Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

John felt that there had come a change upon the three, and silently divined whose unconscious influence had wrought the miracle. The embargo was off his tongue, and he was in a fever to ask that question which brings a flutter to the stoutest heart; but though the "man" had come, the "hour" had not. So, by way of steadying his nerves, he paced the room, pausing often to take notes of his companions, and each pause seemed to increase his wonder and content.

He looked at Nan. She was in her usual place, the rigid little chair she loved, because it once was large enough to hold a curly-headed playmate and herself. The old work-basket was at her side, and the battered thimble busily at work; but her lips wore a smile they had never worn before, the color of the unblown roses touched her cheek, and her downcast eyes were full of light.

He looked at Di. The inevitable book was on her knee, but its leaves were uncut; the strong-minded knob of hair still asserted its supremacy aloft upon her head, and the triangular jacket still adorned her shoulders in defiance of all fashions, past, present, or to come; but the expression of her brown countenance had grown softer, her tongue had found a curb, and in her hand lay a card with "Potts, Kettel, & Co." inscribed thereon, which she regarded with never a scornful word for the "Co."

He looked at Laura. She was before her easel, as of old; but the pale nun had given place to a blooming girl, who sang at her work, which was no prim Pallas, but a Clytie turning her human face to meet the sun.

"John, what are you thinking of?"

He stirred as if Di's voice had disturbed his fancy at some pleasant pastime, but answered with his usual sincerity,--

"I was thinking of a certain dear old fairy tale called 'Cinderella.'"

"Oh!" said Di; and her "Oh" was a most impressive monosyllable. "I see the meaning of your smile now; and though the application of the story is not very complimentary to all parties concerned, it is very just and very true."

She paused a moment, then went on with softened voice and earnest mien:--

"You think I am a blind and selfish creature. So I am, but not so blind and selfish as I have been; for many tears have cleared my eyes, and much sincere regret has made me humbler than I was. I have found a better book than any father's library can give me, and I have read it with a love and admiration that grew stronger as I turned the leaves. Henceforth I take it for my guide and gospel, and, looking back upon the selfish and neglectful past, can only say, Heaven bless your dear heart, Nan!"

Laura echoed Di's last words; for, with eyes as full of tenderness, she looked down upon the sister she had lately learned to know, saying, warmly,--

"Yes, 'Heaven bless your dear heart, Nan!' I never can forget all you have been to me; and when I am far away with Philip, there will always be one countenance more beautiful to me than any pictured face I may discover, there will be one place more dear to me than Rome. The face will be yours, Nan,--always so patient, always so serene; and the dearer place will be this home of ours, which you have made so pleasant to me all these years by kindnesses as numberless and noiseless as the drops of dew."

"Dear girls, what have I ever done, that you should love me so?" cried Nan, with happy wonderment, as the tall heads, black and golden, bent to meet the lowly brown one, and her sisters' mute lips answered her.

Then Laura looked up, saying, playfully,--

"Here are the good and wicked sisters;--where shall we find the Prince?"

"There!" cried Di, pointing to John; and then her secret went off like a rocket; for, with her old impetuosity, she said,--

"I have found you out, John, and am ashamed to look you in the face, remembering the past. Girls, you know, when father died, John sent us money, which he said Mr. Owen had long owed us and had paid at last? It was a kind lie, John, and a generous thing to do; for we needed it, but never would have taken it as a gift. I know you meant that we should never find this out; but yesterday I met Mr. Owen returning from the West, and when I thanked him for a piece of justice we had not expected of him, he gruffly told me he had never paid the debt, never meant to pay it, for it was outlawed, and we could not claim a farthing. John, I have laughed at you, thought you stupid, treated you unkindly; but I know you now, and never shall forget the lesson you have taught me. I am proud as Lucifer, but I ask you to forgive me, and I seal my real repentance so--and so."

With tragic countenance, Di rushed across the room, threw both arms about the astonished young man's neck and dropped an energetic kiss upon his cheek. There was a momentary silence; for Di finely illustrated her strong-minded theories by crying like the weakest of her sex. Laura, with "the ruling passion strong in death," still tried to draw, but broke her pet crayon, and endowed her Clytie with a supplementary orb, owing to the dimness of her own. And Nan sat with drooping eyes, that shone upon her work, thinking with tender pride,--

"They know him now, and love him for his generous heart."

Di spoke first, rallying to her colors, though a little daunted by her loss of self-control.

"Don't laugh, John,--I couldn't help it; and don't think I'm not sincere, for I am,--I am; and I will prove it by growing good enough to be your friend. That debt must all be paid, and I shall do it; for I'll turn my books and pen to some account, and write stories full of dear old souls like you and Nan; and some one, I know, will like and buy them, though they are not 'works of Shakspeare.' I've thought of this before, have felt I had the power in me; _now_ I have the motive, and _now_ I'll do it."

If Di had proposed to translate the Koran, or build a new Saint Paul's, there would have been many chances of success; for, once moved, her will, like a battering-ram, would knock down the obstacles her wits could not surmount. John believed in her most heartily, and showed it, as he answered, looking into her resolute face,--

"I know you will, and yet make us very proud of our 'Chaos,' Di. Let the money lie, and when you have made a fortune, I'll claim it with enormous interest; but, believe me, I feel already doubly repaid by the esteem so generously confessed, so cordially bestowed, and can only say, as we used to years ago,--'Now let's forgive and so forget.'"

But proud Di would not let him add to her obligation, even by returning her impetuous salute; she slipped away, and, shaking off the last drops, answered with a curious mixture of old freedom and new respect,--

"No more sentiment, please, John. We know each other now; and when I find a friend, I never let him go. We have smoked the pipe of peace; so let us go back to our wigwams and bury the feud. Where were we when I lost my head? and what were we talking about?"

"Cinderella and the Prince."

As he spoke, John's eye kindled, and, turning, he looked down at Nan, who sat diligently ornamenting with microscopic stitches a great patch going on, the wrong side out.

"Yes,--so we were; and now taking pussy for the godmother, the characters of the story are well personated,--all but the slipper," said Di, laughing, as she thought of the many times they had played it together years ago.

A sudden movement stirred John's frame, a sudden purpose shone in his countenance, and a sudden change befell his voice, as he said, producing from some hiding-place a little worn-out shoe,--

"I can supply the slipper;--who will try it first?"

Di's black eyes opened wide, as they fell on the familiar object; then her romance-loving nature saw the whole plot of that drama which needs but two to act it. A great delight flushed up into her face, as she promptly took her cue, saying,--

"No need for us to try it, Laura; for it wouldn't fit us, if our feet were as small as Chinese dolls';--our parts are played out; therefore 'Exeunt wicked sisters to the music of the wedding-bells.'" And pouncing upon the dismayed artist, she swept her out and closed the door with a triumphant bang.

John went to Nan, and, dropping on his knee as reverently as the herald of the fairy tale, he asked, still smiling, but with lips grown tremulous,--

"Will Cinderella try the little shoe, and--if it fits--go with the Prince?"

But Nan only covered up her face, weeping happy tears, while all the weary work strayed down upon the floor, as if it knew her holiday had come.

John drew the hidden face still closer, and while she listened to his eager words, Nan heard the beating of the strong man's heart, and knew it spoke the truth.

"Nan, I promised mother to be silent till I was sure I loved you wholly,--sure that the knowledge would give no pain when I should tell it, as I am trying to tell it now. This little shoe has been my comforter through this long year, and I have kept it as other lovers keep their fairer favors. It has been a talisman more eloquent to me than flower or ring; for, when I saw how worn it was, I always thought of the willing feet that came and went for others' comfort all day long; when I saw the little bow you tied, I always thought of the hands so diligent in serving any one who knew a want or felt a pain; and when I recalled the gentle creature who had worn it last, I always saw her patient, tender, and devout,--and tried to grow more worthy of her, that I might one day dare to ask if she would walk beside me all my life and be my 'angel in the house.' Will you, dear? Believe me, you shall never know a weariness or grief I have the power to shield you from."

Then Nan, as simple in her love as in her life, laid her arms about his neck, her happy face against his own, and answered softly,--

"Oh, John, I never can be sad or tired any more!"

* * * * *

THE OLD DAYS AND THE NEW.

A poet came singing along the vale,--
"Ah, well-a-day for the dear old days!
They come no more as they did of yore
By the flowing river of Aise."

He piped through the meadow, he piped through the grove,--
"Ah, well-a-day for the good old days!
They have all gone by, and I sit and sigh
By the flowing river of Aise.

"Knights and ladies and shields and swords,--
Ah, well-a-day for the grand old days!
Castles and moats, and the bright steel coats,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"The lances are shivered, the helmets rust,--
Ah, well-a-day for the stern old days!
And the clarion's blast has rung its last,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"And the warriors that swept to glory and death,--
Ah, well-a-day for the brave old days!
They have fought and gone, and I sit here alone
By the flowing river of Aise.

"The strength of limb and the mettle of heart,--
Ah, well-a-day for the strong old days!
They have withered away, mere butterflies' play,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"The queens of beauty, whose smile was life,--
Ah, well-a-day for the rare old days!
With love and despair in their golden hair,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"They have flitted away from hall and bower,--
Ah, well-a-day for the rich old days!
Like the sun they shone, like the sun they have gone,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"And buried beneath the pall of the past,--
Ah, well-a-day for the proud old days!
Lie valor and worth and the beauty of earth,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"And I sit and sigh by the idle stream,--
Ah, well-a-day for the bright old days!
For nothing remains for the poet's strains
But the flowing river of Aise."

Then a voice rang out from the oak overhead,--
"Why well-a-day for the old, old days?
The world is the same, if the bard has an aim,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"There's beauty and love and truth and power,--
Cease well-a-day for the old, old days!
The humblest home is worth Greece and Rome,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"There are themes enough for the poet's strains,--
Leave well-a-day for the quaint old days!
Take thine eyes from the ground, look up and around
From the flowing river of Aise.

"To-day is as grand as the centuries past,--
Leave well-a-day for the famed old days!
There are battles to fight, there are troths to plight,
By the flowing river of Aise.

"There are hearts as true to love, to strive,--
No well-a-day for the dark old days!
Go put into type the age that is ripe
By the flowing river of Aise."

Then the merry Poet piped down the vale,--
"Farewell, farewell to the dead old days!
By day and by night there's music and light
By the flowing river of Aise."

* * * * *

THE ICEBERG OF TORBAY.

TORBAY.

Torbay, finely described in a recent novel by the Rev. R.T.S. Lowell, is an arm of the sea, a short strong arm with a slim hand and finger, reaching into the rocky land and touching the water-falls and rapids of a pretty brook. Here is a little village, with Romish and Protestant steeples, and the dwellings of fishermen, with the universal appendages of fishing-houses, boats, and "flakes." One seldom looks upon a hamlet so picturesque and wild. The rocks slope steeply down to the wonderfully clear water. Thousands of poles support half-acres of the spruce-bough shelf, beneath which is a dark, cool region, crossed with foot-paths, and not unfrequently sprinkled and washed by the surf,--a most kindly office on the part of the sea, you will allow, when once you have scented the fish-offal perpetually dropping from the evergreen fish-house above. These little buildings on the flakes are conspicuous features, and look as fresh and wild as if they had just wandered away from the woodlands.

There they stand, on the edge of the lofty pole-shelf, or upon the extreme end of that part of it which runs off frequently over the water like a wharf, an assemblage of huts and halls, bowers and arbors, a curious huddle made of poles and sweet-smelling branches and sheets of birch-bark. A kind of evening haunts these rooms of spruce at noonday, while at night a hanging lamp, like those we see in old pictures of crypts and dungeons, is to the stranger only a kind of buoy by which he is to steer his way through the darkness. To come off then without pitching headlong, and soiling your hands and coat, is the merest chance. Strange! one is continually allured into these piscatory bowers whenever he comes near them. In spite of the chilly, salt air, and the repulsive smells about the tables where they dress the fish, I have a fancy for these queer structures. Their front door opens upon the sea, and their steps are a mammoth ladder, leading down to the swells and the boats. There is a charm also about fine fishes, fresh from the net and the hook,--the salmon, for example, whose pink and yellow flesh has given a name to one of the most delicate hues of Art or Nature.

THE CLIFFS.

But where was the iceberg? We were not a little disappointed when all Torbay was before us, and nothing but dark water to be seen. To our surprise, no one had ever seen or heard of it. It must lie off Flat Rock Harbor, a little bay below, to the north. We agreed with the supposition that the berg must lie below, and made speedy preparations to pursue, by securing the only boat to be had in the village,--a substantial fishing-barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at least a cord of cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a motive power, as it turned out, none too large for the occasion. We embarked at the foot of a fish-house ladder, being carefully handed down by the kind-hearted men, and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck. All ready, they pulled away at their long, ponderous oars with the skill and deliberation of lifelong practice, and we moved out upon the broad, glassy swells of the bay towards the open sea, not indeed with the rapidity of a Yankee club-boat, but with a most agreeable steadiness, and a speed happily fitted for a review of the shores, which, under the afternoon sun, were made brilliant with lights and shadows.

We were presently met by a breeze, which increased the swell, and made it easier to fail in close under the northern shore, a line of stupendous precipices, to which the ocean goes deep home. The ride beneath these mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my life. While they do not equal the rocks of the Saguenay, yet, with all their appendages of extent, structure, complexion, and adjacent sea, they are sufficiently lofty to produce an almost appalling sense of sublimity. The surges lave them at a great height, sliding from angle to angle, and fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the face of the vast walls. They descend as deeply as two hundred feet, and rise perpendicularly two, three, and four hundred feet from the water. Their stratifications are up and down, and of different shades of light and dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the effect of height, and gives variety and spirit to the surface. At one point, where the rocks advance from the main front, and form a kind of headland, the strata, six and eight feet thick, assume the form of a pyramid,--from a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to meet in a point. The heart of this vast cone has partly fallen out, and left the resemblance of an enormous tent with cavernous recesses and halls, in which the shades of evening were already lurking, and the surf was sounding mournfully. Occasionally it was musical, pealing forth like the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity. Now and then, the gloomy silence of a minute was broken by the crash of a billow far within, when the reverberations were like the slamming of great doors.

After passing this grand specimen of the architecture of the sea, there appeared long rocky reaches like Egyptian temples,--old, dead cliffs of yellowish gray, checked off by lines and seams into squares, and having the resemblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean, of doors and windows opening in upon the fresher stone. Presently we came to a break, where there were grassy slopes and crags intermingled, and a flock of goats skipping about, or ruminating in the warm sunshine. A knot of kids--the reckless little creatures--were sporting along the edge of a precipice in a manner almost painful to witness. The pleasure of leaping from point to point, where a single misstep would have dropped them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in proportion to the danger. The sight of some women, who were after the goats, reminded the boatmen of an accident which occurred here only a few days before: a lad playing about the steep fell into the sea, and was drowned.

We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked the small cape, in the finest style,--a beautiful dance of breakers of dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward, and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. "There it is!" one exclaimed. An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the next headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon us from the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg was expected to be seen. Farther and farther out the long, strong sweep of the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between us and the next headland was in full view. It may appear almost too trifling a matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning or remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when from the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells, we stood up and looked around and saw, that, if the iceberg, over which our very hearts had been beating with delight for twenty-four hours, was anywhere, it was somewhere in the depths of that untoward fog. It might as well have been in the depths of the ocean.

While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing left for us but to wait patiently where we were, or retreat. We chose the latter. C. gave the word to pull for the settlement at the head of the little bay just mentioned, and so they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we turned away for the second time, when the game was fairly ours. Even the hardy fishermen, no lovers of "islands-of-ice," as they call them, felt for us, as they read in our looks the disappointment, not to say a little vexation. While on our passage in, we filled a half-hour with questions and discussions about that iceberg.

"We certainly saw it yesterday evening; and a soldier of Signal Hill told us that it had been close in at Torbay for several days. And you, my man there, say that you had a glimpse of it last evening. How happens it to be away just now? Where do you think it is?"

"Indeed, Sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or over. De'il a bit can a man look after a thing in a fog, more nor into a snow-bank. Maybe, Sir, he's foundered; or he might be gone off to sea, altogether, as they sometimes do."

"Well, this is rather remarkable. Huge as these bergs are, they escape very easily under their old cover. No sooner do we think we have them, than they are gone. No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no pilot-fish to his shark, than the fog to its berg. We will run in yonder and inquire about it. We may get the exact bearing, and reach it yet, even in the fog."

THE FISHERMAN'S.

The wind and sea being in our favor, we soon reached a fishery-ladder, which we now knew very well how to climb, and wound our "dim and perilous way" through the evergreen labyrinth of fish bowers, emerging on the solid rock, and taking the path to the fisherman's house. Here lives and works and wears himself out William Waterland, a deep-voiced, broad-chested, round-shouldered man, dressed, not in cloth of gold, but of oil, with the foxy remnant of a last winter's fur cap clinging to his large, bony head, a little in the style of a piece of turf to a stone. You seldom look into a more kindly, patient face, or into an eye that more directly lets up the light out of a large, warm heart. His countenance is one sober shadow of honest brown, occasionally lighted by a true and guileless smile. William Waterland has seen the "island-of-ice." "It lies off there, two miles or more, grounded on a bank, in forty fathoms water."

It was nearly six o'clock; and yet, as there were signs of the fog clearing away, we thought it prudent to wait. A dull, long hour passed by, and still the sun was high in the northwest. That heavy cod-seine, a hundred fathoms long, sank the stern of our barge rather deeply, and made it row heavily. For all that, there was time enough yet, if we could only use it. The fog still came in masses from the sea, sweeping across the promontory between us and Torbay, and fading into air nearly as soon as it was over the land. In the mean time, we sat upon the rocks, upon the wood-pile, stood around and talked, looked out into the endless mist, looked at the fishermen's houses, their children, their fowls and dogs. A couple of young women, that might have been teachers of the village school, had there been a school, belles of the place, rather neatly dressed, and with hair nicely combed, tripped shyly by, each with an arm about the other's waist, and very merry until abreast of us, when they were as silent and downcast as if they had been passing by their sovereign queen or the Great Mogul. Their curiosity and timidity combined were quite amusing. We speculated upon the astonishment that would have seized upon their simple, innocent hearts, had they beheld, instead of us, a bevy of our city fashionables in full bloom.

At length we accepted an invitation to walk into the house, and sat, not under the good man's roof, but under his chimney, a species of large funnel, into which nearly one end of the house resolved itself. Here we sat upon some box-like benches before a wood fire, and warmed ourselves, chatting with the family. While we were making ourselves comfortable and agreeable, we made the novel and rather funny discovery of a hen sitting on her nest just under the bench, with her red comb at our fingers' ends. A large griddle hung suspended in the more smoky regions of the chimney, ready to be lowered for the baking of cakes or frying fish. Having tarred my hand, the fisherman's wife, kind woman, insisted upon washing it herself. After rubbing it with a little grease, she first scratched it with her finger-nail, and then finished with soap and water and a good wiping with a coarse towel. I begged that she would spare herself the trouble, and allow me to help myself. But it was no trouble at all for her, and the greatest pleasure. And what should I know about washing off tar? They were members of the Church of England, and seemed pleased when they found that I was a clergyman of the Episcopal Church. They had a pastor who visited them and others in the village occasionally, and held divine service on Sunday at Torbay, where they attended, going in boats in summer, and over the hills on snow-shoes in the winter. The woman told me, in an undertone, that the family relations were not all agreed in their religious faith, and that they could not stop there any longer, but had gone to "America," which they liked much better. It was a hard country, any way, no matter whether one were Protestant or Papist. Three months were all their summer, and nearly all their time for getting ready for the long, cold winter. To be sure, they had codfish and potatoes, flour and butter, tea and sugar; but then it took a deal of hard work to make ends meet. The winter was not as cold as we thought, perhaps; but then it was so long and snowy! The snow lay five, six, and seven feet deep. Wood was a great trouble. There was a plenty of it, but they could not keep cattle or horses to draw it home. Dogs were their only teams, and they could fetch but small loads at a time. In the mean while, a chubby little boy, with cheeks like a red apple, had ventured from behind his young mother, where he had kept dodging as she moved about the house, and edged himself up near enough to be patted on the head, and rewarded for his little liberties with a half-dime.

THE ICEBERG.

The sunshine was now streaming in at a bit of a window, and I went out to see what prospect of success. C., who had left some little time before, was nowhere to be seen. The fog seemed to be in sufficient motion to disclose the berg down some of the avenues of clear air that were opened occasionally. They all ended, however, with fog instead of ice. I made it convenient to walk to the boat, and pocket a few cakes, brought along as a kind of scattering lunch. C. was descried, at length, climbing the broad, rocky ridge, the eastern point of which we had doubled on our passage from Torbay. Making haste up the crags by a short cut, I joined him on the verge of the promontory pretty well heated and out of breath. The effort was richly rewarded. The mist was dispersing in the sunny air around us; the ocean was clearing off; the surge was breaking with a pleasant sound below. At the foot of the precipice were four or five whales, from thirty to fifty feet in length, apparently. We could have tossed a pebble upon them. At times abreast, and then in single file, or disorderly, round and round they went, now rising with a puff followed by a wisp of vapor, then plunging into the deep again. There was something in their large movements very imposing, and yet very graceless. There seemed to be no muscular effort, no exertion of any force from within, and no more flexibility in their motions than if they had been built of timber. They appeared to move very much as a wooden whale might be supposed to move down a mighty rapid, roiling and plunging and borne along irresistibly by the current. As they rose, we could see their mouths occasionally, and the lighter colors of the skin below. As they went under, their huge, black tails, great winged things not unlike the screw-wheel of a propeller, tipped up above the waves. Now and then one would give the water a good round slap, the noise of which smote sharply upon the ear, like the crack of a pistol in an alley. It was a novel sight to watch them in their play, or labor, rather; for they were feeding upon the caplin, pretty little fishes that swarm along these shores at this particular season. We could track them beneath the surface about as well as upon it. In the sunshine, and in contrast with the fog, the sea was a very dark blue or deep purple. Above the whales the water was green, a darker green as they descended, a lighter green as they came up. Large oval spots of changeable green water, moving silently and shadow-like along, in strong contrast with the surrounding dark, marked the places where the monsters were gliding below. When their broad, blackish backs were above the waves, there was frequently a ring or ruffle of snowy surf, formed by the breaking of the swell around the edges of the fish. The review of whales, the only review we had witnessed in Her Majesty's dominions, was, on the whole, an imposing spectacle. We turned from it to witness another of a more brilliant character.

To the north and east, the ocean, dark and sparkling, was, by the magic action of the wind, entirely clear of fog; and there, about two miles distant, stood revealed the iceberg in all its cold and solitary glory. It was of a greenish white, and of the Greek-temple form, seeming to be over a hundred feet high. We gazed some minutes with silent delight on the splendid and impressive object, and then hastened down to the boat, and pulled away with all speed to reach it, if possible, before the fog should cover it again, and in time for C. to paint it. The moderation of the oarsmen and the slowness of our progress were quite provoking. I watched the sun, the distant fog, the wind and waves, the increasing motion of the boat, and the seemingly retreating berg. A good half-hour's toil had carried us into broad waters, and yet, to all appearance, very little nearer. The wind was freshening from the south, the sea was rising, thin mists, a species of scout from the main body of the fog lying off in the east, were scudding across our track. James Goss, our captain, threw out a hint of a little difficulty in getting back. But Yankee energy was indomitable. C. quietly arranged his painting--apparatus, and I, wrapped in my cloak more snugly, crept out forward on the little deck, a sort of look-out. To be honest, I began to wish ourselves on our way back, as the black, angry-looking swells chased us up, and flung the foam upon the bow and stern. All at once, whole squadrons of fog swept up, and swamped the whole of us, boat and berg, in their thin, white obscurity. For a moment we thought ourselves foiled again. But still the word was, "On!" And on they pulled, the hard-handed fishermen, now flushed and moist with rowing. Again the ice was visible, but dimly, in his misty drapery. There was no time to be lost. Now, or not at all. And so C. began. For half an hour, pausing occasionally for passing flocks of fog, he plied the brush with a rapidity not usual, and under disadvantages that would have mastered a less experienced hand. We were getting close down upon the berg, and in fearfully rough water. In their curiosity to catch glimpses of the advancing sketch, the men pulled with little regularity, and trimmed the boat very badly. We were rolling frightfully to a landsman. C. begged of them to keep their seats, and hold the barge just there as near as possible. To amuse them, I passed an opera-glass around among them, with which they examined the iceberg and the coast. They turned out to be excellent good fellows, and entered into the spirit of the thing in a way that pleased us. I am sure they would have held on willingly till dark, if C. had only said the word, so much interest did they feel in the attempt to paint the "island-of-ice." The hope was to linger about it until sunset, for its colors, lights, and shadows. That, however, was suddenly extinguished. Heavy fog came on, and we retreated, not with the satisfaction of a conquest, nor with the disappointment of a defeat, but cheered with the hope of complete success, perhaps the next day, when C. thought that we could return upon our game in a little steamer, and so secure it beyond the possibility of escape. The seine was hauled from the stern to the centre of the barge, and the men pulled away for Torbay, a long six miles, rough and chilly. For my part, I was trembling with cold, and found it necessary to lend a hand at the oars, an exercise which soon made the weather feel several degrees warmer, and rendered me quite comfortable. After a little the wind lulled, the fog dispersed again, and the iceberg seemed to contemplate our slow departure with complacent serenity. We regretted that the hour forbade a return. It would have been pleasant to play around that Parthenon of the sea in the twilight. The best that was left us was to look back and watch the effects of light, which were wonderfully fine, and had the charm of entire novelty. The last view was the very finest. All the east front was a most tender blue; the fissures on the southern face, from which we were rowing directly away, were glittering green; the western front glowed in the yellow sunlight; around were the dark waters, and above one of the most beautiful of skies.

We fell under the land presently, and passed near the northern cape of Flat-Rock Bay, a grand headland of red sandstone, a vast and dome-like pile, fleeced at the summit with green turf and shrubs of fir. The sun, at last, was really setting. There was the old magnificence of the king of day,--airy deeps of ineffable blue and pearl, stained with scarlets and crimsons, and striped with living gold. A blaze of white light, deepening into the richest orange, crowned the distant ridge behind which the sun was vanishing. A vapory splendor, rose-color and purple, was dissolving in the atmosphere; and every wave of the ocean, a dark violet, nearly black, was "a flash of golden fire." Bathed with this almost supernatural glory, the headland, in itself richly complexioned with red, brown, and green, was at once a spectacle of singular grandeur and solemnity. I have no remembrance of more brilliant effects of light and color. The view filled us with emotions of delight. We shot from beneath the great cliff into Flat-Rock Bay, rounding, at length, the breakers and the cape into the smoother waters of Torbay. As the oars dipped regularly into the polished swells, reflecting the heavens and the wonderful shores, all lapsed into silence. In the gloom of evening the rocks assumed an unusual height and sublimity. Gliding quietly below them, we were saluted every now and then by the billows thundering in some adjacent cavern. The song of the sea in its old halls rung out in a style quite unearthly. The slamming of the mighty doors seemed far off in the chambers of the cliff, and the echoes trembled themselves away, muffled into stillness by the stupendous masses.

Thus ended our first real hunting of an iceberg. When we landed, we were thoroughly chilled. Our man was waiting with his wagon, and so was a little supper in a house near by, which we enjoyed with an appetite that assumed several phases of keenness as we proceeded. There was a tower of cold roast beef, flanked by bread and butter and bowls of hot tea. The whole was carried silently, without remark, at the point of knife and fork. We were a forlorn-hope of two, and fell to, winning the victory in the very breach. We drove back over the fine gravel road at a round trot, watching the last edge of day in the northwest and north, where it no sooner fades than it buds again to bloom into morning. We lived the new iceberg-experience all over again, and planned for the morrow. The stars gradually came out of the cool, clear heavens, until they filled them with their sparkling multitudes. For every star we seemed to have a lively and pleasurable thought, which came out and ran among our talk, a thread of light. When we looked at the hour, as we sat fresh and wakeful, warming at our English inn in St. John's, it was after midnight.

* * * * *

THEODORE PARKER.

"Sir Launcelot! ther thou lyest; thou were never matched of none
earthly knights hands; thou were the truest freende to thy lover
that ever bestrood horse; and thou were the kindest man that ever
strooke with sword; and thou were the sternest knight to thy mortall
foe that ever put spere in the rest." _La Morte d'Arthur._

In the year 1828 there was a young man of eighteen at work upon a farm in Lexington, performing bodily labor to the extent of twenty hours in a day sometimes, and that for several days together, and at other times studying intensely when work was less pressing. Thirty years after, that same man sat in the richest private library in Boston, working habitually from twelve to seventeen hours a day in severer toil. The interval was crowded with labors, with acquisitions, with reproaches, with victories, with honors; and he who experienced all this died exhausted at the end of it, less than fifty years old, but looking seventy. That man was Theodore Parker.

The time is far distant when out of a hundred different statements of contemporaries some calm biographer will extract sufficient materials for a true picture of the man; and meanwhile all that each can do is to give fearlessly his own honest impressions, and so tempt others to give theirs. Of the multitude of different photographers, each perchance may catch some one trait without which the whole portraiture would have remained incomplete; and the time to secure this is now, while his features are fresh in our minds. It is a daring effort, but it needs to be made.

Yet Theodore Parker was so strong and self-sufficing upon his own ground, he needed so little from any other, while giving so freely to all, that one would hardly venture to add anything to the autobiographies he has left, but for the high example he set of fearlessness in dealing with the dead. There may be some whose fame is so ill-established, that one shrinks from speaking of them precisely as one saw them; but this man's place is secure, and that friend best praises him who paints him just as he seemed. To depict him as he _was_ must be the work of many men, and no single observer, however intimate, need attempt it.

The first thing that strikes an observer, in listening to the words of public and private feeling elicited by his departure, is the predominance in them all of the sentiment of love. His services, his speculations, his contests, his copious eloquence, his many languages, these come in as secondary things, but the predominant testimony is emotional. Men mourn the friend even more than the warrior. No fragile and lovely girl, fading untimely into heaven, was ever more passionately beloved than this white-haired and world-weary man. As he sat in his library, during his lifetime, he was not only the awakener of a thousand intellects, but the centre of a thousand hearts;--he furnished the natural home for every foreign refugee, every hunted slave, every stray thinker, every vexed and sorrowing woman. And never was there one of these who went away uncomforted, and from every part of this broad nation their scattered hands now fling roses upon his grave.

This immense debt of gratitude was not bought by any mere isolated acts of virtue; indeed, it never is so bought; love never is won but by a nobleness which, pervades the life. In the midst of his greatest cares there never was a moment when he was not all too generous of his time, his wisdom, and his money. Borne down by the accumulation of labors, grudging, as a student grudges, the precious hour that once lost can never be won back, he yet was always holding himself at the call of some poor criminal, at the Police Office, or some sick girl in a suburban town, not of his recognized parish perhaps, but longing for the ministry of the only preacher who had touched her soul. Not a mere wholesale reformer, he wore out his life by retailing its great influences to the poorest comer. Not generous in money only,--though the readiness of his beneficence in that direction had few equals,--he always hastened past that minor bestowal to ask if there were not some other added gift possible, some personal service or correspondence, some life-blood, in short, to be lavished in some other form, to eke out the already liberal donation of dollars.

There is an impression that he was unforgiving. Unforgetting he certainly was; for he had no power of forgetfulness, whether for good or evil. He had none of that convenient oblivion which in softer natures covers sin and saintliness with one common, careless pall. So long as a man persisted in a wrong attitude before God or man, there was no day so laborious or exhausting, no night so long or drowsy, but Theodore Parker's unsleeping memory stood on guard full-armed, ready to do battle at a moment's warning. This is generally known; but what may not be known so widely is, that, the moment the adversary lowered his spear, were it for only an inch or an instant, that moment Theodore Parker's weapons were down and his arms open. Make but the slightest concession, give him but the least excuse to love you, and never was there seen such promptness in forgiving. His friends found it sometimes harder to justify his mildness than his severity. I confess that I, with others, have often felt inclined to criticize a certain caustic tone of his, in private talk, when the name of an offender was alluded to; but I have also felt almost indignant at his lenient good-nature to that very person, let him once show the smallest symptom of contrition, or seek, even in the clumsiest way, or for the most selfish purpose, to disarm his generous antagonist. His forgiveness in such cases was more exuberant than his wrath had ever been.

It is inevitable, in describing him, to characterize his life first by its quantity. He belonged to the true race of the giants of learning; he took in knowledge at every pore, and his desires were insatiable. Not, perhaps, precocious in boyhood,--for it is not precocity to begin Latin at ten and Greek at eleven, to enter the Freshman class at twenty and the professional school at twenty-three,--he was equalled by few students in the tremendous rate at which he pursued every study, when once begun. With strong body and great constitutional industry, always acquiring and never forgetting, he was doubtless at the time of his death the most variously learned of living Americans, as well as one of the most prolific of orators and writers.

Why did Theodore Parker die? He died prematurely worn out through this enormous activity,--a warning, as well as an example. To all appeals for moderation, during the latter years of his life, he had but one answer,--that he had six generations of long-lived farmers behind him, and had their strength to draw upon. All his physical habits, except in this respect, were unexceptionable: he was abstemious in diet, but not ascetic, kept no unwholesome hours, tried no dangerous experiments, committed no excesses. But there is no man who can habitually study from twelve to seventeen hours a day (his friend Mr. Clarke contracts it to "from six to twelve," but I have Mr. Parker's own statement of the fact) without ultimate self-destruction. Nor was this the practice during his period of health alone, but it was pushed to the last moment: he continued in the pulpit long after a withdrawal was peremptorily prescribed for him; and when forbidden to leave home for lecturing, during the winter of 1858, he straightway prepared the most laborious literary works of his life, for delivery as lectures in the Fraternity Course at Boston.

He worked thus, not from ambition, nor altogether from principle, but from an immense craving for mental labor, which had become second nature to him. His great omnivorous, hungry intellect must have constant food,--new languages, new statistics, new historical investigations, new scientific discoveries, new systems of Scriptural exegesis. He did not for a day in the year nor an hour in the day make rest a matter of principle, nor did he ever indulge in it as a pleasure, for he knew no enjoyment so great as labor. Wordsworth's "wise passiveness" was utterly foreign to his nature. Had he been a mere student, this had been less destructive. But to take the standard of study of a German Professor, and superadd to that the separate exhaustions of a Sunday-preacher, a lyceum-lecturer, a radical leader, and a practical philanthropist, was simply to apply half a dozen distinct suicides to the abbreviation of a single life. And, as his younger companions long since assured him, the tendency of his career was not only to kill himself, but them; for each assumed that he must at least attempt what Theodore Parker accomplished.

It is very certain that his career was much shortened by these enormous labors, and it is not certain that its value was increased in a sufficient ratio to compensate for that evil. He justified his incessant winter-lecturing by the fact that the whole country was his parish, though this was not an adequate excuse. But what right had he to deprive himself even of the accustomed summer respite of ordinary preachers, and waste the golden July hours in studying Sclavonic dialects? No doubt his work in the world was greatly aided both by the fact and the fame of learning, and, as he himself somewhat disdainfully said, the knowledge of Greek and Hebrew was "a convenience" in theological discussions; but, after all, his popular power did not mainly depend on his mastery of twenty languages, but of one. Theodore Parker's learning was undoubtedly a valuable possession to the community, but it was not worth the price of Theodore Parker's life.

"Strive constantly to concentrate yourself," said the laborious Goethe, "never dissipate your powers; incessant activity, of whatever kind, leads finally to bankruptcy." But Theodore Parker's whole endeavor was to multiply his channels, and he exhausted his life in the effort to do all men's work. He was a hard man to relieve, to help, or to cooperate with. Thus, the "Massachusetts Quarterly Review" began with quite a promising corps of contributors; but when it appeared that its editor, if left alone, would willingly undertake all the articles,--science, history, literature, everything,--of course the others yielded to inertia and dropped away. So, some years later, when some of us met at his room to consult on a cheap series of popular theological works, he himself was so rich in his own private plans that all the rest were impoverished; nothing could be named but he had been planning just that for years, and should by-and-by get leisure for it, and there really was not enough left to call out the energies of any one else. Not from any petty egotism, but simply from inordinate activity, he stood ready to take all the parts.

In the same way he distanced everybody; every companion-scholar found soon that it was impossible to keep pace with one who was always accumulating and losing nothing. Most students find it necessary to be constantly forgetting some things to make room for later arrivals; but the peculiarity of his memory was that he let nothing go. I have more than once heard him give a minute analysis of the contents of some dull book read twenty years before, and have afterwards found the statement correct and exhaustive. His great library,--the only private library I have ever seen which reminded one of the Astor,--although latterly collected more for public than personal uses, was one which no other man in the nation, probably, had sufficient bibliographical knowledge single-handed to select, and we have very few men capable of fully appreciating its scholarly value, as it stands. It seems as if its possessor, putting all his practical and popular side into his eloquence and action, had indemnified himself by investing all his scholarship in a library of which less than a quarter of the books were in the English language.

All unusual learning, however, brings with it the suspicion of superficiality; and in this country, where, as Mr. Parker himself said, "every one gets a mouthful of education, but scarce one a full meal,"--where every one who makes a Latin quotation is styled "a ripe scholar,"--it is sometimes difficult to distinguish the true from the counterfeit. It is, however, possible to apply some tests. I remember, for instance, that one of the few undoubted classical scholars, in the old-fashioned sense, whom New England has seen,--the late John Glen King of Salem,--while speaking with very limited respect of the acquirements of Rufus Choate in this direction, and with utter contempt of those of Daniel Webster, always became enthusiastic on coming to Theodore Parker. "He is the only man," said Mr. King more than once to the writer, "with whom I can sit down and seriously discuss a disputed reading and find him familiar with all that has been written upon it." Yet Greek and Latin were only the preliminaries of Mr. Parker's scholarship.

I know, for one,--and there are many who will bear the same testimony,--that I never went to Mr. Parker to talk over a subject which I had just made a speciality, without finding that on that particular matter he happened to know, without any special investigation, more than I did. This extended beyond books, sometimes stretching into things where his questioner's opportunities of knowledge had seemed considerably greater,--as, for instance, in points connected with the habits of our native animals and the phenomena of out-door Nature. Such were his wonderful quickness and his infallible memory, that glimpses of these things did for him the work of years. But, of course, it was in the world of books that this wonderful superiority was chiefly seen, and the following example may serve as one of the most striking among many.