Chapter IV: Front Matter (4)

Winters had left N----, the little county-town in Middle Ohio, where I had known him, in the spring of 1845, and had begun to travel as agent for a marble dealer of Pittsburgh, Pa. In this capacity he had roamed over all the Western States during several years, had made extensive acquaintances, and been rubbed against the world until he had acquired great knowledge of mankind and habits of self-reliance, without much of that polish of manner which worldly attrition usually gives a man. He was at that time between twenty-five and thirty years of age, in perfect health, and of herculean strength. He was considerably over six feet in height, compactly built, and that consciousness of power which such favored individuals possess, rendered him, in a great measure, indifferent to the opinions of others. Without any of the refinement which careful culture and early training confer, it is not to be wondered at that Tom was not 'over-particular' as to the society in which he ventured, or what profession he followed.

He had also been captain of a canal-packet, a drover, a deputy-sheriff, a general collector, and had first married in Kentucky, and settled at Lexington, where he had spent four years. There his wife died, without leaving children, and Tom was afloat upon the world again. Then he had spent two years in Mississippi; returned to Lexington, went to Cincinnati; 'and since then,' he continued, 'I have lived in every county on this side in succession, and have been here four years since I married my present wife; so that you see the seventeen years is now filled up, and you know my whole history.'

'But what were you doing in Mississippi?' I inquired.

For the first time Tom hesitated; and he answered, with an uneasy expression and a furtive glancing about of his keen hazel eye, that he had been an overseer on a plantation.

'The devil!' I exclaimed, rather abruptly.

'It is a fact,' said the plain-spoken Tom, looking seriously into his empty glass, then adding apologetically:

'What should I care about it? I had lived a long time in Kentucky, and been accustomed to slavery as it existed there. Besides, I am a Marylander by birth. I said slavery was right, and I believed it. My wife was dead; I had little means left, and cared for nothing.

'I had become acquainted with Luke Meminger, the principal negro-dealer at Lexington, who boarded at McGowan's Hotel, where I was then stopping, and he introduced me to a Mississippi planter' who was there buying a few hands for his plantation back of Grand Gulf. Talbot (that was the planter's name) seemed to take a fancy to me, and finally proposed to me to go with him to Mississippi and serve as assistant overseer. He offered me a salary of eight hundred dollars a year; said I should have a horse to ride over the plantation, a servant to wait on me, and an easy time of it generally. I accepted the offer, and accompanied him down the river. We took down fifteen niggars whom he had purchased in Kentucky, mostly at Lexington. I was there two years, and left heartily sick of it.'

'Well, that is an episode in your history, Tom,' I said, 'that I could never have imagined. But now you must tell me something about plantation life. I have heard and read a great deal about it, but never had it from the mouth of an old friend on whose word I could rely, and who possessed the advantage of having been an overseer himself.'

'Oh! there is very little to tell,' said Tom. 'I had to set the niggars at work and see that they performed their tasks; that was all.'

'Well, what crops did you cultivate?'

'Cotton.'

'How many hands did you work?'

'About seventy-five. There were some hundred and fifty on the plantation, altogether, big and little.

'What did the women do?'

'Women?' said Tom, with a slight note of interrogation. 'We didn't know any thing about women: they were all _hands_. When I was driving stock to New-York, I treated oxen and cows all alike; and on our plantation all the able-bodied hands worked together in the field, and no difference was made between them. There were old, decrepit wenches, unable to work, who took care of the children during the day. When the mothers came from the field at night they suckled their picaninies--for nearly all the women have babies. They breed like rabbits,' added Tom, 'in postscript.'

'But what did _you_ know about raising cotton?' I asked.

'Nothing, of course,' he replied, 'you must remember that I was second overseer. The head overseer took the chief management of affairs. But when I had been there about three months, Blake died--that was my chief's name--then the whole charge of the plantation then devolved on me. Talbot was North, spending the summer. I wrote to him at Saratoga, informing of the death of Blake, and requesting him to get another head-overseer. But I got no reply, and I supposed he never received the letter. When he came back in the fall, I found that he had, though; but he said he supposed things would go on well enough. And so they did. The supplies were all on hand, and there was nothing to do but to work the place, raise the crop, and gather it.'

'But, after the death of Blake, and in the absence of Talbot, your want of knowledge of the business must have worked you great inconvenience,' I remarked.

'Not at all,' he replied; 'I knew next to nothing about it, it is true; but the niggars did. [Tom _would_ call them _niggars_.] They understood the business well enough, the most of them. Talbot knew nothing about it himself, and he seemed to care less. These planters put every thing on the overseers. They make them responsible for the crop; and the overseers--they make the hands responsible.'

'Well, tell me something, now, of the operations of each day on the plantation. How early did you get the hands at work in the morning?'

'In summer I called the hands at about four o'clock. They had half an hour to get their feed and reach the field. I divided them into gangs of from fifteen to thirty each, and appointed some one of the most intelligent to oversee each gang. I then set them their tasks for the day; and calling out Dick, or Jeff, or whatever his name might be that I had appointed, I told him, in presence and hearing of his gang, that I made him responsible for the work being done, and being well done; that if the hands did not obey him, he should lick them, and make them do their work. In this way I never had any difficulty in getting the work done which I had set for them.

'When I had got them all at work, I rode from one part of the field to another to see how they were getting along; and when the sun began to get too hot, toward nine o'clock, I would go back to my quarters at the house, get my breakfast, and then lounge about awhile, and finally lie down and sleep through the heat of the day. After four or five o'clock in the afternoon, I had my horse brought up by my servant--I had my own servant, I told you; I had my boots blacked twice a day; had to keep up the dignity of the institution, you know--I had my horse brought up, and rode round to the different gangs.'

'But, Tom,' I inquired; 'I suppose you sometimes had to flog the slaves?'

'Never touched a one of them, never! 'T wan't no use. Made 'em do just as I wanted without striking a blow.'

'Why, how did you do it?'

'I've told you how I did it. I set some of them to oversee the rest. _They_ thrashed them; I didn't. If they failed in their tasks, I talked to them in this way,' (and he turned his wicked eye on me with a merry twinkle,) 'I called out the overseer, and spoke to him so that the rest could hear me; I said to him: 'Dick,' or 'Jeff,' or whatever his name was, 'how is this? I set you a task this morning that you could do easy enough. Why isn't it done? Some of your hands have been lazy. Now, mind, this won't do. I don't want to punish you, but I see I'll have to do it.' Then turning to the hands: 'Boys, what have you been so lazy for? You don't want Jeff licked, do you? Why don't you work like men, and finish the tasks I set you? You black devils, you! if you keep on in this way you will always be niggars; but if you work, and do as you ought to, you will get as white as I am, after a while!'

'This course generally had the desired effect; but I clinched the argument by threatening to withhold their whisky rations if they failed in their work.'

'Then you gave them whisky rations, did you?'

'Yes. Every Saturday night, if they had behaved well during the week, I gave them a keg of whisky to keep Sunday with. We locked up the tools, and the supplies, and in fact the houses. My room was bolted and barred like a state's prison, and I had a complete arsenal of guns, swords, and ammunition. And then they had a regular 'drunk' on Sunday. The keg held just enough, and not a drop over. They divided it out among themselves, by measurement, and it was all gone in time for them to get over the effects of it before Monday morning.'

'Don't you think,' I inquired, 'that the expected whisky rations was quite as great a stimulus to their exertions as your philosophical exhortations?'

'Perhaps it was. But you must recollect that the whisky rations formed a part of my lecture, and were always introduced as a clincher. I was the most popular overseer ever on the plantation, and when I left the darkies cried like babies. Talbot raised my wages to twelve hundred dollars, dating from the time I went there, and I performed the whole duties of overseer without any assistance.'

'And how did you come to leave so agreeable and profitable an employment?'

'Well, I'll tell you how it was. Talbot used to get tight; and although he was ordinarily a perfect gentleman in his behavior, when drunk he was the very devil! Then, he would abuse me like a pickpocket, and find all manner of fault with whatever I did. He would curse me for a d--d Yankee, and I would give him as good as he sent. I was no more a Yankee than he was, having been born, as you know, in Maryland.

'Often he drew his bowie-knife, and rushed at me as if he would cut me into mince-meat; but I met him boldly with my 'cheese-cutter,' and backed him down. I could have handled him as I would a child, and he knew it. And if he had ever drawn blood on me, I would have killed him in an instant; and he knew it.

'One day when he was drunk, he got mad at a niggar woman he kept about the house, and ordered me to whip her. I told him to whip her himself. This enraged him terribly. He was just drunk enough to be crazy. Out came the everlasting bowie-knife, and out came mine, as usual. Then he turned from me--whom he feared to attack, drunk and insensate as he was--he turned from me upon the poor black girl. She was standing near, with her eyes cast down, and did not immediately perceive his intention.

'She was a pretty girl--a dark mulatto--and had long been his favorite. But he was then perfectly blind with fury, and dashed at her with his glittering knife raised above his head. She saw him in time to utter a piercing shriek, and while in the act of turning to fly, the weapon fell upon her neck, severed the jugular vein, and prostrated her to the floor.

'The poor girl never spoke again. The blood rushed like water from the wound, her face paled, her limbs stiffened, and, with a few convulsive shudders, she was dead. She was taken to one of the huts, and buried by the blacks on the following night. There was no inquest--no inquiry--it was nobody's business.

'As for Talbot, as soon as he saw her fall he appeared to be sobered all at once. He looked at her a moment, glanced at the bloody knife, and then cast it from him, as if he were purging himself of the offense, or punishing the offender by the act. He said not a word, but went to his room. I saw him no more that day.

'On the next, I went to him and told him he must get another overseer, for I was about to leave. He seemed incredulous at first, then stormed, then finding me inflexible, he offered to increase my wages if I would remain. I had but one answer for all. I said to him: 'Mr. Talbot, I don't want your money. If I would stay with you at all, I would stay for my present salary. But I will not stay: I never eat my words. If you are ready to settle with me now, say so; if not, say when you will be ready.'

'He said he was ready then, and we settled. I had a few hundred dollars due to me, which he paid, and I was on my way to Grand Gulf within two hours after. The subject of the murder of the mulatto girl was not alluded to between us.'

* * * * *

'Well,' I said to Tom, 'what is your opinion of slavery now? You are able to judge for yourself of the 'institution,' having formed one of its ornaments, and contributed to keep up its 'dignity.' I suppose you have read _Uncle Tom's Cabin_, and are prepared to give a flat denial to the pretended facts of the author. Of course it is all false about the parting of families--husband and wife, parent and child, etc., and all the instances of that sort of cruelty cited in her appendix are trash and a libel upon the beneficent and patriarchal institution?'

I spoke ironically, and he so understood me. The passions of Tom's great heart had been gradually wrought up by a review of the bloody scene he had himself witnessed, and which had made a strong impression on him, and he now sprung to his feet.

'_Uncle Tom's Cabin_ be d--d!' he cried. 'Owen Glendower, what I've seen with my own eyes I know, don't I? I could tell you things that would make your hair stand straight out, if I was a mind to; but it's no use.

'As to slavery, as it exists in the Sugar and Cotton States, to-day, I have but one fit illustration for it.

'The religious writers of the Jews, and those who follow their ideas, have pictured to us the future condition of the sinner and finally impenitent as the most desperate and deplorable possible to be conceived--as they thought. They had never witnessed American slavery as practiced in the nineteenth century. If they, had, the material fire, the tormenting fiends, and the 'worm that never dies,' would have given place to the natural features of a Mississippi plantation, where the unrestrained passions of avarice, brutality, and lust make a Hell to which the _Gehenna_ of the Hebrews is but a mild sort of purgatory by comparison.

'About parting husband and wife, and parent and child, I will tell you one thing I myself saw in Kentucky; and in Kentucky you know, slavery exists in its mildest form, and the system approaches nearer to that patriarchal character which is most falsely claimed for it by its supporters, than in any of the more Southern States.'

Just then Master Winters returned to the room, and on seeing him Tom's excitement apparently increased. He gesticulated violently, and delivered himself in short, emphatic sentences, interlarded, I am sorry to say, with rather too many of those objectionable expletives that an ex-slave-overseer may be supposed to be addicted to. Swearing is a vulgar practice, and one for which there is no sort of justification; and yet, I must confess, it is calculated to give a certain savage energy to one's language when he has not a very copious vocabulary of choicer epithets and synonyms at command. Of course I can not do justice to Tom's colloquial style in print, but he proceeded:

'I was, as I told you before, well acquainted with the slave-dealer, Meminger, at Lexington. We boarded together at M'Gowan's; and after my wife died I went about with him considerable.

'One day, in the winter before I left there to go to Mississippi, he and I were coming over from Danville. It was the coldest day I ever knew in Kentucky. Kentucky has a mild climate, and the winters are short and not very severe. Still the weather is very variable, and there will occasionally occur a day in January which is as cold as any where else, and which is felt all the more for being an exception.

'This day, when Meminger and I were coming over from Danville, was one of those days. It was cold; I tell you, it was almighty cold! We were on horseback, and were bundled up with any amount of clothes and mufflers, and had leggins on--as they always wear them in Kentucky when they go on horseback. We had got--you know where the turnpike forks south of the Kentucky river. One branch runs this way, to Danville; the other, that way to Lancaster and Stanford. Right here in the forks--that is the identical spot where Camp 'Dick Robinson' now is; but there was no camp there then, by a long shot. Then as you approach the river, you come down a long hill, a mile long, at least, you know.

'Well, we had got nearly to the bottom of this hill, and were coming along at a pretty good jog, when we heard some body hallooing after us, and we held up. Looking around, we saw a man running down from the house standing upon the side-hill, a little away from the road. May be you remember the house up there? Well, he was hallooing like a loon, and we waited till he came up. Soon as he got near enough to talk, he says:

''An't one o' you Mr. Meminger, the negro-trader from Lexington?'

''My name's Meminger,' said my companion, 'and I sometimes buy niggars. What do you want?'

''I want to sell you a woman,' replied the man.

''Where is she?'

''Up at my house, there.'

''Well, fotch her down, then. You don't suppose I'm going up there for any d--d niggar woman, such a day as this, do you? And be quick about it, for I don't intend to stand here in the cold.'

'The man started back for the house on the run, and kept hallooing and motioning to some one who met him on the way; and he returned to where we stood on the 'pike with as fine, healthy a looking young black girl as I have often seen. She was dressed with a single garment, which hardly covered her; and she carried in her arms a child, apparently about two or three months old, which she had wrapped up in some rags to keep it warm.

''This is the woman,' said the man.

''What do you ask for her?' said Meminger.

''I'll take eight hundred dollars for the mother and child,' said the man.

''D--n the child!' said Meminger; 'do you suppose I want two months children in my pen? If you do, you are cursedly mistaken. What will you take for the woman alone?'

''I don't very well like to part them,' said the man hesitatingly, 'and I promised my wife I wouldn't. But if you won't buy the child--'

''I tell you I won't buy the child, and that's enough,' broke in Meminger.

''---- I'll take seven hundred dollars for the woman.'

'Meminger threw his bridle-rein to me, and slid down from his horse to look at the girl. He stepped up to her, caught her upper lip with one hand and her lower with the other, and opened her mouth, and examined her teeth in the same manner that you or I, Owen, would a horse. Then he took her by the arm, twirled her round, struck her roughly on her back, felt the muscle of her fore-arm, her thigh, and calf; then stood back and examined her all over a moment, and said:

''I suppose she is all right? I don't want her, but I am going right home, and I can take her along as well as not, and I'll give you six hundred dollars for her. If you want it, say so at once, for I an't going to stand here talking all day!'

'The man seemed reluctant to take the sum offered--said she was worth more, and he ought to give six hundred and fifty for her.

'Meminger cut him short with a savage oath, telling him that if he wasn't going to accept the six hundred, to say so, for he would not stand there in the cold any longer for the six hundred dollars, niggar and all, and he moved toward his horse as if to remount.

''Well, then,' said the man, who seemed determined to sell her at some price, 'take her at six hundred if that's all you'll give.'

'Meminger drew out a blank bill of sale--that's the way they do it, you know, have to have it in writing--and said to me:

''Here, Tom, you fill out this for me, for my hands have got so cold I can't write.'

'He took a pen and ink from his pocket, and I filled out the bill of sale while he counted down six hundred dollars in bills on the Northern Bank of Kentucky, and paid them over. By the time the man had signed the bill the ink was frozen solid.

''Hurry up!' says Meminger.

'The man having received his money, caught the child from its mother's arms and started for the house without saying another word.

'The woman had all this time been shivering with the cold, and apparently wholly occupied with the child in endeavoring to keep it warm. She pressed it to her bosom, examined the ragged covering with care and tenderness, and strove to draw her own scanty garment over it. She seemed, in fact, so engrossed with her care of the child that she had not comprehended that part of the negotiation which threatened to part her from it. Perhaps she did not, in her blind maternal confidence, conceive such a thing possible!

'When the child was roughly snatched from her, she paused an instant, as if collecting her thoughts, and then, awakening to the reality of the case, she started wildly after it. But Meminger was too quick for her. He was used to such scenes. He caught her before she had gone three steps, and rudely threw her down. She uttered scream after scream, and implored him not to part her from her child. Turning alternately from the unfeeling and repulsive countenance of the slave-trader to the retreating form of her late master, who bore away farther and farther from her all that she knew of love or hope on earth, her impassioned entreaties touched every key-note of human agony from frenzy to despair. It was of no use. Meminger regarded her feelings no more than I regarded the lowings of my stock when I was in the droving business.

'He mounted his horse, brought him up alongside of a low bank, and ordered the woman to get up behind him. This she did as one accustomed to obey, groaning and crying piteously. He placed her behind his saddle, astride of the horse as if she were a man. In this position, what dress she had on, and it was not much, was necessarily drawn up above her knees. She had an old pair of scuffs of shoes on, the rest of the limbs were bare. And in this way we went on through the cold, she shivering, sobbing, and clinging to the negro-trader, all the way to Lexington. Only at Nicholasville, I persuaded Meminger to alight and get some clothes to wrap up the girl's legs to prevent them from being frosted before he got her home.'

'And do you really think she had a mother's affection for her child, and felt its loss as acutely as other mothers--white mothers?' I asked him.

'Do I think so?' he asked, almost fiercely. 'Come here, Henry Clay!' and he reached down and lifted his boy up into his huge arms and kissed him with fervor.

'Do you see that boy? Do you think his white mother loves him?' he asked.

'No doubt of it,' I answered.

'And I tell you, Owen Glendower,' he resumed, 'that just as my wife, Mrs. Winters, loves this boy, did that black mother love her child. More strongly, more firmly did she love it; more frantically did she bewail its loss, because her reason did not suggest any hope of its ultimate recovery, such as might be entertained by an intelligent white woman. And when it was suddenly snatched from her bosom, on that cold day, by the Kentucky River, it was as much lost to her as if it had been snatched by the hand of death instead of that of her inhuman master.'

'This was a single instance, you may say; but if I've seen _one_, I've seen _fifty_ such. Not all alike, but varying with circumstance, locality, and occasion; and yet all due alike to the essential elements of human slavery, and inseparable from the institution.'

* * * * *

My time was up. I bade adieu to my hostess, shook Tom Winters' hand, and started for the cars with a feeling of satisfaction at having encountered him again, even if it should be for the last time.

THE WHITE HILLS IN OCTOBER.

Our town friends, who fly from the heat and dust, and menacing diseases and insupportable _ennui_, of their city residence during the months of July and August, may have an escape, but they have little enjoyment. We admire the heroism with which they endure, year after year, the discomforts of a country hotel, or the packing in the narrow, half-furnished bed-rooms and rather warm attics of rural lodging-houses, and the general abatement and contraction of creature-comforts, in such startling contrast to the abounding luxuries of their own city palaces. But they are right. The country, at any discount, is better, in the fearful heats of July and August, than the town with its hot, unquiet nights and polluted air. Any hillside or valley in the country, and a shelter under any roof in or upon them, with the broad cope of heaven above, (not cut into patches and fragments by intervening walls and chimney-tops,) and broad fields, and grass, and corn, and woodlands, and their flowers and freshening dews and breezes, and all Nature's infinite variety, is better than every appliance and contrivance of luxury, with the din, the suffocation, and unrest of city life.

Yes, our city friends are right in their summer flight from

'----the street,
Filled with its ever-shifting train;'

but they must not flatter themselves that their mere glimpse of country life--their mere snatch at its midsummer beauty, the one free-drawn breath of their wearied spirit--is acquaintance with it. As well might one who had seen Rosalind, the most versatile of Shakspeare's heroines, only in her court-dress at her uncle the duke's ball, guess at her infinite variety of charm in the Forest of Ardennes. Nature holds her drawing-room in July and August. She wears her fullest and richest dresses then; if we may speak flippantly without offense to the simplicity of her majesty, she is then _en pleine toilette_. But any other of the twelve is more picturesque than the summer months: blustering March, with its gushing streams tossing off their icy fetters; changeful April, with its greening fields and glancing birds; sweet, budding, blossoming May; flowery June; fruitful September; golden, glorious October; dreary, thoughtful November; and all of Winter, with its potent majesty and heroic adversity.

But let our citizens come to our rural districts; the more, the better for them! Only let them not imagine they get that 'enough' which is 'as good as a feast.'

This preamble was naturally suggested by our autumnal life in the country, and by a recurrence to a late delightful passage through the 'White Hills of New Hampshire.'

'That resort of people that do pass
In travel to and fro'

during the intense months of July and August, we found in October so free from visitors, that we might have fancied ourselves the discoverers of that upland region of beauty, unparalleled, so far as we know, in all the traveled parts of our country. And for the benefit of those who shall come after us, for all who have their highest enjoyment, perhaps their best instruction, in Nature's 'free school,' we intended to give some brief notices of our tour, in the hope of extending the traveling season into October by imparting some faint idea of the startling beauty of this brilliant month in the mountains; but what we might have said was happily superseded.

At a little inn in a small town, after we came down from the 'high places,' we met a party of friends who had preceded us along the whole route by a day. A rain came on, and we were detained together for twenty-four hours. We agreed to pass the evening in a reciprocal reading of the brief notes of our journey. It came last to the turn of my friend, a very charming young person, whom I shall take the liberty to call Mary Langdon. She blushed and stammered, and protested against being a party to the contribution.

'Mine,' she said, 'is a long letter to my cousin, which I began before we left home.'

'So much the better,' we rejoined, 'for the pleasure will be the longer.'

'But it has been written in every mood of feeling.'

'Therefore,' we urged, 'the more variety.'

At last, driven to the wall, she threw a nice morocco letter-case into my lap, saying:

'Take it and read it to yourself, and you will see why I positively can not read it aloud.'

So we gave up our entreaties. I read the letter-journal after I went to my room. The reading cheated me of an hour's sleep; perhaps because I had just intensely enjoyed the country my friend described; and in the morning I begged Miss Langdon's permission to publish it. She at first vehemently objected, saying it would be in the highest degree indelicate to publish so much of her own story as was inextricably interwoven with the journey.

'But, dear child,' I urged, 'who that reads THE CONTINENTAL knows you? And besides, when this is published, (if indeed the Messrs. Editors of that popular journal graciously permit it to see the light,) you will be on the other side of the Atlantic; and before you return, this record will be forgotten, for, alas! we contributors to Monthlies do not write for immortality.'

'But for the briefest mortality I am not fitted to write,' she pleaded.

I rather smiled at the novelty of one hesitating to write for the public because not fitted for the task; and, thinking of 'the fools that rushed in,' (there is small aptness in the remainder of the familiar quotation,) I continued to urge till my young friend yielded, on my promising to omit passages which relate to the emotions and rites of the inner temple; Mary Langdon not partaking that incomprehensible frankness or child-like hallucination which enables some of our very best writers--Mrs. Browning, for instance--to impart, by sonnets and in various vehicles of prose and verse, to the curious and all-devouring public those secrets from the heart's holy of holies that one would hardly confess to a lover or a priest.

It is to our purpose, writing, as we profess to do, _pour l'utile_, that our young friend indulged little in sentiment that her circumstances rendered dangerous to her peace, and that, being a country-bred New-England girl, she conscientiously, set down the coarser realities essential to the well-being of a traveler--breakfasts, dinners, etc. But before proceeding to her journal, I must introduce my _debutante_, if she who will probably make but a single appearance before the public may be so styled.

Mary Langdon is still on the threshold of life; at least those who have reached threescore would deem her so, as she is not more than three-and-twenty. The freshness of her youth has been preserved by a simple and rather retired country-life. A total abstinence from French novels and other light reading has left the purity and candor of her youth unscathed by their blight and weather-stain. Would that this tree of the knowledge of evil--not _good_ and evil--were never transplanted into our New World. 'If ye eat of it,' your love of what is natural and simple 'will surely die;' ye will lose your perception of the sweet odors of the flowers Providence has sown along your path, and the vile exhalations from these fruits of corrupted genius will hide from you the star of duty--perhaps Nature's sternest light, but her best.

Mary Langdon's simplicity is that of truth, not of ignorance. Her father has given her what he calls 'a good old-fashioned English education;' that means, he says, that 'she thoroughly knows how to read, write, and cipher, which few girls brought up at French boarding-schools do.' As might be suspected from the practical ideas in her narrative, our young friend has had that complete development of her faculties which arises out of the necessities of country-life in its best aspects. There is hardly a position in our country, now, so isolated but one may 'follow the arts' if one chooses, foreign artists and accomplished exiles pervading our country parts. Mary has availed herself of the facilities thus afforded to cultivate a musical talent and temperament, and acquire enough of the foreign languages to open their literature to her. Strangers do not call Mary Langdon handsome; but her friends do, and they marvel that her fair oval face, her spirited expression, tempered by the sweetest mouth and most pearly and expressive teeth, do not strike all eyes. And then she is so buoyant, so free of step and frank of speech, that while others are slowly winding their way to your affections, she springs into your heart.

With due respect to seniority, we should have presented Mr. Langdon before his daughter. On being called on for his journal, he said he was not 'such a confounded fool as to keep one for any portion of his life. He should as soon think of crystallizing soap-bubbles. He had dotted down a few memoranda in his memorandum book, as warnings to future travelers, and we were welcome to them; though he thought we were too mountain-mad to profit by them, if indeed any body ever profited by any body else's experience!' The fact was, the dear old gentleman had left home in a very unquiet state of mind. He hated at all times leaving his home, abounding in comforts. He detested travel under what he termed 'alleviating circumstances.' He was rather addicted to growling; this English instinct came over with his progenitor in the Mayflower, and half a dozen generations had not sufficed to subdue it. But Mr. Langdon's 'bark is worse than his bite.' In truth his 'bite' is like that of a teething child's, resulting from a derangement of sweet and loving elements.

We found our old friend's memoranda so strongly resembling the grumbling of our traveling cousins from over the water, that we think it may be edifying to print it in a parallel column, as a per contra, illustrating the effects of the lights or shadows that emanate from our own minds. Providence provides the banquet; its relish or disrelish depends on the appetite of the guest.

But to Mary Langdon's letter, which, as it was begun before she left home, bears its first date there:

'LAKE-SIDE, _28th September_.--My Dear Sue: I have not much more to tell you than my last contained. Carl Heiner left our neighborhood last week, determined to return by the next steamer to Dusseldorf. We were both very wretched at this final parting. But as I have often seen people making great sacrifices to others, and then letting them lose all the benefit of the sacrifice, by the manner of it, I summoned up courage, and appeared before my father calm and acquiescing, and--you will think me passionless, perhaps hard-hearted--I soon became so. I read, over and over again, your arguments, and I confess I was willing to be persuaded by them. But, after all, my point of sight is not yours, and you can not see objects in the proportions and relations that I do. You say I have exaggerated notions of filial duty, that I have come to mature age and ripe judgment, and that I should decide and act for myself; that in the nature of things the conjugal must supersede the filial relation, and that I have no right to sacrifice my life-long happiness to the remnant of my father's days; and above all, that I am foolish to give in to his prejudices, and _selfishness_, you added, dear, and did not quite efface the word. Now I see there is much reason in what you say, and I have only to answer that I can not leave my father with a shadow of his disapprobation. I can not and I will not. Our hearts have grown together. God forms the bond that ties the child to the parent, and we make the other, and rotten it often proves. Susy, you lost your parents when you were so young, that you can not tell what I feel for my surviving one. Since my mother's death and Alice's marriage, he has lived in such dependence on me, that I can't tell what his life would be if I were to leave him; and I will not. You tell me this is unnatural, and a satisfactory proof to you that I do not love Carl Heiner. O Sue----'

'Here must be our first hiatus. We can only say that the outpouring of our young friend's heart satisfied us that beneath her serene surface there was an unfathomable well of feeling, and that her friend must have been convinced that 'love's reason' is _not_ always without reason. The letter proceeds:

'I very well know that my father is prejudiced, Sue, but old men's prejudices become a part and parcel of themselves, and they can not be cured of them. My father's do not spring from any drop of bitterness, for he has not one--nor from egotism, for he has none of it; but, as you know, his early life was in Boston, and his only society is there, and he naturally partakes the opinions of his cotemporaries, who--the few surviving--believe all foreigners to be a sort of 'outside barbarians,' and especially regard those who have participated in the revolutionary movements of Europe as impertinent invaders of our exclusive birthright to 'liberty, equality, and the pursuit of happiness.' Artists, in the creed of these good old gentlemen, are mere vagrants; and so my father comes to look upon Carl's intense love of his art, and his confidence in his future success, justified as it is by that already achieved, as a mere hallucination. So it is all ended--_for the present_. How subtle is hope! it still lurks in my heart in spite of the strongest probability that all is ended _forever_.'

* * * * *

GLEN-HOUSE, _White Hills, October 3d_.--I am resuming my unfinished
letter to you, my dear Sue, much nearer heaven than I began it. The
day of Carl's sailing from New-York, my father proposed to me to go
to Boston, take up Alice there, and come up to the hill-country.
Dear father! he was offering me a lump of sugar after the bitter
medicine, and I accepted it, sure at least of a momentary sweet
sensation, and very sure that my poor father felt comforted by the
self-complacency flowing from the enormous sacrifice he was making
in coming up to the highlands at this cold season. My sister was
glad enough to get a holiday from her nursery, so, on Monday, the
second of October, a mellow, beautiful day, we came into Boston to
take the two o'clock cars for Portland. We had three hours upon our
hands, which were pleasantly filled up by visits to a studio and a
picture-shop, and finally to refresh our mortal part, which had
been running down while we were feasting the immortal, to a
restaurateur's.

We groped our way up-stairs into a little back-room in School
street, where, if we did not find luxuries and elegance, we did
wholesome fare and civility. The rail-ride to Portland was dusty
but brief, and we arrived there in time to see its beautiful harbor
while the water reflected the roses thrown by the last rays of the
sun upon the twilight clouds. We eschewed the hotel, and were
kindly received at the boarding-house of a Miss Jones, a single
woman somewhere between thirty and forty, who so blends dignity
with graciousness, that she made us feel more like guests than
customers. One might well mistake her reception for a welcome. Her
house is a model, adding variety and abundance to the perfection,
in all but these attributes, of the table of an English inn, and
having the quiet and completeness, neatness and elegance, that have
made the English tavern a classic type of comfort. It seems this
house with its high repute, was the inheritance of two sisters from
their mother, of whom we were told an anecdote which may be
apocryphal, but which certainly would not be discordant with the
character of Sir Roger de Coverley. The old lady finished her
patriarchal days serenely, and when she was dying, begged that the
order of her house might be in no wise disturbed by the event of
her decease, but that 'the gentlemen would play their evening game
of whist as usual'!

Miss Jones's morning face was as benign as her evening countenance
had been. No lady could have administered hospitality with more
refinement. We were to be at the station before seven, and just as
our carriage-door was closing, it was reopened, and a rough but
decent country-woman was shoved in, the driver muttering something
about there being no other conveyance for her. My father looked a
little awry, not with any thought of remonstrating against the
procedure--no native American would do that, you know--but he was
just lighting his after-breakfast segar, and he shrunk from the
impropriety of smoking in such close quarters, with even such a
woman-stranger. 'I hope, madam,' he said, 'a segar does not offend
you?' 'La! no, sir,' replied our rustic friend most good-naturedly,
'I like it.' My father's geniality is always called forth by the
touch of his segar. He said, with a smile at the corners of his
mouth: 'Perhaps, madam, you would try one yourself.' 'I would!' she
answered eagerly. My father hospitably selected his best segar,
which she took, saying: 'Thank you kindly, sir. I s'pose I can
light it at the end of yours.' My dear, fastidious father
heroically breasted this juxtaposition, and the good woman,
unconscious of any thing but her keen enjoyment of the unlooked-for
boon, smoked away vigorously. Alice, who never loses sight of her
duty to avert a possible mischance from any human being, rather
verdantly suggested, 'that the segar might make her sick.' 'Mercy,
child! I am used to pipes,' she replied; which, indeed, we might
have inferred from her manner of holding the segar. Her rapid puffs
soon resulted in the necessity usually engendered by smoking, and
half-rising from her seat it was too evident that she mistook the
pure plate-glass for empty space. My father let down the glass as
if he had been shot, but she, no wise discomposed, even by our
laughing, (for Alice and I could not resist it,) merely said,
coolly: 'Why, I didn't calculate right, did I?' There are
idiosyncrasies in Yankeedom, there is no doubt of it. We had a long
drive to the cars, but there our close companionship, and our
acquaintance, too, ended, except that the woman's husband--for she
had a husband, some Touchstone, whose 'humor' it was to 'take that
no other man would,' came to me, and asked me to put my window
down, for his 'wife was sick.' But as I had just observed the good
woman munching a bit of mince-pie, I thought that, coming so close
upon the segar might possibly offend her stomach more than the
fresh, untainted air, so I declined, as courteously as possible,
with the answer I have always ready for similar requests, 'that I
keep my window open to preserve the lives of the people in the
car.' 'That's peculiar!' I heard her murmur; but her serenity was
no wise discomposed by my refusal, or her sickness. Surely the
imperturbable good-nature of our people is national and peculiar.

By the way, there were notices posted up in these cars, which
reminded us that we were near the English Provinces, and under
their influence. The notices ran thus: 'Gentlemen are requested not
to put their feet on the cushions, and not to spit on the floor,
and to maintain a respectable cleanliness. The Conductors are
required to enforce these requests.' Must we wait for the
millennium to see a like request and like enforcement in our own
cars?

We found ourselves surrounded by intelligent people of the
country--_habitués_ who gave us all the local information we asked,
told us when we came to 'Bryant's Pond,' and that the poor little
shrunken stream that still brawled and fretted in its narrowed
channel, along which we were gliding, was the Androscoggin. At
Gorham, but seven miles from the Glen-House, we found a wagon
awaiting passengers, 'the last of the season,' we were told. 'The
houses are all closed,' (he spoke technically) added our driver,
'and the cold has already been so tedious that the _bubble_ has
burst on Mt. Washington.' 'What! the bubble! What means the man?'
exclaimed my father. 'Oh!' said I, 'it is only a poor joke upon
some 'nothing venture, nothing have' people who have come here
since the company season is past, they have told them the bulb had
burst.' 'Oh! the bulb! the bulb!' exclaimed my father; 'oh! that's
it, and I don't in the least doubt it' And as we went on slowly
making the long ascent, he looked 'sagely sad.' However, Alice was,
as she always can be, 'bright without the sun,' and my father
kindly protested that the slight sprinkling that, ever and anon,
reminded us of our exposure in an open wagon, was no annoyance to
him, and he even responded to our exclamations of delight at the
wreaths of mist that floated around the mountains, and dropped over
their summits, so that our imaginations were not kept in abeyance
by definite outlines, and we were at liberty to fancy them just as
high as we wished them. The air was as soft as in the early days of
September, and our steeds very considerately lingered, thus
prolonging our pleasure, so that we came into the Glen-House with
keen appetites, a needful blessing, we thought, when Mr. Thompson,
its host, said: 'We are not prepared for company in October, and I
don't know that we shall find any thing but pork and beans to give
you!' My father looked blank, and blanker yet when we were ushered
into a parlor where, instead of finding the crackling wood-fire
that we had fancied indigenous in these mountains, there was one of
those frightful black stoves that have expelled from our life all
the poetry of the hearthstone--but, courage, we can open the
stove-door, and see a sparkle of light and life.

10 P.M.--Before bidding you good night, dear Sue, I must tell you
'pour encourager les autres' who may come after us that our
scrupulous host performed so much better than he promised, that
when we were summoned to our dinner it was served in a cosy little
room, as neatly as a home dinner, and hot, which a hotel meal, _in
the season_, never is, and that the ghost of the pork and beans
which had terrified us, was exorcised by actual tender chickens,
fresh eggs, and plentiful accessories of vegetables and pies; and
our man, William, the driver, was converted into a waiter, doing
his part as if he were 'native to the manner.'

[N.B.--Our old friend's memorandum was scanty, and so we publish
but a small extract from it. We smile at his infirmities--more in
love than ridicule--and are not fond of proclaiming them, and only
do so in this brief extract to justify our assertion that his
traveling temper reminded us of English tourists, who would seem to
make it a point to turn their plates bottom-side upward. The
father's and daughter's records of the same scenes are both true.
The one is the right, the other the wrong side of the tapestry.
Strange, that any eye should make the fatal mistake of looking at
the last rather than the first.]

_September 29th, Anno Domini 18--._ ---- Left my comfortable
lowland home for unknown parts, and known mountain regions of snow
and ice. The Lord willing, I am sure of one pleasure--coming home!

_Monday Evening._--We had three mortal hours on our hands this
morning in Boston. I called on my dear old surviving friends of the
---- family. Not one of them, they tell me, has yet risked his life
in a rail-car. Wisdom is not extinct! Called on dear Widow O----,
who gave me a nice lunch of pickled oysters, rolls and butter, and
a glass of old Madeira. Meantime the girls were ranging round
studios(?) and picture-shops. This rage for art has come in with
the foreign tongues, since my time. Picked them up at a
restaurateur's. What a misnomer! What refreshment could be found in
the little back-parlor of a shop, with herds coming in and herd
going out, and a few faint rays of light stealing in between the
windows and the walls of back-buildings surrounding them? Came in
the cars to Portland. Dust disgusting! Shall never again see the
original color of my coat! Dust laid on inches deep, the continual
presence of a mob, and peril to life and limb; death staring you in
the face, ready to grab you at any moment. This is what we get by
the modern improvement of rail-cars over a gentleman's carriage,
with select and elect friends, and leisure to look at a beautiful
country! Travelers now are prisoners under sentence of probable
death--their jailer being called a _conductor_. Oh! I cry with my
old friend Touchstone: 'When I was at home, I was in a better
place!'

Rather a nice house, this of the Misses Jones--old-fashioned,
neatness, and comfort. But the lady should not favor us with the
company of her guest! Bad butter for tea. And my daughters
pronounce the house perfect!

_Tuesday Morning._--Bad butter again! could eat nothing.

_Tuesday Afternoon._--Happy illustration from a smoking old woman,
this morning, of the pleasant accessories of railroad traveling.
Found only an open wagon at Gorham, and a rain impending.
Convenience of travelers much talked of, but in my opinion, the
convenience of those who transport them is alone consulted.

The approach to the mountain, dreary. The girls--Lord, help
us!--call it beautiful, sublime! Not very cold, but the driver says
the bulb has already burst on Mount Washington! What an arrant old
fool I was to propose coming up here! The 'Glen-House closed!' But
the landlord graciously, as a favor, 'took us in'--a 'take in' to
the tune of his summer-prices, no doubt. Fried salt-ham at dinner,
and mince-pie for a supplement!

Went with the girls to walk, and plunged into forest-paths, where,
instead of our broad, smiling, home meadows, and orchards, and
gardenspots, we could see nothing but the ghostly mountains in
their fog-shrouds, and precipices, and uprooted trees, and that
plague of our Egypt--Paddies--who are making a road to the summit
of Mount Washington, that men, women, and much cattle may be
dragged up to see a savage view--ninety-nine times out of a hundred
befogged!

_Wednesday._--Well, here we are! raining all night, and when I
could sleep, haunted by dire mischances, torrents, slides, etc.
Waked by a devilish gong! Hot biscuits, potatoes, and corn-bread,
on the breakfast-table; could eat none of them. Villainous tea!
Raining and sunshining alternately, so that no mortal can tell
whether to go or stay; and meantime here am I, sitting by a gloomy
window where I can see nothing but these useless mountains. Lord,
forgive me! The angels do hover about me, even here, in the shape
of my children! Etc., etc., etc.!