Chapter I (2)

Some swift emotion passed over his face; but whether of fear or anger she could not tell. The next moment he smiled grimly. "I know just how it happened, ma'am," he said; "for didn't the lawyers tell me? Oh! but they told the whole story so plain you'd have thought they did the deed themselves; and faith, they made me almost believe I did it. It is a very convincing way that the lawyers have about them. They made out that Mike Murray was at our house one night, and we all played cards and got drunk together; and when we were pretty high, that Larry and I went out with Mike to see him home; and that I sent Larry back, he being too drunk to go on; and that I waited upon Mike out to a piece of woods, and there I knocked him down and robbed him; and that he was picked up half-dead the next morning, and I was caught throwing the money away. They proved that I only did it because I was drunk, and that I never did a dishonest deed before; and so they sent me here for ten years. And the pity it was of poor Mike Murray! It would have brought tears to your eyes to hear that lawyer go on about him, as if Mike was his own father's son, and a saint to the bargain, instead of a dirty, drunken blackguard that Mary was mad to see in the house, and that beat his own wife with a stool, and kicked her down-stairs every morning; and that's the way she used to get down. She told our Mary that she was never without a sore spot on her head, and that when she got to the top of a flight of stairs, if it was in the church itself, she'd look behind for the kick that Mike always had for her. Indeed, ma'am, while the lawyer was talking, I didn't believe he meant the Mike Murray I knew at all, but a sweet, gentle creature with the same name, and that never took a sup of anything but milk. And that's the story of my coming here, ma'am," the convict concluded, giving a short laugh.

{395}

"You have had troubles enough," Mrs. Raynor said gently; "but now they are nearly over. Only two months longer, and you will be free. It won't hurt you to go to chapel for that short time."

"I shall not go," he replied.

She turned away at that, went into the deserted prison-yard, and stood there a moment recollecting a sermon she had heard not long before. "Why should we not now have a saint after the grand old way?" the speaker had asked.

"There is every reason why we should not!" she exclaimed impatiently. "Those _bizarre_, uncompromising virtues of the antique time would now scandalize the very elect. We must not offend against _les bienséances_, though all the saints should clap their hands. This poor Irishman is unquestionably a little wrong in his head, and will have to go to the dungeon. For you, Madge Raynor, you had best return to your _moutons_, and cease pulling at the skirts of the millennium. What a quixotic little body you are, to be sure!"

To the dungeon, accordingly, Dougherty was sent the next Sunday and after a few hours, the warden's wife went to see him.

A door of solid iron opened in the basement wall of the prison, and let the light into a stone vestibule that was otherwise perfectly dark. Opposite this entrance was what looked like an oven or furnace-door, about two feet square, and also of solid iron. Removing a padlock from the inner door, the guard opened it, and called Dougherty.

Mrs. Raynor started back as the foul air from the dungeon struck her face; for, though there was an aperture artfully contrived so as to admit a little air and exclude all light, it was not large enough to do more than keep the prisoner from actual suffocation.

"You are acting like a simpleton!" the lady exclaimed when the convict's pale face appeared at the opening. "Go to chapel next Sunday, and say your prayers under the parson's nose. I will give you beads that shall rattle like hail-stones."

"I thank you, ma'am!" the man replied in his provokingly quiet way; "but I can't go to chapel."

"You expect to enjoy staying here three days, with bread and water once a day, sitting and sleeping on bare stones, and breathing air that would sicken a dog?" she demanded angrily.

"That is nothing to what my Lord suffered for me," was the reply.

"You fancy yourself a martyr, and that the officers of the prison are children of the devil!" she said.

"I don't blame them," he answered. "They do what they think is right."

"Shut him up!" she exclaimed, turning away. "It's a pity we haven't a rack for the blockhead. He is pining for it."

Dougherty did not complain nor yield; but he was put to work again after three days, that being the longest time the rules allowed a man to be kept in the dungeon.

Mrs. Raynor was annoyed with herself for taking such an interest in this contumacious thief. Every day she protested that she would not worry about him, and every day she worried more and more. When Sunday came again, "I will not go near him," she said. "I will leave him to his fate. 'What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba?'" and even while speaking, counted anxiously the last strokes of the prison-bell ringing for service. {396} At that moment the convicts were entering the chapel, all but the sick, and that troublesome _protégé_ of hers. "I won't go near him," she said in a very determined manner, and, five minutes after, was on her way up the prison-stairs.

Letting herself into the guardroom with a pass-key, she found but one man on guard; but the voices of others came through the open door of the hospital, and with them a long, agonized moan. Hurrying into the cell where the punishment called "the strings" was inflicted, Mrs. Raynor saw Dougherty hanging by his wrists to a chain run through a ring in the ceiling. His toes touched the floor and slightly relieved the otherwise intolerable strain on his shoulders and breast. One of the guards kept the chain up, while the deputy-warden stood by the convict and watched for the first sign of submission or of fainting.

The man groaned with pain, and drops of perspiration rolled down his face.

"Will you give up and go to chapel next Sunday?" asked the deputy.

"O God! strengthen me," cried the convict. "No, I will not go!"

Mrs. Raynor's pale face flushed as she heard this reply.

The moans became fainter.

"Now, give up like a man," the deputy said. "You've shown your grit, and that is enough."

"Lord, help me!" came in a broken cry.

"He's going; let him down," the deputy said.

"Dead?" cried the warden's wife, starting forward.

"No, madam; he has fainted."

They applied restoratives, and when his senses had returned, led him, reeling, out into the guardroom, and placed him in a chair by the open window.

"Did you ever read a history of the Spanish Inquisition, Mr. Deputy?" asked the warden's wife.

"Yes'm!" was the immediate reply. "This is just like it, isn't it?"

"Well, Dougherty, you will be content now, and go to chapel next Sunday, will you not?" asked the lady, touching the convict's sleeve.

He lifted his heavy eyes. He was still catching his breath like one who sobs. "I will die before I will go to hear the name of God and of his truth blasphemed!" he answered, speaking with difficulty.

"But if you should be again put up in the strings?"

He shivered, but replied without hesitation, "He that died upon the cross will strengthen me."

"The fellow is a fool!" muttered one of the guard.

"May God multiply such fools!" cried Mrs. Raynor, turning upon the speaker. Then to the convict, "I will urge you no more. I am not capable of judging for you, and you do not need help nor advice from me. Go your own way."

Dougherty's own way was to persist in his refusal to attend chapel; and since the officers had no choice but to punish him for his disobedience, it chanced that for the next four weeks he was put up in the strings every Sunday morning.

"It shall not be done again," the warden said then. "He has but a fortnight longer to stay; and, rule or no rule, he shall do as he likes."

"Only a fortnight," he said to the convict, "then you will be a free man."

Dougherty's face brightened. "Yes, sir! And I long to set my feet on the turf again. A man doesn't know what green grass is, till he gets shut up in a place like this."

"Don't come here again," the officer said kindly. "Let what you have suffered teach you to resist temptation."

{397}

The convict looked at Mr. Raynor with a singular expression of surprise, not unmingled with a momentary indignation, and seemed about to speak, but checked himself.

"It is only to keep from drink," the warden went on. "I don't believe you would be dishonest when sober."

The convict dropped his eyes. "God knows all hearts," he said.

The next day Dougherty had a cold and a headache; the second day he was unable to go to work; the third day he had a settled fever. He was removed to the hospital, where the cells were larger, and, being next the outside wall, had light and air; a convict whose term had nearly expired was set to take care of him, and Mrs. Raynor visited him twice a day.

But the fever had got well fixed before the man gave up, and it found him good fuel. He burned like a solid beech log, with a slow, intense, unquenchable heat. His pale and sallow face became a dull crimson; his strong, full pulses beat fiercely in neck, wrists, and temples; and his restless eyes glowed with a brilliant lustre. Mrs. Raynor was sometimes startled, as she sat fanning and bathing his face, fancying that she had soothed him to sleep, to see those eyes open suddenly, and fix themselves on her with a searching gaze, or wander wildly about the cell. But he lay almost as motionless as the burning log would, locked in that fierce and silent struggle with disease. Nearly a fortnight passed, and there were but two days left of Dougherty's term of imprisonment; but there was no longer a hope that any freedom of man's giving would profit him. There was scarcely more than the embers of a man left of him; not enough, indeed, for a fever to prey upon. The flushes had become intermittent, like the last flickerings of a fire, and the parched and blackened mouth showed how he had been consumed inwardly.

It was May, and the sweet air and sunshine came in through two narrow windows and lightened and freshened the cell where the convict lay. Everything was clean and in order. The stone walls and floor were whitewashed; a prayer-book, crucifix, medicine, and glasses were carefully arranged on a little table between the windows; and there was a spotless cover on the narrow pallet that stood opposite. The door was wide open for a draught, and now and then one of the guard, approaching laboriously on tiptoe, would put his head into the cell, raise his eyebrows inquiringly at the convict-nurse who sat at the head of the bed, receive a nod in return, and retire with the same painful feint of making no noise. Neither of the two men was quite clear in his mind as to what he meant by this pantomime; but the result with both was a conviction that all was right. Presently, as the afternoon waned, there was the soft rustle of a woman's garments in the corridor, and a woman's unmistakable velvet footfall. At that sound the convict-nurse went lightly out; and Mrs. Raynor came in, and seated herself on the stool where he had sat, and slipped a bit of ice between the lips of the patient. He had been lying motionless and apparently asleep during the last hour; but as she touched him, he opened his eyes and fixed them upon her. "What does the doctor say, ma'am?" he asked in a tone so firm that one forgot it was but a whisper.

{398}

"I think that you will want to see the priest," she said gently. "I have sent for one, and he will come tomorrow."

A slight spasm passed over the sick man's face, his eyelids quivered, and his mouth contracted for an instant.

"It must come to us all sooner or later," she continued; "and it is well for us that He who knows best and does best is the one to choose."

He said not a word, but closed his eyes again; and she kept silence while he went through with his struggle, her own tears starting as she saw how the tears swelled under his eyelids, and the stern mouth quivered, and knew that he was tearing up the few simple hopes that had taken root in his heart: the setting his feet on the green grass again, the meeting his brother, the dream of a cheerful fireside where he should be welcome, the honest gains and generous gifts, the happy laughter, kind looks, and sorrows from which love and faith should draw the sting. Simple hopes; but they had struck deep, and every fibre of the man's heart quivered and bled at their uprooting.

Presently the watcher spoke softly: "Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord hath mercy on them that fear him!"

"May his will be done!" said the convict. "But, poor Larry!"

"You want me to write to him?"

"Yes ma'am!" he answered eagerly. "Tell him that I was comfortable here, and that I was willing to die; and be sure to tell him that coming here was the best thing that ever happened to me. Don't let him know anything about the punishment. Larry'd feel bad about that. Don't forget!" he urged, looking anxiously in the lady's face.

"I won't forget," she said.

He stopped a moment for breath; then resumed, "Tell him that my last words were, that he should remember his promises to me, and never taste liquor again. And tell him to be kind to Mary for my sake. You see, ma'am, I was fond of Mary; but of course she liked Larry best."

The lady blushed faintly, and laid her cool white hand on his fevered one. "Dougherty," she said, "nobody but God thanks us for true love. In this world a light love meets with most gratitude."

"Sometimes I've thought the same," the man said gravely. "Some are made to give, and some are made to take; but the Lord gives to all."

The next day a priest came and spent some time with the sick man. Mrs. Raynor went up for her afternoon visit, and found him still lingering there, looking gravely and intently at his penitent, who lay with an expression of perfect peace on his countenance.

"Poor man!" she sighed, glancing toward the bed.

The father looked up with a light flashing into his thoughtful eyes. "Poor man, madam?" he repeated. "Not so: that man is rich! It is for him to pity us."

She followed the priest out, and spoke to him in the corridor. "Dougherty's brother has come from California," she said. "He reached here this morning. It seems hard to keep him out, but I hate to disturb a man who is dying."

The priest frowned. "Keep the fellow out for to-day. I have just given this man the viaticum, and want him to be undisturbed. His confession has exhausted him, and he mustn't be made to talk much more. How does his brother appear?"

"Oh! he is frantic. He fainted when I first told him, and I could hear him crying out in the yard when I got up into the guard-room. I told him that he couldn't come in till he should have become quiet."

{399}

"What sort of fellow is he?" asked the priest coldly.

The lady hesitated. In spite of her pity, she did not fancy Larry; neither did she like the coldness the priest showed toward him. "He is a very handsome young man," she said presently, "and very well dressed."

The father shrugged his shoulders. "Oh! then he should be admitted without delay."

She must, of course, free herself from such an imputation. "He looks weak and faithless," she said; "but his grief is genuine; and his having come so far shows that he loves his brother."

"You might tell Dougherty tonight, and let Larry in to-morrow morning if he behaves himself."

Mrs. Raynor sat by her patient without speaking, till presently he looked at her and smiled faintly. "May the Lord reward you, ma'am!" he said fervently. "You've been a good friend to me."

"Here is a note from your brother," she said. "Shall I read it to you?"

He glanced eagerly at the folded paper in her hand--a note which, in the midst of his lamentations, Larry had written and entreated her to take up to his brother.

"Read it!" the sick man said, making an effort to turn toward her.

"Would you like very much to see your brother?" she asked.

Dougherty's face began to work. "O ma'am! has Larry come?" he asked tremulously.

"Yes; and presently he is to come in to see you. Of course, he feels very much grieved, you know. That must be. But when he shall see how resigned and happy you are, he will take comfort."

Seeing that he eagerly watched the paper in her hand, the lady unfolded and glanced over it. As she did so, her face underwent a change. "It cannot be!" she cried out; and, crushing the note, looked at the man who lay there dying before her.

He did not understand, was too weak and dull to think of anything but the letter. "Read it!" he said faintly.

She began breathlessly to read the blotted page: "My dear brother John, for God's sake don't die! I have come to take you back to California with me, and Mary and I will spend our lives in taking care of you. We will make up to you what you have suffered for me, going to prison for my crime."

The sick man started up with sudden energy and snatched the paper from the reader's hand. "The lad is wild!" he gasped. "He didn't know what he was writing!"

She tried to soothe him, to coax him to lie down; but he sat rigid with that terrible suspense, his haggard eyes fixed on hers, a deathly pallor in his face.

"You won't tell anybody what the foolish boy wrote!" he pleaded.

"It was your brother, then, who robbed the man?" she said.

He sank back, moaning, upon his pillow, "All for nothing!" he said despairingly. "I've given my heart's blood for nothing! O ma'am! have you the heart to spoil all I've been trying to do, and have just about finished?"

It was a hard promise to give, but she gave it. Without his permission, what she had learned should never be revealed.

"The poor lad wasn't to blame," the sick man said. "It was drink did it. Drink always made Larry crazy. When he got home that night, he didn't know what he'd been doing; but in the morning Mary found the money on him, and the stain of blood on his hand. I tried to throw the money away, and they saw me."

{400}

He paused, gasping for breath. He was making an effort beyond his strength.

"Tell me the rest to-morrow," Mrs. Raynor said, giving him a spoonful of cordial.

But he went on excitedly, clutching at the bed-clothes as he spoke. "It would have been the ruin of Larry if he had come here. He would never again have looked anybody in the face. Besides, Mary's heart was broke entirely. So when I was caught, I just bid Larry hold his peace. But I didn't tell any lie, ma'am. When they asked me in court if I was guilty or not guilty, I said 'not guilty;' and it was true."

She gave him the cordial again, wiped his forehead, and, noticing that his hands were cold, first lifted the blanket to cover them, then hesitated, looked at him more closely, finally laid it back.

He lay for a while silent and exhausted, then spoke again. "You promise?"

"I promise, Dougherty. Set your heart at rest. You are dying; did you know it?"

"Yes, ma'am!"

After a while he said faintly, "My time will be up to-morrow morning."

"Yes!"

Twilight faded into night. Mrs. Raynor went into the house for a while, then returned to sit by her patient, sending the nurse out. One and another came to the cell-door, looked in, spoke a word, then went away. The heavy doors clanged, there was a sound of rattling bars as the prison was closed for the night, then silence settled all over. The dying man lay perfectly quiet, breathing slowly, and responding now and then to the prayers read by his attendant. He felt no pain, and his mind was clear and calm. He had no complicated intellectual mechanism to confuse his ideas of right and wrong; there was no labyrinth of sophistry to entangle his faith, no flutter of imagination to start a latent fear. He had done what he could; and he held on to the promises with an iron grasp.

That lonely watcher almost feared for him. Might he not be presuming on an act of devotion which, after all, rose from a love that was entirely human?

"My friend," she said, "even the angels are not pure before God. Perhaps you loved your brother too well."

"If I had loved him less, he would have been lost," was the calm reply. "I haven't loved him well enough to sin for him."

"Do not be too sure," she said.

"I'm a poor, ignorant man; but I've done as well as I knew how; and he has promised. I never broke a promise to man nor woman; and do you think that the Almighty would do the thing that I would scorn to do?"

"Are you not afraid of presumption?"

"It would be presumption to doubt the word of God."

"Do not rely on your own strength," she urged.

"I have no strength but what he gives me," said the dying man.

While they talked, or prayed, or were silent, the stars wore slowly and brightly past the open windows of the cell, dropping down the west like golden sands in an hour-glass, and counting out the minutes of that ebbing life. Then the dim and humid crescent of the waning moon stole by in the early morning twilight; then the air grew alive with the golden glances of the dawn. {401} As the sun rose, the man called Dougherty, a convict no longer, lay dead on his prison pallet, his face white and calm, the dull eyes half open, as though the deserted body followed with a solemn gaze the flight of its emancipated tenant.

"Would you rather have been the angel loosing Peter, or Peter in chains? I would rather have been Peter!"

----------

Translated From Le Conseiller Des Familles.

The Children's Graves In The Catacombs.

Childhood and the grave! Should these two words be placed together? Must flowers fall before bearing fruit, and children also die? This is what mothers think, and the church thinks as they do, because the church is a mother. In her view children do not die; they are born again, they are transfigured; and the grave in which cold death places them resembles the white bed, whereon, perhaps the day before, you saw them open their eyes to the sunlight. Do you recollect the ode in which a poet, at the time eminent, celebrated in beautiful verses the entrance of Louis XVII. into the heavenly palace to which his father had gone by the rough road of martyrdom? According to Catholic belief, all those little beings who die before making a name or obtaining a place in this world, are also young princes, heirs-apparent of a kingdom more beautiful than that of France, and who, like Louis XVII., fall asleep in a prison to awake upon a throne.

This is why the church has no prayers of grief at their burial. Assured of their happiness, she laments not, but gives praise. By the grace given at baptism, they are received into glory. She covers their remains with white drapery, which calls to mind the vestment which she put over them at the baptismal font. Instead of mourning, she invites the children of heaven to unite in praises, _Laudate, pueri!_ The Virgin, who was herself a mother, receives them at her altar, where the triumphant procession congratulates the Queen of angels that her empire is enriched by one more subject--_Ave, Regina caelorum! Ave, Domina angelorum!_ The funeral mass for little children is only a thanksgiving to God, who has reserved a favored space for those _blessed_ beings, _Venite, benedicti Patris_. Having read the gospel of our Lord, who blessed and caressed those to whom he promised the kingdom of heaven, the last prayer of the church which throws a little earth upon the body that is to rise again, is that we, adult sinners, may one day rejoice with them in the same kingdom. Read again this funeral service, and if you have a mourning mother among your friends and relatives, (who does not know one?) give her these consolations. She will believe that she hears the voice of God, who stopped the coffin of the widow's only son and restored him to her.

{402}

But these are, if I may speak thus, only the first caresses of religion of the remains of children; the honor which she accords to them is perpetuated in the worship with which she surrounds their graves.

Paganism took little care of the tombs of those who had not furnished to their country a citizen or a soldier. We know that they considered a child's life very unimportant. Virgil alone, among the poets, uttered a cry for the souls of young infants, whom he represents as being cut down before the eyes of their mothers. In those family sepulchres, called by the Romans _columbaria_, I found several little busts in marble, representing children, by the side of which were funeral urns, containing at the bottom several pinches of ashes. This was all that remained. Among the innumerable inscriptions which cover the walls of the immense gallery of the Vatican, I saw several epitaphs coldly stating that Junius Severianus had lived two years; that Octavius Liberalis died when he was five years four months and four days old; that Steteria Superba had departed life at the age of eighteen months. But there was no wish or hope of meeting them again, and no religious emblem to console the mourners.

Elysium did not exist for those shades without a name, as they were called, _sine nomine manes_, and their sepulchre closed without hope and without glory. The position of children in heathen times was revealed to me by an epitaph which I found at Antibes, the ancient Antipolis, to which the fashionable Romans came to enjoy the fine coast and a sunny sky. A stone detached from the ruins of a theatre, now almost entirely destroyed by the action of the weather and the sea, had the following inscription: "To the divine shades of Septentrion, a child of twelve years, who danced two days in the theatre and pleased the people"! [Footnote 83] They made the poor slave-boy contribute for two days to their delight; but he was overcome, and they applauded-- _saltavit et placuit_. See, then, what society made of this child--a plaything and a victim! Meditating upon this, I recalled to mind the time when another infant of twelve years of age glorified God in the temple at Jerusalem, and also when the Saviour took the hand of the dying girl and saying unto her, "Arise!" restored her to her father. I was obliged to leave these cursed ruins and enter for a moment into the temple of that God who, to save these little ones, took upon himself the form of a child--_Custodiens parvulos Dominus_.

[Footnote 83: "Diis Manibus pueri Septentrionis, annorum
duodecim, qui biduo saltavit in theatro et placuit."]

II.

Jesus Christ was born, was an infant; and since that time a revolution in favor of children began, which is perceptible in the epitaphs upon their graves. The child becomes a king, almost a god. It is at least a soul called to heaven and expecting us; and what new regards surround it for the future in that lapidary style, which says so much in so few words.

I was at Avignon, and visiting the museum of that city, my attention was attracted to a grave-stone of one of the first Christian centuries. It contained the following words: "_Florentiola, pax tecum!_" Florentiola, peace be with thee!" By the side was the monogram of Christ, surrounded with glory. Who was this little Florentiola? The tender diminutive proved plainly that she was an infant, and a beloved one. The wish expressed and the sign of Christ the Redeemer gave evidence that she was also a Christian. {403} This little name brought to mind another inscription which I found somewhere in one of our cemeteries, upon the sepulchre of a young woman: "She bloomed, blossomed, and died." Of these three periods of life, Florentiola had passed through only the first; but the last words expressed the hope that, as she had given to this world the blossom, she would yield the fruit in another: "_Pax tecum!_"

But one must go to the catacombs in Rome, and read, in that great Christian city of death, the delicacies of the affections of earth, and the hopes of a resurrection, which are radiant upon the graves of little children. In the cemetery of St. Priscilla, I observed two epitaphs distinguished above all others by their brevity. One of them consists only of a single melancholy word, "_Libera_" that is to say, free. A dove flying away, carrying an olive-branch, explains the meaning, which to me appeared sublime.

This captive soul which had passed through the prison of earth was free at last! The church conveys a similar idea at the funeral obsequies of little children: "_Anima nostra, sicut passer, erepta est de laqueo venantium. Laqueus contritus est, et nos liberati sumus._" (Psalm cxxiii.) "Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers. The snare is broken, and we are delivered."

The other one, which I remarked at the same place, containing only a word, was quite as beautiful and more Christian--"_Redempta_," redeemed. This was also expressive of liberty, but it was a freedom which had been acquired as the price of a ransom which was the blood of God: _Redempta!_

This last expression alludes to the grace given by baptism, which liberates the soul held in bondage by the demon. The children's epitaphs have it often, and prove that the church had conferred the sacraments upon them at the most tender age. You can find for instance, in the museum of the Lateran: "Paulina, neophyte of eight years; Candida, neophyte, twenty-one months old; Zozima, neophyte, five years, eight months, and thirteen days; Matronata Matrona, neophyte, one year, fifty-two days."

Upon a grave in the catacomb of Saint Calista, a Grecian inscription was found by the Canon Profili, consisting of the following words:

"Dionysius, newly illuminated, one year and four months." This title of enlightened was given only to those who came into possession of it by baptism. Saint Chrysostom mentions the enlightened in no other way.

This one, collected in the cemetery of the new road Salaria, and preserved at the Lateran, is more explicit:

"Florentius dedicates this inscription to his well-beloved son, Apronianus, who lived one year, nine months, five days. He was loved by his grand-mother, and seeing that he was nigh unto death, she asked the church to make him a Christian before he should leave the world." [Footnote 84]

[Footnote 84: "Florentius filio suo Aproniano fecit titulum
benemerenti qui vixit annum et menses novem, dies quinque.
Cum amatus fuisset à majore suâ et vidit hunc morti
constitutum esse, petivit de ecclesiâ ut fidelis de seculo
recessisset."]

Baptism, which was conferred upon the newly-born, was a great consolation to those who witnessed their departure from this world. "O Magus, innocent child!" said an inscription at the museum of the Lateran, "thou hast gone to live among the guiltless. How much more endurable is life! With what joy the church, thy other mother, received thee, when thou didst leave the world for her. We will suppress the murmurings of our hearts and restrain the tears from our eyes." [Footnote 85]

[Footnote 85: "Magus puer innocens, esse jam inter innocentes
coepisti. Quàm staviles (stabilis) tivi (tibi) haec vita est!
Quàm te laetum excipet (excepit) mater ecclesia edeoc (de
hoc) mundo revertentem. Comprimatur pectorum gemitus,
struatur (destruatur) fletus oculorum."]

{404}

Expressions of the most ingenious tenderness are shown in the last farewell to creatures of whom only smiles are known.

"Cyricus, dear soul, peace be with thee! He lived a year and sixty-two days!" [Footnote 86]

[Footnote 86: Cyricus, anima dulcis in pace, vixit annum i.
dies lxii.]

"Here reposes our dear soul, named Quiriace, an innocent child, beautiful and good, who lived three years, three months, eight days." [Footnote 87]

[Footnote 87: Hic posita est anima dulcis, innoca sapiens et
pulcra, nomine Quiriace, quae vixit annos iii. menses iii.
dies viii.]

The word _soul_, in the Latin language, is a term of great tenderness. It signifies life as it is visible. But in the Christian language it has a more spiritual signification. As the poet says:

"Thou callest me thy life; call me thy soul!
I wish a name more lasting than a day.
Life is of little value, a breath extinguishes the flame;
But the soul is immortal as our love."

Maternal affection creates, in Christianity, a name for children which becomes as the family name for those beings who pass from earth, having only glanced at its sorrows. The mother remembers that the Lord said, the angels of these little ones behold the face of the Father who is in heaven. This was enough to make so many angels of those innocent babes by an intentional confusion. This is hereafter to be their title: and where is now the afflicted mother who, at the death-bed of her son, has not seen, like the poet, the radiant face of the angel bending over and calling the child who resembles him? Primitive epigraphy goes to show the cause of this synonymy upon the graves of children.

"_Angelica, bene in pace_." "Angelica, child, be happy in peace," was one inscription of the Catacombs.

Upon another was written:

"Laurentius to his beloved son Severus, who lived four years, eight months, and five days, and was called by the angels on the 7th of January." [Footnote 88]

[Footnote 88: "Severo filio dulcissimo Laurentius pater
benemerenti qui vixit annos iv. menses viii. dies v.
accersitus ab angelis, vii. idus Januarii."]

One is pleased to recognize in these funereal places, the remembrances of school days, being the only ones that the departed youths have left in life. In several catacombs, near the Cubicula, where the faithful ones assembled for prayer, large halls can be seen, which have neither altar nor pictures, and no other embellishment than banks made in the turf, mostly terminated by one or two elevated seats. It is presumed that the antiquarians assembled children in school, and instructed them in the catechism. Near one of these halls can be read the following epitaph in the catacomb of Saint Priscilla:

"Obrimos to Palladios, his beloved cousin and schoolmate, as a remembrance."

In the catacomb of the new Via Salaria the school-teacher united with the mother to write an epitaph upon his pupil, whom he had adopted in his heart.

"With a holy and pure spirit, this grave has been made to Florentius, a child of thirteen years, by Coritus, his teacher, who loved him more than a son, and by Corda, his mother." [Footnote 89]

[Footnote 89: "In spiritu sancto bono, Florentio qui vixit
annis xiii. Coritus magister qui plus amavit quam proprium
filium, et Cordeus mater filio benemerenti fecerunt.']

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The glass paintings found at the same place are a finished representation of the education of young Christians in those days. On a chalice made of glass there is a child, whom the father and mother are teaching to read the Scriptures. Another one represents two little children, Pompeianus and Theodora, with their parents, under the trees. They are holding a copy of the Gospel, and Pompeianus points to the monogram of Christ which is erected in the midst of this Christian family. Their father is discoursing and explaining to them the precepts of their faith.

But once torn from the bosom of their family, who received children into the world of souls, which they entered astonished? The epitaphs recommend them to the saints in heaven to attend them on their entrance into paradise. The mother of Aurelius Gemellus, who died at the age of eight years, added to the inscription engraved upon his tombstone the following: "O Saint Basilla! we recommend to you the innocence of Gemellus!" [Footnote 90] In former times this was to be found in the cemetery of Saint Basilla, now of Saint Hermes.

[Footnote 90: "Commendo Basilla, innocentiam Gemelli."]

A similar prayer was addressed to this saint in the same catacomb, but for another child: "O Saint Basilla! we commend to thy care Crescentinus, and our daughter Crescentia, who lived ten months." [Footnote 91]

[Footnote 91: Domina Basilla, commendamus tibi Crescentinum
et filiam nostram ... quae vixit menses x." ...]

More frequently it was to God they directed the loved soul, "Lord Jesus, remember our child," said a Grecian inscription reported by Northcote.

Is there not a remembrance of the stammering of a child in prayer, in the first pronunciation, and in the orthography of the last word of the epitaph on a little girl?

"Regina, bibas (vivas) in Domino Zezu!" "Regina, live in the Lord Jesus!"

If life is only a pilgrimage for us, is not this particularly true of those who have only passed a few days in this world? This idea has been rendered in the epitaph of a young Christian; and few have made so great an impression upon me as the following, simple and short as it is:

"_Peregrina, vixit annos viii., menses viii., dies x. Decessit de corpore_." "Peregrina lived eight years, eight months, ten days, then departed from the body."

Did this name of Peregrina, pilgrim, passenger, allude to her rapid voyage upon the earth, which she hastened to leave? I incline to this beautiful idea, which a similar inscription authorizes, not far from there, carved upon the tomb of a Christian: "Viator!"

Upon the grave-stones of children of the first centuries, it is not uncommon to see a white dove, carved upon an antique cup, drinking from the border. Those who repose beneath that stone had drunk of the cup of life, and taking a taste, not wishing more, had spread their wings and returned to heaven.

In that better land they become intercessors for their kindred on the earth. What family has not theirs? And who has not prayed to those young elect, yesterday our brothers and sons, to-day our defenders in that place from which they behold us and will prove their love for us? The following can be read in the Lateran Museum:

"Matronata matrona, intercede for thy parents! She lived one year, fifty-two days." [Footnote 92]

[Footnote 92: "Pete pro parentes tuos, Matronata Matrona,
quae vixit an. i. di lii."]

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And upon another stone:

"Anatolius has made this grave for his dear son, who lived seven years, seven months, twenty-two days. May the soul repose in happiness with God. Pray for thy sister!" [Footnote 93]

[Footnote 93: "Anatolius filio benemerenti fecit, qui vixit
annis vii. mensis vii. diebus xxii. Spiritus tuus bene
requiescat in Deo. Petas pro sorore tua."]

III.

I must confess that we have preserved little of the architectural simplicity in the inscriptions upon tombs. It is just to say that they are of a poor style, laden with lengthy common epitaphs, emphatic declamations, and warm protestations, contradicted by the neglected and solitary aspect of those almost forgotten places. I make an exception of the sepulchres of children. If you find in a cemetery a grave which is preserved with love, invested with crowns, and dressed with fresh flowers, you can recognize the place of a child. In all countries of the world, a delicate worship is devoted to the mortal remains of innocence. The Indian graves have become celebrated, since Chateaubriand described them so charmingly. Now that Christianity has been established in those parts of the globe, mothers no longer suspend the cradles of their sons upon branches of trees, but their funerals have retained much of the simple grace of the time of Chactas.

A missionary has written: "I had to attend the burial of a little child five or six months old. They brought it to the church, laying it upon a mat, with garlands of flowers for a winding-sheet. We should have thought that it was sleeping sweetly, and notwithstanding its color, I admired its angelic beauty. After the prayers, which the church addresses to the good God, they dropped it gently into the grave, as if it had been its cradle, without covering even the face. Flowers were given in the place of earth, to throw upon the body. All the assistants did likewise, and some commenced to weep. It was sad to see the earth close over this little body so sweetly adorned, and cover that young face which appeared to smile upon us. It was to become food for worms; but the beautiful soul was already in heaven with the angels. I then united with the heavenly spirits to sing praises to God at the happiness of his little creature. I hope that this child will not forget the young missionary who celebrated its deliverance from this world of misery." [Footnote 94]

[Footnote 94: Vie de M. l'Abbé Chopart, p. 188.]

This scene recalls to me a similar one which I witnessed in the village of Beauvoisis. I met in the street the funeral procession of a little girl who was being carried to the cemetery. In advance of the coffin, a child of ten years, concealed under a floating drapery, was carrying a basket of white flowers. Thus she walked, gathering and smiling, happy with her part, until their arrival at the sepulchre; then throwing her basket into the grave, she disappeared among the trees, delighted at having prepared this flowery bed for her playmate, who was to sleep there the long night of death.

Menander said in a celebrated verse, "He whom the gods love dies young." And Sophocles said before him, "It is good not to be born; but if once born, the second degree of happiness is to die young." The ancients considered it fortune to be delivered from mortal misery. What would they have said if those who left them had appeared upon the bosom of God in a beatitude and glory without end? _Bene in pace!_

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Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. [Footnote 95]

[Footnote 95: _Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople_.
By Emeline Lott. 4th edition. 12mo, pp. 312. Richard Bentley.
New Burlington Street, London. 1867.]

This volume has run through several editions in England within the last three years. It is destined from its popularity to run through as many more; but as yet, it has found no publisher on this side of the Atlantic, although its merits are well-established in British literature. Observing a new edition announced by Bentley, it reminds us that the neat, unpretending little work has not received any recognition from our republic, nor has any attention been called to it. In truth, the American public, deeply interested in travellers and travelling in the east, or in whatever comes from the press illustrating scriptural scenes and events, have strangely overlooked this production, which furnishes a better insight into oriental domestic life than any account published for many years.

Egypt is now what it was in the days of the crucifixion and of Julius Caesar; it is unchanged, it is unchangeable, in its social structure, as the pyramids in their architecture, or the sands of the desert in their external aspect. To understand the condition of the people now, is to understand their condition when the Israelites under the direction of Moses went out from among them. To enter the family circle in the valley of the Nile for the purpose of learning their present mode of life, is at once an introduction to all their progenitors who ever dwelt in the same region in the reign of the ancient Pharaohs. In order to see what a Roman city was in the first century, it is requisite to put aside the ashes from a submerged Pompeii, or to remove the superincumbent earth from a buried Herculaneum. But in Egypt, to comprehend what was the moral, social, intellectual, religious appearance of the country when Cleopatra sailed upon the river, all that need be done is to push aside the mat which serves for a door to the first mud hovel met with, or pass within the first portal where heavy hinges grate upon the ear an uncordial reception.

The same Egypt can be seen which Alexander of Macedon, Sesostris, and the shepherd-kings beheld. Egyptian institutions were never buried; or, if buried, their sepulchre is above ground. A living death is visible on all sides; it is a palsy that struck the land long before the dawn of history, and may remain as it now is, when the history of the present century has passed into oblivion. Although the Egyptian mind and morals will not die in their body, still no motion is in its limbs, no quickening vitality in its joints, no trembling in its nerves; the blood is stagnant; a black pool as destitute of national animation as the waters of the Dead Sea. Progress is a term never heard of near the habitation of the Sphinx; and the period of ruins has gone by. Everything seems running rapidly to demolition; but nothing is demolished; decay has in that mysterious soil a perennial existence, a species of recuperation, that renews itself like the integuments of neighboring snakes, lizards, and toads, which bury themselves in the same rich slime.

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A book, therefore, on modern harem life in Egypt, is in one sense a hand-book for historians in their explorations after the vanities and household troubles of good King Solomon, when his domestic peace and quiet, his comfort and felicity, were invaded by many more spinsters than the Levitical law allowed to any one wise man. This dame Emeline is the very woman to aid them in their archaeological researches. Her volume furnishes important hints and information; and if on the title-page nine centuries before the Christian era were substituted for the date of publication, instead of nineteen centuries after it, the change would be so unimportant in a chronological point of view, that no annalist would be aware of the anachronism. It would look like a second edition of Herodotus, revised and improved, for the benefit of the ladies, and far surpassing in truth the first impression of that ancient Halicarnassian, full of his old gallinaceous and bovine stories.

Mrs. Lott, an English school-teacher, was engaged in London to proceed to Egypt in 1862-3, to take charge of the education of his highness the Grand Pasha Ibraim, five or six years old, the son of Ismail Pasha, the viceroy, and the grandson of the renowned and illustrious Ibraim. The lady in due time arrived at the port of Alexandria, consigned to the delicate consideration and tender mercies of the viceroy's agent, like any other bale of valuable and perishable drygoods. Her first glimpse of the land in the culinary and creature-comfortable line of development was not favorable. She next proceeded to the city of Cairo by rail, and was invited to the house of the vice-regal commercial partner, a German in lineage and language, but with principles and refinement somewhat neglected from want of proper planting and propagation in his youthful European culture. At the residence of this gentleman she was perpetually served with the same dishes at breakfast, noon, and dinner--boiled and roast mutton, stringy and dry, vermicelli soup, tomatoes stuffed with rice, chicory, spinach, and "the whole of the dishes were swimming in fat;" oranges and coffee followed after. Considering that the thermometer was raging above 100°, Fahrenheit, this oriental feed was rather oleaginous, and the lady longed for the wings of a dove to devour her provender elsewhere. So far she had learned one important lesson, and thus paints it. She says:

"I can endorse the veracity of the statement made by a
contributor to _Once a Week_, who most naively and
truthfully asserts that 'the land of Egypt is ruled over by
twenty princes: one of whom is the viceroy, eighteen of the
others are known as consuls-general of European nations; but
the twentieth is the most powerful of all, and his name is
Baksheesh, (gift, present, bribery.')"

To the high and mighty Prince Baksheesh, in duty bound we render all due homage; we bow our lowest salaam, and are pleased to make his acquaintance. He is not wholly unknown to fame in this hemisphere; for a popular superstition prevails in the rural districts that his majesty has many loyal subjects and followers in our own dearly beloved and dearly governed model republic. Prince Baksheesh is a power in our institutions, and a party to much of our legislation. The misfortune of the unprotected female was, that she did not propitiate the potentate; the superabundant fat would have been speedily withdrawn from the bill of fare.

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At last the day arrived for her to remove to the harem of the viceroy on the other side of the river; and she was destined to leave the hands of the agent in the same sort of consignment in which she had come into them, that is, amid bales, barrels, and boxes of merchandise. The dame, therefore, had no opportunity to take a look into the royal market-basket, to ascertain how Ismail Pasha provided for his little private family of three hundred females of different colors, ages, sizes,--and sexes of the feminine and neuter gender. Although the English governess has an eye for the ornamental and beautiful, it is nevertheless only one eye; the other throws its dark splendor upon the useful and substantial. Sometimes she endeavored to close both against sights which were neither the one nor the other. The truth of history, however, compels her to supply her readers with specimens of all these. She observes:

"The vice-regal standard, the everlasting crescent, floated at
the stem and stern. On they rowed most vigorously, and in less
than ten minutes I was landed at the stairs of the harem. The
building is a very plain structure, the interior of which is
painted like the trunks of the trees of the Dutch model village
of Broeck. In appearance it resembles the letter E, and is a
large pile, composed of five blocks of buildings. Proceeding to
the one which faced the Nile, I entered the _harem_,
('sacred,') passed through a small door--the grating sound of
whose huge hinges still seems to creak in my ears like the
grinding of the barrel-organ of an itinerant Italian or
Savoyard--which led into a court-yard, at that time lined, not
with a corps of the Egyptian infantry, with their shrill brass
bands playing opera airs, but with a group of hard-working
Fellahs and Arabs, toiling away like laborers in the London
docks, and rolling into the immense space hundreds of bales of
soft Geneva velvets, the costliest Lyons silks, rich French
satins, most elegant designed muslins, fast gaudy-colored
Manchester prints, stout Irish poplins, the finest Irish
linens, Brussels, Mechlin, Valenciennes, Honiton, and imitation
laces, Nottingham hose, French silk stockings, French and
Coventry ribbons, cases of the purest Schiedam, pipes of
spirits of wine, huge cases of fashionable Parisian boots,
shoes, and slippers, immense chests of _bon bons_ in
magnificent fancy-worked cases, boxes and baskets, bales of
_tombeki_, and the bright, golden-leaved tobacco of
Istambol, (Constantinople;) Cashmere, Indian, French, and
Paisley shawls of the most exquisite designs; baskets of
pipe-bowls, cases of amber mouth-pieces, cigarette papers, and
a whole host of miscellaneous packages too various to
enumerate, of other commodities destined for the use of the
inmates of that vast conservatory of beauty, all supplied by
his highness's partners. For, be it known to you, gentle
reader, that the Viceroy of Egypt may most appropriately be
styled _par excellence_ the Sinbad of the age, the
merchant-prince of the terrestrial globe.