Chapter V: Part 5

To these choice spirits, these enthusiastic and confiding friends, his house was the House of the Interpreter. The little back-room, kitchen, bedroom, studio, and parlor in one, plain and neat, had for them a kind of enchantment. That royal presence lighted up the "hole" into a palace. The very walls widened with the greatness of his soul. The windows that opened on the muddy Thames seemed to overlook the river of the water of life. Among the scant furnishings, his high thoughts, set in noble words, gleamed like apples of gold in pictures of silver. Over the gulf that yawns between two worlds he flung a glorious arch, and walked tranquilly back and forth. Heaven was as much a matter-of-fact to him as earth. Of sacred things he spoke with a familiarity which, to those who did not understand him, seemed either madness or blasphemy; but his friends never misunderstood. With one exception, none who knew him personally ever thought of calling his sanity in question. To them he was a sweet, gentle, lovable man. They felt the truth of his life. They saw that

"Only that fine madness still he did retain
Which rightly should possess a poet's brain."

Imagination was to him the great reality. The external, that which makes the chief consciousness of most men, was to him only staging, an incumbrance, and uncouth, but to be endured and made the most of. The world of the imagination was the true world. Imagination _bodied_ forth the forms of things unknown in a deeper sense, perhaps, than the great dramatist meant. His poet's pen, his painter's pencil turned them to shapes, and gave to airy nothings a local habitation and a name. Nay, he denied that they were nothings. He rather asserted the actual existence of his visions,--an existence as real, though not of the same nature, as those of the bed or the table. Imagination was a kind of sixth sense, and its objects were as real as the objects of the other senses. This sense he believed to exist, though latent, in every one, and to be susceptible of development by cultivation. This is surely a very different thing from madness. Neither is it the low superstition of ghosts. He recounted no miracle, nothing supernatural. It was only that by strenuous effort and untiring devotion he had penetrated beyond the rank and file--but not beyond the possibilities of the rank and file--into the unseen world. Undoubtedly this power finally assumed undue proportions. In his isolation it led him on too unresistingly. His generation knew him not. It neglected where it should have trained, and stared where it should have studied. He was not wily enough to conceal or gloss over his views. Often silent with congenial companions, he would thrust in with boisterous assertion in the company of captious opponents. Set upon by the unfriendly and the conventional, he wilfully hurled out his wild utterances, exaggerating everything, scorning all explanation or modification, goading peculiarities into reckless extravagance, on purpose to puzzle and startle, and so avenging himself by playing off upon those who attempted to play off upon him. To the gentle, the reverent, the receptive, the simple, he, too, was gentle and reverent.

Nearest and dearest of all, the "beloved Kate" held him in highest honor. The ripples that disturbed the smooth flow of their early life had died away and left an unruffled current. To the childless wife, he was child, husband, and lover. No sphere so lofty, but he could come quickly down to perform the lowliest duties. The empty platter, silently placed on the dinner-table, was the signal for his descent from Parnassus to the money-earning graver. No angel-faces kept him from lighting the morning fire and setting on the breakfast-kettle before his Kitty awoke. Their life became one. Her very spirit passed into his. By day and by night her love surrounded him. In his moments of fierce inspiration, when he would arise from his bed to sketch or write the thoughts that tore his brain, she, too, arose and sat by his side, silent, motionless, soothing him only by the tenderness of her presence. Years and wintry fortunes made havoc of her beauty, but love renewed it day by day for the eyes of her lover, and their hands only met in firmer clasp as they neared the Dark River.

It was reached at last. No violent steep, but a gentle and gracious slope led to the cold waters that had no bitterness for him. Shining already in the glory of the celestial city, his eyes rested upon the dear form that had stood by his side through all these years, and with waning strength he cried, "Stay! Keep as you are! _You_ have been ever an angel to me: I will draw you." And, summoning his forces, he sketched his last portrait of the fond and faithful wife. Then, comforting her with the shortness of their separation, assuring her that he should always be about her to take care of her, he set his face steadfastly towards the Beautiful Gate. So joyful was his passage, so triumphant his march, that the very sight was to them that could behold it as if heaven itself were come down to meet him. Even the sorrowing wife could but listen enraptured to the sweet songs he chanted to his Maker's praise; but, "They are _not_ mine, my beloved!" he tenderly cried; "_No!_ they are _not_ mine!" The strain he heard was of a higher mood; and continually sounding as he went, with melodious noise, in notes on high, he entered in through the gates into the City.

* * * * *

THE FIRST VISIT TO WASHINGTON.

One chill morning in the autumn of 1826, in the town of Keene, New Hampshire, lights might have been seen at an unusually early hour in the windows of a yellow one-story-and-a-half house, that stood--and still stands, perhaps--on the corner of the main street and the Swanzey road.

There was living in that house a blind widow, the mother of a large family of children, now mostly scattered; and the occasion of the unseasonable lights was the departure from home of a son yet left to her, upon a long and uncertain adventure.

He was a young man, eighteen years old, just out of college. Graduating at Dartmouth, he had brought away from that institution something better than book-learning,--a deep religious experience, which was to be his support through trials now quickly to come, and through a subsequent prosperity more dangerous to the soul than trials. He had been bred a farmer's boy. He was poor, and had his living to get. And he was now going out into the world, he scarcely knew whither, to see what prizes were to be won. In person he was tall, slender, slightly bent; shy and diffident in his manners; in his appearance a little green and awkward. He had an impediment in his speech also. His name--it is an odd one, but you may perhaps have heard it--was Salmon.

He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,--her intelligent hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of her, when unpacked in a distant city.

A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early breakfast was eaten in silence,--anxious eyes looking up now and then at the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words.

"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full.

She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully, and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,--not with his own tears.

The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,--a heavy sound to the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations; and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty head.

Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune. Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere, beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,--but where?

In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter of introduction to the Rev. Mr. ----, who received him with hospitality, and used his influence to assist him in gaining a position. But the door of Providence did not open yet: Philadelphia was not that door: his path led farther.

So he kept on, still drawn by that magnet which we call Destiny. He went to Frederick: still the invisible finger pointed on. At last there was but one more step. He secured a seat in the stage going down the Frederick road to Washington.

Years after he was to approach the capital of the nation with far different prospects! But this was his first visit. It was at the close of a bleak day, late in November, that he came in sight of the city. The last tint of daylight was fading from a sullen sky. The dreary twilight was setting in. Cold blew the wind from over the Maryland hills. The trees were leafless; they shook and whistled in the blast. Gloom was shutting down upon the capital. The city wore a dismal and forbidding aspect; and the whole landscape was desolate and discouraging in the extreme. Here was mud, in which the stage-coach lurched and rolled as it descended the hills. Yonder was the watery spread of the Potomac, gray, cold, dimly seen under the shadow of coming night. Between this mud and that water what was there for him? Yet here was his destination.

Years after there dwelt in Washington a man high in position, wielding a power that was felt not only throughout this nation, but in Europe also,--his hand dispensing benefits, his door thronged by troops of friends. But now it was a city of strangers he was entering, a youth. Of all the dwellers there he knew not a living soul. There was no one to dispense favors to _him_,--to receive _him_ with cheerful look and cordial grasp of the hand. A heavy foreboding settled upon his spirit, as the darkness settled upon the hills. Here he was, alone and unknown,--a bashful boy as yet, utterly wanting in that ready audacity by means of which persons of extreme shallowness often push themselves into notice. Well might he foresee days of gloom, long days of waiting and struggle, stretching like the landscape before him!

But he was not disheartened. From the depths of his spirit arose a hope, like a bubble from a deep spring. That spring was FAITH. There, in that dull, bleak November twilight, he seemed to feel the hand of Providence take hold of his. And a prayer rose to his lips,--a prayer of earnest supplication for guidance and support. Was that prayer answered?

The stage rumbled through the naked suburbs and along the unlighted streets.

"Where do you stop?" asked the driver.

"Set me down at a boarding-house, if you know of a good one." For Salmon could not afford to go to a hotel.

"What sort of a boarding-house? I know of a good many. Some 's right smart,--'ristocratic, and 'ristocratic prices. Then there's some good enough in every way, only not quite so smart,--and with this advantage, you don't have the smartness to pay for."

"I prefer to go to a good house, where there are nice people, without too much smartness to be put into the bill."

"I know jest the kind of place, I reckon!"--and the driver whipped up his jaded horses.

He drew up before a respectable-looking wooden tenement on Pennsylvania Avenue, the windows of which, just lighted up, looked warm and inviting to the chilled and weary traveller.

"Good evening, Mrs. Markham!" said the driver to a kindly-looking lady who came to the door at his knock. "Got room for a boarder?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. I'm afraid not," said the lady, loud enough for Salmon to hear and be discouraged. "There's only half a room unoccupied,--if he would be content with that, and if he's the right sort of person"--

Here she said something in a whisper to the driver, who apparently pointed out Salmon to her inspection.

But it was too dark for her to decide whether he would do to put into the room with Williams; so Salmon had to get down and show himself. She examined him, and he inquired her terms. They appeared mutually satisfied. Accordingly the driver received directions to deposit Salmon's baggage in the entry; and the hungry and benumbed young traveller had the comfort of feeling that he had reached a home.

Grateful at finding a kind woman's face to welcome him,--glad of the opportunity to economize his slender means by sharing a room with another person, strongly-recommended as "very quiet" by Mrs. Markham,--Salmon washed his face, combed his hair, and ate his first supper in Washington. He has eaten better suppers there since, no doubt,--but not many, I fancy, that have been sweetened by a more devout sense of reliance upon Providence.

"Williams was a companionable person, who had a place in the Treasury Department, and talked freely about the kind of work he had to do, and the salary.

"Eight hundred a year!" thought Salmon, deeming that man enviable who had constant employment, an assured position, and eight hundred a year. _His_ ambition was to get a living simply,--to place his foot upon some certainty, however humble, with freedom from this present gnawing anxiety, and with a prospect of rising, he cared not how slowly, to the place which he felt belonged to him in the future. Little did he dream what that place was, when he questioned Williams so curiously as to what sort of thing the Treasury Department might be.

"If I could be sure of half that salary,--or even of three, or two hundred, just enough to pay my expenses, the first year,--I should be perfectly happy!"

"Haven't you any idea what you are going to do?"

"None whatever."

"What _can_ you do?"

"For one thing, I can teach. I think I shall try that."

"You'll find it a mighty hard place to get pupils!" said Williams, with a dubious smile.

Which rather gloomy prediction Salmon had to think of before going to bed.

But soon another subject, which he deemed of far greater importance, occupied his mind. He had of late been seriously considering whether it was his duty to continue his private devotions openly, or in secret,--and had concluded, that, when occasion seemed to require it, he ought to make an open manifestation of his faith. Here now was a test for his conscience. His room-mate showed no signs of going out again that night: he had pulled off his boots, put on his slippers, and lighted his pipe. Salmon had already inferred, from the tone of his conversation, that he was not a person who could sympathize with him in his religious sentiments. Yet he must kneel there in his presence, if he knelt at all. It was not the fear of ridicule, but a certain sensitiveness of spirit, which caused him to shrink from the act. He did not hesitate long, however. He turned, and knelt by his chair. Williams took the pipe out of his mouth, and looked at him over his shoulder with curious amazement. Not a word was spoken. Salmon, feeling that he had no right to intrude his devotions upon the ear of another, prayed silently; and Williams, compelled to respect the courageous, yet quiet manner in which he performed what he regarded as a solemn duty, kept his astonishment to himself.

Then Salmon arose, and went to bed for that first time in Washington under Mrs. Markham's roof.

On the twenty-third of December, 1826, the following advertisement appeared in the columns of the "National Intelligencer":--

"SELECT CLASSICAL SCHOOL.

"The Subscriber intends opening a Select Classical School, in the
Western part of the City, to commence on the second Monday in
January. His number of pupils will be limited to twenty, which
will enable him to devote a much larger portion of his time and
attention than ordinary to each individual student. Instruction
will be given in all the studies preparatory to entering College,
or, if desired, in any of the higher branches of a classical
education. The subscriber pledges himself that no effort shall be
wanting on his part to promote both the moral and intellectual
improvement of those who may be confided to his care. He may be
found at his room, three doors west of Brown's Hotel. Reference
may be made to the Hon. Henry Clay; Hon. D. Chase and Hon. H.
Seymour, of the Senate; Hon. I. Bartlett and Hon. William C.
Bradley, of the House of Representatives; Rev. Wm. Hawley and Rev.
E. Allen.

"SALMON ----.

"Dec. 23--3td & eotJ8."

The "Hon. Henry Clay" was then Secretary of State. The "Hon. D. Chase" referred to was Salmon's uncle Dudley, then United States Senator from Vermont. Congress was now in session, and he had arrived in town. He was a man of great practical sagacity, and kept a true heart beating under an exterior which appeared sometimes austere and eccentric. He had the year before been a second time elected to the Senate; and when he was on his way to Washington, Salmon had gone over from Hanover to Woodstock to meet him. They occupied the same room at the tavern, and the uncle had given the nephew some very good advice. What he said of the human passions was characteristic of the man; and it made a strong impression upon the mind of the youth:--

"A man's passions are given him for good, and not evil. They are not to be destroyed, but controlled. If they get the mastery, they destroy the man; but kept in their place, they are sources of power and happiness."

And he used this illustration, which, though the same thing has been said by others, remains, nevertheless, fresh as truth itself:--

"The passions are the winds that fill our sails; but the helmsman must be faithful, if we would avoid shipwreck, and reach the happy port at last."

Salmon had remembered well these words of his uncle, and the night spent with him at the Woodstock inn. Hearing of his arrival in Washington, he had called on him at his boarding-house. The Senator received him kindly, listened to his plans, approved them, and helped him to procure the references named in the advertisement.

Day after day the advertisement appeared; and day after day Salmon waited for pupils. But his room, "three doors west of Brown's Hotel," remained unvisited. Sometimes, at first, when there came a knock at Mrs. Markham's door, his heart gave a bound of expectation; but it was never a knock for him.

So went out the old year, drearily enough for Salmon. He had made the acquaintance of several people; but friends he had none. There was nobody to whom he could open his heart,--for he was not one of those persons "of so loose soul" that they hasten to pour out their troubles and appeal for sympathy to the first chance-comer. In the mean time the advertisement was to be paid for, barren of benefit though it had been to him. There was also his board-bill to be settled at the end of each week; and Salmon saw his slender purse grow lank and lanker than ever, with no means within his reach of replenishing it.

The new year came; but it brought no brightening skies to him. Lonely enough those days were! When tired of waiting in his room, he would go out and walk,--always alone. He strolled up and down the Potomac, and sometimes crossed over to the Virginia shore, and climbed the brown, wooded banks there, and listened to the clamor of the crows in the leafless oak-trees. There was something in their wild cawing, in the desolateness of the fields, in the rush of the cold river, that suited his mood. It was winter in his spirit too, just then.

Sometimes he visited the halls of Congress, and saw the great legislators of those days. There was something here that fed his heart. Wintry as his prospects were, the sun still shone overhead; his courage never failed him; he never gave way to weak repining; and when he entered those halls,--when he saw the deep fire in the eyes of Webster, and heard the superb thunder of his voice,--when he listened to the witty and terrible invectives of Randolph, that "meteor of Congress," as Benton calls him, and watched the electric effect of the "long and skinny forefinger" pointed and shaken,--when charmed by this speaker, or convinced by that, or roused to indignation by another,--there was kindled a sense of power within his own breast, a fire prophetic of his future.

On returning home, he would look on his table for communications, or he would ask, "Has anybody called for me to-day?" But there was never any letter; and Mrs. Markham's gentle response always was, "No one, Sir."

The thirteenth of January passed,--his birthday. He was now nineteen. When the world is bright before us, birthdays are not so unpleasant. But to feel that your time is slipping away from you, with nothing accomplishing,--to see no rainbow of promise in the clouds,--to walk the streets of a lonely city, and think of home,--these things make a birthday sad and solitary.

At last his money was all gone. The prospect was more than dismal,--it was appalling. What was he to do?

Should he borrow of his uncle? "Not unless it be to keep me from starvation!" was his proud resolve.

Should he apply to his mother? The remembrance of what she had already done for him was as much as his heart could bear. Her image, venerable, patient, blind, was before him: he recalled the sacrifices she had made for his sake, postponing her own comfort, and accepting pain and privation, in order that her boy might have an education; and he was filled with remorse at the thought that he had never before fully appreciated all that love and devotion. For so it is: seldom, until too late, comes any true recognition of such sacrifices. But when she who made them is no longer with us,--too often, alas, when she has passed forever beyond the reach of filial gratitude and affection,--we awake at once to a realization of her worth and of our loss.

What Salmon did was to make a confidant of Mrs. Markham; for he felt that she at least ought to know his resources.

"This is all _I_ have for the present," he said to her one day, when paying his week's bill. "I thought you ought to know. I do not wish to appear a swindler,"--with a gloomy smile.

"You a swindler!" exclaimed the good woman, with glistening eyes. "I would trust you as far as I would trust myself. If you haven't any money, never mind. You shall stay, and pay me when you can. Don't worry yourself at all. It will turn out right, I am sure. You'll have pupils yet."

"I trust so," said Salmon, touched by her kindness. "At all events, if my life is spared, you shall be paid some day. Now you know how I am situated; and if you choose to keep me longer on an uncertainty, I shall be greatly obliged to you."

His voice shook a little as he spoke.

"As long as you please," she replied.

Just then there was a knock.

"Maybe that is for you!"

And she hastened away, rather to conceal her emotion, I suspect, than in the hope of admitting a patron for her boarder.

She returned in a minute with shining countenance.

"A gentleman and his little boy, to see Mr. ----! I have shown them into the parlor."

Salmon was amazed. Could it be true? A pupil at last! He gave a hurried glance at himself In the mirror, straightened his shirt-collar, gave his hair a touch, and descended, with beating heart, to meet his visitor.

He was dignified enough, however, on entering the parlor, and so cool you would never have suspected that he almost felt his fate depending upon this gentleman's business.

He was a Frenchman,--polite, affable, and of a manner so gracious, you would have said he had come to beg a favor, rather than to grant one.

"This is Mr. ----? My name is Bonfils. This is my little boy. We have come to entreat of you the kindness to take him into your school."

"I will do so most gladly!" said Salmon, shaking the boy's hand.

"You are very good. We shall be greatly indebted to you. When does your school commence?"

"As soon, Sir, as I shall have engaged a sufficient number of pupils."

"All! you have not a great number, then?"

"I have none," Salmon was obliged to confess.

"None? You surprise me! I have seen your advertisement, I hear good things said of you,--why, then, no pupils?"

"I am hardly known yet. Allow me to count your son here my first, and I have no doubt but others will soon come in."

"Assuredly! Make your compliments to Mr. ----, my son. I shall interest myself. I think I shall send you some pupils. In mean time, my son will wait."

And with many expressions of good-will the cheerful Monsieur Bonfils withdrew.

This was a gleam of hope. The door of Providence had opened just a crack.

It opened no farther, however. No more pupils came. Salmon waited. Day after day glided by like sand under his feet. He could not afford even to advertise now. He was getting fearfully in debt; and debt is always a nightmare to a generous and upright mind.

"Any pupils yet?" asked Monsieur Bonfils, meeting him, one day, in the street.

"Not one!" said Salmon, with gloomy emphasis.

"Ah, that is unfortunate!"

He expected nothing less than that the Frenchman would add,--"Then I must place my son elsewhere." But no; he was polite as ever; he was charming.

"You should have many before now. I have spoken for you to my friends. But patience, my dear Sir. You will succeed. In mean time we will wait."

And with a cordial hand-shake, and a Parisian flourish, he smilingly passed on, leaving a gleam of sunshine on the young man's path.

Now Salmon was one who would never, if he could help it, abandon an undertaking in which he had once embarked. But when convinced that persistence was hopeless, then, however reluctantly, he would give it up. On the present occasion, he was not only spending his time and exhausting his energies in a pursuit which grew each day more and more dubious, but his conscience was stung with the thought that he was wronging others. Kind as Mrs. Markham was to him, he did not like to look her in the face and feel that he owed her a debt which was always increasing, and which he knew not how he should ever pay.

"Why don't you get a place in the Department?" said Williams, that enviable fellow, who had light duties, several hours each day to himself, and eight hundred a year!

"That's more easily said than done!" And Salmon shook his head.

"No, it isn't!" The fortunate Williams sat with his legs upon the table, one foot on the other, a pipe in his mouth, and a book in his hand, enjoying himself. "You have an uncle in the Senate. Ask him to use his influence for you. He can get you a place." And puffing a fragrant cloud complacently into the air, he returned to his pleasant reading.

Salmon walked the room. He went out and walked the street. A sore struggle was taking place in his breast. Should he give up the school? Should he go and ask this thing of his uncle? Oh, for somebody to whom he could go for counsel and sympathy!

"Williams is perhaps right I may wait a year, and not get another pupil. Meanwhile I am growing shabby. I need a new pair of boots. My washerwoman must be paid. Why not get a clerkship as a temporary thing, if nothing more? My uncle can get it for me, without any trouble to himself. It is not like asking him for money."

Yet he dreaded to trouble the Senator even thus much. Proud and sensitive natures do not like to beg favors, any way.

"I'll wait one day longer. Then, if not a pupil applies, I'll go to my uncle--"

He waited twenty-four hours. Not a pupil. Then, desperate and discouraged at last, Salmon buttoned his coat, and walked fast through the streets to his uncle's boarding-house.

It was evening. The Senator was at home.

"Well, Salmon?" inquiringly. "How do you get on?"

"Poorly," said Salmon, sitting down, with his hat on his knee.

"You must have patience, boy!" said the Senator, laying down a pamphlet open at the page where he was reading when his nephew came in. "Pluck and patience,--those are the two oars that pull the boat."

"I have patience enough, and I don't think I'm lacking in pluck," replied Salmon, coldly. "But one thing I lack, and am likely to lack,--pupils, I've only one, and I expect every day to lose him."

"Well, what can I do for you?" said the Senator, perceiving that his nephew had come for something.

"I would like to have you get me a place in the Treasury Department."

It was a minute before Dudley Chase replied. He took up the pamphlet, rolled it together, then threw it abruptly upon the table.

"Salmon," said he, "listen. I once got an appointment for a nephew of mine, and it ruined him. If you want half-a-dollar with which to buy a spade, and go out and dig for your living, I'll give it to you cheerfully. But I will not get you a place under Government."

Salmon felt a choking sensation in his throat. He knew his uncle did not mean it for unkindness; but the sentence seemed hard. He arose, speechless for a moment, mechanically brushing his hat.

"Thank you. I will not trouble you for the half-dollar. I shall try to get along without the appointment. Good night, uncle."

"Good night, Salmon." Dudley accompanied him to the door. He must have seen what a blow he had given him. "You think me harsh," he added; "but the time will come when you will see that this is the best advice I could give you."

"Perhaps," said Salmon, stiffly; and be walked away, filled with disappointment and bitterness.

"Well, did he promise it?" asked Williams, who sat up awaiting his return.

He had been thinking he would like to have Salmon in his own room at the Department; but now, seeing how serious he looked, his own countenance fell.

"What! Didn't he give you any encouragement?"

"On the other hand," said Salmon, "he advised me to buy a spade and go to digging for my living! And I shall do it before I ask again for an appointment."

Williams was astonished. He thought the Senator from Vermont must be insane.

But, after the lapse of a few years, perhaps he, too, saw that the uncle had given his nephew good advice indeed. Williams remained a clerk in the Department, and was never anything else. Perhaps, if Salmon had got the appointment he sought, he would have become a clerk like him, and would never have been anything else.

In a little more than twenty years Salmon was himself a Senator, and had the making of such clerks. And what happened a dozen years later? This: he who had once sought in vain a petty appointment was called to administer the finances of the nation. Instead of a clerk grown gray in the Department, to whom the irreverent youngsters might be saying to-day, "----, do this," or, "----, do that," and he doeth it, he is himself the supreme ruler there. He could never have got _that_ place by promotion in the Department itself. I mention this, not to speak slightingly of clerkships,--for he who does his duty faithfully in any calling, however humble, is worthy of honor,--but to show that the ways of Providence are not our ways, and that often we are disappointed for our own good. Had a clerkship been what was in store for Salmon, he would have obtained it; but since, had he got it, he would probably have never been ready to give it up, how fortunate that he received instead the offer of fifty cents wherewith to purchase a spade!

It may be, when the new Secretary entered upon his duties, Williams was there still; for there were men in the Treasury who had been there a much longer term than from 1826 to 1861. I should like to know. I can fancy him, gray now, slightly bald, and rather round-shouldered, but cheerful as a cricket, introducing himself to the chief.

"My name is Williams. Don't you remember Williams,--boarded at Mrs. Markham's in '26 and '27, when you did?"

"What! David Williams? Are you here yet?"

"Yes, your Honor." (These old clerks all say, "Your Honor," in addressing the Secretary. The younger ones are not so respectful.) "I was never so lucky as to be turned out, and I was never quite prepared to leave. You have got in at last, I see! But it was necessary for you to make a wide circuit first, in order to come in at the top!"

Did such an interview ever take place, I wonder?

But we are talking of that evening so long ago, when Williams seemed the lucky one, and things looked so black to Salmon, after he had asked of his uncle bread, and received (as he then thought) a stone.

"Well, then I don't know what the deuse you _will_ do!" said Williams, knocking the ashes out of his pipe.

You would have said that his hopes of Salmon were likewise ashes: he had entertained himself with them a little while; now they were burnt out; and he seemed to knock them out of his pipe, too, into the fire. He got up, yawned, said he pitied ----, and went to bed.

In a little while his breathing denoted that he was fast asleep.

Salmon went to bed, too; but did he sleep?

Do not think, after all this, that he gave way to weak despondency. Something within him seemed to say, "What you have you must obtain through earnest struggle and endeavor. It is only commonplace people and weaklings who find the hinges of life all smoothly oiled. Great doors do not open so easily. Be brave, be strong, be great." It was the voice of Faith speaking within him.

The next morning he arose, more a man than he had ever felt before. This long and severe trial had been necessary to develop what was in him. His self-reliance, his strength of character, his faith in God's providence,--these were tried, and not found wanting.

Still the veil of the future remained impenetrable. Not a gleam of light shone through its sable folds. He could only watch for its uplifting, and sit still.

"A bad beginning makes a good ending," said Williams, one evening, to comfort him.

"Yes,--and a good beginning sometimes makes a bad ending. I had a lesson on that subject once. When I was about eleven years old, I started from Keene, with one of my sisters, to go and visit another sister, who was married and living at Hookset Falls, over on the Merrimac. It was in winter, and we set out in a sleigh with one horse. I was driver. My idea of sleighing was bells and fast driving; and I put the poor beast up to all he knew. We intended to reach a friend's house, at Peterborough, before night; but I found I had used up our horse-power before we had made much more than half the journey. Then came on a violent snow-squall, which obliterated the track. It grew dark; we were blinded by the storm; we got into drifts, and finally quite lost our way. Not a house was in sight, and the horse was tired out. The prospect of a night in the storm, and only a winding-sheet of snow to cover us, made me bitterly regret the foolish ambition with which I had set out. At last my sister, whose eyes were better than mine, saw a light. We went wallowing through the drifts towards it, and discovered a house. Here we got a boy to guide us; and so at last reached our friend's, in as sad a plight as ever two such mortals were in. Since which time," added Salmon, "I have rather inclined to the opinion that slow beginnings, with steady progress, are best."

"That's first-rate philosophy!" said Williams, secretly congratulating himself, however, on having made what he considered a brisk start in life.

One day Salmon passed a store where some spades were exposed for sale. He stopped to look at them. There was a strange smile on his face.

"Perhaps, after all, digging is my vocation! Well, it is an honorable one. I only wish to know what God would have me to do. If to dig, then I will undertake it cheerfully."

However, there was one great objection to his lifting a spade. It would first have been necessary to apply to his uncle for the once-rejected half-dollar. He was determined never to do that.

He walked home, very thoughtful. He could not see how it was possible that any good fortune should ever happen to him in Washington. The sights of the city had become exceedingly distasteful to him, associated as they were with his hopes deferred and his heart-sickness. He reached his door. Mrs. Markham met him with beaming countenance.

"There is a gentleman waiting for you! I reckon it's another pupil!"

His face brightened for an instant. But it was clouded again quickly, as be reflected,--

"_One_ more pupil! Very likely! That makes two! At this rate, I shall have four in the course of a year!"

He was inclined to be sarcastic with himself. But he checked the ungrateful thoughts at once.

"What Providence sends me, that let me cheerfully and thankfully accept!"

He entered the parlor. A gentlemanly person, with an air of culture, advanced to meet him.

"This is Mr. ----?"

"That is my name, Sir."

"Mrs. Markham said you would be in in a minute; so I have waited."

"You are very kind to do so, Sir. Sit down."

"I have seen your advertisement in the 'Intelligencer.' You still think of establishing a school?"

"That is my intention."

"May I ask if you have been successful in obtaining pupils?"

"Not very. I have one engaged. I would like a dozen more, to begin with."

The gentleman took his hat. "Of course he will go, now he knows what my prospects are!" But Salmon was mistaken. The visitor seemed to have taken his hat merely for the sake of having something in his hands, to occupy them.

"Then perhaps you will be pleased to listen to my proposition?

"Certainly, Sir."

"My name is Plumley. I have established a successful classical school, as you may be aware. It is in G-Street."

"I have heard of you, Sir." And Salmon might have added, "I have envied you!"

"Well, Mrs. Phimley has recently opened a young ladies' school, which has succeeded beyond all our expectations."

"I congratulate you sincerely!"

"But it is found that the two schools are more than we can attend to. I propose to give up one. Now, if you choose to take the boys' school off my hands, I will make over my entire interest in it to you. Perhaps you may know the character the school sustains. We have, as pupils, sons of the Honorable Henry Clay, William Wirt, Southard, and other eminent men. The income amounts to something like eight hundred a year. You can go in next Monday, if you like."

Thus suddenly the door, so long mysteriously closed, flew open wide, "on golden hinges turning." What Salmon saw within was heaven. He was dazzled. He was almost stunned with happiness. His lips quivered, his voice failed him as he spoke.

"Mr. Plumley, this is--you are--too kind!"

"You accept?"

"Most gratefully!"

The young man was regaining possession of himself. He grasped the other's hand.

"You do not know what this is to me, Sir! You cannot know from what you have saved me! Providence has surely sent you to me! I cannot thank you now; but some day--perhaps--it may be in my power to do you a service."

He was not the only one happy. Mr. Plumley felt the sweetness of doing a kind action for one who was truly worthy and grateful. From that moment they were friends. Salmon engaged to see him again, and make arrangements for entering the school the next Monday; and they parted.

His benefactor gone, Salmon hastened to tell the good news to Mrs. Markham. But he could not remain in the house. His joy was too great to be thus confined. Again he went out,--but how different now the world looked to his eyes! He had not observed before that it was such a lovely spring day. The sky overhead was of heaven's deepest hue. The pure, sweet air was like the elixir of life. The hills were wondrously beautiful, all about the city; and it seemed, that, whichever way he turned, there were birds singing in sympathy with his joy. The Potomac, stretching away with soft and misty glimmer between its hazy banks, was like the river of some exquisite dream.

It was no selfish happiness he felt. He thought of his mother and sisters at home,--of all those to whom he was indebted; and in the lightness of his spirit, after its heavy burden had been taken away, he lifted up his heart in thanksgiving to the Giver of all blessings.

The school, transferred to his charge, continued successful; and it opened the way to successes of greater magnitude. Through all his subsequent career he looked back to this as the beginning; and he ever retained for Mr. Plumley the feeling we cherish for one whom we regard as a Heaven-appointed agent of some great benefaction. Were it not for trenching upon ground too private and personal, we might here complete the romance, by relating how the young man's vaguely uttered presentiment, that he might some day render him a service, was, long afterwards, touchingly realized. But enough. All we promised ourselves at the start was a glance at the Secretary's first visit to Washington.

* * * * *

HOUSE AND HOME PAPERS.

BY CHRISTOPHER CROWFIELD.

IV.

Talking to you in this way once a month, O my confidential reader, there seems to be danger, as in all intervals of friendship, that we shall not readily be able to take up our strain of conversation, just where we left off. Suffer me, therefore, to remind you that the month past left us seated at the fireside, just as we had finished reading of what a home was, and how to make one.

The fire had burned low, and great, solid hickory coals were winking dreamily at us from out their fluffy coats of white ashes,--just as if some household sprite there were opening now one eye and then the other, and looking in a sleepy, comfortable way at us.

The close of my piece, about the good house-mother, had seemed to tell on my little audience. Marianne had nestled close to her mother, and laid her head on her knee; and though Jennie sat up straight as a pin, yet her ever-busy knitting was dropped in her lap, and I saw the glint of a tear in her quick, sparkling eye,--yes, actually a little bright bead fell upon her work; whereupon she started up actively, and declared that the fire wanted just one more stick to make a blaze before bedtime; and then there was such a raking among the coals, such an adjusting of the andirons, such vigorous arrangement of the wood, and such a brisk whisking of the hearth-brush, that it was evident Jennie had something on her mind.

When all was done, she sat down again and looked straight into the blaze, which went dancing and crackling up, casting glances and flecks of light on our pictures and books, and making all the old, familiar furniture seem full of life and motion.

"I think that's a good piece," she said, decisively. "I think those are things that should be thought about."

Now Jennie was the youngest of our flock, and therefore, in a certain way, regarded by my wife and me as perennially "the baby"; and these little, old-fashioned, decisive ways of announcing her opinions seemed so much a part of her nature, so peculiarly "Jennyish," as I used to say, that my wife and I only exchanged amused glances over her head, when they occurred.

In a general way, Jennie, standing in the full orb of her feminine instincts like Diana in the moon, rather looked down on all masculine views of women's matters as "_tolerabiles ineptiae_"; but towards her papa she had gracious turns of being patronizing to the last degree; and one of these turns was evidently at its flood-tide, as she proceeded to say,--

"_I_ think papa is right,--that keeping house and having a home, and all that, is a very serious thing, and that people go into it with very little thought about it. I really think those things papa has been saying there ought to be thought about."

"Papa," said Marianne, "I wish you would tell me exactly how _you_ would spend that money you gave me for house-furnishing. I should like just your views."

"Precisely," said Jennie, with eagerness; "because it is just as papa says,--a sensible man, who has thought, and had experience, can't help having some ideas, even about women's affairs, that are worth attending to. I think so, decidedly."

I acknowledged the compliment for my sex and myself with my best bow.

"But then, papa," said Marianne, "I can't help feeling sorry that one can't live in such a way as to have beautiful things around one. I'm sorry they must cost so much, and take so much care, for I am made so that I really want them. I do so like to see pretty things! I do like rich carpets and elegant carved furniture, and fine china and cut-glass and silver. I can't bear mean, common-looking rooms. I should so like to have my house look beautiful!"

"Your house ought not to look mean and common,--your house ought to look beautiful," I replied. "It would be a sin and a shame to have it otherwise. No house ought to be fitted up for a future home without a strong and a leading reference to beauty in all its arrangements. If I were, a Greek, I should say that the first household libation should be made to beauty; but, being an old-fashioned Christian, I would say that he who prepares a home with no eye to beauty neglects the example of the great Father who has filled our earth-home with such elaborate ornament."

"But then, papa, there's the money!" said Jennie, shaking her little head wisely. "You men don't think of that. You want us girls, for instance, to be patterns of economy, but we must always be wearing fresh, nice things; you abhor soiled gloves and worn shoes: and yet how is all this to be done without money? And it's just so in housekeeping. You sit in your arm-chairs and conjure up visions of all sorts of impossible things to be done; but when mamma there takes out that little account-book, and figures away on the cost of things, where do the visions go?"

"You are mistaken, my little dear, and you talk just like a woman,"--(this was my only way of revenging myself,)--"that is to say, you jump to conclusions, without sufficient knowledge. I maintain that in house-furnishing, as well as woman-furnishing, there's nothing so economical as beauty."

"There's one of papa's paradoxes!" said Jennie.

"Yes," said I, "that is my thesis, which I shall nail up over the mantel-piece there, as Luther nailed his to the church-door. It is time to rake up the fire now; but to-morrow night I will give you a paper on the Economy of the Beautiful."

* * * * *

"Come, now we are to have papa's paradox," said Jennie, as soon as the teachings had been carried out.

_Entre nous_, I must tell you that insensibly we had fallen into the habit of taking our tea by my study-fire. Tea, you know, is a mere nothing in itself, its only merit being its social and poetic associations, its warmth and fragrance,--and the more socially and informally it can be dispensed, the more in keeping with its airy and cheerful nature.

Our circle was enlightened this evening by the cheery visage of Bob Stephens, seated, as of right, close to Marianne's work-basket.

"You see, Bob," said Jennie, "papa has undertaken to prove that the most beautiful things are always the cheapest."

"I'm glad to hear that," said Bob,--"for there's a carved antique bookcase and study-table that I have my eye on, and if this can in any way be made to appear"--

"Oh, it won't be made to appear," said Jennie, settling herself at her knitting, "only in some transcendental, poetic sense, such as papa can always make out. Papa is more than half a poet, and his truths turn out to be figures of rhetoric, when one comes to apply them to matters of fact."

"Now, Miss Jennie, please remember my subject and thesis," I replied,--"that in house-furnishing there is nothing so economical as beauty; and I will make it good against all comers, not by figures of rhetoric, but by figures of arithmetic. I am going to be very matter-of-fact and commonplace in my details, and keep ever in view the addition-table. I will instance a case which has occurred under my own observation."

* * * * *

THE ECONOMY OF THE BEAUTIFUL.

Two of the houses lately built on the new land in Boston were bought by two friends, Philip and John. Philip had plenty of money, and paid the cash down for his house, without feeling the slightest vacancy in his pocket. John, who was an active, rising young man, just entering on a flourishing business, had expended all his moderate savings for years in the purchase of his dwelling, and still had a mortgage remaining, which he hoped to clear off by his future successes. Philip begins the work of furnishing as people do with whom money is abundant, and who have simply to go from shop to shop and order all that suits their fancy and is considered 'the thing' in good society. John begins to furnish with very little money. He has a wife and two little ones, and he wisely deems that to insure to them a well-built house, in an open, airy situation, with conveniences for warming, bathing, and healthy living, is a wise beginning in life; but it leaves him little or nothing beyond.