 |
When they once had found that out, it was difficult to get any of them to sit in our parlor. I had purposely christened the new room my study, that I might stand on my rights as master of ceremonies there, though I opened wide arms of welcome to any who chose to come. So, then, it would often come to pass, that, when we were sitting round the fire in my study of an evening, the girls would say,—
"Come, what do we always stay here for? Why don't we ever sit in the parlor?"
And then there would be manifested among guests and family-friends a general unwillingness to move.
"Oh, hang it, girls!" would Arthur say; "the parlor is well enough, all right; let it stay as it is, and let a fellow stay where he can do as he pleases and feels at home"; and to this view of the matter would respond divers of the nice young bachelors who were Arthur's and Tom's sworn friends.
In fact, nobody wanted to stay in our parlor now. It was a cold, correct, accomplished fact; the household fairies had left it,—and when the fairies leave a room, nobody ever feels at home in it. No pictures, curtains, no wealth of mirrors, no elegance of lounges, can in the least make up for their absence. They are a capricious little set; there are rooms where they will not stay, and rooms where they will; but no one can ever have a good time without them.
* * * * *
THREE CANTOS OF DANTE'S "PARADISO."
[Transcribers Note: Line that had notes associated with them have been numbered. The notes have been moved to the end of the canto.]
CANTO XXIII.
Even as a bird, 'mid the beloved leaves, [1] Quiet upon the nest of her sweet brood Throughout the night, that hideth all things from us, Who, that she may behold their longed-for looks And find the nourishment wherewith to feed them, In which, to her, grave labors grateful are, Anticipates the time on open spray And with an ardent longing waits the sun, Gazing intent, as soon as breaks the dawn: Even thus my Lady standing was, erect And vigilant, turned round towards the zone Underneath which the sun displays least haste; [12] So that beholding her distraught and eager, Such I became as he is, who desiring For something yearns, and hoping is appeased. But brief the space from one When to the other; From my awaiting, say I, to the seeing The welkin grow resplendent more and more. And Beatrice exclaimed: "Behold the hosts Of the triumphant Christ, and all the fruit Harvested by the rolling of these spheres!" [21] It seemed to me her face was all on flame; And eyes she had so full of ecstasy That I must needs pass on without describing. As when in nights serene of the full moon Smiles Trivia among the nymphs eternal Who paint the heaven through all its hollow cope, Saw I, above the myriads of lamps, A sun that one and all of them enkindled, [29] E'en as our own does the supernal stars. And through the living light transparent shone The lucent substance so intensely clear Into my sight, that I could not sustain it. O Beatrice, my gentle guide and dear! She said to me: "That which o'ermasters thee A virtue is which no one can resist. There are the wisdom and omnipotence That oped the thoroughfares 'twixt heaven and earth, For which there erst had been so long a yearning." As fire from out a cloud itself discharges, Dilating so it finds not room therein, And down, against its nature, falls to earth, So did my mind, among those aliments Becoming larger, issue from itself, And what became of it cannot remember. "Open thine eyes, and look at what I am: [45] Thou hast beheld such things, that strong enough Hast thou become to tolerate my smile." I was as one who still retains the feeling Of a forgotten dream, and who endeavors In vain to bring it back into his mind, When I this invitation heard, deserving Of so much gratitude, it never fades Out of the book that chronicles the past. If at this moment sounded all the tongues That Polyhymnia and her sisters made [55] Most lubrical with their delicious milk, To aid me, to a thousandth of the truth It would not reach, singing the holy smile, And how the holy aspect it illumed. And therefore, representing Paradise, The sacred poem must perforce leap over, Even as a man who finds his way cut off. But whoso thinketh of the ponderous theme, And of the mortal shoulder that sustains it, Should blame it not, if under this it trembles. It is no passage for a little boat This which goes cleaving the audacious prow, Nor for a pilot who would spare himself. "Why does my face so much enamor thee, That to the garden fair thou turnest not, Which under the rays of Christ is blossoming? There is the rose in which the Word Divine [72] Became incarnate; there the lilies are By whose perfume the good way was selected." Thus Beatrice; and I, who to her counsels Was wholly ready, once again betook me Unto the battle of the feeble brows. As in a sunbeam, that unbroken passes [78] Through fractured cloud, ere now a meadow of flowers Mine eyes with shadow covered have beheld, So I beheld the multitudinous splendors Refulgent from above with burning rays, Beholding not the source of the effulgence. O thou benignant power that so imprint'st them! [89] Thou didst exalt thyself to give more scope There to the eyes, that were not strong enough. The name of that fair flower I e'er invoke Morning and evening utterly enthralled My soul to gaze upon the greater fire. And when in both mine eyes depicted were The glory and greatness of the living star Which conquers there, as here below it conquered, Athwart the heavens descended a bright sheen [98] Formed in a circle like a coronal, And cinctured it, and whirled itself about it. Whatever melody most sweetly soundeth On earth, and to itself most draws the soul, Would seem a cloud that, rent asunder, thunders, Compared unto the sounding of that lyre Wherewith was crowned the sapphire beautiful, Which gives the clearest heaven its sapphire hue. [106] "I am Angelic Love, that circle round The joy sublime which breathes from out the bosom That was the hostelry of our Desire; And I shall circle, Lady of Heaven, while Thou followest thy Son, and mak'st diviner The sphere supreme, because thou enterest it." Thus did the circulated melody Seal itself up; and all the other lights Were making resonant the name of Mary. The regal mantle of the volumes all [116] Of that world, which most fervid is and living With breath of God and with his works and ways, Extended over us its inner curve, So very distant, that its outward show, There where I was, not yet appeared to me. Therefore mine eyes did not possess the power Of following the incoronated flame, Which had ascended near to its own seed. And as a little child, that towards its mother Extends its arms, when it the milk has taken, Through impulse kindled into outward flame, Each of those gleams of white did upward stretch So with its summit, that the deep affection They had for Mary was revealed to me. Thereafter they remained there in my sight, Regina coeli singing with such sweetness, [132] That ne'er from me has the delight departed. Oh, what exuberance is garnered up In those resplendent coffers, which had been For sowing here below good husbandmen! There they enjoy and live upon the treasure [137] Which was acquired while weeping in the exile Of Babylon, wherein the gold was left. There triumpheth beneath the exalted Son Of God and Mary, in his victory, Both with the ancient council and the new, He who doth keep the keys of such a glory. [143]
[Line 1: Dante is with Beatrice in the eighth circle, that of the fixed stars. She is gazing upwards, watching for the descent of the Triumph of Christ.]
[Line 12: Under the meridian, or at noon, the shadows being shorter move slower, and, therefore the sun seems less in haste.]
[Line 21: By the beneficent influences of the stars.]
[Line 29: The old belief that the stars were fed by the light of the sun. So Milton,—
"Hither, as to their fountain, other stars Repair, and in their golden urns draw light."
Here the stars are souls, the sun is Christ.]
[Line 45: Beatrice speaks.]
[Line 55: The Muse of harmony and singing.]
[Line 72: The rose is the Virgin Mary, Rosa Mundi, Rosa Mystica; the lilies are the Apostles and other saints.]
[Line 78: The struggle between his eyes and the light.]
[Line 89: Christ reascends, that Dante's dazzled eyes, too feeble to bear the light of his presence, may behold the splendors around him.
The greater fire is the Virgin Mary, greater than any of those remaining. She is the living star, surpassing in brightness all other souls in heaven, as she did here on earth: Stella Maris, Stella Matutina.]
[Line 98: The Angel Gabriel, or Angelic Love.]
[Line 106: Sapphire is the color in which the old painters arrayed the Virgin.]
[Line 116: The regal mantle of all the volumes, or rolling orbs, of the world is the crystalline heaven, or Primus Mobile, which infolds all the others like a mantle.]
[Line 132: Easter hymn to the Virgin.]
[Line 137: Caring not for gold in the Babylonian exile of this life, they laid up treasures in the other.]
[Line 143: St. Peter, keeper of the keys, with the holy men of the Old and the New Testament.]
CANTO XXIV.
"O company elect to the great supper [1] Of the Lamb glorified, who feedeth you So that forever full is your desire, If by the grace of God this man foretastes Of whatsoever falleth from your table, Or ever death prescribes to him the time, Direct your mind to his immense desire, [7] And him somewhat bedew; ye drinking are Forever from the fount whence comes his thought." [9] Thus Beatrice; and those enraptured spirits Made themselves spheres around their steadfast poles, Flaming intensely in the guise of comets. And as the wheels in works of horologes Revolve so that the first to the beholder Motionless seems, and the last one to fly, So in like manner did those carols, dancing [16] In different measure, by their affluence Make me esteem them either swift or slow. From that one which I noted of most beauty Beheld I issue forth a fire so happy That none it left there of a greater splendor; And around Beatrice three several times [22] It whirled itself with so divine a song, My fantasy repeats it not to me; Therefore the pen skips, and I write it not, Since our imagination for such folds, Much more our speech, is of a tint too glaring. [27] "O holy sister mine, who us implorest [28] With such devotion, by thine ardent love Thou dost unbind me from that beautiful sphere!" Thus, having stopped, the beatific fire Unto my Lady did direct its breath, Which spake in fashion as I here have said. And she: "O light eterne of the great man To whom our Lord delivered up the keys He carried down of this miraculous joy, This one examine on points light and grave, As good beseemeth thee, about the Faith By means of which thou on the sea didst walk. If he loves well, and hopes well, and believes, Is hid not from thee; for thou hast thy sight Where everything beholds itself depicted. [42] But since this kingdom has made citizens By means of the true Faith, to glorify it 'Tis well he have the chance to speak thereof." As baccalaureate arms himself, and speaks not Until the master doth propose the question, To argue it, and not to terminate it, So did I arm myself with every reason, While she was speaking, that I might be ready For such a questioner and such profession. "Speak on, good Christian; manifest thyself; [52] Say, what is Faith?" Whereat I raised my brow Unto that light from which this was breathed forth. Then turned I round to Beatrice, and she Prompt signals made to me that I should pour The water forth from my internal fountain. "May grace, that suffers me to make confession," Began I, "to the great Centurion, [59] Cause my conceptions all to be explicit!" And I continued: "As the truthful pen, Father, of thy dear brother wrote of it, Who put with thee Rome into the good way, Faith is the substance of the things we hope for, And evidence of those that are not seen; And this appears to me its quiddity." [66] Then heard I: "Very rightly thou perceivest, If well thou understandest why he placed it With substances and then with evidences." And I thereafterward: "The things profound, That here vouchsafe to me their outward show, Unto all eyes below are so concealed, That they exist there only in belief, Upon the which is founded the high hope, And therefore take the nature of a substance. And it behooveth us from this belief To reason without having other views, And hence it has the nature of evidence." Then heard I: "If whatever is acquired Below as doctrine were thus understood, No sophist's subtlety would there find place." Thus was breathed forth from that enkindled love; Then added: "Thoroughly has been gone over Already of this coin the alloy and weight; But tell me if thou hast it in thy purse?" And I: "Yes, both so shining and so round, That in its stamp there is no peradventure." Thereafter issued from the light profound That there resplendent was: "This precious jewel, Upon the which is every virtue founded, Whence hadst thou it?" And I: "The large outpouring Of the Holy Spirit, which has been diffused Upon the ancient parchments and the new, [93] A syllogism is, which demonstrates it With such acuteness, that, compared therewith, All demonstration seems to me obtuse." And then I heard: "The ancient and the new Postulates, that to thee are so conclusive, Why dost thou take them for the word divine?" And I: "The proof, which shows the truth to me, Are the works subsequent, whereunto Nature Ne'er heated iron yet, nor anvil beat." 'Twas answered me: "Say, who assureth thee That those works ever were? the thing itself We wish to prove, nought else to thee affirms it." "Were the world to Christianity converted," I said, "withouten miracles, this one Is such, the rest are not its hundredth part; For thou didst enter destitute and fasting Into the field to plant there the good plant, Which was a vine and has become a thorn!" This being finished, the high, holy Court Resounded through the spheres, "One God we praise!" In melody that there above is chanted. And then that Baron, who from branch to branch, [115] Examining, had thus conducted me, Till the remotest leaves we were approaching, Did recommence once more: "The Grace that lords it Over thy intellect thy mouth has opened, Up to this point, as it should opened be, So that I do approve what forth emerged; But now thou must express what thou believest, And whence to thy belief it was presented." "O holy father! O thou spirit, who seest What thou believedst, so that thou o'ercamest, Towards the sepulchre, more youthful feet," [126] Began I, "thou dost wish me to declare Forthwith the manner of my prompt belief, And likewise thou the cause thereof demandest. And I respond: In one God I believe, Sole and eterne, who all the heaven doth move, Himself unmoved, with love and with desire; And of such faith not only have I proofs Physical and metaphysical, but gives them Likewise the truth that from this place rains down Through Moses, through the Prophets and the Psalms, Through the Evangel, and through you, who wrote After the fiery Spirit sanctified you; [138] In Persons three eterne believe I, and these One essence I believe, so one and trine, They bear conjunction both with sunt and est. With the profound conjunction and divine, Which now I touch upon, doth stamp my mind Ofttimes the doctrine evangelical. This the beginning is, this is the spark Which afterwards dilates to vivid flame, And, like a star in heaven, is sparkling in me." Even as a lord, who hears what pleases him, His servant straight embraces, giving thanks For the good news, as soon as he is silent; So, giving me its benediction, singing, Three times encircled me, when I was silent, The apostolic light, at whose command I spoken had, in speaking I so pleased him.
[Line 1: Beatrice speaks.]
[Line 7: Hunger and thirst after things divine.]
[Line 9: The grace of God.]
[Line 16: The carol was a dance as well as a song.]
[Line 22: St. Peter thrice encircles Beatrice, as the Angel Gabriel did the Virgin Mary in the preceding canto.]
[Line 27: Too glaring for painting such delicate draperies of song.]
[Line 28: St. Peter speaks to Beatrice.]
[Line 42: Fixed upon God, in whom all things reflected.]
[Line 52: St. Peter speaks to Dante.]
[Line 59: The great Head of the Church.]
[Line 66: In the Scholastic Philosophy, the essence of a thing, distinguishing it from all other things, was called its quiddity: an answer to the question, Quid est?]
[Line 93: The Old and New Testaments.]
[Line 115: In the Middle Ages earthly titles were sometimes given to the saints. Thus, Boccaccio speaks of Baron Messer San Antonio.]
[Line 126: St. John, xx. 3-8. St. John was the first to reach the sepulchre, but St. Peter the first to enter it.]
[Line 138: St. Peter and the other Apostles after Pentecost.]
CANTO XXV.
If e'er it happen that the Poem Sacred, [1] To which both heaven and earth have set their hand Till it hath made me meagre many a year, O'ercome the cruelty that bars me out From the fair sheepfold, where a lamb I slumbered, Obnoxious to the wolves that war upon it, With other voice henceforth, with other fleece Will I return as poet, and at my font Baptismal will I take the laurel-crown; [9] Because into the Faith that maketh known All souls to God there entered I, and then Peter for her sake so my brow encircled. Thereafterward towards us moved a light Out of that band whence issued the first-fruits [14] Which of his vicars Christ behind him left, And then, my Lady, full of ecstasy, Said unto me: "Look, look! behold the Baron For whom below Galicia is frequented." [18] In the same way as, when a dove alights Near his companion, both of them pour forth, Circling about and murmuring, their affection, So I beheld one by the other grand Prince glorified to be with welcome greeted, Lauding the food that there above is eaten. But when their gratulations were completed, Silently coram me each one stood still, So incandescent it o'ercame my sight. Smiling thereafterwards, said Beatrice: "Spirit august, by whom the benefactions Of our Basilica have been described, [30] Make Hope reverberate in this altitude; Thou knowest as oft thou dost personify it As Jesus to the three gave greater light,"— [33] "Lift up thy head, and make thyself assured; [34] For what comes hither from the mortal world Must needs be ripened in our radiance." This exhortation from the second fire [37] Came; and mine eyes I lifted to the hills, [38] Which bent them down before with too great weight, "Since, through his grace, our Emperor decrees Thou shouldst confronted be, before thy death, In the most secret chamber, with his Counts, [42] So that, the truth beholding of this court, Hope, which below there rightly fascinates, In thee and others may thereby be strengthened; Say what it is, and how is flowering with it Thy mind, and say from whence it came to thee": Thus did the second light continue still. And the Compassionate, who piloted [49] The plumage of my wings in such high flight, In the reply did thus anticipate me: "No child whatever the Church Militant Of greater hope possesses, as is written In that Sun which irradiates all our band; [54] Therefore it is conceded him from Egypt To come into Jerusalem to see, [56] Or ever yet his warfare is completed. The other points, that not for knowledge' sake [58] Have been demanded, but that he report How much this virtue unto thee is pleasing, To him I leave; for hard he will not find them, Nor to be boasted of; them let him answer; And may the grace of God in this assist him!" As a disciple, who obeys his teacher, Ready and willing, where he is expert, So that his excellence may be revealed, "Hope," said I, "is the certain expectation [67] Of glory in the hereafter, which proceedeth From grace divine and merit precedent. From many stars this light comes unto me; But he instilled it first into my heart, Who was chief singer unto the chief captain. [72] Hope they in thee, in the high Theody He says, all those who recognize thy name; [74] And who does not, if he my faith possesses? [75] Thou didst instil me, then, with his instilling In the Epistle, so that I am full, And upon others rain again your rain." [78] While I was speaking, in the living bosom Of that effulgence quivered a sharp flash, Sudden and frequent, in the guise of lightning. Then breathed: "The love wherewith I am inflamed Towards the virtue still, which followed me Unto the palm and issue of the field, Wills that I whisper thee, thou take delight In her; and grateful to me is thy saying Whatever things Hope promises to thee." And I: "The ancient Scriptures and the new The mark establish, and this shows it me, [89] Of all the souls whom God has made his friends. Isaiah saith, that each one garmented In his own land shall be with twofold garments, [92] And his own land is this sweet life of yours. Thy brother, too, far more explicitly, There where he treateth of the robes of white, [95] This revelation manifests to us." And first, and near the ending of these words, Sperent in te from over us was heard, To which responsive answered all the carols. [99] Thereafterward among them gleamed a light, [100] So that, if Cancer such a crystal had, Winter would have a month of one sole day. [102] And as uprises, goes, and enters the dance A joyous maiden, only to do honor To the new bride, and not from any failing, [105] So saw I the illuminated splendor Approach the two, who in a wheel revolved, [107] As was beseeming to their ardent love. It joined itself there in the song and music; And fixed on them my Lady kept her look, Even as a bride, silent and motionless. "This is the one who lay upon the breast Of him our Pelican; and this is he To the great office from the cross elected." [114] My Lady thus; but therefore none the more Removed her sight from its fixed contemplation, Before or afterward, these words of hers. Even as a man who gazes, and endeavors To see the eclipsing of the sun a little, And who, by seeing, sightless doth become, So I became before that latest fire, [122] While it was said, "Why dost thou daze thyself To see a thing which here has no existence? [124] Earth upon earth my body is, and shall be With all the others there, until our number With the eternal proposition tallies; [127] With the two garments in the blessed cloister [128] Are the two lights alone that have ascended: [129] And this shalt thou take back into your world." [130] And at this utterance the flaming circle Grew quiet, with the dulcet intermingling Of sound that by the trinal breath was made, [133] As to escape from danger or fatigue The oars that erst were in the water beaten Are all suspended at a whistle's sound. Ah, how much in my mind was I disturbed, When I turned round to look on Beatrice, At not beholding her, although I was Close at her side and in the Happy World!
[Line 1: This "Divina Commedia," in which human science or Philosophy is symbolized in Virgil, and divine science or Theology in Beatrice.
"Fiorenza la Bella," Florence the Fair. In one of his Canzoni, Dante says,—
"O mountain-song of mine, thou goest thy way; Florence my town thou shalt perchance behold, Which bars me from itself, Devoid of love and naked of compassion."]
[Line 9: This allusion to the Church of San Giovanni, "il mio bel San Giovanni," as Dante calls it elsewhere, (Inf. xix. 17,) is a fitting prelude to the Canto in which St. John is to appear. Like the "laughing of the grass" in Canto xxx. 77, it is a "foreshadowing preface," ombrifero prefazio, of what follows.
See Canto xxiv. 150;
"So, giving me its benediction, singing, Three times encircled me, when I was silent, The apostolic light."]
[Line 14: St. Peter. "That we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." Epistle of St. James, i. 18.]
[Line 18: St. James. Pilgrimages are made to his tomb at Compostella in Galicia.]
[Line 30: The General Epistle of St. James, called the Epistola Cattolica, i. 17. "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights." Our Basilica: Paradise: the Church Triumphant.]
[Line 33: Peter, James, and John, representing the three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Charity, and distinguished above the other apostles by clearer manifestations of their Master's favor.]
[Line 34: St. James speaks.]
[Line 37: The three Apostles, luminous above him, overwhelming him with light.]
[Line 38: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help." Psalm cxxi. 1.]
[Line 42: The most august spirits of the Celestial City.]
[Line 49: Beatrice.]
[Line 54: In God,
"Where everything beholds itself depicted."
Canto xxiv. 42.]
[Line 56: To come from earth to heaven.]
[Line 58: "Say what it is," and "whence it came to thee."]
[Line 67: "Est spes certa expectatio futurae beatitudinis, veniens ex Dei gratia et meritis praecedentibus." Petrus Lombardus, Magister Sententiarum.]
[Line 72: The Psalmist David.]
[Line 74: The Book of Psalms, or Songs of God.]
[Line 75: "And they that know thy name will put their trust in thee." Psalm ix. 10.]
[Line 78: Your rain: that is, of David and yourself.]
[Line 89: "The mark of the high calling and election sure."]
[Line 92: The twofold garments are the glorified spirit and the glorified body.]
[Line 95: St. John, in the Apocalypse, vii. 9. "A great multitude which no man could number ... clothed with white robes."]
[Line 99: Dances and songs commingled; the circling choirs, the celestial choristers.]
[Line 100: St. John the Evangelist.]
[Line 102: In winter the constellation Cancer rises at sunset; and if it had one star as bright as this, it would turn night into day.]
[Line 105: Such as vanity, ostentation, or the like.]
[Line 107: St. Peter and St. James are joined by St. John.]
[Line 114: Christ. "Then saith he to the disciple, 'Behold thy mother!' And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home." St. John, xix. 27.]
[Line 122: St. John.]
[Line 124: "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee."]
[Line 127: Till the predestined number of the elect is complete.]
[Line 128: The two garments: the glorified spirit and the glorified body.]
[Line 129: The two lights: Christ and the Virgin Mary.]
[Line 130: Carry back these tidings.]
[Line 133: The sacred trio of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John.]
* * * * *
EXTERNAL APPEARANCE OF GLACIERS.
Thus far we have examined chiefly the internal structure of the glacier; let us look now at its external appearance, and at the variety of curious phenomena connected with the deposit of foreign materials upon its surface, some of which seem quite inexplicable at first sight. Among the most striking of these are the large boulders elevated on columns of ice, standing sometimes ten feet or more above the level of the glacier, and the sand-pyramids, those conical hills of sand which occur not infrequently on all the large Alpine glaciers. One is at first quite at a loss to explain the presence of these pyramids in the midst of a frozen ice-field, and yet it has a very simple cause.
I have spoken of the many little rills arising on the surface of the ice in consequence of its melting. Indeed, the voice of the waters is rarely still on the glacier during the warm season, except at night. On a summer's day, a thousand streams are born before noontide, and die again at sunset; it is no uncommon thing to see a full cascade come rushing out from the lower end of a glacier during the heat of the day, and vanish again at its decline. Suppose one of these rivulets should fall into a deep, circular hole, such as often occur on the glacier, and the nature of which I shall presently explain, and that this cylindrical opening narrows to a mere crack at a greater or less depth within the ice, the water will find its way through the crack and filter down into the deeper mass; but the dust and sand carried along with it will be caught there, and form a deposit at the bottom of the hole. As day after day, throughout the summer, the rivulet is renewed, it carries with it an additional supply of these light materials, until the opening is gradually filled and the sand is brought to a level with the surface of the ice. We have already seen, that, in consequence of evaporation, melting, and other disintegrating causes, the level of the glacier sinks annually at the rate of from five to ten feet, according to stations. The natural consequence, of course, must be, that the sand is left standing above the surface of the ice, forming a mound which would constantly increase in height in proportion to the sinking of the surrounding ice, had it sufficient solidity to retain its original position. But a heap of sand, if unsupported, must very soon subside and be dispersed; and, indeed, these pyramids, which are often quite lofty, and yet look as if they would crumble at a touch, prove, on nearer examination, to be perfectly solid, and are, in fact, pyramids of ice with a thin sheet of sand spread over them. A word will explain how this transformation is brought about. As soon as the level of the glacier falls below the sand, thus depriving it of support, it sinks down and spreads slightly over the surrounding surface. In this condition it protects the ice immediately beneath it from the action of the sun. In proportion as the glacier wastes, this protected area rises above the general mass and becomes detached from it. The sand, of course, slides down over it, spreading toward its base, so as to cover a wider space below, and an ever-narrowing one above, until it gradually assumes the pyramidal form in which we find it, covered with a thin coating of sand. Every stage of this process may occasionally be seen upon the same glacier, in a number of sand-piles raised to various heights above the surface of the ice, approaching the perfect pyramidal form, or falling to pieces after standing for a short time erect.
The phenomenon of the large boulders, supported on tall pillars of ice, is of a similar character. A mass of rock, having fallen on the surface of the glacier, protects the ice immediately beneath it from the action of the sun; and as the level of the glacier sinks all around it, in consequence of the unceasing waste of the surface, the rock is gradually left standing on an ice-pillar of considerable height. In proportion as the column rises, however, the rays of the sun reach its sides, striking obliquely upon them under the boulder, and wearing them away, until the column becomes at last too slight to sustain its burden, and the rock falls again upon the glacier; or, owing to the unequal action of the sun, striking of course with most power on the southern side, the top of the pillar becomes slanting, and the boulder slides off. These ice-pillars, crowned with masses of rock, form a very picturesque feature in the scenery of the glacier, and are represented in many of the landscapes in which Swiss artists have endeavored to reproduce the grandeur and variety of Alpine views, especially in the masterly Aquarelles of Lory. The English reader will find them admirably well described and illustrated in Dr. Tyndall's work upon the glaciers. They are known throughout the Alps as "glacier-tables"; and many a time my fellow-travellers and I have spread our frugal meal on such a table, erected, as it seemed, especially for our convenience.
Another curious effect is that produced by small stones or pebbles, small enough to become heated through by the sun in summer. Such a heated pebble will of course melt the ice below it, and so wear a hole for itself into which it sinks. This process will continue as long as the sun reaches the pebble with force enough to heat it. Numbers of such deep, round holes, like organ-pipes, varying in size from the diameter of a minute pebble or a grain of coarse sand to that of an ordinary stone, are found on the glacier, and at the bottom of each is the pebble by which it was bored. The ice formed by the freezing of water collecting in such holes and in the fissures of the surface is a pure crystallized ice, very different in color from the ice of the great mass of the glacier produced by snow; and sometimes, after a rain and frost, the surface of a glacier looks like a mosaic-work, in consequence of such veins and cylinders or spots of clear ice with which it is inlaid.
Indeed, the aspect of the glacier changes constantly with the different conditions of the temperature. We may see it, when, during a long dry season, it has collected upon its surface all sorts of light floating materials, as dust, sand, and the like, so that it looks dull and soiled,—or when a heavy rain has washed the surface clean from all impurities and left it bright and fresh. We may see it when the heat and other disintegrating influences have acted upon the ice to a certain superficial depth, so that its surface is covered with a decomposed crust of broken, snowy ice, so permeated with air that it has a dead-white color, like pounded ice or glass. Those who see the glacier in this state miss the blue tint so often described as characteristic of its appearance in its lower portion, and as giving such a peculiar beauty to its caverns and vaults. But let them come again after a summer storm has swept away this loose sheet of broken, snowy ice above, and before the same process has had time to renew it, and they will find the compact, solid surface of the glacier of as pure a blue as if it reflected the sky above. We may see it in the early dawn, before the new ice of the preceding night begins to yield to the action of the sun, and the surface of the glacier is veined and inlaid with the water poured into its holes and fissures during the day and transformed into pure, fresh ice during the night,—or when the noonday heat has wakened all its streams, and rivulets sometimes as large as rivers rush along its surface, find their way to the lower extremity of the glacier, or, dashing down some gaping crevasse or open well, are lost beneath the ice.
It would seem from the quantity of water that is sometimes ingulfed within these open breaks in the ice, that the glacier must occasionally be fissured to a very great depth. I remember once, when boring a hole in the glacier in order to let down a self-regulating thermometer into its interior, seeing an immense fissure suddenly rent open, in consequence, no doubt, of the shocks given to the ice by the blows of the instruments. The effect was like that of an earthquake; the mass seemed to rock beneath us, and it was difficult to keep our feet. One of these glacial rivers was flowing past the spot at the time, and it was instantly lost in the newly formed chasm. However deep and wide the fissure might be, such a stream of water, constantly poured into it, and daily renewed throughout the summer, must eventually fill it and overflow, unless it finds its way through the whole mass of the glacier to the bottom on which it rests; it must have an outlet above or below. The fact that considerable rivulets (too broad to leap across, and too deep to wade through safely even with high boots) may entirely vanish in the glacier unquestionably shows one of two things,—that the whole mass must be soaked with water like a wet sponge, or the cavities reach the bottom of the glacier. Probably the two conditions are generally combined.
In direct connection with the narrower fissures are the so-called moulins,—the circular wells on the glacier. We will suppose that a transverse, narrow fissure has been formed across the glacier, and that one of the many rivulets flowing longitudinally along its surface empties into it. As the surface-water of the glacier, producing these rivulets, arises not only from the melting of the ice, but also from the condensation of vapor, or even from rain-falls, and flows over the scattered dust-particles and fragments of rock, it has always a temperature slightly above 32 deg., so that such a rivulet is necessarily warmer than the icy edge of the fissure over which it precipitates itself. In consequence of its higher temperature it melts the edge, gradually wearing it backward, till the straight margin of the fissure at the spot over which the water falls is changed to a semicircle; and as much of the water dashes in spray and foam against the other side, the same effect takes place there, by which a corresponding semicircle is formed exactly opposite the first. This goes on not only at the upper margin, but through the whole depth of the opening as far down as the water carries its higher temperature. In short, a semicircular groove is excavated on either side of the fissure for its whole depth along the line on which the rivulet holds its downward course. After a time, in consequence of the motion of the glacier, such a fissure may close again, and then the two semicircles thus brought together form at once one continuous circle, and we have one of the round deep openings on the glacier known as moulins, or wells, which may of course become perfectly dry, if any accident turns the rivulet aside or dries up its source. The most common cause of the intermittence of such a waterfall is the formation of a crevasse higher up, across the watercourse which supplied it, and which now begins another excavation.
These wells are often very profound. I have lowered a line for more than seven hundred feet in one of them before striking bottom; and one is by no means sure even then of having sounded the whole depth, for it may often happen that the water meets with some obstacle which prevents its direct descent, and, turning aside, continues its deeper course at a different angle. Such a well may be like a crooked shaft in a mine, changing its direction from time to time. I found this to be the case in one into which I caused myself to be lowered in order to examine the internal structure of the glacier. For some time my descent was straight and direct, but at a depth of about fifty feet there was a landing-place, as it were, from which the opening continued its farther course at quite a different angle. It is within these cylindrical openings in the ice that those accumulations of sand collect which form the pyramids described above.
One may often trace the gradual formation of these wells, because, as they require certain similar conditions, they are very apt to be found in various stages of completion along the same track where these conditions occur. Fissures, for instance, will often be produced along the same line, because, as the mass of the glacier moves on, its upper portions, as they advance, come successively in contact with inequalities of the bottom, in consequence of which the ice is strained beyond its power of resistance and cracks across. Rivulets are also likely to be renewed summer after summer over the same track, because certain conditions of the surface of the glacier, to which I have not yet alluded, and which favor the more rapid melting of the ice, remain unchanged year after year. Of course, the wells do not remain stationary any more than any other feature of the glacier. They move on with the advancing mass of ice, and we consequently find the older ones considerably lower down than the more recent ones. In ascending such a track as I have described, along which fissures and rivulets are likely to occur, we may meet first with a sand-pyramid; at a certain distance above that there may be a circular opening filled to its brim with the sand which has just reached the surface of the ice; a little above may be an open well with the rivulet still pouring into it; or higher up, we may meet an open fissure with the two semicircles opposite each other on the margins, but not yet united, as they will be presently by the closing of the fissure; or we may find near by another fissure, the edges of which are just beginning to wear in consequence of the action of the water. Thus, though we cannot trace the formation of such a cylindrical shaft in the glacier from the beginning to the end, we may by combining the separate facts observed in a number decipher their whole history.
In describing the surface of the glacier, I should not omit the shallow troughs which I have called "meridian holes," from the accuracy with which they register the position of the sun. Here and there on the glacier there are patches of loose materials, dust, sand, pebbles, or gravel, accumulated by diminutive water-rills, and small enough to become heated during the day. They will, of course, be warmed first on their eastern side, then, still more powerfully, on their southern side, and in the afternoon with less force again on their western side, while the northern side will remain comparatively cool. Thus around more than half of their circumference they melt the ice in a semicircle, and the glacier is covered with little crescent-shaped troughs of this description, with a steep wall on one side and a shallow one on the other, and a little heap of loose materials in the bottom. They are the sundials of the glacier, recording the hour by the advance of the sun's rays upon them.
In recapitulating the results of my glacial experience, even in so condensed a form as that in which I intend to present them here, I shall be obliged to enter somewhat into personal narration, though at the risk of repeating what has been already told by the companions of my excursions, some of whom wrote out in a more popular form the incidents of our daily life which could not be fitly introduced into my own record of scientific research. When I first began my investigations upon the glaciers, now more than twenty-five years ago, scarcely any measurements of their size or their motion had been made. One of my principal objects, therefore, was to ascertain the thickness of the mass of ice, generally supposed to be from eighty to a hundred feet, and even less. The first year I took with me a hundred feet of iron rods, (no easy matter, where it had to be transported to the upper part of a glacier on men's backs,) thinking to bore the glacier through and through. As well might I have tried to sound the ocean with a ten-fathom line. The following year I took two hundred feet of rods with me, and again I was foiled. Eventually I succeeded in carrying up a thousand feet of line, and satisfied myself, after many attempts, that this was about the average thickness of the glacier of the Aar, on which I was working. I mention these failures, because they give some idea of the discouragements and difficulties which meet the investigator in any new field of research; and the student must remember, for his consolation under such disappointments, that his failures are almost as important to the cause of science and to those who follow him in the same road as his successes. It is much to know what we cannot do in any given direction,—the first step, indeed, toward the accomplishment of what we can do.
A like disappointment awaited me in my first attempt to ascertain by direct measurement the rate of motion in the glacier. Early observers had asserted that the glacier moved, but there had been no accurate demonstration of the fact, and so uniform is its general appearance from year to year that even the fact of its motion was denied by many. It is true that the progress of boulders had been watched; a mass of rock which had stood at a certain point on the glacier was found many feet below that point the following year; but the opponents of the theory insisted that it did not follow, because the mass of rock had moved, that therefore the mass of ice had moved with it. They believed that the boulder might have slid down for that distance. Neither did the occasional encroachment of the glaciers upon the valleys prove anything; it might he solely the effect of an unusual accumulation of snow in cold seasons. Here, then, was another question to be tested; and one of my first experiments was to plant stakes in the ice to ascertain whether they would change their position with reference to the sides of the valley or not. If the glacier moved, my stakes must of course move with it; if it was stationary, my stakes would remain standing where I had placed them, and any advance of other objects upon the surface of the glacier would be proved to be due to their sliding, or to some motion of their own, and not to that of the mass of ice on which they rested. I found neither the one nor the other of my anticipated results; after a short time, all the stakes lay flat on the ice, and I learned nothing from my first series of experiments, except that the surface of the glacier is wasted annually for a depth of at least five feet, in consequence of which my rods had lost their support, and fallen down. Similar disappointment was experienced by my friend Escher upon the great glacier of Aletsch.
My failure, however, taught me to sink the next set of stakes ten or fifteen feet below the surface of the ice, instead of five; and the experiment was attended with happier results. A stake planted eighteen feet deep in the ice, and cut on a level with the surface of the glacier, in the summer of 1840, was found, on my return in the summer of 1841, to project seven feet, and in the beginning of September it showed ten feet above the surface. Before leaving the glacier, in September, 1841, I planted six stakes at a certain distance from each other in a straight line across the upper part of the glacier, taking care to have the position of all the stakes determined with reference to certain fixed points on the rocky walls of the valley. When I returned, the following year, all the stakes had advanced considerably, and the straight line had changed to a crescent, the central rods having moved forward much faster than those nearer the sides, so that not only was the advance of the glacier clearly demonstrated, but also the fact that its middle portion moved faster than its margins. This furnished the first accurate data on record concerning the average movement of the glacier during the greater part of one year. In 1842 I caused a trigonometric survey of the whole glacier of the Aar to be made, and several lines across its whole width were staked and determined with reference to the sides of the valley;[B] for a number of successive years the survey was repeated, and furnished the numerous data concerning the motion of the glacier which I have published. I shall probably never have an opportunity of repeating these experiments, and examining anew the condition of the glacier of the Aar; but as all the measurements were taken with reference to certain fixed points recorded upon the map mentioned in the note, it would be easy to renew them over the same locality, and to make a direct comparison with my first results after an interval of a quarter of a century. Such a comparison would be very valuable to science, as showing any change in the condition of the glacier, its rate of motion, etc., since the time my survey was made.
These observations not only determined the fact of the motion of the glacier itself, as well as the inequality of its motion in different parts, but explained also a variety of phenomena indirectly connected with it. Among these were the position and direction of the crevasses, those gaping fissures of unknown depths, sometimes a mile or more in length, and often measuring several hundred feet in width, the terror, not only of the ordinary traveller, but of the most experienced mountaineers. There is a variety of such crevasses upon the glacier, but the most numerous and dangerous are the transverse and lateral ones. The transverse ones were readily accounted for after the motion of the glacier was admitted; they must take place, whenever, the glacier advancing over inequalities or steeper parts of its bed, the tension of the mass was so great that the cohesion of the particles was overcome, and the ice consequently rent apart. This would be especially the case wherever some steep angle in the bottom over which it moved presented an obstacle to the even advance of the mass. But the position of the lateral ones was not so easily understood. They are especially apt to occur wherever a promontory of rock juts out into the glacier; and when fresh, they usually slant obliquely upward, trending from the prominent wall toward the head of the glacier, while, when old, on the contrary, they turn downward, so that the crevasses around such a promontory are often arranged in the shape of a spread fan, diverging from it in different directions. When the movement of the glacier was fully understood, however, it became evident, that, in its effort to force itself around the promontory, the ice was violently torn apart, and that the rent must take place in a direction at right angles with that in which the mass was moving. If the mass be moving inward and downward, the direction of the rent must be obliquely upward. As now the mass continues to advance, the crevasses must advance with it; and as it moves more rapidly toward the middle than on the margins, that end of the crevasse which is farthest removed from the projecting rock must move more rapidly also; the consequence is, that all the older lateral crevasses, after a certain time, point downward, while the fresh ones point upward.
Not only does the glacier collect a variety of foreign materials on its upper surface, but its sides as well as its lower surface are studded with boulders, stones, pebbles, sand, coarse and fine gravel, so that it forms in reality a gigantic rasp, with sides hundreds of feet deep, and a surface thousands of feet wide and many miles in length, grinding over the bottom and along the walls between which it moves, polishing, grooving, and scratching them as it passes onward. One who is familiar with the track of this mighty engine will recognize at once where the large boulders have hollowed out their deeper furrows, where small pebbles have drawn their finer marks, where the stones with angular edges have left their sharp scratches, where sand and gravel have rubbed and smoothed the rocky surface, and left it bright and polished as if it came from the hand of the marble-worker. These marks are not to be mistaken by any one who has carefully observed them; the scratches, furrows, grooves, are always rectilinear, trending in the direction in which the glacier is moving, and most distinct on that side of the surface-inequalities facing the direction of the moving mass, while the lee-side remains mostly untouched.
It may be asked, how it is known that the glacier carries this powerful apparatus on its sides and bottom, when they are hidden from sight. I answer, that we might determine the fact theoretically from certain known conditions respecting the conformation of the glacier; to which I shall allude presently; but we need not resort to this kind of evidence, since we have ocular demonstration of the truth. Here and there on the sides of the glacier it is possible to penetrate between the walls and the ice to a great depth, and even to follow such a gap to the very bottom of the valley, and everywhere do we find the surface of the ice fretted as I have described it, with stones of every size, from the pebble to the boulder, and also with sand and gravel of all sorts, from the coarsest grain to the finest, and these materials, more or less firmly set in the ice, form the grating surface with which, in its onward movement down the Alpine valleys, it leaves everywhere unmistakable, traces of its passage.
We come now to the moraines, those walls of loose materials built by the glaciers themselves along their road. They have been divided into three classes, namely, lateral, medial, and terminal moraines. Let us look first at the lateral ones; and to understand them we must examine the conformation of the glacier below the neve, where it assumes the character of pure compact ice. We have seen that the fields of snow, where the glaciers have their origin, are level, and that lower down, where these masses of snow begin to descend toward the narrower valley, they follow its trough-like shape, sinking toward the centre and sloping upward against the sides, so that the surface of the glacier, about the region of the neve, is slightly concave. But lower down in the glacier proper, where it is completely transformed into ice, its surface becomes convex, for the following reason: The rocky walls of the valley, as they approach the plain, partake of its higher temperature. They become heated by the sun during the day in summer, so that the margins of the glacier melt rapidly in contact with them. In consequence of this, there is always in the lower part of the glacier a broad depression between the ice and the rocky walls, while, as this effect is not felt in the centre of the glacier, it there retains a higher level. The natural result of this is a convex surface, arching upward toward the middle, sinking toward the sides. It is in these broad, marginal depressions that the lateral moraines accumulate; masses of rock, stones, pebbles, dust, all the fragments, in short, which become loosened from the rocky walls above, fall into them, and it is a part of the materials so accumulated which gradually work their way downward between the ice and the walls, till the whole side of the glacier becomes studded with them. It is evident, that, when the glacier runs in a northerly or southerly direction, both the walls will be affected by the sun, one in the morning, the other in the afternoon, and in such a case the sides will be uniform, or nearly so. But when the trend of the valley is from east to west, or from west to east, the northern side only will feel the full force of the sun; and in such a case, only one side of the glacier will be convex in outline, while the other will remain nearly on a level with the middle. The large masses of loose materials which accumulate between the glacier and its rocky walls and upon its margins form the lateral moraines. These move most slowly, as the marginal portions of the glacier advance at a much slower rate than its centre.
The medial moraines arise in a different way, though they are directly connected with the lateral moraines. It often happens that two smaller glaciers unite, running into each other to form a larger one. Suppose two glaciers to be moving along two adjoining valleys, converging toward each other, and running in an easterly or westerly direction; at a certain point these two valleys open into a single valley, and here, of course, the two glaciers must meet, like two rivers rushing into a common bed. But as glaciers consist of a solid, and not a fluid, there will be no indiscriminate mingling of the two, and they will hold their course side by side. This being the case, the lateral moraine on the southern side of the northernmost glacier and that on the northern side of the southernmost one must meet in the centre of the combined glaciers. Such are the so-called medial moraines formed by the junction of two lateral ones. Sometimes a glacier may have a great number of tributaries, and in that case we may see several such moraines running in straight lines along its surface, all of which are called medial moraines in consequence of their origin midway between two combining glaciers. The glacier of the Aar represented in the wood-cut below affords a striking example of a large medial moraine. It is formed by the junction of the glaciers of the Lauter-Aar, on the right-hand side of the wood-cut, and the Finster-Aar, on the left; and the union of their inner lateral moraines, in the centre of the diagram, forms the stony wall down the centre of the larger glacier, called its medial moraine. This moraine at some points is not less than sixty feet high. We have here an effect similar to that of the glacier-tables and the sand-pyramids. The wall protects the ice beneath it, and prevents it from sinking at the same rate as the surrounding surface, while its heated surface increases the melting of the adjacent surfaces of ice, thus forming longitudinal depressions along the medial moraines, in which the largest rivulets and the most conspicuous sand-pyramids, the deepest wells and the finest waterfalls, are usually met with. As the medial moraines rest upon that part of the glacier which moves fastest, they of course advance much more rapidly than the lateral moraines.
The terminal moraines consist of all the debris brought down by the glacier to its lower extremity. In consequence of the more rapid movement of the centre of the glacier, it always terminates in a semicircle at its lower end, where these materials collect, and the terminal moraines, of course, follow the outline of the glacier. The wood-cut below represents the terminal moraine of the glacier of Viesch.
Sometimes, when a number of cold summers have succeeded each other, preventing the glacier from melting in proportion to its advance, the accumulation of materials at its terminus becomes very considerable; and when, in consequence of a succession of warm summers, it gradually melts and retreats from the line it has been occupying, a large semicircular wall is left, spanning the valley from side to side, through which the stream issuing from the glacier may be seen cutting its way. It is important to notice that such terminal moraines may actually span the whole width of a valley, from side to side, and be interrupted only where watercourses of sufficient power break through them. To suppose that such transverse walls of loose materials could be thrown across a valley by a river were to suppose that it could build dams across its bed while it is flowing. Such transverse or crescent-shaped moraines are everywhere the work of glaciers.
All these moraines are the land-marks, so to speak, by which we trace the height and extent, as well as the progress and retreat, of glaciers in former times. Suppose, for instance, that a glacier were to disappear entirely. For ages it has been a gigantic ice-raft, receiving all sorts of materials on its surface as it travelled onward, and bearing them along with it; while the hard particles of rock set in its lower surface have been polishing and fashioning the whole surface over which it extended. As it now melts, it drops its various burdens on the ground; boulders are the mile-stones marking the different stages of its journey, the terminal and lateral moraines are the framework which it erected around itself as it moved forward, and which define its boundaries centuries after it has vanished, while the scratches and furrows it has left on the surface below show the direction of its motion.
All the materials which reach the bottom of the glacier, and are moving under its weight, so far as they are not firmly set in the ice must be pressed against one another, as well as against the rocky bottom, and will be rounded off, polished, and scratched, like the rock itself over which they pass. The pebbles or stones set fast in the ice will be thus polished and scratched, however, only over the surface exposed; but, as they may sometimes move in their socket, like a loosely mounted stone, the different surfaces may in turn undergo this process, and in the end all the loose materials under a glacier become more or less polished, scratched, and grooved. These marks exhibit also the peculiarity so characteristic of the grooves and scratches on the bed and walls of the valley: they are rectilinear, trending in the direction in which the superincumbent mass advances, though, of course, owing to the changes in the position of the pebbles or boulders, they may cross each other in every direction on their surface.
As the larger materials are pressed onward with the finer ones, that is, with the sand, gravel, and mud accumulated at the bottom of the glacier, the component parts of this underlying bed of debris will be mixed together without any reference to their size or weight. The softest mud and finest sand may be in immediate contact with the bottom of the valley, while larger rocks and pebbles may be held in the ice above; or their position may be reversed, and the coarser materials may rest below, while the finer ones are pressed between them or overlying them. In short, the whole accumulation of loose debris under the glacier, resulting from the trituration of all kinds of angular fragments reaching the lower surface of the ice, presents a sort of paste in which coarser and lighter materials are impacted without reference to bulk or weight. Those fragments which are most polished, rounded, grooved, or scratched, have travelled longest under the glacier, and are derived from the hardest rocks, which have resisted the general crushing and pounding for a longer time. The masses of rock on the upper surface of the glacier, on the contrary, are carried along on its back without undergoing any such friction. Lying side by side, or one above another, without being subject to pressure from the ice, they retain, both in the lateral and medial moraines, and even in the terminal moraines, their original size, their rough surfaces, and their angular form. Whenever, therefore, a glacier melts, it is evident that the lower materials will be found covered by the angular surface-materials now brought into immediate contact with the former in consequence of the disappearance of the intervening ice. The most careful observations and surveys have shown this everywhere to be the case; wherever a large tract of glacier has disappeared, the moraines, with their large angular boulders, are found resting upon this bottom layer of rounded materials scattered through a paste of mud and sand.
We shall see hereafter how far we can follow these traces, and what they tell us of the past history of glaciers, and of the changes the climates of our globe have undergone.
* * * * *
STEPHEN YARROW.
A CHRISTMAS STORY.
Sometime in the year 1856, a family named Yarrow moved into the neighborhood where I then lived, and rented a small house with a bit of ground attached to it, on one of the rich bottom-farms lying along the eastern shore of the Ohio. The mother, two or three children, and their dog Ready made up the quiet household: not one to attract notice from any cause. People soon knew Martha Yarrow,—all that was in her. She was Western- and farm-born; whatever Nature had given her of good or bad, therefore, thrust itself out at once with pungent directness.
The family supported themselves by selling their poultry and vegetables to the hucksters, leading an eventless life enough, until the change occurred, some five years after they came into the neighborhood, of which I am going to tell you.
I called it a Christmas Story, not so much because it happened on a Christmas, as because the meaning of it seemed suited to that day; and I thought, too, that nobody grows tired of Christmas stories, especially if he chance to have been born in one of those families where the day is kept in the old fashion: it roots itself so deep, that memory, in whatever quaint superstition, or homely affection for mother or brother, or unreasoning trust in God, may outlive our childhood, and underlie our older years. And surely that is as just, as wise a thing,—to strip off for a child the smirched trading-dress of one day at least, and send it down through the long procession of the years with its true face bared, to waken in him a live sense of man's love and God's love. Some one, perhaps, had done this for this woman, Mrs. Yarrow, long ago; for, let the months before and after be bare as they chose, she kept this day of Christmas with a feverish anxiety, more eager than her children even to make every moment warm and throb with pleasure, and enjoying them herself, to their last breath, with the whole zest of a nervous, strong-blooded nature. Yet she may have had another reason for it.
The evening before the Christmas of which we write, she had gone out to the well with her son before closing the house for the night.
"There's no danger of thaw before morning, Jem?"—looking anxiously up into the night, as they rested the bucket on the curb.
"Thaw! there's a woman's notion for you! Why, the very crow is frozen out of the cocks yonder!"—stretching his arms, and clapping his hollow cheat, as if he were six feet high. "No, we'll not have a thaw, little woman."
The children often called her that, in a fond, protecting way; but it sounded most oddly from Jem, he was such a weak, swaggering sparrow of a little chap. He stretched his hands as high as he could reach up to her hips, and smoothed her linsey dress down: if it had been her face, the touch could not have been more tender.
"You don't think of the luck we always have. Why, it couldn't rain on Christmas for you or me, mother!"
She laughed, nodding several times.
"Well, that is sure, Jem," stopping to look into the lean, emphatic little face, and to pass her hand over the tow-colored hair.
Somehow, the bond between mother and son was curiously strong to-night. It was always so on Christmas. At other times they were much like two children in companionship, but Christmas never came without bringing a vague sense of cowering close together as though some danger stood near them. There was something half fierce, now, in the way she caressed his face.
"Come on with the bucket, brother," she said, cheerfully, stamping the clogging snow from her shoes, shading her eyes with her hand, and looking over the white stretch to the black line of hills chopping the east. "More like a hail-gust than rain. But I was afraid of that, you see," as they went up the path. "There's an old saying, that trouble always comes with rain. And it did in my life—to me"—
She was talking to herself. Jem whistled, pretending not to hear; but he peered sharply into her face, with the relish which all sickly, premature children have for a mystery or pain. Very seldom was there hint of either about Martha Yarrow. She was an Ohio woman, small-boned, muscular, with healthy, quick blood, not a scrofulous, ill-tempered drop in her veins; in her brain only a very few and obstinate opinions, maybe, but all of them lying open to the sight of anybody who cared to know them. Not long ago, she had been a pretty, bouncing country-belle; now, she was a hard-working housewife: a Whig, because all the Clarks (her own family) were Whigs: going to the Baptist church, with no clear ideas about close communion or immersion, because she had married a country-parson. With a consciousness that she had borne a heavier pain in her life than most women, and ought to feel scourged and sad, she did cry out with such feeling sometimes,—but with a keen, natural relish for apple-butter parings, or fair-days, or a neighbor dropping in to tea, or anything that would give the children and herself a chance to joke and laugh, and be like other people again. Between the two feelings, her temper was odd and uncertain enough. But in this December air, now, her still rounded cheek grew red, her breast heaved, her eyes sparkled, glad as a child would be, simply because it was cold and Christmas was coming; while the child Jem, with his tougher, less sappy animal nature, jogged gravely beside her, head and eyes down. As for her every-day life, nobody's fires burned, nobody's windows shone like Martha Yarrow's; not a pound of butter went to market with the creamy, clovery taste her fingers worked into hers. She put a flavor, an elastic spring, into every bit of work she did, making it play. The very nervousness of the woman, her sudden fits of laughter and tears, impressed you as the effervescence of a zest of life which began at her birth. Nobody ever got to the end, or expected to get to the end, of her stories and scraps of old songs. Then, every day some new plan, keeping the whole house awake and alive: when Tom's birthday came, a surprise-feast of raspberries and cake; when Jem's new trousers were produced, they had been made up over-night, a dead secret, ten shining dimes in the pocket, fresh from the mint; even the penny string of blue beads for Catty, bought of Sims the peddler, was hid under her plate, and made quite a jollification of that supper. You may be sure, the five years just gone in that house had been short and merry and cozy enough for the children. Before that—Here Jem's memory flagged: he had been a baby then; Catty just born; yet, somehow, he never thought of that unknown time without the furtive, keen glance into his mother's face, and a frightened choking in the heart under his puny chest. Somewhere, back yonder, or in the years coming, some vague horror waited for him to fight. To-night, (always at Christmas, although then the glow and comfort of all days reached its heat,) this unaccountable dread was on the boy; why, he never knew. It might be that under the hurry and preparation of Martha Yarrow on that day some deeper meaning did lie, which his instinct had discerned: more probably, however, it was but the sickly vagary of a child grown old too fast.
They hurried along the path now to reach the house and shut the night outside, for every moment the cold and dark were growing heavier; the snow rasping under their feet, as its crust cracked; overhead, the sky-air frozen thin and gray, holding dead a low, watery half-moon; now and then a more earthy, thicker gust breaking sharply round the hill, taking their breath. It was only a step, however, and Tom was holding the house-door open, letting a ruddy light stream out, and with it a savory smell of supper. Tom halloed, and that blue-eyed pudge of a Catty pounded on the window with her fat little fist. How hot the fire glowed! Somehow all Christmas seemed waiting in there. It was time to hurry along. Even Ready came out, shaking his shaggy old sides impatiently in the snow, and began to dog them, snapping at Jem's heels. Like most old people, he liked his ease, and was apt to be out of sorts, if meals were kept waiting. Ready's whims always made Martha laugh as she did when she was a young girl: they knew each other then, long before Jem was born.
"Come on, old Truepenny," she said, going in.
There was comfort. Nothing in that house, from the red woollen curtains to the bright poker, which did not have its part to play for Christmas. Nothing that did not say "Christmas," from Catty's eyes to the very supper-table. Of course, I don't mean the Christmas dinner, when I say supper. Tom could have told you. Somewhere in his paunchy little body he kept a perpetual bill of fare, checked off or unchecked. He based and stayed his mind now on preparations in the pantry. Something solid there! A haunch of venison, mince-meat, winter succotash, a roasted peahen,—and that is the top and crown of Nature's efforts in the way of fowls. For suppers,—pish! However, Tom ate with the rest. Mother was hungry; so they were very leisurely, and joked and laughed to that extent that even Catty was uproarious when they were through. Then Jem fell to work at the great coals, and battered them into a rousing fire.
"I'll go and fasten the shutters," said Tom.
Martha Yarrow's back was to the window. She turned sharply. The sickly white moon lighted up the snow-waste out there; some one might be out in those frozen fields,—some one who was coming home,—who had been gone for years,—years. Jem was watching her.
"Leave the windows alone, Tom," he said. "It won't hurt the night to see my fire."
He pulled his cricket close up to her, and took her hand to pet. It was cold, and her teeth chattered. However, they were all so snug and close together, and Christmas, that great warm-hearted day, was so near upon them, as full of love and hearty, warm enjoyment as the living God could send it, that its breath filled all their hearts; and presently Martha Yarrow's face was brighter than Catty's. They were noisy and busy enough. The programme for to-morrow was to make out; that put all heads to work to plan: the stockings to be opened, and dinner, and maybe a visit to the menagerie in the afternoon. That was Martha's surprise, and she was not disappointed in the applause it brought. It made the tears come to her eyes, an hour after, when she was going to bed, remembering it.
"It takes such a little thing to make them happy," she said to herself,—"or me, either," with a somewhat silly face.
She tried to thank God for giving them so much, but only sobbed. After the confusion about the show was over, and Catty had been wakened into a vague jungle of tigers and lions and Shetland ponies, and put to sleep again, they subsided enough to remember the winding-up of the day. Quiet that was to be; the children from Shag's Point were coming up, some half-dozen in all, for their share of Christmas. Poorer than the Yarrows, you understand? though but a little; in fact, there were not many steps farther down: peahens and cranberries were not for every day. Well, to-morrow evening Jem would tell them the story of the Stable and the Child, and how that the Child was with us yet, if we could only see. Jem was always his mother's spokesman, and put the meaning of Christmas into words: she never talked of such things. Yet they always watched her face, when they spoke of them,—watched it now, and looked, as she did, into the little room beyond the kitchen where they sat, their eyes growing still and brighter. There might have been a tinge of the savage or the Frenchman in Martha Yarrow's nature, she had so strong a propensity to make real, apparent to the senses, what few ideas she had, even her religion. A good skill to do it, too. The recess out of the kitchen was only a small closet, but, with the aid of a softly tinted curtain or two, and the nebulous light of a concealed lamp, she had contrived to give it an air of distance and reserve. Within were green wreaths hung over the whitewashed walls, and an altar-shaped little white table, covered with heaps of crimson leaves and bright berries, such as grow in the snow; only a few flowers, but enough to fill the air with fragrance; the children's Christmas gifts, and wax-lights burning before a picture, the child Jesus, looking down on them with a smile as glad as their own. A thoroughly real person to the boys, this Christ for childhood; for she built the little altar before this picture on all their holidays: something in the woman herself needing the story of the Stable and the Child. If she were doing a healthier work on the souls of that morbid Jem and glutton Tom than could a thousand after-sermons, she did not know it: never guessed, either, when they absorbed day by day hardly enough the force of her tough-muscled endurance and wholesome laugh, that she prepared the way of the Lord and made His paths straight. Yet what matter who knew?
But to go on with our story. There were times—once or twice to-night, for instance—when she ceased doing even her unconscious work. Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty, pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking out, her forehead leaning on the glass, her body twitching weakly. One would think from her face she saw some work in the world which God had forgotten. What could it matter to her? Whatever hurt her, it was the one word which her garrulous lips never hinted. Once to-night she spoke more plainly than Jem had ever known her to do in all his life. It was after the children had gone to bed, which they did, shouting and singing, and playing circus-riders over the pillows, their mother leaning her elbows on the foot-board, laughing, in the mean time. Jem got up, after the others were asleep, and stole after her, in his little flannel drawers, back to the kitchen. By the window again, as he had feared, the woollen sock which she was knitting for Tom in her hand, the yarn all tangled and broken. Ready was by her knees, winking sleepily. The old dog was growing surly with his years, as we said: Jem remembered when he used to romp and tussle with him, but that was long ago: he lay in the chimney-corner always now, growling at Martha herself even, if her singing or laugh disturbed his nap. But when these strange moods came on her, Jem noticed that the yellow old beast seemed conscious of it sooner than any one beside, crept up to her, stood by her: that she clung to him, not to her children. He was licking her hand now, his red eye, drowsy though it was, watching her as if danger were nigh. A dog you would not slight. Inside of his hot-headedness and courage there was that reserved look in his eyes, which some men and brutes have, that says they have a life of their own to live separate from yours, and they know it. The boy crept up jealously, thrust his numb fingers into his mother's hand. She started, looking down.
"It grows into a clear winter's night, Jemmy," trying to speak carelessly.
So they stood looking out together. The fire had burned down into a great bed of flameless coals, the kitchen glowed warm and red, throwing out even a patch of ruddy light on the snow-covered yard without. A cold, but comfortable home-look out there: the bit of garden, fences, cow-house, pump, heaped with the snow; old Dolly asleep in her stable: Jem wrapped himself in his mother's skirt with a sudden relish of warm snugness. What made her pull at Ready's neck with such nervous jerks? She saw nothing beyond? Jem stood on tiptoe, peering out. There was no hint of the hailstorm they had prophesied, in the night: the moon stood lower now in the sky, filling the air with a yellow, frosty brilliance. Yet something strangely cold, dead, unfamiliar, in the night yonder, chilled him. Neither sound nor motion there; hills, river, and fields, distinct, sharply cut in pallor, but ghost-like: it made him afraid. There seemed to be no end of them; the hills to the north ran low, and beyond them he could see more blue and cold and distance, going on—who could tell where? to the eternal ice and snow, it might be. She felt it, he knew. The boy was frightened, tried to pull her back to the fire, when something he saw outside made him stop suddenly. Shag's Hill, the nearest of the ledge to the house, is a low, narrow cone, with a sharp rim against the sky; the moon had sunk half behind it, lighting the surface of drifted snow which faced them. Across this there suddenly fell a long, uncertain shadow, which belonged neither to bush nor tree: it might be the flicker of a cloud; or a man, passing across the top of the hill, would make it. It was nothing; some of the coal-diggers from the Point going home; he pulled at her petticoat again.
"Come to the fire, dear," he said, looking up.
Her whole face and neck were hot; she laughed and trembled as if some spasm were upon her.
"Do you see?" she cried, trying to force the window open. "Oh, Jemmy, it might be! it might!"
Jem was used to his mother's unaccountable whims of mood. Ready, however, startled him. The dog pricked up his ears, sniffed the air once or twice, then, after a grave pause of a minute, with a sharp howl, such as Jem had not heard him give for years, dashed through the kitchen into the wash-shed and out across the fields. Martha Yarrow turned away from the window, and leaned her head against the dresser-shelves: standing quite still, only that she clutched Jem's hand. The clock ticked noisily as a half-hour went by; the fire burned lower and dark. The dog came back at last, dragging his feet heavily, came up close to her, and crouched down with a half human moan. After a long time he got up, went out into the wash-kitchen in a spiritless way, and did not return again that night. She did not move. It seemed a long time to the child before she turned, her face wet with tears, and took him up in her arms, chafing his cold feet.
"It could not be! I knew that, Jemmy. I wasn't a fool. But I thought—Oh, Pet, I've waited such a long while!"
He patted her cheeks, soothing her,—the more effectually, perhaps, that he did not know what troubled her.
"Why, it's Christmas, mother," he said.
"I know that. You see, I thought," her eyes fastened on his in an appealing sort of way, "that, being Christmas, if there should be any lost body wandering out on the fields that God had forgotten—What then?" all the blood gone from her face. "Why, what then, Jem? No home, no one to say to him, 'Here's home, here's wife and children a-waiting to love you,—oh, sick with waiting to love you!' No one to say that, Jem. And him wandering out in the cold, going quick back to the mouth of hell, not knowing how God loved him."
"If there is such a one," Jem said, steadily, though his lip trembled, "God will let him know."
"There is no such one," sharply. "There is no one yonder but knows his home, and is nearer to his God than you or I, James Yarrow."
The boy made no reply,—sat on her knees looking earnestly into the fire. He had more nearly guessed her secret than she knew,—near enough to know how to comfort her. After a while, when she was quiet, he turned, and put his thin arms about her neck, smiling.
"Take me into your bed, mother, I'm so cold! Let me into old Catty's place this once."
She nodded, pleased, and, putting him to bed, soon followed him. When she held him snugly in her arms, the replenished fire making hot, flickering shadows from the next room, he whispered,—
"Next Christmas, mother! Only one year more!"
Again the quick shiver of her body; but this time her breath was gentle, a soft light in her eyes.
"Well, and then, my son?"
"Why, some one else then will call me son. How long he has been gone, dear! so long that I never saw him since I was a bit of a baby."
"Five years. Yes. Well, dear?" anxiously.
Her eyes were shut, he stroked the lids softly, thinking how moist and red her lips were: never as beautiful a face as the little mother's; for so Jem, feeling quite grown up in his heart, called her there.
"Well, then, no more trouble, but somebody to take care of us all the time. Whenever I see a preacher, now, I think of father"—stopping abruptly, with that anxious, incisive look so sad to see on a child's face.
She did not reply at first; then,—
"He preached God's word as he knew it," she said, dryly.
"And whenever I hear of a good, brave man, I think, 'That's like father!'"
Her eyes opened now.
"That's true, Jemmy! God knows that's true! So proud my boy will be of his father!"
She did not say anything more, but began playing with his hair, her month unsteady, and a bashful, dreamy smile in her eyes. She looked very young and girlish in the mellow light.
"He's not coarse like me, Jem," she said at last. "Even more like a woman in some ways. He always came nearer to you children, for instance; I mind how you always used to creep away from me close to him at night. He hates noise, Stephen does,—and mean, scraping ways, such as we're used to, being poor. My boy'll mind that? We'll keep anything shabby out of his sight, when he comes back."
"I'll mind," said Jem, dryly. "But—Well, no matter. We're to try and be like him, Tom and I? I understand."
She drew down her head suddenly into the pillow. Jem had been growing sleepy, but he started wide awake now, trying to see her face: the pretty pink color his questions had brought was gone from it.
"Did you speak, mother?"
No answer.
"I said we are to be men like him, Tom and I, if we can?"
He knew he had touched her to the quick somehow: his heart beat thick with the old childish terror, as he waited for her answer.
"Yes, you are to try, my son."
Martha Yarrow's frivolous chirruping voice was altered, with meaning in it he never had heard before, as if her answer came out of some depth where God had faced her soul, and forced it to speak truth. But when, after that, the boy, curious to know more, went on with his questions, she quieted him gravely, kissed him good-night, and turned over,—to sleep, he concluded, from her regular breathing. However, when Jem, after a while, began to snore, she got up and went to the kitchen-fire, kneeling down on the stone hearth: her head was on fire, and her body cold.
"So they shall be like him!" she whispered, with a fierce, baited look, as if by her wife's trust in him she defied the whole world. "I have kept my word. I've tried to make his sons what God made him in the beginning."
That was true: she had kept her word. Five years ago, when the great scandal came on the church in ——, and their minister was tried for forgery, and sentenced to six years' imprisonment in the penitentiary, the first letter his wife wrote to him there had these words: "For the boys, my husband, they never shall know of this thing. They shall know you as God and I do, Stephen. I'll make them men like you, if I can: except in your religion; for I believe, before God, the Devil taught you that."
When the man read that in his cell, a dry, quiet smile came over his face. He had not expected such a keen opinion from his shallow, easy-going wife: he did not think there was so much insight in her.
"It's a deep sounding you give, Martha, true or not," folding up the letter. "And so the boys will never know?" going back to his solitary cobbling, for they were making a shoemaker of him.
If there were any remorse under his quiet, or impatience at fate, or gnawing homesickness, he did not show it. That was the last letter or message that came from his wife. The friends of other prisoners were admitted to visit them, but no one ever asked to see him; the five years went by; every day the same bar of sunlight struck across his bench, and glittered on the point of his awl, gray in winter, yellow in summer; but no day brought a word or a sign from the outer world but that. The man grew thin, mere skin and bone; but then he was scrofulous. He asked no questions, ceased at last to look up, when the jailer brought his meals, to see if he carried a letter. Sometimes, when he used to stand chafing his stubbly chin in the evening at the slit cut in the stones for his window, looking at the red brick chimney-pot he could see over the penitentiary-wall, it seemed like something of outer life, and he would mutter, "She said the boys would never know." Once, too, a year or two after that, when the jailer came into "quiet Stevy's" cell, (for so he nicknamed him,) Yarrow came up, and took him by the coat-buttons, looking up and gabbling something about Martha and the little chaps in a maudlin sort of way,—then, with a silly laugh, lay down on his pallet.
"I never felt sorry for the little whiffet before," said the fat jailer, when he came out. "He's so close; but it's a cursed shame in his people to give him the go-by that way,—there!"
But when he went back an hour or two after, he found he had gained no ground with Stevy; he was dry, silent as ever: he had come to himself, meanwhile, and shivered with disgust at the fear that any madness had made him commit himself to this mass of flesh.
"'Mortised with the sacred garlic,'" he muttered, with the usual dry twinkle in his eyes.
Ben caught the last word.
"It's a good yarb, garlic," he said, confusedly. "Uses it on hot coals mostly, under broilin' steaks. Well, good night.—He's a queer chap, though," after he had gone out,—"beyond me."
Five years being gone, Martha Yarrow, sitting by her fire to-night, could only repeat the words of her letter. She had taken out a daguerreotype of her husband, and was looking at it. He was a small man; young; dressed in a suit of rusty black, with a certain subdued, credulous, incomplete air about him, like a man forced at birth into some iron mould of circumstance, and whose own proper muscles and soul had never had a chance of air to grow. A homely, saddened, uncouthly shaped face,—one that would be sure to go snubbed and unread through the world, to find at last some woman who would know its latent meaning, and worship it with the heat of passion which this country-girl had given. Withal, a cheerful, quizzical smile on the lips. Poor Martha's eyes filled, the moment she looked at that; and so she went back to her first years of married life, full of keen, relishing enjoyment, all coming from him, quiet, silent as he was,—remembering how her maddest freaks were indulged with that same odd, dry laugh. She stood alone now.
"And in these years I have grown used to being alone,"—standing up, stretching her arms suddenly above her head, and letting them fall again.
It was a lie: she knew that the tired sinking within her of body and soul was harder to bear now than the day he went away, and she weaker to bear it. If she could but lean her head on his breast for one moment, and feel him pat her hair with the old "Tut! tut! why, what ails my girl?" it would give her more strength than all her prayers. She couldn't think of herself as anything but a girl, when she remembered her husband: these years were nothing.
Her mouth grew drier and hotter, as she sat there looking into the face, polishing the glass with her hand, kissing it. "I'm so tired, Stephen!" she would whisper now and then. Only those who know the unuttered mysterious bond in the soul of a true wife and husband can comprehend what Martha Yarrow bore, when it was torn apart, and by no fault of hers. "God meant him for me," she sometimes said, savagely; "no man had a right to part us." She looked at the picture, feeling that he was purer than any baby she had nursed at her breast, nearer God. "It was his religion was to blame. That was the ruin of us all. I believe he never knew who the good God was; how could he?" thinking of his father, who used to sit in the chimney-corner,—one of those acrid doctrine-professors who sour the water of life into gall and vinegar before they dole it out to their children. She was glad she had told him her mind before they parted,—to what his teaching had brought his son. "I cut deep that day, and I thank God for it," she said, her face white.
She had brought the children here to be near the penitentiary, but she had never been allowed to see him. No letters came from him. His brother, John Yarrow, sent hers to him. There was some formula of admission, he said, which she did not understand. The time was nearly up; in one year more he would be free. Well, and then? He had been in one of the ways that butted down on hell; how would he come back to her? In all these years, silence. Who would bring him back? Who? They were keen enough to put him in,—but who would stay with him, to say, "You've slipped, boy, but stand up again"? Who would hold out a kind hand at the gate, when he came out, with "Here's a place, Yarrow. Here's home, and love, and God waiting; try another chance"? Who would do that? No wonder she looked out that night, thinking there was some work forgotten.
Martha sat there until dawn came, moving only to replenish the fire lest the children should take cold. In all her life she never forgot that night. Some furious instinct seemed at work within her, goading her to be up and doing. What should she do? Why should she disquiet herself? Her husband was safe asleep in his cell. Yet all night long she could not keep her soul back from crying to God to save him in his deadly peril, to bring him there at once to her, to the children. When morning broke, cold and sweet-breathed, russet clouds, dyed with the latent crimson day, thronging up from behind the hills, she tried to thrust down all the pains of the night as moody fancies. They did not go. She bathed herself, woke the children, laughed and romped with them (for their year's holiday should not be damped); but the cold, unsufferable weight within dragged her physically down. Trifles without, too, beset her with vague fears. Ready was gone; for years he had not left the house at night. The children began to look with uneasy eyes at her face: she would betray all. She kept her fingers thrust in the breast of her wrapper to touch the case of the picture: she could hold herself quiet so. How cold and unmeaning the light was that day to her! and every tick of the clock seemed to beat straight on her brain. So the morning crept by. She grew so sure—without reason—that it was the last day of waiting, that, when the children went out to build their snow-man, she sat down on Jem's chest, shivering and dizzy; when the snow cracked under a step outside, afraid to turn her head,—thinking he would be standing in the door, with the old patient smile on his mouth, and his hand out. But he did not come.
* * * * *
About half a mile on the other side of Shag's Hill there is a hotel, off from the road, looking like an overgrown Swiss chalet. Not a country-tavern by any means. Starr, a New-York caterer, keeps it, as a sort of boarding-house for a few wealthy Pittsburg families in summer: however, if you should stop there at any time of the year, you would be sure of a delicate croquette and a fair glass of wine. Usually, Starr and his family are the only occupants in winter, but on this Christmas eve there were lights in two of the upper rooms. M. Soule, the Mobile financier, so well known through the West, with his family, had occupied them for about a week; this evening, too, a Mr. Frazier from St. Louis was at the house: there was a collision of trains near Beaver, and he had left the other passengers and come over to Starr's, intending to go on horseback up to Pittsburg in the morning. An old acquaintance of the Soules, apparently: he had dined with them that evening, and when Starr went up about ten o'clock to know if Mr. Soule wished to go out gunning in the morning, he found the old man still standing with his back to the fire, talking sharply of the Little Miami Railroad shares, then beginning to go up. "A thorough old Shylock," thought Starr, waiting, scanning the acrid, wizened face with its protruding black eyes, the dried-up figure in a baggy suit of blue, a white collar turned down nearly to the shoulders, and the gray hair knotted in a queue. He looked at the landlord, scowling at the interruption: M. Soule, on the contrary, spoke heartily, as if suddenly relieved of a bore.
"Of course, of course, Starr; I'll be off by four. I'll saddle my own horse,—no need to disturb any of your people; let them sleep on Christmas at least, poor devils. The partridges about here are really worth tasting," turning to Frazier, "and Starr tells me of a mythical deer back in the hills. You see," with a bow, "it will not be possible for me to breakfast with you. I'll see you at Pittsburg about those snares,—say, on Monday."
"Yes," buttoning his coat, with a furtive glance of contempt at Soule's burly figure and eager face. Was this the far-famed Nimrod of the money-hunt? "I'll say to Pryor you had other game on hand to-day."
"Other game,—yes," with a sudden gravity,—pushing his hair back, and looking in the fire, while the old man made his formal adieus to his wife. They lasted some time, for Madame Soule was a courtly little body, with all her quiet. |
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