to look at. But the scene of his
completest glory would be when the wagon had halted
for the night, and his stock of books was transferred
to some crowded bar-room. Then would he recommend
to the multifarious company, whether traveller from
the city, or teamster from the hills, or neighboring
squire, or the landlord himself, or his loutish hostler,
works suited to each particular taste and capacity;
proving, all the while, by acute criticism and profound

132 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

remark, that the lore iii his books was even exceeded by
that in his brain.

Thus happily would he traverse the land ; sometimes a
herald before the march of Mind; sometimes walking
arm in arm with awful Literature ; and reaping- every-
where a harvest of real and sensible popularity, which the
secluded bookworms, by whose toil he lived, could never
hope for.

" If ever I meddle with literature," thought I, fixing
myself in adamantine resolution, " it shall be as a travel-
ling bookseller."

Though it was still mid-afternoon, the air had now
grown dark about us, and a few drops of rain came down
upon the roof of our vehicle, pattering like the feet of
birds that had flown thither to rest. A sound of pleasant
voices made us listen, and there soon appeared half-way
up the ladder the pretty person of a young damsel, whose
rosy face was so cheerful, that even amid the gloomy light
it seemed as if the sunbeams were peeping under her
bonnet. We next saw the dark and handsome features
of a young man, who, with easier gallantry than might
have been expected in the heart of Yankee-land, was
assisting her into the wagon. It became immediately
evident to us, when the two strangers stood within the
door, that they were of a profession kindred to those of
my companions ; and I was delighted with the more than
hospitable, the even paternal kindness, of the old show-
man's manner, as he welcomed them ; while the man of
literature hastened to lead the merry-eyed girl to a seat
on the long bench.

" You are housed but just in time, my young friends,"
said the master of the wagon. " The sky would have
been down upon you within five minutes."

The young man's reply marked him as a foreigner, not

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 133

by any variation from the idiom and accent of good Eng-
lish, but because he spoke with more caution and accu-
racy, than if perfectly familiar with the language.

"We knew that a shower was hanging over us," said
he, "and consulted whether it were best to enter the
house on the top of yonder hill, but seeing your wagon
in the road — "

"We agreed to come hither," interrupted the girl,
with a smile, " because we should be more at home in a
wandering house like this."

I, meanwhile, with many a wild and undetermined fan-
tasy, was narrowly inspecting these two doves that had
flown into our ark. The young man, tall, agile, and
athletic, wore a mass of black shining curls clustering
round a dark and vivacious countenance, which, if it had
not greater expression, was at least more active, and at-
tracted readier notice, than the quiet faces of our country-
men. At his first appearance, he had been laden with a
neat mahogany box, of about two feet square, but very
light in proportion to its sizs, which he had immediately
unstrapped from his shoulders and deposited on the floor
of the wagon.

The girl had nearly as fair a complexion as our own
beauties, and a brighter one than most of them ; the light-
ness of her figure, which seemed calculated to traverse
the whole world without weariness, suited well with the
glowing cheerfulness of her face ; and her gay attire,
combining the rainbow hues of crimson, green, and a
deep orang3, was as proper to her lightsome aspect as if
she had been born in it. This gay stranger was appro-
priately burdened with that mirth -inspiring instrument,
the fiddle, which her companion took from her hands, and
shortly began the process of tuning. Neither of us —
the previous company of the wagon — needed to inquire

134 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

their trade ; for this could be no mystery to frequenters
of brigade-musters, ordinations, cattle-shows, commence-
ments, and other festal meetings in our sober laud ; and
there is a dear friend of mine, who will smile when this
page recalls to his memory a chivalrous deed performed
by us, in rescuing the show-box of such a couple from a
mob of great double-fisted countrymen.

" Come," said I to the damsel of gay attire, " shall we
visit all the wonders of the world together ? "

She understood the metaphor at once ; though indeed
it would not much have troubled me, if she had assented
to the literal meaning of my words. The mahogany box
was placed in a proper position, and I peeped in through
its small round magnifying window, while the girl sat by
my side, and gave short descriptive sketches, as one after
another the pictures were unfolded to my view. We
visited together, at least our imaginations did, full many a
famous city, in the streets of which I had long yearned
to tread ; once, I remember, we were in the harbor of
Barcelona, gazing townwards ; next, she bore me through
the air to Sicily, and bade me look up at blazing jEtna ;
then we took wing to Yenice, and sat in a gondola be-
neath the arch of the llialto ; and anon she sat me down
among the thronged spectators at the coronation of Na-
poleon. But there was one scene, its locality she could
not tell, which charmed my attention longer than all those
gorgeous palaces and churches, because the fancy haunted
me, that I myself, the preceding summer, had beheld just
such a humble meeting-house, in just such a pine-sur-
rounded nook, among our own green mountains. All
these pictures were tolerably executed, though far infe-
rior to the girl's touches of description ; nor was it easy
to comprehend, how in so few sentences, and these, as I
supposed, in a language foreign to her, she contrived to

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 135

present an airy copy of each varied scene. When we had
travelled through the vast extent of the mahogany box,
I looked into my guide's face.

" Where are you going, my pretty maid ? " inquired I,
in the words of an old song.

" Ah," said the gay damsel, " you might as well ask
where the summer wind is going. We are wanderers
here, and there, and everywhere. Wherever there is
mirth, our merry hearts are drawn to it. To-day, indeed,
the people have told us of a great frolic and festival in
these parts ; so perhaps we may be needed at what you
call the camp-meeting at Stamford."

Then in my happy youth, and while her pleasant voice
yet sounded in my ears, I sighed ; for none but myself,
I thought, should have been her companion in a life
which seemed to realize my own wild fancies, cherished
all through visionary boyhood to that hour. To these
two strangers the world was in its golden age, not that
indeed it was less dark and sad than ever, but because
its weariness and sorrow had 110 community with their
ethereal nature. Wherever they might appear in their
pilgrimage of bliss, Youth would echo back their glad-
iiass, care-stricken Maturity would rest a moment from
its toil, and Age, tottering among the graves, would smile
in withered joy for their sakes. The lonely cot, the nar-
row and gloomy street, the sombre shade, would catch a
passing gleam like that now shining on ourselves, as these
bright spirits wandered by. Blessed pair, whose happy
home was throughout all the earth ! I looked at my
shoulders, and thought them broad enough to sustain
those pictured towns and mountains ; mine, too, was an
elastic foot, as tireless as the wing of the bird of para-
dise ; mine was then an untroubled heart, that would
have gone singing on its dalightful way.

130 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

" O maiden ! " said I aloud, " why did you not come
hither alone ? "

While the merry girl and myself were busy with the
show-box, the unceasing rain had driven another way-
farer into the wagon. He seemed pretty nearly of the
old showman's age, but much smaller, leaner, and more
withered than he, and less respectably clad in a patched
suit of gray ; withal, he had a thin, shrewd countenance,
and a pair of diminutive gray eyes, which peeped ralher
too keenly out of their puckered sockets. This old fellow
had been joking with the showman, in a manner which
intimated previous acquaintance ; but perceiving that the
damsel and I had terminated our affairs, he drew forth a
folded document, and presented it to me. As I had an-
ticipated, it proved to be a circular, written in a very
fair and legible hand, and signed by several distinguished
gentlemen whom I had never heard of, stating that the
bearer had encountered every variety of .misfortune, and
recommending him to the notice of all charitable people.
Previous disbursements had left me no more than a five-
dollar bill, out of which, however, I offered to make the
beggar a donation, provided he would give me change for
it. The object of my beneficence looked keenly in my
face, and discerned that I had none of that abominable
spirit, characteristic though it be, of a full-blooded Yan-
kee, which takes pleasure in detecting every little harm-
less piece of knavery.

" Why, perhaps," said the ragged old mendicant, " if
the bank is in good standing, I can't say but I may have
enough about me to change your bill."

" It is a bill of the Suffolk Bank," said I, " and better
than the specie."

As the beggar had nothing to object, he now produced
a small buff-leather bag, tied up carefully with a shoe-

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 137

string. When this was opened, there appeared a very
comfortable treasure of silver coins of all sorts and sizes ;
and I even fancied that I saw, gleaming among them, the
golden plumage of that rare bird in our currency, the
American Eagle. In this precious heap was my bank-
note deposited, the rate of exchange being considerably
against me. His wants being thus relieved, the destitute
man pulled out of his pocket an old pack of greasy cards,,
which had probably contributed to fill the buff-leather
bag, in more ways than one.

" Come," said he, " I spy a rare fortune in your
facs, and for twenty-five cents more, I '11 tell you what
it is."

I never refuse to take a glimpse into futurity ; so,
after shuffling the cards, and when the fair damsel had cut
them, I dealt a portion to the prophetic beggar. Like
others of his profession, before predicting the shadowy
events that were moving on to meet me, he gave proof
of his preternatural science, by describing scenes through
which I had already passed. Here let me have credit for
a sober fact. When the old man had read a page in his
book of fate, he bent his keen gray eyes on mine, and
proceeded to relate, in all its minute particulars, what
was then the most singular event of my life. It was one
which I had no purpose to disclose, till the general un-
folding of all secrets ; nor would it be a much stranger
instance of inscrutable knowledge, or fortunate conjecture,
if the beggar were to meet me in the street to-day, and re-
peat, word for word, the page which I have here written.
The fortune-teller, after predicting a destiny which time
seems loath to make good, put up his cards, secreted his
treasure-bag, and began to converse with the other occu-
pants of the wagon.

" Well, old friend," said the showman, " you have not

138 T\VICE-TOLD TALES.

yet told us which way your face is turned this after-
noon."

" I am taking a trip northward, this warm weather,"
replied the conjurer, " across the Connecticut first, and
then up through Vermont, and may be into Canada before
the fall. But I must stop and see the breaking up of
the camp-meeting at Stamford."

I began to think that all the vagrants in New England
were converging to the camp-meeting, and had made this
wagon their rendezvous by the way. The showman now
proposed that, when the shower was over, they should
pursue the road to Stamford together, it being sometimes
the policy of these people to form a sort of league and
confederacy.

" And the young lady too," observed the gallant bib-
liopolist, bowing to her profoundly, "and this foreign
gentleman, as I understand, are on a jaunt of pleasure
to the same spot. It would add incalculably to my own
enjoyment, and I presume to that of my colleague and
his friend, if they could be prevailed upon to join our
party."

This arrangement met with approbation on all hands,
nor were any of those concerned more sensible of its ad-
vantages than myself, who had no title to be included in
it. Having already satisfied myself as to the several
modes in which the four others attained felicity, I next
set my mind at work to discover what enjoyments were
peculiar to the old " Straggler," as the people of the
country would have termed the wandering mendicant and
prophet. As he pretended to familiarity with the Devil,
so I fancied that he was fitted to pursue and take delight
in his way of life, by possessing some of the mental and
moral characteristics, the lighter and more comic ones*
of the Devil in popular stories. Among them might be

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 139

reckoned a love of deception for its own sake, a shrewd
eye and keen relish for human weakness and ridiculous
infirmity, and the talent of petty fraud. Thus to this old
man there would be pleasure even in the consciousness,
so insupportable to some minds, that his whole life was
a cheat upon the world, and that, so far as he was con-
cerned with the public, his little cunning had the upper
hand of its united wisdom. Every day would furnish
him. with a succession of minute and pungent triumphs :
as when, for instance, his importunity wrung a pittance
out of the heart of a miser, or when my silly good-na-
ture transferred a part of my slender purse to his plump
leather bag ; or when some ostentatious gentleman should
throw a coin to the ragged beggar who was richer than
himself; or when, though he would not always be so
decidedly diabolical, his pretended wants should make
him a sharer in the scanty living of real indigence. And
then what an inexhaustible field of enjoyment, both as
enabling him to discern so much folly and achieve such
quantities of minor mischief, was opened to his sneering
spirit by his pretensions to prophetic knowledge.

All this was a sort of happiness which I could conceive
of, though I had little sympathy with it. Perhaps, had
I been then inclined to admit it, I might have found that
the roving life was more proper to him than to either of
his companions ; for Satan, to whom I had compared the
poor man, has delighted, ever since the time of Job, in
"wandering up and down upon the earth" ; and indeed
a crafty disposition, which operates not in deep-laid
plans, but in disconnected tricks, could not have an ad-
equate scope, unless naturally impelled to a continual
change of scene and society. My reflections were here
interrupted.

" Another visitor ! " exclaimed the old showman.

14-0 . TWICE-TOLD TALES.

The door of the wagon had been closed against the
tempest, which'was roaring and blustering with prodigious
fury and commotion, and beating violently against our
shelter, as if it claimed all those homeless people for its
lawful prey, while we, caring little for the displeasure of
the elements, sat comfortably talking. There was now
an attempt to open the door, succeeded by a voice, ut-
tering some strange, unintelligible gibberish, which my
companions mistook for Greek, and I suspected to be
thieves' Latin. However, the showman stepped forward,
and gave admittance to a figure which made me imagine,
either that our wagon had rolled back two hundred years
into past ages, or that the forest and its old inhabitants
had sprung up around us by enchantment.

It was a red Indian, armed with his bow- and arrow.
His dress was a sort of cap, adorned with a single feather
of some wild bird, and a frock of blue cotton, girded
tight about him ; on his breast, like orders of knight-
hood, hung a crescent and a circle, and other ornaments
of silver; while a small crucifix betokened that our
Father the Pope had interposed between the Indian and
the Great Spirit, whom he had worshipped in his sim-
plicity. This son of the wilderness, and pilgrim of
the storm, took his place silently in the midst of us.
When the first surprise was over, I rightly conjectured
him to be one of the Penobscot tribe, parties of which I
had often seen, in their summer excursions down our
Eastern rivers. There they paddle their birch canoes
among the coasting schooners, and build their wigwam
beside some roaring milldam, and drive a little trade in
basket-work where their fathers hunted deer. Our new
visitor was probably wandering through the country
towards Boston, subsisting on the careless charity of the
people, while he turned his archery to profitable account

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 141

by shooting at cents, which were to be the prize of his
successful aim.

The Indian had not long been seated, ere our merry
damsel sought to draw him into conversation. She, in-
deed, seemed all made up of sunshine in the mouth of
May ; for there was nothing so dark and dismal that her
pleasant mind could not cast a glow over it; and the
wild man, like a fir-tree in his native forest, soon began
to brighten into a sort of sombre cheerfulness. At length,
she inquired whether his journey had any particular end
or purpose.

" I go shoot at the camp-meeting at Stamford," replied
the Indian.

"And here are five more," said the girl, "all aiming
at the camp-meeting too. You shall be one of us, for we
travel with light hearts ; and as for me, I sing merry
songs, and tell merry tales, and am fall of merry thoughts,
and I dance merrily along the road, so that there is never
any sadness among them that keep me company. But,
0, you would find it very dull indeed, to go all the way
to Stamford alone ! "

My ideas of the aboriginal character led me to fear that
the Indian would prefer his own solitary musings to the
giy society thus offered him ; on the contrary, the girl's
proposal met with immediate acceptance, and seemed to
animate him with a misty expectation of enjoyment. I
now gave myself up to a course of thought which, whether
it flowed naturally from this combination of events, or
was drawn forth by a wayward fancy, caused my mind to
thrill as if I were listening to deep music. I saw man-
kind, in this weary old age of the world, either enduring
a sluggish existence amid the smoke and dust of cities,
or, if they breathed a purer air, still lying down at night
with no hope but to wear out to-morrow, and all the

142 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

- to-morrows which make up life, among the same dull
scenes and in. the same wretched toil that had darkened
the sunshine of to-day. But there were some, full of the
primeval instinct, who preserved the freshness of youth
to their latest years by the continual excitement of new
objects, new pursuits, and new associates; and cared
little, though their birthplace might have been here in
New England, if the grave should close over them in
Central Asia. Fate was summoning a parliament of
these free spirits; unconscious of the impulse whirh
directed them to a common centre, they had come hither
from far and near; and last of all appeared the repre-
sentative of those mighty vagrants, who had chased the
deer during thousands of years, and were chasing it now
in the Spirit Land. Wandering down through the waste
of ages, the woods had vanished around his path ; his
arm had lost somewhat of its strength, his foot of its
fleetness, his mien of its wild regality, his heart and mind
of their savage virtue and uncultured force ; but here,
untamable to the routine of artificial life, roving now
along the dusty road, as of old over the forest leaves,
here was the Indian still.

"Well," said the old showman, in the midst of my
meditations, " here is an honest company of us, — one,
two, three, four, five, six, — all going to the camp-meet-
ing at Stamford. Now, hoping no offence, I should like
to know where this young gentleman may be going ? "

I started. How came I among these wanderers ?
The free mind, that preferred its own folly to another's
wisdom ; the open spirit, that found companions every-
where ; above all, the restless impulse, that had so often
made me wretehed in the midst of enjoyments : these
were my claims to be of their society.

"My friends!" cried I, stepping into the centre of

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 143

the wagon, " I am going with you to the camp-meeting
at Stamford."

" But in what capacity ? " asked the old showman,
after a moment's silence. " All of us here can get our
bread in some creditable way. Every honest man should
have his livelihood. You, sir, as I take it, are a mere
strolling gentleman."

I proceeded to inform the company, that, when Nature
gave me a propensity to their way of life, she had not
left me altogether destitute of qualifications for it;
though I could not deny that my talent was less re-
spectable, and might be less profitable, than the meanest
of theirs. My design, in short, was to imitate the story-
tellers of whom Oriental travellers have told us, and be-
come an itinerant novelist, reciting my own extempora-
neous fictions to such audiences as I could collect.

"Either this," said I, "is my vocation, or I have been
born in vain."

The fortune-teller, with a sly wink to the company,
proposed to take me as an apprentice to one or other
of his professions, either of which, undoubtedly, would
have given full scope to whatever inventive talent I
might possess. The bibliopolist spoke a few words in
opposition to my plan, influenced partly, I suspect, by
the jealousy of authorship, and partly by an apprehension
that the viva voce practice would become general among
novelists, to the infinite detriment of the book-trade.
Dreading a rejection, I solicited the interest of the merry
damsel.

"Mirth," cried I, most aptly appropriating the words
of L'Allegro, " to thee I sue ! Mirth, admit me of thy
crew ! "

"Let us indulge the poor youth," said Mirth, with a
kindness which made me love her dearly, though I was

144 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

no sucli coxcomb as to misinterpret her motives. "I
have espied much promise in him. True, a shadow some-
times flits across his brow, but the sunshine is sure to
follow in a moment. He is never guilty of a sad thought,
but a merry one is twin born with it. We will take him
with us; and you shall see that he will set us all
a-laughiug before we reach the camp-meeting at Stam-
ford."

Her voice silenced the scruples of the rest, and gained
me admittance into the league ; according to the terms
of which, without a community of goods or profits, we
were to lend each other all the aid, and avert all the
harm, that might be in our power. This affair settled,
a marvellous jollity entered into the whole tribe of us,
manifesting itself characteristically in each individual.
The old showman, sitting down to his barrel-organ,
stirred up the souls of the pygmy people with one of
the quickest tunes in the music-book ; tailors, black-
smiths, gentlemen, and ladies, all seemed to share in the
spirit of the occasion ; and the Merry -Andrew played
his part more facetiously than ever, nodding and wink-
ing particularly at me. The young foreigner flourished
his fiddle-bow with a master's hand, and gave an inspir-
ing echo to the showman's melody. The bookish man
and the merry damsel started up simultaneously to dance ;
the former enacting the double shuffle in a style which
everybody must have witnessed, ere Election week was
blotted out of time ; while the girl, setting her arms
akimbo with both hands at her slim waist, displayed
such light rapidity of foot, and harmony of varying atti-
tude and motion, that I could not conceive how she ever
was to stop; imagining, at the moment, that Nature had
made her, as the old showrman had made his puppets, for
no earthly purpose but to dance jigs. The Indian bel-

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 145

lowed forth a succession of most hideous outcries, some-
what affrighting1 us, till we interpreted them as the war-
song, with which, in imitation of his ancestors, he was
prefacing the assault on Stamford. The conjurer, mean-
while, sat demurely in a corner, extracting a sly enjoy-
ment from the whole scene, and, like the facetious Merry-
Andrew, directing his queer glance particularly at me.

As for myself, with great exhilaration of fancy, I
b?gan to arrange and color the incidents of a tale, where-
with I proposed to amuse an audience that very evening ;
for I saw that my associates were a little ashamed of me,
and that no time was to be lost in obtaining a public ac-
knowledgment of my abilities.

" Coins, fellow-laborers," at last said the old show-
man, whom we had elected President ; " the shower is
over, and we must be doing our duty by these poor souls
at Stamford."

" We '11 come among them in procession, with music
and dancing," cried the merry damsel.

Accordingly — for it must be understood that our
pilgrimage was to be performed on foot — we sallied
joyously out of the wagon, each of us, even the old
gentleman in his white-top boots, giving a great skip as
we came down the ladder. Above our heads there was
such a glory, of sunshine and splendor of clouds, and
such brightness of verdure below, that, as I modestly
remarked at the time, Nature seemed to. have washed
her face, and put on the best of her jewelry and a fresh
green gown, in honor of our confederation. Casting our
eyes northward, we beheld a horseman approaching leis-
urely, and splashing through the little puddles on the
Stamford road. Onward he came, sticking up in his
saddle with rigid perpendicularity, a tall, thin figure in
rusty black, whom the showman and the conjurer shortly

VOL. II. 7 J

146 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

recognized to be, what his aspect sufficiently indicated, a
travelling preacher of great fame among the Methodists.
What puzzled us was the fact, that his face appeared
turned from, instead of to, the camp-meeting at Stam-
ford. However, as this new votary of the wandering
life drew near the little green space, where the guidepost
and our wagon were situated, my six fellow- vagabonds
and myself rushed forward and surrounded him, crying
out with united voices, —

"What news, what news from the camp-meeting at
Stamford ? "

The missionary looked down, in surprise, at as singu-
lar a knot of people as could have been selected from all
his heterogeneous auditors. Indeed, considering that we
might all be classified under the general head of Vaga-
bond, there was great diversity of character among the
grave old showman, the sly, prophetic beggar, the fid-
dling foreigner and his merry damsel, the smart bibliop-
olist, the sombre Indian, and myself, the itinerant nov-
elist, a slender youth of eighteen. I even fancied that
a smile was endeavoring to disturb the iron gravity of
the preacher's mouth.

" Good people," answered he, " the camp-meeting is
broke up."

So saying, the Methodist minister switched his steed,
and rode westward. Our union being thus nullified, by
the removal of its object, we were sundered at once to
the four winds of heaven. The fortune-teller, giving a
nod to all, and a peculiar wink to me, departed on his
northern tour, chuckling within himself as he took the
Stamford road. The old showman and his literary co-
adjutor were already tackling their horses to the wagon,
with a design to peregrinate southwest along the sea-
coast. The foreigner and the merry damsel took their

THE SEVEN VAGABONDS. 14-7

laughing leave, and pursued the eastern road, which I
had that day trodden ; as they passed away, the young
man played a lively strain, and the girl's happy spirit
broke into a dance ; and thus, dissolving, as it were,
into sunbeams and gay music, that pleasant pair de-
parted from my view. Finally, with a pensive shadow
thrown across my mind, yet emulous of the light philos-
ophy of my late companions, I joined myself to the
Penobscot Indian, and set forth towards the distant
city.

THE WHITE OLD MAID.

|HE moonbeams came through two deep and
narrow windows, and showed a spacious cham-

ber, richly furnished in an antique fashion.

i'rom one lattice, the shadow of the diamond panes was
thrown upon the floor ; the ghostly light, through the
other, slept upon a bed, falling between the heavy
silken curtains, and illuminating the face of a young
man. But, ho\v quietly the slumberer lay ! how pale his
features ! and how like a shroud the sheet was wound
about his frame ! Yes ; it was a corpse, in its burial-
clothes.

Suddenly, the fixed features seemed to move, with
dark emotion. Strange fantasy ! It was but the shadow
of the fringed curtain, waving betwixt the dead face
and the moonlight, as the door of the chamber opened,
and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delu-
sion in the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye
betray a gleam of triumph, as she bent over the pale
corpse — pale as itself — and pressed her living lips to
the cold ones of the dead ? As she drew back from that
long kiss, her features writhed, as if a proud heart Avere
fighting with its anguish. Again it seemed that the
features of the corpse had moved responsive to her.
own. Still an illusion ! The silken curtain had waved,

THE WHITE OLD MAID. 14)9

a second time, betwixt the dead face and the moonlight,
as another fair young girl unclosed the door, and glided,
ghost-like, to the bedside. There the two maidens
stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead
between them. But she, who had first entered, was
proud and stately; and the other, a soft and fragile
thing.

"Away!" cried the lofty one. "Thou hadst him
living ! The dead is mine ! "

"Thine!" returned the other, shuddering. "Well
hast thou spoken ! The dead is thine ! "

The proud girl started, and stared into her face, with
a ghastly look. But a wild and mournful expression
passed across the features of the gentle one ; and, weak
and helpless, she sank down on the bed, her head pil-
lowed beside that of the corpse, and her hair mingling
with his dark locks. A creature of hope and joy, the
first draught of sorrow had bewildered hsr.

" Edith ! " cried her rival.

Edith groaned, as with a sudden compression of the
heart; and removing her cheek from the dead youth's
pillow, she stood upright, fearfully encountering the
eyes of the lofty girl.

" Wilt thou betray me ? " said the latter, calmly.

"Till the dead bid me speak, I will be silent," an-
swered Edith. "Leave us alone together! Go, and
live many years, and then return, and tell me of thy
life. He, too, will be here ! Then, if thou tellesfc
of sufferings more than death, we will both forgive
thee."

"And what shall be the token?" asked the proud
girl, as if her heart acknowledged a meaning in these
wild words.

" This lock of hair," said Edith, lifting one of the

150 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

dark, clustering curls, that lay heavily on the dead man's
brow.

The two maidens joined their hands over the bosom of
the corpse, and appointed a day and hour, far, far in time
to come, for their next meeting in that chamber. The
statelier girl gave one deep look at the motionless coun-
tenance, and departed, — yet turned again and trembled,
ere she closed the door, almost believing that her dead
lover frowned upon her. And Edith, too ! Was not her
white form fading into the moonlight ? Scorning her own
weakness, she went forth, and perceived that a negro
slave was waiting in the passage, with a wax light, which
he held between her face and his own, and regarded her,
as she thought, with an ugly expression of merriment.
Lifting his torch on high, the slave lighted her down the
staircase, and undid the portal of the mansion. The
young clergyman of the town had just ascended the
steps, and bowing to the lady, passed in without a
word.

Years, many years rolled on ; the world seemed new
again, so much older was it grown, since the night when
those pale girls had clasped their hands across the bosom
of the corpse. In the interval, a lonely woman had
passed from youth to extreme age, and was known by
all the town, as the " Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet."
A taint of insanity had affected her whole life, but so
quiet, sad, and gentle, so utterly free from violence, that
she was suffered to pursue her harmless fantasies, unmo-
lested by the world, with whose business or pleasures she
had naught to do. She dwelt alone, and never came into
the daylight, except to follow funerals. Whenever a
corpse was borne along the street, in sunshine, rain, or
snow, whether a pompous train, of the rich and proud,
thronged after it, or few and humble were the mourners,

THE WHITE OLD MAID. 151

behind them came the lonely woman, in a long, white
garment, which the people called her shroud. She took
no place among the kindred or the friends, but stood at
the door to hear the funeral prayer, and walked in the
rear of the procession, as one whose earthly charge it was
to haunt the house of mourning, and be the shadow of
affliction, and see that the dead were duly buried. So
long had this been her custom, that the inhabitants of •
the town deemed her a part of every funeral, as much as
the coffin pall, or the very corpse itself, and augured ill
of the sinner's destiny, unless the "Old Maid in the
Winding-Sheet" came gliding, like a ghost, behind.
Once, it is said, she affrighted a bridal party, with her
pale presence, appearing suddenly in the illuminated hall,
just as the priest was uniting a false maid to a wealthy
man, before her lover had been dead a year. Evil was
the omen to that marriage ! Sometimes she stole forth
by moonlight, and visited the graves of venerable Integ-
rity, and wedded Love, and virgin Innocence, and every
spot where the ashes of a kind and faithful heart were
mouldering. Over the hillocks of those favored dead
would she stretch out her arms, with a gesture, as if
she were scattering seeds ; and many believed that
she brought them from the gardsn of Paradise ; for the
graves, which she had visited, were green beneath the
snow, and covered with sweet flowers from April to
November. Her blessing was better than a holy verse
upon the tombstone. Thus wore away her long, sad,
peaceful, and fantastic life, till few were so old as she,
and the people of later generations wondered how the
dead had ever been buried, or mourners had endured
their grief, without the "Old Maid in the Wiuding-
Sheet."

Still, years went on, and still she followed funsrals,

152 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

and was not yet summoned to her own festival of death.
One afternoon, the great street of the town was all alive
with business and bustle, though the sun now gilded only
the upper half of the church-spire, having left the house-
tops and loftiest trees in shadow. The scene was cheer-
ful and animated, in spite of the sombre shade between
the high brick buildings. Here were pompous merchants,
in white wigs and laced velvet ; the bronzed faces of sea-
captains; the foreign garb and air of Spanish Creoles;
and the disdainful port of natives of Old England ; all
contrasted with the rougli aspect of one or two back
settlers, negotiating sales of timber, from forests where
axe had never sounded. Sometimes a lady passed, swell-
ing roundly forth in an embroidered petticoat, balancing
her steps in high-heeled shoes, and courtesying, with
lofty grace, to the punctilious obeisances of the gentle-
men. The life of the town seemed to have its very centre
not far from an old mansion, that stood somewhat back
from the pavement, surrounded by neglected grass, with
a strange air of loneliness, rather deepened than dispelled
by the throng so near it. Its site would have been suit-
ably occupied by a magnificent Exchange, or a brick
block, lettered all over with various signs ; or the large
house itself might have made a noble tavern, with the
" King's Arms" swinging before it, and guests in every
chamber, instead of the present solitude. But, owing to
some dispute about the right of inheritance, the mansion
had been long without a tenant, decaying from year to
year, and throwing the stately gloom of its shadow over
the busiest part of the town. Such was the scene, and
such the time, when a figure, unlike any that have
been described, was observed at a distance down the
street.

"I espy a strange sail, yonder," remarked a Liver-

THE WHITE OLD MAID. 153

pool captain ; " that woman in the long, white gar-
ment ! "

The sailor seemed much struck by ths object, as were
several others, who, at the same moment, caught a,
glimpse of the figure that had attracted his notice. Al-
most immediately, the various topics of conversation gave
place to speculations, in an undertone, on this unwonted
occurrence.

" Can there be a funeral, so late this afternoon?" in-
quired some.

They looked for the signs of death at every door, —
the sexton, the hearse, tli3 assemblage of black-clad rela-
tives,— all that makes up the woful pomp of funerals.
They raised their eyes, also, to the sun-gilt spire of the
church, and wondered that no clang proceeded from its
bell, which had always tolled till now, when this figure
appeared in the light of day. But none had heard that a
corps 3 was to be borne to its home that afternoon, nor
was there any token of a funeral, except the apparition
of the " Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet."

" What may this portend ? " asked each man of his
neighbor.

All smiled as they put the question, yet with a certain
trouble in their eyes, as if pestilence, or some other wide
calamity, were prognosticated by the untimely intrusion
. among the living, of one whose presence had always been
associated with death and woe. What a comet is to the
earth, was that sad woman to the town. Still she moved
on, while the hum of surprise was hushed at her approach,
and the proud and the humble stood aside, that her white
garment might not wave against them. It was a long,
loose robe, of spotless purity. Its wearer appeared very
old, pale, emaciated, and feeble, yet glided onward, with-
out the unsteady pace of extreme age. At one point of
"7*

154 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

her course, a littly rosy boy burst forth from a door, and"
ran, with open arms, towards the ghostly woman, seem-
ing to expect a kiss from her bloodless lips. She made
a slight pause, fixing her eye upon him with an expres-
sion of no earthly sweetness, so that the child shivered
and stood awe-struck, rather than affrighted, while the
Old Maid passed on. Perhaps her garment might have
been polluted even by an infant's touch ; perhaps her kiss
would have been death to the sweet boy, within a year.

"She is but a shadow," whispered the superstitious.
" The child put forth his arms and could not grasp her
robe ! "

The wonder was increased, when the Old Maid passed
beneath the porch of the deserted mansion, ascended the
moss-covered steps, lifted the iron knocker, and gave
three raps. The people could only conjecture, that some
old remembrance, troubling her bewildered brain, had
impelled the poor woman hither to visit the friends of her
youth ; all gone from their home, long since and forever,
unless their ghosts still haunted it, — fit company for the
" Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet." An elderly man ap-
proached the steps, and reverently uncovering his gray
locks, essayed to explain the matter.

" None, Madam," said he, " have dwelt in this house
these fifteen years agone, — no, not since the death of old
Colonel Fenwicke, whose funeral you may remember to
have followed. His heirs being ill agreed among them-
selves, have let the mansion-house go to ruin."

The Old Maid looked slowly round, with a slight ges-
ture of one hand, and a finger of the other upon her lip,
appearing more shadow-like than ever, in the obscurity
of the porch. But again she lifted the hammer, and gave,
this time, a single rap. Could it be that a footstep was
now heard, coining down the staircase of the old mansion.

THE WHITE OLD MAID. 155

which all conceived to have been so long imtenanted ?
Slowly, feebly, yet heavily, like the pace of an aged and
infirm person, the step approached, more distinct on every
downward stair, till it reached the portal. The bar fell
on the inside ; the door was opened. One upward glance,
towards the church-spire, whence the sunshine had just
faded, was the last that the people saw of the " Old Maid
in the Winding-Sheet."

" Who undid the door ? " asked many.

This question, owing to the depth of shadow beneath
the porch, no 0113 could satisfactorily answer. Two or
three aged men, while protesting against an inference,
which might be drawn, affirmed that the person within
was a negro, and bore a singular resemblance to old
Ca3sar, formerly a slave in the house, but freed by death
some thirty years before.

" Her summons has waked up a servant of the old
family," said one, half seriously.

" Let us wait here," replied another. " More guests
will knock at the door, anon. But the gate of the grave-
yard should be thrown open ! "

Twilight had overspread the town, before the crowd
began to separate, or the comments on this incident were
exhausted. One after another was wending his way home-
ward, when a coach — no common spectacle in those days
— drove slowly into the street. It was an old-fashioned
equipage, hanging close to the ground, with arms on the
panels, a footman behind, and a grave, corpulent coach-
man seated high in front, — the whole giving an idea of
solemn state and dignity. There was something awful,
in the heavy rumbling of the wheels. The coach rolled
down the street, till, coming to the gateway of the de-
serted mansion, it drew up, and the footman sprang to
the ground.

156 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

" Whose grand coach is this ? " asked a very inquisi-
tive body.

The footman made no reply, but ascended the steps of
the old house, gave three raps with the iron hammer, and
returned to open the coach-door. An old man possessed
of the heraldic lore so common in that day examined the
shield of arms on the panel.

" Azure, a lion's head erased, between three flower-de-
luces," said he ; then whispered the name of the family to
whom these bearings belonged. The last inheritor of its
honors was recently dead, after a long residence amid the
splendor of the British court, where his birth and wealth
had given him no mean station. " He left no child," con-
tinued the herald, " and these arms, being in a lozenge,
betoken that the coach appertains to his widow."

Further disclosures, perhaps, might have been made,
had not the speaker suddenly been struck dumb, by the
stern eye of an ancient lady, who thrust forth her head
from the coach, preparing to descend. As she emerged,
the people saw that her dress was magnificent, and her
figure dignified, in spite of age and infirmity, — a stately
ruin, but with a look, at once, of pride and wretchedness.
Her strong and rigid features had an awe about them,
unlike that of the white Old Maid, but as of something
evil. She passed up the steps, leaning on a gold-headed
cane ; the door swung open, as she ascended, — and the
light of a torch glittered on the embroidery of her dress,
and gleamed on the pillars of the porch. After a mo-
mentary pause — a glance backwards — and then a des-
perate effort — she went in. The decipherer of the coat
of arms had ventured up the lowest step, and shrinking
back immediately, pale and tremulous, affirmed that the
torch was held by the very image of old Caesar.

"But, such a hideous grin," added he, "was never

THE WHITE OLD MAID. 157

seen on the face of mortal man, black or white ! It will
haunt me till my dying day."

Meantime, the coach had wheeled round, with a pro-
digious clatter on the pavement, and rumbled up the
street, disappearing in the twilight, while the ear still
tracked its course. Scarcely was it gone, when the peo-
ple began to question whether the coach and attendants,
the ancient lady, the spectre of old Csesar, and the Old
Maid herself, were not all a strangely combined delusion,
with some dark purport in its mystery. The whole town
was astir, so that, instead of dispersing, the crowd con-
tinually increased, and stood gazing up at the windows
of the mansion, now silvered by the brightening moon.
The elders, glad to indulge the narrative propensity of
age, told of the long-faded spleildor of the family, the
entertainments they had given, and the guests, the great-
est of the land, and even titled and noble ones from
abroad, who had passed beneath that portal. These
graphic reminiscences seemed to call up the ghosts of
those to whom they referred. So strong was the impres-
sion, on some of the more imaginative hearers, that two
or three were seized with trembling fits, at one and the
same moment, protesting that they had distinctly heard
three other raps of the iron knocker.

" Impossible ! " exclaimed others. " See ! The moon
shines beneath the porch, and shows every part of it,
except in the narrow shade of that pillar. There is no
one there ! "

"Did not the door open?" whispered one of these
fanciful persons.

" Didst thou see it, too ? " said his companion, in a
startled tone.

But the general sentiment was opposed to the idea,
that a third visitant had made application at the door

158 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

of the deserted house. A few, however, adhered to this
new marvel, and even declared that a red gleam, like
that of a torch, had shone through the great front
window, as if the negro were lighting a guest up the
staircase. This, too, was pronounced a mere fantasy.
But, at once, the whole multitude started, arid each man
beheld his own terror painted in the faces of all the rest.

" What an awful thing is this ! " cried they.

A shriek, too fearfully distinct for doubt, had been
heard within the mansion, breaking forth suddenly,
and succeeded by a deep stillness, as if a heart had
burst in giving it utterance. The people knew not
whether to fly from the very sight of the house, or
to rush trembling in, and search out the strange mys-
tery. Amid their confusion and affright, they were
somewhat reassured by the appearance of their cler-
gyman, a venerable patriarch, and equally a saint,
Avho had taught them and their fathers the way to
hoaven, for more than the space of an ordinary life-
time. He Avas a reverend figure, with long, white
hair upon his shoulders, a white beard upon his breast,
and a back so bent over his staff, that he seemed to
be looking downward, continually, as if to choose a
proper grave for his weary frame. It was some time
before the good old man, being deaf, and of impaired
intellect, could be made to . comprehend such portions
of the affair as were comprehensible at all. But, when
possessed of the facts, his energies assumed unexpected
vigor.^

" Verily," said the old gentleman, " it will be fitting
that I enter the mansion-house of the worthy Colonel
Fenwicke, lest any harm should have befallen that
true Christian woman, whom ye call tlie '(Xd Maid in
the Winding-Sheet.' "

THE WHITE OLD MAID. 159

Behold, then, the venerable clergyman ascending the
steps of the mansion, with a torch-bearer behind him.
It was the elderly man, who had spoken to the Old Maid,
and the same who had afterwards explained the shield
of arms, and recognized the features of the negro. Like
their predecessors, they gave three raps, with the iron
hammer. •

" Old Csesar cometh not," observed the priest. " Well,
I \vot, Ii3 no longjr doth service in tins mansion."

"Assuredly, then, it was something worse, in old
Caesar's likeness ! " said the other adventurer.

" Be it as God wills," answered the clergyman. " See !
my strength, though it be much decayed, hath sufficed
to open this heavy door. Let us enter, and pass up the
staircase."

Here occurred a singular exemplification of the dreamy
state of a very old man's mind. As they ascended the
wide flight of stairs, the aged clergyman appeared to
move with caution, occasionally standing aside, and of-
tener bending his head, as it were in salutation, thus
practising all the gestures of one who makes his way
through a throng. Reaching the head of the staircase,
he looked around, with sad and solemn benignity, laid
aside his staff, bared his hoary locks, and was evidently
on the point of commencing a prayer.

" Reverend Sir," said his attendant, who conceived
this a very suitable prelude to their further search,
" would it not be well, that the people join with us in
prayer ? "

" Well-a-day ! " cried the old clergyman, staring
strangely around him. " Art thou here with me, and
none other ? Verily, past times were present to me,
and I deemed that I was to make a funeral prayer, as
many a time heretofore, from the head of this staircusa.

160 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

Of a truth, I saw the shades of many that are gone.
Yea, I have prayed at their burials, one after another,
and the ' Old Maid in the Winding-Sheet ' hath seen
them to their graves ! "

Being now more thoroughly awake to their present
purpose, he took his staff, and struck forcibly on the
floor, till there came an echo from each deserted cham-
ber, but no menial, to answer their summons. They
therefore walked along the passage, and again paused,
opposite to the great front window, through which was
seen the crowd, in the shadow and partial moonlight of
the street beneath. On their right hand was the open
door of a chamber, and a closed one on their left. The
clergyman pointed his cane to the carved oak panel of the
latter.

" Within that chamber," observed he, " a whole life-
time since, did I sit by the death -bed of a goodly young
man, who, being now at the last gasp — "

Apparently, there was some powerful excitement in
the ideas which had now flashed across his mind. He
snatched the torch from his companion's hand, and
threw open the door with such sudden violence, that the
flame was extinguished, leaving them no other light
than the moonbeams, which fell through two windows
into the spacious chamber. It was sufficient to dis-
cover all that could be known. In a high-backed oaken
arm-chair, upright, with her hands clasped across her
breast, and her head thrown back, sat the "Old Maid
in the Winding-Sheet." The stately dame had fallen on
her knees, with her forehead on the holy knees of the
Old Maid, one hand upon the floor, and the other pressed
convulsively against her heart. It clutched a lock of
hair, once sable, now discolored with a greenish mould.
• As the priest and layman advanced into the chamber, the

THE WHITE OLD MAID.

161

Old Maid's features assumed such a resemblance of
shifting expression, that they trusted to hear the whole
mystery explained, by a single word. But it was only
the shadow of a tattered curtain, waving betwixt the dead
face and the moonlight.

" Both dead ! " said the venerable man. " Then who
shall divulge the secret ? Methiuks it glimmers to and
fro in my mind, like the light and shadow across the Old
Maid's face. And now 't is gone ! "

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE.

CD so, Peter, you won't even consider of the
business?" said Mr. John Brown, buttoning
his surtout over the snug rotundity of his per-
son, and drawing on his gloves. " You positively refuse
to let me have this crazy old house, and the land under
and adjoining, at the price named ? "

" Neither at that, nor treble the sum," responded
the gaunt, grizzled, and threadbare Peter Goldthwaite.
"The fact is, Mr. Brown, you must find another site
for your brick block, and be content to leave my estate
with the present owner. Next summer, I intend to*
put a splendid new mansion over the cellar of the old
house."

" Pho, Peter ! " cried Mr. Brown, as he opened the
kitchen-door ; " content yourself with building castles in
the air, where house-lots are cheaper than on earth, to
say nothing of the cost of bricks and mortar. Such
foundations are solid enough for your edifices ; while this
underneath us is just the thing for mine ; and so we may
both be suited. What say you, again ? "

" Precisely what I said before, Mr. Brown," answered
Peter Goldthwaite. " And, as for castles in the air,
mine may not be as magnificent as that sort of architec-
ture, but perhaps as substantial, Mr. Brown, as the very

PETER COLDTIIWAITE'S TREASURE. 163

rsspec.able brick block with dry -goods stores, tailors'
shops, and banking-rooms on the lower floor, and law-
yers' offices in the second story, which you are so anxious
•tj substitute."

"And the cost, Peler, eh?" said Mr. Brown, as he
withdrew, hi something of a pet. " That, I suppose, will
be provided for, offhand, by drawing a check on Bubble
Bank ! "

John Brown and Peter Goldthwaite had been jointly
known to the commercial world between twenty and
thirty years before, under the firm of Goldthwaite &
Brown ; which copartnership, however, was speedily dis-
solved, by the natural incongruity of its constituent parts.
Since that event, John Brown, with exactly the qualities
of a thousand other John Browns, and by just such plod-
ding methods as they used, had prospered wonderfully,
and become one of the wealthiest John Browns on earth.
Peter Goldthwaite, on the contrary, after innumerable
schemes, which ought to have collected all the coin and
paper currency of the country into his coffers, was as needy
a gentleman as ever wore a patch upon his' elbow. The
contrast between him and his former partner may be briefly
marked, for Brown never reckoned upon luck, yet always
had it ; while Peter made luck the main condition of his
projects, and always missed it. While the means held out
his speculations had been magnificent, but were chiefly
confined, of late years, to such small business as adven-
tures in the lottery. Once, he had gone on a gold-gather-
ing expedition, somewhere to the South, and ingeniously
contrived to empty his pockets more thoroughly than
ever; while others, doubtless, were filling theirs with
native bullion by the handful. More recently he had
expended a legacy of a thousand or two of dollars in
purchasing Mexican scrip, and thereby became the pro-

164 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

prietor of a province; which, however, so far as Peter
could find out, was situated where he might have had an
empire for the same money, — in the clouds. From a
search after this valuable real estate, Peter returned so
gaunt and threadbare, that, on reaching New England,
the scarecrows in the cornfields beckoned to him, as he
passed by. "They did but nutter in the wind," quoth
Peter Goldthwaite. No, Peter, they beckoned, for the
- scarecrows knew their brother !

At the period of our story, his whole visible income
would not have paid the tax of the old mansion in which
we find him. It was one of those rusty, moss-grown,
many -peaked wooden Louses, which are scattered about
the streets of our elder towns, with a beetle-browed
second story projecting over the foundation, as if it
frowned at the novelty around it. This old paternal ed-
ifice, needy as he was, and though, being cent rally situated
on the principal street of the town, it would have brought
him a handsome sum, the sagacious Peter had his own
reasons for never parting with, either by auction or pri-
vate sale. There seemed, indeed, to be a fatality that
connected him with his birthplace ; for, often as he had
stood on the verge of ruin, and standing there even now,
he had not yet taken the step beyond it, which would have
compelled him to surrender the house to his creditors.
So here he dwelt with bad luck till good should come.

Here, then, in his kitchen, the only room where a
spark of fire took off the chill of a November evening,
poor Peter Goldthwaite had just been visited by his rich
old partner. At the close of their interview, Peter, with
rather a mortified look, glanced downwards at his dress,
parts of which appeared as ancient as the days of Gold-
Ihwaite & Brown. His upper garment was a mixed sur-
tout, wofully faded, and patched with newer stuff on

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 165

eacli elbow ; beneath this, he wore a threadbare black
coat, some of the silk buttons of which had been replaced
with others of a different pattern ; and lastly, though he
lacked not a pair of gray pantaloons, they were very
shabby ones, and had been partially turned brown, by
the frequent toasting of Peter's shins before a scanty fire.
Peter's person was in keeping with his goodly apparel.
Gray-headed, hollow-eyed, pale-cheeked, and lean-bodied,
he was the perfect picture of a man who had fed on windy
schemes and empty hopes till he could neither live on
such unwholesome trash nor stomach more substantial
food. But, withal, this Peter Goldthwaite, crackbrained
simpleton as, perhaps, he was, might have cut a very
brilliant figure in the world, had he employed his imagi-
nation in the airy business of poetry, instead of making
it a demon of mischief in mercantile pursuits. After all,
he was no bad fellow, but as harmless as a child and as
honest and honorable, and as much of the gentleman
which nature meant him for, as an irregular life and de-
pressed circumstances will permit any man to be.

As Peter stood on the uneven bricks of his hearth,
looking round at the disconsolate old kitchen, his eyes
began to kindle with the illumination of an enthusiasm
that never long deserted him. He raised his hand,
clinched it, and smote it energetically against the smoky
panel over the fireplace.

"The time is come ! " said he. "With such a treas-
ure at command, it were folly to be a poor man any
longer. To-morrow morning I will begin with the gar-
ret, nor desist till I have torn the house down ! "

Deep in the chimney-corner, like a witch in a dark
cavern, sat a little old woman, mending one of the two
pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite kept his
toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were ragged

166 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flan-
nel petticoat, to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was
an old maid, upwards of sixty years of age, fifty-five of
which she had sat in that same chimney-corner, such
being the length of time since Peter's grandfather had
taken her from the almshouse. She had no friend but
Peter, nor Peter any friend but Tabitha; so long as
Peter might have a shelter for his own head, Tabitha
would know where to shelter hers ; or, being homeless
elsewhere, she would take her master by the hand, and
bring him to her native home, the almshouse. Should it
ever be necessary, she loved him well enough to feed him
with her last morsel, and clothe him with her under-
petticoat. But Tabitha was a queer old woman, and,
though never infected with Peter's flightiness, had be-
come so accustomed to his freaks and follies, that she
yiewed them all as matters of course. Hearing him
threaten to tear the house down, she looked quietly up
from her work.

" Best leave the kitchen till the last, Mr. Peter," said
she.

"The sooner we have it all down the better," said
Peter Goldthwaite. " I am tired to death of living in
this cold, dark, windy, smoky, creaking, groaning,
dismal old house. I shall feel like a younger man,
when we - get into my splendid brick mansion, as,
please Heaven, we shall, by this time next autumn.
You shall have a room on the sunny side, old Tabby,
finished and furnished as best may suit your own no-
tions."

"I should like it pretty much such a room as this
kitchen," answered Tabitha. " It will never be like
home to me, till the chimney-corner gets as black with
smoke as this; and that won't be these hundred years.

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 167

How much do you mean to lay out oil the house, Mr.
Peter ? "

" What is that to the purpose ? " exclaimed Peter,
loftily. " Did not my great -grand-uncle, Peter Gold-
thwaite, who died seventy years ago, and whose name-
sake I am, leave treasure enough to build twenty
such ? "

"I can't say but he did, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha,
threading her needle.

Tabitha well understood that Peter had reference
to an immense hoard of the precious metals, which
was said to exist somewhere in the cellar or walls, or
under the floors, or in some concealed closet, or other
out-of-the-way nook of the house. This wealth, accord-
ing to tradition, had been accumulated by a former
Peter Goldthwaite, whose character seems to have borne
a remarkable similitude to that of the Peter of our story.
Like him, he was a wild projector, seeking to heap up
gold byfc the bushel and the cartload, instead of scraping
it together, coin by coin. Like Peter the second, too,
his projects had almost invariably failed, and, but for the
magnificent success of the final one, would have left him
with hardly a coat and pair of breeches to his gaunt and
grizzled person. Reports were various as to the nature
of his fortunate speculation ; one intimating that the
ancient Peter had made the gold by alchemy ; another,
that he had conjured it out of people's pockets by the
black art ; and a third, still more unaccountable, that the
Devil had given him free access to the old provincial
treasury. It was affirmed, however, that some secret
impediment had debarred him from the enjoyment of his
riches, and that he had a motive for concealing them
from his heir, or, at any rate, had died without disclos-
ing the place of 'deposit. The present Peter's father had

168 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

faith enough in the story to cause the cellar to be dug
over. Peter himself chose to consider the legend as an
indisputable truth, and, amid, his many troubles, had
this one consolation, that, should all other resources fail,
he might build up his fortunes by tearing his house
down. Yet, unless he felt a lurking distrust of the golden
tale, it is difficult to account for his permitting the paternal
roof to stand so long, since he had never yet seen the
moment when his predecessor's treasure would not have
found plenty of room in his own strong-box. But, now
was the crisis. Should he delay the search a little longer,
the house would pass from the lineal heir, and with it
the vast heap of gold, to remain in its burial-place, till
the ruin of the aged walls should discover it to strangers
of a future generation.

" Yes ! " cried Peter Goldthwaite, again ; " to-morrow
I will set about it."

The deeper he looked at the matter, the more certain
of success grew Peter. His spirits were naturally so
elastic, that even now, in the blasted autumn of his age,
he could often compete with the spring-time gayety of
other people. Enlivened by his brightening prospects,
he began to caper about the kitchen like a hobgoblin,
with the queerest antics of his lean limbs, and gesticula-
tions of his starved features. Nay, in the exuberance of
his feelings, he seized both of Tabitha's hands, and danced
the old lady across the floor, till the oddity of her rheu-
matic motions set him into a roar of laughter, which was
echoed back from the rooms and chambers, as if Peter
Goldthwaite were laughing in every one. Finally, he
bounded upward, almost out of sight, into the smoke
that clouded the roof of the kitchen, and alighting safely
on the floor again, endeavored to resume his customary
gravity.

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 169

" To-morrow, at sunrise," he repeated, taking his lamp,
to retire to bed, " I '11 see whether this treasure be hid in
the wall of the garret."

" And, as we 're out of wood, Mr. Peter," said Tabitha,
puffing and panting with her late gymnastics, " as fast
as you tear the house down, I '11 make a fire with the
pieces."

Gorgeous, that night, were the dreams of Peter Gold-
thwaite ! At one time he was turning a ponderous key
in an iron door, not unlike the door of a sepulchre, but
which, being opened, disclosed a vault, heaped up with
gold coin, as plentifully as golden corn in a granary.
There were chased goblets, also, and tureens, salvers,
dinner-dishes, and dish-covers, of gold, or silver-gilt,
besides chains and other jewels incalculably rich, though
tarnished with the damps of the vault ; for, of all the
wealth that was irrevocably lost to man, whether buried
in the earth, or sunken in the sea, Peter Goldtlnvaite
had found it in this one treasure-place. Anon, he had
returned to the old house, as poor as ever, and was
received at the door, by the gaunt and grizzled figure of
a man, whom he might have mistaken for himself, only
that his garments were of a much elder fashion. But
the house, without losing its former aspect, had been
changed into a palace of the precious metals. The floors,
walls, and ceilings were of burnished silver ; the doors,
the window-frames, the cornices, the balustrades, and the
steps of the staircase, of pure gold ; and silver, with gold
bottoms, were the chairs, and gold, standing on silver
legs, the high chests of drawers, and silver the bedsteads,
with blankets of woven gold, and sheets of silver tissue.
The house had evidently been transmuted by a single
touch ; for it retained all the marks that Peter remem-
bered, but in gold or silver, instead of wood ; and the

VOL. II. 8

170 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

initials of his name, "which, when a boy, he had cut in
the wooden doorpost, remained as deep in the pillar of
gold. A happy man would have been Peter Goldthwaite,
except for a certain ocular deception, which, whenever
he glanced backward, caused the house to darken from
its glittering magnificence into the sordid gloom of yes-
terday.

Up, betimes, rose Peter, seized an axe, hammer, and
saw, which he had placed by his bedside, and hied him
to the garret. It was but scantily lighted up, as yet, by
the frosty fragments of a sunbeam, which began to glim-
mer through the almost opaque bull's eyes of the window.
A moralizer might find abundant themes for his specula-
tive and impracticable wisdom in a garret. There is the
limbo of departed fashions, aged trifles of a day, and
whatever was valuable only to one generation of men,
and which passed to the garret when that generation
passed to the grave, not for safe-keeping, but to be out
of the way. Peter saw piles of yellow and musty
account -books, in parchment covers, wherein creditors,
long dead and buried, had written the names of dead
and buried debtors, in ink now so faded, that their moss-
grown tombstones were more legible. He found old
moth-eaten garments all in rags and tatters, or Peter
would have put them on. Here was a naked and rusty
sword, not a sword of service, but a gentleman's small
Trench rapier, which had never left its scabbard till it
lost it. Here were canes of twenty different sorts, but
no gold-headed ones, and shoe-buckles of various pattern
and material, but not silver, nor set with precious stones.-
Here was a large box full of shoes, with high heels and
peaked toes. Here, on a shelf, were a multitude of
phials, half filled with old apothecaries' stuff, which,
when the other half had done its business on Peter's

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 171

ancestors, had been brought hither from the death-cham-
bar. Here — not to give a longer inventory of articles
that will never be put up at auction — was the fragment
of a full-length looking-glass, which, by the dust and
dimness of its surface, made the picture of these old
things look older than the reality. When Peter, not
knowing that there was a mirror there, caught the faint
traces of his own figure, he partly imagined that the
former Peter Goldthwaite had come back, either to assist
or impede his search for the hidden wealth. And at that
moment a strange notion glimmered through his brain,
that he was the identical Peter who had concealed the
gold, and ought to know whereabout it lay. This, how-
ever, he had unaccountably forgotten.

" Well, Mr. Peter ! " cried Tabitha, on the garret stairs.
" Have you torn the house down enough to heat the tea-
kettle ? "

"Not yet, old Tabby," answered Peter; "but that's
soon done, as you shall see."

With the word in his mouth, he uplifted the axe, and
laid about him so" vigorously, that the dust flew, the
boards crashed, and, in a twinkling, the old woman had
an apronful of broken rubbish.

"We shall get our winter's wood cheap," quoth
Tabitha.

The good work being thus commenced, Peter beat
down all before him, smiting and hewing at the joists
and timbers, uncliuching spike-nails, ripping and tearing
away boards, with a tremendous racket, from morning
till niglLt. He took care, however, to leave the outside
shell of the house untouched, so that the neighbors might
not suspect what was going on.

Never, in any of his vagaries, though each had made
him happy while it lasted, had Peter been happier than

172 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

now. Perhaps, after all, there was something in Peter
Goldthwaite's turn of mind, which brought him an inward
recompense for all the external evil that it caused. If
he were poor, ill-clad, even hungry, and exposed, as it
were, to be utterly annihilated by a precipice of impend-
ing ruin, yet only his body remained in these miserable
circumstances, while his aspiring soul enjoyed the sun-
shine of a bright futurity. It was his nature to be always
young, and the tendency of his mode of life to keep him
so. Gray hairs were nothing, no, nor wrinkles, nor in-
firmity ; he might look old, indeed, and be somewhat disa-
greeably connected with a gaunt old figure, much the worse
for wear ; but the true, the essential Peter was a young
man of high hopes, just entering on the world. At the
kindling of each new fire, his burnt-out youth rose afresh
from the old embers and ashes. It rose exulting now.
Having lived thus long — not too long, but just to the
right age — a susceptible bachelor, with warm and tender
dreams, he resolved, as soon as the hidden gold should
flash to light, to go a-wooing, and win the love of the
fairest maid in town. What heart' could resist him ?
Happy Peter Goldthwaite !

Every evening — as Peter had long absented himself
from his former lounging-places, at insurance-offices,
news-rooms, and bookstores, and as the honor of his
company was seldom requested in private circles — he
and Tabitha used to sit down sociably by the kitchen
hearth. This was always heaped plentifully with the
rubbish of his day's labor. As the foundation of the
fire, there would be a goodly sized backlog of red-oak,
which, after being sheltered from rain or damp above a
century, still hissed with the heat, and distilled streams
of water from each end, as if the tree had been cut down
within a week or two. Next, there were large sticks,

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 173

sound, black, and heavy, which had lost the principle of
decay, and were indestructible except by fire, wherein
they glowed like red-hot bars of iron. On this solid
basis, Tabitha would rear a lighter structure, composed
of the splinters of door-panels, ornamented mouldings,
and such quick combustibles, which caught like straw,
and threw a brilliant blaze high up the spacious flue,
making its sooty sides visible almost to the chimney-
top. Meantime, the gleam of the old kitchen would be
chased out of the cobwebbed corners, and away from the
dusky crossbeams overhead, and driven nobody could
tell whither, while Peter smiled like a gladsome man, and
Tabitha seemed a picture of comfortable age. All this,
of course, was but an emblem of the bright fortune which
the destruction of the house would shed upon its occu-
pants.

While the dry pine was naming and crackling, like an
irregular discharge of fairy musketry, Peter sat looking
and listening, in a pleasant state of excitement. But,
when the brief blaze and uproar were succeeded by the
dark-red glow, the substantial heat, and the deep singing
sound, which were to last throughout the evening, his
humor became talkative. One night, the hundredth
time, he teased Tabitha to tell him something new about
his great-grand-uncle.

" You have been sitting in that chimney-corner fifty-
five years, old Tabby, and must have heard many a tra-
dition about him," said Peter. " Did not you tell me,
that, when you first came to the house, there was an
old woman sitting where you sit now, who had been
housekeeper to the famous Peter Goldthwaite ? "

" So there was, Mr. Peter," answered Tabitha ; " and
she was near about a hundred years old. She used to
say that she and old Peter Goldthwaite had often spent

174 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

a sociable evening by the kitchen fire, — pretty much as
you and I are doing now, Mr. Peter."

"The old fellow must have resembled me in more
points than one," said Peter, complacently, " or he never
would have grown so rich. But, methinks, he might
have invested the money better than he did, — no in-
terest ! — nothing but good security ! — and the house
-.to be torn down to come at it! What made him hide
it so snug, Tabby ? "

" Because he could not spend it," said Tabitha ; " for,
as often as he went to unlock the chest, the Old Scratch
came behind and caught his arm. The money, they say,
was paid Peter out of his purse ; and he wanted Peter
to give him a deed of this house and land, which Peter
swore he would not do."

" Just as I swore to John Brown, my old partner,"
remarked Peter. "But this is all nonsense, Tabby! I
don't believe the story."

"Well, it may not be just the truth," said Tabitha;
" for some folks say, that Peter did make over the house
to the Old Scratch ; and that 's the reason it has always
been so unlucky to them that lived in it. And as soon
as Peter had given him the deed, the chest flew open,
and Peter caught up a handful of the gold. But, lo and
behold ! — there was nothing in his fist but a parcel of
old rags."

" Hold your tongue, you silly old Tabby ! " cried
Peter, in great wrath. "They were as good golden
guineas as ever bore the effigies of the king of Eng-
land. It- seems as if I could recollect the whole cir-
cumstance, and how I, or old Peter, or whoever it was,
thrust in my hand, or his hand, and drew it out, all of
a blaze with gold. Old rags, indeed ! "

But it was not an old woman's legend that would dis-

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 175

courage Peter Goldtliwaite. All night long, lie slept
among pleasant dreams, and awoke at daylight with a
joyous throb of the heart, which few are fortunate
enough to feel beyond their boyhood. Day after day,
he labored hard, without wasting a moment, except at
meal-times, when Tabitha summoned him to the pork
and cabbage, or such other sustenance as she had
picked up, or Providence had sent them. Being a
truly pious man, Peter never failed to ask a blessing;
if the food were none of the best, then so much the
more earnestly, as it was more needed ; — nor to return
thanks, if the dinner had been scanty, yet for the good
appetite, which was better than a sick stomach at a
feast. Then did he hurry back to his toil, and, in a
moment, was lost to sight in a cloud of dust from the
old walls, though sufficiently perceptible to the ear, by
the clatter which he raised in the midst of it. How en-
viable is the consciousness of being usefully employed !
Nothing troubled Peter; or nothing but those phan-
toms of the mind, which seem like vague recollections,
yet have also the aspect of presentiments. He often
paused, with his axe uplifted in the air, and said to
himself, " Peter Goldtliwaite, did you never strike this
blow before ? " — or, " Peter, what need of tearing the
whole house down? Think, a little while, and you
will remember where the gold is hidden." Days and
weeks passed on, however, without any remarkable dis-
covery. Sometimes, indeed, a lean, gray rat peeped
forth at the lean, gray man, wondering what devil had
got into the old house, which had always been so peace-
able till now. And, occasionally, Peter sympathized with
the sorrows of a female mouse, who had brought five or
six pretty, little, soft, and delicate young ones into the
world, just in time to sae them crushed by its ruin.
But, as yet, no treasure!

176 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

By this time, Peter, being as determined as Fate, and
as diligent as Time, had made an end with the uppermost
regions, and got down to the second story, where he was
busy in one of the front chambers. It had formerly been
the state bedchamber, and was honored by tradition as
the sleeping-apartment of Governor Dudley and many
other eminent guests. The furniture was gone. There
were remnants of faded and tattered paper-hangings, but
larger spaces of bare wall, ornamented with charcoal
sketches, chiefly of people's heads in profile. These be-
ing specimens of Peter's youthful genius, it went more
to his heart to obliterate them, than if they had been
pictures on a church-wall by Michael Augelo. One
sketch, however, and that the best one, affected him
differently. It represented a ragged man, partly sup-
porting himself on a spade, and bending his lean body
over a hole in the earth, with one hand extended to grasp
something that he had found. But, close behind him,
with a fiendish laugh on his features, appeared a figure
with horns, a tufted tail, and a cloven hoof.

" Avaunt, Satan ! " cried Peter. " The man shall have
his gold ! "

Uplifting his axe, he hit the honied gentleman such a
blow on the head, as not only demolished him, but the
treasure-seeker also, and caused the whole scene to van-
ish like magic. Moreover, his axe broke quite through
the plaster and laths, and discovered a cavity.

"Mercy on us, Mr. Peter, are you quarrelling with the
Old Scratch ? " said Tabitha, who was seeking some fuel
to put under the dinner-pot.

Without answering the old woman, Peter broke down
a further space of the wall, and laid open a small closet
or cupboard, on one side of the fireplace, about breast
high from the ground. It contained nothing but a brass

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 177

kmp, covered with verdigris, and a dusty piece of parch-
ment. While Peter inspected the latter, Tabitha seized
the lamp, and began to rub it with her apron.

" There is no use in rubbing it, Tabitha," said Peter.
" It is not Aladdin's lamp, though I take it to be a token
of as much luck. Look here, Tabby ! "

Tabitha took the parchment and held it close to her
nose, which was saddled with a pair of iron-bound spec-
tacles. But no sooner had she begun to puzzle over it,
than she burst into a chuckling laugh, holding both her
hands against her sides.

" You can't make a fool of the old woman ! " cried she.
" This is your own handwriting, Mr. Peter ! the same as
in the letter you sent me from Mexico."

" There is certainly a considerable resemblance," said
Peter, again examining the parchment. " But you knoAV
yourself, Tabby, that this closet must have been plastered
up before you came to the house, or I came into the
world. No, this is old Peter Goldthwaite's writing;
these columns of pounds, shillings, and pence are his
figures, denoting the amount of the treasure ; and this,
at the bottom, is doubtless a reference to the place of
concealment. But the ink has either faded or peeled off,
so that it is absolutely illegible. What a pity ! "

" Well, this lamp is as good as new. That 's some
comfort," said Tabitha.

" A lamp ! " thought Peter. " That indicates light on
my researches."

For the present, Peter felt more inclined to ponder on
this discovery, than to resume his labors. After Tabitha
had gone down stairs, he stood poring over the parch-
ment, at one of the front windows, which was so obscured
with dust, that the sun could barely throw an uncertain
shadow of the casement across the floor. Peter forced it
8* L

178 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

open, and looked out upon the great street of the town,
while the sun looked in at his old house. The air,
though mild and even warm, thrilled Peter as with a
dash of water.

It was the first day of the January thaw. The snow
lay deep upon the house-tops, but was rapidly dissolving
into millions of water-drops, which sparkled downwards
through the sunshine, with the noise of a summer shower
beneath the eaves. Along the street, the trodden snow
was as hard and solid as a pavement of white marble, and
had not yet grown moist in the spring-like temperature.
But, when Peter thrust forth his head, he saw that the
inhabitants, if not the town, were already thawed out
by this warm day, after two or three weeks of winter
weather. It gladdened him — a gladness with a sigh
breathing through it — to see the stream of ladies,
gliding along the slippery sidewalks with their red cheeks
set off by quilted hoods, boas, and sable capes, like roses
amidst a new kind of foliage. The sleigh-bells jingled to
and fro continually, sometimes announcing the arrival of
a sleigh from Vermont, laden with the frozen bodies of
porkers, or sheep, and perhaps a deer or two ; sometimes
of a regular market-man, with chickens, geese, and tur-
keys, comprising the whole colony of a barn-yard ; and
sometimes of a farmer and his dame, who had come to
town partly for the ride, partly to go a-shopping, and
partly for the sale of some eggs and butter. This couple
rode in an old-fashioned square sleigh, which had served
them twenty winters, and stood twenty summers in the
sun beside their door. Now, a gentleman and lady
skimmed the snow, in an elegant car, shaped somewhat
like a cockle-shell. Now, a stage-sleigh, with its cloth
curtains thrust aside to admit the sun, dashed rapidly
down the street, whirling in and out among the vehicles

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 179

that obstructed its passage. Now came round a corner
the similitude of Noah's ark, on runners, being an im-
mense open sleigh, with seats for fifty people, and drawn
by a dozen horses. This spacious receptacle was populous
with merry maids and merry bachelors, merry girls and
boys, and merry old folks, all alive with fun, and grinning
to the full width of their mouths. They kept up a buzz
of babbling voices and low laughter, and sometimes burst
into a deep, joyous shout, which the spectators answered
with three cheers, while a gang of roguish boys let drive
their snowballs right among the pleasure-party. The
sleigh passed on, and, when concealed by a bend of
the street, was still audible by a distant cry of merri-
ment.

Never had Peter beheld a livelier scene than was con-
stituted by all these accessories : the bright sun ; the
flashing water-drops ; the gleaming snow ; the cheerful
multitude ; the variety of rapid vehicles ; and the jingle-
jangle of merry bells, which made the heart dance to
their music. Nothing dismal was to be seen, except that
peaked piece of antiquity, Peter Goldthwaite's house,
which might well look sad externally, since such a terri-
ble consumption was preying on its insides. And Peter's
gaunt figure, half visible iu the projecting second story,
was worthy of his house.

" Peter ! How goes it, friend Peter ! " cried a voice
across the street, as Peter was drawing in his head.
" Look out here, Peter ! "

Peter looked, and saw his old partner, Mr. John Brown,
on the opposite sidewalk, portly and comfortable, with his
furred cloak thrown open, disclosing a handsome surtout
beneath. His voice had directed the attention of the
whole town to Peter Goldthwaite's window, and to the
dusty scarecrow which appeared at it.

180 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

"I say, Peter," cried Mr. Brown again, "what the
devil are you about there, that I hear such a racket,
whenever I pass by ? You are repairing the old house,
I suppose, — making a new one of it, — eh ? "

" Too late for that, I am afraid, Mr. Brown," replied
Peter. " If I make it new, it will be new inside and out,
from the cellar upwards."

" Had not you better let me take the job ? " said Mr.
Brown, significantly.

" Not yet ! " answered Peter, hastily shutting the win-
dow ; for, ever since he had been in search of the treas-
ure, he hated to have people stare at him.

As he drew back, ashamed of his outward poverty, yet
proud of the secret wealth within his grasp, a haughty
smile shone out on Peter's visage, with precisely the
effect of the dim sunbeams in the squalid chamber. He
endeavored to assume such a mien as his ancestor had
probably worn, when he gloried in the building of a
strong house for a home to many generations of his pos-
terity. But the chamber was very dark to his snow-
dazzled eyes, and very dismal too, in contrast with the
living scene that he had just looked upon. His brief
glimpse into the street had given him a forcible impres-
sion of the manner in which the world kept itself cheer-
ful and prosperous, by social pleasures and an intercourse
of business, while he, in seclusion, was pursuing an object
that might possibly be a phantasm, by a method which
most people would call madness. It is one great advan-
tage of a gregarious mode of life, that each person recti-
fies his mind by other minds, and squares his conduct to
that of his neighbors, so as seldom to be lost in eccentricity.
Peter Goldthwaite had exposed himself to this influence,
by merely looking out of the window. For a while, he
doubted whether there were any hidden chest of gold,

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 181

and, in that case, whether it was so exceedingly wise to
tear the house down, only to be convinced of its non-
existence.

But this was momentary. Peter, the Destroyer, re-
sumed the task which fate had assigned him, nor faltered
again, till it was accomplished. In the course of his
search, he met with many things that are usually found
in the ruins of an old house, and also with some that are
not. What seemed most to the purpose was a rusty key,
which had been thrust into a chink of the wall, with a
wooden label appended to the handle, bearing the initials, ,
P. G. Another singular discovery was that of a bottle of
wine, walled up in an old oven. A tradition ran in the
family, that Peter's grandfather, a jovial officer in the old
French war, had set aside many dozens of the precious
liquor, for the benefit of topers then unborn. Peter
needed no cordial to sustain his hopes, and therefore
kept the wine to gladden his success. Many halfpence
did he pick up, that had been lost through the cracks. of
the floor, and some few Spanish coins, and the half of a
broken sixpence, which had doubtless been a love-token.
There was likewise a silver coronation medal of George
the Third. But, old Peter Goldthwaite's strong-box fled
from one dark corner to another, or otherwise eluded the
second Peter's clutches, till, should he seek much farther,
he must burrow into the earth.

We will not follow him in his triumphant progress,
step by step. Suffice it, that Peter worked like a steam-
-engine, and finished, in that one winter, the job, which
all the former inhabitants of the house, with time and
the elements to aid them, had only half done in a cen-
tury. Except the kitchen, every room and chamber was
now gutted. The house was nothing but a shell, —
the apparition of a house, — as unreal as the painted

182 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

edifices of a theatre. It was like the perfect rind of
a great cheese, in which a mouse had dwelt and nib-
bled, till it was a cheese no more. And Peter was the
mouse.

What Peter had torn down, Tabitha had burned up :
for she wisely considered, that, without a house, they
should need no wood to warm it ; and therefore econ-
omy was nonsense. Thus the whole house might be said
to have dissolved in smoke, and flown up among the
clouds, through the great black flue of the kitchen chim-
ney. It was an admirable parallel to the feat of the man
who jumped down his own throat.

On the night between the last day of winter and the
first of spring, every chink and cranny had been ran-
sacked, except within the precincts of the kitchen. This
fated evening was an ugly one. A snow-storm had set
in some hours before, and was still driven and tossed
about the atmosphere by a real hurricane, which fought
against the house, as if the prince of the air, in person,
were putting the final stroke to Peter's labors. The
framework being so much weakened, and the inward
props removed, it would have been no marvel, if, in some
stronger wrestle of the blast, the rotten walls of the
edifice, and all the peaked roofs, had come crashing down
upon the owner's head. He, however, was careless of the
peril, but as wild and restless as the night itself, or as
the flame that quivered up the chimney, at each roar of
the tempestuous wind.

"The wine, Tabitha! " he cried. "My grandfather's
rich old wine ! We will drink it now ! "

Tabitha arose from her smoke-blackened bench in the
chimney-corner, and placed the bottle before Peter, close
beside the old brass lamp, which had likewise been the
prize of his researches. Peter held it before his eyes, and

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 183

looking through the liquid medium, beheld the kitchen
illuminated with a golden glory, which also enveloped
Tabitha, and gilded her silver hair, and converted her
mean garments into robes of queenly splendor. It re-
minded him of his golden dream.

" Mr. Peter," remarked Tabitha, " must the wine be
drunk before the money is found ? "

" The money is found ! " exclaimed Peter, with a sort
of fierceness. " The chest is within my reach. I will
not sleep, till I have turned this key in the rusty lock.
But, first of all, let us drink!"

There being no corkscrew in the house, he smote the
neck of the bottle with old Peter Goldthwaite's rusty
key, and decapitated the sealed cork at a single blow.
He then filled two little china teacups, which Tabitha
had brought from the cupboard. So clear and brilliant
was this aged wine, that it shone within the cups, and
rendered the sprig of scarlet flowers, at the bottom of
each, more distinctly visible, than when there had been
no wine there. Its rich and delicate perfume wasted
itself round the kitchen.

" Drink, Tabitha ! " cried Peter. " Blessings on the
honest old fellow, who set aside this good liquor for
you and me ! And here 's to Peter Goldthwaite's
memory ! "

"And good cause have we to remember him," quoth
Tabitha, as she drank.

How many years, and through what changes of for-
tune, and various calamity, had that bottle hoarded up
its effervescent joy, to be quaffed at last by two such
boon companions ! A portion of the happiness of a
former age had been kept for them, and was now set
free, in a crowd of rejoicing visions, to sport amid the
storm and desolation of the present time. Until they

184 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

Lave finished the bottle, we must turn our eyes else-
where.

It so chanced, that, ou this stormy night, Mr. John
Brown found himself ill at ease, in his wire-cushioned
arm-chair, by the glowing grate of anthracite, which
heated his handsome parlor. He was naturally a good
sort of a man, and kind and pitiful, whenever the mis-
fortunes of others happened to reach his heaTt through
the padded vest of his own prosperity. This evening,
he had thought much about his old partner, Peter
Goldthwaite, his strange vagaries, and continual ill luck,
the poverty of his dwelling, at, Mr. Brown's last visit,
and Peter's crazed and haggard aspect, when he had
talked with him at the window.

" Poor fellow ! " thought Mr. John Brown. " Poor,
crack-brained Peter Goldthwaite ! For old acquaintance'
sake, I ought to have taken care that he was comforta-
ble, this rough winter."

These feelings grew so powerful, that, in spite of the
inclement weather, he resolved to visit Peter Gold-
thwaite immediately. The strength of the impulse was
really singular. Every shriek of the blast seemed a
summons, or would have seemed so, had Mr. Brown
been accustomed to hear the echoes of his own fancy in
the wind. Much amazed at such active benevolence, he
huddled himself in his cloak, muffled his throat and ears
in comforters and handkerchiefs, and, thus fortified, bade
defiance to the tempest. But the powers of the air had
rather the best of the battle. Mr. Brown was just
weathering the corner, by Peter Goldthwaite's house,
when the hurricane caught him off his feet, tossed him
face downward into a snow-bank, and proceeded to
bury his protuberant part beneath fresh drifts. There
seemed little hope of his reappearance, earlier than the

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 185

next thaw. At the same moment, his hat was snatched
away, and whirled aloft into some far-distant region,
whence no tidings have as yet returned.

Nevertheless, Mr. Brown contrived to burrow a pas-
sags through the snow-drift, and, with his bare head
bent against the storm, floundered onward to Peter's
door. There was such a creaking, and groaning, and
rattling, and such an ominous shaking throughout the
crazy edifice, that the loudest rap would have been in-
audible to those within. He therefore entered, without
ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen.

His intrusion, even there, was unnoticed. Peter and
Tabitha stood with their backs to the door, stooping over
a large chest, which, apparently, they had just dragged
from a cavity, or concealed closet, on the left side of the
chimney. By the lamp in the old woman's hand, Mr.
Brown saw that the chest was barred and clamped with
iron, strengthened with iron plates, and studded with iron
nails, so as to be a fit receptacle in which the wealth of
one century might be hoarded up for the wants of an-
other. Peter Goldthwaite was inserting a key into the
lock.

" 0 Tabitha ! " cried he, with tremulous rapture,
"how shall I endure the effulgence ? The gold! — the
bright, bright gold ! Methinks I can remember my last
glance at it, just as the iron-plated lid fell down. And
ever since, being seventy years, it has been blazing in
secret, and gathering its splendor against this glorious
moment ! It will flash upon us like the noonday sun ! "

"Then shade your eyes, Mr. Peter! ".said Tabitha,
with somewhat less patience than usual. "But, for
mercy's sake, do turn the key ! "

And, with a strong effort of both hands, Peter did
force the rusty key through the intricacies of the rusty

186 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

lock. Mr. Brown, in the mean time, had drawn near,
and thrust his eager visage between those of the other
two, at the instant that Peter threw up the lid. No
sudden blaze illuminated the kitchen.

" What 's here ? " exclaimed Tabitha, adjusting her
spectacles, and holding the lamp over the open chest.
"Old Peter Goldthwaite's hoard of old rags."

" Pretty much so, Tabby," said Mr. Brown, lifting a
handful of the treasure.

O, what a ghost of dead and buried wealth had Peter
Goldthwaite raised, to scare himself out of his scanty
wits withal ! Here was the semblance of an incalculable
sum, enough to purchase the whole town, and build
every street anew, but which, vast as it was, no sane
man would have given a solid sixpence for. What then,
in sober earnest, were the delusive treasures of the
chest ? Why, here were old provincial bills of credit,
and treasury notes, and bills of land banks, and all
other bubbles of the sort, from the first issue, above a
century and a half ago, down nearly to the Revolution.
Bills of a thousand pounds were intermixed with parch-
ment pennies, and worth no more than they.

" And this, then, is old Peter Goldthwaite's treasure ! "
said John Brown. " Your namesake, Peter, was some-
thing like yourself; and, when the provincial currency
had depreciated fifty or seventy-five per cent, he bought
it up, in expectation of a rise. I have heard my grand-
father say, that old Peter gave his father a mortgage
of this very house and land, to raise cash for his silly
project. But the currency kept sinking, till nobody
would take it as a gift ; and there was old Peter Gold-
thwaite, like Peter the second, with thousands in his
strong-box, and hardly a coat to his back. He went
mad upon the strength of it. But, never mind, Peter !

PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE. 187

It is just the sort of capital for building castles in the
air."

" The house will be down about our ears ! " cried
Tabitha, as the wind shook it with increasing violence. •

" Let it fall ! " said Peter, folding his arms, as he
seated himself upon the chest.

" No, no, my old friend Peter," said John Brown.
" I have house-room for you and Tabby, and a safe
vault for the chest of treasure. To-morrow we will try
to come to an agreement about the sale of this old house.
Real estate is well up, and I could afford you a pretty
handsome price."

" And I," observed Peter Goldthwaite, with reviving
spirits, " have a plan for laying out the cash to great ad-
vantage."

" Why, as to that," muttered John Brown to him-
self, " we must apply to the next court for a guardian
to take care of the solid cash ; and if Peter insists upon
speculating, he may do it to his heart's content with old
PETER GOLDTHWAITE'S TREASURE."

CHIRPINGS WITH A CHISEL.

ASSING a summer, several years since, at Ed-
gartown, on the island of Martha's Vineyard, I
became acquainted with a certain carver of
tombstones, who had travelled and voyaged thither from
the interior of Massachusetts, in search of professional
employment. The speculation had turned out so suc-
cessful, that my friend expected to transmute slate and
marble into silver and gold, to the amount of at least a
thousand dollars, during the few months of his sojourn
at Nantucket and the Vineyard. The secluded life, and
the simple and primitive spirit which still characterizes
the inhabitants of those islands, especially of Martha's
Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer
remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bus-
tle of the world can elsewhere afford to beings of the
past. Yet while every family is anxious to erect a me-
morial to its departed members, the untainted breath of
ocean bestows such health and length of days upon the
people of the isles, as would cause a melancholy dearth
of business to a resident artist in that line. His own
monument, recording his disease by starvation, would
probably be an early specimen of his skill. Gravestones,
therefore, have generally been an article of imported
merchandise.

CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 189

In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown,

— where the dead have lain so long that the soil, once
enriched by their decay, has returned to its original bar-
renness, — in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much
variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones,
dated a century back, or more, have borders elaborately
carved with flowers, and are adorned with a multiplicity
of death's-heads, cross-bones, scythes, hour-glasses, and
other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here and
there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit
upward. These productions of Gothic taste must have
been quite beyond the colonial skill of the day, and were
probably carved in London, and brought across the
ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely
isle. The more recent monuments are mere slabs of
slate, in the ordinary style, without any superfluous
flourishes to set off the bald inscriptions. But others

— and those far the most impressive, both to my taste
and feelings — were roughly hewn from the gray rocks
of the island, evidently by the unskilled hands of surviv-
ing friends and relatives. On some there were merely
the initials of a name ; some were inscribed with misspelt
prose or rhyme, in deep letters, which the moss and
wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliter-
ate. These, these were graves where loved ones slept !
It is an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of
monumental eulogies; but when affection and sorrow
grave the letters with their own painful labor, then we
may be sure that they copy from the record on their
hearts.

My acquaintance, the sculptor, — he may share that
title with Greenough, since the dauber of signs is a
painter as well as Raphael, — had found a ready market
for all his blank slabs of marble, and full occupation in

190 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

lettering and ornamenting them. He was an elderly
man, a descendant of the old Puritan family of Wiggles-
worth, with a certain simplicity and singleness, both of
heart and mind, which, methiuks, is more rarely found
among us Yankees than in any other community of peo-
ple. In spite of his gray head and wrinkled brow, he
was quite like a child in all matters save what had some
reference to his own business; he seemed, unless my
fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation
than as people in want of tombstones ; and his literary
attainments evidently comprehended very little, either of
prose or poetry, which had not, at one time or other,
been inscribed on slate or marble. His sole task and
office among the immortal pilgrims of the tomb — the
duty for which Providence had sent the old man into
the world, as it were with a chisel in his hand — was to
label the dead bodies, lest their names should be for-
gotten at the resurrection. Yet he had not failed, within
a narrow scope, to gather a few sprigs of earthly, and
more than earthly, wisdom, — the harvest of many a
grave.

And lugubrious as his calling might appear, he was as
cheerful an old soul as health, and integrity, and lack of
care, could make him, and used to set to work upon one
sorrowful inscription or another with that sort of spirit
which impels a man to sing at his labor. On the whole,
I found Mr. Wigglesworth an entertaining, and often
instructive, if not an interesting character; and partly
for the charm of his society, and still more because his
work has an invariable attraction for " man that is born
of woman," I was accustomed to spend some hours a
day at his workshop. The quaintness of his remarks,
and their not infrequent truth, — a truth condensed and
pointed by the limited sphere of his view, — gave a

CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 191

raciness to his talk, which mere worldliness and general
cultivation would at once have destroyed.

Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits of
the various qualities of marble, numerous slabs of which
were resting against the walls of the shop ; or sometimes
an hour or two would pass quietly, without a word on
either side, while I watched how neatly his chisel struck
out letter after letter of the names of the Nortous, the
Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial
families of the Vineyard. Often, with an artist's pride,
the good old sculptor would speak of favorite productions
of his skill, which were scattered throughout the village
graveyards of New England. But my chief and most
instructive amusement was to witness his interviews with
his customers, who held interminable consultations about
the form and fashion of the ' desired monuments, the
buried excellence to be commemorated, the anguish to
be expressed, and finally, the lowest price in dollars and
cents for which a marble transcript of their feelings might
be obtained. Really, my mind received many fresh ideas,
which, perhaps, may remain in it even longer than Mr.
Wigglesworth's hardest marble will retain the deepest
strokes of his chisel.

An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her
first love, who had been killed by a whale in the Pacific
Ocean no less than forty years before. It was singular
that so strong an impression of early feeling should have
survived through the changes of her subsequent life, in
the course of which she had been a wife and a mother, and,
so far as I could judge, a comfortable and happy woman.
Reflecting within myself, it appeared to me that this life-
long sorrow — as, in all good faith, she deemed it — was
one of the most fortunate circumstances of her history.
It had given an ideality to her mind; it had kept her

192 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

purer and less earthly than she would otherwise have
been, by drawing a portion of her sympathies apart from
earth. Amid the throng of enjoyments, and the pressure
of worldly care, and all the warm materialism of this life,
she had communed with a vision, and had been the better
for such intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her
maturity, and loving him with a far more real affection
than she ever could have felt for this dream of her girl-
hood, there had still been an imaginative faith to the
ocean-buried, so that an ordinary character had thus been
elevated and refined. Her sighs had been the breath of
Heaven to her soul. The good lady earnestly desired
that the proposed monument should be ornamented with
a carved border of marine plants, intertwined with twisted
sea-shells, such as were probably waving over her lover's
skeleton, or strewn around it, in the far depths of the
Pacific. But Mr. Wigglesworth's chisel being inadequate
to the task, she was forced to content herself with a rose,
hanging its head from a broken stem. After her de-
parture, I remarked that the symbol was none of the
most apt.

" And yet," said my friend the sculptor, embodying in
this image the thoughts that had been passing through
my own mind, " that broken rose has shed its sweet smell
through forty years of the good woman's life."

It was seldom that I could find such pleasant food for
contemplation as in the above instance. None of the
applicants, I think, affected me more disagreeably than
an old man who came, with his fourth wife hanging on
his arm, to bespeak gravestones for the three former
occupants of his marriage -bed. I watched with some
anxiety to see whether his remembrance of either were
more affectionate than of the other two, but could dis-
cover no symptom of the kind. The three monuments

CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 193

were all to be of the same material and form, and each
decorated, in bas-relief, with two weep ing- willows, one
of these sympathetic trees bending over its fellow, which
was to be broken in the midst and rest upon a sepulchral
urn. This, indeed, was Mr. Wigglesworth's standing
emblem of conjugal bereavement. I shuddered at the
gray polygamist, who had so utterly lost the holy sense
of individuality in wedlock, that methought he was fain
to reckon upon his fingers how many women, who had
once slept by his side, were now sleeping in their graves.
There was even — if I wrong him it is no great matter
— a glance sidelong at his living spouse, as if he were
inclined to drive a thriftier bargain by bespeaking four
gravestones in a lot. I was better pleased with a rough
old whaling captain, who gave directions for a broad
marble slab, divided into two compartments, one of which
was to contain an epitaph on his deceased wife, and the
other to be left vacant, till death should engrave his
own name there. As is frequently the case among the
whalers of Martha's Vineyard, so much of this storrn-
beaten widower's life had been tossed away on distant
seas, that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent
scarce three, and those at scattered intervals, beneath his
own roof. Thus the wife of his youth, though she died
in his and her declining age, retained the bridal dewdrops
fresh around her memory.

My observations gave me the idea, and Mr. Wiggles-
worth confirmed it, that husbands were more faithful in
setting up memorials to their dead wives than widows to
their dead husbands. I was not ill-natured enough to
fancy that women, less than men, feel so sure of their
own constancy as to be willing to give a pledge of it in
marble. It is more probably the fact, that while men
are able to reflect upon their lost companions as remem-

VOL. II. 9 M

194 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

brances apart from themselves, women, on the other hand,
are conscious that a portion of their being has gone with
the departed whithersoever he has gone. Soul clings to
soul ; the living dust has a sympathy with the dust of
the grave; and, by the very strength of that sympathy,
the wife of the dead shrinks the more sensitively from
reminding the world of its existence. The link is al-
ready strong enough ; it needs no visible symbol. And,
though a shadow walks ever by her side, and the touch
of a chill hand is on her bosom, yet life, and perchance
its natural yearnings, may still be warm within her, and
inspire her with new hopes of happiness. Then would
she mark out the grave, the scent of which would be
perceptible on the pillow of the second bridal ? No — •
but rather level its green mound with the surrounding
earth, as if, when she dug up again her buried heart,
the spot had ceased to be a grave. Yet, in spite of these
sentimentalities, I was prodigiously amused by an inci-
dent, of which I had not the good fortune to be a wit-
ness, but which Mr. Wigglesworth related with consid-
erable humor. A gentlewoman of the town, receiving
news of her husband's loss at sea, had bespoken a hand-
some slab of marble, and came daily to watch the pro-
gress of my friend's chisel. .One afternoon, when the
good lady and the sculptor were in the very midst of
the epitaph, which the departed spirit might have been
greatly comforted to read, who should walk into the
workshop but the deceased himself, in substance as well
as spirit ! He had been picked up at sea, and stood in
no present need of tombstone or epitaph.

" And how," inquired I, " did his wife bear the shock
of joyful surprise?"

"Why," said the old man, deepening the grin of a
death's-head, on which his chisel was just then em-

GHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 195

ployed, " I really felt for the poor woman ; it was one
of my best pieces of marble, — and to be thrown away
on a living man ! "

A comely woman, with a pretty rosebud of a daugh-
ter, came to select a gravestone for a twin-daughter,
who had died a mouth before. I was impressed with
the different nature of their feelings for the dead ; the *
mother was calm and wofully resigned, fully conscious
of her loss, as of a treasure which she had not always
possessed, and, therefore, had been aware that it might
be taken from her ; but the daughter evidently had no
real knowledge of what death's doings were. Her
thoughts knew, but not her heart. It seemed to me,
that by the print and pressure which the dead sister
had left upon the survivor's spirit, her feelings • were
almost the same as if she still stood side by side, and
arm in arm, with the departed, looking at the slabs of
marble ; and once or twice she glanced around with a
sunny smile, which, as its sister smile had faded for-
ever, soon grew confusedly overshadowed. Perchance
her consciousness was truer than her reflection, — per-
chance her dead sister was a closer companion .than in
life. The mother and daughter talked a long while with
Mr. Wigglesvvorth about a suitable epitaph, and finally
choss an ordinary verse of ill-matched rhymes, which
had already been inscribed upon innumerable tomb-
stones. But, when we ridicule the triteness of monu-
mental verses, we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper
in them than we can, and finds a profound and individ-
ual purport in what seems so vague and inexpressive,
unless interpreted by her. She makes the epitaph anew,
though the self-same words may have served for a thou-
sand graves.

"And yet," said I afterwards to Mr. Wigglesworth,

196 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

"they might have made a better choice than this.
While you were discussing the subject, I was struck
by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from
the lips of both mother and daughter. One of these
would have formed an inscription equally original and
appropriate."

" No, no," replied the sculptor, shaking his head,
" there is a good deal of comfort to be gathered from
these little old scraps of poetry ; and so I always rec-
ommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones.
And somehow, they seem to stretch to suit a great grief,
and shrink to fit a small one."

It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited
by what took place between Mr. Wigglesworth and his
customers. A shrewd gentlewoman, who kept a tavern
in the town, was anxious to obtain two or three grave-
stones for the deceased members of her family, and to
pay for these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor
to board. ' Hereupon a fantasy arose in my mind, of
good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting "down to dinner at a
broad, flat tombstone, carving one of his own plump
little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of cross-bones,
and drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps
a lachrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn ; while his hos-
tess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly ban-
quet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the
old man, he laughed heartily, and pronounced my humor
to be of the right sort.

" I have lived at such a table all my days," said he,
"and eaten no small quantity of slate and marble."

"Hard fare!" rejoined I, smiling; "but you seemed
to have found it excellent of digestion, too."

A man of fifty, or thereabouts, with a harsh, unpleas-
ant countenance, ordered a stone for the grave of his

CIIIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 197

bitter enemy with whom he had waged warfare half a
lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The secret of
this phenomenon was, that hatred had become the sus-
tenance and enjoyment of the poor wretch's soul ; it had
supplied the place of all kindly affections ; it had been
really a bond of sympathy between himself and the man
who shared the passion ; and when its object died, the
unappeasable foe was the only mourner for the dead.
He expressed a purpose of being buried side by side
with his enemy.

" I doubt whether their dust will mingle," remarked
the old sculptor to me ; for often there was an earthliness
in his conceptions.

" O yes," replied I, who had mused long upon the in-
cident ; " and when they rise again, these bitter foes may
find themselves dear friends. Methinks what they mis-
took for hatred was but love under a mask."

A gentleman of antiquarian propensities provided a
memorial for an Indian of Chabbiquidick, one of the few
of untainted blood remaining in that region, and said to
be an hereditary chieftain, descended from the sachem
who welcomed Governor Mayhew to the Vineyard. Mr.
Wigglesworth exerted his best skill to carve a broken
bow and scattered sheaf of arrows, in memory of the
hunters and warriors whose race was ended here ; but he
likewise sculptured a cherub, to denote that the poor
Indian had shared the Christian's hope of immortality.

" Why," observed I, taking a perverse view of the
winged boy and the bow and arrows, " it looks more like
Cupid's tomb than an Indian chiefs ! "

" You talk nonsense," said the sculptor, with the
offended pride of art ; he then added, with his usual good-
nature, " How can Cupid die when there are sucli pretty
maidens in the Vineyard ? "

198 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

" Very true," answered I ; and for the rest of the day
I thought of other matters than tombstones.

At our next meeting I found him chiselling an open
book upon a marble headstone, and concluded that it
was meant to express the erudition of some black-letter
clergyman of the Cotton Mather school. It turned out,
however, to be emblematical of the scriptural knowledge
of an old woman who had never read anything but her
Bible ; and the monument was a tribute to her piety and
good works, from the Orthodox church, of which she had
been a member. In strange contrast with this Christian
woman's memorial, was that of an infidel, whose grave-
stone, by his own direction, bore an avowal of his belief
that the spirt within him would be extinguished like a
flame, and that the nothingness whence he sprang would
receive him again. Mr. Wigglesworth consulted me as
to the propriety of enabling a dead man's dust to utter
this dreadful creed.

" If I thought," said he, " that a single mortal would
read the inscription without a shudder, my chisel should
never cut a letter of it. But when the grave speaks such
falsehoods, the soul of man will know the truth by its
own horror."

" So it will," said I, struck by the idea ; " the poor
infidel may strive to preach blasphemies from his grave ;
but it will be only another method of impressing the
soul with a consciousness of immortality."

There was an old man by the name of Norton, noted
throughout the island for his great wealth, which he
had accumulated by the exercise of strong and shrewd
faculties, combined with a most penurious , disposition.
This wretched miser, conscious that he had not a friend
to be mindful of him in his grave, had himself taken the
needful precautions for posthumous remembrance, ly

CHIPPINGS WITH A CHISEL. 1J9

bespeaking an immense slab of white marble, with a long
epitaph in raised letters, the whole to be as magnificent
as Mr. Wigglesworth's skill could make it. There was
something very characteristic in this contrivance to have
his money's worth even from his own tombstone, which,
indeed, afforded him more enjoyment in the few months
that he lived thereafter, than it probably will in a whole
century, now that it is laid over his bones. This incident
reminds me of a young girl, a pale, slender, feeble crea-
ture, most unlike the other rosy and healthful damsels
of the Vineyard, amid whose brightness she was fading
away. Day after day did the poor maiden come to the
sculptor's shop, and pass from one piece of marble to an-
other, till at last she pencilled her name upon a slender
slab, which, I think, was of a more spotless white than all
the rest. I saw her no more, but soon afterwards found
Mr. Wigglesworth cutting her virgin name into the stone
which she had chosen.

" She is dead, — poor girl," said he, interrupting the
tune which he was whistling, " and she chose a good
piece of stuff for her headstone. Now which of these
slabs would you like bast to see your own name upon ? "

" Why, to tell you the truth, my good Mr. Wiggles-
worth," replied I, after a moment's pause, — for the ab-
ruptness of the question had somewhat startled me, —
" to be quite sincere with you, I care little or nothing
about a stone for my own grave, and am somewhat in-
clined to scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monu-
ments at all, over the dust that once was human. The
weight of these heavy marbles, though unfelt by the dead
corpse of the enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the
spirit of the survivor, and causes him to connect the idea
of death with the dungeon-like imprisonment of the tomb,
instead of with the freedom of the skies. Everv s^rave-

200 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

stone that you ever made is the visible symbol of a mis-
taken system. Our thoughts should soar upward with
the butterfly, — not linger with the exuviae that coiifiued
him. In truth and reason, neither those whom we call
the living, and still less the departed, have anything to do
with the grave."

" I never heard anything so heathenish ! " said Mr.
Wigglesworth, perplexed and displeased at sentiments
which controverted all his notions and feelings, and im-
plied the utter waste, and worse, of his whole life's labor ;
"would you forget your dead friends, the moment they
are under the sod ? "

"They are not under the sod," I rejoined; " then why
should I mark the spot where there is no treasure hid-
den ! Forget them ? No ! But to remember them
aright, I would forget what they have cast off. And to
gain the truer conception of DEATH, I would forget the
GRAYS ! "

But still the good old sculptor murmured, and stum-
bled, as it were, over the gravestones amid which he had
walked through life. Whether he were right or wrong,
I had grown the wiser from our companionship and from
my observations of nature and character, as displayed by
those who came, with their old griefs or their new ones,
to get them recorded upon his slabs of marble. And yet,
with my gain of wisdom, I had likewise gained perplex-
ity ; for there was a strange doubt in my mind, whether
the dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and regrets,
have not as much real comfort in them — leaving relig-
ious influences out of the question — as what we term
life's joys.

THE SHAKER BRIDAL.

day, in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim,
who had been forty years the presiding elder
over the Shaker settlement at Goshen, there
was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the
sect. Individuals had come from the rich establishment
at Lebanon, from Canterbury, Harvard, and Alfred, and
from all the other localities where this strange people
have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by their
systematic industry. An elder was likewise there, who
had made a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village
of the faithful in Kentucky, to visit his spiritual kindred,
the children of the sainted Mother Ann. He had par-
taken of the homely abundance of their tables, had quaffed
the far-famed Shaker cider, and had joined in the sacred
dance, every step of which is believed to alienate the en-
thusiast from earth, and bear him onward to heavenly
purity and bliss. His brethren of the North had now
courteously invited him to be present on an occasion
when the concurrence of every eminent member of their
community was peculiarly desirable.

The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair,

not only hoary-headed and infirm with age, but worn

down by a lingering disease, which, it was evident, would

very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to other hands.

9*

202 TVriCE-TOLD TALES.

At liis footstool stood a man and woman, both clad in the
Shaker garb.

" My brethren," said Father Ephraim to the surround-
ing elders, feebly exerting himself to utter these few words,
" here are the son and daughter to whom I would com-
mit the trust of which Providence is about to lighten my
weary shoulders. Read their faces, I pray you, and say
whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided
my choice aright."

Accordingly, each elder looked at the two candidates
with a most scrutinizing gaze. The man, whose name
was Adam Colburn, had a face sunburnt with labor in
the fields, yet intelligent, thoughtful, and traced witli
cares enough for a whole lifetime, though he had barely
reached middle age. There was something severe in liis
aspect, and a rigidity throughout his person, characteris-
tics that caused him generally to be taken for a school-
master; which vocation, in fact, he had formerly exercised
for several years. The woman, Martha Pierson, was
somewhat above thirty, thin and pale, as a Shaker sister
almost invariably is, and not entirely free from that
corpse-like appearance, which the garb of the sisterhood
is so well calculated to impart.

" This pair are still in the summer of their years,"
observed the elder from Harvard, a shrewd old man.
" I would like better to see the hoarfrost of autumn on
their heads. Methinks, also, they will be exposed to
peculiar temptations, on account of the carnal desires
which have heretofore subsisted between them."

" Nay, brother," said the elder from Canterbury, " the
hoarfrost and the blackfrost hath done its work on
Brother Adam and Sister Martha, even as we sometimes
discern its traces in our cornfields while they are yet
green. And why should we question the-wisdom of our

THE SHAKER BRIDAL. 203

venerable Father's purpose, although this pair, in their
early youth, have loved one another as the world's people
love ? Are there not many brethren and sisters among
us who have lived long together in wedlock, yet, adopt-
ing our faith, find their hearts purified from all but spirit-
ual affection ? "

Whether or no the early loves of Adam and Martha
had rendered it inexpedient that they should now preside
together over a Shaker village, it was certainly most sin-
gular that such should be the final result of many warm
and tender hopes. Children of neighboring families, their
affection was older even than their school-days ; it seemed
an innate principle, interfused among all their sentiments
and feelings, and not so much a distinct remembrance,
as connected with their whole volume of remembrances.
But, just as they reached a proper age for their union,
misfortunes had fallen heavily on both, and made it neces-
sary that they should resort to personal labor for a bare
subsistence. Even under these circumstances, Martha
Pierson would probably have consented to unite her fate
with Adam Colburn's, and, secure of the bliss of mutual
love, would patiently have awaited the less important
gifts of fortune. But Adam, being of a calm and cautious
character, was loath to relinquish the advantages which
a single man possesses for raising himself in the world.
Year after year, therefore, their marriage had been de-
ferred. Adam Colburn had followed many vocations,
had travelled far, and seen much of the world and of life.
Martha had earned her bread sometimes as a seamstress,
sometimes as help to a farmer's wife, sometimes as school-
mistress of the village children, sometimes as a nurse or
watcher of the sick, thus acquiring a varied experience,
the ultimate use of which she little anticipated. But
nothing had gone prosperously with either of the lovers ;

201- TWICE-TOLD TALES.

at no subsequent moment would matrimony have been so
prudent a measure as when they had first parted, in the
opening bloom of life, to seek a better fortune. Still they
had held fast their mutual faith. Martha might have been
the wife of a man who sat among the senators of his
native State ; and Adam could have won the hand, as he
had unintentionally won the heart, of a rich and comely
widow. But neither of them desired good fortune, save
to share it with the other.

At length that calm despair which occurs only in a
strong and somewhat stubborn character, and yields to
no second spring of hope, settled down on the spirit of
Adam Colburn. He sought an interview with Martha,
and proposed that they should join the Society of Shak-
ers. The converts of this sect are oftener driven within
its hospitable gates by worldly misfortune, than drawn
thither by fanaticism, and are received without inquisition
as to their motives. Martha, faithful still, had placed her
hand in that of her lover, and accompanied him to the
Shaker village. Here the natural capacity of each, culti-
vated and strengthened by the difficulties of their previous
lives, had soon gained them an important rank in the So-
ciety, whose members are generally below the ordinary
standard of intelligence. Their faith and feelings had,
in some degree, become assimilated to those of their
fellow- worshippers. Adam Colburn gradually acquired
reputation, not only in the management of the temporal
affairs of the Society, but as a clear and efficient preacher
of their doctrines. Martha was not less distinguished in
the duties proper to her sex. Finally, when the infirm-
ities of Father Ephraim had admonished him to seek a
successor in his patriarchal office, lie thought of Adam
and Martha, and proposed to renew, in their persons, the
primitive form of Shaker government, as established by

THE SHAKER BRIDAL. 205

Mother Ann. They were to be the Father and Mother
of the village. The simple ceremony, which would con-
stitute them such, was now to be performed.

" Son Adam, and daughter Martha," said the vener-
able Father Ephraim, fixing his aged eyes piercingly upon
them, " if ye can conscientiously undertake this charge,
speak, that the brethren may not doubt of your fitness."

" Father," replied Adam, speaking with the calmness
of his character, " I came to your village a disappointed
man, weary of the world, •worn out with continual trouble,
seeking only a security against evil fortune, as I had no
hope of good. Even my wishes of worldly success were
almost dead within me. I came hither as a man might
come to a tomb, willing to lie down in its gloom and cold-
ness, for the sake of its peace and quiet. There was but
one earthly affection in my breast, and it had grown
calmer since my youth ; so that I was satisfied to bring
Martha to be my sister, in our new abode. We are
brother and sister, nor would I have it otherwise. And
in this peaceful village I have found all that I hoped for,
— all that I desire. I will strive, with my best strength,
for the spiritual and temporal good of our community.
My conscience is not doubtful in this matter. I am
ready to receive the trust."

" Thou hast spoken well, son Adam," said the Father.
" God will bless thee in the office which I am about to
resign."

" But our sister ! " observed the elder from Harvard ;
" hath she not likewise a gift to declare her senti-
ments ? "

Martha started, and moved her lips, as if she would
have made a formal reply to this appeal. But, had she
attempted it, perhaps the old recollections, the long-
repressed feelings of childhood, youth, and womanhood,

206 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

might have gushed from her heart, in words that it would
have been profanation to utter there.

"Adam has spoken," said she, hurriedly; "his senti-
ments are likewise mine."

But while speaking these few words, Martha grew so
pale, that she looked fitter to be laid in her coffin, than to
s'and in the presence of Father Ephraim and the elders ;
she shuddered, also, as if there were something aAvful
or horrible in her situation and destiny. It required,
indeed, a more than feminine strength of nerve, to sus-
tain the fixed observance of men so exalted and famous
throughout the sect, as these were. They had overcome
their natural sympathy with human frailties and affec-
tions. One, when he joined the Society, had brought
with him his wife and children, but never, from that
hour, had spoken a fond word to the former, or taken
his best-loved child upon his knee. Another, whose
family refused to follow him, had been enabled — such
was his gift of holy fortitude — to leave them to the
mercy of the world. The youngest of the elders, a man
of about fifty, had been bred from infancy in a Shaker vil-
lage, and was said never to have clasped a woman's hand
in his own, and to have no conception of a closer tie than
the cold fraternal one of the sect. Old Father Ephraim
was the most awful character of all. In his youth, he
had been a dissolute libertine, but was converted by
Mother Ann herself, and had partaken of the wild fanati-
cism of the early Shakers. Tradition whispered, at the
firesides of the village, that Mother Ann had been com-
pelled to sear his heart of flesh with a red-hot iron, before
it could be purified from earthly passions.

However that might be, poor Martha had a woman's
heart, and a tender one, and it quailed within her as she
looked round at those strange old men, and from them

THE SHAKER BUIDAL. 207

to the calm features of Adam Colburn. But perceiving
that the elders eyed her doubtfully, she gasped for breath,
and again spoke.

" With what strength is left me by my many troubles,"
said she, " I am ready to undertake this charge, and to do
my best in it."

" My children, join your hands," said Father Ephraim.

They did so. The elders stood up around, and the
Father feebly raised himself to a more erect position, but
continued sitting in his great chair.

" I have bidden you to join your hands," said he, " not
in earthly affection, for ye have cast off its chains forever ;
but as brother and sister in spiritual love, and helpers of
one another in your allotted task. Teach unto others the
faith which ye have received. Open wide your gates, —
I deliver you the keys thereof, — open them wide to all
who will give up the iniquities of the world, and come
hither to lead lives of purity and peace. Receive the
weary ones, who have known the vanity of earth, — re-
ceive the little children, that they may never learn that
miserable lesson. And a blessing be upon your labors ;
so that the time may hasten on, when the mission of
Mother Ann shall have wrought its full effect, — when
children shall no more be born and die, and the last sur-
vivor of mortal race, some old and weary man like me,
shall see the sun go down, nevermore to rise on a world
of sin and sorrow ! "

The aged Father sank back exhausted, and the sur-
rounding elders deemed, with good reason, that the hour
was come, when the new heads of the village must enter
on their patriarchal duties. In their attention to Father
Ephraim, their eyes were turned from Martha Pierson,
who grew paler and paler, unnoticed even by Adam
Colburn. He, indeed, had withdrawn his hand from

208

TWICE-TOLD TALES.

hers, and folded his arms with a sense of satisfied am-
bition. But pale and paler grew Martha by his side, till,
like a corpse in its burial-clothes, she sank down at the
feet of her early lover; for, after many trials firmly
borne, her heart could endure the weight of its desolate
agony no longer.

NIGHT SKETCHES.

BENEATH AN UMBRELLA.

LEASANT is a rainy winter's day, witliin doors !
The best study for such a day, or the best
amusement, — call it which you will, — is a
book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that
sombre one, which is mistily presented through the win-
dows. I have experienced, that fancy is then most suc-
cessful in imparting distinct shapes and vivid colors to
the objects which the author has spread upon his page,
and that his words become magic spells to summon up a
thousand varied pictures. Strange landscapes glimmer
through the familiar walls of the room, and outlandish
figures thrust themselves almost within the sacred pre-
cincts of the hearth. Small as my chamber is, it lias
space enough to contain the ocean-like circumference
of an Arabian desert, its parched sands tracked by
the long line of a caravan, with the camels patiently
journeying through the heavy sunshine. Though my
ceiling be not lofty, yet I can pile up the mountains of
Central Asia beneath it, till their summits shine far
above the clouds of the middle atmosphere. And, with
my humble means, a wealth that is not taxable, I can
transport hither the magnificent merchandise of an Ori-

210 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

ental bazaar, and call a crowd of purchasers from distant
countries, to pay a fair profit for the precious articles
which are displayed on all sides. True it is, however,
that amid the bustle of traffic, or whatever else may
seem to be going on around me, the rain-drops will occa-
sionally be heard to patter against my window-panes,
which look forth upon one of the quietest streets in a
New England town. After a time, too, the visions vanish,
and will not appear again at my bidding. Then, it being
nightfall, a gloomy sense of unreality depresses my spir-
its, and impels me to venture out, before the clock shall
strike bedtime, to satisfy myself that the world is not
entirely made up of such shadowy materials, as have
busied me throughout the day. A dreamer may dwell so
long among fantasies, that the things without him will
seem as unreal as those within.

When eve has fairly set in, therefore, I sally forth,
tightly buttoning my shaggy overcoat, and hoisting my
umbrella, the silken dome of which immediately resounds
with the heavy drumming of the invisible rain-drops.
Pausing on the lowest doorstep, I contrast the warmth
and cheerfulness of my deserted fireside with the drear
obscurity and chill discomfort into which I am about to
plunge. Now come fearful auguries, innumerable as the
drops of rain. Did not my manhood cry shame upon me,
I should turn back within doors, resume my elbow-chair,
my slippers, and my book, pass such an evening of slug-
gish enjoyment as the day has been, and go to bed in-
glorious. The same shivering reluctance, no doubt, has
quelled, for a moment, the adventurous spirit of many a
traveller, when his feet, which were destined to meas-
ure the earth around, were leaving their last tracks in
the home-paths.

In my own case, poor human nature may be allowed a

NIGHT SKETCHES. 211

few misgivings. I look upward, and discern no sky,
not even an unfathomable void, but only a black, impene-
trable nothingness, as though heaven and all its lights
W3re blotted from the system of the universe. It is as
if nature were dead, and the world had put on black, and
the clouds were weeping for her. With their tears upon
my cheek, I turn my eyes earthward, but find little con-
solation here below. A lamp is burning dimly at the
distant corner, and throws just enough of light along the
street, to show, and exaggerate by so faintly showing,
the perils and difficulties which beset my path. Yonder
dingily white remnant of a huge snow-bank, — which
will yet cumber the sidewalk till the latter days of
March, — over or through that wintry waste must I
stride onward. Beyond, lies a certain Slough of De-
spond, a concoction of mud and liquid filth, ankle-deep,
leg-deep, neck-deep, — in a word, of unknown bottom, —
on which the lamplight does not even glimmer, but
which I have occasionally watched, in the gradual growth
of its horrors, from morn till nightfall. Should I floun-
der into its depths, farewell to upper earth ! And hark !
how roughly resounds the roaring of a stream, the tur-
bulent career of which is partially reddened by the gleam
of the lamp, but elsewhere brawls noisily through the
densest gloom . O, should I be swept away in fording
that impetuous and unclean torrent, the coroner will
have a job with an unfortunate gentleman, who would
fain end his troubles anywhere but in a mud-puddle !

Pshaw ! I will linger not another instant at arm's-
length from these dim terrors, which grow more obscure-
ly formidable, the longer I delay to grapple with them.
Now for the onset ! And lo ! with little damage, save a
dash of rain in the facs and breast, a splash of mud high
up the pantaloons, and the left boot full of ice-cold water,

212 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

behold rne at the corner of the street. The lamp throws
down a circle of red light around me; and twinkling
onward from corner to corner, I discern other beacons
marshalling my way to a brighter scene. But this is a
lonesome and dreary spot. The tall edifices bid gloomy
defiance to the storm, with their blinds all closed, even
as a man winks when he faces a spattering gust. How
loudly tinkles the collected rain down the tin spouts!
The puffs of wind are boisterous, and seem to assail me
from various quarters at once. I have often observed
that this corner is a haunt and loiteriug-place for those
winds which have no work to do upon the deep, dashing
ships against our iron-bound shores ; nor in the forest,
tearing up the sylvan giants with half a rood of soil at
their vast roots. Here they amuse themselves with lesser
freaks of mischief. See, at this moment, how they assail
yonder poor woman, who is.passing just within the verge
of the lamplight ! One blast struggles for her umbrella,
and turns it wrong side outward ; another whisks the
cape of her cloak across her eyes ; while a third takes
most unwarrantable liberties with the lower part of her
attire. Happily, the good dame is no gossamer, but a
figure of rotundity and fleshly substance ; else would
these aerial tormentors whirl her aloft, like a witch upon
a broomstick, and set her down, doubtless, in the filthi-
est kennel hereabout.

From hence I tread upon firm pavements into the
centre of the town. Here there is almost as brilliant
an illumination as when some great victory has been
won, either on the battle-field or at the polls. Two rows
of shops, with windows down nearly to the ground, cast
a glow from side to side, while the black night hangs
overhead like a canopy, and thus keeps the splendor
from diffusing itself away. The wet sidewalks gleam

NIGHT SKETCHES. 213

with a broad sheet of red light. The rain-drops glitter,
as if the sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts
gush with fire. Methinks the scene is an emblem of
the deceptive glare, which mortals throw around their
footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves,
till they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems
them in, and that can be dispelled only by radiance
from above. And after all, it is a cheerless scene, and
cheerless are the wanderers in it. Here comes one who
has so long been familiar with tempestuous weather that
he takes the bluster of the storm for a friendly greeting,
as if it should say, "How fare ye, brother ? " He is a
retired sea-captain, wrapped in some nameless garment
of the pea-jacket order, and is now laying his course
towards the Marine Insurance Office, there to spin
yarns of gale and shipwreck, with a crew of old sea-
dogs like himself. The blast will put in its word among
their hoarse voices, and be understood by all of them.
Next I meet an unhappy slipshod gentleman, with a
cloak flung hastily over his shoulders, running a race
with boisterous winds, and striving to glide between the
drops of rain. Some domestic emergency or other has
blown this miserable man from his warm fireside in quest
of a doctor ! See that little vagabond, — how carelessly
he has taken his stand right underneath a spout, while
staring at some object of curiosity in a shop-window !
Surely the rain is his native element ; he must have
fallen with it from the clouds, as frogs are supposed
to do.

Here is a picture, and a pretty one. A young man
and a girl, both enveloped in cloaks, and huddled be-
neath the scanty protection of a cotton umbrella. She
wears rubber overshoes ; but he is in his dancing-pumps ;
and they are on their way, no doubt, to some cotillon-

£14 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

party, or subscription-ball at a dollar a head, refresh-
ments included. Thus they struggle against the gloomy
tempest, lured onward by a vision of festal splendor.
But, ah ! a most lamentable disaster. Bewildered by
the red, blue, and yellow meteors, in an apothecary's
window, they Lave stepped upon a slippery remnant
of ice, and are precipitated into a confluence of swollen
floods, at the corner of two streets. Luckless lovers !
Were it my nature to be other than a looker-on in life,
I would attempt your rescue. Since that may not be,
I vow, should you be drowned, to weave such a pathetic
story of your fate, as shall call forth tears enough to
drown you both anew. Do ye touch bottom, my young
friends ? Yes ; they emerge like a water-nymph and a
river deity, and paddle hand in hand out of the depths
of the dark pool. They hurry homeward, dripping, dis-
consolate, abashed, but with love too warm to be chilled
by the cold water. They have stood a test which proves
too strong for many. Faithful, though over head and
ears in trouble !

Onward I go, deriving a sympathetic joy or sorrow
from the varied aspect of mortal affairs, even as my
figure catches a gleam from the lighted windows, or
is blackened by an interval of darkness. Not that mine
is altogether a chameleon spirit, with no hue of its own.
Now I pass into a more retired street, where the dwell-
ings of wealth and poverty are intermingled, presenting a
range of strongly contrasted pictures. Here, too, may
be found the golden mean. Through yonder casement
I discern a family circle, — the grandmother, the par-
ents, and the children, — all flickering, shadow-like, in
the glow of a wood-fire. - Bluster, fierce blast, and beat,
thou wintry rain, against the window-panes! Ye can-
not damp the enjoyment of that fireside. Surely my fate

NIGHT SKETCHES. 2iO

is hard, that I should be wandering homeless here, tak-
ing to my bosom night, and storm, and solitude, instead
of wife and children. Peace, murmurer ! Doubt not
that darker guests are sitting round the hearth, though
the warm blaze hides all but blissful images. Well ;
here is still a brighter scene. A stately mansion, illu-
minated for a ball, with cut-glass chandeliers and ala-
baster lamps in every room, and sunny landscapes hang-
ing round the walls. See ! a coach has stopped, whenca
emerges a slender beauty, who, canopied by two um-
brellas, glides within the portal, and vanishes amid
lightsome thrills of music. Will she ever feel the night -
wind and the rain ? Perhaps, — perhaps ! And will
Death and Sorrow ever enter that proud mansion?
As surely as the dancers will be gay within its halls
to-night. Such thoughts sadden, yet satisfy my heart ;
for they teach me that the poor man, in his mean,
weather-beaten hovel, without a fire to cheer him, may
call the rich his brother, brethren by Sorrow, who must
be an inmate of both their households, — brethren by
Death, who will lead them both to other homes.

Onward, still onward, I plunge into the night. Now
have I reached the utmost limits of the town, where the
last lamp struggles feebly with the darkness, like tli3
farthest star that stands sentinel on the borders of un-
created space. It is strange what sensations of sublimity
may spring from a very humble source. Such are sug-
gested by this hollow roar of a subterranean cataract,
where the mighty stream of a kennel precipitates itself
beneath an iron grate, and is seen no more on earth.
Listen awhile to its voice of mystery ; and fancy will
magnify it, till you start and smile at the illusion. And
now another sound, — the rumbling of wheels, — as the
mail-coach, outward bound, rolls heavily off the pave-

216 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

meuts, and splashes through the mud and water of the
road. All night long, the poor passengers will be tossed
to and fro between drowsy watch and troubled sleep, and
will dream of their own quiet beds, and awake to find
themselves still jolting onward. Happier my lot, who
will straightway hie me to my familiar room, and toast
myself comfortably before the fire, musing, and fitfully
dozing, and fancying a strangeness in such sights as all
may see. But first let me gaze at this solitary figure,
who comes hitherward with a tin lantern, which throws
the circular pattern of its punched holes on the ground
about him. He passes fearlessly into the unknown gloom,
whither I will not follow him.

This figure shall supply me with a moral, wherewith,
for lack of a more appropriate one, I may wind up my
sketch. He fears not to tread the dreary path before
him, because his lantern, which was kindled at the fire-
side of his home, will light him back to that same fireside
again. And thus we, night-wanderers through a stormy
and dismal world, if we bear the lamp of Faith, enkindled
at a celestial fire, it will surely lead us home to that
Heaven whence its radiance was borrowed.

BNDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS.

T noon of an autumnal day, more than two
centuries ago, the English colors were displayed

by the standard-bearer of the Salem trainband,

hich had mustered for martial exercise under the orders
of John Endicott. It was a period when the religious
exiles were accustomed often to buckle on their armor,
. and practise the handling of their weapons of war. Since
the first settlement of New England, its prospects had
never been so dismal. The dissensions between Charles
the Eirst and his subjects were then, and for several
years afterwards, confined to the floor of Parliament.
The measures of the King and ministry were rendered
more tyranically violent by an opposition, which had not
yet acquired sufficient confidence in its own strength to
resist royal injustice with the sword. The bigoted and
haughty primate, Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, con-
trolled the religious affairs of the realm, and was conse-
quently invested with powers which might have wrought
the utter ruin of the two Puritan colonies, Plymouth and
Massachusetts. There is evidence on record, that our
forefathers perceived their danger, but were resolved that
their infant country should not fall without a struggle,
even beneath the giant strength of the King's right arm.

Such was the aspect of the times, when the folds of

VOL. n. 10

218 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

the English banner, with the Red Cross in its field, were
flung out over a company of Puritans. Their leader, the
famous Eudicott, was a man of stern and resolute coun-
tenance, the effect of which was heightened by a grizzled
beard that swept the upper portion of his breastplate.
This piece of armor was so highly polished, that the
whole surrounding scene had its image in the glittering
steel. The central object in the mirrored picture was
an edifice of humble architecture, with neither steeple
nor bell to proclaim it — what nevertheless it was — the
house of prayer. A token of the perils of the wilder-
ness was seen in the grim head of a wolf, which had just
been slain within the precincts. of the town, and, according
to the regular mode of claiming the bounty, was nailed
on the porch of the meeting-house. The blood was still
plashing on the doorstep. There happened to be visible,
at the same noontide hour, so many other characteristics
of the times and manners of the Puritans, that we must
endeavor to represent them in a sketch, though far less
vividly than they were reflected in the polished breast-
plate of John Endicott.

In close vicinity to the sacred edifice appeared that
important engine of Puritanic authority, the whipping-
post, with the soil around it well trodden by the feet of
evil-doers, who had there been disciplined. At one cor-
ner of the meeting-house was the pillory, and at the other
the stocks ; and, by a" singular good fortune for our
sketch, the head of an Episcopalian and suspected Cath-
olic was grotesquely incased in the former machine ;
while a fellow-criminal, who had boisterously quaffed a
health to the King, was confined by the legs in the latter.
Side by side, on the meeting-house steps, stood a male
and a female figure. The man was a tall, lean, haggard
personification of fanaticism, bearing on his breast this

ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 219

label, — A WANTON GOSPELLER, — which betokened that
he had dared to give interpretations of Holy Writ un-
sanctioiied by the infallible judgment of the civil and
religious rulers. His aspect showed no lack of zeal to
maintain his heterodoxies, even at the stake. The woman
wore a cleft stick on her tongue, in appropriate retribu-
tion for having wagged that unruly member against the
elders of the church ; and her countenance and gestures
gave much cause to apprehend, that, the moment the
stick should be removed, a repetition of the offeucj
would demand new ingenuity in chastising it.

The above-mentioned individuals had been sentenced
to undergo their various modes of ignominy, for the
space of one hour at noonday. But among the crowd
were several whose punishment would be life-long ; some,
whose ears had been cropped, like those of puppy-dogs ;
others, whose cheeks had been branded with the initials
of their misdemeanors ; one, with his nostrils slit and
seared ; and another, with a halter about his neck, which
he was forbidden ever to take off, or to conceal beneath
his garments. Methinks he must have been grievously
tempted to affix the other end of the rope to some con-
venient beam or bough. There was likewise a young
woman, with no mean share of beauty, whose doom it
was to wear the letter A on the breast of her gown, in
the eyes of all the world and her own children. And
even her own children knew what that initial signified.
Sporting with her infamy, the lost and desperate creature
had embroidered the fatal token in scarlet cloth, witli
golden thread and the nicest art of needlework ; so that
the capital A might have been thought to mean Admi-
rable, or anything rather than Adulteress.

Let not the reader argue, from any of these evidences
of iniquity, that the times of the Puritans were more

220 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

vicious than our own, when, as we pass along the very
street of this sketch, we discern no badge of infamy on
man or woman. It was the policy of our ancestors to
search out even the most secret sins and expose them
to shame, without fear or favor, in the broadest light of
the noonday sun. Were such the custom now, per-
chance we might find materials for a no less piquant
sketch than the above.

Except the malefactors whom we have described, and
the diseased or infirm persons, the whole male popula-
tion of the town, between sixteen years and sixty, were
seen in the ranks of the trainband. A few stately sav-
ages, in all the pomp and dignity of the primeval Indian,
stood gazing at the spectacle. Their flint -headed arrows
were but childish weapons, compared with the match-
locks of the Puritans, and would have rattled harmlessly
against the steel caps and hammered iron breastplates,
which enclosed each soldier in an individual fortress.
Th3 valiant John Endicott glanced with an eye of pride
at his sturdy followers, and prepared to renew the mar-
tial toils of the day.

"Come, my stout hearts!" quoth hf, drawing his
sword. "Let us show these poor heathen that we can
handle our weapons like men of might. Well for them,
if they put us not to prove it in earnest ! "

The iron-breasted company straightened their line, and
each man drew the heavy butt of his matchlock close to
his left foot, thus awaiting the orders of the captain.
But, as Endicott glanced right and left along the front,
he discovered a personage at some little distance, with
whom it behooved him to hold a parley. It was an eld-
erly gentleman, wearing a black cloak and band, and a
high-crowned hat, beneath which was a velvet skullcap,
the whole being the garb of a Puritan minister. This

ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 221

reverend person bore a staff, which seemed to have been
recently cut in the forest, and his shoes were bemired, as
if be had been travelling on foot through the swamps of
the wilderness. His aspect was perfectly that of a pil-
grim, heightened also by an apostolic dignity. Just as
Endicott perceived him, he laid aside his staff, and
stooped to drink at a bubbling fountain, which gushed
into the sunshine about a score of yards from the corner
of the meeting-house. But, ere the good man drank, he
turned his face heavenward in thankfulness, and then,
holding back his gray beard with one hand, he scooped
up his simple draught in the hollow of the other.

" What, ho ! good Mr. Williams," shouted Endicott.
" You are welcome back again to our town of peace.
How does our worthy Governor Wiuthrop ? And what
news from Boston ? "

" The Governor hath his health, worshipful Sir," an-
swered Roger Williams, now resuming his staff, and
drawing near. "And, for the news, here is a letter,
which, knowing I was to travel hitherward to-day, his
Excellency committed to my charge. Belike it contains
tidings of much import ; for "a ship arrived yesterday
from England."

Mr. Williams, the minister of Salem, and of course
known to all the spectators, had now reached the spot
where Endicott was standing under the banner of his
company, and put the Governor's epistle into his hand.
The broad seal was impressed with Winthrop's coat of
arms. Endicott hastily unclosed the letter, and began
to read ; while, as his eye passed down the page, a
wrathful change came over his manly countenance. The
blood glowed through it, till it seemed to be kindling
with an internal heat ; nor was it unnatural to suppose
that his breastplate would likewise become red-hot,

TWICE-TOLD TALES.

riving at the conclusion, he shook the letter fiercely in
his hand, so that it rustled as loud as the flag above his
head.

" Black tidings these, Mr. Williams," said he ; " blacker
never came to New England. Doubtless you know their
purport ? "

" Yea, truly," replied Roger Williams ; " for the Gov-
ernor consulted, respecting this matter, with my brethren
in the ministry at Boston ; and my opinion was likewise
asked. And his Excellency entreats you by me, that the
news be not suddenly noised abroad, lest the people be
stirred up unto some outbreak, and thereby give the
King and the Archbishop a handle against us."

" The Governor is a wise man, — a wise man, and a
meek and moderate," said Endicott, setting his teeth
grimly. "Nevertheless, I must do according to my own
best judgment. There is neither man, woman, nor child
in New England but has a concern as dear as life in
these tidings; and if John Eudicott's voice be loud
jenough, man, woman, and child shall hear them. Sol-
diers, wheel into a hollow square ! Ho, good people !
Here are news for one and all of you."

The soldiers closed in around their captain ; and he
and Roger Williams stood together under the banner of
the Red Cross ; while the women and the aged men
pressed forward, and the mothers held up their children
to look Endicott in the face. A few taps of the drum
gave signal for silence and attention.

" Fellow - soldiers, — fellow -exiles," began Endicott,
speaking under strong excitement, yet powerfully re-
straining it, " wherefore did ye leave your native coun-
try ? Wherefore, I say, have we left the green and fertile
fields, the cottages, or, perchance, the old gray halls, where

ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 223

we were born and bred, the churchyards where our fore-
fathers lie buried ? Wherefore have we come hither to
set up our own tombstones in a wilderness ? A howling
wilderness it is I The wolf and the bear meet us within
halloo of our dwellings. The savage lieth in wait for us
in the dismal shadow of the woods. The stubborn roots
of the trees break our ploughshares, when we would till
the earth. Our children cry for bread, and we must dig
in the sands of the sea-shore to satisfy them. Wherefore,
I say again, have we sought this country of a rugged soil
and wintry sky ? Was it not for the enjoyment of our
civil rights ? Was it not for liberty to worship God ac-
cording to our conscience ? "

" Call you this liberty of conscience ? " interrupted a
voice on the steps of the meeting-house.

It was the Wanton Gospeller. A sad and quiet smile

flitted across the mild visage of Roger Williams. But

Endicott, in the excitement of the moment, shook his

"sword wrathfully at the culprit, — -an ominous gesture

from a man like him.

" What hast thou to do with conscience, thou knave ? "
cried he. " I said liberty to worship God, not license to
profane and ridicule him. Break not in upon my speech ;
or I will lay thee neck and heels till this time to-morrow \
llsarken to me, friends, nor heed that accursed rhapso-
dist. As I was saying, we have sacrificed all things, and
have come to a land wnereof the old world hath scarcely
heard, that we might make a new world unto ourselves,
and painfully seek a path from hence to heaven. But
what think ye now ? This son of a Scotch tyrant, — this
grandson of a Papistical, and adulterous Scotchwoman,
whose death proved that a golden crown doth not always
save an anointed head from the block — "

" Nay, brother, nay," interposed Mr. Williams ; "thy

22<i TWICE-TOLD TALES.

words are not meet for a secret chamber, far less for a
public street."

" Hold thy peace, Roger Williams ! " answered Endi-
cott, imperiously. " My spirit is wiser than thine, for
the business now in hand. I tell ye, fellow-exiles, that
Charles of England, and Laud, our bitterest persecutor,
arch-priest of Canterbury, are resolute to pursue us even
hither. They are taking counsel, saith this letter, to send
over a governor-general, in whose breast shall be depos-
ited all the law and equity of the land. They are minded,
also, to establish the idolatrous forms of English Episco-
pacy ; so that, when Laud shall kiss the Pope's toe, as
cardinal of Rome, he may deliver New England, bound
hand and foot, into the power of his master ! "

A deep groan from the auditors — a sound of wrath,
as well as tear and sorrow — responded to this intelli-
gence.

" Look ye to it, brethren," resumed Endicott, with
increasing energy. "If this King and this arch-prelate
have their will, we shall briefly behold a cross on the
spire of this tabernacle which we have builded, and a
high altar within its walls, with wax tapers burning round
it at noonday. We shall hear the sacring bell, and the
voices of the Romish priests saying the mass. But think
ye, Christian men, that these abominations may be suffered
without a sword drawn ? without a shot fired ? without
blood spilt, yea, on the very stairs of the pulpit ? No,
— be ye strong of hand, and stout of heart ! Here we
stand on our own soil, which we have bought with our
goods, which we have won with our swords, which we
have cleared with our axes, which we have tilled with the
sweat of our brows, which we have sanctified with our
prayers to the God that brought us hither ! Who shall
enslave us here ? What have we to do with this mitred

ENDICOTT AND THE RED CROSS. 225

prelate, — with this crowned King? What have we to
do with England ? "

Endicott gazed round at the excited countenances of
the people, now full of his own spirit, and then turned
suddenly to the standard-bearer, who stood close behind
him.

" Officer, lower your banner ! " said he.

The officer obeyed ; and, brandishing his sword, Eu-
dicott thrust it through the cloth, and, with his left hand,
rent the Red Cross completely out of the banner. He then
waved the tattered ensign above his head.

" Sacrilegious wretch ! " cried the High-Churchman ra-
the pillory, unable longer to restrain himself; " thou
hast rejected the symbol of our holy religion ! "

" Treason, treason ! " roared the royalist in the stocks.
"He hath defaced tli3 King's banner ! "

" Before God and man, I will avouch the deed," an-
swerd Endicott. "Beat a flourish, drummer! shout,
soldiers and people ! in honor of the ensign of New Eng-
land. Neither Pope nor Tyrant hath part in it now ! "

With a cry of triumph, the people gave their sanction
to one of the boldest exploits which our history records.
And, forever honored be the name of Endicott ! We
look back through the mist of ages, and recognize, in the
rending of the Red Cross from New England's banner,
the first omen of that deliverance which our fathers con-
summated, after the bones of the stern Puritan had lain
more than a century in the dust.

10*

THE LILY'S QUEST.

AN" APOLOGUE.

|Vv*O lovers, once upon a time, bad planned a little
summer-house, in the form of an antique temple,

which it was their purpose to consecrate to all

manner of refined and innocent enjoyments. There they
would hold pleasant intercourse with one another, and
the circle of their familiar friends ; there they would give
festivals of delicious fruit ; there they would hear light-
some music, intermingled with the strains of pathos
which make joy more sweet; there they would read
poetry and fiction, and permit their own minds to flit
away in daydreams and romance ; there, in short, — for
why should we shape out the vague sunshine of their
hopes? — there all pure delights were to cluster like
roses among the pillars of the edifice, and blossom ever
new and spontaneously. So, one breezy and cloudless
afternoon, Adam Forrester and Lilias Fay set out upon a
ramble over the wide estate which they were to possess
together, seeking a proper site for their Temple of Hap-
piness. They were themselves a fair and happy spectacle,
fit priest and priestess for such a shrine; although, mak-
ing poetry of the pretty name of Lilias, Adam Forrester
was wont to call her LILY, because her form was as
fragile, and her cheek almost as pale.

THE LILY'S QUEST. 2:27

As they passed, hand in hand, down the avenue of
drooping elms, that led from the portal of Lilias Fay's
paternal mansion, they seemed to glance like winged
creatures through the strips of sunshine, and to scatter
brightness where the deep shadows fell. But, setting
forth at the same time with this youthful pair, there was
a dismal figure, wrapped in a black velvet cloak that
might have been made of a coffin pall, and with a sombre
hat, «such as mourners wear, drooping its broad brim
over his heavy brows. Glancing behind them, the lovers
well knew who it was that followed, but wished from
their hearts that he had been elsewhere, as being a com-
panion so strangely unsuited to their joyous errand. It
was a near relative of Lilias Fay, an old man by the name
of Walter Gascoigne, wrho had long labored under the
burden of a melancholy spirit, which was sometimes mad-
dened into absolute insanity, and always had a tinge of it.
What a contrast between the young pilgrims of bliss and
their unbidden associate ! They looked as if moulded of
Heaven's sunshine, and he of earth's gloomiest shade ;
they flitted along like Hope and Joy, roaming hand in
hand through life; while his darksome figure stalked
behind, a type of all the woful influences which life could
fling upon them. But the three had not gone far, when
they reached a spot that pleased the gentle Lily, and she
paused.

" What sweeter place shall we find than this ? " said
she. " Why should we seek farther for the site of our
Temple ? "

It was indeed a delightful spot of earth, though undis-
tinguished by any very prominent beauties, being merely
a nook in the shelter of a hill, with the prospect of a
distant lake in one direction, and of a church-spire in
another. There were vistas and pathways, leading on-

228 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

ward and onward into the green woodlands, and vanishing
away in the glimmering shade. The Temple, if erected
here, would look towards the west : so that the lovers
could shape all sorts of magnificent dreams out of the pur-
ple, violet, and gold of the sunset sky ; and few of their an-
ticipated pleasures were dearer than this sport of fantasy.

"Yes," said Adam Forrester, "we might seek all day,
and find no lovelier spot. We will build our Temple
here."

But their sad old companion, who had taken his stand
on the very site which they proposed to cover with a
marble floor, shook his head and frowned ; and the young
man and the Lily deemed it almost enough to blight the
spot, and desecrate it for their airy Temple, that his dis-
mal figure had thrown its shadow there. He pointed to
some scattered stones, the remnants of a former struc-
ture, and to flowers such as young girls delight to nurse
in their gardens, but which had now relapsed into the
wild simplicity of nature.

" Not here ! " cried old Walter Gascpigne. " Here,
long ago, other mortals built their Temple of Happiness.
Seek another site for yours ! "

" What ! " exclaimed Lilias Fay. " Have any ever
planned such a Temple, save ourselves?"

" Poor child ! " said her gloomy kinsman. " In one
shape or other, every mortal has dreamed your dream.

Then he told the lovers, how — not, indeed, an antique
Temple — but a dwelling had once stood there, and that
a dark-clad guest had dwelt among its inmates, sitting
forever at the fireside, and poisoning all their household
mirth. Under this type, Adam Forrester and Lilias saw
that the old man spake of Sorrow. He told of nothing
that might not be recorded in the history of almost every
household; and yet his hearers felt as if no sunshine

THE LILY'S QUEST. 229

ought to fall upon a spot where human grief had left so
deep a stain; or, at least, that no joyous Temple should
be built there.

" This is very sad," said the Lily, sighing.

" Well, there are lovelier spots than this," said Adam
Forrester, soothingly, — "spots which sorrow has not
blighted."

So they hastened away, and the melancholy Gascoigne
followed them, looking as if he had gathered up all the
gloom of the deserted spot, and was bearing it as a bur-
den of inestimable treasure. But still they rambled on,
and soon found themselves in a rocky dell, through the
midst of which ran a streamlet, with ripple, and. foam,
and a continual voice of inarticulate joy. It was a wild
retreat, walled on either side with gray precipices, which
would have frowned somewhat too sternly, had not a
profusion of green shrubbery rooted itself into their crev-
ices, and wreathed gladsome foliage around their solemn
brows. But the chief joy of the dell was in the little
stream, which seemed like the presence of a blissful child,
with nothing earthly to do save to babble merrily and
disport itself, and make every living soul its playfellow,
and throw the sunny gleams of its spirit upon all.

" Here, here is the spot ! " cried the two lovers with
one voice, as they reached a level space on the brink of a
small cascade. " This glen was made on purpose for our
Temple ! "

" And the glad song of the brook will be always in our
ears," said Lilias Fay.

" And its long melody shall sing the bliss of our life-
time," said Adam Forrester.

" Ye must build no Temple here ! " murmured their
dismal companion.

And there again was the old lunatic, standing just on

230 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

the spot where they meant to rear their lightsome dome,
and looking like the embodied symbol of some great woo,
that, in forgotten days, had happened there. And, alas !
there had been woe, nor that alone. A young man, more
than a hundred years before, had lured hither a girl that
loved him, and on this spot had murdered her, and washed
his bloody hands in the stream Vhich sung so merrily.
And ever since, the victim's death-shrieks were often
heard to echo between the cliffs.

" And see ! " cried old Gascoigne, " is the stream yet
pure from the stain of the murderer's hands ? "

" Methiiiks it has a tinge of blood," faintly answered
the Lily ; and being as slight as the gossamer, she trem-
bled and clung to her lover's arm, whispering, " let us
flee from this dreadful vale ! "

" Come, then," said Adam Forrester, as cheerily as he
could; " we shall soon find a happier spot."

They set forth again, young Pilgrims on that quest
which millions — which every child of Earth — has tried
in. turn. And were the Lily and her lover to be more
fortunate than all those millions ? Tor a long time, it
seemed not so. The dismal shape of the old lunatic still
glided behind them ; and for every spot that looked
lovely in their eyes, he had some legend of human wrong
or suffering, so miserably sad, that his auditors could
never afterwards connect the idea of joy with the place
where it had happened. Here, a heart-broken woman,
kneeling to her child, had been spurned from his feet ;
here, a desolate old creature had prayed to the Evil One,
and had received a fiendish malignity of soul, in answer
to her prayer ; here, a new-born infant, sweet blossom of
life, had been found dead, with the impress of its moth-
er's fingers round its throat ; and here, under a shattered
oak, two lovers had been stricken by lightning, and fell

THE LILY'S QUEST. 231

blackened corpses in each other's arms. The dreary
Gascoigne had a gift to know whatever evil and lamenta-
ble thing had stained the bosom of Mother Earth ; and
when his funereal voice had told the tale, it appeared like
a prophecy of future woe, as well as a tradition of the
past. And now, by their sad demeanor, you would
have fancied that the pilgrim lovers were seeking, not a
temple of earthly joy, but a tomb for themselves and
their posterity.

" Where in this world," exclaimed Adam Forrester,
despondiugly, "shall we build our Temple of Happi-
ness ? "

" Where in this world, indeed ! " repeated Lilias Fay ;
and being faint and weary, the more so by the heaviness
of her heart, the Lily drooped her head and sat down on
the summit of a knoll, repeating, " Where in this world
shall we build our Temple ? "

" Ah ! have you already asked yourselves that ques-
tion ? " said their companion, his shaded features grow-
ing even gloomier with the smile that dwelt on them ;
" yet there is a place, even in this world, where ye may
build it."

While the old man spoke, Adam Forrester and Lilias
had carelessly thrown their eyes around, and perceived
that the spot where they had chanced to pause pos-
sessed a quiet charm, which was well enough adapted to
their present mood of mind. It was a small rise of
ground, with a certain regularity of shape, that had per-
haps been bestowed by art ; and a group of trees, which
almost surrounded it, threw their pensive shadows across
and far beyond, although some softened glory of the
sunshine found its way there. The ancestral mansion,
wherein the lovers would dwell together, appeared on
one side, and the ivied church, where they were to wor-

232 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

ship, on another. Happening to cast their eyes on the
ground, they smiled, yet with a sense of wonder, to see
that a pale lily was growing at their feet.

" We will build our Temple here," said they, simulta-
neously, and with an indescribable conviction, that they
had at last found the very spot.

Yet, while they uttered this exclamation, the young
man and the Lily turned an apprehensive glance at their
dreary associate, deeming it hardly possible, that some
tale of earthly affliction should not make those precincts
loathsome, as in every former case. The old man stood
just behind them, so as to form the chief figure in the
group, with his sable cloak muffling the lower part of
his visage, and his sombre hat overshadowing his brows.
But he gave no word of dissent from their purpose ;
and an inscrutable smile was accepted by the lovers
as a token that here had been no footprint of guilt
or sorrow, to desecrate the site of their Temple of Hap-
piness.

In a little time longer, while summer was still in its
prime, the fairy structure of the Temple arose on the
summit of the knoll, amid the solemn shadows of the
trees, yet often gladdened with bright sunshine. It was
built of white marble, with slender and graceful pillars,
supporting a vaulted dome ; and beneath the centre of
this dome, upon a pedestal, was a slab of dark-veined
marble, on which books and music might be strewn.
But there was a fantasy among the people of the neigh-
borhood, that the edifice was planned after an ancient
mausoleum, and was intended for a tomb, and that the
central slab of dark-veined marble was to be inscribed
with the names of buried ones. They doubted, too,
whether the form of Lilias Fay could appertain to a
creature of this earth, being so very delicate, and grow-

THE LILY'S QUEST. 233

ing every day more fragile, so that she looked as if the
summer breeze should snatch her up, and waft her heav-
enward. But still she watched the daily growth of the
Temple ; and so did old Walter Gascoigne, who now
made that spot his continual haunt, leaning whole hours
together on his staff, and giving as deep attention to the
work as though it had been indeed a tomb. In due time
it was finished, and a day appointed for a simple rite of
dedication.

On the preceding evening, after Adam Forrester had
taken leave of his mistress, he looked back towards the
portal of her dwelling, and felt a strange thrill of fear ;
for he imagined that, as the setting sunbeams faded from
her figure, she was exhaling away, and that something of
her ethereal substance was withdrawn, with each lessen-
ing gleam of light. With his farewell glance, a shadow
had fallen over the portal, and Lilias was invisible. His
foreboding spirit deemed it an omen at the time ; and so
it proved ; for the sweet earthly form, by which the Lily
had been manifested to the world, was found lifeless, the
next morning, hi the Temple, with her head resting on
her arms, which were folded upon the slab of dark-veined
marble. The chill winds of the earth had long since
breathed a blight into this beautiful flower, so that a
loving hand had now transplanted it, to blossom brightly
in the garden of Paradise.

But, alas for the Temple of Happiness ! In his unut-
terable grief, Adam Forrester had no purpose more at
heart than to convert this Temple of many delightful
hopes into a tomb, and bury his dead mistress there.
And lo ! a wonder ! Digging a grave beneath the Tem-
ple's marble floor, the sexton found no virgin earth, such '
as was meet to receive the maiden's dust, but an ancient
sepulchre, in which were treasured up the bones of gen-

234 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

erations that had died long ago. Among those forgotten
ancestors was the Lily to be laid. And when the funeral
procession brought Lilias thither in her coffin, they beheld
old Walter Gascoigne standing beneath the dome of the
Temple, with his cloak of pall, and face of darkest gloom ;
and wherever that figure might take its stand, the spot
would seem a sepulchre. He watched the mourners as
they lowered the coffin, down.

" And so," said he to Adam Forrester, with the strange
smile in which his insanity was wont to gleam forth, "you
have found no better foundation for your happiness than
on a grave ! "

But as the Shadow of Affliction spoke, a vision of
Hope and Joy had its birth in Adam's mind, even from
the old man's taunting words ; for then he knew what
was betokened by the parable in which the Lily and him-
self had acted ; and the mystery of Life and Death was
opened to him.

"Joy! joy!" he cried, throwing his arms towards
Heaven, "on a grave be the site of our Temple; and
now our happiness is for Eternity ! "

With those words, a ray of sunshine broke through
the dismal sky, and glimmered down into the sepulchre;
while, at the same moment, the shape of old Walter
Gascoigne stalked drearily away, because his glooin,
symbolic of all earthly sorrow, might no longer abide
there, now that the darkest riddle of humanity was read.

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE.

T must be a spirit much unlike my own, which
can keep itself in health and vigor without
sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of
the world, to plunge into the cool bath of solitude. At
intervals, and not infrequent ones, the forest and the
ocean summon me — one with the roar of its waves, the
other with the murmur of its boughs — forth from the
haunts of men. But I must wander many a mile, ere I
could stand beneath the shadow of even one primeval
tree, much less be lost among the multitude of hoary
trunks, and hidden from earth and sky by the mystery
of darksome foliage. Nothing is within my daily reach
more like a forest than the acre or two of woodland near
some suburban farm-house. When, therefore, the yearn-
ing for seclusion becomes a necessity within me, I am
drawn to the sea-shore, which extends its line of rude
rocks and seldom-trodden sands, for leagues around our
bay. Setting forth at rny last ramble, on a September
morning, I bound myself with a hermit's vow, to inter-
change no thoughts with man or woman, to share no
social pleasure, but to derive all that day's enjoyment
from shore, and sea, and sky, — from my soul's commun-
ion with these, and from fantasies, and recollections, or
anticipated realities. Surely here is enough to feed a

236 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

human spirit for a single day. Farewell, then, busy
world! Till your evening lights shall shine along the
street, — till they gleam upon my sea-flushed face, as I
tread homeward, — free me from your ties, and let me
be a peaceful outlaw.

Highways and cross-paths are hastily traversed, and,
clambering down a crag, I find myself at the extremity
of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth,
and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent
of the broad, blue, sunny deep ! A greeting and a hom-
age to the Sea ! I descend over its margin, and dip my
hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow.
That far-resounding roar is Ocean's voice of welcome.
His salt breath brings a blessing along with it. Now let
us pace together — the reader's fancy arm in arm with
mine — this noble beach, which extends a mile or more
from that craggy promontory to yonder rampart of broken
rocks. In front, the sea ; in the rear, a precipitous bank,
the grassy verge of which is breaking away, year after
year, and flings down its tufts of verdure upon the bar-
renness below. The beach itself is a broad space of sand,
brown and sparkling, with hardly any pebbles intermixed.
Near the water's edge there is a wet margin, which glis-
tens brightly in the sunshine, and reflects objects like a
mirror ; and as we tread along the glistening border, a
dry spot flashes around each footstep, but grows moist
again, as we lift our feet. In some spots, the sand
receives a complete impression of the sole, square toe
and all; elsewhere it is of such marble firmness, that. we
must stamp heavily to leave a print even of the iron-shod
heel. Along the whole of this extensive beach gambols
the surf wave : now it makes a feint of dashing onward
in a fury, yet dies away with a meek murmur, and does
but kiss the strand ; now, after many such abortive ef-

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 237

forts, it rears itself up in an unbroken line, heightening
as it advances, without a speck of foam on its green crest.
"With how fierce a roar it flings itself forward, and rushes
far up the beach !

As I threw my eyes along the edge of the surf, I
remember that I was startled, as Robinson Crusoe might
have been, by the sense that human life was within the
magic circle of my solitude. Afar off in the remote dis-
tance of the beach, appearing like sea-nymphs, or some
airier things, such as might tread upon the feathery
spray, was a group of girls. Hardly had I beheld them,
when they passed into the shadow of the rocks and van-
ished. To comfort myself — for truly I would fain have
gazed a while longer — I made acquaintance with a flock
of beach birds. These little citizens of the sea and air
preceded me by about a stone's-throw along the strand,
seeking, I suppose, for food upon its margin. Yet, with
a philosophy which mankind would do well to imitate,
they drew a continual pleasure from their toil for a sub-
sistence. The sea was each little bird's great playmate.
They chased it downward as it swept back, and again
ran up swiftly before the impending wave, which some-
times overtook them and bore them oif their feet. But
they floated as lightly as one of their own feathers on
the breaking crest. In their airy flutterings, they seemed
to rest on the evanescent spray. Their images — long-
legged little figures, with gray backs and snowy bos-
oms — were seen as distinctly as the realities in the
mirror of the glistening strand. As I advanced, they
flew a score or two of yards, and, again alighting, recom-
menced their dalliance with the surf wave ; and thus they
bore me company along the beach, the types of pleasant
fantasies, till, at its extremity, they took wing over the
ocean, and were gone. After forming a friendship with

238 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

iliese small surf-spirits, it is really worth a sigh, to find
no memorial of them, save their multitudinous little
tracks in the sand.

"When we have paced the length of the beach, it is
pleasant, and not unprofitable, to retrace our steps, and
recall the whole mood and occupation of the mind
during the former passage. Our tracks, being all dis-
cernible, will guide us with an observing consciousness
through every unconscious wandering of thought and
fancy. Here we followed the surf in its reflux, to pick
up a shell which the sea seemed loath to relinquish.
Here we found a sea-weed, with an immense brown leaf,
and trailed it behind us by its long snake-like stalk.
Here we seized a live horseshoe by the tail, and counted
the many claws of the queer monster. Here we dug
into the sand for pebbles, and skipped them upon the
surface of the water. Here we wet our feet while ex-
amining a jelly-fish, which the waves, having just tossed
it up, now sought to snatch away again. Here we trod
along the brink of a fresh-water brooklet, which flows
across the beach, becoming shallower and more shallow,
till at last it sinks into the sand, and perishes in the
effort to bear its little tribute to the main. Here some
vagary appears to have bewildered us; for our tracks
go round and round, and are confusedly intermingled,
as if we had found a labyrinth upon the level beach.
And here, amid our idle pastime, we sat down upon
almost the only stone that breaks the surface of the
sand, and were lost in an unlooked-for and overpowering
conception of the majesty and awfulness of the great
deep. Thus, by tracking our footprints in the sand, we
track our own nature in its wayward course, and steal
a glance upon it, when it never dreams of being so
observed. Such glances always make us wiser.

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHOltE. 239

This extensive beach affords room for another pleasant
pastime. With your staff you may write verses — love-
verses, if they please you best — and consecrate them
with a woman's name. Here, too, may be inscribed
thoughts, feelings, desires, warm outgushings from the
heart's secret places, which you would not pour upon
the sand without the certainty that, almost ere the sky
has looked upon them, the sea will wash them out.
Stir not hence till the record be effaced. Now — for
there is room enough on your canvas — draw huge
faces, — huge as that of the Sphinx on Egyptian sands,
— and fit them with bodies of corresponding immensity,
and legs which, might stride half-way to yonder island.
Child's play becomes magnificent on so grand a scale.
But, after all, the most fascinating employment is sim-
ply to write your name in the sand. Draw the letters
gigantic, so that two strides may barely measure them,
and three for the long strokes ! Cut deep, that the rec-
ord may be permanent ! Statesmen, and warriors, and
poets have spent their strength in no better cause than
this. Is it accomplished ? Return, then, in an hour or
two, and seek for this mighty record of a name. The
sea will have swept over it, even as time rolls its effacing
waves over the names of statesmen, and warriors, and
poets. Hark, the surf wave laughs at you !

Passing from the beach, I begin to clamber over the
crags, making my difficult way among the ruins of a
rampart, shattered and broken by the assaults of a
fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of atti-
tude ; some of them have their feet in the foam, and
are shagged half-way upward with sea- weed ; some have
been hollowed almost into caverns by the unwearied toil
of the sea, which can afford to spend centuries in wear-
ing away a rock, or even polishing a pebble. One huge

210 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

rock ascends in monumental shape, with a face like a
giant's tombstone, on which the veins resemble inscrip-
tions, but in an unknown tongue. We will fancy them
the forgotten characters of an antediluvian race; or
else that Nature's own hand has here recorded a mys-
tery, which, could I read her language, would make
mankind the wiser and the happier. How many a thing
has troubled me with that same idea ! Pass on, and
leave it unexplained. Here is a narrow avenue, which
might seem to have been hewn through the very heart
of an enormous crag, affording passage for the rising
sea to thunder back and forth, filling it with tumultuous
foam, and then leaving its floor of black pebbles bare
and glistening. In this chasm there was once an inter-
secting vein of softer stone, which the waves have
gnawed away piecemeal, while the granite walls re-
main entire on either side. How sharply, and with
what harsh clamor, does the sea rake back the pebbles,
as it momentarily withdraws into its own depths ! At
intervals, the floor of the chasm is left nearly dry ; but
anon, at the outlet, two or three great waves are seen
struggling to get in at once ; two hit the walls athwart,
while one rushes straight through, and all three thun-
der, as if with rage and triumph. They heap the chasm
with a snow-drift of foam and spray. While watching
this scene, I can never rid myself of the idea that a
monster, endowed with life and fierce energy, is striv-
ing to burst his way through the narrow pass. And
what a contrast, to look through the stormy chasm, and
catch a glimpse of the calm bright sea beyond !

Many interesting discoveries may be made among
these broken cliffs. Once, for example, I found a dead
seal, which a recent tempest had tossed into the nook of
the rocks, where his shaggy carcass lay rolled in a heap

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 211

of eel-grass, as if the sea-monster sought to hide himself
from my eye. Another time, a shark seemed on the
point of leaping from the surf to swallow me ; nor did
I wholly without dread approach near enough to ascer-
tain that the man-eater had already met his own death
from some fisherman in the bay. In the same ramble,
I encountered a bird, — a large gray bird, — but whether
a loon, or a wild goose, or the identical albatross of the
Ancient Mariner, was beyond my ornithology to decide.
It reposed so naturally on a bed of dry sea-weed, with
its head beside its wing, that I almost fancied it alive,
and trod softly lest it should suddenly spread its wings
skyward. But the sea-bird would soar among the clouds
no more, nor ride upon its native waves ; so I drew
near, and pulled out one of its mottled tail-feathers for
a remembrance. Another day, I discovered an immense
bone, wedged into a chasm of the .rocks ; it was at least
ten feet long, curved like a cimeter, bejewelled with bar-
nacles and small shell-fish, and partly covered with a
growth of sea-weed. Some leviathan of former ages had
used this ponderous mass as a jawbone. Curiosities of
a minuter order may be observed in a deep reservoir,
which is replenished with water at every tide, but be-
comes a lake among the crags, save when the sea is at
its height. At the bottom of this rocky basin groV ma-
rine plants, some of which tower high beneath the water,
and cast a shadow in the sunshine. Small fishes dart to
and fro, and hide themselves among the sea-weed ; there
is also a solitary crab, who appears to lead the life of a
hermit, communing with none of the other denizens of
the place ; and likewise several five-fingers, — for I know
no other name than that which children give them. If
your imagination be at all accustomed to such freaks,
you may look down into the depths of this pool, and

VOL. II. 11 P

242 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

fancy it the mysterious depth of ocean. But where are
the hulks and scattered timbers of sunken ships? —
•where the treasures that old Ocean hoards ? — where
the corroded cannon ? — where the corpses and skeletons
of seamen, who went down in storm and battle ?

On the day of my last ramble (it was a September
day, yet as warm as summer), what should I behold as
I approached the above-described basin but three girls
sitting on its margin, and — yes, it is veritably so —
laving their snowy feet in the sunny water ! These,
these are the warm realities of those three visionary
shapes that flitted from me on the beach. Hark ! their
merry voices, as they toss up the water with their feet !
They have not seen me. I must shrink behind this rock,
and steal away again.

In honest truth, vowed to solitude as I am, there is
something in this encounter that makes the heart flutter
with a strangely pleasant sensation. I know these girls
to be realities of flesh and blood, yet, glancing at them
so briefly, they mingle like kindred creatures with the
ideal beings of my mind. It is pleasant, likewise, to
gaze down from some high crag, and watch a group of
children, gathering pebbles and pearly shells, and playing
with the surf, as with old Ocean's hoary beard. Nor
does it infringe upon my seclusion, to see yonder boat
at anchor off the shore, swinging dreamily to and fro,
and rising and sinking with the alternate swell ; while
the crew — four gentlemen, in roundabout jackets —
are busy with their fishing-lines. But, with an inward
antipathy and a headlong flight, do I eschew the pres-
ence of any meditative stroller like myself, known by
his pilgrim staff, his sauntering step, his shy demeanor,
his observant yet abstracted eye. From such a man,
as if another self had scared me, I scramble hastily over

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 243

the rocks, and take refuge in a nook which many a
secret hour. lias given me a right to call my own. I
would do battle for it even with the churl that should
produce the title-deeds. Have not my musings melted
into its rocky walls and sandy floor, and made them a
portion of myself?

It is a recess in the line of cliffs, walled round by a
rough, high precipice, which almost encircles and shuts
in a little space of sand. In front, the sea appears as
between the. pillars of a portal. In the rear, the preci-
pice is broken and intermixed with earth, which gives
nourishment not only to clinging and twining shrubs,
but to trees, that gripe the rock with their naked roots,
and seem to struggle hard for footing and for soil
enough to live upon. These are fir-trees; but oaks
hang their heavy branches from above, and throw down
acorns on the beach, and shed their withering foliage
upon the waves. At this autumnal season, the precipice
is decked with variegated splendor ; trailing wreaths of
scarlet flaunt from the summit downward ; tufts of yellow-
flowering shrubs, and rose-bushes, with their reddened
leaves and glossy seed-berries, sprout from each crevice ;
at every glance, I detect some new light or shade of
beauty, all contrasting with the stern, gray rock. A
rill of water trickles down the cliff and fills a little cis-
tern near the base. I drain it at a draught, and find it
fresh and pure. This recess shall be my dining-hall.
And what the feast ? A few biscuits, made savory by
soaking them in sea-water, a tuft of samphire gathered
from the beach, and an apple for the dessert. By this
time, the little rill has filled its reservoir again; and, as
I quaff it, I thank God more heartily than for a civic
banquet, that he gives me the healthful appetite to make
a feast of bread and water.

244 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

Dinner being over, I throw myself at length upon the
sand, and, basking in the sunshine, let my mind disport
itself at will. The walls of this my hermitage have no
tongue to tell my follies, though I sometimes fancy that
they have ears to hear them, and a soul to sympathize.
There is a magic in this spot. Dreams haunt its pr^-
cincts, and flit around me in broad sunlight, nor require
that sleep shall blindfold me to real objects, ere these be
visible. Here can I frame a story of two lovers, and
make their shadows live before me, and be mirrored in
the tranquil water, as they tread along the sand, leaving
no footprints. Here, should I will it, I can summon up
a single shade, and be myself her lover. Yes, dreamer,
— but your lonely heart will be the colder for such
fancies. Sometimes, too, the Past comes back, and finds
me here, and in her train come faces which were glad-
some, when I knew them, yet seem not gladsome now.
Would that my hiding-place were lonelier, so that the
past might not find me ! Get ye all gone, old friends,
and let me listen to the murmur of the sea, — a melan-
choly voice, but less sad than yours. Of what mysteries
is it telling ? Of sunken ships, and whereabouts they
lie? Of islands afar and undiscovered, whose tawny
children are unconscious of other islands and of conti-
nents, and deem the stars of heaven their nearest neigh-
bors ? Nothing of all this. What then ? Has it talked
for so many ages, and meant nothing all the while ?
No ; for those ages find utterance in the sea's unchanging
voice, and warn the listener to withdraw his interest
from mortal vicissitudes, and let the infinite idea of eter-
nity pervade his soul. This is wisdom ; and, therefore,
will I spend the next half-hour in shaping little boats
of drift-wood, and launching them on voyages across the
cove, with the feather of a sea-gull for a sail. If the

FOOTPRINTS OX THE SEA-SIIOHE. 245

voice of ages tell me true, this is as wise an occupation
as to build ships of five hundred tons, and launch them
forth upon the main, bound to " far Cathay." Yet, how
would the merchant sneer at me !

And, after all, can such philosophy be true ? Me-
thinks I could find a thousand arguments against it.
Well, then, let yonder shaggy rock, mid-deep in the surf,
— see ! he is somewhat wrathful, — he rages and roars
and foams, — let that tall rock be my antagonist, and let
me exercise my oratory like him of Athens, who bandied
words with an angry sea and got the victory. My maiden
speech is a triumphant one ; for the gentleman in sea-weed
has nothing to offer in reply, save an immitigable roaring.
His voice, indeed, will be heard a long while after mine
is hushed. Once more I shout, and the cliffs reverberate
the sound. O, what joy for 'a shy man to feel himself so
solitary, that he may lift his voice to its highest pitch
without hazard of a listener ! But, hush ! — be silent,
my good friend ! — whence comes that stifled laughter ?
It was musical, — but how should there be such music in
my solitude ? Looking upwards, I catch a glimpse of
three faces, peeping from the summit of the cliff, like
angels between me and their native sky. Ah, fair girls,
you may make yourselves merry at my eloquence, — but
it was my turn to smile when I saw your white feet in
the pool ! Let us keep each other's secrets.

Tlie sunshine has now passed from my hermitage, ex-
cept a gleam upon the sand just where it meets the sea.
A crowd of gloomy fantasies will come and haunt me, if
I tarry longer here, in the darkening twilight of these
gray rocks. This is a dismal place in some moods of
the mind. Climb we, therefore, the precipice, and pause
a moment on the brink, gazing down into that hollow
chamber by the deep where we have been, what few can

246 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

be, sufficient to our own pastime, — yes, say the word
outright ! — self-sufficient to our own happiness. How
lonesome looks the recess now, and dreary, too, — like all
other spots where happiness has been ! There lies my
shadow in the departing sunshine with its head upon the
sea. I will pelt it with pebbles. A hit ! a hit ! I clap
my hands in triumph, and see ! my shadow clapping its
unreal hands, and claiming the triumph for itself. "\Vhat
a simpleton must I have been all day, since my own
shadow makes a mock of my fooleries !

Homeward ! homeward ! It is time to hasten home.
It is time ; it is time ; for as the sun sinks over the
western wave, the sea grows melancholy, and the surf
has a saddened tone. The distant sails appear astray,
and not of earth, in their remoteness amid the desolate
waste. My spirit wanders forth afar, but finds no rest-
ing-place, and comes shivering back. It is time that I
were hence. But grudge me not the day that has been
spent in seclusion, which yet was not solitude, since the
great sea has been my companion, and the little sea-birds
my friends, and the wind has told me his secrets, and
airy shapes have flitted around me in my hermitage.
Such companionship works an effect upon a man's char-
acter, as if he had been admitted to the society of crea-
tures that are not mortal. And when, at noontide, I
tread the crowded streets, the influence of this day will
still be felt ; so that I shall walk among men kindly and
as a brother, with affection and sympathy, but yet shall
not melt into the indistinguishable mass of humankind.
I shall think my own thoughts, and feel my own emotions,
and possess my individuality unviolated.

But it is good, at the eve of such a day, to feel and
know that there are men and women in the world. That
feeling and that knowledge are mine, at this moment ;

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 247

for, on the shore, far below me, the fishing-party have
landed from their skiff, and are cooking their scaly prey
by a fire of drift-wood, kindled in the angle of two rude
rocks. The tliree visionary girls are likewise there. In
the deepening twilight, while the surf is dashed near their
hearth, the ruddy gleam of the fire throws a strange air
of comfort over the wild cove, bestrewn as it is with peb-
bles and sea- weed, and exposed to the " melancholy main."
Moreover, as the smoke climbs up the precipice, it brings
with it a savory smell from a pan of fried fish, and a black
kettle of chowder, and reminds me that my dinner was
nothing but bread and water, and a tuft of samphire,
and an apple. Methinks the party might find room for
another guest, at that flat rock which serves them for a
table ; and if spoons1 be scarce, I could pick up a clam-
shell on the beach. They see me now ; and — the bless-
ing of a hungry man upon him ! — one of them sends up
a hospitable shout, — halloo, Sir Solitary ! come down and
sup with us ! The ladies wave their handkerchiefs. Can
I decline ? No ; and be it owned, after all my solitary
joys, that this is the sweetest moment of a Day by the
Sea-shore.

EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD.

[pIEE-E is hardly a more difficult exercise of fancy,
than, while gazing at a figure of melancholy age,
to re-create its youth, and, without entirely ob-
literating the identity of form and features, to restore
those graces which time has snatched away. Some old
people, especially women, so age- worn and woful are
they, seem never to have been young and gay. It is
easier to conceive that such gloomy phantoms were sent
into the world as withered and decrepit as we behold
them now, with sympathies only for pain and grief, to
watch at death-beds, and weep at funerals. Even the
sable garments of their widowhood appear essential to
their existence ; all their attributes combine to render
them darksome shadows, creeping strangely amid the
sunshine of human life. Yet it is no unprofitable task,
to take one of these doleful creatures, and set fancy reso-
lutely at work to brighten the dim eye, and darken the
silvery locks, and paint the ashen cheek with rose-color,
and repair the shrunken and crazy form, till a dewy
maiden shall be seen in the old matron's elbow-chair.
The miracle being wrought, then let the years roll back
again, each sadder than the last, and the whole weight of
age and sorrow settle down upon the youthful figure.
Wrinkles and furrows, the handwriting of Time, may

EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 249

thus be deciphered, and found to contain deep lessons of
thought and feeling. Such profit might be derived, by
a skilful observer, from my much-respected friend, the
Widow Toothaker, a nurse of great repute, who has
breathed the atmosphere of sick-chambers and dying
breaths these forty years. •

See ! she sits cowering over her lonesome hearth, with
her gown and upper petticoat drawn upward, gathering
thriftily into her person the whole warmth of the fire,
which, now at nightfall, begins to dissipate the autumnal
chill of her chamber. The blaze quivers capriciously in
front, alternately glimmering into the deepest chasms of
her wrinkled visage, and then permitting'a ghostly dim-
ness to mar the outlines of her venerable figure. And
Nurse Toothaker holds a teaspoon in her right hand,
with which to stir up the contents of a tumbler in her
left, whence steams a vapory fragrance, abhorred of tem-
perance societies. Now she sips, — now stirs, — now
sips again. Her sad old heart has need to be revived by
the rich infusion of Geneva, which is mixed half and half
with hot water, in the tumbler. All day long she has
been sitting by a death-pillow, and quitted it for her
home, only when the spirit of her patient left the clay
and went homeward too. But now are her melancholy
meditations cheered, and her torpid blood warmed, and
her shoulders lightened of at least twenty ponderous
years, by a draught from the true Fountain of Youth, in
a case-bottle. It is strange that men should deem that
fount a fable when its liquor fills more bottles than the
Congress-water! Sip it again, good nurse, and see
whether a second draught will not take off another score
of years, and perhaps ten more, and show us, in your
high-backed chair, the blooming damsel who plighted
troths with Edward Fane. Get you gone, Age and
11*

250 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

Widowhood ! Come back, unwedded Youth ! But,
alas ! the charm will not work. In spite of fancy's most
potent spell, I can see only an old dame cowering over
the fire, a picture of decay and desolation, while the
November blast roars at her in the chimney, and fitful
showers rush suddenly against the window.

Yet there was a time when Rose Grafton — such was
the pretty maiden name of Nurse Toothaker — pos-
sessed beauty that would have gladdened this dim and
dismal chamber as with sunshine. It won for her the
heart of Edward Fane, who has since made so great a
figure in the world, and is now a grand old gentleman,
with powdered hair, and as gouty as a lord. These early
lovers thought to have walked hand in hand through life.
They had wept together for Edward's little sister Mary,
whom Rose tended in her sickness, partly because she
was the sweetest child that ever lived or died, but more
for love of him. She was but three years old. Being
such an infant, Death could not embody his terrors in her
little corpse ; nor did Rose fear to touch the dead child's
brow, though chill, as she curled the silken hair around
it, nor to take her tiny hand, and clasp a flower within
its fingers. Afterward, when she looked through the
pane of glass in the coffin-lid, and beheld Mary's face, it
seemed not so much like death, or life, as like a wax-
work, wrought into the perfect image of a child asleep,
and dreaming of its mother's smile. Rose thought her
too fair a thing to be hidden in the grave, and wondered
that an angel did not snatch up little Mary's coffin, and
bear the slumbering babe to heaven, and bid her wake
immortal. But when the sods were laid on little Mary,
the heart of Rose was troubled. She shuddered at the
fantasy, that, in grasping the child's cold fingers, her
virgin -hand had exchanged a first greeting with mor-

EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 251

tality, and could never lose the earthly taint. How
many a greeting since ! But as yet, she was a fair
young girl, with the dewdrops of fresh feeling in her
bosom ; and instead of Rose, which seemed too mature
a name for her half-opened beauty, her lover called her
Rosebud.

The rosebud was destined never to bloom for Edward
Fane. His mother was a rich and haughty dame, with
all the aristocratic prejudices of colonial times. She
scorned Rose Grafton's humble parentage, and caused
her son to break his faith, though, had she let him
choose, he would have prized his Rosebud above the
richest diamond. The lovers parted, and have seldom
met again. Both may have visited the same mansions,
but not at the same time; for one was bidden to the
festal hall, and the other to the sick -chamber ; he. was
the guest of Pleasure and Prosperity, and she of Anguish.
Rose, after their separation, was long secluded within the
dwelling of Mr. Toothaker, whom she married with the
revengeful hope of breaking her false lover's heart. She
went to her bridegroom's arms with bitterer tears, they
say, than young girls ought to shed at the threshold of
the bridal chamber. Yet, though her husband's head
was getting gray, and his heart had been chilled with an
autumnal frost, Rose soon began to love him, and won-
dered at her own conjugal affection. He was all she had
to love ; there were no children.

In a year or two, poor Mr. Toothaker was visited
with a wearisome infirmity which settled in his joints,
and made him weaker than a child. He crept forth
about his business, and came home at dinner-time and
eventide, not with the manly tread that gladdens a
wife's heart, but slowly, feebly, jotting down each dull
footstep with a melancholy dub of his staff. We must

252 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

pardon his pretty wife, if she sometimes blushed to own
him. Her visitors, when they heard him coming, looked
for the appearance of some old, old man ; but he dragged
bis nerveless limbs into the parlor, — and there was Mr.
Toothaker ! The disease increasing, he never went into
the sunshine, save with a staff in his right hand and his
left on his wife's shoulder, bearing heavily downward,
like a dead man's hand. Thus, a slender woman, still
looking maiden-like, she supported his tall, broad-chested
frame along the pathway of their little garden, and
plucked the roses for her gray-haired husband, and spoke
soothingly, as to an infant. His mind was palsied with
his body ; its utmost energy was peevishness. In a few
months more, she helped him up the staircase, with a
pause at every step, and a longer one upon the landing-
place, and a heavy glance behind, as he crossed the
threshold of his chamber. He knew, poor man, that the
precincts of those four walls would thenceforth be his
world, — his world, his home, his tomb, — at once a
dwelling and a burial-place, till he were borne to a darker
and a narrower one. But Rose was with him in the
tomb. He leaned upon her, in* his daily passage from
the bed to the chair by the fireside, and back again from
the weary chair to the joyless bed, — his bed and hers, —
their marriage-bed ; till even this short journey ceased,
and his head lay all day upon the pillow, and hers all
night beside it. How long poor Mr. Toothaker was
kept in misery ! Death seemed to draw near the door,
and often to lift the latch, and sometimes to thrust his
ugly skull into the chamber, nodding to Rose, and point-
ing at her husband, but still delayed to enter. " This
bedridden wretch cannot escape me ! " quoth Death. " I
will go forth, and run a race with the swift, and fight a
battle with the strong, and come back for Toothaker at

EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 253

my leisure !" O, when the deliverer came so near in the
dull anguish of her worn-out sympathies, did she never
long to cry, " Death, come in ! "

But, 110 ! We have no right to ascribe such a wish to
our friend Rose. She never failed in a wife's duty to
her poor sick husband. She murmured not, though a
glimpse of the sunny sky was as strange to her as him,
nor answered peevishly, though his complaining accents
roused her from her sweetest dream, only to share his
wretchedness. He knew her faith, yet nourished a can-
kered jealousy ; and when the slow disease had chilled
all his heart, save one lukewarm spot, which Death's
frozen fingers were searching for, his last words were,
" What would my Rose have done for her first love, if she
has been so true and kind to a sick old man like me ! "
And then his poor soul crept away, and left the body
lifeless, though hardly more so than for years before, and
Rose a widow, though in truth it was the wedding-night
that widowed her. She felt glad, it must be owned,
when Mr. Toothaker was buried, because his corpse had
retained such a likeness to the man half alive, that she
hearkened for the sad murmur of his voice, bidding her
shift his pillow. But all through the next winter, though
the grave had held him many a month, she fancied him
calling from that cold bed, " Rose ! Rose ! come put a
blanket on my feet ! "

So now the Rosebud was the Widow Toothaker. Her
troubles had come early, and, tedious as they seemed,
had passed before all her bloom was fled. She was still
fair enough to captivate a bachelor, or, with a widow's
cheerful gravity, she might have won a widower, stealing
into his heart in the very guise of his dead wife. But
the Widow Toothaker had no such projects. By her
watchiugs and continual cares, her heart had become knit

254 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

to her first husband with a constancy which changed its
very nature, and made her love him for his infirmi-
ties, and infirmity for his sake. When the palsied old
man was gone, even her early lover could not have sup-
plied his place. She had dwelt in a sick-chamber, and
been the companion of a half-dead wretch, till she could
scarcely breathe in a free air, and felt ill at ease with the
healthy and the happy. She missed the fragrance of the
doctor's stuff. She walked the chamber with a noise-
less footfall. If visitors came in, she spoke in soft and
soothing accents, and was startled and shocked by their
loud voices. Often in the lonesome evening, she looked
timorously from the fireside to the bed, with almost a
hope of recognizing a ghastly face upon the pillow.
Then went her thoughts sadly to her husband's grave.
If one impatient throb had wronged him in his lifetime,
— if she had secretly repined, because her buoyant youth
was imprisoned with his torpid age, — if ever, while
slumbering beside him, a treacherous dream had admitted
another into her heart, — yet the sick man had been pre-
paring a revenge, which the dead now claimed. On his
painful pillow, he had cast a spell around her ; his groans
and misery had proved more captivating charms than
gayety and youthful grace ; in his semblance, Disease
itself had won the Rosebud for a bride ; nor could his
death dissolve the nuptials. By that indissoluble bond
she had gained a home in every sick-chamber, and no-
where else ; there were her brethren and sisters ; thither
her husband summoned her, with that voice which had
seemed to issue from the grave of Toothaker. At length
she recognized her destiny.

We have beheld her as the maid, the wife, the widow ;
now we see her in a separate and insulated character ;
she was, in all her attributes, Nurse Toothaker. And

EDWARD FANE'S ROSEBUD. 255

Nurse Toothaker alone, with her own shrivelled lips,
could make known her experience in that capacity.
What a history might she record of the great sicknesses,
in which she has gone hand in hand with the exterminat-
ing angel ! She remembers when the small-pox hoisted
a red banner on almost every house along the street. She
has witnessed when the typhus fever swept off a whole
household, young and old, all but a lonely mother, who
vainly shrieked to follow her last loved one. Where
would be Death's triumph, if none lived to weep ? She
can speak of strange maladies that have broken out, as
if spontaneously, but were found to have been imported
from foreign lands, with rich silks and other merchandise,
the costliest portion of the cargo. And once, she recol-
lects, the people died of what was considered a new pes-
tilence, till the doctors traced it to the ancient grave of
a young girl, who thus caused many deaths a hundred
years after her own burial. Strange that such black mis-
chief should lurk in a maiden's grave ! She loves to tell
how strong men fight with fiery fevers, utterly refusing to
give up their breath ; and how consumptive virgins fade
out of the world, scarcely reluctant, as if their lovers
were wooing them to a far country. Tell us, thou fear-
ful woman ! tell us the death-secrets ! Fain would I
search out the meaning of words, faintly gasped with
intermingled sobs, and broken sentences, half audibly
spoken between earth and the judgment-seat !

An awful woman ! She is the patron saint of young
physicians, and the bosom friend of old ones. In the
mansions where she enters, the inmates provide them-
selves black garments; the coffin-maker follows her;
and the bell tolls as she comes away from the threshold.
Death himself has met her at so many a bedside, that
he puts forth his bony hand to greet Nurse Toothaker.

256 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

She is an awful woman ! And, O, is it conceivable,
that this handmaid of human infirmity and affliction —
so darkly stained, so thoroughly imbued 'with all that
is saddest in the doom of mortals — can ever again tie
bright and gladsome, even though bathed in the sun-
shine of eternity ? By her long communion with woe,
has she not forfeited her inheritance of immortal joy ?
Does any germ of bliss survive within her?

Hark ! an eager knocking at Nurse Toothaker's door.
She starts from her drowsy revery, sets aside the empty
tumbler and teaspoon, and lights a lamp at the dim em-
bers of the fire. Rap, rap, rap ! again ; and she hurries
adown the staircase, wondering which of her friends can
be at death's door now, since there is such an earnest
messenger at Nurse Toothaker's. Again the peal re-
sounds, just as her hand is on the lock. "Be quick,
Nurse Toothaker ! " cries a man on the doorstep ; " old
General Fane is taken with the gout in his stomach, and
has sent for you to watch by his death-bed. Make haste,
for there is no time to lose ! " " Fane ! Edward Fane !
And has he sent for me at last ? I am ready ! I will
get on my cloak and begone. So," adds the sable-gowned,
ashen- visaged, funereal old figure, " Edward Fane remem-
bers his Rosebud ! "

Our question is answered. There is a germ of bliss
within her. Her long-hoarded constancy — her memory
of the bliss that was — remaining amid the gloom of her
after life, like a sweet-smelling flower in a coffin, is a
symbol that all may be renewed. In some happier clime,
the Rosebud may revive again with all the dewdrops in
its bosom.

THE THREEFOLD DESTINY.

A FAIRY LEGEND.

HAVE sometimes produced a singular and not
unpleasing effect, so far as my own mind was
concerned, by imagining a train of incidents,
which the spirit and mechanism of the fairy legend
should be combined with the characters and manners of
familiar life. In the little tale which follows, a subdued
tinge of ths wild and wonderful is thrown over a sketch
of New England personages and scenery, yet, it is hoped,
without entirely obliterating the sober hues of nature.
Rather than a story of events claiming to be real, it
may be considered as an allegory, such as the writers
of the last century would have expressed in the shape
of an Eastern tale, but to which I have endeavored to
give a more life-like warmth than could be infused into
those fanciful productions.

In the twilight of a summer eve, a tall, dark figure,
over which long and remote travel had thrown an out-
landish aspect, was entering a village, not iii "Fairy
Londe," but within our own familiar boundaries. The
staff, on which this traveller leaned, had been his com-
panion from the spot where it grew, in the jungles of
Hindostan ; the hat, that overshadowed his sombre brow,
had shielded him from the suns of Spain ; but his cheek

Q

258 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

had been blackened by the red-hot wind of an Arabian
desert, and had felt the frozen breath of an Arctic region.
Long sojourning amid wild and dangerous men, he still
wore beneath his vest the ataghan which he had once
struck into the throat of a Turkish robber. In every
foreign clime he had lost something of his New England
characteristics ; and, perhaps, from every people he had
unconsciously borrowed a new peculiarity ; so that when
the world-wanderer again trod the street of his native
village, it is no wonder that he passed unrecognized,
though exciting the gaze and curiosity of all. Yet, as
his arm casually touched that of a young woman, who
was wending her way to an evening lecture, she started,
and almost uttered a cry.

" Ralph Craufield ! " was the name that she half artic-
ulated.

" Can that be my old playmate, Faith Egerton ? "
thought the traveller, looking round at her figure, but
without pausing.

Ralph Craufield, from his youth upward, had felt
himself marked out for a high destiny. He had im-
bibed the idea — we say not whether it were revealed
to him by witchcraft, or in a dream of prophecy, or that
his brooding fancy had palmed its own dictates upon
him as the oracles of a Sibyl — but he had imbibed
the idea, and held it firmest among his articles of faith,
that three marvellous events of his life were to be con-
firmed to him by three signs.

The first of these three fatalities, and perhaps the
one on which his youthful imagination had dwelt most
fondly, was the discovery of the maid, who alone, of
all the maids on earth, could make him happy by her
love. He was to roam around the world till he should
meet a beautiful woman, wearing on her bosom a jewel

THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 259

ill the shape of a heart ; whether of pearl, or ruby, or
emerald, or carbuncle, or a changeful opal, or perhaps
a priceless diamond, Ralph Cranfield little cared, so
long as it were a heart of one peculiar shape. On
encountering this lovely stranger, he was bound to ad-
dress her thus : " Maiden, I have brought you a heavy
heart. May I rest its weight on you ? " And if she
were his fated bride, — if their kindred souls were des-
tined to form a union here below, which all eternity
should only bind more closely, — she would reply, with
her finger on the heart-shaped jewel, " This token, which
I have worn so long, is the assurance that you may ! "

And, secondly, Ralph Cranfield had a firm belief that
there was a mighty treasure hidden somewhere in the
earth, of which the burial-place would be revealed to
none but him. When his feet should press upon the
mysterious spot, there would be a hand before him,
pointing downward, — whether carved of marble, or
hewn in gigantic dimensions on the side of a rocky
precipice, or perchance a hand of flame in empty air, he
could not tell ; but, at least, he would discern a hand,
the forefinger pointing downward, and beneath it the
Latin word EFFODE, — Dig ! And digging thereabouts,
the gold in coin or ingots, the precious stones, or of
whatever else the treasure might consist, would be cer-
tain to reward his toil.

The third and last of the miraculous events in the life
of this high-destined man was to be the attainment of
extensive influence and sway over his fellow-creatures.
Whether he were to be a king, and founder of an hered-
itary throne, or the victorious leader of a people con-
tending for their freedom, or the apostle of a purified
and regenerated faith, was left for futurity to show. As
messengers of the sign, by which Ralph Cranfield might

260 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

recognize the summons, three venerable men were to
claim audience of him. The chief among them, a digni-
fied and majestic person, arrayed, it may be supposed, in
the flowing garments of an ancient sage, would be the
bearer of a wand, or prophet's rod. With this wand, or
rod, or staff, the venerable sage would trace a certain
figure in the air, and then proceed to make known his
heaven-instructed message ; which, if obeyed, must lead
to glorious results.

With this proud fate before him, in the flush of his
imaginative youth, Ralph Cranfield had set forth to seek
the maid, the treasure, and the venerable sage, witli his
gift of extended empire. And had he found them ? Alas !
it was not with the aspect of a triumphant man, who had
achieved a nobler destiny than all his fellows, but rather
with the gloom of one struggling against peculiar and
continual adversity, that he now passed homeward to his
mother's cottage. He had come back, but only for a
time, to lay aside the pilgrim's staif, trusting that his
weary manhood would regain somewhat of the elasticity
of youth, in the spot where his threefold fate had been
foreshown him. There had been few changes in the
village ; for it was not one of those thriving places where
a year's prosperity makes more than the havoc of a
century's decay ; but like a gray hair in a young man's
head, an antiquated little town, full of old maids, and
aged elms, and moss-grown dwellings. Few seemed to
be the changes here. The drooping elms, indeed, had
a more majestic spread ; the weather-blackened houses
were adorned with a denser thatch of verdant moss ; and
doubtless there were a few more gravestones in the
burial-ground, inscribed with names that had once been
familiar in the village street. Yet, summing up all the
mischief that ten years had wrought, it seemed scarcely

THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 261

more than if Ralph Cranfield had gone forth that very
morning, and dreamed a daydream till the twilight, and
then turned back again. But his heart grew cold, be-
cause the village did not remember him as he remembered
the village.

" Here is the change ! " sighed he, striking his hand
upon his breast. " Who is this man of thought and care,
weary with- world-wandering, and heavy with disappointed
hopes ? The youth returns not, who went forth so joy-
ously ! "

And now Ralph Cranfield was at his mother's gate, in
front of the small house where the old lady, with slender
but sufficient means, had kept herself comfortable during
her son's long 'absence. Admitting himself within the
enclosure, he leaned against a great, old tree, trifling
with his own impatience, as people often do in those
intervals when years are summed into, a moment. He
took a minute survey of the dwelling, — its windows,
brightened with the sky-gleam, its doorway, with the
half of a mill-stone for a step, and the faintly traced path
waving thence to the gate. He made friends again with
his childhood's friend, the old tree against which he
leaned ; and glancing his eye adown its trunk, beheld
something that excited a melancholy smile. It was a
half-obliterated inscription — the Latin word EFFODE —
which he remembered to have carved in the bark of the
tree, with a whole day's toil, when he had first begun to
muse about his exalted destiny. It might be accounted
a rather singular coincidence, that the bark, just above
the inscription, had put forth an excrescence, shaped not
unlike a hand, with the forefinger pointing obliquely at
the word of fate. Such, at least, was its appearance in
the dusky light.

" Now a credulous man," said Ralph Craufield care-

262 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

lessly to himself, "might suppose that the treasure which
I have sought round the world lies buried, after all, at
the very door of my mother's dwelling. That would be
a jest indeed ! "

More he thought not about the matter ; for now the
door was opened, and an elderly woman appeared on the
threshold, peering into the dusk to discover who it might
be that had intruded on her premises, and was standing
in the shadow of her tree. It was Ralph Cranfield's
mother. Pass we over their greeting, and leave the one
to her joy and the other to his rest, — if quiet rest be
found.

But when morning broke, he arose with a troubled
brow ; for his sleep and his wakefulness had alike been
full of dreams. All the fervor was rekindled with which
he had burned of yore to unravel the threefold mystery
of his fate. The crowd of his early visions seemed to
have awaited him beneath his mother's roof, and thronged
riotously around to welcome his return. In the well-
remembered chamber — on the pillow where his infancy
had slumbered — he had passed a wilder night than ever
in an Arab tent, or when he had reposed his head in the
ghastly shades of a haunted forest. A shadowy maid
had stolen to his bedside, and laid her finger on the
scintillating heart ; a hand of flame had glowed amid
the darkness, pointing downward to a mystery within the
earth ; a hoary sage had waved his prophetic wand, and
beckoned the dreamer onward to a chair of state. The
same phantoms, though fainter in the daylight, still flitted
about the cottage, and mingled among the crowd of famil-
iar faces that were drawn thither by the news of Ralph
Cranfield's return, to bid him welcome for his mother's
sake. There they found him, a tall, dark, stately man,
of foreign aspect, courteous in demeanor and mild of

THE THREEFOLD DESTINY, 263

speech, yet with an abstracted eye, which seemed often
to snatch a glance at the invisible.

Meantime the Widow Cranfield went bustling about
the house full of joy that she again had somebody to
love, and be careful of, and for whom she might vex and
tease herself with the petty troubles of daily life. It was
nearly noon, when she looked forth from the door, and
descried three personages of note coming along the street,
through the hot sunshine and the masses of elm-tree
shade. At length they reached her gate, and undid the
latch.

" See, Ealph ! " exclaimed she, with maternal pride,
"here is Squire Hawkwood and the two other select-
men coming on purpose to see you ! Now do tell them
a good long story about what you have seen in foreign
parts."

The foremost of the three visitors, Squire Hawkwood,
was a very pompous, but excellent old gentleman, the
head and prime mover in all the affairs of the village,
and universally acknowledged to be one of the sagest
men on earth. He wore, according to a fashion, even
then becoming antiquated, a three-cornered hat, and
carried a silver-headed cane, the use of which seemed to
be rather for nourishing in the air than for assisting the
progress of his legs. His two companions were elderly
and respectable yeomen, who, retaining an ante-revolu-
tionary reverence for rank and hereditary wealth, kept a
little in the Squire's rear. As they approached along the
pathway, Ralph Cranfield sat in an oaken elbow-chair,
half unconsciously gazing at the three visitors, and en-
veloping their homely figures in the misty romance that
pervaded his mental world.

" Here," thought he, smiling at the conceit, — " here
come three elderly personages, and the first of the three

261 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

is a venerable sage with a staff. What if this embassy
should bring me the message of my fate ! "

While Squire Hawkwood and his colleagues entered,
Ralph rose from his seat, and advanced a few steps to
receive them ; and his stately figure and dark counte-
nance, as he bent courteously towards his guests, had a
natural dignity, contrasting well M-ith the bustling im-
portance of the Squire. The old gentleman, according to
invariable custom, gave an elaborate preliminary flourish
with his cane in the air, then removed his three-cornered
hat in order to wipe his brow, and finally proceeded to
make known his errand.

" My colleagues and myself," began the Squire, "are
burdened with momentous duties, being jointly select-
men of this village. Our minds, for the space of three
days past, have been laboriously bent on the selection of
a suitable person to fill a most important office, and take
upon himself a charge and rule, which, wisely considered,
may be ranked no lower than those of kings and poten-
tates. And whereas you, our native townsman, are of
good natural intellect, and well cultivated by foreign
travel, and that certain vagaries and fantasies of your
youth are doubtless long ago corrected ; taking all these
matters, I say, into due consideration, we are of opinion
that Providence hath sent you hither, at this juncture,
for our very purpose."

During this harangue, Cranfield gazed fixedly at the
speaker, as if he beheld something mysterious and un-
earthly in his pompous little figure, and as if the Squire
had worn the flowing robes of an ancient sage, instead of
a square-skirted coat, flapped waistcoat, velvet breeches,
and silk stockings. Nor was his wonder without suffi-
cient cause ; for the flourish of the Squire's staff, marvel-
lous to relate, had described precisely the signal in the

THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 2G5

air which was to ratify the message of the prophetic
Sage, whom Cranfield had sought around the world.

" And what," inquired Ralph Cranfield, with a tremor
in his voice, — " what may this office be, which is to equal
me with kings and potentates ? "

" No less than instructor of our village school," an-
swered Squire Hawkwood ; " the office being now vacant
by the death of the venerable Master Whitaker, after a
fifty years' incumbency."

" I will consider of your proposal," replied Ralph
Cranfield, hurriedly, " and will make known my decision
within three days."

After a few more words, the village dignitary and his
companions took their leave. But to Cranfield's fancy
their images were still present, and became more and
more invested with the dim awfulness of figures which
had first appeared to him in a dream, and afterwards had
shown themselves in his waking moments, assuming
homely aspects among familiar things. His mind dwelt
upon the features of the Squire, till they grew confused
with those of the visionary Sage, and one appeared but the
shadow of the other. The 'same visage, he now thought,
had looked forth upon him from the Pyramid of Cheops ;
the same form had beckoned to him among the colonnades
of the Alhambra; the same figure had mistily revealed
itself through the ascending steam of the Great Geyser.
At every effort of his memory he recognized some trait
of the dreamy Messenger of Destiny, in this pompous,
bustling, self-important, little great man of the village.
Amid such musings Ralph Cranfield sat all day in the
cottage, scarcely hearing and vaguely answering his
mother's thousand questions about his travels and ad-
ventures. At sunset he roused himself to take a stroll,
and, passing the aged elm-tree, his eye was again caught

VOL. II. 12

266 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

by the semblance of a hand, pointing downward at the
half-obliterated inscription.

As Cranfield walked down the street of the village,
the level sunbeams threw his shadow far before him ; and
he fancied that, as his shadow walked among distant ob-
jects, so had there been a presentiment stalking in ad-
vance of him throughout his life. And when he drew
near each object, over which his tall shadow had preceded
him, still it proved to be one of the familiar recollections
of his infancy and youth. Every crook in the pathway
was remembered. Even the more transitory character-
istics of the scene were the same as in bygone days. A
company of cows were grazing on the grassy roadside, and
refreshed him with their fragrant breath. " It is sweeter,"
thought he, " than the perfume which was wafted to our
ship from the Spice Islands." The round little figure of
a child rolled from a doorway, and lay laughing almost
beneath Cranfield's feet. The dark and stately man
stooped down, and, lifting the infant, restored him to his
mother's arms. " The children," said he to himself,
and sighed, and smiled, — " the children are to be my
charge ! " And while a flow of natural feeling gushed
like a wellspring in his heart, he came to a dwelling
which he could nowise forbear to enter. A sweet voice,
which seemed to come from a deep and tender soul, was
warbling a plaintive little air, within.

He bent his head, and passed through the lowly door.
As his foot sounded upon the threshold, a young woman
advanced from the dusky interior of the house, at first
hastily, and then with a more uncertain step, till they
met face to face. There was a singular contrast in their
two figures ; he dark and picturesque, — one who had
battled with the world, — whom all suns had shone upon,
and whom all winds had blown on a varied course ; she

THE THREEFOLD DESTINY. 267

neat, comely, and quiet, — quiet even in her agitation, —
as if all her emotions had been subdued to the peaceful
tenor of her life. Yet their faces, all unlike as they were,
had an expression that seemed not so alien, — a glow
of kindred feeling, flashing upward anew from half-extin-
guished embers.

" You are welcome home ! " said Faith Egerton.

But Cranfield did not immediately answer ; for his eye
had been caught by an ornament in the shape of a Heart,
which Faith wore as a brooch upon her bosom. The
material was the ordinary white quartz ; and he recol-
lected having himself shaped it out of one of those Indian
arrowheads, which are so often found in the ancient haunts
of the red men. It was precisely on the pattern of that
worn by the visionary Maid. When Cranfield departed
on his shadowy search he had bestowed this brooch, in a
gold setting, as a parting gift to Faith Egerton.

" So, Faith, you have kept the Heart ! " said he, at
length.

"Yes," said she, blushing deeply; then more gayly,
" and what else have you brought me from beyond the
sea ? "

" Faith ! " replied Ralph Cranfield, uttering the fated
words by an uncontrollable impulse, " I have brought
you nothing but a heavy heart ! May I rest its weight
on you ? "

" This token, which I have worn so long," said Faith,
laying her tremulous finger on the Heart, " is the assur-
ance that you may ! "

" Faith ! Faith ! " cried Cranfield, clasping her in his
arms, " you have interpreted my wild and weary dream ! "

Yes, the wild dreamer was awake at last. To find the
mysterious treasure, he was to till the earth around his
mother's dwelling, and reap its products ! Instead of

268 TWICE-TOLD TALES.

warlike command, or regal or religious sway, he was to
rule over the village children ! And now the visionary
Maid had faded from his fancy, and in her place he saw
the playmate of his childhood ! Would all, who cherish
such wild wishes, but look around them, they would ofteu-
est find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness
within those precincts, and in that station where Provi-
dence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the
riddle, without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent

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