Chapter IV: Preface (4)

"Do with it? Study it, experiment on it, put it under the microscope, and day by day watch the growth of its various parts. At first it is little more than a mass of cells. Then I notice that these cells begin to take a definite shape, and blood vessels appear in them. Then the muscles begin to appear."

"Very interesting, I dare say."

"You don't seem to think so, by your tone. But look in this vase: here are several tadpoles with the most apologetic of tails--mere stumps, in fact. I cut them off nine days ago."

"Will they grow again?"

"Perfectly; for, although the frog dispenses with a tail almost as soon as he reaches the frog form, the tadpole needs his tail to swim with; and when by any accident he loses it, Nature kindly supplies him with another."

"Yes, yes," added Syntax, glad to feel himself once more among things of which he knew something; "just like the lobster or the crab, you know. They tear off their legs and arms in a most reckless way, and yet they always grow new ones again."

"Would you like to know what has become of the tails which I cut off from these fellows?"

"Aren't they dead?"

"Not at all. Alive and kicking."

"Alive after nine days? Oh! oh!"

"Here they are, in this glass. It is exactly nine days since they were cut off, and I have been watching them daily under the microscope. I assure you that I have seen them _grow_, not _larger_, indeed, but develop more and more, muscle fibers appearing each day where before there were none at all."

"Come, now, you are trying to see what a fool you can make of me."

"I am perfectly serious. The discovery is none of mine. It was made by M. Vulpian in Paris. He says that the tails live many days--as many as eighteen in one instance; but I have never kept mine alive more than eleven. He says, moreover, that they not only grow, as I have said, but that they seem to possess feeling, for they twist about with a rapid swimming movement when irritated."

"Well, but I say, how _could_ they live when separated from the body? Our arms or legs don't live; the lobster's legs don't live."

"Quite true. But in those cases we have limbs of a complex organization, which require a complex apparatus in order to sustain their life. They must have blood, the blood must circulate."

"Stop, stop! I don't want to understand why our arms can't live apart from our bodies. They don't. The fact is enough for me. I want to know why the tail of a tadpole can live apart from the body."

"It _can_. Is not the fact enough for you in that case also? Well, I was going to tell you the reason. The tail will live apart from the body only so long as it retains its early immature form. If you cut it off from a tadpole which is old enough to have lost its external gills a week or more, the tail will _not_ live more than three or four days. And every tail will die as soon as it reaches the point in its development which requires the circulation of the blood as a necessary condition."

"But where does it get food?"

"That is more than I can say. I don't know that it wants food. You know that reptiles can live without food a wonderful length of time."

"Really, I begin to think there is more in these little beasts than I ever dreamed of. But it must take a great deal of study to get at these facts."

"Not more than to get at any of the other open secrets of Nature. But, since you are interested, look at these tails as the tadpoles come bobbing against the side of the glass. Do you see how they are covered with little white spots?"

"No."

"Look closer. All over the tail there are tiny, cotton-like spots. Take a lens, if your eye isn't sharp enough. There, now you see them."

"Yes; I see a sort of _fluff_ scattered about."

"That fluff is an immense colony of parasites. Let us place the tadpole under the microscope, and you will see each spot turn out to be a multitude of elegant and active animals, having bodies not unlike a crystal goblet supported on an extremely long and flexible stem, and having round their rim or mouth a range of long, delicate hairs, the motion of which gives a wheel-like aspect, and makes an eddy in the water which brings food to the animal."

"This is really interesting! How active they are! How they shrink up, and then, unwinding their twisted stems, expand again! What's the name of this thing?"

"_Vorticella_. It may be found growing on water fleas, plants, decayed wood, or these tadpoles. People who study the animalcules are very fond of this Vorticella."

"Well, I never could have believed such a patch of fluff could turn out a sight like this: I could watch it for an hour. But what are those small yellowish things sticking on the side of these parasites?"

"Those, my dear Syntax, are also parasites."

"What, parasites living on parasites?"

"Why not? Nature is economical. Don't you live on beef, and mutton, and fish? Don't these beeves, muttons, and fishes live on vegetables and animals? Don't the vegetables and animals live on other organic matters? Eat and be eaten, is one law: live and let live, is another."

The learned Doctor remained thoughtful; then he screwed up one side of his face into the most frightful wrinkles, while with the eye of the other he resumed his examination of the Vorticella.

--_George Henry Lewes._

From the Painting by Rosa Bonheur. Engraved by Horace Baker.

The Lions.
]

THE GLOVE AND THE LIONS.

King Francis was a hearty king, and loved a royal sport,
And one day, as his lions fought, sat looking on the court;
The nobles filled the benches, with the ladies in their pride,
And 'mongst them sat the Count de Lorge, with one for whom he
sighed:
And truly 'twas a gallant thing to see that crowning show,--
Valor and love, and a king above, and the royal beasts below.

Ramped and roared the lions, with horrid laughing jaws;
They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their
paws;
With wallowing might and stifled roar, they rolled on one another,
Till all the pit, with sand and mane, was in a thunderous smother;
The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air:
Said Francis, then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here than
there."

De Lorge's love o'erheard the king, a beauteous, lively dame,
With smiling lips and sharp bright eyes, which always seemed the
same;
She thought, "The Count, my lover, is brave as brave can be,
He surely would do wondrous things to show his love of me;
King, ladies, lovers, all look on; the occasion is divine;
I'll drop my glove, to prove his love; great glory will be mine."

She dropped her glove, to prove his love; then looked at him, and
smiled;
He bowed, and in a moment leaped among the lions wild:
The leap was quick, return was quick, he soon regained the place,
Then threw the glove, but not with love, right in the lady's face.
"In faith," cried Francis, "rightly done!" and he rose from where he
sat;
"No love," quoth he, "but vanity sets love a task like that."

--_Leigh Hunt._

TRUE GROWTH.

It is not growing like a tree
In bulk, doth make man better be;
Or standing like an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere;
A lily of a day
Is fairer far in May,
Although it fall and die that night--
It was the plant and flower of Light.
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures life may perfect be.

--_Ben Jonson._

THE SHIPWRECK.

I.

Having made up my mind to go down to Yarmouth, I went round to the coach office and took the box seat on the mail. In the evening I started, by that conveyance, down the road.

"Don't you think that a very remarkable sky?" I asked the coachman, in the first stage out of London. "I don't remember to have seen one like it."

"Nor I--not equal to it," he replied. "That's wind, sir; there'll be mischief done at sea, I expect before long."

It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a color like the color of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds tossed up into most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way and were frightened. There had been wind all day; and it was rising then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew harder.

But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night (it was then late in September, when the nights were not short) the leaders turned about, or came to a dead stop; and we were often in apprehension that the coach would be blown over.

When the day broke, it blew harder and harder. I had been in Yarmouth when the seamen said it blew great guns, but I had never known the like of this, or anything approaching to it. We came to Ipswich--very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the market place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the innyard while we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped off a high church tower and flung into a by-street, which they then blocked up. Others had to tell of country people, coming in from neighboring villages, who had seen great trees lying torn out of the earth, and whole ricks scattered about the roads and fields. Still there was no abatement in the storm, but it blew harder.

As we struggled on, nearer and nearer to the sea, from which the mighty wind was blowing dead on shore, its force became more and more terrific. Long before we saw the sea, its spray was on our lips, and showered salt rain upon us. The water was out, over miles and miles of the flat country adjacent to Yarmouth; and every sheet and puddle lashed its banks, and had its stress of little breakers setting heavily towards us. When we came within sight of the sea, the waves on the horizon, caught at intervals above the rolling abyss, were like glimpses of another shore with towers and buildings. When at last we got into the town, the people came out to their doors, all aslant, and with streaming hair, making a wonder of the mail that had come through such a night.

I put up at the old inn, and went down to look at the sea, staggering along the street, which was strewn with sand and seaweed, and with flying blotches of sea foam; afraid of falling slates and tiles; and holding by people I met at angry corners. Coming near the beach, I saw, not only the boatmen, but half the people of the town, lurking behind buildings; some now and then braving the fury of the storm to look away to sea, and blown sheer out of their course in trying to get zigzag back.

Joining these groups, I found bewailing women whose husbands were away in herring or oyster boats, which there was too much reason to think might have foundered before they could run in anywhere for safety. Grizzled old sailors were among the people, shaking their heads as they looked from water to sky, and muttering to one another; shipowners excited and uneasy; children huddling together, and peering into older faces; even stout mariners disturbed and anxious, leveling their glasses at the sea from behind places of shelter, as if they were surveying an enemy.

The tremendous sea itself, when I could find sufficient pause to look at it, in the agitation of the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed themselves to pieces before they reached the land, every fragment of the late whole seemed possessed by the full might of its wrath, rushing to be gathered to the composition of another monster. Undulating hills were changed to valleys, undulating valleys (with a storm bird sometimes skimming through them) were lifted up to hills; masses of water shivered and shook the beach with a booming sound; every shape tumultuously rolled on, as soon as made, to change its shape and place, and beat another shape and place away; the ideal shore on the horizon, with its towers and buildings, rose and fell; the clouds flew fast and thick; I seemed to see a rending and upheaving of all nature.

Not finding my old friend, Ham, among the people whom this memorable wind--for it is still remembered down there as the greatest ever known to blow upon that coast--had brought together, I made my way to his house. It was shut; and as no one answered to my knocking, I went by back ways and by-lanes to the yard where he worked. I learned there that he had gone to Lowestoft, to meet some sudden exigency of ship repairing in which his skill was required; but that he would be back to-morrow morning in good time.

I went back to the inn; and when I had washed and dressed, and tried to sleep, but in vain, it was five o'clock in the afternoon. I had not sat five minutes by the coffee-room fire, when the waiter, coming to stir it as an excuse for talking, told me that two colliers had gone down, with all hands, a few miles away; and that some other ships had been seen laboring hard in the Roads, and trying in great distress to keep off shore. "Mercy on them, and on all poor sailors," said he, "if we had another night like the last!"

I was very much depressed in spirits, very solitary, and felt an uneasiness in Ham's not being there, disproportionate to the occasion. I was seriously affected, without knowing how much, by late events, and my exposure to the fierce wind had confused me. There was that jumble in my thoughts and recollections that I had lost the clear arrangement of time and distance. Thus, if I had gone out into the town, I should not have been surprised, I think, to encounter some one who I knew must be then in London. So to speak, there was in these respects a curious inattention in my mind. Yet it was busy, too, with all the remembrances the place naturally awakened, and they were particularly distinct and vivid.

In this state, the waiter's dismal intelligence about the ships immediately connected itself, without any effort of my volition, with my uneasiness about Ham. I was persuaded that possibly he would attempt to return from Lowestoft by sea, and be lost. This grew so strong with me, that I resolved to go back to the yard before I took my dinner, and ask the boat builder if he thought his attempting to return by sea at all likely. If he gave me the least reason to think so, I would go over to Lowestoft and prevent it by bringing him with me.

I hastily ordered my dinner, and went back to the yard. I was none too soon; for the boat builder, with a lantern in his hand, was locking the yard gate. He quite laughed when I asked him the question, and said there was no fear; no man in his senses, or out of them, would put off in such a gale of wind, least of all Ham Peggotty, who had been born to seafaring.

I went back to the inn. The howl and roar, the rattling of the doors and windows, the rumbling in the chimneys, the apparent rocking of the very house that sheltered me, and the prodigious tumult of the sea, were more fearful than in the morning. But there was now a great darkness besides; and that invested the storm with new terrors, real and fanciful.

I could not eat, I could not sit still, I could not continue steadfast in anything. Something within me, faintly answering to the storm without, tossed up the depths of my memory and made a tumult in them. Yet, in all the hurry of my thoughts, wild running with thundering sea, the storm and my uneasiness regarding Ham were always in the foreground.

My dinner went away almost untasted, and I tried to refresh myself with a glass or two of wine. In vain. I fell into a dull slumber before the fire, without losing my consciousness either of the uproar out of doors or of the place in which I was. Both became overshadowed by a new undefinable horror; and when I awoke--or rather when I shook off the lethargy that bound me in my chair--my whole frame thrilled with objectless and unintelligible fear.

I walked to and fro, tried to read an old gazetteer, listened to the awful noises; looked at faces, scenes, and figures in the fire. At length the steady ticking of the undisturbed clock on the wall tormented me to that degree that I resolved to go to bed.

It was reassuring, on such a night, to be told that some of the inn servants had agreed together to sit up until morning. I went to bed, exceedingly weary and heavy; but on my lying down all such sensations vanished, as if by magic, and I was broad awake, with every sense refined.

For hours I lay there, listening to the wind and water; imagining now that I heard shrieks out at sea, now that I distinctly heard the firing of signal guns, and now the fall of houses in the town. I got up several times and looked out, but could see nothing except the reflection in the window panes of the faint candle I had left burning, and of my own haggard face looking in at me from the black void.

At length my restlessness attained to such a pitch, that I hurried on my clothes, and went downstairs. In the large kitchen, where I dimly saw bacon and ropes of onions hanging from the beams, the watchers were clustered together, in various attitudes, about a table, purposely moved away from the great chimney, and brought near the door. A pretty girl who had her ears stopped with her apron, and her eyes upon the door, screamed when I appeared, supposing me to be a spirit; but the others had more presence of mind, and were glad of an addition to their company. One man, referring to the topic they had been discussing, asked me whether I thought the souls of the collier crews who had gone down were out in the storm?

I remained there, I dare say two hours. There was a dark gloom in my solitary chamber when I at length returned to it; but I was tired now, and, getting into bed again, fell off a tower and down a precipice into the depths of sleep. I have an impression that for a long time, though I dreamed of being elsewhere and in a variety of scenes, it was always blowing in my dream. At length I lost that feeble hold upon reality, and was engaged with two dear friends, but who they were I don't know, at the siege of some town in a roar of cannonading.

II.

The thunder of the cannon was so loud and incessant, that I could not hear something I much desired to hear, until I made a great exertion, and awoke. It was broad day--eight or nine o'clock; the storm raging, in lieu of the batteries; and some one knocking and calling at my door.

"What is the matter?" I cried.

"A wreck! close by!"

I sprang out of bed, and asked what wreck?

From the Painting by A. Marlon. Carbon by Braun, Clement & Co.
Engraved by Walter Aikman.

The Shipwreck.
]

"A schooner, from Spain or Portugal, laden with fruit and wine. Make haste, sir, if you want to see her! Its thought she'll go to pieces every moment."

The excited voice went clamoring along the staircase; and I wrapped myself in my clothes as quickly as I could, and ran into the street. Numbers of people were there before us, all running in one direction, to the beach. I ran the same way, outstripping a good many, and soon came facing the wild sea.

The wind might by this time have lulled a little, though not more sensibly than if the cannonading I had dreamed of had been diminished by the silencing of half a dozen guns out of hundreds. But the sea, having upon it the additional agitation of the whole night, was infinitely more terrific than when I had seen it last. Every appearance it had then presented bore the expression of being _swelled_; and the height to which the breakers rose, and, looking over one another, bore one another down, and rolled in, in interminable hosts, was most appalling.

In the difficulty of hearing anything but wind and waves, and in the crowd, and the unspeakable confusion, and my first breathless attempts to stand against the weather, I was so confused that I looked out to sea for the wreck, and saw nothing but the foaming heads of the great waves. A half-dressed boatman standing next me pointed with his bare arm (a tattooed arrow on it, pointing in the same direction) to the left. Then, O great Heaven, I saw it, close in upon us!

One mast was broken short off, six or eight feet from the deck, and lay over the side, entangled in a maze of sail and rigging; and all that ruin, as the ship rolled and beat,--which she did without a moment's pause, and with a violence quite inconceivable,--beat the side as if it would stave it in. Some efforts were even then being made to cut this portion of the wreck away; for as the ship, which was broadside on, turned towards us in her rolling, I plainly descried her people at work with axes, especially one active figure, with long curling hair, conspicuous among the rest. But a great cry, which was audible even above the wind and water, rose from the shore at this moment: the sea, sweeping over the rolling wreck, made a clean breach, and carried men, spars, casks, planks, bulwarks, heaps of such toys, into the boiling surge.

The second mast was yet standing, with the rags of a rent sail, and a wild confusion of broken cordage, flapping to and fro. The ship had struck once, the same boatman hoarsely said in my ear, and then lifted in and struck again. I understood him to add that she was parting amidships, and I could readily suppose so, for the rolling and beating were too tremendous for any human work to suffer long. As he spoke, there was another great cry of pity from the beach: four men arose with the wreck out of the deep, clinging to the rigging of the remaining mast; uppermost, the active figure with the curling hair.

There was a bell on board; and as the ship rolled and dashed, like a desperate creature driven mad, now showing us the whole sweep of her deck, as she turned on her beam ends towards the shore, now nothing but her keel, as she sprung wildly over and turned towards the sea, the bell rang; and its sound, the knell of those unhappy men, was borne towards us on the wind. Again we lost her, and again she rose. Two men were gone. The agony on shore increased. Men groaned and clasped their hands; women shrieked, and turned away their faces. Some ran wildly up and down along the beach, crying for help where no help could be. I found myself one of these, frantically imploring a knot of sailors whom I knew, not to let those two lost creatures perish before our eyes.

They were making out to me, in an agitated way, that the lifeboat had been bravely manned an hour ago, and could do nothing; and that as no man would be so desperate as to attempt to wade off with a rope, and establish a communication with the shore, there was nothing left to try; when I noticed that some new sensation moved the people on the beach, and saw them part, and Ham come breaking through them to the front.

I ran to him, as well as I know, to repeat my appeal for help. But distracted though I was by a sight so new to me and terrible, the determination in his face, and his look out to sea, awoke me to a knowledge of his danger. I held him back with both arms, and implored the men with whom I had been speaking not to listen to him, not to do murder, not to let him stir from off that sand.

Another cry arose from the shore; and, looking towards the wreck, we saw the cruel sail, with blow on blow, beat off the lower of the two men, and fly up in triumph round the active figure left alone upon the mast.

Against such a sight, and against such determination as that of the calmly desperate man who was already accustomed to lead half the people present, I might as hopefully have intreated the wind. "Mas'r Davy," he said cheerily, grasping me by both hands, "if my time is come, 'tis come. If't an't, I'll bide it. Lord above bless you, and bless all! Mates, make me ready! I'm a going off!"

I was swept away, but not unkindly, to some distance, where the people around me made me stay; urging, as I confusedly perceived, that he was bent on going, with help or without, and that I should endanger the precautions for his safety by troubling those with whom they rested. I don't know what I answered, or what they rejoined, but I saw hurry on the beach, and men running with ropes from a capstan that was there, and penetrating into a circle of figures that hid him from me. Then I saw him standing alone, in a seaman's frock and trowsers, a rope in his hand or slung to his wrist, another round his body; and several of the best men holding, at a little distance, to the latter, which he laid out himself, slack upon the shore, at his feet.

The wreck, even to my unpracticed eye, was breaking up. I saw that she was parting in the middle, and that the life of the solitary man upon the mast hung by a thread. Still he clung to it.

Ham watched the sea, standing alone, with the silence of suspended breath behind him, and the storm before, until there was a great retiring wave, when, with a backward glance at those who held the rope, which was made fast round his body, he dashed in after it, and in a moment was buffeting with the water--rising with the hills, falling with valleys, lost beneath the foam; then drawn again to land. They hauled in hastily.

He was hurt. I saw blood on his face from where I stood; but he took no thought of that. He seemed hurriedly to give them some directions for leaving him more free, or so I judged from the motion of his arm--and was gone, as before.

And now he made for the wreck--rising with the hills, falling with the valleys, lost beneath the rugged foam, borne in towards the shore, borne on towards the ship, striving hard and valiantly. The distance was nothing, but the power of the sea and wind made the strife deadly.

At length he neared the wreck. He was so near that with one more of his vigorous strokes he would be clinging to it,--when a high, green, vast hillside of water, moving on shoreward from beyond the ship, he seemed to leap up into it with a mighty bound, and the ship was gone!

Some eddying fragments I saw in the sea, as if a mere cask had been broken, in running to the spot where they were hauling in. Consternation was in every face. They drew him to my very feet--insensible, dead. He was carried to the nearest house; and, no one preventing me now, I remained near him, busy, while every means of restoration was tried; but he had been beaten to death by the great wave, and his generous heart was stilled for ever.

--_From "David Copperfield," by Charles Dickens._

THE HAPPY VALLEY.

The place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes was a spacious valley in the kingdom of Amhara, surrounded on every side by mountains, of which the summits overhang the middle part. The only passage by which it could be entered was a cavern that passed under a rock, of which it has been long disputed whether it was the work of Nature or of human industry.

The outlet of the cavern was concealed by a thick wood, and the mouth, which opened into the valley, was closed with gates of iron forged by the artificers of ancient days, so massy that no man could, without the help of engines, open or shut them.

From the mountains, on every side, rivulets descended, that filled all the valley with verdure and fertility, and formed a lake in the middle, inhabited by fish of every species, and frequented by every fowl which Nature has taught to dip the wing in water. This lake discharged its superfluities by a stream, which entered a dark cleft of the mountain on the northern side, and fell, with dreadful noise, from precipice to precipice, till it was heard no more.

The sides of the mountains were covered with trees. The banks of the brooks were diversified with flowers. Every blast shook spices from the rocks, and every month dropped fruits upon the ground. All animals that bite the grass or browse the shrub, whether wild or tame, wandered in this extensive circuit, secured from beasts of prey by the mountains which confined them.

On one part were flocks and herds feeding in the pastures; on another, all the beasts of chase frisking in the lawns; the sprightly kid was bounding on the rocks, the subtle monkey frolicking in the trees, and the solemn elephant reposing in the shade. All the diversities of the world were brought together; the blessings of nature were collected, and its evils extracted and excluded.

The valley, wide and fruitful, supplied its inhabitants with the necessaries of life; and all delights and superfluities were added at the annual visit which the Emperor paid his children, when the iron gate was opened to the sound of music, and during eight days every one that resided in the valley was required to propose whatever might contribute to make seclusion pleasant, to fill up the vacancies of attention, and lessen the tediousness of the time.

Every desire was immediately granted. All the artificers of pleasure were called to gladden the festivity; the musicians exerted the power of harmony, and the dancers showed their activity before the princes, in hope that they should pass their lives in this blissful captivity, to which those only were admitted whose performance was thought capable of adding novelty to luxury.

Such was the appearance of security and delight which this retirement afforded, that they to whom it was new always desired that it might be perpetual; and as those on whom the iron gate had once closed were never suffered to return, the effect of long experience could not be known. Thus every year produced new schemes of delight and new competitors for imprisonment.

* * * * *

Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia," from which this selection is taken, was first published in 1759. "The late Mr. Strahan, the printer, told me," says Boswell, "that Johnson wrote it, so that with the profits he might defray the expenses of his mother's funeral, and pay some little debts which she had left. He told Sir Joshua Reynolds that he composed it in the evenings of one week, sent it to the press in portions as it was written, and had never since read it over. None of his writings have been so extensively diffused over Europe, for it has been translated into most, if not all, of the modern languages. This tale, with all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the force and beauty of which the English language is capable, leads us through the most important scenes of human life, and shows us that this stage of our being is full of 'vanity and vexation of spirit.'"

The peculiarities of style which distinguish all of Johnson's writings are well illustrated in this story. Notice the stately flow of high-sounding words; the dignified formality of many of the descriptive passages; and the richness and perfection which characterize the production as a whole.

THE PASS OF KILLIECRANKIE.

John Græme of Claverhouse, whose title of Viscount Dundee had been given him in reward for his cruelties to the Western Covenanters, was the instigator and leader of a revolt of the Highland clans against the government of William III. in Scotland. General Mackay, with his loyal Scotch regiments, was sent out to suppress the uprising. But as they climbed the pass of Killiecrankie, on the 27th of July, 1689, Dundee charged them at the head of three thousand clansmen, and swept them in headlong rout down the glen. His death in the moment of victory broke, however, the only bond which held the Highlanders together, and in a few weeks the host which had spread terror through the Lowlands melted helplessly away.

The Græmes, or Grahams, were among the most noted of Scottish families, and included some of the most distinguished men of the country. Among them were Sir John the Græme, the faithful aid of Sir William Wallace, who fell in the battle of Falkirk, 1298, and the celebrated Marquis of Montrose, who died in 1650, and whose exploits are immortalized in Scott's "Legend of Montrose."

In the following stirring verses from "The Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers," by W. E. Aytoun, the fight at Killiecrankie is described, presumably, by one of the adherents of Dundee. The title of the poem in its complete form is "The Burial March of Dundee." Our selection includes only so much as relates to the conflict in the pass.

On the heights of Killiecrankie
Yester-morn our army lay:
Slowly rose the mist in columns
From the river's broken way;
Hoarsely roared the swollen torrent,
And the pass was wrapt in gloom,
When the clansmen rose together
From their lair amidst the broom.
Then we belted on our tartans,
And our bonnets down we drew,
And we felt our broadswords' edges,
And we proved them to be true;
And we prayed the prayer of soldiers,
And we cried the gathering cry,
And we clasped the hands of kinsmen,
And we swore to do or die!
Then our leader rode before us
On his war horse black as night--
Well the Cameronian rebels
Knew that charger in the fight!--
And a cry of exultation
From the bearded warriors rose;
For we loved the house of Claver'se,
And we thought of good Montrose,
But he raised his hand for silence--
"Soldiers! I have sworn a vow:
Ere the evening star shall glisten
On Schehallion's lofty brow,
Either we shall rest in triumph,
Or another of the Græmes
Shall have died in battle harness
For his country and King James!
Think upon the Royal Martyr--
Think of what his race endure--
Think of him whom butchers murdered
On the field of Magus Muir:--
By his sacred blood I charge ye,
By the ruined hearth and shrine--
By the blighted hopes of Scotland,
By your injuries and mine--
Strike this day as if the anvil
Lay beneath your blows the while,
Be they Covenanting traitors,
Or the brood of false Argyle!
Strike! and drive the trembling rebels
Backwards o'er the stormy Forth;
Let them tell their pale Convention
How they fared within the North.
Let them tell that Highland honor
Is not to be bought or sold,
That we scorn their prince's anger
As we loathe his foreign gold.
Strike! and when the fight is over,
If ye look in vain for me,
Where the dead are lying thickest,
Search for him that was Dundee!"
Loudly then the hills reëchoed
With our answer to his call,
But a deeper echo sounded
In the bosoms of us all.
For the lands of wide Breadalbane
Not a man who heard him speak
Would that day have left the battle.
Burning eye and flushing cheek
Told the clansmen's fierce emotion,
And they harder drew their breath;
For their souls were strong within them,
Stronger than the grasp of death.
Soon we heard a challenge trumpet
Sounding in the pass below,
And the distant tramp of horses,
And the voices of the foe:
Down we crouched amid the bracken,
Till the Lowland ranks drew near,
Panting like the hounds in summer,
When they scent the stately deer.
From the dark defile emerging,
Next we saw the squadrons come,
Leslie's foot and Leven's troopers
Marching to the tuck of drum;
Through the scattered wood of birches,
O'er the broken ground and heath,
Wound the long battalion slowly,
Till they gained the field beneath;
Then we bounded from our covert.--
Judge how looked the Saxons then,
When they saw the rugged mountain
Start to life with armèd men!
Like a tempest down the ridges
Swept the hurricane of steel,
Rose the slogan of Macdonald,--
Flashed the broadsword of Lochiell!
Vainly sped the withering volley
'Mongst the foremost of our band--
On we poured until we met them,
Foot to foot, and hand to hand.
Horse and man went down like driftwood
When the floods are black at Yule,
And their carcasses are whirling
In the Garry's deepest pool.
Horse and man went down before us--
Living foe there tarried none
On the field of Killiecrankie,
When that stubborn fight was done!
And the evening star was shining
On Schehallion's distant head,
When we wiped our bloody broadswords,
And returned to count the dead.
There we found him gashed and gory,
Stretched upon the cumbered plain,
As he told us where to seek him,
In the thickest of the slain.
And a smile was on his visage,
For within his dying ear
Pealed the joyful note of triumph,
And the clansmen's clamorous cheer:
So, amidst the battle's thunder,
Shot, and steel, and scorching flame,
In the glory of his manhood
Passed the spirit of the Græme!

SUMMER RAIN.

It is a long time since much rain fell. The ground is a little dry, the road is a good deal dusty. The garden bakes. Transplanted trees are thirsty. Wheels are shrinking and tires are looking dangerous. Men speculate on the clouds; they begin to calculate how long it will be, if no rain falls, before the potatoes will suffer; the oats, the grass, the corn--everything! To be sure, nothing is yet suffering; but then--

Rain, rain, rain! All day, all night, steady raining. Will it never stop? The hay is out and spoiling. The rain washes the garden. All things have drunk their fill. The springs revive, the meadows are wet; the rivers run discolored with soil from every hill.

Smoking cattle reek under the sheds. Hens, and fowl in general, shelter and plume. The sky is leaden. The clouds are full yet. The long fleece covers the mountains. The hills are capped in white. The air is full of moisture.

The wind roars down the chimney. The birds are silent. No insects chirp. Closets smell moldy. The barometer is clogged. We thump it, but it will not get up. It seems to have an understanding with the weather. The trees drip, shoes are muddy, carriage and wagon are splashed with dirt. Paths are soft.

So it is. When it is clear we want rain, and when it rains we wish it would shine. But after all, how lucky for grumblers that they are not allowed to meddle with the weather, and that it is put above their reach. What a scrambling, selfish, mischief-making time we should have, if men undertook to parcel out the seasons and the weather according to their several humors or interests!

If one will but look for enjoyment, how much there is in every change of weather. The formation of clouds--the various signs and signals, the uncertain wheeling and marching of the fleecy cohorts, the shades of light and gray in the broken heavens--all have their pleasure to an observant eye. Then come the wind gust, the distant dark cloud, the occasional fiery streak shot down through it, the run and hurry of men whose work may suffer!

Indeed, sir, your humble servant, even, was stirred up on the day after Fourth of July. The grass in the old orchard was not my best. Indeed, we grumbled at it considerably while it was yet standing. But being cut and the rain threatening it, one would have thought it gold by the nimble way in which we tried to save it!

Blessed be horse rakes! Once, half a dozen men with half a dozen rakes would have gone whisking up and down, thrusting out and pulling in the long-handled rakes with slow and laborious progress. But no more of that. See friend Turner, mounted on the wheeled horse rake, riding about as if for pleasure. It is easy times when _men_ ride and _horses_ rake.

Meanwhile, the clouds come bowling noiselessly through the air, and spit here and there a drop preliminary. Well, if one thing suffers, another gains! See how the leaves are washed; the grass drinks, even drinks; the garden drinks; everything drinks.

It is our opinion that everything except man is laughing and rejoicing. Trees shake their leaves with a softer sound. Rocks look moist and soft, at least where the moss grows. Even the solitary old pine tree chords his harp, and sings soft and low melodies with plaintive undulations!

A good summer storm is a rain of riches. If gold and silver rattled down from the clouds, they could hardly enrich the land so much as soft, long rains. Every drop is silver going to the mint. The roots are machinery, and, catching the willing drops, they array them, refine them, roll them, stamp them, and turn them out coined berries, apples, grains, and grasses!

When the heavens send clouds and they bank up the horizon, be sure they have hidden gold in them. All the mountains of California are not so rich as are the soft mines of heaven, that send down treasures upon man without tasking him, and pour riches upon his field without spade or pickax--without his search or notice.

Well, let it rain, then! No matter if the journey is delayed, the picnic spoiled, the visit adjourned. Blessed be rain--and rain in summer. And blessed be he who watereth the earth and enricheth it for man and beast.

--_Henry Ward Beecher._

LIFE IN THE BACKWOODS.

It would not be easy to say where or when the first log cabin was built, but it is safe to say that it was somewhere in the English colonies of North America, and it is certain that it became the type of the settler's house throughout the whole middle west. It may be called the American house, the Western house, the Ohio house. Hardly any other house was built for a hundred years by the men who were clearing the land for the stately mansions of our day. As long as the primeval forests stood, the log cabin remained the woodsman's home; and not fifty years ago, I saw log cabins newly built in one of the richest and most prosperous regions of Ohio. They were, to be sure, log cabins of a finer pattern than the first settler reared. They were of logs handsomely shaped with the broadax; the joints between the logs were plastered with mortar; the chimney at the end was of stone; the roof was shingled, the windows were of glass, and the door was solid and well hung. But throughout that region there were many log cabins, mostly sunk to the uses of stables and corn cribs, of the kind that the borderers built in the times of the Indian War, from 1750 to 1800. They were framed of the round logs untouched by the ax except for the notches at the ends where they were fitted into one another; the chimney was of small sticks stuck together with mud, and was as frail as a barn swallow's nest; the walls were stuffed with moss, plastered with clay; the floor was of rough boards called puncheons, riven from the block with a heavy knife; the roof was of clapboards laid loosely on the rafters, and held in place with logs fastened athwart them.

There is a delightful account of such a log cabin by John S. Williams, whose father settled in the woods of Belmont County in 1800. "Our cabin," he says, "had been raised, covered, part of the cracks chinked, and part of the floor laid, when we moved in on Christmas day. There had not been a stick cut except in building the cabin, which was so high from the ground that a bear, wolf, panther, or any animal less in size than a cow could enter without even a squeeze.... The green ash puncheons had shrunk so as to leave cracks in the floor and doors from one to two inches wide. At both the doors we had high, unsteady, and sometimes icy steps, made by piling the logs cut out of the walls, for the doors and the window, if it could be called a window, when perhaps it was the largest spot in the top, bottom, or sides of the cabin where the wind could _not_ enter. It was made by sawing out a log, and placing sticks across and then by pasting an old newspaper over the hole, and applying hog's lard, we had a kind of glazing which shed a most beautiful and mellow light across the cabin when the sun shone on it. All other light entered at the doors, cracks, and chimneys. Our cabin was twenty-four by eighteen. The west end was occupied by two beds, the center of each side by a door.... On the opposite side of the window, made of clapboards, supported on pins driven into the walls, were our shelves. On these shelves my sister displayed in simple order, a host of pewter plates, and dishes and spoons, scoured and bright.... Our chimney occupied most of the east end; with pots and kettles opposite the window, under the shelves, a gun on hooks over the north door, four split-bottomed chairs, three three-legged stools, and a small eight by ten looking-glass sloped from the wall over a large towel and comb case.... We got a roof laid over head as soon as possible, but it was laid of loose clapboards split from a red-oak, and a cat might have shaken every board in our ceiling.... We made two kinds of furniture. One kind was of hickory bark, with the outside shaved off. This we would take off all around the tree, the size of which would determine the caliber of our box. Into one end we would place a flat piece of bark or puncheon, cut round to fit in the bark, which stood on end the same as when on the tree.... A much finer article was made of slippery-elm bark, shaved smooth, with the inside out, bent round and sewed together, where the end of the hoop or main bark lapped over.... This was the finest furniture in a lady's dressing room," and such a cabin and its appointments were splendor and luxury beside those of the very earliest pioneers, and many of the latest. The Williamses were Quakers, and the mother was recently from England; they were of far gentler breeding and finer tastes than most of their neighbors, who had been backwoodsmen for generations.

When the first settlers broke the silence of the woods with the stroke of their axes, and hewed out a space for their cabins and their fields, they inclosed their homes with a high stockade of logs, for defense against the Indians; or if they built their cabins outside the wooden walls of their stronghold, they always expected to flee to it at the first alarm, and to stand siege within it.

The Indians had no cannon, and the logs of the stockade were proof against their rifles; if a breach was made, there was still the blockhouse left, the citadel of every little fort. This was heavily built, and pierced with loopholes for the riflemen within, whose wives ran bullets for them at its mighty hearth, and who kept the savage foe from its sides by firing down upon them through the projecting timbers of its upper story. But in many a fearful siege the Indians set the roof ablaze with arrows wrapped in burning tow, and then the fight became desperate indeed. After the Indian war ended, the stockade was no longer needed, and the settlers had only the wild beasts to contend with, and those constant enemies of the poor in all ages and conditions,--hunger and cold.

Winter after winter, the Williamses heard the wolves howling round them in the woods, and this music was familiar to the ears of all the Ohio pioneers, who trusted their rifles for both the safety and support of their families. They deadened the trees around them by girdling them with the ax, and planted the spaces between the leafless trunks with corn and beans and pumpkins. These were their necessaries, but they had an occasional luxury in the wild honey from the hollow of a bee tree when the bears had not got at it.

In its season, there was an abundance of wild fruit, plums and cherries, haws and grapes, berries, and nuts of every kind, and the maples yielded all the sugar they chose to make from them. But it was long before they had, at any time, the profusion which our modern arts enable us to enjoy the whole year round, and in the hard beginnings the orchard and the garden were forgotten for the fields.

When once the settler was housed against the weather, he had the conditions of a certain rude comfort indoors. If his cabin was not proof against the wind and rain or snow, its vast fireplace formed the means of heating, while the forest was an inexhaustible store of fuel. At first he dressed in the skins and pelts of the deer and fox and wolf, and his costume could have varied little from that of the red savage about him, for we often read how he mistook Indians for white men at first sight, and how the Indians in their turn mistook white men for their own people.

The whole family went barefoot in the summer, but in winter the pioneer wore moccasins of buckskin, and buckskin leggins or trousers; his coat was a hunting shirt belted at the waist and fringed where it fell to his knees. It was of homespun, a mixture of wool and flax called linsey-woolsey, and out of this the dresses of his wife and daughters were made; the wool was shorn from the sheep which were so scarce that they were never killed for their flesh, except by the wolves, which were very fond of mutton, but had no use for wool.

For a wedding dress a cotton check was thought superb, and it really cost a dollar a yard; silks, satins, laces, were unknown. A man never left his house without his rifle; the gun was a part of his dress, and in his belt he carried a hunting knife and a hatchet; on his head he wore a cap of squirrel skin, often with the plume-like tail dangling from it.