Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

[C] As I have stated in the beginning, I am satisfied that the unstratified clay deposit of Rio and its vicinity is genuine glacial drift, resulting from the grinding of the loose materials interposed between the glacier and the solid rock in place, and retaining to this day the position in which it was left by the ice. Like all such accumulations, it is totally free from stratification. If this be so, it is evident, on comparing the two formations, that the ochraceous sandy clay of the Valley of the Amazons has been deposited under different circumstances; that, while it owes its resemblance to the Rio drift to the fact that its materials were originally ground by glaciers in the upper part of the valley, these materials have subsequently been spread throughout the whole basin and actually deposited under the agency of water.

A MANIAC'S CONFESSION.

I am a maniac. I have for some years been the victim of a peculiar insanity, which has greatly distressed several of my friends and relatives. They generally soften it in their talk by the name _mono_mania; but they do not hesitate to aver, when speaking their minds, that it has in truth infected my whole soul, and made me incapable of doing or thinking anything useful or rational. This sad delusion, which they endeavor to remove by serious advice, by playful banter, or by seeming to take an interest in my folly for a moment, is encountered with great acrimony by less gentle friends. They who are not bound to me by blood or intimacy--and some who are--deride, insult, and revile me in every way for my subjection to a mental aberration which is rapidly consuming a pretty property, more than average talents, and unrivalled opportunities.

Of course, like all madmen, I think just the reverse. When the fit is on me, I assert that this fever--this madness--far from being the bane of my life, is a blessing to it; that I am habitually devoting money, time, and wits to an object at once beautiful and elevating; that I have found consolation in its visions for many sufferings, which all the amusements offered me by my revilers are utterly inadequate to touch. I declare that I have found a better investment for my money than all the West Virginia coal companies that ever sunk oil-wells, and am making more useful acquaintances than if I danced every German during the season. I have not been shut up yet, for my friends know that, if they attempt any such thing, the Finance Committee on the Harvard Memorial and Alumni Hall are in possession of a bond conveying all my money to them; so I am still at large, scolded by my brother Henry, laughed at by my sister Bathsheba, the aversion of Beacon Street, and the scorn of Winthrop Square.

The other day, I took a little journey to Europe, with the view of feeding my madness on that whereby it grows. My friends did not choose to stop me, for they thought the charms of foreign travel might win me from my waywardness. To be sure, when they found, on my return, that I had never left England, they were convinced, if never before, that I was hopelessly insane; for what American, they very sanely said, "would stay in that dull, dingy island, among those stupid, cowardly bullies, when he might live in that lovely Paris, the most interesting and amusing city in the world, unless he were incomprehensibly mad." And, in truth, I begin to think I must be mad, when I find myself, like the man shut up with eleven obstinate jurymen, alone in thinking England a gay, beautiful, happy country, teeming with every gratification of art or nature, and inhabited by a manly, generous, and intelligent race; and that life in Paris, as Americans live it, is a senseless rush after excitement, where comfort is abandoned for unreal luxury, and society for vicious boon-companionship. Still I am very willing to admit that my special mania can be very capitally gratified in Paris, and I am meditating a little trip there for the purpose.

On my return from England, I was observed to be in great distress about a certain box that I missed at Liverpool, looked for at Halifax, and all but lost at East Boston; and when it was found and opened, it only contained two suits of clothes, when, as Henry said, "I might have brought forty, the only thing they did have decent in England," and all the rest--mad, mad! I beg the readers of the Atlantic to listen to my humble confession of madness, as it culminated in this box.

It is this. The most valuable property a man can possibly have is books; if he has a hundred or a thousand dollars to spare, he had better at once put it into books than into any "paying investments," or any horses, clothes, pictures, or opera-tickets. A life passed among books, thinking, talking, living only for books, is the most amusing and improving life; and to make this possible, the acquisition of a library should be the first object of any one who makes any claim to the possession of luxuries. (My madness only allows me to make one exception,--I do acknowledge the solemn duty of laying in a stock of old Madeira.) But so far I have many fellow-maniacs. The special reason why I ought always to stop the Lowell cars at Somerville is, that I consider the reading of books only half the battle. I must have them in choice bindings, in rare imprints, in original editions, and in the most select forms. I must have several copies of a book I have read forty times, as long as there is anything about each copy that makes it peculiar, _sui generis_. I must own the first edition of Paradise Lost, because it is the first, and in ten books; the second, because it is the first in twelve; then Newton's, then Todd's, then Mitford's, and so on, till my catalogue of Miltons gets to equal Jeames de la Pluche's portraits of the "Dook." "And when," as Henry indignantly says, "he could read Milton all he wanted to, more than I should ever want to, notes and all, in Little and Brown's edition that father gave him, he must go spending money on a parcel of old truck printed a thousand years ago." Mad, quite mad.

Now, to finish the melancholy picture, I am classic mad. I prefer the ancient authors, decidedly, to the moderns. I love them as I never can the moderns; they are my most intimate friends, my heart's own darlings. And how I love to lavish money on them, to see them adorned in every way! How I love to heap them up, Aldines, and Elzevirs, and Baskervilles, and Biponts, in all their grace and majesty. This was what filled that London box. This was all I had to show for twenty-five or thirty guineas of good money; a parcel of trumpery old Greek and Latin books I had by dozens already! Mad, mad.

Will you come in and see them, ladies and gentlemen? Here they are, all ranged out on my table, large and small, clean and dirty. What have we first?

A goodly fat quarto in white vellum, "Plinii Panegyricus, cum notis Schwarzii, Norimbergae, 1733." A fine, clean, fresh copy,--one of those brave old Teutonic classics of the last century, less exquisitely printed than the Elzevirs, less learnedly critical than the later Germans, but perfectly trustworthy and satisfactory, and attracting every one's eye on a library shelf, by the rich sturdiness of their creamy binding, that smacks of the true Dutch and German burgher wealth. The model of them all is Oudendorp's Caesar. But there is nothing very great about Pliny's Panegyric, and a man must be a very queer bibliomaniac who would buy up all the vellum classics of the last century he saw. Look inside the cover; read under the book-plate the engraved name, "Edward Gibbon, Esq." What will you, my sanest friend, not give for a book that belonged to the author of the "Decline and Fall"?

The next is also a large quarto, but of a very different character. It is the Baskerville impression of the elegiac poets,--Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius: Birmingham, 1772. No books are more delightful to sight and touch than the Baskerville classics. This Catullus of mine is printed on the softest and glossiest post paper, with a mighty margin of two inches and a half at the side, and rich broad letters,--the standard _n_ is a tenth of an inch wide,--of a glorious blackness in spite of their ninety-two years of age. The classics of all languages have never been more fitly printed than by Baskerville; and the present book may serve as an admirable lesson to those who think a large-paper book means an ordinary octavo page printed in the middle of a quarto leaf,--for instance; Irving's Washington. My Catullus is bound in glossy calf, with a richly gilt back, and bears within the inscription, "From H. S. C. | to her valued friend | Doctor Southey | Feb'y y'e 24th, 1813," in a true English lady's hand. This cannot be the poet Southey, who was not made LL. D. till 1821; but it may be his brother, Henry Herbert Southey, M. D.

Next comes a very neat and compact little Seneca, in four 18mo volumes, bound in rich old Russia, and bearing the esteemed imprint, "Amstelodami apud Ludovicum et Danielem Elzevirios, M.D.CLVIII." As the Baskerville classics are the noblest for the library table, so the Elzevirs are the neatest and prettiest for the pocket or the lecture-room. And to their great beauty of mechanical execution is generally added a scrupulous textual accuracy, which the great Birmingham printer did not boast. This edition of Seneca, for instance, is that of Gronovius. His dedicatory epistle, and the title-pages of Vols. II., III. and IV., are all dated 1658, but the general title-page in Vol. I. is 1659, as if, like White's Shakespeare, the first volume was the last published. Contrasting a _bijou_ edition with a magnificent one, it may be noted that in the Elzevir the four words and two stops, "Moriar: die ergo verum," occupy just an inch, exactly the space of the one word "compositis" in the Baskerville; but the printing of each is in its way exquisite.

Just about a century after the Elzevirs, and contemporary with Baskerville, an English publisher of the name of Sandby, who appears to have been, as we should say, the University printer and bookseller at Cambridge, projected a series of classics, which are highly prized on large paper and not despised on small. I possess two of the latter, a Terence and a Juvenal; the second, curiously enough, lettered "Juvenal_u_s," a regular binder's blunder. They are called pocket editions, but are much larger than the Elzevirs, and, though very pretty, just miss that peculiar beauty and finish which have made the former the delight of all scholars. There is a carelessness somewhere--it is hard to say where--about the printing, which prevents their being perfect; but a "Sandby" is a very nice thing.

My next "wanity" is a Virgil,--Justice's Virgil; a most elaborate and elegant edition, in five octavo volumes, published in the middle of the last century. It is noted, first, for the great richness and beauty of its engravings from ancient gems, coins, and drawings, which form an unrivalled body of illustration to the text. But, secondly, it will be seen, on inspection, that the whole book is one vast engraving, every line, word, and letter being cut on a metallic plate. Consequently, only every other page is printed on. The same idea was still more perfectly carried out by Pine, a few years later, who executed all Horace in this way, but only lived to complete one volume of Virgil, choicer even than Justice's. It is well bound, in perfect order, and ranks with the choicest of ornamental classics.

Side by side with this Virgil is another, the rare Elzevir Virgil, and a gem, if ever there was one. It is the corrected text of Heinsius, and thus has a fair claim to rank as the earliest of the modern critical editions of Maro. The elegance of this little book in size and shape, the clearness and beauty of the type, and the truly classical taste and finish of the whole design, can never be surpassed in Virgilian bibliography, unless by Didot's matchless little copies. Elzevir Virgils are common enough; but mine is, as I have said, the rare Elzevir, known by the pages introductory to the Eclogues and AEneid being printed in rubric, while the ordinary Elzevirs have them in black. It dates 1637,--the year when John Harvard left his money to the College at Newtowne, and the first printing-press in the United States was set up hard by.

The books, then, that I have described so far all date within the two hundred and thirty years of our collegiate history. But I have behind three of an earlier--a much earlier date; books which John Cotton and Charles Chauncy might have gazed upon as old in Emmanuel College Library.

First, I show you a pair of Aldines, and, what is better, a pair _editionum principum_,--the first Sophocles and the first Thucydides. Both have the proper attestation at the end that they come from the Aldi in Venice in the year 1502,--the Thucydides in May, and the Sophocles in August; hence the former has not the Aldine anchor at the extreme end. Both are in exquisitely clean condition; but the Sophocles, though taller than other known copies of the same edition, has suffered from the knife of a modern binder, who otherwise has done his work with the greatest elegance and judgment. The Thucydides has a grand page, over twelve inches by eight; the Sophocles is about seven by four. The type of both is small, and, though distinct, especially the Thucydides, not at all what we should call elegant. In fact, elegant Greek type is a very late invention. There is, I believe, no claim to textual criticism in these early Aldines; the publishers printed from such manuscripts as they could get. The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction. But it is, at any rate, most curious to consider that these two writers, who stand at the very head of Greek, or at least Attic, prose and verse, both for matter and style, should not have found a printer till the fifteenth century was long past, and then in a style which, for the Sophocles, can only be called neat. The Thucydides is handsome, but far inferior to the glory of the _princeps_ Homer. And to own them--for a maniac--O, it is glorious!

Last comes my special treasure,--my fifteener,--my book as old as America,--my darling copy of my darling author. Here, at the culmination of my madness, my friends, especially my brother Henry, are all ready to say at once what author I mean. For it has been my special mania for twenty years--thereby causing the deepest distress to nearly all my friends, even those who have been thought fellow-lunatics, except one,[D] who is for me about the only sane man alive--to prefer VIRGIL to all authors, living or dead, and to seek to accumulate as many different editions and copies of him as possible. I have in these pages chronicled two. My library holds twelve more, besides two translations, and I consider myself very short; for to my mind no breadth of paper, no weight of binding, no brilliancy of print, no delicacy of engraving, no elaboration of learning, can ever do honor enough to the last and best of the ancients, who was all but the first of the Christians,--who would have been, if his frame had not broken down under a genius too mighty and a soul too sweet for earth. (Mad, you see, beyond all question. Virgil is allowed to be a servile copyist, far inferior to Lucretius. Compare Lucr. V. 750 with Georg. II. 478, and Heyne's note.) This Virgil of mine bears the imprint of Antony Koburger, Nuremberg, 1492. It is in the original binding of very solid boards overlaid with stamped vellum, and is still clasped with the original skin and metal. It is a small folio, on very coarse paper, and the only one of my rare classics not in the cleanest condition. Its stains appear to be caused by its use in a school; for it is covered with notes, in German current hand, very antiquated, and very elementary in their scholarship. It has all the poetry ascribed to Virgil, and the Commentaries of Servius and Landini, which are so voluminous that the page looks like a ha'p'orth of sack to an intolerable deal of very dry bread. It is very rare, being unknown to the great Dibdin, and was snapped up by me for three guineas out of a London bookseller's catalogue. A Virgil printed by Koburger in the year America was discovered, original binding and clasps, not in Dibdin, for three guineas! Hurrah! It excites my madness so that I must rush straight to Piper's and buy right and left. Kind friends, come and take me away ere I am reduced to beggary.

FOOTNOTES:

[D] F. W. H. M., you know I mean you.

THE GREAT DOCTOR.

A STORY IN TWO PARTS.

II.

Five or six years of the life of our hero we must now pass over in silence, saying of them, simply, that Fancy had not cheated much in her promises concerning them. The first rude cabin had given place to a whitewashed cottage; the chimney-corner was bright and warm; the easy-chair was in it, and the Widow Walker often sat there with her grandson on her knee, getting much comfort from the reflection that he looked just as her own Johnny did when he was a baby!

The garden smiled at the doorside, and the village had sprung up just as Fancy promised; and Hobert and Jenny walked to church of a Sunday, and after service shook hands with their neighbors,--for everybody delighted to take their strong, willing hands, and look into their honest, cheerful faces,--they were amongst the first settlers of the place, and held an honored position in society. Jenny was grown a little more stout, and her cheek a little more ruddy, than it used to be; but the new country seemed not so well suited to Hobert, and the well-wishing neighbor often said when he met him, "You mustn't be too ambitious, and overdo! Your shoulders ain't so straight as they was when you come here! Be careful in time; nothing like that, Walker, nothing like that." And Hobert laughed at these suggestions, saying he was as strong as the rest of them; and that, though his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, he was a better man than he seemed.

The summer had been one of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once. It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather had been unusually trying; as soon as the frost came, the ague would vanish; the water was the best in the world, to be sure, and the air the purest.

Hobert was ploughing a piece of low ground for wheat, cutting a black snake in two now and then, and his furrow behind him fast filling with water that looked almost as black as the soil. Often he stopped to frighten from the quivering flank of the brown mare before him the voracious horse-flies, colored like the scum of the stagnant pools, and clinging and sucking like leeches. She was his favorite, the pride of his farm,--for had she not, years before, brought Jenny on her faithful shoulder to the new, happy home? Many a fond caress her neck had had from his arm; and the fine bridle with the silver bit, hanging on the wall at home, would not have been afforded for any other creature in the world. Hobert often said he would never sell her as long as he lived; and in the seasons of hard work he favored her more than he did himself. She had been named Fleetfoot, in honor of her successful achievement when her master had intrusted to her carrying the treasure of his life; but that name proving too formal, she was usually called Fleety. She would put down her forehead to the white hands of little Jenny, four years old and upward now, and tread so slow and so carefully when she had her on her back! Even the white dress of Johnny Hobert had swept down her silken side more than once, while his dimpled hands clutched her mane, and his rosy feet paddled against her. He was going to be her master after a while, and take care of her in her old age, when the time of her rest was come; he knew her name as well as he knew his own, and went wild with delight when he saw her taking clover from the tiny hand of his sister or drinking water from the bucket at the well.

"She grows handsomer every year," Hobert often said; "and with a little training I would not be afraid to match her against the speediest racer they can bring." And this remark was always intended as in some sort a compliment to Jenny, and was always so received by her.

On this special day he had stopped oftener in the furrow than common; and as often as he stopped Fleety twisted round her neck, bent her soft eyes upon him, and twitched her little ears as though she would say, "Is not all right, my master?" And then he would walk round to her head, and pass his hand along her throat and through her foretop, calling her by her pet name, and pulling for her handfuls of fresh grass, and while she ate it resting himself against her, and feeling in her nearness almost a sense of human protection. His feet seemed to drag under him, and there was a dull aching in all his limbs; the world appeared to be receding from him, and at times he could hardly tell whether he stood upon solid ground. Then he accused himself of being lazy and good for nothing, and with fictitious energy took up the reins and started the plough.

He looked at the sun again and again. He was not used to leaving off work while the sun shone, and the clear waters of the Wabash held as yet no faintest evening flush. There were yet two good hours of working time before him, when the quick shooting of a pain, like the running of a knife through his heart, caused him to stagger in the furrow. Fleety stopped of her own accord, and looked pityingly back. He sat down beside the plough to gather up his courage a little. A strange sensation that he could not explain had taken possession of him, a feeling as if the hope of his life was cut off. The pain was gone, but the feeling of helpless surrender remained. He opened his shirt and passed his hand along his breast. He could feel nothing,--could see nothing; but he had, for all that, a clearly defined consciousness as of some deadly thing hold of him that he would fain be rid of.

He had chanced to stop his plough under an elm-tree, and, looking up, he perceived that from the fork upward one half of it was dead; mistletoe had sucked the life out of it, and lower and lower to the main body, deeper and deeper to the vital heart of it, the sap was being drawn away. An irresistible impulse impelled him to take the jack-knife from his pocket, and as far as he could reach cut away this alien and deadly growth. The sympathy into which he was come with the dying tree was positively painful to him, and yet he was withheld from moving on by a sort of fascination,--_he_ was that tree, and the mistletoe was rooted in his bosom!

The last yellow leaves fluttered down and lodged on his head and shoulders and in his bosom,--he did not lift his hand to brush them away; the blue lizard slid across his bare ankle and silently vanished out of sight, but he did not move a muscle. The brown mare bent her side round like a bow, and stretched her slender neck out more and more, and at last her nose touched his cheek, and then he roused himself and shook the dead leaves from his head and shoulders, and stood up. "Come, Fleety," he said, "we won't leave the plough in the middle of the furrow." She did not move. "Come, come!" he repeated, "it seems like a bad sign to stop here";--and then he put his hand suddenly to his heart, and an involuntary shudder passed over him. Fleety had not unbent her side, and her dumb, beseeching eyes were still upon him. He looked at the sun, low, but still shining out bright, and almost as hot as ever; he looked at his shadow stretching so far over the rough, weedy ground, and it appeared to him strange and fantastic. Then he loosed the traces, and, winding up the long rein, hung it over the harness; the plough dropped aslant, and Fleety turned herself about and walked slowly homeward,--her master following, his head down and his hands locked together behind him.

The chimney was sending up its hospitable smoke, and Jenny was at the well with the teakettle in her hand when he came into the dooryard.

"What in the world is going to happen?" she exclaimed, cheerfully. "I never knew you to leave work before while the sun shone. I am glad you have, for once. But what is the matter?"

He had come nearer now, and she saw that something of light and hope had gone out of his face. And then Hobert made twenty excuses,--there wasn't anything the matter, he said, but the plough was dull, and the ground wet and heavy, and full of green roots; besides, the flies were bad, and the mare tired.

"But you look so worn out, I am afraid you are sick, yourself!" interposed the good wife; and she went close to him, and pushed the hair, growing thinner now, away from his forehead, and looked anxiously in his face,--so anxiously, so tenderly, that he felt constrained to relieve her fears, even at some expense of the truth.

"Not to look well in your eyes is bad enough," he answered, with forced cheerfulness, "but I feel all right; never better, never better, Jenny!" And stooping to his little daughter, who was holding his knees, he caught her up, and tossed her high in the air, but put her down at once, seeming almost to let her fall out of his hands, and, catching for breath, leaned against the well-curb.

"What is it, Hobert? what is it?" and Jenny had her arm about him, and was drawing him toward the house.

"Nothing, nothing,--a touch of rheumatism, I guess,--no, no! I must take care of the mare first." And as she drank the water from the full bucket he held poised on the curb for her, he thought of the elm-tree in the field he had left, of the mistletoe sucking the life out of it, and of the unfinished furrow. "Never mind, Fleety," he said, as he led her away to the stable, "we'll be up betimes to-morrow, and make amends, won't we?"

"I believe, mother, I'll put on the new teacups!" Jenny said, as she set a chair before the cupboard, and climbed on it so as to reach the upper shelf. She had already spread the best table-cloth.

"Why, what for?" asked the provident mother, looking up from the sock she was knitting.

"O, I don't know; I want to make things look nice, that's all."

But she did know, though the feeling was only half defined. It seemed to her as if Hobert were some visitor coming,--not her husband. A shadowy feeling of insecurity had touched her; the commonness of custom was gone, and she looked from the window often, as the preparation for supper went on, with all the sweetness of solicitude with which she used to watch for his coming from under the grape-vines. Little Jenny was ready with the towel when he came with his face dripping, and the easy-chair was set by the door that looked out on the garden. "I don't want it," the good grandmother said, as he hesitated; "I have been sitting in it all day, and am tired of it!"

And as he sat there with his boy on his knee, and his little girl, who had climbed up behind him, combing his hair with her slender white fingers,--his own fields before him, and his busy wife making music about the house with her cheerful, hopeful talk,--he looked like a man to be envied; and so just then he was.

The next morning he did not fulfil his promise to himself by rising early; he had been restless and feverish all night, and now was chilly. If he lay till breakfast was ready, he would feel better, Jenny said; she could milk, to be sure, and do all the rest of the work, and so he was persuaded. But when the breakfast was ready the chilliness had become a downright chill, so that the blankets that were over him shook like leaves in a strong wind.

Jenny had a little money of her own hidden away in the bottom of the new cream-pitcher. She had saved it, unknown to Hobert, from the sale of eggs and other trifles, and had meant to surprise him by appearing in a new dress some morning when the church-bell rang; but now she turned the silver into her hand and counted it, thinking what nice warm flannel it would buy to make shirts for Hobert. Of course he had them, and Jenny had not made any sacrifice that she knew of,--indeed, that is a word of which love knows not the meaning.

"We will have him up in a day or two," the women said, one to the other, as they busied themselves about the house, or sat at the bedside, doing those things that only the blessed hands of women can do, making those plans that only the loving hearts of women can make. But the day or two went by, and they didn't have Hobert up. Then they said to one another, "We must set to work in earnest; we have really done nothing for him as yet." And they plied their skill of nursing with new hope and new energy. Every morning he told them he was better, but in the afternoon it happened that he didn't feel quite like stirring about; he was still better, but he had a little headache, and was afraid of bringing on a chill.

"To be sure! you need rest and quiet; you have been working too hard, and it's only a wonder you didn't give out sooner!" So the two women said to him; and then they told him he looked better than he did yesterday, and, with much tender little caressing of neck and arms and hands, assured him that his flesh felt as healthy and nice as could be. Nevertheless, his eyes settled deeper and deeper, and gathered more and more of a leaden color about them; his skin grew yellow, and fell into wrinkles that were almost rigid, and that beseeching, yearning expression, made up of confidence in you, and terror of some nameless thing,--that look, as of a soul calling and crying to you, which follows you when you go farther than common from a sick-pillow,--all that terrible appealing was in his face; and often Jenny paused with her eyes away from him, when she saw that look,--paused, and steadied up her heart, before she could turn back and meet him with a smile.

And friendly neighbors came in of an evening, and told of the sick wife or boy at home; of the mildewed crop, and the lamed horse; of the brackish well, and of the clock bought from the pedler that wouldn't go, and wouldn't strike when it did go;--dwelling, in short, on all the darker incidents and accidents of life, and thus establishing a nearness and equality of relation to the sick man, that somehow soothed and cheered him. At these times he would be propped up in bed, and listen with sad satisfaction, sometimes himself entering with a sort of melancholy animation into the subject.

He would not as yet accept any offers of assistance. The wood-pile was getting low, certainly, and the plough still lying slantwise in the furrow; the corn-crop was to be gathered, and the potatoes to be got out of the ground,--but there was time enough yet! He didn't mean to indulge his laziness much longer,--not he!

And then the neighbor who had offered to serve him would laugh, and answer that he had not been altogether disinterested: he had only proposed to _lend_ a helping hand, expecting to need the like himself some day. "Trouble comes to us all, Mr. Walker, and we don't know whose turn it will be next. I want to take out a little insurance,--that's all!"

"Well, another day, if I don't get better!"

And the long hot rains were over at last; the clouds drew themselves off, and the sharp frosts, of a morning, were glistening far and near; the pumpkin-vines lay black along the ground, and the ungathered ears of corn hung black on the stalk.

Hobert was no better. But still the two women told each other they didn't think he was any worse. His disease was only an ague, common to the time of year and to the new country. It had come on so late it was not likely now that he would get the better of it before spring; making some little sacrifices for the present, they must all be patient and wait; and the nursing went on, till every device of nursing was exhausted, and one remedy after another was tried, and one after another utterly failed, and the fond hearts almost gave out. But there was the winter coming on, cold and long, and there was little Hobert, only beginning to stand alone, and prattling Jenny, with the toes coming through her shoes, and her shoulder showing flat and thin above her summer dress. Ah! there could be no giving out; the mother's petticoat must be turned into aprons for the pinched shoulders, and the knit-wool stockings must make amends for the worn-out shoes. So they worked, and work was their greatest blessing. A good many things were done without consulting Hobert at all, and he was led to believe that all went easily and comfortably; the neighbors, from time to time, lent the helping hand, without so much as asking leave; and by these means there were a few potatoes in the cellar, a little corn in the barn, and a load of wood under the snow at the door.

The table was not spread in the sickroom any more, as it had been for a while. They had thought it would amuse Hobert to see the little household ceremonies going on; but now they said it was better to avoid all unnecessary stir. Perhaps they thought it better that he should not see their scantier fare. Still they came into his presence very cheerfully, never hinting of hardship, never breathing the apprehension that began to trouble their hearts.

It was during these long winter evenings, when the neighbors sat by the fire and did what they could to cheer the sick man and the sad women, that the wonderful merits of the great Doctor Killmany began to be frequently discussed. Marvellous stories were told of his almost superhuman skill. He had brought back from the very gate of death scores of men and women who had been given up to die by their physicians,--so it was said; and special instances of cures were related that were certainly calculated to inspire hope and confidence. None of these good people could of their own knowledge attest these wonderful cures; but there were many circumstances that added weight to the force of the general rumor.

Dr. Killmany lived a great way off, and he charged a great price. He would not look at a man for less than a hundred dollars, so report said, and that was much in his favor. He had a very short way with patients,--asked no questions, and never listened to explanations,--but could tie down a man and take off his leg or arm, as the case might be, in an incredibly short space of time, paying as little heed to the cries and groans as to the buzzing of the flies. If anything further had been needed to establish his fame, it would have been found in the fact that he was very rich, wearing diamonds in his shirt-bosom, driving fine horses, and being, in fact, surrounded with all the luxuries that money can procure. Of course, he was a great doctor. How could it be otherwise? And it was enough to know that a Mr. A had seen a Mr. B who knew a Mr. C whose wife's mother was cured by him!

At first these things were talked of in hearing of the sick man; then there began to be whispers about the fire as to the possibility of persuading him to sell all that he had and go to the great Doctor; for it was now pretty generally felt that the ague was only the accompaniment of a more terrible disease.

Then at last it was suggested, as a wild pleasantry, by some daring visitor, "Suppose, Hobert, we should send you off one of these days, and have you back after a few weeks, sound and vigorous as a young colt! What should you say to that, my boy?"

To the surprise of everybody, Hobert replied that he only wished it were possible.

"Possible! Why, of course it's possible! Where there's a will, you know!" And then it began to be talked of less as an insane dream.

One morning, as Jenny came into the sick man's room, she found him sitting up in bed with his shirt open and his hand on his breast.

"What is it, Hobert?" she said; for there was a look in his eyes that made her tremble.

"I don't know, Jenny; but whatever it is, it will be my death," he answered, and, falling upon her shoulder,--for she had come close to him and had her arm about his neck,--he sobbed like a child.

The little hand was slipped under his, but Jenny said she could feel nothing; and I think she will be forgiven for that falsehood. He was sick, she said, worn out, and it was no wonder that strange fancies should take possession of him. She had neglected him too much; but now, though everything should go to pieces, he should have her first care, and her last care, and all her care; he should not be left alone any more to conjure up horrors; and when he said he was weak and foolish and ashamed of his tears, she pacified him with petting and with praises. He was everything that was right, everything that was strong and manly. A little more patience, and then it would be spring, and the sunshine would make him well. She put the hair away from his forehead, and told him how fair in the face he was grown; and then she shoved his sleeve to his elbow, and told him that his arms were almost as plump as they ever were; and so he was comforted, cheered even, and they talked over the plans and prospects of years to come. At last he fell asleep with a bright smile of hope in his face, and Jenny stooped softly and kissed him, and, stealing away on tiptoe, hid herself from her good old mother and from the eyes of her children, and wept long and bitterly.

And the spring came, and Hobert crept out into the sunshine; but his cheek was pale, and his chest hollow, and there was more than the old listlessness upon him. As a tree that is dying will sometimes put forth sickly leaves and blossoms, and still be dying all the while, so it was with him. His hand was often on his breast, and his look often said, "This will be the death of me." The bees hummed in the flowers about his feet, the birds built their nests in the boughs above his head, and his children played about his knees; but his thoughts were otherwhere,--away beyond the dark river, away in that beautiful country where the inhabitants never say, "I am sick."

It was about midsummer that one Mrs. Brown, well known to Mrs. Walker's family, and to all the people of the neighborhood, as having suffered for many years with some strange malady which none of the doctors understood, sold the remnant of her property, having previously wasted nearly all she had upon physicians, and betook herself to the great Dr. Killmany. What her condition had actually been is not material to my story, nor is it necessary to say anything about the treatment she received at the hands of the great doctor. It is enough to say that it cost her her last dollar,--that she worked her slow way home as best she could, arriving there at last with shoes nearly off her feet and gown torn and faded, but with health considerably improved. That she had sold her last cow, and her feather-bed, and her teakettle, and her sheep-shears, and her grandfather's musket, all added wonderfully to the great doctor's reputation.

"You can't go to him if you don't go full-handed," said one to another; and he that heard it, and he that said it, laughed as though it were a good joke.

Some said he could see right through a man: there was no need of words with him! And others, that he could take the brains out of the skull, or the bones out of the ankles, and leave the patient all the better for it. In short, there was nothing too extravagant to be said of him; and as for Mrs. Brown, the person who had seen her became semi-distinguished. She was invited all over the neighborhood, and her conversation was the most delightful of entertainments. Amongst the rest, she visited Mr. Walker; and through her instrumentality, his strong desire to see the great Dr. Killmany was shaped into purpose.

Two of the cows were sold, most of the farming implements, and such articles of household furniture as could be spared; and with all this the money realized was but a hundred and fifty dollars. Then Jenny proposed to sell her side-saddle; and when that was gone, she said Fleety might as well go with it. "If you only come home well, Hobert," she said, "we will soon be able to buy her back again; and if you don't--but you will!"

So Fleetfoot went with the rest; and when for the last time she was led up before the door, and ate grass from the lap of little Jenny, and put her neck down to the caressing hands of young Hobert, it was a sore trial to them all. She seemed half conscious herself, indeed, and exhibited none of her accustomed playfulness with the children, but stood in a drooping attitude, with her eye intent upon her master; and when they would have taken her away, she hung back, and, stretching her neck till it reached his knees, licked his hands with a tenderness that was pitiful to see.

"Don't, Hobert, don't take on about it," Jenny said, putting back the heart that was in her mouth; "we will have her back again, you know!"--and she gave Fleetfoot a little box on the ear that was half approval and half reproach, and so led Hobert back into the house.

And that day was the saddest they had yet seen. And that night, when the sick man was asleep, the two women talked together and cried together, and in the end got such comfort as women get out of great sacrifices and bitter tears.

They counted their little hoard. They had gathered three hundred dollars now, and there required to be yet as much more; and then they made plans as to what yet remained to be done. "We must mortgage the land," Jenny said, "that is all,--don't mind, mother. I don't mind anything, so that we only have Hobert well again." And then they talked of what they would do another year when they should be all together once more, and all well. "Think what Dr. Killmany has done for Mrs. Brown!" they said.

And now came busy days; and in the earnestness of the preparation the sorrow of the coming parting was in some sort dissipated. Hobert's wearing-apparel was all brought out, and turned and overturned, and the most and the best made of everything. The wedding coat and the wedding shirt were almost as good as ever, Jenny said; and when the one had been brushed and pressed, and the other done up, she held them up before them all, and commented upon them with pride and admiration. The fashions had changed a little, to be sure, but what of that? The new fashions were not so nice as the old ones, to her thinking. Hobert would look smart in the old garments, at any rate, and perhaps nobody would notice. She was only desirous that he should make a good impression on the Doctor. And all that could be done to that end was done, many friends contributing, by way of little presents, to the comfort and respectability of the invalid. "Here is a leather pouch," said one, "that I bought of a pedler the other day. I don't want it; but as you are going to travel, may be you can make use of it, Walker; take it, any how."

"I have got a new pair of saddle-bags," said the circuit-rider, "but I believe I like the old ones best. So, Brother Walker, you will oblige me by taking these off my hands. I find extra things more trouble to take care of than they are worth."

It was not proposed that Hobert should travel with a trunk, so the saddle-bags were just what was required.

"Here is a pair of shoes," said another. "Try them on, Walker, and see if you can wear them: they are too small for my clumsy feet!" They had been made by the village shoemaker to Mr. Walker's measure. Of course they fitted him, and of course he had them.

"I'll bet you a new hat," said another, "that I come to see you ag'in, day after to-morrer, fur off as I live."

The day after the morrow he did not come: he was "onaccountably hendered," he said; but when he did come he brought the new hat. He thought he would be as good as his word in one thing if not in another, and redeem his bet at any rate.

"I'll bring my team: I want to go to town anyhow; and we'll all see you off together!" This was the offer of the farmer whose land adjoined Mr. Walker's; and the day of departure was fixed, and the morning of the day saw everything in readiness.

"Hobert looks a'most like a storekeeper or a schoolmaster, don't he, mother?" Jenny said, looking upon him proudly, when he was arrayed in the new hat and the wedding coat.

"Why, you are as spry as a boy!" exclaimed the farmer who was to drive them to town, seeing that Hobert managed to climb into the wagon without assistance. "I don't believe there is any need of Dr. Killmany, after all!" And the neighbors, as one after another they leaned over the sideboard of the wagon, and shook hands with Mr. Walker, made some cheerful and light-hearted remark, calculated to convey the impression that the leave-taking was a mere matter of form, and only for a day.

As Jenny looked back at the homestead, and thought of the possibilities, the tears would come; but the owner of the team, determined to carry it bravely through, immediately gathered up the slack reins, and, with a lively crack of his whip, started the horses upon a brisk trot.

"Don't spare the money," Jenny entreated, as she put the pocket-book in Hobert's hand; but she thought in her heart that Dr. Killmany would be touched when he saw her husband, and knew how far he had travelled to see him, and what sacrifices he had made to do so. "He must be good, if he is so great as they say," she argued; "and perhaps Hobert may even bring home enough to buy back Fleety." This was a wild dream. And the last parting words were said, the last promises exacted and given; the silent tears and the lingering looks all were past, and the farmer's wagon, with an empty chair by the side of Jenny's, rattled home again.

It was perhaps a month after this that a pale, sickly-looking man, with a pair of saddle-bags over his arm, went ashore from the steamboat Arrow of Light, just landed at New Orleans, and made his slow way along the wharf, crowded with barrels, boxes, and cotton-bales, and thence to the open streets. The sun was oppressively hot, and the new fur hat became almost intolerable, so that the sick man stopped more than once in the shade of some friendly tree, and, placing the saddle-bags on the ground, wiped the sweat from his forehead, and looked wistfully at the strange faces that passed him by.

"Can you tell me, my friend," he said at last, addressing a slave-woman who was passing by with a great bundle on her head,--"Can you tell me where to find Doctor Killmany, who lives somewhere here?"

The woman put her bundle on the ground, and, resting her hands on her hips, looked pitifully upon the stranger. "No, masser, cante say, not for sure," she answered. "I knows dar's sich a doctor somewhars 'bout, but just whars I cante say, an' he's a poor doctor fur the likes o' you,--don't have noffen to do with him, nohow."

"A poor doctor!" exclaimed the stranger. "Why, I understood he was the greatest doctor in the world; and I've come all the way from the Wabash country to see him."

"Warbash! whar's dat? Norf, reckon; well you jes be gwine back Norf de fus boat, an dat's de bery bes' advice dis yere nigger can guv."

"But what do you know about Dr. Killmany."

"I knows dis yere, masser: he mos'ly sends dem ar' as ar' doctored by him to dar homes in a box!"

Mr. Walker shuddered. "I don't want your advice," he said directly; "I only want to know where Dr. Killmany lives."

"Cante say, masser, not percisely, as to dat ar'; kind o' seems to me he's done gone from hur, clar an' all; but jes over thar's a mighty good doctor; you can see his name afore the door if you'll step this yere way a bit. He doctors all de pour, an' dem dat ar' halt, and dem dat ar' struck with paralasy, jes for de love ob de ark and de covenant; an' he's jes de purtiest man to look at dat you ever sot eyes onto. Go in dar whar ye sees de white bline at de winder an' ax for Dr. Shepard, an' when you's once seen him, I reckon you won't want to find de udder man; but if you does, why he can pint de way. An' de Lord bless you and hab mercy on your soul."

The sick man felt a good deal discouraged by what the old slave had said, and her last words impressed him with feelings of especial discomfort. He knew not which way to turn; and, in fact, found himself growing dizzy and blind, and was only able, with great effort, to stand at all. He must ask his way somewhere, however, and it might as well be there as another place.

Dr. Shepard, who happened to be in his office, answered the inquiry promptly. Dr. Killmany was in quite another part of the city. "You don't look able to walk there, my good friend," he said; "but if you will sit here and wait for an hour, I shall be driving that way, and will take you with pleasure."

Mr. Walker gratefully accepted the proffered chair, as indeed he was almost obliged to do; for within a few minutes the partial blindness had become total darkness, and the whole world seemed, as it were, slipping away from him.