"Dear Father,—I have come away from school. I don't know as you will like it much. I walked all the way from Bolton, and my feet are very sore; I don't think I could walk home. Captain Saul says he will take me by the way of New York. I can go and see Aunt Mabel. I will tell her you are all well."How is Adèle and Phil and Rose and, the others? I hope you won't be very angry. I don't think Mr. Brummem's is much of a school. I don't learn so much there as I learned at home. I don't think the boys there are good companions. I think they are wicked boys sometimes. Mr. Brummem says they are. And he whips awful hard.Yr affect, son,"Reuben."
"Dear Father,—I have come away from school. I don't know as you will like it much. I walked all the way from Bolton, and my feet are very sore; I don't think I could walk home. Captain Saul says he will take me by the way of New York. I can go and see Aunt Mabel. I will tell her you are all well.
"How is Adèle and Phil and Rose and, the others? I hope you won't be very angry. I don't think Mr. Brummem's is much of a school. I don't learn so much there as I learned at home. I don't think the boys there are good companions. I think they are wicked boys sometimes. Mr. Brummem says they are. And he whips awful hard.
Yr affect, son,"Reuben."
And the skipper, taking the letter ashore to post it, adds upon the margin,—
"I opened the within to see who the boy was; and this is to say, I shall take him aboard, and shall be off Chatham Red Quarries to-morrow night and next day morning, and, if you signal from the dock, can send him ashore. Or, if this don't come in time, my berth is Peck Slip, in York."John Saul, Sloop Princess."
"I opened the within to see who the boy was; and this is to say, I shall take him aboard, and shall be off Chatham Red Quarries to-morrow night and next day morning, and, if you signal from the dock, can send him ashore. Or, if this don't come in time, my berth is Peck Slip, in York.
"John Saul, Sloop Princess."
Next day they go drifting down the river. A quiet, smoky October day; the distant hills all softened in the haze; the near shores green with the fresh-springing aftermath. Reuben lounged upon the sunny side of the mainsail, thinking, with respectful pity, of the poor fagged fellows in roundabouts who were seated at that hour before the red desks in Parson Brummem's school-room. At length he was enjoying a taste of that outside life of which he had known only from travellers' books, or from such lucky ones as the accomplished Tavern Boody. Henceforth he, too, would have his stories to tell. The very rustle of the water around the prow of the good sloop Princess was full, of Sindbad echoes. Was it not remotely possible that he, too, like Captain Saul sitting there on the taffrail smoking his pipe, should have his vessel at command some day, and sail away wherever Fortune, with her iris-hued streamers, might beckon? Not much of sentiment in the boy as yet, beyond the taste of freedom, or—what is equivalent to it in the half-taught—vagabondage. As for Rose, what does she know of sloops and the world? And Adèle? Well, from this time forth at least, the boy can match her nautical experience with an experience of his own. Possibly his humiliation andconscious ignorance at the French girl's story of the sea were, as much as anything, at the bottom of this wild vagary of his. For ten hours the Captain lies off Chatham Quarries, taking on additional freight there; but there is no signal from the passenger-dock. The next morning the hawsers were cast off, and the mainsail run up again, while the Princess surged away into the middle of the current.
"Now, my boy, we're in for a sail!" said Captain Saul.
"I'm glad," said Reuben, who would have been doubly glad, if he had known of his narrow escape at the last landing.
"I suppose you haven't much of a kit?" said the Captain.
The truth is, that a pocket-comb was the extent of Reuben's equipment for the voyage. It came out on further talk with the Captain; and the boy was mortified to make such small show of appliances.
"Well, well," says the Captain, "we must keep this toggery for the city, you know"; and he finds a blue woollen shirt,—for the boy is of good height for his years,—and a foremast hand shortens in a pair of old duck trousers for him, in which Reuben paces up and down the deck, with a mortal dread at first lest the boom may make a dash against the wind and knock him overboard, in quite sailorly fashion. The beef is hard indeed; but a page or two out of "Dampier's Voyages," of which an old copy is in the cabin, makes it seem all right. The shores, too, are changing from hour to hour; a brig drifts within hail of them, which Reuben watches, half envying the fortunate fellows in red shirts and tasselled caps aboard, who are bound to Cuba, and in a fortnight's time can pluck oranges off the trees there, to say nothing of pineapples and sugar-cane.
Over the Saybrook Bar there is a plunging of the vessel which horrifies him somewhat; but smooth weather follows, with long lines of hills half-faded on the rim of the water, and the country sounds at last all dead. A day or two of this, with only a mild autumnal breeze, and then a sharp wind, with the foam flying over forecastle and wood-pile, between the winding shores, toward Flushing Bay, brings sight of great white houses with green turf coming down to the rocks, where the waves play and break among the drifted sea-weed. Captain Saul is fast at his helm, while the big boom creaks and crashes from side to side as he beats up the narrowing channel, rounding Throg's Point, where the light-house and old whitewashed fort stand shining in the sun,—skirting low rocky islands, doubling other points, dashing at half-tide through the roar and whirl of Hell Gate,—Reuben glowing with excitement, and mindful of Kidd and of his buried treasure along these shores. Then came the turreted Bridewell, and at last the spires, the forest of masts, with all that prodigious, crushing, bewildering effect with which the first sight of a great city weighs upon the thought of a country-taught boy.
"Now mind the rogues, Reuben," said Captain Saul, when they were fairly alongside the dock; "and keep by your bunk for a day or two, boy. Don't stray too far from the vessel,—Princess, Captain Saul, remember."
The Doctor is not a little shocked by the note which he receives from Reuben, and which comes too late for the interception of the boy upon the river. He writes to Mrs. Brindlock, begging the kind offices of her husband in looking after the lad, until such time as he can come down for his recovery. The next day, to complete his mortification, he receives the epistle of Brother Brummem.
The good Doctor cannot rightly understand, in his simplicity, how such apparent headlong tendency to sin should belong to this child of prayer. At times he thinks he can trace back somewhat of the adventurous spirit of the poor lad to the restless energy of his father, the Major; was it not possiblealso—and the thought weighed upon him grievously—that he inherited from him besides a waywardness in regard to spiritual matters, and that "the sins of the fathers" were thus visited terribly upon the children? The growing vagabondage of the boy distressed him the more by reason of his own responsible connection with the little daughter of his French friend. How should he, who could not guide in even courses the child of his own loins, presume to conduct the little exile from the heathen into paths of piety?
And yet, strange to say, the character of the blithe Adèle, notwithstanding the terrible nature of her early associations, seems to fuse more readily into agreement with the moral atmosphere about her than does that of the recreant boy. There may not be, indeed, perfect accord; but there are at least no sharp and fatal antagonisms to overcome. If the lithe spirit of the girl bends under the grave teachings of the Doctor, it bends with a charming grace, and rises again smilingly, when sober speech is done, like the floweret she is. And if her mirth is sometimes irrepressible through the long hours of their solemn Sundays, it breaks up like bubbles from the deep quiet bosom of a river, cheating even the grave parson to a smile that seems scarcely sinful.
"Oh, that sermon was so long,—so long to-day, New Papa! I am sure Dame Tourtelot pinched the Deacon, or he would never, never have been awake through it all."
Or, maybe, she steals a foot out of doors on a Sunday to the patch of violets, gathering a little bunch, and appeals to the Doctor, who comes with a great frown on his face,—
"New Papa, is it most wicked to carry flowers or fennel to church? Godmother always gave me a flower on holydays."
And the Doctor is cheated of his rebuke; nay, he sometimes wonders, in his self-accusing moments, if the Arch-Enemy himself has not lodged under cover of that smiling face of hers, and is thus winning him to a sinful gayety. There are times, too, when, after some playful badinage of hers which has touched too nearly upon a grave theme, she interrupts his solemn admonition with a sudden rush toward him, and a tap of those little fingers upon his furrowed cheek:—
"Don't look so solemn, New Papa. Nobody will love you, if you look in that way."
What if this, too, be some temptation of the Evil One, withdrawing him from the grave thought of eternal things, diverting him from the solemn aims of his mission?
There were snatches, too, of Latin hymns, taught her by the godmother, and only half remembered,—hymns of glorious rhythm, which, as they tripped from her halting tongue, brought a great burden of sacred meanings, and were full of the tenderest associations of her childhood. To these, too, the Doctor was half pained to find himself listening, sometimes at nightfall of a Sunday, with an indulgent ear, and stoutly querying with himself if Satan could fairly lurk in such holy words as
"Dulcis memoria Iesu."
"Dulcis memoria Iesu."
Adèle, as we have said, had accepted the duties of attendance upon the somewhat long sermons of the Doctor and of weekly instructions in the Catechism, with a willing spirit, and had gone through them cheerfully,—not, perhaps, with the grave air of devotion which by education and inheritance belonged to the sweet face of her companion, Rose. Nay, she had sometimes rallied Rose upon the exaggerated seriousness which fastened upon her face whenever the Bible tasks came up. But Adèle, with that strong leaning which exists in every womanly nature toward religious faith of some kind, had grown into a respect for even the weightiest of the Christian gravities around her; not that they became the sources of a new trust, but, through a sympathy that a heart like hers could not resist, they rallied an old childish one into fresh action. The strange, serious worship of those about her was only a newguise—so at least it seemed to her simplicity—in which to approach the same good God whom the godmother with herself had praised with chants that rang once under the dim arches of the old chapel, smoky with incense and glowing with pictures of saints, at Marseilles. And if sometimes, as the shrill treble of Miss Almira smote upon her ear, she craved a better music, and remembered the fragrant cloud rising from the silver censers as something more grateful than the smoke leaking from the joints of the stove-pipe in Ashfield meeting-house, and would have willingly given up Miss Eliza's stately praises of her recitation for one good hug of the godmother,—she yet saw, or thought she saw, the same serene trust that belonged to her in the eyes of good Mistress Onthank, in the kind face of Mrs. Elderkin, and in the calm look of the Doctor when he lifted his voice every night at the parsonage in prayer for "all God's people."
Would it be strange, too, if in the heart of a girl taught as she had been, who had never known a mother's tenderness, there should be some hidden leaning toward those traditions of the Romish faith in which a holy mother appeared as one whose favor was to be supplicated? The worship of the Virgin was, indeed, too salient an object of attack among the heresies which the New England teachers combated, not to inspire a salutary caution in Adèle and entire concealment of any respect she might still feel for the Holy Mary. Nor was it so much a respect that shaped itself tangibly among her religious beliefs as a secret craving for that outpouring of maternal love denied her on earth,—a craving which found a certain repose and tender alleviation in entertaining fond regard for the sainted mother of Christ.
When, therefore, on one occasion, Miss Eliza had found among the toilet treasures of Adèle a little lithographic print of the Virgin, with the Christ's head surrounded by a nimbus of glory, and in her chilling way had sneered at it as a heathen vanity, the poor child had burst into tears, and carried the treasure to her bosom to guard it from sacrilegious touch.
The spinster, rendered watchful, perhaps, by this circumstance, had on another day been still more shocked to find in a corner of the escritoire of Adèle a rosary, and with a very grave face had borne it down for the condemnation of the Doctor.
"Adaly, my child, I trust you do not let this bawble bear any part in your devotions?"
And the Doctor made a movement as if he would have thrown it out of the window.
"No, New Papa!" said Adèle, darting toward him, and snatching it from his hand, with a fire in her eye he had never seen there before,—a welling-up for a moment of the hot Provençal blood in her veins; "de grâce! je vous en prie!" (in ecstatic moments her tongue ran to her own land and took up the echo of her first speech,)—then growing calm, as she held it, and looked into the pitying, wondering eyes of the poor Doctor, said only, "It was my mother's."
Of course the kind old gentleman never sought to reclaim such a treasure, but in his evening prayer besought God fervently "to overrule all things,—our joys, our sorrows, our vain affections, our delight in the vanities of this world, our misplaced longings,—to overrule all to His glory and the good of those that love Him."
The Doctor writes to his friend Maverick at about this date,—
"Your daughter is still in the enjoyment of excellent health, and is progressing with praiseworthy zeal in her studies. I cannot too highly commend her general deportment, by which she has secured the affection and esteem of all in the parish who have formed an acquaintance with her. In respect of her religious duties, she is cheerful and punctual in the performance of them; and I find it hard to believe that they should prove only a 'savor of death unto death.' She listens to my discourse, on most occasions, with a commendablepatience, and seems kindly disposed toward my efforts. Still I could wish much to see in her a little more burdensome sense of sin and of the enormity of her transgressions. We hope that she may yet be brought to a realizing sense of her true condition.
"She is fast becoming a tall and graceful girl, and it may soon be advisable to warn her against the vanities that overtake those of her age who are still engrossed with carnal things. This advice would come with a good grace, perhaps, from the father.
"A little rosary found among her effects has been the occasion of some anxieties to my sister and myself, lest she might still have a leaning toward the mockeries of the Scarlet Woman of Babylon; and I was at first disposed to remove it out of her way. But being advised that it is cherished as a gift of her mother, I have thought it not well to take from her the only memento of so near and, I trust, dear a relative.
"May God have you, my friend, in His holy keeping!"
Reuben, taking the advice of Captain Saul, with whom he would cheerfully have gone to China, had the sloop been bound thither, came back to his bunk on the first night after a wandering stroll through the lower part of the city. It is quite possible that he would have done the same, viewing the narrowness of his purse, upon the second night, had he not encountered at noon a gentleman in close conversation with the Captain, whom he immediately recognized—though he had seen him but once before—as Mr. Brindlock. This person met him very kindly, and with a hearty shake of the hand, "hoped he would do his Aunt Mabel the honor of coming to stay with them."
There was an air of irony in this speech which Reuben was quick to perceive; and the knowing look of Captain Saul at once informed him that all the romance of his runaway voyage was at an end. Both Mr. and Mrs. Brindlock received him at their home with the utmost kindness, and were vastly entertained by his story of the dismal life upon Bolton Hill, the pursuit of the parson with his white-faced nag, and the subsequent cruise in the sloop Princess. Mrs. Brindlock, a good-natured, self-indulgent woman, was greatly taken with the unaffected country naturalness of the lad, and was agreeably surprised at his very presentable appearance: for Reuben at this date—he may have been thirteen or fourteen—was of good height for his years, with a profusion of light, wavy hair, a thoughtful, blue eye, and a lurking humor about the lip which told of a great faculty for mischief. There was such an absence, moreover, in this city home, of that stiffness with which his Aunt Eliza had such a marvellous capacity for investing everything about her, that the lad found himself at once strangely at his ease. Was it, perhaps, (the thought flashed upon him,) because it was a godless home? The spinster aunt had sometimes expressed a fear of this sort, whenever stories of the Brindlock wealth had reached them. Howbeit, he was on most familiar footing with both master and mistress before two days had gone by.
"Aunt Mabel," he had said, "I suppose you'll be writing to the old gentleman, and do please take my part. I can't go back to that abominable Brummem; if I do, I shall only run away again, and go farther: do tell him so."
"But why couldn't you have stayed at home, pray? Did you quarrel with the little French girl? eh, Reuben?"
The boy flushed.
"Not with Adèle,—never!"
Brindlock, a shrewd, successful merchant, was, on his part, charmed with the adventurous spirit of the boy, and with the Captain's report of the way in which the truant had conducted negotiations for the trip. From all which it came about, that Mrs. Brindlock, in writing to the Doctor to inform him of Reuben's safe arrival, added an urgent request that the boy might be allowed to passthe winter with them in New York; in which event he could either attend school, (there being an excellent one in her neighborhood,) or, if the Doctor preferred, Mr. Brindlock could give him some light employment in the counting-room, and try his capacity for business.
At first thought, this proposition appeared very shocking to the Doctor; but, to his surprise, Miss Eliza was strongly disposed to entertain it. Her ambitious views for the family were flattered by it; and she kindly waived, in view of them, her objections to the godless life which she feared her poor sister was leading.
The Doctor was not fully persuaded by her, and took occasion to consult, as was his wont in practical affairs, his friend Squire Elderkin.
"I rather like the plan," said the Squire, after some consideration,—"quite like it, Doctor,—quite like it.
"You see, Doctor,"—and he slipped a finger into a buttonhole of the good parson's, (the only man in the parish who would have ventured upon such familiarity,)—"I think we've been a little strict with Reuben,—a little strict. He's a fine, frank, straight-for'ard lad, but impulsive,—impulsive, Doctor. Your father, the Major, had a little of it,—quicker blood than you or I, Doctor. We can't wind up every boy like a clock; there's some that go with weights, and there's some that go with springs. Then, too, I think, Doctor, there's a little of the old Major'sfightin the boy. I think he has broken over a good many of our rules very much because the rules were there, and provoked him to try his strength.
"Now, Doctor, there's been a good deal of this kind of thing, and our Aunt Eliza puts her foot down rather strongly, which won't be a bugbear to the boy with Mrs. Brindlock; besides which, there's your old friend, Rev. Dr. Mowry, at the Fulton-Street Church close by"——
"So he is, so he is," said the Doctor; "I had forgotten that."
"And then, to tell the truth, Doctor, between you and I," (and the Squire was working himself into some earnestness,) "I don't believe that all the wickedness in the world is cooped up in the cities. In my opinion, the small towns have a pretty fair sprinkling,—a pretty fair sprinkling, Doctor; and if it's contagious, as I've heard, I think I know of some places in country parishes that might be called infectious. And I tell you what it is, Doctor, the Devil" (and he twitched upon the Doctor's coat as if he were in a political argument) "doesn't confine himself to large towns. He goes into the rural districts, in my opinion, about as regularly as the newspapers; and he holds his ground a confounded sight longer."
How much these views may have weighed with the Doctor it would be impossible to say. If they did not influence directly, they were certainly suggestive of considerations which did have their weight. The result was, that permission was given for the stay of Reuben, on condition that Mr. Brindlock could give him constant occupation, and that he should be regular in his attendance on the Sabbath at the Fulton-Street Church. Shortly after, the Doctor goes to the city, provided, by the watchful care of Miss Eliza, with a complete wardrobe for the truant boy, and bearing kind messages from the household. But chiefly it is the Doctor's object to give his poor boy due admonition for his great breach of duty, and to insist upon his writing to the worthy Mr. Brummem a full apology for his conduct. He also engages his friend of the Fulton-Street parish to have an eye upon his son, and to report to him at once any wide departure from the good conduct he promises.
Reuben writes the apology insisted upon to Mr. Brummem in this style:—
"My Dear Sir,—I am sorry that I threw 'Daboll' in your face as I did, and hope you will forgive the same."Yours respectfully."
"My Dear Sir,—I am sorry that I threw 'Daboll' in your face as I did, and hope you will forgive the same.
"Yours respectfully."
But after the Doctor's approval of this, the lad cannot help adding a postscript of his own to this effect:—
"P.S. I hope old Whiteface didn't lose a shoe when you drove out on the river road? I saw you; for I was sitting in the edge of the woods, eating Keziah's gingerbread. Please thank her, and give my respects to all the fellows."
"P.S. I hope old Whiteface didn't lose a shoe when you drove out on the river road? I saw you; for I was sitting in the edge of the woods, eating Keziah's gingerbread. Please thank her, and give my respects to all the fellows."
Miss Johns considers it her duty to write a line of expostulation to her nephew, which she does, with faultless penmanship, in this strain:—
"We were shocked to hear of your misconduct toward the worthy Mr. Brummem. I could hardly believe it possible that Master Reuben Johns had been guilty of such an indiscretion. Your running away was, I think, uncalled for, and the embarkment upon the sloop, under the circumstances, was certainly very reprehensible. I trust that we shall hear only good accounts of you from this period forth, and that you will be duly grateful for your father's distinguished kindness in allowing you to stay in New York. I shall be happy to have you write to me an occasional epistle, and hope to see manifest a considerable improvement in your handwriting. Does Sister Mabel wear her ermine cape this winter? I trust we shall hear of your constant attendance at the Fulton-Street Church, and hear only commendation of you in whatever, duties you may be called to engage. Adèle speaks of you often, and I think misses you very much indeed."
"We were shocked to hear of your misconduct toward the worthy Mr. Brummem. I could hardly believe it possible that Master Reuben Johns had been guilty of such an indiscretion. Your running away was, I think, uncalled for, and the embarkment upon the sloop, under the circumstances, was certainly very reprehensible. I trust that we shall hear only good accounts of you from this period forth, and that you will be duly grateful for your father's distinguished kindness in allowing you to stay in New York. I shall be happy to have you write to me an occasional epistle, and hope to see manifest a considerable improvement in your handwriting. Does Sister Mabel wear her ermine cape this winter? I trust we shall hear of your constant attendance at the Fulton-Street Church, and hear only commendation of you in whatever, duties you may be called to engage. Adèle speaks of you often, and I think misses you very much indeed."
Yet the spinster aunt was not used to flatter Reuben with any such mention as this. "What can she mean," said he, musingly, "by talking such stuff to me?"
Phil Elderkin, too, after a little, writes long letters that are full of the daily boy-life at Ashfield:—how "the chestnutting has been first-rate this year," and he has a bushel of prime ones seasoning in the garret;—how Sam Throop, the stout son of the old postmaster, has had a regular tussle with the master in school, "hot and heavy, over the benches, and all about, and Sam was expelled, and old Crocker got a black eye, and, darn him, he's got it yet";—and how "somebody(name unknown) tied a smallish tin kettle to old Hobson's sorrel mare's tail last Saturday night, and the way she went down the street was a caution!"—and how Nat Boody has got a new fighting-dog, andsucha ratter!—and how Suke, "the divine Suke, is, they say, going to marry the stage-driver.Sic transit gloria mulie—something,—for I'll be hanged, if I know the proper case."
And there are some things this boisterous Phil writes in tenderer mood:—how "Rose and Adèle are as thick as ever, and Adèle comes up pretty often to pass an evening,—glad enough, I guess, to get away from Aunt Eliza,—and I see her home, of course. She plays a stiff game of backgammon; she never throws but she makes a point; she beats me."
And from such letters the joyous shouts and merry halloos of the Ashfield boys come back to him again; he hears the rustling of the brook, the rumbling of the mill; he sees the wood standing on the hills, and the girls at the door-yard gates; the hum of voices in the old academy catches his ear, and the drowsy song of the locusts coming in at the open windows all the long afternoons of August; and he watches again the glancing feet of Rose—who was once Amanda—tripping away under the sycamores; and the city Mortimer bethinks him of another Amanda, of browner hue and in coquettish straw, idling along the same street, with reticule lightly swung upon her finger; and the boy bethinks him of tender things he might have said in the character of Mortimer, but never did say, and of kisses he might have stolen, (in the character of Mortimer,) but never did steal.
And now these sights, voices, vagaries, as month after month passes in his new home, fade,—fade, yet somehow abide. The patter of a thousand feet are on the pavement around him. What wonder, if, in the surrounding din, the tranquillity of Ashfield, its scenes, its sounds, should seem a mere dream of the past? What wonder, if the solemn utterances from the old pulpit should be lost in the roar of the new voices? Thefew months he was to spend in their hearing run into a score, and again into another score. Two or three years hence we shall meet him again,—changed, certainly; but whether for better or for worse the sequel will show.
And Rose?—and Adèle?
Well, well, we must not overleap the quiet current of our story. While the May violets are in bloom, let us enjoy them and be thankful; and when the autumn flowers are come to take their places, let us enjoy those, too, and thank God.
"Once I sat upon a promontory,And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea grew civil at her song;And certain stars shot madly from their spheresTo hear the sea-maid's music."A Midsummer Night's Dream.
"Once I sat upon a promontory,And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,That the rude sea grew civil at her song;And certain stars shot madly from their spheresTo hear the sea-maid's music."
A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Men have a commodious faith generally, and in the things of land and water; but they do not believe in the mermaid.
Once, a thousand years ago, a certain Arabian traveller described an Oriental fish that came up out of the sea to catch flies or to get a drink. It was no crabbed crustacean, no compromise of claws; but a fish with fins,—a perch: and, being a perch, it not only came up on dry land, but did, the traveller said, climb trees. There was a climax! No one characterized this story fitly, for all perceived that the Arabian must know its nature very well. And so the Arabian traveller died in good time, and the thousand years went on about their business, and in our days the fish story has been verified. Now it rests, partly, on the authority of "two Dutch naturalists residing at Tranquebar." Two Dutch naturalists are a good foundation for anything less than a pyramid. In this matter they are not alone, however; for the naturalist Daldorf, also, who was a lieutenant in the Danish East-India Company's service, communicated to Joseph Banks, who "did not believe in the mermaid," that "in the year 1791 he had taken this fish from a moist cavity in the stem of a Palmyra palm which grew near a lake." More than this, "he saw it when already five feet above the ground struggling to ascend still higher." And this was its process: "suspending itself by its gill-covers, and bending its tail to the left, it fixed its anal fin in the cavity of the bark, and sought by expanding its body to urge its way upward"; and its progress was arrested only by the hand with which the valiant Daldorf seized it. More in reference to the same fish may be found in Tennent's great book on Ceylon, in Hartwig, and later naturalists generally.
Men would naturally doubt of fish in trees. Even the Chinese would. "To climb a tree in pursuit of fish," is a phrase actually used as an hyperbole of nonsense by many Tsze, in the book called "Shang Mung." And the above is therefore a fair instance of the progress of human intelligence,—of a thousand years of incredulity, and final scientific admission. Let it be taken here as absinthe, appetizingly.
The ancients believed, among other things, that man had, to say the least, relations in the various departments of Nature and in the various divisions of animal life; that there were wild men who lived in the forests, and differedfrom man proper principally in other than physical respects; and that there were wild men who lived in the sea: also that there were beings half-man and half-horse; others half-man and half-bird; and others, again, half-man and half-fish. In respect to the wild man of the woods, it may be said that those words are the literal signification of the Malayan wordsorang outang; and that animal's appearance seems to determine that the Satyr and kindred creatures were not entirely imaginations. For the half-man and half-horse we have abundant explanation in the various wild riding tribes of men, especially the Tartars. The half-bird appears to have been distinguished for only a singing reason, and is therefore, as it were, a piece of heraldry. For the wild man of the sea, and the half-man and half-fish, what have we?
Let us see.
Apparently the earliest presentation to men's eyes of that form under which the mermaid is still figured was the image, in very ancient days, of Derceto, goddess of the Philistines of Ascalon, in a temple of that city. She was woman above and fish below. She had been a beautiful virgin, but had excited that all-prevalent passion since irregulated by Aphrodite. It proved her ruin, she cast herself into the sea, and suffered the partial metamorphosis. So was it fabled in that land: but it is much more plausibly thought that the combination of woman and fish declared, hieroglyphically, some dim knowledge that those ancients had of certain relations between the moon and the sea, of which things the respective parts were typical.
Half-fishy also was the form of that Dagon which in Ashdod, or Azotus, another city of the Philistines, fell down upon his face before the ark of the Lord. This Dagon was the god, apparently, in whose honor the Philistines were gathered together on that day when blind Samson "took hold of the two middle pillars," and let down the roof, and caught so many swallows.
According to an ancient fable, preserved by Berosus, this is what was known of Dagon. In the first year, there appeared, coming out of that part of the Erythræan Sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal whose whole body was that of a fish; but under the fish's head he had another head, with feet below similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's tail. His voice was articulate and human, and he taught men to construct cities, to found temples, compile laws,—indeed, taught them everything that could tend to soften them from a state of natural barbarism; and hence he was called Oannes, a name that signified "the Enlightener"; and this name journeying westward became contracted intoOn, and had prefixed to it theDag, signifyinga fish, and so became Dagon.
An image of Oannes is mentioned by Berosus as preserved in his time, and one has been found on the walls of Nimroud. In the ruins near Khorsabad was found another of Dagon in his final Phœnician form. Engravings of both these may be seen in "Nineveh and its Palaces."
In the story of Oannes we have probably the account preserved by a rude people of the advent among them at a very early period of one more enlightened than themselves; just as the Peruvians accounted in their peculiar way for the coming of Manco Capac. He comes also from a land farther east, by the Persian Gulf. These people were at the time very likely ignorant of even the most rudimentary navigation, and hence coming by water he was to them a fish indeed.
The incarnation of Brahma as a fish—the Matsya Avatar—is recounted in much Sanscrit; but it appears to be only a symbolical reference to a great division of Nature,—a heathen assertion of God in the sea, as well as elsewhere. The same is true of the marine deities of Greece and Rome, which were not fishy, though the words Triton and Nereïd have led to misconception, as in relation to those words it is necessary to understand a distinction that has not always been made. The mythological Triton was one,—a sea-god subordinateto Poseidon, and played a conspicuous part in Deucalion's flood. He is pictured by Ovid as carrying a horn, and wearing a Tynan robe, that may be construed into a blue jacket,—which would make him the original sailor. The Nereïds were fifty. They were the daughters of Nereus, and, pursued by the fifty sons of Ægyptus, could find rest in no land, and became wanderers upon the sea, and at length sea-nymphs. Each had a special, besides the general name.
There does, however, appear to have been a "fishy composure" held sacred by the Greeks: this was thePompilus, "Pompilus," says Apollonius Rhodius, "was originally a man, and he was changed into a fish on account of a love-affair of Apollo's. They say that Apollo fell in love with a beauty named Ocyrhoe, and that, when she had crossed over to Miletus, at the time of a festival, and was afraid to return lest the god should attack her, she induced Pompilus, a sailor, and friend to her father, to see her safely home; and that he led her down to the shore and embarked, when Apollo appeared, took the maiden, sunk the ship, and metamorphosed Pompilus into a fish." Others assert this fish to have sprung at the same time with Aphrodite, and from the same heavenly blood. What fish it was it is scarcely possible to say; but that there was a fish bearing this name held sacred by the Greeks is certain.
The Triton, in which the ancients believed as part of the physical world, was a different being from the deity. He was the classical Merman. The termNereïdwas used confusedly to express the female of the Triton, or the Mermaid.
The passage, in his "Natural History," where Pliny speaks of the Triton, indicates that the existence of such an animal was not universally admitted. It is prefaced thus:—"The vulgar notion may very possibly be true, that whatever is produced in any other department of Nature may be found in the sea as well." We are then told that a deputation of persons from Olisipo, (the present Lisbon,) that had been sent for the purpose, brought word to the Emperor Tiberius that a Triton had been both seen and heard in a certain cavern, blowing a conch-shell, and that he was of the form in which Tritons are usually represented.
This is so simple and meagre as to read like an extract from some diary or annals; and the mere existence of such a passage seems to be good evidence that something, at the least, like a Triton, was certainly seen. For Pliny was sufficiently near to this time to know whether such a deputation had come to Rome, and would scarcely have volunteered a falsehood; so that the deputation may reasonably be granted. Then the distance from Lisbon to Rome was so great, particularly in that ante-railroad time, and the general interest in the Merman so little, that it does not seem possible a deputation should be sent that distance "for the purpose" only of presenting this information, unless the proof of the object seen was of the most convincing character to those by whom the deputation was sent.
It is to be regretted that Pliny did not give at more length the statement of this early scientific commission. He does not leave the subject immediately, however, but says,—
"I have some distinguished informants of equestrian rank, who state that they themselves once saw in the Ocean of Gades a sea-man which bore in every part of his body a perfect resemblance to a human being; and that during the night he would climb up into ships, upon which the side of the vessel where he seated himself would instantly sink downward, and, if he remained there any considerable time, even go under water."
Gades was Cadiz, and the Ocean of Gades was that part of the Atlantic lying south and west of Spain and west of Africa. The statement of the Merman's boarding a ship is, a little singularly, to be found as well in the ballad of the "Merman Rosmer," which comes into English from a Scandinavian source. The effect of his boardinga ship is identical also. He would seem to have been a heavy fellow, North and South.
"Nor yet," says Pliny, still on the same subject, "is the figure generally attributed to the Nereïds [Mermaids] at all a fiction; only in them the portion of the body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over with scales. For one of these creatures was seen upon the same shores, [Ocean of Gades,] and as it died its plaintive murmurs were heard, even by the inhabitants at a distance. The legates of Gaul, too, wrote word to the late Emperor Augustus, that a considerable number of Nereïds had been found dead upon the sea-shore."
Entire faith in the scales is not exacted of the reader, and the weight of authority, especially scientific, is against them. No marine mammals have scales. There is, of course, no knowing what they may have had. The statement of what the legates of Gaul wrote to the Emperor is of most consequence in this extract, and it is perhaps out of a natural respect for authority that we are inclined to give most weight to these official communications. Officials, it is true, have sometimes erred; but these officials agree with others, and to be stranded has been a common misfortune of mermen and maids.
Alexander of Alexandria, the good Bishop who had so healthy an abhorrence of Arianism,saw(upon his own authority) a Nereïd (Mermaid) that had been thrown ashore on the coast of the Peloponnesus. Seeing was believing; and if the Bishop was right in so many things, all the way up to Divinity, is it possible that he could be wrong in the mere fact of a dead animal? Or if he was wrong in this particular, is not the whole question as to the right or wrong of Arianism opened again?
A mermaid was stranded in 1403 near Haerlem,—driven ashore by a tempest, said one Meyer, a Dutchman. It was brought to feed upon bread and milk, taught to spin, and lived for many years. John Gerard of Leyden adds, that she would frequently pull off her clothes and run toward the water, and that her speech was so confused a noise as not to be understood by anybody. She was buried in the churchyard, because she had learned to make the sign of the cross. They had much consideration for a possible soul in those days.
Gerard spoke this upon the credit of several persons who had seen her. We find noted by another author, that, "in the fifteenth century, after a dreadful tempest on the coast of Holland, a mermaid was found struggling in the mud, near Edam, in West Friesland; whence it was carried to Haerlem, where it lived some years, was clothed in female apparel, and, it is said, was taught to spin." This was apparently the same.
This creature is said to have run,—a thing somewhat inconsistent with a caudal termination,—and she must be supposed, therefore, to be of the Wild-Man-of-the-Sea family rather than of the half-man, half-fish. She was, perhaps, a relative of this next, recorded in an ancient English chronicle:—
"In the time of King Henry I., when Bartholomew de Glanville was warden of Oxford Castle, the fishermen took in their nets a wild man, having the human shape complete, with horns on his head, and long and pick beard, and a great deal of shaggy hair on his breast; but he stole away to sea privately, and was never seen afterwards."
He wished, evidently, to avoid the embarrassment of the farewell.
Another of these footed sea-men makes his appearance in the book of Gellius on Animals. Therein is recounted the history, as far as landsmen knew it, of a Triton that used to come ashore on the coast of Epirus, and lie in wait by a well but a short distance from the sea, and who, when the country girls came to the well for water, would leap out and seize them, and bear them away beneath the waves; and not able to conceive the peculiarity of the human lungs that lurked beneath their beautiful bosoms, many a one the wretch thus drowned in his passionate admiration. Beautiful Greek girls! with suchlimbs as have come down in marble! Life under the sea seems favorable to the perfection of a correct taste.
Mem.—The reader is not at liberty to doubt this Triton. Draconetus Bonifacius, a Neapolitan, subsequently saw him preserved in honey.
In 1560 the fishermen of Ceylon caught seven of these sea-people of both sexes. They were seen by many Portuguese gentlemen then at Menar, and, among the rest, by Dimaz Bosquez, physician to the Viceroy of Goa, who minutely examined them, made dissections, and asserted that the principal parts, internal and external, were conformable to those of the human species.[A]
In the reign of Roger, King of Sicily, a young man swimming in the sea, one night, perceived that something followed him. He thought it one of his companions, but caught it by the hair, and dragged it on shore. It was a maiden of great beauty! He threw his cloak about her, and took her to his home. There she lived with him and bore a son. But he was continually troubled that one so beautiful should be dumb; for she had never spoken. One day a companion jeered at the spectre that he had at home, and, angry and terrified, he urged her to tell him who or what she was, and threatened with his sword to kill the child before her, if she did not. Then she said that he had lost a good wife by forcing her to speak; and she vanished. A few years after, when the son was playing on the shore, his mother dragged him into the sea, and he was drowned.
In the South of France a belief prevails in beings called Dracs, who have apparently a complete human form, and who inhabit indifferently the rivers or the sea. Gervase of Tilbury has recorded several instances of their appearance, of which the following is one:—
"There is on the banks of the Rhone, under a guard-house at the north gate of the city of Arles, a great pool of the river. In these deep places they say that the Dracs are often seen of bright nights. A few years ago, there was, for three successive days, openly heard the following words in the place outside the gate of the city which I have mentioned, while the figure, as it were, of a man ran along the bank,—'The hour is past, and the man does not come!' On the third day, about the ninth hour, while the figure of a man raised his voice higher than usual, a young man ran swiftly to the bank, plunged in, and was swallowed up, and the voice was heard no more."
The depths of the sea appear to be the Fairy Land of France, and the French Mermaids merely fairies. Such is their character in popular ballads of Provence. Among popular legends of Brittany, "The Groac'h of the Isle of Lok" is peculiarly striking, but withal merely a fairy story,—the Groac'h being a first cousin at least of Undine and the Lorelei. Yet in Brittany another Mermaid—Morgan, or Morverc'h, sea-woman, or sea-daughter—sings and combs its golden hair by the noontide sun at the edge of the ocean.
The Irish Moruach, or Merrow, seamaid, is thebonâ fideMermaid, and some families in the South of Ireland are said to claim descent from them. There are numerous legends.
Mermaids are plentiful in all accounts of Norway; and Aldrovandus gives the portrait of one that was captured in the Baltic, and presented to Sigismund, King of Poland. It lived several days, and was seen by all his court. Aldrovandus gives also the picture of a Merman who, in his natural condition, had the appearance of being clothed in a bishop's frock, and of another with horns, which was a peculiarity of the one taken in England somewhat earlier.
In Scandinavian mythology every division of Nature is peopled with its peculiar spirits, and all have a longing, mournful desire for salvation. A river-spirit, or Nek, once asked a priest if he would likely be saved.
"Sooner," answered the priest, "will this cane which I hold in my hand grow green flowers than thou attain salvation."
The spirit wept mournfully, and the priest passed on. But in a little while his cane actually bloomed, and put forth leaves and blossoms, and he went back and told the spirit, who then sang and rejoiced all night.
The Havmand is the Merman; the Havfrue, the Mermaid. They are handsome, rather beneficent than evil, though occasionally both are treacherous. "Fishermen sometimes see the Mermaid in the bright summer sun, when a thin mist hangs over the sea, sitting on the surface of the water, and combing her long, golden hair with a golden comb, or driving up her snow-white cattle to feed on the islands. At other times she comes as a beautiful maiden, chilled and shivering with the cold of night, to the fires the fishers have, hoping by this means to entice them to her love."
In the Faroe Islands the Mermaid of popular belief merges insensibly into the Seal; and in Shetland it is believed, that, while they are distinct beings, they can only come to the surface of sea by entering the skin of some animal capable of existing in the water. This also is always the Seal. In this form they land on some rock and amuse themselves as they will. But they must take care of these skins, for without them they can never return.
One summer's eve, a Shetlander walked along the shore of a little inlet, By the moonlight he saw, at some distance before him, a number of these sea-people who had "left unsounded depths to dance on sands." Near them, on the ground, he saw several seal-skins.
As he approached, the disturbed dancers precipitately made to their garments, drew them on, and, in the form of seals, plunged into the sea. When he came up, he saw one seal-skin still there; he snatched it up, ran away, and secured it. He then returned. There he met upon the shore the fairest maiden that eye ever gazed upon. She was lamenting piteously the loss of her seal-skin robe, without which she could never rejoin her friends or reach her watery home. He endeavored to console her. She implored him to restore her dress; but her beauty had decided that. At last, as he continued inexorable, she consented to become his wife. They were married and had several children, who retained no mark of the watery strain, save a thin web between their fingers and a peculiar bend of the hand.
The Shetlander's love for his wife was unbounded, but she made a cold return. Often she stole out alone and hastened to the sea-shore, and at a given signal a seal of large size would appear, and they would hold converse for hours in an unknown language, when she would return home pensive and melancholy.
So years passed and her hopes vanished, when one day the children, playing behind a stack of corn, found a seal-skin. Delighted, they ran to show the prize to their mother. She was no less delighted, for she saw in it the lost home and friends beneath the water. Yet she loved her children. That proved but a slight pang, and with many embraces she fled to the sea.
The husband came in almost immediately, and hearing what had happened ran out only to see her plunge into the sea, where she was joined by the seal. She looked back and saw his misery, "Farewell!" she said. "I loved you well while I was with you, but I always loved my first husband better."
"Near the coast," says Sir James Forbes, "we saw many sorts of fish, but did not meet with many of the Mermaids so often mentioned in these seas especially by Mr. Matcham, a gentleman of great respectability, and at that time superintendent of the Company's Marine at Bombay. I have heard him declare, that, when in command of a trading vessel at Mozambique, Mombaz, and Melinda, three of the principal seaports on the east coast of Africa, he frequently saw these extraordinary animals from six to twelve feet long;the head resembling the human, except about the nose and mouth, which were rather more like a hog's snout; the skin fair and smooth; the head covered with dark, glossy hair of considerable length; the neck, breasts, and body of the female as low as the hips, appeared like a well-formed woman; from thence to the extremity of the tail they were perfect fish. The shoulders and arms were in good proportion, but from the elbow tapered to a fin, like the turtle or penguin."
The very curious reader should examine Cuvier's account of the Manatee, or Manatus, (called from its hands,) and of the Halicore, or Dugong, "from its mammæ, called the Mermaid." Concerning this latter Hartwig has the following sentence:—"When they raise themselves with the front part of their body out of the water, a lively fancy might easily be led to imagine that a human shape, though certainly none of the most beautiful, was surging from the deep."
This is the testimony, and our deduction is short and simple.
We see, first, in the East, two hieroglyphs: one, the fishy man-monster, expressive of a joint dominion over land and sea; the other, a woman and fish conjoined, and expressive of relationship between the moon and the sea; and thusformof the Mermaid grew; and as that which had in its mythology the latter of the figures was a maritime nation, the figure was spread abroad and perpetuated. Next, in the North we see the imagination that placed a colony of trolls under every hill, a tiny creature under every "cowslip's bell," and a separate spirit in every little stream, peopling also the outer ocean with its creatures; and here the perfectideaof the Mermaid, with its various beneficent or mischievous qualities, appears.
Between these two put the sailor, always superstitious and of ready credulity, and very often ignorant that the stories and the figure were not the actual results of human experience, and, their reality assumed, whatever strange thing he saw in his wanderings would be naturally referred to them, whether it were an occasional Dugong, or only a seal erected in the water at such a distance that the sunbeams on his shining coat made it seem white.
And this is the natural history of the Mermaid.
Aside from this, if one were Quixotically inclined to assert the Mermaid, he would find in all that has been said nothing of weight against it; and after what has been proved to have existed, it is hard to say what is impossible. The Ichthyophagi of Diodorus, while they retained their human form, were more than half-fish, fishes in blood and instinct very clearly. Tendencies exaggerate themselves very strangely in a few centuries. A negro's under-lip has been so big as to hang down before him like an apron. Cuvier declares that we "may trace the gradations of one and the same plan, from man to the last of the fishes"; and Mr. Darwin's theory appears to involve something like Mermaids as inevitable links, existing or extinct, in the chain of universal life.