Chapter VI: Life on Board (2)

It was a happy circumstance for the new state, that her chief representative was a man who knew how to wait with dignity and when to act with energy; for it was this just appreciation of circumstances that gave him such a strong hold upon the mind of Vergennes, and imparted such weight to all his applications for aid. No sooner had Congress begun to receive money from Europe than it began to draw bills upon its agents there, and often without any certainty that those agents would be in a condition to meet them. Bills were drawn on Mr. Jay when he was sent to Spain, and his already difficult position made doubly difficult and humiliating. Bills were drawn on Mr. Adams in Holland, and he was unable to meet them. But such was the confidence of the French Court in the representations of Dr. Franklin, that he was enabled not only to meet all the drafts which were made upon him directly, but to relieve his less fortunate colleagues from the embarrassments in which the precipitation of their own Government had involved them.

And thus passed the first twelve months of his residence in France,--cloudy and anxious months, more especially during the summer of 1777, when it was known that Burgoyne was coming down by Lake Champlain, and Howe preparing for a great expedition to the northward. Then came the tidings that Howe had taken Philadelphia. "Say rather," said Franklin, with that air of conviction which carries conviction with it, "that Philadelphia has taken Howe." Men paused as they repeated his words, and suspended their judgment; and when the news of the Battle of Germantown and the surrender of Burgoyne followed, they felt deeper reverence for the calm old man who had reasoned so wisely when all others desponded. It was on the 4th of December that these welcome tidings reached Paris; and the Commissioners lost no time in communicating them to the Court. The second day after, the secretary of the King's Council came to them with official congratulations. Negotiations were resumed and carried on rapidly, nothing but a desire to consult the Court of Madrid being allowed to retard them; and on the 6th of February, 1778, the first treaty between the United States and a foreign power was signed with all the formalities which custom has attached to these acts. On the 20th of March the Commissioners were presented to the King.

Nor was it mere curiosity which filled the halls of the royal palace with an eager throng on that eventful day. These were the halls which had witnessed the gathering of powerful men and of great men to the footstool of the haughtiest of French kings,--which had seen a Conde and a Turenne lay down their laurels at the royal feet, a Bossuet and a Boileau check the flow of independent thought to bask them in the beams of the royal smile, a Fenelon retiring with saddened brow to record for posterity the truths which he was not permitted to utter to the royal ear, a Racine shrinking from the cold glance of the royal eye and going home to die of a broken heart. Here Louis had signed the decree which sent his dragoons to force his Protestant subjects to the mass and the confessional; here he had received with a smile of triumph the tidings that the Pope himself had been compelled to yield to his arrogant pretensions; and here he had listened in haughty state, when one of the last of the glorious republics of the Middle Ages, the city of Columbus and Andrew Doria, which had once covered the Mediterranean with her ships, and sent forth her hardy mariners, as from a nursery of brave men, to impart their skill and communicate their enterprising genius to the rest of Europe, humbled herself before him through her Doge, as, bowing his venerable head, the old man asked pardon in her name, not for the wrongs that she had committed, but for the wrongs that she had borne.

And now, up those marble stairs, through those tapestried halls, came three men of humble birth, two of whom had wrought for their daily bread and eaten it in the sweat of their brows, to receive their recognition as the representatives of a power which had taken its place among the nations, not by virtue of the divine right of kings, but in the name of the inalienable rights of the people. Happy would it have been for the young King who sat in Louis's seat, if he could have understood the full meaning of his act, and recognized at the same moment the claims of his own people to participate in that government which derived its strength from their labor and its security from their love!

Nothing could have demonstrated more clearly the wisdom of Franklin's confidence in the sincerity of the French Government than the generous and liberal terms of the treaty. No present advantage was taken of the dependent condition of their new ally; no prospective advantage was reserved for future contingencies. Only one condition was stipulated,--and that as much in the interest of the Colonies as of France,--that they should never return to their allegiance. Only one reciprocal obligation was assumed,--that neither party should make peace with England without the knowledge and consent of the other. All the rest was full and free reciprocation in the future, and the assurance of efficient aid in the present; no ambiguities, no doubtful expressions, no debatable ground for interpretation to build upon and weave the mazes of her subtile web,--but clear, distinct, and definite, a mutual specification of mutual duties and mutual rights. Equal could not have treated more firmly with equal than this new power, as yet unrecognized in the congress of nations, with the oldest monarchy of Europe.

I have already alluded to the rage for treaties which prevailed for a while in Congress. It was this that sent William and Arthur Lee upon their bootless errands to Vienna and Berlin, Francis Dana to St. Petersburg, John Jay to encounter embarrassment and mortification at Madrid, and gave Ralph Izard an opportunity to draw an unearned salary, through two successive years, from the scanty funds of the Congressional banker at Paris.

Jay's situation was peculiarly trying. He had been Chief Justice of New York, President of Congress, had written some of the most eloquent state papers that were issued in the name of that body whose state papers were ranked by Chatham among the best that ever were written, and, at a personal sacrifice, had exchanged a position of honor and dignity at home for a doubtful position abroad. A clear-headed, industrious, decided man, he had to contend for more than two years with the two qualities most alien to his nature,--habitual dilatoriness and diplomatic reticence.

Spain, like France, had marked out a path for herself, and it was impossible to move her from it. Jay obtained some money to help him pay some of the drafts of Congress, but neither treaty nor recognition. "They have taken four years," wrote Franklin, "to consider whether they would treat with us. I would give them forty, and let us mind our own business." And still viewing the question as he had viewed it in the beginning, he wrote in his diary in May, 1782,--"It seems to me that we have in most instances hurt our credit and importance by sending all over Europe, begging alliances and soliciting declarations of our independence. The nations, perhaps from thence, seemed to think that our independence is something they have to sell, and that we do not offer enough for it."[D]

The most important European event in its American bearings, after the recognition by France, was the armed neutrality of the Northern powers,--a court intrigue in Russia, though a sober act in Spain,--and which was followed, in December, 1780, by the addition of Holland to the open enemies of England.

Attempts had already been made to form a treaty with Holland,--first through William Lee, with such prospect of success as to induce Congress to send Henry Laurens to the Hague to continue the negotiations. Laurens was captured by an English cruiser, and soon after John Adams was directed to take his place. At Paris, Adams had failed singularly as a negotiator,--lending a ready ear to Lee, hardly attempting to disguise his jealousy of Franklin, and enforcing his own opinions in a manner equally offensive to the personal feelings of the Minister and the traditional usages of the Court. But at the Hague he found a field better suited to his ardent temperament, and, backed by the brilliant success of the campaign of 1781, and the votes of the House of Commons in favor of reconciliation, succeeded in obtaining a public recognition in the spring of 1782, and concluding a treaty in the autumn.

All these things were more or less upon the surface,--done and doing more or less openly. But under the surface the while, and known only to those directly concerned therein, were covert attempts on the part of England to open communications with Franklin by means of personal friends. There had been nothing but the recognition of our independence that England would not have given to prevent the alliance with France; and now there was nothing that she was not ready to do to prevent it from accomplishing its purpose. And it adds wonderfully to our conception of Franklin to think of him as going about with this knowledge, in addition to the knowledge of so much else, in his mind,--this care, in addition to so many other cares, ever weighing upon his heart. Little did jealous, intriguing Lee know of these things; petulant, waspish Izard still less. A mind less sagacious than Franklin's might have grown suspicious under the influences that were employed to awaken his distrust of Vergennes. And a character less firmly established would have lost its hold upon Vergennes amid the constant efforts that were made to shake his confidence in the gratitude and good faith of America. But Franklin, who believed that timely faith was a part of wisdom, went directly to the French Minister with the propositions of the English emissaries, and frankly telling him all about them, and taking counsel of him as to the manner of meeting them, not only stripped them of their power to harm him, but converted the very measures which his enemies had so insidiously, and, as they deemed, so skilfully prepared for his ruin, into new sources of strength.

Of the proffers of mediation in which first Spain and then Russia and the German Emperor were to take so important a part, as they bore no fruit, it is sufficient to observe, in passing, how little European statesmen understood the business in which they were so ready to intermeddle, and what a curious spectacle Catharine and Kaunitz present, seeking to usher into the congress of kings the first true representative of that great principle of popular sovereignty which was to make all their thrones totter and tremble under them. It may be added, that they furnished that self-dependence of John Adams which too often degenerated into arrogance an occasion to manifest itself in a nobler light; for he refused to take part in the discussions in any other character than as the representative of an independent power.

Meanwhile events were hastening the inevitable termination. In Europe, England stood alone, without either open or secret sympathy. In June, 1779, a war with Spain had followed the French war of 1778. In July, 1780, the "armed neutrality" had defined the position of the Northern powers adversely to her maritime pretensions. War was declared with Holland in December of the same year. In America, the campaign of 1781 had stripped her of her Southern conquests, and effaced the impression of her early victories. At home her people were daily growing more and more restless under the pressure of taxation; and even the country gentlemen, who had stood by the Ministry so long in the hope of transferring their own burden to the shoulders of their American brethren, began to give evident tokens of discontent. It was clear that England must consent to peace. And yet she still stood bravely up, presenting a bold front to each new enemy: a grand spectacle in one light, for there is always something grand in indomitable courage; but a sad one in the true light, and one from which a hundred years hence the philosophic historian will turn with a shudder, when, summing up all these events, and asking what all this blood was shed for, he shows that the only principle at stake on her part was that pernicious claim to control the industry of the world, which, had she succeeded, would have dried up the sources of prosperity in America, as it is fast drying them up in Ireland and in India.[E]

Nor was peace less necessary to her rival. The social revolution which the two last reigns had rendered inevitable was moving with gigantic strides towards its bloody consummation. The last well-founded hope of reforms that should probe deep enough to anticipate revolution had disappeared with Turgot. The statesmanship of Vergennes had no remedy for social disease. It was a statesmanship of alliances and treaties and wars, traditional and sometimes brilliant, but all on the surface, leaving the wounded heart untouched, the sore spirit unconsoled. The financial skill of Necker could not reach the evil. It was mere banking skill, and nothing more,--very respectable in its time and place, filling a few mouths more with bread, but failing to see, although told of it long ago by one who never erred, that "man does not live by bread alone." The finances were in hopeless disorder. The resources of the country were almost exhausted. Public faith had been strained to the utmost. National forbearance had been put to humiliating tests under the last reign by the partition of Poland and the Peace of Kainardji; and the sense of self-respect had not been fully restored by the American War. And although no one yet dreamed of what seven swift years were to bring forth, all minds were agitated by a mysterious consciousness of the approaching tempest.

In 1782 the overtures of England began to assume a more definite form. Franklin saw that the time for decisive action was at hand, and prepared himself for it with his wonted calm and deliberate appreciation of circumstances. That France was sincere he could not doubt, after all the proofs she had given of her sincerity; nor could he doubt that she would concur heartily in preparing the way for a lasting peace. He had the instructions of Congress to guide him in what America would claim; and his own mind was quickly made up as to what England must yield. Four points were indispensable: a full recognition of independence; an immediate withdrawal of her troops; a just settlement of boundaries,--those of Canada being confined, at least, to the limits of the Act of 1774; and the freedom of the fisheries. Without these there could be no treaty. But to make the work of peace sure, he suggested, as equally useful to both parties, four other concessions, the most important of which were the giving up of Canada, and securing equal privileges in English and Irish ports to the ships of both nations. The four necessary articles became the real basis of the treaty.

John Adams, John Jay, and Henry Laurens were joined with him in the commission. Jay was first on the ground, reaching Paris in June; Adams came in October; Laurens not till November, when the preliminary articles were ready for signature. They all accepted Franklin's four articles as the starting-point. But, unfortunately, they did not all share Franklin's well-founded confidence in the sincerity of the French Government. Jay's mind was embittered by the tergiversations of Spain. Adams had not forgotten his former disagreements with Vergennes, and hated Franklin so bitterly that he could hardly be prevailed upon to treat him with the civility which his age and position demanded, much less with the consideration which the interest of his country required. Both Jay and Adams were under the influence of that hostility to France which prevailed as extensively in the Colonies as in the mother country,--an hostility which neither of them was at sufficient pains to conceal, although neither of them, perhaps, was fully conscious of it. It was this feeling that kept them both aloof from the French Minister, and made them so accessible to English influences. And it was a knowledge of this feeling which three years later suggested to George III. that well-known insinuation about Adams's dislike to French manners, which would have been a scathing sarcasm, if it had not been an inexcusable impertinence.

The English agents availed themselves skilfully of those sentiments,--sowing suspicions, fostering doubts, and not shrinking, there is strong reason to suppose, from gross exaggeration and deliberate falsehood. The discussion of articles, like all such discussions, was protracted by the efforts of each party to make the best terms, and the concealing of real intentions in the hope of extorting greater concessions. But England was really prepared to yield all that America was really prepared to claim; France, in spite of the suspicions of Adams and Jay, was really sincere; and on the 30th of November, 1782, the preliminary articles were signed.

Franklin's position was difficult and delicate. He knew the importance of peace. He knew that the instructions of Congress required perfect openness towards the French Minister. He believed that the Minister deserved, both by his past kindness and present good intentions, to be treated with perfect openness. But both his colleagues were against him. What should he do? Refer the difference to Congress, and meanwhile hold the country in painful and expensive suspense? What could he do but submit, as he had done through life, to the circumstances which he could not control, and give the appearance of unanimity to an act which the good of his country required to be unanimous?

He signed the preliminaries, and submitted to the reproach of personal and public ingratitude as he had submitted to the taunts of Wedderburn. History has justified his confidence,--the most careful research having failed to bring to light any confirmation of the suspicions of his colleagues. And Vergennes, though nettled for the moment, understood Franklin's position too well to lay the act at his door as an expression of a real opinion.

Much time and long discussions were still required to convert the preliminaries into a final treaty; for the complicated interests of England, France, and Spain were to be taken into the account. But each party longed for peace; each party needed it; and on the 3d of September, 1783, another Treaty of Paris gave once more the short-lived, though precious boon to Europe and America.

During Franklin's residence at the Court of France, and mainly through his influence, that court had advanced to Congress three millions of livres a year as a loan, had increased it to four millions in 1781, had the same year added six millions as a free gift to the three millions with which she began, and become security for the regular payment of the interest upon a loan of ten millions to be raised in Holland.[F]

Nor will it be inappropriate to add, that, before he sailed upon his mission to France, he called in all the money he could command in specie (between three and four thousand pounds) and put it into the public treasury as a loan,--and that while the young men, Adams and Jay, were provided with competent secretaries of legation, he, though bowed down by age and disease, and with ten times their work to do, was left to his own resources, and, but for the assistance of his grandson, would have been compelled to do it all with his own hand.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] Franklin's Works, Vol. IX. p. 284, Sparks's edition.

[E] I cannot deny myself the pleasure of referring in this connection to Mr. Carey's admirable exposition of this fact in his "Principles of Political Science."

[F] In all, eighteen millions as a loan, and nine millions as a free gift.

OUR BATTLE-LAUREATE.

"How came the Muses to settle in Connecticut?" This was the question of a writer in the "Atlantic Monthly" last February, whose history of the "Pleiades" of that State we read with a pleasure which we doubt not was shared by all who saw it, except perhaps a few who did not relish the familiar way in which the feather duster was whisked about the statuettes of the seven _dii minorum gentium_ who once reigned in Hartford and New Haven.

"There still remain inventive machinists, acute money-changers, acutest peddlers; but the seed of the Muses has run out. No more Pleiades at Hartford."

In the July number of our elder brother, the "North American," one of the ablest of American critic's said of an author who had just published a small volume, "In him the nation has found a new poet, vigorous, original, and thoroughly native." "We have had no such war-poetry, nor anything like it. His 'River-Fight' is the finest lyric of the kind since Drayton's 'Battle of Agincourt.'"

The author of this volume, which is entitled "Lyrics of a Day, or Newspaper Poetry, by a Volunteer in the U. S. Service," and of which a second edition has just been issued by Carleton in New York, is Mr. HENRY HOWARD BROWNELL of East Hartford, taught in a school at that place, a graduate of Trinity College, a nephew of the late Bishop Brownell of Connecticut. The good which came out of Nazareth, as all remember, claimed another birthplace. If the author of the "Pleiades" asks Nathanael's question, putting Hartford for Nazareth, and we tell him to come and see, we shall have to say that Providence was our new poet's birthplace, and that his lineage divides itself between Rhode Island and Massachusetts. But the good has come to us from the Connecticut Nazareth.

If Drayton had fought at Agincourt, if Campbell had held a sabre at Hohenlinden, if Scott had been in the saddle with Marmion, if Tennyson had charged with the Six Hundred at Balaklava, each of these poets might possibly have pictured what he said as faithfully and as fearfully as Mr. Brownell has painted the sea-fights in which he took part as a combatant. But no man can tell a story at second hand with the truth of incident which belongs to an eye-witness who was part of what he saw. As a mere relator, therefore, of the sights and sounds of great naval battles, Mr. Brownell has a fresh story to tell. Not only so, but these naval battles are not like any the Old World ever saw. One or two "Monitors" would have settled in half an hour the fight which Aeschylus shared at Salamis. The galleys "rammed" each other at Actium; but there was no Dahlgren or Sawyer to thunder from their decks or turrets. The artillery roared at Trafalgar; but there were no iron-clads to tilt at each other, meeting with a shock as of ten thousand knights in armor moulded into one mailed Centaur and crashing against such another monster.

But, again, a man may see a fight and be able to describe it truthfully, yet he may be unable to describe it dramatically. He must have the impressibility of the poetical nature to take in all its scenes, and the vocabulary of an artist to reproduce them. But, for some reason or other, poets are not very often found under fire, unless it be that of the critics. The temperament which makes men insensible to danger is rarely the gift of those who are so organized as to be sensitive to the more ethereal skyey influences. The violet end of the spectrum and the invisible rays beyond it belong to the poet, farthest from the red, which is the light that shines round the soldier.

It happens rarely that poets put their delicate-fibred brains in the paths of bullets, but it does happen. Koerner fell with his last song on his lips. Fitz-James O'Brien gave his life as well as his chants to our cause. Mr. Brownell has weathered the great battle-storms on the same deck with Farragut, and has told their story as nobly as his leader made the story for him to tell. We cannot find any such descriptions as his, if for no other reason than that already mentioned, that there have been no such scenes to describe.

But Mr. Brownell's genius is exceptional, as well as his experience. He can compose his verses while the battle is going on around him. During the engagement with Fort Powell, he was actually pencilling down some portions of the "Bay Fight," when he received a polite invitation to step down to the gun-deck and "try a shot at 'em with the Sawyer." He took minutes of everything as it happened during the contest, so that the simple record and the poetical delineation run into each other. We take the liberty to quote a few words from a note he kindly sent in answer to some queries of our own.

"Some of the descriptions [in the 'Bay Fight'] might seem exaggerated, but better authorities than I am say they are not. To be sure, blood and powder are pretty freely mixed for the painting of it; but these were the predominant elements of the scene,--the noise being almost indescribable, and the ship, for all the forward half of her, being an absolute 'slaughter-house.' Though we had only twenty-five killed and twenty-eight wounded (some of whom afterwards died) on that day, yet numbers were torn into fragments, (men with their muscles tense, subjected to violent concussion, seem as _brittle as glass_,) causing the deck and its surroundings to present a most strange spectacle."

We can understand better after this the lines--

"And now, as we looked ahead,
All for'ard, the long white deck
Was growing a strange dull red,...
Red from mainmast to bitts!
Red on bulwark and wale,--
Red by combing and hatch,--
Red o'er netting and rail!"

The two great battle-poems begin, each of them, with beautiful descriptive lines, move on with gradually kindling fire, reach the highest intensity of action, till the words themselves have the weight and the rush of shot and shell, and the verses seem aflame with the passion of the conflict,--then, as the strife calms itself after the victory is won, the wild dithyrambic stanzas rock themselves into sweet, even cadences. No one can fail to be struck with the freedom and robustness of the language, the irregular strength of the rhythm, the audacious felicities of the rhyme. There are hints which remind us of many famous poets,--hints, not imitations. There can be no doubt that these were either coincidences or unconscious tricks of memory. To us they seem beauties, not defects, in poems of such originality, as in a new musical composition a few notes in some well-remembered sequence often seem to harmonize the crudeness of the newer strain,--as in many flowers and fruits Nature herself repeats a streak of color or a dash of flavor belonging to some alien growth.

Thus, Drayton says,--

"With Spanish yew so strong.
Arrows a cloth-yard long,
That like to serpents _stung_."

And Brownell,--

"Trust me, our berth was hot;
Ah, wickedly well they shot;
How their death-bolts howled and _stung_!"

A mere coincidence, in all probability, but the word one which none but a poet could have used. There are reminiscences of Cowper's grand and simple lines on the "Loss of the Royal George," of Campbell's "Battle of the Baltic," of Tennyson's "Charge of the Six Hundred," not one of which but has a pleasing effect in the midst of such vigorous pictures as the new poet has given us fresh from the terrible original. The most obvious criticism is one which applies to the "River Fight," and which is directed against what might be thought an overstraining of the singular power in the use of words which is one of Mr. Brownell's most remarkable characteristics. "General Orders," not essential to the poem, may be admired as a _tour de force_, but cannot be properly called poetry. It is a condensed, versified edict,--true, no doubt, to the prose original, but on the whole better printed by itself, if printed at all, than suffered to distract the reader from the main narration by its elaborate ingenuity.

These two poems--the "River Fight" and the "Bay Fight"--are better adapted for public reading and declamation than almost any in our literature. They hush any circle of listeners, and many cannot hear those exquisitely tender passages which are found toward the close of each without yielding them the tribute of their tears. They are to all the drawing-room battle-poems as the torn flags of our victorious armadas to the stately ensigns that dressed their ships in the harbor.

Such pictures, if they do not kill everything hung on the walls with them, make even a brilliant canvas look comparatively lustreless. Yet the first poem of Mr. Brownell's which ever attracted our attention, "The Fall of Al Accoub," is of great force, and shows much of the same red light and black shadow, much of the same Vulcanic power over words, as with blast and forge and hammer, which startle us in the two battle-pieces. The lines "Annus Memorabilis," dated Jan. 6th, 1861, read like prophecy in 1865. "Wood and Coal" (November, 1863) gives a presage of the fire which the flame of the conflict would kindle. "The Burial of the Dane" shows the true human sympathy of the writer, in its simple, pathetic narrative; and the story of the "Old Cove" had a wider circulation and a heartier reception than almost any prose effort which has been called forth by the "All we ask is to be let alone" of the arch traitor.

The "Lyrics of a Day" are too modestly named. Our literature cannot forget the masterpieces in this little volume in a day, a year, or an age. The War of Freedom against Slavery has created a devilish enginery of its own: iron for wood, steam for wind and muscle, "Swamp-Angels" and thousand-pounders in place of the armaments that gained the Battle of the Nile and toppled over the chimneys of Copenhagen. New modes of warfare thundered their demand for a new poet to describe them; and Nature has answered in the voice of our Battle-Laureate, Henry Howard Brownell.

DOCTOR JOHNS.

XVI.

Miss Eliza being fairly seated in the Doctor's study, with great eagerness to hear what might be the subject of his communication, the parson, with the letter in his hand, asked if she remembered an old college friend, Maverick, who had once paid them a vacation visit at Canterbury.

"Perfectly," said Miss Eliza, whose memory was both keen and retentive; "and I remember that you have said he once passed a night with you, during the lifetime of poor Rachel, here at Ashfield. You have a letter from him?"

"I have," said the parson; "and it brings a proposal about which I wish your opinion." And the Doctor cast his eye over the letter.

"He expresses deep sympathy at my loss, and alludes very pleasantly to the visit you speak of, all which I will not read; after this he says, 'I little thought, when bantering you in your little study upon your family prospects, that I too was destined to become the father of a child, within a couple of years. Yet it is even so; and the responsibility weighs upon me greatly. I love my Adele with my whole heart; I am sure you cannot love your boy more, though perhaps more wisely."

"And he had never told you of his marriage?" said the spinster.

"Never; it is the only line I have had from him since his visit ten years ago."

The Doctor goes on with the reading:--

"It may be from a recollection of your warnings and of your distrust of the French character, or possibly it may be from the prejudices of my New England education, but I cannot entertain pleasantly the thought of her growing up to womanhood under the influences which are about her here. What those influences are you will not expect me to explain in detail. I am sure it will be enough to win upon your sympathy to say that they are Popish and thoroughly French. I feel a strong wish, therefore,--much as I am attached to the dear child,--to give her the advantages of a New England education and training. And with this wish, my thought reverts naturally to the calm quietude of your little town and of your household; for I cannot doubt that it is the same under the care of your sister as in the old time."

"I am glad he thinks so well of me," said Miss Eliza, but with an irony in her tone that she was sure the good parson would never detect.

The Doctor looks at her thoughtfully a moment, over the edge of the letter,--as if he, too, had his quiet comparisons to make,--then goes on with the letter:--

"This wish may surprise you, since you remember my old battlings with what I counted the rigors of a New England 'bringing-up'; but in this case I should not fear them, provided I could assure myself of your kindly supervision. For my little Adele, besides inheriting a great flow of spirits (from her father, you will say) and French blood, has been used thus far to a catholic latitude of talk and manner in all about her, which will so far counterbalance the gravities of your region as to leave her, I think, upon a safe middle ground. At any rate, I see enough to persuade me to choose rather the errors that may grow upon her girlhood there than those that would grow upon it here.

"Frankly, now, may I ask you to undertake, with your good sister, for a few years, the responsibility which I have suggested?"

The Doctor looked over the edge of the sheet toward Miss Eliza.

"Read on, Benjamin," said she.

"The matter of expenses, I am happy to say, is one which need not enter into your consideration of the question. My business successes have been such that any estimate which you may make of the moneys required will be at your call at the office of our house in Newburyport.

"I have the utmost faith in you, my dear Johns; and I want you to have faith in the earnestness with which I press this proposal on your notice. You will wonder, perhaps, how the mother of my little Adele can be a party to such a plan; but I may assure you, that, if your consent be gained, it will meet with no opposition in that quarter. This fact may possibly confirm some of your worst theories in regard to French character; and in this letter, at least, you will not expect me to combat them.

"I have said that she has lived thus far under Popish influences; but her religious character is of course unformed; indeed, she has as yet developed in no _serious_ direction whatever; I think you will find a _tabula rasa_ to write your tenets upon. But, if she comes to you, do not, I beg of you, grave them too harshly; she is too bird-like to be treated with severity; and I know that under all your gravity, my dear Johns, there is a kindliness of heart, which, if you only allowed it utterance, would win greatly upon this little fondling of mine. And I think that her open, laughing face may win upon you.

"Adele has been taught English, and I have purposely held all my prattle with her in the same tongue, and her familiarity with it is such that you would hardly detect a French accent. I am not particularly anxious that she should maintain her knowledge of French; still, should a good opportunity occur, and a competent teacher be available, it might be well for her to do so. In all such matters I should rely greatly on your judgment.

"Now, my dear Johns,"--

Miss Eliza interrupts by saying, "I think your friend is very familiar, Benjamin."

"Why not? why not, Eliza? We were boys together."

And he continues with the letter:--

"My dear Johns, I want you to consider this matter fairly; I need not tell you that it is one that lies very near my heart. Should you determine to accept the trust, there is a ship which will be due at this port some four or five months from now, whose master I know well, and with whom I should feel safe to trust my little Adele for the voyage, providing at the same time a female attendant upon whom I can rely, and who will not leave the little voyager until she is fairly under your wing. In two or three years thereafter, at most, I hope to come to receive her from you; and then, when she shall have made a return visit to Europe, it is quite possible that I may establish myself in my own country again. Should you wish it, I could arrange for the attendant remain with her; but I confess that I should prefer the contrary. I want to separate her for the time, so far as I can, from _all_ the influences to which she has been subject here; and further than this, I have a strong faith in that self-dependence which seems to me to grow out of your old-fashioned New England training."

"That is all," said the Doctor, quietly folding the letter. "What do you think of the proposal, Eliza?"

"I like it, Benjamin."

The spinster was a woman of quick decision. Had it been proposed to receive an ordinary pupil in the house for any pecuniary consideration, her pride would have revolted on the instant. But here was a child of an old friend of the Doctor, a little Christian waif, as it were, floating toward them from that unbelieving world of France.

"Surely it will be a worthy and an honorable task for Benjamin" (so thought Miss Eliza) "to redeem this little creature from its graceless fortune; possibly, too, the companionship may soften that wild boy, Reuben. This French girl, Adele, is rich, well-born; what if, from being inmates of the same house, the two should come by-and-by to be joined by some tenderer tie?"

The possibility, even, of such a dawn of sentiment under the spinster's watchful tutelage was a delightful subject of reflection to her. It is remarkable how even the cunningest and the coolest of practical-minded women delight in watching the growth of sentiment in others,--and all the more strongly, if they can foster it by their artifices and provoke it into demonstration.

Miss Johns, too, without being imaginative, prefigured in her mind the image of the little French stranger, with foreign air and dress, tripping beside her up the meeting-house aisle, looking into her face confidingly for guidance, attracting the attention of the simple townspeople in such sort that a distinction would belong to her _protegee_ which would be pleasantly reflected upon herself. A love of distinction was the spinster's prevailing sin,--a distinction growing out of the working of good deeds, if it might be, but at any rate some worthy and notable distinction. The Doctorate of her good brother, his occasional discourses which had been subject of a public mention that she never forgot, were objects of a more than sisterly fondness. If her sins were ever to meet with a punishment in the flesh, they would know no sharper one than in a humiliation of her pride.

"I think," said she, "that you can hardly decline the proposal of Mr. Maverick, Benjamin."

"And you will take the home care of her?" asked the Doctor.

"Certainly. She would at first, I suppose, attend school with Reuben and the young Elderkins?"

"Probably," returned the Doctor; "but the more special religious training which I fear the poor girl needs must be given at home, Eliza."

"Of course, Benjamin."

It was further agreed between the two that a French attendant would make a very undesirable addition to the household, as well as sadly compromise their efforts to build up the little stranger in full knowledge of the faith.

The Doctor was earnest in his convictions of the duty that lay before him, and his sister's consent to share the charge left him free to act. He felt all the best impulses of his nature challenged by the proposal. Here, at least, was one chance to snatch a brand from the burning,--to lead this poor little misguided wayfarer into those paths which are "paths of pleasantness." No image of French grace or of French modes was prefigured to the mind of the parson; his imagination had different range. He saw a young innocent (so far as any child in his view could be innocent) who prattled in the terrible language of Rousseau and Voltaire, who by the providence of God had been born in a realm where all iniquities flourished, and to whom, by the further and richer providence of God, a means of escape was now offered. He would no more have thought of declining the proposed service, even though the poor girl were dressed in homespun and clattered in sabots, than he would have closed his ear to the cry of a drowning child.

Within that very week the Doctor wrote his reply to Maverick. He assured him that he would most gladly undertake the trust he had proposed,--"hoping, by God's grace, to lead the little one away from the delusions of sense and the abominations of Antichrist, to the fold of the faithful."

"I could wish," he continued, "that you had given me more definite information in regard to the character of her early religious instruction, and told me how far the child may still remain under the mother's influence in this respect; for, next to special interposition of Divine Grace, I know no influence so strong in determining religious tendencies as the early instruction or example of a mother.

"My sister has promised to give home care to the little stranger, and will, I am sure, welcome her with zeal It will be our purpose to place your daughter at the day-school of a worthy person, Miss Betsey Onthank, who has had large experience, and under whose tuition my boy Reuben has been for some time established. My sister and myself are both of opinion that the presence of any French attendant upon the child would be undesirable.

"I hope that God may have mercy upon the French people,--and that those who dwell temporarily among them may be watched over and be graciously snatched from the great destruction that awaits the ungodly."

XVII.

Meantime Reuben grew into a knowledge of all the town mischief, and into the practice of such as came within the scope of his years. The proposed introduction of the young stranger from abroad to the advantages of the parsonage home did not weigh upon his thought greatly. The prospect of such a change did not soften him, whatever might come of the event. In his private talk with Esther, he had said, "I hope that French girl'll be a _clever_ un; if she a'n't, I'll"----and he doubled up a little fist, and shook it, so that Esther laughed outright.

Not that the boy had any cruelty in him, but he was just now learning from his older companions of the village, who were more steeped in iniquity, that defiant manner by which the Devil in all of us makes his first pose preparatory to the onslaught that is to come.

"Nay, Ruby, boy," said Esther, when she had recovered from her laughter, "you wouldn't hurt the little un, would ye? Don't ye want a little playfellow, Ruby?"

"I don't play with girls, I don't," said Reuben. "But, I say, Esther, what'll papa do, if she dances?"

"What makes the boy think she'll dance?" said Esther.

"Because the Geography says the French people dance; and Phil Elderkin showed me a picture with girls dancing under a tree, and, says he, 'That 's the sort that's comin' to y'r house.'"

"Well, I don't know," said Esther, "but I guess your Aunt Eliza 'd cure the dancin'."

"She wouldn't cure me, if I wanted to," said Reuben, who thought it needful to speak in terms of bravado about the spinster, with whom he kept up a series of skirmishing fights from week to week. The truth is, the keen eye of the good lady ferreted out a great many of his pet plans of mischief, and nipped them before they had time to ripen. Over and over, too, she warned him against the evil associates whom he would find about the village tavern, where he strayed from time to time to be witness to some dog-fight, or to receive a commendatory glance of recognition from one Nat Boody, the tavern-keeper's son, who had run away two years before and made a voyage down the river in a sloop laden with apples and onions to "York." He was a head taller than Reuben, and the latter admired him intensely: we never cease admiring those "a head taller" than ourselves. Reuben absolutely pined in longing wonderment at the way in which Nat Boody could crack a coach-whip, and with a couple of hickory sticks could "call the roll" upon a pine table equal to a drum-major. Wonderful were the stories this boy could tell, to special cronies, of his adventures in the city: they beat the Geography "all hollow." Such an air, too, as this Boody had, leaning against the pump-handle by his father's door, and making cuts at an imaginary span of horses!--such a pair of twilled trousers, cut like a man's!--such a jacket, with lapels to the pockets, which he said "the sailors wore on the sloops, and called 'em monkey-jackets"!--such a way as he had of putting a quid in his mouth! for Nat Boody chewed. It is not strange that Reuben, feeling a little of ugly constraint under the keen eye of the spinster Eliza, should admire greatly the free-and-easy manner of the tavern-boy, who had such familiarity with the world and such large range of action. The most of us never get over a wonderment at the composure and complacency which spring from a wide knowledge of the world; and the man who can crack his whip well, though only at an imaginary pair of horses, is sure to have a throng of admirers.

By this politic lad, Nat Boody, the innocent Reuben was decoyed into many a little bargain which told more for the shrewdness of the tavern than for that of the parsonage. Thus, he bartered one day a new pocket-knife, the gift of his Aunt Mabel of Greenwich Street, for a knit Scotch cap, half-worn, which the tavern traveller assured him could not be matched for any money. And the parson's boy, going back with this trophy on his head, looking very consciously at those who give an admiring stare, is pounced upon at the very door-step by the indefatigable spinster.

"What now, Reuben? Where in the world did you get that cap?"

"Bought it,"--in a grand way.

"But it's worn," says the aunt. "Ouf! whose was it?"

"Bought it of Nat Boody," says Reuben; "and he says there isn't another can be had."

"Bah!" says the spinster, making a dash at the cap, which she seizes, and, straightway rushing in-doors, souses in a kettle of boiling water.

After which comes off a new skirmish, followed by the partial defeat of Reuben, who receives such a combing down (with sundry killed and wounded) as he remembers for a month thereafter.

The truth is, that it was not altogether from admiration of the accomplished Nat Boody that Reuben was prone to linger about the tavern neighborhood. The spinster had so strongly and constantly impressed it upon him that it was a low and vulgar and wicked place, that the boy, growing vastly inquisitive in these years, was curious to find out what shape the wickedness took; and as he walked by, sometimes at dusk, when thoroughly infused with the last teachings of Miss Eliza, it seemed to him that he might possibly catch a glimpse of the hoofs of some devil (as he had seen devils pictured in an illustrated Milton) capering about the doorway,--and if he had seen them, truth compels us to say that he would have felt a strong inclination to follow them up, at a safe distance, in order to see what kind of creatures might be wearing them. But he was far more apt to see the lounging figure of the shoemaker from down the street, or of Mr. Postmaster Troop, coming thither to have an evening's chat about Vice-President Calhoun, or William Wirt and the Anti-Masons. Or possibly, it might be, he would see the light heels of Suke Boody, the pretty daughter of the tavern-keeper, who had been pronounced by Phil Elderkin, who knew, (being a year his senior,) the handsomest girl in the town. This might well be; for Suke was just turned of fifteen, with pink arms and pink cheeks and blue eyes and a great flock of brown hair: not very startling in her beauty on ordinary days, when she appeared in a pinned-up quilted petticoat, and her curls in papers, sweeping the tavern-steps; but of a Saturday afternoon, in red and white calico, with the curls all streaming,--no wonder Phil Elderkin, who was tall of his age, thought her handsome. So it happened that the inquisitive Reuben, not finding any cloven feet in his furtive observations, but encountering always either the rosy Suke, or "Scamp," (which was Nat's pet fighting-dog,) or the shoemaker, or the round-faced Mr. Boody himself, could justify and explain his aunt's charge of the tavern wickedness only by distributing it over them all. And when, one Sunday, Miss Suke appeared at meeting (where she rarely went) in hat all aflame with ribbons, Reuben, sorely puzzled at the sight, says to his Aunt Eliza,--

"Why didn't the sexton put her out?"

"Put her out!" says the spinster, horrified,--"what do you mean, Reuben?"

"Isn't she wicked?" says he; "she came from the tavern, and she lives at the tavern."

"But don't you know that preaching is for the wicked, and that the good had much better stay away than the bad?"

"Had they?" said Reuben, thoughtfully, pondering if there did not lie somewhere in this averment the basis for some new moral adjustment of his own conduct.

There are a vast many prim preachers, both male and female, in all times, who imagine that certain styles of wickedness or vulgarity are to be approached with propriety only across a church;--as if better preaching did not lie, nine times out of ten, in the touch of a hand or a whisper in the ear!

Pondering, as Reuben did, upon the repeated warnings of the spinster against any familiarity with the tavern or tavern people, he came in time to reckon the old creaking sign-board of Mr. Boody, and the pump in the inn-yard, as the pivotal points of all the town wickedness, just as the meeting-house was the centre of all the town goodness; and since the great world was very wicked, as he knew from overmuch iteration at home, and since communication with that wicked world was kept up mostly by the stage-coach that stopped every noon at the tavern-door, it seemed to him that relays of wickedness must flow into the tavern and town daily upon that old swaying stage-coach, just as relays of goodness might come to the meeting-house on some old lumbering chaise of a neighboring parson, who once a month, perhaps, would "exchange" with the Doctor. And it confirmed in Reuben's mind a good deal that was taught him about natural depravity, when he found himself looking out with very much more eagerness for the rumbling coach, that kept up a daily wicked activity about the tavern, than he did for Parson Hobson, who snuffled in his reading, and who drove an old, thin-tailed sorrel mare, with lopped ears and lank jaws, that made passes at himself and Phil, if they teased her, as they always did.

So, too, he came to regard, in virtue of misplaced home instruction, the monkey-jacket of Nat Boody, and his fighting-dog "Scamp," and the pink arms and pink cheeks and brown ringlets of Suke Boody, as so many types of human wickedness; and, by parity of reasoning, he came to look upon the two flat curls on either temple of his Aunt Eliza, and her pragmatic way, and upon the yellow ribbons within the scoop-hat of Almira Tourtelot, who sang treble and never went to the tavern, as the types of goodness. What wonder, if he swayed more and more toward the broad and easy path that lay around the tavern-pump, ("Scamp" lying there biting at the flies,) and toward the barroom, with its flaming pictures of some past menagerie-show, and big tumblers with lemons atop, rather than to the strait and narrow path in which his Aunt Eliza and Miss Almira would guide him with sharp voices, thin faces, and decoy of dyspeptic doughnuts?

Phil and he sauntering by one day, Phil says,--

"Darst you go in, Reub?"

Phil was under no law of prohibition. And Reuben, glancing around the Common, says,--