Chapter II: Preface: To Volume Second (1)

Our first volume having been devoted to the Reason or Theory of Art in general, it is our intention in the second, Rhyme and Rhythm, to bring these comprehensive thoughts to a focus, and concentrate their light upon the art of Versification. Indeed, this volume is to be considered as a _manual_ of poetic Rhythm. Practical rules are given for its construction and criticism; simple solutions offered of its apparent irregularities and anomalies; and examples of sufficient length are quoted from the best poets to afford just ideas of the scope and power of the measure under consideration. The numerous citations given under their appropriate metrical heads are intended not only to assist the student in the analysis of verse, but to aid him in the choice of forms in accordance with his subject, in case he should himself wish to create Poems.

By its extrication from the entanglement of quantity and syllabic accent, under which it has been almost buried, an effort has been made to simplify the study of Rhythm: by tracing its origin and characteristics, and by the citation of poems in which its power and beauty are conspicuous, we have endeavored to render the subject one of vivid interest.

CHAPTER FIRST.

RHYTHM.

What is Rhythm? The best definition of this perplexing word has been given by the grand old Bohemian composer Tomaschek:

'The _order_ perceptible in a succession of sounds recurring in
_determinate_ portions of Time, which portions of Time are more
distinctly marked for the ear through the _accentuation_ of certain
determinate parts, constitutes Rhythm.

Rhythm has been surrounded with so much mystery, has been the subject of so much learned debate and research, has called forth so many quartos and folios, that few know what a familiar thing it is, how closely it everywhere surrounds us, how constantly it beats within us. For the pulsations of the heart are rhythmical, and the measured throbs of life register in music every moment of our passing existence on the bosom of Time. And when life manifests itself to the senses through the medium of time, time being to the ear what space is to the eye, the Order of its pulsations is Rhythm. Strange relation between our own marvellous being and the march of time, for its mystic rhythm beats in tune with every feeling that sweeps over the heart, forever singing its primeval chant at the very core of our existence! The law of Rhythm is the law of mortal life: the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising ever again in new exertion, to sink again in ever new repose:

'And our hearts, though true and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.'

This low music of the heart never ceases until stilled by the touch of death, when the spirit, led by God, enters upon the waveless ocean of an immeasurable eternity, where past and future meet in the eternal present. Time with its rhythmic measures is then no more. The necessity of 'effort and rest,' 'exertion and repose,' will exist no longer. What the fuller music of that higher life is to be, 'it has not yet entered into the heart of man to conceive.' But if the very _imperfection_ of our being has been rendered so full of charm to us in the order and proportion with which it records its law, 'effort and repose,' 'life and death'--what may we not expect when this mortal shall have put on immortality? We should think of this when that saddest of human sounds, 'it beats no more; it measures time no longer'--knells upon our ear the silence of the throbbing, passionate heart.

Nor is inanimate nature without the quickening breath of Rhythm. It cadences the dash of the wave, chimes in the flash of the oar, patters in the drops of rain, whispers in the murmurings of the forest leaves, leaps in the dash of the torrent, wails through the sighing of the restless winds, and booms in the claps and crashes of heaven's thunders.

Only through _succession_ do we arrive at the idea of time, and through a continual _being and ceasing to be_ are its steppings made sensible to us. It is thus literally true, as sung by the Poet, that 'we take no note of Time but from its loss.' Happy are we if so used that it may mark our eternal progress.

There is but little mystery in the art of keeping time, since we may at once gather a correct notion of it from the vibrations of the pulse, or from our manner of walking. If we listen to the sound of our own step, we find it equal and regular, corresponding with what is termed common time in music. Probably the time in which we walk is governed by the action of the heart, and those who step alike have pulses beating in the same time. To walk faster than this gives the sensation of hurry; to walk slower, that of loitering. The mere recurrence of sounds at regular intervals by no means constitutes the properties of _musical_ time; accent is necessary to parcel them out into those portions which Rhythm and the ear approve. If we listen to the trotting of a horse or the tread of our own feet, we cannot but notice that each alternate step is louder than the other--by which we throw the sounds into the order of common time. But if we listen to the amble or canter of a horse, we hear every third step to be louder than the other two, owing to the first and third foot striking the ground together. This regularity throws the sounds, into the order of triple time. To one or other of these descriptions may be referred every sort of time.

There is a sympathetic power in measured time which has not yet received the attention it deserves. It has been found that in a watchmaker's shop the timepieces or clocks connected with the same wall or shelf have such a sympathetic effect in keeping time, that they stop those which beat in irregular time; and if any are at rest, set agoing those which beat accurately. What wonder then that the living, soldiers, artisans, such as smiths, paviors, etc., who work in unison with the pulse, should acquire habits of keeping time with the greatest correctness.

Rhythm not only measures the footfall of the pedestrian, but exerts a sympathetic power, so that if two are walking together, they feel its spell, and unconsciously fall into the same step, not aware that they are thus conforming to a Unity always engendered by the Order regulating rhythmical motion. It is this entrancing sense of unity which wings the feet of the dancers, and enables them to endure with delight a degree of physical exertion which, without it, would be utterly exhausting. The following extract from the _Atlantic Monthly_, of July, 1858, is so much to our purpose, that we place it before the reader:

'The sailor does not lack for singing. He sings at certain parts of
his work;--indeed, he must sing, if he would work. On vessels of
war, the drum and fife or boatswain's whistle furnish the necessary
movement-regulator. There, where the strength of one or two hundred
men can be applied to one and the same effort, the labor is not
intermittent, but continuous. The men form on either side of the
rope to be hauled, and walk away with it like firemen marching with
their engine. When the headmost pair bring up at the stern or bow,
they part, and the two streams flow back to the starting point,
outside the following files. Thus in this perpetual
'follow-my-leader' way the work is done, with more precision and
steadiness than in the merchant service. Merchantmen are invariably
manned with the least possible number, and often go to sea
short-handed, even according to the parsimonious calculations of
their owners. The only way the heavier work can be done at all is
by each man doing his utmost at the same moment. This is regulated
by the song. And here is the true singing of the deep sea. It is
not recreation; it is an essential part of the work. It mastheads
the topsail yards, on making sail; it starts the anchor from the
domestic or foreign mud; it 'rides down the main tack with a will;'
it breaks out and takes on board a cargo; it keeps the pumps (the
ship's, not the sailor's) going. A good voice and a new and
stirring chorus are worth an extra man. And there is plenty of need
of both.

'I remember well one black night in the mid-Atlantic, when we were
beating up against a stiff breeze, coming on deck near midnight,
just as the ship was put about. When a ship is tacking, the tacks
and sheets (ropes which confine the clews or lower corners of the
sails) are let run, in order that the yards may be swung round to
meet the altered position of the ship. They must then be hauled
taut again, and belayed, or secured, in order to keep the sails in
their place and to prevent them from shaking. When the ship's head
comes up in the wind, the sail is for a moment or two edgewise to
it, and then is the nice moment, as soon as the headsails fairly
fill, when the mainyard and the yards above it can be swung
readily, and the tacks and sheets hauled in. If the crew are too
few in number, or too slow at their work, and the sails get fairly
filled on the new tack, it is a fatiguing piece of work enough to
'board' the tacks and sheets, as it is called. You are pulling at
one end of the rope--but the gale is tugging at the other. The
advantages of lungs are all against you, and perhaps the only thing
to be done is to put the helm down a little, and set the sails
shaking again before they can be trimmed properly. It was just at
such a time that I came on deck, as above mentioned. Being near
eight bells, the watch on deck had been not over spry; and the
consequence was that our big maincourse was slatting and flying out
overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The
flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's
fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying
pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You
could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it
flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all
over head was black with the flying scud. The English second mate
was stamping with vexation, and, with all his h's misplaced,
storming at the men: ''An'somely the weather mainbrace--'an'somely,
I tell you!--'Alf a dozen of you clap on to the main sheet
here--down with 'im!--D'y'see 'ere's hall like a midshipman's
bag--heverythink huppermost and nothing 'andy. 'Aul 'im in, Hi
say!' But the sail wouldn't come, though. All the most forcible
expressions of the Commination Service were liberally bestowed on
the watch. 'Give us the song, men!' sang out the mate, at
last--'pull with a will!--together men!--haltogether now!'--And
then a cracked, melancholy voice struck up this chant:

'Oh, the bowline, bully, bully bowline,
Oh, the bowline, bowline, HAUL!'

At the last word every man threw his whole strength into the
pull--all singing it in chorus, with a quick, explosive sound. And
so, jump by jump, the sheet was at last hauled taut.'

It would be well if the philanthropist and utilitarian would stoop to examine these primeval but neglected facts, for there is no doubt that under the healthful and delicious spell of Rhythm a far steadier and greater amount of labor would be cheerfully and happily endured by the working classes. The continuous but rhythmed croon of the negro when at work, the yo-heave-o of the sailor straining at the cordage, the rowing songs of the oarsman, etc., etc., are all suggestive of what might be effected by judicious effort in this direction. But man, ever wiser than his Maker, neglects the intuitions of nature. Rendered conceited by a false education, and heartless by a constant craving for gold, he scorns the simple but deep intuitions which are his surest guide to civilization, health, and cheerfulness. There can be no doubt that the physical exercise so distasteful to the pale inhabitants of our cities, yet so essential for the preservation of health and life, might be rendered delightful and invigorating through the neglected powers of rhythmical motion. Like Michal, the proud daughter of Saul, who despised King David in her haughty heart when 'she saw him dancing with all his might before the Lord,' we scorn the simple and innocent delights of our nature, and, like Michal, we too are bitterly punished for our mistaken pride of intellect, for, neglecting the rhythmical requisitions of the body, we injure the mind, and may deprave the heart. Virtuously, purely, and judiciously applied to the amusements and artistic culture of a people, we are convinced the power of Rhythm would banish much of that craving for false excitement, for drinks and narcotics, an indulgence in which exerts so fatal an influence over the character and spiritual progress of a nation. It is surely not astonishing that Rhythm should be so pleasant to the senses, when we consider that the laws of order and unity by which it is regulated are the proper aliment of the soul.

Strange pedantries have grown out of the neglect of music as a practical pervading element in modern education. We should endeavor to reform this fault; we should use this powerful engine of healing nature to remove from us the reproach of being merely a shopkeeping and money-making people.

The wildest savage is not insensible to Rhythm. It fires his spirit in the war dance and battle chant, soothes him in the monotonous hum of the pow-wow, and softens him in naive love songs. It is the heart of music, and it can be proved that low and vulgar rhythms have a debasing effect upon the character of a people. 'Let me write the songs of a people,' said a great thinker, 'and I care not who makes its laws:'--if he included the tunes, there was no exaggeration in his thought. Alas! a meretricious age scorns and neglects the true, because it is always simple in its sublimity, and, striving to banish God from His own creation, would also banish nature and joy from the heart! A pedantic age loves all that is pretentious, glaring, and assuming; and Rhythm stoops to rock the cradle of the newborn infant; to soothe the negro in the rice swamp or cotton field; to shape into beauty the national and patriotic songs of a laborious but contented peasantry, as among the Sclaves--but what cares the age for the happiness of the race? 'Put money in thy purse,' is its consolation and lesson for humanity.

The beat of the healthful heart is in unison with the feelings of the hour. Agitation makes it fitful and broken, excitement accelerates, and sorrow retards it. And this fact should be the model for all poetical and musical rhythm.

To show how readily we associate feelings with different orders of sound, let us suppose we are passing the night somewhere, where a stranger, utterly unknown to us, occupies a room from which we can hear the sound of his footsteps. Suppose that through the tranquil hours of the night we hear his measured tread falling in equally accented and monotonous spondees, it is certain that a quick imagination will at once associate this deliberate tread with the state of mind in the unknown from which it will believe it to proceed, and will immediately suggest that the stranger is maturing some great design of heavy import to his future peace.

Should the character of the spondaic tread suddenly change, should the footsteps become rapid, eager, and broken, we look upon the term of meditation and doubt as over, the resolve as definitely fixed, and the unknown as restlessly longing for the hour of its fulfilment.

When we hear steps resembling dactyls, anapaests, and choriambs thrown hurriedly together, broken by irregular pauses, we begin to build a whole romance on the steps of the stranger; we infer from them moments of grave deliberation; the languor consequent upon overwrought thought; renewed effort; resolve; alternations of passion; hope struggling with despair; until all at last seems merged in impatient longing for the hour of anticipated victory.

Nor has the imagination been alone in its strange workings; it has whispered, as it always does, its secrets to the heart, and succeeded in arousing its ever-ready affections, so that we cannot help feeling a degree of interest in the unknown, whose emotions we have followed through the night, reading their history in his alternating footsteps: _for sounds impress themselves immediately upon the feelings, exciting, not abstract or antagonistic thought, but uniting humanity in concrete feeling_. (See vol. i.)

As the imagination necessarily associates different feelings with different orders of Rhythm, it is the task of the Poet to select those in the closest conformity with the emotions he is struggling to excite. It is positively certain that we not only naturally and intuitively _associate_ distinctive feelings with different orders of rhythmical sounds, but that varied emotions are _awakened_ by them. Some rhythms inspire calmness, some sublime and stately courage, some energy and aggressive force, some stir the spirit to the most daring deeds, some, as in our maddening Tarantulas, produce a restless excitement through the whole nervous system, some excite mere joyousness, some whisper love through every fibre of the heart, and some lead us in their holy calm and unbroken order to the throne of God. Why is this? We need not look in the region of the understanding for the philosophy of that which is to be found only in the living tide of basic emotions. The pleasure we receive from Rhythm is a feeling. Alternate accentuation and non-accentuation are facts in the living organism of the universe; this may be expressed, not explained. There is an order in the living succession of musical sounds or poetic emotions, which order is expressed by the words 'equality and proportion.' These things _are_. What more can be said? Do comparisons help us? the waves in the eternal ocean of vitality--the shuttle strokes of the ever-moving loom of creation! Let us take it as it is, and rejoice in it. We cannot tell you why we live--let us be glad that our life is music through every heart-throb!

Rhythm is a species of natural but inarticulate language, in which the _thought_ is never disengaged from the _feeling_; in language its aim should be to awaken the _feeling_ properly attached to the thought it modulates; it should be the _tune_ of the thought of the Poet. To write a love song in alexandrines, an idyl in hexameters, would be to incarnate the shy spirit of a girl in the brawny frame of a Hercules, to incase the loving soul of a Juliet in a gauntleted Minerva. Genius and deep sympathy with human nature can alone guide the Poet aright in this delicate and difficult path; it lies too near the core of our unconscious being to be susceptible of the trim regularity of rule--he must trust his own intuitions while he studies with care what has already been successfully done by our best poets. We may however remark in passing that if the rhythm be abruptly broken without a corresponding break in the flow of thought or feeling, the reader will be confused, because the outward form has fallen into contradiction with its inner soul, and he discerns the opposition, and knows not with which to sympathize. Such contrarieties argue want of power or want of freedom in the poet, who should never suffer the clanking of his rhythmical chains to be heard. Such causeless breaks proceed from want of truth to the subject, and prove a lack of the careful rendering of love in the author. The poet must listen to the naive voice of nature as he moulds his rhythms, for the ingenious and elaborate constructions of the intellect alone will never touch the heart. Rhythm may proceed with regularity, yet that regularity be so relieved from monotony and so modified in its actual effects, that however regular may be the structure of parts, what is composed of them may be infinitely various. Milton's exquisite poem, 'Comus,' is an example of perfect rhythm with ceaseless intricacy and great variety. It would indeed be a fatal mistake to suppose that _proportion_ cannot be susceptible of great variety, since the whole meaning of the term has reference to the adjustment and proportional correspondence of _variable_ properties.

The appreciation of rhythm is universal, pertaining to no region, race, nor era, in especial. Even those who have never _thought_ about it, _feel_ order to be the law of life and happiness, and in the marking of the _proportioned_ flow of time and the regular accentuation of its _determinate_ portions find a perpetual source of healthful pleasure.

If we will but think of it, we will be astonished how many ideas already analyzed we may find exhibited through rhythm. We may have: similarity, variety, identity, repetition, adaptation, symmetry, proportion, fitness, melody, harmony, order, and unity; in addition to the varied feelings of which it becomes the symbolic utterance. The Greeks placed rhythms in the hands of a god, thus testifying to their knowledge of their range and power.

Wordsworth asserts that

'More pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have
a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in
metrical compositions than in prose.'

The reason of this seems to be that the bright beams forever raying from the Divine Sun of unity and order, shine through the measured beat of the rhythm, and are always felt as life and peace, even when their golden light is broken by the wild and drifting clouds of human woe, or seen athwart the surging and blinding mists of mortal anguish.

Rhythm lurks in the inmost heart of language, accenting our words that their enunciation may be clear and distinct; lengthening and shortening the time of our syllables that they may be expressive, emotional, and musical. Let the orator as well as the poet study its capabilities; it has more power over the sympathies of the masses than the most labored thought.

Although through the quantitive arrangement and determinate accentuation of syllabic sound, rhythm may be exquisitely manifested through language, yet in music alone does it attain its full power and wonderful complexity. For the _tones_ are not _thoughts_, but _feelings_, and yield themselves implicitly to the loving hand which would reunite them and form them into higher unities. These passionate tones, always seeking for and surging into each other, are plastic pearls on the string of rhythm, whose proportions may be indefinitely varied at the will of the fond hand which would wreathe them into strands of symmetrical beauty; while _words_, the vehicles of antagonistic thought, frequently refuse to conform to the requisitions of feeling, are often obstinate and wilful, will not be remodelled, and hard, in their self-sufficiency, refuse to bear any stamp save that of their known and fixed value. Like irregular beads of uncut coral, they protrude their individualities in jagged spikes and unsightly thorns, breaking often the unity of the whole, and painfully wounding the sense of order.

The true poet overcomes these difficulties. When, in the hands of a master, they are forced to bend under the onward and impetuous sweep of the passionate rhythm, compelled to sing the tune of the overpowering emotions--the chords of the spirit quiver in response. The heart recognizes the organic law of its own life: _the constant recurrence of new effort sinking but to recover itself in accurately proportioned rest, rising again in ever-renewed exertion, to sink again in ever-new repose_; feeling seems clothing itself with living form, while the divine attribute, Order, marks for the ear, as it links in mystic Unity, the flying footsteps of that forever invisible element by which all mortal being is conditioned and limited: TIME!

'There is no architect
Can build as the Muse can;
She is skilful to select
Materials for her plan.

'She lays her beams in music,
In music every one,
To the cadence of the whirling world
Which dances round the sun.

'That so they shall not be displaced
By lapses or by wars,
But for the love of happy souls
Outlive the newest stars.'
EMERSON.

'OUR ARTICLE.'

'John,' said I to my husband, as he came home from business, and settled into an armchair for half an hour's rest before dinner, 'I think of writing an article for THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.'

'Humph!' said my husband.

Now 'humph' bears different interpretations; it may argue assent, indifference, disgust, disapprobation--in all cases it is aggressive; but this 'humph' seemed to be a combination of at least three of the above-mentioned frames of mind.

Natural indignation was about taking full possession of me, but reflection stepped in, and I preserved a discreet silence. The truth is, no man should be assailed by a new idea before he has dined, and I, having had three years' opportunity of studying man nature, met my deserts when the above answer was given. So I still looked amiable, and behaved very prettily till dinner was over, and then John, having subsided into dressing gown, slippers, easy chair, and good nature, I remarked again:

'John, I think of writing an article for THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY.'

'How shall you begin it?' said he.

'Well, I haven't exactly settled on a beginning yet, but--'

'Exactly! I supposed so!' remarked this barbarian.

Unfortunately, he knew my weak point, for hadn't he been allowed to see a desk full of magnificent middles, only wanting a beginning and an end, and a publisher, and some readers, to place me in the front ranks of our modern essayists, side by side with 'Spare Hours,' and the 'Country Parson,' and 'Gail Hamilton?'

The fact is, I have always been brimming over with brilliant ideas on all sorts of subjects, which never would arrange themselves or be arranged under any given head, but presented a series of remarkable literary fragments, jotted down on stray bits of paper, in old account books and diaries, and even, on one or two occasions, when seized by a sudden inspiration, on a smooth stone, taken from the brook, a fair sheet of birch bark, and the front of a pew in a white-painted country church. Having been subject to these inspirational attacks for many years, I had decided to take them in hand, and, if they must come, derive some benefit from them. An idea suggested itself. Claude Lorraine, it is said, never put the figures in his landscapes, but left that work for some brother artist. Now I could bring together material for an article; the inspiration, the picturing should be mine, but John should put in the figures. In other words, he should polish it, write the introduction and the _finis_, and send it out to the public, as the work of 'my wife and I.'

Then a question occurred: how should we divide the honors, supposing such an article should really find its way into print? Would there not be material for a standard quarrel in the fact that neither could claim sole proprietorship? What would be John's sensation, should any one say to him: 'Mr. ----, I have just been reading your wife's last article; capital thing!' and, _vice versa_, imagine the same thing said of me. Could I preserve amiability under such circumstances, and would not the result be, a divorce in a year, and a furious lawsuit as to the ownership of the copyright? John certainly is magnanimous, I thought, but no one cares for divided honors, and there is that middle-aged relation of his, with a figure like a vinegar cruet, and a voice as acid as its contents, who never comes here for a day without doing her best to set us by the ears, and who, in the beginning of our married life, when we did not understand each other quite so well as now, sometimes succeeded, to her intense satisfaction.

How she would go about among all the friends and relations, pulling the poor articles to pieces, giving all the fine bits to John and the rubbish to me, and hinting generally that my pretensions to authorship were all very well, but that every one knew John did the work and I looked out for the credit.

Here I paused. I had been successfully engaged in the pursuit of trouble, and had conjured up so irritating a picture, that actually a small tear had left its source, and was running over the bridge of my nose!

'John,' I said, 'notwithstanding that I never did know how to begin anything in an effective way, I am still determined to write, and you must help me.'

Then I opened my heart to him, and told him my plan, and the imagined tribulation it had given me in the last ten minutes.

'There are too many writers already, Helen,' he said; 'every man who cannot see his way clear through life--every woman who fancies herself misunderstood and unappreciated, worries out a book or poem or a set of essays, to picture their individual wrongs and sufferings, and bores every publisher of every magazine and paper of which they have ever heard, till he is tormented into printing, or dies of manuscript on the brain. I tell you, Helen, we do our share in aggravating the people we meet daily, without tormenting an innocent man, 'who never did us any harm;' and I for one, don't want an extra sin on my conscience. Moreover, I am afraid it would spoil you, should you happen to succeed. Have you forgotten your old friend Angelina Hobbs? One article ruined her for life. Until that poem got into print and was favorably noticed, she was as sensible as ordinary girls, and never imagined herself a genius. Since then, there is not an 'ism' in America that she has not taken up and run into the ground; I have met her in every stage, from the coat and pantaloons of the Bloomer ten years ago to the hoopless old maid I saw yesterday going into Dodworth's Hall with the last spiritual paper and a spirit photograph in her hand. Not a literary man or woman do I know, who has not some crotchet in his or her brain, and who does not in some way violate the harmonies of life at least once an hour. Be content as you are: be satisfied to live without seeing yourself in THE CONTINENTAL MONTHLY, or any other monthly under the sun!'

'John,' I said, 'I am surprised, I am astonished at the view you take of the case. I don't desire that publishers should be tormented into their graves; and if they are all as fat and rosy as the two we met the other day, I think you can dismiss all fears on that score. Moreover, I believe the world to be better for every book that is written, however insignificant it may be. The days of the corsairs and giaours, romantic robbers, and devout murderers, are over: our young ladies and our servant girls see no fascination in the pages of 'Fatherless Fanny,' 'The Foundling,' or 'The Mysteries of Slabtown.' Arthur's stories and ten thousand others of the same class have taken their place, and commonplace as they may often be, have brought a healthier influence into action. No book written with an honest heart is lost; no poem or essay, however poor, fails to reach some mark. The printed page that to you or me looks so barren and poor, may carry to some soul a message of healing; may to some eyes have the light of heaven about it. And to how many aimless lives, writing has given a purpose which otherwise never might have entered it! John, I believe in writing, and this baby shall be taught to put his ideas into shape as soon as he is taught anything! I never wish him to settle down in the belief that he is a genius and can live on the fact; but he shall write if he can, and publish too, if any one will do it for him. If not, we will have a private printing press of our own, and get up an original library for our descendants.'

'A genuine woman's answer,' said John; 'only one point in it touching upon my argument.' Here the baby opened his blue eyes wide. 'There!' said John; 'just for the present your life has a purpose, and we can dispense with writing, at least till that fellow is asleep again. When you have disposed of him, we will find out how many aims it is necessary for one woman to have, and what arrangement of them it is best to make.'

The baby stayed awake obstinately, but I was reconciled to the fact, for our discussion might have become hot, and the writing ended for that evening quite as effectually as the baby had done it.

Night came again, and this time John opened the subject, by placing before me a large package of foolscap, and a new gold pen.

'I have brought some paper for you to spoil, Helen,' he said, 'for I foresaw how it would end. Do your best, and I will do mine in the matter of beginnings. I cannot write easily, you know, but I can suggest and dictate, when you wish it; and you have been my amanuensis for a year and more, so it will all seem very natural.'

He looked down, as he spoke, at the scarred right hand and its missing fingers, carried away eighteen months before by a rebel bullet, and a little shade passed over his face.

'No, John,' I said, 'don't look there now; look at my two hands waiting to do the work of that, and tell me if two are not better than one. We will write an article which shall astonish the critics, and bring letters from all the magazines, begging us to become special contributors at once; and we will not quarrel as to who shall have the glory, but make it a joint matter. And now I am ready to begin, and propose to speak upon a subject which I wonder greatly no one has taken up in detail before. Your words last evening brought out some dormant ideas. 'We do our share in aggravating the people we meet daily,' you said, and I have been reflecting upon the matter ever since, till now I am prepared to give my opinions to the world.'

So saying, I arranged the table properly, took out some sheets of the smooth, white paper, filled my pen, and waited for the dawning of an idea. To which it came first, I shall not tell you. The results are before you: which part is John's, which mine, you will never learn from us. It will be of no avail for you to write to the editors, for they don't know either, and will not be told. It will be a useful exercise for you to dissect the article, and set apart the masculine from the feminine portions. The critics will for once be quite at a loss how to abuse it, probably. I foresee a general distraction in the minds of our readers, and already hear ourselves classed as among one of the trials which I select as the title of 'Our Article.'

SOME OF THE AGGRAVATIONS OF LIVING.

Two thirds of life in the aggregate are made up of aggravations. They begin with our beginning, and only cease with our ending; perhaps, if good Calvinists speak the truth, not even then, for, according to their belief, the souls in torment look always upon the blessed in heaven, and this surely is the most horrible species of aggravation ever devised by man or fiend.

From the time when the air first fills the lungs and the infant screams at the new sensation, to the day when fingers press down the resisting lids and straighten the stiffening limbs, we are forced to meet and to bear all manner of aggravations in nine tenths of our daily life.

Has it ever occurred to any of you what an amount of unnecessary suffering an infant endures, and have you ever watched the operations it undergoes daily, with reference to the confirming of this fact? If not, an inexhaustible field of inquiry lies open before you, and after a week's observation of bandages rolled till the flesh actually squeaks--of pins stuck in and left, where you know they will prick--of smotherings in blankets and garrotings with bibs--of trottings for the wind and poundings for the stomach ache--of wakings up to show to visitors, and puttings to sleep when sleep is at the other end of the land of Nod, and will not be induced to come under any circumstances--of rockings and tossings--of boiling catnip tea and smooth horrible castor oil poured down the unsuspecting throat--after a week of such observations, I say, you will decide with me that the baby's life is only a series of aggravations, and feel astonished the bills of infant mortality do not double and treble.

As years round out the little life, the hands, reaching out to the tree of knowledge, find themselves pushed back on all sides. The dearest wishes are made light of, the most earnest desires slighted, the most sacred thoughts ridiculed, till one marvels that men can grow up anything but devils. In the path where Gail Hamilton's feet have trod I need not follow, for she has told us what these 'Happiest Days' are, in better words than my pen can find. It warmed my heart as I read her protest against the platitudes concerning childhood and its various imagined delights. Mentally I shook hands, for she expressed my ideas so fully, that the notes I had long ago jotted down upon the subject I committed at once to the flames, satisfied I never could do any better, and might possibly do very much worse.

I believe that the major part of sour-tempered, perversely wrong-headed, and unhappily disposed people, of hot-headed fanatics, victims to one idea, of once noble souls who sink themselves in sensuality, and so go down to death, and of all the sad cases one hears and reads of day after day and year after year, are made so through unceasing aggravation at the most impressible time of life. Do any of you who may be my readers know of half a dozen happy families in your circle of friends and acquaintance? Do you know of half a dozen where boys prefer home and their sisters to the streets, or where girls do not court the most uninviting boy in preference to their own brothers?

One would almost imagine spite had been the feeling implanted in all homes, as they look at the private pinch exchanged between John and James, the face made by Mary at which Martha cries and is slapped by way of adjusting matters, and the general refusal of requests made to father and mother, whether reasonable or not. My own childhood was moderately happy, and yet I recall now the sense of burning indignation I sometimes suffered at wrongs done me, which the child's sense of justice told me were wrongs, and which I now know to have been so. Children are themselves one of the aggravations of living, but it is because we do not know how to treat them. I look for a time when every father shall be just, every mother reasonable as well as loving; when children shall neither be flogged up the way of life as in times past, or coaxed up with sugarplums as in times present, but, seeing with clear eyes the straight path, shall walk in it with joy, and finish their course with rejoicing.

Another aggravation, and not a minor one either it strikes me, is the summary way in which youth is put down by middle-aged and aged people. Youthful emotions are 'bosh and twaddle,' youthful ideas, 'crude, sir, very crude!' and youthful attempts to be and to do something in the world frowned at, as if action of any sort, save inaction, before forty, were an outrage on humanity, and an insult to the Creator.

How fares it with young professional men during the first ten years of their career? They hope and wait, doubt and wait, curse and wait, labor to wait, and in the mean time a wheezing old lawyer, with no more enthusiasm than a brickbat, takes the cases which Justice, if she were not blind, would have sent to his starving younger brethren, and pockets fat fees, a tenth of which would have lifted loads from many a heavy heart. An old family physician, an old minister, an old lawyer, are excellent in their way, and have a variety of pleasant associations with them, which it is impossible to pass over to the young aspirant who steps in to take their place; yet because Dr. Jones, aged sixty-eight, carried us safely through the measles, does it follow that Dr. Smith, aged twenty-eight, cannot do the same for our children?

Because for thirty years the Rev. Dr. Holdfast has preached upon election, and justification by faith, is the Rev. Dr. Holeman to be set down as presumptuously progressive, because he suggests works as a test of the faith we profess, and ventures to speak of God, not as the stern Deity who commands us all to be afraid of Him, and who drops lost souls into the pit with a calm satisfaction, but as the loving Father of the world, who wills that all men should come to the knowledge of His truth.

It is well for the old to give us their experience, well for the young to listen, but every man and every woman lives a life of their own, which the widest experience cannot touch at all points. No two natures have ever been nor ever can be exactly alike; no rules of the past can form the present in the same mould. Girls and boys, young men and women, must 'see the folly' for themselves, and all the advice and warning of all the ancestors under heaven cannot prevent it. Therefore, O middle-aged aunt, or white-haired grandparent, aggravate by unceasing advice, if you will, but be not aggravated if it isn't taken. Reflect as to how fully you availed yourself of the experience of _your_ grandparents when you were young, and then make your demands accordingly. Tell the young the story of your life as a story, and they will listen and mayhap profit; give it as advice, and you shall see them keep as far off as circumstances will admit. It is my fixed belief that until the people in the world have learned how to hold their tongues, it will be entirely useless to read Dr. Cumming; believe in the Great Tribulation as much as you please, for it is about us all day long, but don't look out for the Millennium, which I think will consist entirely in people's minding their own business.

In the inability or unwillingness of people to let other people alone, may be summed up all the aggravation of living. The bane of my life has been never being let alone. People seem to think they have come into the world with a special mission to give me advice, and from my babyhood up, I have never been allowed to carry out the best-arranged plan of operation, without interference. As each man and woman is the representative of a certain class, I conclude others have had the same experience with myself; and there is a gloomy satisfaction in reflecting that there are many who have been made as essentially uncomfortable as I. The result has been, I have come to the unalterable determination never, under any circumstances, to either advise anybody or receive it myself where it can be avoided. If it is ordained that I am to make a fool of myself, it shall be done on my own responsibility, and not with the assistance of meddling friends--though if they have any desire to take the credit of it, I shall make no objections whatever. I doubt if they will. The longer I live in the world, the clearer appears the fact that half at least of our unhappiness is unnecessary. We seem perversely bent on tormenting and being tormented. We visit people for whom we do not care one straw, because our position in society or our interests demand it. We sacrifice our own judgment to the whims of others as a matter of expediency, and almost ignore our own capacity in the eagerness to agree with everybody. We suffer because a rich snob snubs us, and agonize over unfavorable remarks made concerning our abilities or standing. These things ought not so to be. No man can find a substitute when he lies a-dying;--why should all his years be spent in the vain endeavor to find a substitute for living? An endless dependence upon the opinions, the whims, the prejudices of others, is the bane of living, and the mark of a weak mind, made so oftener by education than nature.

When the young forget to abuse the old, and the old to run down the young; when mothers-in-law cease to hate their daughters-in-law, and to improve all opportunities for sowing strife; when wives take pains to understand their husbands, and husbands decide that woman nature is worth studying; when women can remember to be charitable to other women; when the Golden Rule can be read as it is written, and not 'Do unto others as ye would _not_ they should do unto you;' when justice and truth rule men, rather than unreason and petty spite, then the aggravation of living will die a natural death, and the world become as comfortable an abiding place as its inhabitants need desire.

Till then, hope and wait. Live the life God gives us, as purely and truly as you know how. Have some faith in human nature, but more in God, and wait his own good time for the perfect life, not to be reached here, but hereafter.

THE LESSON OF THE WOOD.

In the same soil the family of trees
Spring up, and, like a band of brothers, grow
In the same sun, while from their leafy lips
Comes not the faintest whisper of dissent
Because of various girth and grain and hue.
The oak flings not his acorns at the elm;
The white birch shrinks not from the swarthy ash;
The green plume of the pine nods to the shrub;
The loftiest monarch of the realm of wood
Spares not his crown in elemental storms,
But shares the blows with trees of humbler growth,
And stretches forth his arms to save their fall.
Wild flowers festoon the feet of all alike;
Green mosses grow upon the trunks of all;
Sweet birds pour out their songs on every bough;
Clouds drop baptismal showers of rain on each,
And the broad sun floods every leaf with light.
Behold them clad in Autumn's golden pomp--
Their rich magnificence, of different dyes,
More beautiful than royal robes, and crowns
Of emperors on coronation day.
But the deserted nest in silence sways
Like a sad heart beneath a royal scarf;
And the red tint upon the maple leaves
Is colored like the fields where fell our braves
In hurricanes of flame and leaden hail.
I love to gaze up at the grand old trees;
Their branches point like hope to Heaven serene;
Their roots point to the silent world that's dead;
Their grand old trunks hold towns and fleets for us,
And cots and coffins for the race unborn.
When at their feet their predecessors fell,
Spring covered their remains with mourning moss,
And wrote their epitaph in pale wood flowers,
And Summer gave ripe berries to the birds
To stay and sing their sad sweet requiem;
And Autumn rent the garments of the trees
That stood mute mourners in a field of graves,
And Winter wrapped them in a winding sheet.
They seemed like giants sleeping in their shrouds.

DIARY OF FRANCES KRASINSKA;

OR, LIFE IN POLAND DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

CASTLE OF JANOWIEC,
Wednesday, _May 27th, 1760._

I had hoped too much! He is going, and the memory of the past will render the days to come very sad. I knew that Monday was an unlucky day: since my maid gave me such a fright by announcing the approaching departure of the princes, all has gone from bad to worse.

The huntsman who brought me the bouquet from the prince, told me, in his name, that he too was forced to depart. With great difficulty could he invent a pretext for remaining three days after his brothers left. These three days will not expire until to-morrow, and yet he leaves me to-day; he must go, and can no longer delay. The king has sent an express for him, with an order to return as soon as possible. He will leave in one half hour, and I do not know when we can meet again. Ah! how soon happiness passes away!...

Sunday, _June 7th._

It is now two weeks since the prince royal left me; he has sent two expresses, and slipped two notes for me under cover to the prince palatine. But what is a letter?... An unfinished thought--it soothes for a moment, but cannot calm. A letter can never replace even a few seconds of personal intercourse; he has left me his portrait; I am sure every one would think it like him; but for me, it is merely a shred of inanimate canvas. It has his features, but it is not he, and has not his expression.... I have him much better in my memory.

All consolation is denied me, for I will not reply to his letters; this restraint I have imposed upon myself; I am sure that my hand would become motionless as the cold marble were I to write to the man I love without the knowledge of my aunt, my elder sister, and my parents. I told the prince royal that he could never have a letter from me until I was his wife. This is a great sacrifice, but I have promised my God that I will accomplish it.

Since his departure, time weighs upon me as a continued torture. During the first few days I wandered about as if bereft of reason; I could not fix my thoughts, or apply myself to any occupation. The illness of the princess has restored some energy to my soul. The injury to her foot, which she at first neglected, has become very serious; during three days she had a burning fever, which threatened her life. My anguish was beyond description; I am sure I could not have been more uneasy had it been my sister or one of my parents. I scarcely thought of the prince royal during the whole of those three days; and what is most strange, I no longer regretted his absence; if he had been here, I could not have devoted myself so entirely to the princess. The idea of her death was terrible to me, for, notwithstanding all the arguments of the prince royal and of the Princes Lubomirski, I feel myself very culpable in having withheld my confidence from her; if she suspects the truth, she has every reason to accuse me of perfidy.... There is in this world but one inconsolable evil, and that is the torture of a bad conscience--remorse....

I hoped one day to be able to repair my wrongs toward the princess, to fall at her feet and confess my fault, but when I saw her in danger, I felt as if hell itself were menacing me, and as if I must be forever crushed under the weight of an eternal remorse.... Another thought too has distressed me to the very bottom of my soul! My parents are advanced in years; if I should lose them before I have confessed my secret to them! It is written above that I am to know every sorrow! Heaven has cruelly tried me, but to-day a ray of pity seems to have fallen upon my miserable fate. The princess is steadily improving, and I have received good news from Maleszow; I breathe again.

Were the king to give his consent to our marriage, I could not be happier than I was on hearing from the physician's own mouth that the princess was out of danger.... I will then be able to open my heart to her! Ah! my God! if this painful dissimulation weighs so heavily upon me, what must be the state of the prince royal, who is deceiving his father, his king, and offending him by a misplaced affection!