Chapter IV: Part 4

Reader, hast thou ever seen the old castle of Oakham? If thou hast not, and opportunity will serve, prythee, go thither, and feast thy eyes with the wondrous array—not of breathing sculptures, or matchless pictures; not of antique folios or curiously carven cabinets; not of storied tapestries or blazing heraldries—but of horse-shoes: ay, horse-shoes of all sorts and sizes, that adorn the walls of that singular old Saxon hall,—supported by its "antique pillars massy proof,"—and stretching its primitive roof overhead. A sight it is, pregnant with abundant reflection, that curious monument of feudalism; and many and marvellous are the stories they tell you about its origin: but, chiefly, they report that Ferrers—the Earl now, but simply, the _ferrier_, or farrier, to the victorious Norman—obtained, with this fief, authority to demand a horse-shoe of any knight, baron, or earl, who rode for the first time through his manor of Oakham. And many a veritable shoe taken from the foot of the steed of proud baron, or chivalrous knight,—his name obliterated by the rust of ages,—you behold on those walls; but therewith now mingle the mock-shoes of the modern great: a semblance, merely, put up at a great price, in some instances, they say. Gigantic shapes, some of these modern things are: such are those bearing the inscriptions "H. R. H. the Prince Regent," and "H. R. H. the Duchess of Kent," which latter hath a more diminutive one beside it, inscribed "the Princess Victoria." Of the judges, who here hold the courts of assize, the modern monuments of this curious kind are the most numerous; and if you listen to a sly Oakhamer he will not fail to tell you how often that model of political consistency, of generosity, liberality, integrity, impartiality, gentleness, and all the enlightened virtues—the ever-to-be-commemorated Abinger—was _dunned_ for his five pounds, and how often he contrived to slip, like an eel, through the fingers of those whose office or privilege it is to claim the shoe or the price of it, before he was finally caught. Yet _there is_ the shoe of the stainless and exalted legal functionary on the wall,—so that he _was_ caught at last!

Pardon, reader, this most unseemly wandering from the illustrious subject of our present biography, the erudite Zerubbabel Dickinson. Now it was in the contemplation of this unique monument of baronial greatness,—it was in the collection and collocation of manuscripts relative to the identity of the several shoes,—it was in the array of the pedigrees of those in whose names they were put up,—it was in brushing away the rust (not from the shoes, for the discerning Dickinson would have adjudged him a pagan, of a verity, and no Christian, who dared to disturb a grain of it!)—the rust of uncertainty that hung about the names and memories of those to whom the more ancient furniture of horses' feet belonged,—it was in this mine profound of all that was important, and noble, and useful, and great, and grand, about the countless catalogue of horse-shoes that were nailed to the walls of the great hall in the castle of Oakham, that the learned and laborious Zerubbabel dug and delved,—it was on these themes, I say (and I scarcely know how to express myself worthily on so magnitudinous a matter), that the indefatigable and magnanimous schoolmaster-antiquary expended the choicest energies of his untiring intellect.

This, courteous reader, was the prime labour—the _opus majus_ of Master Zerubbabel Dickinson. The work was to have been entituled "_Tallagium illustrissimum; seu Catalogus solearum ferrearum_"—with I know not how many more _ums_ and _arums_, besides. _Was_ to have been? Yes; for let it not be supposed that so stupendous a work was ever finished. It was the opinion of the laborious Zerubbabel himself that it never could be finished, so transcendent was the _beau-idéal_ of such a work that he had conceived.

But enough of a subject which, in this degenerate age, will never be placed at its right value. This slender fragment of a biographic memorial was not commenced so much with the view of showing how truly great a man was the erudite Master Zerubbabel,—since we would despair as deeply of doing justice to so immense a subject as Zerubbabel himself despaired of completing the leviathan folios of the mighty "Tallagium illustrissimum:" we have a more philosophic purpose in view—namely, the proof, by history, of the striking moral truism, that the greatest men are very little men when you take them out of their accustomed sphere: in other words, that the wisest men are fools when you talk to them about things with which, in spite of their wisdom, they are not conversant. But why prove a truism? Ah, my friend, these same truisms, as the world calls them, for the greater part, are just the very things that want proving——.

"Master Hubby," said a jolly fat farmer who called, with his fat wife and her egg-basket, at the schoolmaster's door, towards five of the clock on a market afternoon, "we've browt ye a queer, odd-fashionedish sort on a thing, here, that we f'un i'th' home clooas tuther day; can ye tell us what it is?" and the farmer produced an ancient fragment of ironwork of a crooked form, but so unlike any modern utensil of any kind, that any one but an antiquary might well be puzzled with it. Nay, the profoundly erudite Zerubbabel himself was nonplused for the moment! He turned it over and over, and put on his spectacles, and then took them off again, and wiped them, and re-adjusted them to the most perfect distance for his natural optics—that is to say, he placed them as near to the very tip of his nose as they would remain without falling off,—but all his delays for consideration would not do: he was compelled to confess that he did not know what it was!

"Why dooant ye, indeed?" cried the farmer with a stare.

"The Lord ha' marcy on us! you dooant say so, Master Hubby, do ye?" echoed the farmer's wife, perfectly electrified with the thought that there was any thing ancient which Hubby did not understand; and she set down her basket of eggs, and drew out her spectacle-case, and put on her spectacles also, to gaze at Hubby in his.

And so there stood the odd trio at the learned schoolmaster's door: the man of ancient learning, barnacled to the nose-tip, and holding up the curious crooked rusty piece of iron with a gaze of indescribable eagerness; and the farmer with open mouth, and hands buried in the profound pockets of the plush waistcoat that enveloped the goodly rotundity of his person; and the farmer's wife, with the basket at her feet, her arms a-kimbo, and her eyes directed with intense earnestness through her spectacles on the movements of the illustrious Zerubbabel's countenance.

There was a perfect silence of full three minutes, and still the trio gazed on.

"Where found ye it?" asked Hubby, at last, not knowing what other question to adventure.

"At Hambleton on th' hill," replied the farmer; "and what think ye to't then now, Master Hubby?" he asked again.

Zerubbabel shook his head, and there was again a profound and perfect silence.

"You know, Davy," said the farmer's wife, at length, "young Bob Rakeabout said he was somehow of a mind it was——"

"Pooh, woman!" said the impatient farmer; "where's the use and sense of telling what such a rattle-scallion as he thinks?"

"Nay, but, Davy," reiterated the spouse, "it may be of use, for they say he's book-larnt."

"Book-larnt! ay, mally good faith, I think as much: and noose-larnt, too," replied the farmer; "and I wish, when his last noose is tied, he may be allowed benefit o' clargy!" and he burst into a loud laugh at his own wit.

"Well, howsomever," said the wife, "young Bob said he could swear it was a spur, and nowt else."

"_Calcar equitis Romani_, of a verity!" exclaimed Zerubbabel, and danced with ecstasy, till the farmer and his wife stared harder than ever.

"Ha! ye f'un' it out?" cried the farmer's wife: "Lord! maister Hubby, do tell us what ye think it is."

"A spur, good neighbours, a spur it is, no doubt, and hath belonged to some valorous Roman knight many ages ago," replied Hubby.

"Why, zowks, then, Bob was right," said the farmer; "and pray ye, Maister Hubby, accept a dozen o' pullets' eggs with it, for it is not worth having by itself."

Zerubbabel was of a very different opinion, but very thankfully received the eggs, notwithstanding; and his homely visitors bade him good afternoon.

And now did the deeply learned man retire into the very penetralia of reflection, and meditation, and thought, and consideration, and so forth; yet the "vasty cavern" of his mind displayed other and more profound concernments than admiration of the invaluable Roman spur. "_Noose-larnt_"—that was the singular word which riveted his thought. "Noose-larnt!"—what could it mean? That was the great question which the great Zerubbabel asked of himself—for he knew no higher authority on such high matters—at least one hundred times before he went to bed; but he slept—answerless! Again, on the succeeding day—ay, and on the day succeeding that day—Hubby Dickinson pondered on the same profound problem; and, on the third night, when he had extended his cogitations to the stroke of twelve, and his sole remaining candle was reduced to one inch of tallow, and four of black wick, curling through and through the struggling bit of flame, and spreading gloom rather than light over Hubby's little studium—then it was that Hubby Dickinson, feeling one thought go through him like a flash of lightning, suddenly sprang up, crying out, "Eureka—eureka!" and plucked an ancient volume from its shelf to satisfy himself of the correctness of his thought.

The searcher for enlightenment snuffed the candle with a speed and dexterity which few could equal,—performing the act with Nature's snuffers, his fingers,—feeling that the vastitude and urgency of the inquiry did not permit the delay of employing the aid of man's mechanic invention,—and then, and then—opening the ancient volume, and turning to the name he contemplated, and fixing his spectacles, once again, in the most advantageous position—the ardent and delighted antiquary read out aloud to himself the following passage from the said ancient tome:—

"Anaxagoras, the disciple of Anaximenes, was surnamed _Nous_, which signifieth _intelligence_, by reason of his excelling quickness of parts, and a certain, I know not what, of instant perception or discernment of nice difficulties in a twinkling. For whereas other wise men went round about to survey the questions to them proponed, on this side and that, and, after much nice calculation and naming of postulates, drew from the balance of probabilities what they affirmed to be a correct answer, this philosopher manifested a strength and clearness of judgment, and swiftness of reasoning, which might be said to partake of intuition,—a faculty which the gods themselves only possess in its perfection: and thus it came to pass that Anaxagoras was called, in the Hellenistic tongue, _Nous_, or intelligence."

That was the passage he read; and when he had read it he closed the heavy quarto with a noise like the report of a gun, and again cried out that "he had found it" with all his power of lungs. And then, feeling that he had done business enough for one night, in having made so transcendentally-sagacious a discovery, he put out the small remnant of candle, groped his way to his bedside, and, while he performed the prefatory work of unclothing, thus he soliloquised:—

"Yea, of a verity, this is the true interpretation of the mystery. This 'Noose-larnt' young man is some great natural genius,—some miracle of mother wit,—some second Anacharis the Scythian, who would very likely beat all the wise men of this time, although he never entered the pale of the schools,—nay, perhaps, hath never passed beyond the limits of the lordship of Hambleton-on-the-hill. I have no doubt of it; for none but such a genius could have determined, without witchcraft, that this curiously shapen piece of ancient armour pertained to the heel. It is strange that my friend, the parson of Hambleton,—who must have given the young man this expressive epithet, seeing that the rural people understand no Greek,—it is strange that he never told me of the existence of this youth. But I will essay to find him out, if I be spared till the morning light! O Hubby Dickinson! though few now call you Zerubbabel, yet you may have lived to this age for a high purpose, even to bring to light the name and singular endowments of this 'Noose-larnt' youth! Why, the discovery may even ennoble you beyond the composition of the grand Tallagium!" And then Hubby fell asleep, and dreamt delightfully; but the delight itself, of his dream awoke him, and again he began to soliloquise amid the darkness:—

"Why, it is as clear and luminous as the sun at noon to my mind," he said to himself: "nothing less than the possession of a high degree of the faculty of intuition could have enabled this youth to announce such a truth. Verily, there is no wonder the rude peasant people entertain suspicions that he hath a familiar, or is a wizard: and that they do entertain such ideas is evident from that strange exclamation, or rather optation, of Gaffer Davy—he wished when the youth's last noose was tied he might find benefit o'clergy. There, is an allusion to the ancient privilege of escape from the halter by a neck-verse, which I have illustrated in the Tallagium. Doubtless, the farmers and ploughmen believe this singular youth to be one who deals in the black art, and think his mal-practices may bring him to the gallows. Ah, it is the way in which the lights of the world have been treated in all ages! I will find out the abode of this miracle of nature, that I will!" he said, and again fell asleep.

The morning broke, Hubby opened his eyes, and forthwith arose to renew his self-congratulations. "Ah, Hubby," said he to himself, "you will live to be called Master Zerubbabel again, by gentle and simple; for you are destined, this day, to achieve a great work!" And then he went over the roll of his reasonings again, and, feeling more assured than ever of the certitude of them, he again congratulated himself. "Ay, as old as I am, I have not lost my power of penetrating a matter," he said; "tell me who, in the whole county of Rutland, except myself, could have found this out from the simple premises on which it was given me to erect my sagacious hypothesis?"

Reader,—was Hubby Dickinson a very silly old fellow to talk and think thus? Ah, how many of your great philosophers have reared their world-admired hypotheses from premises as slight; and yet how long it was before the folly of many of them was found out!

Well, there was now but one step to be taken as a preliminary to the commencement of Hubby's journey to Hambleton, which, he was sure, would be memorable while the world lasted: it was—to give his scholars a holiday.

Reader,—talk of potentates by whatever name you will; but your schoolmaster is your only emperor! Can he not make laws—break laws—bind his subjects—set them free—and, in one word, do what he listeth? I tell thee, reader, that his is the true _imperium in imperio_: his will is law, and who can gainsay it? Thou knowest of no potentate so truly imperial as the village schoolmaster.

And Hubby Dickinson—had he not power in himself, and of himself—to give his boys a holiday? That he had; and when the word was given, ye powers! what a rush was there over benches, and what a scampering for hats; and then the huzza! when the threshold was passed and the plans for fun throughout the livelong day that were formed! Woe worth the world! one owes it a grudge, one is tempted to think, since it hath taken away from our lips the nectared chalice of childhood, and giveth us now, from day to day, no other draught but this unsavoury minglement, wherein one scarcely knows whether the bitterness or the insipidity most prevails!

It was but three short miles from Oakham to Hambleton; and Hubby Dickinson's eagerness of desire gave such strength and speed to his limbs that he soon reached the village.

"Pray, my good friend," said he to a farmer on horseback, as he entered the place, "can you say where I shall find the singularly endowed youth who is familiarly called Bob Rakeabout, the Noose-larnt?"

Poor Hubby! how he stared, and how loftily indignant he felt, when the farmer returned him a broad horse-laugh for an answer, and, setting spurs to his horse, rode away! He was not to be driven from his purpose, however, and put the same question to a pedestrian, next. The man, who was a ditcher with a shovel on his shoulder, touched, or rather nipped, his hat skirts, and asked what the gentleman said; and when he clearly understood that Bob Rakeabout was wanted, his reply was, that he knew not where he would be found, unless at the alehouse. Hubby thanked his informant, but was sure within himself that there was some mistake arising from the man's dulness, for it could not be that a genius of so magnificent a grade as the human being he was seeking could be found loitering in a vulgar alehouse. So on Hubby strode, looking at the ground, and thinking, and thinking,—till, at last, he was accosted by a very dark-visaged and singularly dressed man, who stood by a tent in a lane, on the other side of the village—for the thinker had passed quite through it, unconsciously.

"Fine weather, sir," said the man; "you seem to be in a brown study."

"Pray, my friend," said Hubby, instantly, "know you one Bob Rakeabout, a singularly gifted youth who, I am informed, hath obtained the significant epithet of the 'Noose-larnt?'"

The man took his short black pipe from his mouth, and stared agape for a few seconds, and then said, with a smothered laugh,—

"Oh, Bob! Ay, I know him well: he's famous for noose-larning!"

Hubby Dickinson's heart leaped within him, and he bounded from the side of the road into the centre of the lane, and, grasping the man's hand, conjured him to lead him to the youth's presence. By this time, three or four more dark faces had gathered at the entrance of the tent.

"Come in a bit," said the man to whom the antiquary had addressed himself. And, winking at his companions, the gipsy led Hubby into the tent.

Hubby was placed upon a sack that covered a clump of wood, and was invited to partake some bread and cheese,—while a boy ran into the village to fetch Bob Rakeabout. Having, in his eagerness, utterly forgot his breakfast at home, Hubby felt nothing loth when he saw the food, and accordingly accepted a "good farrantly piece," as the gipsies called it. A humming horn of ale followed, and then another, and another. Indeed, the contents of the huge black earthen bottle were passed about rather freely. Endless questions followed, and strange answers were given; and sometimes the gipsies stared, and at others they smiled, and often they were in danger of laughing outright.

At length the boy returned, and, behold! immediately afterwards Bob Rakeabout, the "Noose-larnt" himself, entered the tent! Hubby rose to receive him, bareheaded; but, he knew not how it was, it was somewhat difficult for him to stand, and so he sat down again. As for the great natural phenomenon himself, he stretched his brawny hand to each of the gipsies, and they shook it with remarkable good-humour. Then, seizing the black earthen bottle, he applied it to his mouth, without either using the horn or waiting for invitation to drink.

Hubby's thinkings were becoming somewhat confused; but he turned, inwardly, to the fact that Diogenes threw away his dish when he saw the boy drink out of his hand. "Of a verity, the youth is one of Nature's own miracles!" said he to himself.

Forthwith, Bob Rakeabout rakishly laughed as he took out a large pouch, composed of mole-skins, and filled with tobacco. He laid it open on the floor of the tent, filled his own short pipe from it, and the gipsies immediately followed his example. Hubby, as yet, had scarcely spoken to Bob; but when the whole company began to smoke, and the antiquary was again pressed to drink, for more than one reason he quietly remarked that he much wished to converse with this youth alone.

"Oh, ay," replied the gipsy, whom Hubby had seen first, "Bob will have no objection to that:—you can show this gentleman some noose-larning, can't you, Bob?"

The gipsies tittered,—but Bob understood the question,—for much had been said by himself and the gipsies in the peculiar slang of their tribe, which Hubby had not comprehended.

"Take another horn, sir," said Bob; "and give us another ten minutes to smoke our pipes out, and I'll show ye some noose-larning, in a twink."

Hubby's head swum partly with pleasure, but much more with the strong ale, to which he was unused; but he drank off the other horn, in eager expectation of such a mental feast to follow it as he had never yet tasted.

"Come along wi' me, sir!" cried Bob, springing up, suddenly, at the end of less than ten minutes; "come along wi' me, and I'll show ye some noose-larning!"

"Are ye really off, Bob?" asked the gipsies, all together.

"Ay, ay," he answered, "kick up a roaster, and set on iron-jack against I come back."

Hubby thought this strange talk; but he had not time to think much about it, for Bob seized him by the hand, and away they scampered together over two or three fields, and then entered a wood. And here Bob took from his pocket certain strange engines of wood and wire, and, showing Hubby the noose attached to each, planted them severally in little openings of bush or brake, while Hubby stared like one that was thunder-struck, for Bob only uttered one word—"Noose-larning!" and then, seizing Hubby by the arm, hurried him on again. At length, in the thickest part of the wood, Bob began to take up engines instead of putting them down—but, lo! there were dead hares attached to them.

And now poor Hubby Dickinson saw of what kind of mettle the "miracle of mother-wit" was made, and, taking to his heels, he ran from the poacher with as much haste as if a legion of fiends were behind him. Did the poacher follow? Not he, indeed. He only burst into hysterics of laughter, and then went on with his business.

And whither fled the antiquary? Indeed, he knew not; but, having emerged from the wood, he ran as long as the fumes of the strong malt-liquor in his brains permitted him to retain possession of the power of his feet; and, when they failed him, he fell souse into a ditch, which happened merely to contain mud instead of water, and remained there, insensible and asleep for the greater part of the time, till late in the afternoon.

As luck would have it, the parson of Hambleton, who was an old antiquarian crony of Hubby's, took his afternoon walk in that direction, and, to his perfect amazement, found his erudite friend in the ditch.

"Noose-larning!" roared out Hubby, and shook and shuddered, when the parson had poked him with his walking-stick until he waked him:—"Noose-larning!" he still uttered, beholding the poacher in the wood, in his bewildered condition. With much ado, Hubby was at length fully brought to the remembrance of what he was about, and being by that time perfectly sober,—but dreadfully cramped,—he clambered out of the ditch; and though sorely ashamed of his bedaubed condition, and much more of his doating folly, he accompanied his friend to the parsonage-house at Hambleton, and, after much entreaty, with all the simplicity of his soul, recounted all he could remember of the whole adventure, commencing with Gaffer Davy's visit and the present of the Roman spur.

Oft was the hearty laugh of the plain Oakhamers raised at Hubby Dickinson's expense, during the remainder of his life; but the fine old fellow's adventure never lessened their esteem for him. He was never permitted to want, even when age had stiffened his limbs and almost totally closed his eyes and ears. Town and country were alike proud of the learning that he had possessed; and the villages, especially, believed that his like would never be seen in Rutland again, even to the day of judgment.

In the lapse of a few months, Hubby got over the shame and soreness of mind created by his adventure so entirely, as to be able to relish a joke about it; and, when his lamp of life was quivering and ready to sink, nothing would so soon cause it to blaze up with a healthy and cheerful light as a joke about the "noose-larning"—unless it were a grave and respectful mention of the "Tallagium illustrissimum." But the lamp of that life went out at last, though its exit from mortality was peaceful and gentle as the sinking to sleep of a babe; and never yet has "the like" been seen in little Rutland, for wondrous learning, of Master Zerubbabel Dickinson.

THE BEGGARED GENTLEMAN, AND HIS CROOKED STICK.

There is not a sight in the world more distressful to the bosom that retains any measure in it of "the milk of human kindness" than that of an abject, poverty-stricken fellow-creature, who once rolled in wealth and plenty. Even the born beggar, who has lived a beggar all his life, feels an involuntary compassion for such a man. And, if his fall be attributable to no avaricious spirit of speculation, or proud and sensual excess—but is the effect of Fortune's untoward frown, or the result of what the selfish world calls an imprudent practice of relieving the distressed, the "beggared gentleman" is surely a legitimate object of universal commiseration.

"Poor Mr. Clifford!" the most ragged and hungry inhabitant of Kirton-in-Lindsey would exclaim, "how much he is to be pitied!—I never thought to see him come to this!" And when the subject of this general pity happened to let fall his curious crooked stick through infirmity of age, there was not a poor man or woman in the little town but would hasten to restore it to him who seemed to regard it as the most prizeable possession he had left in the world. It was moving to see the instant act of ceremonious courtesy to which the recipient of this simple heart-kindness would resort. He would raise his hat, and smile with the same polite expression of thankfulness as in his best days. No one who saw him could forget that he had been a gentleman. And yet the home of his old age was one of squalid misery!

Hugh Clifford's father was a descendant, by a younger branch, of a noble family, and had gained a considerable fortune as a merchant in the port of Hull. He died in the beginning of the reign of George the Third, and left his accumulated wealth to his only son, who was then at college. Hugh hastened home, on the sudden death of his father, and, by the advice of a few friends, resolved to carry on his father's mercantile concern. Twelve months, however, served to disgust him with business. His wealth, instead of augmenting, began rapidly to decrease under the peculations of clerks and managers, to whom the business was necessarily entrusted, and he took the resolution, ere it was too late, of retiring, after he had disposed of his "concern," to a pretty little estate which had fallen to him, by his mother's right, at the pleasant little rural town of Kirton-in-Lindsey, that like "a city set on a hill" delights the eye of the traveller for miles before he reaches it.

For many years, Hugh Clifford's house was a general refuge for the distressed. None ever knocked at his gate, and told a tale of want, but they found instant relief. Hugh Clifford's heart was expansive as Nature herself. He felt that all men were his brethren, and that, if he merely tendered them lip-kindness when they were in sorrow, it was but mockery. He pondered over the precepts and history of the Great Exemplar, until, nature and reason combining to stimulate him, his whole life became an effort to banish the misery of human-kind. And yet the sphere in which he acted was comparatively narrow; for his natural intelligence was not of that high order which marks out for itself extended fields of enterprize in philanthropy. Hugh Clifford could not be termed a planet, like Howard, that visited widely distant climes in its great dispensing orbit of goodness; but he was most veritably a star of benevolence, that cheered with a pure and genial light all within its neighbourhood who partook of woe and wretchedness.

Living, by his charity, in the very core of poor men's hearts, and respected for his true politeness and urbanity by his wealthier neighbours, Hugh Clifford, while he rendered others happy, was believed to be himself a very happy man. Nevertheless, for twenty years after he had passed the prime of age, discomfort and distress were gradually stealing upon him; and these, too, from a source which was almost entirely unsuspected by the majority of his neighbours. True, it was sometimes remarked that fox-eyed lawyer Merrick was often, very often, at Clifford cottage,—and this was considered to be anomalous, since Hugh Clifford's acquaintances had been uniformly chosen for some quality which distinguished them in the little town and its neighbourhood, as benefactors rather than oppressors of the poor: albeit lawyer Merrick was notoriously of the latter description of character. A few shrewd, hard-bargaining farmers also made a notch in their memories, now and then, that lawyer Merrick's purchases of odd bits of land were becoming frequent now he seemed to be so very oft a visitor at good Mr. Clifford's.

Notwithstanding these slight precurses of suspicion, it came, at length, upon the ears of the Kirton people, poor and rich together, like the shock of an earthquake, that "poor good old Mr. Clifford was turned bodily out of doors, with nothing but the clothes on his back and his favourite crooked stick in his hand, a complete pauper, for that he had been getting into lawyer Merrick's debt for years and years, by borrowing small sums upon his estate, whereby all he was worth was mortgaged to the lawyer, who had now suddenly foreclosed, and pounced upon house and land, pushing good old Mr. Clifford away, by the shoulders!"

"Poor Mr. Clifford!" was echoed by every body;—but who helped "poor Mr. Clifford?"

There lay the hardest fact in the good man's history. The little tradesmen who had shared his daily orders for the relief of the miserable had none of them more than five pounds in their books against him; but each of them made out a bill of thrice the amount of their debt, and so figured in the world's compassion as great losers by the "beggared gentleman," instead of ingrates, when they shut their doors against him. The farmers shook their heads, and buttoned up their fobs, saying, "It was no wonder that all was over with Mr. Clifford: he ought to have remembered that, 'Charity begins at home.'" The parish parson, who was the prime whip of the neighbourhood, and spent more days of the year with 'Squire Harrison's hounds than he spent in his pulpit and study, thrice told, only struck his top-boots violently with his whip, and said, "God bless me! I always thought the poor fellow was cracked in his upper story! Why, he must have meant to end his days in an alms-house, or he would not have undertaken to keep all the poor in my parish and the surrounding parishes to boot!" and, springing into the stirrups, was out of sight in a minute.

And into an alms-house poor Hugh Clifford went, but not until he had wandered through the little town three or four times, leaning upon his curious crooked stick, and looking as if unconscious of the crowd of tearful poor men and women that followed him. At first, the parish overseers waited, in the expectation that, as a matter of course, either the parson or some of the "better sort of people" would invite the "beggared gentleman" into their houses; but when it was seen that no such invitation was given, while, all the time, the poor fallen man was wandering in the street with derangement manifest in his looks, the puzzled overseers laid their heads together, and agreed that one of the alms-houses should be apportioned for Mr. Clifford's home, and that an old deaf female pauper should be put under the same roof to wait upon him.

For many days the poor victim to his own goodness was silent and helpless, and, by order of the parish surgeon, was disturbed, on the rugged bed where he lay, no oftener than was necessary to arouse him in order that he might be fed; for his mental powers seemed to have undergone so complete a paralysis as to render him insensible to the calls of nature. After the lapse of some weeks, during the latter half of which he seemed to be absorbed in abstract devotion, poor Hugh Clifford's mind rallied. And now the meekness with which he bore his adversity was equally remarkable with the perfectness of that pity he had evermore displayed for the wretched during the term of his prosperity. He accepted the smallest act of kindness with gratitude; and the poor deaf old female pauper never knew what it was to hear him utter a word of complaint.

The remnant of his life may be summed up in a few lines. All who had the means of ameliorating his lot neglected him; and all who wished for the means, and had hearts to have used them in his relief, lacked them. He lived years in his beggared condition, and died calmly and quietly, complaining of nothing in the world, nor of the world itself, and leaving but one request,—that his curious crooked stick might be placed by his right side, in his coffin, and buried with him!

The deaf old female pauper who had waited on him did not fail to communicate this strange request to the parish overseers when they came to look at Hugh Clifford's corpse, prior to giving orders for his burial. It may be guessed that the singular request gave rise to much wonder and some enquiry. But the old female could only answer that the good gentleman would often place his odd-looking walking-stick in the corner, and sit on his bedside looking very intently upon it; and that often he would turn the other side of it to the wall, and then sit and look at it again; and several times she had seen him take a little note-book from his coat pocket, at the breast, and write in it, looking, ever and anon, at the curious crooked stick.

The latter part of the old female's communication of course occasioned a search. The pocket-book was found, and in it a paper covered with a close manuscript of a most curious character, but one that served to display the anatomy of poor Hugh Clifford's heart under his misfortunes more fully than it could have been laid open and read in either death-bed confession, or funeral sermon. It ran as follows:—

"_A Soliloquy on my only faithful and never-failing friend,—my
beloved and valued crooked stick._

"Ay, there thou art,—my own crooked stick!—My heart cleaves to thee, in thy crookedness; and I love thus to look upon thee, more and more, daily, as thou leanest by the wall in that corner,—remembering that thou and I were not always tenants of an alms-house.

"I love to look upon thee, with a melancholy yet pleasurable love, beholding that thou preservest thy crooked identity,—yea, remainest as crooked as ever thou wert! I know not whether aught within me, or, indeed, any thing but thyself without me, be still the same as on that beautiful summer eve when, more than fifty years ago, I cut thee from the venerable crab-tree whereon thou didst grow, and we formed our inseparable friendship.

"The wise men of this age would tell me that not a particle of the body I had then, at nineteen, is to be found in this old body of threescore and ten,—but that blood, bone, brains, and all its other youthful components, are changed. I know not, my dear crooked crab-stick, how truly they may speak; but this I know,—that I then was proud of a perfect and spotless array of teeth, while, now, my old gums are tenantless; that then my eyes were sharp and strong, while now I see, with the utmost difficulty, objects removed half a yard from my nose; that then my ears were instruments of use, and porches for receiving the brain's most precious visitants, the sounds of music,—while, now, they only serve to plague me when I see people's lips moving, and think, like other old fools, that folks are always talking about me; and, that I used to have 'a handsome head of hair,' as my barber always called it, on quarter-day, when he expected his salary,—while, now, I behold a perpetual winter above my brow, and on my brow itself!

"But, ah! my faithful friend, why should I lament the changes which have come upon me? Fate, or Fortune, or whatever power I might fancifully charge with my evil day, cannot avenge herself of me so bitterly as she might,—if I had teeth to be set on edge with inferior food,—eyes to be offended with the rude shapes of this straw mattrass and rush-bottomed chair,—ears to be tormented with the jangling of earthen porringers, as the poor deaf old woman knocks them against each other,—and hair which I could not dress for lack of a mirror!

"And then, as to my inner man, good lack, my beloved crooked crab-stick! though thou remainest the same, how is this my inner man changed! ay, how hath it changed and changed again, since our first dear friendship was formed! Yet I said in my heart, once, that my mind could never change in its regard for what I was pleased to call 'certain great principles!' Alack! I have lived to feel uncertain about the certainty and greatness of almost all principles! and——

"But stop! how is this, that having taken thee into my hand, I begin, just now, to question the reality of thy crookedness? Art thou really so very, very crooked, my dearly beloved stick?

"There! I place thee, again, in thy own corner, that so thou mayst lean against thy own spot in the wall, and lo! thy crookedness is made, once more, fully manifest! No, no, my friend—for Hugh Clifford loves thee too well and sincerely to call himself thy 'master,' and think of thee as of a slave!—no, no, it is too late in life for the 'beggared gentleman' to deceive himself—thou _art_ crooked, crooked indeed!

"But ah! my beloved stick, it is for thy crookedness I love thee, above all, though not for it alone. I avow to thee, as I have often avowed, in times past, when no human ear heard me, that I thank thee, my faithful, crooked, unfailing friend, for all thy service. Twice, when wielded by my right arm, didst though enable me to deliver a weak fellow-creature from his stronger, who would have slain him because he had not filthy gold or silver to satisfy the robber: ten times didst thou empower me to wrest open the cottage doors of dying human beings deserted by their kind, and unable to arise and welcome their deliverer: nay, once didst thou enable me to preserve my own poor life when the plunderer who now possesseth my house and land would have secretly and bloodily taken it!

"What though it bringeth some sorrow to remember the angelic face and form I saw, for the last time, but an hour before I cut thee from thy parent tree, Ah! how well doth life assort the lot of its inheritors, even when they most deeply repine! The sea devoured my Mary—my beauty, my only love, and I repined that she was not spared to share my riches and possessions; alas! would she not have had to share my lot, also, in this alms-house? Indeed, my friend, I was blessed that I gained thy friendship that night, when my love was taken from me, for how great a comfort hast thou been to me!

"I tender thee these my heartfelt thanks, now our long and interesting friendship is in the yellow leaf! Many a mile hast thou travelled with me,—unfailingly hast thou supported my steps in manhood and old age,—in all weathers,—and never shrunk from me, nor upbraided either my haste or my tarrying, my speed or my slowness, my lavishness or my poverty; but Hugh Clifford cannot expect, in the nature of things, to remain with thee much longer. He loves thee so well, that he would fain thou mightst be laid by his side in the grave: yet such a request may be met churlishly by those who provide Hugh's coffin,—and thou mayst become the support of another, who will, peradventure, proudly call thee his 'property' instead of his 'companion!'"

"Farewell, then, my dearly-beloved and highly valued friend—farewell! but not before I have more fully thanked thee:——

"Above all, my precious crooked stick, I return thee hearty thanks that thou hast been to me a truthful mirror—yea, a bright and glittering looking-glass,—although the eye of the undiscerning, and of those who judge after the outward seeming and surface appearance, would misreckon thee to be a dry, dull, opaque crooked crab-stick! Yea, a mirror, I say, thou hast been to me,—reflecting upon my spiritual retina,—the judgment,—that great fact, which, in my folly, I oft would have hidden from myself,—that I resembled thee!

"Yet, thou pitiedest me in thy heart,—hard and unfeeling as some would say that heart must be, the heart of a crooked crab-stick!—yea, thou pitiedst me therein, and didst still from thy old corner regard me with the same unflatteringly argumentative and admonitory aspect,—penetrating _my_ heart with the faithful language of _thine_: 'Hugh! look at me and know thyself.'

"And I _have_ looked at thee, and I do _now_ look at thee, and in thy veritable crookedness I behold my own!"

"Reader,—who wilt find this my solemn and earnest soliloquy, when I am gone,—hast thou a crooked stick?

"'I, Mr. Clifford!' answers some young puppy of one-and-twenty, who, perchance, may take my paper into his dainty fingers, 'I am not so vulgar as to carry a crooked stick: my cane is most beautifully polished, and it is a perfectly straight one!'"

"Pshaw! my brave lad! I sought not thy answer: do not be so pert: think more, and talk less, for the next thirty years; and then re-consider my question.

"'I understand your censorious query, Mr. Clifford,' says another, some score of years older, and with less buckram but more gauze in his composition—'I understand you: but the fact is, _my_ stick is _not_ a crooked stick: it is perfectly straight, and hath always been straight: 'tis the evil-disposed and calumnious world who call it crooked: albeit, if they would only view it aright, they would perceive that all the parts of it which they think crooked and perverse are direct as a geometrical right line!'

"Alas, my reader with the pretended straight stick! thou pratest in vain to Hugh Clifford, the 'beggared gentleman!' I tell thee, plainly, thy stick is, like mine, a crooked one; nay, I tell thee, that every man's stick is but a crooked stick. And, of all curses under which this poor abused world groans, may it be speedily and effectually delivered, I pray, in my old age and in an alms-house, from the cant of the starched faces who assure their fellow-creatures with so much show of sanctity that their crooked sticks are straight ones!

"Farewell, then, once again, my beloved but crooked friend, and thanks for thy faithfulness! alas, that I neglected to use thy silent admonitions as I ought to have used them, when the serpent who wrecked me was wont to shed his false tears while I related my tales of the poor in his ears! Fool that I was to take those tears, and the offers to lend more money that followed, for proofs of his feeling heart! Ah, my friend, had I to spend life again, I would attend more closely to thy monitions, and would not credit a man's professions of humanity, unless they cost him something! But it is too late to repent at what I fear I could not have avoided if I had even seen my error.

"Let it pass! Hugh Clifford's heart danceth for joy, even amidst the squalor of an alms-house, that he can point to no inconsiderable portion of his life, and say with truth regarding it, as one said of old—'When the ear heard me, then it blessed me: and when the eye saw me it gave witness to me: because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me: and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy.'—

"Yet see I my image in thine, my dear faithful friend! my stick is but a crooked one, though I have done some little good in my life! Ostentation hath mixed itself, more or less, with my purest charities,—anger hath too often burned in my bosom till the morning light: I have not always 'done as I would be done by;' I have too often behaved contemptuously to my fellow-creatures, forgetting that I was but a poor, pitiful earth-worm, like themselves. I am but a _crooked_ stick, like thee, my beloved friend, with all my imagined excellency.

"But, finally, I thank thee, that thou hast perseveringly shown me that I was not perfect: thou hast preserved me from self-deceit, or at least hast chased it away, when it hath led me into temporary captivity.

"Farewell, then, my beloved crooked stick!—and if he who, first or last, readeth this my serious soliloquy feeleth inclined to laugh thereat, let him answer my question, when I ask him if _he_ be able to point to one human thing that hath been to him what thou hast been to me—_for fifty years, an ever-faithful and never-failing friend_?"

THE NURTURE OF A YOUNG SAILOR; OR, THE HISTORY OF COCKLE TOM.

Cockle Tom was born in poverty, cradled in hardship, and schooled, never in the alphabet, but perpetually in endurance of labour, hunger, and fatigue. His manhood was brief; but his death was generous and heroic. He was one of the humble children of genuine romance, which England produces in profusion, but whose lives are unchronicled, and the moral of their story lost, simply from the fact that, though full of virtuous ambition, they are untainted with vain-glory: they neither seek for notice in cities, nor lay claim to distinction in public assemblies; but they restlessly seek to obtain and preserve the reputation that they are hard-workers, undaunted by any danger, and capable of sustaining any amount of fatigue, or undertaking any risk, even that of life itself, to benefit the existence or preserve the life of a fellow-creature. Such is genuine Saxon character—genuine old English nature: what elements for useful greatness in a nation, if its rulers were Alfreds! But to proceed with our humble biography:—

Cockle Tom was born at Northcotes-on-the-Sands, a slender, straggling village, bleakly situate on the Lincolnshire sea-coast, and at no great distance from the mouth of the Humber. His father was a simple fisherman, who rented the "cockle sands," as they were called,—an extent of something more than a mile, belonging to the parish of Northcotes, and possessed in fee-simple by the principal landholder in the neighbourhood. Having married young, and being early the head of a numerous small family, Tom's father, from the penury of his condition, was constrained to introduce every one of his male children, at least, to the rough and painful labour of gathering cockles on the sea-beach by the time they had reached the tender age of five years. And at that age was Tom first taken, by his elder brothers, without shoes or stockings, with a bundle of rags rather than clothes around him, and a red flannel night-cap tied fast round his head, to gather the shell-fish, by scraping them out of the sand with his little hands, and putting them into a small hempen bag tied round his loins. Little Tom was very eager to go;—for "the sea! the sea!" was his unvarying song (chanted in a wild, untaught melody which perhaps even Neükomm himself would have thought beautiful, could he have listened to it) from the day when he was three years old, the first day on which his father bore him on shoulder to gaze upon the ships riding in the German Ocean. But poor little Tom cried bitterly with frozen hands, and cold, and hunger, before the day was over, and it was time to return to his mother's aproned knee, and the soothing heaven of sympathy that dwelt on her tongue and in her eyes.

Yet, on the morrow, little Tom would go again. The father would have left him at home till the Spring strengthened and the sun came nearer, for it was but early March as yet; but the little adventurer was too true to his nature to accept the boon. And from that day, summer and winter, except when even the father himself was compelled to stay at home by reason of an unusual storm, Tom continued to mount his little red night-cap, like the rest, and make one among the picturesque line of industrious stragglers on the sea-beach. To school Tom never went in his life: though his lot would not have been more highly favoured in that respect, had he been the child of a peasant in the interior, or even the son of a decent mechanic in Lincolnshire, at that period,—for we are speaking of events of seventy years' date, from their commencement to our own time,—and at that far-back period the idea of sending a poor man's child to school was regarded as a piece of over-weening pride that deserved no gentle rebuke from "the better sort of people." But what though he could never read? he could make boats; and indeed his earliest error was a display of that kind of ingenuity, for he bored a hole in the bottom of his mother's bread-tin when but four years' old, stuck a wooden mast in it, fitted on a sail, and set it afloat on the surface of a brook that ran by the end of his father's little garden; and, while he clapped his little hands in ecstasy, away dashed his ship to the sea! He was severely chidden for this, but _not_ flogged: that was not his mother's way; she happened to have too much good sense to brutify her offspring: and the lecture served to shew him that he had done foolishly,—but it did not annihilate that passion for ships and the sea which his first sight of them had created within him. He could make boats—did we say? ay, and he made a ship, too,—such a ship!—though this was when he was ten years old, and had seen the magnificent merchant-vessels from the Mediterranean and the West Indies go by in full sail for the Humber and the port of Hull,—such a ship, with masts, and yards, and rigging, and portholes, and even miniature sailors,—it was so wondrous a piece of art as the oldest villager in Northcotes had never seen, and rendered little Tom the every-day talk of all its inhabitants. Such talk did not render little Tom vain, however, for his yearning mind had influenced his hands to form the ship from no principle of praise-seeking: it was a type that signified he meant to sail in such an ocean-vehicle—if the simple people could so have read it.