Chapter XXXV: A Fountain (3)

It does not appear that Mr. Mickley was ever actively engaged in the manufacture of piano-fortes. He continued, however, to tune pianos to the end of his life; and it is reported that he could never be induced to alter his terms from the original fee of one dollar which was customary forty years ago. He also became noted far and wide as a repairer of violins and other stringed instruments. At one time, a violin which had belonged to George Washington was sent to him for this purpose. Ole Bull, who happened to be in town at the time, hearing of the circumstance, hastened to the shop for the purpose of examining and playing upon the historic instrument. Mickley also became an authority in regard to the value and authenticity of these instruments, although he never indulged in the passion of making collections in this field. His minuteness of observation was frequently manifested. While stopping at Venice in 1870 he notes down in his diary, "A man came to the hotel with some violins for sale. Among them was a Hieronymus Amati. It was a good one, but the head and neck were not genuine." At another time, a violin was sent to his place from a distant locality for repairs. The instrument was preceded by a lengthy letter beseeching his special care for its welfare, and setting forth in extravagant terms its great intrinsic value and its peculiarly interesting "belongings." Anticipating a treasure, Mr. Mickley sent for some violin-connoisseurs to enjoy with him a first sight of the precious instrument. On opening the express-package a very worthless "fiddle" was revealed. After the laugh had gone round, he said dryly, "I think the value of this must be in its 'belongings.'"

In the old house on Market Street Mr. Mickley was not alone popular among prominent people from afar. He was equally loved by his neighbors on all sides. Many of the more unconventional of these knew him best by the familiar title of "Daddy." To the better-educated class of young musicians he was almost as much a father as a friend. Nor were his close friendships confined to the young. Among his most steadfast admirers was an old-bachelor German musician by the name of Plich. Herr Plich was a piano-teacher, and it was under his tuition that the afterward favorite prima-donna Caroline Richings made her first public appearance as a pianist in 1847. This old teacher induced Mickley to take him as a boarder, and he lived for a number of years in one of the upper back rooms of No. 927. One night a fire broke out in a building directly contiguous with the rear of the Mickley mansion. There was great consternation, of course, and busy efforts on the owner's part to gather together the manifold contents of his treasure-house. When all had been at length secured in a place of safety, he bethought himself of Herr Plich. Hastening to the upper room, he discovered the old man in a state of semi-insanity, marching up and down the apartment, and carrying in his hands only a valuable viola. So confused was he with fright that main force was required to get him out of the room. After seeing him safely out of the front door, Mickley went back and secured a considerable sum of paper money which had been totally overlooked for the sake of the beloved viola. Plich at his death bequeathed the viola to Mickley, and it was the only instrument which the latter always refused to part with during his lifetime. The entire savings of Plich were also left in trust to Mickley, to be distributed for such charitable objects as he should consider most worthy, and for about twenty-seven years Mr. Mickley carefully administered this trust.

Mr. Mickley's most remarkable success in life was obtained as a numismatist. His habit of collecting coins began almost in childhood. It has been stated that at the age of seventeen he first became interested in coin-hunting, owing to his difficulty in finding a copper cent coined in 1799, the year of his birth. Every student of numismatism knows that this piece is exceedingly rare. The one sold in Mr. Mickley's collection after his decease brought no less than forty dollars. The taste thus formed continued a prevailing one for sixty years. It is surprising to find how speedily he became a leading and recognized authority. Although as guileless as a child and the easy victim of numerous thefts throughout his life, he was scarcely ever deceived in the value of a coin, token, or medal. Once, at Stockholm, in 1871, he visited a museum where rare coins were exhibited. "The collection," says his diary, "is very, very rich in Greek and Roman, but particularly in Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon. There are not many United States coins, but among them I was astonished to find a very fine half-eagle of 1815." The known rarity of this coin thus on exhibition in a far country very naturally attracted the keen eyes of the aged collector.

These researches, continuing year after year, grew to be more and more valuable, until they became widely celebrated. By the time he had reached middle age he was as well known among the guild of antiquarians as a Quaker is known by his costume. Before his death he had been elected a member of all the prominent societies in numismatics, history, and archaeology throughout the world. The last honor of this kind, which reached him in his eightieth year, was a notice of his election to membership in the Société Française de Numismatique et d'Archéologie. His great collections in this department of knowledge were not confined to coins, but extended also to the literature of the subject. This was splendidly illustrated in his famous library, which comprised many works of the utmost value and scarcity.

A taste thus developed in early youth naturally became in the course of years a habit, a sentiment, a leading passion of Mickley's nature. By the year 1867 his coin-collection had become the most extensive in this country. By this time also the entertainment of curious visitors absorbed a good share of the collector's daily duties. He was naturally proud of his treasures, and took a great delight in showing them to all who came. Utterly devoid of suspicion, he was a ready victim to designing persons. The following memorandum, which was found among his later papers, will show how he suffered from this source:

"I have become rather indifferent about numismatics, or, at least, about collecting coins. It was a great source of amusement for a period of over fifty years. But, having been so unfortunate at different times with my coins, it is, as it were, a warning to desist from collecting any more. In the year 1827 the United States dollars from 1794 to 1803, all good specimens, together with some foreign coins, were stolen. In 1848 about twenty half-dollars were taken. In 1854, after showing my collection to three Southern gentlemen (as they called themselves) I missed three very scarce half-eagles. The great robbery was in 1867. In Jaffa, Palestine, a small lot, worth about one thousand francs, with a collection of Egyptian curiosities, was stolen at the hotel; and, finally, last winter, at Seville, Spain, some old Spanish coins were missing while I was showing them to some persons."

The "great robbery" above alluded to occurred on the evening of April 13, 1867. It was of such magnitude as to cause a wide sensation at the time, and enlisted the sympathies of his coin-hunting brethren the world over. Mr. Mickley's chief precautions, notwithstanding his previous warnings of danger from another source, had been against fire. In a third-story room was his cabinet. This had been long since filled, chiefly with an unbroken and historic list of American coins. The additional accumulations of years, nearly all foreign, and many of great rarity, had been stored in an old piano-case in his bedroom, where, as he said, in the event of fire they would be close at hand. On the evening in question Mickley was alone in his workshop, engaged in repairing a musical instrument. He had then been living entirely alone for a number of years. A single servant, who provided his meals, had gone home. About nine o'clock the loud barking of his dog in the yard below called him to the window. It was afterward found that a pair of old shoes thrown from an upper room by the burglars had thus called away the attention both of dog and master from what was going on inside. An hour later a caller discovered several pieces of money lying in the hall. An investigation disclosed the startling loss which he had sustained. The entire contents of the piano-box had been carried off. A private desk had also been broken open and despoiled of a few medals, although its chief contents were intact. A gold pencil, the gift of Ole Bull, and other keepsakes, remained undisturbed. But the larger portion of a collection of foreign coins, one of the most complete in the world, and the product of a lifetime's intelligent research, was gone!

It was a heavy calamity, and one from which the old collector never fully recovered. Sir Isaac Newton's historic Fido did not do nearly the amount of irremediable damage when he overturned the lamp upon his master's papers. The actual pecuniary loss, reckoning at cost prices, was in the neighborhood of nineteen thousand dollars. The market value of such a collection was of course vastly greater, and increasing all the time at a good deal faster rate than compound interest. It was somewhat of a coincidence that Mr. Mickley had received and refused what he records as a "tempting offer", for the entire collection only a short time before the robbery.

The ardent passion of a lifetime was now chilled, and his one desire seemed to be to get rid of his remaining coins and of the responsibility which keeping them entailed. Such, however, was the completeness of Mickley's literary methods of condensing, that an entry of three or four lines made in his diary on the night of the robbery is all that he had to write about the appalling loss. A week or two afterward he records in the same volume the disposal of all the remaining coins, with an air of great relief, as he adds, "I do not doubt I should be robbed again if I kept them." A large box full of the most valuable had been taken, for safe-keeping, to the Mint just after the robbery; but these were sold with the rest. It is understood that this remnant of the original lot was disposed of for about sixteen thousand dollars, the largest purchaser being Mr, Woodward, of Roxbury, Massachusetts. The dollar of 1804 went to a New York collector for the enormous sum of seven hundred and fifty dollars.

Efforts to restore the lost treasure were not wanting. It might be supposed that the possession of such rare tokens of value would have speedily led to the discovery of their whereabouts. Mr. Mickley himself intimated that he suspected the quarter from which the depredation had come. Yet from that day until the present the secret has been as securely kept as that of the rifling of Lord Byron's letter from a vase at Abbotsford, or of the Duchess of Devonshire's portrait from the London Art-Gallery. In fact, the same mild generosity which had always characterized Mr. Mickley still came uppermost in the face of this trying disaster. He frequently sought to overlook the misdoings of petty thieves. A London pickpocket who had successfully practised upon him Oliver Twist's little game was only prosecuted because his testimony was insisted upon by the authorities. At the foot of the Pyramids he deplored the chastisement inflicted by an Arab sheik upon one of his native servants who had committed a similar depredation. His life-long friend the late William E. Dubois, of the United States Mint, has stated that "eight or nine years after the robbery a few very fine gold pieces of English coinage were offered for sale at the Mint cabinet-rooms. I was so well convinced that the labels were in his handwriting that I sent for him to come and see them. He could not deny the likeness, but seemed reluctant to entertain the subject at all."

During these years of study and research Mr. Mickley must not be thought of as a strict specialist. Side by side with his fascinating collection of coins there was an ever-growing library, the extent and value of which were never appreciated until his death. This accumulation was in itself an example of his cosmopolitan tastes. It was copious in local history, in biography, in music, in general literature, in costly and well-preserved black-letter editions, in illuminated missals dating back to the thirteenth century, and, above all else, in autographs. Of the latter, space cannot be spared here for anything approaching a full description. As some indication of their value, it may be mentioned that a letter of George Washington (the last he was known to write), dated six days before his death, was bought by George W. Childs, Esq., for one hundred and fifteen dollars. A letter of Abraham Lincoln to General McClellan fetched nearly one hundred dollars. There were also signed autograph letters of all the governors of Pennsylvania, of all the Presidents, and of all the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The latter group is rarely met with complete; and three of the scarcest names alone sold for as much as all the others put together. There were signatures also of about forty generals of the Revolutionary war, of both the British and American armies, and including Lafayette and Kosciusko. Both Napoleon and Josephine were represented; and the lovers of poetic justice will be glad to know that the latter name brought double that of the great emperor. In autographs of literary and musical celebrities the collection was extraordinarily rich, those of Goethe and Schiller, Beethoven and Mozart, being conspicuous. But the chief rarity was a large album formerly owned by Babet von Ployer. This contained, among other treasures, a manuscript of Haydn, believed to be the only one ever offered for sale in this country. It also contained an India-ink sketch of Mozart, drawn by his wife Constance. At the sale in 1878 this album was knocked down for one hundred and twenty-six dollars, although three hundred dollars had been previously refused for it. The Mozart letter, a particularly interesting specimen, was sold for fifty-two dollars to M.H. Cross, Esq.

Turning from the autographs to the books, we find still greater value and variety. The historical portion, especially where it referred to local subjects, was almost phenomenal. One precious lot comprised a complete set of the first daily newspaper of the United States, beginning with the "Pennsylvania Packet" in 1771, and continuing unbroken, through several changes of title and proprietorship, for one hundred and seven years. An amusing incident is related in connection with Mr. Mickley's purchase of the larger portion of this series,--"Poulson's Advertiser" from 1800 to 1840. When the wagon was driven to his door, loaded with the purchase, the housekeeper exclaimed, "What ever is to be done with all this truck?" Yet this "truck," a mine of wealth to the future historian, was sold after Mickley's death for eight hundred dollars. There were city directories of several editions for ninety-three years. The black-letter list was quite large, and there were more than thirty editions of the Bible, some of great rarity, and nearly all in a fine state of preservation.

From the time of the coin-robbery the older acquaintances of Mr. Mickley noticed a decided change in him. On the subject of coins, once so voluble, he grew very reticent. His business, which had for many years appeared rather a pastime than a task to him, grew irksome. After a period of uncertainty, he finally decided to close up his affairs and spend some years in foreign travel. In spite of advanced age, he was both physically and mentally well equipped for such a journey. His health had always been good. His temper seemed never to be ruffled. Of the French and German languages he was a master, and he had some knowledge of the Spanish, Italian, and Swedish. His previous extensive acquaintance with men of many nations and habits was kept fresh in mind by a remarkable memory. With all these advantages, the period of his travels was the most interesting of his life.

Mr. Mickley set sail on the 5th of June, 1869, being at that time a few months past his seventieth year. He remained abroad for three years, visiting every country in Europe, ascending the Nile to the first cataract, passing through the Suez Canal, and across a portion of Asia Minor and Palestine. He made two trips to Northern Sweden to behold the spectacle of the midnight sun. Being a week too late on the first season, he tried it again the following year. Passing through the entire length of the Gulf of Bothnia, and ascending the Tornea River, he entered Lapland, crossing the Arctic circle and penetrating the Arctic zone in a sledge-journey of seventy miles. The indomitable old traveller pushed on until he reached a small lumber-village named Pajala. On the night of June 23, 1871, crossing the river with a small party of Swedes and Finns, he ascended Mount Avasaxa, in Finland. At this altitude, he says, "the sky happened to be clear in the direction of the sun, and he shone in all his glory as the clock struck twelve."

During this prolonged absence he visited almost every considerable town in Germany, Holland, Italy, and England. The instant that he arrived at a town, he seemed to know the shortest cut to its museum. If there was an antiquarian in the place, he knew of it beforehand, and hastened either to make or renew an acquaintance. In the larger cities he was surrounded by these people, and he expressed unaffected surprise and pleasure at their attentions. He made visits of inspection to nearly every mint in Europe, having been commissioned by the Philadelphia Mint to make purchases of rare coins for its cabinet. Here the old passion appears to have blazed up again for a little while. It was an entire surprise to his family to discover among his possessions at his death the nucleus of a new collection, which was sold for about two thousand dollars.

Mr. Mickley made at this period some valued acquaintances. Among these was the Italian composer Mercadante. At the time of Mickley's visit, in April, 1870, the composer, who was also president of the Conservatoire in Naples, had been blind for eight years. "The old gentleman," says Mickley (who, by the way, was only two years his junior), "held out his hand and bade me welcome. I told him it would be a lasting pleasure to have shaken hands with so highly distinguished a man, whose name had long since been favorably known in America. At this his face brightened; he arose from the sofa, shook my hand cordially, wishing me health, happiness, and a safe voyage." Later, at Brussels, he called on M. Fétiss, the famous French musical critic and biographer. At that time, in his eighty-eighth year, Fétis was a fugitive from Paris, owing to the troubles of the Franco-Prussian war. Mr. Mickley's picture of the veteran _littérateur_ and critic is an engaging one. He says, "Considering his great age, Mr. Fetis is very active. He climbed up the stepladder to get books and to show me such as he considered the most rare and interesting. He is not only active in body, but he retains all the faculties of his mind. He appears to have a very happy disposition. While I was with him a continual smile was on his face, and it seemed to give him great pleasure to show me his books. He has been engaged in collecting them for over fifty years, and they have cost him a sum equal to three hundred thousand dollars, exclusive of a great many presents. The first book on music was printed in 1480." At Trieste he spent some time with the United States consul there, Mr. Thayer, of Boston, best known to musical and literary people as the author of an exhaustive Life of Beethoven, which has been under way for nearly thirty years and is not yet finished. Mr. Thayer showed his visitor all the historic data and personal relics which he had collected for the book, of which at that date only one volume had been published. Since then Mercadante and F?s have been gathered to their fathers. Their genial guest is also gone. The industrious Mr. Thayer lives, with three volumes of the Life completed, and every American, either literary or musical, will wish him well on to the conclusion of his _magnum opus_.

Mr. Mickley's plain personal habits remained almost unchanged by the many unforeseen exigencies of foreign travel. Once, at Rouen, six months after leaving home, he says, "Tasted wine for the first time in Europe, as the water here did not agree with me." A little later, at Munich, he remarks, "Drank beer for the first time." His pockets remained as accessible as heretofore to the nimble-fingered gentry. Upon his first visit to Naples, he records very naïvely, "Three silk handkerchiefs have been stolen from me here,--which is one more than in London." At Jaffa, on his way from Egypt to Palestine, besides the robbery of coins alluded to some time back, he lost a choice autograph manuscript of Mozart which had cost him two hundred and fifty francs at Salzburg. If careless in these particulars, he was very watchful and jealous of opportunities to uphold America's position in the world. He took special pains to inform the mint-masters at various points concerning the superior appliances and machinery of the Philadelphia Mint. On the way back from Lapland, while steaming southward along the upper waters of the Gulf of Bothnia, he writes, under date of July 4, 1871, "This being our national holiday, I put up my flag on the door of my berth, but was obliged to explain the meaning of the holiday to nearly all the passengers." While in England, he met at Manchester a barrister who had formerly been his guest in Philadelphia. This gentleman proposed to introduce him to an American lawyer then practising there. "I asked the name. He said it was Judah P. Benjamin. I declined the invitation."

Wherever Mr. Mickley journeyed, so long as any fresh acquisition of knowledge was to be gained the old traveller appeared insensible to fatigue. When halfway up the Great Pyramid an English group who were in his company stopped and insisted upon going no farther. He resolutely continued, and they, unwilling to see so aged a man out-distance them, followed reluctantly, until all reached the summit and congratulated each other on the famous view. In St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other Russian cities, which he visited in the winter season, he was equally untiring and undaunted. As a specimen of his accuracy of observation, he writes during his first journey in Italy, "I counted forty-six tunnels between Pisa and Bologna." Several severe accidents fell to his lot. In Rome, while exploring a dark, arched passage, he fell into "Cicero's Well," receiving severe bruises. In a street in Constantinople, where there are no sidewalks, he was knocked down by a runaway horse and taken up for dead, remaining insensible for several hours. The former of these mishaps occupies three lines in his diary; the latter, twelve lines. On his third visit to Leipsic he was confined in his room for several weeks with an attack of smallpox. But in regard to none of these accidents, although an aged man, thousands of miles from home, and entirely alone, does he betray any symptoms of apprehension. He merely adds, on the date of his recovery from the attack at Leipsic, "This sickness has detained me much longer than I had expected to stay."

In one of Mickley's trips he made a not unimportant contribution to musical history. Almost every student of instrumental music is acquainted with the name of Jacob Steiner or Stainer, the most successful of violin-makers outside of the Cremonese school of workmen. Of Steiner's life but little is known, and no biography of him extant in either French, German, or English contains either the date or place of his death. The account commonly given is that he separated from his wife and died in a convent. Mr. Mickley, with his accustomed perseverance, started out to see if this matter might not be cleared up. At Innspruck he inquired in vain for information. As Fétis and Forster both fixed his birthplace at Absom, a small village some twelve miles from Innspruck, Mickley repaired thither. For some time his errand was fruitless. He stopped in at a little shop where an old woman sold photographs, etc. "I asked her, 'Did you never hear of Jacob Steiner, the violin-maker?' She replied, 'There is no Steiner nor violin-maker living in this town.' I then said that a celebrated violin-maker of that name, of whom I desired some information, had lived there two hundred years before. She replied, quite seriously, 'I am not two hundred years old.'" A few minutes later, in the course of his walk, his eye fell upon an old church, the outer wall of which contained a number of stone tablets with inscriptions. A search of five minutes revealed the desired information. On a plain tablet Steiner's name was found, together with the information, given in very old-fashioned German, that he had died there in 1683, "at the rising of the sun."

The closing field of Mr. Mickley's travels covered Southern France and Spain, Lisbon, where he passed the winter of 1871-72, and Madrid. The weather being very severe, he was detained two months at Lisbon, where he engaged a teacher and took daily lessons in Portuguese. He had done the same at Stockholm the previous winter with the Swedish language, which he mastered pretty thoroughly. At Madrid he examined what he emphatically pronounced the finest collection of coins in the world, numbering one hundred and fifty thousand specimens. He adds, "This is the only place in Europe where the subject is properly understood. Alfonzo V., King of Aragon, in the fifteenth century, was the first person known to have collected coins for study or amusement, and Augustin, Archbishop of Tarragona, was the first writer on the subject. The science of numismatics is, therefore, of Spanish origin."

Mr, Mickley left Madrid in March, crossing the Pyrenees and arriving in Paris on the 24th of that month, his seventy-third birthday. He "made the tour of three hundred and sixty-three miles in twelve hours, without being in the least fatigued." After a few weeks passed in Paris and in revisiting friends in England, he sailed for home, arriving in Philadelphia June 5, 1872, exactly three years from the date of his departure.

It was surprising to his friends how little change the lapse of years and the somewhat rugged incidents of travel had made in Mr. Mickley. He quickly settled down, and, as nearly as possible, resumed his old habits. He bought himself a residence, but followed the Paris custom of taking his meals elsewhere. In the house he was entirely alone, even without a servant. After a time he showed some disposition to concede to "luxuries" which he had previously ignored. Carpets he had never used in his life, but he now admitted that they were very pleasant and comfortable, and ordered his house to be carpeted throughout. The arrangement of his library in the new quarters was a great pleasure, and took some time. Mr. Mickley was in no sense of the word a politician, but he voted pretty regularly. An incident connected with his last visit to the polls was amusing. Having been three years absent, a patriotic Hibernian, who kept the window-book and knew nothing of him, demanded to see his tax-receipt. The old gentleman went quietly home and brought back the desired document. He was next asked if he could read and write, which question, however, was not pressed. The last scene in Mr. Mickley's life was as quiet and peaceful as its whole tenor had been. On the afternoon of February 15, 1878, Mr. Carl Plagemann, the well-known musician and a friend of many years' standing, called at his house. While he waited, Mr. Mickley wrapped for him some violin-strings, the last work of his hands. He requested Mr. Plagemann to go with him that evening to visit another old friend,--Oliver Hopkinson, Esq., at whose house there were to be some quartettes. "I have a letter," he said, "from the Russian ambassador, a part of which I am unable to translate. A Russian lady is to play the piano there this evening, and I shall ask her to help me out." Mr. Plagemann could not go, and, as so often before, Mr. Mickley started out alone. Just before reaching the house of Mr. Hopkinson he was taken suddenly ill, and, chancing to be close by the residence of his physician, Dr. Meigs, he stopped there and rang the bell. As the door opened, he said in husky tones, "I am suffocating." He walked in and ascended the stairs without assistance. Then he said, "Take me to a window." As this was being done, he fell back insensible into the arms of the attendants, and, a few minutes later, breathed his last.

Thus, on the very western edge of fourscore years, ended this long and industrious, this peaceful and beautiful life. In our land of busy and constant action there have been few like it,--surely none happier. Serene at the close as it was placid in its course, its lot had been cast ever between quiet shores, which it enriched on either hand with its accumulated gifts of knowledge and of taste. And at the close of it all there could be no happier eulogy than the one modestly yet comprehensively delivered by his old and congenial friend William E. Dubois, himself since summoned to take the same mysterious journey. "In fine," says he, "Mr. Mickley seemed superior to any meanness; free from vulgar passions and habits, from pride and vanity, from evil speaking and harsh judging. He was eminently sincere, affable, kind, and gentle: in the best sense of the word he was a gentleman."

J. BUNTING.

* * * * *

ROSE ROMANCE.

Two roses, freshly sweet and rare,
Bloomed in the dewy morning
On neighboring bushes green and fair,
One garden-bed adorning.
"Ah!" sighed the pair, "what joy, what pride.
If on one branch together
We two were growing side by side
Through all this golden weather!"

There came a youth who roughly tore
The roses from their bowers,
And to his sweetheart proudly bore
The two fair, fragrant flowers.
Upon her bosom with delight
They bloomed,--but not forever:
They faded--ah! but, rapture bright,
They faded there together.

ADA NICHOLS.

* * * * *

THE WHITE WHATERS.

"Down with her! Hard!" came hoarsely through the mist.

An oil-skinned figure threw himself heavily upon the oar; the little craft rounded tremblingly up into the wind, hurling clouds of spray and foam aloft that were borne far away by the whistling breeze. For a moment the sail beat furiously, as if in protest at this infringement upon its privileges, then a second oil-skin--the cause of all this commotion--raised his arms, a steel spear flashed, a willowy pole trembled in the air, a quick movement, a roar of rushing waters, a shower of spray that drenched the craft, a sound of escaping steam or hissing rope, and a white whale had been struck by Captain Sol Gillis, of Bic.

Captain Gillis, as might be assumed, was not a native of the province of Quebec, but merely a carpet-bagger, who moved north in the summer and returned in early autumn about the time the wild geese went south, and all for reasons known only to himself. He hailed from down East, and voted in a small town not many miles from the historic shell-heaps and the ancient city of Pemaquid.

Our meeting with the down-East skipper was entirely one of accident. Wandering along the beach at Bic, we had come upon a boat, half dory, half nondescript, which from the possession of certain peculiarities was claimed by one of the party to be of Maine origin, and, to settle the dispute, a little house a few hundred yards higher up was visited.

It was like many others along shore,--single-storied, painted white, with green blinds, with a small garden in the rear, in which grew old-fashioned flowers and an abundance of "yarbs" that bespoke a mistress of Thompsonian leanings. A stack of oars, seine-sticks, and harpoon-handles leaned against the roof; gill-nets festooned the little piazza, while a great iron caldron, that had evidently done service on a New Bedford whaler, had been utilized by the good housewife to capture the rain-water from the shingled roof.

"Mornin' to ye, gentlemen. Been lookin' at the bot?" queried a tall, thin, red-faced man, with an unusually jolly expression, stepping out from a shed.

"Yes. We thought she was of Maine build," replied the disputant.

"Wall, so she is," said the mariner,--"so she is; and there ain't none like her within forty mile of Bic. I'm of Maine build myself," he added. "But I ain't owner. I'm sorter second mate to Sol Grillis; sailed with him forty year come Christmas. Don't ye know him? What! don't know Sol Gillis!" And a look of incredulity crept into the old man's eye. "Why, I thought Sol was knowed from Bic to Boothbay all along shore. But come in, do. I know ye're parched," continued the friend of the skipper, dropping his palm and needle and motioning the visitors toward the little sitting-room. "Mother," he called, "here's some folks from daown aour way."

As the old man spoke, a large-framed woman appeared in the door-way, holding on to the sides for support, and bade us welcome. Her eyes were turned upward, and had a far-away look, as if from long habit of gazing out to sea, but, as we drew nearer, we saw that she was blind.

Leading the way into the kitchen, which was resplendent with shining pans and a glistening stove, all the work of the thrifty but blind housewife, she began to entertain us in her simple manner, and described a model of a full-rigged ship that rested on a table, though she had never seen it, with an exactness that would have done credit to many a sailor: even the ropes and rigging were pointed out, and all their uses dwelt upon with a tenderness strangely foreign to the subject.

"And Captain Sam built it?" we asked.

"No, no," replied the old lady, turning her head to hide a tear that stole from the sightless eyes. "It's all we've got to remember aour boy John. He built her and rigged her. He was his mother's boy, but--"

"He went down on the Grand Banks in the gale of '75," broke in her husband hoarsely.

"Yes," continued the wife, "me and Sam's all alone. It's all we've got, and Sam brings it up every summer as sorter company like. Ye're friends of Captain Sol, I guess," she said, brightening up after a moment. "No?" and she looked in the direction of the captain, as if for a solution of the mystery. "Naow, ye don't tell me that ye ain't acquainted with Captain Sol, and ye're from aour way, too? Why," she continued earnestly, "Sol's been hog-reeve in aour taown ten years runnin'; and as for selec'-man, he'll die in office. Positions of trust come jest as nat'ral to him as reefin' in a gale of wind. Him and my man tuck to one another from the first."

"Then you were not townsmen always," we suggested.

"No, we wa'n't," was the reply.

"My man and Sol met under kinder unusual circumstances. Tell 'em haow it was, Sam."

The old sailor was sitting on the wood-box, shaping a row-lock from a piece of white pine, and, when thus addressed, looked up with a blank expression, as if he had been on a long search for ideas and had returned without them.

"He gits wanderin' in his ideas when he sets his mind on the '75 gale," whispered the old lady. "Tell 'em abaout yer meetin' Captain Sol, Sam," she repeated.

"Me and Sol met kinder cur'us," began the captain. "That year I was first mate of the Marthy Dutton, of Kennebec; and on this identical v'yage we was baound daown along with a load of coal. In them days three was a full-handed crew for a fore-an'-after, and that's all we had,--captain, mate, and cook, and a dog and cat. One evenin',--I reckon we was ten miles to the south'ard of Boon Island,--it was my trick at the wheel, and all hands had turned in. It was blowin' fresh from the east'ard, and I had everything on her I could git. I reckon it was nigh on ter two o'clock, and as clear as it is to-day, when the fust thing I knowed the schooner was on her beam ends. She gave a kind of groan like, pitched for'ard, and down she went, takin' everything with her; and, afore I knowed what was the matter, I found myself floatin' ten miles from shore. I see it was no use, but I thought I'd make a break for it: so I got off my boots and ile-skins in the water, and struck aout for shore, that I could see every once in a while on a rise.

"Wall, to make a long story short, I reckon I was in the water a matter o' four hours, when I see the lights of a schooner comin' daown on me. I hailed, and she heard me, ran up in the wind, put aout a bot, and Sol Gillis, the skipper, yanked me in. I couldn't have held aout ten minutes longer. So Sol and me has been tol'able thick ever since."

"Here he comes naow," said the matron, whose quick ear had caught the sound of approaching footsteps. "Sam, set aout my pennyroyal, will ye? Ye see," she added apologetically, "Sol is literary, and when he comes raound he gives us all the news, and there is sech goin's on in the papers nowadays that it jest upsots my nerves to hear him and Sam talkin' 'em over. Sech murders, riots, wrackin', and killin' of folks! If it wa'n't for a dish of tea I 'low I couldn't hear to it." And the good woman held out her hand to a burly fisherman in a full suit of oil-skins, and presented him to the visitors as Sam's friend, Captain Sol Gillis.

"I'm a white-whaler at present, gentlemen," said the captain, with a hearty laugh that was so contagious that all hands joined in, scarcely knowing why.

He was a tall, robust specimen of a down-Easter, his open face reddened by long battling with wind and weather, and shaved close except beneath the chin, from which depended an enormous beard that served as a scarf in winter and even now was tucked into his jacket.

"It's a curious thing, naow, for the captain and mate of a coaster to be in furrin parts a-whalin'; but we find it pays,--eh, Sam?" And Captain Sol closed one eye and looked wisely for a second at his friend, upon which the two broke into hearty laughter that had a ring of smuggled brandy and kerosene in it, though perhaps it was only a ring, after all.

"Kin yaou go whalin'?" said the captain in reply to a question of one of the visitors. "Why, sartin. White-whalin's gittin' fashionable. There's heaps o' chaps come daown here from Montreal and Quebec and want to go aout: so I take 'em. Some shoots, and some harpoons, and abaout the only thing I've seen 'em ketch yet is a bad cold; but there's excitement in it, --heaps of it: ain't there, Sam?"

"I ain't denyin' of it," replied the latter. "What's sport for some is hard work for others. Work I calls it."

"Wall, as I say," continued the skipper, "white-whalin' is gittin' fashionable, so in course there ain't no hard work abaout it; and if yaou will go, why, I'm goin' aout now, me and Sam. The only thing, it's dampish like; but perhaps mother here kin rig yaou aout."

Half an hour later the two landsmen were metamorphosed into very respectable whalers, and, with the two captains, were running the whale-boat down the sands of Bic into the dark waters of the St. Lawrence. The light sail was set, and soon we were bounding away in the direction of Mille Vaches, Captain Sam at the oar that constituted the helm, and Captain Sol in the bow, with harpoon at hand, ready for the appearance of game.

The white whale, or Beluga, is extremely common at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, and is found a considerable distance up the river beyond Tadousac. The oil is in constant demand for delicate machinery, and Beluga leather, made from the tanned hide, is manufactured into a great variety of articles of necessity and luxury.

In appearance these whales are the most attractive of all the cetaceans. They are rarely over twenty feet in length, more commonly fifteen, of a pure creamy color, sometimes shaded with a blue tint, but in the dark water they appear perfectly white, perhaps by contrast, and seem the very ghosts of whales, darting about, or rising suddenly, showing only the rounded, dome-shaped head.

The Beluga is a toothed whale, in contradistinction to those that are supplied with the whalebone-like arrangement that characterizes the right whales: consequently its food consists of fish and perhaps squid. To enable it to capture such prey it must be endowed with remarkable powers of speed. The motor is the great horizontal tail, powerful strokes of which force the animal; through the water and enable it to leap high into the air in its gambols. The pectoral fins are small and of little use in swimming. The head is the most remarkable feature. It is the only instance in this group of animals where this organ appears at all distinct from the body. By viewing the creature in profile, a suggestion of neck may be seen, and it is claimed that there is more or less lateral motion,--that the head can be moved from side to side to a limited extent. The outlines of the face are shapely, the forehead rising in a dome-like projection and rounding off in graceful lines, so that the head resembles to some extent that of our common _Balaena Cisarctica_.

In their movements the Belugas are remarkably active, and are very playful, --leaping into the air in their love-antics, rolling over and over, chasing each other, and displaying in many ways their wonderful agility. They often follow vessels in schools of forty and fifty, and old whalers claim that they utter a whistling sound that can be heard distinctly above the water. The young, sometimes two, but generally one, are at first brown in color, later assuming a leaden hue, then becoming mottled, and finally attaining the cream-white tint of the adult. The calves are frequently seen nursing,--the mother lying upon the surface and rolling gently.

The Beluga has a wide geographical range, being found upon our northern and northwestern shores in great numbers. Their southern limit seems to be the St. Lawrence, and in search of food they venture up this river beyond the mouth of the Saguenay, and often in water but little over their own depth. On the western coast they also enter the great rivers, and have been captured up the Yukon seven hundred miles from its mouth. In their columnar movements they somewhat resemble the porpoise,--long processions being frequently seen, composed of three in a row, perhaps led by a single whale.

Among the Samoyeds, at Chabanova, on the Siberian coast, the white-whale fisheries amount to fifteen hundred or two thousand pood of train-oil a year. On the coasts of Nova Zembla and Spitzbergen they are captured by enormous nets made of very stout material; and the Tromsoe vessels alone have taken in a single season over two thousand one hundred and sixty-seven white whales, valued at about thirty thousand dollars. Magdalen a Bay is a favorite place for them, and often three hundred are taken at a single haul in the powerful nets. Here and in most of the northern localities the entire body is utilized,--the carcass being used in the manufacture of guano. So perfectly are the bodies preserved by the cold of these northern regions that if they cannot be removed at the time of capture they are secured in the ensuing season.

As the boat reached mid-stream, where the wind was blowing against the current, great rollers were met with, that tossed the light craft about like a ball. But this was evidently the play-ground of the Beluga, and dead ahead the white forms were seen darting about in the inky water with startling distinctness, while faint puffs were occasionally borne down on the wind.

Gradually we neared them, and suddenly a white dome appeared on the weather bow. Then came the command and ensuing scene chronicled at the commencement of this paper.

We were perfectly familiar with whaling-terms, and as the game was struck we construed Captain Sam's impressive "git aft" to mean "starn all," and even in that moment of stumbling and drenching felt a sense of disappointment in the suppression of a time-honored term. To omit "There she blows!" was enough; but to substitute "git aft" for "starn all" was a libel on the chroniclers of the "Whaler's Own Book."

There was little time, however, for regrets. Our combined weight had raised the bow a trifle, yet not enough to prevent the sea from coming in; and, as the skipper, who was laboring with the steering-oar, said, the small whaler was "hoopin' along, takin' everything as it came, and askin' no questions." Now by the slight slacking of the line we were high on a wave, the crest of which was dashed in our faces in the mad race; now down in a hollow, taking the next sea bodily and plunging through it, causing the oars and harpoons to rattle as if they were the very bones of the boat shaking in fear and terror.

In a short time she was a third full of water, and the amateur whalers were invited to man the pumps--namely, two tin basins--and bale the St. Lawrence out as fast as it came in. The maddened animal soon carried us beyond the area of heavy seas, and preparations were made for taking in the slack. The boat was still rushing along at an eight-knot rate; and, as the whale showed no signs of weakening, it was Captain Sam's opinion that nothing short of the lance would stop him.

"Jest lay holt of the line, will ye?" sung out Captain Sol, passing the slack aft, and four pairs of arms hauled the boat nearer the game, that was far ahead. At first this only spurred the creature to further endeavors; but the steady pull soon told, and, after an amount of labor that can only be compared to sawing a cord of wood with a dull implement, the white head of the Beluga came in sight.

"Steady, now!" shouted Captain Sol, releasing his hold and picking up the lance. "Now, then, work her ahead."

A final haul, and the boat was fairly alongside of the fleeing animal, careening violently under its rapid rushes; and, in response to the order "Git to wind'ard," we sprang to the weather rail. A moment of suspense, a quick motion of the lance, and the great white body of the whale rose from the water and fell heavily back, beating it into foam in its convulsive struggles.

"She dies hard," said Captain Sol, shaking the water from the creases of his oil-skin as the boat rounded to at a safe distance from the dying whale. "But," he continued, lighting a match by biting the sulphur and puffing violently at a short, black pipe, "that ain't nothing to what they do sometimes: is it, Sam?"

"I ain't denyin' of it," was the reply of that individual, who was now sculling the boat about the whale in a great circle.

"I've seen," continued the skipper, "a white whale smash a bot so clean that ye'd thought it had been through a mill; and it was a caution haow we didn't go with it. That was a curious year," he added. "Something happened to drive the whales up here so thick that the hull river was alive with 'em, and of course we was for reapin' the harvest. When we struck the rip-rap--as they call the tide agin' the wind--it was jest alive with 'em, puffin' and snortin' on all sides. I had three harpoons aboard, besides a rifle, and in a minute I had two foul, with buoys after 'em, and as one big feller came up alongside to blow I let him have it with the rifle.

"Naow," he went on, "whether they heard it or not I can't say, but I heard a yell from Sam jest in time to look and see a whale rise I'll 'low twenty foot clean out of the water. Then there was a kind of a rush, and Sam and me went down, and when we riz it was gone. The critter had hopped clean over that bot as slick as nothing. That kinder tuck the peartness aout of us, so to speak; but later in the day I got aout the gun ag'in, havin' broke the lance, and in killin' the critter she jumped on the bot, and--wall, Sam and me we lit aout, and was picked up after a spell; but that bot, there wasn't enough of her to make kindlin'-wood of.

"They ain't vicious like," continued the skipper, "but clumsy, and if yaou git in the way ye're bound to git hurted. Round the bend at Bic Island one came ashore one time and got left every tide, so she was aout of water an hour or so every day. Heaps of city folks went to see her, and one chap came along and let on haow she couldn't be alive aout of water, and poked her like with a stick. Wall, it ain't for me to say haow many feet she knocked him, but when she fetched him with her flukes it was a Tuesday, and I guess he thought he'd reached the turnin'-p'int of Friday when he hauled himself aout of the mud.

"No, they won't exactly live aout of water, but they'll stand it a like of three weeks if yaou splash 'em every hour or so. They sent one to England that way. They ain't fish. Whales' milk's good, if cream is.

"But the best bit of whalin'," continued the communicative Captain Sol, "that I ever see in these 'ere parts was done by that identical old chap in the starn there."

"When Sol ain't talkin', gentlemen," retorted the person thus alluded to, "ye'll know he's sick,"

"Wall," said Captain Sol, laughing, "I'll spin the yarn, and yaou kin go back on it if yaou kin. As I was sayin', we was aout one day I think a couple o' miles below Barnaby Island. I was a-mummin' for'ard, kinder sleep-in' on and by, and Sam at the helm, when we see a bot a-slidin' into the ripple right ahead of us, and in a minute a couple of white heads was dodgin' up a little to the wind'ard. Sam trimmed the sheet and hauled the Howlin' Mary--that's what we called the bot---on the wind, and the other bot did the same, both of us makin' for the same spot. I see it was nip and tuck; and, knowin' that Sam was a master-hand, I says. ' Sam, yaou take the iron.' So we shifted.

"The other bot had a trifle the weather-gage of us, but both of us, mind ye, makin' for where we thought the critter was comin' up to blow, and in a minute, sure enough, up it come. This 'ere other bot shot right across aour bows; but, Lord bless ye, it would take a proper good Injun to beat Sam, for he up, hauls back, and let fly the harpoon clean over the other hot, takin' the critter right alongside the blow-hole so neat that the line fell across the other bot.--Naow, deny it if yaou kin," said Captain Sol, turning to his friend.

"Ye're a master-hand at talkin'," retorted Captain Sam. "I ain't denyin' of it; but it was luck, good luck, that's all."

By this time the white whale had succumbed, and lay upon the surface motionless and dead; and upon the boat being hauled alongside the huge creature was taken in tow and soon stranded upon the beach, where the valuable parts were secured,--the liver and blubber for the oil, and the thick, white skin that was to be tanned and made into leather or used in the manufacture of various articles.