The commander-in-chief being among the killed, Colonel Walpole was promoted in his stead, and brevetted as General, by way of incentive. He found a people in despair, a soldiery thoroughly intimidated, and a treasury, not empty, but useless. But the new general had not served against the Maroons for nothing, and was not ashamed to go to school to his opponents. First, he waited for the dry season; then he directed all his efforts towards cutting off his opponents from water; and, most effectual move of all, he attacked each successive cockpit by dragging up a howitzer, with immense labor, and throwing in shells. Shells were a visitation not dreamed of in Maroon philosophy, and their quaint compliments to their new opponent remain on record. "Damn dat little buckra!" they said; "he cunning more dan dem toder. Dis here da new fashion for fight: him fire big ball arter you, and when big ball 'top, de damn sunting (something) fire arter you again." With which Parthian arrows of rhetoric the mountaineers retreated.
But this did not last long. The Maroons soon learned to keep out of the way of the shells, and the island relapsed into terror again. It was deliberately resolved at last, by a special council convoked for the purpose, "to persuade the rebels to make peace." But as they had not as yet shown themselves very accessible to softer influences, it was thought best to combine as many arguments as possible, and a certain Colonel Quarrell had hit upon a wholly new one. His plan simply was, since men, however well disciplined, had proved powerless against Maroons, to try a Spanish fashion against them, and use dogs. The proposition was met, in some quarters, with the strongest hostility. England, it was said, had always denounced the Spaniards as brutal and dastardly for hunting down the natives of that very soil with hounds,—and should England now follow the humiliating example? On the other side, there were plenty who eagerly quoted all known instances of zoölogical warfare: all Oriental nations, for instance, used elephants in war, and no doubt would gladly use lions and tigers, also, but for their extreme carnivorousness, and their painful indifference to the distinction between friend and foe;—why not, then, use these dogs, comparatively innocent and gentle creatures? At any rate, "something must be done"; the final argument always used, when a bad or desperate project is to be made palatable. So it was voted at last to send to Havana for an invoice of Spanish dogs,with their accompanying chasseurs, and the efforts at persuading the Maroons were postponed till the arrival of these additional persuasives. And when Colonel Quarrell finally set sail as commissioner to obtain the new allies, all scruples of conscience vanished in the renewal of public courage and the chorus of popular gratitude; a thing so desirable must be right; thrice were they armed who knew their Quarrell just.
But after the parting notes of gratitude died away in the distance, the commissioner began to discover that he was to have a hard time of it. He sailed for Havana in a schooner manned with Spanish renegadoes, who insisted on fighting everything that came in their way,—first a Spanish schooner, then a French one. He landed at Batabano, struck across the mountains towards Havana, stopped at Besucal to call on the wealthy Marquesa de San Felipe y San Jorge, grand patroness of dogs and chasseurs, and finally was welcomed to Havana by Don Luis de las Casas, who overlooked, for this occasion only, an injunction of his court against admitting foreigners within his government,—"the only accustomed exception being," as Don Luis courteously assured him, "in favor of foreign traders who came with new negroes." To be sure, the commissioner had not brought any of these commodities, but then he had come to obtain the means of capturing some, and so might pass for an irregular practitioner of the privileged profession.
Accordingly, Don Guillermo Dawes Quarrell (so ran his passport) found no difficulty in obtaining permission from the governor to buy as many dogs as he desired. When, however, he carelessly hinted at the necessity of taking, also, a few men who should have care of the dogs,—this being, after all, the essential part of his expedition,—Don Luis de las Casas put on instantly a double force of courtesy, and assured him of the entire impossibility of recruiting a single Spaniard for English service. Finally, however, he gave permission and passports for six chasseurs. Under cover of this, the commissioner lost no time in enlisting forty; he got them safe to Batabano, but at the last moment, learning the state of affairs, they refused to embark on such very irregular authority. When he had persuaded them, at length, the officer of the fort interposed objections. This was not to be borne, so Don Guillermo bribed him and silenced him; a dragoon was, however, sent to report to the governor; Don Guillermo sent a messenger after him and bribed him, too; and thus, at length, after myriad rebuffs, and after being obliged to spend the last evening at a puppet-show, in which the principal figure was a burlesque on his own personal peculiarities, the weary Don Guillermo, with his crew of renegadoes, and his forty chasseurs and their one hundred and four muzzled dogs, set sail for Jamaica.
These new allies were certainly something formidable, if we may trust the pictures and descriptions in Dallas's History. The chasseur was a tall, meagre, swarthy Spaniard or mulatto, lightly clad in cotton shirt and drawers, with broad straw-hat and moccasins of raw hide; his belt sustaining his long, straight, flat sword ormachete, like an iron bar sharpened at one end; and he wore by the same belt three cotton leashes for his three dogs, sometimes held also by chains. The dogs were a fierce breed, crossed between hound and mastiff, never unmuzzled but for attack, and accompanied by smaller dogs calledfinders. It is no wonder, when these wild and powerful creatures were landed at Montego Bay, that terror ran through the town, doors were everywhere closed and windows crowded, not a negro dared to stir, and the muzzled dogs, infuriated by confinement on shipboard, filled the silent streets with their noisy barking and the rattling of their chains.
How much would have come of all this in actual conflict does not appear. The Maroons had already been persuaded to make peace upon certain conditions and guaranties,—a decision probably acceleratedby the terrible rumors of the bloodhounds, though they never saw them. It was the declared opinion of the Assembly, confirmed by that of General Walpole, that "nothing could be clearer than that, if they had been off the island, the rebels could not have been induced to surrender." Nevertheless a treaty was at last made, without the direct intervention of the quadrupeds. Again commissioners went up among the mountains to treat with negotiators at first invisible; again were hats and jackets interchanged, not without coy reluctance on the part of the well-dressed Englishmen; and a solemn agreement was effected. The most essential part of the bargain was a guaranty of continued independence, demanded by the suspicious Maroons. General Walpole, however, promptly pledged himself that no such unfair advantage should be taken of them as had occurred with the hostages previously surrendered, who were placed in irons, nor should any attempt be made to remove them from the island. It is painful to add, that this promise was outrageously violated by the Colonial government, to the lasting grief of General Walpole, on the ground that the Maroons had violated the treaty by a slight want of punctuality in complying with its terms, and by remissness in restoring the fugitive slaves who had taken refuge among them. As many of the tribe as surrendered, therefore, were at once placed in confinement, and ultimately shipped from Port Royal to Halifax, to the number of six hundred, on the 6th of June, 1796. For the credit of English honor, we rejoice to know that General Walpole not merely protested against this utter breach of faith, but indignantly declined the sword of honor which the Assembly voted him in its gratitude, and retired from military service forever.
The remaining career of this portion of the Maroons is easily told. They were first dreaded by the inhabitants of Halifax; then welcomed, when seen; and promptly set to work on the citadel, then in process of reconstruction, where the "Maroon Bastion" still remains,—their only visible memorial. Two commissioners had charge of them, one being the redoubtable Colonel Quarrell, and twenty-five thousand pounds were appropriated for their temporary support. Of course they did not prosper; pensioned colonists never do, for they are not compelled into habits of industry. After their delicious life in the mountains of Jamaica, it seemed rather monotonous to dwell upon that barren soil,—for theirs was such that two previous colonies had deserted it,—and in a climate where winter lasts seven months in the year. They had a schoolmaster, and he was also a preacher; but they did not seem to appreciate that luxury of civilization,—utterly refusing, on grounds of conscience, to forsake polygamy, and, on grounds of personal comfort, to listen to the doctrinal discourses of their pastor, who was an ardent Sandemanian. They smoked their pipes during service-time, and left Old Montagu, who still survived, to lend a vicarious attention to the sermon. One discourse he briefly reported as follows, very much to the point:—"Massa parson say no mus tief, no mus meddle wid somebody wife, no mus quarrel, mus set down softly." So they sat down very softly, and showed an extreme unwillingness to get up again. But, not being naturally an idle race, (at least, in Jamaica the objection lay rather on the other side,) they soon grew tired of this inaction. Distrustful of those about them, suspicious of all attempts to scatter them among the community at large, frozen by the climate, and constantly petitioning for removal to a milder one, they finally wearied out all patience. A long dispute ensued between the authorities of Nova Scotia and Jamaica, as to which was properly responsible for their support; and thus the heroic race, that for a century and a half had sustained themselves in freedom in Jamaica, were reduced to the position of troublesome and impracticable paupers, shuttlecocks between two selfish parishes. So passed their unfortunate lives, until, in 1800, their reduced population was transportedto Sierra Leone, at a cost of six thousand pounds, since which they disappear from history.
It was judged best not to interfere with those bodies of Maroons which had kept aloof from the late outbreak, as the Accompong settlement, and others. They continued to preserve a qualified independence, and retain it even now. In 1835, two years after the abolition of slavery in Jamaica, there were reported sixty families of Maroons as residing at Accompong Town, eighty families at Moore Town, one hundred and ten families at Charles Town, and twenty families at Scott Hall, making two hundred and seventy families in all,—each station being, as of old, under the charge of a superintendent. But there can be little doubt, that, under the influences of freedom, they are rapidly intermingling with the mass of colored population in Jamaica.
The story of the exiled Maroons attracted attention in high quarters, in its time; the wrongs done to them were denounced in Parliament by Sheridan and mourned by Wilberforce; while the employment of bloodhounds against them was vindicated by Dundas, and the whole conduct of the Colonial government defended, through thick and thin, by Bryan Edwards. This thorough partisan even had the assurance to tell Mr. Wilberforce, in Parliament, that he knew the Maroons, from personal knowledge, to be cannibals, and that, if a missionary were sent among them in Nova Scotia, they would immediately eat him; a charge so absurd that he did not venture to repeat it in his History of the West Indies, though his injustice to the Maroons is even there so glaring as to provoke the indignation of the more moderate Dallas. But, in spite of Mr. Edwards, the public indignation ran quite high, in England, against the bloodhounds and their employers, so that the home ministry found it necessary to send a severe reproof to the Colonial government. For a few years the tales of the Maroons thus emerged from mere colonial annals, and found their way into Annual Registers and Parliamentary Debates,—but they have vanished from popular memory now. Their record still retains its interest, however, as that of one of the heroic races of the world; and all the more, because it is with their kindred that this nation has to deal, in solving the tremendous problem of incorporating their liberties with our own. We must remember the story of the Maroons, because we cannot afford to ignore a single historic fact which bears upon a question so momentous.
Whether the Student advertised for a school, or whether he fell in with the advertisement of a school-committee, is not certain. At any rate, it was not long before he found himself the head of a large district, or, as it was called by the inhabitants, "deestric" school, in the flourishing inland village of Pequawkett, or, as it is commonly spelt, Pigwacket Centre. The natives of this place would be surprised, if they should hear that any of the readers of a periodical published in Boston were unacquainted with so remarkable a locality. As, however, some copies of this periodical may be read at a distance from this distinguished metropolis, it may be well to give a few particulars respecting the place, taken from the Universal Gazetteer.
"Pigwacket, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and township in —— Co.,State of ——, situated in a fine agricultural region, 2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and Smithville, 3 churches, several schoolhouses, and many handsome private residences. Mink River runs through the town, navigable for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy Pond at N. E. section, well stocked with horned pouts, eels, and shiners. Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs, clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373."
"Pigwacket, sometimes spelt Pequawkett. A post-village and township in —— Co.,State of ——, situated in a fine agricultural region, 2 thriving villages, Pigwacket Centre and Smithville, 3 churches, several schoolhouses, and many handsome private residences. Mink River runs through the town, navigable for small boats after heavy rains. Muddy Pond at N. E. section, well stocked with horned pouts, eels, and shiners. Products, beef, pork, butter, cheese. Manufactures, shoe-pegs, clothes-pins, and tin-ware. Pop. 1373."
The reader may think there is nothing very remarkable implied in this description. If, however, he had read the town-history, by the Rev. Jabez Grubb, he would have learned, that, like the celebrated Little Pedlington, it was distinguished by manyveryremarkable advantages. Thus:—
"The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking down the lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Musquash. The air is salubrious, and many of the inhabitants have attained great age, several having passed the allotted period of 'three-score years and ten' before succumbing to any of the various 'ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow Comfort Leevins died in 1836, Æt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African, died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are distinguished for intelligence, as has been frequently remarked by eminent lyceum-lecturers, who have invariably spoken in the highest terms of a Pigwacket audience. There is a public library, containing nearly a hundred volumes, free to all subscribers. The preached word is well attended, there is a flourishing temperance society, and the schools are excellent. It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families who relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. The Honorable John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate, was a native of this town."
"The situation of Pigwacket is eminently beautiful, looking down the lovely valley of Mink River, a tributary of the Musquash. The air is salubrious, and many of the inhabitants have attained great age, several having passed the allotted period of 'three-score years and ten' before succumbing to any of the various 'ills that flesh is heir to.' Widow Comfort Leevins died in 1836, Æt. LXXXVII. years. Venus, an African, died in 1841, supposed to be C. years old. The people are distinguished for intelligence, as has been frequently remarked by eminent lyceum-lecturers, who have invariably spoken in the highest terms of a Pigwacket audience. There is a public library, containing nearly a hundred volumes, free to all subscribers. The preached word is well attended, there is a flourishing temperance society, and the schools are excellent. It is a residence admirably adapted to refined families who relish the beauties of Nature and the charms of society. The Honorable John Smith, formerly a member of the State Senate, was a native of this town."
That is the way they all talk. After all, it is probably pretty much like other inland New England towns in point of "salubrity,"—that is, gives people their choice of dysentery or fever every autumn, with a season-ticket for consumption, good all the year round. And so of the other pretences. "Pigwacket audience," forsooth! Was there ever an audience anywhere, though there wasn't a pair of eyes in it brighter than pickled oysters, that didn't think it was "distinguished for intelligence"?—"The preachéd word"! That means the Rev. Jabez Grubb's sermons. "Temperance society"! "Excellent schools"! Ah, that is just what we were talking about.
The truth was, that District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, had had a good deal of trouble of late with its schoolmasters. The committee had done their best, but there were a number of well-grown and pretty rough young fellows who had got the upperhand of the masters, and meant to keep it. Two dynasties had fallen before the uprising of this fierce democracy. This was a thing that used to be not very uncommon; but in so "intelligent" a community as that of Pigwacket Centre, in an era of public libraries and lyceum-lectures, it was portentous and alarming.
The rebellion began under the ferule of Master Weeks, a slender youth from a country college, under-fed, thin-blooded, sloping-shouldered, knock-kneed, straight-haired, weak-bearded, pale-eyed, wide-pupilled, half-colored; a common type enough in in-door races, not rich enough to pick and choose in their alliances. Nature kills off a good many of this sort in the first teething-time, a few in later childhood, a good many again in early adolescence; but every now and then one runs the gauntlet of her various diseases, or rather forms of one disease, and grows up, as Master Weeks had done.
It was a very foolish thing for him to try to inflict personal punishment on such a lusty young fellow as Abner Briggs, Junior, one of the "hardest customers" in the way of a rough-and-tumble fight that there were anywhere round. No doubt he had been insolent, but it would have been better to overlook it. It pains me to report the events which took place when the master made his rash attempt to maintain his authority. Abner Briggs, Junior, was a great, hulking fellow, who had been bred to butchering, but urged by his parents to attend school, in order to learn the elegant accomplishments of reading and writing, in which he was sadly deficient. He was in the habit of talking and laughing pretty loud in school-hours,of throwing wads of paper reduced to a pulp by a natural and easy process, of occasional insolence and general negligence. One of the soft, but unpleasant missiles just alluded to, flew by the master's head one morning, and flattened itself against the wall, where it adhered in the form of a convex mass inalto rilievo. The master looked round and saw the young butcher's arm in an attitude which pointed to it unequivocally as the source from which the projectile had taken its flight.
Master Weeks turned pale. He must "lick" Abner Briggs, Junior, or abdicate. So he determined to lick Abner Briggs, Junior.
"Come here, Sir!" he said; "you have insulted me and outraged the decency of the schoolroom often enough! Hold out your hand!"
The young fellow grinned and held it out. The master struck at it with his black ruler, with a will in the blow and a snapping of the eyes, as much as to say that he meant to make him smart this time. The young fellow pulled his hand back as the ruler came down, and the master hit himself a vicious blow with it on the right knee. There are things no man can stand. The master caught the refractory youth by the collar and began shaking him, or rather shaking himself against him.
"Le' go o' that are cŏat, naow," said the fellow, "or I'll make ye! 'T 'll take tew on ye t' handle me, I tell ye, 'n' then ye caänt dew it!"—and the young pupil returned the master's attention by catching hold ofhiscollar.
When it comes to that, thebest man, not exactly in the moral sense, but rather in the material, and more especially the muscular point of view, is very apt to have the best of it, irrespectively of the merits of the case. So it happened now. The unfortunate schoolmaster found himself taking the measure of the sanded floor, amid the general uproar of the school. From that moment his ferule was broken, and the school-committee very soon had a vacancy to fill.
Master Pigeon, the successor of Master Weeks, was of better stature, but loosely put together, and slender-limbed. A dreadfully nervous kind of man he was, walked on tiptoe, started at sudden noises, was distressed when he heard a whisper, had a quick, suspicious look, and was always saying, "Hush!" and putting his hands to his ears. The boys were not long in finding out this nervous weakness, of course. In less than a week a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most diabolical malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil, (making itscreechon the slate,) falling of heavy books, attacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with sounds as of drawing a cork from time to time, followed by suppressed chuckles.
Master Pigeon grew worse and worse under these inflictions. The rascally boys always had an excuse for any one trick they were caught at. "Couldn' help coughin', Sir." "Slipped out o' m' han', Sir." "Didn' go to, Sir." "Didn' dew 't o' purpose, Sir." And so on,—always the best of reasons for the most outrageous of behavior. The master weighed himself at the grocer's on a platform-balance, some ten days after he began keeping the school. At the end of a week he weighed himself again. He had lost two pounds. At the end of another week he had lost five. He made a little calculation, based on these data, from which he learned that in a certain number of months, going on at this rate, he should come to weigh precisely nothing at all; and as this was a sum in subtraction he did not care to work out in practice, Master Pigeon took to himself wings and left the school-committee in possession of a letter of resignation and a vacant place to fill once more.
This was the school to which Mr. Bernard Langdon found himself appointed as master. He accepted the place conditionally, with the understanding that he should leave it at the end of a month, if he were tired of it.
The advent of Master Langdon to Pigwacket Centre created a much more lively sensation than had attended that of either of his predecessors. Looks go a good ways all the world over, and though there were several good-looking people in the place, and Major Bush was what the natives of the town called a "hahnsome mahn," that is, big, fat, and red, yet the sight of a really elegant young fellow, with the natural air which grows up with carefully-bred young persons, was a novelty. The Brahmin blood which came from his grandfather as well as from his mother, a direct descendant of the old Flynt family, well known by the famous tutor, Henry Flynt, (see Cat. Harv. Anno 1693,) had been enlivened and enriched by that of the Wentworths, which had had a good deal of ripe old Madeira and other generous elements mingled with it, so that it ran to gout sometimes in the old folks, and to high spirit, warm complexion, and curly hair in some of the younger ones. The soft curling hair Mr. Bernard had inherited,—something, perhaps, of the high spirit; but that we shall have a chance of finding out by-and-by. But the long sermons and the frugal board of his Brahmin ancestry, with his own habits of study, had told upon his color, which was subdued to something more of delicacy than one would care to see in a young fellow with rough work before him. This, however, made him look more interesting, or, as the young ladies at Major Bush's said, "interéstin'."
When Mr. Bernard showed himself at meeting, on the first Sunday after his arrival, it may be supposed that a good many eyes were turned upon the young schoolmaster. There was something heroic in his coming forward so readily to take a place which called for a strong hand, and a prompt, steady will to guide it. In fact, his position was that of a military chieftain on the eve of a battle. Everybody knew everything in Pigwacket Centre; and it was an understood thing that the young rebels meant to put down the new master, if they could. It was natural that the two prettiest girls in the village, called in the local dialect, as nearly as our limited alphabet will represent it, Alminy Cutterr, and Arvilly Braowne, should feel and express an interest in the good-looking stranger, and that, when their flattering comments were repeated in the hearing of their indigenous admirers, among whom were some of the older "boys" of the school, it should not add to the amiable dispositions of the turbulent youth.
Monday came, and the new schoolmaster was in his chair at the upper end of the schoolhouse, on the raised platform. The rustics looked at his handsome face, thoughtful, peaceful, pleasant, cheerful, but sharply cut round the lips and proudly lighted about the eyes. The ringleader of the mischief-makers, the young butcher who has before figured in this narrative, looked at him stealthily, whenever he got a chance to study him unobserved; for the truth was, he felt uncomfortable, whenever he found the large, dark eyes fixed on his own little, sharp, deep-set, gray ones. But he found means to study him pretty well,—first his face, then his neck and shoulders, the set of his arms, the narrowing at the loins, the make of his legs, and the way he moved. In short, he examined him as he would have examined a steer, to see what he could do and how he would cut up. If he could only have gone to him and felt of his muscles, he would have been entirely satisfied. He was not a very wise youth, but he did know well enough, that, though big arms and legs are very good things, there is something besides size that goes to make a man; and he had heard stories of a fighting-man, called "The Spider," from his attenuated proportions, who was yet a terrible hitter in the ring, and had whipped many a big-limbed fellow in and out of the roped arena.
Nothing could be smoother than the way in which everything went on for the first day or two. The new master was so kind and courteous, he seemed to take everything in such a natural, easy way, that there was no chance to pick a quarrelwith him. He in the mean time thought it best to watch the boys and young men for a day or two with as little show of authority as possible. It was easy enough to see that he would have occasion for it before long.
The schoolhouse was a grim, old, red, one-story building, perched on a bare rock at the top of a hill,—partly because this was a conspicuous site for the temple of learning, and partly because land is cheap where there is no chance even for rye or buckwheat, and the very sheep find nothing to nibble. About the little porch were carved initials and dates, at various heights, from the stature of nine to that of eighteen. Inside were old unpainted desks,—unpainted, but browned with the umber of human contact,—and hacked by innumerable jackknives. It was long since the walls had been whitewashed, as might be conjectured by the various traces left upon them, wherever idle hands or sleepy heads could reach them. A curious appearance was noticeable on various higher parts of the wall, namely, a wart-like eruption, as one would be tempted to call it, being in reality a crop of the soft missiles before mentioned, which, adhering in considerable numbers, and hardening after the usual fashion ofpapier maché, formed at last permanent ornaments of the edifice.
The young master's quick eye soon noticed that a particular part of the wall was most favored with these ornamental appendages. Their position pointed sufficiently clearly to the part of the room they came from. In fact, there was a nest of young mutineers just there, which must be broken up by acoup d'état. This was easily effected by redistributing the seats and arranging the scholars according to classes, so that a mischievous fellow, charged full of the rebellious imponderable, should find himself between two non-conductors, in the shape of small boys of studious habits. It was managed quietly enough, in such a plausible sort of way that its motive was not thought of. But its effects were soon felt; and then began a system of correspondence by signs, and the throwing of little scrawls done up in pellets, and announced by preliminarya'h'ms!to call the attention of the distant youth addressed. Some of these were incendiary documents, devoting the schoolmaster to the lower divinities, as "a —— stuck-up dandy," as "a ---- purse-proud aristocrat," as "a —— sight too big for his, etc.," and holding him up in a variety of equally forcible phrases to the indignation of the youthful community of School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre.
Presently the draughtsman of the school set a caricature in circulation, labelled, to prevent mistakes, with the schoolmaster's name. An immense bell-crowned hat, and a long, pointed, swallow-tailed coat showed that the artist had in his mind the conventional dandy, as shown in prints of thirty or forty years ago, rather than any actual human aspect of the time. But it was passed round among the boys and made its laugh, helping of course to undermine the master's authority, as "Punch" or the "Charivari" takes the dignity out of an obnoxious minister. One morning, on going to the schoolroom, Master Langdon found an enlarged copy of this sketch, with its label, pinned on the door. He took it down, smiled a little, put it into his pocket, and entered the schoolroom. An insidious silence prevailed, which looked as if some plot were brewing. The boys were ripe for mischief, but afraid. They had really no fault to find with the master, except that he was dressed like a gentleman, which a certain class of fellows always consider a personal insult to themselves. But the older ones were evidently plotting, and more than once the warninga'h'm!was heard, and a dirty little scrap of paper rolled into a wad shot from one seat to another. One of these happened to strike the stove-funnel, and lodged on the master's desk. He was cool enough not to seem to notice it. He secured it, however, and found an opportunity to look at it, without being observed by the boys. It required noimmediatenotice.
He who should have enjoyed the privilege of looking upon Mr. Bernard Langdon the next morning, when his toilet was about half finished, would have had a very pleasant gratuitous exhibition. First he buckled the strap of his trousers pretty tightly. Then he took up a pair of heavy dumb-bells, and swung them for a few minutes; then two great "Indian clubs," with which he enacted all sorts of impossible-looking feats. His limbs were not very large, nor his shoulders remarkably broad; but if you knew as much of the muscles as all persons who look at statues and pictures with a critical eye ought to have learned,—if you knew thetrapezius, lying diamond-shaped over the back and shoulders like a monk's cowl,—or thedeltoid, which caps the shoulders like an epaulette,—or thetriceps, which furnishes thecalfof the upper arm,—or the hard-knottedbiceps,—any of the great sculptural landmarks, in fact,—you would have said there was a pretty show of them, beneath the white satiny skin of Mr. Bernard Langdon. And if you had seen him, when he had laid down the Indian clubs, catch hold of a leather strap that hung from the beam of the old-fashioned ceiling, and lift and lower himself over and over again by his left hand alone, you might have thought it a very simple and easy thing to do, until you tried to do it yourself.—Mr. Bernard looked at himself with the eye of an expert. "Pretty well!" he said;—"not so much fallen off as I expected." Then he set up his bolster in a very knowing sort of way, and delivered two or three blows straight as rulers and swift as winks. "That will do," he said. Then, as if determined to make a certainty of his condition, he took a dynamometer from one of the drawers in his old veneered bureau. First he squeezed it with his two hands. Then he placed it on the floor and lifted, steadily, strongly. The springs creaked and cracked; the index swept with a great stride far up into the high figures of the scale; it was a good lift. He was satisfied. He sat down on the edge of his bed and looked at his cleanly-shaped arms. "If I strike one of those boobies, I am afraid I shall spoil him," he said. Yet this young man, when weighed with his class at the college, could barely turn one hundred and forty-two pounds in the scale,—not a heavy weight, surely; but some of the middle weights, as the present English champion, for instance, seem to be of a far finer quality of muscle than the bulkier fellows.
The master took his breakfast with a good appetite that morning, but was perhaps rather more quiet than usual. After breakfast he went up-stairs and put on a light loose frock, instead of his usual dress-coat, which was a close-fitting and rather stylish one. On his way to school he met Alminy Cutterr, who happened to be walking in the other direction. "Good morning, Miss Cutterr," he said; for she and another young lady had been introduced to him, on a former occasion, in the usual phrase of polite society in presenting ladies to gentlemen,—"Mr. Langdon, let me make y' acquainted with Miss Cutterr;—let me make y' acquainted with Miss Braowne." So he said, "Good morning"; to which she replied, "Good mornin', Mr. Langdon. Haow's your haälth?" The answer to this question ought naturally to have been the end of the talk; but Alminy Cutterr lingered and looked as if she had something more on her mind.
A young fellow does not require a great experience to read a simple country-girl's face as if it were a signboard. Alminy was a good soul, with red cheeks and bright eyes, kind-hearted as she could be, and it was out of the question for her to hide her thoughts or feelings like a fine lady. Her bright eyes were moist and her red cheeks paler than their wont, as she said, with her lips quivering,—"Oh, Mr. Langdon, them boys'll be the death of ye, if ye don't take caär!"
"Why, what's the matter, my dear?" said Mr. Bernard.—Don't think there was anything very odd in that "my dear," at the second interview with a village belle;—some of those woman-tamers calla girl "My dear," after five minutes' acquaintance, and it sounds all rightas they say it. But you had better not try it at a venture.
It sounded all right to Alminy, as Mr. Bernard said it.—"I'll tell ye what's the mahtterr," she said, in a frightened voice. "Ahbner's go'n' to car' his dog, 'n' he'll set him on ye 'z sure 'z y' 'r' alive. 'T's the same cretur that haäf ēat up Eben Squires's little Jo, a year come nex' Faästday."
Now this last statement was undoubtedly overcolored; as little Jo Squires was running about the village,—with an ugly scar on his arm, it is true, where the beast had caught him with his teeth, on the occasion of the child's taking liberties with him, as he had been accustomed to do with a good-tempered Newfoundland dog, who seemed to like being pulled and hauled round by children. After this the creature was commonly muzzled, and, as he was fed on raw meat chiefly, was always ready for a fight,—which he was occasionally indulged in, when anything stout enough to match him could be found in any of the neighboring villages.
Tiger, or, more briefly, Tige, the property of Abner Briggs, Junior, belonged to a species not distinctly named in scientific books, but well known to our country-folks under the name "Yallah dog." They do not use this expression as they would sayblackdog orwhitedog, but with almost as definite a meaning as when they speak of a terrier or a spaniel. A "yallah dog" is a large canine brute, of a dingy old-flannel color, of no particular breed except his own, who hangs round a tavern or a butcher's shop, or trots alongside of a team, looking as if he were disgusted with the world, and the world with him. Our inland population, while they tolerate him, speak of him with contempt. Old ——, of Meredith Bridge, used to twit the sun for not shining on cloudy days, swearing, that, if he hung up his "yallah dog," he would make a better show of daylight. A country fellow, abusing a horse of his neighbor's, vowed, that, "if he had such a hoss, he'd swap him for a 'yallah dog,'—and then shoot the dog."
Tige was an ill-conditioned brute by nature, and art had not improved him by cropping his ears and tail and investing him with a spiked collar. He bore on his person, also, various not ornamental scars, marks of old battles; for Tige had fight in him, as was said before, and as might be guessed by a certain bluntness about the muzzle, with a projection of the lower jaw, which looked as if there might be a bull-dog stripe among the numerous bar-sinisters of his lineage.
It was hardly fair, however, to leave Alminy Cutterr waiting while this piece of natural history was telling.—As she spoke of little Jo, who had been "haäf ēat up" by Tige, she could not contain her sympathies, and began to cry.
"Why, my dear little soul," said Mr. Bernard, "what are you worried about? I used to play with abearwhen I was a boy; and the bear used to hug me, and I used to kiss him,——so!"
It was too bad of Mr. Bernard, only the second time he had seen Alminy; but her kind feelings had touched him, and that seemed the most natural way of expressing his gratitude. Alminy looked round to see if anybody was near; she saw nobody, so of course it would do no good to "holler." She saw nobody; but a stout young fellow, leading a yellow dog, muzzled, sawherthrough a crack in a pickéd fence, not a great way off the road. Many a year he had been "hangin' 'raoun'" Alminy, and never did he see any encouraging look, or hear any "Behave, naow!" or "Come, naow, a'n't ye 'shamed?" or other forbidding phrase of acquiescence, such as village belles understand as well as ever did the nymph who fled to the willows in the eclogue we all remember.
No wonder he was furious, when he saw the schoolmaster, who had never seen the girl until within a week, touching with his lips those rosy cheeks which he had never dared to approach. But that was all; it was a sudden impulse; and the master turned away from the young girl,laughing, and telling her not to fret herself about him,—he would take care of himself.
So Master Langdon walked on toward his schoolhouse, not displeased, perhaps, with his little adventure, nor immensely elated by it; for he was one of the natural class of the sex-subduers, and had had many a smile without asking, which had been denied to the feeble youth who try to win favor by pleading their passion in rhyme, and even to the more formidable approaches of young officers in volunteer companies, considered by many to be quite irresistible to the fair who have once beheld them from their windows in the epaulettes and plumes and sashes of the "Pigwacket Invincibles," or the "Hackmatack Rangers."
Master Langdon took his seat and began the exercises of his school. The smaller boys recited their lessons well enough, but some of the larger ones were negligent and surly. He noticed one or two of them looking toward the door, as if expecting somebody or something in that direction. At half past nine o'clock, Abner Briggs, Junior, who had not yet shown himself, made his appearance. He was followed by his "yallah dog," without his muzzle, who squatted down very grimly near the door, and gave a wolfish look round the room, as if he were considering which was the plumpest boy to begin with. The young butcher, meanwhile, went to his seat, looking somewhat flushed, except round the lips, which were hardly as red as common, and set pretty sharply.
"Put out that dog, Abner Briggs!"—The master spoke as the captain speaks to the helmsman, when there are rocks foaming at the lips, right under his lee.
Abner Briggs answered as the helmsman answers, when he knows he has a mutinous crew round him that mean to run the ship on the reef, and is one of the mutineers himself. "Put him aout y'rself, 'f ye a'n't afeard on him!"
The master stepped into the aisle. The great cur showed his teeth,—and the devilish instincts of his old wolf-ancestry looked out of his eyes, and flashed from his sharp tusks, and yawned in his wide mouth and deep red gullet.
The movements of animals are so much quicker than those of human beings commonly are, that they avoid blows as easily as one of us steps out of the way of an ox-cart. It must be a very stupid dog that lets himself be run over by a fast driver in his gig; he can jump out of the wheel's way after the tire has already touched him. So, while one is lifting a stick to strike or drawing back his foot to kick, the beast makes his spring, and the blow or the kick comes too late.
It was not so this time. The master was a fencer, and something of a boxer; he had played at single-stick, and was used to watching an adversary's eye and coming down on him without any of those premonitory symptoms by which unpractised persons show long beforehand what mischief they meditate.
"Out with you!" he said, fiercely,—and explained what he meant by a sudden flash of his foot that clashed the yellow dog's white teeth together like the springing of a bear-trap. The cur knew he had found his master at the first word and glance, as low animals on four legs, or a smaller number, always do; and the blow took him so by surprise, that it curled him up in an instant, and he went bundling out of the open schoolhouse-door with a most pitiable yelp, and his stump of a tail shut down as close as his owner ever shut the short, stubbed blade of his jacknife.
It was time for the other cur to find who his master was.
"Follow your dog, Abner Briggs!" said Master Langdon.
The stout butcher-youth looked round, but the rebels were all cowed and sat still.
"I'll go when I'm ready," he said,—"'n' I guess I won't go afore I'm ready."
"You're ready now," said Master Langdon, turning up his cuffs so that the little boys noticed the yellow gleam of a pair of gold sleeve-buttons, once worn by Colonel Percy Wentworth, famous in the Old French War.
Abner Briggs, Junior, did not apparently think he was ready, at any rate; for he rose up in his place, and stood with clenched fists, defiant, as the master strode towards him. The master knew the fellow was really frightened, for all his looks, and that he must have no time to rally. So he caught him suddenly by the collar, and, with one great pull, had him out over his desk and on the open floor. He gave him a sharp fling backwards and stood looking at him.
The rough-and-tumble fighters allclinch, as everybody knows; and Abner Briggs, Junior, was one of that kind. He remembered how he had floored Master Weeks, and he had just "spunk" enough left in him to try to repeat his former successful experiment on the new master. He sprang at him, open-handed, to clutch him. So the master had to strike,—once, but very hard, and just in the place to tell. No doubt, the authority that doth hedge a schoolmaster added to the effect of the blow; but the blow was itself a neat one, and did not require to be repeated.
"Now go home," said the master, "and don't let me see you or your dog here again." And he turned his cuffs down again over the gold sleeve-buttons.
This finished the great Pigwacket Centre School rebellion. What could be done with a master who was so pleasant as long as the boys behaved decently, and such a terrible fellow when he got "riled," as they called it? In a week's time, everything was reduced to order, and the school-committee were delighted. The master, however, had received a proposition so much more agreeable and advantageous, that he informed the committee he should leave at the end of his month, having in his eye a sensible and energetic young college-graduate who would be willing and fully competent to take his place.
So, at the expiration of the appointed time, Bernard Langdon, late master of the School District No. 1, Pigwacket Centre, took his departure from that place for another locality, whither we shall follow him, carrying with him the regrets of the committee, of most of the scholars, and of several young ladies; also two locks of hair, sent unbeknown to payrents, one dark and one warmish auburn, inscribed with the respective initials of Alminy Cutterr and Arvilly Braowne.
The invitation which Mr. Bernard Langdon had accepted came from the Board of Trustees of the "Apollinean Female Institute," a school for the education of young ladies, situated in the flourishing town of Rockland. This was an establishment on a considerable scale, in which a hundred scholars or thereabouts were taught the ordinary English branches, several of the modern languages, something of Latin, if desired, with a little natural philosophy, metaphysics, and rhetoric, to finish off with in the last year, and music at any time when they would pay for it. At the close of their career in the Institute, they were submitted to a grand public examination, and received diplomas tied in blue ribbons, which proclaimed them with a great flourish of capitals to be graduates of the Apollinean Female Institute.
Rockland was a town of no inconsiderable pretensions. It was ennobled by lying at the foot of a mountain,—called by the working-folks of the place "themaounting,"—which sufficiently showed that it was the principal high land of the district in which it was situated. It lay to the south of this, and basked in the sunshine as Italy stretches herself before the Alps. To pass from the town of Tamarack on the north of the mountain to Rockland on the south was like crossing from Coire to Chiavenna.
There is nothing gives glory and grandeur and romance and mystery to a place like the impending presence of a high mountain. Our beautiful Northampton with its fair meadows and noble stream is lovely enough, but owesits surpassing attraction to those twin summits which brood over it like living presences, looking down into its streets as if they were its tutelary divinities, dressing and undressing their green shrines, robing themselves in jubilant sunshine or in sorrowing clouds, and doing penance in the snowy shroud of winter, as if they had living hearts under their rocky ribs and changed their mood like the children of the soil at their feet, who grow up under their almost parental smiles and frowns. Happy is the child whose first dreams of heaven are blended with the evening glories of Mount Holyoke, when the sun is firing its treetops, and gilding the white walls that mark its one human dwelling! If the other and the wilder of the twain has a scowl of terror in its overhanging brows, yet is it a pleasing fear to look upon its savage solitudes through the barred nursery-windows in the heart of the sweet, companionable village.—And how the mountains love their children! The sea is of a facile virtue, and will run to kiss the first comer in any port he visits; but the chaste mountains sit apart, and show their faces only in the midst of their own families.
The Mountain that kept watch to the north of Rockland lay waste and almost inviolate through much of its domain. The catamount still glared from the branches of its old hemlocks on the lesser beasts that strayed beneath him. It was not long since a wolf had wandered down, famished in the winter's dearth, and left a few bones and some tufts of wool of what had been a lamb in the morning. Nay, there were broad-footed tracks in the snow only two years previously, which could not be mistaken;—the black bear alone could have set that plantigrade seal, and little children must come home early from school and play, for he is an indiscriminate feeder when he is hungry, and a little child would not come amiss when other game was wanting.
But these occasional visitors may have been mere wanderers, which, straying along in the woods by day, and perhaps stalking through the streets of still villages by night, had worked their way along down from the ragged mountain-spurs of higher latitudes. The one feature of The Mountain that shed the brownest horror on its woods was the existence of the terrible region known as Rattlesnake Ledge, and still tenanted by those damnable reptiles, which distil a fiercer venom under our cold northern sky than the cobra himself in the land of tropical spices and poisons.
From the earliest settlement of the place, this fact had been, next to the Indians, the reigning nightmare of the inhabitants. It was easy enough, after a time, to drive away the savages; for "a screeching Indian Divell," as our fathers called him, could not crawl into the crack of a rock to escape from his pursuers. But the venomous population of Rattlesnake Ledge had a Gibraltar for their fortress that might have defied the siege-train dragged to the walls of Sebastopol. In its deep embrasures and its impregnable casemates they reared their families, they met in love or wrath, they twined together in family knots, they hissed defiance in hostile clans, they fed, slept, hybernated, and in due time died in peace. Many a foray had the town's-people made, and many a stuffed skin was shown as a trophy,—nay, there were families where the children's first toy was made from the warning appendage that once vibrated to the wrath of one of these "cruel serpents." Sometimes one of them, coaxed out by a warm sun, would writhe himself down the hillside into the roads, up the walks that led to houses,—worse than this, into the long grass, where the bare-footed mowers would soon pass with their swinging scythes,—more rarely into houses,—and on one memorable occasion, early in the last century, into the meeting-house, where he took a position on the pulpit-stairs,—as is narrated in the "Account of Some Remarkable Providences," etc., where it is suggested that a strong tendency of the Rev. Didymus Bean, the Minister at that time, towards the ArminianHeresy may have had something to do with it, and that the Serpent supposed to have been killed on the Pulpit-Stairs was a false show of the Dæmon's Contrivance, he having come in to listen to a Discourse which was a sweet Savour in his Nostrils, and, of course, not being capable of being killed Himself. Others said, however, that, though there was good Reason to think it was a Dæmon, yet he did come with Intent to bite the Heel of that faithful Servant,—etc.
One Gilson is said to have died of the bite of a rattlesnake in this town early in the present century. After this there was a great snake-hunt, in which very many of these venomous beasts were killed,—one in particular, said to have been as big round as a stout man's arm, and to have had no less thanfortyjoints to his rattle,—indicating, according to some, that he had lived forty years, but, if we might put any faith in the Indian tradition, that he had killed forty human beings,—an idle fancy, clearly. This hunt, however, had no permanent effect in keeping down the serpent population. Viviparous creatures are a kind of specie-paying lot, but oviparous ones only give their notes, as it were, for a future brood,—an egg being, so to speak, a promise to pay a young one by-and-by, if nothing happen. Now the domestic habits of the rattlesnake are not studied very closely, for obvious reasons; but it is, no doubt, to all intents and purposes oviparous. Consequently it has large families, and is not easy to kill out.
In the year 184-, a melancholy proof was afforded to the inhabitants of Rockland, that the brood which infested The Mountain was not extirpated. A very interesting young married woman, detained at home at the time by the state of her health, was bitten in the entry of her own house by a rattlesnake which had found its way down from The Mountain. Owing to the almost instant employment of powerful remedies, the bite did not prove immediately fatal; but she died within a few months of the time when she was bitten.
All this seemed to throw a lurid kind of shadow over The Mountain. Yet, as many years passed without any accident, people grew comparatively careless, and it might rather be said to add a fearful kind of interest to the romantic hillside, that the banded reptiles, which had been the terror of the red men for nobody knows how many thousand years, were there still, with the same poison-bags and spring-teeth at the white men's service, if they meddled with them.
The other natural features of Rockland were such as many of our pleasant country-towns can boast of. A brook came tumbling down the mountain-side and skirted the most thickly settled portion of the village. In the parts of its course where it ran through the woods, the water looked almost as brown as coffee flowing from its urn,—to say likesmoky quartzwould perhaps give a better idea,—but in the open plain it sparkled over the pebbles white as a queen's diamonds. There were huckleberry-pastures on the lower flanks of The Mountain, with plenty of the sweet-scented bayberry mingled with the other bushes. In other fields grew great store of high-bush blackberries. Along the road-side were barberry-bushes, hung all over with bright red coral pendants in autumn and far into the winter. Then there were swamps set thick with dingy-leaved alders, where the three-leaved arum and the skunk's-cabbage grew broad and succulent,—shelving down into black boggy pools here and there, at the edge of which the green frog, stupidest of his tribe, sat waiting to be victimized by boy or snapping-turtle long after the shy and agile leopard-frog had taken the six-foot spring that plumped him into the middle of the pool. And on the neighboring banks the maiden-hair spread its flat disk of embroidered fronds on the wire-like stem that glistened brown and polished as the darkest tortoise-shell, and pale violets, cheated by the cold skies of their hues and perfume, sunned themselves like white-cheeked invalids. Over these rose the old forest-trees,—the maple, scarred with the wounds that had drained away its sweet life-blood,—thebeech, its smooth gray bark mottled so as to look like the body of one of those great snakes of old that used to frighten armies,—always the mark of lovers' knives, as in the days of Musidora and her swain,—the yellow birch, rough as the breast of Silenus in old marbles,—the wild cherry, its little bitter fruit lying unheeded at its foot,—and, soaring over all, the huge, coarse-barked, splintery-limbed, dark-mantled hemlock, in the depths of whose aërial solitudes the crow brooded on her nest unscared, and the gray squirrel lived unharmed till his incisors grew to look like ram's-horns.
Rockland would have been but half a town without its pond; Quinnepeg Pond was the name of it, but the young ladies of the Apollinean Institute were very anxious that it should be called Crystalline Lake. It was here that the young folks used to sail in summer and skate in winter; here, too, those queer, old, rum-scented, good-for-nothing, lazy, story-telling, half-vagabonds, that sawed a little wood or dug a few potatoes now and then under the pretence of working for their living, used to go and fish through the ice for pickerel every winter. And here those three young people were drowned, a few summers ago, by the upsetting of a sail-boat in a sudden flaw of wind. There is not one of these smiling ponds that has not devoured more youths and maidens than any of those monsters the ancients used to tell such lies about. But it was a pretty pond, and never looked more innocent—so the native "bard" of Rockland said in his elegy—than on the morning when they found Sarah Jane and Ellen Maria floating among the lily-pads.
The Apollinean Institute, or Institoot, as it was more commonly called, was, in the language of its Prospectus, a "first-class Educational Establishment." It employed a considerable corps of instructors to rough out and finish the hundred young lady scholars it sheltered beneath its roof. First, Mr. and Mrs. Peckham, the Principal and the Matron of the school. Silas Peckham was a thorough Yankee, born on a windy part of the coast, and reared chiefly on salt-fish. Everybody knows the type of Yankee produced by this climate and diet: thin, as if he had been split and dried; with an ashen kind of complexion, like the tint of the food he is made of; and about as sharp, tough, juiceless, and biting to deal with as the other is to the taste. Silas Peckham kept a young ladies' school exactly as he would have kept a hundred head of cattle,—for the simple, unadorned purpose of making just as much money in just as few years as could be safely done. Of course the great problem was, to feed these hundred hungry misses at the cheapest practicable rate, precisely as it would be with the cattle. So that Mr. Peckham gave very little personal attention to the department of instruction, but was always busy with contracts for flour and potatoes, beef and pork, and other nutritive staples, the amount of which required for such an establishment was enough to frighten a quartermaster. Mrs. Peckham was from the West, raised on Indian corn and pork, which give a fuller outline and a more humid temperament, but may perhaps be thought to render people a little coarse-fibred. Her speciality was to look after the feathering, cackling, roosting, rising, and general behavior of these hundred chicks. An honest, ignorant woman, she could not have passed an examination in the youngest class. So this distinguished institution was under the charge of a commissary and a housekeeper, and its real business was feeding girls to grain, roots, and meats, under cover, and making money by it.
Connected with this, however, was the incidental fact, which the public took for the principal one, namely, the business of instruction. Mr. Peckham knew well enough that it was just as well to have good instructors as bad ones, so far as cost was concerned, and a great deal better for the reputation of his feeding-establishment. So he tried to get the best he could without paying too much, and, having got them, to screw all the workout of them that could possibly be extracted.
There was a master for the English branches, with a young lady assistant. There was another young lady who taught French, of theahvahngandpahndahngstyle, which does not exactly smack of theasphalteof the Boulevardtrottoirs. There was also a German teacher of music, who sometimes helped in French of theahfaungandbauntaungstyle,—so that, between the two, the young ladies could hardly have been mistaken for Parisians, by a Committee of the French Academy. The German teacher also taught a Latin class after his fashion,—benna, a ben,gahboot, a head, and so forth.
The master for the English branches had lately left the school for private reasons, which need not be here mentioned,—but he had gone, at any rate, and it was his place which had been offered to Mr. Bernard Langdon. The offer came just in season,—as, for various causes, he was willing to leave the place where he had begun his new experience.
It was on a fine morning, that Mr. Bernard, ushered in by Mr. Peckham, made his appearance in the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute. A general rustle ran all round the seats when the handsome young man was introduced. The principal carried him to the desk of the young lady English assistant, Miss Darley by name, and introduced him to her.
There was not a great deal of study done that day. The young lady assistant had to point out to the new master the whole routine in which the classes were engaged when their late teacher left, and which had gone on as well as it could since. Then Master Langdon had a great many questions to ask, some relating to his new duties, and some, perhaps, implying a degree of curiosity not very unnatural under the circumstances. The truth is, the general effect of the schoolroom, with its scores of young girls, all their eyes naturally centring on him with fixed or furtive glances, was enough to bewilder and confuse a young man like Master Langdon, though he was not destitute of self-possession, as we have already seen.
You cannot get together a hundred girls, taking them as they come, from the comfortable and affluent classes, probably anywhere, certainly not in New England, without seeing a good deal of beauty. In fact, we very commonly mean bybeautythe way young girls look when there is nothing to hinder their looking as Nature meant them to. And the great schoolroom of the Apollinean Institute did really make so pretty a show on the morning when Master Langdon entered it, that he might be pardoned for asking Miss Darley more questions about his scholars than about their lessons.
There were girls of all ages: little creatures, some pallid and delicate-looking, the offspring of invalid parents,—much given to books, not much to mischief, commonly spoken of as particularly good children, and contrasted with another sort, girls of more vigorous organization, who were disposed to laughing and play, and required a strong hand to manage them;—then young growing misses of every shade of Saxon complexion, and here and there one of more Southern hue: blondes, some of them so translucent-looking, that it seemed as if you could see the souls in their bodies, like bubbles in glass, if souls were objects of sight; brunettes, some with rose-red colors, and some with that swarthy hue which often carries with it a heavily-shaded lip, and which with pure outlines and outspoken reliefs gives us some of our handsomest women,—the women whom ornaments of pure gold adorn more than any otherparures; and again, but only here and there, one with dark hair and gray or blue eyes, a Celtic type, perhaps, but found in our native stock occasionally; rarest of all, a light-haired girl with dark eyes, hazel, brown, or of the color of that mountain-brook spoken of in this chapter, where it ran through shadowy woodlands. With these were to be seen at intervals some of maturer years, full-blown flowers amongthe opening buds, with that conscious look upon their faces which so many women wear during the period when they never meet a single man without having his monosyllable ready for him,—tied as they are, poor things! on the rock of expectation, each of them an Andromeda waiting for her Perseus.
"Who is that girl in ringlets,—the fourth in the third row on the right?" said Master Langdon.
"Charlotte Ann Wood," said Miss Darley;—"writes very pretty poems."
"Oh!—And the pink one, three seats from her? Looks bright; anything in her?"
"Emma Dean,—day-scholar,—Squire Dean's daughter,—nice girl,—second medal last year."
The master asked these two questions in a careless kind of way, and did not seem to pay any too much attention to the answers.
"And who and what is that," he said,—"sitting a little apart there,—that strange, wild-looking girl?"
This time he put the real question he wanted answered;—the other two were asked at random, as masks for the third.
The lady-teacher's face changed;—one would have said she was frightened or troubled. She looked at the girl doubtfully, as if she might hear the master's question and its answer. But the girl did not look up;—she was winding a gold chain about her wrist, and then uncoiling it, as if in a kind of reverie.
Miss Darley drew close to the master and placed her hand so as to hide her lips. "Don't look at her as if we were talking about her," she whispered softly;—"that is Elsie Venner."
A certain immortal fool, who had, like most admitted fools, great wisdom, once said, that the number of truces between the Christians and Saracens in Palestine made an old man of him; for he had known three of them, so that he must be at least one hundred and fifty years old. The saying occurs in a romance, to be sure, but one which is not half so romantic as the best-accredited decade of Titus Livius, and is quite as authentic as most of what Sir Archibald Alison says, when he writes on the United States.
What Palestine and the Crusades were to the witty son of Witless, Mexico and her politics are to moderns, not even excepting the predestined devourers of the Aztec land, who ought to know something of the country they purpose bringing within the full light of civilization through the aid of slaughter and slavery. There are some myriads of "Americans of the North" yet living, and who entertain not the remotest idea of dying, who remember Mexico as a Spanish dependency quite as submissive to Viceroy Iturrigaray as Cuba is now to Captain-General Serrano; and who have seen her both an Empire and a Republic, and the theatre of more revolutions than England has known since the days of the Octarchy. The mere thought of the changes that have occurred there bewilders the mind; and the inhabitants of orderly countries, whether that order be the consequence of despotism or of constitutionalism, wonder that society should continue to exist in a country where government appears to be unknown.
Less than fifty years cover the time between the appearance of Hidalgo and that of Miramon; and between the dates of the leaderships of the two men, Mexicohas had an army of generals, of whom little is now known beyond their names. Hidalgo, Morelos, Mina, Bravo, Iturbide, Guerrero, Bustamente, Victoria, Pedraza, Gomez Farias, Paredes, and Herrera,—such are the names that were once familiar to our countrymen in connection with Mexican affairs. We have now a new race of Mexican chiefs,—Alvarez, Comonfort, Zuloaga, Uraga, Juarez, Vidaurri, Haro y Tamariz, Degollado, and Miramon. Some of these last-named chiefs might, perhaps, be classed with those first named, from years and services; but whatever of political importance they have belongs to the present time; and the most important man of them all, Miramon, is said to be very young, and was not born until many years after the last vestiges of the vice-regal rule had been removed. Santa Aña, but for his shifting round so often,—now an absolute ruler, and then an absolute runaway, yet ever contriving to get the better of his antagonists, whether they happen to be clever Mexicans or dull Americans,—might be called the isthmus that connects the first generation of leaders with that which now misleads his country. Santa Aña's public life synchronizes with the independence of Mexico of foreign rule, and his career can hardly be pronounced at an end. It would be of the nature of a newspaper coincidence, were he to know his "last of earth" at the very time when, by all indications, Mexico stands in greater danger of losing her national life than she has known since the day when Barradas was sent to play the part of Cortés, but proved himself not quite equal to that of Narvaez. Santa Aña owed much of his power to his victory over the Spaniards in 1830, though pestilence did half the work to his hand; and perhaps no better evidence of the hatred of the Mexicans for Spanish rule can be adduced, than the hold which he has maintained over their minds, in consequence of the part he took in overthrowing that rule, and in rendering its return impossible.
Provoked by the anarchy which has so long existed in Mexico, American writers, and writers of other countries, have sometimes contrasted the condition of that nation with the order that prevailed there during the Spanish ascendency, and it is not uncommon to hear Americans say that the worst thing that ever happened to the Mexicans was the overthrow of that ascendency. They forget that the causes of Mexican anarchy were of Spanish creation, and that it must have exhibited itself, all the same, if Mexico had not achieved her independence. The shock caused by the seizure of the Spanish throne by Napoleon I. led to that war against the Spaniards in Mexico which prematurely broke out in 1810, and which was of the nature of aJacquerie, but which would have been completely successful, had Hidalgo been equal to his position. It had been intended that the blow should be struck against theGachupines,—European Spaniards, or persons of pure Spanish blood,—who were partisans of Spain, whether Spain were ruled by Bourbons or Bonapartes; and it was to have been delivered by the Creoles, who remained faithful to the House of Bourbon. Circumstances caused the Indian races to commence the war, and this was fatal to the original project, as it led to the union of both Spaniards and Creoles against the followers of Hidalgo. The army with which Calleja overthrew the forces of Hidalgo was an army of Creoles. It was composed of the very men who would have been foremost in putting down the Spaniards, if the Indians had remained quiet. From that time dates the disorder of Mexico, which has ever since continued, though at intervals the country has known short periods of comparative repose.
In 1811 Morelos was the most conspicuous of the insurgent chiefs, and the next year he was successful in several engagements; and it was not until the end of 1815 that he fell into the hands of his enemies, by whom he was shot, sharing the fate of Hidalgo.During the four years that he led the people, efforts were made to settle the controversy on an equitable basis that would have left the King of Spain master of Mexico; but the pride of the Spaniards would not allow them to listen to justice. They acted in Mexico as their ancestors had acted in the Netherlands. It is the chief characteristic of the Spaniard, that, in dealing with foreigners, he always assumes a Roman-like superiority, without possessing the Roman's sense and shrewdness. The treatment of the Capuans by the Romans, as told by Livy in his narrative of the Hannibalian War, might be read as a history of the manner in which the Spaniards ever treat "rebels"; and never did they behave more cruelly than they behaved toward the Mexicans in the last days of the viceroys. This fact is to be borne in mind, when we think of the sanguinary character of Mexican contests; for that character originated in the action of the Spaniards during their struggles with the Patriots. The latter were not faultless, but they often exhibited a generosity and a self-denial that promised much for the future of their country, which promise would have been realized but for the ferocious tone of the warfare of the old governing race. The Spaniards were ultimately beaten, but they left behind them an evil that marred the victory of the Patriots, and which has done much to prevent it from proving useful to those who obtained it at great cost to themselves and their country.
The defeat and death of Morelos proved fatal, for the time, to regular opposition on the part of the Patriots, and it was not until the arrival of Mina in Mexico that they renewed the war in force. This was in April, 1817; and Mina was defeated and put to death in seven months after he landed. At the beginning of 1818, the viceroy Apodaca announced to the home government, "that he would be answerable for the safety of Mexico without a single additional soldier being sent out to reinforce the armies that were in the field." Had he been a wise man, the event might have justified this boast; but as he was neither wise nor honest, and as he sought to restore the old state of things in all its impurity, his confidence was fatal to the Spanish cause. The Spanish Constitution of 1812 had been proclaimed in Mexico in the autumn of that year, and its existence kept the Liberal cause alive. So long as the Patriots had any power in the field, Apodaca, though an enemy of the Constitution, dared not seek its destruction; but after the overthrow of Mina, when he believed the Patriot party was "crushed out," he plotted against the Constitution, and resolved to restore the system that had existed down to 1812. Not a vestige of Liberalism was to remain. He selected for his chief tool the once famous Agustin de Iturbide, who turned out an edged tool, so sharp, indeed, that he not only cut the viceroy's fingers, but severed forever the connection between Mexico and Spain. Iturbide had eminently distinguished himself in the royal army, and to him it was owing that Morelos had been defeated. He was brave, ambitious, and able, and he possessed a handsome person and elegant manners. He was appointed to head an army in Western Mexico, on condition that he should "pronounce" in favor of the restoration of absolute royal authority. He accepted the command; but on the 24th of February, 1821, he astonished his employer by proclaiming, not the plan upon which they had agreed, but what is known as thePlan of Iguala, from the town where the proclamation was made. This plan provided that Mexico should be independent of Spain, and for the erection of the country into a constitutional monarchy, the throne of which should be filled by Ferdinand VII., or by one of his brothers,—or by some person chosen from among reigning families, should the Spanish Bourbons decline the invitation. The monarch was to be calledEmperor, a title made fashionable and cheap by Bonaparte's example. Perfect equality was established, and all distinction of castes was abolished. Saving thatthe Catholic religion was declared the national religion, the twenty-four articles of this Plan were of a liberal character, and leave an impression on the mind highly favorable to their author. Viewing it in the light of thirty-nine years, and seeing that republicanism has not succeeded in Mexico, even a democrat may regret that the Plan of Iguala did not become the constitution of that country.
The simple abolition of Spanish rule would have satisfied the mass of the inhabitants, who cared little for political institutions, but who knew the evils they suffered from the tyranny of a class that did not number above one-eightieth part of the population. For the time, the Plan was successful: the clergy, the military, the people, and the old partisans of independence all supported it; and O'Donoju, who had arrived as successor to Apodaca, recognized Mexican independence. The victors entered the capital September 27, 1821, and established a provisional Junta, which created a regency, with Iturbide for President. On the 24th of February, 1822, a Congress assembled, which contained three parties, the representatives of those which existed in the country:—1. The Bourbonists, who desired that the Plan of Iguala should be adhered to in all its details; 2. The Iturbideans, who wished for a monarchy, with their chief as Emperor; and, 3. The Republicans, who were hostile to monarchical institutions as well as to Spanish rule. It is possible that the first party might have triumphed, had Spain been under the dominion of sagacious men; for the clergy must have preferred it, not only because it was that polity under which they were sure to have most consideration, but because the whole power of Rome might have been brought to bear in its behalf, and that the clergy never would have seriously thought of resisting;—and the influence of the clergy was great over the mass of the people. But the Spanish government would not ratify the treaty made by O'Donoju, or abandon its claim on Mexico. This left but two factions in the Congress, and their quarrel had a sudden termination, for the moment, in the elevation of Iturbide to the imperial throne, May 18th, 1822. This was the work of a handful of the lowest rabble of the capital, the select few of a vagabondage compared with whom the inhabitants of the Five Points may be counted grave constitutional politicians. The legislature went through the farce of approval, and the people acquiesced,—as they would have done, had he been proclaimed Cham. Had Iturbide understood his trade, he might have reigned long, perhaps have established a dynasty; but he did what nearly every Mexican chief since his time has done, and what, to be just, nearly every revolutionary government has sought to do: he endeavored to establish a tyranny. He dissolved the Congress, substituting a Junta for it, composed of his own adherents. The consequence was revolt in various parts of the empire. Santa Aña, then Governor of Vera Cruz, "pronounced" against the Emperor; and Echavari, who was sent to punish him, played the same part toward Iturbide that Iturbide had played toward Apodaca: he joined the enemies of the imperial government. As Iturbide had triumphed over the viceroy by the aid of men of all parties but that of the old Spaniards, so was he overthrown by a coalition of an equally various character. He gave up the crown, after having worn it not quite ten months, and was allowed to depart, with the promise of an annual pension of twenty-five thousand dollars. Seeking to recover the crown in 1824, he was seized and shot,—a fate of which he could not complain, as he was a man of bloody hand, and, as a royalist leader, had caused prisoners to be butchered by the hundred.