Chapter III (1)

While the mutiny was brewing, one La Roche Ferrière had been sent out as an agent or emissary among the more distant tribes. Sagacious, bold, and restless, he pushed his way from town to town, and pretended to have reached the mysterious mountains of Appalachee. He sent to the fort mantles woven with feathers, quivers covered with choice furs, arrows tipped with gold, wedges of a green stone like beryl or emerald, and other trophies of his wanderings. A gentleman named Grotaut took up the quest, and penetrated to the dominions of Hostaqua, who could muster three or four thousand warriors, and who promised with the aid of a hundred arquebusiers to conquer all the kings of the adjacent mountains, and subject them and their gold-mines to the rule of the French. A humbler adventurer was Peter Gamble, a robust and daring youth, who had been brought up in the household of Coligny, and was now a soldier under Laudonnière. The latter gave him leave to trade with the Indians, a privilege which he used so well that he grew rich with his traffic, became prime favorite with the chief of Edelano, married his daughter, and, in his absence, reigned in his stead. But, as his sway verged towards despotism, his subjects took offence, and beat out his brains with a hatchet.

During the winter, Indians from the neighborhood of Cape Canaveral brought to the fort two Spaniards, wrecked fifteen years before on the southwestern extremity of the peninsula. They were clothed like the Indians,--in other words, were not clothed at all,--and their uncut hair streamed wildly down their backs. They brought strange tales of those among whom they had dwelt. They told of the King of Calos, on whose domains they had suffered wreck, a chief mighty in stature and in power. In one of his villages was a pit, six feet deep and as wide as a hogshead, filled with treasure gathered from Spanish wrecks on adjacent reefs and keys. The monarch was a priest, too, and a magician, with power over the elements. Each year he withdrew from the public gaze to hold converse in secret with supernal or infernal powers; and each year he sacrificed to his gods one of the Spaniards whom the fortune of the sea had cast upon his shores. The name of the tribe is preserved in that of the River Caloosa. In close league with him was the mighty Oathcaqua, dwelling near Cape Canaveral, who gave his daughter, a maiden of wondrous beauty, in marriage to his great ally. But, as the bride, with her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved them above all measure."

Outina, taught by Arlac the efficacy of the French fire-arms, begged for ten arquebusiers to aid him on a new raid among the villages of Potanou, again alluring his greedy allies by the assurance, that, thus reinforced, he would conquer for them a free access to the phantom gold-mines of Appalachec. Ottigny set forth on this fool's-errand with thrice the force demanded. Three hundred Thimagoa and thirty Frenchmen took up their march through the pine-barrens. Outina's conjurer was of the number, and had well-nigh ruined the enterprise. Kneeling on Ottigny's shield, that he might not touch the earth, with hideous grimaces, howlings, and contortions, he wrought himself into a prophetic frenzy, and proclaimed to the astounded warriors that to advance farther would be destruction. Outina was for instant retreat, but Ottigny's sarcasms shamed him into a show of courage. Again they moved forward, and soon encountered Potanou with all his host. Le Moyne drew a picture of the fight. In the foreground Ottigny is engaged in single combat with a gigantic savage, who, with club upheaved, aims a deadly stroke at the plumed helmet of his foe; but the latter, with target raised to guard his head, darts under the arms of the naked Goliath, and transfixes him with his sword. The arquebuse did its work: panic, slaughter, and a plentiful harvest of scalps. But no persuasion could induce Outina to follow up his victory. He went home to dance around his trophies, and the French returned disgusted to Fort Caroline.

And now, in ample measure, the French began to reap the harvest of their folly. Conquest, gold, military occupation,--such had been their aims. Not a rood of ground had been stirred with the spade. Their stores were consumed; the expected supplies had not come. The Indians, too, were hostile. Satouriona hated them as allies of his enemies; and his tribesmen, robbed and maltreated by the lawless soldiers, exulted in their miseries. Yet in these, their dark and subtle neighbors, was their only hope.

May-day came, the third anniversary of the day when Ribaut and his companions, full of delighted anticipations, had explored the flowery borders of the St. John's. Dire was the contrast; for, within the homesick precinct of Fort Caroline, a squalid band, dejected and worn, dragged their shrunken limbs about the sun-scorched area, or lay stretched in listless wretchedness under the shade of the barracks. Some were digging roots in the forest, or gathering a kind of sorrel upon the meadows. One collected refuse fish-bones and pounded them into meal. Yet, giddy with weakness, their skin clinging to their bones, they dragged themselves in turn to the top of St. John's Bluff, straining their eyes across the sea to descry the anxiously expected sail.

Had Coligny left them to perish? or had some new tempest of calamity, let loose upon France, drowned the memory of their exile? In vain the watchman on the hill surveyed the solitude of waters. A deep dejection fell upon them, a dejection that would have sunk to despair, could their eyes have pierced the future.

The Indians had left the neighborhood, but, from time to time, brought in meagre supplies of fish, which they sold to the famished soldiers at exorbitant prices. Lest they should pay the penalty of their extortion, they would not enter the fort, but lay in their canoes in the river, beyond gunshot, waiting for their customers to come out to them. "Oftentimes," says Laudonnière, "our poor soldiers were constrained to give away the very shirts from their backs to get one fish. If at any time they shewed unto the savages the excessive price which they tooke, these villaines would answere them roughly and churlishly: If thou make so great account of thy marchandise, eat it, and we will eat our fish: then fell they out a laughing and mocked us with open throat."

The spring wore away, and no relief appeared. One thought now engrossed the colonists, the thought of return to France. Vasseur's ship, the Breton, still remained in the river, and they had also the Spanish brigantine brought by the mutineers. But these vessels were insufficient, and they prepared to build a new one. The energy of reviving hope lent new life to their exhausted frames. Some gathered pitch in the pine forests; some made charcoal; some cut and sawed the timber. The maize began to ripen, and this brought some relief; but the Indians, exasperated and greedy, sold it with reluctance, and murdered two half-famished Frenchmen who gathered a handful in the fields.

The colonists applied to Outina, who owed them two victories. The result was a churlish message and a niggardly supply of corn, coupled with an invitation to aid him against an insurgent chief, the plunder of whose villages would yield an ample supply. The offer was accepted. Ottigny and Vasseur set forth, but were grossly deceived, led against a different enemy, and sent back empty-handed and half-starved.

Pale with famine and with rage, a crowd of soldiers beset Laudonnière, and fiercely demanded to be led against Outina to take him prisoner and extort from his fears the supplies which could not be looked for from his gratitude. The commandant was forced to comply. Those who could bear the weight of their armor put it on, embarked, to the number of fifty, in two barges, and sailed up the river under the commandant himself. Outina's landing reached, they marched inland, entered his village, surrounded his mud-plastered palace, seized him amid the yells and howlings of his subjects, and led him prisoner to their boats. Here, anchored in mid-stream, they demanded a supply of corn and beans as the price of his ransom.

The alarm spread. Excited warriors, bedaubed with red, came thronging from all his villages. The forest along the shore was full of them; and troops of women gathered at the water's edge with moans, outcries, and gestures of despair. Yet no ransom was offered, since, reasoning from their own instincts, they never doubted, that, the price paid, the captive would be put to death.

Laudonnière waited two days, then descended the river. In a rude chamber of Fort Caroline, pike in hand, the sentinel stood his guard, while before him crouched the captive chief, mute, impassive, brooding on his woes. His old enemy, Satouriona, keen as a hound on the scent of prey, tried, by great offers, to bribe Laudonnière to give the prisoner into his hands. Outina, however, was kindly treated, and assured of immediate freedom on payment of the ransom.

Meanwhile his captivity was entailing dire affliction on his realm; for, despairing of his return, his subjects mustered to the election of a new chief. Party-strife ran high. Some were for a boy, his son, and some for an ambitious kinsman who coveted the vacant throne. Outina chafed in his prison, learning these dissensions, and, eager to convince his over-hasty subjects that their king still lived, he was so profuse of promises, that he was again embarked and carried up the river.

At no great distance below Lake George, a small affluent of the St. John's gave access by water to a point within eighteen miles of Outina's principal town. The two barges, crowded with soldiers, and bearing also the royal captive, rowed up this little stream. Indians awaited them at the landing, with gifts of bread, beans, and fish, and piteous prayers for their chief, upon whose liberation they promised an ample supply of corn. As they were deaf to all other terms, Laudonnière yielded, released the chief, and received in his place two hostages, who were fast bound in the boats. Ottigny and Arlac, with a strong detachment of arquebusiers, set forth to receive the promised supplies, for which, from the first, full payment in merchandise had been offered. Arrived at the village, they filed into the great central lodge, within whose dusky precincts were gathered the magnates of the tribe. Council-chamber, forum, banquet-hall, dancing-hall, palace, all in one, the royal dwelling could hold half the population in its capacious confines. Here the French made their abode. Their armor buckled, their arquebuse-matches lighted, they stood, or sat, or reclined on the earthen floor, with anxious eyes watching the strange, dim scene, half lighted by the daylight that streamed down through the hole at the apex of the roof. Tall, dark forms stalked to and fro, quivers at their backs, bows and arrows in their hands, while groups, crouched in the shadow beyond, eyed the hated guests with inscrutable visages, and malignant, sidelong eyes. Corn came in slowly, but warriors were mustering fast. The village without was full of them. The French officers grew anxious, and urged the chiefs to greater alacrity in collecting the promised ransom. The answer boded no good, "Our women are afraid, when they see the matches of your guns burning. Put them out, and they will bring the corn faster."

Outina was nowhere to be seen. At length they learned that he was in one of the small huts adjacent. Several of the officers went to him, complaining of the slow payment of his ransom. The kindness of his captors at Fort Caroline seemed to have won his heart. He replied, that such was the rage of his subjects that he could no longer control them,--that the French were in danger,--and that he had seen arrows stuck in the ground by the side of the path, in token that war was declared. Their peril was thickening hourly, and Ottigny resolved to regain the boats while there was yet time.

On the twenty-seventh of July, at nine in the morning, he set his men in order. Each shouldering a sack of corn, they marched through the rows of squalid huts that surrounded the great lodge, and out betwixt the interfolding extremities of the palisade that encircled the town. Before them stretched a wide avenue, three or four hundred paces long, flanked by a natural growth of trees,--one of those curious monuments of native industry to which allusion has been already made. Here Ottigny halted and formed his line of march. Arlac with eight matchlockmen was sent in advance, and flanking parties thrown into the woods on either side. Ottigny told his soldiers, that, if the Indians meant to attack them, they were probably in ambush at the other end of the avenue. He was right. As Arlac's party reached the spot, the whole pack gave tongue at once. The war-whoop quavered through the startled air, and a tempest of stone-headed arrows clattered against the breastplates of the French, or tore, scorching like fire, through their unprotected limbs. They stood firm, and sent back their shot so steadily that several of the assailants were laid dead, and the rest, two or three hundred in number, gave way as Ottigny came up with his men.

They moved on for a quarter of a mile through a country, as it seems, comparatively open; when again the war-cry pealed in front, and three hundred savages came bounding to the assault. Their whoops were echoed from the rear. It was the party whom Arlac had just repulsed, who, leaping and showering their arrows, were rushing on with a ferocity restrained only by their lack of courage. There was no panic. The men threw down their corn-bags, and took to their weapons. They blew their matches, and, under two excellent officers, stood well to their work. The Indians, on their part, showed a good discipline, after their fashion, and were perfectly under the control of their chiefs. With cries that imitated the yell of owls, the scream of cougars, and the howl of wolves, they ran up in successive bands, let fly their arrows, and instantly fell back, giving place to others. At the sight of the levelled arquebuse, they dropped flat on the earth. Whenever, sword in hand, the French charged upon them, they fled like foxes through the woods; and whenever the march was resumed, the arrows were showering again upon the flanks and rear of the retiring band. The soldiers coolly picked them up and broke them as they fell. Thus, beset with swarming savages, the handful of Frenchmen pushed their march till nightfall, fighting as they went.

The Indians gradually drew off, and the forest was silent again. Two of the French had been killed and twenty-two wounded, several so severely that they were supported to the boats with the utmost difficulty. Of the corn, two bags only had been brought off.

Famine and desperation now reigned at Fort Caroline. The Indians had killed two of the carpenters; hence long delay in the finishing of the new ship. They would not wait, but resolved to put to sea in the Breton and the brigantine. The problem was to find food for the voyage; for now, in their extremity, they roasted and ate snakes, a delicacy in which the neighborhood abounded.

On the third of August, Laudonnière, perturbed and oppressed, was walking on the hill, when, looking seaward, he saw a sight that shot a thrill through his exhausted frame. A great ship was standing towards the river's mouth. Then another came in sight, and another, and another. He called the tidings to the fort below. Then languid forms rose and danced for joy, and voices, shrill with weakness, joined in wild laughter and acclamation.

A doubt soon mingled with their joy. Who were the strangers? Were they the succors so long hoped in vain? or were they Spaniards bringing steel and fire? They were neither. The foremost was a stately ship, of seven hundred tons, a mighty burden at that day. She was named the Jesus; and with her were three smaller vessels, the Solomon, the Tiger, and the Swallow. Their commander was "a right worshipful and valiant knight,"--for so the record styles him,--a pious man and a prudent, to judge him by the orders he gave his crew, when, ten months before, he sailed out of Plymouth:--"Serve God daily, love one another, preserve your victuals, beware of fire, and keepe good companie." Nor were the crew unworthy the graces of their chief; for the devout chronicler of the voyage ascribes their deliverance from the perils of the seas to "the Almightie God, who never suffereth his Elect to perish."

Who, then, were they, this chosen band, serenely conscious of a special Providential care? Apostles of the cross, bearing the word of peace to benighted heathendom? They were the pioneers of that detested traffic destined to inoculate with its black infection nations yet unborn, parent of discord and death, with the furies in their train, filling half a continent with the tramp of armies and the clash of fratricidal swords. Their chief was Sir John Hawkins, father of the English slave-trade.

He had been to the coast of Guinea, where he bought and kidnapped a cargo of slaves. These he had sold to the jealous Spaniards of Hispaniola, forcing them, with sword, matchlock, and culverin, to grant him free trade, and then to sign testimonials that he had borne himself as became a peaceful merchant. Prospering greatly by this summary commerce, but distressed by the want of water, he had put into the River of May to obtain a supply.

Among the rugged heroes of the British marine, Sir John stood in the front rank, and along with Drake, his relative, is extolled as "a man borne for the honour of the English name.... Neither did the West of England yeeld such an Indian Neptunian paire as were these two Ocean peeres, Hawkins and Drake." So writes the old chronicler, Purchas, and all England was of his thinking. A hardy seaman, a bold fighter, overbearing towards equals, but kind, in his bluff way, to those beneath him, rude in speech, somewhat crafty withal, and avaricious, he buffeted his way to riches and fame, and died at last full of years and honor. As for the abject humanity stowed between the reeking decks of the ship Jesus, they were merely in his eyes so many black cattle tethered for the market. Queen Elizabeth had an interest in the venture, and received her share of the sugar, pearls, ginger, and hides which the vigorous measures of Sir John gained from his Spanish customers.

Hawkins came up the river in a pinnace, and landed at Fort Caroline, "accompanied," says Laudonnière, "with gentlemen honorably apparelled, yet unarmed." Between the Huguenots and the English there was a double tie of sympathy. Both hated priests, and both hated Spaniards. Wakening from their apathetic misery, the starveling garrison hailed him as a deliverer. Yet Hawkins secretly rejoiced, when he learned their purpose to abandon Florida; for, though, not to tempt his cupidity, they hid from him the secret of their Appalachian gold-mine, he coveted for his royal mistress the possession of this rich domain. He shook his head, however, when he saw the vessels in which they proposed to embark, and offered them all a free passage to France in his own ships. This, from obvious motives of honor and prudence, Laudonnière declined, upon which Hawkins offered to lend or sell to him one of his smaller vessels.

Hereupon arose a great clamor. A mob of soldiers and artisans beset Laudonnière's chamber, threatening loudly to desert him, and take passage with Hawkins, unless the offer of the latter were accepted. The commandant accordingly resolved to buy the vessel. The generous slaver, whose reputed avarice nowise appears in the transaction, desired him to set his own price; and, in place of money, took the cannon of the fort, with other articles now useless to their late owners. He sent them, too, a gift of wine and biscuit, and supplied them with provision for the voyage, receiving in payment Laudonnière's note,--"for which," adds the latter, "I am until this present indebted to him." With a friendly leave-taking he returned to his ships and stood out to sea, leaving golden opinions among the grateful inmates of Fort Caroline.

Before the English top-sails had sunk beneath the horizon, the colonists bestirred themselves to depart. In a few days their preparations were made. They waited only for a fair wind. It was long in coming, and meanwhile their troubled fortunes assumed a new phase.

On the twenty-eighth of August, the two captains, Vasseur and Verdier, came in with tidings of an approaching squadron. Again the fort was wild with excitement. Friends or foes, French or Spaniards, succor or death: betwixt these were their hopes and fears divided. With the following morning, they saw seven barges rowing up the river, bristling with weapons and crowded with men in armor. The sentries on the bluff challenged, and received no answer. One of them fired at the advancing boats. Still no response. Laudonnière was almost defenceless. He had given his heavier cannon to Hawkins, and only two field-pieces were left. They were levelled at the foremost boats, and the word was about to be given, when a voice from among the strangers called that they were French, commanded by John Ribaut.

At the eleventh hour, the long-looked-for succors were come. Ribaut had been commissioned to sail with seven ships for Florida. A disorderly concourse of disbanded soldiers, mixed with artisans and their families, and young nobles weary of a two-years' peace, were mustered at the port of Dieppe, and embarked, to the number of three hundred men, bearing with them all things thought necessary to a prosperous colony.

No longer in dread of the Spaniards, the colonists saluted the new-comers with the cannon by which a moment before they had hoped to blow them out of the water. Laudonnière issued from his stronghold to welcome them, and regaled them with what cheer he might. Ribaut was present, conspicuous by his long beard, the astonishment of the Indians; and here, too, were officers, old friends of Laudonnière. Why, then, had they approached in the attitude of enemies? The mystery was soon explained; for they expressed to the commandant their pleasure at finding that the charges made against him had proved false. He begged to know more, on which Ribaut, taking him aside, told him that the returning ships had brought home letters filled with accusations of arrogance, tyranny, cruelty, and a purpose of establishing an independent command: accusations which he now saw to be unfounded, but which had been the occasion of his unusual and startling precaution. He gave him, too, a letter from the Admiral Coligny. In brief, but courteous terms, it required him to resign his command, and invited his return to France to clear his name from the imputations cast upon it. Ribaut warmly urged him to remain; but Laudonnière declined his friendly proposals.

Worn in body and mind, mortified and wounded, he soon fell ill again. A peasant-woman attended him, brought over, he says, to nurse the sick and take charge of the poultry, and of whom Le Moyne also speaks as a servant, but who had been made the occasion of additional charges against him, most offensive to the austere Admiral.

Stores were landed, tents were pitched, women and children were sent on shore, feathered Indians mingled in the throng, and the sunny borders of the River of May swarmed with busy life. "But, lo, how oftentimes misfortune doth search and pursue us, even then when we thinke to be at rest!" exclaims the unhappy Laudonnière. Behind the light and cheer of renovated hope, a cloud of blackest omen was gathering in the east.

At half-past eleven on the night of Tuesday, the fourth of September, the crew of Ribaut's flag-ship, anchored on the still sea outside the bar, saw a huge hulk, grim with the throats of cannon, drifting towards them through the gloom; and from its stern rolled on the sluggish air the portentous banner of Spain.

Here opens a wilder act of this eventful drama. At another day we shall lift the curtain on its fierce and bloody scenes.

* * * * *

SEAWARD.

TO ----.

How long it seems since that mild April night,
When, leaning from the window, you and I
Heard, clearly ringing from the shadowy bight,
The loon's unearthly cry!

Southwest the wind blew; million little waves
Ran rippling round the point in mellow tune;
But mournful, like the voice of one who raves,
That laughter of the loon.

We called to him, while blindly through the haze
Upclimbed the meagre moon behind us, slow,
So dim, the fleet of boats we scarce could trace,
Moored lightly, just below.

We called, and, lo, he answered! Half in fear,
I sent the note back. Echoing rock and bay
Made melancholy music far and near;
Slowly it died away.

That schooner, you remember? Flying ghost!
Her canvas catching every wandering beam,
Aërial, noiseless, past the glimmering coast
She glided like a dream.

Would we were leaning from your window now,
Together calling to the eerie loon,
The fresh wind blowing care from either brow,
This sumptuous night of June!

So many sighs load this sweet inland air,
'T is hard to breathe, nor can we find relief;
However lightly touched, we all must share
The nobleness of grief.

But sighs are spent before they reach your ear,
Vaguely they mingle with the water's rune;
No sadder sound salutes you than the clear,
Wild laughter of the loon.

* * * * *

SIDE-GLANCES AT HARVARD CLASS-DAY.

It happened to me once to "assist" at the celebration of Class-Day at Harvard University. Class-Day is the peculiar institution of the Senior Class, and marks its completion of college study and release from college rules. It is also an institution peculiar, I believe, to Harvard, and I was somewhat curious to observe its ceremonials, besides feeling a not entirely _unawful_ interest in being introduced for the first time to the _arcana_ of that renowned Alma Mater.

She has set up her Lares and Penates in a fine old grove, or a fine old grove and green have sprouted up around her, as the case may be. At all events, there is sufficient groundwork for any quantity of euphuism about "classic shades," "groves of Academe," _et cetera_. Trollope had his fling at the square brick buildings; but it was a fling that they richly deserved, for they are in very deed as ugly as it is possible to conceive,--angular, formal, stiff, windowy, bricky,--and the farther in you go, the worse it grows. Why, I pray to know, as the first inquiry suggested by Class-Day, is it necessary for boys' schools to be placed without the pale of civilization? Do boys take so naturally to the amenities of life that they can safely dispense with the conditions of amenity? When I entered those brick boxes, I felt as if I were going into a stable. Wood-work dingy, unpainted, gashed, scratched; windows dingy and dim; walls dingy and gray and smoked; everything unhomelike, unattractive, narrow, and rickety. Think, now, of taking a boy away from his home, from his mother and sisters, from carpets and curtains and all the softening influences of cultivated taste, and turning him loose with dozens of other boys into a congeries of pens like this! Who wonders that he comes out a boor? I felt a sinking at the heart in climbing up those narrow, uncouth staircases. We talk about education. We boast of having the finest system in the world. Harvard is, if not the most distinguished, certainly among the first institutions in the country; but, in my opinion, formed in the entry of the first Harvard house I entered, Harvard has not begun to hit the nail on the head. Education! Do you call it education, to put a boy into a hole, and work out of him a certain amount of mathematics, and work into him a certain number of languages? Is a man dressed, because one arm has a spotless wristband, unquestionable sleeve-buttons, a handsome sleeve, and a well-fitting glove at the end, while the man is out at the other elbow, patched on both knees, and down at the heels? Should we consider Nature a success, if she concerned herself only with carrying nutriment to the stomach, and left the heart and the lungs and the liver and the nerves to shift for themselves? Yet so do we, educating boys in these dens called colleges. We educate the mind, the memory, the intellectual faculties; but the manners, the courtesies, the social tastes, the greater part of what goes to make life happy and genial, not to say good, we leave out of view. People talk about the "awkward age" of boys,--the age in which their hands and feet trouble them, and in which they are a social burden to themselves and their friends. But one age need be no more awkward than another. I have seen boys that were gentlemen from the cradle to the grave,--almost; certainly from the time they ceased to be babies till they passed altogether out of my sight. Let boys have the associations, the culture, the training, and the treatment of gentlemen, and I do not believe there will be a single moment of their lives in which they will be clowns.

And among the first necessities are the surroundings of a gentleman. When a man is grown up, he can live in a sty and not be a pig; but turn a horde of boys in, and when they come out they will root out. A man is strong and stiff. His inward, inherent power, toughened by exposure and fortified by knowledge, overmasters opposing circumstances. He can neglect the prickles and assume the rose of his position. He stands scornfully erect amid the grovelling influences that would pull him down. It may perhaps be, also, that here and there a boy, with a strong native predilection to refinement, shall be eclectic, and, with the water-lily's instinct, select from coarse contiguities only that which will nourish a delicate soul. But human nature in its infancy is usually a very susceptible material. It grows as it is trained. It will be rude, if it is left rude, and fine only as it is wrought finely. Educate a boy to tumbled hair and grimy hands, and he will go tumbled and grimy to his grave. Put a hundred boys together where they will have the appurtenances of a clown, and I do not believe there will be ten out of the hundred who will not become precisely to that degree clownish. I am not battling for the luxuries of life, but I am for its decencies. I would not turn boys into Sybarites, but neither would I let them riot into Satyrs. The effeminacy of a false aristocracy is no nearer the heights of true manhood than the clumsiness of the clod, but I think it is just as near. I would have college rooms, college entrances, and all college domains cleanly and attractive. I would, in the first place, have every rough board planed, and painted in soft and cheerful tints. I would have the walls pleasantly colored, or covered with delicate, or bright, or warm-hued paper. The floor should be either tiled, or hidden under carpets, durable, if possible, at any rate, decent. Straw or rope matting is better than brown, yawning boards. There you have things put upon an entirely new basis. At no immoderate expense there is a new sky, a new earth, a new horizon. If a boy is rich and can furnish his room handsomely, the furnishings will not shame the room and its vicinity. If he is poor and can provide but cheaply, he will still have a comely home provided for him by the Mater who then will be Alma to some purpose.

Do you laugh at all this? So did Sarah laugh at the angels, but the angels had the right of it for all that.

I am told that it would all be useless,--that the boys would deface and destroy, till the last state of the buildings would be worse than the first. I do not believe one word of it. It is inferred that they would deface, because they deface now. But what is it that they deface? Deformity. And who blames them? You see a rough board, and, by natural instinct, you dive into it with your jackknife. A base bare wall is a standing invitation to energetic and unruly pencils. Give the boys a little elegance and the tutors a little tact, and I do not believe there would be any trouble. If I had a thousand dollars,--as I did have once, but it is gone: shall I ever look upon its like again?--I would not be afraid to stake the whole of it upon the good behavior of college students,--that is, if I could have the managing of them. I would make them "a speech," when they came back at the end of one of their long vacations, telling them what had been done, why it had been done, and the objections that had been urged against doing it. Then I would put the matter entirely into their hands. I would appeal solely to their honor. I would repose in them so much confidence that they could by no possibility betray it. We don't trust people half enough. We hedge ourselves about with laws and locks and deeds and bonds, and neglect the weightier matters of inherent right and justice that lie in every bosom.

It may be thought hardly polite to accept hospitality and then go away and inveigh against the hospital; but my animadversions, you will do me the justice to observe, are not aimed at my entertainers. I am marauding for, not against them.

* * * * *

The Oration and Poem form the first public features of Class-Day, but, arriving late, I could only eddy on the surge that swept around the door. Strains of distant eloquence would occasionally float musically to my ear; now and then a single word would steer clear of the thousands of heads and come into my port unharmed. Frequent waves of laughter beat and broke into the vestibule; but what is more "trying" to a frail temper than laughter in which one cannot join? So we tarried long enough to mark the fair faces and fine dresses, and then rambled under the old trees till the hour for the "collation" came; and this is the second point on which I purpose to dwell.

Each member of the Senior Class prepares a banquet,--sometimes separately and sometimes in clubs, at an expense varying from fifty to five hundred dollars,--to which he invites as many friends as he chooses, or as are available. The banquet is quite as rich, varied, and elegant as you find at ordinary evening parties, and the occasion is a merry and pleasant one. But it occurred to me that there may be unpleasant things connected with this custom. In a class of seventy-five, in a country like America, it is quite probable that a certain proportion are ill able to meet the expense which such a custom necessitates. Some have fought their own way through college. Some must have been fought through by their parents. To them I should think this elaborate and considerable outlay must be a very sensible inconvenience. The mere expense of books and board, tuition and clothing, cannot be met without strict economy and much parental and family sacrifice. And at the end of it all, when every nerve has been strained, and must be strained harder still before the man can be considered fairly on his feet and able to run his own race in life, comes this new call for entirely uncollegiate disbursements. Of course it is only a custom. There is no college by-law, I suppose, which prescribes a valedictory _symposium_. Probably it grew up gradually from small ice-cream beginnings to its present formidable proportions; but a custom is as rigid as a chain. I wondered whether the moral character of the young men was generally strong enough, by the time they were in their fourth collegiate year, to enable them to go counter to the custom, if it involved personal sacrifice at home,--whether there was generally sufficient courtliness, not to say Christianity, in the class, whether there was sufficient courtesy, chivalry, high-breeding, to make the omission of this party-giving unnoticeable or not unpleasant. I by no means say that the inability of a portion of the students to entertain their friends sumptuously should prevent those who are able from doing so. As the world is, some will be rich and some will be poor. This is a fact which they have to face the moment they go out into the world; and the sooner they grapple with it, and find out its real bearings and worth or worthlessness, the better. Boys are usually old enough by the time they are graduated to understand and take philosophically such a distinction. Nor do I admit that poor people have any right to be sore on the subject of their poverty. The one sensitiveness which I cannot comprehend, with which I have no sympathy, for which I have no pity, and of which I have no tolerance, is sensitiveness about poverty. I think it is an essentially vulgar feeling. I cannot conceive how a man who has any exaltation of life, any real elevation of character, any self-respect, can for a moment experience so ignoble a shame. One may be annoyed at the inconveniences and impatient of the restraints of poverty; but to be ashamed to be called poor or to be thought poor, to resort to shifts, not for the sake of being comfortable or elegant, but of seeming to be above the necessity of shifts, is an indication of an inferior mind, whether it dwell in prince or in peasant. The man who does it shows that he has not in his own opinion character enough to stand alone. He must be supported by adventitious circumstances, or he must fall. Nobody, therefore, need ever expect to receive sympathy from me in recounting the social pangs or slights of poverty. You never can be slighted, if you do not slight yourself. People may attempt to do it, but their shafts have no barb. You turn it all into natural history. It is a psychological phenomenon, a study, something to be analyzed, classified, reasoned from, and bent to your own convenience, but not to be taken to heart. It amuses you; it interests you; it adds to your stock of facts; it makes life curious and valuable: but if you suffer from it, it is because you have not basis, stamina; and probably you deserve to be slighted. This, however, is true only when people have become somewhat concentrated. Children know nothing of it. They live chiefly from without, not from within. Only gradually as they approach maturity do they cut loose from the scaffolding and depend upon their own centre of gravity. Appearances are very strong in school. Money and prodigality have great weight there, notwithstanding the democracy of attainments and abilities. If I live a thousand years, I do not believe I shall ever do a more virtuous deed than I did long ago in staying at home for the sake of a quarter of a dollar when the rest of the school went to see Tom Thumb, the late bewritten bridegroom. I call it virtuous, because I had the quarter and could have gone, and could not explain the reason why I did not go. And though a senior class in Harvard College may reasonably be supposed to be beyond the eminent domain of Tom Thumb and quarter-dollars, the principle is precisely the same,--only the temptation, I suppose, is much stronger, as the stake is larger. Have they self-poise enough to refrain from these festive expenses without suffering mortification? Have they virtue enough to refrain from them with the certainty of incurring such suffering? Have they nobility and generosity and largeness of soul enough, while abstaining themselves for conscience sake, to share in the plans and sympathize without servility in the pleasures of their rich comrades? to look on with friendly interest, without cynicism or concealed malice, at the preparations in which they do not join? Or do they yield to selfishness, and gratify their own vanity, weakness, self-indulgence, and love of pleasure, at whatever cost to their parents? Or is there such a state of public opinion and usage in college that this custom is equally honored in the breach and in the observance?

* * * * *

When the feasting was over, the most picturesque part of the day began. The college green put off suddenly its antique gravity, and became

"Embrouded ... as it were a mede
Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede,"--

"floures" which to their gay hues and graceful outlines added the rare charm of fluttering in perpetual motion. It was a kaleidoscope without angles. To me, niched in the embrasure of an old upper window, the scene, it seemed, might have stepped out of the Oriental splendor of Arabian Nights. I think I may safely say I never saw so many well-dressed people together in my life before. That seems a rather tame fact to buttress Arabian Nights withal, but it implies much. The distance was a little too great for one to note personal and individual beauty; but since I have heard that Boston is famous for its ugly women, perhaps that was an advantage, as diminishing likewise individual ugliness. If no one was strikingly handsome, no one was strikingly plain. And though you could not mark the delicacies of faces, you could have the full effect of costumes,--rich, majestic, floating, gossamery, impalpable. Everything was fresh, spotless, and in tune. It scarcely needed music to resolve all the incessant waver and shimmer into a dance; but the music came, and, like sand-grains under the magnet, the beautiful atoms swept into stately shapes and tremulous measured activity,--

"A fine, sweet earthquake gently moved
By the soft wind of whispering silks."

Then it seemed like a German festival, and came back to me the Fatherland, the lovely season of the Blossoming, the short, sweet bliss-month among the Blumenthal Mountains.

Nothing can be more appropriate, more harmonious, than dancing on the green. Youth and gayety and beauty--and in summer we are all young and gay and beautiful--mingle well with the eternal youth of blue sky and velvet sward and the light breezes toying in the tree-tops. Youth and Nature kiss each other in the bright, clear purity of the happy summer-tide. Whatever objections lie against dancing elsewhere must veil their faces there.

Yet I must confess I wish men would not dance. It is the most unbecoming exercise which they can adopt. In women you have the sweep and wave of drapery, gentle undulations, summer-cloud floatings, soft, sinuous movements, the fluency of pliant forms, the willowy bend and rebound of lithe and lovely suppleness. It is grace generic,--the sublime, the evanescent mysticism of motion, without use, without aim, except its own overflowing and all-sufficing fascination. But when a man dances, it reminds me of that amusing French book called "Le Diable Boiteux," which has been or may be free-thinkingly translated, "The Devil on Two Sticks." In saying this, I design to cast no slur on the moral character of masculine dancers. It is unquestionably above reproach; but let an angel put on the black coat and trousers which constitute the "full-dress" of a modern gentleman, and therein antic through the "Lancers," and he would simply be ridiculous,--which is all I allege against Thomas, Richard, and Henry, Esq. A woman's dancing is gliding, swaying, serpentine. A man's is jerks, hops, convulsions, and acute angles. The woman is light, airy, indistinctly defined: airy movements are in keeping. The man is sombre in hue, grave in tone, distinctly outlined; and nothing is more incongruous, to my thinking, than this dancing, well portrayed in the contraband melody of

"Old Joe," etc.

The feminine drapery conceals processes and gives results. The masculine absence of drapery reveals processes and thereby destroys results.

Once upon a time, long before the Flood, the clergyman of a country-village, possessed with such a zeal as Paul bore record of concerning Israel, conceived it his duty to "make a note" of sundry young members of his flock who had met for a drive and a supper, with a dance fringed upon the outskirts. The fame thereof being noised abroad, a sturdy old farmer, with a good deal of shrewd sense and mother-wit in his brains, and a fine, indirect way of hitting the nail on the head with a side-stroke, was questioned in a neighboring village as to the facts of the case. "Yes," he said, surlily, "the young folks had a party, and got up a dance, and the minister was mad,--and I don't blame him,--he thinks nobody has any business to dance, unless he knows how better than they did!" It was a rather different _casus belli_ from that which the worthy clergyman would have preferred before a council; but it "meets my views" precisely as to the validity of the objections urged against dancing. I would have women dance, because it is the most beautiful thing in the world. I would have men dance, if it is necessary, in order to "set off" women, and to keep themselves out of mischief; but in point of grace, or elegance, or attractiveness, I should beg men to hold their peace--and their pumps.

From my window overlooking the green, I was led away into some one or other of the several halls to see the "round dances"; and it was like going from Paradise to Pandemonium. From the pure and healthy lawn, all the purer for the pure and peaceful people pleasantly walking up and down in the sunshine and shade, or grouped in the numerous windows, like bouquets of rare tropical flowers,--from the green, rainbowed in vivid splendor, and alive with soft, tranquil motion, fair forms, and the flutter of beautiful and brilliant colors,--from the green, sanctified already by the pale faces of sick and wounded and maimed soldiers who had gone out from the shadows of those sheltering trees to draw the sword for country, and returned white wraiths of their vigorous youth, the sad vanguard of that great army of blessed martyrs who shall keep forever in the mind of this generation how costly and precious a thing is liberty, who shall lift our worldly age out of the plough of its material prosperity into the sublimity of suffering and sacrifice,--from suggestions and fancies and dreamy musing and "phantasms sweet," into the hall, where, for flower-scented summer air were thick clouds of fine, penetrating dust, and for lightly trooping fairies a jam of heated human beings, so that you shall hardly come nigh the dancers for the press; and when you have, with difficulty and many contortions and much apologizing, threaded the solid mass, piercing through the forest of fans,--what? An inclosure, but no more illusion.

Waltzing is a profane and vicious dance. Always. When it is prosecuted in the centre of a great crowd, in a dusty hall, on a warm midsummer day, it is also a disgusting dance. Night is its only appropriate time. The blinding, dazzling gas-light throws a grateful glare over the salient points of its indecency, and blends the whole into a wild whirl that dizzies and dazes one; but the uncompromising afternoon, pouring in through manifold windows, tears away every illusion, and reveals the whole coarseness and commonness and all the repulsive details of this most alien and unmaidenly revel. The very _pose_ of the dance is profanity. Attitudes which are the instinctive expression of intimate emotions, glowing rosy-red in the auroral time of tenderness, and justified in unabashed freedom only by a long and faithful habitude of unselfish devotion, are here openly, deliberately, and carelessly assumed by people who have but a casual and partial society-acquaintance. This I reckon profanity. This is levity the most culpable. This is a guilty and wanton waste of delicacy.

That it is practised by good girls and tolerated by good mothers does not prove that it is good. Custom blunts the edge of many perceptions. A good thing soiled may be redeemed by good people; but waltz as many as you may, spotless maidens, you will only smut yourselves, and not cleanse the waltz. It is of itself unclean.

There were, besides, peculiar _désagréments_ on this occasion. How can people,--I could not help saying to myself,--how can people endure such proximity in such a sweltering heat? For, as I said, there was no illusion,--not a particle. It was no Vale of Tempe, with Nymphs and Apollos. The boys were boys, appallingly young, full of healthful promise, but too much in the husk for exhibition, and not entirely at ease in their situation,--indeed, very much _not_ at ease,--unmistakably warm, nervous, and uncomfortable. The girls were pretty enough girls, I dare say, under ordinary circumstances,--one was really lovely, with soft cheeks, long eyelashes, eyes deep and liquid, and Tasso's gold in her hair, though of a bad figure, ill set off by a bad dress,--but Venus herself could not have been seen to advantage in such evil plight as they, panting, perspiring, ruffled, frowsy,--puff-balls revolving through an atmosphere of dust,--a maze of steaming, reeking human couples, inhumanly heated and simmering together with a more than Spartan fortitude.

It was remarkable, and at the same time amusing, to observe the difference in the demeanor of the two sexes. The lions and the fawns seemed to have changed hearts,--perhaps they had. It was the boys that were nervous. The girls were unquailing. The boys were, however, heroic. They tried bravely to hide the fox and his gnawings; but traces were visible. They made desperate feint of being at the height of enjoyment and unconscious of spectators; but they had much modesty, for all that. The girls threw themselves into it _pugnis et calcibus_,--unshrinking, indefatigable.

There is another thing which girls and their mothers do not seem to consider. The present mode of dress renders waltzing almost as objectionable in a large room as the boldest feats of a French ballet-dancer. Not to put too fine a point on it, I mean that these girls' gyrations in the centre of their gyrating and centrifugal hoops make a most operatic drapery-display. I saw scores and scores of public waltzing-girls last summer, and among them all I saw but one who understood the art, or, at any rate, who practised the art, of avoiding an indecent exposure. In the glare and glamour of gas-light it is only flash and clouds and indistinctness. In the broad and honest daylight, it is not. Do I shock ears polite? I trust so. If the saying of shocking things might prevent the doing of shocking things, I should be well content. And is it an unpardonable sin for me to sit alone in my own room and write about what you go into a great hall, before hundreds of strange men and women, and do?

I do not speak thus about waltzing because I like to say it; but ye have compelled me. If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it. I respect and revere woman, and I cannot see her destroying or debasing the impalpable fragrance and delicacy of her nature without feeling the shame and shudder in my own heart. Great is my boldness of speech towards you, because great is my glorying of you. Though I speak as a fool, yet as a fool receive me. My opinions may be rustic. They are at least honest; and may it not be that the first fresh impressions of an unprejudiced and uninfluenced observer are as likely to be natural and correct views as those which are the result of many afterthoughts, long use, and an experience of multifold fascinations, combined with the original producing cause? My opinions may be wrong, but they will do no harm; the penalty will rest alone on me: while, if they are right, they may serve as a nail or two to be fastened by the masters of assemblies.