Chapter V (12)

But before settling the question whether the several races of men belong to one and the same species or not, and have or have not had the same origin, it is necessary to determine the characteristic or _differentia_ of man. Naturalists treat man as simply an animal standing at the head of the class or order mammalia, and are therefore obliged to seek his _differentia_ or characteristic in his physical structure; but if it be true, as some naturalists tell us, that the same type runs through the physical structure of all animals, unless insects, reptiles, and crustacea form an exception, it is difficult to find in man's physical structure his _differentia_. The schoolmen generally define man, a rational animal, _animal rationale_, and make the genus animal, and the _differentia_ reason. The characteristic of the species, that which constitutes it, is reason or the rational mind, and certainly science can prove nothing to the contrary. Some animals may have a degree of intelligence, but none of them have reason, free will, moral perceptions, or are capable of acting from considerations of right and wrong. We assume, then, that the _differentia_ of the species _homo_, or man, is reason, or the rational soul. If our naturalists had understood this, they might have spared the pains they have taken to assimilate man to the brute, and to prove that he is a monkey developed.

This point settled, the question of unity of the species is settled. There may be differences among individuals and races as to the degree of reason, but all have reason in some degree. Reason may be weaker in the African than in the European, whether owing to the lack of cultivation or to other accidental causes, but it is essentially the same in the one as in the other, and there is no difference except in degree; and even as to degree, it is not rare to find negroes that are, in point of reason, far superior to many white men. Negroes, supposed to stand lowest in the scale, have the same moral perception and the same capacity of distinguishing between right and wrong and of acting from free will, that white men have; and if there is any difference, it is simply a difference of degree, not a difference of kind or species.

But conceding the unity of the species, science has, at least, proved that the several races or varieties in the same species could not have all sprung from one and the same original pair. Where has science done this? It can do it only by way of induction from facts scientifically observed and analyzed. What facts has it observed and analyzed that warrant this conclusion against the Adamic origin of all men? There are, as we have just said, no anatomical, physiological, intellectual, or moral facts that warrant such conclusion, and no other facts are possible. Wherever men are found, they all have the essential characteristic of men as distinguished from the mere animal; they all have substantially the same physical structure; all have thought, speech, and reason, and, though some may be inferior to others, nothing proves that all may not have sprung from the same Adam and Eve. Do you say ethnology cannot trace all the kindreds and nations of men back to a common origin? That is nothing to the purpose; can it say they cannot have had a common origin? But men are found everywhere, and could they have reached from the plains of Shinar continents separated from Asia by a wide expanse of water, and been distributed over America, New Holland, and the remotest islands of the ocean, when they had no ships or were ignorant of navigation? {339} Do you know that they had, in what are to us antehistorical times, no ships and no knowledge of navigation, as we know they have had them both ever since the first dawn of history? No? Then you allege not your _science_ against the Christian dogma, but your _ignorance_, which we submit is not sufficient to override faith. You must prove that men could not have been distributed from a common centre as we now find them before you can assert that they could not have had a common origin. Besides, are you able to say what changes of land and water have taken place since men first appeared on the face of the earth? Many changes, geologists assure us, have taken place, and more than they know may have occurred, and have left men where they are now found, and where they may have gone without crossing large bodies of water. So long as any other hypothesis is possible, you cannot assert your own as certain.

But the difference of complexion, language, and usage which we note between the several races of men proves that they could not have sprung from one and the same pair. Do you know they could not? Know it? No; not absolutely, perhaps; but how can you prove they could and have? That is not the question. Christianity is in possession, and must be held to be rightfully in possession till real science shows the contrary. I may not be able to explain the origin of the differences noted in accordance with the assertion of the common origin of all men in a single primitive pair; but my ignorance can avail you no more than your own. My nescience is not your science. Your business is by science to disprove faith; if your science does not do that, it does nothing, and you are silenced. We do not pretend to be able to account for the differences of the several races, any more than we pretend to be able to account for the well-known fact that children born of the same parents have different facial angles, different sized brains, different shaped mouths and noses, different temperaments, different intellectual powers, and different moral tendencies. We may have conjectures on the subject, but conjectures are not science. If necessary to the argument, we might, perhaps, suggest a not improbable hypothesis for explaining the difference of complexion between the white and the colored races. The colored races, the yellow, the olive, the red, the copper-colored, and the black, are inferior to the Caucasian, have departed farther from the norma of the species, and approached nearer to the animal, and therefore, like animals, have become more or less subject to the action of the elements. External nature, acting for ages on a race, enfeebled by over-civilization and refinement, and therefore having in a great measure lost the moral and intellectual power of resisting the elemental action of nature, may, perhaps, sufficiently explain the differences we note in the complexion of the several races. If the Europeans and their American descendants were to lose all tradition of the Christian religion, as they are rapidly doing, and to take up with spiritism or some other degrading superstition, as they seem disposed to do, and to devote themselves solely to the luxuries and refinements of the material civilization of which they are now so proud, and boast so much, it is by no means improbable that in time they would become as dark, as deformed, as imbecile as the despised African or the native New Hollander. {340} We might give very plausible reasons for regarding the negro as the degraded remnant of a once over-civilized and corrupted race; and perhaps, if recovered, Christianized, civilized, and restored to communication with the great central current of human life, he may in time lose his negro hue and features, and become once more a white man, a Caucasian. But be this as it may, we rest, as is our right, on the fact that the unity of the human species and its Adamic origin are in possession, and it is for those who deny either point to make good their denial.

But the Scriptures say mankind were originally of one speech, and we find that every species of animals has its peculiar song or cry, which is the same in every individual of the same species; yet this is not the case with the different kindred and nations of men; they speak different tongues, which the philologist is utterly unable to refer to a common original. Therefore there cannot be in men unity of species, and the assertion of the Scriptures of all being of one speech is untrue. If the song of the same species of birds or the cry of the same species of animals is the same in all the individuals of that species, it still requires no very nice ear to distinguish the song or the cry of one individual from that of another; and therefore the analogy relied on, even if admissible, which it is not, would not sustain the conclusion. Conceding, if you insist on it, that unity of species demands unity of speech, the facts adduced warrant no conclusion against the Scriptural assertion; for the language of all men is even now one and the same, and all really have one and the same speech. Take the elements of language as the sensible sign by which men communicate with one another, and there is even now, at least as far as known or conceivable, only one language. The essential elements of all dialects are the same. You have in all the subject, the predicate, and the copula, or the noun, adjective, and verb, to which all the other parts of speech are reducible. Hence the philologist speaks of universal grammar, and constructs a grammar applicable alike to all dialects. Some philologists also contend that the signs adopted by all dialects are radically the same, and that the differences encountered are only accidental. This has been actually proved in the case of what are called the Aryan or Indo-European dialects. That the Sanskrit, the Pehlvi or old Persic, the Keltic, the Teutonic, the Slavonic, the Greek, and the Latin, from which are derived the modern dialects of Europe, as Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, Dutch, German, Scanian, Turk, Polish, Russian, Welsh, Gaelic, and Irish, all except the Basque and Lettish or Finnish, have had a common origin, no philologist doubts. That the group of dialects called Semitic, including the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Coptic, and Ethiopic, have had an origin identical with that of the Aryan group is, we believe, now hardly denied. All that can be said is, that philologists have not proved it, nor the same fact with regard to the so-called Turanian group, as the Chinese, the Turkish, the Basque, the Lettish or Finnish, the Tataric or Mongolian, etc., the dialects of the aboriginal tribes or nations of America and of Africa. But what conclusion is to be drawn from the fact that philology, a science confessedly in its infancy, and hardly a science at all, has not as yet established an identity of origin with these for the most part barbarous dialects? From the fact that philology has not ascertained it, we cannot conclude that the identity does not exist, or even that philology may not one day discover and establish it.

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Philology may have also proceeded on false assumptions, which have retarded its progress and led it to false conclusions. It has proceeded on the assumption that the savage is the primitive man, and that his agglutinated dialect represents a primitive state of language instead of a degenerate state. A broader view of history and a juster induction from its facts would, perhaps, upset this assumption. The savage is the degenerate, not the primeval man; man in his second childhood, not in his first; and hence the reason why he has no growth, no inherent progressive power, and why, as Niebuhr asserts, there is no instance on record of a savage people having by its own indigenous efforts passed from the savage to the civilized state. The thing is as impossible as for the old man, decrepit by age, to renew the vigor and elasticity of his youth or early manhood. Instead of studying the dialects of savage tribes to obtain specimens of the primitive forms of speech, philologists should study them only to obtain specimens of worn-out or used up forms, or of language in its dotage. In all the savage dialects that we have any knowledge of, we detect or seem to detect traces of a culture, a civilization, of which they who now speak them have lost all memory and are no longer capable. This seems to us to bear witness to a fall, a loss. Perhaps, when the American and African dialects are better known, and are studied with reference to this view of the savage state, and we have better ascertained the influence of climate and habits of life on the organs of speech and therefore on pronunciation, especially of the consonants, we shall be able to discover indications of an identity of origin where now we can detect only traces of diversity. As long as philology has only partially explored the field of observation, it is idle to pretend that _science_ has established anything against the scriptural doctrine of the unity of speech. The fact that philologists have not traced all the various dialects now spoken or extinct to a common original amounts to nothing against faith, unless it can be proved that no such original ever existed. It may have been lost and only the distinctions retained.

Naturalists point to the various species of plants and animals distributed over the whole surface of the globe, and ask us if we mean to say that each of these has also sprung from one original pair, or male and female, and if we maintain that the primogenitors of each species of animal were in the garden of Eden with Adam and Eve, or in the Ark with Noah. If so, how have they become distributed over the several continents of the earth and the islands of the ocean? _Argumentum a specie ad speciem, non valet_, as say the books on logic. And even if it were proved that in case of plants and animals God duplicates, triplicates, or quadriplicates the parents by direct creation, or that he creates anew the pair in each remote locality where the same species is found, as prominent naturalists maintain or are inclined to maintain, it would prove nothing in the case of man. For we cannot reason from animals to man, or from flora to fauna. Nearly all the arguments adduced from so-called science against the faith are drawn from supposed analogies of men and animals, and rest for their validity on the assumption that man is not only generically, but specifically, an animal, which is simply a begging the question.

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Species again, it is said, may be developed by way of selection, as the florist proves in regard to flowers, and the shepherd or herdsman in regard to sheep and cattle. That new varieties in the lower orders of creation may be attained by some sort of development is not denied, but as yet it is not proved that any new species is ever so obtained. Moreover, facts would seem to establish that, at least in the case of domestic animals, horses, cattle, and sheep, the new varieties do not become species and are not self-perpetuating. Experiments in what is called crossing the breed have proved that, unless the crossing is frequently renewed, the variety in a very few generations runs out. There is a perpetual tendency of each original type to gain the ascendency, and of the stronger to eliminate the others. Cattle-breeders now do not rely on crossing, but seek to improve their stock by selecting the best breed they know, and improving it by improved care and nourishment. The different varieties of men may be, perhaps, improved in their physique by selection, as was attempted in the institutions of Lycurgus; but, as the moral and intellectual nature predominates in man and is his characteristic, all conclusions as to him drawn from the lower orders of creation, even in his physical constitution, are suspicious and always to be accepted with extreme caution. The church has defined what no physiologist has disproved, that _anima est forma corporis_. The soul is the informing or vital principle of the body, which modifies all its actions, and enables it to resist, at least to some extent, the chemical and other natural laws which act on animals, plants, and unorganized matter. The physiological and medical theories based on chemistry, which were for a time in vogue and are not yet wholly abandoned, contain at best only a modicum of truth, and can never be safely followed, for in the life of man there is at work a subtiler power than a chemical or any other physical agent. We do not deny that man is through his body related to the material world, or that many of the laws of that world, mineral, vegetable, and animal, are in some degree applicable to him; but, as far as science has yet proceeded, they are so only with many limitations and modifications which the physician--we use the word in its etymological as well as in its conventional sense--can seldom determine. The _morale_ every physician knows has an immense power over the _physique_. The higher the morale, the greater the power of the physical system to resist physical laws, to endure fatigue, to bear up against and even to throw off disease. Physical disease is often generated by moral depression, and not seldom thrown off by moral exhilaration. What is called strength of will at times seems not only to subject disease to its control, but to hold death itself at bay. In armies the officer, with more care, more labor, more hardship, and less food and sleep, will survive the common soldier, vastly his superior as to his mere physical constitution. These facts and innumerable others like them justify a strong protest against the too common practice of applying to man without any reservation the laws which we observe in the lower orders of creation, and arguing from what is true of them what must be true of him. Tear off the claw of a lobster, and a new one will be pushed out; cut the polypus in pieces, and each piece becomes a perfect polypus, at least so we are told, for we have not ourselves made or seen the experiment. But nothing of the sort is true of man, nor even of the higher classes of animals in which organic life is more complex. {343} We place little confidence in conclusions drawn from the assumed analogies between man and animals, and even the development of species in them by selection or otherwise, if proved, would not prove to us the possibility of a like development in him. We must see a monkey by development grow into a man before we can believe it.

But why, even in the case of animals that can be propagated only by the union of male and female, we should suppose the necessity of duplicating the parents of the species is more than we are able to understand. The individuals of the species could go where man could go. Suppose we find a species of fish in a North American lake, and the same species in a European or Asiatic lake which has no water communication with it, can you say the two lakes have never been in communication, you who claim that the earth has existed for millions of ages? Much of what is now land was once covered with water, and much now covered with water it is probable was once land inhabited by plants, animals, and men. Facts even indicate that the part of the earth now under the Arctic and Antarctic circles once lay nearer to the Equator, if not under it, and that what are now mountains were once islands dotting the surface of the ocean. No inductions which exclude these probabilities or indications are scientific, or can be accepted as conclusive.

Take, then, all the facts on which the naturalists support their hypotheses, they establish nothing against faith. The facts really established either favor faith or are perfectly compatible with it; and if any are alleged that seem to militate against it, they are either not proved to be facts, or their true character is not fully ascertained, and no conclusion from them can be taken as really scientific. We do not pretend that the natural sciences, as such, tend to establish the truth of revelation, and we think some over-zealous apologists of the faith go further in this respect than they should. The sciences deal with facts and causes of the secondary order; and it is very certain that one may determine the quality of an acorn as food for swine without considering the first cause of the oak that bore it. A man may ascertain the properties of steam and apply it to impel various kinds of machinery, without giving any direct argument in favor of the unity and Adamic origin of the race. The atheist may be a good geometrician; but, if there were no God, there could be neither geometry nor an atheist to study it. All we contend is, that the facts with which science deals are none of them shown to contradict faith or to warrant any conclusions incompatible with it.

Hence it may be assumed that, while the sciences remain in their own order of facts, they neither aid faith nor impugn it, for faith deals with a higher order of facts, and moves in a superior plane. The order of facts with which the sciences deal no doubt depends on the order revealed by faith; and no doubt the particular sciences should be connected with science or the explanation and application of the ideal formula or first principles, what we call philosophy, as this formula in turn is connected with the faith; but it does not lie within the province of the particular sciences as such to show this dependence or this connection, and our _savans_ invariably blunder whenever they attempt to do it, or to rise from the special to the general, the particular to the universal, or from the sciences to faith. Here is where they err. {344} What they allege that transcends the particular order of facts with which the sciences deal is only theory, hypothesis, conjecture, imagination, or fancy, and has not the slightest scientific value, and can warrant no conclusions either for or against faith. There is no logical ascent from the particular to the universal, unless there has been first a descent from the universal to the particular. Jacob saw, on the ladder reaching from heaven to earth, the angels of God descending and ascending, not ascending and descending. There must be a descent from the highest to the lowest before there can be an ascent from the lowest to the highest. God becomes man that man may become God. The sciences all deal with particulars and cannot of themselves rise above particulars, and from them universal science is not obtainable.

He who starts from revelation, which includes the principles of universal science, can, no doubt, find all nature harmonizing with faith, and all the sciences bearing witness to its truth, for he has the key to their real and higher sense; but he who starts with the particular only can never rise above the particular, and hence he finds in the particulars, or the nature to which he is restricted, no immaterial and immortal soul, and no God, creator, and upholder of the universe. His generalizations are only classifications of facts, with no intuition of their relation to an order above themselves; his universal is the particular, and he sees in the plane of his vision no steps by which to ascend to science, far less to faith. Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte both understood well the necessity of subordinating all the sciences to a general principle or law, and of integrating them in a universal science; but starting with the special sciences themselves, they could never attain to a universal science, or a science that accepted, generalized, and explained them all, and hence each ended in atheism, or, what is the same thing, the divinization of humanity. The positivists really recognize only particulars, and only particulars in the material order, the only order the sciences, distinguished from philosophy and revelation, do or can deal with. Alexander von Humboldt had, probably, no superior in the sciences, and he has given their _résumé_ in his _Cosmos_; but, if we recollect aright, the word God does not once appear in that work, and yet, except when he ventures to theorize beyond the order of facts on which the sciences immediately rest, there is little in that work that an orthodox Christian need deny. Herbert Spencer, really a man of ability, who disclaims being a follower of Auguste Comte or a positivist, excludes from the _knowable_, principles and causes, all except sensible phenomena; and although wrong in view of a higher philosophy than can be obtained by induction from the sensible or particular facts, yet he is not wrong in contending that the sciences cannot of themselves rise above the particular and the phenomenal.

Hence we do not agree with those Christian apologists who tell us that the tendency of the sciences is to corroborate the doctrines of revelation. They no more tend of themselves to corroborate revelation than they do to impair it. They who press them into the cause of infidelity, and hence conclude that science explodes faith, mistake their reach, for we can no more conclude from them against faith than we can in favor of faith. The fact is, the sciences are not science, and lie quite below the sphere of both science and faith. When arrayed against either, their authority is null. {345} Hence we conclude, _á priori_, against them when they presume to impugn the principles of science as expressed in the ideal formula, or against faith which is, considered in itself objectively, no less certain than the formula itself; and we have shown, _à posteriori_, by descending to the particulars, that the sciences present no facts that impugn revelation or contradict the teachings of faith. The conclusions of the _savans_ against the Christian dogmas are no logical deductions or inductions from any facts or particulars in their possession, and therefore, however they may carry away sciolists, or the half-learned, or little minds, greedy of novelties, they are really of no scientific account.

All that faith demands of the sciences as such is their silence. She does not demand their support, she only demands that they keep in their own order, that the cobbler should stick to his last, _ne sutor ultra crepidam_. Faith herself is in the supernatural order, and proceeds from the same source as nature herself; it presupposes science indeed, and elevates and confirms it, but no more depends upon it than the creator depends on the creature. The highest science needs faith to complete it, and in all probability never could have been attained to without revelation; but neither science nor the sciences, however they may need revelation, could ever, without revelation, have risen to the conception of a divine and supernatural revelation. It is idle, then, to suppose that without revelation we could find by the sciences the demonstration or evidence of revelation. Lalande was right when he said he had never seen God at the end of his telescope, and his assertion should weigh with all natural theologians, so-called, who attempt to prove the existence of God by way of induction from the facts which naturalists observe and analyze; but he was wrong and grossly illogical when he concluded from that fact, with the fool of the Bible, there is no God, as wrong as those chemists are who conclude against the real presence in holy eucharist, because by their profane analysis of the consecrated host they find in it the properties of bread. The most searching chemical analysis cannot go beyond the visible or sensible properties of the subject analyzed, and the sensible properties of the bread and wine nobody pretends are changed in transubstantiation. None of the revealed dogmas are either provable or disprovable by any empirical science, for they all lie in the supernatural order, above the reach of natural science, and while they control all the empirical sciences they can be controlled by none.

But when we have revelation and with it, consciously or unconsciously, the ideal formula, which gives us the principles of all science and of all things, and descend from the higher to the lower, the case is essentially different. We then find all the sciences so far as based on facts, and all the observable facts or phenomena of nature, moral, intellectual, or physical, both illustrating and confirming the truths of revelation and the mysteries of faith. We then approach nature from the point of view of the Creator, read nature by the divine light of revelation, and study it from above, not from below; we then follow the real order of things, proceed from principles to facts, from the cause to the effect, from the universal to the particular, and are, after having thus descended from heaven to earth, able to reascend from earth to heaven. In this way we can see all nature joining in one to show forth the being and glory of God, and to hymn his praise. {346} This method of studying nature from high to low by the light of first principles and of divine revelation enables us to press all the sciences into the service of faith, to unite them in a common principle, and do what the Saint-Simonians and positivists cannot do, integrate them in a general or universal science, bring the whole intellectual life of man, as we showed in our article on Rome or Reason, into unison with faith and the real life and order of things, leaving to rend our bosoms only that moral struggle symbolized by Rome and the World, of which we have heretofore treated at length.

But this can never be done by induction from the facts observed and analyzed by the several empirical or inductive sciences. We think we have shown that the pretension, that these sciences have set aside any of the doctrines of Christianity, or impaired the faith, except in feeble and uninstructed minds, is unfounded; we think we have also shown that they not only have not, but cannot do it, because they lie in a region too low to establish anything against revelation. Yet as the sciences are insufficient, while restricted to their proper sphere, to satisfy the demand of reason for apodictic principles, for unity and universality, there is a perpetual tendency in the men devoted exclusively to their culture to draw from them conclusions which are unwarranted, illogical, and antagonistic both to philosophy and to faith. Against this tendency, perhaps never more strongly manifested than at this moment, there is in natural science alone no sufficient safeguard, and consequently we need the supernatural light of revelation to protect both faith and science itself. With the loss of the light of revelation we lose, in fact, the ideal formula, or the light of philosophy; and with the light of philosophy, we lose both science and the sciences, and retain only dry facts which signify nothing, or baseless theories and wild conjectures, which, when substituted for real science, are far worse than nothing.

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My Meadowbrook Adventure.

"No, no, Tom; that is out of the question. I can't afford to go away just now. I am getting into a fine practice; the courts open in ten days; and besides, I am in the midst of an essay on the Law of Contracts which I promised for the next number of a certain law magazine. Your prescription is a very pleasant one; but really I can't take it. You must give me a good dose of medicine instead."

"I tell you what it is, Franklin, I don't let my patients dictate to me in that style. You have been fool enough to throw yourself into a nervous fever by working in this nasty den all summer, instead of taking a vacation-run to the country as you ought to have done; and now, if you don't follow my directions, I swear I won't cure you! Go off to some quiet farm-house for a week or two, and, if your essay on contracts weighs upon your mind, take the stupid stuff with you. I'll risk your working much at it after you get within scent of the fields."

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I could not stand out very long against the bluff orders of my friend and physician Tom Bowlder. I knew, too, that he was right. I had overtasked myself. I had been dangerously ill; and, eager as I was to get on with my work, I could not help feeling that rest and change were absolutely necessary for me. So I packed my portmanteau, not forgetting my precious essay and a liberal supply of writing-paper, and the next morning saw me on the way to Meadowbrook.

It was a quiet, sleepy little village, nestling at the foot of a beautifully wooded ridge, and looking out from its shelter, across a slope of green fields, to a little stream which ran purling over the stones a quarter of a mile distant. Majestic old elm-trees shaded the grassy roads and swung their branches over the roofs of the trim little cottages. There was only one house in the place which pretended to be anything better than a cottage, and that was a rather stately villa, a good hundred years old at least, which stood a little way out of the village, surrounded with trees, and shut in from the public gaze by an enormous hawthorn hedge which ran around the extensive grounds. Meadowbrook House, or "the house," as it was generally called by the villagers, was the property of an old maiden lady named Forsythe, the daughter of a retired merchant who long years ago had chosen this quiet spot as a retreat for his old age. Mr. Forsythe was a Catholic, and one of his first actions after removing to Meadowbrook was to build the pretty stone church in the main street of the village, and to pledge a certain sum annually from his ample income for the support of the priest. When, after a long life of usefulness, he died and was buried by the side of his wife, leaving all his property to his daughter, who had already long passed the period of youth, the generosity of Miss Forsythe continued to supply what the poor little Catholic congregation was unable to give, and the excellent spinster was still the mainstay of the church. Poor Father James, an old man now of nearly seventy, would have fared ill but for her assistance.

So much I learned in an after-supper chat with my landlady on the night of my arrival. I cannot say that I was much engrossed at the time by the good woman's garrulous narrative, but after-events were to give me a deep interest in Meadowbrook House and in everything connected with it. I had taken lodgings in the village inn, a neat, quiet, respectable establishment, where there were few guests except the villagers who used to drop in of an evening to enjoy a little gossip and a pipe, and with whom, after a days' ramble, I used often to sit and smoke my cigar. I led an idle but most delicious life during my ten day's holiday. I ranged through the woods, with my gun on my shoulder, bringing home now and then a bird or so, but caring in reality more for the walk than the shooting. I whipped the brook for trout. I searched the fields for botanical specimens. I wandered about with a volume of Tennyson or Buchanan in my pocket, stopping at times to lie down and read under the trees. I did almost everything, in fact, except work at my essay, which remained in the portfolio where I had originally packed it.

One sunny afternoon I was dozing on my back in the shade of an apple orchard, when a strain of music was borne to my ears, beginning like the distant hum of bees, and gradually swelling on the air with slow and majestic cadences. I had never heard such music in Meadowbrook before. {348} Curious to know whence it came, I followed the sound, and was not long in discovering that some practised hand was touching the wheezy little organ in the village church. Not the same hand which was accustomed painfully to struggle with the keys there on Sunday, and wring from them broken and doleful sounds to the distress of all nervous listeners. The person who was playing now had the touch of a master; and as the plaintive phrases of the _Agnus Dei_ from Mozart's First Mass broke upon the solitude of the church, the rickety organ seemed infused with a new spirit. I could not have believed that so much pathos and such exquisite delicacy of tone could be drawn from the wretched instrument whose laborious whistling and puffing had set my teeth on edge the previous Sunday. I sat down in a pew under the gallery, and listened. It was not until twilight approached that the playing ceased. I heard the organ closed; the player was silent for a few moments; "He is saying a prayer," thought I; and then a soft step began to descend the stairs. Thinking it possible the performer might feel annoyed at perceiving a stranger in the church, I sat quietly in my place, confident that the growing darkness and the shelter of one of the pillars would screen me from observation. I could see very well, however, though I could not be seen, and my surprise was great when a slender female figure issued from the gallery staircase, and came within the light of the open street door. She was young--not more than eighteen, I should think--with a face of rare beauty, a pretty form, a light and graceful carriage, and the unmistakable air of a gentlewoman. Small, regular features, light brown eyes, cheeks like a peach, blooming with health, a profusion of dark hair, and an expression of remarkable simplicity and sweetness made up a picture of loveliness such as I had never seen before. She wore a fascinating little round hat, and when I first caught sight of her was just drawing on her gloves, and I could see that her hands were small and shapely. She bent her knee as she passed before the altar, and when she went out into the street the church seemed suddenly to have grown darker. My first impulse was to follow her; but I stopped, feeling that it would be an intrusion, and trusting that she would return the next day, if she supposed herself to be unobserved. So I kept still until she had been gone several minutes, and when I left the church she was nowhere to be seen.

I determined to ask my landlady about the fair musician, and that evening, when worthy Mrs. Brown brought me my supper, I detained her a few minutes in conversation--an amusement to which she was in noway adverse.

"It's been an elegant day, hasn't it, now, Mr. Franklin?" said the old woman, as she placed on the table the smoking rasher of ham and the pile of buttered toast; "and it's plain to see what a world of good this tramping about the country is doing you. I wouldn't say you were over-strong yet; but, Lord bless me! when you first came here, you were little better than a ghost. Well, well, sir, and I hope you won't find our little village too dull for you!"

"Dull! Mrs. Brown. Not a bit of it. I wish I could stay here a year. By the way, who is it plays the organ so beautifully in Meadowbrook church? I heard the music, and stopped awhile to listen."

"Plays the organ, sir? Well, you know there's Mr. Thrasher, the schoolmaster; he's the organist on Sundays, and very like you heard him practising--though why he should be out of school to-day, and this not a holiday--"

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"Mr. Thrasher, Mrs. Brown, thumps on the organ as if he was thumping his pupils, and his singers scream as if they felt the blows. This was not Mr. Thrasher. It was a young lady!"

"Well, sir, I never knowed of no young lady playing the organ except it was Betty Cox, the butcher's daughter. They do say she has a wonderful talent for music, and Mr. Thrasher, he has been giving her lessons this last month, and I wouldn't wonder if it was her!"

Now, it had been my privilege to hear Miss Betty Cox finger the keys one day after Mass, and a more doleful performance I never had listened to. Even if I had not seen the performer, I should have been sure it was not Miss Betty; but, quite apart from her musical proficiency, I felt a little bit indignant that the beautiful girl who had made such an impression upon me should be mistaken for a Betty Cox. No, she was not one of the village damsels; that was clear. And unfortunately it was equally clear that Mrs. Brown knew no more about her than I did myself.

I fell asleep that night humming the _Agnus Dei_, and dreamed of angels with round hats and brown kid gloves, playing on rickety organs, and hurling legions of musty school-masters out of the clouds.

The next day I took my book to the church-yard, and chose a shady spot where I could hear the first notes of the organ. I waited a long while, reading little, for I could not fix my attention on the page. At last she came, as I had hoped. For more than an hour I listened to the exquisite tones which seemed to flow from her agile fingers. Then she went away without perceiving me.

I need hardly say that I made many another visit to the church, for the pursuit of the fair organist had now become a genuine passion with me. Sometimes I waited all the afternoon without seeing or hearing her. Then I used to go to my room and be moody and miserable all the evening. A rainy day would throw me into despair, and I watched the clouds with the eagerness of a schoolboy on a holiday. My readers will not need to be told that I was falling desperately in love. Once or twice I met her walking, and had an opportunity to notice more particularly the singular beauty of her form and countenance, and the refined and quiet air which pervaded her whole person. Once I met her by accident at the crossing of a brook. I gave her my hand to help her over, and she took it with the modest frankness of a true lady, saying, "Thank you, sir," in a voice which seemed to me as sweet as her face. Yes, I was certainly in love.

I might easily have found out all about her by asking a few questions in the village, where the shopkeepers, at all events, would hardly be as ill informed as my landlady; but since my conversation with Mrs. Brown I had become, I know not why, unwilling to speak of her. I had grown to look upon her as _my secret_, which I was disposed to guard pretty jealously. A bit of mystery, be it ever so little and unnecessary, is one of the most charming things in the world to a young lover, and I have always thought that Sheridan displayed great knowledge of human nature when he made Lydia Languish refuse to be married without an elopement. At some time in our lives almost all of us give way to more or less of the same sort of nonsense.

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There came a sudden end at last to my mooning and dreaming, and it came in a way with which even Lydia Languish herself could not have quarrelled. I had been off one day on a long ramble among the hills, and, missing my way, did not get back to Meadowbrook until close upon evening. As I came near the village, I was made aware of some extraordinary commotion in the place. Men and women were hurrying through the streets, and voices were shouting in excited tones. I ran after the crowd, and as I turned into the main street a glance in the direction of the church revealed the cause of the disturbance. Flames were bursting through the gallery windows, and a dense smoke poured through the open door. Nearly the whole population of Meadowbrook had gathered around the scene of disaster. The men, and some of the women with them, had formed lines leading to one or two of the nearest wells, and were passing buckets with all the speed they could; but it was too evident with but little prospect of subduing the conflagration. I have already mentioned that the building was of stone, so there was little fear of the walls falling; but the woodwork of the interior was old, and burned almost like tinder. The organ-gallery was, of course, of wood, and inside the tower, which stood at the front of the edifice, there was a wooden staircase, forming the only means of access to the gallery. It was in the tower, I saw at once, that the flames were burning most fiercely. The rear of the church was as yet untouched. I need hardly tell what my first thought was when I saw the cruel glare that lighted up the approaching twilight. A sickening sensation crept over me. If the fair musician was in the gallery when the fire broke out, her escape seemed effectually cut off. I ran forward but there was little need to ask questions. The distressed expression on every face, the eager eyes fixed upon the windows of the gallery, the frantic but vain efforts of one or two of the boldest of the crowd to penetrate the doorway, out of which the smoke was rolling in great black clouds, told me that my worst fears were true.

"Ah! sir," said one of the men "it's a dreadful thing to see a pretty young creature like that burned to death before our very eyes. But we can't get to her!"

A cold perspiration broke out upon my forehead, and for a moment I reeled like a drunkard. "Good heavens!" I cried; "have you no ladders?"

"Yes, we have two; but look at the tower, sir. There's no window except in the belfry, and both the ladders together would not reach that."

"Take the ladders into the church by the back way," I cried, "and get up the front of the gallery! Here," I added, pulling out my purse, "this for the first man who reaches her."

"We wouldn't want your money, sir, if we could get at the young lady," answered one or two voices together; "but there's little use in trying. Three men have gone into the church already."

They were still speaking when there was a stir among the crowd at the side of the building, and the three men reappeared. Their clothes were scorched, and even their hair was slightly singed.

"Can't do it," said one; "the gallery front is burning like a furnace. We got the ladders up, but we could not climb them and hardly got them away again."

"Did you see anything of her?"

"No, and didn't hear a sound. If she has not been choked already by the smoke, she must have gone up into the tower."

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It was a slight hope, yet there was something in it after all. Behind the organ there was, as I knew, a door opening into a sort of lumber-room in the tower, from which a rude flight of steps, terminating in a ladder, led up to the bell. It was possible that when she found the gallery staircase in flames, (I afterward learned that it was here the fire broke out; it was supposed to have been caused by a coal dropped on the stairs by a tinker who had been repairing the roof that afternoon)--it was just possible, I say, that she might have retreated up these steps in the hope of being rescued through the belfry window. For a moment or two after the failure to reach her through the interior, there was a pause of awful suspense. Whatever was to be done, however, must be done at once. The flames were making rapid headway, and in ten minutes nothing would be left of the tower but the bare stone shell. Already it was doubtful if any one could survive even in the upper portion of it. The men were still throwing bucketfuls of water into the burning porch with frantic speed; but this, of course, did little good, for the fire was spreading high above their reach. Others were running helplessly about with coils of rope. Suddenly a thought seized me. Just in front of the church, but on the opposite side of the road, stood an enormous elm-tree. Some of its upper branches reached within fifty feet of the top of the tower. Was it not possible to bridge across that chasm?

"Is there any opening," I cried, "in the tower roof?"

"No, sir; none at all."

"Give me an axe and some rope."