'OH, MY GOD!' HE SOBBED. 'MY GOD! MY GOD!'"OH, MY GOD!" HE SOBBED. "MY GOD! MY GOD!"
There were two other witnesses in the white-washed cell to which Isaac was assigned. It was on the south side, and large, and sunny, and often the door was left unlocked; but the cell looked out into a crumbling grave-yard. One of these witnesses was a boy of about eighteen, pale to the suggestion of a mortal disease. It did not take Isaac long to find out that this complexion did not indicate consumption, but was only prison pallor. The other prisoner was less pathetic as to color, but he was listless and discouraged. The only amusement of these men consisted in chewing tobacco in enormous quantities, playing surreptitious games of high-low-jack, in reading the daily paper, a single magazine, and waiting for the sun to enter the barred window, and watching it in the afternoon as it slipped away. These two men tried to cheer the new comer in a rude, hearty way; but when the country lad learned that they had been in detention for six months already, held by the government as main witnesses against the first mate of their brig, their words were as dust. They only choked him.
"What did you do," Isaac asked, "to get you in such a scrape?"
"We saw the mate shoot the cook; that's all."
"If I'd known," said the pale boy, with, a look out of the window, "how Uncle Sam keeps us so long—I wished I hadn't said nothing. But we get a dollar a day; that's something." And with a sigh that he meant to engulf with his philosophy, the boy turned his face away, so that Isaac should not suspect the tears that salted the flavor of the coarse tobacco.
The dark outlook, the blind future, the hopeless cell, the disordered table, the lazy life that deadened all activity but that of the imagination, the lack of vigorous air, the lounging companionship, but, above all things, the thought of his mother and Abbie, and the brooding over what he dared to call an outrage perpetrated, in the name of the law, upon himself—these things made a turmoil of Isaac's brain. There was a daily conflict between the Christian and the criminal way of looking at his irreparable misfortune which he wassurprised to find that even the possession of his father's Bible could not control.
There were times when it needed all his intelligence to keep him from springing on the keeper, and running amuck in the ward-room, simply for the sake of uttering a violent, brutal protest. Then there were hours when he was too exhausted to leave his cot. At such a time he wrote a letter, his first letter to his mother, and he made the keeper promise to have it mailed so that no one could possibly suspect that it started from a prison.
"DEAR MOTHER"—it ran—"I have not written to you for three weeks since I have been here, because I have been sick. I am now in a very safe place, and am doing pretty well. I clear my food and board and seventy-five cents a day. I have not been paid yet. I think you had better not write to me until I can give you a permanent address. I read my Bible every day and love you more dearly than ever. I have tried to do my duty as you would have me. Give my love to Abbie. I will write soon again."Ever your affectionate son,"ISAAC."
"DEAR MOTHER"—it ran—"I have not written to you for three weeks since I have been here, because I have been sick. I am now in a very safe place, and am doing pretty well. I clear my food and board and seventy-five cents a day. I have not been paid yet. I think you had better not write to me until I can give you a permanent address. I read my Bible every day and love you more dearly than ever. I have tried to do my duty as you would have me. Give my love to Abbie. I will write soon again.
"Ever your affectionate son,
"ISAAC."
The simpleton! Could he not suspect that country papers copy from city columns all that is of special local interest, and more? And did he not know that it is one of the disgraces of modern journalism that no department is so copiously edited, annotated, and illustrated as that of criminal intelligence?
Could he not surmise that on the Saturday following his incarceration the very mountains rang with the news? That it should be mangled and turned topsy-turvy, and that in the eyes of his simple-minded neighbors he should be thought of as the murderer, by reason of his great strength? For how could it come into the intelligence of law-abiding citizens and law-respecting people, that a man should be shut up in prison, no matter what the newspapers said, unless he haddonesomething to deserve it? What did the mountaineers know about the laws of bail, and habeas corpus? And could such news, gossiped by one neighbor, repeated by another, confirmed by a third, fail to reach the desolate farm-house in which a woman, feeble, old and faint of heart, lay trembling between life and death?
The grand jury meets on the first Monday of each month to indict those for trial against whom reasonable proofs of guilt are obtained. The saloon loafer had been shot in the groin, and pending his injuries indictment was waived. In proportion as the wound proved serious and the recovery prolonged, trial was postponed.
Isaac Masters had now been locked up six weeks. He had not yet heard from home, and had only written once. About noon, one day, the keeper came to tell him that a woman wished to see him. Isaac thought that it was his mother, and the shame of meeting her in the guard-room surrounded by tiers upon tiers of murderers and thieves and petty criminals overcame him. The man of strength sat down on his cot, and putting his hands over his white face, trembled violently. The guard, who knew that Isaac was an innocent man, spoke to him kindly.
"Go! go!" said the prisoner in a voice of agony, "and tell my mother that I will be right there."
"Mother!" ejaculated the guard. "She's the youngest mother for a man of your size I ever see." He winked at the sailor, and went.
Then Isaac knew that it was Abbie, who had come alone, and he tightened his teeth and lips together, and went down.
Isaac slowly came down the perforated iron stairs that were attached to his prison wing like an inside fire-escape. On the bench in the middle of the guard-room sat Abbie—a little, helpless thing she seemed to him—facing the entrance, as if she feared to remove her eyes from the door that led to freedom.
Abbie was greatly changed. She was dressed in black. If Isaac had been a free man, this fact would have startled him. As it was, he was so spent with suffering that his dulled mind could not understand it. At first Abbie did not recognize her hearty lover. His huge frame was gaunt and wasted. His ruddy face was white, and his cheeks hung in folds like moulded putty. His country clothes dropped about him aimlessly. From crown to foot he had been devastated by unmerited disgrace. Grief may glorify; but the other ravages.
This meeting between the lovers was singularly undramatic. Each shrank a little from the other. They shook hands quietly. His was burning; her's like a swamp in October dew. He sat down beside her on the bench awkwardly, while the deputy looked at them with careless curiosity. He was used to nothing but tragedy and crime, and to his experienced mind the two had become long ago confused.
"Mother?" asked Isaac, nervously moving his feet. "Didn't she get my letter?"
The girl nodded gravely, tried to meet his eyes, and then looked away. Tears fell unresisted down her cheeks. She madeno attempt to wipe them off. It was as if she were too well acquainted with them to check their flow.
Then the truth began to filter through Isaac's bewebbed intellect. He spread his knees apart, rested his arms upon them, and bent his head to his hands. His great figure shook.
"Oh, my God!" he sobbed. "My God! My God!"
"Oh, don't, Isaac, don't!" Abbie put her hand upon his head as if he had been her boy. "Your mother was as happy as could be. She was happy to die. We buried her yesterday!"
How could she tell him that his mother had died of grief—too sorely smitten to bear it—for his sake?
But Isaac's head rose and fell—rose and fell rhythmically between his hands. His breath came in low groans, like that of an animal smitten dead by a criminally heavy load.
"She sent her love before she passed away. She wanted you to come back to the farm as soon as you could. She believed in you, Ikey, even if you were in prison. She said Paul was in prison, and that it was a terrible mistake. She knew your father's son would not depart from his God!"
As Abbie uttered this simple confession of country faith, the pitiful man lifted up his eyes from the tiled floor and looked at her gratefully. His dry lips moved, and he tried to speak.
"Yes," was all he said, with fierce humility. Then the lack of breath choked him.
"She made me promise not to give you up, and to come and see you. Of course you are innocent, Ikey?" Abbie did not look at him.
"Yes," he answered mechanically.
"I know," she said softly.
Of what use were more words? They would only beat like waves against the granite of his broken heart. The two sat silent for a time. Then Abbie said, "I must go." She edged a little towards him, and touched his coat.
"When will you come out? I will explain it all to the minister and the neighbors. We will be married as soon as you come home. She wanted us to! Oh, Ikey! Oh, Ikey! My poor—poor boy!"
Isaac arose unsteadily. It was time for her to go, for the turnkey had nodded to him.
A fierce, mad indignation at his fate and what it had wrought upon his mother and upon his honorable name blinded him. He did not even say good-by, but left the girl standing in the middle of the guard-room alone. At any cost he must get back to his cell. Supposing his mind should give way before he got there? He staggered to the stairway. He threw his hands up, and groped on the railing. A blindness struck him before he had mounted two steps. He did not hear a woman's shriek, nor the rushing of feet, nor the sound of his own fall.
When he awaked, he was alone in the witness cell; and when he put his white hands to his hair, he felt that his head was shaven. The chipper prison doctor told him that he was getting nicely over a brain fever.
It was three months after this before the case of Tom Muldoon came upon the docket. The man whom the saloon-keeper had shot had but just been declared out of clanger and on the road to recovery.
When the case was called, the district attorney arose from his desk under the bench, and represented to the court that as for some unforeseen reason the said Frank Stevens, who had been maliciously and wilfully assaulted and shot by the said Tom Muldoon, had refused to prosecute, the prosecution rested upon the government, which would rely upon the direct evidence of one witness to sustain the case.
The district attorney, who was an unbought man, and whose future election depended upon the number of convictions he secured for the State, now opened his case with such decision, vigor, and masterful certainty that the policemen and other friends of the defendant began to quake for the boss of the—th Ward.
"And now, your honor, I will call to the witness-stand a young man of stainless life, whom the government has held as a witness since the brutal assault was committed. He is in the custody of the sheriff of the county, Isaac Masters!"
All eyes turned to the door at the left of the bench. There was a bustle of expectancy, and a pallor upon the face of Tom Muldoon.
"Isaac Masters!" repeated the attorney impatiently. "Will the court officer produce the witness?"
The judge rapped his pencil on the desk in a nervous tattoo. Above all things he detested delay.
"I hope Your Honor will grant me a few moments," said the attorney, annoyed. "The witness must surely be here directly."
"It can go over—" began the judge indulgently, when he was interrupted by the entrance of the sheriff of the county himself. This man beckoned to the district attorney, and the two whispered together with the appearance of great excitement.
"Well?" said the judge, yawning. "Produce your witness."
But the attorney for the government came back to his place slowly, with head bent. He was very pale, and evidently much shaken. The saloon-keeper's face expanded with hope, as he leaned aside and whispered to a friendly wardman.
What was the evidence? Where was the witness? Silent? Why? The question flashed from face to face in the court-room. Had he escaped? Or been spirited away? Such things had been known to happen. Or had he become insane during his incarceration? Such things had been known to happen, too. Gentlemen of the law! Gentlemen of the jury! Sheriff of the county! Judge of the Superior Court! Where is the witness? We demand him on penalty of contempt. Contempt of your Honorable Court? Contempt of court!
What? Is he not here? After all this cost to the State, and to the man? Why has he not met his enforced appointment? If not here, why was the innocent witness suffocated behind bars and walls, while the murderer was free to dispense rum?
"Your Honor," began the attorney, with white lips, "a most unfortunate occurrence has happened, one that the government truly deplores. The witness has been suddenly called away. In fact, Your Honor—hem!—in short, I have been informed by the sheriff that the witness cannot answer to the summons of the court. He is disqualified from subpoena. In fact, Your Honor, the witness died this morning."
The lawyer took out his handkerchief ostentatiously. He then bent to his papers with shaking hands. He looked them over carefully while the court held its breath.
"As the government is not in possession of any evidence against Muldoon, I move to nolle prosequi the case."
"It is granted," said the judge, with a keen glance at the bloated prisoner, whom wardmen and officers of the law were already congratulating profusely.
"Order!" continued the judge. "Prisoner, stand up! You are allowed to go upon your own recognizance in the sum of two hundred and fifty dollars."
The next case was called, a new crowd entered the vitiated room, and the court proceeded with its routine as if nothing unusual had happened.
And the silent witness has passed out of every memory but mine, and that of one poor girl mourning in the New Hampshire hills.
Letter T
HE light of the great orb of day emanates solely from a closely fitting robe of surpassing brightness. The great bulk of the sun which lies within that brilliant mantle is comparatively obscure, and might at first seem to play but an unimportant part so far as the dispensing of light and heat is concerned. It may indeed be likened to the coal-cellar from whence are drawn the supplies that produce the warmth and brightness of the domestic hearth; while the brilliant robe where the sun develops its heat corresponds to the grate in which the coal is consumed. With regard to the thickness of the robe, we might liken this brilliant exterior to the rind of an orange, while the gloomy interior regions would correspond to the edible portion of the fruit. Generally speaking, the rind of the orange is rather too coarse for the purpose of this illustration. It might be nearer the truth to affirm that the luminous part of the sun may be compared to the delicate filmy skin of the peach. There can be no doubt that if this glorious veil were unhappily stripped from the sun, the great luminary would forthwith lose its powers of shedding forth light and heat. The spots which we see so frequently to fleck the dazzling surface, are merely rents in the brilliant mantle through which we are permitted to obtain glimpses of the comparatively non-luminous interior.
As the ability of the sun to warm and light this earth arises from the peculiar properties of the thin glowing shell which surrounds it, a problem of the greatest interest is presented in an inquiry as to the material composition of this particular layer of solar substance. We want, in fact, to ascertain what that special stuff can be which enables the sun to be so useful to us dwellers on the earth. This great problem has been solved, and the result is extremely interesting and instructive; it has been discovered that the material which confers on the sun its beneficent power is also a material which is found in the greatest abundance on the earth, where it fulfils purposes of the very highest importance. Let us see, in the first place, what is the most patent fact with regard to the structure of this solar mantle possessed of a glory so indescribable. It is perfectly plain that it is not composed of any continuous solid material. It has a granular character which is sometimes perceptible when viewed through a powerful telescope, but which can be seen more frequently and studied more satisfactorily on a photographic plate. These granules have an obvious resemblance to clouds; and clouds, indeed, we may call them. There is, however, a very wide difference between the solar clouds and those clouds which float in our own atmosphere. The clouds which we know so well are, of course, merely vast collections of globules of water suspended in the air. No doubt the mighty solar clouds do also consist of incalculable myriads of globules of some particular substance floating in the solar atmosphere. The material of which these solar clouds are composed is, however, I need hardly say, not water, nor is it anything in the remotest degree resembling water. Some years ago any attempt to ascertain the particular substance out of which the solar clouds were formed would at once have been regarded as futile; inasmuch as such a problem would then have been thought to lie outside the possibilities of human knowledge. The advance of discovery has, however, shed a flood of light on the subject, and has revealed the nature of that material to whose presence we are indebted for the solar beneficence. The detection of the particular element to which all living creatures are so much indebted is due to that distinguished physicist, Dr. G. Johnstone Stoney.
In the whole range of science, one of the most remarkable discoveries ever made is that which has taught us that the elementary bodies of which the sun and the stars are constructed are essentially the same asthose of which the earth has been built. This discovery was indeed as unexpected as it is interesting. Could we ever have anticipated that a body ninety-three millions of miles away, as the sun is, or a hundred million of millions of miles distant, as a star may be, should actually prove to have been formed from the same materials as those which compose this earth of ours and all which it contains, whether animate or inanimate? Yet such is indeed the fact. We are thus, in a measure, prepared to find that the material which forms the great solar clouds may turn out to be a substance not quite unknown to the terrestrial chemist. Nay, further, its very abundance in the sun might seem to suggest that this particular material might perhaps prove to be one which was very abundant on the earth.
THE SUN'S CORONA.THE SUN'S CORONA.From a photograph taken by Professor Schaeberle, at Mina Bronces, Chili, in April, 1893, and kindly loaned by Professor E.S. Holden, director of the Lick Observatory.
From a photograph taken by Professor Schaeberle, at Mina Bronces, Chili, in April, 1893, and kindly loaned by Professor E.S. Holden, director of the Lick Observatory.
I had occasion to make use of the word carbon in a lecture which I gave a short time ago, and I thought when I did so that I was of course merely using a term with whose meaning all my audience must be well acquainted. But I found out afterwards that in this matter I had been mistaken. I was told that my introduction of the word carbon had quite puzzled some of those who were listening to me. I learned that a few of those who were unfamiliar with this word went to a gentleman of their acquaintance who they thought would be likely to know, and begged from him an explanation of this mysterious term; whereupon he told them that he was not quite sure himself, but believed that carbon was something which was made out of nitro-glycerine! Even at the risk of telling what every schoolboy ought to know, I will say that carbon is one of the commonest as well as one of the most remarkablesubstances in nature. A lump of coke only differs from a piece of carbon by the ash which the coke leaves behind when burned. As charcoal is almost entirely carbon, so wood is largely composed of this same element. Carbon is indeed present everywhere. In various forms carbon is in the earth beneath our feet, and in the air which we breath. This substance courses with the blood through our veins; it is by carbon that the heat of the body is sustained; and the same element is intimately associated with life in every phase. Nor is the presence of carbon merely confined to this earth. We know it abounds on other bodies in space. It has been shown to be eminently characteristic of the composition of comets. Carbon is not only intimately associated with articles of daily utility, and of plenteous abundance, but with the most exquisite gems of "purest ray serene." More precious than gold, more precious than rubies, the diamond itself is no more than the same element in crystalline form. But the greatest of all the functions of carbon in the universe has yet to be mentioned. This same wonderful element has been shown to be in all probability the material which constitutes those glowing solar clouds to whose kindly radiation our very life owes its origin.
.
Eruptive prominence at 10.34 A.M. The height of the eruption at this stage was at 135,200 miles.At 10.34 A.M..The height of the eruption at this stage was 135,200 miles.
Eruptive prominece at 10.40 A.M. Height, 161,500 miles.At 10.40 A.M..Height, 161,500 miles.
Eruptive prominence at 10.58 A.M. Height, 280,800 miles.At 10.58 A.M..Height, 280,800 miles.THREE VIEWS OF AN ERUPTIVE PROMINENCE OF THE SUN.From photographs taken at Kenwood Observatory, Chicago, March 25, 1895, and kindly loaned by Professor George E. Hale, of the Chicago University.
From photographs taken at Kenwood Observatory, Chicago, March 25, 1895, and kindly loaned by Professor George E. Hale, of the Chicago University.
In the ordinary incandescent electric lamp, the brilliant light is produced by a glowing filament of carbon. The powerful current of electricity experiences so much resistance as it flows through this badly conducting substance, that it raises the temperature of the carbon wire so as to make it dazzlingly white-hot. Indeed the carbon is thus elevated to a temperature far in excess of that which could be obtained in any other way. The reason why carbon is employed in the electric lamp, in preference to any other substance, may be easily understood. Suppose we tried to employ an iron wire as the glowing filament within the well-known glass globe. Then when the current was turned on that iron would of course become red-hot and white-hot; but ere a sufficient temperature had been attained to produce the requisite illumination, the iron wire would have been fusedinto drops of liquid, the current would have been broken, and the lamp would have been destroyed. Nor would the attempt to make an incandescent lamp have proved much more successful had the filament been made of any other metal. The least fusible of metals is the costly element platinum, but even a wire of platinum, though it would stand much more heat than a wire of iron or of steel, would not have retained the solid form by the time it had been raised to the temperature necessary for an incandescent lamp.
There is no known metal, and perhaps no substance whatever, which demands so high a temperature to fuse it as does the element carbon. A filament of carbon, and a filament of carbon alone, will remain unfused and unbroken when heated by the electric current to the dazzling brilliance necessary for effective illumination. This is the reason why this particular element is so indispensable for our incandescent electric lamps. Modern research has now taught us that, just as the electrician has to employ carbon as the immediate agent in producing the brightest of artificial lights down here, so the sun in heaven uses precisely the same element as the immediate agent in the production of its transcendent light and heat. Owing to the extraordinary fervor which prevails in the interior parts of the sun, all substances there present, no matter how difficult we may find their fusion, would have to submit to be melted, nay, even to be driven off into vapor. If submitted to the heat of this appalling solar furnace, an iron poker, for instance, would vanish into invisible vapor. In the presence of the intense heat of the inner parts of the sun, even carbon itself is unable to remain solid. It would seem that it must assume a gaseous form under such circumstances, just as the copper and the iron and all the other substances do which yield more readily than it to the fierce heat of their surroundings.
The buoyancy of carbon vapor is one of its most remarkable characteristics. Accordingly immense volumes of the carbon steam in the sun soar at a higher level than do the vapors of the other elements. Thus carbon becomes a very large and important constituent of the more elevated regions of the solar atmosphere. We can understand what happens to these carbon vapors by the analogous case of the familiar clouds in our own skies. It is true, no doubt, that our terrestrial clouds are composed of a material totally different from that which constitutes the solar clouds. The sun evaporates the water from the great oceans which cover so large a proportion of our earth. The vapor thus produced ascends in the form of invisible gas through our atmosphere, until it reaches an altitude thousands of feet above the surface of the earth. The chill that the watery vapor experiences up there is so great that the vapor collects into little liquid beads, and it is, of course, these liquid beads, associated in countless myriads, which form the clouds we know so well.
We can now understand what happens as the buoyant carbon vapors soar upwards through the sun's atmosphere. They attain at last to an elevation where the fearful intensity of the solar heat has so far abated that, though nearly all other elements may still remain entirely gaseous, yet the exceptionally refractory carbon begins to return to the liquid state. At the first stage in this return, the carbon vapor conducts itself just as does the ascending watery vapor from the earth when about to be transformed into a visible cloud. Under the influence of a chill the carbon vapor collects into a myriad host of little beads of liquid. Each of these drops of liquid carbon in the glorious solar clouds has a temperature and a corresponding radiance vastly exceeding that with which the filament glows in the incandescent electric lamp. When we remember further that the entire surface of our luminary is coated with these clouds, every particle of which is thus intensely luminous, we need no longer wonder at that dazzling brilliance which, even across the awful gulf of ninety-three millions of miles, produces for us the indescribable glory of daylight.
Sir Robert Ball will contribute a series of articles on "The Marvels of the Universe." Six or eight of these articles may be expected during the coming year.
THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BUILDINGS, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY BUILDINGS, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.
Letter A
NDOVER is—or Andover was—like the lady to whom Steele gave immortality in the finest and most famous epigram ever offered to woman.
To have loved Andover; to have been born in Andover—I am brought up short, in these notes, by the sudden recollection that I wasnotborn in Andover. It has always been so difficult to believe it, that I am liable any day to forget it; but the facts compel me to infer that I was born within a mile of the State House. I must have become a citizen of Andover at the age of three, when my father resigned his Boston pulpit for the professorship of Rhetoric in Andover Seminary. I remember distinctly our arrival at the white mansion with the large, handsome grounds, the distant and mysterious grove, the rotund horse-chestnut trees, venerable and solemn, nearly a century old—to this day a horse-chestnut always seems to me like a theological trustee—and the sweep of playground so vast, so soft, so green, so fragrant, so clean, that the baby cockney ran imperiously to her father and demanded that he go build her a brick sidewalk to play upon.
What, I wonder, may be the earliest act of memory on record? Mine is not at all unusual—dating only to two and a half years; at which time I clearly remember being knocked down by my dog, in my father's area in Boston, and being crowed over by a rooster of abnormal proportions who towered between me and the sky, a dragon in size and capabilities.
My father always maintained that he distinctly remembered hearing the death of Napoleon announced in his presence when he was one year and a half old.
Is the humiliating difference between the instinctive selection of Napoleon and that of the rooster, one of temperament or sex? In either case, it is significant enough to lead one to drop the subject.
Next to having been born in a university town, comes the advantage—if it be an advantage—of having spent one's youth there. Mr. Howells says that he must be a dull fellow who does not, at some time or other, hate his native village; and I must confess that I have not, at all stages of my life, held my present opinion of Andover. There have been times when her gentleindifference to the preoccupations of the world has stung me, as all serenity stings restlessness. There have been times when the inevitable limitations of her horizon have seemed as familiar as the coffin-lid to the dead.
PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS'S STUDY.PROFESSOR AUSTIN PHELPS'S STUDY.Drawn from a photograph taken after Professor Phelps's death, when the study had been somewhat dismantled.
Drawn from a photograph taken after Professor Phelps's death, when the study had been somewhat dismantled.
There was an epoch when her theology—But, nevertheless, I certainly look back upon Andover Hill with a very gentle pleasure and heartfelt sense of debt.
It has been particularly asked of me to give some form to my recollections of a phase of local life which is now so obviously passing away that it has a certain historical interest.
That Andover remains upon the map of Massachusetts yet, one does not dispute; but the Andover of New England theology—the Andover of a peculiar people, the Andover that held herself apart from the world and all that was therein—will soon become an interesting wraith.
The life of a professor's daughter in a university town is always a little different from the lives of other girls; but the difference seems to me—unless she be by nature entirely alien to it—in favor of the girl. Were I to sum in one word my impressions of the influences of Andover life upon a robust young mind and heart, I should call themgentle.
As soon as we began to think, we saw a community engaged in studying thought. As soon as we began to feel, we were aware of a neighborhood that did not feel superficially; at least, in certain higher directions. When we began to ask the "questions of life," which all intelligent young people ask sooner or later, we found ourselves in a village of three institutions and their dependencies committed to the pursuit of an ideal of education for which no amount of later, or what we call broader, training ever gives us any better word than Christian.
Such things tell. Andover girls did not waltz, or suffer summer engagements at Bar Harbor, a new one every year; neither did they read Ibsen, or yellow novels; nor did they handle the French stories that are hidden from parents; though they were excellent French scholars in their day.
I do not even know that one can call them more "serious" than their city sisters—for we were a merry lot; at least,mylot were. But they were, I believe, especially open-hearted, gentle-minded girls.
If they were "out of the world" to a certain extent, they were, to another, out of the evil of it. As I look back upon the little drama between twelve and twenty—I might rather say, between two and twenty—Andover young people seem to me to have been as truly and naturally innocent as one may meet anywhere in the world. Some of these private records of girl-history were so white, so clear, so sweet, that to read them would be like watching a morning-glory open. The world is full, thank Heaven, of lovely girls; but though other forms or phases of gentle societyclaim their full quota, I never saw a lovelier than those I knew on Andover Hill.
One terrible tragedy, indeed, befell our little "set;" for we had our sets in Andover, as well as they of Newport or New York.
A high-bred girl of exceptional beauty was furtively kissed one evening by a daring boy (not a native of Andover, I hasten to explain), and the furore which followed this unprecedented enormity it would be impossible to describe to a member of more complicated circles of society. Fancy the reception given such a commonplace at any of our fashionable summer resorts to-day!
On Andover Hill the event was a moral cataclysm. Andover girls were country girls, but not of rustic (any more than of metropolitan) social training. Which of them would have suffered an Academy boy, walking home with her from a lecture or a prayer-meeting, any little privilege which he might not have taken in her father's house, and with her mother's knowledge? I never knew one. The case of which I speak was historic, and as far as I ever knew, unique, and was that of a victim, not an offender.
The little beauty to whom this atrocity happened cried all night and all the next day; she was reported not to have stopped crying for twenty-six hours. Her pretty face grew wan and haggard. She was too ill to go to her lessons.
The teachers—to whom she had promptly related the circumstance—condoled with her; the entire school vowed to avenge her; we were a score of as disturbed and indignant girls as ever wept over woman's wrongs, or scorned a man's depravity.
Yet, for aught I know to the contrary, this abandoned young man may have grown up to become a virtuous member of society; possibly even an exemplary husband and father. I have never been able to trace his history; probably the moral repulsion was too great.
Yet they were no prigs, for their innocence! Andover girls, in the best and brightest sense of the word, led a gay life.
The preponderance of young men on the Hill gave more than ample opportunity for well-mannered good times; and we made the most of them.
VIEW LOOKING FROM THE FRONT OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS'S HOME IN ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.VIEW LOOKING FROM THE FRONT OF ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS'S HOME IN ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.
Legends of the feminine triumphs of past generations were handed breathlessly down to us, and cherished with awe. A lady of the village, said to have been once very handsome, was credibly reported to have refused nineteen offers of marriage. Another, still plainly beautiful, was known to have received and declined the suits of nine theologues in one winter. Neither of theseladies married. We watched their whitening hairs and serene faces with a certain pride of sex, not easily to be understood by a man. When we began to think how many times theymighthave married, the subject assumed sensational proportions. In fact, the maiden ladies of Andover always, I fancied, regarded each other with a peculiar sense of peace. Each knew—and knew that the rest knew—that it was (to use the Andover phraseology) not of predestination or foreordination, but of free will absolute, that an Andover girl passed through life alone. This little social fact, which is undoubtedly true of most, if not all, university towns, had mingled effects upon impressionable girls. For the proportion of masculine society was almost Western in its munificence.
Perhaps it is my duty to say just here that, if honestly put to the question, I should admit that this proportion was almost too munificent for the methods of education then—and still to an extent now—in vogue.
A large Academy for boys, and a flourishing Seminary for young men, set across the village streets from two lively girls' schools, gave to one observer of this little scholastic world her first argument for co-education.
I am confident that if the boys who serenaded (right manfully) under the windows of Abbott Academy or of "The Nunnery," or who tied their lady's colors to the bouquets that they tossed on balconies of professors' houses, had been put, class to class, in competition with us, they would have wasted less time upon us; and I could not deny that if the girls who cut little holes in their fans through which one could look, undetected and unreproved, at one's favorite Academy boy, on some public occasion, had been preparing to meet or pass that boy at Euclid or Xenophon recitation next morning, he would have occupied less of their fancy. Intellectual competition is simpler, severer, and more wholesome than the unmitigated social plane; and a mingling of the two may be found calculated to produce the happiest results.
"Poor souls!" said a Boston lady once to me, upon my alluding to a certain literary club which was at that time occupying the enthusiasm of the Hill. "Poor souls! I suppose they are so starved for society!" We can fancy the amusement with which this comment would have been received if it had been repeated—but it never was repeated till this moment—in Andover.
For Andover had her social life, and knew no better, for the most part, than to enjoy it. It is true that many of her diversions took on that religious or academic character natural to the place. Of village parish life we knew nothing, for our chapel was, like others of its kind, rather an exclusive little place of worship. We were ignorant of pastoral visits, deacons, parochial gossip, church fairs, and what Professor Park used to call "the doughnut business;" and, though we cultivated a weekly prayer-meeting in the lecture-room, I think its chief influence was as a training-school for theological students whose early efforts at public exhortation (poor fellows!) quaveringly besought their Professors to grow in grace, and admonished the families of the Faculty circle to repent.
But we had our lectures and our concerts—quite distinct, as orthodox circles will understand, from those missionary festivals which went, I never discovered why, by the name of Monthly Concerts—and our Porter Rhets. I believe this cipher stood for Porter Rhetorical; and research, if pushed far enough, would develop the fact that Porter indicated a dead professor who once founded a chair and a debating society for young men. Then we had our anniversaries and our exhibitions, when we got ourselves into our organdie muslins or best coats, and listened to the boys spouting Greek and Latin orations in the old, red brick Academy, and heard the theological students—but here this reporter is forced to pause. I suppose I ought to be ashamed of it, but the fact is, that I never attended an anniversary exercise of the Seminary in my life. It would be difficult to say why. I think my reluctance consisted in an abnormal objection to Trustees. So far as I know, they were an innocent set of men, of good reputations and quite harmless. But I certainly acquired, at a very early age, an antipathy to this class of Americans from which I have never recovered.
Our anniversaries occurred, according to the barbaric custom of the times, in the hottest heat of August; and if there be a hotter place in Massachusetts than Andover was, I have yet to simmer in it. Our houses were, of course, thrown open, and crowded to the shingles.
I remember once sharing my tiny room with a little guest who would not have the window open, though the thermometer had stood above ninety, day and night, for a week; and because she was a trustee's daughter, I must not complain. Perhapsthis experience emphasized a natural lack of sympathy with her father.
At all events, I cherished a hidden antagonism to these excellent and useful men, of which I make this late and public confession. It seemed to me that everybody in Andover was afraid of them. I "took it out" in the cordial defiance of a born rebel.
Then we had our tea-parties—theological, of course—when the students came to tea in alphabetical order; and the Professor told his best stories; and the ladies of the family were expected to keep more or less quiet while the gentlemen talked. But this, I should say, was of the earlier time.
And, of course, we had the occasional supply; and as for the clerical guest, in some shape he was always with us.
I remember the shocked expression on the face of a not very eminent minister, because I joined in the conversation when, in the absence of my father's wife, the new mother, it fell to me to take the head of the table. It was truly a stimulating conversation, intellectual, and, like all clerical conversations, vivaciously amusing; and it swept me in, unconsciously. I think this occurred after I had written "The Gates Ajar."
This good man has since become an earnest anti-suffragist and opposer of the movement for the higher education of women. I can only hope he does not owe his dismal convictions to the moral jar received on that occasion; and I regret to learn that his daughter has been forbidden to go to college.
DR. EDWARDS A. PARK, FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN ANDOVER SEMINARY.DR. EDWARDS A. PARK, FORMERLY PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN ANDOVER SEMINARY.From a photograph taken in 1862 by J.W. Black, Boston.
From a photograph taken in 1862 by J.W. Black, Boston.
We had, too, our levees—that was the word; by it one meant what is now called a reception. I have been told that my mother, who was a woman of marked social tastes and gifts, oppressed by the lack of variety in Andover life, originated this innocent form of dissipation.
These festivities, like others in academic towns, were democratic to a degree amusing or inspiring, according to the temperament of the spectator.
The professors' brilliantly-lighted drawing-rooms were thrown open to the students and families of the Hill. Distinguished men jostled the Academy boy who built the furnace fire to pay for his education, and who might be found on the faculty some day, in his turn, or might himself acquire an enviable and well-earned celebrity.
Eminent guests from out of town stood elbow to elbow with poor theologues destined to the missionary field, and pathetically observing the Andover levee as one of the last occasions of civilized gayety in which it might be theirs to share. Ladies from Beacon Street or from New York might be seen chatting with some gentle figure in black, one of those widowed and brave women whose struggles to sustain life and educate their children by boarding students form so large a part of the pathos of academic towns.
One such I knew who met on one of these occasions a member of the club for which she provided. The lady was charming, well-dressed, well-mannered.
The young man, innocent of linen, had appeared at the levee in a gray flannelshirt. Introductions passed. The lady bowed.
"I am happy," stammered the poor fellow, "I am happy to meet the woman who cooks our victuals."
If it be asked, Why educate a man like that for the Christian ministry?—but it wasnotasked. Like all monstrosities, he grew without permission.
Let us hasten to call him the exception that he was to what, on the whole, was (in those days) a fair, wholesome rule of theological selection. The Professor's eyes flashed when he heard the story.
"I have never approved," I think he said, "of the Special Course."
For the Professor believed in no short-cut to the pulpit; but pleaded for all the education, all the opportunity, all the culture, all the gifts, all the graces, possible to a man's privilege or energy, whereby to fit him to preach the Christian religion. But, like other professors, he could not always have his way.
It ought to be said, perhaps, that, beside the self-made or self-making man, there always sat upon the old benches in the lecture-room a certain proportion of gentlemen born and bred to ease and affluence, who had chosen their life's work from motives which were, at least, as much to be respected as the struggles of the converted newsboy or the penitent expressman.
Take her at her dullest, I think we were very fond of Andover; and though we dutifully improved our opportunities to present ourselves in other circles of society, yet, like fisher-folk or mountain-folk, we were always uneasy away from home. I remember on my first visit to New York or Boston—and this although my father was with me—quietly crying my eyes out behind the tall, embroidered screen which the hostess moved before the grate, because the fire-light made me so homesick. Who forgets his first attack of nostalgia? Alas! so far as this recorder is concerned, the first was too far from the last. For I am cursed (or blessed) with a love of home so inevitable and so passionate as to be nothing less than ridiculous to my day and generation—a day of rovers, a generation of shawl-straps and valises.
"Do you never want tostay?" I once asked a distinguished author whose domestic uprootings were so frequent as to cause remark even in America.
"I am the most homesick man who ever lived," he responded sadly. "If I only pass a night in a sleeping-car, I hate to leave my berth."
"You must have cultivated society in Andover," an eminent Cambridge writer once said to me, with more sincerity of tone than was to be expected of the Cambridge accent as addressed to the Andover fact. I was young then, and I remember to have answered, honestly enough, but with what must have struck this superior man as unpardonable flippancy:
"Oh, but one gets tired of seeing only cultivated people!"
I have thought of it sometimes since, when, in other surroundings, the memory of that peaceful, scholarly life has returned poignantly to me.
When one can "run in" any day to homes like those on that quiet and conscientious Hill, one may not do it; but when one cannot, one appreciates their high and gentle influence.
One of the historic figures of my day in Andover was Professor Park. Equally eminent both as a preacher and as a theologian, his fame was great in Zion; and "the world" itself had knowledge of him, and did him honor.
He was a striking figure in the days which were the best of Andover. He was unquestionably a genius; the fact that it was a kind of genius for which the temper of our times is soon likely to find declining uses gives some especial interest to his name.
The appearances are that he will be the last of his type, once so powerful and still so venerable in New England history. He wears (for he is yet living) the dignity of a closing cycle; there is something sad and grand about his individualism, as there is about the last great chief of a tribe, or the last king of a dynasty.
In his youth he was the progressive of Evangelical theology. In his age he stands the proud and reticent conservative, the now silent representative of a departed glory, a departed severity—and, we must admit, of a departed strength—from which the theology of our times has melted away. Like other men in such positions, he has had battles to fight, and he has fought them; enemies to make, and he has made them. How can he keep them? He is growing old so gently and so kindly! Ardent friends and worshipping admirers he has always had, and kept, and deserved.
A lady well known among the writers of our day, herself a professor's daughter from a New England college town, happened once to be talking with me in a lonely hour and in a mood of confidence.
"Oh," she cried, "it seems some ofthese desolate nights as if Imustgo home and sit watching for my father to come back from faculty meeting!"
But the tears smote her face, and she turned away. I knew that she had been her dead father's idol, and he hers.
To her listener what a panorama in those two words: "Faculty meeting!"
Every professor's daughter, every woman from a university family, can see it all. The whole scholastic and domestic, studious and tender life comes back. Faculty meeting! We wait for the tired professor who had the latest difference to settle with his colleagues, or the newest breach to soothe, or the favorite move to push; how late he is! He comes in softly, haggard and spent, closing the door so quietly that no one shall be wakened by this midnight dissipation. The woman who loves him most anxiously—be it wife or be it daughter—is waiting for him. Perhaps there is a little whispered sympathy for the trouble in the faculty which he does not tell. Perhaps there is a little expedition to the pantry for a midnight lunch.
My first recollections of Professor Park give me his tall, gaunt, but well-proportioned figure striding up and down the gravel walks in front of the house, two hours before time for faculty meeting, in solemn conclave with my father. The two were friends—barring those interludes common to all faculties, when professional differences are in the foreground—and the pacing of their united feet might have worn Andover Hill through to the central fires. For years I cultivated an objection to Professor Park as being the chief visible reason why we had to wait for supper.
I remember his celebrated sermons quite well. The chapel was always thronged, and—as there were no particular fire-laws in those days on Andover Hill—the aisles brimmed over when it was known that Professor Park or Professor Phelps was to preach. I think I usually began with a little jealous counting of the audience, lest it should prove bigger than my father's; but even a child could not long listen to Professor Park and not forget her small affairs, and all affairs except the eloquence of the man.
Great, I believe it was. Certain distinguished sermons had their popular names, as "The Judas Sermon," or "The Peter Sermon," and drew their admirers accordingly. He was a man of marked emotional nature, which he often found it hard to control. A skeptical critic might have wondered whether the tears welled, or the face broke, or the voice trembled, always just at the right moment, from pure spontaneity. But those who knew the preacher personally never doubted the genuineness of the feeling that swept and carried orator and hearers down. We do not hear such sermons now.
Professor Park has always been a man of social ease and wit. The last time I saw him, at the age of eighty-five, in his house in Andover, I thought, one need not say, "has been;" and to recall his brilliant talk that day gives me hesitation over the past tense of this reminiscence. On the whole, with the exception of Doctor Holmes, I think I should call Professor Park the best converser—at least among eminentmen—whom I have ever met.
He has always been a man very sensitive to the intellectual values of life, and fully inclined perhaps to approach the spiritual through those. It is easy to misunderstand a religious teacher of this temperament, and his admiring students may have sometimes done so.
One in particular I remember to have heard of who neglected the lecture-room to cultivate upon his own responsibility the misson work of what was known as Abbott Village. To the Christian socialism of our day, the misery of factory life might seem as important for the future clergyman as the system of theology regnant in his particular seminary—but that was not the fashion of the time; at all events, the man was a student under the Professor's orders, and the orders were: keep to the curriculum; and I can but think that the Professor was right when he caustically said:
"That —— is wasting his seminary course in whathe calls doing good!"
Sometimes, too, the students used to beg off to go on book-agencies, or to prosecute other forms of money-making; and of one such Professor Park was heard to say that he "sacrificed his education to get the means of paying for it."
I am indebted to Professor Park for this: "Professor Stuart and myself were reluctant to release them from their studies. Professor Stuart remarked of one student that he got excusedeverySaturday for the purpose of going home for aweek, and always stayed afortnight."
The last time that I saw Professor Park he told me a good story. It concerned the days of his prime, when he had been preaching somewhere—in Boston or New York, I think—and after the audience was dismissed a man lingered and approached him.