CHAPTER. XIII.

I sold my forge and went to the city. My name appeared in the catalogue of the fall exhibition:—"Forest Scene, by Alexander Allen." I have no reason to suppose that the genuine merit of my picture secured for it a place in the gallery, though doubtless some as poor by established artists found their way there; but these having proved they could do better could afford to be found occasionally below concert pitch. However, Mr. Leopold commended it as highly as his conscience would permit, and I reaped the reward; while Miss Darry gloried over its admission as an unalloyed tribute to ability, and treasured the catalogue more carefully than my photograph. The same course of study and labor which I had pursued in Warren was continued in the city, with this difference: I had not the pure air, simple food, regular life, manual exertion, or social evenings at Hillside. Miss Darry wrote to me regularly, but I felt wearied after her letters. There were no tender assurances of undying affection, so soothing, doubtless, to tired brain and heavy heart; but they read somewhat in this style:—

"My dear Sandy,—Won't you begin at once a course of German reading? 'Das Leben Jesu' of Strauss will help you wonderfully. The old Platonic philosophers have done you some good; but you have a faith too childlike, a complete reliance upon Providence quite too unreasoning, for a man of your ability. Through your own developed self you must learn to find the Supreme Intelligence,—not to spell him out letter by letter in every flower that grows, every trifling event of your life. You began with belief in the old theological riddle of the Trinity; then with perception of the Creator in his visible world; but to your Naturalism you must add at least a knowledge of Mysticism, Transcendentalism,—mists which, veiling indeed the outward creation, are interpenetrated by the sun for personal illumination, more alluring by their veiled light, like those sunned fogs Mr. Leopold deals with occasionally, than the clear every-day atmosphere of beliefs sharply outlined by a creed. When you have sounded the entire scale of prevailing and past theories, even to the depths of unbelief, then alone are you able, as a reasoning being, to translate God's dealings with you into consistent religious faith."

And ended often with,—

"I hope you work hard, intensely, in your art. Do not think, when you lay aside your brush, you lay aside the artist also. Genius is unresting. A picture may shape itself in your brain at any hour, by day or night; and don't be too indolent, my dear boy, to give it outward embodiment, if it does."

"I was sadly disappointed at the result of the last," she wrote once. "Mr. Lang showed it to Mr. Peterson, the sculptor, who pronounced it slightly below the average first attempts. Of course, from your devotion to coloring, you did not feel sufficiently interested to put forth all your powers; still I accept the trial as a proof of your affection. Having greater genius for painting, you could certainly succeed in sculpture, nevertheless, if you heartily labored at it. I could never accept the definition of genius given by the author of 'Rab and his Friends,' which limits it, if I remember rightly, to an especial aptitude for some one pursuit. Genius is a tremendous force, not necessarily to succeed only in one channel, although turned to one by natural bent."

Little Annie, at my earnest request, wrote to me occasionally. It was a brief parting with her: she feared her own self-control, possibly. I know I feared mine; for, had she showed actual grief, I might have pacified it at the cost of my profession or my life. She wrote in this wise:—

"Dear Sandy,—I know of course you are very busy, for Miss Darry told me at Hillside that your painting was in the Exhibition, and that you were rapidly becoming a great artist; and this makes me think I ought to confess to you, Sandy, that I was wrong that morning when I called Miss Darry proud. She has been very kind to me lately. She said it was not right that I should be taught music, and all sorts of lovely, pleasant studies, and not know how to write and cipher. So she teaches me with Mrs. Lang's sisters. She says I already express myself better than I did, and I can cast up father's account-book every Saturday night; but please forgive me, dear brother Sandy, I long for that stiff old work-hour to be over, that I may run up to Mrs. Lang's sun-shiny room, with its flowers, pictures, piano, and herself. Miss Darry, because of her very great talents, Sandy, is far above me. Do you know, though you are to be a great painter, she seems to me more talented than you, with your old home-like ways? But then we sha'n't have those home-like ways any more. Oh, Sandy, we miss you! but I do hope you will be good and great and happy. Miss Darry says you work night and day. But you must sleep some, or you'll be sick. I always fancied great men were born great; it must be hard to have to be made so. I guess you will be glad to hear that father don't swear and scold now; he says he is doing well, and he bought me a new dress the other day at Miss Dinsmore's. She has got back from the city with the gayest flowers and ribbons. My dress is orange-colored. I don't fancy one quite so bright, and wear the old violet one you gave me oftener; but I can't exactly see why I don't like it, after all; for the very same color, on the breast of the Golden Oriole that builds a nest in our garden, I think is perfectly splendid. I hope you won't forget your loving little sister,"Annie Bray."

"Annie Bray."

Sometimes she wrote less brightly and hopefully; but, oh, what a blessing it was to have her write at all! I found myself watching for those natural, loving words, for the acknowledgment of missing me, as, wearied after viewing Alpine peaks, one might stoop cheered and satisfied to pluck a tiny flower. Miss Darry never missed me. She discouraged the idea of a long autumn vacation, and offered to come to the city and board, that my work might still go on. I began to entertain serious doubts, if, when we were married, I should be suffered to live with her,—or whether she would not send me to boarding-school, or to pursue my studies abroad.

When October came, with the rich sadness of its days, at once a prophecy of grief and an assurance of its soothing, I broke down utterly. My æsthetic and literary friends did not feel that sympathy for my worn-out body and soul which both demanded. I applied to the only legitimate source for aid in my weakness and the permission to yield to it; but before either arrived, Nature proved more than a match for Miss Darry, and sent me exhausted to bed. Miss Darry appeared the next morning, and if the whole breezy atmosphere of Hillside had clung to her garments, she could not have had a more bracing effect. How bright, loving, and gentle she was, when she found me really ill! To be sure, she prescribed vigorous tonics, as was in accordance with her style; in fact, she was one herself; but she relieved my weak and languid dejection by brilliant talk, when I could bear it,—by tender words of hope, when I could not. My late internal censures upon her, as a hard task-mistress, were now the ghosts of self-reproach, which a morbid condition conjured about my pillow; and the vision of her healthy, self-restrained nature presided over every dream, recalling most derisively Mr. Leopold's simile of the pine- and peach-trees.

I left my bed, from very shame at prostration, long before I was able, and returned with her to Hillside, whither Mrs. and Mr. Lang invited me for the rest which she now considered necessary. Mr. Leopold had left Warren, and retaken a studio in town for the fall and winter; but many a memory of his kind deeds and pleasant manners lingered in the place. Every village must have its hero, its great man of past or present, looking down, like Hawthorne's great stone face, in supreme benignity upon it. Mr. Leopold had been the first occupant of this royal chair in Warren; for the enthusiasm which seeks a better than itself had just been called forth by the teaching and influence of Hillside.

One morning, when Miss Darry was occupied with her scholars, I wandered through the village and to the Brays' cottage to make my first call. Mrs. Bray was busy making cake. Annie, so tall and slender, that, as she stood with her face turned from me, I wondered what graceful young lady they had there, was prepared for her walk to Hillside, her books in a little satchel on her arm. Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of my thin, pale face, though her own was fragile as a snow-drop; but she at once apologized for and explained her sorrow by calling me her "dear old brother Sandy." I proposed one of our old-time strolls together up the hill, and we soon started in company. Half way up, at the meadow, where we had arranged and painted our first picture, I yielded to the impulse, which heretofore I had resisted, to sit again on the old stump and recall the scene. I was really weary, for this was my first long walk, and Annie looked as though rest would not come amiss; so I helped her over the stile, and we sat down. The rich, fervid hues I used so homœopathically by the stroke of my brush were spread over miles of forest; a vaporous veil of mist hung over every winding stream and mountain lake, and, reflecting the brilliant-colored shrubbery which bordered them, they glared like stained glass; the sunshine filtered down through haze and vapor like gold-dust on the meadow-land; gold and purple key-notes of autumn coloring in many varying shades of tree, water, and cloud blended to the perfect chord, uttering themselves lastly most quietly in the golden-rods and asters at our feet. That hazy, dreamy atmosphere uniting with my vague, aimless state of mind, I would fain make it accountable for the talk which followed.

First we went over the old times, I recalling, Annie assenting in a quiet, half-sad way, or brightening as though by an effort, and throwing in a reminiscence herself. We talked of those we had mutually known, and I was just recalling the rude admiration of Tracy Waters to her mind, when she suggested that she should be late for her lesson,—it was time to leave.

"No, indeed, Annie!" I exclaimed, seizing her hand as she sat beside me,—"this is the first hour's actual rest I have had for months; it is like the returning sleep of health after delirium. You shall not go. When have I ever had you to myself before? The time is beautiful; we are happy; do not let us go up to Hillside to-day—or any more."

I spoke not so much wildly as naturally and weariedly; but Annie's cheek flushed scarlet, as she started, with a touch of Miss Darry's energy, from the stump beside me.

"Yes, Sandy, we will go to Hillside at once; you shall tell Miss Darry, that, in talking over by-gone days with your little sister, you forgot yourself and overstayed your time; and I, too, must make my excuses."

She walked quickly away, and before I had risen, in a half-stupefied way, she was at the stile.

It was rather difficult to rejoin her. I had the novel and not altogether pleasing sensation of having been refused before I had asked; and my child-friend, taught of Nature's simple dignity and sense of right, was more at ease for the remainder of the walk than I.

I meant to have frankly confessed my talk with Annie to Miss Darry. No orthodox saint could have been more penitentially conscious of having fallen from grace. But she gave me no time. She was either so animated, so thoroughly agreeable and entertaining, that I felt only pride at the part I held in her, or else she gave premonitory symptoms of a return to the drill, which always suggested to me the absolute need of physical exercise, and ended in a walk or horseback ride,—in her company, of course. At last I really was so far restored, that my plea of being so much stronger, more at rest, near her, (which was true, for her oral teaching was not unmingled with subtile fascination,) failed to call forth the genial, loving smile. She began to pine for more honors, greater development, more earnest life. Strange! I, the former blacksmith, was a very flower, lulled in thedolce far nienteof summer air and sunshine, beside her more vigorous intellectual nature. Sensation and emotion were scarcely expressed by me before they were taken up into the arctic regions of her brain, and looked coldly on their former selves.

I resolved one day, by a grand effort, to leave the next. As I had not seen Annie since the walk with her to Hillside, and had declined Mrs. Lang's offer to invite her to the house that I might see more of her, on the ground of fatigue and occupation in the evening with Miss Darry, it became incumbent upon me to go to the cottage for a farewell.

It looked very quiet, as I approached. The blinds were closed, as in summer, and there was no one in the kitchen.

Hearing footsteps in the sitting-room, however, I entered, and met Miss Dinsmore with her finger on her lips and an agitated expression on her face.

"For mercy's sake, don't come here now, Sandy Allen! You might have done some good by coming before; but now, poor, sweet lamb, she's very sick, and Miss Bray's most distracted. You're the very last person she'd care to see. You'd better go out just the very same quiet way you come in."

"Annie sick? How? where? when?" I asked, breathlessly.

Miss Dinsmore seized me by the shoulder, and pushing me, not too gently, into the kitchen, closed the door, and stood beside me.

"She's got brain-fever. I guess she caught cold the other day, when she went up to Hillside. She a'n't been out since, and she's been wanderin',—somethin' about not wantin' to go into a meader."

"I shall go up and see her," I answered, turning again to the door.

"Indeed you won't, Sandy Allen! You'll set her wilder than ever again."

"I shall go up and see her," I repeated, firmly; and, pushing by MissDinsmore, I went up the front stairs to Annie's little room.

There she lay,—her bright, golden hair on the pillow, her eyes closed,—a pale, panting phantom of herself, apparently in a troubled sleep,—her mother, the bustling, gaudily attired woman, as quiet as a little child beside her. She turned her head when she heard me, changed color, and the tears filled her eyes; but it was probably owing to the self-control of this woman, whom I had so looked down upon, that I did not snap the thread of Annie Bray's life that day. With her child on the brink of a precipice, she would make no moan to startle her off. The doctor said her sleep must be unbroken. He, too, sat there; and, obeying Mrs. Bray's quiet motion, I seated myself behind the others. The hours wore on; the October sun went down. None of us moved, but gazed in mute apprehension at the figure of her who, it seemed, could awake only in heaven. This earthly love, so strong, so fierce, in the effort to retain her,—would it prevail? This was the question which chained us there; and when, at eight o'clock, she awoke, I waited until the doctor pronounced his favorable opinion, then, without Annie's having seen me, stole out by the other door and away.

At Hillside, when I entered, pale with suppressed excitement, and told where I had been, Mrs. Lang rose at once.

"I wondered why she missed her lessons, until her brother brought word she was not well. I will send some flowers and white grapes to her at once"; and she would have rung the bell, but Miss Darry prevented her.

"Dear Alice," she said, "white grapes are only water sweetened by a little sunshine, and flowers she is too ill to enjoy. Let me make up a basket. Come down with me, Sandy, to the pantry."

Mechanically I followed her down, watched her moving busily about, and heard her talk, yet could not find a word to utter in reply.

"White grapes are excellent for people who sit down to a luxurious dinner every day, but pale, feeble bodies like little Annie Bray's must recuperate on richer fare,—a bottle of wine, some rich, juicy beef; and the sight of this old working world from the window is worth all the flowers in creation."

She filled her basket, called a servant, and sent him off. Still pale and silent, I neither moved nor spoke.

"What is the matter with you, Sandy?" Miss Darry asked, a half-smothered fear in her voice. "You are not strong enough for such excitement. Come to the drawing-room, and I will play you to sleep with some of those grand old German airs. You shall have Mendelssohn or Von Weber, if you are not in the mood for Beethoven or Chopin," she added, compromising to my nervous weakness.

She led the way, I followed, to the parlor,—only, however, once there, and finding it unoccupied, I led, and she listened.

"No music this evening, Frank, for heaven's sake!" I cried, my voice thick with emotion, as she seated herself at the piano. "I must be truthful with you. I have been a weak fool; and to you, whom I respect and admire so thoroughly, I will confess it. Bear with me awhile longer, then you shall speak," I added, as she rose and came toward me.

"In the first place, since I am a genius," I continued, bitterly, "I ought to have had a clearer vision. I ought to have seen, that, because you were the most fascinating, brilliant woman I had ever dreamed of, the most highly cultured, and planned on the noblest scale,—because you disinterestedly devoted yourself to my improvement, kindled a spark of what you were pleased to call genius, and then gave your own life to fan it into a flame,—I ought to have seen that all this did not necessarily imply that subtile bond and affinity between us which alone should end in marriage. But I did not see. I was touched to the heart by your kindness. I thrilled with pride, when you turned from men of refinement and intellect, to smile cordially, tenderly, upon me. Ilonged to be a suitable companion for one so superior; and I have worked—honestly, faithfully, have I worked—to become so. But what you grew upon made me languid. I was satiated with study, weary even of my brush. Metaphysics and mystical speculation bewilder a mind too weak to trust itself in their mazes, without the old established guides, the helps to a childlike faith. I was worn out and sick. Then your presence revived me; all the doubts which have since become certainties were thrust aside. I came here; I met Annie Bray; I said some foolish words one day, when we were walking up here, about being worn out and staying where we were forever. They were dishonorable words, for they were due first of all to you; and they have haunted me since like a nightmare. It was Annie herself who reproved and repelled them. To-day I went there with the thought of saying good-bye. I was sure that my feeling for you was firm as a rock; it is only periodically and indefinably, Frank, that it has seemed otherwise; and now I would lay down my life to restrain these words, to be worthy of the love I renounce. Some other and better man must win what I have been too weak to keep. This afternoon has proved to me that I do not belong exclusively to you."

Was I base and unfeeling, or only weak, as I had said? Frank Darry turned away, and walked to the long French window, looking out in the moonlight upon the very spot, perhaps, where I had so passionately declared my love. I could see her tremble with emotion. Yet I dared not speak or go to her. Perhaps five minutes passed,—it might have been an hour,—when, pale, but composed, she came to the sofa, upon which I had thrown myself.

"You love Annie Bray, then, Sandy?" she asked, calmly.

"No," I answered, "I do not love her; but I feel that I have done violence to what might have grown into love between us. I do not intend to see her. I do not wish to ask for what would assuredly not be granted. I desire only to go away, to be alone and quiet."

"You are, indeed, forever rushing to extremes, Sandy," she said, slowly. "We have both done wrong: I, in tempting you, without, of course, a thought of self," she added, proudly, "to set aside this first and strongest interest; and you, in your acceptance of fascination as love. We have done wrong; but you are now right, for you are true. Let me be so also. I consider it no disgrace to my womanhood to admit the pain your avowal gives me, yet I thank you for making it. Remember, Sandy, if a true affection spring up within you, do not crush it from a morbid remembrance of this: it would be a poor revenge for me to desire."

She spoke sadly. I could not reply to her. Such generosity was, indeed, like coals of fire on my head. Say as I might to myself that her strong will had held me spellbound,—reason as I might that it was only because she had developed, made me, as it were, that this motherly, yearning, protecting love had been lavished upon me,—there was still the fact, that this rich, strong nature had given of its best treasure in answer to my passionate pleading, had wasted it on me.

"Frank Darry," I said, "why I do not entirely love what I completely reverence and admire I cannot tell. To live without you seems like drifting through life without aim or guide. I would gladly think that one who suffered through my joy, one far better than I, should yet win what he longed for."

Then only did her paleness vary.

"Sandy, spare me, at least just now, such complete renunciation. Remember, I have not confessed what you have."

She took my hand: it was, I know, burning, while hers was cold as marble. She stooped and kissed my forehead.

"Good night, and good bye, Sandy. The time may come, when, as teacher and pupil, we shall think of each other tenderly."

Where was the passionate avowal I would once have made? Had I learned a lesson? Yes, the most bitter of my life. When I heard her firm foot-step die away in the hall, I crossed to the library, and in a few brief words explained to Mr. and Mrs. Lang that I must leave their house at once, and that our engagement was broken because I alone had proved unworthy. The color mounted to Mr. Lang's brow.

"You are weak, Sandy," he ejaculated, bitterly; "it is what I always feared."

Mrs. Lang, in her gentle, kindly way, tried to soften his anger; but it must have been a hard task with one who, while he pitied sin, scorned weakness; and I did not await the result, but, hurrying to my room, packed my portmanteau and left for the station.

A fortnight later I received from Miss Dinsmore, in reply to my inquiries, a letter giving a most favorable account of Annie Bray's health. This was all I desired. I wrote a few lines of friendly farewell, and, hinting at no period of return, merely explained that I was about to leave for Europe. I restrained my desire to give her some advice as to her pursuits in my absence. Such mentorship, at present, seemed like creating another barrier between us. I assumed no superiority myself, I had no disposition to seek it in others.

Worn out and jaded, I began my travels. I strove to make these travels as inexpensive as possible. I walked much, and at times lived both cheaply and luxuriously, as one learns to do after a little experience abroad. At first I resolved to make this tour one long summer day of pleasure through the outward senses. I took no books with me. I painted no picture. I rarely even sketched. Brain and heart rested, while there flowed into them, through the outward avenues of eye and ear, new pictures and harmonies,—I fancied, for present enjoyment merely, but in reality for future use.

When I reached Rome, my funds, which had even previously been eked out by the sale of the few sketches I had made, were quite exhausted. Anticipating this, I had, after great hesitation, written to Mr. Leopold, desiring letters of introduction to some artists, in the hope of obtaining work from them. I found his reply to this letter awaiting my arrival in Rome; and though I had not hinted at my destitution, he must have guessed it, for he inclosed a check and all the information I desired. I provided myself with a humble studio and recommenced work. How fresh and charming was this return to my old mode of life! I even bought a few choice books at the old stalls, and revelled in poetry. Dante opened his Purgatory to me just as I escaped from my own, and I basked in the returning sun-light of a free and happy life.

Copying in a painting-gallery one day, I beheld with pain, albeit he was my benefactor, a ghost of my former life arising to haunt me. Mr. Leopold, having arrived the night before, was enjoying the pictures preparatory to hunting me up. His greeting was cordial; he cheered me by most favorable opinions as to my progress in my art, and was dumb about the past. He desired that I should again work in connection with himself; and the profound respect I had always felt for his abilities was confirmed and heightened by the affection he inspired in me. His really harmonious character guided mine without the absolute surrender of my individuality. One by one I resumed the old interests, and began to feel the old heart which has throbbed through the centuries, from Adam downward, beating within me. How very much I was like other men, after all!

"Sandy," Mr. Leopold said to me one day, as we sat sketching some old ruin on the Campagna, "is it your wish to be silent as to the past? Are you restrained by fear of yourself or me?"

For only answer I exclaimed,—

"How and where is Miss Darry?"

"She is well, and at Munich," he answered, smiling pleasantly,—"developingin herself the powers with which she invested you. As a sculptress she gives great promise; her figures show wonderful anatomical knowledge."

"And you, Mr. Leopold," I asked breathlessly, "how could you forgive and befriend one who had so weakly treated the woman you alone were worthy to love?"

"You are indeed breaking silence, Sandy," he replied; "it is with you the Chinese wall or illimitable space. Perhaps you have not really wronged either her or me. She worked off some extravagant theories on you. You exhausted your weakness, I trust, on her; and as for me, I have learned to conquer through both."

I have lived several years since that morning in Rome, where, at the headquarters of the confessional, I opened my heart to Mr. Leopold. Standing, as he does, at the head of his art, I follow him. Those who prefer fancy to vigorous thought and imagination, the lovely and familiar in Nature to the sublime, sometimes rank me above him. Time has not evolved the genius which Miss Darry prophesied, yet I am as fully convinced that I occupy my true position and do my appropriate work in the world as though it had. Mrs. Leopold professes occasionally to me, with a smile, that her opinion is unaltered, that my weakness was only an additional proof of genius, but that her husband is a hero worth all the geniuses in the world. She holds this subtile essence more lightly in estimation now than formerly. Some think she possesses it; and her groups of statuary fairly entitle her to more laurels than in her happy domestic life she is likely to win. She laughs at my wife, and calls her sentimental, because her Art instincts, like vines over a humble dwelling, embroider only the common domestic life. Her many fanciful ways of adorning our home, and her own sweet, sunny self, its perpetual light and comfort, are to me just so many 'traps to catch the sunbeams' of life, especially as I see beneath all this the earnest, developed womanhood of the blacksmith's daughter. Do you ask me how I won her? I can describe my passionate admiration, even the weakness and limitations of my nature; but I will not unveil my love. Is it not enough that I am a thorough democrat, have little faith in the hereditary transmission of good or evil, and welcome Mr. and Mrs. Bray to my home and hearth? I am not hurried now.

"You have only this lifetime to make amanin, Sandy," Annie pleads occasionally, when a call for service outside my profession presents itself; "but any special power of mind, it seems to me, will have the mending ages in which to unfold."

To love men, to labor for them and for the ideas which free and redeem them, seems the special mission of our times; and my little wife has caught its spirit, and so helps me to recognize the virtue which eighteen hundred years ago was crucified to rise again, which has been assailed in our country, and is rising again to be the life and inspiration of Christendom, the death-blow to slavery and oppression, the light of many a humble home and simple heart. Unselfishness! keystone to the arch through which each pure soul looks heavenward!

A merry monarch two years and four months old.

If we could have stood by when the world was a-making,—could have sniffed the escaping gases, as they volatilized through the air,—could have seen and heard the swash of the waves, when the whole world was, so to speak, in hot water,—could have watched the fiery tumult gradually soothing itself into shapely, stately palms and ferns, cold-blooded Pterodactyles, and gigantic, but gentle Megatheriums, till it was refined, at length, into sunshine and lilies and Robin Redbreasts,—we fancy we should have been intensely interested. But a human soul is a more mysterious thing than this round world. Its principles firmer than the hills, its passions more tumultuous than the sea, its purity resplendent as the light, its power too swift and subtile for human analysis,—what wonder in heaven above or earth beneath can rival this mystic, mighty mechanism? Yet it is formed almost under our eyes. The voice of God, "Let there be light," we do not hear; the stir of matter thrilled into mind we do not see; but the after-march goes on before our gaze. We have only to look, and, lo! the mountains are slowly rising, the valleys scoop their levels, the sea heaves against its barriers, and the chaotic soul evolves itself from its nebulous, quivering light, from its plastic softness, into a world of repose, of use, of symmetry, and stability. This mysterious soul, when it first passed within our vision, was only not hidden within its mass of fleshly life, a seed of spirituality deep-sunk in a pulp of earthliness. Passing away from us in ripened perfection, we behold a being but little lower than the angels, heir of God and joint heir with Christ, crowned with glory and honor and immortality.

Come up, then, Jamie, my King, into the presence of the great congregation! There are poets here, and philosophers, wise men of the East who can speak of trees, from the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon, even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes. But fear them not, little Jamie! you are of more value, even to science, than many fishes. Wise as these Magi are, yesterday they were such as you, and such they must become again or ever they shall enter the kingdom of heaven. Come up, little Jamie, into the hall of audience! Blue eyes and broad brow, sunny curls, red lips, and dainty, sharp teeth, stout little arm, strong little hand, sturdy little figure, and most still and steadfast gaze: truly it is the face and form of a king,—sweetness in power, unconsciousness in royalty.

"Jamie, you are a little beauty! You are too handsome to live!"

"No!" says Jamie, vehemently, for the fiftieth time, stamping the royal foot and scowling the royal brows. "Gamma saynottoo ha'some!"

"But you are a young Apollo."

"Nomy 'Pollo!"

"What are you, then?"

"I goo e baw," which is Jametic for good little boy.

This microcosm, like the macrocosm, may be divided into many departments. As the world is viewed geographically, geologically, historically, astronomically, so in this one little Jamie we have many Jamies. There is the Jamie philological, Jamie theological, Jamie psychological, Jamie emotional, Jamie social; in fact, I can hardly think of any natural, moral, or mathematical science, on which a careful study of Jamie will not throw some light. Would you frame a theory of metaphysics? Consult Reid, and Locke, and Hamilton warily, for they are men, subject to like mistakes as we are; but observe Jamie with utmost confidence and the closest care, for he is the book of God, and will teach only truth, if your eye is single to perceive truth. Theologically, Jamie has points superior to both Andover andPrinceton; he is never in danger of teaching for doctrine the commandments of men; nor have passion and prejudice in him any power to conceal, but, on the contrary, they illuminate truth. For the laws of language, mark how the noble tree of human speech springs in his soul from mustard-seed into fair and fruitful symmetry. In good sooth, one marvels that there should be so much error in the world with children born and growing up all over it. If Jamie were, like Jean Paul, the Only, I should expect philosophers to journey from remotest regions to sit at his feet and learn the ways of God to man. Every one who presumed to teach his fellows should be called upon to produce his diploma as a graduate of Jamie, or forfeit all confidence in his sagacity. But, with a baby in every other house, how is it that we continually fall out by the way? It must be that children are not advantageously used. We pet them, and drug them, and spoil them; we trick them out in silks and fine array; we cross and thwart and irritate them; we lay unholy hands upon them, but are seldom content to stand aside and see the salvation of the Lord.

Tug, tug, tug, one little foot wearisomely ranging itself beside the other, and two hands helping both: that is Jamie coming up stairs. Patter, patter, patter: that is Jamie trotting through the entry. He never walks. Rattle, clatter, shake: Jamie is opening the door. Now he marches in. Flushed with exertion, and exultant over his brilliant escapade from the odious surveillance below, he presents himself peering on tiptoe just over the arm of the big chair, and announces his errand,—

"Come t' see Baddy."

"Baddy doesn't want you."

"Baddydo."

Then, in no wise daunted by his cool welcome, he works his way up into the big chair with much and indiscriminate pulling: if it is a sleeve, if it is a curtain, if it is a table-cloth whereon repose many pens, much ink and paper, and knick-knacks without number, nothing heeds he, but clutches desperately at anything which will help him mount, and so he comes grunting in, all tumbled and twisted, crowds down beside me, and screws himself round to face the table, poking his knees and feet into me with serene unconcern. Then, with a pleased smile lighting up his whole face, he devotes himself to literature. A small, brass-lined cavity in the frame of the writing-desk serves him for an inkstand. Into that he dips an old, worn-out pen with consequential air, and assiduously traces nothing on bits of paper. Of course I am reduced to a masterly inactivity, with him wriggling against my right arm, let alone the danger hanging over all my goods and chattels from this lawless little Vandal prowling among them. Shall I send him away? Yes, if I am an insensate clod, clean given over to stupidity and selfishness; if I count substance nothing, and shadow all things; if I am content to dwell with frivolities forever, and have for eternal mysteries nothing but neglect. For suppose I break in upon his short-lived delight, thrust him out grieved and disappointed, with his brave brow clouded, a mist in his blue eyes, and—that heart-rending sight—his dear little under-lip and chin all quivering and puckering. Well, I go back and write an epic poem. The printers mangle it; the critics fall foul of it; it is lost in going through the post-office; it brings me ten letters, asking an autograph, on six of which I have to pay postage. There is vanity and vexation of spirit, besides eighteen cents out of pocket, and the children crying for bread. I let him stay. A little, innocent life, fearfully dependent on others for light, shines out with joyful radiance, wherein I rejoice. To-morrow he will have the measles, and the mumps, and the croup, and the whooping-cough, and scarlatina; and then come the alphabet, and Latin grammar, and politics, and his own boys getting into trouble: but to-day, when his happiness is in my hands, I may secure it, and never can any one wrest from him the sunshine I may pour into his happy little heart. Oh! the time comes so soon, and comes so often, that Love can onlylook with bitter sorrow upon the sorrow which it has no power to mitigate!

Language is unceremoniously resolved into its original elements by Jamie. He is constitutionally opposed to inflection, which, as he must be devoid of prejudice, may be considered indisputable proof of the native superiority of the English to other languages. He is careful to include in his sentences all the important words, but he has small respect for particles, and the disposition of his words waits entirely upon his moods.Myusually does duty forI. "Want the Uncle Frank gave me hossey," with a finger pointing to the mantel-piece is just as flexible to his use as "Want the hossey that Uncle Frank gave me." "Where Baddycanbe?" he murmurs softly to himself, while peering behind doors and sofas in playing hide-and-seek. Hens are cud-dah, a flagrant example of Onomatopœia. The cradle is a cay-go; corn-balls are ball-corn; and snow-bird, bird-snow; and all his rosy nails are toe-nails. He has been drilled into meet response to "how d' ye do?" but demonstrates the mechanical character of his reply by responding to any question that has theyouandhowsounds in it, as "What do you think of that?" "How did you do it?" "How came you by this?" "Pit-teewell."

But his performances are not all mechanical. He has a stock of poetry and orations, of which he delivers himself at bedtime with a degree of resignation,—that being the only hour in which he can be reduced to sufficient quietude for recitation; nor is that because he loves quiet more, but bed less. It is a very grievous misfortune, an unreasonable and arbitrary requisition, that breaks in upon his busy life, interrupts him in the midst of driving to mill on an inverted chair, hauling wood in a ditto footstool, and other important matters, and sweeps him off to darkness and silence. So, with night-gown on, and the odious bed imminent, he puts off the evil day by compounding with the authorities and giving a public entertainment, in consideration of a quarter of an hour's delay. He takes large liberties with the text of his poems, but his rhetorical variations are of a nature that shows it is no vain repetition, but that he enters into the spirit of the poem. In one of his songs a person

"Asked a sweet robin, one morning in May,That sung in the apple-tree over the way,"

what it was he was singing.

"Don't you know? he replied, you cannot guess wrong;Don't you know I am singing my cold-water song?"

This Jamie intensifies thus:—

"Do' know my sing my co'-wotta song, hm?"

When he reaches the place where

"Jack fell downBoke cown,"

he invariably leaves Gill to take care of herself, and closes with the pathetic moral reflection, "'Attoobad!" Little Jack Horner, having put in his thumb and picked out a plum, is made to declare definitely and redundantly,—

"Myga-atebig boy, jus' so big!"

He persists in praying,—

"'F I should die 'fore I wake up."

Borne off to bed a last, in spite of every pretext for delay, tired Nature droops in his curling lashes, and gapes protractedly through his wide-dividing lips.

"I seepy," he cries, fighting of sleep with the bravery of a Major-General,—observing phenomena,in articulo somni, with the accuracy and enthusiasm of a naturalist, and reasoning from them with the skill of a born logician.

A second prolonged and hearty gape, and

"I two seepies," he cries, adding mathematics to his other accomplishments.

And that is the last of Jamie, till the early morning brings him trudging up stairs, all curled and shining, to "hear Baddy say 'Boo!'"

Total depravity, in Jamie's presence, is a doctrine hard to be understood. Honestlyspeaking, he does not appear to have any more depravity than is good for him,—just enough to make him piquant, to give him a relish. He is healthy and hearty all day long. He eats no luncheon and takes no nap, is desperately hungry thrice a day and sleeps all night, going to bed at dark after a solitary stale supper of bread and butter, more especially bread; and he is good and happy. Laying aside the revelations of the Bible and of Doctors of Divinity, I should say that his nature is honest, simple, healthful, pure, and good. He shows no love for wrong, no inclination towards evil rather than good. He is affectionate, just, generous, and truthful. He just lives on his sincere, loving, fun-loving, playful, yet earnest life, from day to day, a pure and perfect example, to my eye, of what God meant children to be. I cannot see how he should be very different from what he is, even if he were in heaven, or if Adam had never sinned. There is so fearful an amount of, and so decided a bent towards, wickedness in the world, that it seems as if nothing less than an inborn aptitude for wickedness can account for it; yet, in spite of all theories and probabilities, here is Jamie, right under my own eye, developing a far stronger tendency to love, kindness, sympathy, and all the innocent and benevolent qualities, than to their opposites. The wrong that he does do seems to be more from fun and frolic, from sheer exuberance of animal spirits and intensity of devotion to mirth, than anything else. He seems to be utterly devoid of malice, cruelty, revenge, or any evil motive. Even selfishness, which I take to be the fruitful mother of evil, is held in abeyance, is subordinate to other and nobler qualities. Candy is dearer to him than he knows how to express; yet he scrupulously lays a piece on the mantel for an absent friend; and though he has it in full view, and climbs up to it, and in the extremity of his longing has been known, I think, to chip off the least little bit with his sharp mouse-teeth, yet he endures to the end and delivers up the candy with an eagerness hardly surpassed by that with which he originally received it. Can self-denial go farther?

It seems to me that the reason of Jamie's gentleness and cheerfulness and goodness is, that he is comfortable and happy. The animal is in fine condition, and the spirit is therefore well served; consequently, both go on together with little friction. And I cannot but suspect that a great deal of human depravity comes from human misery. The destruction of the poor is his poverty. Little sickly, fretful, crying babies, heirs of worn nerves, fierce tempers, sad hearts, sordid tastes, half-tended or over-tended, fed on poison by the hand of love, nay, sucking poison from the breasts of love, trained to insubordination, abused by kindness, abused by cruelty,—that is the human nature from which largely we generalize, and no wonder the inference is total depravity. But human nature, distorted, defiled, degraded by centuries of misdealing, is scarcely humannature. Let us discover it before we define it. Let us remove accretions of long-standing moral and physical disease, before we pronounce sentence against the humannature. If it ever becomes an established and universally recognized principle, as fixed and unquestionable as the right and wrong of theft and murder, that it is a sin against God, a crime against the State, an outrage upon the helpless victim of their ignorance or wickedness, for an unhealthy man or woman to become the parent of a child, I think our creeds would presently undergo modification. Disease seems to me a more fertile source of evil than depravity; at least it is a more tangible source. We must have a race of healthy children, before we know what are the true characteristics of the human race. A child suffering from scrofula gives but a feeble, even a false representation of the grace, beauty, and sweetness of childhood. Pain, sickness, lassitude, deformity, a suffering life, a lingering death, are among the woful fruits of this dire disease, and it is acknowledgedto be hereditary. Is not, then, every person afflicted with any hereditary disease debarred as by a fiat of the Almighty from becoming a parent? Every principle of honor forbids it. The popular stolidity and blindness on these subjects are astonishing. A young woman whose sisters have all died of consumption, and who herself exhibits unmistakable consumptive tendencies, is married, lives to bear three children in quick succession, and dies of consumption. Her friends mourn her and the sad separation from her bereaved little ones, but console themselves with the reflection that these little ones have prolonged her life. But for her marriage, she would have died years before. Of the three children born of this remedial marriage, two die in early girlhood of consumption. One left, a puny infant, languishes into a puny maturity. Even as a remedy, what is this worth? To die in her youth, to leave her suffering body in the dust and go quickly to God, with no responsibility beyond herself, or to pine through six years, enduring thrice, besides all her inherited debility, the pain and peril, the weariness and terror of child-bearing, to be at last torn violently and prematurely away from these beloved little ones,—which is the disease, and which the remedy? And when we look farther on at the helpless little innocents, doomed to be the recipients of disease, early deprived of a mother's care, for which there is no substitute, dragging a load of weakness and pain, and forced down into the Valley of the Shadow of Death before years shall have blunted the point of its terrors, or religion robbed them of their sting,—it is only not atrocious because so unwittingly wrought.

And bodily health is only one of the possessions which every child has a right to claim from its parents. Not merely health, but dispositions, traits, lie within human control far beyond the extent of common recognition. We say that character is formed at fourteen or sixteen, and that training should begin in infancy; but sometimes it seems to me, that, when the child is born, the work is done. All the rest is supplementary and subordinate. Subsequent effort has, indeed, much effect, but it cannot change quality. It may modify, but it cannot make anew. After neglect or ignorance may blight fair promise, but no after wisdom can bring bloom for blight. There are many by-laws whose workings we do not understand; but the great, general law is so plain, that wayfaring folk, though fools, need not err therein. Every one sees the unbridled passions of the father or mother raging in the child. Gentleness is born of gentleness, insanity of insanity, truth of truth. Careful and prayerful training may mitigate the innate evil; but how much better that the young life should have sprung to light from seas of love and purity and peace! Through God's mercy, the harsh temper, the miserly craving, the fretful discontent may be repressed and soothed; but it is always up-hill work, and never in this world wholly successful. Why be utterly careless in forming, to make conscious life a toilsome and thankless task of reforming? Since there is a time, and there comes no second, when the human being is under human control,—since the tiny infant, once born, is a separate individual, is for all its remaining existence an independent human being, why not bring power to bear where form is amenable to power? Only let all the influences of that sovereign time be heavenly,—and whatever may be true of total depravity, Christ has made such a thing possible,—and there remains no longer the bitter toil of thwarting, but only the pleasant work of cultivating Nature.

It is idle, and worse than idle, to call in question the Providence of God for disaster caused solely by the improvidence of man. The origin of evil may be hidden in the unfathomable obscurity of a distant, undreamed-of past, beyond the scope of mortal vision; but by far the greater part of the evil that we see—which is the only evil for which we are responsible—is the result of palpable violation of Divine laws. Humanity here is as powerful as Divinity.The age of miracles is past. God does not interfere to contravene His own laws. His part in man's creation He long ago defined, and delegated all the rest to the souls that He had made. Man is as able as God to check the destructive tide. And it is mere shuffling and shirking and beating the wind, for a people to pray God to mitigate the ill which they continually and unhesitatingly perpetuate and multiply.

The great mistake made by the believers in total depravity is in counting the blood of the covenant of little worth. We admit that in Adam all die; but we are slow to believe that in Christ all can be made alive. We abuse the doctrine. We make it a sort of scapegoat for short-coming. But Christ has made Adamic depravity of no account. He came not alone to pardon sin, but to save people from sinning. Father-love, mother-love, and Christ-love are so mighty that together they can defy Satan, and, in his despite, the soul shall be born into the kingdom of heaven without first passing through the kingdom of hell. And in this way only, I think, will the kingdom of this world become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ.

"Now, Jamie, having set the world right,—you and I, for which the world will be deeply grateful,—let us see what you are about, for you have been suspiciously still lately. What doing, Jamie?"

"Hay-puh!" says Jamie, very red, eager, and absorbed, with no intermission of labor.

"Making hasty pudding! Oh, yes! I know what that means. Only taking all the chips and shavings out of the wood-box in the closet and carrying them half across the room by the eminently safe conveyance of his two fat hands, and emptying them into my box of paper, and stirring all together with a curling-stick. That's nothing. Keep on, Jamie, and amuse yourself; but let us hear your geography lesson.

"Where are you going one of these days?"

"Min-nee-so-toh."

"Where is Minnesota?"

Jamie gives a jerk with his arm to the west. He evidently thinks Minnesota is just beyond the hill.

"Where is papa going to buy his horses?"

"Ill-noy."

"And where does Aunt Sarah live?"

"Cog-go."

"What river are you going to sail up to get to Minnesota?"

"Miss-iss-ipp-ee."

"That's agoodlittle boy! He knows ever so much; and here is a peppermint. Open his mouth and shut his eyes, and pop! it goes."

There is, however, a pretty picture on the other side, that Jamie thrusts his iconoclastic fists through quite as unconcernedly; and that is the dignity of human nature. The human being can be trained into a dignified person: that no one denies. Looking at some honored and honorable man bearing himself loftily through every crisis, and wearing his grandeur with an imperial grace, one may be pardoned for the mistake, but it is none the less a mistake, of reckoning the acquirement of an individual as the endowment of the race. Behold human nature unclothed upon with the arts and graces of the schools, if you would discover, not its possibilities, but its attributes. The helplessness of infancy appeals to all that is chivalric and Christian in our hearts; but to dignity it is pre-eminently a stranger. A charming and popular writer—on the whole, I am not sure that it was not my own self—once affirmed that a baby is a beast, and gave great offence thereby; yet it seems to me that no unprejudiced person can observe an infant of tender weeks sprawling and squirming in the bath-tub, and not confess that it looks more like a little pink frog than anything else. And here is Jamie, not only weeks, but months and years old, setting his young affections on candy and dinner, and eating in general, with an appalling intensity. It is humiliating to see how easily he is moved byan appeal to his appetite. I blush for my race, remembering the sparkle of his eyes over a dainty dish, and the abandonment of his devotion to it,—the enthusiasm with which his feet spring, and his voice rings through the house, to announce the fact, "Dinnah mo' weh-wy! dinnah mo' weh-wy!" To the naked eye, he appears to think as much of eating as a cat or a chicken or a dog. Reasons and rights he is slow to comprehend; but his conscience is always open to conviction, and his will pliable to a higher law, when a stick of candy is in the case. His bread-and-butter is to him what science was to Newton; and he has been known to reply abstractedly to a question put to him in the height of his enjoyment, "Don' talk t' me now!" This is not dignity, surely. Is it total depravity? What is it that makes his feet so swift to do mischief? He sweeps the floor with the table-brush, comes stumbling over the carpet almost chin-deep in a pair of muddy rubber boots, catches up the bird's seed-cup and darts away, spilling it at every step; and the louder I call, the faster he runs, half frightened, half roguish, till an unmistakable sharpness pierces him, makes him throw down cup and seed together, and fling himself full length on the floor, his little heart all broken. Indeed, he can bear anything but displeasure. He tumbles down twenty times a day, over the crickets, off the chairs, under the table, head first, head last, bump, bump, bump, and never a tear sheds he, though his stern self-control is sometimes quite pitiful to see. But a little slap on his cheek, which is his standing punishment,—not a blow, but a tiny tap that must derive all its efficacy from its moral force,—oh, it stabs him to the heart! He has no power to bear up against it, and goes away by himself, and cries bitterly, sonorously, and towards the last, I suspect, rather ostentatiously. Then he spoils it all by coming out radiant, and boasting that he has "make tear," as if that were an unparalleled feat. If you attempt to chide him, he puts up his plump hand with a repelling gesture, turns away his head in disgust, and ejaculates vehemently, "Don' talk t' me!" After all, however, I do not perceive that he is any more sensitive to reproof than an intelligent and petted dog.

His logical faculty develops itself somewhat capriciously, but is very prompt. He seldom fails to give you a reason, though it is often of the Wordsworthian type,—

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