Chapter VII (3)

Whilst I kanahed[22] and smoked, Karlee, humbly "squatting" at my back, allowed me to draw from him all that I have here related of his house and family, and much more that I have not space to relate. Of course, he could not have shared the repast with me,--all the holy water of Ganges could never have washed out so deep a defilement,--but he accompanied my hookah with his hubble-bubble. The reader has observed that, although the viands were choice enough, they were laid on the cheapest pottery, and even on leaves, that the plate from which I ate was of unglazed earthenware, and that the coffee was served in a gourd. This was in order that they might be at once destroyed. By no special dispensation could those vessels ever again be purified for the use of a respectable Hindoo; even a pariah would have felt insulted if he had been asked to eat from them; and if the knives and forks and spoons had not been my own, they must have shared the fate of the platters. But this prejudice must be taken in a Pickwickian sense,--it covered no objection simply personal to the Sahib. In some castes it is forbidden to eat from any plate twice, even in the strictest privacy of the family; and many natives, however wealthy, scrupulously insist upon leaves. All respectable Hindoos lift their food with their fingers, using neither knife, fork, nor spoon; and for this purpose they employ the right hand only, the left being reserved for baser purposes. In drinking water, many of them will not allow the _lotah_ to touch the lips; but, throwing the head back, and holding the vessel at arm's length on high, with an odd expertness they let the water run into their mouths. The sect of Ramanujas obstinately refuse to sit down to a meal while any one is standing by or looking on; nor will they chew betel in company with a man of low caste. Ward has written, "If a European of the highest rank touch the food of a Hindoo of the lowest caste, the latter will instantly throw it away, although he may not have another morsel to allay the pangs of hunger";--but this is true only of certain very strait sects. There are numerous sects that admit proselytes from every caste; but at the same time they will not partake of food, except with those of their own religious party. "Here," says Kerr, "the spirit of sect has supplanted even the spirit of caste,"--as at the temple of Juggernath in Orissa, where the pilgrims of all castes take their _khana_ in common.

At our quarters in Cossitollah even this progressive Karlee will not taste of the food which has been served at our mess-table, though it be returned to the kitchen untouched. But at least he is consistent; for neither will he take medicine from the hand of a Sahib, however ill he may be; nor have I ever known him to decline or postpone the performance of this or that duty because it was Sunday,--as many knavish bhearers do when they have set their hearts on a cock-fight. To compound for sins one is inclined to, by damning those one has no mind to, it is not indispensable that one should be a Christian.

The amiable Mr. James Kerr, of the Hindoo College of Calcutta, has contrived an ingenious and plausible apology for the constitutional (or geographical) laziness of Bengalese servants. He says: "A love of repose may be considered one of the most striking features in the character of the people of India. The Hindoos may be said to have deified this state. Their favorite notion of a Supreme Being is that of one who reposes in himself, in a dream of absolute quiescence. This idea is, doubtless, in the first instance, a reflection of their own character; but, in whatever way it originated, it tends to sanctify in their eyes a state of repose. When removed from this world of care, their highest hope is to become a part of the great Quiescent. It will naturally appear to them the best preparation for the repose of a future life to cultivate repose in this." Therefore, if your kitmudgar, nodding behind your chair, permits his astonished fly-flapper to become a part of the great Quiescent, or if your punka-wallah, having subsided into a comatose beatitude, suddenly invites his compliant machine to repose in himself, in a dream of absolute stagnation, with the thermometer at 120° outside the refrigerator, you must not say, "Damn that boy,--he's asleep again!"--but patiently survey and intelligently admire the spiritual processes by which an exalted sentient force prepares itself for the repose of a future life. But our reckless Karlee took no thought for the everlasting rest into which his soul should enter "when removed from this world of care," according to the ingenious psychological system of the amiable Kerr Sahib; for when he had anything to do, he kept on doing it until it was done, and when he caught the punka-wallah reposing in a dream of absolute quiescence, he bumped his head against the wall, and called him a _sooa_, and a _banchut_, and a _junglee-wallah_.[23]

Though possessed of a lively imagination and all his race's sympathy with what is vast, though he saw nothing extravagant in the Hindoo chronology, nor aught that was monstrous in Hindoo mythology, Karlee yet served to illustrate the arguments of those who contend that Hindoos need not necessarily be all boasters, servile liars, and flatterers. He was not forever saying, "Master very wise man; master all time do good; master all time ispeak right." He never told me that my words were pearls and diamonds that I dropped munificently from my mouth. He never called me "your highness," or said I was his father and mother, and the lord of the world; and if I said at noonday, "It is night," he did not exclaim, "Behold the moon and stars!" He never tried to prove to me that the earth revolved on its axis once in twenty-four hours by my favor. "What! dost thou think him a Christian that he would go about to deceive thee?" No, he was as proudly truthful as a Rajpoot, as frank and manly as a Goorkah, and as honest as an up-country Durwan.

Good by, my best of bhearers. To the new baby a good name, and to the faithful ayah enviable enlargement of liver! _Khodá rukho ki beebi-ka kulle-jee bhee itui burri hoga!_[24]--I owe thee for a day of hospitable edifications; and when thou comest to my country, thou shalt find _thy_ Heathen at Home.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] A long, round, narrow bolster, stuffed with very light materials (often with paper), and not for the head, but embraced in the arms, so as to help the sleeper to a cool and comfortable posture.

[4] Body-servants.

[5] A salutation of particular respect and well-wishing.

[6] Waistband.

[7] Destiny, fortune.

[8] A table-servant.

[9] A spiritual teacher.

[10] Writer, clerk.

[11] Banker, merchant in foreign trade.

[12] The fourth caste--originally laborers.

[13] A native gentleman, of wealth, education, and influence.

[14] Hostler and footman.

[15] Washerman.

[16] Sweeper.

[17] _Lit._ Fan-fellow.

[18] "Good! Bring the Europe-water,"--Bengali for soda-water.

[19] Showmen and puppet-dancers.

[20] Little shells, used as coins by the poorest people to make the smallest change.

[21] Text.

[22] Dined.

[23] Pig, sot, and jungle-animal.

[24] "God grant the lady a substantial liver!"--"the happiness and honors which should follow upon the birth of a male child being figuratively comprehended in that liberality of the liver whence comes the good digestion for which alone life is worth the living."--_Child-Life by the Ganges_.

* * * * *

A FRIEND.

A friend!--It seems a simple boon to crave,--
An easy thing to have.
Yet our world differs somewhat from the days
Of the romancer's lays.
A friend? Why, _all_ are friends in Christian lands.
We smile and clasp the hands
With merry fellows o'er cigars and wine.
We breakfast, walk, and dine
With social men and women. Yes, we are friends;--
And there the music ends!
No close heart-heats,--a cool sweet ice-cream feast,--
Mild thaws, to say the least;--
The faint, slant smile of winter afternoons;--
The inconstant moods of moons,
Sometimes too late, sometimes too early rising,--
But for a night sufficing,
Showing a half-face, clouded, shy, and null,--
Once in a month at full,--
Lending to-night what from the sun they borrow,
Quenched in his light to-morrow.
If thou'rt my friend, show me the life that sleeps
Down in thy spirit's deeps.
Give all thy heart, the thought within thy thought.
Nay, I've already caught
Its meaning in thine eyes, thy tones. What need
Of words? Flowers keep their seed.
I love thee ere thou tellest me "I love."
We both are raised above
The ball-room puppets with their varnished faces,
Whispering dead commonplaces,
Doing their best to dress their lifeless thought
In tinselled phrase worth naught;
Or at the best, throwing a passing spark
Like fire-flies in the dark;--
Not the continuous lamp-light of the soul,
Which, though the seasons roll
Without on tides of ever-varying winds,
The watcher never finds
Flickering in draughts, or dim for lack of oil.
There is a clime, a soil,
Where loves spring up twin-stemmed from mere chance seed
Dropped by a word, a deed.
As travellers toiling through the Alpine snow
See Italy below;--
Down glacier slopes and craggy cliffs and pines
Descend upon the vines,
And meet the welcoming South who half-way up
Lifts her o'erbrimming cup,--

So, blest is he, from peaks of human ice
Lit on this Paradise;--
Who 'mid the jar of tongues hears music sweet;--
Who in some foreign street
Thronged with cold eyes catches a hand, a glance,
That deifies his chance,
That turns the dreary city to a home,
The blank hotel to a dome
Of splendor, while the unsympathizing crowd
Seems with his light endowed.
Many there be who call themselves our friends.
But ah! if Heaven sends
One, only one, the fellow to our soul,
To make our half a whole,
Rich beyond price are we. The millionnaire
Without such boon is bare,
Bare to the skin,--a gilded tavern-sign
Creaking with fitful whine
Beneath chill winds, with none to look at him
Save as a label grim
To the good cheer and company within
His comfortable inn.

* * * * *

THE SINGING-SCHOOL ROMANCE.

Father sits at the head of our pew. In old Indian times they say that the male head of the family always took that place, on account of the possible _whoops_ of the savages, who sometimes came down on a congregation like wolves on the fold. It was necessary that the men should be ready to rise at once to defend their families. Whatever the old reason was, the new is sufficient. Men must sit near the pew doors now on account of the _hoops_ of the ladies. The cause is different, the effect is the same.

Father, then, sits at the head of the pew; mother next; Aunt Clara next; next I, and then Jerusha. That has been the arrangement ever since I can remember. Any change in our places would be as fatal to our devotions as the dislodgment of Baron Rothschild from his particular pillar was once to the business of the London Stock Exchange. He could not negotiate if not at his post. We could not worship if not in our precise places. I think, by the fussing and fidgeting which taking seats in the church always causes, that everybody has the same feeling.

It was Sunday afternoon. The good minister, Parson Oliver, had finished his sermon. The text was--well, I can't pretend to remember. Aunt Clara's behavior in meeting, and what she said to us that afternoon, have put the text, sermon, and all out of my head forever. That is no matter; or rather, it is all the better; for when the same sermon comes again, in its triennial round, I shall not recognize an old acquaintance.

The sermon finished, we took up our hymn-books, of course. But the minister gave out no hymn. He sat down with a patient look at the choir, as much as to say, "Now, do your worst!" Then we understood that we were to be treated to an extra performance, not in our books. There had been a renewal of interest in the choir, and there was a new singing-master. We were to have the results of the late practisings and the first fruits of the new school. The piece they sung was that in which occur the lines,--

"I'd soar and touch the heavenly strings,
And vie with Gabriel, while he sings,
In notes almost divine!"

We always, when we rise during the singing, face round to the choir. I don't know why. Perhaps it is to complete our view of the congregation, since during the rest of the time we look the other way, and, unless we faced about, should see only half. I like to peep at father, to discover whether he appreciates the performance. To-day he just turned his head away. Mother sat down. Aunt Clara looked straight ahead, and her old-fashioned bonnet hid her face; but I could discover that something more than usual was working under her cap. I looked at every one of the singers, and then at the players, from the big bass-viol down to the tenor, and not a bit of reason could I perceive for the twitter the heads of our pew had certainly got themselves into. There's a pattern old lady, Prudence Clark, presidentess of the Dorcas Society,--a spinster, just Aunt Clara's age,--a woman who knows everything, and more too. She sits in the pew before us. She turned her head and gave a sly peep at Aunt Clara. They both laughed in meeting. I know they did, and they can't deny it. I peeped round at the minister, and, if he did not laugh too, his face was scarlet, and he was taken with a wonderful fit of coughing. Such strange proceedings in meeting I never had seen. The minister, the deacon (father is a deacon), and the oldest members were setting us young folks a very bad example. But we tolerate anything in our good old parson. He was a youth when our old folks were young, and as to us young folks, he remembers us longer than we do ourselves.

* * * * *

We were all home, and tea was over,--the early tea with substantials, as is the custom in the primitive districts of New England on Sunday afternoon. The double accumulation of dishes was disposed of; for at noon we take a cold collation, doughnuts and cheese, and bread and butter, and we never descend to servile employments till after tea. Then many hands make light work. I suppose light work does not break the Sabbath, especially as it is done in our Sunday best, with sleeves tucked up, and an extra apron.

The laughing in church was the point upon which, as yet, we had obtained no satisfaction. Jerusha and I, in an uncertain hope that we should find out something in due time, were discussing the music. The particular point in debate was, why village choirs _will_ astonish the people with pieces of music in which nobody can join them. We did not settle it, nor has anybody ever solved the riddle that I know of. We don't even know whether it comes under the ontological or psychological departments. (There, now! Haven't I brought in the famous words that our new schoolmaster astonished us with at the teachers' meeting? He need not think that Webster Unabridged is his particular field, in which nobody else may hunt.)

We were, as I said, discussing the music. Mother was flitting round, giving the final dust-off and brush-about after our early tea. Aunt Clara was sitting quietly at the window, pretending to read Baxter's "Saint's Rest." Jerusha and I tried to imitate the tune, and we did it, as well as we could, and I am sure we are not bad singers. Mother slipped out of the room just as we came to

"And vie with Gabriel, while he sings."

She ran as if something had stung her, and she was making for the hartshorn or some fresh brook-mud. Aunt Clara's face laughed all over, and I said:

"Come, now, Aunt Clara, you are really irreverent. You began laughing in meeting, and you are keeping it up over that good book."

"Downright wicked," said Jerusha.

Now I am a Normal graduate, and Jerusha is not yet "finished." That will account for the greater elegance of my expressions. Aunt Clara paid no heed to either of us, but laughed on. The most provoking thing in the world is a laugh that you don't understand. Here was the whole Dorcas Society laughing through its presidentess, and Aunt Clara joining in the laugh in meeting, and aggravating the offence by stereotyping the smirk in her face. In came mother again, evidently afraid to stay out, and not liking for some reason to stay in. Again we tried the tune, and had just got to

"And vie with Gabriel, while he sings."

Up jumped mother again, stopping in the door, and holding up a warning finger to Aunt Clara. That gesture spurred my curiosity to the utmost point. As to my beloved parent's running in and out, _that_ I should not have heeded. She is like Martha, careful of many things. She is unlike Martha, for she wants no assistance; but when the rest of us are disposed to be quiet, she _will_ keep flitting here and there, and is vexed if we follow. If father is talking, and has just reached the point of his story, off she goes, as if the common topic were nothing to her. Father says she is a perturbed spirit. But then he is always saying queer things, which poor mother cannot understand. Aunt Clara seems to know him a great deal better. I wonder he had not taken to wife a woman like Aunt Clara. He would have taken _her_, I suppose, if she were not his own sister.

I besought mother, as she fled, to tell me what ailed aunty. "Don't ask _me_," she answered. "The dear only knows. As for me, I have given up thinking, let alone asking, what either your aunt or your father would be at." And away she went, perturbed-spirit fashion, and Aunt Clara laughed louder than ever. Indeed, before she had only chuckled and silently shaken her sides; now she broke out into a scream.

"Well, I never!" she said. "That flounce of your mother's out of the room was certainly as much like old times as if the thing had happened yesterday."

"What had happened yesterday?" asked Jerusha and I, both in a breath.

"O, I _shall_ die of laughing," said Aunt Clara.

"We shall die of impatience," said I, "if you don't tell us what you mean."

"No you won't. Nobody, especially no woman, ever yet died of unsatisfied curiosity. It rather keeps folks alive."

We very well knew that nothing would be made of Aunt Clara by teasing her. So Jerusha turned over the great family Bible, her custom always of a Sunday afternoon. Over her shoulder I happened to see that the good book was open at the first chapter of I Chronicles, "Adam, Sheth, Enosh, Kenan, Mahalaleel, Jared." Though her lips moved diligently, I am afraid she did not make much of it. As for me, I turned to the window, and studied the landscape. Father, his custom of a Sunday afternoon, walked down into the meadow, and the cattle came affectionately up to him. It was the salt in his broad pocket that they were after. "I might salt them of a Monday," he says, "but they kind of look for it, and it isn't kind to disappoint the creetur's on a Sabba'-day. And the merciful man is merciful to his beasts."

The flies droned and buzzed that summer afternoon. Jerusha nodded over the big Bible. Aunt Clara tried to look serious over the book she held. But the latent laugh was coursing among the dimples in her face, like a spark among tinder. I stole up behind, and, leaning over her shoulder, kissed her.

"O, yes," said aunty. "Fine words butter no parsnips, and fine kisses are no better."

Jerusha's head made an awful plunge, then a reactionary lift back, and then she opened her eyes and her mouth with such a yawn!

"Why, what a mouth!" I cried. "Master Minim would rejoice if you would thus open out in singing-school,

'And vie with Gabriel, while he sings.'"

Off went Aunt Clara in the laugh again, and this time till the tears came. We saw now that there was something in that line which provoked her mirth; but what Gabriel could have to do with her strange behavior we could not imagine, and were wisely silent.

"Girls," she said, as soon as she could speak for laughing, "I _will_ tell you."

We knew she would, provided we were not too anxious to hear. So Jerusha turned over her leaf to the second chapter of I Chronicles, "Reuben, Simeon, Levi." I pretended to be more than ever interested out of doors. Aunt Clara took off her specs, closed her book, smoothed her apron, and began:--

"When I was a girl--"

Now that we knew the story was coming, we pretended to no more indifference. Once get aunty started, and, like a horse balky at the jump, she was good for the journey. So Jerusha shut the Bible, and we both sat down at her feet.

"Not too close, girls. It's dreadful warm."

Her face worked and her sides heaved with her provoking laugh, and we were half afraid of a disappointment. But there was no danger. She was by this time quite as ready to tell as we to hear.

"When I was a girl I went to singing-school. Dear me! how many of the scholars are dead and gone! There was my brother William, poor fellow! he died away off in Calcutty. And Sarah Morgan, she never would own to it that she liked him. But actions speak plainer than words. She never held up her head after. And she's dead now, too."

Aunt Clara's face--she _is_ a dear old aunty--had now lost every trace of mirth. The golden sunset touched her fine head, and made her look so sweetly beautiful that I wondered why no man had had the good taste, long ago, to relieve her of her maiden name. Perhaps she will tell us some day, and if she does, perhaps we will tell you. She sat two or three minutes, thinking and looking, as if she waited to see the loved and lost. There was a rustle, and she started from her revery. It was only mother, flitting into the room with one of her uneasy glances. But we were all so still and serious and Sabbath-like, that a look of relief came over her countenance. She vanished again, and through the window I saw her join her husband in the meadow.

"There, now, before they come in," said Aunt Clara. "When I was a girl, I went to singing-school. Dear me! But we will not think of the dead any more. There was one of the girls,--she thought she had a very good voice. But she never sings now."

"Why?" asked Jerusha.

"The dear knows. I suppose because she is married. Married people never sing, I believe. So, girls, if you would keep your voices, you must stay single. Well, there was one of the boys, he thought _he_ had a good voice. And he never sings now either."

"Why?" said I.

"O, he's married too. So don't you get cheated into thinking you have mated a robin. He will turn out a crow, like as any way. I suppose they both did have good voices, and, for all that I know, they have still. They were the singing-master's especial wonders and his pattern pieces. He never was tired of praising them up to the skies, to mortify the rest of us into good behavior. She was the wonder for the girls' side and he for the boys',--two copies that we were to sing up to. I think they were a little proud of the distinction. They were kind of brought together by it, so that they did not see any harm at all in singing out of the same note-book."

"I suppose not," said Jerusha.

"Well, there was one girl in the school,--I dare say she _was_ a giggling, mischief-making thing, for everybody said so--"

"Is she living now?" I asked.

"Yes, indeed."

"Does _she_ sing now?" asked Jerusha.

"Well,--not much."

"Then," said I, "she must be married, too."

"No, she is not," said Aunt Clara, with a plaintive and very positive emphasis on the negative particle,--"no, she is not."

"Then why does she not sing?" I asked.

"Nobody will look over the same note-book with her," said Jerusha.

"O, you girls may have your own fun now," said Aunt Clara. "You will see the world with a sadder face by and by."

"Not if we look at it through your spectacles, aunty," I answered.

"Dear me; well, the Lord _has_ been kind, to me," said Aunt Clara, "if I am a spinster still. But we must make haste. The old folks are coming back."

"Old folks!" I thought, and Aunt Clara is older than either of them. Father stopped and gave an ugly weed a whack with his cane. Then he stooped and rooted it up, Sabbath-day though it was. I presume he considered it an ox in a pit, for the moment.

Aunt Clara continued:--"The same tune you were at this afternoon used to be a great favorite in our school. It's as old as the hills. I wonder if Israel did not let out his voice in it! And Sally, she wouldn't be behind _him_, I warrant you."

Jerusha and I exchanged glances.

"It happened, one evening,--and that's what I was laughing at this afternoon. You see, the singing-master, if the music was not going to suit him, would pull the class straight up in the middle of it, and make them begin again. The giggling girl that I was speaking of, she was always fuller of her own nonsense than of learning. This particular evening she was tempted of the Evil One to alter the words to her own purposes, just for the confusion of those close to her; and a dreadful mess she would get them into. It was wrong, very wrong indeed," Aunt Clara added, with a face that was meant to be serious, while her voice laughed, in spite of her.

"On this evening, they were singing the very tune, as I told you. Something went wrong. The singing-master stopped his viol, and called out to the class to stop singing. But the heedless girl had got into mischief, and could not stop with the rest, or she did not hear, or she did not wish to. So on she went, all alone, right out, at the top of her voice:--

'And vie with _Israel_, while he sings,
In notes almost divine!'

"And there she broke down, and sat down, and, graceless hussy as she was, laughed as if she was mad. The truth was, that 'vying with Israel' was a byword with us. We were always teasing Sally about her vying with Israel, as she certainly did, while they sung out of the same book, and thought a deal more of each other than they did of the music. Everybody took the joke, and such a time as there was! Prudence Clark, who turned round and looked at me in meeting to-day, she laughed the most spitefully of anybody, for she had a great notion of your fath--I mean of Israel. As to Israel and Sarah, if ever you did see two persons who did not know whether to stand still or to run, to cry or to laugh, they were the couple. The master, he tried to read us a solemn lecture; but he was so full of suppressed fun that he hugged his viol under his arm till one of the strings snapped. That gave the pitch, and we had a laughing chorus. All joined in, except Israel and Sarah. She pouted, and I do believe he grit his teeth." Here Aunt Clara gave herself up to the comic reminiscence, till her eyes filled again.

"Well, and what came of it all?" asked Jerusha.

"Why, it broke up the school for that season, and made town-talk for nine days. Parson Oliver,--he was a young man then,--he went for to give the mischievous girl a good talking to. He needn't have tried that; for he was too young to scold a young girl, full of mischief, and, though I say it that shouldn't say it, rather pretty."

"Why shouldn't _you_ say she was pretty?" asked Jerusha.

"O, you hush! Well, the girl bent her head down, and a few stray tears came, for it _was_ wicked, and she knew it. But before the water got head enough to fall from her eyes, she kind of thought that the young minister's voice was getting shaky, either with mirth or with sadness. To find out which, she slyly looked up, and both she and the minister laughed long and loud. So there was an end of the jobation that he meant to give her."

"How did you know all this?" said Jerusha. "Were you there?"

"I certainly was not far off."

"But Israel and Sarah," said I, now seeing through the whole affair, and understanding perfectly why father looked aside, and mother sat down, and Aunt Clara and Prudence Clark of the Dorcas Society exchanged glances, and the minister himself would have laughed in the pulpit, if he had not turned it off with a cough,--"but Israel and Sarah, how did they fare?"

"Why, Israel, he said that Sarah was just a pretty nobody, and Prudence Clark was a great deal more sensible,--for his part he never cared anything about Sarah. And Sarah, she declared that Israel was a hawbuck of a fellow, that no girl would think of when he was out of sight."

"It was too bad!" said Jerusha.

"_Too_ bad!" I echoed.

"_Dreadful suz_!" said aunty, mocking our tone. "Never you fear, if two young simpletons are once caught, that a joke is going to separate them! And whenever you hear two people pretending to hate one another, you may get your wedding present ready for them. The folks did tease them though, too bad, and so they had it, back and forth. Stories never lose anything by carrying, especially the compliments between two quarrelling lovers. So it went on for about a month, when Israel, on his way to see Prudence Clark, who was sitting in her best, waiting for him, stopped to tell Sarah that he _never_ said so and so. And Sarah said, _she_ never said so and so. And they went into the house to finish their talk, and Prudence Clark was left lamenting. _I_ know Israel came home very late that night."

"_You_ know?" said Jerusha.

"And father's name is Israel," said I.

"And mother's name is Sarah," said my sister.

"Hush, hush; here they come," said Aunt Clara. "But I don't believe they would ever have found out their own minds if it had not been for me."

"And you were the giggling girl," said I.

"She's no better now," said my mother, as she entered the room, and readily guessed what we had been hearing from aunty. Father walked up to Aunt Clara, and pinched her ears for her. What more he might have done I don't know, if Parson Oliver had not dropped in. We made quite a pleasant evening of it, and the old folks discussed the reminiscence in all its bearings. I like to hear old people talk. They come straight to the pith of a subject, especially if it is love and matrimony. And the more I hear them, the better I can realize the truth of the Old Virginia admonition,--

"Ole folks, ole folks, you better go to bed,
You only put the mischief in the young folks' head."

* * * * *

AUTUMN SONG.

In Spring the Poet is glad,
And in Summer the Poet is gay;
But in Autumn the Poet is sad,
And has something sad to say:

For the wind moans in the wood,
And the leaf drops from the tree;
And the cold rain falls on the graves of the good,
And the cold mist comes up from the sea:

And the Autumn songs of the Poet's soul
Are set to the passionate grief
Of winds that sough and bells that toll
The dirge of the falling leaf.

* * * * *

THE FALL OF AUSTRIA.

The great characteristic of aristocracies, according to their admirers, is prudence; and even democrats do not deny the soundness of the claim thus put forward in their behalf. They are cautious, and if they seldom accomplish anything brilliant, neither do they put everything to hazard. If they gain slowly, they keep long what they have. Did not Venice endure so long that, when she perished as a nation, within living memory, she was the oldest of great communities? And was she not the most perfect of all aristocratically governed nations? Was she not the admiration of those English republicans of the seventeenth century whose names are held in the highest honor wherever freedom is worshipped? Aristocracies have their faults, but they outlast every other kind of government, and therefore are objects of reverence to all who love order. The Roman Republic was aristocratical in its polity, and all that is great in Roman history is due to the ascendency of the Senate in the government; and when the Forum populace began to show its power, the decay of the commonwealth commenced, and did not cease till despotism was established,--the natural effect of the resistance of the many to the government of the few being the formation of the government of one. England's polity is, and for ages has been, aristocratical. Not even the passage of the Reform Bill materially lessened the power of the aristocracy; and the declaration of Earl Grey, the father of the measure, that it would be found the most aristocratical of measures,--as he was one of the most aristocratical of men,--does not seem so absurd now as it appeared four-and-thirty years since, when we note how difficult it now is to lower the franchise in Britain. The firmest government in Europe is that of England, in which property has greater influence than in that of any other nation. The conclusion drawn by aristocrats and their admirers is, that aristocracies are the most enduring of all the polities known to men, and that they are so because aristocrats are the most prudent and cautious of men. The governments they form and control wash and wear well, and bid defiance to what Bacon calls "the waves and weathers of time."

There is some truth in this. Aristocracies _are_ cautious and prudent, and indisposed to risk present advantage in the hope of future gain. Therefore aristocratical polities often attain to great age, and the nations that know them attain slowly to great and firmly-placed power. Rome and Venice and England are striking examples of these truths. Yet it is not the less true that aristocracies sometimes do behave with a rashness that cannot be paralleled from the histories of democracies and despotisms. It has been the fortune of this age to see two examples of this rashness, such as no other age ever witnessed or ever could have witnessed. The first of these was presented in the action, in 1860-61, of the American aristocracy. The second was that of the Austrian aristocracy, in 1866. The American aristocracy--the late slavocracy--was the most powerful body in the world; so powerful, that it was safe against everything but itself. It had been gradually built up, until it was as towering as its foundations were deep and broad. Not only was it unassailed, but there was no disposition in any influential quarter to assail it. The few persons who did attack it, from a distance, produced scarcely more effect adverse to its ascendency, than was produced by the labors of the first Christians against the Capitoline Jupiter in the days of the Julian Cæsars. Abolitionists were annoyed and insulted even in the course of that political campaign which ended in the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency; and not a few of the victors in that campaign were forward to declare, that between their party and the "friends of the slave" there was neither friendship nor sympathy. One of the most eminent of the Republicans of Massachusetts declared that he felt hurt at the thought that his party could be suspected of approving the conduct of Captain John Brown at Harper's Ferry. Down to the spring-time of 1860, it required, on the part of the American slaveholding interest, only a moderate display of that prudence which is said to be the chief virtue of an aristocracy, to secure all they possessed,--which was all the country had to give,--and to prepare the way for such gains as it might be found necessary to make, as the American nation should increase in strength. But this prudence the slaveholders would not display. They annoyed and insulted the people of the Free States. They broke up the Democratic party, which was well disposed to do their work. They pursued such a course as compelled the great majority of the American people to take up arms against them, and to abolish slavery by an act of war. The effect was the fall of a body of men who certainly were very powerful, and who were believed to be very wise in their generation. It was impossible to attack them as long as they were true to their own interests, and they could fall only through being attacked. They made war on the nation, and the nation was forced to defend herself, and destroyed them. It is the most wonderful case of suicide known to mankind.

The Austrian aristocracy behaved almost as unwisely as the American aristocracy. As the Republic of the United States is a union of States, which in reality was governed by the slaveholders down to 1861, so is the Austrian Empire a collection of countries, governed by a few great families, at the head of which stand the imperial family,--the House of Austria, or, as it is now generally called, the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine. That aristocracy might have prevented the occurrence of war last summer, by ceding Venetia to Italy; and that it did not make such cession early in June, when we know it was ready to make it early in July, but plunged into a contest which, according to the apologists for its terrible defeat, it was wholly unprepared to wage, speaks but poorly for its prudence, though that is claimed to be _the_ virtue of aristocracies. The Austrian aristocrats behaved as senselessly in 1866 as the Prussian aristocrats in 1806, but with less excuse than the latter had. By their action they caused their country's degradation. From the rank of a first-rate power that country has been compelled to descend, not so much through loss of territory and population as through loss of position. For centuries the house of Austria has been very powerful in Europe, though the Austrian empire can count but sixty years. Rudolph of Hapsburg, the first member of his line who rose to great eminence, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, founded the house of Austria. While holding the imperial throne, he obtained for his own family Austria, Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola; but it was not till several generations after his death, and in the fifteenth century, that the imperial dignity became virtually, though not in terms, hereditary in the Hapsburg line. For several centuries, down to the extinction of the office, there was no Emperor of Germany who was not of that family. Every effort to divert the office from that house ended in failure. The consequence was, that the house of Austria became the first of reigning families; and at one time it seemed about to grasp the sceptre of the world. When the Empire ceased to exist, the Austrian empire, though of later creation than the French empire of Napoleon I., had that appearance of antique grandeur which has so great an effect on men's minds. It was looked upon as ancient because the imperial family really was ancient, and could trace itself back through almost twelve hundred years, to the sixth century, though in places the tracing was of the most shadowy character. It profited from the greatness of the Hapsburgs in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries,--a greatness which is among the most extraordinary things recorded in history.

Should the history of royal marriages ever be written in a manner proportioned to its importance, a large part of the work would have to be given to the marriages made by various princes of the house of Austria; for those marriages had prodigious effect on the condition of the best portions of the human race, and in the sixteenth century it seemed that they were about to bring, not only most of Europe, but nearly all America, a large part of Asia, and not a little of Africa under the rule of one family, and that family by no means superior to that of Valois or the Plantagenets. The extraordinary luck of the house of Austria in turning marriage into a source of profit was early remarked; and in the latter part of the fifteenth century, long before the best of the Austrian matrimonial alliances were made, Matthias Corvinus, the greatest of Hungarian kings, wrote a Latin epigram on the subject, which was even more remarkable as a prediction than as a statement of fact; for it was as applicable to the marriage of Napoleon I. and Maria Louisa, and to that of Philip the Fair and Juana the Foolish, as it was to that of Maximilian and Mary.[25] It is from the Styrian line of the Austrian house that all princes of that house who have reigned for four centuries and upward are descended. Ernest, third son of that Leopold who was defeated and slain at the battle of Sempach by the Swiss, became master of the duchies of Styria, Carniola, and Carinthia. He was a pious prince, and made a pilgrimage to Palestine, after the superstitious fashion of his time. He was a quarrelsome prince, and kept himself in a state of perpetual hot water with his brother. He was an amorous and a chivalrous prince, and, having lost his first wife, he got him a second after a knightly fashion. Having heard much of the material and mental charms of the Princess Cymburga, a Polish lady who had the blood of the Yagellons in her veins, he went to Cracow in disguise, found that report had not exaggerated her merits, and, prudently making himself known, proposed for her hand, and got it. But Cymburga was not only very clever and very beautiful: she was a muscular Christian in crinoline,--for hoops were known in those days among the Poles, or might have been known to them,--and if they were, no doubt Cymburga, like American ladies of to-day, had the sense and taste to use them. She had such strength of fist that, when she had occasion to drive a nail into anything, she dispensed with a hammer; and she economized in nut-crackers, as some independent people do in the item of pocket-handkerchiefs, by using her fingers. One would think that Ernest would have hesitated to woo and wed a lady who was so capable of carrying matters with a high hand; but then he was a very strong man, and was surnamed "The Iron," so that he could venture where no other man would have thought of going. This strong-handed as well as strong-minded couple, who were both paired and matched, must be taken as the real founders of that house of Austria which has been so conspicuous in the history of Christendom for almost four centuries, though they and their descendants built on the broad and solid foundations established by Rudolph of Hapsburg and his earlier descendants. Some authorities say that Cymburga brought into the Hapsburg family that thick lip--"the Austrian lip"--so often mentioned in history; but others call it the Burgundian lip, though the marriage between Maximilian (Cymburga's grandson) and Mary of Burgundy (Charles the Bold's daughter) did not take place till 1477; and the ducal Burgundian family was only a branch of the French royal line of Valois. It was no addition to the beauty of the imperial family, no matter to whom that family was indebted for it. It is certain that it appeared in the Emperor Frederick III., son of Ernest and Cymburga, and father of that Emperor who, when an archduke, married the Burgundian duchess, if such Mary can be called; for Menzel, who must have seen portraits of him, and who knew his history well, speaks of him as "a slow, grave man, with a large, protruding under-lip."

This Frederick was a singular character. He had the longest reign--fifty-three years--of all the German Emperors, and it may be said that he founded the house of Hapsburg, considering it as an imperial line. Yet he is almost invariably spoken of contemptuously. Menzel says that no Emperor had reigned so long and done so little. Mr. Bryce declares that under him the Empire sank to its lowest point. Even Archdeacon Coxe, who held his memory in respect, and did his best to make out a good character for him, has to admit "that he was a prince of a languid and inactive character," and to make other damaging admissions that detract from the excellence of the elaborate portrait he has drawn of him. There was something fantastical in his favorite pursuits,--astrology, alchemy, antiquities, alphabet-making, and the like,--which the men of an iron age viewed with a contempt that probably had much to do with giving him that character which he has in history, contemporary opinion of a ruler generally being accepted, and enduring. "A species of anagram," says the English historian of his family, "consisting of the five vowels, he adopted as indicative of the future greatness of the house of Austria, imprinted it on all his books, carved it on all his buildings, and engraved it on all his plate. This riddle occupied the grave heads of his learned contemporaries, and gave rise to many ridiculous conjectures, till the _important_ secret was disclosed after his death by an interpretation written in his own hand, in which the vowels form the initials of a sentence in Latin and German, signifying, 'The house of Austria is to govern the whole world.'"[26] Notwithstanding the archidiaconal sneer, Frederick III.'s anagram came quite as near the truth as any uninspired prophecy that can be mentioned. In little more than sixty years after the Emperor's death, the house of Austria ruled over Germany, the Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, the Milanese, Hungary, Bohemia, the Spains, England and Ireland (in virtue of Philip II.'s marriage with Mary I., queen-regnant of England), the greater part of America, from the extreme north to the extreme south, portions of Northern Africa, the Philippines, and some minor possessions; and it really ruled, though indirectly, most of that part of Italy, outside of the territory of Venice, that had nominally an independent existence. Before Holland's independence was fully established, but after the connection with England had ceased, Portugal passed under the dominion of the Spanish branch of the house of Austria, with all her immense American, African, and Asiatic colonial possessions. For years, Philip II. was more powerful in France than any one of her sovereigns could pretend to be. Frederick's prediction, therefore, came to pass almost literally, and was less an exaggeration than St. Luke's assertion that a decree went forth from Cæsar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. As Augustus was lord of nearly all the world that a man like St. Luke could consider civilized and worth governing, so might an Austrian writer of the sixteenth century declare that the Hapsburgs ruled over wellnigh all the world that could be looked upon as belonging to the Christian commonwealth, including not a little that had been stolen from the heathen by Christians.